Teddy Kennedy and the Turning Tides of Political History

Earlier today we opined on how progressives' ultimate goals are often hazy - consistent with their being jealously guarded by an elite that chafes at debating their long-term merits:

The reasoning process here is of the same variety that the left has used on virtually every topic it deems 'progressive'. (Progressive towards what?, one might ask. 'Progressive' in whose world view? But that's post for another day)... There are, in the minds of a set of liberal mandarins 'rights' that only they can fully appreciate. We must not question.

In a related vein, we note this post by John Hinderaker of Powerline, linking to his recent piece in the Daily Standard:

When liberals talk about a "living Constitution," what they really mean is a leftward-marching Constitution. Liberals--especially those of an age to be senators--have spent most of their lives secure in the conviction that history was moving their way. History meant progress, and progress meant progressive politics. In judicial terms, that implied a one-way ratchet: "conservative" precedents can and should be overturned, while decisions that embody liberal principles are sacrosanct.

Many liberals actually believe that the job of a Supreme Court justice is to be "part of the whole movement of the continued march towards progress." That is to say, to impose liberal philosophies by fiat when Americans won't vote for them.

I find it amusing that liberal angst surrounding the inevitable generations-long ebb and flow of political sentiment ignores the fact that what would have been seen as liberal in 1960 (i.e., with JFK) is now seen as utterly reactionary - by his brother. I thought he knew more about tides.

UPDATE I: Sigmund, Carl & Alfred has a nice factual send-up of Ted Kennedy's judicial 'logic' here, referencing Michelle Malkin's inspired live-blogging of TK's self-immolation Monday ("I am watching Sen. Ted Kennedy on C-SPAN unraveling before my eyes. He is screaming. The face is fire-engine red. The fists are waving furiously.") We also note the following, buried deep down in yesterday's NYTimes article on the groundwork Reagan and others laid for the latest Supreme Court picks to become viable:

...the last gasp of resistance came in a Democratic caucus meeting on Wednesday when Senator Edward M. Kennedy, joined by Senator John Kerry, both of Massachusetts, unsuccessfully tried to persuade the party to organize a filibuster. No one defended Judge Alito or argued that he did not warrant opposition, Mr. Kennedy said in an interview. Instead, opponents of the filibuster argued about the political cost of being accused of obstructionism by conservatives. [emphasis added]

It's worth noting that in a party that once prided itself on grassroots diversity and principle, the dynamic of the Democratic caucus had nothing to do with the nominee's qualifications. Not a single voice could be found to take a contrarian position, to say "wait a minute, what might we gain if we were gracious in defeat just this once?" Not one. Democrats have become homogeneous in opinion, unquestioning of internal authority, and utterly self-serving in their objectives. Sadly, we may be witnessing not just the meltdown of Teddy Kennedy (oft reported, never fulfilled), but the nadir of his party (if it even survives a host of other crises plaguing it).

UPDATE II: Re-reading the Chappaquiddick story in all of its telling moment-by-moment detail Monday night, it struck us that the desperate, last-stand behavior of Teddy Kennedy in the Alito nomination has little to do with rational political calculus and a great deal to do with attempting to extract meaning from a life and a Senatorial career overshadowed by deep feelings of guilt and inadequacy.

That's neither a new insight nor an excuse. But it explains a lot.

Teddy Kennedy the political buffoon is still Teddy Kennedy the grieving, guilt-ridden younger brother. He knows now beyond the shadow of a doubt that he will never redeem the legacy of Bobby and Jack. That a man much like his brother sits in the oval office only grinds salt into that wound. It forces Teddy to confront ever more clearly how far he has moved away from his brothers' expansive ideals and (even more painfully) how his own reprehensibly irresponsible behavior and its result (the death of a young woman) one night half a life ago cost him the chance of ever sitting there himself.

Narcissism Writ Large: Clinton at Davos (Again)

In light of Bill Clinton's comments last year at Davos (i.e., praising progressivist liberal Iran while bad-mouthing the United States), I suppose we shouldn't be too surprised that this year at Davos, he's insisting that attempting to fix the unfixable and fundamentally unknowable possible results 100 years from now of a set of desperately biased computer simulations (aka, "global climate change") should be the world's top priority:

"First, I worry about climate change. It's the only thing that I believe has the power to fundamentally end the march of civilization as we know it, and make a lot of the other efforts that we're making irrelevant and impossible."

Unbelievable. Delusional. Terrorism in his view, comes in third place behind this and (in second place) the Marxist koan, "global inequality". Hint to Bill: the 9-11 terrorists had advanced degrees, trust funds and bright futures. Their motivations had nothing to do with 'inequality'. Similarly, the Palestinians have had almost 60 years to make themselves prosperous - as so many others have done. They chose instead to follow leaders whose idea of progress was blowing up airliners.

Bill went on to say that people around the world:

"...basically want to know that we're on their side, that we wish them well, that we want the best for them, that we're pulling for them."

Which basically means nothing - neatly illustrating why I'm really really glad he's not president anymore. It's not "basically", Bill. Not "wish". Not "want". Not "pulling". (Yeesh... how many waffle words can you pack into a single sentence?) The people of the world don't want good intentions and meaningless assurances from a comfortable elite at a five-star hotel in the Swiss Alps. They want proof that we support them and not the maniacal intentions of their misguided if well-spoken leaders.

They want help in establishing justice and individual freedom and democracy and free market principles that can set them on the road to prosperity as they've seen happen in dozens of other nations already. They want action to back up nice words, not just the adoration of your liberal cronies. They want to hear - as Natan Sharansky did from the Soviet gulag - a man (Reagan) with the full intention of backing up his rhetoric calling evil by its name. They want - as the violated Kuwaitis did - to hear "this will not stand" and know that it won't.

They want to look a Marine grunt in the eye and smile and know that he's not going home on the whim of some turncoat politician more interested in today's polling results and tomorrow's headlines and next November's election than he is in adhering to enduring principles and staying the course and making the sacrifice for something truly better.

Those are things your idols once stood for, Bill. What happened? We both know. Power and women and lies and a gilded ability to convince anyone that you feel for them - really feel for them - even when it's all a load of crap and it's all about you and always has been. That and a thousand other things that ate away at what integrity you might once have had as a young man. It's sad, really. Sad that you so obviously need the limelight to feel fully yourself.

No, Bill, the people of the world (if we can even generalize about such a thing) long to see the 101st Airborne kick out the guy who ran their uncle through an industrial shredder while his sister watched and her daughter was raped and then hung for the 'crime'.

Yes, they want us "pulling" for them but in concrete ways: Like when the American military was first on the scene after the tsunami. Like when we stood by our rhetoric and brought the Soviet Union to its knees, unleashing a cascade of freedom in Eastern Europe. Like when, over the past century, we've stood up to tyrants and thugs at incredibly high cost to ourselves instead of lobbing an easy missile or two when the headlines about our torrid office affairs got too hot and then calling in the UN to go in in their air-conditioned SUVs and rape a few more civilians. Like when we stuck by our commitment to see the Iraqi people through to an election. Like when this administration refused to call the leaders of North Korea, Iran and Syria something other than what they are.

Those kinds of things, Bill. Those kinds of things have costs - big costs. They can cost popularity, money... and lives. Thank goodness there are men and women in uniform (and in that office you used to inhabit) who understand these things and are willing to make the necessary sacrifices. Thank goodness there are individuals who have not sold it all for fame and a fat speaking fee who have enough sense of what they stand for not to have to suck at the teat of narcissistic liberal reassurance that you so obviously and pitifully crave.

UPDATE: Sounding a similar note, No Oil for Pacifists notes that:

It is you, not the Bush Administration, with bloody hands. It is you [the loony left] -- departing from liberal Democrats of the past -- who have abandoned the still enslaved around the world.

Rights: The New, Revised, Super-Expanded Edition

There are at least four great things about the founding documents of the United States: 1) their definition of human rights in terms that are brief, timeless, universal and essential, 2) their absolutist stand on those essentials (e.g., "inalienable", "self evident"), 3) their clear acknowledgement of a divine source ("Creator") and 4) the fact that the authors managed to avoid cluttering them up with a long, gussied-up list of "rights" that would have required expansive government programs and expenditures and/or locked in political favors to particular individuals or groups for all time.

This high school level review of American government shouldn't be necessary in 2006. Sadly, it is.

Sadly, for example, we hear straight-faced debate from otherwise well-educated people about whether the Palestinian Authority has a 'right', under Hamas leadership (or any other for that matter), to our continued financial largesse. The fact that they've held an election has also been interpreted by some as conferring a 'right' to be free from criticism of any policies they choose to pursue. It's as if the process of holding an election - because we encouraged it - automatically confers permanent amnesty on Palestinian leadership from responsibility for all subsequent decisions and actions and instead pins it on us.

Sorry guys. It doesn't work that way. The election was the first step. Next you have to govern. Then you have to convince us that you're acting in ways that are in concert with our values and priorities and those of our chosen allies. Then and only then should you even think about asking us for money. At which point we'll consider it - if it's in our national interest and you give us cause to believe you and our electorate supports it.

In a similar vein we hear some arguing that the Bush administration has no 'right' to define foreign terrorist organizations and apply the laws of the land to those who might aide, abet or provide comfort to them (a point on which - it's worth pointing out - this administration has shown enormous restraint when one considers the damage the New York Times' leak has done to our ability to protect ourselves.) We hear also in the NSA flap the implication that the administration has no 'right' to take basic, prudent measures to see that terrorist organizations do not act on their stated intent to harm us or our allies.

In this, the critics are narrowly correct.

There is no administration "right" to these things in the sense that the Constitution means it. There is however, a clear set of responsibilities and powers that we the people (the only entities in with inalienable rights endowed by God) have conferred on our leaders through war and peace, sickness and health, riches and poverty, Whigs, Democrats, Republicans and the accumulated wisdom of 230 years of messy but ultimately fair democratic tri-partite process.

To suddenly pull the rug out from under all that and argue that none of it matters because, (don't you see?), Bush is an evil, fascist, misogynist, Bible-thumping, greedy, anti-progressive, condescending, bigoted, power-hungry, election-stealing pig bent on world domination. Such shrillness, coming from politicians once considered responsible and 'moderate' starts to sound, well... revolutionary - and not in the positive sense of that word. Toss it all out. I don't like the result. I don't like that we keep losing. I don't like that nobody is listening to me anymore. I don't like this country if it's going to be like this, they seem to say and often do. Never mind precedent and process. Never mind history. Never mind the popular will. Never mind that people are trying to kill us and we need to protect ourselves. Stop it. I want to get off.

To which I'm tempted to reply: be my guest.

We also hear the left hatching grand self-fulfilling conspiracy theories at the disciplining of a government employee (a NASA 'scientist') as if a high-paying, taxpayer-funded, high-profile government job and its misuse for personal political purposes over more than five years was a 'right' akin to academic tenure (a bad idea even in that context - a catastrophically misguided idea in the public sphere.)

Where no rights exist, they are invented (largely but not exclusively by the left) to justify political points of view. Calling something a 'right' gives it extra special status in the debate. Taxpayer subsidy of a foreign organization openly hostile to our well being somehow becomes (by a process of 'reasoning' I can scarcely begin to fathom) a 'right' at the expense of not only our financial sovereignty but of our physical safety. Taxpayer subsidy of art and abortion and illegal aliens and a thousand other things becomes a right, well... because it was a right last year and someone thought that it seemed like a good idea at the time so let's just keep writing checks and don't question it.

What harm can this extension of 'rights' do? Plenty. Misusing language by calling something a right that is not degrades those rights that are truly fundamental. Not unlike the filibuster, ratcheting up the rhetoric is a tactic reserved for those who were never taught by their parents that throwing temper tantrums and disrespecting the will of the majority is not how reasoning adults deal with one another (to say nothing of being Constitutionally proper or politically wise.)

If such logical contortions have become fair game then why should Hamas not pay us for having created a climate in which an election became virtually inevitable? Why should Hamas not pay reparations to Israel for the damage that its suicide bombers have caused? Why should a ranting NASA scientist not pay back the portion of his salary that went to making political statements that have nothing to do with the research job we pay him to do on our behalf?

I suppose I shouldn't be so surprised. The reasoning process here is of the same variety that the left has used on virtually every topic it deems 'progressive'. (Progressive towards what?, one might ask. 'Progressive' in whose world view? But that's post for another day.)

Step one: Establish a new 'right' for a particular special interest group (e.g., the Palestinians.)
Step two: Demonize as bigoted all criticism (and critics) of those 'rights'.
Step three: Get the government to subsidize the 'right'.
Step four: Kick and scream and fight at the barest hint of opposition.

Whether the initial justification for the subsidy is now moot does not matter. Whether the justification made sense in the first place does not matter. Whether the hazy justification of 'public good' makes any sense to the current electorate doesn't matter. There are, in the minds of a set of liberal mandarins 'rights' that only they can fully appreciate. We must not question. The fact that continuing to subsidize Hamas is even up for debate throws thousands of other 'rights' and associated subsidies into the harsh light they should have been subject to long ago.

UPDATE: As if on cue...

A senior leader of Hamas urged the European Union and other international donors Monday to continue funding the Palestinian Authority once the radical Islamic group enters the government a few weeks from now. "We are asking you to cooperate with our mission by keeping an open mind," Ismail Haniyeh, the top candidate on Hamas' national list, told journalists at his house in a beachside refugee camp here. "We are asking you to respect these results and respect the will of the Palestinians."

This is tremendously clever, really. The words 'cooperation' and 'open mind' are like Pavlovian insta-triggers, guaranteed to put some on the left into a trance-like, unquestioning state. To be uncooperative or close-minded, after all is a bad thing. Never mind that what they are asking for cooperation with is Hamas' mission, which is... to eliminate Israel. So how's that again? Let's translate: Hamas is asking Europe (including Germany) to cooperate in wiping out Jews? Haven't we been here before? The even more clever part is in conflating funding with acceptance of the election results.

The two could not be more different.

For the record, we accept the Palestinian election results. We are disturbed by them, but we accept them. Now the Palestinian people have to accept the consequences of having voted as they did.

When George Bush was elected, individual Americans were suddenly looked on as persona non grata (or persona ridiculosa or persona neanderthalis) in parts of the world (e.g., Europe) where they had once been feted as saviors. I should know. I've had these conversations with European members of my family. And I accept the consequences of having elected George Bush. The Palestinians need to accept the signals they have sent in electing Hamas. Those consequences may include less funding from the rest of the Western, civilized world that it seeks to destroy. Next time they may think a little harder about where their meal ticket really comes from before they vote. If they don't like it, they don't have to cash the checks.

Guile, Power and Projection

Dr. Sanity neatly sums up our continuing perplexity at how the left can see this president and the actions he's taken in the war on terror as not just a different point of view but as evil incarnate:

It is impossible for [the left] to believe that anyone in politics would not play the game to maximize their hold on power (since that is what they would do if they were in power); and might actually take action because it is the right thing to do; or that it might be important for national security or in the national interest of America. What a concept! All their rationalizations and rhetoric represent a classic case of projection, pure and simple. [emphasis in original]

Guile cannot credit guilelessness in others. It can only see feint and deception.

Peacemaking and Peacemakers

This story doesn't have a tidy conclusion. Stop reading now if that bothers you. I'm still not sure what it means or where it goes, but I can't escape feeling that it ties into recent troubling headlines out of the Middle East.

This past week, I found myself talking to my sister-in-law, (or 'Sis', or 'J', or 'hey you', or whatever it is that one is supposed to call the dear widow of one's recently deceased brother), about childhood memories of him. Most were stories she'd never heard, or if she had, she'd only heard his version in bits and pieces over the years. It's possible that other people would remember the same scenes, but I haven't been in touch with any of them in almost 30 years.

It's a funny thing being the keeper of such things: at once very heavy (gulp... I'm the only one who remembers now!) and also very light (it feels like he's listening as I tell them...)

I spoke mostly about the summers my brother and I spent at an all-boys overnight camp in Maine. They were delightful times - not without their adolescent conflicts and anxieties, but formative and important and pleasant to recall: the struggles of closely fought games of 'capture-the-flag', the way the setting sun filtered through the pines during the evening softball game, the mist on the lake during the early morning swims, the talks around the campfire and in the cabins after lights-out...

As I recalled things I hadn't thought about in decades, I kept coming back to one kid: Abel. That was his real name. Abel, as in the brother that Cain murdered in the book of Genesis.

Abel was about my age. He was also black - one of a handful of inner city kids given a chance to attend camp on scholarship. The significance of that went largely over my head at the time. For the most part, our camp had been lily white for the first couple of years that my brother and I had gone there. That wasn't particularly anybody's fault. The owners and staff were perfectly enlightened - quite liberal in fact. It just hadn't occurred to anyone until the mid '70's to think terribly hard about integration or diversity of any of the things that pervade the culture now.

I first met Abel a couple of years after the forced bussing debacle in Boston. Tensions stayed mostly below the surface but there were fights. Some were interracial. Many were not. I don't remember any weapons, or anyone getting hurt beyond the occasional bloody nose. Skin color just didn't have a lot to do with it. Fighting is and always has been just part of what boys do.

One thing that stood out about Abel was that he was never party to those fights - at least not to my recollection. He was the only boy in a large family. I don't know if that had anything to do with it, but in hindsight Abel was a pretty mature kid for his age. Whenever someone had a conflict - violent or not - Abel was often there, helping to break it up, helping the counselors cool things down, helping kids to talk it out and move on and get back to the business of being kids and playing sports and having fun. He seemed drawn to be the peacemaker.

My brother was desperately homesick his first year away at camp. (He was only nine.) Abel took him (and many other younger kids) under his wing. Peacemaker. Consoler. Friend.

Ten years later, Abel was dead.

I remember riding in a cab on my way to the airport when I found out. August, 1987. Leafing through the paper... wham! A name I hadn't heard in years. Abel... No way, I thought. It can't be him. The story made clear that it was. Abel was shot twice in the head while attempting to talk down a cocaine-crazed gunman who'd entered the bar where he was working. The crowd had peeled back, crouching low as the music stopped. (Pardon the link to an otherwise... unusual website but it's by far the best firsthand account of Abel's last days that I could find.)

Abel leaped the bar and walked towards the guy firing into the ceiling - his palms outstretched in a gesture of peace, according to witnesses. Abel died a few days later. About the same time, they caught the guy who'd shot him - on the run in Kansas. He's serving a life sentence for first degree murder back here in Massachusetts. This post is not about the death penalty.

What this post is about is a guy with an exceptional gift. Abel. A black guy perfectly comfortable and friendly and trusting in places that logically he shouldn't have been - at least not at that time: Abel, the guy who felt it his calling in any situation to make friends with everyone, to be the peacemaker, the arbitrator, the guy to cool things down.

Why was I suddenly drawn to think about Abel last week after almost twenty years? I don't know. What I do know is that my brother was even more shocked and crushed than I was when he'd heard the news of Abel's murder - disconsolate for days in a way that's uniquely true of the first time that a true friend and contemporary passes on. My brother: a patient man (far more patient than I). Abel: the guy to toss oil on angry waters even when he had every reason to jump into them. What I sense also in this serendipitous meander down memory lane is that Abel was there to greet my brother when he died. And that puts a huge smile on my face.

This incredible, instinctual, highly gifted peacemaker - someone able to confront pure evil and save others without a thought for his own safety - just happened to come vividly to mind at the end of a month that's seen one of the biggest escalations in tensions in the Middle East in decades. I don't think of Abel as the kind of patsy some so-called peacemakers seem to be. He was street smart. He knew an aggressor when he saw one and didn't let other factors color that judgment. He liked to party. He was cool. I could tell other stories. I won't.

And yet, when the time came to step in, he did the right thing without a second thought. What does it mean? Again, I don't know. I'm just comforted in the knowledge that he and my brother are together, that saints both named and unnamed are watching over world events as they unfold, that angels ride in the whirlwind, directing the storm... in ways we cannot know.

Why Abel? Why now? I can't help wondering as the news continues to unfold...

Genesis 4:6-16
Then the Lord said to Cain, "Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it." Now Cain said to his brother Abel, "Let's go out to the field." And while they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him. Then the Lord said to Cain, "Where is your brother Abel?" "I don't know," he replied. "Am I my brother's keeper?" The Lord said, "What have you done? Listen! Your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground. Now you are under a curse and driven from the ground, which opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand. When you work the ground, it will no longer yield its crops for you. You will be a restless wanderer on the earth." Cain said to the Lord, "My punishment is more than I can bear. Today you are driving me from the land, and I will be hidden from your presence; I will be a restless wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me." But the Lord said to him, "Not so; if anyone kills Cain, he will suffer vengeance seven times over." Then the Lord put a mark on Cain so that no one who found him would kill him. So Cain went out from the Lord's presence and lived in the land of Nod, east of Eden.

UPDATE I: The friend of Abel's who was in the bar when he was shot in 1987 and who put up the website about his final days points me to this trip he felt called in a dream to take to Rome to witness the election of Pope Benedict XVI last April. He recounts the unlikely pilgrimage, as well as the odd 'coincidence' of finding "the camera transfixed for a long shot of me, singled out from a crowd of a half million...a long receding shot" on worldwide coverage immediately after the puff of white smoke. If I wasn't sure where the main part of this story was heading when I wrote it, I'm even less sure now. But my spidey sense is tingling...

UPDATE II: Less than 24 hours after I posted this ("still not sure... where it goes"), I was confronted with this short prayer by one of my favorite spiritual authors, Trappist monk Thomas Merton, on the inside flap of our church program:

My Lord God,
I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.
But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.
And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.
I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.
And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it.
Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.
I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

Condi's Clear Speaking

I really hope she runs in '08...

"[The Iranians are] doing nothing but trying to throw up chaff so that they are not referred to the (UN) Security Council and people shouldn't let them get away with it. The time for talking outside the Security Council is over."

