# Posted 11:54 PM by David Adesnik  

MATT ON THE MOVE: Mr. Yglesias is now writing for Tapped. His old site will live on, but focus on the non-political issues that aren't a part of Tapped's portfolio. So good luck to Matt at his new job and here's to reading Tapped! (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:37 PM by David Adesnik  

READ MY LIPS: NO NEW TAX CUTS. It isn't everyday that OxBlog agrees with Paul Krugman. And while I don't speak for Josh or Patrick, I'm willing to speculate that they would agree with Krugman as well.

Leaving aside the partisan invective, Krugman's column basically says that it is embarrassingly irresponsible for the Bush Administration to push for massive tax cuts, run up a massive deficit and then ask for an $87 billion supplmental appropriation for Iraq.

In spite of its insufficient planning, the Administration should have known that the costs of war and reconstruction often outstrip pre-war estimates. I can't imagine that legislators on either side of the aisle would have objected if the Administration deferred its tax cuts pending the outcome of the situation in Iraq.

But that wasn't going to happen. This Administration has an ideological commitment to tax cuts and wasn't going to waste a golden opportunity to have them written into law.

So what now? Both George W. Bush and Karl Rove most certainly remember the damaging price that Bush 41 paid for breaking his promise of "no new taxes". They aren't going to admit they were wrong, although they may well limit their requests for further cuts.

As far as the nation's finances go, what's going to happen now is what happened under Reagan: the United States took advantage of its perfect credit rating in order to finance both tax cuts and military spending through increased debt. Thanks to spectacular economic growth in the 1990s, we never had to face the terrifying prospect of heading into a serious recession with a massive debt on our shoulders.

But there was one victim of Reagan's largesse: George Bush the Father. He had to break his "no new taxes" promise because there was simply no way for the government to go into further debt. That is a danger that the Bush the Son may have to face because of his current policies...in his second term. Thus if Bush the Son does have to reverse on tax cuts, then the Republican candidate in 2008 may be seriously damaged. The result? President Hillary.

UPDATE: CalPundit is also hitting Bush hard on the costs of the war/occupation. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:05 PM by David Adesnik  

QUAGMIRE! The death toll is rising. The government is trapped in its own incompetence. And the people are losing faith in their leaders. So isn't it fair to say that the French have sunken into a quagmire? (No wonder they didn't want to fight Saddam. They can't even beat the weather.) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:48 AM by David Adesnik  

THE PURPOSE OF BRINGING IN THE U.N. (SOME TENTATIVE THOUGHTS): I still have a lot of news to catch up on, but have come to a few speculative conclusions after going through a dozen or so news articles about the Bush Administration's turn to the UN for help in Iraq.

First of all, no one seems to agree on why the United States is (or should) ask for UN help in Iraq. As best as I can tell, the fundamental issue is that we simply don't have enough troops to man the occupation forces past next march. While there has been a lot of talk about training Iraqi police and paramilitary forces, I'm guessing that the Administration: A) Doesn't know if they'll be ready in time and/or B) Doesn't have all that much confidence that they will be effective once deployed.

According to Joe Biden,

"The costs are staggering, the number of troops are staggering, we're seeing continuing escalation of American casualties, and we need to turn to the U.N. for help, for a U.N.-sanctioned military operation that is under U.S. command."

Lest one think that Biden is making a partisan point, one should note that John Warner (R-VA) has said that

"These casualties are beginning to unnerve Americans, and it concerns me...As I traveled through my state last month, people in very respectful tones came up to me and said, `John, we have to do something.' "

In other words, Biden and Warner want the Security Council to draw up a new resolution so that other nations' citizens can die instead of our own. While it's good to know that Biden and Warner are looking out for their constituents, the parochialism of their viewpoint is disturbing. After all, what good is it for a Frenchman or a Belgian to die instead of an American?

The problem here, as Phil Carter so ably pointed out, is that Americans often confuse success with a low casualty rate. While every effort should be made to minimize casualties, our purpose in Iraq is to build democracy and stop terror. Will bringing in the French and Belgians accomplish that task? If you believe that a multilateral occupation is more likely to succed, then yes. But Biden, Warner and others like them don't seem to be willing to say that. Perhaps they simply assume it. Or, as I suspect, they are unwilling to confront powerful arguments against the efficacy of a multilateral nation-building effort.

The next big question which no one has answered is what kind of quid pro quo the UN will demand for its consent. Before the Bush Administration approached the UN, Kofi Annan held out the prospect of the US maintaining a leadership role while sharing "decisions and responsibility with others". But now the NYT is reporting that

several Security Council members, like France and Russia, have said repeatedly that they would not support a measure that allowed the United States to maintain full military and political control.

Which brings us to the real question: What is it, exactly, that France and Russia want to change about the occupation? According to Dominique de Villepin,

"It is time to move resolutely into a logic of sovereignty for Iraq. A true change of approach is needed. We must end the ambiguity, transfer responsibilities and allow the Iraqis to play the role they deserve as soon as possible."

You can't disagree with that. It sounds exactly like what Donald Rumsfeld has been saying about giving the people Iraq more responsibility for their future.

While my spider-sense indicates that the French have some other agenda, the fact may be that they don't expect much of a quid for their pro-quo because they just aren't going to give that much to the occupation in terms of either time or money. While the French military has drawn up plans for the dispatch of up to 10,000 troops, other officials are insisting that France is already overcommitted to other peacekeeping projects. Thus, the French may be satisfied with the already impressive public relations victory they have scored by having Bush come back to the UN.

But if the French won't send troops, who will? I doubt that too many other European hold-outs would reverse course because of a new UN resolution. The real manpower will have to come from India, Pakistan and Turkey. Now, the prospect of having Indian troops is a good one -- after all, they are from a democratic country with a pretty good human rights record. Turkey is democratic as well, but less so. And its shared border with Iraq means that the Turks may turn a blind eye to smuggling, etc. Pakistan? I don't even want to go there. As thanks for its help in Afghanistan, we're already putting up with an incompetent dictator who is holding up peace talks with India and probably letting his subordinates indulge their taste for jihad by harboring all sorts of Islamic radicals. That is, when they aren't busy sending nuclear technology to Iran and North Korea.

The last big question for tonight is whether turning to the UN is a good thing. In a surprisingly judicious editorial, the WSJ argues that it may be worth the public relations cost of looking foolish if a new resolution lets Indian or Turkish forces focus on peacekeeping while mobile and heavily-armed Americans hunt down Ba'athist insurgents. Provided, of course, that France and Russia really want to help Iraq govern itself, rather than just forcing a US withdrawal or establishing their own fiefdoms in Baghdad.

What do I think? I'm not sure. What I want to know is whether the Bush Administration has suggested approaching the UN because it knows that it can work out a good deal, or whether its own deficient planning has resulted in the sort of confused and ad hoc decisionmaking that the Bush campaign once identified as the cause of Clinton's foreign policy troubles. I can imagine Rumsfeld wanting to go to the UN because he is desperate for troops, Cheney going along because he wants someone else to his nation-building for him and Powell agreeing because he cares more about rebuilding trans-Atlantic relations than rebuilding Iraq. And who would disagree if Powell, Rumsfeld and Cheney are all on the same side? Wolfowitz?

That's where Bush's speech comes in. He sounded much more like a Wolfowitz than a Powell, a Cheney or a Rumsfeld. He really seems to think we can get things right in Iraq. But how does the UN fit into the President's plans? I just don't know.

UPDATE: In an impressive debut column, David Brooks suggests some answers. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:27 PM by David Adesnik  

WE DIDN'T START THE SAFIRE: Yes, I pretty much agree with Bill Safire's point in today's column. But his presentation is so harsh and one-sided that I think he is doing more to hurt the cause of reconstruction than to help it. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:07 AM by David Adesnik  

COMING SOON...A lengthy post on the Bush Administration's efforts to get the UN involved in Iraq. So far, this looks like a big "I told you so" moment for liberal critics of the occupation. And conservatives seem to think it's pretty embarrassing, too. I'm gonna need some time to figure this all out. In the meantime, take a look at what Kevin Drum has to say here, here, here and here. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:38 PM by David Adesnik  

NOT EVERYONE LIKED THE SPEECH: Josh and I may have liked what the President said, but I think it's only fair to post some critical views here as well. For example,

The speech was Mr. Bush's first extended address about Iraq since he declared an end to major combat operations in a May 1 speech. He was more triumphal then, asserting that "the United States and our allies have prevailed."

But 149 Americans have died in Iraq since then, compared with the 138 in the invasion itself. The United Nations headquarters in Baghdad was bombed last month, a low point in the United States' now five-month-old occupation...

In his 18-minute speech, Mr. Bush did not mention Osama bin Laden, who has so far eluded American capture in Afghanistan. He also did not mention the failure so far to find any unconventional weapons in Iraq, the major stated reason that the United States went to war. Nor did Mr. Bush dwell on the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, which he once predicted would abate if Saddam Hussein was ousted from power in Iraq. That conflict has worsened."

Despite sounding like something out of The Nation, the quotation above is actually from a straight news piece in the NYT written by Elisabeth Bumiller. While I'm still not enough of a Times-watcher to differentiate all that effectively between its correspondents' individual biases, I've long considered Bumiller one of the most biased.

Of course, when it comes to outright ridiculousness, no one can match Howard Dean. While I may have been defending the man just over a week ago (and still stand by what I said), the good Doctor isn't going to score any OxBlog points by saying that Bush's speech is

"beginning to remind me of what was happening with Lyndon Johnson and Dick Nixon during the Vietnam War."

Asked to explain the analogy to Vietnam, Dr. Dean said: "The government begins to feed misinformation to the American people in order to justify an enormous commitment of American troops, which turned out to be a tremendous mistake."

So it looks like Dean has bought into the quagmire myth hook, line and sinker. His first comment demonstrates that he has very little ability to distinguish between "nation-building" in Vietnam and nation-building in Iraq. However, his second comment shows that he isn't exactly ready to go public with that view. Instead of actually commenting on the supposed failure of the occupation, Dean's responded with a non sequitur about Presidential deception. Yes, yes, we've all heard about the uranium. But tonight's speech wasn't about uranium. From context, it seems clear that Dean's initial use of the Vietnam analogy concerned the President's decision to commit ever more resources to a failing cause. But he didn't have the guts to follow up that line of criticism.

Now, you might ask, why do I invest so much effort criticizing a candidate whose foreign policy I already know I don't like? Because I still haven't made up my mind what I would do if it were Dean vs. Bush in November '04. It's a question Josh keeps putting to me: What incentive does Dean have to be responsible about national security if even the most security-minded Democrats (e.g. me)will vote for him on domestic grounds?

With comments like the ones he made tonight, Dean has come that much closer to persuading me that I just can't trust him on national security. I may not like Bush's instincts or truly, truly trust him. But it seems that Dean's instincts are even worse. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:54 PM by David Adesnik  

SCHWARZENEGGER '08: The NY Times says immigrants should have the same right as everyone else to run for President. Yet strangely, the NYT's masthead editorial avoids any mention of Big Arnie. While that isn't exactly a sin, it does point to an important omission in the Times' remarks. Whereas the NYT says that letting immigrants run is the right thing to do, it fails to point out that there is also considerable room for bipartisan compromise on the issue precisely because both parties have important leaders born abroad. Welcome to Schwarzenegger vs. Granholm in '08. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:44 PM by David Adesnik  

PROUD OF GEORGE W. Two years ago, I never thought I'd write those words. Yet in the face of intense criticism from all sides, George Bush has held fast to his ambition of bringing democracy to Iraq. I felt truly proud when the President declared that:

In Iraq, we are helping the long-suffering people of that country to build a decent and democratic society at the center of the Middle East. Together we are transforming a place of torture chambers and mass graves into a nation of laws and free institutions. This undertaking is difficult and costly - yet worthy of our country, and critical to our security.

The Middle East will either become a place of progress and peace, or it will be an exporter of violence and terror that takes more lives in America and in other free nations. The triumph of democracy and tolerance in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and beyond would be a grave setback for international terrorism. The terrorists thrive on the support of tyrants and the resentments of oppressed peoples. When tyrants fall and resentment gives way to hope, men and women in every culture reject the ideologies of terror and turn to the pursuits of peace. Everywhere that freedom takes hold, terror will retreat.

Naive as I am, I recognize that many of the President's critics will write off the above as empty rhetoric. In response, I have two things to say. First, there are striking differences between tonight's speech and the President's February remarks on the rebuilding of Iraq. Whereas in February the President said that Iraq and its people are "fully capable of moving toward democracy and living in freedom", he has now made it clear that the United States will ensure that the people of Iraq fulfill their democratic potential. This is a major commitment of presidential credibility. It is no different than a campaign promise. The President and advisers know that if he does not live up to his word, he will pay a heavy price.

My second point about the President's speech also concerns credibility. While almost every American president has spoken eloquently about fighting for the democratic cause, few have done as much for democracy as they have said. Yet George Bush is keeping 130,000 US troops on the ground in Iraq, where they are working extremely hard to build a democratic state amidst the ruins of the Ba'athist dictatorship. Not since Harry Truman and Douglas MacArthur has the United States taken such dramatic action on behalf of the democratic cause.

Also surprisingly, the President explicitly committed himself to promoting democracy in Afghanistan, a country whose name he did not even mention in his February speech. While the President's actions re: Afghanistan have not been all that impressive up to this point, this kind of public commitment may begin to change that.

The question I am left asking myself now is "When will the disappointment come?" Proud as I am of the President for saying what he has said, part of me still suspects that he does not truly understand either what he is saying or the magnitude of it. This was the selfsame President who ran against nation-building as a candidate.

To be fair, it is not in the nature of Presidential speechmaking for the President to engage in the sort of introspective and confessional discourse that might convince listeners such as myself that he has recognized his previous errors rather than just chosen to forget them. Nor can the Presidently openly disavow the anti-nation building position of advisers such as Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice and (possibly) Powell. The best one can hope for is an explicit and unequivocal commitment to doing that right thing. And George Bush has given us that. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:54 PM by David Adesnik  

OXBLOG COMES, ABBAS GOES: Josh is on his way to New Haven and I have moved into my new office at Harvard's Olin Institute. I really don't have any idea what's been going on in the real world this past week, although I can recommend an excellent BBQ joint near my office. Even that ornery Texan by the name of Chafetz thought it was good.

Speaking of ornery, things aren't going well in the Middle East, with Mahmoud Abbas resigning and the unknown Ahmed Qurei ("widely seen as the only internationally credible alternative to Mr. Abbas" -- NYT) emerging as the front-runner in the race to replace him.

Also, thumbs up to Israel for avoiding civilian casualties by using fewer explosives in their effort to kill Hamas "spiritual leader" Sheik Ahmed Yassin. Yassin survived the attack thanks to the small size of the Israeli bomb. But I'm guessing that he won't be able to run far enough or fast enough to avoid the next attack, given that he's a paraplegic.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:40 PM by Patrick Belton  

I'M PACKING TODAY. David's up at Harvard unpacking. And Josh's in transit. However, if any of our readers would like to come by and pitch in with the packing, I'm sure any of the three of us would be very happy to blog orally to provide entertainment..... (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:48 PM by David Adesnik  

ARABS LESS ANTI-SEMITIC THAN HARVARD: At least in this one instance. (Thanks to MV for the link.) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:17 AM by Patrick Belton  

THANK GOODNESS THERE'S A BBC, PART I: Thinking Negatively Really Does Make You Depressed (headline from this morning's UK edition) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:16 AM by Patrick Belton  

THANK GOODNESS THERE'S A BBC, PART II: Jazz Greats Blighted by Drugs, Alcohol, and Mental Illness." Wow. Pretty soon they'll be saying the same thing about heavy metal.....
(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:08 AM by Patrick Belton  

JESSE JACKSON ARRESTED AT YALE: Several minutes ago, as part of a sympathy demonstration in support of striking service and clerical employees, Jesse Jackson was arrested after blocking traffic at the intersection of Elm and College. (See NYT, Yale's side, and the unions' side). Incidentally, Jesse has been arrested in connection with civil disobedience in New Haven before: in 1993, he was cited for public disturbance in connection with demonstrations in support of striking health care workers at Yale/New Haven Hospital. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:13 AM by Patrick Belton  

"DROP DEAD GORGEOUS" REALITY PARALLEL OF THE DAY: 40 of 100 semi-finalist contestants at the Miss Italy beauty pagent developed acute allergic reactions on their big night to a metallic decorative design used in their costumes, triggering massive rashes, puffy cheeks, and tearing. (Kind of gives the other 60 an advantage.) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:08 AM by Patrick Belton  

"UMMM, RIGHT" QUOTE OF THE DAY: Via CNN: "For his part, Pollard contends that he was an Israeli patriot, spying not against the United States, but for Israel." (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:43 PM by David Adesnik  

ACK! Glad to see Patrick's had a chance to get online. My landlord still hasn't finished installing the new windows in my place, so I haven't been able to move in yet. Expect the hiatus to last a bit longer. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:24 PM by Patrick Belton  

A LETTER FROM OXBLOG'S NEPAL CORRESPONDENT: It's not Labor Day over there, thanks to the wonders of the international date line...so OxBlog's friend Joel Hafvenstein is at the office, logging long hours to bring us some ....

Bad news from Nepal.

When I was there last week, the peace talks with the Maoists were at an obvious impasse. The rebels yesterday cancelled the ceasefire, and have since assassinated one military colonel in Kathmandu, wounded another, and knocked over multiple banks in the south -- attacks clearly well-planned during the months of the peace process. The government has declared them terrorists, and America may well follow suit. A conflict which had already escalated exponentially since 2001 looks likely to get much bloodier.

See this article from Nepal News.

This time, the Maoists may also be directly targeting political leaders, not just military, police, and low-level party hacks and development workers. An attack on former PM Deuba's convoy on Monday (before the cancellation of the ceasefire) was described by apologetic Maoists as a mistake:

See here and here.

But they just made a (perhaps successful) assassination attempt against Devendra Raj Kandel, the hard-nosed Home Minister under the last Deuba government, which suggests that this time, the gloves are coming off. (Here's an interview indicating why Kandel was so hated by the Maoists: ) And the house of another political leader (negotiator in the recent govt-Maoist peace talks) was firebombed.

One of the more striking changes about Kathmandu this time was the number of sandbagged military emplacements that had sprung up around every major crossroads and government building. It's really come to look like a country at war. Which, sadly, it once again is.

Joel

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:48 AM by David Adesnik  

JOURNEY TO THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC...of Cambridge, that is. I'll be on the road today, headed up to my new place. Chances are no blogging tomorrow, either. With Patrick and Josh also in transit, expect light posting until after Labor Day. Happy BBQ! (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:16 PM by David Adesnik  

SPEAKING OF BIRKENSTOCK LIBERALS...Kevin Drum writes in [via e-mail] that

I actually thought "Birkenstock liberal" was a perfect term.  In two words it brought forth a whole slew of connotations and describes perfectly a certain kind of person.  I knew exactly what she was talking about.

Yet as RO points out, Dean himself has rejected the phrase "Birkenstock liberal" as an unfair cliche that the media relies on to marginalize him. RO writes that

Howard Dean used the phrase "Birkenstock liberals" during the Portland
stop during the "Sleepless Summer" [tour].

