Shot In The Dark - Politics and Current Events in Minnesota and Beyond

Saturday, September 13, 2003

Weekend - Have a good one. See you Monday with a whole bunch of stuff (much of which, due to the miracle of "Post to the Future", was written yesterday!).
posted by Mitch Berg 9/13/2003 01:51:09 PM

The Unbiased NPR - Instapundit cued me into something I'd almost forgotten about - an interview I heard Thursday night on "The World", with Terry Gross interviewing Ann Garrels, NPR's woman on the street in the Bagh for much of the past year or so.

NZ Bear covers the story like I wished I'd have remembered to do at the time.

Money quote:
Gross asked a simple question, Garrels answer to which speaks volumes:

Terry Gross: Could you describe what you consider to be the emotional high point and low point for you during the war --- as a reporter and as a human being being there?

Anne Garrels: I think a curious high point was in the weeks afterwards when I realized that all the months of staying there had really been worth it because Iraqis had so accurately predicted what was going to happen happen; Iraqis knew themselves and made it very clear. So in a perverse kind of way I guess that was a high point. I was astonished at how ill-prepared the Bush administration was for the aftermath from the very beginning. And that continues to this day.

Think about this. Garrels witnessed the fall of one of the more evil regimes of the past century. Even for the most staunch opponent of the war, the end of Saddam's power and the beginning of the Iraqi people's freedom must be recognized as a hugely achievement event for human decency.

But what was Garrels emotional high point? That's right: when she felt reassured that yes, things really are going badly for Iraq -- and the U.S. When her view that America was screwing things up was confirmed.

It is human to want to validate one's own actions; to feel some smug self-justification if events do indeed turn out badly when one has been predicting they would. But in Garrels situation, with all the things she must have seen and experienced, to declare that feeling to be the high point?

It is honorable of Garrels to admit this honestly. But that doesn't make it any less pathetic.
Pathetic isn't the word I'd use. I'd pick "depressing" or "infuriating".

Bear's story includes the entire depressing thing in RealAudio.
posted by Mitch Berg 9/13/2003 09:54:51 AM

Confessions - I'm a pretty regular guy. I live in St. Paul, not Edina. I drive a Saturn, not a Lexus. I shop at Cub, not Whole Foods (although there's no beating the produce at Mississippi Market.

But I don't like much of your regular, American, good-ol' Macrobrew beer. It's not a snob thing; my first exposure to beer was in Europe, and when I came back to the US, the stuff here just didn't taste good.

That's why this poll is so garshfarled irritating:
"The campaign by August Schell Brewing Co. to revive Grain Belt Premium beer gets a boost from the latest issue of Rolling Stone magazine.

The venerable brand earned the title of 'Hot Retro Brew' in the 2003 Hot List of the Sept. 12 issue, which features Britney Spears on the cover.

The magazine calls the beer a 'big gulp of authentic Americana.'
Even by the dubious standards of low-end, $5 a case American brew, Grain Belt is "a big gulp of cattle urine."

Yeah, yeah - when it's hot out and I've been painting or something, a cheapo beer can taste as good as a Summit or a Newcastle. But even then, I'll take a PBR or a Stroh's, maybe even Old Milwaukee, over Grain Belt.

Unless...you know...someone's buying.
posted by Mitch Berg 9/13/2003 07:20:55 AM

When Statists Melt Down- Read this online debate on the Cato website - actually an exchange of emails - between Johan Norberg and Robert Kutner, on the history of capitalism.

Watch Kutner slowly start to lose it. I expect to read about him sitting on a clock tower with a high-powered rifle by the end of next week.

(Via Instapundit)
posted by Mitch Berg 9/13/2003 12:03:35 AM

Friday, September 12, 2003

Yesterday By Day - I liked this episode.
posted by Mitch Berg 9/12/2003 06:32:28 PM

Rolled - Woo Hoo! Powerline has finally blogrolled Shot In The Dark (along with our friends the Fraters and the Scholars). Thanks, guys!

First Instapundit, then Hewitt, now Powerline...hm. What next?

Ah, yes. Vodkapundit.

My sights are set.

ALSO: Hey, SCSU Scholars - Happy First Blog Birthday on Wednesday! I had no idea until yesterday, and then, well, other things were happening. Congrats!
posted by Mitch Berg 9/12/2003 05:09:17 PM

Absence Noted - Elder from Fraters attended the 9/11 memorial last night, and I have to commend his memory; he noted that the bagpipers were the Minnesota Pipes and Drums, remembered that that's my band, and mentioned my absence.

Which is true; I'm not a piper yet. Just a student, honking away on the chanter, learning by far the most complex of my ten instruments.

I'll say this; it's on occasions like 9/11 that the bagpipes come into their own. They combine the best of both worlds; the starkness of the pipes' mournful keening (listen to "Amazing Grace" or "Flower of Scotland" and not feel choked up) catalyzes the emotions; on the other hand, when they switch to more martial music (listen to any the hundreds of jarring, asymmetric-sounding martial airs that have been written for the instrument), it provokes an urge to club the enemy to death with your shoes, grocery bags, whatever is at hand - the pipes are incendiary. Which is why all the Scottish regiments in the British (and Canadian, and Indian and even Pakistani) armies still play them.

Next year.
posted by Mitch Berg 9/12/2003 03:12:02 PM

Level the Peaks, Fill In The Valleys - Frabjous day, callooh, callay; Blogger has just made all their "Blogger Pro" features available to freebie users like me.

What does this mean? Well, for me, it means that I can start to level out my output. Some days, if I'm feeling a little slow or have nothing in particular to say, I don't blog a whole lot. Other days I make up for it, posting dozens of column-feet of material. I've always wanted a "post-to-the-future" capability, so that I can bank posts for later in the week, or into the next week, so that I have a more constant output. At least, that's what it means in theory.

In practice, of course, it means that I've spent a good chunk of the morning scattering posts all over the next week or so, just to test out Blogger's new

Now, when should I post this? Hmmmmm...
posted by Mitch Berg 9/12/2003 12:30:38 PM

2003 - Doublespeak Finally Adopted - The Star-Tribune editorial board outdoes itself with today's editoral, begging the question: do they carry the Democrats' water in a big jug, or in individual bottles?:
"Almost immediately following the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the Bush administration began building a case for taking down the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein. President Bush gave two principal justifications: Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMD) that were a threat to the United States and the world, and had close links to Al-Qaida -- to which he might pass some of his WMD stores. It was a mantra repeated again and again, to the point that some polls now show 70 percent of the American people believing Iraq was linked to the Sept. 11 attacks.
Perhaps, but also irrelevant.

Whether there was a link between Saddam an 9/11 or not, there are unquestionable links between the Hussein regime and terror in general. To draw an artificial, legally-pointillistic distinction between Al Quaeda and any of the tongue-twisting array of other butchers - Hamas, Jamiyat-e-Islami, the PLO, the Islamic Jihad - is the sort of speciousness that explains why the likes of Bill Clinton and David Lillehaug are so popular among DFLers.
That is false. There were no links between Iraq and those attacks, and no evidence has surfaced that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction.
The Strib is lying.

If there was "no" evidence, then why was the entire world, including the UN, worried enough about it to pass resolution upon resolution?
The inescapable conclusion is that at the time of the U.S.-British attack on Iraq, that country posed no terrorist threat to the United States and no threat of attack with WMD.
I'd like to ask the Strib Editorial Board - what's the threshold for something to be considered a "threat"?

