In 1968, the New Left cost the Democrats the presidency by rioting at their convention and urging young people to shun voting. In 2008, the not-so-new Left may cost Barack Obama the presidency by their vocal support. Read my piece in City Journal online about the '68 rioters, Communist schismatics, and Weatherman terrorists who give Barack Obama the the type of support every candidate wishes for their opponent.
The Major League Baseball season is half over and, surprise, the Tampa Bay Rays are in first place in the American League East. In fact, they actually share the best record in MLB with the Chicago Cubs, another perennial loser--albeit one with a much longer and storied tradition of defeat than the heretofore hapless Rays. You will notice, too, the Rays dumped their "Devil" prefix before this season. Coincidence? Or, a real-life reversal reenactment of Damn Yankees, with the Devil Rays exorcising the devil instead of selling their souls to him?
"All the Chinese have to do is fly around the Moon and back, and they'll appear to have won the return to the Moon with humans," moonwalker Buzz Aldrin tells us. The Cold War is over, Buzz, and the symbolic propaganda victories--like winning more medals at the Olympics or putting a man on the moon--are over with it. Nobody remembers who flew across the Atlantic after Charles Lindbergh did it, and nobody, save for a space wonk, has any interest in who gets to the moon forty years after Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins got there first. We know it's not made of cheese, and that's what is important. "Retain the vision for space exploration," Aldrin counsels. "If we turn our backs on the vision again, we're going to have to live in a secondary position in human space flight for the rest of the century." So what?
Talk show host Glenn Beck offers a list of what conservatives believe. Since most self-identifying conservatives believe many things they would have deemed liberal before the Bush presidency, it's a good time for conservatives to figure out what they believe--or else there won't be a conservatism to conserve any longer. I can't say there's much to disagree with on Beck's list. My personal favorite? "A conservative believes that people go to the movies to be entertained and to church to be preached to, not the other way around."
The U.S. Constitution isn't written in an opaque style accessible by only the most learned scholars. Anyone with a sixth grade education can get it. That's why it's so disheartening that four Supreme Court justices found that "the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed" meant that the government can infringe on private citizens keeping and bearing arms. Had five justices arrived at such a dishonest interpretation of the words of the Second Amendment it would have been a whole lot more disheartening. Antonin Scalia today penned the landmark 5-4 decision that overturned the unconstitutional (and counterproductive) Washington, DC gun ban, and reaffirmed the constitutional right to keep and bear arms.
Raping a child is cruel and unusual. Executing a child rapist is not. In fact, the natural impulse of people cross culturally is to execute such malefactors. The U.S. Supreme Court today forbade states from executing child rapists. Court liberals, with Anthony Kennedy providing the swing vote, uniformly voted to ban capital punishment for crimes other than murder. Kennedy and the NAMBLA wing of the court deemed such executions as "cruel and unusual" and an affront to "evolving standards of decency." The specific case in question involved a stepfather raping an eight-year-old girl, with the injuries sustained in the attack requiring surgery. While people can disagree on the justice of employing capital punishment for this or any other case, why is an unelected body judging a case by "evolving standards" rather than the fixed words of the Constitution?
The government used to put debtors in prison. Now the state wants to pay their debts. In addition to rewarding bad financial choices, the foreclosure rescue bill overwhelmingly supported by Democrats and Republicans in both houses of Congress allows the Federal Housing Administration to back more than $300 million in loans to people who don't qualify for traditional loans through banks--who, unlike the government, are generally prudential with money because it is their money. Isn't issuing loans to unqualified lendees how we got in this mess in the first place? Naturally, the banks that weren't prudential with their own money like this bill because it saves them from the consequences of issuing bad loans. National Review points out the corrupt relationship several of the bill's supporters have with leading mortgage corporations. "Under the bill, mortgage lenders--of which Countrywide is the largest in the U.S.--would agree to renegotiate their most troubled home loans in exchange for a federal guarantee on those loans," NR explains. "If the borrowers who took out those troubled loans end up defaulting, the government would cover any losses the mortgage lenders incur." Given, as NR points out, that lenders face an average loss of one-third of the loan on such defaults, the benefit for banks would be quite substantial. A senator from Wyoming, one of the nine opponents in the upper chamber, perhaps said it best. "They expect the federal government to turn their backs on responsible lenders and borrowers and renters waiting--waiting--to become first-time homeowners, and support those groups that have pushed our housing market into decline with bad loans and bad investments," Mike Enzi told the Associated Press. "This bill is a federal government bailout." Rewarding reckless economic behavior only encourages reckless economic behavior.
"Emphasis on extreme scenarios may have been appropriate at one time, when the public and decision-makers were relatively unaware of the global warming issue," James Hansen wrote in 2003. Does the father of global warming again feel the need to peddle "extreme scenarios" in 2008? "We see a tipping point occurring right before our eyes," Hansen told a congressional committee on Monday. It was, he claimed, our "last chance" on global warming. Unless we do something now, we're "toast." This is altogether terrible news. I would much prefer to become an English muffin than toast. But if science says we are toast, then toast we shall be. It's SCIENCE. Don't question it. Just ridicule it.
"Those who look to the past instead of the future have a full view, at any rate, which is more than can be said for even the most gifted purported searchers into the future. If the past produces tiresome nostalgics, these are less a plague at the present time than are 'futurists' or 'futurologists.' Properly worked, the past is, as all comparative historians from Herodotus on have said, a vast and wonderful laboratory for the study of successes and failures in the long history of man. If we have to look beyond the present, and apparently most of us do, the past is terra firma by comparison with anything even the most fertile imagination--armed with the most powerful of computers--can come up with out of the liberal's cherished future."
--Robert Nisbet, Conservatism: Dream and Reality, 1986
My fondest memories of Gloucester, Massachusetts include catching a 45-yard bomb in a preseason high-school game and jumping about the same distance from atop its wilderness rock quarry into the clear water below. Now, fair or unfair, I'll think of it as the town where girls, of the same age as when I jumped into the water and for the pass, sought to get pregnant en masse. Kay Hymowitz writes at City Journal that "what's most striking in the Gloucester story was that these girls had every intention of getting pregnant, and knew exactly how to get the job done. Unless someone has figured out how to force young people to take birth-control pills, sex education is completely beside the point." True, but lost amidst all the talk of "pacts" and Jamie Lynn Spears is a glaring truth that isn't discussed. What's interesting is not whether there was or wasn't a pact among the girls to have babies at such a young age. What's interesting is that if this were an inner-city high school, instead of a working-class white school, this would not be news. In fact, seventeen teenage girls getting pregnant amidst a pool of several hundred in Roxbury or Dorchester might be considered a local success story.
Steve Sailer authors a provocative piece at TakiMag arguing that affirmative-action lending fueled the mortgage crisis. "About half of all mortgages for blacks and Hispanics are subprime, versus roughly one-sixth for whites," Sailer points out. "Not surprisingly, the biggest home price collapses have occurred in heavily Hispanic cities such as Las Vegas, Miami, Phoenix, and Los Angeles." Sailer accuses George W. Bush of fostering the mentality that paved the way for the crisis by attempting to realize his "ownership society" rhetoric via a policy of zero-down, federally-backed mortgages to first-time home buyers. Antedating the Bush administration, federal lawsuits that targeted lenders who didn't reach diversity goals imposed from without encouraged the reckless lending. Unfortunately, the government contributed to the problem that they will now attempt to "solve," creating ever new problems, which, one supposes, will be followed by ever new "solutions."