The Portland stop was two days before the New York stop that Jodi Wilgoren was reporting on.

Dean used the phrase as an example of something the press had been calling supporters of his campaign. I believe this makes the use of the phrase by Jodi Wilgoren all the more outrageous and seriously moots Kevin Drum's disagreement with your assessment.

Kevin seemed to believe it was nothing more than an "evocative" turn of phrase, in fact it would appear to me an example of a reporter using a loaded term she or he knew was objectionable to the subject of his or her article for no more reason than to poke a sharp stick at the subject and see what would happen.

At any rate, the audio from Portland still seems to be available in
the list at the bottomg of the main www.deanforamerica.com page. Dean may
have used the phrase in Falls Church the day before that, indeed he may
have been using it for some time before I became aware of it, but he
was definitely using it before Jodi Wilgoren used it to "review" the
Bryant Park speech.

Responding from the right, the ever-insouciant EP observes that

Please inform your readers, that the NYT not withstanding, there are many people who wear Birkenstocks who are not only not liberal, but rabidly conservative.  I am one such myself.  Not only that, but I lived in Vermont, yes Vermont, for many years before coming to my senses and moving to Florida...[D]uring those many years, I wore these extremely comfortable shoes (the sandal variety -- easily the most telltale politically and even occasionally with rag socks)  knowing full well that I was taken for one of 'them' even though I knew I was just funning them.

At risk of setting myself for a "yo-mama" joke, I'll add that my own mother wears Birkenstocks and is a centrist Democrat who voted for Giuliani and against Bloomberg.

On a more serious note, Rabbi MB -- a supporter of Howard Dean -- writes that

I think you identified an important factor in what drives media bias and why even institutions that are typed as liberal are often damaging to liberal and progressive causes.  To the jaded NYT, any one who claims to speak for the people or involve them in Democracy is playing the political game.  The more earnest they are, the more they must be knocked down. 

The elitist bias of a paper like the NYT not only leads to the dismissive tone that marked Wilgoren's article, but also makes the paper less likely to do the journalism necessary to document the abuses of the system perpetrated by some conservatives or Republicans.  Its only newsworthy when a  Republican crosses the stereotype and cares about social issues or when a Democrat can be exposed as a fraud or irrelevant. 

Unfortunately other mainstream news sources are not interested in seeing the nuanced picture you present and take every opportunity to bash "liberal bias" as a purely ideological phenomenon. All of us -- conservative, progressive, libertarian, or liberal -- with a serious commitment to resolving iddues and revitalizing the democratic process are done a disservice by elitism and media bias.

In contrast, Kevin Drum [same e-mail] asks

You completely lost me with the Julius Caesar stuff.  How did you draw all those conclusions from a simple paragraph saying that Dean's crowds were remarkably high this early in the campaign?  The "elitist liberal intelligentsia distrusts the common man"?  Isn't that a bit of a stretch from a fairly unexceptionable paragraph?
 
Anyway, I'm not trying to hammer you.  I'm just curious why you reacted so strongly to an article that seemed fairly ordinary to me.

Kevin is right to ask that sort of question. Wilgoren's article alone is not sufficient evidence to demonstrate an anti-populist bias in the mainstream media. I reacted so strongly because, in the course of my research, I have come into contact with a significant body of scholarship that assaults the mainstream "liberal" media for its anti-populist/anti-radical bias.

Thus, I was not deriving a conceptual framework from a single NYT article. Rather, I was applying a pre-existing conceptual framework to it. In that light, I think Wilgoren's word choices are extremely significant.

(For those interested in further reading, the classic work on this subject is Todd Gitlin's The Whole Word is Watching: Mass Media in the Making and Unmaking of the New Left)

Last but not least, a factual correction: Both Kevin Drum and VC -- an editor at a major metropolitan daily -- point that correspondents do not write the headlines for their own articles. As VC incisively observes,

One should not attribute a headline, bad or good, to the reporter who writes the story under the headline, since she almost certainly had nothing to do with
it and very likely never even saw the headline until, like you, she picked up a
paper the morning it was published.

Point taken. That's all for now, but if you're looking for more, surf on over to the Sarcastic Southerner for more on Dean.

UPDATE: Aziz over at Dean2004 (the unofficial Dean blog) is glad to have a "righty" on his side. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:19 PM by David Adesnik  

BOMBING UPDATE: Four suspects in the Najaf bombing have ties to Al-Qaeda. See Tacitus and Instapundit for some more details.

Also, Michael Ledeen writes in that

Sometimes I think that there is a real death wish in the West, which simply will not look at our greatest enemy in the Middle East, namely Iran.  Anyone looking at the devastation in Najaf, as at the UN hotel/office building in Baghdad, has to think automatically of Imad Mughniyah, the Iranian-created operational chieftain of Hizbollah.  

In the eyes of the Iranians, Hakim was guilty of treason, since they had fed him and supported him for twenty years, then sent him into Iraq, only to have him turn out to be altogether reasonable and even pro-American.  He said at a meeting about 12 days ago that Iraq would never have peace so long as Iran kept sendng terrorists into the country.
 
He was on an Iranian hit list that includes the grandson of Khomeini and other moderate Shi'ite clerics.
 
Many are saying that no Shi'ite would commit such an act at the Shrine of Ali.  But Iran feels that the Shrine of Ali is theirs.  It is, after all, where Khomeini lived in exile.  And Iran claims control over the Najaf clerics.
 
Of course the Iranians would not send their own people directly to the site to do the deed, and of course the Iranians would have Baathist or Sunni "suspects" all ready for the police.
 
Meanwhile they are organizing the extraction of Saddam from Iraq to Iran.  I suppose fairly soon there will be a banquet of chiefs of state in Tehran, with Osama, Mullah Omar, Hekmatiar, Saddam and Khamene'i....

I know this is extremely serious, but doesn't that sort of banquet remind you of the opening scene in The Naked Gun, where Leslie Nielsen bursts in on a meeting of Qaddafi, Khomeini, Arafat and then rubs the birthmark off of Gorbachev's head? (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:43 AM by David Adesnik  

IRAQ BOMBING: Ninety-five men and women, including Ayatollah Muhammad Bakr al-Hakim, lost their lives in Najaf today. They were the victims of a car bomb placed outside the Imam Ali Mosque by unknown terrorists.

The death of Ayatollah Hakim is a major setback for American efforts to cultivate and cooperate with a moderate Shi'ite leadership. Perhaps the best one can hope for is that Hakim's martyrdom will enshrine his non-violent and pro-democratic approach to reconstruction as the reigning standard for Iraqi Shi'ites.

The prime suspects in the Najaf bombing are renegade Ba'thist forces. After the bombing, Najaf police officers arrested four men in connection with the bombing, all of them former members of Saddam's intelligence services. According to scholar-blogger Juan Cole,

this bombing was the work of Saddam loyalists. Baqir al-Hakim had waged a long terrorist and guerrilla war against the Baath. He cooperated with the Americans. When Saddam called on Shiite clergy to declare jihad on the US a couple of weeks ago, Baqir and others rejected the call forcefully and attacked Saddam as a tyrant. No believing Shiite would blow up a huge bomb right in front of Imam Ali's shrine. The truck bomb has become a signature of the remnants of the Baath, as with the attack on the United Nations HQ. The Saddam loyalists may hope that Shiite factions will blame one another and fall to fighting an internal civil war, adding to the country's ungovernability for the Americans.

I myself am wondering whether the Ba'athist were hoping to provoke a Shi'ite-Sunni conflict rather than a Shi'ite civil war. After all, it is hard to imagine that Iraq's Shi'ite wouldn't unite in the face of an external attack. And this afternoon, a Shi'ite protest march made its way into a prominent Sunni neighborhood in Baghdad after a Shi'ite imam called for vengeance. Fortunately, there was no violence.

It is hard to know how the bombing will affect the relationship between Coalition forces and the people of Iraq. Matt Yglesias writes that

One thing the hawks are right about, is that Iraq is not another Vietnam and it's not going to be one in the future, either. On the one hand, the US has gotten much better at avoiding things like the slaughter of innocent villagers. On the other hand, our military opponents do things like blow up mosques that will almost certainly not endear them to the broad mass of Iraqis. But as I said before, each unhappy intervention is unhappy in its own way. The risk in Iraq is not that things like blowing up mosques is going to drive us out of the country. Rather, the risk is that mosques (and oil pipelines, and police stations, and UN buildings, etc.) are just going to keep getting blown up because the occupation authority is understaffed, underfunded, and led by a group of men in Washington DC who've evinced an utter inability to manage public policy. Infrastructure may continue to degrade and central authority may become utterly ineffective. Just like in the last country we invaded.

Kevin Drum shares Matt's concerns about security, writing that

I wish we had a better idea of just how strong these remnants of the Baathist movement are these days. For all the talk about how we're making progress, they sure seem like they're still able to cause an awful lot of damage.

I suspect that this will not be the last attack on a Shi'i holy site. As the NYT noted about the shrine in Najaf,

There were no American forces in the vicinity, as senior Najaf clergymen had made it clear they did not want troops patrolling anywhere near the holy site. A compromise proposal to train a 300-member local police force has been awaiting financing, a Marine officer said.

As was the case with the UN bombing, it seems that Ba'athist insurgents have become adept at locating high-profile targets that are not protected by American forces. Perhaps that is an indication that the Ba'athists no longer believe they can achieve significant success against Americans, with success defined as inflicting more than a handful of casualties at once.

Of course, the security of American forces will provide little comfort to vulnerable Shi'ites. In the aftermath of the bombing, it became apparent that some Shi'ites held the United States responsible for the lack of security. Thus, the challenge ahead is for the occupation government to forge an agreement with Shi'ite leaders that can ensure the security of their gathering places without relying on either an intrusive American presence or an independent Shi'ite military force.

Will that happen? According to an NYT news analysis, today's bombing exposed a disappointing lack of leadership ability on the part of both the occupation government and the Iraqi interim council. The article makes a strong case that a stalemate has resulted from both the Americans insisting that the Iraqis become more assertive while the Iraqis counter that the Americans haven't given them enough power.

Regardless, I think this bombing demonstrates the need for greater Presidential leadership on Iraq. It is time for President Bush to deliver a simple and powerful message to the people of Iraq: "We share your desire for an end to the occupation and the return of self-government. The faster that you demonstrate your commitment to democratic ideals and institutions, the sooner our day of departure will come. The harder you work to fulfill Ayatollah Hakim's vision of an Islamic democracy, the sooner you will be able to honor his memory through the establishment of a free Iraq. God bless and good night." (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:58 PM by Daniel  

COME AND RIDE MY ONE TRICK PONY. Ian Buruma provides an excellent overview of America's relationship with Israel and explains why conventional wisdom about "Jewish interests" driving American foreign policy toward Israel simply doesn't match up with the historical facts. He did not talk about AIPAC (the primary American lobby group on behalf of Israel) and its transformation in the late 1970s/early 1980s, or the cultural ties (value affinity) that bind America and Israel. I think those are two very important factors to consider.

One line with which I disagree: "It may well be that Israel's interests coincide with those of the United States for the moment, but this should not be a given, never to be examined or reassessed." America continually examines and reassesses its relationship with Israel, but in the broadest sense, there are certain parameters beyond which no President will go. AIPAC's reorganization and increased national power in the past 25 years as well as the cultural bond/value affinity argument helps explain these limits. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:36 PM by David Adesnik  

AIR FORCE SHAME: Winds of Change rounds-up the history of the Air Force academy's epidemic of sexual harrassment and rape. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 3:37 AM by Patrick Belton  

WORTH READING: So after a pleasant and somewhat long cigar- and bourbon-accompanied premarital guys' night out between best man and groom, Vi and I have returned to the maid of honor's house to do what's only appropriate....blog on US foreign policy.

To wit: Thomas Donnelly has a very good piece on long-term strategies for Iraqi democratization being laid down in the UK MoD. Donnelly's praise for the MoD is effusive and, it seems, justified: while the Office of the Secretary's comparable report omits "not only broader strategic questions but operational and tactical issues that might raise awkward questions about the Bush administration's planned defense program," the UK effort "represents one of those rare occasions when a government grades itself with some rigor." The special relationship, it would seem, is alive and well.

Also worth reading is a piece by Michael Novak in which he points out the lengths the press has undertaken to exaggerate U.S. casualties in Iraq: "In the 118 days between May 1 and August 26, there were 63 American battlefield deaths in Iraq. About two weeks ago, the left-wing press recognized that this did not sound as dramatic as they wished. So they started totaling all military deaths in Iraq, including those from accidents, which happen in military life every day, everywhere. This brought the total up by another 78. They're more comfortable with that total number, 141. But the true battlefield number is 63. ... In the first stage of the war, from March 19 until April 30, 112 Americans died in combat, and 29 in various accidents. In those first 42 days, that meant almost 3 combat deaths per day. In the 118 days since then, there has been about one combat death every other day--63 in 118 days. (The accidental deaths have been fairly consistent: 29 in 42 days early on, and after May 1, 78 in 118 days.)" The challenge for responsible, national-security minded Democratic contenders is to offer helpful suggestions, and yes, criticisms about the U.S.'s commitment of time and money to making Iraq a pivotal functioning democracy for the region and validating America's status as a principled foreign policy actor - this, of course, instead of seizing on (even exaggerating) each suggested mis-step of U.S. policy simply to attack a President with every criticism with which the left would take pleasure in seeing him attacked. Responsibility, idealistic patriotism, and a commitment to seeing politics stop at the water's edge were a trademark of both parties for the vast majority of the Cold War...and they should be once again. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 4:05 PM by David Adesnik  

HOWARD DEAN, VICTIM OF THE LIBERAL MEDIA: That's right. I'm about to stick up for Howard Dean. Not because I particularly like the guy, but because the NYT should hold its correspondents accountable for their slanted reporting.

The correspondent in this instance is Jodi Wilgoren, the very same one who did her best some months back to whitewash the terrorist murders committed by David Gilbert and Kathy Boudin. So, one might ask, why would the same correspondent who defends the Weather Underground give Howard Dean a hard time?

As far as I can tell, Wilgoren is following one of the unwritten rules of the trade: romanticize Vietnam-era leftism as much as you want, but don't make nice with the aggressive leftists of today. After all, they might provoke a conservative reaction that threatens low-key mainstream leftists like the ones who work on 44th Street.

Up front, Wilgoren is pretty good to Dean, giving him a favorable headline that reads "In a Long Presidential Race, Dean Sprints". Positive as it is, the headline is accurate because Dean really is campaigning a lot harder than his opponents.

The first hint of of what's going comes in the second graf, where Wilgoren describes Dean's supporters as "rabid". As if being excited about Dean were some sort of violent pathology. While I think the Doctor's supporters are often misguided, such comments belong on the editorial page, or at least in a news analysis column.

Later on, Wilgoren informs us that "the feisty crowds were filled with Birkenstock liberals whose loudest ovations always followed Dr. Dean's anti-war riff -- there were few union members, African-Americans or immigrants." There is a lot of substance in that sentence, but it's hard not to notice a ridiculous phrase like "Birkenstock liberals" that belongs on the pages of the National Review.

While most of us are aware of the vague correlation between footwear and political preferences, invoking this sort of stereotype in the news is both counterproductive and misleading. As best as I can tell, "Birkenstock liberals" refers to those liberals who are not black, not union, and not immigrants. Does it refer, then, to middle-class white liberals? Young liberals?

Perhaps all this guesswork isn't worth the time, since the term "Birkenstock" might just have been thrown in to provide some color. Yet at the same time, it carries the sample sort of implication as the term "rabid" -- that Dean's supporters are outside the mainstream, so caught up in their idiosyncratic lifestyle that their views aren't worth taking seriously.

First of all, is that really the case? I doubt it. My sense is that Dean's campaign -- and especially his fund-raising -- isn't getting its momentum from granola-crunching Berkeley undergrads. As far as I can tell, there is a sizable portion of the American public that was firmly anti-war and is forcefully anti-Bush. They have to be taken seriously.

In another telling passage from the article, we hear that

"He's not running a campaign, he's running a movement," [according to] Natasha C., one of four people the Dean campaign invited to chronicle the trip on their Web logs. "These are protest-size crowds, these are not politics-size crowds, and that's the critical difference."

But it is unclear what the movement is for.

Holy unwarranted editorializing Batman! I may not like what Dean is for, but you've got to pretty thick not to recognize that his supporters have a socially liberal, fiscally conservative, and Jimmy Carter-emulating agenda. But why the cheapshot if most NYT correspondents like that kind of agenda?

Because the elitist liberal intelligentsia distrusts the common man, even when he is on their side. Toward the beginning of the article, Wilgoren writes that

The staggering, seemingly spontaneous crowds turning up to meet [Dean] — about 10,000 in Seattle on Sunday and a similar number in Bryant Park in Manhattan last night — are unheard of in the days of the race when most candidates concentrate on the early-voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire and would seem formidable even in October 2004.

Not just unheard of, but unwelcome. Taking their cues from Julius Caesar, correspondents fear that the latest incarnation of Marc Antony will turn the mob to his own ends. Howard Dean one day, Rush Limbaugh the next.

Strangely, this is one issue on which the academicians are far ahead of the correspondents. Beginning in the late 1980s, a veritable flood of books and articles began to demonstrate that the American public is actually a moderating force, drawing politicians back from the ends of the ideological spectrum. Even on foreign policy, which scholars long considered the issue area in which the public makes the worst choices, it became clear that American voters recognized that they wanted something to the right of Jimmy Carter and the left of Ronald Reagan. (Click here to read more about the Rational Public.)

In short, it's time for the Times to get with the times. It may be true that

the people buying the "Doctor is in" buttons [at Dean's rallies] were mostly aging flower children and the tongue-studded next generation.

But that sort of provocative details shouldn't pass for serious political reporting. In all fairness, there is a lot of interesting information in Jodi Wilgoren's article, much of it not reprinted here. But at just those moments when Wilgoren needs to provide more depth to her initial observations, she wanders off course and provides us instead with substandard cliches.

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# Posted 2:54 PM by David Adesnik  

DEMOCRATIC DOMINOS: MA further elaborates my earlier point about the role of Austria and West Germany in opening up the Eastern Bloc. He writes that:

Although the details of the story have been rather forgotten here in Britain or the US, it was very precisely a series of planned, deliberate acts by the West Germans and Austrians that brought about the end of communism in Europe.

First some background: In the constitution of West German state the right of East German citizens to become West Germans was automatic and guaranteed.

Every single DDR citizen who succeeded in getting out - and, as you state, it became harder and harder - was automatically a West German - as soon as they crossed the border they got a passport, some money, help finding a job, accomodation etc. All W German governments, left and right, were equally punctilious in fulfilling this.

Furthermore, during the 1970s and 1980s East Germans living near the border and near Berlin (you will remember that West Berlin was an enclave in the middle of East Germany) could receive West German TV automatically. (Of course, the West Germans boosted their signal as much as they could in those areas).

By the mid 1980s, it had become so difficult for the DDR government to persuade people to live in areas that couldn't get the signal that they were actually forced to retransmit it, rather than attempt to jam it, to cover the whole country.

