Strange Days - We're teetering on the brink of war - according to some pundits, it could happen next week. Some of the "smart money" says the week after. I recall how wrong everyone was in '91, and figure I'll wait to see what happens.
I just finished...gaa, has it really been eight weeks of job hunting? Oy. I haven't been on the beach this long since 1987. It feels like the local high tech economy is building up tension, almost like a bow that's been quietly pulled back...something's going to let it go, one of these days. But for right now, everyone's sitting on their hands.
I have a morning of appointments coming up - but I'll post some stuff this afternoon. Hang in there.
Governor Rice? - The talk about Condi Rice running for governor of California has been flitting about the periphery of GOP circles for a few months.
It's going more mainstream now:
Rice, the former Stanford provost who rates highly with California voters in opinion polls, is "very much open" to a future gubernatorial run in the nation's most populous state, according to those high-level Republicans.Very interesting.Though they admitted much depends on the outcome of the expected U.S. war in Iraq, Republicans at the state's recent party convention openly speculated that a Rice campaign could instantly recharge a party still reeling from losses in every statewide office this past November.
"She's said no on the Senate race, but is very much open on '06," said a Republican insider who asked not to be identified. The Republican said Rice sees herself as more compatible with an executive position such as governor than a legislative office.
Mark Baldassare, pollster for the Public Policy Institute of California, said Rice is "a very visible figure in the Bush administration, very articulate, has roots at Stanford -- and would be taken very seriously."
"In a state where you have to look long and hard for elected officials outside the white male category on the Republican side, Condi Rice would certainly add a new dimension to GOP politics in California," Baldassare said. "It would help (Republicans) deal with what is becoming a stereotype -- that they don't have women and people of color."
I maintain that, if she manages to win California (and there are many potential clinkers in that scenario) and succeeds at it, she stands a great chance of being America's first black and female president.
Indoctrination - My daughter came home from school yesterday and told me that her class had been given a presentation by a number of Hamline University students that had recently been involved in anti-war protests in Washington.
According to my daughter, the students went to great lengths to repeat the standard A.N.S.W.E.R. mantra to the kids; the Iraqis have no weapons of mass destruction; the war is wrong; the President is doing this to finish his father's job, ad nauseum.
My daughter, bless her spunky little heart, claims to have pushed back. She's definitely my little girl - her classroom teacher is a rather avowed far-lefty (Nader, Wellstone, yadda yadda) who earlier in the school year amused the students with derogatory George Bush jokes, until my daughter pushed back.
School can be a terrible place - kids can be so awful. But apparently if you or your parents flout the beliefs of some teachers, the kids are the least of your problems:
Members of the Maine National Guard, called up to prepare for an attack on Iraq, have asserted that their children are being harassed at school by teachers who oppose the war. Top StoriesKids may not know any better. But teachers?Guard members say their children are "coming home upset, depressed, crying," said Maj. Peter Rogers, a spokesman for the Maine National Guard. "This was based on some incidents that were happening in school, both in the classroom and on the playground."
In an e-mail sent to the parents of one child who had complained of harassment at school, National Guard officials said they had "over 30 complaints that name schools and individual principals, teachers and guidance counselors."
Mr. [J. Duke Albanese, state commissioner of education] told the Bangor Daily News that only one complaint involved classroom remarks, after the child of a Guard member became upset during a discussion of Iraq when a teaching assistant "took up the anti-war" argument.We don't know the details - but if it's true, how much gall does it take to attack something a kid's parent is doing, to his/her face?
I plan on asking my daughter's teacher if she plans on bringing in any of St. Paul's Kurdish population to talk about what a harmless fella Hussein is.
Hot on the heels of Tuesday's spinfest, the Strib released another Minnesota Poll yesterday, measuring Tim Pawlenty's first month or so in office.
Despite the furor over cuts to Local Government Aid, Pawlenty's numbers are pretty strong:
Although 60 percent of the 845 adults interviewed Feb. 20 to 23 said that they approved of his handling of the job...According to those two political scientists, Minnesotans seem to think Pawlenty's a likeable enough guy - especially compared with his predecessor:In general, Minnesotans find Pawlenty likeable and credible and are giving him the benefit of the doubt despite the harshness of some of his proposals to balance a $4.2 billion projected budget shortfall, two state political scientists said.
"This guy is affable, there's no question about it," said Steven Schier, a professor at Carleton College in Northfield. "He has strong convictions and can be tart, but he's basically polite and nice, and Minnesotans like that compared to what they've seen over the past four years."The administration has its two cents worth:Said Lilly Goren, a professor at the College of St. Catherine in St. Paul: "There are some legitimate concerns because people are losing jobs and benefits and bus routes. But people liked him better than the other candidates [in November], and they're still feeling warmly toward him."
Pawlenty's chief of staff, Charlie Weaver, said that the results were a "ringing endorsement of him personally" and evidence "that we can fix our problems without raising taxes," a centerpiece of Pawlenty's campaign and budget strategy.It may be a ringing endorsement, or it may be that Pawlenty's still enjoying a honeymoon period.
But evidence in favor of "ringing endorsement" includes this bit:
...approval of his handling of the projected budget deficit for fiscal years 2004 and '05 was slightly lower, at 56 percent."Slightly" lower being the operative word. Pawlenty's approval numbers are predictably lower on some of the issues where the budget problem impacts Minnesotans on a less abstract level: 43 percent for cuts to Local Government Aid that might lead to property tax hikes (49 percent opposed), and 31 percent on his K-12 education spending freeze and the cuts to higher education. This isn't much of a surprise - these sorts of issues are analogous to unfavorable polls about legislators; people consistently give poor marks to legislators in general, but rate their own legislators much higher. In this case, the budget cuts that are most visible to people are the ones that cause the least favorable impressions.
But it would seem Pawlenty has done a decent job of selling his program:
Support for Pawlenty appeared to be tied to self-perceived knowledge about the issues. More than half the respondents, 55 percent, said they knew "a fair amount" or "quite a lot" about the budget, while 44 percent said they knew "only a little" or "not much at all."Support was highest in the Twin Cities area, and among males and Republicans.Among those who said they knew a lot or a fair amount, support for Pawlenty's proposals was higher on all of the major budget issues: use of tobacco money, local government aid and education spending.
Here may be the best news for Pawlenty - his key message, that government should tighten its belt as Minnesotans are doing the same, seems to be selling, at least on the abstract level:
Tad Engstrom, 27, a carpenter from Stillwater, said he likes Pawlenty because he agrees with his message that, like families, governments can't just raise taxes and must reduce spending to survive. "We have to make cuts in our budget, and it's always worked for us," Engstrom said. "I don't agree with raising because they're way too . . . high the way they are. A lot of us are getting to the point where enough is enough."While there's still a long way to go on this budget process, and the economy is still soft (and the poll may predate reactions to many budget cuts), it is in some ways an indicator of a watershed in Minnesota politics. For generations, Minnesotans were willing to swallow ever-higher spending, and near-endless tax increases. Now, though, after twelve years of unprecedented increases and the squandering of years of massive, tax-funded surpluses on program increases, the message of the state's right is finally getting through; enough is enough. There's no reason state government should be living any larger than its citizens.
This next few months are going to be interesing for the Administration. I'd suspect the Pawlenty administration is banking on the same thing many of us are; that the economy is going to pick up through the spring and summer, which will erase a fair chunk of the deficit. Like many households - mine included - the Pawlenty adminstration is hunkering down to get through the downturn, in a fashion to which Minnesotans are unaccustomed to seeing in their government.
If this poll is an indication, Minnesotans appreciate it.
Take the Deal - Fred Thompson, former Senator from Tennessee and current District Attorney on Law and Order, is providing a welcome antidote to Martin Sheen, according to Drudge:
"Thank goodness we have a President with the courage to protect our country," LAW AND ORDER's Thompson says in the commercial. "What should we do with the inevitable prospect of nuclear weapons in the hands of a murderous and aggressive enemy? Can we afford to appease Saddam?"And here's the coolest possibility of all:
In an interview with a local Memphis newspaper, Thompson did not hide his disdain for what he considers WEST WING's preachy liberalism. "I've been thinking about the possibility of having my character run against Martin Sheen (Bartlet) for president," Thompson declared.If he does, I'll make my own line of bumper stickers: "Fred Thompson Is My Real Make-Believe President".
Cogent - Neil Pollack of the Stranger has perhaps one of the most cogent comments about the media and the blogosphere as we count down to war:
Just Shut Up. Nobody gives a shit what anti-war or pro-war writers think. Really. So shut up. That goes double for poets. Shut the hell up, poets. Everybody just shut up.The article goes downhill from there, of course - how could it not? But I figured with a lede like that, I had to give it a nod.
Word Processing - After all these years, I finally saw a picture of Molly Ivins. She looks like Lambchop's alcoholic aunt.
Which might explain some of her "logic" in this column.
I almost hate to bother fisking Molly Ivins. I won't take the cheap shot route - the woman's neither retarded nor senile. She's just an idiot. An idiot with a way with a faux-homespun yarn, but an idiot nonetheless.
Edward Monks, a lawyer in Eugene, Ore., did a report for the newspaper there last year on the prevalence of right-wing hosts on radio talk shows. "The spectrum of opinion on national political commercial talk radio shows ranges from extreme right wing to very extreme right wing -- there is virtually nothing else." Monks notes the irony that many of these right-wing hosts spend much of their time complaining about "the liberal media."Isn't this like complaining about how everyone in a bowling alley is talking about bowling instead of baseball? Talk radio is the only niche within the media - really, within public, non-military society - where the dominant culture is conservative. That is as compared to the networks, most newspapers, academia, the public school system, all unions, the non-profit community, Public Broadcasting, and on, and on...
Ivins continues:
On the two Eugene talk stations, Monks found: "There are 80 hours per week, more than 4,000 hours per year, programmed for Republican and conservative talk shows, without a single second programmed for a Democratic or liberal perspective. ... Political opinions expressed on talk radio are approaching the level of uniformity that would normally be achieved only in a totalitarian society. There is nothing fair, balanced or democratic about it."It's sort of like taking a little kid to a store ten times. The first nine times, you buy the kid a pack of gum. The tenth time, you say "no", and the kid scrunches up her face and pouts "you NEVER buy me gum!".
Yes, Molly and Edwin, talk radio is a conservative preserve. It is not "the media", though, just a medium. One medium, among the long list of news, info and entertainment media.
Commercial talk radio is conservative. Against that:
Indeed, it's the only intellectual competition there is among American media. Competition - a concept for which Ivins cries crocodile tears:
To point out the obvious, broadcasters and their national advertisers have a clear stake in promoting the views of those who advocate lower taxes on the rich and on big corporations. What is so perfectly loony about the FCC's proposal to unleash yet another round of media concentration is that it is being done in the name of "the free market."So the US is ranked 17th by "Reporters Without Borders"? Whoah - where did they come in?Is the free market not supposed to encourage competition rather than lead to its disappearance? The U.S. now ranks 17th, below Costa Rica and Slovenia, on the worldwide index of press freedom established by the Reporters Without Borders.
We're Number 17! - Who is this "Reporters Without Borders" group that Molly Ivins has so favored?
They're a French organization, for starters.
How did they end up ranking us 17th?
Look at this map - RW/oB ranks the US equal to the likes of Peru and France - and worse than Canada, whose trends on censorship would make any genuine American reporter or libertarian blanche in horror.
No, indeed, the only criticism RW/oB seems to have is that we're in the midst of a war on terrorism - and the poll, being compiled from reports sent in by journalists in the countries themselves, reflects the rather exacting standards of journalist/activists in the US, who would seem to regard any hint of restriction of information as censorship.
Not that it's not justifiable - a free press is vital to a free society. But RW/oB's poll, as quoted by Ivins, is an incredibly misleading piece of work.
Why Is It... - ...that so many of the stars I instinctively like the least, end up being the ones with the political views I appreciate the most?
First, Ted Nugent. Now; Kid Rock:
Kid Rock won't be joining the music industry's anti-war movement.Side note - he made this statement the day after he shared the stage with Sheryl "War is Bad Karma" Crow, at the Grammys. Bummer."Why is everybody trying to stop the war? George Bush ain't been saying, 'You all, make s-y records.' Politicians and music don't mix. It's like whisky and wine. [Musicians] ought to stay out of it."
But it doesn't take much nudging to hear the Kid's policy analysis. "We got to kill that mother-[bleeper] Saddam," he says. "Slit his throat. Kill him and the guy in North Korea."
Are some women and children going to die? "Yeah. But is doing the right thing. You got money, you sit around talking about peace. People who don't have money need some help."
(Via Jay Reding)
Drastic Oversight - So this fall, it'll be ten years since I moved into my house.
And in all that time, I still haven't had a housewarming party. I may have to fix that.
Part of it was that it was just impossible; my then-wife and I had a newborn, a toddler and a teenager to deal with. Then two toddlers and a teenagerier teenager. Then two school-age kids and the teenageriest teen I've seen, and a divorce. And since then - oy, gevalt, so busy I've been.
But it occurs to me that I need to do this. It's time to start planning my party, for this October. And I may just make it the first blog-centric decade-late housewarming in history - an occasion to meet the Twin Cities' small but pretty darn high-quality band of bloggers, among many others.
Of course, it's all dependent on finding a job (and there've been some positive developments in the past week, although obviously one development short of where I'd like it to be) by then. And a girlfriend would be nice to have by that point, too, although I'm not going to set my sights too high...
It also occurs to me that I haven't thrown a genuine party since the last time I was on unemployment, back in 1987. In celebration of my last UI check on getting a job, I threw a bender that had it all; sick-to-puking drunkenness, food-poisoning-til-puking eating (someone made a hamburger from meat that'd been sitting out for eight hours on a hot July evening), at least one brawl, one breakup, one new and fabulous relationship (for someone else, of course) that lasted at least through the next weekend (and lots of other flirtation and dalliance...), and the worst hangover I've had in my life.
The next one will probably be a bit more restrained.
Anyway, finger-food for thought. Stay tuned - more to come in this space as events warrant.
Poll Cats - Is it just me, or is the Strib spinning like mad?
Today' Strib Minnesota Poll headline reads "Support for Bush slipping". And then proceeds to tell us that things are basically...normal.
As he steers the nation to the brink of war with Iraq, President Bush faces a continuing slide in his approval ratings and a majority that disagrees with his determination to proceed against Iraq even without a new U.N. resolution, according to the latest Star Tribune Minnesota Poll.So they start off claiming a "majority" opposes Bush on Iraq. Then, a few grafs down, the story says:
A slim but steady majority continues to back the idea of using force to remove Saddam Hussein, when the question is asked without reference to the United Nations. But when the Minnesota Poll asked respondents to consider the possibility that the Security Council might reject a resolution authorizing force, only 38 percent agreed with Bush's intention of beginning military action with the help of countries that are willing....assuming the UN spikes the idea!Fifty-six percent would prefer that war be postponed while inspections proceed and multilateral discussions continue...
So in other words, the Strib is taking "A majority favors force (depending on the conditions)" and turning it into "A majority opposes force".
Strikes me as either clumsy spin or biased reporting. OK - what am I missing here?
The article goes on:
Fifty percent of Minnesotans said they approve of Bush's overall job performance -- down 12 percentage points since December, and down 37 points from the stratospheric levels his ratings reached just after the Sept. 11 attacks.It says this without mentioning that the numbers, in any case, are still almost unprecedently high, even as they inevitably erode over time, especially given the state of the economy!In general, the poll showed declining support for Bush's performance and his policies.
A majority of Minnesotans still approve of Bush's handling of the campaign against terrorism, but that majority is down from 64 percent in December to 57 percent now. A plurality of Minnesotans -- 47 percent -- now disapproves of Bush's handling of the economy, while 42 percent approve.I need to dig through the raw data (assuming I can find it), but I have to wonder, when nearly 2/3 approve of the way he's handling terrorism and a slim plurality disagree with the Administration on economic issues, where that figure comes from.And 58 percent of Minnesotans -- the highest level since 1996 -- say the nation is off on the wrong track.
Here's the part I have to wonder about:
"Everything you are finding indicates a presidency on the precipice," said University of Minneota political scientist Larry Jacobs. "He's put the country's prestige on the line and appears to be on a glide path to war, yet the country appears to be more divided than at any time during his presidency. An approval rating of 50 percent is an alarming vital sign for any presidency."Reagan pushed through his agenda with lower numbers. I have to wonder where Professor Jacobs gets this.
So after the Strib's - and Jacobs' - gloom and doom predictions, the poll gets down to brass tacks:
The 55 percent majority that supports military action to remove Saddam is virtually unchanged since December and last August. Thirty-eight percent opposed military action. Men, Republicans, and those with higher incomes were more likely to support the use of force. Recent national polls have shown similar results.Get that? The real number supporting Bush is 55-38! That's three points shy of a twenty point lead, and it hasn't changed since August!
So re-read the headline, and tell me how this makes sense?
Although national polls have shown support for removing Saddam, they have also shown a preference for a multilateral, U.N.-sanctioned approach, in contrast with Bush's determination to proceed with or without a new U.N. resolution.I've seen no poll yet ask the question "do you think Hussein is playing the UN for a bunch of patsies"? Anyone?
Safe Home - the Minnesota Poll also measures how safe we feel, here in Minnesota.
A large majority (68 percent) of Minnesotans believes another terrorist attack against the United States is at least somewhat likely within the next few months. But only 10 percent said such an attack was likely to hit in the area where they live or work.Interesting, given the little burst of warnings about "soft targets" a few weeks ago, coming from everyone this side of the agent in charge of the Minneapolis FBI office on down.The number of Minnesotans describing themselves as very or somewhat fearful for their own safety -- which was never high -- has continued to drift down slowly. In October 2001 -- immediately after the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks -- 26 percent of Minnesotans expressed a personal fear. By August 2002, it was 23 percent, and in the latest poll, 19 percent.
Just 9 percent said they had taken steps to prepare for a terrorist attack.
Peace Rally - Jay Manifold talks about a genuine peace rally he visited - an interfaith observation at a Baptist church.
The whole article is very much worth reading - it's great - but here's the payoff section as far as I'm concerned:
The church sanctuary, built in the style of an immense amphitheater, was full. Musicians, singers, clergy, and congregants from six evangelical churches and five synagogues were there; American and Israeli flags stood on the dais, with more Israeli flags draped from the balcony, and banners hanging above the choir loft behind the dais, on either side of the 10' x 15' video screen; Isaiah 56:7 was prominent. The pastor's first word to the congregation was "shalom," and he spoke of the gathering in terms of a "family reunion." The closing remarks were delivered by a rabbi, who spoke on Genesis 22:6, which ends (in the JPS TaNaKh) with: "And the two of them walked on together." Then the video screen showed the words to the Israeli national anthem so that we could all sing it.A few lights, here and there.One of J.R.R. Tolkien's letters contains an astonishing vignette. He tells the story of a Jewish friend glancing meaningfully at a clock by way of subtly reminding Tolkien that he will miss a church service if he does not depart immediately, and of the feeling this gave him: "A glimpse of an unfallen world." Just about any American evangelical baby boomer with Jewish friends has gotten many such glimpses. Of course, this service was in many ways a reminder of our all-too-fallen world; we were, after all, praying for the peace of Jerusalem -- thus the readings of Psalm 122 (in Hebrew, with English translation printed in the program), and Psalms 116, 125, and 128.
But it left me in awe, with a sense that after centuries of wretchedness, I was born into the first generation to get it right, the fruit of emergent behavior in the freest society on Earth. The lights may be going out in Europe, but in America, in this year 2003 of our Common Era, the lights are coming on.
Outside, things are still pretty dark. But here in America, for all the naysaying and the emotional hinkiness that attends times like these, we're not doing all that badly.
(Via Instapundit)
The Times, They Are A-Bleating - I love this email to Sullivan on The Dish today:
"At the end of the 3rd quarter in the "Is the NYT biased bowl?", let's review some relevant stats:Via, obviously, Sullivan.
Score: Sullivan, Kaus et al: 52, NYT: 3
1st downs: Sullivan, et al: 28, NYT: 1
Passing Yards: Sullivan, et al: 320, NYT: 15
Rushing Yards: Sullivan, et al: 225, NYT: -5
So yes, while it may be true that the 4th quarter belongs to you, Mr. Raines, the rest of the world has turned the game off. It's over."
Nahm - I remember reading, back in 1995, reading about how Republicans, let by Vin Weber, were courting Norm Coleman for national office - there was even speculation he was on the long list for the 2000 GOP race. That talk receded a bit after the '98 gubernatorial campaign.
It seems the talk is back. Coleman's making a pretty big splash for a freshman senator:.
Dinerstein [Sid - chair of the Palm Beach GOP] predicted that Republicans in 2008 are likely to face a presidential contest between Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani. He said that having Coleman as a running mate could help in states such as Florida, New York and California.Given that Jeb and Rudy'll be the front-runners, the Vice Presidential race could be really interesting in '08; Norm is obviously an attractive candidate for the GOP - young, capable, a very adept politician, and able to help the continuing swing to the right among younger Jewish voters.Erich Mische, Coleman's state director, said that "it's always very gratifying to be the topic of speculation about your next job" but that Coleman is focused on his two subcommittee chairmanships and Minnesota issues.
I see him pitted against Condi Rice, whom some analysts see being able to win the California governorship in the near future. Depending on how the Iraq situation turns out, she could be a real superstar, soon.
So which is more important to crack - the Jewish vote or the Black Female vote? Which can be more easily cracked?
It's fun to be a Republican these days...
Democrat Problems - Jay Reding has an excellent analysis, I think, of the Democrats' current problem:
The Democrats are doing exactly the opposite of what they should be doing. They're copying the GOP playbook of 1998 by creating a demon figure on the opposition.There really doesn't seem to be a Democrat with a coherent vision. Not that that's a bad thing. Or for that matter, not that the current Democrat vision would necessarily sell.Except the problem isn't with the hardcore DNC partisans that this strategy would motivate. The problem is that swing voters are moving towards the GOP. This strategy does nothing to correct that movement. In fact, it will only make it worse.
The Democrats are coming off as a shrill and partisan party with an obssession with the President. In other words, they're coming off as the GOP of the Clinton years. We all know how effective that strategy was back then.
Reding continutes:
If the Democrats want to have a chance in 2004, they need to start becoming an effective minority party. That doesn't merely entail attacking the plans of the majority, it means coming up with better alternatives. However, even if the Dems do come up with viable public policies, their message is going to be lost to the attacks they make on Bush.That's the thing that many of us railed about in '96 - and hope nobody in the DNC's railing about now; Reagan never had to attack anyone. He articulated a vision that Americans wanted to share.Political attacks are only viable when you are confident that you have the ability to gain an edge. This strategy is only going to compound the Democrats problems with swing voters and reduce their viability. Then again, looking at the current makeup of the Democratic Party, having them out of office is probably a good thing for the country.
Do the Dems have any such vision?
What The.... - Norah Jones sweeps the big awards?
I mean, it's great intimate-fifth-date music (which is why I've only heard the album on the car radio and on the kiosks at the record store), but Album of the Year, during a year with The Rising and The Eminem Show came out?
Can anyone say "Christopher Cross"? Sarah Vaughn or Cassandra Wilson are to Norah Jones as Django Reinhardt is to Pat Metheny.
On the other hand, the "All Star Tribute to the Clash", by Elvis Costello, Springsteen, Miami Steve Van Zandt and Dave Grohl, was really, really great. Even my 11 year old daughter went "Wow. That was cool. Wish we could get that on CD".
UPDATE: A correspondent writes: "Django was a genius, yes, but don't sell Metheny short - he's hardly a lite-jazz fret caresser."
Fair enough. Metheny is good, although I haven't listened to him much since the late eighties. I just needed something a little less obvious than "Billie Holiday is to Norah Jones as Charlie Parker is to Kenny G". Point taken.
Here's the real question: Am I wrong? Am I selling Jones short?
I'm willing to be convinced.
Grammy Whaaa??? - Jesse Harris beats Springsteen for Songwriter of the Year? Granted, Norah Jones is very good. But...what?
The E Street Band; the TV sound mix was just plain wierd. Live is still the only way to fly.
Can't wait to see the all star salute to the Clash. Also can't wait to see why the Academy figures they had to honor the Clash this long after they broke up, unhonored by the Academy in the first place. I mean, should they also honor Stiff Little Fingers?
More to come.
Taking a Page from the Sullivan Songbook - I am now running two awards for the end of 2003:
More are sought!
Baldwin Award Nominee - George Clooney, famed military historian and thinker, has favored a German news program with his keen, cutting and qualified observations about a potential war with Iraq:
Clooney, 41, said Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was making a mistake to think a war against Iraq would be an easy win for the United States.One wonders two things:"I believe he thinks this is a war that can be won, but there is no such thing anymore," said Clooney, who starred in a film about the 1991 Gulf War "Three Kings" that took a dark look at the war to drive Iraq out of Kuwait.
"We can't beat anyone anymore," added Clooney
Single Payer Healthcare - Advocates of Single Payer Heathcare - and the Twin Cities are crawling with them - say we couldn't possibly have any worse-quality healthcare than we do now, and point to the British system as an example of how to do it right.
Not that years of other evidence to the contrary has had any effect, of course. But this story is the cherry on the sludge sundae:
BRITISH hospital managers gave a surgeon a dessert spoon to use in a hip replacement operation, prompting him to spend £150 ($405) of his own money to buy the proper instrument, a tribunal has heard.Just a fluke?Dr Godfrey Charnley later quit his job and is suing the public agency that runs Derriford Hospital in Plymouth, south-western England, for allegedly forcing him out.
He said assistants had given him a sterilised metal dessert spoon instead of a curette, a sharp-edged, spoon-shaped tool he should have had to scrape cartilage and damaged bone from the hip socket...He held up a household spoon similar to the one he said he was given.The system, threatened, is striking back:He said the hospital's cost-cutting managers had previously tried to persuade him to use a dessert spoon, but he refused.
Julian Hoskins, lawyer for the Plymouth Hospitals National Health Service Trust, accused Charnley of threatening Sister Helen Wood, a nun present in the operating room, over a report on the incident "by telling her what you would do or not do unless she tore up that piece of paper".What? A bureaucracy, cheating?Charnley replied that he had only asked to see the page to check that it fairly described what had happened.
The surgeon, who now practices at another hospital, also claims managers pressured him to manipulate waiting lists so they would not be fined for making patients wait too long.
Never.
Many Times Bitten, Twice Shy - I'm not shocked we've had such a rash of club disasters in the past week - shocked, perhaps, only that it's taken this long to have a serious disaster.
As the death toll in the Rhode Island Concert Fire climbs toward 100, the word is leaking out that the band had no permission to use pyrotechnics.
Great White used pyrotechnics during three other shows - Feb. 7 at the Pinellas Park Expo Center near Tampa, Fla.; Feb. 13 in Allentown, Pa.; and Tuesday in Bangor, Maine - without discussing it with promoters or the venue, according to concert organizers or their spokesmen.The motto among a lot of rock and roll people is "it's easier to get forgiveness than permission". The Chicago and Rhode Island disasters greatly - and justifiably - overshadowed our own near miss, when the Fine Line in Minneapolis suffered $100,000 in damage from another band that not only used pyrotechnics, but apparently made it a habit:Domenic Santana, the owner of the Stone Pony club in Asbury Park, N.J., said Great White failed to tell him they were using pyrotechnics during a Valentine's Day show.
"Our stage manager didn't even know it until it was done," said Santana. "My sound man freaked out because of the heat and everything, and they jeopardized the health and the safety of our patrons."
Officials at other clubs said Great White asked before using pyrotechnics and complied when they were turned down. One of those venues was the Oxygen Nightclub in Evansville, Ind., where the band played Feb. 3.
Members of the The Jet City Fix never told club owner Dario Anselmo that they would be shooting anything off during their set, Anselmo said. The band played a show at Luther's Blues bar in Madison, Wis., on Sunday and was yelled at by the owner after it did the same thing, Anselmo said.I'm amazed that we haven't seen more of these sorts of things. Bands and their roadies (those that have roadies) are incredibly casual about these thing - usually from ignorance. I've seen lots of bands fire off pyros in bars. I'd be amazed if more than a few of them had permits.
Open Question for NPR Staff - When National Public Radio's news reporters and anchors read the names of the capitals of France, Germany, Poland, the Netherlands, Norway, South Africa, Hungary, Romania and Russia, respectively - really, any first-world or first-world-allied nation - they say PAIR-iss, Bur-LINN, WAR-sah, AM-stir-dam, OSS-lo, Joe-HAN-es-burg, BOO-da-pest, BUU-ca-rest and MOSS-cow. They never use the native pronunciations: pair-EE, bear-LEEN, var-SHA-va, OMM-shter-dom, OO-slow, Yo-HON-esh-boork, boo-da-PESHT, bu-koo-REST-ee or MOS-kva.
But whenever the topic turns to Latin America, the Middle East or the Third World, suddenly the entire NPR news staff wraps their tongues floridly and tortuously around the most elaborate native (or pseudo-native) pronunciations. Away with Nicaragua, Pakistan, Tehran, Guatamala, Tijuana, Havana, Chile - in with Nee-ka-RRRAH-wha, Pock-ee-STON, Tay-hay-RRRRRON, Hwat-a-MAAA-la, Tee-WHAAA-na, Ha-BAAA-na, CHEEEE-lay. Combine the florid, pretentious and selective attempts at native pronunciation with the standard-issue, round-syllabled, college-professor NPR accent, and everyone sounds like Jimmy Carter on Quaaludes.
So why do NPR staffers throw themselves at Spanish and Arabic pronunciations with the determination of a pack of third-graders on a stack of Pokemon cards, but sluff through the rest of the world's place names with the gringo aplomb of a bunch of Indiana Kiwanians?
Anyone?
Laughs in Danger's Face - Kevin Pollack in the NYTimes writes about why this may be our last chance to deal with Hussein on favorable terms.
The whole article is worth a read - but I want to call your attention to this bit here:
America has never encountered a country that saw nuclear weapons as a tool for aggression. During the cold war we feared that the Russians thought this way, but we eventually learned that they were far more conservative. Our experts may be split on how to handle North Korea, but they agree that the Pyongyang regime wants nuclear weapons for defensive purposes — to stave off the perceived threat of an American attack. The worst that anyone can suggest is that North Korea might blackmail us for economic aid or sell such weapons to someone else (with Iraq being near the top of that list). Only Saddam Hussein sees these weapons as offensive — as enabling aggression.That's why I keep saying the Korean "crisis" is a diversion (very probably staged in collusion with Hussein himself, given his close relationship with Pyongyang; when all is said and done, Kim Jong-Il is at least rational (in a very aggressive way) about what force represents. It's a tool - a very overused tool, in his case, a tool he trots out with amazing freqency, but a tool nonetheless.
With Hussein, it's different. Why? Pollack continues:
Finally, we cannot forget that all evidence has shown Saddam Hussein to be an incorrigible optimist who willfully ignores signs of danger. Consider that on at least five occasions over the last three decades, he has embarked on foreign policy adventures that nearly destroyed him: his attack on Iraq's Kurds in 1974 (which might have ended in an Iranian assault on Baghdad if the shah of Iran had not unexpectedly decided to double-cross the Kurds instead); his invasion of Iran in 1980; his invasion of Kuwait in 1990; his assassination attempt against former President Bush in 1993; and his threatened attack on Kuwait in 1994. In each case, he took a course of action that we know even his closest advisers considered extremely dangerous.Democrats - show this article to your friends.This is the problem with Saddam Hussein. The assertion that he is not intentionally suicidal may be true, but it is irrelevant. In the end, he has frequently proven inadvertently suicidal.
And he seems to be doing it again. With more than 150,000 American soldiers taking positions on his borders he continues to run the international inspectors in circles, foolishly confident that his minor concessions will stave off an invasion. Is there any other person on earth who wouldn't turn his country inside out to prove that he did not have more weapons of mass destruction? Once again, he seems to be betting his life that the game is not as dangerous as everyone else thinks it is.
Human Shields, Day One - Reports indicate that western "human shields" are starting to dribble into Iraq.
"We will try everything to get peace instead of war and to protect civil societies," said Ingrid Ternert, a Swedish member of the group.Nice to know they've picked the right place.The volunteers planned to spend only one night at the station, but said others would rotate in to protect the infrastructure installation, which wasn't bombed during the 1991 Gulf War.
Workers at the station were happy with their unusual visitors.The WaPo didn't mention if Mr. Alwan had a gun to his head or not."We welcomed them. I feel happy and it is nice because they want peace for our country," said Hussein Alwan, a 32-year-old supervisor.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Wednesday that any Iraqi officials who help in the deployment of the human shields could be punished as war criminals.I can't wait - can not wait - to see how the average Iraqi citizen reacts to these people when liberation finally happens.Asked about Rumsfeld's remarks, Ternert, a high school teacher, said: "He doesn't know that this is protecting the society."
Some of the human shields weren't exposing themselves to much danger. Cano said the United States would be to blame if anyone is hurt - but conceded that likely wouldn't be him.Indeed, all of them - and, regrettably, Sean Penn as well - will probably live to tell the tale of their superhuman courage."I will be leaving Iraq in two days," he said. "So I personally think I will be all right."
The real thing is almost wierder than Unfossilized's inside scoop.
My Favorite New Toy - I could stare at it for hours.
Pearl - Today's the anniversary of Daniel Pearl's murder.
Lileks has a great Bleat on the subject. Here's one of two money clips:
Playwright Harold Pinter, speaking at last weekend’s rally, said "The US is a nation out of control," and “unless we stop it, it will bring barbarism to the entire world." He said America was "a country run by a bunch of criminal lunatics with Tony Blair as a hired Christian thug."The other:When Blair shows up in the pulpit cleaving the air with a scimitar, let me know. When US television broadcasts a speech with Billy Graham hosting an Excalibur replica from the Franklin Mint Collection, demanding the decapitation of Muslims, let me know. When George Bush grips the podium and beseeches American rock formations to give up the location of non-Christians so we can slit their throats, and it’s carried live on national TV by presidential order, drop me a line.
It takes a particularly rarified variety of idiot to look at a Jew-hating fascist with a small mustache - and decide that his opponent is the Nazi.
every so often - say, when you’re standing in the aisle of Target, woolgathering, recalling something you heard on the radio on the way over, or read on the web that morning, and you see headlines: Israel retaliates; Syrian forces push south or Smallpox appears contained, for now and you wonder whether this simple trivial moment will seem unutterably precious in six months, or three - and then you shake it off, and buy Tupperware. Another normal February day.It is, indeed, interesting to read things written before 9/11; my own diary, magazines, even peoples' weblogs. I often wonder - what will these days look like in a year? Like looking at peoples' diaries in 1938? The uncertainty, the political maneuvering, the thundering jeremiads from left and right...March is named after which Roman god? Yes, yes. Of course.
I need to bookmark some of these things.
Les Monquiez Surrendeurellement aux Consommez du Fromage - The French have been getting a lousy rap lately.
Much of it's deserved.
Yesterday's edition of Fraters Libertas did an able fisking of the execrable Molly Ivins' latest take on the French.
In her latest piece, Ivins proves that those who decry others' knowlege of history had best be up on it themselves. Ivins is not up to the challenge.
This is going to be just a tad redundant - the Fraters did a fine job - but I have no problem piling on Molly Ivins:
George Will saw fit to include in his latest Newsweek column this joke: "How many Frenchmen does it take to defend Paris? No one knows, it's never been tried."Ivins gets part of it right - and some of the critics of France get it partly wrong.That was certainly amusing.
One million, four hundred thousand French soldiers were killed during World War I. As a result, there weren't many Frenchmen left to fight in World War II. Nevertheless, 100,000 French soldiers lost their lives trying to stop Adolf Hitler.
Germany and Russia both lost greater numbers of men in action than did France. But France had a smaller population than Germany or Russia. Roughly 65% of all Frenchmen of military age were killed, wounded, captured or declared missing in World War I. That's nearly 2/3. The other combatants suffered grievously as well - Germany nearly 50%, Britain 35% and the US roughly 8%.
The gutting of an entire generation affected all Western societies - but the French worst of all. Although they remained a world power, they suffered from a malaise from which, in some ways, they never recovered. Picture America's post-Vietnam hangover, only 100 times worse.
This is the last part where Ivins is even close to the truth, though.
On behalf of every one of those 100,000 men, I would like to thank Mr. Will for his clever joke. They were out-manned, out-gunned, out-generaled and, above all, out-tanked. They got slaughtered, but they stood and they fought. Ha-ha, how funny.Wrong on most counts.
In the few places where they had tanks, they held splendidly.Simplistic in the extreme. The French held out just fine in quite a number of areas - but it was irrelevent. The German Blitzkrieg was built around, as Nathan Bedford Forrest put it, "hitting 'em where they ain't". The Germans would force a breakthrough ( in the Ardennes mountains in Belgium), then force all their tanks through the hole. The French spread their tanks evenly over their entire front. Where the French held, with or without tanks, it was in a place the Germans weren't attacking.
And as the Fraters mention, there were a few armored counterattacks by British and French troops. They managed to win some localized successes (as the British did at Arras) that were overwhelmed by the German advance everywhere else.
Relying on the Maginot Line was one of the great military follies of modern history, but it does not reflect on the courage of those who died for France in 1940. For 18 months after that execrable defeat, the United States of America continued to have cordial diplomatic relations with Nazi Germany.As irrelevant an observation as it is stupid.
Not as stupid as what follows:
For those of you who have not read Paris 1919, I recommend it highly. Roosevelt was anti-colonialist. That system was a great evil, a greater horror even than Nazism or Stalinism.And with this, Ivins proves her own gaping cretinism. Naziism, Stalinism, and their offshoots, as well as the wars they started between them devoured as many as 150 million people in the last century.
Ivins is again raving.If you have read Leopold's Ghost by Adam Hochschild, you have some idea. The French were in it up to their necks.
Instead of insisting on freedom for the colonies of Europe, we let our allies carry on with the system, leaving the British in India and Africa, and the French in Vietnam and Algeria, to everyone's eventual regret.
Roosevelt in 1919 was an Assistant Secretary of the Navy. He had no power over colonial policy, to say nothing of that of other sovereign nations.
Or does Ivins mean after 1945? When the British began divesting their colonies almost immediately? Let's look into this:
Surrender monkeys? Try Dien Bien Phu. Yes, the French did surrender, didn't they? After 6,000 French died in a no-hope position. Ever heard of the Foreign Legion? Of the paratroopers, called "paras"? The trouble we could have saved ourselves if we had only paid attention to Dien Bien Phu.So, which is it? Is colonialism worse than Naziism, or is the French defense of their colonies, and DeGaulle's foot-dragging and horribly bloody disengagement from Algeria proof that they're a tough, pugnacious people? I'm confused.Then came Algeria. As nasty a war as has ever been fought. If you have seen the film Battle of Algiers, you have some idea. Five generations of pieds noirs, French colonialists, thought it was their country Charles de Gaulle came back into power in 1958, specifically elected to keep Algeria French. I consider de Gaulle's long, slow, delicate, elephantine withdrawal (de Gaulle even looked like an elephant) one of the single greatest acts of statesmanship in history. Only de Gaulle could have done that..
The other night on 60 Minutes, Andy Rooney, who fought in France and certainly has a right to be critical, chided the French for forgetting all that sacrifice. But I think he got it backward: The French remember too well.Apparently not. They learned in the fifties and sixties that appeasement of terrorists was a one-way trip to a fiery death.
I was in Paris on Sept. 11, 2001. The reaction was so immediate, so generous, so overwhelming.Nobody doubts that many, maybe most, French people have their hearts in the right place. Their government is where the problems come in.Not just the government, but the people kept bringing flowers to the American embassy. They covered the American Cathedral, the American Church, anything they could find that was American.
They didn't just leave flowers -- they wrote notes with them. I read more than 100 of them. Not only did they refer, again and again, to Normandy, to never forgetting, but there were even some in ancient, spidery handwriting referring to WWI: "Lafayette is still with you."
This is where I think the real difference is. We Americans are famously ahistorical. We can barely be bothered to remember what happened last week, or last month, much less last year.Nor should Ivins "go there". Any putative French "historicism" is based on a collective national dogma - the same as Russian "paranoia" and Japanese "isolationism" and German "Volk". The French "knowledge of history" is neither particularly objective (not that Ivins is fit to comment) nor necessarily healthy.The French are really stuck on history. (Some might claim this is because the French are better educated than we are. I won't go there.)
Yes, it does.Does it not occur to anyone that these are very old friends of ours, trying to tell us what they think they know about being hated by weak enemies in the Third World?
France gets a bum rap in the US, in some respects. The Germans swept them aside in 1940, largely because they were a demoralized people, many of whom felt more sympathy for authoritarian Vichy than their own republic. Their military is the butt of jokes, even though many of their special forces are among the best in the world. They have experience being hated in the Third World, largely because they were among the most brutal and autocratic colonizers.
The French story is neither as craven as the likes of Jay Leno would tell you - nor as monochromatically courageous as Molly Ivins would have you believe.
Biting the Hand that Blogs Me - Blogger.com, the site with which I publish Shot in the Dark, has revolutionized web publishing.
For example, it's made instant web publishing possible for people who neither know nor care to know HTML code or how to FTP files to servers.
It also has bad habits, like losing archives - I have no idea where the archives for the last year have gone. Very irritating.
I'll be updating to a better system as soon as I get a job.
It's no secret; I'm one of the small, misbegotten, misunderstood troupe of conservatives that are huge Bruce Springsteen fans.
I don't know who gives us more grief - conservatives like Jason Lewis, who mistake his marketing savvy and relentless blue-collar mien for socialistic diddling, or liberals who see his relentless blue-collar mien and often-dour lyrics about the dark side of American life as an indictment of capitalism and America itself.
Both are wrong, of course.
The most galling thing about Bruce, of course, is that some ultra-left demigog always manages to appoint himself the Pope of Bruce. During the first half of Bruce's career, Dave Marsh filled the role. Marsh was the most galling of rock critics - an able critic with impeccable musical taste (he wrote the definitive bios of the Who and Bruce, among many other great rock tomes), who nonetheless couldn't write a shopping list without slipping in a paeon to Castro or a condemnation of Ronald Reagan.
Eric Alterman has taken over the papacy of Bruce recently. The far-left pundit - most famous for the preposterous What Liberal Media? - also wrote Aint' No Sin to Be Glad You're Alive, a capable dissection of Springsteen's music as literature and social criticism which, despite being a fair set of opinions, is no less dogmatic than any of Marsh's neo-Maoist screeds.
Dexter Van Zile has written an interesting piece on Springsteen-via-Alterman in the Washington Dispatch.
In his recent piece in The Nation (“USA OUI! BUSH NON!” Feb. 10, 2003), Eric Alterman returns to a familiar trope – Bruce Springsteen’s moral and artistic superiority. It's an important theme in Alterman's writings and for good reason. Springsteen's body of work, shot through as it is with depictions of wounded manhood, mournful ambivalence and longing for redemption, provides convenient fodder for Alterman's proclamations of America's inherent greatness, the failure of Democratic leadership to live up to that greatness and the malign intent of Republicans to undermine it. But while mournful ambivalence and all that accompanies it may make for good artistry, it doesn't make for good foreign policy, which is why unlike Alterman, most Americans can embrace both Springsteen and George W. Bush in their respective realms. Americans may tolerate, even enjoy, watching artists grapple with self-doubt, but they realize that when it comes to responding to the challenges in the international arena, there are times when politicians must struggle with something aside from their own failings and face evil for what it is. In the cultural realm, Springsteen is the Boss; in the political realm, Bush is their man.This is a fascinating point.
Alterman seems to feel that people must be consistent in all things; to favor action against terrorism, one must listen to Toby Keith and presumably eat steak twice a day and drive an SUV, while Springsteen fans must perforce be anti-war, vegetarian, and so on.
And yet hasn't art always been a vehicle by which people explore and soothe their self-doubts? An entry point into the insecure parts of the psyche to which one must tend before being able to put on one's war face?
Van Zile continues:
The main thrust of Alterman's piece, which discusses Europe's feelings toward the U.S., is that the people of Europe are disgusted by Bush’s alleged unilateralism, but love America, its people and its culture. To redeem its relationship with Europe, Alterman argues, America must fully embrace its values, adopt multilateralism and embark on a foreign policy that “protects and defends our values as well as our people.” Exactly what such a policy would look like in concrete terms, Alterman doesn’t say, but it appears we have three tasks before us. First, we must dump Bush as president, then give Europe veto power over the American use of force and lastly, appease Saddam Hussein, the president of Iraq who has gassed his own people, invaded Kuwait and has lied to UN arms inspectors. Do these things, Alterman suggests, and all will be well between the U.S. and Europe.Oddly, it seems that Zacarias Moussaoui was a bit of a Bruce fan.The first proof Alterman offers to demonstrate Europe really, really does love us is the positive reaction of the crowd at a Bruce Springsteen concert Alterman attended at Paris' Bercy Stadium while reporting his piece. It seems that the crowd of 15,000 screamed the lyrics to “Born in the USA” at the “top of their lungs” and “with their fists in the air.” The scene inspired Alterman to write “You can't be anti-American if you love Bruce Springsteen.”
But that's a side issue. Whether one can be an anti-American Springsteen fan is as irrelevant as whether one can support the war and also admire Springsteen's music.
No, the real issue as far as I'm concerned is that people can simultaneously believe things that, to the overly-rigid mind, may seem contradictory, but for reasons that are thorougly consistent.
Even Springsteen himself.
Last summer, when The Rising was released, he did a series of interviews in which he said "The war in Afghanistan was handled well. It was deliberative, which I wasn't counting on. I expected a lot less from this administration." The muted praise of the President was more than some leftists could handle.
And after that, we saw the most amazing of phenomenae - the rock critic from the ultraliberal Village Voice lambasting the album and the artist, while a music critic from the conservative National Review lionized it.
It was an absolute gut-shot for many on the left. But many on the left have memories just as short as many on the right. Because while many leftist commentators still praise Springsteen for slamming Ronald Reagan for alluding to Born in the USA during the '84 campaign, many on both sides forget that he was equally quick to cut off Walter Mondale's attempt to exploit the incident for his own advantage as well.
Iraq is more complicated. Springsteen has taken some conservative heat during his current tour for asking people to be sure to stay on top of the situation, not to give to blind patriotism or revenge, to keep the Administration accountable. Fairly mild stuff, compared to the vast majority of the Hollywood "peace" movement, really. Some chalk it up to his being a lefty - and there's something to it. More importantly, there's an element of moral consistency to this stance; Springsteen is pretty forthright about the fact that he dodged the draft during the Vietnam war. According to the stories he's told in concert over the years, he managed to flunk the physical, on purpose. It's not something he's advertised, but neither is it something he's covered up (unlike a certain former president). He's said in previous interviews he doesn't believe it appropriate for someone who dodged the draft to be a hawk.
What's the point?
Demigogues of both sides (but especially the left) are quick to jam people into convenient, monochromatic containers. Dave Marsh and Eric Alterman may live, breathe and exude red to the cores of their beings - more power to them.
Most people aren't like that. I'm a conservative who still loves punk rock, Jersey-shore soul, and the date with the occasional Green.
Springsteen is a liberal who supported a war that the left roundly, and wrongly, condemned.
Life is complicated. More complicated than the likes of Alterman can usually gather.
The Bad Guys...- "Move On", an organization that was born to defend the rights of middle-aged white male philanderers, has moved on to "anti-war" actities (as has been noted in this space). It's behind Martin Sheen's upcoming ad campaign.
They're carrying out a "Virtual March on Washington", via their website.
The good folks at Instapundit, as well as many other blogs of conscience, are asking you to register your opinions. I second this.
When you register, the website assigns you times to call your senators. I plan on joining in.
Here's what I wrote:
I completely support the actions of our President and our military, and those of our allies (UK, Australia, Kuwait, Oman, Jordan, Poland, Hungary, the Baltic States, Denmark, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Moldova and Bulgaria) to end the dictatorial and repressive regime of Saddam Hussein. Inspections have not, and will not, work to disarm Saddam - indeed, by design, they can not. He has played the US and the UN for fools and patsies for 12 years. It is time to return the country of Iraq to a free and unoppressed Iraqi people.Sign up. Let us know.I repudiate the actions of Martin Sheen, who truly does not act "in my name".
And the only "move on" we need is into Iraq. The only way home is through Baghdad.
More to come.
...and the Good Guys - Adam Yoshida is responding with his Virtual March to Victory.
Various ‘anti-war’ groups have declared that February 26, 2003 will be the day on which they will launch a so-called “Virtual March on Washington.” These groups, such as “Win Without War”, claim to represent the real will of the American people and the people of the world. For far too long that mainstream media has been allowed to represent the views of the protestors as the views of the average American. It’s high time for the great silent majority, that majority who polls show support President Bush and his efforts to defend America, to speak out against the tyranny of this vocal minority which is seeking to use their Hollywood connections, and the complicity of the mainstream media, to impose their views upon the American people.I signed. Hope to see you there.Therefore, I am calling for a counter-demonstration, a twin virtual march to show that not all of the people of the world are fooled by the lies of Saddam Hussein. It’s time for the great silent majority of the world- that majority which recognizes the mortal threat posed by the alliance between terrorists and outlaw states- to tell the world that we stand with President George W. Bush...
...On February 26th let us flood the internet with messages of support for the brave forces deployed all across the world as part of the global war on terrorism and messages declaring our support for a war to disarm Iraq and remove the dictator Saddam Hussein from power.
Old Diplomacy, New Diplomacy - The left is fond on decrying the Administration's diplomatic skills. I read one pundit, last week, who said "Europe is so far ahead of us in every way..."
According to Charles Paul Freund in Reason, the Chirac incident belies all that:
Chirac's performance in Brussels this week was so clumsy that it surprised even the French. Members of the European Union were meeting to iron out a common position on Iraq, and were joined by applicants to the EU from central and eastern Europe. These included a group of nations that had recently expressed support for the U.S. hard line against Saddam Hussein. At a press conference, Chirac lectured these nations in an astonishing manner. He called their pro-American letter "irresponsible," and evidence that they had been "badly brought up." "They missed a good opportunity to keep quiet," Chirac said.After forty years of being talked down to as "members" of the "Warsaw Pact", it seems the eastern natives are restless. The upshot?"Badly brought up"? What kind of an international showdown is this? The French regard the American global presence as that of a wild and trigger-happy cowboy. To face off against him, Paris is assuming the stance of a supercilious French governess ready to tongue-lash the whole of Europe into submission.
French TV showed a succession of eastern European foreign ministers attempting to maintain their dignity while responding to Chirac. One Czech representative tried to smile as he termed the French attitude "undemocratic." The Hungarian minister said icily that he hoped his refusal to respond would be evidence of his decent upbringing.
"We thought we were preparing for war with Saddam Hussein and not Jacques Chirac," the Czech deputy foreign minister told The New York Times. Eastern Europe "definitely cannot remain silent" about Iraq, he said.
Compared to Parisian diplomatic contempt, American efforts begin to look remarkably deft. No sooner had France and Germany established their common opposition to American aims, for example, than the U.S. characterized them as "Old Europe" even as it worked to bring a "New Europe" into plain view. Now that Chirac has made his countermove—telling upstart Europe it should be seen and not heard—the American and British governments look like a pair of pretty smooth operators.Read the rest of the article .The New York Times' account takes a stab at interpreting Chirac's behavior. Support for the U.S., writes reporter Craig S. Smith, "reinforced widespread suspicion in France that the poorer European countries are primarily attracted to European Union membership for economic reasons while their political allegiance will remain with Washington." Smith added that French foreign minister Dominique de Villepin had noted testily last weekend that "Europe is not a cash register."
Shot and Goal - Tim Pawlenty is fighting for his budget plan against a full-court press from the media, the non-profit community, and the DFL.
And he's getting in some good points.
DFL House Minority Leader Matt Entenza, said:
The governor can't have it both ways. He can't say he's balancing the budget solely through cuts and then claiming the cuts don't have an impact," Entenza said. "The reality is they're going to have real significant impact. The impact is on law enforcement.Pawlenty retorted:
In a hastily called news conference at the State Capitol, a visibly irritated Pawlenty said local officials who could not handle the magnitude of the reductions without cutting police and fire services should be fired. The reductions would be limited to 5 percent of a city's total revenue the first year and at 9.5 percent the second year.As an aside - perhaps Entenza's remarks are actually a good sign for Republicans. That Entenza would protest the potential loss of cops and law enforcement - as opposed to traditional DFL bases like welfare and social programs - is a sign that the DFL knows which voters are really in charge in this state."If you can't manage your city with a 3 percent drop in revenue without having the first thing you do is run before the cameras and say you're going to lay off cops, then you shouldn't be in that position," Pawlenty said.
Genocide Afoot in Minnesota- This also came from the Strib article:
"It [the LGA cuts] hits the inner cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul and rural communities extremely hard, and it doesn't touch the wealthy suburban districts at all," said Rep. Tom Rukavina, DFL-Virginia. "To me, the attack on rural Minnesota is almost like geographic genocide. The social fabric of the state of Minnesota is going to be severely damaged."Geographic Genocide.
A cut in funding...is equal to genocide (the destruction of an entire people). I'll cut Rukavina a certain amount of slack - I've heard him speak, and let's just say the problems of having an overly-keen intellect are not ones he needs to worry about.
But "Geographic Genocide"? That's not just dumb - that's Maxine Waters/Carole Mosely-Braun-level stupid. And the worst part? Someone out there is going to take this seriously, and vote based on that kind of idiocy.
Seriously - the debasement of our language by such tripe is absolutely galling.
Liberal Talk Watch - Ann Coulter touches on the same topic I did a few days ago - the putative "liberal talk radio network" that a group of big-dollar lefties are supposedly going to try to launch.
Here's the big point - one I sorta buried in Tuesday's screed:
Liberal persuasion consists of the highbrow sneer from self-satisfied snobs ladled out for people with a 40 IQ. This is not an ideology that can withstand several hours a day of caller scrutiny where their goofball notions can be shot down by any truck driver with a cell phoneIf I were a liberal thinking about trying to float a talk radio network, the last thing I'd do would be to trot out another batch of liberal "big names" like Cuomo or Al Franken. "Big names" have one huge problem - they know they're "big names". Even if they can affect a "just plain folks" attitude long enough to avoid turning listeners off in droves (and that's difficult), the very fact that they're a "big name" exerts a chilling effect on reaction. People who have no compunctions about calling to rag on Bob Davis, Schlemiel Without Portfolio, will be just a tad intimidated at the notion of calling an ex-Big Wheel.
Which, as a conservative, sounds just fine to me. Bring on the Big Names! Put Barbra Streisand on afternoon drive!
As to Al Franken; bitter and snide don't sell on the radio. Well - they can, but it's rare. And nobody in the public eye comes across as more bitter and snide than your average comedian. Having never met Franken, I don't know if he fits the pattern, but I wouldn't bet against it. And if so - well, it doesn't bode well for an "Al Franken Show"s chances.
So bring 'em on!
Whew - I was sicker than I thought yesterday. I'll try to make up for lost time today.
One word: Theraflu.
Premier Chirac - Most of Eastern Europe is overtly backing the Administration on Iraq. Virtually the entire former Warsaw Pact - Poland, The Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, the Baltic States, Moldova, Romania, Bulgaria - are backing us. It must have something to do with having been subjects to a far-away dictatorship.
Last week, French prez Chirac attacked the Eastern European nations that had broken ranks with France, Germany and Belgium. At one point, Chirac said the nations had "missed a great opportunity to shut up".
Today: They're talking back:
Romanian President Ion Iliescu led the attack on France, describing the President's "outdated" views as an affront to democracy and free speech.Chirac has be be nervous."Such reproaches are totally unjustified, unwise and undemocratic," he told reporters in Brussels, after a meeting for candidate nations on Iraq.
"It is unwise to separate countries into pro-American and anti-American. I thought it was outdated to say, 'He who is not with us is against us'."
"In the European family there are no mummies, no daddies and no kids - it is a family of equals," said Polish Foreign Minister Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz
The EU is an offshoot of fifty-year-old efforts to reconcile France and Germany, after two world wars. Of course, the effort always saw France and Germany as the leaders of the effort.
But today, with their economies moribund, the French and Germans see some of their power shifting eastward, to countries that have largely adapted freer markets, that detest authoritarianism....
...and that are often staunch US allies. Poland and the Czechs are among the best allies we have in the world, these days. And unlike France and Germany, the economies of Eastern Europe have nowhere to go but up.
Oh Blogger, Where Art Thou? - Blogger.com, the site I use to edit and publish Shot in the Dark, has been down most of the day.
As luck'd have it, so have I - I caught my first nasty cold in quite some time, and actually spent much of the day in bed. Let's look at the half-full glass and say that it's one nice thing about being unemployed; I can take a sick day when I want one. Unfortunately, my son was also home sick, so it wasn't the most restful day off I've had...
Anyway, more posts to come.
Jay Reding beat me to one story I've been chewing on for a few weeks here; efforts to kick off a liberal talk radio network.
Says the Times
The plan faces several business and content challenges, from finding a network of radio stations to buy the program to overcoming the poor track record of liberal radio shows. But it is the most ambitious undertaking yet to come from liberal Democrats who believe they are overshadowed in the political propaganda wars by conservative radio and television personalities.My response should be obvious, but Reding said it first, so I'll defer to Jay: "They believe that since there's a such a lack of left-wing partisans in the media (other than Dan Rather, James Carville, Ted Turner, the Times own editorial staff, etc...) that there needs to be a left-wing alternative. The major problem with that logic is that there is a glut of liberal voices in the media, and even on the airwaves. One wonders if these people haven't heard of National Public Radio before..." Indeed.
But in terms of a muckraking presence among blue and white-collar breadwinners, the left really doesn't have much going on. There's a reason for that.
When I worked in talk radio, is was segregated into a ghetto on the AM band. In the eighties, it was widely agreed that AM radio was doomed to go the way of the steam-powered car; Talk radio was the province of blue-hairs and dyspeptic third-shifters. Larry King was the biggest name in the business - and he was no more astringent than he is today.
Then came Limbaugh - a sad sack schlemiel turned "pompous blowhard" who reveled in and excelled at pushing liberal buttons. Then as now, he mixed analysis - often glib, frequently brilliant - with pointed irreverence and fairly sophisticated humor (by radio standards) into something that appealed to "angry white men" and not a few women nationwide in numbers that radio had never seen.
Suddenly, between 1987 and 1989, all those AM radios that had been sitting unused at construction sites, in long-haul trucks, homes, and really anywhere that people with mal-educated kids and beleaguered families and big tax burdens gathered, suddenly sprang back into use.
Within two years of going nationwide, Limbaugh became the biggest thing in radio history. Today, the tables have turned; many AM talk stations will carry their FM and TV sister-properties, financially. Talk radio has boomed in a way that we in the racket couldn't have imagined in 1986.
And it's all conservative. All of it. The shows that are getting any numbers at all are conservative. There are few - very few - surviving liberal talk show hosts, and the number is dwindling.
And the left's not happy about it:
The concern has been around for years: Hillary Rodham Clinton first mentioned a "vast, right-wing conspiracy" in 1998. But the sentiment has taken on new urgency with the rise to the top of the cable news ratings of the Fox News Channel, considered by many to have a conservative slant, and the Republicans' gaining control of the Senate in November. Such events have spurred many wealthy Democrats to explore investments in possible, liberal-skewing media ventures. New campaign finance rules that restrict giving opportunities also gave them further incentive.The article's last paragraph is an interesting one, and flirts with the point without actually hitting it. What the left calls "Fire and Brimstone" is something much deeper.The new liberal radio network is initially being financed by the Paradigm Group, of which the Drobnys are the principal partners. Ms. Drobny is the chairwoman of the venture, which is being called AnShell Media L.L.C. Jon Sinton, a longtime, Atlanta-based radio executive, will be its chief executive. He helped start the nationally syndicated radio program of Jim Hightower, the former Texas agriculture commissioner. Liberals had hoped that would be their answer to Mr. Limbaugh, but it was canceled shortly after its start in the mid-1990's.
The failure of Mr. Hightower's show supported the notion of many in radio that liberal hosts do not have what it takes to become successful and entertaining hosts: the fire-and-brimstone manner and a ready-made audience alienated by the mainstream news media it perceives to be full of liberal bias.
The vast majority of people are conservative. No, I don't mean they're members of the Republican Party. Far from it. But when the beginning of the month rears its ugly head and the phone bill is arguing the with the mortgage about whom Daddy loves more, an awful lot of Americans that only Roger Moe would consider "rich" are fiscal conservatives at least in spirit.
The conservative hosts that have succeeded did it because they gave a voice - a passionate one - to those workadaddy, hugamommy concerns. Then, they connected those concerns (and that passion) to the larger politics involved.
