Conservatives Anonymous

2010-03-23T18:58:00.000-07:00

A clarification

The previous post is not an endorsement of silly notions about socialism. "Socialism" is just a stupid cliche that ends conversations, a conservative analog to Godwin's Law. Talk-show hosts with little or no understanding of the fiscal policy dynamic use it to incite. Nor do I believe this is about "one-world government" or any other paranoid delusion. This isn't the Wizard of Oz. There is no man behind the curtain, just a few dozen politicians who range from the cowardly to the myopic to the self-interested partisans and a whole lot of sycophants. They're not dragging us into the waiting arms of the UN, they're dragging us down to at best muddle-through, and in the process they're going to bring a lot of the world economies crashing down alongside us.

2010-03-22T17:51:00.000-07:00

The Die is Cast

Thomas Jefferson once questioned the ability of one generation to bind another in a political context. I disagree him on this point; two plus centuries removed from the French Revolution we better appreciate the value of continuity in ensuring stability and freedom from violence. I think in a fiscal sense though his point is much more salient. It is unjust for one generation to ask another generation to pay for money spent before its time. This debt, set to reach 100% of GDP with no signs of slowing, was not incurred in the service of existential conflicts. A small fraction paid for the two conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan; important as those might have been the economy seemed to be booming and they could have been paid for at least in part through the raising of revenues. This debt was grown by expanding entitlements, cutting taxes and refusing to make politically unpopular spending choices. This was a bipartisan effort. Presiding over its ballooning were Republican and Democratic Presidents, Speakers and Majority Leaders. It really began under Reagan, and while as a conservative he is of course in my pantheon in this instance his legacy led us astray.

As far as I'm concerned yesterday was the last chance to stop the madness. At present we have the third largest deficit in the OECD, behind only Ireland and the UK. We have no reasonable hope of sustained economic growth as the tax burden necessarily has to grow and interest rates are essentially at zero. The debt is expected to swell to nearly 150% of GDP by 2014. Yesterday a Democratic House debated a bill that used specious accounting to mask the fact that it is likely to cost $1.3 trillion over ten years, even if Washington goes through with politically unpopular Medicare cuts. Foreseeable Republican countermeasures are probably going to exacerbate the fiscal hit; a repeal of the mandate to purchase coverage (necessary to subsidize the requirement that insurance companies insure the unhealthy) is likely to send the insurance companies scurrying to Washington for a handout or to convince them to jack up their rates, which may give the Democrats cover for an actual takeover or something equivalent to one.

This was an act akin to national suicide. A new and unassailable entitlement expansion was rammed through using procedural loopholes, on a Sunday, by the slimmest of margins. Pelosi and some of her colleagues expect that by rendering several million more Americans reliant on the government for healthcare they have created a durable Democratic majority. If I had to wager a guess I would suppose she sold it by telling her colleagues that the next priority would be financial sector reform, where populism cuts against Republicans and seats may be salvaged. The end result is that what little chance we had to salvage our medium and long term fiscal situation is being squandered for a purely political advantage.

Raise taxes? Sure. Necessary evil. But you can't raise them to close the gap because you're going to need to raise them to pay for the entitlement obligations you just incurred. And how are you going to grow an economy against the backdrop of rising taxes? Lower interest rates? They're already essentially at zero. Our ability to provision long-term growth is virtually non-existent at this point. The states will of course shoulder much of the burden for this healthcare program, putting further strain on California, New Jersey and other states already on the brink of insolvency.

For the first time in my adult life I have zero optimism that this nation's fortunes will improve over time. The best we can hope for is a muddle-through that accepts 1-2% growth for a generation, punctuated by the failings of other states occasioned largely by our economic weakness. Demographics will accelerate this for us as the percentage of the population at work declines and the percentage receiving entitlement checks grows; this problem is even worse for Western Europe and East Asia.

As mentioned above there is no one single cause, just the mixture of political cowardice and political opportunism of this generation and the ones that preceded it. Democratic (and Republican) Administrations swelled entitlement obligations knowing they would not have to pay for them while Republicans pushed tax cuts uber alles. Interest rates were lowered to stimulate growth and then lowered again to keep it going. In time of plenty these actions don't seem objectionable, but now that the inevitable downturn finally occurred we find meaningful choices so curtailed that we can do nothing to get the economy going again. It is an economic, fiscal and foremost a political trap from which there is no escape.

2010-03-14T19:24:00.000-07:00

America on the Precipice

It has been vogue to predict our relative decline for a good fifty years now. I don't think that's reasonable: if we go down the rest of the world goes down with us. China is an export-driven economy with an underdeveloped domestic market. Their economy, perhaps their government as a whole, would not survive an American economic cataclysm. The EU is beset by many of the same structural problems we now face, and what is for us a looming demographic imbalance is for the EU a ticking time bomb. In the larger Asian markets, especially China and Japan, it's a ticking economic H-bomb. No, this slide is likely to be an absolute decline, and the rest of the world's economic fortunes will decline accordingly. Perhaps not the 1930's, but in breadth and duration it could come close.

Conventional economic wisdom seems to have reached an endstate. The Keynesian prescription, explicated (perhaps amended) by the suddenly prescient Hyman Minsky, of deficit spending as an economic catalyst is simply impossible when we're already running a trillion plus deficit and nothing is moving. The tax cuts mantra is virtually DOA; in the mind of none but a college libertarian is there enough leeway in the present tax burden for cuts to jumpstart the economy, even if revenue concerns are ignored. There are no meaningful spending cuts to be found as the budget for even the bare bones untouchables (Medicare, Social Security, Defense, Debt Service) exceeded revenues by $200 bn. Regular medicare and social security obligations are projected to expand in the near term as the number of new retirees accelerates.

Against this we juxtapose a broken tax system. Tax credits undermine the predictability of tax receipts; refundable credits mean that millions of Americans receive more from the government than they pay in taxes, even without cash and non-cash entitlements. They also undermine the corrective check on spending provided when the majority of the people actually feel the tax pinch from the spending priorities they elected people to enact. Yes people pay myriad state and local taxes and the total burden may still be fairly high, but the explicit link between FICA and the federal budget is severed. Avoidance and evasion limit the sting of taxes on the "filthy rich" who were caricatured to get tax increases on the wealthy enacted, leaving the considerably more popular assortment of professionals, managers, near-retirement white-collar and union laborers and dual-wage households to actually foot the bill. So between lower-middle and lower classes who pay minimal federal taxes and the upper-upper class that pays a modest sum, you have a squeezed middle and upper-middle class, many of whom are already stung by the demise of job security and the collapse of the housing market.

In summary, too few taxpayers paying too little money to fund an inflexible and expanding federal budget. If we cannot fix the structural disparity we will be forced to borrow to service debt. That is the epitome of a Ponzi scheme.

Against this backdrop, instituting a healthcare overhaul is not merely problematic, it is madness. Even if one accepts the absurd claim of deficit neutrality, the bill's proponents admit "neutrality" is achieved by passing on additional Medicare costs to cash-strapped states, many of whom are on the brink of insolvency. Long-term entitlement promises are the single greatest problem we face on the outflow side of the budget ledger. Substantially increasing those entitlement promises is going to balloon our liabilities even as the political will to increase revenues seems at a low ebb. It is at once a cross between an American Beveridge Report, Britain's attempt to provision comfort while turning a relative decline into an absolute one, and a nakedly partisan attempt to build a durable center-left voting base.

Republican attempts at repeal will probably be worse than the cure. They will not kick people off Medicare for that is political suicide. More likely they will simply repeal the mandate that able-bodied Americans must pay for health insurance or pay a fine. Insurance companies will lack the funds of the healthy to subsidize the care regulators will force them to provide to the sick, and either costs will spiral upward or the insurance industry will run hat-in-hand to Congress. Or both.

There are no good answers to the present economic situation. There are certainly no easy ones. Be suspicious of any politician who promises you more spending without significantly increased taxation or less taxation without drastic spending cuts. That's a recipe for making our version of Japan's lost decade last a lot longer than that.

2009-12-14T08:49:00.000-08:00

A Celebration of Lindsey Graham

I'm sick and tired of the vilification of Graham, of the Maine Street Republicans, and every Republican who has ever extended a hand across the aisle. This silly emphasis on ideological purity cost us NY-23 and is likely to exact far greater cost in 2010 if it isn't checked now. I am fiscally and socially conservative (so is Graham for that matter), but I refuse to delude myself into thinking that even a bare majority of Americans share my views on most issues of consequence. I accept that politics is the art of the possible. Don't like abortion? Sure you can stand outside a clinic or a senator's office holding blood-drenched signs, or you can treat women contemplating the procedure as real people and treat measures to restrict the practice as incremental gains toward a larger, greater goal. For each incremental gain, each woman convinced to carry to term, is a life saved. Now a vote for or against this or that bill may not be a life or death issue, but when you swap a vanilla Republican for a mainstream Democrat the only message that you're sending is that purity is more important than efficacy. Politics is the art of the possible, and if Lindsey Graham honestly believes that he can leverage his vote for the inclusion of measures that mitigate the potential damage of certain bills I'm willing to defer to his judgment. For all that he has done personally and for what he has done politically he has earned that. A political scene not dictated by Bill O'Reilly's Talking Points or Keith Olbermann's Worst Person in the World award has a lot more to offer us going forward. To the extent that Lindsey Graham, Olympia Snowe and the Jim Webbs of the Democratic Party can effect this, they deserve our encouragement and support, not puerile insults.

2009-12-02T19:59:00.000-08:00

Progressive Taxation and the Illogic of Duty

A hypothetical, using nice round numbers. Bob grosses $250,000 a year. Bob works 75 hours a week and forgets the names of his children. Bob lives in a state with a moderate burden of sales and income tax, so with a little creativity in his accounting his total tax burden amounts to roughly 40% of his salary, or $100,000. He is left with $150,000 to spend as he sees fit. Enter crusading politician. "In this time of skyrocketing deficits, the rich need to pay their fair share." Presto chango, Bob's total tax burden after his raised federal and state income taxes reaches 60%. Bob's spending power has declined to $100,000 and he contributes $150,000 to the local, state and federal tax coffers. Had Bob made less, say, $150,000 instead of $250,000, said politician's anger would have been limited and his tax burden would have been just 50%, leaving him with $75,000 of spending money and the various tax authorities with another $75,000. Let's say, hypothetically, that he could make that $150,000 while working 40-50 hours a week and having time to coach Little League. An additional $75,000 may be worth the extra hours and the abandonment of non-economic activities. An additional $25,000 may not be worth the extra effort (and this is to speak nothing of those on the margins of different tax brackets, who may net more by grossing less). Bob decides against the additional work, and both he and the tax collector are poorer relative to the original state of affairs. This is the essence of the Laffer Curve, namely that steeply progressive taxation incentivizes evasion and disincentivizes the earning of additional income, with the perverse consequence of causing a decrease in tax revenue.

(Author's note: I'm not attempting to argue for the validity of the Laffer curve in all it's glory; indeed I think Arthur Laffer and John Maynard Keynes were the two most destructive economists of the Twentieth Century for they preached that people could have something for nothing. In limited circumstances and in the hands of people who understood the doctrine and the math this was correct, but in the hands of simpletons and the economically illiterate their respective theorems begot fiscal incontinence.)

Said politician is not immune to this obvious economic truth, even if he has little recollection of the 1970's. Progressive taxation as a means of raising revenue is predicated on the presumption that the rich man believes it his duty to sustain the pace of his work, even in the face of obvious economic disincentives to do so. Of course politics aside few if any hardworking rich men believe this to be the case. They may labor for reasons other than money, for the building of a business or professional satisfaction or for myriad personal motivations. But the abiding motivation is to earn money, and when that motivation is removed he will limit his efforts and establish a new balance between the pursuit of wealth and the non-economic activities that he limited or abandoned in his previous pursuit of wealth.

2009-11-16T14:23:00.001-08:00

A Note

I abandoned this for a long time for various reasons. I can't vouch for the regularity of my contributions, but when I have something worth saying and the time to say it I will post.

2009-11-16T12:03:00.000-08:00

Contra Libertarianism

In this the day of creeping (perhaps galloping) statism it has become fashionable to rediscover the Randian canon; indeed the belle of the objectivist ball is selling books at a torrid pace. Populist tea parties mix conservative and libertarian shibboleths. I resist the temptation, however, for reasons I will now outline.

Libertarianism is the flirtation of almost every collegiate conservative. It is undoubtedly appealing; like other utopian schemes it has a plug and play answer for virtually every policy question of consequence. It allows one to remain "progressive" or at least neutral on most social issues, which tend to inflame and ostracize to a greater extent than, say, fiscal policy.

And yet in many manifestations it is fundamentally incompatible with conservatism. For the same reason Whittaker Chambers wrote Ayn Rand out of conservatism, some British conservatives balked at Margaret Thatcher's economic policies. Conservatism is, among other things, the predisposition toward the settled, the anti-ism. In the language of Jonah Goldberg it is "but a partial worldview." Conservatives have a tactical alliance with libertarian economic policy, but it is ephemeral and when free market fundamentalism runs afoul of efficacy and of social imperatives it must, for the conservatives, give way.

Without getting too technical (both for the sake of reader confusion and for the sake of my own) the proper role of government in the arena of corporate finance is to ensure fair dealing and transparency. To the extent that an unregulated market in various forms of complex debt instruments requires opacity to operate, the fortunes of a great many who did not know themselves at risk will be reliant on the skill and altruism of a tiny cabal treading in virtually uncharted territory. We cannot decline to act merely because the theoretical or quasi-quantitative precepts of a universalist ideology say otherwise.

The issue of gay marriage is not one that excites particularly strong feelings in me. Maybe I'm ambivalent, maybe I have a subconscious fear of being on the wrong side of history. But witness the libertarian programme (of course this varies by exponent), which in many instances calls for the state to absent itself from the business of marriage entirely, presumably by dismantling the set of protections and incentives it offers to married couples. The predisposition toward the settled that I referenced earlier presupposes that this edifice exists for reasons; whether we once took pains to enumerate them and have simply forgotten or whether they were simply so intuitive we deemed explication unnecessary is immaterial. Now this is not to say that the reasons a given policy is deemed "settled" are everywhere and always valid ones; they can be overtaken by changing mores, by technology or by events. It is to say, however, that in addressing an institution as old as civil marriage we can fairly be said to owe it to ourselves to attempt to discern them before we adopt such fundamental legal changes.

Let's look at some more plug and play. Some libertarians advance the belief that road construction and maintenance could be privatized. To a degree, sure. Toll roads in a number of locales offer low-volume alternatives to busier free roads, and so consumers can pay for the luxury. To attempt to privatize every road, or even every main road, would be to create huge transaction costs, both in the cost of collection and in the lost time of the consumers. Yes, the technology exists to collect tolls automatically, but this offends that second of libertarian bogeymen, privacy. And local roads provide still greater problems. The simpler solution is to add this to police and defense as legitimate government functions. Even for small-government conservatives, it's the appropriate one.

This is not to say that libertarianism doesn't advance important ideas. One does not have to embrace the "legalize it all" solution to recognize that contemporary drug policy is problematic. Likewise the demolition of various sacred cows underpinning the welfare state, such as the monetarist attack on the prevailing interpretation of the Great Depression, laid the foundation for the so-called Reagan Revolution. Milton Friedman was integral in the transition to a volunteer armed forces, and the contemporary educational imperatives of limiting or ending affirmative action and advancing vouchers and school choice are ideas that owe much to libertarianism. But the gap between libertarian-as-skeptic and libertarian-as-utopian, hats that can occasionally be worn by the same people, seems too great to bridge.

For more emphasis on the libertarianism-as-utopianism phenomenon, read Brian Doherty's Radicals for Capitalism. He discusses the cult of Ayn Rand and denunciations of this or that libertarian thinker as "socialist" by his peers for heretical opinions, occasionally expressed before the party line has been set down. Such denunciations mimic the old Marxist obsession with decrying this or that heretic as a "petty bourgeois" thinker.

So yes, consult Brink Lindsey on trade, read Friedman and Hayek on the superiority of free markets and free societies, and listen to libertarian ideas. But view them through a conservative prism, and when you can't reconcile the two tendencies remember that one is at heart a partial, pragmatic programme and the other a universalist, utopian one.

2008-05-13T18:13:00.000-07:00

I have returned to the States, probably not to the blog

I just returned after seven or so months in Iraq (just under eleven months of total mobilization time), where we fared no worse than a decent firefight and a small IED. I am not really inclined to return to politics right now as I am rather cynical. I like Bush but with reservations; I like McCain personally with few reservations and politically with plenty of 'em. Obama strikes me as Jimmy Carter part deux, a well-meaning and intelligent man unprepared for the challenges he will almost certainly face. Hillary, for what its worth, may be a pragmatist but she is not nearly as savvy as she is thought to be and in truth an Obama White House may be marginally less threatening. Perhaps something will annoy me or inspire me enough to warrant comment, but until/unless that happens this site will likely remain dormant. I thank you for your attention and your patronage and I wish you the best.

2007-09-01T12:16:00.000-07:00

I have toyed with the idea of shutting this down, and I may yet do so. I am deploying to Iraq with the Virginia National Guard and will have neither the ability nor the desire to keep up even my meager posting pace. I will leave this up though, comment if you wish or just peruse past posts and perhaps I will begin this again when I return.

2007-04-17T19:55:00.000-07:00

We Are All Hokies

One day removed from this tragedy, so much remains unanswered. There are anecdotes suggesting that the shooter was unstable and a loner, but that description fits a substantial portion of undergraduates. Perhaps jilted romance was the motive, but even a crime of passion is unlikely to claim dozens of lives. Some have tried to say that the willful nature of this renders it beneath the term "tragedy." I disagree. Terrorism, which seeks to kill innocents for political purpose, can be described as a crime, as can the infliction of death where greed is motive. This was violence for no apparent motive and with no enumerated goal in mind. I can think of few circumstances for which "tragedy" is a more apt term.

This was indicative of a spiritual sickness, both in the person of the shooter and in similar communities across the country that have born witness to such senseless acts. It was Cho Seung-Hui's tragedy, it was the tragedy of the thirty-two who happened to cross his path yesterday morning and the countless lives personally touched by their loss, so too was it the tragedy of thousands of communities across the country who looked across their campuses, their town squares, their places of business and realized that it could just has easily have been them.

And yet amidst the despair and the senselessness, so too did we bear witness to acts of great heroism. Liviu Librescu sacrificed his life to help several of his students escape and became the first of what will probably be several tales of heroism to emerge. And across the state, on campuses where "Tech Sucks" paraphernalia was on back order prior to April 16th, thousands-strong crowds stood vigil to share their thoughts and prayers with their Hokie brethren. Even as half-wits the world over rushed to pass judgment and levy blame, our political leadership has been thankfully above the fray, acknowledging that grieving comes first and recrimations a distant, distant second.

If something positive is to emerge from this, hopefully it will be the realization that we are all God's children, and that a warped, well-armed nihilist can destroy lives but he cannot destroy the sense of camaraderie and community that trumps silly football rivalries, post-adolescent awkwardness, and the pulls of a material world. In death may Cho find the peace he never found in life, and may those he sought to take with him into the hereafter be welcomed into God's kingdom with open arms. May those left behind find some small solace in knowing that a campus, a state, and a country grieve with them. And may we find the strength to embrace the awkward and the marginalized among us, so that their temporary sense of alienation never grows so strong as to recommend so cruel and heartless a farewell gesture.

2007-04-06T14:21:00.000-07:00

The Crisis Through Muslim Eyes

It is mildly ironic that the side of the political spectrum so fond of deriding its opponents for cultural insensitivity steadfastly refuses to acknowledge that the Muslim world might perceive the events of the last several years through a completely different prism. A punditry that cannot remember back to the winter of '02-'03 cannot fathom how a people with considerably lower literacy rates and education levels than our own can contextualize events over millennia.

To do so would be to acknowledge that at its sixtieth birthday, at roughly the same age as Israel is today, the Crusader Kingdom probably thought itself pretty secure in Jerusalem. It's fall a mere three decades later at the hands of its much more populous neighbors would reinforce the insight that Israel is not a lumbering giant assailing the weak and powerless people that surround it but rather an imperiled state that will face for many decades to come an existential threat that is growing, not diminishing, and it should be permitted to act accordingly.

To do so would be to acknowledge as well that a retreat from Baghdad would be coupled onto a list that stretches probably 550 years of the decadent West retreating in the face of Muslim aggression. It would join Jerusalem circa 1187, Kosovo Polje, Constantinople circa 1453, Kabul circa 1842, Gallipolli, Algeria, Beirut, Mogadishu and Kabul circa 1989. To our eyes such a coherent whole cannot be rationalized with adding in ignominious defeats for Islam, but to an ill-educated populace for whom religious jurists and print media propagandists suffuse such messages with religious themes it makes all the sense in the world. For alongside that narrative can run another about the West's conspiracy against Islam and the victimhood of the Muslim world, running from the Crusades to Andalusia in the fifteenth century to Sevres and the ouster of Mossadeq in 1953.

There is little we as Westerners respect more than human life, particularly our own human life. In an era of biomedical advances and limited warfare, life is enduring and comfortable. The decline or at least marginalization of religion for many has removed the prospect of the hereafter as a palliative for suffering and premature death in this life (though one could argue that the increasing comfort of our lives has helped to render religion unnecessary for many). Contrast that with the Muslim world, particularly the Arab world, where booming populations, poor economic fortunes and internecine strife have limited the provisioning of comfort to the masses. In the hereafter, trained engineers do not drive taxis or face strip-searches at Israeli checkpoints, affronts that are blamed by virtually everyone of religious, social or temporal authority on Israel and/or the West. Islam, both as a faith and as an identity, is triumphant. In short, life is cheap because the distance between the heavenly promise and the worldly present is so great that people are willing to dispense with the latter to achieve the former.

For much of Iran, an educated and relatively comfortable society, this is not the case. Religion is seen as an impediment to the achievement of economic prosperity and temporal pleasure. Ahmadinejad is not speaking to these people, however. He appeals instead to those who sent their children to war with plastic keys around their necks, those frustrated youths who have chosen to blame the West for their limited opportunities rather than their own meager talents or a clerical elite that has alienated itself from the world in service of a narrow and theologically questionable interpretation of Shia Islam. More important than this, he appeals to the Shia and Sunni masses in the Arab world who, while skeptical of Persian ascendance, delight in seeing the all-powerful Britain (in public imagination over the last century an equal or greater menace than the U.S.) brought to heel by a Muslim power.

The hostage crisis highlighted to the Western public but also to the Muslim world the value that we place on the lives of our citizens, indeed our soldiers, and the sacrifices we are willing to make to preserve them. The groveling and contrition of the captives, while perhaps understandable in context, will be broadcast and rebroadcast throughout the Muslim world as a reminder that we are not invincible and that we will retreat before we accept casualties. Those who aim with seriousness to "out-breed" their opponents and to convey to their children the glories of martyrdom will not easily disavow these notions, no matter how many American bullets fell pajama-clad warriors.

Until we learn to view ourselves through the eyes of our enemies, we will continue to abide by the paradigm of domestic political considerations rather than that of the Arab street, which respects force and the willingness to use it, eschews the appearance of weakness in all its manifestations. Nancy Pelosi's diplomatic missteps, the image of smiling, waving, apologetic British sailors...these are very serious setbacks for our progress in the region. If multiculturalism can bestow upon us any tangible benefit, it ought to be the ability, at minimum the willingness, to understand how we are perceived by our enemies. Perchance...

2007-04-01T10:49:00.000-07:00

The Iranian Hostage Crisis, Part II

I sincerely doubt that my meager contributions will add materially to what has been said elsewhere, but I've been away for two weeks and I haven't read what others had to say on the subject so it's new to me. For intellectual and personal reasons a good bit of my youthful bellicosity has eroded, and I have little desire to see a full-scale war against the Islamic Republic. That said, a "diplomatic solution" to this that involves anything more involved that an Iranian capitulation will be a disaster. Even a half-hearted apology, much less any substantive step such as a hostage release or a delay or withdrawal of pending sanctions, will be a major domestic and international coup for the Iranians.

Let's get something straight from the beginning. Even if one accepts Tehran's rather dubious claim that they were in Iranian waters (the Shatt-al-Arab has long been disputed) and ignores the improbability that this was something more sinister than an accident (these men and women hardly seem candidates for a clandestine mission), Iran is flaunting the Geneva Convention by parading them on television and coercing confessions out of them. Their conduct is reprehensible and its reward by a verbal apology or substantive conduct to that end would undermine three years of efforts aimed at their isolation.

During the 1980's, the Reagan Administration was willing to exchange arms for Western hostages seized in Beirut. This did not effect a thaw in relations between Tehran and Washington; rather it inspired the Iranians to encourage their Lebanese proxies to seize more hostages. By rewarding Iranian misbehavior London will reinforce the presumption (an accurate one at that) in Tehran and the capitols of other rogue states that when given a choice between appeasement and retaliation the West will opt for the former in all but the most egregious instances.

The optimal outcome to this would be an Entebbe-style rescue that sees the SAS and their American counterparts rescue the hostages and deal a harsh rebuke to Tehran. In the wake of Entebbe and Desert One, however, (thanks Jimmy!) the Iranians are probably keeping the hostages well-hidden and separated, so even if such an action were possible the potential for disaster is high. Still, the stakes in this are simply too high for Britain to cave in.

2007-03-31T19:12:00.000-07:00

The Demise of the UVM College Republicans

What began five years ago as a tiny cabal and ultimately mushroomed into a successful, hundred-strong organization met its ignominious end last Tuesday in the hallowed halls of the UVM Student Government Association, when the SGA opted to derecognize the UVM CRs for failure to repay an eighteen month old debt. The charge was legitimate; the club borrowed heavily to finance the visit of Newt Gingrich in Fall 2005 and had been unable to make any substantial headway in repaying the $7000 debt. Still, the SGA has a long history of rescuing troubled student organizations, including a bailout of the Cynic, the school's disaster of a student newspaper, and the International Socialist Organization, who managed to get an SGA van impounded at Fort Benning. Their failure to act in this case, coupled with their zeal in delivering the final nail in the coffin, suggests that antipathy to the Republicans' cause was a motivating factor. Still, the blame lies with myopic students who ran up a tab that they had no foreseeable means of paying down.

It is a sad end for an organization that was a labor of love for a number of students, one that provided a valuable service to the UVM community by attracting notable speakers at a time when the likes of Howard Zinn and Ward Churchill were the most accomplished that the school could muster. To its members and to the wider student body the organization introduced basic tenets of conservative thought, a viewpoint long lacking in and out of the classroom. It fostered intellectual development, provided support, and connected present students to alumni in various walks of life. Those who dedicated themselves to making as successful and enduring as it was deserve credit for doing so, and those who squandered the gift of a populous and accomplished organization deserve disapprobation. Also deserving of jeers are the petty minions of the SGA who seized an opportunity to squash the only serious challenge to ideological orthodoxy.

2007-03-10T18:11:00.000-08:00

Abortion in the Modern Era

To preface this, I saw the movie Amazing Grace this weekend and was struck by some of the similarities between the two conflicts. I am not suggesting that the ragtag bunch of pro-lifers, ranging from fanatical to lukewarm in sympathy, constitute a new batch of John Browns and Harriet Beecher Stowes; I am neither that presumptuous nor that wedded to the illustrative analogy. Still, I thought it worth sounding out.

The monkey wrench in this analogy is the notion that slavery was morally and economically anachronistic in the 1800's while so-called reproductive freedoms are thought to be progressive, economically, politically and even in some corners morally. This is where I seek to be contrarian. There is nothing progressive about abortion. It has existed in various forms for thousands upon thousands of years. Histories of the classical era suggest that abortion and even infanticide (exposure) were not uncommon in Greek or Roman civilization. Though the procedure often has or had an accompanying stigma, tacit acceptance existed across political, geographic and religious divides. The only thing novel about the contemporary practice is that it possesses legal sanction.

The first half of the nineteenth century saw the ebbing of ethical justifications for slavery. The existence in the midst of white society of educated, eloquent free blacks and former slaves such as Frederick Douglass and Olaudah Equiano helped to dispel ideas about inferiority that had helped slave societies reconcile their notions about liberty with the servitude of individuals. In many ways, these individuals were inconvenient truths. Abolitionist sentiment was fueled in part by the ebbing of economic justifications for slavery in the North; while the cotton gin made slavery somewhat more profitable in the South the mercantile and small-scale farming economy of the North had little use for individuals with little incentive to work who had to be fed, clothed and housed.

I posit that the same arguments can now be made against abortion. The ethical doublespeak that must take place to justify abortion founders as science perfects imaging techniques that dispel the "clump of cells" notion about developing fetuses, as we understand better how unique and miraculous even the youngest lives are, and most importantly as the date of viability is pushed ever backward. The odds of survival that once applied to a twenty-five week old can now be said to apply to a twenty week old.

Economic arguments are similarly wanting. The proliferation of day-care agencies to accommodate working women and even women in college, the availability of WIC to provide free and nutritious food to pregnant women, and the abundance of willing and eager homes waiting to adopt healthy babiesall suggest that it has never before been easier to carry babies to term. Even the stigma that used to attach itself to illegitimacy has been diluted in most of the communities where abortion is most prevalent.

As a final point, I would suggest that never before has pregnancy been so easy to prevent. There are literally countless contraceptive options, many of which are available at deep discounts or free of charge from school or community programs. Even dispensing with that old chestnut abstinence, there are few excuses save lapses in judgment and in memory for becoming pregnant. Thus abortion can be seen not as a necessary evil but rather for what it really is, a choice, a luxury even, to which the alternatives both before and after conception are myriad.

I still have some strong reservations about the issue. I cannot in good conscience ask, much less demand, that someone who did not consent to sex in the first place carry her baby to term. Nor can I ask that a mother bring to term a baby whose birth is likely to kill mother and/or child. But few on either side of the debate claim that these cases constitute the rule rather than simply the exceptions to it.

The day will probably never come when abortion is thought of with the same universal contempt that characterizes our present approach to slavery. But with these points in mind perhaps the fence-sitters and the lukewarm among us can begin to see that abortion is not progress, it is not the wave of the future. Rather it is an anachronistic edifice for which the ethical and empirical foundations are being eroded each and every day. Perhaps it is escapist or even morally cowardly to merely hope that a favorable Supreme Court decision and the march of aforementioned scientific, economic and ethical progress will help it to die a slow death. I don't doubt that a handful of fire-eaters and sociological naifs will step forward to defend it, but hopefully the expiation of this great travesty will not be as gut-wrenching and divisive as its predecessor.

2007-03-10T18:10:00.000-08:00

I took a little while off, in part because I wasn't getting a ton of feedback and consequently thought it unworth the effort. Turns out I had several comments, I just didn't know I had to moderate them. Granted, most of them were ads for male enhancement pills, but feedback is feedback.

2006-09-15T20:10:00.000-07:00

Two Thoughts

First, those trying to simplify the President's case for clarifying the Geneva Conventions into merely right or wrong are missing a great deal of nuance. If roughing people up prevents a mushroom cloud from wafting over a major US city, its tough to argue against it. At the same time, there is a prestige issue highlighted so well by Colin Powell. Unless we fight a conventional war against a state actor this is unlikely to boomerang on our troops; see how much success you have asking Kristian Menchaca and Thomas Tucker what the insurgents do to Americans they capture. Nor is this likely to doom us in an Arab world that already believes us guilty of everything this measure permits and most of what it outlaws. But to the rest of the world, it is a frontal assault on international law and multilateralism. No matter how useless a conservative might deem these two concepts, paeans to them are precursors to any serious attempt at attracting military and diplomatic allies. Absent a reasonable belief that a pending large-scale attack can be prevented through aggressive interrogation techniques (and if that belief exists I should hope most interrogators would do what was necessary and take the consequences) the benefits of this measure would seem to be dwarfed by its costs. The only good that seems to be arising from this is the appearance of Congressional independence that might help GOP candidates avoid being tarred by association with an unpopular president.

Second, how stupid, how peurile, how infantile must one be to demonstrate against someone who calls you intolerant by displaying violence and intolerance? This latest row, not unlike the cartoon controversy of the past year, evidences the pathetic, infantile, abjectly stupid political culture that dominates most of the Muslim world at present. That secular and religious leadership can quite literally call out a mob to demonstrate over something a fraction as offensive as the rhetoric that eminates from mosques during Friday prayers speaks to the colossal nature of our challenge. Until we can convince a region of sheep that they cannot evidence intolerance and respond to someone who labels it as such by emphatically restating it in violent form, democracy is a pipe dream. How can you say Pope Benedict was wrong to say what he did when literally millions of people take to the streets to act out the very point they allege he made?

2006-09-11T11:35:00.000-07:00

I do not have anything particularly profound to say. I simply wanted to express my disdain at the arrogance of those individuals so sodden with efficacy as to dream that their thoughts on this tragedy evidence the requisite profundity to touch souls and to change minds. So too am I outraged at those who wish to recast the deaths of these thousands as arrows, mere weapons to be slung at political opponents. The facts of this crime speak for themselves. The deaths of three thousand people were effected in mere seconds by individuals who would gleefully have taken the lives of ten, one hundred, one thousand times as many as they did. Thousands were made widows, widowers, and orphans. Remember. Commemorate. Pray, if that is your persuasion. There are three hundred sixty four tomorrows to avenge or to excuse.

2006-08-26T06:38:00.000-07:00

Adieu (sorta)

I apologize for my lengthy absence. I just started grad school this past week and have been running around for a month getting in shape for it. I've been a little less inclined to blog recently as I am coming to realize that I lack the requisite shock value to attract much of an audience and will not stoop to demagoguery to gain one. I'll leave this up and update it on occasion, but I will probably be more apt to post to NER when the mood strikes me or pen something for Red State. I thank my few loyal linkers and readers for their time and attention over the past two and a half years.