Thus practically everyone in East Germany had access to West German and they could not only get uncensored news, but could see for themselves just through the medium of ordinary everyday programming that life in the West was materially richer, freer, safer and just more exciting than their own.

In 1988 the W German government, deciding to test Gorbachev to the limit, came to an agreement (money changed hands) with both the Hungarians and the Austrians, that the Hungarians would announce that, on a given date, they were going to allow people to leave Hungary and go to Austria without exit visas. This meant that anyone in Hungary after that date, Hungarians or any other of the Warsaw Pact nations could leave the country. Now, this didn't affect the Hungarians and others too much, because they would still need visas, work permits etc to stay in Austria or anywhere else, but obviously everyone in the DDR knew that they COULD stay in West Germany. In effect, because the whole border between East and West was an extension of the Berlin Wall, by making the announcement the Hungarians announced that they were opening a gate through which anyone could pass.

So, in March 1989 (I'm not at the home, so can't check the exact dates) [the] Hungarian Govt did announce that they were going to open their border to Austria on a given date in August. Of course, this got huge play on W German TV, the implications were spelled out in black and white, and so that August literally millions of East Germans booked their annual holidays in Hungary and succeeded in crossing the border. By the time the DDR government realised what was happening it was too late, because although they had built the wall between East and West, there was only basic border security between the countries of the Warsaw Pact. Even when they tried to stop people going directly to Hungary, all anyone had to do (as many did) was go to Czechoslovakia, and then cross into Hungary.

The fact that the DDR had, almost at a stroke, lost the core of its "middle class" led to the panicked decision to open the Berlin Wall, which led to the collapse of the state, and to a ripple effect which spread to Czechoslovakia, Romania and eventually to the USSR itself.

So, as I say, although the mere existence of West Germany did not lead to the collapse of communism, the fact that the it was there, and the (too often unacknowledged) courage and determination of Helmut Kohl and other West German leaders did indeed lead to the collapse of communism.

Very well said. Finally, in response to my observation that

"As for Cuba, it's an island. Its residents would all be in Miami now except for the fact that it's a helluva lot harder to survive a rafting trip across the Gulf of Mexico than a subway ride to West Berlin."

BB wisely responds that

The fact that when we catch them attempting it, we drag them back to Castro's warm embrace, doesn't [that] have anything to do with it? At least if somebody made it across the Berlin wall we didn't toss them back over...

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 2:41 PM by David Adesnik  

BODY COUNT: Phil Carter has some insightful comments on the fate of American soldiers in Iraq. He also has quite a good post on Ashcroft up. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:55 PM by Patrick Belton  

ADMINISTRATION TAKES OXBLOG'S ADVICE, YET AGAIN: CNN is reporting this morning that the administration "is considering having a multinational force in Iraq to be sponsored by the United Nations but under U.S. command." The network quotes Deputy Secretary of State Armitage as saying that among several ideas being explored, "one is a multinational force under U.N. leadership, but the American would be the U.N. commander." They must have been reading this this (and this). Glad to hear OxBlog's record in setting U.S. foreign policy remains strong.

With that said, I'm off now for a few days of Labor Day blogcation in Rochester, where I have the happy pleasure of serving as best man as my close friend Vi Nguyen (the handsome guy to my left there) weds his lovely fiancee Amanda Houppert. OxBlog threw him a stately weekend-long bachelor's party last week, which included a black-tie dinner Friday night at the Harvard Club hosted by David and myself, and an ensuing weekend up in the Catskill Mountains alternating between athletic TR-esque hiking and subsequent restful snacking on Eggs Belton and grilled chicken. (We in OxBlog were seeking to patronize the Borscht Belt, even if we didn't patronize the Borscht). See you guys Monday! (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:27 PM by David Adesnik  

WAS IT OVER WHEN THE GERMANS BOMBED PEARL HARBOR? In honor of the 25th anniversary of Animal House, the NYT has an essay charting the film's influence on the countless frat-house flicks that have followed in its wake.

It's a good essay, but I'd like to expand on one point. Film critic Elvis Mitchell says that the lovable misfits of Delta house won us over because they were rebelling against an American establishment with authoritarian habits. Mitchell even quotes director John Landis saying that the creators did their best to make the bad guy frat come off as Nazis.

Now, back when I was in college, I had a hard time convincing my friends that there was any political content in Animal House. Sort of the same way that my friends now aren't willing to believe that there is any political content in professional wrestling.

To be fair, I'm not going to pretend that AH was a political film, rather than one about college. But it's message is very clear, and it isn't just about rebels vs. fascists. It's about the World War II generation vs. the Cold War generation that sunk the United States into the quicksand of Vietnam.

It's no accident that campus enforcer Doug Niedermeyer is in charge of the ROTC unit, or that the Dean threatens to notify the draft board that the men of Delta house have been expelled are no longer entitlted to deferments. In spite of AH's happy-go-lucky charm, the characters' lives are on the line. That is an important reason why AH is so much more compelling than recent knock-offs like Old School, in which the main characters are running away from adult life rather than resisting death.

So what about the WWII vs 'Nam symbolism? Again, it's no accident that Delta has a motorcycle riding member named D-Day who wears a vintage Army helmet, or that John Belushi tries to inspire his troops by referring to Pearl Harbor. Perhaps the most telling Vietnam symbolism in the film comes at its end, when the camera freeze-frames on each of the main characters and reveals their future. Niedermeyer goes to Vietnam and gets killed by his own troops. His buddy Greg becomes a Nixon White House aide and is later raped in prison.

A murder and a rape. In context, they seem downright hilarious. They are punishments that these men deserve. But here, in a essay focused on politics, it becomes clear just how brutal these punishments are. Hidden in humor, they are indication of just how deadly serious Animal House was.

Today, the WWII generation has become the "Greatest Generation", known for its unmatched sacrifice and courage, not to mention its hard work and family values. But before Tom Brokaw took advantage of the vets' fading memories to recast their image, the men of WWII were once a symbol of how a melting-pot nation came together to face down an authoritarian menace.

The men of WWII were not Boy Scouts. They were a little bit wild, a little bit like the men of Delta House. They were the embodiment of democratic freedom. They were individuals. They broke the rules and they had a good time. But when push came to shove, they were willing to put it all on the line and lay down their lives for the freedoms they cherished. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 3:25 PM by David Adesnik  

GILLIGAN AND THE SKIPPER: Kevin Drum says Instapundit and others have been misintepreting a recent story about Andrew Gilligan losing his position at the BBC and being exposed as a liar.

I think Kevin has a point about how Glenn, myself and the British media have been confused about what Gilligan's alibi actually was. But from Kevin's post, you get the sense that he actually believes Gilligan's alibi and wants to ignore the multitude of evidence which points to Gilligan's malicious incompetence as a correspondent. With any luck, Josh will clear this all up next time he logs on. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 3:05 AM by David Adesnik  

WEDDED TO MY PRECONCEPTIONS: Tacitus thinks I'm refusing to accept reality. To back up his point, he provides a list of about a half-dozen (recent) fatal attacks on Coalition forces outside the Sunni triangle and in Shi'a majority locales, which I described as free of anti-American resistance.

Tacitus most definitely has a good eye for detail, but are ten or so fatalities supposed to persuade me that there is real resistance outside the Sunni Triangle? Also note that Tacitus assumes Shi'ites were responsible for the attacks outside the Triangle. I didn't see any evidence of that in the news articles he links to (Daily Telegraph excepted since I couldn't open the links.)

Tacitus also points to intra-Shi'ite conflicts, some violent, to demonstrate that things are not going well. Hmmm. A strange point to make given that upstart Shi'ite clerics such as Moqtada Sadr are attacking their more established elders for being too pro-American.

Finally, Tacitus isn't happy that I accused him of still living in Vietnam. Actually, I'm willing to take that one back. I don't read Tacitus on a regular basis, so perhaps I should've been less harsh in my judgment.

Now, while I won't give the NYT or WaPo a free pass for their Vietnam mindset, I am willing to let history go when it comes to fellow bloggers. And frankly, Tacitus is providing a much more interesting challenge to my views on Iraq than left-wing pessimists such as Kos.

Also, Tacitus' comments section on this post has a very sophisticated debate on the course of events in Iraq, with both sides well-represented. In short, I'm perfectly happy to agree to disagree. Tacitus is now on my regular reading list. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 2:30 AM by David Adesnik  

THE DICTATOR NEXT DOOR: Matt Yglesias isn't happy with NRO's Jed Babbin for arguing that democracy in Iraq will bring down the dictatorships next door. Matt writes that

you hear this (or something like it) all the time, but is it true? What's the evidence supposed to be? Certainly the establishment of democracy in West Germany and Austria didn't exactly topple the dictators in East Germany. A democratic USA's been just a hop a way from a dictatorial Cuba for a bit over 100 years. Or does Babbin just mean that the Saudi (or Syrian or whatever) regimes can't persist indefinitely? Clearly, it's better for a regime to be situated near other like-minded regimes, but dictatorships and democracies sit side-by-side all the time for decades.

Note to Matt: The East Germans had to crush a nation-wide rebellion in 1953 and build a wall around West Berlin in 1961 to keep their entire population from walking away. Lucky for them, the Soviets were there to bail them out on both occasions. My question: Will anyone be there to bail out the Syrians, Saudis or Iranians?

As for Cuba, it's an island. Its residents would all be in Miami now except for the fact that it's a helluva lot harder to survive a rafting trip across the Gulf of Mexico than a subway ride to West Berlin.

Finally, what about the fact that "dicatorships and democracies sit side-by-side all the time for decades"? As Samuel Huntingon has aruged, democratization comes in waves. In contrast to Huntington's dumber arguments (See "Clash of Civilizations") this one has some real substance to it. (And problems, too, but that's another story.)

So far, no democratic wave has hit the Middle East. But if Iraq goes that way and Iran follows, would you want to be in Mubarak or Assad's shoes?

UPDATE: To be fair, Matt's been putting up a lot of good posts on Iraq, for example here, here, and here. There is no question that Matt takes the importance of reconstruction seriously. He just happens to be more critical of the situation on the ground than I am.

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# Posted 2:08 AM by David Adesnik  

ANOTHER POST NOT ABOUT IRAQ: Back in the September 10th era, the Weekly Standard ran a cover story [no permalink] lamenting the absence of patriotic themes in post-Cold War professional wrestling. (Hey, it's not Bill Kristol's fault. It wasn't easy to come up with good cover stories before Chafetz started writing them.)

Anyway, I'd imagine that Kristol and Kagan would swell with pride if they knew that Vince McMahon had given the Tag Team Championship to Rene Dupree and Sylvain Grenier, aka "La Resistance."

Representing the Good Ol' USA are D-Von and Bubba Ray, the Dudley Boys. The Dudley are crude, ignorant, violent and much-loved by wrestling fans across the world. Apparently, when it comes to certain aspects of world politics, unilateralism pays off. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:54 AM by David Adesnik  

A POST NOT ABOUT IRAQ: Instead, a post about drinking beer, watching football and having bikini-clad models jump up and down on trampolines. A day in the life of Patrick Belton? No! It's The Man Show on Comedy Central. New hosts, new season. Lowest common denominator. God, does it get any better than this? (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:30 AM by David Adesnik  

IRAQ -- READERS RESPOND: Prof. DN thinks I have been making a mountain out of molehill. He writes that

This doesn't seem all that complicated to me. Whether Islamicists or Baathists were responsible for the UN bombing, the US is fighting a guerrilla war in Iraq. The aim of the enemy is to disrupt reconstruction and lesson the effectiveness of the occupation at
delivering goods and services to the Iraqis. There's no evidence either way that the US is "winning" or "losing," just that the occupation is difficult and probably requires a lot more resources than the Bush administration initially earmarked.

A reasonable point. If the occupation were a football game, we'd still be in the first quarter. But even after a few minutes of play, you begin to get a sense of what the opposing sides' respective strengths and weaknesses are. If DN is right and the occupation demands far more resources than initially planned, than it is fair to say that the United States is "losing".

On the other hand, if anti-American forces have given up on the struggle for hearts and minds (as DN strongly implies) than the US may have a decisive advantage. It's as if the Ba'athists and fundamentalists have given up on short-yardage plays in the first quarter and are already throwing Hail Mary passes.

On a related note, BG writes that

I'm afraid I just don't buy the example you use as an empirical example of how we are winning the "hearts and minds." You said

Early on in the quagmire debate, OxBlog also pointed to one clear empirical indicator of whether or not the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people were on the American or the Ba'athist side. That standard was to judge whether or not the people were protecting the 55 men on the Pentagon's most wanted list. My answer then was no and my answer now is still no. 38 of the 55 are dead or in prison because the Iraqi people are helping us find them.

Isn't it entirely possible for an Iraqi to despise both Saddam and America? Just because someone hates the Ba'athists doesn't mean they accept the occupation. Take a guy like Moqtada Sadr, the radical Shia cleric. He hates/hated Saddam. He's clearly not on the Ba'athist side. Does that mean he's on our side? Would he protect Ba'athists in his midst? Of course not. He'd probably kill any senior Ba'athists without thinking twice. But how can you claim that his hatred
of Saddam equals an acceptance of American rule? How can this be seen as anything close to empirical?

BG is right that I didn't elaborate on my point sufficiently. If you take a look at my original post on the subject, however, you may get a better sense of what I'm driving at. In it, I wrote that

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...

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.

While this sort of evidence does not imply an "acceptance of American rule", it shows that most Sunni in Iraq (not to mention Shi'ites and Kurds) have decided that an American occupation is far better than Ba'athist rule. That is a critical part of the struggle for hearts and minds. In fact, it is a form of conditional acceptance.

I grant BG's point that certain Shi'ite clerics may resent the US almost as much as they did Saddam. But take BG's own example of Moqtada Sadr. Even he seems willing to accommodate a temporary American presence. While Sadr advocates the establishment of an Islamic republic, he has not said that it should be an authoritarian rather than a democratic one.

In the end, what matters is not whether the people of Iraq accept American rule, but whether they accept democracy.

On a more theoretical note, "C" writes that

I have been following your debate with Josh Marshall. FWIW, I am predisposed to your side of the debate, so you can take the following with a grain of salt.

The problem with establishing a benchmark in social science, as opposed to the physical sciences, is that success is also measured against alternative "universes" defined by paths not taken.

For instance, are Bush's economic policies successful? Looking at economic performance in terms of the real data is insufficient; one must determine whether Bush's policies are better than alternatives. Looking merely at the fact that unemployment rates have risen does not mean Bush's policies are unsuccessful; they might actually be better than alternatives under which unemployment would have risen further.

So, too, trying to establish a benchmark for success with Mideast policy must make an estimate of where the U.S.'s position would be if alternative strategies had been followed. In other words, it's not enough to establish benchmarks to measure a policy; you must also argue that the path the administration has taken is better than what might have occurred had
the administration taken alternative paths.

This is a long-winded way of saying what Dan Drezner has been saying all along: it's not that pre-emption is a good policy, it's that it is better than the alternatives.

Most definitely a valid point (although I'm not sure that Bush's economic policy is the best illustration of it!)

The last comment of the night comes from Michael Ledeen, who continues to make time for OxBlog despite his professional commitments. Michael writes that

on the "hearts and minds" question, I think that the mullahs and the Assads believe that if they drive us out of Iraq -- which is their intention, as they have said all along -- they will thereby win fealty from the masses.  As Lyndon Johnson once famously said, when you've got them by the balls, the hearts and minds usually follow...[Let's hope the mullahs and the Assads are as successful as LBJ was in 'Nam! --ed.]
 
It is certainly desperation in the sense that the Terror Masters are fighting for survival;  if we win, they're doomed.  But don't try to read the minds of Iranians with a logical Western decryption device.  They are very cunning and very devious.
 
Finally, on the "Iraqi secret service" theory.  Maybe, maybe.  But as soon as I heard the story I said "the guards were obviously paid off."  You don't need the secret service; it's enough to have people who want/need money, or are blackmailed to accept it. 

When I was a correspondent in Italy years ago, and people asked me how it could be that Italian terrorists broke out of jail so often, so easily, I said, "Well, what if you were a guard and somebody came to you and said, 'Look here, if you will just arrange not to be in Cellblock 4 at midnight, we'll pay you three years' salary, and will promise NOT to murder your daughter...'"
 
It works, believe me.  Just about every time.

Fair enough.

To conclude, I guess I should mention that there were actually lots of positive responses to my post as well, including this one from Steve Sturm, who takes the critics to task for applying inconsistent standards when judging the progress of the occupation. He is right. But that's their job!
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# Posted 1:24 AM by David Adesnik  

IRAQ -- LOOKING BACK AT THE DOG DAYS OF SUMMER: In yesterday's posts on the occupation, I set out for the record those positions which both OxBlog and its critics had taken vis-a-vis the occupation of Iraq during the months of April, May and June. This post will pick up where the last one left off. (If you want to know why I am investing so much time and effort in this project, click here.)

In the last days of June, I elaborated at length on my argument that the American media had become fixated on the superficial resemblance of the occupation of Iraq to the war in Vietnam. Surprisingly, certain liberals agreed with my conclusions as much as did conservatives.

In July, the big news in Iraq was the death of Uday and Qusay Hussein. To my surprise, even those invested in demonstrating the existence of a quagmire recognized an American victory when the saw one.

In August, it was all quiet on the Middle Eastern front until the double bombing of Jerusalem and Baghdad. Then I put up this post which led to an avalanche of criticism followed by this four-part series on the state of the occupation as it is right now.

So there you go. Thankfully, this post has turned out to be shorter than expected. So now I can stop navel-gazing and get back to current events. TTFN.



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# Posted 12:52 AM by David Adesnik  

OXBLOG -- INTROSPECTION AND HISTORY: What began as a response to my critics became an unexpected exploration of my intellectual development over the past five months.

While compiling material for yesterday's posts on the occupation of Iraq, I became more aware than ever of how blogging enhances one's self-awareness and forces one to take responsibility for one's thoughts and actions.

For dedicated historians of the self, it has always been possible to gather together journal entries, personal correspondence and other documents in order to assemble an intellectual self-portrait. However, thanks to blogging, the investment of time and effort necessary to become aware of one's own political development has fallen to the point where it has actually become an inviting prospect.

In our heads, we tend to keep an informal score of our own rights and wrongs on the issues of the day. Unsurprisingly, such informal scores tend to ignore losses and emphasize wins, thus suggesting to ourselves that we have far more insight and credibility than we actually do.

At the same time, such informal scores tend to reduce the value of actual wins, since all one can to say to one's opponents long afterward is "I'm usually right and you're usually wrong." And they can say the same thing right back. Or just make fun of you for your groundless self-confidence.

However, in the blogosphere, one must hand over to the reading public the right to measure the worth of your latest post against the value of your older ones. If a blogger is not consistent in his or her views, the reading public (especially other bloggers) will impose consistency from without.

Even professional journalists rarely have to endure this sort of scrutiny. While a record of their work is available in every public library, who actually spends their spare time burrowing through stacks of old newspapers? (Nexis-Lexis is beginning to change all that, but subscriptions are not yet priced for the general public.)

