# Posted 12:40 AM by David Adesnik  

HOW TO AVOID IMPLICIT HISTORICAL ANALOGIES: Don't call Iraq a quagmire. Call it a monkey trap. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:29 AM by David Adesnik  

THE USUAL EXCUSE: "I said I had sold a water buffalo to someone in Afghanistan and I needed to collect my money." That is how one Taliban fighter persuaded a border guard to let him in. As the WaPo explains, the Afghan-Pakistani border is completely porous. What I want to know is whether that's because Musharraf wants it that way or because it's inevitable. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:11 AM by Daniel  

SPACE RACING. Our good friend Jackie Newmyer has once again published an article on the topic of China and its technological/military goals. In June she wrote a piece in Policy Review. A regional paper in the Northeast picked up her most recent article. I dare repeat myself: Jackie is so hot right now. Jackie. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:46 AM by David Adesnik  

HYPOCRISY AT THE VATICAN: As Andrew Sullivan explains in the NYT,

The current pope is obviously a deep and holy man; but that makes his hostility even more painful. He will send emissaries to terrorists, he will meet with a man who tried to assassinate him. But he has not and will not meet with openly gay Catholics. They are, to him, beneath dialogue. His message is unmistakable. Gay people are the last of the untouchables. We can exist in the church only by silence, by bearing false witness to who we are.

Sad but true. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:26 AM by David Adesnik  

NEVER HAS AMERICAN PRESTIGE IN EUROPE BEEN LOWER: That is a direct quote from this essay in Life Magazine, dated January 7, 1946. As you might have guessed, the essay's main point is that the American occupation of Germany had become a catastrophic failure.

What I want to know is how widespread this sort of pessimism was. I hope that someone out there is conducting a survey of US and foreign coverage of the occupation from 1945-1949. Until then, I guess the best we can do is keep an open mind. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:04 AM by David Adesnik  

AS JOSH POINTS OUT, some of the Senators who voted for demanding repayment from Iraq are running for re-election. Perhaps more importantly, two of them are running for President: John Kerry and John Edwards. Meanwhile, Howard Dean is refusing to take a position on the issue because -- believe it or not -- he isn't running for Senate. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 3:28 PM by David Adesnik  

ARE YOU A NEO-CON? Greg Djerejian points to this amusing little quiz in the Christian Science Monitor. Greg reports that he was a realist at first, but then changed one answer he wasn't sure about and became a neo-con.

I just took the quiz myself and discovered-- to my complete surprise -- that I am a realist. My surprise abated, however, when I read the quiz's definition of realism, which has absolutely nothing in common with the capital-R realism of Hans Morgenthau, George Kennan and Henry Kissinger.

All in all, I'd have to say that the CSM definitions are fairly crude and are unfair to everyone except the (mis-named) realists. In short, the liberals are naive, the neo-cons are jingoistic and the isolationists have their head in the sand. This leaves us with the realists, who come across as sensible, pragmatic moderates.

But a sensible, pragmatic moderate is not what I am. Rather, I am a fierce advocate of basing American foreign policy on democratic principles. I am neither a liberal multilateralist nor a neo-con unilateralist. "-lateralisms" are means, not ends. Democracy is the end.

In fact, I think that there are a lot of liberals and neo-cons who would agree that we all share an interest in promoting democracy but disagree on how to achieve that objective. However, in the CSM and elsewhere, that disagreement has become the news, while the underlying principles get ignored. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:09 PM by David Adesnik  

WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS? Or perhaps just $20. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 3:35 AM by David Adesnik  

NOT FORGOTTEN: The WaPo calls upon the President to speak out on behalf of Aung San Suu Kyi and the cause of Burmese democracy. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 3:22 AM by David Adesnik  

SADR'S CHALLENGE: Brian Ulrich thinks I may be underestimating Moqtada Sadr's potential to become a major force in Shi'ite politics as well as a threat to American interests. With the tension between Sadr and the U.S. now coming to a head, it may not be long before we find out how much of a threat he is. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 3:13 AM by David Adesnik  

IN GOLF WE TRUST: Reihan points to this ESPN column on anti-Asian prejudice in the world of golf. I'm going to have to agree that there is a double standard when it comes to tackling racism in public life. But with Howell Raines gone, who is going to make sure the prejudice in the world of golf is front page news? (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 2:56 AM by David Adesnik  

GOD BLESS HALLIBURTON! I can't put my finger on anything explicity wrong with this op-ed by Halliburton CEO Dave Lesar, but it just seems so damn suspicious.

UPDATE: Or maybe I should be more worried about what Halliburton is doing on the homefront. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 2:44 AM by David Adesnik  

HATING REAGAN VS. HATING BUSH: If you take a look at David Brooks' over-the-top column in today's NYT, you'll see that the I Hate Bush debate is still at the top of the agenda. As such, I thought I'd reprint some comments sent in by readers who are old enough to remember the Reagan era and compare it to what we have today.

First, Kevin Drum writes that

For what it's worth, I've thought about the Bush/Reagan comparison a fair amount, and of course I have personal experience of both. I can't quite explain this, but my take is that you're exactly right but completely wrong.

That is, everything you said is correct, and a lot of liberals forget just how much we loathed Reagan at the time. Ed Meese was his Ashcroft, Weinberger was his Rumsfeld, the Soviet Union was his Iraq, etc. And there were all the same jokes about moving to Canada if he won again.

And yet....all I can say is that Bush really is different. I think part of it is the fact that Reagan at least seemed to earn the office. He was governor of CA for 8 years, he ran for president twice before winning, and he had serious ideological credentials (i.e., his anti-communism was serious and long established). By contrast, Bush seems like a frat boy with no experience and no real core beliefs who got elected on nothing but name recognition and the ability to woo lots of big donors. That drives everyone nuts.

And the fact is that Bush *is* more partisan. Despite his rhetoric, Reagan was rather famous for being pretty pragmatic, both as president and as governor. Bush, on the other hand, gives no quarter. Ever.

And, finally, there's 9/11. Reagan may have talked big, but he never did anything more serious than spend a lot of money and support a few guerrillas. Bush has actually fought a big pre-emptive war.

Finally, Reagan always seemed like a friendly guy. Even liberals saw that in him. However, Bush doesn't. In fact, I think he has a mean streak a mile wide and I wouldn't even want to meet him, let alone vote for him. I just flat don't like his personality, and I think that's pretty universal among liberals.

Anyway, I'm just guessing at the reasons here, but I think there really is a difference. Liberals don't hate Bush so much as they despise him, and I think it really is stronger than it was with Reagan. Just thought you might be interested.

Kevin makes a lot of good points, but I want to put one of them context and disagree with another. First, as I argued yesterday, Bush can afford to be more partisan because he has solid support on the Hill. Imagine what Reagan might have done with Congress behind him.

More importantly, I have to sharply disagree with the assertion that Reagan "never did anything more serious than spend a lot of money and support a few guerrillas." The fact is, a massive anti-nuclear movement believed that Reagan was about to blow the world to kindgom come. As members of the MTV generation may recall, there was a classic Genesis video in which a claymation version of the President wakes up in distress and tries to press the red 'Nurse' button next to his bed, but instead hits the one below it labeled 'Nukes'. In hindsight, the video is pretty damn funny. At the time, it was deadly serious.

Next up, we hear from KD -- who voted for Reagan twice but thinks Bush is an embarrassment. She writes that

Having lived in Washington during the period you describe, and having voted for Reagan (twice) as a freshly minted opinion from Graduate School, I might be able to provide some perspective. Reagan had earned his political oats in California. He was an able speaker. Obviously, Peggy Noonan didn't exactly hurt him, but in situations where he needed to stand his ground he did so effectively.

I beg to differ on Iran/Contra, however. Reagan survived the situation only because we couldn't take the stress of another Watergate. That would have broken our spirit at the time, and we looked the other direction. More damaging was his handling of the Air Traffic Controller strike, which to anyone of us who depended on the airports running well, was just kind of dumb.

George Bush is a completely different matter. If Reagan had seen a few million people protesting the war in Iraq, I really believe he would have said: this is part of the national conscience. We need to understand the problem. If it's a problem in perception, let's correct that. But, if it's a problem in policy, let's take some time and make sure we're doing the right thing.

You may not understand how the rush to war in Iraq infuriated many Americans, including myself. For Bush to call to call a significant block of the American people a "focus group," and by this analysis ignore them, is not acceptable from any leader. Yes, I believe Bush is far more partisan. And I believe he is an embarrassment to the office of President of the United States.

Finally, AG offers some bullet-pointed observations:

(1) Reagan got 8,420,000 more popular votes and 440 more electoral votes than Jimmy Carter. So he was installed in office by the American people, not by five reactionary Republicans.

(2) Reagan was as "scripted" as Bush, but didn't sound as scripted. So he didn't remind me how much I disliked him every time he opened his mouth.

(3) Reagan was a self-made man and had been at least moderately successful at everything he did. The governorship of California is a real job with
real power. The Texas governorship is a cipher. So you had to, grudgingly, perhaps, respect him at least a little bit.

(4) Reagan's tax cuts, as irresponsible as they were, were much more broad-based than the Bushies gift the the rich.

(5) Brezhnev did have weapons of mass destruction and had invaded Afganistan.

I think it's interesting that Kevin, KD and AG all emphasize how Reagan earned his way to the top, whereas Bush didn't. At the time, Reagan's critics almost universally believed that he lied his way to the top. They said that Reagan's victories at the polls meant little because he won by deceiving the American public.

As such, I'm going to stick to my argument that what sets Reagan apart from Bush is the fear he inspired in his opponents. You had to watch what you said about Reagan because his charisma enabled him to win without breaking the rules of the game. Thus, the hatred was greater but it was kept inside.

In contrast, it is easy to despise a second-generation President installed in the White House by a few thousand old Jews who voted for Pat Buchanan. The question is, if Bush gets re-elected with a strong majority, will critics begin to think of him as another Reagan, or will his tainted victory in 2000 continue to define his reputation?

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 2:12 AM by David Adesnik  

REAL ANTI-SEMITISM: The NYT deserves considerable praise for this editorial, which reminds me of an old joke, set in Berlin in the 1930s. There are two old Jews sitting on a park bench, both reading newspapers. One is reading a local Jewish paper that is reporting on Nazi anti-Semitism and the Jewish plight in Hitler's Germany. The other is reading a copy of Der Stuermer, the infamous Nazi propaganda rag published by Julius Streicher.

Alarmed, the first Jew turns to the second and asks how he could dignify Der Stuermer's vicious lies by reading it in a public place. The second Jew responds: "True, true. But I worry a lot less about Hitler when I'm reminded that the Jews still run this country." (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:52 AM by David Adesnik  

HOLD THE LINE! Just in case any of you were getting ready to sign new cellphone service contracts, you should know that it may be worth your while to wait until November 24. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:48 AM by David Adesnik  

AMERICA IS IN DECLINE: What? You didn't know that? Then I guess you haven't been reading the NY Times. As Jane Perlez reports,

More than 50 years of American dominance in Asia is subtly but unmistakably eroding as Asian countries look toward China as the increasingly vital regional power, political and business leaders in Asia say.

China's churning economic engine, coupled with trade deals and friendly diplomacy, have transformed it from a country to be feared to one that beckons, these regional leaders say.

Of course, the real news is that American dominance in the Far East was fully intact until earlier this year. As Perlez notes,

[The] new, more benign view of China by its neighbors has emerged in the last year as President Bush is perceived in Asia to have pressed America's campaign on terror to the exclusion of almost everything else.

I hardly know where to begin with this one. Perhaps I should mock Perlez for taking at face value the words of "political and business leaders in Asia". How naive does she think they are? Has one year of less-than-stellar American diplomacy persuaded all of China's neighbors to forget that the PRC is a dysfunctional and corrupt oligarchic dictatorship? Or perhaps -- just perhaps -- Asian businessmen and diplomats are smart enough to praise the Chinese in public before entering into negotiations with them at this week's economic summit?

My second recommendation for Perlez is that she talk to her colleague Nick Kristof before declaring that America's decline in the Far East is a twelve-month-old phenomenon. Perhaps Kristof can tell her he -- along with almost every other American expert on East Asian affairs -- spent much of the 1990s expounding upon the death of American hegemony and the inevitable rise of Chinese power. Thankfully, Kristof & Co. had the good sense to attribute such epochal changes to profound historical forces rather than the ineptitutde of William Jefferson Clinton.

Now, I'm not going to pretend that the Chinese economy hasn't made tremendous advances over the past twenty years or that the political situation there hasn't improved considerably since the Tiannanmen Massacre. But you have to keep things in perspective. Instead, the media tend to shoehorn every story coming out of China into a grand narrative of American decline.

What's happening here is similar, of course, to what's happening with media coverage of Iraq. There is no clear-cut political or partisan bias at work. Rather, the media produce news coverage that derives from a set of fixed narratives that have become a part of professional journalistic culture over the course of the past four decades.

If you think about it, there is actually a fairly close relationship between the Vietnam and China narratives: both are morality tales that purport to demonstrate the self-destructive nature of American aggressiveness and the inevitable victory of Third World challengers. The origins of the Rising China narrative are hard to locate. On the one hand, both American and British observers have been predicting the rise of China for almost two hundred years now. However, I'd guess that the Rising China narrative gained its current prominence in the journalistic repertoire as a result of the war in Vietnam.

But that is somewhat beside the point. The real lesson here is that if the media possessed a greater degree of institutional memory, it might not recycle its own stories in such a transparent manner. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:31 AM by David Adesnik  

HOW DOTH THE CITY SIT SOLITARY, THAT WAS FULL OF PEOPLE! How is she become as a widow, she that was great among the nations, and princess among the provinces, how is she become tributary. She weepeth sore in the night, and her tears are on her cheeks; among all her lovers she hath none to comfort her; all her friends have dealt treacherously with her, they are become her enemies. (Lamentations 1:1-2)

What other than a biblical lament can offer tribute to the despair of long-suffering Red Sox fans? Truly there in the 8th inning Boston was great among the nations. Yet now her tears are on her cheeks.

Why must Red Sox fans suffer so? As the Bible tells us, "Her adversaries are the chief, her enemies prosper; for the LORD hath afflicted her for the multitude of her transgressions: her children are gone into captivity before the enemy." (Lamentations 1:5) As Rabbi Joseph of Torre observes, "transgressions" refers to the sale of Babe Ruth in 1918 for thirty pieces of silver. (Adjusted for inflation, that comes to $100,000.)

But there is forgiveness in the heart of the LORD, so perhaps one day, once Pedro has learned to stop assaulting senior citizens, the Spirit of the LORD will return to Boston.
(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:52 PM by David Adesnik  

WE HATE WHAT WE CANNOT FEAR: A few weeks back, there was a lot of talk about Jonathan Chait's TNR essay entitled "Why I hate George W. Bush". Since I still haven't gotten around to subscribing to TNR Online, I didn't read Chait's essay until TNR sent it out (for free) to all those on its weekly update e-mail list.

Unsurprisingly, reaction to Chait's essay has been divided along partisan lines. Conservatives such as David Brooks tend to see it as evidence that even mainstream liberals have gone overboard with their resentment of the President. Liberals, of course, beg to differ, although some think that Chait's article played right into the hands of conservatives who want to paint all liberals as wild-eyed radicals.

From where I stand, however, the real problem with Chait's essay is its total lack of historical context. And I don't mean that Chait should spend more time writing about Andrew Jackson or Ulysses S. Grant. What's wrong from a historical perspective is Chait's absurd premise that liberals hate George Bush more than they hated Ronald Reagan.

While my memories of the Reagan are somewhat less than reliable, the overwhelming sense I get from my academic reading is that Reagan was a far more controversial figure than any of his successors. But perhaps more important than the hatred that Democrats felt for Ronald Reagan was their abject fear of him. Whereas Bush's upper-crust upbringing and foot-in-mouth pronouncements make him seem vulnerable, Reagan's All-American upbringing and flawless public persona struck terror into the hearts of all those Democrats who believed that no argument they made, no matter how sound, could prevent The Great Communicator from persuading the American public of just how right he was.

Thus, Chait is essentially right to begin his article by focusing on Bush's character. According to Chait,

[Bush] reminds me of a certain type I knew in high school--the kid who was given a fancy sports car for his sixteenth birthday and believed that he had somehow earned it. I hate the way he walks--shoulders flexed, elbows splayed out from his sides like a teenage boy feigning machismo. I hate the way he talks--blustery self-assurance masked by a pseudo-populist twang. I even hate the things that everybody seems to like about him. I hate his lame nickname-bestowing-- a way to establish one's social superiority beneath a veneer of chumminess (does anybody give their boss a nickname without his consent?). And, while most people who meet Bush claim to like him, I suspect that, if I got to know him personally, I would hate him even more.

