# Posted 9:23 PM by David Adesnik  

"AN EMBARRASSMENT OF RICHES" is probably the best way to describe Phil Carter's prolific posting on military affairs. In case you aren't already a loyal reader, start with these great posts on Sec'y Rumsfeld's worldwide redeployment plans and the repositioning of US troops in South Korea. I predict you will soon find your mouse hovering over the "Add Bookmark" command... (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:07 PM by David Adesnik  

RACISM AND ANTI-SEMITISM: Cheery fun with Josh Cherniss. Plus, what may be the last-ever post on Strauss and the neo-cons. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:00 PM by David Adesnik  

I-TOLD-YOU-SO REDUX: Andrew Sullivan on how the media invented the looting of Iraq's National Museum. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:53 PM by David Adesnik  

OH, THAT SCANDAL: Last week, Josh Marshall asked, "Was the Pentagon's transcript of Sam Tanenhaus' interview with Paul Wolfowitz scrubbed of embarrassing details?"

The short answer: No. But to Marshall's credit, he has now put up a long post describng the esoteric but nonetheless intersting story behind the scandal he didn't find. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:47 PM by David Adesnik  

800-POUND GUERRILLAS: A front-page headline in the WaPo tells us that

U.S. Soldiers Face Growing Resistance; Attacks in Central Iraq Become More Frequent and Sophisticated

The NYT headline reads

Deadly Attacks on G.I.'s Rise

Matt Yglesias says that

the speed with which the "post-war" casualty figures are rapidly approaching the levels sustained before the end of organized Iraqi resistance give us, I think, good reason to worry that the situation won't be improving any time soon. If you ask me, this is the big under-covered story taking place right now.

Apparently, Matt is too busy with The American Prospect to glance at the front page of the WaPo...(Yes, that was a cheap shot.)

Also sounding the alarm is Matt's favorite conservative, Tacitus, who writes that

Blaming this on "Ba'athist holdouts" doesn't seem to cut it, really. It's more honest to admit that these are resistance movements with some measure of popular support that don't need Ba'athist ties to survive. The popular psychology of the Arab world is more than sufficiently motivated to violence by the perceived humiliation of occupation -- as we've seen in Palestine, where it trumps all rational concerns of self-preservation and communal well-being. I hope that the individuals formulating counterinsurgency strategy are being honest with themselves about this.

No wonder Tacitus is the left's favorite conservative. He's still living in Vietnam.

Frankly, I see no evidence of a self-sufficient resistance movement which can survive independent of Ba'athist ties. Nor does Tacitus provide any. Besides, the fact that almost all of the attacks on US soldiers have been in the former Ba'athist strongholds of Tikrit and Falluja demonstrates just how closely tied the attacks are to the fallen dictatorship.

Now here's some food thought: Remember the good old days when our big concern about postwar Iraq was the potential for Shi'ite resistance to the occupation?

Well, even back then OxBlog was pointing out that anti-American violence was coming from the Sunni community, not the Shi'ites. So? The bottom line is that only that small minority who benefited from Saddam's rule seems interested in resisting the occupation.

But don't worry, Matt. Guerrilla attacks on US soldiers will always be big news. While the WaPo and NYT articles were more subtle than Tacitus, the fact is that any military encounter even vaguely reminiscient of Vietnam will go straight to the front pages.

Does that mean I'm discounting the Ba'athist threat? The answer is "yes" if you think any significant amount of Iraqi real estate will ever fall to the ex-Fedayeen. The answer is "no" if you expect the Fedayeen to take the lives of dozens of brave American soldiers but ultimately prove nothing more than a reminder of the brutality of the man who ruled Iraq before Paul Bremer. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:54 PM by David Adesnik  

JIMMY LOVES HAFIZ: A while back, I reported on the Carter administration's surprising affection for Saddam Hussein. Since the blogosphere seems to love nothing better than bashing America's greatest dove, I thought it might be worth reprinting the following quotation from the comments Carter made before his meeting with the Syrian president on May 9, 1977. Here goes:

It's with a great deal of pleasure and hope that I come to Geneva to meet with the great President of Syria, President Asad. As leader of one of the great countries in the Middle East, I look to him for guidance and advice and for support as all of us search for progress in achieving peace in that important and troubled part of the world.

President Asad has a great role to play because of his experience, the greatness of his country, his interest in and sensitivity about world affairs outside his region and because of his ability to bring together different peoples who in the past have been unfriendly toward one another and at odds.

This is a year when we are blessed with strong and moderate leaders in the Middle East...

Of course, if Carter had stuck around for a few more years he might have seen that strength and moderation in action at Hama, where the Syrian government massacred 20,000 citizens as part of its struggle against the Muslim Brotherhood... (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:40 PM by David Adesnik  

BREAKIN' THE LAW: At first, Glenn Reynolds agreed that John Ashcroft's records to defend Unocal's Burmese operations were misguided. But now he isn't so sure.

While I know next to nothing about law, it does seem fair to say that the 1789 Alien Tort Statute was not meant to become a human rights enforcement mechanism. On the other hand, if the law is now bringing criminals to justice why not?

I guess the tougher question (and one which I am in no way qualified to answer) is whether the moral value of misusing the 1789 Statute compensates for the procedural havoc it might create. At the moment, I'm leaning toward no. The real answer is to have the US government -- especially the current one -- take a more serious interest in human rights and democracy promotion. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:26 PM by David Adesnik  

BIG DAY FOR GOD: How often do three separate columns on the NYT and WaPo all talk about the positive role of religion in political life on the same day? E.J. Dionne reminds us that "it's Bush's religious side that seems to draw him at least to the right words about poverty." Of course Mr. Dionne wants more, and justifiably so. Consider the following:

"Jewish prophets and Catholic teaching both speak of God's special concern for the poor. This is perhaps the most radical teaching of faith, that the value of life is not contingent on wealth or strength or skill, that value is a reflection of God's image."

Those thoughtful words are George W. Bush's. Is it too much to ask him to explain how his policies live up to that vision?

For inspiration, Bush might consider the positive example set by Alabama's Republican Gov. Bob Riley.

"I've spent a lot of time studying the New Testament, and it has three philosophies: love God, love each other, and take care of the least among you," [Riley] said. "I don't think anyone can justify putting an income tax on someone who makes $4,600 a year."

That's the kind of religious talk I like to hear. Not pious generalities, but specific humane proposals.

In contrast, Nick Kristof deals with the nasty side of religion, specifically a number of prominent evangelists' demonization of Islam. While breathing fire and brimstone at the demonizers, Kristof argues that "Vituperations about Islam are a throwback, not the trend." Evangelicas are getting more tolerant, not less.

Going further, Kristof puts aside all partisanship and declares that

Mr. Bush displayed real moral leadership after 9/11 when he praised Islam as a "religion of peace" and made it clear that his administration would not demonize it. He should now join the evangelical leadership in repudiating remarks by religious zealots who preach contempt for other religions — and then we should demand that Saudi and Yemeni leaders repudiate their own zealots.

Hell yeah. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 3:28 PM by Patrick Belton  

FREE TRADE! GET YER FREE TRADE!: The U.S. has inked a free trade agreement with Chile. A friend who was close to the U.S. side of the negotiations says that the administration wanted to reward Chile's progress in governance reform - and to demonstrate to other countries in the region that they'll be rewarded once they implement comparable reforms. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 2:57 PM by Patrick Belton  

CURIOUS WHAT'S GOING ON IN IRAN? Well, then, lucky for you, because Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty has been doing a fantastic job in compiling news stories from inside Iran. Among the items of interest appearing in today's edition: (1) Sources close to the Iranian Islamic Revolution Guards Corps are reporting that Iran has expelled Suleiman Abu-Ghayth and several other Al-Qai'da operatives whom Iran had been sheltering in Tehran, Qom, and several other locations. (2) Iranian students have been denied permission to rally on the anniversary of an attack four years ago on a Tehran University dormitory by security personnel and vigilantees. (3) In the latest episode of a struggle for power between President Khatami and Ayatollah Rafsanjani (chair of the Expediency Council), Khatami is seeking to reconcile his views with those of the clerical Guardian Council on two key bills on elections and presidential powers, to prevent Rafsanjani's Expediency Council from having a go at them.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:06 AM by Patrick Belton  

SUU KYI WATCH: The United Nations special envoy to Burma, Razali Ismail, has told reporters that he has been given permission by the junta to visit Aung San Suu Kyi. Mr. Razali was involved two years ago in brokering peace talks between Suu Kyi and the country's ruling junta, which later reneged on its promises. His visit, reportedly, will take place later today. (via BBC). (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:32 PM by Patrick Belton  

OKAY, TIME FOR A STUDY BREAK: And OxBlog makes no implicit endorsement of any illegal (or, far worse, procrastinatory) behaviors described...

There once was a number named pi
Who frequently liked to get high.
All he did every day
Was sit in his room and play
With his imaginary friend named i

There are more of them here, unfortunately. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:41 PM by David Adesnik  

AUNG SAN SUU KYI UPDATE: Mort Abramowitz, former US Ambassador to Thailand (as well as uncle-in-law of OxBlog reader AG), argues persuasively in the WaPo that the United States must pressure Thailand to take a harder line on Burma. In his column, Abramowitz lists a good number of practical measures Thailand might take that would be far more influential than another round of US sanctions.

Also in the WaPo is a front-page story about Suu Kyi which contains the most details I've seen about her condition. US and other diplomats have concluded that it was nothing short of a bloody ambush that left scores of Suu Kyi's supporters dead in addition to resulting in her capture. The assault seems to reflect a power-play by the hardline faction in the ruling junta.

Also on the Burma front, Winds of Change says that conservatives should be up in arms about John Ashcroft's shameful effort to defend US corporations who exploit slave labor in Burma. Joe K. rightly credits Randy Paul for focusing on the slave labor issue and says that if conservatives want the right to criticize ANSWER, Galloway etc., they have to be just as ready to denounce those in their own ranks who betray American values. Damn right.

Finally, for background on Aung San Suu Kyi and the struggle for democracy in Burma, visit the Free Burma Coalition, an online international network of activist organizations trying to bring a measure of humanity to brutal land. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:24 PM by David Adesnik  

KIM'S SOYLENT GREEN: Unsure of initial reports that cannibalism has become widespread in North Korea, Glenn Reynolds thinks today's Telegraph account, among others, is disturbingly reliable.

Perhaps more importantly, Glenn places the event in its proper context by reminding us of Nobel Laureaute Amartya Sen's wise observation that there has never been a famine in a democracy. So who says Instapundit doesn't think profound thoughts? (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:26 AM by Patrick Belton  

QUICK ROUND-UP: Me have article deadline. Me go and hide. Me come back tomorrow.

In the meantime, here's some of what methinks is worth reading on the web today. The foreign policy society I run in Washington had a meeting last night on the roadmap. While I'd like to say we solved all the problems of the Middle East in two hours of pizza, we did compile a list of readings that I think are relevant to understanding the current peace process and issues for the U.S. in "riding herd": they're here.

MEMRI offers a synopsis of Arab press coverage of the discovery of large mass graves in Iraq. Some of the venues are frequent repositors of self-criticism by Arabs of Arab governments, such as London's Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, but other sources such as Lebanon's Al-Nahar appear as well. The broad tenor of the coverage is a salutary realization by the Arabic-language press of the extent of Saddam's depravity. This conclusion is representative: "To prevent the reappearance of these graves, [we must] discuss why they [came into existence]... and these reasons concern tyrants' domination of the peoples' lives with dogma and slogans..." If run to its conclusion, this course of stories may have an effect of increasing popular displeasure with Arab governments in general - in turn, a displeasure which may be directed either toward liberal reform or Islamic militancy.

Staying in the region, Gary Gambill of the Middle East Intelligence Bulletin has an interesting piece on democracy promotion efforts in the Middle East that I'll return and post on later this week. The MEIB's interview with the UK rep of SCIRI is fascinating ("How big are your bases?" "Very big! I have been to some of these camps, they are huge, with thousands of fighters"), and another piece examines Syrian support for Hezbollah.

The WaPo is to be congratulated for running one of its stories, as it periodically does, that remembers there's a very large, interesting country right to the south of us! - but, predictably, its reporting generates sentences like this: "Panzo heard of a war this year in a place called Iraq -- a friend of a friend saw pictures of it on his boss's television." Note to the Post: my mother didn't even know there was a war in a place called Iraq. More to the point, the article discusses rural poverty in an isolated indigenous village without ever touching on, say, the local economy of the place, or how its fortunes have been affected by broader economic trends, national and state policies, or free trade. Instead, lots of poignant vignettes of rural poverty and human suffering, without terribly much political or economic context to illuminate how that poverty came about or the prospects for its eradication. (One thinks of Soviet-era stories about south Bronx: foreign correspondents far too often focus on the unimaginable poverty/racism/suffering in the Other Country - which are real and important parts of the picture, no question - but neglect the political, economic, or sociological trends which would make for thornier, more complex reporting.) B- for effort, guys.

Moving to Central Asia, the always-excellent Central Asia Analyst features a few interesting stories. For one, the radical Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir is making inroads in Kazakhstan, redoubling recruiting efforts and capitalizing on popular displeasure with the U.S. and Britain after the War against Saddam. For another, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization is showing new signs of life, with a secretariat in Beijing and a counterterrorism center in Bishkek - a welcome development, since the thorniest security, economic, and resource-management problems in Central Asia require multilateral solutions. Key developments to keep an eye on: whether the SCO is too taken over by Chinese and Russian efforts to forestall US regional dominance to be able to address important regional issues, and whether practical efforts at economic integration result from the organization, or whether it is sidetracked by bilateral disputes between the Central Asian countries. And, speaking of bilateral disputes, Turkmenistan is reconsidering relations with Uzbekistan after seven months of high tension following a November 2002 assassination attempt against Turkmenbashi Niyazov, in which the increasingly erratic, isolationist, and Stalinist Niyazov imputed the involvement of Uzbekistani intelligence and the nation's ambassador in Ashgabat.

And lest we forget you, India: deputy PM Advani told SecDef Rumsfeld in Washington that his government is considering sending troops to Iraq. Pakistani PM Jamali is pushing forward with summit plans and promising normalized rail, road, and air links between the two South Asian countries by the end of the year, while the Pakistani Foreign Office is saying stability on the subcontinent can only be achieved with a strategic balance in nuclear and missile capabilities. Death tolls from the heat wave in Andhra Pradesh (the state in which Hyderabad lies) pass 1,300, with high temperatures hovering between 113 and 120 for the past three weeks.

Okay, me go away now....



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# Posted 7:52 PM by David Adesnik  

THE CABAL LIVES: In the NYT, Jenny Strauss Clay defends her father from the raft of conspiratorial accusations that have become attached to his name. For an extended and thoughtful commentary, see Josh Cherniss' take on Prof. Strauss Clay's thoughts.

In fact, if extended and thoughtful posts are your favorite kind, you should be visiting Josh Cherniss' site as often as you can. An impressive guy who also happens to be a very nice one...and has good taste in Scotch.

UPDATE: Andrew Sullivan is still following the Strausscapades as well. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:36 PM by David Adesnik  

HAT TRICK: No, this isn't a post about the Stanley Cup. Still, wouldn't it be weird/cool if New Jersey took home both the NHL and NBA titles in the same year?

Anyway, this post is actually about the WaPo op-ed page, which came up with three big scores in a single day.

First off is a column by Physicians Without Borders that describes the horrors of hospital life under Saddam Hussein.

Next, Democratic consultant Mandy Grunwald points out the real reason that journalist become so defensive when they are the targets of investigation -- they simply have no idea what it is like to be judged instead of juding others. A simple point, but one that is all too true and often ignored.

Finally, Robert Kagan compiles a devastating list of Democratic and European politicians who said all the same things about Saddam's chemical arsenal long before Bush ever did. As Kagan wryly observes,

if all these people are lying, there's only one person who ever told the truth: Saddam Hussein. And now we can't find him either.

Ouch! (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:24 PM by David Adesnik  

POETIC LICENSE: Whereas the Guardian has now apologized for its abuse of Paul Wolfowitz, Pravda is now fabricating Wolfowitz quotes out of whole cloth. Well, it always good to see a Soviet paper getting back to its roots. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:12 PM by David Adesnik  

THE PEOPLE HAVE HEARD: I want to thank all of you who responded to my call to arms in defense of Aung San Suu Kyi.

First of all comes Randy Paul, who demonstrated a serious interest in Burma even before Suu Kyi was assaulted. As Randy points out, the Bush administration has previously shown a disturbing lack of concern about human rights in Burma.

On the positive side, Glenn Reynolds thinks that the Myanmar junta's defensive response to the assualt on Suu Kyi and the NLD is a sign that they are concerned about international pressure. I hope so. The question is, will the President recognize the opportunity and add his voice to critics of the regime?

Kevin Drum points out that Burma has joined Zimbabwe and the Congo as the latest additions to crisis central. Like Matt Yglesias, Kevin wonders what the international community can do in such situations given that few have the will to use force while sanctions tend to be ineffective.

One post no one should miss is Boomshock's devastating account of other East Asian nations' -- yes, the democratic ones' -- embarrassing and hypocritical silence when finally given a chance to demonstrate that they are rising actors on the international stage.

Adding a small but important point is Jeff Hauser, who has reminded me (via e-mail) that the proper name of Aung San Suu Kyi's homeland is Burma. "Myanmar" is an invention of the generals.

Last but not least, I'd like to give a shout out to Atrios (yes, really!), who doesn't often visit this corner of the blogosphere but generously decided to publicize Aung San Suu Kyi's plight after I told him about OxBlog's concern.

All in all, I'm glad to see that the blogosphere has started to get its priorities in order. Besides, the NYT will probably appoint a replacement for Raines who is just as good a target for criticism...



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# Posted 6:39 PM by David Adesnik  

BACK IN BUSINESS: The Blogger blackout has ended. I guess it says something about my compulsive fixation on blogging that I began to feel cut off from the world within 24 hours of being separated from my website.

While shut out of the blogosphere, I happened to notice how rare it is nowadays for committed bloggers to rely on this server. Will it be long before OxBlog joins the Movable Type revolution? I just don't know... (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:28 PM by Patrick Belton  

TODAY IS THE BIRTHDAY of Vatican City as a sovereign state, through the Lateran Treaty ratified on June 7th, 1929 by Mussolini and Papal Secretary of State Cardinal Gasparri. What I find particularly interesting about this anniversary is the reflection which it provides into how extraordinarily much journalistic norms have changed in the intervening years: the New York Times's coverage of the original event has very much the texture of a society column, with several pages of reporting along the lines of

Premier Mussolini was seated in the first car with Under-Secretary Giunta. He was followed in another car by Minister of Finance Mosconi, while Minister of Justice Rocco was in a third car.
They all wore their full-dress diplomatic uniforms with the characteristic three-cornered plumed hats. Signor Mussolini wore the collar of the Annunziata, which makes him rank as a cousin of the King, as well as the broad sash of the Mauritian Order and the insignia of the Sovereign Order of Malta.

and

The Vatican text was enclosed in a red velvet case with damasked edges and bearing the Papal coat of arms. The Italian text was contained in a white morocco leather case bearing the Italian royal arms

What doesn't appear in the Times's reporting is anything that could be construed as political - which seems to us unusual, given that the entire event was the entry into force of a treaty marking the emergence of a new polity into the world's society of states. We're not told anything about the actual provisions of the treaty - how security or logistical responsibilities were to be shared among Mussolini's Italy and the Vatican City, or the extent to which Italian police could enter St Peter's Squre under the treaty. Many of these provisions, indeed, were fascinating: under article 8, any "public insult" committed within Italian territory against the Pope, "whether by means of speeches, acts, or writings, shall be punished in the same manner as offences and insults against the King"; substantial extraterritoriality provisions are granted the Vatican over other churches and papal buildings in Rome; and under article 3, Italian police are granted the ability to enter into St Peter's Square, though it forms part of the nation of Vatican City. Instead of covering the actual stuff of diplomacy, though, the Times is seized by its ephemera, and the column reads like contemporary fawning coverage given to an idol from the popular culture, to a Tom Cruise or a (secular) Madonna. The only treatment of the actual treaty comes as an aesthetic afterthought, equal to the white morocco leather case in which the treaty was contained, or the three-pointed diplomatic garb of the Fascist Premier and his secretaries:

The document contained, among others, the following phrase:

"The high contracting parties at the moment of exchange of the ratifications of the Lateran treaties again affirm their desire loyally to observe in letter and spirit not only the treaty of conciliation in its irrevocable reciprocal recognition of sovereignties and in its definite elimination of the Roman question, but also are concerned at its lofty aims tending to regulate the condition of religion and the Church in Italy."

With all the contemporary, and just, criticism of the Times, it's useful to remember just how far the profession has come in providing analysis of foreign affairs, and in consigning fawning over celebrities' fashion to the back pages.
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# Posted 7:31 AM by David Adesnik  

AUNG SAN SUU KYI UPDATE: The Belmont Club has an excellent post up on the situation in Myanmar (posted before my call to arms, mind you.)

Also, many thanks to Glenn Reynolds for publicizing my call to arms over at Instapundit. Glenn also links to this VOA report which says that the State Department is trying to up the pressure on the Myanmar junta. Now it's time for the White House to get with the program.

Also deserving of a shout is Bill Sherman, aka the Tough Democrat, who agrees that 50 million Burmese are more important than two editors at the NYT.

More to come...
(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:36 PM by Patrick Belton  

UND HIER, EIN PFOSTEN FÜR SHABBAS: UPI is reporting that Jews have been streaming into Germany to escape anti-Semitism elsewhere... (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:54 PM by David Adesnik  

SO HOW ABOUT THAT DUMB TEXAS UNILATERALIST COWBOY PRESIDENT OF OURS? Pejman waxes ironic. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:48 PM by David Adesnik  

ANOTHER FORGOTTEN CAUSE: Winds of Change has an excellent post on the current situation in the Congo. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:48 PM by Patrick Belton  

HEAR, HEAR, DAVID! Burma, Southeast Asia's second most populous nation, has been living under the totalitarian governance of the SLORC generals since September 18, 1988. While bearing suffering with equanimity is the essence of Buddhism, the Burmese people have borne much more than their fair lot. And Suu Kyi is in this emblematic of her nation. Of right she ought to have been its leader, receiving an almost unbelievable 80 percent of ballots as the head of the National League of Democracy, in the 1990 Burmese general elections. But the generals showed their disrespect not only for the people, but for their chosen receipient of mandate, by placing her and other pro-democracy leaders under house arrest, where the Nobel Laureate has remained since. Yet Suu Kyi is not alone in chains; the people of Burma are imprisoned with her; and as lovers of freedom, we must make their cause ours as well.
(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:13 PM by David Adesnik  

FLOOD THE ZONE, DAMMIT! Preoccupied with its celebration of Howell Raines' fall, the blogosphere has shown a disturtbing lack of interest in the Myanmar junta's assault on Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi. At the moment we don't even know where Suu Kyi is, although foreign diplomats have confirmed that she was injured during an attack on her entourage that left four of her supporters dead.

In case anyone needs reminding, Suu Kyi won a well-deserved Noble Peace Prize for leading the people of Myanmar in a peaceful struggle to overthrow their brutal government and establish a democratic order. However, after winning a landslide election in 1990s, Aung San Suu Kyi became the prisoner of Myanmar's generals who refused to give in to the public's demands.

Actually, it seems that the blogosphere is the only entity that needs much reminding on this count. Both the NYT and WaPo ran masthead editorials today demanding immediate action to ensure Suu Kyi's personal safety and reverse the crackdown on her National Democratic League.

Congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle have rushed to Suu Kyi's defense and even American firms accustomed to trading with Myanmar are supporting Sen. Mitch McConnell's (R-KY) call for an import ban.

President Bush has joined other world leaders in calling for Aung San Suu Kyi's release. (Still, as Josh points out, the leader of the free world and the leading advocate of promoting democracy abroad should be doing much more to help Suu Kyi and her people.)

So come on, people. Forget about Howell Raines and start demanding justice for the people of Myanmar.

PS Some blogs, including AndrewSullivan.com, have put up a post on Suu Kyi. Now let's see more! (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 4:44 PM by David Adesnik  

DEFENDING MARTHA STEWART: What better way to polish one's credentials as a defender of civil liberties than speaking out on behalf of someone we all want to see thrown in jail? Thus, setting all personal prejudice aside, Robert Cox has boldly challenged the NYT's unwarranted decision to treat Stewart as a convicted criminal.

Now what's really impressive is that Robert has gotten the Times to admit it was wrong. The Lelyveld era has begun...again. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 4:31 PM by David Adesnik  

PRIDE COMETH AFTER THE FALL: I agree with Kevin Drum that it is extremely premature for the blogosphere to take credit for bringing down Howell Raines. It was fair to take credit for bringing down Trent Lott because no one other than Josh Marshall & Co. kept Lott's racial gaffe in the spotlight.

In contrast, the NYT scandals have been front page news from day one. As such, I think the devastating combination of public embarrassment and newsroom pressure would have done Raines in even if the blogosphere didn't exist. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 4:16 PM by David Adesnik  

CASH AND KERRY: The Kerry campaign has announced that their candidate cannot spend his wife's millions on his campaign. Jacob Levy comments that this announcement is a turning point in the Democratic race. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:38 PM by David Adesnik  

THE LAUGH OUT LOUD TEST: Given the contest submissions I've heard so far, Kevin's wins by a longshot. It may be crude, but it makes you laugh. (Dan is also pulling for Kevin, which shows that my vulgarity is in good company.)

Anyhow, I thought I'd throw my hat into the ring just to show I'm a good sport, even if I have no chance of winning. Here goes:

Marx (to nubile Communist co-ed): Hey baby, I turned Hegel on his head. So how about letting me get you on your back?

Talk about a red menace... (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:09 PM by David Adesnik  

CONGRATULATIONS are in order in honor of Matt Yglesias' graduation from Harvard (with honors, Matt adds). Only God knows how he got his work done while blogging so much... (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:59 PM by David Adesnik  

JOSH CHAFETZ=JAYSON BLAIR? Yes, Josh, the NYT does need an ombudsman. That's why I recommended it six months ago.

But don't worry; Patrick and I have decided to forgive you for your reckless plagiarism of my December post. ;) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:54 PM by David Adesnik  

A MINOR GENOCIDE: In case Josh's post wasn't enough, the WaPo has an informative editorial on mass-murderer and Liberian President Charles Taylor. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:51 PM by David Adesnik  

FLEET STREET NEWS: Kevin Drum updates the Guardian fiasco and says he won't ever take the British press at its word again.

Here's my advice for Kevin and all of you who have an interest in the UK media: make a mental note if you see something interesting, but don't believe it until the NYT or WaPo reprints it. If something is important and true, the US media will pick it up.

Of course, that advice doesn't really work for British domestic politics, since US papers don't really cover it. When it comes to that, I dunno.

Anyhow, Kevin adds that he was so interested in getting to the bottom of the Wolfowitz affair because he doesn't "like to see liberals make fools of themselves." Neither do I. And I don't like to see conservatives make fools of themselves either.

But the real question is why there are fools at all, liberal or conservative. Without going too far into it, I'd say the answer is a lack of patience. For good reasons, the media prizes being the first with the story above all else.