In the process of compiling material for yesterday's posts on Iraq, I found it disturbing to read hundreds of paragraphs that I myself had written but whose contents I would not have recognized in the absence of a byline. Thus, to take either the credit or the blame for the contents of those paragraphs seems rather strange.

At the same time, there were discernible patterns of thought that gave a distinct personality to what I had written. On the other hand, I would not have recognized such patterns if not for the convenience of the OxBlog archive.

In my next post, I will finish off the project that I began yesterday. Yes, it is a response to my critics. But much more importantly, it is a process of learning about myself. And it enables me to recognize that which is so distinctive about belonging to a community of individuals -- a.k.a. the blogosphere -- that has made a similar commitment, more or less formal, to learning about themselves.

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# Posted 12:05 AM by David Adesnik  

AFTER CHAFETZ EXPOSE, HEADS ROLL AT BBC: Andrew Gilligan will no longer be reporting for the network. Instapundit has more. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:04 PM by Patrick Belton  

THREE NOT-SO-EASY PIECES, CONT'D: This month's issue of the RAND Review includes pieces by senior RAND analysts James Dobbins and James Quinlivan.

Dobbins's piece extracts lessons from the U.S. experience in building democratic nations after wars, from Germany on. The most pertinent:

"Unity of command is as essential in peace operations as it is in war. This unity of command can be achieved even in operations with broad multilateral participation when the major participants share a common vision and tailor the response of international institutions accordingly."

"There is no quick fix for nation-building. None of our cases was successfully completed in less than seven years."

"Multilateral nation-building is more complex and time-consuming than a unilateral approach. But the multilateral approach is considerably less expensive for individual participants.

"Multilateral nation-building can produce more thorough transformations and greater regional reconciliation than can unilateral efforts."

"There appears to be an inverse correlation between the size of the military stabilization force and the level of casualties. The higher the proportion of troops relative to the resident population, the lower the number of casualties suffered and inflicted. Indeed, most of the post-conflict operations that were generously manned suffered no casualties at all."

And as though the point weren't driven home yet: "Many factors—such as prior democratic experience, level of economic development, and social homogeneity—can influence the ease or difficulty of nation-building, but the single most important controllable determinant seems to be the level of effort, as measured in troops, money, and time" (emphasis added).

Quinlivan focuses more on the ratio of policing officers to residents in historical experience:

"Peaceful populations require force ratios of somewhere between one and four police officers per thousand residents. The United States as a whole has about 2.3 sworn police officers per thousand residents. Larger cities tend to have higher ratios of police to population."

"Although numbers alone do not constitute a security strategy, successful strategies for population security and control have required force ratios either as large as or larger than 20 security personnel (troops and police combined) per thousand inhabitants. This figure is roughly 10 times the ratio required for simple policing of a tranquil population."

" The British are acknowledged as the most experienced practitioners of the stabilization art. To maintain stability in Northern Ireland, the British deployed a security force (consisting of British army troops plus police from the Royal Ulster Constabulary) at a ratio of about 20 per thousand inhabitants. This is about the same force ratio that the British deployed during the Malayan counterinsurgency in the middle of the 20th century.

More recently, successful multinational operations have used initial force ratios as large as the British examples or larger. In its initial entry into Bosnia in 1995, the NATO Implementation Force brought in multinational forces corresponding to more than 20 soldiers per thousand inhabitants. After five years, the successor Stabilization Force finally fell below 10 per thousand. Operations in Kosovo during 2000 showed the same pattern; the initial forces were sized at somewhat above 20 per thousand."

"The population of Iraq today is nearly 25 million. That population would require 500,000 foreign troops on the ground to meet a standard of 20 troops per thousand residents. This number is more than three times the number of foreign troops now deployed to Iraq.... For a sustainable stabilization force on a 24-month rotation cycle, the international community would need to draw on a troop base of 2.5 million troops. Such numbers are clearly not feasible and emphasize the need for the rapid creation of indigenous security forces even while foreign troops continue to be deployed."

Quinlivan's implication is that the U.S. should draw as much as practicable on an indigenous policing force, which would require a smaller footprint (instead of, i.e., the five nondeployed uniformed soldiers required for each soldier in theatre). Both authors' arguments conduice too towards bringing foreign troops onto the ground in Iraq - but under unified, U.S.-led command and control, and a clear commitment by the U.S.'s partners to establishing a democracy in Iraq and staying for as much time as that takes. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:59 PM by Patrick Belton  

A SAD DAY IN INDIA: Two powerful car bombs exploded today in Bombay, killing 46 and injuring over 115, with initial suspicion resting on the Kashmiri separatist group Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Students' Islamic Movement of India. This is the fifth bombing in Bombay since December 2002. See CNN, Times of India, BBC. Hawken Blog has thoughts and is paying an eye to developments.

According to the Times of India, the bombs exploded in the boots of two taxis, one near Mumbadevi temple in Bombay's jewellery district, and the other in a parking lot near the Gateway of India. The bombs occasioned immediate calls from the BJP and Shiv Sena for the resignation of the Congress-led state government. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:38 PM by Patrick Belton  

SCOTS GAELIC FOR VIETNAMESE SPEAKERS: and you think I'm joking.... (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:46 AM by Patrick Belton  

L'HOMME NIKITA: Writing in the pages of the LRB, Neal Ascherson gives us a remarkably well-rounded portrait of a remarkably complex man, Nikita Krushchev:

His personality was horribly deformed; his crimes were unforgivable. And yet his lust for the new was disarming. I will never forget a story Taubman tells about his London visit in 1956. What, he asked his Foreign Office escort, was that odd 'oo, oo!' noise coming from the back of the crowd? The diplomat explained that people were booing, an expression of disapproval. Khrushchev grew thoughtful. In the back of the car, he said experimentally to himself: 'Boo!' And then again: 'Boo!' He liked it. For the rest of the day, he went around exclaiming 'Boo!' to all kinds of puzzled people. He had learned something.

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# Posted 11:11 AM by Patrick Belton  

THREE NOT-SO-EASY PIECES: This Weekly Standard piece by Bob Kagan and William Kristol is worth noting. The authors begin by repeating - correctly - that "American ideals and American interests converge ... a more democratic Middle East will both improve the lives of long-suffering peoples and enhance America's national security." They then applaud statements to that effect by Condoleezza Rice and President Bush calling for a "generational commitment" to Iraq and the Middle East comparable to the U.S.'s commitment to Western Europe in the aftermath of the Second World War. And in this, the security advisor and the president are also indeed applauseworthy: the intertwined task of promoting democracy and pursuing counterterror in the Middle East is as obviously central to U.S. security today as creating a secure, commercially prosperous free Europe was then.

Rather than basking solely in admiration for the president's bold, long-term vision, however, the authors are quick to measure current performance in Iraq up to its metric. They point to the successful performance of the U.S.'s mission at hand requiring two more divisions in Iraq - divisions which, thanks to the prior administration's short-sightedness, the nation simply does not have. But most interestingly, they then offer these two criticisms:

[Show me the money:] There has also been a stunning shortage of democracy assistance, at a time when, according to surveys taken by the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, Iraqis undergoing an explosion of political activity.... The price tag [for everything], which may be close to $60 billion, will provide fodder for opportunistic Democratic presidential hopefuls who are already complaining that money spent inIraqwould be better spent in theUnited States. But, again, the time to bite the bullet is now, not six months from now when Iraq turns to crisis and the American campaign season is fully underway

[And show me the diplomats:] Until recently, only a handful of State Department employees have been at work in Iraq. The State Department, we gather, has had a difficult time attracting volunteers to work in Iraq. This is understandable. But it is unacceptable. If the administration is serious about drawing an analogy with the early Cold War years, it should remember that the entire U.S.government oriented itself then to the new challenge. We need to do the same now. The administration must insist that the State Department pull its weight.

This paragraph, though, seems both their most stirring and their most correct:

Make no mistake: The president's vision will, in the coming months, either be launched successfully in Iraq, or it will die in Iraq. Indeed, there is more at stake in Iraq than even this vision of a better, safer Middle East. The future course of American foreign policy, American world leadership, and American security is at stake. Failure in Iraq would be a devastating blow to everything the United States hopes to accomplish, and must accomplish, in the decades ahead.

I could not agree more completely, and endorse everything that I have quoted, as far as the authors go. However - and although they are two writers I respect deeply on the subject - I think they might be too quick to reject out of hand the prospect of looking overseas for soldiers. The authors seem to think of the matter as a choice between two options: simply asking our dedicated soldiers to do more of what they have been doing so well, or giving the entire enterprise over to the internationals - in which case either Kofi and Jacques Chirac will be the ones to determine the pace of Iraq's democratization, or still worse, we may suffer "the possibly unfortunate effects of turning over the security of Iraqis to a patchwork of ill-prepared forces from elsewhere in the world."

Hmmm. Though I agree with Kagan and Kristol on their other points, this particular bit seems a bit of a false dichotomy. Without doubt, the army's current deployed force is woefully insufficient for the task (this in numbers alone, not training or personal devotion). But first of all, we can't simply send more U.S. troops over, because we don't have them. A friend in the Office of the Secretary of Defense told me over lunch last week that bringing additional divisions online - as are indisputedly needed at the moment - would take five to ten years, with emphasis more on the ten than the five. (An important lesson from U.S. history: don't throw your armies away. you might need that.) As far as extending the current pace of deployment - anyone considering this as a viable notion should flip back a few issues in one of my favorite magazines to a piece by another talented Kagan who writes on national security matters (this time Fred). Kagan begins by noting that of the 495,000 troops in the U.S. Army, 370,000 are deployed at the moment. And this already represents a substantial overdeployment relative to the normal requirement to have two units at home in "yellow" and "red" stages - training, tending to base duties, recovering psychologically from overseas service in a combat zone, and rescuing families from divorce - for every one unit serving overseas. At the army's current size, following this rule would allow us to sustain an indefinite deployment of three and two-thirds divisions between different theatres. At present, we have the equivalent of over five out, in Iraq alone, and they aren't enough. Equally seriously, massive overdeployment of the reserve component has ceased to make service in the Reserves any longer an attractive path for amateur patriotic professionals with families and civilian careers. Speaking personally, I know at least several OxBloggers were giving serious consideration to service in the Reserves after 9/11 - but at the current deployment pattern, the price would simply have been too high to balance with beginning families and civilian national security careers. The damage this may have inflicted on the reserve component may in fact be incalculable.

On the other hand, bringing in Allied forces does not mean surrendering U.S. command and control, or democracy promotion aims. Indeed, both would be strengthened by having more feet on the ground to further consolidate security in Iraq. This is not to underestimate interoperability problems with even NATO allies, or the caution that we should take in the drafting of a UN resolution to permit the entry into theatre of peacekeepers from other democracies, like India. And a careful balance will have to be struck, between giving countries sufficient operational control over their own forces to secure their deployment of those forces, while retaining a preeminent role for U.S. leadership in the theatre to make sure that democracy promotion and order is what in the end results. But such complexities must be dealt with, as it is the path which must be taken.

That bit excepted, I heartily endorse everything Kagan and Kristol have said. More, please. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 2:33 AM by David Adesnik  

RESPONSE TO MARSHALL, PART TWO: (Part one is here.) In early May, I confessed that contradictory coverage of the situation in Iraq made it hard to know whether the occupation was head for success or failure. Since then, my confusion in the face of conflicting press reports has been a running theme of my commentary on Iraq.

While confident that the pessimists consistently get the story wrong, I haven't been willing to say that things in Iraq are necessarily going right. The point? That even in the midst of this extended I-told-you-so, I'm not willing to say that Iraq will become known as an American success story anytime soon. But I am very sure that the pessimists Cassandran pronouncements reflect fundamental misperceptions rather than a balanced assessment of the evidence at hand.

Of course, OxBlog gets things wrong as well. I really didbelieve that American negligence led to the sack of Baghdad's National Museum. Then again, the pessimists didn't exactly get that one right...

It may also be worth noting that I have criticized the US occupation policy at times, even if I haven't pronounced it a failure. Examples of such criticism include my response to rumors of the US implementing a shoot-on-sight policy to deal with looters, my criticism of a US ceasefire with the Mujahedeen e-Khalq, and my blasting of ignorant comments made by Donald Rumsfeld. I admit that I'm an optimist, but I'm sure as hell no Republican cheerleader.

Moving on, OxBlog continued in late May to argue that American GIs were up to the task of befriending the Iraqi people and serving as the embodiment of the United States' democratic values. While there seem to be serious morale problems inside the American camp, I think it is fair to say that the soldiers have still done an admirable job of interacting with those around them. I can't think of any reports of serious misconduct, and even the NYT is getting all teary-eyed about the GIs reaching out to appreciative locals.

In mid-June, OxBlog was gratified to see both the NYT and the WaPo running stories on the restoration of order and basic services in Baghdad. While things are still not great on this front, it might be worth noting that criticism on this front tends to ignore just how far things have come since the end of the war.

Mid-June also marked the beginning of the quagmire debate that has raged on ever since Ba'athist insurgents began to pick-off American soldiers in Baghdad. OxBlog's comments at the time remain surprisingly valid two and a half months later:

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.

If resistance had spread outside the Baghdad triangle, I would gladly accept that this prediction was wrong. But it hasn't so I won't.

Early on in the quagmire debate, OxBlog also pointed to one clear empirical indicator of whether or not the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people were on the American or the Ba'athist side. That standard was to judge whether or not the people were protecting the 55 men on the Pentagon's most wanted list. My answer then was no and my answer now is still no. 38 of the 55 are dead or in prison because the Iraqi people are helping us find them.

To Be Continued...
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# Posted 1:23 AM by David Adesnik  

MARSHALL CALLS OUT OXBLOG: In response to the comments that Ralph Peters and I made after the bombing of UN headquarters in Baghdad, Josh Marshall wrote that

There's a basic principle in scientific theory: an hypothesis, to be a real hypothesis, must be capable of disproof. In other words, for an hypothesis to be a valid basis for research, there must be some data which, if found to be true, would prove the hypothesis was false. Otherwise, there's no way to test it.

Now, foreign policy is no science. But some looser version of this principle must apply here as well. To be a policy, as opposed to a theological position, there must be some potential results that would show the policy was not working. The proponents of the policy should be able to say ahead of time that if this or that result happens, the policy has failed...

So I think it's time for the hawks to give us a few examples of events that would show that our policy was not working or at least facing setbacks. You know, just so we can put down some benchmarks, so we can know what we're working with...

If Josh Marshall had been paying closer attention to my constant stream of writing on the occupation of Iraq, he would know that I have held to a single, observable standard for measuring the success or failure of the occupation. Instead of spending his time in the OxBlog archives, Josh chose to direct a small-minded accusation at my work: that it is a product of ideological blindness.

Given that caustic condescension is one of Mr. Marshall's trademarks, I'm not going to take his comments personally (even though I may hit back once in a while.) In fact, since I know that Josh meant well, I will do his homework for him and evaluate the evidence at hand according to my standard for measuring success and failure in Iraq.

In short, I want to know one thing about Iraq: Who is winning its hearts and minds? Strictly speaking, one cannot provide a definitive answer to such a question. Thus, one has to search for proximate indicators from which one can infer a defensible answer. In the following paragraphs, I focus in greater detail on the indicators I have chosen and evaluate the degree to which their reliability has held up over time.

In the opening days of the occupation, I spent a good amount of time asking what standard foreign observers should rely on during the course of the occupation to measure its success. In Foreign Policy, a pair of top-flight scholars argued that the struggle for women's rights would become the decisive front in the democratization process. I disagreed.

In fact, the standard I chose -- that of hearts and minds -- reflected a continuation of my prior interest in the Arab world's reaction to the invasion of Iraq. Most experts predicted a widespread backlash against American imperialism throughout the Arab world.

However, OxBlog insisted firmly and explicitly that the popular reaction in the Arab world would amount to nothing more than scattered and short-lived protests. Exactly as Josh Marshall would've wanted, this site laid out explicit criteria for what sort of evidence would confirm its interpretation. As a result, OxBlog took home all the bragging rights when its prediction turned out to be right.

Anyhow, the real point here is that OxBlog chose the hearts-and-minds standard because of my initial conclusion that the United States' reservoir of good will on the Arab street was far greater than most talking heads cared to believe. While critics mocked the phrase "liberation" during the opening weeks of the war, those who had faith in Iraq resentment of Saddam Hussein ultimately had the final say on the matter. (For those keeping score, Josh Marshall was on the losing side of that one, too.)

During the second week of the occupation, I had an extended discussion with Kevin Drum about whether or not the United States needed to enhance the legitimacy of the occupation by granting a leadership role to the UN. As I saw it, Iraqis wouldn't care about whether the US or the UN were in charge, but rather about whether the US lived up to its promise of letting Iraqi citizens have a taste of the freedom and prosperity that Saddam denied them. Given that opposition to the US occupation consists of Ba'ath loyalists and migrant Islamists, I think it's fair to say that I laid out a clear standard for judging this one and that the evidence came down on my side.

Also during the second week I reviewed the state of homefront support for the United States' occupation policy. While American citizens haven't shown much enthusiasm for the occupation, they haven't come across as resentful either. So let's call this one a tie and take a rain check.

In week three, the first signs of Shi'ite unrest led pundits to speculate that the euphoria of liberation had worn off and that the US would not be welcome in Iraq for long. Ever the dissident, OxBlog responded that

Thankfully, US officials don't seem prone to rush to conclusions as fast as the media has. As Jay Garner said,

"I think the bulk of the Shia, the majority of the Shia, are very glad they are where they are right now...Two weeks ago they wouldn't have been able to demonstrate."

Exactly. There is every reason to believe that most Iraqi Shi'ites are greatful for their liberation. In fact, many indigenous Shi'ite clerics are open to working with the United States. What we have to watch out for are the ambitious men with friends in Teheran.

Given that Sunnis have been responsible for almost every attack on US forces since the occupation began, I think it's fair to say: Score for one for OxBlog. (So now it's three-zip. But who's counting?)

Week four was marred by a disturbing event that led some critics to assert that American soldiers were too violent to win over Iraqi hearts and minds. The event in question was the death of Fallujah-based protesters at the hands of American G.I.s. While dismayed, OxBlog insisted that "peaceful co-existence is possible with all those except the remaining partisans of Saddam." Make that four-zip.

To Be Continued...
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# Posted 7:15 PM by David Adesnik  

A LESS-TOLD STORY: Click here for an interesting article about CIA operations in Iraq. It's from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and was written by an old friend of mine who is well on the road to establishing himself as a foreign correspondent. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:05 PM by Daniel  

MR. SUMMERS, DON'T TEAR DOWN THAT SNOW PENIS. You'll see what I mean when you read this highly enjoyable piece about Larry Summers and his time as President of Harvard. Read to the end and find out why Summers and Al Gore have more in common than one might assume. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 4:46 PM by David Adesnik  

HEARTS AND MINDS AND BOMBS: As mentioned before, I have come under attack from a wide array of critics for arguing that this week's bombing of UN headquarters was not a triumph for anti-American forces, but a sign of their desperation.

Especially noteworthy is the fact that my critics include the blogosphere's entire center-left brain trust, i.e. Josh Marshall, Matt Yglesias and Kevin Drum. Gentlemen, it's an honor. Now let's get down to business.

There are two principal lines of attack against the 'desperation thesis': First, that Islamic fundamentalists rather than Ba'athist renegades were responsible for the attack. Second, that "conservative columnists" have been so blinded by their partisan and ideological commitments to success in Iraq that they are incapable of acknowledging any sort of setback for American interests.

I'm going to address the first point first since it is a more direct and factual objection to my analysis. Pointing out that no one knows the true identity of the bombers, Matt Yglesias writes that

Maybe all the various attacks we've seen in Iraq were organized by a single, loosely-affiliated group of people. Maybe these people really are deeply unpopular Ba'ath Party remnants. Maybe they've started targeting infrastructure because they're on their last legs and no longer capable of targeting US soldiers. Honestly, though, I just don't see how anyone could know these things.

While Matt never explicitly states why it is important whether Ba'athists or Islamists were responsible for the attack, I think his implicit logic is fairly clear: that if Islamists are responsible, one cannot conclude that the UN attack represents a failure of the Ba'athists initial strategy of focusing their attacks on American forces. Rather, the UN attack may represent one of the first blows in an entirely new insurgency against the occupation government. By extension, there is no reason to believe that the attack represents any sort of desperation.

This assertion begs two questions: First, what do we actually know about the identity of the bombers? Second, must one believe that the appearence of an independent Islamist force in Iraq represents a success for anti-American forces?

The first question is basically matter of evidence and still has no clear answer. I admit that in my initial post on the UN bombing I did not give sufficient consideration to the possibility of Islamists being responsible for it. For a forceful argument in favor of Islamist responsibility, take a look at Michael Ledeen's recent column in the Telegraph. (Also, special thanks to Michael for taking the time to send in his thoughts on my original post.)

While Michael makes some good points, his argument is basically contextual and doesn't establish whether or not Islamists were responsible for this specific attack. The evidence against Islamist responsibility consists of two main facts: First, that the explosives used in the attack were standard components of Saddam's military arsenal. Second, that the former Iraqi secret service agents guarding the UN compound may have been complicit in the attack.

While US officials think that the Ba'athist hypothesis is much more plausible, they haven't ruled out the possibility of the attack being authored by Islamists. There are also those individuals who suspect that the Ba'athists and Islamists are working together, but there isn't any solid evidence to back that up just yet.

Now on to the second question: So what if Islamists were responsible for the attack rather than Ba'athists? I wrote yesterday that evidence of Islamic responsibility

hardly contradicts my main point: that if our enemies are attacking the UN, they have no hope of winning the minds and hearts of the people of Iraq.

Let me elaborate on that a bit. Liberal critics have been arguing from the moment the occupation began that the key to success would be to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people, both by restoring basic services and delivering on our promise of democratic self-rule. That, after all, was the lesson of Vietnam: that no amount of firepower can win a guerrilla if the people are on the guerrilla's side.

Thus, I find it rather ironic that they see the UN bombing as a setback. I think the most straightforward version of the liberal argument has been made by blogopshere newcomer Jon Gradowski, who writes that the UN attack was a show of force which may well scare Iraqi citiznes into abandoning their (temporary) support for the occupation government. In short, hearts and minds don't matter.

Yet why should a handful of car bombs lead the people of Iraq to abandon their aspiration of a establishing a democratic, non-Ba'athist order? Especially when the United States has more than a 120,000 troops on the ground and continues to apprehend leading Ba'athist figures such as Chemical Ali and former Vice-President Taha Yassin Ramadan?

(If you are a fan of Vietnam comparisons, you might ask why a handful of car bombs would terrorize the people of Iraq into submission if hundreds of thousands of tons of high explosives couldn't terrorize the people of Vietnam into abandoning their hopes of soveriegnty and independence?)

If Islamists were responsible for the attack instead of Ba'athists, one has to modify this argument somewhat. If this were a wholly Islamist operation, it may represent the first (second, actually -- see "Jordanian Embassy") in the wave of devastating suicide attacks. But how many attacks will it take to persuade the average Iraqi citizen that he or she is better off without American forces on the ground?

In answering this question, it is important to consider the nature of the target in the UN attack. Ralph Peters writes that

for al Qaeda and associated terrorists, the United Nations is a Western-dominated tool of Christians and Zionists - despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

But the people of Iraq are not al Qaeda. According to the Deputy Director of Physicians for Human Rights,

In the aftermath of the tragic bombing in Baghdad...many have speculated that Iraqis do not welcome United Nations involvement in reconstruction.

Physicians for Human Rights recently asked Iraqis about the United Nations' role there in a population-based survey of more than 2,000 households.

When asked if the United Nations should play a lead role in the reconstruction process, more than 85 percent said that it should play the lead role, and close to 90 percent felt that international assistance in reconstruction was very important.

The Iraqi people are the ones who suffer the most from acts of terror like the bombing in Baghdad. These attacks only set back delivery of basic needs and rights like electricity, clean water, food, health and the development of civil society in Iraq.

The American-led coalition should allow the United Nations a stronger and more independent role in Iraq.

Given that PHR is hardly a pro-Bush organization, I think its word carries a fair amount of weight. Besides, the people of Iraq would have to be ignoring all of the information now available to them in order to conclude that the UN is just a US henchman in disguise.

If you're still with me at this point, you might ask why Islamists would embark on a strategy that is so obviously self-defeating? The answer, of course, is that to them it isn't so obvious. As Peters observed, they are so blinded by ideology and by the Mogadishu analogy that they simply don't believe that either the US army or the people of Iraq are willing to fight for what they believe in.

As such, "desperate" may not be the best way to characterize the Islamist strategy if, in fact, Islamists were responsible for the UN attack. The Islamists are simply unable to switch gears despite the fact that up until know their suicide strategy has resulted in devastating failures, including the destruction of their base in Afghanistan and the apprehension of many Al Qaeda leadership figures.

Again you might ask, "Are the Islamists really that stupid or that unwilling to confront reality?" Well, the Americans were in Vietnam. The Soviets were in Eastern Europe. Further examples aren't hard to think of. Given the Islamists' extreme ideological commitments and the closed nature of their organizations, there is little reason to believe that they will prove any better at coming to grips with reality.

Alternately, the Islamists' may well recognize that they are losing their war against the United States but still have no idea how to win it and no ability to question their tactics. In essence, that was the situation of the United States in Vietnam. We simply didn't know how to win hearts and minds despite knowing that without hearts and minds we couldn't win the war. (It was more complex than that, but I'm not going to go into it here.)

In the final analysis, it is unlikely that Islamist terrorists in Iraq are as desperate as their Ba'athist counterparts, since the Islamists have an international support structure that the Ba'athists lack. Yet if the Islamists are responsible for attacking the UN (or worked in tandem with the Ba'athist underground to organize the attack) then they are strategically desperate and have no idea how to get the people of Iraq to join them in their crusade against the American Satan.

PS I know I didn't get to Josh Marshall's criticism. But it'll have to wait until I get back on Sunday. (1) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:35 AM by Patrick Belton  

OKAY, ONE MORE THING: This, incidentally, is a very, very good thing. Hade Soleimanpour - who served as Iran's ambassador in Buenos Aires in 1994 when Iranian intelligence conspired with Hizbullah to bomb the city's Jewish community center, an event which killed 85 members of the Argentine Jewish community and followed by a year the destruction of the Israeli embassy in that city by Iranian intelligence and Hizbullah - was served an extradition warrant yesterday in Durham, and will appear today before a magistrate in London. Menem and his cronies subsequently accepted a bribe of $10 million from Tehran to obscure judicial investigations of Iran's role in the bombings (the bribe was placed in Menem's personal bank account in Switzerland, and among other substantiating accounts, a defector from Iranian intelligence has testified profusely on the extent of collaboration between Menem's corrupt government and the secret arms of the Iranian mullahs). However, now that the Argentine judiciary is being swept clean of Menem's corrupt hacks, a judge issued a warrant last week for Soleimanpour and seven other Iranian intelligence and foreign ministry officials.

Justice, justice shall you pursue. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:22 AM by Patrick Belton  

THE EGYPTIANS WANT THEIR GOLD BACK: Make of this what you will. A group of Egyptian jurists, their tongues (hopefully) somewhat in cheek, discussed bringing suit against the Jews to recover the gold taken from the Pharoah at the time of the exodus. Some problems have reportedly been encountered with statutes of limitations.

And with that, I'm off for the week! I'll be in Princeton, humbly attempting to serve as a good best man by throwing the party of the century (it's a new century, so the bar's lower) for my good friend Vi. Details are classified at the moment, but look for a full account from David and me on Monday. Happy weekend! (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 3:57 AM by David Adesnik  

PHIL CARTER IS FRIKKIN' AWESOME: While this post is especially excellent, everything Phil has put up the past few days has demonstrated once again what a superb blogger he is. Enjoy! (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 3:54 AM by David Adesnik  

STAY ON THE LINE, WE WILL BE WITH YOU SHORTLY: I'm going to bed now. After I get up, I'll make good on my promise to respond to Josh Marshall's criticism of my original post on the UN attack. I will also respond to Matt Yglesias, Kevin Drum, Dan D. and John Gradowski.

In case you couldn't tell, no one seemed to like a single thing I had to say. However, Ralph Peters does have a column in the NY Post which he published at around the same time I put up my initial post. With the exception of Peters' comments about the flypaper theory, I think Peters' column is brilliant. (For more on flypaper, click here and here.)

As you can tell, I have a lot on my plate and need some time to digest it. But don't worry. Reverse peristalsis is imminent. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 3:40 AM by David Adesnik  

MINDBOGGLINGLY STUPID: No, that isn't a description of Bob Herbert's latest column. It's a description of the UN's faith in the willingness of former Iraqi secret service agents to provide "security" for their Baghdad headquarters.

Don't believe it? Well, I was surprised, too. I doubt that any Pentagon propagandist could've come up with a better way to demonstrate that the UN was (and is) embarrassingly unprepared to head up the occupation of Iraq. But that is exactly what Bob Herbert thinks should it should do. According to Bob,

As quickly as possible, we should turn the country over to a genuine international coalition, headed by the U.N. and supported in good faith by the U.S.

As far as I'm concerned, good faith support means not turning the future of Iraq over to an organization that trusts Saddam's henchmen to protect the lives of its employees. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 2:22 AM by David Adesnik  

SATAN GOES ICE SKATING: Hawken has the details. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 2:15 AM by David Adesnik  

SKELETONS IN THE CLOSET: A long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far way, SH babysat for a future OxBlogger. The experience persuaded him not to have children of his own.

Moving on, SH responds to my recent post on Schwarzenegger and the Nazi past by noting that Arnold

ignor[ed] significant evidence of the complicity of Kurt Waldheim in war crimes (evidence significant enough for the US government to ban him from coming to the US while he was president of Austria), has been a staunch defender of Waldheim.  I have no reason to believe that Arnold hates Jews or subscribes to Nazi ideology -- although, you know, there is some of that in the Kennedy background -- Ambassador Kennedy was a well-known Naziphile -- in fact, I doubt that either is true, but I did think the Waldheim issue should be brought to your attention.

Interesting. I wonder what will come of it. I guess that if Arnold loses the recall election the President could always nominate him to be Secretary General of the United Nations. After all, the UN never seemed to have any problem with Waldheim's past. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 4:20 PM by Patrick Belton  

BEFORE THERE WERE UGLY AMERICANS...there were ugly Britons....

(For a kinder expression of transatlantic bonds, go see Mark Twain. He would have been a heck of a blogger.) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:15 AM by Patrick Belton  

LEDEEN ON STAYING THE COURSE IN THE MIDDLE EAST: Michael Ledeen pens a superb piece in yesterday's Sun (another version of which appeared in the Telegraph), reminding his readers that the nation confronts a stark choice - between continuing to work, despite Tuesday's attack, to bring freedom to the Iranians, Syrians, and Saudis whose ruling elites are the paymasters of the region's terrorists; or demonstrating to the partisans of terror that those of freedom can always be sent home by a well-placed bomb of adequate size.

The entire piece is worth reading, but to highlight one favorite passage:

The U.S. Secretary of State, Colin Powell, and his British counterpart, Jack Straw, often speak as if they believe we could actually enlist Syria, Saudi Arabia and Iran in the war against terror, which is rather like Roosevelt convincing himself that he could enlist Hitler and Mussolini in a war against Japan following Pearl Harbor.

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# Posted 9:15 AM by Patrick Belton  

ERRR, he's from my side of the family..... (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:01 AM by Patrick Belton  

WE'VE GOT CHEMICAL ALI: Ali Hassan al-Majid, Saddam Hussein's cousin and the officer who ordered a massive chemical weapons attack against Iraq's Kurds in 1988, has been taken into U.S. custody.

For an idea about what this means, read this Chemical Ali quote from Human Rights Watch's dossier: "I will kill them all with chemical weapons! Who is going to say anything? The international community? F_ck them! the international community, and those who listen to them!... I will not attack them with chemicals just one day, but I will continue to attack them with chemicals for fifteen days."

And more from that dossier:

Ali Hassan al-Majid, as secretary general of the Northern Bureau of Iraq's Ba'th Party, held authority over all agencies of the state in the Kurdish region from March 1987 to April 1989, including the 1st and 5th Corps of the army, the General Security Directorate, and Military Intelligence. This included the period of the "Anfal" genocide against the region's Kurdish residents. One of his orders, dated June 20, 1987, directed army commanders "to carry out special bombardments [a reference to chemical weapon use]...to kill the largest number of persons present in...prohibited zones."

Named after a Koranic verse, justifying pillage of properties of infidels, the "Anfal" campaign unfolded as the 1980-1988 Iran/Iraq war was winding down. The Anfal campaign, under al-Majid's command, resulted in the murder and "disappearance" of some 100,000 noncombatants, the use of chemical weapons against non-combatants in dozens of locations, and the near-total destruction of family and community assets, including agricultural and other infrastructure, throughout the rural Kurdish areas. Documents captured from Iraqi intelligence services demonstrate that the mass killings, "disappearances," forced displacement, and other crimes were carried out in a coherent and highly centralized manner under al-Majid's direct supervision. Ali Hassan al-Majid was subsequently in charge of Iraq's military occupation of Kuwait and led forces that suppressed the popular uprising in the south of the country in March 1991. All of these campaigns were marked by executions, arbitrary arrests, "disappearances," torture and other atrocities.

According to Iraqi opposition activists and refugee testimony, al-Majid also played a leading role in the campaign against Iraq's Marsh Arab population in the 1990s, a campaign that included the systematic bombardment of villages, torture, "disappearances," forced displacement, which reduced a community that once numbered over a quarter of a million people to less than 40,000 today.

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# Posted 5:59 AM by David Adesnik  

SADDAM AND FRIENDS: Matt Yglesias suggests that I am being rather complacent in my assessment of the UN bombing in Baghdad. Matt is right that I didn't address the possibility that the UN bombing was the work of Islamic fundamentalists working independently of the Ba'ath underground. But that hardly contradicts my main point: that if our enemies are attacking the UN, they have no hope of winning the minds and hearts of the people of Iraq.

UPDATE: I just noticed that Josh Marshall is mocking my arguments as well. I will respond later on today. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:40 AM by David Adesnik  

DEFENDING THE BBC: Kevin Drum takes his best shot at Josh's cover story in the Standard but isn't all that convincing.

Kevin's tries to argue that Josh hasn't come up with anything more than a few trivial examples of the BBC's anti-war/anti-American bias. For a in-depth dismantling of Kevin's post, check out Bill Herbert's comments on COINTELPRO.

But first, you might want to give Josh's article another read. Frankly, Kevin seems to be ignoring all of the most compelling points Josh makes. For starters, Kevin acknowledges that the BBC

obviously lied to make it appear that their source [regarding the Blair dossier] was more highly placed than he was.

That alone is an extremely serious violation of journalistic ethics, especially considering that the BBC lied repeatedly and intentionally.

Next, Kevin dodges the fact that the BBC was patently wrong when it accused Blair advisor Alastair Campbell of being the individual responsible responsible for sexing-up the WMD dossier. Instead, he insists that the accusation was legitimate because BBC source David Kelly made it twice, in separate conversations with separate reporters. Yet Kevin also admits that one of those reporters ignored the accusation becuase she judged it to be nothing more than a "gossipy aside". And the Beeb went ahead with the story. Not exactly a ringing endorsement of the BBC's standards, huh?

But what really seems to be behind Kevin's criticisms of Josh is Kevin's admission that

"I would be very cautious about accepting views of the BBC from American hawks, who seem to view any deviation from the war party line as an anti-American, pro-Saddam tirade."

In other words, since some American hawks are unfair to the BBC, Kevin assumes that Josh is being unfair as well. That kind of ad hominem logic is worthy of, well, the BBC.

The one good point Kevin makes is that Josh isn't suspicious enough about the veracity of statements made by now-dead weapons expert David Kelly. Kevin is right that Kelly had a strong incentive to lie about what he told the BBC in order to hide his own violation of his employers' trust. However, Kevin goes too far in describing Josh as "credulous". Rather thank simply taking Kelly at his word, Josh compares three versions of what Kelly allegedly said and then relies on his own judgment to decide which version was best.

While Kevin Drum almost always offers up thoughtful and balanced criticism from a liberal perspective, this time he has fallen far short of his usual high standards.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:05 AM by Daniel  

As I watched Gray Davis' speech at UCLA yesterday, I couldn't help but think: you aren't Bill, so stop trying to be. When Gray Davis adopts Clinton's tactics, especially when speaking about his Republican rivals, it's just....awkward. It is pretty hard to play the victim when your approval ratings are in the low 20's.

However, I do think the recall is ridiculous--voters had their chance to oust Davis last November. Dianne Feinstein may take the lead in reforming California's recall process.
(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 4:43 AM by David Adesnik  

HOW TO LOSE FRIENDS AND ALIENATE PEOPLE is the name of a gut-wrenchingly funny memoir by British expat Toby Young. I bought a copy at Heathrow Airport on my way back from the UK and had read 200+ pages by the time I got off of the plane.

While I had thought about quoting a few of the best passages here on OxBlog, I unfortunately decided to lend the book to a friend before I had a chance to do that. Rest assured, the quotes will appear sometime in the indefinite future.

Another gut-wrenchingly funny British book I've been busy with is Nice Work by David Lodge. An emeritus professor of English at the the University of Birmingham, Lodge has taken academic satire to new heights. He is also a prolific writer, with more than 10 novels to his name.

In addition to the providing the standard attributes of an outstanding novel, such as a compelling story and characters one actually cares about, Lodge's work stands out because of its unparalleled ability to hoist jargon-laden post-modern academe on its own petard.

The basic premise of Nice Work is that Robyn Penrose, an expert in the 19th Century British "industrial novel", has to confront the divide between theory and reality when she finds herself forced to work with Vic Wilcox, the managing director of a local factory. Now, while I would probably enjoy a novel that mercilessly satired post-modern thought without granting it any sort of redeeming characteristics, Lodge persuasively presents Dr. Penrose as a genuinely good human being who uses her theoretical knowledge in productive ways despite her often ridiculous behavior.

While I haven't yet lent my copy of Nice Work to anyone, I thought I'd pull out a quotation or two from another one of Lodge's novels instead, this one called Small World. On page 113, we learn that literary critic "Michel Tardieu sits at his desk and resumes work on a complex equation representing in algebraic terms the plot of War and Peace." The glorious absurdity of that one line had me in stitches.

Small World also happens to provide one of the the best descriptions of blogging I have ever come across, despite the fact that it was written in 1984. On page 99, Lodge comments as follows on the philosophy of undersexed Oxford don Rudyard Parkinson:

The highest form of writing is a book of one's own, something that has to be prepared with tact, subtlety and cunning and sustained over many months, like an affair. But one cannot always be writing books, and even while thus engaged there are pauses and lulls when one is merely reading secondary sources, and the need for some release of pent-up ego on to the printed page, however trivial and ephemeral the ocacasion, becomes urgent.

That is exactly the feeling I have when I go through the paper every morning. Nothing I say is going to be as well-thought out as what I put into my dissertation. But I just have to say something in response to all the ridiculous things I read, otherwise I'd go insane.

As an academic, one tends to think that one's life exists outside the reality which one writes about. One rarely considers the fact that the Ivory Tower is its own sort of reality, with customs and folkways that would befuddle the most conscientous anthropologist. In fact, one tends to assume that academic life is so boringly rational that it isn't worth commenting on. But after reading a novel by David Lodge, you won't make that mistake again.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 4:35 AM by Daniel  

FAT CHANCE. Martin Indyk outlines his idea for a trusteeship in Palestine, which is promising on paper. My bold prediction: not going to happen. Would we (would Bush?) actually commit forces to fight terrorists alongside Palestinian forces? Would Bush take on another nation-building effort? (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:55 PM by Patrick Belton  

IT'S SO BIG: Get your mind out of the gutter, that's the name of the virus currently circulating - the one that's been declared fastest spreading virus of all time. One estimate is that right now the virus accounts for one out of every 17 e-mail messages being sent at the moment. And when combined with the Blaster and Nachi internet worms, it's slowed down the very backbone of the internet. (See, e.g., Reuters, WaPo, Bloomberg, Internetnews.com, The Register (UK), Market Wire)

But that's all beside the point. Which is, I've received 126 e-mails with this virus in the last two days. And even I'm starting to get a little ticked.

UPDATE: 128
UPDATE: 208 (9:00 am)
(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:44 PM by Patrick Belton  

OOPS (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 4:36 PM by Patrick Belton  

THOSE RAMADAN NIGHTS: There's a lovely piece on Qur'anic exegesis in the August 7th LRB (registration or print ed., but well worth picking up a copy for).

Some favorite bits:

Faced with the challenge of modernity, many Muslims today, rather than accommodate themselves to the age-old fudges that have prevailed in so many Muslim societies, have resorted instead to a kind of textual Puritanism. Instead of referring to the way things were done in, say, colonial Morocco, or Ottoman Turkey, or, much further back, under the Abbasid caliphs, they prefer to return to the 'simple truths' of the Koran. The Koran, however, is not simple..... Naive literal readers are soldered onto modern preoccupations with the menaces of Zionism, globalisation and feminism, and this third-rate religious education is one of the things that fuels fundamentalist violence. I have a sense that for some hapless, underemployed and spiritually ill-schooled young Muslims, the Koran is a style accessory that goes hand in hand with martial arts training and watching videos of aeroplanes being blown up. On the other hand, there are those Western infidels, whose reading background is mostly in fiction, who pick up an English version of the Koran expecting to be shocked by its exotic barbarism. There have been many, like Fay Weldon at the time of the Rushdie affair, who...are just as shocked as they expected to be."

and

"Although Qutb was a fervent Muslim, he did not favour an unduly literalist reading of the text. Metaphors could be identified as such. Other Muslims, however, particularly those aligned with Wahhabism, have favoured a narrow, rather pharisaical adherence to surface meanings. Even so, a narrow reliance on the text is not without its problems. For example, Wahhabis and other Islamicists insist that the penalty for fornication is stoninng, even though the Koran prescribes no such penalty. (Flogging is ordained instead.) Again, the Koran does not actually prescribe the veiling of women's faces, it only ordains that their bosoms should be covered. (So the dress code is no more strict than that currently enforced at Harrods.)

and

"It is in (the translator) Arberry that one gets the strongest sense of something speaking to us from beyond the visible world--something transcendent, yet very near:

We indeed created man; and We know
what his soul whispers within him,
and We are nearer to him than the
jugular vein.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:29 PM by Patrick Belton  

TWO CUBAN ATHLETES DEFECT AT WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS: Even though large portions of the United States and our generation in particular may hold the dubious notion that Cuba represents a socialist paradise free from capitalist greed, borgeouis boredom, and noxious parental supervision, a different story comes across from actual Cubans who have lived in that unfortunate country under its police state. This was the case this weekend, when two Cuban athletes defected to the United States in the course of a world championships competition held in California. "We don't have a future there," said one of the two athletes to a reporter.

And, contra the half of the Yale junior class who go there each spring break, he adds: "and there's no way to have fun over there." (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:42 AM by Patrick Belton  

THE DAY AFTER: The Washington Post places yesterday's attack on the U.N. in historical context - except there've been few such attacks on senior U.N. personnel, and hardly any attacks of such significance against U.N. installations in the organization's history. A senior U.N. Middle East mediator, Count Folke Bernadotte, was assassinated by the Stern group on September 17, 1948. (Bernadotte had advocated the disarmament of Jerusalem and the Palestinian right of return. The event led to the outlawing of the Stern organization by Israel, although the suspects in the murder were granted general amnesty on February 14, 1949.) (CNN covers past attacks on UN mission personnel, as well, and agrees that this attack against UN staff is unprecedented in magnitude.) The Post also memorializes the slain diplomat, Sergio Vieira de Mello. The NYT assesses the military munitions used in the attack. The UK press points to reports of thousands of Saudi militants crossing into Iraq (Scotsman), and suggests the coalition had done an insufficient job to protect the UN building (The Times). (And even the Guardian is calling for some sanity over the unfolding dossier brouhaha, saying the dossier's importance in Britain's decision to go to war has been far overrated, and the real reasons for entry into the war were a mixture of arguments, some good and some bad; the Guardian bemoans only the lack of a UN resolution.) (Fortunately, Fisk's Independent article saying the attack "underlines America's crumbling authority and shows it can guarantee the safety of no one" is pay-for-view, so many of you will be spared the pain of reading it.)

In Israel, Abu Mazen is attempting to salvage the peace process by cutting off all contacts with Islamist militant leaders and ordered the arrest by Palestinian security services of the perpretators of yesterday's bombing. Wounded, the usually pro-road map Ha'aretz runs pieces this morning on the failure of hudna, the government's impotence in dealing with terror, and proclaiming there is no right of return. Forced into a greater prudence, however, Israel's policy arms are holding off on a massive military response, permitting Abu Mazen some time to act against the perpetrators first.

In the blogosphere, Glenn links to a NY Post piece wondering whether the UN will take a stand against terror or retreat and take refuge in the comforts of anti-americanism; the Post piece concludes by saying "the lesson the U.N. must take away is that no one can be neutral in the struggle with evil." Salam Pax was there shortly after, and contributes a first-hand account. Matthew Yglesias urges caution in attributing the attack too quickly to Ba'athists or Islamic militants, and thus to drawing overly hasty conclusions from it. Dan Drezner suggests that in pushing the US and UN closer to one another (contra Fisk above), the attackers are tactically inept as well as morally nihilistic. Josh Marshall reflects on the images of the attack. Volokh's David Bernstein attempts to plot out a way forward from here, with effective PA action against Al-Aqsa and Hamas, and Israeli pulling back of settlers. (Bernstein's pragmatism and dedication to principle is touching, as his girlfriend, a U.S. official, was mere yards away from the bombing of the bus).

Slate reviews some of the press coverage of yesterday's bombings, noting that NYT did its best to keep them distinct, while USA Today and several others conflated them as one attack. As regards the culprit, attention is focusing principally on Ansar al-Islam (see profiles of the organization here, here, and here).

Other losses in yesterday's attack include the U.N.'s chief Arabist, Rick Hooper, roughly twenty members of Mr. Vieira de Mello's staff and other offices, and five members of the World Bank staff. In the think tank family, CFR's Arthur Helton was scheduled to meet with Mr. Vieira de Mello at the time of the bombing, and is missing. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 3:20 AM by David Adesnik  

DAY OF TERROR: In terms of moral depravity, there is no difference between the separate bombings that took place yesterday, one in Baghdad and one in Jerusalem. In political terms, however, the attacks bear little resemblance to one another.

The sensless destruction of UN headquarters in Baghdad demonstrates just how desperate the Ba'athist underground has become. For as long as the Ba'athist remnants held fast to their strategy of assassinating American soldiers, they could plausibly represent themselves as rebels against a foreign occupation.

Now, having murdered 17 representatives of the United Nations, the Ba'athists have made it clear to the people of Iraq that they are still the same brutal thugs who served as loyal enforcers of Saddam's dictatorship.

Unsurprisingly, no one at the New York Times seems to have noticed that the attack on UN headquarters is a sign of desperation rather than ingenuity. A masthead editorial entitled "A Mission Imperiled" argues that the attack is evidence of the United States' failure to restore in Iraq. Maureen Dowd makes the same misguided point, albeit with more of an anti-Bush spin.

Most disappointingly, Thomas Friedman writes that

The bad guys in Iraq have been gaining so much momentum in recent days -- with their attacks on pipelines, US forces, and UN headquarters -- that they are steadily eroding the sense of partnership between US forces and the Iraqi people.

That is absurd. By attacking the UN or even by attacking local infrastructure, Ba'athist forces demonstrate their total disregard for the welfare of the Iraqi people -- which isn't that surprising given that they have been practicing that sort of disregard for over thirty years. (A similar point is made by a security expert in the NYT's news analysis piece on the Baghdad attack.)

The one positive message sent by the NYT staff is that the only acceptable response to the attack in Baghdad is to increase the US commitment to rebuilding Iraq in both military and economic terms. Surprisingly, Dowd writes that "We can't leave, and we can't stay forever. We just have to slug it out."

What happened to "Bring Our Boys Home" or "Give Peace a Chance"? While leftist groups in NYC and San Francisco have been busy posting handbills and stickers which advocate a similar point of view, mainstream liberals will never be able to sympathize with such a point for as long as the US remains committed to promoting democracy in Iraq.

In short, the President has his critics in a rhetorical vise. There is no way they can advocate the abandonment of the Iraqi people without coming across as retrograde isolationists. On the downside, this situation also diminishes criticism of the Administration's lackluster effort to rebuild and democratize Iraq. But with enemies as incompetent as those who attacked the United Nations, the United States and the people of Iraq may succeed despite their unpreparedness to nation-build in the Middle East.

Now Israel. Regardless of whether it was Hamas, Islamic Jihad or both who were responsible for yesterday's attack, the bombing was not senseless from a political perspective. On the one hand, there is no question that the violent death of 18 Israeli civilians will force the terrorists to shoulder most of the blame for ending the ceasefire, assuming that Israel moves aggressively to retaliate against those responsible for the attack.

But Hamas and Islamic Jihad -- or at least their military commanders -- never had much to gain from the ceasefire. While it may have given them time to re-equip, it also gave Mahmoud Abbas time to prepare his strategy for consolidating power in the hands of the PA.

What is hard to know is why Hamas and/or Jihad attacked first, rather than waiting for Abbas to attack them. Had the Prime Minister done so, Hamas and/or Jihad would have been able to represent themselves as righteous victims of an Israeli errand boy.

One explanation for the decision to pre-empt Abbas is that Hamas and Jihad were afraid that they could not recover if Abbas had the opportunity to strike the first blow. But I doubt it. The greater threat may have been that Abbas would have done nothing at all for five or six months, maybe more. Each day without violence raised the political cost of breaking the ceasefire. If Abbas attacked his opponents five or six months from now, they may not have been able to mount the most effective possible response: killing Israelis.

Thus, recognizing that Sharon and Abbas actually were committed to peace and able to cooperate with one another, Hamas and/or Jihad decided that the optimal strategy available to them was to undermine the ceasefire before its roots took greater hold.

It is possible, of course, that this strategy will backfire. The desire for peace on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian divide may be too intense. But I am not going to get my hopes up. Unless Abbas is willing to move hard and fast against the terrorists, Israel will do it for him. Negotiations will break off and the people of Israel will inch ever closer to accepting that the closest they can come to achieving real peace is to build another Berlin Wall and hide behind it.

UPDATE: Glenn Reynolds says it's hard to know whether pro- or anti-Saddam forces are behind the UN attack. If it were the latter (which I doubt) my analysis above would be, well, wrong.

Matt Yglesias think the good Professor has his tongue buried well inside of his cheek, but I'm not so sure.

Also, Josh Marshall links to footage of the attack.
(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 2:13 PM by Patrick Belton  

WHAT NEXT FOR US POLICY IN THE MIDDLE EAST? Don't expect an answer (in this post, at least), but there's some thinking on this point in Foreign Policy. Contributors include Bob Kagan, Thomas Carothers, Marina Ottaway, Daniel Brumberg, and Vince Cannistrano. Other pieces deal with Iran and moderate Muslims. Kudos to Carnegie for their efforts in adding new meat to the conversation. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:17 PM by Patrick Belton  

AL QA'IDA CLAIMS RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE RECENT POWER OUTAGES: Here, in this piece from Dar al-Hayat. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:01 AM by Patrick Belton  

BURMA ROUNDUP: A flurry of events in support of the imprisoned democratic leader took place last Thursday, the 15th anniversary of a massacre of pro-democracy protesters in the Burmese capital of Rangoon, in which thousands were killed. The Japanese and Laotian foreign ministers expressed concern about Suu Kyi's release during a bilateral meeting they held that day. Meanwhile, Burmese students and sympathizers staged protests in New Delhi and Bangkok. The US and EU have announced sanctions. Slightly earlier (on June 28), the Burmese foreign minister said during a visit to Indonesia that his government did not intend to detain the pro-democracy leader indefinitely, but did not indicate when she might be released.

There has been some speculation that the intense criticism of Burma's ruling junta from neighboring Asia Pacific countries may result in Suu Kyi's release before a regional border committee meeting scheduled between Myanmar and Thailand on August 22.

At its summit ending June 17th, ASEAN issued a statement breaking with three decades of non-interference with member states' internal affairs and calling for Suu Kyi's release. Malaysian PM Mahathir Mohamad has since pressed farther, calling repeatedly for Burma's expulsion from ASEAN if Suu Kyi is not released.

Perhaps most important among regional condemnations of the SLORC has been that of Japan, previously Burma's chief donor (giving the country aid worth $17 million in 2002), which has frozen all aid to the country. Also expressing repeated disgust (and bringing rare credit on their institutions) has been Kofi Annan, who dispatched a special envoy to the country the week after Suu Kyi's imprisonment, and the EU, which responding to British pressure placed sanctions on the junta on June 16. Pepsi and other large corporations have also stopped doing business with the Burmese government in protest. Some corporations, however, have been less scrupulous - British American Tobacco, for one, which rejected calls by the UK government for the company to quit Burma, saying "We're not a government or an international statesman. We'll do business in countries if it's legal to do so." Not very praiseworthy, that.

On July 29, President Bush signed sanctions against Burma into law in the Burmese Freedom and Democracy Act, which had been shepherded through Congress by Senators McConell and McCain and Reps. Jim Leach and Tom Lantos (only three legislators voted against the sanctions). The law, which enters into force at the end of August, bans all imports from Burma (its textiles trade is crucial in keeping that country's economy from collapse), freezes Burma's assets and property in the US, authorizes the president to aid Burmese democratic activists, and widens the visa ban on junta officials.

Aung San Suu Kyi has been detained since May 30. Among other groups working to keep the Burmese people's cause in the world's eye, worthy of mention are the Free Burma Coalition and the Burma Campaign UK. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:11 AM by Patrick Belton  

MORE BEEBISHNESS: Belgravia Dispatch takes on the BBC - but this time, for bad writing.

(Which, to think of it, is even worse...) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:32 PM by Patrick Belton  

ALSO IN MEXICO, an American bounty hunter .... jumps bail. Funny, they look a lot better in the movies. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:24 PM by Patrick Belton  

MEXICO WATCH: The center-left PRD has a new head, after the resignation of Lic. Rosario Robles, who as the former acting mayor of Mexico City attained the highest post attained by any female politician in Mexico. Lic. Robles was forced out of office amidst concerns of financial mismanagement, although the party doubled its parliamentary representation in the July Camera elections. (See Reforma and related) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:18 PM by Patrick Belton  

THE LIGHTS AIN'T JUST OUT IN GEORGIA: Nope, Vatican too. See, the whole world wants to be like New York.... (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 2:49 PM by Patrick Belton  

SHE'S BEEN TAKING WRITING LESSONS FROM THOMAS FRIEDMAN!: This latest from MoDo:

We have BlackBerrys that are also telephones and Palm Pilots that are also cameras and cellphones that also send text-message mash notes. We take it on faith that the power will come on when we switch on computers to send e-mail around the world instantaneously from our air-conditioned, well-lit, cable-TV-equipped, key-coded, A.T.M.-financed worlds, without ever knowing that our power might be originating in Canada — eh? — or looping eerily around Lake Erie. Now comes news that our foamy lattes are steamed by the antiquated, overloaded system at Niagara Mohawk? I thought we'd already seen the Last of the Mohicans.

Geesh. Even he does it better.... (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:18 AM by Patrick Belton  

THE LITTLE PAPER-CLIP GUY on Microsoft Word looks innocuous....but watch out, he's actually spying on you.....

(I always knew it - it was something about the way he blinks.....) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:24 PM by David Adesnik  

CHAFETZ IS #1: On Blogdex, that is. Josh's excellent analysis of the BBC has blown away the competition in terms of getting attention on the Net. OxBlog is now shepping infinite nachas. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:17 PM by David Adesnik  

BUSH: BIG GOVERNMENT CONSERVATIVE? That's what Fred Barnes says, though I'm not buying it. Bush may behave according to the principles Barnes describes, but I get the sense that the President does so as a matter of political expediency.

Barnes also goes to great lengths to contrast Bush to Reagan, the supposed paradigm of small government conservatism. But Reagan did all the same things then that Bush is doing now, albeit with greater pangs of conscience. The bottom line is that Republicans maintain a rhetorical commitment to small government but tacitly admit that their cause is hopeless.

Finally, Barnes makes the untenable statement that "Neocons tend to be big government conservatives." While I can't speak as a neo-con, I think it's fair to say that many neocons have strong libertarian leanings which go against the foundational tenet of big government conservatism, i.e. that

"using what would normally be seen as liberal means--activist government--for conservative ends. And [being] willing to spend more and increase the size of government in the process.

In the final analysis, I think Barnes' essay falls into a well-known genre of opinion journalism, specifcally the attribution of a coherent political philosophy to officeholders who have strong instincts but are unable to articulate a coherent philosophy on their own.

In general, this genre tends to be considerably more popular among conservative journalists, since Democrats have a habit of nominating and electing egg-headed Presidents who can speak for themselves, whereas Republicans prefer men such as Reagan and George W. Bush. In fact, Barnes essay reminds one of the endless battles of the Reagan years in which conservatives spent as much time claiming the President's loyalty for their own Republican faction as they did responding to Democratic broadsides against the GOP as a whole.

You see, in a democracy it's entirely possible to be a 'C' student and a 'A+' president...as well as vice versa. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 4:02 PM by David Adesnik  

MODO SAYS EUROPE WRONG: You thought it couldn't happen. The Immutable Laws insist that it cannot happen. But Maureen Dowd has decided that a European is wrong and that an American is right.

The European in question is none other than Austrian-born megastar Arnold Schwarzenegger. MoDo says that the California frontrunner

is running on pecs and running away from peccadilloes...he's smoked marijuana and his father was a Nazi...

First of all, the Nazi reference is just plain offensive. I have vague recollections of other journalists asking questions about the elder Mr. Schwarzenegger's politics, but unless his son has actually said something that demonstrates insensitivity to the plight of the Holocaust's victims, there is absolutely no reason to blacken Arnold's name by mentioning him in the same breath as the Third Reich.

On the other hand, the Nazis were Europeans, so perhaps I should compliment MoDo for recognizing that they were evil. Or is this just the exception that proves the rule?

Anyhow, one still has to ask how Ms. Dowd could turn her back on a European candidate for American political office, given her fondness for all things from the Continent. I think I have an answer for this one, and it entails laying out a corollary to the Fifth Immutable Law. It is as follows:

Whereas under normal circumstances Europeans are always right, a European abandons the privilege of automatic rightness if he or she shuns his or her superior cultural heritage by embracing American popular culture and/or taking on American citizenship.

Given Mr. Schwarzenegger titanic role as a worldwide ambassador for Hollywood action flicks, his sins against the Dowdian way of life are unforgivable. Or perhaps it would just be simpler to say that Europeans are never right if they decide to become Republicans.
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# Posted 9:54 AM by Patrick Belton  

AND WHO SAID THE UN TRUSTEESHIP COUNCIL WAS DEAD? NYT reports on an idea to revive it to govern Liberia..... (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:42 PM by David Adesnik  

A MODEL IDIOT? Yes, another Zoolander reference. No OxPoints up for grabs, though.

For those of you who do not worship at the comedic altar, "A Model Idiot?" is the headline of Time Magazine's fictional cover story on Derek Zoolander. The purpose of that story was to demonstrate that a well-known and well-respected public figure was actually nothing more than a mindless hack with delusions of grandeur.

As you might have guessed, I am trying to suggest that Time's cover story was the inspiration for Josh's excellent, excellent cover story in this week's Weekly Standard. Its purpose, of course, is to demonstrate that a well-known and well-respected public institution, i.e. the BBC, is populated by mindless hacks with delusions of grandeur.

What is especially impressive about Josh's article is its ability to disentangle an extremely complex narrative and forcefully spell out its political implications. While most readers of this site may already have a negative view of the BBC, that is all the more reason to read Josh's article both carefully and thoroughly. Whereas quick posts here and elsewhere (for example, on Andrew Sullivan's site) often provide anecdotal evidence of the BBC's prejudice, Josh's article provides a in-depth portrait of the institution at work and play.

Finally, in case you were wondering, this is the same article Josh himself referred to earlier today. But he didn't play up it's importance nearly enough (or at all for that matter). If only the BBC were that modest...because in contrast to Josh, it has every reason to comport itself with greater humility. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 2:08 PM by Patrick Belton  

KRISTOF, VIRGIN BIRTH, AND THE INTELLECTUAL STATE OF AMERICAN RELIGIOSITY: Our close friend (and fellow Oxonian) Newman Nahas, in his inaugural post, disputes Nicholas Kristoff's argument this morning that American Catholic and Protestant intellectual traditions are withering at present. (For some reason, no one ever accuses Jewish or Orthodox intellectual traditions - the latter being Newman's denomination - of being in decline.) A very warm welcome to the blogosphere, Newman!

And it's fun to get to see two Arabic-speaking Rhodes scholars debate each other.... (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:39 PM by Patrick Belton  

REAL LIFE OR THE ONION: Actor Rob Lowe, who played a political operative on "The West Wing," has announced he will serve in an active capacity in the gubernatorial campaign of Arnold Schwarzenegger, who played a hero in "The Terminator" series, "Running Man," and "Conan the Barbarian."

Lowe, a television actor since the age of 8, has played the role on television of a Princeton graduate and White House Deputy Communications director. Lowe remarked, "my extensive experience playing a television character arguing for education reform has given me able preparation and great desire to take that message to the television audience of California." Schwarzenegger, for his part, responded by commenting "as I said in Terminator 2: Judgment Day, 'My CPU is a neural-net processor - a learning computer.' I look forward, with the help of the man who played Sam Seaborn in NBC's hit series The West Wing, to bringing those talents and desire to serve to the good people of California." (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:48 PM by Patrick Belton  

WANNA EMPIRE, II?: In a constructive piece, The Economist calls for greater U.S. investment of resources in what it impishly terms our dominion of "Iraqistan" - fair and good. While I don't necessarily subscribe to every claim in the article, sign me on the dotted line with regard to the conclusion:

In a paradox, those Americans now clamouring for an exit from Iraqistan should be pushing their government to do much more in its new dominions, not less.

America succeeded at “war lite”. But it would be an error to follow up with what a Canadian writer, Michael Ignatieff, has called “empire lite”. Even an unwanted empire is an empire, and hard to run on the cheap. Iraqistan requires the urgent application of more money, attention and ingenuity than America has invested so far. This need not mean staying for “the long haul”, as people say. It is possible that by doing more now, America may be able to pull out sooner. The key is to make enough of an effort now to ensure that these places will remain stable when the empire goes home.

The priorities for Iraq are to raise an effective local police force and put together a clear plan and timetable for a constitutional assembly and the election of a government that Iraqis will see as their own. Afghanistan needs more peacekeepers. In Bosnia in 1995, as soon as peace was agreed, America, Britain and France inserted 60,000 peacekeepers. By contrast, the whole of Afghanistan, a country 12 times the area with seven times the population, has only 5,000 or so troops providing security, plus another 12,000 or so mopping up the remnants of the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

For a superbly fleshed-out piece on this theme, see Dan Drezner's recent piece in TNR online. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:34 PM by Patrick Belton  

WANNA EMPIRE? Via today's Economist, print ed.: Londoners could do well to seek relief from the British summer in such cooler climes as Cairo (30C/86F at noon last Monday, compared with London's 38 C/100F) and Delhi (31C/87F). (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:06 AM by Patrick Belton  

MORE PRESS COVERAGE OF THE HUNT FOR HAMBALI: NYT and WaPo (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:29 AM by David Adesnik  

PLAGIARISM PART THREE: Part one is here, part two here. Now here's the rest:

4) Constraints

a) Domestic Constraints:

i) First and foremost of all constraints is the 2004 election. At the moment, both polling data and a survey of the experts indicate that no Democratic candidate can come close to matching the President’s credibility on national security issues. Thus, the best hope of a Democratic victory may be a dramatic economic downturn similar to the one that unseated the President’s father. Alternately, a significant terrorist attack on US soil may destroy the President’s credibility and create an even playing field.

(1) Given the President’s credibility advantage, there is little reason to believe he will change much of his foreign policy in response to electoral pressure.

(2) While the media continues to highlight the prospect that increasing casualties in Iraq may provoke a public backlash, the polls show no indication of such a phenomenon, regardless of how many headlines each casualty gathers. In all likelihoood, cabinet infighting will have much more to say about the future of Iraq than electoral pressure.

(3) Even if a Democrat wins 2004, it is highly likely that the US will continue on the same basic course it has until now, albeit showing somewhat more deference to Europe.

(a) The one Democrat who may change US foreign policy considerably is former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean. However, the chances of him winning the Democratic primary, let alone the general election are extremely remote.

ii) Congress: In the 1980’s, the Democratic-controlled Congress quickly became the President’s bete noir on all sorts of foreign policy issues. Two important changes have taken place since then, however:

(1) First is the return to Republican control.

(2) The second, and perhaps more important, is the reduction in partisan tension regarding foreign policy ever since the end of the Cold War. There are no longer any clear Democratic-Republican dividing lines, even if one can say that Republicans tend to be more hawkish. After all, it was Trent Lott who told Bill Clinton to "Give peace a chance."

(3) At the moment, Congressional criticism has focused on three main subjects: Homeland security, the State of the Union/uranium flap, and the occupation of Iraq. As mentioned above, Homeland security has not had much traction and will gain momentum unless another attack occurs. The uranium controversy is also dying out. With regard to Iraq, Congress mainly seems interested in ensuring a serious American commitment to rebuilding, rather than calling for a withdrawal as the media projected.

b) International constraints

i) Bush administration critics argued throughout the buildup to the invasion of Iraq that a unilateral policy would do lasting damage to transatlantic relations, the United Nations and the international system. Despite the continuing failure of the Administration to justify the invasion by locating any weapons of mass destruction, the US relationship with Europe and the UN seems reasonably stable.

(1) The main point of contention seems to be the occupation of Iraq, with most opponents of the war refusing to commit any forces to its reconstruction. On most other matters, cooperation is going ahead as usual.

ii) There has also been little reaction in the Arab world to the US occupation of Iraq, despite widespread predictions of a regional upheaval driven by anti-imperialist Islamic fundamentalism By and large, the United States authoritarian allies in the region have begun to spin out a new reformist rhetoric while giving few indications they intend to carry through on its implications.

5) Scenarios:

a) "Pax Americana" – Probability: 40%

i) As specified in your initial comments this scenario would entail significant success in Iraq and Afghanistan. Conventional wisdom suggests that neither is probable.

(1) However, I believe that assessments of the situation in Iraq have been marred by an instinctive pessimism. Thus, I consider it extremely likely that there will be an elected, civilian government within 24 months and that the overall state structure (police, judiciary, legislature, armed forces, etc.) will be at least as resilient as some of the relatively stable Latin American democracies.

(2) In contrast, Afghanistan cannot hope for much more than a continuation of the status quo, excepting the validation of the current government by reasonably democratic elections in the near future.

(3) An optimistic yet still realistic scenario for the Middle East should also include internally-driven regime change in Iran and a reduction of tension in the Israeli-Palestinian relationship.

ii) The Pax scenario might also include a multilateral resolution of the North Korean nuclear crisis, with the North trading its nuclear program for a combination of aid and security guarantees.

iii) The absence of any further attacks on American soil is critical to this scenario.

iv) The re-election of President Bush is NOT essential to this scenario. If the US economy falls into recession once again, Bush’s successor may be a centrist Democrat with a foreign policy that emphasizes the status quo of rebuilding Iraq and negotiating with North Korea.

(1) If President Bush is re-elected, the rise of any given faction within his cabinet may not have great significance, since the positive trend in world events will reinforce the current ideological course.

b) "Manning the Barricades" – Probability: 40% The US suffers no major setbacks, but nor does the war on terror progress.

i) A new Iraqi state emerges but has its legitimacy called into question by a one-sided constitution, a failure to provide basic services, ethno-religious tensions or all of the above. Reform does not advance in neighboring countries. The Israeli-Palestinian peace process stalls.

ii) The Karzai government accepts de facto warlord rule outside the capital.

iii) There is no resolution of the North Korean crisis. New rounds of talks alternate with rhetorical escalation.

iv) Al Qaeda or other terrorist forces attack US military installations in the Middle East, inflicting moderate casualties. Small attacks on US soil also possible.

v) The outcome of the 2004 will probably have little impact on this scenario. However, if the President is re-elected, enough delay may enable realists in the administration to reduce the US commitment to Iraq and Afghanistan, thus increasing the possibility of major failure 5-8 years from now.

c) "Retreat and Rentrenchment" – Probability: 20%

i) As a stillborn Iraqi state begins to decay, realists and non-ideological hawks take control of the administration agenda. After a single flawed election, the US declares the occupation successful and withdraws. A similar scenario plays out in Afghanistan. Reform stalls throughout the Middle East and Israeli-Palestinian fighting flares.

ii) North Korea, possibly joined by a reinvigorated Iranian theocracy, mounts a serious challenge to the nuclear non-proliferation regime and returns the world to the brink of war.

iii) Al Qaeda launches a successful attack on American soil, with hundreds of casualties. Other smaller scale attacks take place regularly around the globe.

iv) The push for retrenchment at home is led either by newly-empowered realists in a second Bush administration, or Vietnam-era liberals in a leftward tilting Democratic administration.

v) Come 2008, America finds itself sharply divided between those who believe that the cause of the current chaos is the Administration’s timidity and those who believe that the sins of the first Bush administration are still provoking a violent backlash across the globe.

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# Posted 11:26 PM by David Adesnik  

PLAGIARISM PART DEUX: Here's the next section of my comments (see below):

2) Objectives:
Given the absence of a coherent strategic vision, the best approach to assessing American objectives may be to look at the top issues on the agenda and examine how competing factions within the cabinet want to address them.

a) Iraq

i) Ever since his February speech on postwar Iraq, the President has maintained a firm rhetorical commitment to nation-building and democracy promotion in the Middle East. However, there has been little evidence that any part of the administration made much of an effort – either before, during, or after the invasion – to seriously explore how best to rebuild and democratize Iraq.

(1) Unsurprisingly, the firmest commitment to reconstruction has come from those with an ideological commitment such as Paul Wolfowitz.

(2) Rumsfeld and Cheney seem to have minimal interest in the topic, preferring to delegate authority to others with greater interest.

(3) Powell seems disinterested as well, given that Iraq was never his cause.

(4) Rice appears more concerned with defending her reputation from allegations of her responsibility for allowing misleading statements about Saddam’s nuclear program into the State of the Union address.

(5) All in all, there is fairly widespread concern among Iraq watchers that the President’s interest is too superficial to maintain much of a commitment to rebuilding Iraq should that task become much more daunting than it now is. On the other hand, if the President’s interest is more than passing, he may demonstrate the same stubbornness with regard to rebuilding Iraq as he did to invading it.

b) Afghanistan

i) Neither the President nor any of his advisers has shown much interest in this subject, even ideologues such as Paul Wolfowitz. As best as this analyst can tell, the strong international and domestic consensus behind the war on Afghanistan has given the administration a free pass on its responsibility to rebuild.

ii) The unknown in the Afghanistan equation concerns possible negative outcomes in the 2003 election, such as the installation of a warlord president or even rigged elections that destroy the credibility of the US backed government. In such an instance, the US response is very hard to predict, although one can expect the usual factions to advocate their preferred solutions.

c) North Korea

i) While you didn’t mention North Korea in your brief discussion of the three scenarios, I imagine it is very high on your list of concerns. Yet given the almost total lack of transparency of the North Korean regime, prediction is almost impossible.

ii) One of the few simplifying factors in the North Korean equation is that there is no real hawkish option for the US. It is simply not possible to sustain a get-tough approach when tens of thousands of South Korean and Japanese lives can be lost in a matter of moments. Moreover, there would be no easy win for the US armed forces regardless of US sensitivity to allied civilian casualties
.
iii) Of course, Pyongyang may make war inevitable. Similarly, a combination of North Korea recklessness and US confusion may result in war.

iv) Ideally, the North Korean situation will become a mini-Cold War, in which both sides eye other nervously, occasionally negotiate, and ultimately avoid serious provocation. Yet as the Cuban Missile Crisis showed, one can never truly be secure when there are fingers on the button.

d) Homeland Security

i) Sadly, Homeland security has had about as little prominence on the US agenda as the rebuilding of Afghanistan.

ii) The best way to approach this may be to consider the Administration’s neglect as a sort of strategic risk:

(1) If there are no further attacks on American soil, the Administration will continue to get a free pass on this issue.

(2) On the other hand, an Al Qaeda attack that takes hundreds or even just dozens of American lives may cause serious damage to the President’s re-election prospects. The electorate may even come to see the Iraq war a dangerous diversion that – as critics have long alleged – prevented the US from fighting the real war against terror.

3) Capabilities

a) Given the increasing length of these comments, I am going to try and be somewhat brief from now on!

b) As a percentage of GDP, US military expenditure is still far below its Cold War peak. Thus, in the face of a serious threat, there is almost unlimited potential for expansion.

c) If the threat level does not increase dramatically, however, it will be hard to secure funding for a major expansion of the armed forces, especially if the Administration persists with its deficit-inducing tax cut plans.

d) Thinking in terms of possible scenarios, the real nightmare concerns what might happen if the US had to fight North Korea or even just pursue a major buildup on the peninsula, as it did in Saudi Arabia before the invasion of Iraq.

i) In such a situation, one has to wonder how it would be possible to maintain significant forces in Iraq, Afghanistan or anywhere else.

To Be Continued... (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:19 PM by David Adesnik  

SHAMELESS SELF-PLAGIARISM: A friend of mine at a consulting firm asked for my thoughts on his firm's projections regarding the development of US foreign policy over the course of the next 2-5 years. Since I spent a good amount of time on it and actually had fun doing it, I thought I'd reproduce my comments here on OxBlog.

While I can't republish my friend's remarks, you don't need to know exactly what he said in order to understand what I'm saying. If something doesn't make sense at first glance, just read a few more lines and I'm sure you'll pick it up from the context. So here goes:

1) Grand Strategy: [Defined as] Objectives, Capabilities, [and] Constraints

a) I think this is a very solid overall framework. Of course, given that it strongly resembles the approach to strategic thinking I worked on with John Gaddis and laid out in my [earlier paper], my comfort with this approach isn’t all that suprising. ;)

b) I think it is very important that you distinguish between domestic and international constraints and take the latter very seriously, since traditional strategists often dismiss the former, especially the role of Congress, the media and public opinion.

c) In your comments, you raise the question of strategic coherence. I agree that this is an extremely important question. I suggest, however, that you approach it in terms of cabinet infighting and not just in terms of pure theoretical consistency.

i) In terms of both objectives as well [as] policy process, there is a strong resemblance between the current administration and that of Ronald Reagan. In fact, the current administration resembles that of President Reagan much more than it does that of the President’s own father.

ii) Above all, this similarity rests on the presence of a president with basically hawkish instincts but few fixed ideas about foreign policy. (Reagan partsians tend to insist [that] the 40th president had a very developed strategy, but it is hard to know what that consisted of beyond forceful anti-Communism. By the same token, the current President is an uncompromising opponent of terrorism, broadly defined.)

iii) Given the President’s lack of fixed ideas, he is extremely susceptible both to arguments presented by his advisers as well as arguments suggested by sudden upheavals in world politics.

(1) As is well known, the administration pursued a firm "realist" policy before Sept. 11th, with "realism" being defined as a focus on "great" powers and firm opposition to nation-building or other humanitarian projects. Then, as a result of the WTC and Pentagon attacks, there was a dramatic change in both the President’s world view and the influence of certain factions within his cabinet.

iv) ONE CANNOT SEPARATE THE INFLUENCE OF EVENTS AND THE INFLUENCE OF ADVISORS. While Condoleeza Rice retained considerable influence even after Sept. 11th, her foreign policy agenda was shunted aside and has not even begun its return to center stage. She has retained influence by virtue of her personal connection to the President and willingness to abandon her prior agenda. In contrast, world events validated the world view of men such as Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, thus increasing their influence with the President.

(1) It is extremely important to keep in mind the differences between those like Rumsfeld and those like Wolfowitz, in spite of the fact that the media tends to label them [jointly] as either hawks or neo-conservatives or both.

(a) Wolfowitz has a much clearer agenda as well a fierce ideological commitment to it. Wolfowitz believes in the inherent superiority of American democracy and the possibility/obligation of transforming the Middle East by introducing it to a democratic way of life. This principled ideological commitment ensures that Wolfowitz and his associates have both a comprehensive as well as a somewhat inflexible approach to foreign affairs.

(b) Rumsfeld and others like him (especially Cheney) are hawks rather than ideologues. They believe in the efficacy of force but seem to have few clear principles that indicate where and when force should be used (although international approval of such force seems essentially irrelevant). Thus, their reaction are much harder predict. Thus, they tend to have a much shorter attention and be much more susceptible to the pressures of electoral politics. Finally, Rumsfeld & Co. tend to share Rice’s aversion to nation-building and humanitarian action.

(c) The Powell wing of the administration tends to be extremely skeptical of both Wolfowitz’s ideological vision and the Rumsfeld/Cheney camp’s instinctive hawkishness. While Powell & Co. seem reliably committed to building international consensus, they do not seem to have any clear agenda beyond a desire to moderate the ambitions of the Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld camps. Again, this frustrates prediction and creates susceptibility to electoral politics.

(d) In sum, it might be said that whereas the Wolfowitz camp has a fixed agenda, the Rumsfel/Cheney and Powell camps have fixed tactics and an agenda dictated by unexpected events.

To Be Continued...
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# Posted 5:03 PM by Patrick Belton  

BRINGING BACK SCOOP JACKSON: Michael O'Hanlon, one of the smarter kids kicking around the Massachusetts Avenue think-tanks, has a piece arguing the Dems should work to make themselves more credible on national security. Hear, hear.

More on this topic shortly. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 4:56 PM by Patrick Belton  

EVER WONDER what it's like to be stuck on the Q train for two hours? (and not even get all the way to Brighton Beach?) Amy Langfield clues us in (via InstaPundit). (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 4:36 PM by Patrick Belton  

BRINGING C-SPAN TO IRAQ: Or D-SPAN, perhaps, in honor of its portion of the Syrian desert, and lack of sea other than a few kilometers of the Gulf... At any rate, Claudia Winkler presents an excellent argument in the Standard that the U.S. needs to pay more attention to creating a credible mass media presence oriented around spreading support for democracy - an argument which Max Kampelman made last week as well in an (offline) letter to the Washington Post.

The travails of the Iraqi media, both independent and U.S.-backed, have been covered in depth in pieces by Netherlands Radio, a report by the BBC World Service Trust (also this), and the Guardian; excerpts from the indigenous press are regularly catalogued here by MEMRI.

The Beltway received wisdom, at the moment, lays a fair portion of blame for the weakness of the US-backed media presence at the feet (or postal drops) of paralyzing bureaucratic battles between the government bureaucracies involved. Winkler and Kampelman couldn't be more right on, in saying that Washington must find a way to provide a media presence for the interim government, and that the focus of that media's broadcasting should be strongly on democracy - in Iraq, and in other democracies around the world. This isn't too much to ask for, and it's keenly needed. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 4:11 PM by Patrick Belton  

CHINA AND GEORGIA: PNAC published two statements today, criticizing Boeing for caving into Chinese pressure by rescinding an invitation the company had extended to Taiwan's vice president, and also reprimanding Georgia's Schevardnadze for giving signs he will back down on his promises to the U.S. to hold free and fair parliamentary elections.

The event in Georgia which PNAC is criticizing is this event, from two weeks ago, in which President Schevardnadze's faction in parliament voted down an election law that had been based on the U.S.-proposed "Baker Plan" - an event which receives excellent and more expansive analysis here by Eurasia Insight.

As regards Annette Lu's cancelled visit to Boeing, other versions of the story are circulating - most notably, in the China Post and Taipei Times, both of which allude to versions in which it was not Boeing or Beijing but rather Washington, annoyed by Taiwan's unilateral disclosure of Vice President Lu's travel plans, which vetoed the visit.

PNAC is a wonderfully talented organization, but still seems to be searching for a way to bring its weekly statements up to the high level of the group's letters and statements of principles. I, for one, will be watching and encouraging from the sidelines. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 3:06 PM by David Adesnik  

THE FILES ARE INSIDE THE COMPUTER: Until just a few minutes ago, I was cut off from the outside world. But now I'm back, and have to take care of all of the s*** I was supposed to take care of before the blackout happened. On the bright side, now I can have pizza. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:18 PM by Patrick Belton  

ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST: Many victories in the war on terror are quiet, and will never be known outside the corridors of Langley and the NSC.

This is not one of them.

In an unnamed country (reportedly Thailand, according to Fox and other sources), key terrormaster Riduan Isamuddin was taken into custody earlier this week, where he is undergoing interrogation. Isamuddin, whose nom de guerre was Hambali, may well have been the mastermind behind the infamous attacks of September 11th which reminded our country that evil in the world did not die with the Soviet Union. Isamuddin is one of the faces of that evil: he was the principal operational commander in Jemaah Islamiyah, and the principal liason point between that organization and Al Qa'ida.

For coverage: CNN, SITE Institute, MSNBC, FOX, Washington Times.

And for those who must labor in quiet to protect freedom from doers of evil: we congratulate you, even though we will never know your names. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 2:43 PM by David Adesnik  

AND THE AWARD GOES TO...Hansel! No, actually not. The winner is GB, who correctly identified Jacobim Mugatu (played by Will Ferrell) as the man who felt like he was taking crazy pills in Zoolander.

Boomshock also had the correct answer, as did RP and BS. I have decided to award each of them three OxPoints for effort. And I've also decided to award GB five bonus OxPoints for having a subject line that read "That David Adesnik is so hot right now".

Moreover, I'd like to address GB's contention that OxPoints "don't actually exist". In point of fact, they are no less real than Saddam's weapons of mass destruction. Actually, I'm still trying to decide what OxPoints are good for. I was thinking that each one could be traded in for ten words on OxBlog, e.g. GB now has the right to post an 100-word message saying whatever.

Of course, there would have to be better prizes for those who save their points for a rainy day. 100 points could get any photo of your choice on OxBlog (since, after all, a picture is worth a thousand words.) And 1000 OxPoints could be traded in for sexual favors (not from me, though, I'm a prude. But Chafetz may be able to work something out with his OxBlog groupies...) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 3:11 AM by David Adesnik  

I FEEL LIKE I'M TAKING CRAZY PILLS!!! So I come back from San Francisco and the world has turned completely upside down. Maureen Dowd is praising all those blogs not published by candidates for the Democratic nomination. If you ask me, that sound like an implicit endorsement of the Immutable Laws...

Meanwhile, Tom Friedman is waxing Krugmanesque with ridiculous statements such as

To wait in line for 30 minutes and then be told you have to go across [Baghdad] to a different gate produces humiliation and rage, and eventually grenades tossed at Americans. I saw it in the eyes of those Iraqi women and their husbands as they drove away.

I guess Iraqis are less patient than Russians, since the latter stood on line for several decades without ever managing to throw grenades at the local commissar. Then again, I wouldn't exactly want Iraq to turn out like the Soviet Union (a position that puts me at odds with most San Franciscans!)

Perhaps more shocking than the turnaround on the op-ed page was the objectively pro-Israel coverage provided by the lead story on the NYT front page. After reading this article, it's hard not to come to the conclusion that Israelis are the victims of Palestinian terror (and not vice versa). Multiple anti-Palestinian quotations from Israeli citizens as well as officials (including Arik Sharon himself) pass by without any sort of critical response.

The Times' token effort at balanced reporting consists of a ridiculous bit of invective from Hamas leader Abdel Aziz Rantisi that does more to undermine his credibility than advance his cause. The Times doesn't even mention that Rantisi was the victim of an internationally condemned (and sadly unsuccessful) targeted Israeli killing.

However, there is a catch. The Times reported that

By tonight the Israeli military had not retaliated, as it often has after suicide bombings in nearly three years of renewed fighting here.

You see, if Israel wants favorable coverage, it has to let its citizens get killed. In contrast, the PA and Hamas get favorable coverage so long as Israel responds to terrorism the same way that the US, the UK, Germany and France always have: with force.

Moving on, the Times has also bothered to put some relatively favorable coverage of Iraq on the front page. The principal subject of the article is the obsession of Islamic militants with derailing the occupation of Iraq. While that sort of angle suggests a quagmire motif, the actual contents of the article come across as an accidental instance of patriotic cheerleading.

The case for promoting democracy in Iraq gets made by Kurdish leader Barham Saleh, who inspiringly observes that

Iraq is the nexus where many issues are coming together — Islam versus democracy, the West versus the axis of evil, Arab nationalism versus some different types of political culture...If the Americans succeed here, this will be a monumental blow to everything the terrorists stand for.

Then, the Times lets the local terrorists undermine their own credibility the same way it let Rantisi embarrass Hamas. According to the head of Ansar al-Islam

The resistance is not only a reaction to the American invasion, it is part of the continuous Islamic struggle since the collapse of the caliphate...All Islamic struggles since then are part of one organized effort to bring back the caliphate.

Talk about two birds with one stone. Not only does the Ansar spokesman makes himself look ridiculous, but he argues that American aggression isn't the real cause of Arab anger!

If this kind of coverage keeps up, I may actually subscribe to the paper edition of the New York Times!

PS Ten OxPoints to the first person (other than Chafetz) who e-mails in the name of the character who said "I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!"

CORRECTION: Make that five OxPoints, since I just discovered you can identify the quotation with just one try at Google.
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# Posted 6:48 PM by Patrick Belton  

ON THAT NOTE, here are a few favorite selections out of The Jokes of Oppression.....

Question: What is the necessary transitional stage between socialism and Communism?
Answer: Alcoholism.

Question: What's meant by an exchange opinions in the Communist party of the Soviet Union?
Answer: It's when I come to a party meeting with my own opinion, and I leave with the party's.

During the period of Stalin's Great Terror in the 1930s, this scenario was frequently heard.
"How long are you here for?" the prison guard asked the newly arrived inmate.
"Ten Years," the prisoner replied.
"What did you do?" asked the guard.
"Nothing," came the reply.
"That's not possible," said the guard. "For nothing, they give you
five years, not ten."

Question: What does friendship among Soviet nationalities mean?
Answer: It means that the Armenians take the Russians by the hand; the Russians take the Ukrainians by the hand; the Ukranians take the Uzbeks by the hand; and they all go and beat up the Jews.

And this one putatively actually happened: "At a political agitation meeting at government store that my grandma worked at in the 50s ... one of the shop-hands stood up and asked in complete sincerity the speaker "So are we in 'communism yet, or is it going to get worse?" ... Everyone tried to keep from laughing and the dumbfounded speaker at first tried to give an answer and then just went to the next question."

Find more here. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:24 PM by Patrick Belton  

ANYBODY RECEIVING the LRB in their mailboxes today can look for my (and Rachel's) personal. No, no, not that kind of personal, we were looking for a bike.... Lookie, mommy, I've made it onto the LRB's personals page! (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:36 PM by Patrick Belton  

CENTRAL ASIA is too often a neglected front both in counterterrorism and in democracy promotion, but my two favorite print magazines (and not just 'cause they employ Josh) are giving attention this week to Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. Ami Horowitz, however, treats Kazakhstan's choice between orienting itself with the democracies or with Iran as though it were a foreign policy matter that could be accomplished without actually making Kazakhstan a democracy - which seems to me fairly short-sighted. Looking across the region, it's precisely the Central Asian countries where autocratic capitals have oppressed all dissent - think Uzbekistan and its portion of the Ferghana Valley - where Islam has become most radicalized. In countries like Tajikistan (though it unfortunately, at the moment, lacks an economy - a real bummer), Islamist parties have been drawn into a comparatively more democratic government, with the result that they're now among the most moderate Muslim religious parties in the world. And this in a country that weathered a civil war through most of the last decade in which the Islamist party was one of the principal combatants, and which drew roving Islamist operatives from Iran, Chechnya, and Afghanistan. Not a bad record - and not a bad lesson to learn from Central Asia. One only hopes the administration is listening.

UPDATE: Matthew Yglesias has a thoughtful post up on the topic as well. While I'm not sure I'd want to agree that Karimov makes radical Islamists look good comparison, I strongly agree that Karimov's religious policy has driven a naturally moderate Central Asian religiosity into a radical path. More importantly, I fully subscribe to his point that neo-cons should take equal interest in the promotion of democratic freedoms and forms of governance in Central Asia as well as the Middle East. Along the other path lies short-sighted policy conduicing to worldwide cynicism about U.S. motives, and spawning radical religious oppositions which are much more of a security threat to U.S. interests than the temporary security alliances of despots could ever make up for. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:27 PM by Patrick Belton  

ON THE OTHER HAND, "Liebererman" (thus spake TNR's Jason Zengerle) is leading the TNR primary, racking up A grades in intellectual honesty (which seems more of a courage metric to me), foreign policy (though for resisting protectionism, not for a strong national security posture), and domestic policy (though for grilling - or promising to grill - Bush's EPA appointee, not for the proposals on the economy or measures to expand opportunity). Not sure I agree with the TNR staff's bases for arriving at these grades, but I do think he's the best of the lot. Call it a concurring opinion (even though that's admittedly mixing metaphors....). (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:24 AM by Patrick Belton  

BLOGGING FROM THE SANDBOX: Lt. Smash provides a compelling round-up of U.S. military bloggers posting from Iraq (via InstaPundit). I've really enjoyed reading through their posts, particularly those of the ChromeDomeZone and Will. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:55 PM by Patrick Belton  

ABDOMINAL SNOWMEN (HAVE HAIRY ABS): A team of Japanese explorers are heading out to scour the Himalayas for Yeti, the abominable snowman of some fame. People have tried this before.

But why wait? You can have a conversation with him now here. Heck, I did:

Patrick: Yeti, how's it going, man?
The Abominable Snowman: Are you really interested? Why?
Patrick: Errr, because you're the abominable snowman.....
The Abominable Snowman: Is that the real reason?
Patrick: umm, yes....
The Abominable Snomwan: Why do you think so?
Patrick: Why does that interest you?
The Abominable Snowman: Why do you ask?
Patrick: Why do you think?
The Abominable Snowman: Does that question interest you?
Patrick: Yeti, you are a bad, bad snowman.
The Abominable Snowman: What makes you think I am a bad, bad snowman?
Patrick: What is your sex life like, Yeti?
The Abominable Snowman: What is the best thing about your love life?
Patrick: Umm, sleeping with people who aren't snowpersons. Also, just having other members of my species to be romantically involved with is nice too.
The Abominable Snowman: (stumped)

Maybe you'll hit it off better than me. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:33 PM by Patrick Belton  

THE THIRD ID CAME HOME today! We're glad you're back - welcome home. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:55 PM by Patrick Belton  

BYE, BYE, PRESIDENT TAYLOR: So the world is finally free of Charles Taylor, at least in his pitiful and bloody-handed incarnation as a head of state. After formally handing over power this afternoon to vice president Moses Blah, the Liberian ex-president arrived in Nigeria where he will live in exile, albeit palatial exile. Critics continue to call for his prosecution for war crimes by an international tribunal. Three Navy ships - the amphibious assault vessel Iwo Jima, the dock landing ship Carter Hall, and the amphibious transport dock Nashville - with 3,000 Marines on board have moved within sight of the Liberian coast; this showing-the-flag action is intended to send a signal to the warring factions to adhere to the cease-fire as efforts continue to open the port of Monrovia to relief shipments. MGEN Thomas Turner came ashore to coordinate actions necessary to open Monrovia's port to permit aid shipments to enter. Liberia's largest rebel group, Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy, has declared their war to be over. LURD and other rebel groups have said, however, that they would not permit Blah to remain in office for longer than seven weeks. Several names for a longer-lasting interim head of government are floating at the peace talks in Accra.

The people of Liberia, though, and not Taylor, remain the principal losers of their nation's conflict. Water supplies are nonexistent, and aid workers fear a cholera epidemic. One million Liberians are internally displaced, and malnutrition is widespread.

Reuters, characteristically, writes an oddly poignant piece about Taylor's last moments in office:

On his last day in office, Liberian President Charles Taylor prayed, sang hymns, joked, defended his record and boarded a Nigerian plane to exile under a grey sky.

A besuited man wept openly, scrubbing his eyes with crumpled tissue. "I don't want you to go. I don't want you to go," he cried, stumbling to keep up with Taylor's muscled entourage as they swept down the red carpet.

"I don't know about politics but I just know he was very nice to me," she [i.e., Liberia's other Taylor supporter] sobbed.

Compared to them, Guardian comes off disconcertingly sensibly in printing the AP's review of Charles Taylor's regrettable public life and bio of his hand-picked successor-for-now, and its history of Liberia. MSNBC also has a chronology of events in Liberia since Taylor's accession to power. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:32 PM by Patrick Belton  

ON CONSERVING FREEDOMS: Peter Berkowitz gives a good rendition in Policy Review of the arguments that liberalism contains in itself the seeds of its destruction, by abolishing the preconditions which permit and constitute it. In his summative paragraph:

Our freedom encourages us to cast aside arbitrary authority and topple unjust hierarchy, but it also undermines the just claims of political order and moral excellence. It severs onerous bonds of association, but it also separates and isolates. It is the touchstone of our equality, yet it permits and indeed encourages competition, which results in vast disparities in wealth, power, and glory. It makes us responsible for ourselves and infuses us with a sense of the humanity and rights that we share with all people on the planet while loosening the claims of duty. It is bound up with the realization of our most cherished hopes while putting awkward pressure on and destabilizing them. It eloquently exalts choice and then falls crushingly silent concerning what actions and ends are choiceworthy, leaving it perilously close to teaching that the choice is all.

The promise and the dangers of our era are indissolubly connected. The more freedom we have, the more we want. And the more we get, the more we weaken freedom’s foundations in moral and political life.

His arguments are even on his own admission half of a larger dichotomy - but Peter is always readable, and a beautiful stylist. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 4:51 PM by Patrick Belton  

HIZBULLAH WATCH: As the situation tenses up across Israel's northern border, Haaretz presents a good analysis of the elements of brinksmanship involved on all sides. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 4:37 PM by Patrick Belton  

HEAR YE, HEAR YE: For you law buffs in the audience (and there may be one or two of you out there), the OYEZ project has just gotten a website running with the recordings and transcripts of oral arguments for important Supreme Court decisions (with unimportant Supreme Court decisions coming shortly too). (Some particular favorites: U.S. v. Nixon, Roe, Miranda, Bakke, and, for you readers surfing in from foreignaffairs.com, Hustler v. Falwell and US v. Playboy).

And Josh, you'll be happy that they've also included Oyez Baseball, which combines your two (non-blogging) hobbies so that you can "build Supreme Court knowledge through America's favorite pastime." Fun. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion