# Posted 10:22 PM by David Adesnik  

NOW THAT'S AN OMBUDSMAN: As if it weren't bad enough that I'm a Yankees fan, I betray Boston twice over by reading the NYT and WaPo rather than the Globe. But since restaurants and stuff often have copies lying around, I do get to take an occasional look. Today, for the first time, I came across a column by Globe ombudsman Christine Chinlund and I have to say that I was very impressed. Chinlund does an admirable job both of addressing reader complaints and of documenting the behind-the-scenes decisions in the news room that produced the complaints in the first place.

One especially interesting part of yesterday's column was Chinlund's observation that there were few complaints about the Globe's decision to run a photo of a fallen Marine on its front page, but that those few who complained were themselves Marines. As one corporal asked, "If you were over there in Iraq, would you want that to be your family's last memory of you?"

A very fair question. Still, I think the Globe made the right decision. The photograph in question showed a group of Marines praying over the body of their fallen comrade. It was very touching and I believe that it was respectful as well. Of course, each reader should judge for himself whether that is the case. (Which is easier said than done since I can't find the photo on the Globe website. Paging the ombudsman!) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:07 PM by David Adesnik  

LITTLE ORPHAN DONNIE: Even the red-blooded conservatives want nothing to do with Rumsfeld. After all, how often is it that both the Weekly Standard and the National Review devote their editorials to bashing a hawkish Republican Secretary of Defense?

Kristol & Kagan are even harsher on Rumsfeld than NRO was, and I agree with everything they have to say. As I mentioned before, I agree with NRO's criticism of Rumsfeld but don't think much of its attempt to pin's Rumsfeld's mistakes on the neo-cons.

Another point of difference between the Standard and NRO is that the Standard explicitly challenges the President to make good on his word about Iraq, instead of directing all of the accusations at his subordinates. Even so, after their initial mention of Bush, Kristol & Kagan focus exclusively on Rumsfeld. But how viable of a strategy is that? If the Secretary of Defense has been screwing that badly for that long, isn't it time to hold the President responsible? (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:44 PM by Patrick Belton  

NEW DEMOCRATIC FOREIGN POLICY GROUP STARTS, MILLIONS RUSH TO JOIN: This just in from, errr...okay, my wife. But it's a damned good group anyway, and is set to declare the Scoop Jackson wing of the party once again open for business:

For those of you who feel you are Democrats longing for a party that takes national security more seriously, (or even borderline Republicans discontented with both parties) a new group has formed that would love to have you as members.  The Truman National Security Project (www.trumanproject.org) is a group of young foreign policy professionals dedicated to creating a strong foreign policy platform for the Democratic Party, and working to move the national security debate beyond the tired battles between Cold Warriors and Vietnam-era liberals, to create new ways of thinking about foreign policy for an age of transnational threats and terrorism.  

Truman Democrats believe in a strong military and intelligence network, and think that national security is best secured through proactive policies of democratization, liberalization, and free trade.  Unlike neoconservatives, however, Truman Democrats believe that in an age of transnational threats, real security can only be achieved by working in concert with international partners, convincing other countries that we share joint threats, taking malignant threats such as AIDS and social breakdown seriously, treating aid and trade as crucial national security tools, and bolstering American legitimacy to strengthen our soft power. 

And if you're feeling particularly like a joiner (or if you just want to keep track of them all), other organizations within the OxBlog universe you can also take part in are the Nathan Hale Foreign Policy Society, a burgeoning bipartisan national foreign policy society with thirteen local chapters (ed: quick, someone, add another!) and an active think tank; OxDem, which supports democracy movements overseas and democracy promotion as a keystone of American foreign policy; and the Ibn Khaldun Project for Internet Media, which will be involved in translating weekly selections from the English-language blogosphere into Middle Eastern languages. And once my cofounder Marianna finishes up her M.Phil. exams, we're also looking forward to establishing a race NGO with local chapters which will foster spaces, through dinners and an assortment of other programs, in which people can have conversations and make friendships across race lines. All these organizations are carrying out important work and could very much use your help if you'd like to be part of them; and most importantly, we just wouldn't be being completely honest with you if we failed to note that membership in any one (or all) of these organizations is reported by scientists to confer on the member instant irresistability to the opposite sex.

To find out more about the Truman Project and to become involved with its efforts, please contact Rachel Belton. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:19 PM by Patrick Belton  

REMEMBER CENTRAL ASIA? If not, that's okay, you'll fit in fine with our nation's principal newspapers. That's the region - just to jog your memory - where one rather despotic security ally has just exploded in insurgence, and where a second nation's reconstruction prospects lie pretty much in our hands. And when it comes to Central Asia, Nathan from The Argus is your man. He's got a roundup just for you on Winds of Change of what's new in that part of the world. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:17 AM by Patrick Belton  

IN YER OXBLOG IRISH-FRIENDLY CORNER FOR THE DAY: Tin whistle legends Chiff & Fipple answer the questions everyone's been asking and present an in-depth, side-by-side comparison of the tin whistle, the recorder, and the Norelco Triple Head shaver. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:43 AM by Patrick Belton  

QU'EST-CE QUE font les Français quand ils ont trop d'heure.... (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:23 PM by David Adesnik  

NEGROPONTE AND THE DEATH SQUADS: As of June 30, US Ambassador to the United Nations John Negroponte has will become the United States' Ambassador to Iraq. And in case you haven't noticed, Matt Yglesias has been waging a one-man blog-war against Negroponte because of his toleration of right-wing death squads while serving as Ambassador to Honduras in the 1980s.

On Matt's behalf, I'd like to say that both the NYT and the WaPo have done a marvelous job of whitewashing Negroponte's record in their coverage of his appointment as Ambassador to Iraq.

Throwing balance out the window, neither the Times nor the Post bothers to balance the President's lavish praise of Negroponte with a single critical comment. And believe me, it would not be hard to find some very knowledgeable people who would be willing to gives the Times and the Post an earful. If any NYT or WaPo staff happen to be reading this post, why not give Bill LeoGrande or Cynthia Arnson a call? Both of them are well-respected scholars who have published op-eds in the leading newspapers as well as longer articles in places like Foreign Affairs and Foreign Policy, not to mention numerous books on the subject of the United States and Central America.

You'd think Matt would've had some more sharp words for the Times and the Post, given his constant efforts to show that the media is biased in favor of the right and not hte left. So is this a case of conservative media bias? No, not really. I think what's going on here is simply that journalists have very little knowledge of any sort of history that they didn't experience themselves. If Ray Bonner or Alan Riding -- both of whom are current NYT correspondents with experience in Central America in the 1980s -- had written the Negroponte story, I seriously doubt that Negroponte would've gotten off so easily.

Now, you may be wondering, "What did Negroponte do that was all that bad? If the only one covering this story is Yglesias, wouldn't it be safe to dismiss the accusations against Negroponte as just another liberal Democratic vendetta?" Actually, no. For an excellent summary of Negroponte's amazing ability to deny the existence of death squads in Honduras, take a look at this article in TNR from March 2001. (Link via Yglesias)

However, Matt goes pretty far overboard with his suggestions that Negroponte will start training death squads in Iraq. Now, I generally agree with Matt that from an ethical perspective, Negroponte is not the right man to be running the Embassy in Baghdad. After all, how long will it be before Sunni and Shi'ite insurgents begin telling anyone and everyone that the United States has installed a death squad chieftain in the embassy in Baghdad? No, that characterization of Negroponte isn't fair. But the Iraqi people aren't likely either to appreciate the nuances of the situation in Central America in the 1980s or give the benefit of the doubt to an American pro-consul.

But nuances there were, and an American audience deserves to know a little more about them. While Matt and others have focused on the death squad issue, Negroponte real job in Honduras was to build up the right-wing Nicaraguan guerrilla force known as the contras. In addition to the logistical challenges of running a guerrilla war, Negroponte had to face the twofold diplomatic challenge of keeping the whole operation secret while also persuading the Hondurans to severely compromise both their own sovereignty and international law by voluntarily hosting a guerrilla force dedicated to the violent overthrow of a neighboring government.

In November 1982, Newsweek destroyed the myth that the United States wasn't the main sponsor and organizer of the Contra forces. Unsurprisingly, widespread knowledge of what the United States was up to made it far harder for the Hondurans to pretend that they weren't involved. The fact that Negroponte persisted in such adverse circumstances won him a reputation as a top-flight diplomat, at least on the Republican side of the aisle. Lately, Negroponte seems to have won admirers on both sides of the aisle.

What I can't say, since I haven't finished my research yet, is what role Negroponte played in the illegal phases of the Contra war. If you're interested in reading what an unreliable and partisan source has to say about Negroponte and the contras, click here. When I have some hard facts, I'll put up a post on the subject.

On a related note, it is also important to put Negroponte's blindness to human rights abuses in context. During Negroponte's five years in Tegucigalpa, the Honduran death squads only committed about as many murders as the Salvadoran death squads did in an average month (between 1980 and 1983). At the same time, the Guatemalan military was waging a genocidal campaign against indigenous Guatemalans that resulted in tens of thousands of innocent lives lost. Thus, Negroponte hardly stands out among diplomats of his time as someone blind to human rights abuses.

On the other hand, American diplomats in El Salvador did far more to speak out against the brutality. In 1981, Reagan sent Deane Hinton to replace Bob White, the Carter's administration's Ambassador in San Salvador who was appointed precisely because of his commitment to human rights. While Reagan & Co. expected Hinton to stay relatively quiet, Hinton delivered a blistering anti-death squad speech in late 1982 that the Reagan administration disavowed because it was so embarrassing to the United States.

On the other hand, it was Bob White who presided over the most murderous era in the Salvadoran civil war. His intentions were good, but does that really excuse the fact that he actively supported a junta responsible for ten thousand murders? The same can be said of Hinton. Should White and Hinton have resigned? Or was being more honest than their colleagues enough? The same can even be said of Thomas Pickering, the #3 man at State under Albright. As Ambassador to El Salvador after Hinton, he was so outspoken in the campaign against the death squads that they ultimately tried to kill him. Yet he, too, presided over a slaughterhouse far worse than that in Honduras.

Of course, it was not the killings in Honduras that truly represent Negroponte's greatest blindness. In my opinion, his willingness to work with the Contras, whose leadership was drawn from the ranks of the Somoza dictatorship's brutal National Guard, was even more problematic. Unsurprisingly, the Contras amassed a record of human rights violations far worse than that of the Hondurans. They just didn't have death squads.

But there is another twist to the story. Neither the New Republic nor Matt Yglesias describe how Negroponte helped consolidate democracy in Honduras. Although the transition to democracy in Tegucigalpa begun under Carter, it could not have been completed without the active support of the Reagan administration. While Honduras is not exactly a model democracy today, we'd probably all be pretty happy if Negroponte managed to build an Iraqi state that regularly held elections for more than 20 years, subordinated the military to the civilian government and ultimately got rid of almost all major human rights abuses.

All in all, the situation is far more complex than what you would pick up by reading either the NYT/WaPo descriptions of Negroponte's career or Matt's polemics against him. In spite of my belief that the Reagan administration made a tremendous contribution to promoting democracy in Central America, I still cannot forgive the fact that so many of its highest ranking officials regularly lied to Congress in order to support that policy. Even in hindsight, it is very hard to separate right from wrong.
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# Posted 9:28 AM by Patrick Belton  

BROOKINGS PANEL ON IRAQ AND ISRAEL: The transcript is interesting, not least of which because it incorporates both the views of a number of smart people we often agree with (e.g., Michael O'Hanlon) and others whom we occasionally differ from (such as Kenneth Pollack), as well as some new information and perspectives. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:23 AM by Patrick Belton  

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, WE HAVE A NAME! I think we may have received a winning suggestion for a name for our project to translate weekly selections from the English-language blogosphere into Arabic and Farsi. So our friends, please say hello to the Ibn Khaldun Project! For those of you who aren't familiar with his work, Ibn Khaldun was a brilliant and incisive fourteenth-century traveller and scholar, who translated the outside world and its political dynamics for an audience of his countrymen. His Kitab al-l'bar was a masterful rendition of the history of every empire and people known to medieval Islamic civilisation, and his ponderous Muqaddimah revolutionised medieval historiography by searching for economic, sociological, geographical, and psychological factors underlaying the rise, evolution, and decline of states - it has in many ways been judged the superior by scholars of the Italian Renaissance's Prince. So in naming our project the Ibn Khaldun Project, we are trying to live up to his legacy of bringing the Western and Middle Eastern worlds into productive dialogue with each other, and to make legible to audiences in the Middle East the varieties of opinion and political conversations to be found in the English-speaking world.

We've also gratefully got our first handful of volunteers - Arabic and Farsi speakers, as well as expert computer hands. We can always make use of the efforts of more, and we will look forward to making this project worthy of its namesake!

(SIDENOTE: It's also an acronym, incidentally - "I" stands for internet, and "bn Khaldun," well, we won't get into that for considerations of space....) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:01 AM by Patrick Belton  

WAITING FOR BOUDREAUX: Glenn links yesterday to the ongoing investigation into a photograph - correctly publicised by CAIR - in which a Louisiana reservist poses with two smiling Iraqi children who are holding a sign which appears to read "Lcpl. Boudreaux killed my dad then he knocked up my sister." What's interesting in this whole matter - apart from the fact that CAIR staffer Ibrahim Hooper comes off as the most sensible person in the whole saga ("My assumption has always been these things didn't happen, and in fact I doubt there's any girl at all") - is the as-yet unresolved question as to whether the text on the sign was just photoshopped in the first place. Museum of Hoaxes tracks the image through its different permutations- which include a 'Lcpl Boudreaux saved my dad then he rescued my sister', a boring blank piece of cardboard, and the inevitable odd spoofs, some of which involve Teletubbies. Purely as a technical question, I'm curious whether any of our readers might have any idea about how to tell which among these different versions is a genuine photograph rather than a doctored one? To my untrained eye, the text looks equally fishy in the "shagged my sister" as in the "saved my sister" shot. But I wouldn't want to bet the ranch on it. (And no, that's not really my ranch.)

Also, just as an incidental sidenote, I've as yet only seen Teletubbies in Serbo-Croatian, which I've got to say didn't really help to reduce the oddness of the series for me.

UPDATE: We've got, ahem, fans. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:25 AM by Patrick Belton  

MODERN-DAY ENGLAND IN A NUTSHELL: Thus Education Secretary Charles Clarke:

"There is no point having improving GCSE results and higher education participation rising towards 50% if there remains a huge chunk in the middle that continue to drop out and enter into a cycle of continuous low paid work or unemployment."

While I'm hardly a Nietzschean in matters of education policy, it seems to me there actually is indeed some point in raising test scores and the number of people going to university, even holding for the moment constant the number of students dropping out of secondary school. This might be true, for instance, even if it were motivated only by Rawls's Difference Principle, and a desire to create a larger reservoir of income with which to drive a more robust social welfare state. But such ideas are coming to be seen as terribly out of fashion in an England which would rather condemn its principal research universities to slightly-below-European-level mediocrity than subject itself to criticism for pursuing any goal other than (or even together with) utter levelling equality, or allowing any inequality irrespective of how meritocratically attained or useful for the society as a whole. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:25 PM by David Adesnik  

BLOGGER-CON II, CONT'D: (Click here for Part I) Before letting you in on the secrets of how to blog for profit, I thought I'd let you know that Tara from Liloia.com has put up a comprehensive set of links to posts about Blogger-Con II. As you might guess, it's hard to think of an event that could possibly get more blog-love than a convention of bloggers. Anyhow...

There are a lot of different ways to blog for profit, and Jeff Jarvis has put up a rough list of them here. Even though I've never had much interest in figuring out ways to make money off of blogging, I've noticed that more and more of my favorite blogs have started to put up ads.

Sometimes, you just don't have a choice. As Kevin Drum mentioned when we met up last December, the cost of bandwidth for a popular site can add up to thousands of dollars per year. In other words, Kevin basically had the choice of paying out of his own pocket to give readers access to his site or, instead, selling ads to cover the cost. As Kevin found out, a site as popular as his can easily earn back five or six times in ad revenues what it lays out for bandwidth.

One of things I'm curious about is how many hits per day a site has to have before BlogAds will take it on as a client. I'm also sort of curious about the maximum amount someone can make off selling-ads. The BlogAds site says it has clients making up to $1500 a month. Is that a reference to Glenn Reynolds? Or will he break that ceiling wide open?

Anyhow, I don't think I'm doing a very good job of conveying the substance of Jeff's session. Frankly, a lot of the business talk passed me by because I don't have any sort of framework to plug it into. What definitely was both interesting and relevant was when Jeff polled the audience to find out what are the most important challenges facing the blogging industry.

The top two answers, far and away, were: 1) A blogging industry trade association and 2) Reliable demographic information about blog readers. A trade association is necessary to set standards as well as deal with collective welfare issues such as legal concerns, lobbying and insurance. Reliable stats are critical to turning profits because it is very hard to sell ads or product without a reliable way to quantify the target audience.

While blog audiences are small compared to big media, my suspicion is that our demographics are extremely impressive in terms of education, income and geographical distribution. But you can't sell a suspicion. The challenge then becomes how you get a representative sample of readers to provide information about themselves.

The technical folks at Jeff's session seemed to be in agreement that measuring internet traffic is a very, very hard thing to do. Why is that so? You probably know more about it than I do. But I wonder if there are solutions to this problem already out there. After all, the NYT and WaPo have a strong incentive to get demographic information about their readers. Whatever methods they use should have some applicability on a smaller scale as well. Or not. After all, what do I know?

In closing, I think that Jeff's standing-room only audience felt that his session was a big, big success. The participants were very excited about sharing their ideas and actually seemed very excited just about being together and sharing the hope of turning blogging into a major industry. I hope they're right about that. I could use the cash!

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:16 PM by David Adesnik  

HAS ISRAEL WON ON THE BATTLEFIELD? It looks like Oxblog underestimated the NYT. Right now, the lead story on its website is an excellent article by Greg Myre which reports (argues) that Hamas may simply not be able to follow through on its threat to retatiate for the death of Abdelaziz Rantisi.

In March 2002 alone, 16 suicide bombers struck Israeli citizens. In 2002 as a whole, there were fifty attacks. In 2003, there were twenty. So far this year there have been six, including a recent attack that only killed one border guard.

While Myre doesn't come out and say so directly, this trend may reflect an extraordinary vindication of Sharon's strategy of crushing terrorism with overwhelming force. I have to admit, I never really thought it was possible. Much as I resented the media's kneejerk condemnations of Sharon, I never really liked him either and never thought Hamas or Fatah could be beaten on the battlefield. Their popular support and organization resources were simply too deep.

But, hey, I've been wrong before. And I may be wrong now. The current setbacks for Hamas and Fatah may only be temporary. Of course, I hope not. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:03 PM by David Adesnik  

WHO KILLS AMERICAN SOLDIERS? Ten more soldiers lost their lives today during combat in Iraq. What I can't tell from the news coverage, however, is whether they are dying in battle against Ba'athist insurgents or against the Sadr militia. In fact, that distincation has almost never been made since the double insurgency broke out two weeks ago.

Based on where most American soldiers seem to have been killed, it looks like the Ba'athists and not the Sadrists have been responsible. But what is the significance of that fact? Are Sadr's men simply less proficient in combat? Are they less willing to die? Or is level of hostilities between Coalition forces and the Sadr militia simply not as serious?

Unfortunately, I don't have an answer to any of these questions. But my instinct says that our conflict with Sadr is very different from our war against the Ba'athists because Sadr and his men are not dead-enders with nothing to lose, but political operatives looking to establish themselves in the new Iraq. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:55 PM by David Adesnik  

SPAIN TO WITHDRAW: Even if Zapatero had some reservations about pulling out of Iraq after the Madrid bombing, there is no way that he could break his most important campaign promise. What Spain should do, however, is demonstrate its commitment to the War on Terror and refusal to compromise with Al Qaeda by sending two troops to Afghanistan for every one it pulls out of Iraq. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:13 AM by Patrick Belton  

DEMOCRACY IN THE WORLD THIS WEEK: Here's a quick round-up of democratization related stories that were in the headlines this week: (We also contributed brief posts on South African and Algerian elections over at Winds of Change, if you're interested...)

• Burmese democratic activists released: National League for Democracy chairman Aung Shwe and party secretary U Lwin were freed Tuesday by the country’s ruling junta after nearly a year under house arrest. With their release, Aung San Suu Kyi and her vice president Tin Oo remain as the last senior NLD officials in confinement. Yangon-based observers tell the press there is widespread expectation that Suu Kyi will be released shortly, most likely before the junta holds a convention on May 17 to court international support by touting its seven-point “road map to democracy,” which it claims will end with free and fair elections. Suu Kyi’s decision will then be whether to participate in - and lend legitimacy to - the junta’s multiparty conference, after having led the NLD to resounding victory in the country’s last election.

• In Iran, President Mohammad Khatami formally withdrew two key reform bills this week which had passed the country’s parliament last year, in a sign of the utter collapse of Iran’s reform movement within the country’s political system. At the same time, Tehran prosecutor Saeed Mortazavi - who was behind the closure of about one hundred pro-democratic publications in the run-up to elections - was publicly honoured as the "best manager" in the Iranian judiciary. The two withdrawn bills had each been vetoed last year by the Guardian Council; one would have increased presidential powers against the clerical Guardian and Expedience Councils, while the other would have barred the Guardian Council from disqualifying parliamentary and presidential candidates.

• In Nepal, thousands of people have taken to the streets in the last several weeks urging King Gyanendra to initiate democratic reforms. Gyanendra said last month that he hoped to hold elections by April next year, but left ample room to delay them past that date based on a lack of security. The country has been in the grip of a Maoist insurgency since 1996, with 9,300 people having died in fighting between Maoist and government forces. In 2002, Gyanendra dismissed the country’s prime minister for failing adequately to contain the insurgency, and used the occasion to postpone indefinitely elections which had been scheduled for November of that year. Over the past two weeks, more than one thousand people have been detained for taking part in demonstrations against the King, which are officially illegal.

• A Congress of Democrats from the Islamic World opened Tuesday amidst warnings from Turkey and Jordan that political reforms must not be imposed by outside powers. Separately, Egypt’s President Mubarak visited President Bush at his Crawford, Texas ranch, where the U.S. president lavished praise on him for having hosted a conference of Arab civil society representatives who met at the Alexandria Library in March.

• South Korea voted for its National Assembly this week under the shadow of presidential impeachment. Polls favored President Roh Moo-hyun’s Uri party, which campaigned on a government reform platform, and benefitted from a backlash against the conservative Grand National Party after it drove impeachment through the legislature. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 2:39 AM by David Adesnik  

JAILHOUSE BLOG: At the conference today, someone said that there aren't any bloggers working out of jail cells. It turns out there are. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:56 AM by David Adesnik  

BLOGGER-CON II: It's the Mecca of the blogosphere. More than 200 bloggers gathered together not just in real time, but in real space. Their purpose? To advance the state of the art. To navel-gaze with unprecedented commitment. To consume bandwidth with unmatched ferocity. To have a damn good time.

Sessions at BCII included everything from discussions of international blogging to personal television networks to blogging and religion. The sessions I attended were the prolific Michael Watkins' discussion of academic blogging and the illustrious Jeff Jarvis' workshop on blogging for profit. And no description of BC II (or for that matter, BC I) would be complete if you didn't mention the man responsible for it all, Dave Winer. Go Dave!

A professor at Harvard Business School (HBS), Michael opened up his session by existing whether universities still have a right to exits. After all, aren't there much more efficient ways to accomplish the conflicting objectives of teaching students, conducting research and certifying professionals? In spite of universities' self-image as the home of free think and the free exchange of ideas, doesn't the inflexible academic hierarchy unsure that the most innovative ideas are the ones least likely to be pursued? And finally, can the blogosphere save the university from itself?

The question that clearly preoccupied the participants in Michael's was whether and how blogs have the potential to subvert the informal mechanisms of control that limit academic freedom. Michael's personal experience is quite relevant on this front since he used his weblog, World Events on Weekdays, to challenge HBS when it denied him tenure. Michael's case is exceptional, however, in that his outstanding achievements as an author -- writing six books in five years and selling 50,000 copies of the most recent one -- have prevented him from becoming dependent on the academy for employment.

However, there are compelling examples of rank-and-file academics who have challenged the authorities within their discipline. As one anthropologist related, there was recently a case in which his discipline's governing body responded to a major academic scandal by appointing a rather lax investigative committee. Yet to the committee's surprise, rank-and-file anthropologists chose to post the early drafts of its report in an online forum and deconstruct the report in considerable detail. As a result, the committee was forced to take its job seriously and confront the scandal head-on.

In addition to institutions, individuals can also become the targets of the blogosphere. As one participant asked Prof. Watkins, how would he feel if his students set up weblogs devoted to the in-depth critique of all of his lectures? Now, that was a softball question for self-avowed subversive like Michael. But what if other professors suddenly found themselves the subject of online forums? What about elementary or high school teachers? Although often unstated, there is a powerful academic norm which says that what is said in the classroom stays in the classroom.