The real test of integrity is whether we are willing to admit our own foolishness when it comes to that. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:11 PM by David Adesnik  

WHY DIDN'T I ENLIST? This sounds a helluva lot better than getting 72 virgins in the afterlife. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 4:26 PM by Patrick Belton  

ANYBODY OUT THERE happen to know how to make a Comcast cable modem work with an Airport base station? Winner gets, if you want it, your choice of (1) a 0.84 written chapter on Congress and Russo-American relations, (2) a 0.9 written piece on Hizbollah in the Americas, or (3) a 0.4 complete piece on the ideological evolution of Shi'a mosques in Dearborn. Or alternatively, I could send you some baklava. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:31 PM by Patrick Belton  

HEADLINE AWARD: "Yale-New Haven De-Livers," about the closing of a liver transplant center at the Yale-New Haven hospital. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:49 PM by Patrick Belton  

A CHARMING STORY, CARE OF OXBLOG'S FRIENDS IN THE OSS SOCIETY:

You never know when that old Boy Scout manual will come in handy.

Dan Pinck was 18 when he joined the Office of Strategic Services, America's first spy agency in World War II. Pinck was barely trained when he left on his first mission. His job was to slip behind Japanese lines near Hong Kong. He was to liaise with Chinese guerillas and gather intelligence about Japanese forces along the South China Coast. He was the only [non-Asian] hiding in a Chinese town surrounded by hundreds of Japanese troops. Trouble was, no one in OSS had shown Pinck how to draw a map.

How did he get out of this fix? Pinck leafed through an old copy of the Boy Scout handbook and innovated his way to success. A neighbor gave Pinck the scout handbook before he went overseas. "The neighbor was a retired public health official who served in the Philippines. He said it would be useful anywhere and told me to take it along. For some strange reason, I took his advice," said Pinck, now 79, who wrote about his life in a recent memoir: Journey to Peking, A Secret Agent In Wartime China.

The neighbor was right. One of Pinck's most daunting tasks was mapping Japanese artillery positions so they could be destroyed or skirted by U.S. forces. Not knowing the first thing about maps, he consulted a section of the scout handbook called "Getting to Mrs. Nestor's Farm." It's an exercise where scouts find their way to an imaginary farm by drawing in local landmarks and other details. "Mrs. Nestor's farm gave us notations for streets, streams, houses...even rough elevations," Pinck said.

"Mrs. Nestor's Farm" has been removed from latter editions of the scout handbook. But at the time, Pinck followed its instructions to pinpoint the location of Japanese guns based on information he got from Chinese agents. He also mapped out ports and routes used by Japanese ships in his area.

Pinck's maps helped sink several Japanese vessels. His data on Japanese artillery also helped the U.S. plan for an invasion of China which was called off when Japan surrendered.

Pinck relied on his scout handbook so much he once caught a Japanese spy trying to steal it. "(The spy) probably thought it was an American code book stuffed with secret messages," Pinck recalled.

Communicating well with Chinese allies was Pinck's other ace in the hole. He says when serving behind enemy lines, a trusting relationship with locals often spells the difference between success and failure. Pinck came across as an honest communicator committed to helping China defeat Japan. The Chinese respected that. "In special ops, it's not the 'thing' that counts, it's the 'who.' The human dimension is the prime consideration," Pinck said. "If you have good people who can pick good people, you also have a good chance to succeed."

What are some other secrets....? "Always have back up and be ready to pull out instantly. Also, doubt everything and believe only what you see."... "Always go into a situation with two or three people covering you. And always have two or three alternative schemes," Pinck said. "Things rarely happen the way they're conceived. Try to have as many variations as possible and act quickly if the situation demands it."

For instance, I had three different ways planned to finish this post, but I'm in the end selecting lunch. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:18 AM by Patrick Belton  

IT'S OFFICIAL: Arthur Sulzberger announced the resignation of Howell Raines and Gerald Boyd to staffers at a morning newsroom meeting. "This is a day that breaks my heart," said Sulzberger. Former executive editor Joseph Lelyveld will be the New York Times's executive editor for the interim. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:02 PM by David Adesnik  

WHERE CREDIT IS DUE: Robert Cox points out that TimesWatch was onto Maureen Dowd's dishonesty even before Andrew Sullivan, who may have picked it up from TimesWatch.

For more on Dowd's irresponsibility, see Spinsanity and The National Debate. Happy schadenfreude!
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# Posted 8:51 PM by David Adesnik  

THE POWER OF MASS MEDIA: In my periodic ruminations about the role of mass media in public life, one of the questions I often return to is the question of whether one-sided coverage of a given issue actually influence its audience, or whether readers intuitively know how to filter out editorial bias.

I returned to this question today, in fact, after an interesting exchange on the Rhodes Scholar e-mail list. It all began with a brief message from a physicist, who provided a link to a Guardian dispatch on Paul Wolfowitz, simpy noting that it might be of interest.

In short, the dispatch reported that Wolfowitz had finally admitted, in public, that the American motive for invading Iraq was the possession of its oil. The "evidence" cited by the Guardian consisted of an artilce in the German-language Tagesspiegel as well as the already-distorted statements Wolfowitz made in an interview with Vanity Fair.

Not long after the physicist's missive, OxFriend Steve Sachs sent a brief note to the list providing a link to the full transcript of the Vanity Fair article so that his fellow Scholars could see how the Guardian took Wolfowitz's words out of context.

Next up came a message from a Scholar inclined to trust the Guardian, who pointed out that Steve had done nothing to discredit the account provided by the German press. Guessing that it wouldn't be hard to finish what Steve had started, I decided to discredit the German press myself.

As it turns out, doing so required no effort at all, since Greg D. over at Belgravia Dispatch kindly let me know that he had just put up an in-depth exposing the fundamental dishonesty of the German press in this instance.

Yet before I could even let Steve know what I'd found, OxBlog's own Josh Chafetz sent an e-mail to the Rhodes list which linked to an ABC news story with the correct version of Wolfowitz's remarks.

So what's the moral of this story? Well, one moral is that the proliferation of transcripts online makes it much more dangerous for journalists to quote anyone out of context.

Another moral is that even those of us thought to be most educated are prone to manipulation by the press. Consider this counterfactual: What if Josh, Stephen and myself weren't news junkies who had the wherewithal to fisk the Guardian with a few keyboard strokes? My guess is that hundreds of Rhodes Scholars would now believe (if they didn't already) that Wolfowitz had confessed to invading Iraq for its oil.

Would it be their fault for believing this lie? Of course not. For most of the Oxbridge set, the Guardian has the same credibility that the Washington Post has in the United States. In fact, there are probably tens of thousands of Britons who still believe what the Guardian had to say about the Deputy Secretary of Defense.

(Full disclosure: I myself have been suckered by the media, so I do not place myself above any of my fellow Scholars with regard to this matter.)

Perhaps the more important question is what long-term impact this event might have had on the political beliefs of the Scholars in question. One might hypothesize that those who already have negative attitudes towards either the GOP or the US as a whole might be more likely to remember what Wolfowitz said, whereas the less critical might soon forget it.

Yet even if that rule applies in general, what if a small but definite percentage of those who read the article converted from an uncommitted to a highly negative approach to either the GOP or the United States? Given that the Guardian publishes such articles on a regular basis, how long before all those who think of it as political gospel come to share its cynical view of American motives?

Weighing against such considerations is the possibility that articles in other publications might reverse the effect had by the Guardian. The problem is, of course, how it could ever be possible to measure the impact of any article or publication on a given audience.

While I obviously don't have an answer to that question, I would like to describe one broad approach to it which I find compelling. According to this approach, humans are "online" thinkers who retain only small amounts of relevant information in their accessible memory.

Yet rather than "forgetting" information when it disappears from active memory, the mind updates any concepts which might be affected by the information in question. For example, before forgetting the details of the Guardian's attack on Wolfowitz, one might increase one's distrust of Wolfowitz, the Bush administration, the United States and possibly even all government officials.

If, later on, one asked why one distrusts such persons or categories of persons, one will not be available to refer to the Guardian article as evidence, since one will have forgotten it.

While it should be evident that the "online" paradigm doesn't resolve the issue of measurement, it does explain one of the most mystifying aspects of public opinion, i.e. how hundreds of millions of citizens can have firm views on so many different political issues without having any information at their fingertips with which to back such opinions up.

Until recently, scholars presumed that the average citizens was simply so prejudiced and closed-minded that he or she reached his opinions in the absence of information. With the aid of the online paradigm, however, one can understand how the average citizens forms opinions without devoting a tremendous amount of memory to political information storage.

Is there any neuroscientific evidence to back up the online paradigm? I don't know. My knowledge of the literature isn't great. But someone probably is working on it. Still, the online approach does have common sense working in its favor. While there aren't too many specific conclusions to be drawn from it, it does give us a helpful way of thinking about how media bias fits on to the lives of the vast majority of those who don't have all day and all night to spend worrying about politics.
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# Posted 8:27 PM by Patrick Belton  

OKAY, I MAY NOT BE a card carrying member of the ACLU....but I'm proud to know one. Congratulations, Chrissy, on your new gig as their communications officer! (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:14 PM by Patrick Belton  

SHEIKH IT UP BABY, NOW: On the heels of the Sharm el-Sheikh Arab American conference, we all received this morning from Aqaba some reasons, perhaps, for hope. Prime Minister Sharon declared his support for Palestinian statehood, for Palestine's territorial congruity, and for the forcible removal of up to ten settlements which are illegal under Israel's law. For his part Abu Mazen's Arabic was passionate, calling on the Palestinians to recognize the suffering of the Jews throughout history and especially in the twentieth century. (See CFR's Henry Siegman, and AAI's Jim Zogby (also over here - though the anecdote he slightly boggles is often attributed to Churchill - ya Jim, habib, you shoulda come to me).

Those not invited to the dance are predictably feeling grumpy; in this instance, these are the hard-liners from both sides of the 1967 line. From Israel, some of the harder-line Likudniks are now criticizing Sharon with vehemence; tens of thousands of protesters gathered this evening in Zion Square, with MKs and ministers from Likud, National Union, the National Religious Party, Shas, and United Torah Judaism, all scheduled to speak at the demonstration. As-yet unnamed American representatives and senators, it was reported, would be in attendance as well. Labor, for its part, is happy, leading to the possibility Israel will see reshuffling in its coalition, with one of the three National Union member parties indicating it will quit the governing coalition once the government begins its evacuation of outposts and implementation of the road map.

From the Palestinian side, Hamas and Islamic Jihad were no happier - after all, if the intifadah and Oslo were any example, peace processes help the Palestinian Administration by giving it stature at home, while intifadah hurts the PA and gains stature for the militant resistance. Abdullah Shami (Islamic Jihad head in Gaza) accused Abbas of offering "a free service to the enemy in targeting the Palestinian resistance and stopping our legitimate right to fight the occupation." Hamas's Abdel Aziz Rantisi, while saying his organization was "still discussing" the possibility of a ceasefire with the Palestinian government, strongly criticized Abu Mazen for neglecting the right of return and entertaining the surrender of "even one centimeter" of Palestinian territory.

Also feeling grumpy after the party is Arafat's advisor Saeb Erekat (now thankfullly irrelevant), who criticized Sharon for not dropping dates. Palestinian Foreign Minister Nabil Sha'ath, however, (who for his part is relevant) praised Sharon for his promises of geographical contiguity for the Palestinian state, as well as his promise to dismantle illegal (under Israeli law) settlements in the West Bank.

Sharon may indeed be doing something we never suspected of him - becoming, like Nixon and Reagan, a peacemaker coming from the right. But this is not a region which is easy on its peacemakers, and people are making the inevitable allusions of the cost of the enterprise to previous peacemakers Anwar Sadat (mowed down by Egyptian soldiers in uniform, no less) and Yitzhak Rabin (himself army chief on the fateful day of June 5, 1967). Making ominous alusions to the possibility of violence are such members of the Knesset's rightist fringe as minister Avigdor Lieberman, head of the National Union bloc and himself a settler (in the West Bank settlement of Nokdim), and hard-line rabbis in the settlements, such as Eliezer Melamed of the Nablus-area Har Bracha settlement, who are also making nasty allusions to the possibility of civil war, and bemoaning as treachery their betrayal by a leader they had seen as not only one of them, but the head of the hardline. Many have already remembered, although perhaps (hopefully) with an excess of paranoia, that Rabin's death was preceeded by a month by a rightist protest in Zion Square.

For the United States's part, this administration is to be commended for its reengagement. The Bush administration will be sending a team to Israel and the Palestinian territories to oversee the implementation of the plan, and publicize compliance and violations to it. More of this, please. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:03 PM by Patrick Belton  

GE-RECHT AKTUELL: Reuel Marc Gerecht, in a former life one of our best covert operatives acting in the Middle East, has a Weekly Standard piece on the Iranian Manhattan Project and why, to his mind, (1) more than covert action is needed to stop it, and (2) even if it weren't, Langley is extraordinarily adverse to covert action in Iran, leaving it to Messrs Shulsky and Luti's Office of Special Plans, which would in turn face its own bureaucratic obstacles. For my part, I need to go mull(ah) over his arguments a bit before commenting, but Gerecht is always eminently readable. The Standard's lucky to have him. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:57 PM by David Adesnik  

ASHCROFT'S SELF-INDICTMENT: The Justice Department's own Inspector General has reported on the incompetence and abuse entailed in the Department's treatment of terrorism suspects. Sadly, Ashcroft seems to be in complete denial about the seriousness of his own wrongdoing. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:52 PM by David Adesnik  

BUSH II OR REAGAN III? It is a dangerous thing to write about Ronald Reagan. No matter how much one knows about him, one cannot say that one understands him. Nonetheless, in the hope of knowing more, I sat down today and began to read President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime, by Lou Cannon, the WaPo correspondent who spent almost three decades writing about the Great Communicator.

While I sat down with Cannon's book because my dissertation demanded it, I couldn't help but compare Reagan to George W. Bush. As multiple commentators have observed, both the character and ideology of the current president are far more similar to that of Reagan than that of his own father.

As someone with a special interest in foreign policy, the most apparent similarity from my perspective is the dependence of both Reagan and the younger Bush on a circle of feuding advisers to provide them with the specific knowledge necessary to forge an actual policy. While I don't recall making this comparison explicitly, it was very much on my mind when I was posting about the divide within Bush's cabinet.

But now, having read the first handful of chapters in Cannon's book, I think its important to emphasize a critical distinction between the Reagan and Bush styles of consulting their inner circle.

According to Cannon, Reagan expected his advisors to achieve a consensus among themselves before bringing their options to him. To some degree, this approach was grounded in Reagan's strong averson to interpersonal conflict of all kinds. In contrast, Bush seems to welcome his closest advisors' presentation of contrasting perspectives and strategies, from which he chooses the most effective.

Another aspect of Reagan's approach was his avoidance of all unnecessary detail, almost to the point of being self-destructive. For example, James Baker (then Chief of Staff) approached the President on the morning of the only G7 economic summit held in the US during Reagan's eight years of office, only to find that Reagan hadn't even opened the briefing book Baker had given him the night before.

Although hesitant to confront the President, Baker asked him why he hadn't opened the book. In all seriousness, Reagan replied that the Sound of Music was on the night before and that he wanted to watch it.

From where I stand, this aversion to detail explains how Reagan could, in all sincerity, make the sort of absurd pronouncements that his critics found so maddening, e.g. that the Salvadoran army was struggling to reduce human rights violations or that the brutal Contras were the moral equivalent of the United States' Founding Fathers.

(Now, if you are one of those revisionist historians who believes that the Founding Fathers were genocidal plutocratic racists, the comparison works. But I digress...)

In contrast to Reagan, I think Bush has a far greater command of detail, despite constant attacks on his intelligence and competence as a public speaker.

What made this contrast click in my mind was an anecdote recounted in a front-page story on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in yesterday's WaPo. The anecdote runs as follows:

Bush called Sharon a "man of peace" last year, infuriating Arabs angry over the Israeli army's actions against Palestinians in the West Bank. Bush publicly has not backed off that statement, but last year he privately rebuked Sharon when the Israeli leader began to repeat the comment to the president, administration officials said.

Bush interrupted Sharon when he began to say he was a "man of peace and security," according to a witness to the exchange who recounted it. "I know you are a man of security," Bush said. "I want you to work harder on the peace part."

Then, adding a bit of colloquial language that first seemed to baffle Sharon, Bush jabbed: "I said you were a man of peace. I want you to know I took immense crap for that."

Bush final jab shows that he understands both his critics' motivations and the tactical value of refusing to change his stance regardless of such objections.

(While were on the subject of the Middle East, make sure to read this excellent op-ed about Sharon and Abu Mazen by Fareed Zakaria.)

In the final analysis, I think one should be very careful when analogizing between divisions in the Reagan and Bush cabinets. Yes, both Presidents are from being experts on foreign policy. But one of them has a much more productive method for taking advantage of his advisors' expertise. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:28 PM by Patrick Belton  

RESISTANCE IS FUTILE: Not a very good day for computer use at OxBlog, it turns out. Not only is David doing it in public (ahem, blogging)...but Handspring, which has for years created better products than Palm at a fraction of the price, is being assimilated by the Palm collective for $170 million in stock. Oh well, happens to the best of us. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:58 PM by David Adesnik  

DIVINE JUDGMENT: As punishment for my anti-Macintosh blasphemy, the computer gods have wrought terrible vengeance on my PC, crippling its hard drive and forcing me to subject myself to the ultimate humiliation: the use of a public computer cluster. Oh, the agony!

Anyhow, you'll know why it is if my posting is somewhat irregular for the next few days. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 3:57 PM by Patrick Belton  

ARLINGTON PUBLIC LIBRARIES ARE BETTER THAN OXFORD UNIVERSITY ONES, PART 318: For all of our readers in the metropolitan Washington area, I've got to just rave for a second on the public library system in Arlington. Not only does it have the incredible area studies and diplomatic history holdings that you might expect out of, well, out of a wealthy area with comparatively low social service needs, and populated entirely by current and former CIA, State, DOD hands - BUT, its online holdings (OED, Proquest, Infotrack) rival if not exceed those of any university I've ever attended. For those of you who are in D.C. (and particularly you all in Arlington), this is better than sliced bread (which isn't really that great anyway - Nabeel Abraham gives a cute story in Arab Detroit of he and his brothers as children pestering their Arabic mother to buy Wonder Bread instead of baking fresh Khubz Arabi every afternoon for them, so they could be like the non-Arab kids in town; and trying to hide their underwhelment with the mythical white sliced bread when their mother finally caved in and bought it....)

(And to those of you who are keeping track, yes, in a noteworthy three-day spurt of nerdiness I've managed to (1) brag about my public library system, (2) tell all of you about a date night spent reading the Greek classics out loud with my bride, and (3) compare the personals ads in two different literary reviews. Hmmm....seems like, to restore this blog's former unparalleled well-rounded image of physical and mental athleticism I should start up a blogger pin-up series or something....)

UPDATE: Matt Madden concurs in part, dissents in part (specifically, the library's no food/no drink rule). (So here's a deal - track me down in the library, Matt, and we'll go out for an interblogonal slurpee) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:19 PM by Patrick Belton  

THE COMPARATIVE LITERATURE OF PERSONALS ADS: It's rainy. So let's play, New York vs. London Review of Books in personals ads.

First off we have the New York Review of Books (print ed., June 12, 2003). Here, we see many entries, and they're...basically...all...the same. That is, people who "love cats" and "classical music." They're "confident, yet sensitive." They even look good in earth-toned sweater vests. In a word: annoying, ingratiating wimps.

to wit,

"ADVENTUROUS, INTELLECTUAL DJM, 47, periodontist...cat-lover, seeks full-figured woman for passionate sex and scintillating discussions"

"BEAUTIFUL, BRAINY SJF, 54, earthmother...passionate about art...knows Paris well...Reply only if you can increase my joy. Handwritten replies only."

"SJM interested in fathering a child in a flexible, supportive parenting partnership. Open to many possibilities, including marriage."

"ALL FETISHES, DOMINATION/SUBMISSION FANTASIES explored by Ivy League educated Goddesses."

And that's leaving out the "Ph.D. Yankee with a twist, spirited not spiritual, California-raised, supportive yet strong, believes humor is key." The passionate, warm, almond-eyed academic (good shoulders)... And lots of avid tennis players, sweater-vest wearers, and strong but compassionate cat lovers who can't live without classical music, and would love to "return to Prague, Vienna, France," with an "educated, financially stable, kind," etc.

etc., etc., etc. Boring, pretentious wimps.

Now, for round two, it's time to turn to the inside back page of the London Review of Books (print ed., 22 May 2003). Yes, even here we do have one or two "passionate, academic, liberal female[s], seeking similar male, also emotionally aware, empathetic, communicative, proactive and progressive." (Et in Londono ego.) But then, we have these:

"EITHER I'M DESPERATELY UNATTRACTIVE, or you are all lesbians. Bald, pasty man (61) with nervous tick and unclassifiable skin complaint believes it to be the latter but holds out hope for dominant (yet straight) fems at box no. 10/18."

"FAT FRISKY AND 42. Not me, it's the wife. Complex M dullard, 43, seeking younger, slimmer and downright unlibidinal replacement to avoid another night of force-fed Viagra. Must enjoy computer battleships, segregated bathrooms and respect my mother by wearing clothes just like hers (calvary twill, mainly). Box no. 10/17."

"BOOKLOVERS! Ask for The Cambridge Companion to My Butt" when you're next in the LRB shop. Embittered overeducated Boston third age gay...not so much disruptive, just plain choleric. Box no. 10/13."

"THEY CALL ME MR BOOMBASTIC. You can call me Monty. My real name, however, is Quentin. But only Mother uses that. And Nanny. Monty is fine, though. Anything but Peg Leg (Shrewsbury Prep, 1956, 'please don't make me do cross-country, sir'). Box no. 10/17"

"MEET A LARDARSE FOR THE THINKING GAY F. Only I'm a man. Difficult to classify bisexual couch potato, 39. Seeking more of the same, only without so many doughnuts this time. Bristol."

"GERMANY IS THE NEW DETROIT" (no text can live up to that, so I'm not quoting it)

"WHEN MY MUM IS IN, I can't make any noise. But when my mum goes out, then I can make a noise. NW M, 38.... Large head. Box. no. 09/02."

"THIS COLUMN IS THE PLACE TO SEE AND BE SEEN. But not too often. Certainly not eight times in the last twelve months. So know when you're beatn G. P.-J., and throw in the towel. Hope for singles nights at the LRB bookshop; failing that, there's always rhumba mornings at the Golden Age Drop-In Centre. Box no. 09/09."

Oh, and the winner,

"MY CURRENT RESEARCH CONSISTS OF UTILISING FRESHWATER and marine isolates for the possibility of Lignin Modifying Enzyme production, Bioremediation of Xenobiotics and Phanerochaete chrysosporium. All this to be blonde. Postgraduate Scottish beauty tired of trans-Euro mousey brown and nights alone with a jigsaw and a chemistry set. Seeking Cambridge hunk, thirties or upwards, for outre bathtime fun and games. Box no. 09/10." (Heck, I'm even writing a couple of hunky Cantabridgian friends about her right now...)

Wow, the difference is striking. So in conclusion: if you want love, go to England.

(Heck, it worked for me...)

UPDATE: Josh C., (no, the other Josh C...if this were grade school, we'd need of course to have Josh C.-sub-1 and Josh C.-sub-2, with precedence being decided by a head-to-head political theory battle royale at noon between these two lovable guys...think "8 mile" meets Rawls...), says the downside of advertising in the LRB is that you might end up with someone in the Balliol MCR....






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# Posted 10:37 PM by Patrick Belton  

SAY IT AIN'T SO, SAMMY!: Sammy Sosa breaks all of our hearts, for those of us who believe in and have affection for our national sport. Sosa, the only player in the history of baseball with three 60-homer seasons, shattered his bat in the first inning of the Cubs' game against Tampa Bay at Wrigley - to reveal a bat that had been corked. We may never know how much of his career's successes had been due to cheating.

Sosa was ejected from the game.

UPDATES: Lots, lots more email about this than about Sophocles. AJ points out that this will situate Sosa within the immortal pantheon of legendary baseball cheaters. Patrick W. writes in with his thought that the margin of most of Sosa's homers was probably ironically greater than the 20 to 30 additional feet conferred by a corked bat.

(On the other hand, my father-in-law liked my Sophocles post when he read about it...on Volokh, that is!)









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# Posted 5:51 PM by Patrick Belton  

THE RECENT REARREST OF SUU KYI is but the latest instance in a sad pattern, in which the degree of freedom extended or denied Ms Suu Kyi by the junta has been a careful calibration between its internal imperative to forestall demcracy, and its own departure from rule, and the external imperative to court the trade benefits which East Asian nations (notably Japan) are happy to confer, in reward for any slight "advance" toward democratic rule, however cynically imposed.

The three of us each have somewhat close ties to this remarkable woman, as her late husband, Michael Aris, was an Oxford academic at St Antony's College. Suu Kyi, herself a graduate of Oxford, returned from the life of a homemaker and donnish spouse to assume her father's mantle when she returned to Burma in August 1988, in the aftermath of a brutally repressed pro-democratic uprising months earlier. Her father, General Aung San, had been a democratizing leader pivotal to securing the end of colonial rule in Burma. With her fortunate combination of parentage, comparative youth, and the preexistence of a strong if frustrated democratic movement, she shot quickly to the worldwide stature shared only by such figures as Nelson Mandela; her political party, the National League for Deomcracy, received 82 percent in national elections in 1990; she had by that point already been under house arrest for a year.

She is, as she should be, very much in all of our thoughts at her erstwhile university.
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# Posted 2:42 PM by Patrick Belton  

SOPHOCLES AND POLITICS: Over the weekend, Rachel and I stayed in on Saturday night and read to each other the penultimate Sophoclean tragedy, Philoctetes. (Yes, this is how married nerds spend their weekends; Sophocles's final work, incidentally, was his more widely read Oedipus at Colonus, to which Philoctetes bears resemblance). I had been thinking at length lately on how best to begin approaching issues of ethics and statecraft, and on reading this neglected play of Athens's greatest tragedian, I was struck by how appropos it was to modern issues of state morality. Indeed, Philoctetes (and here is one translation) is at its core a play of statecraft, revolving around strikingly topical questions such as the morality of deception and covert action in service of a nation's security (even a spy appears, briefly), the moral validity of raisons d'etat, and the legitimate claims owed to chains of command by an officer of the state. It bears, I think, further reflection.

The titular Philoctetes, once the greatest of Greek archers and second to none in nobility of character, has for ten years been abandoned by his countrymen Achaians after his accidental trespass and subsequent snakebiting in a religious sanctuary on the island of Chryse. In consequence of this mishap he is banished and becomes an instantly recognizable as a sort - in Seamus Heaney's gloss, "the wounded one whose identity has become dependent upon the wound." We meet him rag-dressed after a decade's exile, inaugurated when Odysseus abandoned him sleeping on the shores of the desolate island Lemnos. After the snakebiting, his wounds had brought Philoctetes such pain that due to his "savage and ill-omened" cries, his companions could not pour libations or conduct sacrifices in peace. And so he is abandoned through trickery; and so, with the Chorus, we come upon him ten years after his abandonment,

of illustrious race,
Yet here he lies, from every human aid
Far off removed, in dreadful solitude,
And mingles with the wild and savage herd;
With them in famine and in misery
Consumes his days, and weeps their common fate,
Unheeded, save when babbling echo mourns
In bitterest notes responsive to his woe.