Remember - while building an atomic bomb or Sarin gas for the first time is a Nobel prize-winning effort, after a few dozen or hundred or thousand have been built it becomes more a matter of craftsmanship - having the right skills and equipment - and information. Since the information needed to build a bomb or refine Sarin from pesticide can be burned onto a single compact disk, which would be very difficult to find in an area the size of California (assuming ten low-key militants didn't simply pocket CDs and flee to the four corners of the world), the Strib's point is specious; information and knowledge are themselves threats in this age, when the precursors for WMDs are mere commodities.
That was then; this is now: In an address on Sunday evening, President Bush asserted that Iraq is 'the central front' in the war on terrorism. He may well be right. If so, it is a situation of his making. He confronted an Iraq that was no threat and succeeded in converting it into one.
Orwell was 19 years off, but Doublespeak has finally arrived. Hussein was benign; a free people are malignant. When a nation that has a long, bloody history of committing and supporting terror has free reign to develop, buy and distribute any weapons they want, any way they want, it's no problem; when US troops control the place, it fullfills the prophesies of terror. Liberation is terrorism. Freedom is slavery.The Strib continues:
But look at the damage created along the way:
By going into Iraq against the wishes of most U.N. Security Council members, Bush squandered the remainder of post-Sept. 11 international goodwill for the United States. Most of the world now regards the United States as an arrogant cowboy nation that believes its military and economic might gives it the right to behave as it desires anywhere.
By going into Iraq almost alone, Bush guaranteed the United States would bear most of the burden in reconstructing Iraq. And that burden is proving huge, in lives and treasure.
Let's assume, for a moment, that France's "goodwill" was completely on the level (and that is to say the least questionable): "Goodwill" doesn't protect you from terror (and France's "goodwill" ended long before Iraq became an issue in the war on terror).

And are we alone? Troops from nearly three dozen nations are with us in Iraq now; moreover, they're from nations that have an interest in preserving freedom; from nations just getting free of totalitarians as bad as Hussein (Poles, Albanians, Czechs, Bulgarians) and from others that remember all-too-keenly the horrors of dictatorship, and have quietly vowed never to forget (Norway, the Netherlands).

Does the Strib editorial board honestly believe that the military effort will be better served by adding troops from Fiji, Ireland and the Philippines?

Worse - does the Strib pay any attention to history at all? The UN's efforts at military intervention have not only almost uniformly been disasters, the very names of the interventions have come into the language as synonyms for bungling, bureaucratic inertia, lethally inept micromanagment; Congo. Brazzaville. Biafra. The Golan Heights and Lebanon. Somalia. Srebrenice. The Congo again. Rwanda.

The Strib continues:
U.S. assessments of the state of the infrastructure in Iraq were inexcusably worthless,
...for the simple reason that we've only liberated one totalitarian dictatorship before.

Under dictatorships, there is none of what we Americans call "process". The people who run the infrastructure tend to accumulate the knowledge of how to do it, and keep it amongst themselves as institutional knowledge, almost like ancient tribal bards who kept collective history in the form of songs and stories, long before there was such a thing as written communication. The Germans were at least fanatical keepers of records; the Iraqis were apparently not. In addition, while the US allowed ex-Nazis who were not associated with war crimes to man key infrastructural posts after the war, we've barred Baathists from those same positions - justifiably, but in so doing we've also barred their specialized knowledge of how things run from the process as well. It'd be as if KSTP fired Paul Brand from Auto Talk; the Rookie could probably host the show, but it'll take years to develop the expertise about cars that'd make the transition complete.

The Strib goes on:
The belief that American soldiers would be joyfully greeted as liberators has turned into a grim reality of being greeted by rocket propelled grenades and homemade bombs.
The belief that they woudn't be greeted as liberators in the vast majority of the country was a more malignant fantasy still. And the notion that they'd be greeted as they were after World War II, with rapturous crowds in the villages, was a simple-minded bit of spin on the left's part anyway; after the UN-brokered betrayal of the Kurds and Marsh Arabs in 1991, Iraqis were justifiably cautious; as the Zogby Poll from Tuesday shows, they also appreciate being liberated.
A corollary notion behind the invasion of Iraq is that the United States would awe the Arab world with its military strength, contributing positively to chances of a peace deal between Israelis and Palestinians, and setting off a wave of reform in the oppressive Arab world. But it hasn't worked out that way. Instead, the United States has given the world a fascinating glimpse at the limits of American power.
Really?

I guess that explains all the terrorist attacks we've had in the past six months, right?
Belatedly, and half-heartedly, the United States has gone back to the United Nations -- but not hat in hand. The Bush administration can't seem to set aside its arrogant approach to the world body. As someone said, the Bush administration is now in the position of asking for rescue but insisting it will dictate the terms.
The Strib's editorial board has it backwards.

The UN demanded its piece of the liberation, even though it was not only unprepared to do the work involved in achieving it (even assuming that the bulk of the UN wanted to pursue any but another pusillanimous set of wrist-slapping resolutions), but actively impeded it.

Bush is now telling the UN to put up or shut up. Arrogant? Perhaps. Justifiable? Damn right.
If anyone thinks that litany is recounted with glee, they're mistaken. The United States can't afford to lose in Iraq. It must stay there and finish the difficult job it has begun.
True, and we will, even despite the best efforts of people like the Strib editorial board.
And it must mend its relationship with the world community.
The Strib still doesn't get it. The only thing that mends relationships, when you're the big dog on the block, is success. Being seen as the only (rational) game in town will buy us a lot more international approval than decades of kowtowing to the Distinguished Representatives from Bumfungle, Buttlustistan and the Hellspawn Islands.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is now beating the abusive drum that criticism of the president is unpatriotic and undercuts the American effort. He couldn't be more mistaken. Americans owe it to their nation, and to the men and women who serve in its military, to ask the difficult questions.
Commensurately, we owe it to our nation to ask you, the news media, equally difficult answers, and questions of our own.

To wit:
The most important questions are these: Wasn't there a better way? And what can we learn from the past two years that will help make Sept. 11, 2004, an anniversary of both remembrance and relief?
OK, Strib; you've asked your tough question. Now, I'm going to ask mine.

What is the "better way" you'd like to see? Spell it out, in concrete detail - and I mean, every bit as concrete as the reality we currently face. Don't give it to us in terms of Hallmark-y platitudes about international goodwill; spell out the specifics in terms of efforts and strategies, of this "better way", and then spell out what you believe are the most likely consequences of your approach, especially in terms of eradicating terror.

And do it now.

If you work at the Strib - and according to my hit log, there are at least three of you, sometimes more - please pass this up to your editorial board. I hereby challenge them to debate this issue, in any forum of their choosing.
posted by Mitch Berg 9/12/2003 10:54:23 AM

RIP Johnny Cash - Johnny Cash passed away, surviving the his wife, the late June Carter Cash by four months.

Cash, Zevon, Strummer, Joey and Dee Dee Ramone, Stuart Adamson, Ben Orr, George Harrison - it's truly been a dismal couple of years for music fans.
posted by Mitch Berg 9/12/2003 09:50:26 AM

The Latest - The Minnesota Poll has tended to be as accurate as Baghdad Bob, only not as entertaining.

You remember the Minnesota Polls before the 2002 midterm elections? The Democrats and the Strib certainly hope you don't.

