The Dish

In today’s New York Times Book Review, Anthony Julius reviews Ruth Wisse’s new book, Jews and Power.

But it also has a certain delicacy, in particular in its openness to alternative histories, alternative political arrangements. “It is worth considering how the Middle East might have evolved had Arab rulers accepted the partition of Palestine,” she writes. There would have been some voluntary shifts of population. Arab Palestine might have federated with Jordan. Regional priorities would have dictated new patterns of trade, commerce and development. Jews and Arabs who wanted to live in the other’s land could have traveled back and forth.

Indeed, imagine how history might have changed had the Arab powers accepted the mere presence of a Jewish state in their midst. Devastating wars would have been averted, radical Islam would not have the appeal it currently does, economies would be on the rise. Why is the existence of Israel such a big deal, not just for the Arabs, but for gullible and guilt-ridden Westerners who insist that the Palestinian issue must be solved before any other Middle Eastern problem can be tackled?

President Bush still does not know who actually controverted his policy on keeping Saddam’s military intact and instead disbanded it.  That’s an incredible admission — unbelievable! 

This from a revealing New York Times piece today on Bush biographer Robert Draper’s interviews with Bush (and in his forthcoming book Dead Certain:  The Presidency of George W. Bush):

Mr. Bush acknowledged one major failing of the early occupation of Iraq when he said of disbanding the Saddam Hussein-era military, “The policy was to keep the army intact; didn’t happen.”

But when Mr. Draper pointed out that Mr. Bush’s former Iraq administrator, L. Paul Bremer III, had gone ahead and forced the army’s dissolution and then asked Mr. Bush how he reacted to that, Mr. Bush said, “Yeah, I can’t remember, I’m sure I said, ‘This is the policy, what happened?’ ” But, he added, “Again, Hadley’s got notes on all of this stuff,” referring to Stephen J. Hadley, his national security adviser.

Those still in doubt about how Iraq’s military forces were disbanded and the incompetence and unaccountable idiocy that ran rampant during Bremer’s reign at the Coalition Provisional Authority, watch the dog fight between former senior CPA Office of Reconstruction special initiatives chief Paul Hughes and former Senior Advisor for National Defense in the Coalition Provisional Authority Walter Slocombe in the Sundance Special Jury Grand Prize winning No End in Sight. 

Hughes is the good guy in the film — and in the real life situation.  And Slocombe admits on film that he decided to disband the military — he just did it, without authorization from anyone.

And Bush still doesn’t get how this happened? or why?  And no one has paid a price. . .

— Steve Clemons

Scott Lemieux is right: this is a good post about Larry Craig’s arrest:

"By the cop’s own admission, he (the cop) "pumped his foot slowly up and down in response." In other words, Craig asked for sex using an arcane code extremely unlikely to "alarm, anger, or disturb" — according to the the equally arcane code defining disorderly conduct in Minnesota — an uninitiated fellow-lavator, and the cop knew what it meant and said yes.

Where’s the victim? What I find more astonishing is the definition of "disorderly conduct." By this reckoning, ten years and thirty pounds ago, I had disorderly conduct foisted upon me approximately…let’s see…15,923 times. Per week. Give or take. But, even if they’re unwanted advances, that’s the natural order of things, right? Whereas men have to be protected from the unwanted advances of men at all costs (why? because they’re worried they just might succumb to a particularly persuasive piece of foot telegraphy?). Given the constant, daily harassment women endure (come on now, don’t tune out; stay with me, here) — harassment that makes us compress our daily activities into daylight hours, that circumscribes where we go, who we go with, and even what we wear; intrusive harassment, ruin-your-day, make-you-feel-powerless/angry/depressed harassment — the overzealous prosecution of the toe-tapper really pisses me off. It’s like those sophomore discussions one has of human trafficking, in which someone invariably says "but what about the men?", and then the rest of the discussion, in some form or another, is overwhelmingly preoccupied with those minority cases. Heaven forfend we don’t keep men front and center, even if it makes lousy Bayesians of us all. Look: if there’d been groping, a physical risk, or even just a persistent advance in the face of a single "no" (which doesn’t seem to have ever been uttered), I’d be supportive regardless of the gender base-rates involved. But "he tapped his foot and looked at me funny"? Please! Men! Grow a pair!"