- Condi Rice, on Iran's demands for in-country uranium enrichment

Mideast Thought Experiment

This has probably been around for years, but I just heard it for the first time today. It's a simple little thought experiment that neatly highlights the fallacy of moral equivalence:

Question: If tomorrow morning we woke up and all of the Islamic nations and peoples surrounding Israel were completely without any weapons more powerful than a ripe eggplant, (and Israel retained theirs) what would happen next?
Answer: Very little.

Question: If the reverse were true, what would happen?
Answer: Israel would be overrun in a matter of days if not hours.

The Wolf Comes to Dinner

We note this morning the absolute victory by Hamas in yesterday's Palestinian parliamentary elections. (Sorry to be the bearer of fantastically, head-swimmingly, world-shakingly bad news if this is the first place you're reading about it.) The WaPo notes blandly that Hamas' election would:

...severely complicate Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas' policy of pursuing negotiations with Israel under a U.S.-backed peace plan known as the roadmap

Why? Because it...

...conflicts with Hamas' platform in several key respects.

What would those "several key respects" be, you may ask?

Hamas officials in Gaza City, where their victory was greatest, said the group has no plans to negotiate with Israel or recognize Israel's right to exist.

Yeah, I'd say that that's a key respect. And in case some of the WaPo's readers were just waking from an Austin Powers 40-year time capsule, the WaPo wastes ink and pixels stating that:

Europe, Israel and the United States classify Hamas, formally known as the Islamic Resistance Movement, as a terrorist organization.

Phew! Thanks goodness for diplomatic consensus. I was confused. I thought they were the ones organizing knitting circles and potluck suppers in the church basement on Wednesday evenings. I'll give the New York Times a little more credit than the WaPo as they mustered the decency to call the Hamas victory:

a shocking upset sure to throw Mideast peacemaking into turmoil... The result could have a devastating effect on the peace process with Israel.

Well, yeah. But what's amazing is that even with those slightly stronger adjectives, the Grey Lady of Times Square still seems to live inside a world view that imagines there is a peace 'process'. That it's still all about fake Clintonesque smiles and earnest Jimmy Carter/Madeine Albright shuttles and meaningless Nobel Prizes and documents that boil down to "suckah!" In light of recent developments, that is utter delusion. When one negotiating party has made unilateral concessions and the response of the other has been to spit a kind of anti-Semitic "we'll stop at nothing less than killing you all" vitriol that even Hitler didn't think he could pull off until he'd pushed the Allies back across the English Channel, then we're waaaay past 'process'.

Japan - Conflicted Over Iran

Fascinating little piece in this Thursday's Asahi Shimbun:

Iran's publicly stated intention to advance its nuclear technology threatens a key element of Japan's energy strategy--development of the Azadegan oil field [in Iran]... a senior official of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry explains Japan's dilemma. "We want to develop the field at any cost," the official said. "But opposing nuclear weapons proliferation is the national policy of Japan as the world's only country to suffer atomic bombings. It's impossible for Azadegan alone to escape any impact (from the nuclear issue and possible sanctions)."

While joining the United States and Europe in calling on Iran to drop its nuclear program, resource-poor Japan cannot afford to lose the development rights. With estimated reserves of 26 billion barrels, the Azadegan field is one of the largest in the Middle East. Japan's Inpex Corp., in which the government has a 36-percent stake, won 75 percent of development rights in February 2004. It was a much-needed enhancement of Japan's energy security after Arabian Oil Co., a Japanese company, lost its rights to Saudi Arabia's Khafji field in 2000...

...[Japanese] officials are concerned with China's aggressive push to strengthen ties with Iran. It recently won rights to the Yadavaran oil field in the country. "Even if Japan gives up Azadegan, China will move in, resulting in no damage whatsoever to Iran," said a senior ministry official.

Dilemma indeed. I'll give them the "at any cost" bit as something that may have been mangled in translation; but it's true: Japan has no ANWR equivalent. They are truly stuck. China by contrast, can buy its way out of an energy crunch at the cost of slowing its astronomical growth rate, further develop its domestic resources (as its doing) and/or impose its will on Iran or other Middle Eastern countries. (Wonder if we'll see any "No Jintao Oil Greed!" banners if that goes down. Hmm... Doesn't seem likely.)

We find the Japanese dilemma closely analogous to the have-our-cake-and-eat-it-too thinking that pervades much left-leaning environmental rhetoric. We're against nukes, but we're also against freezing in the dark or burning coal. Inconvenience a few caribou? Impose higher costs on people who live far away from their jobs? Attempt to pacify an unstable but oil-rich region of the world? The choices and trade-offs are seldom absolute... but neither are they optional.

Iran's Pressure Points: Syria Comes Back Into the Spotlight

Syria is coming back around as a leverage point in our efforts to alter the strategic landscape of the Middle East in our favor. As wiser commentators observed nearly a year ago, Syria is intimately tied to everything we've been talking about here the past month, most especially Israel and Iran. Michael Ledeen, has this highly educational piece in NRO on Iran's alliance with Syria and Hezbollah and the ethnic vulnerability they have in a repressed ethnic minority in their richest oil region. (H/T: Fausta at Bad Hair Blog):

In short, the Assad family's grip on Syria is weakening, and this is welcome news indeed, both for the long-suffering Syrian people and for us. The Iranians are obviously desperate to keep Assad in power, and Hezbollah armed to the teeth. Should things go the other way, Iran would lose its principal ally in the war against us in Iraq. As is their wont, the Iranians have been paying others to do much of their dirtiest work, and they have awarded Assad tens of millions of dollars' worth of oil, as well as cash subsidies, to cover the costs of recruiting, training and transporting young jihadis, who move from Syria into the Iraqi battle space (and, according to Jane's, a serious publication, the Iranians have also sent some of their WMDs to Assad for safekeeping). That deadly flow has been considerably reduced in recent months, thanks to an extended campaign waged by U.S. and Iraqi forces in Anbar Province, and further along the Iraq/Syria border. The Syrians have accordingly sent radical Islamists into Lebanon, perhaps to link up with Hezbollah in a new jihad against Israel.

And as we noted last April from a NYTimes article on the CIA's final but incomplete report on WMD in Iraq, Syria may well have provided (and may still be providing) similar 'safekeeping' services on behalf of Iraq:

...a group formed to investigate whether WMD-related material was shipped out of Iraq before the invasion wasn't able to reach firm conclusions because the deteriorating security situation limited and later halted their work. Investigators were focusing on transfers from Iraq to Syria. [emphasis added]

Others have noted further pieces of the same story. Iraq did have WMD - how many we are not sure. Some of them were discovered. The rest went... somewhere. One caller on a radio show I happened to catch yesterday had an isolationist, Bush-bashing axe to grind in this vein, observing that tracking WMD in the Middle East seems like a shell game. His question: When does it stop? His implication: Aren't we the suckers here? Our response: We are suckers only to the extent that we agree to look under one shell. That's usually the way the game works. But then in the carnival version, the huckster hiding the coin is the one in control. This particular set of hucksters has shown the world quite clearly that they ought not to be (in control).

As we speculated yesterday in a comment, the most likely scenario for an Iranian nuclear attack on Israel will originate not from a 'suitcase' (for all practical purposes a Jack Baueresque myth) but from a cargo container - on a ship, a truck, or a civilian airliner. And at least for the latter two, having a nearby partner (nearby to Israel, that is) would make sense. Syria. As we noted last March, Syria "may be a flashpoint".

Missiles are something that Iran would like to have, and is probably developing or purchasing, but they don't need them. Thinking in those terms is a classic case of imposing our paradigm (human life is precious) in a context where the base assumption is false. In short: they have hundreds if not many thousands of willing 'drivers' for nukes. We only had one... and he was fictional. I can even imagine that the competition for that role would be fierce... among those who are into that sort of thing.

Ledeen at NRO continues:

Should the jihadist traffic into Iraq and Lebanon cease, we and the Iraqis would be free to concentrate our attention on the Iranian border, especially in the oil-rich south, where Revolutionary Guards forces are very active, both to contain the anti-regime rage of the Ahwaz Arabs on the Iranian side of the border, and to infiltrate the Iraqi side, both in support of Zarqawi's terror network, and to agitate for an Islamic republic in the Shiite region around Basra. The Iranians have been hyperactive in that area ever since the fall of Saddam, and it would be a very good thing to start to turn the tables on them. For, just as many Iraqi oil fields, and millions of Iraqi Shiites are vulnerable to Iranian maneuver, the reverse is also true: the bulk of the Iranian oil fields, and millions of Iranians, are vulnerable. And the strategic balance is definitely in our favor.

The population of the Iranian oil region is largely Arab, and they have been brutally oppressed and ethnically cleansed by the mullahs. Tehran has gobbled up thousands of square kilometers of land on the pretext of building industrial parks or expanding military facilities, and the locals have been protesting on and off for many months. As I wrote last week, the regime is so nervous about disorder in the spinal cord of the Iranian economy that they sent Lebanese Hezbollahis and members of the Badr Corps (Shiites of Iraqi origin trained in Iran for the past two decades and then sent into Iraq to fight the Coalition).

In other words, working on toppling Syria's brutal regime (method TBD, but I'm open) may be one of our best strategic options, accomplishing several things at once. It would eliminate an immediate, easy avenue for Iran to reach Israel with nukes, i.e., the map-wiping it says it desires - potential missile programs notwithstanding. It would turn over yet one more highly plausible WMD shell in the area. It would put Iran and others on notice that we ain't screwin' around. It would, as Fedeen notes, free up some of our resources to focus on the Iranian border area which is sure to be an increasing source of trouble under almost any scenario. And finally, it would free a people crushed under brutal oppression - a desirable but neither sufficient nor absolutely essential element in my neocon world view. (For those unfamiliar with just how brutal Syria under the Assads has been check out - believe it or not - the World Socialist Website and try to overlook the BS about bourgeosie and imperialism:

[In 1980 Hafez el-] Assad was targeted in a grenade attack. In revenge, his brother Rifaat, head of Syria's security forces, gunned down more than 250 religious opponents in their prison cells. In February 1982 a Muslim Brotherhood revolt broke out in Hama. Ba'ath Party officials were killed and appeals were broadcast from the mosques for a national insurrection. Assad's retribution was ruthless. The military levelled [sic] half of the city, slaughtering an estimated 10,000 to 25,000 people. It is estimated [by Amnesty International] that between 1982 and 1992 thousands were arrested for political dissent and 10,000 were executed.

(Tom Friedman outlines the same story in his 1989 book From Beirut to Jerusalem but I couldn't find a convenient link to its content.)

Wretchard at The Belmont Club has this to say, about the unfortunately atrophied capabilities and therefore limited options we have between feckless, flaccid talk and raining down metal and heat and death:

Perhaps one of the reasons the US adopted the military approach against terrorism and struck at targets amenable to the application of force was that it was obliged to use the only instruments of national power which reliably worked. They had a bureaucratic repertoire which in any case was all they could play. All the talk about "nuanced" or "sophisticated" approaches evaded the fact that there were no effective policy instruments between a diplomatic note and sending in the Marines. After you composed a nuanced and literary diplomatic demarche there was nothing left but to order in the Third Infantry Division. If American society really wanted the capability to covertly upend mentally disturbed dictators it would take the trouble to build up the mechanism to do it. Instead, General Michael Hayden, former director of the National Security Agency recently had to explain before a hostile audience at the National Press Club why it was necessary to wiretap Al Qaeda. [emphasis added]

Part of the capability IMHO involves a more sustained and forthright case (playing on offense instead of defense) on the need for prudent national security measures that the ACLU routinely opposes. Wretchard harmonizes with (without duplicating) things that Tom Barnett has been preaching for years.

And then, for those inclined to such things, there is the eerie prophesied confluence of Syria, Iran and Russia supporting a major attack on Israel before the end of the Hebrew year 5766... which equates with the end of March... this year. As we've warned: fasten your seatbelts.

Making It Up As They Go Along

Diplomacy is...
...asking the cop who just stopped you for speeding if he'd mind if you take your hands off the wheel for a moment in order to pull your cell phone out of your pocket to call your daughter to tell her you're going to be late to pick her up from school while he writes up your ticket.

Diplomacy is not...
...putting your mob friend Guido on the phone to tell said cop that he'd better put down that ticket pad and get back in his squad car now or you're going to drive off in a spray of gravel and burning rubber and oh by the way the reason you were speeding was that you're on your way to a shooting spree at the local elementary school and he'd better not follow you or you'll get him and his family too and would he mind terribly if you continue loading your Uzi while he sat by and watched and could he please hold the mirror while you do another line of coke?

That is called contempt.

Russia's national security chief and Iran's top nuclear negotiator said Tuesday that Tehran's nuclear standoff must be resolved by diplomatic efforts in the U.N. atomic watchdog agency [IAEA]. The Kremlin statement reflected Russia's efforts to delay Iran's referral to the U.N. Security Council and Moscow's opposition to international sanctions against Tehran. "Both sides expressed their desire to solve the issue in a diplomatic way within the framework of the International Atomic Energy Agency," Russia's Security Council said in a statement after the meeting between council chief Igor Ivanov and Ali Larijani of Iran. The meeting came after Iran warned that IAEA referral to the U.N. Security Council over its nuclear ambitions would lead it to move forward with a full-scale uranium enrichment program, a possible precursor to making atomic weapons. [emphasis added]

Completely blowing off your appointment with the IAEA in Vienna does not make anyone more likely to believe that you would abide by what they have to say anyway. And threatening to do something you're already doing (or that everyone believes you're doing) isn't really much of a threat. I shouldn't have expected as much as I did from the Russian negotiations. What a waste. Iran is both setting the tempo and dealing the cards and that's not good.

Remembering Reagan

Without really thinking about this being the 25th anniversary of Ronald Reagan's first inauguration, I found myself watching a PBS American Experience documentary on his life yesterday. Given that it was PBS, they did a reasonable job of it.

Many things stand out, but one that I had not recognized at the time (being on the other side, as I was back then) was the poignancy of a few moments at the 1976 Republican National Convention when - speaking reluctantly and extemporaneously - Reagan absolutely galvanized the crowd. As someone noted, "it was then that most in the room recognized that they'd nominated the wrong man" (Gerald Ford).

In light of what happened over the next four years, it's an interesting thought exercise to imagine how the world might have been different had even a few delegates voted their gut and swung the nomination his way. What was at least as remarkable was the sense from several who knew him of how he was gracious in defeat - biding his time knowing it seems, that his time would come, that it was important and it was not his to choose.

To the delight of some of our more liberal-leaning readers, I'll give them this: to listen to Reagan speak is to cringe at George Bush. One can love a man's conviction and faith and follow-through and still pine for the kind of galvanizing speechcraft that we lost when Reagan passed last year. I hated him at the time. I miss him now. And in that vein, few could do better than this incredibly moving firsthand account by Dr. Sanity of meeting and speaking with him - a chance encounter as both of them played primary roles in the aftermath of the Challenger disaster.

Motivations and Preparations: Dealing With Iran

I've received a number of comments and e-mails recently (several of which I've summarily deleted... for reasons which will become apparent in a moment) asking roughly the same two questions: why? and what?

1) Why is Iran motivated to say what it's saying and do what it's doing? (or less savory words to the same effect). That is, why is Iran - or rather, why are its radical leaders - lashing out at the U.S. and Israel in what seems to be (as I described it yesterday) a 'suicide by cop' challenge? I.e., "we're going to kill as many of you as we can... we know we'll probably get flattened trying... but we're gambling on the long odds that we won't... and in any case we don't care 'cause we're the 12th imam..." It's the insane, desperate lunge after Clint Eastwood declares: "Go ahead. Make my day."

This is simply a variant on the much flogged "why do they hate us?" question that made the rounds after 9-11. I'd imagined - perhaps naively - that it had been obliterated by the overwhelming evidence since then, i.e., that the 'reasons' of the Islamofascists are all ex post facto and selected for their audience du jour. (Sorry, three languages; one sentence; bad blogger, baaad...) The real reason is the restoration of an Islamic empire twelve centuries in decline. But if they said that more often it would tip more of us off to their real and consistently imperialistic motives.

The only answer - because it is the one they've given in their most candid moments - is that they hate us because of who we are, not because of what we do. This has been repeated so often I would have thought it would be clear. For some, apparently it is not. So let's try this approach: ask the same for any primary aggressor in history - that is, for any nation or movement that has declared expansionist, conquest-oriented ambitions backed up by the capacity to act on them. E.g.,

• Why did Imperial Japan attack Pearl Harbor? (not to mention China and Korea and much of Eastern Asia and the Western Pacific)
  
  
• Why did the USSR press into Vietnam, Afghanistan, Cuba, Nicaragua, Eastern Europe and a slew of other places and impose what all thinking people now recognize to be an utterly oppressive, dehumanizing system?
  
  
• Why did Hitler overrun Europe?

Better historians than I could make a much longer list going back centuries if not millennia but for now these will suffice. The answer to all of them is the same: Because they could. They did what they did because they calculated (wrongly as it turned out) that they could pick off the weak and defenseless and that nobody was going to stop them. In light of history it is clear that had nobody tried to stop them the world would be a much more brutal terrifying place today.

Hitler owning Europe, standing for "re-election" in 1970 and garnering 100% of the 'vote'? All too possible without Churchill and Roosevelt. Tojo's son in charge of Australia, Hawaii and most of Eastern Asia? Not all that hard to imagine in light of how North Korea has managed to persist. The Cold War still bumping along after Lech Walesa, Vaclav Havel and others took a bullet to the head and were buried in anonymous graves? Easy to imagine without Reagan and Pope John Paul. Iran, Syria, Saddam and Saudi triumphantly marching into the glass parking lot that was once Jerusalem? Easy to imagine under President Kerry or Mondale or Gore or Dukakis or Carter.

And that's the nice answer. :)

The less nice answer is that to even ask those questions is utterly noxious in light of what we now know of those regimes, their methods, the bitter fruit they bore, and their larger ambitions that the world managed to put a stop to. Yes, the cost was great. Visit the cemeteries in Northern France and ask the whispering pines and silent stones whether it was worth it. They will tell you: it was. Oh how it was! Terrible and regrettable and painful and yet... oh so worth it. We don't even care if they're grateful over in Europe. (OK, we do. We're human. But it was worth it just the same.)

Plumbing the motives of these regimes as if they were simply the opposing gymnastics team in the next town over is an exercise in empathy with pure evil. It is abhorrent because it puts "understanding" of those regimes ahead of compassion for the people crushed under the megalomania of their leaders.

One cannot empathize with both - it is simply not possible. One has to choose.

One either spends energy trying to see what 'good' Castro (e.g.) has done for 'his' people or one asks the obvious follow-on: "Compared to what?" and notes that the overwhelming majority of people with the means to leave his little Cuban 'paradise' with their families have done so.

One either tries to understand Hamas and the carnage it has attempted to make routine, or one tries to understand why Israel has taken measures to protect its people from said carnage - quite restrained really, when one contemplates Israel's enormous capability to fight back unilaterally.

One either tries to understand Iran's seeming insanity or one takes it at face value and says: nope; can't allow that and tells them as slowly and clearly as possible that we disagree with their racist, expansionist ambitions and will oppose them with as much force as we need to to ensure that they are not fulfilled. Which leads to the next question:

2) What do you propose that we actually do about it (Iran)?

Some have read into my words the idea that I propose nuking Iran unilaterally. I challenge anyone to comb back through the archives and find where I said so because I did not. Nuclear weapons suck, frankly. I do not relish the thought of my country having to use them. At the same time however, to declare that we will not ever (or that we will unilaterally undo our nuclear capability) is foolish. We cannot responsibly rule out their use under all circumstances. War, unfortunately is hell - especially with an aggressor who does not play 'nice.

So what do I propose?

Limited diplomacy. Diplomacy that recognizes that some do not bargain in good faith and that endless talk sometimes serves the ambitions of tyrants far better than it serves the cause of long term peace and freedom. Not to get too Biblical here, but it's virtually the hallmark of evil that it niggles and negotiates with words with the precise purpose of distracting from larger wordless truths.

Democratic solidarity with the president. Let's be plain: I did not and do not like Bill Clinton. But I also recognize that he did some good: i.e., he was not Jimmy Carter. He had enough sense to fire some warning shots at Al Qaeda. Yes, they were ineffectual. Yes, I would have done a lot differently in light of what we all know now but then he might have too. I can't say with conviction that in the climate of the 1990's Bob Dole would have done substantially better. In any case, that's past. What I could and did do then was to say: he's the president and we have a process and until we have the chance to replace him in another election I'll hold my choicest comments.

It was also a different time: the history of political infighting in the country - up until Vietnam anyway - was to apply just a little more decorum during wartime than not. I'm not going to bother fisking the usual vacuous responses (e.g., "we have a duty to oppose the president!" and "he got us into the war in the first place!" or "we're not really at war".) We're talking about a recognition of the fact that we (and I emphasize WE) were attacked in force on 9-11, that our efforts to see that it does not happen again are very much in progress and that without sufficient support they very well could fail to our collective detriment. What we say to one another is more visible to our enemies than at any time in history and they've proven that they are only too able and willing to use it to hurt us.

Democratic wakefulness. I won't belabor this one, but for the most part , the left needs to open their eyes to what time it is and what's going on in the world. We are at war - and not of our own making. Joe Lieberman is the exception that proves the rule and - at least in how her mouth moves - to some extent Hillary Clinton is also. I don't believe her and don't believe she should be president, but at least she's not lost in the same kind of fantasy land as Nancy Pelosi et al. The continual sense I get is that the left believes that our global problems are either (take your pick): our fault for having interests beyond our shores, our fault for being successful, our fault for electing George Bush, the result of going into Iraq to depose Saddam (our fault again), or not so challenging as to require anything more than a 1990's brush-fire management and law enforcement approach. Wake up, people. It is 1938.

Carry a big stick. Prepare (and visibly so) to back up our words with whatever action our president, his advisors (including Congress) and our smartest military planners deem least worst among our options. There are blogs better equipped to flesh out the details on this. I hope it does not involve nukes on our side but the alternatives may be worse.

