Saturday, October 25, 2003
MEANWHILE, BACK ON THE SHAARI" AL-"ARAB ...:
On the front page of Friday�s Times, a story that makes it perfectly clear that our policy is indeed playing into the hands of the Islamists and turning hearts and minds against us.
Two decades after Syria ruthlessly uprooted militant Islam, killing an estimated 10,000 people, this most secular of Arab states is experiencing a dramatic religious resurgence.
Friday Prayers draw overflowing crowds. More heavily veiled women and bearded men jostle unharried among city pedestrians. Family restaurants on the outskirts of Damascus do not serve alcohol, and one fashionable boutique even sports a sign advertising Islamically modest bathing suits [ get yours here � SW]
Syrian experts on religious matters and others attribute the phenomenon � more creeping than confrontational � to various factors. Islam is proving appealing through much of the Arab world, including Syria, as a means to protest corrupt, incompetent and oppressive governments.
The widespread sense that the faith is being singled out for attack by Washington has invigorated that appeal, at a time when the violence fomented by radicals had tarnished political Islam.
[...]
Syria, of course, knows about extremist movements. Increasingly violent skirmishes with the Muslim Brotherhood prompted President Hafez al-Assad to move against them in 1982, sending troops to kill at least 10,000 people and smashing the old city of Hama.
Hundreds of fundamentalist leaders were jailed, many never seen alive again.
Syria's various secret services then tracked radical militants around the world � one reason the government could provide so much helpful information to the United Stataes about Al Qaeda after the Sept. 11 attacks.
Domestically, though, Hafez al-Assad did two things that helped foster the current resurgence. He built hundreds of mosques, trying to counter the sense among Syria's Sunni Muslims that his minority Alawite sect was religiously suspect.
He also founded myriad schools to study the Koran, which Syrians say in recent years dropped the gentle Sufi Islam once prevalent here, replacing it with the more intolerant Wahhabi Islam of Saudi Arabia.
(Emphasis ours)
The article isn�t, on the whole, as alarmist as this excerpt might make it seem. Nevertheless, we have been surprised that none of the blogs we regularly read have picked it up yet. There�s clearly something going on here.
posted by Sully 10/25/2003 12:04:00 AM
Friday, October 24, 2003
MAKING SOMETHING OLD NEW AGAIN:
Fisking, as one longtime correspondent recently lamented to us in an email, is so pass�, yet Steve �Permalinks? I Don� Need No Steenkin� Permalinks� Gilliard does a pretty good job (scroll down to �The �real� picture�) on the Rumsfeld memo:
What else should we be considering?
Leaving Iraq while we still have an Army.
posted by Sully 10/24/2003 11:45:00 PM
THE CONTEST:
Media Whores Online takes note of Josh Marshall�s recent call for most blatant �imminent threat� statement.
posted by Sully 10/24/2003 11:36:00 PM
HEY, HE DOESN�T CLICK ON THE LINK EITHER, SO WHY SHOULD YOU?:
We knew this was out there but we didn�t have the time to find the proof ourselves, so TBogg helps Sullivan out on the question of how it was possible for the Times knew Rumsfeld had leaked the memo himself: so it had been reported in USA Today, a paper Sullivan can hardly be ignorant of since a few months ago he linked to the article in it about how, once you get past the fact that the Taliban still haven�t been suppressed entirely and we�re hardly anywhere near rebuilding the country, life in Afghanistan ain�t so bad because people in Kabul are going on picnics again.
posted by Sully 10/24/2003 11:31:00 PM
DOES ANDREW SULLIVAN SPIN WITHOUT SHAME? YES!:
It�s this kind of tough self-questioning that makes this unlike Vietnam.
Were neocons really born yesterday?
There was this kind of self-questioning during Vietnam. More than that, in fact. We know now that LBJ realized by 1965 that he had committed America to a war it couldn�t possibly win if it lasted a long time. Yet they kept, at the time, publicly saying that all was going according to plan and that anyone questioning them publicly had suspect motives and should therefore not be trusted.
But even that degree of willful historical ignorance can�t explain the following:
And his assessment, after invading two countries, that �we have not yet made truly bold moves� against terrorism is extremely encouraging.
Has Sullivan himself not been busy praising Bush and his Inner Circle for their �boldness� in invading Iraq and Afghanistan? If two costly and ongoing military deployments aren�t bold, what is? What, pray tell, is in store for us?
And, excuse us, but we found it awfully candid that Rummy admits there�s a hell of a lot more to do than what we�ve done so far. We most certainly do not find it �extremely encouraging� that the leadership of the country is not being entirely candid with those who elect it that, having sacrificed as many of their sons, daughters and jobs as they have already, this isn�t over. It isn�t the beginning of the end. It isn�t even the end of the beginning.
Churchill at least had the decency to not piss on the English public�s leg and tell it was just raining. When he said �I have nothing to offer you but blood, toil, tears and sweat,� he was only confirming what they already knew.
Certainly lines about lights and tunnels come to mind here, but we�re thinking also of what we said several times before the war, and we�ll say it again here: Starting a war is like entering a dark room.