The play's main tension begins nearby, where the wily general Odysseus (registering an early anti-Odyssean tradition in which the Homeric hero's deceptiveness receives much less sympathetic treatment than that to which we are accustomed) is conferring with young Neoptolemus, the late Achilles's noble, battle-untried son. We meet them as Odysseus is justifying to his charge why the young man must convince Philoctetes, through lies and ruse, to return with the Greeks to the battlefields of Troy. This deed is necessary because the seer Helenus, son of Priam, had prophesised Troy would be secure until Philoctetes arrived on the scene; hearing this, the joint commanders of the Greek armies, Agamemnon and Menelaus, dispatched Odysseus and his soldiers to retrieve Philoctetes and his bow - and thereby setting our plot in motion.

Odysseus realized that the archer whom for the common good he betrayed would murder him on sight given the chance, and so dispatches young Neoptolemus to by ruse disarm the afflicted archer so the Greeks could compel him to accompany them to Troy. In justifying his actions to his junior officer, Odysseus presents several arguments to Neoptolemus. His first is premised on state morality (duty) and the chain of command (compliance) - "Reflect that 'tis thy duty to comply." His second is the broader compulsion of the state, justified by the security imperatives it faces:

Say what thou wilt, I shall forgive,
And Greece will not forgive thee if thou dost not;
For against Troy thy efforts are all vain
Without his arrows.

His final appeal, though, is not ultimately to patriotic duty, but to vanity and pride:

I know thy noble nature
Abhors the thought of treachery or fraud.
But what a glorious prize is victory!

Concluding, Odysseus stresses the aberrant, temporary nature of the deceitfulness that the state is compelling upon Neoptolemus:

Therefore be bold; we will be just hereafter.
Give to deceit and me a little portion
Of one short day, and for thy future life
Be called the holiest, worthiest, best of men.

However, the noble nature of Achilles, living in his son, rebels against deceipt, and cries out for an honest contest among equals -

What open arms can do
Behold me prompt to act, but ne'er to fraud
Will I descend. Sure we can more than match
In strength a foe thus lame and impotent.
I came to be a helpmate to thee, not
A base betrayer; and, O king! believe me,
Rather, much rather would I fall by virtue
Than rise by guilt to certain victory

The pivotal interchange in the dispute which ensues is Neoptolemus's question, "And thinkst thou 'tis not base / To tell a lie then?"; to which Odysseus's response is, as it must be, "Not if on that lie / Depends our safety."
 
Before proceding to the unplaying of the covert action itself, we might pause to consider what has taken place. First, we see the state giving, in order to preserve itself, to one of its citizens the right to violate its laws and its decent standards of conduct. The wilyness and deceptiveness of Odysseus, now forced by command and conjolance upon his charge, is from the perspective of Athens a black art forgiveable when the survival of the state is in question, but out of place at home in the peacetime councils and life of the democracy. Second, this dispensation here has become a command - conveyed and made attractive with appeals to patriotism, personal glory, and compulsion (familiar components in the recruitrment of agents even in today's clandestine tradecraft) - but at the same time, a military command given from a senior officer to a junior, who with his soldierly status has accepted the impositions on his individual capacities for moral choice of the military chain of command. Third, when the individual threatens the communal good, that of the state, the Greek polity selects its own self-preservation- whether by deceitfully banishing the unlucky hero far from Greek civilization ("Alas, poor soul," says the Chorus, "that never in ten years' length / enjoyed a drink of wine"), or then by deceitfully compelling his disarmament and forcible return. Sophoclean morality condemns, after all, hubris above all - thus the unseemly pride of Creon in Antigone, or perhaps that of Oedipus in Oedipus Rex - because through it, the individual threatens the good of all Athens.

This much, at least, from Odysseus's perspective. Yet thankfully Sophocles also permits us to see things from the perspective of Neoptolemus: here we come across a talented junior officer for whom the concept of deceiving others - that is, acting under a cover, hiding the true state of affairs (hence our covert, the old French past participle of cuvrir, to cover) - reaches beyond the unaesthetic to the unethical. Neoptolemus's unease with deceipt in the service of a state's survival is not impossible to understand - his code, after all, is heroic, not conniving; it privileges means, not ends; it is ultimately Kantian, not utilitarian. But while gentlemen who, with Secretary Stimson, do not relish the thought of opening the mail of other gentlemen may perhaps nonetheless be forgiven for opening that of tyrants and murderers, the noble character of Neoptolemus, son of Achilles, does not even allow us that much: for noble Achilles's son would seek to struggle honestly and win nobly, or nobly be defeated. The tension between the general of covert artistry and the noble lowly officer is left pending rather than resolved by Neoptolemus's brief acquiescence, and Odysseus departs from the scene, calling both on Hermes, god of trickery, and on Athena, goddess of Athens.

Thus, shortly after, Neoptolemus presents himself under cover to Philoctetes and genuinely pities and befriends the lonely accursed archer, and begins to shake loose his cover when he directs the Spy (a largely gratuitous character who briefly appears) to speak openly to them both, commanding him: "Hide nothing then." And after only a short period further - feeling pity for the abandoned cripple as well as the pull between the heroic code and the shadowy efficacy of Odysseus - he chooses to honor the code of Athenian heroism and tells all, hoping to continue following the chain of command and compel Philoctetes's forcible transportation to the fields of Troy, but now to do so openly and without deception in his application of coercion:

I can no longer hide
The dreadful secret from thee; thou art going
To Troy, e'en to the Greeks, to the Atreidae.
PHILOCTETES
Then am I lost,
Undone, betrayed. Canst thou, my friend, do this?
Give me my arms again.
NEOPTOLEMUS
It cannot be.
I must obey the powers who sent me hither; justice enjoins- the common cause demands it

Unfortunately, Neoptolemus's moment of moral clarity then disintegrates somewhat into the muddled inclarity of a therapy-session. We anticipate, even, catharsis by group hug:

Alas!
What shall I do? Would I were still at Scyros!
For I am most unhappy.

At which point, the session is disrupted by the arrival of Odysseus - who now justifies his actions of compulsion, now no longer covert, by reference to gods' compulsion rather than merely that of the state and men:

Know, great Zeus himself
Doth here preside. He hath decreed thy fate;
I but perform his will.
PHILOCTETES
Detested wretch,
Mak'st thou the gods a cover for thy crime?
Do they teach falsehood?
ODYSSEUS
No, they taught me truth,
And therefore, hence- that way thy journey lies. Pointing to the sea

The gods thus demand it - but, this far, only in Odysseus's mouth, although we have no reason to believe that he and his own commanders are acting in bad faith in keeping with their information at hand and their special responsibility for the Greeks' security. But now Neoptolemus makes his existential choice worthy of the Sartrean French wartime student, and disobeying his general, returns to the crippled archer the bow which was, on his deserted island, his livelihood:

NEOPTOLEMUS
I come
To purge me of my crimes.
ODYSSEUS
Indeed! What crimes?
NEOPTOLEMUS
My blind obedience to the Grecian host
And to thy counsels.

Yet he keeps Philoctetes from slaying Odysseus and permits the latter to escape, for the moment striking out as an independent actor, capable of rendering himself on one side or the other as compelled by the dictates of moral choice. Whereupon Neoptolemus then seeks, though vainly, through speech to make common cause with both the archer and his commanders, and compel Philoctetes to Troy by force of arguments rather than violence; in other words, he becomes a diplomat:

PHILOCTETES An idle tale
Thou tellst me. surely; dost thou not?
NEOPTOLEMUS I speak
What best may serve us both.
PHILOCTETES But, speaking thus,
Dost thou not fear the' offended gods?
NEOPTOLEMUS Why fear them?
Can I offend the gods by doing good?

Having foresworn force or the arts of deception to impose the Greeks' will on Philoctetes, however, Neoptolemus finds that relying on argument he is powerless to compel the crippled archer to Troy. And so, noble Neoptolemus is ultimately rendered in a position of incontrovertible tension between moral commitments.

The resolution of the tension is ultimately by deus ex machina - quite literally, as Heracles then appears, and directs Philoctetes and Neoptolemus to Troy where the two will slay Paris and where Philoctetes will be healed - and this because Sophocles could not in the end answer the question which he himself had posed: how one might reconcile irreconcilably conflicting duties to the state, to the gods, and to human pity and benevolence. The appeal to divine intervention brought Aristotles's scorn upon this play, and subsequent critics have tended to follow his impulse here. Well enough, we might ask, that the gods appear to the agonizing noble pair, resolving their tormenting pulls between human benevolence and the needs of the state - but where are those of us left to whom Heracles does not deign to appear?

The gods themselves must intervene to solve this dilemma. But perhaps - perhaps - Sophocles's play contains a meaning missed by Aristotle and academics following in his path; perhaps this can be read differently, to say that only divine intervention can justify the commission of intrinsically unethical acts to serve a public good. This may not be my answer - I believe, for instance, with John Lewis Gaddis that espionage serves an important good of stability, assuring antagonists of one another's peaceable intentions when, as during the Cold War, their talk in each others' ears is cheap. But I do believe, however, that this is ultimately the answer which is Sophocles's. And as to my knowledge no more compelling treatment in literature, whether classical or modern, of the ethical dilemmas inherent in covert acts of state than this play from the Athenian golden age, we who might argue for more expansive notions of raison d'etat, if only toward murderers and terrorists rather than gentlemen, would do well to measure and tune our arguments against Sophocles's tragedy.
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# Posted 1:52 PM by David Adesnik  

DOES ANYONE KNOW WHAT'S HAPPENING IN IRAQ? If all you read were the headlines in NYT or WaPo, it wouldn't hard to persuade yourself that American efforts to rebuild Iraq are an unmitigated disaster. On the other hand, right-of-center critics -- e.g. Glenn Reynolds and Mark Steyn-- have begun to argue with considerable force that the mainstream media have focused on inevitable problems while ignoring that the occupation is going far better than one might reasonably expect.

From where I stand, the fundamental problem with mainstream coverage of the occupation is that its tone depends not on the situation on the ground in Iraq, but rather on the rhetoric that is coming out of Washington. In short, even though the occupation is going better than expected, Donald Rumsfeld's passive aggression toward nation-building has led the media to give as much attention as possible to any evidence that Rumsfeld's lackluster attitude has brought the reconstruction effort to the brink of failure.

It's important to recognize, of course, that this pattern of behavior on the media's part is nothing new. One point that almost all academic studies of the media agree on is that journalists attempt to protect their (self-endowed?) reputation for objectivity by avoiding all independent judgment of what is happening on the ground.

In practice, this preference leads journalists to measure reality against the standards set out by leading officials in Washington. Because Rumsfeld & Co. have demonstrated a disturbing lack of concern about progress in Baghdad, everything that goes wrong in Iraq becomes front-page news.

This pattern of interaction rapidly becomes a vicious cycle. Since journalists themselves place tremendous faith in the media, the constant repeititon of similar headlines persuades correspondents on the ground that the headlines reflect some sort of objective reality. Right now, a raft of negative reports from Baghdad have been mistaken for a decisive assessment of the occupation as an unmitigated failure.

Fortunately, some critics of the administration recognize that this sort of judgment is premature. Yet as the ever-critical Kevin Drum warns, center-right critics of media pessimism can't afford to mistake the media's premature criticism of the Administration for an indication that the President, Vice-President and Secretary of Defence actually understand how hard it is to rebuild a nation.

The occupation certainly isn't going so well that we can start to praise the Administration for its well-laid plans. As Fareed Zakaria points out, the Administration's respective attitudes toward Afghanistan and Iraq demonstrate precious little cognizance of the most important lesson we have learned from the failed and semi-successful nation-building efforts of the past decade: go in with overwhelming force and accept nothing short of success.

Does that lesson sound familiar? Of course it does. As Tom Friedman reminds us, it's known as the Powell Doctrine. Except now the US needs to apply it to waging peace instead of waging war. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:55 PM by David Adesnik  

CONSOLIDATING THE MEDIA: I admit it. I can't figure out what my position is on this issue. Today the FCC voted to ease current restrictions that prevent corporations from owning an excessive number of television stations in a single market. The restrictions also prevent individual corporations from owning both a newspaper and a television station in the same market.

The WaPo seems to be just as confused as I am. While its masthead editoral asks some good questions about the current debate, it provides no answers whatsoever.

On the con side, Ted Turner is arguing that he never could've started CNN if not for the current rules, which ensure that risk-taking entrepreneurs have a supply of television stations available for purchase. But that was 20 years ago. My guess is that today's innovators would use the internet or other media to launch their new enterprises.

All in all, I think I'm inclined to discount apocalyptic prophecies of media conformism and agree with Calpundit, who argues that there is a pretty resilient marketplace for ideas and that the revisions voted on today aren't nearly significant enough to have much effect at all.
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# Posted 9:30 PM by David Adesnik  

MOBILITY AND INEQUALITY: Dan Drezner has a great post on the subject. For a lot of us, I think it will be the final word on the inequality debate, at least for the moment. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:51 PM by David Adesnik  

APOLOGY, TAKE TWO: It seems that my first apology to the advocates of medieval Europe was thought of as excessively tongue-in-cheek. So, just to reassure everyone, let me say the following: I do not believe that the medieval Europe was backward or be(k)nighted. It is a fascinating period that I wish I had more of a chance to study.

On the bright side, the shortcomings of my first apology led RR to send in this fascinating account of the development of computing technology in the late 20th century. RR's comments come in response to my statment that

"It's not as if Bill Gates was responsible for taking computers that once filled entire rooms and transforming them into desktops."

After re-reading what I wrote, I can see why it came off as a sarcastic dismissal of Gates' critics. But actually, I wanted to show that I am aware of the fact that the history of computers is not the history of Microsoft. Fortunately, RR has made with in greater depth than I ever could. He writes that:

Bill Gates contributed _nothing_ to the development of desktop computers. The microprocessor was developed by Intel, Motorola, Texas Instruments, et al. So was semiconductor memory. Computers were already shrinking:a PDP-11, the standard 'minicomputer' of the '70s, was the size of a small refrigerator, and then a small suitcase.

The first desktop computers were designed by hobbyists and a few daring entrepreneurs. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak designed the Apple.

Then larger companies joined in. Radio Shack's TRS-80 computer was as dominant circa 1980 as Windows is now. Next IBM blitzed the market with the "PC".

During this whole period, Microsoft was a minor player. Its big deal was BASIC interpreters for several of the early microcomputers (including the Apple). Microsoft did not even create DOS - they acquired it for a few thousand dollars from Seattle Computing.

Then Gates had an immense stroke of luck. IBM chose DOS for the PC, spurning then-dominant CP/M for obscure reasons. IBM poured colossal resources into the PC marketing blitz, establishing the PC _and_ DOS as de facto standards. But while a horde of low-cost Asian manufacturers sliced away IBM's hardware domination, Gates expanded DOS' software domination with clever licensing agreements that practically required manufacturers to be Windows-only.

Gates then leveraged his revenue and OS control into control of the spreadsheet and wordprocessor market, squeezing out established products like Lotus 123 and WordPerfect. Xerox invented the graphical user interface that Apple marketed. Gates copied it. The Unix/academic world created the Internet, developing TCP/IP, FTP, SMTP, and HTTP with no help from Microsoft. Netscape pioneered the Web browser; Microsoft followed with Internet Explorer. Databases, gaming, home finance, multimedia, development tools, graphics - Microsoft has never been the leader, never been the innovator.

That's capitalism for you, eh? (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:23 PM by David Adesnik  

DEMOCRACY, WHISKEY, SEXY: Shi'ite fundamentalists are giving liquor merchants a hard time in Basra. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:59 PM by David Adesnik  

METAPHOR OF THE YEAR: The WaPo opens its profile of John Kerry with the Senator's advice on how to hunt, kill, skin and cook doves. Is it a metaphor for Kerry's toughness? Or a premonition of what the President will do to his probable opponent in the 2004 election?

Regardless, it is terribly, terribly clever. The rest of the article is not. It provides biographical data but no real information about who Kerry is or what he stands for. Then again, the Post's evasiveness may be both terribly intentional and terribly clever.

In the coming days, the WaPo will publish profiles of the other eight Democratic candidates for president. If those profiles are more substantive, we'll know that the Post was having its way with the Senator from Massachusetts. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:06 PM by Patrick Belton  

HONEY, CAN WE SET ASIDE SOME TIME TO TALK ABOUT REINVIGORATING OUR RELATIONSHIP?: This, at least, is the question being posed to the Kremlin by Ambassador Sestanovich and Carnegie's Michael McFaul. And it's timely: for all of the Bush administration's just criticisms of the highly personalized nature of the Clinton-Yeltsin relationship, President Bush's with Putin displays remarkable areas of similarity: despite a bilateral agenda spectacularly lacking in creativity or capacity for inspiration (chicken and steel imports and visa regimes figure at the moment in the first rank of bilateral issues), Vloidim Putin nonetheless currently tops the list of the "axis of the unwilling" leaders with whom Bush is mending fences - and this because, unlike Herr Shroeder or Monsieur Chirac, Bush made great political hay from his personal friendship with Vloidim, which he must repair before Democratic presidential contenders use it to attack the administration for needlessly alienating allies in the run-up to the War against Saddam. Highly personalized relationships can have their usefulness - one thinks of Reagan's famed walks in the woods with Gorbachev - but only if they do not distract from broader strategic visions and creativity. Some ideas are currently on the table, and are worth pursuing: for instance, forming a consultative body between the two presidents' national security advisors (which, if nothing else, will serve as an instrument of influence, exposing the Kremlin more frequently to U.S. position and thinking at a high level). But more are needed: the Kremlin's influence in North Korea, Iran, and the Middle East could be a useful instrument for selling US-brokered ways forward in each of those regions, but absent American prodding, Moscow's instinct may well be to tell the U.S. to go and patch things up, and let them know when they should sign on the dotted line - possibly in Moscow's interests by allowing it to conserve political capital in those relationships, but robbing us of a potentially useful tool in the meantime. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:21 AM by Patrick Belton  

GAINS BY INDIRECTION?: Mexico enters the final months before an important mid-term election for its Camera de Diputados and several state governorships. Most analysts think things won't be changed terribly much: Fox, bruised by lack of progress on the bilateral agenda with the U.S. and vigorous opposition from the countryside about the entry into force of new NAFTA categories, will suffer slightly, but the field of play will remain basically what it is now - a politically reformist, economically liberalizing, pro-U.S. president facing off against a parliamentary opposition seeking to maintain government ownership of struggling public services and secure federal aid to the countryside along with protecting partisan patronage. While this isn't ideal - there still isn't a clear panista or tecno successor to run under Fox's reformist mantle after the close of his sexenio, and a more strongly entrenched opposition may hobble his prospects for success in the remainder of his term - one externality is that constitutional democracy in Mexico is being strengthened, as the opposition PRI and PRD search for and breathe life into separation-of-powers provisions implicit in the Mexican constitution. Gracias al Señor por las benediciones pequeñítas. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:26 AM by Patrick Belton  

WAIT, IF THIS WAS AN ANNULAR ECLIPSE, then why don't I remember one like this last year? (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:50 PM by David Adesnik  

WHO NEEDS AFFIRMATIVE ACTION? Certainly not women. Across the board, men are trailing behind in the dust while women build an ever more impressive record of academic achievement. Good for them. They deserve it.

Btw, the above article on women's achievement also contains a statistic which says quite a lot about the nature of income inequality in our post-industrial economy:

Better-educated men are also, on average, a much happier lot. They are more likely to marry, stick by their children, and pay more in taxes. From the ages of 18 to 65, the average male college grad earns $2.5 million over his lifetime, 90% more than his high school counterpart. That's up from 40% more in 1979, the peak year for U.S. manufacturing. The average college diploma holder also contributes four times more in net taxes over his career than a high school grad, according to Northeastern's [Andrew] Sum. Meanwhile, the typical high school dropout will usually get $40,000 more from the government than he pays in, a net drain on society.

Hmmm. If that income statistic is correct, then I still have $2.44 million to look forward to... (Thanks to A at Rational Explications for the link.)

Also, RS recommends that anyone with a serious interest in inequality take a look at Jeremy Waldron's Liberal Rights, specifically Waldron's essay on charity and the welfare state. If all y'all get a chance to read it, send in your thoughts. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:26 PM by David Adesnik  

HOPE FOR 2004? Trent Telenko says the Dems have none. While Trent may be right, I think his analysis flows much more from his profound resentment of the Democratic left than from a real consideration of the current candidates prospects. Moreover, Trent tends to confuse the hardcore left with the whole of the Democratic party. As he would have it,

Today's "Democratic liberals" are big central government statists who are functional isolationists. As such, a political party run by them can provide neither national security nor long term economic prosperity...

Sounds like Trent thinks Jimmy Carter was president in the 1990s. Thankfully he wasn't. The fact is that almost all American presidents migrate, over time, to the center. Clinton started out far more to the left than he ended up. His shift reflected both self-interest and the will of the electorate. So don't underestimate the Dems.

This criticism aside, Trent's post is quite thoughtful, definitely worth reading, and full of great links to articles about the Dems and national security. Viva Winds of Change! (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:54 PM by David Adesnik  

A LIBERAL DEFENDS BUSH: Dan from over at Reason of Voice agrees with Wayne Hsieh that Bush's China policy has been far more successful than I'm willing to admit.

In an e-mail, Dan writes that

I'm no Bush lover, believe me, but I think you do him a disservice in your analysis of China.

Besides having coopted, as best possible, the Chinese on Iraq and Afghanistan, he's clearly made great strides on including the Chinese in a dialogue with North Korea when Pyongyang was adamantly opposed to
inclusion of anyone besides the Americans. The 'closed door' discussions you wonder about, I have little doubts are proceeding, and proceeding well.

Give credit where it is due.........which for me and the Bush administration is a wholly rare event.

I'll grant that the jury is still out. But I sense that China's participation in the North Korea talks has much more to do with China's self-interest than Bush's diplomacy. As for the talks themselves, I don't think I'll be willing to admit they've accomplished anything until there are some concrete results.

But I really do hope that Bush can put together a deal that puts a permanent end to the crisis on the peninsua. First of all, it would be good for both the US and North Korea. And more importantly, it would set Josh Marshall up for a big "I told you so!" ;) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:34 PM by David Adesnik  

BRIDGING THE ATLANTIC: Belgravia Dispatch has some very good thoughts on the state of US-European relations. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:31 PM by David Adesnik  

BLAIR=BRAGG=DOWD? With the NYT reeling after the departures of Jayson Blair and Rick Bragg, Maureen Dowd has chosen to duck for cover rather than admit that her own standards had begun to slip. In her most recent column, Dowd implicity acknowledges her gross distortion of the President's words on May 14th. Instead of a selective quotation of the President's comments on Al Qaeda, she now reprints all of what Bush said. But that is not enough.

For those of us who watch Dowd like hawks, an implicit confession admission is gratifying enough. But the overwhelming majority of NYT readers won't notice a thing. They have better things to do with their time than monitor Dowd's honesty. Thus, I'm glad that NY Daily News columnist Zev Chafets has chosen to expose Dowd in his most recent column. The question is, when will Howell Raines give Chafets Dowd's job?

(Thanks to N for the Chafets link.)

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 4:34 PM by David Adesnik  

ANTI-SEMITISM AT YALE: Judith Weiss reports that a Yale prof active in pro-Palestinian causes has begun to rant about a Straussian conspiracy and has even launched personal attacks on Jewish students in New Haven. This is apalling. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:00 PM by Patrick Belton  

THANK GOODNESS FOR SCIENTISTS: Without them, for instance, we wouldn't have this: (from the Economist, print edition, May 24th, p. 69)

Beauty matters most, though, for reproductive success. A study by David Buss, an American scientist, logged the mating preferences of more than 10,000 people across 37 cultures. It found that a woman's physical attractiveness came top or near top of every man's list.

Here's hoping this study was at least some grad student's excuse to get funding to look at lots of women. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 4:32 PM by David Adesnik  

CALIFORNIA REPENTS: An internal memo drafted by the editor of the LA Times takes its correspondents to task for liberal bias. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 4:28 PM by David Adesnik  

EVERYDAY AMERICAN VALUES: Daniel Drezner has just put up a must-read post about how US field commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan have taken the initiative in promoting democracy and compensating civilians who became accidental targets of American bombs.

Dan is absolutely right when he says that

a signal virtue of U.S. diplomacy is the ingrained habit of trusting subordinates to innovate and adapt to local circumstances, and then copying those innovations when they work.

All I can add to Dan's point is a bit of historical context. According to Cold War historian John Lewis Gaddis, the United States' successful effort to transform Germany and Japan rested heavily on local commanders' efforts to adapt American values and institutions to local circumstances.

In most cases, such commanders received no direction from above. According to Gaddis, they simply acted on the belief that the Germans and Japanese deserved exactly the same rights as US citizens had on the homefront.

There was, however, some recognition on the part of higher-ups in Washington that the best way to transform Germany and Japan was to ensure that American soldiers held foreigners to the same standards that they did their fellow Americans. According to John Dower, the foremost American historian of modern Japan, the training films shown to US soldiers departing for Japan emphasized that American values were the key to reform in Japanese society.

If shown today, such films' uncritical glorification of the United States and its values would provoke immediate accusations of cultural imperialism. While I wouldn't recommend the replication of such propaganda today, the fact remains that promoting democracy in Iraq will depend more on the occupation forces' ability to instill democratic values than on their ability to appreciate the local populations' cultural heritage.

Even so, this is not necessarily cultural imperialism. First of all, the values in question are not American or even Western. They are the values shared by democratic nations in Latin America, East Asia, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, the Indian subcontinent and even parts of Africa.

Perhaps more importantly, the occupation forces will transmit such values more by setting the right example than by spreading propaganda. Then again, the simple fact of holding elections privileges democratic values over all others.

The critical point to recognize here is that elections provide the Iraqi people a means of expressing themselves. If this sort of fostering self-determination counts as cultural imperialism, then the accusation has become meaningless. As I see it, true democracy cannot be imperial.

All in all, one of the most important reasons that I have much greater faith in the Pentagon's ability to promote democracy in Iraq (as opposed to the State Department's), is that rank-and-file American soldiers have a long tradition of sharing democatic values with all those they encounter. Even our generals and admirals tend to adopt this same straightforward approach.

While American diplomats have often risked their lives and reputations for the sake of human rights, their measured, cosmopolitan approach is not best-suited to countries in need of a total transformation. From where is stand, the best hope for democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan to just let our soldiers do what their grandfathers did in Germany and Japan: be themselves. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 4:07 PM by Patrick Belton  

SPRING CLEANING: In Argentina, President Nestor Kirchner is beginning his tenure in the Casa Rosada by replacing the chiefs of the air, sea, and land forces, along with half of the nation's remaining officers of flag rank (see the NYT and Clarin(Spanish)). This is a bold move, and given the resumes of the men Kirchner is replacing, inspires confidence.

