It's over

Via Crooked Timber:

In every Presidential election-year since 1936, if the Washington Redskins lost their last game before the election, the incumbent lost as well. In today’s game, the Packers beat Washington 28 - 14. A late rally by the Redskins in the 4th Quarter couldn’t save them. This is the strongest spurious evidence yet that Kerry’s going to win on Tuesday.

How to handle a terror tape

Kerry will be jumped on if he tries very hard to directly tie Osama's reappearance to Bush. However hypocritical this would be of the Bush campaign (from whom I received a mailer plastered with images from 9/11) it's still unavoidable and must be taken into account. Kerry can actually do some constructive political things with this tape while avoiding the indignation of the Bush campaign. I think he can do this by addressing Osama bin Laden. Talk past George Bush directly to Osama. "I have a message for you, Osama." type of thing. If done right it would make him look tougher than he has been and avoid direct criticism of the President.

Matthew Yglesias writes:

The most interesting thing about the Osama tape is the reference to My Pet Goat. That business was, even when Michael Moore did it, closer to being a joke than a serious argument. So now Osama's cracking jokes at our expense. He's not afraid, he's not injured, he's not on the run, he doesn't worry that the courier that delivers his videotapes might betray him, or that the local government wherever he is is going to find him. He's sitting -- wounds healed, shura council reconstituted, ideological network growing -- and he's laughing at us.

Capturing OBL is not the be-all and end-all of the war on terrorism, but if you want to know what kind of weakness invites the wolves in for supper, then you saw it right there on video. A man plots and organizes the slaughter of thousands of Americans and three years later there he is, distributing his latest threats and boasts over a global satellite network. Laughing at us. At all of us. And all because the president couldn't be bothered to nab him.

Bull Moose is great

T.R. thought for the week is about the patriotism of criticizing the President.

The Iranian question

I've been hanging out in some German blogs lately and I dropped a comment in one of them yesterday to the effect that Bush hamstrung the US in how it can deal with Iran and North Korea through the way he dealt with Iraq and that the cost of the war in Iraq could climb steeply in human and monetary terms if one of those countries does something.

Anyway, after a couple self-righteous comments from Germans, an Iranian left an interesting comment which I translate thusly:

let me tell you an iranian joke: what does the so-called 'critical dialogue' (initiated by mr kinkel 1992/1993) mean in practice: "be nice to the mullahs and when they ruin it again, then just be even nicer"

we iranians know what it's about for europeans: make a deal and look away. now and then give a pseudo-moral declaration and then back to making deals and looking away. (or can germany afford in its present economic situation to say that the mullahs money stinks)

i fervently hope that the mullahs will be destroyed. and help from the US in that is fine by me.

by the way, as a follower of american politics in iran i know that a military invasion is not an option from the american perspective (ledeen, rubin, gerecht, pletka) but rather a moral/logistical/financial strengthening of the democratic opposition in iran (from reformers to decided opponents of the regime)

meanwhile the germans and french delegations compete at gatherings of the beggars in teheran [i'm not sure about that sentence-joe]. only the economy becomes worse for us iranians every day. who benefits from these trade agreements is completely obvious (for example the iranian GDP declined one-third from its 1979 level)

so we iranians are thankful for help in destroying the mullahs, from all the four corners of the earth. if it's not the europeans, then it shall be the americans.

-reza

I'm not a big fan of anecdotal evidence, but I thought it was interesting nonetheless because it is in line with other anecdotal evidence. Here is the original which can be found here:

lassen sie mich einen iranischen witz erzählen:
was heisst der sogenannter "kritischer dialog" (initiiert vom herrn kinkel 1992/1993) in praxis:
"sei nett zu den mullahs und wenn sie es mal wieder vermasslen, dann sei eben noch netter"

wir iraner wissen, woran es den europäern liegt:
geschäfte machen und wegsehen. ab und zu eine pseudo-moralische erklärung abgeben und dann wieder geschäfte machen und wegsehen.
(oder kann sich etwa deutschland mit derzeitgen wirtschaftslage behaupten/leisten , daß das geld der mullahs stinkt)

ich hoffe inbrünstig, daß die mullahs gestürzt werden. und da ist mir hilfe aus usa nur recht.

übrigens als ein verfolger der amerikanischen politik in iran , weiss ich, daß eine militärische invasion aus den augen der amerikaner (ledeen,rubin,gerecht,pletka) keine option ist, sondern die moralische/logistische/finanzielle stärkung der demokratischen opposition in iran (von reformern bis zu den entscheidenden gegnern des regimes)

währenddessen
konkurrieren die französischen und deutschen delegationen beim stelldichein der klinkenputzern in teheran. bloss uns iranern geht täglich wirtschaftlich noch schlechter.
wer der nutznießer dieser handelsverträge ist wohl offentsichtlich (z.b. beträgt das iranische bruttosozial-produkt eindrittel des vom 1979)

also wir iraner sind für hilfe, aus allen herrenländern zum sturz der mullhs dankbar. wenn es nicht die europäer sind, dann sollen es die amerikaner sein.

Still going

Talking Points Memo still on top of it including this and David Kay's appearance on Aaron Brown.

Today Di Rita brought out an Army major who says his unit removed and destroyed roughly 250 tons of equipment, ammunition and explosives from somewhere in the al Qaqaa facility in early April 2003 -- that would be after the first US troops arrived but prior to the arrival of the news crew that apparently filmed much of the explosives on April 18th.

Was it the stuff in question? Di Rita kept trying to answer the questions on the major's behalf. But the major made clear that he had no idea. Did he see any IAEA seals? No, he said, he didn't.

The Fox reporter at the news conference tried to coax the major into saying more than he was saying. But to no avail. He would only say what he knew. And there was very little that he knew that pertained to the relevant question.

The other reporters on hand, apparently weary of being lied to all week, preferred to put their questions to the major directly, rather than to Di Rita. And he, the major, was straightforward enough to say that all he knew was that he had taken stuff from somewhere at al Qaqaa and destroyed.

Not seeing any seals is important because only the HMX and RDX were under IAEA seal. It's good to hear that a lot of explosives from there were destroyed, but the film crew was there after this major and was with a group of soldiers who broke IAEA seals to get in to film material that David Kay, as positively as possible, identified as the explosives in question.

Reality check

Matthew Yglesias with a little criticism of Josh Marshall:

I must say that I find Josh's apparent faith that the fact that the facts prove Bush to be totally wrong about Al Qaqaa and Kerry to be totally right will somehow affect the media coverage of the campaign to be somewhat naive. The only news that really affects the campaign at this late date is the coverage provided by the Associated Press that runs in the local papers in the battleground states, and today's AP article, in typical fashion, gives no sense of the accuracy of various claims and counterclaims being made about anything. As we know from PIPA, the majority of Bush supporters have managed to somehow not discover the most elementary facts about the past four years, such as that Iraq did not have advanced WMD programs. The notion that the press is somehow going to suddenly start jamming minor things like accurate information into their heads is sadly out-of-touch with the realities of the current media and political climate.

Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall

Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall

The president and his advisors insisted on a warplan that had far too few troops to secure even the key facilities in Iraq that were the reason for the invasion in the first place. Remember, many of the nuclear facilities were stripped bare too. This wasn't the fault of troops streaming through on their way to Baghdad, doing a quick check for chemical and biological weapons. The error was in the planning of the war itself -- planning that came from Rumsfeld's civilians and the White House over and against the advice of the generals.

Now, in this particular case, could the White House get lucky and it turn out that the al Qaqaa munitions were actually carted off to Mars?

Sure. Even though no evidence adduced to date suggests anything but that they were looted because they were not secured.

But that would hardly change the essential issue. The administration didn't deploy adequate troops to secure these facilities and didn't even have a plan to do so. It wasn't even a concern until late Sunday evening when the issue blew up into a political firestorm and they began desperately trying to come up with some rationale, any rationale, to shift the blame off themselves.

Nor is that all.

Why was the mission so undermanned?

Part of the explanation comes from Secretary Rumsfeld's and his staff's view of military transformation, one that puts a heavy emphasis on high-tech weaponry and airpower over ground forces.

That's not the biggest reason, though.

The biggest reason is that President Bush and his chief advisors knew that it would be much harder to get the country into Iraq if the electorate knew the full scope of the investment -- in dollars, deployments and casualties -- upfront. In other words, undermanning the operation was always part of the essential dishonesty and recklessness with which the president led the nation to war.

Still unravelling

EXCLUSIVE: 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS video may be linked to missing explosives in Iraq
The video was shot 9 days after the fall of Baghdad by a local TV news crew.

Bull Moose--Elephant panic attack

Bull Moose

What has knocked the President and the G.O.P. off balance? It all started when the Qaqaa hit the fan about the missing munitions. Kerry pounced on the allegations that the explosives disappeared after the beginning of the war. The G.O.P. countered that they vanished before the war. And Bush suggested that Kerry was criticizing the troops.

No, Mr. President he was attacking you and your cronies. It is a neat trick by the President - every time his Administration is criticized on the handling of the war, he responds that the Democrats are disparaging the soldiers. But then again, how could the paragons of perfection in this Administration ever make an error!

The Moose Intelligence Services cannot determine whether the weapons were missing before or after the invasion. But, what he does know beyond any shred of doubt is that the Administration (yes the Administration and not the troops) consistently failed to heed warnings about the need for more troops to secure Iraq. The dump at Qaqaa has resonance because it has become a metaphor for the overall chaos in Iraq.
...
But, what really has got the G.O.P's dander up is that the press is actually reporting on the situation on the ground in Iraq. The press was a virtual lap-dog for the Administration leading up to the war, and for four years the Bush Administration has stiff-armed the fourth estate.

Now, the Bushies are paying the price, and it hurts so bad.

Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall

Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall:

Again, Di Rita and his associates in the Bush campaign certainly don't know what happened. Nor are they trying to find out what happened. What they're trying to do -- a la Rather and Mapes in those ugly days -- is try to come up with something, anything, that will provide an alternative, exonerating explanation of what happened. And as each new piece of evidence or explanation gets knocked down, they look around for something else.

The Washington Monthly

The Washington Monthly

THE TROOPS DID IT....Via Atrios, this is truly revolting. A mere one day after George Bush tried to pretend that John Kerry's criticism of him was actually denigration of U.S. troops, Bush campaigner Rudy Giuliani blames the al-Qaqaa fiasco on....the troops:

"No matter how you try to blame it on the president the actual responsibility for it really would be for the troops that were there. Did they search carefully enough? Didn't they search carefully enough?"

Do these guys have any shame left at all?

Yahoo! News - Cheney Says Kerry Wrong on Iraq Explosives

Yahoo! News - Cheney Says Kerry Wrong on Iraq Explosives

Vice President Dick Cheney (news - web sites) said Thursday that John Kerry (news - web sites) had gotten the facts wrong in criticizing the Bush administration for the disappearance of several hundred tons of explosives in Iraq (news - web sites).

Well, if the Vice-President says it, it must be true.

Update: My point is not that the VP is necessarily wrong. As the story unfolds it is becoming more complicated and it always was more complicated than merely the headlines. My point is that the VP claiming this gives it absolutely no credibility boost whatsoever.

Election break

Tonight I share one of my favorite parts of Paradise Lost to remind us that our house is not yet completely divided and hope that our President for the next four years will prevent such a thing as follows from happening. I don't mean to call the US heaven (a certain state in the Midwest gets that designation), but life is pretty good here.
Paradise Lost--Book VI ll. 568-614

So scoffing in ambiguous words, he scarce
Had ended; when to right and left the front
Divided, and to either flank retired;
Which to our eyes discovered, new and strange,
A triple mounted row of pillars laid
On wheels (for like to pillars most they seemed,
Or hollowed bodies made of oak or fir,
With branches lopped, in wood or mountain felled),
Brass, iron, stony mould, had not their mouths
With hideous orifice gaped on us wide,
Portending hollow truce; at each, behind,
A Seraph stood, and in his hand a reed
Stood waving tipped with fire; while we, suspense,
Collected stood within our thoughts amused,
Not long; for sudden all at once their reeds
Put forth, and to a narrow vent applied
With nicest touch. Immediate in a flame,
But soon obscured with smoke, all heaven appeared,
From those deep-throated engines belched, whose roar
Embowelled with outrageous noise the air,
And all her entrails tore, disgorging foul
Their devilish glut, chained thunderbolts and hail
Of iron globes; which, on the victor host
Levelled, with such impetuous fury smote,
That whom they hit none on their feet might stand,
Though standing else as rocks, but down they fell
By thousands, Angel on Arch-Angel rolled;
The sooner for their arms; unarmed, they might
Have easily, as Spirits, evaded swift
By quick contraction or remove; but now
Foul dissipation followed, and forced rout;
Nor served it to relax their serried files.
What should they do? if on they rushed, repulse
Repeated, and indecent overthrow
Doubled, would render them yet more despised,
And to their foes a laughter; for in view
Stood ranked of Seraphim another row,
In posture to displode their second tire
Of thunder: Back defeated to return
They worse abhorred. Satan beheld their plight,
And to his mates thus in derision called.
O Friends! why come not on these victors proud
Ere while they fierce were coming; and when we,
To entertain them fair with open front
And breast, (what could we more?) propounded terms
Of composition, straight they changed their minds,
Flew off, and into strange vagaries fell,...

I don't want to spoil it for anyone, but Satan loses in the end.

Nobody's home

I was away from the computer all day. Talking Points Memo continues to have analysis of and links to almost all the major follow up stories on al Qaqaa.

Andrew Sullivan endorsement

Why I am supporting John Kerry.
Risk Management

Bush's comparative advantage--the ability to pull the trigger when others might balk--will be largely irrelevant. That doesn't mean it hasn't come in handy. Without Bush, Saddam would still be in power. But just because the president was suited to fight the war for the last four years doesn't mean he is suited to succeed at the more complicated and nuanced tasks of the next four. In fact, some of the very virtues that made him suited to our past needs now make him all the more unsuited to our future ones. I am still glad he was president when we were attacked. But that doesn't mean he's the right leader for the years ahead. And one of the great benefits of being a democracy at war is that we can change leaders and tactics to advance the same goals. Dictatorships are stuck with the same guy--with all his weaknesses and all the hubris that comes from running successful wars, hubris that almost always leads to fatal errors, hubris that isn't restricted to tyrants.

I agree especially with the fact that we're not electing John Kerry in 2000. This is about the next four years, not the last four.

This is not, should not be, and one day cannot be, Bush's war. And the more it is, the more America loses, and our enemies gain.

That sounds familiar(That rightful place includes a policy on terrorism which is an evil that must be, will be, and is being fought by Democrats and Republicans alike.). Is Andrew Sullivan stealing my stuff? It would be nice if someone was.

The explosives

Josh Marshall is following and adding to the explosives disappearance story. He has a number of both analytical and informative posts up including a discussion of the NBC story that these explosives were already gone when they reached that facility with the 101st Airborne.

WSJ piling on

The most indicting articles for the Bush administration are not Kerry endorsements on the editorial pages, but the straight news pages carrying stories on Iraq. Opinion-makers are not influencing the election so much as fact-reporters. The latest such entry comes from that left-wing rag The Wall Street Journal which reports about the different scenarios to take out Zarqawi that were scrapped for political considerations. If we bombed Zarqawi the link between Saddam and terrorist would be all the more tenuous. Laura Rozen has some excerpts of the article.

Update: Crooked Timber has some more analysis of this fiasco.

We can, I think, dismiss the idea that an attack on Zarqawi would have led the UN not to pass resolution 1441 demanding that Saddam admit weapons inspectors. As Ted points out here the US was bombing Iraq throughout the leadup to the war and had conducted many similar attacks on terrorists (notably including Clinton’s failed attempt on bin Laden). In any case, the final proposal for an attack on Zarqawi was rejected when the inspections were already under way. There was no way that the UN Secretariat could have withdrawn the inspectors without authorization from the UNSC where the US and UK could have vetoed it, in the unlikely event it was proposed.

I think two considerations were decisive. First, an effective attack would probably have required co-operation with Kurdish ground forces. But, right up to March 2003, the Administration was trying to get Turkish participation, or at least basing rights to allow an attack on Iraq from north as well as south. Strong hints were given that if the Turks came on board, the US would keep Kurdish demands for autonomy in check. Obviously, a joint operation with the Kurds would have wrecked the negotiations. As it turned out, the Turkish Parliament rejected the deal, but not until the war machine was already rolling.

The second point relates to intelligence. Defenders of the Administration’s position have made much of the fact that they didn’t know for sure whether Zarqawi was there, but this hasn’t stopped previous attacks on terrorist leaders, some of which have been successful and others not. A more difficult point for the Administration was that they had made propaganda points out of the claim that Zarqawi’s Al-Ansar group was manufacturing ricin, a poison used in assassinations. By a rhetorical sleight of hand, this could be equated to “WMDs in Iraq”. But, by late 2002, and certainly by early 2003, it must have been pretty obvious to the hardheads in the Administration that all their intelligence on WMDs was worthless - the failure to secure al-Tuwaitha after the war was indicative of this. Regardless of whether Zarqawi was caught, an attack on the Kirma camp would have come up blank on WMDs, and this would have undermined the broader case being mounted by Bush and Powell.

White House Press Gaggle

McClellan:

Now, if you go back and look at the Duelfer report that recently has come out, according to the Duelfer report, as of mid-September, more than 243,000 tons of munitions have been destroyed since Operation Iraqi Freedom. Coalition forces have cleared and reviewed a total of 10,033 caches of munitions; another nearly 163,000 tons of munitions have been secured and are on line to be destroyed. That puts this all -- that puts this all in context

I would like to know what percentage of the total munitions in Iraq this 406,000 tons represents (McClellen changes the second number to 363,000 tons later in the gaggle so the total could be 606,000, but I arbitrarily took the first number because there are no good reasons to take either one.).