2006-07-18T20:05:00.000-07:00

The Palestinization of Iraq

If the American effort in Iraq is ultimately unsuccessful, the postmortem will undoubtedly blame George Bush's naivete and the sinister machinations of the neoconservatives. While no doubt the Administration's policy planners deserve some of this, I would credit instead the efforts of the Arab elite to undermine this venture at every turn. Iraq has become what Palestine has long been and what Lebanon seemed to finally break free of in 2005. It is a cynical ploy perpetrated by and on behalf of the Arab political and religious elite, a lamb sacrificed on the altar of the status quo.

The people of Iraq, even the Sunnis, will benefit from peace and stability, above and beyond the obvious plus of not having to dodge bombs and sectarian mobs. Even if the oil wealth is not split evenly across society, and even if the Shia and the Kurds come to dominate the government, the return of well-educated expatriates and risk-averse investment will almost certainly turn Baghdad into the region's preeminent city. After Cairo there is no other comparable Arab metropolis, and Najaf and Karbala make eastern Iraq the religious and theological hub of the Shia community. A democratic Iraq would probably attract the dissidents from the other Arab states, creating in Baghdad an oasis of free thought similar to Ras Beirut pre-1975. Thus it is all but assured that a stable, peaceful Iraq would have superb economic prospects.

Fears of an American beachhead in the Muslim Middle East are self-evidently nonsense,. A democratic Iraq need not be an American client state to act upon our interests; political stability and domestic tranquility (and the corresponding security of the Iraqi oil supply) accomplish virtually everything we would desire from the country.

What, then, is the problem? The best interests of the Iraqi people differ from those of the Arab elite. For a number of reasons, political instability in Iraq is much more beneficial than is tranquility for the temporal and religious rulers of the Muslim Middle East. America (the Crusader/Zionist alliance, in Bin Laden's verbiage) is a much better bogeyman with thousands of her soldiers on the ground in Iraq than she is several thousand miles away. Iraq also serves as a release valve for angry jihadists, the Afghan Arabs (rather the successor generation) that so threaten the monarchies and emirates of the Arab world.

Additionally, Shia and Kurd ascendancy poses significant problems for those who rule over minorities long accustomed to marginalization. A decentralized Iraqi state will foster a semi-autonomous Kurdistan both a haven for and beacon to Turkish and Iranian Kurds. The Shia mullahocracy in Iran was unsettling; indeed it helped awaken the long marginalized Lebanese Shia. Nonetheless, the state's Persian identity rendered it sufficiently alien to limit its effect. A empowered Shia majority in Iraq lacks that ethnic and cultural distance. This is especially worrying for Wahhabists who decry the Shia as idolators and apostates.

Though Iran would seem to desire stability for its Shia brethren in Iraq, they realize that this could be the death knell of their own hold on power. Khomeini's conception of the velayat-e-faqih is at odds with most Shia jurisprudence. A politically quietist approach such as that advocated by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani would be uniquely unsettling for the Islamic Republic. Additionally, the clerical schools at Qom and Mashad have anchored the regime's claim to be the center of the Shia world; an emerging alternative at the pilgrimage site of Najaf would instantly rival Qom.

Thus the Iraq of today exists as a violent, lawless cautionary tale, fostered by the dollars and public pronouncements of political and clerical elites throughout the region. It serves as a cold shower for those who consider democracy or even the United States Marine Corps an upgrade over the status quo. It is foment for the conspiracy theories so central to the stultification of Arab political consciousness. This cynicism plays on ancient sectarian bigotry to make the case for the perpetuation of monarchical rule and clerical domination of the educational and religious lives of subject populations and the consequent perpetuation of tyranny and ignorance. In sacrificing the wellbeing of millions to preserve their hold on power, the Arab elite are erecting a new Palestine in Iraq.

2006-07-13T08:46:00.000-07:00

A Voice of Dissent

Allow me to state from the outset that my support for Israel is all but unconditional. I am awed by what the Israelis have wrought from a dusty, misbegotten corner of the Earth and I believe that both as democrats and as foes of Islamic militancy we have common cause. I believe, however, that their attack on Lebanon will effect no end to this violence; it will outrage the Arab world and will probably imperil the independence of Beirut in the process. This is too great a price to bear for a token gesture that will not tackle the 'root causes' of Hezbollah terror, Damascus and Tehran.

The Cedar Revolution has not succeeded in removing all the vestiges of foreign influence in Lebanon, but it has helped Beirut emerge from the shadow of Damascus to birth the freest majority-Muslim state in the region. A people long held hostage to a proxy conflict between stronger states seemed to have finally turned the corner. Problems certainly remain. Syrian influence persists, particularly among the Hezbollah organization they fund, and Beirut's influence in the Bekaa and the southern Jabal Amil is limited. Armed forces appointments are still hostage to the need for sectarian proportionality and thus can play a limited role in providing internal security. It is not that Beirut does not want to disarm Hezbollah, it is that it cannot. The fact that Hezbollah holds seats in parliament is incidental; they are a minority party that sits only because the Sunnis, Druze and Maronites cannot sever ties with their most populous demographic group.

Enter Israel. With Iran's nuclear program about to come before the Security Council, one need not be a cynic to suggest that Hezbollah's cross-border raid came at the behest of its patrons in Tehran. There is certainly precedent for this, namely the practice in the 1980's of kidnapping Westerners to ratchet up the pressure on Washington. This banks on the inevitability of a devastating Israeli response; in this case they hope the spectre of the Jewish State thrashing about like an angry giant may be enough to convince the Arab world (and the European left) that the danger of an Iranian bomb is smaller than that posed by an Israel with no Muslim counterweight.

The problem is that Olmert and his American allies know full well that Beirut does not control, and cannot rein in, Hezbollah. Furthermore, they know that a sustained Israeli presence in Southern Lebanon will all but ensure Syrian and probably Iranian infiltration, thus endangering Lebanese independence and reducing her people once more to cannon fodder for a proxy war. If they succeed in destroying Lebanon's economy, they will but widen the appeal of Hezbollah as the organization, backed by the suddenly bountiful petrodollars of the Iranians, is the sole provisioner of social services for much of the Shia population. Israel and the Bush Administration endorse this because they do not want Israel to be seen as doing nothing. 'Doing something' cannot be a substitute for doing the right thing. In my estimation, it would be better to take little or no action than to take action that risks the freedom of a third party state while doing nothing to address the root causes of this phenomenon.

The sinister hands behind Hezbollah and to a lesser extent Hamas are Damascus and Tehran. In the wake of crushing defeats on the field of battle, Syria has come to accept that the only way in which it can strike Israel without retaliation is to do so through terrorist organizations. Neither Damascus nor Tehran has ever faced meaningful consequences for its support of Hezbollah because to Israel it is less costly in the short term to either accept the casualties or attack the weak governmental organizations responsible for territorial security in the lands from whence the bombers came.

I am not suggesting that Israel needs to march on Damascus or start lobbing missiles at Tehran. Rather I am saying that holding accountable those who evidently lack the ability (though admittedly the Palestinians also lack the desire) to prevent such attacks while allowing their instigators to remain free ensures that they will continue. If Israel lacks the will to move against the Syrians or the Iranians, it should take smaller measures such as striking militant leaders from above or raiding to free its soldiers rather than a blockade or a full-scale invasion. The solutions they opted for instead have the unique distinction of being powerful enough to outrage the Arab world and the European left while weak enough to prevent a real resolution to foreign-funded terror. Israel either needs to accept casualties as the inevitable consequence of its precarious position and thus placate the Arab world (which should go a long way toward facilitating relative unity in the face of the Iranian threat) or it needs to move against those who genuinely threaten it, consequences be damned. Woeful half-measures offer the drawbacks of both and the benefits of neither.

2006-07-08T15:38:00.000-07:00

Deb Frisch and the Demise of Collegiality

A member in good standing of the Angry Left, Deb Frisch, managed to distinguish herself with a lengthy pattern of harrassment directed at blogger Jeff Goldstein, of the popular site Protein Wisdom. Rather than confining her verbal rapier to attacks on Goldstein, she opined that the death of Goldstein's young son (whether he was 'shot' or 'Jon-Benet'ed) would mean nothing to her, accused him of playing the 'Jew card' and, when confronted with the possibility of legal action, told Goldstein to 'bring it on.' These insults, while despicable, would have merited scant attention had not their author been an adjunct professor of Psychology at the University of Arizona. In response to the outcry over her statements, Dr. Frisch issued an 'apology' conspicuously free of contrition that characterized the apparent wish that Goldstein's son be raped and murdered as 'over the line of nastiness.' Depending on which line you read, she resigned or lost her job. She will skip back to Eugene, Oregon with a martyrdom story to share with the ideologically sympathetic.

This story seems to me symptomatic of a larger problem. Several decades ago, even centuries ago, college faculties, indeed the intelligentsia as a whole, were hotbeds of intellectual discourse. Professors and other luminaries across national borders and oceans corresponded on the philosophical and scientific questions of the day. Even in the early Twentieth Century, the stodgy professoriate hired Marxists so long as their credentials were in order. It is difficult to imagine an avowed Burkean or a disciple of Friedman being so well received in the faculty lounges across the country these days. While there are some disciplines and faculty lounges where constructive discourse perseveres, I would posit that the reason Dr. Frisch was so angry is that her academic experience, and her online echo chamber, exposes her to little or no difference of opinion. She expressed via email the sort of rage and despicable humor that rarely seeps beyond the closed doors of faculty lounges and other bastions of liberal insularity.

It is a function of the world in which we live that much of the intellectual left has retreated into an armed camp, a self-policing entity as pitiless in treating heretics and apostates (witness the Kossacks' treatment of The New Republic for emphasis) as in assailing the ideologically unenlightened (Protein Wisdom has been shut down for some time now, presumably at the behest of some intrepid lefty IT nerds). This is not to suggest that the intellectual right cannot be guilty of insularity, only that Frisch represents that unhappy wedding of academic and internet echo chambers. Thus a professor who should be helping her students to understanding all points of view is ruthless and borderline criminal in taking aim at people with whom she disagrees. Whither collegiality...

2006-07-06T08:36:00.001-07:00

The White Man's Burden
William Easterly Takes Aim At Development Aid

I just finished William Easterly's castigation of the Western world for the failures of developmental aid programs. Easterley, an economist, rightly savages these programs for their bumbling inefficiency, their pitiful results, and the mushrooming bureaucracy that inevitably accompanies such efforts. He breaks down the numbers that suggest at minimum correlation and probable causation between large-scale development aid and sluggish or nonexistent economic growth. He points out that aid is skewered toward the 'sexy' programs that get First World politicians reelected, eg building new roads and giving antiretroviral drugs to AIDS patients, to the detriment of much more cost-effective solutions like maintaining the equipment and infrastructure from past development projects and preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS. He also points out that many of the most successful initiatives in advancing education and fighting poverty have been partly or completely initiated not by the donor countries but by people from the recipient countries; indeed some of the most successful have been unable to find donors willing to fund expansion.

I agree with Easterly's larger conclusions. He rightly asserts that all the benefit concerts in the world will be for naught if the aid programs they fund are ineffectual or even counterproductive. He is right to emphasize accountability for success among programs and to emphasize pragmatism over sweeping goals that have failed miserably in the past and are almost certain to do so in the future. I agree as well that an emphasis on loans over grants is sowing the seeds of future problems, specifically debt crises and the resulting discord that undermines any goodwill generated by the original gesture.

And yet Easterly's work was itself overly ambitious, overstretching itself in a manner not dissimilar to the aid programs he lampoons. He tried to fit a template of Western incompetence on each and every interaction between the First and the Third Worlds, from Iraq to the Argentinian debt crisis, and attempted to depart from his training as an economist to dabble in history. His creative historiography begets a paradox whereby the West seems to be at fault for much that has gone wrong, be it through imperialism, anti-communism, or decolonization, but the solutions for fixing the problems in the developing countries must come from within. He may be right on the latter count, but the accuracy of the former is dubious at best.

Its flaws notwithstanding, The White Man's Burden is an important cold shower for those imbued with the spirit of Bono and Jeffrey Sachs, those who think that global prosperity or even just The End of Poverty (to purloin the title of the 2005 Sachs book on the subject) is one more Big Push away. It should be required reading for those who sit in cushy chairs on 19th Street in DC or overlooking the East River in Manhattan doling out largesse to peoples they cannot bring themselves to visit, much less comprehend. It's assault on Good Intentions as Foreign Policy, or worse yet the portention of such for electoral gain, is impeccably timed and, if heeded, may save the Third World and the First from another round of wasted billions, donor-funded Swiss chalets for tin-pot dictators, and massive disappointment.

2006-06-26T13:33:00.000-07:00

The Quest for the Vital Center

The title of this post is culled from an Arthur Schlesinger book of the same name, published in the midst of the postwar liberal identity crisis. In The Good Fight, Peter Beinart attempts to redefine post-9/11 liberalism in much the same fashion. Beinart, editor of the leftish New Republic, has long advocated a liberal internationalism of the sort practiced by George Kennan and George Marshall during the early Cold War and Scoop Jackson and Pat Moynihan at its end. In his book, he spells out a prescription for a liberal order that comprehends the threat posed by terrorism and the necessity of confrontation. His criticisms of the Bush Administration are myriad, but embedded within them is a shared sense of purpose that has been sorely lacking among leftist politicians and pundits in this country.

Beinart lays out a vision of an America that is militarily strong and assertive when necessary but distinguished as well for its generosity and restraint. He advocates foreign aid as a palliative in the Islamic World, by no means a panacea but a method of countering the prevailing winds of poverty and authoritarianism in the region. He advocates an embrace of multilateralism but acknowledges the failures of the United Nations; thus he calls for a greater role for multilateral alliances such as NATO and for NGOs.

To buttress his case Beinart undertakes a decades-long survey of American liberalism, focusing in particular on the critical elections of 1948, 1968 and 1972 while implying that the Democrats are in the midst of a similar crisis of confidence. Rather than give in to the temptation to say as Henry Wallace and Jimmy Carter did that America must be morally pure to act (or the conservative implication that America IS essentially pure), Beinart argues that we are imperfect but cannot fall into the relativistic trap of believing that our impurity should prevent action. In so doing he rejects the 'anti-imperialist' argument that sees the American plutocratic and economic establishments as the ultimate evil, one which need be confronted before that of Osama bin Laden and his progeny.

I agree with Beinart in spirit on many points. While his advocacy of a Marshall Plan for the Middle East seems to ignore the reality that America aided not in the development of Western Europe's industrial and economic capacities but in their REconstruction, he is right to say that foreign aid is public relations on the cheap, as in Indonesia after the tsunami. I think him naive not to realize the difference between disaster relief in Indonesia and Pakistan and developmental assistance to a region many of whose countries are awash with money, but the wider conclusion is a sage one. Similarly, I believe he is somewhat knavish to hold the examples of Kosovo or Somalia as any sort of standard for nation-building, but in emphasizing the need for democratization as a process and a practice rather than merely as an ideology he is not nearly so naive as some of the lesser neo-con minds who believed that Iraqi democracy would effortlessly construct (and fund) itself.

Beinart is right to argue, as Fukuyama does, that sometimes restraint can go as far in advancing American goals as precipitous action. Unilateralism can alienate potential or even longstanding allies, and while sometimes it is necessary the burden should be that much higher when the resolve of the international community is lacking. For instance, Iranian development of nuclear weapons may ultimately necessitate military action, but in giving the appearance of restraint Bush has helped to rejuvenate his ties with his European allies and may ultimately gain acquiescence in if not sanction for the use of force.

There were other aspects to Beinart's work that were problematic. His Cold War narrative seemed to suggest that the liberal hawks and the conservative hawks had contradictory visions of Cold War success when they could better be described as complimentary. He made the traditional leftish paeans to economic equality and progressive taxation, though any devotees of Scoop Jackson will remember that the 'Senator from Boeing' never lost faith in the New Deal.

A slightly more complicated issue for Beinart is his implication that a conservative emphasis on moral clarity excludes any attempt to tackle 'root causes.' I would argue that while it is imperative that a response to a terrorist attack or a hostage-taking appear to reject the terrorists' demands out of hand lest copycats be bred, the root causes are often tackled down the line. For instance, George Bush could never have evacuated the Arabian peninsula in October 2001, but he has quietly drawn down troops in 'the Land of the Two Holy Places' in the years that followed. To declare war on Arab poverty and autocracy would be to grant moral legitimacy to the hijackers, but clearly the invasion of Iraq was aimed at effecting political and economic liberalization. Thus it seems fair to say that for many conservatives there must exist sufficient lag time between the event and an exploration of its underlying causes, lest the perpetrators seem to receive moral reprieve, even moral sanction.

On the aggregate, however, the book was a clarion call for a shared sense of purpose. I believe George Will erred in calling Beinart's book a refutation of Bush's foreign policy; rather I believe that the vision of The Good Fight is complimentary. Clearly the liberal internationalism advanced by Beinart will depart frequently from a Republican foreign policy that still draws heavily on the tenets of neoconservatism, but tactical disagreements pale in comparison to the importance of consensus on the nature and the magnitude of the threat of jihadism. A battle over Beinart's vision of a strong, self-confident liberal internationalism seems to be playing out in Joe Lieberman's primary battle, where the incumbent Senator faces a primary challenge from an opponent whose position would fall into the author's characterization of a liberal anti-imperialist. If Beinart can precipitate a shift in the orientation of self-described liberals, perhaps future votes on military and diplomatic action will be 80-20 and 350-150 instead of 55-45 and 260-240. The parties can debate the best means to confront the evil of jihadism rather than the virtue and necessity of confronting it at all.

2006-06-24T13:20:00.000-07:00

Two Faces of Islam

I apologize for my laziness in tending to my ongoing book review. I was stuck in the 600-page quagmire that is Caroline Finkel's Osman's Dream, a lengthy and very dry book about the Ottoman Empire. The subject is important but not terribly bloggable, so I was waiting until I concluded Stephen Schwartz's Two Faces of Islam to put in my next installment.

I was rather unimpressed by the book. The author's criticisms of Wahhabism bordered on the irrational. I do not mean to imply that I think Wahhabism to be benign; far from it. A case can be made that Wahhabism is the preponderate threat eminating from the Islamic world, and certainly the oil-fueled expansion of Saudi-funded madrassas is one of the biggest sources of the growth of extremism. I was instead resentful of Schwartz's attempt to exonerate virtually the whole of Islam for the sins of extremism.

I believe that there is a strain within Islam as a whole that has contributed to the growth of fundamentalism. Whether one wishes to point to the lack of a delineation between the spiritual or the temporal, the abundance of verses in which the Quran chides believers against 'turning the other cheek,' or merely the peculiarities of Islamic history, it hardly seems bigoted to posit that perhaps it is Islam itself rather than merely bastardized interpretations of it that facilitates what the world is dealing with toay. This is not to say that mainstream Islamic sects, be they Sunni, Shia, or Sufi, are averse to peace; far from it. It is instead to point out that extremism and anti-Western animus seem to have evolved in a number of distinct regions in which al-Wahhab hardly seems a fitting scapegoat. To ignore them in the pursuit of simplistic explanations flies in the face of my ideological and historiographical leanings.

Most galling is Schwartz's treatment of Iran, the world's largest state-sponsor of terrorism, as a benign entity. Khomeini comes across as a true Muslim, not a mediocre Shia scholar whose vision of velayat-e-faqih is diametrically opposed to a millennia of Shia teaching. Hezbollah's reign of terror, in Lebanon and elsewhere, merits a scant few lines. Iranian attempts to topple the regimes in Bahrain and Lebanon can properly be described as imperialism, a term he uses in a cavalier fashion to describe Wahhabi proselytizing. Shia Iran has less of a constituency for amalgamation than do its Sunni counterparts, but its efforts are much more overt.

Schwartz uses Wahhabism and Saudi rule over the Arabian peninsula interchangeably. I agree that the two are closely intertwined, but the monarchy has been a staunch ally and has long maintained a low price for oil, thus deserving a measure of credit for our quarter-century of economic growth. This is not to say that our current relationship with Saudi Arabia is tenable anymore. The Saudis have played a prominent role in fomenting extremism, consciously or otherwise. In the age of large-scale terror this is unacceptable, and the burden is on the Saudis to demonstrate that they are taking steps to prevent the use of Saudi soil or Saudi petrodollars in perpetrating such crimes.

That said, Schwartz's perspective and his criticisms are much to narrow. It is all well and good to spotlight the rich cultural and theological diversity of Islam. It is another thing entirely to fawn over all measure of hatemongers and anti-Americans and save the whole of your animus for a regime that, while imperfect, has proved one of our staunchest economic allies for decades. An appreciation for nuance and context would seem to be a much safer bet.

2006-06-23T09:07:00.000-07:00

Journalists Take Sides

I will say again, I am not particularly enthusiastic about the media bias crusade. In general terms it contributes to the lamentable phenomenon of conservative victimology whereby right-leaners believe themselves oppressed by the domestic 'axis of evil;' the mainstream media, the Ivory Tower, and the civil service. I believe the media tends to be biased in favor of the left, but I believe the more serious problem tends to be sensationalism, both for the sake of money and for the glory of 'scooping' a big story.

The decision of the NYT and the LAT to run the story of banking investigations mixes a little of all three. In pursuit of self-aggrandizement and in subservience to an ideology that considers the journalist a world citizen, if anything held to a higher standard of sensitivity and restraint in treating other cultures than in treating one's native culture, journalists and editors from the 'Paper of Record' willfully undermined American security in printing classified information. Whether this might have clashed with the 'spirit' of civil liberties even the journalists concede that it did not violate American law. Thus the papers have proclaimed themselves, not the executive and legislative leaders charged with the responsibility, arbiters of what classified information the American populace is and is not entitled to see.

It is almost certain that the program will be rendered ineffective by its airing. It will help return the financing of terrorism to the shadowy world of paperless transactions and increase the burden for our intelligence services considerably. An ostensibly successful program has been 'outed' by criminal leakers and law-breaking journalists and editors who are unlikely to face the jail time they deserve for knowingly violating the penal code.

Were the press uniformly disinterested I would be angry but not unreasonably so. What is most appalling is that their outrage is limited to misdeeds allegedly perpetrated by our government and service personnel. They were happy to publish in detail what happened to a disabled Iraqi allegedly killed by Marines but refuse to publish details about what happened to the two captured soldiers before and after their deaths. This from the same outlets that yanked 9/11 images off television sets along with pictures of cheering crowds in the Arab World within days of the terrorist attacks.

The message embodied in these publishing decisions is that the American media has a duty to air any and all information about government or military 'misdeeds' (employing of course their own subjective definition) regardless of whether it constitutes a risk to life or to the efficacy of counter and anti-terrorism measures. The corollary to this is that the American media must display inordinate sensitivity to the cultural peculiarities of Muslims and other groups lest their coverage incite protest from CAIR and anger among Americans.

The solution to this irresponsibility is prosecution. Punish the leakers of classified information to the fullest extent of the law, and ensure that journalists and editors who encourage and abet these betrayals end up in the same cell. Do so publicly and allow the American people to see the priorities of the journalistic establishment in bold relief.

2006-06-21T06:44:00.000-07:00

The Case of North Korea

North Korea's latest round of saber-rattling has produced a predictable amount of soul-searching in Washington and among the punditry. Thankfully very few are arguing for any measure of aggressive military response, though some knaves are whining that by our inaction we are affording North Korea the same 'double standard' that allowed us to recognize India as a nuclear power and yet menace Iran for aspiring to join the nuclear club. This is a vexing problem and I can envision no policy wonk or statesman running into the room with a deus ex machina. My solution is simple, but it is evidently imperfect.

I propose we do nothing. My definition of 'nothing' is not particularly absolutist. We could levy support for sanctions or even a blockade, but these are unlikely to be particularly effectual for a starving and insular country. We could (and certainly should) continue and even expand our efforts to deploy a functioning missile defense shield, preferably one that can extend that protection to our allies. We ought to continue to work with the South Koreans to limit as much as possible the death and destruction caused by a North Korean attack. In the short term we might even attempt to shoot down the test missile, though failure would be an embarrassment of global proportions. But on the aggregate, nothing seems to be the best course of action.

Military attack should remain on the table but only as an infinitesimally small possibility. Even if North Korea lacks the ability to employ its nuclear devices its conventional munitions are substantial and could effect wide swaths of destruction across South Korea, Japan, perhaps even the Western United States. They would race to occupy as much of the Korean peninsula as possible before we could deploy troops to dislodge them, almost certainly at great cost. The best case scenario cost estimate of a nuclear-tipped first strike would be hundreds of thousands of dead North Koreans and decades of international credibility. A conventional decapitation strike gambles the lives of those South Koreans and Japanese on extremely long odds (both that such a strike kills Kim Jong Il and that no viable contingency plans exist).

The arguments for a limited strike to disable either the nuclear program or the long-range missile capability (akin to that suggested by Newt Gingrich) are appealing at face but they too fall apart under scrutiny. This abides by the principle (more widely advanced in regard to Iran) that a surgical strike is unlikely to stimulate a cataclysmic response. This may be the case, but Kim Jong Il is unlikely to be satiated with a diplomatic protest; even a measured response would be devastating. Instead of aiming at the South, North Korea could lob missiles at Japan, which has considerable air defense assets but virtually no retaliatory capability. The United States and the world would have to decide on escalation into a full-scale shooting war. The crux of this is that the danger is the greatest not for our population but for our allies in South Korea and Japan. It is one thing to risk the lives of our soldiers and even our civilians on the decisions of our government and foreign policy establishment; it is another matter entirely to risk the lives of millions of citizens of other countries by acting unilaterally.

Since Munich circa 1938 did not dispel faith in the power of appeasement, that dynamic duo of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton gave it another try in 1994. In that we are having this debate in 2006 it seems safe to say that appeasement failed then too. Offering substantive carrots will not satiate Kim Jong Il, it will but reinforce his faith in the efficacy of saber-rattling (and provide a powerful example of Ahmadinejad, Chavez and other would-be extortionists).

This is not to say that 'nothing' does not have negative consequences. North Korea will use the time to attempt to develop delivery systems for its nuclear munitions and will work to develop long-range missile capacity such that the whole of the United States could be within range. The country will probably continue to traffic in weapons, and we would be well-advised to act to limit that as much as possible. But unlike Iran, North Korea has already reached a point such that the cost of forcible disarmament is simply too great to bear. North Korea also has a disincentive to action; the regime can wield the sword (nuclear and conventional) but the moment they actually employ it they sow the seeds of their own imminent demise. Though I would not infer rationality from Kim Jong Il there is no messianic Shia eschatology guaranteeing him a blissful eternity should he push the button.

Time is the only weapon that can work against North Korea. Kim Jong Il will die, whether at the hands of another man or simply of old age. China and other nations will eventually cease to support North Korea financially. The strains of being a bedrock of absolutist repression in a rapidly liberalizing world will ultimately become too great to bear. Let us neither aid in the regime's longevity nor allow it to take down millions while in its death throes.

2006-06-19T08:29:00.000-07:00

Elitism and the Response to Immigration

Allow me first to declare an interest. I am an elitist. I am not an elitist in that I sneer at the stupidity and pliability of the masses; indeed I believe that the common man understands himself and his needs far better than do his self-proclaimed champions. I am an elitist in the sense that I believe that societies tend to progress and regress economically and intellectually based on the efforts of an elite, in a historic context an aristocratic elite and in an American context a meritocratic (occasionally plutocratic) elite.

Over the past several years and particularly the last few months, proponents of immigration (and, more specifically, apologists for illegal immigration) have raised the grim standard of racism to decry politicians and pundits who advocate stringent controls on legal immigration and those who argue for a strident response to illegal immigration. United in this crusade against bigotry are the sneering editorialists at the WSJ and the NYT, unlikely allies on most issues but in lock-step on this one. Representing the anti-racists of the left and the business interests of the right, they conspire to define all who disagree as nativists, xenophobes, etc etc.

The racism charge is failing. The attempt by mainstream media outlets to refuse to distinguish between legal and illegal immigration when talking about the subject is similarly flagging. They might have to look to find them, but people see poll numbers indicating that large majorities of the population support much more strident controls on illegal immigration. The fallback position is to raise the spectre of populism to decry those who oppose amnesty and other measures aimed at confronting illegal immigration.

Reality is quite different. Proponents of concilliation for illegal immigrants purposely ignore a number of facts that the practice raises. First, it is self-evident that having ten to twelve million people living within our borders of whom the government has little information poses at least some danger to our security, though reasonable people can disagree as to the magnitude of that threat. Second, the contribution of illegal immigrants to the economy is atleast partially if not entirely mitigated by the burden they place on emergency rooms, police, and other publicly funded social services; again, reasonable people can disagree as to the degree of this mitigation. Third, America in principle declines to negotiate with terrorists because it would encourage copycats; is not the legitimization of illicit behavior not a tacit encouragement to continue such behavior? Fourth, there are millions of people waiting to get into this country legally, many of whom bear skills in far greater demand than the janitor or the landscaper; it is hardly racist to point out that 'amnesty' places a lawbreaker ahead of these aspirant immigrants, many from societies more impoverished and more repressive than Mexico. Fifth, the strain of assimilating millions upon millions of people of a different linguistic, racial and cultural heritage into our society is a considerable one.

Media and political elites in America (and Europe for that matter) have helped to lock in these taboos. That the WSJ is so wedded to globalization lock stock and barrel as to ignore pertinent ECONOMIC issues raised by illegal immigration is dereliction of duty from the nation's foremost financial journal. That the Democratic Party and its Labor allies are so wedded to multiculturalism as to table discussion of the ramifications of illegal immigration on its minority and blue collar constituents is similarly unfortunate. The fact is that these questions NEED to be answered. We need to know what the economic costs and benefits of amnesty and other concilliatory measures will be. We need to debate the sagacity of giving official sanction to unlawful behavior. We need to have a national conversation as to what it means to be an American and how mass movements of linguistically distinct immigrants may impact this identity. We also need to revisit the Gospel according to Ted (Kennedy) that decrees that immigration is a form of welfare for the Third World and that we as a nation have no right to request that our immigration policies be tailored to meet our economic and security needs.

Make no mistake about it, to the extent that populism thrives in the Old World and the New it is the result of political, academic and media elites refusing to tackle an issue that is of crucial importance to millions of their constituents. The percentage of the French or Austrian electorates that wants to associate with quasi-fascists like Le Pen and Haider is minimal, but the percentage of their respective electorates that is deeply concerned about influx of predominately Muslim immigrants from North Africa and the Middle East is considerable. These repugnant individuals, and their counterparts on the other side of the Atlantic, fill a vacuum produced by the active attempt of their mainstream opposite numbers to quash the issue.

Individuals may entertain prejudices and cling to ignorant beliefs, but taken as a whole the people tend to be far more intelligent than they are given credit for being. To ignore their concerns in the short term can be politically expedient, but to do so in the long term can be political suicide. These politicians need to take the opportunity to argue for globalization, for amnesty, and for other measures they deem necessary; far better they defend them publicly than they deceive their constituents with euphemistic rhetoric.

To scoff at timely and legitimate questions with which America needs to grapple in the name of multiculturalism on the one hand and slavish adherence to a bastardized free market fundamentalism on the other is to endanger the virtue of tolerance and the belief in economic liberalization at home and abroad, the bedrock principles that underly the NYT editorialists and their WSJ counterparts, respectively. Lou Dobbs and Pat Buchanan are repulsive men, but the more elected leaders and consumer-driven media outlets spurn their constituents the larger the followings of these men will become.

The elitists of which I speak are endangering their very relevance. I can see Tom Tancredo riding into political leadership in Washington astride his trusty steed, brandishing a spitoon and dripping tobacco juice on the White House carpet. Unless the nation's self-appointed leadership discerns how out of touch it has become, we may get the chance to see the disciples of Jackson descend on the Nation's Capitol once more.

2006-06-15T12:23:00.000-07:00

Democrats and the Online Left

A few days removed from the tin foil hats and hyperbole of the YearlyKos convention, commentators write and left are tripping over each other to esteem the importance of the left-wing blogosphere. To Byron York, the watchword of this much-publicized event is scrutiny, the steely glare of the public eye that is supposed to bring these barking dogs to heel. To Dean Bartlett, writing in the Weekly Standard, the blogs have hit their peak readership and are beginning a decline that will soon sweep away all delusions of efficacy. I think that both, to a degree, misapprehend the meaning of these websites.

Serious Democratic politicians understand that while the blogosphere can turn a primary also-ran into a name (see Howard Dean for reference) they can indeed be a liability in the general election. The man who really put his finger on it was Democratic strategist Steve Elmendorf, who said in January, "The bloggers and online donors represent an important resource for the party, but they are not representative of the majority you need to win elections. The trick will be to harness their energy and their money without looking like you are a captive of the activist left." An angry blogger at Daily Kos rebutted, "Not one dime, ladies and gentlemen, to anything connected with Steve Elmendorf. Anyone stupid enough to actually give a quote like that deserves to have every single one of his funding sources dry up." Sure, the lesser minds among the blogosphere and the denizens of the comment boxes were upset at the blasphemy but I would posit that the more intelligent among them were upset because they knew it was completely and utterly true.

People who are animated enough to publish blogs or to troll them religiously even in slow news months are the people that turn up to wave signs, knock on doors, and camp on gym floors to campaign. They also get people excited (or scared) enough to open their wallets and give, give, give. The blogs have become the new grassroots, taking the place of dwindling union rolls and other aspects of civil society in providing the energy that can give people like Howard Dean publicity that would have eluded them in years past. Who will be the Dean of 2008? Feingold? Gore? Mark Warner governed as a moderate and likely will run as one, but his visit to the YearlyKos suggests that he believes that a candidate spurns the online left at his peril.

