Alenda Lux

Politico Might Have Jumped the Shark

2008-11-24T00:49:00.003-05:00

Politico.com seemed like an interesting concept when it launched in January 2007 - it was an attempt to break the stranglehold on the news from established newspapers and news channels. In recent months, however, I've become less impressed. On the surface, they spent much of the last three months finding every possible negative in everything Sarah Palin did during the campaign - a feature they've continued even after the election. They've also had a new story up just about every day since the election reporting the same story of how the Republican Party is "in turmoil" or "searching for itself," or something along those lines. Then they admitted that their reporting was biased, but explained it away as the result of Obama having such a great campaign.

Of course, this doesn't make them much different from the rest of the press, much of which has admitted that their reporting was tremendously biased towards Obama. On a more substantive level, Politico simply doesn't seem to offer anything to make it more than a gossip tabloid. They take to a whole new level this silly habit of calling political happenings a "conversation." Their blogs say they're "advancing the conversation or Joe the Plumber was "driving the conversation" the day after the third debate. Despite these claims, however, you'll be hard pressed to find any treatment of the issues on the website. No analysis of Obama's tax proposals, comparison of the health care plans of the two candidates or in depth look at the proposals for winning in Afghanistan. It was all focused on the process - where candidates bought ads, fundraising totals, latest polls, etc. This is all well and good for an election, but what do you do after?

Well, Politico has launched Politico44 as an answer to that question. Right now its mostly gossip about Cabinet selections and where the Obama girls will go to school, which is fine for the two months or so of the transition. But not all of a president's four year term is as newsmaking as the election and transition. If they have to keep reinventing what they offer, they might find they get fewer and fewer readers, especially if each new idea is as ridiculous as their previous new idea. Take for example their latest new idea: a calendar of Obama's whereabouts during the transition. The only problem, however, is that each day consists of Obama going to the gym, going home, going to his office, and going home. Every day. Occasionally he'll go to a restaurant, but not often. When there is any additional information, it includes the exact number of minutes he spent at the gym and details on how his motorcade took a wrong turn through Hyde Park. You can scroll through three weeks of this.

I can't decide yet if this consists of Politico jumping the shark. For their entire existence, there's been an election to cover. If this is how they adjust to new demands, I'm sure their future offerings will be as ridiculously entertaining as this.

Captain Obvious Award

2008-11-24T00:30:00.002-05:00

As far back as this summer, when gas prices were at record highs, CNN.com has been doing these front page stories about how awful high gas prices are. Before the economic crisis really hit in mid-September with the fall of Lehman, every day there'd be a story about record high gas prices and some story about someone who couldn't go as far away for Fourth of July vacation. These stories were relentless, hitting what seemed like every day. At the time, this was supposed to be the proxy story for how awful the economy was.

In the months since Lehman fell, and the Dow crashed along with it, they've been able to put stories on the front page about each successive drop, along with pictures of brokers with their hands on their faces that looked like that had been taken in 1994. At the same time, however, gas prices dropped sharply as well. Oil is currently under $50/barrel and average gas prices are currently under $2.00.

Well, the good news is, they've since found a story on gas prices worth accompanying the stories of the falling market on the front page. With a headline in large font that says "End of Gas Price Crash is 'Either Here or Near,'" they have a story that quotes Trilby Lundberg, the editor of a survey of gas prices nationwide.

Lundberg attributed the price reductions to a drop in crude oil prices and demand, and also because of low refining margins.

"Crude oil remains [the] main driver," for the decline, she said, noting that crude oil futures settled on Friday below $50.

Demand is always low in November, she said, but the weakening economy is reducing it further.

However, Lundberg said that if crude oil prices do not fall further, "then the end of this [gasoline] price crash is either here or near."

You got that? No one actually knows that the end of low gas prices is "either here or near." Trilby is just stating the obvious that gas prices depend in large part on the price of crude. Neither Trilby nor CNN know what's going to happen to the price of crude which, of course, closed at a three year low on Friday, after closing at the previous three year low on Thursday. Furthermore, the declining price of oil is largely due to the weakening economy. In fact the only thing likely to increase prices by any significant amount in the immediate term is a cut in output by OPEC.

This is what passes for reporting these days.

Fissures in the Party

2008-11-18T01:38:00.011-05:00

A number of mainstream media organizations have spent the last 2 weeks since the election beating the drum about how this is the end of the Republican Party. As you can see, Politico has led the way with this theme (as it did throughout the campaign), but today the New York Times has a story about the alleged end of intellectualism at the National Review. The reasoning behind this claim: Christopher Buckley, Kathleen Parker and David Frum. Which brings us to the second theme of the media these past weeks: the conservative movement has come to an end because a lot of conservatives liked Sarah Palin.

Parker and Buckley are allowed to support whatever political candidate they want (Frum continued to support McCain, and even laid out a cogent argument for supporting McCain). The circumstances surrounding Buckley's departure from National Review strike me as slightly embellished on his part. As for Parker, she wrote a column after the Couric interview suggesting Palin was not prepared for the job. I disagreed with her, but fine - that's her prerogative. She got a fair amount of vicious email for the column. I'm sorry that happened to her, but that's life. Just because someone is a conservative doesn't mean they are nice or a good person. Unfortunately, she felt the need to be just as childish by writing in a subsequent column that McCain picked Palin because, well:

But there can be no denying that McCain's selection of her over others far more qualified — and his mind-boggling lack of attention to details that matter — suggests other factors at work. His judgment may have been clouded by ... what?

What indeed. If I can say so, the departure of Buckley does not mark the end of intellectualism at National Review (he only wrote the column for a matter of months), and, should National Review stop running Parker's column, it certainly would not mark the end of intellectualism at the magazine. The departure of David Frum is a bit more disappointing. I often disagreed with him, but enjoyed his writing. I can't seem to figure out his reasoning, though.

Mr. Frum said deciding to leave was amicable, but distancing himself from the magazine founded by his idol, Mr. Buckley, was not a hard decision. He said the controversy over Governor Palin’s nomination for vice president was “symbolic of a lot of differences” between his views and those of National Review’s.

To be honest, the Palin pick was one of the first times I've seen Frum in broad disagreement with the rest of the folks at National Review's blogs. Given Frum's post-election analysis that the Republicans need to drop social conservatives, perhaps this is what he has in mind. It's true, of the major conservative magazines (NR, Weekly Standard, Commentary, American Spectator), National Review is probably the most socially conservative (and I'm referring to the part of NR I am most familiar with: their blogs). Most of the comments on social conservatism, however, are usually posted by a handful of individuals (Kathryn Jean Lopez, Ramesh Ponnuru), and are often countered by (I believe) atheists such as John Derbyshire and Heather Mac Donald. In fact, National Review's blogs are the most active, and contain more robust debate among varying conservative viewpoints, than any of the other conservative magazine blogs.

The Times article claims that the National Review has become the mouthpiece for the Bush administration, and has "run out of ideas." This claim is patently absurd. National Review has broken with the Bush administration on any number of topics, the most notable one being immigration reform. In fact, this is where I differ from the magazine, as I think, during the immigration debate last summer, the content on National Review's blogs was particularly unhelpful. I think they made a mistake giving the platform on immigration to commentators like Mark Krikorian, Mac Donald, Derbyshire and others, who are not just against illegal immigration, but against most kinds of legal immigration as well, a position that I suspect will not find much support on the right, let alone in the rest of the country.

Throughout this debate, Frum was in complete agreement with his colleagues at the magazine. I thought his contributions to this debate were some of his less impressive posts, for example, arguing that open borders was actually protectionism. At one point he defied all logic and tried to blame the coming loss of the Hispanic vote on those pushing for immigration reform:

The deal will worsen Republican prospects among Hispanic voters. Over the years, the Republicans have done not too badly with Hispanics, typically winning about 35%-40% of the Hispanic vote as compared to under 10% of the black vote.
Republicans have done so well because until now, the highly diverse Hispanic population has not voted as an ethnic bloc. Now we ourselves are forcing that to change. It's as if this Republican president and these Republican senators have said, "Hmm. Can we invent an issue that will teach Cuban-American doctors, Honduran day laborers, and Mexican-American army officers to think of themselves as a unified ethnic group? Can we then provoke a fight that all of them (whatever their diverging practical interests) will treat as a symbol of acceptance in American society? And can we then stage-manage this fight to ensure that two-thirds of our party will have no choice but to fall on the wrong side of it?"

I find it hard to buy the argument that the "shamnesty" crowd forced stalwart opponents of immigration reform to scream "amnesty" every time the issue came up, come out against all forms of immigration (legal and illegal), and alienate Hispanic voters. To argue such would suggest the opponents of immigration reform had no self-control.

The other recent point of disagreement between Frum and his colleagues came regarding a column written by Anne Applebaum of the Washington Post, in which, despite professing long-held admiration for John McCain, she endorsed...anyone but McCain. The reason, of course, being Palin. Certainly, this was somewhat better than those on the right who said they'd vote for Obama in the hopes that he'd run away from his far left record, despite any evidence at the time to give reason for hoping such. Nevertheless, Applebaum's column consisted of a less than cogent argument. Two individuals at National Review responded as such. On the media blog, Kevin Williamson:

There are all sorts of good reasons to not vote for McCain — e.g., if you prefer Obama's policies — but this bit from Applebaum is shabby nonsense. And I find it difficult to believe for a moment that this was some sort of wrenching, soul-searching exercise for the one DC-born/Sidwell Friends-and-Yale-alumnus/Europe-dwelling member of the Washington Post editorial board who was seriously thinking about going Republican this year. Spare us the opera; you're an Obama voter. Big deal.

Williamson later apologized for his tone, while sticking to his claim that Applebaum's argument was silly. The other criticism came from Ponnuru:

Max Boot writes, “There have been a number of absurd reasons given recently by self-described conservatives who are endorsing the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate in his bid for the presidency, but none are quite as unconvincing as Anne Applebaum’s.” Her effort did seem oddly perfunctory—Mickey Kaus makes sound criticisms of it—but I think Boot is overstating the case. I can think of a few Obamacons who edge out Applebaum in the most-unconvincing category. My sense is that Francis Fukuyama has been the most honorable and serious of the Obamacons (although it would probably be more precise to call him an Obama-neocon).

Ponnuru was probably a little harsh with the "honorable" charge, but again, he's right, it was a silly argument from Applebaum. In any case, Frum, a friend of Applebaum's, took exception to this talk, and got upset that Ponnuru and Williamson failed to mention Applebaum's Pulitzer Prize winning book, Gulag. To some degree, I get his point, he's as annoyed as I am with conservatives who react quite so harshly to other conservatives with whom they disagree, even if their argument for supporting Obama is full of logical holes. Nevertheless, this seems like a silly incident to get worked up over, especially coming five days before the election.

But look, just as Frum is wrong to advocate dropping social conservatives, or to get worked up over disagreements on Palin, Applebaum, or whatever the issue may be, so are other conservatives wrong to run around afixing the "RINO" label to anyone who doesn't have all the boxes ticked on the "True Conservative Checklist." I think Frum is wrong about the way forward for the party, in part because of his antipathy towards social conservatives, even if they had nothing to do with losing this year's election, but also because of his mixed-up views on the role immigration played in losing the Hispanic vote. A post-mortem he recently posted from a Democratic friend mentions the significant drop in the Republican share of the Hispanic vote, even with "Amnesty John" (as he was once called on a NR cover) at the top of the ticket. I'm glad he recognizes this as a major problem for the Republican future, but I'm not sure his positions on immigration reform, as well as what seems to be support for for severely constricting legal immigration is the solution we need.

That said, I think our party is stronger for having Frum and Buckley as members (assuming Buckley still considers himself as such). Frum's book on the War on Terror, for example, was excellent. I hear his previous books on the conservative movement are just as good, though I have not read them. At the same time, I'm not going to leave the Party or stop reading NR or other magazines simply because I disagree with them on some issues, such as immigration. If the departure of Frum and Buckley really comes down to the Palin pick, or the presence of social conservatives, or the Applebaum tiff, or whatever the area of disagreement, then they hold as much responsibility for fissures in the conservative movement as the people following Ted Nugent around on "RINO hunts."

Cats and Dogs Living Together

2008-11-12T19:10:00.001-05:00

We're a week past the election, and some corners of the Republican Party are already set to write prescriptions for improving its electoral fortunes. David Frum writes:

College-educated Americans have come to believe that their money is safe with Democrats – but that their values are under threat from Republicans. And there are more and more of these college-educated Americans all the time.

So the question for the GOP is: Will it pursue them? To do so will involve painful change, on issues ranging from the environment to abortion. And it will involve potentially even more painful changes of style and tone: toward a future that is less overtly religious, less negligent with policy, and less polarizing on social issues. That’s a future that leaves little room for Sarah Palin – but the only hope for a Republican recovery.

Likewise, Max Boot writes:

One area where I do see some room for adjustment is on the issue of abortion. I am by no means suggesting that Republicans jettison their anti-abortion ideology, which would alienate the party’s base even if it might make the GOP more attractive on the coasts. What I am suggesting is that Republicans should not fear to nominate an otherwise attractive candidate who happens to be pro-choice. The insistence on abortion purity has cost the GOP during the past year. It was a major contributing factor to Rudy Giuliani’s crash and burn, since he has always been a pro-choicer, and a major factor, indirectly, in Mitt Romney’s downfall too, since he had to flip to the “pro-life” side before seeking the nomination, thus making him appear insincere. This issue also made it impossible for John McCain to pick either Joe Lieberman or Tom Ridge as his vice presidential candidate–both men who were better qualified for the job than Sarah Palin and likely would have proven to be bigger draws for the independent voters McCain needed to win.

I should pause here to mention that both Frum and Boot are very smart guys - and the Republican Party is lucky to have them. The first thing the Republicans should do is throw out the use of the term "RINO" (Republican In Name Only). There is no checklist that has to be completed before someone can be approved as a conservative or Republican. Republicans from New York City aren't always going to agree with Republicans from Nebraska. Instead of fighting to see who can cast the other side out of the party first, we should be looking towards ways to coexist together under the same label of Republican.

That said, I also think they are both wrong on this. Frum argues that we're losing the youth vote because of social issues. A 2007 New York Times/CBS/MTV poll of youth ages 17-29, 62% believe abortion should either not be permitted, or should be made available under much stricter conditions. This is compared to 58% among all adults. Likewise, 54% of youth are against gay marriage (30% saying no legal recogntiion and 24% saying civil unions, but not legal marriage). This is by no means a harbinger of a new generation of fundamentalist Christians, but it does suggest that Republicans are losing the youth vote on other issues rather than social issues.

As for Boot's comments, it is not a surprise that he would have preferred Giuliani or Lieberman as a president or vice president. They are both very strong on foreign policy, Iraq, Afghanistan and other aspects of the war on terrorism - Boot's area of expertise and passion. It is hard to argue, however, that absence from the ticket was the fault of social conservatives. Giuliani lost in the primaries because he ran a terrible campaign - to the point where no one (right, left or center) was able to figure out why he adopted the strategy he did of putting so few resources into Iowa and, particularly, New Hampshire, and instead gambling everything on Florida. By the time the Florida primary came around, Giuliani was entirely out of the news.

As for Lieberman, I suspect a lot of Republicans, social conservatives included, would have been happy to see him as Secretary of Defense in a McCain administration. Likewise, they will likely hope Connecticut will continue sending him back to the Senate instead of a Ned Lamont-type, and should also welcome him with open arms to the Republican caucus if the Democrats punish him for not falling in line in support of The One. All of that, however, does not mean that he should be our vice presidential nominee, a "heartbeat away" (as they like to say) from being president and (ostensibly) leader of a party with which he agrees on very little else besides foreign policy.

Besides, a McCain-Lieberman ticket would have had an average age of 69, and would have attracted Max Boot, myself and probably 10 other people to each of their rallies. Finally, it remains unclear that independents would have voted for McCain-Lieberman while the other ticket continued to promise them unicorns and rainbows. It's false assumption that independent voters aren't necessarily any smarter, savvier or more analytical than partisan voters. When a candidate promises them the world, they are just as likely as any other voter to get suckered into voting for that candidate.

James Antle has a good piece at The American Spectator on what seems to be a somewhat recurring tradition in the Republican Party: blaming any and all electoral misfortune on social conservatives.

This illustrates the folly of divining lasting political trends on the basis of a single election result, as well as the perils of declaring the death -- or dominance -- of social conservatism. Looking back at the postmortems of the 1992 election, it is easy to find political writers arguing that it was time to abort the pro-life movement and look toward socially liberal Northeastern governors like Christine Todd Whitman and Bill Weld (remember him?) for the Republican future. Coming just before the GOP congressional takeover of 1994, such analysis -- written not just by smart liberals like the New Republic's John Judis but also center-right commentators like Charles Krauthammer -- seems as overwrought as the social-conservative triumphalism just two years before the 2006 elections restored the Democratic majorities on Capitol Hill.
In truth, there is very little evidence that the country has moved left on social issues since 2004, when values voters were said to decide the presidential election. Polls have been shifting somewhat more pro-life since the mid-1990s. Even leftward movement on same-sex marriage, which has gone from being unthinkable in the early '90s to a live issue today, seems to have stalled around late 2003. Republicans emphasized their social conservatism much more in 2004, when they won, than during their losing campaigns of 2006 and 2008.

Antle raises a good point at the end there. At what point in the election this year did social conservatism play anywhere near as much of a role as the 2004 election? Sarah Palin was just a sop to the right wing crazies, right, we know. As I mentioned earlier, even Palin rarely brought up the social issues during the campaign - it was the left and the media that depicted her as an abortion-banning, book-burning, contraception-outlawing, anti-gay fire breathing radical. Thanks to a general lack of pushback from the campaign over the first weekend after the announcement of her as the nominee, this caricature stuck. What is particularly noteworthy is that abortion played such a small role in the campaign despite the Democratic nominee being one of the most pro-abortion nominees ever on a major ticket.

That's not just a clever use of words. Obama isn't just pro-choice - when you want to cut funding to teen crisis pregnancy centers but use taxpayer money to fund abortions abroad, abortions at home, remove the restrictions of partial birth abortion and born alive infant protection, you are pro-abortion. Yet it never came up as an issue outside a couple 527 ads with sporadic coverage across the country. The closest Palin came throughout the rest of the campaign to any kind of social conservatism was one speech on abortion and the small-town boosterism. Small town populism is not the same thing as social conservative red-meat issues - take a look at the soaring attendance at megachurches in cities and suburbs. I live in a major metropolitan area that also happens to be one of the most conservative Catholic dioceses in the country, and there are about eight Catholic churches within five miles of me.

There is nothing, therefore, to show that social conservatism cost the Republicans this election. The fact that moral values was low on the list of the most important issue driving voters is also not a sign that the American people don't care about that issue anymore, or that it didn't still play a role in how they voted. With the economy tanking, the bottom falling out in the market, 401(k)s disappearing, home foreclosures skyrocketing, unemployment rising and prices increasing, very few people are going to tell an exit pollster that anything weighed on their minds more than the economy, be it Iraq, terrorism or moral values. That does not mean, however, that people consider moral values to be unimportant. For evidence of this, look at the gay marriage bans in Florida and Arizona, which passed by 12% in Arizona, 24% in Florida and even 3% in California. The measure passed in Arizona after a similar one failed there in 2006. It's difficult to contend that the people of Arizona are becoming less socially conservative.

The problem with the Republican Party and its various factions is not that foreign policy conservatives, social conservatives and fiscal conservatives can't co-exist. (If that were the case, I'd be in the middle of a very existential crisis right now, because I consider myself all three.) There is the impression among some, particularly fiscal conservatives that social conservatives are big spending, moral crusading nanny-staters, particularly on social programs and "wars on..." such as poverty, obesity, etc. To be fair, significant parts of "compassionate conservatism" gave them reason to think that, and some social conservatives like Mike Huckabee, though he has plenty of good attributes, also embodies some of this approach. In actuality, much of the social conservative wing doesn't think like this at all. Sure, they feel compelled by their faith to help the less fortunate, but not necessarily through the state. Huckabee did fairly well in the primaries, but that had as much to do with the lack of any other consistently pro-life candidate than it did agreement among social conservatives with the nanny-state aspects of Huckabees platform.

There is plenty of evidence disproving a general preference for big government among social conservatives. For those fiscal conservatives who like to talk about things like incentives, I would recommend one study, in which Daniel Chen, a law student at Harvard and formerly a fellow at the University of Chicago, finds that social conservatives are more likely to oppose a big spending welfare state. There is one twist: this is particularly the case in countries with strong separation of church and state, such as the United States.

Fiscal and social conservatives...tend to come hand in hand. Religious groups with greater within-group charitabe giving are more against the welfare state

[...]If church-state separation does not exist or the government were to become fundamentalist, the alliance would revere: social conservatives would become fiscal liberals

[...]As credit markets develop, elites gain access to alternative forms of social insurance and prefer less religious and government insurance. They legislate or judiciate increasing church-state separation in order to create a constituency for lower taxes, if religious voters exceed non-religious voters

In other words, in a country with church-state separation, churches have to look to their congregations for support. As such, a small state means marginal individuals look to the church for support. This provides the incentive for churches to support a small government. If you were to remove the church-state barrier, there would be less of an incentive for a church to oppose small government as the funding came pouring in from the state. Chen argues that this explains much of church history - as church-state separation became popular, emphasis on the social gospel (funded by the state, of course) went the way of the dinosaurs.

Now, the arguments that economics explains all human behavior always strike me as a bit cold and impersonal. Of course, church pastors are not all this cold and calculating. I suspect the social conservatives, more interested in human stories than talk of incentives, have nevertheless noticed that some of the most robust and effective charities are run by religious organizations, both at the individual parish level and on a national and international level. When the government tries to do the same things, their organizations eventually turn into bloated bureaucracies with multiple people performing the same job, large amounts of overhead, and billions of dollars go to waste.

It is true government has the resources and logistics required to deliver aid around the country and around the world, but local and nationalprivate charities (including religious ones) are often more streamlined, quicker to act and more efficient than local, state or federal government. Continued cooperation between government and private charity, particularly local organizations, would likely yield the more efficient outcomeon the ground. To the extent that government involves itself in social programs, disaster relief an d other activities, the federal government should devolve as much control over resources and decision-making authority to the state and local governments.

From a purely anecdotal standpoint, it's worth noting that the most socially conservative members of Congress are also the most fiscally conservative, according to the Club for Growth rankings. Below are the top 10 most fiscally conservative senators from the 2007 rankings, with their rankings from National Right to Life to the right of the Club for Growth rankings.

SC R DeMint, James 100% 100%
OK R Coburn, Tom 97% 100%
NC R Burr, Richard 97% 85%
AZ R Kyl, Jon 92% 100%
OK R Inhofe, James 91% 100%
NV R Ensign, John 90% 100%
TX R Cornyn, John 88% 100%
CO R Allard, Wayne 88% 100%
WY R Enzi, Michael 85% 100%
KY R McConnell, Mitch 84% 100%

It's also worth noting that social and fiscal conservatives have been shouting past each other in recent debates as well. Social conservatives feel like the people for whom they've played a major role in sending them to Washington have let them down. They argue that their national politicians have used them, playing on the abortion and gay marriae debates simply to get their votes. Meanwhile, the fiscal conservatives argue that social conservatives are a major drag on the ticket, beating the drum on abortion and gay marriage when there are far more important issues that the American people care about at stake.

What the social conservatives need to realize is that Bush and Republicans in Congress have actually done a great deal for them, from banning federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, to the Born Alive Infants Protection Act, to the ban on partial birth abortion, to the Bush administration's support for faith based initiatives, to the emphasis on abstinence education in the Africa AIDS initiatives, to Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, just to name a few. Many social conservatives (at least from my very unscientific and anecdotal survey) have also come to realize the futility of hoping for a repeal of Roe v. Wade, particularly in the short term, and are looking for more pragmatic ways of meeting their political goals. Likewise, I think most social conservatives will come to realize just how much progress the Bush administration made in enacting the social conservative agenda, even if in increments, if Obama (as has been reported) plans to repeal the ban on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, repeal the Mexico City law against using taxpayer money to fund abortions abroad and all the other tenets of the Freedom of Choice Act that Obama has said he would sign .

For their part, fiscal conservatives need to realize that social conservatism is not nearly the drag on the ticket as they like to think. As I mentioned, social issues played a negligible role in this election, and played a major role in electing Bush in 2004. Likewise, they need to realize that America is fundamentally closer to social conservatism than they are to social liberalism. They also need to realize that just because voters do not list moral values as the most important issue driving their vote, does not mean that moral issues do not play a role in their voting behavior. It also suggests that social conservatives are much more pragmatic than they are often given credit for. No matter how strong their positions may be on moral issues, they obviously recognized this year that the economy was the most important issue. That does not mean, however, that voters have to choose between the two - to say otherwise simply presents a false choice. There are a plethora of candidates out there who are both socially and fiscally conservative. Fortunately, they also happen to be more prevalent in the younger generations of leadership: Bobby Jindal, Sarah Palin, Tim Pawelenty, Paul Ryan, Mark Sanford, Mike Pence, John Shadegg, Eric Cantor, Jeb Hensarling, and so forth.

I should also add, I am not opposed to pro-choice Republicans running in their districts, particularly if that is the only way to get a Republican from that district. When we elect a president, however, we should look more towards the candidates that unite the various factions of conservatism.

Misdiagnosing the Problem

2008-11-11T17:27:00.000-05:00

David Brooks has a column in today's New York Times on the split in the conservative movement following last week's election.

In one camp, there are the Traditionalists, the people who believe that conservatives have lost elections because they have strayed from the true creed.

[...] To regain power, the Traditionalists argue, the G.O.P. should return to its core ideas: Cut government, cut taxes, restrict immigration. Rally behind Sarah Palin.