Use China and Russia. I am deeply wary of the leadership of both nations but the fact is that both have influence that we do not. I have read about and contemplated countless scenarios involving each (some good, some bad, some simply treacherous). What they all have in common is that they may be our best shot and that we cannot afford - the world cannot afford - a nuclear misunderstanding between us. Iran is bad. All out war with China or Russia (the latter much like a wounded pit bull) is something to be avoided - and I think it can be. Note that I did not say "at all costs". There are some things we would not do to avoid it (standing by and not retaliating on Iran while Israel got nuked). In the meantime I am thankful that more rather than fewer channels of communication appear to be opening up with the Chinese and the Russians.

Keep an eye on France. This may be a red herring, but someone commented recently on another blog that if anyone were to retaliate with nukes vis a vis Iran and with scarcely a second thought, it would be France. It's a strange thing to say in light of their behavior on Iraq, but this situation is vastly different (a much longer post for another day.)

Pray. Some may sniggle at this, but I'd be remiss in leaving it out. I can scarcely imagine the burden that the president is under in these times. Agree with him or don't but please pray for him. Unlike Roosevelt, he cannot wait until yet another galvanizing shot is fired at us to act since this time the shot may be the final one (at least as far as some of our allies are concerned and possibly some in our largest urban areas).

The inspiration for this blog's title is precisely the kind of situation we face: seemingly unsolvable. And when man's capacity falls short (as it inevitably does), we need help in discerning how to "reprogram the simulation" we find ourselves in to achieve a better outcome than all of the awful ones that seem to lie before us.

UPDATE: Great reminder from Sigmund, Carl & Alfred about the 1967 (aka 'Six Day') war that Israel fought against Egypt:

There is no single example of a leader, anywhere, that threatened Jews or Israel, that did not go out and attempt to implement that evil when given the chance. Further, responsible nations and leaders cannot fall back and claim 'bluster' every time they are called on uttering racist, bigoted and hateful remarks. When leaders and nations espouse views that are clearly out of the norm, when they use their own government controlled media to propagate hate and other outrages, they must be marginalized. There are consequences for inappropriate behavior, not the least of which is the forfeiture of a seat at the table of civilized nations.

Hamas vs. Fatah - Missing the Main Issue

I've already gotten myself into trouble today making references to Hitler and failing to do all my research. But having not made any comparisons with Mussolini, this one is too good to pass up. Time Magazine posts this article reporting on how much more efficient local Hamas officials have been in providing basic services to the Palestinians than was Yasser Arafat's Fatah party.

In towns like al-Bireh, Hamas has built popular support by providing a disciplined alternative to Fatah, which is seen by many Palestinians as corrupt, inefficient and unable to run a garbage collection service, let alone negotiate with Israel. Hamas has long run its own medical clinics, schools and soup kitchens for the poor—mostly in the Gaza Strip, its stronghold. In last year's local elections, Palestinian voters gravitated toward Hamas because of its reputation for having "members with a clean record," as Mayor Hamayel puts it, in a reference to Fatah's many corruption-tainted officials. Residents of towns where Hamas won control say they are now better run than they were under Fatah. In Qalqiliya, a West Bank town that Hamas won in elections last June, the Hamas council has paid off the town's debt, balanced its budget, raised salaries and begun rebuilding roads. Even in al-Bireh, which Hamas has governed for less than a month, there are signs of improvement: the streets are being cleaned and teams of men last week were installing stoplights in the rain hours after the end of the workday. The locals are impressed. "Fatah has not achieved anything for me," says Haytham Hammad, 22, a corporal in the Palestinian security forces, over a cup of coffee and a cigarette in an al-Bireh cafe. "Hamas is capable of taking back the rights of the Palestinian people—daily rights like a good job, clean water."

Which is all very nice. We're happy that the Palestinians seem to be waking up to the basics of self government now that Mr. Arafat is dead. It's only been what, 58 years since the founding of Israel? No analogy is exact of course, but one looks at places like Singapore, Thailand, South Korea or even Tibet and wonders why the Palestinians are somehow excused by the world for two generations from producing little more than a bunch of thugs with expertise in taking hostages, hijacking airplanes and killing innocent civilians in ever more spectacular fashion while getting awards for making movies about them ...when they're not getting other awards for making promises they never intend to keep.

Just to pick one example, the South Koreans were decimated (and then some) by the Japanese in WWII, systematically raped, deported and pillaged. A few years later they were nearly pushed to the sea by their ruthless fellow countrymen, egged on by Communist China. They had their infrastructure utterly destroyed, their population again decimated by war, and endured decades of abject poverty with little complaint while their northern neighbor made nuisance raids, constantly threatening to invade with massive force. Singapore has virtually no natural resources at its disposal on an eentsy weentsy dot of land nearby to practically nothing. Less than 25 years ago its people were making cheap goods in dirt floored factories for pennies a day. Yet both have become gems of economic progress and peace.

Each beleaguered nation has had to endure unbelievable hardship in the last 65 years, all the while making far far less trouble for the world in several decades than the Palestinians make in a week or two of routine operations. Each has done rather well for itself in far less time than it's taken the Palestinians to start cleaning their own streets and picking up their own garbage. And we're supposed to applaud? To say: Good for you. Good boys and girls. Next we're going to learn how to use a pencil and flush the toilet.

Give me a break. To do so would be to descend into the worst kind of racism and expectation lowering imaginable and I'm not going there. As they say about excuses and certain parts of one's posterior anatomy: everyone has one... and they all stink.

And where did Time get the idea that efficient local government is in any way correlated with morality? That clean streets mean peace? That clean water means fewer suicide bombers? That slightly more reliable electricity and merely mediocre schools means that we're poised to see the Palestinian Stock Exchange brimming with hot IPOs any day now... any day now.

Tehran, Havana, Pyongyang and Baghdad are all reasonably clean and efficient as well (free and modern are a different story). Iran's President Ahmadinejad was a civil engineer. He got his doctorate in traffic transportation planning. By all accounts he did an OK job running Tehran. Do we conclude from that that he's our friend? Uh, no.

It may be a myth that Mussolini made the trains run on time, but it hardly follows that doing so makes for a state whose values we can embrace. Not even close.

UPDATE: How do you say "Sinn Fein" in Arabic? (including the duplicity, pig-lipsticking and long-term hope that that admittedly incomplete comparison implies)

...the new mayor of Nablus embodies a cadre of Hamas "spinoffs." Gone are the full beards and fiery religious rhetoric. Absent are assertions that all Israel is a "Zionist entity" that Muslims must destroy.

They Really Mean It

I was struck over the weekend by two things: deep fatigue on the Iranian crisis and an equally deep, ominous sense that this is really going down. The two are not unrelated. Neither I suspect, are they unique. The headlines this morning are light on fresh news about Iran. Nobody really wants to hurry along what is going to be an ugly period in history. Nobody on our comfortable side anyway. That's totally understandable. The mullahs understand it only too well. In fact, they're counting on it.

As the stock market tanked, Bin Laden's message came out and Ahmadinejad visited Syria late last week, the whole scene moved in my mind from one that could merely be written about indignantly and commented upon from afar to one that will impact my life in significant ways. None of this is bluff. Something bad is going to happen. Soon. (My best guess: March.)

Ahmadinejad arrived in Damascus on Thursday upon the official invitation of his Syrian counterpart -- President Bashar al-Assad. He spoke of the importance of the Palestinian cause and stressed the cause will not come be materialized if occupiers continue to occupy even a tiny part of Palestine's territories. [sic; emphasis added]

As Bush 41 would say: this will not stand. Israel will not be moving to Germany or Alaska. Sorry. Not negotiable. A showdown seems increasingly inevitable. As I've written before, it almost doesn't matter who fires the first shot or whether it goes nuclear. (OK, it does matter - a lot - but since I can't see this not involving nukes, the only strategic impact is in the timing and sequencing, not the ultimate sweep of what happens over the next few years.)

Even with the utmost in goodwill and skilled diplomacy on our side (and I'll give credit where credit is due: the talkers do have a limited role at this juncture if only to be able to say to our grandchildren: we tried; we really did), Iran's mullahs and their radical Islamic brethren seem bent on rolling the dice.

They're betting - no doubt based on reading and listening to our left-leaning, relentlessly anti-war, Bush-bashing media - that domestic political divisions will stay our hand. They're betting that we'll effectively hand over Israel in exchange for what a set of myopic, radicalized, narcissistic left-wing Baby Boomers in Congress seem to want most: ten more years of the 1990's. Just ten more years. Keep it low level and don't make it too public and we'll make whatever concessions you want until then.

Ten more years for the 401Ks of their Upper West Side, Nob Hill and Beacon Hill constituents to plump up and their retirement benefits to kick in and 9-11 to fade in memory. Ten more years to retreat to their vacation homes in Vail and Martha's Vineyard, West Palm and Key West and then... who cares? Go ahead, they say in effect. Obliterate Israel. Wipe out the embarrassment in Iraq (and snub Bush in the eye while you're at it.) Bring back the Taliban and stone a few more widows in Afghanistan. The AP won't rub your face in it - we've already established that.

Go ahead. Roll slowly across Europe. (Dateline Paris, 2025: Notre Dame dismantled by French-Islamic government.) See if we care. Just don't make us actually do anything drastic like monitoring phone calls. Don't you understand? The end of history already happened. We're past that nasty stuff of moral choices and guns and things we'd rather legislate out of existence. Didn't you get the memo? Didn't you read about it in the New Yorker? Didn't you see Live8 or memorize the words to that old Coke jingle?

As the 21st century unfolds, I'll admit that all of this is hard to face. It is sickening to be reminded that evil is ever present - that it didn't die with a shot to the head in a Berlin bunker in 1945. It's sickening to contemplate that a handful of demagogues and their death-loving followers can be practically begging (as every bomber does) for a kind of twisted evil righteousness in homicidal 'martyrdom'. Only this time the car bombs are nukes. This time millions may go with them. They know it... and they don't care.

What Iran is bringing on is effectively 'suicide by cop' - on the scale of nations. Comparatively impotent for centuries, they're begging to be immortalized in the headlines. And if somehow we blink and give in, they vastly increase their street cred and their power anyway. Nothing to lose! It all works beautifully. The logic of all truly effective (read: evil) dictators is the same as that of those running Enron or the S&L's in the 1980's: gamble with other peoples' money. Gamble with other peoples' lives. Leverage is great when people go along.

UPDATE I: Let's get this straight... Ahmadinejad visits Syria to express his unqualified support for Hamas and its goal of wiping out Israel (big surprise) while Israel contemplates the possibility that Hamas may win Palestinian elections in two days? Some might call it a contradiction that the U.S. supports democratically elected leaders only when we agree with those who are elected. Not so. We support democracy... and encourage nations to use it responsibly. It is a much much bigger responsiblity than many may imagine. The fact that someone is elected doesn't mean that we must acquiesce to all of their policies and actions. Let's not forget: Hitler ran for election was elected too*.

UPDATE II: Random thought: with Kim Jong-il and Ahmadinejad both traveling abroad in the last few weeks couldn't we have arranged for a plausibly deniable assassination... or two? Just asking...

UPDATE III: *D'oh. I stand corrected. Hitler was not elected, though he did garner 36.8% of the national vote in 1932 for a relatively distant second place out of three. All of which proves...

• That Bush is not Hitler (something most sensible people already knew),
  
  
• That the Palestinians may show us on Wednesday that they're worse suckers for despots and terrorists than I'd imagined,
  
  
• That Hitler didn't have as much infrastructure in place to commit systematic vote fraud in Germany in 1932 as some Democratic precincts do today.

WSJ Ed Page Roundup

The Wall Street Journal carries several excellent pieces on its editorial pages this morning. Jonathan Stevenson, Professor of National Security Affairs at the Naval War College writes about the Bin Laden tape (subscription required):

...it is tempting to dismiss bin Laden's offer as a haughty act of desperation, or an effort to buy time, as terrorist cease-fire proposals often are. A more nuanced extension of this logic would be that he is explicitly dialing back his ambition of a global caliphate and would now settle for a limited U.S. stand-down, which could help render his demands moderate enough to become subject to at least tacit accommodation. Such thinking would be wishful, and not much more. Even if he really wanted to work toward coexistence, he wouldn't be able to deliver his end of the bargain precisely because he no longer enjoys close operational control over most of those he inspires. His word could be countermanded by Zarqawi, by a Moroccan in Spain, or by a British Pakistani. Quite simply, bin Laden's ideology and résumé have become bigger than the man himself. [emphasis added]

As we wrote last week, the goal is and always has been the return of the 9th century Caliphate. What Bin Laden thinks doesn't matter so much as the fact that radical movements only tend to get more radical over time. (Witness for example, the Democratic party which, as Bill Bennett is pointing on his show right now, honestly believes that it has not been shrill enough in its opposition to the president. Guess I'll be going long on tin foil for some time to come...) And speaking of dangerous nut cases, Melanie Kirkpatrick writes about Kim Jong-il's trip to China (subscription required):

...every indication that North Korea is liberalizing is countered by evidence of precisely the opposite. Last fall, the government banned the private farmers' markets that fed much of the urban population. Shortly before Kim's journey, Pyongyang announced the end of international food aid that had been feeding up to a third of the people. It evicted the World Food Program and told European aid groups to get out by spring. Now, Pyongyang will have to find other sources to avoid shortages. Two million died in the famine of the late 1990s. And that's where China and, especially, South Korea come in. Pyongyang blithely takes their food aid, which has few or no conditions attached. The U.N., by contrast, requires in-country monitors to confirm that aid was delivered to the starving civilians for whom it was intended. [emphasis added]

Score that as a rare piece of positive news on the First Street Mafia (aka, the UN).

Shelby Steele positively sparkles in this must-read piece (free at OpinionJournal) demolishing Hillary's plantation remark and highlighting a fundamental strategic problem Democrats face:

[Her remark] came from a corruption in post-'60s liberalism and Democratic politics that profoundly insults blacks. Mrs. Clinton came to Al Sharpton's MLK celebration looking for an easy harvest of black votes... Mrs. Clinton's real insult to blacks--one far uglier than her plantation metaphor--is to value them only for their sense of grievance... Once black grievance is morphed into liberal power, it need never be honored... It is hard to fully respect one's suckers...

Precisely because Republicans cannot easily pander to black grievance, they have no need to value blacks only for their sense of grievance. Unlike Democrats, they can celebrate what is positive and constructive in minority life without losing power. The dilemma for Democrats, liberals and the civil rights establishment is that they become redundant and lose power the instant blacks move beyond grievance and begin to succeed by dint of their own hard work...

No other potential Republican candidate could--to borrow an old Marxist phrase--better "heighten the contradictions" of modern liberalism and Democratic power than [Condi] Rice. The more ugly her persecution by the civil rights establishment and the left, the more she would give liberalism the look of communism in its last days--an ideology long since hollowed of its idealism and left with nothing save its meanness and repressiveness. Who can say what Ms. Rice will do. But history is calling her, or someone like her. She is the object of a deep longing in America for race to be finally handled, not by political idealisms, but by the classic principles of freedom and fairness.
[emphasis added]

Those are just a few of the insightful gems that are making me a bigger Steele fan with every new piece of his I read. Take a look.

Finally, for those who (like me) tend to fall into a complete stupor at most analysis of Supreme Court goings-on, there is this insightful piece by James Taranto (free at OpinionJournal) on the unanimous Planned Parenthood vs. Ayotte non-decision decision last week. Taranto notes that it was necessary to insulate the court (and the country) from the scorched-earth politics that would be likely once either Stevens or Ginsburg retires if a split decision had been rendered in this case. At least somebody is thinking ahead...

VDH on Ahmadinejad: Studied on the Western Left

Excellent piece by Victor Davis Hanson in today's Chicago Tribune:

[Iranian President Ahmadinejad] has studied the recent Western postmodern mind, nursed on its holy trinity of multiculturalism, moral equivalence and relativism. As a third-world populist, Ahmadinejad expects that his own fascism will escape scrutiny if he just recites enough the past sins of the West. He also understands victimology. So he also knows that to destroy the Israelis, he--not they--must become the victim, and the Europeans the ones who forced his hand. Ahmadinejad also grasps that there are millions of highly educated but cynical Westerners who see nothing much exceptional about their own culture. So if democratic America has nuclear weapons, why not theocratic Iran? Moreover, he knows how Western relativism works. So who is to say what are "facts" or what is "true"--given the tendency of the powerful to "construct" their own narratives and call the result "history." Was not the Holocaust exaggerated, or perhaps even fabricated, as mere jails became "death camps" through a trick of language to take over Palestinian land? [emphasis added]

(H/T: Pocket Full of Mumbles)

When a Truce Isn't Really a Truce

On the way to a breakfast meeting today, I happened upon part of a great interview on Bill Bennett's 'Morning in America' show with terror uber-expert Walid Phares, author of Future Jihad (Nov., 2005). It's worth checking out before it goes into the premium archive.

Phares points out that, "it is almost a certainty among experts" that the timing of the release of such tapes is at Al Jazeera's discretion. I.e., they break the 'story' on their own terms, for maximum impact in furthering their own political Islamofascist agendas. Sort of like the New York Times might do say, with potentially treasonous leaks it might have solicited from the NSA in order to say, promote a book by one of its reporters. Sort of like that. In the fine tradition of how other "news stories" were "broken" during WWII.

Phares also performs a line-by-line translation and interpretation of the Arabic transcript of the tape on The Counterterrorism Blog. Unfortunately, the web audio of Bennett's interview does not include an extra segment with Phares after a commercial break. In it, he clears up something he didn't fully address on the blog: Our English translation of Bin Laden's Arabic into the word 'truce' does not mean what we think it means. This has already become (no doubt intentionally on Al Qaeda's part) a widespread misinterpretation in the West.

The term 'truce' seems reasonable. Peaceful. Honorable. Modest.

It is anything but.

Instead, Phares noted, the term we read as 'truce' would be better interpreted as temporary cease fire pending total withdrawal of all U.S. and Western interests (not just military, but economic, religious, etc.) from "all Muslim lands". That's just a wee bit different, no? That would include Iraq of course. And Saudi Arabia. And Israel. And Spain. And Turkey. And parts of Southern France. To start...

[Having learned from Hitler, Bin Laden and his ilk are leading with the propaganda offensive. Properly executed, it will enable the jihadists to minimize the military piece that became Hitler's undoing. Letting the enemy's own internal bickering and weakness and fear prompt it to cede the territory you want is much much easier than fighting for it with Panzer divisions.]

In essence, 'truce' as Bin Laden is using it in Arabic means what he's said all along: return to the 9th century Caliphate - its borders, its values and its power - or else. If liberals truly understood what that meant (i.e., the complete dismantling of everything that liberalism - in the broader sense - has ever stood for), they would not be so quick to think it reasonable.

Last I checked, liberals stood against things like male domination of all the institutions of society, like autocracy and the lack of suffrage (male or female), like state-mandated religious practice, like institutionalized gay-bashing, like restrictions on dress and movement, like child labor, like draconian restrictions on the use of money, like the death penalty, like rape, like domestic abuse and state-sanctioned spousal murder. Little things like that.

Heck, even American conservatives oppose most of those things! ;)

With the Bin Laden tape, it's become clear that in their hatred of George Bush and Operation Iraqi Freedom, Democrats and jihadists share much. That may sound harsh and unfair. I wish it were. I really do. I wish we had a Democratic party that had not run off the rails while shooting itself in the foot. A Democratic party that knew evil when it was on the march. Go read a transcript of the tape and compare it to anything that Howard Dean, Nancy Pelosi, Teddy Kennedy, John Kerry or any of those folks have been yammering on about for the last several years. Then go read anything on foreign policy by Truman or FDR or JFK. That was a two party system. Frankly, it was healthier.

Like Pravda at the height of Soviet power, its become apparent that Bin Laden is paying very close attention to the arguments of the American left and playing them back to divide us. "Useful idiots" was the term Lenin coined in reference to those whose knee-jerk sympathy for all things Soviet and a hopelessly naive Communist ideal that never could work led them to scorn everything about their own country. We hear that knee-jerk reaction today in the left's sympathy for all things Palestinian, ignoring the fact that dozens of other displaced, downtrodden, even decimated cultures and peoples have managed to do miraculously constructive and positive things with themselves in the 60+ years since the end of WWII.

Sadly, "useful idiots" are as alive and well today as ever. Only the 'users' have changed.

"Villainy Early Detection System"

Great piece by Andrew Klavan in last Saturday's LA Times (H/T: The Anchoress). Sadly, it's only getting more relevant by the day. Klavan explains what shouldn't need explaining in a culture not lacking for top-drawer films and books on the subject: What does the presence of national-level anti-Semitism signal about what comes next in history? Why do we ignore it at everyone's peril? (This should be an easy quiz to pass; for some it isn't.) It's rare to be able to weave humor, biting logic and extreme seriousness into one short op ed but Klavan does:

All bigotry is wrong, of course, but there's something about this particular form of prejudice [anti-Semitism] that is weirdly reliable as a sign of deeper wickedness. Perhaps it's because the Jews contributed so much to humanity's moral code that to hate them as a race is to despise the restraints of morality itself.

Whatever the reason, true, virulent anti-Semitism is such a good indicator of the presence of evil that I'm tempted to believe that when God made the Jews his chosen people, this is what he chose them for: to be a sort of Villainy Early Detection System for everyone else.

Unfortunately, in his infinite love for his creation, I suspect the Big Guy may have overestimated our intelligence. Maybe he thought that after Hitler we'd just, you know, like, get it. Instead, we still see apparently intelligent people appeasing, making excuses for and even embracing the sorts of stinkers who ought to set off the Big Alarm.

That's why I think the system could use more bells and whistles — a loud honking noise perhaps, or even closed captioning for the morally impaired. Thus, when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says the Holocaust is a "myth" or that Israel "must be wiped off the map," you would hear a loud honk and words would appear in the air below his face: "Hello. I am an evil madman. Please stop negotiating with me now and proceed to cripple my nuclear capability by any means necessary." [emphasis added]

Read it.

