# Posted 10:23 PM by David Adesnik  

SPARTAN TRIUMPH: Andrew Sullivan wryly notes that the stunning British victory in Basra is evidence of how effective an army that respect homosexuals can be.

Sullivan asks: "How did [the British] manage not to collapse as a military force? After all, they allow openly gay soldiers in their units, thus undermining unit cohesion, destroying morale, wrecking troops' privacy and making it impossible to fight. A miracle against all the odds, I suppose."

I guess now we know why the Republican Guard failed to demonstrate all that much unit cohesion, morale, or battlefield effectiveness: they just didn't have enough homosexuals. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:16 PM by David Adesnik  

THE ARABIAN ORWELL: Thus far, both the mainstream media and the blogosphere have held up Iraqi Information Minister Mohammad Saeed al-Sahhaf as an object of ridicule. In fact,

During al-Sahhaf's denials on Monday, an Arabic translator for one of Britain's global satellite TV stations couldn't control himself and broke out laughing on the air.

Fair enough. I'm not going to defend al-Sahhaf the way I did Peter Arnett. Even Robert Fisk is struggling to find a good word to say about the man.

But I want to do is think seriously for a moment about the political implications of al-Sahhaf's performance as the public face of Iraqi resistance. The first commentator to think seriously about al-Sahhaf's role has been Slate's Tim Noah, who made a compelling case that al-Sahhaf says what he says to order to turn back the wrath of Qusay Hussein and other Saddam henchmen who might have his head if he faithfully reported Iraqi defeats. (Thanks to Josh for the link.)

Presuming that Noah is correct, al-Sahhaf's behavior bears a striking resemblance to that of high officials in both Stalinist Russia and Maoist China, who faced the simple choice of fabricating the truth or being killed. According to one historian, the death of 30 million Chinese during the Great Leap Forward stemmed in great part from a nationwide effort to provide Beijing with false reports of agricultural and industrial success that confirmed its predictions of national greatness. Acting on such reports, Mao and his inner circle made further predictions of success, and so on.

While the dysfunction of totalitarian regimes is now a matter of conventional wisdom, this was not so until well after the end of the Cold War. Realists such as George Kennan and Henry Kissinger long insisted that the Politburo's immunity from public opinion enabled it to carry out foreign initiatives far more daring and sophisticated than those of the United States. Given the apparent success of the Soviet Union in military affairs, such conclusion were hard to resist. Thus, in the mid-1980s, policy intellectuals found themselves enraptured by Paul Kennedy's "Rise and Fall of the Great Powers", which foresaw American becoming a victim of 'imperial overstetch'.

As critics are fond of saying, Kennedy got things half-right; the Cold War did end when one of the superpowers fell prey to imperial overstetch. Kennedy just failed to guess which one. While I would still hesitate to say that the Coalition victory in the current war has come at less cost then expected, the low cost of that victory surely reflects the dysfunction of the Iraqi regime.

The analysis of al-Sahhaf's lies must not end with the fall of Baghdad, however. While such lies may be an indication of the Ba'ath regime's dysfunction, they may now become a direct cause of other regime transitions in the Middle East.

I expect that al-Sahhaf will soon become a symbol for all those Arabs who have long suspected that their own state-run media tell nothing but lies. Instead of wondering whether the endless repetition of such lies reflects the kernel of truth at their core, Arabs will become more confident that such lies can be unmasked when confronted with force.

It is hard to know what effect this changing awareness will have on Middle Eastern politics. In an optimistic scenario, it will force unmitigated dictatorships such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia to give a greater voice to civil society and nascent opposition groups. In a less optimistic scenario, the crumbling facade of state propaganda will heighten both public anger and government repression, resulting in widespread human rights abuses and even civil war.

The clearest beneficiary of al-Sahhaf's self-pardoy is Al Jazeera. Now more than ever, Arabs will know that only an independent news source can provide them with reliable information. The fact that Saddam expelled Al Jazeera from Iraq during the war will only heighten its credibility. Of course, this market for information may well result in the establishment of competitors who will challenge Al Jazeera role as the pre-eminent non-Western news source.

Perhaps the most surprising beneficiary of al-Sahhaf's charade will be the United States. At minimum, his lies will remind American citizens that we still face opponents who will lie straight through their teeth in order to justify their own brutality. In the two decades or so since the death of Mao and Brezhnev, that point has often been forgotten, even if there are those such as Milosevic who effortlessly built on their precedent.

But there is also the chance that the exposure of al-Sahhaf's lies will force Arabs to confront the inadequacy of their own knowledge about the United States and its motives. For the moment, there still may be millions of Arabs who believe what al-Sahhaf has to say. But as Al Jazeera and others broadcast news of the American victory, even the most faithful will be disillusioned.

While countless residents of the Middle East have no doubt enjoyed al-Sahhaf's no-holds barred rhetorical attacks on the United States and Britain, these same residents will recognize that such boldness comes with a price. This sentiment was intimated by one man quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle:

"He's the comic relief of the war," said Salwa, a 59-year-old Egyptian teacher. "At the same time, he's the voice of victory that we want to believe."

Some might say that the more compelling voice of victory belongs to Al Qaeda, that Saddam's fall will benefit only those who offer an even more radical alternative. But I disagree. I suspect most Arabs will recognize that both Saddam and Bin Laden are examples of what happens to those who act the Arab world's fantasies of violent revenge.

In order to consolidate the gains made thanks to al-Sahhaf, the United States must now show that American ideals follow the American flag. Remembering al-Sahhaf, the people of the Middle East will demand credible accounts of life in occupied Iraq. If that life becomes evidence of democracy's viability in the sands of the Middle East, then the alternatives will become clear: Act on one's pride and become a martyr, or admit that what one's enemy has to offer is the best option available.

UPDATE: Dan Simon comments on Orwell's pessimism and its application to al-Sahhaf. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:42 PM by David Adesnik  

FILL IN THE BLANKS: I came across an interesting article from a few years back while doing research for my dissertation. Let's see if you can guess whose names I've left out of its opening sentences:

The drums around Washington have begun to beat out faint but persistent signals heralding what could become the strangest diplomatic seduction scene of this troubled political year. Judging by the drift of pronouncements of knowledgeable commentators, and the cautious entreaties of National Security Adviser [BLANK A], the [BLANK B] admiistration is adopting a distinctly flirtatious attitude toward Iraqi strongman Saddam ("the engineer of revolution") Hussein. Coming at a time of increased tension between Iraq and Iran on the one hand, and the US and Iran on the other, the US feelers are not likely to be ignored by the pragmatic Hussein, whose strategies for Iraqi hegemony in the Middle East are well known.

Tough one, eh? Perhaps making this a multiple choice test would be better. The choices are (for Blanks A/B):

a) Henry Kissinger/Gerald Ford
b) Zbigniew Brzezinski/Jimmy Carter
c) Robert MacFarlane/Ronald Reagan
d) Brent Scowcroft/George H.W. Bush
e) Anthony Lake/Bill Clinton

Did that help at all? It's hard to say, since all of the answers are fairly plausible. The easiest of the five to eliminate is actually choice 'c' (MacFarlane/Reagan), since why would I bother with guessing games about an administration that everyone knows was in bed with Saddam Hussein?

Actually, I wouldn't even bother you with guessing games if the answer were anything except 'b' (Brzezinski/Carter). Who knew? Mr. Nobel Peace Prize himself warming up to the Ba'athist butcher. The article cited above is from the The New Republic's May 3, 1980 edition. The author was Amos Perlmutter, whom one would have to describe as almost prophetic.

Here are some other highlights from the article:

Already stories have appeared in the New York Times and Washington Post painting pictures of a moderate and benign Iraq as the logical successor to Iran as the dominant power in the Persian Gulf and a likely candidate for closter ties with the United States...

"We see no fundamental incompatibility of interests between the United States and Iraq," [Brzezinski] said...

To the administration, Iraq and Hussein now loom as the protectors of Saudi Arabia and its oil...

A gesture of friendship with the West and the United States seems rife with opportunity for Iraqi action against Iran, action that the US might be forced to sanction...

Hussein's involvement in the brutalities and violenc eof recent Iraqi political history is first-hand and continuous...

Last and most ominously, Iraq is the only Arab country attempting to develop a nuclear capactiy -- with the active help of Italy and France...

Our policymakers, particularly Brzezinski, should take off their blindfolds and look at Iraq for what it really is: a state inimically hostile to US interests, under a regime steeped in bloodshed and violence.

As Yogi Berra once said, "It's like deja vu all over again." Or perhaps it would be better to recall the words of Karl Marx, who said that history repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. But the third time is always the charm. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:25 PM by David Adesnik  

READING OXBLOG, PART II: The mainstream media are beginning to notice that the prospects for an Arab backlash have been somewhat exaggerated. The Economist is now asking:

If secular nationalism has failed the Arabs, will they turn to violent Islamism instead? It is unlikely. Over the past 20 years, Arabs have watched the Islamic revolution in Iran, which once hoped to export revolution to the Arabs as well, fail in war against Iraq and then fail in economics too. In countries where radical Islam turned violent, such as Egypt and Algeria in the 1990s, it has succeeded mainly in scaring the middle classes and secular intellectuals, who might otherwise have pushed for political reform, into accepting ruthless state repression. A few pious and violent hearts, offended by the spectacle of infidel intrusion, will no doubt respond to the Iraqi war by taking up arms alongside al-Qaeda. But though some Arabs admired the attack on the twin towers, most know that religious war against the West is no answer to their difficulties. The chances of Iraq igniting such a war is slim.

Did someone once make similar points about Egypt and Algeria. Nah, couldn't be...

Moving on, Tom Friedman writes that

To read the Arab press is to think that the entire Arab world is enraged with the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and to some extent that's true. But here's what you don't read: underneath the rage, there is also a grudging, skeptical curiosity — a curiosity about whether the Americans will actually do what they claim and build a new, more liberal Iraq.

While they may not be able to describe it, many Arabs intuit that this U.S. invasion of Iraq is something they've never seen before — the revolutionary side of U.S. power. Let me explain: for Arabs, American culture has always been revolutionary — from blue jeans to "Baywatch" — but American power, since the cold war, has only been used to preserve the status quo here, keeping in place friendly Arab kings and autocrats.

Arabs able to patiently think and evaluate empirical evidence? Nope, never heard that one, either.

(That last link was actually to my first ever post on the backlash myth. I've been working on this same rant for almost two months now! Man, will I luck dumb if the backlash starts tomorrow. But if you're a pro-wrestling fan, you know that the Backlash begins on April 27th with the return of Goldberg!)

Last but not least, we come to the WaPo, which seems to be distancing itself from its earlier insistence that the backlash is well underway. On the front page of yesterday's paper, Glenn Frankel reported that

For Muslims throughout the world, the war in Iraq has set off a wave of anger, sadness, frustration and despair.

What it hasn't done, so far at least, is produce a flood of jihadist recruits willing to die for President Saddam Hussein's cause, or a backlash strong enough to topple Arab governments with close ties to the West, according to interviews conducted over the past week with Muslims around the world.

The televised daily scenes of civilian casualties, humiliated Iraqi prisoners of war and triumphant American warriors rolling through southern Iraq have left a bitter taste in the mouths of millions. But political Islam, a potent if divided force, appears torn between its fear and suspicion of the West and its long-standing hatred of Hussein, who is perceived as one of the most secular and totalitarian of Arab leaders.

Resenting Saddam more than they fear the US? No way! [The OxDem FAQ linked to a Yahoo! news story on this point, but the link has expired.)

Now, you'll have to excuse for a minute while so I can get all of this righteous indignation out of my system. Of course, f you're really sure that a backlash is coming, make sure to visit the NYT, which is still turning up evidence for it all over the place. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:49 PM by David Adesnik  

READING OXBLOG? Following our precedent, Slate rips into the NYT's R.W. "Johnny" Apple for his turnaround on the war. (Thanks to Dr. BL for the link) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:43 PM by David Adesnik  

BBC'S CHARLATAN: Daniel Drezner reports that the BBC is uncritically citing Marc Herold's civilian casualty counts for the current war. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:45 PM by David Adesnik  

FEELING LAZY? You are not alone. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:26 PM by David Adesnik  

POWER OF THE PURSE: So far, the struggle for power in postwar Iraq has played out as a battle between the Pentagon on the one hand and a coalition of the State Department, the British government and the United Nations on the other.

But now there's another gunslinger in town who links it his job to play sherriff. They call him Congress. We learn today that

Congress has already rewritten the emergency request for $2.5 billion in reconstruction assistance that Bush submitted last month, with the Senate barring the money from use by the Pentagon. The House has insisted that it go through the traditional State Department aid agencies. "The secretary of state is the appropriate manager of foreign assistance, and is so designated by law," said Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-Ariz), a House Appropriations Committee member, expressing a view widely held across party lines.

While $2.5 billion may not sound like enough to warrant congressional concern, that isn't the point. When Congress wants to influence American foreign policy, it does so by taking advantage of its power of the purse. While the executive branch controls almost every aspect of foreign relations, the appropriations process is a bottleneck at which Congress can stop almost any initiative it deems undesirable.

For a concise and incisive overview of Congress' powers in the realm of foreign relations, see James Lindsay's "Congress and the Politics of US Foreign Policy."

In the process of conducting research for my doctoral dissertation, I have become well aware of how Congress can face down the executive no matter determined he is. Even though Reagan asked for negligible sums to aid the Salvadoran armed forces and Nicaraguan contras, Congress forced him to invest a massive amount of political capital in a battle that lasted throught Reagan's entire time in office -- and which he eventually lost.

Information -- distributing it, hiding it, interpreting it -- was the tactical focus of the interbranch struggle to dictate policy toward Central America. As today's WaPo report indicates, the same is true with regard to the Bush administration and the struggle over postwar Iraq:

Despite repeated requests for more information and for a meeting with Garner, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.) said he and his staff have received only "inconclusive and not very comprehensive views" on Garner's plans. The Pentagon has refused requests from Lugar and other committees to meet with Garner. With Garner's team awaiting entry into Iraq, the Defense Department "has refused requests by the staff of the Appropriations Committee to brief us, and has its people sitting around a swimming pool in Kuwait drawing up plans," said a senior congressional aide...

In what members said was an unprecedented move, Bush asked for the $2.5 billion reconstruction fund to be appropriated to the White House itself, presumably to be distributed through the Pentagon. A memo prepared by senior GOP staff for the House Appropriations Committee noted that the arrangement would erect a "wall of executive privilege [that] would deny Congress and the Committee access to the management of the Fund. Decision-makers determining the allocation . . . could not be called as witnesses before hearings, and most fiscal data would be beyond the Committee's reach."

It's worth noting that the Bush administration has already provoked Republican congressmen to the point where they are willing to break ranks and oppose the administration's plans. It took Reagan quite a while to let things slip that far.

All in all, initial reports suggest that the Bush administration's well-known obsession with secrecy and awkward managment of legislative affairs will shape its approach to the occupation. (NB: Josh disagrees on the legislative affairs point.)

For the moment, it is unclear where the President himself stands on hte occupation issue. My guess, however, is that he will broker a compromise which favors the Pentagon.

As a matter of principle, I like to Congress win when the executive tries to undermine its oversight of foreign relations. But in this case, I think Congress favors an inferior policy while the secretive Pentagon has a much stronger case. So what is to be done?

Hopefully, the Pentagon will open up and give Congress the information that it both wants and deserves. The public deserves this information as well. There is every reason to believe that Congress will go along with the administration's preferred policy provided that the administration shows respect for congressional opinion.

If it doesn't there is good reason to believe that Congress will fight tooth and nail to stop the administration, regardless of the impact that such a conflict would have on America's interests abroad. When Congress feels that it has been slighted, it tends to put all practical concerns aside and focuses on punishing those who have slighted it. Assuming the White House fights back (as it did under Nixon and Reagan) the usual outcome is a compromise that is worth than either of the original policies under consideration.

In light of America's compelling interest in the democratic reconstruction of Iraq, the administration ought to work with Congress rather than against it. Congress has a long record of favoring democracy promotion, and there is every reason to believe that it will want to entrust that task to the Pentagon rather than those who support the United Nations. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:36 PM by David Adesnik  

THE SOCIAL CONTRACT: The more I read of the Republic, the more ignorant I know I am. From Socrates' perpsective, I guess that makes it the perfect book.

By posting my thoughts on OxBlog, I hope that I can draw more of you into this coversation about Plato so that you can help me appreciate his work. The more I read, the more I recognize that I cannot begin to understand Plato's significance without being able to place him within the context of the Western philosophical tradition.

Unfortunately, in contrast to Josh, I did not participate in Yale's Directed Studies (DS) program, which introduces a select lot of freshman to the great works of Western civilization. Therefore, I want to take advantage of the fact that the readers of this website have a wealth of untapped knowledge. What I post will consist more of questions and speculations than of answers.

Then again, turnabout is fair play. Instead of blogging to advertise my opinions to the world, I will now take advantage of my blog to learn from it. Here goes:

In Book II, Sec. 358-59, Glaucon observes that

They say that to do injustice is, by nature, good; to suffer injustice, evil; but that the evil is greater than the good. And so when men have both done and suffered injustice and have had experience of both, not being able to avoid the one and obtain the other, they think that they had better agree among themselves to have neither; hence there arise laws and mutual covenants; and that which is ordained by law is termed by them lawful and just. This they affirm to be the origin and nature of justice; --it is a mean or compromise, between the best of all, which is to do injustice and not be punished, and the worst of all, which is to suffer injustice without the power of retaliation; and justice, being at a middle point between the two, is tolerated not as a good, but as the lesser evil, and honoured by reason of the inability of men to do injustice. For no man who is worthy to be called a man would ever submit to such an agreement if he were able to resist; he would be mad if he did. Such is the received account, Socrates, of the nature and origin of justice.

To the modern reader (or at least to this modern reader), Glaucon's observation presciently anticipates the work of Locke, Rousseau and others on the social contract. A footnote to the Penguin edition of The Republic (Pp. 45-46) observes that Enlightenment philosophers were more interested in providing a legal justification for state sovereignty, whereas Glaucon's interest is in the moral foundation of obedience to the law.

That seems fair. But what I find much more striking about Glaucon's words are the way in which they prefigure Rawls' description of the 'original position' which exists behind the veil of ignorance. Justifiably, Rawls has been attacked for describing the original position in a manner so abstract that it becomes impossible to derive any sort of ethical precepts from it. In contrast, Plato (through Glaucon) seems to deal with a more concrete situation in which actual victims of injustice engage in an effort to draw up a constitution for civil society. Will Socrates later explain why this approach to the law is deficient?

I imagine so, since the Republic is famous for its identification of the sovereignty of the philosophers as ideal. On the other hand, some have argued that Rawls' original position is nothing more than an elaborate disguise for the rule of the one philosopher, namely Rawls.

For the moment, I'd like to contrast Glaucon's description of the origin of the law with Socrates' description of the origin of society later on in Book II, Sec. 369. It reads as follows:

A State, I [Socrates] said, arises, as I conceive, out of the needs of mankind; no one is self-sufficing, but all of us have many wants. Can any other origin of a State be imagined?

--There can be no other.

Then, as we have many wants, and many persons are needed to supply them, one takes a helper for one purpose and another for another; and when these partners and helpers are gathered together in one habitation the body of inhabitants is termed a State.

--True, he [Adeimantus] said.
And they exchange with one another, and one gives, and another receives, under the idea that the exchange will be for their good.

--Very true.
Then, I said, let us begin and create in idea a State; and yet the true creator is necessity, who is the mother of our invention.

What I find especially interesting about this passage is its description of a society that has come into existence not because of a social contract, but because of mutual needs. If memory serves, Locke argues that the state of war between man and man only comes to an end with the conclusion of a social contract. Yet here, a peaceful and cooperative society exists in the absence of a social contract.

Alternately, one might say that it is exists in the absence of a conscious social contract. Rather, it seems that an implicit recognition of the value of cooperation has led to the creation of an informal social contract. Perhaps the more formal one described by Glaucon above is the one that communities institute in order to resolve those conflicts that are not amenable to resolution via the cooperative division of labor.

These different models of conflict and arbitration seem to prefigure some of the game theoretic models of international cooperation developed by political scientists. From what I know, the sophistication of such models pales in comparison to the game theory applied by economists. But that is the sad fate of international relations; to recylce the detritus of other social sciences. (What, me melodramatic?)

In short, Glaucon's scenario accounts for the resolution of zero sum conflicts, whereas Socrates' describes the natural outcome of positive sum games. Is it going too far to suggest that Plato had some fundamental awareness of these different scenarios, even if he was not able to apply the language of modern game theory? I guess I will have to read on and find out.




(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:46 PM by David Adesnik  

CONGRATULATIONS! All the best to JA and MP on their engagement! Jon and I were roommates for three years in college and one year thereafter. We've been through it all together. We go way, way back.

I haven't met the bride, but I am fully confident that anyone who has won Jonathan's respect and love is someone it that I will be proud to know for decades to come. I wish the bride and groom a wonderful life together, a wonderful family, and all the happiness in the world. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 4:17 PM by David Adesnik  

THE RUMSFELD REVOLUTION: A noted historian writes that the Secretary of Defense's dominant role in strategic decision-making is unprecedented -- with the exception of Robert McNamara's dominance in the age of Vietnam. So maybe that Marx guy was wrong about history repeating itself. We'll see. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:45 PM by David Adesnik  

CAN'T FIND A VEDDER MAN: As a die hard Pearl Jam fan, I wasn't all that happy to read about Eddie Vedder's sophomoric anti-Bush protest. (NB: If he had gone after Gavin Rossdale, that would've been justified. But I'm talking about President Bush.)

But as Josh always says, we'd never be able to appreciate great art or music if we spent time worrying about their creators' politics. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:26 PM by David Adesnik  

AIRLINES: Heh heh heh. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:25 AM by Daniel  

WHERE WILL SHE SEE HERSELF? According to some scholars, Sandra Day O'Connor sympathizes with plaintiffs like herself. Will she side with the University of Michigan because she sees the parallel in her own life--that bright, hard-working students sometimes deserve a few extra points? (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:07 AM by David Adesnik  

TO BE ARNETT TO BE: I have yet to come across a single individual who shares my opinion that NBC was wrong to fire Peter Arnett. Doesn't matter. I'm still not convinced.

But just so you know, I do think Arnett is an idiot. On April 1, Arnett wrote that

"Tariq Aziz told me the U.S. will have to brainwash 25 million Iraqis because these people think exactly the same as Saddam does.

"Maybe he is wrong, maybe not."

Does that mean that if Saddam lived in Najaf, he also would've cheered for the American soldiers who had come to liberate the town?
(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:43 PM by David Adesnik  

DEMS BACK REGIME CHANGE: John Kerry has announced that

"What we need now is not just a regime change in Saddam Hussein and Iraq, but we need a regime change in the United States."

Unsurprisingly, the GOP denounced Kerry for his absurd comparison of George Bush to Saddam Hussein. Kerry responded that "I'm not going to let the likes of Tom DeLay question my patriotism, which I fought for and bled for in order to have the right to speak out."

Somewhat surprisingly, Josh Marshall is going to bat for Kerry. While Josh has no love lost for Republicans, this seems to me to be the wrong issue over which to pick a fight. It's hard to interpret Kerry's original statement as anything other than a comparison of Bush to Hussein, which really is quite offensive.