But why should that be the case? With some justification, teachers are often concerned that public pressures will get in the way of academic freedom. Yet at the same time, blogs might offer unprecedented opportunities for students, parents and concerned others to become involved in the educational process. Similar concerns about the vulgarity of popular taste often lead professors to treat the blogosphere as a means of communication that is beneath them. Online, they can't rely on the protection provided by membership on the faculty of an august university or publication in a prestigious academic journal. In the blogosphere, some punk kid might turn out to know more than the supposed experts and proceed to embarrass them quite thoroughly.

Of course, blogging isn't the only medium that professors avoid because it is beneath them. As two professors of marketing related, many of their colleagues refuse to watch television and fail to recognize how ironic it is that supposed experts in marketing are totally unfamiliar with the most important medium for advertising today.

Even in a post of this length, it is hard to cover all of the issues and illustrative examples that participants shared in the course of Michael's session. Thus, the last thing I'd like to focus on is what wasn't said this afternoon. While talking to a former CNN correspondent at the reception that followed the conference, I mentioned that Michael had begun the session by asking whether academics do anything that is relevant to the real world. Instead of addressing that question, however, the participants mostly decided to talk about themselves. Typical, she said. Academics more concerned with what goes on inside the ivory tower than outside of it.

While that brief exchange didn't do justice to a very thoughtful session, I think it is fair to say that we never looked back after wading into the bog of academic politics. As someone who rails prolifically against the irrelevance of political science to actual politics, I would have been glad to talk about whether blogging may help make scholarship more relevant. Then again, this discussion was just a first. It is the foundation for discussions to come, not the final word on the subject.

Coming soon: Jeff Jarvis on blogging for profit. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:38 AM by David Adesnik  

SUPPORT OUR TROOPS: Learn more about the innovative ways in which bloggers are working with American soldiers to make Iraq a better place. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:34 AM by David Adesnik  

THE MAN BEHIND 'WINDS OF CHANGE': Who is Joe Katzman? Follow the link and find out more about the man who created what may be the most impressive collection of foreign affairs experts in the blogosphere. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:47 PM by David Adesnik  

HAMAS LEADER SLAIN (YES, AGAIN): Last night, an Israeli missile strike took the life of Abdelaziz Rantisi, the leader of Hamas. I don't think anyone is going to miss Rantisi, who was a hardened terrorist devoted to the total destruction of the State of Israel. But was this a good time for Israel to lash out at Hamas? Will Hamas respond with a wave of suicide bombings?

These are, of course, the exact same questions that we all asked one month ago when Israeli missiles ended the life of Sheikh Ahmad Yassin. Back then, the NYT wrote that

Hamas will now redouble its efforts to send human torpedos into Israel. The Palestinian Authority will be even less inclined to confront terrorists in its midst and less able to coax Hamas into observing a cease-fire.

At the time, OxBlog shared the expecation that Hamas would hit back hard, but despondently observed that

After all, what is the difference if the bombers detonate themselves this week in honor of Yassin rather than next week in honor of someone else?

Well, as it turns out, OxBlog was wrong. Neither Hamas nor Fatah was able to retaliate with a major strike. My guess is that this kind of failure on their part only encouraged the Israelis to follow through on their plans for more targeted killings. Moreover, the targeted killings certainly didn't deter the Bush administratrion from coming out strongly in favor of Sharon's Gaza withdrawal plan.

What all this adds up to, I guess, is a strong incentive for Israel to continue with the targeted killings. Not a pleasant thought, but with no prospects for a negotiated settlement, violence is all that we can really expect. I'm also going to guess that most of the American media will raise the same objections to the killings that they did the last time around. But if neither Bush nor Sharon listened then, why listen now? (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:04 PM by Patrick Belton  

104 YEAR OLD PROFESSOR RETIRES: At the rate I'm writing my thesis, I'll need an academic career roughly that long myself.... (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 3:54 PM by Patrick Belton  

TODAY'S MUST-READ: Namely, TNR's Michael Crowley writing in Slate on the seven different factions vying for control of the Kerry campaign. Apart from the less interesting dueling-operatives jousting between Boston and Washington, the interesting policy fights are being fought between DLC hawkish centrists on the one hand (Bruce Reed, Gene Sperling, Richard Altman, Sarah Bianchi, Jamie Rubin) and fiery leftish populists drafted on a TDY basis out of Senator Kennedy's office (Bob Shrum, Mary Beth Cahill, Stephanie Cutter) and dovish Vietnam veterans (Tom Vallely, Chris Gregory, John Hurley) on the other, who respectively crave more class warfare and anti-war soundings out of the campaign. Interesting and useful analysis - and may the DLC folk win!

UPDATE: Matt has a different reading of Crowley's piece, and thinks Crowley's light tone extends both to his analysis as well as his presentation, as well as that the DLC faction (note to self: think up witty factional nicknames before end of campaign. then go back and put them here. result = really funny!) is running the more important policy shop rather than menial matters of political strategy. Matt's interesting as always, but I'm not sure I'm convinced yet. First, I think Crowley's analysis, as opposed to his metaphor of tribes and warlords, is meant to be fairly much taken at face value, but I guess in the final instance we could always just ask Crowley which of us is right. (Although Barthes might be grumpy.) Second, Mary Beth Cahill, a Kennedy office alumna, is Kerry's campaign manager, which seems like a more ponderous position to affect policy than from the issues staff. And incidentally, about the relationship of speechwriting to policies, there's actually an awfully interesting piece about how rhetoric can trap policymakers in being better than their intentions by some pundit daring to commit actual scholarship under the diabolically ingenious nom de plume of Adesnik. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 2:57 PM by Patrick Belton  

NEW WEBSITE: I've noticed that we get a really remarkable number of hits (and will get even more after this post, in all likelihood) from people googling "Dearborn (/Oxford / Washington / Kabul / Baghdad - hey, you're an adventuresome bunch) Massage Parlours," "Arabic gay sex pics," and even some really interesting combinations of Bush administration foreign policy statesmen (and women) and the former. This probably reflects the principal usages of the internet at this point in history (59% pornography, 31% Nigerian diamonds and Viagra sales, 10% email and e-commerce). In the past, I've tended to just say "welcome, gentlemen, and you can leave your trenchcoats by the door." But my current idea is that, if our dissertations don't come through in the end, we could always just spin out a companion website, OxxxBlog.

Second, we've been talking with friends in the democracy-promotion community about our idea to get funding to translate a weekly "best of blogs" round-up into Arabic and Farsi, with a scrupulously balanced representation each week of centre-left to centre-right blogs from the US and abroad. I have to admit, though, I still haven't figured out a cool title for the project. I've been thinking "Internet (something something) Project," where the middle bit has something to do with electronic political media, and perhaps the Middle East, but just neater-sounding. Any ideas? (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:17 PM by David Adesnik  

NRO VS. THE NEO-CONS: The National Review have some sharp words for the Bush administration regarding its conduct of the occupation. But sharp or not, I think that NRO's criticisms are basically fair. (Thanks to JM for the link.)

Where NRO gets things wrong is when it tries to blame everything that's gone wrong on the Wilsonian neo-cons in the administration. Strangely, none of these supposed neo-cons gets mentioned by name. And in fact, the mistakes that NRO mentions were just as much (if not moreso) the fault of NRO-style conservatives like Rumsfeld, Cheney and Rice as they were of Weekly Standard readers like Wolfowitz.

Of course the real culprit here is George W. Bush. No one has done more to push a Wilsonian agenda for Iraq than the President himself. Judging from their public statements, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Rice and Powell have only gone along with the President because they have no choice. Yet the NRO is afraid to point its finger at Bush because what they're trying to do is get Bush to stop pushing the neo-con agenda. But perhaps the NRO should recognize -- as most of Bush's other critics have -- that he actually means what he says. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:54 PM by David Adesnik  

EVERYTHING YOU WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT SHI'ISM BUT WERE AFRAID TO ASK: Rob's got one helluva reading list. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:45 PM by Patrick Belton  

CAN YOU SMOKE IN THE UN CAFETARIA? According to this article, no - but New York cops can't stop you. Under the 1947 headquarters agreement (the article gets the year wrong), unless explicitly stated otherwise in the agreement, the federal, state, and city laws that apply to the rest of New York also apply to the Headquarters District - but American police officials can't enter the UN to enforce them. (An exception is that they can enter on the Secretary-General's invitation, which is contemplated in emergency situations to maintain law and order within the district).

So you can smoke a camel with your coffee, or even a Cuban in the cafeteria, there on the East River? If you're okay with violating unenforceable New York City regulations, well, sure - assuming the UN hasn't enacted a law for the Headquarters District. And in fact, Secretary General Annan tried to do so by decretal authority, but diplomats accredited to the United Nations protested that only the General Assembly had lawmaking competence for the Headquarters District. Indeed, the current, though disputed, dominant sense does seem to be that only the General Assembly, and not Secretary-General Annan, could outlaw cigarettes within the Secretariat building - and given how difficult it is to get the General Assembly to do anything, you can probably rest assured in the confidence that at the UN for a long while you will be able to smoke your stogies to your heart's content. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:42 PM by David Adesnik  

WHEN IT RAINES, IT POURS: Rob Tagorda isn't so sure that Frank Raines would make a good running mate for Kerry. Nor is Rob all that happy with what Kerry's saying about Iraq or about the economy. But as Rob reminds us, there is always another Senator from Massachusetts who could be President... (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:30 PM by David Adesnik  

A WALK DOWN MEMORY LANE: Dan Drezner links to his April 2003 review of what the anti-war crowd got right and what they got wrong about the war. I'd say that the passage of time has only made Dan's post look even more insightful than it was 12 months ago.

Dan has also some very good posts up on US-China trade relations and the comparative efficiency of knowledge-based economies. While the talking heads may be wringing their hands about outsourcing and the loss of high-tech jobs, the numbers say that America is doing just fine. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:17 PM by David Adesnik  

NEGATIVE CAMPAIGNING: Attack ads will never be the same. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:53 PM by David Adesnik  

IGNORE THE HEADLINES: "Bush Planned For War as Diplomacy Continued" blares the WaPo. "Book Alleges Secret Iraq War Plan" says the NYT/AP. The existence of such a plan is one conclusion of Bob Woodward's new book on the invasion of Iraq. But the book also has something quite interesting to say about the phantom WMD:

Bush wanted someone with Powell's credibility to present the evidence that Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction -- a case the president had initially found less than convincing when presented to him by CIA deputy director John McLaughlin at a White House meeting on December 21, 2002.

McLaughlin's version used communications intercepts, satellite photos, diagrams and other intelligence. "Nice try," Bush said when he was finished, according to the book. "I don't think this quite -- it's not something that Joe Public would understand or would gain a lot of confidence from."

He then turned to Tenet, McLaughlin's boss and said, "I've been told all this intelligence about having WMD and this is the best we've got?"

"It's a slam dunk case," Tenet replied, throwing his arms in the air. Bush pressed him again. "George, how confident are you."

"Don't worry, it's a slam dunk case," Tenet repeated.

Tenet later told associates he realized he should have said the evidence on weapons was not ironclad, according to Woodward.

Woodward could be wrong about all of this. Critics often assert that he gets access to top officials because they know that he will write what they want to hear. But let's say Woodward got this exchange between Bush and Tenet right. Shouldn't the WaPo headline have read: "Bush Never Lied About WMD"? (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:05 AM by Patrick Belton  

LONDON RESTAURANT REVIEW OF THE DAY: From OxBlog's Afghanistan correspondent (who's, disconcertingly, in Oxford; we're shooing back to Afghanistan, where he's supposed to be):

We all went out in the evening to Montuno's, a good restaurant (serving ostrich and alligator) in a dodgy East London neighborhood. It had a 1920s Prohibition theme that didn't quite come off (all the waiters were wearing black suits and fedoras, and looked more like Lubavitchers than Capone boys).

# Posted 6:49 AM by Patrick Belton  

TWO MATURIN QUOTATIONS: After coming back from a surprise birthday party that Josh and I, and a handful of our Oxford friends, threw for Rachel last night, I laid in bed for a bit with my moment's Patrick O'Brian novel, HMS Surprise, and ran across two passages which I wanted to share with our readers:

'Even more painful than the fact that my let us call it interrogation was carried out by the French, the nation I love best.'

'What civilised man does not? Their rulers, politicians, revolutions set apart, and this horrible engouement for Bonaparte.'


'Bonden,' cried Stephen, 'take pen and ink, and write-'
'Write, sir?' cried Bonden.
'Yes. Sit square to your paper, and write: Landsdowne Crescent - Barret Bonden, are you brought by the lee??'
'Why, yes, sir; that I am - fair broached-to. Though I can read pretty quick, if in broad print; I can make out a watch-bill.'
'Never mind. I shall show you the way of it when we are at sea, however; it is no great matter - look at the fools who write all day long.'

Just as a sidenote, I was still thinking about the first passage as I was about to wake up this morning, and while I was in the midst of dreaming of a very intense older woman who had been recounting to me how, as a member of the Free French in June 1940, she had broadcast the rally to occupied France: "Vous, vous, vous, vous, vous, vous, vous maintenant devez agir de défendre votre patrie. Vous, vous, vous, vous, vous, vous, vous devez soutenir vos voisins et vos familles. Vous, vous, vous, vous, vous, vous, vous vous devez prouver aujourd'hui que vous êtes digne fils de la France." I quickly woke up to realise the pigeons had begun their broadcast of "ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo" from outside my window, as they do dutifully each morning from 6 am until the broadcast day ends around dinner-time, occasionally later.

PS: And incidentally, I couldn't agree more wholeheartedly with David's sterling taste in the blogosphere's best exemplars, as reflected in the post immediately below! (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:52 AM by David Adesnik  

A LESSON IN CIVICS: Kevin Drum has made a point of apologizing for his derisive and unfair comments about the quality of the CIA's prose. It was not a major point and Kevin clearly had the option of saying nothing and letting his readers forget about it.

In fact, Kevin had already put up one post acknowledging that Patrick's praise for the CIA's work may have been more valid than his (Kevin's) initial criticism. The fact that Kevin has continued to post additional corrections is yet another illustration of Kevin's commitment both to civility in public discourse and to putting the truth ahead of personal interests.

A damn fine blog and a damn fine blogger. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:31 AM by David Adesnik  

A SOLDIER'S SACRIFICE: A meditation on the human costs of war. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:26 AM by David Adesnik  

IRAQ ISN'T VIETNAM -- IT'S WORSE: So says Krugman. Unsurprisingly, Krauthammer disagrees. While some may find it disturbing that critics of the occupation have resorted to the language of Vietnam so quickly, I am actually encouraged by it. Their cards are now on the table. Their reputation as analysts is now invested.

After one week of hard combat, the critics gave up on the occupation as lost. We heard that Sadr's militia represent the advance guard of a national Shi'ite revolt. We heard that Shi'ite and Sunnis were joining forces against the Americans. But now things are quieting down again.

To be sure, there is still no transition government to speak of. But the US seems to have built a good working relationship with the UN envoy to Iraq. What may emerge from that relationship is a government appointed by the UN but which will respect both American and Iraqi interests. With very mild justification, Kerry's partisans are now claiming that Bush is following Kerry's line on Iraq. Yet the Bush administration hasn't come close to the turning over the occupation to the UN in the way that Kerry and other Democrats have demanded. Rather, the administration has invited the UN to mediate critical disputes that the CPA couldn't handle by itself.

In the long run, the emergence of a healthy democracy in Iraq is still a longshot. But if the United States stays the course, it can shift the odds in democracy's favor. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:53 AM by David Adesnik  

SUDDENLY BIN LADEN'S A GENIUS: This is how the WaPo opens its analysis of Bin Laden's latest offer:

Osama bin Laden's psychological operations campaign against the United States took a surprising turn yesterday with the release of an audio message that is modern, tactical and nearly diplomatic in tone, and that addresses Europeans rather than Muslim devotees, counterterrorism experts and intelligence officials said.

In doing so, experts who have analyzed his previous audiotapes and videotapes said bin Laden is employing a powerful weapon in psychological warfare: an adaptable propaganda machine that understands the nature of Western democracies, seeks to exploit political dissent and knows how to disseminate its message worldwide without being caught.

That is patently ridiculous. Is it "modern, tactical and nearly diplomatic" to tell Europeans that Bin Laden will stop murdering their fellow citizens if they surrender completely to his demands? If Bin Laden "understands the nature of Western democracies" why has every European government rejected the prospect of negotiating with Al Qaeda as unconscionable? Here's a sample of what Europe has to say:

"There cannot be negotiations with terrorists and criminals like Osama bin Laden," a German government spokesman said. "The community of nations must continue the fight against international terrorism, and Germany will continue to contribute to that fight."

Miguel ?ngel Moratinos, the new foreign minister of Spain, said Spain would not negotiate with Mr. bin Laden. "Bin Laden is the enemy of all of us who seek peace, democracy and freedom," Mr. Moratinos said. "Therefore we must not listen to him or pay attention to him."

The Italian foreign minister, Franco Frattini, said, "It is unthinkable that we may open a negotiation with bin Laden."

It should come as absolutely no surprise that Europe responded to Bin Laden with such united and unequivocal condemnation. No matter how controversial the war in Iraq has become, Europeans share our fundamental conviction that terror is beyond the pale. Rather than dividing Europe from the United States, Bin Laden has only succeeded in reminding us of the moral foundation on which our alliance rests. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:26 PM by Patrick Belton  

NEW ARAB REFORM BULLETIN: Carnegie releases these every month, courtesy of Yalie Arabist Amy Hawthorne, and they're always worth reading. In this month's issue, the Congressional Research Service's Kenneth Katzman says that the bulk of Iraq's Shi'i are quite moderate, CFR Next Generation Fellow Steven Cook writes that Algeria's elections were only democratic by Arab standards (why? because the military played a role in keeping the state secular, and sidelining Islamist parties...), and other pieces on Europe's response to the Greater Middle East Initiative, the role of Arab media in US reform efforts, and speculation as to the ultimate cause of the collapse of the Tunisia summit. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:10 PM by Patrick Belton  

EURASIANET ON US-UZBEK RELATIONSHIP: There generally isn't a lot of good analytical coverage of Uzbekistan and the rest of Central Asia, but Ariel Cohen offers a good piece in which he reports that the administration isn't planning to alter its relationship with Karimov in light of the explosion of terrorism in his country which occurred this month, and reports official scepticism that the violence was a result of Karimov's authoritarianism. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:07 PM by Patrick Belton  

AMERICA IN OPEC? On an APSA listserv which I take part in, Connecticut government professor Tristan Borer poses the interesting international law question of whether, as an occupying power exercising Iraq's sovereignty, the US is therefore currently a member of OPEC. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:56 PM by Patrick Belton  

MARINES FOR IRAQI LOCAL TV: Jim Hake and a group of Marines (see synonyms) have just begun a project to set up a network of low-powered local television stations in Iraq, which will be manned by Iraqis, and will report on local news - and particularly on things that are going on in parts of Iraq where there are no explosions, fires, bodies, or mainstream media coverage. There's more on the project's website. This sounds to be a wonderfully thought out and useful project, and definitely deserves any support people feel able to give it. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:04 AM by Patrick Belton  

A VERY HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO OUR FOREMOST READER, AND MY BELOVED WIFE: To Rachel, with many happy returns of the day, from the three of us....

First sight. First snapshot isolated
Unalterable, stilled in the camera's glare.
Taller
Than you ever were again.
Swaying so slender
It seemed your long, perfect, American legs
Simply went on up.
That flaring hand,
Those long, balletic, monkey-elegant fingers.
And the face - a tight ball of joy.
I see you there, clearer, more real Than in any of the years in its shadow - As if I saw you that once, then never again.
Ted Hughes, "St. Botolph's," Birthday Letters (about his first meeting Sylvia Plath at Cambridge in 1956)

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:17 PM by David Adesnik  

WHAT'S NEW HERE, EXACTLY? No question about it, this morning's Bush-Sharon press-conference is the top story of the day. But why, exactly? If you get your news from the WaPo or NYT, the answer to that question is far from self-evident. Both papers' headlines focus on Bush's support for Sharon's plan to withdraw from the Gaza Strip unilaterally. So? Why does Sharon need Bush's support to make concessions to the Palestinians? Halfway through its cover story, the NYT provides a cryptic answer to that question:

The United States' support is expected to strengthen [Sharon] at home, and help him push his disengagement proposal through a binding vote by his Likud party on May 2.

Those familiar with the details of the peace process will recognize that the May 2 vote represents an effort by Sharon to overcome the opposition of Likud hard-liners to making any sort of unilateral concessions to the Palestinians. In other words, Sharon is investing a good amount of political capital in an effort to give up land to the Palestinians and Bush is investing political capital in an effort to support Sharon.

Of course, casual readers of the NYT would have a hard time figuring out that that is what they President and the Prime Minister are trying to do. Readers of the WaPo wouldn't have any idea at all about what's going on, since the WaPo cover story doesn't even mention the May 2 vote.

Now, if you focus on the text of the NYT and WaPo articles rather than the headlines, you get a better idea of the point that those papers' correspondents are trying to make. The first sentence in the Times tells its readers that

President Bush, in a significant shift in American policy, told Prime Minister Ariel Sharon today that the United States would not object if Israel retained some West Bank settlements under a future peace accord.

According to the second paragraph in the WaPo's version of the story,

In an appearance with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and in an exchange of letters to be made public later today, Bush accepted essentially all of what the Israeli leader had sought. The move substantially changes U.S. policy toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, softening the American objection to Israel's settlements and dropping a reluctance to dictate terms of a final peace settlement.

In other words, today's big story is that Bush is damaging the peace process by publicly endorsing -- for the first time ever -- the most unreasonable of Israeli demands. In case this message wasn't clear, the NYT reports that

The [American] announcement seemed sure to anger many Arabs and Muslims, many of them already deeply resentful of the United States occupation of Iraq. [If I were less generous, I might describe this reference to Iraq as entirely gratuitous. --ed.]

Ahmed Qurei, the Palestinian prime minister, issued a powerful denunciation, saying, according to Reuters, "Bush is the first U.S. president to give legitimacy to Jewish settlements on Palestinian land. We reject this."

Earlier today, anticipating the administration's action, Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, said in a statement that such an accord "means clearly the complete end of the peace process."

That's funny. I thought that the "complete end of the peace process" was when Arafat walked away from the negotiations at Taba in December 2000 and ordered a merciless assault on Israeli civilians that continues to this day. Now, given that both the NYT and WaPo describe Bush's new position on the peace process as a major innovation, you'd think that they would at least have the decency to compare his position with the one that Clinton endorsed at Taba. After all, how else can you figure out what's changed?

Well, FYI, Arafat walked away from Taba because neither Clinton nor Barak considered the Palestinians' Right of Return to be legitimate. The bottom line is that letting millions of Palestinians settle inside the Green Line is an invitation to civil war. Clinton and Barak also negotiated some marginal territorial concessions in order to bring as many Israeli settlers as possible inside the boundaries of Israel proper. Nonetheless, Clinton and Barak offered Arafat more than 90% of the occupied territories as a Palestinian state. As the NYT correctly states halfway through its coverage, Bush's position represents a

Clear shift from a longtime United States position that issues such as borders, the "right of return" for refugees and the status of Jerusalem be resolved in final-status talks.

In other words, what's changed isn't the substance of the American position but the articulation of it. But when it comes to diplomacy, articulation matters. That's why today's announcement really is a big story. By staking out a clear position in advance of final-status talks, Bush is essentially saying that important aspects of Israel's demands are simply non-negotiable. If the Palestinians negotiators accept those demands, they will now come across as giving in to American pressure rather than compromising in the name of peace. Thus, if you think that only a negotiated accord can end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, then Bush and Sharon really have thrown a wrench in the works. Clearly, that is the premise on which the NYT and WaPo correspondents are operating.

But there is another premise out there which also deserves a fair hearing: that a negotiated settlement is no longer possible and that Israel simply has to find the best way to let go of the occupied territories. That is why Sharon wants to pull out of Gaza. That is why he is building a massive wall to separate Israel from the West Bank. While one can argue that good fences don't make good neighbors, a strong majority of Israeli voters have taken Sharon's side on this one. Interestingly, Bush said that

the security fence Israel is erecting to separate part of the Palestinian territories "should be temporary rather than permanent, and therefore not prejudice any final status issues, including final borders."

In other words, Bush has no intention of letting Sharon use the wall to define the borders of a future Palestinian state. That message doesn't really come across in either the NYT or WaPo, which both cite Bush's statement but don't explain its significance. In fact, the WaPo follows it up by writing that

Bush's stance in favor of Sharon's policy of "disengagement" and promise that Israel need not return to its pre-1967 borders has the potential to further inflame relations between the United States and the Arab world. Although Arab states are opposed to the security fence, they have urged Bush not to allow Israel to use its unilateral withdrawal from Gaza to mean that it will keep its position in the West Bank.