I watch all of M. Night Shyamalan's films because so many of them have been so good. I caught The Happening last night. It's an average film. It doesn't sink to the depths of The Lady in the Water or soar to the heights of Unbreakable or The Village. It's watchable, which is more than I expected, based on the rotten reaction from Rotten Tomatoes. Without giving away too much, I found its political message depressingly conformist. Far more ominous villains than the boogeymen in environmentalist scare stories are environmentalists themselves. Their certainty, power-lust, and self-righteousness remind one of the real-life villains of the past century. It's often the people ringing the alarm bells, rather than what the alarm bells are ringing for, that's truly frightening.
It's not because Roger Cohen of the New York Times denigrates Ireland as a once "beer-soaked backwater" that makes me think he hates Ireland. Nor is it because he lambastes the "electoral crassness" of the Irish in rejecting last week the Lisbon Treaty that would have empowered Eurocrats at the expense of national sovereignty on such matters as immigration and regulation. Nor is it even because Cohen implores the Europeans to "deal with the ungrateful Irish." It is because Cohen, like so many other leftists, wishes to do away with the nation-state Ireland and replace it with a distant government in Brussels that makes me think he that he hates Ireland. For that matter, he hates France, Germany, Italy, and every other nation-state. Bureaucrats in Washington, DC are bad enough; imagine if we had to deal with an additional layer of bureaucracy in a far-away land--that, at least in part, is what the Irish rejected. It's not that his animus is peculiar to the Irish. In Cohen's fantasy, no countries just the world. The liberal intellectual's dream is the common man's nightmare.
Coldplay has the most popular song in the world right now. Until today, nobody has ever heard of Creaky Boards. But their song, ironically called Songs That I Didn't Write, sounds eerily similar to the most popular song in the world. If their song is indeed over a year old, my sense is that Creaky Boards will become quite rich real soon. Pay up Coldplay. Put Creaky Boards on that ubiquitous I-Tunes advert. Let the lead singer of Creaky Boards marry Gwyneth Paltrow in recompense. Have Creaky Boards take your spot at the next poseur charity concert.
This got me to thinking. Ray Parker Jr.'s Ghostbusters plagiarized Huey Lewis's I Want a New Drug, George Harrison's My Sweet Lord ripped off The Chiffons's He's So Fine, and The Rolling Stones took Anybody Seen My Baby from K.D. Lang's Constant Craving. But these are instances where courts or the artists themselves have agreed upon the, well, let's just call it "homage." In other words, money, perhaps begrudgingly, changed hands.
Rock 'n' roll is filled with stolen riffs. Could Led Zeppelin, for instance, complain about Pearl Jam borrowing the general chord progression of Given to Fly from Going to California when they made a career of musical expropriations from earlier bluesmen? Here are a few examples where I think the "homage" is particularly flattering:
Pearl Jam Given to Fly sounds like Led Zeppelin Going to California
The Strokes Last Night sounds like Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers American Girl
Wilco Pot Kettle Black sounds like The Cure In Between Days
The Faces Three Button Hand-Me-Down really, really sounds like Soul Brothers Six Some Kind of Wonderful
Finger Eleven Paralyzer sounds like Franz Ferdinand Take Me Out
Click on the links. Listen to the songs. Tell me if you hear the similarities. Tell me who else is a copycat.
The Boston Celtics won the deciding game of the NBA Finals in decisive fashion. A few thoughts: Kobe is the best player in the game, but the series demonstrated that basketball is a team sport. As the rowdies at the bar where I watched the game chanted, "You need Shaq! You need Shaq!" The Celtics were the epitome of team, with three legit stars sacrificing individual stats for a championship. Their bench clearly outplayed LA's. Perhaps the most important factor in the series was the Celtics' toughness and the Lakers' lack of it. They were soft not only on defense and in the paint, but they were soft in getting blown out in the deciding game and allowing the Celtics to get back into it in their game four implosion. Congratulation to the Boston Celtics, who, after 22 years, get to hang yet another banner in the rafters.
"If every person did a good job of taking care of his own business, if families and neighborhoods did the same, and if governments devoted less energy to other nations and more to their own, then there might not be much need for Good Samaritanism that is responsible for so much of the world's miseries, whether he is the puritan snooping into his neighbor's affairs or the puritanical government that bombs civilians in order to punish a despot, the relevant rule remains the Golden Rule: Mind your own business, or someone else might decide to mind yours."
--Thomas Fleming, The Morality of Everyday Life, 2004
Having encountered Meet the Press host Tim Russert numerous times in my neighborhood when I lived in Washington, DC, I second all of the tributes to his kindness and humility. He frequented an Italian restaurant for lunch across from my apartment, and his gregarious nature shined through in all of the interactions with the non-televised Washingtonians that I observed. Leaving aside my superficial observations, I am disturbed by a couple of aspects of the on-air eulogies to him. First, particularly on NBC, they are non-stop. A head of state did not die. Tim Russert, an employee of NBC News, did. It used to be a cardinal sin of journalism to become the story--no more. The most glaring aspect of media bias involves the media's obsession with itself. Second, amidst the endless tributes, there hasn't been much time devoted to Russert's other career. Prior to a career in journalism, Russert served as a lackey to liberal politicians Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Mario Cuomo. This, in the partisan world of big media, somehow qualified him to work as an objective moderator. Would anyone working for Moynihan and Cuomo's right-wing counterparts ever be entrusted to "moderate" a Sunday morning public affairs show on NBC? It is a testament to Russert's commitment to his new profession that he seemed to make a real effort to overcome his biases and provide an even-handed effort.
Tell the world. Don't hold it in. Say anything in the comments thread. It's open-thread Friday.
Conservatives do not speak with one voice on Iraq. Like the first installment of 25 Conservative Critics of the Iraq War, the second installment shows that some of the most admired conservative thinkers and doers have opposed and/or criticized the Iraq War. Why? Unprovoked aggression, undeclared wars, nation-building, policing the world, and exporting democracy by gun-barrel rub conservatives the wrong way. Reaganites, military leaders, National Review alumni, right-wing politicians, and pioneers of DC's conservative think-tanks offer prudential reasons rather than pacifistic feelings in making the case against the Iraq War.
26. "[T]he administration believes Saddam Hussein is on the verge of acquiring weapons of mass destruction and using them against us. Outside the White House complex, there is some doubt on this score. I am not convinced and I do not believe the majority of Americans are yet convinced that it is wise or prudent to divert resources away from the difficult struggle against the fanatical Islamic Jihadists and the task of rebuilding Afghanistan.... Based upon the hard evidence I have seen, I do not believe the administration has yet made a compelling case for the invasion and occupation of Iraq. There is no doubt in my mind we could win such a war and dispose of Saddam Hussein. The question that continues to nag, however, is 'what then?'"
--Jack Kemp, Questions to Ponder, Townhall.com, September 24, 2002
27. "Considering that I'm writing this from inside the bunker of what many regard as the Alliance of Neocon Warmongers, it bears mentioning that Michael Moore and I have one surprising trait in common: We both believe that the war in Iraq was ill-advised, ill-planned, and ill-executed, an apparent failure bordering on unmitigated disaster, that was never in our best national interest. Around our office over the last two years, I've made these arguments to colleagues, open-minded types who, after they put me through my water-boarding/naked pyramid sessions, say they'll take it under advisement."
--Matt Labash, Un-Moored From Reality, The Weekly Standard, July 5/12, 2004
28. "At last Thursday's White House briefing, spokesman Ari Fleischer was asked whether the president was retreating from 2000 campaign opposition to the use of U.S. troops for nation building, since they now are stationed in Afghanistan, Kosovo, Bosnia and probably soon in Iraq. 'No,' responded Fleischer, 'the president continues to believe that the purpose of using the military should be to fight and win wars.' Instead, he talked about U.S. relief workers distributing humanitarian aid in occupied Iraq along with 'a variety of international relief organizations.' Watching Fleischer on television, a skeptical Republican in Congress could only chuckle. It will take more than civil servants to bring order to Baghdad after the coming war. In quest of national greatness at home and of a Middle East that is safe for America and Israel, George W. Bush faces a daunting task. While disdaining nation building, he is embarking on empire building."
--Bob Novak, The American Imperium, February 10, 2003
29. "As was predicted here almost four years ago, the Iran-backed Shia Muslims, who are the majority in Iraq, are steadily taking over Iraq and turning it into an ally of Tehran--a most ominous development for the United States. Iran is truly one of the charter members of the Axis of Evil--and, ironically, the Bush Plan is turning Iraq into an adjunct of Iran! Under the new Constitution of Iraq, these fundamentalist Muslims will be able to control the oil in the south and also impose their radical political and social agenda. Women will be treated worse under this new government than under Saddam. Beatings and stonings will be allowed; and women will be confined to a backward lifestyle including limited education and no outside-the-house jobs. Did US troops fight and die so that a Muslim Theocracy could be imposed in Iraq? Our whole adventure in Iraq is an example of American intervention run amok. It is why true conservatives never liked the notion of a pre-emptive invasion and we don't believe in nation-building."
--John LeBoutillier, Deterioration, Boot's Blasts, August 29, 2005
30. "No one has ever thought Wilsonianism to be conservative, ignoring as it does the intractability of culture and people's high valuation of a modus vivendi. Wilsonianism derives from Locke and Rousseau in their belief in the fundamental goodness of mankind and hence in a convergence of interests. George W. Bush has firmly situated himself in this tradition, as in his 2003 pronouncement, 'The human heart desires the same good things everywhere on earth.' Welcome to Iraq. Whereas realism counsels great prudence in complex cultural situations, Wilsonianism rushes optimistically ahead. Not every country is Denmark. The fighting in Iraq has gone on for more than two years, and the ultimate result of 'democratization' in that fractured nation remains very much in doubt, as does the long-range influence of the Iraq invasion on conditions in the Middle East as a whole. In general, Wilsonianism is a snare and a delusion as a guide to policy, and far from conservative."
--Jeffrey Hart, The Burke Habit, Wall Street Journal, December 27, 2005
31. "Unfortunately, what we face in Iraq today is a vacuum of power, a lack of stable institutions needed to govern, and the problem that the promise of democracy for which our nation stands may be lost in the essential scramble for safety and stability in the streets. This is one of the reasons I am uneasy about the war we have made here--for we have helped to create the chaos that has overtaken the country, and we may have reduced rather than promoted the pace of democratic reform."
--Jeane Kirkpatrick, Neocon Godmother Considered Iraq War a Mistake, The Nation, April 9, 2007
32. "The emergence of a postwar democratic Iraq is a Walter Mitty fantasy."
--Arnaud de Borchgrave, Bush's Rubicon: War on Iraq Risks Global Muslim Terrorism, Newmax, January 31, 2003,
33. "And the existence of myriad threats highlights the real problem: there are opportunity costs in this dangerous world to being bogged down in a WMD-free Iraq. Yes, presidents sometimes have to make decisions based on imperfect intelligence. But there were substantial prewar doubts. We conservatives have too often allowed this president to soft-pedal those doubts and, worse, conflate the war aims with its actual results. Many conservatives have been too slow to grapple with new data unfolding on the ground in Iraq, preferring the comfort of familiar talking points. But it is not disloyal to our brave troops, a thousand of whom have already made the ultimate sacrifice for their country, to question the war. Nor is this presidential campaign the wrong time to raise such questions, for fear of helping Kerry, whose position on the war is indecipherable and is otherwise banally liberal. In addition to the election, something else is at stake: the credibility of conservatism as the guarantor of responsible national defense."
--W. James Antle III, Conservatives Must Face Iraq Facts, EnterStageRight.com, October 11, 2004
34. "The administration has yet to challenge any of the following statements that bear on whether Iraq is a serious threat to U.S. national interests: Iraq has not attacked the United States. The administration has provided no evidence that Iraq supported the Sept. 11 attacks. Iraq does not have the capability for a direct attack on the United States--lacking long-range missiles, bombers, and naval forces."
--William Niskanen, One Last Time: The Case Against the War with Iraq, Cato Institute, February 5, 2003
35. "For a movement that began uniquely united in opposition to communism, it is strange that the conservative split would become most profound on foreign policy. From its founding document, the Sharon Statement, conservatives had agreed that all foreign policy had to be justified on the criterion--was it in 'the just interests of the United States'? Communism was the 'greatest threat' to those interests, so it had to be opposed. Iraq was not so simple for the question was empirical, not principled--was that war in the U.S. interest or not? Was it necessary to eliminate weapons of mass destruction and control terrorism or was Iraq not a threat unless the U.S. invaded and stirred up Mideast terrorism? Buckley and many others calculated war was necessary but still opposed empire building. Philosophically, either he was right that building an American world empire was against conservative principles or Bill Kristol, Max Boot and Paul Johnson--with some NR and the Wall Street Journal support--were correct that a new American colonialism was required to bring peace and democracy to the world."
--Donald Devine, Revitalizing Conservatism, May 13, 2003
36. "Somehow we were sent to invade a nation because it was a direct threat to the American people, or to the world, or harbored terrorists, or was involved in the September 11 attacks, or received weapons-grade uranium from Niger, or had mobile weapons labs, or WMD, or had a need to be liberated, or we needed to establish a democracy, or stop an insurgency, or stop a civil war we created that can't be called a civil war even though it is. Something like that."
--Kevin Tillman, After Pat's Birthday, October 19, 2006
37. "You can make a case for it. You can make a case against it. But what you can't oppose is the clear obligation of the president of the United States to secure a declaration of war from the Congress of the United States before he initiates action in Iraq or elsewhere. We will suffer greatly whenever we fail to adhere to the Constitution of the United States."
--Howard Phillips, U.S. Can't Attack Iraq Unless Congress Declares War, Newsmax, July 23, 2002
38. "For the past ten years at least, the conservative movement has been dominated by a bunch of pudgy, pasty-faced kids in bow-ties and blue blazers who spent their youths playing Risk in gothic dormitories, while sipping port and smoking their father's stolen cigars. Thanks to the tragedy of September 11--and a compliant and dim-witted president--these kids got the chance to play Risk with real soldiers, with American soldiers. Patriotic men and women are dying over in Iraq for a war that was never in America's interests. And now these spitball gunners, these chicken hawks, want to attack Iran--which is no threat to the U.S. at all. One thing I can tell you for sure, there may well be some atheists in foxholes--but you'll never find a neocon. They prefer to send blue-collar kids out to die on their behalf, so they get to feel macho--and make up for all the times they got wedgies in prep school. It shall be our considered task to take on the chicken-hawks of this world, and give them wedgies again."
--Taki Theodoracopulos, TakiMag, 2007
39. "The next president should commit to a speedy and complete withdrawal from Iraq, and tell the Iraqi people that the U.S. troops will be going home.... the war and subsequent occupation was a mistake and has been badly mismanaged."
--Bob Barr, Tell Iraqis No Permanent Bases, Says Barr, June 3, 2008
40. "In the ongoing debate over the present Iraq War, I have stood opposed since before we first attacked on March 19, 2003. I opposed the war on prudential grounds, believing it to be both unwarranted and counterproductive to the War on Terror. And I opposed it because it is unconstitutional, lacking the congressional Declaration of War required by the Constitution for sustained offensive actions against another sovereign nation."
--Eric Langborgh, Is the Iraq War Constitutional?, Borg Blog, July 19, 2007
41. "Let's be clear: we have lost this war. We have lost because the initial, central goals of the invasion have all failed: we have not secured WMDS from terrorists because those WMDs did not exist. We have not stymied Islamist terror--at best we have finally stymied some of the terror we helped create. We have not constructed a democratic model for the Middle East--we have instead destroyed a totalitarian government and a phony country, only to create a permanently unstable, fractious, chaotic failed state, where the mere avoidance of genocide is a cause for celebration. We have, moreover, helped solder a new truth in the Arab mind: that democracy means chaos, anarchy, mass-murder, national disintegration and sectarian warfare. And we have also empowered the Iranian regime and made a wider Sunni-Shiite regional war more likely than it was in 2003. Apart from that, Mr Bush, how did you enjoy your presidency?"
--Andrew Sullivan, Ron Paul for the Republican Nomination, Daily Dish, December 17, 2007
42. "Notice what Colin Powell didn't say. Addressing the United Nations Security Council, the meticulous secretary of state--the Bush administration's most credible spokesman--didn't say that Saddam Hussein had anything whatever to do with the events of 9/11. That was supposed to be the whole point of the 'war on terrorism': to avenge and punish the destruction of the World Trade Center and part of the Pentagon, and to prevent a recurrence of that horror. It's hard to see how war on Iraq will achieve either purpose. What do Iraq's hidden 'weapons of mass destruction,' however terrible, have to do with a score of terrorists armed only with box-cutters? Nothing. Nor did Powell say that conquering Iraq would amount to a victory. Or that it would defeat or diminish terrorism. Or that Americans would be safer from terrorists if the United States launches war on Iraq. Have Americans already forgotten that the 'war on terrorism' is supposed to be about--terrorism?"
--Joe Sobran, What Happened to the War on Terrorism?, February 6, 2003
43. "We have created in Iraq the exact type of scenario Bin Laden was hoping (but failed) to lure us into in Afghanistan--an unwinnable war where we're isolated from the world, our troops are walking targets for guerilla terrorists, and our only options are bad (pull out and hope for minimal carnage) and worse (stay in, where our troops will continue to die, and where there's no prospect for stability in the near future). A loosely-connected, (relatively) poorly funded, backward-thinking organization like Al-Qaeda could never inflict significant harm on the United States, at least not in a straightforward war. Their best hope is to scare us into rash, ill-considered actions like overextending our military, alienating our allies, and doing away with the open society and civil liberties that define who we are."
--Radley Balko, Six Years Later: Bin Laden Still Free, U.S. Mired in Iraq, FoxNews.com, September 11, 2007
44. "Still, throughout Bush's almost two-year rush to use the military solution against Iraq, I became increasingly convinced that the Butcher of Baghdad was not a threat to our national security and was far from the main event. No way in my military mind could I see how he represented anywhere near the clear and present danger of a dirty-bomb-armed al-Qaida or a North Korea with nukes and a missile-delivery system probably capable of frying our West Coast at the push of a button. So I was opposed to employing the military solution against Iraq because: We'd lose our focus on dealing with the main contenders; we'd use too many military assets and too many tax dollars; and we'd end up with an already overstretched military force stuck in the Iraqi sand for years."
--Col. David Hackworth, Bad Call, WorldNetDaily, August 5, 2003
45. "Conservatives are divided on the Iraq war, but there is a growing feeling it was a mistake. It's not a Ronald Reagan-type of idea to ride on our white horse around the world trying to save it militarily. Ronald Reagan won the cold war by bankrupting the Soviet Union. No planes flew. No tanks rolled. No armies marched."
--Richard Viguerie, How the Right Went Wrong, Time, March 15, 2007
46. "The consequences of the neocons' adventure in Iraq are now all too clear. America is stuck in a guerrilla war with no end in sight. Our military is stretched too thin to respond to other threats. And our real enemies, nonstate organizations such as Al Qaeda, are benefiting from the Arab and Islamic backlash against our occupation of an Islamic country."
--Paul Weyrich, The Antiwar Right Is Ready To Rumble, New York Times, November 7, 2004
47. "My opposition has deepened as the war has exceeded my worst fears in duration, blatant economic motives, political incompetence and military brutality.... Get out right now. Declare victory, declare defeat, remember a pressing engagement back home... it doesn't matter what reason is given. Get out immediately."
--Wendy McElroy, Iraq Progress Report, Reason, March 17, 2006
48. "It is a traditional conservative position to be in favor of a strong national defense, not one that turns our soldiers into international social workers, and to believe in a noninterventionist foreign policy rather than in globalism or internationalism. We should be friends with all nations, but we will weaken our own nation, maybe irreversibly unless we follow the more humble foreign policy the President advocated in his campaign. Finally, it is very much against every conservative tradition to support preemptive war."
--Rep. John Duncan, Conservatives Against a War With Iraq, March 6, 2003
49. "[T]he invasion of Iraq in 2003, has served American interests in no identifiable way. The United States is more diplomatically isolated than at any time in recent memory. The secular regime of Saddam Hussein, detestable as it was, was nevertheless among the more liberal states of the region. As many observers predicted at the time, in the absence of Saddam it may now be replaced by an Islamic state. That is what American security and the 'American national interest' have gained from a conflict whose financial cost alone will surpass the cost of America's share of World War I sometime next year."
--Thomas Woods, The Progressive Peacenik Myth, The American Conservative, August 2, 2004
50. "Congress is there for the exercise of that responsibility. I think our Constitution and our tradition are quite sufficient here. [Bush] should not do what he's planning to do without a clear congressional mandate. This is against all American tradition. Anyone who has ever studied the history of American diplomacy, especially military diplomacy, knows that you might start in a war with certain things on your mind as a purpose of what you are doing, but in the end, you found yourself fighting for entirely different things that you had never thought of before. In other words, war has a momentum of its own and it carries you away from all thoughtful intentions when you get into it. Today, if we went into Iraq, like the president would like us to do, you know where you begin. You never know where you are going to end."
--George Kennan, George Kennan Speaks Out About Iraq, History News Network, September 26, 2002
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a report today showing that the life expectancy of Americans has hit a record high; that not one of the fifteen leading causes of death saw an appreciable uptick; and that the infant-mortality rate is down considerably. The CNN headline of an AP article on the good news? "US Life Expectancy Still Trails 30 Countries."
"Romanticism is man's revolt against reason, as well as against the condition under which nature has compelled him to live. The romantic is a daydreamer; he easily manages in imagination to disregard the laws of logic and of nature. The thinking and rationally acting man tries to rid himself of the discomfort of unsatisfied wants by economic action and work; he produces in order to improve his position. The romantic is too weak--too neurasthenic--for work; he imagines the pleasures of success but he does nothing to acheive them. He does not remove the obstacles; he merely removes them in imagination. He has a grudge against reality because it is not like the dream world he has created. He hates work, the economy, and reason."
--Ludwig von Mises, Socialism, 1922
Young America's Foundation has been recording the commencement speakers at top schools for more than a decade. Unsurprisingly, the data supports much anecdotal evidence that suggests that colleges and universities promote left-wing ideas to the exclusion of conservative ideas. Carnegie Mellon hosting Al Gore, Cornell featuring Maya Angelou, Wake Forest honoring E.J. Dionne, and UC-San Diego spotlighting Robert Kennedy, Jr. are a few of many examples of schools fawning over liberal celebrities on graduation day. On the rare ocassion when conservatives get the call, campus denizens act as though administrators proposed to burn down the library. "Professors at the University of Georgia tried to get the school to rescind an invitation to Justice Clarence Thomas," YAF points out. "At Washington University in St. Louis leftist students and professors turned their backs when Phyllis Schlafly was awarded an honorary degree." We are in the midst of a war. Why only one military leader? A Republican administration is in the White House. Why so few GOP stalwarts amidst what seems like a Clinton administration reunion? Where are the conservative counterparts to Julian Bond, Laurence Tribe, and Carl Bernstein?
Hillary Clinton's campaign was historic, but not in the ways suggested by the feminist rhetoric she cloaked her defeat in when ceasing her campaign on Saturday. It was historic in that it was the biggest political choke job in my lifetime, and perhaps Hillary's lifetime as well. It was appropriate that she ended suspended her campaign on the very day that gargantuan favorite Big Brown finished last in the Belmont Stakes. How did she lose? She calculated poorly on her Iraq vote. Rather than an asset, her too-tenacious husband proved a liability. She arrogantly assumed victory and ran an incumbent-type campaign. Like Mike Tyson not bringing icepacks to the Buster Douglas fight, Senator Clinton assumed an early knockout and didn't prepare for later contests. She forgot she was in a Democratic primary and not the general election, letting Obama out-liberal her. Her campaign spent money foolishly. And she reminded voters just how poisonous even mundane political matters got when she and her husband ruled in the 1990s. When a woman becomes president, no sane person will see Hillary Clinton's campaign as putting the "18 million cracks" in the glass ceiling that enabled Mrs. President to finally take the oath of office. Instead, her campaign will go down in history as a caveat against sure-things believing their own hype.
Shouldn't an attempt to kill your child in the womb be ample grounds for the state to judge a couple "unfit parents"? Lewis Percival survived the saline harpoons, chemical weapons, and vacuums of the abortionist to ultimately escape from the world's most dangerous place last November. Depending upon the way you look at it, he left his mother's body three weeks premature or twenty-five weeks late. "I was on the [birth control pill] when I became pregnant," England's Jodie Percival noted of her abortion gone wrong, er, I mean right. "Deciding to terminate at eight weeks was just utterly horrible but I couldn't cope with the anguish of losing another baby." Help me with the logic here. I couldn't cope with the anguish of losing another baby so I attempted to kill my baby.
The Guardian interview of Clint Eastwood is as refreshing in the age of political correctness as Dirty Harry's "Do you feel lucky?" scene was refreshing in the bizarro age when criminals were confused for their victims. In Dirty Harry-style, Eastwood tells Spike Lee to "shut his face." Lee, if you recall, faulted Eastwood for omitting African Americans from Flags of Our Fathers. "The story is Flags of Our Fathers, the famous flag-raising picture, and [African Americans] didn't do that. If I go ahead and put an African-American actor in there, people'd go, 'This guy's lost his mind.' I mean, it's not accurate." The controversy reminds one of the ahistorical decision by New York City to commission a multiracial statue of 9/11 firemen hoisting a flag even though the firemen who actually did this were, gasp, white. Accuracy takes a back seat to diversity.
Lee's next movie is set in Depression-era Los Angeles, before the great migration of Hispanics and African Americans there. "What are you going to do, you gonna tell a fuckin' story about that?" Eastwood told the Guardian. "Make it look like a commercial for an equal opportunity player? I'm not in that game. I'm playing it the way I read it historically, and that's the way it is. When I do a picture and it's 90% black, like Bird, I use 90% black people." Lee, for his part, has responded to Eastwood's response. He notes that he never claimed blacks raised the flag at Iwo Jima, just that they were there and weren't there in Eastwood's film. "First of all, the man is not my father and we're not on a plantation either," the Do the Right Thing director explained to the Guardian. "He's a great director. He makes his films, I make my films ... And a comment like 'A guy like that should shut his face' - come on Clint, come on. He sounds like an angry old man right there."
Occasioning the Eastwood interview is the imminent release of the Dirty Harry box set. I'm there. When I had cable, and Dirty Harry or especially Magnum Force came on late night, I was in for it the next day--I couldn't stop watching. The Enforcer got a bit silly, with the liberation-theology nun pulling out a piece in the church before a pre-Cagney & Lacey Tyne Daley let her have it. But there is something cathartic in watching any of the Dirty Harry (or the Death Wish) films. They don't make 'em like they used to, and the political correctness that Eastwood lashes out against is one of the reasons why.
Okay, I give in--at long last, an NBA post. Do you want to know the truth about The Truth? People caught up in mythology have taken a how-dare-you attitude to the comparisons of Paul Pierce's Game 1 injury-ridden emergence from the lockerroom to an injured Willis Reed taking the court to start game seven of the 1970 NBA Finals. A writer at Fox Sports, who moonlights as a medical doctor and film critic, opines that Pierce should be awarded an Oscar. I'm tempted to throw a "How dare you?" right back at him--and the congregants of the Cult of Willis Reed. Both Pierce and Reed had injuries to their legs (Pierce's knee, Reed's thigh), were playing for their first title against the Lakers, and sent the arena into a frenzy by their mere presence. The big difference is that Paul Pierce won the game with his play, while Willis Reed merely, well, played. He scored four points, took down three rebounds, and had one assist. Here's the box score for those living in a world constructed by sports mythology rather than reality. Pierce, on the other hand, drained consecutive threes, helped make the best player in the NBA look like Bonzi Wells, and, after an anemic first half, took over the game. It's not game seven, it's not New York, and it may not turn out to be that great an injury, but what Paul Pierce did was not only dramatic in a Willis Reed way, but effective in a Kirk Gibson way as well.
Postscript: Like Willis Reed, I tore a muscle in my thigh. Instead of thousands of rabid fans cheering me on, a crowd of Marines laughed uncontrollably as I writhed in pain (Had they been in my place I would have responded similarly, and they knew it). I had fallen from atop a Light Armored Vehicle onto the rocky soil of Twenty-Nine Palms, California. Only on the way down my leg hit a ladder rung extending from the LAV's steel hull, and to hear the story told by my amused comrades in arms, I bounced several times after hitting the ground. The bruise on the back of my thigh was larger than Kevin Mench's head and I was unable to bend my leg at the knee without causing severe pain. I didn't go to the locker room. I didn't get to call a time out. I didn't even get medical treatment or convalesce. I spent another week riding in the gunner's seat. The Marines didn't think more of me for any of this. They certainly would have thought less of me if an injury, even the one I endured, impeded my training. When respect, rather than a multimillion dollar contract, is on the line, you play the game and no one gives you an "ataboy." Give me my overdue online standing ovation--please.
The racism of the American past that the Left uncourageously crusades against from the present is the Left's history as well. Robert Owen's New Harmony commune that effectively launched the American Left banned African Americans. The Communist Party ejected Japanese Americans from its rolls after Pearl Harbor. The Democratic Party countenanced the Theodore Bilbos and John Rankins, but just one black member of Congress before World War II. In my National Review Online article on the Left, racism, and the historic Barack Obama campaign (click and read), I tackle the Left's version of American Exceptionalism that posits that leftists have always held superior attitudes on race vis-a-vis their fellow countrymen.
A Conservative History of the American Left is "worth taking seriously," writes historian Michael Kazin. "Unlike his fellow partisans, Flynn has spent some time in libraries and archives, and he strains to turn this erudition into a larger interpretation of the phenomenon he detests." The review in The Nation calls A Conservative History of the American Left "an intriquing failure," which when considering the source I'll take as a compliment. The negative review distorts and fails in neglecting to give the reader a feel for the book. In one breath Kazin borrows from Marx's insult lexicon in calling actual communists--you know, the people who lived on communes instead of the one who dreamed about them inside the British Museum--"utopian socialists." In another breath, he accuses me of not considering "retrospective enemies, be they alive or dead, on their own terms." Practice what you preach, dude. Political scientist Paul Gottfried and historian Tom DiLorenzo pen positive reviews. DiLorenzo focuses on the book's first section, which inspects those utopian socialists antebellum communists. Gottfried notes on TakiMag, "The most critical insight that I extracted from Flynn's book is the recognition that radical social ideas travel well in American society, if they are made to look and smell American."
The Iraq war has created a false dichotomy. The media has manufactured the perception, and thus influenced the reality, that conservative=pro-war and liberal=anti-war. But no conservative principles buttress the idea of nation building, policing distant parts of the globe, and militarily evangelizing the world for democracy. You would not know this from listening to talk radio, perusing op-ed columns, or watching cable news, but a multitude of important conservative voices are critical of, and some in fact oppose, the Iraq war. Additionally, one could conjure up a list of similarly well-known liberals--Christopher Hitchens, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton--who supported the invasion. I've compiled a diverse list of conservatives--neoconservatives and theoconservatives, libertarians and Republicans, but mostly just plain-old conservatives--who are critics of the Iraq War. They have rebelled against the simplistic script the media has produced that forces conservatives to play the role of the jingoes, and liberals the role of the pacificists. It's a lot more complicated than that. On what grounds would a conservative oppose or criticize the Iraq venture? Read carefully....
1. "What's really killed the Republican Party isn't spending, it's Iraq. As it happens, I was opposed to going into Iraq from the beginning. I think it was a mistake, for the simple reason that I do not believe the United States of America ought to be involved in aggression."
--Milton Friedman, The Romance of Economics, Wall Street Journal, July 22, 2006
2. "But it is clear to me now that things are not working out well in Iraq. Despite the incredible confidence, bravery and sacrifice of our men and women on the ground there, Iraq is still a violent, largely out of control nation. We may be making more terrorists than we destroy. The word 'quagmire' comes sadly to mind."
--Ben Stein, What Ben Stein Thinks Bush Should Do, CBS.com, October 29, 2006
3. "With the benefit of minute hindsight, Saddam Hussein wasn't the kind of extra-territorial menace that was assumed by the administration one year ago. If I knew then what I know now about what kind of situation we would be in, I would have opposed the war."
--William F. Buckley, National Review Founder to Leave Stage, New York Times, June 29, 2004
4. "As President Bush marched the country to war with Iraq, even some voices on the Right warned that this was a fool's errand. I dismissed them angrily. I thought them unpatriotic. But almost four years later, I see that I was the fool. In Iraq, this Republican President for whom I voted twice has shamed our country with weakness and incompetence, and the consequences of his failure will be far, far worse than anything Jimmy Carter did."
--Rod Dreher, Bush, Iraq Lead a Conservative to Question, National Public Radio, January 11, 2007
5. "I think it's a total nightmare and disaster, and I'm ashamed that I went against my own instincts in supporting it."
--Tucker Carlson, Newly Dovish, Tucker Carlson Goes Public, New York Observer, May 16, 2004
6. "I thought there was an arrogance about this war, and a belief flowing from self-righteousness and misdirected idealism, which was bound to end in disaster. I thought of my own country at the end of the nineteenth century and embarking on the Boer War and ending essentially its imperial power by its overweening folly. And I thought, not merely wrong but a mistake. And nothing, absolutely nothing that has happened since--and I have been to Iraq twice since that war took place--has convinced me in any way that I was wrong. This was an idealist's war. It was an idealist's war supported by idealists for the best of reasons. And it fulfilled my belief that there is nothing in this world more terrifying than somebody who thinks that he is right."
--Peter Hitchens, Debate: Hitchens v. Hitchens, April 3, 2008
7. "The thought of Saddam Hussein with a sophisticated nuclear capability is a frightening thought, okay? Now, having said that, I don't know what intelligence the U.S. government has. And before I can just stand up and say, 'Beyond a shadow of a doubt, we need to invade Iraq,' I guess I would like to have better information.... I think it is very important for us to wait and see what the inspectors come up with, and hopefully they come up with something conclusive."
--General Norman Schwarzkopf, Desert Caution, The Washington Post, January 28, 2003
8. "Despite the myriad voices in the press insisting, 'Iraq is not a Vietnam!' the indisputable fact is that, if you consider the passions and principles applied there, it really IS another Vietnam. Among the causes for the war are obscurantist theories about foreign threats that have little basis in reality; civilians at the top who play with the soldiers they have never been; and the underlying lies that give credence to special interests (the Bay of Tonkin pretense in Vietnam, the supposed weapons of mass destruction in Iraq)."
--Georgie Anne Geyer, Vietnam and Iraq Have More Similarities Than Differences, November 10, 2003
9. "We didn't have a casus belli going in, and that was disturbing to me. Casus belli means that this guy is a threat to our national security, to our vital national interests, or to American lives. I just didn't see that that was the case. We had Afghanistan happening, and Osama bin Laden is a fellow who needs to meet God sooner or later--preferably with a U.S. bullet in his head--and that was a more pressing matter to me at that time."
--Tom Clancy, Charlie Rose Show, May 25, 2005
10. "The Pope has very clearly expressed his thoughts, not only as the thoughts of an individual, but as the thoughts of a man of conscience occupying the highest functions in the Catholic Church. Of course, he has not imposed this position as a doctrine of the Church, but as the appeal of a conscience enlightened by the faith. This judgment of the Holy Father is convincing from a rational point of view also: reasons sufficient for unleashing a war against Iraq did not exist. First of all it was clear from the very beginning that proportion between the possible positive consequences and the sure negative effect of the conflict was not guaranteed. On the contrary, it seems clear that the negative consequences will be greater than anything positive that might be obtained. Without considering then that we must begin asking ourselves whether as things stand, with new weapons that cause destruction that goes well beyond the groups involved in the fight, it is still licit to allow that a 'just war' might exist."
--Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI), The Catechism in a Post Christian World, April 2003
11. "My fault was in not grasping the scale of the administration's multiculturalist ambitions. (Of which, to be fair to them, they had given plenty of hints, and even one or two frank declarations of intent.) George W. Bush believes that, to borrow and adjust a line from the colonel in Full Metal Jacket: 'Inside every Middle East Muslim there is an American trying to get out.' The effort to stabilize Iraq, and the reluctance to just leave the Iraqis to fight each other among the rubble, followed inevitably from that belief, which is, according to me, a false belief. I see all that now. I didn't see it then. I am sorry."
--John Derbyshire, Apologizing for Iraq, NRO, June 12, 2006
12. "I for one would not have supported the war if I thought that its principal justification was the liberation of the Iraqi people, which is what the White House now says was its primary mission. Our military exists to defend the nation, not be the world's policeman."
--Bruce Bartlett, My Misgivings, Townhall.com, April 21, 2004
13. "Of all of the different views that have now come to be associated with neo-conservatives, the strangest one to me was the confidence that the US could transform Iraq into a Western-style democracy and go on from there to democratise the broader Middle East. It struck me as strange precisely because these same neo-conservatives had spent much of the past generation warning about the dangers of ambitious social engineering and how social planners could never control behaviour or deal with unanticipated consequences. If the US cannot eliminate poverty or raise test scores in Washington, DC, how in the world does it expect to bring democracy to a part of the world that has stubbornly resisted it and is virulently anti-American to boot?"
--Francis Fukuyama, Shattered Illusions, The Australian, July 16, 2004
14. ''I don't believe that America will justifiably make an unprovoked attack on another nation. It would not be consistent with what we have been as a nation or what we should be as a nation.... My own view would be to let [Saddam Hussein] bluster, let him rant and rave all he wants and let that be a matter between he and his own country. As long as he behaves himself within his own borders, we should not be addressing any attack or resources against him.''
--Majority Leader Dick Armey, Iraq Is Defiant as GOP Leader Opposes Attack, New York Times, August 9, 2002
15. "The war on Iraq is a dangerous diversion from the war on al-Qaida. Indeed, an Iraq invasion is likely to inspire retaliatory terrorism from Islamists everywhere. I would prefer to see America's resources--money, manpower, intelligence services, military might--devoted to crushing the al-Qaida infrastructure, tracking down its operatives and protecting the American homeland from terror assault. Our current anti-terror efforts are pathetically inadequate, as I fear we shall soon see."
--Heather MacDonald, Who's for War, Who's Against It, and Why, Slate, February 19, 2003
16. "For some, the promotion of democracy promises an easy resolution to the many difficult problems we face, a guiding light on a dimly seen horizon. But I believe that great caution is warranted here. Without strong evidence to the contrary, we should not readily believe that, without an enduring American presence, democracy can be so easily implanted and nourished in societies where history and experience suggest it is quite alien. It may, in fact, constitute an uncontrollable experiment with an outcome akin to that faced by the Sorcerer's Apprentice."
--Rep. Henry Hyde, The Perils of the Golden Theory, February 26, 2006
17. "President Bush has adopted and fostered an ideologically charged missionary spirit that bears a striking resemblance to that of the Jacobins who led the French Revolution. The principles of 'freedom and democracy' are to be promoted around the world by virtuous American power. The French Jacobins, too, saw themselves as virtuous champions of universal principles, 'freedom' and popular rule prominent among them."
--Professor Claes Ryn, A Jacobin in Chief, The American Conservative, April 11, 2005
18. "Although the Constitution endows the legislative branch with the sole authority to declare war, the president did not consult Congress before announcing his new policy. He promulgated the Bush Doctrine by fiat. Then he acted on it. In 2003, Saddam Hussein posed no immediate threat to the United States; arguing that he might one day do so, the administration depicted the invasion of Iraq as an act of anticipatory self-defense. To their everlasting shame, a majority of members in both the House and the Senate went along, passing a resolution that 'authorized' the president to do what he was clearly intent on doing anyway."
--Professor Andrew Bacevich, Rescinding the Bush Doctrine, Boston Globe, March 1, 2007
19. "What's human sacrifice if not sending guys off to Iraq for no reason?"
--Mel Gibson, Mel Gibson Criticizes Iraq War at Film Fest, AP, September 25, 2006
20. "Although the argument that the United Nations cannot dictate to us what is in our best interest is correct, and we do have a right to pursue foreign policy unilaterally, it's ironic that we're making this declaration in order to pursue an unpopular war that very few people or governments throughout the world support. But the argument for unilateralism and national sovereignty cannot be made for the purpose of enforcing UN Security Council resolutions. That doesn't make any sense. If one wants to enforce UN Security Council resolutions, that authority can only come from the United Nations itself. We end up with the worst of both worlds: hated for our unilateralism, but still lending credibility to the UN. The Constitution makes it clear that if we must counter a threat to our security, that authority must come from the U.S. Congress."
--Rep. Ron Paul, Another United Nations War?, February 26, 2003
21. "[Saddam Hussein] is a bad guy. He's a terrible guy and he should go. But I don't think it's worth 800 troops dead, 4,500 wounded--some of them terribly-- $200 billion of our treasury and counting, and our reputation and our image in the world, particularly in that region, shattered."
--General Anthony Zinni, Author Tom Clancy Criticizes Iraq War, AP, May 24, 2004
22. "The United States intends to invade and occupy a nation that has not attacked us, to reshape its society, rebuild its government, and redirect its foreign policy to reflect American ideals and serve American interests. Imperialism, pure and simple. Though President Bush declares our aims to be altruistic--liberation of the people of Iraq from the grip of a brutal dictator--this war is already seen in Arab eyes as a war of American empire."
--Patrick J. Buchanan, After Baghdad, Where Do We Go?, March 3, 2003
23. "And what are we to say of the threat of a war which could strike the people of Iraq, the land of the Prophets, a people already sorely tried by more than twelve years of embargo? War is never just another means that one can choose to employ for settling differences between nations. As the Charter of the United Nations Organization and international law itself remind us, war cannot be decided upon, even when it is a matter of ensuring the common good, except as the very last option and in accordance with very strict conditions, without ignoring the consequences for the civilian population both during and after the military operations."
--Pope John Paul II, Address of His Holiness Pope John Paul II to the Diplomatic Corps, January 13, 2003
24. "We've got to be looking at priorities here. Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden have one thing in common, and that is they both hate the United States. Otherwise, they have very little in common. As a matter of fact, my guess is, if it weren't for the United States, Osama bin Laden would turn on Saddam Hussein. Why? Because Saddam Hussein is the head of a Ba'athist party--a secular, socialist party. He is anathema to the kind of world that Osama bin Laden wants to reinstall. So he's part of the problem; he's not part of the solution. That doesn't mean they can't cooperate, and might not cooperate. But what I'm saying is we need to get our priorities straight, and we've got them straight right now. We're going after number one target."
--Lt. Gen. Brent Scowcroft, PBS Interview, October 2001
25. "Now America is engaged in a great exercise in nation-building. America invaded Iraq to disarm a rogue regime thought to be accumulating weapons of mass destruction. After nine months of postwar searching, no such weapons have as yet been found. The appropriate reaction to this is dismay, and perhaps indignation, about intelligence failures--failures that also afflicted the previous American administration and numerous foreign governments. Instead, Washington's reaction is Wilsonian. It is: Never mind the weapons of mass destruction; a sufficient justification for the war was Iraq's noncompliance with various U.N. resolutions. So a conservative American administration says that war was justified by the need--the opportunity--to strengthen the U.N., a.k.a. the 'international community,' as the arbiter of international behavior. Woodrow Wilson lives."
--George Will, Can We Make Iraq Democratic, City Journal, Winter 2004
Jimmy Carter will endorse Barack Obama for president tonight. Like most liberals, Carter has trouble discerning intentions from consequences. If he really wanted Obama to win, the former president would have endorsed John McCain.
By most indicators, the war in Iraq is going much better. For instance, just 21 troops died in May. Depending on who is counting, this is the lowest number of American military deaths since the war began more than five years ago. I am against the war. I think it is bad for America. But I cheer the improvement. Every American should want to win this war. That said, I am unclear what this week's standard for winning is. Ridding Iraq of non-existent WMDs? Punishing Iraq for its non-role in 9/11? Launching a democracy in a soil that has never grown it? It is the shifting rationales for why we are in Iraq, and the lack of a definitive criterion for victory, that makes it hard to see even short-term improvements as evidence of long-term transformation. A strategy that relies on the controllable, i.e., the military's ability to impose their might, rather than one that relies on the uncontrollable, i.e., the ability of Iraqis to transform themselves into pluralistic democrats that they have never been, seems a formula better suited for success.
Put another way, consider the Powell Doctrine, and ask yourself if any of that wise general's counsel is now heeded by the war managers:
1. "Is a vital national security interest threatened?"
2. "Do we have a clear attainable objective?"
3. "Have the risks and costs been fully and frankly analyzed?"
4. "Have all other non-violent policy means been fully exhausted?"
5. "Is there a plausible exit strategy to avoid endless entanglement?"
6. "Have the consequences of our action been fully considered?"
7. "Is the action supported by the American people?"
8. "Do we have genuine broad international support?"
Guitarist Bo Diddley has died at 79. The Bo Diddley beat lives on. Hear it in Mr. Brownstone by Guns n Roses, Not Fade Away by Buddy Holly, and Desire by U2.
Historian John Lukacs writes a negative review of Pat Buchanan's Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War. This would hardly be news save for where the criticism appeared: The American Conservative. Buchanan, if you remember, founded the magazine in 2002. Buchanan provided the name, Taki the money, and Scott McConnell the sweat. Taki took his money elsewhere and Pat Buchanan's name has been trashed.
I haven't read Buchanan's book, but one of Lukacs's criticisms certainly rings true. "The further and perhaps deeper problem is Buchanan's sincerity," he writes. "Since when has he been an admirer of the British Empire?" Merely seeing the book's title a few months back evoked the same thought. Does Pat Buchanan really weep over the collapse of the British Empire? Yet, Lukacs's strong points get buried beneath an unfortunate comparison that does more to discredit the reviewer than the reviewed. "In this review it is not my proper business to speculate about Buchanan's inclinations," Lukacs writes. "I must restrict myself to questioning his arguments." But by comparing Buchanan to David Irving, Lukacs violates his self-imposed restriction. Irving, an historian whose claim to infamy involves holocaust denial, isn't cited in Buchanan's book. From what I understand the book discusses the wider question of World War II and takes for granted, as buttressed by the historical evidence and endless personal testimony, that the holocaust was not "the hoax of the century," as one denier's book puts it, but mass-murder on a scale rarely approached in recorded history. Why mention Buchanan's name in the same breath as Irving's? It only obscures any of the valid points Lukacs makes and focuses all attention on a few vindictive sentences.
Lukacs's review, predictably, has caused a firestorm. Tom Piatak, on The American Conservative's blog no less, calls Lukacs a "crank" and--gasp--a "neocon." This is unfair to Lukacs, who has produced many fine works of history. It's also unfair to Buchanan. Perhaps not Piatak, but I sense that many of Buchanan's fans believe he is a god above criticism. Certainly anyone writing a book that calls the fight against Hitler an "unnecessary war" knows that he is in for it.
What is most interesting about this controversy is neither Lukacs's criticism nor Buchanan's book. It is The American Conservative's decision to commission a review of a book by one of its founders by a known intellectual adversary. However harmful it may be to Buchanan that critics can now say that even his own magazine won't back him, it may be ultimately more harmful to The American Conservative to alienate the man primarily responsible for attracting its subscribers.
"While Pat Buchanan is a large name in and of himself, he is the figure most associated with a brand of conservatism that could be called 'old right,' 'paleoconservative,' 'America First,' or even 'Buchananite' or 'Pat Buchanan Conservative,'" Marcus Epstein notes in an informative piece at TakiMag. "Whatever you want to call it, neither TAC editor Scott McConnell nor the magazine fit into any of those categories." Paul Gottfried's take, like mine and Epstein's, finds neither Lukacs or Buchanan the object of interest here, but the American Conservative. He writes at TakiMag, "the magazine is usually predictable, for example, in opposing the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and in supporting the Palestinian cause, sometimes to the point of playing down Palestinian violence. The same magazine is also vehemently against the war in Iraq, indeed so much so that its tirades are often formulaic. Almost every issue has at least one piece on the war, and often by authors who have made similar denunciations in earlier issues. On most other matters, the American Conservative rarely stands to the right of the neoconservative press, and its tendency to feature fairly conventional leftists suggests for me that the editorial staff is trying to build up a following among liberal establishment journalists." The editor's decision to endorse John Kerry for president in 2004, a "conservative case for Obama" piece in a recent issue, and fawning over the likes of Norman Mailer have left many American conservatives scratching their heads over The American Conservative. The attack on Buchanan puzzles further, leaving some to admire its boldness and others to decry it as biting the hand that fed them.
Reviews, unfortunately, are often assigned based on a preexisting understanding between editor and writer on how the review will turn out. In the case of Lukacs reviewing Buchanan, such an understanding was unnecessary since TAC editor Scott McConnell knew how such a review would turn out before even speaking to Lukacs. In other words, publishing a negative review of Buchanan's book was by design. Whether motivated by a desire to forge an identity independent from Buchanan, to get people talking about the magazine, or to distance itself from Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War's controversial thesis, The American Conservative has succeeded in doing all of that.
The American Conservative (and Lukacs) has its defenders. Daniel Larison of the TAC hosted Eunomia blog opines, "Obviously, invoking the name of David Irving was quite unnecessary for the purposes of the review (though I understand why Lukacs used it to make his traditional point about the danger of half-truths), but then so is throwing around the epithet neocon or accusing John Lukacs of all people of holding neoconservative views." "AmCon hasn't been taken over by leftists, its just that they aren't stupid and don't want to refight the 'movement' wars of years gone by," holds the Left Conservative blog regarding Professor Gottfried's critique. "One final note on the subject of the TakiMag v. AmCon issue. Last year Taki himself vanished from the pages of AmCon for reasons that were never explained. Soon thereafter Chronicles took up his column. Last week TakiMag announced that they will begin publishing Pat Buchanan's syndicated column and featured a long excerpt of the previously mentioned book as a feature article. Given all of that, one has to wonder what sort of behind the scenes issues have been going on with both of these journals and why have they now evolved into a public pissing contest?"
Indeed.