But according to Josh,

The particulars of Kerry's remark are almost beside the point. This is no better than cheap bullying practiced by the president's hacks. And, in political life as in personal life, there is only one way to deal with bullies: you must fight back against them with at least the ferocity and intensity that they use against you. They understand nothing else and deserve nothing better. There's no reasoning with them, no apologizing to them, no hashing out the particulars of remarks you've made.

Bullying, bluff and aggression have been the signature modus operandi of the president's political operatives in domestic politics for the last two years. How many veterans will get their patriotism questioned by the president's operatives and placemen before we see the mainline pundits say enough is enough? Recently, we've seen Tom Daschle, Dick Gephardt and now John Kerry get the treatment. The president's operatives are using the presence of an American army in the field -- Americans fighting and dying in Iraq-- not only to land a few easy shots on the president's opponents but to hit them so hard that they're afraid to hit back. Don't miss the point of this: it's to scare anyone out of uttering any criticism. And it's a cheap use of American blood.

2004 has begun. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:07 PM by David Adesnik  

MANUFACTURED OPTIMISM: "As American troops rushed to the outskirts of Baghdad, many people seemed to have the impression that the war was all but over." -- Michael Gordon, NYT military correspondent

"Just days ago, people were saying we were bogged down, and now they're saying, `Describe for us and give us the names of the government that's going to be running Iraq in the future.' We're still in the middle of war." -- Ari Fleischer, White House press secretary

Interesting how Gordon never says who it is that think the war is "all but over". Unless he meant the White House press corps. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:01 PM by David Adesnik  

EATING CROW: Last week, the NYT's R.W. "Johnny" Apple compared this war to the one Vietnam. This week, Apple is the author of a news analysis essay explaining how remarkable progress in the march on Baghdad has turned back fierce criticism of the administration's war plans.

I have to guess someone at the Times thought this was a proper way for Apple to face up to his own prejudices. Who knows. Maybe Apple volunteered for the assignment in order to show he's a big enough of man to admit when he's wrong.

Still, Apple's essay doesn't quote even a single individual who suggests that last week's criticism reflected the media's desperate search for a story rather than an actual setback in the conduct of the war. Johnny, don't you read Bill Keller's opinion columns?

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:41 PM by David Adesnik  

EVEN MORE BACKLASH: While this op-ed by Sens. Joe Biden and Chuck Hagel deserves a more in-depth response, for now I'll focus on one sentence that really got to me:

...a military occupation, even temporary, that includes only American and British soldiers could fuel resentment throughout the Middle East, bolster al Qaeda's recruitment and make Americans a target for terrorists everywhere.

I get it. Right now, tens thousands of Arabs are thinking to themselves "I guess I'm OK with the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq, even if it violated international law and led to the death of innocent civilians. But an exclusive Anglo-American occupation? What chutzpah! I trusted George Bush and Tony Blair up until now, but this is the straw that breaks the camel's back. I'm off to join Al Qaeda!" (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:21 AM by David Adesnik  

IS THAT NEWS? "The BBC's Rageh Omaar, whose activities are restricted by authorities, says he saw no American troops in the centre of Baghdad."

OxBlog's David Adesnik, whose activities are restricted by the fact that he lives in England, also says that he saw no American troops in the centre of Baghdad. This report was confirmed by Josh Chafetz and Patrick Belton, thus ensuring that it represents the objective truth, and not just a shadow on the wall of a cave.

CORRECTION/UPDATE: Reader ZM points out that the quote I attribute to the BBC does not, as things now stand, appear verbatim on its website. This afternoon, when I originally cut-and-pasted it from the BBC to OxBlog, it appeared as it does above.

This leads me to believe that BBC edited its website without giving public notice of its decision. I find such an explanation plausible, because I know that both the NYT and Reuters edit their websites without giving notice.

Even so, it is fully possible that my own incompetence led me to misquote the BBC and then forget that I had done so.

FYI, the BBC now reports that:

BBC correspondents say they have not seen US troops in the centre of Baghdad...[Six paragraphs later:] The BBC's Rageh Omaar, whose activities are restricted by authorities, witnessed the evidence of recent fighting littering the main roads, with Iraqi tanks and armoured personnel carriers still on fire.

Naturally, I find this to be rather confusing. If US troops didn't destroy those tanks and APCs, who did? Moreover, it is not even clear from context whether Omaar is reporting from Baghdad or elsewhere (although elsewhere on the BBC website he is listed as a "BBC correspondent in Baghdad).

If any of you can help me figure this one out, it would be much appreciated. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:24 PM by David Adesnik  

WHAT, ME WORRY? Daniel Drezner mocks a pessimist. Andrew joins in. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:21 PM by David Adesnik  

JUST VIOLENCE: Mickey Kaus reports on just how far Iraq is going to intimidate deserters. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:11 PM by David Adesnik  

SACHS AND VIOLENCE: Steve Sachs is back in the blogosphere, with excellent posts on both the serious side of war (suicide bombing) and the less serious side as well (booby trapped pencils).

Welcome back to a good friend and a first-rate thinker!

WARNING: The links in this post don't seem to be working. Typical Blogger. We'll try to fix the problem ASAP. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:58 PM by David Adesnik  

MOCKING THE CLUELESS: CalPundit does it, and well. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:50 PM by David Adesnik  

OIL AND BANKRUPTCY: The LA Times reports that Iraq needs far more help than even its oil can provide. (Link via CalPundit.) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:40 PM by David Adesnik  

KRISTOF ON OCCUPATION: "Sensitivity and diplomacy managed to turn around public opinion [toward the US] in Japan and Germany." Funny, I thought it had something to do with the fact that people actually resented Hitler.

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# Posted 8:31 PM by David Adesnik  

LOVING SADDAM: NYT journalist Ethan Bronner has published a long essay on the almost incomprehensible phenomenon of Iraqi adoration for Saddam. Perhaps the most disturbing observation in Bronner's column is this:

In 1995, Mr. Hussein held his first popular "referendum" and "won" more than 99 percent of the vote. Everybody abroad dismissed it, but my sense was that an honest poll would still have given him a victory — with 55 or 60 percent.

In an otherwise judicious discussion of the subject, it is shocking assertion that will undermine Bronner's credibility in the eyes of countless readers.

In addition to the judiciousness of the rest of his essay, Bronner's derives credibility from the fact that he has had considerable contact with Iraqi citizens in the absence of government minders. Thus, it is not the Iraqi government but rather Bronner's own prejudice and ignorance that have rendered him judgment so extremely flawed.

Perhaps I would believe that a majority of Sunni Arabs support Saddam, at least as a necessary evil. But how can anyone believe that the Kurds would vote for the same man that made them victims of genocide?

Moreover, is there any reason to believe that Shi'ite Iraqis would vote for a man who has crushed them and their religion with a brutality hardly less extreme than that which devastated the Kurds? Mind you, two-thirds of Iraqis are Shi'ites. To win an election without their support is all but impossible.

Finally, even when it comes to the Sunnis, I believe that whatever delusional adoration they have for Saddam is a reflection of their subjection to mind-numbing propaganda. As Josh has pointed out, even Al Jazeera's fierce anti-Americanism has not prevented it from exposing the injustice of Arab dictators.

In the process, Al Jazeera's broadcasts have destroyed Saddam's image within the Arab world as a savior. Just as the end of World War II delivered a perceptual shock ot the misguided supporters of militarist brutality in Germany and Japan, there is every reason to believe that those Iraqis who now have true faith in Saddam will recognize him for what he is once he is gone.

This is not to say that such Iraqis will either come to appreciate the United States or develop a commitment to democratic politics. But they may well be disgusted with themselves for what they once were.

While Bronner's essay is well worth reading, one must ultimately regard it as a sad monument to the ways in which prejudice can color the work of even the most hardworking journalists. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:08 PM by David Adesnik  

DEEP THOUGHTS: No, not by Jack Handey. But rather by the intrepid readers of OxBlog.

BA warns:

For the love of heaven, do not, on any account, let the first commentary on Plato you read be Karl Popper. Like many early analytic philsophers, he read the tradition quickly, uncomprehendingly, and poorly. I say this as a card-carrying analytic myself (although perhaps my membership has
lapsed).

DW and MY agree on this point, with DW adding that Allan Bloom's translation and commentary are infinitely preferable.

With that point made, we come to a discourse on the Republic by EK, whose advice I sought in my first post on Plato. I'd just like to preface EK's comments by saying that we have known each other for almost twenty years. At Yale, we had the joint privilege of taking a seminar on Thucydides' Peloponnesian War (highly recommended by BS) with Donald Kagan. In my four years at Yale and three at Oxford, I have never been in a seminar with anyone (professors excluded) who made as many intelligent and substantive points as E. So it's a privilege to have him writing for OxBlog. Here goes:

Allan Bloom's introduction to the Republic (which is in the edition he translated) is an invaluable source. Bloom (borrowing from Leo Strauss) decimates the common assumption that Socrates speaks for Plato, and attempts to read the
Republic for what it is --- a play with different characters in which the author's position cannot simply be conflated with the protagonist's, but must be teased out of the action and the narrative.

Along those lines, Josh's bland assertion that "our knowledge of truth and justice [has] advanced beyond that of Plato's time" is based on his premise that Plato supported "a dictatorship of the philosophers." The only argument for that premise, however, is that, in the Republic, Socrates supported "a dictatorship of philosophers." This argument is weak. Exhibit A in the case against Socrates = Plato is the dramatic structure of the Republic (see Bloom for this). Exhibit B is Plato's later
dialogue, the Laws, in which the Athenian Stranger (who takes Socrates' place as Plato's protagonist) argues for a mixed constitution similar (at least broadly speaking) to the mixed constitution later described by Aristotle and Polybius.

All I'm getting at here is that for Josh to prove that "our knowledge of truth and justice [has] advanced beyond that of Plato's time," he can't just say: (1) Plato was an antidemocrat, (2) we now know antidemocrats are bad, and (3) therefore, our knowledge of truth has advanced. The argument has several severe flaws: First, for the reasons summarized above, Plato's view is not that simple. Second, our own Constitution has profoundly undemocratic elements. The Senate was originally conceived of by many as an aristocratic check on the House of Reps (note that the original Constitution did not allow for the direct election of senators -- this was changed by the 17th Amendment). Hence, the six-year term limits that insulate senators from their constituents. The president, moreover, who is not directly elected (though, of course, the electoral college now votes strictly as they are told to vote), also served as a check on direct democracy. Finally, the notion of a written Constitution that's hard to
change and that can be enforced by the judiciary is itself antidemocratic.

The point is not that there haven't seen significant innovations since Plato -- that's obvious (Josh's example of federalism is a good one, though I'm not sure that was the Founders' idea. See Tocqueville's "Old Regime and the French Revolution," in which he describes the British county system in the 18th century and contrasts it with the French administrative apparatus). The point is that Josh turns Plato into an anti-democratic straw man.

The game is afoot!

CORRECTION: The letter I cited yesterday was from Jefferson to Adams, not vice versa.

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# Posted 6:29 PM by David Adesnik  

OK, I ADMIT IT: This Krauthammer column is eminently readable. But if Ignatius keeps pretending that Saudi princes are unbiased observers of Middle Eastern politics, he's going on the unreadable list. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:27 PM by David Adesnik  

FIGHTING AL-JAZEERA: This column argues that it would be a waste of money for the US government to go ahead with its initial plans to launch a US-funded Arabic-language satellite television network in order to compete with Al Jazeera.

I tend to agree, especially given Josh's point that Al Jazeera does a surprisingly effective job of advancing US national interests. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:20 PM by David Adesnik  

IRAQ'S PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT? The WaPo reports that Donald Rumsfeld has called for the immediate establishment of an Iraqi civilian government in US-occupied areas.

Talk of a civilian government becomes especially interesting when placed alongside reports that the administration is considering the possibility of declaring victory without occupying Baghdad or destroying the Ba'ath regime. Were victory declared, the creation of a civilian government would become imperative.

Personally, I think that such a false victory would be both an embarrassment for the US as well a major strategic failure. After promising "nothing less than complete and final victory," the President can't well decide that halfway is good enough. More importantly, would everyday Iraqis cooperate with the US-backed government if they still believed Saddam had a chance of retaking the rest of Iraq? I think not.

The one bit of good news to come out about reconstruction is that even Colin Powell doesn't want the UN to play a leading role in the process. As the SecState observed,

"It was the coalition that came together and took on this difficult mission at political expense, at the expense of the treasury, the money that it costs, but at the expense of lives as well.

"This is not to say that we have to shut others out, and not to say that we will not work in partnership with the international community, and especially with the United Nations."

The second half of that is open to multiple interpretations, but I seriously doubt Powell would have come out with the first half if he didn't mean it. Unlike the SecDef, he seems to recognize the value of not pissing off the Europeans just for the hell of it. That part about working with the UN is just a conciliatory, non-specific and non-committal bit of diplomatic outreach.

Now, if the US does dominate the reconstruction process, does that mean that the Pentagon and its Iraqi allies in the INC will have exclusive control? Josh Marshall thinks so, and points out that even the WaPo editorial board is concerned.

While I am no fan of Ahmed Chalabi and the INC, I have a sense that the Pentagon will have to compromise with State over running Iraq even if Powell agrees with Rumsfeld on keeping out the UN. But I could be wrong.

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# Posted 5:54 PM by David Adesnik  

FOURTH-RATE REPORTING: File it under "Backlash": Today's WaPo is running a story with the headline "Secular Pakistanis, Upset By War, Turn to Religious Parties."

Yes, the religious parties are gaining strength. No, it is not because of the war. It is because Pakistan has a dictator supported by the Pentagon.

While the Bush administration looks away, Musharraf is crushing Pakistan's secular political parties, his main rivals for power. The secular parties themselves are profoundly corrupt, an important reason why most Pakistanis have not spoken up on their behalf.

While the incentive of popular support might normally provoke an effort at reform from within, none of the parties has much interest in fighting internal battles at the same time that they are struggling to defend themselves from Musharraf.

When it comes to foreign policy, Pakistanis' sense of betrayal at the hands of the Bush administration provides evidence enough (in their eyes) that all the President's talk of fighting terror and liberating the Middle East is nothing more than a cover for an imperial exercise. Thus, if Pakistanis hate the war, it is not because of the war per se, but because their opposition is a means of advertising their resentment of United States foreign policy vis-a-vis Pakistan.

(Incidentally, that is an illustration of my earlier point that Arab/Muslim opposition to the war is all talk. Opposing the war is just a convenient way of venting other grievances.)

Perhaps the most dangerous bit of misinformation in the WaPo article on Pakistan is its sympathetic quoting of a young man who asserts that "In the next elections, the MMA will win a clear landslide victory." Not a chance. Pakistanis have never shown much interest in Islamism and will probably continue to keep their distance.

The one bit of interesting and valuable information reported by the WaPo is that Pakistan's Islamist alliance has shown a remarkable degree of self-restraint in its anti-Americanism. For example, it sometimes instructs protesters not to burn American flags. As one leading Islamist politician observed, "We must differentiate between Americans and the administration."

Thus, even if the Islamists had the potential to win the next election, it might not be a terrible thing. This is an especially important point, since most of those who are against democracy promotion in the Middle East warn that democratization in Muslim lands will lead to victory at the polls for radical fundamentalists.

Warnings of anti-American backlash tend to reinforce such fears by implying that the Islamists who benefit from anti-Americanism are always terror-driven radicals.

As I've said before and will surely say again, the real threat to American interests and ideals in the Middle East is not the people, but the dictators.

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# Posted 10:42 AM by Patrick Belton  

REMEMBER AFGHANISTAN?: Pakistan (for the record: a bad country) is courting influence and trying to choke trade between Afghanistan and India (for the record: the world's largest democracy). Afghanistan, a landlocked nation, depends on Pakistan for exports to India and sea shipments, an historic point of leverage for Islamabad over Kabul. Russia and India, in response, are planning to construct a highway to provide Afghanistan with maritime access through Iran, in order to prevent Afghanistan from falling too much under Pakistan's control.

In other news, NATO appears disposed to assume some of the peacekeeping responsibilities in Afghanistan currently being carried out by the UN. More worryingly, the traditional booming Afghan drug trade appears to be returning - a distressing sign for regional stability and western interests, since in the past it has tended to come under the control of regional Islamist terrorist organizations such as the IMU.

Don't remember Afghanistan? That's okay - you're in good company with lots of senior U.S. policymakers. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:59 AM by Patrick Belton  

FOLLOWING UP ON DAVID'S POST, the AP is reporting this morning on a warehouse south of Baghdad loaded with Arabic documents on how to engage in chemical warfare as well as bottles of atropine, a nerve agent antidote. Further, one bottle has been found which was labeled "tabun" - the nerve agent believed to have been used by Iraq during its war with Iran. More no doubt to come.

Putin, at least, is beginning to make nice to Washington - although his foreign and defense ministries are holding out. Putin is responding to several weeks of having Ambassador Sandy Vershbow (full disclosure: a former boss of mine, and one of the few bright gems of the Foreign Service) telling him in detail about all the economic sticks which the U.S. could apply to Russia.


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# Posted 9:04 AM by David Adesnik  

DEAD HORSE RESURRECTED, BEATEN: Is it still appropriate to use the term "material breach"? While the concept seems somewhat irrelevant at this point, would the UN Security Council be obliged to pass a resolution approving the use of force when and if chemical weapons are found? (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:05 PM by Patrick Belton  

THANKS TO THE GLORIES OF LAPTOP COMPUTING, I spent an incredibly beautiful afternoon writing today in the nation's capital, while eating a hot dog (mustard, no ketchup: the small sacramental ways I grasp precariously at the identity of an exiled New Yorker) from the shadow of the Washington Monument. It was a bright early April day, and from my spot underneath an orchard of cherry blossoms opposite the White House, there were 47 American flags visible within a single field of vision (including somewhat distant ones over the Old Executive Office Building and State Department which may have been close calls, since I needed prior knowledge to know they were U.S. flags, and not, say, district ones or for that matter the green flags of the Ottoman prince).

I was overcome by the simple pleasure of eating my hot dog while joggers mixed with identically-beshirted tourists and executive branch officials temporarily released from their cubicles. Now granted, our popular culture can at times be philistine - whichever country's can't? - but I'd like to see all the Europeans who make a lifelong sport out of anti-Americanism just for once trying a hot dog on a warm spring day on the Mall. They just may like it.
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# Posted 6:50 PM by David Adesnik  

WELL-READ READERS: As a neophyte in the world of ancient philosophy, I have much to learn from OxBlog's eminent readers.

JB, MP & JCT all strongly recommend that I complement the Republic with Karl Popper's "The Open Society and its Enemies, Vol. I", which provide a critical view of Plato.

AL and SSC point out that the Founders tended to have a rather low opinion of Socrates' protege/creator. PC has kindly provided a link to this missive from Adams to Jefferson in which the second President observest that:

While wading thro' the whimsies, the puerilities, and unintelligible jargon of this work, I laid it down often to ask myself how it could have been that the world should have so long consented to give reputation to such nonsense as this?...

But fashion and authority apart, and bringing Plato to the test of reason, take from him his sophisms, futilities, and incomprehensibilities, and what remains? In truth, he is one of the race of genuine Sophists, who has escaped the oblivion of his brethren, first by the elegance of his diction, but chiefly by the adoption and incorporation of his whimsies into the body of artificial Christianity. His foggy mind, is forever presenting the semblances of objects which, half seen thro' a mist, can be defined neither in form or dimension. Yet this which should have consigned him to early oblivion really procured him immortality of fame and reverence.

Well, he certainly wouldn't be the only academic whose ill-defined propositions won him everlasting fame. Somewhere, Foucault is smiling. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:55 PM by Patrick Belton  

LEVIATHAN WHOM THOU HAST MADE: Milton writes of "Leviathan, hugest of living creatures on the deep," that "stretched like a promontory sleeps or swims, and seems a moving land." A Russian fishing trawler in the icy sub-Antarctic Ross Sea recently uncovered a real-life leviathan, a colossal squid which at a size twice that of cinema's King Kong, dwarves the maritime monsters of Verne and Melville. Found 2200 miles south of Wellington, the leviathan boasts eyes the size of dinner plates - the largest of any animal's - and in its formidable arsenal figure 25 teeth-like razorous hooks on eight arms and two tentacles, each deeply rooted into muscle and capable of rotating 360 degrees. The "squid of colossal dimensions" which attacked Captain Nemo's Nautilus in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea was by comparison a mere "giant" squid, based on a historical giant squid which had attacked a French naval ship in 1861, thereby fueling Verne's imagination. Imagination is where such creatures generally stay - the icy depths in which they live keeps them shrouded in mystery, and only few specimens have ever wandered up to where we might observe them. One notable other wanderer was the colossal octopus which washed ashore in Florida in November 1896, and had a scarcely-believable estimated diameter of one hundred and fifty feet and weight of four or five tons.

What is it about these monstruous creatures from the deep that gives them such unmatched ability to arouse our human capability for wonder? Perhaps it is the wonder engendered by intellectual humility in confronting something that compels us to realize how little we actually do understand about our world. As such, the experience of wonder is one of the most deeply human of human potentialities, without which we are reduced to a life which may be easily recognizable in models of economics or sociobiology but isn't quite fully human. Wonder lies at the heart of those deeply human endeavors, literature, art, and religion. As, incidentally, do these leviathans that make us feel such wonder. The term leviathan first occurs in the Hebrew "liwyatan," as when the Psalmist writes "There go the ships; there is that Leviathan whom thou hast made to play therein." The concept of leviathan has stuck in imagination since, with Isaiah applying it to Satan, Hobbes to the commonwealth, and Bulgakov applying Behemoth to the magical feline trickster which accompanied his Mephistopholes. The pedigree of "monster" is similar - it derives from old French monstre, from monstrum, a divine portent or warning, as an unnatural prodigy was understood to be. The sea's leviathans appear prominently in all religious literature of the west and near orient - the entirety of the Book of Jonah is read the afternoon of Yom Kippur during the Mincha service, at the end of the ten days of awe. In the Qur'an the leviathan-engulfed prophet appears as Yunus, and gives his name to the tenth Surah, also appearing in As-Saffat (which actually presents the Jonah story) and Al-Qalam. The basis of the mermen of myth may perhaps lie in colossal behemoths from the bottom of the sea, washed to the surface - this was the conclusion of a nineteenth-century Danish professor, based on comparing colossal squids with extant villagers' descriptions of mermen stranded in 16th century Norway. Melville arrives at the subject well aware of its history and potential to instill wonder in a rationalistic age too certain of its ability to understand a world in which reason must, as in Goya's etchings, at times pause before monsters.

Steve O'Shea, the Auckland-based world expert in these wonder-inducing creatures from the deep, sums up their attraction to us: "We know so little about the marine environment in general. If animals like this are turning up [near the surface], what's going to be at 3,000-meters depth? We don't know," O'Shea said. And thus wonder. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:44 AM by David Adesnik  

AN OXFERD EJICATION: In attempt to broaden my mind beyond the headlines, I have started reading Plato's Republic. It is a work of staggering genius. I'm willing to say that after reading only the first thirty pages, because they alone would merit that praise.

To my mind, one of the most fascinating issues raised by the brilliance of the Republic is whether one can say with any conviction that human wisdom is any greater today than it was 2,500 years ago. Has our knowledge of truth and justice advanced beyond that of Plato's time?

On some counts, one can confidently that the modern world has made significant moral progress. We have banished slavery to the edges of modern life. Democracy has taken hold in more nations than ever before.

Yet these are recent accomplishments. As are the horrors of Hitler, Stalin and Mao. (What? Were you expecting me to include Saddam on that list?) We live in an age of extremes.

What if one had been alive 250 years ago, in the days of Washington, Hamilton and Jefferson? Imagine yourself as Hamilton or Jefferson reading the Republic. Would you not have wondered whether it would ever be possible to establish more than a shadow of justice in the modern world? (There actually are answers to such questions. Perhaps EK can enlighten us on this point.)

All these thoughts after only thirty pages... (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:46 AM by David Adesnik  

AIRBORNE CASUALTIES: Sadly, a Black Hawk went down yesterday, killing seven US soldiers and wounding four.

In light of the frequent reports of helicopter casualties in this war, I recommend this article from the Daily Standard, which expalins the tremendous risks inherent in helicopter aviation.

Regardless of how well Coalition forces fight, helicopter casualties will be high. As always, the shorter the war the better. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:41 PM by David Adesnik  

SPINNING RECONSTRUCTION: Today's WaPo has a front-page story on US reconstruction plans. Josh Marshall then complements the WaPo article with an excerpt from his unpublished work on INC chief Ahmed Chalabi.

In short, Marshall thinks of Chalabi in much the same way as he does Rumsfeld -- a reckless and naive gambler whose arrogance may well be the prelude to a catastrophic setback for American national security. Marshall notes that the Pentagon has largely sidelined Chalabi so far, but is worried that DoD's efforts to shut Foggy Bottom out of Iraq will lead it to promote Chalabi to a position he doesn't deserve.

While less persuaded by Marshall's take on Rumsfeld, I'm fairly certain that he is right about Chalabi. As I've said many times before, Chalabi and the INC seem to lack both a realistic sense of how to govern Iraq as well as an indigenous base of support. Moroever, Chalabi & Co. seem just a little to eager to get their hands on the reins of power.

But what about Jay Garner and the Pentagon brigade? I don't know much about Garner, but I take it as a good sign that The Guardian has utterly failed to come up with any dirt on him. Consider what follows:

...the choice [of Garner] looks to be yet another misjudgment from a Pentagon leadership that has misjudged rather a lot...

Among those who actually know him, no one seems to have a bad word for Jay Garner. Now 64, he retired six years ago as a three-star general, having made his reputation most spectacularly after the 1991 Gulf war when he was in charge of the Kurdish areas in the north, and won the confidence of the thousands of Kurds who had fled into the mountains to escape President Saddam's forces...

Gen Garner's firm does not make military hardware but specialises in the guidance systems. In other words, he is the man who has been trying to make sure the weapons hit the targets rather than the surrounding civilians. This may be true, but this might require an over-subtle explanation in the Baghdad souks if Iraqis start to believe they are being ruled by a man who was just trying to kill them...

"It sends completely the wrong signal," said Ibrahim Hooper of the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations.

"From the perspective of the Muslim and Arab world, it is inappropriate to have someone who has exhibited strong pro-Israel sentiments as the veritable ruler of Iraq. It will be seen as confirming the sense that it is not a war of lib eration but a war to promote the state of Israel."

To summarize: Garner has a proven record of winning the Iraqis' trust, has helped developed technologies that save Iraqi lives and openly supports the only established democracy in the Middle East. Oh, those fools at the Pentagon. Why didn't they just ask Dominique de Villepin to govern postwar Iraq?
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# Posted 10:02 PM by David Adesnik  

PRACTICE FISKING AT HOME: Arundhati Roy has published yet another ignorant diatribe in today's issue of The Guardian. I don't actually recommend that you read it.

But if you are an aspiring practitioner of the gentle art of fiskification, Roy will provide you with the raw material on which to inscribe your acid wit and dry sense of humor.

PS In a strange indication of just how well the war has been going in the past 48 hours, the first link for the moment on www.guardian.co.uk is entitled "US smashes Guard at gates of Baghdad."
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# Posted 9:11 PM by David Adesnik  

TOLERANCE FOR ANKARA: The WaPo explains why it is imperative. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:09 PM by David Adesnik  

SULLIVAN VS. MARSHALL, ROUND TWO: Andrew responds and Josh responds right back.

It's still an evenly matched fight, with Andrew just slightly getting the better of Josh. I'm giving Andrew the edge because of Josh's excessive rhetoric. For example, Andrew takes Josh to task for his statement that

"The administration premised virtually all of its strategy and most of its tactics on the assumption that the civilian population would treat us as liberators. Unfortunately, that basic assumption has been shown itself to be fundamentally flawed."

While Josh is right that the administration expected a more enthusiastic response, today's parade in Najaf does make Josh look foolish for passing such premature judgment on the merits of the administration's strategy. As Andrew points out, even the NYT presented Najaf as a straightforward example of liberation.

While the absence of any sort of uprising in Basra has been disappointing, there is still good reason to believe the Coalition will be hailed there as liberators once the army and paramilitaries are ousted.

Finally, Andrew gets considerable style points for writing that

I don't agree with Josh, by the way, that this kind of back-and-forth is insidery. We're not discussing ourselves; we're debating the issues. Isn't that what opinion journalism should be all about?"

Not just opinion journalism. Blogging. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:37 PM by David Adesnik  

KOIZUMI ON IRAQ: Glad to see the WaPo had a piece on the Japanese PM's support for the Coalition. You'd think that the Japanese government's support for the US and the UK would get more media play considering that Japan has a population of over 120 million, has the world's second largest economy and has a history of principled pacificism.

At minimum, the Bush administration should focus on Japan's support, rather than trying to spin headlines out of the hesitant backing of pseudo-allies such as Ukraine. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:01 PM by David Adesnik  

PRAISE FOR CNN: In response to MW's comments about CNN's anti-Israel bias, JI says:

Far be it from me to defend CNN, but credit should be given when due.
Sometime during last summer CNN did put up a much publicized section on their website devoted to Israeli victims of terrorism, after many allegations were made of CNN having a pro-Palestinian bias. The site can be found at the following URL: http://edition.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2002/terror.victims/

As JI says, credit where credit is due. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:38 PM by David Adesnik  

LOGISTICS: RV seconds RF's analysis and adds that:

Although not a military professional myself, I'm a wargamer and have worked with the military on enough programs to understand that the chief problem with all military operations is logistics. The map in the Telegraph illustrates how the 3ID has used the Euphrates as a screen to move near Bagdhad.

By moving west of the Euphrates instead of east, they were able to move through a sparser populated area, cross fewer rivers, control attacks on thier LOC by controlling the bridges and basically pin the entire Republican Guard. This also allowed us to control the southern oil fields the dams at the head of the Eupharates and cut off portions of Western Iraq. In WWI the British went up the middle, stalled, and got isolated in Kut.

We've taken the western approach. Now that they are there, there is no hurry. A Republican Guard attack would be welcome and the Guard can't redeploy. I think that Saddam was caught off guard. He expected the prolonged bombing that would allow him to position and plan. He lost over 1/3 of his territory without any response.

Gee, maybe I should start learning more about logistics. This sounds sort of important. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:29 PM by David Adesnik  

A FEW GOOD MEN: With hearts of gold. (Thanks to Howard for the link.) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:30 AM by Patrick Belton  

ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE: Alternate headings for this post are "Sandraker" and "Giving Saddam the Goldfinger." While not fighting pitched battle in Basra, Britain's commandos have apparently taken to culling a large portion of their codenames for the Iraqi war from Bond movies - thereby giving military history "Operation James" as well as military targets with names like "Goldfinger" and "Blofeld" (i.e., the famous villain with the white Persian - the feline doesn't actually appear in the novels). UK operational code names have often betrayed a decidedly Brittannic sense of humor - as opposed for instance to the "Operation Free Iraq" of current U.S. military usage, the U.K. has adopted the name "Operation Telic," - a term from the philosophical lexicon meaning "purposeful" (from the Greek telos). Says Paul Beaver, a London-based military expert: "Operation James is an objective named after something the soldiers will remember easily. James Bond is a No. 1 Brit, and he's a hero."

As are you, mates. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:51 PM by Patrick Belton  

BOND VILLAIN OR HUSSEIN FAMILY MEMBER?: American (and British) moviewriters couldn't make this stuff up. The Bondean sociopath here is, of course, Uday Hussein, who tortures and murders Iraqi athletes whose performance in international sporting events doesn't please his caprice. Uday is head of the Iraqi national Olympics committee. What has the Olympics' governing IOC done about this? If you're guessing "zippo" - you win, errr, a copy of my thesis. Not wanting to stick out at the next international organizations party in Brussels, IOC board members have said "you have to make sure this is not all tied to the Iraq-U.S. dispute, that we are not being used for propaganda. You just never know."

The game alluded to in the header is, by the way, a variant of the "English dessert or STD?" game beloved by generations of Americans at Oxford. Examples: spotted dick? treacle? (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:44 PM by David Adesnik  

SULLIVAN VS. MARSHALL: It isn't often that Josh Marshall descends into the trenches of the inter-blog warfare, but it's hard not to respond to a challenge from a blogger like Andrew Sullivan whose stature rests on far more than his website.

For the moment, there is no victor in this clash of the titans. I think Marshall's post deserves a response, despite the fact that it comes close to evading Sullivan's points.

However, if you agree with Josh (Marshall) that "tit-for-tats with other bloggers...get too insidery and readers get bored with them" then ignore the clash and head straight for Marshall's latest posts on Rumsfeld's failure as a military strategist.

Reading these posts, it's hard to know whether Marshall thinks that the current situation is evidence of Rumsfeld's failure, or whether Rumsfeld's failures will be responsible if something goes terribly wrong. IMHO, Marshall is right that Rumsfeld has come close to crossing the line between boldness and hubris. And the US may well have to shift to a more traditional strategy for taking Baghdad. But unless something does go terribly wrong because of Rumsfeld's insistence on overruling the generals, I think Marshall's "hyperbolic" criticism will seem rather excessive in retrospect.

(NB: Even if Marshall is above tit-for-tats, he certainly can't resist the usual blogospheric temptation to play for sympathy by publishing the most offensive criticism his readers send in.) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:24 PM by David Adesnik  

FIRE IN A CROWDED THEATER: Defending Peter Arnett is a lonely task, but I'm not going to give up just yet. In this post, I'm going to respond to three separate charges against Arnett that have been raised both by Josh's response to my original post as well as by multiple readers who have sent in their thoughts.

The relevant issues at hand are whether the substance of Arnett's remarks merited firing him, whether the consequences of his remarks merited firing him, and finally, whether the context in which he delivered them merited firing him.

As for substance, Josh points to the National Review's decision to fire Ann Coulter as an example of when it is appropriate to fire someone because of the substance of their remarks. But if you follow Josh's own link to NRO's official explanation for firing Coulter, you'll see that it had nothing to do with the content of her remarks.

As Jonah Goldberg clearly states, Coulter failed as a writer, not as a person. According to Golberg,

In the wake of her invade-and-Christianize-them column, Coulter wrote a long, rambling rant of a response to her critics that was barely coherent...

Running this "piece" would have been an embarrassment to Ann, and to NRO. Rich Lowry pointed this out to her in an e-mail (I was returning from my honeymoon). She wrote back an angry response, defending herself from the charge that she hates Muslims and wants to convert them at gunpoint.

Clearly, NRO did not fire Coulter becaue of her i"nvade-and-Christianize-them" column. It fired her because she refused to bring her work up to the publication's own standards. In fact, NRO didn't actually fire Coulter. Instead of responding to Lowery's e-mail, Coulter began to bash NRO in public forums, such as the WaPo. As Jonah Goldberg asks,

What publication on earth would continue a relationship with a writer who would refuse to discuss her work with her editors? What publication would continue to publish a writer who attacked it on TV? What publication would continue to publish a writer who lied about it — on TV and to a Washington Post reporter?

Insubordination, incompetence and deception. That is why Ann Coulter lost her job.

On a related point, reader PW challenges my statement

that journalists have the right to say whatever they want to say without having to worry they might be fired. This only seems correct because Arnett just barely crossed the line. Apply the same thought to a more extreme idea - if he had said that the Jews in the US were driving policy towards the middle east, say, something so obviously indefensible, and he were fired, I don't think you would be saying he must be kept on because of his right to free speech, so as a general principle, your statement fails.

I disagree. If Arnett had made such a monstrous statement, I would demand an apology but not his job. I might demand that NBC ask for his resignation, but the ultimate decision would have to stay in the hands of Arnett himself. If a journalist fulfills his or her duty to report the news as best as possible, his or her private views are not grounds for being fired.

Next we come to the question of consequences. Josh writes that Arnett's comments had

the effect of reinforcing the position of the Iraqi regime and discouraging critics of that regime. The appropriate parallel is Hanoi Jane, and if Fonda had been working for NBC at the time, she damn well should have been fired.

Jane Fonda aside, I think the Constitution is on my side here. The right to speak one's mind is the right to say things that have "the effect of reinforcing the position of the Iraqi regime" (with the obvious exception of revealing military secrets).

Nicholas de Genova's absurd remarks at a Columbia teach-in had the same effect. Every anti-war protest has the same effect. That is why we have a First Amendment.

The fact that Arnett is a journalist should not make any difference provided that he has not consciously distorted the truth in order to advance his political agenda. According to the AP report I cited yesterday, Arnett told Iraqi TV that

the United States was reappraising the battlefield and delaying the war, maybe for a week, 'and rewriting the war plan. The first war plan has failed because of Iraqi resistance. Now they are trying to write another war plan.'

Arnett said it was clear that, within the United States, opposition to the war was growing, along with a challenge to President Bush about the war's conduct.

If you ask me, those are some pretty bland comments coming from a guy who's openly anti-war.

It is also worth pointing out that journalists often have an obligation to report information that has the effect of reinforcing the position of the Iraqi regime. As Arnett remarked in his interview,

"Our reports about civilian casualties here, about the resistance of the Iraqi forces, are going back to the United States," he said. "It helps those who oppose the war when you...develop their arguments."

It's hard to disagree with Arnett on this point. If civlians die or if Coaltion forces lose battles, the public has a right to know. The public and its representatives can then decide whether enough civilians have died or battles have been lost for the United States to reconsider its plans.

The final issue at play is whether Arnett crossed the line by granting an interview to Iraqi TV. According to JS, "I believe the context in which Arnett gave the interview is pivotal to
why he was fired. He may be expressing his sincere views, but he did so to the controlled media of a brutal state, and to their benefit." Josh seems to agree (despite later contradicting himself), having written that "[Arnett] wasn't fired for what he said, but rather to whom he said it. He gave an interview to Iraqi state-run media..."

There is a strong argument to be made for all journalists refusing to cooperate with controlled, state-run media. As guardians of the right to self-expression, journalists have an obligation to speak out against all those attempt to deny it. Still, one has to ask whether NBC itself or most news organizations have an official policy that prohibits cooperation with state-run media. If any of you happen to know, please share.

However, in light of NBC's statement that Arnett should have asked permission before giving the interview, it seems right to infer that NBC has no objection in principle to cooperating with controlled media. (Then again, a spokesman for the network also said that "It was wrong for Mr. Arnett to grant an interview to state-controlled Iraqi TV, especially at a time of war." However, this sort of inconsistency only supports my point.)

Finally, reader CI writes that

If [Arnett] had said the same things on "Meet the Press" or on a Sky News interview, I suspect nothing at all would have happened.

Of course not. But that speaks to a lack of integrity on NBC's part, not Arnett's.
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# Posted 5:59 PM by David Adesnik  

SOLDIERS PRAY FOR BUSH: I would too if I were in the military. Anyhow, according to the WaPo, pamphlets from Atlanta's In Touch Ministries have instructed troops to pray for the President and his family. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:48 PM by David Adesnik  

MUBARAK WARNS OF BACKLASH: The Egyptian dictator "warned today that a protracted U.S.-led war in Iraq will lead to a dangerous rise in Islamic militancy across the Arab world."

In the same article, ministers from Jordan and Saudi Arabia also warn that the US invasion will provoke a backlash. Do you see a trend here? Those whose well-being is intimately tied to the survival of repressive dictatorships constantly warn of a coming backlash.

I wouldn't be all that suprised if Mubarak & Co. actually believe what they are saying. After all, it's hard for dictators to survive unless they are somewhat paranoid. Better to crush threats that don't exist than fail to notice one that does.

Warning of an anti-American backlash also has the pleasant side-effect of distracting both Americans and Arabs from recognizing the true cause of instability in the Middle East -- the total prevalence of brutal dictatorships.

The first step toward dispelling such illusions is the democratization of Iraq. Let the people of the Middle East see that freedom is a real option. Then they will slowly begin to recognize who is on their side and who isn't. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:34 PM by David Adesnik  

CELEBRITY OCCUPATION: Donald Rumsfeld has written off the State Department's candidates for running occupied as Iraq as "'too low-profile and bureaucratic' for the work envisioned". The State Department's candidates had actually gone through training on were on the point of shipping out to Kuwait before being ordered to "stand down".

And a damn good thing they were. Assuming the eight were, in fact, low-profile bureaucrats, one might guess that the State Department selected them in order to minimize the amount of media attention given to the occupation once it starts.

Why? So no one trashes State when it starts to endorse half-hearted democratization measures. Or, possibly, so that State can cede as much authority as possible to the United Nations with drawing too much attention.

If Larry Kaplan's report in TNR is on target, then it seems both Foggy Bottom and 10 Downing St. want to make peace with the rest of Security Council by offering it political control of the occupation. [Full text for subscribers only.]

Bad, bad idea. Having UN High Commissioner or the like means having someone who has to answer to the non-democratic states on the Security Council as well as taking the interest of Arab dictatorships into consideration.

While there is no question that the US and UK will look out for their own interests in the process of occupation, their interests are far more compatible with the process of democratization. So let's hope the Pentagon puts its heavy hitters in Iraq. The WaPo thinks former CIA director Jim Woolsey is on the inside track for a big job. Good choice. Woolsey is fully committed to democratization as well as being a Washington player.

[According to Patrick, Woolsey also has a stunningly beautiful right-hand (wo)man. While Josh and I are inclined to agree, we think she got the job because she's a Rhodes Scholar.)

Let's hope the rest of the Pentagon's candidates are as important as Woolsey or moreso. Let's get the world to watch, so America has to put its best foot forward.

UPDATE: Josh Marshall says the WaPo article cited above

makes painfully clear that Rumsfeld is intent on stacking the entire post-war American occupation government with members of the DC Iraq-regime-change mafia. It's not even an American occupation; it's an AEI occupation. Every made-man in the gang gets his own ministry apparently. Maybe they'll set up an Iraqi Defense Policy Board that Richard Perle can run in Baghdad. I hear he's on the market again. Ken Adelman, Ministry of Pastries?

Now we know where all those discredited cakewalk Iraq-hawks are headed. They're going to Baghdad to run the occuption.

In short, the Pentagon's motivation in all of this is partisan politics, not a serious commitment to promoting democracy. Here's what I'm going to do to get to the bottom of this: Tell Josh Marshall that his first priority after the war is over is making sure that the media stays focused on the truth about the occupatin. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 2:42 PM by Daniel  

HOLY WAR! Yes, I have heard the term jihad defended--that is literally means "striving"--but I don't think that's what Iraqi Information Minister Muhammad Said al-Sahhaf meant in his speech today. I want to point out that I am the first person to speculate about Saddam's whereabouts. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:24 PM by David Adesnik  

SHOUT OUT TO INSTAPUNDIT: It's not like Glenn needs OxBlog to tell him he's doing a good job. But he does get a lot of flak for all sorts of things, I'd just like to say that he has done a really, really good job of finding interesting things to post in the two weeks since the war began. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:13 PM by David Adesnik  

DE GENOVA IN CONTEXT: In-depth insight from Daniel Drezner. For an extra dose of Double D's insightful commentary, click here and here. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:04 PM by David Adesnik  

NOW I GET IT: Seems the US wasn't exactly the only one supporting Iraq back in the day. Just the only who's decided to admit it was wrong. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:59 PM by David Adesnik  

DEFENDING RACHEL CORRIE: No, not on OxBlog. In The Guardian. Once you've read the Guardian column and gotten yourself good and indignant, read Bill Herbert's devastating response. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:49 PM by David Adesnik  

DEFENDING ARNETT: NBC has fired Baghdad correspondent Peter Arnett for giving an unauthorized interview with Iraqi state television. According to the AP:

NBC was angered because Arnett gave the interview Sunday without permission and presented opinion as fact. The network initially backed him, but reversed field after watching a tape of his remarks.

The network said it got "thousands" of e-mails and phone calls protesting Arnett's remarks - a thousand e-mails to MSNBC President Erik Sorenson alone.

You know, the whole point of freedom of speech is that you have it regardless of what you say. It sounds like NBC endorsed Arnett's freedom of speech right up until it found out what he had to say. There's a word for behavior like that: hypocrisy.

Even worse, it sounds like NBC fired Arnett because it didn't have the guts to stand up to its viewers. That doesn't say a lot for the network's integrity. Now, what NBC did is probably legal. But the media cannot continue to function as a guardian of free speech if its own behavior compromises that role.

According to Glenn Reynolds, Arnett had it coming for a lot of reasons. Regardless, I'm glad he decided to give the interview. Journalists are political figures. They should have to defend their views rather than hiding behind a curtain of objectivity.

What Arnett did was pull back that curtain. No surprise he was fired.

(For more on Arnett, click here and here.) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:05 PM by David Adesnik  

WMD ACADEMY: Alan Henderson observes that

It's one thing to have chemical weapons, but it's another to have people who know how to properly handle and deploy them. If I'm a military intel guy, one of the first questions I want answered is how many Republican Guardsmen are chem warfare specialists and where they are located. My top priority would be to locate them and aim our next volley of ordnance at them ASAP.

If I'm an UNMOVIC inspector, one of the first things I want to look for is chem warfare training facilities - which in themselves would be evidence of a WMD program.

If only Hans Blix had known...

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# Posted 5:56 PM by David Adesnik  

BUSH AND BLAIR: In love. Will it last? (Special thanks to BL!) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:05 PM by David Adesnik  

MUSTARD ON WRY: Even though French's is not manufactured in France, JMH reports that there is "worse news. The mustard seed is grown in Canada."

I think I can live with that. As long as the seeds are not from Quebec.

Btw, since JMH is a captain in the Canadian army, I sense that his report may have a subtle sarcastic subtext. C'est la vie!

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# Posted 3:30 PM by Patrick Belton  

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, PAPA HAYDN! For homework, go and celebrate Haydn's birthday by listening to the Creation chorale.

Haydn's most recognizable melody is, of course, the music of the Deutschlandlied. Now made embarassing by the tyrant of Braunau-am-Inn and since then never performed in its first verse, Germany's national anthem initially had a very different set of associations, serving as a rallying cry of the republican nationalists of 1848, and inspired by the solemn beauty of God Save the King. More important from the perspective of musical history, though, is a second context: the melody we recognize as Deutschland Uber Alles is the second movement of Haydn's 1797 Emperor Quartet (in C Major, the third of six quartets published as Haydn's Opus 76). And the string quartet is the musical form which Haydn did more than anyone else to bring from its early beginnings as a melody with tripartite accompaniment to the balanced development of four equal voices using sonata form which is reflected in the Emperor and companion pieces, incidentally, Haydn's final quartets.

Alles Gute zum Geburtstag, Papa Haydn! Hoch soll er leben! (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 3:00 PM by Patrick Belton  

IRAQ WATCH: The AP picks up this morning on a story from pro-government Moscow daily Nezavisimaya Gazeta, reporting that agents from Russian intelligence are meeting daily with Iraqi officials to negotiate the transfer of Iraqi intelligence files to Moscow's control should Saddam fall. Yevgeny Primakov, former Soviet foreign minister and spymaster, met with Saddam in a February exchange shrouded in secrecy to apparently discuss precisely this point. According to the reporting, Russia is principally interested in obtaining intelligence which Iraqi agents have collected from other countries (yes, that means us), as well as determining to what extent Iraq may have financed Russian political parties and movements.


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# Posted 9:38 PM by David Adesnik  

SELF-HELP: In a moment of eccentric brilliance, Mike Sanders of Keep Trying has written up the Seven Habits of Highly Effective Blogging.

As both a blogger and an actual bricks-and-mortar person, I found it to be extremely thoughtful. If you blog, read it. If you don't, it may help you understand us strange folks who do. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:21 PM by David Adesnik  

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL and Human Rights Watch sell out. (From the USS Clueless.) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:11 PM by David Adesnik  

WHO KNEW? It's not the US, but rather the UN that is trying to get rich on Iraqi oil. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:01 PM by David Adesnik  

BILL KRISTOL praises Dick Gephardt and Hillary Clinton. Really! (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:38 PM by David Adesnik  

CLASS WARFARE: David Broder on the tax cut that would come at the expense of food stamps, school lunches and child nutrition programs. While the government should cut taxes when it can (even if the rich are the ones that benefit), this is not the time. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:27 PM by David Adesnik  

JOSH FINDS AN EXCUSE for the gratuitous use of the word tits. People, need I remind you that this is a family blog? (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 2:50 PM by David Adesnik  

'OUTRAGE SPREADS IN ARAB WORLD' is the headline of a story in today's WaPo. As usual, this sort of article is a collection of absurd anti-American quotes combined with implications that the Arab media is at fault.

As for me, I think this sort of outrage is all talk. You can always find Arabs who hate America. The question is, what are they doing about it? Not much, as far as I can tell.

The problem with the media -- including top-notch papers such as the WaPo -- is that journalists have fixed expectations of what the news will be, and they won't abandon those expectations unless something truly dramatic happens. (And even then, they sometimes forget what they have learned.)

This isn't a simple matter of liberal or conservative bias, but of journalists -- especially those who cover foreign affairs -- having simplistic expectations of how non-Americans react to world events. On the bright side, at least the journalists' expectations are more realistic than the professors'...

UPDATE: The WaPo has not just one, but three separate articles on the backlash theme. The other two are here and here.

The first of the two illustrates my point perfectly. It is about a Saudi couple named Leila and Mohammed. She is a physician who wears tights sweaters and stiletto heels. He is a businessman who does import-export. They are enraged by the invasion. Leila goes to anger management classes and tells the WaPo correspondent she may just have to become a suicide bomber.

This is what the media calls a backlash. Upper-middle class Saudis who make empty threats to abandon their pampered lives. Did I mention that Leila and Mohammed are also very, very angry about what Israel does to the Palestinians?


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# Posted 2:39 PM by David Adesnik  

WAR POLLS: Gallup has the latest. Support for the war is holding steady at above 70% in spite of a marked decrease in public optimism about the war. This strongly suggests that the American public did not/does not support the war because of false expectations about the ease of victory, even if it might've had such expectations. (Gallup didn't say that, of course. It's an OxBlog editorial comment.)

As I see it, the public's memory of Vietnam is just as strong as that of the media. The public, however, has drawn different lessons from it. Whereas the media is committed to a constant search for evidence of a quagmire, the public recognizes that war is hell and that things often go wrong. But you can't back out at the first sign of danger. If the cause is just, the public will stand behind the government.

There are those who do not support the war, however. Among there American public, there are significant divides along the lines of race, party, gender and class. The black-white divide is most striking. Whereas as white support the war 78-20, blacks oppose it 69-28.

78 percent of men favor the war compared to 66 percent of women. There was a similar gap during the first gulf war. 93 percent of Republicans support the war, compared to 66 percent for independents and 54 for Democrats. Finally, only 58 percent of Americans with a household income of less than $30,000 support the war, compared to 78% for all others.

The obvious question, of course, is to what degree such categories overlap. Does lower support among Democrats and those with incomes below $30,000 simply reflect the anti-war sentiment of poor black Democrats? Or are there significant numbers of poor white Democrats, poor white Republicans, rich black Democrats and rich Black republicans who oppose the war as well? Without answering that question, one cannot know whether race, class or party is responsible for the divide.

Unfortunately, Gallup doesn't provide a break down of the numbers. It does, however, provide the results of a multivariate analysis designed to answer the same question. This analysis shows that race is the most significant factor, but that party and class matter as well. Gender is irrelevant despite the 12 point divide mentioned above.

More interestingly, it turns out that -- far and away -- the single best predictor of support for the war is whether or not one approves of Bush's leadership as President. According to Gallup,

The single greatest predictor of views on the war is one's rating of President Bush, suggesting that to a significant degree this has become "Bush's war."

Phrasing it that way sounds rather snide, sort of like saying that Vietnam was Lyndon Johnson's war. But Gallup does offer a less partisan explanation as well:

The stronger influence of presidential approval can be probably explained by the reality that most Democrats and independents who support the war also approve of Bush, while most Democrats and independents who oppose the war also disapprove of Bush's job performance.

There are a number of ways of interpreting that statement. First, that if one trusts the President on Iraq, then party affilitaion doesn't matter. Alternately, pre-existing resentment of the President has made it impossible to persuade certain Democrats and independents to support the war.

I sense there is some truth in both arguments. However, it would be interesting to know if the pro/anti-war divide reflects different views of how America should interact with the world, not simply attitudes toward the President. Are anti-war Americans the strongest supporters of multilateralism and of the United Nations? Are they willing to support the use of force only in the event of an attack on the American homeland? If so, they have good reason to disapprove of Bush, whose position on these is issues is diametrically opposed to their own.

As you may have noticed in my earlier comments on opinion polls, I have a fair amount of confidence in the reasonableness of the American people. Their (our) opinions are derived from coherent conceptual frameworks, not emotions and propaganda. While trust and resentment have a powerful influence on politics, beliefs usually matter more.

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# Posted 9:16 AM by David Adesnik  

EMOTIONAL RESPONSE: I just visited, for the first time, the CNN site devoted to Coalition casualties in the war. It is very hard to read. It is very hard to look at the pictures of the men who died, most of them younger than myself.

They shouldn't have had to die. They deserve better. It is almost impossible to keep anything in perspective when looking at their photos. I kept thinking to myself: "Why don't we just stop it now? Let's pull out and go home. Let these kids live the lives they deserve."

Chemical weapons and international law seem like nothing more than abstractions when you are looking at those photos. You forget the thousands of Iraqi soldiers who have died. The thousands of Iraqi civilians killed by their government. The men and women who died on September 11th.

Somehow, looking at those pictures, my mind was only able to focus on the most immediate cause of their death. "Killed in action near Nasiriya on March 23, 2003." "Killed in a U.S. CH-46 Sea Knight helicopter crash on March 21, 2003." Killed. Period.

UPDATE: MW responds:

Your emotional response to the CNN posting is understandable - just what CNN wants - that they have not posted pictures of those killed in Israel by suicide bombers, the Iraqis murdered by Saddam, those starved by Mugabe or by the regime in North Korea.

Put pictures of your family and friends on a wall and imagine what life or death would be like for them if tyrants like Saddam gained dominance.

I suspect that is what many of those serving in Iraqi Freedom have dealt with. I hate that they have died. I hate that evil exists and to contain it we must confront it.

Sad but true. Still, I think that posting memorials to fallen soldiers is appropriate in war time and not simply manipulative. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:49 PM by David Adesnik  

OUT OF MY LEAGUE: RF sends in an interesting analysis of Tommy Franks' strategy. It covers a lot of points the media haven't bothered much to talk about and thus arrives at a far less critical assessment. But this is way outside my area of expertise, so read it and judge for yourself:

Tommy Franks is a traditionalist. Like all American theater commanders before him, he has aimed at seizing a series of logistics bases on which to develop his campaign. The purpose of 3rd ID's charge to Baghdad was to pin down the IRG by positioning itself only 60 miles form the capital. Behind that screen, Franks could scoop up all logistics bases he wanted safely. H3, H2, Talil, Basur and Umm Qasar. The IRG can't go north to level the 173rd from Bashur because it is now rooted to Baghdad by the 3rd ID.

It is worth mentioning that the dash to Baghdad could not have been achieved with 4th ID in company. The field manuals specify that 150 lbs/day/per man in consumables (not counting equipment) are necessary to support a soldier in SW Asia. That's 4,500 tons per day, the weight of a British destroyer, every day. When 4th ID arrives in theater, that requirement will rise by about 2,000 tons per day. Franks could not have reached Baghdad in under a week with two mech infantry divisions abreast. The logistical tail from
Kuwait would not have supported it.

Frank's command is not currently force limited, so much as logistics limited. Indeed, fully 1/3 of his command, the 3 brigades of 101st AM and the 325th brigade of 82nd AB have not seen action to any meaningful extent. The 4 ID can't be effectively used until the logistical prizes, especially the port, are developed. That's what Franks is doing. The 7 sq mile base of the 101st west of An Najaf is first fruit. More will be to come.

Hardly any of the islands seized in WW 2 were attacked to destroy their garrisons. Guadalcanal, the Gilberts, the Marhsalls, the Bonins were all attacked for their logistical value, and for their ability to interdict enemy countermoves. Franks may be bold, but he is a bold traditionalist.

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# Posted 9:33 PM by David Adesnik  

NOT DIJON: Warmongering Illustrated tells the unpleasant truth about French's Mustard. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:16 PM by David Adesnik  

ISRAEL IN THE MEDIA: Contemplating the death of Rachel Corrie, DM writes in with a reminder of what happened last year when the NYT misidentified the Jewish victim of a Palestinian mob as a casualty of IDF brutality. Arab propagandsists had something of a field day, to say the least. (All links courtesy of DM!) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:09 PM by David Adesnik  

PROTESTING WITH PRAYER: These people must be reading Gandhi in their spare time. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:52 PM by David Adesnik  

THE V-WORD is thrown around gratuitously in this article, but otherwise it is a very interesting account of a less-reported side of the war. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:39 AM by David Adesnik  

MAKE YOU LAUGH: Say what you will about Kieran Healy's political views, he has a great sense of humor. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:06 AM by David Adesnik  

PONTIUS PILATE AND LIBERAL IDEALISM: Kieran Healy is deeply concerned about the well-being of the Oxford Democracy Forum. As with most of our critics, Kieran is concerned that our naivete regarding both the prospects for promoting democracy in the Middle East as well as the Bush administration's commitment to doing so will prevent OxDem from accomplshing any of its objectives.

Now, before responding to Kieran's argument, I'd like to congratulate him on his recent marriage as well as thank him for constantly linking to OxBlog.

Now let's get down to business.

Kieran fundamentally misunderstands the purpose of the Oxford Democracy Forum. According to Professor K,

OxDem should be clear about whether it is giving us a description of what the U.S. is doing, or whether it is advising the U.S. about what it ought to be doing...the principles they endorse may be betrayed by the Administration they support. They will then be left having to explain why the post-war strategy which they felt helped justify the invasion was not pursued by the Administration. That’s an uncomfortable position.

First of all, OxDem has been very clear about its purpose. According to the first sentence in our statement of principles, "The Forum's mission is to promote democracy worldwide. It will do so through public education and activism." We are not interested in describing. We are interested in persuading.

Second of all, OxDem does not support this administration or any administration. It is non-partisan. We believe the fundamental strength of our agenda is that one can embrace it regardless of whether one is a Democrat or a Republican, a Tory or a Labourite.

Moreover, this non-partisanship is not simply a facade for either a pro-Republican or a pro-war agenda. I myself have a perfect Democratic voting record, as do many of our other strongest supporters.

Nonetheless, our critics tend to assume -- or simply want to believe -- that we are reflexive supporters of a belligerent approach to international relations. As far as I can tell, this assumption is a reflection of the insecurity that OxDem provokes on the Left by virtue of the fact that it is more committed to liberal principles than its liberal critics are. Thus, such critics comfort themselves by insisting that OxDem's commitment to such principles is nothing more than a front for an unthinking conservative agenda.

I don't know if this criticism applies specifically to Kieran. In fact, one cannot prove that it applies to any given individual, since it is an inference about his or her innermost thoughts. However, liberal critics' belief that OxDem is nothing more than a GOP front simply recurs too often for me to believe that it is an innocent mistake rather than a politically motivated attack.

Now, let's go back to my comment that OxDem "is more committed to liberal principles than its liberal critics are." Many of our critics -- and Kieran specifically -- constantly voice their profound skepticism about the prospects for promoting democracy in the Middle East. They warn that the Bush administration will do nothing to prevent the emergence of semi-authoritarian regimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, provided that such governments are pro-American.

Presuming that neither Kieran nor our other critics favor the installation of semi-authoritarian regimes, exactly what kind of government do they believe the United States should set up? Unfortunately, they don't say. The closest Kieran comes to showing his hand is when he asks

What if we are skeptical that the Bush Administration can or will do what it ought to do, on OxDem’s terms? Max Sawicky is currently exploring this line. He argues that the U.S. “can destroy bad regimes; it cannot bestow self-government on people.” I think there’s a lot to be said for this view.

Even if one agrees with Max, that does not constitute an answer to the question of what kind of government the United States should set up in Iraq. Even if we "cannot bestow self-government", we also cannot let Iraq descend into utter chaos.

Perhaps the more interesting question to be asked is why Kieran and other OxDem critics won't say what principles should guide the American occupation of Iraq. Here's what I think:

In the process of canvassing support for OxDem, Josh and I have come to recognize that there are many individuals who will not publicly support the establishment a democratic government in Baghdad, since doing so implies approval of the war that would precede such an event. In private, however, such individuals accept that the United States has an obligation to establish a democratic government at the end of the current war.

It seems to me that Kieran has taken this logic one step further and simply avoided making any statements about what the United States should do at the end of the war in Iraq, lest even his private support for democracy in Iraq lend some sort of a moral cover to the President's foreign policy.

However, that sort of position is logically untenable and morally indefensible. Assuming that the United States will occupy Iraq as planned, it will have to set up some sort of government in Baghdad. If one is serous about one's liberal principles, then that government must be a democratic one.

What, then, of the legitimate objection that it will not be easy to establish such a government? As Kieran observes,

Democratic institutions aren’t like lizards. They don’t hide under rocks waiting to emerge. They don’t exist in Iraq and will have to be built. Anyone who thinks they can be put together in relatively short order after an invasion doesn’t know what they are talking about. [Boldface in original.]

That much goes without saying. In fact, that is exactly why Josh and I wrote that

We must commit to rebuilding Iraq as a free state, which means committing to the provision of significant amounts of time, money and expertise...If the administration ever turns away from postwar Iraq...OxDem will be there to remind it that its job has only just begun.

As this statement makes clear, OxDem supports democracy promotion in spite of the hardships involved. We are willing to face such hardships precisely because a principled commitment to democracy commitment entails an obligation to face hardship.

Instead of recognzining this obligation, Kieran and others seem to be more interested in washing their hands of responsibility for the fate of Iraq (and Afghanistan). This is the only possible way of reconciling their passivity with their insistence that the Bush administration is insincere in its commitment to promoting democracy in Iraq.

In contrast, OxDem rejects the ethics of Pontius Pilate. We are willing to invest our time and integrity in the struggle to persuade both the Bush administration and the American public that democracy promotion is both consistent with American principles and in the United States' best interests. Kieran is right that

OxDem may fall into the gap between the rhetoric of the Administration and its actions.

But taking that risk is the least that we as individuals can do to help ensure that people in Iraq and throughout the Middle East have a chance to share the freedoms that no American would live without. We hope that once this war has come to an end, our critics will work with us to make that vision a reality.

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# Posted 8:40 AM by Daniel  

WAR OR TERROR? A suicide bombing against American forces in Iraq. To my surprise, Israel didn't come up once in the NY Times and CNN coverage of it. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:39 PM by David Adesnik  

MEDIA ROUND-UP: Instapundit puts together an informal report card. (Link to OxBlog included!) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:21 PM by David Adesnik  

READING LIST: Matt Yglesias has comments on two articles I've been meaning to read, one by Josh Marshall and one by Paul Berman.

Matt is also trying to figure out just who is telling the truth about what it will be like to fight in the streets of Baghdad. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:06 PM by David Adesnik  

MORE ON UNIT COHESION: LDA writes that

I grew up in a military family. My father (who is quite old now and very very 'old school') is a retired Rear Admiral USNR. He has served on a number of promotion boards and has had considerable and broad legal experience in Military Law. He has come across the 'gays in the military' issue quite often and on many levels. I have never heard him question a gay person's commitment to US interests as a reason for keeping him or her out of the service. 'Unit cohesion' or something like that has been his mantra on this issue for as long as I can remember--and still is.

Glad to hear it. As I said before, hopefully every officer worried about unit cohesion will be honest enough to recognize that this war has put such concerns to rest once and for all.

MR adds:

It's not the military that makes the policy - it's the government. If the powers that be truly wanted the discrimation to end they could do it in one fell swoop. Think Truman and integration. Bill Clinton didn't want to fight for it and 'don't ask' was the result. The military follows orders, but they don't initiate policy.

But who didn't Bill Clinton want to fight against? If the military were behind equal opportunity for homosexuals, I think it would've gone through without a fight.
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# Posted 10:56 PM by David Adesnik  

TOO NICE: Dan Simon responds to Jacob Levy and yours truly about whether or not it's possible to limit Iraqi military casualties. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:54 PM by David Adesnik  

LE MONDE C'EST MAUVAIS: Belgravia Dispatch has the latest on its anti-American absurdity. Joschka Fischer has been getting a bit giddy as well, it seems. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:28 PM by David Adesnik  

YIKES: Intelligence reports say the Republican Guard is preparing to use chemical weapons in its defense of Baghdad. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:23 PM by David Adesnik  

BEING NICE TO THE NYT: Since I constantly beat up on the NYT, I thought I'd mention that they've done a good job with this story, in which administration officials point to numerous statements on their part -- made before the invasion started -- which warned that the conflict might be long and hard. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:55 PM by David Adesnik  

ALL TALK: Here is some of the latest anti-American vitriol from the Arab world:

"America has killed thousands of Iraqi children," said Hassan, 34, in this small town an hour's drive north of Cairo, the Egyptian capital. "They want to destroy Islam as a religion."

From his hairdressing salon in Amman, Jordan, Abdullah Alami, 37, said he believes the United States started the war to steal truckloads of oil for Israel. In glittery downtown Beirut, Hani Dannawi, 28, a bank employee, said he thinks the war is a ploy by the United States to colonize the Middle East; he thinks Syria and Lebanon will be next.

I'm sure all these folks believe what they are saying and that their statements are fairly representative of local opinion. But all they do is talk. No protests. No sending humanitarian aid to Iraq. No violence.

I'm beginning to think that Arab opposition to the invasion of Iraq is like Arab support for the Palestinians: something everyone can agree on but that no one wants to do anything about. That's why there's no backlash against the war and why Arab governments never do much about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

And still the experts call for appeasing the Arab street...
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# Posted 9:43 PM by David Adesnik  

THE USUAL SUSPECTS: Afghanistan. Warlords. Problems. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:26 PM by David Adesnik  

TRAGEDY: An explosion in a Baghdad marketplace has left scores of dead and wounded. The apparent cause was a missile strike, though there is no word on whether it was American or Iraqi.

One thing I can't figure out: Are Iraqis still required to have a government 'minder' present when speaking to foreign journalists? I can't see why this rule would've changed, but there is no mention of it in the WaPo article on the explosion. I want to find out, though, since there is no way of telling whether the victims' anguished accusations of American cruelty are a sincere reaction, or just something staged for the benefit of Saddam's thought police. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:53 PM by David Adesnik  

IN CASE YOU WEREN'T SURE that Rachel Corrie was anti-Israel rather than pro-human rights, it now turns out that a senior member of Islamic Jihad has been arrested at the Jenin headquarters of ISM, the activist group to which Corrie belonged.

Link via Best of the Web. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:22 PM by David Adesnik  

THE SOUTHERN FRONT: Judging by your respones to my posts, the most important issue facing America today is anti-Semitism in the Southern United States. Here are some of more of the interesting thoughts and stories you have sent my way:

Briefly, RL points out that Jim Moran is originally from Boston, and not a native Southerner.

ET from Colorado writes that

I haven't actually lived in the South and am in no position to comment on the day to day incidence of anti-Semitism there. Still, I happen to know that synagogues, JCCs and Jewish philanthropy are highly developed in the South and I think there are a couple of ways to interpret this phenomenon in terms of how it relates to anti-Semitism.

On the one hand, this robust Jewish associational life seems to suggest that Jews feel confident enough in their safety to build significant parts of their social lives around Jewish communal institutions. I wonder if Jews in the midwest (outside of Chicago/Skokie) and northern plains states share such a willingness to organize and identify this freely on the basis of their Jewish identity.

On the other hand, it should be recognized that churches are the focal point of a lot of social activity in the South. This state of affairs more or less compels Jews to establish separate institutions and charities of their own, since they can't, or more likely today--don't, want to belong to explicitly Christian ones. That's one reason why we see very active JCCs and Jewish Federations in the South. In fact, for many years, Tulsa, OK has had the distinction of being the highest per capita giver to the UJC (United Jewish Communities--the largest Jewish philanthropy) of any city in the country. In second place? Greensboro, NC.

You can read about it for yourself here and here.

I wouldn't call this current situation anti-Semitism (though that's probably what led to it), but in some ways it surely resembles conditions in other places where Jews were historically segregated, shunned, or
otherwise never really "fit in". Interwar Poland had many Jewish schoolsthat belonged to a variety of educational streams. So too did Morocco. In Argentina, to this day, the social lives of many Jews center around Jewish social clubs called "Hebraicas".

The upshot of all of this is a robust Jewish associational life. These Jewish institutions promote Jewish identity, culture and education and might help stem the tide of intermarriage (though I know there are mixed feelings about whether this should be an explicit goal).

A troubling question, then, is whether social marginalization might actually give rise to stronger Jewish communities that provide more services and are better poised to address communal Jewish concerns,
including responding to anti-Semitism.

I think this state of affairs can be tolerated as long as it doesn't block Jews' access to political participation, economic opportunities or civic involvement. There may be a parallel here with black churches and
historically black colleges, which also trace their origins to intolerance by the white majority, but have today become effective platforms for expressing communal interests and are springboards for articipation in public affairs.

Still, the question remains: In places with a legacy of intolerance, is it "healthy" to foster continued segregation?

A good question. I wish I had the answer. Moving on, TN writes in that

I too grew up in South Carolina, in a small town called Edgefield (pop. 3000) in the western piedmont area. I live in Atlanta now.

I have to concur with your other Southern correspondents. Anti-semitism just wasn't a factor I ever noticed. Nor did I ever hear even casual anti-jewish sentiments expressed anywhere else in piedmont or low country South Carolina (where most of my extended family lived). It may be that anti-semitic feelings were more widely spread and more deeply felt than I knew, but if so no one ever bothered expressing them, and so far as I know they don't now. Further, I've got truckloads of cousins in South Georgia, and it's not anything I ever heard down there, either.

I was going to point out Sol Blatt myself -- his son is still around, a retired federal court judge. However, I think his son converted to episcopalianism (if that can be called a "conversion"). I might be
wrong about that, it may have been his grandson that converted. That would make sense, because Episcopalians were (and are) very prominent in the S.C. social & political circles, so such a conversion would have advantages.

Sol Blatt did not go out of his way to hide his jewishness -- it was no secret, nor something covered up. I've heard stories of him being caught at stump speeches and other political rallies eating pork
barbecue, and being teased about, to which which he had a stock response, with a wink -- Pork?!?? I thought this was goose!!! Back then, it seems, barbecue and politics weren't wholly separable if you
were serious about either.

There had been a number of jews that lived in my home county (Edgefield), who arrived in the later 19th century as travelling pedlers who settled down as brick&mortar merchants. One of the 19th century
storefronts in my home town has a stained glass strip that reads "Israel Mukashy". When I was a kid it was run as a dry-goods store by a Mr. Rubenstein, (or was it "stien"?) who always had a piece of sour apple super-bubble bubblegum for the kids. He and his wife were about the only jews around by then -- most of the younger jews had left for larger towns and different careers before I was born. In retrospect, he bore one classic jewish physical stereotype: an enormous hook nose. However, back then I didn't know enough about jews in general to be aware that this was a stereotypical feature, nor would have any of my friends. Besides, Mr. Tompkins in the store a few doors down, who wasn't jewish, had an even bigger nose that looked like a burst section of grapefruit. The point being that, other than knowing Mr. Rubenstein was jewish, that he & his wife had to go to Augusta for Temple, and that Mrs. Rubenstein cooked some tasty but unusual food, you wouldn't have noticed anything that distinctly set him off from anyone else in town.

I do know of an ugly episode that occurred in Marietta, Georgia, in 1913. A young jewish man named Leo Frank was accused of murdering a young girl and ended up getting lynched, apparrently the only known lynching of a jew anywhere in the United States.

However, it doesn't seem that Frank's jewishness was the only thing that did him in -- there was probably some class resentment involved, too, since the workers at the factory Frank supervised were probably poorer and less educated than he. Further, he was a jewish yankee which was all the worse -- but that's another story.

If memory serves, Frank was accused of murdering Mary Phagan. I only know that because one of the networks ran a made-for-television movie on the subject when I was in grade school. Naturally, this is one of the only films I know of that says much about Southern Jewish life. The others are all about civil rights and the murders of Schwerner, Goodman and Cheney. So perhaps what we're beginning to see is that Hollywood (and my own ignorance) are responsible for Northern Jews' perceptions of Southern anti-semitism.

But what about anti-Semitism elsewhere in the US? MR writes that

I've lived all over the U.S. (courtesy of the U.S. Army) and have found some of the worst anti-semitism in the Pacific Northwest, especially the Seattle area. It was so bad there I told my husband if he ever got orders for that place again he could go alone. Never had any problems in the South, but haven't lived in the deep south, although I feel North Carolina was south enough. It seems like a lot of anti-semitism comes out of the North East these days, does Al Sharpton ring a bell? Now I am happily living in San Antonio, Texas, one of the nicest places in the country (and I ought to know!).

I'm a fan of San Antonio as well, having visited briefly while I worked in Texas. SA is now, of course, a major landmark in the blogosphere thanks to Sean-Paul Kelley. And yes, Al Sharpton does ring a bell, but I think I mentioned in one of my earlier posts that this is a discussion of white anti-Semitism. If we start crossing color-lines, my inbox will surely overflow. Maybe once things calm down in the Middle East we can have an open thread about the Reverend Al.

On a lighter note, MR writes in with the following anecdote:

The first person on my mother's side of the family to immigrate to America was a man named Moses Sauer, a German Jew. For reasons lost to history he went straight to Shreveport, LA where he was promptly conscripted into the Confederate Army. He served and eventually got an honorable discharge (the papers still exist). Anyway, after his discharge he went back to Shreveport. His eventual family split up, with some staying in LA and others moving to NYC (my ancestors).

Fast forward to about 20 years ago, when we met some distant relatives still living in Shreveport, still Jewish and very southern. They were buffont blondes. I was 8 or 9, and one of them, as older Jewish women have done since time began, reached down, gave my cheek a good pinch, and said in a perfect southern drawl, "y'all so meshugge." I can't remember but I think I could hear the theme of the Twilight Zone in the background.

MR, y'all so meshugge!!!

Last but not least, SG, a close friend of mine from Tennessee, asks

Anti-semitism in the South? Didn't we talk about this a million times? I find it interesting that in Berkeley, I'm getting attacked daily for being Jewish because that's apparently why we're at war. Yep, that's right Berkeley, California, liberal bastion. Meanwhile, no one is hassling my parents or friends in Tennessee at all about this. And yes, there are plenty of folks against the war there. Or how about recent events at Yale? I can handle residual ignorance (like the story about the hitchhiker who was asked to see his horns), that can be corrected. What is terrrifying to me is the educated masses deciding to buy the myth of Jewish puppeteering.

Sad but true. Thankfully, Berkeley is a world unto itself. And when anti-Semitism raises its head at Yale, I think we can rest assured that it will be beaten down swifly.

For those of you who want to know even more about Southern Jewish life, both TG and BL recommend Alfred Uhry's play, The Last Night of Ballyhoo. When it comes to London, I'm there.

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# Posted 10:26 AM by Patrick Belton  

I'M OUTTA HERE: That's it for me for the week - I'm headed off to P-town to perform best-manly duties. (And no, sorry, the link isn't to a central New Jersean strip club.) See you guys Monday! (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:23 AM by Patrick Belton  

A NEO-CON, A CENTRIST, AND A LIBERAL WALK INTO A BAR: None of them think the U.S. war in Iraq is driven by idealism. Sound like a bad joke? Except I was out with these three guys last night. All three of them are perceptive recent graduates from Yale and Harvard, currently working in fast-track government positions as aides in the executive and legislature. And the cincher is, they're all dead wrong. Whatever you think about the precise amount of risk involved in the administration's strategy - a matter that's now passed into the purview of historians - there's an unmistakable, driving sense of idealism behind the administration's democracy-promotion aims in the region, and it's just truly tragic it hasn't been able to communicate that message better.

How does it start? Frustratingly, it can't really until we take Baghdad - even though in the meantime the way we fight and the rhetoric we use will play an important supportive role. Unfortunately, it's been a trope of conquerors to pass themselves off as liberators as well ever since Alexander wept over there being no further worlds to conquer. We only convince the world if today's successors to the Seljuk and Mongol cavalries arrive in ancient Baghdad with Jefferson and the Federalist in our back pockets, and the cash and political commitment to the Iraqi people to back it up. The U.S.'s historical record is fortunately promising on our ability to deliver: but there's no avoiding it, our moral credibility as an idealistic nation depends on our giving a great deal of thought now to making New Iraq a durable democracy. So, herewith, a promissory note: I'll be using this space in the coming weeks to collate and analyze what's being said - in government, think tanks, universities, and the blogosphere - about constructing democratic institutions for the people of Iraq. Feel free to e-mail me your forwards and thoughts. And then let's show the world American conquerors really are liberators too. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:48 AM by Patrick Belton  

STARTLING GAZE OF THE OTHER: So my apartment complex's kindly maintenance man, Ramiro, walks in on me at 10 am after a long night of writing, to see a hair-disheveled, unshaven, shirt-unbuttoned me, with a laptop positioned roughly 12 inches in front of my nose, and a half-empty bottle of Scotch from the night before's writing positioned roughly 6 inches north-by-northwest from the axis joining my nose and the screen. He quickly summed up the situation and asked: "are you a writer?"

Gulp. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:29 AM by Daniel  

ARMCHAIR QUARTERBACKING. Who would have thought that the Bush Administration would employ at "third way" military strategy? Michael Gordon makes some of the same points as Josh Marshall. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:15 AM by David Adesnik  

CHICAGO DEEP DISH: Daniel Drezner has a ton of good posts up, on topics ranging from discredited hawks, to weasel-baiting, to bull-headed diplomacy, to de-Ba'athification. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:06 AM by David Adesnik  

SHARPENING THE KNIVES: If Rumsfeld's strategy doesn't work in Iraq, Josh Marshall is going to look very, very smart. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:55 PM by David Adesnik  

SPRITUAL RECONSTRUCTION: Josh Marshall on missionaries in postwar Iraq, plus a few thoughts about military strategy and reconstruction contracts. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:46 PM by David Adesnik  

OXDEM HAS A FRIEND: I'm feeling like a bit of heel. Right after I write Nick Kristof off as unreadable, he comes up with some of the best advice around for the US government.

[So why was I reading Kristof if I've already said he's unreadable? Because once you say somethig like that, you don't want to have people jumping all over you if you turn out to be wrong. How ironic.]

Anyway, here's what Kristof said:

We doves simply have to let go of the dispute about getting into this war. It's now a historical question, and the relevant issue, for hawks and doves alike, is how we get out of this war (and how we avoid the next pre-emptive war). Americans should be able to find common ground, for all sides dream of an Iraq that is democratic and an America that is again admired around the world. Creating a postwar Iraq that is free and flourishing is also the one way to recoup the damage this war has already done to America's image and interests.

The key words there are "all sides". When Josh and I founded OxDem, we wanted it to rise above partisan distinctions and bring Americans together behind the shared ideal of democracy.

What we've found in practice is that many Democrats who tentatively support the war are unwilling to sign on to our statement of principles because they are afraid of being part of an organization that casual observers so often assume is pro-war and pro-Bush.

Now, we've said time and again that the purpose of OxDem is to stand up for democracy in Iraq and around the world regardless of which party controls the White House or the Capitol. But I do understand that when one is in a hostile environment (yes, Oxford), it's hard to sign on to a controversial position. But we are hoping that one the question of war and peace is over and done with, students' commitment to the shared ideal of democracy will make them reconsider their decision to keep their distance from OxDem.

That is why Kristof's words are so encouraging. If even he can bury the hatchet, then promoting democracy may really become a popular cause. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:31 PM by David Adesnik  

TOO MANY SECRETS, PART II: Under the cover of war, the President has issued yet another executive order making it harder for ordinary citizens to get access to declassified government documents. For the definitive account of the Bush administration's apalling record of deception on the freedom of information front, see Josh's excellent TNR article from last year.

You know, I really would like to be able to trust the President. He just makes it so damn hard. Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio? (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:22 PM by David Adesnik  

NO REPRIEVE FOR AMNESTY: Best of the Web takes a swipe at this Amnesty International war crimes report, which suggest that the US hasn't been behaving itself any better than the Iraqis. Click here for a slight different view. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:59 PM by David Adesnik  

MISSING THE POINT: The WaPo headline reads: "Anti-Hussein Officials Rebuke Unilateral U.S. Battle Strategy; Dissidents Say Failure to Incorporate Iraqis Constitutes 'War of Conquest'". The opposition figures quoted within say exactly what you'd expect.

But no one makes the critical point that by sidelining Iraqi militias, the US avoids taking on political debts that will have to be paid off with postwar concessions. Avoiding such concessions is not just a matter of self-interest, but a way of ensuring that opposition groups cannot translate their fighting strength into special privileges in what should be a democratic Iraq.

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# Posted 10:44 PM by David Adesnik  

BACKHANDED COMPLIMENT: From the WaPo:

...the strapping 19-year-old from Birmingham has a combat tale to tell. Now, beaming a perfect white smile, Maskers guards a cargo warehouse ready to accept humanitarian supplies. His grin is not just evidence that British dental services have improved...

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# Posted 10:37 PM by David Adesnik  

TOO MANY SECRETS: Would it really be that hard for the White House to be a little more forthcoming about its decisions to award large reconstruction contracts to Halliburton and other well-connected firms? (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:30 PM by David Adesnik  

ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT: You have no idea how long I've been waiting to use that as the tag line for one of my posts. But now I can, since the WaPo reports that US Special Forces have disrupted Baghdad's control of western Iraq, thus ensuring that it cannot be used to stage missile or unmanned air attacks on Israel, Jordan or Saudi Arabia.

PS Yes, I know the title of Remarque's novel is supposed to be ironic and that I've used it here in a literal sense. So sue me. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:24 PM by David Adesnik  

POLITICAL THEATER: Bush and Blair held a joint press conference today at Camp David. Since there wasn't much news, the questions and answers given weren't all that suprising. However, the behavior of the press in the absence of any news offers a striking demonstration of how the media thinks of its relationship with the Preisdent.

Here's a list of the questions asked:

1.

"First, you, Mr. Prime Minister. Briefly, Secretary Powell said yesterday that the U.N. should have a role in post-war Iraq, but that the United States should have a significant dominating control of post-Saddam Iraq. How will that kind of talk play in Europe?

And, Mr. President, can you help be understand the timing of this war? You talked yesterday that it'll be--we're far from over; today you said it's going slowly, but surely, we're working our way to our end goal.

Given that the resistance is as strong as it's been in the south and that we have what you call the most hardened, most desperate forces still around Baghdad, are we to assume that this could last months and not weeks and not days.

2.

"For both leaders, if I may? We've, all of us, noted quite a shift in emphasis over the last few days from a hope that this could be over very, very quickly to the military in both countries briefing about months.

My question is really, why do you think that shift has taken place? Did we underestimate the scale of Iraqi resistance, has it been the weather, has it been poor advice at the beginning of the campaign or is it a military question?"

3.

Mr. President, you've raised the possibility of holding Iraqis accountable for war crimes. I'm wondering if now if you could describe what war crimes you think they've committed to date?

And secondly, should the Iraqis be prepared for U.S. retaliation with nuclear weapons if they were to attack coalition forces with weapons of mass destruction?

4.

...could I ask you both, you both ranged over history, the justness of the cause that you believe that this war is. Why is it, then, that if you go back to that history, if you go back over the last century, or indeed recent conflicts of your political careers, you have not got the support of people who've been firm allies, like the French, like the Germans, like the Turkish? Why haven't you got their support?

If one were to sum up the nature of such questions, one could do it in two words: confrontational and predictable. In principle, confrontation is good. Challenges from the press force elected officials to justify controversial decisions and account for notable failures. While somewhat of a turn-off, the snide and condescending tone of most of the question asked demonstrates that even in times of war, Americans' support for the First Amendment is so strong that journalists have the right to grill the President as if he were the defendent in a murder trial.

Unfortunately, the predictable nature of today's questions render their confrontational stance worthless. These are questions that Bush and Blair have answered dozens of times before. This sort of repetition demonstrates a disturbing lack of creativity on the journalists' part.

If the press wants to extract concessions from the President, it has to challenge him on the evidence. Otherwise, press conferences become nothing more than a charade in which journalists pretend to be challenging presidential authority while the President himself gets to say vague but patriotic things such as "This isn't a matter of timetable, it's a matter of victory."

I guess this press conferences sums up how I've been feeling about the media over the past few days. When nothing happens at the front, the press spins it as a lack of progress. While challenge and confrontation are good in principle, this sort of desperate attempt to find bad news only exhausts the press' credibility and makes it harder for it to challenge the government when it really should.

Ultimately, media bias hurts both the press itself and the democratic process. It would simply be better for American democracy if both conservatives and liberals could get behind the press as an institution, thus giving it the prestige necessary to demand greater honesty on the part of elected officials. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:15 PM by Patrick Belton  

A MAN OF IDEAS AND OF ACTION: Senator Moynihan deserves more expansive commemorating. For now, simply several greatest hits:

Daniel Patrick Moynihan reaffirmed our ideas of the worth of a life in politics and the academy, and showed it was possible not to fall prey to the short-sightedness endemic in either. Instead - scholarly, gutsy, opinionated, eloquent, and an idealist - he bettered everything he touched, and in all his numerous incarnations - and here one can't help thinking of Vishnu and the other country he so loved - he touched pretty much everything. Whether the subject was international affairs, urban development, public architecture, or civil rights, he brought to it trademark intellectual creativity, a determined and stubborn willingness to follow his own best lights, and a sense of national loyalty surpassing the narrow dictates of the logic of party or ideology. I heard him speak several times on the floor of the Senate. I remember thinking that, as a politician, he showed us the Senate could be a place for dignified, erudite debate worthy of the parliamentary tradition of Tulius Cicero, Burke, and his own chamber's Daniel Webster - a place where equally public-spirited men and women could argue different sides of issues, without impugning their interlocutors' virtue or motives, with eloquent speeches and searching intellects, and with loyalty to a Republic rather than to a faction. Personally, I also thought then that as a coethnic, he gave a dignified public face to an ethnicity too often associated on these shores with the philistinisms of green beer and mediocre midwestern colleges' football teams. When Moynihan spoke, though, it was Parnell and O'Connell who came to mind, and sometimes even Joyce and Muldoon.

He used the eloquence of the Senate well: every day of Terry Anderson's captivity at the hands of Hezbollah in Lebanon, he went to the Senate floor to remind his fellow senators, in a quiet sentence, just how many days it had been. He was a patriot: explaining to his aghast friends and wife why he, a Democrat, had accepted a position in the Nixon administration as assistant to the president for urban affairs, he explained when the president of the United States asks, a good citizen agrees to help. Yet he had no truck with the culture of government secrecy, which he saw as antithetical to a vibrant democracy. When he saw, at the close of his life, barriers and metal detectors proliferating around what for him had to be an open city, he dedicated his last op-ed for the Post to decrying it.

Particularly comforting, for those of us writing theses, is the anecdote the NYT lifted from a 1979 biography, where two college friends caught a dissertation-writing Pat in his room in 1952: "Impressed at first with his elaborate file cabinet full of index cards, they found that most of the cards were recipes for drinks rather than notes on the International Labor Organization." It was indeed often over a lifted glass that the prolific author Moynihan poured out his best stories. His eloquence, though, could also be spontaneous and respond perfectly to the needs of a moment. The NYT caught a quote by Moynihan from the television coverage of President Kennedy's assassination: "I don't think there's any point in being Irish if you don't know that the world is going to break your heart eventually. I guess we thought we had a little more time." He added softly, "So did he."

The Washington Post's editorial page calls Daniel Patrick Moynihan "a man of large ideas in a city of tacticians." In a time in which they are in alarmingly short supply in both politics and the academy, this decent, good man brooks no hesitation in standing up for us as that rare quantity, a role model. Godspeed ye, Senator.
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# Posted 11:32 AM by Patrick Belton  

I DIDN'T DO IT!: A 30-foot wide sinkhole gulps down a portion of M Street in Georgetown. This from the same street that brought you the "exploding manhole cover" cocktail which was so popular in Georgetown bars summer before last.... (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:11 AM by Daniel  

URBAN WARFARE PART TWO. Heavily influenced by his knowledge of the 1993 battle for Mogadishu, Mark Bowden opines on the Battle of Baghdad. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:27 PM by David Adesnik  

THE ONION MOCKS OXBLOG: Or something like that. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:11 PM by David Adesnik  

NOT SO FAST: It seems I got the wrong impression of Tony Blair's stance on Iraq. While he wants the UN to have a role in postwar Iraq, he is no rush for that role to begin. Same goes for Colin Powell. (Links via Command Post.) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:00 PM by David Adesnik  

AGONIST ON AGONY: "5:07 EST Developing story right now is that the 'bomb' that went off in the [Baghdad] market earlier is left too small a crater for coalition weapon. It was only 2 feet deep. Suspected to be an Iraqi air defense weapon. The weapon, repeat, does not resemble any coalition 'penetration weapon'."

Iraqi sources claimed earlier that the bomb was Allied ordance. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:51 PM by David Adesnik  

URBAN WARFARE: What the odds are and how to win. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:45 PM by David Adesnik  

NYT POLL SPINNING: Phillippe has the story. Meanwhile, Eugene takes the AP to task for playing similar games. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:29 PM by David Adesnik  

HUMAN SHIELD EXPOSED: Before heading off to Israel last week, I mentioned that I was on a mission as a human shield. I probably wouldn't have said that if I'd known that an actual human shield was about to die in the Gaza Strip.

Her name was Rachel Corrie. She died after being run over by an Israeli bulldozer. But was it murder, negligence, or an accident provoked by Corrie's own recklessness? The more newspapers you read, the more confused you get.

In a relatively balanced account, the WaPo quotes both Corrie's fellow human shields as well as Israeli military officials responsible for investigating her death. Each one says exactly what one would expect him or her to say. (There's a similar article in the LA Times.)

While in Israel, I didn't have a chance to read the Post, but instead relied on the Herald Tribune, which my hotel distributed to guests every morning. It's account, borrowed from the NYT, suggests that Corrie's resistance was much more passive than other articles made it out to be. According to its first sentence,

An Israeli Army bulldozer crushed to death an American woman Sunday who had knelt in the dirt to discourage the armored vehicle from destroying a Palestinian home in the southern Gaza Strip, witnesses and hospital officials said. [Sorry, no permalink.]

The key word, of course, is 'knelt', which suggests that Corrie had deliberately placed herself in the bulldozer's path and then stopped moving. The word 'knelt' also has religious connotations, which bring to mind the passive resistance of Mahatma Gandhi.

The WaPo's opening sentence describes Corrie as 'crouching', but also quotes a protester who describes her as 'kneeling'. In contrast, the LA Times quotes witnesses who say that Corrie was standing.

The accounts I read in Israel, from the Jerusalem Post and Ha'aretz, were entirely different however. According to the J-Post,

Richard Summers, 31, from England, told The Jerusalem Post that Corrie confronted the D-9 as it slowly rumbled toward the Masri home. Trying to stop the machine, she scaled a steep pile of earth that the bulldozer had plowed up with its blade.
"She was level with the cabin and she was wearing an orange florescent vest," Summers said. "There's no way the driver could have missed her."

Corrie then fell backward, tumbling down the mound and out of sight, but instead of stopping, the driver kept going forward for another 15 meters. The pile of earth enveloped her and she was crushed. All the while, Summers said, "we were yelling over the megaphone for the driver to stop."

According to Ha'aretz,

Rachel Corey [sic], 23, from Olympia, Washington, was killed when she ran in front of the bulldozer to try to prevent it from destroying a house, doctors in Gaza said...

Greg Schnabel, 28, from Chicago, said the protesters were in the house of Dr. Samir Masri.

"Rachel was alone in front of the house as we were trying to get them to stop," he said. "She waved for bulldozer to stop and waved. She fell down and the bulldozer kept going. We yelled 'stop, stop,' and the bulldozer didn't stop at all. It had completely run over her and then it reversed and ran back over her."

Three different protesters, three different accounts. Strange how only one of them -- the most damaging one -- made it into the American papers.

I really have no idea what happened to Rachel Corrie. The most plausible speculation I've read is from No Cameras, a blog run out of Corrie's hometown, Olympia, Wa. NC observes that

Having spent a fair amount of time around armoured vehicles, however, I'm not convinced [Corrie's megaphone] would have made much difference. IDF bulldozers--in this case a Caterpillar D9--are large, noisy and heavily armoured, and the driver is probably wearing hearing protection against the engine noise; you'd probably need Nigel Tufnel's custom amps to make yourself heard inside the cab from outside. Moreover, the view from the cab is severely restricted...The most plausible scenario, to my mind, is that the driver advanced slowly, expecting Ms. Corrie to chicken out in time; she lost her footing and in doing so was lost to the driver's view. Assuming she'd gotten out of the way, he continued moving forward, with fatal results.

Regardless of the uncertaintly surroudning Corrie's death, what we do know for sure is that the Western media have given it a distinct anti-Israel spin. For example, the Christian Science Monitor has described Corrie as a "peace activist" even though she has a habit of burning American flags while participating in rallies in the Gaza strip. (See Tal G. for more links.)

Of course, one can burn American flags and still be a peace activist. But when one marches with Hamas and PA supporters in the Gaza Strip while burning an American flag, that's a little different.

Far worse than descriptions of Corrie as a peace activist, however, is the misuse and mislabeling of photographs in a way that suggests her death was the product of Israeli intentions. For details, click here and here.

But why am I getting so worked up about all of this? After all, anti-Israel bias in the media (not to mention outright anti-Semitism on the left) is hardly news. But it happened while I was there. And people have asked me what I know about it, or what Israelis thought about it. When I respond to such questions, I don't want to profess ignorance. I want to say something that makes a difference.

UPDATE: Hmm. Even Atrios thinks Corrie was no victim. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:52 PM by David Adesnik  

THIS MUST STOP: JAD sends in a link to an article about a pro-war rally in Minnesota. Most of what's in it good news, but at one point there was disgusting display of anti-Muslim prejudice. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:42 PM by David Adesnik  

A WAYWARD "THE" is all that separates the headline of yesterday's London Times from identical headlines in the Telegraph and Guardian. Thanks to MV, of the long lost Visser View, for pointing this out.

Also, Josh points out that front page images of yesterday's British papers are available here. [Warning: Only scroll up and not down after accessing the front page images.] (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:33 PM by David Adesnik  

GAYS AND THESPIANS: Asparagirl has very interesting post up about how hard it is for gay soldiers to comply with the "don't ask, don't tell" policy. Rather than simply saying nothing, gay soldiers often have to engage in elaborate charades in order to persuade others that they are straight. As Brooke points out, this is the last thing a soldier should have to think about in the midst of fighting a war.

Meanwhile, MB writes that he's

not privy to what generals think about such things, but as a former Marine officer who has argued in support of "don't ask, don't tell" I can assure you that my own concern has never been anything but unit cohesion. And I don't recall ever hearing my peers express the idea that gays are somehow less patriotic or loyal Americans, on average, than straights. (But I must admit that this isn't an issue that was ever a particularly hot topic of discussion among my peers, that I can recall--even when Clinton first took office.) Perhaps they were concealing their true beliefs about the issue, but I'm not sure why they would have bothered to do so when talking with peers who agreed with their conclusions.

This is all anecdotal, of course; take it for what it's worth.

I hope MB is right. If he is, the military should be ready to let open gays serve once this war is over. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 4:40 PM by Patrick Belton  

WILSON, JACKSON, AND BISMARCK, MAKE WAY FOR BLAIR, RUMSFELD, AND "CHIRACO-PUTIN:" Interesting op-ed piece in the NYT several days ago by spousal college advisor Timothy Garton Ash, in which Mr. Garton Ash compares the grand-strategic orientations he can't resist dubbing as "Rumsfeldian," "Blairite," and (my personal favorite) "Chiraco-Putinesque." Garton Ash, noting that the world's more powerful powers have split into maritime and continental powers (the US, UK, and Australia vs. France, Germany, Russia, and China), notes his hope that Blair's more multilateral approach will be the signpost of the future, in preference either to the U.S. administration's willingness to act alone, if necessary, in promoting democracy and fighting international terrorism, or to Chirac and (at times) Putin's quijotic hopes to create a alternate pole for the purpose of balancing unchecked U.S. power.

The argument is fine as far as it goes: in the post-WWII period, international institutions have served U.S. interests more cheaply, with greater legitimacy, and probably with a much higher track record of success than the U.S. could arguably have achieved if it had had to further its interests and values supported only by ad-hoc coalitions and its own and its allies' power. However, Garton Ash's argument fails to deal with what happens in the scenario in which comparatively minor world powers, such as France, motivated by dislike of the U.S. precisely because of the latter's superiority in state strength, then use their outsized power in international institutions (relative to their actual economic or military power) either to blackmail or to veto the U.S.'s attempts to act in the international community's interests and provide global security, a public good. Garton Ash's answer seems simply to be that Blair should have tried harder to court continental support, rather than jumping so quickly into an alliance with the U.S. - an argument which sounds specious. (Given the current governments in Paris and Berlin, a coyer Blair could have prolonged the process of diplomacy - itself a continental victory - but it is unlikely that he would have been able to gather their support for a war on Iraq.)

So what does happen in that scenario? Is it just barely possible that, within the constraints of a situation like that, the U.S. might have taken precisely the smartest course open to it- that is, creating a credible threat that it would indeed in the future go outside those international institutions, and therefore completely deprive minor countries from their power over the U.S. that derives strictly from those institutions (and the U.S.'s continued participation within them) rather than from their own national power? The U.S. would then have created strong incentives for minor countries not to use their vetoes in New York or Brussels for blackmail to secure side payments or as a means to keep their disliked, stronger neighbor Gulliver from ever using its military at all, save when directed from Paris. Were they to do so, those countries would succeed only in pushing the United States out of those institutions, and theeby robbing themselves of the outsized global influence that precisely those institutions confer on them. For a country which is roundly derided for its lack of tactical skill in diplomacy, this would have been quite an intelligent and long-sighted gambit indeed.

(P.S.: Entirely incidentally, if in the first sentence you noticed that there's been a high frequency of significant-other-directed nods in my recent posts - a phenomenon also noticeable in the posts of fellow DC-resident Andrew Sullivan ("Sullivinian," for Garton Ash?) - then one might perhaps draw the conclusion that perhaps the Federal City is still conducive to amorousness, even with the Clinton administration no longer in town any more.) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 3:22 PM by Patrick Belton  

I TAKE IT ALL BACK: I WAS WRONG! Well, at least my comments on D.C. weather. Just yesterday, I was bragging about it to my friends in southern California, but today - inexplicably - there's suddenly more rain than even in an Adam Durwitz song. (Incidentally, today I was for some reason inspired to buy my ticket back to England for mid-April.) Thankfully, 89.3 FM used the downturn in, errr, downpour as an occasion to broadcast a half-hour of wonderful rain-themed jazz about 2:30 this afternoon. Thanks! (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:20 AM by David Adesnik  

GAY AND STRAIGHT TO BAGHDAD: Suddenly, the military has stopped discharging soldiers on grounds of homosexuality. While refusing to admit it, the military seems to know that gay soldiers fight just as hard and are just as patriotic.

UPDATE: Reader EG makes a good point:

The military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy is wrong but it does not reflect the assumption that gay soldiers are less patriotic or fight less hard. It is premised on the assumption that the presence of gay soldiers undermines unit cohesion. The more telling point you could have made was that the military seems to tolerate the presence of gay soldiers when their units are under fire, i.e., when unit cohesion is most critical.

I mostly agree, but I still think that the unit cohesion argument is often a cover for unjustified suspicions that gay soldiers are less committed to American interests than their heterosexual counterparts are.
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# Posted 11:03 AM by David Adesnik  

THE UN IN IRAQ: Blair says the UN will have a critical role in reconstruction and that the American President supports him on this point.

The French and German ambassadors to the UN also seem pretty adamant about this point. So much for all those critics who said that the US has to get French and German support for an invasion so that their governments are willing to take responsibility for reconstruction. Au contraire; the absence of a second resolution has made the French and Germans even more concerned about being locked out again. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:59 AM by David Adesnik  

VISUAL SUMMARY: The WaPo has a well-drawn map that charts the progress of Allied forces, along with explanatory notes at the side. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:56 AM by David Adesnik  

MISFIRE: Iraq is reporting that an American missile hit a crowded market, killing 14 people. The army has yet to confirm. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:53 AM by Patrick Belton  

ANSWER TO JOSH: In that case, what you need to do is (mis)attribute it to somebody else, and then sneer at it. For instance: Josh, you could change that sentence in your thesis to: "As Belton so infelicitously said, 'you know, the common law is like a river, ever changing as it goes.'" (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:22 PM by Daniel  

BACK FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE AND ANECDOTES. I just returned from a trip to St. Petersburg and Moscow. Russia is so full of contradictions and hope, I don't even know where to begin. Of course my opinion is biased--I am a spoiled 24 year old with no Russian language skills, which impeded my ability to truly interact with the "Russian street" as one famous NY Times columnist would put it. My sample size is about 20 or 30. Recognizing these limitations, here are a few of my thoughts:

I didn't feel any outright hostility toward me based on my American citizenship (I think most of the hostility was based on my obnoxious personality), but two anecdotes stick out: at a bar, a girl came and sat down at our table, and we smiled and asked her where she was from. She replied, "Baghdad." The next day, we went to an outdoor shopping district and a salesman came up to us and said, "You are American? I am Iraqi!" That was about it. Most of the Russians I spoke to about the war felt that America was violating international law and its power, if unchecked, was "dangerous". The idea of America as the world's lone superpower came up often--one Russian friend of a friend told me that Russians feel threatened because they were a "fake superpower" and seeing a real superpower exercise its strength was unsettling.

Many of the Russians with whom i interacted are at best "hostile to darker skinned minorities" and at worst downright racist. The adjectives they used to describe Chechens are eerily similar to those early white Americans used to describe (American) Indians: "uncivilized", "untrustworthy", "violent", "barbaric", "unreformable" and so on. The friend with whom I stayed told me to expect this, but it was still shocking to hear it. I even got a "some of my best friends are Chechen--but these ones are not like the others" comment from one Russian woman. When i asked her if Russians were anti-Chechen, she said, "How could we be--they own all the hotels and have power in this city." We took a day trip from Moscow, and we told our tour guide that we were studying near London. She said, "London is nice, but of course you have that problem with the blacks. But they are not as bad as the negroes in America--they are Indian....the blacks, they go to restaurants and leave a mess everywhere, it's horrible." During lunch she told us that she liked America--she thought it was a very well run country, but that "there is the problem with the negroes. What a disaster." All of this was quite disconcerting.

Traveling with a Marine and Army officer while our country is at war has provided me with an entirely new perspective on it. They help me with the technical aspects of the war: "Dan, generals are ranked brigadier (one star), major (two stars), lieutenant (three stars), and general (four stars)." Little things like this help immeasurably when watching a press briefing. I could also see their own ambivalence and feelings of helplessness while watching everything on CNN. They are on scholarships in England until July. Until they return to America for training, they have to watch and read about their classmates and friends' experiences in a war in which both of them would likely have served.

It was a wonderful trip, save for the sub-freezing temperature throughout most of it....I never thought I would be looking forward to the weather back in England.
(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:54 PM by David Adesnik  

SEAN-PAUL SUPERSTAR: The NYT has an in-depth review of war coverage in the media. Leading off its section on blogs is an interview with none other than Sean-Paul Kelly, aka The Agonist.

Definitely read the section about Sean-Paul, which also mentions the Command Post. Let me just say that long before the NYT described Sean-Paul as a "mastermind", OxBlog wrote that

"The Agonist" is the nom de blog of a fellow student of International Relations who has traveled the world in search of truth, enlightenment, and investment capital. Sean-Paul has even taught English in South Korea, which perhaps explains why his posts [on the subject] are so much more intelligent than those of the elder Democratic statesmen who polemicize in the NY Times.

We knew quality when we saw it. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:42 PM by David Adesnik  

NO MORE MR. NICE GUY? Dan Simon thinks that Jacob Levy and myself are wrong about the innocence of enemy soldiers.

Steve Sturm thinks the Allies are just being too nice, period. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:22 PM by David Adesnik  

SLEIGHT OF HAND: While this administration seems fundamentally incapable of being honest about budget deficits, one would have hoped for some straight talk about the costs of war. Don't bother. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:19 PM by David Adesnik  

WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE: Egypt has begun to torture anti-war protesters. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:04 PM by David Adesnik  

BRITISH POLLS: Here are some more details about the poll I mentioned yesterday.

In addition to majorities among Tory and Labor voters, a plurality of Lib Dems (45%-41%) now support the war. As in the United States, men are much more supportive of the war than women.

There are pluralities or majorities supporting the war in all age brackets except for the youngest, those aged 18-24. That fact actually surprised me quite a bit, since I tend to assume that anti-war sentiment reflects vivid memories of the devisive and destructive conflicts of the Vietnam era.

But perhaps those Britons old enough to remember Vietnam know that this war is very different. Only those of us who had the privilege of growing up in the aftermath of the Cold War are susceptible to the belief that the enemies of the West can be brought down without the threat of violence.

If you download the full results of the poll, you can find even more interesting information. For example, Guardian readers are against the war, 66-25. But what's really surprising is that readers of the Financial Times are against the war 58-34. (Only 2% of respondents read the FT, however, in contrast to 8% who read The Guardian.)

Anyway, hats off to The Guardian for putting all this 'bad' news on its front page.



(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:43 PM by David Adesnik  

MORE FISK: Just when you thought he couldn't be any stupider, he outdoes himself again. Today, Robert Fisk compares Saddam to Stalin.

But wait, you say, isn't that a pretty accurate comparison? Sure it is...unless it is meant as praise for Saddam.

But wait, you say, how could a comparison with Stalin ever be considered praise? Don't worry, it can. After all, Stalin did hold out against the Wehrmacht for more than two years at a time when military experts predicted the fall of Moscow within six weeks.

To be fair, Saddam has imitated the opening moves of the Soviet defensive campaign of 1941, i.e. lose every battle and retreat to your capital. Now all he has to do is hold out against the world's most powerful military for another one year and three hundred fifty-nine days... (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:33 PM by David Adesnik  

THE DUBIOUS PLURAL: "Undaunted By Losses, Allies Push On Towards Baghdad" -- five-column headline, The Independent.

If you have a copy of the Independent's print edition, you'll notice that above this headline, there are three smaller headlines, the first of which reads "British Soldier Killed in Action". Given that only one soldier was killed, shouldn't the main headline read "Undaunted by Loss, Allies Push on Towards Baghdad"?

Then again, I'm probably wrong on technical grounds. It is almost certain that some other soldier lost his life within the same 24-hour period as the first British combat fatality. But the juxtaposition of the two headlines is still absurd.

While Americans are used to thinking of The Guardian as the ancestral home of liberal media bias, that paper has been rather moderate since the war started while the Independent has become the Al-Jazeera of the West. Again, let us savor the moment. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:18 PM by David Adesnik  

HELL FROZEN OVER: "Battle for Baghdad Begins" -- five-column headline, The Daily Telegraph. "Battle for Baghdad Begins" -- five-column headline, The Guardian. [Note: You have to see the actual print editions to know that these are the headlines. There is no indication on the respective papers' websites.]

I guess the old adage is true; war brings a nation together. God knows the next time these two papers will have identical headlines. I'm curious whether this sort of thing has ever happened before, but I have no idea how to figure it out. For the moment, let's just enjoy this unity while it lasts. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 2:44 PM by Patrick Belton  

I CAME, I SAW, I created viable democratic institutions: okay, so it doesn't make for as nice a Latin translation, but obviously U.S. democracy-promotion aims and credibility in the world will take a big hit if we don't start giving some serious thought - and equally hefty political commitment - to how to build durable democratic institutions in post-war Iraq. Who's been thinking about this? One person, for starters, is Joseph Braude, a Yalie and ex-Bernard Lewis advisee, whose book The New Iraq (Basic Books) attempts a tour d'horizon of existing Iraqi institutions (parliamentary, judicial, police, military, and intelligence), their historical backgrounds and bureaucratic cultures, and directions in which they most need to be reformed. I promise to summarize and comment on some of Braude's arguments as soon as I can get my grubby hands on the book. Some students of the area have been poking holes at his arguments (which they've probably read in their free review copies - not that I'm hinting or anything here...), without putting forth any better alternatives. All well and good, but they need to ante up! We'll all be the better off. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:34 PM by Patrick Belton  

HELLO, AND THANKS to Josh and David for letting me come over and play! For those of you who don't know me (and incidentally, this is equally true for those of you who do know me), I'm a third-year politics and international relations grad student currently enrolled in Oxford's illustrious ph.d.-by-mail program, which for me involves periodic schlepping between a lovely wife in Washington and a thesis supervisor in England who's not as pretty but is very nice anyway. What I'm planning on doing here on Oxblog is taking a few articles each week from recent foreign policy journals, and offering reviews and fiskings of them in which I'll try to point out weaknesses in their facts or thinking, outline diverging perspectives within the academic policy community, and finally put in my two bits about which arguments seem strongest to me in light of promoting U.S. interests and democratic values. I'll start off in the first few weeks by trying to bite off a few pieces each on counterterrorism, Central Asia (because yurts are just cool), democracy promotion, and grand strategy.

But that's all to come. For now, I'm very happy to be over here with you guys! (Especially since I get to do it from drier, warmer, Washington, D.C.....) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:15 PM by David Adesnik  

ESCALATION: In response the Union Jacks proudly displayed in the windows of both 17 East Avenue and in the windows of my neighbors at no. 15, the folks across the way at no. 32 have decided to put an even larger "Stop the War" placard in their window.

While bigger is often better, I think the folks in no. 32 have embarrassed themselves and their cause by putting up a sign distributed by the Socialist Workers Party. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:11 PM by David Adesnik  

A MAN WE CAN BE PROUD OF: Lance Cpl. Jose Gutierrez. May he rest in peace. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:00 PM by David Adesnik  

MORE GOOD NEWS FOR BLAIR: A new poll adds to the existing evidence that a majority of Britons support the war, including a majority of Labour voters.

This striking shift in public opinion is an important reminder that polls can tell us what the public believes, but not how committed it is to its beliefs. Which means, of course, that a majority of Britons may oppose the war once again if it doesn't go well. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:55 PM by David Adesnik  

HONOR ROLL: Holding the line against the unreadables is Jackson Diehl, who almost never fails to impress.

In today's column, he argues that pro-American Arab dictators know which way the wind is blowing. They have already begun cosmetic democratic reforms to stave off American demands for reform. Diehl suggests how the US can use its leverage with such dictators to transform such cosmetic openings into substantive reforms. Mr. President, I hope you are listening. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:47 PM by David Adesnik  

WAY OVER THE LINE: Bill Safire says that

The new, Islamic-influenced [Turkish] government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan transformed that formerly staunch U.S. ally into Saddam's best friend.

Unfortunately, one cannot expect American liberals to defend Turkey from such slander the way they did Tom Daschle. In fact, even conservatives defended Daschle.

As I have argued, the Turkish government's failure to win parliamentary support for hosting US troops should be chalked up to incompetence, not malice. (Or American incompetence, if you agree with Josh Marshall.)

In the years ahead, America is going to have learn how to cooperate with Muslim democracies -- some of them allies -- who do not always do what we want even when what we want is morally sound. Intolerance like Safire's is thus extremely dangerous if there is to be any hope of realizing the President's vision of recasting the politics of the entire Middle East.

After all, if we can live with allies like France, there's no reason we can't put with the rest... (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:35 PM by David Adesnik  

ADD HIM TO THE LIST: When writing about foreign policy, Bob Herbert is unreadable.

PS So far I've gotten two objections to putting Krauthammer on my list. Unsurprisingly, not a single reader has objected to my assessments of Krugman, Kristof and Keller. (The KKK of commentary?) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:28 PM by David Adesnik  

THE UNKNOWN FRONT: Muslim gunmen murdered 24 Hindus in a remote Kashmir village today. The gunmen first overpowered the village's guards and then shot defenseless men, women and children.

This sort of strategy provides a disturbing contrast to that of Palestinian suicide bombers. On the one hand, the Kashmir gunmen were dignified enough to first face down armed guards before attacking civilians. On the other hand, the calculated decision to first overpower the guards and then murder civilians at will is evidence of a brutality reminiscient of the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, or even of the SS.

Sadly, this brutality will not end for as long as there is military rule in Pakistan. The United States must learn that democracy is our greatest ally in the war on terror.

UPDATE: Glenn Reynolds posted on the Kashmir murders before I did. Good for him! (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:09 PM by David Adesnik  

OR PERHAPS NOT: The NYT is reporting that the port of Umm Qasr is not ready for humanitarian aid shipments. Tommy Franks disagrees, however.

UPDATE: Save the Children and the Red Cross are also warning of a massive humanitarian crisis. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 3:16 PM by David Adesnik  

STRANGER THAN FICTION: Thanks to Best of the Web for the links. First of all, it turns out that there was a grenade attack by one US soldier on another during the First Gulf War as well. The attacker was none other than John Allen [Williams] Mohammed, aka The DC Sniper.

Next, it turns out that Russian arms manufacturers have been providing the Iraqis with sophisticated weapons and equipment. The US government has been protesting for some time, but the Russian government responded first with implausible denials and then with extensive delays.

Finally, Maoist rebels in India have been attacking Pepsi factories as well as the usual Coca-Cola targets. As James Taranto points out, the rebels ought to recognize that the enemy of their enemy is their friend... (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:10 AM by David Adesnik  

THE BAD NEWS: While the American media are well-known for presenting every minor setback as a strategic disaster, the following reports are still worth noting:

The NYT reports that Apache helicopters have taken heavy fire near Baghdad while hunting for Iraqi armored division. Interestingly, an American general noted that

in an attack like the one on the helicopters, "you have 10 guys lying on top of a building firing RPG's and small arms. You can go in and bomb that building and reduce it to rubble," but at the potential cost of many civilian lives.

The WaPo reports that the US took unexpectedly heavy casualties in the battle for Nasiriya. 16 soldiers are reported dead.

The closest thing to good news there is that the American people are still firmly behind the war despite a growing sense that it may last longer than expected and involve heavier casualties. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:58 AM by David Adesnik  

CIVILIAN CASUALTIES: CNN reports that

The Australian navy has been working with the United States to clear Umm Qasr in preparation for humanitarian aid shipments, the commander of Australian forces in the Middle East said Monday.

This development is extremely important. Both an in-house UN study and numerous humanitarian NGOs expect that an invasion of Iraq will result in 100,000-400,000 civlian casualties. However, a critical premise on which this report is based is that the port facilities at Umm Qasr will be disabled, preventing shipments of aid.

While it is still far to early to draw definitive conclusions about civilian casualty counts, we are beginning to see that the UN and NGO projections are nothing more than irresponsible speculations influenced by anti-war prejudice. In short, this is a replay of what happened during the invasion of Afghanistan. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:44 PM by David Adesnik  

INNOCENT SOLDIERS: Jacob Levy comments on my post. (And Instapundit links to Jacob Levy.) I have to admit, I think Jacob is right on this one. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:36 PM by David Adesnik  

FISKING FISK: Why do experts wring their hands about the influence of Al Jazeera when it is the British press that is the source of so much anti-American vitriol? According to a full-page headline in the Sunday edition of the Independent, "This is the Reality of War. We Bomb. They Suffer."

Alongside the headline is a horrific photo of a burnt Iraqi child. The author of the accompanying article is none other than Robert Fisk. After visiting one Baghdad hospital ward, he indignantly declares that the humanitarian consequences of war are intolerable. I have to wonder what he would say if he had the chance to visit one of Saddam torture chambers.

The Independent's full-page headline on Saturday was more subtle than today's, but also more offensive: "Baghdad's Night of Terror". Implying, of course, that Bush and Blair are terrorists. Naturally, Robert Fisk provided 800 words of idiocy to go along with the headline. (For some reason, Fisk's column appears on the Independent's website with a different headline. Check Lexis-Nexis if you want to see the original.)

Highlights included:

Well yes, one could say, could one attack a more appropriate regime? But that is not quite the point. For the message of last night's raid was the same as that of Thursday's raid, that of all the raids in the hours to come: that the United States must be obeyed. That the EU, UN, NATO - nothing - must stand in its way. Indeed can stand in its way.

I guess that's why the US spent six months negotiating at the United Nations.

When it comes to stupidity, however, Saturday's column pales in comparison to today's. In it, Fisk informs us that

The [Iraqi] film [of American POWs] will increase internal support for Saddam Hussein, because it will be regarded as proof that the American-British force will be beaten.

Just how stupid does Fisk think the Iraqi people are? As stupid as Fisk himself is, I guess. Unsurprisingly, Fisk fails to note that making humiliating films of POWs violates the Geneva Convention.

So is there a point to this post? No, not really. Just thought I'd remind all of you what it's like to live in Britian, where Robert Fisk is considered a great journalist.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:10 PM by David Adesnik  

NOT JUST THE POOR: Charlie Rangel (D-NY) says that America's is sending its poor and black citizens to die for a white government. Yesterday, I pointed out that those who die are more likely to be white. Today, the Angry Clam points out that the casualties in this war have cut across class lines, even including a descendent of Presidents John and John Q. Adams.

NB: Apologies to those of you who think I have been too hard on Charlie, who served his country proudly in Korea. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:01 PM by David Adesnik  

SECOND IN THE MOTION: Josh already pointed out just how great this op-ed by John McCain is. I wholeheartedly agree. Read it now. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:55 PM by David Adesnik  

THE BA'ATH MUST GO: Jim Hoagland warns that the Pentagon has begun to consider working with Saddam's generals to restore order in Iraq. That would be sheer idiocy. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:50 PM by David Adesnik  

BACKLASH AT HOME: Sadly, some Americans have begun to vent their prejudice against citizens of Arab and Middle Eastern descent. While this column gives no sense of how widespread such incidents are, I think it is self-evident that even one such attack is intolerable. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:50 PM by David Adesnik  

THE CHARLATAN RETURNS: Our old friend Marc Herold is now counting civilian casualties in Iraq, instead of Afghanistan. Mr. Herold may get bored, however, since the Pentagon has been depriving him of much of anything to count. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:45 PM by David Adesnik  

HUMAN SHIELDS REPENT: Glenn Reynolds has the story, here and here. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:35 PM by David Adesnik  

INNOCENT SOLDIERS: As this column reminds us, the life of an Iraqi soldier is also a valuable thing, one which we should not treat with contempt. Many of the young men forced into Saddam's armed forces are as innocent as their civilian counterparts.

Nonetheless, I find it hard to accept that American strategy should focus on minimizing Iraq's military casualties. Were that our approach, fighting a war would simply become impossible. While minimizing opposition casualties is a noble goal, it is one best achieved through the swiftest possible victory. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:30 PM by David Adesnik  

NOT WORTH FISKING: I tend to think of Bill Keller as being a cut above Nick Kristof and Paul Krugman when it comes to providing a balanced view of foreign affairs. But today's column consists of nothing more than shameless partisan sniping.

While I am inclined to give Keller one more chance, the next time this happens I will add him to my list of unreadables. For the moment, it includes Kristof, Krugman and McGrory on the left, Will and Krauthammer on the right. Dowd almost made it, but her special relationship with Josh makes reading her just a little bit more fun... (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:06 PM by David Adesnik  

IRAQ'S ENRON: The NYT has an in-depth report on the administration's plans to give American corporations the exclusive right to bid on reconstruction contracts for Iraq. While there are good reasons to believe that the private sector can get the job done more efficiently than either the US government, the UN, or the NGO community, the political and economic risks of a market-based strategy are tremendous.

As Enron demonstrated, American corporations are no strangers to massive fraud. If scandals emerge, the administration will be hard-pressed to defend itself from charges that corporate interests are running US foreign policy.

Even worse, American corruption may alienate the people of Iraq while also ensuring that dishonest business practices become part and parcel of the political culture in postwar Iraq. While the Bush administration has never been a fan of strong corporate regulations, that is it's only hope of ensuring that Iraq becomes a prosperous democracy rather than a failed state run by organized criminals. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:43 PM by David Adesnik  

CHIRAC VS. IRAQ: The French president has declared that he will not support a UN resolution authorizing the British and American governments to administer postwar Iraq.

According to the WaPo's sub-headline, "Chirac Vows to Block U.S., British Attempts to Govern Post-War Iraq." But that is not what Chirac said. In fact, what he opposes is providing international legitimacy to the Anglo-American occupation.

There is no indication that the French will actually do anything to stop the US or UK from administering Iraq, since that might involve paying some of the costs of the occupation. And why pay if the US and UK are going to take care of the occupation on their own?

In a sense, Chirac's attitude toward the occupation is identical to his attitude toward the war: Let the British and Americans do what has to be done while the French insist that they could have done it better. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:22 PM by David Adesnik  

BEYOND REGIME CHANGE: The Outlook section in this Sunday's WaPo features a series of five essays on the aftermath of the war in Iraq.

As the co-founder of OxDem, I found the essays thoroughly depressing. Taken as whole, the essays' message is that there is little hope for promoting democracy in Iraq or in the Middle East. Fortunately, the logic on which this message rests is absurd to the point of self-contradiction.

Wesley Clark spends most of his time explaining why Iraq is not Japan and why we cannot expect to transform it via military occupation. According to Clark,

The circumstances of Japan and its transformation bear so little resemblance to those of present-day Iraq that both the analogy and the pursuit of a new MacArthur are off the mark. Almost nothing from the lessons of postwar Japan can be applied directly to Iraq, and consequently, neither the approach nor the character of a MacArthur are appropriate for the mission in Iraq. Just consider the facts.

By September 1945, Japan was defeated militarily, culturally and economically...Its armed forces were whipped, with remnants scattered throughout Southeast Asia, China and the Pacific. Its major cities were flattened, its vaunted pride was broken, and its economy was in shambles. It had suffered millions of casualties...

Pardon me, General, but that description of Japan's total defeat seems to fit Iraq perfectly. Except that Iraq's casualties will have come mostly at the hands of Saddam Hussein.

Clark is right to point out that Japan was ethnically unified whereas Iraq is diverse, in both ethnic and religious terms. Yet as Andrew Cockburn points out in his essay, uninformed Western observers have ignored considerable evidence that Sunni, Shi'ite and Kurdish Iraqis are ready to share a single state. Yes, he is referring to you, General Clark.

Adopting a regional perspective, Youssef Ibrahim insists that promoting democracy in the Middle East will accomplish nothing more than bringing violent fundamentalists to power. This, however, is an argument that OxBlog has been in the process of dismantling since December.

Ibrahim draws his evidence mostly from Egypt and Algeria. Had he taken the time to read over Oxblog's in-depth posts on Egypt and Algeria, he might have recognized that the evidence he focuses on is thoroughly misleading.

Ibrahim also mentions in passing both Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, which OxBlog has also profiled as part of its ongoing series on democracy and Islam. Once again, Ibrahim's evidence is far from persuasive.

Perhaps the saddest aspect of Ibrahim's essay is the author's willingness to trust Hosni Mubarak's assertion -- made in private conversation with the author -- that democratic reforms in Egypt will provoke a fundamentalist backlash. Apparently, Ibrahim is so naive that he doesn't recognize how Mubarak and other dictators have systematically exaggerated the fundamentalist threat in order to prevent the United States from demanding democratic reforms.

Yet as OxBlog has insisted time and again, it is the dictators themselves who are holding back the establishment of democracy in the Middle East. While it might be foolish for Mubarak or Assad to suddenly resign and hold elections, there is no reason to think that a gradual transition to democracy would promote a fundamentalist backlash. Rather, a gradual transition will show the people of the Middle East that they do not have to choose between secular dictators and Islamic radicals. Instead, they can reject both and govern themselves.

The final pair of essays in the Post, by Robert Kuttner and Max Boot, provide left- and right-wing approaches to international order in the aftermath of war. What is sad about both essays is that neither focuses on the importance of democratic reform for preventing international conflict.

Kuttner's essay confirms that the anti-war left has no intention of speaking out on behalf of the Iraqi people once the war is over. Rather, it will focus on protesting against "the Bush administration's plans for global hegemony." Forget the starving Iraqi children that were a staple of the protesters' rhetoric. Let someone else take care of them.

While Max Boot's essay is as firmly conservative as Kuttner's is liberal, Boot rises above the simplistic UN-bashing that conservative commentators so often indulge in. His wisest advice to conservatives is not to abandon those allies who voice their resentment of American power. While rhetorical attacks are unpleasant, the behavior of such allies demonstrates that they expect the United States to be the ultimate guarantor of international security. Or as OxBlog put it,

In time, the current Euro-American rift will become yet another memorial to the unprecedented flexibility of alliances between democratic nations. It was that flexibility that ensured our victory in the Cold War, and which will ensure our victory in the war on terror.

(1) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:08 PM by David Adesnik  

HALFWAY TO BAGHDAD: Congratulations, General. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:02 PM by David Adesnik  

PIZZA VS. TERRORISM: Reader BR has sent in a link to this very clever site which lets you send pizza to Israeli soldiers. The soldiers BR adopted were kind enough to send him a digital photo of themselves, slices in hand.

Yes, the pizza is kosher. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:48 PM by David Adesnik  

RANGEL WRANGLED? Reader GB thinks it was unfair for OxBlog to call Charlie Rangel (D-NY) a hypocrite. As GB points out, Rangel made clear that his initial support for reinstating the draft was a tactic designed to prevent the US from going to war.

As far as I'm concerned, that doesn't change a thing. Rangel opposes having a volunteer army on the grounds that it lets rich white congressmen send poor black citizens off to die for their country. Yet Rangel was one of just eleven congressmen who voted against a resolution expressing support for the troops but not for the war.

Why, pray tell, won't Congressman Rangel express his support for the selfsame troops whose selfless sacrifice he described as a justification for reinstating the draft? Answer: hypocrisy.

NB: Rangel is actually wrong about black soldiers dying for a white government. While there are more minorities in the army than in society as a whole, they tend to enlist in non-combat units. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:07 PM by David Adesnik  

UNION JACK: Yesterday I reported that my neighbors at 15 East Avenue are also adamant supporters of overthrowing Saddam. Today, they have chosen to follow the lead of 17 East by hanging a Union Jack in their window. Rule Britannia! (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:41 PM by David Adesnik  

BELGRAVIA DISPATCH is the name of a blog run by Gregory Djerejian. It's well worth a visit, especially recent posts on Tony Blair, the Turkish-Kurdish conflict and why the New York Times is still the home of great journalism. Enjoy! (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:30 PM by David Adesnik  

EXTREMELY DISTURBING if it's true. Via Instapundit. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:23 PM by David Adesnik  

ANTI-WAR ANTI-SEMITISM: Judith Weiss and Gary Farber dismantle Nick Denton's absurd posts. While Nick's posts are a waste of time, Judith and Gary's are top-notch responses that address an enduring and important issue in American politics. Read them now. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:07 PM by David Adesnik  

NOT IN MY NAME: OxBlog's Australian correspondent isn't happy with the total absence of rational thought that tends to characterize anti-war protesters. (See this video clip for some evidence.) What makes Patrick's frustration interesting is that he himself is against this war. Or, in his own words:

Slogans and cliches abound in the anti-war movement. One does not have to be Donald Rumsfeld to puncture the mindless litany of one-liners that protesters and activists intone.

"Public opinion says no" is one line. So? Opinion polls say lots of things at any given time. If all public policy were determined in Britain by counting heads rather than by persuasion and electing governments, the death penalty would be reintroduced and asylum seekers would be expelled. Would governments with mandates be expected to roll over at the behest of one million people descending on London to demand the return of hanging?

"War kills" was another. So does leaving brutal dictators in power. Whatever your opinion on this war, both military action or inaction entails the loss of lives. That is the tragedy of these kinds of crises, that we are all morally tainted, there will be blood on the hands of decision-makers whatever they decide. There are no pure or innocent choices - inaction too entails the tolerance of slaughter.

"No blood for oil", that old chestnut, does not so much argue as presume. It presumes an obscene motive that is unproven and simplistic. Kosovo lacks large reserves of oil. As does Afghanistan. If the Bush administration were so beholden to the dictates of oil companies, it could have lifted sanctions on oil years ago. The oil motive is not obvious, so we should stop pretending it is. Protests themselves often attract speakers whose intellect is on neutral and whose emotion is on overdrive. Jesse Jackson shouting Peace and Love and Justice is not persuasion, it is a series of mantras.

There are better arguments against the war. Inaction cannot bring peace and justice back to the people of Iraq. The only response is that this is not just about the people of Iraq, but the sovereign states and people of the world. It is about the threshold for war. The Archbishop of Canterbury, for example, warns of the dangers and instability of pre-emptive strikes as a precedent for world order. Striking a nation largely at the behest of great powers without the clear sanction of the United Nations could well liberate the people of Iraq, but also threatens to set a pattern less benign great powers of the future could emulate. You may not agree- its arguable. But it's an argument that does not presume an unproven motive, that does not pretend to moral purity, does not rely on cheap slogans, and does not insult the intelligence.

But if not for the pretensions of moral purity, cheap sloganeering and manifest insults, some of us hawks might actually have been persuaded by the protesters!!! Oh well... (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:51 PM by David Adesnik  

TURKS AND KURDS: The Cougars are getting worried about the presence of Turkish commandos in Northern Iraq. According to Reuters,

Turkey has spoken of not going beyond a "buffer zone" reaching some 20 km (12 miles) into northern Iraq but said it could go deeper if its national interests were threatened.

While that doesn't sound good, I sense that the Turkish refusal to host US ground forces will ensure that the US keeps Turkish interference to a minimum.

On a related note, the Cougars think that this CNN article constitutes evidence of an Arab backlash. But I'm not impressed. None of the protests mentioned by CNN had more than 10,000 marchers.

Perhaps more importantly, the Cougars ought to recall my statement that

even those [Arabs] who are not firmly anti-American will be deeply suspicious of American motives. Thus, there may well be riots or other disturbances. However, if it becomes clear that the West has replaced Saddam with a government more democratic than any other in the Middle East, the initial outburst of anti-Americansim will abate.

A real backlash will have to entail more than ineffective protests.

CORRECTION: According to the AP, the Cairo protest hit 10,000 and the one Yemen hit 30,000. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:32 PM by David Adesnik  

HYPOCRISY EXPOSED: Best of the Web points out that Charlie Rangel (D-NY) -- aka Mr. Reinstate-The-Draft -- was one of 21 representatives to vote 'no' on a resolution expressing congressional support for the troops.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, a majority of African-American representatives refused to support the resolution. But two of those who did were Denise Majette (D-GA) and Arthur Davis (D-AL), both whom defeated far-left anti-Semites (Cynthia McKinney and Earl Hilliard, respectively) in last year's Democratic primaries. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:28 PM by David Adesnik  

THE AMERICAN ZIONIST OIL MAFIA: What exactly does Iraq have against Sicilians? (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:11 PM by David Adesnik  

READER RESPONSE: Here's a classic from the NYT discussion board:

So you've started a war. Well done America. Hope you're ready for the consequences because your greatest threat now - is not muslim fundamentalists. It's the hatred of millions of white westerners.

I'm tempted to agree. But if this guy's right, should we start bombing France? Or would that lead to protests in the Muslim world?

Anyway, I'm a moderate, so what I recommend is for the US to hold off bombing Paris until the first French suicide bomber shows up in New York. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:57 PM by David Adesnik  

DEJA VU: Sarah Sewall is back with more comments on civilian casualtites. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:41 PM by David Adesnik  

ARAB PROTESTS ARE PEACEFUL: That's an NYT headline, not a generalization. Read the story. You might begin to wonder about the anti-American backlash that's supposed to be happening.

As far as I can tell, the best evidence for a backlash is coming straight out of San Francisco. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:10 PM by David Adesnik  

BACKSEAT DRIVERS: Hamas has called upon the people of Iraq to attack American forces with suicide bombs. What, isn't Saddam's strategy suicidal enough for them already? (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:03 PM by David Adesnik  

THE POLLS: The WaPo reports that seventy percent of Americans back the war. According to Gallup, 60% support the war strongly, with an additional 16% supporting it somewhat.

There is some division, however, on whether the US will have won if it doesn't kill or capture Saddam. Also very interesting is that most Americans expect the war to last for months, not days or weeks. Strangely, 80% of respondents expect fewer than 1000 casualties despite the length of the war.

If you look at the raw data, there are a couple of other points worth noting. First of all, Bush's approval ratings -- both for general performance and for his handling of Iraq -- rose by 5-10% over the late February numbers. Not exactly a surprise.

The more interesting thing is that 67% of respondents thought that the President had done a good job of explaining his reasons for going to war. In light of the pundits' constant criticism of the president on that point, one has to wonder whether they were missing something.

My guess is that Saddam's transparent efforts to block inspections made it clear that he has a lot to hide and was not going to cooperate. Even if Bush was less than consistent in his public statements, he recognized that Saddam was playing games, which was what most Americans already knew.

Think of it this way: The pundits are like theater critics who will only applaud a brilliant performance. Everyone else is the audience. They know whether they like the film or not, but don't get worked up about the details.

PS I am a pundit. But I respect the audience.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:54 PM by David Adesnik  

DEMOCRATS AGAINST DEMOCRACY: Larry Kaplan levels his guns at the array of prominent Democrats who have come out against promoting democracy in Iraq or elsewhere in the Middle East. What is especially sad and hypocritical about such criticism is that it turns its back on Bill Clinton's legacy of promoting democracy abroad, especially during his second term in office.

What Kaplan does not confront, however, is the fact that the GOP's commitment to Wilsonian ideals remains unproven. Precisely because Kaplan is well aware of this fact, his exclusive criticism of prominent Democrats rings somewhat hollow. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:30 PM by David Adesnik  

KOSOVO, IRAQ & INTERNATIONAL LAW: Kosovo demonstrated that morality often compels avoidance of UN protocol. But was the attack on Yugoslavia legal in addition to being moral? Yes -- but only after the fact. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:12 PM by David Adesnik  

ARAB WORLD ERUPTS IN FURY: Or so reads the headline of an AP wire on the WaPo site. Read the article and you'll learn that a few thousand Egyptians are now the sum total of the Arab world.

Also note the opening sentence: "Hundreds of thousands of people marched on American embassies in world capitals Thursday to protest the war against Iraq, including a violent clash in Cairo..." Turns out that the hundres of thousands were mainly in Athens, Rome and Milan, cities not known for being part of the Arab world. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:55 PM by David Adesnik  

JEWS NAMED BUBBA: Lots more interesting mail from OxBlog's readers. DM writes that:

Read your posting on anti-semitism in the South with great interest. I can't really speak for other parts of 'Dixie' but as a South Carolinian I can tell you that I have seen very little of that in my lifetime in the Palmetto state. For many years (from the 50's through the early 80's one of the most powerful politicians in South Carolina was Salomon Blatt...Speaker of the South Carolina House of Representatives). In the 90's we had a Jewish Chief Justice of the state Supreme Court -- Julius 'Bubba' Ness -- and as a boy I remember meeting, during a class trip, one of the powers of the state Senate, Senator Hyman Rubin.

The first Reform congregation in the United States was in Charleston, South Carolina and the Secretary of State for the Confederacy was Jewish. Also many of the business leaders of South Carolina have been Jewish. I can't answer for other parts of the south (such as the 'deep south'- they're a breed unto themselves down in those parts) but anti-semitism is not something that I ever witnessed. We have been guilty of other forms of bigortry in the south in our past, but in the social circles in which I grew up I never saw anti-semitism. Just glimpse of things from the Palmetto state. Again, I can't speak for the entire south.

It goes without my saying it that the prominence of Jews within the SC elite is absolutley remarkable. Still, I hesitate to consider such prominence as evidence for the sincere acceptance of Jews as equal citizens. Throughout the 19th century, Jews achieved remarkable prominence throughout Western Europe, only to have those same Western Europeans turn against them later on. Regardless, this sort of strange co-existence raises sophisticated questions about what tolerance is and how it is experessed.

Moving on: Complementing DM's Palmetto report, WG writes in on behalf of the Deep South. He writes that

I may be a bit late to this thread but here is a little evidence for your files. My wife's father is a devout Episcopalian in his mid 60s. He grew up in Greenville, Miss. His best friend in the world is a gentleman named Ed Kostman who is Jewish. They grew up together in Geenville. If there is a deeper part of the deep south I don't know where it is. Sonny moved to Chicago and eventually Danville, VA where my wife grew up. Ed stayed in Greenville. Presumably antisemitism was not rife enough to prevent him from eventually own 4 car dealerships. I've never had a discussion with either of these guys about antisemitisim but they treat each other and their families treat each other the same way we would treat Baptists, Presbyterians or any of the other weird sects we Episcopalians find in the South. In Danville, VA my wife grew up with a number of Jewish kids, so did my first wife in Petersburg, VA,. Neither places are pillars of enlightened thought. In fact, they are both as full of red necks as any small southern town but those people are in a very distinct minority in my opinion. In the big city of Richmond, I also grew up with numerous Jewish kids and never considered their religion as anything other than their religion. Of course we made fun of each other and called each other names and befriended each other the way kids do, or at least used to do before PC made everyone so damn hyper sensitive. It is also true that the civil rights struggle was going on while I was growing up and I never had anything like the kind of interaction with African Americans that I had with Jews.

Finally we come to the thoughts of AT, an Oxonian from Arkanas. She comments that

I've been following your posts about Southern anti-Semitism with interest. I found it very amusing that you would not be surprised at Moran's and Lott's offensive remarks based on the fact that they are
Southerners. We get that a lot. A Northerner assuming that bigoted views are rampant down South?? How shocking! Fortunately for everyone, it's not quite that bad. I don't agree that the percentage of bigots in the South is higher than anywhere else--it may be that our bigots are more vocal (and automatically more noticeable because of everyone's expectations), but for the vast majority of Southerners, the bad old days are over. And there is a striking difference between urban and rural views in both North and South, for the simple reason that city dwellers are more exposed to diversity. (Of course, people sometimes react to such exposure by becoming more racist.)

I would like to make one observation about residual prejudice in the South and the way it is expressed. The way I see it, a lot of older Southerners may seem inappropriate, but as far as I can tell, this makes no difference whatsoever in how they actually treat people. My late grandfather would make some pretty unreconstructed comments from time to time--nothing mean-spirited, but definitely embarrassing in front of your non-Southern friends. Still, I haven't met many people who were kinder and more even-handed, or less racist in actual fact. My grandfather's verbal gaffes, and the ways of thinking they represented, came from having lived almost his entire life in the rural Delta, where
racial roles were still narrowly defined (white farmers, poor white and black sharecroppers, Chinese storekeepers). Growing up in a relatively diverse Arkansas city (Fort Smith), I didn't have the same sort of baggage. By this, I certainly don't mean to defend Moran and Lott--they should have known better. It's very easy for people to take those
remarks as corroborating evidence that most Southerners are racist. But appearances can be deceiving.

My point is that there is a long tradition of decency and respect in the South. Sadly, it has often been drowned out by less noble elements in our culture, but a true Southerner will cultivate and uphold it. People who subscribe to this tradition treat everyone with the same dignity, and they also understand that actions speak louder than words. Racisms and prejudice are not only wrong, they are improper and unworthy. To us, the term "white trash" refers to ignorant, prejudiced people, not poor people. I only knew one Jewish family growing up, and only one black family (though I knew plenty of Asians, and Catholics), but honestly it never would have occurred to me to treat them differently. I just didn't think about it.

