# Posted 7:34 PM by David Adesnik  

GENOCIDAL DICTATOR DEFEATED: Voters turned back Guatemala's Gen. Efrain Rios Montt in his effort to win yesterday's presidential election. Rios Montt headed a military government in 1982-83 that sought to crush a leftist insurgency by indiscriminately murdering Guatemalan peasants.

Monday's election was also the most peaceful in recent Guatemalan history. It also had the largest turnout. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:22 PM by David Adesnik  

MISSION TO AFGHANISTAN: 15 envoys -- one from each state represented on the UN Security Council, have returned from Afghanistan with a mixed report on its progress toward democratic government. The mission found that

while Afghan officials have largely achieved the benchmarks of the Bonn agreement, which established the interim government and a timeline leading to national elections in 2004, "the conditions necessary for a credible political process are not yet in place," Mr. Pleuger [the German representative] said.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:15 PM by David Adesnik  

A TRIBUTE ON VETERANS DAY: The NYT has published a set of letters sent home by servicemen and -women who later lost their lives on the battlefields of Iraq. All of them are well worth reading. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:06 PM by David Adesnik  

DEAD-TREE HYPERLINKS: As Josh mentioned earlier, David Brooks' latest column relies heavily on some excellent research and writing done by the blogosphere's own Dan Drezner. But since you can't link directly from Brooks column to Dan's work, I thought I'd provide some links here on OxBlog.

First up is Dan's recent article in Slate. After reading that, check out the extra material -- all of it well worth reading -- in this post on Dan's website. Finally, OxBlog is proud to say that it told the world how great Dan Drezner's work was three whole days before David Brooks decided to share it with the NYT's seven-figure readership. Go us! But more importantly, congratulations to Dan. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:25 AM by Patrick Belton  

COME PLAY WITH US: I've mentioned a few times here before that a few friends and I have started up a foreign policy society, which runs discussion groups in a handful of cities in the U.S., and also has a think-tank side that is aimed at contributing to the national foreign policy conversation the analyses and considered thoughts of the young, rising generation of foreign policy professionals.

Well, I'm happy to report that we've got a few more local chapters starting up: in San Francisco, Chicago, New York, and New Haven, with two more to come shortly in Boston and L.A. as well. Each group will be meeting twice a month to discuss a topic in U.S. foreign policy - early topics will probably include our relationships with China, Russia, and Europe, and lessons to be learned from the U.S. experience in democracy promotion, development, and the war on terror. Our more established groups, in D.C. and Oxford, always warmly welcome new participants too.

So please drop me an e-mail if you'd like to come out and talk with us! I think we'll have fun. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:29 AM by Patrick Belton  

HEADING TO SEE THE MATRIX THIS WEEKEND? Don't do it - learn from your older brother Josh's mistakes! (And if you're even thinking about taking a date, just think about the variegated romantic repercussions of a bad movie upon your love life.... And now that I've heartlessly played on your worst insecurities, move on and read the next paragraph)

Instead, you might think about accompanying your popcorn (sorry - don't read that) with a quite good Irish art film called in America, which is by Jim Sheridan of "My Left Foot" directorial fame. It's a very well done film, with ample untaken plot twists touched on very lightly and deftly. It also includes a dextrously handled recurrent theme of depiction and representation (introduced by the young girl's camcorder), and presents one of the strongest black masculine roles in a recent cinematic history generally given to superficiality and type-casting. (Don't believe me? Try googling black men movies.) Much of what it does could have been heavy-handed in a less skillful treatment, and it is in this that Mr Sheridan's adeptness of his craft truly shows. So go see it; at the moment, it's playing in Oxford at the Phoenix, in LA (in the Egyptian), and one assumes it will probably be out in the east coast before too long as well.

And your date will like you for it, too. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:22 AM by Patrick Belton  

YALE PROFESSOR DAVID GELERNTER, writing in the Weekly Standard:

Does Iraq bring back memories of Vietnam? The president's critics say yes, and they are right. Vietnam came to mind when we saw Saddamites torturing their captives on camera. Do President Bush's opponents grasp that those are (or were) real people getting beaten to a pulp, mutilated, tortured, murdered? (If they did, wouldn't they be overjoyed now that the smug murderers have been thrown out, and radiantly proud of America?) Our moral obligations as the world's most powerful nation come strongly to mind when we hear about rape rooms and children's prisons; when we read about captives fed into industrial shredders, and swaggering princelings dragging women off the street to the torture houses.

We are haunted by the image of Vietnamese who trusted and supported us trying frantically to grab a place on the last outbound helicopter; by Vietnamese putting to sea in rowboats rather than enjoy Uncle Ho's "Workers' and Peasants' Paradise" one more day. We are haunted by the consequences of allowing South Vietnam to collapse. Tens of thousands of executions (maybe 60,000), re-education camps where hundreds of thousands died, a million boat people.

We put them in those rowboats--we antiwar demonstrators, we sophisticated, smart guys. The war was nearly over when I graduated from high school. But high school students were old enough to demonstrate. They were old enough to feel superior to the fools who were running the government. And they were old enough to have known better. They were old enough to have understood what communist regimes had cost the world in suffering, from the prisons of Havana to the death camps of Siberia. It was my fault, mine personally; I was part of the antiwar crowd and I'm sorry. But my apology is too late for the South Vietnamese dead. All I can do is join the chorus in shouting, "No more Vietnams!" No more shrugging off tyranny; no more deserting our friends; no more going back on our duties as the strongest nation on Earth.

Today we are haunted, in thinking about Iraq, by the fact that a noisy, self-important, narcissistic minority talked the United States into betraying its allies. (Loyalty didn't mean a lot to antiwar demonstrators; honor didn't mean a lot.) We betrayed our allies and hurried home, to introspect. They stayed on, to suffer. We were eager to make love, not war, but the South Vietnamese weren't offered that option. Their alternatives were to knuckle under or die.

Voltaire once felt obliged to rouse all Europe over the judicial torture of one man. Europe today reacts with the same charming befuddlement it felt back then: What's all the fuss? Surely, it's none of our business.

People ask: Are you proposing to overthrow every sadist tyrant on Earth? No, only proposing to be proud that we overthrew one.

His full article is here. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:53 AM by Patrick Belton  

TODAY THE GUNS FELL SILENT OVER FLANDERS, and so today we pause to call to mind those whose lives were silenced as well by all wars in the preceding century.
Britain comes to a halt today for two minutes at 11:00, as do her Commonwealth allies, among them Canada and Australia, which relative to its population suffered more losses than any other in the First World War. Here in Britain, the Queen unveiled a monument to Australian war dead, and the BBC dedicates a page to remembrance. Oxford has a page dedicated to poetry from the Great War.

They ask me where I've been,
And what I've done and seen.
But what can I reply
Who know it wasn't I,
But someone just like me,
Who went across the sea
And with my head and hands
Killed men in foreign lands...
Though I must bear the blame,
Because he bore my name.
- Wilfred Gibson, private, "Back" (1915)

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:25 AM by Patrick Belton  

THEY'VE GOT ISSUES: and this one's very good. Lots of good pieces in this week's TNR, on Khodorkovsky, al Sadr, the need for more troops in Iraq, Peter Beinart on the Democrats on Iraq, and the Dean campaign's inventive use of the internet. (There's also a lovely review of Rebecca West's unfinished writing on Mexico, for readers who've ponied up their subscriptions, and bought lunch for some lucky intern.) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:39 AM by Patrick Belton  

FOR DEMOCRACY IN THE MIDDLE EAST: ARABS -
The Daily Star (Lebanon): "Good Rhetoric and Goals Need Good Follow-Up Policies"

Hafez Abu Se’da, head of the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights:
"It is an historical speech, and I agree with what the president had to say, and this is the first time....It is a new vision from the United States now because they focus on democracy. For a long time, they focused on economy and commercial interests. It is historical because the United States is talking about democracy and the interest of the people in these countries.”

AGAINST: NYT, GUARDIAN, AND THE LEFT -
Guardian: "It Would be Laughable, Were it Not So Pathetic" (which, incidentally, includes only one quote from an Arab source)

MSNBC: "Arabs to Bush: Mind Your Own Business" (virtually the entire story, by the way, is made up of quotes from Iranian government sources - who, as OxBlog has often controversially pointed out, aren't Arab)

Ditto NYT: "In Mideast, Reaction to Bush Speech is Dismissive," where the only actual dismissive reactions come from official Iranian sources, and, of course, from the reporter.

World Socialist: "Bush Vows Decades for War for 'Democracy' in the Middle East'"

(And the Times of India, by contrast, simply reports the speech this way: "Pak Not a Democracy: Bush") And who says there's no objectivity left in journalism? (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:29 AM by Patrick Belton  

YOU TELL 'EM: Brookings's Michael O'Hanlon, one of the young stars of the think tank world, writes this week to call on Democratic presidential candidates to offer critiques of the administration's foreign policy which are substantive, fair, and politically useful. He says, however, that what they're currently offering up is none of the above.

Instead, says O'Hanlon, Democratic candidates are dwelling on three misgrounded premises:

The first mistake is to argue that Iraqi weapons of mass destruction were not a serious concern before the war. The second is that somehow Bush administration unilateralism has been the principal cause of our current problems on the ground in Iraq. And the third is the assumption, explicit or implicit, that the Iraq mission will remain just as difficult as it is today right through general election time next year.

Michael's piece is a refreshing breath of good sense, both for those of us who still want to call ourselves Scoop Jackson Democrats, and also for everyone who simply values a fair public debate on matters of foreign policy. His whole piece is here.


(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:29 PM by Patrick Belton  

REMEMBRANCE SUNDAY:

They shall not grow old as we grow old;
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun, and in the morning
we will remember them......

-Laurence Binyon, For the Fallen (1869 - 1943)

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:09 AM by Patrick Belton  

SARTRE, ET LES SARTRIENS: I paid a visit, about a fortnight ago, to Sartre and Simone at the Cimetière du Montparnasse. Slate has a thoughtful piece up this week on his legacy. For all his weaknesses, including his oft-raised inability to inoculate himself with his own vaccine against totalitarianism, no subsequent philosopher (or earlier, pace Voltaire) has to such a great extent engaged the broader culture of his day, and wrapped it around himself:

Despite the phenomenological complexities of his philosophy, Sartre managed to make it exciting. Anybody could become an existentialist, especially the young. The teutonic dread of Kierkegaard and angst of Heidegger gave way to Sartrean fun. In the underground caves of St. Germain-des-Prés, jazz dancing was deemed the highest expression of existentialism. Never has a serious philosopher had such an impact on nightlife.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:26 AM by Patrick Belton  

FAREED ON BUSH'S DEMOCRACY PROMOTION SPEECH: Fareed applauds the President's speech heartily in his Newsweek column, and calls for a redoubling of U.S. efforts and resolve in what he warns will be a "long, hard slog" toward the building of a world of liberal democracies.

Whatever the problems—and I’ll get to them—as a speech it stands as one of the most intelligent and eloquent statements by a president in recent memory.... If it marks a real shift in strategy, it will go down in history as Bush’s most important speech.

Then,

Sometimes I think that President Bush’s critics need to put up a sign somewhere in their rooms that reads: “Some things are true even if George W. Bush believes them.” A visceral dislike for the president is boxing many otherwise sensible people into a corner because they cannot bring themselves to agree with anything he says.

Read the whole thing. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:18 AM by Patrick Belton  

JAPAN VOTES TODAY: Pollsters are predicting that Koizumi's LDP-led coalition will triumph, but narrowly, with the Democratic Party poised to make major gains. CNN, Reuters. The election is being fought principally over the stalling Japanese economy, with supporting roles being played from time to time by pension reform (a significant issue in heavily greying Japan), the prime minister's support of the US over Iraq, and his push to permit the Japanese army to engage in counterterror operations.

The prime minister's hair, however, has yet to play a major role in the election. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 2:15 AM by David Adesnik  

CULTURAL INSENSITIVITY: The WaPo reports: "The mujaheddin hosted a banquet for the Americans, laying out a spread of chicken and French fries after showing off a new museum dedicated to the history of their struggle." Those are FREEDOM fries, dammit! I said FREEDOM FRIES! (Regardless of whether that joke made you laugh, the WaPo article is worth a read.) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 2:09 AM by David Adesnik  

SHOW ME THE MONEY: Howard Dean's decision to opt out of the federal campaign finance program hasn't exactly been an exercise in intellectual honesty. Yet leaving aside the issue of hypocrisy, I am glad to see a Democrat boldly willingly to state that he is going to match the Republicans dollar for dollar. I just with it weren't this particular Democrat... (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:59 AM by David Adesnik  

THE ETERNAL PESSIMIST: Today's NYT features an essay from Milt Bearden, a 30-year veteran of the CIA's directorate of operations. Mr. Bearden warns that the Ba'athist insurgents in Iraq have developed a brilliant strategy worthy of Sun Tzu and that the prospects of American success are doubtful at best.

Two years ago, Mr. Bearden published an essay in Foreign Affairs entitled "Afghanistan, Graveyard of Empries". In it, he warned that

It is more than doubtful that the Northern Alliance forces could capture bin Ladin and his followers, and there is no reasonable guarantee that they could dislodge the Taliban. On the contrary, the more likely consequences of a U.S. alliance with the late Masoud's fighters would be the coalescing of Afghanistan's majority Pashtun tribes around their Taliban leaders and the rekindling of a brutal, general civil war that would continue until the United States simply gave up. The dominant tribe in Afghanistan, which also happens to be the largest, will dominate; replacing the Pashtun Taliban with the largely Tajik and Uzbek Northern Alliance is close to impossible. The threat of providing covert assistance to the Northern Alliance might be a useful short-term strategy to pressure the Taliban, if it is handled delicately, but any real military alliance to Masoud's successors will backfire.

Without pretending that the American-led reconstruction of Afghanistan has been a success, I think it is pretty fair to say that Bearden's prediction of a US military failure was far off the mark. Also of special interest is his misguided belief that there would be a Pashtun backlash if the United States chose to side with the Northern Alliance.

During the first months of 2003, OxBlog patiently documented the widespread belief that a potential US invasion of Iraq would provoke a massive backlash throughout the Arab world. And yet the peoples of the Arab world stayed home, rather than flooding the streets and toppling their governments -- just as the Pashtuns have not declared war on the US-backed government in Afghanistan.

The point here is that those who expect failure on the part of the United States almost always underestimate the ability of Middle Eastern and other "non-Western" peoples to distinguish between imperialists, e.g. the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, and liberators, e.g. the United States in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

This is not to say that the establishment of a democratic order in either Afghanistan or Iraq is even close to being guaranteed. But if we commit ourselves to working honestly toward that goal, the people we work with are likely to recognize that their best interest is ours as well, and vice versa.

UPDATE: It seems that Wes Clark is also in the habit of overestimating Iraqi resentment of the United States. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:27 AM by David Adesnik  

THE SANCTIONS PARADOX: I expect that that the blogosphere's resident expert on sanctions will soon post something about this one-sided column from Nick Kristof. In the meantime, I'm going to ask aloud why the Burmese junta has decided to release Aung San Suu Kyi if international economic pressure has been completely ineffective. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:21 AM by David Adesnik  

WHO'S STEALING CHINA'S JOBS? According to conventional wisdom, China's low-paid labor force lets it steal jobs from American workers. But it turns out that China has lost an even greater percentage of its manufacturing jobs than the United States has.

So, you might ask, who is the culprit? Answer: efficiency. Now it's true that some jobs are leaving the United States for lower-wage markets. But as massive factory job losses in China, Brazil and elsewhere in the developing world show, protectionism is not the answer. With any luck, public awareness of this trend will increase support for making the Western Hemisphere the largest free trade area on earth. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:56 PM by Patrick Belton  

NEW FROM SUU KYI: The Burmese junta has released Suu Kyi from her house arrest, but the persecuted pro-democracy leader is refusing liberty until 35 colleagues arrested at the same time as her are released from detention as well. CNN, BBC, Suu Kyi's pages.

(More on our past vocal support for Suu Kyi and for the cause of Burmese freedom is here, and as a cautionary note, we've noted here that she's been released in the past under international pressure, only to be reimprisoned shortly thereafter - after the junta had garnered trade and other benefits for releasing her.) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:50 PM by David Adesnik  

ZELL EXPLAINS JOE SIXPACK: Greg Wythe has an in-depth review of Zell Miller's new book. On a more substantive note, Greg also reviews avant garde film classic Satan's Cheerleaders. Plus, Greg mentions my favorite place in Texas: New Braunfels. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:43 AM by David Adesnik  

AND NOW FOR SOME REAL NEWS: Everytime I sit down to blog I think, "Gee, I should focus on something other than the occupation of Iraq. You know, put up one or two posts about it, but give some serious airtime to all the other important issues out there." But then I read something that gets me all worked up about the occupation, so I write about it. Again. And again. And again.