Double Standard Alert: France's Mention of the Nuclear Option

Imagine for a moment if President Bush had been as explicit as Jacques Chirac was today in threatening a nuclear response to terrorist strikes on his country. We'd see two inch banner headlines in the New York Times. We'd hear (more) calls for the President's impeachment. We'd see leaks of nuclear plans with not a hint of treason (the media "just doing its job"). Perhaps the French are the perfect foil to be able to say what needs to be said. Everyone expects it from Mr. Bush. Like Nixon making an overture to China and starting the EPA, it is sometimes the politician with credibility on one side of the ledger who can say precisely the opposite of what people expect.

I'm also inclined to agree with a commenter on an earlier post here who remarked that France may have finally woken up to how small a step it is from low-level Islamic-sponsored car-torching mayhem in the heart of Paris to a giant, smoking Islamic-sponsored radioactive crater in the heart of Paris. Good morning, France! Welcome to a post-9-11 world. It's good to have you on board. Again. For now.

Reading the Bin Laden Tea Leaves

We take it as highly positive that a few days after several of his top deputies were taken out in a country they probably thought 'safe' (Pakistan) - with other 'safe' havens becoming less 'safe' (for Al Qaeda) every day - Osama Bin Laden is 1) coming out of hiding, (in the process quelling persistent rumors of his death last April) and 2) offering the U.S. a truce.

Sure, the 'offer' comes with the usual arrogant bluster and chest-pounding conditions; ominous threats of a major attack on U.S. soil may very well be true. Multiple interpretations are possible. Is this feigned strength disguising real weakness or feigned weakness disguising real strength? We can't know for certain. Deception is in the nature of war. Referencing Sun Tzu fails to clear up the ambiguity.

When we back up however, we see this: Feeling the need to show yourself to rally the troops, and 'offering' truce shortly after sustaining significant surprise casualties amongst your leadership is more likely a sign of weakness than not. Time to press the offensive. In a related piece, Stratfor warns us not to become complacent on Al Qaeda.

UPDATE: Transcript of the Bin Laden tape here. As one commentator on local talk radio noted this afternoon, much of what he says is hard to differentiate from the rhetoric of high profile Congressional Democrats. One could even argue on the basis of this tape that, were Bin Laden himself a Democrat, he'd be considered a moderate one.

Getting North Korea Out of the Way

As we were saying... China: U.S., North Korea to Resume Nuke Talks

France Gets a Spine on Iran? Reflections on Consensus

Well this is nice for a change.

"...it is not possible for [Europe] to meet [with Iran] under satisfactory conditions to pursue these discussions [on nuclear fuel]. Iran must return to a complete suspension of these activities."

- French Foreign Ministry spokesman Denis Simonneau in Paris, yesterday

We'll see how long it lasts in light of the other note the French are sounding:

French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin said European nations were seeking the "greatest possible consensus" on dealing with Iran...

Consensus is nice when it reflects some fundamental moral truth. It is worse than useless when it is allowed to become the top priority. The lowest common denominator logic inherent in worshipping consensus says we must wait until even the most self-serving and corrupt are on board before we decide, much less act. Like two other favorite terms of the left ('diversity' and 'inclusion'), when exalted over other aspects of moral discernment, 'consensus' becomes nothing more than a way to give anyone, or in this case any nation, a veto over whatever is being discussed no matter what their motives.

It's not that we believe that the French people are clueless and corrupt... It's just that... Well... How to put this delicately... In diplomatic language...

When France's little backdoor Oil For Food deal came to light in the Volcker Report last Fall, the protestations of their leaders on Iraq started to seem in hindsight, well... corrupt... self-serving... morally bankrupt... worthy of the kind of scorn and condemnation that some reserve solely for President Bush... more like what we'd expect from a two-bit, third-world, fist-shaking autocracy than - for goodness sakes - a permanent member of the UN Security Council. (What kind of deranged Napoleonic hangover was the world suffering from when they did that, I wonder?)

In short, even though France appears to be saying the right things on Iran at the moment, the Oil-For-Food thing makes us question their motives on virtually everything else for years to come. Plus, we don't like their wine very much.

One mistake many make in thinking about the concepts of security and freedom and the proper role and voice that nations should have in protecting them, is in skipping past the individual and investing nations and only nations with those rights. National sovereignty (no matter what is going on inside the borders of a particular country) becomes a higher ideal than say, protecting rape victims from being hung by the neck until dead, or female reporters from being kidnapped and threatened with having their head slowly sawed off on videotape in some sick Islamo-misogynist fantasy writ large.

Being able to tuck one's child into bed at night in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv becomes that much harder when they ask: "Mommy, what does it mean when they say they're going to wipe us off the map?" and we're left telling them not to worry because international consensus will protect them. Our ample historical knowledge of the Nazi Holocaust makes us ask why we should not take such threats quite literally. Consensus did not help millions in Europe under Hitler. Why should it help now?

The idea of one nation, one vote no matter what kind of despot may be running each nation or how their motives may have been twisted structurally prevents the UN (or any international body for that matter) from having a moral compass that's superior to what the most morally oriented nation could have. It is almost a mathematical proof that it be so as long as corrupt nations exist and are allowed to participate in such bodies. Combined with the idea of international consensus uber alles it all gets truly noxious.

Together, those ideas move the world away from the concept - inherent in both religion and science - that sometimes (many times, in fact) it is the lone voice in the wilderness speaking truth above the din of cowardly souls who instinctively seek safety in numbers. I.e., sheep. It is inherent in the DNA of sheep that they do not lead themselves. Sheep must be led and led well - led by those firmly grounded in enduring principles like the sanctity of individual freedom. Not by the principle of consensus-no-matter-what.

UPDATE I: Welcome Michelle Malkin readers! From her post on the subject, it seems that the Dems (or at least Hillary) are attempting to re-sell the "Iraq was a distraction from getting the real terrorists" meme we heard so often in 2003. Those inclined to swallow such garbage would do well to read this.

UPDATE II: Underscoring the main point of this post with near perfect timing, we now hear that Russia may be the holdout this time. Big surprise.

...the European Union said it was mulling a Russian proposal that would stop short of a formal referral of the Islamic republic to the council. A formal referral would mean Iran would face possible sanctions over the West's suspicions it is pursuing a nuclear bomb. Rice, who has been seeking to build a united position on Iran among Europeans, the United States, Russia and China, chose the word "referral" despite Moscow's effort to have Iran only "reported" to the council.

The difference amounts to more than diplomatic nuance. If Iran avoids U.S.-led efforts for a formal referral, the council could debate its case but there would be a lack of legal weight and there would not be the potential for "consequences," EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said on Wednesday in Washington.

Not that "legal weight" or "consequences" mean anything either. Unlike Iraq remember, any UN resolution on Iran would only be the first - if we get even that far. Recall that with Iraq, seventeen resolutions still didn't amount to anything other than talk. Firm talk. Stern talk. All talk. Ahmadinejad must be laughing his a$$ off. Just like Saddam did for 12 years.

UPDATE III: Not only a spine but a ten-gallon hat, a six-shooter and a great big pair of...

UPDATE IV: Interesting piece (pardon the fractured English) on everyone's interests in Iran. Conclusion: Russia is smiling bigtime.

War-Gaming Irrationality: Iran and the 'Fallowscy' of Assumptions

We're reminded this morning of this interesting if controversial piece by James Fallows on "war-gaming" options for dealing with Iran, published thirteen months ago in the Atlantic Monthly. It is as or more relevant today: worth printing and reading with highlighter in hand over coffee even if you may disagree (as I do) with the overly tidy conclusions it draws.

Iran will cross one of the red lines when it produces enough enriched uranium for a bomb, and another when it has weapons in enough places that it would be impossible to remove them in one strike. "Here's the intelligence dilemma," Gardiner said. "We are facing a future in which this is probably Iran's primary national priority. And we have these red lines in front of us, and we"—meaning the intelligence agencies—"won't be able to tell you when they cross them." Hazy knowledge about Iran's nuclear progress doesn't dictate assuming the worst, Gardiner said. But it does mean that time is not on America's side. At some point, relatively soon, Iran will have an arsenal that no outsiders can destroy, and America will not know in advance when that point has arrived...

The general and his staff had prepared plans for three escalating levels of involvement: a punitive raid against key Revolutionary Guard units, to retaliate for Iranian actions elsewhere, most likely in Iraq; a pre-emptive air strike on possible nuclear facilities; and a "regime change" operation, involving the forcible removal of the mullahs' government in Tehran. Either of the first two could be done on its own, but the third would require the first two as preparatory steps. In the real world the second option—a pre-emptive air strike against Iranian nuclear sites—is the one most often discussed...

...any of the measures against Iran would carry strategic risks. The two major dangers were that Iran would use its influence to inflame anti-American violence in Iraq, and that it would use its leverage to jack up oil prices, hurting America's economy and the world's. In this sense option No. 2—the pre-emptive air raid—would pose as much risk as the full assault, he said. In either case the Iranian regime would conclude that America was bent on its destruction, and it would have no reason to hold back on any tool of retaliation it could find. "The region is like a mobile," he said. "Once an element is set in motion, it is impossible to say where the whole thing will come to rest."

If [Iran] thought that the U.S. goal was to install a wholly new regime rather than to change the current regime's behavior, it [Iran] would have no incentive for restraint.

Of course if the U.S. were assured by clear statements out of Iran that its intent was the destruction of Israel and the U.S., then we wouldn't either. These are just a few of the prescient gems sprinkled throughout. Very much worth the time. The MSM seems only now to be rediscovering them (or in some cases going into total denial.)

Unfortunately in the conclusion (which I have not excerpted here), Fallows attempts to tie up a thorny and open-ended problem with the assertion (based on a three hour meeting and some interviews and without even exploring the topic in the piece) that diplomacy is the only option available to the U.S. The underlying (but unstated) supposition seems to be that in the long run, we can somehow make Iran like or at least be nice to us; that we can keep them at arms length and accept some imaginary low level of manageable mischief that (like Pakistan for instance) we don't like but can endure and contain.

It does not take into account the possibility that Iran means exactly what it says. Like Babe Ruth, I see Iran pointing to a particular spot on the left field wall of the metaphorical ballpark (i.e., Israel) and saying: There. We are going to hit... there. Like the Babe, I fully expect that they will do so. And like the Babe, the left field wall is not the only thing in their sights.

The piece scurries away from the all-too-real possibility that Iran (particularly under Ahmadinejad, a virtual unknown at the time Fallows wrote the article) will go out of its way to harm the U.S., Israel and our larger global interests. Waaaay out of its way.

No consideration is given to the possibility that it may do so even if - like a malignantly narcissistic suicide bomber the size of an entire nation - those actions bring on Iran's destruction, including (even emphasizing) the death of its leaders. The saying goes that war is miscalculation. In this case, it may be extremely precise calculation on Iran's part but of a kind we more commonly see among those taking PCP, LSD or failing to treat their schizophrenia.

Fallows brushes aside the thought that bringing on their own (earthly) destruction may be exactly what Iran's leaders are seeking... so long as it brings on ours as well.

After all, who would be happier with a return to 9th century living conditions, politics, culture, women's 'rights' and legal frameworks? Who imagines that they have 77 virgins waiting for them in paradise once the shockwave hits?

What we assume they should wish to turn away from is starting to look more and more like precisely what the mullahs most desire. That kind of calculated nihilism cannot be appeased, contained or negotiated with. Like a malignant cancer it must be cut out somehow. Even though the side effects are considerable and hard to predict we know what will eventually happen if it is not... and we know that it is worse.

UPDATE: Lest any of the above strike anyone as overly paranoid, see this. It's a picture worth at least a million of the kind of words that diplomats like to tell themselves.

Storming Heaven for Jill Carroll

As The Anchoress might say, it's time to "storm heaven" for the safe return of 28 year-old reporter Jill Carroll, kidnapped in Iraq. Please keep her in your thoughts and prayers. 'Cause we sure won't be (and shouldn't be) meeting her captors' demands:

Jill Carroll's captors have issued a statement asking that the United States free all Iraqi women prisoners within 72 hours – and are threatening to kill Carroll if this demand is not met.

More in the Time Magazine piece that last week broke a somewhat controversial (though self-imposed) news blackout on her January 7th abduction.

Also, still awaiting word from NOW on this important issue affecting womens' lives (one way or the other). Apparently NOW is too busy crafting anti-Alito pop-up windows for their website.

UPDATE: More here. Looks like she was deliberately set up by the Sunnis. Big surprise.

Diagnosis: Apocalypse, Lyrics: Keith Richards

Our good friend ShrinkWrapped writes this must read piece helping to resolve the debate about whether or not Iranian President Ahmadinejad is 'rational' or 'insane'. The answer? Both.

Malignant Narcissism and Paranoid Psychosis are two sides of a coin, but the most important aspect of such a person is that they are not "mad" or "crazy" in any conventional meaning of the term. Their basic assumptions may be bizarre and their goals may be terrifying, but they are perfectly capable of being cunning, brilliant, charming, and exhibiting a full range of human attributes, all the while imagining ushering in the Apocalypse. In addition, and this is crucial for understanding the danger from Iran, the relationship between the Narcissist and his belief structure is such that they cannot separate themselves from their beliefs...

...These are not the actions of fools or "madmen." They are the rational actions of people in the service of irrational goals. The goal of the Iranian leadership is to bring on the Apocalypse. They can not separate their Islamic beliefs from their experience of the world and the failure of Islam would be a psychic death; suicide via murdering the infidel is the only outcome possible that preserves their mental state. [emphasis added]

Striking a supporting chord elswhere in the piece, SW references this bit on Shi'a's long-awaited 12th Imam:

This return [of the 12th Imam] is the most significant event in the future for the Shi'ite faithful and... will occur shortly before the Final Judgement and the end of history. Imam Mahdi will return at the head of the forces of righteousness and do battle with the forces of evil in one, final, apocalyptic battle. When evil has been defeated once and for all, the Imam Mahdi will rule the world for several years under a perfect government and bring about a perfect spirituality among the peoples of the world. After the Imam Mahdi has reigned for several years, Jesus Christ will return...

Given the titanic conflict of civilizations and religions that seems to be shaping up here, it becomes easier to see this (Shi'a prophecy) as an almost a perfect photo-negative image of Christian prophecy as told in the Book of Revelations. I.e., switch the terms 'righteousness' and 'evil'. As I noted in this piece on China and Iran the other day, the best cover story for falsehood is partial truth - a small 'give' to distract attention from a larger truth. In this case we also have the structure of truth with the characters mixed around (the nod to Jesus is a classic herpetological head-fake.)

Ahmadinejad has been around for a long long while (i.e., 1979 hostage-taking). His rise to power last Spring - from utterly rational and... utterly beholden to a malignantly narcissistic view of reality. Sound like anyone we know?

I'm a man of wealth and taste
I've been around for a long, long years
Stole many a man's soul and faith...

...Pleased to meet you
Hope you guessed my name
But what's confusing you
Is just the nature of my game

Just as every cop is a criminal
And all the sinners saints
As heads is tails
Just call me Lucifer
'Cause I'm in need of some restraint

So if you meet me
Have some courtesy
Have some sympathy, and some taste
Use all your well-learned politesse
Or I'll lay your soul [civilization?] to waste...

How China Plays vis Iran

As we noted last Sunday, the big overlooked factor in the Iran crisis is China. Now the BBC is picking it up.

As Washington, now joined by the EU3, presses for punitive international action against Tehran, one of its most difficult tasks will be to win China's support. The first step is to persuade China to agree to support - or not to block - an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) referral of Iran to the UN Security Council. China, like Russia, feels it is in an awkward position.

We'll be hearing a lot more on this soon. A lot more.

Hollywood, NSA Loathing, Mental Illness and the Left

Through completely serendipitous circumstances, I had reason this past weekend to track down a copy of the hard-to-forget job interview monologue by Matt Damon's character 'Will' in the 1997 movie 'Good Will Hunting'.

On one level it's a very funny scene. You may remember it. Will's unrecognized mathematical brilliance has recently come to light, presenting him with an opportunity to interview for a job with the NSA. Upon being asked "Why do you want to work for the NSA?" however, he goes off:

Why shouldn't I work for the NSA? That's a tough one, but I'll take a shot. Say I'm working at the NSA Somebody puts a code on my desk, something nobody else can break. Maybe I take a shot at it and maybe I break it. And I'm real happy with myself, 'cause I did my job well. But maybe that code was the location of some rebel army in North Africa or the Middle East. Once they have that location, they bomb the village where the rebels were hiding and fifteen hundred people that I never met and that I never had no problem with get killed. Now the politicians are sayin', "Send in the marines to secure the area" 'cause they don't give a s&*t. It won't be their kid over there, gettin' shot. Just like it wasn't them when their number was called, 'cause they were pullin' a tour in the National Guard. It'll be some kid from Southie takin' shrapnel in the a$$. And he comes home to find that the plant he used to work at got exported to the country he just got back from. And the guy who put the shrapnel in his ass got his old job, 'cause he'll work for fifteen cents a day and no bathroom breaks. Meanwhile he realizes the only reason he was over there in the first place was so we could install a government that would sell us oil at a good price. And of course the oil companies used the skirmish over there to scare up domestic oil prices. A cute little ancillary benefit for them but it ain't helping my buddy at two-fifty a gallon. They're takin' their sweet time bringin' the oil back, and maybe even took the liberty of hiring an alcoholic skipper who likes to drink martinis and fuckin' play slalom with the icebergs, and it ain't too long 'til he hits one, spills the oil and kills all the sea life in the North Atlantic. So now my buddy's out of work and he can't afford to drive, so he's walking to the f&%#in' job interviews, which sucks 'cause the schrapnel in his a$$ is givin' him chronic hemorroids. And meanwhile he's starvin' 'cause every time he tries to get a bite to eat the only blue plate special they're servin' is North Atlantic scrod with Quaker State. So what did I think? I'm holdin' out for somethin' better. I figure, f&%# it, while I'm at it, why not just shoot my buddy, take his job and give it to his sworn enemy, hike up gas prices, bomb a village, club a baby seal, hit the hash pipe and join the National Guard? I could be elected president.

A copy of the monologue can be found here.

What's easy to forget in the context of this semi-amusing stream of consciousness is that Will has 'issues'. Lots of issues. Serious issues. The story revolves around his initially tense and antagonistic relationship with his latest psychiatrist - Robin Williams' character, Sean Maguire. (As a side note, Williams, who lives in San Francisco, tried to pull off a Boston accent in the film and to the ear of this Boston boy failed utterly. The result is somewhere between rural Maine, Ted Kennedy and the Bronx.)

Damon's character means well. He's trying to keep it together but he can't. It's meant to be clear to the audience that 'Will' is a deeply troubled, dysfunctional young man, acting against his own self interest and (it is implied) suicidal in the not-so distant past. The NSA job-interview speech is a perfect set-piece portraying him as angry, paranoid and delusional - wrapped up so tightly inside his own head and his own fears that he cannot see what is before him much less engage in meaningful exchange with other people. (Hopefully my psych doc readers will have more precise terms to describe his condition as portrayed on screen.)

When I first saw the film - around the time that it came out during the second Clinton administration - I remember thinking what a great scene it was. (I was still 80% liberal at the time.) Here's this kid from a poor troubled home, spitting in the face of "the man", telling it like it is, holding nothing back, saying whatever comes into his mind. He's the ultimate individual hero. He needs nobody and nothing. Screw authority. Screw order. Let's get drunk.

Re-reading the monologue nine years later, I could not feel more differently. In light of stories such as the New York Times leaks the speech takes on an air of frightening unreality. Here we have what is arguably the most influential media outlet in the world, acting with a good deal more force and malice aforethought than Damon's troubled character in seriously degrading the effectiveness of the NSA as an agency of the U.S. government sworn to protect the country.

Can it really be true just nine years and one administration later, that there are individuals in positions of significant power at the New York Times, in the Congress and in the Democratic party who feel, speak and most importantly, act on essentially the same wildly convoluted reasoning as 'Will' in the film? Hello! He was mentally ill. Delusional. Paranoid. Self-destructive. Entirely divorced from reality and any ability to hold grounded relationships with other human beings.

He was absolutely brilliant, no doubt but not the kind of person you'd ever want in any position of power, responsibility or authority - until he got himself well, anyway. It was entertainment, for goodness sakes, not a rational foreign policy manifesto. That some in power would take it seriously is frankly, scary. Truth really can be stranger than fiction...

No Lincoln; No King - Reflections on The Future of the Middle East

As a self-described 'child of the sixties' Hootsbuddy reflects firsthand today on his involvement in the Civil Rights movement forty years ago. For those who weren't born at the time or who - like me - were only toddlers, it's worth reading to get past some of the hazy/lazy ways (both positive and negative) in which that era has been summed up in the collective mind. Hoots concludes with a quote from MLK's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail". In it, King writes:

...I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
[emphasis added]

King's intent is clear enough. He is talking about how to obtain civil rights for blacks in the South in the 1960's. Like any great, enduring wisdom however, the words speak to us over time - far beyond the context that initially inspired them or the causes and individuals who would seek to keep them for themselves and their own parochial purposes.

Christian fundamentalists are often tarred with a brush that accuses them (and not without justification) of maintaining an iron grip on their own interpretation and use of religious wisdom. They would seek to use their interpretations of the Bible exclusively for their own purposes and agendas. Fair enough. I take seriously those few Biblical scholars who speak Aramaic, Latin and Greek and have a commanding knowledge of Biblical authorship. I take less seriously those who speak to the literal truths of a particular English translation. But that's a tangent...

I would submit that the same accusation of parochial fundamentalism sticks rather better to what passes for the 'left' in this country today. What's confusing is that they hold up many of the same icons they have always held up (MLK being one of them) while screaming 'sacrilege' when those icons are co-opted by their political opponents. (Or even for that matter, by the intellectually curious when it is pointed out that there is real evidence that some dreams really have come true.)