Honestly: I loathe sexual harassment. Leaving aside the attempted rapes on the one hand and all the myriad gropings and propositions on the other, I have been stalked twice, asked by a professor (now dead) whose class I was enrolled in to spend the summer with him, had a pitcher of beer poured over my head for saying no, and so on and so forth. I even got a buzz cut once — 1/4" long hair, max — because some jerk grabbed my breasts, and when I pulled away he started screaming obscenities at me. I was writing a travel guide at the time, so going to restaurants and discos alone was part of my job, and since I couldn’t figure out how to obtain a nun’s habit, cutting all my hair off seemed like the best way to make the levels of sexual harassment drop to remotely bearable levels. (I’m not kidding. I did this. I figured that in the split second when I was walking past someone, he would be thinking: "what on earth is that?", rather than grabbing me. It worked. Plus, ever since I since I watched the original Star Trek, I had wondered what I would look like with no hair. Now I knew.) I only called the police once — see "attempted rape", above — and the charming officer who responded said, and I quote: "why don’t you just head down to the beach tomorrow in a nice bikini and see if he tries again?" And much as I loathed all the rest of the sexual harassment I’ve encountered, I don’t really see that most of it — the cases in which I was not touched, at least — should be illegal, as opposed to merely vile. If it were illegal, however, I would have thought that since women are far more likely to receive unwanted advances than men, the police should focus a bit more attention on protecting us.

And one more thing:

Here’s what Tucker Carlson said that he did when he was the victim of sexual harassment in a men’s room:

"CARLSON: I went back with someone I knew and grabbed the guy by the — you know, and grabbed him, and — and —

ABRAMS: And did what?

CARLSON: Hit him against the stall with his head, actually!"

Later he amended his story, omitting the part about hitting the man’s head against the stall. The first time he told it, however, he, Joe Scarborough, and Dan Abrams seemed to think it was pretty funny to hit the guy’s head against a bathroom stall, and he never said that he thought there would have been anything wrong with it.

Here are some of Tucker Carlson’s comments on sexual harassment when he was not the victim:

One:

"CARLSON:  So it‘s basically everything related to sex that we don‘t like is now sexually harassment—is now sexual harassment.  See, that‘s the problem I have with this category itself.  Is I think it‘s too amorphous."

Two:

"What‘s going on here, Max, is male supervisors are so completely paranoid about being accused of sexual harassment, that when a woman flirts with them, or in any way acts female, or appealing, or cheery, or effervescent, the man is terrified of seeming like he favoring her so he pays her less. (…)

If anything, we need a federal law to protect the rights of on-the-job flirters."

And on whether Congressional Democrats will be more fun than Republicans:

"CARLSON:  A lot more fun?  This is a group that made up the concept of sexual harassment.  You look great today.  Boom, I‘m charging you with a crime.  Do you know what I mean?  It‘s not a group I associate with fun."

Apparently, Tucker Carlson thinks that when a man grabs him, it’s appropriate to shove his head against a bathroom stall, but that when a man harasses a woman it’s just good clean fun. Why? Is it that same-sex sexual harassment is icky but heterosexual sexual harassment is fine? Or is it just that sexual harassment is OK as long as he’s not the victim?

President Bush, June 28, 2004:

"Earlier today, 15 months after the liberation of Iraq, and two days ahead of schedule, the world witnessed the arrival of a free and sovereign Iraqi government. Iraqi officials informed us that they are ready to assume power, and Prime Minister Allawi believes that making this transition now is best for his country. After decades of brutal rule by a terror regime, the Iraqi people have their country back."

Wikipedia:

"Sovereignty is the exclusive right to complete political (e.g. legislative, judicial, and/or executive) authority over an area of governance, people, or oneself."

New York Times, September 2, 2007:

"Mr. Bush and his commanders weighed whether to reward the Sunnis with early provincial elections, restoring a degree of political power to them. But calling elections is no longer within the power of the United States, and the Shiite-dominated national government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki has long opposed empowering the Sunnis.

They also discussed ways to pressure Mr. Maliki’s government to provide millions of dollars in Iraqi funds — much of it oil money — to reconstruction of Anbar’s schools and health care centers and the reopening of state-run factories.

“This is all about finding ways to circumvent Maliki,” said one senior official who is involved in preparing Mr. Bush’s presentation of a new strategy, which will probably come in an address to the country after General Petraeus and the American ambassador to Iraq, Ryan C. Crocker, have presented their report to Congress starting on Sept. 10. “We can’t go to the Hill again and say Maliki will perform if we just give him the space. He won’t. So you find other means to accomplish the goal.”

But circumventing a central government that the United States itself set up is unlikely to prove easy."

They don’t even bother to pretend.

Today, at the National and Lesbian Gay Journalists’ Association annual convention in San Diego, I had a chance to see the irascible legend Larry Kramer riff on gay politics in America. He delivered his usual points (but in his always entertaining fashion): that straight people hate gays, that gay people are complacent about their second-class status ("just don’t be so fucking passive!"), and attacked the gay rights movement in general and the Human Rights Campaign in particular for being weak and ill-managed. A friend remarked that Kramer has the proper diagnosis of, but not the best tactics for, gay America.

But Kramer has a trenchant and historically-informed perception of how gay people are portrayed in the mainstream media, and he’s willing to call out people and institutions, friend or foe, for their irresponsibility and unfair treatment. Kramer mentioned an Iowa judge’s decision Thursday to overturn a state law banning gay marriage, a story that appeared on page A9 of Saturday’s New York Times and A18 of Friday’s Times; and hardly at all on television news. Meanwhile, the Larry Craig drama has been on the front page of the Times for several days this week and non-stop on CNN and Fox. No one can accuse the Times of having an anti-gay bias, but it’s nevertheless reflective of the paper of record’s poor news judgment to prioritize the sexual peccadilloes of a particular U.S. Senator over a major gay civil rights victory in a mid-western state.

To quote John Edwards, "Better late than never."

There’s been a lot of discussion on the blog about the use–and abuse–of the label "neo-con." Which has got me thinking–what is it that causes people to label others this way? And why is it that people who would never consider themselves neo-conservatives are labeled as such?

Today, it seems that a "neo-con" (at least in the fevered imaginations of the net-left) is someone who frequently calls attention to the unprovoked aggression of despotic regimes (e.g. Iran and Syria), the violation of human rights in other countries, and advocates the moral superiority of democratic countries in international affairs. A "neo-con" is now anyone who dares make an issue out of the aggressions and inhumanity of despotisms without explaining them away, and for advocating America do something about these aggressions and inhumanities. It is for this reason that so many on the left attacked Bayard Rustin in the 1970’s and 1980’s when, in addition to speaking out about racial injustices in the United States and condemning Reaganomics, he also spoke out, vociferously, against the PLO, Robert Mugabe, and the Sandinistas. But Rustin was hardly a proper neo-conservative, even if he happened to write the occasional article for Commentary and helped found the Coalition for a Democratic Majority. And so, simply for stating uncomfortable realities about the world, someone is called a "neocon" (which in today’s political discourse–not just left-wing discourse–is akin to labeling someone a "pinko" in the 1950’s) and readily dismissed.

It seems that, in both the right and left blogospheres those who do not toe the party line are attacked and called names: Liberals are traitors and conservatives are warmongers. "Neo-con" has become the de facto curse word in the left-wing blogosphere, applied to anyone who dares oppose the dictates of Chairman Kos (do his followers realize the cruel irony of calling themselves "Kossacks?")

While I write frequently about despotic regimes, their threat to America, and criticize the United Nations for being, what Daniel Patrick Moynihan referred to as, "A Dangerous Place," the neocons–at least the ones at the American Enterprise Institute–will probably be really surprised to hear Steve claim that "Jamie has been providing a ‘sideways defense’ for the neocons," considering this. Needless to say, not everyone who advocates for an internationalist, engaged, muscular foreign policy is a "neo-conservative."

My colleague Brad Plumer calls me out for stating that, "Whereas once the AFL-CIO had a large and effective international office, you’d be hard-pressed to hear, for instance, what they’re doing for Iraqi trade-unionists." He’s right that I give short shrift to the AFL-CIO’s international support for trade unionists, particularly in Iraq, and I apologize for and regret the oversight. And he’s absolutely right about the Bush administration’s moronic spurning of Iraqi trade unions, "which were one of the few dedicated anti-insurgent, anti-Baathist organizations in the country."