Anyhow, I thought I'd break the monotony by linking to this story about Tenacious D's abortive hunger strike, which the band had hoped would last "for 45 days or until their DVD went platinum, world hunger came to an end or there was peace in the Middle East." Now that's what I call social activism. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:33 AM by David Adesnik  

A BLOGGER AND A GENTLEMAN: When expounding upon his interest in pornography, Matt Yglesias spends his time defending OxBlog's honor. As Matt writes,

I keep wondering why I see conservative writers saying the Democratic candidates want to cut and run from Iraq and that the great thing about George W. Bush is that he wants to stay the course. My best guess was that they're just liars. After reading this from David Adesnik, though, I'm not so sure, since David's no liar.

While Matt's compliment is somewhat backhanded, I'm proud to accept it. A reputation for honesty is very hard to come by. But we all say dumb things about politics sometimes.

Still, I'm not about to disavow my criticism of Howard Dean. As Matt goes on to note,

David explains that we can't get too focused on little things like Dean's "official position" on the war. David, apparently, was able to gaze into Dean's heart and see that he has a secret plan to end the war.

Meanwhile, we know that Bush is going to stay the course because, after all, his official position is that we're going to stay the course.

In other words, Matt thinks that "official positions" are more credible when they come from Howard Dean than when they come from George Bush. But I'm not so sure.

Bush & Co. may have said a lot of misleading things, but they have been consistenly clear about where the stand on the two biggest issues of the day: taxes and Iraq. In contrast, Dean is the kind of guy who publicly asks

"Where do you get this 'I'm a strong supporter of NAFTA'?" -- though in fact he had described himself as "a very strong supporter of NAFTA" on that same network [ABC] eight years earlier

Of course, the NAFTA incident doesn't mean that Dean isn't being up front about Iraq. While that is my sense of the matter, I recognize that the issue is a controversial one. For example, one of the comments appended to Matt's post (by Swopa) points to the following statement by Howard Dean in a the Oct. 9 Democratic debate:

Now that we're there [in Iraq], we can't pull out responsibly. Because if we do, there are more Al Qaida, I believe, in Iraq today than there were before the president went in. If they establish a foothold in Iraq, or if a fundamentalist Shiite regime comes in, allied with Iran, that is a real security danger to the United States, when one did not exist before when Saddam Hussein was running the place.

That's a pretty firm statement, so I'm going to have to do some more research on the issue before I convince anyone that I have a strong case. Still, what is clearly absent from either this statement or the one from Dean that I initially criticized is that he really cares about building democracy in Iraq. For him, the occupation is a mounting cost without any possible benefits -- which leads me to think that he will not respond to unexpected events in the Middle East the way that a liberal hawk might want him to. What he wants is to avoid entanglements, not fight a war of ideas.

UPDATE: This persuasive Peter Beinart column (recommended by HTY) makes a point about Howard Dean very similar to my own. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:55 AM by David Adesnik  

SO WHAT YOU'RE TRYING TO SAY IS...Josh Marshall says everyone should read this column by Fareed Zakaria. Now here are some highlights from it:

Frustrated by the lack of quick progress on the ground and fading political support at home, Washington is now latching on to the idea that a quick transfer of power to local troops and politicians would make things better. Or at any rate, it would lower American casualties. It was called Vietnamization; today it's called Iraqification. And then as now, it is less a winning strategy than an exit strategy...

This new impulse has less to do with Iraqi democracy than with American democracy. The president wants to show, in time for his reelection, that Iraqis are governing their affairs and Americans are coming home. But it might not work out that way...

For the neoconservatives in the Pentagon, a quick transfer fulfills a pet obsession, installing in power the Iraqi exiles led by Ahmad Chalabi. Last week the Philadelphia Inquirer quoted a senior administration official as saying, "There are some civilians at the Pentagon who've decided that we should turn this over to someone else and get out as fast as possible." But every indication we have is that the exiles do not have broad popular support.

There are no shortcuts out. Iraq is America's problem. It could have been otherwise, but in the weeks after the war the administration, drunk with victory, refused to share power with the world...

In short, Zakaria's column covers all the bases of the Josh Marshall Weltanschauung. There is the Bush administration's ignorance of history, its preoccupation with electoral concerns at the expense of the national interest, the devious and self-destructive influence of the neo-cons, and a reckless disregard for allied opinion.

The funny thing is, that despite all of these hyperbolic attacks on the administration and comparisons to Vietnam, Zakaria's message is almost identical to that of the President himself, i.e. we must stay the course in Iraq, come hell or high water, because our national security depends upon it. If you click over to Zakaria's column, you'll see that after denouncing the Bush Administration for "refus[ing] to share power with the world", Zakaria writes that "Now there can be only one goal: success."

Moreover, the point of his Vietnam analogy is not that American has entered a quagmire, but rather that we cannot depend on incompetent local allies. In fact, drawing a sharp contrast to the US effort in Vietnam, Zakaria believes that we have the fundamentals of victory in place the insurgents lack popular support and external sources of supply.

In policy terms, Zakaria's is also the opposite of what one might expect from the quagmire camp. His answer to what's going wrong right now is not a faster exit, but a more patient one. And I wholeheartedly agree. Zakaria is absolutley right that

The desperation to move faster and faster is going to have bad results. Accelerating the training schedule (which has already been accelerated twice before) will only produce an ineffective Iraqi army and police force. Does anyone think that such a ragtag military could beat the insurgency where American troops are failing?...

The idea of a quick transfer of political power is even more dangerous. The Iraqi state has gone from decades of Stalinism to total collapse. And there is no popular national political party or movement to hand power to. A quick transfer of authority to a weak central government would only encourage the Shiites, the Sunnis and the Kurds to retain de facto autonomy in their regions and fragment the country.

The question Zakaria didn't ask but should have is whether all of the pressure to "Iraqify" the occupation as quickly as possible is the result of premature pessimism about its outcome. By making it seem that Iraqification is the Administration's preferred option, Zakaria avoids asking whether the Administration has begun to drift toward such a reckless strategy in response to widespread, often exaggerated perceptions that the United States is achieving nothing on the ground.

What it all comes down to is a question of rhetorical strategy: Does Zakaria's harsh criticism of the administration increase his credibility as an advocate of intensive nation-building? Or is he making it even harder for the US government to support the nation-building process by packaging his support in criticism that reinforces the arguments of all those who want to us to end the occupation as soon as possible? (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:17 AM by David Adesnik  

THE DEFENSE RESTS ITS CASE: There's something we've wanted to know for a long time now -- Is it true that the Bush Administration has been handing out reconstruction contracts to its personal friends and seven-figure campaign donors? According this report by the Center for Public Integrity (CPI), the answer is an unequivocal yes. Thanks to its impressive array of statistics, the CPI report got some very favorable coverage from the Washington Post and a lot of other leading newspapers.

However, that kind of coverage may have proven to be CPI's undoing. Curious about what CPI had to say, Dan Drezner decided to take a closer look at their work. What he found was a lot of bad math and false accusations.

Then, in this impressive post, Dan goes on to answer another big question on the reconstruction front -- Even if it's true that the Bush Administration awarded major contracts to firms that weren't friends or donors, don't the contracts given to KB&R and Halliburton show that favoritism still matters?

According to Dan, the answer is once again 'No'. It turns out that there were very good reasons behind the administration's decision to give major contracts to KB&R and Halliburton. Plus, those companies seem to do a very good job of what their hired for.

Dan does point out, however, that we still don't know enough about Pentagon outsourcing to pronounce it an unmitigated success. The fact is, there aren't that many companies ready to step up and perform the services that KB&R and Halliburton offer, so competitions remains dampened. But for the moment, it is safe to throw out some of the unsubstantiated charges that are casting suspicion on the American effort to rebuild Iraq.

UPDATE: MF points out that the WaPo ran this op-ed in response to the CPI report. It's by a Clinton Administration procurement officer who thinks the current administration isn't handling Iraq well at all. Still, he's 100% confident that there has been no cronyism or dishonesty in the process of awarding reconstruction contracts.

While MF is right that this op-ed balances the WaPo's coverage, one has to wonder why their initial coverage completely failed to uncover so much of the logic and evidence in this one op-ed. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:34 PM by David Adesnik  

ADVICE FROM A FRIEND: A pro-American Pole thinks the US should be doing more to show the Polish people that they are our peers, not our inferiors. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:15 PM by David Adesnik  

IRANIANS ARE NOT ARABS: I just thought the headline writers at the WaPo might like to know that. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:12 PM by David Adesnik  

ON THE MOVE: While my knowledge of economics consists largely of what I read in the papers, a couple of statistics in today's NYT struck me as fairly interesting. First, according to this very upbeat news analysis piece, there are 130.13 million individuals in the US workforce, representing 66.11 percent of the adult population. Then, in this even more upbeat op-ed column, it says that anywhere from 27 to 35 million old jobs disappear each year, ulitmatley to be replaced by approximately the same number of new jobs.

As such, one might infer that the average American changes jobs every few years -- a process that can be exhilirating or terrifying depending on one's perspective. On the other hand, it is entirely possible that the population is divided into two blocks of workers, one that changes jobs very frequently and one that doesn't. Thus, what I want to know is how long the average worker stays in the average job, as well as the average income of those workers who leave old jobs and take new ones. With that kind of data, one might be able to tell whether job loss is the curse of the lower-middle class, or the escalator to higher standards of living. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:55 PM by Patrick Belton  

DON'T ALWAYS BELIEVE WHAT YOU READ IN THE PAPER, NO. 3815: From the Guardian, May 15th:

[Jessica Lynch's] Iraqi guards had long fled [at the time of her rescue], she was being well cared for - and doctors had already tried to free her....

The doctors in Nassiriya say they provided the best treatment they could for Lynch in the midst of war. She was assigned the only specialist bed in the hospital, and one of only two nurses on the floor. "I was like a mother to her and she was like a daughter,"says Khalida Shinah....

[Lynch's] memory loss means that "researchers" have been called in to fill in the gaps...

Her rescue will go down as one of the most stunning pieces of news management yet conceived. It provides a remarkable insight into the real influence of Hollywood producers on the Pentagon's media managers, and has produced a template from which America hopes to present its future wars.

Their "daring" assault on enemy territory was captured by the military's night-vision camera.

Now from the Washington Post, November 6:

A new authorized biography of the soldier accurately cites medical records indicating Lynch was sexually assaulted, Stephen Goodwin said.

In the [recently released authorized biography] book, [Rick] Bragg writes: "The records do not tell whether her captors assaulted her almost lifeless, broken body after she was lifted from the wreckage, or if they assaulted her and then broke her bones into splinters until she was almost dead."

Gee, from the Guardian's reporting, I sure would've thought that Pfc Lynch was living in the lap of luxury, you know, like in some kind of (e.g., Hanoi) Hilton, and it was only the Straussian-Volvofitzian-media cabal which had pretended otherwise....

Note too the copious use of scare quotes in the May Guardian report. Perhaps I'll be forgiven if I follow their lead and begin systematically referring to the Guardian as a "news" source. Imitation is the best form of flattery, right? (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:32 PM by Patrick Belton  

MORE ON THIS IN THE MORNING: But incredible kudos to the president for giving this speech today at NED outlining a coherent U.S. policy of democracy promotion. Initial coverage is in the NYT and WaPo. (Many thanks to our friend JG for bringing this speech to our attention, in a day otherwise occupied by pitying the fool naive enough to take on Perfessor Chafetz in an argument....)

A few significant quotes:

Some skeptics of democracy assert that the traditions of Islam are inhospitable to the representative government. This "cultural condescension," as Ronald Reagan termed it, has a long history. After the Japanese surrender in 1945, a so-called Japan expert asserted that democracy in that former empire would "never work." Another observer declared the prospects for democracy in post-Hitler Germany are, and I quote, "most uncertain at best" -- he made that claim in 1957. Seventy-four years ago, The Sunday London Times declared nine-tenths of the population of India to be "illiterates not caring a fig for politics." Yet when Indian democracy was imperiled in the 1970s, the Indian people showed their commitment to liberty in a national referendum that saved their form of government.

Time after time, observers have questioned whether this country, or that people, or this group, are "ready" for democracy -- as if freedom were a prize you win for meeting our own Western standards of progress. In fact, the daily work of democracy itself is the path of progress. It teaches cooperation, the free exchange of ideas, and the peaceful resolution of differences. As men and women are showing, from Bangladesh to Botswana, to Mongolia, it is the practice of democracy that makes a nation ready for democracy, and every nation can start on this path.

It should be clear to all that Islam -- the faith of one-fifth of humanity -- is consistent with democratic rule. Democratic progress is found in many predominantly Muslim countries -- in Turkey and Indonesia, and Senegal and Albania, Niger and Sierra Leone. Muslim men and women are good citizens of India and South Africa, of the nations of Western Europe, and of the United States of America.

More than half of all the Muslims in the world live in freedom under democratically constituted governments. They succeed in democratic societies, not in spite of their faith, but because of it. A religion that demands individual moral accountability, and encourages the encounter of the individual with God, is fully compatible with the rights and responsibilities of self-government.

and

This is a massive and difficult undertaking -- it is worth our effort, it is worth our sacrifice, because we know the stakes. The failure of Iraqi democracy would embolden terrorists around the world, increase dangers to the American people, and extinguish the hopes of millions in the region. Iraqi democracy will succeed -- and that success will send forth the news, from Damascus to Teheran -- that freedom can be the future of every nation. The establishment of a free Iraq at the heart of the Middle East will be a watershed event in the global democratic revolution.

and a personal favorite:

Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe -- because in the long run, stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty. As long as the Middle East remains a place where freedom does not flourish, it will remain a place of stagnation, resentment, and violence ready for export. And with the spread of weapons that can bring catastrophic harm to our country and to our friends, it would be reckless to accept the status quo.

Therefore, the United States has adopted a new policy, a forward strategy of freedom in the Middle East. This strategy requires the same persistence and energy and idealism we have shown before. And it will yield the same results. As in Europe, as in Asia, as in every region of the world, the advance of freedom leads to peace.

The advance of freedom is the calling of our time; it is the calling of our country. From the Fourteen Points to the Four Freedoms, to the Speech at Westminster, America has put our power at the service of principle. We believe that liberty is the design of nature; we believe that liberty is the direction of history. We believe that human fulfillment and excellence come in the responsible exercise of liberty. And we believe that freedom -- the freedom we prize -- is not for us alone, it is the right and the capacity of all mankind.

Working for the spread of freedom can be hard. Yet, America has accomplished hard tasks before. Our nation is strong; we're strong of heart. And we're not alone. Freedom is finding allies in every country; freedom finds allies in every culture. And as we meet the terror and violence of the world, we can be certain the author of freedom is not indifferent to the fate of freedom.

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# Posted 9:59 AM by Patrick Belton  

THANK GOD FOR SCIENTISTS:

Scientists have proved that even the most seemingly innocent chat with a woman can be enough to send male sex hormones soaring. A team from the University of Chicago paid students to come into their lab under the pretence of testing their saliva chemistry.
While there, the students got to chat to a young female research assistant. Saliva tests showed the brief interaction was enough to raise testosterone levels by as much as 30%. The more a man's hormone level shot up, the more attractive he later admitted to finding the research assistant. And perhaps more tellingly, the research assistant herself was able to identify those men who found her attractive. The men who she judged to be doing the most to try to impress her proved to be those who registered the biggest jump in testosterone levels.

Maybe I should considering withdrawing my objections to whether politics should be considered a science. (On multiple grounds. Incidentally, widely read politics blog seeks research assistant...apply in person, and do please just ignore all the saliva lying around our office) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:46 AM by David Adesnik  

CATS AND DOGS LIVING TOGETHER: Atrios and Luskin have decided to kiss and make up. So I ask: If there can be peace in the blogosphere, why can't there be peace in the Middle East? (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:34 AM by David Adesnik  

ST. DAIACL HUTEEVS: Can't remember whether the Secretary of Commerice or the Secretary of Transportation comes first in the line of presidential succession? Then you need an acronym! (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:22 AM by Patrick Belton  

SPANGLISH FINALLY GETTING ITS DUE: After living for a substantial period in Mexico, I came to nurse a lifelong affection not only for that beautiful country and its people, but also for the borderlands, and the people who occupy the at times creative, at times painful, space that corresponds to the tidy black line which on political maps neatly separates two countries and cultures.