One of my dad's favorite sayings: "Just about" doesn't count.

The 380-ton straw that broke the camel's back

If I'd been wavering the explosives story in the NYT would probably have pushed me decisively into the Kerry camp. I'm not sure if it's true but I was listening to NPR on the way back from IC today and it was reported that "A Bush spokesman dismissed the claims of Sen. Kerry [about the explosives] saying that no nuclear material had been stolen." What the hell is that supposed to mean? Not only is it immaterial and unresponsive to the danger that conventional explosives (380 tons of them!) can pose to our troops, to Iraqis and to Israelis, but we found out a couple weeks ago that in fact a lot of the equipment useful for making nukes was stolen before that. A non-answer on top of an untruth.

Disappearing pictures

Bear with me. I'm trying to improve the appearance of the blog.

Liberals

The other day I wrote that it was wrong for liberals to demonize the word 'conservative' and vice versa, but didn't say much about the efficacy of the Bush campaign's attempt to do just that in this election. Peter Beinart (Unfortunately only available to subscribers. Lucky for me I have LexisNexis through the UI.) weighs in on why it hasn't been particularly stinging to call Kerry a liberal arguing that it's about race, taxes, cultural elitism, and the war on terror.

Liberalism used to be tied to racial politics and taxes because of the perception that liberals would dole out money to racial minorities and be soft on crime. This changed with Clinton who reformed welfare and was tough on crime. Also,"Today, it's a different story. When Bush says Kerry can't pay for his health care plan without raising taxes, he's implicitly conceding that Kerry will spend tax dollars on health care, something swing voters support." And the critique of liberals as cultural elites is no longer potent because it doesn't motivate swing voters. Now to verbatim Beinart:

That leaves terrorism. It is possible that September 11 gives the L word a salience it lacked in the '90s. And Bush is trying to update it to mean someone who would require a "permission slip" from other countries to defend America. But the danger of attacking Kerry as a liberal, rather than as a flip-flopper, is that it focuses the national security debate away from character and toward policy. A liberal, unlike a flip-flopper, is someone with clear views about national security. Those views may not be particularly popular--voters may indeed suspect Kerry would be too deferential to other countries. But, given voter dissatisfaction over Iraq, it is no longer clear that Bush's views are very popular, either. The flip-flop attack worked in part by appealing to a slice of the electorate that didn't like Bush's foreign policy but liked his steadfastness in carrying it out. By reframing the national security debate in ideological--rather than characterological--terms, Bush risks losing them.

I hope he does not only because of my electoral preferences in this particular election but also in the hope that 'liberal' as a term of contempt will be permanently deflated and its proper place within the moderate range of politics can be properly solidified. That rightful place includes a policy on terrorism which is an evil that must be, will be, and is being fought by Democrats and Republicans alike.

More exceptional America

American exceptionalism is a type of nationalism, but it isn't necessarily a malignant nationalism. Yesterday I noted at the end of this post the kind of American exceptionalism that can be a force for good and recognizes "the fact that we've played a special role in defending liberalism, both our own and others." This exceptionalism is intimately related to the discussion of Bush's faith rising out of Ron Suskind's NYT Mag article because Bush believes (or creates the impression that he believes) the US is uniquely blessed by God and as President he has a unique role to play in the fulfillment of the goals of the US and God. I linked to and excised parts of a post by Bull Moose Blog that cautions against grouping Christians with Bush.

Today I found an article entitled God's Chosen People that manages to both decry American exceptionalism and throw Christians in wholesale with Bush. The Christians:

This campaign, I would argue, is one of the last convulsions of angry, real American men, fighting desperately (and well) to hold back the time and tide of the new—the un-white and un-Christian, and girlie-men, too, who sooner or later will be America.

American exceptionalism:

I said, with appropriate respect, that I thought Bush was ignorant of history and was doomed to repeat it. I added that I thought his secretary of State was incompetently presiding over the rape of diplomacy and that his secretary of Defense seemed to be crazy enough to actually believe that American invaders and occupiers would be greeted by dancing in the streets. There was applause for that.

But the next question was different: I was asked about how history might view this Iraq war. I answered that one possibility was that President Bush might be overreaching and that history could one day judge that this was the “beginning of the end of American empire.”

A hundred people, maybe more, in the crowd of 1,750 people began to boo. Some people walked out, too, or maybe they just wanted to get out early to avoid traffic as the parking lot emptied. Before applause drowned out dissent, some guy yelled, “Go back to Russia, you bum!” I loved that; it made me feel like a kid again. There was something encouragingly American about the scene: The crowd, or at least some of it, would let me demean the president and his men but not diminish the country or its actions, right or wrong.

The idea of America has always been powerful in the world. The idea of American righteousness has always been powerful at home. “Avoid foreign entanglements,” said George Washington. “The last best hope,” said Abraham Lincoln. “A shining city on a hill,” said Ronald Reagan. That is what professors call “American exceptionalism”: We think we are not like other people because God did shed his grace on us. A lot of Americans, Reagan one of them, have always believed, simply and deeply, that we are better than other people. That is a key to President Bush’s rhetoric. The old story: We are going to save the world, whether or not the world wants to be saved.

The belief in American exceptionalism is not rooted, at least for me or anyone I know personally, in anything close to a feeling of genetic or national superiority. I don't believe, and know it not to be the case, that I am better than other people. My American exceptionalism is rooted in a few unavoidable empirical facts. The United States is the most powerful nation on earth, it is the richest nation on earth, it was one of the first democracies, and the primary language of its people is the primary language for business, culture and science in the world. This is not a comprehensive picture of the US. Slavery is not forgotten, nor the more than hundred years of black subjection that followed. American exceptionalism, recognizing that our country occupies a unique place in the world , does not mean American supremacy in a white supremacy, nazi supremacy type of usage. Neither does it mean that we believe ourselves to be specially ordained by God, God's Chosen People, the title of the article cited above whose subtext seems to be that Jews who believe this are also necessarily racist in the same way Americans are nationalistic To understand the US is exceptional is not a supremacist belief, but if the world needs saving in a conventional sense, i.e. from military threat, the US has a decent record at it and is now alone in its capability to do so.

To get some of the background of how and why American 'nationalism as exceptionalism' differs from the pathological European 'nationalism as fascism' I recommend The Two World Orders, an insightful article from this summer. His argument more broadly concerns international law and the reluctance to accept it here and the opposite being true for Europe which he traces back to the fact that nationalism (as fascism) destroyed Europe--twice--but nationalism (as exceptionalism) based on the constitution was what mobilized the public in the US against fascist nationalism and brought about its defeat.

ABC News: Air Force to Help Ferry Sudan Peacekeepers

ABC News: Air Force to Help Ferry Sudan PeacekeepersI haven't been paying as much attention to this with the election nearing, but this looks encouraging. I don't know if it's all the logistical support the AU was asking for, but it's something.

Language Politics

Yesterday I wrote about the demonization of the 'liberal' label which is closely related to the right wing language wars exemplified by the "Healthy Forests Initiative," "Clear Skies," and so on. Well, not to be outdone in warping peoples' thought processes the left has their very own professional language abuser. He calls it 'framing.' George Carlin has lost the war. We are all the worse off for it. The guy's answer to the possibility that he is a propagandist:
How to Talk Like a Conservative (If You Must)

MJ.com: Yet I imagine for some liberals, when they hear you talking about needing to reframe the issues, they think, “Oh, we have to create propaganda. There’s something dishonest about that.”

GL: I’m not saying that we should do that at all. But there’s a very important other message there, which is: the conservatives know that they’re weak. If the public agreed with them, they could have called it the Dirty Air initiative. Why not? Well, they knew the public wouldn’t like it. What this means is that they’re weak. If they know they’re weak, they can be called on it because the public is on your side.

I'm not sure exactly how to deflate the language abuses on either side, but his answer seems somewhat non-responsive, or at least incomplete. He doesn't explain how he proposes to avoid descent into propaganda. He talks about 'framing' in a way that means 'distorting' not the morally laudable 're-injecting truth' that he hints at here. n.b. Also the blurb for the headline article on the MoJo homepage: " We're less far than we might imagine from a world where an Orwellian formula like "illusion is reality" could pass muster." Satire can't beat reality.