The Strib is at it again, saying the Economy takes its toll on Bush:
"A new Star Tribune Minnesota Poll found Bush's job approval rating stands at 49 percent, down from 63 percent in April, when Minnesotans, along with the rest of the nation, rallied behind a president leading a nation in wartime. Bush's approval rating now is 1 point below the rating he received in February, but far lower than his high of 87 percent after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

As it has been throughout his presidency, Bush's approval rating is lower in Minnesota than it is nationwide. An ABC News poll this week found that 56 percent of Americans approved of the way he is handling the job of president.
Look for the Democrats to latch onto this like it's the last bag of Cheetos at a Dave Matthews concert.
As the presidential campaign gathers momentum, the new poll numbers potentially pose a peril for Bush. Support for his performance is relatively weaker among women, and Bush appears to have alienated a substantial number of the conservatives who form the core of his support.
Bush has been alienating conservatives since his name was first broached as a potential candidate for the presidency!

The poll - and the Strib - get two things wrong here:
Bush has been adept at defusing conservative ire (for better or worse) throughout his political life, and
The GOP, being a genuine big tent party, will differ on things - and then make the necessary compromises to live in the big tent and win the election. Which is not to say that Bush is a conservative's dream; far from it. But this sort of fractiousness, which would have paralyzed a Democrat (or DFL) effort, will be sorted out by election time.
'This is the same trend you're seeing in most places around the country,' said Larry Jacobs, a University of Minnesota professor who specializes in public opinion polling.

'This is just a snapshot, and it may work out for him 14 months from now, but at this point, he's got a problem,' Jacobs said. 'He's in dangerous territory, because 50 percent approval is where the alarms go off.'"
Unstated by Jacobs; Bush's biggest problems at the moment is that He's been on vacation. When he's in Crawford, the Democrats have the media all to themselves. His numbers always take a hit. Always.

Watch for the spin - and then put it in perspective.
posted by Mitch Berg 9/12/2003 09:39:57 AM

Coulda Been - We came so close...

GORE'S TERROR POLICY "THIS CLOSE"

WASHINGTON, D.C. (Reuters) - President Gore says passage of his landmark anti-terror legislation is "this close", after a frantic week of negotiations with a Congress he's simply not been able to conquer since the 9/11 attacks.

"After two years of intense, but cooperative strife, we are nearly finished in finally providing this nation the anti-terror legislation we need for the children, to prevent any further tragedies like the one that happened two years ago yesterday", the President said to a gathering of abortion fundamentalists in San Francisco.

Gore used the speech as an opportunity to castigate not only the Republicans, but members of his own party as well. "This strife has been carried out for the children with an eye toward leveraging America's rich social diversity", Gore said, "although some Senators have used this as an opportunity for grandstanding for risky schemes".

The legislation - which would create an interagency task force to investigate and prosecute the 9/11 crimes, would grant sweeping new powers, not only to federal law enforcement, but elsewhere in government.

The task force, consisting of FBI, CIA and representatives from many state and local police departments and social welfare agencies, would be granted wide-sweeping powers to serve subpoenas and summonses worldwide. In addition, it would provide so-called "Terrorguard" grants to state social service, transportation and welfare agencies to help upgrade services. Critics have noted that the upgrades don't necessarily need to have anything to do with terror.

The opposition to the bill has come from both sides of the aisle. Rep. Maxine Waters introduced a controversial amendment that would have declared America a terrorist state, "since America is designed to terrorize minorities". The amendment would have required the anti-terror task force to first investigate allegations of terrorism on the part of the US and several state governments "before wasting time overseas", according to Waters. The amendment delayed the passage of the bill during the crucial mid-term elections last year.

Senator Hillary Clinton held up, and nearly killed, the bill last spring with her controversial-but-effective "It Takes a Terror-Free Village" effort. The amendments, which declare hunger, large class sizes, right-wing talk radio and restrictions on late-term abortion "domestic terror", was finally allowed into the bill as a compromise last month, and accounts for 55% of the bill's $300 billion price tag.

More troubling in the run-up to the 2004 election is Republican criticism of the Administration's rejection of military force against the terrorists. "Republican criticisms of my military record are pure partisan politics", Gore said, noting that his February, 2002 cruise missile strikes on terrorist camps in Afghanistan, Somalia and the Sudan may have killed as many as a dozen terrorists "who may have been linked to the attacks".

"Above all, critics who say I'm 'weak on terror' only do so by ignoring for the children the raid in Islamabad", Gore said, referring to the January, 2003 raid by FBI, CIA, BATF, NRO, AFL-CIO, FWPS, NEA and NARAL agents on gathering of bankers that had had dealings with terror organizations that claimed four bank employees and 16 US agents.

Secretary of Defense James Carville responded to the critics more forcefully. "That's a dog that don't hunt", he said to a group of evangelical Unitarians. "Down in Louisiana, we'd take them critics out behind the barn and make 'em squeal like a pig". He added "Tarnation, we increase the defense budget, and the Republicans are killing children anyway"

House minority leader Dennis Hastert noted that the bill would not increase funding for military combat units, but rather triple funding for diversity training and add $300 million for the Hillary Clinton-sponsored "War against Terror against Military Women and Children" initiative, which calls for a creation of a separate uniformed branch of armed services.

Gore, hampered by his very slim electoral margin of victory in the hotly-contested 2000 election, has had a hard time, critics say.

"Taking two years to pass a response to 9/11? That doesn't bode well for the Democrats in '04", says commentator Rush Limbaugh, currently being held without bail at the US Maximum Security Prison in Marion, Illinois, after the sweep of conservative talk radio hosts under the "Vast Conspiracy Act" passed in October of 2001.

posted by Mitch Berg 9/12/2003 07:11:36 AM

Wednesday, September 10, 2003

OK... - ...now, I'm really taking off to get ready for the interview.

Prayers and other karmic infusions gratefully accepted as always.

Good News, Bad News - If I read correctly, we had both in the St. Paul School Board primary last night.

The bad news? Tom Swift - Occasional "Shot" contrib and firebrand Republican who's been a much-needed gadfly to the School Board's relentlessly liberal mien - didn't make it into the top eight.

The good news? Either did Uber-Green Richard Broderick, who we've written about several times in the past. We have three years before we have to worry about someone using the schools to indoctrinate little Greens with the help of Friends for a Non-Violent World again.

UPDATE: Ooops. I read the chart wrong. Broderick made the cut, although he was second from the bottom.

Republican Georgia Dietz, however, made the cut.
posted by Mitch Berg 9/10/2003 10:37:30 AM

Tick Tock - Ripped from the headlines:
"The government of Iran has begun preparations to resist a military invasion by the United States scheduled for the year 2015. The attack will come after 12 years of attempts to get Iran to cooperate with United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding its nuclear program...

...A high-ranking Iranian official said his nation's war plans are based on a study of the history of U.S. and U.N. policy toward Iraq.

'We know the clock is ticking,' said the unnamed source. 'We only have so much time before the international community takes action against us.'"
Sometimes it's hard to know where Scrappleface ends and real life begins.
posted by Mitch Berg 9/10/2003 10:35:49 AM

Vital Music News - Elder from Fraters Libertas worries about my post ribbing JB Doubtless' taste in music:
"Does this mean that my dreams for a Northern Alliance band (JB on geetar, Lileks on keyboards, Atomizer on triangle, and Mitch on everything else) are dead?
Of course not. What would the Beatles have been without the dissonance between Lennon and McCartney? Would The Who have been better had Daltrey and Townsend not come to blows constantly? Where would Sinatra have ended up without the Gallo/Gambino feud? Where would the E Street Band ended up if Springsteen had gotten along with Vinnie "Mad Dog" Lopez, instead of firing him in 1974?