I also became very fond of the language which is often spoken on that tidy black line, Spanglish. And for that reason I'm very pleased to note this underappreciated, amazingly versatile language is finally receiving its long-overdue literary recognition: this, namely, in a new book by Ilan Stavans, a Jewish Mexican who teaches at Amherst, and whose engaging earlier works include The Hispanic Condition and Tropical Synagogues. Particularly worth mentioning, the introductory essay of his book includes inter alia (Latinglish) his playful translation of a particularly significant passage from Iberian literature: “In un placete de la Mancha of which nombre no quiero remembrearme, vivía, not so long ago, uno de esos gentlemen who always tienen una lanza in the rack, una buckler antigua, a skinny caballo y un grayhound para el chase.” ¡Que viva la frontera! (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:03 AM by David Adesnik  

CUBA LIBRE? A prominent dissident says free trade won't pry open the Castro dictatorship. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:56 AM by David Adesnik  

KERRY -- NO LONGER THE FRENCH CANDIDATE: Now that Howard Dean has characterized his remarks about the Confederate flag as "a big contretemps", John Kerry shouldn't take it for granted that he has the Francophile vote locked up. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:51 AM by David Adesnik  

SADDAM'S FINAL PEACE MISSION: The NYT has just put up a detailed investigative report about an apparent effort by Saddam to broker a last-minute deal with the United States. Basically, Saddam was offering the US the chance to conduct its own inspections.

According to Imad Hage, the Lebanese Christian intermediary who was running messages to the Pentagon for Iraq, the Iraqis "understand the days of manipulating the United States are over." I find that hard to believe. As far as I can tell, the Iraqis were playing for time at the last minute, hoping that further inspections might delay an American invasion until after the summer -- during which time either opposition to the war would mount or the US would find it impossible to keep 150,000 troops on the ground in the Middle East.

To the NYT's credit, correspondent James Risen states up front that Saddam's "overtures, after a decade of evasions and deceptions by Iraq, were ultimately rebuffed." While that kind of statement comes pretty close to editorializing in favor of the Bush Administration's position, it does balance the suggestion elsewhere in the article that the United States missed a valuable opportunity to avoid an unnecessary war. Although you have to wonder: if Saddam was so interested in peace, why did he invest so much effort in deceiving the UN inspectors? (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:21 AM by David Adesnik  

LIB-HAWK TURF WAR: Winds of Change has compiled a comprehensive set of links to a recent discussion among liberal hawks about whether there is any hope for the Democratic party when it comes to national security. Before getting into the intricacies of the debate, let me state my position up front: I'm with Peter Beinart.

Beinart makes two basic points. First, the Democrats tend to confuse biography with ideology. They assume that a war hero like John Kerry or a general like Wesley Clark will have instant credibility on national security issues despite having no clear position on the most important issues of the day.

Second, the Democrats had a golden opportunity to present themselves as the party of responsible internationalism by saying that Bush's $87 billion plan for Iraq and Afghanistan was an admission that the Democrats had been right all along about the need to take nation-building seriously. Instead, the Democratic candidates for President began to offer evasive answers about whether they supported the plan, sometimes suggesting that the money might be better spent at home.

So, when Election Day 2004 rolls around, who will I vote for? Answer: I don't know. But what if things stay as they are now, with the Democratic candidates half-heartedly promising to rebuild Iraq while the Bush Administration says all the right things but only does half of them? And what if 20-30 soldiers a month are still falling prey to hostile fire while there is no clear progress toward the drawing up of an effective constitution?

Even then, I would find myself closer to the President's side. He has invested so much of his credibility in this issue that I think it will be all but impossible for him to declare victory and retreat, perhaps in concert with the United Nations. And part of me really believes that he is personally committed to seeing Iraq become democratic.

In my heart, I'm still hoping that the Democrats can put up a credible national security candidate. But Lieberman is a long shot. Gephardt seems solid on this front, but is a long shot as well. If Clark gets things together, perhaps it could be him. But in the end, I see myself forced into a situation where I may have to sacrifice my preferences on the domestic policy in order to ensure a responsible US approach to foreign affairs.

But enough about me. What are all the other lib-hawks and moderate Democrats saying? First, there's Zell Miller. It's not often that someone who voted for Adlai Stevenson twice comes out in favor of George W. Bush. Still, the explanation Miller gives for his change of heart is simplistic at best, disingenuous at worst. He says that the Democratic candidates

to varying degrees, want us to quit and get out of Iraq. They don't want us to stay the course in this fight between tyranny and freedom. This is our best chance to change the course of history in the Middle East. So I cannot vote for a candidate who wants us to cut and run with our shirttails at half-mast.

As Democratic partisan for over five decades, Miller must've confronted plenty of Republicans who charged his party with being the home of cowards and traitors. So how can he turn around now and say things that are so maddeningly similar?

Since that is what I think of Miller, you won't be surprised to hear that I disagree with Michael Totten's assertion that Miller's conversion is a reflection of a Democratic failure to come up with a serious foreign policy. By the same token, I don't put much stock in the significance of Roger Simon's assertion that

[The Democratic candidates] are one of the sleaziest collections of low-down opportunists I have ever seen on one stage together short of that crowd of tobacco executives who testified “No, sirree, I didn’t know that nicotine was addictive.”

If this election were about honesty and opportunism, I would not consider voting for four more years of Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld. I also disagree with Roger that the Democrats have failed to appreciate the stakes of our conflict with terrorism and dictatorship. I think they know what we're fighting for. They just aren't as clear about what it takes to win.

That said, I'd ask Kevin Drum and Matt Yglesias to respond to Peter Beinart's arguments about the failures of Democratic foreign policy, instead of taking down the straw-man arguments that they associate with the Democrats-for-Bush camp.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'll go back to pretending that Harry Truman is still president.

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# Posted 8:43 PM by Patrick Belton  

IT'S OFFICIAL: HAROLD KOH TO ASSUME the deanship of the Yale Law School, for our readers who are interested. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:35 PM by David Adesnik  

SERIOUS CHARGES: No, this isn't another post about Wesley Clark. Thank God. It's a post about a Canadian citizen whom the US deported to Syria on grounds of being a suspected terrorist. Released last month, Maher Arar said he was brutally tortured in Syria, something that American authorities knew would happen. While the facts aren't all, it certainly seems that Mr. Arar was the victim of unjust American actions that did nothing to advance the war on terror. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:16 PM by David Adesnik  

BREMER-OXBLOG TELEPATHIC LINK: So now it seems like Paul B. doesn't approve of the the paramilitary idea. He is simply "open" to it. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:13 AM by David Adesnik  

MASON-DIXON FOLLIES: "Former Vermont governor Howard Dean came under fierce attack Tuesday night from several Democratic rivals, who accused him of arrogance and insensitivity and demanded that he apologize for saying last week that he wanted to be the candidate for 'guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks...'" Don't ask. Just read. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:08 AM by David Adesnik  

BREMER'S SECRET POLICE: Under pressure to clamp down on Ba'athist insurgents, Paul Bremer has agreed to the training of an Iraqi paramilitary and intelligence-gathering force under the auspices of the Ministry of the Interior. Supposedly, the local knowledge of the Iraqi force will enable to track down insurgents more effectively.

To Bremer's credit, he is deeply worried about the implications of establishing such a force, initially opposed it, and wants to ensure that there will be a rigorous screening process so that the ranks of the new counterinsurgency force don't become filled with criminals in uniform. Bremer also wants the force to undergo police training, not military education.

Frankly, I don't think Bremer is going to get what he wants. The United States has never been good at teaching foreign military forces to respect civilian government, human rights or anything else. When we are successful at promoting democracy, we are successful because we side with the civilians against the military.

It is also worth pointing out that the US has a pretty bad record of training counterinsurgency forces, even if one leaves human rights issues aside. In El Salvador, for example, a massive of amount of American funding and manpower did little more than entrench the corruption and incompetence that plagued the Salvadoran military. Bottom line: On this one, I'm siding with the pessimists. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:03 PM by David Adesnik  

APPARENTLY, OXBLOG OWES CONDI AN APOLOGY: In a recent post, I criticized Wes Clark for saying that the Bush Administration's negligence was in part responsible for 9/11. As part of OxBlog's ongoing effort to be fair and balanced, I also criticized Condi Rice for saying that the Clinton administration was negligent with regard to Al Qaeda. But now it seems that Condi may not have said that at all.

As Pejman points out, the idea that Condi said what she said comes from this NYT article. As such, Pejman has some sharp words for Matt Yglesias, who blasted Condi for her one-sided accusations on the basis of what he read in the NYT. So I guess OxBlog ought to suffer some of Pejman's wrath as well.

FYI, the quotation I attributed to Condi (taken from an e-mail sent by one of our readers) is pretty much a verbatim repetition of what the NYT said, with just a few of the quotation marks moved around. Still, it should go without saying that I had an obligation to verify the quote before posting it on the web.

Btw, I'm still looking for a transcript of Condi's speech since it isn't up on the NSC website yet. (Even so, it's pretty clear from reading the NYT article that Condi's remarks were misrepresented.) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:36 PM by David Adesnik  

STUDENTS FOR WAR: While Reihan suggests that it's a parody, I think that the SFW website is for real. Yes, the graphics on the SFW homepage are ridiculous. And agitating for war with North Korea is almost ridiculous. Still, SFW was a real organization with typical right-of-center views back in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq.

Anyhow, the reason I raise this issue is because the Campus Organizations section of the SFW site has a link to OxDem. To SFW's credit, it describes OxDem and the other student groups as "organizations supporting the cause of freedom". If SFW were a parody, I think it would have the decency to call us "young hegemonists" or something to that effect.

So, bottom line: Website real. In no way representative of OxDem's views. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:35 AM by David Adesnik  

"AMERICA WILL NOT RUN": The President has come out with one response to Sunday's tragic loss of life. Howard Dean has come out with another:

"[The attack] weakens the position of the president and my Democratic opponents," said Dr. Dean, a Democratic contender who, as one of the most vocal critics of the war, cited the attack on a Chinook helicopter that took the lives of 16 American soldiers on Sunday. "There are now almost 400 people dead who wouldn't be dead if that resolution hadn't been passed and we hadn't gone to war."

While Dean can argue with some validity that the war may have been a mistake given our failure to find a substantial cache of WMD, this sort of statement implies that because we made a mistake by going in, we should pull out right now regardless of the consequences. That is the kind of short-sighted thinking that makes it so hard for me to even consider supporting the Vermont governor's bid for Commander-in-Chief.

UPDATE: Brian Ulrich writes that this interpretation of what Dean said may be misleading. After all, Dean says on his website that

"That is, after all, now much more than a national security objective," he added. "It is a declaration of national purpose, written in the blood of our troops, and of the innocent on all sides who have perished."

His bullet point on American troops: "A democratic transition will take between 18 to 24 months, although troops should expect to be in Iraq for a longer period."

While Brian is right about Dean's official position, I think one gets a better sense of what Dean is about by listening to what he says in person. The pattern we tend to see with Howard Dean is that he says something embarrassing in person, e.g. his comment about "guessing" that Iraq is better off without Saddam, then has to correct himself by pointing out that his official position isn't what you would expect based on his prior statement. To me, this says a lot about his instincts on foreign policy. If Dean makes the transition from candidate to present, I think it is reasonable to expect that his instincts will be far more more important than his official positions.

Btw, it's probably worth pointing out that Dean's official statement is from April 9, which leads me to think that it isn't exactly the most important thing on his mind these days. So what I'm interested in seeing is whether Dean keeps talking about those-who-wouldn't-have-died while adjusting the 400 figure upwards as warranted. If so, it will become ever harder to believe that he is committed to rebuilding Iraq.

UPDATE: Brian has some comments on my response. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:01 AM by David Adesnik  

CLARK'S SPEECH -- HIS DEFENDERS RESPOND: OxBlog's vocal Democratic readers are up in arms about my criticism of Wesley Clark's attacks on George Bush. The remark at the center of the conroversy is my assertion that

If a Democratic candidate is going to attack Bush on this front, he will need nothing short of a smoking gun in order to persuade the American public that Osama bin Laden deserves anything less than 100% of the blame for the September 2001 attacks.

According to Mark Kleiman, my assertion constitutes nothing less an "abusive misinterpretation" of Clark's words. Specifically,

The idea of Bush's "letting 9-11 happen" is entirely Adesnik's fantasy, and that Adesnik converts Clark's well-reasoned rebuke of Bush -- for trying to blame the failure to notice that al-Qaeda had plans to use jetliners as missiles on lower-level intelligence personnel -- into the absurd assertion that Bush, rather than bin Laden was responsible for the crime. Having put absurd words into Clark's mouth, Adesnik is then stunned by their absurdity: Did he really say that?

In an e-mail response to Mark, I point out that Michael Tomasky of The American Prospect interpreted Clark's speech to mean exactly the same thing that I thought it meant. So, unless Clark's most avid partisans have fantasies identical to those of critics such as myself, I think it is fair to say that I am guilty of neither abuse nor misinterpretation. Still, Mark responds that

I read Tomasky. He and I agree both about the facts and about what Clark is saying. Bush, as President, is responsible for failures in the national security apparatus. There were failures that facilitated 9-11. So Bush can reasonably be held responsible for misfeasance. That isn't to say that "Bush let it happen" or that Bush is a criminal in any way comparable to bin Laden, only that Bush is responsible for the screw-ups and shouldn't be allowed to blame it on underlings in the intelligence agencies.

First of all, I never even came close to saying that Clark described Bush as being in any way comparable to Bin Laden. Rather, I clearly stated that Clark wants Bush to shoulder a small but significant proportion of the responsibility for the September 11 attacks. And that seems to be exactly what Mark Kleiman and Michael Tomasky want as well.

On a related note, AL writes in that

I think your recent blogpost obscures an important distinction between 'blame' and 'responsibility'-- responsibility in the slightly separate sense of the acts of a responsible person. There is no question that Osama gets 100% of the blame for 9/11...I don't think Gen. Clark is talking about blame. Gen. Clark
is suggesting, and it is not an unreasonable inference given the reluctance to the White House to divulge anything, that Bush had been *imprudent* and *irresponsible* in disregarding various warnings we might have received.

If I forget to lock my bicycle, the thief is 100% to blame. This doesn't mean I should get four more years of running the bicycle store.

In response, I'd have to say that there is a slight difference between bicycles and national security. If you ignore threats to the well-being of your bicycle, it's probably because you were thinking about something more important. If the President ignores threats to our national security, it's a matter of criminal negligence.

Moreover, the use of the bicycle analogy suggests that just a little more forethought on Bush's part might have prevented a major national disaster. If that is one's position, then one cannot say that one isn't trying to blame Bush. Think, perhaps, of a night watchman who is having a few drinks at the corner bar while burglars make off with everything in the company safe.

The problem here is that both Kleiman and AL want to have it both ways. They want voters to think of Bush as partially responsible for 9/11 without admitting that Clark's words constitute an attack or an accusation. In other words, they want to throw mud without getting it on their hands. (In contrast, Tomasky is up front about what he is doing.)

Now, notice what I'm not saying -- that Clark is wrong. If the Senate Intelligence Committee pries enough evidence from the deathgrip of the Administration, it may just find that Bush & Co. were criminally negligent when it came to Osama Bin Laden. Still, Clark's accusation struck as me as quite surprising because there was no indication that he knew of any such evidence.

I'd also like to add that I never intended to give Repubicans a free-ride on the 9/11 mudslinging front. As JG points out, Condi Rice tried to turn the tables on the Democrats two days after Clark's speech by saying that

"The Clinton and other past administrations had ignored evidence of growing terrorist threats and despite repeated attacks on American interests, until Sept. 11, the terrorists faced no sustained, systematic and global response from the United States. They became emboldened, and the result was more terror and more victims."

Given that the Bush Administration hasn't released any evidence to back up such charges, Rice's comments are pretty offensive. I'm guessing, however, that the President won't say this sort of thing, especially not on the campaign trail.

While I don't necessarily think that he's above it, it's an accusation that undermines the credibility of the attacker unless he has evidence to back himself up. That is why I was so surprised by Clark's statement. It just seemed like such a bad move. (For a good elaboration of that point, see this post from the Chicago Report.) Moreover, it was another bad move on the national security front from a candidate whose greatest strength is supposed to be military and foreign affairs.

Incidentally, I now have more information on Clark's speech, information provided by a someone who is in a position to know. While riding with Clark on his way to make the speech, my source watched the general make last-minute revisions to the text. Thus, the differences between the official text and what Clark actually said would seem to reflect a personal decision by the candidate to intensity his attacks on the President. Whether it was a good decision is what we don't yet know.

UPDATE: AL clarifies that he is accusing the Bush Administration of doing something very wrong. However, he is not accusing it of being evil or malign.
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# Posted 12:41 PM by David Adesnik  

ANOTHER SAD DAY. Our thoughts are with the families of the dead and wounded. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:05 AM by Patrick Belton  

A HAPPY HALLOWEEN to all our readers! (Except, of course, to our Gaelic readers, to whom I should wish a happy Samhain instead).