And just how does Sully know Rummy is a great debater, anyway? When has he spent a few minutes with him? And what might some of the senior officers of the Army who have more or less been purged since then have to say about that?
posted by Sully 10/24/2003 02:38:00 PM
IMMINENCE PILE-ON:
Late to the �imminent threat-yes!� party but no less welcome for it is Bob Somerby, who shows how it was stealthed to the public:
Did the Bush Admin see � and suggest � an imminent threat? It�s hard to suppress those mordant chuckles when one sees how many people thought so. Last October 7, for example, Dave Boyer of the Washington Times reported that a few �key lawmakers [had] declared their support� for the pending Iraq war resolution. Why had Dick Armey decided to back it? Boyer told you�in the Washington Times:
BOYER (10/7/02): House Majority Leader Dick Armey, one of the few Republican lawmakers who had voiced concerns about attacking Iraq, said the White House has convinced him that Saddam�s weapons buildup is an imminent threat to the United States and Israel. �I�m convinced the snake is out of his hole,� said Mr. Armey, Texas Republican. �So we have to kill him.�
Boyer, at the Washington Times, seemed to think the concern was an �imminent threat.� And why wouldn�t he think such a thing? Here�s what his colleague, Joseph Curl, had reported just one day before:
CURL (10/6/02): President Bush yesterday said Saddam Hussein has a history of attacking his enemies first and could inflict �massive and sudden horror� on the United States, offering a new reason for a pre-emptive military strike against the Iraqi leader.
Mr. Bush said the Iraqi dictator has a �horrible history� of attacking his enemies first.
�We cannot ignore history. We must not ignore reality. We must do everything we can to disarm this man before he hurts one single American,� the president told hundreds of cheering police and National Guardsmen.
Gee! Any way you could think that Saddam posed a threat, or that the threat might be immediate? And was there any way to get that idea from Bush�s speech in Cincinnati, given just one day later? Here was Curl�s opening paragraph:
CURL (10/8/02): President Bush last night said Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein is a �murderous tyrant� who could attack the United States �on any given day� using unmanned aerial vehicles loaded with chemical or biological weapons.
That was the opening paragraph, in the Washington Times, about Bush�s biggest fall speech on this subject! Of course Curl himself � at the Washington Times � had long thought an �imminent threat� was at issue. Here�s what he�d written weeks earlier:
CURL (9/21/02): Administration officials have in recent days ratcheted up talk about unilateral U.S. action in the event the United Nations fails to deliver the type of resolution Mr. Bush desires�[S]enior administration officials, including Vice President Richard B. Cheney, have laid out the case for pre-emptive strikes to deal with imminent threats to the United States.
[...]
Yes, the Bush Admin saw a threat from Saddam; plainly, they presented that threat as immediate. There would be no harm in making an honest argument � in making the argument, right or wrong, that they thought such prudence was justified. But instead, the lap-dogs are handed fresh, hot copy, telling them to parse and parse hard. Result? Goldberg and Will start cutting-and-pasting, offering tortured distinctions they once called �Clintonesque.� But this is now the shape of your discourse. How dumb does it get when things fall apart? Very dumb. Tune in tomorrow.
(Boldface and italics as much as in original as possible)
Josh Marshall, for his part, is running a contest:
Certain conservative mumbojumbocrats have been trying to rewrite history by claiming that the White House never argued that Iraq posed any sort of imminent threat to the United States.
We�d say something along our usual lines of �who do you think he�s referring to?� but this time the pipes of the Mighty Wurlitzer blaring this particular hot air are too numerous to count.
And Josh has something to bring to the table too:
For my money, one of the most revealing quotes is the passage in the National Security Strategy the White House released in 2002, which essentially argues that the concept of �imminent threat� must be reinterpreted to apply to countries like Iraq.
Anyway, here�s the deal
But back to our contest. Because this debate wasn�t hashed out in NSC documents, but in public statements on the hustings.
Our wingerly friends have made a lot of the rarity of occurences in which the phrase �imminent threat� was used. But they rather ignore all the instances in which administration officials told the public we had to depose Saddam right now before he could use his nuclear weapons and smallpox on us. Any quotation which conveys the imminent threat message is acceptable even it doesn't contain the phrase �imminent threat.�
(One example, though certainly not the best one, might be President Bush�s statement on March 7th of this year that he would no longer �leave the American people at the mercy of the Iraqi dictator and his weapons.�)
So now it�s up to you. Send us your best Bush administration �imminent threat� quote.
(Emphasis in original)
We�ve got a couple of entries right here on our site, Josh.
posted by Sully 10/24/2003 12:26:00 AM
THIEF IN THE NIGHT:
Guess Sullivan isn�t the only popular right-wing blogger who makes stealth corrections to his online work.
Actually, originally, we would have stopped there. But as we discussed this post before posting it, we realized that, in a larger sense, Glenn had a point.
The 55-mph national maximum speed limit, we recall from having once been active in efforts to repeal it, was indeed instituted during the 1974 energy crisis by the Nixon Administration as a way of saving fuel (not that much, only two percent, and that's in vehicles less fuel-efficient than those we drive now). It was supposed to be a temporary measure, but was kept on afterwards when the drop in highway deaths (which had been declining at the time anyway, and the downward spike in 1974 was probably as much due to drivers overcompensating as they waited to see how serious enforcement was) was seen as a side benefit.
Ford wasn�t really in office long enough to do anything about it. It was Carter who had the chance to end this, and instead, during that administration, Congress, the insurance industry (the real bad guy in this story, since more speeding tickets for going higher above the limit meant more the industry could charge in premiums without drivers becoming worse risks) and the executive branch teamed up to make it permanent, with all the states being held to federal compliance standards or risk losing their highway funds, and NHTSA distributing funds to the states to buy radar and speed-computer units and fuel helicopters and airplanes for an orgy of enforcement for its own sake. Reagan was sympathetic to those who wanted to repeal this, but by then a strong constituency had been established and it would take most of the 1980s to break its influence enough to at least allow the states to go to 65 on rural highways.
So, yes, Nixon created the double nickel but it was on Carter�s watch that it became the self-serving monster loathed in the trucking industry and resented by everyone else save high-ranking highway patrol officers, insurance executives and the hysterical and/or venal state legislators they kept well-bankrolled (and although most of the people in the, ahem, driver�s seat of efforts to repeal it were libertarians, it wasn�t necessarily just their cause: Barney Frank long supported going to 65, and on the other side of the coin the very conservative Republican Senator Mike DeWine of Ohio is probably the only person in either house of Congress who would still support going back to 55, due to the death of one of his daughters in a car accident at college).