That last sentence makes it seem that Bush actually is going to let Sharon use the wall to draw Palestine's broders. What it would be fair to say is that even if Bush describes the wall as temporary, what difference does that make if there is no prospect for peace talks that would enable Israel to remove the wall? Thus, I am very concerned that Bush has given Sharon an implicit green light to force an unfair settlement on the Palestinians.

As this excellent article in Foreign Affairs [subscription required] points out, there are multiple paths that the security wall might take. Some of them bring an overwhelming majority of the settlers into Israel proper without expropriating more than a small amount of Palestinian land. If such a path were followed, the wall would have the basic effect of imposing the Taba agreement on the Palestinians. However, there are Israeli hawks who want to use the wall to punish the Palestians by carving up their state and surrounding it with Israeli territory. That is a recipe for conflict and that is what the NYT and WaPo should be focusing on.
(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 2:06 PM by Patrick Belton  

OPEN QUESTION FOR PEACE PROCESS JUNKIES IN THE AUDIENCE: Speaking today with Israeli PM Sharon, President Bush said "it seems clear" that Palestinians will have to give up the right of return in order to attain statehood. My question: have U.S. presidents addressed the right of return before in this way, or is this something more or less new in the history of American engagement in the peace process? I know Clinton suggested the Palestinians concede the right of return as part of a grand bargain, in exchange for East Jerusalem, or at least al-Haram al-Sharif (i.e., Temple Mount for Jews), but whereas that was a suggested exchange, this seems to me like a more a statement of a precondition. First answer that seems correct to me wins a falafel, but you have to come to Oxford for it. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:33 PM by Patrick Belton  

BBC BAITING, BEATS BAITING BEARS, COMPANY: Scott Burgess from Daily Ablution emails to suggest that if we have any readers who aren't preoccupied with skateboarding dogs, then they might be interested in his recent posts on the BBC's rather cockamamie poll asking "Is the US a bigger threat than terror?" (and the Beeb's response), and on the striking difference between how the Beeb treats the Israeli and Palestinian foreign ministers - which you don't exactly have to be an ardent AIPAC member to find rather striking.

Of course, if you'd rather bait bears - well, it's a rather unpleasant thing to do, and you shouldn't. But if you'd be happy looking at fairly cute pictures of bears instead, then here are some. (OxBlog: little. cute. furry. Not to mention generally amusing or at least inoffensive.) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:58 AM by Patrick Belton  

SO YOU CAN TEACH A DOG TO RIDE A SKATEBOARD. What I want to know is, can you get him to wear baggy pants and a backwards baseball cap?

ANSWER: I love our readers. Apparently you can...if he's a dog, inside a cartoon, inside a cartoon.

So my next question is, when can we look forward to replacing all the teenagers in Oxford city centre with cute puppies who can do the same job more cheaply and with fewer piercings? (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:10 AM by David Adesnik  

BLACKMAIL IS NOT ENOUGH: This evening, the Boston chapter of the Nathan Hale Society had the privilege of dining with Prof. Sung-Yoon Lee of the Fletcher School of Diplomacy at Tufts. Prof. Lee is an expert on Korean politics and history. The subject of our discussion was the North Korean nuclear program.

The analytical linchpin of Prof. Lee's approach to North Korean behavior is his conclusion that the Pyongyang dictatorship considers the possession of nuclear weapons to be the only reliable guarantor of its existence. In the absence of a nuclear deterrent, it would only be a matter of time before the South Korean government destroyed its Northern counterpart by tempting its citizens with the prospect of prosperity and freedom Thus, there is no reason whatsoever to believe that Kim Jong Il will accept the verifiable dismantling of his nuclear program in exchange for economic aid, international legitimacy, a non-aggression pact with the United States or some combination of all three. Immoral or not, giving in to blackmail simply won't work.

In other words, Prof. Lee vehemently disagrees with all those who believe that the United States can resolve its ongoing confrontation with North Korea by means of either bilateral or multilateral negotiations. Yet given that war is simply not an acceptable option, Prof. Lee has nothing against negotiation, since it can't make matters worse and -- given some extraordinary luck -- may result in a lessening of tensions.

In assessing the state of US-North Korean relations, Prof. Lee believes that both the Bush administration and its critics make the categorical mistake of interpreting North Korean behavior as a response to American initiatives rather than the imperatives of North Korean domestic politics. Coming from this perspective, Prof. Lee tends to believe that the Bush administration has been beset by critics who offer unrealistic alternatives because of their naivete about North Korean politics. Thus, with regard to the Bush administration's decision to confront the North Koreans in October 2002 with evidence of their illegal uranium enrichemnt program, Prof. Lee suggested that the temporary escalation of tensions was essentially insignificant given that North Korea constantly creates crises as a result of its own provocative behavior.

Turning southward, Prof. Lee expressed grave concerns about rising anti-American sentiment in South Korea. While describing himself as an ardent South Korean nationalist who puts the interests of his homeland above all else, Prof. Lee nonetheless argued that absolutely nothing is more critical to South Korean security than an unflinching American commitment to protect it from Northern aggression. Speaking historically, Prof. Lee observed that whereas Harry Truman went to war in 1950 in order to contain Communism and protect American interests, his decision had the unmistakable effect of liberating South Korea from Northern occupation and laying the foundations of the moderan South Korean state.

With no memories of the war to rely on, young South Koreans have forgotten the degree to which South Korean and American security are inextricably linked. Thus, young South Koreans' passionate desire for reunification with the North leads them to indefensible conclusion (expressed via opinion polls) that it is the United States, rather than North Korea, that is preventing reunification. What young South Koreans do remember is that in 1980, South Korea's military government slaughtered thousands of civilians in what became known as the Kwangju Massacre. While there is no question that the Carter administration supported the military government almost uncritically, many South Koreans believe that the United States actually played a direct role in the massacre, since the military government could not have transferred its soldiers from the northern border to the southern city of Kwangju without the direct authorization of hte United States. [Apparently South Koreans don't think highly enough of Jimmy Carter to believe that he would never do such a thing. --ed.]

In addition to his wariness of South Korean public opinion, Prof. Lee is fiercely critical of both the current administration of Roh Moo-Hyun as well as that of his predecessor Kim Dae Jung. One year ago, Prof. Lee wrote that

[South Korean] nationalism was a constructive force in resisting colonial oppression and in the staggering challenge of nation-building half a century ago. Today, in its virulent anti-US rhetoric and shockingly naive attachment to North Korea, it is simply self-defeating.

One example of naivete that Prof. Lee mentioned was the Kim and Roh governments' decision to all but abandon counter-espionage programs designed to protect the South from the vast network of covert operatives -- numbering in the thousands -- that North Korea continues to operate in the South. In fact, the North Korean commitment to espionage is so fanatical that drafts preadolescents into its espionage programs so that they can undergo decades of training and indoctrination before being deployed to the South.

In spite of this bleak assessment of North Korean motives, is there any hope for change in the near future? Prof. Lee says 'no'. At the moment, there are no indications of factionalization within the North Korean military and thus no known prospects for a coup d'etat. While the North depends on China to provide much of its food and most of its fuel, China is in many ways the subordinate partner in the relationship. Knowing that a collapse of the North Korean regime would result in the arrival of millions upon millions of starving North Korean refugees in northern China, Beijing simply will not take any sort of action that endangers the existence of the Kim regime. At the same time, China desperately wants to avoid a military confrontation on the Korean peninsula that involves the United States.

How does China reconcile such conflicting impulses? The answer isn't exactly clear. Prof. Lee observed that the Beijing government does all in its power to hide its intentions from the West, as well as denying to the West any of the information it derives from its unique relationship with North Korea.

In closing, Prof. Lee shared his expectation there will be no significant developments on the Peninsula before the US presidential election in November. Moreover, even if John Kerry takes the White House there is little reason to expect any substantive change in American policy. For as long as the imperative of survival governs the decision-making process in Pyongyang, the options available to the West will remain extremely renstricted.

If you are a young scholar or professional and this conversation with Prof. Lee sound like something you want to be a part of, then get in touch with your local chapter of the Nathan Hale Society. If you happen to be a fellow Bostonian or Cantabrigian, then get in touch with chapter President Ronan Wolfsdorf find out what we're up to. (Information is also available on the Nathan Hale blog, which you can find here.)

If you happen to be a young member of the working class or even a known felon, don't be deterred by the words "scholar or professional". They are meant to be more descriptive than prescriptive. If you are young at heart but middle-aged in body type, check out the Council on Foreign Relations. If you are still in high school, you are up past your bedtime. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:56 PM by Patrick Belton  

POLITICAL WEBSITE OF THE DAY: Apart, of course, from all of our friends in the blogosphere.... WaPo's Veep-o-matic: select up to five characteristics of the ideal vice presidential candidate for Senator Kerry to select (non-politician, southerner, live or work outside the beltway - hey, I'm not saying these are good characteristics to select a vice-president on....), and let the magic of 21st-century technology do the work for you. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:23 PM by Patrick Belton  

PESACH IS A VERY NICE HOLIDAY when it comes, but it's an even nicer holiday when it ends. So a very happy chametz eating season, everyone!

Here are lots of nice leavened recipes, to help you celebrate: for Irish soda bread, crumpets, and lots of other nice yummy types of bread. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:17 PM by Patrick Belton  

COUNTERTERRORISM AND DOMESTIC INTELLIGENCE IN DEMOCRACIES: RAND has a report gauging lessons learned from the experiences in domestic intelligence and counterterrorism of Britain, France, Canada, and other democracies.

Also from RAND lately, recommendations on organising counterterror responsibilities within the executive branch. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:41 PM by Patrick Belton  

SENATOR KERRY GIVES HIS VIEWS ON IRAQ this morning in the WaPo. While some is sound-biteish ("Progress is not possible in Iraq if people lack the security to go about the business of daily life. Yet the military alone cannot win the peace in Iraq. We need a political strategy that will work."), some is unfair or incorrect (e.g., the attempt to make political hay out of the recent violence: "In the past week the situation in Iraq has taken a dramatic turn for the worse." Or the factually disputable claim in - "Finally, we must level with our citizens. Increasingly, the American people are confused about our goals in Iraq, particularly why we are going it almost alone.") - but a few ideas are quite interesting, including increasing the role of Nato in Iraq. My take: this piece includes a number of notes - some anti-war, some more hawkish - which Kerry will be trying out in public over the next few weeks, while the campaign is still in a low stage of intensity, to develop the views that he judges will meet with the best public response. A great deal of his ultimate foreign policy stance will depend on the result, and is currently up for grabs. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:26 PM by Patrick Belton  

US TO STOP PATROLLING DMZ: The UPI is reporting that the U.S. military will relinquish its outpost along the Demilitarized Zone in October, in favour of permitting South Korea to take a greater role in its own self-defence. This comes at a time when President Roh Moo-hyun seeks to make good on campaign promises to move his country closer to its northern neighbour and away from the United States; the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade remains in favour of close defence ties with the United States. It's unclear, however, whether this latest move, intended to downplay the U.S. presence, will gladden too many hearts across the Korean political spectrum - Korea's conservatives worry that removing U.S. forces from the DMZ removes an important security tripwire, while liberals complain that the U.S. will now build new bases further to the south to replace the reployed soldiers.

The more salient and interesting question here is, did the United States act correctly here? The answer in the short term, most likely, is a clear yes. There are no friends to be won for the United States by its sticking around in countries where its presence isn't wanted. Basing represents as much a natural irritant to a relationship as a solidifier of ties, and it may well be that ties between Washington and Seoul will draw closer minus a few hundred adolescents away from home for the first time, and largely immunized against local prosecution for their misdeeds by a Status of Forces Agreement, along with the electoral irritant their presence often provides. And that troops of the 2nd Infantry Division might be safely brought home without prejudicing the nation's security is a view not only held among the South Korean electorate, warming toward their northern neighbour and chilling toward their nation's historical alliance partner, but also among such rather less sentimental and anti-American voices as, say, Michael O'Hanlon. Rumsfeld's plan to eliminate redundant command structures in Hawaii, Japan, and Korea makes eminent sense if it can actually be carried out in the face of service-level bureaucratic inertia. And that the present moment represents a particularly good time to draw down the American footprint in areas where it's outsized, in order to shift troops home or toward theatres where they're acutely needed, is as clear a proposition as they come.

It's the longer term that's somewhat more tricky. The drawing-down of American troops in Korea is clearly a very pleasant scenario for the Chinese, who for the past two decades have been pursuing a quiescent strategy in which they plan that a peacefully unified Korea will naturally fall into its orbit, along with Tiawanese reunification. In Beijing's post-normalisation calculus, this process will be nudged along as its economy and trade ties grow stronger in the Asia Pacific, while the United States grapples with unpopularity in the region stemming both from basing and the rise of opposition parties to unseat historically governing pro-U.S. parties, while at home it comes to face the domestic electoral and economic effects of overextension. While one recent War College paper suggests Guam as an alternate American basing site, however ideal Guam may be in logistical terms, as a politically symbolic ally it leaves a bit to be desired. But a drawing down of basing in politically problematic crowded Seoul and Okinawa, along with the construction of the groundwork of a new alliance with the foreign policy establishment of Roh's party - and the dramatic upgrading and restructuring of security ties with a Japan which looks ready to have outgrown its post-World War Two straightjacket - may represent as good a policy choice for the United States in Asia as is out there. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:30 AM by Patrick Belton  

ROUND-UP: With Rachel having decided to erect a Mexican death shrine next to the sofa for my cold, laid out with lillies and various British cold ailment remedies, blogging at least holds out the possibility of making me feel slightly less like a 90 year-old Tamaulipeca woman waiting patiently for the angel of darkness.... (There's also something distinctly Indian in my shrine, too - most likely in the flowers - but I can't quite tease it out yet.)

Rob's suggesting the UN call on Sistani to crack down on Sadr, since Sistani seems to have deferred to it in the past. Meanwhile, Crooked Timber points out far-right tabloid speculation that Europe will become a province of Islam is utter demographic scaremongering, and touches on jurisdictional challenges in prosecuting spam.

Josh Kurlantzick points out that the internet has not been the death knell to authoritarianism that enthusiasts in the optimistic 1990s had hoped: the reasons why - principally the individual nature of web-surfing (but then again, what about such electronic political phenomena as blogging and meet-ups?), and the suppression of sites with political content (successfully "nailing jello to the wall," is his quote with regard to China). Still, in countries which unlike China and Singapore don't actively suppress independent electronic fora for political conversation, it sounds from this piece that there's likely a great deal of potential in spreading internet-mediated political technologies such as blogging and meet-ups to young populations that already frequent cybercafes, if only at present to download - merciless google troll coming - naked pictures of Brittney Spears and Paris Hilton kissing topless Osama Bin Laden while listening to free ringtones...

Christopher Hitchens points out, mercifully, that Iraq isn't Vietnam. Also in Slate, and equally mercifully, Lee Smith points out that Al-Jazeera's tendency of late toward conspiracy theories about the U.S. is unprofessional and silly. (Also awkward and silly is Bob Dylan in a bra, a phrase which is likely to win us substantially fewer google hits.) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:25 AM by Patrick Belton  

MORE ON SUDAN: As genocide continues - and as human rights organizations continue to ignore it, preferring instead to comfortably attack the United States - Dan Geffen has more on the possible European response.

UPDATE: A former Oxford amnesty member emails in

OK, admittedly it's not as thorough as one would like (and dated 3 February so they are taking their eye off the ball) but still a step up from "ignoring" it...

http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGAFR540102004

How's Trinity at this time of year? Do the ducks still nest next to the
porter's lodge near Staircase 1?

Hope you're feeling better,

MP

Thanks! (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 4:41 AM by Patrick Belton  

I'M A SICK, SICK MAN: So possibly light posting from me today - too much Pesach celebrating and dissertating, I guess, not to mention cavorting with a sick, diseased woman. Go read Drezner instead. You could even enter our essay contest - deadline is May 1st! (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 4:59 PM by Patrick Belton  

I HAVE A NEW favourite ship in the Royal Navy! I'm referring, of course, to the HMS Belton, which has won my heart. She was a minesweeper, run aground heroically in the Hebrides in 1974. (But there was no naval action in Hebrides in 1974! No, but it sounds sort of like the Falkands, and they were only eight years after. Oh) Incidentally, those interested in my academic work will be gratified to know "Belton is busier than ever", according to the website of the village of Belton in Lincolnshire. You can also read about medieval Belton and Victorian Belton, and even visit Belton House, which has apparently after only four years of entertaining already been put on the tourist map! (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:04 AM by Patrick Belton  

GUINNESS IS GOOD FOR YOU: Now it's official.

UPDATE: But that doesn't mean it doesn't have its detractors nonetheless:

Although I don't always agree with you, I usually find your posts worthwhile or at least inoffensive. (Ed: new OxBlog slogan - "usually worthwhile or at least inoffensive!") In this case you are spreading psuedoscientific nonsense that could have serious detrimental effects on an entire class of people. The nutritional benefit of Guinness has been systematically exaggerated by corporate propaganda for a century. As more recent research has shown, Guinness is beneficial only as part of a balanced diet. Please see this link for proof.

The link goes on to note "So, to fulfill all of your daily nutritional requirements you would need to drink a glass of orange juice, two glasses of milk, and 47 pints of Guinness." (I actually know a bloke in Galway City who does that.) Personally, in this genre of biased, malinformed detractor literature, my preferences run toward the classic "Young Scientist Proves Guinness Not 'Good for you'" (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:36 AM by Patrick Belton  

IN BOSTON? WANT FUN? Our foreign policy society's Boston chapter is having its first meeting this week - if you live in the area, and would like to come along, please drop our friend and chapter president Ronan Wolfsdorf a note!

Also, warm thanks to Robert Tagorda in Los Angeles, Eric Hassman in San Francisco, Will Baude and Amanda Butler in Chicago, Justin Abold in Washington, Allen Dickerson and Roger Schonberg in New York, Tom Petrick in Houston, Marc Schulman in Miami, and now Lindsay Hayden at Yale for their kind efforts in starting up chapters of our foreign policy society around the country. If you'd like to get in touch with our friends in a city near you, please feel free to drop them a note! (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:25 AM by Patrick Belton  

JUST BECAUSE IT NEEDS TO BE SAID, AND LOUDLY: BAD. BAD. BAD.

Incidentally, a friend and I are planning to start up an ngo soon to foster cross-racial understanding and friendships in cities in the US and UK - I'll be asking for your suggestions, and more on that to come shortly. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:07 AM by Patrick Belton  

OKAY, I DID IT. I have a confession to make. It was years ago, Rachel and I had broken up for a weekend, and I did it out of weakness. No, not go to one of the multiple students financing their Oxford education through prostitution - something much worse, and much darker. I sat down, in the dark, and in my weakness took a test for admission to a nerd group. I've pretty much been haunted by the results ever since. Particularly when I get emails like this:

UFO SIG: an international Mensa e-SIG for serious discussion about unidentified flying objects. (Ed: SIG="Special" Interest Group)

We are here to discuss unidentified sightings and experiences of our members. We encourage and welcome members with specific experiences to post a note about their observations to our group.
 
Whilst our group is factually-oriented, many of our members are also interested in science fiction. There are two international e-SIGs of possible interest to these members, M-Star Trek and M-Babylon 5. These groups' home pages are listed below.
 
FYI, our UFO SIG is the fastest-growing SIG in the history of international e-SIGs.

More links of interest to our members:

• UFO SIG http://groups.yahoo.com/group/UFOsig
  
• M-STAR TREK SIG http://groups.yahoo.com/group/m-startrek
  
• M-BABYLON 5 SIG http://groups.yahoo.com/group/m-babylon5

And unlike, say, much cooler clubs like the Illuminati, Skull and Bones or Freemasons, or even your average trip to the Madame in Magdalen, I think I'll be haunted by these folks for years to come.

MAILBAG: JH from Dallas notes "I joined long enough to get a Mensa Credit Card from
MBNA. I hand it to snotty waiters." Hey, good idea, can I get one? (a credit card, not a snotty waiter). And "Anon" from an academic email address takes a different tack entirely and writes: "Forget about all that Fallujah nonsense, what we all want to know about is the Madame of Magdalen. Does every college have one, and is there is an equivalent of the Norrington table?" No, but now we do have a slightly better idea where all those hits from "Oxford massage parlor" were coming from. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:04 AM by Patrick Belton  

MORE ON TRANSLATING THE BLOGOSPHERE INTO ARABIC AND FARSI: I'm really grateful to everyone who wrote in with their thoughts on my post on providing Arabic and Farsi translations of blogs across the political spectrum, whether automatically by using a translation program or by having volunteers translate a "best of the web" roundup which would represent blogs from across the political spectrum, and could appear, say, once or twice a week.

Right now I'm leaning towards thinking that a human-translated "best of blogs" roundup might be looking like the more attractive option, given the inaccuracies in web translating software at this stage of the game, but I'm also happy to keep looking into both possibilities. For my part, our think tank'd be very happy to host and help administer the project with help, and create a movable type blog for the purpose. I'd be particularly interested in hearing from any of our readers who speak Arabic or Farsi, and who might be willing to help translate posts, perhaps once or twice a month. If you have any other suggestions or would like to help out, please drop us a note! (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:18 PM by Patrick Belton  

WHAT THE BECK: I am about to do something which is illegal on British soil. Not to call for the abolition of the monarchy - actually, we here at OxBlog have generally had quite good things to say about the usefulness of the Queen in the nation's diplomacy and in Britain's efforts to maintain a higher world profile. (Anyway, who in South Africa ever gets excited about a visit from the imponderous President of, say, Ireland?) No, this is to do something far more dangerous - to question, loudly, what the heck all of the fixation with David Beckham was all about in the first place.

I mean, come on - he looks like a ren-faire geek, just if possible even less manly. How he ever convinces random Euro-femmes to commit adultery with him proves, I think, just how easily sex is to come by in post-Christian Europe. He got his wife's name tattooed on his arm in Hindi - but it's spelt incorrectly. He has allowed himself to be seen in public in a sarong, never a wise fashion choice for any English male. And as far as his hair - shaved off, cut into a Mohawk, long and wild and carefully done into plaits, he's always looked basically like a geek. Yes, yes, he slipped one past Greece in 2002 to draw and keep England in the World Cup, but he got stood up by Lisa Simpson, when the show's producers decided he wasn't well known enough in the States to receive a cameo role. And he named his kid Brooklyn? What, so he can develop a fondness for America and be playmates with Prince Michael II?

His and Posh Spice's three-week publicity tour of the States in June was, well, basically ignored. But perhaps there's another side to this, that we're missing. Which is that Beckham shows all of us that you can be an effeminate, geeky looking, and style-challenged English male, and still have a chance of pulling when you go to the Continent. Which perhaps is worth letting the bloke hang around, after all.

UPDATE: After early mistaken attempts involving Arab democracy and gay rights, OxBlog finally hits on the secret for filling up our inbox. Randy Paul from Beautiful Horizons writes in amusingly, "I'm an Arsenal and FC Barcelona fan, so my antipathy towards Beckham is well grounded, but in fairness to him he did name his oldest kid Brooklyn because he was conceived there. Thank God he wasn't conceived say in a hotel near LaGuardia in Flushing for example." (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:34 AM by Patrick Belton  

PB ON THE PDB: While Kevin's as usual been doing some really wonderful blogging lately, I'm not sure I agree with him here about the President's Daily Briefing from August 6 which was just released:

[W]hat really struck me was that the whole thing was so short - considerably shorter than your average op-ed column, in fact - and written at about a high school level. This is an intelligence briefing prepared at the request of the president of the United States and he was apparently satisfied with it? Eleven paragraphs of pabulum considerably less authoritative than an average article in Foreign Affairs? Sheesh.

Actually, I'm not really sure I agree with Kevin here. If you look through administrations at documents prepared for the president (the National Security Archive has one fairly nice collection online), they're as a rule never over two pages. And while I strongly support inquiries into and subsequent reforms of both the analytical process and the current sad shape of information sharing among bureaucracies, where there's an awfully lot of good work to be done - what strikes me about this particular briefing, having spent some portion of my life reading sterling samples of bureaucratic argot, is that it's clear, concisely written, and packs a good deal of information into a short memo. If you'd like to see something that's none of these things, look around most government documents.

MAILBAG: A graphic designer points out how the PDB, which he notes disapprovingly "looks like it was done in Word," could be made more effective as a way of presenting information. Hey, we have a substantial readership in the EOP and national security agencies - for what it's worth, we're all for making the daily briefing as effective (and pleasant-looking) a tool as possible! (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:57 AM by Patrick Belton  

A VERY HAPPY EASTER, TO ALL OF OUR READERS AND FRIENDS! The Pope, in his semiannual Urbi et Orbi message, urged humanity to oppose the "inhuman, and unfortunately growing, phenomenon of terrorism, which rejects life and brings anguish and uncertainty to the daily lives of so many hard-working and peaceful people. May [God's] wisdom enlighten men and women of good will in the required commitment against this scourge."