All I can say is that if the spokesmen of the South were as civilized as AT herself, then all of America would look forward to the South rising again. For the moment, it may be worth considering the relationship between thought and action. How is it that certain individuals openly accept stereotypes but still act in a fair and color-blind manner? What role do such stereotypes then play in the behavior of those who are racists?

In light of WG's concern about political correctness, one recognizes that such questions have to be answered before one can object to speech codes on ethical grounds rather than libertarian ones.

Before signing off, a couple of quick notes: DH writes back with a link to this article about that brief moment in Georgian history when Jews were the majority in said colony.

AS recalls hearing a British version of the Lt. Goldstein joke. Appropriately, the British version was more subtle. On a related point, I have to confess that I went astray in telling the Lt. Goldstein joke. The dowager in question actually requests that no Jews be sent to her home for dinner, not no blacks. This correction actually adds a level of sophistication that places the Southern version of the joke on par with the British one. TTFN!

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:14 PM by David Adesnik  

DEFINING TERRORISM: Here's one more reason to be proud of the US military. In a challenge to her students, Naval Academy ethics professor Shannon French asked each of them to clearly state the difference between themselves and the members of Al Qaeda. She then had her students exchange papers with a partner and write critical responses from the perspective of Al Qaeda.

The respones of both the students and their professor to this challenge are a powerful statement about what it means to be a professional soldier. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:02 PM by David Adesnik  

THE EXPATRIATE RETURNS: I am back in Oxford and have replaced my curtains with British and American flags.

For the moment, the balance on our block is 2 for war, 2 against. Along with the Union Jack/Stars & Stripes display at 17 East Avenue, someone at No. 15 has had a poster up that says "Appeasment is not an option. It is a suicide note."

Across the street, there is a window with a "No War on Iraq" sign. A few houses down on our side of the street there is a poster that shows a B-52 in action along with the words: "Stop Humaniterrorism!" Looks like someone hasn't been reading OxBlog...

PS Later on tonight I'll tell you all a little more about my time in Israel. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 3:35 PM by David Adesnik  

JERUSALEM DISPATCH, PART II: Still alive, still well. But British Airways cancelled all of its flights so I had to switch to El Al for the way back. Otherwise having a great time. Seeing friends from high school as well as my family. Should be back in Oxford tomorrow afternoon.

Everyone here is pretty calm, though I've hard that things in Tel Aviv are a bit more tense. I think things will turn out all right. I hope. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 2:57 PM by David Adesnik  

JERUSALEM DISPATCH: Still alive. Four limbs, etc. Minimal internet access. Reading mail but not writing. Human shield mission successful so far. Suicide bombers effectively deterred. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:26 AM by David Adesnik  

OXBLOG=HUMAN SHIELD: I'm headed off to Israel in about half an hour. I will be there for four days. With any luck, I'll find some time to blog. Rather: With any luck, I'll come back in one piece. Peace. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:56 PM by David Adesnik  

GRAD STUDENTS TALK BACK: Eric Tam (definitely) and Brett Marston (sort of) think my description of Yale grad students' attitudes toward undergraduates is a little one-sided.

They're right, but it seems that the attitude I described is the one that makes it into print far more than the one they describe. Would that it were not so! (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:34 PM by David Adesnik  

SMALL POX: Martin Kimel reminds us that the US government isn't taking some very basic steps to protect its citizens from biological warfare. Martin says,

"It amazes me that so many American bloggers and professional pundits can argue that Saddam Hussein's possession of weapons of mass destruction poses such a grave danger that we must be prepared to launch a pre-emptive war against Iraq, yet they remain vitually mute in the face of our government's failure to protect us against Saddam's potential use of smallpox against our cities. I agree that we must be prepared to disarm Saddam by force, but I am also convinced that our lethargic reaction to the smallpox threat places us all in great peril.

What makes this so maddening is that there is a fairly simple preventive measure here: the smallpox vaccine. The risks are relatively de minimis, the failure to act potentially catastrophic. (Anyone who believes that an outbreak will be contained after the fact, with all the ensuing panic, is kidding himself. Can you imagine people in high-density areas calmly making appointments to get themselves and their families inoculated once the first case has been diagnosed in their vicinity?) If the "first responders" in my area don't want the vaccine that's been offered them, I do -- and there are plenty of other ordinary civilians who share that view.

So, what to do? We can write letters to the White House, to our Congressional representatives, to local government officials, to anyone of influence. We can make this an issue in the blogosphere that draws the attention of the mainstream media. There are, I'm sure, a host of other things we can do. The war is just around the corner. Let's start defending ourselves at home.

If it's any consolation to our stateside readers, the UK is just as vulnerable... (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 2:56 PM by David Adesnik  

JEWS OF DIXIE: OxBlog's intrepid reades are on a mission to figure out why it is that Hebraic Northerners assume that anti-Semitism thrives in the states of the Old Confederacy. Gary Farber, the incisive mind behind Amygdala writes that:

I don't have any kind of statistics handy, and I'm a bit loath to do other people's online research without a darned good reason (that's a hint to try googling up some yourself), but first an observation: there are and particularly were in the Sixties and earlier, far, far, far, more "blacks" in the South than Jews. So I'm hardly surprised to see anyone testify what I'm sure is completely true: that they heard far more anti-black remarks than anti-semitic remarks, and witnessed far more anti-black acts, etc. It only stands to reason.

As an anecdote, my mother, who was quite brave, took a hitchhiking trip with a friend, down through the South to visit her brother, who was then training at an Army base, in 1942. When she allowed in conversation with a truck driver that she was Jewish, he asked to see her horns. Deadly serious, no joke, that's what he (and many people) believed. Not in NYC, of course, but that's a difference between being around zillions of Jews and never having met one.

I don't recall of any Jewish civil rights workers being shot up North (Goodman, Schwerner, Cheney, you've heard of them?). And in the Sixties, the KKK was a tad more popular down South. And many other people, of course, had lesser versions of their opinions, which had a lot to say about Jews. As does, for instance, still, David Duke and others today. Where was it David Duke was in office, again?

On the other hand, Congressman Moran is not from a Southern state.

It's almost certainly as worthwhile to distinguish between urban areas and rural areas when discussing anti-semitism, as it is "north" and "south," historically. NYC is an exceptional case, for instance, as are some other large cities, but it's not as if you couldn't find anti-semitism in rural northern states, to be sure.

I think Gary says it pretty well. And whereas his mother was asked about her horns in the 1940s, I have friends who were asked about their horns in the 1990s. (It probably didn't help that my friend's last name was Horn, but anyway.)

Reader BR, a Southern native, thinks that the premise of Southern anti-Semitism should take into account the difference between Catholics and Protestants. As he observes:

I grew up in Alabama -- Mobile to be specific. I attended Catholic grade and high school from 1948 to 1960. Not once did I hear a disparaging remark from the nuns or the brothers aginst the Jews. Oddly enought Mobile has a substantial Catholic, and I suspect, a respectablely sized Jewish populations.

Growng up, I never heard my father or anyone else saying anything bad about Jews, but the Blacks were another story. Also I do not recall any synagogues being defaced. I think the KKK was never very big in Mobile because of the relatively large Catholic population and obviously the KKK never welcomed Catholics, Jews, and Blacks with open arms (or sheets.)

PS Mobile is a seaport and it is my opinion that seaports are generally more tolerant about cultural differences.

Another reader -- one who happens to share the initials DH -- adds that all those who think of the South as more anti-Semitic should take into account the often more offensive racism and anti-Semitism of the North. As he recalls,

I lived in Atlanta, and traveled the across the deep south, but no further north than Richmond until I went to Hofstra U. ( Long Island ). I am 39, from a white, Southern Baptist upbringing. My experience is similar to the DH you quote, but coming along at the tail end of the desegregation struggle, I heard very few openly expressed anti-black comments either. Prejudice was not extinguished by any means, but race problems had become a source of regional shame. I remember being stunned to hear my roommate from New England unselfconsciously ask me, "How can you stand all the niggers down there?" The "N-word" was considered a hyper-obscenity in my southern circle of friends.

In college, my incompetence at identifying Jews by racial characteristics or surname was a source of amusement, as was my confusion of their term "JAP" with John Wayne's epithet for his enemy in old war movies. I had always thought of Judaism as a religious belief that one could not know of a stranger. The Jewish friends of my childhood were simply kids whose religion had an inconveniently unsynchronized, but recognizably similar Sabbath ritual.

White Northerners I met in college all seemed to assume that whatever racial prejudices they harbored were at least better than what went on down south, and thus excusable.

A point worth making. Last but not least, blogger Dan Gelfand adds that

among my father's generation (he's 52), the perception of southern anti-Semitism seems to have at least partly resulted from the murders of Cheney, Schwerner and Goodman. It's something that seems to have stuck in the heads of many people. That said, I don't really know how much of that perception is actually true.

In closing, I offer a thought and a joke. The thought: Northern Jews' strong identification with the civil rights movement has led them to assume that the racists of the South must have also been anti-Semites. Regardless of our white skin, we know that Teutons and Anglo-Saxons often consider us to be less than white.

And the (moderately offensive) joke:

In 1944, a lonely southern dowager sent a telegram to the local army base to let it be known that she would be glad to host two or three young G.I.'s for Saturday dinner. She requested, however, that only white soldiers be sent.

On the appointed day and time, the dowager's doorbell rang and she walked out onto her porch. Standing there were three of the blackest soldiers she had ever seen. Taken aback, she stammeringly asked them, "Are you sure your commanding officer sent you to the right address?"

Calmly, one of the soldiers responded, "I'm sure that this is the right address, ma'am. Lieutenant Goldstein never makes mistakes."

Cheers! (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:35 PM by David Adesnik  

IRAN'S NUCLEAR STRATEGY. Get the bomb, stop America. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:26 PM by David Adesnik  

DAMN GOOD POST: Amygdala lays down the law of how to separate veiled anti-Semitism from legitimate criticism of neo-conservatives. Don't come back here until you're done reading it.


Judith Weiss' response is also well worth your time. Finally, don't forget Jonah Goldberg's devastating attack on those who attack neo-conservatives because they are afraid to admit they are anti-Semites. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:01 PM by David Adesnik  

MORE BLOGGYFOTTOM: Ben Berman has a long and thoughtful post on the dilemma of the liberal hawks. One of Ben's best points is that

it is naïve to think that war in Iraq will not increase the likelihood of terrorist attacks during the conflict. However, increased terrorism would be a strategic decision on the part of Al Qaeda, and not a direct result of the US invasion. Those who want to do harm to the US and the West need no further incentive, but an invasion of Iraq will be an opportune time to strike.

If there's a backlash, it will be planned. Anyway, go and read the rest of Ben's post. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:43 PM by David Adesnik  

THE SOUTH RESPONDS: Unhappy with my observation that anti-Semitism is more common south of the Mason-Dixon line, reader DH responds:

I do not doubt that you and some of your friends may perceive that anti-Semitism is much more common in the South than in the North. However, in making statements based on such "perceptions" about groups of people, I think it's important to be careful that the perceptions stem from actual facts instead of stereotypes that themselves create the perception. To be more blunt, I think it's likely that the reason you and others perceive that Southerners are more likely to be anti-Semitic than Northerners is a general stereotype of white Southerners as bigoted. In this particular instance, I doubt that the stereotype has any basis in fact.

I grew up in Mississippi during the segregation era (I'm 49 and white) and although anti- black statements were as common as air, I can't remember ever hearing an anti-Semitic statement. It was not until I went north to law school (in Chicago) that I ever heard seriously anti-Semitic statements, all from Northerners. In the apartheid-era South that I grew up in, there were only two racial groups - whites and blacks. At that time, the key fact was that Jews were white. (Interestingly, the same was true for Chinese, who were declared "white" by law for purposes of segregation.) Even today, when I visit less enlightened relatives, I may hear anti-black comments, but I just don't remember any anti-Jewish remarks.

I have no doubt that polls would show that white southerners are more likely to be biased against blacks than whites in the rest of the country. But I am not aware of such polls showing this is true with respect to anti-Semitism. Are you? Without such evidence, I think it's best not to make generalizations about groups of people.

DH is right. I don't have evidence, just experience. If any of you have thoughts on this one, let me know. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:36 PM by David Adesnik  

GREED: Seems a French corporation has been smuggling military supplies to Iraq as recently as this January. While there's no reason to think that the government has anything to do with it, I figure an American company would probably have the decency to sell illegal arms to China instead.

Thanks to RB for the link. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:30 PM by David Adesnik  

SMARTER THAN SMART: The inimitable Howard Veit thinks that Elizabeth Smart was never kidnapped in the first place. Howard was a private investigator once, so maybe it's a good hunch. Sure would explain a lot.

Anyway, while you're over at Oraculations, don't forget to enjoy some of the other bizarre, twisted and hi-f*****- larious posts. I think Howard may be even more evil than the Angry Cyclist. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:12 PM by David Adesnik  

CLINTON ON BUSH: In a speech at New York's 92nd St. Y, the fomer Arkansas governor said that he would've done a better job of handling the economy and lining up allies than his successor.

On the one hand, Clinton's attacks weren't much better than cheap shots. But the simple fact that he does support the war shows that he has a certain minimal degree of integrity. Cough--cough--Algore--cough--cough...

(Thanks to reader JW for the link.) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:57 AM by David Adesnik  

PROCRASTINATION: This is the end of the line. I've now descended from racial politics, to crime news, to internet quizzes to the controversy surrounding statues that resemble reproductive organs.

I've stayed away from that last one despite Andrew Sullivan's pronounced interest. But since Glenn asked whether there is a double-standard regarding such stautes on university campuses, I thought I'd add my two cents.

At Yale, there is exactly such a statue, known as the Women's Table. It was designed by Maya Lin, better known for her work on the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington DC. The Table is the regular site of demonstrations and counter demonstrations about gender issues.

From this photo, it's hard to tell that there is anything even vaguely reproductive about the statue. But if you look at the Table from above, it looks exactly like an Oval Orifice. In fact, the Table has even been the victim of a "symbolic rape".

Anyway, it's time for me to go to the gym. Sensei Ohta is visiting, and I have the chance to move one step closer to being a black belt if I impress him enough. Cheers! (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:33 AM by David Adesnik  

MY ROLE MODEL is Franklin Roosevelt. At least according to this political stereotypes quiz. Could be worse. He did kick some Nazi a**.

I'm guessed that Josh would come up with Ronald Reagan, but I was wrong. He got Ralph Nader. Go figure. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:10 AM by David Adesnik  

SENSATIONALISM: I know I should be more concerned about the Middle East, but this Utah kidnapping case is just too weird. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:49 AM by David Adesnik  

MUSLIMS VS. ANTI-SEMITISM? We all know that James Moran (D-VA) is an anti-Semite. The real question, though, is "Will Arab-American groups say anything about Moran's remarks?"

Thanks to reader SR, we have our first answer. According to Khalid Turaani, executive director of American Muslims for Jerusalem (AMJ),

“Anti-Semitism is repulsive and intolerable. At the same time it is profoundly un-American to stifle discussion of the well-documented Israeli push for committing American troops to invade Iraq. Israel is a big factor in our decision to go to war...Israel Firsters want a war sooner than later, without regard for American interests or American lives."

Let me translate that for you in case you were having some trouble: "Anti-Semitism is bad, but American Jews are traitors who will sell out America on Israel's behalf."

The hypocrisy continues on AMJ's website. The highlight is AMJ's "Congress Watch", a comprhensive rating of all 535 congressmen's support for the Palestinians. At the end of the report is the AMJ "Hall of Fame" which includes (drum roll please): James Moran. Not to mention Dennis Kucinich and Cynthia McKinney.

There's a Hall of Shame as well, which includes hateful reactionary Arab bashers such as Hillary Clinton, Barbara Boxer, and Dianne Feinstein.

Also worth reading are some of the AMJ press releases, which do their best to pretend that Israeli soldiers show the same malicious disregard for human life as Palestinian suicide bombers. As is obligatory, the AMJ tries to compare Israeli crimes to the Holocaust.

After all, Auschwitz was nothing more than a justified response to fundamentalist Jews who strapped dynamite to themselves and wandered into Munich beerhalls. Right.

All this should really come as no surprise. As Daniel Pipes has shown, AMJ is nothing more than a moderate front for vicious anti-Semitic agenda. Sadly, the war on terror will have to confront enemies within the United States as well as abroad. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:48 AM by David Adesnik  

THE DEMOCRATIC LEFT: Social Democrats, USA "is the successor to the Socialist Party, USA, the party of Eugene Debs, Norman Thomas and Bayard Rustin and is a member of the Socialist International."

You'll have to admit, these aren't the sort of folks you think of as hawks. But they are. They support the war against Saddam. And -- more importantly -- they are stronlgy in favor of a serious commitment to building democracy in postwar Iraq. Click here for a copy of an open letter to the President on behalf of democracy in Iraq, signed by an SDUSA official as well as neo-cons like Robert Kagan. Strange bedfellows, I say...but all for a good cause!

UPDATE: Special thanks to readers MC and TM who point out that SDUSA is one of the splinters that resulted from the break up of the original American socialist party. Closer to the neo-cons than one might expect, SDUSA has often taken a hawkish line on foreign policy. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:32 AM by David Adesnik  

MAD COWS AND ENGLISHMEN: The anti-war crowd here seems to be enjoying its civil disobedience. As Giants & Dwarfs reports,

I have just witnessed a mild form of the LA riots or the French Revolution. Around two o'clock this afternoon, a huge mass of school kids (I estimate about 500), most of whom seemed to be about 14, 15 years old, turned up in the main shopping street of Oxford (Corn Market Street) carrying anti-war posters and chanting "No to War!" Some were wearing T-shirts that said: "Let's bomb Texas. They have oil too." They hung around the city center for a good hour and a half. Eventually they stormed Oxford Castle. Then the mob turned violent. They began to hurl rocks at busses and innocent by-standers (such as your humble correspondent). Later they occupied Carfax, the very heart of the city, and blocked buses. Security guards and the odd police officer tried to protect a nearby mall, when the kids threatened to go there next. I spoke to a couple of them, and they told me that they had broken out of their classes, with the tacit support of their anti-war teachers. "The teachers can't let us go, because it's illegal and they'd get sacked, but they wanted us to go", a girl told me. Almost all were pupils from Cheney School (If only the Vice President knew what they are doing in his name), where I imagine some unpleasant conversations will have to take place with staff tomorrow morning.

Not to be outdone, Oxford's students (participating in a larger demonstration) broke into an actual air force base. The BBC reported this as a criminal activity. In contrast, I received the following message from Rhodes Scholars Against the War maillist:

Thank you to everyone who came to our events this week, especially those who came to lie in the cold street on Saturday for the die-in, and those who made the journey to RAF Fairford on Sunday.

Our action at Fairford was a great success, with Oxford students breaking into the base successfully and blocking the take-off of a C-17 transport plane, as well as supporters having a picnic near Gate 14 and the B52 bombers...keeping a vigilant eye on them while they ate. We received coverage on the BBC (both on the TV and on
their website), Radio 4, and in the London Metro....please don't forget about the presence of these bombers in our backyard.

While, in a literal sense, this is sabotage, I'm not going to get worked up about it. These protesters will convince themselves of their own righteousness, ignore the Iraqi liberation once it happens, and then go back to protesting globalization like they did before September 11. Ho-hum. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:05 PM by David Adesnik  

UNBELIEVABLE: Thanks to RS for sending this my way. It is an

"Interesting video of the AC-130 Specter gunship in action. Note the ability of the crew to discriminate between combatants and non-combatants (not firing on the mosque, which was right next to the target). It is also important to remember there are Special Forces teams on the ground that spotted the target and determined that the Afghanis in the area are combatants."

[Note: The link above will directly open a wmv file.]

UPDATE: Here is some more information about the AC-130. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:48 PM by David Adesnik  

ANOTHER NEW BLOG: I wonder if any country will ever pass the one-blog-per-person barrier. All I can say is that I'm doing my bit. In addition to OxBlog, I belong to Nathan Hale, a DC-area blog started by some friends of mine. It has lots of long, thoughtful essays about US foreign policy.

Also visit the Ranting Rantionalist, a new blog which describes its aspriations as follows:

Hopefully, my rantings will at least vaguely interest those of you who crave rational discourse. I am similarly hopeful that you liberal, subjectivist, collectivist simpletons are roundly agitated and annoyed. The ideas expressed on this Blog will not be subject to any form of political correctness. Facts and thoughts, no matter how unpalatable or taboo, will be presented in an unflinchingly honest fashion. It is my belief that political correctness is a shocking and fetid fact of modern intellectual life; nothing to expand it's already ubiquitous presence will be fostered here.

Read some RR posts and you'll see that Nick means business. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:27 PM by David Adesnik  

WATCH OUT, ANDREW: OxBlog's good friend The Agonist has had some bad luck lately. A fellow IR student, Sean-Paul found out that his university had cancelled his research grant, which would have enabled him to write his book on the Silk Road. Thanks to cuts in federal and state funding, Sean-Paul doesn't have any personal savings to put toward his research. So...

In a bold move reminiscient of Andrew Sullivan, Sean-Paul has decided to turn to the blogosphere for support. He doesn't need $100,000, only $2500. And instead of earmarking it for personal consumption, Sean-Paul will be spending the cash on a worthy intellectual endeavour.

If 100 people pledge $25 each, Sean-Paul can write his book. Or make that 99. This OxBlogger has put his money where his mouth is. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:15 PM by David Adesnik  

WARMONGERING ILLUSTRATED is the name of a new blog run by two law students at the University of North Carolina. Some recent highlights include their comments on the unknown merits of the UN Security Countil and their very own fisking of Jimmy Carter's NYT op-ed.

And don't forget to check out WMI's gonzo journalism exploits, which include crashing anti-war rallies and a contest for silliest anti-war poster. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:51 PM by David Adesnik  

ANTI-WAR, ANTI-LOGIC: In a razor-sharp yet idiosyncratic essay, historian Perry Anderson exposes the untenable logic on which the anti-war movement rests. (Special thanks to reader AG for bringing the essay to my attention.)

Anderson's sharpest point is his refutation of the argument that a unilateral invasion of Iraq will undermine either the institution of international law or the trans-atlantic alliance on which it depends. As he observes:

Historically, the United States has always reserved the right to act alone where necessary, while seeking allies wherever possible. In recent years it acted alone in Grenada, in Panama, in Nicaragua, and which of its allies now complains about current arrangements in any of these countries? As for the UN, NATO did not consult it when it launched its attack on Yugoslavia in 1999, in which every European ally that now talks of the need for authorisation from the Security Council fully participated, and which 90 per cent of the opinion that now complains about our plans for Iraq warmly supported.

I might add that the unprecedented influence that the United Nations has at the moment is in part a response to American (and European) disrespect for its mandate. As I've said before, an invasion of Iraq is thus as likely to strengthen the UN as it is to destroy it.

The idiosyncratic side of Anderson's argument emerges in the form of warm praise for arch-realists Kenneth Waltz, Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer. Incomprehensibly, Anderson endorses Waltz's bizarre hypothesis that the spread of nuclear weapons will make the world safer. Perhaps Prof. Anderson has not heard of a man by the name of Kim Jong Il?

All in all, Anderson's essay is well worth reading. Yet, as always, caveat emptor.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:55 PM by David Adesnik  

THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE TO CHARLATANRY: A while back, OxBlog linked to