Most of these newly-retired flag officers - like top officials in the supreme court, federal police, and SIDE (Argentine intelligence) - were appointees of President Menem, and generally a thuggish lot. It is somewhat poetic that the SIDE's new chief, thanks to Kirchner, is to be Sergio Acevedo - a man has spent the last several years on a congressional committee staff, bravely challenging Menem and his appointees' cover-up of the role of Iranian intelligence in the 1992 Hezbollah bombing of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires. According to the court testimony of an Iranian defector currently in German protection, Menem personally received $10 million from the Iranian government in return for diverting the course of the investigation into the bombings. The story of the investigation, perhaps not surprisingly, has been one of disappearing evidence, unfollowed leads, and the occasional videotape surfacing starring an investigating judge discussing payoffs.

Kirchner's bold act is good news. Argentina, and we as a hemisphere, are much better off without the likes of these in office. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:03 PM by Patrick Belton  

TERRORISM BOOK REC: For those of you who are at all interested in terrorist organizations and operations, I can't recommend highly enough Rohan Gunaratna's Inside Al Qaeda. Among Gunaratna's principal themes is the fantastic success of Osama as a diplomat, who succeeded in weaving together previously feuding operatives from Hezbollah, Iranian intelligence, and Sunni ethnoreligious groups around common goals, rather than religious or ideological doctrines. In terms of his dedication to detail and evidence, quiet analytical tone, and breadth and quality of contacts among those who labor quietly in the shadows, Rohan's text is insuperable.

Gunaratna moves peripatetically among several of the leading centers of counterterror analysis, including his principal affiliation at St Andrew's Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence, Israel's International Policy Institute for Counterterrorism, and the US-based RAND Corporation. If you can't find the book, you're lying - it's in a library within two miles of you - but here are two of his interviews in Singapore and PBS's Newshour. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 2:02 AM by Patrick Belton  

ON THE OTHER HAND, IT DOES MAKE KNOWING WHAT TO WRITE EASIER: The Times is reporting that Al-Jazeera's director general has been dismissed amidst allegations he worked with Iraq's Mukhabarat intelligence service (via Instapundit). The Times story notes that Al-Jazeera enjoyed a unique status in pre-war Iraq of being allowed to work independently of the information ministry and its controls over foreign media. Other coverage is making the claim that Jazeera both provided information to Mukhabarat and placed stories, although it's not clear with what frequency, on Uday's request. Correspondent Rahim Mizyad is explicitly named as an agent. The Weekly Standard's take is that it reported this before. Mine is that this is a sad indicator of the regrettable state of the press in the Arab world, which still must await its Arthur Schulzburger. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:37 AM by Patrick Belton  

WAS THE FIRST TIME JUST A DRESS REHEARSAL?: The often-brilliant Marc Perelman of the Forward muses here on Iran-Iraq lead-up parallels: the presence of an emigree policy entrepreneur (for Ahmed Chalabi, substitute Reza Pahlavi), the involvement of the Pentagon's fascinating Office of Special Plans (now supplemented by knowledgeable Iran hawk Michael Rubin) - and of course, those dern neo-cons (William Kristol, Michael Ledeen, Jim Woolsey, Frank Gaffney, AEI).

For another perspective, see the WaPo, which says the pro-western Tehran street is becoming so pro-western that now it's even apathetic about politics too. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:33 PM by David Adesnik  

INNOCENT UNTIL PROVEN GUILTY: Wayne Hsieh defends both the Bush administration's China policy and Katrina Leung from OxBlog's recent attack. I agree wholeheartedly with the point about Leung. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:19 PM by David Adesnik  

WHAT DARK AGES? PH proudly defends the Catholic tradition from my derogatory comparison of it a Macintosh. He writes that

As to the "Protestant" DOS being the foundation for capitalism, again, leaving Weber aside, it *is* true that the Microsoft Way has generated entire short-lived cottage industries which have grown up to plug the busted dams and fill the holes and generally fix the glaring weaknesses in their products. Microsoft generates industry
in the same way that an Enron does: swarms of lawyers, regulators, muckrakers and inevitable t-shirt makers are picking over the bones, but that's all.

Finally, the error that put me over the edge. "...Macintosh Catholicism, one dare not forget that it alone could not have brought us out of the dark ages." Oi, where to start? Passing over the dichotomy at hand, either no one taught you, or you have forgotten, basic aspects of medieval, Renaissance, Reformation, and early modern
history.

I admit it. I am a terrible, terrible bigot. What fair-minded invidual would dare suggest that Catholic Europe of the Middle Ages and Renaissance was a backwards place?

By the same token, who but an unthinking partisan of DOS could deny the tremendous progress made on computer technology in the 1940s, '50s and 60s? It's not as if Bill Gates was responsible for taking computers that once filled entire rooms and transforming them into desktops.

As such, I must repent. Yet as it says in the Book of [Steven] Job[s], it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a Windows user to enter the gates of Heaven. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:22 PM by David Adesnik  

TAKING APART THE POST: I said there would be a fisking tonight. Here it is:

Argentine Leader Takes Office, Pledging to Combat Poverty

By Jon Jeter
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, May 26, 2003; Page A18

BUENOS AIRES, May 25 -- Pledging to combat deepening poverty and rebuild a struggling economy, Nestor Kirchner was sworn in today as the first elected president of Argentina since a succession of violent demonstrations 18 months ago forced the ouster of four presidents in two weeks.

The constant repetition of the "four presidents in two weeks" motif makes Argentina seem like a banana republic. But in fact, the "four presidents" comment is profoundly misleading.

Fernando De La Rua, elected in 1999, resigned in response to violent protests in December 2001. Because there was no vice-president at the time, the leader of the Senate automatically became president. He refused the office, however, and the Senate later chose provincial governor Adolfo Rodriguez Saa to govern as interim president for 90 days so that new elections could be held. Yet thanks to the Senate leader's 48 hours in office, he is counted as a president.

Rodriguez Saa immediately provoked widespread anger by appointing corrupt ministers and indicating that he would use his position as interim president to position himself as front-runner in the new elections. In response to protests that were actually quite peaceful, Saa left office.

This time, the presidency fell to the leader of the lower house, who also rejected the office. Yet once again, thanks to the 48 hour interval between the resignation of Saa and the selection of his successor, Argentina technically observed the inauguration and resignation of a fourth president in two weeks.

Complex as the December 2001 transition was, the WaPo could've avoided its raft of errors by replacing the last five words of its lede with "Fernando De La Rua, elected in 1999."

Addressing Congress and 12 leaders from Latin America, including Cuba's Fidel Castro, Kirchner promised to reinvigorate Argentina's once-solid middle class, which has been hit hardest by the worst economic crisis in the country's history. But he also appealed for an end to the cronyism and corruption that
many Argentines associate with Kirchner's ruling Peronist Party.

Mentioning Castro is gratuitous and damning. It's how American reporters imply that the Latin American left is resurgent without providing any evidence to that effect. But the fact is that Castro attends lots of inaugurations, so his presence means nothing.

Next comes the misleading description of "Kirchner's ruling Peronist Party". The Peronist Party is a badly divided party which doesn't stand for much of anything at all. Such internal divisions were so extreme that the party couldn't agree on rules for a presidential primary. As a result, four separate Peronist candidates ran for president, each representing one faction within the party.

Even though Kirchner is no saint, he ran as a reformist outsider bent on challenging the corruption of former President Carlos Menem, who withdrew rather than facing a run off he was sure to lose by a landslide.

However, Kirchner did have the support of current President Eduardo Duhalde, who is known for running a massive political machine whose corruption is second only to that of Menem's. But Duhalde only supported Kirchner after Duhalde's hand-picked successor performed so badly in early polls that he had to withdraw from the election. Once again, the WaPo could've significantly improved its coverage by changing only a few words.

"We want to be the generation of Argentines that restores upward social mobility, but also promotes cultural and moral change and respect for the law,"
Kirchner said in his inaugural speech.

...Kirchner succeeded Eduardo Duhalde, a caretaker president who was named by Congress after violent protests forced four of his predecessors from office in the last two weeks of December 2001.

The repetition of the "four presidents" error suggests that the WaPo doesn't even understand how misleading his dispatch is. While lede senteneces have to be short, there is no excuse for this sort of glaring inaccuracy later in the article.

Despite the lack of a clear mandate from voters, poll results released last week showed that Kirchner has the support of nearly 70 percent of voters. Today he continued to strike the defiant, populist tone that characterized his campaign.

He said Argentina planned to honor its outstanding $136 billion in foreign debt but only if new terms of repayment could be negotiated with international lenders such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. And he promised to place the needs of poor Argentines ahead of debt repayments.

"We know our debt is a central problem," Kirchner said. "It is not a question of paying," but creditors "will only get their money if Argentina does well."

Kirchner is getting off pretty easy here. Imagine quoting an American president's inauguration speech without getting any sort of response from the opposition. What might the opposition say? That Kirchner talks tough but will give in to the IMF like all of his predecessors.

Kirchner has proposed a New Deal-like $2.8 billion public works program to create jobs and jump-start an economy that contracted nearly 11 percent last year. Nearly 60 percent of the country's 37 million people live on less than $2 a day, and Argentina's official jobless rate is roughly 18 percent...

The Post really needs an opposition quote here. I guarantee that my old boss, Sen. Terragno, would've been happy to provide one. He might've said that there is no way Argentina can afford massive public works and that even if the Congress passes them, the funds will be siphoned off by all sorts of corrupt officials.

Although Kirchner has questioned Argentina's relationship with the United States, he has promised greater cooperation with other Latin American countries, particularly Brazil. Lingering resentment of U.S.-backed free-market reforms helped elect a former metalworker, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, known as Lula, to the Brazilian presidency, and he publicly supported Kirchner during the campaign in Argentina.

Resentment of U.S.-backed reforms had almost nothing to do with Lula's election. The Brazilian himself cut a deal with the IMF during the campaign, even though the IMF's demands still consisted of "U.S.-backed reforms". Fact is, American reporters thrive on a strange mix of paranoia about the Latin American left and liberal guilt about the United States' responsibility for its alleged rise to power. Until they get over both obsessions, we're going to get third-rate coverage of the region.

PS Argentina is not a Third World country! But there is no better way to get Argentines' attention than to accuse Argentina of being backward... (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:45 PM by David Adesnik  

WORST NAME EVER: The Command Post reports that Islamist rebels in the Philippines have called for a ceasefire. The name of the rebels' organization is the Moro Islamic Liberation Front or MILF. Go ahead and see what happens if you put that into Google. I dare you.

(If you want actual commentary on the MILF rather than prurient entertainment, see this post by Boomshock.) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:37 PM by David Adesnik  

HARD NUMBERS: Boomshock has an absolutely first-rate post on the causes and extent of income inequality in the United States. Read the whole thing. Now! (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:30 PM by David Adesnik  

THIRD-RATE THIRD-WORLD COVERAGE: One of the lessons I learned this past summer in Argentina is the NYT and the WaPo often provide terrible coverage of those countries whose internal affairs are not at the top of the American agenda. With regard to Argentina, the Times and Post provided alarmist coverage of the violence and instability that followed Buenos Aires' political and economic trvails in autumn 2001.

In contrast to the American papers, the Financial Times and The Economist provided top-notch coverage both before, during and after the crisis. I make this claim with a fair amount of confidence because one of the projects I conducted as a Senado intern in Buenos Aires was a review of all articles about Argentina published between July 2000 and June 2001 in the four periodicals mentioned above.

In my final report on the project, I argued that the financial papers' superior coverage of Argentine affairs was not a random event, but rather the direct result of two very different approaches to covering the news.

The Times and thePostrely on one or two full-time correspondents to provide coverage of the whole of Latin America. In contrast, The Economist, the FT and financial news services such as Bloomberg have correspondents in almost every country in the region. Often, these correspondents have enough experience covering economic affairs to provide much more thoughtful coverage than their non-expert competitors.

The reason that the financial papers devote more resources to this sort of thing is that their readers demand accurate news about all those countries in which their capital is invested. If a financial doesn't provide such coverage, it will lose it readers.

In contrast, no one will cancel their subscription to the NYT or the WaPo because of their coverage of Latin America is less than stellar. (Of course, it is entirely possible that the NYT and WaPo provide better coverage of those countries in which foreign investors have little interest.)

The broader lesson of all this is that one has to be especially careful when reading what the papers have to say about any country that isn't the focus of sustained international attention. While the editorial position of any given paper may influence its coverage of Israel or Iraq, one can have a certain degree of confidence in the nuts and bolts of its coverage.

Elsewhere, that isn't the case. To make my point, I am now going to go ahead and fisk the WaPo whose inaccuracies provoked me enough to write this whole post in the first place. However, I am about to go out to dinner, so I will fisk said article in my next post on the subject.

UPDATE: Randy Paul recommends the Miami Herald's coverage of Latin America, which is arguably the best around. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:50 PM by David Adesnik  

REMEMBER CHINA? About a half-dozen news cycles ago, Josh Marshall was all over the Katrina Leung scandal. Remember her? The GOP fundraiser who slept with FBI agents and turned over stolen intelligence to the Chinese goverment?

I am now embarrassed that OxBlog didn't take the story more seriously at the time. Patrick wondered why two long-serving FBI agents would betray their wives and their country to sleep with a woman who is so profoundly unattractive. I responded that that Lewinsky affair had perilously lowered the standards of American males. In short, OxBlog spun the Leung affair for laughs.

What brought it all back to my attention was this excellent column by the WaPo's Fred Hiatt, who persuasively argues that true significance of the Leung affair is not its exposure of either the vulnerability of the US intelligence community or the hypocrisy of all those Republicans who bashed the Clinton administrion for its China spy scandal.

Rather the Leung scandal is a powerful indicator of just how adrift and directionless the Bush administration's China policy is. On the campaign trail, the President attacked Clinton for the failure of his policy of "constructive engagement" and promised to get tough on China both for its espionage and its human rights abuses.

Bush has done neither. To be fair, it may not be productive to antagonize China given its relatively constructive approach to both Iraq and North Korea. But the Republicans silence in response to the Leung affair shows that the adminsitration isn't even thinking about China.

For example, if it were committed to working with China on the North Korea front, the administration should thoroughly investigate the Leung affair and use it (behind doors) to remind the Chinese that they have to demonstrate their good faith through action, not promises.

Is it possible that the administration has been doing just that, albeit without public knowledge? Possibly, but given the inevitability of leaks within this administration, I find it very hard to believe that this is the case.

I think it's far more likely that the administration is desperate to direct attention away from yet another fiasco that emphasizes the failures of the US intelligence community. And fortunately for the President, Iraq and the Roadmap have largely kept China off the front pages.

Without excusing OxBlog's negligent avoidance of the Leung affair, I still think it is fair to criticize Josh Marshall for presenting the scandal in entirely partisan. From his first post onward, Marshall presented the Leung affair as a partsian issue that exposed Republican hypocrisy.

While that perspective is significant in its own right, I've tended to become somewhat inured to Marshall's constant focus on the scandal of the moment. To be fair, Marshall isn't the only who covered the Leung affair in partisan terms. I think one could direct that charge at most of the mainstream media.

Even conservative columnist Michelle Malkin -- who deserves considerable credit for commenting on her own party's hypocrisy -- approached the Leung affair in partisan in terms.

So why single out Josh Marshall for abuse? Because I know he is capable of so much better. While I usually find myself opposing TPM, its posts often provide the most persuasive argument for Josh's side of a given issue.

At the moment, I hope Josh is working on something other than the Texas Legislature scandal, which has been TPM's cause celebre over the past week or so. While Josh does have a professional interest in writing up unique stories that can advance his career as a journalist, I still think he might do even better by focusing his considerable talents on issues that will have a greater impact on American national security.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:29 PM by Daniel  

DELAY-ING THE ROAD MAP. One-trick-pony Dan chimes in on an article about America and Israel....I don't think that the Christian Zionists' pressure tactics will be a problem for Bush. He has declared it in America's national interest to pursue the road map. No lobby group can hold him back from his goal, and his position on the Arab-Israeli dispute resonates with a majority of the country. The Christian Zionists will still vote for him in 2004 regardless of what he does in Israel (who are they going to vote for, the Democrats?). The big question is what will happen with the Jewish vote in 2004. As I have said before, I think Jews will stay home in the Democratic Party, which is so much more tolerant on a host of social issues--gay rights, a woman's right to choose, keeping religion away from politics. These are important issues on which Jews vote besides Israel. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:16 AM by David Adesnik  

LIONS, TIGERS AND REPUBLICANS: Little Miss Attila is tickled pink by the NYT's in-depth coverage of the campus conservative movement in this week's issue of the Magazine.

I haven't had time to read the whole thing yet (because it is very, very looooong), but I'm really hoping to turn up some evidence of a Straussian conspiracy. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:08 AM by David Adesnik  

MICROBES ON PARADE: NZ Bear has set up a showcase for new weblogs that aren't as well-known as the ecosystem elite.

If your blog is just starting up, definitely think about submitting an entry to the contest. If you run an established blog, than vote for your favorite new entrant.

My votes for the week go to and to Rational Explications for its post on income inequality and to Page Three for its post on Star Wars. Again, I strongly encourage all of you with blogs to vote, since just a few more can make all the difference. Happy blogging! (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:37 AM by David Adesnik  

I AM OVERPAID: Kevin Drum draws on personal experience to argue that corporate executives are overpaid. He says that executive pay has risen at the same time that executives have become less and less accountable for their performance. The result? Inequality. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:24 PM by David Adesnik  

DEMOCRACY IN PALESTINE? Judith Weiss takes a careful look at the prospects. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:58 PM by David Adesnik  

INEQUALITY VS. POVERTY: Responding to my initial post about inequality, DP writes that

The real question is: How poor is America willing to let its least fortunate be?...Those that advocate assistance to the poor are in essence trying to raise the standard of living for the poor to some minimum standard...

If the poor already had [this minimum], would we be worrying about the poor at all? Would we care how wealthy the rich are? It seems to me that complaints like Kevin's are not precisely about the wealthy are making so much more money than everyone else, but that they are doing so while the poor have an inadequate standard of living.

I agree that our objective should be to establish a minimum standard of living rather than a minimum share of income growth. At the same time, we have to recognize that what we consider a minimally acceptable standard of living rises over time. Fifty years ago, it was acceptable to live without a washing machine, a television, or a computer. Now it isn't.

That aside there are some reasons to think that the inequality situation isn't as bad as Kevin makes it out to be. CS points out that according to the Census data Kevin cites

"The official income estimates in this report are based solely on money income before taxes and do not include the value of employment-based fringe beneifts nor of gevernement-provided noncash benefits, such as food stamps, Medicare, Medicaid, and public or subsidized housing."

In other words, Kevin's data provide no indication of the degree to which major government programs have actually mitigated extant inequality. While it's fair to say we should be doing more for the poor, especially in terms of education (remember the President's campaign promise?), one has start by establishing exactly how much the government does for them already.

JV adds that if the top 5% of American households earned $687 billion more than they "should have", much of that $687 will be sent to Washington as taxes, since -- contrary to popular myth -- the rich pay much more in taxes than the poor. (JV kindly provides a link to this page on the Cato Insitute website which has the hard data she is working with.)

On the other hand, if that growth were proportionately distributed in the first place, we wouldn't need the government to collect taxes and redistribute them!

Moving on, JAT writes in to emphasize just how much the changing nature of the family has contributed to inequality. As he says,

Remember, households aren't people. There are two major, major changes
that have occurred in household structure, especially in the last twenty years:

1) Increase in women's participation in the workforce, especially at the upper income ranges, and

2) Increase in divorces, single motherhood (and fatherhood), and a later age of first marriage.

You discussed the first, let's also consider the second. For background, here's the census data on household structure.

Consider the following [initial] situation:

Household A - married couple, making a total of $100,000
Household B - married couple, both making $50,000 [Total: $100,000]

No household income inequality. The top 50% of households make 50% of the
income.

After a divorce in Household B:

Household A - married couple, making $100,000
Household B - single man, making $50,000
Household C - single woman, making $50,000

Now only the top 33% of households make 50% of the income. Much more income inequality!

See the problem? Of course, this is a simplification. But economists and demographers can tell you that, given various societal trends, income inequality as measured by households was bound to increase in the last twenty years.

All these seem like good points to me. But to paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, I don't even know what I don't know about economics. I sense that the arguments made above are just the tip of the iceberg.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 2:36 PM by David Adesnik  

ECON AVALANCHE: I want to start this post with a big shout out to all of you who have shared your thoughts on some of the very basic economic questions I am just starting to grapple with. I am much obliged.

The first response I want to talk about is the one from your favorite sociologist and mine, Kieran Healy. Kieran heads straight for the jugular and questions my fundamental premise that "rapidly increasing inequality is an inevitable feature of capitalism," given that entreprenuers always reap the lion's share of the return on their investments.

As I understand it, Kieran's main argument is that top executives have rigged the American economy to ensure that "middle-managers and workers [are] being forced to bear a much larger part of the risk inherent in the capitalist enterprise" even though top executives still take home the lion's share of the profits.

Sounds improbable to me, but I'm going to take Kieran's argument seriously, since his position reflects the good professor's extensive reading on the subject, a bibliography of which is included in his post.

[Btw, don't forget to check out Kieran's clever comment about my post on Marx.]

Next we come to Kevin Drum's own response to my post (which he sent along via e-mail rather than posting it on the web). Kevin says

Good post. At least you addressed the main point of my post, instead of dodging it, as so many have done...

I completely agree that in a pure free market economy the rich get richer faster than anyone else -- and our transition to a service economy has made this even worse. That's the basic problem of monopoly in a market economy, and it's roughly what we had in American a hundred years ago. I much prefer regulated capitalism, which harnesses the genius of the marketplace but also reins in the worst of its excesses.

"Regulated capitalism" is an interesting phrase, since regulation entails everything from the existence of a central bank to the establishment of a Scandinavian welfare state.

Whereas progressives tend to think of regulation as their rallying cry -- while conservatives denigrate it as a wrench in the capitalist works -- the fact is that even the most committed free marketers have accepted the existence of extremely powerful regulatory bodies such as the Federal Reserve Board.

In fact, I think there's an argument to be made that the simple existence of a legal system with the power to enforce contracts is a pervasive form of regulation. Whereas some might argue that the existence of contract law is the foundation on which the market rests rather than an imposition on it, the existence of market economies in places such as China shows that markets can operative with remarkable vigor regardless of whether contracts can be reliably enforced.

In short, the point I'm trying to make is that regulation is always a question of "how much", not "whether or not".

Anyhow, I'm going to cut off this post right here since I have to run out to meet a friend. This evening I'll start putting up all the great responses that are now waiting in my inbox. Hasta luego!

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:56 PM by David Adesnik  

THE PEOPLE OF THE (POWER)BOOK: Writing from his portable G4, Steve Sachs informs me that Dr. BL may have been too hasty to identify Mac users as the Jews of the computing world, when in fact they are the Catholics.

Steve points to this column by celebrated Italian novelist Umberto Eco, which observes that

The fact is that the world is divided between users of the Macintosh computer and users of MS-DOS compatible computers. I am firmly of the opinion that the Macintosh is Catholic and that DOS is Protestant. Indeed, the Macintosh is counterreformist and has been influenced by the "ratio studiorum" of the Jesuits. It is cheerful, friendly, conciliatory, it tells the faithful how they must proceed step by step to reach - if not the Kingdom of Heaven - the moment in which their document is printed. It is catechistic: the essence of revelation is dealt with via simple formulae and sumptuous icons. Everyone has a right to salvation.

DOS is Protestant, or even Calvinistic. It allows free interpretation of scripture, demands difficult personal
decisions, imposes a subtle hermeneutics upon the user, and takes for granted the idea that not all can reach salvation. To make the system work you need to interpret the program yourself: a long way from the baroque community of revelers, the user is closed within the loneliness of his own inner torment.

You may object that, with the passage to Windows, the DOS universe has come to resemble more closely the counterreformist tolerance of the Macintosh. It's true: Windows represents an Anglican-style schism, big ceremonies in the cathedral, but there is always the possibility of a return to DOS to change things in accordance with bizarre decisions.....

And machine code, which lies beneath both systems (or environments, if you prefer)? Ah, that is to do with the Old
Testament, and is Talmudic and cabalistic.

Never much of a theologian, what concerns me are the socio-economic implications of Eco's argument. The MS-DOS emphasis on personal responsibility recalls Max Weber's insistence that Protestant thought is the foundation of capitalism.

Given the worldly success of Microsoft, it seems that Weber's analysis may be just as relevant to the information age as it was to the industrial era that came before it. While there is every reason to celebrate the beauty of Macintosh Catholicism, one dare not forget that it alone could not have brought us out of the dark ages. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:28 PM by Patrick Belton  

I'VE GOT (COMPUTER) ISSUES, so posting from me (and from our Washington bureau office) may be a bit light while I straighten them out..... (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 3:33 AM by David Adesnik  

THE UNKNOWN ECONOMIST: Having almost no knowledge of economics, I rarely comment on the fiscal state of the nation. But if I'm going to pretend to know about current events, I better start figuring out what I think about economics. And besides, this post from Kevin Drum made such an exploration impossible to resist.

As usual, I've decided to give Kevin a hard time because he runs my favorite left-of-center site in the blogosphere. Whenever I put up a post that criticizes the Democratic party, liberal policy or anything similar, I try to anticipate Kevin's counterarguments. Of course, Kevin still manages to surprise me and come up with solid arguments that expose flaws in my own logic. And I'm happy to do the same for him.

Now onto the post in question. In it, Kevin rails against the unjust distribution of the economic gains made by the United States over the past 20 years. In general, I am open to that sort of criticism. I do think that the US government needs to a lot more for America's poor. But designing such programs must begin with a solid analysis of why poverty continues to exist in the midst of rapid growth.

As Kevin points out, the top 5% of American households have seen their incomes rise by $687 billion more than one would expect if one made such projection on the basis of population size. In other words,

That means that the bottom 95% — in other words, households making less than $150,000 per year — have gotten $687 billion less than they would have if we had all shared equitably in the economic prosperity of the past two decades...Translation: if increasing prosperity had been equitably distributed, those households — 100 million of them — would have incomes today nearly $7,000 higher than they do.

With that extra income, those 40 million Americans without health insurance might be able to afford to protection. Or they could spend more on their children's education. In fact, they could probably do both and still have some cash left over to spend on the simple pleasures of life, such as a fine steak and some good beer.

So, to Kevin's credit, one has to admit that the stakes on this issue are large. But I can't bring myself to agree with Kevin's observation that

It's one thing to say that the rich have most of the money — after all, that's the whole point of being rich. But it's quite another to say that as our country grows ever more prosperous, the rich should actually grow richer at a faster rate than anyone else.

But that's the way the Republicans have convinced us the system should work, and they have systematically set about to implement policies that would make this happen.

Without pretending that the Republicans have done anything to ensure the equal distribution of income growth, one can make a strong case that an unequal distribution is (a) the natural outcome of market interactions and (b) especially likely given the United States' recent transition from an industrial to a service-based economy.