Where Chait goes wrong is with assertion that Bush-hatred reflects substantive political opposition on the grounds that Bush is not just more ideological than Clinton, but also far more ideological than Reagan. In fact, Chait incomprehensibly describes Bush as "the most partisan president in modern U.S. history."

While arguing that Bush wants to dismantle the welfare state by privatizing Medicare and Social Security, Chait fails to note that Reagan talked of destroying both programs without offering much in the way of an alternative. And while Chait is correct that Reagan followed his massive tax cut with some concessions to his critics, he only did so because the economy went into a tailspin just after the tax cuts went into effect. Moreover, Reagan tried to fight off any protests against his tax cuts, but found it impossible to overcome the objections of both a Democratic House and a moderate Republican Senate. Thus, if Bush can sometimes afford to be more partisan, it is because he has what Reagan never did: solid support on the Hill.

Now what about foreign policy? Given their support of the war against Iraq and relative silence even after no WMD were found, it is hard to characterize Bush as all that much of a radical on this front. In contrast, Reagan drove his opponents up the wall with his constant antagonization of the Soviet Union and inexplicable obsession with fighting Communism in Central America. And then came Iran-Contra. Finally, the President's sterling reputation became tarnished. And yet he was able to emerge from the crisis without taking any personal responsibility for his subordinates' flagrant subversion of the constitutional order. So if you thought the Florida recount made Democrats mad...

Yet despite all their anger and resentment, Democrats often held back thanks to their fear of the President's charisma. This is clearly not the case with Bush. What did hold the Democrats back for a long time, however, was their fear of criticizing the President during the early days of the war on terror. Even in the run-up to the war on Iraq, it was hard to say more than "Gee, we should really be nicer to the French." And that is almost never a winning line in American politics.

But now that Bush is struggling to confront the challenges of occupation while also fighting off a bad economy, an intelligence scandal and the failure to find a substantial cache of WMD, his post-9/11 invulnerability has come to an end. All of the resentment that Democrats once had to hold back is now in the open. The question is, Will such intense emotions lead to victory in 2004, or just a marginalization of the party as a whole? Damned if I know. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:13 PM by David Adesnik  

NEWS YOU CAN USE: In the odd event you should run into a member of the British royal family, please consider the following:

There are no obligatory codes of behaviour when meeting The Queen or a member of the Royal Family. Many people wish to observe the traditional forms. For men this is a neck bow (from the head only) whilst women do a small curtsy. Other people prefer simply to shake hands in the usual way. On presentation to The Queen, the correct formal address is 'Your Majesty' and subsequently 'Ma'am'. For male members of the Royal Family the same rules apply, with the title used in the first instance being 'Your Royal Highness' and subsequently 'Sir'. For other female members of the Royal Family the first address is conventionally 'Your Royal Highness' followed by 'Ma'am' in later conversation.

Of course, some Americans prefer to be less conventional. Consider the following passage from Michael Lewis' Liar's Poker:

A complete hush enveloped the Great Hall of St. James' Palace. As the queen mother drew near, the insurance salesmen bowed their heads like churchgoers. The corgis [a breed of small dog --ed.] had been trained to curtsy every fifteen seconds by crossing their back legs and dropping their ratlike bellies to the floor. The procession at last arrived at its destination. We stood immediately to the queen mother's side. The Salomon Brothers wife glowed. I'm sure I glowed too. But she glowed more. Her desire to be noticed was tangible. There are a number of ways to grab the attention of royalty in the presence of eight hundred silent agents of the Prudential, but probably the surest is to shout. That's what she did. Specifically, she shouted, "Hey, Queen, Nice Dogs You Have There!

Never let it be said that we Yanks aren't orignal. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:57 AM by David Adesnik  

MIDTERM EXAM: Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez says the US may move forcefully against the armed militia of radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada Sadr. If that happens, it will be a major test of whether US forces have enough credibility to move against one Shi'ite faction without provoking a general mobilization among defensive Shi'ites.

Of course, such action would also be a test of my argument that America is winning Iraqi hearts and minds. In some respects, however, it is a twofold test. First, there is a question of whether American forces can design their enforcement action in a non-provocative manner.

Nonetheless, it may be the case that no American action, no matter how well-planned, can win over the majority of Iraqi Shi'ites. Thus, such action would be a test of Shi'ite sentiment as well as American competence.

As I suggested before, Sadr lack of support among both Shi'ite clerics and the rank-and-file is his greatest liability -- and thus America's greatest advantage. Then again, you just never know. So keep your fingers crossed. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:32 AM by David Adesnik  

LETTERGATE: This week's second-tier scandal involves the misguided efforts of Lt. Col. Dominic Caraccilo to spread the good word about American achievements in Iraq. First word of the story came from Olympia, WA's Olympian, which received a pair of identical letters-to-the-editor advertising the positive role of American soldiers had played in Kirkuk. The catch, of course, was that the letters were signed by different soldiers.

Unsurprisingly, both Hesiod and Josh Marshall suspected foul play, given that there is an entire industry devoted to creating "astroturf", i.e. fake grassroots support, for various and sundry causes.

Much more interesting was the fact that Glenn Reynolds immediately assumed that the letters were part of a malicious hoax. Glenn quickly backed down, however, when it became clear that an American unit in Kirkuk had been sending out form letters written by Col. Caraccilo.

In a later post, Glenn points out that all sorts of activists distribute form letters for their supporters to sign and circulate. Given that all of the soldiers in the 503d signed onto the letter willingly, there isn't much ground for condemnation.

What I think Glenn is missing here is that there is a difference between sending a form letter to your congressman and to your local newspaper. From what I can tell, there is an informal expectation that letters-to-the-editor must represent unique individual viewpoints. In contrast, congressmen expect a full mailbag. While the existence of such norms may seem arbitrary, I think that one would have to be fairly ignorant not to be aware of them. ("One" refers to Col. Caraccilo, not Glenn Reynolds, who presumably is aware of the norm but didn't articulate it.)

As Glenn rightly suggests, the soldiers would've had much more of an impact on public opinion if they had written personalized (albeit less elegant) letters. Yes, that is right. But Glenn is thinking too small. What a more savvy commanding officer would have done is distributed the letter in the form of a petition, with the signatures of all 500 soldiers who agreed with its conents.

If Col. Caraccilo had done that, he probably would've gotten some very positive press coverage in the front section of almost every major newspaper in the United States, perhaps even on the front page. The letters from the 503d would have been especially compelling because Kirkuk actually is one of the remarkable success stories of the occupation (despite the NYT's best efforts to pretend that it isn't.)

Instead, both the NYT and Josh Marshall are continuing to attack the letters as a fraud designed to cover up America's failure in Iraq. So, Gen. Petraeus, if you want the world to know that the 101st Airborne is doing a helluva job in Mosul, make sure to learn from Col. Caraccilo's mistakes.


(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:31 AM by David Adesnik  

FAKE LEFT, GO RIGHT: On Friday, Matt Yglesias took something of cheapshot at me. In respone to Thursday's suicide attack on an Iraqi police station, Matt asks: "More knee-jerk negative coverage from the press corps, Mr Adesnik, or does this qualify as actual bad news?"

While I will respond to Matt's question directly (especially since there was another suicide bombing in Baghdad today), I'm also going to speculate that Matt's below-the-belt attitude is something he has conjured up to guard his left flank while quietly moving toward a more positive evaluation of the occupation's progress. In other words, Matt may not want good liberal pessimists to realize that he moving toward the acceptance of controversial arguments made by Dem-hawks such as myself, not to mention most neo-cons.

Don't believe it? Then consider Matt's new take on the situation in Iraq; the question isn't whether we are achieving success in the short-run (which we are), but whether those successes will still be there six, twelve, eighteen or twenty-four months from now. Or as Matt puts it:

Let it never be said that we're not making progress in the military campaign in Iraq. The problem, I think, is not that we're not making progress, but that we're not making progress fast enough. Not by the standard of some arbitrary time table I cooked up in my bedroom, but by the fact that it simply won't be possible to maintain the current level of manpower and financial commitment for very long.

Alternately, Matt observes that

The trouble is that we are simply expending resources -- money, and (especially) manpower -- at an unsustainable level... All indications are that if we keep up what we're doing for years and years we can hold things together, but all indications are also that we can't keep up what we're doing for years and years without bankrupting the country and doing incredible harm to the Army Reserves and National Guard.

I share Matt's concerns about the sustainability of US policy in Iraq. We will have to start rotating American soldiers out in February, we don't have much of an Iraqi force in place, and the Europeans seem to have neither the inclination nor the ability to have their troops man the barricades. These are issues we will have to look at very closely in the coming months.

But my point for now is that Matt's take is dramatically different from that of the NYT, for example. Sometimes, the Times just implies that the entire occupation has already become a fiasco by ignoring the good news staring it in the face. At other times it is more direct, writing in a masthead editorial that

The administration's wrong-headed insistence on maintaining exclusive control over Iraq has already proved costly. Attacks against American troops, international aid workers and Iraqi police recruits continue at an alarming rate. Separate incidents in and near Baghdad yesterday killed at least 10 people and injured more than 40...

Washington should be listening more attentively to proposals that promise to open the door to substantial international help. President Bush has repeatedly said that American forces came to Iraq as liberators, not occupiers. He should follow through on the logic of those words and begin arrangements for transferring power to an interim Iraqi government.

In short, we are losing the hearts and minds of Iraq as well as the bodies of American soldiers. Yet from where I stand, we are winning those hearts and minds while paying a tragic but necessary price.

In fact, approaching the occupation from a hearts-and-minds perspective is the best way to demonstrate how misleading Matt's question about the recent suicide car-bombings is. I am not going to go into my argument in great detail, because it is exactly the same argument I made after the attack on UN headquarters in late August.

First of all, this week's attacks as well as those on UN headquarters and the Shi'ite mosque in Najaf are undoubtedly bad news. However the implication of Matt's question is that such bad news reflects both the fundamental failure of the US nation-building effort as well as the ideologically-induced blindness of its supporters.

Yet as I said before, the decision of Ba'athist insurgents and/or Islamists to slaughter their own kinsmen demonstrates just how desperate they have become. They have either given up all hope of winning the people's hearts and minds, or are so blinded by their own fervor that they truly believe that half-a-dozen car bombs will persuade the people of Iraq that Saddam & Osama have more to offer than those American liberators who are about to provide $20 billion of butter, not to mention a lot of guns.

Even Matt admits that "the consensus among Iraqis certainly seems to be that their liberation from Saddam was a good thing." (Said consensus refers, of course, to the positive poll results that have started to come out of Iraq with surprising consistency.) It is because Matt is so aware of such evidence, that it is hard to interpret his occasional cheapshots as anything other than the classic New Dem/DLC strategy of "fake left, go right."

Six weeks ago, Matt was still pretty sure that the occupation was headed for an outright, in-the-here-and-now kind of failure. Just two weeks ago, Matt was still writing that

The fact is that things aren't fine, but if we and the international community act decisively they can be made fine. Bush needs to drop the pretense and level with people, even though doing that may well cost him his job. Otherwise, we're going to wind up holding the situation together with duct tape until November '04 only to see it all fall apart sometime in the near future with disastrous consequences.

But that was a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. In other words, Matt, welcome to the club. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:07 PM by David Adesnik  

PHIL CARTER KICKS A**: It's really hard to say enough good things about Phil. Believe me. I try. So for now, just go and read his excellent posts on whether we have enough troops in Iraq,what the importance of Wesley Clark's military record is, and how the US should spending the $87 billion being appropriated for Iraq. Or you know what? Just start at the top and read everything Phil has to say. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 4:01 PM by David Adesnik  

YGLESIAS '04? Matt says: "I don't think I'd be a great pick for commander in chief. I bet I'd do better than the current guy, as would all of the viable candidates, but that doesn't mean any of us would necessarily do very well." In case you couldn't tell, Matt is coming close to endorsing Wes Clark. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:05 AM by Patrick Belton  

A NEO-CON IN PARIS: Mes amis, je me vais a Paris. I'm heading to Paris this afternoon for the week, to scribble in the Sorbonne library and be study-buddies with my friend Sarah as she preps for the oral segment of the French bar examination. Precisely because of my background as an American foreign policy specialist and democracy-promoter, I'm very much looking forward to getting a better sense of trends there, and speaking with some of the more thoughtful members of our generation in France. To that end, I'll be spending my evenings along the cafes of the Rive Gauche buying cups of coffee for young academics and Quai d'Orsay staffers, and will dutifully be reporting back my findings here.

Comme disent les anglais: Honi soit qui mal y pense! (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:32 AM by Patrick Belton  

WAPO ON DYNAMICS OF BUSH ADMINISTRATION foreign policy decisionmaking: although the title suggests it's a hit piece on Rice, this piece in the Sunday WaPo gives a fairly well-researched glance into this administration's internal decisionmaking dynamics. Worth a read. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:58 AM by David Adesnik  

TOMMY HITS A HOMER: Friedman's column in today's NYT is that damn good. The WaPo's David Broder is also swinging for the stands with his column on Iraq.

Elsewhere, the Times' John Tierney notes that

After international sanctions were imposed on Iraq in 1990, [Saddam] started a program that now uses 300 government warehouses and more than 60,000 workers to deliver a billion pounds of groceries every month — a basket of rations guaranteed to every citizen, rich or poor.

Guaranteed. To every citizen. Rich or poor. Including the Marsh Arabs? Including the families of those slaughtered in Saddam's torture chambers? I don't want to take away from all of the wonderful things Saddam did for his country, but perhaps Mr. Tierney (and his editors on 44th St.) could be slightly more skeptical about Saddam's wisdom and benificence? Or does skepticism stop at the water's edge? (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:01 PM by Patrick Belton  

A LETTER FROM SARAJEVO: OxBlog's dear friend Saliha returned recently to the Sarajevo of her birth, for the first time in years. She writes us with her impressions:

Hello my dear Washingtonians, current or former!
 
As most of you know, I've spent over three weeks in Bosnia recently. I've waited until now to send you a report because I wanted my impressions to form as well as because I've wanted to send you a few pictures -- which I still haven't found a good way of doing (suggestions welcome), as I didn't want to clog your email accounts, especially if you too are travelling.
 
My early days were spent resolving a bureaucratic mess (involving recalled passports such as mine and a lack of blank passports), so insert here a mental picture of me persistant, begging, frustrated, crying -- well, not quite, but almost.  Fortunately, the weekend came around, and I was forced to take respite from all that, at my grandmother's house in the most beautiful place in the world.  The mediterranean town of Stolac is on a landscape that looks a lot like Tuscany, an 1-2h drive from the Adriatic, (and would be much less if there were a straight highway to it), and I used to spend every summer there, until the war.  This was my first time back in 12 years. 
 
Another day I went to Prusac, a small town 2 hours away from Sarajevo.  A village near it on the hill is obviously still recovering, with the reconstrucion of homes still in process, and with its point of focus, an old Ottoman mosque, badly damaged.  As we looked around it, together with local community and international donor representatives, an old local lady walked up carrying a tray with Bosnian coffee pot and cups and home-made sugar cubes in her arms, welcoming us as if we were her personal guests.  It was a lovely day, one I imagine I will always remember, because the beauty of rural Bosnia, the tragic experience of the village, the scars -- the demolished mosque, the mining and the deforestation occurring illegally as people struggle to make ends meet and which mar an otherwise surreal landscape -- the kindness of a woman who didn't know us, where I'd expect only bitterness and distrust, caused different emotions to well up all at once, and I was filled with despair and hope at the same time. 
 
My birth city, Sarajevo, is usually rainy and cold this time of year, but I guess the record-high temperatures of the summer have carried over into this season, turning the last month into a most pleasent September.  As long as the weather is warm and dry, the city streets are filled in the evening with the young and the old alike.  Looking at this it is hard to imagine that the unemployment in this country exceeds forty percent. 
 
It was not easy to be in Bosnia, but leaving it was even harder.  It's amazing how many emotions I have surpressed, and have been surpressing for so long.  It's amazing how clear some things become from over there...  You realize the meaning of family and friendships, and in my case, you realize how difficult it can be to have your heart in so many different places.  I wish you were with me, but I'll write you instead.  I've arrived in Dubai a few days ago, and as soon as my impressons form, you'll hear from me, and I hope you'll do the same, at your leisure.  Take care, and think of me.
 
Love, 
Saliha

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:52 PM by David Adesnik  

DON'T RUSH ELECTIONS IN IRAQ: This top-notch essay is from the Sept. 28 edition of the San Jose Mercury News. The authors are both professors at Stanford, and one of them is Mike McFaul, whose work I have praised consistently on this site.

The money graf from the SJMN article is this one:

Snap elections in Iraq may serve the personal interests of Chirac, Chalabi and some American politicians. But history shows that premature elections in war-torn countries are disfigured by fraud, discredited by incompetence and rejected by the losers as well as much of the public. They rarely birth democracy. Instead, they often revive autocracies and, in the worst cases, lead to renewed war.