Bull

Bull Moose Blog is great. He just re-launched his blog yesterday and has been posting original (not the cheap quoting that I'm always doing) and well thought out pieces like there's no tomorrow. Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo recommended him. Today he hits on the danger of having an Islamic fundamentalist government which would apparently "disappoint" our current President, but "democracy is democracy." But before we get to Bull Moose a bit from JS Mill who has seniority over the born-yesterday Bull Moose. John Stuart Mill-On Liberty:

...for example, an engagement by which a person should sell himself, or allow himself to be sold, as a slave, would be null and void; neither enforced by law nor by opinion. The ground for thus limiting his power of voluntarily disposing of his own lot in life, is apparent, and is very clearly seen in this extreme case. The reason for not interfering, unless for the sake of others, with a person's voluntary acts, is consideration for his liberty. His voluntary choice is evidence that what he so chooses is desirable, or at the least endurable, to him, and his good is on the whole best provided for by allowing him to take his own means of pursuing it. But by selling himself for a slave, he abdicates his liberty; he foregoes any future use of it, beyond that single act. He therefore defeats, in his own case, the very purpose which is the justification of allowing him to dispose of himself. He is no longer free; but is thenceforth in a position which has no longer the presumption in its favor, that would be afforded by his voluntarily remaining in it. The principle of freedom cannot require that he should be free not to be free.

That is why we cannot allow a truly fundamentalist government to take power. (I don't have the time or energy right now to argue fully for what I am premising the previous sentence on, that is, why I think democracy and fundamentalist Islam are diametrically opposed, but I will certainly keep my eyes open for such an argument from someone else that I can post here. In the meantime I'll rely on empirical examples such as the Taliban.) And now, finally, here is what the Bull Moose added to the discussion today:

That is what came to the Moose’s mind when he read Robin Wright’s lead story in today’s Washington Post, “Religious Leaders Ahead in Iraq Poll.” The story cites a poll taken in Iraq by the International Republican Institute, which no one can claim is a French-loving left-wing outfit.

The IRI poll found that the most popular politicians in liberated Iraq are Iran-supported pols
...
Since the end of the war, Iran has been extremely active among the Shia. While attention has focused on the violent Sunni Triangle, the real long-term threat to the anti-terrorist cause may be the emergence of an Iranian client state with support drawn from the majority Shia based in the relatively peaceful south.

Bull Moose also goes on to say that one should be careful not to throw Christian babies out with the Bush bathwater.

In short, Suskind attributes President Bush’s ideological intransigence, arrogance, hubris, triumphalism and lack of self-reflection to the fact that he is a devoutly religious Christian with a born-again experience. The Moose suggests that it could also be due to the fact that the President is intransigent, arrogant, full of hubris, triumphant to the max and is not introspective. He is not a religious fundamentalist but rather a militant anti-empiricist.

Yes, some people who possess these qualities are religious. And some are secular. But neither the Moose nor does anyone else have a window into the President’s soul. Religion may actual temper these destructive qualities in the President. Or, the President may simply not be faithful to his faith.
...
Yes, we should oppose this President’s overweening arrogance and hubris. But, let’s keep religion out of it. As matter of fact, it wouldn’t hurt if we got some religion ourselves. If the President is re-elected, we may desperately need it!

Like I said, Bull Moose is great.

Bonding Time

The ability of the US to run a deficit because of the willingness of foreign countries to buy treasury bonds was a frequent point of discussion and occasional resentment in my International Political Economy of Finance class in Potsdam so the following is perhaps not as interesting to my readers as it is to me.

Doug Merrill of A Fistful of Euros posts the following:

Earlier this month, when Edward wrote

The alarm shot was given by Dalls Federal Reserve President Robert McTeer when he declared in a speech in New York last week that whilst overseas investors now “finance” the US current account gap, “theoretically some day that process will come to an end, the flows will turn against us and there will be a crisis that will result in rapidly rising interest rates and a rapidly depreciating dollar.” This prospect, which currently seems remote, should not be taken lightly. It is real, and it is there.

I noted that this prospect had been around for a long time (close to ten years at least) and asked what would constitute a sign that this time might be different.

continue reading

This could be it:

On Sept. 9, as it must frequently do, the U.S. government turned to Wall Street to raise a little cash, and Paul Calvetti bet that demand for $9 billion worth of long-term Treasury bonds would be “huge.”

But at 1 p.m., as the auction opened and the numbers began streaming across his flat-panel screens, the head of Treasury trading at Barclays Capital Inc. slumped in his chair. Foreign investors, who had been voraciously buying Treasury bonds, failed to show up. Bond prices cascaded downward, interest rates rose, and in five minutes, Calvetti, 38, who makes money by bidding on bonds at one price and hoping market demand lets him quickly resell them at a profit, had lost $1.5 million.

“It’s amazing,” he gasped, after the Treasury Department announced that Wall Street traders, not foreigners, had been left to buy virtually the entire auction. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen this before.”

Losing the favor of the bond market can be laid squarely at the foot of the present US administration. The move from surplus to record deficits in just three years, abandonment of fiscal discipline, a view that economics don’t matter in the face of politics, policy choices that mean deficits as far as the eye can see, refusal to be honest about the cost of those policies; all purely voluntary choices, and the price may have just arrived.

One thing that has protected the US against an earlier reversal is the perception that future US growth will be stronger than future European growth. In the face of massive fiscal irresponsibility, differing growth prospects may not matter as much to international investors. Rapid flight from Treasuries is not in anyone’s interest. That doesn’t mean it won’t happen.

In fact, Mr Vice President, deficits do matter. While you're over at A Fistful of Euros, do check out this very interesting economics/business post on inventory in the music/book business in the digital age.

The market for books that almost no store carries is as large as the market for all the books that a store has in stock.

Neoconservatism's Liberal Legacy by Tod Lindberg - Policy Review

I continue to be attracted to neo-conservatism in theory (though not in practice and I have a strong aversion to many of its salesmen at the Weekly Standard. This article is well thought through.Neoconservatism's Liberal Legacy by Tod Lindberg - Policy Review, No. 127

I think it is not unfair to describe the neoconservative conclusion as follows: Reality is such that efforts to alter it result in its mugging you -- often enough, that is, to render such efforts dubious at best. One should reduce one�s ambitions accordingly.

He presents it as a politics of common sense and sets its central goal as "the conservation and extension of liberalism", but it falls sadly short in reality. But here is a bit that I couldn't agree with more as I said the other day.

As it happens, the story is more complicated than that. After all, a worse outcome than an authoritarian regime is certainly possible in some cases. For example, holding an election might result in empowering an Islamist government bent on smothering all liberal sentiment under a blanket of sharia. Or an authoritarian government, under pressure to liberalize, might lose its grip altogether, resulting in a failed state prone to lawlessness, warlordism, and misery.

But, of course, to say this is merely to say that one must be prudent in pursuit of the advance of liberalism — one must be realistic and take local circumstances fully into account; one must be attuned to the difficulty of introducing a balance between the desire for freedom and the desire for equality in places that have little or no experience of the two in relation and may not, in any event, wish this liberalism for themselves. One must not shrink from rejecting such illiberal wishes: Universal liberalism means nothing if it grants exceptions in principle — though, clearly, certain prudential accommodations may be necessary. In the end, however, it is the resolution of disagreement as “agreement to disagree” that most securely protects liberalism. This is no less true in the international context than in the domestic context (and, in my view, provides the only adequate account of the “democratic peace”18). If, at home, the politics of the future consists of the conservation of liberalism, abroad the same tendency — whether one wishes to call it “neoconservative” or something else — consists of the prudent expansion of liberalism.

He goes on to say that American exceptionalism concerning our relationship to liberalism broadly defined is just part and parcel of a belief in the universality of liberalism. The exceptionalism comes from the fact that we've played a special role in defending that liberalism, both our own and others.

PARAMETERS, US Army War College Quarterly - Autumn 2004

This is an idea that I haven't heard from anywhere else, but I find it very convincing.The whole article is interesting to read for a discussion of the troop levels, strain, and wisdom of a draft. PARAMETERS, US Army War College Quarterly - Autumn 2004--The Need to Increase the Size of the Deployable Army

Third and finally, the United States should create various types of nonmilitary units in other parts of the government that would be useful in any stabilization mission. Their specialties should include not only security activities but reconstruction assistance as well. The idea should not be to create capacity that is already found in the armed forces. Nor should it be to pay for large formations of many thousands of police and aid officials who would do little except during such missions. For possible operations in countries the size of Iraq or Afghanistan, where standard police sizing rules would suggest the need for up to 100,000 police, fielding standing forces that were often on standby in the United States would be inordinately expensive.15 Rather, the smarter approach would be to create a nucleus of experts in various fields that could become the core of any larger operation, drawing on reservists and nongovernmental organizations and private contractors to beef up their ranks as needed.

We don't have an exact equivalent to the kinds of professional civilian administrators that the British used in nation building/empire administration. I have no facts, but I assume that Defense and State are filling most of these roles in Iraq as well as private contractors and some spots being filled by people like Ari Fleischer's brother who have friends in high places. An excerpt from Paul Krugman's June 29th column:

In March, Michael Fleischer, a New Jersey businessman, took over. Yes, he's Ari Fleischer's brother. Mr. Fleischer told The Chicago Tribune that part of his job was educating Iraqi businessmen: "The only paradigm they know is cronyism. We are teaching them that there is an alternative system with built-in checks and built-in review."

List of prominent politicians and their military service

This is amazing if true.
Patriot Acts-Greenespace

Pathologizing Conservatism

Pathologizing Conservatism - Reason An article about some psychology studies. I had to wait to the end of the interesting article for the following, but for my readers I'll spoil the drama of waiting to see whether the author was going to be an unknowing parody of himself or would realize the pathology of these studies.

Reasonable people, such as the distinguished academic researchers cited here, will no doubt agree that until effective treatments can be developed, we should reconsider whether sufferers of conservatism, like other mental defectives, should be allowed freely to exercise the franchise.

I do think that the pathologies of the far right are real as were the pathologies of the far left. I say 'were' because I think that the far left is dead in the US in any serious sense; communist and socialist are terms of utter contempt for most people here and no serious politician could get away with describing himself as such. One of the real pathologies of the right is the pathologizing of the self-descriptions of the left. There is nothing wrong with being a liberal. On some days I describe myself as one while at the same time identifying, self-congratutorily, as a genuinely good guy and a Christian. The right succeeded in this with the aforementioned 'communist' and 'socialist' terms. But in that case there was arguably something inherently wrong with being a communist or socialist if not before WWII, certainly as the realities of life in the communist countries became more widely known. Part of the disdain that these terms hold now is due to the fact that a consensus eventually emerged through argument (and other less high-brow means as well) that communism was inherently pathological. In Europe to call someone a communist or socialist is a description. Here it is a denunciation. The right cannot be allowed to demonize every term of self-description the left chooses. These studies attempt to do that from the opposite direction. Liberal and conservative are good names for the moderate halves of the debate here. Neither belongs in the ninth circle of hell with the communists and fascists. The right ought not demonize 'liberals' and the left ought to be careful not to treat people as if they have some sort of genetic disease if they subscribe to conservatism. To do so is fascist if anything ever fit the term.

Hey, who says the French can't be tough?

France confronts a surge in racism - World - www.smh.com.au: "A school in the eastern French city of Mulhouse expelled two girls for wearing Muslim headscarves on Tuesday in the first such case since Paris imposed a controversial ban on religious symbols in state schools last month.

The pupils, aged 12 and 13, had refused to remove their headscarves despite repeated meetings teachers held with them and their parents, the school principal said."

Jokes aside, it probably was in fact somewhat tricky politically. It's good that they're following through on this, although it's difficult for me to believe that this was the first violation. I find the law itself objectionable because people shouldn't have their clothing choices dictated to them by their government. I suppose one could argue that the law is similar to school codes that ban risque clothing and things relating to beer, tobacco, etc., but the difference is that exhibiting one's faith is an act of speech of a higher order, with more meaning, than one advertising Budweiser. Disclaimer:The preceding is not a complete summary of what I think about free speech.

Oops-a-daisy

USATODAY.com - Castro falls leaving speech, but quickly recovers

President Fidel Castro tripped and fell after leaving the stage at a graduation ceremony, but later returned to say that he was "all in one piece."

Stupid. Really Stupid.

Yahoo! News - Heinz Kerry Asks if Laura Bush Ever Had 'Real Job':

Times (London) Online - Editorial

And you thought the Democrats were pessimistic.Times Online - Comment - Vote Bush: it's the quickest way to get American troops out of Iraq

Only Mr Bush can plausibly orchestrate withdrawal with dignity. Only he can spin defeat into a sort of victory. Neither the Democrats nor Washington’s military and diplomatic establishment would oppose him. The ranters who got him into this and now cry, “on to Iran, on to Syria”, will be of less account after an election. Mr Bush’s eye will be on posterity, and he is not stupid. He will have Mr Blair egging him on.

Consider instead John Kerry. He wants to involve “our European allies” in Iraq. He would plead with Mr Blair to stay, and plead for his help in securing a wider United Nations involvement. Desperate not to seem weak, Mr Kerry is likely to struggle ever deeper into the Iraqi quagmire. Any move to disengage will be seen as treachery by his enemies, as undoing the work of his Republican predecessors. Rather than hand Iraq over to the unavoidable next phase of civil upheaval and partition, Mr Kerry will postpone and let the mission creep ever forward. The hapless Mr Blair will be dragged along, too. Mr Kerry must make Iraq a success. Mr Bush need only to make it go away. For an early end to the war, I would vote Bush.

The New York Review of Books: Dreams of Empire

The New York Review of Books: Dreams of Empire

But as Shalikashvili would doubtless agree, it is hard to be a leader if your behavior is not admired, your authority not respected, your example not emulated. All that remains to you is force. Of course, as the neocons are fond of repeating, a good prince would rather be feared than loved; but what they forget is that the same is true of most bad princes. An empire built on fear—fear of terror and the aspiration to make others fear us in turn—is not what Machiavelli (or Jefferson) had in mind.

The challenge facing American voters in the coming elections is not to find a president who can convince the world that the US isn't an empire—or else, if it is an empire, that its intentions are honorable. That argument has been lost and is now beside the point. Nor is it even a question of choosing between being loved and being feared. Thanks to America's performance in Iraq—and our evident inability to plan one war at a time, much less two—we are neither loved nor feared. We have shocked the world, yes; but few now hold us in awe.

And yet the election of 2004 is the most consequential since 1932, if not since 1860. Is John Kerry the man for the moment? I doubt it. Does he fully grasp the scale of America's crisis? I'm not sure. But what is absolutely certain is that George W. Bush does not. If Bush is reelected much of the world (and many millions of its own citizens) will turn away from America: perhaps for good, certainly for many years. On November 2 the whole world will be looking: not to see what America is going to do in future years, but to find out what sort of a place it will be.

OxBlog-Making the decision

OxBlog:

This broad commitment to anti-interventionism on the left is the legacy of the Vietnam war. I believe that this same anti-interventionism led Kerry to oppose the first Gulf War as well as (to some degree) the second.

But the choice America's faces in Iraq is not one of intervention. We are already there. Our soldiers are already dying. Some might suggest that Kerry would rather save the lives of a few hundreds thane he would ensure the success of Iraq's transition.

I disagree. I believe that Kerry recognizes the danger of withdrawing from Iraq before it is stabilized. And I don't believe that Kerry could accept (let alone achieve) a process of stabilization that isn't democratic.

This doesn't mean that I expect Kerry to consistently make the right decisions about democracy in Iraq. In fact, I fully expect there to be a major struggle within the Democratic Party to define Kerry's agenda should he become President. I will simply do my best to play my small part in that struggle and to persuade as many Democrats as I can that democracy is the answer for Iraq.

Ultimately, I recognize that the arguments made above reflect a considerable degree of speculation about Kerry's motives. Thus, I will not hold it against anyone if they vote for Bush because their subjective assessment of the candidates' motives is different from my own.

Quotation of the Day

An ideology is a complex of ideas or notions which represents itself to the thinker as an absolute truth for the interpretation of the world and his situation within it; it leads the thinker to accomplish an act of self-deception for the purpose of justification, obfuscation and evasion in some sense or other to his advantage.

Karl Jaspers
--The Origin and Goal of History

Crooked Timber-Broadening the Coalition

Crooked Timber-Broadening the Coalition post riffing on this Newsday article about Muslim countries offering troops. Obviously it didn't happen. The sticking point was that the U.S. wanted to have command of the troops and the Muslim countries wanted either to be under UN command or Iraqi government command. Allawi was ok with having the troops under his command so the argument that the Iraqis didn't want neighbors meddling isn't effective. I don't have any illusions that these additional troops would have been going on any dangerous raid missions or anything like that, but they could have freed up some of our troops from the patrolling, sitting duck missions. Command over the additional troops seems unessential.

Yahoo! News - Bush Talks About Troop Presence in Iraq

Yahoo! News - Bush Talks About Troop Presence in Iraq:

If free and open Iraqi elections lead to the seating of a fundamentalist Islamic government, 'I will be disappointed. But democracy is democracy,' Bush said. 'If that's what the people choose, that's what the people choose.'

Remind me again what Osama bin Laden wanted? How do you ask an American soldier to be the last man to die for a for a fundamentalist Islamic government. Fundamentalist Islam is diametrically opposed to democracy. To allow a fundamentalist government to take power we will have condemned Iraqi democracy to death. The only question is how long it woud take.

Elections choosing a fundamentalist government is a very tough question. How it can be resolved I don't know. It may be prudent to signal like this that we will accept anything, but in the meantime we have to make sure that this possibility has no chance.

Voting in Iowa

I'm looking for articles that confirm it, but I just heard on the morning news that 95% of all Iowa voters are registered, new registrations for Democrats outnumber those of Republicans 9:1 (!), and overall voter registration has increased by 10%. The 95% is the highest in the country and the increase of 10%+ is only shared by South Dakota.

Update: Chet Culver, SoS, was just on and said that there are only 100,000 unregistered voters in the state so I don't know if that matches the 95% or not. WaPo Both Paties Claim Registration Success:

In Iowa, Democrats have registered four voters for every new Republican voter since 2000. Since this year's caucuses, Democrats have outregistered Republicans by 9 to 1, narrowing the GOP lead in registration statewide to about 8,000.

So it's voters registered by Democrats, not Democratic registrations. That makes a little more sense.

General Reported Shortages In Iraq (washingtonpost.com)

Subtitle softens the blow: Situation Is Improved, Top Army Officials Say
General Reported Shortages In Iraq (washingtonpost.com): "The lack of key spare parts for gear vital to combat operations, such as tanks and helicopters, was causing problems so severe, Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez wrote in a letter to top Army officials, that 'I cannot continue to support sustained combat operations with rates this low.'" via Memeorandum an excellent website that's new to me.

Jewish refugees

Normally I don't have a lot of respect for arguments of the form, "Yeah, but look what they did." but David Bernstein's post at The Volokh Conspiracy was worthwhile as new information to me. I simply had no idea.

I mention this because of the consistent blindness of the news media and punditocracy, especially left-wing sources like the Guardian, to the fact that Israel's War of Independence created two groups of refugees, one Jewish, one Arab, of approximately the same size. The Jewish refugees were forced out by their governments in many Arab countries simply because they were Jews, and this was a politically expedient response to local anger about the establishment of Israel. The Arab refugees were forced out, orin many cases fled voluntarily, because their community was engaged in a war of annihilation against the emerging Jewish state. The Middle Eastern Jewish refugees were resettled by an Israel dominated by Ashkenazim, who had a different linguistic and cultural background, at great economic sacrifice to both the Ashkenazim and the Middle Eastern Jews, who were almost as numerous as the Jews already in Israel. The Arab refugees, who mostly fled only a few miles and were linguistically and culturally largely indistinguishable from their Arab neighbors, were herded by Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt into refugee camps, and forced to remain there to serve as political tools to use against Israel. The Jewish refugees received a bit of charity from the world Jewish community, and were otherwise left to their own devices (my wife's late mother went from living in a mansion in Iraq to living in a tent for several years in Israel).

The reality-based community

This article by Ron Suskind about Bush's sense of infallibility and its relation to his faith has been receiving loads of attention. Especially this passage:

[A senior Bush advisor] said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors....and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

This reminded me almost immediately of a review of a biography of Napoleon I read this Spring that contained this passage:

"What a pity," Valéry, who recognized the emperor's literary abilities, once remarked, "to see a mind as great as Napoleon's devoted to trivial things such as empires, historical events, the thundering of cannons and of men." Englund [the author of the biography] quotes Valéry, and then, at the end of his book, answers him: "Napoleon chose to 'write' his novel on the world, not on paper."

People seem really shocked that a Bush official would say such a thing. This difference between people who do things and people who discuss the actions of those people has existed since Homer. What is slightly disturbing is that the official seems to think that no conduit to reality is necessary. To look at it this way, however, is a bit of a misinterpretation. What the official is saying is that action is necessary and the analysis of static situations is limited because things are dynamic and being changed by the actors who make judgments more quickly than the analysts. Even the actors have to have a connection to reality or their actions would be frustrated by that reality. The official gets a bit carried away with a usage of 'reality,' meaning 'situation,' that I've always found peculiar, but I don't think he is arguing that reality is immaterial but is arguing that one should be a mobile sketch artist rather than a sedentary portraitist that catches every detail.

The refusal of Bush to face reality on Iraq and domestic issues is more simple than such a philosophical position on the siginificance of sense perception would require. The news is bad for Bush. If it were good, he'd be in love with reality as press presents it. He doesn't have an aversion to reality per se, just to bad news. The molding of interpretations on Iraq is also a political act, however dishonest, that has a long tradition (i.e. Gulf of Tonkin). I'm going to have to sit around and analyze things for a lot longer before I conclude that the Bush administration believes it is living in the Matrix.

Update: Uniform Standard-The New Republic Like I was saying, the guy hates dissent, not reality. There is a difference. It's not a comforting difference; both are ultimately pathological, but I think, as one in the reality-based community, that it is most useful to accurately diagnose the problem.

Update 2: The reassurance of a like mind. Wil Wilkinson expresses more clearly what I was thinking in the useful philosophical shorthand that I still haven't internalized.
Wil Wilkinson-Reality Based Community

That said, it strikes me as fairly unlikely that Suskind's source was really positing a kind of power-based ontological constructivism. Maybe, maybe. I have no doubt that much faith-based nutjobbery is afoot. But some people do have a bad habit of using 'reality' in a confusing de dicto sense according to which different people have different "realities" simply because we are separate centers of experience and hold sometimes conflicting assumptions.
...
As Bush's hero Karl Marx wrote: "The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it."[emphasis added]

Endorsements

It's endorsement time and I've read some very cogent endorsements of Bush. Here's one from the LA Times by the editor of The New Republic who argues that Bush is the better pro-Israel candidate. (hat tip once again: Judge Mac)

This muddled foolishness reflects Kerry's sense of politics as desperate theater. Another simply showy idea he proposed (to Tim Russert on NBC's "Meet the Press") was to insert U.S. troops between Israel and the territories, as part "of some kind of very neutral international effort that began to allow Israel itself to disengage and withdraw."

A summary of the editorial would be that Kerry is completely clueless about the realistic effects his brand of diplomacy will have on the problems of Israel. A similar argument of Kerry's naivete is skillfully presented by The Belgravia Dispatch which argues that Kerry just doesn't understand the stakes of the war on terror. To wit:

Kerry also suffers from something of a Vietnam syndrome. I, like Robert Kagan has written, believe that Kerry has a deep distrust and suspicion regarding exerting American power overseas. He voted against Gulf War I, for pete's sake (Saudi oil supplies likely to be controlled by Iraq!?! Hey, who cares!). His disregard for such a vital strategic interest has been replicated when confronted by humanitarian tragedies too. See his vote against 'lift and strike' in Bosnia (Laura Rozen would like you to forget it). Kerry says he would never send our boys into war unless it is absoutely necessary. Well, what is absolutely necessary Senator? Really, what? Too little, in Kerry's worldview, I'm afraid.

The whole thing is really worth reading.

I've had similar doubts about Kerry, but I think he understands the stakes more fully than that article gives him credit for. Not only that, but it is politically impossible for him not to. Concern about terrorism is not going to go away in four years because terrorism is not going to go away in four years. Voters are going to be concerned about terrorism in four years and if Republicans can credibly claim that the Democrats have not been fighting terrorism effectively, then the Reps will win in landslides across the board. Democrats are not stupid and know this. For that political reason alone they have to 'get it.' The difference is that I think the Democrats are going to be worlds better at actually getting the job done in Iraq compared with Bush. That post in the Belgravia Dispatch also includes this second-hand paragraph from Andrew Sullivan:

We must shock them more than they have shocked us. We must do so with a force not yet seen in human history. Then we can begin to build a future of greater deterrence. I repeat: we are not responding to terrorism any more. We are at war. And war requires no restraint, simply massive and unanswerable force until the enemy is not simply defeated but unconditionally destroyed. To hesitate for fear of reprisal is to have capitulated before we have even begun. I don't believe Americans want to capitulate to anyone. The only question is whether we will get the leadership now to deal with this or whether we will have to endure even worse atrocities before a real leader emerges.

What I fear has happened during the occupation of Iraq is that we have not been effective enough. I think the mistakes made in Iraq have encouraged terrorism, not in the sense so popular on the left that we have inflamed them (although I do not completely dismiss this consideration as irrelevant) but in the sense that we have appeared weak after the fall of Baghdad.

I think John Kerry will fight a more effective war on terrorism. I agree that some of his pronouncements about the sanctity of the UN have been less than reassuring, but the pressures of the Oval Office will necessarily mold him into a more pragmatic leader than his candidacy has shown. John Kerry shamefully voted against the first Gulf War, but George W. Bush claimed he wasn't into nation building. Things have changed. I am confident that Kerry's ideas shifted appropriately on 9-11 so that he understands what is at stake. He wouldn't have invaded Iraq. I think history will prove that the invasion was good, but only if it is completed effectively and Kerry will do that. With one starting a necessary job, but lacking the competence to finish it and the other lacking the perception of that job as initially necessary, but understanding that the job has to be completed Bush-Kerry may in the end serve as a very effective tag team against terrorism.

Sunday Morning Talkshows

Meet the Press: The candidates' respective gaffes received some attention. Mary Cheney 3-4 min. versus Osama bin Laden 30 sec. ; Bush bulge-no answer, just laughs. Ha, ha. Crazy people who want to know what was in Bush's back. They're so crazy. And funny. Let's laugh at them. On the Republican side laughing to completely avoid the question, on the Democratic side to avoid the spectre of the embarassment of the appearance of possibly giving any weight to conspiracy theory. Crazy people. I just want to know what the hell it was. I don't think it was a wire, but what was it? Bob Shrum is only slightly less abrasive than Ken Mehlman.

Face the Nation: A politically incorrect inquiry: Is it possible for Rudy Giuliani to open his mouth without saying, "September 11th"?

Fox News Sunday: I don't like Bill Kristol. His righteous indignation over the Mary Cheney remark is as incongruous to his personality as Dan Rather's head is to his body. (I've seen Dan Rather; his head is huge compared to his body. And conveniently he's the one guy everyone can make fun of with impunity at the moment. Poor Dan Rather. He's probably a really nice guy.) Mary Cheney 3-4 min. versus Osama bin Laden 0 min. 0 sec.

Update: PBS
Inside Washington: Mary Cheney 5 min. versus Osama bin Laden 0. Charles Krauthammer takes charge of the Republican Mary Cheney indignation gravy train. On an unrelated point, in Krauthammer's Friday column he talked of Edwards's, admittedly idiotic, claim that the lame would walk again under a Kerry administration, " In my 25 years in Washington, I have never seen a more loathsome display of demagoguery." What follows that is more interesting and shows the kind of one-way mirror world this guy lives in, "Hope is good. False hope is bad. Deliberately, for personal gain, raising false hope in the catastrophically afflicted is despicable." I couldn't agree more, but would apply the same reasoning to the President's assessment of Iraq.

McLaughlin Group: Mary Cheney 6-7 min. versus yep you guessed it. Bush-Cheney obliterated the Democrats on post-debate spin. I imagine many Democratic strategists took the same view I did of the Osama gaffe, i.e. embarrassing, but in the end just a misstatement by the President and therefore didn't bother to play it up. Instead they wanted to spin a sweep of the debates and didn't give this cheap shot much, if any, emphasis. The Republicans have demonstrated once again that such considerations are for chumps (. Every minute spent on the talk shows and every inch printed in the papers about Mary Cheney are resources that are not going to talking about substance. This is a zero-sum game. John Kerry can win on substance, but he needs as much of it as possible in the press. He cannot afford these distractions. Mary Cheney has stopped what could have been terminal momentum for the Kerry campaign coming out of that last debate. I am 70% confident that Kerry is going to win anyway, but if he doesn't I'll pin it on that moment and the press's reaction fueled by the Bush spin.

This Week w/ George Stephanopoulos: I don't remember any Mary Cheney, but I could be mistaken. What I do remember is wishing during the Jeb Bush interview that we could do some sort of swap.

Debate parody paradise

David Brooks plays funny man today with success (hat tip: The Hon. Judge Mac). Some good parts:

Debate, Declaim, Debacle

...

KERRY Bob, I'm glad you asked me that question, but before I dodge it I'd like to thank you for moderating this debate, I'd like to thank Arizona State University for being such wonderful hosts and I'd like to thank Dick Cheney's daughter for being a lesbian - in case anybody didn't know.

Bob, as you know, this nation is on the brink of an apocalyptic catastrophe. Civilization as we know it is hanging on by a thread. Our culture has collapsed, our economy is in tatters, the human spirit is extinguished, children never laugh, God is dead, and families like Dick Cheney's are ashamed of their daughters, one of whom is a lesbian. All of this is because of George Bush.

BUSH You need a plan. I know that. I'm president. I wake up every day looking for a plan. In fact, I supported Mitch McConnell's plan. But my opponent voted to raise taxes 1,500 gazillion bazillion times. He even voted for some of my budgets, which have created deficits as far as the eye can see! He's a liberal!

The first thing we need to do is cut back. I'm not going to have a flu shot this year. I'm not even going to take a Tylenol. I'm going to have a root canal right here on this stage without Novocain. But we also need to declare an international war on deficits.

I'm excited about 19-year-old girls in Afghanistan who are voting in favor of the line-item veto for the first time ever. I'm excited about the millions of Iraqis who have been liberated from Saddam's Hussein's trial lawyers and their frivolous lawsuits.

BUSH America, we've been through a lot together. Imagine how bad things would be if I'd made any mistakes. But we've come through it.

We haven't enforced the Dred Scott decision. And what about my timber company? Can you believe the networks? Oh, never mind. Do you want some wood? How late does this go, anyway? I'm losing it.

...

KERRY Bob, it's true that I am married. She's my second wife, to be precise. Can't recall her name at the moment, but she's fully funded. And I've got two beautiful daughters. Heterosexuals, both of them.

I want to tell you about my family unit and what it means to me. We're in the 79th percentile in most demographic categories. Our compatibility fitness score is within the standard deviation for median households worldwide. ...

I found another good parody cruising around. I had almost the whole thing copied into this post; it's hilarious.

Debate Parody

BOB SCHIEFFER: Good evening from an auditorium that looks exactly like the last one we debated in. Just so you know which state we'll be hearing the candidates pander to, let me tell you we're in Arizona tonight. By the end of the night, you'll know how many people in Arizona have lost their jobs, lost their health care, and lost their hair since the 2000 election. Even though there are only a hundred people in the room, and most of them are related to one of the candidates. I'm Bob Schieffer of CBS News, and I'm very old.

I'll moderate our discussion under detailed rules agreed to by the candidates, including the temperature in here, which is a chilly 47 degrees. But John Kerry's from Massachusetts, so that's what he wanted. George Bush, in turn, asked for Tonka trucks in the Green Room. That request was granted. The questions have been chosen by me, one of my research assistants, or the producer talking to me through my earpiece. To refresh your memory on the procedure -- and mine -- I will ask a question. The candidate is allowed two minutes to answer. His opponent then has a minute and a half to offer a rebuttal. At my discretion, I can extend the discussion by offering each candidate an additional 30 seconds. A member of the audience can then speak for 7 seconds, a dog can bark for 3 seconds, I can give you 2 seconds to grab another beer from the fridge, and then we will flash a subliminal message on the screen for an eighth of a second. A green light will come on to signal the candidate has 30 seconds left. A yellow light signals 15 seconds left. A red light means five seconds left. A purple light means we're at a 4th grade science fair growing plants. A black light means we're at a rave. A flashlight means we've had a blackout. There are also buzzers, horns, sirens, cans of mace, bottles of silly string, and freshly squeezed lemonade, if they are needed.

The candidates may not question each other directly. Because "debate" doesn't really mean anything. There are no opening statements, but there will be two-minute closing statements. There is an audience here tonight, but they have agreed to remain silent, which makes them pretty near useless. Except for right now, when they will clap on command like the monkeys they are. (Applause)

Gentleman, welcome to you both. By coin toss, the Bills will do the kickoff. Uh, I mean the first question goes to Senator Kerry. Senator, I want to set the stage for this discussion first by asking the question that I think is probably on the minds of many people watching this debate tonight. Are the Yankees still winning the game?

SEN. KERRY: Yes, Bob. I believe they are.

PRES. BUSH: They are winning the war against Terry. Terry Francona, the manager of the Red Sox.

...

BUSH: We are safe. Let me compare us to Afghanistan, the country we all think of first when we think of safety. They had elections there. We have elections here. The first person who voted was a 19-year-old woman. Then she was shot.

...

KERRY: The President had an opportunity to kill Osama Bin Laden, and he outsourced the job to Tony Soprano, who did not do it. The President said he didn't know where Osama Bin Laden was, he wasn't answering his e-mails, but he said he wasn't concerned.

BUSH: I don't think I ever said I wasn't concerned about Osama Bin Laden. Of course I'm concerned about Osama Bin Laden. He has my West Wing DVD set. This is one of Senator Kerry's exaggerations. Like when he said he was taller than me. He says it's about intelligence. It's not about intelligence. Not with me in the Oval Office.

SCHIEFFER: To jump from homeland security to something that couldn't involve a more awkward transition, I'd like to ask you about the flu vaccine. I mean specifically, since I'm old, I'd like a flu vaccine. Can I get one?

BUSH: Yes, I think you can, Bob. We should be saving them for the young, and the old. If you're neither young nor old, don't get a flu shot this year. I haven't got a flu shot and don't intend to, because I'm only the President, so what's the difference if I get the flu.

...

BUSH: A plan is not a litany of complaints. Litany. That's a real word, right? Did I make that up? Senator Kerry just said he wants everybody to be able to buy in to the same health plan that senators and congressmen get. Are senators and congressmen all that healthy? Max Cleland is missing some limbs. Do we want Americans to be missing limbs? Bob Dole has a shriveled arm. Do you want a shriveled arm? Strom Thurmond is dead. Do you want to die? If every family in America signed up for the senator's plan, it would cost us $5 gazillion over 10 years. It's an empty promise.

KERRY: Actually, it's not an empty promise. Here's an empty promise: we'll all live on the moon in 10 years. Promise. Look, seniors ought to have choice. In the Senate, we have choice. I chose Blue Cross / Blue Shield. And for mentioning them in this debate, they gave me a hat.

...

BUSH: There you go again, Mr. Senator. In his last litany of misstatements -- there's my new word again! Litany! Senator Kerry said we cut Pell Grants. That's a fact. We've increased Pell Grants by a million students. That's a lie. Oops, I mean the other way around.

KERRY: You know why the Pell grants have gone up in their numbers? No? Me neither. Crap.

...

KERRY: Bob, anybody can play with these votes. Everybody knows that. So, despite the fact that he's right, and I can't deny it, let's pretend I just did. Look, I voted for a tax cut once. Back in 1942. You were there, Bob. And, finally, to start the requisite war of the bipartisan name dropping, let me mention I once shook hands with Ronald Reagan.

BUSH: Oh yeah? Well, Ted Kennedy voted for No Child Left Behind. Because he wants to eat them all. Senator, there's a mainstream in America, and a main stream that runs outside my ranch in Crawford. It's very nice. In American politics, you're on the Left Bank. And I'm on the West Bank. Your record is such that Ted Kennedy is the conservative senator from Massachusetts. And the fattest. And, incidentally, if Ted Kennedy's a conservative, that would make me a fascist.

...

SCHIEFFER: Well, gentlemen, that brings us to the closing statements. Senator Kerry, I believe you're first.

KERRY: Nah, I think I'll skip this one.

BUSH: Yeah, me too. I'm getting pretty sleepy.

SCHIEFFER: Works for me. Yankees are still playing, so you all may want to check that out, since it's not like any of the pundits are going to have anything useful to say. Oh well. From all of us here in Arizona, I'll see you 4 years from now, when I'm a hundred and twelve.

Foreign Affairs - The Neglected Home Front - Stephen E. Flynn

Foreign Affairs - The Neglected Home Front - Stephen E. Flynn:

Summary: The Bush administration has waged an aggressive war against terrorists abroad, but it has neglected to protect the homeland, even though Americans in the United States are the ones most vulnerable to future attacks. The government must do more to safeguard critical U.S. infrastructure and mobilize the American public to help. For starters, it should create a semi-independent federal agency tapping into private resources that would develop and enforce security standards.

Rogue States & Failed States

Something like an enunciation of Democratic foreign policy concerning terrorism is floating around the left half of the blogosphere. The central tenet is a concentration on terrorist groups and a recognition that their relationship to states is not generally given to cooperation. I made this point in mid September in a comment to a reader in the context of a response to the reader's assertion that the number of terrorists is finite:

Whereas the Nazi ideology, potency, and potential lethality was inextricably linked to the German state calling for a war of states to defeat it, the war on terrorism is different in significant ways that require differentiated responses. The terrorists are now and have been geographically decentralized since the end of major combat in Afghanistan and not analogously connected to a state since then either. It was wise and necessary to take out the Taliban for the same reason as it was to do likewise to the Dritten Reich. We no longer have the luxury of such large targets. Nazi ideology died (in any important sense) with the German state. Islamic fundamentalism did not die with the Taliban because it does not require (although they would certainly like to have) the machinery of a state. It required just five people who wanted to kill Americans to climb into an aircraft.

The Republican response to terrorism is to attack states. In short, Democrats go straight to the source of terrorism while Republicans go to what they consider the long-term underlying factors.[ As a sidenote, I think we need to think more about these long-term factors in the light of the fact that most al-Qaeda are well-educated and even Westernized. See the spiked-online article Meet the Al Qaeda Archetype I quoted from in early September for this.]

A consequence of this difference in perspective is that Republicans are liable to advocate policies that Democrats believe to be the exact opposite of the country's best interest. Josh Marshall out of the Atlantic:

A key assumption shared by almost all Democratic foreign-policy hands is that by themselves the violent overthrow of a government and the initiation of radical change from above almost never foster democracy, an expanded civil society, or greater openness. "If you have too much change too quickly," Winer says, "you have violence and repression. We don't want to see violence and repression in [the Middle East]. We want to see a greater zone for civilization--a greater zone fur personal and private-sector activity and for governmental activity that is not an enactment of violence."

The Republican approach appeals to me over the long term and it's one of the main reasons I supported the invasion. In the long term a democratic Iraq truly will make us safer and help to counter the terrorist threat in the greater Middle East. I now think that the best chance for a democratic or at least non-threatening Iraq lies with a Kerry administration. It's not a fight the Democrats would have started, but because of their greater concern for failed states, it is not a fight they will leave undone.

A couple of missed openings

Some lines for Kerry:
"If we're trying to get flu vaccines from Canada now, why can't we import drugs from there?"

"It doesn't instill great confidence in the President's preparedness to combat biological terrorism when we are having so much trouble with the flu season."

The Third Debate

I just watched the debate and took in a little reaction from Andrew Sullivan and Kevin Drum. I agree with Drum that Bush denying he said he wasn't worried about Osama will probably get a lot of play over the next few days. The commercial where he says precisely that has been getting a lot of airtime here and Bush's statement tonight is clearly false to people who have seen that commercial. Right now the commercial includes Bush saying he wants Osama dead or alive followed by him saying, "I don’t know where he is. Nor — you know, I just don’t spend that much time on him really, to be honest with you. I....I truly am not that concerned about him." Tonight Bush said, "Gosh, I just don't think I ever said I'm not worried about Osama bin Laden. It's kind of one of those exaggerations." Unless they want to delve into Clintonian parsing and contend that 'worry' is not 'concern,' this is going to be a little embarassing. Probably not more than embarassing, but also not less.

The narrative that seems to have developed for the Kerry campaign through the debates is that in the first debate Kerry broke through the stereotype as a flip-flopper and established himself as a viable alternative to the incumbent. In the second debate Kerry showed that although he is no Bill Clinton he can interact with people and give more responsive answers to their questions. And tonight, as also in the second debate, Kerry spoke mostly to undecided voters while Bush was forced to speak to his base.

I think tonight Bush made some attempts to speak to the middle and try to find his compassionate conservatism with all the educational policies he talked about, but I think Kerry was able to address a much larger audience. Bush did well tonight for the message he was trying to send, but ultimately it's not as effective because he limited his audience.

Update: Josh Marshall thinks Bush's gaffe will be more than embarassing. He also has the transcript from the press conference where Bush said he wasn't concerned about Osama that shows that it isn't at all taken out of context. It was, as the Kerry criticism claims, a reflection of the removal of the spotlight from Osama and its refocus on Saddam.

Another thing. Does Bush really not know that this ad is running? How could he make the statement he made tonight if he knows that this ad is running? Could he really be that sheltered from the outside world?

Update 2: Kevin Drum has the same thought as I did about the sheltering. The Bush Cocoon. He also has a good roundup of insta-polls from the debate:

WHO WON?....The post-debate polls are solidly in Kerry's favor:

• CNN/USA Today/Gallup: Kerry wins 53%-39%.
  

• CBS News poll of uncommitted voters: Kerry wins 39%-25%
  

• ABC News: Kerry wins 42%-41%, even though their audience leaned heavily Republican.
  

• Democracy Corps: Kerry wins 41%-36%.
  

That's by far the biggest win for Kerry of the three debates. By next week I'll bet Kerry is 3-4 points ahead of Bush in nearly every poll.

Needless to say, this means that Karl Rove's October Surprise will be unveiled soon. But what will it be?

Yahoo! News - UN: Iraqi Nuclear-Related Materials Have Vanished

Why I'm voting for John Kerry:
Yahoo! News - UN: Iraqi Nuclear-Related Materials Have Vanished

"Equipment and materials that could be used to make nuclear weapons are disappearing from Iraq (news - web sites) but neither Baghdad nor Washington appears to have noticed, the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency reported on Monday."
...
"Equipment and materials helpful in making bombs also have been removed from open storage areas in Iraq and disappeared without a trace, according to the satellite pictures, IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei said.

While some military goods that disappeared from Iraq after the March 2003 U.S.-led invasion, including missile engines, later turned up in scrap yards in the Middle East and Europe, none of the equipment or material known to the IAEA as potentially useful in making nuclear bombs has turned up yet, ElBaradei said."

A convert, maybe

After over two months of trying almost any argument to convince my mom to vote for John Kerry, I may have finally been successful. She was never really planning to vote for Bush, but planned to leave the presidential portion blank. She's an independent and is skeptical of both parties but leans Republican.

The argument that she called 'the most rational thing I've heard out of you all day' is about the balance of power that could be shifted for a generation in favor of the right if Bush wins. Being suspicious of both parties she is a big fan of the checks and balances. Because the Republicans will control the House for quite a long time and a Bush victory will likely be accompanied by a majority in the Senate, the one check that remains is the Supreme Court. Up to four justices may retire during the next four years tilting the court toward the right and consolidating control over the judiciary which will in turn pave the way for the legislative and executive to operate unfettered. The checks and balances could become pats on the back instead.

Also, as you may already know, the strange reference to Dred Scott was apparently code for overturning Roe v. Wade. As my mom said, Bush is perhaps not actually for overturning it, but is trying to get political mileage out of holding that possibility out to the pro-choice poeple. Still, if you're fond of preserving potent checks and balances you have a good reason to vote for Kerry.