And except in France, where, according to the always trustworthy Seattle paper, Halloween is apparently as much a relic of last year's fashion as pointy shoes. Tant pis. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:43 AM by Patrick Belton  

ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER LETTER FROM KABUL: Here's the latest from OxBlog's intrepid, and hard-working, bureau chief:

Ramazan is well underway; thankfully, the days are cool and short. P.'s [note: still not me - ed.] and my decision to join the fast has been greeted with general incredulity and the sly question, "Ah yes, but what time do you get up for breakfast?" In P.'s case, the answer is generally, "Not at all." I tend to drowse awake at 4:00 a.m., munch a couple McVitie's biscuits, down a liter of water, and fall asleep again. Z. initially tried to muster us for a proper pre-dawn breakfast, but then started sleeping through the alarm herself. Regardless, by the time dusk rolls around, we're all famished and ready to pack away a grand iftar dinner. One of these days we're going to see if the food at the shuttered, formidable-looking Croatian dive across the street is as good as its reputation.

Tonight (Thursday) I ended up taking iftar at the home of logistics assistant Aziz Ahmad, after a long afternoon of driving around the city discussing American marriage customs and the shelling of West Kabul during the 1990s. Aziz lives with his parents and seven siblings on the western outskirts of Kabul, in a tight-packed
neighborhood of small walled compounds. He hustled me and the reluctant driver, Ainodeen, through the door and into a cozy, carpeted dining room with long floor cushions. After allowing me to give cursory salaams to his flustered sisters, Aziz ducked out and drew a curtain across the doorway; it was the last I saw of his
family, with the exception of his brother and six year-old sister, who periodically brought in more food. We sat cross-legged around a plastic tablecloth, tore off chunks of the diamond-shaped, corrugated flatbread that accompanies (or composes) most meals in Afghanistan, and tucked into heaps of mashed potatoes (deliciously heavy on the garlic, oregano, and pepper), curd, and still-liquid fried eggs. Over a dessert of lightly salted pomegranate seeds, Aziz ruefully discussed how his family's persistent association with foreigners has cut them off from their traditional community in the south. "My father was in the military, so when we went back to the village five years ago, they called us all Communists. Now that I work with French and US groups for a few years, they call me a foreigner."

It was all rather a contrast with last Thursday, which I spent entirely in the company of foreigners. We had dinner and drinks at the Mustafa Hotel (favorite haunt of expat journalists), whose slightly claustrophobic barroom offers glitzy mirror-mosaic decor, Beck and Guinness on tap, and a decent chicken tikka pizza. The bar is up a narrow flight of stairs, past several doors and a couple clusters of guards. A sign on the wall informs all concerned parties that under no circumstances will alcohol be served to Afghan citizens. When we left (the women shrugging their headscarves back on), we drove over to a compound inhabited by a haggard, hospitable Dane and a cheery Glaswegian Scot who invited everyone in sight to tomorrow's rugby game. About ten other young aid workers from all round Europe and Australia were hanging out on the couches, deconstructing music videos over screwdrivers and G&Ts. I added my American twang to the symphony of accents, and we whiled away a cheerful half hour in front of the TV.

Then began the remarkable quest for Thursday night parties in a city without addresses. In a country littered with mines and mujahidin, I think my life was most in danger that night, hurtling through the Kabul streets after dark with a tipsy, expostulating Scot as chauffeur: "Love the Afghans. Couldna find a kinder, more hospitable people. But get them behind the wheel of a car, and forget about it! Game over!" None of us quite knew where we were going, though as we trawled the area where the ICRC party was supposed to be, we encountered two or three other cars following the same rumor. Finally our little caravan arrived at the right street. As with most expat parties in Kabul, this one was marked by (1) a surreptitious X on the door of the compound, and (2) a couple dozen inconspicuous white SUVs with NGO logos and patient Afghan drivers parked along the roadside. We found the marked door and walked past the impassive guards into a different world. A sign by the entryway mandated a tequila shot for all comers (the three bottles were long empty). The house was packed with aid workers from all over the planet, drinking, dancing, talking shop. A long table held an international array of booze, from Australian wine to Latvian vodka to a particularly unpleasant ouzo. There was a bonfire in the backyard, and (as a surreal complement) someone had rigged a projector to shine the "Fire" animation from Windows MediaPlayer onto the ten feet of UNHCR-logo sheeting that topped the rear wall of the compound. We left an hour or so later, with our Aussie friend seeking directions on her mobile: "Yeh, we were just at that party, but it's a bit crap. Is the Bearing Point party on Flower Street? Is there room to park?"

It was loads of fun, and you can't deny all those hardworking expats a little festivity in a city as dry as Kabul. But the disconnect between the normal world of Kabul and the behind-heightened-walls party scene was striking; and naturally there are frictions. The UN has implored its staff to keep a lower party profile on a number of occasions. One of the previous hangouts was a pub established (brilliantly) across the street from a mosque, eventually forced to move due to bomb threats. As we were arriving last Thursday, a group of partygoers who missed the X on the door accidentally roused the unamused Afghan family across the street from their dinner. And the sight of the Afghan drivers waiting up til all hours to drive their drunken masters home was a bit distressing. Of course not everyone's comfortable walking home from parties (as P. and I ended up doing around 3 in the morning), but more efforts could be made to carpool.

Now, one similarity between expat life and Afghan life is that both are generally lived behind high walls -- which I found interesting, having heard plenty of criticisms in other countries of the comfortable "gated communities" in which aid workers isolate themselves. But in a culture as modesty-conscious as Afghanistan's, the gated compound is the norm, and mutual isolation in private life is a powerful social principle (though I hasten to add that hospitality and kinship are even stronger ones). Driving out of the city, I was struck by the walls everywhere -- high, narrow barriers of packed mud along field boundaries, brick walls parceling off empty blocks of mountainside. I commented that barbed wire would surely be a more effective way to keep the sheep out. "Sure," a friend responded, "but you want to be able to send the women to work in the fields. They can't do that effectively in a burqa." The daily trip from home enclosure to work enclosure isn't only an expat routine.

Our trip north of Kabul also brought the effects of the war into full focus. As we drove through the arid, misnamed Dih Sabz wasteland ("Sabz" means "green"), we kept passing the rusted wreckage of Soviet tanks and troop transports. Slowly the desert gave way to trees, walled fields and homes... with large white checkmarks painted on the mud walls, and lines of white stones along the roadside. "White means the deminers have been through here," a friend explained. "If you see red stones, stay the hell on the road. If you don't see any color stones, stay the hell on the road. If you see white stones, ask yourself seriously whether you have a reason to leave the road." As we turned onto the Bagram airbase road, our driver Basyir informed us that this had been the line of control between Ahmad Shah Massoud and the Taliban after the latter conquered Kabul. Both sides of the road were beautifully green, and clearly good farmland; both had been mined into uninhabitability by the rival armies over the years, and were only now recovering. In a bleakly appropriate coda, just as we finished discussing the rehabilitation of mined lands, a one-legged man on a bicycle pedaled gamely past our car.

But more than the mined farmland in the Shomali Plain, West Kabul is by far the saddest thing I've seen in the country. It was literally caught in the crossfire when the mujahidin began killing each other after driving out the Soviets; Aziz and Ainodeen laconically pointed out the specific surrounding mountains from which Gulbuddin, Massoud, and Dostum shelled each other and the city below. Thousands of civilians died. Hundreds of homes were leveled. And today, even after years of reconstruction, West Kabul is still a skeleton of a city. The giant Soviet-built grain silos on the highway have great scorched dents on the side where the shells hit them. The walls left from the bad old days are plasterless, pocked with bullet holes and shrapnel scars. The road in front of Kabul University has been fixed up a bit, but most of the other streets are still deeply pitted from bombs and barricades.

In Kabul it's common to see big metal shipping containers lined up by the side of the road; people keep them after shipments are delivered (perhaps because they choose to, perhaps because there's just not much to ship out of Kabul) and use them as shops or even homes. Along the main roads in West Kabul, you see bullet-riddled containers everywhere, and some are warped, convex, with jagged blast holes. I assumed they had all been used as barricades in the bloody street fighting of the civil war. Today I was told that the warlords had packed the latter containers full of prisoners and fired rockets into them -- execution, not war. Every time I begin to think my imagination is adequate to what happened here, I'm proved wrong again.

In general, please don't imagine that my mostly car's eye view (no pun intended) [ed: get it, Karzai? Joel shares the OxBloggers' taste for kabbalistically obscure puns...] of Kabul is adequate to the reality. There's more going on here than I could possibly pick up in a few weeks. I'll end with one of the things I saw in West Kabul that I found poignantly hopeful: a completely gutted warehouse whose ground level (extending for half a city block) was being used to store new bricks, stacked from floor to ceiling. The city is rebuilding. Kids are going to school in droves, including cute little headscarved girls. The only guns I've seen on the street have been carried by police and soldiers.

But it's clear from all reports that Kabul's relative stability and recovery aren't shared throughout Afghanistan, and Afghans continue to seek refuge in the capital for that reason. The ISAF armed forces here have been key to Kabul's recovery (notwithstanding the disgruntled banner hung from a wall near the heavily barricaded US Embassy: "Honorable International Societies! Have you come to Kabul to block our crossroads and roads?"). The sooner NATO achieves its stated goal of extending ISAF to the major regional cities -- not just Kunduz, though that's a good start -- the better.

And the sooner I get to bed, the better... it's only a few hours till breakfast...

For earlier Letters from Kabul from our worthy Afghanistan correspondent, see if you will here and here. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:51 PM by David Adesnik  

CLARK'S SPEECH: A POLITICAL MASTERSTROKE? Matt Yglesias' boss is arguing that Wes Clark's attack on George Bush's pre-9/11 record was not just intentional, but also the first shot in a well-planned campaign strategy. As Tomasky puts it,

[Clark] will apparently seek in the coming weeks and months to convince Americans that a failure of presidential leadership before 9-11 may have been partly responsible for the disaster's occurrence in the first place.

I'm going to have to call that wishful thinking. If Clark actually had such a clear strategy, why was his prepared text so equivocal on the issue of Bush's responsibility? And if this specific attack on Bush was such an important part of Clark's overall message on national security, why did he resort to ad libbing?

Now, Tomasky may be right that Bush is more vulnerable to criticism on the pre-9/11 front than widely thought. The Kean Commission may well expose an embarrassing degree of unpreparedness in the White House. And Tomasky may even be right that Clark's "surely has his own sources in the U.S. intelligence world". Still, if a Democratic candidate is going to attack Bush on this fron, he will need nothing short of a smoking gun in order to persuade the American public that Osama bin Laden deserves anything less than 100% of the blame for the September 2001 attacks.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 2:23 PM by David Adesnik  

CLARK'S SPEECH, A FIRST-HAND ACCOUNT: Alex Massie was there, and he reports that Clark really did say that Bush was personally responsible for 9/11.

Alex also notes that the specific wording of the accusation was pretty much an ad lib and that transcripts handed out at the event match the one posted on Clark's website.

On a related note, Alex links to this Josh Marshall post which argues that Clark's campaign is in complete disarray and headed for failure. Rightly, Alex takes Josh to task for focusing on organziational issues and ignoring the most important reason that Clark is running into serious trouble: he keeps changing his opinion on the most important issue of the day -- Iraq -- while insisting that his views haven't changed at all. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:45 AM by Patrick Belton  

A LAST FINAL BOW FOR FRANCO CORELLI, TENOR: One of the great tenors of the twentieth century, Franco Corelli, has passed away from us, perchance to sing with the angels.

Rachel and I were, somewhat poignantly, listening entirely by chance to Corelli's Songs and Arias disc at the precise moment he died. (This has made me somewhat cautious in use of my CD player...though were I a substantially less benevolent and well-meaning sort to all, I could note I've been listening quite a bit to the Dixie Chicks today, without demonstrable effect.)

Corelli's Metropolitan Opera debut formed one of the legendary nights to occur in that house, when both he and Leontyne Price both made their debut on the same night in Il Trovatore. The ovations at the end of the performance carried on for nearly an hour. In an anecdote which I recall, from the oral tradition of my own music coaches and relatives not too distant from his (and Rossini's) natal port town of Ancona on Italy's east coast, was that Corelli initially worked in the docks of his port town, following in his father's profession as a naval engineer. Friends noticed his singing on the docks, guided only by old 78's of Caruso, Gigli, and Lauri-Volpi, and encouraged him to study voice professionally. He received what seems in retrospect to have been quite bad instruction at the hands of Rita Pavoni in the Conservatory of Pesaro, and gained the distinction of being compared to a glass - "whenever he went up," Italian oral tradition records the contemporary assessment, "he broke." Returning to the ports, his friends convinced him once again to leave to pursue his vocal gifts, and receiving mildly better instruction from Arturo Melocchi (who was known, however, as a "throat-wrecker"), and a quite productive apprenticeship under Giacomo Lauri-Volpi, he deputed in 1951 as Don Jose in Carmen, singing with Maria Callas in 1953, deputing at La Scala with her in 1954, and taking Tosca to London in 1957. He retired in the year of my birth, 1976. If there be Neapolitan gondoliers in the heavens, he has surely taken his place there among them. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:31 PM by David Adesnik  

DID HE REALLY JUST SAY THAT? (PART TWO): Did Wes Clark actually accuse Bush of letting 9/11 happen? Or did the NYT imagine it?

Josh Marshall, who heard Clark deliver the speech, didn't mention anything about Clark's accusation. That surprised me, since Josh isn't one to miss a big story.

As such, I decided to figure things out for myself by getting a transcript of Clark's speech, which is available on the Clark04 website.

After reading the speech, I'm even more confused. There are some passages that are very similar to the ones reported in the NYT, but which have a fundamentally different meaning. According to the Times,

Gen. Wesley K. Clark said on Tuesday that the administration could not "walk away from its responsibilities for 9/11."

"You can't blame something like this on lower-level intelligence officers, however badly they communicated in memos with each other," said the retired general, the latest entrant in the Democratic presidential field. "It goes back to what our great president Harry Truman said with the sign on his desk: `The buck stops here.' And it sure is clear to me that when it comes to our nation's national security, the buck rests with the commander in chief, right on George W. Bush's desk."

According to the Clark website, the General said

And then there is 9/11. There is no way this administration can walk away from its responsibilities. This wasn't something that could be blamed on lower level intelligence officers. Our great Democratic President Harry Truman said, the "buck stops here." And when it comes to our nation's foreign policy, the buck sits on George W. Bush's desk. And we must say it again and again until the American people understand it. National security, next to upholding the Constitution, is the most important duty of any President.

Reading the Clark transcript, it's hard to figure out exactly what the General is saying. What is Clark referring to when he says that "This" wasn't something that can be blamed on lower-level intelligence officers? Is he referring to 9/11 or to the absence of WMD in Iraq?

From the NYT version of Clark's speech, however, it is absolutely clear that Clark is talking about 9/11. Well, that's all I have for the moment. I'll let you know what I find.

UPDATE: The AP has quotations almost identical to those in the NYT. TNR also has Clark saying the same thing, although Frank Foer doesn't think Clark meant to say what he said. Which leaves me wondering: Did Clark just completely mangle his prepared text?

UPDATE: There's nothing on Clark's sppech over at the Weekly Standard, but it does have a scathing review of Clark's ever-changing position on the war. The Corner has a link to the NYT article.

UPDATE: I just sent the following e-mail to the contact address given on the Clark '04 website:

Dear Clark '04 Staff,

Good luck with your work -- I know you've probably been putting in a lot of 16 hour days lately.

At the moment, I have a question about Gen. Clark's speech to the "New American Strategies for Security and Peace" conference. According to the New York Times and the Associated Press, Gen. Clark held President Bush personally responsible for the intelligence failures that led to 9/11. However, the quotations to that effect that appear in the NYT and AP stories do not appear in the transcript of General Clark's speech posted on your website. In that transcript, Gen. Clark makes statements superficially similar to the ones reported by the NYT and AP, but which have a fundamentally different meaning. Could you please explain this discrepancy?

Best,
David

UPDATE: I was hoping to settle the issue of what Clark said by watching the webcast of his speech, but I'm having trouble connecting.

UPDATE: Having slept on it, I think it's probably fair to conclude that the media reported Clark's statements accurately. However, the Clark campaign may simply have posted an earlier draft of the speech rather than the final product. Alternately, Clark may have mangled the text. Ultimately, the best indicator of what happened may be whether or not Clark decides to disavow his comments -- but even then it would be hard to know if he were backtracking from an accident or from a major rhetorical blunder. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:51 PM by David Adesnik  

DID HE REALLY JUST SAY THAT? Wes Clark seems to be blaming Bush for 9/11. No, not Iraq. 9/11. While the Administration has hardly been forthright about the intelligence failures that contributed to the attack, Clark really seems to be going out on a limb.

My best guess is that Clark thinks he can steal Dean's thunder by ramping us his attacks on the President. Or maybe Clark really has no idea how serious such accusations are. To figure out what was really on Clark's mind we may have to ask Matt Yglesias -- because The American Prospect sponsored the conference at which Clark delivered his speech (via satellite).