Hillary Clinton's four year long Presidential run has adopted the opposite strategy. She is clearly preparing for the general election and presupposing that the primaries will take care of themselves. Proving that hell hath no fury like a whining liberal scorned, the left descended on a Clinton speaking appearance and booed loudly enough to make the news. Clinton knows that she has opened herself up to a challenge from the left, but she is gambling that her name recognition and her own fundraising talent will be enough to trump anything that the online left can manage. Indeed the primaries will be an extremely important test of the efficacy of Kos, MoveOn.org, and their ilk; defeat for the Clinton juggernaut would vindicate to a large extent those who brushed off Elmendorf with a sneer and a threat.

The difference between Warner and Clinton is that one is running for the nomination while the other is running for the election. Warner may end up being too moderate for the online left to suffer, but no doubt he will be preferred to Clinton for the token gesture of humoring them. The problem this creates is that the cozier he is to Kos, to Atrios, and to others like them the greater the likelihood that he will become answerable for every epithet, every four-letter word, every tinfoil hat idea tossed around on their pages. I would not doubt the RNC will probably retain people solely for the purpose of finding these nuggets that look oh-so-good on posters and television commercials Warner, or Feingold, or anyone else who plays ball with the online left may, as Byron York speculated, ultimately be forced to make a choice between repudiating the people who brought them to national prominence and alienating the wider electorate.

Thus as Elmendorf realized but made the mistake of saying aloud, the online left is both a boon and a boondoggle. Its role is significant because regardless of whether its readership is ten million or twenty, it includes the activists and fundraisers that any darkhorse (and perhaps any mainstream candidate) needs to ascend to national prominence. Such an appreciation must be tempered, however, by the fact that the views held dear by this constituency are vociferously repudiated by moderate Democrats and independents necessary for victory in a general election. Contrary to what Bartlett said I doubt it ebbs, but I think it may take multiple election cycles for candidates to strike the appropriate balance between coopting the online left and keeping an acceptable distance from it.

2006-06-12T12:48:00.000-07:00

Pensees

1. I'm not huge for the media bias crusade and am a bit skeptical that every journalist who graduates from Columbia is a Gore-touting Naderite. Nor am I particularly moved when this or that right wing pundit maintains that Democrats are rooting for our defeat. But the coverage of the death of Zarqawi is starting to make a liar of me. Virtually every mainstream media outlet with a left-leaning editorial position has emphasized in its news how little the death of this man matters in the grand scheme of things. A news piece in the WaPo actually referred to the use of Zarqawi in US 'propaganda.' Prominent Democratic pols like Murtha, Harman and Kerry who last week were arguing that our failure to get this man underscored the need for our departure are now saying that his killing underscores the need for our departure. The cynic in me cannot but think that these individuals are less concerned with the success of this venture or the ramifications of its outcome for our foreign policy than in effecting withdrawal with the greatest possible political benefit for the Democratic Party.

2. The death of Zarqawi is a substantial victory for our effort in Iraq. I am not suggesting that it is a colossal tactical victory that will cripple the insurgents' activities, though I would imagine it will limit the attacks that had his personal involvement. I argue instead that it is a strategic victory, a morale booster for our soldiers and for the people of Iraq as well as a warning to insurgents and terrorists who perceived every breath that Zarqawi took as a sign of US and Iraqi impotence. There is also evidence that he was expanding operations into Europe. He also played a significant personal role in fomenting sectarian conflict, and while it may not stop such violence in the short term it reduces the likelihood that another Karbala or even Samarra attack (the latter has not been definitively linked to him) will take place.

3. Stop defending Ann Coulter. She is a merchant of shock value whose profile is raised every time she makes another idiotic statement. Those who defend her help line her coffers but do nothing to aid the conservative cause. Yes, the 'Jersey Girls' made wrongheaded and stupid remarks, but those have been cogently and tactfully rebutted by others on several occasions. Besides, the layperson will perceive this not as a just riposte to fringe lefties but as an unwarranted attack on 9/11 widows. Quit buying her book, quit pretending that Coulter, a millionaire several times over, is somehow a victim, and acknowledge that with all the lines of tact and decency she has transgressed over the past several years she deserves no such coddling.

2006-06-11T05:19:00.000-07:00

The Lost City

I finally decided that I was going to see the film, come hell or high water; with a nine week old in tow and a torrential downpour in the offing I had both. Still, it was worth the trip. Andy Garcia's magnum opus, twenty years in the making, has received little fanfare aside from a few doting pieces on NRO and a handful of editorials denouncing it for not showing the Cuba of the proles. I live in reputedly the most well-educated region in these United States, with as many multiplexes and indie cinemas in a five mile radius as most anywhere on the planet, and yet I could find a whopping two venues willing to carry the film. Even theaters willing to screen Thank You for Smoking wouldn't touch this one.

I was not disappointed. It shined the spotlight on a convivial pre-Castro Havana, a city of music and dance, laughter and mirth. The metaphor for this is El Tropico, the nighclub run by Garcia's character Fico, where there exists a little bit of corruption and a little bit of vice but where the greater evil, the Mafioso, is turned away. Havana is a city ruled by a despot, yes, but he an anachronism and a ridiculous figure. Garcia does not pretend that all was roses, but his movie paints a portrait of a resilient city that had survived petty tyrants. The very soul of Havana had weathered repression, corruption and vice and emerged relatively unscathed.

Into this stepped Fidel Castro and Che Guevera, ignorant nihilists willing to sweep all asunder in the name of "Revolucion." As is evident by my writings over the past two years I tend to subscribe to a view of these two men not displayed on t-shirts or mused in polite conversation on the Hollywood cocktail party circuit. As former Batista cronies of varying culpability are taken to the wall, Guevera offers only a chilling smirk. The saxophone is banned because of its tenuous connection to Belgium and thus through some warped chain of continuity to the repression in the Congo. The revolutionary underlings run their domains as petty fiefdoms, with the stability of land and property disappearing on a dialectical caprice.

The essential point that this movie makes is that pre-Castro Havana was in need of a change but that the cure was orders of magnitude worse than the disease. As in other revolutions where the extremists have succeeded, specifically Iran and Russia, they managed to coopt the legitimate desires of the people for a better life. Most poignant is the character of Fico's widowed sister-in-law, whose husband professed faith in a democracy and pluralism that Castro never would have tolerated but who became a shill for the regime because she believed she was acting in accordance with his wishes.

This movie is not perfect; the acting is occasionally subpar and some of the characters poorly written. Despite this, it could have shared its very important message with millions more had not the movie been so difficult to find. I am no conspiracist, but Yahoo could not be bothered to list it among its 'currently in theaters.' Two theaters in DC or lower MD are carrying it at present. The handful of reviews that came out reflected the reviewers' epistemologies and not the merits of the movie.

I would go so far as to say this movie received so little fanfare because it puts itself in diametrical opposition to the doting Eisenstein-esque treatment that Hollywood affords Castro et al. The Motorcycle Diaries was flatly insulting to anyone with a moral compass and a memory. Oliver Stone's new hagiography of Castro was so disgusting that even HBO wouldn't touch it. Countless Hollywood actors, from the despicable Harry Belafonte and Danny Glover to the usually sane Steven Spielberg, have flown to Havana to pay homage. This fawning and uncritical affinity for a mass murderer was precisely what Garcia's epic stood against. Despite its low box office tallies and its aforementioned flaws I believe The Lost City deserves consideration for Best Picture honors. I have little doubt that Hollywood considers race relations, gay shepherds and gender-benders to be more important than the plight of several million Cubans, but I offer my endorsement nonetheless.

2006-06-08T07:39:00.000-07:00

I got so sick of being spammed with ads for FoxNews that I switched over to Blogger comments so I can delete them. You can still comment anonymously.

2006-06-07T07:17:00.000-07:00

Disaster Looms

I was initially heartened by what I thought was Secretary of State Rice's masterful ploy. Just as Tehran made an exceptionally shrewd maneuver in offering direct talks, Rice's response brilliantly balanced the appearance of diplomacy with the establishment of conditions that Tehran would not meet. On the heels of this comes much more unsettling news; the six-nation accord on dealing with Tehran contains provisions that would allow Iran to enrich uranium on its own soil and develop a civilian nuclear capacity. The unsettling prospect is that the nations may have assembled a package that the regime can accept and save face.

There are myriad practical concerns raised by such a deal. First, this cements the long-term viability of the regime. In the meantime, a civilian nuclear capacity will furnish the Islamic Republic with hundreds of trained technicians. This represents the seminal flaw of the IAEA; it recognizes civilian nuclear technology as benign when in fact the proliferation of nuclear know-how has taken place under its auspices for decades. Even if the regime does not continue its efforts in secret, which it very likely will (bear in mind the world knew nothing of this program until dissidents revealed it in 2002 and it was powerless to prevent North Korea from going nuclear in spite of accords to the contrary), it will possess with the full blessing of the world a host of dual use technologies and the technicians to put them to good use.

Still, the overarching concern is that such an accord will undercut the determination of America and her allies to deal with the problem when it represents a front-burner threat. I am not a warmonger. I have no particular desire to see cities in ruins and morgues full of dead Iranians. But this situation presents an opportunity to deal with Iran once and for all. The Islamic Republic has suborned terrorism regionally and internationally for three decades. The danger posed by Iran to oil, to allies, and ultimately to America itself would grow exponentially were it to obtain nuclear weaponry. What assurances do we have that this will not be North Korea 1994, with the 5 + 1 Nations breathing a collective sigh of relief even as Iranian efforts to acquire the bomb are redoubled, international mischief-making continues or increases, and domestic repression is unaffected? Additionally, to view this through the paradigm of hostage negotiation, how do we prevent the next regime, be it Syria, Sudan or a similar international pariah, from using naked extortion to blackmail concessions and legitimacy from the community of nations?

If accepted, this deal would help to legitimize a regime that is almost as alien as was Saddam's, one that maintains its grip on the populace through violence and intimidation. I cannot emphasize this enough; to agree to a one-sided deal with Tehran is to give the mullahs a diplomatic victory they have not enjoyed since the hostage crisis, augmenting the international, regional and domestic stature of a regime thought to be teetering. By removing military force as atleast a possibility it would dishearten millions in the country who may not have been wishing for an invasion but saw US approbation as a limit on the potential for repression and a chance to obtain funding and assistance. Concluding a deal that provides concessions without attempting to influence the domestic (or international) behavior of the regime is to me the function equivalent of Papa Bush's postwar decision to abandon the Iraqi Shias to their fate. I would anticipate a harsh crackdown on Azeris and other anti-Regime forces in the aftermath of any accord.

There is a better way. Demand Iran cease its effort to acquire nuclear weapons and subject itself to unfettered inspection. Tie any concessions to Iran's domestic behavior and support for terrorism. Announce that any military attack will target command and control centers as well as nuclear facilities. The current leadership of the Islamic Republic cannot accept such an arrangement and retain power. Nonetheless, the reason that taxis will not pick up turbaned clerics has nothing to do with apostasy. There exists a sizable contingent within the Iranian clergy that prefers the good life to cave-hopping or finding itself on the business end of a Tomahawk Cruise Missile. I am confident they would act to muzzle Ahmadinejad and even Supreme Leader Khamenei, whose legitimacy rests not on piety or religious scholarship but on the dying whim of Ayatollah Khomenei. If they fail to act, the regime would face the consequences.

By following this course of action, the Bush Administration would support the wishes of the Iranian people presently ignored by the ruling mullahs and reinforce the belief that American foreign policy can support morality and not merely proximal economic self-interest. Such a move would contribute to our long-term security by removing once and for all the world's foremost state sponsor of terror. Lastly, it would avoid perpetuating the shameful and ineffectual precedent set in 1994 whereby concessions were extracted by a tyranny from a democracy through the tacit threat of force.

2006-06-06T11:59:00.000-07:00

The War for Muslim Minds

I finished Gilles Keppel's work, mercifully (for my wallet) a paperback. It contained nuggets of genuine wisdom amidst a survey of the current conflict between the forces of Islamism, Islamic quietism and the neoconservative push for democratization. Its historic survey of the first and the last of those phenomena was insightful and attempted to retain its objectivity, pointing out the relationship between the two but without the standard-fare attempt at moral equivalency. I would have enjoyed the book much more had it not been suffixed by an asinine and illogical conclusion that did a disservice to an otherwise excellent effort.

Keppel's survey of the roots of Islamism was brief but insightful. He discussed the theology of the fourteenth century scholar ibn Taymiyya and his resurrection by Wahhab in the nineteenth century and Qutb in the twentieth. His profile of al Banna and the Muslim Brotherhood detailed the organization's success in Egypt and the importance of its exile in Saudi Arabia. His treatment of Khomeini was soft on Iranian context but strong on Islamic context. On the aggregate he was successful in condensing an extremely complicated subject into a few dozen pages.

Keppel's take on neoconservatism was not particularly original; George Packer and Francis Fukuyama have done a better job in a similar number of pages. Still, he managed to point out how the logic of democratization runs smack dab into Islamic extremism in Iraq and throughout the Middle East. He mercifully spares the reader an in-depth treatment of the Administration's failures in Iraq save their ideological dimension, ostensibly recognizing that he has little to contribute to an issue already done to death.

A professor in Paris, Keppel seems most comfortable treating Islam and Islamism in Europe. A welcome antidote to Fallaci's alarmism, Keppel's analysis is sober but still concerned. He debates the relative successes and failures of the French approach, which recently has turned its back on quietist Muslims who embraced secularization in favor of communalists. This predates the riots of last year, so I am curious how they may or may not change his thinking. He also points out that Britain has been historically willing to allow extremists to immigrate so long as they do not advocate violence in Britain. Again, I am curious how the subway attacks of last year would influence his analysis. While he points out that marriage to non-Muslims and conversion are making native Europeans a significant source of Islamic extremism, perhaps as part of a tendency toward radicalism that in earlier decades would have been manifested itself as Marxism. Still, he is much more sedate in rating the danger that Islam poses. He argues that there exists a strong voice within the Muslim community advocating moderation and that birthrates fall short of the alarming levels that Fallaci suggests.

Keppel attempted to stay objective and eschewed the value judgments that pervade otherwise excellent treatments of the subject. Had he ended his book in Europe it would have been a solid and very readable work. Instead, he had to suffix it with a conclusion rife with nonsensical value judgments and wistful statements of principle. He led with a comparison of jihad, or holy war, and fitna, a cross between civil war and sedition within the umma. That was all well and good until he starting pining for a 'New Andalusia,' a multiethnic European model in which the pre-Reconquista Spanish model, of Muslim government administering a culturally distinct but content Christian population, is inverted. While the historical analogy is problematic on a number of levels, the viability of such a model in the midst of an avowedly secular Europe is doubtful to say the least.

The most annoying of these value judgments was his assertion that true American accommodation with the Muslim world was made impossible by the aggressive reprisals of Ariel Sharon. He seems to share Western European academia's inveterate hostility to the Jewish state, and this disdain seems to color his judgment. Since 2002 Israeli reprisals have tended to be measured and reflect the fact that security measures are diminishing the success of suicide attacks. With the security fence in place such attacks should ebb further. In spite of Hamas's election victory and anger at the direction of the fence, I have a great deal of trouble believing that throughout the Muslim world people are queuing to blow themselves up over a few feet of West Bank soil. One of two phenomena would seem to be at work here; either Keppel overrates the importance of Israel to the Muslim world or Muslim angst owes to the reality that a fence codifies a long-term division between the two states and puts the chant 'From the River to the Sea' to bed for the foreseeable future. No other changes to the status quo, no murderous rampages by Israeli troops nor mass expulsions of Arabs from Israel itself or the 'occupied territories,' have occurred and thus the newfound affinity for strapping explosives to one's chest and finding an Iraqi or American soldier would seem unrelated. Thus an irksome conclusion helped to spoil an otherwise excellent book.

2006-06-05T08:12:00.000-07:00

An Inconvenient Truth

"The conservative politics of the Bush administration forced me to have an abortion I didn't want." So says "Dana L." in a weekend editorial in the Post. By preventing the over-the-counter availability of the so-called morning after pill and, gasp, allowing doctors the freedom of conscience to decline to prescribe emergency contraceptives, George W. Bush might as well have walked the poor woman into the clinic (in downtown DC, since the Republican-mandated 24 hour waiting period exists in VA) and helped her into the stirrups. As she says to close out her mournful apologia, "to think that, all these years after Roe v. Wade became the law of the land, this is what our children have to look forward to as they approach their reproductive years."

I was not the only conservative to take offense to her attempt to blame everyone but herself for her decision to have an abortion. But I am disgusted enough to contribute my own analysis. The choice that this woman was 'compelled' to make was the direct result of a number of other decisions that she made. She and her husband decided they did not want additional children, but decided not to opt for more permanent prophyllactic measures, such as having her tubes tied or encouraging her husband to have a vasectomy. She made the decision to rely on her chosen form of birth control alone and then forgot to employ it. Unlike many of the women deciding whether or not to have an abortion, she was professionally and economically secure. She had already birthed two children, thus she had seen ultrasounds and knew very well when that fetus would have arms, legs and a heartbeat. This child was an inconvenience for her, and blaming others merely a means of assuaging her guilty conscience.

I frequently speak of this subject with female friends, and the response of many if not most is that while they could not bring themselves to have an abortion they respect the right of others to do so. That is an admirable sentiment, for our collective morality as a society is not forged by blanket assertions but by millions of individual moral choices. This woman made the decision that despite her material success and her knowledge of exactly what she was destroying that her plans and her convenience outweighed moral or ethical considerations. Hers is an attempt to reconcile her value judgment that she prefers an empty nest and early retirement to another eighteen years of child-rearing with any perceived moral obligation to the fruit of her womb.

I am not attempting to belittle the gravity of the choices that women make. All too often conservatives heap moral indignation on these individuals without affording them Christian compassion or without offering them a hand in birthing and rearing children. But this woman was not poor, she was not in an abusive relationship, and aside from her age no extraordinary risks to her health or that of the baby existed. Based on her circumstances and on her statements this woman presented a very strong case AGAINST abortion on demand. Hers is an example of the moral numbing that seems to accompany abortion, whereby women who should know better attempt to justify an inherently narcissistic decision by blaming it on others.

2006-05-31T06:28:00.000-07:00

On Pride

I recently completed Oriana Fallaci's important work The Force of Reason. The aged Italian's work is undermined by a sentiment that can generously be described as xenophobic, but bigotry is not the animating feature of the book. No, the abiding emotions are pride at the cultural and social heritage that Europe as a whole and Italy in particular have bequeathed to the ascendant generation and the fear that the insufficiency of the heirs and the sinister designs of the outsiders will together squander the cultural, social and political traditions of three millennia. Her hyperbolic and discomforting book ignites in me a single and very important question; have we buried pride?

This is not to say that we are not permitted to take pride in self; indeed if a single emotion can be said to define thirty years of psychology, sexual liberation and the evolution of marriage and parenthood from shared experiences into personal ones, it is the ascendancy of self-esteem. The pride that I speak of is the joy that one used to take in being part of a larger entity, specifically an ethnic group or a nation. This sentiment can certainly take an exclusionary tone, but its most important feature is a sense of belonging to something (a demographic group, an artistic heritage, a shared history) larger than one's self. Pride is the Italian that speaks of Cicero and Cato as though they were in his family tree, the Scot that swells with pride at the mention of William Wallace or Robert the Bruce, the Frenchman who gets misty when Jerry Lewis takes the stage...pride is a fundamentally unifying sentiment.

In this day and age, pride has come to stand for something else. To those who have spent time in the humanities departments of the Ivory Tower, the word patriotism is all too often placed in quotation marks or supplanted by jingoism, a loaded term if ever there was one. While a little girl with a flag painted on her face and a miniature Old Glory in her hand is cute, a forty-year old woman presenting a similar spectacle is, well, rednecky. A yellow ribbon on a bumper is sincere; a car bedecked with flags and paraphanalia is disconcerting.

The problem is more systematic than the delegitimization of patriotism. It is as well the historiographical, cultural and journalistic assaults on the founding 'myths' of the American Republic. It is the stipulation that Thomas Jefferson's name cannot be spoken without historically unsubstantiated references to Sally Hemings and her progeny. It is the stipulation that Manifest Destiny conjure images of the Trail of Tears, not hard-working and industrious men and women who braved incredible odds to traverse the continent.

In a European context it is the fact that the word 'colonialism' can stop a conversation just as easily as the word 'Nazi.' France is not renowned for Voltaire or Pascal but rather Algerie et Indochine. Britain remembers neither Locke nor Shakespeare but the Sepoy Mutiny, the Opium Wars and Cecil Rhodes. The land that brought the world civilization is so wracked by guilt at the manner in which it did so that it has no energy left to combat those who would destroy the fruits of its historical labors.

For the corollary to the death of pride is that is has been eradicated only among the so-called dominant cultures, white Americans and Europeans who, legend has it, earned their wealth and their privileged position by trampling on the unfortunate. Those who are permitted to take pride in their past achievements, sufficiently inflated of course, are those who were stomped asunder in the course of white ascendancy. In America, African Americans can employ rhetoric that would never pass muster if the words 'black' and 'white' were reversed. Those who question whether victimology is prudent or effective can expect to be decried as racist, the term that educated whites fear most of all. Mexicans can illegally enter a land that many claim was stolen a century and a half ago, speak Spanish and hoist the Mexican flag and those who think this problematic are decried as bigots, racists and xenophobes.

Thus the followers of Islam, whose hegemony Europe supplanted from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, can recall their past imperial grandeur in a manner that would never be tolerated of their white European counterparts, though the relationship between Muslim and dhimmi was just as exploitative and in general more brutal than anything that Cecil Rhodes or King Leopold could have conjured up (see the janissaries, the slave markets of Istanbul and the Armenian genocide for further reference). Prominent Muslims who are feted by European political and cultural elites can wax nostalgic about Andalusia and a future where the muezzin supplants the bell and the minaret the church tower in Rome and throughout Europe and nary an eyelash is batted. Indeed they can demand acceptance of an ever-increasing list of Islamic precepts, from the seemingly innocuous right to wear a chador in a driver's license photo to the acceptance of Koranic tents of divorce. Societies whose conceptions of personal freedom were once as liberating as any on Earth now routinely try and convict those who dare to question the sagacity of such policies.

Pride is a natural human emotion, in general an extremely positive one. To take pride in one's ethnic or religious heritage is to venerate something above the all-important self. A reasonable appreciation of both the positives and the negatives of a state's past is critical to emphasizing a mutual identity and a shared sense of purpose. In order to esteem and combat physical and moral dangers one must appreciate a threat to a member of a regional or demographic segment of the population (eg a threat to destroy a particular city or the demonization of a country's Jewish community) as a threat to the entire community.

Almost five years removed from 9/11 it is the country's heartland, once taken to insulting and being insulted by New Yorkers, that continues to recall the tragedy by singing about it, voting for those committed to avenging this attack and preventing the next one, and enlisting to physically do something about it. The difference between them and their urban counterparts in Boston, San Francisco, and other cities at much greater physical risk from terrorism than rural Tennessee is that they take pride in America and what it stands for, and thus a threat to one city, indeed one American, is a threat to all.

I would argue that the only hope for America and for the nations of Europe, countries that are struggling to define what citizenship means, is in a resurgence of pride. Before a state can anticipate a threat to its very identity, which Muslims undoubtedly constitute for Christian Europe and which a mass movement of tens of millions of Hispanics may or may not constitute for Anglophonic America, the state need establish what that identity is. After such an estimation, the people can then decide whether or not that identity is worth preserving. Perhaps the heirs of John Wayne and John Adams (and John Coltrane for that matter), Cicero and Cato, of Locke and Shakespeare, of Goethe and Beethoven, of Voltaire and Jerry Lewis, can see their respective countries' political, social and cultural endowments for the remarkable legacies that they are.

2006-05-30T06:28:00.000-07:00

Just Say No to Negotiation

Iran's offer of direct talks with the United States has initiated a firestorm of controversy. Lily-livers actually worried about the fate of Israel are wiping the sweat from their collective brow and saying, "our salvation is at hand." Those opposed to military action are seizing upon this to argue that the use of force is unnecessary and ought now be taken off the table. Alas, if it were true...

To be blunt, this is but a ruse, a stunt employed to increase the regime's prestige at home and abroad. If and when the United States wipes the Iranian nuclear program from the map and inadvertently kills hundreds of Iranians surrounding the strategically placed facilities, Ahmadinejad and Khamenei will appeal to the nationalistic sentiments of a very proud Iranian populace and the heartstrings of a capitulationist Europe and the image of the Great Satan will redound from the bazaars of Tehran and Mashad to the faculty lounges of Harvard and the Sorbonne. A regime that has spent decades purveying its revolution across the region and its destructive tentacles throughout the world will be a victim for the first time since 1982.

This is a win/win for Iran. The best case scenario sees them stall for enough time to provision a handful of nuclear warheads while diplomats and multilateralists dither. The worst case scenario sees Iran attacked in spite of its seeming willingness to talk. Whether Ahmadinejad or a puppeteer clergy is calling the shots, it is a mistake to think the decision-makers unintelligent. This was probably the best decision they could have made.

To evaluate in advance the efficacy of negotiation, let us ask what carrots we have to offer and what sticks we have to brandish. As Joschka Fischer argued this weekend in the WaPo, "Everything speaks in favor of playing the economic-financial and technology card vis-à-vis Iran." What the naive German either cannot or will not appreciate is that we have precious little to offer the Iranians. Money? They have tens of billions in foreign currency reserves as a result of the spike in oil prices largely of their own creation. Technology? They are one of the largest oil producers in the world, and if they funneled the capital they are using to fund their nuclear program into augmenting their refining capability or tapping their natural gas resources they could easily meet their energy needs. Their problem is neither a lack of money nor a lack of technology, it is that they choose to employ both to support international prestige rather than domestic economic growth. A light-water reactor would dramatically swell the ranks of trained nuclear technicians in the country as well.

Punitive measures are similarly lacking. An embargo on oil could easily be circumvented, be it through the Caspian or through neighbors with much to fear from a still more assertive Iran. Revelations about the Oil for Food program should have permanently undermined confidence in a multilateral sanctions regime, and in this case the state is not a militarily chastened international pariah but a militarily strong regime that already has a working relationship with a number of countries on its borders and in Europe. Punitive financial measures would have limited efficacy as Tehran has moved its aforementioned currency reserves out of the reach of the EU and the US, thus pre-empting seizure or freezing of the country's assets.

The only incentive that Iran has to give up its nuclear program is the fear of a destabilizing attack by the United States. Each paean it pays to the spirit of negotiation is another attempt to prevent decisive action and to ensure that should such a strike take place it makes the Islamic Republic domestically and internationally stronger while undermining domestic and international support for the Bush Administration. It is incumbent upon America and the West to see through the charade and act accordingly.

2006-05-28T07:27:00.000-07:00

No God But God

I concluded Reza Aslan's sometimes brilliant, sometimes woefully insufficient polemic this weekend. Aslan's central hypothesis is that the propagation of terrorism does not represent a clash of civilizations, Western and Islamic, but rather is the externally visible sign of an internal conflict, indeed an Islamic Reformation. To support this he calls upon two millenia of Arab and Islamic history. The result is an extremely insightful survey of pertinent philosophical, theological and sectarian debates that have plagued Islam since its inception.

Aslan is quite effective, unusually so for a pop social science book, in placing both the person and the teachings of Mohammed in the context of the sixth and seventh century Arab world. He details the succession of the caliphs and the adoption of the hadiths, demystifying some of the more beguiling aspects of the Muslim tradition. He is a bit sympathetic to Ali and his 'partisans,' perhaps because he is Iranian and thus presumably Shia. He also details not merely the Sunni-Shia split but the evolution of Sufism. In the midst of this his work seems solid, though my knowledge of the subject is admittedly lacking.

His work contains two seminal flaws. First, he is embued with an annoying anti-imperialist mantra that convinces him that much of the current conflict in the Muslim world today is the West's fault. His brief survey of the century or so of imperialist domination of Muslim populations is simplistic and often misleading. To say that Eisenhower and Kermit Roosevelt bear the sole responsbility for Mohammed Mossadeq's ouster ignores the context that he deems so important in the rest of his work. Similarly, it is difficult to argue that the British are responsible for sectarian strife in Iraq when their role in its governance was limited in scope and short in duration.

Second and more importantly, he is overly sympathetic to the flaws of Islam. Where he does touch on the Islamic conquest of non-Muslim regions he is utterly apologetic, but his tactic of choice tends to be ignorance. In detailing the development of Islam his story stops rather abruptly in the ninth century, but for a handful of important scholars, and picks up again just as suddenly in the nineteenth century. The interceding millenium saw frequent domination and subjugation of Christian populations by Muslim masters and dominion that lasted far longer than British administration of Muslim populations in Egypt and India. Christian attempts to convert Muslims are viewed with scorn while the far more numerous, and ostensibly more effective, attempts by Muslims to convert Christians are not even mentioned. He says of Islamic rule over non-Muslim populations that there can be no conversion by force; if so than why the imperative for expansion? If the motivation is purely economic exploitation, than his condemnation of the British for similar designs rings hollow. He wants to have his theological and anti-imperialist cake and eat it too.

On the whole though, Aslan's book was informative and a worthwhile read. His prescription for an Islamic democracy carries little explanation or supporting evidence, but the attempt to fuse Enlightenment principles of liberty and democracy with traditional Islamic virtue is a noble and necessary step. While not always sympathetic to the past and present exploits of the Western nations he makes his audience, his is a moderate voice in the Islamic realm to which we ought listen closely.

2006-05-27T06:35:00.000-07:00

Blood & Oil

Despite its ominous title, the book is a remarkable trip through a century of the Iranian upper class. The book is an autobiography as dictated to his daughter. It's principle, Manucher Farmanfarmaian, was prominent in the government of Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah. Forced to flee in the wake of the 1978-79 Revolution, he evidences implacable hostility to the Khomeinists. He treats the Shah's last years on the Peacock Throne with a wistful lament, a sadness that the monarch's mistakes facilitated the present state of affairs and squandered an opportunity to use Iran's oil wealth to make life genuinely better for its people.

The story begins in the midst of the decline of the Qajar dynasty, which coincides with the rise of Western influence in the country. The career of Manucher's father, Farman Farma, is followed by Manucher's early life and study in Birmingham, England. He demonstrates an inveterate disdain for the British, who in his estimation and lurid descriptions saw the Shah as a puppet and Iran as another colony. On that account he seems fairly accurate; Britain was utterly exploitative in her involvement with the country and the obstinance of the AIOC prevented a reasonable settlement and paved the way for Mossadeq's nationalization. The venerable statesman is portrayed as a bit of a buffoon, an internationally illiterate and frequently self-interested autocrat who used the mob to force his opponents in the majles to get in line. Nonetheless Mossadeq, a cousin of Farmanfarmaian, is described as a nationalist, misguided in the pursuit of rather noble ends.

Manucher is not an opponent of monarchy per se, indeed he seems to celebrate autocracy and order. His contention is that the Shah's exercise of power was both stupid and arrogant. He furnishes the funny story of a protest by British hippies traversing the Silk Road who demonstrated outside their own embassy for the right to camp on its lawn. He argues that the Americans helped bring down the Shah by allowing Iranian students studying in the country to protest outside the White House, thus providing the seemingly appropriate image of President Carter and the Shah brought to tears by the gas used to dispel the rioters.

While an oil executive in Iran and later ambassador to Venezuela, Manucher was offered a detached view of Iranian affairs afforded to few observers at the time. He describes a Shah that came increasingly to surround himself with toadies and sycophants. He describes the White Revolution as successfully alienating every major interest group in Iran. The traditional landed elite had their lands expropriated. The bazaaris saw their traditional role supplanted by Western department stores and the cities come under increasingly onerous and often arbitrary planning mechanisms in the manner of the Latin American regulatory overstretch describe by Hernando de Soto in The Mystery of Capital. The students took advantage of their free higher education less to study than to engage in the protests that had overrun Western institutions. Thus in the midst of the conspicuous flaunting of wealth at Persepolis in 1971 and the buildup of sophisticated weaponry the day to day economic prognosis of the country was growing equally grave.

Manucher's take on the Americans is somewhat more sympathetic than his appraisal of the British but still critical. He spotlights the manner in which noble ideals are subsumed under geopolitical imperatives and the wily designs of the British. His treatment is a welcome departure from the anti-imperialists who blame the Americans for everything that has ever gone wrong and the conservative scholars who often refuse to admit any wrongdoing.

His story is not without its shortcomings. His veiled endorsement of authoritarian rule is a bit difficult to swallow at times. His perspective is without question the top-down one and deals little with the experience of the toiling classes. Still, his story is an important one. His family members were liberals, autocrats, sycophants, communists, and inhabited virtually every corner of elite Iranian society. The humanity that pervades his work and the genuine sadness at the tragedy that befell Iran are unmistakable.

2006-05-26T11:41:00.000-07:00

A Sellout's Lament

I have always felt strongly about public service, a phrase that encompasses everything from volunteerism to the choice of vocation. I have made some decisions in my life consistent with that commitment and others influenced far less by it. The career path that I would undertake if financial and ideological considerations did not weigh in is academia. I would love to pursue my PhD and become a college professor. I would delight in developing the thought processes of countless young minds and in helping to instill an enduring love of learning in students. I would also enjoy for more selfish reasons making a career out of the intellectual inquiry that so animates me in my spare time.

Splashed upon those noble sentiments is the cold water of reality. Unless I became a prolific publisher and earned a tenured position at an upper-tier school, my earning potential would be considerably smaller than it would be in the most meager of public interest law positions. Perhaps more important than the financial considerations, however, is my estimation of the present state of education. For reasons ideological, moral and pedagogical, I do not believe I would find a hospitable home in academia.

