The Dish

"I have proposed the introduction of specific sedition laws that mention the Islamic religion by name, taking note of the uniquely pressing threat of the Jihad. Again, I think such legislation justified in part because throwing a man in prison for two years on a wrongful sedition conviction is indeed an injustice; but it is a pittance compared to what injustice might await that same man, and his family, when legislation is no longer an option, when anarchy and civil war are upon us. I say "in part" because there are other justifications as well: justifications not premised on speculation of civil war. One is that Jihad, quite aside from its threat to us, is a wicked doctrine and should not receive the protection of our laws. Another is that we can fight totalitarian Islam by prohibiting it, by letting its (sic) stand naked without the shelter of the civil liberties which it seeks to obliterate," – Paul Cella, RedState.

Charles Krauthammer, as usual, does a better job at framing and spinning the events in Iraq than the Bush administration. He’s arguing that the surge essentially is working to the extent that it is training Sunni armed militias to battle al Qaeda. I hope he’s right in the short term. It is a lonely piece of good news that Iraqi Sunni Arabs have decided that the foreign 5 percent of the insurgency needs to be taken on. Any place where Arab Muslims are actively fighting al Qaeda is a gain both in terms of tactics and strategic narrative. We should certainly wish Petraeus well in this small but encouraging task.

But Charles is realistic enough to see what this also leads to: a better armed and better trained sectarian force. If we have abandoned the central government – the "80 percent solution" – we have effectively decided to train and arm one side in a coming civil war. Money quote:

Maliki & Co. are afraid we are arming Sunnis for the civil war to come. On the other hand, we might be creating a rough balance of forces that would act as a deterrent to all-out civil war and encourage a relatively peaceful accommodation.

A reader is franker:

There is an easy way out in Iraq: support the Sunnis against the Shia. Arm them heavily and withdraw. This will restore some balance and the two parties will come to terms. If not at least it will tie up the Iranians for a long while. Combine it with a meaningful resolution of the Palestinian issue and most of our  problems go away. Not a very moral position but it will work.

So the strategy is now arming and training one side to better fight the other? And at best, create a stand-off that will prevent genocide from happening too quickly? What’s interesting to me about Charles’ column is that it shows that one of the most inventive and cogent defenders of this administration has conceded that the original strategy behind the surge is now moot. That was quick. We are now doing what we can to prep the sides in a looming civil war, and impeding AQI at the same time. That’s the most we can hope for. He may be right and I don’t see much wrong with this gambit – as long as it is combined with a very serious attempt to protect the Kurdish regions and hold Turkey’s hand very tightly.

If the administration wants to make this case in September, fine. But be honest about it. Drop the crap about AQI being the only problem in Iraq. Frame withdrawal in this context, but be clear about withdrawal. There is a potential realist compromise here in which our withdrawal is linked to creating a less centrifugal failed state than we now have, and protects the Kurds. It will require deftness and subtlety. It will also require the administration to be more candid and humble than they have been thus far. I don’t have my hopes up. But when Dr K has thrown in the towel, maybe even Mr Cheney will listen.

Because Vista does this to your hard drive. If Fallows cannot cope, what hope is there for the rest of us mere techno-mortals?

The latest poll on views of Senator Clinton are no big surprise. Her negatives are still sky-high and there’s no reason to believe they will decline. But the most important aspect of the polling, I think, is the reason for her negatives. Easily the biggest reason people give for not liking her is trust. They don’t trust her. The trust issue is on both right and left. Here’s the right-wing distrust expressed:

"I’ve followed her history back to her college days, and I just don’t trust her. I think she’s a socialist, and I think that’s exactly where she wants to take us."

I’m not sure what she is, myself. If you peel back all the onion layers of opportunism, sound-bites on sound-bites, private promises, public compromises, spin, calculation, triangulation, reinvention and deceit, I think you get what can only be called numb. Deep beneath that numbness, somewhere in that Arctic, resentful interior of hers,I suspect she is just a congenital, well-meaning nanny. Here’s the distrust many on the left nd in the center feel:

"There are certain things she has voted on since she has been in Congress that seem to me to lean more toward the Republican view of things, which doesn’t make me too happy," said Ms. Hughes, a retired newspaper columnist. "I want her to be strong and express strong feelings, not just fit her feelings to that audience at that moment," she said.

It’s quite an achievement – to evoke distrust almost equally across the spectrum. And after all these years, I don’t believe the American public is wrong.

This wouldn’t be that big a deal if it weren’t for the last seven years. We are at war; one of our deepest weaknesses is that we are divided as a country and as a civilization in a battle for our values and, perhaps, our existence. Another profound weakness is that we have lost trust – with very good reason – in the leaders of this war. Successfully prosecuting a long war requires a bond of trust between rulers and ruled. One reason why the current debate about what to do next in Iraq has become so bitter so quickly is precisely because none of us can trust what the government says or its motives.

Replacing Bush with Clinton would, it seems to me, compound this problem. It would send a message that we are more consumed with scoring points at home than confronting a deadly foe from abroad. It would split red America from blue America just as deeply as Rove has done. Even if you like and support her, a vote for Clinton is a vote objectively to divide the nation and distract us from the real enemy. We have a chance to break out of the pattern we’re in. Clinton would prevent that for a very long time.

(Photo: Mannie Garcia/Getty.)

Great post from Ambers today on sex and politics ("sex is inevitable and amoral") with this lovely metaphor:

"Primary politics remains largely an exercise in irritating the triggering points within the musculature of the political parties."

Ross Douthat goes after David Vitter.

A reader writes:

So I was watching the morning news in a state of pre-coffee muziness, and the utter absurdity of our position in Iraq suddenly struck me. We are supporting Sunni insurgents who oppose the Iraqi government which we support, which is in turn supported by militias backed by Iran, who we oppose. The administration is calling this the path to victory. Screw the coffee, where did I hide the whiskey?

Muziness? (Update: A reader explains it’s "muzziness". Look it up.)

This video is worth a look – not necessarily for its conclusion or even for its occasional lapses into hyperbole. But because it puts together some lethal clips of the administration’s WMD claims before and after the invasion. Rumsfeld’s lies are particularly egregious. The evasion of responsibility, the callowness, the arrogance and, yes, the obvious deception at times: all this does not seem to me to diminish with time. The more we know, the angrier many have become. The anger is not a function of some derangement; it’s a function of sanity.

She demands in a letter that Bob Gates back the Cheneyite up or publicly distance himself. It’s on now.

More data for Jamie Kirchick. Here’s Ron Paul at Google:

""Don’t ask, don’t tell’ doesn’t sound all that bad to me because as an employer, I’ve never asked them [employees] anything and I don’t want them to tell me anything. … So I would say that everyone should be treated equally, and they [gays] shouldn’t be discriminated against because of that alone. Which means that even though those words aren’t offensive to me, that ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ don’t sound so bad to me, I think the way it’s enforced is bad. Because, literally, if somebody is a very, very good individual working for our military – and I met one just the other day in my office, who was a translator – and he was kicked out for really no good reason at all. I would want to change that, I don’t support that interpretation."

Ignorant? Yes. Bigoted? Nah.