While I don't understand much about economics, I tend to accept that growth in market economies reflects the willingness of those with capital to invest it in projects that carry with them a certain degree of risk. If the projects fail, so be it. If they succeed, those who put up the capital reap a far greater share of the profits than those employees who enjoyed the security of wage-based income.

Writ large, this process ensures that when the economy grows, the rich will always get richer far faster than everyone else. Should the government redistribute such gains? Perhaps. But there is no reason to expect, as Kevin seems to, that the distribution of income growth will be at all proportionate.

Now consider the specific state of the American economy over the course of the past couple of decades. Thanks to the decline of heavy industry, millions of high-paying union jobs -- held by those without a college education -- have ceased to exist. While there seems to be little question that the flexibility of American labor markets has given the United States a decisive advantage over Japan and Europe, one cannot doubt that such flexibility incurs tremendous social costs.

Ideally, the government would sponsor programs that facilitate a workers' transition from an outmoded industrial job to a more viable service-based one. How might such a program work? I don't know. How much might it cost? I don't know.

I don't even know if anyone knows the answers to those to questions (although I am willing to guess that no one on the Republican side of the aisle has spent much time trying to figure it out.)

In light of our transition to a service-based economy, education has become ever more valuable. And while I don't know much about American education, it seems that the American system does quite a competent job of educating those bound for college, while those without much interest in higher education don't get the preparation they need to compete in today's economy.

As such, is there any reason to expect that income growth in a service-based economy will benefit the lower income brackets as much as the top 5%?

One last trend I want to comment on is the changing role of women in the marketplace. Women are now a majority of students at America's colleges. If they haven't already, they will soon become a majority at the graduate level as well.

Unsurprisingly, such women tend to marry men who have achieved a similar or higher level of education. Again unsurprisingly, such well-educated couples tend to benefit disproporitionately from the growth of the United States' service-based economy. So in this instance, feminism seems to be responsible for a definite proporition of the inequality that often gets placed on the shoulders of Promise Keeping GOP legislators.

As should be evident from the arguments above, I have no idea what proportion of income inequality reflects natural trends in the American economy as opposed to Republican policy objectives. What I do know is that Kevin and others like him ought to seriously consider such arguments before asking

And when is 95% of American going to wake up, realize they have been mightily ripped off over the past 20 years, and fight back?

That sort of question only leads to elitism and despair on the left, since almost half of those 95% will keep on voting Republican regardless of what the Democrats have to say about the economy. Instead, I think it would be better for all of us -- right, left and center -- if the Democrats sought to gain a few percentage points at the polls by supporting program that promote equality of opportunity rather than equality of outcome.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 2:38 AM by David Adesnik  

FACES OF THE FALLEN: In a well-deserved tribute to the men and women of the US armed forces, the WaPo devoted an entire page of its Memorial Day edition to photographs of those soldiers who have lost their lives in Iraq since April 8.

Underneath each photograph is a brief description of how each soldier died. The descriptions provided considerable support for point made by my friend, Lt. MT, who said that driving is no less dangerous than helicopter transportation, even though the dramatic nature of helicopter crashes inevitably results in extensive media coverage of airborne casualties.

Opposite the page with the photographs, the Post ran a misguided story with a Vietnam-era headline: "In Iraq, U.S. Troops Are Still Dying--One Almost Every Day." As the story thunderously notes, 23 soldiers died after President Bush declared on May 1 that "major combate operations in Iraq have ended."

In a minimal nod to fairness, the Post observes that according to Pentagon officials, the casualty rate in Iraq is little different from the casualty rate in peacetime training. Six paragraphs later, the Post informs us of a far more important fact: that only two soldiers have lost their lives to hostile fire during the month of May. The other 21 fatalities this month were due to accidents, often in traffic.

While our success in Iraq is scarce consolation for those who lost the ones they loved, we ought not forget that their losses were for a cause that many great men and women have died for.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 2:14 AM by David Adesnik  

HARD NEWS: Once in a while, all y'all may want to hear about OxBlog's shopping habits and long-awaited reunions. But our bread and butter is politics. We made our name by telling you what we think about the news, and we intend to build on that foundation.

So let's talk about the WaPo. Thanks to the 3 1/2 hour train ride from DC to New York, I had my first chance in almost two years to sit down with an actual print edition of the WaPo. It felt good, but don't even think for a second that I'm going to go soft on Don Graham's crew. When you're #1, you have to prove it day in and day out.

While the lead story for the day was Sharon's victory in persuading Likud to accept the roadmap, the Post devoted far more column inches to the situation in Iraq. Not a bad choice.

The front page led off with features on both Iraqi entrepreneurs in the Kurdish north and tough living conditions for occupation forces. But far more interesting was the Post's decision to head up its "World News" section with an extremely flattering profile of Paul Bremer.

While its nice to see that the mainstream media aren't wedded to their inveterate critcism of the occupation, I have to wonder if this positive coverage of Bremer's efforts reflects his savvy courting of the media as opposed to his actual record on the ground. According to the Post,

Bremer has been in Iraq less than two weeks, but he has already changed the tone and character of the U.S. effort here.

That conclusion seems premature. Consider this: the focus of the WaPo profile is Bremer's trip to Umm Qasr to celebrate the unloading of 28,000 tons of rice donated by the United States to the people of Iraq. Given that importing massive amounts of food aid has been an American objective since the beginning of the war, Bremer's visit to Umm Qasr actually highlights the continuity of US efforts rather than Bremer's innovative approach.

In fact, OxBlog has made a consistent point of emphasizing the magnitude of American nutritional aid to occupied Afghanistan, which was the basis of our confidence that the US would do everything in its power to defy critcis' predictions of massive starvation in postwar Iraq. During the war, we devoted constant attention to the status of Umm Qasr and its readiness to receive aid shipments. While Bremer deserves credit for making sure things have worked out over the past couple of weeks, he has hardly changed the "character" of the occupation.

The WaPo is on more solid ground when it talks about Bremer's change of tone. Whereas "the term 'occupation' was taboo" while Jay Garner was in charge, Bremer has come straight out and said that

Occupation is an ugly word, not one Americans feel comfortable with, but it is a fact.

Absolutely. America now has its reputation on the line. The Security Council has backed off and decided to let us take responsibility for Iraq.

But to give Bremer sole credit for this change of tone is somewhat misleading. As if to mock his superiors' intense unilateralism, Jay Garner spent his tenure as governor of Iraq fretting that the people of Iraq and Europe would perceive the United States as imperalistic. You have to wonder if Garner really is a Republican.

In light of Garner's preemptive liberal guilt, it isn't all that surprising that American occupation policy became far too laissez faire. Predictably, this led to reporters to criticise the occupation effort while columnists (fairly) called for a more profound commitment to rebuilding Iraq. Moreover, I suspect that widespread emphasis on the chaos in Baghdad persuaded the Security Council to abandon its initial efforts to demand a more substantive role in the occupation. Better to let the US take responsibility for it, after all.

To those conspiracy buffs obsessed with the Straussian domination of American foreign policy, it must seem that the Bush administration wanted there to be just enough chaos in Iraq to ensure that everyone would demand a stronger American hand in Baghdad rather than an immediate withdrawal.

While no one in their right mind should believe that, it is important to recognize that the initial confusion in Iraq entirely defused potential criticism of the occupation as just another manifestation of this administration's supposedly mindless unilateralism. If Donald Rumsfeld actually considered promoting democracy in Iraq a priority, he would now be in a perfect position to pursue that objective with the full support of both the reading public and the journalists who inform it.

But regardless of what Rumsfeld thinks, Paul Bremer may now have the perfect chance to establish his reputation as a kinder, gentler, postmodern incarnation of Douglas MacArthur.

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# Posted 12:09 PM by Patrick Belton  

BIRTHDAY THOUGHTS: So it's really hard to think of a more perfect birthday than being able to spend it with my new bride and two of my closest friends in the world. So thank you, Rachel, David, Mel, very much.

Birthdays are egalitarian holidays, thus very low-stress. To celebrate, by contrast, a graduation or wedding, one needs to do something - even celebrating Christmas requires, perhaps somewhat technically, at least getting religion - but birthdays come to one and all, and in a wonderfully individuated manner, too. We're told they date, in shamanistic cultures, to fears that evil spirits presented greater dangers to people experiencing changes in their daily life, such as ageing by a year; by surrounding the person with laughter and joy, a person's family and friends would thus protect them from this evil. In less shamanistic and more medieval Western cultures, it was a perquisite of the aristocracy; hence birthday "crowns," in our more democratic age. Irish children (and others) receive "birthday bumps" on the floor while suspended upside down (Israelis get to do it seated, and right side up), Russians receive birthday pies, Argentines get their earlobes pulled (again, once for each year). Birthday cards are a Victorian invention, while the "happy birthday to you" song dates to two American sisters in 1893. The Scandinavians have a number of tender traditions, such as a Norwegian student's dancing in front of a class with a friend on his or her birthday, or a Dane being greeted by presents surrounding his or her bed; Swedes, by contrast, are more likely to get breakfast in bed; all three are wont to fly their national flag on birthdays.

None of this is to give my friends any ideas. I'm just happy to be able to share today with them. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:34 PM by David Adesnik  

HATE MAIL: I have written about controversial subjects such as homosexuality, Donald Rumsfeld, and professional wrestling. I have denounced my enemies and lavished praise on my friends. And yet, until now, I have not received hate mail. But then I chose to mock the virtues of the Macintosh. And so the vitriol began to pour forth.

Rather than respond to the charges levelled against me by Dr. BL, I shall simply reprint the accusations verbatim and let you, gentle reader, decide on their merits. The good doctor writes:

Mr. Adesnik,

I am outraged by your characterization of Macintosh computers as suitable merely for a "short term relationship." A mac given to me as a bar mitzvah present lasted seven years, well into my junior year of college. This longevity is scarcely seen among the shabby Windows-based machines.

Moreover, your statement that "it's the inside that matters most" implies that there's something empty about the processing power and interface of the mac. Instead of countering these puny charges, let me just say that
these allegations of inferior innards recall those of the phrenologists and racial purists in one of the darkest eras of modern history.

This brings me to an important point: mac usership has historically been relegated to small segments of society (at times as small as 3%), but this usership tends to occupy the highest positions in the worlds of education,
media, and the arts. Yes, macs are the Jews of the computer hardware world. Broadsides against macs may be considered to be anti-Semitic "in effect, if not intent."

Of all of the questionable actions committed on your blog-- including the callous derision of Col. Richard Head and taking bets on the start of the Iraqi war-- this is most offensive posting to date.

Please note that the author of this letter is a Zionist communist homosexual.

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# Posted 8:19 PM by David Adesnik  

CONFUSION: The Economist [subscription required] doesn't pulls it punches. It harshly condemns the USA for doing nothing to end the chaos in Iraq.

Even worse, The Economist thinks Paul Bremer's zeal for de-Ba'athification is distracting him from issues that really matter. In the meantime, Shi'ite clerics are doing a surprisingly effective job of restoring basic services, thus undermining American credibility and positioning themselves as kingmakers.

As is often the case, it's hard to know what to make of The Economist's coverage, since its news coverage is often argumentative in style. As I've pointed out before, the coverage of postwar Iraq in other publications is often contradictory.

On the one hand, I tend to have considerable faith in The Economist. On the other hand, its stories on the occupation don't even seem to acknowledge that American officials have done anything other than while away their time in Saddam's abandoned palaces. For example, its article on the overplayed the extent of both the thefts and of US responsibility.

Well, I guess I won't really have any answers for you until I make my way over to Iraq. Oh well.


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# Posted 6:05 PM by David Adesnik  

STORE BLOGGING: Thanks to Rachel & Patrick, I started my day with one of the best breakfasts I've had in years. It then took us another five-and-a half hours to digest and make our way off of the couch and out of the house.

So here I am in the Apple Computer store, blogging on a lovely 17" screen. Whatever your stance on the great Mac-Windows debate, you have to admit that Mac's designs are aesthetically brilliant. Even the store itself is designed in a way that makes you feel comfortable.

But I guess you have to approach computers the way you approach signicant others: However nice they are on the outside, it's the inside that matters most. On the other hand, if you're only interested in a short-term relationship, go for the Mac. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:58 AM by Daniel  

BILL ON BILL. If you have the time, be sure to check out this video of President Clinton's appearance at a University of Arkansas, Little Rock class about the Clinton Presidency. He speaks pretty cadidly about his life in public office dating back to the Gubernatorial days, telling some great stories along the way. It is either thoroughly enjoyable or extremely infuriating to watch him defend himself and his record, depending on your opinion of the man. Enjoy! (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:34 AM by David Adesnik  

JOINT BLOGGING: No, this post has nothing to do with the new medical marijuana law in Maryland. It's about David & Patrick's reunion right here in Arlington, VA.

Of course, it isn't just ours. It's been nine months since I have seen the lovely Rachel, whom I last saw as a blushing bride in August. And it's been even longer since I've seen 1st Lt. MT, who is back stateside after a tour of duty in Iraq.

Last year at Oxford, we were an inseparable cabal, defending our table in McDonalds from all comers. Mainly, we had to fight off the overeager guy in charge of cleaning the floor, who decided after watching us for hours on end that we would have to get up so that he could clean our turf.

After a barbecue dinner at Red, Hot and Blue, the four of us settled in for a viewing of Eminem's critically-acclaimed performance in 8 Mile. I'd actually started watching the movie on the plane back from England, but didn't have time to finish it before we landed at Newark Int'l.

I was impressed, especially by Eminem, perhaps because of my low expectations. Everyone else admitted that they'd wanted to see 8 Mile but had been embarrassed to rent it alone. In hindsight, the embarrassment may have been justified. On a five-star scale, 8 Mile got the following:

Rachel: 1 Star.
Patrick: 2.5 Stars.
MT: 1 Star.
David: 3 Stars.

So why'd I like it so much? Because it avoided the sermonizing from a movie whose apparent purpose is to make Eminem look like an nice guy and a decent human being. The essential message is that words are better than fists.

But it says that by telling a story rather than by just saying it outright. To back it up, Eminem plays against type by not being a total a**hole. He was actually quite persuasive as a humble, reflective, aspiring rapper.

The movie also does an impressive job of persuading its audience that a white guy who lives with his mom in a trailer could win the respect of an inner-city audience. Frankly, I have no idea what anyone black thinks of Eminem. But within the fictional Detroit of 8 Mile, Eminem's success feels authentic.

The main shortcoming of the film is that is becomes an implicit glorification of Eminem. Not knowing anything about Mr. Mathers, you might think he is really as nice of a guy as his alter ego "B. Rabbit." Rabbit even makes a conspicuous effort to befriend a gay co-worker, as if to repent for his previous Santorum-like remarks.

If you have a night at home with not much else on the agenda, give 8 Mile a try. Peace out, yo!




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# Posted 1:37 AM by David Adesnik  

LOOKING FOR A FEW GOOD MEN: In the Washington Monthly, Phil Carter (creator of the magnificent Intel Dump) launches a blistering attack on the naivete of Donald Rumsfeld's insistence that we can rebuild Iraq without committing American soldiers for the long-haul.

What makes Carter's argument so compelling is that he grounds it in hard-nosed military terms while leaving aside any ideological considerations. Looks like Phil hasn't forgotten what he learned in his Officer Basic Course. We all owe him one for that.

(Link via Josh Marshall) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:09 AM by David Adesnik  

THE POLLS: Kos notes that Santorum's negative numbers are rising because of his homophobic remarks, even though his positives have held their ground.

Meanwhile, Bush's wartime popularity is slowly giving way to a less exceptional state of affiars. Kos things the President's ratings will continue to fall because of the economic downturn. But the real question is, will they fall below where they were before the Iraq debate? I doubt it. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:51 AM by David Adesnik  

IN MEMORIAM: Dr. BL (Congratulations!) has made me aware of the sad fact that Elizabeth Hulette, aka the WWF's "Miss Elizabeth" passed away just a few weeks ago.

We wish her family the best in this hard time and thank Ms. Hulette for the humor and grace she brought to squared circle. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:44 AM by David Adesnik  

IGNORANCE AND POWER: Kevin Drum provides a different answer to the question I asked yesterday:

"But if Americans are so ignorant, how did the United States manage to become the wealthiest and most powerful nation on Earth?"

Come on. It's because we're bigger, that's all. If Switzerland had 290 million people and we had 7 million, the roles would be exactly reversed and they would be the wealthiest and most powerful nation on Earth.

I happen to agree with you that overall America has done pretty well, but I really don't think you can attribute our global success to our unique culture.

My question for Kevin is this: How exactly did we get so big, 290 million and all? It seems that talented immigrants from all across the world have chosen America as their home.

Whereas being Japanese or French or Saudi Arabian is about blood, being American is about believing in certain principles. That is the case precisely because we are a land of immigrants, founded by immigrants.

This aggressively pluralist democratic tradition has been responsible for such foreign policy innovations as the Fourteen Points, the League of Nations, the United Nations, and the Marshall Plan. While giving due credit to British influences on American thought, it is pretty fair to say that no other nation could have come up with such ideas.

Taking a longer view of history, one recognzies that America is the only dominant power ever to befriend the other leading states of its day rather than inciting them to form an anti-hegemonic coalition. Why? Because democratic nations recognize that the United States is not a threat to their existence.

For a more academic approach to the question of American exceptionalism, I strongly recommend Aaron Friedberg's "In the Shadow of the Garrison State", which shows how America's unique anti-statist culture preventing the Truman and Eisenhower administrating from militarizing American society in the opening decade of the Cold War. [See my review on the Amazon page for Friedberg's book.]

In some ways, the exceptionalist argument is offensive because it implies that America is morally superior to other nations. But that is not a position I want to defend. I fully recognize that United States foreign policy has often been the agent of wanton and immoral destruction. In contrast, the foreign policies of Denmark or Belgium have not (at least not recently).

What I am arguing is that American culture is responsible for a number of specific innovations that have amplified American power while benefitting other democratic states as well. While none of this would have been possible if not for favorable geographic conditions, it also would not have been possible without America's singular political culture.

Forgive me for waxing a bit patriotic. But if you can look past that, I think you just might be persuaded. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:21 PM by Patrick Belton  

A PRINCELY AGE: A man in Rajasthan, it emerges, has been collecting a pension for 65 years. This is not, it turns out, an instance of fraud in the princely state - instead, he's somewhere between 125 (bank records) and 132 (his own recollection) years old.

If he's lonely, there's a 125-year old gal in Mali he might be interested in meeting..... (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 4:44 PM by David Adesnik  

ANTI-CORPORATE CONSERVATISM: Bill Safire has an interesting column up in which he attacks big media executives for their under-the-table efforts to do away with the FCC's anti-monopoly regulations.

The specific issue Safire addresses is a proposal to the lift the ban that prevents corporations from owning both newspapers and television channels in the same local market. But more imporant than the details of this rather complicated issues is the logic Safire relies on to reinforce his position. He writes that

The overwhelming amount of news and entertainment comes via broadcast and print. Putting those outlets in fewer and bigger hands profits the few at the cost of the many.

Does that sound un-conservative? Not to me. The concentration of power — political, corporate, media, cultural — should be anathema to conservatives. The diffusion of power through local control, thereby encouraging individual participation, is the essence of federalism and the greatest expression of democracy.

Exactly. As a centrist, that is the kind of conservatism that I like because it is pro-market rather than pro-business. While I haven't followed the issue as closely as I should have, I constantly get the sense that this Administration sees the government as an ally of specific firms rather than the protector of the marketplace.

As I see it, this approach runs counter to the small government philsophy that conservatives are so fond of promoting. From where I stand, the most effective and fair way to limit the size of government is to ensure that citizens are equals in the marketplace. In contrast, if the government take sides, the struggle for political influence will turn the capital into a corporate battleground.

While I am not 100% behind Safire's approach to the FCC, I do hope that his brand of conservatism is one that Republicans will began to embrace more openly.





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# Posted 4:27 PM by David Adesnik  

IT'S OURS. NOW WHAT? The Security Council has voted 14-0 to lift UN sanctions on Iraq and recognize the role of the US and the UK as occupation authorities.

Critics of the UN should note that the French, Germans and Russians were surprisingly supportive of the new resolution despite the fact that the US showed very little interest in compromise. Some might argue that this newfound spirit of cooperation has vindicated the Administration's tough approach to negotations. After all, there is no question that the French, Germans and Russians don't have the stomach for another knock-down drag-out fight.

But American belligerence is only half the story. Its critics on the Council seem to recognize that the content of its new resolution pales in importance compared to the presence on the ground of American and British combat forces. Why fight for favorable language if it won't make a difference in the end?

The better strategy is to give the US and UK the control they want, thus forcing them to accept responsibility if things go wrong. According to a letter to the editor written by a former UN official,

Washington's condescending effort to involve the United Nations in postwar reconstruction is, at one level, little more than an urgent and desperate attempt to resurrect a scapegoat. At first, the Bush administration did not want the United Nations to become involved at all.

While the author is probably wrong about American motivations, I think his fear of the UN becoming a scapegoat provides a valid insight into the organizations' mindset at this particular moment.

So, now that Iraq is "Our New Baby", what are we going to do with it?

Last week, the NYT reported that initial plans to create a transitional government in the coming weeks had been cancelled because a lack of confidence in existing opposition groups. But today, the Times reports that Jerry Bremer intends to call together a National Assembly sometime in July. However, Bremer hasn't made clear whether this Assembly will have the powers of a "government" or just those of an "authority."

Meanwhile in the Balkans, Paul Wolfiwitz has decided after a visit to Bosnia that premature elections are a recipe for disaster, since they tend to result in the legitimization of those extremists who rush to organize their supporters in the immediate aftermath of a conflict. What does Jerry Bremer think of that?

I don't know, but I can tell you that I agree with Wolfowitz. While I haven't had to time to learn as much I want about the Bosnia and Kosovo operations, it seems fairly self-evident that Saddam's brutality destoryed all moderate opposition to the regime. Thus, it will take some time for mainstream Iraqis to establish themselves in the political arena. With any luck, today's victory at the UN will persuade the Administration that the world is giving it a fair chance to show that America can, in fact, promote democracy abroad.

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# Posted 2:15 PM by Patrick Belton  

GENERAL TOMMY FRANKS TO RETIRE: CNN has the story. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:29 PM by Patrick Belton  

GOOD SPY, BAD SPY: The partially-unclassified, and partially not, Studies in Intelligence journal, run out of Langley's Center for the Study of Intelligence, has a retrospective out on the life of former DCI Richard Helms. I have great respect for DCI Helms, as a consumate intelligence professional who accorded great respect to the profession and who was content to labor in quiet. I have only two reservations about his career: first, that he may have permitted excessive leeway to controversial counterintelligence director James Angleton; and second, that he acceded to President Nixon's request to supply Agency equipment to the President's "Plumbers," on the rationalization that had he declined, the president would only have replaced him with someone less ethically fastidious. (By contrast, I believe quite strongly that the principal duty of an officer of the executive branch is to the Constitution, and in DCI Helms's position would have chosen to resign my commission and office.)

I note Helms also as a way of recognizing his strong belief in the profession of intelligence, and consequently his strong conviction that the profession's analysis not be politicized. This is an inherently difficult proposition: intelligence is inevitably supplied into policy branches which are preoccupied with pushing visions and agendas, where dispassionate weighing of the latest intelligence briefs is in a realistic world hardly the norm. But the intelligence community suffers enormous losses to its credibility and independence when it moves away from its professional role. Currently, there's great unhappiness in the community of analysts that it is being told by appointees what it "should" come up with (see last week's NYT Week in Review piece by William Broad, abstracted here). It's difficult to assess from a vantage point outside the community how grounded these protests are, but they are troubling. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:52 PM by Patrick Belton  

SIX BODIES UNEARTHED yesterday near the tourist attraction of Stonehenge. Authorities are investigating. Precise cause of death is unknown, but homicide sadly has not yet been ruled out. Tragically including two young children as well as four adults from the area, the remains of the six were discovered in a dangerous neighborhood near where last year another likely homicide victim had been found by investigators. The last victim has since that time been identified by authorities as an archer; all seven, yes, date from circa 2300 B.C.E. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:29 AM by Patrick Belton  

THIS JUDGE MUST BE REMOVED FROM THE BENCH AT ONCE: In a sad, disgraceful incident of misconduct debasing the bench, Tarrytown, New York Justice William Crosbie repeatedly insulted a Lebanese-American woman who was contesting a minor parking ticket before him, and continually accused her of being a terrorist until at length the woman fainted from shock on the courtroom floor. As soon as Ms. Anissa Khoder's case came up to the docket, Crosbie - a disgrace who must promptly be removed from office - began to rail into Ms. Khoder, accusing her on the basis of her last name of being a terrorist, and asking why she was contesting a parking ticket if she had money to support terrorism. Justice Crosbie does not dispute the facts in the incident. Particularly sad is that afterward Ms. Khoder felt compelled to state to the press, "there's no Arabic music in my home. I have a 6-foot Christmas tree each year." This cannot stand: if we become a nation which insults or judges our citizens on the basis of their last names or ethnicity, we will have lost our soul as a principled country. We can never, ever permit that to happen, and to that end must protest incidents such as these firmly and without fail. Justice Crosbie, not Ms. Khoder, is the un-American party here; and this is a point which must be made clearly, and as often as needed.

I am writing in strong protest to the New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct, and recommend you do, too. The commission's address is 801 Second Avenue, New York, New York 10017. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:56 AM by Patrick Belton  

BOMB AT YALE UPDATE: CNN is reporting that police sources close to the investigation are saying the device was likely a pipe bomb. Investigators are asking anyone who was near the explosion to please contact police. FBI investigating agents are saying that there have been no claims of responsibility. Linda Lorimer is saying that Yale had received no threats against it, well, ever....

UPDATE n+1: FBI agents have a sketch of a man they are seeking to identify in connection with the bombing yesterday. Initial guesses are that, given the choice of a time, the bomber may have sought to make a statement without hurting anyone. Some 300 rare books in the room underneath the explosion received water damage from water dripping through the floor from fire extinguishers - however, some deft timely freeze-drying has saved all of the books. (Thanks, Glenn!) And our friends over at Kitchen Cabinet got interviewed by the FBI during the last exams of their educational career (I was going to say here's hoping you get extra points for that, but this is Yale, after all - one assumes they can live with an H instead of an H+ if need be.... More importantly, though, a big mazal tov to the honorable Cabinet Members on their impending graduation!)

UPDATE f(n)^2+c (describing a Mandelbrot set - there's no reason updates have to be ordered linearly): The FBI has identified the man in the sketch, whoever he is.... (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:03 AM by Patrick Belton  

URBAN STUDIES WATCH: CS Monitor deservingly puffs a developer in Maine, named John Chamberlain, who is constructing a new high-density subdivision with the idea of making it a pedestrian, village-style neighorhood built on a human rather than automotive scale, with the appropriate copious helpings of public spaces, parks, and tree-lined streets, with homes situated close to the streets, and with streetscapes which mix rowhouses, shops, and apartments.

The article raises an important point, argued often by those students of cities who argue for designing American communities more on the aesthetic, pleasant, pedestrian and public lines of Greenwich Village or the New England townships, while less on the sprawlish dimensions of Los Angeles, Detroit, or Northern Virginia. And in turn this point is often toted under the banner of New Urbanism, a school of urban development which has been led by people like Vincent Scully, James Kunstler, Peter Calthorpe, and Peter Katz. (Here's a bibliography, and a charter drawn up by one group of adherents. There's also a faq drawn up by another New Urbanist organization.) Generally speaking, New Urbanism seeks to increase residential density, mix up styles and types of buildings to a greater extent, and more broadly to create a greater number of more pedestrian, public spaces. A remarkably creative friend of ours from Yale, Adam Gordon, has launched a magazine called The Next American City dedicated to fleshing out and expanding on these, and related, ideas; his magazine is an extraordinarily exciting project, and I'm honored to be working on a piece for their next issue. One city which has been very influenced by this school of thought is Montclair, New Jersey - I remember returning back from England to a friend's back yard, then walking through the city's park over to its main street, and thinking that the pleasantness and human scale of the experience was making me revise my admittedly unwarrented low esteem for American suburbs.

That said, I'm admittedly much less expert on urban studies than many of my friends, and I'd be very interested to hear what they have to say on the subject. Rachel, Joey, Adam, Shayna?..... (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:40 AM by Patrick Belton  

LET'S PLAY...."BBC OR THE ONION?"!!!!! Now for today's mystery headlines.....

1. "Men 'happy with beer bellies'" (Accompanying photo depicts a decapitated, besuited midriff, fittingly encaptioned "Men appear happy to have big bellies.")

2. "Buddhists 'really are happier'" (this article's happy photo reveals a beaming bespectacled monk).

3. "Sticky moments in 21 years of Superglue" Quote: "Perhaps the most embarrassing visit to a casualty room caused by Superglue was the woman who needed her hands removed from her partner's private parts." (Okay, sorry, I know this is a family blog.....) Interestingly, Professor Kreible's invention was originally known as "liquid locknut" (hold your jokes) and he as "the man who beat vibration." It was much easier being a media celeb in the 50's.

4. "How atom spy slipped security net" All right, this isn't technically speaking a funny headline, but it nevertheless includes the wonderful tidbit that MI5, suspecting Fuchs's nasty tendency to pass secrets to the Soviets, decided to therefore....transfer him to the Manhattan Project, since "he is rather safer in America - it would not be easy for Fuchs to make contacts with communists there" - !

5. "Department of Homeland Security Deputizes Real Mean Dog" Okay, I admit, this one actually did come from The Onion....

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 3:10 AM by David Adesnik  

JAYSON BLAIR SPEAKS: And you won't believe what he has to say. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 2:52 AM by David Adesnik  

A CARDINAL ERROR: Kevin Drum marvels at the ignorance of the American people, specifically their belief that 24% of the US budget is spent on foreign aid. As Kevin writes,

The ignorance of Americans about the real world never ceases to amaze me. Ask them what percent of the population is black and they guess it's about a third. Ask them how much they pay in income taxes, and they figure about 50%. Ask them how big the foreign aid budget is and they're off by a factor of 24.

Is it any wonder our political decisions are so screwed up?

While I'm pretty sure Kevin meant that as a rhetorical question, I'm going to answer it anyway. Why? Because condescending attitudes toward the American public have been responsible for some of the most misguided policies in recent history, most notably the Vietnam war.

But first, I have to acknowledge that Kevin's is right when he says that the American public lacks basic information about public affairs. Comparative studies have shown that Europeans consistently score better on factual tests. In fact, polling firms now shy away from 'pop quiz' style questions since they tend to embarrass respondents. [This information comes straight from academic journal articles on public opinion. When I'm back in England with all my old notebooks, I'll dig out the footnotes for y'all.]

But if Americans are so ignorant, how did the United States manage to become the wealthiest and most powerful nation on Earth? The Realist (in the polisci sense of the word) answer to this apparent contradiction is that American power is an accidental byproduct of America's favorable geography and boundless natural resources. But even the Realists admit that this explanation does not account all that well for the United States' success after 1945.

In the opening decades of the Cold War, leading Realists argued that democratic heads of state must ignore public opinion, lest it prevent them from defending the balance of power. In practice, this became a prescription for constant deception, as practiced by Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon. Ironically, it was such deception that was responsible for the tragic war in Vietnam, since it was only Johnson's lies that persuaded the American public to stand and fight. [Footnote forthcoming.]

Because of the war in Vietnam, liberals and progressives came to believe that foreign policy must be made democratically. However, in response to the Reagan Revolution, liberals and progressives began to wonder whether the public was actually fit to steer the ship of state.

After all, how could a President who lied so early and so often maintain such constant public support? One theory is that Reagan was simply much more proficient than his predecessors at the art of deception. Yet at the same time it is hard to ignore the genuine passion he inspired. Thus, elitist condescension increasingly became a staple of liberal approaches to foreign affairs.

Liberal reactions to George W. Bush are almost identical to their reactions to Ronald Reagan. In short, they aren't sure whether to blame the President for willful deception or the public for willful ignorance. Of course, Republicans tend to ask the same sort of questions when confronted with a president such a Clinton, who can't even give a straight answer about the meaning of the word 'is' but still had a 60% approval rating.

Thus, one ought to ask how it is that politicians with such deficient records of public honesty manage to build support for their foreign initiatives.

Answering such a question becomes possible if one shifts one's focus from ignorance to values. While the American public may not have much factual knowledge about the world, they have an impressively stable set of preferences and values about how the United States should relate to the world around it.

One might ask how it is possible to have a reasonable opinion if one lacks basic information about world affairs. The best answer I can give is "culture". Americans simply pass on their values from one generation to the next. (Where did such values originally come from? England, mostly. But that's a whole 'nother story...)

The sum total of American values with regard to foreign affairs approximates a combination of the four traditions described by Walter Russell Mead: the Hamiltonian, the Jeffersonian, the Jacksonian and the Wilsonian. Americans tend to favor free trade, democracy promotion, and international law but accept that force is often a critical component of success abroad.

Unsurprisingly, that sort of vague description can't really predict what sort of policy the American public will support in any given situation. But it does explain why the American public never seems to be as far left as the Democrats or as far right as the Republicans. For example, the American public consistently thought that Jimmy Carter spent too little on defense but that Ronald Reagan spent too much.

More recently, the pragmatism of the American public explains why the Rumsfeld/Cheney argument for avoiding the United Nations fell on deaf ears, yet the American public supported the President's decision for war once he made an extended effort to win over the Security Council.

Thus, far from being "screwed up", American foreign policy tends to chart a rather moderate-but-inconsistent course that frustrates ideologues on both sides of the partisan divide (as well as ideologues of the center, such as myself). While it isn't hard to compile lists of American failures abroad, the United States' record has been, more or less, one of considerable success.

As I see it, this success reflects the American electorate's principled pragmatism. Rather than favoring an ideological line, the American public throws its support behind whichever party or politician comes up with the policies best-suited to a given situation.

The greatest limitation of this sort of pragmatism is that it applies only to the most pressing issues of the day. Given the United States' tremendous influence, its officials make countless decisions that affect countless lives abroad but get negligible coverage at home. That is why I plan to dedicate my professional life to foreign affairs. I believe I can make a difference.

But even if all of the starry-eyed idealists such as myself ceased to exist, America would get along just fine. Its people know how to protect themselves while also doing their part to make the world a better place. As such, even the brightest of the pundits should check their condescension at the door.

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# Posted 1:37 AM by David Adesnik  

'DOUBLE D' ON A ROLL: Daniel Drezner is just putting up one solid post after another. In the past few days, he has taken on Donna Brazile, the myth of Al Qaeda's resurgence, the Administration's apathetic approach to postwar Iraq and -- most important of all -- Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which he refers to as a "pathbreaking work of art."

I guess I can forgive Dan for his Buffy obsession. After all, I just spent the night with some high school friends watching a tape of Wrestlemani VII, where Hulk Hogan takes on Iraqi sympathizer Sgt. Slaughter. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:58 PM by Patrick Belton  

ENOUGH HISTORY ALREADY! WE WANT SOME FARCE!!!! And thankfully The Onion finally does what was predestined and takes on Jayson Blair in an infographic of his best plagiarisms. (via Andrew). Picks of the litter: "Lead paragraph in story about Beltway sniper lifted wholesale from back of Cheetos bag," and "Wrote fabricated story about Iraq possessing massive stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction." Touché (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:32 PM by Patrick Belton  

EXPLOSION AT YALE: Several moments ago, it was reported that there was an explosion at the Yale Law School, which according to the FBI's terrorism task force and the city of New Haven took place in the mail room.

We nervously pray that all of our friends there are all right.

UPDATE 1: A good friend of mine writes in to say that the word on the street (literally) is that thankfully so far it seems that no students were hurt. Smoke is rising from the building; and someone saw a wall to the alumni reading room collapse, and a few classroom doors were reportedly blown out - but buildings can be rebuilt....

UPDATE 2: Reports continue to be that no students or faculty were hurt in the blast. Thankfully, the building seems to have been mostly empty because of exams period. The AP, CNN, and New Haven's NBC affiliate are continually updating their stories, but the New Haven Register is at the moment doing the best job at putting breaking details up. One student on the ground floor by the main staircase reported seeing a "fireball" blow down the stairs.

UPDATE 3: A Yale spokeswoman is confirming that no students were injured. She also is reporting that the blast took place in a classroom, not in the mail room as previously reported. Some reports are indicating that part of one floor may have collapsed. There will be a press conference at 6:30 to announce what is known so far. Channel 30 is broadcasting it live here.

UPDATE 4: Linda Lorrimer and Mayor DeStefano, speaking at the press conference, said that although a number of students and day-care children were in the building at the time of the explosion, no one indeed was hurt, and Yale so far expects the explosion was indeed caused by a bomb. According to the press conference, damage occured in two classrooms; one wall fell in, and it is asserted that the damage was "not structural, it was minimal," with water damage, but no windows blown out. (Glenn heard that one of the classrooms was number 127, but I think he heard the news coverage talking about 127 Wall Street.) The law school will be moved temporarily to another part of campus. There will be a second press conference at 10:00 pm.

UPDATE 5: Fisking time. Nearly every story on this subject has included between one and all of the following gems: that (1) President Bush was in New London, which is in Connecticut. Yale is in New Haven, which is also in...Connecticut. Suspicious? Actually, no. (2) President Bush attended Yale....but not the law school. (President Clinton, on the other hand, did attend the law school....but is no longer president). (3) Barbara Bush is a junior in Yale College....which, once again, is not the law school. (4) Yale is a top university with over 5,000 students (true: it has 10,000 students. 10,000 is indeed more than 5,000.) (5) The Unabomber seriously injured Yale professor David J. Gelernter in June 1993, but once again, not in the law school. The networks' swift detective work pans out at the fact that the Unabomber is...in jail, since 1998. Sorry folks, keep trying.

UPDATE 6: Lilly Malcolm from Kitchen Cabinet adds this wonderful point to the list o' fiskings:

Our early reaction to the bombing is that the news coverage, and the mayor's comments, seemed very uninformed. The NBC TV station here was showing a shot of the city skyline, with "smoke" supposedly rising out of the law school -- but anybody who knows anything about New Haven would know that wasn't even the law school building. They were showing a shot of steam coming off of the power plant across the street!

She also says that the wall that bit the dust in the alumni lounge was the one with Bork's portrait. Sigh. Who was it who said that conservatives always get the short end at the Yale Law School?

AND FINAL ROUND-UP: The AP's final update of the story for the night is reporting that the fallen wall was in actuality simply a partition which fell over, and the "fallen floor" consisted merely of fallen ceiling tiles, although on the other hand a Yale Office of Public Affairs statement referred to the damage as "considerable" to the classroom and the alumni lounge. (And CNN for its part finally got right the number of students who attend Yale.) Connecticut police are announcing that it will take two or three days to go through the building for evidence, during which time it will be closed. Police are currently suspecting a pipe bomb, and Joint Terrorism Task Force staffers are saying on background that they haven't seen any likely indicators to suggest international terrorism.

But most importantly, everyone's okay - and we're all really, really grateful for that.

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# Posted 2:33 PM by David Adesnik  

A RABBI IN OUR MIDST: Yesterday, I had the extraordinary privilege of attending my mother's graduation from rabbinical school. Her ordination follows a lifetime of commitment to Jewish learning and community service.

What made my mother's ordination so exceptional is that she has spent the past two decades teaching rabbinical students at the Jewish Theological Seminary, where she is a professor of Talmud, the foundational text of both ancient and modern Jewish law.

In fact, my mother was the first woman ever to receive a doctorate in Talmud. (I was in the audience when she got her Ph.D., even if I was too young to remember it all that well.) As a scholar, she has published groundbreaking work on the status of women in ancient Jewish law.

Why, then, did such a respected teacher decide once again to become a student? Because the study of Jewish law finds its highest expression in the living of a Jewish life. In addition to working within the ivory tower, my mother wanted to play an active role in helping others live Jewishly.

Thus, as a student, my mother focused her studies on the pastoral side of rabbinical life. While studying, my mother has served as the Jewish chaplain at a local hospital and also conducted healing services for a synagogue community whose members once lived in the shadow of the Twin Towers.

While I don't often write about my personal life on this site, yesterday was an event of such magnitude that it left me with little choice. Mom, you make us all so proud. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:58 PM by David Adesnik  

CORRECTION: On Monday, I mistakenly described The Cash Nexus as Niall Ferguson's most recent book. In fact, that distinction belongs to Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons of Global Power.

Thanks to RS and PG for pointing this out. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:10 AM by Patrick Belton  

MY QUICK BEST OF THE WEB for today, before I head off to hide in a library for the foreseeable future and write (¡híjole!) a dissertation, my first Dearborn article, and an article on Hizbullah operations in Latin America. (As someone in a similar situation once remarked to a family member: The glow-worm shows the matin to be near, and 'gins to pale his uneffectual fire: adieu, adieu, Hamlet: remember me)

So now for the round-up... The Economist makes a point I've been talking about for a long time: namely, that there are at least several promising signs from Central Asia that democracy tends to moderate Islamist parties, whereas state oppression drives pious moderates into the hands of radicals. To wit - Tajikistan, after an extraordinarily bloody civil war in the mid-1990's, now boasts one of the world's most moderate Islamic parties in the guise of its Islamic Revival Party, the only legal religious party in Central Asia. However, in Uzbekistan on the other hand, where all religious activity outside of state control is harshly repressed, lifelong moderates have told me that Tashkent's harsh religious policies against non-state-sanctioned Islam have made them sympathetic toward the radicalized Hizb-ut-Tahrir (a group which it is not in our interests to see gain any influence, anywhere). The prospect that participation in democratic mechanisms may promote moderation in Islamic parties may well give us reasonably strong grounds for hope; on the other hand, one cautionary note is that in the Tajik example, the IRP's most hard-core fringe split from that party (a la the Provo, and later the Real, IRA) when it remade itself as a democratic electoral party, a pattern which is likely to occur in many instances where democratic participation has been preceded by an armed Islamist insurgency.

In this morning's Journal, our friend Tim Bergreen (for whom we occasionally happily provide OxBlog's little-known web debugging services) co-authors a piece with Donna Brazil in which he recapitulates his core arguments that the Democrats should not cede the issue of national security to the Republican Party, and must take action to that end (thanks to Greg Wythe for e-mailing us with the link).

On a lighter note, the Standard has pieces this week on both Buffy and Matrix (in which Cornel West takes time out from his bruising academic schedule to cameo).

In Mexico, Reforma has several pieces (in Spanish; like German, it is a required language for reading OxBlog) seeking to put a new legal migration accord on the binational agenda, now that the administration is making signs it will focus more on the hemisphere post-Iraq. (We, of course, want it to focus both on the hemisphere and Iraq). Moves to shift migratory flows into legal status are in both nations' political and security interests, and are clearly in the humanitarian interests of all. Much more effective counterterror surveillance of the border may be introduced by legalizing and better controlling this inescapable migratory flow which absolutely no border control mechanism has ever succeeded in stemming. (Although Operation Hold the Line led to a massive increase in the numbers of injuries and fatalities suffered by migrants, all demographers agree that it did not result in any dimunition in the number of Mexican nationals entering the United States annually without documentation - only augmenting the suffering they would undergo in doing so.) By introducing "smarter," electronically unfalsifiable visas which clear long before the point of border control the most frequent, trusted border crossers and legalized economic migrants, the United States will free up more time at the border to check more intrusively and thoroughly the automobiles, trucks, and persons of less trusted crossers for narcotics or implements of terror. This is to say nothing of the humanitarian good involved in extending legal cover to an enormous swath of U.S. residents which currently lacks most of the protection of laws and state. (Although the Court has held that the Bill of Rights and due process guarantees, for instance, apply equally to all persons on U.S. territory irrespective of whether they are U.S. nationals, employers of undocumented laborers often cruelly use their undocumented status against them to force on them unsafe and brutally unfair working conditions. Down this path lies the example of Rome before the Social Wars, with its class of non-citizen laborers; that is not our way.) But steps which can be taken fairly easily to extend the cover of the laws to a population which has been fairly stable over time irrespective of our efforts to diminish it both serve a human good and permit us to improve our security at the same time.

Finally, CNN is reporting that Christine Todd Whitman plans to resign as EPA administrator (presumably to follow her good friend Ari into the sunset). And now it is my turn to fly off as well - the owl of Minerva does after all take flight at dawn.... Remember me.

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# Posted 8:30 AM by Patrick Belton  

PLAYING POKER: Leave it to David and Josh to point out which cards we're collecting in Iraq. Priorities & Frivolities is thinking strategically - i.e., in terms of poker hands. Good work.

(Incidentally, P&F author Robert Tagorda shares my fondness for our national sport and the, ahem, Brooklyn Dodgers. On the other hand, despite spending a year in Oxford, he's nonetheless tumbling inexorably toward our esteemed sister vocational school in Cambridge, Mass. Oh well. I'm sure they can use his poker skills.) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:11 PM by Patrick Belton  

OUCH! Ha'aretz is reporting that Abu Mazen is getting 4 percent support in the most recent polls among Palestinians in the territories. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 3:02 PM by Patrick Belton  

BIRTHDAYS AND THOSE HOT SUMMER NIGHTS: So yesterday was big D's birthday. Mine's coming up next Sunday. Our good friend Mel, currently making all of us proud serving in the 101st, had hers over the weekend. Given this unusual concentration of birthdays within one week (combined with Rachel's last month), I know what you're thinking: yes, there will obviously be an enormous OxBlog birthday bash in D.C. this weekend for all three of us...but more importantly, what the heck got into all of our parents in late August of our respective birthyears?

You don't have to answer that. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 2:39 PM by Patrick Belton  

A CALL OUT FOR HAWKS IN THE PARTY OF TRUMAN, ACHESON, AND JFK.... Several bloggers (including Daniel Drezner and Josh Marshall) are linking to Democrats for National Security, an organization of hawkish Democrats recently founded by Timothy Bergreen, a former State Department official who served during the Clinton administration. First for the good news: people of both partisan persuasions will hopefully recognize the United States is best served when neither political party enjoys a monopoly on supporting well-funded military and intelligence services, or espousing a strong U.S. political engagement with the rest of the world on issues such as the promotion of democracy or freer trade. When both parties are equally trusted by the public on matters of foreign policy, then it is more likely for the party out of government to act in the role of a responsible opposition - enjoying more political capital to, say, criticize U.S. security alignments with authoritarian governments, promote greater U.S. engagement in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, or call for a international economic policy more honestly committed to the pursuit of freer trade. (This to say nothing of, for instance, criticizing the present administration's handling of Iraq from the position of a commitment to democracy promotion in the Gulf and Arab world, rather from a less noble position of hopes the U.S. involvement will fail, tarnishing the current administration in the forthcoming election.) All of these are useful additions to a policy conversation which could be made by a responsible opposition parties with trustworthy credentials on letting politics stop at the water's edge.

Now for the bad side: in spite of sharing a common acronym with the internet's Domain Name System, the Democrats for National Security's website suffers from exceptionally bad web design, most notably spacing problems which make it almost unreadable. Oh well. One guesses the Dems have got to start somewhere.

UPDATE: Tim Bergreen writes in helpfully to say that only iMacs seem to be having problems with his template - thanks! Mac users should read it anyway, while all the while savoring carefully all the feelings of moral superiority that come from using a better-designed machine.

UPDATE 2: Our readers are the greatest! MM just wrote in with detailed instructions on how to fix the DNS's website, which we passed on to Tim. Thanks! So that's our contribution - now we hope OxBlog will be invited to the Democrats for National Security's parties!
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# Posted 1:28 PM by David Adesnik  

IGNORANCE OR HYPOCRISY? Thomas Carothers upbraids the Administration for preaching democracy and practicing realpolitik. While the Administration's actions are both stupid and counterproductive, they seem to reflect an ignorance of how to promote democracy rather than a hypocritical effort to deceive the public. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:14 PM by David Adesnik  

BBC BEFUDDLED? Instapundit has the latest on BBC accusations that the Pentagon staged the Jessica Lynch rescue.

Glenn argues that the BBC has backed away from its story, but I think it would be more fair to say that the Beeb is trying to hold the line by avoiding questions about the reliability of its sources. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:49 PM by David Adesnik  

BIRTHDAY ROUND-UP: I admit it. I said I would post before going out to celebrate last night, but I didn't. Why? Because the celebration began at lunchtime, of course. Nothing intoxicating, mind you. It was a family affair, but my family likes extended (and wholesome) celebrations.

The affair began with lunch at VP2, one of New York's best vegetarian Chinese restaurants. We followed it up with a visit to the Guggenheim, which has now been overrun by a single exhibit known as The Cremaster Cycle.

The exhibit is, to say the least, unusual. For example, there are numerous sculptures made out of vaseline, including a full-size bar. The guard barked at me after I touched the bar to see if it was actually soft like vaseline. It was.

Moving, we headed for dinner at The Box Tree. The food is good. But the decor is mindblowing. The restaurant is housed in a pair of converted brownstones on East 49th St. Inside, it has the feel of turn-of-the-(20th)-century New York mansion, including actual Tiffany windows.

Following the structure of the brownstones, the restaurant is divided into a labyrinth of small dining rooms, each giving the feeling of being an intimate private salon. Very, very nice.

After dinner I made way to the Upper West Side to get together with some very old friends (think kindergarten!) for margaritas at Mama Mexico's. Damn good. Quite alcoholic as well.

And if you stop by Mama Mexico's, you have to order the guacamole, which is made fresh at your table. That's right. The guacamole man comes over, splits open an avocado, adds all the right spices, and mixes your guac right in front of your eyes. Mmmmmm.

To close out the night we headed to a local pub where I enjoyed the fine taste of Brooklyn Lager, the best beer in New York. I stumbled home some time around 4am, by which point my birthday was long over.

Until next year... (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 2:05 PM by Patrick Belton  

LETTER FROM DEARBORN: For the last several days, I've been avoiding my OxBlogging duties off in the burgeoning Arab and Muslim capital of the United States, the southwestern Detroit suburb of Dearborn, Michigan. I came here to do interviews for a series of articles I've been commissioned to write, which may turn into a book about Dearborn and what it tells us about the future of the Arab and Islamic communities in the U.S. I've been reading this morning some of the media coverage of Dearborn, but all of it is simplistic, too broadly put, and frankly misses the real community, with its subtleties, its invigorating features, its complexities. It's generally the result of reporters jetting from out of town for an evening to collect an interview or two, then returning to write their pieces once they could drop some of the geographic referents, like Warren Street, to pretend they understood the place. But the real Dearborn doesn't appear in any of their pieces.

Quite simply, I fell in love with Dearborn. The largest concentration of Arabs or Muslims in the United States, it's a study in contrasts - in between miles upon miles of depopulated Detroit blocks now filled only with commercialized sex - Dearborn appears, a small thriving colony of Middle Eastern hustle, entrepreneurship, and colour. Where everything around them is bleak, they've created blocks upon blocks of Lebanese restaurants, social service organizations, Arabic newspapers, small businesses, the practices of Lebanese- and British-educated physicians, lawyers, and accountants. Its colour, its bustlingness, its creativity and entrepreneurship are hard to overstate.

While it's a commonplace to describe the Arab and Muslim communities in the U.S. as monolithic, this actually couldn't be farther from the case. Rifts are common and frequent, and continually being patched over or exploited by different would-be leaders seeking a panethnic or more particularist base. The factional difference between Sunni and Shi'a, however, is the smallest - at the Islamic Center of America, the nation's largest mosque, a Qom-trained Shi'a cleric named Imam Sayed Qazwini leads Friday services to a congregation that's principally Lebanese and Sunni; Shi'a cleric Imam Elahi preaaches to a congregation which is also principally Sunni, and so on. The real rifts are ethnic: the Lebanese date from the 1890s, when Henry Ford brought them to the U.S. as occupational migrants, to receive a mildly comfortable $5 a day to build the first Model Ts at Ford's Rouge plant in south Dearborn. They were principally Christian, but Muslims from neighboring villages followed soon after. The real immigration took place in waves; Palestinians after WWII, residents of the Bekaa Valley from 1975, and increasingly from 1982, and Shi'ites from Iraq after the failure of the Shi'a uprising. The social pecking order runs something like this: Lebanese from Beirut and Tripoli are at the top; then Lebanese from the Bekaa Valley; then Palestinians and the comparatively few Jordanians and Egyptians; afterwards, duking it out for last place, are the Iraqi Shi'a refugees, slightly edging out the rural Yemenis who continue to live in the poorest parts of town (which the Lebanese had inhabited on their arrival), and working in the lowest-skill jobs. A separate cleavage, at the level of leaders, runs like this: one group is principally concerned with the local and with securing greater political influence and meeting social needs of the community; in this category would go Ish Ahmed's social service organization ACCESS, former mayoral candidate Abed Hammoud and journalist Osama Siblani's Arab-American PAC, and a cluster of activity on the school board oriented toward building schools in the Arab neighborhoods which previous boards had entirely ignored. (Reflecting typical semitic patterns of social advancment in the US through education, 10 members of the class of 1998 from the Arab Fordson High School are graduating this year from medical school. Also, nearly all charitable monies raisd by the school district in past years have gone to fairly frivolous uses in the wealthiest, white public school, while Fordson and the other Arab schools have received nary a cent). Alongside the locally-oriented groups are the internationally-oriented commercial organizations, such as Ahmed Chebbani's American Arab Chamber of Commerce, which is quite active and creative in sponsoring trade opportunities with Lebanon and the Gulf. These people are attractive; they spin out ideas by the dozens, whether for international trade conferences (Bill Gates, King Abdullah, and King Fahd are all attending one this summer), or ethnic magazines, or business opportunities in Iraq - and they pursue all of them at once, and seemingly quite well. The third category is the mosque activity; they're not as interested in local issues (which they regard as small fish), but as regards politics are principally interested in foreign policy and Palestine (in the last respect unlike the traders, who are content to ignore Palestine until it has a stable government and rule of law propitious for doing business in). More on the last bit later.