Without flailing once more the dead horse of academic bias, I doubt I would excel in the ivory tower. I am intelligent and well-read but I am no towering intellect; I am a mediocre researcher and my thinking is not particularly unique. I am sure that my gifts dwarf many tenured faculty at prestigious institutions, but I do not kid myself into thinking the bar would be the same for me as it would be for a Ward Churchill, whose utter lack of contrition in his response came as a surprise even to me (and I have been following this repulsive creature's tale long before he made FoxNews). Were I an aggrieved member (authentically or otherwise) of an underrepresented minority I do not doubt I could land an endowed chair at a signature state university, but my ethnicity is overrepresented, my anger minimal, and my perspective unwanted.

My honest appraisal is that even if I were to obtain a PhD from an Ivy or a similarly esteemed school I would be unlikely to land a professorship at a top-tier institution. This is where the oft-ridiculed notion of subtle bias comes into play. Even if my credentials were that much better than those of fellow applicants (and typically a school chooses between similarly qualified scholars) would a screening board favor an ideological apostate or someone with similar personal and professional interests, someone who would make a much more interesting dinner companion? Thus I would probably end up teaching continuing education at a big state school as an adjunct or spend two decades as an assistant professor at one of the public satellite schools, the locating of which on a map is itself a geographical and cartographical challenge.

Perhaps more important than my abiding disdain for the UVM English Department or other bastions of ideological insularity is my belief that education has been so denuded of rigor and purpose that my contributions would be unwelcome and ineffective. I have no great desire to be adored, only respected. Would I be if my assigned readings were two to three times the length of my peers' assignments? If I demand genuine analysis while my colleagues demand regurgitation at best or slavish ideological orthodoxy at worst, will my classes be attended? Will I have a shot at tenure?

What then is the solution? I could ply my wares at a think tank with the rest of the conservative intelligentsia. I could disguise my beliefs until I hit tenure and became unassailable. No, I will sadly opt instead for the much more lucrative legal profession, where I will make a hefty sum arguing legal inanities and contribute not to the public good but to the continuing trend of our litigious society toward the courts as the appropriate redress for all grievances public and private. Oh to be part of the solution...

2006-05-22T08:52:00.000-07:00

The Quest for a Liberalism Worthy of the Name

I have long argued that the appropriate label for the leadership of the Democratic party is not 'liberal' but 'progressive.' Historically, 'liberal' was not a dirty word and the gains for which continental and American liberals struggled are often those that conservatives are most adamant about consolidating and preserving. In an economic sense, Adam Smith and his ideological heirs were liberals and the mercantilists and imperialists they opposed were the conservatives. Socially, liberals as the party of the rising middle class combated privilege and argued for equality of opportunity; their opposition was a Disraelian alliance of the upper and the toiling classes. I speak for the values of the Enlightenment that the liberals celebrated rather than against the politician or the political thought of Disraeli, a visionary conservative who has bequeathed much to the right's ideological if not practical heritage. In the international arena liberals successfully combated the slave trade and many advanced moral and economic refutations of imperialism (though it ought be said that many of the proponents of the 'white man's burden' were liberals).

The intellectual heirs of the Enlightenment gravitated toward two extremes; the Right tended toward Nietzche's relativism while the Left embraced Marx's argument for a rational society, namely 'scientific' socialism. Ironically, both relativism and rationalism are now the perogative of the Left. In an irony lost on American if not continental conservatives, it is the right that generally argues for freedom over sensitivity and equality over fairness.

Hayekian doubts about the viability of such a project notwithstanding, FDR and his progeny attempted to synthesize the trappings of social democracy with the trappings of classical liberalism. This wedding survived the onslaught of the collectivist wing of the Demcratic Party but essentially fell prey to the contentious elections of 1968 and 1972. The remnants of the New Deal/Fair Deal Democrats (at one time the Scoop Jackson Democrats) have been reduced to a fragment of the political leadership, to include the embattled Joe Lieberman and occasionally Robert Byrd. The occasional relic such as Arthur Schlesinger or the late George F. Kennan will publish an article and cause a temporary stir, but they tend to be suffered politely by the Left's establishment thinkers.

The Cold War united the liberal internationalists with conservatives similarly concerned about the perceived mortal threat to American society. Thus the Teamsters, whatever their faults, were stridently anti-Communist. Two of the most celebrated Cold Warrior Presidents are Democrats, John F. Kennedy and Harry Truman. The ostensible victor in the 'long twilight struggle,' Ronald Reagan, famously asserted that he had not left the Democratic Party; rather the Democratic Party had left him. Success owed to the Reagan Revolution, which united conservatives with disaffected Democrats alienated by the McGovernite wing of the party that took over the party in 1972 and the White House in 1976.

Radical Islam is perhaps less dangerous than Communism in the short term but at least as lethal in the long term. It is a challenge for which the Marxist dialectic and moral relativism are woefully unprepared. There can be no dialogue between a liberty-loving democracy and a person who would load his backpack with ball bearings and seek to explode himself where he can kill the most civilians. Our past sins, and they are legion, may justify the terrorist's actions in the eyes of the champions of the oppressed but a few kind words from a Middle East Studies professor at Columbia are not going to be sufficient to prevent a repeat performance. The adherents of Radical Islam will not stop until the whole of the world says there is no God but Allah. Compromise and/or retreat will not enhance our stature in the eyes of Islamists, it will imply the same weakness that they perceived in our precipitous retreats from Lebanon and Somalia.

It was said of Stalin that his calculus and willingness to embrace compromise (specifically the Nazi-Soviet Pact) was based on a Marxist determinism that believed in the inevitable triumph of communism. The Islamists are imbued with a similar sense of determinism; their purview extends fourteen centuries back, their notion of the future is similarly patient. As the Palestinian in Steven Spielberg's Munich said prophetically to his Israeli opposite number, the faithful are content to out-wait and even out-breed their enemies. It is worth remembering that the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem lasted a full century; Israel is not even sixty years old. The tendency to view Israel, surrounded by hostile states who have increased their quantitative advantage while decreasing their qualititative disadvantage, as a bully merely because it is temporarily dominant is a powerful example of this myopia and brief attention span. As Islam's relative share of the global population increases, its influence in Europe will necessarily grow and the clout of its oil-wealthy heartland will increase similarly. And yet the Left cannot even agree that it is Radical Islam and not our cowboy of a President that constitutes the gravest threat to our values.

It is with this in mind that I ask from whence will come our Long Telegram, our Harry Truman, our George Meany. When will a significant part of the Democratic Party come to believe that Islamism represents an existential threat to Western Civilization? Over the weekend George Will profiled TNR editor Peter Beinart, a liberal in the positive sense of the word. He demonstrates that one can differ as to the means without differing as to the ends. A handful of leftists have embraced war on terror without repudiating the leftist economic programme. Though the depths of her convictions are debatable, Hillary Clinton has been relatively hawkish. Still, the leftist punditry and the leadership of the Democratic Party have done little more than pay lip service to the need to fight terrorism and then only to criticize Bush's failures. John Kerry referred to it as a law enforcement issue during his Presidential campaign. The Kossacks and MoveOn.org speak for a sizable percentage of Democrats in embracing an anti-war message.

The reason that elections remain so crucial is that this is a critical period in the War on Terror. We need to consolidate our gains in Afghanistan and Iraq and push the diplomatic capital into still-bleak corners of the Middle East. We need a Democratic leadership that can be counted on to continue this fight. It is bad enough to worry that a Democratic Party will send the country to hell in a handbasket without having to fear that the rest of the world will follow suit. In all seriousness, I can only hope that there will emerge on the left an intellectual alternative to the relativist/collectivist mantra capable of answering the challenge of Radical Islam, indeed a liberalism worthy of its name.

2006-05-21T13:17:00.000-07:00

Eternal Iran

I just finished Patrick Clawson and Michael Rubin's thin collaboration on the Islamic Republic. By and large it was an excellent book, a dense volume that provides a good deal of context for the present state of affairs. A famous bore, I tend to enjoy the tangential works that provide thousands of years of largely irrelevant history as background before tackling contemporary issues. Thus I enjoyed the authors' trajectory that linked Cyrus and Darius to Mohammed Khatami and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 162 pages.

Their foray into the Qajar and Safavid dynasties notwithstanding, the authors were the most informative in treating the postwar operation of the revolutionary government. Most works on Iranian history focus on 1953, 1978-79 and the Iran-Iraq war and tend to skimp equally relevant periods. The late 1980's and early to mid 90's were crucial in that they cemented a seemingly durable political order consisting of reformists, hard-liners and windsocks whose movement to the 'right' or 'left' is measured in the tiniest of steps. The authors also excelled at chronicling the economic fortunes of the Islamic Republic, specifically the unique brand of statism that trades favors for stability. Clerical opposition to the velayat-e-faqih feared that the 'rule of the jurisprudent' would taint Islam; the blatant greed and opportunism of the Shia clergy seems to bear this out. Indeed the authors make the important observation that it is not merely Iraqi democracy that the mullahs fear but an avowedly quietist Shia clergy speaking against the Iranian regime from the Shia holy sites in Najaf and Karbala, undermining Tehran as Khomeini did from a similar perch in the late 70's.

Clawson and Rubin could have benefited from the aid of an editor, as one does not expect an academic text to be rife with grammatical and typographical errors. Additionally, the authors mouth frequent platitudes to the dissidents and the opposition but do little to delve into the movements and understand the motivations of aspirants to leadership. One could gain more insight into the popular mood from a page of Nafisi's outstanding Reading Lolita in Tehran than from the whole of this book. Additionally, other works have been far more effective at appreciating the opportunities and the dangers posed by the various groups, specifically in opining that a power vacuum and the resulting factional discord may not produce the democracy Western observers hope but could easily see the ascendance of either the Basiji or the Marxists, the two groups best prepared for revolutionary violence.

On the whole, however, it was a superb read. Particularly effective was a brief compendium of crimes against the West undertaken since the end of the Iran-Iraq War, a list of actions that might seem individually insignificant but when taken together paint a very sinister picture of what the world can expect from a nuclear Iran. The book succeeds as a one-volume primer on the current political situation and if coupled with a decent travelogue or pop history volume could give a novice a reasonable appreciation for the Iranian past and present.

2006-05-19T07:25:00.001-07:00

On Amnesty and Mean Spirits

The contemporary Iranian economy is a basket case. Despite mushrooming oil revenues and one of the most educated populations in the region, inflation remains sky-high and unemployment tops 11%. Centralized planning fosters nepotism and crony capitalism and leaves graduates of Iran's superb education system with few domestic opportunities. Trained engineers drive taxis to feed their families. Agronomists who lack the connections to get a job in the state's heavily-funded agricultural sector end up waiting tables or working jobs for which they are utterly over-educated. As a result hundreds of thousands fly to Dubai, Amman and Damascus to queue outside the American embassy and its Western counterparts in the hopes of gaining visas. A cottage industry in Iran has developed to advise would-be emigrants on how to sell themselves to State Department officials whose criteria tend to be relatively arbitrary. The great majority are foiled in their quest and return to Iran, where they endure social as well as economic stultification under the theocratic government.

Those who argue that a policy of deportation for illegal immigrants is inhumane, un-American, or un-Christian need look across the Atlantic to Iran. They need to cast their gaze at other states throughout the world where a more generous immigration policy could serve America's economic and humanitarian interests in twain. Allow me to turn first to economics. Immigrants born in Asia have a median income of over $50,000; those in Africa have a median income of just over $41,000. By contrast those born in Latin America earn an average of just $33,000. Iranian immigrants average $55,000 per annum, Mexicans just $31,000. Of immigrants from Belarus, an autocratic, repressive country, 47% sport atleast a bachelor's degree and 20% a graduate degree. For Mexicans the comparable figures are just over 4% and just under 2%. Immigrants who are educated or aspire to become educated will contribute significantly to the American economy and are likely to pay significantly more into the tax coffers than they pull out. Unskilled immigrants and their children, who are likely to pursue similar vocations, tend to exact far more from the system, in social security benefits and entitlement programs, than they pay in taxes. Thus a predisposition toward the skilled or educated makes a great deal of economic sense.

We are on the verge of granting amnesty to twelve million people without border security, thus ensuring that millions more will follow in their footsteps. These people will cut in line millions who languish in extreme poverty, in social stultification, or under repressive regimes, people for whom a visa would be a truly humanitarian gesture. A female Iranian professor frozen out of the academy by gender bias, the Mauritanian parent who does not want a daughter to endure genital mutilation at the hands of a fundamentalist relative, the Belarussian harried by Lukashenko's secret police...if we are to use immigration as a tool of social progress these people and millions more gut-wrenching tales are the ones we should heed. One who seeks to advantage instead those who have suffered no greater hardship than the trip across the border can hardly lay an exclusive claim to the moral high ground. Unless one is willing to countenance visas for all who apply, immigration control requires choices. By affording rights to illegal immigrants we necessarily disadvantage aspirant legal immigrants.

I am not arguing that amnesty is somehow immoral, but neither is it immoral to suggest that legal immigration should be favored over the unlawful. I believe that we should seek to limit illegal immigration at the same time that we expand opportunities for legal immigrants. By broadening our search from the southern border to hundreds of ill-begotten corners of the globe we can give a better life to those in such desperate need of the opportunity and in so doing swell the ranks of our citizenry with those who will contribute to America's economic success. It is a just and effective solution. It is neither a singular claim to morality nor a singular claim to efficacy, but I believe it would be the best synthesis of the two imperatives.

2006-05-17T11:28:00.000-07:00

My Five Point Plan

1. Close the borders - Undertake the security measures necessary to choke off the flow of people into the country. Build a wall, send Guardsmen to the Border, whatever it takes. Slow a torrent to a trickle and the number of new illegal immigrants will become manageable. Stop allowing Mexico to dumb its economic and social problems on America and force them to address them and be accountable for the results. If this implies a deterioration in US/Mexican relations, so be it. The present one is based on Mexico's exploitation of our benevolence and, dare I say, guilt.

2. Partial legitimization - Invite all illegal immigrants to come forward. Those that have roots in the country, to include family ties and a lengthy term of residence, will be considered on a case by case basis for green cards. Those that come forward willingly but are not approved will be returned to their countries of origin and be placed on the waiting list to become citizens. Those that do not come forward will be deported immediately if captured and barred from any path to legal citizenship.

3. Hold employers accountable - Close the 1099MISC loophole by mandating that employers require valid social security numbers or green cards from all employees and independent contractors prior to hiring. Afterwards, levy stiff fines and penalties on all who knowingly hire illegal immigrants. This will make the cost of employment prohibitive and thus dry up the demand for illegal immigrants.

4. Encourage assimilation - Mandate genuine comprehension of English prior to a grant of citizenship. Provide generously for teaching children and adults to speak and write the English language. Accordingly, limit bilingualism in schools and government agencies. Encourage the unum rather than the e pluribus.

5. Expand legal immigration - Swell the ranks of legal immigration. Do so, however, with prejudice toward skilled immigrants and those who face political or religious persecution at home. Iran, for instance, has millions of willing emigrants, many of whom with entrepreneurial or technical skills that would be very marketable in the US. We have a tendency to view immigration as a humanitarian effort rather than an exercise that ought to be made to benefit the United States first and foremost. Understand the ease of immigration for residents of poor countries owes as much to Ted Kennedy's desire to ensure a Democratic majority as it does a desire to inject moral concerns into the process.

If immigration is a humanitarian gesture, afford particular consideration to Vietnamese, Sierra Leonese, and other countries in similarly dire straits. Instead of immigrants who walk across a border and typically have low education and did not require a great deal of ambition to arrive in the US, predispose the system toward those from across the globe with the resources to fund the journey and the ambition to undertake it. Those from countries with poor education systems may work for eighty hours pushing a mop and may even shun social welfare benefits but they will have neither the knowledge nor the ability to foster their childrens' development as readily as those who were educated in their country of origin. Their children will be more likely to engage in criminal activity by virtue of their socioeconomic status or at minimum follow in their parents' footsteps and undertake unskilled labor. It is a recipe for poverty, crime, and difficulty in assimilation.

These are my solutions. Critique.

2006-05-16T12:24:00.000-07:00

Bush's Speech a Qualified Success

I'm sure I'm not saying much of anything I haven't said before, but I was impressed by Bush's speech. I tuned in when he was talking about the guest worker program, the only issue on which I harbor substantive disagreement, and was so disgusted that I switched channels but I read a transcript afterwards and felt placated. By and large his was a common sense approach that tried to chart a reasonable middle between the amnesty crowd and the advocates of mass deportation. In his words and his demeanor he appeared Presidential, and I would expect his poll numbers to improve slightly.

I will treat each of his five points. His first point, border security, is something upon which there should be broad agreement. I can only hope that his pledges will not be mere window dressing. Will his intention to swell the Border Patrol go unfunded amidst pledges for fiscal austerity? I agree on the need to return those captured to their countries of origin, but I would suggest that repeat offense become a felony and thus a bar to eventual legal immigration.

Bush's third point, the need to punish employers who hire such workers, is a necessary and very reasonable suggestion. This will necessitate closing the 1099 MISC loophole whereby workers can be termed 'independent contractors' and work using an individual taxpayer identification number (ITIN). The proposal of a national ID card system is also a solid one that will draw criticism but seems wholely reasonable.

His fourth point addresses the problem of those already in the country. I agree so long as he is serious about deporting recent illegal immigrants. Those who been in the country for several years should be able to pay a fine, pay taxes, and make reasonable efforts toward assimilation (namely learning English) and be afforded in return a reasonable opportunity to gain their citizenship.

His fifth and final point, the need for assimilation, is an obvious attempt to placate conservatives. He is absolutely correct to argue that the historic corrollary to the grant of permission to immigrate and to gain citizenship is the duty of the newcomer to accommodate himself to his adopted homeland. For too long in this country immigrants, legal and illegal alike, have demanded that America accommodate them.

The only issue on which I took real exception was his second point, the notion of a guest worker program. The name alone invokes visions of millions of Turks denied any opportunity to become German citizens, along with a number of similar such examples worldwide. A guest worker program without a path to citizenship strikes me as exclusionary and un-American. It would provide a host of practical challenges, most notably the phenomenon of birthright citizenship that is a Constitutional guarantee. A guest worker program that provides a virtually automatic path to citizenship is simply expanded immigration by another name. What is the problem with green cards? Need we devise another category of immigrants and the bureaucracy to match?

I turned on a local news report that asked the NCIC for their opinions and was utterly disgusted. Their rhetoric about the 'militarization' of the border and their vocal assertion that 'we are Americans too' demonstrates their sense of entitlement and evidences a woefully poor grasp of the state of public opinion. They should be hoisting Bush on their shoulders, not taking aim at him, for this is the best deal they will ever get from a Republican President. We as Americans have a right and a necessity to control the flow of people across our borders. The easiest way to convince people of the necessity of airtight control and deportation is to come on American television and angrily proclaim, in broken English, your right to live in America.

The last twenty years have proven the myopia of the Reagan amnesty. To buckle on this subject now would be to invite millions more Mexicans and other would-be immigrants to attempt to gain entry in advance of another anticipated amnesty. America is becoming less, not more, open to mass immigration. A decade or two from now and a few hundred more angry entitlement marches and the public may sanction much more draconian measures, including deportation of any illegal immigrant and a drastic limitation of legal immigration.

The wisdom of Bush's words will be gauged by the extent to which he is serious about implementation. If he takes (or successfully advocates) measures to ensure that the borders are closed to all but the most dogged attempts to cross them, that businesses are held accountable for knowingly hiring undocumented workers, and that citizenship is contingent on a willingness to learn English his words may prove sage and important. If he does what many cynically believe he will do and confine his efforts to words alone than he will leave the situation no better than he found it.

2006-05-15T08:17:00.000-07:00

A Palpable Sense of Malaise

The State of the Union is relatively stable and trending upward. The economy is humming along at an exceptional pace. Jobless rates are the lowest they have been since the best of the Clinton years and economic growth is stellar. Afghanistan and Iraq are on the path toward stability and representative government. Terrorist networks worldwide have been destroyed or severely limited. Two qualified textualist jurists were confirmed to the nation's highest court. On many levels, Bush's presidency has been extraordinarily successful.

And yet his party's majorities are imperiled in the House and the Senate. With nearly three years left before he leaves office he is already perceived as a lame duck. People are pessimistic about the future of the country and they blame Bush. It does not seem to matter that many such issues are beyond his control. Whether it owes to media bias, media sensationalism, an increasingly vitriolic opposition party, or the Administration's poor marketing campaign, everything seems to be coming apart. The greatest threat to the Republican majority is, simply put, the idea that chaos seems to reign in Washington and its source is the White House.

Positive coverage of the economy is elusive in network news and in the so-called papers of record. 'Offshoring' gains more press than does an historically low jobless rate. I remember trying to find a job as a newly minted college graduate some three years ago. I worked as waitstaff at mediocre restaurants and planted flowers before settling into my present vocation. As I toe the waters of today's job market I find a wealth of positions for which I am qualified. If one seeks to blame the economy of 2001-2003 on Bush one has to give him credit for that of 2004-2006. These years may appear to posterity as boom times, but we would never know it.

Immigration has become the seminal issue virtually overnight. Why is this Bush's fault? I do not like his proposals, but his predecessors were scarcely more active. (An aside: I envisioned this piece before I read a similar tract linked at NER, but it seems only fair to direct the reader to that one as well) Reagan declared an amnesty that was clearly ineffective in that we have an even greater problem two decades later. Papa Bush and Clinton all but ignored the problem. For decades we have had porous borders and the political will to do exactly nothing about them. It was a cozy relationship that benefitted business, appeased Hispanic constituents of both parties, and assuaged a liberal establishment that cringed at the thought of being deemed exclusionary. Its costs included the security of the nation, the public interest of several states in both order and economic stability, and the freedom of action of politicians who are cornered by the above enumerated interest groups. Bush deserves credit for at least tackling the problem, though his solutions hardly solve it in the long term.

The perception of Bush as hapless probably predates Katrina, but it became the dominant portrait of the President in the wake of the hurricane that savaged New Orleans. Despite reports since that blame decades of misconduct and politicization centered around levee construction and a Douglas Brinkley book that savages Mayor Ray Nagin as an incompetent grandstander, the myth that Bush alone is culpable remains. It was not his fault the hurricane hit a city that rested below sea level, nor was it his fault that a population that had subsisted for so long on the government teat could not extricate itself from the path of disaster. FEMA's blundering owed much to the organization's focus on terrorism rather than disaster relief, probably an unavoidable consequence of the post-9/11 hand-wringing. Bush's performance was wanting, to be sure, but as I remarked at the time his was a failure of leadership rather than administration. In the wake of disaster, be it 9/11 or Columbine, the nation expects the President to look, well, presidential. He did not, and for that alone does he really deserve blame.

Foreign policy is typically a Republican strength, but the status quo appears to the novice to be utterly anarchical. Coverage of Iraq focuses on rashes of violence without remarking on the downturn in the middle. March saw one of the lowest American casualty figures since the war's inception, but this was not news. In treating a violent April commentators merely picked up where they left off with the bombing of the mosque in Samarra. Bias? Perhaps, but sensationalism is probably a saner explanation. Iran's nuclear ambitions have been problematic for almost two decades. The media and the Clinton Administration merely ignored them for the better part of his tenure in office. They were newsworthy then, but proliferation was a loser when compared to the President of Iran speaking in concilliatory terms to Christiane Amanpour. 9/11 and the War on Terrorism did not create hostility; it long predated Bush's inauguration. He inherited anarchy and he has been fairly successful at reining it in. In perception, however, he is responsible for its existence.

Gas prices are astronomical, an inconvenient truth for those who claimed America invaded Iraq for oil. Still, the party that has consistently opposed measures that could limit American dependence on foreign oil is scarcely poised to lecture the President on pain at the pump. By blocking drilling, refining, and nuclear power for decades Democrats revealed their commitment to lower gas prices. And yet it is fashionable to blame 'big oil' for windfall profits and to claim that Bush is too close to the industry.

Corruption is another issue on which Bush has been tarnished by association. Be it senior Republican leadership like Duke Cunningham or Tom Delay or the Valerie Plame scandal that has pointed fingers at Bush's two most prominent political allies, Rove and Cheney, the President need not be accused of wrongdoing to earn distrust. The cases of Rep. Mollohan and other Democrats under suspicion scarcely help the President; with public confidence in Washington at its nadir, the party leading the two elected branches of government stands to lose the most.

The phenomenon of comics taking aim at a President is scarcely new. Clinton earned his share of cigar jokes and Dana Carvey did an exceptional impersonation of Papa Bush. Now for many if not most comedians, be they denizens of the nightclub circuit or television personalities, the President has become not a figure worthy of satire but a joke in his own right. There is no sense of deference to the office of the President, much less to the man occupying it. Figures of the mainstream left no longer take the President seriously.

Thus the perception exists that Bush has been a failure as President. He has made a number of mistakes, some of which are quite serious. For instance, he has refused to defy Congressional Republicans on spending. On the aggregate, however, he has righted the economic ship and has charted a foreign policy that eyes the long term over the short term. For myriad reasons, however, perception and reality diverge. Bush and his Administration have done a very poor job of marketing successes and the Democrats have been quite successful at magnifying or spinning failures. Whether owing to bias or merely to the sensationalism of consumer-driven news, the mainstream of network and print media has fostered the sense that chaos reins and that the Executive branch is neither sage nor effectual enough to rein it in.

2006-05-08T18:29:00.000-07:00

The Kurds

I was hesitant to say the least to delve into a book that carried the doting approval of Noam Chomsky, but the subject matter was so interesting that I ignored the pings of doubt. I had mixed feelings about the result. Kevin McKeirnan's book read like a Thomas Friedman volume; successful in the wide sense but tinged with the liberal guilt that leads the author to analogies and tangents that clash with the broader conclusions that the book supports. Amidst the sophistry of analogies to Native Americans and the Fisk-like self-congratulations of journalists is the story of a nation so long held down that is slowly being reborn by American and Kurdish minds alike.

McKiernan's attempt to blame the fate of the Kurds on devious postwar European potentates and American arms dealers largely fails. Anyone with a cursory understanding of history knows that the failure of Sievres was a failure of wills; the Turks had the desire and the resources to tear up a treaty that the Europeans lacked the willingness and the means to enforce. The Kurds' role in the Armenian genocide is ignored and a few out of context Churchill quotes seem to suffice for passing blame. The arms manufacturers supplied the Turks with the means of repression, but they would have come from somewhere if we did not supply them, and by virtue of our role as a benefactor the US maintained at least a limited ability to restrain the Turks.

Equally irksome is McKiernan's self-serving behavior in retelling the story of prewar journalism in Iraqi Kurdistan. He speaks of journalists trying to scoop each others as to where and when the Americans would land in force and trying to capture pictures of SF and CIA contingents on the ground before the invasion. I cannot help but recall stories of the FUSAG, the fake force assembled in Southeast England to convince the Germans that the hammer would fall not in Normandy but in Calais. Had even a single news outlet tried to run with the story the ruse would have been found out and thousands more Allied troops killed. There is no semblance of journalistic restraint in the name of national victory, for journalists are motivated by commercial and professional glory and see themselves not as American but as citizens of the world.

Despite this, McKiernan's subjects are simply too interesting, and too heroic, to be submerged. His anecdotes, both of powerful men and of regular Kurds, paint a compelling portrait of a people gaining something so long in coming, freedom and self-determination. For the part that America played in that, we should be very proud. For the part that the Kurds played, for the prices they paid over the preceding decades, and for the energies that they continue to exert in shaping their land, they deserve our admiration. It is incumbent upon us to do our best to see that the future of the Iraqi Kurds is shared by their Syrian, Iranian, and Turkish brethren, be it as a unitary state or as free minorities within larger multiethnic states.

2006-05-06T19:45:00.000-07:00

Guests of the Ayatollah

Mark Bowden, the author of Blackhawk Down, recently released a 600+ page book on the Iranian hostage crisis. It was an impressive work. He managed to weave a story that essentially boiled down to three interesting days and 400+ days of waiting into a page-turner. Though the events took place a quarter century ago they remain integral to understanding Iranian-American relations and Iran's pariah status in the community of nations. Iran remains defiant and prone to behavior that most students of international relations would deem irrational (such as its public support for terror and the aspirations of its elected leaders to wipe other nations off the map). The heirs of Cyrus Vance and Teddy Kennedy, Democrats remain naive and pacifistic even when negotiating with the undeterrable. Ramsey Clark and other demigods of the far-left, including the recently-deceased William Sloane Coffin, were as strident in apologizing for the hostage-takers as they are now in airing the 'legitimate grievances' of the terrorists/insurgents/'minutemen.' Other states, most notably our erstwhile allies in Europe, mouth multilateral platitudes and shun any action that might undermine their diplomatic and most notably their economic self-interest.

Bowden is at his best in telling the stories of the captives. He pulls no punches and acknowledges that some behavior was as shameful as other behavior was heroic. The characters he illuminates vary from willingly collaborating to steadfastly defying to a military professionalism in keeping with the highest traditions of the uniformed services. He devotes less time to the captors, but he manages to illuminate the gamut of character traits from generosity to abject sadism. He is a bit too sympathetic to Jimmy Carter and a bit too apt to defame Ronald Reagan, but he does argue persuasively that Carter was put in an impossible position.

On the whole, it was a very important story that needed to be brought back to the fore. As we confront a new Persian menace we need to understand that while the anti-American crowds may be more difficult to muster Iran's decision-makers are the ideological stepchildren of the geroghan-gihra. Some are in power, sitting in the majlis or, as some former hostages claim, in the Presidency. More important though is the fact that the individuals who helped make the decisions during the standoff, including Supreme Leader Khamenei and the redoubtable Rafsanjani, have still firmer a grip on the country. This is the rubric through which they perceive the United States, and we need to appreciate their tactics as well as our successes and failures so that our foreign policy, be it implemented diplomatically or militarily, can be more effective this time around. Kudos to Bowden for his contribution to that understanding.

2006-05-03T18:51:00.000-07:00

Update on CPL Binh Le

A couple days ago I was writing a post about immigration and I wanted to link to a story about Binh Le because I thought he exemplified the contribution that many immigrants make even before they gain citizenship. He had been my wife's mentor in JROTC and I have talked to others whose lives he touched. A search turned up a few of the rosier articles as well as the one that described the difficulty his birth family had in gaining citizenship. I was extremely upset and unleashed a barrage of letters to anyone who would listen describing the situation. The response was overwhelming and heartening. Blogs of War ran a great piece, complete with CPL Le's boot camp portrait. The New England Republican posted on the subject. John Podhoretz even gave CPL Le a brief mention at the Corner on NRO. Most recently, Mudville Gazette dug a bit deeper into the issue. Check out the post or go directly to HR 993, which the Gazette was kind enough to track down. I am grateful to these bloggers for their attention on this issue and I ask that readers keep this story on the front burner so that we can honor the wishes of an American hero.

2006-05-03T06:42:00.000-07:00

Tehran Rising

I am a little hesitant to replace the top story on the page as I believe that my meager contribution to an issue that many abler chroniclers are treating pales in comparison to the importance of telling of a story that has, sadly, slipped through the cracks. I'm going to push on anyway. I finished Ilan Berman's Tehran Rising yesterday. At 150 pages and $25 it cost roughly $.17 a page, hideously overpriced for a book that offered few original insights. Indeed the book rates as a more cursory treatment of the issues raised by Kenneth Timmerman's Countdown to Crisis, albeit one devoid of the more questionable assertions raised by the latter author.

In the midst of his short work Berman raises several points worthy of discussion. He is at his best in contextualizing Iranian behavior in Central Asia, treating its implications for Russian-American and Russian-Iranian relations. He draws attention to the plight of Aliyev in Azerbaijan and Sakashvilli in Georgia, staunch US allies pressured by the rising power of Iran and a more assertive Russia. He also made the very important point that while Moscow and Tehran seem close they have very divergent interests. Berman points out that an augmented Iranian military and especially naval presence in the Caspian, coupled with Russian treatment of Chechans and other Muslim minorities, constitute important flash points that suggest a long-term alliance or even amity unlikely.

The second point he raises that deserves treatment is Iran's influence in the Gulf. He catalogues the rise of Tehran's conventional weaponry that accompanied rising oil prices, comparing Iran's capabilities to that of neighboring states. He points out that many have already realized the necessity of good relations with the rapidly developing power of the Islamic Republic, particularly in light of the loss of the Arab counterweight to Iranian power in 2003. The evidence he provides suggests that a nuclear Iran, whose power would be that much greater than the combined strength of the Arab states in the region, would almost certainly come to dominate the shipping lanes and thus global oil supplies.

Lastly, and this is a personal quibble, I take exception to his description of Mohammed Khatami. I have no doubt that Khatami's reformism was not nearly as deep as Clinton, Christopher or Albright wanted to believe, but I believe it does a disservice to the man to characterize him as a charlatan. The hopes that accompanied his accession in 1997 were not merely entertained at Foggy Bottom and on Pennsylvania Avenue. He gave inspiration, albeit fleeting, to millions of students and other Iranians that there was a light at the end of the tunnel. He pushed reform as far as he could for as long as he could until the regime decided it was strong enough to rein him in. He was used as a smokescreen, to be sure, but this recognition does not necessitate attacks on his character.

On the aggregate Berman's book is lacking largely because it is too short. It spared but a brief chapter to ponder the state of affairs inside the country, and this only to assess the viability of the clerical regime. Treatment of Iran's domestic situation is limited to a few public opinion polls that are supposed to show that Iran's listless youth would welcome an invasion. That is naive and simplistic. Domestic affairs influence, and are influenced by, Iran's diplomatic posture and nuclear ambitions. The mistakes of Iraq recommend that much more attention need be paid to ethnic and demographic issues so that Americans might anticipate the consequences of military action and make decisions and plans accordingly. Berman's work is sober and reasonable, but it is an insufficient one-volume reader on the subject of Iran and the threat it poses.

2006-05-01T13:14:00.000-07:00

Give A Hero His Due

On December 3, 2004, Marine CPL Binh Le was slain trying to prevent a truck bomb from killing his fellow Marines. He was posthumously awarded the Bronze Star for his actions. CPL Le received another award that few sacrifice their lives to earn, his citizenship. Le was born in Vietnam; his father had been a soldier in the South Vietnamese Army. When Le was 7, his parents signed adoption paperwork so that his aunt and uncle could take him with them to America. Le visited Vietnam once when he was 12; his next reunion with his birth family came when they flew to the United States for his funeral at Arlington Cemetery. Those who knew him (including my wife, a high school classmate and friend) speak to his vitality, his kindness, and his patriotism. Take the time to read through the numerous tributes to him from family, friends, and fellow soldiers. Another Marine even wrote a song about him, it's titled Memories. Le enlisted fresh out of high school and ended up in Iraq, where he met his untimely end. He laid down his life for a country that had yet to grant him citizenship.

Binh Le's parents want desperately to stay in the United States to be close to their son's grave. Because Le was adopted by his aunt and uncle, his birth parents have no legal claim to citizenship. After the funeral, Rep. Moran (D, VA) attempted to rectify the situation and tried to pass a measure affording them the honor. As of February 2006 the issue was stuck in committee. I rarely ask anything of my readers, but in this case I will make an exception. Please take the time to call or write to your Congressmen and Senators and urge them to act on behalf of CPL Binh Le. Encourage them to support citizenship for his parents. I can think of none more deserving.

2006-05-01T06:58:00.000-07:00

On the Boycott

The debate over immigration is a cantankerous one that animates millions on both sides of the issue and leaves still more praying the issue will go away. Today's protest heartens the former two and dismays the latter, for it ensures that it will not quietly recede from the limelight. Pro-amnesty forces are pleased at the public display of solidarity, the last not an unintentional choice of words for an act of public protest taking place by design on May Day. Foes of illegal immigration are similarly delighted, for they make the crude calculus that for every illegal immigrant who turns out to angrily demand inclusion at least one angry American will turn out in November to demand his exclusion.

I count myself among neither category. I am strongly supportive of immigration. I have deep ancestral roots in this country, but other branches of the family tree were transplanted from Europe much more recently. I am awed by the performance of Hispanics and other immigrants who fight and often die for a country that has yet to grant them citizenship. For illustration, read up on this hero, who went to high school with my wife. Skilled immigrants contribute a great deal to our economy and unskilled immigrants, even those who take more from social services than they repay in taxes, perform labor that would otherwise be much more expensive and thus help limit wage and price inflation.

On the other hand, illegal immigrants drain the resources of law enforcement, educational institutions, medical care and other social services. One need not subscribe to the creed of Tancredo to acknowledge that for particular states and locales illegal immigration is an issue of security, economics and even identity. America has an increasingly paramount interest in monitoring the presence of non-citizens for self-evident issues of preventing terrorist attacks.

Illegal immigrants participating in protests, walkouts and boycotts tend to push many in the middle off of the fence to which they have so stubbornly clung. The sense of entitlement that they display in cutting a line of eager immigrants millions of names long, to partake of our social services, to seek gainful employment ahead of those who have paid taxes and to do so while demanding that Americans respect their cultural and linguistic identity is patently offensive. To Iranians, Cubans, North Koreans, and citizens of dozens of countries on this earth who do not have the good luck to share a contiguous border with the world's most prosperous country, such a display of entitlement must seem ridiculous.

Furthermore, this phenomenon is consciously exploited by the Mexican government to maintain its own ossified economic programme. They maintain a draconian anti-immigration policy on their southern border while actively encouraging emigration on their northern border. Absent genuine economic reforms and a commitment to encouraging family planning, this problem cannot be permanently resolved by declaring an amnesty for those already in country. Millions more will stream over the border in the hope that a decade or two from now a similarly myopic Washington establishment will sanction another legitimization effort.

This boycott has upset the delicate balance sustained by ignorance alone. Advocates and supporters of the illegals do not want sunshine on this issue, because they will lose. Conservatives protest one day a year; fortunately it is the one day that counts. The larger and more outspoken the protests, the greater the number of voters who will show up in November. They alienate their potential allies and unite much of the populace behind at least limited measures aimed at stymieing further illicit entry and deportation of those who have already arrived.

I try to approach this issue from a rational rather than an emotive perspective. It is increasingly difficult, however, when I read the stories of Iranians and Asians who spend days on line for a visa application or years on waiting lists. They are subject to oppression and persecution in their own country and yet they faithfully wait for the chance to immigrate legally. We send Cubans who have the misfortune to cling to the wrong pilon or land on the wrong stretch of beach back to a communist dictatorship. We turn millions of tired, weak and weary each year while millions more sneak in over the border.

I do not mean to diminish the danger or the sacrifice endured by illegal immigrants. Yet I cannot but do so when such individuals exude a sense of entitlement by which they believe the fruits of America to be theirs for the taking but, in many cases, refuse to shoulder their concomitant burdens, such as cultural or linguistic assimilation or even taxation. If one insists on immigrating unlawfully, he ought not not demand that he enjoy the benefits to which he has no legal entitlement without accepting the responsibilities that other Americans, immigrant and native-born alike, undertake.

2006-04-29T08:42:00.000-07:00

A Call for Action in Darfur

I believe it is our duty as moral beings to prevent the slaughter of innocents. I believe that we should have acted more decisively to put an end to this years ago. Instability is contagious and could infect oil-rich states, while an Islamist regime in Khartoum does provide a measure of sanctuary to the scum of the Earth. But let us not delude ourselves; there is no paramount national interest in this case. This is about bringing an end to needless slaughter, perhaps even genocide. The US should attempt to assemble a coalition largely consisting of Muslim states to keep the peace. These troops should have rules of engagement that permit action rather than relying on a disarmed presence as a deterrant. It is good PR, it is to an extent in the interests of economic stability and national security, and it is the moral thing to do.

2006-04-27T03:59:00.000-07:00

I'm From The Government, And I'm Here To Help

What Ronald Reagan famously labeled the nine scariest words in the English language seem to be making a resurgence in the debate over gas prices. From across the political spectrum a populist mob is taking aim at Big Oil. 'Gouging' and 'fixing' are their rallying cries and such phrases as 'windfall profit tax' roll off the lips of people usually counted among the economically sane. The simple fact of the matter is that gas prices are $3+ a gallon because people are willing to pay it. If people deemed them debilitatingly high they would use mass transit or bicycles or find work closer to home. With the drop in demand prices would necessarily come back to earth. There would certainly be a lag, but in the end it is in the interests of gas stations and their oil company overbears to accurately peg the price to that which people are willing to pay. They are not unintelligent. They know that sky-high gas prices will fuel conservation efforts and the development of alternative technologies. The lesson that nobody seems to have learned from the 1970's is that the gravest danger to the American economy comes from an attempt to tinker with the supply. By taxing 'windfall profits' or setting some form of price controls government will pave the way for gas shortages and genuine crises. What government should aim instead to accomplish is a resolution of the international tension that is fueling this rise. Yes, conservation and new technology are needed to cope with the burden of rising demand from India, China and elsewhere. These are long-term solutions, however. In the short term gas prices are artificially inflated because anti-American regimes sit astride oil resources in Venezuela, Iran and elsewhere while unstable governments reign in Nigeria and Iraq. Government's most important role in this is to ensure that, consistent with its principles, it is doing the best it can to keep oil prices low. Truth be told, some of the decisions the government is called upon to make (namely its choices vis a vis Iran) may result in spiking gas prices. Americans who want to drive will bear that burden. The worst thing demagogic politicians can do is tell them they need not.

2006-04-26T12:39:00.000-07:00

Countdown to Crisis
More of the C.A. Book Club

I finished Kenneth Timmerman's Countdown to Crisis in a day and a half. It is an intriguing book. I recently finished Timmerman's Preachers of Hate and found it a rather lackluster collection of cherry-picked speeches coupled with unnecessary value judgments. Still, the subject matter recommended his new book, so I buckled down and bought it. It is neither as sober nor as substantiated as Kenneth Pollack's Persian Puzzle, but its willingness to enumerate some of the questionable allegations about the Iranian regime makes it important nonetheless. One need not subscribe to the Curt Weldon school of the intelligence community to acknowledge that smoke is often accompanied by fire.

Timmerman is at his strongest in documenting the progression of the Iranian nuclear program and the parallel program to improve delivery systems. The latter is an important point often lost on those who believe or disbelieve evidence regarding the nuclear program; a hostile regime has been developing, unmolested, missiles capable of reaching Israel and our NATO allies. Even if they do not yet have the capacity to deliver a nuclear payload, conventional munitions could kill large numbers in European and Middle Eastern metropolises. The nuclear program is of course the more troubling, and Timmerman provides a chilling account of a bumbling and naive IAEA and a Clinton Administration that engaged in willful self-deception, lest the truth subvert economic ties with China and Iran or diplomatic relations with Russia.

Timmerman also pierces the aura that surrounds former President Khatami, who probably deserved the title 'reformist' when compared to his clerical peers but subscribed to the same nuclear ambitions and anti-Israeli rhetoric that his peers and his successor evidence in more strident language. He gives credence to the notion that incoming President Ahmadinejad took an active role in the hostage crisis and also points out that as a founder and participant in the 'Qods' he may have planned or even carried out assassinations of Iranian dissidents on European soil.

The author sacrifices a bit of credibility in his willingness to endorse rather specious claims that Bin Laden is presently in Iran, but he does demonstrate rather conclusively that Iran and Al Qaeda had an operational relationship pre-9/11. Imad Fayez Mugniyeh, a regular on the Most Wanted List for his roles in past terror attacks, was supposedly the liaison between the regime and Al Qaeda; recent revelations that he has been tabbed to plan a response to military strikes lends a bit of credence to Timmerman's claims. He claims that Iran was involved in the 2001 attacks, a plausible assertion but one scarcely proved by the defection of a single man, former MOIS officer Hamid Reza Zakeri (whom the CIA has deemed unreliable). His insinuation that Iran downed TWA Flight 800 and helped train Terry Nichols to bring down the Murrah building has little aupporting evidence. His chronicle of the nuclear program is rather cherry-picked, reporting every shred of evidence to support the worst case scenario and ignoring those that might recommend against it.

Kenneth Timmerman's effort should be taken for what its worth; it is an alarmist work that contains a number of utterly questionable assertions. He is kind enough to provide a lenghty appendix so that the reader understands where he drew his conclusions. Some of what he says is plausible if unprovable, but by and large his strength lies in airing enough of the hearsay and conjecture that a reader has to believe that within the plume of smoke lies at least a flicker of fire.

2006-04-25T04:13:00.000-07:00

Islamic Imperialism
The Return of the C.A. Book Club

I recently finished Efraim Karsh's slender but important volume Islamic Imperialism and was extremely impressed by Karsh's thesis. His is a multi-layered argument but its central idea is that the age-old dream of Islamic empire, incarnated and reincarnated a dozen times in the first millennium after the death of Muhammad, has never died. Thus the recent history of the Middle East should not be understood merely as the sinister machinations of the Great Satan and its Allies but rather as the striving for temporal and/or religious empire. A corollary to this is the idea that the most important actors in the last century have not been the Great Powers but rather the political and spiritual leaders of the region itself.

Karsh's case is not airtight; he has a tendency to expropriate any and everything as proof of his thesis. For instance, the Jordanian accommodation of their Palestinian population in the West Bank and that of the Egyptians in the Gaza Strip are virtually opposite as Karsh explains them, one attempting to assimilate them and the other imposing a strict martial law. Yet both, to his mind, reinforce his proposition. That said, it is absolutely a worthwhile read.

Karsh is at his strongest in debunking some of the fundamental premises on which Middle Eastern political culture rests. The early expansion of Islam was as much about replacing the traditional source of Arab income, thievery of pilgrims, with the plunder looted from and tribute exacted from dhimmis, or nonbelievers. The Crusades, for instance, were not treated as a grievous threat to the region, beaten back by the pious and altruistic Saladin. Rather the Christians occupied territory that had changed hands a number of times, territory that had been occupied by the Byzantines during the preceding century. Saladin, says Karsh, was no less an imperialist than other aspirant caliphs before and since.

His treatment of the Twentieth Century is superb. The Ottomans, he says, made a conscious decision to go to war against the Entente out of naked imperial ambition. The Arab Revolt was neither as successful nor as popular as subsequent mythology has suggested, and its leaders acquiesced in the Balfour Declaration long before Versailles. Most importantly, the carving of the region into nation-states with seemingly alien borders had as much if not more to do with the ambition of Faisal and Abdullah than it did with the callous indifference of Sykes and Picot. As many times as the boundaries have shifted no static border would have united all the right confessional communities or withstood the assaults of religious and temporal demagogues. Lastly Nasser, Karsh maintains, can be understood as an Egyptian imperialist rather than the ardent anti-imperialist that dominates the public's imagination.

It is the successful and unchallenged embrace of victimhood in spite of the truth or falsehood of its fundamental tenets that gives Osama Bin Laden and other aggressive theocrats moral justification for their activities. With uncritical support for this thesis offered by the Arab populace and Western academics, Bin Laden and others want to erect a new Islamic empire. The Islamists are not stupid; theirs is a conscious plan to spread Islam, through demographics, through force, and in the meantime through sympathy.

The eye cast at Andalusia (Spain) has nothing to do with wrongs done Islam; as with the Balkans this occupation saw a minority Muslim population astride a majority Christian population. This was an exploitative imperialism that lasted far longer than the West's fleeting infatuation with the Muslim Middle East. Muslims proselytize in Christian countries without molestation; proselytizing Christians and their converts in much of the Muslim world face a death sentence. As Karsh argues, behind the veneer of faux victimhood is a reaction to a setback in what the Koran says should be the irresistible march of Islam.

For personal, temporal, and religious reasons, these individuals and generation upon generation of successors will not stop until the sound of the muezzin can be heard in every corner of the globe and, to quote Muhammad, Saladin, Khomenei and Bin Laden, every man, woman and child says aloud "There is no God but Allah." Unless the secular and Christian among us unite to confront this threat, militarily but more importantly ideologically and spiritually, we can but reconcile ourselves to this grim future.

2006-04-21T05:52:00.000-07:00

Debunking

Matthew Yglesias is usually one of the more reasonable and reputable left-wing bloggers on the web. His argument opposing war with Iran won a few praises from the right (including the Corner on NRO) as a reasonable case against an attack. While his criticisms are certainly not the foaming at the mouth variety, I found them lacking. Allow me to discuss the article in full.

Should we go to war with Iran? The short answer is “no.” The long answer is “hell no.

As the rumbles of war are heard over the horizon, many feel they’ve heard this whole story before. But with all due respect to those who correctly ascertained in advance that backing Bush’s march on Baghdad was insane, following the neoconservatives to Teheran would be far, far, far more insane.

The decision to attack Iraq was not insane. It seemed a reasonable alternative to me and others who surveyed an international relations status quo that was utterly unacceptable and bereft of new ideas. The neo-cons wanted to drain the swamp. History may villify or vindicate this emphasis, depending on success or failure in Iraq. Let us remember though that the alternatives, for Iraq, for the region and for the globe, were scarcely more palatable.

The United States military is, for one thing, in much worse shape today than it was in March 2003 with far fewer resources at its disposal (see the Iraq War). The Iranian military, meanwhile, is in better shape than Iraq’s army was, since it hasn’t been subjected to more than a decade of stifling sanctions. Iran is geographically larger than Iraq. Its population is about twice as large as Iraq’s. Perhaps more to the point, the vast majority of the trouble in Iraq has been made by a distinct minority of the population -- the one Iraqi in five, more or less, who is Sunni Arab, the dominant group in the Baathist ancient regime. Fully half of Iranians are Shiite Persians, so we’re talking about a nationalist backlash with a population base about four or five times as large as the one we're facing in Iraq.

No disagreement from me here. Iran presents a greater logistical challenge for invasion than did a humbled Iraq. At the same time, Iran's people have been oppressed and shackled but their tyrants are somewhat less vicious than Saddam's absolutist despotism. They will not assist in their occupation or their subjugation, but I believe the good many of them would assist in loosing their chains.

Surveying that scene, many have concluded that rather than an invasion, some sort of aerial bombing campaign, perhaps backed by special operations forces, is in order. This is foolish. If we bomb Iran, Iran will find a way to strike back -- either at oil operations in the Persian Gulf, at American troops in Iraq, or using Hezbollah as a proxy. The conflict will escalate. To stop the Iranian nuclear problem, meanwhile, it would have to escalate. Blowing some stuff up won't make the Iranians abandon their quest for nuclear weapons, it will intensify it. At best, bombing will delay the Iranian program. At worst, by causing them to redouble their commitment, it will actually speed it.

Herein lies the meat of our disagreement. First, Iran cannot 'intensify' its quest. It already consumes billions in a country that is economically stagnant. What a strike does is buy time...for regime change, for moderation, or for a subsequent strike. A decade, even five years if the gloomier estimates are to be believed, is a very long time.

The War on Terrorism was launched to disarm those who can and would attack us. It was the doctrine of action, even pro-action, over that of reaction. Yglesias says that we ought to leave the Iranians to their own devices precisely because they have the ability to retaliate. This is not sensibility, this is capitulation. If we are serious about eradicating terrorism an obvious step is to limit or destroy the capability of the world's largest state sponsor of terror to purvey its doctrine of murder and mayhem.

The more honest among the hawks, including Mark Steyn in a recent City Journal article, admit as much. Only “regime change” can keep Iran nuke-free. But we don’t have the troops to occupy the country. Steyn’s “solution” is for the United States to overthrow the Iranian government but skip the occupation.

This is so mind-bogglingly stupid as to defy belief. It couldn’t possibly work. What would it accomplish? You need to believe that a stable, viable, democratic government would just emerge overnight -- perhaps by magic -- and immediately establish control over all of Iranian territory. It’s a fantasy, a dream. Whether hawks actually believe this is or are just pretending to do so, counting on conscription (or something) to provide the troops necessary for an occupation, I couldn't say. Either way, these are not people who should be listened to or in any way given a respectful hearing.

I tend to agree that a ground invasion followed by an immediate withdrawal is nonsense. It combines the negatives of an invasion (namely that we are actively and openly removing another Iranian ruler) with the negatives of a bombing campaign (chaos). But the notion that the Iranians are incapable of forming a government of their own seems a gross underestimation. The elected majlis is a century-old, and while it had only a brief stretch of governing authority it has retained some measure of responsibility for the whole of its existence. This is, as Yglesias said, a religiously homogenous state that is unlikely to splinter on ethnic or sectarian grounds. Privilege has been class-based, and thus the sense of hostility and the sense of entitlement are both lacking. Its prospects for progress are much better than those of Iraq. My contention is only that they need to do much of the work themselves, with help of course.

The Iraq War, meanwhile, was semi-legitimate under international law. There were years worth of United Nations resolutions demanding that Saddam come clean about his WMD. Even though he turned out not to have had any, he really didn’t ever come clean. Resolution 1441, passed before the war, was deliberately ambiguous as to whether it authorized the use of force. None of this is true of Iran. Everything it’s done so far is allowed under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). If Iran does go forward with a bomb program, it will need to leave the NPT, something the NPT itself permits. There’s nothing resembling a U.N. resolution authorizing the use of force, and the United States has cozy alliances with two non-NPT countries (Israel and Pakistan) and is getting cozier with India.

On this score he's correct. It would be difficult to craft an international law justification for an invasion. A bombing campaign could easily be justified using Iran's terrorist activities in Iraq and across the globe.

Saddam’s regime really was one of the most brutal in the world (probably number two after North Korea). Iran’s regime is unpleasant, but not notably more repressive than those prevailing in the region. Indeed, compared to close Arab allies of the United States like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Kuwait, Qatar, etc., Iran is closer to being a democracy. Politically, it’s about on the level of Morocco's pseudo-democracy, probably the most progressive of the bunch. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is given to saying crazy stuff, but unlike Saddam, the Iranians have never waged war on their neighbors and the government hasn’t even “gassed its own people” or whatever other talking points you want to break out. Nor has Iran, to anyone's knowledge, ever been involved in any terrorist attacks on American civilians.

The Iranians supported Hezbollah and the other Shia militias in Lebanon, limiting the country's prospects for peace for a decade. They menaced Kuwait during the Iran-Iraq War and would almost certain intimidate the Gulf States if given the opportunity.

Instead, the big fear is supposed to be that Iran will launch an unprovoked nuclear first strike against Israel. The evidence for this is so weak that people feel the need to make stuff up. In The New Republic Daniel Jonah Goldhagen tried to make this case and had to clearly misinterpret something a former (yes, former) president of Iran said after he left office to do it. In a later issue of the same magazine, Matthias Kuntzel just truncated the same quotation to make his interpretation seem more plausible. Jeffrey Bell once alleged in The Weekly Standard that Ahmadinejad “muses about the possibility of correcting that Nazi failure by dropping a nuclear bomb on Israel,” which never happened. I called him up and asked him about that, and he explained he was using “poetic license” (my understanding had always been that journalists, not actually being poets or fiction writers of any sort, didn’t have this license).

Ahmadinejad and numerous Iranian leaders have threatened to "annihilate Israel," "wipe it from the map," and made countless other hyperbolic statements about the need for the destruction of the Jewish State. Support for Holocaust denial hardly suggests that one harbors benign or benevolent feelings toward Israeli Jewry.

This aside, the idea that any Iranian leader would commit national suicide in order to harm Israel is ridiculous. Lots of “crazy” leaders -- Stalin, Mao, Kim Jong Il -- have had nuclear weapons and they’ve never done anything like that. What’s more, if Iran wanted to start a war with Israel, kill a bunch of Jews, and get wiped out in the process they could do that with conventional weapons. But in more than 20 years in power, the Islamic Republic’s never done any such thing. Indeed, just over the weekend Iran announced it would offer up a paltry $50 million in aid to the new Hamas-ified Palestinian Authority compared with many hundreds of millions in funding the PA lost from Europe and the United States. Just as they taught me in Hebrew school, the Islamic world’s governments like to talk a big game about Israel, but don’t actually give a rat's ass about the issue and never have.

They’ll do anything to help the Palestinian cause unless it involves spending money, risking the stability of their own regimes, or deploying their military assets. Now we’re supposed to believe that, suddenly, the Mullahs are willing to guarantee their own destruction in order to turn the holy city of Jerusalem into a radioactive wasteland. That’s absurd.

Stalin, Mao and even Kim Jong Il were Communists and devotees of a historical determinism that said that the Earth would one day belong to Communism. They had little imperative for rash action. Ahmadinejad is a true believer with a millennialist streak who has received religious sanction for the use of nuclear weapons. There is much to the argument that he would never be allowed to push the button. That said, can we risk the possibility that this is inaccurate or that a similarly imbued mullah might do so in his stead?

One need not accept the inevitability of an attack to argue for military action. A far more reasonable expectation for Iranian conduct is that they would adopt an aggressive posture within the region and the Muslim world. To acquire nuclear weapons would itself be seen as a triumph over America and the West. Iraq at present does not have an army strong enough to maintain domestic security, much less check Iranian designs in the Gulf. Iran would almost certainly come to dominate oil shipments in the Gulf and thus the global oil market. A $100 barrel of oil would almost certainly be the norm and a wealthier, domestically and internationally stronger Islamic Republic would likely redouble its efforts to export revolution."

A nuclear Iran, however, would be worse than a non-nuclear one. Enough worse, that it’s worth trying to see what kind of diplomatic concessions the Iranians might want in exchange for giving their program up. Maybe if we stopped trying to impoverish their country and overthrow their government while threatening to bomb them, they’d agree to rigorous inspections. If so, we should take the deal. If not, then we’ll live with it. But under no circumstances should war be an option.

The American embargo is not the reason Iran is poor. A reliance on oil and antiquated economic policies is the reason Iran's economy is in shambles. We have neither significant concessions to bribe them to the table nor sufficient non-military options at our disposal to force them to the table. Simply put, Iran has no incentive to abandon its nuclear program short of the threat of attack.

Iran has been at war with us in some way, shape or form for 27 years; we simply have been loathe to acknowledge the conflict. The last line is utterly naive, however. As many have stated the period of greatest progress in the Iranian nuclear program was the late 1990's, when relations were as warm as they had been in two decades and there was no real possibility of military action. When dealing with a hostile power war is ALWAYS an option. So long as it remains the last resort this is not problematic.

2006-04-20T10:28:00.000-07:00

The Actors

Much has been made of the primacy of domestic politics in crafting the appropriate response to the Iranian nuclear challenge. I tend to agree that the decision to undertake strikes against Iranian facilities or a similar military response will probably hinge less on the success of the Iranians in enriching uranium than it will on the Republicans' success or failure that first Tuesday in November. Nonetheless I think it prudent to explore the motives and conduct of the Iranians in pursuing nuclear weapons and, if successful, in crafting a doctrine for use and/or deterrence. I will discuss them in turn.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

The Iranian President has become the champion of the Hidden Imam, the twelfth in the line whose mysterious disappearance was taken by so-called 'Twelver Shiites' to mean that his return would signal the end times. I am a devout Christian and I believe that the Lord Jesus Christ will return to Earth, but I am instinctively distrustful of any who claim to have the ability to effect the Second Coming. I am downright terrified of any who believe that nuclear weapons have the ability to do so.

I have argued in the past that Ahmadinejad may not hold the levers of power in Tehran. While he does have significant authority as President Iran is not a democracy; thus he governs at the will of the mullahs. I posit that they may seek to use the seemingly irrational Ahmadinejad as a smokescreen. Rafsanjani and others like him can recast themselves as 'moderate' and may eventually shunt Ahmadinejad publicly so as to reduce international pressure. The weak-kneed among the Europeans and Americans drawing the wrong lessons from Iraq would welcome this, even if it signals no let-up in the nuclear program.

Ahmadinejad does not command the support of the people, who elected him for his incorruptibility rather than his anti-Western venom. He does, however, have a great deal of influence with the basijis, a sordid array of religious hard-liners, anti-intellectuals, and indolent youth who enjoy beating up those who agitate for freedom or evidence immodesty. This is not an insignificant base of support; literally millions of Iranians claim allegiance and outside of the armed forces and the police it is the sole purveyor of force in the country.

The Mullahs

The country's religious rulers are not monolithic. There are reformers among them, there are hard-liners, and there are millennialists for whom Ahmadinejad is palatable. Unlike most of his predecessors Ahmadinejad is not a cleric. His previous political experience saw him serving as the mayor of Tehran. He was brought to power on a platform that emphasized ridding the Islamic Republic of corruption and thus was disliked by many mullahs who favored Rafsanjani, the 'establishment' candidate.

Many see in the anti-corruption efforts of Ahmadinejad a genuine threat to their privilege. Some, like Rafsanjani, have grown quite fat off graft and corruption. Many simply occupied the palatial homes that once housed the Shah's favorites. Simply put, no matter how many paeans they make to punishing the Great Satan these people have no desire to spend the next decade living in a cave.

As I alluded to earlier, I could envision a scenario in which prominent mullahs distance themselves from the fiery anti-Western, anti-Semitic Ahmadinejad and posture themselves as moderates. When Ahmadinejad brings the country close enough to conflict, they will dispose of him just as they did Khatami. They need not formally oust him as Khomenei did with Banisadr, they need only marginalize him. This will give sufficient cover for the capitulationists in Europe and in the 'moderate middle' of the American political spectrum to declare the problem solved. This scenario may not play out in its entirety, but I do believe that the mullahs will eventually seek to muzzle Ahmadinejad lest his rhetoric invite a military strike.

The Iranian People

This is perhaps the most enigmatic group of all. Perhaps the most pro-Western populace in Southwest Asia, the people of Iran have largely had their fill of the mullahs. The accession of the Khomenei wing of the Revolution never enjoyed majority support; they were merely shrewd and occasionally brutal enough to marginalize their splintered opponents, be they religious, secular moderates, or leftists. The Iran-Iraq war was dispiriting, particularly when Khomenei refused to accept a generous surrender in 1982 and persevered through six more years and hundreds of thousands more dead to ultimately lose. The country's median age is 24 years old, meaning that better than half the population has no memory of the Shah. Their experience has instead been characterized by an utter lack of economic opportunity, famously corrupt mullahs, and a hard-line version of Islam foisted upon a populace increasingly unreceptive.

Proponents of military action do need to acknowledge that a thirst for freedom and a taste for Western pop culture does not necessarily mean that the vast majority of the populace wants to see two-hundred thousand men in ACUs parading through the streets of Tehran. Some will whisper privately, and a handful publicly, that they wish that Iraq's had been their fate. For the majority, however, Iranian nationalism tempers if it does not extinguish the desire for 'liberation.' Reception might be warmer among the Kurds and Azeris of Iran, dominated by a regime that is largely ethnically Persian.

This would recommend against an invasion, but targeted airstrikes are a different story. The mullahocracy is largely an alien regime, ruling by might rather than popular will. So long as Iran maintains a standing Army, a police force, and a basiji militia that can act as an oppressor by proxy, regime change is unlikely. If in addition to targeting nuclear facilities airstrikes sought to destroy command and control, they could throw the country into a disarray that regime opponents could exploit. I would argue that accompanying such a strike would be a verbal commitment to prevent the slaughter of those who rose up against the regime.

Iran has a Western-oriented populace and has a long tradition of representative government in the form of the majlis, which has been sitting for fully a century. If US action could cripple the regime but leave the mortal thrust to the Iranians themselves, the government likely to emerge would be a constitutional, representative one. While tension between hard-liners and moderate and secular forces is likely to occur Iran features an almost homogenous Shia population and a unifying national identity. Persia is a millennia-old entity, unlike an Iraq that has existed for but eighty years. Iranian nationalism suggests that its prospects for representative, unified government are very strong, but such is that nationalism that the country would be better served if we stopped short of full-scale invasion.

Summary

Iran features a complex society and political culture, and the interests of its people or its centers of power ought not be simplified or rendered monolithic in the interest of advancing a case for or against military action. It is easy to view Iran through the prism of the President's vitrol, but he speaks neither for Iran's regime nor for its populace. I believe very strongly in the necessity of military intervention, but I believe it is incumbent upon us to ensure the correct lessons are taken from Iraq so that the appropriate action is employed to neutralize the threat and minimize the negative consequences of an attack.

2006-04-19T04:15:00.000-07:00

SLAPdown!

Dark clouds circle the sky above my alma mater. The students have latched on to the clicheed 'living wage' crusade for school staffers. I think they're demanding $14 an hour or something obscene like that, money that my then-uneducated father wasn't pulling in to support a family of five in New Jersey, where living costs are much higher. The notion that a family might have (gasp) two wage-earners or that an employee might work overtime to provide for his/her family hardly seems fanciful to me, but apparently it is beyond the grasp of politically and economically illiterate collegians and the handful of statisticians who yanked the $14 an hour figure out of thin air. There are five plus billion people the world over who would fight tooth and nail to make half what these individuals earn an hour now. At a school with an Ivy-level endowment a few million extra in salary over the span of a year might seem reasonable, but there is no sinister corporation lurking behind the scenes at UVM, brutally cutting costs to fund a CEO's retirement castle in the Keys. This is student money, in the form of tuition hikes, slashed programs and a trimmed payroll.

As a nameless colleague so aptly put it, a voluntary contract at an above-market wage is not a civil rights violation. Tell that to the few dozen students who attempted to occupy the University's administrative wing. Foiled in this attempt, they decided to camp out on the UVM Green. The UVM Administration allowed them to do so for three days but told them that this permission would not be extended any further. When they declined to leave President Fogel, who aside from inviting a Zapatista to speak at Commencement has been a superb administrator, called out the hounds. Police descended on this motley array of activists, making arrests, levying fines, and giving the students a much-deserved lesson on life in the real world. The reaction was predictable; the 'UVM faculty' (a couple dozen professors, most of whom were prominent in unionization and some of whom were probably prominent in this ill-conceived stunt) drafted a letter in the student weekly, the Cynic, that sounded anything but distinguished. A PHD penned a condescending stylistic nightmare of an editorial saying essentially the same thing.

One of the students lamented that the display was a 'much-need break from school.' No doubt he needed a reprieve from his overbearing twelve-credit courseload, chock full of such pedagogic trailblazers as Nancy Welch and Helen Scott. Tell the woman with two kids, working forty plus hours a week and carrying nine credit hours, that the collegiate experience is overwhelming. Tomorrow is April 20th, and I'm guessing the 'break' he'll be focused on has nothing to do with a KitKat Bar.

College has ceased to be an education for too many students and has become instead an experience. Students take to the streets, occupy school grounds, and even invade administrative buildings in pursuit of some ill-begotten crusade that will vanish from mind in a week or a month or a year. No matter what laws they break or what mores they trample, there are no consequences. Even if they drift over into the political and social mainstream these are the tales with which they will bore their teenagers when they head off to college. They may not rememember what crusade motivated their heroic gesture, but they and everyone they know will never be allowed to forget the depth of their commitment to...well...that doesn't matter.

Graduates leave college with memories and a credential, little more. I congratulate President Fogel and the UVM Administration for having the courage to remind these students that UVM is an institution of higher learning first and foremost. With a few more educators like Fogel and a few less like those who signed the 'faculty' letter, perhaps the ship can start to right itself.

2006-04-18T04:14:00.000-07:00

Mark Steyn on Iran

Mark Steyn's piece in City Journal is an absolute must-read. I do not agree with all that he says; specifically I believe that a regime that once enjoyed popular support is now as alien as Saddam's but enjoys (as the Baathists did) a monopoly on the use of force that renders genuine revolution unlikely without outside assistance. Nor do I countenance the implication that full-scale invasion to effect regime change is the only or even the best choice. Nonetheless, he makes an inference that seems so logical I kick myself for not having grasped it sooner.