[...] The other camp, the Reformers, argue that the old G.O.P. priorities were fine for the 1970s but need to be modernized for new conditions. The reformers tend to believe that American voters will not support a party whose main idea is slashing government. The Reformers propose new policies to address inequality and middle-class economic anxiety. They tend to take global warming seriously. They tend to be intrigued by the way David Cameron has modernized the British Conservative Party.
Moreover, the Reformers say, conservatives need to pay attention to the way the country has changed. Conservatives have to appeal more to Hispanics, independents and younger voters. They cannot continue to insult the sensibilities of the educated class and the entire East and West Coasts.
The Reformist view is articulated most fully by books, such as “Comeback” by David Frum and “Grand New Party” by Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam, as well as the various writings of people like Ramesh Ponnuru, Yuval Levin, Jim Manzi, Rod Dreher, Peggy Noonan and, at the moderate edge, me.

Brooks' list of "reformers" isn't really a list of people agreed on anything - including the fundamental direction in which to take the Republican Party. Rod Drehers condemns wars like the one in Iraq and opposes society's consumer mentality. In that sense, he's a bit more paleocon than most. David Frum argues that the party should moderate its social conservatism,

College-educated Americans have come to believe that their money is safe with Democrats – but that their values are under threat from Republicans. And there are more and more of these college-educated Americans all the time.

So the question for the GOP is: Will it pursue them? To do so will involve painful change, on issues ranging from the environment to abortion. And it will involve potentially even more painful changes of style and tone: toward a future that is less overtly religious, less negligent with policy, and less polarizing on social issues.

Dreher, no fundamentalist to be sure, would nevertheless object to such a proposal. In fact, he does.

Let me make a point that's going to be overlooked among secular conservatives of Reformist impulse: no conservative movement that hopes to be successful can do so without religious conservatives. It will be very easy for secular Reform conservatives to sell op-ed pieces to newspapers, in which they argue that the GOP will not be revived until and unless it cuts itself free from the Religious Right. It'll be easy for them to sell that point because it suits the prejudices of the kind of secular liberals who run the media. But it's quite wrong.

Meanwhile, Peggy Noonan's break with the party is as follows, in a column on her opposition to Sarah Palin

For seven weeks I've listened to her, trying to understand if she is Bushian or Reaganite—a spender, to speak briefly, whose political decisions seem untethered to a political philosophy, and whose foreign policy is shaped by a certain emotionalism, or a conservative whose principles are rooted in philosophy, and whose foreign policy leans more toward what might be called romantic realism, and that is speak truth, know America, be America, move diplomatically, respect public opinion, and move within an awareness and appreciation of reality.

In other words, Noonan's prescription? More Reagan. Seems like a traditionalist to me.

In other words, Brooks' column sets up a false dichotomy. His "reformers" do, however, have one thing in common: they all opposed Sarah Palin as the VP nominee. So, either you're with Hannity and Limbaugh (and thereby discredited) or you're with the really smart people in the party - the anti-Palin crowd. If you think the solution should be to make sure government does the things it needs to do more efficiently, you've got blinders on. If you think government needs to start doing a lot more, even if it remains as inefficient as it is today, you're enlightened and a "reformer." If you happen to think smaller, more efficient government is the way to go, you also hate Hispanics. If you think bigger, less efficient government is the future, you're also enlightened enough to know that the Hispanic vote is important for the future of the Party. Here's what Yuval Levin, one of Brooks' "reformers" has to say:

[T]he David Brooks column...gets the basic picture wrong. I don’t think the notion of reform conservatism should be contrasted with or opposed to the views of the people Brooks calls the “traditionalists.”

As I see it, the basic idea is to apply conservative principles and ingenuity to a broader range of problems than we have been used to thinking about—to think in concrete policy terms about the worries of American families, and offer concrete conservative proposals for reforming our governing institutions. These need to be extensions of conservative successes in the past, like tax and welfare reform: applications of our basic view of the world to the problems of the day.

This kind of reformism is the conservative tradition, not a substitute for it. And its aim is not to move conservatives to the center, but to move the country to the right. It is not, to my mind at least, opposed to what Brooks’s “traditionalists” are trying to do, let alone is it trying to exclude social conservatives—as you might imagine, that’s not something Ramesh, or Ross Douthat, or I would want to see.

In other words, if Brooks can't accurately assess the problem, whatever his solution is is bound to fail.

Nuance

2008-11-10T22:07:00.000-05:00

On Obama:

Barack Obama figured out early on that he had better limit his media consumption before it consumed him.

After three months of campaigning, he stopped reading blogs. After six months, he stopped watching cable news shows. After nine months, he stopped reading the clips, relying instead on his staff to flag important stories.

On Bush:

He walks into the Oval Office in the morning, Bush said, and asks Card: "what's in the newspapers worth worrying about? I glance at the headlines just to kind of (get) a flavor of what's moving," Bush said. "I rarely read the stories," he said.

[...] Instead, Bush is spoon-fed the relevant news from his staff. Top aides usually know the buttons not to push when it comes to bad news. More often they will tell the president what he wants to hear -- the good news if there is any. Or they may just sugar coat the news that is tougher to swallow.

The reaction to the revelation that one of these men doesn't read the news, but instead relies on aides, was outrage. The reaction to the other man was runderstanding and empathy. I'll let you figure out which was which.

About That Civilian National Security Force

2008-11-10T02:41:00.000-05:00

There has been a lot of buzz lately on Obama's plan to create a Civilian National Security Force:

We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we've set. We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.

Now, this comment has evoked images in some corners of brownshirts, Gestapo and the SS. I think its something much more mundane than that. There is a debate in the field of counterinsurgency on the role of the military and the role of civilian agencies like State Department and USAID. Most counterinsurgency professionals agree, and Secretary Gates has echoed these thoughts, that civilian capabilities are not where they should be, leaving the military overworked as they try to create security, as well as the state-building activities normally undertaken by civilian agencies. Secretary Gates has called for increased funding for our civilian agencies, and has even mentioned that if he legally could (in other words, he doesn't want to, he's just making a point), he would give the State Department some DoD money.

The military's role in counterinsurgency is to create security so that civilian agencies can go to work rebuilding a country and consolidating gains made. Recently, State created a new division - the Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization, also known as S/CRS - to coordinate civilian response in counterinsurgency, stability operations and other state-building activities. It is woefully underfunded and undermanned. I suspect this is what Obama was speaking to - however clumsily. If this is what he meant, I can guarantee you it will get strong support from the Pentagon, as it would take much of the excess burden off the military to let it get back to doing what it does best - killing terrorists.

As for that mandatory national community service that the Obama had up - and then subsequently altered - on its transition page, that's concerning. I suspect these are two separate initiatives though.

UPDATE: No sooner do I write this that someone goes and gives a perfect example of the criticism. Of course, it would be helpful if Obama clarified what this means...as it would be helpful if he clarified his position on, um, everything.

In Defense of Sarah Palin

2008-10-29T01:54:00.000-04:00

In the days after the announcement of Sarah Palin as John McCain's running mate, I was talking with an acquaintance of mine - Ivy League educated, now a college professor - about the pick. One of the first things he did was to mock her for only having a journalism degree from the University of Idaho, and that her goal of a Sportscenter job must not have panned out. I didn't really know how to respond at the time, as I wasn't expecting that, so I just let it go. Little did I know that this was just the beginning of a steady barrage of such attacks that would be thrown at Palin - by Democrats, the media and even some Republicans - over the next two months.

I. The Recriminations

In the last couple weeks of the election, and particularly since the end of the election, McCain campaign aides (anonymous, of course, so as to ensure they can continue sabotaging future campaigns) have launched a full-scale offensive against Palin in an attempt to blame her for the ticket's defeat in the election. We've been told she was unbelievably dumb, and didn't know that Africa was a continent and not a country, and that she didn't know what NAFTA was. We were told she was a "diva" and racked up hundreds of thousands of dollars of expenses on clothing for herself and her family. We're told she refused to prepare for her now-infamous interview with Katie Couric. We're told she "went rogue" and brought up Bill Ayers before anyone signed off on the topic. We were told that she answered her door at the hotel in Minneapolis during the convention to let in "senior campaign aides" in either a towel or her bathrobe (stories vary, of course) because she had just gotten out of the shower. She also apparently refused to go on stage at one New Hampshire rally with John Sununu and former Rep. Jeb Bradley, who was running for his old seat, because Sununu was "pro-choice" and Bradley opposed drilling in Alaska. This is just the beginning.

Of course, most of this sounds entirely implausible. One of Palin's aides from Alaska who accompanied her on the campaign trail recently told ABC News that the comment on Africa was human error, like when Barack Obama said he had traveled to all 57 states in the country. Another aide said she was well aware of a number of African issues, including Darfur, failed states, and AIDS initiatives, making it unlikely that she wouldn't know what Africa is. As for NAFTA, the same foreign policy aid has stated that it is also untrue, as he was the one briefing her on various trade agreements. (Besides, does anyone really think a governor of a state that does a great deal of business with Canada, a governor who negotiated a natural gas line to run through Canada from Alaska to the lower 48 wouldn't know what NAFTA is?)

One aide also explained that Palin was opposed to wearing a $3,500 shirt, but was given clothes she was told to wear. As for Sununu and Bradley, on the surface this is pretty funny that she didn't know what Africa was but she knew the voting records of a Senator and former Congressman, who got voted out of office before she even became governor, from a state on the other side of the country. Of course, this is wrong, as Sununu had a 100% pro-life voting record. Also, she had no apparent problem appearing on stage with them at other New Hampshire rallies.

Finally, Randy Scheunemann, McCain's senior foreign policy adviser, claimed that the Ayers attack was fully vetted and approved by HQ. Scheunemann has worked with McCain before, and is well respected in the foreign policy world, and he was assigned to Palin to help with debate prep, in which he played the role of Joe Biden. He called her "brilliant" and said she had a photographic memory. There were reports, since denied, that he was fired for telling reporters that there was a faction of the campaign that was getting ready to savage Palin in order to blame her for the coming electoral defeat.

II. The Roll Out

The real scandal in the whole Sarah Palin ordeal, however, began shortly after she was picked as McCain's running mate. The idea, I have to imagine, was to roll her out as a Young Turk of sorts, a reformer who had been cleaning out the Alaskan Republican Party from that which had made it a symbol of all that was wrong with the national party. When she served as ethics chair and member of the Alaskan Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, the regulatory body for the industry, she was responsible for submitting regular, signed reports that there had been no ethics violations under her watch. Randy Reudrich, chair of the state Republican Party and member of the Commission, had been conducting Republican Party business from his commission office, received deferred compensation from companies under investigation by the commission, lobbied for a coal-bed methane developer and undermined the work of the commission while he was supposed to be regulating the industry. No one else did anything, so Palin sent incriminating emails to her boss, the state Attorney General, Gregg Renkes. Reudrich resigned, and eventually settled for a $12,000 fine, but there was no follow-up investigation. As a result, Palin herself resigned in protest. Eventually, it came to light that Renkes himself was tied to coal technology companies, negotiating trade deals that benefited the company whose executives Renkes knew and in which he owned $120,000 in stock. Within two months, Renkes had also resigned.

She would then go on to challenge the governor, fellow Republican Frank Murkowski, whose administration was plagued by these scandals, among others. She won the primary, and then defeated a former two-term governor in the general election. Once in office, she continued efforts to clean up the mess from an entrenched and corrupt Republican party, including the corruption tied to the earmark process. Though she did not eliminate all earmark requests, she significantly reduced the amont requested and distanced herself from an increasingly corrupt congressional delegation, some members of which had engaged in questionable deals with a major oil services company in Alaska tied to abuse of the earmarking process. Her Lieutenant Governor, Sean Parnell, even ran against At-Large Congressman Don Young in the primary earlier this year, losing by only a few hundred votes. Palin also looked at a number of deals engineered by the previous (Republican) administration, including a natural gas pipeline deal with the same oil services company that resulted in the conviction of Murkowski's chief of staff, Jim Clark, earlier this year for arranging illegal payments from the company to Murkowski's re-election campaign.

This is, presumably, how the campaign wanted to present Palin to the people. If this was the plan, it failed miserably. The campaign made no mention of any of this record, except that Palin wanted to do something about earmarks. The press took this to mean that she was claiming her record, like McCain's, was earmark free - which it wasn't. McCain's admirable ability to avoid ever having to request a single earmark aside, the objection is not to federal funding of local projects, but rather to abuse of the system in which it is carried out. Instead of saying Palin was working on reforming the earmarking process from within a hopelessly corrupt state Republican Party while simultaneously reducing requests so as to cut unnecessary spending, they pretended she was adamantly opposed to all earmarks. This claim was shot to pieces within days when the media found out that she had asked for earmarks as governor, even though she had greatly reduced the amount requested during the previous administration, and had even requested some earmarks while mayor of Wasilla. Within days, therefore one of Palin's strongest and most nonpartisan attributes had been called into question by the press.

When McCain revealed Palin as his pick in Ohio on August 28, her speech did not mention a single social or cultural issue. She talked about her family, her reform efforts in Alaska, McCain's presonal story and character, and the role of women in politics - including Hillary Clinton and Geraldine Ferraro. After that appearance in Dayton, Palin did not reemerge until the next Thursday, September 4, when she gave her convention speech in Minneapolis. In that period of less than a week, the media and Democrats threw everything they had at her, including the kitchen sink.

III. The Attacks

The media and bloggers engaged in some of the most vicious rumor mongering about Palin's personal life. Within a day, bloggers, including those at prominent media outlets, speculated that her infant son Trig was not actually her son, but rather her oldest daguhters's son. Other media organizations apparently demanded to see proof that Trig was Palin's son. This was about the only attack on which the campaign did hit back, revealing that Palin's daughter Bristol was five months pregnant. (Of course, the same individuals at prominent media outlets nevertheless spent the remainder of the campaign demanding to see Trig's birth certificate). Shortly thereafter, the National Enquirer alleged that Palin had had an affair with a family friend. When a family friend happened to file to have his divorce records sealed, reporters rushed to Wasilla to sue for their release. Of course, it turned out that there was nothing there, but that didn't stop the rumor mongering.
As some parts of the media were dragging themselves through the gutter, Democrats, including the Obama campaign, proceeded to mock Palin as nothing more than a former small town mayor - ignoring her record as governor of Alaska and acting as if the only experience she had was just as mayor of a small town. The day she was picked, I was at the airport, and Jack Cafferty was gleefully reading emails from viewers, nearly all of which mocked her description of herself as a "hockey mom" and her experience on the PTA. Like my friend mentioned above, the fact that she only graduated from Idaho (especially after spending time at a number of other schools for financial and personal reasons), that she only had a journalism degree and that she had started her career in sports broadcasting were somehow signs that she just wasn't quite up to the job.

Throughout all of this, during the first weekend and week prior to the Republican convention, nobody bothered to look at her record. Even a simple wikipedia search would have told you more about Palin's record than the media did then (or ever). This would be the biggest problem, and the campaign's biggest failing. They not only let the left and media call into question her reformist credentials, they let them completely rewrite the narrative that would shape Palin's entire time on the campaign. Not content to mock Palin's college, small town and isolated state, they caricatured her as a fire-breathing social conservative - quick to resort to class warfare and wedge issues.

They claimed she supported Pat Buchanan, the best known class warrior of them all, because, as mayor, she wore a Pat Buchanan button to a rally when Buchanan was visiting Wasilla during one of his presidential runs. Rep. Robert Wexler then went on TV and accused her of holding Buchanan's views on Israel while an Obama spokesman accused her of supporting a Nazi-sympathizer. The only problem is, she didn't. She had written an op-ed to a local paper after it mentioned that she was supporting Buchanan in which she asserted that she did not support him and that she was merely welcoming a presidential candidate to her town, as she would have done with any candidate. She was, in fact, co-chair of the state's Steve Forbes campaign.

Next, she had supposedly been a member of an anti-American Alaskan "secessionist party," which actually turned out to be a fringe mainstream political party comparable to a crazy uncle in the attic rather than the Confederacy circa 1861. She was never a member, but had once attended a conference and, as a courtesy as governor, had made a very brief welcome speech for their 2007 convention in which she gave lip service to something the party had in common with Republicans: small government.

Next, they claimed she wanted to teach creationsm. In actuality, she said she wouldn't oppose schools teaching whatever they wanted - she wasn't going to try to block either creationism or evolution.

In an interview Thursday, Palin said she meant only to say that discussion of alternative views should be allowed to arise in Alaska classrooms:
"I don't think there should be a prohibition against debate if it comes up in class. It doesn't have to be part of the curriculum."

She added that, if elected, she would not push the state Board of Education to add such creation-based alternatives to the state's required curriculum.
[...] "I won't have religion as a litmus test, or anybody's personal opinion on evolution or creationism," Palin said.

She was also accused of cutting special needs funding, which I guess was particularly incriminating because she was the mother of a special needs child, and had claimed it as a cause close to her heart. In actuality, however, she raised the funding levels quite significantly - just not quite as significantly as the legislature had requested.

Next, she supposedly tried to ban books in the local library upon taking office as mayor of Wasilla. The story, however, was much more mundane. The department heads in the government had served under previous mayor John Stein, a fellow Republican with whom Palin had a contentios relationship. Palin made clear that the department heads would not be able to remain loyal to Stein, but would have to transfer their loyalties to the new mayor. She then went about testing their loyalty. She asked library director, Mary Ellen Emmons, what she would do if Palin requested a book be banned. Emmons gave her an honest answer, saying she'd fight such a request.

The media has since reported that the subsequent resignation demanded by Palin was retribution for Emmons' unwillingness to ban the book, and that Palin only rescinded the demand following outcry from the town. In fact, Palin requested resignations from all department heads, another test of their loyalty. Most offered their resignation, and they subsequently got their jobs back. Some, however, were fired, including Police Chief Irl Stambaugh, a Stein ally who had made his opposition to Palin well known. Stambaugh, Stein and another Stein ally from the City Council then went on to form Concerned Citizens for Wasilla to discuss the option of launching a recall against Palin. In the end, the group disbanded without making any such attempt. Stambaugh sued the town for contract violation and gender discrimination. He lost.

All of this came out in the first five days following the announcement of McCain's pick of Palin, and the campaign made no apparent attempt to hit back on any of it. Just about every last accusation against her proved to be untrue, but the media and Democrats nevertheless used it to establish the narrative that the campaign had not vetted Palin and that this fit into the narrative that the Democrats were trying to paint about McCain being "erratic." The spinning of this new narrative continued. Palin gave a terrific convention speech, which was tremendously received, even by many skeptics. Since the Obama campaign had hit her on the small town mayor claim, Palin and the campaign hit back with a defense against the attacks on small towns, and included a few digs on community organizers. She spoke about special needs children, touched on energy, foreign policy and other issues, while throwing in sufficient amounts of red meat given the convention setting.

IV. Bunker Mentality

Soon after, however, something happened. Whether it was, as rumored, the Bush-Cheney people who were responsible for some of the bunker mentality of the early days of the second Bush term, I don't know. Gone were the attempts to highlight Palin's record. Without allowing her to start campaigning on the issues, the Democrats continued to succeed with lies about her social policies and painting her as little more than a class warrior and a sop to the right wing crazies. They continued using a shorter version of her convention speech for her stump speech. When questioned by the media what her qualifications were on foreign policy, the campaign did not take the Bush/Clinton route. These two were also once governors with little foreign policy exposure, but they relieved fears by bringing out their foreign policy advisers. Bush made sure to bring Rice, Powell, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Armitage and others into the campaign, and while he didn't know Musharraf's name, it wasn't that big a deal in the end. Granted, foreign policy plays a much bigger role today than it did in 2000, but Palin was also running for VP, with a foreign policy expert at the top of the ticket.

Instead, the campaign decided to make up foreign policy credentials. Though they are best known coming from Palin on Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric, staff members were the first ones to use the talking points that the Alaskan governor was commander in chief of the Alaskan National Guard, or that Alaska's proximity to Russia provided the requisite experience. Palin's use of these lines (or at least the proximity to Russia) in her interviews - and the subsequent mockery on Saturday Night Live - was one of the primary reasons why some voters came to see her as too inexperienced for the job. Yet, the campaign pumped her full of these kinds of talking points and sent her into interviews with Charlie Gibson, who spent the entire interview sighing loudly as if he had someplace better to be and staring down his nose over his glasses at Palin like a school marm scolding a misbehaving student.

Though she asked some perfectly legitimate questions, Couric also asked some inane questions, including one about details of John McCain's legislative records after Palin had only been on the ticket a couple weeks. You could almost see her reaching for the appropriate talking point during her interviews, which is how health care made its way into an answer to a question about the bailout. Meanwhile, there were no call-ins to talk radio and no attempt at easing her into the limelight with interviews in more friendly atmospheres, with the exception of Hannity and Colmes. Even then, though, you could tell she was still reaching for the talking points rather than talking about the issues she knew. But if this was a result of her alleged stupidity, what does that say about the campaign staffers who negotiated the deal with ABC and CBS to allow individual segments to air over a number of days? This arrangement guaranteed that any embarrassing moments from a single interview would air night after night, thereby giving the impression that Palin had blown several individual interviews, one after another.

Then came the Vice Presidential debate. By all accounts, Palin and her husband had become fed up with her handlers by then, and they wanted to get out of the bunker mentality. Some members of the campaign, however, had already started to turn on her. Whether it was her handlers or not, I don't know. Whether it was the claim about Africa referred to above or not, something caused "anonymous sources" to start leaking that Palin was a disaster in the debate prep. Randy Scheunemann, McCain's senior foreign policy adviser, handled Palin's debate prep and would later become her staunchest defender. Whatever problems there may have been in the prep, she more than held her own against Biden in the debate. This was the tunrnaround point for Palin. She obviously shook loose her minders and started holding more impromptu chats with her press corps, gaining a reputation for being the most accessible candidate from either ticket. (Incidentally this is also the point at which the anti-Palin leaks became more frequent. I won't speculate as to whether there is a connection there).

The campaign nevertheless kept Palin on the culture attacks (somewhat cynically, these were the same people who now deride her and her family as "Wasilla hillbillies.") They now accuse her of using the Ayers attack before it was approved by the senior staff and McCain, but, as mentioned, Scheunemann hit back at the time saying that it had been completely vetted and approved. Nevertheless, the leaked comments still give off the impression that the culture war tact was hers all along. According the media, she was the one stirring up the crowds, race-baiting and refusing the denounce alleged, and some of which have since been disproven, shouts of "kill him" and "terrorist." All this by daring to mention the fact that Obama had extremely questionable acquaintances, reflecting poorly on his judgment.

V. Substance

In the last couple weeks of the campaign, Palin gave major policy speeches on special needs children and energy policy. Both were well received, and the media speculated as to whether she should have been doing them from the beginning. While it is a bit ironic that the same people that defined Palin from the beginning as lacking substance suddenly became shocked that there was substance there, I nevertheless agree. Hitting back at the convention against criticisms launched by the Democrats about her small town roots was brilliant, but beating that approach to death made Palin appear to be an empty slate. (It was particularly cynical now that we know what these campaign aides think of small towns like Wasilla and the "hillbillies" who live there).

And while the attacks on Obama for his association with Ayers was entirely legitimate, the way the campaign handled it was self-defeating. By only mentioning one person, it was easy for voters to think that their relationship had been either a coincidence or a single error in judgment. By not creating the narrative of a history of poor judgment calls in forming social and business relationships, from Wright to Pfleger to Governor Blagojevich to Tony Rezko, and so on. Instead they their commercials about Obama's associates included obscure people from Chicago politics and never mentioned what they or Obama had done wrong, instead flashing text headlines across the screen too quickly for anyone to read. They tried to tie Obama to William Daley, the mayor's brother, forgetting that the Daley machine has become more a national punch line (vote early, vote often) than anything else.

Their primary focus from the beginning should have been energy. They could have mentioned her role as chair of the National Governors' Association Natural Resources Committee. They could have had her focus on the same smart takedown of the Obama-Biden record on energy issues that Palin gave before she was even picked by McCain. Palin was added to the ticket on Friday, the day after Obama's speech on the last night of the Democratic Convention and a little under a week since Biden had been picked as Obama's running mate. Earlier that same week, during the Democratic Convention, Palin (at this point just in her role as Governor of Alaska) did an interview (skip to about the 3:00 mark) with CNBC's Maria Bartiromo where she had this to say:

It seems to be almost a naive notion of their's that we can automatically just jump right into a renewable supply of energy to feed hungry markets across our nation when these renewables are not yet proven to be economic nor reliable. We're going to be in a transition period for quite some time when we're going to have to be reliant on conventional sources of energy as we're working on the renewables, and we certainly have to head in that direction also, but it's got to be doing everything, everything we can to allow the domestic supplies, renewable and nonrenewable, to be tapped...and not just skip the oil and gas developments, and the coal development also, that we have to have as part of a comprehensive plan.

Palin and her husband Todd have often touted vocational training opportunities available in the oil and gas industry, a program he benefited from when he first went to work on the North Slope for BP. John McCain lost the Michigan primary to Mitt Romney in part because Romney told workers from the automotive industry who had been laid off that he would be able to bring those jobs back to Michigan. McCain, to his credit, avoided making such impausible promises, though it did contribute to his loss in that state in the primaries. After the convention, the campaign made a big push for Michigan, but soon decided to pull out of the state due to a lack of funds and inability to make headway in the state. Perhaps the Palins could have gone to Michigan to propose a workforce development initiative similar to the Alaska Works Partnership, which provides training and placement within the construction industry, or the Alaska Vocational Technical Center, which provides training in a number of fields, from technology to the health industry. Palin could have talked about the educational tax credits she provided to businesses that support vocational education.

They also could have had her address the difficult economic situation she inherited, and her ability to find solutions to these issues, such as cutting unemployment insurance taxes two years in a row and increasing unemployment benefits, moving Alaska from fourth from last to the midpoint of all states in terms of its unemployment benefits. They could have mentioned her focus on public health and crisis management abilities from planning for potential avian flu outbreaks since, at the time, many public health officials feared that Alaska, a crossroads for migratory birds, could be the site of the first cases of a "highly pathogenic strain of bird flu known as Asian H5N1." From Alaska, infected birds would be able to enter into the continental United States. They could have had her talk about her efforts to increase transparency and competition in Alaska's healthcare system, an effort that was ultimately defeated in the legislature in a sop to the hospitals in the state. They could have talked about her creation of a Climate Change Subcabinet and signing Alaska onto the Western Climate Initiative, a regional cap and trade program, as an observer. They could have talked about how she established the Senior Benefits Program, which "provides support for low-income older Alaskans."