And then they opened the phone lines. The rubes and schmucks sweating over their property tax payments not only had a voice, they could add theirs to the fray. And that voice was accepted on its own merits (within the context of being entertainment).
And when you call a conservative talk host, you know you're calling someone who's not too different from you.
And the results?
The list of successful conservative radio hosts is, in fact, fairly long Rush Limbaugh; Sean Hannity; Michael Savage; Michael Reagan. And there is no equivalent list of liberals. Past attempts, such as the programs of Mr. Hightower and Mario Cuomo, have failed.And it's no wonder.
There's the nub of the gist - look at the past roster of liberal talk radio stars: former government figures like the insufferable Hightower and the narcotic Cuomo; the hopelessly eggheaded Michael Jackson and the vapidly tedious Owen Span; regional stars like Tom Leykis and Alan Berg (murdered by neo-Nazis in 1984) known for being nastier than Morton Downey Junior; locally, the rote cackling of Katherine Lanpher, Turi Ryder's snide hiss, the repetitive wonkery of KSTP's various Morning Spins (not overtly liberal in many cases, but you could and can read between the lines), the condescension Jim Klobuchar's grating rasp...
What do they all have in common? They're all Big Names. Experts. High Priests of Enlightenment.
Conservative hosts - especially the bigger names - are usually more like the kind of people you meet in bars and talk politics with. Only the bars are different; Rush Limbaugh's St. Paul Grill, Jason Lewis at the Monte Carlo, Joe Soucheray at Fern's, Mike Savage at Irv's on Broadway...only Michael Medved sounds like the kind of person you'd meet in a capitol conference room or a grad school seminar.
Now, what is the left going to throw up against the conservative phalanx?
Mr. Sinton [proposes] a full slate of liberally skewing programming with morning, afternoon and early evening shows featuring hosts with as many big names in entertainment as possible.Pow! Exactly!
"Big Names!".
The success of talk radio is not about "Big Names". Who ever heard of Rush Limbaugh or Laura Schlesinger before they hit the big time? Nobody!
It's not about big names. It's about focusing the passions of a huge group that feels disposessed by the current culture!
Current talk centers around Al Franken:
A deal with Mr. Franken, the comedian, would help greatly in luring other big names, as well as in gaining distribution. He said he envisioned a daily program featuring Mr. Franken perhaps in the early afternoons (around the same time as "The Rush Limbaugh Show").Al "Big Fat Idiot" Franken isn't a demigogue?A representative for Mr. Franken, Henry Reisch of the William Morris Agency, said Mr. Franken was seriously considering the offer, and was mostly focusing on whether he could handle the commitment of a daily radio program. Judging from his comments as a guest last month on Phil Donahue's program on MSNBC, Mr. Franken would probably take a far different approach from that of Mr. Limbaugh. "I think the audience isn't there for a liberal Rush," he said. "Because I think liberals don't want to hear that kind of demagoguery."
But I digress - there's my point exactly. I can see Frank the Mechanic from Biloxi calling Rush Limbaugh and getting a relatively sympathetic hearing, even if Frank's a Democrat. Can you see anyone not of Franken's social circle doing as well calling in to Franken's show?
No! Because an Al Franken show would be about Al Franken's politics! Rush Limbaugh, as ego-driven as the show is, is about the audience.
As is all conservative talk radio that actually works!
But Wait! - One conservative radio wonk arouse my ire:
Some radio executives said they simply did not believe liberal radio could become good business. Among them was Kraig T. Kitchen, chief executive of Premiere Radio Networks, one of the nation's largest radio syndication arms with the programs of Mr. Limbaugh, Mr. Reagan and Dr. Laura Schlessinger, among others. Though Mr. Kitchin said he was a conservative, he also said he would have pursued liberal programs had he thought there was money in them. He ascribes to the popular view in the industry that liberal hosts present issues in too much complexity to be very entertaining — while addressing a diffuse audience that has varying views.If you're talking about dittoheads, perhaps. But conservatism is much harder - and takes much more mental effort - than liberalism, to do it well at any rate. Liberalism may be "hard to define", but it's easy to do - just use the government to express your compassion for you. Conservatism is much harder; it's tough love, which is never easy. Much harder to justify to oneself, without a lot of thought."Individuals who are liberal in their viewpoints can be all-encompassing," he said. "It's very hard to define liberalism, unlike how easy it is to define conservatism.
Saddam Dead Pool - Guessing the date of a potential invasion is a fool's game.
And fool's games are usually the most fun.
I've been guessing (and it's only a marginally educated guess) March 21 for some time now. It seems to add up - the troops we just sent to the Gulf (the 82nd and 101st Airborne divisions) will have their heavy equipment in place and ready to go by then; the troops already there (Marines, the 3rd Infantry Division and many others) will have had that much more time to acclimate themselves to the desert. And winter will be drawing to a close in the Gulf around that time.
But the real driver, of course, is politics, especially Tony Blair's need to placate the UK's strong anti-war movement (especially among his own party's strong left wing).
Here's one option: take Villepin's date of March 14 and make it a final deadline. Say that by that date, Saddam must provide an accounting for the anthrax, nerve gas and other missing and unaccounted for materials cited by Blix; and also by that date, Iraq must destroy all its al Samoud missiles, which are banned under existing resolutions. We need a deadline. We had one - "immediate compliance" - I know. But we lose nothing by giving the world a final one. It would put the onus back on Saddam, help Blair, show a little flexibility on the part of the U.S., maybe bring around a few more Security Council members and not lose any significant time. Again, this isn't logical from the point of view of 1441. But it is a reflection of the political pressures on a key U.S. ally. Recognizing that political pressure is not surrendering to it. But ignoring it when we can still offer an alternative would be foolish. We can afford to be a little flexible. So let's be.It's such a fine line, the one between flexibility and enablement.
But for all the left's yapping about Bush's "diplomatic disaster", I think they can do it. In fact, I think taking a month (roughly) for one last round of futility at the UN would play nicely into the Administration's hands. Our troops can use the time to train in the desert, and (in the case of the recent arrivals) unscramble their equipment as it's unloaded from the cargo ships. And if it sews up the public opinion, especially of that part of the public that would support the war "as long as it's not unilateral", then the delay would serve both military and political ends.
Solomon Pasi is Bulgaria's foreign minister. The London Telegraph quotes his response to French pressure to toe the "European" line:
In the meantime, Bulgaria has vowed to resist French attempts to bully it into withdrawing support for America's plans to disarm Iraq. Last week the French ambassador to Sofia warned Bulgaria that its pro-American stance could jeopardise its efforts to join the European Union.In peripherally-related news - could this be a sign that the Franco-German-Belgian anti-invasion bloc is fracturing?
"Bulgaria has to consider carefully where its long-term interests lie," Jean Loup Kuhn-Delforge said last week. "When people live in Europe they should express solidarity and think European-style."Solomon Pasi, Bulgaria's foreign minister, condemned the French as neo-appeasers. "We all remember the hesitancy of the Allies, who weren't sure whether to attack Hitler. They could have prevented so much," he said.
"We're in a situation where we have a moral imperative to act and act now."
France, Germany and Belgium have blocked Nato's plans to send Awacs surveillance aircraft, Patriot missile batteries and specialist equipment to protect Turkey against chemical, biological and nuclear attack. They argue that this would wrongly signal that war with Iraq was inevitable. The row over the Turkish request has further poisoned relations between Paris, Berlin and Washington.All of this is happening, as the left continues to pick at the Administration's diplomatic record. A leftist friend of mine said the other day: "The Administration's diplomacy is a disaster! We're still going it alone!". I rattled off all the nations that are currently supporting us, and added in the ones that support defending Turkey (Norway, the Netherlands - neither of them militarily trivial), and asked where precisely the diplomatic failure was. Toss in the possible split of Germany and France, and you're talking a pretty serious diplomatic win, in my book.While diplomats said that there was now no prospect of ending French opposition to military support from Nato for Turkey's defences, they believe that Germany and Belgium, which have so far backed France, may be wavering.
The countries have faced fierce criticism from Nato's 16 other members and have also come under fire from the seven nations recently invited to join the alliance, who accuse them of a "breach of faith" for refusing to grant Turkey's request for help.
"If Germany can be won over," said a senior Nato diplomat, "it's unlikely that Belgium will want to be isolated as the only one of 18 full military members holding out against aid to Turkey."
(Link via Instapundit)
Someone Notify WAMM - Something for all those MacAlester College peaceniks to get into.
Protest Report, With Twist - John from Blogs of War has an excellent report, with photos, from yesterday's pro-dictatorship, pro-Israeli-extinction rally in Houston.
But this story has a fun twist:
Things really got interesting around 2:00 when two guys ran up to our vantage point overlooking the protesters, held up a sign, and started making more noise than the entire crowd of protesters with a wicked airhorn [ Listen to Rhett.wav ]. Turns out Rhett Boren and his friend left the U.S. Marines three weeks ago and were there to stand up for George Bush, America, our troops, and common sense. [ Image 5 ]You know, I almost hope someone tries to throw another protest here in the Twin Cities on some weekday before I find another job.Rhett had five or six different signs and was rapidly switching between them to counter specific protesters across the street from us. Things almost got ugly when some young punk got pissed and screamed "If you're pro-war why don't you go?" to Rhett. In what was easily the best moment of the day Rhett screamed "I just got back", held up his sign, and started blasting on his airhorn again.
It was totally sweet.
The protesters then moved to a nearby park while Rhett and his friend moved on to confront them. Police (very amused police) kept him a few feet away at all times but he continued to get up close and personal. [ Image 6 ] I couldn't help laughing each time he managed to drown out the entire crowd with blasts of his airhorn.
Big Words - I love great speech. British politics breeds great speakers - much more so than American politics. In the rough-and-tumble world of Parliament, one has to be a good, convincing, literate speaker, or one is booed from the lectern - a great difference from the US Congress, where most congresspeople exhibit the type of oratorical skills that would get them fired for a telemarketing job.
Andrew Sullivan compares Blair with Gladstone, even Churchill (the greatest orator of modern times) due especially to this speech to Parliament (read the whole thing here):
The time needed is not the time it takes the inspectors to discover the weapons. They are not a detective agency. We played that game for years in the 1990s. The time is the time necessary to make a judgment: is Saddam prepared to co-operate fully or not. If he is, the inspectors can take as much time as they want. If he is not, if this is a repeat of the 1990s - and I believe it is - then let us be under no doubt what is at stake.Finally! I'm so glad to see a government leader put that comparison on record.By going down the UN route we gave the UN an extraordinary opportunity and a heavy responsibility. The opportunity is to show that we can meet the menace to our world today together, collectively and as a united international community. What a mighty achievement that would be. The responsibility, however, is indeed to deal with it.
The League of Nations also had that opportunity and responsibility back in the 1930s. In the early days of the fascist menace, it had the duty to protect Abyssinia from invasion. But when it came to a decision to enforce that guarantee, the horror of war deterred it. We know the rest. The menace grew; the League of Nations collapsed; war came.
Remember: the UN inspectors would not be within a thousand miles of Baghdad without the threat of force. Saddam would not be making a single concession without the knowledge that forces were gathering against him. I hope, even now, Iraq can be disarmed peacefully, with or without Saddam. But if we show weakness now, if we allow the plea for more time to become just an excuse for prevarication until the moment for action passes, then it will not only be Saddam who is repeating history. The menace, and not just from Saddam, will grow; the authority of the UN will be lost; and the conflict when it comes will be more bloody. Yes, let the United Nations be the way to deal with Saddam. But let the United Nations mean what it says; and do what it means.Which is, of course, a loaded request; the UN is institutionally unable to do much of anything.
Hey, wait - wasn't Saddam elected?
These states developing Weapons of Mass Destruction, proliferating them, importing or exporting the scientific expertise, the ballistic missile technology; the companies and individuals helping them: they don't operate within any international treaties. They don't conform to any rules. North Korea is a country whose people are starving and yet can spend billions of dollars trying to perfect a nuclear bomb. Iraq, under Saddam became the first country to use chemical weapons against its own people. Are we sure that if we let him keep and develop such weapons, he would not use them again against his neighbours, against Israel perhaps? Saddam the man who killed a million people in an eight year war with Iran, and then, having lost it, invaded Kuwait? Or the other nations scrabbling to get a foot on the nuclear ladder, are we happy that they do so?
It's a sad, sad world when legitimate leaders need to pound, constantly, on the illegitimacy of a Saddam Hussein to try to get through to some parts of their population.
Every time I have asked us to go to war, I have hated it. I spent months trying to get Milosevic to stop ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, delaying action while we negotiated endlessly. I agreed with President Bush not to strike Afghanistan after September 11th but instead to offer the Taliban, loathsome though they were, an ultimatum: yield up Al Qaida and we will let you stay. We used force in the end, but in Kosovo only as a last resort, and though I rejoiced with his people at the fall of Milosevic, as I rejoiced with the Afghan people at the fall of the Taliban, I know that amid the necessary military victory there was pain and suffering that brought no joy at all.Amid the left's caterwauling about the "rush to war", I think it's fascinating how restrained we've been.
Remember in the first Gulf War? We went five months from the invasion of Kuwait until the air war began, and another month before the four-day ground war.
We've been waiting over a year with Iraq.
At every stage, we should seek to avoid war. But if the threat cannot be removed peacefully, please let us not fall for the delusion that it can be safely ignored. If we do not confront these twin menaces of rogue states with Weapons of Mass Destruction and terrorism, they will not disappear. They will just feed and grow on our weakness.Churchillian.
When people say if you act, you will provoke these people; when they say now: take a lower profile and these people will leave us alone, remember: Al Qaida attacked the US, not the other way round. Were the people of Bali in the forefront of the anti-terror campaign? Did Indonesia 'make itself a target'? The terrorists won't be nice to us if we're nice to them. When Saddam drew us into the Gulf War, he wasn't provoked. He invaded Kuwait.Too bad this is too big to fit on a bumper sticker.
Yes, there are consequences of war. If we remove Saddam by force, people will die and some will be innocent. And we must live with the consequences of our actions, even the unintended ones.It's also a regime that will have no problem using a nuke or VX bomb to hold the world's oil, or Israel, hostage. Or using Al Quaeda, or any of several other terrorist groups - as a long-range delivery system.But there are also consequences of "stop the war".
If I took that advice, and did not insist on disarmament, yes, there would be no war. But there would still be Saddam. Many of the people marching will say they hate Saddam. But the consequences of taking their advice is that he stays in charge of Iraq, ruling the Iraqi people. A country that in 1978, the year before he seized power, was richer than Malaysia or Portugal. A country where today, 135 out of every 1000 Iraqi children die before the age of five - 70% of these deaths are from diarrhoea and respiratory infections that are easily preventable. Where almost a third of children born in the centre and south of Iraq have chronic malnutrition.
Where 60% of the people depend on Food Aid.
Where half the population of rural areas have no safe water.
Where every year and now, as we speak, tens of thousands of political prisoners languish in appalling conditions in Saddam's jails and are routinely executed.
Where in the past 15 years over 150,000 Shia Moslems in Southern Iraq and Moslem Kurds in Northern Iraq have been butchered; with up to four million Iraqis in exile round the world, including 350,000 now in Britain.
This isn't a regime with Weapons of Mass Destruction that is otherwise benign. This is a regime that contravenes every single principle or value anyone of our politics believes in.
There will be no march for the victims of Saddam, no protests about the thousands of children that die needlessly every year under his rule, no righteous anger over the torture chambers which if he is left in power, will be left in being.Yeah - has anyone asked ANSWER about this?
I rejoice that we live in a country where peaceful protest is a natural part of our democratic process.Again - it's a shame it won't fit on a sticker.But I ask the marchers to understand this.
I do not seek unpopularity as a badge of honour. But sometimes it is the price of leadership. And the cost of conviction.
But as you watch your TV pictures of the march, ponder this:
If there are 500,000 on that march, that is still less than the number of people whose deaths Saddam has been responsible for.
If there are one million, that is still less than the number of people who died in the wars he started.
So many responses to this speech. I wish our system put such a premium on speech - although when we do get a good speaker (as Reagan and Clinton were), he or she certainly stands out from the crowd.
Let me read from an e-mail that was sent by a member of the family of one of those four million Iraqi exiles. It is interesting because she is fiercely and I think wrongly critical of America. But in a sense for that reason, it is worth reading.She addresses it to the anti-war movement.
In one part, she says:
"You may feel that America is trying to blind you from seeing the truth about their real reasons for an invasion. I must argue that in fact, you are still blind to the bigger truths in Iraq.
Saddam has murdered more than a million Iraqis over the past 30 years, are you willing to allow him to kill another million Iraqis?
Saddam rules Iraq using fear - he regularly imprisons, executes and tortures the mass population for no reason whatsoever - this may be hard to believe and you may not even appreciate the extent of such barbaric acts, but believe me you will be hard pressed to find a family in Iraq who have not had a son, father, brother killed, imprisoned, tortured and/or "disappeared" due to Saddam's regime.
Why it is now that you deem it appropriate to voice your disillusions with America's policy in Iraq, when it is right now that the Iraqi people are being given real hope, however slight and however precarious, that they can live in an Iraq that is free of its horrors?"
But Blair ticks off a very concise checklist of justifications for the upcoming war. Read the whole thing - it's worth it.
Domino Effect - I've been saying for months - take Iraq, and we will force change in the terror-supporting regimes in Teheran and Damascus. I think this is as important as eliminating Hussein's Weapons of Mass Destruction program. It also make clear the context of the Iraq operation - as the second phase of the war on terror.
Iran and Iraq are different, and the Bush administration knows the difference. Iran has the elements of change within it; Iraq will have to be changed by force. U.S. policy has been more subtle on Iran than its critics would have us believe. No credible American scenario envisages a war against Iran once the dust of battle settles in Iraq. The Iranians must know this, even as their clerical rulers protest their inclusion in the "axis of evil." Patience, deadly and dangerous in dealing with Iraq (in my view), could work in Iran's case. In this regard, the policy of the Bush administration has been on the mark. There has been no urge to court Iran. The zeal with which the Clinton administration pursued an accommodation with Iran's rulers has been cast aside. This has been one of the lessons of Sept. 11: Why court hated rulers if this only gets you the enmity of their resentful populations? It was in this vein that President Bush pitched his policy on Iran in his State of the Union address. A distinction was made between the Iranian theocracy and Iraq: "Different threats require different strategies." The regime in Iran was put on notice for its support of terror and its pursuit of weapons of destruction. But the people of Iran and their "aspirations to live in freedom" were embraced.What does it all mean in the long run?A silent revolution is under way in Iran; it lacks the fury of what played out in 1978-79. It is the imploding of the theocratic edifice, the aging of a revolution that has lost the consent of its children. A young Iranian-American author, Afshin Molavi, in a compelling new book, "Persian Pilgrimages," has just brought us fragments of that burdened land. It is of green cards and visas to foreign lands that the young of Iran now dream; in the year 2000, some 200,000 Iranian professionals quit their native land for Western shores. In a recent public-opinion survey, three out of four Iranians said they favored restoring relations with Washington. Iran is at the crossroads. In one vision of things, Tehran would barter the influence it has in Lebanon, through its sponsorship of Hezbollah, for a deal with Israel and a return to that covert understanding that once bound the Jewish state to Iran. In this vision, there would be a gradual accommodation with the U.S., an acceptance of America's primacy in the Persian Gulf. In the rival vision, Iran would continue to muddle through, alternating terror and diplomacy, hinting at moderation and then pulling back, offering its betrayed people more sterility, and a diet of anti-Americanism at odds with the fixation of young Iranians.
It is in the nature of things today, in an Iranian society deeply divided between those who would bury the revolution and join the world, and others hell-bent on keeping the theocracy, and their own dominion, intact, that the American drive against Iraq would be defined by that chasm. For those who want to normalize Iran, the thunder of war against Iraq is the coming of a blessed rain. The Americans would be nearby, but what of it? Liberty is rarely a foreigner's gift, and no American war in Iran's neighborhood will settle the fight between theocratic zealots and those in Iran who have twice, in presidential elections, cast their votes for a reform that never came. But the "contagion effect" of a liberated Iraq will no doubt have a role to play in the fight for Iran's future. In Persia, there will be multitudes hoping that the foreigner's storm will be mighty enough to clear their foul sky.Read the whole thing.
A Blogger Valentine Poem - From Kieran Healey:
More than Dubya hates Saddam
Or an Idiotarian hates a clue
Or Reynolds hates the A.N.S.W.E.R. icks