Saturday, March 15, 2003
C�EST FACIL POUR LUI � PARLER:
First, the inevitable excluded bit from Marc Roche�s Guardian column:
Far from responding with kneejerk anti-Americanism, Mr Chirac is a great fan of the American way of life. After September 11, he was the first world leader to visit the US to pay his respects (well before Blair, who has clearly never forgiven him for it).
Then the thing that really begs mentioning.
In the bit Sullivan quotes, we learn that France has six million Muslim immigrants to worry about as a potential terrorist threat.
He passes that off as the French being appeasers. But that accounts for 10 percent of the current French population (well, almost).
Imagine if the U.S. had a similar amount of not-terribly-well-assimilated (which requires eliding a fundamental difference between American and French multiculturalism that, in this case, works against the French to create unnecessary cultural alienation, we think ... the French feel that all immigrants have an equal right to become French in every way). That would be about 30 million.
Once you appreciate those numbers, you don't have to sympathize with the French position. But at least empathize.
This is what we and Slate meant about Bush�s weakness in not bothering to understand different points of view.
posted by Sully 3/15/2003 01:49:00 AM
Friday, March 14, 2003
THE NEW DIALECTICIANS:
Reading his lead post of the day, we couldn�t help but be reminded of this take by Josh Marshall on the Administration line, specifically what about it really rankles the second-thoughtsers like himself:
One point that deserves notice � and which we�ll try to return to � is that the Bush crowd is now pursuing a logic on the international stage which is inherently self-validating. Every bust-up of an alliance, every disaster is proof that this or that alliance or relationship or global norm was worthless in the first place and thus we�re even more right than we thought we were in bulldozing through ...
Hmm. Again, we wonder who, exactly, he could be paraphrasing?
Josh links to Paul Krugman, who also says something similar in his column this morning, which we'll just join with other bloggers in linking to:
Mr. Bush�s inner circle seems amazed that the tactics that work so well on journalists and Democrats don�t work on the rest of the world [Unfortunately, that says more about those two groups then it does about the rest of the world � SW]. They�ve made promises, oblivious to the fact that most countries don�t trust their word. They�ve made threats. They�ve done the aura-of-inevitability thing � how many times now have administration officials claimed to have lined up the necessary votes in the Security Council? They�ve warned other countries that if they oppose America's will they are objectively pro-terrorist. Yet still the world balks.
Wasn�t someone at the State Department allowed to point out that in matters nonmilitary, the U.S. isn�t all that dominant � that Russia and Turkey need the European market more than they need ours, that Europe gives more than twice as much foreign aid as we do and that in much of the world public opinion matters? Apparently not.
And to what end has Mr. Bush alienated all our most valuable allies? (And I mean all: Tony Blair may be with us, but British public opinion is now virulently anti-Bush.) The original reasons given for making Iraq an immediate priority have collapsed. No evidence has ever surfaced of the supposed link with Al Qaeda, or of an active nuclear program. And the administration�s eagerness to believe that an Iraqi nuclear program does exist has led to a series of embarrassing debacles, capped by the case of the forged Niger papers, which supposedly supported that claim. At this point it is clear that deposing Saddam has become an obsession, detached from any real rationale.
What really has the insiders panicked, however, is the irresponsibility of Mr. Bush and his team, their almost childish unwillingness to face up to problems that they don't feel like dealing with right now.
As usual, he is an oasis amid a scorching desert of mainstream political commentary.
But when is someone going to put all this together and connect the dots that are increasingly obvious?
This is the dry-drunk administration. George W. Bush may or may not have stopped drinking with God�s help, but he failed to hear the man upstairs tell him that he needed to shed the personality traits an addict acquires to sustain his addiction ... the tendency to bully other people when one can, to fob off one's own mistakes on others (as he recently did to Congress over homeland-security funding or the lack thereof), the focus on extremely petty pursuits to the exclusion of all else, the control-freaky vindictiveness.
It�s all there. And isn�t it funny how much Sullivan shares the same traits? No wonder he apologizes for Dubya so persistently.
posted by Sully 3/14/2003 12:26:00 PM
THOSE WHO REMEMBER THE PAST ARE CONDEMNED TO FORGET IT:
Sully is at again today (well, yesterday) with yet more on the Iraq-can't-be-contained aspect of the argument, this time using the thoughts of a former Soviet specialist that Castro wanted the Soviets to nuke the U.S. in 1962 to argue that, hey, maybe Saddam is the same.
He continues to ignore the sound analysis of Jim Henley and others to the effect that Iraq can be deterred and contained, and in fact has been, more than once.
But anyway ... It occurred to us as we read this over and over again from Smalltown Boy and so many others who used the Hitler analogy to consider what the actual facts of Western Europe in the 1930s were.
We have been told that Hitler's Germany became what Saddam will become if we don't act because of a similar French failure of nerve.
But guess what ... in our opinion, we have already done to Saddam what should have been done to Hitler in those darkening years.
We did some historical research, and the moment in question is March 1936, when the German army, in defiance of the Treaty of Versailles and the Locarno pact, re-entered the Rhineland.
In the present situation, this might be analogous to Saddam�s invasion of Kuwait in 1990.
Back then the U.S. and other powers acted as swiftly as they could to repulse Saddam and his army from Kuwait and establish some of containment zone.
But France, which had the most direct stake in keeping Germany out of the Rhineland, did not act. It's believed by historians that if they had, Hitler would have been humiliated and so much prevented.
Why? French public opinion, mainly. The memories of World War I were still strong, and the public as a whole didn't really want war again so soon.
The French left of that time was inclined in a pacifist direction, and, thinking the treaty had sort of been unfair, felt that if Hitler wasn't going to attack France and wanted peace, then he should have peace.
The French right, for its part, looked admiringly on the way Hitler had restored order and respect for authority and the military and suppressed democracy.
So, they did nothing when history would have turned out immeasurably better if they had. They failed to contain Nazi Germany in the way Bill Clinton and Tony Blair did not fail to contain Iraq.
One does have to ask oneself, however, what might have happened if they had continued to press the case even if Germany had withdrawn its troops.
It says much about our present view of the world that very little alternative-history sci-fi posits a world in which World War II did not happen, that we prefer to imagine a world in which the Axis was victorious.
But this scenario wouldn't have produced anything better than what we got. France and Britain would have seemed overbearing and bullyish to the rest of the world, and Hitler would have gained legitimacy from sectors of the German public he couldn�t have bought it from on his own.
posted by Sully 3/14/2003 08:20:00 AM
Thursday, March 13, 2003
BOMBS NOT FOOD:
After much bloviating over the obvious (Pat Buchanan is an antisemite; The New Oxford Review and by extension The Weekly Standard know no end of depravity in their homophobia) this morning, Sullivan outdoes himself or any other warblogger yet in whipsawing antiwar protesters.
The instrument of this unprecendented exercise in disingenuousness is the effect of sanctions on the Iraqi population.
No one argues that it has been at all positive. Everything one can measure the standard of living by in Iraq has declined precipitously since they were imposed many years ago.
Indeed, many western activists have been calling for an end to them on the basis that the Iraqi people have suffered immeasurably, and to no end.
And there was a time not so long ago, we recall, when people like Sully and his ilk disparaged them as na�ve fools, who weren�t tough-minded enough to see that Saddam was a dangerous threat who ought not to be left alone. Starving, dying children were hard to look at, yes, but it was the price we paid to avert even greater evil.
Now, however, according to Smalltown Boy, they�re the cruel and heartless ones. Sanctions we imposed have created such a desultory situation that we must make war to save the Iraqi people from what we inflicted on them.
Notice what�s missing from this little equation? Yup. Saddam. Somehow this notoriously nefarious and self-indulgent dictator is a completely passive agent in all this ... yet what he spends on just one of his palaces could feed all Baghdad for a week. And never mind his complete misuse of the Oil for Food program.
It�s funny how suddenly Saddam�s responsibility for the situation goes out the window when Sullivan senses a window of opportunity to portray war protesters as hypocrites. He gives them the alternative of being either appallingly negligent, like those who apparently share his concern over Saddam�s regional military goals; or venal, like those (the French, he calls them) who want to end that human suffering.
So war, by this argument, is not only a moral course of action, it is the only moral course of action. Dont�t we hear the good Mr. Blair (not the PM, either?) knocking something along those lines somewhere.
And he�s wrong about even that. As this excellent article on this exact topic notes:
This failure to acknowledge the humanitarian implications of policy continues even as war is considered. One can certainly imagine relatively benign war scenarios, including a short war followed by the rapid institution of a popularly legitimate and administratively effective new regime. Such a scenario would lead to humanitarian outcomes which rapidly would become preferable to the current harmful status quo. But such scenarios should not be assumed. UN assessments written for internal planning purposes, but leaked to the public, indicate that the humanitarian risks involved are very high. One report, produced by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, estimated a �medium� scenario in which, �[i]n the event of a crisis, 30 percent of children under five would be at risk of death from malnutrition.� Even this projected �medium� scenario would be a disaster, replete with large refugee flows, infrastructural decimation and consequent suspension of essential services, an inability of the Iraqi health care system to cope with crisis, and acute and large-scale food shortages. Other UN and NGO studies give similar assessments, and all studies stress the highly unusual vulnerability of the Iraqi population, whose assets and other coping mechanisms have been decimated by years of war and sanctions.
What�s their solution? We may have to decide what we consider the lesser of two evils:
Few would argue that Iraqis would not be better off under a different leadership, but �regime change� has a catch: while the Iraqi regime could deliver disarmament, it cannot and will not deliver its own downfall. Raad Alkadiri states a common view when he argues that by 1997 Saddam Hussein believed �once and for all that, irrespective of the kind sentiments of Iraq�s �friends� in the Security Council, nothing could overturn US and British support for sanctions while he remains in power.� The obstinacy of the US and Britain, as well as the Iraqi regime, in the political conflict over disarmament has already inflicted tremendous suffering, through sanctions, upon those Iraqis for whose well-being Bush and Blair now profess such abiding concern. The apparently impending war may very well do the same.
posted by Sully 3/13/2003 12:35:00 PM
Wednesday, March 12, 2003
PRINCIPLES OF JOURNALISTIC ETHICS, SULLIVAN STYLE:
Wyeth Ruthven meditates on Smalltown Boy�s histrionics over Married by America, his comparative silence over Washington Times financial angel The Right Rev. Sun Myung Moon, and comes to this apt conclusion:
Andrew Sullivan has no problem with biting the hand that feeds him � so long as it is a LEFT hand.
posted by Sully 3/12/2003 09:20:00 PM
WE�RE DEFINITELY DOING SOMETHING RIGHT (NOT IN THE IDEOLOGICAL SENSE, OF COURSE):
Conservative blogger Steve Silver says we�ve got it going over MoDo:
Dowd could learn a thing or two about nicknaming her conservative political enemies from the anonymous proprietor of the anti-Andrew Sullivan blog SullyWatch. Not only does this blogger link at least once a day to Sullivan's infamous barebacking ad, but he has a whole array of humorous nicknames for him: The Blog Queen, Captain Bareback, Smalltown Boy, The Sage of South Goodstone, Randy Andy, etc. Even as a Sullivan fan, I laugh every time.
If the American political left's been missing anything lately, it�s humor � and Maureen Dowd, I�m looking chiefly in your direction.
Yup, Steve. We couldn�t agree with you more.
posted by Sully 3/12/2003 09:10:00 PM
DEADLY DRONE NOT SO DEADLY AFTER ALL:
Sullivan has said nothing about today�s reports that Iraq�s SuperSecret Drone of Death is, apparently, just a balsa-wood model in addition to having been previously reported by Blix.
(Thanks Quiddity Quack).
posted by Sully 3/12/2003 09:01:00 PM
RUMSFELD�S INTEMPERACY:
You were surprised by it, Sullivan?
posted by Sully 3/12/2003 08:55:00 PM
ATTABOY TOM!:
It felt good to take a day off. It felt even better when we saw that other bloggers, as they usually do, stepped up to hold the line.
TBogg deserves the highest honors here, summing up Sully�s three-part post on the differences between the present situation and historical analogues thusly:
To save you the pain and suffering of going through Sully's long post on why he is afraid of the future, and why that means we should kill a lot of people who are not reasonable like him, I have broken it down to its more "direct points".
Ahem....Andy has learned that bad guys who aren't really governments with countries and capital cities and soccer teams and stuff, might get bad weapons and do us harm. Sullivan has apparently never seen a James Bond movie (like someone else we know), and so he finds this suprising and unreasonable. Since the world, which doesn�t agree with George Bush (who may be our Churchill...no, really!) about attacking Iraq, what is the use in even discussing North Korea? Everyone except for Bush is soooo unreasonable. So someone has to blow up a Western city for us to realize that Bush and Blair are both Churchillian and ahead of their times. North Korea is probably worse, but let�s invade Iraq anyway. Opposition is unreasonable and cynical. 9/11 and Iraq are somehow linked, but only at a level or frequency that only Andy can see and dogs can hear. Oh. And he is praying about our �leadership.�
... then shows how Sully has lost his sense of humor, and celebrates a funeral Mass for one of Sullivan�s lamer attempts at meme creation.
posted by Sully 3/12/2003 08:50:00 PM
Monday, March 10, 2003
SOMETHING TROUBLING:
We were rereading his Sunday Times of London effluviations this afternoon because two passages stuck in our memory:
September 11 made the White House acutely aware of the ruthlessness of the new Islamist terror-masters: suddenly, the American homeland was also in play. The possibility of a chemical or biological 9/11 made Washington realize that its continued Iraq policy needed actual enforcement. It made Washington realize that regime change needed to mean what it said.
[...]
In fact, Bush came into office far less interventionist than Clinton and far more modest than Gore. His campaign platform budgeted less for defense than Al Gore�s did. And his instincts were more firmly multilateral. That, of course, changed a year and a half ago. 9/11 made him realize that American withdrawal from the world was no longer an option.
It�s hard not to read these and get the impression (especially if you take Sullivan at his word when he said recently he was talking to some high-level White House people (a claim given more credence by this report) that a completely different yet no less accurate way of putting this would be that the Bush Administration was caught completely off-guard by 9/11.
If Bush is such a tough guy who means what he says, why was it only after 9/11, then, that he realized regime change had to mean regime change? What was he planning to do before that? The same thing as Clinton? It�s hard from this not to conclude otherwise. What would Sullivan have been saying about that?
And, most disturbingly, this does not inspire confidence that the Bushies have any sort of plan to deal with other things sneaking up on us ... like North Korea.
A year and a half from now, will we be reading another Sunday Times piece from the Blog Queen arguing that the destruction of Seoul made him realize he had to take Kim Jong Il seriously? If we do, you can count on Sullivan to smoothly parrot the new party line, as if there had never ever been a different one.
posted by Sully 3/10/2003 09:06:00 PM
SULLIED BACK:
Through the good offices of Pennsylvania�s next Senator, we were privileged to read this passionate denunciation by Liquid List of Smalltown Boy�s ongoing minor vendetta against venerable Washington Post columnist Mary McGrory:
Unfortunately for Sully, he�s an idiot. And he doesn�t have the journalistic credibility to rinse Mary McGrory�s pantyhose in his sink let alone sit there on the page grinning like a fool and panning McGrory�s change of heart on an Iraq war.
[...]
Magically, Sullivan knows what was in McGrory�s mind at the time, and now knows (though her recent column explaining the switch gives no indication) that she changed her mind because she was afraid of getting voted off the op-ed page by her loyal readers. The funny thing is that Mary McGrory has been on that page longer than Andrew Sullivan has been drawing breath on this blue earth. McGrory�s story about the re-shift � that she heard from a lot of readers, that she kept her mind open about subsequent developments in the news, that she is capable of change because indeed that sort of critical thought is what separates us from right-wing ideologues and the gibbons � is perfectly acceptable.
[...]
Oddly, Sully goes to the trouble of defending (lest he be accused of hypocrisy later) the right of an informed columnist or blogger like him � or myself to change their minds and regret something they wrote. He ascertains, though, that McGrory did something quite different. He proves nothing of the sort, and in the process he reveals himself to be a fiercely partisan, utterly close-minded simpleton, whose should be careful in his decisions to cravenly attack � rather than respectfully criticize � columnists whose Pulitzer Prize he isn�t fit to polish.
Here�s the opening graf he refers to:
If you write a column every week � let alone a thousand words daily on a blog � the chances that you will get things wrong, regret some things you wrote, or simply change your mind in the slipstream of current events are extremely high.
In Andrew Sullivan�s case, the probability is equal to exactly two.
posted by Sully 3/10/2003 08:57:00 PM
ALL IN THE FAMILY:
So, Sullivan, you were saying about former presidents ...
posted by Sully 3/10/2003 08:48:00 PM
MAXED OUT:
Max Sawicky has two good posts today: one on the resurgence of the �fifth column� meme:
Here we go again. Insta �n Andy are trying to whip up anti-treason sentiment. Insta sez �Is that a �fifth column?� It�s enough of one that I think Andrew has won that point over the people who said he was over the top when he originally used the term.� Insta, defender of freedom, is referring to people who �are positioning themselves if things go badly� (i.e., exercising basic political rights) �but otherwise don�t care� (reflecting IP�s widely touted mind-reading skills).
If �things go badly,� shouldn�t someone in authority be held to account? Other than, say, the French?
If the Right wants to accuse the left of hoping for a U.S. defeat in Iraq for craven political motives, it is perfectly symmetrical and proper for the left to accuse the right of desiring more terrorist attacks on the U.S. to further its imperial ambitions. Or to accuse G. Bush of seeking the distribution of Iraqi oil leases to his friends and neighbors.
and another critiquing, from an antiwar perspective, various antiwar arguments (A practice Sully, who never seems to bother with separating the wheat from the chaff on his own side, could learn from).
posted by Sully 3/10/2003 08:47:00 PM
JUST WHAT WE�RE ALWAYS TALKING ABOUT:
But that alternative is so transparently pie-in-the-sky it's hard to take it seriously.
So long as Smalltown Boy confuses ridicule with serious argument, he�ll be dealing with pink-clad Bush-hating peace protesters on every walk he takes with his beagle.
posted by Sully 3/10/2003 01:21:00 PM
POST-PRESIDENTIAL MEDDLING:
As far as that goes, Dwight Eisenhower�s well-thought dictum to the contrary, presidents have been criticizing their successors all the time. The Horse recently had some examples of Bush Sr. talking trash about Clinton during the last elected presidency.
His correspondents, however, have unfairly bashed Millard Fillmore. While a rather forgettable president, his post-presidency was, like Carter�s, exemplary. Due to his civic service, more things around Buffalo bear his name than that of Grover Cleveland, the former mayor and county sheriff who is the only president to actually win re-election after being defeated. (We'd also advise that unnamed writer not to confuse The Gangs of New York with Buffalo. If there were angry mobs at the ready, it was because that was true of almost every city in the country at the time).
Carter �forgotten to history�? Whatever else one can say about his presidency, three words will always bear his imprint: Camp David accords.
And if any of our one-term presidents deserve opprobrium and oblivion, especially for their role in enabling the Confederacy, it�s Franklin Pierce, who was so resented for allowing Bleeding Kansas when that territory finally became a state that when Kansas City was laid out with streets named after every president who had served up to that time, Fillmore was included but Pierce was not.
posted by Sully 3/10/2003 01:06:00 PM
SHOUTOUTS:
A big tip o� the hat to Hurry Up Harry, a somewhat conservative British blog that has discovered the joys of watcher blogs such as ourselves, and generated some traffic with the link.
A nice sarcastic one to Steven Den Beste, whose recent attempt to respond to D-Squared�s �Shorter Steven Den Beste,� generated a huge increase in visitors when D-Squared�s original link to us was included.
posted by Sully 3/10/2003 11:41:00 AM
SOUNDS LIKE THAT STORY ABOUT CLINTON AND VERNON JORDAN:
Roger Ailes disabuses Sully of the notion, expressed in his most recent Washington Times hideaway, that Dubya is incapable of boorish sexism.
posted by Sully 3/10/2003 11:35:00 AM
THERE IS A DIFFERENCE:
No one with any sense believes Clinton wanted to not displace Saddam Hussein (except a couple of Gulf-area conspiracy theorists who noted that Saddam�s continued presence indirectly aided the U.S. as we got lower oil prices from the scared Gulf states in return for protecting them).
But, as Sullivan must tacitly admit in his Sunday Times of London column, there is a big difference in tactics. And, we�d add, in indisputable facts.
Bush certainly feels a more direct, confrontational style is needed. But his weakness is not the hidden-strength of trying to do ambitious things that Sully tries to spin you into believing. It�s, rather, the inability to even make the effort to understand where the French etc. are coming from. Clinton did that well. Bush projects this �my way or the highway� attitude that can work if you don�t make any pretense of understanding your opponent. But when you have Colin Powell on your side, you can�t claim that as an excuse.
Fobbing the rejection of Kyoto off on the Senate is also disingenuous. That Senate was still dominated by Republicans of President Bush�s ilk.
But the real issue is that the Clinton administration carried on with efforts to implement some of the Kyoto standards voluntarily. OK, if Bush wanted to end that, that was his prerogative. But if you think about it, if you�re complaining about the Kyoto standards not being workable, might it not be a better idea to say you�re going to pull out as a way to renegotiate the accord in a direction that addresses your concerns?
No, what everyone knows is that not only did the Bush administration object to some of the provisions in the Kyoto treaty (as did quite a few of the Democrats who voted against it), they objected to the very idea of international environmental accords, for anyone, and knowing that U.S. participation was critical to Kyoto, pulled out to sabotage it.
As for Kosovo, there were indeed peace protests then with much of the same tenor as the current ones, just smaller. U.N. authorization was less crucial at the time for a) the reason we�ve said before, that it was in Europe�s backyard and b) there was actual genocide taking place, not merely possible prohibited weapon ownership.
posted by Sully 3/10/2003 09:04:00 AM
UPON FURTHER REFLECTION ...:
Maybe he read our commentary, maybe he didn�t, but it�s sort of funny that in the wee hours of the morning he backed off his earlier alarums about that drone.
posted by Sully 3/10/2003 08:40:00 AM
THINKING PINK:
Hmm. Breast cancer activists, a fair amount of whom are women, seem not to mind being associated with pink.
Nor do many of those manly mustached men (his favorite) who march in parades in cities worldwide in late June every year.
Funny how Sullivan gets really picky and picayune about a cause and how it chooses to symbolize itself when he opposes it.
posted by Sully 3/10/2003 08:37:00 AM
THAT IS NOT WHAT I MEANT, AT ALL:
Once again, Sullivan has to be rescued from his own rhetorical excesses by his confr�res and winds up posting another one of his casuistic �I never meant that ... What I meant was� apologias.
This time, he sounds sincere enough that, were it not for his history of making similarly wildly over-the-top posts without getting called on them by anyone save us and other like-minded bloggers, we might have just believed him.
Given that he also implies, re the peace protesters he encountered yesterday, that he was having trouble keeping his temper, we�re tempted to believe he knew exactly what he was saying and, as he often does, artfully phrased it to give himself an out.
posted by Sully 3/10/2003 08:17:00 AM
CONTAINERIZED:
This much is certain: even if we could keep 250,000 troops in the region indefinitely, no future containment regime will ever be as effective as it is now, which is to say it isn�t effective at all.
Oh, we wouldn�t say that ... after all, it�s not like Saddam�s been able to invade anyone for 13 years. We�d call that pretty effective containment.
posted by Sully 3/10/2003 08:06:00 AM
AND ANOTHER SIGN OF COMPETENCE:
While we�re at picking up links from Atrios, let�s also remember that some of our killer �evidence� of Iraqi nuclear development was recently exposed as a put-on.
posted by Sully 3/10/2003 01:17:00 AM
DON�T QUESTION, DON�T MENTION:
Over at Eschaton Saturday morning we gave Sullivan a day�s grace to respond to this interview with Colin Powell, one of Smalltown Boy�s current heroes, in which the distinguished former general and Secretary of State defends the military�s ban on open homosexuals serving.
As you know, the military has the policy, �Don�t ask, don�t tell,� so that somebody who is openly homosexual does not serve. I�m an advocate of that policy, I helped put that policy in place and I�m accused, therefore, of supporting homophobia.
But I think it�s a different matter with respect to the military because you�re essentially told who you're going to live with, who you�re going to sleep next to, and it�s a different set of circumstances in a military environment.
Would it be too much to ask of our favorite Blog Queen that he politely but firmly raise his voice as he has so often before on behalf of gays and lesbians who would like to serve their country honestly in this matter? Every time something like this passes his attention, he lets the sort of people like Mary Eberstadt whom he so constantly deplores know that he can be trusted to remain silent and let the persecution continue.
Coming from someone who so unabashedly admires Powell, and has such a widely-read blog, it would mean something.
posted by Sully 3/10/2003 01:11:00 AM
INTERIDEOLOGICAL ORDER OF ODD BEDFELLOWS:
Arthur Silber, who as one can tell from our greatest hits section has sparred with us in the past, nevertheless has the best response to Sullivan�s hyper critique of the Times editorial:
�The coming domestic war�? �Hostilities have begun�? In response to an altogether predictable editorial in the New York Times? And: �Fifth column alert�? It begins to sound to me as if these gentlemen think it might be time for another version of the Alien and Sedition Acts, or the Espionage Act of 1918 ... Furthermore, Sullivan seems to discount entirely the possibility that someone might oppose the war � or even ask questions about the manner in which this administration is pursuing it � while believing absolutely in the founding principles of this country and in our full and complete right of self-defense, and without simultaneously advocating �the long-term delegation of American power� to the U.N. ... I haven�t been this depressed in a long, long time. This rhetoric is already veering out of control � and the war hasn�t even really started.
(Link via Atrios).
See what we meant now, Arthur?
posted by Sully 3/10/2003 12:58:00 AM
�THE NEW YORK TIMES SAID �GOD IS DEAD� AND THE WAR�S BEGUN ...�:
That thing about not sharing intelligence leads us to ask this question re his critique of the Times editorial: If there really is something to find and we want to protect our sources, what�s the harm in flooding Iraq with inspectors? Enough, and if there is something to find they're bound to find it (and by something, we mean the sort of WMD stocks that would be enough to decide a war right then and there, not something along the lines of �they said they have five of these old missiles when they really have seven! CODE ORANGE!� nitpicking that, except to those who gained their places in power partially through the not-dissimilar investigation of Kenneth Starr, does not constitute a case for all-out war).
We tend to agree with Fred Kaplan that Bush�s functional fixedness is to blame here, at least in part. It was a U.S. delegation under his orders, after all, that agreed with the French on a draft of 1441 that was very clear-cut about what a material breach was, yet neglected to set a timetable for compliance. Our addled president was clearly assuming that the Iraqis would never agree to inspections, and neither he nor his crack team of advisors had bothered to plan for what to do if they did.
This is what we talk about when we talk about incompetence. And Sullivan stands foursquare behind this coterie leading us into war? And expects us to follow them?
posted by Sully 3/10/2003 12:44:00 AM
DRONE, DRONE, DRONE ON THE RANGE:
Perhaps Blix buried the story because he�s upset with our continued failure to share any of our supposedly voluminous intelligence with him?
Or perhaps because it wasn�t a story. The Times of London doesn�t make the connection that Sully does. The plane may be able to exceed agreed limits, but in any case 500 km from the westernmost reach of Iraq barely gets you to the West Bank, and that would be assuming Jordan doesn't mind incurring Israeli wrath by allowing the use of its website. And the chemical delivery systems were found some distance away.
posted by Sully 3/10/2003 12:28:00 AM