VII. Socially Conservative Libertarian

In short, the campaign failed to focus on her record. They let the media and Democrats turn her into a caricature of the social conservative culture warrior based not on her record, but simply on her own personal beliefs After successfully hitting back at the convention, they should have moved on to how her experience and her record would contribute to the ticket, with some populist red meat thrown in along the way. They should have demonstrated that Palin is a good example for how the different wings of the Republican Party - social conservatives and fiscally conservative libertarians - could easily work together, as she is essentially a social conservative who has governed as a libertarian. She has not tried to legislate social issues, but nevertheless spoke about her beliefs, worked to persuade, and ensured that no roll back occurred in the other direction occurred. She holds very conservative views on issues like abortion and gay marriage, but as governor vetoed a bill that would deny same sex couples domestic partner benefits provided to state employees. She has avoided red meat issues like abortion, but stated that she would hope that women considering an abortion would instead "choose life." Instead, we now have a President-elect who is ready to placate liberal interest groups by rolling back restrictions on federal funding of unproven embryonic stem cell research as well as restrictions on using taxpayer money to allow foreign aid to be spent on abortion.

Palin now returns to Alaska and the Governor's office where, with the falling price of oil, she will face a tougher budgetary challenge. This will provide an opportunity to show that she can govern as a fiscal conservative, even when times are tough, and not just when oil revenues are flowing into state coffers. Some are suggesting she run for the Senate should Ted Stevens win re-election and then be kicked out of the Senate. I think this would be a mistake. One of her biggest strengths during the campaign was that she was a Washington outsider with executive experience. I would stay in Alaska and run for re-election. Since the 2012 race may start soon after her 2010 re-election race, voters might be hesitant to vote for her if she were to then immediately enter the presidential race. She may therefore want to consider serving two full terms in Alaska, with an eye toward 2016. (This is assuming Obama's presidency has been farily successful by the time the 2012 race gears up. If his presidency has been at all bumpy, circumstances may change). Along the way she can continue her work that, even after the partisan rhetoric from the presidential race, still has her approval ratings near 70%. Along the way she can find ways to get involved at the national level, and improve her foreign policy knowledge and participation.

As for the red meat issues, she should probably avoid them when possible, except for when Obama starts catering to Planned Parenthood, as she's already established her pro-life bona-fides. When she does bring up the issue, it should be coached in the language of moderation and compromise in order to highlight Obama as the radical. She could say that while there is debate on issues like Roe v. Wade that we could discuss as a nation at a later time, most Americans can nevertheless agree that issues like partial birth abortion and taxpayer funding of abortion are too radical for this country. This could easily allow her to position herself as the reasonable moderate and Obama as out of touch with mainstream America by catering to ultra-liberal interest groups.

A Different Kind of Paradox

2007-09-18T18:44:00.000-04:00

Retired General and former CENTCOM CINC John Abizaid believes that we could abide a nuclear-armed Iran.

"Iran is not a suicide nation," he said. "I mean, they may have some people in charge that don't appear to be rational, but I doubt that the Iranians intend to attack us with a nuclear weapon."
The Iranians are aware, he said, that the United States has a far superior military capability.
"I believe that we have the power to deter Iran, should it become nuclear," he said, referring to the theory that Iran would not risk a catastrophic retaliatory strike by using a nuclear weapon against the United States.
"There are ways to live with a nuclear Iran," Abizaid said in remarks at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank. "Let's face it, we lived with a nuclear Soviet Union, we've lived with a nuclear China, and we're living with (other) nuclear powers as well."

Nevermind that he insists Iran is not suicidal and then admits that he's not entirely sure that its leaders are rational. Even if the Iranian leadership is rational, and precisely because the United States has superior conventional military capabilities, a nuclear Iran would pose a great threat to the United States.

The problem with Gen. Abizaid's thinking is that he falls right into the realist trap. Sure, there's no difference between a nuclear Iran and a nuclear Soviet Union - so long as you believe that states are black boxes. This isn't even just in regards to regime type, or whether the regime is rational or not. This also means you ignore capabilities of states relative to one another as well as their interest in the status quo. Mearsheimer and Walt made this same argument in their original Israel Lobby article.

One might argue that Israel and the Lobby have not had much influence on policy towards Iran, because the US has its own reasons for keeping Iran from going nuclear. There is some truth in this, but Iran’s nuclear ambitions do not pose a direct threat to the US. If Washington could live with a nuclear Soviet Union, a nuclear China or even a nuclear North Korea, it can live with a nuclear Iran.

Iran has displayed a knack for using terrorism as a form of blackmail, as well as the ability to back off just enough when necessary to ease international pressure. Whether it was claiming to end support for terrorism after the US ratcheted up the pressure after Khobar Towers, or when it withdrew its Quds Force from Iraq shortly after it leaked that the US was considering labeling it a terrorist group, the Iranian regime is quite adept at public relations. A nuclear armed Iran would not have any need to be seen as backing off - because the US would be far more wary of upping the pressure.

Paul Kapur, a professor at the Naval War College and Stanford, has done a lot of work on the current and Cold War-era relationships between emerging nuclear powers, balance of conventional forces and revisionist states using the case study of present-day India and Pakistan. In the early Cold War, the Soviets had conventional superiority as well as a desire to change the status quo and gain territory.

The Cold War therefore followed pretty closely the Stability-Instability Paradox, whereby the low likelihood that a conventional war will escalate to nuclear reduced the danger and costs of starting a conventional war and made such conventional war more likely. The revisionist power was more confident in its superior conventional abilities and confident that any such wars would not turn nuclear if it played its cards right. The result was a great deal of low level conventional violence, with neither side willing to escalate to the nuclear level and the Soviet Union enjoying conventional superiority.

The situation in Pakistan and India is different, and so would a nuclear Iran-US dyad. India is conventionally superior to Pakistan, but its Pakistan that wants to change the status quo, particularly in Kashmir. Pakistan therefore has to find a way to make sure it avoids a full-blown war with India, a war Pakistan would certainly lose. Pakistan therefore attempts to change the status quo in Kashmir by bleeding India dry with support for terrorist attacks, and attracts international attention to the issue at the same time. To ensure India won't respond with its overwhelming conventional superiority, Islamabad allows for instability at the nuclear level, prehaps by hinting that it has few qualms about taking the conflict to the nuclear level, or that it might not even have full control over its own nuclear arsenal.

With situations like this, you end up with "skirmishes" like Kargil in 1999, where Pakistani forces actually cross the Line of Control into Indian-controlled territory. The whole world at the time was convinced we were about to have our first nuclear war. India shared in this worry as well, so it severely limited its response to foreign incursion into Indian territory. Depending on who's figures you believe, anywhere between 1,000 and several thousand people were killed in the conflict.

The key here is that India has overwhelming conventional superiority, while Pakistan only has nuclear weapons as its trump card in carrying out its revisionist policies. Does this sound familiar? Kapur concludes an article on the subject with the following:

If the leaders of newly nuclear states are dissatisfied with the territorial status quo, they may engage in limited aggression, believing that the danger of nuclear escalation will reduce the risk of full-scale conventional retaliation by stronger adversaries and will attract international attention.

In other words, "If Iran is unhappy with the status quo (in the Middle East or on a wider geopolitical scale), it may engage in acts of terrorism, while simultaneously giving the impression (or perhaps protraying the reality) that parts of its government (the ones that control the nuclear weapons) are not entirely sane and/or rational, believing that the danger of nuclear escalation will reduce the risk of full-scale conventional retaliation by the United States, simultaneously attracting international attention to its causes." Not exactly a positive scenario for the United States.

Neocons, Interests, Ideals and American Hegemony

2007-08-24T12:15:00.000-04:00

It's become both amusing and maddening to watch the spread of the moniker "neoconservative" over the past 6 years. It started with a cabal of select members of the Bush administration - none of whom were in Cabinet-level positions. It has since come to mean anyone that is, or ever was, part of the Bush administration, with the possible exception of everyone at the State Department. That includes everyone from the President himself all the way down to the lowest political appointee at the most obscure government agency. The term no longer has any meaning other than "Republican" or "someone who thinks war is sometimes necessary" (The latter definition is used to rope in people like Joe Lieberman), and it is a monolithic entity with every member marching in lockstep.

To show the degree to which the actual meaning of neoconservatism has been lost to history, take a look at Matt Yglesias' attempt to rebut Jonathan Chait's argument that neoconservatives were ever idealistic (in the good way).

Now, of course, the original neoconservative foreign policy doctrine was to oppose Jimmy Carter's injection of a larger dose of human rights into US foreign policy and to argue in favor of more vigorous American support for anti-Communist dictators.

That is, of course, absurd. What would later be pejoratively labeled neoconservativism began to coalesce as a set of ideas long before Carter ran for president. Focusing solely on foreign policy, neoconservatives looked around them and found both the left and the right willing to make concessions to the Soviet Union under the mistaken belief that it was "here to stay." Democrats were trending towards the McGovernite wing, while Republicans were pushing detente hard. Neoconservatives generally backed Hubert Humphrey in 1968 and Henry "Scoop" Jackson in 1972. By the 1976 election, many were beginning to make their way to the Republican Party, but the GOP nominee that year was Ford who, together with Henry Kissinger, had continued the policy of detente after Nixon left the White House. As a result, many neoconservatives once again supported Jackson in the primaries. Once Carter won the nomination, many still continued to support him, even if that support was less enthusiastic than the support for Jackson had been. The neoconservative movement to the GOP didn't begin in full force until 1980, after four years of Carter.

Then there's this notion that Carter "injected a larger dose of human rights into US foreign policy." What bothered many neoconservatives about Carter was his utter hypocrisy. He made a big show of opposing dictators and injecting human rights, and publicly opposed a few right-wing bogeymen like Pinochet and Somoza to show he meant it. But then he continued on supporting dictators, both right and left-wing, in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Indonesia, Philippines, Rhodesia/Zimbabwe, China, Panama and elsewhere, including throughout the Middle East.

Carters made a number of mistakes in implementing his "idealism." Until he promulgated the Carter Doctrine, which came far too late into his term to make much of a difference, he made no attempt to link idealism to any concept of American strategic interests. He saw idealism as the polar opposite of force projection - two concepts that could never work together. As a result, his foreign policy was rudderless. He made the common mistake made by American presidents at least as far back as Wilson of believing that "human rights" meant "freedom from imperialism," but gave little connection between the actual type of self-government and human rights - to Carter, if it was self-government, it was inherently "good." What we wound up with was far from ideal - instead we had our president running around making nice with every tin-pot dictator other than the ones the left really didn't like, like Pinochet.

Yglesias does generally get the argument of the "second-wave" neoconservatives (Bill Kristol's generation) correct. This argument, roughly summarized by Yglesias, is two-fold. First:

Thus, standing up for our principles around the world will do good. They also believe that standing up for our principles around the world were enhance our predominant geopolitical position. We'll be doing well by doing good. "American foreign policy, should be informed with a clear moral purpose," they write, "based on the understanding that its moral goals and its fundamental national interests are almost always in harmony."

Second:

But not only are the interests of American hegemony identical to the pursuit of American values, but the pursuit of American global domination is what the rest of the world wants, too: "Most of the world's major powers welcome U.S. global involvement and prefer America's benevolent hegemony to the alternatives." And it's also good for the Republican Party, since "Over the long term, victory for American conservatives depends on recapturing the spirit of Reagan's foreign policy as well."

Naturally, Yglesias expresses disbelief at both of these arguments, calling the first "mighty convenient" and the second "confusion." He doesn't really do much to rebut these arguments though. The first argument brings me back to the review I posted last month of Michael Oren's Power, Faith and Fantasy: America in the Middle East 1776-Present. He argues that American success in the Middle East came when it "responsibly wield[ed] its strength and consistently up[held] its principles." Conversely, America's most spectacular policy failures came when decisions were made either on the strict basis of national interest with no acknowledgment of American ideals or when decisions were made based solely on idealism with little attention paid to strategic interests or power projection. For the most part, Oren argues that each president since Franklin Roosevelt has had successes and failures, but he is especially critical of the Middle East policy of five presidents, who were either too focused on narrow strategic interests, or too naive with regards to their "idealism." From my review:

[Oren argues that] US policy toward the Middle East cannot be based solely on a cold, detached realpolitik, but must also include recognition of American "idealist" values. At the same time, however, power and focus on strategic interests is a necessary component, otherwise American policy becomes aimless and consists of seeking peace at all costs. Oren argues that this (mistaken) approach was followed by presidents like Kennedy, Carter and Clinton. Let me add now, that lest you think this is some partisan screed, Oren is equally as critical of Republican administrations and saves some of his harshest criticism for Nixon and Reagan, the latter of which he argues (and I would tend to agree) pursued the very realpolitik policies in the Middle East that he denounced in US policy toward the Soviet Union.

I add:

There seem to me to be two additional lessons to learn from Oren's history, that he doesn't get into, beyond the appropriate balance between power and ideals. The first, which I've already touched on, is that many of the headaches America experienced in the region came not from a failure to apply "ideals" to foreign policy, but a mistaken notion of what those ideals were. This goes back at least as far as Wilson, who argued for self determination and an end to colonialism, but failed to take into account the nature of the regimes that would replace the colonial administration. As I've mentioned, independence is a necessary ideal, but not sufficient on its own. It must also be accompanied by some sort of legitimate rule whereby the needs and desires of the people are appropriately addressed by the government. From Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy in Egypt, through to Carter throughout the Middle East, Reagan in the Palestinian Territories and Bush 41 in Kuwait after the Gulf War, American policy has addressed "ideals," but has done so incorrectly. As a result, the outcome is often worse, both for the people of the country and for US strategic interests, than what came before.

The second lesson one could draw from Oren's history is that when American policymakers have pursued strategic interests with little regard to American values, they mistakenly assumed that the dictators had the same interests as the United States, and that they would act in good faith. Time and again this proved to be false, as Nasser turned against the US after we had sided with him against our traditional allies; as continued attempts to negotiate with Arafat proved fruitless as he continued to support terrorism, whether covertly or overtly; as Iran failed to uphold its end of the bargain it reached with the Reagan administration to secure the release of American hostages in Lebanon; and as Saudi Arabia continued to fund anti-Western Wahabbist propaganda that would eventually inspire terrorist attacks that killed thousands of Americans.

It really is remarkable how cleanly American foreign policy in the Middle East fits into these three paradigms - strategic interests, rudderless idealism, or linking interests with ideals - and how few of the policies based on the first two were successful compared to policies based on the last one. Neoconservatives do not disavow policy based on strategic interest - but they see American ideals as some of the most valuable tools for formulating policy to achieve those strategic interests.

As for Yglesias' incredulity at the idea that the world might welcome American leadership, or at least not actively oppose, there really isn't much empirical evidence to lend credence to that disbelief. Let's start with history and basic IR theory. Realists argue, and the historical record does tend to support this, that anytime a single state gains too much power at the expense of the rest of the international system, a coalition will form that will balance against the hegemon. Realists face an unfortunate problem, however, when forced to explain why no such coalition has formed to balance American hegemony. To some degree this is because of barriers intrinsic to the relationship between other powers, such as the numerous obstacles - historical, demographic, geopolitical and military - keeping Russia and China from forming some kind of military coalition to balance against the United States.

As many have argued, however, this lack of a balancing power or coalition is also due to the nature of American hegemony that makes it different from past hegemons. The United States provides public goods that offer economic, security and political reasons not to actively try to balance against the United States. Even if they are not thrilled with a hegemonic America, even if they wish , say, that France or Germany or India held equal or greater power than the United States, when faced with reality and forced to consider a world with a hegemon other than the United States or a bipolar/multipolar world with Russia, China or some other country holding the same amount of power as the United States, many reach the conclusion that a hegemonic America is the best alternative. They recognize that the international system with the US as a hegemon is far more conducive to their interests than any of the likely alternatives.

Not wanting to give up on balancing, many realists tried to work their way around this predicament. Kenneth Waltz has been arguing for years that multipolarity is just around the corner. A more feasible argument has been that other countries have turned to this idea of "soft balancing," whereby they might not be able to balance against the US militarily, but would utilize other forms of economic and political power to inhibit America's ability to carry out its foreign policy and counter its hegemony. This concept hadn't been around for very long before academics of varying ideological stripes began expressing their skepticism. It appeared all the examples used by the soft-balancing advocates of how countries were trying to make life hard for America either never occurred or failed miserably in preventing the United States from implementing the parts of its foreign policy with which they disagreed.

Maybe Yglesias has a better answer, I don't know. But he has to come up with something more than writing it off as "confusion." For all the protests from Europe about President Bush, for all the insistence of former Russian foreign minister Yevgeny Primakov - long before Iraq, and under a different American President - that we already lived in a multipolar world, for all the claims that Iraq was a watershed moment in US hegemony - after which everything would change, and for all the claims that the EU is poised to become the new superpower, you simply can't explain away the fact that the few attempts there have been to counter American hegemony have been infrequent, half-hearted and entirely ineffective. Furthermore, these infrequent and weak attempts at balancing American hegemony are far outnumbered by the countless times the United States has been expect to act to counter genocide, tyranny, the effects of natural disasters and just about every other kind of human suffering in one corner of the globe or another.

What possible explanation is there for this reality other than that, while the world might not always agree with the United States, and may sometimes strongly disagree with it, nevertheless sees the alternative(s) to American hegemony, and have no care for them even less.

A Conservative by Any Other Name...

2007-08-22T19:55:00.000-04:00

Remember this moment; this is when many on the left, especially the nutroots, reached the sad realization that many of the "Democrats" elected to Congress last year aren't really Democrats at all. Exhibit one: Pennsylvania Congressman Chris Carney, a Lieutenant Commander in the Navy Reserve and a former Pentagon adviser, announced this weekend that he would back Chuck Hagel for president and criticized Hillary Clinton. The nutroots are not happy; one blog calls Carney "A Democrat gone bad, really bad" and asks whether he is worse than Joe Lieberman.

The blogger points out what Republicans were saying about the freshman congressmen since the 2006 election: "On substantive matters Hagel and Carney have very similar voting records: extreme right." He quotes a news story with Carney's reaction to the nutroots:

The group's Blue America PAC that raised $545,000 for progressive candidates wants Carney to refund $8,210 raised for him.

Carney denied misleading the group and said it was naïve on their part to think he would vote 100 percent in sync with their views.

Let's be clear. Many of the Congressional candidates who won in 2006 as Democrats entered the race as Democrats for one reason: Iraq. Once in, some lifelong Republicans (like Jim Webb) also picked up on some economic populism issues that they may have believed strongly in, but which alone would never have convinced them to switch parties. (Once in though, they weren't really elected because of Iraq, which only came in fourth in the exit polls as the issue most influencing public votes, behind corruption, terrorism and economic issues and only one point ahead of moral values. So when these candidates entered the race as Democrats based on their opposition to the war, they were swept to power based on opposition to Republicans on a range of issues, from corruption to spending to Iraq.) They weren't Democrats, and that the nutroots actually believed they were was always somewhat amusing. Now the honeymoon is over, and they realized they don't have much in common - divorce is imminent.

Part of the brilliance of Rahm Emmanuel, Chuck Schumer and Howard Dean's 2006 victory was supposedly that Democrats wanted someone who could win, and didn't make them pass a litmus test. The nutroots signed on to this strategy with enthusiasm, as Jim Webb was one of the most fortunate recipients of the nutroots' love. Suddenly, as Democrats begin admitting that the surge is making progress and other Democrats start endorsing conservative Republicans for president (and let's be honest, Hagel is a conservative, no matter how much we may disagree with his foreign policy and positions on Iraq), the idea of a litmus test is suddenly looking good to the nutroots.

The Best Defense....

2007-08-22T12:00:00.001-04:00

Jonathan Chait has a brilliantly disingenuous piece in The New Republic today, the sole purpose of which is to criticize those who criticized TNR for publishing made-up stories by Scott Beauchamp about the soldiers in Iraq. Making the decision that the best defense is offense, Chait begins attacking Bill Kristol and the Weekly Standard, arguing that their criticism of TNR's decision to publish Beauchamp's stories are indicative of the descent of neoconservatism from "idealism and liberalism" to a "noxious residue of bullying militarism." It starts out thusly:

The topic was The New Republic's decision to publish an essay by Scott Beauchamp, an American soldier serving in Iraq, detailing some repugnant acts he said he and his comrades committed. Legitimate questions have been raised about this essay's veracity. (We've been publishing updates on our continuing efforts to get answers to them at tnr.com.) But Kristol rushed past these questions, immediately declaring the piece a "fiction."

Let's be honest - they're more than just "legitimate questions." At least a third of his story has proven to be entirely false - the incident with the disfigured woman occurred - if at all - in Kuwait, before he was even in Iraq. What's more, TNR has been far from forthcoming on their investigation - blaming everyone from the military to conservative bloggers for impeding their own, in-house investigation. In fact, and I admit to not having read everything everyone at TNR has said about this scandal, but Chait's line here is the first I've seen from someone at TNR admitting that the questions have any legitimacy at all. When he admitted that the incident with the disfigured woman occurred in Kuwait and not Iraq, editor Frank Foer simply left it at that, as if all it was was a discrepancy in location - no mention of that fact that this revelation cast doubt on Beauchamp's entire argument.

Chait then levels a number of charges at Kristol to back up this accusation. First, Kristol's response to the Beauchamp scandal "provides a full summary of the decrepit intellectual state of neoconservatism."

First, there is Kristol's curious premise that TNR only published this essay because we have "turned against" the war. If Beauchamp's writings were TNR's attempt to discredit the war, why would his first contribution describe a pro-American Iraqi boy savagely mutilated by insurgents? For that matter, why would we work to undermine the war by publishing a first-person account on the magazine's back page rather than taking the more straightforward step of, say, editorializing for withdrawal?

The notion that TNR published a Diarist merely for the edification of readers, rather than to advance a political agenda, did not occur to Kristol, because he could not imagine doing any such thing himself. He once explained his belief in the philosopher Leo Strauss to journalist Nina Easton thusly: "One of the main teachings is that all politics are limited and none of them is really based on the truth." Whether or to what degree Beauchamp's Diarist is true could not matter less to him.

TNR has Beauchamp's previous stories behind a subscriber firewall, so I can't read the entire story about the Iraqi boy. I would need to know more about the story in order to know what position on the war, if any, the story put forth, but writing about a boy mutilated by terrorists does not a pro-war story make. If we were to assume recognizing the savagery of terrorists equaled support for the war, there would be (almost) no one opposing the war in Iraq. But let's say it was a resolutely pro-war story - a number of questions have been raised by the Weekly Standard, among others, about that story as well. You would think that would mean the Weekly Standard cared more about being accurate than supporting its position on the war. Not according to Chait.

Two years ago, my colleague Lawrence Kaplan--who once co-authored, with Kristol, a book arguing for the war--wrote a poignant cover story describing how the dream of creating a liberal Arab state had died. Kristol, naturally, denounced his inconvenient observation. "The fact remains that it is today more possible than ever before to envision a future in which the Middle East and the Muslim world truly are transformed," he insisted. "For this, no one will deserve more credit than George W. Bush." Of course, this was an opinion, not a "fact." But the failure to distinguish between fact and opinion is typical of his mentality.

Good grief. I guess this is supposed to illustrate how Kristol and the Weekly Standard get fact and opinion muddled and wouldn't care so much if a pro-war story turned out to be fabricated. To back this claim, Chait takes a Kristol quote where he utilizes a figure of speech to make it look like he didn't know the difference between his own opinions and fact. "The fact remains..." is used all the time with opinion statements. And this is Chait's damning evidence of Kristol's alleged distaste for facts?

Of course, I can't tell you the context of this quote. Did Kristol "denounce" Kaplan? Or, as this quote suggests, did he simply disagree with him? The Kristol quote does not appear anywhere else on the internet besides this story from Chait. Was it in a Weekly Standard article that has been taken down? Was it on Fox News or some other program? You'd still think there'd be a transcript. Or was it in private discussion with Chait or another individual who then relayed it to Chait?

Next, there is Kristol's assumption that to concede that troops do terrible things in a war is to denounce the war as a whole. Of course, George Orwell, among many others, has written about the ways that the experience of war--and, especially, foreign occupation-- can blunt moral sensibilities. It should be possible to believe this and still believe in the overall justness of a war. (Certainly Orwell himself was no pacifist.) There is an old leftist belief that, if soldiers have done horrifying things, then the war is evil. This turns out to be the Standard's view as well.

Interesting. Let's go to the tape:

Liberals may want to win a war on terror without fighting, and are shocked that in a war, crimes and abuses occur. But here's the hard, Trumanesque truth: In war, terrible things happen, including crimes and abuses and cover-ups.

Let's be clear: Crimes and cover-ups cannot be excused or tolerated. They must be investigated, and the individuals involved, and their commanders, must be held accountable and punished. As the Marine Corps commandant points out, the Marine Hymn pledges that we "keep our honor clean." This is happening. All nations' soldiers commit crimes, and decent nations punish them.

-- William Kristol, The Weekly Standard, 12 June 2006

In the battle for Muslim hearts and minds--which many on the left and right believe is the only solution to Islamic terrorism aimed at the United States--things have just gone to hell thanks to a perverse, kinky group of American soldiers and their military-intelligence overlords who seem to have mixed the U.S. armed forces' manuals on interrogation with S&M techniques.

-- Reuel Marc Gerecht, The Weekly Standard, 24 May 2004

THE IMAGES OF MISTREATMENT and outright sadism that emerged from the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq last year shocked America and the world. The cruel acts illustrated by the photos reflected poorly upon the U.S. military: How, many wondered, could America win support for the war on terrorism--a war that is as much about ideas as it is military objectives--if its soldiers treated the enemy in such a way?

[...] But as "The Torture Question" makes clear, something has been flawed about America's policy toward enemy combatants and interrogations. It's a practice in search of a clear policy to guide it.