It has long been stated that the lens through which Osama Bin Laden perceives the West generally and the United States specifically is that of Vietnam, of Somalia, and more importantly of Lebanon. Steyn argues that Ahmadinejad, allegedly one of the 'students' who seized the Iranian Embassy in 1979, perceives geopolitics through that prism. Iranians held Americans hostage on what was, according to international law, sovereign US territory and the American response was nothing, save a weak-kneed military gesture that ended in ignominy and death in the Iranian desert.

The implications that such a worldview raises are critical to understanding what Ahmadinejad might do with a nuclear weapon. Ahmadinejad the millenarian might be tempted to use such a weapon against Israel, damn the consequences. Ahmadinejad the hostage-taker is likely to employ the weapon as a bargaining device to leverage leadership of the oil industry from the Saudis and the Gulf States, to bully potential US allies in rebuilt Iraq or Afghanistan into unwitting Iranian allies, and to ensure the ascendancy of Shia groups such as Hezbollah in Lebanon. Those who want to argue that an Iranian bomb is harsh medicine but the cost of destroying it is prohibitive need to realize that regionally hegemony and the threat to the global economic order is not merely the worst case scenario but a likely possibility. Still more alarming is the prospect that a mushroom cloud will one day rise over Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, or another city in range of a Shahab-3.

2006-04-15T19:25:00.000-07:00

The "Diplomatic Solution"

Those who want to believe that a diplomatic solution to this conflict exists are deluding themselves. Why? Let us presuppose for the purpose of this exercise that Iran is a rational actor, hardly a safe assumption but immaterial to this particular question. Iran has no incentive to cooperate. The 'carrot' is non-existent and the 'stick' is not a deterrant. What can we offer Iran? Normalized relations would slash the price of oil and thus oil revenues. The present situation, with oil prices at record levels, is probably optimal for Iran, but a close second would be a sanctions regime abused by Russia and China. The limited supply would drive up prices for the resource-poor West and extort a dear cost from the purchasing state. It would also give the regime a tighter control over the money coming in and thus a stronger grip on the nation at large.

The only incentive Iran has to stop is the threat of military action, and to back down before the Great Satan after months of bluster would be an incalculable blow to the prestige and credibility of the Islamic Republic, at home and abroad. We have two options. The first is to disarm Iran, either by full-scale invasion or by counterproliferation strikes, the latter more amenable to me. The second is to acquiesce in a nuclear Iran. Though I supported the decision to remove Saddam Hussein, Iraq did not constitute an imminent threat to America or her interests. A nuclear Iran presents an imminent threat to America, to Europe, to Israel and to the global economy.

2006-04-13T13:47:00.000-07:00

Just Do It

I cannot be clearer or more emphatic. Send the bombers now. Further delays in the name of dead-end diplomacy only increase the possibility that one day in the near future Al-Jazeera will cut to a shot of the President of Iran mouthing 'Eureka' in Farsi and a mushroom cloud wafting over a little-known corner of the Islamic Republic.

Are there costs? Of course. Terrorism will spike and our troops in Iraq may face attacks from the Mahdi Army or even the Iranians themselves. A few Shahab-3's will be lobbed at Israel or perhaps the Green Zone in Baghdad, and it will take careful diplomacy to keep Israel at bay and to prevent Iraq from degenerating still further into chaos. The Muslim world will be outraged and the Arab Street will burn a few dozen more American flags than they ordinarily would. Our relations with a number of countries, be they in Southwest Asia, Europe, or the rest of the world, will undoubtedly suffer. If the Iranians succeed in temporarily closing the Straits of Hormuz oil prices may peak high enough to slow down the global economy. All of these are serious consequences, I have no doubt.

There will also be benefits. In addition to the removal of a mortal threat to America itself and to our Israeli and Middle Eastern allies, this would also preclude a danger to the long-term stability of our oil supplies. A number of states would privately thank Allah and George Bush for removing a threat to the regional balance of power. Qatar in particular but also the Saudis would be at the mercy of an Iran acting as regional hegemon. A counterproliferation strike that destroys radar and command and control facilities might fatally weaken the mullahocracy and pave the way for a representative, Western-oriented government.

The most important consideration should be the cost of inaction. Iran is THE leading sponsor of terrorism on the world stage, and the possibility that a fundamentalist leader embued with Shia messianism could hand such a weapon off to an anti-Israeli or even anti-Western terrorist group is a frightening prospect indeed. Iran would also menace regional states such as Bahrain, Qatar and Saudi Arabia and likely take over the leadership of the oil producing states. Iran would act with impugnity in Iraq and would almost certainly fill a power vacuum left by the seemingly inevitable withdrawal of US forces.

US policy during the Iran-Iraq war was to prevent a decisive victory that would leave the triumphant power astride the region and its oil resources. A nuclear Iran would dominate both powers and run roughshod over lesser, poorly armed states. These states relied on the balance of power and the American presence to deter aggression. The consequence of American withdrawal from Iraq would likely be the end to significant American presence in the region and any accompanying influence. If the possibility of a spike in world oil prices in the wake of a counterproliferation strike is frightening, visualize the likely consequence of a virulently anti-Western state dominating world oil supplies.

A nuclear-armed Iran is emphatically unacceptable. Diplomacy is as likely to work with Iran as it is with North Korea. China and Russia will undermine any attempt at sanctions, of this we can be certain. Counterproliferation is a reasonable answer to the problem. Those who speak against it do so out of ignorance, willful or otherwise. It is an inevitability. No measure of diplomatic formality will quiet the critics. The sooner it is undertaken, the smaller the cost in human lives and the sooner American can begin minimalizing the fallout.

2006-04-11T12:03:00.000-07:00

A Celebration of a Classical Education

I was reading Tim Mackintosh-Smith's superb travel writing Yemen and was struck by the vapidity of my own education. It was not merely his superb prose and his ability to call upon centuries and even milennia-old literati for illustration. Rather it was the story he told of a colonial administrator in Aden who managed to translate a number of Arabic dialects with little or no foreknowledge. He did so because he was probably fluent in Latin and Greek before he hit puberty. The administrative and governmental skills displayed by him and myriad other Oxbridge alums who populated the Foreign Service was that of Cicero and Aristotle, not merely a compendium of technocratic and/or pseudoscientific tracts that comprise "social science" education.

Allow me to make a few broad brush generalizations here; call me on them if you will. The period from the dawn of the Renaissance to the dusk of the Enlightenment produced a volume of literary (and artistic) works that dwarf the achievements of Western civilization before or since. The past hundred years has produced few literary giants; the contemporary literati recede from memory a little more each year they stay dead. The lasting achievements are, by and large, poetic and literary historiography profiling modern warfare and other phenomena unique to the age.

The Renaissance was a 'rebirth' of a classical civilization that had long been stultified by an absolutist Church and the institution of feudalism. The apogee of the Enlightenment saw it slain once more, this time sacrificed on the altar of Reason. The murderers, be they Marxist or Nietzchean, interpreted the past through the prism of the present and declared it an anachronistic sideshow.

In so doing, they assumed that the appeal of classical civilization was the ability of its study to convey objective truth, which science and relativism had undermined in ways both similar and different. This was never its cardinal virtue. Rather it was the illustration of the process of thought from Plato to Aristotle, the reign of Aristotelian philosophy, Descartes, Kant & Hume, etc etc. It was the evolution of language from Greek and Aramaic to Latin to the Romance Languages. It was the debates over the nature of government held millenia ago with many of the same arguments and arguably better advocates. Students were treated to a three thousand year long tour of the processes of thought that allowed scholars throughout history to approach contemporary issues, be they moral or scientific.

Today's students believe the ideas they hold as articles of faith to be the functional equivalent of objective truth (though the mere possibility of the latter is anathema to them), an a priori gift of reason, rather than the product of hundreds of years of the ebbs and flows of norms and academic fads. Deconstructionism, postmodernism, and assorted other isms have sapped the ancient works of the veneration with which the scholar used to treat them. Thus French students learn indolence and entitlement because their education does not teach them to view the present circumstances through the heritage of Descartes, Rousseau and Pascal. It is Cecil Rhodes and not myriad principled purveyors of the 'white man's burden' who typifies the colonial experience for British students.

American students suffer from the curse of egalitarianism; rather than embracing a meritocratic elitism the country opts instead for the lowest common denominator of education. We deemed that every child should have the chance at a diploma; this degenerated into every child getting a diploma regardless of their ability to do the work. Thus high school seniors graduate doing math that students in some countries (and in this country a few decades ago) tackle before they hit ninth grade. We suffer from a sort of historical arrogance in supposing that because science has progressed in a somewhat linear fashion that the humanities have moved forward similarly. The truth is that while we have access to a far greater volume of information we are not trained to think nearly as effectively as our predecessors.

Progressing to the rarified air of higher education, egalitarianism couples with the multiculturalist/relativist mantra to determine curricula. Through the American prism, Phyllis Wheatley becomes an acceptable substitute for Lord Byron and Toni Morrison can stand in for any dead white man. A collegian can take Lesbian Native American Poetry in lieu of Shakespeare, Milton and Donne. I ran into the Melian Dialogue in a foreign policy class and the Republic in philosophy; aside from that my academic experience did nothing to require or even recommend a Great Books education.

Students get a poor education because generations of academics conditioned to believe that there exists no objective truth have come to the implicit or explicit conclusion that they have little to impart upon students but the progressive chatechism. Gender, ethnic and even sexuality studies, along with the time-honored tradition of protest for protest's sake, allow students and their mentors the opportunity to carve out niches of offense; students can either cling to their identity as members of an aggrieved group or take pride in being one of the members of the oppressor group that 'gets it.' The truth is that what they 'get' is a liberal arts orthodoxy that would not stand up to the assault of an Etonian or Andover student of rhetoric from a century ago. It is a system that purports to esteem knowledge but lays no criteria for evaluating what truth is and thus what is worth knowing. It is a house of cards buttressed not by logic or the totality of human progress but by mere self-congratulations.

American education does a remarkable job of training scientists and MBAs (those who aren't picked off by the much easier social sciences and humanities courses) because such courses of study eschew (with limits) the relativism that so informs the rest of academia. Nonetheless the ranks of the great scientists and administrators of the past included men of the belles lettres. The prospect of a Goethe, a serious scientist, member of the literati, and moral philosopher (or even of a Thomas Jefferson), is utterly incomprehensible today.

Now scientists and businessmen consciously wall themselves off from these disciplines because the belief systems that inform such luminaries, objectivism and rationalism, have been erected to ignore or circumvent any demands that other disciplines might place on science. This uneasy detente is occasionally fractured, particularly when religion or morality attempts to shackle science or when science runs afoul of a liberal canard (such as a suggestion of race-based differences in intelligence or a questioning of the reigning opinion on global warming).

Thus I advocate a system of education for our meritocratic elite that grounds the lofty intellects in the progress of thought that has led to what we accept as true or vogue today. There may be few if any dialects left to survey or dark corners of the earth upon which we can shine the light of civilization, but there are myriad scientific, political and ethical challenges that exist today or will in short order. Who better to solve them than the students of a renascent classical education, learning from those who have confronted and solved their own contemporary challenges?

2006-04-09T17:41:00.000-07:00

On Wednesday, April 5th, Kathlyn Elizabeth Henderson was born. She was 7 lbs and 11 oz and 20.5" long. Mother, daughter and me are recovering nicely.

2006-04-04T05:14:00.000-07:00

A critique of the Bush Presidency as devastating as it is simple. Without resorting to moonbat-speak Richard Cohen manages to eviscerate Bush's response to 9/11 as well as anyone I have yet seen.

2006-04-03T13:04:00.000-07:00

Cynthia McKinney

The Georgia Democrat has become (to paraphrase Jonah Goldberg's description of Michael Moore) a bizarre caricature of the Right's conception of the Left. Instead of taking responsibility for her actions, she falls back on the rhetoric of "it's because I'm black and/or a woman." Assorted fringe lefties (including the one-time paragon of virtue the NAACP) come out of the woodwork to take her side. Nancy Pelosi and other champions of the toiling classes (such as...I don't know...cops?) remain mute.

The fact of the matter is she hit a police officer. If I hit a police officer, I go to jail, regardless of the circumstances. Even though she was very evidently in the wrong, she chose to blame the police officer instead. It was SHE who forgot her lapel pin and it was SHE who reacted to a tap on the shoulder with a punch to the gut. My guess is that she could easily have remedied the situation with a mea culpa or even a half-hearted apology, but she sealed her fate by instead turning this into a racial issue.

Is this fringe lunatic, this race-baiter, really the best the Fourth Congressional District of Georgia has to offer?

2006-04-03T03:37:00.000-07:00

The Steroids Controversy

Allow me to throw in my two cents about a controversy that has very little to do with politics. A decade ago, baseball was suffering from a strike that had devastated the national pasttime's hold on the public imagination. Ratings and attendance were down. The future looked bleak for Major League Baseball. Into that void stepped two men, Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire (Barry Bonds would follow). Baseball and its journalists knew what they were getting from the start, and if they did not they were guilty of willfully blinding themselves to the reality. It was the ultimate Faustian bargain. Baseball was popular once more and all was right with the world. MLB, the sportswriters and the fans knew the product was tainted but they knew that the long ball was the only effective means of regaining a national audience. I certainly knew, though I returned to the game for the similarly problematic occasion of Yankee victory, a phenomenon just as beneficial for the game in that it captivates millions of faithful each fall and millions more just as faithful to whoever the Yankees play.

All of this or none of this is particularly problematic, based on your point of view. Nobody complained when half-empty bleachers were suddenly full again, when the ratings on baseball games and of the now-infuriated pundits were respectable once more. My guess is that with the popularity restored steroids testing would have returned incrementally and with sufficient warning. Home runs would have returned to a reasonable level, with the league leaders hitting 45-55 on a yearly basis. Like a monkey wrench into well-oiled machinery steps Jose Canseco, who missed the spotlight and the paycheck and probably wanted a measure of absolution for his own crimes. This is all well and good, repugnant in most every conceivable way and yet still an effective catalyst.

The zeal with which this was seized on by myriad sportswriters, however, simply boggled the mind. To pretend that two players who were big but never gigantic (and another, Sosa, who was downright lanky) could turn into Lou Ferrigno in a summer was delusional. Everyone, from the bleacher bum to the ESPN analyst up to Bud Selig, knew what was going on. To portend righteous indignation is to look the Devil in the eye and ask for your money back. I want to see one of these players, be it Giambi or Bonds or someone of a similar caliber, stand before the cameras and say very simply, "You knew!"

2006-03-30T14:03:00.000-08:00

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Self-Congratulations

Thomas Sowell subtitled his 1996 book Self-Congratulations as a Basis for Social Policy. A decade on, the title remains prescient. So much of the liberal canard is predicated on means, irrespective of ends. Leftist foreign policy is predicated on moral methods rather than humane ends. Domestic policy is an exercise in conscience, not effectiveness. The embodiment of this is the approach to war in Iraq.

A call for 'redeployment' is not predicated on any particular desire to save the lives of our soldiers. Blue state Democratic ideologues are not, by and large, favorably disposed to the military. Aside from a whacky cousin and the ROTC kid in poli-sci class, the average leftist knows few if any active duty soldiers. These are the individuals who morally equate Abu Ghraib and Halabja and who force ROTC to train across town lest they be confronted with the grim spectres of jingoism and militarism. This is about peddling moralism in the guise of concern.

Few individuals argue with sincerity that Iraq was better off under Saddam Hussein. His regime claimed a higher monthly death toll than sectarian violence is claiming now, and the psychological cost of rape rooms and arbitrary sadist violence cannot be overstated. The Shia and Kurdish communities are as prosperous and free as they have ever been, and while the Sunnis have lost their privileged position their future is brighter than it was in a violent, economically stagnant prewar Iraq. Thus the achievement was a moral one, and the ultimate victory will no doubt produce a more humane society than existed under Hussein. Yet the topic of conversation is not the justicity of the ends but the possibility that the Administration's original justification was based on faulty intelligence.

The Left is fighting to end our commitment to Iraq with absolutely no regard for the costs. Bin Laden and many in the Arab world based their calculations on the belief that America would cut and run. America's retreats from Beirut, Mogadishu, Iran and Southern Iraq fostered that impression, and the Left wants to prove them right. Those who would harm us will no longer fear the consequences and those who would ally with us will no longer respect the sincerity of our promises. Just as the Left continues to toast America's defeat in Vietnam without sparing a thought for the Vietnamese or Cambodians who died in the aftermath, so too would a precipitous American retreat loose the corks on champagne bottles across the country, even if it fatally weakens American foreign policy.

A foreign policy based on self-congratulations failed miserably under Carter and Clinton. In light of the stakes on the table in the post-9/11 world, it would fare immeasurably worse today.

2006-03-29T15:08:00.000-08:00

South Park Conservatives
The Latest Installment in the Book Review

I am sensitive to claims from my dozens of (who am I kidding...dozen) loyal readers that my blog has degenerated into little more than an obscure right-wing version of Oprah's Book Club. Nonetheless the bulk of my intellectual activity centers around my book collection, so there's no getting around it. The latest on my reading list was Brian Anderson's South Park Conservatives, a healthy counterweight to Rod Dreher's reputedly "heavy" Crunchy Cons. For the record, I want my money back. Well, two-thirds of it. If I buy a book new, I expect a minimum 350-400 pages. I knew this would be slender, but 160 pages? I've devoted more copy to Barbra Streisand.

Beyond the title, Anderson made little meaningful contribution to the political landscape. His work was largely a compendium of thoughts that had been articulated elsewhere by abler chroniclers. The populist revolution in talk radio and at Fox News has been given superior treatment by sympathetic but sober pundits. The situation on campus was surveyed two decades ago by Allen Bloom in his timeless work The Closing of the American Mind, and while the recent trends could use a more exhaustive examination Anderson has nothing to add to Dan Flynn, Ben Shapiro and David Horowitz, intellectually unsophisticated partisans.

The book's only real insight was its title, which referred to but a mere chapter in the slender encomium. The witty, irreverant iconoclasts the phrase describes have become an important aspect of conservatism and have contributed much to the progress of such values among the young. Nonetheless, plot summaries from a couple South Park episodes and a quote or two from Dennis Miller do scant justice to an important and little-understood phenomenon. Aside from the odd Jonah Goldberg column and a New York Times Magazine piece that read like a Upper West Side liberal's conservative safari, these individuals have received very little attention. Anderson's cursory treatment failed to add to the understanding.

Anderson's biggest flaw lay in his inability to bring any sense of coherence to his work. Instead of glimpsing the future of conservatism, readers were treated to a handful of anecdotes about independent and seemingly unrelated phenomena in the contemporary Republican Party.

2006-03-27T14:18:00.000-08:00

The Immigration Debate

I tend to steer clear of immigration issues. It's not because I'm to the left of my colleagues, it is because it is an intractable problem and I don't have a solution. As a good capitalist, I believe the immigrants are mostly just filling a demand in the labor market. Immigrants tend to the be the brightest and most ambitious from societies where intelligence and industry are not compensated accordingly. I also believe very strongly that we are a nation of immigrants and we should do our best to accommodate "your huddled masses yearning to breathe free."

At the same time, I have serious problems with the status quo. Porous borders have become an issue of national security; when perhaps 12 million people live within our borders without the knowledge of our government our ability to police ourselves and monitor domestic terror threats necessarily diminishes. Crime is another serious problem. Illegal immigrants have been implicated in crime surges in several states. Drug enforcement is another consequence, and there exists the frightening prospect that terrorists could link up with some of the left-wing guerrilla organizations such as FARC who already disdain America to smuggle men, materiel, and/or money into the United States.

Additionally, several states pay dearly to educate the children of illegal immigrants and endure higher auto insurance because illegal immigrants are uninsured. I also take great exception to the belief that many illegals (and many in Mexico) entertain that they possess a 'right' to emigrate. The Mexican government treats America as an outlet for the surplus labor that results from Mexican economic woes and the demographic problems that result from the unwillingness of the Mexican government to encourage family planning.

The appropriate remedy would seem to be a mix of punishment and amnesty, something that accounts for the desire of many to become American citizens and their ability to augment the American economy while respecting the need of Americans for security and those of residents of certain states who pay a disproportionate cost in insurance and education. There also exists in the response to illegal immigration an opportunity to influence a community that respects the cultural and linguistic heritage of America, whether through citizenship tests or a language requirement.

Thus the response should not be merely to build a fence, which solves some issues but does nothing about those already here. Nor should it be to render immigration a felony. Rather it should be a partial amnesty, coupled with an effort to account for as many individuals as possible. We need to put pressure on Mexico to combat this problem as well. It would be a tragedy were America to retreat behind the walls of a stockade. It is criminally negligent, however, to ignore the failures of a status quo injurious to our security and economically burdensome to the residents of a number of states. If Bush does not act now, while the stockade conservatives sound alarmist, we will have to act later, when the nativists sound prescient.

2006-03-23T13:52:00.000-08:00

On Crunchy Cons

I buckled down and read the book. I found much food for thought, but I had mixed feelings about the effort as a whole. First and foremost, it was a poorly written manifesto. You can't launch a movement with bad grammar, and the adjective-happy Dreher lumps together such flowery profundities as "phenomenally delicious" to make the case for a lifestyle that prides itself on intellectual inquiry.

A far more serious criticism is the tone of condescension that oozes throughout his work. This smacks of liberal elitism, the tone of voice that does not merely portend higher knowledge but heaps scorn upon the pithy, unenlightened Republican masses. I have no particular problem with elitism, but the accompanying sneer is a unique feature of its liberal manifestation.

I am not suggesting that Dreher's book was a total waste. Aestheticism is sorely lacking in America and the celebration of the traditional and the beautiful over the merely efficient is a fundamentally conservative position. For a variety of reason the conservative ethic of conservation has given way to an anti-environmentalism (partly the consequence of free-market fundamentalism and partly the consequence of anti-leftism), with the unhealthy consequence that Republicans and most conservatives disdain virtually any argument or policy tinted green. The dearth of community and civil society in America is a sad phenomenon, though the analysis of the causes and potential solutions to this problem was insufficient. Lastly, the exhortation to not merely dabble in religion but to live it is an admirable one.

I have a voracious appetite for books, particularly the classics of literature and nonfiction (though I worry in the spirit of Allan Bloom that they do more to 'culture' me than reveal unto me transcendent truth). I recoil in horror at the hypersexualization of popular culture and cringe at the sight of the souless subdivision. I drive a hideous car largely because it gets excellent gas mileage. That said, I could never consider myself a crunchy con.

Dreher confuses an idiosyncratic conservatism for first principles. His estimation of 'crunch' is as individualistic as many of the choices he derides as consumerism. For instance, he opines that front porches of gentrifying urbana facilitate community by affording the veneer of openness and forcing the residents of homes mere feet apart to interact. A case can be made that the suburban backyard, of barbecue and father-son toss lore, is at least as amenable to community as is the urban environment. Assuming home-schooling is not for everyone, is the suburbanite who works overtime to send his child to private school and pay for his college as dedicated to his family as is the man who accepts lower pay or limits his working hours in the interests of quality time? Thus he seems eager to justify his own lifestyle choices rather than recommending something with universal validity.

The fundamental flaw of Rod Dreher's Crunchy Conservatism is that it is a lifestyle choice for those who can afford to make it. Upper-middle class families can make the decision to home-school and thus remove one half of a wage-earning tandem from the workforce. People generally eat processed and pre-packaged foods not because they want to but because they cannot afford free range chicken and do not have the time to bake bread and spend the day preparing a multi-course meal. A well-educated aesthet can choose between hedonism and asceticism, while a poor American with a GED has a much more limited panorama.

Until Dreher and his cohorts acknowledge the flaws both in their presentation and in their arguments, they will be limited in their ability to influence the conservative movement. This is unfortunate, for his arguments contain nuggets of genuine wisdom. In a witty, concise package devoid of the condescension and broad-brush generalizations so prominent in Crunchy Cons, the premises of aestheticism and conservation would merit more serious consideration.

2006-03-19T09:03:00.000-08:00

Iraq Three Years On

Three years ago I was on the access road to the Grand Canyon when the news came across the radio that we had attacked Iraq. A couple days later I was in a hotel in Pennsylvania when the story of the 507th Transportation Company popped up on CNN. I remember where I was, who I was with and what I felt. While I do not mean to suggest that my sentiments are unchanged, I believe now as I did then that this is a noble and just cause and that we must see it through.

Let me prefix this with a sour note. The revelation that a Sharia court in Afghanistan is contemplating the death penalty for someone accused of conversion to Christianity is extremely troubling. Much of the Islamic world is at the stage of social and political development as was the West in the sixteenth century. If God is dead, the Muslim world has yet to read the obituary. There are plenty of societies shackled by moral stultification, but Islam alone sits astride a lake of the world's most precious resource. A seemingly innocuous sentence tucked into the good book provides the easiest explanation of the difference between the Muslim World and its Christian counterpart. Render unto Ceasar that which is Caesars, and unto God that which is God's. Until the social and political culture recognizes the sagacity of this assertation, Islam will remain a deeply intolerant faith.

Fortunately, Iraq's success is not predicated on the ability of a deeply intolerant faith to accept religious dissent. The people of Iraq need only accept a federated order that prioritizes peace over sectarian domination. There is ample evidence to suggest that the country is headed in this direction. The first reason is exhaustion. A society held hostage by a cruel despot who maintained a monopoly on the use of force has given way to one in which no one holds such a monopoly. Civil war is possible but I liken the situation to Lebanon in the late 80's. Iraq has known a quarter-century of fighting. The underlying causes of this conflict remain unaddressed, but the aggressors (namely the Sunnis) know they cannot win and are content to permit a third party to enforce the peace.

The second reason I believe civil war is unlikely is that much of Iraq is stable and secure. The Shia and Kurd areas have witnessed violent protest but the majority of the territory and population is secure. One could certainly make the case that the majority of the territory and even population passed the years between 1861 and 1865 without seeing hostile forces. Nonetheless this conflict is about the grievances of a single ethnic minority, one increasingly accepting of the reality that political participation is the only way they will avoid violent subjugation by Kurds and Shias.

The third reason is the army. In the relatively secular states of the region (Turkey, Pakistan, Egypt), the historic arbiter of state power has been the army. A paid military undermines the appeal of sectarian militias (and can combat them if the need arises). So long as it represents the varied interests of the different parties rather than those of a minority (or even majority) group, it is a unifying entity. Iraq's army is increasingly capable of undertaking policing and peacekeeping duties.

Iraq is a freer, more prosperous country than it was three years ago. On the whole, its infrastructure has improved and its political processes are developing. There are significant challenges that loom. Baghdad's utilities are not yet at their prewar levels, though much of this owes to the Sunnis' propensity for blowing things up. Certainly this is a minority, but the majority has done little to date to stop them.

America has paid a dear price for her contribution. 2300 dead is a comparatively small number, but in the age of 24 hours news each one of those 2300 whose face and whose story we see hurts more than 100 that we don't Additionally, there are hundreds of amputees and severely wounded soldiers who have made an immutible sacrifice. The majority of this country is neither particularly angry nor particularly supportive of this conflict, for most believe they have no stake in the outcome. The most ardent opposition comes from economic strata who do not fight (or send their children to fight). Those who have sent their sons and daughters to war treat the conflict with grim resignation.

America is not opposed to this conflict, it is merely reluctant. We may not agree with the reasons we went to war, but even those without an authoratative grasp of the geopolitical significance tend to understand that it must be seen through. There are no particularly appropriate historical analogies, though a few partial ones seem relevant. America can and must persevere, not because of what we stand to win but because of what we stand to lose. Blame Bush for the decision, but we are left with its consequences regardless.

2006-03-15T12:41:00.000-08:00

The Commoditization of Culture

Ron Dreher's Crunchy Cons (I'm basing this off the reviews and the blog...today was payday so I'll read the book shortly) has raised quite a stir at NRO, whose contributors seem to have grown bored defending Dubya. They have even gone so far as to devise a Crunchy Con blog. I believe it ties in quite well to the questions I raised last week about the conservative dilemma that pits the asthetic against the economic.

The premise of Dreher, Caleb Stegall, and a number of backers that have quickly emerged is that a significant strand of conservative thought opposes the specific policy prescriptions that are lately identified with conservatism, namely free market economics and a virtual lock-step with the Republican Party. In this I believe his critique holds promise. The RepubliCon response to massism (which hoists the banner of liberalism) has been to encourage policies that typically achieve better economic outcomes but are no less (sometimes more) soulless and culturally vapid.

Walmart and the proliferation of the McMansion are economically sensible and useful, of this I have little doubt. My point is that they are not without their costs. Walmart tends to swallow smaller competitors, and while its convenience and low prices ought not be understated even Milton Friedman himself would not dismiss the correlation (if not causation) between Big Box chains and boarded-up storefronts on Main Streets nationwide. The McMansion is generally safe and convenient, but it caricatures and commoditizes Americana. The front porch, the mailbox and the postage stamp yard are the American Dream churned out by assembly line.

A crunchy con's response to this is to eschew the economic considerations in favor of other factors. Thus a house ought be chosen not merely because it is the largest one can afford; a smaller house that requires a shorter commute affords more time with the family. Organic chicken is, according to some, a healthier, tastier choice than the cheaper Purdue brand. The Navigator appeals to the suburban road warrior but mid-sized sedans are more fuel-efficient and generally meet space needs for family and cargo.

None of these ideas is particularly objectionable; indeed many are eminently plausible. The problem is that the prescription is essentially commoditization (as I theorized was a plausible reaction to the massism of the Big Box chains). In selecting furniture or home decor, this is unobjectionable. In examining religion and other important lifestyle choices, this becomes self-defeating.

The conservative emphasis on tradition treats the past as a foundation for the present and future. The Burkean conception of an organic society is predicated on the argument that each tradition or precept exists not because of what exists at first glance but because it is underlain by dozens of other entities, many of which are unseen. Thus the emphasis on incremental over epiphanal change, which often destroys far more than it seeks to.

Religion embodies this, affecting our values and the esteem in which we hold ourselves and the world around us. Thus most "atheists" are skin-deep, and those that are not are frequently a depressing bunch. In the hands of Nietzche, nihilism was liberating. In the hands of lesser minds, it destroys the soul. The ability to change denomination or even religion without good reason debases faith into a commodity, one that can be swapped each time a trendier one comes along, is the epitome of emptiness. It confuses sensation for spirituality and reduces faith to something akin to music or cinema, an experience rather than a lifestyle.

Crunchy cons imply that the various choices are idiosyncratic, products of an innate conservative affinity for the asthetic and the timeless. In many ways the appropriate analogy is the social consciousness of the far-leftist on the perpetual quest for the newest conscience fad. David Brooks anticipated this beautifully in his decade-old book BoBos in Paradise. Dreher's book and the subsequent debate it captured or unleashed (depending on your perspective) simply allows crunchy cons to advertise their originality. To paraphrase the caption of a picture of a snowflake, "you're unique...just like everyone else."

2006-03-12T08:18:00.000-08:00

The Contenders

While I have no doubt that this list will change significantly over the next two plus years, I will weigh in on my contenders for 2008. I will prefix this with a few prognostications. First, the DPW ports deal may have convinced important Democrats that protectionism is a winning strategy. They will attempt to disguise it as a pro-labor stance, but the reality will be a Lou Dobbs-style populism appealing to the basest of human sentiments...fear. If this does indeed prove to be the case, the appeal of stockade conservatism will wax and we could see a credible candidacy from a Buchananite. Nonetheless, in order of importance:

1. George Allen - The Virginia Senator manages to synthesize social conservatism and small-government libertarianism. While he has been a supporter of Bush, his small-government credentials may give him the requisite distance from a man whom many see as deeply unpopular. As a Virginian, he may have more traction with some of the swing states (particularly Pennsylvania) than a Texan or someone who hails from further south. He is well-spoken and would likely excel in a debate format. Paired with a centrist he may be difficult to beat.

2. Mitt Romney - The Massachusetts Governor's well-known Morman piety and business acumen recommend him well for the job. He troubles social conservatives who perceive his pro-life shift as opportunistic. Nonetheless, he can propel himself to the front of the Republican pack by winning the neighboring state of New Hampshire in the primary. Aside from New Hampshire I don't think him likely to win over many states that went for Kerry in '04. Nonetheless, a geographic split ticket pairing him with a Southern or a Midwestern conservative would be a solid pair.

3. John McCain - The Arizona 'maverick' certainly boasts greater name recognition than anyone in the Republican field, save Rudy Guiliani. He's a pro-lifer and he's very solid on defense issues. He's not a protectionist. He has proven his capacity for leadership and independence, admirable traits to be sure. But campaign finance reform and a number of stances that he has taken against President Bush have alienated him from his conservative base. His recent attempt at the SRLC to pay tribute to Bush probably backfired in the short-term but it will be forgotten long before 2008. Nonetheless McCain must keep in mind that his greatest appeal is his ability to attract the swing voter. A transparent attempt to patronize the base is likely to alienate his particular constituency and convince those who would back him that he is unelectable. He needs to play to his strengths, most notably defense. If he can win the nomination, the right running mate and a few key allies in the punditry will do more to generate support than any half-assed attempts to pat Dubya on the back. McCain still faces an uphill battle. The lesson of 2004 was that the conservative base, sufficiently animated, can win an election. McCain will render them apathetic. If the Dems swing far enough left to scare them, they will show up. If the Dems nominate Evan Bayh or Mark Warner, they will stay home.

4. Rudy Guiliani - The former New York City mayor is a leader, plain and simple. He is not socially conservative; his own personal life bears this out. Nonetheless those who visited New York City under Dinkins and then came back a decade later can appreciate the hand of Rudy. He is strong on crime and security, and while he has minimal experience in foreign policy his leadership style recommends him well for such a role. Nonetheless, he would need to promise to exhume Ronald Reagan to share the ticket if he is to stave off a challenge from the right. I don't know that he would carry New York in November, but he could give the Republicans a fighting chance in the swing states. He and Condi Rice are the only pro-choice candidates I would consider voting for in the general election.

I will treat Bill Frist, Condi Rice, Mike Huckabee and a few of the other notables at a later date. Nonetheless, if the primaries were held in 2006 instead of 2005 these are the four I would keep my eye on.

2006-03-08T14:59:00.000-08:00

Elitism and the Walmart Dilemma

There is a strain of conservatism that I appreciate without necessarily endorsing, that being the phenomenon of elitism. Classic conservatism was aristocratic in origin, particularly in Europe, and one of its most prominent targets was the low-brow culture that came to elbow out the high culture of the aristocratic elite as industrialization and popular democracy began to transfer wealth and influence to millions of people who had been previously disenfranchised. Part of the reason that many accuse conservativsm of being anti-democratic or even anti-capitalist is that consumerist materialism and populism have replaced the well-crafted with the mass-produced and discourse with demagoguery. I intend to give the subject a closer look. I apologize in advance for a rather crude attempt, but broad-brush social criticism is new for me.

Industrialization and other trappings of modernization swelled the ranks of wage laborers; thus the assembly line produced both a massive market of consumers and the cheap goods to satiate their needs. The long-term price of this innovation was the obsolescence of the tradesman. Composite furniture has replaced its durable, well-made predecessors. American and European homes used to be nothing if not original. The houses were uniquely designed and built to stand the test of time. To duplicate the materials and the craftsmanship of the middle and upper class homes of yesteryear would be utterly prohibitive. Instead we have cookie-cutter homes that are poorly built and utterly indistinguishable from their neighbors. While they are more attractive than the council homes of Britain or their counterparts in Europe, they pale in comparison to those built a century ago.

Art has proven similarly vapid. Renaissance painters spent decades perfecting their craft. Masterpieces took months, even years, to create. Now 'art' is an all-encompassing term, and little that falls under the umbrella is the fruit of exhaustive labor. Modern art is soulless and base. This has much to do with misbegotten Nietzchean philosphy and the horrors of Twentieth Century warfare, but both of these were spawned by industrialization. The novel has fallen prey to mass production; where once the learned world awaited a master's latest literary or philosophical work or his peer's rejoinder today the world awaits the semi-annual King or Grisham retread.

The fruit of Jacksonian populism has been the debasement of politics. Politicians no longer govern accordingly to principles of leadership or disinterest; the opinion poll and the next election day have become paramount. Massive entitlements crafted to pander to the majority have betrayed the long-term economic future of the developed world and crippled the ability of developing countries to achieve even a minimum standard of prosperity.

Jose Ortega y Gasset was perhaps the most perceptive critic; his Revolt of the Masses decried the phenomenon of the mass-man, a debased, anti-intellectual product of the modern world. Others from Edmund Burke to William F. Buckley Jr. have bemoaned this phenomenon in some way, shape or form. I do not subscribe wholesale, but I find much merit in their arguments.

I am as staunch a proponent of the free market as anyone, but I fear I am often blind to its consequences. I have little doubt that WalMart is, on the aggregate, an economic boon for most communities. It offers cut-rate goods to people least able to pay high prices. Nonetheless I believe that at some level there are social ills that accompany the proliferation of the big box stores and the concomitant decline of smaller stores.

I am not going to start waxing sentimental about the idyllic small town, but Main Street is a dying breed. It is our history and our culture. It may be economically beneficial for the small towns of America to be subsumed underneath the trappings of suburbia, but the social and cultural cost of reducing the American village to a tourist attraction or the three blocks between Home Depot and Walgreens seems almost prohibitive.

I am no 'Crunchy con' and I have no particular objection to suburbia. Nonetheless I find the picture of an American suburb carbon copied and distributed nationwide a loathesome proposition. Identical homes, identical stores, identical vacations at identical amusement parks or scenic overlooks that pass for getting back to nature. He may be better educated and possessed of creature comforts, but make no mistake about it. The modern suburbanite is the mass man.

Perhaps there is some hope, particularly in the commoditization of fine craftsmanship, of genuine art, and of the small town. Perhaps technology will undermine suburbia, both through internet commerce and through the ability of people to do many of the same service-sector jobs from virtually anywhere in America. If instead conservatism is little more than standing athwart history and yelling 'Stop!' than perhaps all we can do is bemoan that which we lose in the transaction.

2006-03-07T15:17:00.000-08:00

Fukuyama's Second Thoughts

Francis Fukuyama's latest, America at the Crossroads, is one of the better (re)appraisals of neoconservatism to come out thus far. His brief overview of the history of neoconservatism as an ideology and as a movement manages to bridge the gap between the hagiographies put out by adherents and the visceral critiques penned by detractors. He explains the extent to which neoconservatism is the progeny of Strauss while attributing much to the liberties that have been taken with his thought by lesser philosophical minds. He also delineates the difference between strands of neoconservative thought, specifically the gap between the ex-Trotskyite Old Guard and the hard Wilsonianism of Kristol and Kagan the youngers that, in his estimation, did not acquire the appropriate skepticism about the limits of social engineering and ideological dogmatism (almost a Burkeanism by fire) that the CCNY band learned during the 1930's.

Fukuyama treats the Iraq war with a skeptical eye. He points out that he never agreed with the decision to go to war and is highly critical of the Administration's underestimation of the threat of insurgency and unwillingness to plan for the aftermath of the invasion. Nonetheless he argues forcefully that America cannot afford to lose at this endeavor.

Fukuyama rightly points out that America must improve its stature abroad. He argues that development money, accountable and prudently dispersed, frequently buys more influence than much larger outlay of military spending. I tend to agree with Jeffrey Sachs, who Fukuyama invokes, though I believe that aid can be ineffective or even counterproductive if it is not carefully monitored. Fukuyama believes that military force is frequently as or more powerful when it is not employed, as in the case of Japan and Germany (whose pacifism puts its neighbors at ease). He argues, with some justification, that American foreign policy has become too militarized.

Though I find much to agree with in Fukuyama's arguments, I disagreed with several of his points. He assails the UN but advocates multilateralism, ignoring the possibility that it is not the UN but multilateralism as a whole that is flawed. Multilateralism is successful if and only if the interests of member-states coalesce, and while it is logical for states to endure local setbacks if the wider endeavor is beneficial (the GATT and the WTO come to mind) democracy and national self-interest set very clear limits on the extent of self-abnegation a society is willing to endure. Multi-tiered multilateralism is not a bad idea, per se, but the difference between this concept and a 'coalition of the willing' is the form rather than the substance. I appreciate what he is trying to say, but I believe multilateralism is a fickle mistress and ought be a corollary to, rather than a basis for, a coherent foreign policy.

Fukuyama's opposition to the war has much to do with his appreciation of the threat of militant Islam. He argues that it is an overstated threat that has as much to do with Western failure to assimilate their Arab minorities as it does with state-sponsored terror in the Muslim world. I may not agree with those who consider jihadism an existential threat, but the willingness of inividuals to die for this cause means that a small band of determined individuals could kill thousands or more, particularly if they acquire WMD. Additionally, radicalism is a contagion that eminates from the Middle East, and while Western European immigrants have proven susceptible (abetted as they are by the tolerance of free societies) they are a symptom and not a cause.

I believe on the whole my differences with Fukuyama are those of degree rather than of kind and often more semantic that doctrinal. His emphasis on aid and soft power as an economical method of advancing American values and American interests is sage and particularly timely advice. He is correct to a point in emphasizing that foreign policy is too militarized. He does not specifically condemn the doctrine of preemption but rather explains that it ought be better articulated. If he shared Charles Krauthammer's (or even my) estimation of the threat posed by radical Islam he would probably have been more supportive of the use of military force in Iraq.

On the aggregate Fukuyama's is a reasoned, well-articulated review of Bush's foreign policy and its neoconservative influences. He does more than criticize, however, and while some of his proposals are problematic others are very plausible. Those interested in the fate of American foreign policy in the latter stages of the Bush presidency and beyond would be well advised to skim it.

2006-03-06T15:07:00.000-08:00

The Assassin's Gate

I will speak briefly about George Packer's highly critical review of the Iraq war, which begins circa 1991 and continues through the January elections of 2005. I found it to be one of the most important histories of the conflict I had yet read. He is overly critical, to be sure, and there is a serious disconnect between the abject pessimism that characterizes the first 400 pages of the book and the rosier epilogue that takes place in the wake of the successful elections.

Packer's treatment of neoconservatism was scathingly critical. I have many problems with the decisions undertaken by the President's DOD cabal prior to the war and during its early stages, but the involvement of Warrick and his State Department cohorts was no panacea. As a whole, the State Department has rendered itself moot; it did not need the assistance of Paul Wolfowitz and Doug Feith to do so. A force for left-wing realism, the ideological stultification of the State Department alienated most of the Administration. I respect Powell, himself a moderate realist, but he failed to remedy the situation. We can only hope Rice will be more successful.

Packer focused excessively on the negative, limiting most of the book to Baghdad and Kirkuk. Wide swaths of territory and population have been secure and stable since the early days of the invasion. The ebbing of support for Moqtada al-Sadr saw much of Shiite Iraq support the efforts of the coalition, if not the coalition itself. The Kurds have been similarly supportive. America's problems have been for some time Sunni rejectionists and a number of Shiites tired of waiting for American and Iraqi authorities to prevent attacks. Most of Iraq's population goes about its daily life without fear of attack. Packer seemed not to venture into such areas or to studiously ignore their successes.

Nonetheless, Packer's critique is much more nuanced than that of those who believe America's intentions were evil or those convinced that Iraq is incapable of democracy. He writes as one who wants to see the venture succeed, for America but moreover for Iraqis who have been through twenty-five years of hell and deserve to see an end to the fear and chaos.

Reasonable criticisms of the Administration's decisions are necessary both to stimulate change and to undermine the appeal of the anti-war critics whose care for the Iraqis is trumped by partisan politics and low-grade populism. He's wrong, but it is incumbent upon the proponents of war to explain why. In answering the Packers of the debate, the 'sides' of the conversation shift from merely 'yes' or 'no' to perspectives on how to effect successes on individual issues and a triumph for the venture as a whole.

2006-03-06T09:49:00.000-08:00

Following from the Front

Hollywood's annual self-congratulatory spectacle allowed us a window into the vaunted social consciousness of our cultural elite. 'Crash' reminded us how segregated we all are (since we all know that Hollywood Hills, where the only minorities are a handful of non-threatening leads and 'the help,' is genuinely representative). 'Brokeback Mountain' shone the light on that undercurrent of homosexuality that undoubtedly touches so much of Red State America (and provided those who like to laugh at rednecks with replacement fodder for two decades of 'Deliverance' jokes). Jon Stewart reminded us why he is America's favorite left-leaning comedian (and made us ask again who in America thinks Al Franken is funny).

I do not mean to trivialize everything that went on last night. Reese Witherspoon won a much-deserved Oscar for her role in 'Walk the Line,' while the outstanding Philip Seymour Hoffman garnered another that was a long time coming. And while I am in no rush to go see Brokeback Mountain, I still believe it a courageous effort, particularly on the part of the actors. Gyllenhall and Ledger had previously exceled at making war movies and making sappy teenage romance flicks, neither constituency particularly noted for its affinity for gay erotica. Time will tell whether or not this has had any marked impact on the ability of either to command a decent paycheck. Nonetheless, a number of these movies were 'conscience' flicks.

Money is not the only driving force in Hollywood. Onanism functions as a close second. The Oscars represent a relatively risk-free opportunity for Hollywood to clap itself on the back and laud various displays of social consciousness. George Clooney can be feted as an acceptably moderate face for liberal Hollywood, an outlet through which those who opted to work the blockbuster instead of the low-grossing social commentary can channel the sensibilities they prostituted to recycle done-to-death storylines and pull in $200 million at the box office. People who live in exclusive all-white enclaves can revel in the criticism of race relations offered by 'Crash.' Multi-millionaires who probably own stock in the pharmaceutical industry can applaud 'The Constant Gardener.'

The quintessential example of this was provided by Harrison Ford, who a few years back decided to arrive in a Hybrid instead of a limousine to draw attention to our dependence on foreign oil. Does a man who almost certainly retains a stable of high-end automobiles and is chauffered in gas-guzzling limousines believe that the odd excursion in a Prius is difference-making? Of course not. What Harrison Ford was attempting to do was impress his fellow leading lads and ladies (and the hangers-on from television and the print media who do everything short of perform fellatio on those they depend upon for a salary and a purpose) with his social conscience.

Politics are similarly styled; a number of stars can be counted on each year to make comments ranging from the nonsensical to the despicable. The subsequent poor publicity affords them a martyrdom that provides great credibility for the cocktail party circuit. The intent was never to precipitate a fundamental change in policy, rather it was to advance the social status of the star or starlet.

Hollywood is populated by timid lemmings. The storylines are almost all recycled and it is the rare motion picture that charts new ground. Studios would sooner beat on a horse long since flayed to death than take real chances (thus my praise for Brokeback Mountain). The abiding emotion is smugness, a conceit at knowing that harboring values shared by hundreds of similarly popular, wealthy individuals renders one morally superior to the naive and simple millions who populate middle America. George Clooney put it best when he claimed he was "proud to be out of touch." The Academy Awards is a night on which Hollywood unabashedly rewards those who have done the best job following from the front.

2006-03-04T08:50:00.000-08:00

The Perils of the Blogosphere

There exists a great drawback to surrounding yourself with the like-minded. An imagined consensus emerges. Reasonable arguments against a point of view are seen as fringe and unwelcome. This is the problem a liberal faces when going to school at a left-leaning campus. When the debate is not Goldwater versus FDR but Leninism versus Trotskyism versus the Stalinism that dare not speak its name, one is ill-prepared to combat the arguments of those for whom 'class struggle' and 'false consciousness' are not articles of faith. The result is namecalling, hoots and hollers from the likeminded, and a retreat back into insularity. The right has similar perogatives in the form of talk radio, where tuning in to O'Reilly, Hannity and Limbaugh represents getting a variety of opinions (though on the right such people are less the fringe than sometimes crude manifestations of the mainstream).

The proliferation of blogs has only exacerbated this tendency. Incestuous circles link and quote each other ad nauseum until the sheer number of citations gives an argument or a story a life of its own (Chomsky anticipated this phenomenon - check out the bibliographies of his books). Right-leaners recycled story after story about weapons of mass destruction until a reader could almost believe that prewar intelligence had been right; in the meantime most of the stories in the link cycle had been successfully debunked or contextualized. Left-leaners have recycled BushLied so many times it has become an article of faith; the mere notion that someone might believe otherwise (as a majority of the country, Bush supporters and dectractors alike, does) excites the bloggers and the hangers-on that troll their comment boxes into a vitriolic frenzy.

This undermines the potential for civil discourse in a country that sorely lacks it. It gives Democratic politicians in particular (not to pick on the Democrats, but they are the opposition party) as well as the media the mistaken belief that it in spite of the ongoing war what the country needs most is angry denunciations of the President and perpetual scandal-mongering. Insularity is a poison, and the only antidote is to expose one's self to unfamiliar and disagreeable viewpoints. That means that the Washington Post editorial page is a must-read for Republicans, and well-articulated criticisms of Bush such as The Assassin's Gate should be on the reading list. Similarly liberals who can stomach the Wall Street Journal editorial page are equipped to argue against those with whom they disagree.

For bloggers, the answer is to concede failure as readily as one celebrates success. Intellectual honesty is predicated on the ability to admit when one has erred. I invite, with little success, criticism from those who disagree with me (though I have had little success gaining critiques from the like-minded either). The choice is between civil discourse and continued polarization. It seems easy enough to me.

2006-03-01T18:10:00.000-08:00

A Brief Aside About Neoconservatism and Iraq

This is more of an addendum to my below post (which nobody has yet been kind enough to critique). Neoconservatism has sought to wield the mantle of Reagan and done so with some success. Part of the genius of Reagan, however, was his willingness to adopt pragmatic means to reach ideological ends. The architects of the Iraq war and other Bush foreign policy initiatives have been apt to insist upon ideological means to ideological ends. As I said previously, the neocons are absolutely right to assert that all people desire liberty. It is wrong, however, to ignore the reluctance of one group to abandon its power and prilvilege and readily accept minority status, or a fiercely nationalist subset to adapt easily to foreign rule. The means cannot always meet the test of ideological or even moral purity; vindication is predicated on the ability of the ends to satisfy such expectations. To learn this is to grasp the source of Reagan's success.

2006-02-28T14:42:00.000-08:00

The Port Debacle

I have weighed in on this issue in countless comment boxes and conversations, so now let me put out something of my own. Let me first say that Bush is unequivocally right on this issue. Dubai Ports World has nothing on its record that suggests it is unfit from a commercial or a security standpoint to take over for P&O; indeed several Americans hold prominent positions in the hierarchy. The job of protecting the ports still falls upon governmental agencies. The UAE is as close to an ally as we have in the Arab world. It is as free as any country in the region, Israel excepted. Make no mistake, if a corporation from the UAE is unfit to manage these ports than there is no corporation anywhere in the Muslim world fit to do so.

For a stockade conservative to make such an assertion is nothing if not consistent. On the issue of port management as on border security and defense spending, the views of many on the right are coherent. For a handful of Democrats of the Dick Gephardt stripe, whose heads occasionally need be surgically removed from the posteriors of John Sweeney and the rest of Big Labor, this is no great departure. But for those on the right who have been so strident in advocating free trade, and those on the left who have spoken publicly against the profiling of individuals of Arab descent, this is hypocrisy of the highest order. Bush, whatever his faults, is trying to be a leader on this issue and not kowtow to public opinion. Congressional Republicans and Congressional Democrats would sooner pander to their polls than to stand up for their principles.

I do not fault the American people for their opposition. We live in a democracy and must respect the will of the majority. Politicians are elected for their judgment, however, and in this circumstance Congressional leadership from both parties needs to make a principled defense of free trade and/or the virtue of tolerance. For years it has been safer to pretend that the Lou Dobbses of the world do not exist than to stand up for economically and diplomatically farsighted ideas that have unfortunately proven susceptible to demagoguery.

To abandon this deal now sends a powerful message to the Arab world. To those regimes and those elites who want to embrace modernity and development, both for their own merits and as alternatives to fundamentalism, this sends a very clear message that the support of the United States is selfish and shallow. It reinforces every bold faced lie and exaggeration told about America in the Arab press. It will undermine support for future economic and diplomatic cooperation and may help to drive moderate Arab states into the arms of other suitors, be they European, Russian, Chinese or even Iranian.

While a great deal of damage has already been done, something can be salvaged from this. The United States could insist on certain conditions, such as the point of departure container scanning currently practiced in Hong Kong. Alternately, they may even exact concessions such as an end to support for the boycott of Israel. Normalization may be a bridge too far, but a mutually advantageous deal might be worked out. Security pledges and/or progress in the UAE's treatment of Israel would give Congressional leaders of both parties something to take home to their constituencies, while demonstrated resolve from the President enhances his personal credentials as an honest broker. The UAE loses some face but Dubai Ports World gains both the contract and advertising as to its competent management and its good faith. I can only hope that leaders from both parties can look past November and work in the best interests of everyone concerned. It is what we elect them to do.

2006-02-22T14:12:00.000-08:00

The Estrangement of Higher Education

The resignation of Larry Summers, a voice for moderation at Harvard, bodes ill for the future of higher education. As Alan Dershowitz, the Washington Post, and most conservative outlets have quickly argued, Summers admirably attempted to move the academy away from the fringe and toward the center-left position. Professorships used to be springboards to influential government positions and academia as a whole retained a respected position in society. Now its a place to which individuals reluctantly exile their children for four (or more) years, hoping against hope they don't return home with a same-sex partner and a philosophy degree. Congratulations to the Harvard faculty. They have helped to assure the irrelevance of Ivory Tower for many years to come.

Now for a personal anecdote. I am an aspirant law student. I mug the mail lady every day in the forelorn hope that she comes bearing acceptance letters. I hit refresh on the Law School Numbers page every thirty seconds to gauge my chances. This brings me to a very personal gripe in regards to higher education. I have no problem being denied entry to esteemed institutions because better qualified individuals were offered admission. I am, however, extremely upset to watch people with significantly lower LSAT scores and/or GPAs accepted into such schools. These individuals are distinguished from me not by extracurriculars (depending on one's definition mine are anywhere from flagging to peerless) or graduate degrees (I have a 4.0 in my MA program); rather they have a U next to their name that identifies them as an underrepresented minority. I realize this is self-selecting and potentially unrepresentative, but I do not doubt the honesty of these individuals. I may not have a 4.0 and a 180 but I think I know how Bakke felt.

2006-02-20T14:39:00.000-08:00

David Irving Jailed

British Holocaust denier David Irving (he has sued for libel over such an appelation) was sentenced to three years in prison by an Austrian court for his attempts to refute certain aspects of Holocaust history. Irving is a contemptible figure who apparently used to be a reputable historian before he decided to make the Holocaust his field of study. Ron Rosembaum argued rather in rather abstract terms that Irving fell under the Hitler cult, albeit posthumously. Still, I take exception to this ruling. I believe that a dedication to individual liberty requires us to suffer fools, whether they sport swastikas or burn flags. I do not believe this strikes any particular blow against anti-Semitism, for there are dozens writers of his ilk (if not his educational pedigree) who will continue to write what they do without being stupid enough to set foot in a country that qualifies the right to free speech as such.

As the West struggles to explain to the Muslim world why free expression needs to remain preeminent over sensitivity, Austria illustrates that some do not believe these freedoms absolute. Clearly if there was a case to be made for exceptions to the presumption of liberty, the Holocaust would top that list. If a country grants that, however, why do they not criminalize other despicable rhetoric regarding race relations, immigration, or a colonial past? The Holocaust is indisputably the worst atrocity of the past several centuries but it is not the only one. The delineation is thus an arbitrary one. I instead argue that such nonsense need be countered by the principles of sunshine and truth.

2006-02-20T07:43:00.000-08:00

A Qualified Defense of Neoconservatism

Liberty and prosperity are the hopes, the dreams, and the fate of billions of God's creatures across the earth. Though cultural and religious impediments may exist to democratic transformation, these are temporary obstacles. There exist neither ethnic nor racial aversions to freedom, and to insist otherwise is to condescend to the individuals concerned and to underestimate the appeal of Western values. It is incumbent upon the beneficiaries of free expression, representative government and the rule of law to help extend those benefits to other people.

I am a historical determinist. I believe as Hegel and Marx did that we are on a trajectory that we are all but powerless to impede. As Fukuyama brilliantly asserted in his oft-ridiculed but little understood work The End of History and the Last Man, the collapse of communism demonstrated unequivocally that the values of democracy and capitalism had triumphed over all possible competitors. Thus, as Fukuyama argued, the world will be characterized by the march toward the realization of those goals. (Author's note: while I believe in the broad progress of history I am too much of a Burkean to believe that the progress or the result will be identical throughout the world)

Fukuyama explains the difference between himself and the neoconservatives in a lengthy article from the New York Times Magazine titled "After Neoconservatism." If he and his ilk are akin to Marx in their adherence to determinism, Irving Kristol and his ideological heirs are analagous to Lenin in their belief that this history can be willed or pushed along faster. Thus the failure of Iraq to work out precisely as the ideologues had forecast is something analagous to the NEP as an expression of the Bolshevik failure to rule according to the precepts of Marxism-Leninism. It is on this point that I differ with Fukuyama.

To formulate policy based on a belief in the inevitability of democratic change is as sage as a Christian ignoring environmental castrophe out of a belief that the Messiah will come back long before such degredation catches up with us. America and her Western allies face policy decisions that have the power to further or retard the liberalization of non-democratic countries. To often we place our short-term economic and foreign policy interests ahead of the long-term ideal of freedom, which accrues obvious benefits to the populations concerned and less palpable ones to the West in the form of peace and security.

Democracy is not a panacea; those who misapprehend it as such ignore the truth, namely that elections and the trappings of representative government are symptoms and expressions of liberty, an ideal that cannot be so easily grafted upon a society. Thus I must introduce precepts that qualify my support for assertive democracy.

First and foremost, I am not facile enough to believe that a nation that has never known freedom can be expected to develop a mature democracy overnight. Thus a Russia that had known but a few months of relative democracy (and that in 1917) degenerated into a oligarchic kleptocracy even as Czechoslovakia (which had enjoyed relative freedom of expression, with a nondemocratic communist interlude, for centuries) progressed into two democratic states. Thus as Natan Sharansky perceptively pointed out, it was not Vaclav Havel that produced Czech (and Slovak) democracy but rather the relatively open political culture and society of post-1968 Czechoslovakia that produced the outstanding poet and democrat Havel. Poland saw its protest movement spread from a Gdansk shipyard into a nationwide opposition capable of managing the post-communist order, and yet even Polish democracy had growing pains.

Is it then surprising that a Palestinian people who had known only the corrupt autocrat Arafat seized the opportunity of elections to oust Fatah and replace them with (in their eyes) the only credible alternative, Hamas? The voting populace or Iran did not and does not favor the fanaticism of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but when confronted with a choice between the candidate of the venal and despotic mullahs, Rafsanjani (himself a cleric), and anti-corruption platform of Ahmadinejad (who is not a cleric) they made what they perceived to be the appropriate choice.

It is not enough for the free world to hope that one day the prisoners of 'fear societies' (to borrow Natan Sharansky's perceptive phrase) will awake to find their cell doors open and their jailers departed, nor is it enough to assume that the people will immediately make sage and far-sighted decisions at the ballot box. Thus it seems that elections need be preceded or at minimum accompanied by other vestiges of liberty such as a free press, the rule of law (economic liberties and the development of property rights can serve as important precursors), and respect for minority rights (thus checking the instinct of an oppressed majority such as Iraq's Shias or Bolivia's indigenous population to visit economic if not physical revenge upon their former masters).

Among the qualifications that I would enumerate is economic liberalization as a virtual prerequisite for the success of a democratic venture. A government charged with unshackling a command economy is likely to prove itself unpopular to masses of impoverished people who rely on social welfare programs and various subsidies for employment and/or sustinence. All it takes is a demagogue with a poor command of economics or a large appetite for power to stunt this growth. The obvious example of this is Latin America, which has proven itself susceptible to waves of populism; even the democratic among these demagogues have divorced economic from political liberty. Thus the regimes of Pinochet in Chile or Lee Kuan Yew in Singapore did a far better job paving the way for lasting democracy than did Allende, Nkrumah, or countless other Third World leaders. Certainly there are numerous instances of successful political liberalization not preceded by economic liberalization, but without development democracies govern at the whim of impoverished, malleable populaces (notable exceptions to this, India and Bangladesh, had significant exposure to British democracy prior to independence) and armies often staffed by the most ambitious in society.

With these qualifications in mind, I reassert my earlier contention that it is in the moral and geopolitical interests of the free world to aid in the liberation of the unfree. Economic stagnation and political impotence foster rage, an anger which nondemocratic regimes have been happy to deflect onto an external enemy. Those who maintain that the relatively high education levels of the 9/11 hijackers refutes the argument that economic factors are the root cause could not be further from the truth; in the Middle East the population in many countries is extremely well educated but devoid of opportunity. The ultimate expression of this powerlessness is the suicide bomb. Nineteen men willing to die for a cause managed to take three thousand with them. The possibility that similarly fanatical individuals will make their next attack with biological, chemical or even nuclear weaponry necessitates proaction.

Democracy and development act, on the aggregate, as disincentives to aggression among nation-states for both capital and democratic governance are risk-averse. On an individual level, the prospects are similarly promising. Prosperity provides economic opportunity for the young while political liberalization provides a venue for airing grievances, be it in the press or at the ballot box.

This faith in democracy has been criticized by a renascent realism, shamed into silence by its ostensible collapse on 9/11 but revitalized by American difficulties in the democratization of Iraq. F. Gregory Gause, political science professor at my alma mater, argued in Foreign Affairs that a democratic Middle East is not necessarily in the best interests of the West because fundamentalism is likely to take root. In the short term this is likely, but the long-term effect will almost certainly be accountable governments whose political life depends on their ability to foster economic development and avoid economically catastrophic collisions with the West. Indeed much of the appeal of fundamentalism owes to the anti-American, anti-Israeli animus that has been fostered by regimes desperate to deflect criticism of their political oppression and economic failures by inflating an external enemy.

If one accepts the premise that democracy is preferable to tyranny and that it is both moral and strategically wise for Western states to effect it, it is necessary to examine the steps that the free world can undertake to advance liberalization in nondemocratic states. I would argue that these measures fall into three categories, namely a carrot and stick approach toward autocratic regimes, support for democratic opposition within such countries, and, when necessary, the employment of military force.

The least controversial of these is the notion of support for democratic opposition. During the Cold War, the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe were successful at providing the news that the Soviets worked so feverishly to censor. American leaders, most notably Ronald Reagan, voiced their support for the spread of freedom behind the Iron Curtain (though the latter point was attacked by both pacifists and realists as an unnecessary escalation of tensions). George H. W. Bush's failure to back Ukrainian independence (lest he weaken Yeltsin) may have stunted the growth of democracy in the country by a decade and a half. Despite popular disaffection in Iran America has been painfully slow in extending financial and even verbal support.

In contrast to these missed opportunities, there exist a number of success stories on this front. The support of President Chirac of France and President Bush for anti-Syrian protesters in Lebanon helped embolden the demonstrators and convince Bashar Assad to back down. Similarly, the support of Bush Administration officials for Yushchenko in the Ukraine helped convince the Orange Revolutionaries to persevere.

The second option is to undertake a carrot and stick approach with nondemocratic states. This is more controversial, particularly among realists who believe either that autocrats are far better at facilitating our security and our economic interests or who believe that their successors (or the transition) would undermine one or both. This is predicated on a faulty assumption, namely that the manner in which regimes treat their citizens has no impact on America and its allies. The lesson of 9/11 is that when the disaffected fight back they may do so not against their tyrannical regimes but against those whom the regime has cultivated as suitable targets for demonization and rage.

This idea need not be so cut and dry as yanking support for tyrants. It can be instead the linking of continued or increased trade ties with democratic reforms. The classic example of this was the Jackson-Vanik Amendment, which linked MFN status for the Soviet Union to the Soviet willingness to allow Jewish refuseniks to emigrate to Israel. It was decried by many who saw it as an unnecessary escalation but it was ultimately vindicated. The Soviets had to choose between MFN status and the growth likely to result and the necessity of denying emigration to those anxious to leave.

The same principle should be applied to aid. In the case of Egypt, the decision to link American aid with recognition of Israel was initially sound. Nonetheless the willingness to continue it even as Egyptian schools and the Egyptian state media recycle anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic propaganda is myopic. Mubarak needs American money and trade ties; their value to America does not merit acquiescence in the radicalization of future generations of Egyptians who will present a festering sore astride a strategically valuable state. Thus the stick need be brandished.

Libya represents the possibilities of the carrot. The country's abandonment of WMD was an important step and thus ties with the West were initiated. Further progress in liberalization and anti-terror efforts can be rewarded with further carrots, be they trade relations, aid, and other such benefits. This principle of reciprocity has potential, but again I must qualify it. America has demonstrated her credentials as an honest broker, so it is incumbent upon those nations who would like the benefits of trade and of aid to demonstrate these commitments. As Libya did, they must act first.

The last option, not unrelated to its predecessor, is military force. Some countries are simply not receptive to negotiation. Their regimes brutalize their own people and in various ways threaten the security of their neighbors and the West. It is not for America or the West to destroy every tyrant on earth. Nonetheless there are some for whom such an option is not beyond the realm of possibility. The benefits of ousting Saddam Hussein, namely in removing a brutal tyrant whose regime was a festering sore in a volatile region, outweigh the costs; history will vindicate this assertion. There are other tyrants for whom such a tipping point may eventually be reached; Assad, Kim Jong Il, perhaps even Ahmadinejad. To remove this option from the table is to un-learn the lessons of 9/11.

Clearly Iraq demonstrates that this decision needs to be accompanied by thorough planning predicated on contingencies above and beyond the naive assumptions that jubilant crowds would greet their liberators and that initial amity would be sustained through months and years of growing pains. If America is to pay the cost in money and the lives of her young men, the government needs to emphasize that despite its short-term imperatives (WMD, terror, etc) the long-term goal is the progress of democracy both locally and globally.

In summary, the fundamental doctrine of neoconservative foreign policy, namely aggressive support for democratization, is sound. The advance of political liberalization is not merely moral, it is fundamental to the long-term stability of the global order. Nonetheless adherents need acknowledge that elections are not an end but a means to the goal of liberty. Economic liberalization and the cultivation of a democratic ethos are crucial to the emergence and the perseverence of democracy in non-democratic countries. With these qualifications in mind, the West should, indeed must, support the progress of liberty across the globe.

2006-02-16T17:48:00.000-08:00

Random Thoughts

First, those who try to argue that a handful of representations of the Prophet Mohammed imply that such art is not forbidden are wrong. Throughout the Muslim world, the mosques and public buildings are festooned with Koranic verse rather than the image of the Prophet. Contrast this with Christian churches. Some of the more austere Protestant sects feature bare churches, but these are the exception. From the paintings and sculptures that dominate Mediterranean Catholic Churches to the representations of the Northern Renaissance iconography is a manifestation of the Christian faith. It emphatically is not so for the Muslim world.

Second, Al Gore's lecture at Jeddah on American abuses of Arabs since 9/11 was, in light of its environment, probably the most despicable speech I have ever heard from a Democratic leader. Standing at a podium provided by a tyrannical theocracy, he dared assail America's human rights record. Despite the fact that fifteen of the nineteen hijackers were citizens of Saudi Arabia in the country on visas he took aim at the delay Saudis face in waiting for visas. These statements, recast as sound bytes, will be recycled to 'prove' everything that Al Jazeera and Arab demagogues have long asserted was true of America. To say these things at all is asinine and unhinged. To say such things on Saudi soil is borderline seditious.

Third, I will never see another movie featuring Billy Zane or Gary Busey. The willingness of these two to participate in a piece of anti-American, anti-Semitic agitprop is beyond the pale. Zane's pathetic defense of pacifism does little to obscure the fact that this will more than likely result in the deaths of Americans (and Iraqis) at the hands of those whose belief in the barbarism of our military and the greed of American and Israeli Jews was stoked by this film. Pacifism seeks to end war; this takes the side of those who would extend the conflict.

Fourth, Dick Gregory's self-important hissy fit did more to dissipate my anger at Cheney for his silence than anything the Veep said to Brit Hume. I believe Cheney should have been more forthcoming, but there are valid reasons for some delay (obtaining medical attention, notifying his family before the press did, etc). I'm not a Cheney fan and believe he never should have run in 2004. His greatest utility to Bush came in 2000, when he provided in perception the wise if seemingly amoral counsel to the 'boy who would be king.' Like him or lump him, Bush has long since ceased to be anyone's puppet. In addition to ending this controversy immediately, Cheney's resignation would limit the fallout of the Plame affair, give Bush the same energy that a cabinet shuffle gives a prime minister, and allow the Republicans to groom a favorite for 2008.

2006-02-14T15:31:00.000-08:00

It would be remiss of me to forget the anniversary of the assassination of Rafiq Hariri, the Lebanese prime minister whose death catalyzed the Cedar Revolution. The half million that turned out to mark the anniversary certainly remember.

2006-02-14T13:28:00.000-08:00

McCarthyism and the Politics of Fear

To the American left the eternal bogeyman has long been neither Al Qaeda nor the Comintern. Far stronger to the leftist is the fear of HUAC or its accomplice, Senator Joe McCarthy. An ideology that killed an estimated 100,000,000 warranted no great cinematographic rebuke. Another that has killed thousands (3000 in one day alone) has merited an HBO series and a movie whose central thesis was that the danger of the attack loomed far smaller than that of the infringement of civil liberties. Indeed storylines that touched on this particular ideology, Islamism, have been edited out lest filmmakers offend CAIR. McCarthy and the Red Scare of the early 1950's, which claimed a few dozens careers (of varying degrees of culpability) has merited two major motion pictures this young century.

I posit that the spectre of McCarthyism, raised by politicians, entertainers and commentators alike, has become a form of fearmongering not dissimilar from the Red Scare itself. Each time someone criticizes the patriotism of another, the word is whispered, shouted or printed. Each time someone advocates a compromise between civil liberties and security (a necessary compromise that EVERY society has made), Tailgunner Joe is dragged out for the same cautionary tale.

Before we appraise the danger of McCarthyism, let us mention briefly the danger of communism that McCarthy in the Senate and Richard Nixon in the House fought against. Remember it was spying that helped deliver the Soviets the bomb (Stalin knew before Truman). Industrial espionage helped close the gap in industrial production and conventional weapons. This is not conjecture, this is fact. The Venona dispatches and other newly released documents confirm virtually everything Elizabeth Bentley and Whittaker Chambers testified to in court (a fact that has been studiously ignored or buried by outlets that dedicated story upon story to assailing Chambers over the years).

It is neither appropriate nor fair to say that Alger Hiss delivered Eastern Europe to Stalin at Yalta nor China to Mao in 1949-50, but it is wholly appropriate to suggest that having a Soviet agent whispering in Roosevelt's ear at Yalta did not help FDR's decision-making. Suffice it to say Harry Dexter White, a fellow traveler at least, delivered a less than critical appraisal of Stalin's intentions. So too is it fair to question whether highly-placed communists may have helped convince Truman to pull his support for Chiang Kai Shek. Thus closeted communists took part not merely in espionage but in the shaping of policies that facilitated huge pendulum shifts in the global balance of power.

This is not to legitimate McCarthy's tactics nor to substantiate his famous claim that he knew of eighty or a hundred (his number changed multiple times) card-carrying communists in the State Department. It is believable, indeed probable, to assert that there were at least a handful and that the policies they influenced the early days of the Cold War. In 1938 Whittaker Chambers told his story to Adolf Berle, whose regurgitation to the President was greeted with laughter. By the early 1950's, nobody was laughing. Conceding its despicable qualities, this brief period may have been necessary to drive home the danger of communism.

For Hollywood, McCarthy has been a vent for political and moral consciousness. George Clooney, Jim Carrey, and others can advertise their liberal sensibilities without doing anything truly risque. It is cinematography as cliche, two hours of vapid sloganeering no more insightful than affixing "War is Not the Answer" or "An Eye for an Eye Makes the World Blind" to one's bumper.

Through a misappropriation of history, these people remind America of a time when it was (at least in their imagination) a dimmer beacon of freedom, thus ensuring in a period of heightened pride that the patriotic among us are knocked down a peg or two. They also avoid assailing the genuinely evil, those who might fight back physically or with terse editorials about 'stigmatizing' and 'stereotyping.'

2006-02-13T15:59:00.000-08:00

Courage in Hollywood

Commentators praise the courage of people like George Clooney for making movies that advance a (liberal) political belief. Reviewers and peers laud the architect of Syriana and Good Night and Good Luck for risking the approbation of Americans and the Administration to follow his conscience. This is nonsense. It takes courage to stand in front of a tank and will it to stop. It takes courage to expose yourself to the vicissitudes of a tyrannical regime merely to say "Enough!" It takes courage to highlight abuses within a community knowing that representatives of that community have responded to criticism with wonton violence and even murder. Wang Weilin is courageous. Andre Sakharov was courageous. Theo Van Gogh was courageous.

It takes no special courage to stand up within a community of the like-minded and express commonly held beliefs. It takes no unique strength of character to flay a horse that alcohol and countless liberal pundits, academics and entertainers have long since destroyed. Ann Coulter aside, Joe McCarthy is a tough man to love. While his legacy in the fight against communism is debatable, he was personally and professionally loathesome. As for the approbation of Americans, a movie can make money even if 90% of Americans despise it so long as the remaining 10% are willing to buy tickets.

It takes courage to risk professional failure or the estrangement of friends and colleagues. It took guts for Mel Gibson to release a movie in Aramaic, particularly when that movie was an attempt at a literal representation of the premise for a religion that is anything but popular in Hollywood. The producers (and actors) of Brokeback Mountain gambled that America's homophobia would not bankrupt the picture or destroy the careers of its participants. Spielberg's Munich was courageous if naive and self-important. But by and large Hollywood is unwilling to risk failure, much less violence, to tell a story that needs to be told.

It is easy to stand up in a free society and lament even the smallest perceived affront to that freedom, be it McCarthy's brief and fleeting importance or Bush authorizing the NSA to listen into a number of phone calls to and from the Middle East. One risks a tart insult or two from self-important pundits and perhaps a deluge of angry letters. It is far more difficult to take a stand against a genuine evil taking place in an unfree society, even if one does so from a free society. As Theo Van Gogh, Georgi Markov and even Walter Krivitsky found out, the tentacles of the totalitarian can reach beyond borders. When the outrage in question eminates from the Muslim world, the retaliation can be verbal, economic, or even physical.

On top of the danger that the evil the author, filmmaker, or pundit decries will be visited upon him, he must endure the criticism of the relativist and the coward. The relativist asserts that the critic cannot criticize adherents to a worldview he has not lived and thus does not understand. Thus the disciples of Said assail any who dare ask what in Islam may give rise to terrorism and suicide bombing. In the name of physical and/or economic security, the coward assails the criticism rather than the evil that precipitated it. It takes courage to speak out knowing that both the targeted evil and its accomplices in the audience will take aim.

There are hundreds of timely and important causes that Hollywood could spotlight. Don Cheadle was as moving as he was in Hotel Rwanda when he pleaded in a public service announcement that he never have to make a "Hotel Darfur" (Nick Kristof of the NYT has been admirably impassioned on this score). No matter your disdain for military action in Iraq, the refusal of Sunnis to accept their minority role is lamentable and newsworthy. The plight of women in Muslim theocracies has been criticized in academic circles alone, many of which still opposed the American toppling of the Taliban. A feature film about the plight of Iranians, North Koreans or Cubans would certainly be pertinent.

Unfortunately Hollywood would sooner take to the streets to protest Abu Ghraib and Gitmo than make a movie, give a speech, or organize a protest on behalf of Syrians, Iranians, or even Iraqis under Hussein, millions of whom were subjected to tortures that make Graner and England look like humanitarians by comparison. They would sooner stand up for the victims of McCarthy than for those of Ortega, Kim Jong Il or, dare I speak it, Castro. This is not courage. To label it as such insults the millions living and dead who risked everything to expose terror, injustice and tyranny.

2006-02-10T18:24:00.000-08:00

WTF?

A sad spectacle eminated this day from Turin, Italy. The nation that brought us the great statesmen Cicero, Tacitus and Cato, whose architectural and artistic treasures are peerless, the legions of whom once ruled the known world, tried to put its best face forward today. The result looked like Willie Wonka on LSD. Roller-skating sparklers? Twelve year olds do more interesting things with a bowl of chili and a barbecue lighter. Lycra bodysuits? The wave, set to an Italian version of "Getting strong now"? A low-contact roller derby accompanied by techno music that even the Germans wouldn't claim as their own? Americans are often savaged for our lack of culture. This is not culture. This is a nation with millennia of artistic achievement paying tribute to that bleakest of decades, the 1970's.

2006-02-10T17:16:00.000-08:00

Heartening Sight

Six months ago a bus that pulled up to Walter Reed Army Medical Center, laden with wounded soldiers (including several on litters), was greeted by a gaggle of Code Pink protesters, holding signs and chanting slogans. They were of the "Support our Troops, Bring Them Home Now" variety rather than anything particularly virulent, but it was still a hostile welcome for returning heroes. Tonight we were bringing a friend back to Walter Reed after dinner and were disturbed to see a placard-wieling mob outside the gates. When we pulled up we were pleasantly surprised to read "Support Our Troops" and "Thank You" written on dozens of signs and a hundred-strong crowd waving and cheering the soldiers.

2006-02-07T15:12:00.000-08:00

The Yawning Chasm of Priorities

A cursory examination of almost any regularly-updated left-leaning blog over the last twenty-four hours invariably reveals one or both of two threads. First, tributes to Saint Murtha, the 'swift-boated' Democrat (Jean Schmidt was the ONLY semi-prominent Republican to take aim) whose principled call for withdrawal was informed not by his love of the troops but rather by George W. Bush's unwillingness to extend the olive branch to a party that had been savaging him for two years. Second is a microscopic eye taken to hearings on wiretapping, opposition to which is not particularly resonating with Middle America.

On a slow news day this would be unremarkable. The problem is that these days have been anything but dull. The Middle East and Europe are embroiled in a bitter row that should shake us to our democratic foundations. An angry mob is seeking to reshape the political and social fabric of countries thousands of miles away. Demagogues and media outlets that laud the attempted extermination of a people (and call for Round 2) are outraged because a Danish media outlet printed depictions of the Prophet Mohammed, images that were in poor taste but posed important critiques that many in the Muslim world chose to embody rather than answer.

For those who would rather debate the constitutionality of tapping phone calls between American citizens and the sort of people who are presently burning embassies and chanting "Death to America" the response has been silence. DailyKos devoted but a brief mention which snidely asked where Karen Hughes was. Others have been contributing virtual play by plays of the Gonzales hearings but refuse to acknowledge a running display of WHY we are wiretapping.

The American left would sooner ignore radical Islam than admit the danger it poses. To do so would undermine their case against President Bush and emphasize the need for unity of purpose. It would also reaffirm the necessity of perseverence in Iraq. It would place national defense again at center stage, and they realize there are not enough Paul Hacketts and Jack Murthas in the Democratic Party to make them credible on national defense.

Radical Islam is not a Republican problem. Indeed it is not even an American problem. It is a problem that the Western world as a whole needs to face. We need to reaffirm the primacy of liberty over sensitivity, over guilt, and certainly over fear. We need to reevaluate our immigration programs, both in terms of who we admit and in advancing an emphasis on assimilation and integration over multiculturalism and ethnolinguistic enclaves. And we need constructive solutions (rather than merely biting criticism) from both sides of the political spectrum.

2006-02-05T13:52:00.000-08:00

Liberalism Versus Leftism
Radical Islam and the Crisis of Progressivism

Allow me to preface this with a brief note that reveals as much about my own political philosophy as it does about the people I'm criticizing. The Americans who call themselves liberals today are not liberal as the word was once understood. They are progressive. Liberal referred to a reverence for democracy, equal rights, capitalism, free markets, internationalism and the ascendancy of the middle class. There are important differences, no doubt, but these are the values that most American conservatives are attempting to conserve. The victories of the civil rights movement and most of the triumphs of the women's rights movements are no longer contested (and in many cases their detractors were not conservatives but reactionaries). It is the left that venerates the doctrine of fairness over equality, proportionality over majority rule, protectionism and nonintervention over what used to be celebrated as liberal internationalism, and a coalition between the enlightened limousine liberals and the toiling classes against middle class consumerism.

The newest and perhaps greatest dilemma facing today's so-called liberals is the inherent contradiction between the virtues of tolerance and multiculturalism. The reflexive support for the perceived underdog and the belief in the equal validity of all epistemologies (relativism) are difficult to sustain when the people you stand up for violently oppose the very rights which you consider immutible in your own societies.

When you condemn the free market or the proliferation of talk radio as a 'threat' to a free press, how then do you respond to someone who would torch an embassy over a cartoon disgusting but not half as grotesque or vitriolic as the bile that spews forth from the Arab media? When you consider parental notification an infringement on a fundamental right to abortion, how then do you respond to enforced veiling?

Leftists critiques of the West allege that component societies have not gone far enough. Fundamentalist Islam alleges that the West has gone too far...way too far. How can the two be reconciled? Some, Christopher Hitchens and Thomas Friedman foremost among them, have been willing to acknowledge that despite its flaws American intervention is preferable to a tyrannical status quo or the fundamentalist alternative. Others have argued (or insinuated) that a new American empire is a greater danger to America and the world at large than these tyrannical despotisms and/or theocracies. They are abetted by the doctrines of Said, who argues that the West cannot and should not judge non-Western cultures. Still more have remained shamefully silent.

The Left throughout the West but specifically in this country needs to organize its priorities. Is a visceral hatred of a President whose administration has hardly been conservative worth implicitly or explicitly rooting for those who want to return not to the 1950's but to the fifteenth century? Do the doctrines of relativism and multiculturalism necessitate tolerating the intolerant? Until a coherent, moral solution to this dilemma can be reached, the taint of hypocrisy will remain.

2006-02-03T03:47:00.000-08:00

Cartoon Furor

To those who believe in the moral relativist doctrine that no value system is superior to another, I submit to you the actions of the Muslim world over the past several days. People upset over a cartoon that an a single paper decided to publish have held all of Denmark, indeed all of Europe, responsible. Many papers in Europe have courageously printed the cartoons to show their support, though one French editor was shamefully dismissed over his decision to do so by the paper's Egyptian owner. (The US cowardly likened the cartoon to anti-Semitism) The same Arab press and demagoguery that quote the fictitious Protocols of the Elders of Zion and savage Christianity on a daily basis is upset that a non-Muslim paper has dared print a representation of Mohammed, a prohibition thought to prevent idolatry. This is the same impulse that sent Theo Van Gogh to an early grave and Salman Rushdie into hiding (though as a Muslim his perceived crime was apostasy, worse in the eyes of Islam).

Many in the Arab world blame everyone for their problems. Economic stagnation? The West. Palestinian refugees? The Jews. The Palestinians believe themselves entitled to Western money even though they have elected a virulently anti-Western, anti-Israeli government that refuses to renounce terror. When Hamas fails, will the Palestinians acknowledge that a book compiled in the latter stages of the first millennia might be woefully ill-equipped to govern modern life or will they blame the Jews for existing and the West for turning off the aid tap that they believe is their right?

As Victor Davis Hanson pointed out in his brilliant column, the Arabs expect us to pay $70 a barrel, absorb the fruits of their unwillingness to embrace family planning, and pretend that their disaffected are not trying to export violence to our shores. Criticism of any form is an incitement to violence, whether it be a puerile and infantile cartoon or someone questioning the founding myths of Islam by likening Mohammed to a warlord.

Owing to what Bush rightly characterized as our addiction to oil, we endure (and indeed fund) a society that has not yet reached the political and religious progress that the West reached in the sixteenth century. After a flirtation with Arabism, the Muslim Middle East seems generations away from embracing genuine secularization, protecting religious minorities, and respecting the beliefs of other faiths.

So when European newspapers print, to show that their commitment to free speech is immutible, a childish cartoon, the State Department spinelessly asserts that this anti-Muslim cartoon is the same as anti-Semitic images. This is farce. Media outlets that recycle the blood libel and print drawings of hook-nosed monsters, all the while calling for the destruction of Israel, beget riots that see crowds call for the destruction of our allies and burn their flags and our State Department has the gall to castigate those who are finally deciding that liberal virtues such as free speech and a free press are more important than pandering to a minority that cannot be quieted.

Thus the problems are twofold. In the name of cheap oil we sell out our allies (friends who we so recently castigated for doing the same thing) and endanger ourselves. In so doing we abet the authoritarians and the fundamentalists, both of whom want to stultify the Middle East to pursue their respective goals. I am coming to see the sagacity of Bush's energy policy. It is better we spend several billion dollars to limit our dependence on foreign oil than spend several hundred billion dollars to violently remedy the fruits of our complacency. We need to cut off the tap of money to the Muslim world and force them to confront their own problems. Through this, and only through this, can the Middle East remedy its maladies and we wipe away the fetid stench of appeasement that stains our own foreign policy.

2006-02-02T14:25:00.000-08:00

It's Boehner Time

Today House Republicans delivered a mild rebuke to the machine politicians that have helped make scandal and Republican synonymous, those who portend fiscal responsibility but insist that the country at large fund their onanistic urges to name aquariums, bridges and rail stations after themselves and add them to the national defense (or highway or defense) tab. I have no delusions that Boehner is going to make the earmark as anachronistic as beta tapes. He is a baby step in the right direction (Shadegg would have been a full-sized step in the right direction). His strong performance before the RSC made conservatives a little more comfortable with his candidacy, and with people like Shadegg and Mike Pence in the fold the legislature will hopefully turn in a more conservative direction. Perhaps they can drag the President with them.

2006-02-01T14:07:00.000-08:00

Bush's State of the Union Address a Mixed Bag

There was much to admire in Bush's Address last night. His messages to Hamas and the Iranian regime were bold and unmistakable and his unapologetic defense of his Administration's record in Iraq and national security heartened his defenders. Lines in the speech were carefully timed to force the Democrats to applaud points they disagreed with or seem to oppose statements upon which there is general consensus. Thus the Democrats were sitting arms folded after the President asserted that he would not sit back and wait for America to be hit again. Bush took at least a potshot at earmarks, mild succor to fiscal conservatives. The language was sweeping and philosophical and the delivery was tolerable if unspectacular. He finished better than he started with a dynamic last paragraph.

On the other hand, there were significant problems with his speech. He made paeans to fiscal conservatism and to discretionary spending cuts but has presided over a mushrooming federal budget and debt. His policy initiatives for energy independence and R & D could have been lifted off a Democrat's talking points; while there is nothing necessarily wrong with them they are not fiscally responsible for someone trying to make his tax cuts permanent. Both parties spend without reservation; at least the Democrats tax us accordingly. This is not to stand up for the Democrats, only to point out that taxes are a better form of fiscal discipline than empty campaign promises.

He briefly mentioned social security, warranting only the sad spectacle of the Democrats hooting and hollering over their ability to prevent the implementation of a sage, farsighted retirement program while preserving the pyramid scheme that suffices today. He barely mentioned tax reform. On both issues the liberal editorial pages called him chastened for essentially abandoning the meat of his 2005 State of the Union Address.

His attempt to be both a unifier and a bold leader fell woefully short. This is a function of the polarization that Democratic leaders have consciously pursued, but Bush needs to realize he cannot have it both ways. He needs to be the bold, strong leader that he appeared to be on national security. He needs to be the President that nominationed a known commodity, Samuel Alito, instead of someone with no proven judicial track record. By setting clear policy goals he will force the Democrats to debate issues on their merits. Wiretaps are a good example of this; Bush's unwillingness to concede any ground has forced the Democrats to decide whether to fight for a Saudi Arabian's right to call home without someone scanning the line for mention of hot-button words like 'jihad' and 'New York Times.' It is not a winning election issue. If Bush were to argue coherent and concisely for personal accounts he would force the Democrats to choose between frothing rants and actual policy prescriptions.

In criticizing Bush I do not mean to give credit where none is due. The Democratic response was listless and lacking in concrete suggestions and has been barely talked about. After he thoroughly discredits the Democrats in Virginia by hiking taxes in a time of surplus, Tim Kaine will be remembered only for his eyebrow. So to paraphrase, Bush's speech had its good points but failed to achieve either invigoration or unification. He needs to exude on all fronts the boldness that has made him a successful foreign policy President. He needs to force the Democrats to choose between constructive opposition and foaming at the mouth.

2006-01-31T14:05:00.000-08:00

Alito an Important Success for Republicans

We need to be careful to neither over nor underestimate the victory that was won today. First and foremost, Sandra Day O'Connor was a decent moderate justice. Her jurisprudence was occasionally arbitrary and her stance on abortion moved slightly to the left over time, but her defense of property rights, her acceptance of federalism, and her rejection of comparativism spoke well of her on the aggregate. She was no conservative, but she was hardly liberal.

Samuel Alito seems likely to be a reliable conservative. He is young and articulate and has a proven record of supporting judicial restraint. He is not an ideologue or an extremist; he strikes me as a Rehnquist-type capable of building coalitions when necessary and eloquent in dissent. He solidifies a quartet of conservative justices likely to sit for some time (and forces the Catholic Kennedy to decide whether he wants to be Roe's last line of defense). He seems likely to fulfill Bush's campaign promise of trying to redress judicial activism.

I have been floored by the level of vitrol that has come from liberal circles over this. Ginsburg (who IS an extremist) and Breyer were confirmed without incident, a point that earns only a pathetic reference to Harriet Miers (who the Dems would have decried as a lackey and a crony had she ever come to committee). They expect the red carpet for their nominees but claim an exception for their ability to decry any Republican nominee as an extremist ready to herd women into the kitchen and the back alley.

Witness this liberal invoking Niemoller to try to understand today's events. The Kossacks are calling for the heads of the Democrats who voted for cloture and ready to sacrifice those who voted for confirmation. The denizens of the minority party are arguing that the victors of the election do not have the right to govern in accordance with that victory, and when they don't get their way they resort to tantrums and petty namecalling.

2006-01-29T08:12:00.000-08:00

The End of Excuses
Why the Hamas Victory May Be the Best Thing to Happen to the Middle East in Decades

Let me say first and foremost that this vote was a protest vote about corruption far more than it was an endorsement of politicized violence. Just as the Iranian election of Ahmadinejad was not a vote for messianic Shiism but rather a shot at the corrupt, venal mullahs, so too is this an expression of anger ast the venal, corrupt Fatah organization personified in the late Yassir Arafat.

Moving right along. One of these militant, fundamentalist opposition groups was eventually going to enjoy power. Be it Hezbollah astride a fractured Southern Lebanon, the Muslim Brotherhood astride Egypt, or an extremist faction taking power in a post-Assad Syria, it was inevitable that one should come to power. Though the mullahs provide a cautionary tale, their Shia, ethnically Persian theocracy is a bit too distant for those who support the Arab fundamentalist militias to truly take note.

Accepting the inevitability of this, is it not better that Hamas be the first to test the waters? In sole possession of a tiny strip of land and with nominal sovereignty over a slightly large one, they lack tanks, planes, or anything else necessary to cause problems. The very wall that has earned such vociferous criticisms from groups right and left is going to keep the majority of the suicide bombers from getting through. Thus the attacks likely to merit destabilizing retaliations will hopefully be few and far between. Absent such retaliatory attacks and raids, Hamas will have no excuse for its failure to provide peace and social services to the Palestinian people.

On top of the failure to fulfil the basic responsibilities of the state, Hamas leaders have declared their desire to implement the Sharia as legal code of the land. The Sharia is of course open to interpretation; depending on the eye of the beholder, this could be enforced veiling, harrassment or even prosecution of women traveling alone, or something as a simple as a official commitment to abide by Islamic law. I assume that they will stop short of the Taliban's Islamofascism but enforce many of the trappings of conservative interpretations of the Koran. Voters who cast a ballot against corruption, and even many of those who desired more active resistance to Israel, did not sign on for chadors and whip-carrying matawain.

Those who would back such parties will have the opportunity to view within the fenced enclaves of Gaza and the West Bank how capable Hamas is at provisioning basic needs such as policing, infrastructure, and social services. The secular or moderate among them will have the opportunity to see what the fundamentalists in their countries are likely to enact once in power. Their abject failure will be a clarion call for moderation in the Middle East.

Israel must be careful in its treatment of Hamas. She needs to project the veneer of strength and must of course retaliate when attacked, but she needs to ensure that her response is measured. I say this not out of some lily-livered concern for the fate of the Palestinians. Rather I believe it absolutely necessary that the causes of Hamas's failure be evident to the Palestinians and the rest of the Arab world. If they can blame Israel for their shortcomings they will not learn from this disaster.

2006-01-28T14:40:00.000-08:00

Take Back Georgetown Day

Though I had many other things worthy of my time, the prospect of seeing Jonah Goldberg, Fred Barnes and Roy Blunt speak in the same day was just too good to pass up. I was a bit put off by the format, which sandwiched small group discussions in between the aforementioned three speakers, but they in fact proved to be one of the day's highlights. The turnout was small, perhaps 120-150 at most, far smaller than the crowds that turned up weekend nights to see smaller name conservatives at a much more liberal campus, but the event was enjoyable nonetheless.

Max Pappas of FreedomWorks led the first small group discussion on the topic of social security, a topic that frequently bores me but that he managed to bring to life. Kyle Parker of the American Foreign Policy Council headed the second, devoting more of his time to foreign policy as a career field than to specific topics. I took issue to his assertion that the victory of Hamas represents the 'danger' of democracy. I think it does no such thing. I think the inability of Hamas to govern the Palestinians will destroy their appeal and provide a cautionary tale for supporters of extremist (terrorist) parties throughout the region, to include Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood. Just as widespread military action is the surest way to unite Iran behind the mullahs, the worst thing America and Israel can do to is provide Hamas an excuse for their failure.

Roy Blunt was the first speaker of the morning and was utterly uninspiring. The only kind thing I can really say about him is that he's nonthreatening. The misgivings were evident in the faces of everyone, from Jonah Goldberg to the assorted collegians who made up the bulk of the audience. If Tom Delay was the consummate machine politician, Roy BLunt is the consummate establishment politician. From his red herring defense of the earmark ("The Predator was an earmark too.") to his mild demeanor and speaking style, he made Dennis Hastert look positively risque by comparison. My tendency toward Shadegg was confirmed by virtually everything he said.

Jonah Goldberg was the second speaker of the day. He was amusing and witty and connected with the crowd with a twenty-something style that was both empathetic and instructive. I agreed very strongly with his point that conservatives get a far better education on a left-leaning campus than do liberals through what is effectively the Socratic method. His points about the divergence of NRO conservatism from that of Bush and his champions at the Weekly Standard were insightful. He was without question the best speaker of the day.

The last speaker of the day was Fred Barnes, who just published Rebel in Chief. I was very disappointed. I'm not sure if Barnes was flustered or just not used to a collegiate audience, but he came across as a bit patronizing and much of his humor was of the needle in the ribs variety that I tend to abhor in public speakers. He is no doubt a smart man with indelible insight into the Presidency and the conservative movement (particularly the neo-con splinter), but I gleaned little of it from his speech.

I was disappointed that few if any non-conservatives showed up. This may have been because it was Saturday or because the title "Take Back Georgetown" was intentionally divisive. At UVM we would have had as many protesters as Georgetown did participants. Nonetheless, the number of competent, compelling speakers they attracted was very impressive and their organization was superb. It was a very well-run event and they are to be commended for hosting it.

2006-01-24T14:08:00.000-08:00

The Ebbing of Support?

Los Angeles Times Columnist Joel Stein wrote a column entitled "Warriors and Wusses" in which he lamented the phenomenon of people who personally opposed war lauding or supporting the troops. By supporting the troops, Stein says, people who oppose war sanction "an army of people ignoring their morality." He says he sympathizes with those "tricked" into war but assails their stupidity for thinking they'd defend North Carolina instead of serving as the serrated edge of American imperialism. It goes without saying I have a number of problems with this article.

First, soldiers do not have the luxury of split-second moral judgments. An armchair moralist can debate the justicity of a war, its motivations and its tactics. He has the ability to do so precisely because soldiers do not. A soldier is obligated to disobey an illegal order, but these are not the judgments to which Stein refers. When shooting at an inanimate object or a creature one knows is unarmed, a gunman may have the opportunity to carefully debate the physical and moral repercussions of his shot. A soldier ducking to avoid flying lead, who knows not whether the next door he opens will be boobytrapped, nor whether the twenty-something Iraqi eyeing him is concealing an automatic weapon, has time to react decisively; squeeze the trigger or orphan your children and widow your wife.

Second, the author does not understand why people who oppose the war support the troops. The answer is straightforward to anyone who has lived outside of California or the New York metropolitan area. Blue collar Democrats (and moderate Republicans skeptical about war), black and white, support the troops because their sons, brothers, and friends ARE the troops. How many wealthy liberals, particularly those in the Northeast and the Pacific Coast, know someone who serves? I grew up in North Jersey and I can count the number of veterans I went to school with on one hand. This is not to say that people from those areas do not serve, only that most of their recruits are drawn from poor urban environs where opportunities are limited. A pantywaist like Stein does not support the troops because nobody he knows is fighting and dying in Iraq.

Third, many troops enlisted AFTER the invasion of Iraq because they believed in the cause. They were not tricked, hoodwinked or deceived. They knew what they were risking and they signed on the dotted line anyway. Stein leaves no room for those who believe that the impetus for and tactics of this war are just.

Lastly, assertions like these by members of the mainstream media are troubling because they convince the fringe that their views are not extreme. Stein says "I'm not advocating that we spit on returning veterans" but that is precisely what he is doing. Groups like Code Pink protest outside Walter Reed in DC, greeting our war-wounded veterans with placards and chanting. How much longer before "Support our troops: Bring them home now!" becomes "Babykillers!"? Convince the disciples of Michael Moore that they speak for American and people will start spitting on vets.

At least Joel Stein is willing to say publicly what others of his political persuasion think and whisper in friendly company. He is right to point out that many people, most notably Congress, have preferred to insulate themselves against crticism and catastrophe by passing the responsibility for the decision and its ramifications to the President. Nonetheless, it is risky to link policy and those asked to carry it out. America has long preserved a barrier between the soldier and the state; George Marshall is the model of the apolitical warrior. We cannot ask our soldiers to be morally responsible for going to war in the first place, nor can we ask soldiers below the rank of O-5 to account for strategic decisions. We can ask only that they are just in the commission of their duties. The exceptions few and far between, our soldiers have fought an exceptionally moral war on the tactical level. Compare their behavior to that of soldiers in virtually every war on record and you cannot help but admire the discipline and restraint shown by our servicemen.

2006-01-19T16:28:00.000-08:00

Truce?

Bin Laden has reportedly offered a 'truce' to rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan. Of this I will say two things. First, it is a sign we are making progress. Bin Laden is not dealing from a position of strength. Whether it is the killing of hundreds of Muslims by people acting in his name, democratic elections in Iraq and Afghanistan, the monthly (sometimes weekly) killings of higher-echelon Al Qaeda operatives, or simply four years of living in a cave, something or some things we have done precipitated this. My second point is an explanation of what Bin Laden means by 'truce.' In the Koran, the world is divided into two camps, the house of Islam and the house of war. The former is forever at war with the latter, though a temporary truce is permissible. To the majority of peaceful Muslims, this 'truce' is temporary in name only. To fundamentalist Muslim practitioners of Wahhabism and Sufism, this is indeed a cease-fire. We will not triumph over Bin Laden until he is dead, and even then we will have to deal with his legacy.

2006-01-18T17:52:00.000-08:00

Nero fiddles...

If Iran is indeed months away from obtaining nuclear weaponry, there is no conceivable scenario whereby the international community unites to stop them. Iran scoffs at the UN and the IAEA and still it piddles. Last week the EU took the outstandingly resolute step of calling off negotiations (as though not having to endure swell-headed eurocrats is a punishment). Now Russia is interceding to ensure that the matter does not go to the Security Council but is instead kicked back to the IAEA. This means that, best case scenario, the matter is referred for SANCTIONS sometime in March. Assuming no extraordinary obstacles (though with Russia and China on the Security Council it would be a safer bet to assume multiple roadblocks) it would then be voted on somewhere in May or June at the earliest, just in time to give Iran's threat to turn off the tap some real teeth. Let's be clear. The Russians have no interest in stopping Iran's nuclear program because they have picked up where Dr. Khan left off. China may not desire a nuclear Iran but the lure of favorable energy deals is probably too strong to resist. Thus greed and bureaucratic stagnation are, in all likelihood, going to facilitate the admission of a virulently anti-Western, anti-American regime, the titular head of which is a lunatic with messianic delusions, to the nuclear club. Someone tell me again why a Pax Americana is destabilizing.