Damn right. What's especially intersting is that this point is almost identical to the one made by Tom Carothers, a far more dovish and skeptical advocate of democracy promotion. When it comes to elections, no one who thinks seriously about this issue favors the aggressive approach that seems to gaining ground at both the State Department and Pentagon, not to mention the United Nations.

Also, I'd like to make one less substantive point about the McFaul-Diamond essay: It demonstrates that regional newspapers often publish material that is just as impressive as the NYT or WaPo. Of course, the only reason I found this essay in the SJMN was because I am on the haute-exclusif McFaul e-mail list. And even if I don't have enough time to read the regional papers all that often (let alone many blogs that deserve my time as well), it is worth remembering that ideas are not only found in the Bos-NY-Wash corridor. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:49 PM by David Adesnik  

PASS RUSH: Given that Mr. Limbaugh has been having some tough times lately, I thought I'd link to this defense of his McNabb remarks by Jeffrey Collins. JC is right that Limbaugh wasn't being racist in the limited sense of demeaning black quarterbacks. But Rush was saying that white liberals have created an illusion of black success by lowering their standards. Without more evidence to back up that kind of assertion, it basically comes across as racist. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:13 AM by Patrick Belton  

KOIZUMI CALLS ELECTIONS IN JAPAN: The elections will be held on November 9, and Koizumi leaves the first day of campaigning to his young, popular LDP deputy, Shinzo Abe. MSNBC is reporting that the opposition Democrats are closing to eight points in the polls, half the distance from a month ago. See also the Economist's story, which points out that PM Koizumi's fiscally conservative reforms have more of a backing within the opposition party than within his own governing coalition. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:08 AM by Patrick Belton  

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, VODKA! My, 500 years, and you haven't aged a bit..... (Okay, bad joke) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:58 PM by David Adesnik  

NOBODY'S BUSINESS BUT THE TURKS? Back when Istanbul was Constantinople, the Turks were in charge of Baghdad. So it is a good idea to invite them back into Iraq, or a very, very bad one? (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:52 PM by David Adesnik  

JUSTICE FOR THE GURKHAS! Some of Britain's finest are still treated as second-class citizens (or non-citizens as the case may be). (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:43 PM by David Adesnik  

I KNEW IT WAS A JOKE...I just didn't get it at first. Another classic Zoolander line with disturbing relevance to everyday life. When I put up this post on the political implications of the NYT decision to root for the Red Sox, I meant it entirely as a joke. Then I find out -- courtesy of MK, AS & LB -- that the NYT owns part of the Red Sox but decided against full disclosure in its anti-Yankee editorial. Moreover, there was nothing on the letters page about this despite the fact that the Times published four letters disagreeing with its point of view. Perhaps Jayson Blair has been rehired... (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:35 PM by David Adesnik  

THAT SHI'ITE MEME AGAIN: Back in April, there was a lot of talk about the potential for a Shi'ite backlash against the American occupation. The consensus among the experts was that Iraqi Shi'ites would show little gratitude to their ostensible liberators and instead mobilize en masse to throw the Americans out, presumably so that the Shi'ite majority could transform Iraq into a fundamentalists state.

Not known for its long memory, the NY Times is once again raising the spectre of a Shi'ite backlash. The occasion this time was an unfortunate incident in which American forces suffered two fatalities after an extended firefight in one of Baghdad's massive Shi'ite slums. As the NYT notes,

A confrontation with [radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-] Sadr, who is about 30 years old, and his followers, many of them poor young men without jobs, does not seem out of the question. American officials have long regarded him with concern, for his anti-American oratory, his close ties to radical clerics in Iran and his insistence on establishing an Islamic state in Iraq.

So what does the WaPo have to say about all this in its article on the firefight? Namely, that

A clash with Shiites could open a second front for troops already facing regular attacks in the Sunni heartland of central Iraq where Saddam Hussein drew his greatest support. Still, al-Sadr has very little support among the mainstream Shiite clerical leadership.

Sadr's lack of support within the Shi'ite hierarchy is a well-known fact. Thus, the NYT correspondent was either ignorant of the fact or somehow decided it wasn't worth mentioning.

All in all, this latest episode just adds to the point I made a couple of days ago in my response to Kevin & Matt, i.e. that there is a big difference between reporting on violent events and insisting that such events represent a general trend rather than an exception to a more positive rule. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:16 PM by David Adesnik  

JIMMY CARTER'S VICTORY was the price we had to pay for Shirin Ebadi's Nobel Peace Prize. And you know what? It was a bargain.

Carter's victory was a political football that had no impact on current events. But Ebadi's prize may become one of the straws that will someday break the Teheran dictatorship's back. And long before that, it may bring about substantial improvement in the lives of women and children throughout the Middle East. (Btw, compare the NYT and WaPo articles on Ebadi. Very interesting.)

Speaking of Jimmy Carter, I spent an hour this afternoon reading an article in Diplomatic History about his Administration's Cambodia policy. In short, it made quite an effort to bury its head in the sand until public outrage forced Carter to admit that Pol Pot was "the worst violator of human rights in the world today".

But the matter didn't end there. Even after the Vietnamese drove the Khmer Rouge out of Phnom Penh and into the jungles, Carter & Co. kept hammering away at the Vietnamese with accusations that they were aggravating the widespread famine in Cambodia despite the fact that they were doing their best to provide some sort of relief to the victims of the Khmer Rouge genocide.

While that sort of disingenuity is unpleasant, its impact was far more than rhetorical. While holding up aid shipments to Vietnamese-controlled territory in central Cambodia, the Carter administration sent a considerable amount of aid to the Thai-Camodian border. While the ostensible purpose of such aid was to save the lives of Cambodian refugees who had fled in the direction of Thailand, the Administration knew that most of the aid sent to the borderlands would wind up in the hands of the Khmer Rouge.

Now, for tough-minded realists such as Henry Yang, there may be nothing objectionable about Carter's foreign policy. After all, its purpose was to advance the United States' national interest by preventing the expansion of Soviet influence in Southeast Asia. On the one hand, Carter didn't want to be too vocal about the Cambodian genocide lest it derail his effort to establish diplomatic relations with China. On the other, his Administration somehow arrived at the conlusion that the hellish graveyard known as Cambodia actually had geostrategic value.

To top it all off, Carter allowed the United Nations to recognize the Khmer Rouge as one of the legitimate occupants of Cambodia's seat at the United Nations. Less well-known is the fact that Carter quietly signed off on Chinese and Thai military aid to the Khmer Rouge. (A fact somehow left out of the citation that accompanied Carter's Nobel Prize.)

To be fair, Reagan did nothing to improve on Carter's policy and demonstrated that he was no less blind to the viciousness of the Khmer Rouge. Then again, that is hardly a point in Carter's favor, given that his reputation as a statesman rests on his moral superiority relative to Ronald Reagan.

That said, one possible way to end this post is to ask what the Cambodian people have to say about the Nobel Prize board's decision to grant such renown to Jimmy Carter. The answer is: "Nothing. Because they're dead."

However, indulging in that sort of clever repartee gets in the way of the substantive point raised by recognition of the Carter administration's relationship with Cambodia. Namely, that the 39th President did make a tremendous contribution to the promotion of human rights and democracy around the globe, but that his legacy has much more to do with the way in which the positive examples he set changed the intellectual and political climate that prevailed both during and after his term of office. The task now facing historians is to better understand how intellectual climates and, by extension, how such changes translate into the visible advancement of human rights. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:51 AM by Patrick Belton  

MY FIRST DEARBORN ARTICLE is hitting the streets today (alhamdulillah), in a new urban studies magazine called The Next American City - an online version of my piece is here on my website (and I also wrote an impressionistic Letter from Dearborn here on OxBlog several months ago, after returning from my first research trip to Michigan).

I had a truly lovely time getting to know the Muslim community of Dearborn, and many of my sources have now quite happily turned into friends. So my many thanks to all who kindly helped me with this piece. (Also, the article's being turned into a book, so I'd be very interested in any feedback or comments that any of our readers might have.) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:51 AM by Patrick Belton  

NIGERIA HAS ALWAYS SOUNDED like a rather nice place, but I think I'll be staying away from Gambia and Ghana for a bit, though. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:22 AM by Patrick Belton  

MEMRI has an essay on progress being made in Iraq. Among other points I found interesting were these:

* Polling data: The Saudi daily Okaz polled the following statements in Iraq. First: "Iraq, and the people of Iraq, are today better off than they were in the past." 66 percent of the respondents "strongly agreed" and another 17 percent "agreed" with the statement. Only 17 percent disagreed. One hundred percent of respondents disagreed with the second statement: "It is possible that Saddam Hussein will return to govern Iraq because he is preferable to the Western coalition."

* Also, the Zogby polling shop found great optimism in Iraq, combined with a willingness to give the United States one to two years further to carry out political and economic reforms. Seven out of 10 say they expect their country and their personal lives will be better five years from now. 59 percent of respondents would give the occupation forces and the CPA the additional time of one to two years to initiate political and economic reforms.

* There are also very touching, daily changes. For the first time in over thirty years, Iraq has no torture chambers, and has no arbitrary arrests or executions. More than 100 dailies and weeklies are flourishing, writing from perspectives ranging from Khomeinism to Kurdish nationalism. Information is flowing freely, which it has never done before. For the first time, students will attend school without having to sing the praises of Saddam or recite Ba'ath party slogans. (An old, Saddam-era textbook includes a chapter entitled "Valuable Things," referring to valuable things students bring to school. One excerpt: "A girl brings a watch; a boy brings a picture of Saddam.")

Many problems remain, but there is progress being made, and I will cheer it. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:07 AM by Patrick Belton  

WE HAVE A NOBEL PEACE LAUREATE: Iranian human rights lawyer Shirin Ebadi has won the Peace Prize. (CNN)

This is a selection I'm enormously pleased by (though a Havel prize would have been quite nice, too). Famous as the first female judge in Iranian history, Ms. Ebadi had to resign her position in 1979 after the Iranian Revolution, and has since then been a quite brave activist in the cause of democracy and human rights in her country.

She came to particular prominence, and danger, in 2000 when as counsel she took up the case of Darious and Parvaneh Foruhar, two intellectuals and writers murdered by the Iranian government, together with her defense of a number of other persecuted intellectuals. For performing her work as a lawyer she was then herself arrested and faced with a closed hearing in July 2000. The particular attention of a letter-writing campaign directed by Amnesty International resulted in her being given a five-year disbarment together with a suspended sentence for the same period. Her other efforts have focused on Iranian women and children.

Pieces written about her before her selection include profiles in the Christian Science Monitor, and pieces by her include numerous pieces critical of the Iranian juvenile justice system (here, here, here, and here).

The Nobel Committee's biography of Ms Ebadi is here, and its citation and press release are online as well. This is a strong selection, in line with the Committee's 1991 selection of Aung San Suu Kyi and its 1983 selection of Lech Walesa (and drawing a strong contrast with some of the Committee's past choices which have not withstood the test of hindsight, such as Ms Menchu and Chairman Arafat).

May Ms. Ebadi's work, supported now by its proper attention, prosper and continue. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:16 PM by Patrick Belton  

THE TRANSCRIPT FROM Steven Pinker's lecture at AEI this week, on "The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature," is up online now. Professor Pinker is not only one of current U.S. academia's most prolific and thoughtful figures, he is also a (actually, the) charter member of the "Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists," to which he links from his Harvard site. This from the LFHCfS website:

The initial list, assembled by a subcommittee comprised of seven members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, was meant as a nucleating seed, from which a larger list could grow. Here is the initial list: Steven Pinker (note: Pinker's is the sole name on list).

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:21 PM by Patrick Belton  

JUST BECAUSE THERE ISN'T ENOUGH blogging on Guv'ner Arnold already (come on, people, we have to make this last at least two years!) - Michael Barone interprets Schwarzenegger's California win for a British audience in the Telegraph (and finds augury in it for Blair). (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:02 AM by Patrick Belton  

WINNER OF THE BAD IDEA OF THE DAY CONTEST: Urban Outfitters has begun selling in its stores a board game called "Ghettopoly," featuring properties including Harlem, the Bronx, and Westside Liquor, and squares with names including "Smitty's XXX Peep Show" and "Weinstein's Gold and Platinum." (A close friend of ours even gets a possible mention with Tyron's Gun Shop.) Cards read, inter alia, "You got yo whole neighborhood addicted to crack. Collect $50." Among mispelt historical figures are to be found "Malcum X" and "Martin Luthor King."

Black clergymen and other community leaders are not amused. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:38 AM by Patrick Belton  

WALL OF SHAME: The Do Not Call list legislation wasn't merely an exercise in populism, it was a defense of a public interest. Voting against it were Reps. Bishop (Ut.), Meek (Fl.), Strickland, Cannon, Paul, Terry, Flake, and Ryan (Oh.) If any of our readers happened to live in one of their districts, and felt like giving them a call (perhaps ideally while their staffs are trying to eat), the Corner has their office numbers. (via Genoan Sailor) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:17 AM by Patrick Belton  

NEWS ROUND-UP: Top news story of the day is the NATO ministerial in Colorado Springs, featuring scenario planning (with the sobriquet "Dynamic Response '07") and serious discussions about the interesting new NATO Response Force (CNN, WaPo, MSNBC). A prototype of the NATO Response Force will come online next week for testing, and it is intended to be ready for real-world use in October 2005, and fully operational by October 2006, with a core force of 5,000 troops and 15,000 additional support troops.

Lord Robertson raised the obvious and long-standing complaint: "We've [ NATO allies] actually got plenty of people in uniform," but because of structural shortcomings in European militaries, these soldiers cannot be deployed on foreign soil. "So long as you have so many unusable soldiers," Robertson noted, "the taxpayers are being ripped off." Of the 1.4 million non-U.S. soldiers among NATO countries, a paltry 55,000 of them are deployed on operations in the Balkans and elsewhere, yet the US's NATO allies feel overstretched. In other NATO news (and representing an overdue development), the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in Aghanistan, with 5,000 German, Canadian, and U.S. troops currently stationed in Kabul, is preparing to add 2,000 to 10,000 more troops into Aghanistan's provincial cities.

Elsewhere in the papers, NYT is running a piece presenting Putin as torn between a KGB officer and a democrat struggling within him for equipoise. (Note to readers: great, Hamlet running the world's most sizable nation. One pictures him in the shower, muttering in a Boris Badanov accent "Oh, that this too, too sullied Grozny would melt away...")

And in the neat-but-no-cigar category, WaPo is running a piece on Virginia v. Maryland, an original jurisdiction case the Supreme Court heard oral arguments on yesterday, where the two states had recourse to 1632-vintage colonial documents from Charles I to contest whether Maryland or Virginia owned the Potomac. Maryland's case to full ownership, however, is shaky, as reflected in the decision of the special master and questions in oral arguments.

Finally, in the blogosphere, look for a fascinating new blog providing strong coverage of Central Asia on Afghan Voice, with recent posts up on Dostum, Chechnya, and the resignation of the US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, and the expansion of the NATO force in Afghanistan. Slate is encouraging drunkenness to get through primary debate season. TNR is running a fairly thoughtful online debate on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And Weekly Standard has a piece on that foremost American cleric who began the Great Awakening, penned the essay "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," and now is immortalized chiefly by having a residential college named after him at Yale - admittedly, though, one with the motto "JE sux."

(OxBlog: riding herd on the daily papers since the Bush administration, focusing like a laser beam on democracy promotion since - okay, maybe not quite - the Clinton years. Or at least since Chelsea's years at Oxford) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:27 AM by David Adesnik  

INCHING TOWARD A POSITIVE OUTLOOK: Two days ago, I challenged Matt & Kevin to defend the conventional wisdom on Iraq, i.e. that the occupation is headed for failure. As expected, both of them raise good point in response to my challenge. And perhaps more importantly, it seems we share a fair amount of common ground.

First off, one thing that both Kevin (via e-mail) and Matt share in common is their insistence that there is little point in focusing on the pessimism of the mainstream media, since journalists almost always focus on dramatic and violent events. As Matt puts it,

After all, if you took the Washington Post Metro section too seriously you might think that 10 percent of DC residents have been murdered this year, since after all one article in ten seems to discuss a murder.

Now, I admit that drama and violence are the bread and butter of the mainstream media. However, that generalization does not have enough explanatory power to account for two critical facets of media coverage in Iraq.

First of all, a focus on individual dramatic or violent events does not necessitate coming to conclusion that drama and violent are the fundamental characteristics of a given situation. For example, the WaPo Metro section tends to balance reports of specific murders with articles charting the overall trend in the murder rate. If that rate is falling, as it was for most of the 1990s, the Metro desk won't report that the city is descending into chaos. In Iraq, however, the media interpret almost every Ba'athist attack as an indication of growing insurgent strength and sophistication. And they ask after every American soldier falls whether the United States can afford to hold out until it achieves its objectives on the ground.