-- Christian Lowe, The Weekly Standard, 18 October 2005

Congressman Hunter has wise advice on what we should do as the true story of Haditha unfolds. "We should slow down and let the military justice system work and let the chips fall where they may," he says. "The military system has integrity." Hundreds of Marines and Army soldiers have been punished, many severely, for abusing Iraqis. Eight Marines were charged last week with murdering an Iraqi man.

-- Fred Barnes, The Weekly Standard, 3 July 2006

I think you get the idea. Neither Kristol nor any of his colleagues at The Weekly Standard think that admitting that abuses happen in war mean that you think the war is lost. It's more that they don't think reputable magazines should be publishing false stories of the morally deadening effects of war in order to get the readers to call into question the war itself. Crazy for them to think that! Back to Chait's article:

Then there is Kristol's accusation that critics of the war don't "support the troops." I wonder if, back in his youthful days teaching political philosophy, Kristol ever imagined he would one day find himself mouthing knucklehead slogans like this. I shouldn't need to say this, but apparently I do: I strongly support and respect the troops and would desperately like them to succeed. My respect, unlike Kristol's, extends to soldiers who don't share my politics, and isn't contingent on the fantasy that all of them are saints.

Actually, fully two years after TNR's then-editor Peter Beinart, published an editorial for the magazine regretting its support for the war, claiming that "our strategic rationale for war has collapsed," Kristol made perfectly clear what he thought of Beinart. Putting him in the "pro-American left" camp, Kristol pointed out that Beinart supports "the war against the jihadists." Kristol also distinguished Beinart and the pro-American left from the anti-American left by noting that their decline in support for the war was the result mre of sorrow than anger over incidents like Haditha and Abu Ghraib. I'm not saying Chait falls into one or the other of these categories, but as a general concept, his past words show Kristol does not equate supporting the war in Iraq with supporting the troops - instead, he's able to distinguish between those who do actually support the troops, like Beinart, and those who simply claim to.

The most incredible part of Kristol's diatribe is his accusation that critics of the war really believe that the war is going well: "They sense that history is progressing away from them--that these soldiers, fighting courageously in a just cause, could still win the war." Now, perhaps Kristol truly believes that there is good news in Iraq hidden beneath the surface, but can he possibly believe that this good news is so obvious that even liberals believe it? And that liberals, including liberals who initially supported the war, are now trying to undermine it even though--nay, because--we believe the United States is winning?

So there are no liberals who are so opposed to the war that they're unwilling to accept when progress is made? How about Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC), who claimed that, were Gen. Petraeus to come before Congress in September and argue that the surge was suceeding, it would be a "real big problem" for Democrats? One would think success in Iraq would be a good thing for all Americans. Or how about Hillary claiming in a VFW speech that new tactics in Iraq were working, only to have her campaign later clarify that she only meant the new tactics in al-Anbar, not elsewhere in Iraq? Or how about Harry Reid's jubilant prediction that Democrats would pick up Senate seats as a result of the war? Obviously not all opponents of the war/surge are beign disingenuous and looking only at the political effects of the war - but I think one can accurately say many politicians are.

The reality is, if there are supporters of the war who, at times, have stubbornly refused to see the realities of the situation in Iraq, there have also been opponents of the war who have stubbornly refused to see the changing realities of the war. Interestingly, those who initially supported the war, and now oppose it, often fit in the latter category. I think here of Andrew Sullivan, who continues to deny any and all successes Gen. Petraeus or the surge might have had (usually in posts that come shortly after promising to "consider" the potential success, in an attempt to sound reasonable). His low point came when he attacked Gen. Petraeus for appearing on Hugh Hewitt's radio talk show, then claimed he did no such thing. (He then failed to point out that Petraeus went on to appear on Alan Colmes' radio talk show.) Others who have turned against the war include Rod Dreher (who questions whether we can trust Petraeus and wants troops out now, even if genocide is the result) and Dan Drezner (who is so mad about Iraq that he refuses to acknowledge - for fear of getting trapped into supporting action against Iran - repeated attacks on American soldiers by Iran or Iran-backed terrorists. Instead he cites a report based on a walkabout through a single Afghan town near the border with Iran as proof that Bush is stirring up trouble where there is none to be found).

My point is that it is easy to fall into these traps whereby you have so much staked on a position on a single issue that it no longer matters what the reality is. This was the case for many supporters of the war, although, ironically, the Weekly Standard was not one of them - as Chait points out in an earlier article, neoconservatives (Kristol especially) were early critics of the way the administration was handling the war. What's more - among reasonable commentators - it has often been the converts to the anti-war position who have been most strident in refusing to budge. Perhaps its a "we won't get fooled again" mentality, I don't really know. But like Sullivan, Dreher and Drezner, TNR fits into this category. I don't particularly think they are anti-military - the other three cited above aren't - bud I do think they became so invested in their new position on Iraq that, whether they realized it or not, Beauchamp's fiction just seemed to fit their mold of the Iraq war and how soldiers act in that specific war - as if there is something intrinsic to the Iraq war that makes it more evil and corrupting than other wars. And so we got Scott Thomas, Baghdad Diarist, fabulist.

A Useful Reminder

2007-08-01T16:39:00.000-04:00

Over at The Plank, Jonathan Chait bemoans the sale of the Wall Street Journal to Rupert Murdoch. I don't want to be too critical of Chait and The Plank since they're having one of their better days, but I thought I'd address this part of his lament:

If you want to learn about business lobbying or the details of a tax bill, there's no better source. The commitment of the Journal's newswriters to fair political reporting routinely infuriates the rabid partisans of the editorial page.

Here's a useful reminder, from a 2004 study by researchers at UCLA and University of Missouri (emphasis mine):

One surprise is the Wall Street Journal, which we find as the most liberal of all 20 news outlets. We should first remind readers that this estimate (as well as all other newspaper estimates) refers only to the news of the Wall Street Journal; we omitted all data that came from its editorial page. If we included data from the editorial page, surely it would appear more conservative.

Second, some anecdotal evidence agrees with our result. For instance, Reed Irvine and Cliff Kincaid (2001) note that “The Journal has had a long-standing separation between its conservative editorial pages and its liberal news pages.” Paul Sperry, in an article titled the “Myth of the Conservative Wall Street Journal,” notes that the news division of the Journal sometimes calls the editorial division “Nazis.” “Fact is,” Sperry writes, “the Journal’s news and editorial departments are as politically polarized as North and South Korea.”
Third, a recent poll from the Pew Research Center indicates that a greater percentage of Democrats, 29%, say they trust the Journal than do Republicans, 23%. Importantly, the question did not say “the news division at the Wall Street Journal.” If it had, Democrats surely would have said they trusted the Journal even more, and Republicans even less.
Finally, and perhaps most important, a scholarly study—by Lott and Hasset (2004)—gives evidence that is consistent with our result. As far as we are aware this is the only other study that examines the political bias of the news pages of the Wall Street Journal. Of the ten major newspapers that it examines, the study estimates the Wall Street Journal as the second-most liberal. Only Newsday is more liberal, and the Journal is substantially more liberal than the New York Times, Washington Post, L.A. Times, and USA Today.

Just something to keep in mind. Despite Chait's best attempts to make it seem that way, the Journal's news staff is hardly the centrist, independent, non-ideological newsmen trying to keep the folks at the editorial page in line. No question the editorial page leans conservative, but let's get the rest of the story as well.

Realism and Idealism in the Middle East

2007-07-26T21:19:00.001-04:00

On Friday I wrote about Michael Oren's new book Power, Faith and Fantasy: America in the Middle East 1776-Present with respect to the role played by idealism and realism in US policy toward the Middle East. I wrote at the time, when I was about halfway through the book,

[Oren] hasn't said it yet - maybe he's saving it for his conclusion - but one thing I've noticed is interesting. When power - or the threat of power - was used appropriately in pursuit of both idealist and realist goals, the outcome was generally favorable.

[...] When power was used - or not used - strictly for narrow economic or political interests, the result did not fare so well.

Now that I've finished the book (and highly recommend it), I can say that that was essentially his argument, but with one clarification.

By responsibly wielding its strength and consistently upholding its principles, the United States might yet transform its vision of peaceful, fruitful relations with the Middle East from fantasy into reality.

That is, US policy toward the Middle East cannot be based solely on a cold, detached realpolitik, but must also include recognition of American "idealist" values. At the same time, however, power and focus on strategic interests is a necessary component, otherwise American policy becomes aimless and consists of seeking peace at all costs. Oren argues that this (mistaken) approach was followed by presidents like Kennedy, Carter and Clinton. Let me add now, that lest you think this is some partisan screed, Oren is equally as critical of Republican administrations and saves some of his harshest criticism for Nixon and Reagan, the latter of which he argues (and I would tend to agree) pursued the very realpolitik policies in the Middle East that he denounced in US policy toward the Soviet Union.

The greatest value of Oren's book is that it provides a full, detailed, comprehensive history of American dealings with the Middle East, from interactions at the government level all the way down to tourists and missionaries. For a region of which too much of our historical knowledge comes piecemeal from movies, fiction, and spotty and incomplete histories, this book is a great asset to American understanding of its past dealings with the Middle East, including what has worked and what hasn't. Historically, and particularly in the post-War period, the most coherent approaches to the region have combined the concepts of power and ideals, and some of the least coherent approaches have focused just on one or the other.

Truman recognized the imporance of combining American power and American ideals in pursuit of US interests, and generally enjoyed success when he did so. In 145, the French bombed Syria in order to put down a riot that broke out after France reneged on its promise to withdraw from Syria. Four hundred people were killed as a result. Truman sent a cable to de Gaulle warning of serious consequences from the Americans or British if he didn't withdraw his troops back to barracks, and de Gaulle readily complied. Another example, a perfect example in fact, was the Truman Doctrine, pledging financial aid for Greece and Turkey. The idea was to rebuild their economies to the point where democratic governments could take hold and serve as bulwarks against Soviet expansionism. This would later serve as the model for the Marshall Plan.

Despite his frequent recognition of the importance of American ideals in foreign policy, this wasn't always the case with Truman. Where he did solely pursue strategic interests with no inclusion of American values, he experienced some of his greatest foreign policy blunders and headaches. The best example came as a result of riots that had broken out in Egypt. Truman feared the Soviets would take advantage of the chaos and attempt to gain a political foothold in Egypt.

As a result, Truman told Kermit Roosevelt, the CIA officer and grandson of Theodore Roosevelt, to "identify an Egyptian nationalist figure, 'a Moslen Billy Graham,' who could restore order in the country and enroll it in a NATO-like Middle East Defense Organization." The nationalist figure Roosevelt found turned out to be Gamal Abdel Nasser, who would cause headaches for the US in the Middle East for years to come. In addition to focusing on a figure solely to restore order, Truman's biggest mistake was forgetting what it was that made NATO (and still makes it) so successful: the common ideals held by each of its members. This was also what the Middle East lacked, making any Middle Eastern NATO doomed from the beginning.

Truman's installation of Nasser in power in Egypt proved to cause trouble for Eisenhower as well. After Nasser nationalized the Suex Canal, France, Britain and Israel coordinated an attack on Egypt. Rather than support its traditional allies of France and Britain (we didn't really become close with Israel until after 1967), the US strongly opposed the attack, and backed Nasser, humiliating France and Britain. Nasser didn't return the favor. Soon after, he started to turn strongly against the US, denouncing it as the new imperialist power in the Middle East. It turns out, the administration had started to consider overthrowing Nasser even before the Suez crisis, but based mostly on a cold calculation of strategic interests, decided keeping Britain and France from gaining an advantage in the Suez was most important.

Where "ideals" did play a role in this decision-making, that the US should side with an independent Egypt rather than colonial Britain and France, it was a misconception of what American ideals consisted of, one that would be repeated many times in dealings with the Middle East. This misconception was that independence for former colonies was so important, that it didn't really matter who took control, so long as he was a native of the country. I'll touch more on this later, but while independence is indeed an American ideal, independence followed by dictatorship is not. I would argue that an independent dictatorship ruled by the whim of a tyrant is the worst possible outcome - worse even than being a colony of a constitutional democracy or monarchy. Nevertheless, it was unofficial American policy at least as far back as the Wilson administration.

Oren argues that Kennedy had the opposite problem: it was too idealistic, with little tendency to project power in the Middle East. Kennedy also had the romantic idea that an independent ruler of Middle Eastern countries was the same thing as a democratic ruler, that independence automatically meant democracy. Eager to repair relations with Nasser, who had turned on its original patron, the country that put him in power, Kennedy gushed effusively about how the founding of the United Arab Republic (the short-lived union between Egypt and Syria) came on George Washington's birthday, and how the Arab states were like a young American confederation, eager to form a union. Nasser responded by promoting the overthrow of a pro-American regime in Yemen. He also consistently violated cease-fire agreements the administration tried to broker between Israel and Egypt.

Oren has very little time for the Nixon/Kissinger policy toward the Middle East, arguing that it was one of the worst examples of pursuing strategic interests even at the cost of American ideals. The administration's policy toward Israel was especially awful. When Jordan tried to get the PLO out of its country, Syria threatened to back the PLO. Jordan turned to the US for help, but we declined, out of fear of drawing the Soviets into the conflict on the Syrian side. Instead, we turned to Israel to take military action to drive the PLO out of Jordan. Despite being asked to go to war based on the interests of the United States and an Arab state, with comparatively few of its own interests at stake, Israel nevertheless quickly agreed, even though war proved unnecessary in the end.

The response of the US to Israel was less than gracious. A year later, after the terrorist assassinations at Munich, the US failed to respond out of fear of Angering the Soviets during negotiations on Vietnam and nuclear stockpiles. When the Nixon administration tried to secure Egyptian-Israeli peace, it continually pushed for Israeli territorial concessions. Nasser, meanwhile, continued to break any cease-fire the parties were able to broker, in one case by moving Soviet-made missiles into the truce zone. When Israeli PM Golda Meir received intelligence that Egypt and other Arab states were planning an offensive in 1973, she thought about striking Egypt pre-emptively. Kissinger, however, talked her out of it, arguing that international opinion would be against Israel.

The war initially proved to be a disaster for Israel, but DoD warned against supplying Israel, because it would hurt the US war effort in Vietnam. Since it was known that the Soviets were supplying the Arab states, this argument seems pretty silly. What were we fighting for in Vietnam if not to contain the spread of Soviet political and military influence throughout the world - precisely what was happening in the Middle East. To not counte Soviet involvement in the war would betray the very reason we were fighting in Vietnam for in the first place. Oren sums up the dismal Middle East policy of the administration, arguing,

By concentrating almost exclusively on global strategic factors, the US failed to prevent a regional conflict and, by dallying on diplomatic efforts, may even have hastened its eruption...Could realism alone suffice to rectify this devastation and clear a path toward peace? The dispiriting answer was provided in Geneva.

Oren's analysis of the Ford administration, probably because of Kissinger's continued presence, was not much kinder than that of the Nixon administration. But let's focus on one particular incident. During a border dispute between Iran and Iraq, Kissinger urged th Iraqi Kurds to rebel against Iraqi rule. They did, but were quickly crushed by the Iraqi military. When the Kurds appealed to Kissinger for help, he ignored them, saying "Covert action should not be confused with missionary work." Seems to me a perfect way to lose allies and support.

Carter's policy toward the Middle East made many of the same mistakes as Kennedy's: failure to project force, rudderless idealism with no regard to strategic interests (except with the Carter Doctrine, which came far too late), willingness to assume independence from colonial rule was in itself an American "ideal," regardless of what type of regime took power and a willingness to assume dictators were the legitimate representatives of their people. In that case, Carter not only ignored power altogether, but it's idea of what the "faith" part consisted of was entirely misguided.

Like I said before, Oren reserves a great deal of criticism for Reagan, but that doesn't mean he didn't have a great deal of respect for Reagan. In essense, Oren argues, his policies toward the Soviet Union were correct, but he failed to apply the same principles to his Middle East policy. Instead, he pursued the very course he rejected in his dealings with the Soviets. In fact, Reagan was almost given an impossible task having to deal both with the Soviet Union and the rise of terrorism and extremism in the Middle East. Oren argues that Reagan's policy of backing Arab secularists against Muslim extremists, and supporting Israel against Soviet proxies ultimately proved incompatible. His support for Israel came from its willingness to fight with the West against communism.

Nevertheless, "he regarded oil as America's paramount interest in the Middle East, and resisted any Israeli action liable to jeopardize it." This included supplying AWACS surveillance aircraft to the Saudis, despite knowing that thee Saudi regime funded anti-Western Wahabbist propaganda in order to bolster its own legitimacy. The administration also suspended a strategic cooperation agreement with Israel when Arab states protested its attempt to annex the Golan Heights. The US also failed to support the Israeli raid on the Osirak nuclear facility, and Reagan even sent Jeane Kirkpatrick to confer with the Iraqi ambassador to the UN, who was drafting a Security Council resolution condemning the raid.

The administration oversaw the withdrawal of the PLO from Beirut to Tunis, "only to boycott the organization thereafter and then, in the final volte-face, engaged in diplomatic dialogue with Arafat." Reagan also backed himself into a corner in his dealings with Arafat. When the first intifada broke out, Arafat was in Tunis and was just as surprised as the US. Furthermore, he found he had no control over the Palestinians. Needing to bolster his own position and "legitimacy," he "renounced terrorism" and agreed to recognize Israel. These had been the two conditions set upon Arafat for recognition by the West, and when he met them, the US had no choice except to accept the PLO as the representative of the Palestinians and to open contacts with Arafat.

The notion that he represented Palestinians was, of course, silly since he had absolutely no control over the intifada, but Reagan made the same mistake as past presidents in failing to note the difference between an indigenous leader who claims to represent the people, and a legitimate, democratic government. By setting only these preconditions, the Reagan administration allowed Arafat a fait accompli. Of course, he soon proved how little trustworthy he was, when he refused to condemn an Abu Abbas attack on an Israeli beach, and the US broke off contacts once again.

Another perfect example of how Reagan's Middle East contradictory policies got so tangled up in one another is his policy toward Iran and Iraq. After the administration tried to deter state sponsors of terrorism (Iran's support for Hizbollah attacks and kidnappings) proved ineffective, it got word that "moderate elements" in the Iranian regime (sound familiar?) would obtain the release of the hostages in return for antitank missiles needed for its war against Iraq. The administration agreed, and began funneling arms through Israel. Naturally, when it came time for Iran to make good on its end of the deal, it refused to rein in Hizbollah and launched missile boat attacks against Kuwaiti oil tankers. The Reagan adminstration therefore began arming Iran and Iraq at the same time, undermining the rationale for supporting Baghdad as a bulwark against Muslim extremists in Iran.

Despite his approach in dealing with the Soviet Union, Reagan nevertheless pursued in the Middle East the very policies he had sworn off as failures in dealing with communism. He made many of the same mistakes as past presidents, both assuming indegenous dictatorships were what American "ideals" consisted of, so long as they were under self-rule. Unlike past presidents, Reagan knew in his dealings with the Soviets that these were indeed mistaken assumptions, which makes his application of them in the Middle East that much more puzzling and tragic. Oren summed up the Reagan policy toward the Middle East with the following:
"Reagan proved incapable of coping with the complexities of the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Iran-Iraq War and tensions between secular and Islamic regimes." He suggests that the American people simply did not realize this because their attention was on Europe and the beginning of the fall of Communism, as well as myths perpetuated by Hollywood of the Middle East as a mystical place and terrorists as more bumbling and comical than dangerous and tyrannical.

Oren gives Bush 41 higher marks on this issue, though his reaction is mixed. While the administration wasn't necessarily right from the start, it knew enough to change course rather than stick to a strict pursuit of material stategic interests, but then only to change back again. After Iraq began massing troops on the border with Kuwait, the US actually had two strategic interests at stake: Kuwaiti oil or Iraqi oil. As a result, it attempted to remain neutral on the issue. A 1990 National Security Directive states "Normal relations between the United States and Iraq...promote stability in both the Gulf and the Middle East." Oren argues, "The White House continued to value Iraq for exercising a crucial constraint on Iran, and even exerting a moderating influence on the Palestinians." This is all to explain the famous April Glaspie quote that the US had "no opinion on Arab-Arab conflicts" that probably gave Saddam the final incentive to cross into Kuwait.

Oren argues, however, "America in the past had tried to stay out of the Middle East disputes...only to be violently dragged into them, and the conflict in the Gulf was unexceptional." In the end, the Bush adminsitration recognized the right decision, but after the war, the strategic calculation framework fell quickly back into place. After encouraging the Shia and Kurds to rebel against Saddam, the Bush administration decided against going to Baghdad and ousting the regime, leaving the Shia and Kurds to get crushed by the Iraqi army, with unintentional help from the US. Colin Powell, meanwhile, spoke for the administration when he said that he "saw a chastened, but still militarily viable Iraq as an American asset" in countering Iran.

With the Clinton administration, Oren sees a lot of similarities with Kennedy and Carter. But Oren is actually somewhat sympathetic towards Clinton. Despite his continued willingness to negotiate with Arafat, despite the tyrant's inability to rein in terrorists, Oren argues that Clinton had no love for the dictator. When Arafat, after another failed round of negotiating at Camp David in 1999, told Clinton he was a great man, Clinton replied, "I am not a great man. I am a failure, and you have made me one." The Clinton administration's desire for peace not linked to any real strategic interests was best illustrated by the scene that took place in Paris at the US Embassy. After another failed round of negotiations, when Arafat was trying to make his getaway to avoid having to go through further discussions, Madeleine Albright chased him down the embassy driveway in her heels yelling for the Marine guards to "Close the gate! Close the gate!" Oren sums up Clinton's Middle East policy with the following:

In general, Clinton rfrained from resorting to force as a means of securing America's interests in the Middle East. There seemed little need.

[...] He had refrained whenever possible from projecting American military strength against Islamic extremists, but then discovered that the extremists were determined to bring the battle to the US

Once again, seeking peace for its own sake was not enough, and once again left American policy in the region rudderless.

Oren also argues that the American people share some of the blame for the misdirection in America's Middle East policy.

The American people should also have grasped the danger. Terrorist assaults, ending with the Cole and going back to hijackings and assassinations of the early 1970s, had become a reality of American life.

[...] Yet, confident in their military, Americans still had difficulty conceiving how a group of untrained men from Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Lebanon could penetrate their country and attack its most prominent city and capital.

[...] Reluctant to confront the danger at its sourcees, overconfident in its military, and still deluded by Middle Eastern myths, Americans were ill prepared for the ultimate jihadist aggression.

Oren speculates some, "influenced by the theories of [Edward] Said and [Noam] Chomsky, believed that Arabs and Iranians had far more to fear from Americans than vice versa." He also places some of the blame on the "fantasy" aspect of his title, arguing that movies and fiction gave a romanticized notion of the Middle East, to the extent that "Many...might have wondered why the inhabitants of so mystical a land, flying airliners rather than carpets, would strike at the United States, a nation that had never harmed them."

There seem to me to be two additional lessons to learn from Oren's history, that he doesn't get into, beyond the appropriate balance between power and ideals. The first, which I've already touched on, is that many of the headaches America experienced in the region came not from a failure to apply "ideals" to foreign policy, but a mistaken notion of what those ideals were. This goes back at least as far as Wilson, who argued for self determination and an end to colonialism, but failed to take into account the nature of the regimes that would replace the colonial administration. As I've mentioned, independence is a necessary ideal, but not sufficient on its own. It must also be accompanied by some sort of legitimate rule whereby the needs and desires of the people are appropriately addressed by the government. From Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy in Egypt, through to Carter throughout the Middle East, Reagan in the Palestinian Territories and Bush 41 in Kuwait after the Gulf War, American policy has addressed "ideals," but has done so incorrectly. As a result, the outcome is often worse, both for the people of the country and for US strategic interests, than what came before.

The second lesson one could draw from Oren's history is that when American policymakers have pursued strategic interests with little regard to American values, they mistakenly assumed that the dictators had the same interests as the United States, and that they would act in good faith. Time and again this proved to be false, as Nasser turned against the US after we had sided with him against our traditional allies; as continued attempts to negotiate with Arafat proved fruitless as he continued to support terrorism, whether covertly or overtly; as Iran failed to uphold its end of the bargain it reached with the Reagan administration to secure the release of American hostages in Lebanon; and as Saudi Arabia continued to fund anti-Western Wahabbist propaganda that would eventually inspire terrorist attacks that killed thousands of Americans.

Whenever we trusted dictators and tyrants enough to try to deal with them, they usually left us disappointed. They received a great number of benefits from American backing, including international legitimacy and material concessions from the US, but had no concept of good faith and therefore left us worse off then we were initially. This, obviously, should give caution to those who say, were we to negotiate formally with Iran or Syria, that the worst that can happen is that nothing comes of the talks and we prove their intransigence. History has shown that these talks can actually be a negative for the United States, giving up much even if nothing is agreed upon, and getting nothing in return.

Oren does not have much to say about the Bush 43 administration, mostly because the verdict is still out. He is quite critical of the way in which the war was carried out, but he does make this claim, which will prove to be as controversial as it probably is true.

More than any other post-war President, Bush mapped the course of America's meandering relations with the Middle East.

He was the sum of many of America's diverse experiences in the region, a warrior-diplomat...and a warrior evangelist...In the manner of Jefferson and Theodore Roosevelt, Bush expressed few qualms about projecting force...Yet in the fashion of Theodore's fifth cousin, Franklin, Bush was deeply appreciative of the value of oil and reluctant to alienate its suppliers, especially in Saudi Arabia. He shared Andrew Jackson's solicitude for American trade with the Middle East...

[...] Bush gravitated towards the...popular and politically influential evangelical churches. This made him the spiritual heir and not merely the genetic descendant of Professor George Bush who in the 1840s advocated the creation of a Jewish state, and of the colonial theologians who warned of the dangers of militant Islam...Along with this religious zeal, however, the president also espoused the secular fervor of the neoconservatives...who preached the Middle East's redemption through democracy. The merging of sacred and civic missions in Bush's mind placed him firmly in the Wilsonian tradition. But the same faith that deflected Wilson from entering hostilities in the Middle East spurred Bush to decide in favor of war.

Oren is not wearing blinders with regards to Iraq. He knows everything that has gone wrong, and he details the mishandling of the aftermath of the war. He also knows the failings in US policy towards the Middle East in a broader, historical sense. But, as he puts it:

The history of the US-Middle East relations, I reminded myself, was not one of unqualified kindness and altruism. American oil companies pumped billions of barrels of Arabian oil not for the betterment of the indigenous population but for their own enrichment. Successive administrations had backed the oppressive regimes that advanced America's interests and conspired to overthrow popular leaders. Yet for all its demerits, the record of American interaction with the Middle East is rife with acts of decency and graced with good intentions. The United States was unrivaled in introducing modern education and health care to the area, in extending emerrgency relief and building infrastructure, in obtaining freedom of colonized nations, and in attempting to achieve security and peace. On balance, Americans historically brought far more beneficence than avarice to the Middle East and caused significantly less harm than good.

He is optimistic about the US's venture in the region, so long as it is accomplished by "prudent demonstrations of America's powerand firm, but tolerant applications of its faith (meaning democracy, not Christianity --ed.)

To Talk Or Not To Talk

2007-07-25T08:53:00.001-04:00

I hate to beat up on Andrew Sullivan around these parts, but sometimes it really is too easy. Yesterday he posted a video of a public hanging in Iran, rightly noting the barbarity.

A young woman is hanged, as a mob shouts "God is great!" The method of hanging is not by knocking someone off a gallows. It's an excruciating, slow ascent. The woman struggles for a long time.

After coming real close to drawing a moral equivalence between the Bush administration and the Iranian regime, he finishes with an observation about "this barbaric justice."

This is part of a regime we are trying to negotiate with.

Perhaps I'm wrong, but this seems like me to be disbelief, and to be a tacit acknowledgment that there is no arguing in good faith with a regime that acts like this. But it's hard to tell, because Andrew has been all over the map in the past over what to do with Iran.

24 May 2005:

We are fighting a global war with the manpower for a minor spat. Technology can only do so much. And when you further consider that, in order to win, we need to deal with Syria and Iran at the very least, you can see the scale of our problem.

03 March 2006 (Speaking of a development in Iraq that "merit[ed] cautious optimism"):

Scott McClellan has confirmed that Zalmay Khalilzad has been authorized to negotiate with Iran solely on the issue of Iraq...And so, as I put it the other day, "sometimes the darkest days are inevitable - even necessary - before the sky ultimately clears."

06 September 2006:

Fighting does not merely mean brute military force. It can mean more skillful global diplomacy with other great powers to isolate Iran's regime, better counter-insurgency tactics in Iraq and Afghanistan, covert military action, expanded intelligence, as well as subtle but real support for the people of Iran.

07 September 2006 (in response to a reader who said we need to talk to Iran):

Practically speaking, I'd pour many more troops into Iraq, especially Baghdad, ratchet up the diplomatic isolation of Iran, encourage the domestic unrest in that country, and wait till we have a functioning executive branch in Washington.

How do you isolate someone while at the same time negotiate with them?

22 October 2006:

At some point, Washington may have to talk to Iran and Syria - or face meltdown.

09 November 2006 (In response to Bush 41 advisers Gates and Baker):

Daddy's back to clean up the mess. Between Gates and Baker, we may have to talk to Iran. What other options are there?

07 December 2006 (This one's a little convoluted. Get ready to be confused):

Many neoconservatives argue that Iran has precisely the opposite intention, and so we have no leverage; and even if we did, Ahmadinejad is not someone any rational actor can negotiate with. I don't want to go all Baker-Hamilton on you, but both sides may have captured parts of the truth. Let's assume the neocons are right (and I think they are) about the nature of the Tehran regime.

Did you get that? Neocons argue the regime is so bad that you can't negotiate them. Put simply, Ahmadinejad is an irrational actor and another rational actor simply cannot deal with him. Andrew agrees with that assessment. You would infer from this that he too would find it difficult to negotiate with an irrational actor. But you'd be wrong. From the same post:

And why not talk to the regimes in Syria and Iran? If they are what the Bush administration says they are, the diplomacy will go nowhere, and we can then be seen to have at least tried.

This assumption that diplomacy is either advantageous or neutral is rather common. There is a third possible outcome. We've seen in the past how negotiating with dictators who are acting in bad faith (and, as Andrew agrees, are not rational actors) can actually be a net negative for us, whether it increases a state's prestige in parts of the international community or encourages dictators to pursue their own agenda, knowing we're going to talk to them no matter what they do.

29 May 2007 (Responding to an argument from Juan Cole for engagement with Iran):

I'm still a skeptic, but see few other good options right now...

His latest comment seems to suggest that little will come as a result of negotiating with such a barbaric regime, but it's hard to tell.

The Politics of Cynicism

2007-07-24T16:53:00.002-04:00

Putting aside Obama's unhesitating willingness to meet with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Cuba, Venezuela and North Korea (no word yet on whether Robert Mugabe and Omar al-Bashir feel left out) without expecting a thing in return from those leaders, let's turn to this comment from Obama in the YouTube debate

COOPER: Senator Obama, how do you address those who say you're not authentically black enough?
(LAUGHTER)
OBAMA: Well...
COOPER: Not my question; Jordan's question.
OBAMA: You know, when I'm catching a cab in Manhattan -- in the past, I think I've given my credentials.

So Obama couldn't get a cab because the New York City taxi drivers are racist? According to this website, 95% of New York City cab drivers are immigrants, and 70% of all drivers are South Asian. Are the Pakistani cabbies racist? I don't know what he means by "in the past" but I get the feeling that even when he's not running for president Obama usually dresses pretty well. So the cab driver would rather forgo a fare from a well dressed man, with the possibility of a good tip, because that man is black?

It doesn't really matter though, because it was just Obama pandering to the Al Sharpton race-hustler crowd, who claim he's not black enough. So he had to prove his bona fides, by giving an instance of where he was the victim of racism. But then he continues:

But I do believe in the core decency of the American people, and I think they want to get beyond some of our racial divisions.

Here, he's talking to everyone else in the country. Even though he just disparaged all hard-working New York City cabbies as racist, he's sure we're good people and want to get beyond race. The seems to me to be rather, well, cynical.

If Obama were smart, his example of when he was the victim of racism (and I don't doubt that he has been) for him to pull out in later debates to pander to Sharpton and his ilk would be a time when he was targeted by one person, not an entire group that consists of 40,000 people.

Am I Ernesto Cardenal?

2007-07-20T08:54:00.000-04:00

Daniel Larison responds to my post on the relationship between God and freedom with an argument I wasn't expecting.

This liberation theology, not unlike Marxist liberation theology before it, is a perfect example of how Christians twist and distort the Faith to suit the supposed political needs of the moment.

This is interesting, because as a conservative and as a conservative Catholic, I've never had to defend myself against such charges before. So, sure, I guess insofar as we were discussing liberty from a perspective of religion, then yes, I guess you can call it "liberation theology" if you insist. But no, I don't see the connection between this argument and Marxist liberation theology. Let's go to the source of the Church's problem with Marxist liberation theology, Benedict XVI writing as Cardinal Ratzinger.

Nothing lies outside political commitment. Everything has a political color.

[...] An attempt is being made to recast the whole Christian reality in the categories of politico-social liberation praxis.

I'm making no attempt to "recast the whole Christian reality" or even part of the Christian reality. The salvation we receive because Christ died for us and rose from the dead is not contingent on joining some sort of worldwide crusade for democracy. I am not claiming that the "Christian reality" can only be seen through temporal political activism. I am pointing out that the teachings of the Catholic Church argues for political freedom, not that you're going to hell if you don't take up arms to create democracies everywhere you find injustice.

The view arose that the existing theological tradition was no longer adequate...

[...] [This] school...[cut] off the path to theology in its prior form and so encourag[ed] people all the more to produce new constructions.

Again, I don't see how this applies to me. I'm not reorienting the theological tradition Benedict speaks of in any way. I never even brought up theology.

The challenge evidently called for new answers which were not to be found in the existing tradition.

Again, I don't see how this applies to me. Benedict's illustrates his problem with Marixst liberation theology with the Sermon on the Mount. Liberation theology, he argues, takes an event in the Bible, such as the Sermon on the Mount where God sided with the poor, and chooses to interpret in according the "Marxist dialectic of history," arguing that God favored class struggle. Any attempt to disagree, furthermore, was a sign that you were part of the oppressor class, determined to hold on to power. Nevermind that this was all contrary to Church teaching and tradition, but it was the way they interpreted the Bible - and you had to agree.

Fortunately for me, the Church already has a position on the issue of temporal authority - and I happen to agree with it. Larison actually concedes this point when he turns the debate to which type of regime would best provide for a "society and government...well-ordered according to prudence, justice, charity, moderation."

To the extent that a liberal democratic government can realise these virtues or allows people to realise them, we can say that it does not stand in opposition to what God wills. It might even be argued (though I would not necessarily argue this) that this is the regime best suited for cultivating such virtues.

[...] Those who gave it much thought routinely came down, of course, in favour of monarchy...

Well, ok. But this isn't really what Bush and I are arguing. Bush has not argued that democracy, per se, is "God's gift to mankind," but that freedom is. I agree that there could be a distinction here. If freedom and liberty were still able to thrive in a monarchy, perhaps Larison would have a point. But in the last century, events have shown time and again that monarchy isn't up to the task, and that a democratic form of government is now the best suited to govern accordingly. That may not always be the case, but it is for now.

Larison also mentions a couple times that even today, Catholics are obligated to respect "legitimate authority," regardless of regime type. I also agree with this - particularly since he always qualifies authority with the word "legitimate." This is, indeed, also Church teaching.

The diversity of political regimes is morally acceptable, provided they serve the legitimate good of the communities that adopt them

But a regime is only legitimate if it serves the common good.

Regimes whose nature is contrary to the natural law, to the public order, and to the fundamental rights of persons cannot achieve the common good of the nations on which they have been imposed.

Further, the Catechism lays out what constitutes a legitimate regime.

Authority does not derive its moral legitimacy from itself. It must not behave in a despotic manner, but must act for the common good as a "moral force based on freedom and a sense of responsibility"

[...]Authority is exercised legitimately only when it seeks the common good of the group concerned and if it employs morally licit means to attain it. If rulers were to enact unjust laws or take measures contrary to the moral order, such arrangements would not be binding in conscience. In such a case, "authority breaks down completely and results in shameful abuse."

I'm hard pressed to think of a country today that this applies to that isn't a democracy.

Nevertheless, it is Larison's last two sentences that makes me realize we'll probably never agree on this issue.

Against the sweep of that tradition, the liberation theologians have on their side the Declaration of Independence and the occasional passage from Algernon Sydney. How could it be that I remain convinced that liberation theology is bunk?

If having the Declaration of Independence on my side makes me a liberation theologian, I'm ok with that.

Is Realism Realistic?

2007-07-19T23:41:00.000-04:00

Jonah and Andrew Stuttaford are having a fascinating debate (Andrew pt 1, pt 2; Jonah pt 1, pt 2) over at The Corner on the topic of the idealism and the national interest. Andrew argues that the national interest, narrowly defined, is all a government is obligated to pursue - and all they should pursue. Jonah is having none of it.

Realists work on the assumption that government follow their national interests which they then define in incredibly narrow terms of power, security and money. In effect, realists are a breed of utopian because they expect governments to be purer than the people they represent.
Second, I think it is impossible identify clear and bright lines between what is morally right and what is right simply in terms of national interest. Cost benefit analysis is unreliable when dealing with the question of, say, whether we should honor a commitment to an imperiled ally or persecuted minority. We dishonorably abandoned the Kurds and Shiites during the first Gulf War in the name of realpolitick and we paid a price in terms of realpolitick later.

It's not really a surprise that I'm on Jonah's side in this one. The biggest problem with realism, narrowly defined to mean increasing power - latent and actual - is that it has often focused almost entirely on the near term. Little attention was paid to long term consequences. I'm currently finishing up Power, Faith and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present by Michael Oren - an incredibly interesting study that, among other things, examines what has driven American policy towards the Middle East. Oren shows how the quest for power and America's "faith" - that is, both religion and the more secular American values of freedom and liberty, have often come into conflict with one another in influencing American policy (and European policy, when he focuses on that as well).

He hasn't said it yet - maybe he's saving it for his conclusion - but one thing I've noticed is interesting. When power - or the threat of power - was used appropriately in pursuit of both idealist and realist goals, the outcome was generally favorable. A few examples include freeing the Americans held captive by the states of Barbary or intervening in Egypt to put down riots in which hundreds of Jews were killed - and then setting up clinics and shelters for anyone who needed them. In the latter case, the United States earned goodwill from both the British and French (for putting down the riots) and the Egyptian people (for the clinics and shelters) - and at no time before intervening could the United States have known the the results would turn out the way they did. A strict reading of the national interest would have cautioned against flexing too much military muscle in what the British determined "their" territory, especially at a time when Anglo-American relations were not at their best.

When power was used - or not used - strictly for narrow economic or political interests, the result did not fare so well. The first example was the Armenian genocide. Despite being urged by nearly all sides - including a bipartisan Congress - to intervene, Wilson refused. He did this for two reasons. First, he did not want to put the Western missionaries in the Ottoman Empire in a position of being harmed or used for blackmail. Though most people pointed out that they could just leave for a while, and then return, he still refused. The second reason was his desire to avoid having the fight the Ottoman Empire. In the end, the US still wound up at war with Germany, but Wilson still tried to avoid declaring war on the Ottomans. The result, of course, was hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions dead. Another result was America's comparatively small role in determining the political future of the former Ottoman Empire after the war. Instead of Wilson's 14 Points, we got European mandates - and we know how successful that was.

Which brings me to my next example. Wilson is often maligned for his policy of democratization, but what is often overlooked is that very little of his Fourteen Points plan - or his larger plan for self-determination and democracy - was ever fully implemented - especially not in the Middle East. He argued, "the other nationalities which are now under Turkish rule should be assured an undoubted security of life and an absolutely unmolested opportunity of an autonomous development." Instead, because of a combination of Congressional opposition at home and European reluctance to lose vast territories as well as their land and sea trading routes and, in Britain's case, their route to India, we ended up with the the mandate, this vague system whereby enlightened rule by the Europeans was supposed to ready the various territories for democracy - which would come at some unstated date. I'm not automatically opposed to this concept for developing states - a debate for another time - but needless to say, there was room for improvement on the enlightenment front.

So we'll never know if Wilson's immensely idealistic plan - fully implemented - would have worked. There is plenty of reason for doubt. There are other problems I have with Wilson's policies, most imporant of which was his emphasis on seeing national groups ruled independent of colonial rule, regardless of whether or not the leaders of these new entities were actually democratic - which they usually weren't. Nevertheless, I don't think it would have been worse that the outcome of the European policies, which were based solely on narrowly construed economic and political interests.

A final example of where narrowly defined self interest, absent any hint of idealism, has led the United States into a predicament was the founding of Saudi Arabia and the discovery of vast quantities of oil. I hate to bring this up less I sound like economic interests like oil aren't of huge importance. Nor do I want to sound anything like Chalmers Johnson, but there is something to the idea of blowback. When Ibn Saud conquered the Arabian peninsula and established the state of Saudi Arabia, the United States refused to officially recognize the state for a time due to the nature of the new regime and the means by which it took power. But that quickly changed with the discovery of vast quantities of oil.

From that point onward, little attention was paid to the nature of the House of Saud, with a few exceptions. When Ibn Saud asked for $10 million in Lend Lease aid during WWII, Roosevelt rightly pointed out that the program was meant to advance democracy in its fight against tyranny, and given the nature or his rule in Saudi Arabia, Ibn Saud could get stuffed. For the most part however, all attention remained on the oil, and keeping it from the Germans during the war, and in times of peace, Britain and France. We see the result of these policies still today. Again, the vital importance of oil to our economy is not lost on me, but I think it also attests to the importance of American values in addition to strategic interest. Critics of democratization point out that elections in Saudi Arabia would almost guarantee Wahabbists in power and the creation of a virtual terrorist state. I'm not trying to draw a moral equivalence here with the terrorists, but surely we bear even the slightest bit of responsibility for the current state of affairs.

In closing, I should also mention that I think Jonah is right that "it is impossible identify clear and bright lines between what is morally right and what is right simply in terms of national interest." It may not be the national interest as realists define it, but its importance should not be ignored. If we avoid intervening - or even doing anything - in a genocide on the scale of Rwanda or Darfur, it's hard to convince people that American really actually cares about freedom or liberty or any of that "nonsense" - at least for non-Americans. That makes it all the more difficult to get the job done the next time we do have to intervene or engage in military action that realists approve of, because we've disillusioned so many people as to our intentions. Realists were critical of Bush not going to war with the UN, not because they had any love for the UN, but b/c it would have shared the burden, making it easier for the US (I find that debatable, but thats also for another time). Why they would want to make it more difficult on us to fight a war because they didn't want to fight in someplace like Kosovo or Rwanda is beyond me.

UPDATE: Andrew responds to Jonah here, and I think largely concedes Jonah's (and my own) point.

The Kurds and the Shia: You say that we abandoned the Kurds and the Shia in 1991 in the name of Realpolitik. Actually, no, we abandoned the Shia (we protected the Kurds, at least to a degree) for a mixture of reasons, not the least of which was the belief that we (and, remember, that much of the Gulf War coalition would have melted away) would not have been able to handle what might have been unleashed as a result. There are some who would say that the experience of the last four years would show that was true. We'll never know. In a way, however, this is all something of an irrelevance. It's rare that Realpolitik will throw up one, "right" answer. I could have made a case (and would have done, had anyone asked me) based on Realpolitik that the Coalition should have gone on to Baghdad. If they had done, and if it had worked (two big ifs), not only would a dangerous opponent have been overthrown, but a humanitarian disaster would have been averted.

So Andrew essentially argues that the decision not to help the Shia and/or to go on to Baghdad was made on an assessment of the national interest - and he's right, since driving policy at the time were the godfathers of realism Brent Scowcroft and James Baker. But then he also argues that he would have made the case, based on the national interest, that we should have gone on to Baghdad. In other words, an assessment of the national interest could yield two completely different outcomes.

What I (and Jonah) have been trying to say is that there are many ways to determine the national interest, and that the one that includes some rationale based on American values as well as power considerations will likely have the better result. Not always, but more often than not.

I would also add that the Shia revolted because we told them to, saying we'd back them. This was based on a combination of idealism (promoting freedom) and national interest (weakening Saddam's hold on power). It was only later, after the Shia revolt had begun, that we decided not to help them - and that decision is still giving us headaches today.

I think the best way to put it is that the "hard" realists, unlike idealists, may think democracy is a nice thing to have, but have little faith in the transforming power of American values. Idealists are not blind to the concept of national interest, they just argue that those values are an important tool for realizing the national interest.

Foreign Fighters in Iraq

2007-07-19T19:24:00.000-04:00

The LA Times had a "gotcha" story on Sunday in which they tried to refute administration claims that the regimes in Iran and Syria are intimately involved with helping the foreign fighters that have made up the overwhelming majority of suicide attacks in Iraq. Their big scoop is that about half of the fighters in US custody come from Saudi Arabia and not Iran or Syria.

Although Bush administration officials have frequently lashed out at Syria and Iran, accusing it of helping insurgents and militias here, the largest number of foreign fighters and suicide bombers in Iraq come from a third neighbor, Saudi Arabia, according to a senior U.S. military officer and Iraqi lawmakers.

About 45% of all foreign militants targeting U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians and security forces are from Saudi Arabia; 15% are from Syria and Lebanon; and 10% are from North Africa, according to official U.S. military figures made available to The Times by the senior officer. Nearly half of the 135 foreigners in U.S. detention facilities in Iraq are Saudis, he said.

Well, a couple things about this. First, half of the foreigners in US custody are Saudi. That doesn't really mean half of ALL foreign fighters are Saudi. Maybe US forces broke a particular terrorist cell made up mostly of Saudis who knew each other or came to Iraq together. It really doesn't tell us much. Second, and more important, the first paragraph correctly describes the administration's argument: that Iran and Syria help the insurgents - with training, financing, supplies, base of operations and transit across the border into Iraq. The second part of this paragraph doesn't really address the first part though. They tell us the nationality of these fighters: about half Saudi. No one's saying, however, that the fighters are all Iranian and Syrian, just that they've been at the forefront of helping these fighters.

The question they don't address here at the beginning of the argument is where the terrorists are coming from immediately before they enter Iraq? Is it the two countries with the longest border neighboring Iraq? That would be Iran and Syria. Certainly, the fighters come from elsewhere besides these two countries - even as far away as Europe. But when they get to the Middle East, where do they go? Which government gives them the supplies, money, safe haven and their mission? Once we find out who these countries are, it would seem more logical to prevent these states from continuing to support these terrorists rather than relying on tracking every would be terrorist down in every country (not that we don't do that too - but we don't only do that).

Well, the LA Times articlee gives us a profile of an average Saudi terrorist in Iraq. Guess how he came into Iraq? Guess whose border he crossed - certainly not despite any attempt on that country to prevent such smuggling across their border.

The fighter, a young college graduate whose mother was a teacher and father a professor, had been recruited in a mosque to join Al Qaeda in Iraq. He was given money for a bus ticket and a phone number to call in Syria to contact a handler who would smuggle him into Iraq.

Of course, it takes until the end of the article before they decide to mention this. What else did this individual do while in Syria that we don't know about? It would be great if the Saudi government stopped promoting radical Islam and endorsing these kinds of mosques, and if we were a little less chummier with the Saudis (and I don't just mean Bush). It would be equally as great, not to mention more productive in stemming the flow of terrorists into Iraq, if the Syrians and Iranians stopped giving support, and turning a blind eye to others who give support to these terrorists.

Thoughts on Freedom

2007-07-18T09:47:00.000-04:00

There's been a lot of buzz about David Brooks' column from yesterday (being held ransom behind TimesSelect) on his meeting with the President, particularly this one sentence from when the conversation turned to democracy.

Bush is convinced that history is moving in the direction of democracy, or as he said Friday: “It’s more of a theological perspective. I do believe there is an Almighty, and I believe a gift of that Almighty to all is freedom. And I will tell you that is a principle that no one can convince me that doesn’t exist.”

That single sentence has taken a lot of criticism from the blogosphere. A lot of it has focused on political philosophy and the challenges of introducing the idea of freedom in the Muslim world, but there has been a different, and as equally interesting, critique of this notion, namely that it trivializes the freedom we experience in God. David Kuo:

"I believe a gift of that Almighty to all is freedom," Bush said. How completely correct and how outrageously wrong he is. God does give us freedom. But that gift of freedom is not a freedom based on a form of government - it is the freedom to live as individuals with total, complete, and utter free will. It is the freedom to choose or to reject God, the freedom to choose or to reject God's gifts. THAT is God's gift of freedom. To confuse that gift with a form of government reflects both theological and political naivety.

Daniel Larison:

Immanentist ideologies and substitute religions stand in opposition to the Gospel. Compared to the liberation from sin and death that Christ has accomplished, how insignificant is political liberty! This does not mean that the latter is itself undesirable, but that it is hardly the chief priority of God’s salvific plan for man, and it is precisely for the salvation of men from sin and death and not their amelioration of their political status that God became man.

Ross Douthat:

The gift of freedom that Christ promises is far more real than anything else in this world, if Christian teaching on the matter is correct. On the other hand, there's nothing that's political about that promise, and the attempt to transform God's promise of freedom through Jesus Christ into a this-world promise of universal democracy is the worst kind of "immanentizing the eschaton" utopian bullshit.

And so on...

There's a common theme in all these, that because the religious is much more important than the political and worldly, that the political and worldly essentially doesn't matter and that the religious shouldn't influence the political and worldly. I strongly disagree with this.

Are they right that Christ's promise of freedom is "far more real than anything else in this world?" Of course. But does that mean God doesn't care about the conditions in which we live while here on earth? I don't think so. This is a trap I've seen Kuo fall into before. that Christians should focus more on Christ and less on politics. Of course, the first part is correct, but I don't think the two are mutually exclusive. There is a clear role for the state laid out in the Bible, the most obvious being Christ's call To "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's." Does God not care how man is then treated by the state? Does human dignity given by God to mankind not include treatment by the state? I don't think so. As long as we're here in this world, we should be living our lives as Christians - and that doesn't just mean worrying about ourselves, but about the rest of God's creation as well.

The simple truth is that t00 many people live lives devoid of any trace of dignity given to them by God. Kuo recognizes this, as he is often mildly scolding those who read his blog for not giving enough to the poor (even Americans, who, as a whole, are overwhelmingly give the most of their time and money to charity than any other country in the world), so I'm not sure why it is suddenly irrelevant when it comes to how people living in other countries are treated by their governments. Does it pale in comparison to "the liberation from sin and death that Christ has accomplished," as Larison believes? Of course. Does it still matter very much? Yes.

To begin with, the teachings of the Catholic Church, to which I belong, are very clear on the relationship between God, the people and governments. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC), man has the freedom to do both good and evil, but that he is truly free only "in the service of what is good and just." That is, having freedom is different from being free, and the choice do do evil "is an abuse of freedom."

With respect to governing institutions, the CCC is equally as clear. It argues that authority governs according to the consent of the governed, that is that "Authority does not derive its moral legitimacy from itself," and that "the choice of the political regime and the appointment of rulers are left to the free decision of the citizens." But this does not mean that any old despot can rule if the people initially say so.

"Regimes whose nature is contrary to the natural law, to the public order, and to the fundamental rights of persons cannot achieve the common good of the nations on which they have been imposed."

And without serving the common good, that authority loses it's legitimacy.

"Authority is exercised legitimately only when it seeks the common good of the group concerned and if it employs morally licit means to attain it. If rulers were to enact unjust laws or take measures contrary to the moral order, such arrangements would not be binding in conscience. In such a case, 'authority breaks down completely and results in shameful abuse.'"

The Bible itself also has plenty to say about how people should be governed - and it overwhelmingly sides with freedom. Peter tells the Elect Pilgrims that it is the will of God that they live as free men, using their liberty to honor God. Peter is not just referring to the freedom man has in Christ's death and resurrection, but also to man's status while in this life with regards to governing authorities, as well as how they live their individual lives. The question then becomes whether governance over such a people should be entrusted to a king or to some other form of leadership, and what that should be. For the most part the Bible speaks of kings, but it is made clear, in Samuel, Judges, Kings, Proverbs and elsewhere, that the king also serves at the will of the people, so to speak. There's even references to what would later become known as democracy. In Exodus, Moses' father-in-law Jethro tells him that he cannot carry out all of his responsibilities on his own, and that he should pick honest men from among his followers to represent the people. In Deuteronomy, however, Moses does Jethro one better, and tells the Israelites to pick from among themselves "wise, understanding and knowledgeable men...and I will make them heads over you."

So we establish that, as Peter said, liberty and freedom for man is God's will. Kuo even accepts this, when he talks about "the freedom to live as individuals." What is that other than individual liberty? And who controls our individual liberties here on Earth? The question then becomes, what kind of government today can best uphold mankind's right to liberty and to live as free men? Does God care more about a people being governed by a hereditary king or about a people being governed by a system that respects human dignity and liberty? I'd have to guess the latter. So if a system of heriditary government (constitutional monarchies by and large no longer being run by the monarch) can no longer respect those gifts of dignity and liberty, and no longer governs with the consent of the people, do we stick with the king or do we stick with the consent of the governed?

The men who founded this country seemed to think it was the latter. They believed men were created equal and given unalienable rights by their Creator. Furthermore, they believed the role of governments was to secure these rights. In other words, the consent to govern came from the people, just like it did in the the time of the Old Testament and in Christ's time. When kings could no longer be trusted to govern according to the will of the people, or forgot that they served at the will of the people, Jefferson, Madison and their colleagues decided it was time to try something different. They even found it important enough to fight a war over.

Does that mean we're to start a war wherever injustice is found? Of course not, and though Bush's rhetoric sometimes gets the better of him, he hasn't done anything like that. In fact, I very much doubt "democracy" was the sole, or even the initial reason he started the war. I just find it too hard to believe that the Bush that campaigned as a realist would suddenly become such an idealist (even with 9/11 as a catalyst). I believe that like everyone else in the government and in our intelligence agencies, he believed that Saddam posed a threat to the United States, and came to the conclusion, rightly or wrongly - thats for another debate, that a free and democratic society would not produce leaders like Saddam Hussein. I believe it was the security threat of terrorism and WMD that made Bush realize the status quo of how we deal with dictatorial regimes had to change. Now, if you want to argue that the "how" of this democratization idea has been found wanting, I'd probably be likely to agree. Again, that's for another debate, but suffice it to say a lot of our commitment to democracy has consisted of settling for the group or individual least hostile to American interests and calling it democracy. In other words, what the US has been doing for decades - the status quo.

But the point of this post was to address those who make the argument that because "the liberation from sin and death that Christ has accomplished" is more important than our time here on Earth, that the latter somehow becomes completely irrelevant. I don't agree that democracy - or, more accurately, freedom - is just a nice thing to have but that God doesn't particularly care one way or the other. I'm going to side with Jefferson who argued that our Creator does care about how we are governed in this life, that He gave us all the same rights, that governments are created to uphold those rights and that politics in this world is very much connected to our belief in that Creator.

As for Bush's comments, I don't know if history is moving in the direction of (liberal) democracy, though I would like to think so. I'm under no illusions that democracy would create a perfect world, or some kind of utopia, and I doubt Bush is either. But given Churchill's description of democracy, it would make the world less worse than it otherwise might be. That's all. And while I don't know what the future holds for democracy, I absolutely think a thoroughly justifiable theological case can be made, that while God's greatest gift to man is freedom through Christ's dying and resurrection, that freedom, human dignity and liberty here on Earth are also great gifts from God - and the best way those gifts can be realized in this day is through liberal democracy.

Military Money

2007-07-17T16:42:00.001-04:00

Andrew Sullivan links approvingly to a blog called The Spin Factor that claims that Ron Paul leads in contributions from those employed by the military. Andrew gushes that Paul has a "staggering 52.53% of all military contributions." Taking the bait, I checked out the link and found that, sure enough, in dollar amount, Paul comes in first - with a grand total of $23,000. McCain comes in second with only two-thirds of what Paul has, at $15,000.

Does this mean the military is turning on the war? Is the military being co-opted by the "stab-in-the-back righties," as Andrew puts it? Is a "staggering" percentage of the military flocking to the one anti-war Republican because they've been betrayed by the administration, as Andrew would have you assume? Well, not really.

With a cursory search of the list of individual donors, you'll find Paul's military money comes from a total of 23 people (6 Army - including civilians, 9 Navy - including at least 1 civilian, 5 USAF, 1 USMC - which The Spin Factor forgot to search for and 2 Veterans Affairs employees), many of whom gave $1,000 or more each. Scrolling through the list of McCain donors will show, that while he may have a lower dollar amount, he has more than twice the number of donors employed by the military, at 55 (18 Army, 17 Navy, 11 USMC, 7 USAF and 2 Veterans Affairs employees). A cursory search finds only one of those is a civilian, employed by the US Navy Memorial, and one is a midshipman at the Naval Academy - Jack McCain IV.

So Paul might be able to dive into his, err, thousands Scrooge McDuck style, and McCain's donors might not give as much, but in the end it's the votes that decide the candidate, and if we're going to infer anything from these numbers, it's that John McCain would beat Paul 55-23. That would mean the military is still in favor of aggressively pursuing victory in the war.

But can you infer anything about the opinions of the military by these contributions? Of course not - it's taking an opinion poll of 78 people. It means absolutely nothing. Moreover, it's a total of 15,000 and 23,000 to the respective campaigns - statistically insignificant given the millions each campaign has raised. And, as The Spin Factor pointed out, this only takes into account those who listed their employer. But Andrew Sullivan is still going to link approvingly to it, probably without bothering to actually look at the data, simply because it validates his love affair with Paul, his opposition to the war and his hatred of the Bush administration.

Neville or Winston?

2007-07-02T11:13:00.000-04:00

Lynne Olson, the author of Troublesome Young Men, has an article in Sunday's Washington Post arguing that Bush has more in common with Neville Chamberlain than he does with Winston Churchill. The comparison to Chamberlain seems forced and not really based on much factual evidence.

Like Bush and unlike Churchill, Chamberlain came to office with almost no understanding of foreign affairs or experience in dealing with international leaders... He surrounded himself with like-minded advisers and refused to heed anyone who told him otherwise.

Bush had little experience with foreign affairs coming into office. Fair enough. But at least he had the foresight to surround himself with people who were eminently qualified to speak on foreign affairs. Whether you agree with them or not, and whatever you thought about their performance in Iraq, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Rice, Powell, etc. can not be said to have had limited foreign relations experience (this, of course, is why the American system of picking a cabinet is better than the Parliamentary system, but that’s for another day). Nor were they all that like-minded coming into office. Cheney and Rumsfeld were national power conservatives, Rice was the realist, Wolfowitz the neoconservative, Powell the liberal hawk and so on.

Chamberlain on the other hand, had the Viscount Halifax at the Foreign Ministry, who had made the rounds from Agriculture to Education, and whose only foreign affairs experience to note was Viceroy of India, which didn’t really help much when it came to

Germany

. His Secretary of State for War, the Baron Hore-Belisha, spent his career before that at the Transport Ministry and the Board of Trade. His Secretary of State for Air, Kingsley Wood, had been Minister for Health and Postmaster General.

Nonetheless, he was convinced that he alone could bring Hitler and Benito Mussolini to heel.

The comparison to Bush here is completely off. Chamberlain completely misjudged the threat. He underestimated Hitler and Mussolini’s power, their motives and their drive, and he assumed it was a threat that could be fixed with shuttle diplomacy. He was indeed naïve about human nature, and the nature of tyrants. Bush has made no such mistake. Whatever else his faults may be, he has no false assumptions of the threat we face, nor does he assume that peace is the natural desire of dictators and tyrants.

In the months leading up to World War II, Chamberlain and his men saw little need to build up a strong coalition of European allies with which to confront Nazi Germany -- ignoring appeals from Churchill and others to fashion a "Grand Alliance" of nations to thwart the threat that Hitler posed to the continent.Unlike Bush and Chamberlain, Churchill was never in favor of his country going it alone.
[...] After the League failed to stop fascism's march, Churchill was adamant that, to beat Hitler, Britain must form a true partnership with France and even reach agreement with the despised Soviet Union, neither of which Chamberlain was willing to do.

The truth, of course, is that Churchill spent years refusing to give the Soviets anything in return for their fight against the Germans on the Eastern front. He refused for years to open the second front and scolded the Soviet ambassador whenever the issue was brought up, saying the Soviets had “no right to make reproaches against us.” After El-Alamein, Churchill began to realize that, going forward and especially after the war, the Soviets growing power was becoming a major threat to the West. He wanted the West to take Berlin so the Soviets couldn't get it. Roosevelt often had to keep the peace between Stalin and Churchill when they met. Of course, the Soviet fight against the Germans was crucial to the Allied victory, and I doubt even Bush would insist the Soviets stop fighting the Germans so the Americans could have the whole fight. This really wasn’t much of a “Grand Alliance” though, and if anything its pattern of “take and give very little other than unintentional legitimacy” is very similar to our relationship with

Saudi Arabia

and

Egypt

today. Their counter-terrorism efforts have been immensely useful, but we try to avoid giving them anything and would be more than happy to have nothing to do with them if we could get away with it. Churchill’s Grand Alliance, by the way, about which he wrote a four volume history, was first and foremost the English-speaking peoples, especially Britain-America-Australia, the same alliance of forces currently fighting in

Iraq

.

Philip Klein also points out at the American Spectator blog, "Churchill, of course, was arguing for a "Grand Alliance" to confront Germany militarily, while opponents of the Iraq War were arguing for a grand alliance to confront Saddam diplomatically so America could avert military action."

As was true of Bush and the Republicans before the 2006 midterm elections, Chamberlain and his Tories had a large majority in the Commons, and, as Macmillan noted, the prime minister tended to treat Parliament like a lapdog legislature, existing only to do his bidding. "I secretly feel he hates the House of Commons," wrote one of Chamberlain's most fervent parliamentary supporters. "Certainly he has a deep contempt for Parliamentary interference."
Churchill, on the other hand, revered Parliament and was appalled by Chamberlain's determination to dominate the Commons in the late 1930s. Churchill considered himself first and foremost "a child" and "servant" of the House of Commons and strongly believed in the legislature's constitutional role to oversee the executive (even when, after becoming prime minister, he often railed against MPs who criticized him). In August 1939, when Chamberlain rammed through a two-month parliamentary adjournment just weeks before the war began, Churchill -- then still a backbencher -- exploded with anger in the House, calling the prime minister's move "disastrous," "pathetic" and shameful." He encouraged his anti-appeasement colleagues to mount similar attacks against Chamberlain, and when one of them, Ronald Cartland, called the prime minister a dictator to his face in the same debate, Churchill congratulated Cartland with an enthusiastic, "Well done, my boy, well done!"

To support the comparison between Bush and Chamberlain on this point, Olson compares Bush’s actions in office with Churchill’s rhetoric while out of office. She seems to ignore the fact that British politics are much more partisan within parties than American politics. It is not unusual for there to be intra-party divisions like the one that pitted Churchill against Chamberlain, or Michael Heseltine against Thatcher, or most of the Labour Party against Blair. So Churchill’s comments while out of office show little more than that he was as partisan as the next British politician. It’s his actions while in office that matter, and as Olson points out, he would frequently rail against the MPs when he was in office. I don’t think this means Churchill had no respect for Parliament, I think Olson is right that he had great respect for it. I also think Bush respects Congress and its role in American government – they both just got caught up in the natural flow of partisan politics.

Likewise, Churchill almost certainly would look askance at the Bush administration's years-long campaign to shut down public debate over the "war on terror" and the conflict in Iraq -- tactics markedly similar to Chamberlain's attempts to quiet his opponents. Like Bush and his aides, Chamberlain badgered and intimidated the press, restricted journalists' access to sources and claimed that anyone who dared criticize the government was guilty of disloyalty and damaging the national interest.

Actually, Churchill despised the BBC (which at the time WAS the British media) as they had essentially censored him throughout the 1930s. John Reith, the head of the BBC, openly admired Hitler and Mussolini. Ironically, he was Minister of Information under Chamberlain – not really the minister someone wants when they are contemptuous of the media. When Churchill became PM, Reith could no longer block him, but deemed it “awful” that Churchill was the premier, and, incidentally, thought Churchill was concentrating too much power in his office by making himself Defence Minister as well as PM, essentially giving himself the power to run the war.

Churchill, by contrast, believed firmly in the sanctity of individual liberties and the need to protect them from government encroachment. That's not to say that he was never guilty of infringing on them himself. In June 1940, when a Nazi invasion of Britain seemed imminent, he ordered the internment of more than 20,000 enemy aliens living on British soil, most of them refugees from Hitler's and Mussolini's fascist regimes. But as the invasion scare abated over the next few months, the vast majority were released, also by his order. "The key word in any understanding of Winston Churchill is the simple word 'Liberty,' " wrote Eric Seal, Churchill's principal private secretary during the early years of the war. "He intensely disliked, and reacted violently against, all attempts to regiment and dictate opinion. . . . He demanded for himself freedom to follow his own star, and he stood out for a like liberty for all men."

Err, she argues that Churchill would have been against Bush’s indefinite detentions, but then point out that Churchill not only did the same thing, only more so. He not only detained thousands of civilians, but he did so based solely on their country of origin, something I'm pretty sure Bush has never done. She argues that Churchill ordered their release months later, but there were still 14,000 “enemy aliens” interned on the Isle of Man nearly a year later, and probably long after that. Furthermore, other civilians from Axis countries were limited in where they could go, were forced to check in with the authorities every day and had a curfew.

Incidentally, Andrew Sullivan approvingly links to Olson's article based on this point about detainees. He argues:

Churchill would be appalled by the indefinite suspension of habeas corpus and even more by the shameful adoption of torture by the Americans. He was a realist, a pragmatist and a defender of actual liberty.

Oops, that's inconvenient. Besides proving that all Andrew Sullivan does these days is post these kinds of meaningless and vapid attacks on Bush, it also shows that's he's not really one for facts. Anyway, back to Olson.

Throughout her article, Olson argues Bush and Chamberlain, unlike Churchill, concentrated too much power in their respective offices. However, like I mentioned before, Churchill went as far as to create new posts that he assigned to himself in order to have the greatest ability to run the war. Also, if Bush had known about the bombing of an American city, like Churchill knew about Coventry, and kept it quiet in order to protect crucial intelligence, he would have been impeached and probably arrested long ago. Also, she points out, perhaps unintentionally, with her quote from Eric Seal, how Churchill felt about allowing others to take control. “He intensely disliked, and reacted violently against, all attempts to regiment and dictate opinion…He demanded for himself freedom to follow his own star.” That sounds a lot to me like “He didn’t like other people telling him what to do. He did things the way he wanted.”

Finally, she belittles our opponent compared to Churchill's defeat of Germany (which, I think, America had something to do with as well).

But Churchill would snort, I believe, at the administration's equation of "Islamofascism," an amorphous, ill-defined movement of killers forced to resort to terrorism by their lack of military might, to Nazi Germany, a global power that had already conquered several countries before Churchill took office in 1940.

At The Corner, Steven Hayward points out that Churchill was actually ahead of his time in understanding the seriousness of Islamic radicalism. But as for unconventional conflict, surely Ms. Olson knows Churchill was again PM from 1950-1953, when the British faced both the Mau Mau and the Malayn uprisings, both of which they were unable to put down until well after Churchill had left office - and even then they didn't really win

Like I said earlier, I don’t know if Bush is like Churchill, but I’m fairly certain he has little in common with Chamberlain. I also tend to think Olson puts Churchill on a pedestal that is perhaps a bit too high, and in doing so makes unfair contrasts to Bush. Churchill was not perfect, and neither is Bush. She argues, “As the world's two most prominent and powerful democracies, the United States and Britain had a responsibility to serve as exemplars of democracy for the rest of the world, Churchill believed. But to be fitting role models, he argued, both countries had to do their best to ensure that the "title deeds of freedom" were strongly safeguarded within their own boundaries.”

I agree - I think both America and Britain are the best examples of freedom and democracy in the world today. That we are perhaps the two countries with the greatest immigration crises in the world is no coincidence. But like Churchill said about democracy, we’re not perfect – and we won’t always be perfect – but we’re better than everything else.

That Was Then...

2006-08-04T14:38:00.000-04:00

Robert Pape, a political science professor at the University of Chicago had an op-ed in the New York Times the other day on the Hezbollah-Israeli war, in which he argued that Israel will not win.

ISRAEL has finally conceded that air power alone will not defeat Hezbollah. Over the coming weeks, it will learn that ground power won’t work either. The problem is not that the Israelis have insufficient military might, but that they misunderstand the nature of the enemy.
Contrary to the conventional wisdom, Hezbollah is principally neither a political party nor an Islamist militia. It is a broad movement that evolved in reaction to Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in June 1982. At first it consisted of a small number of Shiites supported by Iran. But as more and more Lebanese came to resent Israel’s occupation, Hezbollah — never tight-knit — expanded into an umbrella organization that tacitly coordinated the resistance operations of a loose collection of groups with a variety of religious and secular aims.

The op-ed, continuing with this argument, follows the same theme as Pape's recent book, Dying to Win. In trying to prove that Hezbollah's suicide bombers were not motivated by Islamic fundamentalism to blow themselves up, Pape came up with data that showed that very few of the suicide bombers were Islamic fundamentalists.

I know Professor Pape from classes I took with him, and enjoyed his teaching and books a great deal - even when I disagreed with some of their arguments - but I think he's stretching to apply his arguments from his books into this situation where they don't fit as well. Hezbollah might have just been a loose-knit umbrella organization in the 1980s when they popularized the suicide bomb attack for other Islamic terrorist groups, but a great deal of evidence suggests that they have solidified into a much more unitary group now - or at least a coalition that has come to agree on political issues that are more than simply expelling all foreign forces like in the 1980s. They unified enough to run on a single campaign platform in the recent elections. They have become willing to answer to a single leader in Nasrallah and, most importantly, they have changed their military strategy from one of asymmetric suicide attacks to one of direct engagement with Israeli military forces using conventional weapons.

Of course, it could be that Hezbollah's strategy thus far has been more on the conventional side simply because the current military situation in Lebanon has been so fluid, leaving no real fixed Israeli military target for Hezbollah to target. The recent talk of an international force in southern Lebanon to keep the peace is, for this reason and reasons of history, a terrible idea. The international forces (American, French, Israeli) that tried the same thing in the 1980s ended up with hundreds dead and quick withdrawal, ceding victory to Hezbollah and their suicide attacks. The same will happen if a multinational force sets up shop this time. If a cease-fire is implemented, there will be no peace to keep, and Hezbollah will return to their "glory days" of the 1980s, doing what they do best. That is why the only solution now is for Israel to be allowed to completely destroy Hezbollah's military capability. Once that is accomplished, the Lebanese army should take over control of former Hezbollah-controlled areas. Nancy Soderberg makes the same point based on her experience at the UN in an earlier op-ed in the NY Times.

In any case, one cannot deploy a peacekeeping force until the questions of disarmament and sovereignty have been addressed. Unless the path forward is agreed upon, the peacekeeping troops are at best without a clear mandate and at worst can become pawns in the negotiations.

Second, no cease-fire will hold unless the root cause of the current crisis is addressed: the continuing presence of armed Hezbollah militia in southern Lebanon. Any solution will require a new security arrangement that not only disarms the Hezbollah militia but also mandates the deployment of Lebanese forces to the south, as well as a return of prisoners on both sides. Without such a deal, it would be folly to send in peacekeepers.

The recent US decision to arm and train the Lebanese army is a good first step in carrying out this course of action.

It won't be easy, of course, but there is no reason to be as outright pessimistic as Professor Pape. His book is well written and full of fresh, new insight that challenges conventional wisdom. This has the advantage of sparking controversy and debate on the consequences of foreign occupation. Nevertheless, he tries too hard to apply the insight in his book to the current situation, where it does not fit as cleanly - both because of the ways in which Hezbollah has changed in the 20+ years its been in existence, as well as the nature of the current military conflict in Lebanon. Pape's first book, Bombing to Win - another great book - is all about using air power to deny an opponent the ability to carry out its military strategy rather than simply punishing the citizens in the hopes that they turn on their government. Pape points out that it is inherently difficult to deny a guerilla force the ability to carry out its strategy, and that any attempt to do so becomes frustrated and eventually turns into a punishment campagn.

Pape is still treating Hezbollah as a purely unconventional, guerilla force - which, in some cases, especially their reliance on the support of local populaces, they still are - but Hezbollah has also made significant changes in their military strategy, turning from suicide bombings to fighting from fixed positions with conventional artillery and other weapons. The fact that Hezbollah still maintains some aspects of a guerilla force explains Pape's claim - which I believe to be correct - that an air campaign alone would not defeat Hezbollah and risk turning the military campaign into one of punishment alone. I do not share Professor Pape's pessimism that Israeli ground forces will inevitable fail, given the important changes Hezbollah has made in their war fighting strategy.

Ideology Or Strategic Interest?

2006-07-26T21:45:00.000-04:00

Bernard Haykel, an associate professor of Islamic studies at NYU, has a bizarre op-ed in today's New York Times that is, to say the least, confusing. His argument is that al Qaeda is becoming concerned that Hezbollah is stealing its thunder in the fight against Israel.

But now Hezbollah has taken the lead on the most incendiary issue for jihadis of all stripes: the fight against Israel.

[...]For Al Qaeda, it is a time of panic. The group’s Web sites are abuzz with messages and questions about how to respond to Hezbollah’s success.

[...] The truth is that Al Qaeda has met a formidable challenge in Hezbollah and its charismatic leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, who have made canny choices that appeal to Al Qaeda’s Sunni followers. Al Qaeda’s improbable conspiracy theory does little to counter these advantages.

Haykel peddles the "all Shi'ite and Sunni Muslims hate each other and will therefore never work with each other" schtick at the beginning of the column.

Al Qaeda’s Sunni ideology regards Shiites as heretics and profoundly distrusts Shiite groups like Hezbollah. It was Al Qaeda that is reported to have given Sunni extremists in Iraq the green light to attack Shiite civilians and holy sites. A Qaeda recruiter I met in Yemen described the Shiites as “dogs and a thorn in the throat of Islam from the beginning of time.”

I'm not sure how this myth, along with the one that says secular and fundamentalist Islam cannot work together, continues to stay alive despite all the evidence to the contrary. Secular and fundamentalists in Damascus and Tehran have found common cause. Radical shi'ites in Tehran and Hezbollah and Salfist Sunnis of al Qaeda have found common cause. In the final analysis, ideology does not determine the presence or lack of cooperation. What does, however, is shared strategic interest. Despite his initial claim of how unreconcilable the hatred is between Shiite and Sunni, Haykel admits the opposite throughout the rest of his column.

Many Sunnis are therefore rallying to Hezbollah’s side, including the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Jordan. The Saudi cleric Salman al-Awda has defied his government’s anti-Hezbollah position, writing on his Web site that “this is not the time to express our differences with the Shiites because we are all confronted by our greater enemy, the criminal Jews and Zionists.”

[...] First, although Sheik Nasrallah wears the black turban and carries the title of “sayyid,” both of which identify him as a Shiite descendant of the Prophet Muhammad, he preaches a nonsectarian ideology and does not highlight his group’s Shiite identity. Hezbollah has even established an effective alliance with Hamas, a Sunni and Muslim Brotherhood organization.
Second, Hezbollah’s statements focus on the politics of resistance to occupation and invoke shared Islamic principles about the right to self-defense. Sheik Nasrallah is extremely careful to hew closely to the dictates of Islamic law in his military attacks. These include such principles as advance notice, discrimination in selecting targets and proportionality.

Finally, only Hezbollah has effectively defeated Israel (in Lebanon in 2000) and is now taking it on again, hitting Haifa and other places with large numbers of rockets — a feat that no Arab or Muslim power has accomplished since Israel’s founding in 1948.

These are already serious selling points. And Hezbollah will score a major propaganda victory in the Muslim world if it simply remains standing in Lebanon after the present bout of warfare is over and maintains the relationships it is forging with Hamas and other Sunni Islamist organizations.

Perhaps he means that al Qaeda's specific brand of Slafist Sunni ideology is making it incompatible with support for Hezbollah. But this doesn't pan out either. Much of al Qaeda's ideology has its roots in organizations such as the Muslim Brotherhood (through thinkers such as Sayyid Qutb), so if the Muslim Brotherhood is now backing HEzbollah, it's hard to see how al Qaeda's prblem has anything to do with ideology. Ignoring the claim that Hezbollah has been at all discriminatory or propotionate (proportionate to what, exactly, is unknown), which I can only describe as misleading, the majority of this column questions Haykel's claim of how much Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims truly hate each other. Perhaps more importantly, it fails to differentiate between rhetoric and action.

More likely, al Qaeda is upset because another group has taken the headlines. But also curious is Haykel's claim that al Qaeda is upset because Hezbollah has stolen its thunder in targeting Israel. Perhaps someone can refresh my memory, but when was the last al Qaeda attack against Israel? Hamas (Sunni), Islamic Jihad (Shi'ite) and al Aqsa Martyr's Brigade ("secular") have been attacking Israel for years, and al Qaeda has taken little notice beyond the usual rhetoric. They have never tried to "upstage" Hamas by launching a more spectacular attack in Israel.

Al Qaeda's targets have consistently been American and European countries, American and European interests in foreigh countries, and local (generally Muslim) allies of Americans and Europeans. This goes back to the claim that al Qaeda (or Islamic fundamentalists in general) are attacking us because of our support for Israel. If anyone should attack Western interests because of support for Israel, it should have been Hamas or IJ. Likewise, if al Qaeda really cared about the Israeli-Palestinian situation, you would have seen al Qaeda attacks in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa. But you haven't. Israel provides al Qaeda with great rhetorical material, and that is likely the case with this latest episode.

At the most, al Qaeda's concerns have more to do with organizational/bureaucratic rivalry than with ideology. Nevertheless, I even hesitate to accept that that is the case. Al Qaeda has been "upstaged" there before, by Sunni, Shi'ite and secularists alike. Why is it different now? Israel has supposedly been "attacking" Muslims in the West Bank and Gaza before, so what is different about this conflict? Hezbollah has even upstaged al Qaeda in the past with regards to Israel. By the mid-1990s, Israel and everyone else knew its presence in southern Lebanon was failed, and they would eventually have to withdraw. Hezbollah had become the champion of the anti-Israel cause in the Arab world, a major factor in motivating Hafiz al-Assad, and late Bashir al-Assad, in pledging Syrian support to Hezbollah. According to Haykel's claim, this imminent victory for Hezbollah should have driven al Qaeda mad with jealousy and led to a surge of al Qaeda attacks on Israel. This wasn't the case, as al Qaeda had little presence in Israel or the Palestinian territories. In fact, as I've mentioned before, according to the 9-11 Commission, al Qaeda even saw fit to cooperate with Hezbollah (via Iran) in the Khobar Towers bombing in 1996. If Haykel is correct, al Qaeda's actions in the latter half of the 1990s should not have played out anything like they did.

Given al Qaeda's limited involvement in attacks against Israel in the past, and given Haykel's mistake in not separating rhetoric from action in other parts of the op-ed, I suspect he's making the same mistake again. Hezbollah's campaign against Israel may be causing the al Qaeda public relations department some headaches, but I seriously doubt whether Hezbollah's actions are going to be the determining factor in when, where or how al Qaeda carries out its next attack.

I'm also unclear about Haykel's claim that Shi'ites and Sunnis everywhere will come together to attack Israel and the United States. This is sort of like the extreme of the claim that Iraqi Shi'ites are simply going to hand over control of Iraq to Tehran, because the regime there is also Shi'ite. In this case, however, some sort of pan-Islamic force will emerge, shedding all national identities, to attack the Zionist-Crusader conspiracy. Gone is any recognition of the power of nationalism. Ignored is the historical evidence from events like the Iran-Iraq War, where it was certain that Iraqi Shi'ites would defect and fight for Tehran and that Iranian Sunnis would pledge their allegiance to Baghdad. The evidence, however, proved these hopes and fears on the part of Baghdad and Tehran to be wrong almost in their entirety as Iranian Sunnis and Shi'ites fought with equal ferocity against Iraq Sunnis and Shi'ites. Why the power of nationalism would simply disappear now is unclear.

In the end, I'm not really sure what the point of Haykel's op-ed is, exactly, but whatever his final argument is is, in my view at least, probably wrong given how very few of his basic assumptions seem to hold any water anyways.

Impasse In Ukraine

2006-07-21T01:51:00.000-04:00

RIA Novosti is reporting that Viktor Yanukovych, the pro-Russian Party on Nations leader and big loser of the 2004 Orange Revolution, has made overtures towards President Viktor Yuschenko's Our Ukraine bloc to form a sort of grand coaltion to end the 4 month political standoff that has resulted from the inability of anyone to form a government following the March parliamentary elections.

Viktor Yanukovych, leader of the pro-Russian Party of Regions, said Thursday he hoped that pro-presidential bloc Our Ukraine would join the "anti-crisis" coalition in parliament.
Our Ukraine was part of a short-lived coalition with the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc and the Socialists - the two other political forces that propelled Viktor Yushchenko the presidency in the 2004 "orange revolution" - that emerged three months after parliamentary elections but then collapsed when the Socialists left.

The Economist raised this possibility in this week's issue. (subscription required, or you can probably watch a short ad to receive a one day free pass)

"The other option may be a grand coalition that takes bits of the President's party as well as the Party of Regions, drops the Communists and leaves Ms. Tymoshenko's bloc in opposition - though that would probably mean finding a different prime minister to Mr Yanukovich...A grand coalition might ease the resentments of eastern Ukraine, which overwhelmingly backs Mr Yanukovich - though it is hard to see such a coalition lasting long."

Any grand coalition, however, would likely only involve parts of the Our Ukraine bloc. The leader of Our Ukraine in parliament was not terribly enthusiastic about the idea.

But Roman Bezsmertniy, head of Our Ukraine's parliamentary faction, said Thursday his party would never join "the so-called anti-crisis coalition."

A grand coalition would at least allow for a conclusion to this constitutional crisis in Ukraine. Other advantages include Our Ukraine's presence to mitigate the threat of a reversion to corruption under a Yanukovich government. Likewise, as The Economist points out, this would be somewhat palatable to those in the country's east. It would be a fragile coalition, to be sure, but may be the best solution, as dissolving the parliament for new elections would be a major blow to Ukraine's fragile democracy.

Of course, any grand coalition would likely mean further splintering of the Orange Coalition, but in the end, the Orange Revolution was about democracy and honest government, not a single party or faction of party maintaining a hold on power. If the bits of Our Ukraine that join a grand coalition can ensure that Yanukovych comes to accept the way the new, democratic Ukraine works, the Orange Revolution will have achieved its goals.

Is Israel's Strategy Working?

2006-07-21T01:26:00.000-04:00

The Age tells of a report from an Italian paper that Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora has made a dramatic change in policy, and is now demanding that Hezbollah, which he calls "a state within a state," must be disarmed.

HEZBOLLAH has created a "state within a state" in Lebanon and must be disarmed, the country's Prime Minister says.
Fouad Siniora said the Shiite militia had been doing the bidding of Syria and Iran, and could only be disarmed with the help of the international community once a ceasefire had been achieved.

While Siniora is still claiming that a ceasefire must come first, this is a noted move away from Hezbollah and towards the Israeli position.

When Israel first began its aerial attack on Lebanon, I was hesitant as to whether such an attack would be counterproductive to Israel's political aims. Many make the claim that a foreign power attacking a state in the hopes of separating the people from their government so as to inspire them to turn on the government. The counter to this argument, however, was that nationalism would lead a population to "rally round the flag," so to speak, thereby supporting the government, no matter how unpopular it may otherwise be, in response to a foreign aggressor.

In reality, I'm not sure either side is entirely right on this count. As we saw after the first Gulf War, a great number of Shia and Kurds did rise up against Saddam, only to be abandoned by the United States. The result, as told by Kenneth Pollack, was slaughter by the Iraq forces, with the unwitting help of General Schwarzkopf.

[...] at the cease-fire talks after Desert-Storm was halted, the Iraqis asked for permission to fly their helicopters to move personnel and supplies around, and General Norman Schwarzkopf, the commander of the U.S. forces — acting without any instructions but trying to show magnanimity — permitted Iraq to use all of its helicopters, including armed gunships. As should have been expected, the Iraqis began using their gunships to attack the rebels, and the United States could have prohibited the Iraqis from doing so.

Nevertheless, the argument is not as clear cut as its arguments like to argue either, as the backfiring of countless aerial bombardments, blockades and ground invasions, with the only result being increased hostility towards the aggressor, have shown throughout history.

Even without taking Israel's side, world opinion has clearly come down against Hezbollah as the instigator of the crisis. Admittedly, this is a somewhat more complicated situation than those that simply involve two governments and the people of the target state. In some cases, therefore, nationalism could be causing the Lebanese to side with the Hezbollah-skeptic government over the arguably more powerful Hezbollah. At the same time, claims by the usual suspects (which, as I mentioned, I considered myself) that Israeli bombing would turn the Lebanese back to Hezbollah are apparently unfounded. In the end, I suppose whether or not this situation is playing out as the "nationalism as the strongest force" argument would suggest is irrelevant - as long as the result is the weakening of Hezbollah and the strengthening of the Siniora government in Beirut.

A Crisis Of Confidence

2006-07-21T00:30:00.000-04:00

As mentioned in an earlier post, Belgravia Dispatch has become convinced that just about every single Weatern leader, especially everyone in the Bush administration, is an incompetent buffoon. Tonight he approvingly cites a story from the Financial Times (subscription required) which reaches the same conclusion. He cites significantly more of the article, but here are some key grafs.

President Bush has thus declined to restrain Israel’s military operations in spite of the feeling among US allies that they are disproportionate and, in significant measure counterproductive. Bombing the Lebanese army and weakening the government of Fouad Siniora will not drive Hizbollah from southern Lebanon.
European diplomats aver that the ferocity of the Israeli response owes as much to the weakness of Ehud Olmert, the prime minister, as to the traditional use of massive force as a deterrent against future aggression. Israel, though, has persuaded Mr Bush that Hamas and Hizbollah should be seen through the prism of his own war on terrorism. The terrorists, in this flawed but, for Mr OImert, useful analysis, are all the same.

As a simple description of the many fires smouldering in the region, there is something to be said for Mr. Blair’s “arc of extremism”. The Taliban is resurgent in Afghanistan, Iran remains defiant about its nuclear ambitions, Iraq has fallen to sectarian civil war, Hizbollah threatens to destroy Lebanon’s fragile stability, Hamas is fighting Israel in Gaza.

Much more dubious is the attempt to draw through these conflicts a single thread of extremism. That is to ignore their complexities and the myriad grievances and rivalries. These set Sunni against Shia, Arab against Iranian as well as political Islam against the west. Al-Qaeda and Hizbollah are not allies. (emphasis is Greg's)

Greg is right that some corners of the blogosphere and commentariat see far simpler solutions than actually exist. Nevertheless, he all too often fails to recognize that these "solutions" might have a modicum of truth to them - that is, that they might be just part of a complicated plan needed for the region. While he supported the war in Iraq, he was never by any means a neocon. In recent months and years, however, his commentary has taken on a noticeably realist tone. Perhaps this is the inevitable reaction for someone who feels his support for the war was betrayed by the entire administration in the years since.

Nevertheless, his continued criticism of those who remain on the administration's side is beginning to resemble more and more my description of realist "policymaking": nothing. Like realists, and like the FT article, Greg goes to great pains to remind everyone of how complicated everything is, how anyone who has come up with a solution is a naive and dangerous ideologue, and how, if we just delay long enough with platitudes to how darn difficult everything is, how nuanced the situation is, how ancient the hatreds are, then perhaps we'll be able to wait out the whole thing. This was the Clinton (surprisingly realist-minded) approach to the Bosnia crisis in the early days of his first term. Robert Kaplan's book Balkan Ghosts was said to have been extremely influential in Clinton's decision-making calculus to simply not do anything. If you can't think of anything, or are too hesitant to take action, simply wait for one side to simply run out of people to kill, citing the "ancient hatreds" meme to justify your (lack of) response.

Simply going with what I read of the FT article, the author goes to great pains as well to show just how hard everything is. Once again the idea comes forward that Sunnis and Shi'ites simply don't work together, therefore adding to the number of players in the crisis, making it that much more difficult to work with. We are told that Hezbollah should not be part of our War on Terror, yet Hezbollah was responsible for the deaths of 19 American servicemen in 1996 in the Khobar Towers bombing. We are told al Qaeda and Hezbollah are not allies. While it is true the groups are run by very different people with very different goals, the idea that the Sunni-Shia divide (one that should be especially wide given that both parties are on the extreme ends of the divide) would prevent groups from working together not supported by the evidence. Just on this one example, on the claim that Hezbollah and al Qaeda would ever be able to see eye to eye, or that Hezbollah is not part of the War on Terror, the 9-11 Commission would suggest otherwise.

While it found no operational ties between al Qaeda and Iraq, the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks has concluded that Osama bin Laden's terrorist network had long-running contacts with Iraq's neighbor and historic foe, Iran.

[...] In relation to Iran, commission investigators said intelligence "showed far greater potential for collaboration between Hezbollah and al Qaeda than many had previously thought." Iran is a primary sponsor of Hezbollah, or Party of God, the Lebanon-based anti-Israel group that has been designated a terrorist organization by the United States.

The commission's Republican chairman, former New Jersey governor Thomas H. Kean, also said in a television appearance last week that "there were a lot more active contacts, frankly, with Iran and with Pakistan than there were with Iraq."

But perhaps most startling was the commission's finding that bin Laden may have played a role in the Khobar attack. Although previous court filings and testimony indicated that al Qaeda and Iranian elements had contacts during the 1990s, U.S. authorities have not publicly linked bin Laden or his operatives to that strike, which killed 19 U.S. servicemen. A June 2001 indictment of 14 defendants in the case makes no mention of al Qaeda or bin Laden and lays the organizational blame for the attacks solely on Hezbollah and Iran.

The ability with which states and terrorist groups are able to overcome ideological divides to achieve common strategic goals is quite interesting.

Greg is right that there are too many people offering conveniently simple solutions to the crisis. Nevertheless, he (and those he has cited approvingly) have gone to great lengths to make the crisis appear to be exceedingly complicated. Perhaps this can be forgiven as a case of crisis of confidence among those (including myself) who were mistaken in their assumptions of how Iraq would pan out. Nevertheless, both reactions are also dangerous. The former because it could lead us to act upon the same mistaken assumptions on which we based our plans for how Iraq would turn out. The latter is equally dangerous, however, because it will prevent us from ever taking any action at all. The answer, I suspect, lies somewhere in between these two extremes.

Terrorism Is Terrorism Is Terrorism

2006-07-20T23:56:00.000-04:00

The Times reports that certain groups in Israel have commemorated the 60th anniversary of the bombing of the King David Hotel, at the time the headquarters of British rule, by the "resistance" group Irgun, led by Menachem Begin. 92 people were killed in the blast on July 22, 1946. Netanyahu joined the celebrations, defending the attack against charges that it was terrorism.

Yesterday Mr Netanyahu argued in a speech celebrating the attack that the Irgun were governed by morals, unlike fighters from groups such as Hamas.
“It’s very important to make the distinction between terror groups and freedom fighters, and between terror action and legitimate military action,” he said. “Imagine that Hamas or Hezbollah would call the military headquarters in Tel Aviv and say, ‘We have placed a bomb and we are asking you to evacuate the area’.”

I've got a good deal of respect for Netanyahu, but this claim is rather despicable, in poor taste and, most of all,m poorly timed as Israel is trying to convince the West of the moral rectitude of its fight against Hezbollah. Netanyahu's rhetoric here mirrors that of the Palestinians. Supporters of this attack would likely make two claims to try and distinguish the Irgun attack from "terrorism." The first being that they called ahead of the attack to give warning and allow evacuation of the hotel (the British deny having received advanced warning, but no matter). The second claim likely used to distinguish this attack from "terrorism" is that the attack targeted military, not civilians.

Both of these claims are nonsense. Groups like ETA and, to a lesser degree, the IRA often gave advanced warning of their attacks to allow for evacuation. Is ETA not a terrorist group? Is the IRA not a terrorist group? Second, if you claim it wasn't terrorism because it only targeted military (of course, it killed government officials - civilians - but perhaps they think that is alright too), then you also do not consider the attacks on US and French forces by Hezbollah in Lebanon in the 1980s to be terrorism. Nor do you consider the attacks on the Khobar Towers in 1996 or the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole to be terrorism. Notice Netanyahu didn't use this excuse, because he knows it's completely wrong.

The attack was 60 years ago. Long enough in the past that it could have been forgotten by both sides, but not long enough that it didn't bring back old memories that should have been left in the past. Britain and Israel have good relations now, and Israel needs the West in its fight against the terrorists that threaten us today. The King David Hotel bombing could have been left in the past. At the very least, given the current situation in Lebanon, these individuals and groups could have allowed this anniversary to pass by. That they decided to drag it back into the open, expecially given current events, was in extremely poor taste and exhibits an alarming lack of moral clarity from those who should have known better.

The Multipolar Myth

2006-07-19T23:59:00.000-04:00

In his Guardian article today, liberal internationalist Timothy Garton Ash takes a walk down a path well trodden by realists like Kenneth Waltz and Stephen Walt: claiming that multipolarity in the internatiol system is upon us. Garton Ash tries to out-Waltz Waltz, however, by claiming that multipolarity is already here. His evidence? In order, it appears to be as follows: the US is using its military to evacuate Americans from Lebanon, small groups with access to powerful technology can crash a plane into a building or aim a rocket at Haifa, US popularity in the world has declined and the US is using diplomacy with regards to Iran and North Korea.

The US possesses the mightiest military the world has ever seen, and how is it being used? To evacuate its citizens from Lebanon...

[...]Developments in technologies with violent potential mean that very small groups of people can challenge powerful established states, whether by piloting an aeroplane into the World Trade Centre in New York, targeting a missile at Haifa, taking on the US military in Iraq, bombing the London underground, or squirting sarin gas into the Tokyo subway.

[...]Developments in information technology and globalised media mean that the most powerful military in the history of the world can lose a war, not on the battlefield of dust and blood, but on the battlefield of world opinion. If you look at the precipitate decline in US popularity since 2002, charted by the Pew Global Attitudes polls even in countries traditionally sympathetic to Washington, you could argue that this is what has been happening to the US.

[...]North Korea test-fires missiles capable of carrying the nuclear warheads that it's already making? Washington says: come back to the six-party talks! Iran resumes uranium enrichment? Washington says: we're going to take you to the UN! Hizbullah launches missiles at Israel? Washington says: the hour of diplomacy has come!

Of course, none of this has any bearing on the actual balance of power in the international system. The military evacuating Americans from Lebanon a sign of multipolarity? How exactly? That people can take down a building or fire a rocket at another city has little bearing on the overall balance of power. The closest it comes to being relevant is to hint at the danger of WMD in the nads of terrorists. Nevertheless, this is a problem that most of the world, at least those that recognize it as a threat, still depdends on the US to solve. Even still, it's still questionable whether a chemical attack on an American city would really alter the international balance of power. It would certainly kill lots of people, and it would certainly create a great deal of panic, but alter the balance of power? Not really - the reason being that most of the other contenders for positions of power in a multipolar world (Europe, Russia, India) recognize that they are targets too. They'd have to spend more time preventing attacks on their homeland, leaving them little time to capitalize on America's chemical attack-induced weakness.

And of course, the Tokyo sarin-gas attack was more than a decade ago now, and 9/11 was 5 years ago. Garton Ash is obviously trying to prove that this new multipolarity is the result of Bush's reckless actions, so I don't know how Bush's policies as governor of Texas in 1995 in any way influenced an apocalyptic cult in Japan to release sarin gas in the Tokyo subway system. Finally, Garton Ash sees any hint of the use of diplomacy by the Bush administration as the result of its recognition that the world has moved from unipolarity to multipolarity on its watch. This is a rather silly notion.

First, and this admittedly may be something the administration took too long to figure out, a position of strength can often be shown through diplomacy as well as military action. Garton Ash points out that (because of our supposed weakness), we've called for North Korea to come back to six-party talks. What he doesn't mention is that North Korea didn't want six-party talks to resume, but we won out. What North Korea really wants is bilateral talks with just the United States. Why, you ask? Because it realizes that the US is the only country in the position (ie, with the power) to give North Korea what it wants. That the administration has refused to allow North Korea to have bilateral negotiations until it suspends its reprocessing/enrichment shows that the US still has the upper hand on that matter. Obviously this does not mean that the problem will be resolved anytime soon, but it does suggest that Garton Ash's claim that all diplomacy is indciative of multipolarity is a bit ridiculous. Even in diplomacy there are positions of strength to be had.

As much as Garton Ash, Jacques Chirac, Putin, Hu Jintao, Yevgeny Primakov or anyone else would like to see a multipolar world, simply saying it is so does not make it true. The United States continues to hold significant power in the economic, political and military realms. (To read more about this, the go-to person is William Wohlforth). There have been no serious attempts at balancing American power. The much ballyhooed "soft balancing," whereby other states that cannot meet America's "hard" military power attempt to frustrate American foreign policy on "soft power" issues, has been little more than a fantasy though up by realists unable to explain the lack of any serious attempt at balancing

The case against soft balancing is best laid out by Gerard Alexander and Keir Lieber). While the soft balancing advocates claim economic statecraft can exclude the US by focusing more on regional economic alliances, Alexander and Lieber show that the "US has been one of the primary drivers of trade regionalization, not the excluded party." Where soft balancing advocates claim complaints brought against the US in international economic and financial bodies indicate attempts to counter US economic power, Alexander and Lieber show that these complaints are brought by countries seeking to gain access to US markets, not adversely affect the US economy. Finally, the US still maintains significant influence over the international financial institutions on which most countries are economically dependent. Witness Russia's long period of lobbying the US for entry into the WTO.

Soft balancing advocates have also pointed to Turkey's refusal to grant the US-led coalition basing rights there prior to the invasion of Iraq as evidence of their claims. The very short conventional war, however, showed how little this affected US warfighting needs. Of course, we have plenty of troubles in Iraq now, but none of them can be attributed to a need for access to bases to station our troops. It can be safely said that Turkey's decision had very little adverse effect on the US. While it was an irritant in the short-term, it had no noticeable long-term effect. Moreover, when the US does pull its troops out of a country overseas, as much as soft-balancers may like to flash those opinion polls, the same countries end up protesting the decision. As Alexander and Lieber point out, they recognize the economic and strategic benefits of having US bases on their territory. country denies the US basing rights in its territory, five others step up and offer their territory.

Finally, by trying to "tie down" the US through international institutions, other countries essentially shoot themselves in the foot. It is extremely unlikely the UN will be able to stop the US from taking an action it deems to be vital to its national security, and by doing little more than irritating the US, the purported soft-balancers increase the chances that the US will be more likely to find little value in the UN on any issue, even on less vital interests on which it may have otherwise been willing to work with the UN. Soft balancing, therefore, is mostly non-existent, and where it does exist, it is mostly counter-productive.

The most common claim of the return of multipolarity essentially straddles the line of soft-balancing and hard-balancing -- if it even existed, that is. This is the much vaunted Moscow-Beijing alliance. The two countries tried to use this as proof of a returning multipolar world in the 1990s, giving birth to the Primakov doctrine that multipolarity would be best for the world, but it collapsed in a heap as Primakov was forced to make a quick exit from office by the end of the decade.

Ironically, the most used evidence of the power of this alliance, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, began (as the Shanghai Five) largely to fight Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism in the Central Asian region. In general, it was relatively unsuccessful. After 9/11, however, its members realized that any fight against fundamentalism in the region would have to include the US - for the obvious reasons. Therefore, the one institution that has been offered up with the greatest frequency as evidence of the Russian-Chinese threat to American supremacy, had to eventually bring in the United States to help it achieve its own objectives. To claim such an organization is the answer to American unipolarity, no matter how much it can achieve through petro-politics, simply shows a lack of seriousness about the entire matter.

Interestingly, Gurmeet Kanwal of New Delhi's Centre for Air Power Studies had an op-ed in the India Tribune yesterday with more insight on the same subject.

Though Russia is the foremost supplier of military hardware to China, there has been no major military and strategic cooperation between the two countries. The relationship is basically a patron-client, buyer-seller relationship with limited transfer of technology to manufacture under license. It will be recalled that the Chinese had debunked former Russian Prime Minister Primakov’s proposal of a China-Russia-India triangle.

This is not to say the United States can save the world on its own. There are a lot of serious national and international security threats on the agenda today. A lot of these do not simply affect the United States, but a number of other countries as well. It is true that this administration could have been more diplomatic, especially in its first term. At the same time, however, it would be extremely helpful if these other countries, that have a great deal of influence to wield in various hotspots around the world, stop talking about how powerful they are and actually take some action.

Debating Democracy

2006-07-17T02:56:00.000-04:00

The folks over at NRO's The Corner have been having a spirited debate about the efficacy of democratization as a counterterrorism method in light of recent events in Lebanon. Andy McCarthy started the debate by asking if fighting terrorism through democratization migh be - and might have always been - a mistake.

"So now the Lebanese democracy can't control Hezbollah (which has been freely elected and controls about a fifth of its legislature), while the Palestinian Authority IS Hamas (the Palestinian people having democratically put them in power)."

This is the same mistake I'm worried the administration has been willing to make - the assumption that elections equals democracy. In either the 2002 NSS or the 2003 National Counterterrorism Strategy (I forget which - maybe both), the administration broke states down into three categories: states that were willing and able to fight terrorists operating within its borders (most developed countries), states that, regardless of whether they were able, weren't willing to fight terrorists operating within their borders (syria, Iran, etc), and states that were willing, but not able to fight terrorists operating within their borders. States such as the Philippines and Indonesia fit into this last category. The Arroyo government in Philippines got US help in going after Abu Sayyaf and other Islamic militants operating in the south. Indonesia got US help in fighting Jemaah Islamiya. For whatever reason, however, we never gave post-Cedar Revolution Lebanon much help. True, perhaps they didn't want any, but I'm willing to bet that the West more or less dropped Lebanon after it held large demostrations and elected its own government. Lebanon may have been on the road to being a democracy, but there was not much it could do to strengthen itself enough to offer the services incumbent on any government - the same services Hezbollah had been offering in the south of Lebanon to win over support. This wasn't a failure of democracy to fight terrorism, it was a failure to ensure a fledgling democracy move beyond elections and be able to govern effectively.

This is a similar point Cliff May makes in a response to McCarthy on The Corner.
And finally, yes, Hamas was elected, but, no, that doesn’t mean Gaza and the West Bank are “democratic.” Democracy requires the rule of law, an independent judiciary, a free press, and many other attributes. If someone got up on a soapbox in Gaza City tomorrow and said: “Vote for me, I’m the peace candidate!” he’d be shot dead within an instant and there’d be no arrest or trial. That’s not what happens in a liberal democracy.
The discussion also touched on the way in which democracy does (or does not) fight terrorism. McCarthy says the in response to a comment by John Podhoretz:
John, with due respect, terrorists have managed to strike us, repeatedly, from within our own 230-year-old democracy (where they have managed to plot for years without detection before attacking). The beach heads for the 9/11 plot were in Hamburg and Madrid. The current hotspots are in London, Paris, Milan and Amsterdam. Check out yesterday's Wall Street Journal op-ed by Swapan Dasgupta about India's emerging terrorist nightmare — it's homegrown.
McCarthy came to my school earlier this year to talk, along with two professors from the law school, about the legal aspect of the war on terror. At the end of his talk, however, he brought out this same argument. I thought this then, and this new debate reminds me: McCarthy is arguing against something of a strawman here. The contention has never been that terrorists can not live, plan and operate within the borders of a democracy. I live in a democracy, but if I decided that I wanted to go kill some people, the fact that I voted last Novemeber in an election will not stop the thought from running through my head. McCarthy continues knocking down straw-men:

"On the other hand, selling democratization as a complete, self-contained response to terrorism is nothing beyond a more appealing manifestation of the regnant political correctness that induces us to call this enterprise the "war on terror" lest we offend anyone by mentioning who the enemy is"

This, has really never been the case. Even with its commitment to democratization, therefore, the administration has not ended counterterrorist operations. I don't even know if there is an official count of the number of countries in which US forces are either killing terrorists themselves or teaching the local forces how to kill terrorists (again, back to Philippines and Indonesia like I mentioned above). The focus of democratization is not, and never has been, on the terrorists themselves. Democracy is not going to change how they think or act. The trick is to find a way to decrease their support; to make it easier for us to get at the terrorists to root them out.

In his book The Case for Democracy, Natan Sharansky delineates between two segments of the population in what he calls a "Fear Society:" the true believers and those who have no alternative. The focus of democratization, therefore, should not be on the "true believers," the terrorists themselves, but rather on the general populace, and how to decrease its support for the terrorists so as to make it easier for the military to clean up. There's the administration's claim that democracies allow an alternative to terrorism as a forum for letting out ones grievances, political ambitions, etc. I think there is a great deal of truth to this, but I also think it has a lot to do with something a lot more simple: access to the necessities for everyday survival. So much of the support enjoyed by Islamic fundamentalist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah comes from their ability to provide basic services for those willing to support them. Where the dysfunctional Middle Eastern state fails so miserably in providing the basic services that, as a state s government, it should be obligated to provide for its people, the mosque steps in and fulfills that role. As a result, the people's allegiance is transferred from the state to to mosque or Islamist group.

There is no doubt, however, that democracies, even somewhat weak ones, govern better than authoritarian regimes. The following is an excerpt from my thesis that I wrote on the same subject.
"For the handful of examples of authoritarian states successfully promoting economic development and democratization, there have been significantly more authoritarian states that have sustained sub-par economic growth and little sign of political liberalization. In fact, the record indicates that low-income countries would be better served skipping the authoritarian stage and democratizing instead. Low-income democracies and democratizing states have “outperformed their authoritarian counterparts on a full range of development indicators…including life expectancy, literacy, access to clean drinking water, agricultural productivity, infant mortality."
Since a democratic regime is beholden to the entire population, and not just the political, ethnic or economic faction that put it in power, it is forced to provide services to the entire population. When the average citizen is forced to support a certain movement or group because it provides medical services or clothing for his children, his support will not transfer back to the central government until he is sure that government can provide the same services. Authoritarian governments do not have the track record of being able to provide there services - or, indeed, being willing to provide these services to those not in the specific political or ethnic groups it counts on for protection and loyalty.

If you were to put a democratic regime in government as opposed to an authoritarian one, a democratic regime that was at the point where it could provide these services to its people, you can bet support for the terrorist groups would decline sharply. A terrorist group that loses its support among the public is left open and exposed to the states military and police forces. No longer can terrorists hide among the local population and count on those people to keep silent about who among them is a terrorist and who isn't. With this, they lose one of their most effective weapons - being able to cause the world to question the government's position on the moral high ground because it is forced to bomb indiscriminately - civilian and terrorist alike - because they can't tell who is who.

No one argues it is a cure-all. Democracy does not eliminate the need for a military response to bomb the hell out of the bad guys. Democracy does, however, make it far more easy to implement this military response, b/c people are increasingly willing to point out who the bad guys are. Democracy does not affect the terrorist response so much as it affects the response of the rest of the population.

One last thing: McCarthy raises the (legitimate) question of whether we really want to see democracies in places like Egypt and Saudi Arabia given the likely alternative. Unfortunately this is true - but only because so many of those arguing against democratization have made it true (I don't intend this as an attack on McCarthy - I have no idea what his position has been on this subject over the years). The reason this is the likely outcome in these states is because of decades of American support for dictators. While there is little we can do about that now, if the United States continues to support oppressive dictators rather than liberal democrats, it will make this drawback to democracy a self-fulfilling prophecy. It will not promote democracy because uncertainty about what the outcome will be necessitates supporting "friendly" dictators, while the supposrt for these dictators will create the conditions whereby the outcome will be too uncertain to allow for democracy promotion.

A Tory For Saddam?

2006-07-08T05:03:00.000-04:00

Twice a year, the British Prime Minister comes before the Liaison Committee, consisting of the heads of all of the parliamentary committees, to discuss his administration's policies. It's a much more candid and (relatively) unscripted exchange compared to Prime Minister's Questions, and it covers a number of issues at a much more sophisticated level than does Prime Minister's Questions, where members vie for the opportunity to ask the Prime Minister what he plans to do about the random fellow in that member's constituency who stubbed his toe walking down the sidewalk because a crack had formed in the pavement and it had become uneven.

Tony Blair went before the Liaison Committee on Tuesday, and I caught C-SPAN's coverage of it tonight. It was really very fascinating, covering a range of issues from Northern Ireland, to immigration issues, to Iraq and Afghanistan to the US-British relationship. If C-SPAN has coverage of it on its website, I would recommend watching it. Tony Blair looked incredibly composed, leaning back in his chair, he might as well have had his feet up on the table. The committee members, however, were breaking into sweats, shuffling papers and fidgeting.

In any case, one exchange caught me by surprise. Blair had responded to earlier questions by telling stories of his trips to Iraq and his conversations with British soldiers and Iraqi government officials. Edward Leigh, the conservative member from Gainesborough, and chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, asked a question that was intended to point out the security problems in Iraq. I don't have a transcript, but this BBC report sums up the exchange rather well.

Tory Edward Leigh challenged Mr Blair over the number of Iraqis who had died since the invasion and asked whether life really was better than pre-war.

[...]However, Mr Leigh, chairman of the influential Commons public accounts committee, said thousands of Iraqis had died since the conflict, and while he had been able to walk around Baghdad safely in Saddam's time, no-one could do the same now.

There was only one response to make to this astounding remark, and Blair nailed it - one of the very few emotional outbursts he let loose.

Mr Blair said that was because Mr Leigh was a Westerner and not an Iraqi who disagreed with the former dictator. If he had been an Iraqi who disagreed with Saddam Hussein he would have ended up in a mass grave, said Mr Blair.
On the Iraqi deaths, the prime minister snapped angrily: "They are not dead as a result of this invasion or the removal of Saddam.

"They are dead as a result of the actions of a criminal minority. Our job is to stand with the Iraqis against the terrorists."

Mr Blair said the politicians he talked to in Iraq had been elected by Iraqis, and said if people had wanted to they could have voted for the "Saddam party".

Leigh continued to protest for a while that Iraqis were better off under Saddam becausue HE had been able to walk around safely. With regards to Blair's stories about his visits to Iraq, Leigh asked him when he last spoke to an "ordinary Iraqi." Blair admitted that this wasn't possible for him on his visits, but Leigh had no place to take satisfaction in this answer. Blair rightly said that he had talked numerous times with the elected Iraqi government officials, picked by the "ordinary Iraqis." By his own admission, Leigh's only trip had been during Saddam's regime. I'd be interested in learning who invited him to visit Iraq, and what the purpose of his trip was. A number of the other Conservatives on the committee made a point of reminding Blair that they had supported his decision to go into Iraq, and still do, while still asking tough questions about government policy. That was a great relief to me, because I sure hope Leigh does not represent the current state of the Tory party.

Another Leak

2006-07-08T04:31:00.000-04:00

Speaking of embarassing polemicists, not long after writing my last post, I caught the first 15 minutes or so of the Countdown with Keith Olbermann midnight repeat. Unfortunately, a transcript won't be up until monday, but the first story was about the news today of the threat to attack the PATH train tunnels between NY and NJ. The former sportscaster used his favorite tactic of arguing that the administration released the news of the threat, even though it hadn't advanced very far in the planning stages, in order to perpetuate a climate of fear in the American populace, presumably because it's an election year.

The only problem, of course, is that the administration did not disclose the news of this planned attack. Someone leaked it to the Daily News, who printed it up in a big story this morning. That also explains why we found out about it while it was still at such an early stage. The people at the press conference in New York City today included Mayor Bloomberg, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, Superintendent of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey Samuel Plumeri and SAIC of the FBI's New York office, Mark Mershon. There was not a single administration official. Only after the Daily News published the story, and after the press conference, did the FBI and Department of Homeland Security issue a statement.

As an aside, ff you think back over the last 5 years, the administration has made public very few instances where they thought a terrorist attack was in the works or could be possible. I remember a Somali immigrant who was accused of plotting to bomb a Columbus, OH shopping mall in 2004, the possible plot against the Citigroup, Prudential, World Bank, NYSE and IMF buildings in New York, New Jersey and Washington, the plot to bomb the Bank of America Tower in Los Angeles, the Miami plot from a couple weeks ago, and now this one. (The color coded scale was also used a fair amount, particularly with regards to the NY subway system, but news of "color changes" has been very scarce in recent months and years, indicating that that was more an attempt to show that the newly-established DHS was "doing something," and certainly not to affect political races). So, in all, that was 5 plots that were made public in all their detail in the last 5 years. (I'm not saying that was all of them, but those were certainly the big ones - if I missed some, please let me know). Hardly the use of a political tool by the administration.

Going back to today's news, the FBI was, in fact, upset that the story was leaked. They realized it was in the early planning stages, and there was a great deal of information that they, and intelligence agencies of other countries involved, had yet to learn about the plot itself, the individuals planning it and the connections they had with other terrorists and terrorist plots.

Authorities said they hadn't intended to release details about the plot this early and that whoever leaked the information had compromised the FBI's relationship with some foreign intelligence services.
The person who leaked the details is"clearly someone who doesn't understand the fragility of international relations,'' Mershon said. `We've had a number of uncomfortable questions and some upsetment with these foreign intelligence services that had been working with us on a daily basis.''

In the wake of the New York Times, Washington Post and other newspapers printing stories about the NSA programs, the prisons in Europe and SWIFT, if those who have been unyielding in their defense of the public's right to know might be willing to admit that publishing this story did more harm than good in terms of the damage done to our relationships with foreign intelligence services as well as the additional intelligence we could have gotten by continued surveillance of these individuals and their accomplices. If the answer is no, then I ask, with regards to the public's right to know, what did we get out of this news? People like Olbermann were criticizing the administration for letting us know. So how can the administration possible win? Apparently, it can't.

Who's The Conservative?

2006-07-07T21:51:00.000-04:00

There have been a number of divisions in the Republican party that have emerged in recent years. In foreign policy, some claim that the Bush administration has betrayed conservatism by running around the world trying to solve the world's problems. They argue that democratization is not conservative, that democracy can not take hold in every society on earth. These conservatives generally make up the realist foreign policy camp. These conservatives also generally include everyone at the CATO Institute and even some people at Heritage. Many of these conservatives probably voted for Bush in 2000, but then voted for Kerry in 2004. On the other side of the foreign policy divide are the neoconservatives, who have great faith in the power of democracy to solve the world's problems. These conservatives are the ones you find at AEI, Weekly Standard and on the Project for the New American Century list of signatories. These are also the ones who have been accused of not really being conservative. On social policy, you have the more libertarian-minded Republicans on one side and the social conservatives on the other. Then there are the Republicans who count themselves as fiscal conservatives above all else.

I've been reading Right Nation: Conservative Power in America, written by two British writers from The Economist. (It came out a couple years ago; I'm just getting to it now). The authors' powers of observation are simply astounding, and the Introduction alone has enough information and insight to spend hours considering. One point I want to mention, however, is their description of the roots of modern day conservatism, namely Edmund Burke.

"The creed of Edmund Burke, [conservatism's] most eloquent proponent, might be crudely reduced to six principles: a deep suspicion of the power of the state, a preference for liberty over equality, patriotism, a belief in established institutions and hierarchies, skepticism about the idea of progress and elitism."

The writers argue that modern day conservatives still adhere to the first three, but have taken opposite positions on the last three. Modern day conservatives in America, they argue, are generally suspicious of the establishment and elites, and have an endless supply of optimism about the future. They offer one exception to the idea of optimism, however, saying that the neoconservatives, which they call "Straussians," are, like Leo Strauss, inherently pessimistic about modernity.

This had me thinking back to a grad school class I took, in which the professor (a leading realist) tried to push the same point: that neoconservatives are inherently pessimistic about America's future. This was generally the realists' attempt to lay claim to the (optimistic) Reagan legacy that the modern and neoconservatives were also trying (more realistically, in my opinion) to claim. (The best example of realists trying to claim the Reagan legacy was the book America Alone) I always had trouble accepting this, because if you read stuff written by neoconservatives, they are full of optimism about what they think they can accomplish. They don't have a pessimistic view of America itself, but simply think it's been taken in the wrong direction (just like every other political/ideological group thinks). Instead, it is many realists who are the pessimists.

Realists are generally broken up into two camps, the human-nature realists and the structural realists. The human-nature realists, like Hans Morgenthau, argue that man is inherently evil, and as such, war and conflict will be an inevitable occurrence in international relations. Structural realists, which include many of the modern-day realists, argue that the structure of the international system, namely that it is anarchic, makes it a self-help system in which each state will be looking to maximize their power at the expense of the power of other countries. (There are of course, the defensive and offensive split within the structural realist camp, and even more subtle distinctions beyond that level, but for our purposes this generalization will suffice).

Read "Back to the Future: Instability in Europe after the Cold War. by John Mearsheimer for an apocalyptic vision of Europe in which every country has nuclear weapons pointed at each other from all directions (and this after the Cold War was over!). Read anything by Kenneth Waltz, who has argued for years that the end of American supremacy was just around the corner. Read the self-flagellating accounts of liberals and realists about everything America has supposedly done wrong, read the accounts of how the European Union is supposedly becoming the new superpower. Many realists are also all too often big on criticism and short on solutions. In fact, their solutions are often to just not do something. Many, such as Mearsheimer, see war between other states as inevitable regardless of whether American troops are there to prevent such an occurrence. As such, we should draw down troop levels at bases overseas so that when war does break out American troops aren't in the middle of the fight. Other solutions include to not expand NATO because it would risk antagonizing Russia. They have little faith in the changing power of democracy, and as such see little need for an organization like NATO now that the Cold War is over.

Many neoconservatives, however, see democracy less as an ends in and of itself, and more as a powerful tool to shape the world for good. Many liberal hawks take similar positions, but neoconservatives and those allied with them have a much more lasting faith in democracy than even liberals. Democracy has changed countries for the better, it has taken root in countries of all cultures, civilizations, levels of political and economic development and means of implementation. Democracy has taken root in some countries at gunpoint, as well as through means of general change. This reality, therefore, negates the realists' claims that democracy cannot take hold in certain countries. Their opposition to democratization, therefore, is the result of a greater pessimism towards the power of democracy to enact change. With the record of what democracy has done in the last couple decades, who is really being pessimistic here?

Neoconservatives, and their political allies, therefore follow the first three attributes of Burke's conservatism (you can, of course argue against the first one given the current administration's record on government spending, but that's been the one area where he's attracted the most criticism from his supporters. In any case, that's for another time), and have rejected the latter three attributes of Burke's conservatism, namely the rejection of the establishment and elites and a pessimistic view of man and progress. Therefore, modern conservatives, including neoconservatives, embody all the positive attributes of Burke's conservatismm (suspicion of the state, patriotism, liberty over equality) and reject the old and outdates attributes, namely pessimism about America and mankind, support for the establishment and elitism). That sounds pretty good to me.

I recommend The Right Nation if you have not read it. As I said, it gives you a lot to think about, and I'm sure I'll have more comments as I go through it.

That Pesky Lobby

2006-07-07T00:47:00.000-04:00

Foreign Policy has a number of articles in its latest issue as part of a roundtable (subscription required for all but one article) on the question of the "Israel Lobby," which has recently received prominence with the article in the London Review of Books and the Kennedy School working paper written by John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen Walt of Harvard University. Foreign Policy asks the question, "Does the Israel Lobby have too much power" in American politics. Taking the affirmative are Professors Mearsheimer and Walt, along with Zbigniew Brzezinski. Taking the opposite side are Cheney's former Deputy National Security Advisor and professor Princeton, Aaron Friedberg, Shlomo Ben-Ami, a former Israeli cabinet official under Ehud Barak, and Dennis Ross, former Middle Eastern envoy under President Clinton.

I have yet to read all of the articles, but will do so in the near future. In the meantime, I'll focus on the original article by Professors Mearsheimer and Walt. Some people think it was anti-Semitic, but I am not one of them. I just think it was wrong, and incredibly sloppy social science. In my mind, this article is a black mark on the work done over the decades by these two academics. Not all of it I have agreed with, but it has all been written at a consistently high standard that this work simply does not even come close to meeting.

Methodological Flaws

With regards to methodological flaws, the historian in me cringes at a purportedly scholarly piece of writing taken almost entirely from newspaper articles. I've noticed a disheartening trend in international relations scholarship in recent years where sourcing seems to come entirely from newspapers. Read through an edition of International Security, for example, to find evidence of this trend. I wouldn't be willing to stake money on this, but a lot of articles with this type of sourcing have happened to be ones heavily critical of the current administration. Of course, if this is what they set out to do, there has been all sorts of cannon fodder in the newspapers over the last couple years, but that does not mean it has been right. All sorts of speculation, unnamed sourcing and inaccurate information makes its way into press accounts. Professors from institutions like the University of Chicago and Harvard should not be using this as their primary material for the scholarly work.

In his rebuttal of the Mearsheimer/Walt aritcle, Alan Dershowitz raises this same point. There is very little, if, indeed, anything in the way of primary research done for this article. Neither Mearsheimer nor Walt appear to actually have talked to anyone involved in the policy-making process with regards to Israel. As a result, there are serious historical errors and quotes taken out of context that are referenced in the article. Certainly, such research will not always unveil the truth, but it would probably require some sort of analysis on the part of the authors and would do wonders to raise the scholarly level of the article.

Additionally, while I understand documents on the decision making process that led to the Iraq War are probably hard to get ones hands on (not so much the case for documents dealing with our relationship with Israel in past decades though), there are, nevertheless, many VERY in depth accounts out ther of the decision making process that led to the war, based on original research, have been written. To take just two examples of such authors, Bob Woodward and George Packer. I don't know if Mearsheimer and Walt even bothered to try and get interviews or to try and see if there were any declassified documents to get their hands on, but I tend to doubt it. A paper like this simply should not be written from one's office in Chicago or Cambridge using little more than a Lexis-Nexis search. As Dershowitz pointed out - that can easily lead to silly factual/historical errors.

Finally, Mearsheimer and Walt define the Israel Lobby as "a loose coalition of individuals and organizations who openly work to push U.S. foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction." To begin with, their use of the word "loose" is the overstatement of the year. Members of the Israel Lobby range from neo-conservatives to former Clintonites like Martin Indyk, who neo-conservative publications have treated with near-contempt, calling him "Arafat's 'Yes-man.'" To believe that these two groups of people, with vastly different ideological roots, could ever agree (even without knowing it) on a certain direction in which to drive US policy towards Israel is laughable. Thus, the major flaw of the thesis - there is no causality involve - a cardinal sin in the halls of the political science buildings at Chicago and Harvard. Mearsheimer and Walt name a lof names, but they never show a coherent link between these people and the policies that result from their actions, other than to show a few loose groupings, for example around AIPAC. .

Substantive Flaws

Now, getting on to the substantive aspects of the Mearsheimer and Walt paper. I'll focus first on the question of whether Israel is a strategic burden or not. Mearsheimer and Walt put forth a number of arguments as to why Israel is a strategic burden. (As Daniel Drezner pointed out at one point, however, the never consider the benefits of Israel as an ally, therefore making it impossible to determine if Israel is a NET strategic burden or not)

1) "The first Gulf War revealed the extent to which Israel was becoming a strategic burden. The US could not use Israeli bases without rupturing the anti-Iraq coalition, and had to divert resources (e.g. Patriot missile batteries) to prevent Tel Aviv doing anything that might harm the alliance against Saddam Hussein."

This is hardly indicative of how Israel was a strategic burden. More so, it's indicative of how our need to court Arab opinion was (and still is) a strategic burden. We obviously could have defeated the Iraqi army on our own and pushed them out of Kuwait. Instead, we decided to build a big coalition, and to have Arab troops "liberate" Kuwait City (after we had done all the hard work). That was why we needed to keep Israel out of the war. We had to play nice with a bunch of thug dictators, so we had to sideline Israel. What does that have to do with what Israel does or doesn't have to offer on its own? This doesn't explain why Israel shouldn't be an American ally due to a conflict in interests, but rather that our alliance with Israel causes us problems elsewhere. I don't find that reason enough to drop Israel - to do that I would need them to explain to me, independent of outside factors, why Israel is a strategic burden.

On a side note, if we're talking the contributions Arab governments made in terms of military support in Gulf I, I'd personally rather have the far more professional and effective IDF fighting with me than the Syrians, Egyptians or Saudis.

2) "More important, saying that Israel and the US are united by a shared terrorist threat has the causal relationship backwards: the US has a terrorism problem in good part because it is so closely allied with Israel, not the other way around. Support for Israel is not the only source of anti-American terrorism, but it is an important one, and it makes winning the war on terror more difficult."

This has been used for the last 5 years by an array of people, primarily Europeans, who insist that if we just had an equitable solution to the Israeli-Palestinian crisis, al Qaeda would go away. In reality, this is a strawman. Terrorists aren't coming from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Yemen or elsewhere because of the Palestinians' plight. The one thing the Palestinian issue does provide is great public relations. In fact, many would argue that's not much of a reason at all, including Osama bin Laden who has made clear that it is the presence of American troops on the Arabian peninsula that is driving America's terrorism problem. Professor Mearsheimer's colleague at Chicago, Robert Pape, has also argued that, if support for Israel was much of a driving motivation for suicide terrorism against America, you would expect to see the most attacks on US interests coming from Hamas and/or major attacks by al Qaeda on Israeli interests. You don't see either of those. Mearsheimer and Walt could still be right, but they spend so little time laying out their arguments for why Israel is a strategic burden and far too much time detailing which columnist and which assistant secretary of defense is a member of the "lobby." The latter doesn't tell us much, but elaboration on the former would.

3) "Iran’s nuclear ambitions do not pose a direct threat to the US. If Washington could live with a nuclear Soviet Union, a nuclear China or even a nuclear North Korea, it can live with a nuclear Iran. And that is why the Lobby must keep up constant pressure on politicians to confront Tehran."

Note that one sentence starting with "If" and ending with "Iran" is their entire argument on this point. Whether the US could tolerate a nuclear Iran is a contentious issue, on which you could write an entire book. To sum it up in this throw-away sentence makes a mockery of the whole issue. Like I said above, more time elucidating their arguments like these, less time naming names on who is a member of the "lobby" and who isn't.

On a side note, many have pointed out the the two leading "realists" in the field of IR suddenly managed to find the one issue in all of IR that is explained first and foremost by domestic politics rather than the structure of the international system. Rest assured, Mearsheimer and Walt aren't leaving realism. Note how they bunch the Soviet Union, China, North Korea and Iran together in a nuclear club, as if none of the members vary at all in implications for US security. No internal or external (other than the structure of the system) factors specific to any one of those countries allows for any variation at all in how the US should deal with these states.

4) "A final reason to question Israel’s strategic value is that it does not behave like a loyal ally. Israeli officials frequently ignore US requests and renege on promises (including pledges to stop building settlements and to refrain from ‘targeted assassinations’ of Palestinian leaders)."

Israel is an ally, not our lap dog. We weren't overly thrilled when Britain attacked Argentina over the Falklands or when France and Britain tried to start a war over the Suez, but we were bright enough to realize that things like this were going to happen, b/c even the interests of your closest allies don't always coincide with yours. There's plenty of things we wish our European partners would do and wouldn't do. Heck, by Mearsheimer and Walt's logic, France and Germany are also "strategic burdens" for not behaving like a "loyal ally."

Also, to argue that Israel is not allowed to pursue its counterterrorist policy of targeted assassinations (regardless of whether you think its effective or not) when the US is doing the exact same thing to al any Qaeda leaders we find is downright hypocritical. Israel has had a terrorism problem far longer than we have. We can't just barge in, insist everything is to be done "our way" and act shocked when Israel disagrees with that course of action.

5) "Israel is hardly the only country that spies on the US, but its willingness to spy on its principal patron casts further doubt on its strategic value."

This is entirely irrelevant. We spy on every one of our allies in some way, shape or form - and they do the same to us. Go back to Feb/March 2003 when we were trying to get the second resolution passed in the Security Council to authorize war in Iraq. The Observer "broke" a story about how the US was spying on the UN delegation of the Security Council members to find out ahead of time how they were going to vote. The reaction from those countries was overwhelmingly one of indifference because they knew they'd done the same thing to us many times before.

Like I said before, I think there's also a strong moral case to be made for support for Israel - not that Israel is perfect, but that it is far and away morally superior to its neighbors. Mearsheimer and Walt actually (unwittingly) recognize this. When they lament that there is no debate on the issue in the US, they cite the far more robust debate that takes place in Israel itself. By recognizing this Mearsheimer and Walt implicitly recognize the key feature that makes Israel morally superior to its neighbors: its ability to engage in domestic debate and have that debate affect government policy when they recognize that they have been wrong on an issue. This debate drove a number of governments back to the negotiating table in the 1990s, caused a great deal of change in the treatment of Arab Israelis over the years and played a major role in the eventual withdrawal from Gaza last year and the formation of Kadima. Therefore, despite insisting that Israel is, at best, the moral equal of its neighbors, Mearsheimer and Walt recognize otherwise elsewhere in their paper