Corn on Armitage

So it was Dick Armitage that was Novak's source in 2003. That resolves that question, but as David Corn points out, it isn't exactly a "get of jail free" card for the administration, for two main reasons:

1) Because Armitage's source was that infamous White House memo highlighting the Plame-Wilson-Niger connection intended to discredit Wilson, thus making the White House indirectly responsible;

and 2) because of this:

The outing of Armitage does change the contours of the leak case. The initial leaker was not plotting vengeance. He and Powell had not been gung-ho supporters of the war. Yet Bush backers cannot claim the leak was merely an innocent slip. Rove confirmed the classified information to Novak and then leaked it himself as part of an effort to undermine a White House critic. Afterward, the White House falsely insisted that neither Rove nor Libby had been involved in the leak and vowed that anyone who had participated in it would be bounced from the administration. Yet when Isikoff and Newsweek in July 2005 revealed a Matt Cooper email showing that Rove had leaked to Cooper, the White House refused to acknowledge this damning evidence, declined to comment on the case, and did not dismiss Rove. To date, the president has not addressed Rove's role in the leak. It remains a story of ugly and unethical politics, stonewalling, and lies.

The problem is that while Armitage was Novak's source, there was lots more leaking going on that really WAS intended to discredit Wilson. Even if Armitage did it first, it doesn't get any of the confirmers off the hook. The rules are clear: neither confirm nor deny. They didn't follow those rules.

Bush Press Conference

Man, is he having trouble with this one. Everybody knows that he stumbles over questions until he gets back to his talking points. It's still almost awesome to behold.

(Especially when he tries to hide it by hiding the awkward segue by shouting the talking points. "mumblemumblemumble THAT'S WHY WE CAN'T CUT 'N RUN" barely worked back when the war started, and it doesn't work now.)

Edit: Erm, George? Ixnay on the ecuritysay ouncilcay. Yeah, Iran hasn't been the SC's bestest friend, but Israel and the UN also have a long and not-always-friendly history. Invocation of it in one case may turn around to bite you in the ass on the other.

Bevilacqua quits, backs Bob Rae

The Canadian Liberal leadership race got slightly weirder, as "center-right" candidate Maurizio Bevilacqua quits and backs Bob Rae, the former leader of Ontario wing of the social democratic NDP.

Needless to say, it's an odd combination. His stated reasons?

"I'm convinced that Bob Rae is the best person to lead the Liberal Party to victory. He has the experience and the intelligence and the vision to lead Canada into the 21st century," Mr. Belivacqua said at press conference in Ottawa.

This doesn't really give us much information either. It's leadership boilerplate, nothing more.

Perhaps Rae's money advantage and high media profile is starting to have an effect, even if his on-the-ground machine hasn't been up to snuff.

Lamont is Winning?

I'm following it (after Daily Kos died), on what may be the longestEschaton comments thread EVER.

With about 94% in, it's 51.5-48.3 for Lamont. Against Joe Freakin' Lieberman, one of the most famous figures in the country and the poster boy for the DLC.

Even if Lieberman managed to turn it around, this is a testamony to just how badly the DLC is misreading their party. He's probably not going to turn it around.

Incredible, unexpectedly, Ned Lamont is going to be the Democratic candidate for Connecticut.

(I can't even begin to think about all the phone calls that Markos Moulitsas is going to be getting tomorrow. He'll have become a superstar.)

Unsurprising

Via the National Post comes Kinsella:

And, in the media, anti-Jewish conspiracy theories now regularly take the place of serious analysis. Read the Sun’s Eric Margolis, for example: “Israel’s attempted destruction of Hezbollah is the first step in a long-planned campaign to strip away Iran’s allies and turn Lebanon into a joint US-Israeli protectorate.” Or the Toronto Star’s Haroon Siddiqui: “The abductions [of Israeli soldiers] provided the excuse to do what Israel was planning anyway – try and destroy Hezbollah and Hamas.”

These fiendish Israeli “campaigns” and “plans” apparently also extended to Israel requiring that Hezbollah rockets be launched at Israel – and that Israel look the other way while Israelis are kidnapped by murderers. With the greatest of respect, Messrs. Margolis and Siddiqui give the sasquatch coverage in the National Enquirer the glossy finish of high academic research.

No, actually what they're saying is that this plan had been on the books for a long time, and that the kidnapping (which in no way, apparently, do Margolis and Siddiqui support or justify) was the spark/excuse/reason/whatever needed for that pre-existing plan to be put into place.

Whether one agrees or not, it's simply disingenuous to misrepresent the argument like that.

But if all of this sounds rather familiar, it is because it is: whenever Israel responds to organized campaigns of mass murder, as is its right, sputtering indignation is heard far and wide. Tenured university professors rail against the Zionist state on newspaper op-ed pages; editorial boards (not, gratefully, at the Post or the Globe and Mail) demand that Israel exercise restraint never practiced by its enemies; and pollsters offer up surveys, as the Globe did on its front page this week, asserting that nearly 80 per cent of Canadians desire “neutrality.” (In this context, “neutrality” is what happens when someone hurries past when you are being mugged.)

Bolding mine. No, Warren, the analogy would be more like if you saw a mugger's victim setting charges to demolish the mugger's building. Would that get rid of the mugger? Yeah, probably. He definitely wouldn't mug anybody ever again. Thing is, most of the people in that building wouldn't be doing anything ever again, either.

Would you try to stop the victim from pushing that lever, and instead finding some other way to ensure he doesn't get mugged again? Sure, I imagine most of my readers would. But not some, including Warren, who don't get the idea that proportionality means anything, and that you don't drop a MOAB to take out a bothersome mosquito.

Salon: "hiding among civilians" is a myth

Check it out:

Throughout this now 16-day-old war, Israeli planes high above civilian areas make decisions on what to bomb. They send huge bombs capable of killing things for hundreds of meters around their targets, and then blame the inevitable civilian deaths -- the Lebanese government says 600 civilians have been killed so far -- on "terrorists" who callously use the civilian infrastructure for protection.

But this claim is almost always false. My own reporting and that of other journalists reveals that in fact Hezbollah fighters -- as opposed to the much more numerous Hezbollah political members, and the vastly more numerous Hezbollah sympathizers -- avoid civilians. Much smarter and better trained than the PLO and Hamas fighters, they know that if they mingle with civilians, they will sooner or later be betrayed by collaborators -- as so many Palestinian militants have been.

For their part, the Israelis seem to think that if they keep pounding civilians, they'll get some fighters, too. The almost nightly airstrikes on the southern suburbs of Beirut could be seen as making some sense, as the Israelis appear convinced there are command and control bunkers underneath the continually smoldering rubble. There were some civilian casualties the first few nights in places like Haret Hreik, but people quickly left the area to the Hezbollah fighters with their radios and motorbikes.

But other attacks seem gratuitous, fishing expeditions, or simply intended to punish anything and anyone even vaguely connected to Hezbollah. Lighthouses, grain elevators, milk factories, bridges in the north used by refugees, apartment buildings partially occupied by members of Hezbollah's political wing -- all have been reduced to rubble.

In the south, where Shiites dominate, just about everyone supports Hezbollah. Does mere support for Hezbollah, or even participation in Hezbollah activities, mean your house and family are fair game? Do you need to fire rockets from your front yard? Or is it enough to be a political activist?

The Israelis are consistent: They bomb everyone and everything remotely associated with Hezbollah, including noncombatants. In effect, that means punishing Lebanon. The nation is 40 percent Shiite, and of that 40 percent, tens of thousands are employed by Hezbollah's social services, political operations, schools, and other nonmilitary functions. The "terrorist" organization Hezbollah is Lebanon's second-biggest employer.

If this IS true, then Israel is in a world of trouble, because it's highly unlikely that this particular line of argument is going to remain restricted to Salon for very long.

It does make sense, though. The bombing is, in all honesty, a political operation- it's an attempt to convince the Lebanese that they cannot both support Hezbollah and be free from the repercussions of Israeli reprisals. The Hezbollah fighters aren't going to change their opinion, but the supporters might, if they understand that Israel's reaction is justifiable and, more importantly, inevitable. Without that support, Hezbollah is isolated and eventually can be removed entirely.

Of course, that's not what's happening. Truth be told, that's NEVER what happens. I can't think of any situations off the top of my head where such a strategy worked. People always end up rallying around the insider against the outsider, especially when the outsiders' strategy is so easily seen as immoral, if not monstrous.

(Hezbollah's attempts to wildly fire rockets in the hopes of causing damage in Israel is, of course, no more morally justiable. It's certainly not going to stop the Israelis. Constantly using that as an attempt to justify what's going on isn't going to benefit the Israelis, though, outside of maybe Washington.)

What the Israelis seem to be discovering is that Hezbollah isn't the enemy they thought they were:

"You can be a member of Hezbollah your entire life and never see a military wing fighter with a weapon," a Lebanese military intelligence official, now retired, once told me. "They do not come out with their masks off and never operate around people if they can avoid it. They're completely afraid of collaborators. They know this is what breaks the Palestinians -- no discipline and too much showing off."

Perhaps once a year, Hezbollah will hold a military parade in the south, in which its weapons and fighters appear. Media access to these parades is tightly limited and controlled. Unlike the fighters in the half dozen other countries where I have covered insurgencies, Hezbollah fighters do not like to show off for the cameras. In Iraq, with some risk taking, you can meet with and even watch the resistance guys in action. (At least you could during my last time there.) In Afghanistan, you can lunch with Taliban fighters if you're willing to walk a day or so in the mountains. In Gaza and the West Bank, the Fatah or Hamas fighter is almost ubiquitous with his mask, gun and sloganeering to convince the Western journalist of the justice of his cause.

The Hezbollah guys, on the other hand, know that letting their fighters near outsiders of any kind -- journalists or Lebanese, even Hezbollah supporters -- is stupid. In three trips over the last week to the south, where I came near enough to the fighting to hear Israeli artillery, and not just airstrikes, I saw exactly no fighters. Guys with radios with the look of Hezbollah always found me. But no fighters on corners, no invitations to watch them shoot rockets at the Zionist enemy, nothing that can be used to track them.

This isn't the behavior of your typical terrorist group. Terrorists want, CRAVE attention. It's the entire point. William Gibson's bit in Neuromancer about the symbiotic relationship between terrorists and media is as true now as it was then. It's also their weakness- attacks are chosen for maximum visibility, instead of maximum impact and effectiveness.

What Hezbollah acts like, at least according to this passage, is a paramilitary that occasionally uses terrorist tactics, and that's a far more dangerous beast. It means that Israel must focus on those members that are visible--the political ones--but since they are civilians, it would make sense that they'd be found in civilian areas, and attacking them is going to naturally involve attacking civilians.

(It's kind of like if you wanted to take out Donald Rumsfeld. You could do it with a big enough bomb, and he IS a theoretically legitimate target of war, being the head of the DoD and all. Unfortunately, you'd take out a LOT of innocent civilians doing it. Israel is faced with the same dilemma, and it's pretty clear they haven't solved it yet.)

Most importantly, though, it's a propaganda nightmare:

Israel, however, has chosen to treat the political members of Hezbollah as if they were fighters. And by targeting the civilian wing of the group, which supplies much of the humanitarian aid and social protection for the poorest people in the south, they are targeting civilians.

The problem with Hezbollah is that they DO do all those positive things, but also launch the rockets. If you draw the distinction, you're left with the tricky job of seperating them out.. but if you attack the former group while
ignoring or missing the latter, the people you're trying to influence will not see your response as a terrible swift vengeance, but as bullying with bombers. Even if your motives are pure, there's no way you can win.

Of course, this article could be overstating things. It likely is. It does show, however, that the situation is not as simple as it seems, and that Israel likely cannot win this from the air.

(Then again, when's the last time anybody pulled THAT one off, either?)

Edit: for another take far more critical of Hezbollah and that says that they DO use civilians as cover, check out the New York Times piece here.

“Hezbollah came to Ain Ebel to shoot its rockets,” said Fayad Hanna Amar, a young Christian man, referring to his village. “They are shooting from between our houses.”

“Please,’’ he added, “write that in your newspaper.”

...Many Christians from Ramesh and Ain Ebel considered Hezbollah’s fighting methods as much of an outrage as the Israeli strikes. Mr. Amar said Hezbollah fighters in groups of two and three had come into Ain Ebel, less than a mile from Bint Jbail, where most of the fighting has occurred. They were using it as a base to shoot rockets, he said, and the Israelis fired back.

One woman, who would not give her name because she had a government job and feared retribution, said Hezbollah fighters had killed a man who was trying to leave Bint Jbail.

“This is what’s happening, but no one wants to say it” for fear of Hezbollah, she said.

So there you go... although this may be due to different Hezbollah groups' tactics, or may be due to a political agenda by the woman with the "government job" who fears Hezbollah political dominance after this is all over.

(It's unlikely considering the situation, but possible.)

Further Edit: And this is the attitude that will hand Hezbollah the war. From one of the response letters:

Have no fear Prothero, the Israelis can't dislodge Hezbollah. Only the Lebanese people, when they finally find their balls, can kick these sons of bitches out.

If the Lebanese people don't like artillery and air strikes, they need to go out into the street with small arms, pistols, rifles, and shotguns, and when ever they encounter a Hezbollah thug, they need to start shooting. I know it's easy to say that from here. But I've got some personal experience with guerrilla warfare and I know for a fact that only the local civilian population can put an end to this.

You Prothero, wouldn't know a Hezby if he walked up and gave you a shave. But every neighborhood knows who belongs there and who doesn't. When guys start showing up with a Toyota with some rockets in the back, it's time for the local civilians to make some hard choices.

It may be a scary thing for a bunch of ordinary people to grab their pistols and rifles and start shooting. But the alternative is far worse. If the guerrillas set up in their street and get a couple of Katyushas airborne, it will only be a matter of minutes before Israel's 155 batteries are putting a dozen H.E.s smack in the middle of the neighborhood.

It's like this: If civilians in a neighborhood start making them bleed when they show up, then the morons will pack up and go somewhere less dangerous. If all the neighborhoods get these guys on the run, then Israel will quickly run out of targets and the shelling will stop.

But the Lebanese for some reason would rather just ignore the shadowy thugs who rule their streets. Then when it's over, like you, they blame Israel for the destruction. When civilians finally get pissed off, they are more powerful than any guerrilla force.

It's time for the Lebanese people to get pissed off and get Hezbollah the hell out of their beautiful country once and for all. They threw out Syria, now it's time to finish the job.

I'm going to make it very clear.

THIS.
WILL.
NOT.
HAPPEN.

Nor, I suspect, is it really supposed to. It's useless as a prescription and worse than useless as analysis. What it DOES do, though, is provide justification. "If the Lebanese don't kick the bastards out, they deserve what they get". It'd be lunacy if Putin were making it about Chechnya and the Chechan rebels, and it's lunacy now. Pity that it's lunacy of the most common sort.

And, tragically, it doesn't help Israel one damned bit.

Last Edit: Hat tip to the Poorman, who also notes that that picture going around of a bunch of guys hanging out around an anti-aircraft gun in a christian neighbour doesn't imply much. (That should be obvious.... since when do anti-aircraft guns launch rockets into Israel?)

On Lebanon

It comes down to a simple question: Is what Israel doing necessary to protect it's security?

If it IS necessary, then it's justifiable. If it's unnecessary, then it is collective punishment, and that's not only against the Geneva conventions but morally unjustifiable.

The question is not whether any action is necessary, though; the question is whether Israel's specific actions have been restrained to what necessity requires. Since the necessity in question is security, the key question in turn is whether Israel is increasing or decreasing its future security by employing such widespread bombing in Lebanon. If it breeds more terrorists through its actions than it eliminates and/or deters, then it's not helping its security, but engaging (unwittingly or not) in collective punishment, which is both illegal and morally unjustifiable.

(Yes, I'm aware that Hezbollah situates themselves within civilian areas in order to defend themselves. Unfortunately, that doesn't change the fate of those who are caught in the crossfire; dead is dead. You can't level a city to take out a few terrorists, any more than you could nuke a country to take out a few terrorists. The question has to be whether the civilian casualties are worth it, and so far, I haven't seen enough evidence that they are.

Unlike some, I think the jury is still out, but I don't think the evidence is on the side of the Israelis.

Soo....

So, North Korea is testing missiles, Japan's leadership seems bound and determined to use it to kill Article 9, Israel and Lebanon are at war (with more regional players likely about to get involved), and Russia made a lot of REALLY ominous comments prior to the G-8 meeting about having the west stay the hell out of their business.

If anybody wants me, I'll be building my colony ship. We'll probably need one, and I can borrow the plutonium needed to run it from Kim Jong-Il.

Happy Independence Day

to all the American readers out there. It was a revolution fought not just on behalf of a people, but on behalf of ideals; and it's those ideals that makes the United States special, not the number of aircraft carriers and MOABs it can bring to bear or how many self-serving theocrats are in its governing party.

Happy Canada Day- and Cheers to Americans, too

To any Canadian readers out there. I had meant what I said before about the possibilities inherent in Canadian liberalism, and I'm truly fascinated by the debate going on within the Liberal party over issues that, were it America, would be overwhelmed with twitching fear over looking "weak on defense" by the Usual Suspects.

Pity that the whole thing seems to be dominated by Ignatieff, everybody's favorite "liberal hawk", but the existence of the debate is welcome.

As for the "Cheers".. isn't it obvious? Gitmo is screwed, and trying to dodge the Geneva Convention is probably dead as well. Great news, probably the last bit of good news to come out of the Roberts court. I'll take what I can get, though.

Blogofascism

Go read the Poorman's take on, what is, bar none, the most dangerous phenomenon the universe has ever known.

: What is “blogofascism”?

A: Blogofascism is a violent online political philosophy and movement. It is characterized by:

-A cult of personality built around dangerously charismatic 2002 US Spelling Bee quaterfinalist and apple-cheek’ed nerd despot Markos “Kos” Moulitsas;

-A reactionary rejection of all standards of human decency and/or invitations to subscribe to The New Republic;

-Many other terrible qualities, TBD.

Q: Is blogofascism real?

A: Realer than anything you could possibly imagine.

Q: Is there any evidence for this?

A: The evidence is right there on your home computer. Open up Miscrosoft Word, and type “blogofascism”. Note that “blogofascism” - the most dangerous political movement in America, bar none - is not even in the Word dictionary! An oversight? Recall now that Bill Gates announced his intention to step down as head of Microsoft - the world’s most powerful computer company - just as blogofascism - the world’s most dangerous computer cult - has come into its own. Is Gates planning on turning Miscrosoft over to “Khairman Kos”, as part of a dastardly scheme to bundle “Halloween III”-style exploding novelty masks with every install of the long-anticipated “Longhorn” operating system? Connect the dots, people! We went through the looking glass a long time ago. We went through the looking glass, walked around the looking glass world for a while, and then went through a couple of looking glass looking glasses we found in there, and we’ve all been flipped inside out and upside down so many times we don’t know if we can believe anything anymore. What does it all mean? Fucked if we know, but if a chronically tardy bunny in a gold-button’ed waistcoat starts waving weird pills at you, for God’s sake, just say no!

Also, we are in the process of forging some really incriminating emails.

Q: How can I protect myself and my family from blogofascism?

A: Make sure your subscriptions to the New Republic are up-to-date, and make sure that you have at least one subscription for each member of your family, and for each room in your house. Give subscriptions to The New Republic as presents on Christmas, Presidents’ Day, birthdays, and un-birthdays. Make sure all your neighbors also subscribe to The New Republic; if not, sign them up for a free trial subscription and then make sure that the issue that comes with the “please cancel my free trial subscription” card mysteriously never reaches them. We’re not saying you should commit mail fraud, exactly - merely that you should do whatever is necessary to protect your family. Unless your local post office has been infiltrated by blogofascists, they should understand.

Learn. Be vigilant. Survive.

Derbyshire and Iraq (and Iggy et al.)

A week or so back, there was a really good piece on Crooked Timber that I hadn't caught until recently discussing Iraq war opponents and Iraq war supporters.

Among the supporters of war were people like Derbyshire, who wanted to reduce large parts of Iraq for rubble as revenge for the September 11 attacks (the absence of any proof of a direct link being, for many, part of the attraction), believers in the WMD threat who wanted to destroy the WMD threat and leave, militarists like Rumsfeld who wanted to use Iraq as a testing ground and permanent base for a new era of American military dominance, rightwing ideologues who expected to transform Iraq into a bastion of free-market economics and support for Israel, ruled by some pliant type like Chalabi, and “decent” leftists who who saw the invasion as a step towards a secular democracy that would bring the Iraqi left to power. While some of these groups might perhaps have reached a satisfactory accommodation, assuming a military victory, they could not all do so.

Of course, the opponents of war were a similarly disparate group, including isolationists and international realists who regarded it as an unproductive use of US state power, a large group (including most on the moderate left) who thought that the human costs of war would outweigh any benefits, opponents of a unilateral war carried out without UN support, advocates of national sovereignty, non-interference in internal affairs and those opposed to any military action by the US.

The crucial difference is that, while the opponents of war might have disagreed violently about their reasons for their position, these disagreements made no fundamental difference to the policy that they supported. In debates over wars of choice, peace is the status quo, and is a fairly unambiguous concept. (Perhaps not totally unambiguous – if the inspections had been allowed to continue and nothing had been found, differences would no doubt have emerged about what to do next, but peace leaves options like this open whereas war forecloses them).

By contrast, the supporters of the war were giving their support to very different kinds of war and assuming that their own preferred version would be the one that took place. But if they were honest with themselves (as Derbyshire has been, at least retrospectively) they should have looked at their allies and realised that there was no warrant for this assumption. Instead, they committed themselves to war with a whole series of implicit conditions. Many of them, in recanting, have blamed the Bush Administration for not delivering the kind of war they supported, or for mishandling the war in various ways that reflect entirely different assumptions and objectives. But, they had no reason to expect anything different.

The same asymmetry arises in predictions about the war. Opponents of the war variously predicted a military defeat for the US, a long and costly occupation, tens of thousands of civilian casualties, millions of refugees, the emergence of a new dictatorship, civil war on religious and ethnic lines, a stimulus to terrorism and so on. Supporters of the war derided all of these predictions and projected a variety of rosy scenarios including a quick military victory, roses and sweets showered on the liberating troops, and so on. Apart from the initial victory, not many of the optimistic predictions have panned out, but, as war supporters have pointed out, plenty of the anti-war predictions have failed too.

But this is the wrong test, and presumes a symmetry that isn’t there. War is doing harm, and only under very special conditions can it produce enough good to outweigh this. This is the point of what used to be called the Powell doctrine which allowed for discretionary use of force only with near certainty of success at low cost, clear and easily achieved objectives and a well-defined exit strategy.

Looking at the list of antiwar predictions, the realisation of any one of them would be enough to make war the wrong choice. As it is, several of them have been validated, and even some of those that seemed falsified, like the millions of refugees are now coming to pass.

I know I harp on the point made in the last paragraph a lot, but it still deserves to be made: whereas opponents merely needed to show that the war was a bad idea, supporters needed to show not only that the war was a good idea, but that it would be fought in the way--and for the reasons--that they advocated. Of course, they didn't do anything of the sort- they just projected onto Bush and Rumsfeld's little adventure everything they wanted their fantasy war to be.

This is the main reason I have trouble with Ignatieff supporters' talking points on Iraq; because they keep claiming (like most of the "liberal hawks" that supported the war) that the war wasn't fought in the way that they wanted. The question is, did they honestly expect that it would? The architects of the war were Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and George W. Bush, for God's sake... who in their right mind would think that that trio would care in the slightest about the necessary pre-conditions to build a reasonably liberal and representative democracy in the middle east? They certainly hadn't demonstrated any such competence, nor were they making any plans that demonstrated it. Far from it, they seemed to be living in a fantasy world--one that too many American policymakers seem to live in--where every fight is WWII, and every opponent is Germany and Japan. The whole enterprise was doomed, and one's fantasies about a "perfect war" that were deviated from don't change that.

The war, over the war

There is a little blogwar going on right now between the New Republic (cheerleaders of war-thirsty "Liberal Hawks" worldwide) and DailyKos, over the charge that, supposedly, Kos accepted money from candidates in exchange for endorsing them on his weblog. This seemed unlikely at best to me, and Max Sawicky does a good job of rebutting TNR's wilder charges.

What struck me, though, is this bit in Sawicky's post:

Sectarianism by the way is not an uncommon trait. You could find the same thing in the Ralph Nader Adoration Society or the College Republicans. One always has hopes for 1) a liberal formation that 2) will transcend such weaknesses. On these counts, the Kos hive is oh for two. But they still don't deserve the fictions being served up.

As I think about it, oddly enough you could make a case that this is really about the war. Huh? After all, on most issues Kos is no big leftist. Mark Warner, for chrissakes. Where he really stands out is on Iraq. Where are the attacks mostly coming from? From supporters of the invasion, the current, disastrous occupation, and whatever military tomfoolery is next on the agenda. I can see Peter Beinart on the barricades now, speaking virtually of course.

I'd say they do not look forward to the positive evolution of the anti-war movement, quite possibly in the direction of a more left, radical critique of what Uncle Sam really wants in U.S. foreign policy.

I can't say I disagree. At this point, is there really anything left of TNR but increasingly-feeble attempts to attack anti-war Democrats? Hell, considering the domestic policies of Howard Dean, was there ever a basis for the DLC's "he's an extremist" argument except their pants-soiling terror that Democrats and Republicans might actually disagree about the utility of Bush's adventure?

Sure, it's not as if TNR is right--the public hasn't exactly rallied around the Republicans over the war, and the Dems are freely attacking the war as vigorously as the "Kossacks" were two years ago--but what else do they have, really?

Maybe it's a Walt and Mearsheimer thing, motivated by the worry that the Dems are going to take their anti-Iraq war position and turn it to advocacy of the Palestinian cause (which seems a little unlikely in this day and age). To be honest, though, it seems less about that and more about this fantasy that by embracing warhawk Democrats that never existed, you can somehow "neutralize" foreign policy. Hasn't worked, doesn't work, won't work, and it's just going to piss off the people that you're ignoring and marginalizing.

Or maybe Kos is right, and they're Republicans too afraid to call themselves that. It's quite possible. Maybe even likely. I think it's more likely, though, that they've been so terrified of the foreign policy issue that they're willing to say or do anything to make themselves appear "strong", not realizing how cowardly and servile they appear to everyone else.

Pity, that.

Intense Curiosity

Not that it matters in the grand scheme of things, but that's the emotion that was prompted by the posting from TDH Strategies' Jonathan Ross discussing why he supports Michael Ignatieff for leader. A juxtaposition:

On March 27, I wrote this as to why Mr. Ignatieff was not one of my favourites:

"...a fundamental disagreement with his stances on the Iraq war and the use of torture," and belief "that a man who has spent the better part of three decades outside of Canada is properly cut out to lead the Liberal party so soon after returning "home."

I resented his description of our country as a "well-meaning, herbivorian boy scout" back in 2002. I hated the fact that he had started to include himself in his pontifications on what it was like to be an American (using words like "we" and "our". I had confusion on his opinions on torture, the United Nations, and Iraq, and accused the candidate of being someone who "flirts with [an] issue masterfully, and yet always leaves himself an exit strategy to negate his critics."

That was him then. This is him now:

Well, like I have stated in the past, my opinions were formed with only a peripheral understanding of the man, and I now know that I didn't have all the necessary information. Because ultimately, despite the fact that I don't agree with all of Ignatieff's positions, I also understand that he is a guy that can step up to the plate and offer Canadians many of the visions that I have spent years promoting on this website.

I like the fact that he is willing to take positions that aren't necessarily popular or easy. If there is one thing that has become very clear to political observers is this country, it is the intense backlash against wishy-washy, "trying to please everyone" types of policies after the Paul Martin era. Why have Stephen Harper's five priorities been well received for the most part? Because a) every Canadian is able to find at least one that they can support b) they are decisive in branding who the government is and what they want to accomplish c) people are ready to be won over by leaders, not appeasers.

Supporting our mission in Afghanistan is the right thing to do, and there is no waivering in Ignatieff's stance, in spite of some Liberals' insistence that we MUST be different than Stephen Harper (how utterly silly that kind of stand alone criteria is). His support for the Iraq war and the ouster of Saddam Hussein is controversial and some might even say dangerous, but completely understandable because of his bond with the Kurdish people.

Now he's reciting Ignatieff-supporter talking points. ("Bond with the Kurdish people"? How does that justify an invasion in 2003, when the Kurds were more autonomous than they had ever been?) I mean, this is bog-standard stuff- no spark of creativity whatsoever. Long-in-tooth and long-rebutted.

But more importantly, get a load of all that "he holds his position without wavering" stuff. Aside from being talking points, doesn't that

a) mean that he still holds the contempt for Canada seen in the earlier quote

and

b) sound a HELL of a lot like a Republican trying to support George Bush in 2004? Down to the word? For those Canadians who maybe haven't been paying attention, consistency is not necessarily a virtue. Sometimes you make mistakes. Sometimes the situation changes. Sometimes you realize that there's a better option. Leaving aside the wisdom of the deployment in Afghanistan, this is a terrible argument, and it makes me wonder why the hell someone of Ross's seeming intelligence would mention it.

The other rather dim bit? Take a look:

These kinds of positions provide a nice transition into my next point - Micheal Ignatieff has more depth behind his opinions than just about any politician I have encountered over the past decade. In fact, it is that kind of knowledge base and experience which make him the atypical politician - a feather in his cap as far as I am concerned. Like I wrote last month:

"Rather than create a wedge with people, however, Ignatieff's long academic and journalistic careers have given him the uncanny ability to know how to identify with an audience. He was just as comfortable walking into a small room filled with wealthy socialites sympathetic to the plight of Israel as he was speaking to a large, semi-hostile Sunni Muslim audience celebrating Milad-un-Nabi. To say that he has been to mosques in Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan, to recant about trips to Israel, to understand the delicate balance of issues betwen the Israelis and the Palestinians...requires a broad base of experience in which to draw upon. And, Ignatieff has plenty in which to work with."

How refreshing...a candidate that can back up his words with academic credentials, global experience, and the incorporation and consideration of a wide range of opinions.

Ok, let's leave aside the "consideration of a wide range of opinions" (every politician does that to a certain extent, unless they're "holding a position without wavering")... what does having a background in foreign policy have to do with, for instance, knowing about a carbon tax?

Sometimes I think that people think that the "Professor" on Gilligan's Island is an actual true-to-life character, and that knowledge of one field means that you must be an authority on another. This, of course, is nonsense- there are any number of fields that Ignatieff is completely ignorant about, just as there are any number of professors who are completely ignorant about international relations and foreign policy.

Ignatieff's strength is in foreign policy, full stop. On that, he speaks authoritatively, although it's important to remember that someone with a Prof. beside his name is usually dead wrong on some issue in his field, and for every issue there's a Professor that's dead wrong about it. The thing about Ignatieff, though, is that it's precisely on the issue of foreign policy that he's been criticized most deeply and by the most experts in the field, and the "Prof." beside his name doesn't insulate him from those criticisms in the least.

If his foreign policy is a millstone around the neck of the Liberal party, it's a millstone. Full stop.

I also found this interesting:

I am very impressed by Ignatieff's intellectual honesty. This approach is a combination of not treating your audience like idiots, and having the resolve to call a spade a spade without walking on eggshells.

Yes, he's pretty good at "calling a spade a spade without walking on eggshells". So was Archie Bunker.

(Oh wait, that's right...it wasn't spades he was "telling it like it is" about, it was Ukrainians. Just calling a Slav a Slav, I suppose. I wouldn't call that "intellectual honesty", though.)

Me, I'm surprised that any Canadian could read this:

He believes that we cannot continue to live in this bubble of "boyscout diplomacy" and expect the world we live in to magically become safer. He says that a mature and diversified foreign policy must involve risk - a quality that we as Canadians are often so adverse to

...and not feel downright insulted. I guess calling the people you want to lead a mob of delusional children is the kind of diplomatic acumen that Michael Ignatieff brings to the table. Ross says "He is a breath of fresh air". He certainly does smell of something.

So kudos, Jonathan Ross, kudos, for joining the winning team:

Finally, aside from the content behind the candidate, the way I have been treated by the campaign, even in the past 24 hours, has been very impressive. I was welcomed on board by the national campaign director with a phone call yesterday. I have already been asked to make contributions, likely on national policy to begin with. I have had a lot of positive encouragement from so many of the individuals that form the collective core of Ignatieff supporters across the country. It is very nice to feel appreciated.

...and I'm very glad that Ignatieff's e-communications and blogger recruitment team worked so hard to bring you onside.

Judging by the talking points in this post, life is so much easier when you can have your opinions chosen for you.

In case anybody's wondering

My take on the North Korean missile issue is that it's a tactic, and it's quite likely N.Korea wasn't really intended to fire the thing.

Check out this piece, which describes how Kim Jong-Il is pressing for two-way talks with the United States:

North Korea said in comments published Wednesday that its self-imposed moratorium on testing long-range missiles from 1999 no longer applies because it's not in direct dialogue with Washington, suggesting it would hold off on any launch if the U.S. agreed to new talks.

Now, this isn't necessarily true, but it's certainly an argument that the North Koreans could employ even as all involved understand the real reasons why the missile test was scheduled.

And those real reasons? First, the N.Koreans want to sell the thing abroad, and so it's a demonstration. More importantly, though, they also want the US to think that they're within a hairsbreadth of taking out Los Angeles, so as to goad the US into negotiating a firm "nukes-for-security" agreement that ensures that Kim Jong-Il doesn't suffer the same fate as Saddam Hussein. Since that's the entire point of their having nukes to begin with (who else would they be deterring? China?) there'd be little reason for them to keep the things afterwards.

Wait a Sec...

Is Chuck Schumer seriously going to ignore the Connecticut primary and use Democratic money to support Joe Lieberman's increasingly likely run as an independent?

As Digby so ably points out, why even bother running primaries if you aren't going to abide by them? Does anybody seriously think that they're going to get around the anger in the Democratic base by playing these sorts of games? It goes against the very foundations of American democracy.

(Not quite as much as, say, calling primary voters "Democratic terrorists", but it's pretty goddamned bad.)

What is THIS Talking-Points-Repeating Joker Doing on Huffington's Site?

I'm all in favor of debate and inclusiveness, but I gotta wonder why, exactly, Ariana even bothered inviting Seth Swirsky onboard when the best he can do it recitation of hoary (and long-discredited) Republican talking points.

Case in point:

I voted for Al Gore in 2000. When he lost, I was disappointed, mostly in my fellow Democrats for thinking that the election had been "stolen" and in having forgotten their American history. The Electoral College has elected three other Presidents in our history: John Quincy Adams in1824, Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876, and Benjamin Harrison in1888. The rush to judgment by the now conspiracy consumed Left put me off. Where, I asked, were all the "disenfranchised" black voters who would have given Gore a victory in Florida? No one could produce a single name. And how exactly were the voting machines in Ohio "rigged" in 2004? I now refer to the Democrats as the Grassy Knoll party.

What's ironic about this is that only a few posts away there's a discussion of 2004 that notes that the GAO concluded that it was possible and, indeed, relatively simple for electronic voting machines to be rigged, but that it was unprovable due to the impossibility of audit.

Probably not a good idea to be writing this after Kennedy's Rolling Stone piece regardless, and that "no one could produce a single name" bit was just goofy, but it gets better.

Still, I approached the 2004 primaries with an open mind. I was still a Democrat, still hoping that leaders like Sam Nunn and Scoop Jackson would emerge, still fantasizing that Democrats could constitute a party of truly progressive social thinkers with tough backbones who would reappear after 9/11.

What's this obsession with Scoop Jackson about, anyway? He was a hawkish Dem. Great. That doesn't make him Ben Franklin, although it DOES make him a useful tool for the reflexively fearful.

I was wrong. The Left got nuttier, more extreme, less contributory to the public debate, more obsessed with their nemesis Bush -- and it drove me further away. What Democrat could support Al Gore's '04 choice for President, Howard Dean, when Dean didn't dismiss the suggestion that George W. Bush had something to do with the 9/11 attacks? Or when the second most powerful Senate Democrat, Dick Durbin, thought our behavior at the detention center in Guantanamo was equivalent to Bergen Belsen and the Soviet gulags? Or when Senator Kennedy equated the unfortunate but small incident at Abu Ghraib with Saddam's 40-year record of mass murder, rape rooms, and mass graves saying, "Saddam's torture chambers have reopened under new management, U.S. management"? What Democrat could not applaud the fact that President had, in fact, kept us safe for what's going on 5 years? What Democrat -- even those who opposed the decision to go into Iraq -- wouldn't applaud the fact that tens of millions of previously brutalized people had the hope of freedom before them?

Hoo nelly. Look, Mr. Swirsky, I've got a bunch of unreleased pictures and videos of Abu Gharib, a sheaf of horrifying stories about Gitmo and one HELL of an anti-terrorist tiger rock that I'll give you in exchange for never, ever going near these here internets ever again.

Honestly, this argument is pure 100% grade "A" stupid, farm fresh and ready for the table.

What made me leave the Left for good and embrace the Right were their respective reactions to 9/11. While The New York Times doubted that we could succeed in Afghanistan because the Soviets in the '80s hadn't, George W. Bush went directly after the Taliban and Al Qaeda and crushed them in short order. Although many on the Left claim to have backed the President's actions, the self-doubt leading up to it, crystallized my view of the Left as weak and terminally lacking in confidence.

Seth? There are a growing number of dead Canadians who would wish to strenuously disagree with your contention that th Taliban was "crushed". Pity that they can't, being dead and all.

Oh, and your savior buggered up Iraq, too. A little "doubt" might have served him well.

No, seriously, is this a Kaufman-esque trick of some kind? There's even better crap I omitted about how much "liberal Jews" suck, but I'm not going to belabor the point. Considering this guy's a New York musician, I'm sure he'll be enjoying plenty of attention from his colleagues on this soon enough.

AL GORE IS HITLER!!!?!!1

So says the Republicans' Henchmen, according to a DNC email found on justiceblog:

Hurricane season has arrived -- and two fresh studies point to a link between global warming and an increase in the number and power of storms like Hurricane Katrina.

What are Republicans doing about it? They're smearing former Vice President Al Gore.

One right-wing pundit compared Gore to Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propagandist. Another right-winger, who's been on the payroll of corporate special interests, likened Gore's pursuit of solutions to global warming to Adolf Hitler's pursuit of genocide.

I'm sending Al a note this week telling him to keep fighting, to keep standing up for the truth no matter how vicious the attacks. I thought he might like to hear from you, too. Sign on to this note of thanks, and add your own note of encouragement here:

http://www.democrats.org/keepfighting

Ok, let's stop and consider for a moment. I'm not making the claim, but if there were fascists out there nowadays and they wanted to avoid being called such, wouldn't the best tool be to call other people "fascists" on such incredibly thin grounds? After all, when you're called on being corporatist (another term for fascist) as hell, you can say "well, the other guys are fascists too", and other people can say "can we avoid calling anybody fascist?" and you're pretty much insulated from the charge.

Is Al Gore "Hitler" for creating "An Inconvenient Truth" and not providing a soapbox for the purile apologists and ideologues that make up the "global warming skeptic"? Not even close. He's being called "Hitler" because the movie is effective, powerful, and judging by the per-screen grosses would be a logical candidate for wider distribution. They're trying to make sure that their fiction of a "debate" is maintained, and they'll smear however they can to do it.

Oh, and speaking of smears, Juan Cole lose the opportunity to teach at Yale due to another well-orchestrated smear campaign. Why? Well, when you're part of a conservative movement that enjoys control or domination of most sources of scholarship and information, it makes sense that you'd go after academe too. Mearshiemer and Walt were the canaries in the coal mine; it looks like Cole is the first asphixiated miner.

Not Afraid? No Doubt.

It's not news to anybody that Canada came face-to-face with a group of proto-terrorists who bought a lot of fertilizer in the hopes of building a bomb. Warren and (as can be seen on Cerberus) others are starting a "we are not afraid" campaign in response, similar to the British one.

The thing is, from what I've seen out of the Canadian media about Canadian reactions, the campaign is barely necessary. Canadians aren't afraid; far from it, they seem almost contemptuous of what many seem to think of as a pack of barely competent losers. This strikes me as the best way to demonstrate that Canadians aren't afraid- saying it only implies that it's even in question, whereas living it leaves everybody without a shred of doubt.

Certainly CSIS's star is shining brightly, though. If Canadians come away with this with nothing else, they'll come away with this with a renewed respect for their spy agency. That has both good and bad elements to it; the agency could use the support, but its past SNAFUs and the already weak polling numbers for civil liberties imply that it's important to subject it to scrutiny that Canadians may not be inclined towards.

Commonality among extremists

I think at this point pretty much everybody knows about the Canadian jihadists who were scooped in in a police sting on Friday night.

(There is some controversy over whether or not they would have been able to acquire the explosives in question were it not a sting; surely the massive amounts of fertilizer involved would have set off alarm bells, even if CSIS hadn't been tracking these guys for a good while now.)

What struck, me, however, was this backgrounder on the recruitment of "homegrown" terrorists: how they're usually young men angry at modern secularism who use snippets of religion and are recruited through a combination of societal radicals and extremist Internet writings. Sure, this fits the profile of an Islamist, but it also fits the profile of the kind of white kid who becomes a violent skinhead.

Go read the article: if you know anything about recruitment by racists, you'll see how striking similarity is.

(Does this mean that "Islamists" and "race warriors" share other similarities? Not really, and this post should not be taken as the kind of xenophobia that tends to infest this sort of discussion. What's striking is that this sort of thing seems to have little to do with the religion or ideology itself. They could be just as easily violent Hindus or Marxists or Shintoists or whatever.)