But I still stand by my larger point, which is that whereas anti-totalitarianism used to be the animating ideology of the AFL-CIO and Cold War liberals (both domestically–when the AFL fought tooth and nail against entryist communists, and internationally, in support for higher defense budgets and beating–not living with–the Soviet Union), the AFL has now become part of the anti-war faction of the Democratic Party, calling for immediate withdrawal, and abandoning Iraqi trade unionists to their fates.

For an example of what position American labor might take on the war, they ought to look across the pond to their British comrades, particularly Labour Friends of Iraq, a group composed of Labour MPs which supported the invasion of Iraq on humanitarian grounds and that opposes a coalition withdrawal:

History will not forgive us if we fail to give solidarity to Grassroots Iraq as its long-suffering people seek a federal, democratic, pluralist, and unified Iraq, in which there is full respect for the political and human rights of all.

The group’s director, Gary Kent, wrote yesterday in Progress, a publication affiliated with the Labour Party:

Why can’t more progressives start seeing who are its real enemies and friends in Iraq? Instead, some seem stuck in a time-warp circa February 2003 when millions marched to prevent the invasion of Iraq. The war easily toppled Saddam which most Iraqis welcomed but the American military proceeded to start losing the peace with great stupidity.

One of the most important gains has been the renaissance of a new civil society after decades of fascist-type rule. Labour Friends of Iraq (LFIQ) concentrates its efforts on supporting the Iraqi trade union movement.

…It’s perfectly understandable that those who opposed the invasion maintain the integrity of their arguments. It’s quite another to effectively adopt an "I told you so" stance and sit on one’s hands at the expense of the workers’ movement, women’s organisations and elected Iraqi parliamentarians and parties.

It’s obscene for a minority to back insurgents who murder union leaders and would destroy civil society.With or without foreign troops, a surge of solidarity with the unions and others is needed. It’s the very least one would expect from progressive internationalism.

A few points in response to Jamie’s last post, which I will put below the fold so as not to distract from more substantive posts.

First, I don’t know how Jamie is using the term ‘totalitarian’, but I meant it in its usual sense: “Of, relating to, being, or imposing a form of government in which the political authority exercises absolute and centralized control over all aspects of life, the individual is subordinated to the state, and opposing political and cultural expression is suppressed.” We can debate how closely al Qaeda’s goals fit this definition: whether, for instance, an organization that rejects all man-made political structures could be described as one in which a political authority exercises absolute control over all aspects of life; whether the Sunni Islamic authorities who would presumably have a fair amount of power in al Qaeda’s dream caliphate are normally unified enough to exercise totalitarian control, and so forth.

But al Qaeda does not pose a threat to us because its dream caliphate is a realistic possibility. It threatens us because it is a terrorist group. Moreover, its nearer-term political goals — e.g., eliminating any American presence from Saudi Arabia, toppling various governments in the Muslim world — are much more developed than its positive vision of the caliphate with which it wants to replace them. The caliphate would clearly be a theocracy of some kind; whether or not it would be a totalitarian government is, I think, not at all clear. But to emphasize this goal, given both the unlikelihood that it will ever be achieved and its underdeveloped character relative to the rest of al Qaeda’s goals is like describing Lenin’s Communist Party as an anarchist rather than a totalitarian organization on the grounds that it held that the state would eventually wither away.

Second, I do not deny that Iran and Syria support terror, or that they, especially Iran, have helped factions within Iran. I do deny that they have “effectively declared war on us”, which was Jamie’s original claim. There is a difference.

Third, Jamie objects to my claim that al Qaeda’s natural allies are failed states. (Though I don’t know what he means when he says that “claiming that al Qaeda is “allied” with them is a bit like saying it’s “allied” with the equator.” Even leaving aside the fact that I did not say that al Qaeda was allied with “failed states” in general, but that failed states were its natural allies, the analogy escapes me.) The two states with which al Qaeda has been most closely allied were Somalia and Afghanistan. Both were failed or failing states. I do not believe that this is a coincidence: a stronger state would be likely to resist allying itself with an organization as destructive, unpredictable, and likely to cause problems as al Qaeda.

Fourth, because I used the phrase “the risk of further destabilization in the Middle East and Pakistan”, Jamie writes that “For Hilzoy, as for many on the left, there’s no agency, no ideology, no actor behind this destabilization, except, of course, America, George W. Bush, and the criminal neocon cabal.” Jamie is free to entertain this fantasy vision of what the left thinks, but if he wants to attribute this view to me, he should provide some evidence other than the construction of a single sentence. For the record, I have neither said nor thought that no one other than Bush is responsible for the destabilization of the Middle East, nor have I been particularly shy about criticizing other agents.

Fifth, Jamie seems to think that when I asked him what his conception of journalism was, I was bothered by the fact that I disagree with him. This is not true. I was bothered, as I said, by the fact that he made a serious accusation, and then wrote, the next day, that he wasn’t sure whether what he wrote was true or not, but was simply trying to be provocative. I would have been just as baffled had he written something I thought was true but that he himself did not believe, just to be provocative, especially if, in writing it, he had apparently not bothered to check and see whether it was true or not.

I was trying to understand how someone could write an article defining and describing “The Obama Doctrine”, and then go on to write: “I’m not really sure if there is an Obama Doctrine, but was hoping to be provocative and stir some debate. That is why I asked:

“Jamie, how do you conceive of your role as a journalist and blogger? What responsibilities do you think it involves? And how has your view of those responsibilities informed the posts I’ve mentioned above?”

In asking that question, I was not impugning Jamie’s motives, but questioning his conception of what being a journalist or a blogger involves. There is a difference. I supposed that Jamie was trying to do what a journalist or a blogger is supposed to do, and I wondered what he took that to involve. I might instead have impugned his motives: for instance, I might have said that he intentionally misrepresented the truth for some purpose of his own, or, perhaps, that he tried to provoke rather than inform in order to subvert the norms of journalism from within. I might have impugned his journalistic competence: for instance, by supposing that he was trying to state the truth accurately, but did not understand that to state the truth about a candidate’s views, one normally needs to consider more than one snippet of one interview. Or I might have impugned his linguistic competence: for instance, by supposing that he did not understand that “I’m not really sure whether X is true” is inconsistent with “I believe X for good reasons.”

Any of these options would, I thought, have been less charitable than the one I chose. Moreover, while I do not know Jamie, and thus am in no position to judge, I do not suppose that any of them is true. That is why I did not impugn either his motives or his competence, but asked what his conception of journalism and blogging was, and how it was consistent with what he wrote. Likewise, it would have been less charitable to leap to conclusions about what that conception was. That is why I asked him, rather than assuming that I knew the answer. If there is a good answer to that question, I am eager to hear it. If there isn’t, then it is that fact, not any statement of mine, that Jamie should worry about.

Larry Craig won’t be Idaho’s Senator after September 30th.  He made his resignation announcement today.

There has been a lot of ridicule of Craig in the last several days — much of which was deserved given his well-preened anti-gay persona, but now he’s out. He’s terminated one of the big contradictions in his life.  Now he has others he’ll have to deal with.

Two things come to mind immediately after hearing his decision to resign. 

First, I am reposting Tom Toles‘ cartoon again — particularly in commemoration of Andrew Sullivan’s and Aaron Tone’s wedding last Monday.  The Republican moderates — the "main streeters" — should use this opportunity to unwind their party’s ridiculous objections to broader institution building (read: marriage) between committed same sex couples.

Toles (c) 2007 The Washington Post. Used by permission of Universal Press Syndicate. All rights reserved.

Second, there are a lot of people living dual lives.  When those lives finally clash, the answer is not ridicule — but rather compassion.  Larry Craig has to sort this out — but so do many, many others who have more than one track defining who they are.

Craig will soon be a former Senator.  I recommend he go spend time with one of the most enlightened Republican Senators on these subjects, Alan Simpson of Wyoming, who has done a lot of thinking about the gap between straight and gay worlds, particularly the political dimensions and all of the variations of identity between "gay" and "straight".

Simpson is one of the best counselors and friends Larry Craig could reach out to right now.

— Steve Clemons