Second, a general preference for violence and drama hardly explains how certain correspondents can miss good news that is staring them right in the face. For example, my post from two days ago compared comparable stories about the situation in Kirkuk published, respectively, in the NY Times and the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Notice that neither story came in response to specific events. Both were atmosphere pieces meant to assess general trends in the city. And yet the NYT correspondent managed to come up with a narrative of chaos and failure while the PI reporter focused on the general calm in the city and the critical role of the 173rd Airborne Brigade in ensuring it. While one might say that the PI correspondent is simply naive and misguided, the fact that he was able to produce far better evidence than his counterpart at the Times suggests that that is not the case. (NB: The Chicago Tribune was already commenting on positive trends in Kirkuk back in may, but there wasn't much interest in the story except online.)

Now, to be fair, the fact that some mainstream journalists are reporting the kind of news that favors my position means that there is some sort of balance within the media as an institution. However, this "good news" is something of a recent phenomenon. More importantly, it tends to come from regional papers rather than the NYT or the (more balanced) WaPo.

As Matt notes, I have never been one to believe that this kind of negative reporting reflects either a conscious or unsconscious liberal desire to embarrass a conservative administration. Rather, it is the product of a historically-conditioned mindset that took hold of the journalistic profession as result of the war in Vietnam.

Now, this isn't to say that because Iraq isn't Vietnam it is therefore a success. Rather, my point is that historical blinders have prevented foreign correspondents -- both American and otherwise -- from paying attention or attributing significance to positive trends. Of course, the evidence sometimes becomes so overwhelming that denial is no longer possible. Hence, the invasion of Iraq was a quagmire on Day Ten but an unprecedented triumph on Day Twenty. By the same token, the media had to do rapid about faces after American successes in both the first Gulf War and Panama.

Since it is getting let and this post is getting long, I'm going to cut it off here. But when I get a chance, I will address two other important issues that Matt & Kevin raise. First, is there any reason to believe that short-term successes in Iraq will translate into permanent improvements, especially given the United States inability to maintain an 100,000-strong invasion force for more than a year or two? Second, is there enough information from which to draw firm conclusions about the state of the occupation, or is agnosticism the wisest option? Coming soon... (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:13 PM by David Adesnik  

ECONOMISTS' MORAL VALUES: Matt Yglesias provides some interesting commentary. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:58 PM by David Adesnik  

CALVIN & HOBBES REDUX? From the WaPo:

In Texas, thought to hold perhaps half the nation's backyard tigers, a string of attacks during the past four years underscores the threat to youngsters...

The day after the Las Vegas incident [involving Siegfried & Roy --ed.], New York authorities removed a 425-pound tiger from a fifth-floor Harlem apartment after it attacked and injured its owner.

Well folks, you can rest assured that there are no tigers on OxBlog. Only paper tigers. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:46 PM by David Adesnik  

BLAMING THE JEWS AND THE COMMUNISTS: This op-ed by the Russian ambassador to the United States is almost Saudi Arabian in its faux indignance. According to Mr. Ushakov, Americans' "Cold War mentality", i.e. their ignorant inability to differentiate Russians from their Soviet predecessors, is a leading cause of tension in the US-Russian relationship.

And then there's the Jackson-Vanik amendment, designed to punish the Soviet Union for barring the emigration of Soviet Jews. While "the amendment does not substantially damage Russian commercial interests", it represents a symbolic threat to Russian sovereignty. Huh? Unless Russia has plans to follow the Soviet precedent on immigration, I don't think Jackson-Vanik will do any damage to Russian commericial interests, substantial or otherwise.

Now here's a radical thought Mr. Ushakov might want to consider: there is continual tension in US-Russian relations because Russia's President is a lying thug and because some of us aren't happy that our President is closing his eyes to Putin's brutal and dictatorial methods of government. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:27 PM by David Adesnik  

BLEEDING-HEART LIBERALS: The NYT editorial board is actually rooting for the Red Sox. While acknowledging that

Cold reality favors the Yankees; warm sentiment, which is at the heart of baseball and to which we are always susceptible, favors one or the other of baseball's most reliable losers.

If it had any real moral fibre, the Times would call for a Red Sox win in the ALCS so that Boston fans might later face the maximum humiliation of losing the Series to the Cubs.

Perhaps worse than the Times' emotional attachment to a Red Sox victory is the superficiality of its commitment to the cause. In a classic extension of its limousine liberalism to the wide world of sports, the Times professes its deep sympathy for Red Sox fans, all the while knowing that "cold reality" will ensure that New York celebrates yet another victory. Thus, even as they bask in the glory of yet another World Series crown, the editors at the Times will be able to tell themselves that they are different and better than the rest of us because they are sensitive to Boston's true needs. How touching. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 4:58 PM by David Adesnik  

OR PERHAPS Patrick meant to say "Joschka"? (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:45 AM by Patrick Belton  

THAT'S OKAY, we know how you spell your name, Josch. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:11 AM by Patrick Belton  

(BAD) JOKE OF THE DAY: CNN, reporting on the assault, murder, and likely rape of Canadian journalist Zahra Kazemi by Iranian intelligence, has this to say after the usual palather about Khatami's reformist credentials:

The Intelligence Ministry, which is controlled by reformists, have rejected the indictments of its agents and threatened to "expose all the facts" if the conservative judiciary do not withdraw the charges.

"Reformists": is the word losing all of its meaning? (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:21 AM by Patrick Belton  

THIS JUST IN FROM OUR FRIENDS THE SAUDIS: Saudi Princess Reem Al-Faisal, granddaughter of the late King Faisal, had this to say in a piece in the Saudi-based Arab News:

"It is time for the American nation to acknowledge its crimes and apologize and ask forgiveness from the many people it has harmed. Beginning with the Native Americans, followed by the Africans and South Americans, right through to the Japanese, who have suffered such horror by being the only race to know the true meaning of weapons of mass destruction.

"The U.S. should leave Iraq after apologizing for over a million dead after an unlawful embargo and a colonial war which at best is a farce and at worst a crime... Are the Americans willing to admit their mistakes? This is the most important question of the 21st century, since much of the world's safety depends on it."
...
"The Americans insist that most criticism directed toward their policies stems from a deep-seated anti-Americanism which the entire world has been suffering from since the founding of the U.S. In fact, I find that the world has been more than forgiving toward the Americans from the very beginning.

"If you take a quick look at American history, you will realize instantly that the atrocities committed by the Americans on their fellow man might be one of the worst in human history, and that's saying much - one, because humanity has reached levels of evil that no other creature on earth can compete with, and two, because the very short history of the American nation makes its crimes even more shocking when compared with other, more ancient lands.

Like Saudi Arabia, one assumes. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:09 AM by Patrick Belton  

BRIEF BLEG (OR: IS THERE AN ECONOMIST IN THE HOUSE?): I've recently become involved with a working-group which will be working on writing a policy paper on trade policy, starting out from a commitment to increased opportunity. I assume we'll end up doing four things, probably in descending order of importance: (1) examining how gains from freer trade can be distributed to its losers without distorting market mechanisms, (2) examining the most successful programs for assisting displaced workers and affected communities adapt from the manufacturing to the service economy, (3) summarizing the evidence at hand for the relationship of past free trade initiatives to indices of opportunity (i.e., income, disposable income after purchase of goods, etc), (4) surveying the current landscape of free trade, and ideally offering some new suggestions for the executive's trade policy. I'd be very interested to hear from any of our readers who have backgrounds related to the subject. Thanks! (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:00 AM by Patrick Belton  

WEDGWOOD ON ISRAELI SELF-DEFENCE: My old professor, Ruth Wedgwood, has a piece in today's Journal, where she writes:

If you can't enjoy a good laugh, you shouldn't serve as a diplomat at the United Nations. One source of amusement is Syria's current membership on the U.N. Counter-Terrorism Committee. ... Any succor to terror groups that seek out noncombatant civilians for mayhem and maiming for "political" purposes might seem to be inconsistent with the Counter-Terrorism Committee's program.
... Unembarrassed by its obligations of membership on the Security Council, Syria has announced a rather different standard. In a little-remarked September 2002 Counter-Terrorism Committee filing, Syria reported that it could not regard as terrorism any acts committed in a "legitimate struggle against foreign occupation."

She also reminds us that there is a clear distinction between terrorism and guerilla insurgency: "The international law of armed conflict does not permit the deliberate targeting of civilians by suicide bombings, no matter what the occasion or cause for struggle." Again, "Terrorism is the deliberate use of force against protected persons. It is not defined by the political objectives of the actor." And she concludes memorably:

"The standards of international humanitarian law and the law of armed conflict are set by treaty and international custom. They make no exception for passionate liberators who wish, for an instrumental purpose, to target seaside cafes crowded with Arab and Jewish civilians. The identity of the suicide bomber points out the tragedy of this intellectual and moral confusion. The bomber was a young Palestinian woman, with a life ahead of her. She was also a lawyer."

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:33 AM by Patrick Belton  

THE PERENNIAL RECOURSE OF SCOUNDRELS: Despite President Bush's pledge of "full disclosure" in uncovering who in his administration violated the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, thereby imperilling US lives and interests in countless countries, administration officials are indicating they may seek to protect the felon with that perennial recourse of scoundrels, claims of executive privilege. (The president is also to be seen protesting that he has no idea whether the felon in his administration will ever be uncovered.)

I am growing very, very disappointed. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:13 AM by Patrick Belton  

THE VOTE: Here's a roundup of the news coverage surrounding governor-elect Ahnold. NYT notes Schwarzenegger did not do significantly worse among women, even after repeated allegations of sexual misconduct. NYT also notes that, keeping with the Hollywood theme, Jay Leno introduced the governor-elect before his victory speech. LA Times notes that Schwarzenegger picked up 20% of Democratic voters (along with 40 percent of independents and 69 percent of conservatives). Cruz Bustamante received almost 60 percent of the Latino vote, and two-thirds of liberal voters. Davis scored best amongst blacks and Jewish voters. McClintock's conservative appeal won the support only of a fifth of conservative Republican voters. (The San Francisco Chronicle has more numbers, too.) Other California-related tidbits: Secretary of State Kevin Shell estimated turnout at 60 percent (or 9.25 million voters), the state's highest turnout in a nonpresidential contest since 1982. Jesse Jackson spent a considerable amount of time in California attempting to rally Democrats on behalf of Governor Davis. Arnold spent $10.3 million of his own money on his campaign (out of a total of $83 million being spent by all candidates, more than half of which was spent on TV ad buys in the final weeks). In the blogosphere, excellent coverage as usual from Politics and Frivolities, Kaus explains why he voted for the Terminator, Andrew kvells, and CalPundit's comments section is lit up like a Christmas tree. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 4:55 AM by Patrick Belton  

EURASIA WATCH: Some very good pieces appearing this week on the Soros Foundation's EurasiaNet: on Kazakh-Uzbek tensions, opposition politics in Turkmenistan, and the U.S. cutting development aid to Georgia in response to the Shevardnadze government's lack of democratic reforms. (No, not that Georgia....) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:24 PM by David Adesnik  

BROUGHT TO YOU BY NAVIGATOR: I've had enough of Explorer. Ever since I started up my new DSL service in Boston, it has been malfunctioning all the time. So I switched to Navigator. Unsurprisingly, everything works a lot better now. So if momentum is the only thing keeping you loyal to Explorer, take five minutes of your life and install Navigator now. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:33 PM by Patrick Belton  

SMART FRIENDS WE'VE GOT: Congrats, Lisa!!! (okay, four months or so overdue, but hey, news travels slow over water...) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:24 PM by David Adesnik  

TOTAL RECALL: Schwarzenegger guru Robert Tagorda will be Recall-blogging throughout the day. He already has a bunch of great posts up, so go over to his site and check'em out. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:44 PM by Patrick Belton  

MORE ON NEW NATO SECGEN: A few weeks ago, when we were guest-blogging on Volokh, I posted on NATO's new secretary-general-designate, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer. I was interested in Mr De Hoop Scheffer (and his formidable last name) not only because he will be taking the helm of the day-to-day workings of the U.S.'s principal strategic alliance, but also because, on a personal note, I worked for his soon-to-be predecessor, outgoing SecGen Lord Robertson. Lord Robertson was kind enough to write a note to Rachel and me at our wedding, in which he musingly compared the ongoing compromise of running a successful multilateral alliance of democracies with the one required to fashion a loving marriage. He is a classy act, and will be a difficult one to follow.

My post, incidentally, attracted this response from a journalist who has had the opportunity to interview Mr De Hoop Scheffer extensively:

With reference to your post on Mr De Hoop Scheffer, let me fill you in (I hold Dutch citizenship and had the honor of interviewing said Scheffer in the past): he is very typically a man of the European center-right. Undoubtedly what would be called an "Atlanticist" in the continental context, i.e. someone who is very friendly of the United States, and squarely opposed to the left-wing admiration of America's enemies. Before becoming Foreign Minister in 2002 (in the Fortuyn/Christian Democrats/Liberals government), his career wasn't spectacularly successful. In particular, he was considered to have been a particularly ineffective leader of the Christian Democrats, losing the elections in 1998 and being ousted as leader in a coup to be replaced by the man who is now the prime minister. From my own experience with De Hoop Scheffer --and you can use this if you want, but please don't attribute it to me by name-- I would have to say that he does not only have weak leadership/executive skills, but is also not the most intelligent of politicians. I interviewed him for an hour and a half shortly before he became leader of the Christian Democrats back in the mid-nineties and I really found him to lacking in knowledge and basic strategic insight. On the whole, I suspect De Hoop Scheffer is one of the few Europeans who can be expected to be supportive of the United States in the war on terror, but who lacks both the leadership potential, the charisma, and the intelligence to develop into a serious player as NATO SG.

Tough shoes to follow in, indeed. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:05 PM by Patrick Belton  

SOME DARN GOOD WRITING coming out of PNAC these days: on terror financing in Southeast Asia, democracies in East Asia, Hong Kong, and, of course, Iraq. Good work, Kristol, et al. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:08 AM by Patrick Belton  

BLATANT NEPOTISM: Hey, he may be my brother-in-law, but he's a dern good filmmaker anyway, and it's not just me who thinks so. So you readers who are (a) in Chicago, and (b) want something to do for Halloween, think about slipping on down for the Chicago Horror Film festival later this month to see Daniel Kleinfeld's adaptation of the Fall of the House of Usher.

(And speaking of nepotism, when do Josh, David, and I get to meet the chick who plays Madeline?) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:53 AM by Patrick Belton  

PHOTOS FROM OUR IRAQ BUREAU: OxBlog's friend Jay Hallen, a recent Yale grad and member of a little foreign policy roundtable I helped start, is in Baghdad serving in the interim government - and, in his spare time, he's taking pictures. A few of them are up here. (You can also find his account of his first few days up on Tech Central Station, here). (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:36 AM by Patrick Belton  

POSSIBLY INTERESTING IF TRUE: A tipper (no, not that Tipper) writes in to indicate Hillary filed papers associated with a possible presidential bid with the FEC on late Friday, October 3.

An online record on the FEC website apparently reads

CLINTON, HILLARY RODHAM ID: P00003392

Office Sought: President
Election Year: 2004
State: Presidential Candidate
District: 03
Party: DEM (Democratic Party) (To get there from the www.fec.gov website: search "View Financial Reports" for "Clinton" and click on the blue number by her name.)

If this is true, I don't know to what extent filing papers of this nature represents a common precautionary tactic to keep options open. But it seems interesting if true.

UPDATE: Kathryn Lopez on the Corner has traced the record to a Draft Hillary committee, and not to Herself. (Sorry, Attorney Urman, didn't mean to get your hopes up.)

(Note: I should append sooner or later a blanket disclaimer to all of my posting on the elections - i.e., that in the next several days I'm accepting a position as overseas fundraising chair with the Clark campaign. I'll detail my reasons for doing so later - in a nutshell, they're that (a) Clark's candidacy seems to be showing greater chances for success than Lieberman's, and would (b) take the Democratic party toward a much stronger posture in foreign policy and centrism than would Howard Dean's candidacy; and while on the other hand I support much, if not most, of this adminstration's principle-driven foreign policy, I'm (c) disquieted by l'affaire Wilson. But, most importantly for me to establish from the start, I intend to keep my blogging role wholly separate from my role in that campaign.) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:33 AM by Patrick Belton  

BACK FROM ERIN (no, the country, not a putative mistress): So I've just gotten back to Oxford after passing a lovely fortnight with Rachel on the secluded Irish-speaking island of Inishmaan, in Galway Bay off the west coast of Ireland. It was a lovely experience, on which I'll be posting more shortly - but first, I thought for the benefit of our Washington-based readers I might take a moment to publicize this Steven Pinker lecture at AEI this evening. The lecture is from 5:30 to 6:30 at AEI's building at 1150 17th Street NW. Pinker's own scribblings on what he's planning to talk about are these:

Why does talk of human nature inspire such fear and loathing in so many people? It challenges three deeply held beliefs: the blank slate (the mind has no innate structure), the noble savage (people are naturally good), and the ghost in the machine (behavior is not caused by physical events). These beliefs are thought to undergird indispensable moral values, and challenges to the beliefs are therefore thought to undermine the values. These orthodoxies, however, are flawed and should not have such influence on modern ethical principles. The meaning and purpose that people ascribe to life are not compromised by explanations of the ascribing process.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:38 AM by David Adesnik  

THE SPIDER AND THE FLY: On Wednesday night, the Red Sox will be fighting for their lives in the Bronx. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:14 PM by David Adesnik  

GENTLEMEN, PREPARE TO DEFEND YOURSELVES: Splinters are beginning to emerge from the mainstream media consensus that the occupation of Iraq has been a tragic failure -- more specifically, a failure resulting from the Bush Administration's incompetence.