No, the Northern Alliance Band (JB on guitar, Lileks on keys, Atomizer or "A-Dog" on triangle, and me on guitar, bass, drums, mandolin or harmonica or whatever needed) will surivive a little cognitive dissonance.

On some matters, anyway:
I wonder if it's too late to return my 'Colonel' outfit.
There, we could have problems.

So it's "Gabba Gabba Hey", and let's conquer the day!
posted by Mitch Berg 9/10/2003 10:06:49 AM

Wednesday - Big interview at 1PM. I may also hear about another job I interviewed for a while ago.

On Valentine's Day. No, seriously - the requisition may finally open today.

And they say American business isn't cautious enough.
posted by Mitch Berg 9/10/2003 07:52:24 AM

No Doubt - To balance this morning's screed about Fraters' JB Doubtless' attack on Zevon unfair, let me join with Doubtless in urging you to tune in Medved today, as he tangles with Al Franken.

I may roll tape.
posted by Mitch Berg 9/10/2003 07:51:12 AM

Battle for the Heart - Powerline refers us to a fascinating article by Karl Zinmeister, whom they describe thus:
the editor of the American Enterprise magazine and an enterprising journalist. He served as an embedded reporter with the 82nd Airborne; his new book about the experience, Boots on the Ground, has just been published.
The piece has fascinating insights on the Iraqi view of their liberation.

If you believe the left's cant, the war for the Iraqi heart and mind is already lost (as it was, they said, long before the first tank rolled); ipse yesterday's NYTimes editorial:
The United States has no clear exit strategy from Iraq or immediate hope of a turnaround in a violent, complicated and expensive commitment. The hard realities of postwar Iraq have convinced Mr. Bush that he needs the United Nations support he snubbed before the invasion. But even there he is avoiding the hard choice of acknowledging his error and ceding real authority to other nations. Diplomats are wondering, with good reason, whether Mr. Bush is embarking on a new era of international cooperation or simply giving them permission to clean up his mess
So Zinmeister (whose book will have a spot cleared for it at the top of my reading list this fall) and his article come at a perfect time.

He starts with the observation:
We all know that journalists have a bad-news bias: 10,000 schools being rehabbed isn't news; one school blowing up is a weeklong feeding frenzy. And some of us who have spent time recently in Iraq--I was an embedded reporter during the war--have been puzzled by the postwar news and media imagery, which is much more negative than what many individuals involved in reconstructing Iraq have been telling us. Well, finally we have some evidence of where the truth may lie.
...and then moves on to the evidence:
The results show that the Iraqi public is more sensible, stable and moderate than commonly portrayed, and that Iraq is not so fanatical, or resentful of the U.S., after all.
Iraqis are optimistic. Seven out of 10 say they expect their country and their personal lives will be better five years from now. On both fronts, 32% say things will become much better.
The toughest part of reconstructing their nation, Iraqis say by 3 to 1, will be politics, not economics. They are nervous about democracy. Asked which is closer to their own view--"Democracy can work well in Iraq," or "Democracy is a Western way of doing things"--five out of 10 said democracy is Western and won't work in Iraq. One in 10 wasn't sure. And four out of 10 said democracy can work in Iraq. There were interesting divergences. Sunnis were negative on democracy by more than 2 to 1; but, critically, the majority Shiites were as likely to say democracy would work for Iraqis as not. People age 18-29 are much more rosy about democracy than other Iraqis, and women are significantly more positive than men.
Asked to name one country they would most like Iraq to model its new government on from five possibilities--neighboring, Baathist Syria; neighbor and Islamic monarchy Saudi Arabia; neighbor and Islamist republic Iran; Arab lodestar Egypt; or the U.S.--the most popular model by far was the U.S. The U.S. was preferred as a model by 37% of Iraqis selecting from those five--more than Syria, Iran and Egypt put together. Saudi Arabia was in second place at 28%. Again, there were important demographic splits. Younger adults are especially favorable toward the U.S., and Shiites are more admiring than Sunnis. Interestingly, Iraqi Shiites, coreligionists with Iranians, do not admire Iran's Islamist government; the U.S. is six times as popular with them as a model for governance.
Our interviewers inquired whether Iraq should have an Islamic government, or instead let all people practice their own religion. Only 33% want an Islamic government; a solid 60% say no. A vital detail: Shiites (whom Western reporters frequently portray as self-flagellating maniacs) are least receptive to the idea of an Islamic government, saying no by 66% to 27%.
The article goes much farther, of course; if you are tired of the left's chicken-little cant on Iraq, you owe it to yourself to read the whole thing.

The article is, above all things, realistic; it notes the difficulties ahead, as well as some areas where the US didn't come out quite as well.
None of this is to suggest that the task ahead will be simple. Inchoate anxiety toward the U.S. showed up when we asked Iraqis if they thought the U.S. would help or hurt Iraq over a five-year period. By 50% to 36% they chose hurt over help. This is fairly understandable; Iraqis have just lived through a war in which Americans were (necessarily) flinging most of the ammunition. These experiences may explain why women (who are more antimilitary in all cultures) show up in our data as especially wary of the U.S. right now. War is never pleasant, though U.S. forces made heroic efforts to spare innocents in this one, as I illustrate with firsthand examples in my book about the battles. Evidence of the comparative gentleness of this war can be seen in our poll. Less than 30% of our sample of Iraqis knew or heard of anyone killed in the spring fighting. Meanwhile, fully half knew some family member, neighbor or friend who had been killed by Iraqi security forces during the years Saddam held power.
Don't just sit there. Read it.

posted by Mitch Berg 9/10/2003 07:17:25 AM

Sleep When I'm Dead- Don't get me wrong - Fraters Libertas is one of the best blogs in the Twin Cities. It's on my daily read list. It should be on yours.

But...how do I say this diplomatically? - JB Doubtless is to music what Al Franken is to hockey, as we found yet again in yesterday's slime-job on the late Warren Zevon.

Again, don't get me wrong - JB writes some great stuff, too - as long as he steers clear of music. He made his debut with the Fraters last winter by puking on the grave of Joe Strummer (in a piece I misattributed to the Elder), followed up by condoning Norah Jones' beating Springsteen for the Grammy...and now this:
I�ve been reading quite a bit in the last few days about the death of Warren Zevon and What His Music Meant.

As we all know, he was diagnosed with cancer last summer and told he had two months to live. Knowing his time was almost up, he made a memorable appearance on Late Night where Letterman gave him the entire hour. He then gathered his friends and made one last record, finishing it just months ago. Now he�s dead, proving that doctors don�t really always know what�s going on.
Just like Charles Schultz, who died the day the final episode of "Peanuts" ran; ones life's calling can frequently keep one alive. Many artists and authors have defied the odds of their illnesses to complete one last big work - and thankfully, Zevon's one of them. His final album, "The Wind", is stunning - but more later.
To be sure, he was a gifted musician and songwriter, but I don�t like what is says about our culture when someone this dark, this nihilistic is hailed as a musical saint.
Two things to say, here:
The darkness and "nihilism" was usually delivered tongue in cheek - unless it really mattered (like Zevon's illuminating but teeth-clenched work after he quit drinking. In any case, ignore Zevon's rip-roaring sense of humor at your own peril. Zevon got tarred, unfairly, with the "dark and tortured" label in the same way Richard Thompson always has; both men are intensely witty men whose humor can run dark, light, sweet, bitter and everything in between.
Had he not written a wonderful album about death - a topic rock and roll has played with innumerable times, but never lived through - the sainthood would be a lot more hollow. As it is, Zevon's done something very few artists have done; approached a "non-rock" topic and made a wondrous piece of art about it. Sprinsteen's "Rising" was another - both great albums, both good popular art, both about subjects vastly more mature than rock and roll usually gets credit for (death and 9/11, respectively).
Doubtless continues:
But Doubtless, you say, how can you write such things about such a great man? Hey, I Iike the guy too, but this idea of Artist As Suffering Soul has to be defeated and I�m just the guy to do it.
No, Zevon's the one to do it - and he always did. Nobody took the "suffering soul" image less seriously - or poked more holes in it - than Zevon.
Mr. Zevon�s songs paid tribute to murderers, mercenaries, drug dealers, werewolves and assorted other miscreants. Violence, death and suicide were frequent themes, as was love among the desperate and downtrodden.

Sounds great, don�t it?
Sounds simplistic. Zevon's oeuvre was much more varied than that. At his best, he wrote playful songs about violence; hilarious songs about depression; affirming songs about suicide; above all, beautiful and genuinely lovely music about love, both desperate and redeeming.
I�m afraid Zevon suffered from one of the great conceits of his generation; the assumption that there are two groups of people in the world--the squares: suburban, gainfully employed, happy-go-lucky, and the realists: artists, drunks, people that would rather feel pain than what they thought the squares were feeling (nothing). And they felt it was their job as the feeling artists to let the squares know How It REALLY Was.
I'm afraid Doubtless suffers from the conceit of the...er, Doubtless. There may not be an artist anywhere, ever, that has documented more thoroughly the emptiness and self-betrayal of the artistic stereotype. Many artists make the value judgement Doubtless describes; Zevon wasn't one of them.

Although Doubtless tries to pin the rap on him anyway:
Zevon says as much in the song Aint That Pretty At All:

Well, I've seen all there is to see
And I've heard all they have to say
I've done everything I wanted to do . . .
I've done that too
And it ain't that pretty at all
Ain't that pretty at all
So I'm going to hurl myself against the wall
Cause I'd rather feel bad than not feel anything at all
Unstated by Doubtless; the song is as ironic as they come. The song mocks the self-absorbed nihilism of its protagonist.

Better yet, his classic "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead", from "Stand In The Fire", one of the three best live albums in rock history:
So much to do, there's plenty on the farm
I'll sleep when I'm dead
Saturday night I like to raise a little harm
I'll sleep when I'm dead

I'm drinking heartbreak motor oil and Bombay gin
I'll sleep when I'm dead
Straight from the bottle, again and again
I'll sleep when I'm dead

Well, I take this medicine as prescribed
I'll sleep when I'm dead
It don't matter if I get a little tired
I'll sleep when I'm dead

I've got a .44 Magnum up on the shelf
I'll sleep when I'm dead
And I DON'T intend to useit on myself
I'll sleep when I'm dead
Homage to self-destruction? If you read the lyrics in isolation...sure. If you hear them in context - delivered by a guy who was living their hollowness - it makes more sense.

Doubtless continues:
Fusilli goes on to make the point about dark music I�ve heard dozens of times but I still don�t understand:

"Like one of his literary heroes, Ross Macdonald, Mr. Zevon saw the dark side of life on the outskirts of Los Angeles and, chronicling it, revealed universal themes that transcend time and geography."

How? This is never explained. How. How does writing about murder, suicide and wretchedness reveal universal themes? Does jumping into a latrine help one to understand shit? Does sleeping with the homeless help you understand alcoholism and mental illness? And what are the universal themes? Original sin? Hatred?
Read Crime and Punishment lately? For Raskolnikov's redemption to mean anything, one has to understand the darkness, the murder - the sin! - that he's been redeemed from!

Or to put it in Zevon's oeuvre, I'll Sleep When I'm Dead or Carmelita ("Now I'm sitting here playing solitaire with my pearl-handled deck/the county won't give me no more methadone, and they garnished your welfare check/Carmelita, hold me tighter, I think I'm going down/and I'm all strung out on heroin, on the lonely side of town") is a necessary prologue to Accidentally Like A Martyr, where the darkness parts and forgiveness happens:
The phone don't ring, no no
And the sun refused to shine
Never thought I'd have to pay so dearly
For what was already mine
For such a long, long time

{Refrain}
We made mad love
Shadow love
Random love
And abandoned love
Accidentally like a martyr
The hurt gets worse and the heart gets harder

{Repeat refrain}

The days slide by
Should have done, should have done, we all sigh
Never thought I'd ever be so lonely
After such a long, long time
Time out of mind
Doubtless continues:
To me, there�s way more than enough darkness in the world.
And some of us defeat it with art that explores it!
I don�t need it in my pop records, books, movies or personalities. Declaring those who toiled their entire lives in this darkness to be geniuses steers our culture toward a path that is dangerous for our souls.
Doubtless misses the point; Zevon worked in darkness, pushed little corners of it back from his life, poked ribald fun at the rest, and in the end created some art that brought light and dignity and humor to some dark and humiliating and harrowing situations; recovery from addiction, confronting imminent mortality.

I'll take "the Wind" over the entire Frank Sinatra catalogue (and before Doubltess doubtless brands me a musical philistine - I get around on ten instruments, have played classical cello for 30 years now, and have forgotten more music in more genres than most people will ever learn).

And someday when I have the mental energy, I'll address Doubtless' assertion that Norah Jones' upset win over Springsteen at the Grammies wasn't a crime against humanity.

UPDATE: It's not just mortality. Emailer PB writes Zevon was, and is, also great for:
Or just getting through the rain. Since 1976, Zevon has always been the music I turn to on dreary, rainy days. It meets the mist head on, and shows it to be a wispy vapor that is temporarily hiding the bright sunshine a mere mile above. I always feel better after listening to Zevon in the rain, and a bit embarrassed for letting myself accept the dreary viewpoint. Life doesn't have to be dreary. It can be a wacky funfest. Zevon let us know that with both barrels.
PB is right, and I hope JD is getting this.
posted by Mitch Berg 9/10/2003 12:49:05 AM

Tuesday, September 09, 2003

Busy Morning - Some domestic BS, plus I have to do some research for a second interview tomorrow.

Pointers to information on Rational Unified Process, UML and Use Case Modeling will all be gratefully accepted.

Profiles In Cluelessness - There's a little current among the tinfoil-hat left that the US should leave Iraq, and pay Britain and the UN to finish the job; we just can't do it, so they say.

I saw this - from a purveyor of that notion - on a local politics discussion group the other day:
The U.S. soldier is well armed, well fed, comparatively well paid, and well trained. They do not appear to know spit about counterinsurgency warfare. TV cameras show them bunching up on patrols and crossing bridges. The British don't.
So - these people get their knowledge of infantry tactics by what they see on CNN?

I'm still shaking my head.
posted by Mitch Berg 9/9/2003 09:42:12 AM

Broderick, Again - Richard Broderick - a Green candidate for the St. Paul School Board - is at it again with his latest press release:
Of the key proposals I have presented in my race for the St. Paul School Board none has generated more excitement than my call for the development and implementation of a comprehensive, district-wide, K-12 peace curriculum to be accompanied by the creation of student-run committees for -violent conflict resolution in every junior and senior high school.
Mr. Broderick is the same guy who said, a few months ago, that he'd use the School System to essentially indoctrinate students with a Green worldview:
"The core principles of the Green Party -- ecological wisdom, grassroots
democracy, social justice, and non-violence -- are all rooted in a categorical
rejection of exploitation and domination as acceptable means to our ends in
life," Broderick said. "In order for our society to adopt these values (as it
must, if we are to survive on this planet), we need to nurture the instinctively
Green consciousness of our young people through the comprehensive application of
these principles to curriculum, instruction, administration, and district-wide
decision-making processes.
Scary enough yet?

No. It's not.

Here are excerpts from Broderick's latest press release:
Briefly, upon winning in the general election I will establish and chair a task force made up of volunteers from the school district as well representatives from organizations like Friends for a Non-Violent World with a proven track record in training people in the theory and techniques of non-violence. At the end of the current school year, I will gather recommendations from this task force -- recommendations that will cover course content, budgeting, and a time table for implementation -- and embark upon a campaign to raise money from one or more of the many foundations dedicated to shaping a more peaceful world in order to hire professional curriculum writers to develop a peace curriculum for St. Paul's public schools. Cost to the district? Zero.
In other words, the St. Paul Public Schools' curriculum will be even more devoted to pacifism than it currently is.

At "no cost".
Meanwhile, come January I will ask FVNW to work with individual schools to provide training for students involved in conflict resolution committees. These committees will differ from the peer mediation groups that now exist
in some area schools in that they will involve the entire student body, be transparent rather than working behind closed doors, and -- a key contrast -- be proactive, addressing the underlying sources of conflict, from racial tension to taunting to disrespectful behavior in and out of the classroom, before the conflict has a chance to simmer over into violent confrontation.
First - this sort of involvement can be useful - in schools that are genuinely democratic (and by that I'm referring to Sudbury-model schools, which democratize the entire education process, down to the curriculum). In schools that are fundamentally authoritarian (as all traditional schools are), I have to wonder, especially about the "These committees will differ from the peer mediation groups that now exist bin some area schools in that they will involve the entire student body, be transparent rather than working behind closed doors, and -- a key contrast -- be proactive, addressing the underlying sources of conflict" bit.

"Be proactive"...how? Sending troops of students through the schools to root out evidence of "violent" badthink?

The Hitler Youth were proactive, too.
In a world of increasing levels of interpersonal, intercommunal, and international violence, the creation of a district-wide peace curriculum is not only the right thing to do morally, it is also a perfect example of "practical idealism." In addition to providing students with the tools they need to confront conflict without violence and to help create a more peaceful future, a peace curriculum will also end up saving the St. Paul school district money and resources at a time when it faces critical budget shortfalls.
Unstated - they'll "save the money" by importing an ideology from an organization from "Friends for a Non-Violent World", a group with a very strident agenda. Can you imagine the school district getting curriculum help from Gun Owners of America (the people who think the NRA are too mushy)? It's analogous!
By providing students from kindergarten on with the techniques, theories, and ethical principles of non-violence, a comprehensive district-wide peace curriculum will cause an immediate improvement in classroom demeanor.
This, I'm afraid, is completely wrong.

I'll say this now; a little "violence" in grade school prevents a LOT of violence later. Roughhousing can be scary, but it teaches people - especially boys - the limits of their inherent aggressiveness. If those limits aren't learned early, then the child grows up not knowing them at all - and violence becomes serious business, rather than something the child learned to eschew the hard (and direct) way.

I suggest to you that the current discipline problems in the classroom are associated with the feminization of education, and the artificial focus on "non-violence" that it has bred.

I am writing Mr. Broderick right now to ask for clarification. In the unlikely event I get any, I'll let you know.
posted by Mitch Berg 9/9/2003 09:35:00 AM

Monday, September 08, 2003

Immigrant-Bashing Immigrants - Immigrant bashing. Ethnic stereotyping. Absolute intolerance of real diversity.

Isn't that what the Democrats way Republicans are all about?

Sergeant Stryker reports on a Nuremburgesque pro-Davis rally, starting with a Davis quote:
"'You shouldn't be governor unless you can pronounce the name of the state,' in an apparent reference to Schwarzenegger's Austrian accent.
The theme was picked up later in Alhambra at an Asian American rally against the recall. An appointee to the Workforce Investment Board, Sukhee Kang, suggested that Schwarzenegger's accent hindered his governing abilities.
'He can't even speak English well. How can he govern the state of California?' said Kang, who emigrated from South Korea in 1977 [emphasis added - Kang arrived in the US nearly a decade after Scwartzenegger], as he warmed up the crowd before Davis arrived.
The Sarge expresses my own disgust:
Uh...I'm sorry, my shallow reserves of wit fail me. I'm just trying to figure out what kind of a state I live in where Democratic picnics sound like neo-Nazi rallies and Korean immigrants bash on other people for not speaking English well. Greetings from the Hotel California. "
This recall is turning into a referendum between someone who's renounced his family's Nazi past, and those who are embracing something almost as bad.

(Via Powerline)
posted by Mitch Berg 9/8/2003 05:57:42 PM

The Conscience - Oliver Willis channels Jonathan Alter, who notes Britney Spears' vacuous quote from last week:
Britney Spears, best known recently for a lip lock with Madonna, is hardly an authority on the political ramifications of September 11. But Spears has a bankable feel for the popular pulse, and her comments last week reflected a good chunk of public opinion on the subject of patriotism: "I think we should just trust the president in every decision he makes," she told CNN, "and we should just support that, and be faithful in what happens."
...and draws the conclusion...
MILLIONS OF PEOPLE, most of them Republicans, define themselves politically and define others patriotically by adherence to that simple Spears standard. The Bush White House will do everything it can to identify those voters; play to their sometimes sublimated emotions of fidelity and fear, and turn the first Tuesday in November 2004 into a referendum on the second Tuesday in September 2001. Stay Proud. Stay Safe. Vote Bush.
To which Willis adds:
Britney Spears: the political conscience of the right.
Hm. Fascinating.

As John at Freespeech.com says:
Which of course suggests that you or I or anyone is free to point out any arbitrary liberal media starling as the political conscience of the left.

Which is it? Johnny Depp? Harrison Ford? Alec Baldwin? Barbra Streisand? Larry Flint? Can you think of other famous people who say vacuous things that we can arbitrarily declare the political conscience of the left?
Hm. A list is in order, here.

I'd like to get celebs, and their vacuous quotes.

THE POLITICAL CONSCIENCE OF THE LEFT

Cher - famous for "And the Beat Goes On" - said about the President "I don't like Bush. I don't trust him. I don't like his record. He's stupid. He's lazy..."If you think the president is an ass, fine � after four years you can vote him out. But the Supreme Court � that's 30 years! The Jerry Falwells of this world will be right in your back pocket. You won't have one f--king right left."
Jennifer Aniston - known for a haircut and a husband, mainly - on the President ("Bush is a f*cking idiot") and on Jenna Bush ("We'd [Brad Pitt and her] pass her in the hall and Brad would say, 'Heyyyy, Jenna, wanna beer? I got one in the truck!"").
Whoopie Goldberg - famous as a has-been comedian: "I don't agree, you see, I don't really view communism as a bad thing."
Woody Harrelson - whose greatest intellectual achievement has been appearing in an Oliver Stone movie - said "�I read in a paper here [England] about a woman who held out the part of her taxes that would go to the war effort. Something like 17%. I like that idea, though in the US it would have to be more like 50%. If you consider money as a form of energy, then we see half our taxes and half the US government's energy focused on war and weapons of mass destruction. Over the past 30 years, this amounts to more than ten trillion dollars. Imagine that money going to preserving rainforest or contributing to a sustainable economy (as opposed to the dinosaur tit we are currently in the process of sucking dry). (Is Mr. Harrelson aware that mammary glands are a feature of mammals?)
We can (and will) go on...

So with a nod to Jon "The East Is Red" Alter, I need to rephrase him just a bit:
MILLIONS OF PEOPLE, all of them Democrats or Greens, define themselves politically and define others patriotically by adherence to that simple Alter standard, "whatever we say or do, we're smarter than Republicans". The left will do everything it can to identify those voters; play to their almost-never sublimated emotions of arrogance, superiority, entitlement and fear of their fellow citizen, and turn the first Tuesday in November 2004 into a referendum on the first Tuesday in November 2000. Stay Proud. Stay Perpetually but Inarticulately Outraged. Never Park the Bus. Vote Anybody But Bush.
It may not roll off the tongue, but...
posted by Mitch Berg 9/8/2003 08:17:15 AM

Drift - David Warren, on his switch from the Anglican/Episcopal Church to the Catholics.

Midwest Conservative Journal has been admirably and productively obsessed with what it calls the Episcopal Church's drift away from Christianity, also.

Some fascinating reading. I'll have to finish writing my own shot at theological exposition...
posted by Mitch Berg 9/8/2003 07:19:34 AM

Hasten Down The Wind - We knew it was coming.

It doesn't help.

Warren Zevon died yesterday afternoon at age 56:
"In a macabre songbook that includes 'Excitable Boy,' 'Lawyers, Guns and Money' and 'Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner,' Zevon presented a world of the undead and the unethical on the rampage in a mercenary world. In 'Mr. Bad Example,' an altar boy grows up to be a vagabond con man: 'I'm very well acquainted with the seven deadly sins/I keep a busy schedule trying to fit them in/I'm proud to be a glutton and I don't have time for sloth/I'm greedy and I'm angry and I don't care who I cross.' "
Now that he's dead, he'll probably start getting his due.

UPDATE: Powerline, who've covered Zevon's illness as well as any bloggers, wrap it up with style.

RIP, Exciteable Guy.
posted by Mitch Berg 9/8/2003 06:37:07 AM

The Speech - The President took back some of the momentum with last night's speech.

This part was key:
Second, we are committed to expanding international cooperation in the reconstruction and security of Iraq, just as we are in Afghanistan. Our military commanders in Iraq advise me that the current number of American troops ? nearly 130,000 ? is appropriate to their mission. They are joined by over 20,000 service members from 29 other countries. Two multinational divisions, led by the British and the Poles, are serving alongside our forces ? and in order to share the burden more broadly, our commanders have requested a third multinational division to serve in Iraq.

Some countries have requested an explicit authorization of the United Nations Security Council before committing troops to Iraq. I have directed Secretary of State Colin Powell to introduce a new Security Council resolution, which would authorize the creation of a multinational force in Iraq, led by America.

I recognize that not all of our friends agreed with our decision to enforce the Security Council resolutions and remove Saddam Hussein from power. Yet we cannot let past differences interfere with present duties. Terrorists in Iraq have attacked representatives of the civilized world, and opposing them must be the cause of the civilized world. Members of the United Nations now have an opportunity, and the responsibility, to assume a broader role in assuring that Iraq becomes a free and democratic nation.

Third, we are encouraging the orderly transfer of sovereignty and authority to the Iraqi people. Our coalition came to Iraq as liberators and we will depart as liberators.
As we come up on the second anniversary of the launching of the Third World War, it's worth remembering what brought us here.

And how we'll leave:
Fellow citizens: We have been tested these past 24 months, and the dangers have not passed. Yet Americans are responding with courage and confidence. We accept the duties of our generation. We are active and resolute in our own defense. We are serving in freedom's cause ? and that is the cause of all mankind.
Note to the Dems: It's going to take more than prescriptions and handouts to get the momentum.

Sullivan has a great piece - on the "State of the War" speech.

Money quote:
Critics will say that the Iraq-terror connection, brutally outlined in the Washington Post yesterday, is a result of the war and didn't exist beforehand. They're wrong. The links between Baathist remnants and al Qaeda are obviously stronger now than the links between al Qaeda and the Saddam regime a year ago - but they all always had a common goal: the prevention of the liberalization of the Arab world and the defeat of Western interests through terror, both state-sponsored and otherwise. We've flushed them out but we haven't yet destroyed them. Now we have a chance to go in for the kill. If Bush can successfully persuade people that violence in Iraq is a) unavoidable and b) an opportunity, then he will be far more persuasive in the coming months. And we all need him to be.
To deny the ideological link - as Josh Marshall seems to in the article I addressed yesterday - is the sort of Clintonion pseudological pointillism that may make legalists warm and fuzzy - but in the amorphous world of terrorism, makes no sense.
posted by Mitch Berg 9/8/2003 12:52:35 AM

Art of War - A fascinating piece in Chicago Boyz about Steve Mumford, an artist currently drawing post-war Baghdad.

It's a fascinating piece - both the Boyz' bit and the original Artnet piece. Read 'em both. Engrossing.
"Drawing here takes a little getting used to. The Iraqis are intensely interested in most things western, so the presence of an American sitting on a stoop or at a cafe making a drawing always elicits an avid audience. Every brushstroke is watched, and people have many questions. The Iraqi sense of personal space is very different from a westerner's; here people crowd in so close they're touching me, and men feel free to stab at the paper to point out someone I've drawn whom they know. If an onlooker blocks the view, however, he'll be shouted at to get out of the way. Sometimes a passage is greeted with a round of 'tsk, tsk, tsk,' which in Iraq doesn't necessarily connote disapproval as much as interest (I think). "
Verdict?
In general, Baghdad seems to me to be better than it was two months ago, despite the rise in bombings. Many of the huge mounds of trash are cleaned up, the curbs repainted, less gunfire at night. The endless gas station lines are much shorter, the traffic snarls less intense and there's more electricity at night, although still far from enough. Most importantly, the Iraqis of Al Wasiria seem to like these Americans, often calling out to them by name as they're on patrol.
About that last point; when discussing the issue with liberals who've bought the Dean/Kerry/Scheer/Dowd cant that Iraq is a quagmire, I've taken to responding "Let's revisit the question in a year".

History tends to be kinder to conservatives than liberals.

Mumford's drawings, by the way, are very interesting. I hope he has an installation around the Cities sometime.
posted by Mitch Berg 9/8/2003 12:35:28 AM

Sunday, September 07, 2003

DuToit Connects - With a post I could have written at any point in the past fifteen years.

Lupino, Bergman, Bacall, and the list goes on.

Sharon Stone? Sarah Jessica Parker? Pfft. This is one of few areas where the world has not improved one iota.
posted by Mitch Berg 9/7/2003 04:12:32 PM

Powerline Contra Marshall - Interesting, I think, that Power Line gets an entirely different take on the Washington Post Al-Quaeda story:
"Read David Horowitz's Washington Times column 'How to look at the war on terror' together with the Washington Post's story 'Al Qaeda plans a new front.' "
One article. Two completely different analyses.

UPDATE: Sullivan, too -although his permalink isn't working as this is written (scroll down to see the article entitled "FLYPAPER - IT'S WORKING".

I'm picturing a Josh Marshall writiing in November, 1944; "Why the Normandy Landings Were Bad Strategy".
posted by Mitch Berg 9/7/2003 01:13:23 PM

Massage Not Lest Ye Be Massaged - The story from the left is this: The Bush Administration made up a bunch of things about Iraq, and will keep looking until it finds proof to match its preconceptions.

To reach this conclusion, Josh Marshall - the current darling of the blogging left - is...er, looking until he finds proof to match his conclusions.
This is one hell of a story in Sunday's Washington Post. The outlines of the tale are ones we've known for a while now: Iraq had little or nothing to do with al Qaida before the war. But the war itself -- the supposed remedy for the tie between Iraq and al Qaida -- ended up making the Iraq/al Qaida mumbo-jumbo into a reality.
In this paragraph, Marshall leads his little ~~Republican~~ Democrat Guard of strawmen into battle:
The war was never a "supposed remedy for the tie" between Hussein and Bin Laden, but rather addressed quite a number of issues (WMDs, links to terror, human rights abuses, disobedience of UN resolutions).
The piece to which Marshall links - which is indeed interesting, even if it's the usual "unnamed sources" providing the beef - doesn't come anywhere close to proving there was no Al-Quaeda connection with Iraq before 9/11 - and let's leave aside for a moment the fact that focusing on Al-Quaeda is itself myopic, in a world in which terror groups are amorphous and interrelated.
No, the piece shows merely that Al-Quaeda-affiliated guerrillas are flocking to Iraq. Which, if I recall correctly, was not only something we conservatives were predicting, but in fact hoping for ("Bring 'em on").

We return to Marshall:
You knew that in general terms. But here are the particulars. One confluence of events seems key. By the middle of 2002 al Qaida was seriously damaged, its infrastructure disrupted, many of its soldiers and key leaders dead. The mix of damage to the organization and increased security in the United States made new mass-casualty terrorism in America all but impossible. The organization had to fall back on smaller-scale attacks mainly in Muslim countries, carried out by local affiliated groups.

But the Iraq war -- and the onset of the occupation -- provided the organization (or its remnants) with a new opportunity. It was both a new vehicle to galvanize followers and operating there meant fewer logistical difficulties since it was close by. Even just before the war, in February of this year, key al Qaida operatives started planning the move toward Iraq as the new front.
Again, ask yourself (or better yet, Marshall) how this proves what Marshall "already knew" - that there was no pre-9/11 connection?

Marshall's not dishonest; he just works context like an old-world craftsman. It doesn't always work. Marshall says:
Also key is the role of Iran, which, according to the Post article, provided key members of the damaged al Qaida organization with a safe-haven during the period between their expulsion from Afghanistan and the opening of their new front in Iraq.
...which he notes in his next post, is a squishy theory.

Marshall continues:
A story like this, culled together from different sources, many of whom are no doubt interested parties, is only a first run at the truth. Points will be refined; major elements of the story may change. But I think this story and those that will follow it will be a major point of discussion for some time to come.
Note the careful double-standard; the left's anti-war cant is allowed to evolve into, apparently, the "final draft" truth over time; the case for war was allowed no revision or room for adaptation.

While I've been tempted to read exhaustively through Marshall's archives to figure out the gestalt of his Iraq coverage, others have done it before. Hugh Hewitt writes in the current edition of his blog:
Joshua Micah Marshall was on the program yesterday, and we mixed it up over Joshua's refusal to articulate any short-term standard against which the occupation of Iraq can be judged. Marshall's entry today is another amusing brew of unattributed insider knowledge, rim-shots off of newspaper stories, and wild rumors: "What changed, apparently, was that the Joint Chiefs went over too Powell's side." Ah, Seven Days in May must be on Josh's bedside. How breathless. How dramatic. How completely absurd: "Colin, this is Dick Myers. I've got Peter Pace with me here, and we want to come over to your side."
Marshall's article points to something I've noticed in the left's entire case against the ~~war~~ Administration, all along. It's led me to a realization, that I think I can postulate in the form of a pseudo-scientific hypothesis I will henceforth call Berg's Law. To wit:
In attacking the reasons for war, no liberal commentator is capable of addressing more than one of the justifications at a time; to do so would introduce a context in which their argument can not survive.
Think about it; when was the last time you saw a left-of-center commentator note the UN resolutions when jawing about the disappearing WMDs? Can you show me a liberal blogger who's talked about WMDs and still noted the UN resolutions that Iraq flaunted? Has anyone on the left spoken of the technicalities of the resolution-enforcement process while noting the WMD allegations and the pre-war evidence of terrorist (not just Al-Quaeda) connections?

Ask around. I'd love an answer to this.
posted by Mitch Berg 9/7/2003 12:35:27 PM

The First Bonehead - The anti-gun left smells blood. The fact that it's just ketchup escapes them and their pals, the media.

The Pioneer Press reported the story of a guy in north-suburban Anoka County who got into a stupid incident with a gun. Unmentioned in the story - it's the type of story that would have never been widely reported under normal circumstances; it's the type of thing that happens constantly in trailer parks and Frogtowns nationwide.

The only thing abnormal about these circumstances is that the guy has a newly-minted Concealed Carry permit.
An Anoka County man, who shot 11 bullets into the hood of his brother's car in an attempt to "kill" it, may be the first Minnesotan to have his gun permit suspended under a new state law that allows holders to carry handguns in most public places.
So far, so good. In fact, so far, exactly to specs; we concealed-carry supporters never said the law-abiding citizen was perfect - merely that he or she was, statistically, incredibly trustworthy. Joe Olson, of Concealed Carry Reform Now, commented accurately on the story's importance (near the veeeeery end of the PiPress' piece):
Joseph Olson, president of the Minnesota-based Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance, said, "No one ever claimed permit holders would be perfect." Information from other states shows that permit holders are more law-abiding than the population in general, Olson said.

"But there are always exceptions, and this gentleman is a moron," he said. "There will be people who will do stupid and illegal things and the law is set up so they lose their permits, which sounds like it worked just fine in this case."
Exactly. The guy screwed up - and is paying the consequences.

Of course, the anti-gun movement as manifested by Citizens for a ~~Supine~~ Safer Minnesota's Rebecca Thoman, see goblins in the dark:
[Thoman] said the case shows why her group opposed the law.

"This is an obvious case of a man turning to a gun in the heat of the moment," she said. "It also goes to the poor training that this law requires. It's not appropriate to use a gun to protect property. It wasn't a situation of his life being threatened."
The story - by Mara Gottfred et al - didn't mention that the guy did feel he was protecting lives; he was trying to shoot out the engine, to keep his drunk brother from going out on the freeway and endangering others. This, of course, is not allowed under Minnesota's paternalistic self-defense laws, where until recently one had a "duty to retreat" as far as possible before defending oneself (a provision that KSTP host Ron Rosenbaum says has been changed, although I've not been able to confirm that).

So what does this story tell us?

Only this: In a year that has featured a rising number of shootings carried out by "people" who do not qualify for carry permits - demi-human vermin who kill cabbies for money, who blast indiscriminately at drug-industry competitors on residential streets without regard for who's in the houses they're drilling, the Victim Disarmament movement is really desperate for some "good" news from its perspective its it's going to yap about this case.
posted by Mitch Berg 9/7/2003 10:36:48 AM

Berg's Law of Liberal Iraq Commentary:

In attacking the reasons for war, no liberal commentator is capable of addressing more than one of the justifications at a time; to do so would introduce a context in which their argument can not survive