(SIDENOTE: Reuters, more colloquially, notes "Pop appeals for peace in Easter message." Which, semantically, is correct too - il papa) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:43 PM by Patrick Belton  

MORE ON IRANIAN SUPPORT FOR SHI'A INSURGENCY: London's Al-Hayat:

The direct Iranian presence in the Shi'ite areas of Iraq in the political, security, and economic affairs can not be ignored anymore. This presence is accompanied by a vigorous Iranian effort to create bridges with different forces in Iraq; first, by material and logistic aid to parties other than the Shi'a, and secondly through the traditional Iranian influence in the religious seminaries [hawza] and in the Marja'iya [religious Shi'a authorities] institutions.

A member of the Governing Council told Al-Hayat that the Iranians have recently managed to activate a known Marja' [a Shi'a cleric regarded as a religious authority], Kazem Al-Ha'iri, who lives in the city of Qum in Iran, and is known to be close to Al-Sadr's movement, and was regarded as an heir to Ayatollah Muhammad Sadeq Al-Sadr.

Iraqi security sources say that the escalation erupted after an American decision to oust Hassan Kazemi Qumi, the recently appointed chief Iranian agent in Iraq, who is an officer in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards... The sources connected the ousting of Qumi with Moqtada Al-Sadr's statements that his movement is an extension of the Lebanese Hizbullah and of Hamas... Sources said that the visit of an assistant of Moqtada Al-Sadr to Fallujah before the last uprising and Al-Sadr's statement that his movement is an extension of Hamas were both messages to his new allies among the Iraqi Sunnis.

It may well be that the Iranians, who apparently have influence in more than one sphere in Iraq, have intervened to reconcile the inner Shi'ite struggle for power. They intervened when Moqtada Al-Sadr sought to take control of the Husseini circle in Karbala, an attempt that the followers of Ayatollah Al-Sistani objected to. The Iranians worked out an arrangement under which large sums of money were sent to institutions belonging to Al-Sadr's family, which placated Al-Sadr, and satisfied him with controlling the Al-Kufa mosque only."

Al-Sharq Al-Awsat:

[former Iranian intelligence official in charge of activities in Iraq, who recently defected from Iran] Haj Sa'idi told Al-Sharq Al-Awsat that the Iranian presence in Iraq is not limited to the Shi'ite cities. Rather, it is spread throughout Iraq, from Zakho in the north to Umm Al-Qasr in the south, and the infiltration of Iranian Revolutionary Guards and the Al-Quds Army into Iraq began long before the war, through hundreds of Iranian intelligence agents, amongst them Iraqi refugees who were expelled by Saddam Hussein in the 1970's and 1980's to Iran, allegedly because of their Iranian origin, and who infiltrated back into Iraq through the Kurdish areas that were out of the Iraqi Ba'th government control.

After the war, the Iranian intelligence sent its agents through the uncontrolled Iraq-Iran border; some of them as students and clerics, and others as belonging to the Shi'ite militias.

Haj Sa'idi said that the assassination last summer of Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir Al-Hakim, who headed the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), was a successful operation carried out by the intelligence unit of the Iranian Al-Quds Army. He also revealed that there was a failed attempt on the life of the highest Shi'ite Marja, Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani, at the Eid Al-Adha holiday last year, and that there was another plan to assassinate Ayatollah Ishaq Al-Fayadh.

Haj Sa'idi claimed that some of the Iranian intelligence officers in Iraq are known to everybody, for example in Al-Suleimaniya and Derebendikhan in the north. However, he said, the real threat comes not from the officers that are known, but from those that are unknown. Amongst them are 18 Shi'ite charities in Kazimiya, in Al-Sadr city in Baghdad, in Karbala, Najaf, Kufa, Nasiriyah, Basra, and other cities with a large Shi'ite majority. In those offices, new agents are recruited every day, under the guise of financial aid, medicine, food, and clothing for the poor.

Haj Sa'idi said that the Iranian plan to turn Iraq into another Iran is a wide-ranging plan, and it involves the recruitment of thousands of young Shi'ites for the next stage, which will take place with the [first] parliamentary elections in Iraq. Those recruited now are supposed to enlist their relatives to vote for candidates that will be endorsed by the Iranian intelligence apparatuses.

Haj Sa'idi also mentioned that more than 300 reporters and technicians who are working now in Iraq for television and radio networks, newspapers, and other media agencies are in fact members of the Al-Quds Army and the Revolutionary Guards intelligence units.

He also mentioned that the Iranian money allocations for activities in Iraq, both covert and overt, reached $70 million per month. He claimed that 2,700 apartments and rooms were rented in Karbala and Najaf, in order to serve agents of the Al-Quds Army and the Revolutionary Guards.

Haj Sa'idi added that the attempt by the Kurdish authorities in northern Iraq to act against the Iranian activities there prompted a reaction by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards to incite the Turkmeni Shi'ites in the region against the Kurds. He claimed that many Turkmen Shi'ite commanders traveled to Iran and got huge financial support, as well as guarantees that Iran will stand by them in case of clashes between them and the Kurds.

Also in Al-Sharq Al-Awsat:

A source in the Quds Army of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard revealed to Al-Sharq Al-Awsat information relating to the construction of three camps and training centers on the Iranian-Iraqi borders to train elements of the "Mehdi Army" founded by Muqtada Al-Sadr. The source estimated that about 800-1,200 young supporters of Al-Sadr have received military training including guerilla warfare, the production of bombs and explosives, the use of small arms, reconnoitering and espionage. The three camps were located in Qasr Shireen, 'Ilam, and Hamid, bordering southern Iraq which is inhabited largely by Shi'a Muslims.

The newspaper also reported that the Iranian Embassy in Baghdad has recently distributed 400 satellite phones to supporters of Al-Sadr and to clerics and students at the A'thamiyya district of Baghdad, Al-Sadr City, and the holy city of Najaf, all of which are inhabited predominantly by Shi'a Muslims.

The Iranian source, known in Iraq as "Abu Hayder" confirmed that the intelligence service of the Revolutionary Guard has introduced to the Shi'a cities radio and TV broadcasting facilities which are used by Al-Sadr and his supporters.

During his recent visit to Iran, Al-Sadr met with Hashemi Rafsanjani, head of the Expediency Council as well as the head of the revolutionary guard intelligence, Murtadha Radha'i, and the commander of the Al-Quds Army responsible for Iraqi affairs, Brig. General Qassim Suleimani and other government and religious leaders.

The source estimated the financial support to Al-Sadr in recent months have exceeded $80 million, in addition to the cost of training, equipment and clothing of his supporters.

The source indicated that elements of the Al-Quds Army and the Revolutionary Guard Intelligence lead many of the operations directed against the coalition forces. These elements are also leading a campaign against the senior Shi'a clerics such as the Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani, Hussein Al-Sadr [Muqtada's uncle], Ishaq Al-Fayadh and others because of their opposition to the concept of "the Rule of the Jurist" [Wilayat Al-Faqih] which is Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's style of government.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:28 PM by Patrick Belton  

BUMMER OF LUCK: I just received an email with the promising subject "GET PAID F@R Y@UR @PINI@NS" from OxBlog's estimable correspondent EUQQGBWVIAOKFB@bn.com.br.

But then it turned out that they were just looking for freelancer pundits, and were only going to pay 15 cents a word.

Pity. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 3:41 PM by Daniel  

RICE AND RACE. I enjoyed Alessandra Stanley's article about the racial dynamics of Rice's appearance. Lee Hamilton's quote reminded me of the Chris Rock bit in "Bring the Pain" about how everyone always says Colin Powell is so well-spoken: "Well-spoken is not a compliment. Well-spoken is something you say about people you don't expect to be able to speak. How do they expect Colin Powell to sound? Like, I'm gonna drop me a bomb today!" (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 2:55 PM by David Adesnik  

OXBLOG TO HINDUS -- WE FEEL YOUR PAIN: The WaPo reports that

[Prof.] Courtright was not the first to find Oedipal overtones in the Ganesha story. But his book became a rallying point for devout Hindus in the United States who say the academic study of their religion is completely at odds with the way they experience their faith.

The academic study of Christianity and Judaism also tend to be completely at odds with the way tens of millions of Christians and Jews experience their faith. For that matter, the academic study of politics is entirely at odds with the way most Americans experience politics.

As the son of a religious studies professor, however, I endorse the academic study of religion wholeheartedly. It constantly provides thoughful perspectives on one's faith that, at minimum, provoke informative debates. At best, such perspectives enrich the faith with their insights. And in the absence of contrarian perspectives, the faith tends to become inbred and stagant.

If you don't like what the academicians have to say, you can always treat their work the way actual politicians treat the work of political scientists: Just ignore it. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:54 PM by Patrick Belton  

NOPE, NO JEWS OVER HERE: Not that England's any less welcome a place to be Jewish than, say, New York, but here is the unabridged text off the container of "Rakusen's Matzos: The big snack, low fat cracker for healthy appetites":

Matzos are ideal for those who prefer low fat diets. With no added salt Matzos can help reduce your sodium intake. Unlike other crackers, Rakusen's Matzos are simply a wholesome blend of fine English wheatflour and pure water. Each matzo is flame-baked in a traditional long oven for just sixty seconds to give them their incomparable crispness and subtle nutty flavour. Plate-sized Matzos contain no added salt or fat, making them a healthy, satisfying snack or lunchtime partner for toppings galore. Matzos - the original cracker that generations have enjoyed.

Note the studious avoidance of any mention of Passover or anything Jewish whatsoever. Nope, no Jews over here, just regular old English people enjoying a wholesome subtle nutty flavour - cheers, mate!

UPDATE: One of our friends wrote in to suggest this was because we hadn't bought the Kosher for Pesach matzos, which have Hebrew on the box. This may well be the case. But given the choice between a true and boring explanation, and an interesting but untrue one, you know which one I'll always pick...

 They could change the brand name to something a little less, you know, ethnic, like...
 
Definitely Not Jewish English Wheatflour and Water Crackers
Rakkossen's Finnish Flatbreads
Gatsby's Best Crackers
 
- MF, West Virginia

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:10 AM by Patrick Belton  

OPEN QUESTION TO READERS AND THE BLOGOSPHERE: We've all been following lately the efforts of Juan Cole and other like-minded folk to increase the quantity of western political discourse, both historical and contemporary, that's available in Arabic. There have also been a number of websites coming online lately - such as Babel Fish and Ajeeb - that have the capacity to translate automatically online text. These translation engines certainly don't provide perfect translations, but generally give ones that are competent enough to comprehend the meaning of the original text.

So my question is, does anyone out there have any ideas about how we might generate automatic Arabic (or Chinese, Farsi, Russian, or even Spanish and French) translations of English-language blogs from across the political spectrum? A number of writers have noticed a great thirst for political information and commentary in the Middle East, China, Russia, and other areas suffering under illiberal governance, and even in Latin America and francophone Africa it seems to me that making the American political debate readily available would increase understanding both of the United States and of the breadth of opinion within it.

I've been experimenting with Altavista's Babel Fish translation site (which offers Russian, Chinese, Spanish, and French translation), and while it thought our foreign policy society was a "cerveza inglesa," and couldn't even load OxBlog, InstaPundit, or Robert Tagorda, it did a fairly good job in translating both Kevin Drum and Matt Yglesias. My conclusion is that it must only read left-of-center blogs.

If anyone has ideas about whether this idea might be feasible, and how we might go about making it happen, I'd really love to hear from you. For my part I'm happy to help out however I can, and if it's helpful, our foreign policy society would be very happy, for instance, to host mirror sites of blogs from across the political spectrum on our server. Please let me know your ideas!

UPDATE: This has generated a lot of interest already, which I'm very grateful for. I think that one promising idea may be to rely on a handful of volunteer translators to translate into Arabic and Farsi a "best of the web" roundup, which would represent blogs from across the spectrum, and could appear, say, once or twice a week. For my part I'd be very happy to create a movable type blog for the purpose. I'd be very interested in hearing from any of our readers who speak Arabic or Farsi, and who might be willing to help translate posts. If you have any other suggestions or would like to help out, please drop us a note! (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:01 AM by Patrick Belton  

OPPORTUNITIES TO WORK IN THE CPA: We've just received this from a friend in Washington, who thought our readers might be interested:

SOFIA (Support Our Friends in Iraq and Afghanistan)

The Department of Defense is seeking to hire highly skilled and deeply motivated U.S. citizens to work as civilians assisting the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in rebuilding the nations of Iraq and Afghanistan. This is a unique opportunity to serve our country.

People who submit a resume need to understand that conditions may be harsh, primitive and hazardous. Conversely, there may be few opportunities in life to make such a lasting contribution to world peace. Prior experience in the military should be a big help in adapting to the mission. Individuals will be hired by the department through the U.S. Army, which is the executive agent. For more information, please visit our website at: http://cpolwapp.belvoir.army.mil/sofia/.

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# Posted 9:35 AM by Patrick Belton  

FROM CHEESE TO NEOLOGISMS: Being a cultural francophile, even if my admiration of the country doesn't quite extend to any of its present or past political expressions, I'd like to note a very nice word for web-surfer that's originated in Paris: internaut. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:48 AM by Patrick Belton  

MADONNA, IRELAND, KABALLAH: This all makes for a great joke, which I'll tell as soon as it isn't the triduum and pesach. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:55 AM by Patrick Belton  

BEST OF THE WEB SITE RECOMMENDATION: And unlike Andrew's, you can even open this one at work.

The Information Warfare Site (UK) has got a quite nice website up, most notably including a compilation of all CRS reports as they're released, and news archives on subjects ranging from Al-Qaa'eda to cyberterrorism.

(Just disregard the Halloween-ish computer bug that makes all of the news stories appear to have been released on Friday 13 December....) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:00 AM by Patrick Belton  

LARRY DIAMOND argues in the Journal the case for suppressing Sadr and his militia, and also indicates that sentiment in the CPA has been moving quickly toward the demobilization of all of the militias using financial and employment incentives.

My inclination is to agree with his argument that, absent the demobilization and disarmament of the militias, every step of the transition to democracy in Iraq - the formation of parties, registration of voters, election campaigns, casting and counting of votes - will be done under the shadow of militia intervention. And that sounds like a recipe more for democracy à la pakistanaise than anything we'd like to impart to the Iraqi people, if we could possibly avoid it. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:47 AM by Patrick Belton  

MAYBE I SHOULDN'T HAVE BEEN SO QUICK TO LOSE MY VIRGINIANITY: The attorney general in Richmond is pressing charges against the first three people to be arrested under Virginia's anti-spam laws. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:42 AM by David Adesnik  

THE CASE FOR NEGOTIATING: Two days ago I agreed with the WaPo that the United States should crush Moqtada Sadr and his outlaw militia. While I am still hanging on to that position, it is only by a thread. In the NYT, Yitzhak Nakash makes a very persuasive case for letting Ayatollah Sistani broker a ceasefire.

While Nakash comes across as somewhat naive, he makes one extremely persuasive point: that what Sadr wants even more than to end the occupation is to establish his dominance within the Shi'ite community. If Sistani brokers a settlement, it will re-establish his preeminence among Shi'ites and put the transition process back on track.

What Nakash fails to acknowledge is that negotiating with Sadr elevates him to level of respect that he hardly deserves. Yet doing so may be worthwhile, if Sadr consents to the verifiable demobilization of his militia while pledging to respect both the process and results of Iraq's first national elections next winter. Without a verifiable demobilization, however, there is no point in demanding Sadr's lip service to a democratic process he wants to destroy.

The case against negotiation is made rather well by David Brooks. There is good reason to believe that the great majority of Shi'ites, both clerics and parishioners, want nothing to do with Moqtada Sadr. We have to be patient now, rather than accepting at face value the unsubstantiated assertion that Sadr is leading a nationwide revolt.

Of course, the paper that Brooks happens to write for is reporting exactly the opposite: "Account of Broad Shiite Revolt Contradicts White House Stand". While I think it's premature to compare the Times' reporting to Drudge, its reliance on unnamed sources in the US intelligence community is somewhat problematic.

The sources in question provide no specific information to reinforce their claims. Moreover, there is no indication of whether the Times' sources represent a majority or minority opinion within the intelligence establishment. If it is a majority opinion, I expect to see other news outlets confirm the story while providing additional sources. If it is a nationwide revolt, we will have no choice to negotiate. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:50 AM by David Adesnik  

THE COVER UP IS ALWAYS WORSE THAN THE CRIME: Nixon and Watergate. Reagan and Iran-Contra. Clinton and Monica. None of them was punished for what they did. They were punished for lying about it.

All of them were second-term presidents, re-elected by a landslide. None of them learned the lessons of the past, thus condemning themselves to relive it. And now George W. Bush has brought himself to the brink of another major embarrassment because he has refused to learn from the mistakes of his predecessors. The editors of the WaPo observe that

The testimony of national security adviser Condoleezza Rice before the federal Sept. 11 commission justified President Bush's decision to authorize her exceptional appearance.

In other words, if Bush had dispatched Rice to Capitol Hill before being forced to do so, her testimony would have become a footnote, not a banner headline. Even though nothing that Rice said was new or interesting, her simple presence in the spotlight has motivated the administration's critics to pick up charges that had once been dropped.

We have known for almost two years that Bush was warned in August 2001 about Al Qaeda's intention to launch a major attack on US territory. Even back then, Condoleeza Rice didn't want to give an honest account of the the warning's exact contents. The WaPo reported at the time that

New accounts yesterday of the controversial Aug. 6 memo provided a shift in portrayals of the document, which has set off a political firestorm because it suggested that bin Laden's followers might be planning to hijack U.S. airliners.

In earlier comments this week, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and other administration officials stressed that intelligence officials were focused primarily on threats to U.S. interests overseas. But sources made clear yesterday that the briefing presented to Bush focused on attacks within the United States, indicating that he and his aides were concerned about the risks.

Perhaps because she wasn't punished for misleading the public the first time around, Rice has chosen to do so again. She told the 9/11 Commission that the August briefing consisted of "historical information based on old reporting. There was no new threat information. And it did not, in fact, warn of any coming attacks inside the United States." Yet

Several Democratic commissioners said in yesterday's hearing that the briefing also includes significant details about suspected al Qaeda sleeper cells and their plans to carry out domestic hijackings. The commission has demanded that the briefing be made public, a step that White House officials said yesterday was likely. "We hope to be able to make it available," communications director Dan Bartlett said.

And the WaPo is already reporting as fact that the Aug. 6 briefing contained specific information about Al Qaeda plans in progress. Even so, the publication of the full contents of the briefing may not embarrass the President:

Republican John F. Lehman, a former Navy secretary, is one of seven commissioners who have seen only a summary of the PDB. He said the current information within it is not particularly specific.

"On the FBI's part of it, it says don't worry about it, we've got 70 field investigations going," Lehman said. "That's the tone of it. . . . I found it to be net favorable to the president, which is why I can't understand why they were so restrictive in the first place [about] letting us have access to it."

Why was the administration so restrictive? Simple. Because it has learned nothing from the examples set by Nixon, Reagan and Clinton. The cover up is always worse than the crime.

But more important than the similarity between Bush and his predecessors is the difference: Bush is up for re-election. What if 2 or 3 percent of the electorate -- independent voters, not Democratic partisans -- stop trusting the President's because of his unwillingness to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth? What if Thomas Kean, the Republican chairman of the 9/11 commission declares that the attacks on New York and Washington could have been avoided? Reagan and Clinton had nothing to lose but their reputation. Bush may lose his job.

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# Posted 10:52 AM by Patrick Belton  

A VERY HAPPY GOOD FRIDAY to all of our readers and friends.

The wounded surgeon plies the steel
That questions the distempered part;
Beneath the bleeding hands we feel
The sharp compassion of the healer's art
Resolving the enigma of the fever chart.

Our only health is the disease
If we obey the dying nurse
Whose constant care is not to please
But to remind of our, and Adam's curse,
And that, to be restored, our sickness must grow worse.

The whole earth is our hospital
Endowed by the ruined millionaire,
Wherein, if we do well, we shall
Die of the absolute paternal care
That will not leave us, but prevents us everywhere.

The chill ascends from feet to knees,
The fever sings in mental wires.
If to be warmed, then I must freeze
And quake in frigid purgatorial fires
Of which the flame is roses, and the smoke is briars.

The dripping blood our only drink,
The bloody flesh our only food:
In spite of which we like to think
That we are sound, substantial flesh and blood—
Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good.
- "East Coker," IV, T.S. Eliot

See also Eliot's teacher Donne, in his metaphysical sonnets addressing, as always, theological mystery with wit:

Who sees Gods face, that is selfe life, must dye;
What a death were it then to see God dye?
It made his owne Lieutenant Nature shrinke,
It made his footstoole crack, and the Sunne winke.
Could I behold those hands which span the Poles,
And tune all spheares at once, peirc'd with those holes?

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:18 AM by Patrick Belton  

ADVERTISING FOR SPECIAL FORCES IN THE NEWSPAPER: Dishwasher, secretary, automative electronic specialist, commando....

The Army has attracted a bit of publicity lately by offering a direct enlistment option into special forces. The option permits enlistees to attempt the Special Forces Qualification Course immediately after finishing basic training, AIT, and jump school, rather than serving a number of years in the ranks and then attempting the course as an E-4 The wash-out rate for the course, however, is rather high - and enlistees who don't successfully complete the course will likely be heading to Iraq as 11B infantrymen. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:42 AM by Patrick Belton  

WASHINGTON GIVES IN TO BEIJING, PULLS CHIEF DIPLOMAT IN TAIWAN: Washington has given in to Beijing's repeated requests and pulled diplomat Therese Shaheen from the American Institute in Taiwan, where she was Washington director. Shaheen's clashes with the White House were intensified when she issued a letter of congratulations to President Chen Shui-bian for his election victory before the White House had issued its own.

That the nation's diplomats must hew to the instructions of the president they represent is beyond question the president's prerogative; that Washington give into Beijing's pressure in the personnel which it sends to Taiwan, however, is both kow-towing and reprehensible beyond measure. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:32 AM by Patrick Belton  

CEASEFIRE IN FALLUJAH: We received this press release from the CPA by email indicating a U.S. ceasefire in Fallujah; the WaPo reports it is for the aim of allowing a delegation of sheikhs from the city to travel to the Marine base outside of Fallujah for negotiations. Other sources report that the ceasefire is also to allow humanitarian access to the city:

Today at 1200, Coalition Forces initiated a unilateral suspension of offensive operations in Fallujah in order to hold a meeting between members of the Interim Governing Council, Fallujah leadership and leaders of the anti-Coalition forces, to allow delivery of additional supplies provided by the Iraqi Government, and to allow residents of Fallujah to tend to wounded and dead. During this suspension period, Coalition Forces retain the inherent right of self defense, and will remain fully prepared to resume offensive operations unless significant progress in these discussions occurs.

In other Iraq news, while Japan has stood strong against the insurgents' despicable seizure of three citizens, with the threat to burn them if Japan does not withdraw its forces in the Iraqi theatre - Thai PM Shinawatra has ordered his nation's troops to stay in their camp in Kerbala until fighting ceases.

UPDATE: Ceasefire over after 90 minutes. WaPo: "Lt. Col. Brennan Byrne, the commander of the U.S. Marine unit in southeast Fallujah, told reporters on the scene in Fallujah that offensive operations were being suspended to allow women and children and men too old to fight leave the battered city en masse in response to pleas from religious leaders in Fallujah." CNN, though, has reports that it's still on.

UPDATE 2: Amusingly, a friend in the CPA was reading this and writes:

I jumped on your blog briefly and wanted to let you know that the suspension of offensive actions against Fallujah are still on, as of BG Mark Kimmitt’s briefing about an hour and a half ago. We unilaterally suspended any actions at noon today for all the reasons the press releases lists and actions remain suspended at this time. The Marines do retain, however, the right to self-defense if fired on. My guess is that this is where the misleading reports are coming from – a media outlet hears a couple of shots and assumes we are resuming actions.

Thanks!
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# Posted 5:28 AM by Patrick Belton  

PAKISTANI FUNDAMENTALIST OPERATIVES IN IRAQ: Outlook India writes about the links between Pakistan's Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Islamists fighting the United States in Iraq. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:22 AM by Patrick Belton  

JUST HOW BROADLY BASED IS THE "BROAD-BASED SHI'A INSURGENCY"? Arthur Guray from Tripias writes that the NYT cites unnamed reports that there is a "general mood" that anti-Americanism is rising and the insurgence is becoming widespread, while

AP, Reuters, CBS, MSNBC, and WaPo all either flatly state in their reports that there is no sign of the insurgence becoming widespread, or don't discuss it (as in WaPo's case). The NYTimes has descended into Drudge Journalism.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 4:58 AM by Patrick Belton  

AL-SADR NOT SUPPORTED BY OTHER SHI'A LEADERS: Al-Sistani has sought to marginalise Al-Sadr after, among other things, Al-Sadr assassinated Shi'a cleric Abd Al-Majid Al-Khoei, who was the grandson of Al-Sistani's mentor Ayatollah Abu Al-Qassem Al-Khoei. Ayatollah Al-Sistani is also reputed to be quite sore at Al-Sadr for his attempt to grab by force the revenues of Al-Hawza derived from religious pilgrims visiting Shi'a holy sites in Najaf and Karbala. This coldness is reflected in the fact that Al-Sistani has refused to grant a meeting to Al-Sadr. MEMRI has an analysis. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:38 PM by David Adesnik  

THE TRUTH ABOUT AL QAA'IDA: Ever since advertising my minimal knowledge of Arabic, the demands have been piling up for an explanation of one of the most perplexing aspects of the War on Terror: Why do some people spell 'al Qaida' with an 'i', whereas others spell it with an 'e', as in 'al Qaeda'?

To ensure a definitive answer, I decided to ask Harvard linguistics impresario CH for an answer. (Asking him was a good idea, since I would've given you a wrong answer otherwise.) So here goes:

The middle syllable of 'Qaida' is a long 'e', which most linguists write out as 'i'. CH speculates that the alternate spelling 'al Qaeda' emerged because experts in Persian (of whom there are many) prefer to write out long 'e' as 'e'.

Now, if one is going to invest the effort in understanding how to spell the name of the terrorist organization founded by Mr. bin Laden, one may as well learn how to pronounce it as well. First comes the 'al', meaning 'the'. Most people seem to know that this part is pronounced like the first syllable in the word 'olive' and not like the first name of Mr. Gore.

It's the 'Qaeda' that most people get wrong. Usually, it gets pronounced either 'al KAY-da' or 'al KY (rhymes with 'sky')-da'. Both are wrong for the same reason: they assume that there are two syllables in the word, not three. Actually, it's more like 'al KAA-i-da'.

The double 'a' is very important. In Arabic, a 'long' vowel actually has to sound longer than a short one. When writing out Arabic words in English, one indicates the presence of a long vowel either by doubling the vowel or putting a horizontal bar over it.

Now what about this whole 'Q'-instead-of-'K' business? Well, in Arabic there are two letters that have a 'K' sound, but one of them is aspirated, which means that a burst of air comes out along with the sound. Sometimes this gets written out as 'kh' instead of 'q' because the 'sound' of 'h' is really just an aspiration.

Finally, we come back to the long 'e' that started this whole discussion in the first place. There is actually an invisible consonant which precedes it, but which is unpronounceable in English. The letter is called 'ayin' in Arabic and sounds sort of like someone clearing their throat. When written in English, ayin becomes an apostrophe.

So, in the final analysis, the most precise way to write 'al Qaida' is actually 'al Qaa'ida'. (Of course, you don't have to capitalize the 'Q' since there are no capital letters in Arabic.)

If you've read this far, you'll probably also want to know why 'Taliban' also gets spelled as 'Taleban'. As CH points out, 'Taliban' is actually a Persian or Dari word, not an Arabic one (although there is an Arabic cognate for it which also means 'students'). And since long 'e' is written as 'e' when transliterating Persian, the proper spelling is 'Taleban'. However, English speakers are more likely to pronounce the long 'e' correctly if it is transliterated as 'i' in this context.

And since Kevin asked: There is no good reason for American newspapers to drop the 'al from 'al Qaeda' in order to save space in headlines. No Arabic newspaper would do that.
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# Posted 6:33 AM by Patrick Belton  

ALL MY ROWDY FRIENDS ARE COMIN' OVER TONIGHT: The WashTimes is citing military sources that al-Sadr is receiving support from Iran and Hizbullah - the source indicates that money, moral support, and possibly weapons as well are coming from across the border. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:49 AM by David Adesnik  

GONE AWOL? Greg Djerejian comments on America's failing effort to get Iraq's security forces ready to take care of themselves. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:31 AM by David Adesnik  

THE PROTESTANTS AND THE DEVIL'S ADVOCATE: I have continued to receive many, many thoughtful responses to my comments on the Jewish-Christian relationship. (MP has also responded via blog.) One important thread of the conversation concerns how Protestants might respond to my comments differently than Catholics. DK writes that

Most progressive Christians would NOT reinterpret the Gospels to mitigate anti-Semitism. In fact, most of the "progressive" Christians I know would
explicitly say that yes, some parts of the Gospels are openly anti-Semitic, and other parts of the Bible are pro-slavery or anti-women or anti-gay. The prevailing progressive argument is that those parts reflect not the word of God, but the human prejudices of the writers, and that our new historical understanding of the Bible should lead us to reject entirely prejudiced-sounding passages that conflict with the divine command to love your neighbor. The usual argument is that the original oral or written Jesus stories contained nothing anti-Semitic (and were told by people who would self-identify as Jewish followers of Jesus), but statements blaming the Jews were added many years later, after violence had broken out between Christians and Jews who had previously shared the same synogogues and gatherings. So progressives would recommend excision over reinterpretation here.

I'm down with that. My only concern is that the percentage of Christians willing to embrace excision is not that high. (Although MF indicates that it may work out for the Orthodox.) Anyhow, DK adds that

Furthermore, many Protestants would disagree entirely with your comment that the Gospel's "[place] collective blame on the Jewish people for the death of Christ ... [as] an integral aspect of [their] theological agenda."

The problem with this statement are the words "blame" and "collective blame." It is pretty clear to me (and a longstanding Protestant dogma) that both of these concepts are alien to the Gospels and their agenda...Regarding collective blame, at least since the time of Martin Luther Protestants both progressive and non- have seen the Gosepls as entirely about individual guilt and redemption, and not in the least about collective guilt. This is even true in the most extreme theologies of original sin -- in Jonathan Edward's "Sinners in the hands of an Angry God" sermon, you aren't hanging by a thread for the sins of Adam, but for your own personal, specific sins flowing from your personal depravity, laziness, and wickedness.

IMHO, this does not absolve the Gospels of the charge of anti-Semitism, as Martin Luther himself was very non-progressive and very anti-Semitic. He was prejudiced, but he would have rejected any notion of collective guilt.

That also sounds about right, even though I hardly know enough about Protestantism to say so decisively. At the same time, I have vague recollections of Jews being called 'Christ-killers' even by American Protestants. Was I just not paying attention to who was accusing me of killing their Savior? Or has theological consistency sometimes been subordinated to the politics of anti-Semitism? I really don't know. Moving on, DC says

You wrote:

"Yet the message of the text seems clear: that only those Jews who abandon their own religion and become followers of Christ can overcome the burden of guilt that the Jewish people took upon itself by sentencing Him to death."

The problem with your sentence is that it doesn't require the term "Jew." That's the message of the Gospels for everybody. We all must overcome our guilt at having killed Him and become followers in order to find redemption and grace. There's no "special" burden on the "Jewish people" to overcome something extra.

I?ve been a practicing Episcopalian for 34 years and I've never once taken the view that the Jews in particular have anything special for which to atone. I have also never once heard that view espoused by any clergy or lay members of any congregation to which I have belonged. I can?t even remember any discussion of ?the Jewish people.? Church discussion centers on "mankind" as a whole. The central message has always been that humanity killed Christ. If you really think of, it was Judas who killed Christ and he was a disciple!

This point again leads me to turn inward and ask if the perils of persecution have prevented Jews from learning enough about Christianity to help overcome the divide. I hope that DC's perspective has gained widespread acceptance among Protestants. Yet when confronted with an unfortunate cultural artifact such as The Passion, my instincts take over and sometimes all I can hear is "Christ-killer." (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:51 PM by David Adesnik  

FROM A TEACHER TO HIS PUPIL: Thurston Moore eulogizes Kurt Cobain. (In the NYT, of all places.) I was a junior in high school when Cobain killed himself. I resented him for it. What right did he have to take away from all of us our source of inspiration? I know he didn't want to be a role model, but couldn't he show us that there is more to life than wandering through it in a drug-addled haze and ending it all with a shotgun blast?

I thought Nirvana would be forgotten after a while. Sure, we all believed that Nevermind had changed everything about what it meant to be a teenager in America. But teenagers always believe that what they care about is profound and historic. Toward the end of college, however, I began to notice that there were just as many Nirvana-clad kids wandering around Greenwich Village. They had the same angry and sensitive look we sought to perfect back in high school.

I always figured that if Nirvana survived, it would be a product of nostalgia. Those of us who remembered high school fondly would wear their Nirvana t-shirts on weekends. But I was completely wrong, and thank God for that. The music has survived the cultural moment in which it was created. Kids who were seven years old when Cobain died now think he's the greatest thing since sliced bread. I just hope that in another ten years it will still be the same way. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:52 PM by David Adesnik  

BEIJING CLAMPS DOWN: The CCP doesn't want direct elections in Hong Kong. I'm waiting to hear what the people have to say. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:46 PM by David Adesnik  

LIVING IN A GLASS HOUSE:

"John Kerry's newfound interest in fiscal discipline is a political gimmick that defies his 20-year record in the Senate and stands in stark contrast to his reckless and expansive promises of new government spending on the campaign trail," said Steve Schmidt, a Bush campaign spokesman.

If only George Bush had discovered that gimmick for himself before racking up a $400 billion deficit. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:21 PM by David Adesnik  

MORE BAD NEWS FROM IRAQ: Heavy fighting continues. There are further signs of a Shi'ite-Sunni alliance as well as indications that the depth of Shi'ite resentment is greater than expected. Perhaps recognizing that it is best to admit ones mistakes quickly, Donald Rumsfeld has announced that the occupation force will grow by as much as 25,000. Of course, that means that a lot of soldiers who deserve a rest will have to spend even longer away from home.

On the homefront, the politics of the occupation are getting louder. Joe Biden and John McCain are reminding the administration that responsible voices on both sides of the partisan divide wanted a larger occupation force from the outset. John Kerry is keeping his powder dry by offering vague criticism of the President while insisting that the United States must stabilize Iraq. However, Robert Byrd is doing his best to undermine Kerry's responsible stand by declaring that

"Surely I am not the only one who hears echoes of Vietnam in this development," said Mr. Byrd, referring to the possibility of an increase in troops. "Surely, the administration recognizes that increasing the U.S. troop presence in Iraq will only suck us deeper into the maelstrom of violence that has become the hallmark of that unfortunate country. Starkly put, at this juncture, more U.S. forces in Iraq equates more U.S. targets in Iraq."

While Ted Kennedy, Pat Buchanan and Maureen Dowd might agree, Coalition forces come across are fairly confident.

"We will attack to destroy the al-Mahdi Army," Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, a military spokesman, told reporters today. "Those attacks will be deliberate, precise and they will succeed.

"As long as we keep paying attention to the fact that ultimately it's the moderate Iraqis who we're here to serve, I don't think we're going to have much to worry about."

I hope that such confidence is well-grounded. At minimum, I'm glad that Kimmit placed just as much emphasis on the political dimension of the struggle as the military. On a related note, the question of civilian casualties and collateral damage has begun to reemerge as a result of a rocket attack in Fallujah. The WaPo reports that

Witnesses told Arab journalists in the city that as many as 40 people were killed in the bombing, although the U.S. military said it had no reports of any civilian casualties.

In contrast, the headline of the NYT article about today's fighting is "US Rockets Reportedly Kill Over 2 Dozen Iraqis in Falluja". The Times goes on to report that

American marines fired rockets at a wall surrounding a mosque in Falluja, west of Baghdad, killing more than two dozen people, news agencies reported, quoting witnesses who said the death toll could be as high as 40.

I'm guessing that the "news agencies" referred to by the Times are the same as the "Arab journalists" mentioned by the Post. More importantly, I hope that as few civilians as possible were killed. As always, it comes down to hearts and minds. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 2:15 PM by David Adesnik  

OXBLOG DREAM JOB:

Lam Nguyen's job is to sit for hours in a chilly, quiet room devoid of any color but gray and look at pornography. This job, which Nguyen does earnestly from 9 to 5, surrounded by a half-dozen other "computer forensic specialists" like him, has become the focal point of the Justice Department's operation to rid the world of porn.

In this field office in Washington, 32 prosecutors, investigators and a handful of FBI agents are spending millions of dollars to bring anti-obscenity cases to courthouses across the country for the first time in 10 years.

I agree with Glenn. This is completely ridiculous. Those prosecutors and FBI agents should be hunting down terrorists. But Ashcroft is Ashcroft, so what can you do?

Well, here's a modest proposal: Let some of the Taliban guys out of Gitmo early on the condition that they volunteer for DOJ's anti-porn task force. They should do a good job, since they tend to share Ashcroft's militantly anti-porn stance. Moreover, they should work for peanuts since they're used to Afghan wages. And then the FBI guys can focus on Al Qaeda.

The biggest drawback to this plan is that it will antagonize opponents of outsourcing. After all, why should we be giving jobs to the Taliban when there are hundreds of thousands of unemployed Americans who want nothing more than to look at porn all day while getting paid by the government? (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:11 AM by Patrick Belton  

WAITING FOR NEWDOW: Along with Amanda from Crescat, Leon Wieseltier from TNR also was in the gallery during the oral arguments for Newdow. His observations are worth noting - what came to his mind, in the midst of the jarring of counsels making the worse argument the better, was rather

a shrewd and highly un-American observation that was included among the aphorisms in Either/Or: "The melancholy have the best sense of the comic, the opulent often the best sense of the rustic, the dissolute often the best sense of the moral, and the doubter often the best sense of the religious." The discussion that morning fully vindicated the majesty of the chamber, as legal themes gave way to metaphysical themes and philosophy bewitched the assembly. But something strange happened. Almost as soon as philosophy was invited, it was disinvited. It seemed to make everybody anxious, except the respondent. I had come to witness a disputation between religion's enemies and religion's friends. What I saw instead, with the exception of a single comment by Justice Souter, was a disputation between religion's enemies, liberal and conservative. And this confirmed me in my conviction that the surest way to steal the meaning, and therefore the power, from religion is to deliver it to politics, to enslave it to public life.

His ensuing reflections on the relationship of belief, unbelief, and the search for truth within a polity are worth reading. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:46 AM by Patrick Belton  

AND ONE SECTOR'S POSITIVELY BOOMING: Defence contractor SAIC, mercifully a quite nice company which does a great deal of DOD and national security contracting, posts a profit up 43% for this fiscal year. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 4:10 AM by Patrick Belton  

FROM THE REFERRAL LOGS: OxBlog is apparently your blog of choice if you're bored, looking for something interesting in the news, searching for rude Patrick or Patrick Gaddis (and no, I didn't change my last name to kiss up when I took Cold War history), if you want culinary advice about What can I do with smoked salmon?, and my personal favorite, the oddly evocative "embarrassment restraint". (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:03 AM by David Adesnik  

THROWING DOWN THE GAUNTLET: Kevin Drum says that things in Iraq are shot to all hell. Moreover, this is proof that all those who criticized the media for manufacturing bad news about the occupation -- Who, me? -- should admit that they were wrong and the media was right.

Well, I'm going to hold off for now, first and foremost because I have an Arabic test at 9AM tomorrow. But also because there are some broader questions that I want to take the time to think over.

First of all, can what is going wrong in Iraq now be traced to what the media asserted was going wrong in Iraq all along? Over the past few months, the media has mainly been saying that the United States' great mistake was not to take Ayatollah Sistani's demands more seriously earlier on, since he commands overwhelming support among Iraq's majority Shi'ites. Did American hesitance to compromise with Sistani increase Moqtada Sadr's support, or did the media simply drop the ball on this one?

Second, what will happen if the media's most persistent critics go back and read the specific stories that we criticized for being one-sided or pessimistic? Do current events demonstrate that the flaws we detected in those stories were actual strenghts? Or are such flaws still present and unrelated to recent violence?

My guess is that I actually will go back and do some of the research necessary to answer these questions, if only because I'm a little taken aback by the sneering tone of the almost always affable Calpundit. What will I find? Who knows.

UPDATE: Compared to Kevin, Matt Yglesias is rather sanguine about today's violence. On the other hand, Matt has some tough but fair comments about a recent gauntlet I threw his way on the media bias issue. To clarify, I don't believe that moderate liberals see the media as fundamentally objective. Rather, they see the media's subjectivity as politically neutral. In contrast, Matt asserts that the media (inadvertently?) favors conservatives.
(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:40 AM by David Adesnik  

THE PLURAL OF AL QAEDA: Since I have an Arabic test tomorrow, I thought I'd share some Arabic language trivia with you. As many of us know, 'Al Qaeda' means 'the base' or 'the foundation'. However, it does not just refer to physical objects, but also to concepts. Thus, the plural of Al Qaeda, 'Al Qawaid', means 'grammar'. Why? Because grammar is the foundations a language.

Now, it may just be a coincidence, but should we be surprised that George Bush is at war with grammar? (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:34 AM by David Adesnik  

MAKING HISTORY ON THE COURT: Congratulations to UConn for becoming the first university ever to win both the men's and women's titles in NCAA basketball. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:28 AM by David Adesnik  

MARINES TAKE HEAVY CASUALTIES: It is a sad day. Heavy fighting against Sunni insurgents in Ramadi has taken the lives of 12 Marines. Coalition forces are also taking casualties in the struggle against Moqtada Sadr's Shi'ite militia in Baghdad and southern Iraq.

Are these losses the unfortunate price of victory? Or are they an indicator that something has gone wrong on the battlefield? Honestly, I don't know. The Marines say that they have secured Fallujah, where four American civilians were killed and mutilated this past week. It seem to early to say whether the struggle against Sadr's militia is going well or not.

Reports place the strength of the Sadr militia at anywhere from 3,000 to 10,000. Whether those are trained fighters or simply hangers-on I have no idea. As such, it is hard to say how strongly motivated Sadr forces are. Are they ideologically committed to establishing a Shi'ite theocracy? Or will they fall back when confronted with Coalition firepower and the condemnation of mainstream Shi'ites?

Speaking more broadly, does the recent outbreak of violence represent a serious threat to the stability of Iraq? As the NYT aptly put it,

One of the biggest questions at day's end was the role of most of the majority Shiites previously thought to be relatively sympathetic to American goals.

While Ayatollah Sistani has issued a decree urging Iraq's Shi'ites to remain calm, Moqtada Sadr is positioning himself rhetorically as a supporter of the Ayatollah. To that end, Sadr announced that "I proclaim my solidarity with Ali Sistani, and he should know that I am his military wing in Iraq." It is hard to know whether Sadr actually expects to win the Ayatollah over to his cause or whether he simply wants to draw as many mainstream Shi'ites as possible into his fold.

Another emerging question is the degree to which Shi'ite and Sunni radicals may unite against occupation forces. In one Sunni neighborhood in Baghdad, residents marched alongside the Shi'ite followers of Moqtada Sadr:

"What Moqtada Sadr did simply woke up the people," said Sarmad Akram, 36, who owns the small food shop next door. "Now the people have the guts to resist."

The exchange, in a middle-class Sunni quarter, was one scene Tuesday that appeared to challenge the assessment by U.S. military officials that Sadr speaks for only a radical fringe in Iraq and that his calls for mass resistance will resonate only with his followers.

Well, I hope not. And I expect not. Every sign until now has pointed to a broad Shi'ite preference for Ayatollah Sistani's strategy of taking control of Iraq through democratic means. The current uprising may provide a chance for a significant number of Shi'ites to vent their frustration, but unless mainstream leaders throw their support behind it, I don't see how it can gain momentum. On the other hand, those who know Iraq far better than I do are concerned. According to John Burns,

In effect, the militia attacks confronted the American military command with what has been its worst nightmare as it has struggled to pacify Iraq: the spread of an insurgency that has stretched a force of 130,000 American troops from the minority Sunni population to the majority Shiites, who are believed to account for about 60 percent of Iraq's population of 25 million.

Privately, senior American officers have said for months that American prospects here would plummet if the insurgency spread into the Shiite population, leaving American and allied troops with no safe havens anywhere except possibly in the Kurdish areas of the north.

Incidentally, Burns was briefly taken prisonerby Shi'ite radicals earlier today. In contrast to Burns, the editors of the WaPo have chosen to see the silver lining behind the hovering clouds:

For months it has been evident that it will be impossible to stabilize Iraq under a transitional government, much less stage the democratic elections planned for next year, unless factional militias are disarmed and disbanded. Mr. Sadr's Mahdi Army is the most dangerous among them. For weeks there has been a debate inside the occupation administration about whether and how to confront Mr. Sadr; by ordering attacks on coalition troops Sunday, the cleric may have ensured that a painful but necessary battle will go forward...

But now that the conflict with the Mahdi Army has begun, U.S. commanders should not hesitate to act quickly and with overwhelming force.

I tend to agree. There is nothing to be gained by cooperating with anti-democratic extremists. The faster that the United States crushes them -- while minimizing civilian casualties -- the faster it will demonstrate that there is no alternative to the interim constitution and the coming elections. In theory, one might call upon the United Nations to help resolve the current conflict. Yet at the moment, even its fiercest partisans have begun to admit that the UN's credibility has been severely damaged by the Oil-for-Food scandal and the incompetence of the first UN mission to Iraq in providing for its own members' security.

So here we are between a rock and a hard place. I've got my fingers crossed. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:47 PM by Patrick Belton  

ARAB DEMOCRACY WATCH: Algeria will hold elections tomorrow, which are expected to be free and fair. The U.S. is receiving a great deal of credit for exerting influence to safeguard the fairness of tomorrow's elections, along with the military's neutrality in the election. Brian Ulrich has more. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:49 PM by Patrick Belton  

NEXT YEAR IN JERUSALEM: Josh and Rachel wisely talked me out of live-blogging our seder, but noteworthy events included our friend Simon Rodberg's quote, in response to the question "why do we lean to the left?", that Jews always lean to the left. Also noted is Josh's, Rachel's, and my idea of coming up with a neo-con hagaddah for next year.

This year we are slaves; next year, free. May slavery give way to freedom, ignorance to wisdom, despair to hope: next year in Jerusalem. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:44 AM by Patrick Belton  

SUPPORTING DEMOCRATIZING TRENDS IN ISLAM: RAND's Cheryl Benard has written what looks at first glance to be a very thoughtful piece on trends, currents, and subgroups within contemporary Islam. She also has a detailed set of recommendations about supporting modernizers first, and secondarily traditionalists against fundamentalists, which seem to me to be worth further discussion. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:17 AM by Patrick Belton  

UM, DID ANYBODY NOTICE THAT WHILE WE WEREN'T LOOKING, the Lithuanians have impeached their president? The Lithuanian parliament found Rolandas Paksas to be guilty of ties to Russian business, organized crime, and intelligence (note: in Russia, those aren't separate industries) - Paksas is the first European leader to be removed from office through impeachment. (We're not counting these two though). (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:00 AM by Patrick Belton  

WELL DONE, MA'AM: The Queen, speaking in flawless French, delivered a stirring speech last evening at the Elysee in commemoration of the centenary of the Entente Cordiale, recalling the history of Anglo-French cooperation through the wars of the past century, and calling on the two nations to face the challenges of counterterror side by side. Finishing with a toast to M. le President and the French nation, the Queen ended saying "Vive la difference, mais vive L'Entente Cordiale." Well done, ma'am. Britain is fortunate to have such a skilled practicioner to draw upon in its diplomatic service. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:00 AM by Patrick Belton  

HAPPY PASSOVER FROM OXBLOG!

A man walks into Central Park from the West 85th street entrance, sits down by the Lake, and takes out his lunch - which, being passover, included a fair bit of matzoh.

A few minutes later, later a blind man comes by and sits down next to him. Feeling neighborly, the man eating lunch decides to pass a sheet of matzoh over to the blind man.

The blind man handles the matzoh for a few minutes, looking puzzled, and finally exclaims, "Who wrote this crap?"

Chag sameach! (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 4:39 AM by Patrick Belton  

PHOTO CAPTION CONTEST: Madame Chirac clearly counting the seconds until she can get away from the Duke of Edinburgh.... (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 4:10 AM by Patrick Belton  

CHINA=BAD. In the latest instance, for completely reneging on its commitments to democratic self-governance on the part of Hong Kong, most recently by declaring that political reforms in Hong Kong would only be permitted from Beijing and not from the legislature of Hong Kong.

For more, see Brookings on Beijing's attempts to subordinate Hong Kong's wonderfully clean and efficient civil service to its lackeys, Economist on Beijing's anti-subversion law and character assasination labelling democratic legislators as unpatriotic, and Senate Foreign Relations taking the testimony last month of Hong Kong legislators and democracy activists. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:49 PM by Patrick Belton  

PERSONALLY, I'LL BE LOOKING FORWARD TO the book version of this David Brooks piece on the spirit of Emerson, Lincoln, and Jonathan Edwards as subtly alive in American exurban suburbia. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:25 PM by Patrick Belton  

WITH THE MONEY THEY'VE SAVED ON FRENCH LESSONS for their Paris correspondent, the Beeb has sent its team around the world to see if binge drinking is really that much worse in England than in other countries. The answer: yes. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 4:46 PM by Patrick Belton  

US ON THE VERGE OF SIDELINING IRAQI DEMOCRATS: Just having returned from Iraq, Michael Rubin writes in the L.A. Times that the U.S. is being so even-handed in its treatment of the different Iraqi parties, that liberal democratizers are feeling marginalized:

One February evening, a governor from a southern province asked to see me. We met after dark at a friend's house. After pleasantries and tea, he got down to business. "The Iranians are flooding the city and countryside with money," he said. "Last month, they sent a truckload of silk carpets across the border for the tribal sheikhs. Whomever they can't buy, they threaten." The following week, I headed south to investigate. A number of Iraqis said the Iranians had channeled money through the offices of the Dawa Party, an Islamist political party, led by Governing Council member Ibrahim Jafari. On separate occasions in Baghdad and the southern city of Nasiriya, I watched ordinary Iraqis line up for handouts of money and supplies at Dawa offices. The largess seems to be having an effect: Polls indicate that Jafari is Iraq's most popular politician, enjoying a favorable rating by more than 50 percent of the electorate.