For example, Andrew Sullivan points to the absolutely shocking contrast between these two articles on occupied Kirkuk. The first is from the New York Times. It tells us that

[Saddam] expelled tens of thousands of Kurds and replaced them with more loyal Arabs imported from elsewhere. A secret police force was recruited within each group to spy on rival communities...

Mr. Hussein is gone, but the effect survives. Late last month, a sudden burst of ethnic bloodletting in Kirkuk and a neighboring town left 13 people dead. The United States occupation administration quelled the violence through a combination of military muscle and forced negotiations.

But the lingering question remains whether the multiethnic city government being glued together under American tutelage can channel sectarian hatred away from bloodshed.

The NYT correspondent goes on to admit that "If [ethnic reconciliation] succeeds in Kirkuk, many believe, then the effort to create an Iraq unscathed by similar fault lines may succeed, too." Yet it is rather clear from the article that one should not expect this to happen. In contrast, the Philadelphia Inquirer tells us that

Kirkuk, a multiethnic city of Kurds, Arabs, Turkmen and Assyrians that is 150 miles north of the capital, may be the U.S. military's greatest Iraq success story. Attacks on soldiers are unusual, violent crime is low, and Iraqis have worked with Americans to restore basic services to prewar levels

Perhaps most shocking is that fact that American soldiers live in normal homes within the city rather than in fortified camps. In fact, the "soldiers of the 173d regularly eat and shop in local establishments and interact with residents." Given that the NYT and PI correspondents filed their stories within seven days of each other, the contrast between them is almost incomprehensible.

Perhaps even more surreal than this contrast is an article from the London Oberver (aka The Guardian on Sunday) which begins by blasting George W. Bush as the

head of a cabal that seeks to install a client regime in Iraq as a first step to bringing the region under American-Israeli control.

but then insists that

even in Baghdad, even with Saddam and his sons still at large, the sense of relief at the toppling of the regime was palpable.

A university lecturer living above a bakery where colleagues were burned alive told me: 'I feel as if I have been born again. Iraq was a prison above ground and a mass grave beneath it.'

Outside Baghdad, in the Shia south, the mood was overwhelmingly upbeat. In Basra, ordinary people gave the thumbs-up at the mere sight of a Brit. In Najaf, a waiter blew kisses.

Now the purpose of this isn't to make the same old point that the media hasn't been doing a good job of reporting on the occupation. It's purpose is to issue a direct challenge to intelligent pro-Democratic bloggers who still insist that the occupation is failure. The question is, will these liberal web giants wait until the media consensus on the quagmire has completely fallen apart, or will they get ahead of the curve and show that bloggers are consistently one step ahead of their dead-tree partisan allies?

Today, for example, Kevin Drum mocks the Bush Administration for rejiggering the bureaucratic hierarchy responsible for the occupation. While some might regard it as a sign of good things to come that the President is putting Condi Rice, his closest confidant, in charge of occupation oversight, Kevin regards it as a sign of total desperation.

Last we heard from Josh Marshall on this issue, he consdescendingly observed that those "right-wing columnists" naive enough to spin the UN bombing as a sign of progress were totally unable to comprehend just how bad things were going.

Matt Yglesias has been more effusive than most in advertising his belief that the United States has a compelling interest in establishing a lasting democratic order in Iraq. (Kevin has been pretty good about this too, though.) But he also argues tireless;y for bringing in the UN and multilateralizing the occupation (a strategy that OxBlog has never been fond of.)

So, Matt & Kevin (& Josh, if he has time) what do you say? Have we Iraq boosters finally persuaded you that media bias is more than a figment of the conservative imagination? Or is there a compelling case for the conventional wisdom that the occupation is a failure? En garde!

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:41 PM by David Adesnik  

BUSH COMPLICIT IN RUSSIAN CRIMES: I've already said that Vladimir Putin is a lying thug. What I haven't said (because I didn't realize it until now) is that George W. Bush deserved to be hit hard for his praise of Putin.

After reading this NYT article, I thought Bush has the good sense to damn Putin with faint praise. But then I took a look at Fred Hiatt's column in today's WaPo where he slams the President for saying that

"I respect President Putin's vision for Russia: a country at peace within its borders, with its neighbors, a country in which democracy and freedom and rule of law thrive."

While aides insisted that Bush sent a different message in private, that really isn't worth a damn. I think Hiatt isn't far off the mark in his closing statement that

When [Bush] praises Putin's vision of "democracy and freedom and rule of law in Russia," how can Bush expect anyone to believe that he is any more serious about his own commitment to democracy and freedom in Afghanistan or Iraq?

When it comes to the President's short-sightedness, Hiatt is absolutely right. This kind of hypocrisy doesn't speak well of Bush as human being. But politics is about more than being a good human being. Bush has invested a tremendous amount of political capital in the reconstruction of Iraq (less so Afghanistan), thus ensuring that his self interest is tied up with the objective of democratization. Even if you don't trust Bush to do the right thing, it wouldn't come as any surprise if he tried to save himself.

As you might have guessed, this analysis of the President's incentives is a direct application of the lessons derived from doctoral dissertation on Reagan's democracy promotion efforts. As I note in my dissertation, Reagan's behavior suggested that his initial commitment to a "worldwide democratic revolution" reflected a cynical desire for short term partisan advantage in his endless war with Congress over Central America. Yet precisely because Reagan hammered home the pro-democratic message so powerfully and so often, both Republicans and Democrats began to expect a certain sort of behavior from the President.

When it came to Nicaragua, Reagan was willing to invest the political capital necessary to support Contra forces only marginally committed to democratization. Yet when it come to less important countries such as the Philippines, Chile and South Korea, Reagan recognized that he didn't have enough political capital left to persuade either the American public (or even his fellow Republicans) to support those nations faltering dictators.

Now, Bush may decide to invest all of his political capital in persuading the American public to accept a less-than-democratic outcome in Iraq and Afghanistan. But I sense that the President has other priorities, such as ensuring his re-election and (perhaps) supporting another tax cut. Thus, doing the right thing in Iraq (and possibly Afghanistan) may be no different than following the path of least resistance. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:34 PM by David Adesnik  

SPEECH DEFECT: This WaPo masthead notes that "only 54 State Department officers are fully qualified in Arabic". That is un-frikkin'-believable. We have embassies in more than 20 Arabic-speaking countries. Just who the hell works there?

Well, I guess that good news is that once I finish my coursework in Arabic I will be very, very, VERY employable. (NB: Take the rest of the WaPo editorial with a grain of salt.) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:57 PM by David Adesnik  

PUTIN STILL A LYING THUG: OJ Simpson must be giving this guy lessons in chutzpah. He says the occupation of Chechnya is a success and that Russia continues to make "tremendous progress" towards democracy. On the bright side, Putin had the good sense to make fun of California for its carnivalesque recall vote. I bet Putin is glad he won't have to face one of those... (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:41 PM by David Adesnik  

THE KAY REPORT: An excellent WaPo editorial evaluates the significance of the report. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:20 PM by David Adesnik  

ONION OR WAPO? Wesley Clark believes that human beings will some day perfect the art of time travel. Dave Letterman responds: "As a matter of fact, earlier today [Clark] went back in time to remove his foot from his mouth." (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:13 PM by David Adesnik  

KARZAI COALITION HEADED FOR SPLIT: The WaPo has the story. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:45 PM by David Adesnik  

JOE WILSON'S POLITICS: Kevin Drum takes a careful look at Joe Wilson's background and discovers, lo and behold, that Wilson was eminently qualified for the Niger mission as well as somewhat hawkish on using force in Iraq. In short, Wilson was not exactly the "avowed opponent of the war" that the WSJ has imagined.

PLUS: Peter Beinart demolishes the conservative media's effort to defend the administration. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:00 PM by David Adesnik  

DECISIVE COMMAND: NYT military correspondent Michael Gordon is defending Wesley Clark from unfair attacks on his record as a general. Also, despite allegations to the contrary by Howard Dean, Clark was never a Republican. Then again, why should Dean know what party Clark belongs to if Clark himself isn't sure? (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:40 PM by David Adesnik  

SADISTS IN THE DUGOUT: I am a Yankee fan. More importantly, I have been a Yankee fan since the age of six. I suffered along with Mattingly from his first season to his last, not once taking a division title. I watched as my friends celebrated the Amazin' Mets' World Series victory in 1986 as well as their general excellence throughout the second half of that decade.

So when the Yankees started to win again when I was in college, I felt that I deserved it. I was no fairweather fan. But now I have to ask myself, do I really want the Yankees to win yet another World Series? Before answering that question, let me say that I am definitely rooting for the Red Sox to win Game 5 in Oakland. The explanation for that is simple enough: it would be much more gratifying to watch the Yankees beat the Red Sox than to let the A's do the dirty work instead.

But what if the ALCS is a Boston-New York affair? Don't the Sox deserve a chance to win it all after their 40 years in the desert? (More than 40 actually, but precision would've taken away from the biblical metaphor.) My answer to that question depends on whether the Cubs are able to prevail in the NL playoffs. If they are, wouldn't a Cubs-Red Sox series be an event of national importance, worth far more to baseball fans across American than another Yankee assault on the title?

But more importantly -- and this is were the unbridled sadism comes in -- could you imagine anything more delicious than watching the Red Sox lose to the Cubs? It would be another Bill Buckner moment. A series for the taking. A series against the one franchise with a postseason record as dismal as the Red Sox's own.

And so I face the sadist's dilemma: What my matters more? My own pleasure...or my enemies' pain? (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:05 PM by David Adesnik  

STAND BY YOUR MAN: It's nice to see Maureen Dowd (implicitly) sticking by shop-a-holic Arnold Schwarzenegger despite all the charges of sexual harassment. It's also nice to see her slamming Hillary Clinton, Ann Richards and Gloria Steinem for their hypocrisy. But as Josh has always said, Dowd is capable of first rate work when politics gets reduced to personality flaws. It's just the actual issues she has trouble with. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:10 AM by David Adesnik  

LOW BLOW: Daniel Drezner says the LA Times is not being nice to a certain Austrian. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:58 AM by David Adesnik  

CONSERVATIVES DIVIDED: CalPundit rounds up the right-wing media's debate over the significance of L'Affaire Wilson. It isn't everyday Kevin admits that 50% of the GOP media machine is staffed by honest and competent individuals! (For Kevin's sake, I hope Paul Krugman doesn't get wind of this.) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:13 AM by David Adesnik  

I DEMAND A NEW STATISTIC: "On Day Without Deaths, GIs Remain Alert" -- that a headline from today's WaPo. Toward the end of the article beneath it, the Post reports that

The number of Iraqis killed by explosives apparently intended for occupation forces climbed by two today when a bomb exploded in a traffic circle south of Tikrit.

Of course, it's hard to know the significance of a number climbing by two if one doesn't know that number in the first place. Which is why the time has come for the media to keep tabs on just how many Iraqis have lost their lives as a result of Ba'athist attacks on occupation forces.

My guess is that there is at least one Iraqi civilian killed for every US soldier taken down. (Naturally, that projection doesn't include the victims of intentional attacks, such as those on UN headquarters or the Najaf mosque.) In the past nine days, fifteen Iraqi civilians have died in attacks on US soldiers. In that same period, American forces have suffered two combat fatalities and lost three soldiers in truck or car accidents.

The real question, of course, is why come up with a number at all? First, it may have an effect on the population of the Sunni Triangle, which may then prove more willing to cooperate with US forces. But more importantly, it will make a point to American audiences: Our soldiers are not being shot by Iraqi nationalists outraged at the thought of occupation. They are being shot by extremists whose selfishness is so great that they don't care how many of their fellow Iraqis die so long as America bleeds. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:04 AM by David Adesnik  

A NOBLE NOBEL? Oswaldo Paya should win the Nobel Peace Prize. It's the best chance the award committee has of restoring its lost prestige -- not to mention doing something good for the world. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:48 PM by David Adesnik  

LIMBAUGH NABBED...BY THOUGHT POLICE? MV makes a strong case that I've been unfair to Rush Limbaugh because I don't know what I'm talking about when it comes to pro football. (NB: This is a different MV, not the onanistic Frog mentioned in my previous post who (presumably) knows nothing about the NFL.) Anyhow, MV writes that

I usually read you because you offer constructive and valid criticism of the Bush administration’s handling of Iraq, among other things. But to say Rush’s comments about Donovan McNabb were comparable to Trent Lott’s is utterly ignorant. First of all, why did Michael Irvin, who is black, say “Rush has a good point” in the very same segment Rush made those comments.

Secondly, the only thing negative Rush said about McNabb was that he wasn’t as good as everyone makes him out to be. He accused the MEDIA of elevating McNabb’s status as a player because of his skin color. There’s no doubt what he said was politically incorrect, but it was also a very valid and legitimate point. Check out Slate’s defense of Rush.

...So before you indiscriminately compare Rush to Trent Lott’s remarks, put things into some perspective.

I read the Slate article that MV mentioned and I think it's pretty good. I pretty much accept that many commentators wanted McNabb to succeed because he is black (which isn't necessarily a bad thing). But that is not the same as pretending that McNabb is doing well when in fact he wasn't.

Thus, what I'd appreciate are good examples of the media being extra nice to McNabb because of his race. Given how easily this website comes up with examples of media bias, I imagine these wouldn't be too hard to find. So to some degree, I'm agnostic on this one, espeically because I don't know all that much about pro football (or any kind of football). Still, I think Dan Drezner's point about McNabb is pretty persuasive:

There are now a lot of successful black quarterbacks in the NFL -- see Steve McNair, Michael Vick, Aaron Brooks, etc. The media focused on McNabb because he was good (I say this as a New York Giants fan) and looked great playing on TV.

Finally, with regard to the Trent Lott analogy, that was mostly humor. No question Lott's comments were of a different order of magnitude. But there is something about having a brand-name conservative forced out of a prestigious job (before it even began) because of his un-PC remarks. I suspect Rush won't be the last one to have a Trent Lott moment...

UPDATE: The NYT has harsh words for Limbaugh, but evades the issue of whether McNabb was a star or just a product of hype. Now that's unfair.

UPDATE: Matt Yglesias points to this post by the NRO's Robert George, which says there's no evidence McNabb was overrated because he was black. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:16 PM by David Adesnik  

POTTER & FREUD, CONT.: Sadly, my (mis)reading of Harry Potter has not generated any of the outrage Josh expected, but it has produced some interesting comments, to say the least. Blogivore MD says

Hopefully, tongue fully in cheek. Non-Freudian interpretation of this comment is recommended.

MD, I'm not going to go there. (NB: "blogivore" refers to one who has a tremendous appetite for blogs, just as "carnivore" has come, in common parlance, to refer to someone with a great appetite for meat.)

Next, MC Masterchef observes that I am not the first to read far too much in to JK Rowling's prose, whether intentionally or unintentionally.

Now, as far as the next couple of comments are concerned, I suggest that you don't read any further unless you are over the age of 18 (or 21 in some states and 14 in Europe). According to ER,

You need to date more. Or at least go hit a few strip shows. That logic of yours is an incredible stretch. By your own rules we should find all sorts of ribald nonsense in say "Moby Dick".

Hmmm. I don't usually think of dating and going to strip clubs as interchangeable activities. After all, when you go on a date you pretend to like the girl, but when you go to a strip club the girl pretends to like you. (Note to my secret admirers: That last comment was no less tongue in cheek than my reading of Harry Potter. I am always extremely sincere when going on dates.)

Finally, MV asks

Hand lotion? That sounds like a very American, and/or Jewish concept. We Christian Europeans still have everything, if you see what I mean, and therefore we don't need any lotion. Sorry for bragging... We may be wankers ("the French"...), but at least we are good at it.

First response, a joke: Why do Jews circumcise their sons? Because they always demand 10% off everything.

Second of all, I'll have you know MV, that us Semitic folk only deduct 10% from what nature has given us in order to make all you goyim feel less insecure by way of comparison. And I'll have you know that both shiksas and yiddishe madels rate us higher than all you Frog types. So there!
(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:41 PM by David Adesnik  

HARRY POTTER -- A FREUDIAN (MIS)READING: I keep telling myself that a cigar is just a cigar. But the more I read of the Harry Potter books, the more obvious it becames that they're real subject isn't magic, but sex.

I first got a sense of what was going on when I went to see Harry Potter & The Chamber of Secrets back in Oxford. It turns out that one can only enter this Chamber through a secret opening in the girls' bathroom at Hogwarts. Once inside the Chamber, Harry does battle with a tremendous snake that submits once Harry uses his sword.

Now, when I finally got around to reading the books, it all started to become more obvious. Any of you remember the scene where Harry gets his first magic wand? It's pretty much an extended discussion of how long other wizards' wands are, measured in inches. Sort of reminds me of eighth grade.

Next up, consider this passage from Chamber of Secrets (American edition):

WHAT HAVE I TOLD YOU," thundered [Harry's] uncle, spraying spit over the table, "ABOUT SAYING THE 'M' WORD IN OUR HOUSE?"

"But I -- "

"HOW DARE YOU THREATEN DUDLEY!" roared Uncle Vernon, pounding the table with his fist.

"I just -- "

"I WARNED YOU ! I WILL NOT TOLERATE MENTION OF YOUR ABNORMALITY UNDER THIS ROOF!" (PAGE 2)

Now, it turns out that the "M-word" is magic, at least according to a superficial reading of the text. I think it's pretty clear, however, that what the book is really talking about is Masturbation.

All in all, the message of the Harry Potter books is one of sexual liberation. Is it any coincidence that Harry's unmagical relatives force him to live in a closet?

In the second book, author JK Rowling contrasts the repressive atmosphere at the home of Harry's aunt and uncle with the relaxation and freedom found at the house of Ron Weasley, whose parents are wizards.

When Harry first enters Ron's room, he notices that "Ron's magic wand was lying on top of a fish tank full of frog spawn on the windowsill." (Page 40) Kleenex and hand lotion anyone?

Coincidentally, we discover the frog spawn just after Harry and Ron finish whacking their gnomes. Literally. As the book informs us, such gnomes are "small and leathery looking, with a large knobby bald head exactly like a potato" (Page 37). Need I say more?

All in all, it's surprising that the main controversy surrounding the Potter books has been their alleged endorsement of un-Christian witchcraft. But from where I stand, doing magic tricks is the least of the problems one should expect from children who are taught to play with their wands...

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:15 PM by David Adesnik  

LIMBAUGH NABBED: Dan Drezner rounds up the reaction to Rush Limbaugh's Trent Lott moment. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:10 PM by David Adesnik  

MAN OF MYSTERY: TAPPED's authors are now signing their posts, so you won't have to guess which ones are by Matt Yglesias. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:07 PM by David Adesnik  

WILSON/PLAME: CalPundit has a whole lot of posts up, with the most recent one here. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:00 PM by David Adesnik  

MARSHALL PLAYS SOFTBALL: A couple of days ago, Josh Marshall got to interview Wesley Clark. Abandoning his usual attack-dog style, Marshall decided not to get tough with the General.

At first, I though Marshall was just tossing softballs so that Clark would let down his guard and be more candid. But that wasn't the case.

As I see it, going easy on an interview subject isn't necessarily a bad decision. Sometimes a confrontational approach shuts down the communication process and prevents candidates from really expressing themselves. But in this instance, going easy on Clark produced nothing but vague and evasive answers.

For example, Clark said that

Before you pick a party, make sure you know why you're picking a party. Make sure you understand what the partisan political process is in America. What does it commit you to? What does it mean? How does it affect the rest of your life? What is it all about? And so I thought I'd take a look at both parties...

And it was clear as I looked at the parties, looked at the culture, watched the dialogue, it wasn't just that I had voted for Al Gore, I really believed in what the Democratic party stood for. And so when it came time to choose a political party, I chose the Democratic party.

Marshall tried to pull a little bit more out of Clark by asking him which wing of the Democratic party he gravitates toward, but didn't get much of an answer. This resulted in Clark saying that

I have strong views. I have strong feelings about what's right and what's wrong in the way of policy.

What are those views? Beats me. In the interview, Clark comes close to being specific only when recycling standard Democratic criticisms of the current administration: Too ideological, too unilateral, too many tax cuts.

The one passage in the interview that has sparked some controversy is the one in which Clark gave Josh exactly what he wanted to hear: a denunciation of the neo-conservatives' pernicious but little noticed role in the making of American foreign policy. Strangely, Clark holds the Project for a New American Century responsible for Clinton's decision to take a hardline on Iraq in 1998.

In response, the NY Sun ran a somewhat hysterical column denouncing Clark as a conspiracy theorist. Unsurprisingly, Josh responded with a long post praising Clark's extraordinary insight into the foreign policymaking process. Isn't it amazing how smart people are when they agree with you?

Anyhow, I thought the most disturbing part of Clark's interview was where he talked about what counts as a victory in Iraq:

The elements of it might be the following: What kind of government? A unitary Iraq? Maybe a federalized Iraq? A common language, common currency, common -- no customs problems inside Iraq. Common schools, common flag, all the symbols of nationhood.

So, you want to hold Iraq together. And, a country that doesn't threaten its neighbors, and a government that has enough security wherewithal to be able to protect itself and not become a recruiting base for al Qaida. And an Iraq that's able to be integrated into the modern world. So if you lay out those five criteria in some way, you probably could come up with a definition of success.

God forbid that the words "democracy" or "human rights" should pass the General's lips. Or think of this way: here's a man who brags about standing up to Slobodan Milosevic and forcing the Pentagon to fight in Kosovo, but can't say anything about the importance of freedom in Iraq?

While the chances are quite good that I would favor Wes Clark if the race came down to one between him and Howard Dean, I think it's becoming increasingly clear that Clark doesn't really know why he wants to be President. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:56 PM by David Adesnik  

HOW NOT TO RUN AN OCCUPATION: The Kremlin is in the process of sabotaging upcoming "elections" in Chechnya. Now what was it that people were saying about giving other Security Council members greater influence in Iraq? (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:53 PM by David Adesnik  

THE TRUTH SHALL SET YOU FREE (IF YOU PAY FOR IT): The WaPo reports that Iraq's

Teachers are still paid poorly, but received salary increases from the U.S.-led occupation authority. Their monthly salary is now between $67 and $333 a month. During Hussein's rule, the wages ranged from $5 to $13 a month.

A damn good investment, if you ask me. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:46 PM by David Adesnik  

WHAT IS LE BIG DEAL? Rather than jumping all over George Bush as one might expect, the French are coming off as surprisingly complacent about "L'affaire Wilson". You have to give'em credit for being consistent when it comes to abuses of presidential power -- they didn't complain much about Saddam, either. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:21 PM by David Adesnik  

WELL, HE IS MARRIED TO A KENNEDY: Arnold admits he has behaved less than admirably around women. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:15 PM by David Adesnik  

NORTH KOREAN OLIVE BRANCH? The government says it has no intentions of exporting nuclear technology.

UPDATE: Kevin Drum and the WaPo have a very different take on this one than myself and the NYT. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:22 PM by David Adesnik  

EMPOWERING AMERICA: The WaPo says that empowerment is the secret of Howard Dean's success. The question is, can Dean empower centrists and independents as well as committed Democrats? And can he keep his foot out of his mouth in the process of doing so? (Not that Clark is any better on that count...) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:12 PM by David Adesnik  

GOT OUR BACKS: TAPPED is (indirectly) defending myself and Mr. Chafetz from Andrew Sullivan. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:57 PM by David Adesnik  

PARALLEL FISKING: CalPundit introduces a revolution in layout aesthetics. Plus, Kevin says Gray Davis is about to be Terminated. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:46 PM by David Adesnik  

TEMPEST IN A D-CUP: Beware of killer breasts.

UPDATE: OxBlog medical correspondent Dr. BL says that the killer breasts mentioned above should not be confused with these killer breasts, which happen to be fictional. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:42 PM by David Adesnik  

CONFUSION AND IRONY: At first, Democratic legislators told President Bush he wasn't doing enough to rebuild Iraq. Now they're telling him he's doing too much. (While still insisting he isn't doing enough in Afghanistan.)

Instead of an outright grant, Senate Democrats (along with some Republicans) want American aid to come in the form of a loan secured against Iraq's expected oil revenues. You know, I never thought I'd see the day that a White House run by oil executives would be criticized by its opponents for not taking enough of an interest in Iraqi oil.

Fortunately, both the NYT and WSJ agree that demanding repayment from Iraq is both morally unacceptable and politically unwise. Moreover, the Times is right that the Democrats should focus on ensuring a fair bidding process for reconstruction contracts rather than adding to Iraq's debt burden.

Finally, if the Democrats straightened out their priorities, they might be able to focus the President's attention on emerging challenges to democracy and human rights in Afghanistan. More importantly, let's just hope General Clark has his head on straight when it comes Iraq and Afghanistan. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:31 PM by David Adesnik  

BETRAYING THE REVOLUTION: Nick Kristof writes that

A generation ago, Americans protested and held divestment rallies in a snowballing movement against the injustices of South African apartheid...

These days, an incomparably greater injustice — random sickness and death, often striking infants — ravages South Africa.

[President] Mbeki's know-nothing obstructionism has killed incomparably more South Africans than any apartheid leader ever did.

Those are harsh words coming from such a staunch liberal. Imagine saying that Ben Gurion killed more Jews than Hitler. The sad thing is, Kristof is probably right. Mbeki's negligence is criminal.

But is there any hope for change? I guess I'd say there is a possibility, if not much hope. I suspect that change will only come if Nelson Mandela is willing to risk his reputation as South Africa's founding father and demand that Mr. Mbeki and the ANC start acting responsibly.

While Mandela does often say the right things about AIDS, he does not say them loud enough. He is an old man who seems afraid of risking his incalculable prestige by taking a controversial position on the major issues of the day.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:15 PM by David Adesnik  

THOUGHTS: I just want to send all my best to SS, who's in the hospital right now. Here's to a quick and full recovery. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:02 PM by David Adesnik  

SUICIDE AND IDEOLOGY: Scholar Martin Kramer has put up a very good response to Robert Pape's argument that suicide bombings are not an ideological phenomenon. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:46 PM by David Adesnik  

LIBERATING IRAQ...FROM TARIFFS: Dan Drezner says free trade is already benefitting Iraq tremendously. But Juan Cole thinks free trade is a Chalabist scam (and Josh Marshall agrees). I know which way my instincts go on this one, but I don't have any actual evidence. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:27 PM by David Adesnik  

GRAHAM CRACKED? I haven't seen anything in the papers yet, but I think it won't be long before he drops out. Mid-level campaign staffers are losing their jobs and some of the upper-mid-level folks are already talking to the Clark campaign. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:19 PM by David Adesnik  

NO DANGER OF THAT: Matt Yglesias kindly warns me not to confuse Harvard with America. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:02 PM by David Adesnik  

CALLING TPM: Why isn't Josh Marshall all over Dick Cheney's ridiculous defense of his assertion that Saddam was involved in the Sept. 11th attacks? Probably because Josh is focused "like a laser" on the Wilson/Plame scandal. If you want the latest on "Wilsongate", TPM is the place to go.

Also, it seems that Josh doesn't have enough time to invest in good publicity photos. As we all know, TPM features a photo of unshaven hipster Josh, gazing dreamily throught geek-chic glasses at what seems to be an invisible computer screen. Compare that to the snapshot of Josh running in his most recent Hill column. He's wearing a suit and scowling like he's got indigestion. Plus, what happened to "Micah"? Everyone knows that middle names are cool. If you don't got one, you're nothing. Right, W.? (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:42 PM by David Adesnik  

MY SPIDER-SENSE IS TINGLING: The NYT reports that Bush's 2000 campaign manager has set up a lobbying firm devoted to helping corporations get reconstruction contracts for Iraq.

In theory, there's nothing wrong with that. There are lobbyists for everything. But wouldn't it help for the administration to have a bidding process that was a lot more transparent? It almost makes you wonder if Paul Krugman is coming back into touch with reality. (But notice the cheapshot Krugman takes at Bechtel; if you read the WaPo story his accusation is based on, you'll see it's pretty unfair.)

UPDATE: Josh Marshall was all over this one before the NYT. Scroll up for further details. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:16 PM by David Adesnik  

BAD NEWS & DIRTY POLITICS: In yesterday's Best of the Web, James Taranto catches WaPo correspondent Dana Milbank admitting that the media is looking for bad news in Iraq. Presumably for reasons of space, Jim left out the following Milbank quote, which I thought was even more damning:

MILBANK: What happened with President Bush is he was doing well for so long because of September 11. I think there was a lot of pent-up frustration in the press corps. They were waiting for that moment when there was, No. 1, a scandal, or, No. 2, a major policy failure.

KURTZ: They were waiting to jump on the president, waiting for him to stumble.

MILBANK: Yes, and that's not Bush in particular. Any president would get that.

What's really surprising is that Milbank answered Kurtz's question in the affirmative. I assumed Kurtz was baiting him, daring him to say the media wanted to make Bush look bad.

Now Milbank is probably right that the media would do that to any president. Hey, even Jimmy Carter got mercilessly thrashed by his ideological teammates.

But it's still pretty warped to think that the media would want to take the President down just because of his success (or perception thereof). That's even worse than an ideological or partisan bias. At least in those cases it's a matter of principle or politics. But resenting someone for their success is just short-sighted and childish, not to mention a betrayal of journalists obligation to their audience.

Then again, it isn't fair to condemn the entire press corps on the basis of one statment from one correspondent. Besides, Milbank deserves credit for being honest, i.e. telling us how he does his reporting.

CLARIFICATION: The original version of this post referred to Dana Milbank using feminine pronouns. This was a reflection of my ignorance, not an insidious effort to undermine Mr. Milbank's masculinity. And thanks to RiceGrad for catching my mistake. Also, Josh reminds me (via e-mail) that Aziz Poonawalla is a woman, not a man. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:01 PM by David Adesnik  

SPEAKING OF CULTURE WARS: Maybe David Brooks should've have written about the one going on between Japan & China. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:54 PM by David Adesnik  

THROWING THE BOOK AT BROOKS: I don't know why I have it in for this guy. He's intelligent. He's moderate. But sometimes it seems like the broad social trends he identifies are fantasies cut from whole cloth.

Today, David Brooks writes that the Culture Wars have been replaced by attempted assassination of the President's character. It happened to Clinton and now its happening to Bush. Brooks writes:

During the 1980's, when the culture wars were going full bore, the Moral Majority clashed with the People for the American Way. Allan Bloom published "The Closing of the American Mind" and liberals and conservatives argued over the 1960's.

Uh, hello? Does anyone remember Ronald Reagan and how much both mainstream Democrats and committed liberals hated him? In fact, Reagan played a critical role in the Culture Wars, with opponents charging that his cliche vision of America as a Norman Rockwell painting was a deceptive facade behind which Republicans hid a radical right agenda.

The big point Brooks seems to miss is that the current occupant of the White House is always at the center of debates about American culture. The American President is the ultimate celebrity. No other figures commands to close to as much attention from the media, even if the question of the day is "Boxers or briefs?"

Brooks is right that abortion and other issues of personal morality are not in command of the headlines the way they once were. But what do you expect after 9-11? We're still fighting culture wars, except this time the playing field is foreign policy. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:32 PM by David Adesnik  

RUMSFELD LISTENS TO OXBLOG: Last week, the SecDef published a contentious op-ed in the WaPo. This week he has an almost identical column in the WSJ Online edition. Identical, except for the fact that every argument OxBlog criticized has been taken out. Maybe those "dod.gov" hits were coming from the Secretary's office...

Also, Rumsfeld notes that

In Iraq, virtually all major hospitals and universities have been re-opened, and hundreds of secondary schools--until a few months ago used as weapons caches--have been rebuilt and were ready for the start of the fall semester.

Around here, we're still using the secondary schools as weapons caches!

PLUS: The WSJ has some sensible comments about reducing Iraq's debt burden. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:22 PM by David Adesnik  

VASECTOMY DELAYS TUBE COMMUTERS: While breakdowns are standard fare for the British rail system, I never suspected that this was the cause. (Special thanks to JK for the link.) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:15 AM by David Adesnik  

BROOKS YET AGAIN: I really want to go to sleep, but after seeing Glenn cite this post from Juan Non-Volokh, I just had to respond.

Juan writes that

When I was an undergraduate at Yale, I had several long discussions with my senior essay advisor about whether to pursue my PhD. My advisor, who was himself quite liberal, cautioned against it, largely because of my emerging, right-of-center political views. As he described it, succeeding in the liberal arts academy is tough enough as it is without the added burden of holding unpopular views. To illustrate the risk, he noted that one of his colleagues on the graduate admissions committee explicitly blackballed each and every candidate who had ever received financial support (scholarships, fellowships, etc.) from the John M. Olin Foundation because, his colleague insisted, the Olin Foundation only funded people who thought like they did, and Yale did not want any graduate students who thought that way. If I truly wanted to be an academic, he counseled, I was better off going to law school.

So I guess I must be pretty f***ed, given that I'm a fellow at the John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies. Then again, I'm headed for DC, so it's no skin off my back.

But seriously...prior Olin fellows have an extremely impressive track record of finding tenure-track positions at top-tier universities. Moreover, we're very much part of the mainstream here at Harvard. And finally, I can assure you that the rest of the Olin Fellows don't share either the Foundation's political views or my own.

So, is there a message here? First, read the rest of Juan's post. He has some excellent insights into the hiring process which aren't quoted above. Second, I agree with the points Juan makes in the rest of his post, namely that anti-conservative sentiment is rarely a direct factor in the hiring process. However, it shapes the environment in a way that it makes it hard for conservatives to feel comfortable.

In so many words, Juan does a far more eloquent job than myself of arguing for the importance of self-selection in the hiring process. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:58 AM by David Adesnik  

MORE ACADEMIC FASCISM: Yesterday, I discounted David Brooks' concern that the liberal academy persecutes conservative professors and graduate students. The question is, am I being naive?

JG says

I do not quite understand how you can argue that there partisan political ideas do not affect the hiring process. If that is the case, how do you explain the fact that America is divided roughly equally between conservatives, liberals, and independents, and yet the academy is 90% liberal?

I mean that as an honest question, not rhetorically...at my college and among most of my friends, the idea that you could vote for Bush is considered beyond the pale. I had a friend from college (now getting a PhD in physics at Cornell) who said, matter-of-factly, that someone he knew "opposed the war in Iraq - as any reasonable person would." Well, since I supported the war in Iraq, I objected to this. We ended up having a very good conversation about it (he's a very open-minded person), and he concluded that my position was rational and that conservatives weren't as crazy as he thought - and that he simply had been in an environment where no one had ever even bothered to understand conservative views.

So why are 90% of professors liberal? One answer might be self-selection. Given how liberal the academy is, how many conservatives would actually want to spend their entire professional lives there? There's a lot more respect available elsewhere, not to mention financial rewards and job security (after all, tenure is rather hard to come by).

Obviously, I don't have empirical evidence to back up my claim. But I am very skeptical of those who look at the numbers and assume that active prejudice is responsible for the divide.

By way of comparison, think about journalism. Most reporters are left-of-center. But that's because the left valorizes journalism in a way that the right simply does not.

Now what about the evidence of active prejudice that I dismissed as hearsay? Michael Ledeen writes that

Anecdotally, I have spoken to many young academics who are concealing their true political convictions because they know that they will never get tenure as conservatives, but only as liberals.

Adding fuel to the fire, AC describes a strange incident at the University of Michigan in which a Nigerian professor sued the University, charging that the lesbian feminist chair of his department denied him tenure because he wasn't a woman.

Now, what this all reminds me of is a column I wrote for the Yale Daily News a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away. (Btw, many thanks to the YDN for continuting to archive all of my old columns online, along with those of my fellow columnists.)

Anyhow, in said column I took issue with student activists who argued that sexism was responsible for the predominance of men on the Yale faculty. While writing the column, I had the chance to sit down with two representatives of the Yale Women's Center who passionately believed that sexism was responsible for the gender imbalance.

I found their arguments unpersuasive, however, precisely because they rested on exactly the same sort of hearsay that Brooks and others rely on to demonstrate the anti-conservative prejudice of the academy. This is not to deny that some of this hearsay evidence reflects actual instances of prejudice.

Rather, I suspect that those who focus on the hearsay tend to ignore much more compelling arguments for the absence of certain sorts of professors, be they female or conservative. (With regard to women, I listed the other relevant arguments in my column.)

While I haven't researched the hiring process as it pertains to conservatives, I think one has address two big points before crying wolf: First is the issue of self-selection, as mentioned above. Has anyone actually documented the political preferences of grad school applicants? By the same token, what explains the decisions of so many conservative Ph.D.s to leave the academy? Was it prejudice or opportunity?

Second is an issue briefly mentioned in yesterday's post, i.e. the influence of esoteric methodological debates on hiring practices. Given the demonstrated importance of such concerns, shouldn't we look at them first before concluding that political concerns drive the hiring process?

I'm not saying that I have the answers to these questions. But I think David Brooks should've made a much more serious effort to address them before deciding that liberals are the one to blame. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:14 AM by David Adesnik  

WITH FRIENDS LIKE THIS: Never a fan of Ahmed Chalabi, OxBlog asked last week why the INC chief was echoing French demands for an immediate transfer of sovereignty to the Iraqi council.

Well, we may now have an answer. According to an internal report by the Defense Intelligence Agency, all of the information provided by Chalabi & Co. before the war was completely worthless. Thus, Chalabi may have assumed that his days as a Pentagon protege were numbered, and figured that the sooner America is out of Iraq, the better for him.

After all, Chalabi only has a position on the Iraqi council thanks to American influence. If elections are ever held, he'll probably become nothing than a footnote in Iraqi history. But if the council becomes the first sovereign Iraqi government, Chalabi may be in a position to consolidate his power base despite having negligible popular support.

Of course, this is all speculation. But there is good reason to only expect the worst from Chalabi. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:00 AM by David Adesnik  

THE LESSONS OF (RECENT) HISTORY: The British have been involved a quiet nation-building exercise in Sierra Leone since 1998. The United States may want to consider the implications. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:53 PM by David Adesnik  

I WANT A RAISE! This morning's paper says that

Harvard, whose endowment was already the largest in the country, earned a 12.5 percent return on its investments in the 2003 fiscal year (which ended June 30) helping its endowment climb to $19.3 billion. Investment experts said the gain was not only one of the highest among colleges, but also among large financial funds generally.

I'd also like my own office, preferably with a window. And a pony. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:46 PM by David Adesnik  

DUELING HEADLINES: The WaPo says "Bush, Putin Urge Iran, N. Korea to Abandon Suspected Nuclear Weapons Programs". The NYT says "Russia Won't End Accord With Iran to Build Reactor"

I'm going to have to go with the NYT on this one. Putin is a lying thug. And what is going on at the WaPo? Last week, it ran an editorial saying Putin is a lying thug. Now they're making nice?

Well, at least W. isn't going on anymore about seeing into Putin's soul. Instead, he damns him with faint praise: "I like [Putin]. He's a good fellow to spend quality time with." They used to say that about Brezhnev, too. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:28 PM by David Adesnik  

LEFT-WING FASCISTS: David Brooks says the liberal academy is making life impossible for aspiring conservative professors.

I don't buy it. First of all, Brooks' evidence consists mostly of hearsay statements made by those with axes to grind. Thus, I'm glad Brooks is fair enough to quote Volokh Conspirator Jacob T. Levy, who observes that

...some conservatives exaggerate the level of hostility they face. Some politicized humanities departments may be closed to them, he concedes, but professors in other fields are open to argument.

From where I stand, what matters far more to hiring committees (at least in polisci departments) are not their partisan political preferences, but rather the sides they have chosen in esoteric ivory tower civil wars. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:20 PM by David Adesnik  

EVASION OR EFFICIENCY? The NYT reports that US Central Command is making it harder and harder for visitors on its website to get news about casualties in Iraq.

While the Times strongly implies that Central Command is hiding the bad news in order to make it seem like the occupation is working, I think there's a much simpler explanation to be had: The Pentagon doesn't want to waste energy publicizing casualty reports that the NYT is going to splash all over the front page anyway. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:09 PM by David Adesnik  

"IT IS OK TO HATE GEORGE BUSH": That's one of the signs that today's protesters have up in Harvard Square. Another good one was "Lobotomies for Republicans -- It's the Law". Well at least they're promoting a positive agenda for social change, instead of just engaging in destructive partisan attacks. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:37 AM by Patrick Belton  

IT'S A LONG WAY TO TIPPERARY but Galway's not so far off. My lovely wife and I are off to Ireland to pass our anniversary in the traditional style - i.e., cold, and with lots of busybodying fishermen neighbours poking their noses in our bedroom window when we wake up. We'll be off in Inishmaan, the middle of the three Irish-speaking Aran Islands in Galway Bay, where I've got some relations. Look for a Letter from Ireland to come.

In the meantime, we'll be reading Playboy to each other on the bus to Stansted (not Heffner's, sorry, but Synge's Playboy of the Western World - close as I could get us), as well as Ulysses to each other once we get there.

Slainte! (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:20 PM by Patrick Belton  

BRAVO TO THE WASH POST for having this to say about Russia's undemocratic efforts in Chechnya, and Russia's pure gall in comparing its operations there with US and allied opererations in Iraq and Afghanistan:

Mr. Putin likes to compare the four-year-old Russian war against Chechens seeking independence with the U.S. operations in Iraq and Afghanistan; in a meeting with American journalists last weekend, he questioned whether U.S. forces were violating human rights on the streets of Baghdad. In fact the comparison is obscene. In Chechnya Russian troops have wiped out a democratically elected government, killed tens of thousands of civilians, forced others out of refugee camps and back into the war zone, reduced the capital and every major town to rubble, indiscriminately rounded up the entire male populations of dozens of villages for torture or summary execution and so shattered the country's civil society that previously marginal Islamic extremists now are a major force.

This war, remember, was launched purely to bolster Mr Putin's presidential ambitions. As the WashPost notes,

Putin was a strong opponent of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and now he says he is skeptical of U.S. plans for reconstruction. Any political transition, he insists, must be endorsed by the United Nations and Arab states around Iraq. So we can only imagine what Mr. Putin's reaction would be if, during their scheduled meeting at Camp David this week, President Bush were to confide that his official plan to return Iraq to representative government was a mere facade. Mr. Bush might say that Iraq's constitution actually would be written in Washington so as to permanently require the presence of U.S. troops and political control and that the United States would select a presidential candidate who would be allowed to install his campaign manager as supervisor of all Iraqi media. If any serious challengers dared to take on Washington's favorite in a U.S.-run election, the White House would simply force them out of the race."

Well put. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:27 AM by David Adesnik  

THE RACE FOR 2004: Kevin Drum rounds up yesterday's Democratic debate and says its time for the also-rans to let Dean & Clark get down to business.

Kevin also raises the important issue of Mrs. Clark's hairstyle. I have to admit, it may be even siller than Laura Bush's. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:40 AM by Patrick Belton  

PARIS, CAPITAL OF FREEDOM: Today in the capital of Freedom (well, that would be the logical result of doing a massive cultural search-and-replace, converting "France" and "French" into "Freedom," wouldn't it?), a Frenchman named Thierry Meyssan took moral umbrage at the much-publicized deck of cards presenting ex-tyrant Saddam and his sub-thugs as the jokers they were. Said deck of cards had, of course, an illustrious lineage dating back to the Allies' efforts in WWII, but then again, come to think of it, the French weren't too much in favour of that, either. Thus Monsieur Meyssan: "I found it completely indecent to present a manhunt as a game." So he came up with his own deck, with members of the Bush administration prominently displayed therein. "We thought this card game would allow us to ... explain why we consider the government of George Bush a threat to international security."

M. Meyssan's seizure of the moral high ground, however, gets a little shaky when we remember that in a kooky book called 9-11: The Big Lie, he claimed that no plane ever crashed into the Pentagon on September 11, and that the attacks were plotted by a faction within the U.S. military. What's even more troubling is that his book was a best-seller in France (sorry, I meant Freedom).

As with culture, music, and revolutions, of course, Moscow's destiny has generally been to copy Paris, so we can now also buy a deck na-pycckii from Kommersant. Which, incidentally, attempted to take the high road with its. "We want to show our readers the various faces of the current U.S. political elite,...that it is a complex, living organism with varied and vivid personalities," said Azer Mursaliyev, foreign editor of the business daily Kommersant, which designed the cards. Danyet. Gimme a break. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:49 PM by Patrick Belton  

TEQUILA WARS: Half of Mexico's total Tequila output is consumed in the United states - 86.4 million bottles in 2002. That's a lotta Tequila. Of this, 83 percent is shipped to the U.S. in bulk form and bottled here. This, however, may change, and whether it is set to do so or not is the topic of a trade war currently...err, brewing...between Washington and Mexico City. Mexico is threatening to cut off the bulk exports, saying it needs to tighten quality controls on the namebrand which the Government of Mexico, in fact, owns. So the Mexican government is drafting a regulation to ensure all Tequila is bottled in Mexico, and is moving on a timetable of publishing the regulation in late October, with the aim of entering into effect as early as the start of the coming year. Meanwhile, American bottling industry officials are saying the Government of Mexico is simply making a grab for bottling jobs. Mexico's Tequila Regulatory Council is saying that purported bulk shipments have turned out to be sugar cane alcohol or grains spirits, or that U.S. bottlers were violating Mexican standards by mixing different varieties of Tequila together.

Maybe if they just all had a drink together....
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# Posted 7:49 PM by David Adesnik  

TEMPEST IN THE ACADEMIC TEAPOT: When I put up posts about theoretical and methodological issues in political science, I generally expect them to be ignored. After all, that kind of stuff is pretty distant from real politics.

But what I underestimated, I think, was how many bloggers have a dog in this fight. Thus, there were passionate responses to my post from both Dan Drezner and Chris Lawrence, as well as a pretty animated discussion in the comments section following Dan's post.

However, despite the rising temperature, I don't think I disagree with all that much in their posts. A few clarifications are in order, however. First of all, I was all but unaware of the "perestroika" movement in political science at the time of writing my post.

As a scholar of British extraction, nothing that happens on the far side of the Atlantic tends to enter my stream of consciousness. However, in the past three weeks at Harvard, I have heard some murmuring about "perestroika" without really knowing what it's about.

What I can definitely say is that after reading the article about the movment which Dan recommended, I think I can say that I am fundamentally sympathetic to its objectives. (On the other hand, I find it strange to agree with John Mearsheimer about anything.)

Next up: Dan surmises that

There's a very big difference between creating new data and using new statistical techniques to analyze old data. I strongly suspect Adesnik's source of irritation is the latter. The former is way too rare in the discipline, especially in international relations. Mostly that's because building new data sets takes a lot of time and the rewards in terms of professional advancement are not great, whereas relying on old data has no fixed costs.

Actually, I'm far more frustrated by the new data sets than the rehashing of the old ones. Just three days ago I was at a presentation in which a colleague described the data set she assembled on over 120 civil wars that have taken place since 1945. Since Latin America is the region I know best, I pulled the Latin American cases out of the data to set look at them.

What I found was that a very large proportion of the cases were "coded" in a misleading or flat-out wrong manner. Why? Because no one can study 120 civil wars. But pressure to come up with data sets leads scholars to do this anyway and do it poorly. Of course, since their work is evaluated mostly by other scholars who lack the historical knowledge to criticize their work, they get away with it. And so the academic merry-go-round spins merrily along.

Now for an actual disagreement: Chris Lawrence takes exception to my statement that "it is absolutely impossible to explain the tactics of Al Qaeda or Hamas without reference to their perverse ideologies." He responds:

It is? Actually, it’s pretty easy to explain their tactics—historically, they’ve been quite effective. What’s (slightly) more difficult to explain is why Al Qaeda and Hamas engage in terrorism while the Sierra Club and Libertarian Party don’t.

With apologies to Chris, his comment summarizes everything that is wrong with political science. Who but a political scientist could think that ideology is not a good explanation for the differences between the Sierra Club and Hamas?

Now, if Chris is still willing to talk to me after that cheap shot, I'd ask him where he's been spending the past month given that he

just came back from spending a month with people who told me that the absolute worst way to get a job in political science is to “invent statistics.”

Around Harvard, all one hears is that incorporating statistics into one's work significantly increases one's marketability (and I don't just mean at the p<.05 level -- we're talking p<.01 on a one-tailed test.) Obviously, Harvard isn't the be all and end all of political science, but all the visiting fellows from Stanford, Columbia, etc. agree. Also, consider the following, taken from the Perestroika article that Dan recommended:

In their study “Methodological Bias in the APSR” David Pion-Berlin, a political scientist at the University of California at Riverside, an outspoken perestroikan, and his student Dan Cleary assessed APSR content from 1991 to 2000, finding that 74 percent of its articles were based on empirical statistical analysis or formal modeling. Only 25 percent involved political theory, and just 1 percent were qualitative case studies of particular governments or institutions. In a “publish or perish” world where jobs and research funding are doled out according to APSR appearances on c. vitae, qualitative researchers, as Mearsheimer puts it, “are considered dinosaurs.”

Yikes. Btw, I do need to concede one point Chris made. It is ironic that my anti-polisci jeremiad was provoked by a study that had comparatively few statistics in it -- something I would've noticed if I'd looked at the American Political Science Review instead of the New York Times. Still, the words "comparatively few" are important here. The study in question makes exactly those mistakes I ascribe to political science in general, even if it is not the worst offender.

Finally, the Edward Said challenge. I obviously agree that many area studies experts with extensive language training add little to our collective knowledge because of their political prejudices. But I am firm in many conviction that many of the simple errors that political scientists make could be avoided through greater area expertise.

Take, for example, the flaws in the civil war data set mentioned above. I'm hardly a Latin America specialist, but even some knowledge of the region's history made it apparent that the data set was flawed. If political scientists had greater expertise in a given region, they would appreciate just how often in-depth study is necessary to get even the basic facts right. Thus, when putting together a global data set, no political scientist would even consider coding the data before consulting colleagues who are experts in the relevant regional subfields.

But is that enough? As Dan says,

I have no doubt that historians can, through closely argued scholarship, identify which groups are extremist -- ex post. The key is to find descriptive characteristics that can be identified ex ante. Without ex ante markers to identify proper explanatory variables, theories degenerate into tautologies.

It's sort of strange that Dan picked the identification of extremist groups as his example, since that's an easy case for me. Long before 9/11, almost everyone in the US government believed that Osama bin Laden was a menace because of his radical ideology. Included in that "everyone" are Steve Simon and Daniel Benjamin, NSC experts who published an article months before 9/11 arguing that bin Laden's ideology set him far apart from other terrorists precisely because he wanted to kill as many civilians as possible, rather than simply generating media coverage though small to medium-sized attacks.

Only now, two years after 9/11, does a generalist like Robert Pape come along and tell us that ideology isn't the primary cause of suicide terror attacks. Ah, political science.

Last but not least: I can agree with just about everything in Josh's response to my original post. That post was certainly more polemical than nuanced.
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# Posted 7:02 PM by Patrick Belton  

NOW THIS is just cool. What's even cooler is that one of my better friends at Oxford is working on the project. (And incidentally, she's gorgeous, single....and is singularly easy to date, since she comes with her own portable library of movies...) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:52 PM by David Adesnik  

THE DUROCHER MYTH: Multiple readers have let me know that Leo Durocher never said "Nice guys finish last." Actually, someone asked him about the Chicago Cubs and he said "Nice guys;...[they'll] finish last."

My real problem with this correction is that now you can't follow up Durocher's alleged remark with "Or not at all." Think about it. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 4:25 PM by David Adesnik  

RUMSFELD AS PILATE: Josh is right that there were some strong points in Sec. Rumsfeld's op-ed in the WaPo this morning. But there was also much about his column that was disingenuous and disturbing.

First of all, I don't know how Rumsfeld can pretend that the US limited its role in the reconstruction of Afghanistan in order to prevent Afghans from becoming dependent on American largesse. Next he'll be telling us that we left all those warlords in place so that we don't deprive the Afghans of the good feeling that comes from building one's own central government.

Then, in a truly splendiferous display of chutzpah, Rumsfeld insists that the United States has consistently sought to treat Iraq no differently than Afghanistan by avoiding an excessive post-war presence. Hence,

We kept our footprint modest, liberating Iraq with a little more than 100,000 U.S. troops on the ground.

That's right folks, the real reason for limiting the size of the invasion of force had nothing to do with technology or military strategy. It was all about increasing Iraqi self-esteem.

But perhaps one ought to look past this sort of ridiculous rhetoric and accept that Rumsfeld simply isn't able to be honest about a lot of things. At least he's decided to get on board the President's plan for democratizing Iraq. As Rumsfeld writes,

The work in Iraq is difficult, costly and dangerous. But it is worth the risks and the costs...

If we succeed, we will deal terrorism a powerful blow, because a democratic Iraq in the heart of the Middle East would be a defeat for the ideology of terror that is seeking to take control of that area of the world.

Still, I can't shake the feeling that Rumsfeld is starting to lay the groundwork for American withdrawal for a nation-building process he never wanted to become involved in in the first place. Take the following passage, for example:

To help Iraqis succeed, we must proceed with some humility. American forces can do many remarkable things, but they cannot provide permanent stability or create an Iraqi democracy. That will be up to the Iraqi people.

In other words, once things begin to head south, we can blame the Iraqi people and bring the boys back home. Or we can declare democracy a failure and recognize a military regime.

No, Rumsfeld didn't say either of those things...explicitly. But can you really trust a man that has so little respect for the American public? (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 4:05 PM by David Adesnik  

THE IMMUTABLE LAWS RETURN: Last month, Maureen Dowd told us that Arnold Schwarzenegger is

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

But the Times they are a changin'. Today, MoDo is praising Arnold for his unmatched candor:

Later that night [after our interview, Arnold] called to say he hadn't given me properly reflective answers. Oh, boy, I thought, here comes the usual pretentious pap pols dish out about reading Winston Churchill and watching foreign indies. "I forgot to tell you," Arnold said eagerly, "my two favorite actresses are Julia Roberts and Meryl Streep. And my idol is Clint Eastwood. And I loved `The Lion King.' "

So what's going on here? How did Schwarzenegger go from whipping-boy to poster boy?

Answer: He made Dowd believe that he is a real European. And as The Fifth Immutable Law of Dowd states: "Europeans are always right."

Last month, Dowd thought of Schwarzenegger as nothing more than a product of Hollywood kitsch, i.e. pure America. But then, Arnold told Maureen that

"I love shopping for my wife...because wherever I go in the world, I think about her and I want to bring something back. So when you go to Europe, they have great stores. So I go and I get jackets, shirts, whole outfits, dresses. Because I know exactly the sizes!

So I guess I've learned my lesson. Dowd never departs from the Immutable Laws. It is just lesser mortals such as myself who fail to apply them properly.
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# Posted 3:39 PM by David Adesnik  

PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE READ OUR NEWSPAPER: From a NYT masthead editorial:

Mr. Bush and his aides also seem to go to great lengths to underline the degree to which the president closes himself off from the news media. In an interview with Fox News this week, the president said he learned most of what he needs to know from morning briefings by his national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, and his chief of staff, Andrew Card.

As for newspapers, Mr. Bush said, "I glance at the headlines" but "rarely read the stories."

Bush doesn't read OxBlog either, but we won't use that as an excuse to take cheapshots at Condi & Andrew! (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:34 PM by David Adesnik  

BASEBALL AND POLITICAL SCIENCE: The next book I'm going to read is Michael Lewis' Moneyball. It is the story of how the Oakland A's have managed to win more games than anyone else while spending less and less on players' salaries. But really it's a book about capitalism.

For a good review of the book, head over to TNR. According to Cass Sunstein & Richard Thaler, the remarkable success of A's manager Billy Beane demonstrates how unconventional thinking can expose and exploit massive inefficiencies in an open marketplace.

This is not a new idea for Lewis, however, who first made a name for himself with Liar's Poker, an inside account of Salomon Brothers' meteoric rise and fall reflected the damaging conventional wisdom and inbred culture of the bond-trading world. (I happen to be reading Liar's Poker right now and recommend it highly.)

Thus, to my mind, what really stands out about Moneyball is how its hero, Billy Beane, drew most of his ideas from the work of an obscure statistician by the name of Bill James.

Now, for some of us, James is not obscure. As an intellectual and inept eleven-year old, I thought of James as a godsend. Here's was someone who insisted that brains matter far more in baseball than raw talent. (Not that the kids at summer camp would stop laughing at my incompetence on the baseball diamond, but at least I could feel a little bit better about myself.)

In hindsight, it seems pretty self-evident that the relationship between myself and the jocks strongly resembles the current relationship between political scientists and policymakers. Like James, the professors blast the policymakers for subscribing to primitive myths that prevent them from doing their job as best they can. Like jocks, the policymakers laugh at the pointy-headed intellectuals who think they know how to draft good laws and negotiate with foreign governments.

The difference between James and the political scientists is that James' ideas are now proven to work. Meanwhile, political scientists continue to produce veritable avalanches of useless statistics that resemble pseudo-science more than anything else. Of course, what motivates political scientists (some might even admit it) is that one day, a man like Billy Beane will become President or Secretary of State or National Security Adviser and decide to put their ideas to work, finally vindicating all those years of hard academic labor.

My guess is that political scientists who read Moneyball will find it a source of renewed faith in their profession. That, however, is wrong the lesson to draw from it.

The starting point for a political analysis of Moneyball is recognition of the fact that baseball is an inherently amoral activity. As Leo Durocher said, "Nice guys finish last." Ty Cobb was selfish and cruel individual, but also perhaps the best hitter of all time. Unsurprisingly, the Detroit Tigers' management decided that Cobb's ethical deficiencies didn't reduce his value as player.

In contrast, politics is an inherently ethical enterprise. Of course, after watching politicians in actions, you may conclude that politics is an inherently unethical enterprise. But that is exactly the point. We judge politicians from a moral perspective, regardless of whether we are praising or condemning them.

Unfortunately, political scientists seem to believe that they can grapple with the most profound political challenges without approaching them from an ethical perspective. After all, the mission of modern political science is to produce objective analyses of political events from which one can derive rational policy recommendations.

Yet in the absence of values, there is no such thing as rational politics. Rationality is a means to an end. Only values can define the merits of one end as opposed to another.

In theory, there could still be room for a rational science for politics if professors recognized that their mission was to identify the most effective set of means to a given end. However, this will only be possible if political scientists recognize that political actors are fundamentall moral actors.

The great flaw of modern political science is its desire to imitate microeconomists (and share in their prestige) by developing theorems that explain and predict the behavior of rational actors. Of course, that is exactly the wrong way to go about things. It is only when political scientists recognize that ideas and values are what drive politicians and voters that they will begin to produce something worthy of the name "science". (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:29 AM by Patrick Belton  

KLEINFELDS ON A ROLL: A couple of days ago over on Volokh, I was pointing out my mother-in-law's new book on the significance of frontiers in American culture. Well, now I'll be darned if they haven't got a dern good piece out on Iraq, too. Wow - my in-laws are writing more than me, and they've got real jobs! Not too shabby!

A few morsels, to provide a taste of their argument:

As we try to institutionalize democracy and freedom in Iraq, we need to take a clear-eyed look at what makes them stick. Externally imposed institutions, like constitutions and systems of law, are necessary but not sufficient. What makes freedom put down roots is culture. The world is littered with tyrannies calling themselves democracies with paper constitutions like our own. As the great Judge Learned Hand put it, "Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women. When it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it . . . While it lies there, it needs no constitution, no court, no law to save it."

What can be transferred to Iraq are institutions that may go some distance in fostering a freedom-loving culture. Chief among these is the free-enterprise system, which creates economic incentives to protect private property, spurs individuality and creativity, and — of no small importance — fosters anti-authoritarian childrearing practices to adapt children to succeed in an entrepreneurial environment. Free enterprise would be greatly assisted by something like the Alaska Permanent Fund, so that a portion of the oil money goes from the oil companies to the people, instead of from the oil companies to the government. Not only is it absurd for the people to be so poor in one of the richest oil states in the world, but the money excessively concentrates power in the government. If more people have money, more will have an interest in personal freedom, in being left alone by the government, and people with money will furnish power centers independent of each other and government.

Federalism, as well as separation of powers in the national government, promotes freedom, by creating independent, competing centers of power. It is a natural fit with Iraq's existing cultural divisions. Americans can support and encourage an Iraqi culture of democracy and freedom by supporting Iraqi artists and intellectuals who celebrate individual liberty grounded in indigenous cultural traditions. We did this successfully in Europe after World War II, such as by funding publications where freedom-minded authors unwelcome in the Communist magazines could publish. Iraq needs its own free, individualistic heroes. Much of our own socialization into a culture of freedom comes from the stories, music, movies, and heroic romances we grew up with, celebrating strong individuals doing the right thing, and doing their own thing.

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# Posted 12:38 AM by David Adesnik  

HONEY, I SHRUNK THE BLOG: Wondering where we've all been the past couple of days? Actually, probably not, since Josh explained the situation rather clearly. Anyhow, we're once again in business here at OxBlog.

Actually, we're only half in business for the moment since none of our permalinks are working. #$%@& Blogger!

That said, the big news for the moment is that Wes Clark is far ahead of the pack in a new CNN poll, even beating Bush in a head-to-head competition. Then again, Dukakis was a 15-point leader back in the summer of '88...

Yet regardless of the fact that this poll doesn't say much about November '04, it does provide Clark with the kind of jet fuel he needed to avoid becoming just another Democratic hopeful. Things may get interesting, especially Clark can finally decide whether he was for or against the war in Iraq.

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# Posted 11:07 PM by David Adesnik  

TREASON AND FAITH: The Army has charged a Muslim chaplain at Guantanamo with betraying his country. Phil Carter provides the analysis. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:47 PM by David Adesnik  

ARAFAT'S ERRAND BOY: In July, the American media rallied to the defense of Palestinian academic Khalil Shikaki, who became the victim of a local mob after he planned to announce the results of an opinion poll which purported to show that Palestinians had no interest in actually exercising the right of return.

Online, Daniel Drezner put up comprehensive and well-written posts tracking the media's reaction to the Shikaki incident. And OxBlog linked to those posts.

And why not? It was a great story. Brave academic discovers that a negotiated peace is possible, but extremists try to shut him up. Liberals and conservatives could both love it.

But now there is serious reason to believe that Shikaki is a charlatan who never deserved our sympathy. According to an article written by a friend of mine at the Washington Institute for Near Eastern Policy, Shikaki's opinion polls relied on question and methods designed to elicit exactly the answers that he -- and top Palestinian officials -- wanted to hear. As Max tells it,

The problem is that the poll makes relocating to Israel an unappealing option for most Palestinians since it stipulates a priori that "only a small number" of refugees will be allowed to "return," and that the fortunate few may have to wait "several years"...

Conversely, the respondents who opted to settle outside of pre-1967 Israeli land were led to believe that they would receive unrealistically generous amounts of financial compensation...of those who opted for financial compensation over relocating to Israel, two-thirds of the respondents believed they were entitled to anywhere between $100,000 and half a million dollars.

In the text of his press release, Shikaki does acknowledge, "The estimates for a fair compensation were much higher than the estimates of what would actually be paid." Yet in publicizing his findings in the American and Arab media, he avoids mentioning this fact.

Good work, Max. Hopefully this will get some more press.

What still isn't clear is why Shikaki did what he did. On the one hand, a real desire for peace may have tempted to manufacture evidence providing hope for a negotiated settlement. On the other hand, Shikaki may have been Arafat's errand boy, helping to lull the Israelis into accepting a sucker's deal in which they acknowledge the right of returning -- believing that Palestinians won't take them up on it -- only to find Israel deluged with refugees.

As Shikaki himself told an audience at the Brookings Institution,

"We consulted very heavily with Palestinian negotiators as we planned the instrument, that is, the questionnaire...

"We worked with them, we asked them what questions they wanted asked, and we proposed questions to them, and the eventual final product was one that essentially tried to include as much as possible the questions that negotiators were interested in answers to."

That just doesn't sound good... (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:12 PM by David Adesnik  

WHAT THE SOLDIERS ARE THINKING: As I said, I don't know. But here's an op-ed by one reservist, and some comments from a journalist friend of mine in Iraq:

Purely from anecdotal experience, American soldiers are very
disillusioned. From high ranking officers to grunts, they are incredibly
cynical (especially for Americans) about why they are there, hate being
there and take advantage of every opportunity they can to tell journalists
this, and that they want to go home.

Of course it varies from unit to unit, but the 3 month extension was a huge betrayal and destroyed whatever moral[e] was left. Eventually I'll write an article about that. I've been spending a lot of time with American military guys though, and
that's my impression. They also dislike the civilian CPA guys, who they
think are incompetent and ignorant, and I tend to sympathize with that view.

While I might conjecture that my journalist friend tends to attract soldiers with political opinions similar to his own, I am confident that he reports what he sees, no more and no less. So take it for what it's worth. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:54 PM by David Adesnik  

IT'S ALL CHALABI'S FAULT: This is partisan sniping, but it has the ring of truth -- probably because I've never trusted Ahmed Chalabi. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:45 PM by David Adesnik  

FREE MARKET OR FREE FOR ALL? The NYT has an interesting article on private security firms in Iraq. The basic message is that locals understand how to provide security whereas foreigners don't. If that's the case, then the free market in security is doing great things for Iraq.

But I still have questions. Most importantly, how do we know that these private guards don't use excessive force? Unless instructed to respect the rights of those they must confront, there is no reason to believe that their experiences under Saddam has taught them to behave in an appropriate manner.

Also, will private guards and their superiors cooperate with law enforcement officials? Or will they become a law unto themselves? Excited at the prospect of demonstrating that American incompetence is a reflection of American ignorance, the NYT forgot to ask if those who have local knowledge share the American vision of civil and human rights. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:27 PM by David Adesnik  

AT WHAT PRICE, HERR SCHROEDER? In a NYT op-ed, the German Chancellor makes nice to America and says Germany will help rebuild Iraq. He doesn't say what Germany expects in return. In other words, caveat emptor.

UPDATE: M. Chirac hints at the price. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion