# Posted 9:02 PM by David Adesnik  

BBC=NYT? Andrew Sullivan suggests (hopes?) that the BBC will find itself as disgraced as the NYT was in the aftermath of the Jayson Blair scandal. For the moment, however, the BBC hasn't seen fit to change its ways. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:00 PM by Patrick Belton  

A NEW CURRENCY FOR A NEW IRAQ: Bremer has announced a new national currency, an independent central bank, and a budget for the rest of the year in which the largest line item is earmarked for improvements in the nation's electrical infrastructure.

Good for him. Those bills with Saddam's picture were getting a little old. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:54 PM by Patrick Belton  

THANK YOU, BRITISH PRESS, #135: from a story in The Scotsman entitled "Boys planned Matrix-inspired massacre,":

"The New Jersey trio were planning to kill randomly in the streets of Oaklyn, which has inhabitants."

(This, presumably, cannot be taken for granted with respect to mass teenage killing sprees in the Highlands....) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:35 PM by David Adesnik  

TAKING THE FUN OUT OF HARRY POTTER: As only the British and the NYT can. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:58 PM by David Adesnik  

YOU CAN'T BUY PUBLICITY LIKE THAT: Nothing has done more to make American soldiers look good than widespread fears of Saddam's return. Not long ago, all we heard about was the growing resentment directed at American forces. Now

The growing number of attacks on U.S. forces has also disquieted some Iraqis, who worry that rising casualty figures will prompt President Bush to start withdrawing troops before Hussein is caught and fighters loyal to him are rounded up.

"Inside every one of us there is the fear of what will happen if the American people start pushing their government because they are losing so many soldiers every day," said Fadhil Majid, an employee at a bridal shop in the Adhamiyah neighborhood. "If they decide to withdraw, what will happen to us? Saddam is still free. With all the [militiamen] around, what kind of life will we have?"

Ironically, though, it isn't the American people but rather the American soldiers who are interested in getting out of Iraq as fast as possible. (Ditto for the soldiers' wives.) I guess Mr. Majid has this war confused with Vietnam.

Speaking of which, another WaPo front pager has announced that US forces are

becoming enmeshed in a full-blown guerrilla war, military experts said yesterday.

While Colbert King is already calling for a roadmap out of Iraq, most of the individuals quoted in the WaPo and elsewhere seem to think that the real answer is to capture Saddam Hussein.

While I still think that the guerrilla threat is overrated, Phil Carter strongly disagrees. Given the tremendous respect I have for his opinions, Phil's post on the subject has led me to question my own beliefs.

Still, I think we are seeing more spin the substance -- except when it comes to our soldiers' morale. Their performance will deteriorate if they feel abandoned to a hostile population. Even if things aren't looking bad from on high, it is a rough existence on the ground in Baghdad. So let's give our armed forces the support they deserve by sending in enough troops and the right kind of troops to get the job done. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:46 AM by Patrick Belton  

CIVIC DISCOURSE AT OXFORD: The toilet (sorry, cloakroom) in the Radcliffe Camera has gone from advocating "No War" to proclaiming "No Warthogs," presumably also a controversial political stand in some quarters. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:50 PM by Patrick Belton  

ARAB INTELLECTUALS AND DEMOCRATIZATION WATCH: Brett Marston finds us this thoughtful analysis by the Frei Universitat's Amr Hamzawy, who currently is teaching at the University of Cairo. Among Dr. Hamzawy's conclusions after surveying the comments of reform-inclined Arab intellectuals with regard to democratization and the west, is this: "Despite some critical remarks on the West’s Middle East policy, the reformers are beginning to realise that the countries in question are pluralist nations whose foreign policy actions are continually being questioned and monitored by state and civic control bodies."

Furthermore, the lesson - that western democracies are acceptable models of democratic participation, even for those who disagree with American Mid-East policy - is spreading beyond the reformers to the street, according to Hamzawy. He points as evidence to the Saudi initiative of January 13th, in which the Saudi government promised a new social contract respecting the right to criticism of the government, expansion of political participation, and freedom from violence. In comparison, the conservatives' message - that an apocalyptic battle between Occident and Orient is brewing, and the West, ever the colonialist and crusader, is conspiratorially seeking to annihilate Arabs (beginning with the children of Palestine and Iraq), and all they hold holy - gradually is becoming as dated as it is comfortable. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:29 PM by Patrick Belton  

SOME PEOPLE have waaaaay too much fun with photoshop..... (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:00 PM by Patrick Belton  

THOMAS FRIEDMAN'S on vacation this week. They were going to rerun one of his old columns....but then they realized that's exactly what they do when he's not on vacation....

UPDATE: so this week, read this parody instead. (via Jeff Hauser, by email) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:06 PM by Patrick Belton  

YLS BOMBING UPDATE: The YDN and Hartford Courant are reporting that a grand jury has been impaneled to investigate former students or employees who may have a grudge against the law school. (Rumor has it they're starting with the five students in Yale Law history to receive grades of "P" during their time in New Haven. Folks - ahem, senators, professors, sirs - you know who you are, so be prepared.)

A former compsci department employee, with guns and books about explosives found in his house, is apparently under investigation, as is a University of Wisconsin-Madison student who last year was convicted for stealing materials worth $2.5 million from Beinecke. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:30 PM by Patrick Belton  

MEXICO TODAY UNDERGOES what are anticipated to be the second fully democratic national elections in the nation's history, as all 500 seats in the Camera de Diputados open for contest. (CNN, Reforma, WaPo, Brett Marston) Nuestros amigos y vecinos, les deseamos suerte y aún más éxitos en el futuro. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:22 PM by Patrick Belton  

AND THE RESULTS ARE IN: It's the moment you've all been waiting for - yes, the finals of Finland's 11th annual carry-your-wife-in-a-race-to-win-her-weight-in-beer-contest.

Estonia won. The "Estonian Carry" technique once again proved invincible.

And for all of you out there who might feel inclined to make light of such serious and competitive international sport, we could note that it is safer than England's dangerous roll-down-a-hill-with-seven-pounds-of-cheese-contest, or, heck, any of these. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:02 PM by David Adesnik  

OXBLOG VS. NYT -- NOW IT'S PERSONAL: On Friday, I had the pleasure of talking to NYT correspondent Sheryl Wu-Dunn and her adorable daughter Caroline, age 5. Also roaming about Oxford was Ms. Wu-Dunn's husband, Nick Kristof, of whom I have said many things, both good and bad.

Given the fierceness with which I have criticized Mr. Kristof on occasion, I actually felt embarrassed about going up and talking to him. While some might say that business is business and that no one should take it personally, I still think that one dare not forget that one is criticizing actual human beings with actual emotions.

The point here isn't that Nick Kristof would be hurt by anything I say, but rather that I don't want to be the kind of person who criticizes in a hurtful way. Admittedly, I am always far nicer to fellow bloggers than I am to professionals, even to hardcore liberals like Kos and Atrios. Still, running into Sheryl & Nick reminded me that you never really know who you're going to meet. And since it doesn't hurt to be civil, why not?

Now, it would be nice if I could end this warm and fuzzy post by saying something nice about the NYT as a whole. But I won't, since they went and pissed me off by printing something misleading and insulting about me. The collective "me", that is, in my incarnation as one of 250 current Rhodes Scholars.

In this article about the Rhodes Centenary, the NYT presents current scholars as selfish brats because of our alleged resentment of the Rhodes Trust's decision to donate £10 million for the benefit of South African children rather than spending it on extending our stay at Oxford.

In fact, almost none of the Scholars oppose the decision to support South African children. I, for one, am behind it 100%. In truth, our resentment of the Trust comes in response to the arrogance, incompetence, condescension and neglect we have encountered in the person of Dr. John Rowett, CEO of the Trust and the Warden of Rhodes House.

For the moment, I am going to hold back on fisking the NYT article, since the Scholars may decide on a collective response to the NYT's Blair-esque reporting. (Blair as in Jayson, not Tony, of course.) The only thing to be said in the NYT's defense is that the Times of London [no link] and the Independent got the story completely wrong as well.

However, given that the NYT cited two Scholars' response to the Independent (in the form of a letter to the editor [no link]), there is no excuse for its negligence. I guess firing Howell Raines wasn't enough.

CLARIFICATION: A fellow Scholar thought it might be wise to point out that my comments regarding the Warden do not reflect the official position of those Scholars (including myself) who signed the letter protesting his conduct. At present, the contents of that letter have not been made public. Thus, I am not in a position to let the readership of this website compare my personal opinion with that of my fellow Scholars. For the moment, the best I can do is assure you that my sentiments are little different from those of the overwhelming majority of Scholars I have personally spoken to. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:58 AM by David Adesnik  

THE USUAL SPIN: The NYT declares that the current ceasefire in the occupied territories is a victory for Israeli intransigence. Damn Israelis. Considering peace a victory for themselves. Next thing you know, they'll be trading land for peace. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:48 AM by David Adesnik  

SIGNS OF THE TIMES: At the moment, I'm sitting at a desk on the upper level of the EasyEverything internet center in central London (on Tottenham Court Road, for those of you who are interested.)

In addition to the usual signs informing users that no food or drink is allowed in the store, there is also a sign which says "No Sleeping Allowed". To its right is a sign which informs users that first aid is available at the Subway sandwich store downstairs. I guess that means that if someone is slumped over at one of the desks, they may be dead and not just resting.

I think I will go for a walk. By the way, this No Sleep and First Aid signs remind of my favorite internet center sign from Buenos Aires: "No Screaming Allowed". No, that wasn't for the benefit of those who had decided to sleep at their computers. It was a reminder to those playing Doom, Duke Nukem, et al. to stop disturbing the rest of us. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:10 AM by David Adesnik  

MUSLIMS KILLING MUSLIMS: The Middle East is not at war with the West. Rather, there is a three-way struggle for power going on in the Middle East, pitting murderous fundamentalists against brutal dictatorships against besieged democratic forces.

In Pakistan, a suicide bombing by Sunni extremists resulted in the death of 44 Shi'ites. The attack was both the first suicide bombing and the bloodiest sectarian assault in Pakistani history.

In Iraq, Ba'athist guerrillas murdered seven police cadets who had just graduated from an American training program.

These attacks have emphasized yet again that anti-democratic forces in the Middle East have no more regard for innocent Muslim life than they do for innocent Christian or Jewish life, including the twelve concert-goers murdered by a Chechen suicide attack yesterday in Moscow.

While there is no question that the democratic forces are the weakest of the contenders for power in the Middle East, their possession of the moral highground is becoming tragically self-evident. This ethical difference ought to remind American policymakers that only brave allies from abroad can salvage the democratic cause in the Middle East. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:16 PM by Patrick Belton  

DEMONSTRATING FOR A FREE IRAN: According to the Iranian students, solidarity protests are being organized around the world for July 9th. In the US, these include one in New York from 11-2 at the Ralph Bunche Park and Dag Hammarksjold Plaza (47th and 1st Avenue); in Washington, one will begin at 10:00 am at the West Front of the Capitol (with the participation of several Senators and administration officials), two in L.A. (on July 8th at 5:30 pm, and July 9th at 5:00 pm, both times outside the Federal Building in Westwood).

Texas has several: in Austin, at 6 pm in front of the Capitol; in Dallas, at 5 pm on Tuesday in front of the Kennedy Memorial and Sunday the 13th at 5 pm at the Intercontinental Hotel; and in Houston at 5 pm on Sunday the 13th at the Hilton on Westheimer Road.

A solidarity protest in London is scheduled for 2:30-4:30 Wednesday in front of Number 10. (Other protests are scheduled in Bern, Brussels, Paris, Oslo, Rome, and the Hague- please email us if you'd like details. All of the times listed above are for the 9th if not otherwise noted.)

As the students write, "please bring your friend(s) along." Do. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:26 PM by Patrick Belton  

DON'T SWEAT IT! Hot? Wishing you were, say, in a cool northern latitude like...Oxford... instead of sweltering it away in Washington, D.C. and other currently-tropical cities? Well, buck up! Others have it worse than you. (And finish your dinner, too, while you're at it - people are starving in Africa.)

That is, unless you live in Phoenix. In that case, actually, sorry: no one in America has it worse than you. This according to a recent study by Proctor & Gamble of sweat levels in different U.S. cities (so they can decide, among other things, where to market and stock higher levels of deoderant and cologne). The results?

In first place is Phoenix, Arizona; then come, in order, Houston, Miami, San Antonio, Fort Myers, Florida, West Palm Beach, and Tampa; rounding out the top ten are Waco, Austin, and N'Awlins.

So sorry, Chafetzes and Fishkins. At least you're not sweaty Phoenicians. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:16 PM by Patrick Belton  

AN ARMY OF LOTS MORE THAN ONE, PLEASE: Fred Kagan calls for much, much more attention to the insufficient current level of American military manpower relative to the nation's military commitments.

A few salient facts: Of the 495,000 troops in the U.S. Army, 370,000 are already deployed around the world. Compared with the normal requirement to have two units at home resting, training, and tending to stateside tasks for each unit deployed, we currently have the equivalent of over five of the Army's eleven divisions deployed overseas. Finally, we've been calling on our reservists to do the work of full-time soldiers: not a very good way of thanking unusually committed and patriotic citizens, many of whom have been called up for between once and two years, to the detriment of their families and civilian professions. And a number of crucial roles needed in tasks such as providing an interim government for Iraq- civil affairs, for instance - are disproportionately (upwards of 90 percent) concentrated in the reserve component - so as it stands now, lots of people won't be going back to their families, companies, or law schools any time soon. A heckuva nice way to treat our selfless volunteers.

Kagan estimates the Army needs a manpower increase of 25 percent. This basically coheres with other estimates. We'll hope that Congress and the Secretary of Defense heed his, and others', call.
(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:01 PM by Patrick Belton  

THE WEEKLY STANDARD'S AMIR TAHERI has a solid piece on democracy in the Arab world. After briefly surveying the principal canonical stages in Arab political development (monarchies, supplanted after 1948 by republics, which then evolved into authoritarian states relying to differing degrees on Islam to counteract the Khomeini-influenced oppositions who opposed their authoritarianism and corruption...), he offers this cogent analysis of prospects for democracy in Islamic political literature:

The failed model is the power state, known in Islamic literature as "saltana," whose legitimacy rests on the possession and use of the means of collective violence. In saltana, there are no citizens, only subjects, while the ruler is unaccountable except to God.

The only alternative to this failed model is what might be called the political state, whose legitimacy rests on the free expression of the citizens' will. Such a model could be based on what the 14th-century historian Ibn Khaldoun called "al-assabiyah," a secular bond among citizens. The key feature of this model is pluralism, known in modern Islamic political literature as "ta'adudiyah" and "kisrat-garai."

Both the Islamists and the secular authoritarians of the Arab world have persistently opposed the idea of bonding through citizenship. Nevertheless, Islamic political and philosophical literature offers a wealth of analyses that could be deployed in any battle of ideas against both the Islamist and secular enemies of pluralism. Both Farabi (d.950) and Avicenna (d. 1037), partly inspired by the work of the Mutazilite school, showed that there need be no contradiction between revelation and reason in developing a political system that responds to the earthly needs of citizens. On the contrary, because Islam places strict limits on the powers of the ruler, it theoretically cannot be used as the basis for tyranny.

One hopes our Arab brothers and sisters come to Taheri's conclusion, not that of Khomeini and his heirs.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:46 PM by Patrick Belton  

OTHER ADDITIONS TO OXBLOG'S SUGGESTED READING LIST FOR THIS WEEKEND: Foreign Affairs (.org, not .com, which is also an interesting website) has several awfully interesting pieces out in their current issue. Brandeis's Yitzhak Nakash writes on the direction Iraq's Shi'ites are likely to take, with respect to America, Iran, and the nation's other communities. And Kenneth Pollack has a piece on new security challenges in the Gulf now that Saddam is gone. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:40 PM by Patrick Belton  

ETHICS, FOREIGN POLICY, AND PRINCETON: I haven't yet had the opportunity to watch all of the webcasts from this conference on ethics and foreign policy that the Woodrow Wilson School hosted in April, but I'm looking forward very much to doing so. Their panelists include many of the people you'd most want to hear speaking on the topic - inter alia, Michael Walzer, Bill Kristol, Michael O'Hanlon, Dennis Ross, and Dick Ullman (a true elder statesman who made Rachel's and my night last night by sitting down with us in a corner of St Antony's and letting us pick his brain for about an hour...) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:25 AM by Patrick Belton  

NEWS FLASH: RACHEL HAS LEFT THE BUILDING. (Sniff.) Posting from me therefore will resume momentarily. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:53 PM by David Adesnik  

LOVE WILL NEVER BE THE SAME: Barry White passes on at age 58. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:50 PM by Patrick Belton  

IS IT THE FOURTH? (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:48 AM by David Adesnik  

LIBERIA: It is ironic that on this Fourth of July, the front pages of America's great newspapers are devoted to the chaos and rampant violence in Liberia, the one nation on earth founded by Americans who recognized that our independence was not theirs to share.

I agree wholeheartedly with the President that Liberia's unique history justifies international expectations that the United States will devote some of its greater power and wealth to restoring stability in that war-torn nation.

At the same time, I share the concerns of a military friend of mine who thinks that if we are already neglecting Afghanistan, it is absurd to take on the responsibility of policing a potential Somalia. As Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution has argued, the United States Armed Forces have been dangerously overstretched by deployments in Iraq, Afghanistan, Korea and the Balkans.

Thus, it comes as no surprise that the President has made Charles Taylor's resignation a precondition of American participation in an international peacekeeping force. Moreover, the President (wisely IMHO) wants to avoid another nation-building project by ensuring that the objective of the American peacekeepers will be to establish a minimal level of stability and then turn matters over to an international force.