Rubins goes on to argue that the CPA's well-intentioned evenhandedness is being interpreted as support for Islamists, in a society weaned on conspiracy theories:

While Sens. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts and Carl Levin of Michigan demand yet another government audit of the Iraqi National Congress (previous audits have found no wrongdoing), radical clerics find their pockets full, their Iranian sponsors more interested in mission than political cannibalism. Last month, I visited a gathering of urban professionals in Najaf. They repeatedly asked why the CPA stood by while followers of firebrand Shiite cleric Muqtader Sadr invaded homes, smashed satellite dishes and meted out punishment in ad hoc Islamic courts. We may dismiss Sadr as a grass-roots populist, but his rise was not arbitrary. Rather, his network is based upon ample funding he receives through Iran-based cleric Ayatollah Kazem al Haeri, a close associate of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

More here. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:00 PM by Patrick Belton  

OVERHEARD AT THE OXBLOG BUREAU OFFICE:

Anonymous OxBlogger, to be called "PB": Wait, Ali G is Jewish? (from your wikipedia piece....)
Anonymous OxBlogger 2, to be called "JC" I guess. Not so surprising, is it?
PB: But I thought he was Kazakhstani!
PB: Next you'll be trying to convince me that Spock was a Jew....
JC: Wouldn't dare. He doesn't have the capacity to feel guilt.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:47 AM by Patrick Belton  

WISE ADVICE FROM EVERYONE'S JEWISH GODMOTHER: Playwright, and every Yalie's Jewish godmother, Toni Dorfman writes a memorable letter giving some of the wisest advice I've yet read on getting over a broken heart. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:42 AM by Patrick Belton  

WHAT HE SAID: Writing in the Times about the genocide taking place this very moment in the Darfur region of Sudan, Nicholas Kristof correctly commented "Do we advise such refugees that 'never again' meant nothing more than that a Führer named Hitler will never again construct death camps in Germany?" He spoke correctly.

The government of Sudan is currently engaging in genocide against three of its country's black western tribes, the Reziegat, Salamat, and Ta'aisha. Women of those tribes are being systematically raped; roughly one thousand people are being killed each week; and with seven hundred thousand driven from their homes, Sudan's army is bombing the survivors.

The Pentagon is monitoring the situation closely, but with American might deployed already in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Haiti, America's military cannot be asked to be the only one to respond. The UN's response has been significant, but not enough - the Security Council has not addressed the issue by invoking Chapter VII, although UNHCR in cooperation with the government of Chad has done a great deal to alleviate the immediate human plight of refugees by establishing refugee camps far from the Sudanese border, where refugees in Chad were still being attacked by the Sudanese military. Still, the response by the undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs, Jan Egeland, was talmudic, and ridiculous: "I would say it is ethnic cleansing, but not genocide." Still worse, the human rights industry has kept its head equally in the sand: Amnesty International doesn't even mention the genocide in the Sudan on its front page, preferring as usual to pander to its donors with pieces criticizing the United States for the clearly equal crime of executing a dual murderer.

Our friend Zach Kaufman, and director of our think tank's Africa program, wrote in the New York Times recently that "One lesson that should be drawn is that if it is true that the current Sudan resembles 1994 Rwanda, then the United States government should join with others to initiate a humanitarian intervention, assist victims and hold perpetrators accountable. If not, our demands for and promises of 'never again!' will have failed yet again." While the United States cannot bear the sole principal role in counteracting this atrocity at a time when its divisions are already deployed to combating the inhumanity of Fallujah and the Taliban, the responsibility of the international community to make good on its promises of "never again" is clear. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 4:59 AM by Patrick Belton  

NOTE TO THE BBC: The correct spelling of the museum on the left bank of the Seine is not, contrary to popular impression, "muse dorsa."

UPDATE: We get results. They fixed it. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:35 AM by David Adesnik  

RUMBLE IN THE BLOGOSPHERE: Kos said something very, very dumb. Glenn Reynolds called him on it. Kevin Drum reluctantly weighed in on the side of Kos' critics. The Kerry 2004 blog was so embarrassed by Kos that it dropped him from its blogroll. Kos admits he said something dumb but describes the response to it as a product of right-wing paranoia. Yeah, whatever.

CLARIFICATION: Glenn has declared that OxBlog is "officially bored" with Kos-gate. Well, sort of. This whole affair is something of a tempest in a tea cup. However, my "Yeah, whatever" comment above was directed primarily at Kos' paranoid response to his critics. Glenn, Kevin et al. were right to criticize Kos, although the whole thing did get somewhat out of hand. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:58 PM by David Adesnik  

NYT VS. WaPo: WHO'S TELLING THE TRUTH? Seven American soldiers are dead. That is a fact. But why has violence broken out across Iraq? Is this what radical Shi'ites want? Is the violence an accidental byproduct of the challenges of occupation? Or has the incompetence of the Coalition-led reconstruction effort provoked otherwise passive Iraqis to take up arms?

If you read the WaPo, you will conclude that there is no clear answer to the questions posed above. Coalition forces' discomfort in a foreign environment is just as likely to have been the cause of the violence as are radical Shi'ite provocations. If you read the NYT, there is no doubt that today's events were planned. The first sentence of John Burns' article on the subject reads:

A coordinated Shiite militia uprising against the American-led occupation rippled across Iraq on Sunday, reaching into the heart of Baghdad and the sprawling Shiite slum of Sadr City on the capital's outskirts and racking the holy city of Najaf and at least two other cities in southern Iraq.

Burns' use of the words 'coordinated' and 'uprising' were no accident. Lower down in the same article he writes that

On Sunday, [Moqtada] Sadr's veiled threats to stir public disorder erupted into carefully orchestrated violence, with potentially dire implications over the long term for the Americans, and for Iraq.

Furthermore, Burns lets us know exactly what we should think of Mr. Sadr's efforts. He reports that

Mr. Sadr, the son of a powerful Shiite ayatollah who was assassinated by agents of Mr. Hussein in Najaf in 1999, has been a menacing presence in the shadows of the American occupation. He has refused to involve his organization with the American attempt to construct democratic institutions, calling them a ruse intended to place the country under permanent American control. He has threatened to establish an alternative government, and to send his militia, known as the Mahdi Army, into battle with American troops...

Mr. Sadr issued a statement early Sunday from the mosque in Kufa where he had barricaded himself telling his followers, in effect, to turn to violence.

"There is no use for demonstrations, as your enemy loves to terrify and suppress opinions, and despises peoples," he said, referring to the Americans. "Terrorize your enemy, as we cannot remain silent over his violations."

In contrast to Burns' conviction, the WaPo correspondents responsible for this story have used all of the standard conventions of the journalistic trade to convey their unsurety about the cause of the violence. For example, explanations for the violence offered by Sadr's disciples are juxtaposed with explanations from American officials, implying that the credibility of both explanations is roughly equivalent and that the truth lies somewhere in between:

Sadr, 30, delivered a sermon in Kufa on Friday calling on supporters to challenge the occupation.

Abu Haider Ghalib Garawi, a leader of the Mahdi Army -- a self-styled militia Sadr formed last year -- said the cleric had not called for violence in his sermon and attributed the violent protests in Kufa to frustration with the U.S.-led occupation.

"There is no more patience," he said. "We cannot guarantee the behavior of the wise people and of the ordinary people."

At a news conference in the Iraqi capital on Sunday, L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator for Iraq, said U.S.-led forces and Iraqi security would respond strongly to any violent challenge.

Toward the end of the WaPo article, however, there are some more tangible hints that today's violence was not intentional but rather a product of unfortunate coincidences:

Sunday's protests were sparked by reports that Mustapha Yacoubi, an aide to Sadr, had been arrested...Protests and violence involving Sadr's supporters have been increasing since the closing of the cleric's newspaper a week ago.

These same events are explained very differently by the NYT, however:

The scene for the uprising was set a week ago, when American troops raided the Baghdad offices of a popular newspaper, Al Hawza, that was the mouthpiece for Mr. Sadr, and chained its doors under an order by Mr. Bremer closing the paper for 60 days. American officials said Mr. Bremer had acted because of inaccurate reporting in the paper that incited hatred for the Americans, including a February dispatch that an explosion that killed more than 50 Iraqi police recruits was not a car bomb, as occupation officials had said, but an American missile.

For days, demonstrators in the thousands marched through the streets of Baghdad and Najaf, hoisting portraits of Mr. Sadr and vowing retaliation against the Americans. But what appeared to have pushed Mr. Sadr into insurrection was the arrest by allied troops on Saturday -- by probably Americans, although the American command did not say -- of a cleric who was a senior aide to Mr. Sadr, Mustafa al-Yaqubi. A statement on Sunday from Iraq's interior ministry said Mr. Yaqubi was wanted in connection with the killing at a Najaf mosque last April of Ayatollah Sayyed Abdul Majid al-Khoei, a cleric the Americans brought back from exile in London in the hope of shifting the Shiite clerical establishment into a pro-American stance.

Some reports, unconfirmed by the Americans, have said Mr. Sadr himself is on a list of 25 people who are wanted by the interior ministry in connection with the killing, and that he, too, is likely to be arrested.

The differences between the NYT and WaPo could not be more stark. The former describes an intentional assault on Coalition forces organized by a radical Shi'ite cleric who associates with murderers and may be one himself. The WaPo describes confusing events for which no one in particular was responsible.

Why are these accounts so different? Politics don't seem to be the issue, since the NYT tends to be far more critical of the occupation than the WaPo. My hunch is that John Burns is simply far superior to his counterparts at the WaPo. He sees what they do not. Moreover, I suspect that the WaPo will soon revise its account in order to reflect what was written by Mr. Burns.

The broader lesson to be taken away from this episode is one that this third of OxBlog never tires of repeating: That correspondents routinely employ the conventions of journalistic objectivity in order to convey subjective interpretations of the events that they witness. While subjectivity is an integral part of the human condition, the American media have the potential to dramatically improve their coverage by admitting to both themselves and their audience that they are not nearly as objective as they like to pretend.

To critics of the 'liberal media', such accusations are nothing new. Yet moderate liberals, including OxBlog favorites such as Drum and Yglesias, still tend to dismiss charges of media bias as little more than the carping of conservatives unwilling to face the truth. However, the example described above has nothing to do with politics. My criticism has nothing to do with the fact that I like one newspaper's political preferences more than I like the other. That is why this episode is such a powerful demonstration of how journalistic conventions create the illusion of objectivity.

CLARIFICATION: Seven American soldiers were killed in Baghdad. An eighth American soldier died elsehwere, as did a Salvadoran.

UPDATE: The AP report on today's violence resembles that of the WaPo. USA Today splits the difference while Reuters and CNN come across as relatively agnostic about the cause of the violence. The Guardian subtly implies that the heavy-handedness of the occupation was to blame. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:08 PM by David Adesnik  

EDUCATING THE DEVIL'S ADVOCATE, PART II: (Click here for Part I.) To what degree is it possible to resolve the theological tensions between Christianity and Judaism? In response to yesterday's post, PJ writes that

To Christians, Judaism and Christianity are and must be entirely consistent. If the two faiths were not consistent, then, because the Jewish Scripture is contained in the Christian, God's revelation (as Christians understand it) would be internally contradictory. Such an inconsistent revelation would prove that Christianity was false.

You say, "I believe that it is necessary to recognize that there are profound and inherent tensions between Christianity and Judaism....[O]ne must recognize that one can never resolve such tensions once and for all." But Christianity cannot be true unless it is possible to resolve tensions between Christianity and Judaism once and for all. From God's perspective, there can be no tensions between his covenant with the Jews and his grace to Christians.

Of course Christians believe we have a fuller grasp of the truth than Jews who reject Jesus as the Messiah, and that Jews would benefit by accepting this fuller truth; but there is no need for Jews to abandon Judaism in order to become Christians, any more than Jesus had to abandon his Judaism in order to found the Christian church.

While I greatly appreciate the spirit in which PJ's comments were written, I'm afriad that I must disagree vigorously with their substance. Regardless of what Christians believe about the compatibility of Christianity and Judaism, it is extremely hard for even the most moderate and progressive Jews to believe that the two religions are "entirely consistent" or even mostly consistent. The idea that "Jews would benefit by acceping [the] fuller truth" of Christianity is simply anathema regardless of the generous spirit in which Christian teachings are offered.

This fact reinforces my argument that there are inherent tensions between Christianity and Judaism. If, as PJ asserts, it is theologically necessary for Christians to believe that Christianity and Judaism are consistent, then the overwhelming majority of Jews' refusal to acknowledge such consistency amounts to a profound attack on the validity of Christian doctrine.

Of course, it is not our intention to assault the Christian faith any more than it is the intention of PJ or other Christians to assault ours. Yet the substance of our respective faiths mandates such a conflict. I wish it weren't so. I think that the vast majority of Americans wish it weren't so. Yet it is.

This returns us to the paradox I pointed out in my previous post: that the coexistence of the Christian and Jewish faiths depends on the ability of religious leaders' to revise the substance of our respective faiths without acknowledging that they are doing so. Yet I doubt that such revisions could ever overcome the tension created by the fact that Jews will never accept Christ as their Messiah. Thus, as I argued in my original post on this subject,

The task before us is to acknowledge the depth of such tensions while addressing them in a manner that promotes dialogue rather than conflict.

Thankfully, we in the United States have proven remarkably adept at doing just that. I believe that it is precisely because of our common heritage as Americans that we are able to deal so constructively with the tensions that separate our faiths. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:34 PM by David Adesnik  

EDUCATING THE DEVIL'S ADVOCATE: As I had hoped, yesterday's post on the death of Christ has provoked thoughtful responses from those who know far more about Christianity than myself. MP of Scrutineer writes that

I am an agnostic, but I was raised a Catholic and have two brothers who are priests, and your interpretation of the Gospels squarely contradicts that of the Catholic Church.

The RCC does teach that God's covenant with Abraham is still in effect. The RCC does not teach that the Jews are collectively responsible for Jesus' death.

Indeed, while I have heard that some particularly backwards non-Catholic Christians misinterpret the Gospels the way you describe, I have never in my 38 years heard a Catholic profess these anti-Jewish beliefs.

See "The Catholic Church and the Jewish People" for more info.

Multiple readers have observed that according to Catholic and other Christian theologies, the covenant of Abraham is still in effect. Thus, I made a factual error by asserting that it wasn't. Nonetheless, I think it is important to ask how the Christian and Jewish definitions of "chosenness" compare and contrast. The traditional Jewish concept of chosenness (which I fully reject) entails the belief that Judaism is the only true faith and that God has a special and privileged relaitonship with the Jewish people that no other people can enjoy. Thus, if Christians assert that the covenant of Abraham is still in effect, they will find it necessary to redefine certain aspects of the covenant. On a related note, JT writes that

Yes, of course Christianity does claim (to various degrees, depending on denomination) that Judiasm is no longer relevant -- exactly as it claims of all other religions. (Unlike the others, however, it affirms Judaism as true.) Yes, Christianity claims that the only way that Jews can overcome the burden of their own sins is to become a follower of Christ-- exactly as it claim for all others, Jewish or not.

Your statement [about the inherently anti-Semitic nature of the Gospels] is, in my mind, as untrue and offensive as someone claiming that "by my reading, the dehumanization of non-Jewish peoples is an integral part of the theological agenda of the Jewish claim to being a 'Chosen People.'" Ignoring of course the various significance and the commentaries on the subject, because we can merely claim that in the years since the Torah was written, progressive rabbis have reinterpreted the Tanakh in order to mitigate its anti-Gentilism.

If you find such a claim outrageous, you should note that that is the position of Reconstructionist Judaism, which does believe that the entire concept of chosenness, in any way, is very morally suspect.

To be honest, while you start from some reasonable points (such as that Christianity does attempt to delegitimize Judaism and set itself up as a successor religion), you make some claims that are, I think, unwarranted.

Although it is not my intention to offend JT, I must suggest that by my reading, the dehumanization of non-Jewish people is an integral part of the theological agenda of the Jewish claim to being a 'Chosen People'. Consider the genocide of the Amalekites, described in the Book of Samuel. If memory serves, God condemns Saul for slaughtering the Amalekites -- women and children included -- but taking their animals for his own, rather than slaughtering them as well. Even in my relatively progressive school, our teachers endorsed God's condemnation of Saul and observed that if God had asked him to kill the animals as well, that is what he should have done. Not once did our teachers suggest that God's will was fundamentally perverse because it demanded of Saul the genocide of a people whose only sin was that hundreds of years earlier, their ancestors had launched a surprise attack on the Jews.

The irony of this moral logic is disturbing and painful. If one endorses the Jewish slaughter of the Amalekites for a centuries old greivance, how can the Jews of today insist that they bear no responsibility for the death of Christ simply because it happened so long ago? Moreover, what is our response to Hitler and Goebbels if we endorse those genocides that our ancestors supposedly committed?

As such, I am glad that progressive rabbis have chosen to subvert the meaning of the original text and redefine Chosenness in a less bloody-minded manner. Given that the rabbis have spent the last two thousand years subverting the original text in order to advance various agendas, I am glad that at least one of those agendas is the enlightened embrace of human rights. By the same token, I am quite glad that the Catholic Church has begun to insist very publicly that the Jews are not collectively responsible for the death of Christ.

It is important to remember, of course, that those of us who accuse the rabbis and the Church of dramatically reinterpreting sacred texts insult the faith of countless Jews and Catholics. The foundation of Orthodox Judaism is the belief that there is an unbroken chain of interpretation that began with Moses' own interpretation of the Torah and that has continued ever since. My primitive understanding of Catholicism (an attribute I share with Mel Gibson) is that the Church has preserved the true and original spirit of the Gospels.

As such, those of us who advocate greater religious tolerance must accept the paradoxical fact that such tolerance tends to emerge only when the guardians of the faith are able to persuade themselves that their innovations are in fact restorations of a tarnished original meaning. Surely this is what Plato might have referred to as a noble lie.

To be continued... (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:00 AM by Patrick Belton  

SUNDAY TIMES UNREADABILITY WATCH: Once upon a time, the Sunday Times was something one might actually read to, say, find out something about arts, theatre, and literature. No longer.

Today, the Arts section leads with a multipage story about whether Conan O'Brian is moving to 11:30. We're glad that the arts in New York are in such sterling condition that the Times can, well, ignore them. And then, Theatre has a promising piece on Middle Eastern playwrights, which they then proceed to entirely botch:

Some of the women are ethnically Iranian, which means (essentially) that they are Indo-European, and speak Persian. Some are ethnically Arab, which means (essentially) that they are Semitic, and speak Arabic. Their religious roots vary: they are Christian, Muslim or Zoroastrian (a faith that advocates good thoughts and deeds)

And here we were (essentially) getting excited that some other website would start to take up some of the traffic for "Iranian sex change pics." (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:18 AM by David Adesnik  

PLAYING DEVIL'S ADVOCATE: Patrick laments the fact that more and more young Americans have come to believe that the Jews killed Christ. But shouldn't Patrick be lamenting the ignorance of their elders who don't believe that the Jews killed Christ?

While I am no expert on the Gospels, my reading of the text suggests that placing collective blame on the Jewish people for the death of Christ is an integral aspect of the Gospels' theological agenda. The Jews' responsibility for the death of Christ is one demonstration among several that they are no longer the Chosen People and that their religion is no longer relevant.

In recent decades, progressive Christians have reinterpreted the Gospels in order to mitigate the violent anti-Semitism that they have provoked. After all, even according to the Gospels, not all Jews were complicit in the death of Christ. Yet the message of the text seems clear: that only those Jews who abandon their own religion and become followers of Christ can overcome the burden of guilt that the Jewish people took upon itself by sentencing Him to death.

In this sense, the Gospels are fundamentally anti-Semitic. This does not mean that they are responsible for the violence and hatred associated with the phrase 'anti-Semitism'. After all, the Gospels were written at a time when Judaism was an established and influential religion whereas Christianity was a tentative and persecuted faith. Nonetheless, the fundamental purpose of the Gospels is to delegitimize the Jewish faith.

I say this not to defend Mel Gibson or The Passion. Yet I believe that it is necessary to recognize that there are profound and inherent tensions between Christianity and Judaism. While one can condemn specific individuals for transforming these tensions into a pretext for hatred, one must recognize that one can never resolve such tensions once and for all. Thus, the task before us is to acknowledge the depth of such tensions while addressing them in a manner that promotes dialogue rather than conflict.
(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:05 AM by Patrick Belton  

ALL OF THE BAD GUYS CONVENIENTLY BLOWING THEMSELVES UP, II: Three suspects in the Madrid bombings, Moroccan members of an Islamic militant organisation, blew themselves up this morning in a neighbourhood of south Madrid as special branch agents were preparing to storm their apartment. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:26 PM by Patrick Belton  

THANKS, MEL: The percentage of Americans who say Jews were responsible for Christ's death is rising - particularly among young people and blacks - according to a poll just released by the Pew Research Center. In a telephone survey of 1,703 randomly selected adults, 26 percent of respondents said Jews killed Christ - which was up from 19 percent in an identically worded poll from 1997, and the increase among people under thirty was a particularly startling threefold - from 10 percent to 34 percent. (The proportional rise among blacks was smaller, 21 percent to 42 percent.)

That these views are correlated with having seen Mel Gibson's "Passion" movie is borne out by the survey - particularly, again, among the troubling "young anti-semite" demographic: of those 18-34 year olds who have seen the film, 42 percent believe Jews were responsible for Christ's death, compared with 36 percent of 35-59 year olds who watched the movie. And for respondents 60 years and up, there was hardly any difference between the responses of people who had seen the film and those who hadn't.

We should be careful what kind of views we impart to the youngest generation - they'll be with us for quite some time. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:13 AM by Patrick Belton  

YES, BUT THE MUCH MORE INTERESTING QUESTION the court never reaches is just what one ought to do if told by God to kill their child.

Fortunately, the point is taken up at greater length by Levinas, Kierkegaard, and the Midrash. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:10 AM by Patrick Belton  

I TOURED THE MUSÉE DU LOUVRE THIS MORNING; you can too. The Louvre has introduced a lovely and innovatively designed visite virtuelle portion of its website, with QuickTime movies allowing you to stroll through each of the principal rooms and collections from anywhere in the world. It makes a very pleasant and humane study break.

Additionally, any of you feeling inclined this morning to enter the great controversy between the ancients and moderns can see how pitiably the Bayeux Tapestry comes up compared with, say, the salle des antiquités grecques et romaines - both now conveniently accessible online. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:35 AM by Patrick Belton  

OXBLOG COMPLETELY CHANGES ITS OPINION OF THE GUARDIAN: Or at least of its obituary page, at any rate, which runs a briliant piece today on the late Shiela (thus) Grant Duff, journalist and opponent of appeasement - which in turn happens to come from the pen of OxBlog's good friend Josh Cherniss.

When he's not out memorialising the lesser English aristocracy, our friend Josh ably directs our think tank's ethics and foreign policy program, and writes the other politics blog left on blogspot. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 4:06 AM by David Adesnik  

WHAT'S THE OPPOSITE OF A BACKHANDED COMPLIMENT? David Brooks concludes this morning's clever column about productivity by asserting that

Yesterday's good economic news — and the generally good news we've seen over the past 20 years — owes more to innovators like FedEx's Fred Smith than to any of the many fellow Yalies who have sat or will sit in the Oval Office.

Generally speaking, I agree with Brooks. The White House can't have all that much impact on the economy. But this is quite an interesting time for Brooks to make that point. It seems like Brooks is going against the party line by denying his party's president credit for the good news. But what's he really saying is that Democrats shouldn't blame Bush for all the bad economic news that came before yesterday or may come after tomorrow. I can accept that -- as long as Brooks doesn't start defending the deficit. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 3:37 AM by David Adesnik  

A TRIBUTE TO THE FALLEN: The NYT profiles the four civilians killed in Fallujah. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:22 PM by Patrick Belton  

FOR ANYONE WHO DIDN'T READ EASTERBROOK'S news round-up yesterday, well, go, shoo! (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:31 AM by Patrick Belton  

LAWYERS WRITE BACK: At the start of the week, I posed an open question to our readers about why a jury couldn't be told what would happen to a woman they found to have been criminally insane. I wondered out loud whether this arrangement was meant to keep factual questions separate from questions of punishment, and then I very generously offered an insane woman drawn from the ranks of my own ex-girlfriends for the helpful person who would enlighten me.