NB: Matt seems to have gone back to the pessimist side in the Iraq debate. Serves me right for outing him as a tentative optimist back in mid-October.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:33 PM by David Adesnik  

OXBLOG AGREES WITH NYT: Putin's a lying thug. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:19 PM by David Adesnik  

STICKING IT TO THE JEWS: OxBlog has never hidden its respect for the Jewish people. We are always ready to stand up for Israel and against anti-Semitism. But as an insider, let me tell you that sometimes the Jewish people really need to be taken down a notch. Through mantra-like repetition of assorted myths, we sometimes persuade ourselves to believe in our own delusions of grandeur.

Case in point: The supposed invincibility of the Israeli military. Long frustrated by stereotypical images of Jews (and especially Jewish males) as pale, thin and cowardly, Jews the world over now insist that Israeli soldiers are the bravest and most capable in the world. How else to explain the overwhelming victories of 1948, 1956 and 1967, as well as the death-defying come-from-behind triumph of 1973?

But what about 1991? According to Prof. Eliot Cohen -- best known as the author of Supreme Command -- the US military lost much of the respect it had for the Israelis as a result of the first Persian Gulf War. It turns out that this development had nothing to do with Saddam's ability to get in a few shots at Tel Aviv before pulling out of Kuwait. Rather, after their nonchalant devastation of the finest Arab military in existence, the Americans became much less impressed with Israeli victories over adversaries who were even less competent.

Prof. Cohen raised this point in response to a question that was asked after his lecture today on Israeli military strategy and culture in comparative perspective. In the course of his lecture, Prof. Cohen exposed the emptiness of the cherished myths that well-meaning Jewish teachers pass on to countless students in Hebrew schools across the nation.

As a survivor of 13 years of Jewish education, let me tell you that you cannot go to a Jewish school without having myths of Israeli prowess drummed into your head at every turn. And if you went to an Orthodox school like mine, chances are you were taught that Israeli victories were literal miracles, visible signs of God bestowing favors on his chosen people. (What I could never figure out was whether the Almighty just started being nice to the Jews in 1945, or whether the Israeli military's success was some sort of compensation for all of the terrible things that He let happen to us beforehand.)

Suffice it to say that the overwhelmingly Jewish audience at Prof. Cohen's talk was deeply unhappy with what he had to say. With one exception, every question thrown at him demanded to know how he could reconcile this or that Israeli achievement with his insistence that the Israeli military is nothing special. Some of the questions were fairly intelligent. For example, one man wanted to know how Israel established a competent military force in its first heady days as an independent state. As it turns out, David Ben Gurion wisely recognized that the fastest way to build up the armed forces was to take advantage of many Israelis' experience serving in the British and other European militaries.

Among the less thoughtful questions was how Cohen could fail to recognize that Israeli pilots are the best in the world, especially when behind the controls of their F-16s. Somewhat sarcastically, Cohen asked his interlocutor whether the Israelis built the F-16s and taught themselves how to fly, or whether the Americans had something to do with it. However, before Cohen could finish what he was saying, an old Israeli woman asked him how many MiGs the American air force had shot down. (Answer: Enough.)

What really surprised me about the audience was its unwillingness even to accept that lsrael might have the second best military in the world, after that of the American juggernaut. It sort of reminded of the debates I used to have with some of my friends in junior high school. We genearlly assumed that America was stronger than Israel because its military was bigger. But a lot of us argued that, man for man, the Israel military was better. While this view generally prevailed, some dissenters insisted that the American army was better man for man, but only because it could afford to spend so much more on each soldier's training and equipment.

With these adolescent debates as a backdrop, it was especially interesting to hear Prof. Cohen explain that the Israeli military, historically, has valued quality less than quantity. Little known is the fact that in 1948 the Israelis outnumbered their opponents. And thanks to its extensive system of conscription and reserves, Israel maintains one of the last mass armies in the age of the professional soldier.

Prof. Cohen also argued that despite prevalent images of Jews as intellectuals, Israel has one of the least intellectual armies in the world. Unlike the American army and many of its European counterparts, the Israeli armed forces produces few substantive works of military theory and history.

Now, lest one think that Prof. Cohen's entire lecture was an effort at Socratic subversion of Jewish egomania, it is important to recognize that such exercises have tremendous practical value. After all, Israel's most devastating losses on the battlefield -- in the Sinai in October 1973 -- were a direct result of the stubborn hubris that had set in after the Six Day War.

In addition, unloading all of this mythical baggage enables one to appreciate what may be Israel's greatest accomplishment on the military front: the establishment of the only democracy in the Middle East thanks to David Ben Gurion's aggressive efforts to undermine the political influence of senior generals and ensure the subordination of the military to civilian authorities.

At a time when many Israelis considered themselves to be revolutionaries and kept portraits of Stalin above their desks, it was hardly a foregone conclusion that Israel would become both a Jewish state and a democracy. For that, we ought to be thankful. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:20 PM by David Adesnik  

WHERE DOES THE WaPo STAND? This masthead editorial praises President Bush for his iron-willed resolve and says we are making progress in Iraq. Yet this column by editorial page editor Fred Hiatt says that defeat and failure are very real possibilities if we don't get the security situation under control. Has the tide begun to turn? (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:04 PM by David Adesnik  

ARAB LEADERS DENOUNCE KILLING OF INNOCENT IRAQIS: Oh, that Greg Djerejian. He has quite an imagination. Today he invents a hypothetical world in which concern for innocent Arab life motivates Arab heads of state to condemn the cold-blooded murder of dozens of Muslim Arabs in Iraq.

Of course, Greg is a sensible fellow, so he doesn't confuse such hypotheticals with real-life reality. He knows that Arab dictators are self-serving cowards whose lip service to Arab nationalism and Islamic values never gets in the way of their lust for power.

But don't worry, Greg. The day will come when Mubarak and Assad and Abdallah speak out forcefully on behalf of the sanctity of Arab life. It will the be day after an American bomb goes astray and kills a dozen Iraqis.

UPDATE: If the victims in this story turn out to be innocent bystanders, Mubarak et al. may have their chance to lambast the Americans. Frankly, though, I think the Arab leadership will keep quiet unless something egregious happens, like the wedding-party bombing in Afghanistan. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 3:46 PM by Patrick Belton  

SYLVIA PLATH, DEFENDED FROM HER DETRACTORS: As we're having something of a poetic day today, it seems appropriate to link to Meghan O'Rourke's excellent essay on Sylvia Plath on Slate. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 3:34 PM by Patrick Belton  

TORY SHAKE-UP: As of several minutes ago, Ian Duncan Smith is no more, at least as leader of the Conservative Party. (See BBC, Guardian, Telegraph, Conservative Party website). The instant frontrunner to replace him has been shadow chancellor Michael Howard. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:43 AM by Patrick Belton  

A VISIT FROM FATHER PAUL:
"Beannacht De ar an obair,"
-- "The More a Man Has the More a Man Wants," from Quoof, (1983)

As a brief, personal comment, one of the side compensations of becoming grievously overeducated in universities such as this one, as well as of serving time as a foreign policy hand in Washington and New York, is that you accumulate frequent opportunities to meet, and I quote, "Great Men." And so, in the last several years, like many of my friends, I have duly been able to meet a number of the United States's and Britain's leading scholars, chief legislators and public servants of the U.S. executive branch, and even, last week, HM the Queen. This is obviously due to coincidences of shared place rather than through any personal merit whatsoever, and I only make the point at all because I have never before yesterday had the opportunity to exchange words with anyone for whom I have for so long nursed such deep intellectual and personal admiration as I do for Paul Muldoon, our professor of poetry.

Along with Josh, Josh, and Rachel, we ended up brushing up against him before the lecture and having a quite nice chat with him. He's an amazingly nice man, and half-embarrassedly shook all of our hands and introduced himself to all of us as "Paul." I muttered off some Irish to him and must have in so doing by equal parts scared and amused him, so he very kindly talked with us until it was time for his lecture.

During which, some nutter blew a long whistle roughly 20 lines into Paul's prefatory reading of Dover Beach (ironically enough, right around the line about "there is no silence, no peace" &c), and stood up, while carrying a stuffed sheep, and shouted out seven or eight lines in verse, which segued into a denunciation of Jews and Tony Blair (who, as we learned, is the first PM not to be British, as he's Zionist), and ending with the memorable line "the Jews are the real separatists." He was finally convinced to leave, announcing that he was taking his friend, Larry the stuffed sheep, with him. After which our professor poetry announced, admirably without missing a beat, that coincidentally the election for the next Professor of Poetry would be in March of 2004, and that those who said Oxford was being a boring, quiet place would perhaps find themselves mistaken.

Josh and I may disagree slightly over whether it is he or Heaney should be classed the foremost poet currently composing in English. But it is the similarities between the two that amaze: both Heaney and Muldoon were born, obviously, in the North (Muldoon in Armagh, Heaney in Derry) they both attended Queen's University, Belfast; they both passed portions of their youth in the BBC's Northern Ireland bureau. Heaney is dedicant of Muldoon's "The Briefcase" (1990). They have both held Oxford's professorship of poetry.

The poetic output of the North in our generation has been prodigious: though, as Kinsella rightly points out, the Northern phenomenon is 'largely a journalistic entity' rather than a school in any real sense, that Heaney, Muldoon, and their too-neglected colleagues Ciaran Carson, Medbh McGuckian, and Derek Mahon would all hail from a beleaguered, traditionally philistine province simply astounds. This is a province, and a country, that poetically punches above its weight. Of contemporary poets in the Republic, Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill was reared in the Kerry Gaeltacht and composes in Irish at the highest levels that language has known, and Thomas Kinsella's corpus, including his verse translation of The Tain (1969), one of the starting points of the Gaelic literary tradition, are worth noting. Though they straddle an international boundary, all these contemporary Irish poets, whether from the Republic or North, betray great density of local reference. They all follow Kavanagh's dictum, in the sonnet "Epic," "I made the Iliad from such / A local row."

It is in his playful erudition, at times giving way to moments of haunting epic vision, and in his skillful knitting together of intertextual elements from an English-language literary tradition of which he is undisputed master that Muldoon distinguishes himself from the other poets of our day. He combines the incredible humour and inventiveness of, say, "A Half Door Near Cluny" (1998) (which has the appearance of a crossword puzzle), or of [Ptolemy] and [Euclid] in "Madoc: a Mystery" (1990), with the erudition and gift for textual allusion that he displays in the pyrotechnics of To Ireland, I. It is really only Muldoon who could compose a lengthy poem entirely in haiku: witness, "Hopewell Haiku" (1998). He takes, as their citizen, the Gaelic and English literary traditions seriously, but himself as an object he does not, permitting a tremendous sense of fun to run down across Muldoon's lines.

I also must confess here a small personal bias: he is, after all, to my knowledge the only poet who for accidents of natural circumstance links the social and geographic worlds that are also mine: Gaelic Ireland, Britain, the Judaism he comes to through his wife, and the American northeast and the New Jersey Turnpike which have been his residence since 1987. And these worlds are woven together in the spaces between his verses. Following Kavanagh, as he does in his A to Zed of the Irish literary tradition presented in To Ireland, I (based on his Clarendon Lectures in English, 1998), he could not do anything else.

I'll be attempting in the coming months to summon up the guts to invite our professor of poetry out, next term, for a pint with a group of Irish students and others sharing an interest in his work. And in the meantime, I will be off to buy my stuffed sheep. We all do need friends, after all.

UPDATE: For opening her blog with a quote from A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and for linking to Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill, Sheila O'Malley wins the highly coveted OxBabe "Blogosphere Babe of the Week" award. (Prior illustrious winners include Yalediva, and, of course, my lovely Rachel for the brief period she was posting on Nathan Hale). Also, Sheila might even go on a date with you, provided you live in New York and have an air conditioner.

Elsewhere, Josh Cherniss also comments on l'affaire sheep. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:05 AM by David Adesnik  

ONCE UPON A TIME IN CHINA, PART 2: If you want to learn a lot about Chinese foreign policy, read this excellent essay in the new issue of Foreign Affairs. One of the co-authors is Taylor Fravel, a colleague of mine at the Olin Institute who got his doctorate from Stanford last year and just presented a paper at Olin's National Security Seminar that won more praise than any other paper presented so far this year. Taylor also happens to be an Oxford graduate. If he weren't so busy, I guess we'd have to ask him to blog.

Anyhow, this post isn't really about Chinese foreign policy. As I mentioned yesterday, I'm not in a foreign policy frame of mind at the moment. Thus, those of you who would prefer to think about substantive political matters rather than the films of Jet Li (the actual subject of this post) should go and give Taylor's article a thorough read. There are a lot of subtle points in it, so do not forget that there is often an iron fist inside the velvet glove.

Now, back to Jet Li. Last night, I saw -- for the first time -- Once Upon a Time in China, Part 2 (OUTC-2). The opening scene is one of the absolute funniest I have ever seen. It is 1895 in Southern China, and Wong Fei-hung (Jet Li) is in the midst of a railroad journey from Fushan to Canton. A practitioner of traditional Chinese medicine, Wong happens to be not all familiar either with railroads or Western customs. However, his wordly aunt is familiar with both.

When the three protagonists sit down in the dining car, Wong and his apprentice stare in disbelief at the slab of meat on their plate. Wong's aunt informs him that this is a "steak". Wong and his apprentice then begin to struggle with the knife and fork they have been given. Both of them try to imitate Aunt Yee, but wind up pushing the steak around their plate rather than eating it.

Then suddenly, Foon the apprentice pushes down with his knife and fork, sending his steak hurtling toward the window. Ever the Kung Fu master, Wong catches it in his hand just before it is lost forever. Wong then haughtily admonishes Foon to eat properly, but proceeds to send his steak flying into Aunt Yee's face, from which it rebounds back onto the table.

So you're probably not laughing right now. Whether because it is intrinsically hard or because I lack the necessary talent, describing slapstick humor in prose form is not a simple matter. But don't worry. The scene is so funny that you will laugh even if you know exactly what is coming, so you haven't lost anything by reading this post.

Another reason you might not be laughing is that this sort of reverse cultural humor has finally begun to get an audience in the United States thanks to Jackie Chan. But after all the Americans-with-chopsticks humor around, this is still a very amusing alternative.

Of course, there is a lot more to OUTC-2 than just slapstick. First of all, there's kung fu. The action choreographer for the film was Yuen Woo-Ping, now famous in the West as the creative genius behind the fight scenes in all three Matrix films. (At the risk of ruffling some feathers, I'll say that the action in OUTC-2 is far better than it is in the Matrix.)

However, both the slapstick and kung fu are ultimately part of a story, and a good story at that. Coincidentally, it is a story about a foreign policy, even though I said that I wasn't going to write about foreign policy today. More importantly, it is a story about inter-cultural relationships, or what we Americans might refer to as "diversity".

While 'diversity' has become a provocative code word in the American political lexicon, OUTC-2 provides a compelling reminder of what a compelling concept diversity is when removed from its domestic political context. After all, I'm willing to guess that the overwhelming majority of readers on this site enjoy traveling abroad and learning about foreign cultures.

Yet even in such contexts, we often assume that those who think about diversity are Americans/Westerners coming into contact with other cultures. Yet as OUTC-2 demonsrates, Hong Kong can offer us a very different perspective on what it means to navigate cultural differences and cultural divides.

Above all, OUTC-2 reminds us that diversity in no way entails unquestioning acceptance of the other. The primary message of the film is that China must overcome its entrenched legacies of authoriatrian and xenophobic violence. If it can do so, it will then be in a position to both share its unique heritage with the West as well as benefit from all that the West has to offer.

Another fundamental aspect of the film's message is that there is an inextricable link between diversity and democracy. In American political discourse, advocates of diversity often find it hard to make a forceful case for the universality of democracy and human rights, since the universality of anything suggests that diversity only has value within a very narrow set of limits.

However, the message of OUTC-2 is that the benefits of diversity are only possible within a democratic political order. In Hollywood, a movie with a message as serious and sophisticated as that would dispense with all the kung fu and slapstick humor. But not in Hong Kong, where one can still be an intelligent film goer and want to enjoy a good laugh and a good fight. Now that's diversity.

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# Posted 9:08 PM by David Adesnik  

MUCKRAKING ON THE RIGHT: David Brooks slams greed-driven lobbyists and the hypocritical GOP legislators in their pockets. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:40 PM by David Adesnik  

A LYING THUG: You know who I mean. Oh, and he's also an anti-Semite. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:35 PM by David Adesnik  

CLOUDS VS. LININGS: A mixed report from Mazar-e-Sharif. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:32 PM by David Adesnik  

DECADES OF GOOD DEEDS PROVIDE NO ARMOR: An apt headline for today's WaPo update on the Red Cross bombing. According to the Red Cross, the "attacker used what looked like a Red Cross/Red Crescent ambulance to deliver the device." (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:22 AM by Patrick Belton  

SCRIBBLING BENEATH THE VEIL: The New York Times reviews "The Storyteller's Daughter," the wide-ranging literary exploration of Aghanistan just accomplished by Saira Shah, an Afghan-Kent native of Parsee and Afghan stock. (The title refers to the author's father, celebrated Afghan Sufi writer Idries Shah.) Ms Shah has certainly come of age in her own right, and what's more, has done so twice over: she is also the narrator of Channel 4's haunting documentary Beneath the Veil, filmed under the late unmissed Taliban regime. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:19 AM by Patrick Belton  

FOR ANY OF OUR READERS WHO ARE IN OXFORD: You really should go see Paul Muldoon tonight, if you're not already. Not only is he the most significant living poet writing in English, he's also the professor of poetry we're lucky enough to share with Princeton. What's more, you've got two chances: once at 5, at Schools (where he's lecturing on Matthew Arnold's Dover Beach and the end of the poem), and again at 7:45 in the more intimate surroundings of the music room at Corpus. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:35 PM by David Adesnik  

CHANGING THE SUBJECT: There is more to say about Iraq, but not today. So I will change the subject to something that is no less depressing but still different: the devastation of inner-city America. My interest in this subject is more personal than political. Growing up in a metropolis, the issues of race and poverty were never far from my mind, even as a child.

In New York City, if a child is old enough to leave the house by himself, he is also old enough to instinctively sense the unspoken divide between white, black and Latin. Sometimes, that divide becomes more explicit. The Crown Heights riots were one such moment.

It is precisely because I have such vivid but clouded memories of New York's past that I was fascinated by Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities. With incredible detail, it evoked the confusion and fear of upper-middle class white New York.

However, Wolfe does not tell us much about poor, black New York. I believe that this decision is a reflection of Wolfe's honesty as an author. He will not write about that which he does not know. There is artistic value to this decision as well, since less impressive sections might have marred the exquisite observational writing that fills the rest of the book.

Still, being curious about that which I do not know, I decided to purchase of a copy of Code of the Street, by UPenn sociologist Elijah Anderson.

When browsing the shelves at the Harvard Bookstore, I didn't recognize the connection between Wolfe's writing and Anderson's. When I browse, I mostly look at those books that have been remaindered, since I am not inclined to pay full price for my casual reading. I suspect that because of this haphazard approach to book-buying, I didn't even notice what an impressive and surprising array of authors had chosen to publish their praise on the jacket of Prof. Anderson's book. A partial list includes Cornel West, George Will, Marian Wright Edelman and William Julius Wilson.

Having now read half of the book, I think I can see why it appeals to such a broad swathe of the political spectrum. Anderson's work is richly descriptive but subtly analytical. As the author explains, his purpose was to produce an ethnography of inner-city life. He seeks to document what is, rather than focusing on why it is so or how it should be. While one cannot charge Anderson with ignoring such issues, he certainly does not place them in the foreground.

In short, I think it would be best to place Anderson's work in the 'culture of poverty' tradition. Although I am not familiar with the classics of that canon, I believe that they emphasize how the greatest barrier to the advancement of the poor are not purely economic or structural, but are rather the product of a culture that they themselves embrace.

As such, it isn't hard to see why this tradition has considerable appeal for conservatives. If ethical failures are responsible for the perpetuation of poverty, than one can argue persuasively that increased welfare funding and expanded affirmative action programs are not the answer.

However, one can also argue -- and Prof. Anderson often seems to do so -- that increased funding or greater racial justice might be able to break the hold that the culture of the inner city has on its inhabitants. Even so, such sentiments comprise an undercurrent in Anderson's book, rather than its main stream.

As someone almost completely unfamiliar with the academic analysis of urban poverty, I must say that I have been profoundly shocked by what I have read. What Anderson describes is nothing short of a culture that glorifies uncontrolled violence and conspicuous consumption while forcefully disparaging the virtues of responsibility, modesty, and compromise.

Anderson says time and again that it is not wrong to fear a young black man walking towards you with a North Face jacket, Timberland boots and an unwelcoming expression. And it is not just white America that fears him. Decent black America fears him. Other young black men may fear him. And perhaps most disturbing of all, this is exactly the reaction that the young man in question wants to provoke.

Frankly, if this book didn't have endorsements given by West, Edelman and Wilson, I would not believe a word it says. How, in the absence of first-hand knowledge, could I possibly conclude that so many black men (and women) subscribe to a set of principles that I (and most black Americans) believe to be nothing short of perverse? How, in the absence of first-hand knowledge, could I accept a version of reality that seems designed to validate an extreme political agenda?

The most heartbreaking section of Prof. Anderson's book concerns inner-city attitudes toward parenting. For the young men Anderson describes, persuading the mother of your child to accept your total abdication of responsibility for its welfare is an achievement, a demonstration of masculine bravado. In contrast, supporting one's child -- either financially or through marriage -- is considered a weakness.

I found this so heartbreaking because it seems to go against the most fundamental source of human compassion, the parental bond. I found it so heartbreaking because the victims of this insanity are innocent children.

While disapproving of it, I understand why many young black women and women denigrate academic achievement, denigrate respect for the law, and denigrate respect for their elders. But to destroy one's own children is more than I can comprehend.

I am still afraid that someone will respond to this post and point out a glaring flaw with Anderson's work that I have missed. A flaw I did not detect because of my own ideological blinders. A flaw exposing a willingness to believe the worst, a willingness that is analytically indistinguishable from racism. But for the moment I am persuaded that this is real.

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# Posted 10:43 PM by David Adesnik  

A MODEST PROPOSAL: Tom Friedman makes Jonathan Swift seem like a madman. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:20 PM by David Adesnik  

A SAD DAY: Our hearts go out to the families of those who lost their lives today in Baghdad.

But more than lives have been lost. For more than a hundred years, the Red Cross has been a symbol of mankind's desire to lessen the carnage of even the most brutal war. In countless conflicts, the Red Cross has navigated treacherous political waters, succesfully establishing its neutral status so that it could minister to the fallen on all sides. But now, we must confront the sort of mindless cruelty that sees even the humanitarian aspirations of the Red Cross as a threat to its savage agenda. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:26 AM by Patrick Belton  

FEZES AND PIG LATIN IN GREENWICH: While I dodge for the moment making my own stab at truth, I wanted to draw attention to by far the best part of the story David linked to yesterday:

Cole [a prominent local opponent to the U.N. locating in Greenwich, Connecticut] boasted years later of hiring two men to pretend they were Syrians. Each man donned a fez and walked through downtown Greenwich with surveyor tools, chattering away in pig Latin and spooking the shopkeepers.

"The anti-U.N. folks raised a ton of money," Udain recalled, "and they began spreading rumors that camels would walk down the streets."

Atthay isway ettypray arnday unnyfay. Osethay illysay Ushesbay!

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# Posted 6:54 PM by David Adesnik  

CHICKEN HAWK UNDER FIRE: Whatever your opinion of Paul Wolfowitz, you can't say that he's afraid to put his life on the line for policies that he believes in. As the WaPo points out,

The attack [on the al-Rashid] demonstrated how resistance fighters are increasingly using explosive projectiles -- rockets and mortars -- to pierce supposedly secure American facilities. On Friday, two soldiers were killed and four were wounded in a mortar strike a military base north of Baghdad. Thirteen soldiers were wounded in another mortar attack on Thursday night.

So is this bad news? Well, it certainly isn't good news. But the WaPo's correspondents think that we have to keep things in perspective:

The attacks marred a day when two events brought life in Baghdad closer to normal: the reopening of a major bridge across the Tigris River and the lifting of the nighttime curfew clamped on the capital since U.S. forces toppled Iraqi president Saddam Hussein.

The NYT article on the attack also mentioned the reopening of the bridge and the lifting of the curfew, but preserved its correspondents' sense of detachment and objectivity by having an American general describe those events' significance. For those in a charitable frame of mind, the NYT correspondents' professionalism is something to be admired. Those of a more cynical cast might suggest, however, that NYT correspondents maintain an admirable commitment to professional norms precisely when doing favors their interpretation of events on the ground. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:26 PM by David Adesnik  

WHAT IS TRUTH? Ex-blogger Mark Butterworth is taking a very creative approach to the issue of accuracy and balance in the media. He is simply asking journalists to provide their personal answer to the age old question of "What is truth?" Mark is also asking a number of bloggers to answer this question, myself included.

While I answered Mark's question the best I could given my lack of philosophical training, I thought it would be a good idea to get some more feedback from what I wrote, which is as follows:

Briefly, I'd say that the simplest kind of truth is factual truth. Much of it is directly observational. This is a table. This a chair. Water is blue.

But, of course, water isn't blue. We just honestly perceive it to be that way. And even tables and chairs aren't really tables and chairs. Those are just made up names we give to loose categories of objects.

Even so, there tends to be so much basic agreement on these loose categories that only philosophers bother to contest them. The NY Times and the National Review, George Bush and Osama bin Laden, can all agree on what is a table and what is a chair.

The utility of this principle extends rather far, enabling us to describe historical events. Germany did invade the Soviet Union in 1941. All of the nouns in the sentence can be endlessly broken down into fragments. The verb "invade" is especially problematic since it is impossible to describe an "action", which doesn't really exist. There was an infinite sequence of lesser actions, each of which can be characterized in many ways. Thus, higher-level verb contain much generalization and interpretation.

Actually, the same is true of nouns. One could substitute "the Nazis", "the fascists" or "Hitler" for the word Germany in the above sentence. Each gives a distinct coloration to its meaning. Even so, those who object to that coloration tend to accept what they perceive as the basic fact of the matter and consciously object to its coloration.

So what does all this have to say about the truth of the news that we read daily? What's very good about it is that you can usually deduce a set of accepted facts even from articles which one believes to be biased.

But you never can know what's being left out. And casual readers tend to be far more influenced by coloration than by "facts". Non-blogging friends of mine tend to see the occupation of Iraq as a catastrophic failure. Yet because they are casual readers, they can't cite the facts on which this observation is based. Rather, the interpretive cues
that appear in almost every NYT article suggest to them a certain interpretation of the matter.

Finally, on top of all this, you have add the complications that come from ethical/ideological disagreements that have nothing to do with what is "true". So the whole situation is something of a mess. But I think the "truthfulness" of the media could be signficantly imporved if journalists were more conscious/honest about the ways in which the presentation of small truths influences our perception of larger ones.

How that's for starters? (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:08 PM by David Adesnik  

GRANDPAPPY BUSH VS. THE UNITED NATIONS: It turns out that this feud goes back a couple of generations. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:44 PM by David Adesnik  

POT VS. KETTLE: I don't know how Boomshock thinks he can get away with calling me the pervert in this situation. Then again, at least neither of us is violating the women of Islam like that crazy Reynolds guy over there. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 2:48 PM by Patrick Belton  

FROM OUR KABUL CORRESPONDENT: Our valiant correspondent in Afghanistan, treating his duties as OxBlog bureau chief with due seriousness, pens us this update:

It's Friday which, depending on how the moon looks to the relevant authorities, may be the last day before Ramazan begins in Kabul. We're hoping for another day's respite; tomorrow P. and I [note: this is not me - even if I have seemed oddly absent from Oxford lately - ed.] are heading up to check out one of the dams built under our project, and apparently there's a riverside hostel nearby that catches and grills fresh fish from the Panjshir river. It'd be a shame if it didn't start serving until after sundown. Plus, we've decided to honor the fast, judging that to be easier and more respectful than smuggling food into the office restroom (or tantalizing our observant co-worker and housemate Z. with large meals during daylight hours).

Kabul's smoggy skies clear up remarkably on days when car traffic is down. The mountains that frame the city were sharply visible as we drove around today even the more remote ranges, which are usually just distant smudges above the horizon. I spent this evening reading on the balcony of our guesthouse, glancing up at the old hilltop fort that dominates the view from Taimany Street. There were dozens of kite-flying kids silhouetted on the high ridge. The sparrows were going crazy in the trees next door. Something rambunctious was also going on in the larger NGO guesthouse on the other side, but I couldn't tell what - as with most expat haunts, the walls have been heightened with three yards of UNHCR plastic sheeting to prevent anyone seeing in or out. (A more relaxed version of the massive concrete and razor wire barriers that fill half the street around the US Embassy and ISAF headquarters).

Along with logistics assistant Aziz Ahmad, I've spent the last five days riding around the bazaars of Kabul in search of people who can ship, buy, or build us the necessary road construction equipment within three weeks. It's been an education, and a great way to look over a bit more of the city than I could have seen from the expat compounds. Kabul has one of the traits I love most in cities - dozens of ways to get from point A to point B. Getting around may be a life-endangering, drawn-out process, but I doubt I'd ever find it boring. If the multitude of Toyota Corollas ahead is moving too slowly, our resourceful drivers are ever-ready to wheel off the main roads into a maze of rutted, unpaved alleyways. I've gone down to the metalworkers' street across from Kabul Zoo three times now, and each time it's been through a different quarter of the city.

It's fascinating to watch the small specific bazaars roll by roads entirely occupied by plumbing fixture shops, film developers, tinsmiths, carpenters. Scavenged car parts are a roaring business; individual roadside vendors specialize in headlamps, or fenders, rearview mirrors, car doors (with intact windows at a premium). And then you turn off the main road, and are in another, private world of gated compounds ringed by eroding mud-brick walls. Women walk between houses with their burqas rolled back from their faces and children in hand.

Even the routine trip between office and guesthouse can turn abruptly exciting. On Tuesday, we hit traffic so bad that our driver proposed we loop all the way around the center of town and take the road up by the airport. P. said he'd heard of carjackings along that road, but Basyir assured us we'd be fine. We soon found ourselves driving along the edge of a field corn, I think, but it was too dark to tell - on a broad, rutted track covered in dust four inches deep. There were no lights except our headlights, and through the thick storm of dust thrown up by us and other occasional vehicles, we could barely see two yards in any direction. It felt a bit like driving on the moon. Occasionally a lightless shack would appear and vanish along the roadside; three times, we had to abruptly slow down to avoid hitting large rocks that had been considerately placed in the middle of the road. Fortunately, the bandits had taken the night off - either that, or they were still stuck in traffic back in Shahre Now - and we abruptly found ourselves back in the middle of the city, none the worse for wear.

There's a good fifth of Kabul tantalizingly out of reach, built on stone platforms along the steep hillsides with no room left for motor roads. One of the steepest mountains has a thousand-year-old boundary wall built right down its side, defying erosion and gravity. It's strange to turn from that ancient line of stone to the far newer yet half-demolished neighborhoods below it - the pockmarked walls, the gutted, windowless buildings topped with twisted rebar wreckage. In many Kabul neighborhoods, the average shop is a first-floor storefront below two or three stories of war-scarred, uninhabitable ruin. Yet as I mentioned last time, construction is booming. Not everywhere; and the imbalances between different neighborhoods and populations in this city is something I'll write more about later. But the city is coming back. An Indian supplier of construction equipment ruefully complained that he was already being undercut by a half-dozen Afghan merchants who hadn't had a cement mixer to their names two years ago.

Car sales are also booming, and not just to the rich. Traffic in Kabul is as congested as any city I've been in the roundabouts in particular invite a complete standstill, as cars attempt to drive both ways around them and intrepid cyclists, hand-carts, and pedestrians sift into the momentary gaps between vehicles. Beggars chase cars, tapping on the door until the driver or taxi passenger hands over a few Afghanis; and by the way, the "facelessness of the poor" is unnervingly literal in the land of the burqa. Meanwhile, battered German buses roll along with people hanging off the roof and out the windows. Apparently on the theory that what's cool for an SUV is cool for a bus, many buses have the slightly alarming slogan "OFF-ROAD EXPRESS" painted on the side.

For my part, I'll be on the road tomorrow. Next dispatch I'll presumably have some impressions from outside Kabul; and I'll also spin a couple yarns from the surreptitious-verging-on-surreal Thursday night Kabul party scene. Till then!

Cheers,
Joel

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# Posted 1:27 PM by David Adesnik  

POP CULTURE CLARIFICATION: CJ writes in that

I read your blog entry mentioning the Genesis video, shown on MTV and elsewhere, that depicted a Claymation Ronald Reagan accidentally launching nuclear missiles. You may be interested to know that the joke wasn't original to that video, and wasn't originally aimed at Reagan. During the reign of Yuri Andropov, the Soviet leader of the very early 1980s who was in poor health, a cartoon by the well-known French cartoonist Plantu ran in Le Monde that showed an IV-drip-connected Andropov in a hospital bed beneath two large buttons that read "NURSE" and "SS-20". The SS-20 was of course the latest model of Soviet nuclear-armed missile. So, the Genesis video in fact turned somebody else's anti-Soviet humor into an anti-American work.

Oh the irony... (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:18 PM by David Adesnik  

COMIC RELIEF: International ANSWER will be heading up an anti-occupation protest tomorrow in Washington DC. (It's nice to see that ANSWER's agenda isn't just limited to sticking up for Castro.)

