The Dish

ABC News detects a reversal on tax policy.

Since I’m trying to write my marriage vows, the phrase is on my mind. Virginia Postrel sums up my own view of the matter which is that the traditional notion that "disease" has a bright line demarcating it from stuff about your body you just don’t like or enjoy is, well, unconvincing. Or rather, it is as convincing as the distinction between smoking pot for health or for pleasure. The line between the two is a very blurry one. Why isn’t a bad day as worth medicating as an upset stomach? Virginia:

Why not treat a biological condition you just don’t like? (I’m assuming that you are directly or indirectly paying for the treatment.) We don’t have to call Restless Leg Syndrome a disease to acknowledge that it disturbs some people’s sleep and that those people would like relief. Contrary to what you may have heard, the only sort of character suffering builds is the ability to suffer–a useful ability in a world where suffering is the routine nature of life but not a virtue that makes the world a better place.

And suffering because you have an ugly face and want plastic surgery applies. Of course, this assumes you are paying for this yourself. Insurance needs some such line. I’m not talking about having your plastic surgery covered. I’m talking about not needing to be apologetic about it when you pay for it yourself.

The amateur video campaign is getting really racy.

One difference between Obama and Clinton does not seem to me to have been stressed enough. They are of different Democratic generations. Clinton is from the traumatized generation; Obama isn’t. Clinton has internalized to her bones the 1990s sense that conservatism is ascendant, that what she really believes is unpopular, that the Republicans have structural, latent power of having a majority of Americans on their side. Hence the fact that she reeks of fear, of calculation, of focus groups, of triangulation. She might once have had ideals keenly felt; she might once have actually relished fighting for them and arguing in thier defense. But she has not been like that for a very long time. She has political post-traumatic stress disorder. She saw her view of feminism gutted in the 1992 campaign; she saw her healthcare plan destroyed by what she saw as a VRWC; she remains among the most risk-averse of Democrats on foreign policy and in the culture wars. Here’s a simple current example: her position on needle exchanges to reduce HIV transmission among IV drug users. Ben Smith recounts the tale here. The last Clinton administration refused to prevent HIV transmission this way, regardless of the science and epidemiology, because they were terrified of being labeled "liberal" by the GOP machine. Clinton still hasn’t out-grown that (which is why I confidently predict that if she becomes president, progress toward gay equality will slow, because a leading Democrat will impede it in a long slog of triangulation and risk-aversion). Her classic formulation today is what it was before:

"We’ll have as much spine as we possibly can, under the circumstances."

Obama is different. He wasn’t mugged by the 1980s and 1990s as Clinton was. He doesn’t carry within him the liberal self-hatred and self-doubt that Clinton does. The traumatized Democrats fear the majority of Americans are bigoted, know-nothing, racist rubes from whom they need to conceal their true feelings and views. The non-traumatized Democrats are able to say what they think, make their case to potential supporters and act, well, like Republicans acted in the 1980s and 1990s. The choice between Clinton and Obama is the choice between a defensive crouch and a confident engagement. It is the choice between someone who lost their beliefs in a welter of fear; and someone who has faith that his worldview can persuade a majority.

In my view, the call is not a close one.

A view uncannily close to mine:

If Washington, D.C. were the drowsy southern town that Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge rode into, Ron Paul would have a chance. Washington’s not like that nowadays, though. It is a vast megalopolis, every nook and cranny stuffed with lobbyists, lawyers, and a hundred thousand species of tax-eater. The sleepy old boulevards of the 1920s are now shadowed between great glittering ziggurats of glass and marble, where millions of administrative assistants to the Department of Administrative Assistance toil away at sending memos to each other.

Few of these laborers in the vineyards of government do anything useful. (In my experience — I used to have to deal with them — few do anything much at all.) Some of what they do is actually harmful to the nation. On the whole, though, we have settled in with this system. We are used to it. It’s not going away, absent a revolution; and conservatives are — duh! — not, by temperament, revolutionaries.

Imagine, for example, President Ron II trying to push his bill to abolish the IRS through Congress. Congress! — whose members eat, drink, breathe and live for the wrinkles they can add to the tax code on behalf of their favored interest groups! Or imagine him trying to kick the U.N. parasites out of our country. Think of the howls of outrage on behalf of suffering humanity from all the lefty academics, MSM bleeding hearts, love-the-world flower children, Eleanor Roosevelt worshippers, and bureaucratic globalizers!

Ain’t gonna happen. It was, after all, a conservative who said that politics is the art of the possible. Ron Paul is not possible. His candidacy belongs to the realm of dreams, not practical politics. But, oh, what sweet dreams!

"No Cooler for the Scooter".

Dean Barnett pens a sloppy diatribe:

The left and other anti-war figures like Andrew Sullivan have a lot invested in this war failing and failing miserably. They have a lot invested emotionally, intellectually and most of all politically. That’s why they routinely dismiss or ignore good news out of Iraq and hype bad or even potentially fabricated news like the Thomas Diarists.

It’s been interesting watching their tactics evolve over the past few weeks, from the publishing of the Thomas Diarists to the smearing of David Petraeus. Interesting, but also revolting.

There’s no "smearing" of David Petraeus, so far as I can see. There’s concern he’s not a disinterested party in a critical debate. There is worry that by talking to partisans like Hugh Hewitt, he will only undermine his credibility. There is legitimate scrutiny of his forecasts in the past. The broader concern is that whatever small successes a decent counter-insurgency strategy might finally be having, it cannot work without many, many more troops throughout Iraq and without a political settlement. Taking small, local successes as an indicator of the inevitability of systematic, national success would be foolish. And patience is not unlimited.

Why is it not unlimited? Why can we not just stay in Iraq indefinitely until we get this right? The answer is because it is unclear whether this campaign is helping or hurting the battle against Islamist terrorism, and in so far as we have clarity, it suggests the Iraq front is making things worse. The answer is because this war was started on false pretenses, and has been conducted in such a way as to shred trust in the current commander-in-chief. The answer is because many of us do not want to see the US permanently occupying a Muslim country in the middle of the Arab world. The answer is because the bulk of the US military is being ground up in Iraq for minimal benefit. The answer is because a Petraeus campaign with 500,000 troops might have worked in 2003 but cannot work today, after the critical window of opportunity has closed, and Iraq has fractured irreparably. So for many of us, the question, after four dreadful years, is: how do we withdraw in as strategically a helpful a way as possible? And how do we minimize the future damage to our global and regional interests?

Is there an element of emotional investment in having this war fail? No one enmeshed in a public debate this raw will be devoid of emotional investment. That goes for both sides. But it seems to me the question is moot. The war has already failed on its own terms, in its causes, its consequences, and its effects. WMDs? Democracy? Terror-reduction? The results are in, guys, after a conflict as long as the Second World War. The question is simply now the further consequences of the failure and the extent of the damage. And it seems to me that the bulk of the emotional investment is now on the side of the neoconservatives and Cheney-Republicans, fearful that their entire worldview has not just been detonated by recent events, but could be buried by history in the next few years. The phenomenal emotional need to be proven right after all, to goad those of us chastened by the evidence of four grueling years, to escape the tarnish of war crimes, and to rescue an entire movement from impending electoral and intellectual oblivion is surely stalking the current stage.

Our job is to look as dispassionately at the evidence as we can. This blog has, and this blog will: the good news as well as the bad.

"It places the lotion in the basket." "Silence of the Lambs."

Daniel Larison joins the throng of skeptics:

The only similarity between what is happening today and the Cold War is that both do involve containment doctrines of a sort, which is to say that both situations involve adversarial relations between Washington and another power.  That’s it.  Before the invasion, standard U.S. policy in this part of the region was “dual containment,” targeting both Iraq and Iran.  Now that containing Iraq is not in the picture any longer, containment has focused entirely on Iran.  Obviously.  The recently announced weapons sales to the GCC states are a new part of this long-standing policy of anti-Iranian containment.  In other words, the only thing remotely Cold War-like in Iran policy has been going on for years before 9/11, and most of our Iran policy is not really anything like U.S. Soviet policy during the Cold War.

It’s hard to disagree. I’d add this. Our goal should surely be to become allies eventually with a less theocratic and much more democratic Iran. We mustn’t conflate the regime with the country or the people. And I’m worried that a process of demonization might do that.

A reader writes:

The "Delta guys" theory doesn’t make a lot of sense.

The US Army sniper rifles are the M-24 and the M82A1M/M107. The former is an anti-personnel rifle with 7.62mm caliber, the latter is anti-material with .50 cal. Both are bolt-action.

So

1) The medical examiner said "M-16". M-16’s are 5.56mm caliber. I assume that he/she could tell the difference. 5.56mm isn’t a good choice for long-range sniping.

2) None of the bolt-action sniper rifles can "burst" fire.

I agree that something about three shots to the forehead sounds fishy, but Delta snipers from long range isn’t a viable explanation.  Franky, neither is burst-fire from a single weapon since it would be unlikely for three shots to be tightly grouped due to recoil.

I keep thinking this incident is out of a movie. The heroism, the sacrifice, the tragedy, the lies, the cover-up, and the unthinkable. I should repeat I think it’s almost certainly a friendly fire accident. But too much still doesn’t add up. And then there’s this: his diary was destroyed?