The short result: (in the words of PS from Springfield). Yes. I’ll send the legal bill. (Thanks! You win Tiffany.)

More interesting result: most of our readers, or at least a good part of you, seem to be lawyers. This includes a Harvardienne practicing at a Bay area firm who writes "I assume the trial has been bifurcated into liability and damages/sentencing, as sometimes happens.  The idea is that the jury shouldn't be swayed by the extent of the penalty; the woman's guilt or innocence should hang on the evidence of her (alleged) crimes alone.  Happy to discuss this more if you like, but I'm really more interested in why your ex girlfriends are all insane.  Did dating you drive them crazy?"

Wow - while I recoil and ponder going off to become a Jesuit, let me note that Robert from An Inclination to Criticize offers the same analysis, then says "There is no need to reward me, as I've no desire to add to my coterie of insane ex-girlfriends, though I'm sure yours are quite nice." Awww.

The most detailed analysis comes from the author of CrosBlog, who's a state court prosecutor:

I'm sure you've received several answers to your question, but here's my take on it, (FWIW, I'm a state court prosecutor in Georgia.) 
 
I've also been a prosecutor in Missouri, where jurors actually recommend sentences.  When you deliver a closing argument, you also recommend a sentence to the jury, and they'll deliver a recommendation that the judge usually accepts.  Other states (Georgia included) bar it for the reason you've suggested:  If a jury feels that a mandatory sentence would be too extreme, they may acquit, even when the facts support a conviction.  In fact, it's caselaw in Georgia that if a jury specifically finds a defendant "guilty with leniency", it's reversible error to accept that verdict (the jury should have been sent back.)  (Benton v. State, 588 S.E.2d 267)
 
I suppose a good example of why is the Marcus Dixon case, which is a pretty big deal around here.  This link is probably as good an explanation as any.  Simply applying the facts to the law, Dixon appears guilty of aggravated child molestation.  However, it seems pretty clear that the jury would have ignored said law or said facts had they known he was going to get 10 years (the minimum sentence.) 
 
Hope this helps.  If I win, please donate the crazy ex-girlfriend to charity.  I'm married, and have my own crazy woman. 

Done! And thanks very much to everyone who wrote in! (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:28 AM by Patrick Belton  

NOTES FROM A SPAMMER, II: Consider me a new fan of Jesuit education. So far, for every four high school principals with "S.J." behind their name writing me back to take part in our essay contest, I've heard back from one public school official, of any level. And this isn't just because I was, once upon a time, going to be a jesuitical man in black. (Ed: But wait, aren't you kind of Jewish too? Really long story; let's just say, I root for both the Yeshiva and Georgetown football teams. Oh I see, you've just got a thing for pain and no sense of NCAA athletics.) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:56 AM by Patrick Belton  

DRIVING AROUND CHERNOBYL: I'd just written two somewhat critical posts and hadn't really wanted to leave for the library on a downward note - so if you hadn't yet had a chance to read Elena's diary of motorcycle rides through the Chernobyl dead zone, where she brings her digital camera, you really should. She brings a geiger counter and a quick wit with her everywhere, and has some poignant portraits of ghost towns, cities abandoned in midday, and a small (and quickly dwindling) number of occasional villagers who have refused to leave their homes and lifestyles.

(Ed: You call that cheerful? Sure, her journal and wit, not Chernobyl itself. Oh, I see now) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:32 AM by Patrick Belton  

MATT AND I DISAGREE about a Woolsey ambassadorship in Iraq - which I still think would be a great thing - but perhaps we could agree on an anti-Robert Blackwill campaign. Blackwill is a remarkably arrogant former Kennedy School lecturer who managed to have his embassy in India taken away from him earlier in the Bush term, after he managed to alienate his entire staff in New Delhi. The State Department's inspector-general was forced to send two teams to Delhi to investigate complaints which had surfaced in the WaPo and Indian press that Blackwill "treated his staff like furniture" and morale in the embassy had "hit rock bottom." Giving him another embassy is a recipe for disaster; giving him Baghdad would be a Ba'athist's dream. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:59 AM by Patrick Belton  

HAVING WORKED HAPPILY AT THE ALLIANCE and holding fond views of it as a community of allied democracies, I still have to question the dubious decision by Nato's new secretary-general to bill today's ceremony raising the number of allies to 26 as the end of the Cold War. It's 2004, and the Cold War has incontestably been over for between thirteen years (from the end of the Soviet Union as a political entity) and fifteen (since the fall of the Berlin Wall). That the alliance's new leadership has sought to frame the accession of new allies in terms of an official recognition of an event that happened one and a half decades ago does not inspire confidence in its ability to move even now out of the operational framework of the Cold War to address out of area operations in Afghanistan, the Balkans, and eventually in the Middle East and counterterror theatres. At worst, this is reflective of a paradigmatic problem in facing new operational realities; and at best, a rather embarassing political misstep.

UPDATE: After I posted this, CNN quickly revised their headline from "NATO ceremony ends Cold War" to "Larger NATO facing 'new threats'". They also struck the line "in a ceremony being billed as the official end of the Cold War." The original is here. I'm glad we get such fast results! (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 4:35 AM by Patrick Belton  

MY LIFE AS AN INTERNET SPAMMER: After spending all my study breaks for the last two days writing high schools and colleges about our essay contest (including, incidentally, both David's and Josh's high school alma maters), I now feel that Miriam Abacha and her Nigerian hordes have got nothing on me. HIGH PO INT SO F@R OF MY NEW CAR EER: the Houston, Texas singing nuns from Incarnate Word.

I would like to note, though, as a follow-up to David's and Moderate Voice's list of historic April Fools pranks, my personal all-time favorite - the BBC's 1957 Swiss Spaghetti Harvest, which the news show Panorama broadcast drolly in a segment which showed rustic Swiss peasants harvesting that year's bumper spaghetti crop, brought on by a mild winter. (You can watch the original broadcast on the BBC's website.) Of course, the entire broadcast was just a joke. But soon after the broadcast ended, the BBC's offices began to receive hundreds of telephone calls from their puzzled viewers, who either wanted to ask whether spaghetti actually did grow on trees, or who were eager to learn how they might grow their own spaghetti tree. To this, the BBC is reported to have replied they should "place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best." (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:17 PM by David Adesnik  

APRIL FOOLS CLASSICS: Here's a list of the 100 greatest hoaxes of all time. My favorite is #8:

In 1998 Burger King published a full page advertisement in USA Today announcing the introduction of a new item to their menu: a "Left-Handed Whopper" specially designed for the 32 million left-handed Americans. According to the advertisement, the new whopper included the same ingredients as the original Whopper (lettuce, tomato, hamburger patty, etc.), but all the condiments were rotated 180 degrees for the benefit of their left-handed customers. The following day Burger King issued a follow-up release revealing that although the Left-Handed Whopper was a hoax, thousands of customers had gone into restaurants to request the new sandwich. Simultaneously, according to the press release, "many others requested their own 'right handed' version."

(Link via The Moderate Voice) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:08 PM by David Adesnik  

TAKES ONE TO KNOW ONE: Professional ventriloquist Joe Gandelman says that Maureen Dowd has an impressive grasp of dummy humor. Not all that surprising, is it? (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:58 PM by David Adesnik  

HAS CLARKE DAMAGED BUSH? Ryan Lizza points to a new poll which suggests that political independents are being persuaded that Kerry would wage the War on Terror just as effectively as Bush. Yet Lizza also points out that on a broad array of other issues, Kerry is losing ground to the President. While Lizza attributes Kerry's setbacks to the recent Bush advertising blitz, he doesn't even consider the possibility that as people learn more about Kerry, they are finding a lot that they don't like. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:52 PM by David Adesnik  

MOONLIGHTING: Some of the folks over at the Treasury Department seem to be freelancing for the Bush campaign. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:43 PM by David Adesnik  

AN ANTIDOTE TO OXBLOG: I just checked out Spencer Ackerman's blog for the first time. If you're concerned that OxBlog focuses too much on the positive in Iraq, you can rest assured that Spencer will provide a very different perspective. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:30 PM by David Adesnik  

A CALL FOR REFORM:

The Arab world's need to defy Washington and revile Israel is not a valid excuse to perpetuate medieval autocracies and repressive dictatorships. The claim that the Middle East is somehow immune to democracy, whether through tradition, history or religion, is equally spurious. Striking evidence of this was provided by a gathering of Arab intellectuals and nongovernmental organizations at the Alexandria Library in Egypt in mid-March. The statement they issued is a ringing proclamation of universal democratic values and the urgent need to spread them through the Arab world. The statement rejects talk of special conditions or needs and does not mention the occupation of Iraq or Palestine. It is a call on the Arabs to adopt democracy — not because the West wants them to, but because it's best for them.

Statements such as this restore my faith in the New York Times. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:23 PM by David Adesnik  

HORROR AND SILENCE: The savage brutality of yesterday's murders in Fallujah has shocked the blogosphere into silence. How often does an event of this magnitude provoke only a few lines of commentary from some of the most prolific authors on the web? On the other hand, are there any words that can say as much as the images of joyous young men hacking away at a charred American corpse?

Perhaps it will become possible to think about yesterday's slaughter once the numb and shock begin to wear off. Already, Phil Carter has begun to reflect and the murders. He writes that

News of this attack, and the Iraqi mob's behavior, has likely reached every American and coalition soldier now serving in Iraq. Just as the news of the Malmedy massacre during WWII enraged U.S. troops and gave them a reason to fight harder, so too will this event.

But what about the effect of this brutality on the homefront audience at which it was directed? As one might expect, the public mutilation of American bodies has begun to evoke remembrances of Mogadishu. This time, however, there is no thought of surrending to brutality and abandoning our mission.

But what is it that we must do to overcome the bestial rage now on display? Should the United States, as Glenn Reynolds suggests, withhold from Fallujah the benefits of reconstruction? Or is it now more important than ever to demonstrate our goodwill and, as the Marines' motto says, "Do No Harm"?

Before answering those questions, I think we must first ask who committed yesterday's atrocities in Iraq? The banner headline of today's Boston Globe read "Brutality, Cheers In Iraq". The lead story in USA Today was entitled "Iraqis revel in US deaths".

Both headlines have the unfortunate effect of implying that the entire nation of Iraq was celebrating the brutal slaughter of American civilians. While those who follow the news will recognize that the people of Fallujah are hardly representative of the people of Iraq, I am concerned that the overwhelming majority of Americans will believe that Iraqi sentiment toward the United States approximates Palestinian sentiment toward Israel.

Yet even in Fallujah, that is not the case. According to one resident quoted in the NYT,

"This is a bad advertisement for everything we stand for," said Muhammad Khalifa, a spare parts trader who closed his shop during the disturbance in a sign of disgust. "We may hate Americans. We may hate them with all our hearts. But all men are creatures of God."

In the morning, a team of American officials rushed to a meeting with Falluja's mayor and top clerics. American officials said the clerics promised to issue a fatwa, or religious edict, at Friday Prayer to condemn the ambush and the grisly aftermath. One of the gravest sins in Islam is desecrating the dead...

Mazem Hazem, a 20-year-old engineering student, said killing the Americans was acceptable but what was done to their bodies was not.

"I am satisfied that we killed them ? they are Americans and they are foreigners on our land," Mr. Hazem said.

"But I don't agree with what they did with their bodies. It is haram," he said, using the Arabic word for forbidden. "It is an embarrassment. And people will remember Falluja for this for many years."

If that is the reaction of those who support the insurgents, I suspect that those who oppose their struggle will feel even more strongly that the desecration of American corpses was an outrage. For the moment, the Iraqi media isn't preoccupied with what happened in Fallujah. Perhaps the people of Iraq have more pressing concerns. Or perhaps they are not in the least surprised that those who once supported Saddam have no qualms about emulating his brutality.

To the New York Times' credit, it carefully phrased today's headline to avoid any implication that the people of Iraq as a whole were responsible for yesterday's atrocities. Its headline read "4 From US Killed In Ambush in Iraq; Mob Drags Bodies." Perhaps if all of us exercise such care in describing the atrocities, the broader public will begin to recognize that they were the work of a small number of degenerate fascists who represent Iraq's past, but not its future. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:05 PM by Patrick Belton  

BEST EMAIL I RECEIVED TODAY: In connection with our essay contest, I just received this -

Dear Patrick,
Thank you for your email; the contest sounds incredibly intriguing. We currently do not have a student body. Please include us in your contest announcement next year.

Best,
R...
San Francisco

Close runner-up, from a good friend from the Journal of Democracy:

Oddly, I now live here:
 
xxx street
Miami, Fl xxx
(here follows a small ICQ picture of several palm trees)

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:30 AM by Patrick Belton  

OXBLOG OFFICIALLY ABANDONS DEMOCRACY PROMOTION: Hey, everybody's got to have some fun on April Fools.... (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:23 AM by Patrick Belton  

TODAY'S NEWS ROUNDUP: The Pentagon has announced plans to sell Taiwan early-warning radar systems worth $1.8 billion to bolster its defenses in light of a Chinese missile buildup; in return, China has scolded the U.S. for sending "the wrong message" to Taipei. Egyptian President Mubarak has abandoned his attempt to salvage the Arab League summit and host it in Cairo. The Roosevelt Roads Naval Air Station closed its doors yesterday after 60 years in Puerto Rico. And Secretary Powell, unusually for a U.S. official, said yesterday that the U.S. and Europe had been pursuing different world visions for the past two years, and said it was time for the two sides' paths to converge.

In other news, UAVs are in in the new defense budget, while Comanches are out. They're, like, so Cold War.
(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:08 AM by Patrick Belton  

FOREIGN POLICY ESSAY CONTEST GRAND KICK-OFF: Are you an undergraduate or high school student in Washington, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Boston, New Haven, Houston, or Miami? Are you a teacher or professor in one of those cities? If you're a student, we have a foreign policy essay contest for you - and if you teach them, we'd be very grateful if you'd publicize our contest to your students. Our announcement poster is here, and there's a bit more on the essay contest page of our website. Also, please feel free to contact me or Connie Chung, our essay contest chair, if you have any questions or we can be of any help. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:44 AM by Patrick Belton  

RUMORS DULY NOTED: The liberal Tom Paine claims to have heard that Jim Woolsey has been short-listed for the position of ambassador to Baghdad - which, incidentally, would be a wonderful choice if it's only true. (Juan Cole, in contrast, instead mentions Wolfowitz.) Also, in Dan Drezner's excellent and impartial piece in TNR today on how Bush II and Kerry foreign policy making would likely diverge, Dan passes on the speculation that Condi would supplant Colin at Foggy Bottom in a second Bush term. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 4:15 AM by Patrick Belton  

BYE, BYE, YAHOO MAIL: Google will debut a free email service offering 1 gigabyte of storage in the next week or so, and it will also include a particularly advanced search function (not that surprisingly, really, considering this is google...) of all of the messages that are stored in a person's mail folders. The only troubling note is that Gmail (as it's being called) will, however, be poking around in your message text to be able to offer you "relevant" advertising. (I'm not sure how unusual this is, though - Hotmail did seem to know a fair bit about both my anatomy and my pharmaceutical interests.....) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:16 AM by David Adesnik  

WHERE NEXT IN IRAQ? The WaPo has a pair of thoughtful op-eds, one by Jim Hoagland, the other by an infantry officer just back from Iraq. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:28 AM by David Adesnik  

CLINTON ON SEPTEMBER 10TH: Patterico comments on a thoughtful speech by the ex-President that has the accidental effect of making Richard Clarke look foolish. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:31 PM by Patrick Belton  

ATROCIOUS, AND SAD: I don't really have much to say, apart from that I am aghast, about the tragic deaths and mutilation of four American contractors today in the Sunni Triangle. Phil Carter is covering the coverage quite well. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:33 AM by Patrick Belton  

THE ALWAYS EXCELLENT EURASIANET has more on Uzbekistan. Their reporter makes several points: first, a new group other than Hizb ut-Tahrir or the IMU may have been responsible for the attacks, given their modus operandi and presence in Bukhara; second, Uzbekistan's government and security services are tremendously unpopular - the latter being a daily shake-down presence in the nation's bazaars - making popular discontent high and clearing the way for a new anti-government organization; third, various reports have connected the attacks' timing with Novruz or the brutal beating to death of an elderly Bukharan man at Tashkent's Chorsu bazaar by police March 28.

For additional insightful coverage elsewhere, see The Argus, Economist, and Agonist. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 2:25 AM by David Adesnik  

OPEN SOURCE INTELLIGENCE: Kevin Drum has been reading the stuff we all could read but don't bother with. For example, he's actually read all of Richard Clarke's book and provides some insights into Clarke's character that I haven't seen elsewhere. Kevin has also taken a look at what people were saying about Osama bin Laden before 9/11. Interesting stuff. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:44 AM by David Adesnik  

FUN WITH ZIP CODES: Find out who you and your neighbors are. As a sometime resident of 10012, 20015 and 02139 it seems that I have never even come close to seeing the other side of the tracks. (Well, duh.) Perhaps that's why the five weeks I spent living in 78130 were such an eye opener. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:25 AM by David Adesnik  

BUSH'S APPROVAL RATING: If you put together three years of polling results, things look pretty bad for the President. However, if neither of these compilations controls for either the post-9/11 rally effect or the state of the economy. Thus, while Crooked Timber and CalPundit [I just can't refer to Kevin as "Political Animal" -- ed.] suggest otherwise, I'm not sure these graphs do much to change the established conventional wisdom that Bush's re-election will depend on America's GDP growth and unemployment rates. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:13 AM by David Adesnik  

I DIDN'T DO NUTHIN'! A front page article in this morning's WaPo asserts uncritically that

Attacks on John F. Kerry by President Bush and Vice President Cheney, backed by millions of dollars in negative ads, have wiped out the narrow lead Kerry enjoyed at the beginning of the month and damaged his public image.

Unsurprisingly, correspondent Dan Balz fails to explore the possibility that there may actualy be substantive reasons for this change in public opinion. Now, the article does point out that most Americans don't know all that much about Kerry. Perhaps those who have begun to learn more don't like what they've found.

But how about the even more plausible hypothesis that the cause of Kerry's deceleration in the polls is not the Bush campaign but the nation media. The only one in Balz's article who comes close to suggesting that the media might have something to do with it is an administration spokesman:

"For six months, it was a one-way conversation, and then you had the final five or six weeks when Kerry was winning primaries that improved his image," said Bush senior strategist Matthew Dowd. "Right after March 3, a dialogue started about who is or who isn't John Kerry, and the president started advocating for himself. I think we're better positioned from that and Senator Kerry is worse positioned."

Leaving aside Dowd's partisan phrasing, it's hard to ignore the fact that the end of the primary season brought an end to daily coverage in which news stories recounted all of the Democratic candidates' attacks on President Bush. Then, once tapped for the nomination, Kerry became the subject of the sort of intense scrutiny that the media had only directed toward Howard Dean while the campaign was on.

Unsurprisinlgy, there emerged a raft of articles that examined with great seriousness whether or not John Kerry was an inveterate flip-flopper. While such articles didn't make Kerry look all that bad, they made his flaws into credible subjects of public debate. Thus, Dan Balz may want to consider that that it is the idiosyncrasies of his own profession and not the Bush war chest that are responsible for John Kerry's reversal in the polls. (And just imagine how bad things might have gotten for Kerry if the media hadn't done so much to build up Richard Clarke.) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:54 AM by David Adesnik  

RICE TO TESTIFY BEFORE 9/11 COMMISSION: And she damn well should. While there are strong arguments to be made in favor of executive privilege, it is hypocritical for Ms. Rice to play the role of lead attack dog in the White House's Clarke-bashing but refuse to testify under oath.

In addition to being forced to testify, Rice is getting raked over the coals by the media. The NYT article on Rice's forthcoming testimony (as well as a companion news analysis essay) suggests none too gently that Condi has told so many lies that she will have no choice to fess up when under oath. Interestingly, neither of the NYT articles has anything positive to say about Richard Clarke. The same goes for the WaPo's articles on Rice's testimony and the White House's selective declassification of sensitive documents. This suggests that the WaPo's Friday climb down from its effusive praise of Clarke was not an accident.

The lesson to be taken away from all this is that the Bush administration is now suffering more for its incompetent and dishonest effort to attack Richard Clarke than from the substance of Clarke's allegations. The failure of the administration to recognize that it had a strong case on the merits and its reliance instead on character assassination only adds to its reputation as an organization that won't the facts get in the way of its politics. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:37 AM by David Adesnik  

STOP BEING SO DAMN TOLERANT! If Iraq's Shi'ite and Sunni Muslims keep this up, all of the experts predicting the outbreak of a civil war will have a lot of egg on their collective face. The WaPo reports that

The attacks [on Muslim clerics], numbering more than a dozen over a two-week period this month, have been answered with resolute declarations of unity from leading Shiite and Sunni clerics, who meet regularly to devise a joint strategy for maintaining calm. Adamant in refusing to blame the rival branch of Islam, the religious leaders are instructing preachers of Friday sermons to assure worshipers that the attacks are being carried out by terrorists and shadowy foreign elements intent on provoking a civil war...

"The situation has deteriorated with the approach of the handover of power to the Iraqis," said Sheik Nazam Khalaf Zaidi, a pillow cushioning a hand wounded in a March 11 assassination attempt that killed two of his relatives riding in the same car. "God willing, there will be no civil war. I said the same words as I was carrying the coffins of my son and my son-in-law."

"There is a plot for sectarian war in Iraq," said Abdulsattar Abduljabbar, a senior official of the Association of Muslim Scholars, the most prominent organization of Sunni clerics. "We receive Shiite delegates in our office and we visit Shiite clerics in their office. There are no conflicts that could lead to fighting -- yet."...

In cosmopolitan Baghdad, at least, [Iraqi' feelings still tend to be as gentle as the hand that a Shiite shopkeeper lays on the shoulder of the Sunni standing beside him. "He is my friend," the shop owner said. Friends josh one another about rites whose public practice incites bloodshed in some other countries, such as Pakistan. Most important, Iraqis say, marriages between Sunni and Shiite are commonplace, even in deeply religious families. Yet in recent months, the blending of politics and religion has exposed latent tensions...

The most powerful political figure in Iraq today, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, exemplifies the delicacy. The senior Shiite cleric, who met with Sunni leaders last Tuesday to address the sectarian issue, has declared that Iraq's Shiites must protect all Sunni mosques. At the same time, he instructed Shiite imams to circulate petitions and make sermons urging changes in Iraq's interim constitution, which he fears will dilute Shiite power...

Now, there still are a lot of very serious problems in Iraq. For a summary thereof, take a look at this scathing WaPo editorial. However, Sunni-Shi'ite cooperation may aid the work of UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, whom Kofi Annan has dispatched to help organize a transitional government. Of course, the political reconstruction of Iraq won't end on June 30, which is why the Bush administration ought to be very careful about deciding on a replacement for Paul Bremer. Personally, I think Bill Clinton might be the one for the job. He could feel the Iraqis' pain but wouldn't have much of a chance to feel the Iraqis' women... (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:16 AM by David Adesnik  

IT'S BECAUSE, UM, WELL, UH...Richard Cohen asks why the UN rushes to condemn Israel for killing terrorists while doing nothing to condemn Palestinian efforts to recruit children as suicide bombers. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 4:43 PM by Patrick Belton  

AFTER 125 YEARS, a Bolivian-Chilean border dispute heats up again.

UPDATE: Beautiful Horizons has more. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 4:39 PM by Patrick Belton  

AEI'S RADEK SIKORSKI argues in the National Interest that trans-Atlantic defence ties are still a good thing. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:46 PM by Patrick Belton  

IN OTHER TERRORISM NEWS, there are advantages to having all your adversaries be suicide bombers,

Uzbekistan says 20 suspected militants have blown themselves up during a fierce gun battle with special forces in the capital, Tashkent.

After several hours of armed exchanges, there was an explosion inside the building, followed by silence.

An interior ministry statement read out on television said 20 militants blew themselves up with home-made explosives after being surrounded. (BBC)

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:17 PM by Patrick Belton  

BE FUNNY IF THEY TURNED OUT TO JUST BE REALLY SERIOUS GARDENERS:

Eight British men suspected of being involved in terrorist activity have been arrested in a series of raids across the south of England. More than half a ton of ammonium nitrate fertiliser was also seized (BBC)

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 8:26 AM by Patrick Belton  

HEY, LOOKEY, WE'RE THE official blog of the New World Order! (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:35 AM by Patrick Belton  

ANDREW SULLIVAN has a thoughtful piece in The New Republic this morning on the relationship of gay rights and the civil rights movment.