Organizers and police expect the protest to draw upwards of 30,000 participants. While I don't know about crowd numbers, I do expect a deluge of sarcastic barbs from the blogosphere. It's sort of like shooting fish in a barrel. For example,

"I have two granddaughters," said Nancy Jakubiak, 54, a legal assistant preparing for a 12-hour trip to the District on a charter bus leaving Louisville tonight. "They're 3 and 1, and I do this for them. I tremble when I think of the world they're going to grow up in."

Gee, Nancy, do you mean a world without Saddam Hussein? Isn't Kim Jong Il enough for your granddaughters? That's what I mean by fish in a barrel. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:31 PM by David Adesnik  

WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO POLITICAL CORRECTNESS? Catch it before it's gone. If you go to the front page of the NYT right now, there is a picture of a spaced-out looking black dude with a caption underneath that says:

An Unconventional Weapon:
Soldiers in Congo are resorting to the practice of cannibalism. Mystical belief, like disease and poverty, would seem to be an unyielding African curse.

Now imagine if someone (say a three-star general at the Pentagon) had said that "Mystical belief, like disease and poverty, would seem to be an unyielding Arab curse." Then the NYT would write an editorial demanding that he be fired.

Look, I have no interest in defending Gen. Boykin. He should be disciplined. And writing one bad caption (or blog post) is obviously not in the same league as evangelical barnstorming. But some consistency would be appreciated.

Anyhow, I read the first sectionof the cannibalism article and I am sure my stomach can take the rest. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:11 AM by David Adesnik  

NEVER STRIKES TWICE? Not to dispute Patrick's exegesis, but if you are in an open field in the middle of a thunderstorm, climbing onto a cross and just hanging there is a pretty good way to make sure that you get hit by lightning. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:51 AM by Patrick Belton  

A LETTER FROM DUBAI: OxBlog's network of far-flung foreign correspondents is, well, growing and flunging daily. This just in from the Dubai office:

If you land in Dubai, chances are nine out of twelve times the first thing that will strike you after you leave the airport is how hot the weather it is.  Immediately after, you'll begin to notice the sand, the cars (mostly Japanese and American), wide well-maintained American-style highways, and the diversity of people.  Next you will probably start to get a feeling that driving here is really, really crazy. 
 
UAE are a young, still developing country of about 3.5 million people.  Of that, only about twenty percent are the so-called "nationals" (holders of UAE passports, mostly indigenous pre-oil settlers), the rest being "expats" either from Europe and N. America, or "TNC's" (Third Country Nationals, cheap manual labor form the Third World).  Sheikh Zayed al-Maktoum, the President (for life) of UAE, is the head of the ruling family -- those would be the Maktoums -- and is both respected and hard to forget if the gigantic portraits you'll see everywhere, such as those along the Sheikh Zayed Rd., incidentally, are any indication.  There are seven emirates (i.e. states) in the country, and they are fairly autonomous -- and, interestingly, not necessarily geographically contiguous (there are also a couple of bits of a neighboring coutry, Oman contained within UAE territory), and regarding this last point don't know why that is or whether it has anything to do with the predominantly nomadic former nature of these societies.  There is quite a lot of topographical or land cover diversity (as geographers like to call it as of late).  The north and the east of the country is rocky and hilly (the Hajar mountains are named in Arabic for "rock"), and there are valleys, oases, now dry river beds (that look weird), the hot springs and cold pools, palm tree plantations/forests, sparsely vegetated arid bushland and dry savannah, and some parts, like Dubai are all sand, and flat as a pancake, or I should say, are meant to be all sand -- it's amazing what desalination and drip-irrigation system can do.  All this in a country that can be traversed North-South and East-West in a day.  
 
The disparities extend beyond the scenery; effects of the federal system are quite obvious should you travel throughout this country -- the less wealthy emirates are significantly less developed, and in a whole lot of places the date seems to be 1960 or earlier, like Bitnah on the east coast of the country, the site of an old fort, where there are about one hundred ground-level houses with often elaborately designed metal doors, unpaved roads, and goats roaming about. 
 
And then you have Dubai.  This is the city and emirate which has succeeded in becoming a major finance/banking, shipping, trading, and high-endish hospitality industries hub, so much that very approximately 90% of it's revenue comes from non-petrol sector, which is bloody amazing.  Dubai is a great cosmopolitan city where you can buy just anything, might meet anyone, and could have the time of your life (I have seen some great night life there, and it's cheap. Tuesday nights, the equivalent to Thursdays to those of you unfamiliar with the fact that Thu and Fri are the weekend there, are when ladies get to drink alcohol for free, but ironically, if you're not drinking, and you've just lost your wallet, good luck getting a free soda from the staff!)  Much is legal or tolerated here, but for that which is not (e.g. drugs) the punishment is no slap on the wrist (please don't quote me, but I have read that you could get capital punishment for breaking an environmental law), and just for the record, my wallet and car keys were retrived intact at three after midnight in a packed nightclub, after missing in action for four hours, having been left by this genius in the restroom.
 
As for being able to buy anything, one rather peculiar feature of most supermarkets (that, by the way, seem to be full of young British tank-top-and-shorts-or-floral-mini-dresses-wearing "Stoppit!" mothers with conspicuously pale children) is a special "Not for Muslims" section, where it is possible to buy pork of any kind (in order to sell pork, markets and restaurants must have a separate storage and handling facilities or kitchen).  In general, life seems to be quite cushy for the Western Expats, who tend to have larger living quarters and better schools for children than they would back home, and you could throw in a TNC maid as well if you like.  TNC's can make tenfolds of the salary they could hope to make back home, and the one Sri-Lankan working in Dubai I talked to had nothing but praise for the way TNC's were treated here, and I think he used other Gulf countries and homeland as bases for that comparison.  Many plan to stay as long as they can (getting UAE citizenship is not an option).  A young South African woman, a manager of an East Asia inspired nouvelle cuisine restaurant, told me she plans to buy an appartment in Dubai (to quote her, "no point in investing in South Africa"); a line in a funny poem about a quintessential Expat in Dubai goes "...and I'm never going back to that Manchester mob!"
 
All in all, for most it is a nicer, newer, even more cosmopolitan L.A. that has young and emerging forests of gleaming skyscrapers (one of which is called "Manhattan" by the local residents), great big (and ridiculous) shopping malls, and world-class golf courses, good beaches and great SCUBA-diving, all the chintziest hotels, SUV's and highways that seem to be built for them, Starbucks and MNG, every type of restaurant, oh and regarding that, really good Middle Eastern food.  I hope you catch the sarcasm at the end.  The fact is, Dubai is so modern, so international, you can easily forget where it is and what it was, and sadly, many do.  But that's just how I feel.  Besides, in this country you (I don't know about the "Nationals", though) are free to look for what you want, whether it's more than money that brings you here or not.  One of my former professors, and middle-America American lives in Sharjah, a neighboring emirate, where there is a so-called decency code in force.  This code allows police officers to "warn" you that you are indecently dressed should you be showing your knees or navel, and such, and to arrest you if you are in a car with an unrelated member of the opposite sex (although enforcement is probably selective -- I can't imagine them giving grief to Western-looking expats).  Another American professor, a young Eastcoaster also in Sharjah, had been fed up with the politics at home, particularly the foreign policy, and seems very happy to live in this different, a little less hectic place.  And a third American professor, one who, to quote him "made it out of the inner city", is thrilled to travel relatively cheaply to Africa and South East Asia.  He teaches in Abu Dhabi, the official capital of the UAE, as well as the Abu Dhabi Emirate, the wealthiest emirate in the country, thanks to the good old oil.  It's a semi-conservative big city on the south west coast, largely built during the boom years of 70's and 80's, so it has a much more finished look than Dubai, which is a newer, hypermodern city of tomorrow (yes, this cannot be "over-exaggerated").  So one could say that Abu Dhabi looks a little like a hypermodern city of yesterday, and the well-kept, slightly "retro" look gives it, I found, rather original charm. 
 
To wrap it up, this country at worst seems, at times and places, like an over-commercialized, over-consumptive, not-too-pretty child of globalization, and endless work in progress making an impressive but only facade for an underlying case of underdevelopment.  At best, for most it is a land of choices, opportunities, optimism and future blueprints for coexistance and intercultural tolerance, the child does not seem to be spoiled, and, well, it is exciting work in progress.
 
Imagine yourself then taking a plane from the "super-Dubai", and landing somewhere like Nairobi...  I'll tell you about that next time. 
 
Until then, with love,
 
Saliha

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# Posted 4:20 AM by Patrick Belton  

SOME EXEGETES MIGHT SEE IN THIS some small indication of displeasure:

Jesus actor struck by lightning: Actor Jim Caviezel [i.e., the movie's "Jesus"] has been struck by lightning while playing Jesus in Mel Gibson's controversial film The Passion Of Christ. It was the second time Michelini had been hit by lightning during the shoot.

Describing the second lightning strike, [producer] McEveety told VLife, a supplement of the trade paper Variety: "I'm about a hundred feet away from them when I glance over and see smoke coming out of Caviezel's ears."

Although it is not due for release until early next year, it has already hit headlines after Jewish figures in the United States slated it for being "dangerous" and portraying Jews in a negative way.

(Then again, we already knew God reads TNR, like any good Jewish intellectual....) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:42 AM by David Adesnik  

BATTING PRACTICE: Matt Yglesias is the Tim Wakefield of the blogosphere. He's a knuckleball blogger who can tie your hands at the plate with unpredictable and creative thinking. But some knuckleballs just hang there over the plate, waiting to be smashed into the bleachers. Today, Matt has served up one of those floating knuckeballs.

Yesterday, I took the NY Times to task for writing in a straight news article that

With Mr. Hussein still at large, with American soldiers dying here almost every day, with no unconventional weapons found, with America's allies reluctant to help, many supporters now justify the war on the grounds that Iraqis are better off and the nation is on the road to stability.

In response, Matt asks

But what's wrong with [that]? Mr Hussein is at large, no unconventional weapons have been found, American soldiers are dying almost every day, our allies are reluctant to help, and many supporters of the war do now justify it on the grounds that Iraqis are better off and the nation is on the road to stability.

The implicit premise of Matt's statement is that any factually correct statement has a legitimate place in the news. Yet surely a professional journalist such as Matt knows that editorializing is not just a matter of expressing subjective opinions, but emphasizing certain facts at the expense of others.

So let's take a look at the context in which NYT correspondent Ian Fisher wrote what he did. The subject of the article in question is Iraqi citizens' (allegedly) surprising desire to have American forces stay in Iraq for the time being. While the NYT deserves credit for reporting some news at odds with its editorial line, the whole premise of surprise reflects the Times' assumption that the Iraqi people ought to see American soldiers as destructive invaders rather than constuctive liberators. But as it turns out,

"We really feel good for the improvement in our lives," Samir el-Amili, 40, said cheerily as he worked to reopen his demolished jewelry shop on the ground level. "We got something very real from Saddam's going."

Excuse me? Did an Arab just say that freedom is something "very real"? That the end of Saddam's vicious dictatorship was worth the price? How much did Condi and Rummy pay him to say that?

Of course, not everyone is as happy as Mr. Amili.

Saad Atta Mahmoud, 45, a former army officer, was more ambivalent. He grumbled that "the Americans have done nothing good," but said they should stay in Iraq for now.

"How could they leave now?" he asked. "Let's say someone came to your house and he made a big mess. He destroys everything and then says, 'Oh, I have to go now.' No, he has to clean things up."

I don't know about you, but if some psycopath came into my home with a baseball bat and started f***ing sh** up, I wouldn't insist that he stay around any longer than he has to. Thus it seems that even Mr. Mahmoud belives that a continued American presence will do far more good than harm.

Now here comes the paragraph in question. Apparently, the NYT felt that it needed to expand on Mr. Mahmoud's suggestion the United States "has to clean things up." Thus, its correspondent observed that

With Mr. Hussein still at large, with American soldiers dying here almost every day, with no unconventional weapons found, with America's allies reluctant to help, many supporters now justify the war on the grounds that Iraqis are better off and the nation is on the road to stability.

But what if Mr. Fisher worked for Fox News instead of the NYT? Perhaps he would've written that

Cleaning things up in Iraq seems to be at the top of the American agenda. Despite public and congressional resistance, the Bush Administration is fighting hard to appropriate $20.3 billion for the reconstruction of Iraq. In addition, the President has made an unconditional commitment to bring democracy to Iraq, despite the fact that American lives must be sacrificed on almost a daily basis in order to do so.

Yet in spite of the chaos in and around Baghdad, relative calm prevails throughout most of Iraq, where citizens are rushing to take advantage of their newfound freedoms of speech and religion. In many critical areas such as the establishment of local government, the occupation of Iraq has made more and faster progress than did the American occupation of Germany after World War II. By the same token, currency reforms has proceeded apace and Iraqis can now purchase an impressive array of goods at well-stocked local stores.

I'm guessing that Matt wouldn't consider this hypothetical paragraph to be "fair and balanced" despite the fact that it contains no factual errors. Nor should he. Because even-handed journalism is just as much about emphasis as it is about accuracy.

To be sure, there is no objective standard according to which one can measure the fairness of an article's emphasis. That is why I offered a hypothetical alternative to the NYT's editorial comment. To show that there is an alternate (and valid) perspective on the occupation that the NYT glaringly omits. In other words, what the NYT was giving us in a straight news article was not news, but rather its private opinion.
(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:50 PM by David Adesnik  

BUSH IS DEAD WRONG ABOUT CUBA: It's time to lift the travel ban, lift trade restrictions, lift everything. Cuba is a small island just off the coast of Florida. The more open it is to American influence, the more its people will recognize that there are alternatives to living in a police state of misery.

Now I'm sure you've heard this argument before. It's called "engagement". And both liberals and conservatives spent much of the 1990s arguing that the more we engaged China, the more its government would embrace Western political and economic systems.

Yeah right. China is a vast nation, distant from the United States both geographically and culturally. We could only engage it at the margins. But Cuba is fundamentally different. Now, the President is probably right that if that the travel ban etc. is lifted, a significant percentage of the resultant income will go straight into the pockets of the Communist government. But that's not the point.

We are going to overwhelm Cuba with ideas. And we may be able to foster something of a private sector that has assets of its own. Moreover, even Castro's loyal bureaucrats may recognize that their cut of the goods is nothing compared to what it would be if liberalization went even further.

So I wish Congress all the best in its efforts to overcome the President's veto threat. But what do you expect? In 2000, the President's victory margin in Florida consisted of 3000 old Jews who voted for Buchanan. He can't afford to tangle with the Cubans. But Congress can. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:37 PM by David Adesnik  

AROUND AND AROUND: Another congressional report, another condemnation of the CIA. But no way of telling what role the White House played in the intelligence process.

I sort of wish I were a lawyer so I could figure out exactly what executive privilege is and what its limits are. Because doesn't it seem strange that Congress can read every document it wants from the CIA but can't look inside the White House files? Constitutionally, that makes sense.

You know, it might be nice if the Bush Administration just came and said, "Sure, we'd love to have the Senate Intelligence Committee look at our files. After all, who can trust the government if it isn't honest about what it's been up to." But this is the real world, so fuggedabowdit. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 2:36 AM by David Adesnik  

FUZZY MATH: This otherwise good column about the 1983 Beirut truck bomb seems to have some trouble figuring out just how many soldiers we have lost in Iraq. The author notes that

Since President Bush announced the end of hostilities in May, more than 100 American soldiers have become casualties — one or two a day have been killed in ambushes, shot by snipers and blown to pieces by roadside bombs.

Actually, if one soldier were killed each day, there would have been approximately 160 fatalities by now. At two per day, 320. While the author may just have made an innocent mistake, I think it is a good reflection of how the media focus on casualty counting has led to exaggerated perceptions of how often American soldiers get killed.

Meanwhile, enjoy this tidbit from what is ostensible a straight news article on Iraqi public opinion:

With Mr. Hussein still at large, with American soldiers dying here almost every day, with no unconventional weapons found, with America's allies reluctant to help, many supporters now justify the war on the grounds that Iraqis are better off and the nation is on the road to stability.

Maybe the NYT should change its slogan to "Fair and Balanced". (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 2:31 AM by David Adesnik  

JUMPING THE GUN: Here are some more reasons to think my initial optimism about the Iranian nuclear agreement was premature. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:18 AM by David Adesnik  

JUSTICE AND WAR: The usually hawkish Greg Djerejian has some serious concerns about the ethical implicaitons of Israeli counter-terrorist policy. Plus, Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston get criticized by Sharon for their role in the peace process. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:47 PM by Patrick Belton  

RAND REVIEWS THE comparative success to date of counterterror coalitions with Europe, NATO, and the EU. The author (incidentally, a former Drezner classmate) reaches the conclusion that the US should pursue military and intelligence cooperation principally on a bilateral basis, while seeking multilateral venues for financial and law enforcement cooperation. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:28 PM by Patrick Belton  

COME ON, PLACE YOUR BETS: Remind me to write a post sometime soon criticizing the "Pope Death Watch."

In the interim, though - and, after all, since I'm not quite climbed up on my high horse just yet - this Stratfor analysis of the dynamics likely to inform the next papal election, whenever it will be, is interesting.

John Paul II reportedly left written instructions several years ago on what should be done if and when his disease [i.e., Parkinson's] left him bedridden and silent for the rest of his life. Of course, Vatican officials never would confirm the existence of such instructions. However, if he becomes immobile, a successor likely will have to be chosen quickly.

At least 20 cardinals are viewed as potential "papabili," or candidates for the papacy -- including several Europeans, at least one African and three or four Latin Americans.

Some Vatican-watchers have focused on the possibility that 71-year-old Cardinal Francis Azinze of Nigeria could be among the top five likely candidates. Azinze was born into an Ibo family and decided to convert to Catholicism in his early teens. Reportedly he is widely liked within the Vatican hierarchy. He also believes that Muslims, Buddhists and Jews can go to heaven, setting him apart from hardcore Catholic conservatives such as Ratzinger.

Supporters of Azinze's papal qualifications within the Vatican point to several factors in his favor. For example, while Catholicism appears to be in decline in Europe and North America, it is growing very rapidly in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Also, about half of the current members of the College of Cardinals come from countries outside North America or Europe. Moreover, there is a group within the Vatican that believes that electing a black pope would highlight the church's concern for rejecting globalization and alleviating the suffering of the poor.

Italian papal candidates include Cardinal Dionigi Tettamanzi of Milan, age 69, and Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, also 69, who serves in the Vatican as prefect of congregation for bishops and president of the Pontifical Commission for Latin. Some Vatican watchers also tout Vienna's 58-year-old Cardinal Christoph Schonborn -- although many cardinal electors might believe he is too young. Given that John Paul II was elected at 58 and has served for 25 years thus far, many cardinal electors might be reluctant to select a pope who could serve that long.

Other potential candidates include Latin American cardinals Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Buenos Aires, Claudio Hummes of Sao Paulo and Jaime Lucas Ortega of Havana.

Place your bets. (Note: Despite the previous sentence, OxBlog does not condone betting, as it detracts from more important, meaninful, life pursuits, such as whisky and tobacco.) Paddy Power is placing best odds on Cardinals Tettamanzi, Ortega, Arinze, and Battista Re. (That's two Italians, a Nigerian, and a Latin, for those of you keeping score at home.)

UPDATE: Kieran at Crooked Timber is rooting for Nigerian Cardinal Arinze. This is principally because of the expanded Nigerian spam possibilities. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:19 PM by Patrick Belton  

IRANIAN INTELLIGENCE is helping Hezbollah kidnap Israeli citizens, by loans of jets, operatives, and (per one account) attractive women.

Personally, though, I'd much rather think about fluffy computers. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:12 PM by David Adesnik  

BREAKTHROUGH IN IRAN? While skeptical, I am extremely pleased with the Iranian government's agreement to allow unfettered inspections of its nuclear program.

I expect that this important event will get spun two ways: Liberals will present it as a demonstration of multilateral institutions' ability to resolve crises without restort to war. Conservatives will respond that Iran is only making nice because it was intimidated by our victory in Iraq.

Although it would be premature to reject either of these alternatives before having all the facts, I think that both of them underestimate the ways in which multi- and unilateral approaches to international problem-solving cannot just co-exist, but can complement one another.

First of all, the apparent success of the Anglo-Franco-German team in negotiating a deal demonstrates that the unauthorized invasion of Iraq neither undermined the effectiveness of multilateral institutions nor did it provoke an unbridgeable trans-Atlantic divide (both of which the President's critics expected). In fact, as this website predicted, the decision to invade without UN approval may well have a positive effect on the existing international order.

And when I say "Europe", that includes the United Kingdom, which very much hopes to minimize the number of times that it has to jeopardize cross-Channel relations for the sake of trans-Atlantic ones. Thus, the invasion of Iraq may have facilitated the recent agreement with Iran, not by intimidating Teheran, but by motivating London, Paris and Berlin to work as hard as possible for a peaceful outcome.

Admittedly, Teheran's motives remain unknown. Have they made a strategic decision to abandon their nuclear ambitions? Are they afraid of the domestic dissent an open conflict with the West might provoke? Do they believe that the elusiveness of Iraq's WMD arsenal indicates that hiding such a program is more doable than previously thought? Or are the Iranians just plain intimidated? I wouldn't be surprised if more than one of these factors were at play.

The one regret the Europeans might have about the current deal is that allows the Bush administration to have its cake and eat it too. In other words, the US got to invade Iraq without Security Council permission but still got the French and the Germans to invest their political capital in stopping Iran. Thus, I hope that if the current arrangement comes to fruition, the Bush Administration will recognize that its allies have extended a very valuable olive branch.

Finally, what all this goes to demonstrate is that the values and objectives that the United States and Europe share are far more important than any of the inevitable divides that emerge from periodic conflagrations.

UPDATE: MD points to this Reuters dispatch which quotes Iranian NSC chief Hassan Rohani to the effect that

"We voluntarily chose to [stop enriching uranium], which means it could last for one day or one year, it depends on us...As long as Iran thinks this suspension is beneficial it will continue, and whenever we don't want it we will end it."

Also note that the French, British and German foreign ministers "greeted the agreement as an important step forward rather than a breakthrough." Apparently, Mr. Straw, Herr Fischer and M. de Villepin wanted to make clear that OxBlog has been overly optimistic. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:34 PM by David Adesnik  

PICK YOUR POISON: Matt Yglesias explains why the botulism found in Iraq was not a chemical weapon. Plus, Matt says Howard Dean isn't avoiding the aid-for-Iraq issue, but is giving the wrong answer. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:11 PM by David Adesnik  

HIP-HOP JUSTICE: Eminem has emerged unscathed from allegations of slander, thanks to a rhyming verdict:

"The lyrics are stories no one would take as fact/They're an exaggeration of a childish act...

"Any reasonable person could clearly see/That the lyrics could only be hyperbole."

Word to your mother. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:09 PM by David Adesnik  

THE MEDIA WAR: It's been a rough 24 hours for the Bush Administration. Above all, there's the Boykin scandal, which is getting more and more attention. In addition, the WaPo is taking the administration to task for banning press coverage of the arrival of soldiers' coffins from the Middle East. Finally, Human Rights Watch, whose latest report holds the US military responsibility for the unnecessary death of dozens of Iraqi civilians.

When it comes to soldiers' coffins, the Administration picked the worst possible time to make an otherwise sound decision. I'm all for protecting the privacy of the fallen, but in the middle of an open campaign to improve coverage of the occupation, it's hard not to believe that the Administration's decision reflected selfish political concerns rather than the legitimate interests of the soldiers' families.

As for Human Rights Watch, the WaPo article on its new report doesn't really make clear what the US military has been charged with. At the beginning of the article, an HRW officials suggests that US soldiers have behaved in an "over-aggressive" and possibly illegal manner. However, the incidents described at the end of the article make it sound like the fog of war is the real culprit.

If you have the time and the patience, I recommend reading the full HRW report. While the report's summary charges that American soldiers are "arrogant and abusive" and that there is a total lack of accountability for US forces in Iraq, the body of the report doesn't contain much to substantiate that conclusion.

Presumably, the case studies at the heart of the HRW report are meant to substantiate its general conclusions. While I definitely agree that the events described in these studies are tragic, they tend to revolve around confusion rather than neglect.

For example, there are multiple instances in which Iraqi cars were fired upon after running American checkpoints, apparently by accident. In one case, the driver had his internal lights on while also blaring music from his stereo system. Thus, it isn't all that surprising that he failed to listen to (or even hear) the soldiers who yelled at him to stop.

It's also worth noting that a significant number of the cases HRW describes ended in compensation being offered by Coalition forces. Moreover, as the report points out, compensation is not an exceptional event, but rather a standard feature of Coalition policy.

Finally, the HRW case studies are somewhat disturbing because they give the reader no way of determining whether or not any of the eye-witnesses and family members interviewed have anything credible to say. While some cross-checking between witness accounts seems to have taken place, many of the details in the report seem improbable at best. In contrast, the tone used to describe American soldiers' testimony suggests that it should be taken with a grain of salt.

That said, HRW probably is on solid ground when it says that American soldiers need more training in combat situtaitons. Moreover, its recommendations for how to reduce civilian casualties seem useful.

All in all, I'm glad that there are human rights workers aggressively monitoring American behavior. In most instances, such observations lends credibility to official assertions that US troops comport themselves in an exemplary manner.

In those instances where American behavior leaves something to be desired, such monitoring helps ensure that remedial action is taken.

Of course, it might be better if HRW and similar groups didn't always present their findings as scandalous, even when they don't have much to report. Moreover, the armed forces might prove more receptive to such suggestions if HRW & Co. held foreign governments and military forces to similarly high standards.


(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 4:46 PM by Patrick Belton  

PICKING UP HITCHHIKERS IN CUBA: Flying back from my Beckett pilgrimage, I caught this absolutely wonderful piece on Cuba which appeared in the FT over the weekend. Richard Lapper, the FT's Latin America editor, became frustrated with the reticence of Havanans living in a police state to discuss politics, and thus set out with his wife to ten days of ferrying around hitchhikers, and discussing politics, in a rental car:

The trip offers an opportunity to talk to Cubans unencumbered by fears that we might be overheard or that our conversation might be reported to the authorities. The dense network of Revolutionary Defence Committees - Cuba's steelier version of Neighbourhood Watch - is one reason there isn't much crime but it also helps ensure political orthodoxy. When we talked about political issues before we left Havana, many people refused to speak. Others resorted to miming, or referred to Castro simply by stroking an imaginary beard.

So, posing as foreign tourists, we take to the road. We stuff most of our luggage into the hatchback's boot and perch a suitcase on its side on the back seat, leaving just enough room for a passenger or - at a stretch - two. We fill up with petrol, paying in dollars, and set off to find the Autopista Nacional, the eight-lane highway that will take us east into deepest Cuba.

What he finds is not surprising of a police state which spies on and imprisons its human rights workers and poets: "In less than two hours we give lifts to five Cubans, and the picture they are painting of Fidel Castro's Cuba is not attractive. While the ubiquitous roadside slogans urge sacrifice to defend the revolution, Castro seems to be losing the battle of ideas." (Lapper's ending sentence is particularly evocative: "In the gloom, I vaguely make out yet another fading party slogan on a roadside billboard. "Firmness and dignity", it reads.")

This should be required reading for the misguided collegiate fans of the regime, along with Human Rights Watch's extensive documentation of Cuba's repression of its people (including congressional testimony last month by OxBlog's friend Tom Malinowski, a Rhodes scholar from 1989) Although in its report on the latest wave of brutal political repression, Amnesty International curiously spends most of its words playing for the gallery and attacking the U.S. embargo and (quote) the "war on terror" - their scare quotes. (Amnesty's bias against actually looking at countries that repress their people, and instead concentrating with increasing exclusivity solely on criticizing the United States, has been well documented - a sad end to an organization which once stood for human rights.)

Bravo for the FT for, unlike Amnesty, actually going there - and speaking with people who actually live under the regime. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 3:27 PM by Patrick Belton  

THIS IS by far the best variant on the new "flash mob" trend that I've ever come across: (via Craigslist)

Date: Fri Sep 26 18:25:27 2003 Here's how it works: you come to my apartment in Astoria, pick up a heavy box or piece of furniture, move it to my new apartment in Greenpoint, then you disperse without saying a word.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 2:57 PM by David Adesnik  

WHOSE FAULT IS ANTI-SEMITISM? I dunno. But I figure it's got to be either the anti-Semites themselves, or George W. Bush.

UPDATE: A survey of other blogs suggests that the answer is "a) Anti-Semites". (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 4:46 AM by Patrick Belton  

LETTER FROM AFGHANISTAN: OxBlog's intrepid new Kabul correspondent has hit the ground running and writes in with his impressions:

So you all know: I got to Kabul safely, and have been here for a day and a half now. In some ways it feels very familiar (echoes of India and Nepal), in others very new and alien. The airport runway is lined with the rusted wrecks of other planes cannibalized for parts. A scattering of poppies have sprung up next to the tarmac. I waited for a couple hours at the baggage claim to find that one of my checked bags was still in Dubai. When I got out to the parking lot, the guy sent to pick me up was not the least put out by my lateness -- still very friendly, very cheerful.

Kabul has sort of an old west feel to it -- a boomtown, and a city of dust. Every surface is covered in the stuff. Dusty wooden scaffolding is hung with dusty posters of the Tajik-Afghan hero and martyr Ahmed Shah Massoud. The trees are all muted shades of green, and in the mornings, the whole sky is a grey-brown haze. Dust-colored mountains shoot up on every side -- some barren, others with an astonishing clutter of mud-brick houses clinging to their steep, craggy slopes. The roads are clogged with yellow taxis and dirty buses, and trucks painted so gaudily that even the dust can't mute them. Some of the trucks were loaded so high with bundles and boxes I can't believe they stayed upright. One pick-up had a camel hog-tied and tossed in the back, its head and neck lolling ridiculously over the side.

Most of the houses are either half-built or half-destroyed; the city is equal parts construction site and war ruin. I drove around with a couple Afghan guys today in search of road construction equipment -- a long, hot, exhausting day, but fascinating. Construction is clearly a booming business, and the restoration of ties to the outside world means we were picking up equipment that hailed from Japan to Belarus (punctiliously skipping all the cheap, high-quality Iranian products, of course). We took a break to eat fatty kebab off a three-foot iron skewer. Then we hiked into the middle of Kabul's main market, a dense tangle of alleys and courtyards with a splendor of goods spilling out into the dim, narrow streets: carpets, silks, a mountain of pumpkins, spices, nuts, tin trunks, chickens. We wove through the crowds, dodging motorbikes and hand-drawn carts and the three-foot deep sewer ditch in the middle of the road. Nearly all the women we passed in the crowded market were wearing sky-blue burqas -- overall, I think around half the women I've seen on the street have been fully veiled, and the other half have merely had a shawl or scarf over their heads. There are far, far fewer women and children out in public here than in any other South Asian country I've ever visited.

I haven't felt hostility from anyone on the street so far; most people are reserved, many are friendly. Still, we live with some tensions. We work inside a walled compound, like most of the foreigners here. Our guesthouse has three (unarmed) guards at the door. We don't walk out alone.

The guesthouse I'm staying at is nice enough -- got a good cook, and a TV with DVD player. I fell asleep last night watching a Korean soap opera which my co-workers (neither of them Korean) have become addicted to.

That's all that comes to mind so far. More updates as events warrant...

Cheers,
Joel

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 4:44 AM by Patrick Belton  

BACK FROM PARIS: and back to posting, after accompanying Josh to London to meet a kindly, middle-aged, ethnically-Franco-German woman....

At this point, I should also make note of how extraordinarily grateful I am to be luckily arrived safe and sound from an arduous, emotionally and physically draining week of working on my dissertation while sipping coffee at the Café de Flore on the Left Bank - with occasional breaks from writing to stroll down Saint Germain de Prés and meet various black-turtleneck clad rive-gauchistes who were very excited to tell me all about the wonders of Maoism, the commodification of contemporary European culture, and new art exhibitions going on around Paris. Thankfully, however, I am now safely back to Oxfordshire, where I can instead resume my accustomed comfortable habit of working on my dissertation while sipping warm beer at our village pub, while taking work breaks to trip over various tourists and drunken English girls. Much better.

Incidentally, I have many reflections on my experiences and conversations in Paris, which I'm looking forward very much to writing up shortly here. I did not always agree with all my interlocutors, but I do feel that now I understand them much better. Many thanks to all the many generous people who were kind enough to host me, who helped me to begin to get to know the city from the inside, and who explained to me current trends in the city's intellectual and literary currents over copious cups of cafe espres. Paris has a kindly heart indeed, and I am very grateful for the opportunity to be its lucky beneficiary. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:31 AM by David Adesnik  

MISQUOTED BY THE LIBERAL MEDIA: "Mr. Mahathir expanded on his views in an interview with The Bangkok Post published on Tuesday. He said, 'In my speech I condemned all violence, even the suicide bombings,' adding later, 'but those things were blacked out in the Western media.' Then he said, referring to Jews, 'The reaction of the world shows that they do control the world.'"

You can't really argue with that. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:14 AM by David Adesnik  

THE TALMUD IS VERY LONG: Plus other insights into the origins of Jewish intellectual achievement courtesy of Rabbi Yglesias. Meanwhile back at the ranch...Jews are becoming Episcopalian. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:58 AM by David Adesnik  

FOOT CRAMMED WAY BACK IN MOUTH: How did the Pentagon find this guy? You'd think that the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Intelligence would at least be able to come up with a more persuasive apology. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:29 AM by David Adesnik  

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, KEVIN! How much is 45 in cat years? (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# 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