At the same time, many on the left choose to focus narrowly on a few aspects of King's life (e.g., his opposition to the war in Vietnam - something that had at least as much to do with the draft and the unfair loopholes that many wealthier whites such as Bill Clinton or Dan Quayle were using to avoid it) to the exclusion of others (e.g., judging on the content of one's character and not the color of his or her skin). The latter is something we rarely if ever hear from Jesse Jackson anymore. Why? Because to do so would put Jackson and other race hustlers out of a job while validating the color-blind, sex-blind hiring and nomination practices of the Bush administration not to mention the success and neocon world view of people like Condi Rice.

I am not at all sure - as I have said many times before in different ways - whether without party labels as a guide a time traveler from the early '60's would recognize him or her self more in the visionary ideals (and over-generous spending) of today's Republicans, 'neocons' and compassionate conservatives or in the Nancy Pelosis, Ted Kennedys and other shrill, defensive, narrow-issue, self-preservation oriented Congressional Democrats. No, scrath that. I am sure.

I'll leave the more detailed comparisons between co-option of King's legacy and how Biblical teachings have been used and morphed and passed on to others... but the parallels are there. E.g., ancient/divine wisdom intended for one set of people can turn out to apply equally well to (and/or be heard and applied by) another group whether the initial intended recipients of the wisdom have been good, honest caretakers of it or not.

One observation that absolutely jumps out at me from King's letter in the modern context is this...

If we substitute "Arab" or "Middle Easterner" or "Middle Eastern woman" in the place of 'Negro' and think about those (in both parties) who for decades have prefered a veneer of 'stability' to justice and longer-term, sustainable stability (e.g., freedom, democracy, economic growth, liberal society, the removal of oppression and persecution) in that part of the world, then I would assert that the anti-war left is convicted by King in its plea for inaction on behalf of the many in the Middle East who would appreciate help in obtaining justice, freedom and real lasting peace sooner rather later. The left in this country is focused increasingly inwardly. That is a big part of what has killed their once broad and compelling appeal.

One other thing that the left often forgets about King is that he could not have done what he did in the way he did it (i.e., non-violently) had it not been for Lincoln. I.e., without the successful prosecution by the Union of the bloody and divisive U.S. Civil War, Martin Luther King, Jr. could never have set foot in the South. His parents might never even have escaped it. Economists and historians could argue this point all day, but the Confederate South's institutions were not going to crumble overnight. Can we imagine a Confederacy persisting into say, the 1920's? Or the 1990's? Yes, it's quite possible.

No Lincoln. No King.

In the Middle East, it is as much 1860 as it is 1960. Each time in history has played its role in undoing a great injustice and so it is now. Without the forced removal of misguided and immoral leadership (Ahmadinejad = Jefferson Davis??), there will be no flowering; no change; no room for visionary, non-violent leadership to emerge and spread lasting peace, prosperity, freedom and yes, security.

In Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and a host of other smaller states in that region, (e.g., Egypt), there is no room for a Martin Luther King, Jr. to appeal to any higher principles and move the collective conscience in the direction of emancipation. Why? Because there are no higher ideals to appeal to.

Had Gandhi been fighting Persian instead of British occupation of India he would have found no traction. King would have found as little success had he been fighting a Confederate States of The South. Carter did not find traction in his unilateralist olive branch to the dead-hearted, iron-fisted Communists, etc.

People forget too that a good part of the success of Jesus' gradual nonviolent overthrow of the Roman Empire was about using extreme expressions of Roman ideals and customs ('turn the other cheek', 'walk the extra mile') rather than opposing them... a much longer post, that one.

When the highest ideals of a society involve paying families to induce their children to blow themselves up in crowded shopping malls there ain't much to work with. Such 'ideals' cannot be subverted because they lack even a grain of social redeemability. Similarly with slavery. No Lincoln. No King. It was only after the forced eradication of slavery that a slightly higher ideal (grudging acceptance of non-slavery) provided traction to take it the rest of the way (i.e., to 'all men are created equal' - something around which majority opinion had finally congealed). And like Jesus, that culmination was well after the idea's initial expression in the Declaration of Independence. Rather than being an indictment of the document's authors and the ideal's merit, the fact that it worked should be held up as amazing proof of its goodness. In a similar vein, Christianity took centuries to co-opt Rome.

The very idea of a Martin Luther King emerging in the Middle East sounds slightly odd to our ears, accustomed as we are to thinking of the region as hopelessly backwards and corrupt. Under the right conditions however (security, democracy, freedom, the participation of women...) those figures will emerge. They will take the story further. And they will have George Bush to thank. Like Lincoln let's not foret, he's a Republican.

Where Dreams Really Do Come True...

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

Happy Birthday Dr. King. Wish you'd lived to see the day...

Squeeze Play in the Middle East

If as many Democrats would have it, the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan were only justified as isolated reprisals in response to 9-11 (the latter being less justified than the former in their view) and not likely to be effective as part of a macro-strategy to fundamentally change the political culture of the Middle East and with it the fertility of the region in sowing terrorism, then we probably wouldn't be seeing documents like this leaking out from the commanders of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) today:

"From a strategic point of view, any change in, or destabilisation of, Syria will reduce or eliminate the calculations and reach of the Islamic Republic of Iran to counter the threats posed by the Zionist regime [Israel]... The plot that is being implemented in Lebanon with quickening steps aims to change the political makeup of the country and its officials and their positions, so that they force Hezbollah to accept the new imposed realities."

That we are seeing this creeping recognition on the part of the mullahs is a sign that the grand theory of Middle East change has merit. I take this as an early signal that the potential for change in the Middle East may indeed be on par with that which occurred in a post-war generation in an utterly backwards Southeast Asia (e.g., the ASEAN 'Tigers': Thailand, South Korea, etc.) Before it took place - even while it was taking place - few would have believed it possible. Now that it has taken place everyone takes it for granted, forgetting what went into making it so.

This realization by Iran's Revolutionary Guards command has two implications:

1) they get it - that is, the positive domino effect (even if many Democrats don't) and,

2) they get it and will therefore be even more likely to try and stop such change before it becomes impossible to roll back (this year will be when it could go either way)

To be fair, Democrats also get this second part, but they draw different conclusions from the same facts: I.e., because Iran and others will oppose these efforts at positive change (that threaten their iron grip on power), and will do so with escalating violence, we should not pursue change; we should not pursue democracy; we should not seek to rout out despots and dictators and preach womens' right and human rights and rule of law and a thousand other things that the vast majority of people in these places will welcome, even if not on day one.

That is the outdated logic of the last two generations (from both parties) who preached stability, stability, stability lest any spark set off global nuclear annihilation - not really caring much about real change on the ground because nothing terribly worrisome had reached our shores... yet. Until it did. And that changed everything. There was and is no stability that can be achieved with the Islamofascists. Even if we would like to believe that stability is possible, they've said that it is not. There will not be any long, drawn-out cold war. That phase ended a little over four years ago.

The events of 9-11 made many Americans angry. For some that anger remains. It can be ugly, even if I can completely understand it. I didn't lose anyone that day. For the vast majority though, anger has dissipated into something far more rational.

The reason for finally stepping up to change (in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Saudi and yes, Iran) is not at all about anger. It is not about hating Iraqis or Iranians or Syrians or Middle Eastern people or Islamic culture in general (though there's plenty I could take issue with). Instead, it is about saying calmly, coolly and with the utmost in calculation in pursuit of a worthy objective - knowing the eventual outcome if not all the speed bumps along the way: This will not stand. This must change. This is simply too dangerous. The hornet's nest over the garage has finally become a menace. It must be dealt with.

Which does not mean that we won't get (and aren't getting) stung. We are. We will. That's what hornets do. They're hornets - not the people but their leaders. Things will get worse before they get better. This leaked memo is the first sign of that. There is no easy way to eradicate a hornet's nest that has been left to grow too long. They're fully awake now. They know events aren't going their way. They know they cannot win. This is when they're most likely to strike.

We must not forget that neither we nor the people of the Middle East can live with hornets and also live our lives. Inaction is not an option. Retreat is not an option. Having taken down part of the nest, we cannot stop until it is gone.

Iran, China and North Korea: Why is Kim Jong-il in China Now?

Lame and perfunctory denials aside, it has become as clear as it's likely to get that North Korean despot Kim Jong-il is in the midst of an unusual (and unusually visible and extensive) visit to China that began last Tuesday.

The White Swan Hotel in Guangzhou was under heavy guard from 2 p.m. on Thursday, with metal detectors at the entrances and the police turning up every manhole cover around the hotel. Hotels nearby forced foreign guests to check out, citing a special order from the authorities...

How unusual is this? For starters, past forays out of the Hermit Kingdom by KJI and his late father have not been reported until they were over - if they were reported at all. With China's ability to keep a lid on pretty much anything it wants to (large public demonstrations being the exception), I'm running on a different assumption: that China and North Korea want the world to know about this. It's the easy leak that authorities want to get out - its legitimacy increased by the appearance of its being covered up (a little).

Which begs the question: Why? Why is this story an open secret all over Asia and a big yawn in the Western media? (There's been nothing on any of the wire services, much less the major media outlets all weekend after an initial flurry of rumors late last week about a trip to Russia and secret negotiations with U.S. officials.) Granted, there have been stories with bigger punch right now (Iran, Iraq, Pakistan), yet I suspect there is a bigger story here that won't become apparent right away. The cover story is that Kim is attempting to learn from Chinese economic reforms:

It would make sense for Kim to visit not only Guangzhou but also nearby boom cities spearheading the economic reforms like Shenzhen and Zhuhai, sources said. They say Kim is trying to learn from the Chinese economy with a field trip to cities visited by Deng Xiaoping during a historic trip in 1992 to stress the importance of reform and opening.

I believe it. As with all good cover stories, the best one is the truth. It's just not the whole truth. Learning about economic reforms does not answer the question why now? What were Kim and his delegation doing in China earlier last week when his whereabouts were more mysterious? Is it really such a coincidence that U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Chris Hill was in China at the same time as Kim - and for the purpose of re-starting talks with North Korea no less? Are we really to believe that these two visits were unrelated?

There's one other thing that's not an accident of timing here and that's the escalation of the nuclear crisis with Iran. Let's review the bidding...

North Korea has supplied long-range missile technology to Iran. They may not be bosom buddies (reasonable people could argue about whether they should be called 'allies') but they share certain important objectives. Foremost among those is the obliteration of Western Civilization. Never mind that in one case what follows is a paradise-on-earth of strongman-led Islamic law and in the other case a paradise-on-earth of strongman-led Communism. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. And no, that did not start with George Bush.

Even the starting point (the focus for nutty rhetoric in each case) shares certain characteristics. For Iran, Israel must be wiped off the map in order to rally the faithful. For North Korea, the Korean peninsula must be re-united under North Korean Communist rule before such bliss is complete. (Causing havoc in Japan is seen as equally desirable.) No compromise is possible. Too much of each leader's legitimacy depends on having a visceral enemy that does not deserve to live much less be negotiated with. The left often lightly tosses about the term 'unilateralist' in reference to the U.S. They would do well to look to these cases for a better definition.

The commonality (between Iran's visceral target and North Korea's): small, prosperous country under U.S. security umbrella whose existence much less success is a daily insult to the values of the mullahs and Kim Jong-il respectively.

China of course, is a wary ally of both. Wary of North Korea because they know that Kim is a nut. Wary of Iran because they know that a) the mullahs are deranged and b) that they depend on Iran's oil for their continued growth. China has to play in this. Even as they keep a low profile, it's in their interest as much as ours to keep either pot from boiling over. So China is the obvious venue.

Back to the question: Why is Kim in China now?

I suspect (and it is only conjecture at this point) that Kim was meeting - perhaps through intermediaries, perhaps not - with U.S. officials. I.e., Chris Hill and his deputies. That Condi Rice was on the receiving end of vile misogynist rhetoric out of Russia and scheduling meetings with South Korea at about the same time are just head fakes. Both the U.S. and Kim would have reason to keep such negotiations secret - out of the glare of expectations and the need explain and save face.

So is the Bush administration pulling a Madeleine Albright and caving to North Korea? Yes. And no. They are 'caving' but for very good reason and with no illusions about the results they are likely to achieve. Those results are time. A little bit of time because with Iran we sure as heck don't have any. A friend put it succinctly in a phone conversation late last week. Paraphrasing:

Better to have a ticking clock with more time on it and a maniacal despot who responds at least temporarily to financial incentives than a maniacal despot (in Iran) who - driving a 30-year old car and fancying himself the usher of the next Shiia messiah - feels he has nothing to lose and everything to gain by making Jerusalem a smoking radioactive crater as soon as possible, economic incentives be d**ned.

UPDATE I:To try finishing the thought and tying up a few loose ends that just occurred to me in the shower... All indications are that Ahmadinejad doesn't care about material wealth and personal survival. Kim does. He's one of Mercedes' best customers. He likes his Scotch. He likes his harems of virgins in this life. This has all been documented.

Will U.S. incentives stay Kim's hand on the nukes? Not for long. He's proven a liar and worse in the past. I take it as a given that he cannot be trusted. At least this administration knows that. But all of this might distract him temporarily and put the smallest wedge between NoKo and Iran. One was courted by the U.S. One was not. Divide and conquer. Classic strategy.

Getting China involved is also essential at this point. Alone we cannot throw enough weight around to bring this to an outcome anybody likes without a really really big mess. With China we might not either. I don't like what we have to give up in the cozying up to China that's implied in this, but again: the clock is ticking. If the amazing were to happen and we were to get China to recognize that sanctioning Iran in the Security Council was a whole lot better than 20% of their (China's) oil going offline overnight, then maybe just maybe...

We'd still have mess, but we might be able to forestall a war with Iran exploding into a war with China too. I'm way way out on a limb here, but simply signaling that we have shared interests in the Middle East and in fewer nuclear states may give China just enough pause when the shootin' starts as I still think it will.

UPDATE II: To add just the tiniest bit of Team America levity into an otherwise grim situation, this site is good for a couple of giggles at Iranian President Ahmadinejad's expense. Laugh now... 'cause if the worst goes down nobody will be laughing for several generations.

UPDATE III: Excellent analysis of the Iran situation over at The Belmont Club, concluding (in essence) that the real possibility that President Ahmadinejad will step over a hidden tripwire (e.g., nuclear first use and/or a step-function increase in the magnitude, tempo or target of terrorist activity) and thus instantly re-galvanize U.S. public opinion (oh yeah, right, we're at war... forgot about that) is a blessing in disguise in terms of being able to affect positive change:

The ayatollah's fundamental defense lies in the well-founded belief that the United States has expended too much political capital in deposing Saddam to undertake another regime change operation in Teheran... Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad alone can strip Iran of its invulnerability to military action in a single rash moment. In that sense he is not, as some pundits think, the worst possible leader Iran could have at the moment. On the contrary, this unstable, bellicose man is from another point of view the answer to all his enemy's prayers.

Remembering... and Taking Sides

The Anchoress - always good - has posted an absolutely exceptional piece on the NYTimes' national security leaks, the adaptations terrorists seem to have made in the immediate wake of them (purchasing massive quantities of disposable, completely untraceable cell phones), and what some may have forgotten in four years and a few months:

Feeling pretty safe, are you? Pretty secure? Has 9/11 become a faded memory for you?

I haven’t forgotten. I have too many firefighter friends to ever forget. I haven’t forgotten watching the tape of the first Tower burning... my husband was on a plane that morning, traveling on business, and for a little while we didn’t know what flights we were looking at, exploding before our eyes...

I remember Tom Brokaw’s voice as the endless loop of a plane slamming into a tower played, “This,” he intoned, gravely, “is war.”

I remember... the videotape made by a doctor as the first tower fell and he ducked behind a car, hoping to survive, “I hope I live,” he gasped, “I hope I live!”

I remember Fr. Mychal Judge blessing firefighters and hearing hasty confessions before dying at the site, and being carried away...

I remember the walls and columns downtown, plastered with pictures of the missing people. “Have you seen my son…” “We are newlyweds, my wife is missing…” “My daddy was at Cantor Fitzgerald!” “My brother, Jose, he was a waiter…”

I remember pictures of people in the West Bank, dancing and whooping it up.

I remember Rudy Giulini... calmly, kindly, consoling a distraught elderly lady with a hug. I remember him talking about body bags and answering the question, “how many do you think are dead?” He answered softly, “more than we can bear…”

...I looked up to see the empty, silent sky. No planes, no fluffy contrails. Just space - that startling, serene blue. An eerie, eerie silence. A few hours later, I heard my first fighter jet. I remember coming home and realizing that a cousin of mine was very likely in the Pentagon...

I remember the funerals. For a while, for weeks, it seemed like you couldn’t drive through the town without running into a firefighter’s funeral, or a cop’s funeral - and all you could do was pull aside and salute as they went by, and wipe away the tears that simply would not stop coming.

A friend of mine, a telephone company guy, was there, saw the planes hit, he saw the people jumping and jumping - holding hands and jumping. He heard the body’s slamming, bang! Bang! One after another, bang! Crash! And it took a while for him to stop drinking after that.

I remember... the congress spontaneously singing God Bless America...

I remember that when the terrorists used commerical airliners as bombs, they rode to their deaths with little toddlers on board, who had no idea what was going on, and who must have been terribly frightened when some people on the plane were suddenly restrained, or killed, and whose last moments in their short lives were so confusing...

That's just the tip of the iceberg. Read it.

And as you read it, remember when virtually everyone in this country was clear on who was trying to kill us and was united (or pretended to be) in a steely determination never to give them the opportunity to do so again. Four years - in memory, the equivalent of four minutes for many; yet for some, the amnesiac equivalent of four centuries.

Where's the Outrage? Iran to Hang Teen Rape VICTIM

Those who would limit their moral outrage to the ways in which sovereign nations and their leaders treat other other sovereign nations and their leaders would do well to take a closer look at what goes on inside some of them. Last Spring we focused closely on the horrors of North Korea (e.g., 'Partial Birth Abortion: Too Tame for Kim Jong-il' - warning: graphic.) Alas, those horrors have not subsided. Now we turn our eyes to Iran:

An Iranian court has sentenced a teenage rape victim to death by hanging after she weepingly confessed that she had unintentionally killed a man who had tried to rape both her and her niece.

Yes, you read that right.

What William F. Buckley, Jr. once said about the Soviet Union could be said about Iran today: they are not just a different team wearing a different colored jersey, with a different cultural perspective that we have to tiptoe around and say "ooh, that's nice, let's play ball". They are a nation led by evil men (and I emphasize men). In some contexts, that matters a lot to the feminist left. In this context, apparently, it does not.

As a Massachusetts resident, I'd be tempted to dash off a note to Ted Kennedy to stand up for this poor girl. Alas, he's too busy this week throwing baseless innuendo-by-association at Judge Alito for supposedly being a misogynist pig.

What would JFK have said and done? What about RFK? Really. Think about that for a moment.

What a small, sad thing it must be to be Teddy Kennedy- to have missed the vision and the charisma and been left with just the voice, the gestures and the power of superficial persuasion. Power directed at... nothing, really. Hell is truly a universe of one's own making...

On the Iranian hanging sadly, I'm not holding my breath for the press release from N.O.W.

The Only Story That Matters - Update

Last week as I was getting a 'hinky' feeling about Iran (here and here), Chester was getting a 'sinking' feeling in this thoroughly insightful post which he continues to update. Net/net: he's betting on a U.S. and/or Israeli airstrike on Iran in 2006. I'd give it three months. He's also betting on increased terror activity in the Middle East sponsored by Iran. If that includes nuclear terror activity, and the Middle East is extended to include Israel and Europe, I agree.

My spider senses are twitching about Iran. I sense a disturbance in the force. Several reports, from different sources -- Strategic Forecasting, the Turkish press, and now RegimeChangeIran -- are all hinting at windows of opportunity that are closing: for the US or Israel to stop Iran's nuclear program, or for Iran to exploit the situation in Iraq to its advantage before democracy takes root.

Pundits are all worked up debating whether 2006 will be like 1994.

Perhaps a better comparison might be 1914. Things might get hairy awful fast in the mid-east. Iran is not just another country; it is an entire Persian civilization with a long history of conquest from Darius and Cyrus fighting the Greeks, to the Sasanians, the Safavids, and the modern state.

A young Victor Davis Hanson?? The comments thread alone (currently at 192) is worth the price of admission. Read it. We're all going to be thrust into becoming Iran experts soon enough. Might as well get started now.

Sunnis Are to Democrats, Part II

Following up on my post yesterday comparing Iraqi Sunnis to American Democrats (bitter and obstructionist as they adjust to long-term minority status), more parallels start to pop out:

A key Sunni demand is weaker federalism and a stronger central government... "If they do not accept key amendments to the country's new constitution, including the regions issue, then let them work alone and divide the country, as for us we do not accept this," al-Mutlaq told The Associated Press by phone from Amman, Jordan. Al-Mutlaq is the country's third most powerful Sunni Arab politician.

Over at Senator Kerry's website we find his comments on the Alito nomination:

In nominating a successor to Justice O’Connor, President Bush had the power to unite the country by nominating a highly qualified woman or minority who would put the Constitution first and reflect the diversity of our country. Instead, the record must be studied, the documents must be made available, and the questions must be answered conclusively, to determine whether the president has chosen to divide the country with a nominee outside the ideological mainstream.

[As a side note, it's worth highlighting that Senator Kerry's standards put skin color, gender and the fantasy of uniting the nation via those superficial things ahead of character and competence. (Not all that close to MLK's vision, but that seems to have slipped off the radar long ago.) Seeking the very best qualified candidate slips to a distant fourth - off of his explicit priority list. Deference to the views of the nominees also falls aside in the interest of a political agenda. Such views are and always have been at the discretion of the duly elected president, not the Senate.]

What's most relevant here however is the easy accusation (by Kerry and Al-Mutlaq respectively) of "dividing the country" when in each case the speaker himself is doing more to divide it by drawing an absolute line in the sand: Not this nominee. Not this constitution. Over my dead body. Process? Precedent? The will of the electorate? Not as important as getting their way. Whatever happens can and will be blamed on the party in power.

On the other side, we have this:

"We have a group of established principles which we will never give up. Any coalition should be based on these principles. The first principle is not to change the essence of the constitution. This constitution was endorsed by the Iraqi people." - Shiite politician Abdul Aziz al-Hakim

I'm not claiming the Shiites are saints. They aren't. But on its face the statement is a conservative one: deference to what has been voted on by the people. Despite pages and pages of ill-informed dreck on liberal blogs, shouting that the president is trashing the Constitution, it's worth doing two things by way of comparing this Shiite statement with U.S. politics: 1) read carefully through the actual U.S. Constitution and its Amendments as written and see how much they differ from some of the fantastical interpretations that have evolved into the popular consciousness over the years and 2) recall this:

On this day, prescribed by law and marked by ceremony, we celebrate the durable wisdom of our Constitution, and recall the deep commitments that unite our country. I am grateful for the honor of this hour, mindful of the consequential times in which we live, and determined to fulfill the oath that I have sworn and you have witnessed. At this second gathering, our duties are defined not by the words I use, but by the history we have seen together.

For provocative comparison, Carter made no reference whatsoever to the Constitution in his 1977 inaugural.

As I noted yesterday, the Iraqi-U.S. comparison is hardly exact. But it rhymes.

Confusing Forgiveness With Adulation

This is someone to be pitied and prayed for, not celebrated as a hero and released.

To the cheers of nationalist supporters, a white sedan whisked Mehmet Ali Agca... through the gates of the high-security Kartal Prison... supporters showered the car with red and yellow flowers... hundreds of Agca's supporters came to Istanbul to celebrate his release... "He is a family friend. We love him," Mustafa Akmercan, one of two Turks who hijacked an Air Malta jetliner in 1997 to demand Agca's release, told The Associated Press outside the prison. "We're very happy." The pair had forced their way into the Boeing 737's cockpit on June 9, 1997, with a package they claimed was a bomb, and ordered the pilot on a flight from Malta to Istanbul to fly to Cologne, Germany... "For us, Mehmet Ali Agca is a role model for every one who loves the Turkish nation," said another supporter, Seyfi Yilmaz... Agca, known in the past for frequent outbursts and claims that he was the Messiah, has never undergone a thorough psychological evaluation...

Forgiveness is admirable and important. It does not mean that society must dispense with all moral norms in order to fulfill it. One can forgive without unlocking the cell.

Comments on Comments, v2

Those with long memories may remember this post from last April, which some may have taken as an April Fool's joke. (It wasn't.) It referenced LaShawn Barber's IMHO sensible policy on comments that has inspired my own knock-off version. It was time for a refresh.

1) Comment on this blog at your own risk. For any reason at any time, and without necessarily seeming consistent or fair to anyone else but me, your comment may be deleted or edited - with or without an explanation or warning.

2) Name-calling will not be tolerated. This goes for name-calling directed at me and/or at other commenters - even if they invited it. (It most definitely does not apply to my comments on certain public figures. Thank goodness we don't have British libel laws.) To be sure, some names are worse than others. No, I'm not providing a list. And no, I'm not claiming sanctity on this point myself. See item #1 if you're expecting clear, consistent guidelines. Use common sense and try to keep the focus on the argument, not the person.

3) It's my blog. I advocate democracy elsewhere. Here, I run a semi-benevolent dictatorship. There is no appeals process. E-mail me if you like. My response (or lack of response) may or may not satisfy you. See items #4 or #1 for elaboration on this point.

4) The First Amendment restricts government, not private citizens, from infringing on your right to free speech. On this blog, your speech is a privilege. On your blog, your speech is a right. Learn the distinction - and get your own blog if you don't like it. They're free. If you're good and I like you, I'll be happy to blogroll you.

5) No profanity or quasi-profanity. We all get frustrated. We all know the menu of words we can use to attract attention and let off steam. No, I am not going to provide a list. And no, I don't care for a libertarian lecture on George Carlin, Howard Stern, the FCC and Sirius radio. I've simply lost my taste for it as I've raised kids, gotten closer to the church and gotten older. See item #1 for an explanation. We're all mature adults with reasonable vocabularies for expressing emotion. The inventive use of silly, non-profane work-arounds (e.g., phfiddle!) can sometimes be quite amusing. Before you go off on a string of expletives, imagine how you'd behave at your 9-year-old daughter's birthday party. There are plenty of rowdy bar blogs around if that's what you'd prefer.

6) Stay on-topic. I won’t necessarily delete off-topic comments (always a judgment call; never seen the same by two different people), however I'd prefer they be relevant to the original post. Some bunny trails are relevant but so arcane as to effectively end the thread. I'll consider these off-topic at my discretion. If you have an off-topic question or issue, e-mail me.

7) You get one warning before you are banned. See item #1 if you expect me to enforce this consistently. I.e., there are and will be exceptions for reasons known only to me. This neighborhood won't be like those in The Truman Show, but neither will I allow it to degenerate into Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome.

8) Do your homework. Bring facts, references, anecdotes and logical arguments. I am not here to personally tutor anyone (or defend them.) I also don't have to convert anyone (politically, religiously or any other 'ly') to feel that this little project is thoroughly worthwhile. I do this because it's fun. If you change your mind as a result of something I've written, great. I'm delighted. If I change my mind as a result of something you've written, great. And thank you. But don't expect that to happen very often. (I.e., it may not be worth your effort.) Agreeing to disagree and moving on can be OK. That happens with adults - a lot. It's healthy and mature.

9) Don't waste my time. I like to get and respond to e-mail and keep on top of comment threads, but... I have another life. If I feel my time is being wasted I may not respond at all or... invoke items #1 or #3. Not responding does not necessarily mean that I concede the point. It may mean that I'm tired, or sick of flogging an arcane issue instead of tucking my kids into bed or finishing a project for a client. Just because you think it's important doesn't mean I do. That's what your own blog is for.

10) No novels (or even novellas). If Haloscan forces you into a second (much less a third) window to make your point you should seriously consider tightening it up... or getting your own blog. See item #1 for clarification. I'm not here to host a shadow blog or give you an open forum to continually flog your own.

11) Thanks for commenting, correcting and otherwise adding to the discussion. I'm delighted you're here. This wouldn't be nearly as much fun if all everyone did was read.

Fat Chance: Talking Down NoKo and Iran

It's hard to escape simultaneous feelings of deja vu, unreality and impending doom around news like this:

"The United States is eager to resume negotiations as soon as possible so that we can make rapid progress toward the elimination of North Korea's nuclear programs," U.S. ambassador Alexander Vershbow said in a speech in Seoul.

And this:

British Prime Minister Tony Blair said he could not rule out the possibility that Iran will face economic sanctions... "It's important Iran recognizes how seriously the international community treats it." ...State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said "it is more likely than ever" that the U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, will refer Iran to the Security Council. The council could then impose sanctions.

Weak waffle words. Does anyone honestly believe that either Iran or NoKo (who, lest we forget, are allies) will be talked out of obtaining the biggest baddest negotiating stick any country could ever hope to wield? Have any of these people ever played poker?

It's as if NoKo and Iran have 10-J-Q-K showing - all in one suit and everybody knows it. And we're asking them to please fold because they'll see the possibility that the casino may get angry enough to stop serving them free drinks as worse than the probability that they'll draw an Ace (or even a 9 - in suit or not) and take the pot? Hello!

I know negotiators and diplomats operate in a different, nuanced world. But do any of them recognize just how fast the clock is ticking here? (I.e., weeks and months at most.) That each passing day brings both countries one day closer to flipping the rest of the world the biggest bird its ever seen?

Sunnis Are to Democrats...

With a teen around the house preparing for SATs, I've found myself thinking in analogies more often lately. Listening to NPR this morning (not my usual habit... long story), I was struck by the similarities between Iraqi and American politics during an interview with a Iraqi Sunni political figure. Specifically:

American Democrats and Iraqi Sunnis... separated at birth?

I know that there are plenty of reasons why this analogy is inadequate. I'm sure that astute readers here will find and elaborate on them. Before the flame wars begin (and they will be moderated), I'd also encourage thoughts on how the analogy may be correct.

FWIW...

In listening to the Sunni spokesman, I heard the cynicism and anger of a group that had lost the power and influence to which it had grown accustomed over a very long period of time. The speaker was bitter in countless ways small and large, about the verdict that a largely free and fair election had rendered. His bitterness became palpable as he discussed the likelihood that that election's verdict (and simple demographics) would keep him and his fellow Sunnis out of power without a prayer of regaining it in the foreseeable future.

That bitterness was made still worse by the fact that the Sunnis had - after boycotting the first election - made the biggest get-out-the-vote push they could possibly have made. And yet... failure. (Starting to sound familiar?) They'd still fallen short of electoral success. They had won seats in the Iraqi Parliament, but... That's small consolation when one has been a virtual master of the universe in recent memory.

From the interview I gleaned that the Sunnis are starting to realize that their options are those that any minority party faces (with the obvious and not insignificant difference that ethnicity is involved here): to dilute their beliefs and ally with another group in order to create a majority coalition in the next round, to migrate their beliefs to co-opt voters from the opposing parties (also seen as a dilution), or to go radical: obstruct, impede, bend and break rules wherever they can, use the media to throw vitriol and innuendo at the opposing party and the entire political process that had brought it to power - not to mention the steady drumbeat of truck bombings.

Thankfully the analogy breaks down there. One of the beautiful things about America is our agreement with one another to resort to words in fighting our domestic battles. That that compact has been honored for the most part for 140+ years is remarkable. But I digress.

If it had not been for the accent and Iraq-specific details in the NPR interview (not to mention the car bombs of course), the same tone and arguments could have been coming from a Democratic member of the U.S. Congress or the MSM or any of a number of expletive-filled Bushitler-hating leftie blogs. Politics in other countries may share only a passing resemblance with politics here... but it can sometimes echo and rhyme. The violence here is thankfully mostly in the mind but we need to remember - as Jesus taught us - that the veneer between murdering someone in one's mind - hating with unreasoning passion - and actually doing it in 'meatspace' is a lot thinner than we'd like to think it is.

Long before Iraq was much of an issue (1987), Thomas Sowell summed up the bitter, me-first world view that I was hearing from the Sunni and that we hear daily from the likes of Ted Kennedy, Nancy Pelosi and their ilk. In essence (paraphrasing):

We do not like the result, therefore the process must be corrupt.

I would not necessarily characterize the Sunnis as being to the left, but Sowell's thesis is this: those on the left have - throughout history - tended more often than not to put outcome ahead of process. Having 'our' people win - the people we believe to hold our values - validates everything. If those people do not win, then everything is up for grabs - rules, traditions, process, society, restraint - all of it.

After all (so reasoning goes), a loss for 'our' people - the ones who had the proper ideas and stand up for the proper things - is prima fasciae evidence that something is rotten about the process... that someone tweaked a lever or moved a hanging chad or subtly reprogrammed the Diebold voting machines or bribed an official or... something.

How can this be? Make the nightmare stop. If this is reality I want to get off... to kick and scream and throw a tantrum and shout four letter words and slash tires and blow things up. How can we possibly be out of power? Everyone I know voted for the other guy.

By contrast, those on the right have tended more often than not to put process (democracy, markets, rule of law, etc.) ahead of outcome even when they don't like that outcome. Leaders will come and go. Individual human beings are limited and will come and go. They cannot be relied upon (so the rightward thinking goes). But adherence to processes, traditions and rules evolved over generations will - more often than not - lead to 'better' outcomes for society even if I may personally disagree with those outcomes from time to time. It's when those outcomes refuse to conform to the desires and aspirations of a particular group over an extended period of time that trouble starts.

That's another post altogether, but the quick thought occurs that some political groups actively seek out and revel in minority, 'sniper-from-the-sidelines' status (literally or figuratively) because it gives their politicians more clout and their adherents a feeling of righteousness they can't get anywhere else. Holding power and making trade-offs in a pluralistic, democratic society that tugs leaders in all directions and forces them to make compromises with their principles and decisions from which they cannot retreat is tough. Yelling and throwing tantrums and blowing things up is easy. Governing is hard.

Kim Jong-il Visits China and Russia

Interesting... very interesting.

Rational Response: Saddam and Terror Training

Of all the vitriol directed at President Bush, the invasion of Iraq and the logic that made that action both prudent and necessary, none stands out more vividly in my mind than a boat cruise I took across San Francisco Bay in February, 2003. A local friend and I were visiting Alcatraz Island with our families. The women were chatting together. The kids (teens and pre-teens) were all doing their thing. We had an uninterrupted chunk of time to really delve into the matter.

Those were the days (could they have been only three years ago?) when those of us who firmly supported the war still felt that the other side could be convinced by logic. It was the first and last substantive political discussion I would have with this dear friend. Unlike some with whom I walked down a similar path, he remains a friend. As our sharp differences on the matter became all too apparent, we agreed to shelve the topic for good.

The main argument my friend offered - over and over and over again, with a fervor that burned hot and would not be swayed by the remotest possibility of uncertainty - was that there was no connection whatsoever between Saddam's Iraq and terrorism. None. Zippo. Zilch. Until one was proved conclusively, he would not countenance even the thought of military action. Never mind Kuwait. Never mind the torture chambers. Never mind the 17 UN resolutions - spit-upon and laughed at by the butcher of Baghdad because he knew they would never be enforced. Never mind the honey-pot for Russia and France and Kofi's kids that Oil-For-Food would turn out to be. Never mind intelligence (admittedly spotty) that placed Mohammed Atta in Baghdad on a couple of occasions.

It became clear that what my friend needed was the equivalent of a notarized time-stamped video obtained by the New York Times (any lesser source just wouldn't do) of all 19 hijackers explicitly discussing the 9-11 attack plans together with OBL and Saddam, followed by a rehearsal in downtown Baghdad (also captured on video - complete with stewardess throat-slitting and scale models of the WTC towers) while both men looked on and clapped.

My friend's calm, smiling, let-me-take-you-through-this-one-more-time-because-I-love-you approach was eerily similar to the kind of unshakable I'm-here-to-bring-you-to-the- side-of-light approach that talented evangelicals use and that so irritates the unconverted. He really wanted me to be saved... from the pit of despair and teeth-gnashing that would surely follow when my president became LBJ and Iraq became Vietnam.

It's worth recalling that at the time, WMD were a less powerful argument for the left, as every Western security agency, the UN and most Democratic congresspeople believed - and had gone on record as believing - that they were present in Iraq and yes, Saddam was a dangerous megalomaniac who could not be trusted not to use them.

Flash ahead three years and we get to the story ('Saddam's Terror Training Camps') that I just don't have the heart to send to my friend. Triumphalism will not improve our friendship - which is rooted in deeper things now.

THE FORMER IRAQI REGIME OF Saddam Hussein trained thousands of radical Islamic terrorists from the region at camps in Iraq over the four years immediately preceding the U.S. invasion, according to documents and photographs recovered by the U.S. military in postwar Iraq. The existence and character of these documents has been confirmed to THE WEEKLY STANDARD by eleven U.S. government officials.

The secret training took place primarily at three camps--in Samarra, Ramadi, and Salman Pak--and was directed by elite Iraqi military units. Interviews by U.S. government interrogators with Iraqi regime officials and military leaders corroborate the documentary evidence. Many of the fighters were drawn from terrorist groups in northern Africa with close ties to al Qaeda, chief among them Algeria's GSPC and the Sudanese Islamic Army. Some 2,000 terrorists were trained at these Iraqi camps each year from 1999 to 2002, putting the total number at or above 8,000.

The fact that the kind of evidence he insisted upon has shown up would (I'm guessing) only push him to seek a higher standard of proof. Proof that Bush lied. Proof that well, even if it was sorta kinda maybe justified that we knock off that one bad man, it hardly justified two thousand American lives and one grieving mother all over the television with Jesse Jackson and three quarters of the left-wing establishment.

Never mind that tens of thousands of disappeared and tortured Iraqis died every year under Saddam. Never mind that more men were lost in a few hours in some battles in WWII. Never mind that the vast majority of Democratic congresspeople voted for war on an assumption that tens of thousands might die within days in a chemical or biological all-out offensive. Never mind that the spectre of Saddam thumbing his nose at the world set a precedent for general lawlessness that has come to pervade the Middle East. Never mind the success of Iraqi elections or the liberation and elevation of women there. Never mind all that.

I won't pin on my friend any more of a hypothetical response. That wouldn't be fair. But I will offer these possible responses and my bet on which ones become pervasive over the next few weeks as the story seeps out.

It's The Weekly Standard, what do you expect? This line of argument is nonsensical on its face if we consider its opposite. I.e., It's Newsweek, what do you expect? Well, if Newsweek came out with a deeply researched piece citing eleven independent sources and primary material, I'd have to take it seriously even if it said that President Bush was making it with an Oval Office intern. Oh, I forgot, that kind of stuff is no longer a big deal...

It must be made-up. After all, the U.S. military has the run of the place... and a motive. This one is bound to be a dog-chasing-its-tail kind of discussion with anyone who dares to offer it. For those who believe that U.S. soldiers are the scum of the earth and burn babies and bayonet elderly civilians just for fun, this will be the first kind of unsubstantiated straw at which it will be tempting to clutch. It is deranged. Like any human being, U.S. soldiers are flawed creatures. Unlike most other human beings, U.S. soldiers are trained and trained and trained some more to live up to codes of honesty and valor that the rest of us can only imagine. Until I see a tight, investigative piece that does more than throw random, speculative innuendo on this massive pile of primary source material and our men and women in uniform who found it and are analyzing it, those pursuing this line of reasoning had best keep silent.

There are two variants on this theme:
1) I won't believe it until I see it in the New York Times, and
2) This is as credible as the Uranium yellowcake in Niger, Valerie Plame affair.
Both are bogus. If the NYT has that much of a monopolistic grip on what is true and newsworthy in our society then we're in far worse shape than the most psychedelic paranoid nightmare of any Bushitler-burning-the-First-Amendment ranter I've ever heard. I'm thankful every day that instead we have a robust blogosphere that can say: OK, we get it. We heard you. Now I want to hear more about this other story over here that you didn't bother to investigate.

The Saddam terror training camp story is one of those about which I want to hear more. Much more. Earlier this week before this story even broke, I was notified by a source not affiliated with the Weekly Standard that this was coming down - that the evidence was there. That it was and remains highly credible. There is more to come. It may not break widely at first, but it's going to continue breaking for some time as more of these documents, CDs and videotapes get reviewed.

This is nothing new. Except, well... it is. Eight thousand 'graduates'. Four years. Eleven sources. In a world with a MSM that let the facts lead where they may, this would be inch-high headline stuff broken by the New York Times. Instead, we hear nothing from the Grey Lady. Nada. Just the usual drone of mayhem. Nothing about its root causes. 'Nuf said on that.

It depends on your definition of terror and terrorist. In another age, these might be considered 'freedom fighters'. Some of them were probably Iraqi regular military. After all, peoples and nations have a right to defend themselves, right? Sorry. No. Like the military motives argument above, this one falls apart before it ever gets going - because of its starting assumptions. When despite the piles of evidence and UN resolutions and shredded and gassed bodies piled up in unmarked graves over decades one still wants to believe the best about those paying the families of teenagers to encourage them to strap explosives to their bodies and commit mass murder in shopping malls, there is no rational argument to be made.

When Ted Bundy did the same thing (deliberate mass murder of innocents) much more quietly and slowly and closer to home, everyone was understandably horrified and repulsed. When it is done on a virtual assembly line, and the sponsor (Saddam) is explicit about seeking a global franchise, and the victims have olive skin and speak Arabic or are the kinds of Jews who don't have the sense to move to New York and get the heck out of the firing line in Jerusalem (that's not my logic - it's the explicit logic of those in Tehran and the implied logic of some on the left), the reaction is completely different: we shouldn't get involved. Mere documents will not sway the truly faithful. They have already chosen their master.

OK, all of that's fine, but it's history. We got him. We should get out now. This one is clever - seeking to avoid validating the evidence by changing the subject. It has been hashed and hashed and re-hashed on the blogs so I won't flog it again except to say, if the argument for going in in the first place has just been strengthened immeasurably, the argument for getting out with our tail between our legs doesn't get any stronger.

What I expect to actually happen with this story is much less exciting than any of these arguments. Knowing that their hand is weak, I expect the MSM to ignore the story until they absolutely have to, and then give it minor play in the third column on page sixteen. Why? The answer lies in how much rides on this. Giving this story play is removing not only the floorboards of the left's arguments against the war (most of which have already been removed), but most of the nails, several of the struts and the very foundation.

With the no-connection-to-terrorism, no-connection-to-Al-Queda buttresses gone, everything falls down: the Democratic turnabout on the war, the fig leaf that visceral, unreasoning hatred of President Bush is justified by the facts, the prospects for a non-Lieberman Democrat doing even as well in 2008 as Kerry did in 2004, the prospects for 2006 mid-term elections, the President's approval ratings, troop morale, the prospects for a fleeing Murtha-style withdrawal, the view that Cindy Sheehan is anything more than a grieving mother used by a cynical left-wing establishment. All of it. The bets have been placed. This is the call...

Show me your hand. Junk. As I thought. Chips, please. Thanks for playing. Next?

The Weekly Standard piece is an absolute must read. Do it now. You may not sleep any better tonight, but you won't regret it. The truth will set us free.

UPDATE I: One other argument just came to mind that we're likely to see: timing. As in, isn't this just convenient, politically motivated release of stuff that's been sitting around for months or maybe years... just in time for mid-term elections? To which I have three responses:
1) Prove it. (After all, it would have been much more advantageous if this information were to have come out next October. January is way to early for the left's regular Machiavellian bogeyman, the worse-than-Satan Karl Rove.)
2) Projection, much? (Can you say Sudanese baby-food factory?) and
3) If the evidence just came to light, would the left be happier if it were witheld until next December, or would they cry 'foul' even more loudly for other reasons?

UPDATE II: One e-mailer notes this post ("The Right's Rathergate?") by Don Surber making the excellent Jounalism 101 point that we have not seen the actual documents, much less read and understood them in Arabic. I can understand why caution is called for, but at the risk of wading further into Dan-land, I'll note that unlike some bloggers, I was going on more than just the Weekly Standard article in making this post. It's not primary material either, but with the Weekly Standard claiming eleven sources and another independent one dropped in my lap, that's more than Rather went on with the National Guard memo. I expect we'll soon be able to see and examine enough of it to be a lot clearer about the gist. As Powerline notes:

Only a tiny fraction--between two and three percent--of the 2,000,000 "exploitable items" recovered in Iraq have been translated. Only in the last few weeks has the Bush administration finally made a commitment to devoting the necessary resources to reviewing and translating the Iraqi documents. Until now, the administration has been reluctant to allow access even to the handful of unclassified documents that have been translated. Thankfully, that posture is changing.

With Rathergate, we were talking one document - in English no less - and hardly sensitive to national security. Some of what has come out probably should not be de-classified - and won't be. That does not necessarily make the case less viable. The blogosphere is great at vetting things, but that does not mean that everything can or should be vetted by it. The time, volume and language problems are formidable. It took years for East German Stasi files to be thoroughly examined, and German is a far more accessible language than Arabic, at least in the West. This will dribble out over years. Don't hold your breath for the files that show Saddam as the Salvation Army's biggest donor.

One more prediction: watch for the MSM to criticize the administration for not putting enough resources on the problem. It's easy to be a critic.

UPDATE III: For those who prefer actual copies of documents in English from more mainstream sources such as Newsweek, try this. (H/T: Powerline) More readable transcriptions can be found here and here.

The Golden Rule Applied

I'm burned out on news today. Instead, I offer a small philosophical manifesto. This started as a response to a recent comment about applying the Golden Rule (do unto others as you would have them do unto you). I'll let the commenter speak for himself, but the gist was that even if others did not live that way, the rule's consistency and divine source made it an imperative.

I couldn't agree more.

One terrible error that Jimmy Carter and his ilk continue to make is in naively assuming that the expression of the Golden Rule must be entirely passive. Not so. If I were being robbed and beaten, I would have others come to my aide. The fact that my attacker would not desire that intervention (he might himself get smacked in the head or be unable to steal my wallet) does not make it any less right.

Applying it when more than two people are involved necessarily requires trade-offs. Somebody will not have done to them exactly what they do to others. Nor should they. My attacker might be expected to wish that others would not put him in jail for attempted armed robbery - nor would he care all that much if his crime buddies also stayed free. It is unrealistic to expect that he would take the view that the Golden Rule required him to do hard time in the penitentiary for his own good.

Similarly, self-appointed or dubiously elected leaders, e.g., Castro, Chavez, Saddam, etc. often use their bully pulpits to loudly claim (as my hypothetical attacker might) that they would have others not impose moral norms on them. They'd have others remain "hands off" when it came to applying democracy, freedom, market systems, clean accountable judicial institutions and Western values on their people. They would have us take their word for it that their people don't really want these things or aren't culturally suited to them or aren't prepared to use them properly. Nonsense. The giant fallacy in the Jimmy Carter view of the world is that we never get to hear how millions of people under such tyrants would have the Golden Rule applied to them. Call it the purple rule - as in the ubiquitous purple fingers of recent Mideast elections.

Where markets are highly regulated and the government has a monopoly on (fill-in-the-blank), we never get to know how people would have others invent, make and distribute better quality lower cost goods and services for them. Where a free and open democracy doesn't exist, we never get to hear who people would have lead them. Where a free press does not exist, we never get to read how people would share their ideas with one another. In the dark places on this planet, a few oppressors are so busy working to ensure that only their version of how to apply the Golden Rule gets any airtime that we're encouraged to conveniently forget to ask millions of their citizens how they would like to be treated.

Saddam would not have had others throw his armies out of Kuwait; Iran would not have others forestall its ambitions to wipe Israel off the map. Castro would not have others allow the Cuban people to leave for Miami. Like children, they would have others leave them alone to do what they like without supervision. Like children, they would be wrong.

Some also mistakenly assume that the Golden Rule looks the same in aggregate (e.g., as a nation) as it does at the personal level. It does not. Same principle; different scale. Therefore, different expressions of the Golden Rule become possible. Even libertarians agree that nations and other sub-national institutions (e.g. local police) can and must do things to create order and peace that individuals cannot achieve apart.

Even if most individuals' actions were absolutely consistent with the Golden Rule, it would not equal what larger, properly constituted entities can achieve with it to marginalize the holdouts who don't abide by it (or who abide by a twisted version of it). Using the same street crime analogy as above, the way the police use the Golden Rule against my attacker will be different from the way that some random good Samaritan might use it in coming to my aide.

Without rehashing centuries old 'just war' doctrine, here's my take:

Via my elected government, I would have others...

• Rescue me and my family from the boot-heels of a bloodthirsty, oppressive, torturing tyrant if they had the power to do so
  
  
• Maintain unambiguous 'Leviathan' status such that they did have the power, to do so (both military and moral) when it became necessary, (i.e., global cop)
  
  
• Provide generous and immediate humanitarian relief in the event of a natural disaster (e.g., tsunami) before NGO hacks in $3000 suits and air-conditioned SUVs happened to get around to it
  
  
• Spend more on poor and oppressed peoples than any other nation on earth but not cave in to whiners who don't like to count military expenditures (globcal cop services) or who'd prefer statistics about per capita expenditures
  
  
• Not take my hard-earned money and funnel any more of it than is necessary into faceless, unaccountable do-gooder bureaucracies
  
  
• Speak the truth about dithering global bureaucracies (e.g., UN) and irresponsible regimes (e.g., France) even if it pisses people off
  
  
• Doggedly refuse to call true evil by anything but its real name
  
  
• Make hard choices and take action to save millions from credible threats of WMD, expansionist empires and raping/pillaging invaders and protect me from those who would just talk about it, criticize and then take credit for it
  
  
• Stand up for enduring values such as freedom, democracy and markets that have proven themselves both morally superior and more effective than any of the alternatives
  
  
• Avoid appeasing those who would spread chaos, terror and random bloodshed
  
  
• Preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States - as written - as a beacon and example to the peoples of the world and one of the best institutional approximations we've got of how to apply the Golden Rule en masse
  

UPDATE: On a similar wavelength, (including the Latin American examples I gravitated to this afternoon), Mike Austin offers this rockin' picture-filled roundup of history's tyrants, asking:

What is it with leftists, both the international and domestic varieties? Why do they worship at the feet of tyrants? As long as I have been a sentient being I have noticed that those who yelp "Power to the People!" and who claim a particular reverence for such things as freedom and democracy have always scattered their seed among men whose claim to fame rests upon mountains of corpses and miles of barbwire...

...What is the point of all this love and admiration given to dictators by so-called and self-styled intellectuals? While some reasons lie within the realm of clinical psychiatry, there are a few recurring themes. There is a strong element of America hatred in all of these (though perhaps Napoleon merely despised her). From Lenin to Chavez all have tried to reduce the power and influence of the United States---or even, as Castro and Mao fervently wished, to destroy her. Intellectuals tend to be 'men of words' rather than 'men of action.' They admire men who can impose their will upon an entire nation, a dream they themselves secretly nurse...

But there is also an element of self-loathing. Every tyrant in history except for Julius Caesar has imprisoned, exiled or murdered his political opponents, including all artists, writers, journalists and academics who were opposed to the regime.

...[in] my 14 years spent traveling and teaching in Latin America... I have taught perhaps 1000 students from dozens of nations. A few of my Latin students were admirers of Castro, sometimes grotesquely so. In every case but one their family lives were shambles, with either an absent or worthless father. The one student who admired Castro but had an intact family was an wealthy Argentine girl, a brilliant student, a fine writer and possessed of a penetrating and curious intellect. My arguments had no effect, and as far as I know she admires Castro still. The curious thing was this: If Fidel Castro or any of his ilk ever come to power in Argentina he would sooner rather than later eliminate all those of independent wealth and mind. In other words this young lady supported a man who, as ruler over her nation, most certainly would have murdered her own family.

Indeed. As we roll into a new year - especially one with all the early hallmarks of major tumult, pieces like this are well worth reading for the perspective that only history can offer.

Mehmet Ali Acga to be Released Within Hours: The Back Story

Ordinarily this story would merely provoke disgust, outrage and head-shaking:

A court has approved the release from prison [of] the man who shot Pope John Paul II in 1981... Mehmet Ali Agca was extradited to Turkey in 2000 after serving almost 20 years in Italy for shooting and wounding the pope in St. Peter's Square in Rome. His motive for the attack remains unclear. [emphasis added]

Yet another 1980's-era attempted assassin of a truly great man released because the world had moved on, forgotten and allowed spinelessness and administrative procedure to trump justice. (A judge ruled just before New Year's that John Hinckley, President Reagan's attempted assassin could go home with his parents periodically for visits. You don't have to be Jodie Foster - or a former Mondale voter - to recognize the inanity of either move... though Dukakis die-hards might see it as somewhat noble, even enlightened.)

In the context of what I wrote Thursday and Friday - about Iran, Israel and Ariel Sharon (add a dash of Biblical prophecy to taste) - Acga's release is truly chilling. If you haven't read those pieces, I'd urge you to do so. Synopsis: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is preparing to set the world aflame. Soon.

What the AP says about Acga's motives ("unclear") is only partially correct. True, we will never fully plumb the depth of Acga's, Hinckley's, or any other murderer's (or attempted murderer's) motives. Whether the victim is great or ordinary, the crime of murder is not supposed to be understandable. To make it so would be to conform society to the twisted logic of hate. (Ironically, that's something that the left frequently accuses conservatives and the military of doing, but we're not going there today... commenters have been warned.) Even in the mind, the crime is not meant to be understood as anything other than aberration - sin.

We do know plenty about Acga's backers however. As I noted last April, the trail leads back to the Soviet Union, via Bulgaria and East Berlin. Yes, that Evil Empire. The same empire that Carter refused to call an empire - just another team in a different colored jersey that needed to be empathized with. The same territory-grabbing, soul-deadening empire finally identified as such by Reagan - a move that lifted the hearts of those rotting in its gulags.

It was as hard back then as it is today to process the thought that nations can and do sponsor terrorism, and that their most lusted-after targets are speakers of great truths - eternal truths that evil does not wish to see spread. By Reagan. By the Pope. And yes, by people like George Bush. (As a side note, the ways in which those truths are sometimes concealed can be truly bizarre.)

Back to the current story...

Agca, 47, was expected to be released as early as Monday. Anatolia [news agency] said he was expected to be immediately enlisted by the military for obligatory service because he had dodged the draft...

...An Istanbul court ruled in 2004 that Agca should only serve the longest sentence... [but it] was changed twice because of new Turkish laws ...Agca reportedly identified with the Gray Wolves, a far right-wing militant group that fought street battles against leftists in the 1970s. [emphasis added]

Wolves. I didn't know that when I characterized Israel's foes as such. Wolves. Circling.

We know the technical reason Acga is being enlisted immediately in the military: he evaded service. The larger reasons deserve some attention. This is the man who attempted to kill the Pope, for goodness sakes. Turkey will (presumably) be handing him a gun and giving him sanction to use it. Turkey is already a notoriously difficult place to practice Christianity. You connect the dots.

Turkey is a country whose stance as U.S. ally can best be described as on-again, off-again; tense; complex. Buffeted by the same kinds of internal pressures and split along the same kinds of fault lines as Indonesia or Iran (for example... admittedly in different proportions and to a different degree), Turkey is a 'swing state' in the battle between Islamofascism and the West. I'll leave it to the foreign policy experts to slice and dice the particulars of that assertion. One could argue that France is at least as much of a battleground and they'd have a strong case. One could argue that the comparison with Iran dissolves the focus we should be placing there.

Big picture: Turkey could go either way. It could go both ways. It already has.

Turkey is also the home to the headwaters of the Euphrates River. Some scholars believe that its borders include the literal Garden of Eden. I remain resolutely agnostic on that second point. Eden works well as allegory, whether or not archaeologists ever find, carbon date and perform dental forensics on a particular ossified apple core there. But that's another post...

Why is the Euphrates relevant? I don't know... but in light of Iran's lunatic saber-rattling and Israel's status in the cross-hairs of Iran's nuclear hate-mongering that I wrote about on Thursday, it certainly is interesting...

The sixth angel sounded his trumpet, and I heard a voice coming from the horns of the golden altar that is before God. It said to the sixth angel who had the trumpet, "Release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates." And the four angels who had been kept ready for this very hour and day and month and year were released to kill a third of mankind.

In the greater context of things, why is Acga being released right now?... (and handed a gun by a state that's never been kind to Christians, much less Jews.) Why is Hinckley being released right now? Why did Reagan and Pope John Paul II leave the world stage within months of one another? Why is all of this taking place the same week that the world wakes up to the fact that Iran is highly likely to act on its chilling rhetoric?

I don't know. Really. I don't. I'm taking this journey with the rest of you. Decide for yourself.

The Only Story That Matters

I won't claim to be unique in having believed for some time that Iran would become the problem facing the world - the undisputed hub on the all too real Axis of Evil. The sudden eruption of Iran into the early stages of what may be a nightmare scenario seems to have happened overnight. It has not.

While Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has cranked up the rhetoric the last few months, it is only a louder and more explicit version of what has gone before. Not different. The sinking "oh s--t" realization that many of us are experiencing is the result of our limited ability as human beings (and even more so, as a distracted, multi-tasking, stimulation-driven society) to pay attention to anything complicated for long enough to fully grasp it. We're also endowed with a natural tendency to avoid as long as possible that which is unpleasant, and this is certainly that. As ShrinkWrapped points out in this long thoughtful post, our inability (many of us) to fully grasp the passing of time and the change it brings also plays a role in our collective denial and projection.

Hitler gave lots of people a 'hinky feeling' in the 1930's - a sense that utter evil was gathering its strength. Almost by definition, he did not give everyone that feeling. And many who had it chose to ignore it. If the feeling had been universal - present in daily conscious thought, as happened soon enough - the world might have done something about him earlier.

Two things were true then that are true now: human nature and the nature of evil - the latter of course, having gained a permanent foothold in the former. Only the face of evil has changed. Not its nature. Evil sneaks. Evil persuades. Evil disarms. Evil seeds its falsehoods with tantalizing grains of truth. Evil seeks allies in the vast numbers of unconvinced who have come to hold tolerance of all things as the gauge of the goodness of all things. A world view that is never ever black and white cannot see through Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's slick exterior to what lies beneath. Remarks like this from Bill Clinton could not make that world view more clear.

On one level, that kind of reaction is understandable. (Hold the flames. I'm not endorsing, only diagnosing.) Many who today have a 'hinky feeling' about Mahmoud Ahmadinejad simply cannot process it. They cannot walk down the thought path to where his words and actions lead and come back feeling whole enough to pick up the kids from soccer, grab some dinner at the supermarket, go to the gym, finish the presentation for the boss for tomorrow and get to sleep tonight. Ghastly possibilities - the world at war, the world aflame, the world as it has not been for sixty years - just don't seem... real.

Until they are.

As perverse as the comparison may be, Cold War doomsayers (e.g., intellectual refugees from 'The Day After' / unilateral nuclear freeze movement) and biblical end-timers have something in common that's rooted deep in this human inadequacy. They ask "what time is it?" The expected answer of course, is (in unison and with feeling): "seconds before midnight!" Which may or may not be right at any given moment. As the saying goes, even a broken clock is right twice a day. This one will be right at least once in the history of, well... history itself. But to obsess over it is madness. Here we sit. Today. A great man is dying. A madman is thrusting himself into the limelight. As Sigmund, Carl & Alfred notes: what we say and do about it "will say a lot more about us than it will about him".

So let's not forget that evil in its purest, snaky form is extremely clever in how it speaks to the unconvinced. And the unconvinced are its audience. Why bother with arguments that make sense to those arrayed against you? Pick off those at the margin. Evil seeks traction in undeniable small truths that run in direct opposition to much larger ones: it was the Germans who were responsible for the Holocaust, the founding of Israel did inconvenience the Palestinians, Eve would not have actually physically died at the very instant she bit down on the apple. Except that Ahmadinejad has much more in common with Hitler today. Except that the Palestinians have benefited handsomely from Israeli governance while being grossly misled by their "leaders". Except that disobeying God has brought a world of hurt to humanity, whether we understand that allegory (or His will) or not.

Those who haven't thought all that hard about it or wish that it weren't true are evil's targets. Those who would rather pacify and go on another day than to bring on trouble and opposition by saying "this will not stand" or "we will fight them on the beaches..." or "let's roll" or coining a phrase like "a day that will live in infamy" ...or shouting and turning over tables, or going on in to Jerusalem on a donkey - knowing full well what will happen. That stuff is hard. Really hard. It can lose you friends. It can make people slink away and whisper under their breath. It can lose you elections. It can lose you your health and your life. It can lose you... everything. Everything that is, except what really matters.

Fasten Your Seatbelts: Sharon, Israel, Iran, and...

The seriousness of Ariel Sharon's health crisis - including the likelihood that he will not make a full recovery - is even bigger news than it might at first appear. My first thought on hearing the news?: Oh no. Now what about the ongoing U.S. and Israeli planning to deal with the imminent Iranian nuclear threat?

As David Horowitz writes in the Jerusalem Post, Sharon has become an almost mythical figure in Israel. Not only will he be difficult to replace, but his absence will mean certain change in, and great uncertainty about Israel's strategy and policy.

In the waters Israel swims in (and which effectively Western Civilization itself swims in with the spread of global Islamofascist terror), uncertainty is definitely not a good thing. Remember Bush I and April Gillespie vs. Saddam Hussein on the issue of Kuwait? One ambiguous conversation and the fate of the Middle East changed fifteen years ago. The perception of opportunity on the part of Israel's enemies (a category which it could be argued, includes some of Israel's more radically left-leaning politicos) is simply inevitable. Some will act in the confusion and leadership vacuum that's been created.

It seems unlikely that scheduled March elections will put an end to the uncertainty that's been created literally overnight and the danger that goes with it. That scheduled Israeli elections happen to roughly coincide with the expected fulfillment of Iran's nuclear ambitions (March) should get the entire planet's attention. Whatever the rhetoric of Iran et al, and whatever the reality in actual Israeli policy changes (or lack thereof), Sharon's decline invites the wolves to circle closer. Wolves don't sit in salons and write essays and sip lattes and debate. They act. It doesn't matter whether or not we think that's civilized. It's just the way it is.

While most Arab leaders were careful to couch their true feelings in meaninglessly bland, diplomatic expressions of concern, others such as Ahmed Jibril, head of the Syrian-backed PFLP-General Command came right out and said what was on their minds: "We say it frankly that God is great and is able to exact revenge on this butcher. ... We thank God for this gift he presented to us on this new year." Nice.

Remember, Jibril is talking about a man (Sharon) who made the single biggest concession to Palestinian demands since the inception of Israel - actual withdrawal from the West Bank. And this is the thanks he gets? No wonder there's a robust right wing in Israel. From this vantage point, I'm surprised there's any opposition to it. Never underestimate the loony left, even their Israeli brethren who live daily with the threat of personal and national annihilation. The PFLP is the type of organization that the Bush-bashers like to soften by characterizing as 'freedom fighters'. Not terrorists. That would be supporting Bush. That would be bad.

Pre-dating Sharon's stroke yesterday, but now largely overlooked in its shadow is Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's offer to host a Euro/Islamic conference on human rights. Yes, you read that right. (H/T: Indigo Red) Despite two little documents and 230 years of people-centric governance both of which are unprecedented in political history, the U.S. is conspicuously not invited. Laced with what has become his trademark: unapologetically forked-tongue anti-Israeli, Holocaust-denial rhetoric, Ahmadinejad continues to masterfully play off the hand-wringing concerns of the left-wing MSM in a way that would make Josef Goebbels proud.

All of which got me thinking... in a semi-paranoid, fantastical, Spidey-sense-tingling, many pieces-starting-to-fit-together but please slap-me-if-I'm-overplaying-this kind of way, that last night's news is just another development that makes massive, violent confrontation between Iran and at least the U.S. and Israel in the very near future much more likely... and soon. The degree to which Iran's sycophantic Islamofascist brethren come or don't come to its aide, as well as what if anything Europe does as this unfolds are wild cards. Both sides are trying to win over each of them (i.e., Europe and the rest of the Arab world). I suspect we will not be as successful as we'd like to think in that regard. That's unfortunate, even as it is inevitable.

Whether that conflict starts with nuclear or conventional weapons almost doesn't matter at this point. (OK, it does matter, but not in the strategic sense - only in terms of pacing and shock value.) Whether they or we are first to strike also doesn't matter all that much at this point. I'm sure there will be those who will seek to chalk this up to a Bush family plot laid out in a Skull and Bones meeting at Yale to which John Kerry wasn't invited (because he was in Cambodia... or not... or he can't really remember). That's shortsighted. The conflict itself is inevitable.

The involvement of the U.S. also seems inevitable. Our actions in Iraq seem almost tangential to it at this point. I.e., finally calling Saddam's bluff and fulfilling umpteen UN resolutions may have helped to accelerate something that was already brewing. But so did 9-11. And Khobar Towers. And the USS Cole. And WTC bombing #1 in 1993. And Bali. And London. And Saddam's original aggression and sabre-rattling in 1990. And April Gillespie's mealy-mouthed diplomacy. And Clinton's on-again, off-again less-than-strategic approach to all things non-domestic...

And on and on and on...

Back to 1979 and our good friend Mr. Ahmadinejad in Iran, who as a young radical helped orchestrate (or at least helped carry out, depending on whom you believe) the unprecedented taking of American hostages for 444 days. Yes, this has been brewing for a very long time. The "Israel off the map" stuff is merely the brutally honest Tourette's-syndrome ravings writ large of the same radical Islamofascist 27 years older, this time with vastly more power.

(Thought exercise for the reader: if the U.S. had acted aggressively to rescue the hostages in 1979 and punish the perpetrators, would Ahmadinejad and his buddies have gained as much power as they did? Should Jimmy Carter be let off the hook for that, much less lionized?)

To bring this already too-long post to a close, let me share something that may seem a little over the top for this day-to-day secular world that we live in. You don't have to believe it. I frequently question how much I do. Just read it, let it sink in and continue to watch the news over the next few months. Ron Graff and Lambert Dolphin write of Armageddon in the appropriately designated Chapter 13 of their book 'Thy Kingdom Come, Thy Will Be Done...':

...it might be better to speak of the "campaign" of Armageddon, since it is not one single battle but a series of events in which all the nations of the world are drawn in as participants...

[Armageddon, aka Megiddo] is actually a series of inter-related disasters...

[Satan], realizing that his power is waning, manages to unite all the forces of earth together against their common enemy...
[emphasis and links added]

For those who prefer a more secular source, try this from today's FrontPage magazine:

The massive stroke that cut down Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon late on Wednesday night (Jan. 4) not only throws Israeli politics into turmoil. It also marks the likely starting point of the coming nuclear showdown that will pit the Jewish state and the free world against the Islamic Republic of Iran. Vice President Dick Cheney noted the inevitable nearly one year ago... Read it.

UPDATE: Atlas Shrugs has excellent coverage noting especially this ill-timed, ominous and probably not unrelated development:

An Iranian delegation expected in Vienna to explain to the International Atomic Energy Agency Iran's decision to resume nuclear fuel research did not show up for a meeting on Thursday, the IAEA said.

Is anybody really surprised? Who's "unilateral" now? As I said: fasten your seatbelts... you might also think about replenishing the canned goods and bottled water in your basement...

UPDATE II: Welcome LGF readers! Nothing like an unexpected overnight traffic spike to uncover the flaws in my admittedly amateur attempt at Middle-East analysis:

• Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, (not the West Bank),
• April Glaspie, (not Gillespie), and
• I especially like the FDR-Sharon analogy re. health. As Churchill noted in his 'Finland' speech: "This is not the end of the tale..."
  

Thank you. Keep it comin'. This is why blogs work better than the MSM.

UPDATE III: The Only Story That Matters (further reflections on Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, evil and the will to identify and confront them)

UPDATE IV: Paul Mirengoff over at Powerline gets specific about the relationship between succession, strategy and plans already (possibly) in motion:

If the threat of an Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear facilities is a card in a larger plan to deal with the problem, how credible will that threat be absent Sharon? If an Israeli attack is the plan to deal with the problem, how likely is Sharon's successor to launch the attack? My guess is that Israel has its strategy in place and, barring a victory by the left, will carry it through.

Or to put it another way (as one commenter here noted), how good of an historical analogy is FDR-Truman in helping us anticipate what Sharon-???? may mean for Israel and the world?

Abramoff in Perspective: Countertops, Union Dues and the Ghost of Walter Duranty

I'll grant that the long anticipated fall of Jack Abramoff is a significant story. Google finds 1185 recent news stories. Technorati cites 18,053 blog posts. The phrase "Abramoff scandal" finds 147,000 links. Take off the quotes and it's 688,000. Big story.

A Washington insider friend notes coolly that yes, more Republicans will probably get sucked up in it than Democrats. Ooh! Really big story!! A blood-in-the-water feeding-frenzy, maybe we'll get famous like Woodward and Bernstein and regain prestige for a biased and declining mainstream media establishment on the ropes while influencing the course of politics and rendering Bush politically impotent! kind of story.

Which is all fine insofar as it goes. It's the lead story this week. Got it.

What puzzles me however (FYI, that would be the cynical, snarky use of the word 'puzzles') is why a breaking story about the NEA spending over $90M - most of it derived from member dues - on a possibly illegal, probably unethical and certainly questionable grab-bag of lobbying efforts and other purely partisan liberal causes with little or no connection to education barely gets a mention. "NEA scandal" nets zero news stories on Google. Zero.

OK, so that's only $33.52 per member (2.7 million of 'em), that's diverted to radical left-wing causes (or $29.00 per member if we want to do the math differently to be a little more generous). And yes, whether you endorse them or not, many if not most of those causes are 'radical' in the sense of being well out of the mainstream. The term cannot be applied exclusively to the rightward end of the political spectrum and retain its meaning.

If we assume (again, being generous) that nationwide, somewhere between 20% and 40% of teachers are Republicans (or conservatives, or Bush voters, or however you wish to slice and dice it), then that's somewhere between $15.7M and $36.2M effectively extorted from a captive audience of individuals to support causes that they oppose.

To put that in perspective, it is rumored that Jack Abramoff will be asked to pay $25M in restitution. I.e., to give back what he got. Once. Total. Not $16M-$36M year after year after year like the NEA. (Remember, non-liberal teachers are just trying to keep their jobs. It's not as easy as saying: "Not today, thanks. I don't think I'm going to pay my union dues," or "Is it OK with you if I deduct thirty bucks this year because I really don't like what you stand for?") Teachers who vote Republican don't have a choice. That's unfair. That's a racket. That might be racketeering.

But we don't get graphics like this (see right) - that PBS' NewsHour is using for its Abramoff story - for NEA president Reg Weaver. Baad Jack. Reg who?

Meanwhile, where's the outrage (much less significant press coverage) of Louisana's Democratic Governor Kathleen Blanco deciding after hurricane Katrina to renovate her office with "flat screen televisions, Swedish granite countertops, walnut paneling and frosted laminated glass..." to the tune of $564,838? Two media stories (Fox News, picking up on an original story in the Baton Rouge Advocate). A very small handful of blog posts.

Hello!! People are still in shelters. Lots of people. Blanco's Louisiana is cutting back its budget. Significantly: 20% of employees may be laid off. Unemployment in New Orleans is at an all time high. The state is one of the largest recipients of federal largesse since FDR. And we get... granite countertops and a lame excuse? (Blanco is saying the project must go ahead lest the state get sued. We're protecting the people!)

The stories are there. The facts are there. These are just two of them. And yet one story (somber-looking, well-dressed, highly successful lobbyist - wearing a black hat and looking Gotti-esque no less!) is the story. Even though it's been known inside the Beltway for months if not years that Abramoff was eventually going to get slammed.

Lots of politicians are going to go down with Abramoff. The partisan split may be 50/50. It may be as high as 70/30 (R/D). I tend to believe it will be more like 60/40. But even with numbers like those, in the MSM it will be a Republican scandal. There is no such thing as a Democratic scandal. It does not compute. With noble intentions, there can only be excusable lapses in judgment (e.g.., Clinton).

McCain-Feingold somehow implanted in the popular mind (and unfortunately also the law) the misguided notion that we could get money out of politics and that political speech can and should be 'managed'. Not only is that impossible, it's dangerous - an avenue for yet more manipulation, further behind the scenes.

The best we can do is transparency. And thank goodness we're finally getting some of that from the unions - through clenched teeth. Let's do the same for all lobbying: force disclosure and publish every last detail about every penny Jack Abramoff and his friends and anyone else in Washington ever spent. And stop there. That's what real reporters used to do before they all became blogger-columnist wannabes writing editorials for the wire services and 'news' pages.

Let's accept the ancient wisdom that power eventually corrupts and that most career politicians are more than a little on the seamy side. (I'll take a reluctant, late-career public servant any day: Reagan, Bush, Romney.) Drop every other micro-managing regulation (e.g., McCain-Feingold) that presumes an ideal that cannot ever be achieved: the eradication of influence. Let the press do the job it was meant to do - investigate.

And while we're at it, let's get off this idea that the only kinds of influence and corruption that are contemptible are corporate and conservative. The other (liberal) kind is just as inexcusable.

As Communist apologist Walter Duranty quipped in 1933 in reference to Stalin: "You've got to break eggs to make an omelet". If the cause is liberal or socialist (what's the difference, you may ask), the ends always justify the means. Granite countertops... but she cares. A thirty million dollar racket to routinely fleece conservative teachers and give the money to Jesse Jackson... noble. Republican lobbyist for companies the stocks of which make up most peoples' retirement accounts these days... Gotcha!

UPDATE: Sisu has a great round-up of the cooler heads on the Abramoff affair.

Teachers' Union Gluttony - Who Benefits, Exactly?

When I made the tangential observation yesterday that: "[literacy]... is worth smarter investment, e.g. via the breaking of the NEA...", I did not imagine that the WSJ would tackle the subject today (free at Opinion Journal).

And 'tackle' might be too mild a description. Given the damning material they had to work with (the grudging product of new rules for union disclosure about how members' mandatory dues are spent), 'quarterback sack' might be a more accurate description. Not that they couldn't see it coming; they just ran out of defensive options:

Union officials claim that they favored such transparency all along, but the truth is they fought the new rules hard in both Congress and the courts. Originally, the AFL-CIO said detailed disclosures were too expensive, citing compliance costs in excess of $1 billion. The final bill turned out to be $54,000, or half of what the unions spent on litigation fighting the new requirements. When Secretary [of Labor Elaine] Chao refused to back down, the unions took her to court, and lost.

As NEA leaders regain consciousness, spit out their mouth guards and remove bloody turf divots from ears, nose and mouth - let's review the game so far...

The National Education Association is the super-powerful U.S. teachers' union. As the WSJ notes:

The NEA has a $58 million payroll for just over 600 employees, more than half of whom draw six-figure salaries. Last year the average teacher made only $48,000... Reg Weaver, the union's president, makes $439,000 a year...

Nice work if you can get it...

...member dues accounted for $295 million of the NEA's $341 million in total receipts last year. But the union spent $25 million of that on "political activities and lobbying" and another $65.5 million on "contributions, gifts and grants" [to liberal political causes].

In some zip codes (like mine), the political leanings of teachers and school administrators are (sad to say) so closely in synch with such causes that these revelations are probably helpful to the NEA. The distinction between voluntary personal giving and mandatory giving through a bloated bureaucracy like the NEA is merely the bloated bureaucracy: a minor irritant (if members even thought about it). Not a big issue philosophically. (Thankfully most zip codes are not like mine else Mike Dukakis would be enjoying his seventh term as U.S. president with Ted Kennedy and Barney Frank as Congressional consigliere, and John Kerry as veep... shudder.)

Like the United Way, liberal teachers might look at the NEA as a convenient aggregator of political donations they'd otherwise have to make separately. Others know enough to keep their mouth shut and pay their dues to keep their job. But very few zip codes are like mine. Plenty of teachers do not agree with where their dues are being directed, e.g.:

Jesse Jackson's Rainbow PUSH Coalition, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, Amnesty International, AIDS Walk Washington... the Human Rights Campaign, which lobbies for 'lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equal rights'...

None of which is to say that teachers - individual teachers - don't have every right to support those causes to the hilt. Though I could argue it, this post is not about the merits of any particular recipient. It's about bias (in aggregate), freedom (of financial political support) and accountability (to members, but more importantly to the consumers of the teaching services they produce... i.e., parents and kids.) The list NEA beneficiary list goes on:

The National Women's Law Center, whose Web site currently features a "pocket guide" to opposing Supreme Court nominee Sam Alito... And something called the Fund to Protect Social Security... presumably to defeat personal investment accounts... People for the American Way... [which] happens to be vehemently anti-voucher... Protect Our Public Schools, an anti-charter-school group backed by the NEA's Washington state affiliate, received $500,000 toward its efforts to block school choice for underprivileged children. (Never mind that charter schools are public schools.)

In other words: politics. A PAC. No different (though in many respects much more powerful than) the corporate PACs liberals routinely rail against.

At one level, I almost understand the last one: being against school choice.

Unions are about protecting jobs no matter how mediocre the holders of those jobs may be or how badly the institutions of which they are a part may be performing. They are anti-meritocratic by design. That's simply what unions do. They had a purpose back when ten year olds were working 12+ hours a day in abhorrently dangerous conditions. Now, for the most part, they do not.

For the record, I know that teachers work hard. I come from a family of them. Teaching used to be a profession focused primarily on the product - educating kids. As the NEA has grown stronger, that focus shifted: first to the producers (teachers) and now to... this basket of political intrigue. The focus on the kids has been lost as accountability has been lost. Kudos to Secretary Chao for restoring some of the latter.

A short, illustrative story...

During a recent ballot initiative battle in my town, signs sprang up that read "We Support [Town] Educators", i.e., education workers... teachers. Which to my mind, as a taxpayer with two kids, completely missed the point. To the extent that educators are helping to produce better education, great. I support them. The minute they (or the 800 pound NEA gorilla) stands in the way, I don't. Nor should anyone else.

During the campaign, I almost got up the gumption to print up lawn signs saying "We Support [Town] Education", i.e., the product. Alas, while it would have been immensely satisfying, I would have wasted my money and gotten myself ostracized from an otherwise perfectly pleasant place to live...

There are plenty of open teaching jobs. Those truly interested in teaching (who are any good at it) have options. Those truly interested who aren't any good at it shouldn't be teaching. Those who've lost their spark - even if they were good in the past - should retire or change careers. That's the way the world works these days. Fluid. Flexible. Meritocratic. Deal with it. I do.

What's even more loathsome about the NEA's stranglehold is that teaching is not inherently a supply-constrained profession. Except to the extent that the NEA has made it so by making post-graduate teaching credentials a requirement for work, there are plenty of people who'd love to teach as part of a more varied career. Many are demonstrably better than incumbents but don't want to spend two years in school to get their ticket punched for a relatively low-paying career. This is not neurosurgery. This isn't even the legal profession. All of which helps explain why the NEA got so powerful in the first place. There are no inherent barriers. Someone had to erect some lest it all become meritocratic too quickly. Yet another vestige of our quasi-socialist past.

The proof lies in the private sector. Since most private schools are not touched by the NEA (that I know of - please correct me if I'm mistaken), they tend to hire smart - the way any business would. They have to. One tactic some use is to pepper their ranks with young, enthusiastic graduates of top colleges who arguably provide more value and more current knowledge at a lower price point. All parties are happy with the arrangement for a few years while the 20-somethings figure out what else they might want to do with their life. Many of my classmates took this route. Their students were the primary beneficiaries.

Just as Reagan called PATCO's bluff, someone needs to call the NEA's. The stakes (our global competitiveness as a nation) are considerably larger. The new disclosure rules will help. They won't be enough. If air traffic control turned out more easily trainable than had previously been imagined (and eager labor supply much larger), it beggars belief that teaching would be any more difficult to open up. Someone needs to put the focus back in the classroom.

UPDATE I: Carl over at No Oil for Pacifists has done exceedingly detailed research in this link-rich post on the same subject. Read it. (Does he have a day job?)

UPDATE II: I just couldn't put this one to rest. More here Wednesday after doing a little math, tying it in with the Abramoff thing, plus a Blanco zinger.

The MSM Franchise - Erosion... and Backlash?

I find it tremendously ironic that during a period in which the blogsophere has enabled personal and political expression to flourish like no other in history (easier, cheaper, freer and more accessible) the anti-Bush crowd says that it is more concerned than ever about the erosion of the First Amendment - both its free speech and religious non-interference provisions.

It just doesn't add up.

There is nothing in the Constitution guaranteeing an audience. Its also worth remembering that the Constitution doesn't even hint (beyond basic property rights guarantees) at a right to a platform from which to possibly maybe if you're really really industrious, smart and lucky to create such an audience - the muddle-headed and now thankfully defunct 'Fairness Doctrine' notwithstanding.

And yet, we have one - a platform. I'm using it right now. If you don't like this one, there are plenty of free or very low-cost easy-to-use alternatives. (No, this is not an ad for Blogger.)

Aside from blogging being a nasty addiction that cuts into other more profitable ways I might spend my time (entirely my problem and my choice), it is there for the taking. (Hey, everyone needs a jones of some kind.)

Yes I recognize that not everyone is literate or endowed with a computer connected to the Internet. Those things will never be universal. At least the former is worth smarter investment, e.g. via the breaking of the NEA a la Reagan's breaking of PATCO, the de-PC-ization of educational curricula, the de-regulation and injection of market forces into education in general... and a host of other things... But that's a whole 'nother post altogether...

Like most things in life, free speech is as much about initiative as it is about rights. It's about taking the time to write, to write well and most importantly to think carefully before writing. Like anything else, it takes practice. Not everyone is good at it. To paraphrase a comment by Peggy Noonan in her book "What I Saw at the Revolution", the thing that's seductive about writing (particularly the persuasive kind) is that virtually everyone does it to some degree (college applications, speeding ticket appeals, Christmas cards, instructions to the babysitter, instant messages to one's friends, letters to one's parents...) Not everyone realizes what it takes to do well or what good writing looks like. To alter the course of hearts and minds (not to mention votes) is hard. Especially when your logic is muddled.

Which can lead to frustration...

Which leads to two concerns I have about the First Amendment - neither of which I worry about in the least under this president. I am concerned that Hillary Clinton or some other similarly Nixonian personality on the ropes will get so frustrated at a sustained onslaught of criticism from all directions that they ham-handedly attempt to shut down the blogosphere or, (as the UN has already attempted to do), put control of the Internet into the hands of the devil's band of rogues, fools and despots that seem to run everything else over there. Since the Democrats are - of their own making - the ones on the ropes at the moment, my primary concern is there. Should the tables turn, that concern would shift. I don't see it anytime soon.

It is in that context that the increasingly loud whining by the MSM over the loss of its monopoly franchise is both refreshing and cause for potential concern. (See for example this fisking by Ace of Spades of a whining article about blogs' effect on the MSM by Katharine Steelye in the New York Times.)

Refreshing in that it indicates that blogs really do have influence - that certain noses really have been bloodied and those in power have noticed. Concerning in that it forces one to consider what legal and political steps the MSM, its shareholders and its political benefactors might take to protect themselves under an administration more sympathetic to their views and more reliant on them for support.

With the civil rights emphasis currently focused on monitoring (an MSM or rather NYT-created tempest-in-a-teapot if there ever was one), those things don't keep me up at night. I assume that most of what I do is or can be monitored. I will be concerned the day that such freedoms are easier to come by elsewhere in the world. Today they aren't even close, even in seemingly benign places like Canada.

I'm sick of hearing the old saw that freedoms are lost bit by bit and that we should be concerned right now because the president is pushing us towards a Hitlerian nightmare. (Ever wonder why the administration's actions to return national security powers to pre-castration pre-'70s levels are seldom compared with the current state of civil rights in China?)

That line of reasoning pre-emptively frames the debate in terms of how quickly freedoms are being lost or how many we're willing to lose before getting concerned. Yet in an environment in which freedom of expression is exponentially expanding (10-30 millions blogs and counting depending on who you believe) and freedoms related to monitoring merely being returned to where they were before Jamie Gorelick bound and gagged those who would defend us, such a frame is simply wrong.

What's really being lost is a decades-long liberal stranglehold (i.e., the MSM) on the framing of political discourse. The left knows that with that loss goes one of its main pillars of support. True diversity of views is more real now than it has ever been. The left knows that and despises it - even as they mouth the word: "diversity". That is what keeps me up at night - the prospect that the left will see the erosion of their media meal ticket as a problem that must be fixed via the political process. A starving, cornered animal should never be underestimated. That is what we should recognize could easily 'happen here'.

UPDATE I: Writing on a parallel wavelength this morning, ShrinkWrapped uses a bear-baiting analogy to describe the behavior of the NYT:

My patient['s]... impulses toward "bear baiting" [were] reflections of his terrible over-sensitivity to hurt feelings and the rage he felt at real and perceived humiliations.

I think it is likely that the Times, in their terrible humiliation of seeing themselves lose influence and power, is engaged in similar "bear baiting" with the United States government. The Times behaves as if they are humiliated by being ignored by the government; as well, they act as if they can tease the chained up bear with impunity, not recognizing that there are limits beyond which they endanger themselves.

I like it. But it's also worth asking: Why is the NYT betting that it can get away with what it's doing (aside from sheer animus or ignorance)? The answer I think, is rooted in a national hangover from Vietnam and Watergate. The NYT reasons, I suspect (and not without justification) that the precedent of the Pentagon Papers, plus a general impression of goodness surrounding what Woodward and Bernstein uncovered in a parking garage (never mind that it turned out to stem largely from Mark Felt getting passed over for Hoover's job) are enough to insulate it from attack and possibly win it praise.

The NYT is betting that, with that backdrop in national memory, there would be such a public outcry if it were censured (much less censored) that the administration is going to be extremely reluctant to do anything at all. If NYT editors and publishers were called before a grand jury (for example), more damage might be done to secrecy and to administration credibility than if this act were simply allowed to sit out there to rot in the sun of public opinion - as is happening.

What's ironic of course, is that the restraint shown by government (so far anyway) is itself a sign of extreme deference to the First Amendment. The bear (i.e., government/ administration) and the NYT (i.e., bear-baiter) both know (or at least have strong, calculated reason to believe) that if the bear lashes out in any serious way it will be shot by the bystanders with no hesitation (metaphorically speaking). Thus the bear is willing to endure quite a few indignities before doing so. That's the useful if messy legacy of our Constitution: extreme restraint in the face of someone you'd really like to throttle.

UPDATE II: Sisu weighs in with a more aggressive but democratic idea: sue 'em. I like it.

UPDATE III: Welcome Michelle Malkin and Anchoress readers! Be sure to check out the archives while you're here, as well as our new post today on another pillar of liberal politics that's been 'outed' by the WSJ.

The Other Side of Abu Ghraib

An Iraqi infant with severe birth defects arrived in Atlanta Saturday for medical treatment that was offered after U.S. soldiers discovered her during a raid on a home... U.S. troops discovered the baby three weeks ago during a raid of a house in Abu Ghraib, a poverty-stricken district west of Baghdad... Staff Sgt. Darryl Clark, 40, feeds baby Noor after delivering infant formula to her grandmother after their supply ran out.

Yep. It's just like Vietnam.