Now, some might ask, why the United States should do anything in response to Kofi Annan's request that it restore order in Liberia, given how unhelpful Annan and the United Nations were regarding Iraq.

Fair enough. But it would be wiser to take advantage of the situation in Liberia to rebuild our relationship with the United Nations while exacting an important quid pro quo in return for our deployment. As Jim Hoagland argues in the WaPo, Annan should facilitate American intervention in Liberia by persuading other nations to commit substantial forces to the occupation of Iraq.

As David Ignatius suggests, the European Union can demonstrate the seriousness of its common defense and security policy by providing an effective peacekeeping and reconstruction force for Iraq. Thus, all Annan has to do is persuade the Europeans to get their act together so that the United States can send the Marines into Liberia without undercutting its deployments elsewhere.

Going into Liberia is the right thing to do. And if the EU and the UN cooperate, going into Liberia can also serve America's national interest.
(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:17 AM by David Adesnik  

MIRROR IMAGES: Since 1776, Americans have known that "because we are free, we cannot be indifferent to the fate of freedom elsewhere." The question remains, however, whether we can best share our freedom by serving as a model for others to emulate or, instead, by investing our wealth and power in the active promotion of freedom.

Often, American statesmen have sought to reconcile this contradiction between emulation and activism by asserting that freedom is a natural consequence of prosperity and that, therefore, trading with dictatorships will gradually result in the liberation of their subject-citizens.

Sadly, history has provided little validation for this optimistic belief. Instead, it is being challenged by one nation -- the People's Republic of China -- that is committed to demonstrating that the benefits of propserity and modernity can be enjoyed despite the total absence of political freedom.

While the dramatic growth of the Chinese economy has given substance to such assertions, there is not much reason to believe that the Chinese will be successful in the long run. However, rather than economic growth serving as a foundation for political freedom, I suspect that the absence of political freedom will ultimately undermine China's economic growth.

Perhaps the oligarchs in Beijing will be fortunate to stabilize the economy at a half-way point that provides their subjects with a decent way of life but no political freedom. What is more likely, I suspect, is that the Chinese state will come crashing down amidst the corruption, inefficiency and violence bred by the presence of dictatorship.

As such, the United States cannot afford to remain passive and look on as a spectator while the Chinese government conducts the most ambitious experiment in the history of social science. While the use of force is not possible, we must constantly speak out on behalf of freedom.

Thus, at this moment, if we are to celebrate this Day of Independence with a clear conscience, we must remember that as we speak, the Beijing dictatorship has begun to crush the freedom of that small outpost of civil liberty known as Hong Kong.

And so it must, because freedom cannot be contained. If Hong Kong lives free, the rest of China will demand nothing less. It is not prosperity that spreads freedom, but rather the exhiliration of knowing that others are free and prosperous. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:31 AM by David Adesnik  

REFLECTIONS ON INDEPENDENCE: No matter how imperfect our implementation of it, the Founders' vision for the United States of America continues to inspire all those whose struggle for freedom has not yet been won.

As an American, I find few things more inspiring than seeing how the ideals laid out in the Declaration of Independence are able to reach out across time and space, across cultures and religions, to provide consolation and encouragement for all those whose peoples are not yet free.

In that spirit, I have decided to reprint a short message I received yesterday from a friend born in the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire). In the space of a few sentences, he gives life to America's ideals in a way that few of us ever can.

To my American friends,

Happy Independence Day!

I first learnt of this date when I was 14 years old, when the national programme of my country (D. R. Congo) started getting pupils' minds open to world history and geography. In that same year I got interested in the history of the French Revolution. I then realised that peoples of different countries and times have always fought for independence, for self-determination and self-rule, for justice and equality for all, for freedom and for truth. If the leadership and the people are determined, their dream comes true, but if, unfortunately, they have a poor and corrupt leadership their dream fades away and never comes true.

May this day remind you of your nation, its past and present, and of similar fights and struggles in various parts of the world.

Peace to you all!

MK

Well said. Happy July 4th! (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:27 AM by David Adesnik  

RUMSFELD, SULLIVAN AND OXBLOG: On Sunday, I explored -- and ultimately rejected -- the suggestion that the war in Vietnam and the occupation of Iraq are similar projects. On Monday, Sec. Rumsfeld made the same point. On Wednesday, Andrew Sullivan reiterated my point that the American media treats every American war as if it were another Vietnam.

So? Maybe all those ".mil" hits are coming from the Secretary's office... (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:16 AM by David Adesnik  

IRAQ UPDATE: Boomshock puts Kevin Drum's pessimism in perspective, as well as offering some thoughtful comments on Zimbabwe. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:13 AM by David Adesnik  

REFLECTIONS ON A CENTURY: This year marks the 100th anniversary of the Rhodes Scholarship. To celebrate, the Rhodes Trust has organized four days of reunion events in Oxford and London, events that have drawn more than 1500 scholars (and their companions) back to the British Isles.

In general, I avoid commenting on the fact either that I am a Rhodes Scholar or on the significance of that fact to me. I do so because announcing that I am a Rhodes Scholar says very little about who I am or what I believe.

However, the Rhodes Scholarship is a recognizable landmark in American life. Thanks (or no thanks) to President Clinton and others, saying that one is a Rhodes Scholar has important connations, both positive and negative.

As my younger brothers never tire of reminding me, becoming a Rhodes Scholar entails a definite measure of self-promotion and self-aggrandizement. However, that is a very American perspective on the scholarship.

At Oxford, no one cares all that much if you are a Rhodes Scholar. There are 250 of us here at any given time, so everyone at Oxford has gotten used to seeing us on a regular basis. However, the culture of the Rhodes Scholarship entails constant reflection on what it means to have one's education paid for by the estate of Cecil John Rhodes.

Rhodes was the brutal imperialist who brought southern Africa into the British Empire and made his fortune on the broken backs of South Africa's native population. Thus, Rhodes Scholars never dare forget that their education is being paid for with blood-soaked cash.

Being a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford entails a burden of guilt and responsibility. Everytime we consider asking the trust for an increase in our stipend, the Rhodes e-mail list floods with messages discussing whether the necessary funds would be better spent on charitable works in South Africa.

Every time there is a formal dinner at Rhodes House, we ask whether we couldn't have fed hundreds of starving South African children instead of enjoying one more five-course banquet. No matter how many times we tell ourselves that we will redeem our scholarship through public service in the decades to come, we still ask whether we are doing enough right now to repair that damage that has already been done.

As such, one might expect that that the Rhodes Centenary would focus on this central dilemma of Scholarly life. But it has not. Last night in the Houses of Parliament, all 1500 guests at the reunion gathered for the privilege of being addressed by Tony Blair, Bill Clinton and Nelson Mandela, as well as brief remarks by the Chancellor of Oxford University, the Chairman of the Rhodes Board of Trustees, and the Chairman of the DeBeers diamond mining corporation (founded by Rhodes in the 1888).

All of the speakers were careful to point out that Rhodes was a very bad man who happened to do some very good things, such as endowing the Scholarship Fund. However, not one of them addressed the significance of that contradiction for those of us who have been educated at Rhodes' expense. Not one of them sought to explain how it is that a man whose wealth rested on the brutal exploitation of his workers could wax eloquent about the importance of encouraging young idealists to "fight the world's fight" and better the lot of all humanity.

While some might dismiss such concerns as anachronistic self-flagellation, the fact remains that such concerns still exert an overwhelming influence on the behavior of the Rhodes Trust. It is not just the Scholars but also the Trustees and the Warden who are in constant search of forgiveness.

Toward that end, the Trust has devoted £10 million to establishing the Mandela Rhodes Foundation, a charity focused on strengthening civil society in South Africa. As the Foundation's name implies, Mr. Mandela himself was deeply involved in its establishment and in setting its priorities.

While a number of the speakers at last night's event made passing remarks about how the names of Mandela and Rhodes is a sign of reconciliation and of "closing the circle" of South Africa history, none of the them addressed the fundamental perversity of naming the Foundation after both a brutal racist and the greatest living champion of racial justice and equality.

Given that Mr. Mandela himself has blessed the merger, it is hard to argue that joining his name with that of Rhodes' betrays Mr. Mandela's life work. Still, the question remains: What does the establishment of the Foundation say about those of us who continue to benefit from Rhodes' generosity but did nothing to liberate South Africa?

Are we forgiven? Can we now point to the Foundation and say that our obligation to the past has been fulfilled? Ideally, some sort of balance ought to be struck. On the one hand, it would be wrong to forget where the wealth of the Trust came from. On the other hand, we should be at least as comfortable with the Rhodes Trust as Mandela himself is.

Unfortunately, I don't know how such a balance can best be achieved. The constant hand-wringing of the Scholars currently on stipend is somewhat disingenuous, given that few of us will do much for South Africa except thinking about it.

All in all, I tend to prefer an American approach to the Scholarship. I applied for it believing that it is a Scholarship which rewards commitment to public service. It entails a commitment to the future, not to the past. If I devote my professional life to promoting democracy in the Middle East, that is no less valuable than promoting development and civil society in South Africa.

The lesson of Rhodes' life is not that I have some special obligation to the people of southern Africa, but rather that we still live in a world where vicious oppression destorys countless lives in Burma, in North Korea, throughout the Middle East, and in Central Africa, just north of Rhodes' erstwhile homeland.

Let's do something about that.


(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:14 AM by Patrick Belton  

ISRAEL DECLARES BBC PERSONA NON GRATA:
Saying distortions in the BBC's coverage of Israel rival the worst of Nazi propoganda, Israeli officials said that the Government Press Office, Foreign Ministry, and Prime Minister's Office would no longer grant BBC correspondents interviews or offer them services generally provided foreign journalists.
(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:19 PM by David Adesnik  

NATION BUILDING: Yesterday, I referred in passing to Greg Djerejian's suggestion that the US military should train its own corps of nation builders rather than depend on international forces. Phil Carter also thinks that's a good idea, and point out that Fareed Zakaria agrees as well. Me three.

NB: Greg's permalinks aren't working, so scroll down to "Constabulatory Duties and the Warrior Ethos". Also, in yesterday's post on the occupation of Iraq, I exaggerated Greg's support for a greater UN role. He'd like to see more cooperation, but agrees that the US should be firmly in charge. (2) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:10 PM by David Adesnik  

SPEAK OF THE DEVIL: Kevin Drum expressed his concern yesterday that the US is appointing too many Ba'athists to influential posts in occupied Iraq. Then today, American forces arrested the mayor of Najaf, a former military official, on charges of corruption and kidnapping.

So does that mean we're appointing Saddam's henchmen to high office, or that we're able to recognize and correct our mistakes with reasonable speed and accuracy? I tend to favor the second explanation, given that we haven't heard much about Ba'athists being appointed to high office.

Paul Bremer seems to be rather fixated on de-Ba'athification, so I imagine that lower-level officials are mindful of its importance as well. In Najaf, for example, the mayor's arrest apparently came in respone to public dismay with his Ba'athist past.

It also wouldn't surprise me if the WaPo's recent article on reinstated Ba'athists had something to do with the arrest in Najaf. In fact, the WaPo explicitly identified the mayor of Najaf as a former Ba'athist whose reinstatment had led to popular resentment.

While it would be better if occupation forces acted even before the media let them know what was wrong, it is still quite remarkable that a single article (probably) led to immediate action. Often, the government does nothing until it is avalanched with negative press coverage. Thus, the occupation forces's apparent responsiveness demonstrates a real commitment to promoting democracy Iraq. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:50 PM by David Adesnik  

OUTSIDE IRAQ: While things in Iraq are going better than expected, the Administration is adrift almost everywhere else.

As a candidate, the President criticized his predecessor for his excessive personalization of US diplomacy, i.e. depending on single figures such as Yeltsin rather than building a strong overall relationship with Russia. Yet in Russia, Pakistan and Afghanistan, Bush has fallen prey to Clinton's old habit.

When it comes to more peripheral regions such as Africa, Latin America and (for the moment) East Asia, the Administration seems to have no strategy at all. But that much is to be expected.

Few American presidents have ever developed a truly global strategy. Nixon and Kissinger did, but theirs was worse than none at all. So let's just hope that our ambassadors and assistant secretaries of state are ready to face regional challenges without much guidance from above. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:06 PM by David Adesnik  

DOWNSIDE UP: Yesterday, I commented with surprise on a strong preference for the GOP among small donors to political campaigns. Alas, my surprise has exposed my ignorance of campaign finance to the entire blogosphere.

As JAT points out,

It's not surprising that small donors are heavily favoring Republicans. They always do. This has been true since at least the 1910s. I remember my US History books specifically pointing out this fact.

People who actually are small donors still have to have enough excess cash to really consider contributing. The Republicans have always had a strong advantage among a broad section of the fairly rich-- the upper middle class, lower upper class, et al. The Democrats have generally had support from the broadly poor and a relatively small number of highly committed supporters among the superrich.

Even back in the 1920s, the Democratic Party funds were mostly financed from a mere handful of people. Eugene McCarthy's 1968 campaign was primarily financed by just a handful of people, such as Stewart Mort and Jack Dreyfus Jr. (This explains why he was also a plantiff in Buckley v. Valeo, challenging the campaign finance limits of the time. He still argues that being able to raise money from such a small group of people is much less corrupting than having to raise money from so many different interest groups.) By contrast, Barry Goldwater was the first politician to raise significant amounts of his presidential campaign funds in small amounts through direct mail. To be fair, George McGovern followed in his footsteps and was also very successful at this method.

The Republican Party has *always* had an edge in direct hard money contributions from many different individuals in small amounts. The Democratic Party has always been able to equalize only with massive soft money contributions from the very wealthy, such as celebrities. This why McCain-Feingold is so, so damaging to the Democrats, unless they find ways around it.

JVL adds

Not to quibble, but the only aspect of this story that resembles a yoga asana is the failure of the WaPo to notice the phenomenon [of GOP predominance] until now. Ever since the Reagan landslide of 1984, the GOP has scored the bulk of its hard money from small donors. Ron gave the RNC a mailing list that Terry McAu[liffe] would kill for. No fault of yours that this may be news. In 1984, you were creating in Legos, not blogs.

N.B. Not a hint of condescension there. I have yet to discover that having been born when Cal Coolidge was gearing up to run for re-election confers any eminence upon said dodderer.

Ah, Silent Cal. If only modern Presidents had the good sense to keep their thoughts to themselves more often.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:12 PM by David Adesnik  

FUBAR IN BAGHDAD: CalPundit and Tacitus think that the occupation has spun out of control. I don't. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:01 PM by David Adesnik  

OBJECTIVITY: Daniel and Eugene comment on bias in the blogosphere. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:56 PM by David Adesnik  

THE GUERILLA MYSTIQUE: Criticism of the American occupation of Iraq is widespread. While much of it comes from those who have long insisted (or implied)that an American occupation must fail, some of it comes from those who are passionately committed to promoting democracy in Iraq but believe that the United States is not doing enough.

The editors of both the Washington Post and The New Republic fall into the latter category. Even though I am committed to hearing out both the constructive and the destructive critics, I have found it harder and harder and to take the latter seriously as a result of their Vietnam mindset. However, when the WaPo and TNR criticize the occupation I take their observations very seriously.

Recent criticism from the WaPo and TNR is all the more surprising because my own interpretation of the public record suggests that the occupation is going better than expected. Moreover, Josh is at least as optimistic as I am, if not moreso.

So what's going on? First and foremost, the rising casualty toll and persistence of guerrilla warfare has persuaded even supporters of the occupation that something is going seriously wrong. Second, the Pentagon's decision to have combat troops serve as peacekeepers suggests that one can trace much of the chaos in Iraq to the occupation forces' lack of appropriate training.

On the first point, I think that the WaPo and TNR may have fallen prey to media spin. The headlines coming out of Iraq are almost entirely negative. For example:

• Experts Question Depth of Victory
• Iraqi Ambushes Beset Troops
• British Trust in Iraqi Militia Proved a Fatal Miscalculation

And those are just the headlines from Friday's WaPo. By themselves, none of these headlines are inaccuate or misleading. Yet taken together, they indicate the inability of even top-flight journalists to put the military situation in a broader perspective.

As you might have guessed, I think the guerrilla threat is not all that serious. I tend to agree with this former Marine officer who argues that the Ba'athist insurgents have already demonstrated their incompetence as military strategists. In short, he argues that the Ba'athist offensive is extremely premature, given the overwhelming American forces still on the ground in central Iraq.

Without sounding like a kneejerk reactionary, I would like to suggest that the American media -- including moderate, mainstream, responsible publications such as the WaPo -- are still imprisoned in a Vietnam mindset. In contrast to those conservatives who constantly attack the mainstream media, I do not believe that this Vietnam mindset is part and parcel of a pervasive but unacknowledged left-liberal agenda.

Rather, much of this mindset reflects an honest but misguided effort to learn the lessons of history. If Vietnam were the only guerrilla war ever fought (in addition, perhaps, to those in El Salvador and Nicaragua) one might fairly conclude that American generals consistently underestimate the popular support and tactical sophistication of their opponents. Yet quite often, government forces destroy overconfident and unprepared insurgents.

Recently, I have been giving a lot of thought to the Vietnam-Iraq analogy thanks to Neil Sheehan's masterful work on the Vietnam War, A Bright Shining Lie. After confronting the depths of ignorance and incompetence that led to the fall of Saigon, it is ridiculous to suggest that the Ba'athist any surgents can mount any sort of challenge to American occupation forces.

In Vietnam, the United States was supporting a brutal regime that showed total disregard for its citizens' lives, economic welfare, and political rights. In contrast, the Viet Cong demonstrated an impressive concern for the people of Vietnam despite committing some appalling atrocities.

In Iraq, the United States has brought down a regime that strongly resembles the one its supported in Saigon. The occupation forces are also doing far more for the people of Iraq than even the Viet Cong did for the people of Vietnam. Even so, the unexpectedly swift fall of the Ba'athist government ensured that thousands of its supporters would fade into the woodwork, along with considerable amounts of military equipment.

Sad to say, even a flawless assault on the Ba'athist remnants will cost the lives of scores of American soldiers, even hundreds. No question, some of those lives might have been saved had Coalition forces launched their counterinsurgency campaign immediately after the fall of Baghdad. But in the long-run, a month-and-a-half delay is insignificant. With the postwar casualty toll standing at 23, it's hard to say that the US could be doing much better.

Which brings us to the second trend that has disturbed the democracy promotion advocates at TNR and the WaPo: the decision to employ combat troops as peacekeeping forces. Unsurprisingly, this decision has opened the Pentagon to ample criticism of its unpreparedness to face the realities of postwar Iraq. And such criticism is well-deserved. In fact, I agree wholeheartedly with Greg Djerejian's suggestion that the military should equip and train several divisions for the explicit purpose of peacekeeping and reconstruction.

Along with the WaPo and TNR, Greg think that our troops unpreparedness is an ex post facto vindication of those who insisted that the UN play a greater role in the occupation of Iraq. I wouldn't go that far. Yet while I stand by my argument that a strong UN voice would derail the occupation, I do recognize that peacekeeping damages soldiers' morale and that it wouldn't hurt to bring in UN or NGO officials with experience in Bosnia and Kosovo.

That said, I think that Coaltion forces have been doing an impressive job regardless of their insufficient training. Why? Because American soldiers instinctively put their democratic values into practive. Would further training improve these soldiers' efficiency and morale? Absolutely. Yet I suspect that chaos would still abound even with the best-trained forces in Baghdad.

What matters now is patience. If the President ensures that rebuilding Iraq stays at the top of the American agenda, we can overcome those errors that have already been made. While TNR and the WaPo are right to be concerned about the state of affairs in Iraq, the progress we have already made suggests that a long-term commitment to promoting democracy in Iraq will be well worth the effort.


(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:41 PM by Daniel  

SOME OF HIS BEST FRIENDS ARE JEWISH. The Telegraph and the London Times pick up the story of Oxford Professor Andrew Wilkie's rejection of Amit Duvshani's PhD application. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:17 PM by David Adesnik  

SCALIA ON GAY MARRIAGE: Andrew Sullivan comments. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:58 AM by David Adesnik  

SAYS WHO? You might have figured out by now that I like guessing games. So ask yourself who said the following:

1) "overshadowing the military achievement [in Iraq] is the failure -- so far -- to find, or explain the absence of, weapons of mass destruction that were the necessary and sufficient justification for preemptive war. The doctrine of preemption -- the core of the president's foreign policy -- is in jeopardy."

2) "Whatever legitimacy preventive war may claim derives from intelligence reliable enough to persuade responsible people, including allies, that the supposed enemy is really about to strike the United States. If no WMD turn up in Iraq, President Bush will lose a lot of credibility. It seems doubtful that he would be able to lead the American people into wars against Iran or North Korea simply on his presidential say-so."

Turns out the first quote is from George Will, the second from Arthur Schlesinger Jr., the erstwhile JFK advisor and inveterate Democratic mouthpiece.

The surprising resemblance of Will and Schlesinger's views underlines an important aspect of the WMD debate that has often been ignored. While there is little substance to accusations that Bush & Co. invented the Iraqi threat, the President will have to overcome much greater skepticism if he ever asks either the American people or foreign governments to trust his judgment on a matter of fact.

Even if no WMD is found, Bush will be safe at the polls. But America may have its hands tied abroad. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:19 AM by David Adesnik  

UPSIDE DOWN: Bush is setting fund-raising records in California while small donors across the nation are heavily favoring Republicans over Democrats. What is the world coming to? (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:06 AM by David Adesnik  

AMERICAN DOLLARS FOR TERRORISTS: Jim Hoagland blasts the President's hypocritical embrace of Pakistan. Sadly, the Administration seems unable to recognize that Musharraf is not a provider of stability, but rather a corrupt and incompetent fool who promotes violent fundamentalism, launches terrorist attacks on his Indian neighbors and destroys democracy.

UPDATE: Greg Djerejian thinks that Americans fail to appreciate just how much Musharraf did for us right after Sept. 11th. Fair enough. Still, I think Greg substantially exaggerates the degree to which Musharraf risked his own political well-being in the process of aiding the United States. The people of Pakistan may resent "Busharraf" for his ties to the United States, but they resent him much more for being an incompetent and corrupt dictator. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:02 AM by David Adesnik  

LIKE A BLOG OUT OF HELL: Six days have passed since my last substantive post on this site. My inbox is overflowing. My ignorance is apalling.

Countless news cycles have spun by in my time away from the web. And yet life goes on. To my surprise, it is possible to live -- and live well -- without being constantly plugged in to the information superhighway.

The pinnacle of the past six days has been the Magdalen Commemoration Ball, an all-night celebration of indulgent excess that takes place only once every three years. Its atmosphere ranges from the elegant to the ridiculous, from white tie and tails to barbecue and bumper cars. Admission comes at the price of One Hundred English Pounds.

While I might have been tempted to skulk away from the cocktail bar and fireworks show to post my latest thoughts on the reconstruction of Iraq or peace in the Middle East, I did not have that option. Given the intense demands for electricity generated by three sound stages and all sorts of other entertainment paraphrenalia, the college authorities shut down the computer center in order to save power.

But now I am back and raring to go, ready to take on the world like a blog out of hell. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 2:42 AM by Patrick Belton  

NEWS BULLETIN: Rachel's in Oxford - woo-hoo! (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 2:42 AM by Patrick Belton  

HA'ARETZ ON JERUSALEM'S 4-YEAR OLD ARABIC-HEBREW BILINGUAL SCHOOL: This is precisely the sort of thing all people of good will need to be supporting..... (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:00 AM by Daniel  

BILL KELLER ON DIVERSITY. He acknowledges the many shades of gray in the affirmative action debate and demonstrates that it does not follow left/right lines.

The column introduced a quote from Stanley Fish which I thoroughly enjoyed. Referring to the problem of stigmas (something Josh and Clarence Thomas disdain about affirmative action), Fish stated: "the low self-esteem that comes from wondering if your success was based on merit is probably preferable to the low self-esteem that comes from never getting a chance to succeed in the first place." In this sense affirmative action, despite its flaws, is the least worst option. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 2:14 AM by Patrick Belton  

TROUBLING IF TRUE: Little Green Footballs point out this letter, in which - assuming it is authentic - an Oxford professor refuses to consider advising an Israeli doctoral applicant because of his Israeli citizenship:

From: "Andrew Wilkie" awilkie@worf.molbiol.ox.ac.uk
To: "Amit Duvshani"
Sent: Monday, June 23, 2003 9:58 AM
Subject: Re: PhD application

Dear Amit Duvshani,

Thank you for contacting me, but I don't think this would work. I have a huge problem with the way that the Israelis take the moral high ground from their appalling treatment in the Holocaust, and then inflict gross human rights abuses on the Palestinians because they (the Palestinians) wish to live in their own country.

I am sure that you are perfectly nice at a personal level, but no way would I take on somebody who had served in the Israeli army. As you may be aware, I am not the only UK scientist with these views but I'm sure you will find another suitable lab if you look around.

Yours sincerely,
Andrew Wilkie

Nuffield Professor of Pathology,
Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine,
The John Radcliffe,
Headington,
Oxford OX3 9DS,
UK.

Tel (44)-1865-222619
Fax (44)-1865-222500

A FINAL UPDATE: Ha'aretz picks up the story, and Oxford's formal apology to Mr. Duvshani (though, somewhat inexplicably, they refer to him as seeking an internship). (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:59 AM by Patrick Belton  

THERE'S A TRUCE! HAMAS FOUNDER SHEIKH YASSIN CALLS FOR A CESSATION OF HOSTILITIES AGAINST ISRAEL BY ALL PALESTINIAN GROUPS.

Responses: Israel (skeptical), US (positive), France (supportive of Hamas no matter what), EU (pissy). (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:35 PM by Patrick Belton  

DEFINITELY WORTH A (FAR)READ: That is, Foreign Policy's new issue on rebuilding Iraq. Among others, there are pieces from Marina Ottaway, Tom Carothers, Bob Kagan, Husain Haqqani, and Minxin Pei.

These are all worthy of further comment, but for the moment I need to post quietly, because my happily-frequent roommate Josh is grabbing some shuteye in the other room. On the other hand, sunrise over the half-completed annex going up outside the window of his room in Merton is dazzling and beautiful. (Perhaps all the dust being kicked up into the atmosphere by the construction...) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:22 PM by Patrick Belton  

SAUDI ARABIA LECTURES THE WEST ON HUMAN RIGHTS: From the Saudi Kingdom and its embassy in London, we now have a set of Questions and Answers about Human Rights. Occasionally, we in the west may get confused on questions of human rights - which, after all, are thorny and complex. Fortunately, we have the house of Sa'ud to explain all these knotty issues to us: (This via MEMRI)

Q: "Why is Saudi Arabia often criticized in the media for violating human rights?"

A: "Human rights, as a concept, did not suddenly [come into] the world in the form of a sacred revelation. The theory of human rights evolved slowly and is still evolving. A century ago, it was difficult to recognize in Europe anything like the human rights of modern Europe. Saudi Arabia does not see fit to accept the latest version of the West's version of human rights. Saudi Arabia has its own vision.

Q: "Why can women not travel freely and alone within Saudi Arabia?"

A: "This phenomenon is not limited to Saudi Arabia. This custom prevails in many Muslim countries. There is a religious basis for it: the Prophet Mohammad said that no women should travel for more than one night without her husband or a Mahram, for example, her father, son, or uncle. Some Muslim scholars believe that the Prophet's instruction was based on the unsafe travel conditions of the time. They argue that as travel is no longer risky, that injunction does not apply. However, religious scholars in Saudi Arabia do not accept this interpretation, and neither do the majority of the Saudi people. This is not a matter of government decree; it is a matter of deep personal belief."

Q: "....Now that you mention Islam, why is it that Saudi Arabia does not allow the followers of other religions the freedom to practice their faiths in Saudi Arabia?"

A: "Anyone in Saudi Arabia is entitled to his own beliefs and practices. But Saudi Arabia cannot allow the public practice of any religion which contradicts Islam. Saudi Arabia is a special place: it is the cradle of Islam and the Prophet Mohammad declared it a preserve of Islam. A lot of the so-called dissidents want all non-Muslims thrown out of Saudi Arabia. But the government takes a far more moderate stance.

Q: "....But Saudi Arabia's courts lack the basic minimum standards of justice."

A: "Britain is only familiar with the Western system of justice and cannot envisage any other. The West's judicial system is the result of its own historic evolution and so is Saudi Arabia's. According to Saudi tradition there are no juries, nor are there likely to be in the future. Lawyers are not an integral part of the system. One can bring a lawyer but that is optional. We don't consider the presence of lawyers a prerequisite for the delivery of justice."

Q: "But without a jury and a lawyer what guarantee to a fair trial does the accused have?"

A: "A good question. In Saudi Arabia the judge acts, in effect, as the defendant's lawyer. He challenges every piece of evidence presented by the prosecution. Unlike judges in the West who simply act as umpires leaving the prosecution team and the defense team to influence the jury, our judges consider themselves personally accountable to God for every judgment they make. If a judge condemns to death a man who is innocent – the judge faces eternal divine punishment and he knows that. Among God-fearing men this is a mighty safeguard."

I'm convinced. Dunno about you. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:57 PM by Patrick Belton  

DON'T JUST DO SOMETHING, SIT THERE: CalPundit has a wonderful post on differences between the British and U.S. press relationships with senior officeholders. His gist: US politicians are permitted (i.e., by the press and the rules of their game) to dodge questions and avoid press appearances, while British prime ministers must skillfully handle hostile, well-prepared, and dogged interviewers. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:44 PM by Patrick Belton  

A PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT TO OUR READERSHIP: Every one of you, right now, and yes that means you there, need to go without any delay and register online in the Federal Trade Commission's new do-not-call registry, debuted today. Telemarketers who do not remove registrants from their rolls by October 1st may be fined up to $10,000 for their unwelcome calls at dinner. (More information: FTC, WashPost.) This is one populist bill I can heartily thank God, or at least the Congress for. Bloggers (and members of the press), spread the word.... (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:49 AM by Patrick Belton  

SENATOR THURMOND died last night, at 100.

His politics were not my politics, but I had the pleasure of meeting him several times when I worked in Senator Chuck Robb's legislative office. He was a quintessential Southern gentleman who would always generously spare moments for a skinny 22-year old, a flirt who could often be seen walking to Union Station with female interns under each arm, and who once whisked two female colleagues away from a friend of mine with the promise to demonstrate how a gentlemen charmed the opposite sex. Such behavior would have been unthinkable from a younger man, but for Senator Thurmond, well, everyone understood he was being Ol' Strom, and played along. He was a segregationist, but his views changed, and people must be allowed the chance to change for the better - as he did.

An age dies with him. We are better without its worst aspects, and have fortunately learned to treat each other more fully as humans, and as brothers and sisters. But we would do well to recall, and perhaps to imitate, its charm, honor, and graciousness, as they were instantiated so well by the senior senator from South Carolina. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:31 AM by Patrick Belton  

LOOK FOR mostly amusing ancedotes and such bits out of me for three or four days (i.e., soft-core OxBlog) while I finish up a few articles and bits of my thesis, then back right away to more substantive posting (hard-core OxBlog).

After all, how am I supposed to write or blog when I'm on the road, travelling...okay, in Oxford. As a personal note, it's incredibly nice to be back here, seeing many of my closest friends, and being reminded that this place really exists, and isn't merely a fiction of my delirium. At the very least, Oxford is a fiction which manypeople share.....

My first anecdote, however, isn't very amusing at all. It's about an incredibly disturbing incident that took place in Oxford, and was covered in the non-OxBlog Oxford student publication, Cherwell. Cherwell reports that Maxwell's bar in Oxford (37 Queen Street) served ground glass, mixed in a cocktail, to Oxford student Emma Phillips. She subsequently spent the night in John Radcliffe Infirmary, and in x-rays the bottom of her stomach was shown to be lined with glass. The only immediate action taken by the bar? To offer her two free jugs of cocktails. (Yeah, like she's going to drink those....) The manager on duty insisted there was nothing more he could do. However, after time passed, he relented and generously agreed to pay for a taxi to take Ms. Phillips to hospital. (For those of you who have lived in the UK, this will be instantly recognizable as an instance of Anglo-institutional rationality.)

Finall, the excruciatingly painful quote to carry around with you the rest of the day: "Philips had all but finished the drink before she realised that the crunching sensation in her mouth could not be ice."

Anyone in Oxford who reads this who doesn't immediately boycott Maxwell's, well, should. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 3:04 PM by Daniel  

JOSH, YOU ARE RIGHT that I have no way of 100% knowing that affirmative action gave Thomas an opportunity he otherwise would not have had. You are far better versed in legal scholarship than I am, but here is some other evidence: if I am not mistaken, in 1991 the American legal community expressed apprehension about Thomas's clear lack of experience--he had only served two years as a federal judge. Would that allow me to say that he may have been qualified but not a likely candidate given the fact that several other prospective justices had far more experience than he?

My knowledge of history goes back to the late 1980s/early 1990s, so your antebellum reference did not register too well with me. Was there a program in place in the 1850s which looked at qualified black and white candidates and then chose white candidates based in part on the discrimination against them in the past and present? As far as I am concerned, the moral and political distinctions between slavery and affirmative action clouds any analogies.

I am not calling Thomas or our friend from the 1850s "barking mad." Of course black people can criticize affirmative action. When did I argue that they could not?

I do disagree with you over affirmative action--I think that right now, the benefits of affirmative action outweigh the costs but do hope that we can reach the point where it is no longer necessary. We just aren't there yet, as far as I am concerned. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:45 PM by David Adesnik  

ADESNIK AND CHAFETZ DOMINATE AMERICAN MEDIA: This article mentions Patrick as well. Read the whole thing! (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:55 AM by Patrick Belton  

NARCO AND TERRORISM: Time has a fairly good analysis of some of the dynamics relating to Hamas's ceasefire.

On a completely different note, upwards of 90 percent of banknotes in circulation in Europe betray traces of cocaine, from users having rolled up the notes at some point in the notes' history to form a tube for snorting. (Any readers who want to correct my technical description, please feel free.) The Spanish peseta and Irish pound, followed by the German deutschmark, had the most widespread levels of cocaine contamination in a test run by the EU shortly before the introduction of the euro. Now that the euro has been released, the concentration of cocaine on euro notes from Spain was found in a test to be one hundred times that on euro notes from Germany. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:15 PM by Daniel  

WHAT HORRORS? Josh, I don't think Dowd has a problem with the idea of black conservatives in general. She just has a problem with one in particular. Was her quote from Thomas' 1987 speech inaccurate?

Sure, the shot against Gonzales was unneccesary, since Gonzales might just be the most qualified man for the job, but I don't have a problem with her legitimate lambasting of Thomas. Why not look at Thomas as an example of the benefits of affirmative action--he was a qualified candidate for law school and later jobs who, because of affirmative action, was given an opportunity that he otherwise might not have had? (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:14 PM by David Adesnik  

OXBLOG REUNION! Finally, Josh, Patrick and David all in the same place at the same time. The place is Josh's spacious apartments in the graduate annexe of Merton College.

The time is now.

United as one, we have performed the sacred Oxford ritual of purchasing chips & cheese at 1:30am from Hassan, the Lord High Commissioner of Kebab.

As we should have pointed out long ago, the British stopped referring to them as "French Fries" long before any Americans did. Moreover, they refer to it as "snogging" rather than "French kissing"

Contrary to the predictions of organizational theory, the presence of all three OxBlog contributors in one place has not led to any increase whatsoever in our collective efficiency.

(This may have something to do with the fact that Josh insists on watching over my shoulder as I write this post. You'd think Josh would know that Communism doesn't work.)

Anyhow, instead of blogging, we have done many productive things, such as eating in Kurdish restaurant and watching Harlem Nights, a Richard Pryor/Eddie Murphy flick from a few years back. (4 stars out of 5!)

So there. Don't our lives sound fun? Damn right they are. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 3:31 PM by David Adesnik  

LIGHT SWEET CRUDE: The Post's Outlook section has an in-depth explanation of why this war isn't about oil. The basic points will be familiar to readers of the TNR piece which OxBlog linked to a while back. In short, going to war for oil just doesn't make economic sense, either for individual firms or for the US government. The Post article has a few strongpoints, though, which the TNR piece doesn't. First, it's written by Daniel Yergin, who won a Pultizer for his book on oil and power in the Middle East. Second, it contains a lot more solid evidence, especially concerning Iraq's role within the global oil market. Happy wonking. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:10 PM by Patrick Belton  

NOVELIST LEON URIS, author of Exodus among other notable books, died today at 78. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:12 PM by David Adesnik  

A DECADE OF SUFFERING AND STRENGTH: Andrew Sullivan marks the tenth anniversary of his struggle with HIV. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:56 PM by David Adesnik  

ROADMAP SCHOLARS: Intelligent updates from Reason of Voice, Kesher Talk and Belgravia Dispatch. [BD's permalinks are broken, so scroll down to "Roadmap Implementation Watch".] (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:45 PM by David Adesnik  

THE PERSONAL IS POLITICAL: Better known to OxBlog readers as the creator of Boomshock, Robert Tagorda has just published a fascinating essay in The American Spectator on his experiences as a Filipino American confronting the idiosyncratic arbitrariness of affirmative action.

While my knowledge of the law consists of nothing more than common sense, I think that Robert's essay provides a compelling illustration of why the Supreme Court chose to strike down all affirmative action programs that treat human beings as numbers rather than complex individuals. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:18 PM by David Adesnik  

AFFIRMATIVE ACTION: Commentary on the Court's rulings from Jack Balkin and Eugene Volokh. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:15 PM by Patrick Belton  

ISLAM AND DEMOCRACY: Last night, our D.C.-based Nathan Hale foreign policy group hosted a discussion on the prospects for democratization in the Muslim world. Will Baude posts notes on our discussion here. (And here's what we'd been reading on the subject.) I'll look forward very much to hearing your thoughts!.

On a somewhat related note, there's a new free monthly bulletin Carnegie has just begun, to track and analyze reform and democratization developments in the Arab world. You can subscribe to the on-line version here. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:33 AM by Patrick Belton  

BASHAR ON IRAQIS IN SYRIA AND THE PEACE PROCESS: Syrian president Bashar Al-Assad gave a recent interview on Al-Arabiyya. Some highlights:

On not cooperating with the US about Iraqi ex-officials from the Saddam regime presently in Syria: "One official entered Syria under a false name, but not from Iraq - from another country. We learned about him from the Americans, who asked that we extradite him, but we refused. I think he was captured later in Iraq. We did not turn over, and will not turn over, anyone to the Americans. There may be [Iraqi officials in Syria that we are unaware of]. Anything is possible. It's impossible to stop the movement of goods and people between the countries. [If we capture any of them], we'll send them back to Iraq. We won't do anything to them. We won't turn them over to anyone."

On Syria's non-cooperation with the peace process: "They (the U.S.) did not require Syria's presence, because Syria is irrelevant to the issue and because we do not agree to the proposals..."

On Syria's supposed benevolence toward the Palestinian people: "When we adopt the [Palestinian] problem, we do it in accordance with the desire of the Palestinian citizen, whose problem it is. We cannot agree to anything that contradicts it, even if we believe in it, and we cannot oppose anything the Palestinian citizen believes in."

Incidentally, the last point belies one of the unstated cruelties of the Arab world: Arab governments' treatment of their Palestinian refugees. Of the 3.5 million UNRWA-registered refugees in Arab countries, only the 1.5 million in Jordan are granted the basic rights of citizenship of the nation in which they reside. This act of humanity is particularly striking for Jordan, a country which is beset by a simmering question of competing Jordanian and Palestinian identities given the fact that Palestinians have come to constitute 60 percent of the Jordanian population. The 373,000 stateless Palestinians living in Lebanon are not allowed to attend public school, own property, or even improve their housing stock. The Lebanese government is even planning to revoke citizenship rights to Palestinians who were granted Lebanese citizenship in 1994. Marginalization of Palestinian refugees in the Arab world does nothing to diminish radicalism or improve the lot of a people whose human suffering has been great. Arab countries are quite happy to treat them as pawns, to clothe themselves in the symbolic legitimacy of their cause while acting in quite atrocious ways to the actual Palestinians, who often live (as in Lebanon) in refugee camps where they face horrific public health, minimal prospects of education or employment, and are instead maintained in as much of a marginalized status as possible to augment their stateless status and maintain pressure on Israel. If Arab governments were only as good as their people, they might remember with the Palestinians the meaning of the phrase "Ahlan wa Sahlan" - "When you cross our threshold you are one of our family, and you have stepped on even ground."
(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:23 PM by David Adesnik  

NOTHING NEW UNDER THE SON: We have not found weapons of mass destruction. Thoughtful critics have begun to charge the Administration with practicing pervasive deception. Much of the furor centers around an investigative report in The New Republic, which reaches the damning conclusion that President Bush

has engaged in a pattern of deception concerning the most fundamental decisions a government must make. The United States may have been justified in going to war in Iraq--there were, after all, other rationales for doing so--but it was not justified in doing so on the national security grounds that President Bush put forth throughout last fall and winter. He deceived Americans about what was known of the threat from Iraq and deprived Congress of its ability to make an informed decision about whether or not to take the country to war.

But compare TNR's allegations to the more precise criticism offered by Josh Marshall:

It's suddenly become acceptable to discuss what everyone knew for the last year or so: that is, that the administration was willfully misrepresenting the evidence both on WMD and a purported link to al Qaida.

At first, Marshall's criticism comes across as a repetition of the TNR allegations. But it isn't. Marshall is accusing the administration of engaging in deceptive salesmanship, not wholesale fabrication of an Iraqi threat. As Marshall observes in The Hill:

There were really two WMD debates. One was about chemical and low-end biological weapons. The other was about smallpox, nukes, al Qaeda and pretty much everything else under the sun.

On the former, the White House didn’t hoodwink anyone, since virtually everyone in the foreign policy mainstream figured that Iraq at least maintained a chemical and biological weapons capacity. I certainly thought so.

At a minimum, there was solid circumstantial evidence to believe that they did. Frankly, there still is.

If there still is solid evidence that Saddam had chemical and biological weapons, then Saddam was in material breach of Resolution 1441. Do those words sound strange to you? "Material breach"? "Resolution 1441"?

They should. Because the question everyone is now asking is "Did Bush lie?" rather than "Did the United States have good cause to invade Iraq without the express written consent of the Security Council?"

While I suspect that Bush himself did not lie, there is considerable evidence that high-ranking officials, possibly including the Vice President, knew in advance of the State of the Union address that Iraq had not purchased uranium from Niger. If so, all of the officials involved in that process of deception should be severly disciplined.

Nonetheless, this sort of deception has minimal bearing on the justice of the American cause. Just days ago, Hans Blix

said he remains deeply puzzled by the former Iraqi government's efforts to deceive and mislead U.N. inspectors for 12 years after the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

"Why did they conduct themselves as they did throughout the '90s?" Blix said in an interview last week. "Why deny access if you are not hiding something? What I am groping at now is whether pride was at the root of it."

For the moment, there are no answers to those questions. But if Saddam was refusing to submit to the will of the Security Council, then France and China and Russia had an obligation to ensure that Saddam would face the "serious consequences" mentioned in 1441.

Still, it is fair to ask whether the American people would have supported the President's decision to invade if it had been more fully aware of the salesmanship involved in the presentation of the Iraqi threat. TNR argues that

Had the administration accurately depicted the consensus within the intelligence community in 2002--that Iraq's ties with Al Qaeda were inconsequential; that its nuclear weapons program was minimal at best; and that its chemical and biological weapons programs, which had yielded significant stocks of dangerous weapons in the past, may or may not have been ongoing--it would have had a very difficult time convincing Congress and the American public to support a war to disarm Saddam.

While still within the realm of the possible, TNR's speculations directly contradict the results of multiple opinion polls: that if Saddam was hiding chemical and biological weapons, then the United States should go to war.

In the final analysis, there is nothing new under the sun. The case for war then is the case for war now. While front-page stories continue to hint at startling revelations of presidential lies, even those of us who supported the war knew that the President's rhetoric went too far.

What we are waiting for now is the truth in Iraq. Until we know for sure what happened to the WMD, we will not know whether the invasion of Iraq headed off a major threat to international security, or simply removed a megalomaniacal dictator who conned his opponents into believing that he was much more dangerous than he actually was. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:41 PM by David Adesnik  

AUNG SAN SUU KYI: Enraged, the WaPo observes that

Southeast Asian foreign ministers, meeting last week in Cambodia with Mr. Powell, agreed to send a delegation to Burma no later than October. October? While one of the world's most courageous political leaders languishes in one of its most infamous jails? Where are Kofi Annan and the U.N. Security Council? Where are the executive orders that President Bush could issue today?

Your answer is as good as mine. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:17 PM by David Adesnik  

EVIL FORCES: The inimitable Reihan Salam waxes nostalgic about high school life in NY, spins esoteric political rhymes, and comments on the lyrical subtlety of teenage Russian lesbians. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:34 PM by David Adesnik  

ME VS. ME: In the first half of his column in today's NYT, Harvard sociologist Orlando Patterson advertises his liberal credentials by offering a bleeding-heart utilitarian defense of affirmative action. In the second half, Patterson launches a devastating attack on the politically correct multiculturalist rationales offered in defense of affirmative action as it is currently practiced. The horse, my friends, is Trojan.

NB: If you are interested in the history of slavery and emancipation, head straight for Patterson's brilliant work on Slavery and Social Death. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:58 PM by David Adesnik  

A GEM FROM SAFIRE: On freedom in Iran.

For more on the role of foreign broadcasts in supporting the protests, click here. And click here to read about flagrant Iranian violations of the profoundly flawed Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:22 PM by David Adesnik  

ALL YOU WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT TERRRORISM...but were afraid to ask. Yesterday, I wrote that

If there were any hope of destorying Hamas, Fatah and Jihad by purely military means, I might well support it.

Yet as Greg Djerejian points out [via e-mail], Fatah is not an explicitly terrorist organization, even though it has spawned such offshoots such the Tanzim and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.

In fact, Mahmoud Abbas himself is a member of Fatah. So it is pretty much here to stay. But Greg's real point is that we pundits need to be more precise when talking about different terrorist organizations, lest we say something we don't mean. To that end, Greg recommends consulting the "Terrorism: Questions & Answers" website, a project suppored by the Council on Foreign Relations. I, for one, have every intention of doing so. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:13 PM by Patrick Belton  

INTIFADA IN GAELIC: In one of the more interesting manifestations of the IRA-Hamas linkages (which extend to symbology as well as cooperation in training exercises - Irish Republicans have begun flying Palestinian flags, and in response Unionists have started to display Israeli flags), a web page has appeared supporting the intifada, in Gaelic.

Small world, indeed. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:29 AM by Patrick Belton  

MAN ON THE STREET RESPONSE TO BRITISH TOE WRESTLING: "No, Patrick, you do that much better than I do." - Eliana. "That looks like an exciting topic." - Rachel, newly returned from wedding travels. What is everyone talking about - at least at the OxBlog DC bureau office, this morning? It's the British triumph yesterday at toe-wrestling world championships.. "That's sad." - Rachel (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:14 AM by David Adesnik  

POWELL COMES, POWELL GOES: After a brief visit by the Secretary of State, Israeli and Palestinian negotiators have become more optimistic about the prospects of a new security accord for Gaza. What stands in the way of an accord are continuting disagreements between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators about how to provide security for Gaza's main intercity road.

While denouncing Hamas in no uncertain terms, Powell also indicated that the United States and Israel had come to an agreement that targeted killings are out of bounds unless there are indications of an impending terrorist attack.

While this sort of minor advance is encouraging, serious questions about the viability of the Road Map still abound. Without sounding all that optimistic, Reason of Voice observes that the Road Map has forced both Israeli and Palestinian factions to clarify their positions on the prospects of peace.

While the first half of Dan's post amounts to a revisionist history of the Oslo process which declares that it never came close to achieving a lasting peace, I found the second half quite interesting, especially given's Dan's firm support for Likud. He writes that

Mahmoud Abbas' rise and Yasser Arafat's marginalization have forced Palestinian policy 'out of the closet'. The complaints of previous Israeli governments dealing with Arafat was that he would give one speech in English and another in Arabic. It is astoundingly clear how true that statement was in light of the last 3 months of 'roadmap' negotiation. Abbas's statement in Aqaba forced Palestinian terrorist groups to speak for themselves. We've seen Sheik Yassin and al-Rantissi of Hamas, previously unknown publicly, emerge with a firm voice of continued terrorist commitment. These men had previously hid comfortably in the shadows of Arafat's cloaks.

Without intending to do so, Dan seems to have admitted that the (temporary and uncertain) rise of Mahmoud Abbas represents a historic opportunity to negotiate with a Palestinian leadership actually committed to peace. From where I stand, that sounds like a very strong argument in favor of Israeli restraint when it comes to targeting Hamas officials for assassination.

Presumably, friend-of-Volokh Jonathan Zasloff disagrees. He writes [via e-mail]:

My sense is that it would actually ENHANCE Abu Mazen's credibility at this point to tell Hamas: "look, this guy Sharon--you know who he is. I can't control him. Like the Israelis says, he eats Arabs for breakfast. I can get the Americans to lean on him to stop the killings--but only if you commit to an unconditional cease-fire. And you'd better do so--because if you don't, you're all dead men. You know as well as I do that the Shabak is crawling all over Gaza City. They know where you guys are and will find you out eventually. And like I said, this Sharon won't care if he kills a bunch of civilians. He never has."

Given Jonathan's argument, I would counter that Hamas actually wants Sharon to kill as many Palestinian civilians as possible. Each innocent bystander that dies reinforces the Hamas message that Israel is too brutal to negotiate with.

While the killing off of its top leadership may intimidate Hamas, that seems to be a price its top cadres are willing to pay in order to discredit moderates such as Abbas. If that price were too high, Hamas would've declared a ceasefire after the Rantisi attack rather than launching even more destructive suicide attacks.

All in all, the critical question in the targeted killings debate seems to be "Why now?" Why risk destroying Abbas's credibility if he is the best negotiating partner Israel has had? If there were any hope of destorying Hamas, Fatah and Jihad by purely military means, I might well support it. But for as long as one believes that peace can only be had at the negotiating table, there will be no choice for Israel -- at certain critical points -- but to shoulder the risks associated with self-restraint. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 4:22 AM by Patrick Belton  

I NEED TO FINISH MY DISSERTATION, so I can be a professor, and teach courses that don't read like this course description:

"You and me baby ain't nuthin' but mammals/So let's do it like they do on the Discovery Channel." Is it true, as The Bloodhound Gang sings, that we are "nuthin' but mammals?" What does it mean to be a mammal, human to otherwise? And, just how do we "do it?"

Makes you kind of want to show up, just to throw rotten fruit.... (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 4:08 AM by Patrick Belton  

MEMRI picks up on a purported Al-Qa'ida message. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:19 PM by David Adesnik  

ANOTHER OXBLOGGER: It seems that England is not the only place where Oxford polisci grad students post political commentary in their spare time. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:13 PM by David Adesnik  

THE PROSPECTS FOR REGIME CHANGE: John Kerry seems very confident that the President will be exposed as a liar on the WMD front. If that doesn't happen, Kerry may find it impossible to establish himself as a credible candidate on the national security issue. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:01 PM by David Adesnik  

NO ACCOUNTABILITY: Glenn Reynolds thinks the Bush Administration should stop stonewalling about intelligence failures before 9/11. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:52 PM by Patrick Belton  

DOG DAYS: The federal government creatively wasted $700,000 on a dog trainer, who was hired to provide explosive-sniffing canines to guard the State Department, Federal Reserve, and other federal buildings. The problem was, the trainer had absolutely no experience in the field, and provided...plain dogs. Cute dogs, yes. Explosive-sniffers, no: when in a test, 50 pounds of dynamite, 50 pounds of TNT and 15 pounds of plastic explosives were driven into Federal Reserve parking lots, the dogs didn't bat a big brown eye. The guy, Russell Ebersole (whose company still has a website, had no experience at all training dogs, and hired as "dog-operators" high school dropouts who had applied for a job cleaning kennels. Question: shouldn't someone have checked on this guy's credentials before giving him nearly a million dollars? I smell a job for a congressional committee here. And I'm not even a pup. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:42 PM by David Adesnik  

CORRECTION: Last week I criticized Matt Yglesias for asserting without a source that cholera and starvation are serious problems in Iraq. However, Nick Kristof is now reporting that water shortages in Basra have led to cholera outbreaks while Unicef calculates that the malnutrition of Iraqi children has risen since the end of the war. While I have less than 100% in either Unicef or Kristof, they are on the ground and I am not, so I will take their word for it. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:36 PM by David Adesnik  

IRAQI CONFUSION CONTINUES: As I have observed more than once before, it is often impossible to reconcile conflicting accounts of whether the occupation of Iraq is accomplishing anything at all. Nick Kristof describes it as a fiasco. Tom Friedman points to some important accomplishment but thinks we could be doing better.

Unsurprisingly, Paul Bremer is proud of what he has accomplished. More interesting, however, is Bremer's stated intention of opening Iraq to international trade and investment. The directness of Bremer's announcement suggests that he isn't concerned about potential critics who will immediately denounce the opening of the Iraqi economy as a reflection of American self-interest.

The most disturbing criticism of the occupation comes from even-tempered WaPo columnist David Ignatius, who charges that Bremer "is turning what was a war of liberation into a war of occupation." Ignatius' case in point is the planned election in Najaf that Bremer cancelled at the last minute.

While Ignatius' concern about elections is well-meant, his demand for national -- as opposed to local -- self-government seems dangerously misguided given the intensity of fighting in central Iraq. I am much more confident in the United States' ability to lead the charge against the Ba'ath than I am in the ability of an interim Iraqi government.

"Leading the charge", however, is not the same as doing all the work. Perhaps to complement the NYT's insistence that our soldiers' morale is dangerously low, the WaPo now has a front-page report making exactly the same point. While I am often suspicious of the way in which the most critical soldiers get the most attention in such stories, it does seem fair to say that we are asking our troops to do a job they weren't exactly trained for.

On the combat front, things seem to be going rather well despite reckless descriptions of anti-Ba'athist operations as a quagmire. If you read the WaPo's latest report on the capture of the Ace of Diamonds, you begin to get a sense of how desperate the top leadership of the deposed government has become.

Abid Hamid Mahmoud spent his last hours as a fugitive in the house of a couple who didn't even want him there. Mahmoud had no significant weapons, cash resources, nor means of transportation. (The WaPo article clarifies earlier reports which suggested that Mahmoud was found along with $8.5 million in cash. In fact, the cash was found during a different raid.)

Mahmoud's desperate condition suggests that the Ba'ath has not been effective in organizing resistance and that it's support among the population is rather shallow. With any luck, such conditions will result in the ultimate capture of Saddam Hussein, who has been pronounced alive (if not well) according to US experts. [UPDATE: Mahmoud himself has claimed that Saddam is alive.]

Finally, we come to the greatest mystery of all: The WMD. While no new evidence has turned up, uber-expert Ken Pollack (and former Clinton NSC staffer) has published a long essay in the NYT which argues that the President was fundamentally right about Saddam's WMD presenting a very serious threat, even if certain administration officials exaggerated at times in order to make a compelling case for an immediate invasion.

So, how is the occupation going? It could be a lot worse. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:47 PM by Patrick Belton  

EWWWWW: Would you like to write a book, but worry no one will buy it? Don't worry - they've been buying this.

Furthermore, while the previously mentioned book is number 67,697 on Amazon.com's sales chart, this important book is ranked 79,954 on Amazon.com, this important book is 90,283, and this damned important book is number 174,157. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:09 PM by David Adesnik  

BLACK HELICOPTERS, ANYONE?: As Josh has noted, OxBlog is now an official part of the neo-con conspiracy

Given the importance of secrecy for conspiracies such as ours, I though I might learn a little more about World-Information.Org, the organization that "outed" us. What I found out was that,

Under the patronage of the UNESCO, World-Information.Org serves to meet the needs and expectations of citizens for high quality and accessible services of cultural information and content.

Would it be more disturbing if that were true or if that were an outright lie? The UN funding third-rate propaganda outlets?

While I haven't tried to confirm whether UNESCO actually gave WIO any money, I think I just might. Why bother, you might ask? Well, I was looking at the names listed as part of the WIO Advisory Council, and I actually recognized two of them as scholars whose work I've come across while doing my doctoral research. With any luck, they'll let me know what's going on.

As Dan might say, "Developing..."
(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:50 PM by David Adesnik  

"$%&@*£!" That is an exact quote from Daniel Drezner, who is very angry at Blogger for not letting him post on his usual site. For the moment, Dan is posting on a temporary site where you can visit him until further notice. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:55 PM by Patrick Belton  

HEY, CUT IT OUT!!!! Someone just surfed in after googling Yale and Vaseline. Not sure if you found what you were looking for, but thanks for your custom.

(P.S. Some people, of course, go for magazines....) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:50 PM by Patrick Belton  

WANNA JOB? My favorite magazine, the London Review of Books, is hiring. For my part, I think it would be wonderful if we placed an OxBlog reader there:

The London Review is looking for an editorial intern. The job, which would suit a recent graduate, will last for a year from September, and will involve proof-reading, fact-checking and other even less glamorous jobs. You will be paid.

Want a job? Apply! Hey, you might even get a date while you're there.... (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 4:06 PM by Patrick Belton  

SO SPEND IT on THIS!: Slate has a piece up this afternoon (by A.O. Scott, keeping to our Scott theme for today...) on Robert Lowell, making the important (to my mind) point that: "For more than 20 years, Lowell seemed to be more read about than read. Bidart's goal of restoring Lowell to his rightful place as a great poet may therefore require rescuing the poet from his biographers." Of course, Lowell's poems were about Lowell - and New England's Puritan and Brahmin past, which contribute to his psychic universe, together with the conflicting influences of Kenyon southern agrarianism and his very non-Brahmin bounded conversion to Rome - but precisely for that point, he's perhaps best approached through his poetry, on his own terms.

So for those of you who, like me, find yourselves alone on a Friday night, might find in Lowell a suitable pillow-companion. Start here, for starters... (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:34 AM by Patrick Belton  

AND HE SHOULD KNOW, ONE HOPES: The head of Shin Bet has told senior US administration officials this morning that if it comes to it, the Palestinian security services are in sufficiently good condition to be able to prevail over Hamas in a Palestinian civil war (via Kol Yisroel and Ha'aretz).

AND, to step gingerly into this vat of acid, I agree with David's arguments here. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:20 AM by Patrick Belton  

GUESS I've disqualified myself from voting on our groupies by virtue of being married.... Oh well, our existing OxBabe thanks you..... (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:05 PM by David Adesnik  

DOES ASSASSINATION WORK? Even though they have not made the front page for a few days now, targeted attacks on Hamas leaders are still a major point of contention. Whereas Palestinian negotiators want Israel to stop the attacks -- period -- the Sharon government insists that it has a right to kill any "ticking bombs", i.e. militants in the midst of planning imminent attacks.

While the definition of "imminent" is not a simple matter, Sharon's apparent willingness to forgo vengeance strikes and limit himself to pre-emptive ones suggests that he is amenable to compromise. I hope that this is what Sharon has in mind, since pre-emptive strikes are far more justifiable than punitive ones. No one (outside the Occupied Territories) can object to Israel saving the lives of its own citizens when they are in immediate danger. In contrast, punitive strikes raise the prospect of a Hamas, Fatah or Jihad counterstrike, forcing Israeli retaliation, necessitating a Palestinian response...(cf. "cycle of violence").

Now, I recognize that the "cycle of violence" argument does not have many friends in the blogosphere. While Matt Yglesias and the Armed Liberal have gotten my back on this one, Gene Volokh (posting on behalf of JZ), Martin Kimel (scroll down to June 14th), Dan Simon and others certainly don't.

While all of those arrayed against me make good arguments, they one question they always seem to avoid is "Why now?" In other words, why launch punitive strikes at the one moment when they could do the most possible damage to the peace talks?

The closest Sharon's defenders come to addressing this point is when they insist that killing off the Hamas leadership will benefit Abu Mazen by weakening his most prominent opponents on the Palestinian side. When I point out that such targeted attacks hurt Abu Mazen's credibility, they point out that Israel cannot afford "credibility" if that entails an acceptance of endless terror.

That point had me for a while, but I have figured out what's wrong with it. Targeted killings almost inevitably inflict civilian casualties regardless of whether they are successful in eliminating their intended target. If such deaths could be avoided, Palestinians might accept Abbas in spite of such attacks. Yet most Palestinians seem to feel that Israel must not be allowed to strike down innocent bystanders in the process of eliminating Hamas.

Of course, there is a significant minority that supports Hamas outright. Yet as Zvi Bar'el observes in Ha'aretz,

"Today the ambition of the Palestinian public is to go to work, to make a living, and therefore, to see the peace process advance...

While the attack was going on, seven thousand Palestinians were standing waiting to pass the terminal gates into Israel, only to be turned away because of the shooting.

When there is a period of no hope, no change, the Hamas 'rides high,' accumulating more and more popularity points among Palestinians. But the moment the pipeline to socio-economic welfare is opened, Hamas must immediately find an alternative. It can find a bad alternative in mounting a terror attack, which we cause Israel to clamp down, but in reading the 'map' today, Hamas knows that what people really want, is to go to work, to begin to live their lives again."

If Bar'el is right, then Abu Mazen has a very strong base of potential support. But regardless of how much Palestinians want work, they won't stand for innocent bystanders being slaughtered.

Is that a one-sided perspective, given constant attacks on Israeli civilians? Of course. At the same time, insisting on the sanctity of civilian life is hardly unreasonable.

In the final analysis, I stand by the "credibility" argument because I believe that the targeted assassination of Hamas officials alienates a constituency that is potentially pro-Abbas and pro-peace. And if Abbas can bring peace and prosperity, this same constituency will fall silent when he finally crushes Hamas.


(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:11 PM by David Adesnik  

WAITING FOR POWELL: With the arrival of the Secretary of State now imminent, the participants in the Roadmap process have been making last-minute efforts to improve their negotiating positions.

Ariel Sharon has upset both Israeli doves and the New York Times by telling the Knesset that his government would crush Hamas if its attacks on Israeli citizens continued. Then Sharon ordered the armed forces to dismantle, for the first time, an inhabited Israeli settlement in the West Bank.

Given that actions speak louder than words, it would seem that Sharon wants to show Powell that he is serious about implementing the Road Map. At the same time, he is covering his right-wing with conditional threats to destory Hamas.

In the meantime, the Palestinian Authority has rejected an Israeli plan for withdrawal from Northern Gaza, arguing that the plan does not grant it either sufficient control or enough territory. At the same time, the PA is talking up the prospects of a ceasefire with Hamas and other militants.

In tandem, these two moves suggest that the PA wants Powell to believe that it can deliver a ceasefire provided that he forces the Israelis to make further concessions related to the Gaza withdrawal. The question, of course, is whether there is any hope of a Hamas ceasefire.

According to Zvi Bar'el, Arab affairs commentator for Ha'aretz, Hamas can invoke the concept of hudna, or truce, to justify a ceasefire that might otherwise seem to contradict its doctrine of unflagging resistance to Israel.

Under hudna, Hamas is permitted to cooperate with more moderate Palestinians in order to make tactical gains such as the establishment of a Palestinian. Once that happens, it can begin its resistance again. While that sort of Trojan Horse strategy is exactly what Israelis fear, there is no way to persuade Hamas to stop its attacks now unless it can be persuaded that a ceasefire is in its own best interests. The crux of the matter is to ensure that the PA government turns on Hamas once it relaunches its resistance.


(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:06 PM by David Adesnik  

BURMA UPDATE: Randy Paul has the latest on the prosecution of foreign human rights cases in the US court system. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:53 PM by David Adesnik  

TOO CLEVER BY HALF: James Taranto has this to say about harsh conditions at Guantanamo:

Remember that New York Times sob story we noted yesterday about the illegal enemy combatants being held at Guantanamo Bay? Here's the last sentence in the Times article: "Hospital officials said that about 5 percent of the inmates were suffering from depression and that they were being treated with antidepressants, typically Zoloft."

Today's Times carries a story titled "More Americans Seeking Help for Depression," according to which "more than 16 percent of Americans--as many as 35 million people--suffer from depression severe enough to warrant treatment at some time in their lives." That means the Guantanamo inmates are much happier than Americans are! If that's so, could it be that they're being treated too humanely?

James' math may be somewhat off, but I have to admit I laughed. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 2:31 PM by Daniel  

CHINESE AIR POWER. One of our Oxblog's greatest friends, Jackie Newmyer, opines on China's air power capabilities in Policy Review. Jackie, if you recall, skillfully argued against the Oxford Union's proposition that "America is the Greatest Threat to World Peace" back in February. She's so hot right now. Jackie. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:42 PM by Patrick Belton  

OOPS. After two decades of selective abortion, Indian society has an acute shortage of women, particularly in the villages of the north. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:48 AM by Patrick Belton  

BRUSHING YOUR TEETH IS BAD FOR YOU! Well, okay, only if you overdo it...but the story has been picked up with stereotypical ferocity in the British press: Guardian, Daily Telegraph, FT, Globe and Mail (okay, so Globe and Mail is Commonwealth...thanks, JG, for pointing that out...). (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:49 AM by David Adesnik  

ACE OF DIAMONDS: The United States has apprehended Abid Hamid Mahmoud al-Tikriti, the fourth most-wanted man in Iraq after Saddam Hussein and his sons. American forces captured Mahmound along with 50 other members of Saddam's special security forces along with $8.5 million in cash. Sounds like a quagmire to me. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:54 AM by Patrick Belton  

THOMAS FRIEDMAN IS ON CRACK. You know, it takes real indisputable talent to be able to espouse basically sensible arguments and ideas, and yet manage to do it in a way that makes you almost unreadable to your audience. Case in point: Friedman argues, this week, that is in Israel's interests for Hamas to be rooted out, but by Abu Mazen's Palestinian Authority (albeit with substantial quiet U.S. and Israeli help), and not by Israeli tanks. Without wanting at the moment to engage a massive imbroglio, I happen to agree. But for the moment, that's immaterial: what seems fascinating is that, en route to making a fairly sensible (though not uncontroversial) argument, Friedman manages to drop such Friedmanisms as calling Hamas a "ragtag terrorist group" (I'll quibble with "ragtag," don't worry, not "terrorist"), and disputing whether the organization has ever had enough senior operatives and officials for Israel to have been able to kill as many senior Hamas members as it claims to have done. Call Hamas what you will - it doubtless deserves it. Peace will never come about until the organization is gone. But is Friedman on crack? Hamas is a mind-bogglingly vast organization, which includes an overt Da'wah arm, a security arm devoted to gathering information on suspected collaborators with Israel, multiple press and propaganda offices, three military arms (the Izz al-Din al-Qassam hit squads, the Aman, and al-Majahadoun al-Falestinioun), and an unequalled network of overt charitable activities and front fundraising organizations. As much as I agree with the one trick of Mr. Friedman's pony - i.e., that peace and security for Israel (and its neighbors) will require, eventually, a two-state solution and a moderate, secular, reformist government in Palestine - his frequent mistakes and inane comments lead even the most sympathetic reader to question whether he really gets the Middle East that well, after all. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:27 AM by Patrick Belton  

SANCTIONS BREWING: The Senate has voted 97-1 to ban all imports from Burma and freeze its government's assets in the United States; the House will vote soon on a similar measure. The Burmese Freedom and Democracy Act, sponsored by Senator Mitch McConnell and Senator Diane Feinstein, also calls for the expulsion of the junta's envoy in Washington.

Want to read more? Good for you. See: BBC, testimony of Assistant Secretary for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor Lorne Craner, Sen. Feinstein press release, and CFR report with recommended US actions. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:23 PM by David Adesnik  

POVERTY AND INEQUALITY: Thought we'd beaten that topic to death, didn't you? Not by a long shot. In Monday's WaPo, investor Steven Rattner presents an argument that is striking similar to the one on Calpundit.com that set off the whole inequality debate a while back. (For responses, see here, here and here.)

In short, Rattner argues that the poor are getting screwed and that the Bush tax cut will screw them even worse.

After reading Rattner's op-ed, I came across the following column in the NYT by poverty-fighter and Harvard sociologist William Julius Wilson. Based on the NYT summary of Wilson's column, I expected it to be identical Rattner's. According to the summary,

If the president's tax cuts cause huge budget deficits and further weaken the economy, we may again see the high levels of concentrated poverty recorded in 1990.

After reading Wilson's column, I began to wonder if Jayson Blair had written the summary.

Consider the following facts Wilson presents:

The number of people residing in high-poverty neighborhoods decreased by 24 percent, or 2.5 million people, from 1990 to 2000. Moreover, the number of such neighborhoods — the study defined them as census tracts with at least 40 percent of residents below the poverty level — around the country declined by more than a quarter...

...neither the spectacular rise in black [Americans'] concentrated poverty from 1970 to 1990, nor the dramatic decline from 1990 to 2000, can be explained mainly in terms of race. Rather, these shifts demonstrate that the fate of African-Americans and other racial groups is inextricably connected with changes across the modern economy...

So, just as blacks suffered greatly during the decades of growing separation between haves and have-nots, they benefited considerably from the incredible economic boom in the last half of the 1990's, which not only substantially reduced unemployment, including black unemployment, but sharply increased the earnings of all low-wage workers as well...

While Wilson does get around to saying that the Bush tax cut may reverse the gains of the past decade if it results in massive defecits and slower economic growth, his final message is rather different:

The lesson for those committed to fighting inequality, especially those involved in multiracial coalition politics, is to pay more scrutiny to fiscal, monetary and trade policies that may have long-term consequences for the national and regional economies, as seen in future earnings, jobs and concentrated poverty. We must remember that high-poverty neighborhoods reflect America, all of America.

As they used to say, a rising tide lifts all boats. Or is that just a pleasantly-worded justification for trickle-down economics?

While Wilson's arguments hardly justify the Bush tax cut -- to which I am still adamantly opposed -- they do suggest that poverty and inequality may have an inverse relationship to one another rather than a direct one. If economic growth (easier said than done) is the answer to poverty but also results in growing inequality, then what's wrong with inequality? (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:46 PM by David Adesnik  

DOES ASEAN MATTER? The Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) is best known for its belief that subtlety is the essence of diplomacy and that public criticism can only aggravate interstate conflicts. In practice, this means that ASEAN members prefer to bury their heads in the sand rather than address the issues of the day.

Thus, it is heartening to see that all of ASEAN's member states (Myanmar excepted) have chosen to make a public demand for the release of Aung San Suu Kyi.

But why act now? Given all the inhumane actions taken by the junta before, why speak out now? As Daniel Drezner shrewdly observes, the Western media tend to portray ASEAN's response as a reflection of American and EU pressure, whereas the Southeast Asian media are reporting that ASEAN's criticism reflects a principled commitment to the rule of law and quiet diplomacy. Moreover, the Southeast Asian's argue that vocal Western criticism will only provoke an even more militant response from the Myanmar junta.

While Dan isn't sure which of these versions is a better reflection of reality, my experience with ASEAN suggests that its members are, in fact, responding to Western criticism, but denying their susceptibility to pressure in order to avoid both setting a precedent or exposing their vulnerability.

Yet as is always the case with ASEAN, actions speak louder than words. The question is, how far will ASEAN go? Will it only do enough to placate the West? Or will it go as far as to threaten Myanmar with expulsion from ASEAN if it continues to embarrass the other member states?

The initial reluctance of even the Philippines and Thailand -- ASEAN's most democratic states -- to speak out suggests that their is no real interest in confronting Burma.

However, united front presented by the United States, the EU and (lately) Japan, may have persuaded ASEAN that it cannot have credibility as an international actor if it doesn't confront those issues that are of concern to the world's leading states.

In practice, that means that ASEAN's member states will have to start monitoring each other's internal affairs. Before ASEAN expanded in the mid-90s to include Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar, this sort of monitoring would not have been much of a problem. But now ASEAN will have to ask itself "What matters more? Quantity or quality?"

Whereas quality enhances ASEAN's presence on the international stage, quantity helps protect the ASEAN states from Chinese aggression. For the moment, the Chinese threat is dormant because of the war on terror. But if the Middle East calms down and the Taiwan Strait heats up, there will be a real test of ASEAN's commitment to human rights and the rule of law. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 2:33 PM by Patrick Belton  

OVER IN WASHINGTON, IN THE FOREIGN POLICY CREW I HELP RUN, my lovely wife has some remarkably good thoughts up on Thucydides, honor, and the war on terror. There are also fairly lengthy discussions of two issues raised in democracy promotion: the relationship of processes to objectives, and that between liberalization and broader democracy promotion efforts (here, here, and here). Lately, we've been doing a bit more jaw-jaw than blog-blog, but look for more to come out of this gang of young turks soon.....


UPDATE: And we're off! Archidamus has a lengthy response to Rachel's Thucidydes-and-counterrorism post from Nathan Hale (Rachel's post incidentally merited an Instalink). And many more interesting foreign policy discussions out of the DC Yale community no doubt to come. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 2:05 PM by Patrick Belton  

CONGRATULATIONS, JOSH!!!! When you get done recovering, you can type out your answers for all of us to read. :) In the meantime, go have a drink on us! (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:29 PM by Patrick Belton  

FREE SPEECH IN NEW HAVEN: I've been asked by a reader to link to this essay by a Yale freshman on fairly reprehensible behavior by a genetics professor at Yale's medical school. Happily done. Professor Qumsiyeh, in conduct far unbecoming a professor (much less one at a university historically characterized by great respect and collegiality on the part of faculty for their students), sent a mass email at the end of the spring semester to members of a pro-peace student group, reporting his purported 'discovery' of a large overlap between the memberships of Yale Students for Democracy and Yale Friends of Israel. This was supposedly to be of interest because it apparently was to have demonstrated that for 15 years, a Jewish, Straussian, neo-conservative cabal had been planning to "put Israel and personal wealth ahead of U.S. public interests." (his words).

As Eliana points out, however, sleuthful, conspiracy-minded Professor Qumsiyeh sadly wasn't exactly as brilliant as he'd imagined,

Professor Qumsiyeh?s research was not quite as brilliant as he believed it to be; he had mistakenly copied the Yale Friends of Israel member list for comparison purposes rather than the member list of the Yale College Students for Democracy. He was therefore comparing two identical lists of members of the Yale Friends of Israel; not surprisingly, he found "significant overlap" between the two lists. And not surprisingly, Professor Qumsiyeh mistakenly named many students who were staunch opponents of the war in Iraq, and who were horrified at being identified as members of a pro-war cabal by dint of their affiliation with the Yale Friends of Israel.

Putting aside, though, the mistaken empirical basis of his epistle, Eliana notes "The message bears an ugly subtext consistent with Professor Qumsiyeh?s fevered "Jews on the brain" mania." Such behavior has no place whatsoever at a largely principled, humane, idealistic center of learning, and Eliana is right to bring it to widespread attention.

UPDATE: Incidentally, I just discovered Eliana also runs a very nice blog, which just moved to a new Movable Type site. Well done! OxBlog is sending over a bottle of blogwarming champagne.

UPDATE^2: Egads, I just realized Eliana was one of the two freshmen students we mentioned way back here. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:23 PM by David Adesnik  

QUAGMIRE! You'd think the left would've learned its lesson after pronouncing the invasions of both Iraq and Afghanistan to be quagmires. But apparently not.

Focused (like a laser beam) on postwar casualties in Iraq, Kos has declared "It's a quagmire." Atrios seems to be in on this one, too, having compared anti-guerrilla operations in Iraq to be reminiscient of the Army's "search and destroy" missions in Vietnam. [Permalink bloggered.]

While I would like to respond in detail, I've to get some more work done before the library here closes at 7pm. No, I'm not lying. That's actually when the library closes. In fact, the libraries stay open later than almost everything else in Oxford. But that's a whole 'nother story... (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:18 PM by Patrick Belton  

GLENN has a thoughtful essay on Tech Central Station about what makes for a good blog. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:12 PM by David Adesnik  

SMALL BOXES: I think this headline says it all: Iraqi Emerges From 22 Years in A Wall. In fear of his life, Jawad Amer Sayed actually spent 22 years living in a 3x7 secret compartent built inside a wall.

On a related note, Kos points to this NYT article on the harsh conditions for captives imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay.

Kos says the conditions are no different than torture. Given the Justice Department's shameful mistreatment of suspected terrorists, I wouldn't be all that surprised to find out that the conditions in Camp X-Ray went beyond what was necessary from a security perspective. And from the descriptions given by the NYT, it is hard to dismiss the notion that the prisoners at X-Ray did suffer considerably. But torture? I'm not so sure. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:59 AM by David Adesnik  

JESSICA LYNCH 2.0: With the passage of time the story of Private Lynch has become much clearer.

The critical points made by the WaPo's investigative report are that initial reports of Lynch's resisting capture were based on intelligence reports that the army did not discover to be flawed until after Lynch's rescue.
Reports that Iraqi soldiers and/or doctors also seem to be false. While the Iraqi lawyer who alerted US forces to Lynch's presence insists he saw Fedayeen hitting her, the hospital staff who helped save Lynch's life denying the allegation vigorously.

As for the rescue itself, it was not staged, as the Guardian implied in its exposee. May 15. The hospital Lynch was in had, in fact, served as a military command post, with substantial Iraqi forces present until the morning before Lynch's capture. During the rescue itself there were no Iraqi forces in the hospital, but American soldiers involved did take fire from surrounding buildings.

All this, of course, does not mean that the Pentagon did its best to get the truth out. As far as I can tell, the Pentagon rushed to tell the story without doing enough fact-checking, because it recognized the propaganda value of putting a human and heroic face on a war that the media was describing as stalled, or even a quagmire.

No surprise there. Perhaps the more important question is whether the American media's coverage of the Lynch rescue story demonstrates that its presumed liberal bias often surrenders to a certain patriotic naivete in terms of war?

Or is does the media just suffer from split personality disorder, given its flawed descriptions of both the invasion and Lynch's rescue? Or is the media simply incompetent, given that it got both issues wrong (although its spin on the invasion wasmuch further off the mark than its coverage of Lynch)?

IMHO, the answer to all three of the above questions is 'no'. In order to understand the inconsistent coverage of the invasion and the Lynch rescue, one has to look at what kind of story each one is. The former is a diplomatic and military affair. The latter is a human-interest story.

When it comes to the former, the media are far more critical and are often desperate to demonstrate the government's failure, regardless of whether the current administration is Republican or Democratic. When it comes to the latter, the media is far less critical, since it thinks of itself as the defender and advocate of the common man (or in Lynch's case, woman).

Perhaps the way to sum up the media's behavior is to say that it is against the army but for the soldiers. It criticizes the generals and celebrates the privates. Unsurprisingly, this pattern of behavior goes back to Vietnam, where the media saw itself as siding with the common soldier against the military brass. In fact, this struggle within the armed forces is the theme of two of the best books ever written on Vietnam, namely Michael Herr's Dispatches and Neil Sheehan's A Bright Shining Lie.

This schizophrenic approach also resembles the media's coverage of domestic politics, where it rails against politicians while paying respectful attention to the man in the street (whose name is often Greg Packer.)

If memory serves, it was media critic Herbert Gans who first said that the media are for the office but against the office holders.

In the post-Watergate, post-Vietnam era, this is the nature of the American media. All in all, it actually does quite a good job.
(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:59 AM by Patrick Belton  

THE PROBLEMS WITH HAIKU FORM, as relayed by Kieran Healy....

To-Con-vey one’s mood
In sev-en-teen syll-able-s
is ve-ry dif-fic.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:56 AM by Patrick Belton  

STICKING THEIR HEADS IN THE SAND DOWN UNDER: Australia's Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, rejected calls yesterday from Secretary Powell for a tougher international and regional response to Burma's jailing of Aung San Suu Kyi, saying that Australia would continue its current level of trade relations with Burma. Downer justified Australia's pusillanimity by reference to the herd: "I don't think it [i.e., sanctions] would make too much difference unless you were able to get China and the ASEAN countries on board and I think you are whistling in the wind if you think that's going to happen." (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:33 AM by Patrick Belton  

MORE ON THE CEASEFIRE IN LIBERIA: There are celebrations on the streets of Monrovia, but the Guardian raises the cautionary note that the last ceasefire was a mere two weeks ago, and had the result in escalating violence (it ended in a rebel attack on Monrovia). (See also Reuters, VOA.)

UPDATE: Mere hours after the Accra-brokered ceasefire went into effect, the rebel Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL) is alleging that government forces have already violated it.

Also, UN and WHO officials are saying that public health and security conditions in Monrovia are rapidly deteriorating as Liberians internally displaced by fighting stream into Monrovia by the thousands. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:32 PM by Patrick Belton  

OF FASCES AND TIAN'ANMEN SQUARE: In this week's TNR (yes, Josh, I finally ponied up the $28 to pay an intern's salary...) Jasper Becker makes a good case that the relevant paradigm for understanding today's China isn't so much Maoist (or any other variant of) Communism, but Fascism - not Hitler's, yet that of Franco, Mussolini, and the young Japanese officers who cultivated the cult of the Shinto emperor. It's worth a read.... (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:50 PM by Patrick Belton  

FRESH THINKING FROM LARRY SUMMERS ABOUT RESTRUCTURING UNDERGRADUATE EDUCATION: President Summers's commencement proposals last week about restructuring undergraduate education at Harvard were gusty, idealistic, and far-reaching. Henceforth, a few greatest hits:

"First, in a project as ambitious as the curricular review now underway, it is easy to lose sight of the "knower" as we strive to agree on what should be known.... The only true measure of a successful educational model is our students' experience of it. I was thus moved and troubled by a recent letter from a science concentrator admitted to the top graduate programs in his field, which contained the statement: 'I am in my eighth semester of college, and there is not a single science professor here who could identify me by name.'"

" We regularly learn in senior surveys that our students are satisfied with and proud of their experience at Harvard. But both objectively and relative to their peers at other institutions, they are more satisfied with their outside activities than with their academic experience.....I hope that in any new curricular approaches we may adopt, we will think hard about how to incorporate aspects of our students' extracurricular experience that make them so meaningful"

".. it is not clear to me that we do enough to make sure that our students graduate with the ability to speak cogently, to persuade others, and to reason to an important decision with moral and ethical implications"

"I recently commented to one of our leading art historians that it would be terrific if Fine Arts 13 [a popular fine-art survey course, cancelled for lack of faculty willing to teach it] were still available as an introduction for students who would probably never take another art history course in their lives. Reacting with a mixture of consternation and hilarity, she wondered how I could possibly expect any self-respecting scholar to propel our students -- like a cannon ball -- from "Caves to Picasso" in one academic year. In this age of exploding and highly specialized knowledge, and justified skepticism about Olympian claims, it is not easy to figure out how we can legitimately address our students' desire for familiarity with the landscape of the major fields of knowledge. But I hope we will do our best to wrestle with this issue. "

This is fresh thinking, of the sort that can even conceivably overwhelm being dragged down by the combined weights of university committees, vested departmental and bureaucratic interests, and the seductive normative power of the factual. I wish President Summers well, and we will be watching with eagerness from the sidelines as he takes on a task of such odyssean proportions.

UPDATES: Innocents Abroad have thoughtful comments on the topic, including about the role of the classics in providing a bulwark for liberalism precisely by pointing out liberalism's shortcomings. And our friend Josh Cherniss makes the point that the central problem Summers is confronting in undergraduate education - namely, a noteworthy lack of attention given to the educative aspect of education - is particularly conspicuous at his own university. On the other hand, an optimistic take might be that this could make him all the more likely to come up with even bolder reforms - we'll see. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:14 PM by Patrick Belton  

PROBABLY NOT LOOKING FOR HARDCORE POLITICAL ANALYSIS, This afternoon, someone (presumably a student who had recently finished exams) got to OxBlog by googling "massage parlor Oxford marston road". Gentlemen, your trenchcoats at the door, please.

UPDATE: At least it was better than this. Sorry to disappoint whoever came here looking for "women using vibrators clips". (We're result #12, and...it's not because of me...) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 4:59 PM by Patrick Belton  

SEVERAL WEEKS AGO, OxBlog wrote about a 132-year old man in the Indian state of Rajasthan. His only unfulfilled dream? To make the hajj to Mecca, which at the time, seemed rather improbable given his age and impecunity. That is, until now: a UK businessman, reading about the BBC's profile of Habib Miyan, generously transferred $5,700 (270,000 rupees) to Jaipur to cover the costs of Mr. Miyan's pilgrimage, as well as those of two of his grandchildren to act as his guides. So he will be making his life's wish come true, after all.

There is still great generosity in the heart of man, even in the present age. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:28 PM by Patrick Belton  

JAPAN, WE'RE PROUD: At a meeting on the sidelines of the ASEAN ministerial, Japan's Foreign Minister instructed her Burmese counterpart that Japan's future relations with Burma will be dictated by whether or not Burma's government releases Aung San Suu Kyi. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:19 PM by Patrick Belton  

AL QAEDA DANGER STILL HIGH: The director general of MI5, Eliza Manningham-Buller, warned this morning that "It is only a matter of time before a crude version of a CBRN (chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear weapon) is launched on a Western city." She went on to say, "If this is a war which can be won, it will not be won quickly. (CNN, Times) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:42 AM by Patrick Belton  

IRANIAN QUESTION AND ANSWER: Come on, let's play a round....

Q: What did Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi tell reporters yesterday?
A: Alleging that the U.S. was behind the student protests in Tehran, and that Iran's students would never ever want to seek freedom on their own (to think such a thing!), spokesman Asefi told reporters, "Yesterday we lodged a protest with the Swiss Embassy here, which protects the U.S. interests in Iran. We have strongly protested U.S. interference" in the internal affairs of Iran, "and we reserve the right to pursue the matter through legal channels."

Q: What is the address of the headquarters of Iranian intelligence in Europe?
A: Third story, Godesberger Allee 133-137, Bonn, Federal Republic of Germany

Q: What are Iranian intelligence's other principal bases of operations in Germany?
A: Consulates in Frankfurt and Hamburg, and Imam Ali Mosque in Hamburg

Q: How many full-time operatives from Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security are based out of Godesberger Allee 133-137?
A: 20 full-time, with the rest of the 70 members of the embassy staff regularly used in their operations

Q: And what have the good employees of Godesberger Allee 133-137 done for us recently?
A: Murdered, at the Mykonos Restaurant in Berlin, three Kurdish dissidents and their translator, with the complicity of the highest levels of the Iranian government. A German court pronounced Iran and Iranian agent Kazem Darabi complicit on April 10, 1997.

Q: What is the number of front companies in Germany involved in procurement for Iranian intelligence of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons?
A: Approximately 100

Q: What other ways is Iranian intelligence currently intervening in the internal affairs of European states?
A: Besides hunting down dissidents abroad and acquiring technology associated with weapons of mass destruction: Iranian intelligence provides intensive support to Islamic extremist groups in Europe, using financial aid to influence targeted organizations and expand their operations in accordance with Iran’s interests, and placing Iranian-controlled agents in key positions within those organizations.

Q: Moving away from Western Europe now, how many Iranian agents have infiltrated themselves into Bosnian Muslim political and social circles, and into the US program to train Bosnia’s army?

A: More than 200.

Q: Has Iran also intervened in the affairs of countries within the Western Hemisphere?
A: Yes. In March 1992, 28 people were killed and 220 injured in an Iranian-backed bombing of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires. In July 1994, 86 people were killed in an Iranian-backed explosion which destroyed the Argentine Jewish Mutual Association and the Delegation of Argentine Jewish Associations. According to a high-level defector from Iranian intelligence in the custody of the German government, President Carlos Menem of Argentina accepted a payment of $10 million from the government of Iran to keep Iranian complicity secret; Menem himself had received campaign support from Iranian intelligence back to his tenure as governor of La Rioja province, when Iranian agents decided reports of his anti-semitism made him a promising ally for Iran’s interests.

Q: What do the Hadith have to say about hypocrisy?
A: From the Bukhari, Hypocrisy in Deeds:

"The Prophet said, "Whoever has the following four characteristics will be a pure hypocrite and whoever has one of the following four characteristics will have one characteristic of hypocrisy unless and until he gives it up.

1. Whenever he is entrusted, he betrays.

2. Whenever he speaks, he tells a lie.

3. Whenever he makes a covenant, he proves treacherous.

4. Whenever he quarrels, he behaves in a very imprudent, evil and insulting manner"

Q: So you're saying, the Islamic Republic of Iran is exceptionally hypocritical, and really not very Islamic at all?
A: Exactly. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:06 PM by Patrick Belton  

SHOULD THE ADMINISTRATION have drawn from the strategic petroleum reserve in the past year, with the Venezuelan oil strike and the War on Saddam decreasing U.S. supply? Paul Domjan thinks it should have. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:47 PM by Patrick Belton  

AMERICAS ROUND-UP: In Argentina, kidnappings for ransom are up 16-fold since the beginning of the nation's economic crisis in 2002. And Fidel is going to war with the EU. But on a brighter note, Kirchner is calling for massive impeachments against the nation's (Menemist, and perceived-corrupt) Supreme Court, beginning with its president. And Secretary Powell is touring hemispheric capitals to mend neglected relationships with America's neighbors, with BA next on the list. Finally, Mexico signs into law a massive anti-discrimination statute which had been reputed to have low chances of passing.

So there: good news as well as bad news. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:33 PM by Patrick Belton  

ON ORWELL'S CENTENARY BIRTHDAY, the Economist offers an essay on the essayist (and novelist)'s moral vision:

Camus was the better novelist, but their moral vision was remarkably close. Personal engagement and behaving decently mattered more to them in politics than policy or dogma. Neither was happy in party camps. They were distrusted by right and left alike. Both recognised the violence that could result from bad thinking and bad writing—a lesson Orwell put memorably into “Politics and the English Language”. Both believed in the boundlessness of our duty to resist injustice, yet took a bleakly limited view of how far any of us could succeed. Orwell, who was allergic to theory and speculation of all kinds, would have hated the word, but in a sense he was England's existentialist.

Preachy Orwell certainly was. But his anti-authoritarian sermons could almost always make you laugh. He was a master of the one-liner: “Good prose is like a window pane”; “At 50, everyone has the face he deserves.” Whether his weekly column was on writing clearly, resisting tyranny or making tea, he always made it sound like a matter of life and death.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:24 PM by Patrick Belton  

NEXT YEAR, IN (WITH) LABOR?: Fox News is reporting a recent survey done by Dahaf Polling, indicating that Israeli public opinion is strongly in favor of the Road Map and for permitting Abu Mazen to establish himself as a credible alternative among Palestinians to the Islamists. Respondents favored ending Israel's occupation of Gaza and the West Bank by a surprising 67 percent.

Dahaf, incidentally, is recognized as one of the more trustworthy and unbiased public opinion polls in Israel; its head, Dr Mina Tzemah, conducts surveys frequently for Yedioth Ahronoth and Channel Two. On the other hand, public opinion polls in Israel have recurring problems with undercounts among three populations: Israeli Arabs, haredim, and immigrants from the former Soviet Union (see this piece on the subject). (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:04 PM by Patrick Belton  

STANDARD-IZING THE NEXT AMERICAN NEWSPAPER: Responding to Bill Kristol's critique (pre-regime change) of the New York Times, Yale computer scientist David Gelemter offers a few interesting ideas about what a creative newspaper that took advantage of the possibilities of the internet medium could look like. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:00 PM by Patrick Belton  

I GOT IT TOO, DAVID: and I thought it presumably was from having all those Kuwaiti men kissing me at an Arab party I went to last week in Arlington.....

However, if any of the rest of you care to watch "Head Honcho" in Arabic, I have no problem at all with it. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:32 PM by David Adesnik  

ALTERNATIVE MIDDLE EASTERN LIFESTYLES: I just got this message in my inbox and I think someone is playing a joke on me:

Hi!

How are you? I came across your e-mail address on an Arab Gay themed web site and I hope to be doing you a favour by e-mailing you the url of a new and free Arab Gay community web site. The site is 100% free and it has galleries (users can upload their soft- and hardcore photos!), forums (English/Arabic), chat, personals, downloads, links, news, articles, stories, reviews and many more features.

This is the url of the site:

http://www.Arab-Gay.com

Please note that this is not spam. I only wanted to e-mail you the url of this Arab Gay web site, because I thought you would be interested. If not, then I apologise. I will not e-mail you again and you don't have to remove your e-mail address from any mailinglist because you aren't on any mailinglist :-)

I hope you will enjoy the site!

Regards, Kevin.

Thanks but no thanks, Kev. I'll assume you sent that message my way because gay Arabs are about as fond of Osama bin Laden as OxBlog is. However, having made the mistake of actually following the link to your site, I think our similarities may end there. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:16 PM by David Adesnik  

GO, GREG, GO! The Sunday Times (London) has up a great column about the Wolfowitz fiasco at the Guardian. What makes the column so great is that describes how OxFriend Greg Djerejian exposed the Guardian's flawed reporting almost instantly by relying on nothing more than common sense and Google.

For some interesting comments on the Times column, see Greg's post about it from earlier today.

All I can add is that the Times column is some well-deserved publicity for a very intelligent blogger. But I wouldn't be surprised if Greg got more traffic from Instapundit's link to his exposee than from the Times!

PLUS: Greg has my back on the retaliation issue. Dan Simon disagrees with both of us, though. And Paul Jaminet isn't happy either. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:55 PM by David Adesnik  

PAGING SISKEL & EBERT: Now it turns out that Maureen Dowd can't even write a coherent movie review.

There is one thing worth noting about today's column though: Dowd comes perilously close to criticizing a European. The almost-victim is sexy British chef Nigella Lawson, the "domestic goddess" who may or may not be subverting modern feminism by glorifying life in the kitchen.

I say "may or may not" because Dowd's column is far too incoherent for anyone to figure if she is actually criticizing Lawson or merely whining about something tangentially related to her.

However, I am sensing that a partial redefinition of Immutable Law #5 may be in order. Said law states that "Europeans are always right."

But are the British European? They refuse to replace the pound with the euro. Their Prime Minister has publicly allied himself with the President of the United States.

My guess is that Dowd wants to issue a warning to the British: start behaving more like the rest of the EU , or else I will flay you with my withering sarcasm. However, after living here for three years, my sense is that the British are not afraid of sarcasm. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:57 PM by David Adesnik  

WISH GRANTED: Michael Jennings wonders why I haven't linked to him, since he has lots of posts about cricket.

Michael also has an interesting post about the Bilbao (Spain) airport, where the price of a drink is surprisingly reasonable. He asks why the stores there don't indulge in the sort of price gouging one would expect at an airport.

I don't know the answer to Michael's question, but I will say this: Bilbao is a well-run city with an award-winning underground system built in 1995. Thanks to Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Museum building, Bilbao has become a major tourist attraction.

Thus, I wouldn't be surprised if the city fathers decided that imposing reasonable prices at airport stores is good for the city, given the positive feelings that it generates among tourists.

In addition, Bilbao is the first city to recognize that capping airport prices is good for the city as a whole. For example, Dulles International Airport outside of Washington DC has banners up all around which advertise that its stores charge the same price one would pay in a Washington area mall. In fact, one can complain to the airport authorities if one has to pay more.

Somewhere, Ralph Nader is smiling. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:40 PM by David Adesnik  

UNDER FIRE: My criticism of Ariel Sharon and defense of the NYT isn't winning me any friends in the blogosphere.

Adding to the pile-on, Dan Simon insists that Israeli retaliation will not undermine Abu Mazen's authority since Israeli retaliation did not undermine the US effort to sideline Arafat and install Abu Mazen in the first place.

From where I stand, the flaw in Dan's argument is that destroying credibility is far more difficult than reinforcing it. A combination of American and Israeli intransigence forced Arafat to back down. But that same combination cannot persuade Palestinians to embrace Abu Mazen.

Next up, GMU law prof David Bernstein asks (via e-mail)

It's been reported that [Abdel Aziz] Rantisi was in charge of coordinating Fatah, Jihad, and Hamas into one big terror group. The attack on Israeli soldiers in Gaza earlier this week was their first operation. If that's the case, would you really expect Sharon sit by and let such a terror organization, a comibnation of Arafat's minions and Hamas', sprout under his nose?

No, not really. But would an attempt to kill Rantisi change all that much? If Fatah, Jihad and Hamas want to work together, they will. Even if killing Rantisi would've damaged such efforts, did Sharon have to attack him right after the Aqaba summit, at a critical moment for Abu Mazen? Moreover, if Rantisi is that important, why didn't Sharon try to kill him earlier?

Anyhow, what matters far more than my opinion of Sharon is the President's, and it seems that Bush is backing off his initial criticism of the Rantisi attack. In the meantime, Israeli helicopter attacks continue even while Israeli and Palestinian negotiators continue to talk about implementing the roadmap. What will happen next? I don't know. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:58 PM by Patrick Belton  

A TRAGIC STORY from Egypt. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:57 PM by David Adesnik  

DOES OXBLOG MALIGN THE FRENCH? Matt Yglesias definitely thinks so. He argues that

The notion that the "anti-war coalition" is under an obligation to demonstrate it's "ability to defend international order and human rights without relying on American firepower" is a mighty odd test for David to have made up.

Actually, I don't think it's a bad test all. Almost all opponents of the second Gulf War -- especially Europeans -- argued that the United States should respect international law and rely on multilateral mechanisms (such as UN inspections) to resolve its conflict with Saddam Hussein.

While the inability of the United States to find any WMD has restored the credibility of the UN weapons inspectors (at least for the moment), I still believe that there was no multilateral way to address the threat presented by Saddam Hussein. Beginning from that premise, it is fair to present the current situation in the Congo as a test of the UN/European approach to international order.

Matt supports his initial point by emphasizing that

...the UN is not some entity distinct from the United States...

The case for multilateralism in Iraq was never that the US shouldn't do anything about Saddam because some mythical UN-but-not-US entity was going to handle the situation. The UN is an organization through which we multilateralists thought the United States ought to have worked.

The fact is that the United States began to work through the UN, but came to a point where its was no longer possible to reconcile its preferred course of action with that of France et al. Thus, the question isn't whether the UN can handle situations instead of the United States, but whether the United States should limit itself to the problem-solving methods insisted upon by the United Nations.

That being the case, it is fair to ask whether those problem-solving methods have any prospect of success in Central Africa. Even so, I am tempted to concede Matt's point that

French-led UN efforts...[are]doing a hell of a lot more good than the nonexistent US-led efforts there

While Matt seems to ignore that the French are there because the US supported the Security Council's decision to send them, it would be nice for some high level US officials to express concern about the situation in the Congo.

Where I can't agree with Matt is his declaration that

When the United States undermines the international institutions the world has in order to accomplish something in Iraq it makes it that much harder to resolve all the other humanitarian crises out there.

How, pray tell, did the unilateral invasion of Iraq made it harder for the UN to deal with the situation in the Congo? Neither the United States nor any of the nations of Central Africa have challenged the UN's role as peacekeeper and peacemaker in the Congo. As such, the UN's prestige seems to be fully intact. The only question is whether the French and the other anti-war nations of the Security Council are willing to send enough of their own troops to get the job done. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:57 PM by David Adesnik  

PEACEKEEPING DESTROYS MORALE: A major NYT story reports that

Two months after surging into Baghdad, the First Brigade's soldiers have found themselves enmeshed in yet another war — less intense, perhaps, but still exhausting, still perilous and, at times, still psychologically taxing.

Some are haunted by the deaths they caused — and suffered — and have sought counseling. All are tired and hot and increasingly bitter. Morale has plummeted as sharply as the temperature has risen.

While it's hard to discount the direct observations of a professional reporter, there are subtle indications that the NYT may just be crying wolf, as it did with its "quagmire" stories during the invasion.

Perhaps more importantly, the NYT story doesn't seem to fit with most other coverage of the occupation, which tends to show American soldiers adjusting to their new role rather well. You know, I'm really beginning to think that I won't figure out what's going in Iraq until I buy a one-way ticket to Baghdad.
(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:30 PM by David Adesnik  

LOVE THOSE JEWS: Ran across this in the WaPo:

"I see this guy with funny-looking clothes on, mumbling," [Senator] McCain said. "I thought, my God, what's going on here? It was Joe [Lieberman], practicing his religion."

In context, the quote still sounds pretty silly, but isn't at all offensive. McCain was once with Lieberman on a transatlantic flight and woke up blearey-eyed, with a prayer shawl-clad Lieberman in front of him.

In fact, McCain respects Lieberman because he "is one of the few men I've met in my life who lives his religion." Albeit a religion that involves mumbling and funny-looking clothes. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:29 PM by Patrick Belton  

THE HATFIELDS AND MCCOYS HAVE SIGNED A TRUCE: And this without a road map, even. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:11 PM by David Adesnik  

MORE IMPERIALISM, PLEASE: Peter Beinart is scathing in his denunication of the Bush record on human rights. If Saddam's atrocities provoked outrage in the White House, why has the United States turned a blind eye to brutality in Liberia (a former US colony of sorts)?

While welcoming Beinart's call for a more aggressive foreign policy, Glenn Reynolds notes that intervention often consists of dispatching a token force that assuage the Western conscience while accomplishing nothing on the ground. Exhibit A: The Congo.

While there is no question that Beinart goes overboard in his criticism of the administration, his argument is solid. In contrast, Glenn avoids Peter's strongest point, which is that the prospects for a successful intervention are quite good in a country as small as Liberia.

As Peter points out, the British have restored order in Sierra Leone (a former British colony) and the French in Cote D'Ivoire (a former French colony) with just a few thousand troops. Sierra Leone and Cote D'Ivoire are, of course, Liberia neighbors and about the same size.

In contrast, the Congo is four times the size of France. While that doesn't excuse the United Nations' decision to dispatch a miniscule force, it does undermine Glenn's analogy.

The one thing Peter doesn't seem to recognize is that rampant accusations of imperialism in the run-up to the second Gulf War may, in part, be responsible for US disinterest in Liberia. Given that Cheney, Rumsfeld and Bush are predisposed to ignoring Africa, they're probably thinking to themselves: "Why bother with Liberia? It has no strategic value. And the Europeans will only accuse us of unilateralist imperialism if we go ahead and act. Let them take care of it if human rights are so important."

Sadly, this perception is misguided. As in Kosovo, Europe welcomes American intervention when the protection of human rights is the United States' only possible motive. Moreover, in light of the British and French interventions in Sierra Leone and Cote D'Ivoire, no European government can portray itself as defending international law from American depredations.

Ideally, the members of the Security Council will take advantage of the situation in Liberia to repair their relations with one another by unanimously endorsing an American-led intervention.

UPDATE: West African mediators believe a ceasefire in Liberia is now possible. Sadly, the Reuters dispatch which reported this still describes Charles Taylor as an elected president.
(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:56 PM by Patrick Belton  

I KNEW GRADE INFLATION WAS BAD THERE, BUT.... Currently fronting our sister school's website, "Harvard has the largest intercollegiate athletics program in the country, with 41 varsity sports. More than 1,500 varsity letters or freshman numerals are awarded annually." 1500? Sweet Christ, are you giving them away to tourists in Harvard Yard?

UPDATE: Okay, okay, I deserved it: Amanda fromCrescat Scententia tweaks my nose back.... :) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:43 PM by David Adesnik  

BAD NEIGHBOORHOOD: Given its own brutal human rights abuses, the Thai government's failure to condemn the Myanmar junta for imprisoning Aung San Suu Kyi may not be all that surprising. (Thanks to PD for the link.) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:38 PM by David Adesnik  

MEANER THAN A...Junkyard Blog has put up a nice post on US efforts to reach out to Iraqi Shi'ites. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:28 PM by David Adesnik  

VOTING WITH THEIR FEET: In response to yesterday's post about the situation in Iraq, RT writes

There's one set of "experts" about the post-war situation in both Iraq and Afghanistan about whom I've seen very little comment; and yet I personally respect their opinions more than all of the opinions of the "world affairs experts." (What can I say? I'm an ignorant engineer and have a lot of respect for the person actually on the scene!)

That group is the "refugees." All the reports I've seen have said that vast numbers of Afghans have been moving back into Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban, and also that the flow of "refugees" has been INTO Iraq rather than out of it. I consider that to be a VERY significant comment upon the value of the changes wrought by the U.S. actions.

I'm not by this trying to excuse any errors that the U.S. may have made, but I think that the opinion of the former refugees is the most valuable one available as to the relative change in the situations. Those people both understand the situation at the level of the individual citizen far better than any "distant expert," and they are validating their opinions with their LIVES.

"Better" is, of course, not perfection, but it is, I think, a valid comparison of what has been accomplished. There's still work to do, but the mere fact that the net flow of people has been back into both of the countries in question, starting very soon after the completion of "major military action" (you'll notice that I'm not saying "after the countries were safe and secure") is something that deserves consideration and respect.

Well-said. Refugee flows are definitely important indicators of conditions on the ground. This is a subject I hope to learn more about in the near future. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:11 PM by David Adesnik  

OXBLOG DEFENDS NYT: Yesterday, I expressed surprise at my own agreement with this anti-Sharon editorial in the NYT.

In contrast, Martin Kimel decided that the editorial was so bad that it deserved a full-frontal fisking. (Martin doesn't have permalinks, so you'll have to scroll down. His post is the fourth from the top on June 12th.)

In short, I agree with absolutely nothing Martin says, even though his arguments are quite intelligent and well-composed. In fact, I even entertained thoughts of counterfisking Martin's post because it got me so riled up.

But for the sake of clarity and brevity, I think I'll just respond to a few of his points directly

1. Martin defends Sharon from the charge of undermining Abu Mazen's authority by saying that Mazen had none in the first place. But that's just plain wrong. Until the recent attacks, the Palestinian government accepted Mazen's replacement of Arafat as its bridge to Israel and the United States. Now that status is threatened.
   
   
2. Martin argues that Abu Mazen's refusal to use violence against Hamas is a violation of his commitment to stop Palestinian terror. Instead, Mazen has sought to negotiate an end to suicide attacks. What Martin doesn't consider is that Mazen hasn't had enough time to consolidate his authority to the point where he can launch a military assault on Hamas without provoking a popular backalsh.
   
   
3. Martin mocks the NYT's call for Israeli restraint as nothing more than an assertion that "Israel should just sit back and watch its people get slaughtered." However, that argument presumes both that Sharon had no other option than to launch targeted assassinations and that such assassinations improve Israeli security.
   
   As Jackson Diehl points out, there was no security rationale for Sharon's decision to target Hamas leader Abdel Aziz Rantisi for assassination just six days after the Aqaba talks. Israel could have targeted Rantisi at any time in the past year, but chose not to.
   
   In addition, Diehl observes that Sharon has a habit of launching high-profile assassination attempts in the midst of every Israeli-Palestinian ceasefire. Sharon knows that the immediate response to such attempts will consist of more suicide attacks.
   
   While forgoing a violent response to Palestinian terror compromises the valid principle that one must punish the perpetrators of such barbaric acts, the fact is that a less violent response (border closings, etc.) would have saved Israeli lives.

Thanks to the United States, Israel was given its first chance in 15 years to negotiate with someone other than Yasser Arafat. Had Sharon recognized this historic opportunity and shown proper restraint, Palestinians might now think of Abu Mazen as the one man capable of protecting them from Israeli vengeance. At the same time, Palestinians might have begun to recognize that Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Al-Aksa are not defending them from Israeli brutality, but destorying all prospects of peace.

I say "might" cautiously and without great confidence. I recognize the validity of the hawks' argument that restraint often ensures further victimization. Thus restraint entails risk. But for the first time in many years, that risk was worth taking.

UPDATE: Michael Totten and Reason of Voice -- both of whom are often to my left on foreign policy -- agree with Martin that the NYT editorial is nothing more than a call for Israel to passively accept the murder of its citizens.

Sadly, the point may be moot since the prospects for peace are now so dim. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:09 PM by David Adesnik  

CONGO CRISIS: Glenn Reynolds has posts up on the incompetence of both French and UN efforts to stop the slaughter in the Congo.

The question I'm trying to work out in my mind is whether the situation in the Congo is a fair test of the anti-war coalition's ability to defend international order and human rights without relying on American firepower.

Do the French and/or the UN leadership see this as a chance to demonstrate the falsehood of the United States' accusations of incompetence and amorality? Or are the French and the UN more interested in avoiding responsibility for an explosive ethnic war that may demonstrate to the world just how incompetent and amoral they are?

Answer: I don't know. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 3:00 PM by Patrick Belton  

COULD THIS BE THE BEGINNING OF THE END? This, of course, being the fairly spontaneous growth of protests in Iran, which in their last three days have spilled over from students to their fairly pro-Western Tehranian neighbors, who are unhappy with the slow pace of reform Khatami's election was meant to herald in six years ago. See coverage from the VOA, FT, Reuters. This (and this timeline) is from the last time students protested in Tehran, during the hot summer of 1999 following the election of reformist but hobbled President Khatami.

UPDATE: Josh and I think alike.... :)
(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:14 PM by Patrick Belton  

ON ARAB ISRAELIS AND JEWS VISITING AUSCHWITZ TOGETHER: Yossi Halevi has a poignant piece - now especially - in the TNR on this joint pilgrimage, organized by an Arab Catholic priest from Nazareth. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:56 PM by David Adesnik  

ROOKIE OF THE YEAR? Blogosphere newcomer Boomshock is continuing to put up one good post after another. Right now, check out his comments on postwar Iraq and Aung San Suu Kyi.

And for you sporting types, don't miss Boomshock's posts on the LA Dodgers and Ba'athist Poker. Alas, he has no posts on cricket.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:39 PM by David Adesnik  

POSSIBLY A FIRST: I actually agree with this NYT editorial on Israel's reckless response to Palestinian terror. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:36 PM by David Adesnik  

OUR SAUDI FRIENDS: Jim Hoagland slams them for negligent and hypocritical efforts to combat extremism. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:33 PM by David Adesnik  

WHAT, ME HUMANITARIAN? Matt Yglesias wants to disabuse liberals hawks of their dangerous illusion that there is a humanitarian strand in the Bush administration's thinking.

Matt writes that

The administration's actions in postwar Afghanistan and Iraq have, however, made it clear that humanitarianism — like everything else — is a banner to be picked up and then discarded according to the immediate needs of political opportunism.

First Iraq. This morning, both the NYT and WaPo ran long articles on evidence of a remarkable turnaround in Baghdad.

According to the Post,

After weeks of looting and unchecked criminal activity, the U.S. effort to improve security in Baghdad has helped bring signs of normality to this city of 5 million people. As the Americans deploy thousands more soldiers and assign many of them to neighborhood patrols, merchants not only are keeping their doors open longer, they also feel confident enough to stack televisions, air conditioners and other high-priced goods on the sidewalk. Cars zip around until the 11 p.m. curfew imposed by the U.S. military. Parents have begun to let their children walk to school in the daytime.

According to the Times,

Just over a month into his Iraq mission, Mr. Bremer described considerable progress in restoring basic services: electricity now flows 20 hours a day in Baghdad, all 12 hospitals are open, 8,000 police officers patrol the capital and commerce is reviving.

In addition, one has to consider the remarkable progress made in major provincial cities such as Karbala, Kirkuk and Mosul.

Now, Afghanistan. I'm not going to defend the Administration on that one. The prospects for democracy are not looking good. But on strictly humanitarian grounds, one has to give the US considerable credit for the massive shipments of food it sent after the war, shipments which prevented a famine that Oxfam and others had described as imminent.

(NB: There are no indications of famine in Iraq either, even though Matt insists that people there are continuing to die of thirst as well as cholera. Given the absence of a link, I suspect Matt is waxing rhetorical.)

All that said, Matt does make some good points in his post about humanitarianism. He is right that Cheney and Rumsfeld do not share Wolfowitz's idealism. But Matt is wrong to think that OxBlog or any of the other authors he criticizes are unaware of divisions within the cabinet. (See here and here for examples of OxBlog's comments on Rumsfeld's shortcomings.)

Matt is also right to criticize paleo-cons for insisting that humanitarian objectives should have nothing to do with foreign policy. Still, it is somewhat disingenuous for him to cite the National Review as the source of Rumsfeld and Cheney's -- let alone the President's -- attitudes toward foreign policy.

While Matt is right that no one -- especially not liberal hawks -- can afford to be complacent about the Administration's foreign policy, it is no less imperative for doves to overcome their their resentment of the President and recognize that, for all his flaws, he has done certain things very right. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:51 PM by David Adesnik  

SYMBOLIC HOMOSEXUALS IN THE MILITARY: While we're talking about sex, why not take a look at this Michael Gordon dispatch about the Spartan Brigade, officially known as the Second Brigade of the Third Infantry Division in the US Army.

How ironic is that? Imagine if a literary society that excluded homosexuals called itself the Oscar Wilde Club. It just wouldn't work. So how, then, can the Second Brigade model itself on the Spartans?

(Bad joke interlude: What's the Greek army's motto? Never leave your buddies' behind.)

At least Canada is starting to figure that homosexuals are human beings, too. Thanks to a recent ruling by an Ontario appeals court, gay Canadians can now get married.

Just so you know that OxBlog has an open mind about the gay marriage issue, we will make sure to report all evidence that traditional Canadian families are falling apart as a result of gay marriages. We will not, however, report any instances of "man on dog". Leave that to the Senate.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:38 PM by David Adesnik  

REYNOLDS SLEEPS WITH WIFE: His own wife, actually. No scandal here, folks.

In the past, I have chided Prof. Reynolds for his mildly exhibitionist postings. But no more. In fact, it's probably a good thing for people to see that sex and marriage are not mutually exclusive.

However progressive we think we are, the fact is that sex is still a taboo subject. Yes, we are seeing more of it on TV, at the movies and in the papers. But what we see is so distant from reality that it does nothing to promote more healthy attitudes towards the subject.

So good for Glenn.

Now, I have to admit that this post didn't come from nowhere. Amused by my chidings, the good Professor sent me a link to a post (not one of his) so disgusting and offensive that it made me realize that what Glenn is doing is most definitely a good thing.

And no, I'm not going to link to the post that changed my mind. (But if you want to read about more sex and love and marriage, I recommend the Onion.)

Now one last thing about Glenn: If the InstaKids ever come across his posts, they're going to ask some very interesting questions. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:28 AM by Patrick Belton  

SAPPAGE (THAT'S ETONIAN SLANG, OR SO I'M TOLD, FOR INTENSIVE STUDYING) Yet another day passes in hiding for me, as I put myself to the task of writing my way back into the good graces of both an advisor and an editor. However, a few items which nonetheless I couldn't help but briefly comment on:

* Jim Hoagland writes a piece in this morning's Post on the sad travails of the Arab press. The principled, reformist editor Jamal Khashoggi of Saudi's al-Watan was canned recently for denouncing local causes of extremism and intolerance in the kingdom. And after being hit with far worse allegations than the Times (in its case, vending of coverage to Iraqi intelligence), al-Jazeera for its part has launched no public review, and provided no public explanation for the allegations which led to the sacking of the Qatari station's director, Mohammed Jasim al-Ali.

* Elsewhere on editorial pages this morning, the Times calls the recent cycle of violence by Hamas and allied Palestinian militant organizations inevitable at a moment when a real alternative to their absolutist Islamist vision is nearly tangible under the guise of the road maps's two-state solution - but says that strengthening Abu Mazen rather than undermining him is the best way for Israel to battle terror in the occupied territories.

* And he was, by all reports, a decent and clever man, and a good politician. But when Plaid Cymru politician Phil Williams met his end Tuesday night in a massage parlor, there was something novellish about the event. (By contrast, for an instance of true class, witness the New York Yankees franchise's sending of six bottles of champagne to the lockers of the Houston Astros after the latter's no-hitter against them, in which six pitchers had participated. Even in defeat, the Bronx Bombers find ways to make one proud....)

* But finally, a truly important item - which is our heartiest congratulations to our Oxford (and my Trinity) classmate Greg Behrman, for signing his book deal with Simon & Schuster! Greg will be writing on the global response to AIDS on the African continent; we for our part will be impatiently waiting in the bookstores....

That said, there's someone in New York who for her part is impatiently waiting to read something about American mosques...so off I go to think up something to say. Ma’assalama! (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:17 PM by David Adesnik  

THE DEATH OF PREEMPTION: Dan Drezner has the story in TNR. Footnotes are provided on Dan's blog. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:01 PM by David Adesnik  

ME THREE: Broder seconds Chafetz and Adesnik in calling for an ombudsman at the NYT.

NB: Four posts in one day attacking the NYT. I think it's a personal record. Or maybe I'm just dumbfounded by Josh's praise of Johnny Apple. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:50 PM by David Adesnik  

SEINFELD AT THE NYT: Seinfeld was a show about nothing. Everybody loved it. Seeking refuge from the scandals wreaking havoc at the Times, Maureen Dowd has decided that she, too, should write about nothing. And I don't just mean that she's incoherent. Usually she's incoherent when writing about something. Now it's just nothing.

But what's truly miraculous is that Ms. Dowd continues to obey the Immutable Laws even though she is writing about nothing.

Law the First is "the People magazine principle: All political phenomena can be reduced to caricatures of the personalities involved." Dowd writes today that

It seemed perfectly natural when Dennis Kucinich had a dark brown stain on his light blue tie at a recent presidential candidates' forum.

Dishevelment — stains that indicate you had soup at your desk as you sorted through Social Security offset taxes, or that you are wearing a hand-me-down sportscoat your dad gave you at Harvard — signals that you're far too busy pondering the meaning of neoimperialism to look in the mirror.

Law the Second is that "It's easier to whine than to take a stand or offer solutions." Hence the incisive conclusion of today's column:

That's why men are from Mars, a planet where, strangely, it is possible to have too many pairs of black pants.

Law the Third is that "It is better to be cute than coherent." The men-are-from-Mars quote lets us tick off that box as well.

Law the Fourth is that "The particulars of my consumer-driven, self-involved life are of universal interest and reveal universal truths." Hence Dowd's column opens with a declaration that

I know this is an odd bias, but I really don't like to see a him-and-her shopping for clothing for her...

I hate to play into stereotypes, but when I see men following women around the couture departments of Bergdorf's on a rainy Saturday afternoon like trained poodles, it crosses my mind that they should be home on their Barcaloungers watching ESPN and eating a Jerry's sub.

Somehow, I don't think that me and the rest of the Macy's crowd are going to worry about what goes on at Bergdorf's.

Moving on, Law the Fifth states that "Europeans are always right." Which explains why

President Clinton raised eyebrows here when he began wearing showy Zegna ties and double-breasted suits with double-pleated pants designed by Donna Karan (DKDC). Was he going Euro?

To think: If only Bush dressed that well the French might have endorsed a second resolution.

So there you have it folks. A column about nothing that obeys the Immutable Laws. So let me make a recommendation that violates all five of the laws: Fire her. Now. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:25 PM by David Adesnik  

ANOTHER SUCCESS STORY: This WaPo front-pager ties together two important points I've made about postwar Iraq. The first is that American soldiers are more dependable than American diplomats when its comes to putting American values into practice. The second is that we should expect far more violent resistance to the occupation from Sunni Ba'athists than from Shi'ite opponents of Saddam.

According to the WaPo, the exemplary behavior Lt. Col. Michael Belcher has won him the respect of the people of Karbala. The WaPo reports that

In gestures large and small -- from reopening an amusement park with free admission to restoring electricity to twice its prewar level, from stopping looting with a rapidly reconstituted police force, to a conscious effort to respect religious sensitivities -- Karbala seems to have avoided the bitterness and disenchantment that has enveloped Baghdad and other cities.

This story belongs to a genre that is becoming increasingly familar: pragmatic US officer wins over suspicious locals. It's already happened in Mosul and Kirkuk.

What's different about Karbala is that it's in the south and that it is predominantly Shi'ite.

Unlike towns in restive regions north and west of Baghdad, U.S. troops in Karbala have yet to come under fire. They have entered fewer than 10 houses here to search for weapons. They patrol without flak jackets in an effort to make their presence less formidable.

I'd say that's a pretty good indication of the fact that Sunni, and not Shi'ite resistance is the real challenge facing the US.

That said, one shouldn't become complacent. (Although it is still OK to laugh when the NYT runs a headline like "G.I.'s in Iraqi City Are Stalked by Faceless Enemies at Night".)

American soldiers will continue to lose their lives in Iraq. They will fall prey to maddening and unpreventable guerrilla attacks rather than dying heroically during a lightning strike on Baghdad. But that is the inglorious nature of democracy promotion in Iraq. We have no choice. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:59 PM by Patrick Belton  

A WEB FORM JUST CRYING OUT FOR ABUSE: Silflay Hraka is suggesting creative ways to abuse the Saudi religious police's on-line form conveniently provided for ratting on the misdeeds of one's neighbors. Go have fun....

(Yes, these, of course, are our friends the mutawwa'in who caused 15 young girls to die in March 2002 by preventing them from fleeing a blazing building in Mecca, because they were not propertly covered with abayas.) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:42 PM by David Adesnik  

NYT CONTRADICTS NYT: Is the United States dangerously neglecting the Iraqi oil industry or agressively taking advantage of the occupation to help US oil companies best their French and Russian rivals? I have no idea. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:35 PM by David Adesnik  

ALL IN THE NAME: Josh isn't the only one who can put up posts about GOP legislators' embarrassingly selfish shenanigans. Check out this front-pager on new Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-MO), who collected $150,000 in campaign funds from Philip Morris and then tried to slip one of the corporation's pet projects into the Homeland Security Bill. That, my friends, is blunt.

UPDATE: The NYT joins Josh in bashing Larry Craig. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:23 PM by David Adesnik  

SADNESS: Hamas suicide attack kills 16, injures almost 70 in Jerusalem.

UPDATE: Greg Djerejian and the WaPo have some thoughs on whether the peace process can survive. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 4:55 PM by David Adesnik  

BURMA PETITION: 54 Monkeys has passed on the URL for an Amnesty International site where you can sign a petition demanding the release of Aung San Suu Kyi and her supporters.

The AI site also provides addresses at which you can write the Myanmar junta directly. Don't expect a personalized response. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:58 AM by Patrick Belton  

SCHOO! MAKE WAY FOR GEN. SCHOOMAKER: Okay, not to fawn, but....naah, I'll fawn. Former special operations command head and Delta Force chief Peter Schoomaker may just be such a good candidate to lead the Army that it's hard to think of how he could even be any better. General Schoomaker enjoys a reputation as an agile, innovative thinker; his special operations background is in the portion of the army which most embodies the flexible, highly mobile army into which the Secretary of Defense would like to help transform the current conventional army. Here's a round-up: an article he wrote on the challenges facing SOCOM (special operations command), an article from 1999 focusing on him, a piece on mil-mil contact with China in which he figures prominently, the Welch Commision report he partly wrote on giving special operations command a larger role in the war on terror, reportage from Waco mentioning him, NYT , the Telegraph, his bio.

UPDATE: David just pointed out to me that Phil Carter has a thoughtful post on Secretary Rumsfeld's appointment of a retired general over the army's serving three- and four-stars as possibly portending another episode of power struggle between the civilian appointees (and army chief) who push a quick pace of defense transformation, and serving brass who favor a slower pace.
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# 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.

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# 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