Arab exclusion from city hall and the police force is rampant, and shocking. Mayor Guido won office in the 1980's running against "our Arab problem," and subsequently plays the race card in elections while spouting such gems as "if you want to help immigrants, teach them hygiene." He as a matter of unspoken policy does not hire Arabs into either municipal administration or into the police force (this in a city where clearly a quarter, perhaps much more, of the city is much more conversant in Arabic than in English, and where Arabic-speaking police officers would serve a public, not just communal good). He also takes no action to knit together the growing Arab and the declining Italian-American and other white ethnic communities. The inevitability, of course, is that within decades there will be an Arab mayor; and unprepared for this eventuality, the white community may follow Detroit's example with its black minority and flee the city to further removed white enclaves. White elected city officials, with the exception of several school board members with Arab spouses, tend to boast of their "good ties" to the Arab community, while complaining off the record of its growing influence within the city. There are no organizations - civic, religious, or otherwise - that bring together members of the rising and declining communities, with the result that unspoken suspicion and outspoken protests of support are generally from the white ethnic leaders the word of the day. The Arabs, on the other hand, feel marginalized by 9/11 - while whites brag about how well Dearborn weathered the terrorist attacks, the Arabs are quicker to remember the broken storefront windows, the threatening 2:00 a.m. telephone calls, and the highway graffiti insulting to the prophet.

There is a terrorism component to the story, of course, but it is not the only one - although it's sadly the only aspect of this complex story which receives national attention. This is a topic which, in order to deal with as responsibly and carefully as I can, I'll be holding off on for the most part until I address it in print. One interesting dynamic, though, is the incredible extent to which cognitive blinders and distrust of all government counterterror initiatives pervade both white and Arab Dearborn. Islamic charities linked openly to Hezbollah's spiritual leader, Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlullah, operate in the open; yet no one in Dearborn ever mentions the fact. Genuinely Islamophobic local politicians wish to avoid being labelled as such, and avoid the topic; and other quarters have no trust in domestic counterterror efforts, which they believe are all born of a scapegoating urge, and which they describe in the same breath as the awful racism and sickening attacks on Dearborn's Muslims which followed 9/11. The second point is that it is a very, very small number of people, housed quietly in a few mosque-based organizations, who are at all involved in it; the broader community, both Arab and white, is oblivious to its existence. The support in these quarters is for Hamas and Hezbollah, and perhaps to some extent smaller similar organizations like Islamic Jihad, but not to Al-Qa'eda. There is really no affinity of interest between any quarters of the local Islamic community and Al-Qa'eda; the Al-Qa'eda attacks occasioned a precipitous drop in Muslims' acceptance by their neighborhoods and in the fortunes of all of their broader political projects, such as doing away with profiling and securing greater political influence as a community; their interests are inimical.

The support for these groups, however, is a part of a complex larger story, and not the story itself. The broader story is what Dearborn portends for the future of the American Arab and Islamic communities, as the burgeoning capital of both. And I think the broader story is quite good. Compared with blight and poverty on all sides of them, the Arabs of Dearborn have made a thriving and prosperous middle eastern enclave, where they are weaving forth a spectrum of civil society organizations, international trade to enrich their region, and the inevitable desire to secure greater political influence for their community, shared by every other immigrant community in the nation's history. There are dark sides and complexities, shared by the Irish, the Kosovar Albanians, and every other immigrant group which has ever brought its own politics to the U.S. after leaving its own homeland as reluctant refugees, but the processes of reorienting to trade and normal ethnic politics are, I think, strongly advanced and promising. And driving down thirty miles of blighted Michigan Avenue massage parlors and hourly-rental hotels to see this thriving, bustling community, one might be forgiven for imagining the U.S. needs all the Arabs it can get. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:55 AM by David Adesnik  

KARL MARX, ARCH-CAPITALIST: Haven't had your recommended daily allowance of irony? Then check this out. In 1864, Marx sent a letter to a friend in which he admitted that he had been

speculating -- partly in American funds, but more especially in English stocks, which are springing up like mushrooms this year...are forced up to quite an unreasonable level and then, for the most part, collapse. In this way, I have made over 400 pounds and, now that the complexity of the political situation affords greater scope, I shall begin all over again. It's the type of operation that makes small demands on one's time, and it's worth while running some risk in order to relieve the enemy of his money.

You know, if Marx had just written a book called "The Working Man's Guide to the Stock Market" everyone would've turned out rich and happy and we all could've avoided that whole unpleasant business with Lenin and Stalin.

(FYI I ran across this quotation in The Cash Nexus, the most recent book by Oxford historian Niall Ferguson, which I hope to review sometime this week. The quote is at the bottom of page 6 in the paperback edition.) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:39 AM by David Adesnik  

AT THE STROKE OF MIDNIGHT, I marked the end of my 26th year on this humble planet we call Earth. However, I didn't actually notice the clock striking twelve, since digital clocks don't strike and since I was either on the phone or checking my e-mail at the time.

But, hey, I wasn't born until 8pm, so there's no reason to get all worked up at midnight. Anyhow, expect posts only during the day tomorrow so that I can go out and paint the town red at night. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:17 AM by David Adesnik  

ONLY ON THE RADIO: In the cab headed back to Manhattan, I heard the following on the radio. 1010 WINS, actually. It isn't an exact quote, since it's from memory, but the point comes across:

After four recent suicide bombings in the Middle East, the Israeli army has decided to close down the West Bank in order to prevent further attacks.

And speaking of closing down, Les Mis will be ending its long, long, long, long, long run on Broadway, where it has grossed $400 millions dollars over the past 16 years.

Even Jayson Blair can't get away with that kind of free association. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:24 AM by David Adesnik  

GREETINGS FROM HEATHROW: So here I am at the airport, blogging from a stand-up e-mail terminal. I can't put in any links because you can only open one window at a time. OK, so I were really patient I could post some links. But that would still leave me with the challenge of using this bizarre metal keyboard that hurts to type on. Imagine trying to type on an ATM.

I should be able to post some stuff tonight (Eastern time) when I get back to NY. Yes, it's true, not a single OxBlogger will remain in Britain, at least for the next couple of weeks. Don't tell Howell Raines. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:19 PM by David Adesnik  

UNTOUCHABLE: The WaPo reports that the Dems can't touch Bush on national security despite the fact that no WMD has been found. Even Nancy Pelosi

did not seem concerned about whether any are found. "I am sort of agnostic on it; that is to say, maybe they are there," Pelosi said. "I salute the president for the goal of removing weapons of mass destruction."

Amazing. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:07 AM by David Adesnik  

THE OTHER WOODROW: Russell Fox adds some historical context to my interpretation of Woodrow Wilson. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:16 AM by David Adesnik  

EXPORTING TERROR: If you can a get a hold of this week's TNR, don't miss Michael Levi's article on why stopping North Korean plutonium is just about impossible. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:13 PM by David Adesnik  

...AND THE BAD NEWS: Even though Gen. Petraeus is standing tall in Mosul, Donald Rumsfeld still doesn't seem to understand the importance of making a long-term commitment to restoring order and promoting democracy in Iraq. And according to TNR, the real problem may not be the looting and rampant street crime of the past few weeks, but the fact that Iraq's political factions have begun to arm themselves for a civil war. May I remind the SecDef that hell hath no fury like an idealist scorned?

UPDATE: The always-optimistic Kos isn't concerned about a civil war in Iraq since Steve is pretty damn sure that everyone with a gun will join together to fight the Americans.

UPDATE: Phil Carter has some sharp words for Rumsfeld. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:06 PM by David Adesnik  

CHARGING TANKS WITH CAVALRY: That's what the Poles used to do, circa 1939. (Actually, I've heard it's a myth, but a popular one.) Now Poland has elite special forces who can kick ass with the best of them. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:10 PM by David Adesnik  

MORE LOOTING: In France. It's the United States' fault, of course -- they let the French hold elections 60 years too early. (Via Best of the Web) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:50 PM by David Adesnik  

DID I MISS SOMETHING? Greg Myre from the NYT reports on what it was like to ride into combat in Gaza inside an Israeli armored personnel carrier. The Israeli lieutentant colonel in charge of the attack comes off as thoughtful and humane. To balance out his perspective, Myre provides criticism from some local Palestinians. In fact, this coverage is so balanced I'm beginning to wonder if it's intentionally pro-Israeli. So, my compliments to the NYT for a job well done. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:36 PM by David Adesnik  

THE 'BIG MAN CONCEPT': Following yesterday's praise-laden account in the Chicago Tribune, the WaPo now has its own paean to Gen. David Petraeus. As this example shows, it important to remember that the media's herd mentality governs its praise of the government as well as its criticism.

In other Big Man news, American forces have stepped up their arrests of both suspected Ba'ath loyalists and common criminals turned out of jail by Saddam Hussein in the months leading up to the war. In addition, the 1st Armored Division has arrived in central Iraq, adding 16,500 men and thousands of vehicles to the occupation force.

With that kind of force on the ground, it may be easier to enforce Jerry Bremer's recent order banning the top four echelons of Ba'ath officials -- an estimated 15,000-30,000 individuals -- from participating in the new government. As such, the WSJ is right to praise Ambassador Bremer for reversing Gen. Garner's hesitant de-Ba'athification policy. Let's hope this kind of success continues. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:39 PM by David Adesnik  

SELF-LOVE: It's important to take articles like this one with a grain of salt. Now, the NYT is probably right that the Bush communications staff is among the best ever. But that doesn't mean that slick production values make the President's message any more persuasive.

Consider the last sentence of the article in question:

Or as Mr. Deaver said he learned long ago with Mr. Reagan: "They understand that what's around the head is just as important as the head."

This is a message that the media has been broadcasting ever since Reagan first took office -- that Reagan was a fool who compensated for his lack of insight with his good looks, charm and poll-tested rhetoric. Or, stated more generally, that the medium is the message, that image is more important than substance.

But it just isn't true. As the historian Michael Schudson has argued rather persuasively, Reagan earned his reputation as The Great Communicator as a result of hard fought legislative victories, ones which relied to only a limited degree on his telegenic presence. As the media saw it, however, his telegenic presence was responsible for his success.

Moreover, the media was somewhat alone in its perception of Reagan as more beloved than his predecessors. Whereas as polling data demonstrates that Reagan was one of the most divisive presidents of the 20th century, the Reagan-era media systematicallly misrepresented such data in a manner that portrayed the President as a charismatic unifier who transcended partisan politics.

Now, it is true that Reagan's media staff was better than any of those that came before it, with the possible exceptions the JFK and FDR operations. But it was Reagan's conservative ideology that made him so attractive to so many voters -- and so repulsive to so many others.

How, then, did the media get its story so wrong? Perhaps the most important reason is that the media constantly overestimates its own influence. Especially since Vietnam and Watergate, the media has cultivated an enduring belief in itself as the ultimate arbiter of national politics. Thus, when Reagan's communications staff began to outperform the media, journalists drew the "natural" conclusion, that Reagan's communication staff had taken over its role as judge, jury and executioner.

It is also important to consider the elitist ideology that has become so pervasive in the American media. As scholars such as Stephen Hess and Herbert Gans have consistently shown, journalists consider themselves to be the only citizens who are well-enough informed to recognize that political rhetoric is just a facade for ulterior motives. In contrast, the man in the street is nothing more than a potential victim of the spin doctors.

In fact, most Americans are not all that susceptible to manipulation. Most individuals possess fairly stable political preferences that lead to support one party or the other. And even those in the center are capable of judging whether this or that candidate will support the sort of programs that a given independent voter prefer. And regardless of what party they support, most voters believe that politicians are liars.

The media can still play a decisive role, however, especially in close-run elections or congressional votes. It is precisely because a 1-2% in voter preferences can decide the fate of an election or a legislative program that politicians invest so much in their communication staffs.

From a partisan perspective, this revisionist view of the media's role in politics has quite interesting implications, especially with regard to Reagan. Whereas Republicans tend to cherish Reagan's reputation for being a popular president and a Great Communicator, there isn't much evidence to back up such claims. On the other hand, Democrats don't have much of a leg to stand when it comes to their standard argument that Reagan's success was a product of wholesale deception (even if that was the M.O. of prominent officials such as Bill Casey and John Poindexter).

Whereas Republicans often become defensive when Reagan's intelligence is attacked, they should remember that Reagan's ideas were the foundation of his success -- even if he was no rocket scientist. On the other hand, Democrats tend to get defensive when confronted by the fact that such a profoundly conservative President was more popular than almost any other. But he wasn't.

More or less, the same arguments that apply to Reagan also apply to George W. Bush. His success rests more on substance than image, even if that same substance often antagonizes voters as well. The administration hasn't exactly shied away from deception, but such practices are not critical to its success.

Especially for bloggers, it is important to recognize that the media is not the ultimate arbiter of American politics. Since we spend so much of our time criticizing the media, we often start to buy in to its delusions of grandeur. Which isn't to say that we shouldn't invest so much effort in deconstructng the New York Times. On specific issues, media coverage does often have a decisive effect.

But in the broader scheme of things, ideas are what matter most. So let's argue about ideas.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 4:59 AM by Daniel  

IMAGE IS EVERYTHING. The administration is good. Really good. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:07 PM by David Adesnik  

OCCUPATION DONE RIGHT: How one American general has restored order and laid the foundation for democratic governance in Mosul. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:05 PM by David Adesnik  

CHICAGO BOYS: Dan Drezner rounds up the Straussian neo-con debate in this post and this column. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:36 PM by David Adesnik  

MORE MEDIA SHENANIGANS: CalPundit reports that the documents showing that George Galloway was being paid off by Saddam may have been forged.

But the media operation that comes in for much harsher criticism is the Pentagon, which may have fabricated essential facts about the rescue of Jessica Lynch. I'm not so sure what's going to come of this story, though, since almost all of the information in the Guardian is based on Iraqi eyewitness accounts.

For the moment, the Pentagon is refusing to release the unedited videotaping of Lynch's rescue. I guess the word is "Developing..."

UPDATE: JAT writes in to say that

Be careful reading that Mirror story about George Galloway to which Calpundit links. It's a little unclear (intentionally so, it seems), but the allegedly forged documents are not the ones that the Daily Telegraph found. Rather, the Daily Mail reported on other, probably forged, documents implicating George Galloway being offered for sale in Baghdad by a former Republican Guard general.

Mr. Galloway claims that the existence of these other forged documents is evidence that the original documents were also forged. The Mirror story is rather carefully written to make, on a hasty reading, it seem like the actual Daily Telegraph documents were shown to be forgeries.

There are a whole host of explanations for why one set could be real and another fake. In any case, you should follow the link in the article and read for yourself.

Point taken. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:12 PM by David Adesnik  

TAKING CHARGE: Jerry Bremer wants people to know that there is a new sheriff in town. While Baghdad might bear a striking resemblance to the Wild Wild West, I still don't think that gunning down looters is a particularly good idea.

With considerable justification, Bob Herbert is up in arms about this new idea. (In fact, he seems to be so angry that the NYT has taken down his nice smiley photograph and replaced it with an angry and menacing one.) On the bright side, Herbert reports that the Army is already backing away from Bremer's idea.

While Herbert thinks that the shoot-on-sight proposal is just one more reason that the UN should be in charge of the occupation rather than the United States, the armed forces' immediate resistance to the proposal suggests that American authorities are fairly well able to separate the good ideas from the bad.

Moreover, Herbert ought to realize that the administration has now faced four weeks worth of intense criticism for its failure to be forceful enough in its efforts to restore order in Iraq. While Bremer's proposal was an overreaction, it's not hard to understand where it was coming from.

Even so, in the final analysis, the Administration cannot blame the media for its own shortcomings. If the President want to get things right in Iraq, the first principle of the occupation has to be "The Buck Stops Here".

UPDATE: Rumsfeld denies that any shoot-on-sight order is in the works. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:49 PM by David Adesnik  

PREEMPTIVE CORRECTION: I put up the following post about an hour ago. Since then, four readers have already let me know that I made a very big mistake by assuming that Maureen Dowd quoted the President accurately. My compliments to Andrew Sullivan for exposing Dowd's dishonesty.

Yes, dishonesty. This time, she has really crossed the line from spin into fabrication. An apology is in order.

Anyhow, I hope you'll still read this post, since everything after the first paragraph defends the President from Dowd's false charges.

SAUDI EXPLOSION: In a surprisingly coherent column, Maureen Dowd takes the Administration to task for its arrogant dismissal of Al Qaeda's threat. While the President has been rather good about avoiding triumphalism, he should have known better than to say that

"That group of terrorists who attacked our country is slowly but surely being decimated. . . . They're not a problem anymore."

When you put things in such blunt terms, one major incident -- such as the Riyadh attacks -- can leave you looking like a fool. But when it comes to drawing broader lessons from the attacks, Dowd gets things completely wrong. She argues that

Buried in the rubble of Riyadh are some of the Bush administration's basic assumptions: that Al Qaeda was finished, that invading Iraq would bring regional stability and that a show of American superpower against Saddam would cow terrorists.

You'd think Dowd would've learned something from Bush about drawing premature conclusions. Apparently not.

Sad as the recent attacks were, they may actually indicate just how successful the war against Al Qaeda has been. If Al Qaeda is targeting Saudi Arabia, that means that it has begun to turn against a regime whose charade of ignorance was critical to Al Qaeda's global expansion. What that means is either that Bin Laden no longer has the ability to launch attacks outside the Gulf region or that he no longer expects the House of Saud to protect him or both.

As for regional stability, Dowd's criticism is rather short-sighted. Events in Jordan and Syria have begun to show that the fall of Saddam is steering things in the right direction.

Much more importatnly, the administration has argued that the fall of Saddam would begin a process of stabilization in the Middle East -- rather than marking its culmination, as Dowd implies. Moreover, if one takes the neo-conservatives at their word, this process of stabilization will entail direct confrontations with those dictatorships whose willing negligence was responsible for the rise of Al Qaeda.

In fact, the embarrassing failure of the Saudi government to provide extra security for Western residential compounds reinforces the neo-conservative argument that the United States cannot win the war on terrorism if it avoids confronting those who pretend to be its allies. As even some Saudis have begun to argue, nothing short of massive internal reforms can prevent Saudi Arabia from raising another generation of terrorists.

Now, one can argue that the neo-con stabilization project is nothing more than an ideological crusade that will bring chaos and destruction to the Middle East. However, the alternative to such a project is not to bury one's head in the Arabian sand, but rather to advocate an aggressive diplomatic effort to improve our 'allies' anti-terrorism efforts.

Finally, we come to Dowd's assertion that the invasion of Iraq has failed to intimidate existing terrorists. Frankly, I don't think anyone expected the invasion to provide Al Qaeda fanatics with a newfound measure of sanity. The much more important question is whether the invasion provoked an anti-American, pro-terrorist backlash or whether it has led potential Al Qaeda recruits to conlude that there are better ways of confronting American power.

So, what I'd like to know is who were the man responsible for this week's attacks in Riyadh? Hardened operatives or fresh recruits? Given the Saudi habit of covering Al Qaeda's tracks, we may never know. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:01 PM by David Adesnik  

REPLACING BLAIR: Maybe the NYT should hire Joel Elliot. And if you have any questions left about Blair, Mickey Kaus probably has the answer. If you want an outright attack on Howell Raines, then Andrew Sullivan is your man. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:06 PM by David Adesnik  

ALIVE AND KICKING: Now in his 80s, George McGovern still has the wherewithal to defend himself from the charge that his dovishness destroyed the Democratic's party credibility as the guardians of American national security. McGovern explains that he was never afraid to use force in defense of the national interest.

Nor was McGovern ever an isolationist. Rather, the United States was

never more isolated from the international community than when our troops were deepest in the Vietnam jungle. A close second in isolating us from the international community was the invasion of Iraq, a largely defenseless little desert state that posed no threat to us and had taken no action against us.

For good measure, McGovern adds that

We don't measure a nation's internationalism by the number of troops it sends to other countries. By that test, Adolf Hitler would be the greatest internationalist of the 20th century.

And to think that the Democratic party doesn't want to associate itself with this man...

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:51 PM by David Adesnik  

BUT DIDN'T YOU JUST SAY...The WaPo has an intersting article on crime and law enforcement in postwar Iraq. But there are some telling contradictions in the article which demonstrate how the media often portrays the occupation as being much worse than it actually is.

For example, consider the following items:

[Sauzen Khazi] runs a currency exchange shop and is poised to flee in that direction.

The shop didn't require armed guards in the past, when Saddam's government swiftly caught and punished thieves.

And

[In] the city soccer stadium, the 18th Military Police Brigade is recruiting former Iraqi policemen, but only those who worked at the lowest level. Many officers can't be trusted and are despised by the public. They were corrupt and enforced the law mainly through terror.

So which is it? Did the Ba'ath government catch and punish thieves, or were its police officers corrupt and brutal?

Driven by expectations of failure, the media uncritically assumes that everything that goes wrong now was not going wrong while Saddam was in power. But what I suspect is this: With the world so focused on the most brutal and horrific crimes of the Ba'athist dicatorship, no one paid much attentions to the lesser frustrations of life in a totalitarian state such as rampant crime and a total lack of law enforcement.

This isn't to say that everything that has gone wrong is Saddam's fault. It seems clear that the provision of electricity, clean water, and waste removal services were in much better shape before the war. But restoring such services is mostly a technical challenge, not an institutional one such as hiring honest and competent judges and law enforcement officials. The US should have invested much more in planning for the occupation, but some things are just beyond its control. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:18 PM by David Adesnik  

RECONSTRUCTION WATCH: The United Nations is about to recognize the United States' preeminent role in the adminstration of postwar Iraq. Why? The WaPo suggests that the Security Council wants to avoid another public confrontation with the US. I'd guess that reports of chaos in Baghdad have persuaded the French, Russians and Chinese that they want nothing to do with the occupation.

As time goes by, I'm becoming more and more convinced that American planning for the occupation was lackluster at best. In constrast, SCIRI seems to have planned out almost every detail of its rise to power. Now, I don't think there's much chance that it will get all that far. But its preparations demonstrate how much the United States might have accomplished if it had combined its resources with that sort of effort.

[UPDATE: Larry Kaplan has evidence that the US may have a quiet plan to prevent Shi'ite dominance in Iraq.]

There are a couple of bright spots, though. The United States forced the new director of Iraq's Health Ministry to resign after he refused to disavow the Ba'ath (which the United States recently abolished). Also, in one of the first interviews he has given since the war's end, Paul Wolfowitz indicated that the US cannot accomplish its objectives if it does not make a long-term commitment to the rebuilding of Iraq.

So it looks like we're going to have to fight this one out in the bureaucratic trenches. Which means I should probably working on OxDem stuff instead of blogging... (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:41 PM by David Adesnik  

OVERSIMPLIFIED: While Patrick is getting busy at his motel, Rachel has been thinking about American foreign policy. She writes that

I just read through your Monday post--you may want to hedge a bit more before going on at such length about an unread book! Having read Mead a few months ago, I can tell you that his commentators, and thus you, have way oversimplified his ideas. In fact, he largely agrees with your points. His four "types" are NOT the classic IR types--they are much more socially rooted in the American psyche and history, and are much more complex. They also all have good and bad characteristics that he is quick to point out. Jacksonianism is thus not "bad", it is associated with various traits which have various effects on our national policy. His end assertion is that America is lucky to have all four traditions, because they are all needed to balance us from going too far in any one direction.

Wilsonianism, for instance, is equated with a U.S. based mission--from the missionaries, to wars for democracy--basically, it is about a great power linking its destiny to the spread of an ideology. He ties Wilsonianism to the democratic peace thesis and thus the need to spread democracy, AS WELL AS the desire to generally prevent war. In many ways, Bush would very much fall under Mead's Wilsonianism--particularly due to the religious motivation that inspires much of his worldview.

Jackson, on the other hand, is not seen as a bloodthirsty hick. Rather, Jacksonians are seen as motivated primarily by honor, and as having a much stronger "honor" gauge in international relations--as opposed to Hamiltonian's "interest" gauge or Wilsonians "democratic" or "human rights" triggers. Jacksonians do want to fight affronts to their honor--that was why Mead was worried about an unthought response to Sept. 11. sometimes, fighting for honor is a very good thing--you and I have enough Kagan to know that! He also sees Jacksonians as believing wars should be fought to the point of victory--not to the point of interest, or to the point of intruding upon civilian rights. Jacksons are also often isolationists in his mind. Basically, they have a code that highly respects honor, and sees different sets of rules as applicable to people within the community (America, allies) and outside (enemies).

Point taken. Time to read the book, eh? (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:46 PM by David Adesnik  

ROUGH CHILDHOOD: Earlier today, I mentioned an article from the April 1978 issue of Foreign Affairs. While looking over the table of contents, I happened to notice that there was an article entitled Technology and the Military Balance by Col. Richard Head.

Presuming this is not a hoax, I would like to extend my sympathy to the Colonel for the rough childhood he most assuredly had to endure.

UPDATE: Foreign policy professional BD reports that

I can attest to the fact that Colonel (General, when I met him) Richard Head exists. I met him at a Superbowl party on a military base in Vicenza, Italy sometime in the mid-eighties (the Redskins were in it, that's all I remember), and he introduced himself and then told everyone, "please, please call me Dick!" I swear this is true.

I wonder what his wife calls him?

UPDATE: While you might not guess it from a post about a man named Richard Head, this is a family blog. But it is. In fact, BD's mother has written to say that

"I knew Gen. Richard Head when he was the Commanding General of 5 ATAF, an Air Force Group in Vicenza, Italy in th 80's. He really exists."

Sadly, it also seems that condolences to Gen. Head for the loss of his wife are in order. As such, I feel like a pretty big heel, given the question at the end of the last update. You know, I once had a girl friend who warned me about making fun of people's names. I guess I should've listened to her. (1) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:40 PM by David Adesnik  

THEY NEVER LEARN: Walking around Oxford today, I noticed the sudden appearance of posters emblazoned with the a demand to "End the Occupation of Iraq". On the one hand, it's nice to see that the Left's return to anti-globalization activism hasn't led them to forget entirely about the people of Iraq.

On the other hand, when I took a closer look at the poster, I discovered that OSSTW (Oxford Students Stop the War) had invited quite an interesting speaker to address them this Friday (May 16th). That speaker is none other than George Galloway.

Yes, that George Galloway. The MP who was kicked out of the Labour Party for being on Saddam Hussein's payroll.

Now, as Josh has pointed out Galloway is probably not guilty of treason. But if the anti-war movement wants to show concern for the people of Iraq, it might consider having its next speaker be an actual opponent of the Ba'athist dictatorship.

UPDATE: The Oxford Town Hall has refused to let it's room be used for Galloway's talk.

CORRECTION: Josh Cherniss points out that New Labour sent Galloway packing for his incitement of other Arab nations to defend Saddam from the US and the UK.
(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:13 AM by David Adesnik  

BY POPULAR DEMAND: A while back, Josh posted a comprehensive list of critical texts in political philosophy. Lately, I've been getting a lot of reader requests for a similar list of texts about international. Expect to see it posted in the next couple of weeks. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:17 AM by David Adesnik  

RIGHTEOUS INDIGNATION: We all become so indignant when we hear that Libya and assorted other dictatorships have become members of the United Nations' Commission on Human Rights. But isn't it time to recognize that this sort of thing has been going on for thirty years and that the surprise is wearing thin?