We hate to slightly disagree with Atrios and his emailer, but while they�re right about Reynolds it�s fair to say that he is right when he says that the lower speed limit and tighter enforcement thereof at the federal government�s behest was, indeed, popularly identified with Carter.
posted by Sully 10/24/2003 12:11:00 AM
Thursday, October 23, 2003
ABOUT AVERAGE:
For what it�s worth, the average visit to this blog lasts about 96 seconds as well, according to sitemeter.
posted by Sully 10/23/2003 01:23:00 PM
THE TWO MR. FRIEDMANS:
Sometimes we really wonder if there are two people, one sane, the other not, sharing the name Thomas Friedman.
The column under that name today is apparently produced by the former:
Republicans seem to think they don�t have to think when it comes to Iraq. They only have to applaud the president and whack the press for not reporting more good news from Baghdad � and everything will be fine. Well, think again.
[...]
... [T]here is nothing about the Bush team�s performance in Iraq up to now that justifies a free pass. If Republicans don�t get serious on Iraq, they will wake up a year from now and find all their candidates facing the same question: �How did your party lose Iraq?�
[...]
It�s time for the Bush team to admit it made a grievous error in disbanding Iraq�s Army � which didn't even fight us � and declare: �We thank all the nations who offered troops, but we think the Iraqi people can and must secure their own country. So we�re inviting all former Iraqi Army soldiers (not Republican Guards) to report back to duty. For every two Iraqi battalions that return to duty (they can weed out their own bad apples), we will withdraw an American one. So Iraqis can liberate themselves. Our motto is Iraq for the Iraqis.�
Attacks on our forces are getting more deadly, not less. Besides those killed, we�ve had 900 wounded or maimed. We need to take this much more seriously. We�re not facing some ragtag insurrection. We�re facing an enemy with a command and control center who is cleverly picking off our troops and those Iraqi leaders and foreigners cooperating with us. Either we put in the troops needed to finish the war, and project our authority, or we get the Iraqi Army to do the job � but pretending that we�re just �mopping up� is a dangerous illusion.
[...]
We need to fix this situation fast. Instead of applauding without thinking, Republicans should be telling that to the president.
(Emphasis ours)
It will be interesting to see how Sullivan reacts to this column, given that he always jumps all over the Friedmen like a little teddy bear whenever the other Friedman makes one of his pronouncements to the effect that things are going just groovily on the road to democracy and American critics should give George W. Bush a break.
The only honorable thing he can do is say this is what he means by legitimate criticism. More likely he�ll ignore it entirely, because it would mean tacitly endorsing the italicized sentence as fact, which is not what the Administration wants to have the American people hearing.
(And speaking of which, is that the other Friedman sneaking into the lede graf when he pretends that anti-war Democrats can�t make these points? Certainly he�s right that the Bushies don�t take any of them seriously, but many of us were smart enough to realize that we can�t go back to March 18 and have been making many of these same points since then).
posted by Sully 10/23/2003 01:20:00 PM
FEMINIST THANKS TO MOMMY:
We just have to ask ourselves: Would Katie Roiphe have anything remotely resembling a career if her mother weren�t a famous novelist? She�d be ... just another Princeton grad eagerly shuffled along at The New Republic.
posted by Sully 10/23/2003 01:08:00 PM
O ALTERMAN!:
We haven�t sat down and read Eric Alterman for a while, but what he�s done in the past week more than justifies his new gig
On his blog, he first delivers a contrarian assessment of the Rumsfeld memo:
What�s really frightening about this Rumsfeld memo is how clueless it is. Hello, Saddam had nothing to do with terrorism against the U.S. until you invaded his country. The �war on terrorists� was weakened, if not entirely abandoned, in Afghanistan, and homeland security has always been a sick and frightening joke for this administration. I thought at least they had a cynical strategy behind their actions. But I see they really are blinded by their radical ideology�so blind, in fact, that they think they can see what the CIA cannot � like, for instance, imaginary WMDs and the certainty that happily �liberated� Iraqis will embrace the crook Chalabi as their rightful leader. Terrifying really; these people are almost akin to Bolsheviks.
Then, he explodes the myth that Bush seriously condemned Mahathir�s rant:
Yesterday we refused to accept the White House�s word that President Bush gave Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad a hard time about his anti-Semitic tirade. We think the White House a liars� den, Bush an unlikely tribune of moral education, and Washington reporters, more than a bit credulous. Well, the prime minister confirmed our suspicions and specifically denied that Bush had rebuked him at all. Mahathir reported that, �All he said was that I regret today to have to use strong words against you.�
�Unless my hearing is very bad,� he added. �But it is still very good. I can hear very well. He did not rebuke me at all and after that, we were walking practically hand in hand.� Perhaps he�s a liar too, but he could hardly have a worse track record than a guy who claims we�ve already found the WMD in Iraq.
Here�s Alterman�s source, if you need it.
Finally, he puts the whole �imminent threat� debate to sleep.
There�s been some argument on the �imminent threat� case made by the administration. This comes from the new Center for American Progress, where I am now a senior fellow. I think it puts the question to bed.
IMMINENT THREAT ARGUMENT: The Administration has tried to defend itself from charges of misleading the public by claiming it never said Iraq was an �imminent threat.� (Powell told the BBC that he should be absolved because he never used the phrase �imminent threat.�) But the fact is, the Administration repeatedly said Iraq was an imminent threat.
On May 7, 2003, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer was asked, �Didn�t we go to war because we said WMD were a direct and imminent threat to the U.S.?� He replied: �Absolutely.� On Nov. 14, 2002, a mother of a U.S. soldier told Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld that she was not convinced that Iraq was an imminent threat. He replied: �I would look you in the eye and I would say, go back before September 11 and ask yourself this question: Was the attack that took place on September 11 an imminent threat the month before, or two months before, or three months before or six months before? When did the attack on September 11 become an imminent threat? Now, transport yourself forward a year, two years or a week or a month...So the question is, when is it such an immediate threat that you must do something?�
The administration also made the �imminent threat� point in other ways. On Jan. 29, 2003, Rumsfeld said: �The president has stated that he considers the Saddam Hussein regime a danger to the United States.� And Vice President Dick Cheney said on Jan. 30, 2003 that there was a �grave danger posed by the outlaw regime in Iraq,� adding that Saddam �threatens the United States of America.�
So, the line will now be, all threats are always imminent. It is no longer a distinction that holds any significance.
posted by Sully 10/23/2003 01:06:00 PM
MORE SLOBBY JOURNALISM THAT�S OK WITH HIM IF IT SKEWERS THE RIGHT TARGET:
The Horse takes on Kushner:
Kushner fails to tell us which of General Clark�s claims are untrue, and thus demonstrate his disturbing psychosis:
Could Clark have succeeded in the military if he were universally disliked?
Was he the first person in promoted to full colonel in his entire year group of 2,000 officers?
Was he the only one of his West Point class picked to command a brigade when he was picked?
Was he the first person picked for brigadier general?
Do �people� love him?
It seems all of those claims could be easily checked for accuracy.
Perhaps Kushner could investigate. Perhaps, should Kushner find all of those statements to be true, TNR could a correction and an apology to its readers for lapsing into the whorish tendency to question the sanity and �likability� of Democratic frontrunners.
[...]
... [T]he quote cited does not appear to be a claim by General Clark that he succeeded �because of� his personality, but instead appears to represent Clark logically defending himself against smears by pointing out that could not have succeeded had his personality been as defective as his vindictive detractors are now claiming.
Kushner is confusing Clark�s refusal to admit �everybody hates me� with an inability to identify or deem credible the reasons some don�t like him � the answer to which is far more likely to be found in the personal shortcomings of his detractors (including their interpreting his well-founded confidence as arrogance) than in Clark�s personality.
Curiously, media whores seem to have little tolerance for confidence on the part of candidates, unless it is accompanied by the candidate belittling them regularly and/or feeding them large breakfasts on the plane.
Kushner tries to convince us General Clark is not �likable.� Voters on the campaign trail, however, are finding him immensely likable.
It�s high time that Sullivan stopped assuming that almost everything published in The New Republic is the very picture of brilliance just because he once worked there and, well, everything he did was great.
posted by Sully 10/23/2003 12:51:00 PM
THE LACK OF EVIDENCE OF THINGS NOT SAID:
Unwittingly (would he ever do it any other way?), Sully complicates his own arguments for war with Iraq when he talks about North Korea:
One of the lessons I drew from Iraq is that, when push comes to shove, there are some regimes that, regardless of any other factors, should be destroyed, if we can, purely because of their unmitigated evil. North Korea is one of them. Yes, I know that its ambiguous nuclear capacity makes military action all but impossible. But the horrors of its system beggar belief. I�m suspicious of any and all attempts to placate Pyongyang. But I don�t have any brighter ideas either.
So, if North Korea�s ambiguous nuclear capacity precludes military action (and this is the Administration�s own fault we are in this position), what does that say about Iraq?
If the war were purely about curtailing WMD proliferation, we would not have invaded Iraq if we had real, credible fears of nuclear retaliation, right? So, obviously we knew that capacity (the only real weapon of mass destruction we cared about) didn�t exist in Iraq�s case. And Sullivan seems to know this too.
Now, perhaps, he will understand the opposition to the Iraq war better.
posted by Sully 10/23/2003 12:43:00 PM
THE SOUND OF THE WATERSKIS SAFELY HITTING THE WATER AS THE DORSAL FIN SLOWLY SUBMERGES:
Of course, a MoDo column ridiculing this is now inevitable. Which is more indication that it�s an encouraging sign.
So, a hypothetical near-future event is now admissible as evidence in an argument about the soundness of a geopolitical strategy?
TBogg accurately predicted the Sulli-spin that it would just scare the kufis off the Islamists yesterday:
Next step: an Aha! we've got them right where we want them moment where someone points out that this is a good sign that Rumsfeld is engaged and on the job and those wily Islamo-facists are on the run now, oh boy, and that the increase in attacks is a sign of their desperation and aren�t we lucky to have a leader like Rummy leading ...
But even he didn�t expect that someone, least of all our Blog Queen, would actually claim the memo itself would send a strong message to terrorists.
(Actually, to be fair, Tom caught Lileks at this today).
posted by Sully 10/23/2003 12:33:00 PM
Wednesday, October 22, 2003
AL-QA3DA? MAYBE NOT ...:
Again via Jesse, we learn that maybe the weekend cyberattack was just shitty hosting:
Yes, but in this context, I highly doubt that any foreign terrorist group was sabotaging mid-range conservative blogs. And if the sort of terrorists we�re facing attack the Power Line, we don�t need to fight a war on terror, because they�re stupid enough to down household solvents any day now.
[...]
Any DOS attack (and I�ve been the recipient of a couple) is more likely the work of some lame ass 14-year-old than a terrorist organization. But you can�t tell some people that. Mainly ones with nicknames like �Hindrocket.�
posted by Sully 10/22/2003 08:59:00 PM
REAGAN BULL:
Jesse links to a Guardian story on the Reagan flick controversy, which notably includes these bits:
But in the official biography, entitled Dutch, by Edmund Morris, the former US president is quoted as saying of the condition Aids: �Maybe the Lord brought down this plague,� because �illicit sex is against the Ten Commandments.�
[...]
Mrs Reagan has refused to comment on the mini-series, which is being transmitted next month, but she is unlikely to be happy about it. She is depicted as a bit of a control freak who appeared to organise the president�s schedule according to the recommendations of their astrologer.
Her stepson Michael is not quarrelling with that assessment. He says he just challenges the focus of CBS on his family problems.
posted by Sully 10/22/2003 08:55:00 PM
GODWIN�S LAW:
From The Antic Muse we are linked to former Spy writer Daniel Radosh, who sees deeper problems with Easterbrook�s post:
I am, however, offended by Easterbrook�s obscene misunderstanding of the nature of the Holocaust. Easterbrook�s implication is that there�s a similarity in kind, if not in scope, between the type of violence depicted in Hollywood movies and the type inflicted during the Holocaust, which is why Jews should be extra sensitive to it. Leaving aside the thorny question of the relationship between movie violence and any real-life violence, Easterbrook's error is in thinking of the Holocaust as simply one big mass murder, as if the only difference between Hitler and Charlie Starkweather is their body counts. In fact, the Holocaust was not in its essence a mass murder at all. Rather, it was genocide: an intent to render a specific group of people sub-human and eliminate them and their culture from the face of the earth. Mass murder was a crucial part of this scheme, of course, but so was slavery, theft, humiliation, torture, debasement of religion, intentional fracturing of family and other social structures, rewriting and erasing of history, wholesale destruction of documents, artifacts, homes, and villages, and much else.
Exactly. We thought it a bit of stretch, something one would expect from someone never on the Internet before.
posted by Sully 10/22/2003 08:49:00 PM
ADMITTED:
TBogg puts Sullivan right on Schwarzengroper.
posted by Sully 10/22/2003 08:43:00 PM
MAHATHIR FAKER:
Sullivan seems to forget, when he chastises Krugman for trying to deflect blame for Mahathir�s antisemitism onto Bush (which he so clearly isn�t ... a big point of the whole column is that Mahathir has done this sort of thing before Bush, but never quite so baldly) that Krugman actually consulted for the Malaysian government during the 1998 crisis (Thanks to Crooked Timber for the link!).
In fact, in that piece Krugman actually explicitly states that Mahathir has blamed the Jews before:
Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad has been the wild man of the Asian crisis, blaming all his problems on manipulations by Jewish speculators, denouncing the prescriptions of the International Monetary Fund as part of a Western conspiracy to recolonize Asia, and so on.
That was long before George W. Bush had made his presidential intentions known.
Now, let�s do Krugman�s argument really slowly:
Malaysia has two primary political constituencies: predominantly Muslim Malays like Mahathir who make up the majority of the population, and a Chinese minority that has spearheaded the country�s recent growth.
Mahathir appeases the Chinese through economic reforms, and the Muslims through his rhetoric. Although he is a somewhat authoritarian leader, he too must be aware of the sword of Damocles. Losing the support of either could be fatal.
If he feels the need to make a speech basically blaming the Jews for the Muslim world�s problems and advising (the part few people have caught) that Muslims must reform themselves intellectually in order to better throw off this Jewish domination, that suggests to someone who knows the �balancing act� that Mahathir must perform, that the sentiments he addressed were widespread among the Muslim population.
Krugman thus posits that these sentiments have grown stronger among the Malaysian people due to the Bush Administration�s foreign policies, which have increased anti-American sentiment in parts of the world not necessarily given to it all the time.
Maybe that last one is debatable. But he isn�t blaming Bush for Mahathir�s antisemitism, and to suggest that the idea that Bush policies have alienated large portions of people in the Third World is ridiculous is defensible only if you believe that there is no rational reason for anyone to dislike or hate Bush.
Which, of course, one fully expects Sullivan to try.
posted by Sully 10/22/2003 01:34:00 PM
YOU CAN�T PAY YOUR MORTGAGE WITH TERROR ATTACKS THAT AREN�T HAPPENING:
Jo Fish shows just how far up the clouds Sully�s head is on the Gephardt mini-boomlet:
I guess that the best way to explain it to our �apolitical' (bwahahahahahaha) little Princess, is that in this Metaphorical War on Terra�, no sacrifice has been too great as long as it involves Tax Cuts; no master criminal or nasty head of state will remain uncaught as long as it�s not too hard; unemployment will be allowed to remain stagnant or increase slightly; unless you�re really wealthy, the economy is basically stinking a lot. Whew, your majesty, it�s a good thing you�re not a Republican ... some of this might be your fault!
posted by Sully 10/22/2003 01:08:00 PM
AGAIN, ALWAYS CLICK ON THE LINK:
The context of Sontag�s remarks (she was accepting a peace prize from the German booksellers� association) shows they are more academic and contemplative than Sully lets on (Notice the conveniently elided ellipsis):
So America now sees itself as the defender of civilisation and Europe� saviour, and wonders why Europeans don� get the point; and Europeans see Americans as a reckless warrior state � a description the Americans return by seeing Europe as the enemy of America: only pretending, so runs rhetoric heard increasingly in the United States, to be pacifist, in order to contribute to the weakening of American power. Americans have got used to thinking of the world in terms of enemies. Enemies are somewhere else, as the fighting is almost always �over there,� Islamic fundamentalism having replaced Russian and Chinese communism as the threat to �our way of life.� And terrorist is a more flexible word than communist. It can unify a larger number of quite different struggles and interests. What this may mean is that the war will be endless � since there will always be some terrorism (as there will always be poverty and cancer); that is, there will always be asymmetrical conflicts in which the weaker side uses that form of violence, which usually targets civilians. American rhetoric, if not the popular mood, would support this unhappy prospect, for the struggle for righteousness never ends.
It is the genius of the United States, a profoundly conservative country in ways that Europeans find difficult to fathom, to have devised a form of conservative thinking that celebrates the new rather than the old. But this is also to say, that in the very ways in which the United States seems extremely conservative, for example, in the extraordinary power of the consensus and the passivity and conformism of public opinion (as De Tocqueville remarked in 1831) and the media, it is also radical, even revolutionary, in ways that Europeans find equally difficult to fathom.
Part of the puzzle, surely, lies in the disconnection between official rhetoric and lived realities. Americans are constantly extolling �traditions�; litanies to family values are at the centre of every politician�s discourse. And yet the culture of America is extremely corrosive of family life, indeed of all traditions except those redefined to promote �identities� that fit into the larger patterns of distinctiveness, co-operation, and openness to innovation.
Perhaps the most important source of the new (and not so new) American radicalism is what used to be viewed as a source of conservative values: namely, religion. Many commentators have noted that perhaps the biggest difference between the United States and most European countries (old as well as new in the current American distinction) is that in the United States religion still plays a central role in society and public language. But this is religion American style: namely, more the idea of religion than religion itself.
True, when, during George Bush�s run for president in 2000, a journalist was inspired to ask the candidate to name his �favourite philosopher,� the well-received answer � one that would make a candidate for high office from any centrist party in any European country a laughing stock � was �Jesus Christ.� But, of course, Bush didn�t mean, and was not understood to mean, that, if elected, his administration would feel bound to any of the precepts or social programmes actually expounded by Jesus.
In the United States it�s not important which religion you adhere to, as long as you have one. A modern, relatively contentless idea of religion, constructed along the lines of consumerist choice, is the basis of American conformism, self-righteousness, and moralism (which Europeans often mistake, condescendingly, for puritanism). Whatever historic faiths the different American religious entities purport to represent, they all preach something similar: reform of personal behaviour, the value of success, community co-operativeness, tolerance of others� choices. (All virtues that further and smooth functioning of consumer capitalism.) The very fact of being religious ensures respectability, promotes order, and gives the guarantee of virtuous intentions to the mission of the United States to lead the world.
What is being spread � whether it is called democracy, or freedom, or civilisation � is part of a work in progress, as well as the essence of progress itself. Nowhere in the world does the Enlightenment dream of progress have such a fertile setting as it does in America.
(Italics ours). Aside from the Derbyshire-esque inanity of nominating for the award the person for whom it was named, Sullivan is in more agreement with Sontag than he wants to admit.
posted by Sully 10/22/2003 12:01:00 AM
Tuesday, October 21, 2003
AN EXTRA-INNING PITCH IN A CLASSIC WORLD SERIES GAME, PERHAPS?:
If you see anything that cries out for a righteous fisking, please send it in.
No, you can�t send him his own blog, apparently.
Seriously, is this an admission that Salon, his former venue for this gig, is no longer sufficiently amused by this?
posted by Sully 10/21/2003 11:50:00 PM
WHAT? BUT I THOUGHT BLOGGING WAS A SAFE WAY TO FIGHT THE WAR?:
Don�cha guys really wish you�d stayed on blogspot now, warbloggers?
At any rate, as much as we all should righteously condemn DoS attacks, something like this was bound to happen eventually. We hope the warbloggers will realize that their actions are not without cost, to someone, and consider that maybe the kind of Muslim-vilification that Little Green Goofballs has made its stock in trade hurts real people, not just a bunch of cardboard bearded fanatics. Maybe it�s time for a little less monologue and a little more dialogue.
And for what it�s worth, we got a similar �connection refused� when we tried to read CalPundit this afternoon, as well as one other liberal blog, so maybe it�s not just you guys being targeted.
posted by Sully 10/21/2003 11:48:00 PM
VIEWERS LIKE YOU ...:
After much contention amongst ourselves, we have decided the time has come to set up our own tip jar and reap some compensation for doing this for a year and a half.
Yes, it was partly due to need. The handwriting�s been on the wall for a while ... Hesiod�s done this himself recently, Capozzola�s been feeling the pinch. More importantly, when Atrios can get not only a laptop but the money for the laptop as well, and we get the email we get saying how much so many of you appreciate this blog, we begin to see that there�s value that can be realized.
It does bother us a little bit, we admit. There�s that much more risk to our anonymity (although Atrios has been doing fine) and one has to wonder if thinking the prospect of financial remuneration will affect the way we blog (we don�t think it will, but one never knows). But we have reached the point where this needs to be done to keep this viable in the long term.
The money raised will, of course, be put at least partially to use improving the blog ... we can think of several things we�d like to do.
We don�t need a lot right now, though. We figure there are about 200 or so of you who read this blog daily, and if we got somewhere in the range of $5-10 from most of you, we�d basically have proof of concept, plus a nice little sum we coudl very much use at present. We know the economy�s on the tight side, and it�s not going to get easier for a while, and that�s why we�re making such a modest request to start off.
Those of you with wallets you are just begging to open for us, hold off and save your money. Wait till Sullivan�s next pledge week this winter, when we�ll tell you how we�re going to challenge you to go head to head with his readers (not on the absolute front, that�s for sure).
Then, and maybe then, we�ll consider the new-laptop thing. Or even getting a beach house in Provincetown ourselves, if someone has that much money to spare.
posted by Sully 10/21/2003 01:55:00 PM
ALL THE SAME ...:
Despite the presence of our name, such as it is, on the Easterbrook petition (simply put, we love Tuesday Morning Quarterback and don�t believe that what he said on his TNR blog should cost him his job at ESPN ... Limbaugh, you�ll note, made his remarks about McNabb under the color of ESPN. That�s different), what he said comes in for broader, deserved criticism from Steve Mussina and Jack Shafer.
From the latter:
My first inkling that Easterbrook didn�t know much about the subject of movie violence came in the opening sentences as I realized that he was sermonizing against it rather than documenting its dangers. My second inkling came when I realized his argument was mostly emotional, something that I�d never encountered in his nonfiction work that I can remember. Relying on his limbic system instead of his cerebral cortex, Easterbrook dismisses movie violence as unimaginative, hackneyed, and trite with an argument that is as unimaginative, hackneyed, and trite as you�ll ever read. I have no doubt that the Rev. Donald Wildmon could write better on the same subject.
By the time Easterbrook gets to the item�s last paragraph, in which he slags Eisner and Weinstein, he�s embraced so many clich�s and stereotypes about movies, violence, and the people who make them that it�s only a small wonder that he stoops also to pick up a few about Hollywood executives and money worship. But Easterbrook�s appreciation of Eisner and Weinstein�s careers is no more savvy than his treatment of movie violence.
posted by Sully 10/21/2003 12:59:00 PM
PERLE OF WISDOM:
Really? Like Perle would know what�s going on in Iraq from his comfortable living room in Chevy Chase?
And anyway, if Iraq had anything do with 9/11 as far as making ourselves out to be a badass nation terrorists didn�t want to pick on (a strategy which has, over time, just paid off so well for Israel), TAPped�s Matthew Yglesias here asks the question we�ve been asking of neocons for months now:
... why wasn�t beating the Taliban a good enough way of proving to the world that our military can win wars if we want to?
We all know the answer, though: The U.S. under Bush would have invaded Iraq no matter what, because the neocons turned U.S. Middle East policy into a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Likud Party. 9/11 was just a fortunate coincidence for them, a hook to hang it on, to this war what the Maine was to the Spanish-American and Tonkin Gulf to Vietnam.
And the worst part: it�s just not working. As Yglesias notes, like all bullies, we are revealing not strength but fear through our desperate flailings over the globe. North Korea realized a long time ago that, since they pose no direct threat to Israel, they may develop nuclear weapons and destabilize a region as they see fit. And by tying ourselves down in Iraq and Afghanistan simultaneously, we have, as others have noted, shown the world what no previous adminstration dared to: what the limits of our military power are.
posted by Sully 10/21/2003 12:45:00 PM
PUTTING OTHER PEOPLE�S MONEY WHERE YOUR MOUTH IS:
Why hasn�t Sullivan signed the Easterbrook petition, then? Easterbrook himself, Wieseltier, Ryan Lizza, Noam Scheiber and quite a few other TNR people have, as well as bloggers Michael Totten, Josh Chafetz and yours truly (#174).
Some friend he is.
posted by Sully 10/21/2003 12:36:00 PM
IS THIS PERSONAL?:
We�re wondering if there might be something other than the issues at hand in The Blog Queen�s defense of his realm against Leon the Wieseltier.
As some of you may know, the two increasingly came to butt heads at The New Republic, with Sullivan at one point purposely blowing off visiting Wieseltier when he was sitting shiva for his father. It finally came down to who Marty Peretz was willing to lie down on the tracks for, and Leon won (reportedly another issue was that Leon was protecting Ruth Shalit, interceding with Marty to keep her on when even Sullivan wanted to fire her. It was that protection that also bugged a fact-checker named Stephen Glass). Sullivan, depending on who you believe and when you ask, was fired or quit shortly thereafter, around the same time he learned he was HIV-positive.
We can�t find any, but we still find ourselves revolted by Sullivan�s casual attitude toward his blog posts. Every word on a blog may indeed be provisional to someone with gigs at the Sunday Times and elsewhere, but for those of us for whom it�s our only outlet, we take it very seriously and try to write words we would stand behind and not, as Sullivan does, secretly delete them hours or days later when they prove embarrassing (For the record, we have only pulled one single post in the history of this blog, and since we pulled it within 15 minutes of posting it there is no reason to go into what it was about).
We haven�t been the only bloggers put out by this, either.
posted by Sully 10/21/2003 12:29:00 PM
HOLLOW TRIUMPHS:
Hesiod and Josh Marshall both highlight Newsweek�s reality check on our rebuilding efforts in Iraq. Schools opened? They reopened long ago, almost right after the war.
Sort of like how, in the early days in Vietnam, we counted destroying huts and garages that had the most tenuous connection to the Viet Cong as significant progress against the enemy.
Hesiod adds some reporting on what the Iraqi newspapers are reporting on, especially Iraq Today, recommended by Sullivan months ago, which among others writes of the difficulties involved in introducing a new currency when black-market trading and counterfeiting are still rampant. As Hesiod puts it, �Isn�t it interesting how even the independent Iraqi media is focusing on the same �negative� stories the U.S. press is covering?�
posted by Sully 10/21/2003 12:18:00 PM
IS THERE A CLEVER LATIN TERM FOR �HEAD UP YOUR ASS�?:
Jo Fish seconds us on post bellum ergo prompter bellum:
Such a nice combination of backward-looking, revisionist thinking and wistful subject-changing, wanting to know what anyone else but Commander Codpiece would have done to remove the onus from his Idol ... like I always say, wish in one hand, etc. ...
posted by Sully 10/21/2003 12:05:00 PM
THE TELLTALE HEART:
TBogg knows perfectly well why the PM has cardiac arrhythmia.
posted by Sully 10/21/2003 12:02:00 PM
Monday, October 20, 2003
IMPLICATION FOLLOW-UP:
The Elder, over at Fraters Libertas, has taken note of our recent critique of his attack on Bush critics for imputing implications of imminence (wow! unintentional alliteration) to Bush�s pre-war rhetoric.
He�s sort of semi-fisked us, which is a new experience for us.
As it is, he somewhat agrees with us, and since most of his response is actually in rather civil and intellectual terms, we really won�t pick further nits over the issues he raises. It�s just agree-to-disagree stuff, really.
However, at the end, he goes to the fallback position:
You want to engage in a constructive debate about the lead up to war in Iraq and whether it was justified? Answer these questions:
Is the United States safer now than it was while Saddam Hussein was in power?
Are the prospects for long term peace and stability in the Middle East better now than they were when the Baath ruled Iraq?
Is the world overall better or worse off for having Saddam removed from power and the Coalition trying to help establish a democratic and free Iraq?
I don�t think that any these questions are necessarily easy to answer and plenty of room exists for reasonable disagreement. But these are the macro issues that really matter. Let�s discuss them instead of parsing every freakin� word that the President uttered before the war.
Nuh-uh. This looks to us like post hoc ergo prompter hoc. You cannot so easily use any side benefits of the war that could only have been observable afterwards to justify the arguments made before the war to justify it. If you wish to say, as Sullivan and so many other administration apologists do, that Bush was fully justified in launching the war, you cannot use any facts known post-war as evidence. You have to base your argument on what we knew or believed we knew at the time.
Yes, politically the Iraqis are freer without Saddam. That would have been a given. In fact, it was probably the only prewar argument for the war that would have proven true without much debate.
But, as George Will has noted (sorry no link to the column ... it ran during the summer) you cannot use that to retroactively justify the war without simultaneously establishing an American duty to forcibly depose every tyranny in the world, from Rangoon to Pyongyang and on the sands of Zimbabwe (a missing line from �Orinoco Flow� perhaps?). While we�d all like to see it done and the people of those nations would probably appreciate their leaders heads� on an American pike, we have not done it because even the Bush administration knows that you don�t invade a country just because you don�t like their style of government (you just have the legislature redistrict it).
posted by Sully 10/20/2003 09:01:00 PM
RIGHT MESSAGE, WRONG ADDRESSEE:
But the whole point of the car tax as a component of the anger that swept Gray Davis out of office is that he had nothing to do the hike. Where were all the Californians pulling for Ah-nuld during the waning years of the Wilson government when the compromise that automatically triggered the increase was passed in the first place? Where were they as California continued to spend like a drunken sailor without raising taxes even as it was obvious the dot-bomb was taking a huge bite of state revenues?
And just how many people really own $30,000 cars, anyway? Not terribly middle-class, those lower-end Mercedes C-Classes (note that poorer areas generally did not vote as strongly for the recall as, say, Orange County did, areas where the hike on a $2,000 or so early '90s vehicle would have meant a difference of merely $27).
posted by Sully 10/20/2003 08:46:00 PM
SULLIVAN COMES FOR THE ARCHBISHOP:
Roger Ailes with a lengthy critique of Sullivan�s critique of the BBC interview of the Archbishop of Canterbury:
This is beyond assinine. The Archbishop earlier made a public pronouncement on the war, and the interviewer asked him whether his position had changed. When the Archbishop refused to answer, the interviewer persisted. The nerve of a journalist to ask a tough question after an interviewee doesn�t �want to go there!� Is that what passes for professionalism nowdays?
Plainly, the interviewer wasn�t arguing against the war. He was asking questions, and not even leading questions. He was giving the Archbishop the opportunity to state his views on the war � a subject on which the Archbishop had previously spoken publicly. The interviewer did not distort or denigrate the war in any way; he offered no opinion whatsoever.
And Sully fudges the key facts. He claims �[i]n a radio interview with the Archbishop of Canterbury [sic], there was a prior agreement that the question of the Iraq war would not be raised.� But the Guardian reported �[w]hen the interview was over, Dr Williams said he believed there had been an agreement not to talk about the war.�
[...]
Perhaps there was an agreement, perhaps there wasn�t. But the article Sully cites doesn�t say there was.
One suspects that if the interviewer had grilled the Roman Catholic Cardinal-designate for Scotland in a similiar manner, seeking clarification on his views (and apparent shift) on matters of morality, Sully would have had high praise indeed. But when it comes to the beloved liberation, even asking someone to state or clarify his position on the war evinces a revolting anti-war bias. Sully embarasses himself with his delusions of pro-war persecution and his refusal to state the facts correctly.
Exactly.
posted by Sully 10/20/2003 05:23:00 PM
YOU HATE ME ... YOU REALLY, REALLY HATE ME!:
Reaction to Sullivan�s return to the Grey Lady�s lap (though, it should be added, not the well-paying pages of the magazine) has been all over the left blogosphere this morning.
Atrios writes:
There are moments when I wish to credit Sullivan for his desire to change institutions from within, but his periodic naive realizations that �hey, they really do hate me!� serve to demonstrate that his alliances are opportunistic, not strategic. No one is that stupid.
I do assume his faith, at least, is genuine, so I have some sympathy there. But, on the other hand, he seems to have little respect for other�s religions, or lack of, so...
He directs us also to David Ehrenstein, who is his usual unsparing self:
And what were you expecting, Sully? That the World�s Largest Pedophile Cult would see the error of its ways and change? Hardly. As I write the �beatification� of their most prominent ghoul is in full swing.
[...]
I�ve met a number of members of �Dignity� � the organization of Gay Catholics that was begun in the hope of changing the church�s mind through reason and reform. They�re nice people. Hopeful people. But not nearly so na�ve as Sully. For they came to realize quite some time ago that being in direct opposition to the Catholic church makes their organization a renegade one.
And Steve Mussina jumps in:
�Waaaah! They hate us!� Yes, Andrew Sullivan, the Catholic Church does hate you and your fellow homosexuals � just like we've been telling you for years.
posted by Sully 10/20/2003 12:53:00 PM