Also in TNR, Massoud Ansari examines how Al-Zawahiri got away. Slate looks at the cancellation of the Arab League summit. (UPDATE: So does Robert Tagorda.) And via A&L Daily, an interview with Martin Seligman - a psychologist of whom I'm awfully fond - about the nature of happiness. (It's in three parts, and they're in backwards order.) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:17 AM by Patrick Belton  

TAIWAN PRESIDENT CHEN SHUI-BAN, emboldened by his narrow election victory and angered by Chinese efforts to intervene in his island's domestic politics, yesterday gave an interview to the Washington Post in which he stated his intention to push for independence:

I think the key issue is not that I personally refuse to accept the "one China" principle. It's the 23 million people of Taiwan who cannot accept the so-called "one China" principle.

If they insist on having dialogue and consultation based on such a precondition, the "one China" principle, I think it will be rather difficult for both sides to sit down and talk.

Therefore, in the year 2006, we will hasten the birth of a new constitution for Taiwan, and in 2008, we intend to enact this new constitution, a tailor-made, efficient constitution that is suitable for Taiwan. And this is just a timetable for our constitutional reform. It is not a timetable for independence or any attempt to change our status quo.

It is difficult not to feel sympathy for Taiwan, as an island of democracy and liberalism which has come far in the past decade toward modernity. Still, the current course which President Chen has set toward steers quite close to a military conflict in the Straits, in which the legal and moral duty of our nation would and ought to be on the side of a free allied republic against nuclear-armed China - a possibility no one can contemplate without trouble. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:14 AM by Patrick Belton  

ALISTAIR COOKE, KBE (Hon.), who embodied the Anglo-American friendship and gave our age one of its most noted essayists and commentators, has died this morning at 95.

Arriving in the United States in 1932 on a Commonwealth Fund Fellowship to study drama at Yale after coming down from Jesus College, Cambridge, Cooke hurried from his boat not to New Haven but to New Orleans, Basin Street, to sample the jazz age himself at first remove, and that by way of a call on the premier exemplar of the craft he would later make his own, essayist H.L. Mencken in Baltimore.

In 1974 he was invited to address the US Congress on the occasion of the celebrations marking the American bicentennial. He was only the third foreign born person so invited; his predecessors were Lafayette and Sir Winston Churchill. British diplomatist Sir Harold Nicolson (like him, an eighteenth century man living a seventeenth century life in the midst of the twentieth century) sought him out on his valedictory trip to the United States in 1963. Like Samuel Pepys or Isaiah Berlin, he knew nearly everyone in his age; and like them, he recorded his incisive impressions. Of Greta Garbo, he wrote "She gave you the impression that, if your imagination had to sin, it could at least congratulate itself on its impeccable taste." Of Presidents, he said "All Presidents start out to run a crusade but after a couple of years they find they are running something less heroic and much more intractable: namely the presidency. The people are well cured by then of election fever, during which they think they are choosing Moses. In the third year, they look on the man as a sinner and a bumbler and begin to poke around for rumours of another Messiah." Las Vegas he called "Everyman’s cut-rate Babylon. Not far away there is, or was, a roadside lunch counter and over it a sign proclaiming in three words that a Roman emperor’s orgy is now a democratic institution….'Topless Pizza Lunch.'" Of prognostication, he wrote "Man has an incurable habit of not fulfilling the prophecies of his fellow men."

Becoming an American citizen in 1941 to marry his wife, he maintained a substantial enough love for the country of his birth to engage with it in a lifetime of correspondence, his Letters from America which the BBC would broadcast without fail each week for 58 years. The BBC collects a sampling of his letters to it, including his eulogy for Senator Robert Kennedy, his reflections on the American fashion of slimming, Thanksgiving, Groucho Marx and Bing Crosby, and his last letter, on the late war in Iraq.

It is to the BBC's, and our, detriment that Cooke will not be able to continue his correspondence with us from whatever such place as he might be now. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 4:52 AM by Patrick Belton  

ANOTHER DAY OF TERRORIST ATTACKS IN UZBEKISTAN: Today's suicide bombing in Tashkent is the second straight; there was also an explosion on Sunday night in Bukhara, which may have been a government attack on IMU assets which led to the current spate of reciprocal attacks.

Due to Uzbekistan's tight control over the media, it is difficult to get hold of information about the current situation, but the choice of targets (such as yesterday's at the Chorsu bazaar, at a time of overlap between two police shifts) seems to reflect a desire to target police and security services. The degree to which news reports are being suppressed by Tashkent is astonishing - yesterday, out of 15 policemen one reporter approached at the bazaar, only one admitted that there had been a bombing, with the remainder explaining that the market was closed for a "sanitary inspection." Reuters is reporting that there were several separate bombing incidents yesterday, with two caused by female suicide bombers, and that four to five separate explosions took place this morning at roughly 8:15 local time. This morning, Tashkent's principal thoroughfares are closed by checkpoints and manned by servicemen with bulletproof vests carrying Kalashikov rifles.

If there was involvement by Hizb-ut-Tahrir in the current round of attacks, it would represent a marked tactical change for the Islamist organization, which to the moment has been peaceful, though it has generated concern for violent potentialities from terrorism and oil industry analysts. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:04 PM by Patrick Belton  

THAT'S IT FOR ME FOR THE DAY: Rachel's taking me out fishing to catch some gefilte fish. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:42 PM by Patrick Belton  

WHILE BAUDE IS OFF SHOPPING FOR A PANAMA HAT FOR SPRINGTIME, over at Crescat Amanda reviews a piece on the novel and her other favourite drug, coffee. (Note: OxBlog does not condone abuse of caffeine, cigarettes, or panama hats.) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 2:08 PM by Patrick Belton  

OPEN QUESTION: CNN notes today a Texas murder case, in which a woman is pleading insanity in the murder of two of her three children. The story goes on to note that if the jury were to agree with the defence, the defendant would go into a state psychiatric hospital's maximum security ward for evaluation, and could stay there for as long as the maximum sentence she could receive if convicted - in her case, 40 years.

Now here's the interesting part, which I'm quite curious about: as the reporter notes, "the jury will not be permitted to hear and consider that information."

Do any of our legally inclined readers happen to know why this is the case? Is the idea that the jury in this case should be ruling solely on the factual question of whether the defendant met the legal criteria for insanity, and that knowledge of the practical consequences of that determination could have the effect of altering the jury's decision on the question of fact? (As an incentive, the author of the winning legal analysis can receive an insane woman of their choice, drawn from the ranks of my ex-girlfriends....) (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:03 PM by Patrick Belton  

PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE, AS IMPROVED BY MANAGEMENT CONSULTANTS: Slate has the Powerpoint version. This is almost as good as Peter Norvig's truly brilliant Powerpoint rendition of the Gettysburg Address. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:47 PM by Patrick Belton  

CLINTON AND GENOCIDE: The National Security Archive has released a report on the Rwanda genocide of 1994, demonstrating through declassified sources that the intelligence and diplomatic services had reached a consensus that genocide was taking place in the country as early as April 23; the Clinton administration would nonetheless resist calling the genocide for what it was until May 25. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 11:30 AM by Patrick Belton  

NATO TURNS 26 TODAY: The Baltic republics of Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia and the south-east European republics of Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia will officially join the alliance today, as their governments deposit their instruments of accession in a ceremony at the White House.

Albania and Macedonia had participated in the Membership Action Plan but were not extended invitations at the Prague Summit in November 2002, because of concern their militaries could not contribute to peacekeeping and collective defence missions (though they are potentially capable of such specialised functions as transport and medical care).

Each of the successful candidates had quite strong sponsors among the allies. Hungary has urged Slovenia's accession since it would allow Hungary to be contiguous with the Nato nations. Slovakia's candidacy was helped by the victory of reformists in September 2002 elections. Poland was a strong supporter of membership for the Baltic states; their governments also excelled particularly in meeting the MAP requirements. Italy, Greece, and Turkey supported Bulgarian and Romanian entry as assisting in Nato's stability missions in the Balkans; critics have argued that both nations continue to have corrupt civilian government and outdated militaries.

Within Russia, the Duma and the military and intelligence services are strongly opposed to enlargement, but Putin seems to view it as part of a trade-off for acquiescence in Russia's operations in Chechnya, as well as a means toward protecting Russian ethnic minorities in Estonia and Latvia. (Nato and EU regulations both have strictures regarding the treatment of ethnic minorities.)

Amendment of the North Atlantic Treaty to admit new members requires action by each ally in accordance with its constitutional processes for adoption of a treaty. Each of the 19 prior members approved the amendment after the close of accession negotiations on 26 March, 2003, the U.S. doing so by two-thirds vote in the Senate. (The advice and consent motion passed by a 85-6 vote, on May 17, 2003). (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:46 AM by Patrick Belton  

MORE ON EU COUNTERTERRORISM: WaPo compares US and EU counterterror styles, and CS Monitor has a roundup of press coverage of recent EU counterterror initiatives. The new terrorism czar, Gijs de Vries, receives profiles in Time and Reuters. (Reuters is also reporting today that a senior official in Al Qa'ida's intelligence arm was killed in the standoff in South Waziristan.) The Observer, unusually, presents a crisp argument that the war on terror will be won in the realm of ideas, and by projecting convincing images abroad of liberal democracy. Ari Cohen says the EU answer has been to create more bureaucracy. One bureaucratic proposal that was shot down, however, was the tabled creation of a Europe-wide intelligence agency to deal with terrorism, a function which Britain and France zealously preferred keeping in national hands. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:39 AM by Patrick Belton  

OXBLOG MUSIC PICK OF THE DAY: Radio Free Klezmer, where every other song is a good one. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:21 AM by Patrick Belton  

IT'D BE A REALLY SICK JOKE if the Noraid financial sponsors of terror brought back this idea from New York..... (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:30 AM by Patrick Belton  

QUICK ROUND-UP, before beginning my day's work as a performance artist interpreting "Chronic Procrastinator Writes a Dissertation," which the Oxford performing arts council is graciously hosting at the moment at the Bodleian library, lower reading room.

The good news is - there might be life on Mars. The bad news - if so, it seems to have a chronic flatulence problem. Policymakers caution that we may not actually want to be in contact with this life form.

Scientists in Bangalore have released a cheap, accessible computer for India's rural population, called the Simputer.

At the same time that the U.S. considers establishing an MI-5, Britain is creating an FBI. The cinematic possibilities for increased cooperation between mother and daughter countries in this realm are endless (think: Godfather IV: James Bond in the Goomba Who Loved Me).

Jackson Diehl editorializes in the WaPo that the unnoticed story of the year is the emboldening of Arab democrats in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Syria. Also in the WaPo, the DC government apparently covered up knowledge of the city water supply's elevated lead levels for at least 15 months before the story broke in the press.

There has been a terrorist attack in Tashkent. Initial suspicion is resting, predictably, on the IMU. This comes at a time when Washington has been considering downgrading strategic ties with Uzbekistan because of the latter's embarrassing human rights record. Also, reports have placed IMU head Tahir Yuldash as possibly having been with Al-Zawahiri in South Wazirstan during the Pakistani operation against an Al Qa'ida stronghold there.

Arab governments are recoiling in embarrassment from the last-hour cancellation of the Arab League summit yesterday in Tunisia, as speculation surrounds the precise reasons for the cancellation. One explanation has been that the Tunisian government was reluctant to play host to a summit which would produce only a tepid call for reform.

Elsewhere, the U.S. and Mexico are considering a revived plan for deep repatriation of undocumented migrants in the US - which is being read as a Mexican gesture of goodwill in the run-up to a more substantial hoped-for change in US-Mexican immigration relations.

Finally, today is, incidentally, the anniversary of the withdrawal of the last U.S. troops from Vietnam, which makes this an appropriate time to thank all of our veterans; for those who did not come back, we will not forget you. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:25 AM by Patrick Belton  

SIX NATIONS ROUND-UP, for you ruggers fans out there. Il est stupéfiant combien les Français ont appris de nous! Ils méritent beaucoup de félicitations. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:17 PM by Patrick Belton  

I IMAGINE IT WOULD BE UNGENTLEMANLY to say we was robbed, so let me instead just warmly congratulate the 'tabs on their victory at Henley this afternoon. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:48 AM by Patrick Belton  

NASRALLAH IS ATTEMPTING to draw Hezbollah and Hamas closer together: at a memorial in Beirut's southern suburbs for Sheikh Yassin, Hezbollah's Secretary-General told Hamas's Khaled Meshal,

We in Lebanon are with you. Be sure that your blood is our blood and your sheikh is our sheikh. We share the same destiny and this means that our fight is one

Hamas, on the other hand, is widely being considered by analysts to be working at its maximum capacity already, making claims of accelerated activity against Israeli targets principally rhetorical. (And for Palestinian voices calling for peaceful intifada, see Palestinian intellectuals' ad, Muslim WakeUp, and Palestinian Catholic priest Raed Awad Abushlia.)

UPDATE: Dan Drezner has more on Palestinians calling for nonviolence. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 4:39 AM by Patrick Belton  

HAPPY SPRING FORWARD DAY, EVERYONE!

UPDATE: Yanks have to wait a week..... (3) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 12:31 PM by Patrick Belton  

HINDI GRAMMAR QUOTE OF THE DAY: If you want to request food, k^hana, the failure to produce aspiration will result in kana. That is, you will end up asking for a one-eyed person.

UPDATE: Our beloved Adrienne points out that Tamils have no aspirations. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:03 AM by Patrick Belton  

DIPLOMACY OF IRISH PM AHERN HAILED in restoring direction to sidetracked talks about the EU Constitution. There's more on the Irish presidency here, and on the constitution here. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:58 AM by Patrick Belton  

PHILADELPHIA MAGAZINE'S SASHA ISSENBERG ably, but a bit harshly, takes down David Brooks's red state-blue state distinction by poking holes in it.

After challenging individual assertions by Brooks about, say, Nascar, QVC, and Doris Kearns Goodwin audiences, Issenberg draws the conclusion that Brooks is feeding into prejudice under the guise of public intellectualism,

There's even a Brooksian explanation for why he has become so popular with the East Coast media elite. Blue Americans have heard so much about Red America, and they've always wanted to see it. But Blue Americans don't take vacations to places like Galveston and Dubuque. They like to watch TV shows like The Simpsons and Roseanne, where Red America is mocked by either cartoon characters or Red Americans themselves, so Blue Americans don't need to feel guilty of condescension. Blue Americans are above redneck jokes, but they will listen if a sociologist attests to the high density of lawn-abandoned appliances per capita in flyover country. They need someone to show them how the other half lives, because there is nothing like sympathy for backwardness to feed elitism. A wrong turn in Red America can be dangerous: They might accidentally find Jesus or be hit by an 18-wheeler. It seems reasonable to seek out a smart-looking fellow who seems to know the way and has a witty line at every point. Blue Americans always travel with a guide.

Leaving aside the obvious fact that Issenberg can't help invoking the red state-blue state distinction even in the act of criticizing Brooks for coining it, I wonder, more broadly, whether he might perhaps discount just a bit too drastically the reliability of lived experience - the "does it ring true?" test - as a guide for an essayist: even if most Marylanders or New Jerseyans are in fact Nascar watchers, and if there are substantial coastal enclaves like Austin, Texas solidly ensconced in red America, Brooks isn't necessarily purveying stereotypes to his buying audience when he seizes onto status details, Tom Wolfe-like, to summon up the distinction between a secular, educated, suburban (and gentrifying-urban) liberal America on the one hand and a godly, more traditional America on the other. This is distinction most readers and commentators would, based on their lived and reflected-upon experience of American social reality, place more evidentiary faith in than in particular demographic points of information about the moment's sales of No Ordinary Time on Amazon.com. As, I think, they should.

Nor is this to say that considered lived experience of social reality can't contain prejudices and biases which can and should be battered down by cannonades of evidence - only to say that something like Scottish enlightenment philosopher and epistemologist Thomas Reid's notion of common sense should also guide us in steering a path between the assumptions we live by and points of information which are adduced to challenge and demolish them.

One last point before leaving the topic: Issenberg (in what I do want to acknowledge again as a witty, provocative essay) depicts Brooks as an ersatz, faux public philosopher, and quotes approvingly an academic who bemoans the tempora and mores which in the place of a public space which once had "Holly Whyte, who got Jane Jacobs started, Daniel Bell, David Riesman, Galbraith," has now given us "David Brooks as your sociologist, and Al Franken and Michael Moore as your political scientists." That, though, is clearly the fault of academics - the serious sociologists, political scientists, and ethicists whose presence in public debate the author laments - who have not risen to addressing a public audience in a creative way which captures the imagination and frames sensed realities in new ideas, language, and distinction. That pundits and reporters have seized the ground only indicates that scholars in the social sciences have in our generation been more preoccupied with academic politics and narrow disciplinary disputes than in fulfilling the role of public intellectuals (or, like Cornel West, have sought fame in the public eye without carrying with them insightful or creative ideas) - and this is a true trahison des clercs.

UPDATE: Wonkette and Easily Distracted both have takes on the piece, too. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:54 AM by Patrick Belton  

GEE, THANKS, DAD: Father of a deploying medic, about his son: "In war, as we've learned through all our history, who gets killed and who doesn't is just happenstance. But if I can raise the odds, then I'll feel better." (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 7:43 AM by Patrick Belton  

RIGHT TO COUNSEL WATCH: In south Texas, a judge had to reprimand the prosecuting and defending attorneys in a sexual assault trial after both of them took to referring casually to the defendant in open court as "this monster". (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:00 AM by Patrick Belton  

THESE ARE PROVING ADDICTIVE: Today's selection of Jewish humour is brought to you by the blogosphere's resident ventriloquist, Joe Gandelman.

I flew El Al Airlines. They have two stewardesses. One serves the food, the other says, eat...eat...

I tried selling a Jewish game show to NBC but they didn't like it. I thought it was a great title: The Price Is Too Much.

Brooklyn radio station: This is KTV radio broadcasting at 1600 on your dial..but for YOU 1550. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:21 AM by Patrick Belton  

LOTS OF STUFF GOING ON OVER AT OUR FOREIGN POLICY SOCIETY: Our vice president, and my good friend, John Ciorciari will be moving back from Asia in order to join our foreign policy society's Washington chapter; and, since he needs a day job to support him while in Washington, he will also be entering government as the senior advisor to the assistant secretary for international affairs at Treasury. Our warm congratulations, John - you've done us awfully proud!

This morning, our Africa program director, Zach Kaufman, has a letter to the editor in today's New York Times about the anniversary of the Rwanda massacre.

Also, we're running a national high school and college foreign policy essay contest, in our chapters in New York, Washington, Boston, Chicago, LA, San Francisco, Miami, and Houston. Our essay contest asks students to "Place yourself in the position of the President's National Security Advisor, with the opportunity to propose a new initiative or a substantial change in an area of American foreign policy. What proposal would you submit to the President, and how would you argue for it? Your memo should consist of two single spaced pages, and will be judged on the merits of the quality of argument you display in arguing for your chosen proposal." Our timeline is:

April 30 -- deadline for submission of entries to local chapters
May 15 -- local chapters to determine local winners and pass along the grand prize entry to the national pool
May 28 -- announcement of national grand prize winner amidst a massive press frenzy by the President in the Rose Garden, and having the consequence of rendering all of our contest winners instantly irresistible to the opposite sex.

For more information, you could look at the essay contest page of our website, or e-mail our essay contest chair, Connie Chung.

And finally, our Los Angeles chapter is meeting this Sunday to discuss grand strategy, and our Chicago chapter will be meeting up next Sunday for a discussion of the media in foreign affairs. Do drop by if you can - the discussions should be awfully interesting! And please drop us a note if you'd like to be added to our newsletter. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 2:28 AM by David Adesnik  

SPIRIT OF '76: I'm heading down to Philadelphia for the weekend. Back on Monday. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 2:24 AM by David Adesnik  

YES, GENOCIDE: Nick Kristof reports on Sudan. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 2:13 AM by David Adesnik  

A HARD MONTH IN IRAQ: After a significant drop in fatalities and casualties in February, the numbers for March have returned to higher levels. During intense fighting yesterday in Fallujah, American forces suffered their 400th combat death. Our thoughts go out to the soldiers and their families. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 2:06 AM by David Adesnik  

WaPo CLIMB DOWN: Without admitting they ever got the story wrong, the WaPo correspondents on the Clarke beat are backing down from their initial assessment of Clarke's criticism. In a News Analysis column entitled "Bush, Clinton Varied Little on Terrorism", Dana Milbank and Dan Eggen (with an assist from Walter Pincus) write that the

[9/11] commission's determination that the two policies were roughly the same calls into question claims made by Bush officials that they were developing a superior terrorism policy. The findings also put into perspective the criticism of President Bush's approach to terrorism by Richard A. Clarke, the former White House counterterrorism chief: For all his harsh complaints about Bush administration's lack of urgency in regard to terrorism, he had no serious quarrel with the actual policy Bush was pursuing before the 2001 attacks.

Clarke did not respond to efforts to reach him for comment yesterday.

Ouch. Anyhow, compare that passage from the WaPo to the Eggen/Pincus front pager from Thursday which reports that "The two [9/11 commission] staff reports issued yesterday appeared to confirm many of Clarke's key allegations and criticisms." Also on Thursday's front page, Dana Milbank wrote that even "Though more prominent personalities testified in the commission's two-day public hearings, the longtime foreign policy bureaucrat [i.e. Clarke] stole the show." And you thought John Kerry was prone to flip-flops... (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:39 AM by David Adesnik  

BEFORE THE SHOE DROPS: In this morning's installment of the Clarke saga, the WaPo highlights Bill Frist's charges that Richard Clarke's recent statements contradict his July 2002 testimony before Congress' joint intelligence committee. Since Clarke was under oath both times, any contradictions that emerge would prove extremely damaging. Whether such contradictions will emerge is an open question. Democrats who have read the July 2002 transcript say that none exist. But the public should be able to judge for itself soon enough, given both sides interest in having the transcript released.

In the meantime, I'd like to address something that has been said by a number of Clarke's defenders. Regarding contradictions between Clarke's recent statements an August 2002 briefing he gave for the press, Dan Drezner says that

I'm not terribly persuaded that this should weaken Clarke's credibility. As anyone who's worked in government should know, what's said in an official capacity will read differently than what's said when one is allowed to be candid. Clarke was acting as a dutiful bureaucrat in 2002, and not as an independent agent.

Since Dan isn't exactly a friend of either Clarke or his Democratic partisans, the fact that Dan is sticking up for Clarke on this particular point has added significance. Conceptually, I think that Dan is right to point out the obligations of an appointed official to defend his administration. Yet as Rich Lowry has pointed out, there is a difference between interpreting facts in a positive light and simply making them up from whole cloth. In the August 2002 briefing, Clarke mentions the following facts:

1) The Clinton administration did not have a specific plan for confronting Al Qaeda that it handed over to the Bush administraiton.

2) The Bush Administraiton decided in January 2001 to continue the implementation of the Clinton Administration's anti-terror policies.

3) In the spring of 2001, the Bush Administraiton decided in principle to support a five-fold increase in CIA funding for anti-Al Qaeda actions.

According to Lowry, none of these points made it into Clarke's book. Why not? It is hard to argue that these points were just a matter of spin, since they consist of facts, not interpretations. It is not as if Clarke simply said "The Bush administration worked extremely hard in its first months in office to stop Al Qaeda." That sort of statement is essentially meaningless and it would be hard to fault Clarke from backing away from it after leaving office. But what Clarke gave the press were facts.

Or were they? There is some room for interpretation regarding such terms as "specific plan", "continue the implementation of" and "decided in principle". (These are my paraphrasings, not Clarke's original words.) But if we have to pick apart Clarke's words in this counterintuitive manner, then is is rather hard to treat him as a credible witness, let alone a heroic whistleblower.

Even so, the question remains: Why didn't Clarke make any mention of the fact that he once defend Bush's anti-terror policies? If Clarke meant his statements on the administration's behalf as a form of hollow praise, why doesn't he say that? In the final analysis, I don't think Clarke intended to deceive anyone. IMHO, he comes across as quite sincere. If anything, he seems to have deceived himself. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 4:30 PM by Patrick Belton  

THE MILITARY'S LESSONS LEARNED from the war in Iraq....

With that said, I'm off to go settle down to the Odyssey and some ice cream with my wife. (Friday nights at the Belton household get pretty wild.) Incidentally, I just had the opportunity to hear Seamus Heaney speak - I'll write up some reflections comparing him and Paul Muldoon after I sleep off the ice cream.

UPDATE: Okay, I couldn't resist. Odyssey, or Monty Python?

I hope you ... will explain to any one of your chief men who may be dining with yourself and your family when you get home, that we have an hereditary aptitude for accomplishments of all kinds. We are not particularly remarkable for our boxing, nor yet as wrestlers, but we are ... extremely fond of good dinners, music, and dancing; we also like frequent changes of linen, warm baths, and good beds, so now, please, some of you who are the best dancers set about dancing.

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# Posted 11:38 AM by Patrick Belton  

YOU'D HAVE TO BE CRAZY TO BUY IN WASHINGTON, INSTALLMENT 583: Hamas has been investing millions of dollars in real estate in the U.S., including in the southern Maryland market, according to the Washington Times.

On a related note, the EU has selected its first antiterrorism official, a former Dutch official born in New York.