While doing some research from my dissertation, I came across the following article in the April 1978 issue of Foreign Affairs. Its title is "Human Rights and Economic Power: The United States Versus Idi Amin." The author is Richard Ullman, a well-known liberal academic. Ullman writes that

In any contemporary lexicon of horror, Uganda is synonymous with state-become-slaughterhouse. The most conservative estimates by informed observers hold that President Idi Amin Dada and the terror squads operating under his loose direction have killed 100,000 Ugandans in the seven years he has held power. Some estimates run as high as 300,000...

The scale of official murder in Uganda, its ferocious brutality, and its terrible capriciousness all place Idi Amin's Uganda in category of its own in which the nearest analogues may be Hilter's Germany or Stalin's Russia...

Thus far, however, Uganda has escaped the kind of censure exemplified by the U.N. Security Council's vote last November to impose a mandatory arms embargo on South Africa...Previously, in March 1977, the U.N. Human Rights Commission -- on which Uganda sits -- shelved a proposal that it should conduct an investigation into Ugandan conditions.

The practical purpose of Ullman's article is to argue for sanctions against Uganda. But he also considers other options:

If the [US] Congress wants to bring down Idi Amin, it might be asked, why not use force to do it? The answer, of course, is that Congress does not wish to expend American lives in order to save Ugandans...

International consciousness of a shared humanity may some day reach a point where supranational authorities or states acting at their command will maintain stirke forces -- larger versions of the Israeli force that landed at Entebbe or the German force at Mogadishu, each to rescue its own nationals -- for use against regimes that brutalize their own citizens. But that day is nowhere in sight. Until it comes, today's prevailing general proscription agains the use of military force is best preserved intact. It is a proscription which, by consensus, applies especially to the two superpowers. Although each has flagrantly violated it, it ramians a bulwark of a "moderate" international order."

Plus ca change, eh? For as long as the United Nations accepts sovereignty as an absolute principle, this is what we can expect. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:59 AM by Patrick Belton  

GOIN' UP TO MOTOWN, GETTIN' ME A MOTEL ... and interviewin' some of the religious descendants of the Prophet MOhammed for the next few days, for my article on Islam in America. But I may not have a MOdem while I'm there, so one MO' OxBlogger thus goes temporarily on hiatus. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:23 PM by David Adesnik  

BLAIR (THE EVIL ONE): Not Tony. Jayson. Actually, he's not evil. Just ethically challenged. Anyway, Dan Simon provides a persuasive response to CalPundit, with Martin Kimel and Steve Sturm adding some good points as well.

Meanwhile, Boomshock compares the NYT to Le Monde. Sacre bleu!

UPDATE: CalPundit is not taking this all sitting down. He has a new post on Jayson Blair, an editorial on affirmative action and even a post on Oreos. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:07 PM by David Adesnik  

TOTTEN ON A ROLL: The WSJ Online has now republished Michael Totten's provocative post on the downfall of liberal foreign policy as an op-ed with the same name, "Builders and Defenders".

In the blogosphere, the excitement surrounding Totten's ideas continues to thrive. Kieran Healy defends himself from my charge that Healy's original response to Totten avoided the main points of Totten's argument. Kieran says that Totten's description of liberals as "builders" and conservatives as "defenders" is so vague that it could easily be reversed.

Take, for example, this passage from Totten's argument:

The first priority of builders is the immediate surrounding environment, starting with the home and moving outward from there. Next is the community, followed by the city, the region, and the nation. The other side of the world is the lowest of all priorities. “Think globally” but “act locally” is a bumper sticker for the left. That we shouldn’t meddle in other countries if our own needs work is also a liberal idea.

Kieran responds by imagining a similar description applied to conservatives:

Conservatives are oriented to their own back yard. Their view is that if everyone took responsibility for their own problems then we wouldn’t need a nanny state or world government to solve them for us. In this sense Conservatives are Builders...

Conservative builders have little interest in managing the problems of others. As Governor Bush said during the second Presidential debate, “I think what we need to do is convince people who live in the lands they live in to build the nations. Maybe I’m missing something here. I mean, we’re going to have kind of a nation-building corps from America? Absolutely not.”

What Kieran misses entirely is that a tendency to look inward has characterized liberals and conservatives at different points in American history. As my post from yesterday elaborated in considerable detail, American liberalism embraced the outside world from the time of Wilson until the end of the Vietnam war. Then, at the same time that liberals began to turn inward, conservatives began to become preoccupied with events abroad. As for Bush's nod to humility and aversion to nation-building, the President's superficial commitment to such preferences has become apparent in the aftermath of September 11th.

Kieran also stumbles quite a bit when he tries to argues that liberals are "defenders" as well. He presents a hypothetical argument that liberals are

Defenders, always looking out for the rights of the supposedly oppressed, even if those they protect don’t really want to be defended. Looking at international political interventionism from the ill-fated League of Nations to the United Nations to the Marshall Plan to the European Union, we see Liberal thinkers and politicians behind all of these grand schemes — schemes which are anathema to the Conservative way of thinking.

In this case, Kieran is simply distoring Michael's argument. When Michael described conservatives as Defenders, he made it extremely clear that what conservatives defend are themselves, not others. As for the Marshall Plan and the United Nations, what better evidence could there be of liberals being great builders in the decades before Vietnam?

Next up, the Armed Liberal directly challenges my application of history to the present day. But before getting to that, I think it's worth noting that AL said this:

I have to publicly go on record that this is an exciting time for me; I've felt isolated from much of the Democratic party and what passes for liberalism for some time, and am constitutionally incapable of moving to the other side of the aisle. But now, I feel that there is some ferment in the Left both here in the U.S. and in the U.K., and that we're starting a process that could well result in an effective, moral, and progressive vision of the country and the world.

I hope AL is right, but I sense that there are precious few signs of such ferment among the Democratic candidates for 2004.

Moving on, we come to AL main point: that I am wrong to call George W. Bush a Wilsonian. Or as AL puts it:

Uh, sorry?? Wilsonians are typically defined as attempting to enmesh nations in a framework of democracy and the rule of law. Bush?? I'd have to make him as a Jacksonian/Hamiltonian in the Mead framework.

"Mead" refers to Walter Russell Mead, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World.

In Special Providence, Mead argues that there are four traditions that shape American foreign policy: the Hamiltonian, the Jeffersonian, the Jacksonian and the Wilsonian. For a brief definition of the four, see this review of Mead's book by Aaron Frieberg, who is the author of my favorite book on international relations.

When it comes to Special Providence, I am on unsure footing since I haven't read the book. Instead, I have had to rely on essays about the book, such as HW Brands' commentary in The National Interest. [All of NI's archive links are bloggered at the moment, so don't bother clicking through.]

That said, Mead's four categories are grounded in concepts familiar to most students of American foreign policy. So I will be somewhat bold in offering my thoughts about them. Basically, there are two main points I want to make: first, Mead seriously misunderstands Woodrow Wilson and his legacy. Second, there is no such thing as a Jacksonian foreign policy.

Both Mead and the Armed Liberal buy into the common misconceptions that Wilson was a multilateralist dove. As I wrote in my original post,

Today we associate Wilson's name with the naive and tragic multilateralism of the League of Nations. Those who insisted that United States had no right to invade Iraq without a second resolution from the United Nations often found themselves tarred as unrepentant Wilsonians. Yet I would suggest that Wilson would have done exactly what George W. Bush did had he been faced with a similar situation. He would've sought a second resolution but taken decisive action if he found it impossible to secure.

In earlier, unpublished version of my post (which -- believe it or not -- was even longer than the first) I referred to a number of important initiatives which demonstrated that Wilson's was not at all gun shy when it came to using force in order to promote American ideals. Throughout Latin America, Wilson sent in the Marines to impose his version of a democratic order. And strange as it sounds, Wilson was the only president ever to order American forces into combat with Soviet Russia.

While American forces foundered in the snows of Murmansk, their invasion of Russia -- in concert with British, French and White Russian forces -- bring to a light a different side of Wilson than the one associated with the tragic Peace of Versailles. In fact, the invasion was taking place at the exact same time that Wilson was negotiating at Versailles.

Thus, Bush's aggressive foreign policy in no way contradicts my assertion that he is a Wilsonian. It precisely because Bush fights so hard for American ideals that he is a Wilsonian. As I wrote yesterday,

In contast, President Bush has gone far beyond President Reagan in committing himself to democratic principles as the foundation of American foreign policy. While there are definite grounds on which to criticize the President's implementation of such policies, his commitment to promoting democracy in Iraq has consummated the role reversal that began in the Carter-Reagan era. Strange as it sounds, Bush is a Wilsonian.

Want a multilateralist dove? Jimmy Carter's your man.

Armed Liberal, of course, wants nothing to do with Jimmy Carter. AL is a self-proclaimed Jacksonian. What does that mean? I think I'll let AL speak for himself on this one:

First, and foremost we have to sell America...

Our foreign policy has to be based, not just in our mechanistic view of 'doing what's good for America', as one nation among many, but on the notion that we (along with many others) have something to offer the world. And what we have to offer the world – the reason why so many want to come here – is not only our prosperity, but our freedom, our belief in and respect for the individual, and most of all our belief in justice – that everyone is equal before the law, that everyone gets an opportunity, and that if we get it wrong once, we'll work and change and eventually get it right...

We need to make it clear that violence will be met with violence. Because we aren't ashamed to be Americans, we need not be ashamed of defending ourselves nor of taking threats to ourselves or others seriously. Out of a mixture of guilt and passivity, we've tolerated extremism and saber rattling and watched it turn into saber waving.

From where I stand, what AL is describing sound exactly like Wilsoniansim. Now, if AL wants to call that a Jacsksonian approach, I don't really mind. Given that Wilson is so widely misunderstood, it might be better just to take his ideas and attribute them to Jackson.

But that isn't what Walter Mead does. His Jackson is not a principled warrior, but a violent and unthinking nationalist. Mead wrote Special Providence not to glorify the Jacksonian tradition, but to prevent it its resurgence.

Less than one week after September 11th, Mead published an op-ed in the WaPo entitled "Braced for Jacksonian Ruthlessness". In it, he warned that the Jacksonians instinct for brutality might overwhelm the United States as it sought to wage its war on terror. Holding the Jacksonians' bloodlust responsbile for the death of 900,000 Japanese civilians in the Second World War, Mead suggests that

Like Pearl Harbor, last Tuesday's unprovoked sneak attack could rouse one of the great storms of Jacksonian war fever that periodically change both American and world history. And if so, some of Bush's most demanding challenges will come from the tensions between the kind of war many Americans instinctively want to fight and the kind of war forced on us by international realities.

After reading that, you'd be forgiven for confusing Mead with the irresponsible anti-war activists who predicted that 100,000 to 400,000 civilians would be killed as a result of the war in Afghanistan. Even when that prediction turned out to be profoundly wrong, the same activists went ahead and made similar predictions about the war in Iraq.

In the meantime, Mead seems to have gotten his head on straight. In a devastating op-ed in the WaPo this past March, Mead attacked anti-war activists for describing containment as a humane alternative to war. In fact, he argued, sanctions -- which only persist because of Saddam's refusal to disarm -- are responsible for far more deaths than any invasion would cause.

(In addition, it seems Mead is somewhat embarrassed about his initial warnings of a Jacksonian resurgence, since his Sept. 17th op-ed is inexplicably missing from the rather comprehensive list of publications on Mead's CFR homepage. Still, he did go on the record in Sept. 2002 to say that Bush is a Jacksonian.)

The point is that Mead has an entirely different definition of Jacksonianism than the Armed Liberal does. And I think it's safe to say that AL would not describe himself as a Jacksonian if he meant the same thing by it that Mead does. AL, my friend, you are a Wilsonian. Be proud of it! I'm one too and so is George Bush (even if we agree that he has corporate interests a little too close to his heart).

One of the fundamental problems with Mead's book is that it denies any sort of identity to individuals such as AL and myself who believe strength in the service of principle should be the foundation of American foreign policy. By imagining a Jacksonian tradition that is a repository for all violence in the American character, Mead prevents his readers from recognizing that the United States can use force without opening the Pandora's Box of mindless brutality. In fact, the measured use of force in the service of principle is what precisely what has enabled the United States to become the only dominant nation ever to persuade the world's other great powers that (even France) that the preservation of its strength is in their self-interest.

UPDATE: Matt Yglesias provides the ultimate in praise: "I'm not sure that I really disagree with anything David says." The question is, what did I leave out? (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 3:05 PM by David Adesnik  

BEHIND THE MAN: Who are the Democratic candidates turning to for foreign policy advice? The Boston Phoenix lets you know. (Link via Greg's Opinion.) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:41 AM by David Adesnik  

GOOGLE DROPS INDYMEDIA and Judith Weiss says it serves them right. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:34 AM by David Adesnik  

CANADA BORING? NO! Dan over at LDLS has the scoop. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:30 AM by David Adesnik  

LITTLE MISS ATTILA tells you everything you wanted to know about American democracy but were afraid to ask. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:55 PM by David Adesnik  

THE LEFT VS. ITSELF: An extremely important debate is taking place right now on the left-hand side of the blogosphere. It begins with this post by Michael Totten, who charges that liberals as a whole suffer from a serious deficiency in their knowledge of foreign affairs. According to Totten,

This is not a partisan point I’m making. I’ve been on the left forever, and I have no reason whatever to shill for the right...

[So] why are liberal intellectuals less interested in the history of foreign countries than conservatives are?...

I‘ve pondered this for a while now, and I think I have part of the answer.

Liberals are builders and conservatives are defenders. Liberals want to build a good and just society. Conservatives defend what is already built and established. This is what the left and the right are for.

I strongly recommend that you read the whole post. Totten's arguments are the result of considerable reflection, as one might expect from a liberal criticizing his own comrades-in-arms. Even so, they have set off a firestorm that has drawn in conservatives as well, including Joe Katzman and Patrick Ruffini.

Before adding my own to cents to this discussion, I think it is important to note that Michael's draws on Gary Farber's response to recent WaPo article by liberal sociologist Todd Gitlin. The first two-thirds of Gitlin's column consist of an attack on conservatives for demonizing the anti-war left. But that is just a set up for the final third, in which Gitlin charges that the left has no foreign policy whatsoever. It is simply anti-Bush.

The Totten and Gitlin arguments complement each other rather well. One is an argument that liberals have a deficient knowledge of foreign affairs while the other states that liberals have no foreign policy.

The most forceful response to Totten's post is from Kieran Healy, who argues that Totten depends far too much on vague generalizations and circular logic. Kieran scores a few points, but in the end he just avoids what Totten has to say.

One of the most interesting responses to Michael's post comes from Matt Yglesias, who agrees with Totten and notes that there a number of former Clinton administration officials who are doing their best to improve the situtation by developing a liberal approach to foreign affairs.

Pre-empting such efforts, I am going to try and define such an approach right here and right now. A critic might object that my self-identification as a centrist will prevent me from empathizing with liberalism well enough to elaborate a compelling liberal approach to foreign affairs. Yet I would counter that the policies I have advocated on this site over the past nine months have a solid foundation in liberal principles. If you disagree, then all I ask is that you hear what I have to say and judge it on its merits.

So where to begin? With history, of course. While a comprehensive discussion of liberalism ought to start with the Founders, I will begin by addressing the misunderstood legacy of Woodrow Wilson. (If you do want to know more about the Founders, consult Louis Hartz's 1952 classic, The Liberal Tradition in America.)

Today we associate Wilson's name with the naive and tragic multilateralism of the League of Nations. Those who insisted that United States had no right to invade Iraq without a second resolution from the United Nations often found themselves tarred as unrepentant Wilsonians. Yet I would suggest that Wilson would have done exactly what George W. Bush did had he been faced with a similar situation. He would've sought a second resolution but taken decisive action if he found it impossible to secure.

Why? If one explores the principles on which Wilson's multilateralism rested, one discovers that the modern-day United Nations is a poor reflection of it. As any compelling liberal foreign policy must be, Wilson's was founded on the idea of protecting individual rights. Having witnessed the horrors of the Great War, Wilson belived that such tragedies could be avoided if governments would only listen to the voice of their citizens.

Anticipating the democratic peace theorists of today, Wilson believed that no democratic government would commit acts of agression against any other. Thus he insisted that the German Empire be replaced by a German republic.

Yet Wilson also recognized that most governments at the time were not democratic and would not become so. Thus, he sought to project democracy onto the international stage by creating the League of Nations. Its purpose was to create a forum for "world opinion", which Wilson believed would be an unfailing opponent of war. While this approach has considerable merit, critics point out that the people of the German Reich overwhelmingly supported war when it was declared in 1914, as did the citizens of most other nations.

Confronted by the United Nations of today, I think that Wilson would conclude that it has done very little to project the democratic spirit onto the international stage. Rather, it is a forum in which semi-authoritarian states such as China and Russia exert a dangerous and disproportionate influence while the protection of individual rights is entrusted to a forum headed by Libya. Ironically, however, the voting public in both the United States and Europe identifies the United Nations as the greatest international expression of the democratic spirit.

In order to understand why the United Nations has become what it is, one has to understand how Franklin Roosevelt's realism altered the institutional design laid out by Wilson in the aftermath of the Great War. While I am no realist, it is hard to disagree with Roosevelt's assessment that no international institution could function without the consent of the great powers, including Soviet Russia. Thus, the Soviet Union had to be given a veto despite its fundamentally illiberal nature.

When Roosevelt died, the reigns of leadership fell to a true heir of Woodrow Wilson, namely Harry Truman. Exactly as Wilson did, Truman believed that American national security was inextricably bound up with the spread of liberal democratic ideas across the globe. Whereas realist critics described the United States as facing a choice between prudence and principle, Truman and Wilson believed that prudence was principle.

One of the little known facts about Truman -- one which I focus on considerably in my doctoral dissertation -- is that he did not abandon his commitment to promoting democracy regardless of how intense the American conflict with the Soviet Union became. Whereas Eisenhower did not hesitate to overthrow the left-leaning but democratic governments of Guatemala and Iran, Truman defended them to the hilt.

Following in Truman's footsteps, John Kennedy implemented a forceful liberal foreign policy that rested on the twin pillars of fighting Communism and promoting democracy. To this day, Latin Americans revere Kennedy for his commitment to an Alliance for Progress that sought to reverse decades of disinterest in the freedom of the Western Hemisphere.

Whereas Johnson remained relatively loyal to Kennedy's approach, Nixon and Kissinger were unabashed advocates of a realist approach to foreign policy that considered no dictator unworthy of an American alliance provided that his brutality was matched by his anti-Communism. And if a democratic nation elected a Communist -- as did Chile -- Nixon and Kissinger had no qualms about supporting a coup d'etat.

Thus, until the end of the Vietnam War, it was not at all had to identify the essence of a liberal approach to foreign policy. It was about the belief that American national security depended on the promotion of democratic principles. In contrast, conservatives found themselves divided between isolationists on the one hand and realists on the other. What united the realists and isolationsts, however, was their commitment to a defensive approach to foreign affairs.

Interestingly, this description of the divide between liberal and conservative approaches to foriegn affairs fits very neatly with Michael Totten's broader generalization that liberals are "builders" whereas conservatives are "defenders". Where Totten goes astary is in his assertion that,

The first priority of builders is the immediate surrounding environment, starting with the home and moving outward from there. Next is the community, followed by the city, the region, and the nation. The other side of the world is the lowest of all priorities. “Think globally” but “act locally” is a bumper sticker for the left...

Defenders, unlike builders, are on the lookout for threats. This is what conservatism is for. In the absence of civil war or revolution, threats exist abroad. Canada isn’t a problem, and Mexico isn’t really either. The biggest threats are on the other side of the world.

While Totten's observation has a certain plausibility when applied to today's partisan politics, that is only because modern liberalism has fallen away so dramatically from the Wilsonian vision, later embraced by Kennedy and Truman. As these great presidents demonstrated time and again, "builders" are no less interested in the world abroad. As Kieran Healy rightly says, only a builder could have come up with the Marshall Plan. (TR Fogey makes a similar point as well.)

So what happened to this compelling and successful liberal vision? Answer: Vietnam. I am extremely surprised that not a single response to Totten's post recognized Vietnam as the event that has done more than any other to shape modern liberal foreign policy (or lack thereof). In addition, almost no one mentioned the liberal approach developed by Jimmy Carter, who explicitly described his anti-interventionist multilateralism as a response to the lessons of Vietnam.

At the same time that Carter was directing the Democratic party away from the aggressive idealism of Kennedy and Truman, Ronald Reagan was busy destorying the realist and isolationist foundations of Republican foreign policy, instead insisting that it, too, must be based on principle. While Reagan often managed to persuade himself that whatever was good for the United States was also consistent with principle, the fact is that he established ideology as the foundation of Republican foreign policy.

Under Clinton, the role reversal of the Carter-Reagan era began to give way to traditional approaches to foreign affairs. When Clinton wanted to bomb Kosovo, Trent Lott responded that he ought to "give peace a chance." In the 2000 campaign, Al Gore vigorously defended the use of force to promote American principles while George Bush called for "humility" and Condi Rice expounded on the virtues of realism.

But times they are a changin'. Few conservatives regretted the absence of humility in George Bush's approach to Iraq. While Democrats tried to avoid the whole issue, critics on the left demonstrated a commitment to multilateralism even stronger than Jimmy Carter's. Carter himself never conditioned his policies on the approval of semi-authoritarian states such as China and Russia. Thus Carter never found himself going against the grain of Wilson's democratic multilateral vision. (Although Jimmy Carter circa 2003 most certainly did.)

In contast, President Bush has gone far beyond President Reagan in committing himself to democratic principles as the foundation of American foreign policy. While there are definite grounds on which to criticize the President's implementation of such policies, his commitment to promoting democracy in Iraq has consummated the role reversal that began in the Carter-Reagan era. Strange as it sounds, Bush is a Wilsonian. And his critics tend to sound like Kissingerian pessimists who fret that intervention in Iraq will promote instability in the Middle East, or even an Arab backlash against the Western world.

As you might have guessed by now, I believe that the foundation of a liberal vision for American foreign policy must entail a return to the Wilsonian vision that animated American liberalism from the First World War until the tragedy of Vietnam. Perhaps the greatest flaw of such a foreign policy is that it does not provide Democratic candiates with a credible means of differentiating their views from that of the current administration.

But over time, that can be done. As Tom Friedman has written,

If Democrats' whole analysis of this war is determined by whether or not it helps Mr. Bush, then they are never going to play the role they must play -- constructive critics of how we rebuild Iraq.

This is such an important moment in U.S. foreign policy. How people view American power is at stake in the outcome in Iraq, and Democrats can't be missing in action. They have to help shape this moment, and not leave it to the Bush Pentagon. But it won't happen if Democrats are sulking in a corner, just trying to point to everything that is going wrong in Iraq, and not offering their ideas for making it better.

Why should Democrats trust the Bush people to win the peace in Iraq the way they won the war? It is clear the Bush team had no coherent postwar plan in place. This administration, with its deep mistrust for diplomacy and diplomats, may be way too ideological and Pentagon-centric for nation-building. We need alternative voices. What is the Democratic view on the proper role of the U.N. or NATO in rebuilding Iraq? How much emphasis do Democrats believe the U.S. should put into the Arab-Israeli peace process to support peace in Iraq? Is a principled and muscular internationalism now the private property of the Republican Party?

In other words, the Democrats will have to establish their Wilsonian credentials by demonstrating that they have better ideas than the GOP does about how to put Wilsonian principles into practice.

Can the Democrats establish such credentials in time for 2004? I don't know. If the Bush Administration's intermittent hostility to nation-building produces an embarrassment in postwar Iraq, the Democrats may have their chance. Still, it will be extremely hard to match the credibility of an President victorious in war.

Ultimately, what the Democrats need is a successful president from their own party who can demonstrate the efficacy of a Wilsonian approach to national security. In that sense, Bill Clinton did his party a tremendous service. But his achievements in Bosnia and Kosovo have now been overshadowed.

The road ahead for liberal foreign policy will be long and difficult. But there is a Wilsonian light at the end of the tunnel.

UPDATE: If you think my response to Totten goes into too much detail, then take a look at Tristero's statistical analysis of it. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:48 AM by David Adesnik  

41 VS. 43: The President has demonstrated that he is an even greater warrior than his father. But is he as good at making peace? (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:45 AM by David Adesnik  

SMOKING GUN: Judith Miller isn't exactly Ms. Credibility these days, but she now reports that one of Saddam's mobile weapons labs has been definitively identified. If correct, this will mitigate the weapons inspectos' intense frustration, as described in the WaPo. If not, it's just one more false expectation to be buried along with the rest. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:38 AM by David Adesnik  

MEA CULPA: The New York Times has an extremely long and apologetic article describing the work of Jayson Blair, a Times correspondent who perpetrated massive journalistic fraud. The article opens as follows:

A staff reporter for The New York Times committed frequent acts of journalistic fraud while covering significant news events in recent months, an investigation by Times journalists has found. The widespread fabrication and plagiarism represent a profound betrayal of trust and a low point in the 152-year history of the newspaper.

Even though I am a frequent and fierce critic of the NYT's reporting and commentary, I take no pleasure in reading of this deception. I never have and never will suspect the Times as a whole of distorting or inventing basic facts in order to provide evidence for its preferred point of view.

What I take issue with is the how the Times presents the facts and how it decides which facts are worth presenting. Such decisions are the subject of legitimate controversy. As I see it, there is no connection between what happened with Jayson Blair and what I find objectionable about the Times' coverage.

The New York Times is one of the great institutions of American life and will emerge from this scandal as a stronger paper.

UPDATE: CalPundit covers the racial aspect of the Blair story. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:20 AM by David Adesnik  

RECONSTRUCTION BLUES: The WaPo has another front-page indictment of the occupation, which focuses on the reassignment of senior officials, including the probable departure of Jay Garner.

Inside the paper there's a report on American efforts to start up a broadcast news service for the people Iraq. This definitely sounds like something the US should've planned for in advance. After all, Iran already has a 24-hour pro-Shi'ite television channel in operation which splits its time between criticizing Saddam and criticizing the US.

There are some indications, though, that the United States' lack of planning reflects a definite fear of being perceived as an occupying power. The WaPo reports that

U.S. officials interviewed today said the U.S. presence in Iraq would likely become more assertive in coming weeks. The absence of strong leadership -- Iraqi or American -- is a subject of intense complaint among ordinary Iraqis, who are struggling with a lack of civil order after 35 years of authoritarian rule.

One senior American official in Baghdad said the U.S. team had been so concerned about being seen as an occupying power that officials were overly reluctant to exert their full authority.

"We came in here hands-off," the official said. "There was a bit of ambivalence between being an authority and being authoritarian. We were so concerned about being authoritarian that we didn't exercise authority."

Ironic, huh? But the fact is you just can't have it both ways. If you have soldiers on the ground you are an occupying power. If you try to pretend that you are not, things just get worse and you get blamed for it because, after all, you are the occupying power.

As I've said many times before, occupying forces win respect not by taking a hands-off approach, but by fulfilling their mission to restore basic services and promote a democratic political order. In short, the US occupation will be judged on the basis of what it achieves, not what its critics say during the first months of the occupation.

After all, if the US had been more assertive, the critics would now be saying that they are too assertive. Fact is, an occupying power cannot escape criticism. The euphoria of liberation cannot last. But we can wing enduring respect over time by giving the people of Iraq what they've never had before: freedom. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion