Well, Friedman is at it again, engaging in a bit of poorly examined wishful thinking. WitnessFriedman's "The Big One":

We are attracting all these opponents to Iraq because they understand this war is The Big One. They don't believe their own propaganda. They know this is not a war for oil. They know this is a war over ideas and values and governance. They know this war is about Western powers, helped by the U.N., coming into the heart of their world to promote more decent, open, tolerant, women-friendly, pluralistic governments by starting with Iraq- a country that contains all the main strands of the region: Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds.

Assumptions abound here, and some simply don't make sense. The big one here is that Tom's assertions actually reflect the understandings of those that are going into Iraq. It comes back to the same criticism that others have had about the theories of David Adesnik... it might conceivably be true, but why on earth should we believe it, and how can we trust an argument built on such fragile foundations? It is hardly settled that this is not a "war for oil" (far from it), and Tom conveniently ignores a major reason why Arabs would be pouring into Iraq: the fear that the Iraqi state will become a puppet government for a Western power, with an ineffective democracy with administration largely by corporations aligned with the U.S. Government and the Republican party.

This seems to be the elephant in the room. Nobody seems to talks about it, especially the hawkish liberals like Friedman. It's mostly discussed by leftists; they claim that Iraq is "imperialism". I don't buy that argument, not exactly, because there is some truth to the "Americans distrust empire" meme... but they are certainly looking for a client state, and the conflict between Iraqi and American interests is pretty obvious, especially when one considers the Turkish example. Realism rears its ugly head once again.

You'd think from listening to America's European and Arab critics that we'd upset some bucolic native culture and natural harmony in Iraq, as if the Baath Party were some colorful local tribe out of National Geographic. Alas, our opponents in Iraq, and their fellow travelers, know otherwise. They know they represent various forms of clan and gang rule, and various forms of religious and secular totalitarianism- from Talibanism to Baathism. And they know that they need external enemies to thrive and justify imposing their demented visions.

I'll leave aside that "external enemies" bit, because it's such an easy target when one is discussing Republican foreign policy.

The real problem with the assumptions here is that the critics of whatever stripe believe that Iraq was bucolic. This could be a strawman, and certainly smells of it, but Friedman may honestly believe this, and it's because he misunderstands the problem that Saddam presented and continues to present. Like most dictators, he treated his people with contempt and was an ineffective administrator (to put it mildly); unfortunately, like many dictators, he staved off internal strife and chaos precisely through the brutal repression that made him so hated. Hobbes pointed out that this is the most important role of a sovereign leader, democratic or otherwise, because he realized (and Tom forgets) that chaos is so very much worse that even a Saddam is preferable. (For proof, see most of Western Africa.) Iraqis and American critics worry that despite American efforts, Iraq will disintegrate, and become a black hole that will suck what stability exists out of the region.

Friedman also ignores an inevitable future event. Iraqi interests and American interests will diverge. Not "may"... will, and to an extent that makes the divide unbridgeable and the resolution of which will be intolerable to one side or another. There is no doubt about this. When that happens, one of two things may happen if the Americans run the show, or are allied with the Iraqis.

1)American interests will prevail, because they really rule the country (one could think of this as the "Shah scenario"):

Iraq will be hurt by this, perhaps deeply, and Iraqis will either begin to resent the United States or (more likely) will remove the American-controlled government. We'll get the Shah all over again, Iraq will descend into chaos and the Islamic theocrats will take over during the chaos, because they will present a proven alternative to U.S. alignment- Iran may not be pleasant, but at least it's certainly independent. Iran will probably snap up a big chunk of Iraq, and the United States will either have its interests hurt or go to war with Iran, a state that may well be nuclear very soon.

2)Iraqi interests will prevail, because they really do have sovereignty. (One could look at this as the "Turkish scenario"):

This will be the best result for the Iraqis, but it may hurt the stability of American security interests, and it will either cause the United States to tighten its grip or withdraw completely and engage in retaliatory measures. As the entire point of the Iraqi exercise is to have a U.S. friendly regime in the region in order to ensure its interests, this is a big problem, but it's inevitable. It will also create huge internal conflict for the United States, because it will force the U.S. to decide between its role as the "shining city on the hill" and its real security needs. I doubt the former will work, and the decision will may future U.S. nation building efforts extremely difficult, if not impossible. That's a problem, because although nation building is extremely difficult in Iraq, it's much more likely to work in failed or collapsed states, such as Liberia, where the U.S. would perceived as a creator of order instead of chaos.

(This is another factor that Friedman seems to never consider- the fact that Iraqis feel that the Americans are largely responsible for the mess they're in. The sanctions were at the behest of the Americans and the Americans were the invaders; without either, Iraq would still be a dictatorship but the last decade and the last few months would not have been remotely as bad as they were. Iraqis aren't going to forget that, even if they are glad that they Americans removed Saddam.)

Of course, this latter scenario could be reversed... the United States could value its symbolic and moral role more than its security interests, and give up some of the latter in the face of the former. That will likely work for most issues, but by definition it can't work for all... sooner or later, something will give, and the U.S. will attempt to exert control.

Finally, this:

In short, America's opponents know just what's at stake in the postwar struggle for Iraq, which is why they flock there: beat America's ideas in Iraq and you beat them out of the whole region; lose to America there, lose everywhere.

This is ludicrous. If Iraq goes democratic, they will be as fully aware of the inevitable conflict between American and Iraqi interests as I am. They'll hunker down and wait, and exploit the chaos when they can. If the Americans start exploiting Iraq to press their case for nation building and westernization, it would also be relatively simple to make the argument that Iraq is simply one particular case that is not exportable to other countries, and make the point that the United States is only giving Iraq its head as long as Iraq goes in the direction they want. The only way that the United States can really make this work is if they successfully "nation build" in several hetereogenous countries and allow them to make decisions that are seriously against American strategic interests. It's possible, but again, sooner or later something has to give, and the more countries get "built" the more likely it is that the type of issue I described above will emerge. This is why the "realists" have been consistently against this war... because they know what's going to happen.

Tom's a smart guy, but he's too busy spinning this story of a climactic war between goodness and light against darkness and evil to look at the situation honestly. It seems like he's been doing this for a while now, but at least before the war it was plausible that the U.S. would secure the country quickly and enjoy flowers and hosannas from the people. That isn't happening, and he needs to recognize it. He's attempting to alter reality to fit his theory, and that's not the mark of a journalist, but of a propagandist. Honestly, Tom, that's really not a good career choice. Just ask that Information Minister.

Just another note on the Greens, prompted by this earlier post

The problem, really, is that the Greens are setting their sights too high. They should be moving into state and national Congresses, not the Presidency. One is irreversibly tied to the two-party system; the other is not, and is more tied into local politics that the Greens could exploit. The Greens should be pouring their resources into challenging Democrats for more liberal congressional seats, and then making deals with the Dems to coordinate policymaking in Washington and in state capitols. They could build their influence and have a realistic shot at influencing policy. Yes, it means that the Greens wouldn't really have a shot at the presidency for about a decade or two, but that's the reality of the project- successful "invasion from the margin" is a very slow process.

Of course, this presumes that Green voters, activists, and politicians are actually interested in policymaking, and from that I think they "purity is the enemy of goodness" attack on the Greens may have some merit. I think the Greens think of themselves as a social movement, and social movements are near-sacrosanct within much of the left. Fine, they have their purpose, but successful social change requires a "grassroots and treetops" approach; you need a governmental branch as well as broad social movements. Even the IRA understood this, and they were far more extremist than the Greens would ever be.

The importance of an independent judiciary:

A federal judge in Manhattan told Fox News yesterday that it had to learn how to take a joke. Then he rejected the network's request for an injunction to block the satirist Al Franken from using the words "fair and balanced" on the cover of his book, "Lies, and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right."

Calling the motion "wholly without merit, both factually and legally," the judge, Denny Chin of United States District Court, said that a person would have to be "completely dense" not to realize the cover was a joke, and that trademark protection for the phrase "Fair and Balanced" was unrealistic because the words are so commonly used....

....[Fox's] arguments were met by laughter in the crowded courtroom, as Fox tried to defend its signature slogan. Part of the network's burden was to prove that Mr. Franken's use of the phrase "fair and balanced" would lead to consumer confusion.

One round of laughter was prompted when Judge Chin asked, "Do you think that the reasonable consumer, seeing the word `lies' over Mr. O'Reilly's face would believe Mr. O'Reilly is endorsing this book?"

The giggling continued as Dori Ann Hanswirth, a lawyer for Fox, replied, "To me, it's quite ambiguous as to what the message is here."

She continued, "It does not say `parody' or `satire.' "

Ms. Hanswirth said Fox's "signature slogan" was also blurred, because people who were not associated with the network, which owns the Fox News Channel, also appear on the cover with Mr. O'Reilly.

Judge Chin said, "The president and the vice president are also on the cover. Is someone going to consider that they are affiliated with Fox?"

The courtroom broke into laughter again.

One wonders what would have happened had there been a different Supreme Court back in 2000. In any case, it's good to see that the ongoing crusade to blunt every amendment except the 2nd has been delayed, at least this one time.

Atrios took a shot at the Greens, and they've responded in his comments thread with everything from "you can't expect Green votes when you insult them" to "the idea that Nader was saying Gore and Bush were identical was a lie".

Folks, those who are saying "we should be nice, or we'll lose the green vote!" are kind of missing the point, which is that the vote is, by definition, lost. Those who choose to vote Green in states that matter aren't going to vote for Democratic candidates who are centrist enough win the election. They'll go for their man Nader.

(Trying to attract them by changing policy will just encourage them to stay the course, in order to have the Dem candidate move more in their direction.)

And, yes, Bush=Gore was a theme of the Greens; trying to deny it is revisionism. There's nothing wrong with that from a partisan point of view: attacking centrists for being centrists is a logical way of getting outlier votes, and worked well enough for the Reform party in Canada. The problem is that just as Dem rhetoric is ticking off Greens now, Green rhetoric was incredibly insulting to Democrats back in 2000. Nobody's forgotten this.

Greens have also seemed to have not realized that trying to "pull" parties in one direction is useless when the political discourse is being pulled in the other direction. The U.S. right realized it long ago, and has been effectively using a "play the fringe vs. moderate" strategy to pull things rightward over the past ten to fifteen years. Greens have the fringe, but that doesn't work without coordination with the Dems, and they can't coordinate with the Dems without losing their relevance. As at least some of them are partisan more than they are ideological, that won't happen.

Finally, to those Greens (and others) who advocate different voting systems- even if it's constitutional (and I have my suspicions), there's no way that a Republican will enact such a thing, and if the Greens are ensuring Republican victories, it's empty rhetoric. It's academic, at least for the foreseeable future, and possibly forever if it'll require a constitutional amendment. Without it, though, the Greens will never own the presidency, and should stop trying. Some seats in Congress, sure, but not the presidency.

Wow... this is amazing news:

Just over two in five (43%) likely voters say they would choose President Bush over a Democratic candidate, and a like number (43%) preferred a Democrat if the election were held today, compared to July polling by Zogby International where 48% would choose Bush and 43% would favor any Democrat.

Jessequoted a few other things from this polls, but not this tidbit, and I thought it was the most significant of the bunch. After all, approval ratings are inherently unreliable due to the nature of the presidency itself- the president is an executive that represents the American people, and that tends to lead to a positive reaction no matter what. Just because they support their current leader doesn't mean they'll want to keep him for the next round. What matters there is their intention to actually re-elect the guy, and when he's even against a random Democrat... that says a lot.

A nasty little blogwar has broken out between Jesse of Pandagon and Lying in Ponds over the question of what "partisanship" actually means, and its relation to ideology. Jesse claims that the distinction is a false one, whereas Lying in Ponds argues that there's a strong difference.

I actually think he has a point on the difference between being ideological and partisan, because one can have a strong allegiance to a party and not be strongly ideological, and/or be strongly ideological but not attached to any particular party.

(Outside of the U.S. system of two ideologically based parties, it's actually quite common. Canadians have known about it for years; look at the NDP/Liberal or PC/Reform divide. Indeed, it's the close association between ideology and party that makes the Republicans so relatively unique.)

That being said, Lying in Ponds completely out to lunch on Paul Krugman; Krugman devastated the whole "partisanship" argument ages ago, driving a stake deep into the heart of LiP's methology that it has never truly recovered from. LiP's supposedly "quantitative" measurement of partisanship is entirely robbed of context, rendering it utterly useless, as (as Krugman noted) a supposed "partisan" could be an honest critic of a dishonest target. Partisanship isn't necessary for this and, because of this, is entirely unprovable by LiP's methodology. As the entire point of the exercise is to measure partisanship, it's rendered pointless, useless, and highly deceptive.

(Not surprising, as quantification of inherently qualitative media such as text is a tricky business at any time.)

So Jesse is wrong on this particular issue of definition, but the point remains that the entire Lying in Ponds exercise is just a sad joke. "Quantitatively", that'd even out... but in the qualitative real world, I'd say that Jesse comes out ahead.

Ok, I've gotta ask this:

Why on earth is Atrios continually linking to that Mischa thug? Even with Atrios' speedy and short style, he's gotta have better things to do.

Several commentators (including David Adesnik and Ralph Peters) are convinced that the attacks on civilian targets in Iraq indicate that guerillas/militants/terrorists/whatever in Iraq are getting "desperate". My reaction upon reading Adesnik's post on the subject was "nice theory; any particular reason I should believe it?"

Matthew Yglesias appears to agree:

Now I'm not going to say that Ralph or David are wrong about this -- they could be right. Maybe all the various attacks we've seen in Iraq were organized by a single, loosely-affiliated group of people. Maybe these people really are deeply unpopular Ba'ath Party remnants. Maybe they've started targeting infrastructure because they're on their last legs and no longer capable of targeting US soldiers. Honestly, though, I just don't see how anyone could know these things.

Exactly. It's a theory entirely unsupported by any evidence whatsoever, and what reasons Adesnik does bring to bear beg the question rather severely. It's like saying that the Iraqis would welcome the Americans with flowers and kisses, in that it's a theory that sounds good and makes America look good (always a growth industry), but dangerous to base analysis or policy on.

After all, according to the hawks, wasn't the U.S. supposed to be out of there by now?

(I'm not even going to get into Adesnik's attempt to berate the media for not agreeing with said theory. Why should they?)

Ezra Klein has a bold plan to use a little political Ju Jitsu on Bush:

George W. Bush has a new website up, and upon seeing it, you have to admit -- this is a campaign that "gets" the web. Their website consolidates many of the tools that the Democratic challengers and their supporters have been experimenting with, and they are well implemented. Particularly impressive is their Action Center, which has one the the coolest, most useful tools I've ever seen:

If you scroll about halfway down the page, you'll see a field where you can input your zip code -- once you do, you'll be given a large list of newspapers and radio shows in your area, complete with contact information for each of them. It's mighty impressive.

Well, George Bush might have some good tools, but we have the online organization -- and tools mean nothing without good, motivated activists. However, we can do a lot with those tools, and we mean to.

[H]ere is what we propose. We want to get a coalition together -- every influential and non-influential lefty site with the ability to direct readers and members over to the Bush action tools. And every Friday, we want to use those tools to write letters and make calls highlighting a different part of the Bush disaster. This Friday will be fiscal irresponsibility day -- where we blanket the media with calls and letters about Bush's absurd fiscal policies. We're even going to get you the info, for instance, behold the Bush Record (if you're not a Dean supporter, just ignore the stuff about Dean).

But this week, we have to pull together the players. That's where you all come in. This needs to move through the blogosphere in much the same way that the "Fair and Balanced" day did. Matt and I can get to a lot of people, but we don't know everybody and we don't have the manpower to do it on our own. So E-mail this around, or simply E-mail your favorite blog-owners and ask them to be part of "Flood the Zone" Fridays, brought to you by Karl Rove and the good folks running the Bush Campaign.

Come Friday, Matt or I will post up some talking points and sample letters, and then watch the fun begin. Lets show Rove who owns the 'net.

So there you have it: "Flood the Zone" Fridays, using Bush's own tools against him. I'm all for it.

Kos is asking a simple question: Can anybody name three good things that Bush has done? Most people cited topping the Taliban and Saddam... others responded to these by saying that the Taliban is far from gone and what will replace Saddam may, incredibly, be worse.

Thing is, these point to a big problem with asking these sorts of questions: it's really too early to tell whether what Bush has done has been "good" or "bad". The only way we can tell is if these countries and his own is in better shape after his presidency than it was before it, and whether the actions and events of that presidency were worth that change. Up until right now, it's possible to say that removing Saddam and the Taliban were good things, but we don't know right now if Iraq and Afghanistan will be completely ruined next year or in 2005.

With that in mind, though, I can't really think of much that Bush has done that has been an unqualified "good thing". Still, he's got a t least a year and a half left. If things don't start improving, though, it's more and more likely that a year and a half is all he's got left.

This has been a very bad day.

On the one side, we likely will see some kind of Palestinian civil war at this point:

Palestinian sources told CNN that Abbas began holding meetings with his ministers and heads of security after the bombing, and decided to break off talks with the two militant groups. The source said the Palestinian Authority blames Hamas and Islamic Jihad for severely damaging the interests of the Palestinian people.

The authority is also considering additional measures against the groups, details of which will be announced in a few days.

..and on the other side, it looks like Al Qaeda may intend to turn Iraq into America's Afghanistan, at least according to Peter Bergen:

"A half-dozen U.S. officials who investigate or analyze al Qaeda ... say that Iraq has become an important battleground for al Qaeda in the past several months," CNN terrorism analyst Peter Bergen said.

"The officials use words such as 'magnet' and 'super magnet' to describe the attraction that Iraq has for al Qaeda and other 'jihadists,' " said Bergen, author of "Holy War, Inc.: Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden."...

..."Let's face it, if you are a terrorist in the Middle East and you have a mission to kill Americans, Iraq is now the place you're going to want to go," said [former U.S. deputy secretary of state James] Rubin, speaking from London, England.

Once again, this doesn't mean the "flypaper" theory is validated; American cells aren't going to Iraq, but may well attack while American forces are distracted. Indeed, now may well be an ideal time, as National Guard units continue to be posted to Iraq. The fighters in Iraq may not be part of "Al Qaeda" per se, but simply independent cells under Al Qaeda's indirect control.

One of the bigger wrinkles here is the Saudi angle:

[Dr. Saad]... al-Faqih said Saudis make up about 85 percent of the foreign fighters in the country, but a few of them are Kuwaitis.

The Saudi fighters consider their actions jihad because they see coalition soldiers as unjustifiably occupying a Muslim country, al-Faqih said.

Another factor is that Saudi authorities have cracked down on al Qaeda since May, when terrorists attacked complexes housing Westerners in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, giving al Qaeda members an additional impulse to leave the kingdom.

There are still people who believe that it is Saddam loyalists at work: Ken Pollack and Paul Bremer both argued that it is likely to be loyalists rather than Al Qaeda. Still, it could well be that the United States is now embroiled in a war on three fronts: the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan, the Saudis pouring into Iraq to fight the Americans there, and the continuing danger of terrorist attacks around the world.

Far from his claim of "mission accomplished", it looks like Bush's half-assed and inept foreign policy has only made things worse. Even Ronald "we launch in five minutes" Reagan couldn't have screwed it up this badly, and he started this whole damned mess with his ham-fisted Afghanistan policy back in the 80's. This time, though, there's no Gorbachev to save Bush's hide.

George Will remains blissfully mad.

The shah's "at least temporary control of the country" lasted just a bit more than half of these 50 years. The fact that his control crumbled in 1979 under the assault of Islamic fundamentalists responsive to the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini does not mean the coup was misguided or unavailing....

...The fact that the coup in some sense set in train events that led to today's highly unsatisfactory situation in Iran does not mean that the coup was not successful.

First, anybody who knows about the revolution knows that the fundamentalists took over only after the revolution had already happened... they were merely opportunists who filled the power vacuum left behind by the removal of a dictator. (Sound familiar to anybody?) Why is Will commenting on an event that he appears so grossly ignorant about?

Second, that "Second World War" bit in just insane. The entire point of the backing of the Shah was to place a U.S. friendly despot in the region, and that lasted, what, 30 years before he was swept away? The goal of the Second World war, on the other hand, was to defeat the Axis, and that was actually accomplished. it's not like the Nazis took Germany back in 1965. In what Bizarro world are these remotely similar? Saying "everything is temporary", as Will does, is absolutely no answer... that very attitude is what tends to lead to the ham-handedness of U.S. foreign policy and the irritation, annoyance, and hatred that said foreign policy tends to engender. Just because "to Americans, a hundred years is a long time" (as the saying goes) doesn't mean one should make policy for the short term.

Then again, it's not supposed to make sense. It's just supposed to create enough talking points to confound people long enough to get Bush re-elected and try to keep his dwindling popularity up. Rolling re-election squad stuff, nothing more.

Found in a Toronto Star editorial about the ruling Liberal party and same-sex marriage that mostly treads well-worn ground, there was one sentence paragraph that resonated well with me:

"Defending the right of others to march to a different, even discordant, drummer has never been easy. But it is the natural work of liberals."

John Stuart Mill would have been proud.

Edit: Link removed, as it was non-functional.

Found on CalPundit:

Hey, that big blackout makes it more important than ever to pass the president's energy bill, right? So important, in fact, that in order to get it passed George Bush has agreed to jettison the portions related to upgrading the power grid.

Unsurprising. Welcome to yet another Bush "Bait 'n Switch", where he uses one thing to accomplish something else, and neglects the initial (and usually critical) issue.

"Straight shooter", my fair and balanced ass.

Ok, I'm back. It wasn't related to the blackout, actually... there were different reasons, but I'm good to go now.

The blackout, oddly enough, was actually predicted by at least one man: Nathan Newman, who wrote a post about his 1998 Ph.D. dissertation that showed both how and why it happened:

While the exact cause of this year's blackouts are not established yet, it's clear that neglected infrastructure lay at the heart of the problem. "electricity demand has shot up by 25 percent since 1990, [while] construction of transmission systems has declined by 30 percent." People will point to why this regulation or that regulation was not in place, but the reality is that deregulation gave the key energy players self-interested incentives not to waste their own funds on maintenance.

The Dissertation is called "Net Loss: Government, Technology and the Political Economy of Community in the Age of the Internet". What I've seen reminds me of the work of Cass Sunstein and Lawrence Lessig (a compliment, to be sure); those two luminaries, however, can't really lay claim to playing the Cassandra here. Nathan can, and while it's a dubious honor, it shows why Nathan is a commentator and analyst to be taken seriously.

There is a story in the Pakistani "Daily Times" detailing a failed attempt by the CIA and DoD to plant WMDs in Iraq.The information comes from a whistleblowing DoD debriefer named Nelda Rogers and the author and former Iran-Contra insider Al Martin.

I find the source somewhat suspect, as Martin's site obviously isn't as Fair and Balanced as my own. I'll still link, however, on the off chance that it might be true. If it is it's explosive news.

Yeah, I'm doing it too, mostly because I think Fox's suit against Franken is the dumbest thing I've seen in a while, and that's saying something.

Great publicity for the man, though.

Fair and Balanced? You bet!

While some bloggers, like Calpundit were quite happy to cite and applaud this Maureen Dowd piece about politicians blogging, I find myself disagreeing. Here's Dowd:

The most telling sign that the Internet is no longer the cool American frontier? Blogs, which sprang up to sass the establishment, have been overrun by the establishment.

In a lame attempt to be hip, pols are posting soggy, foggy, bloggy musings on the Internet. Inspired by Howard Dean's success in fund-raising and mobilizing on the Web, candidates are crowding into the blogosphere — spewing out canned meanderings in a genre invented by unstructured exhibitionists.

It could be amusing if the pols posted unblushing, unedited diaries of what they were really thinking, as real bloggers do. John Kerry would mutter about that hot-dog Dean stealing his New England base, and Dr. Dean would growl about that wimp Kerry aping all his Internet gimmicks. But no such luck.

I doubt most bloggers post their ideas completely unchecked, but that kind of misses the point, as does Ms. Dowd and, for that matter, a lot of blog cheerleaders. A weblog is just a format. It's a way of organizing a website such that the material is placed in reverse chronological order on the same page. That's it. Nothing more.

There's absolutely nothing in the concept of the weblog that they or their owners should do what Ms. Down says they do. They don't have to "sass the establishment"... many don't, and many are actually quite approving of the establishment in different ways. Yes, anti-authoritarianism is common online, but there is zero reason why a blogger should adopt that attitude. Ditto with her complaints about the various politicos weblogs, which reveal not that they're lousy bloggers, but that they simply tend towards the kind of logging of personal events that caused many famous and not-so-famous people to take to weblogs or other online diary systems. The people who use Diaryland pages are generally apolitical, and often far from "sassy", but that doesn't make the material any less compelling. Indeed, it's often a welcome change.

Neil Gaiman's weblog isn't "sassy", either, but does it really need to be? It's interesting, funny, and allows me to peek into the life of a man whose work I enjoy and whose talent and skill at wielding the language I sometimes envy and always admire. Isn't that enough? And if I were as interested in the life and times of, say, John Kerry, isn't that enough as well?

Weblogging is just a medium, and while McLuhan had a point about media and messages, I somehow doubt that there's any intrinsic connection between weblogging and "sass". It may feel understandably good to many bloggers; ultimately, however, it limits the form.

Dammit. More suicide bombings, one by Hamas and one by al-Aqsa. As far as I know al-Aqsa isn't supporting the truce, so it isn't really a surprise, but the Hamas one certainly is, if only because they benefit far more from observing the truce than breaking it. Typically for this conflict, they claimed that the attack was to "avenge the killing of two of its members by Israeli troops last week", but that justification won't hold water, as the Israeli attacks were claimed to be in response to earlier attacks and any Israeli response will no doubt be in response to these attacks. Nobody is going to buy this justification, so why bother?

There is a bit of welcome news, though:

Still, an Israeli military source said there would be no large-scale retaliation and the extremists hinted that they would try not to escalate tensions.

Don't misunderstand; I support Israels right to defend itself, and believe that suicide bombings are both tactically and morally insupportable. They need to end, and this is one of the problems that needs to be solved in order to stop them. It become obvious to all parties: cloaking attacks in the rhetoric of retribution is as useless as attempts to "show them we're serious" or "send them a message". Self-defense may be part of the solution, but vengeance is forever part of the problem.

Edited out the extra "accurate". Sorry about that, been too busy to be able to carefully check as well as I'd like.

So, is the "flypaper" theory espoused by conservatives and Bush supporters accurate? On first inspection, this NYTimes article about militants moving into Iraq appears to support it, but as usual, the truth is somewhat more complicated.

In much the same way as the Russian invasion of Afghanistan stirred an earlier generation of young Muslims determined to fight the infidel, the American presence in Iraq is prompting a rising tide of Muslim militants to slip into the country to fight the foreign occupier, Iraqi officials and others say.

'Iraq is the nexus where many issues are coming together- Islam versus democracy, the West versus the axis of evil, Arab nationalism versus some different types of political culture,' said Barham Saleh, the prime minister of this Kurdish-controlled part of northern Iraq. 'If the Americans succeed here, this will be a monumental blow to everything the terrorists stand for.'

Recent intelligence suggests the militants are well organized. One returning group of fighters from the militant Ansar al-Islam organization captured in the Kurdish region two weeks ago consisted of five Iraqis, a Palestinian and a Tunisian...

So, does this mean that the conflict in Iraq is really supposed to be a lightning rod for militants? It seems unlikely, and if it were intentional then it'd betray the Bush administration as being bone stupid.

It's stupid because the professed goals of the Iraq invasion could all be nullified by this. The security of the oil supply would be in serious jeopardy, as it would be a prime target for terrorist attacks, and because Iraq's oil supply can now have a serious affect on world prices, threats to that supply would seriously increase investor uncertainty across the board, which could hurt regional economies and the world economy (including the U.S.). The goal of creating a stable arab democracy in the Middle East would go out the window: stable democracy requires, well, stability. Even the attempt to make Arabs think that the U.S. is not to be messed with would be contradicted, because this situation makes the U.S. look exactly like the U.S.S.R., another global power that nobody expected to fail and which was confident of its ability to crush opposition. That won't make militants fear the U.S., it will make them even bolder. As for preventing attacks in America, I personally find it doubtful... American sleeper cells aren't going to cut and run to go fight in Iraq, and they may feel that American resources are being diverted to Iraq, making their job easier.

The article includes an interesting piece about the psychology that the U.S. is up against, as well:

...Iraqi officials say they expect a broad spectrum of Muslim militants to flood Iraq. They believe that Ansar al-Islam, a small fundamentalist group believed to have links with Al Qaeda, forms the backbone of the underground network. The group was forced out of northern Iraq by a huge attack during the war.

Mullah Mustapha Kreikar, the founding spiritual leader of Ansar al-Islam, said in an interview on Sunday with LBC, the Lebanese satellite channel, that the fight in Iraq would be the culmination of all Muslim efforts since the Islamic caliphate collapsed in the early 20th century with the demise of the Ottoman Empire. "There is no difference between this occupation and the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in 1979," he said from Norway, where he has political asylum.

"The resistance is not only a reaction to the American invasion, it is part of the continuous Islamic struggle since the collapse of the caliphate," he said. "All Islamic struggles since then are part of one organized effort to bring back the caliphate."

I find that unlikely; there's no Caliphs nowadays and little likelihood of one emerging.

This might, however, explain the enduring popularity of Osama in the arab world, even in places where they don't necessarily share his hatred of the United States. Osama is seen as a kind of ascetic, having given up wealth and power for the sake of his religion. In that, he's very, very similar to the original Caliphs that followed Mohammed, who eschewed the trappings of fame and power that later became associated with the title during the Umayyid and Abbasid Caliphates.

It's extraordinarily frightening to contemplate, but there may well be a large number of arabs out there who are convinced that Osama is a potential Caliph; they support him so zealously due to that conviction. That's deeply disturbing. It would be akin to the return of King Arthur, Charlamagne, or Alexander the Great. Heck, there's an element of the Second Coming as well, and one need not be an Evangelical to appreciate how important a perceived second coming would be to Christians.

Even if that isn't the case, it's still a problem that they profess a desire to return to the caliphate. It makes it that much more difficult to win over "hearts and minds", because you're up against the greatest period in Islamic history, and against the sort of mythology that drives many people who belong to the other monotheistic religions to this day. When the perceived alternative to that is (supposedly) being slowly absorbed by the secular West, well.. it shows that the neocon fantasy about the Middle East and Iraq may well be in the process of exploding in their faces.

I am hardly comforted by that. Such things have a way of killing people, and I certainly don't look forward to the job the rest of us have of cleaning up the mess they leave behind. I just hope the lessons we learn are worth it, because I'm pretty sure that "flypaper" isn't going to be.

My apologies for the lack of updates today, but I've been extraordinarily busy and haven't had the chance to update. I will be able to write a bit more later on tonight.

In the meantime, I'll just quote a favorite bit I just saw over at Matt Yglesias' site:

Check out the update to this InstaPost which appears to suggest that someday Glenn Reynolds may learn the lesson that while Paul Krugman is an actual economist (albeit a shrill one), Donald Luskin is a ranting, inept, hack who has trouble grasping elementary math.

I would have figured that he'd clue in when Luskin discredited himself with that job growth bit. Not surprising that Luskin keeps popping up, though, when one is as desperate as Glenn is to find somebody to reconfirm his beliefs in the face of the good Professor's continuous outpouring of truth. Like most of the "Krugman truth squad", it has nothing to do with "fact-checking"- it has nothing to do with facts- and has everything to do with staving off cognitive dissonance for just one more day.

Nowadays, though, it's gotta be getting harder and harder.

Astonishingly depressing email exchange in the Guardian yesterday on the question of Israel and the Palestinians. It was between Roman Bronfman (a member of the Knesset) and Israel Harel (a settler), and mostly featured the two correspondants talking past each other. This was especially the case with Israel, who seemed to be pushing a variation on transfer, seems never to have heard of the utter failure of pan-Arabism (which puts the lie his "all Arabs are the same people" arguments), complains that the use of the term "West Bank" is somehow a plot against Israelis, appears to believe that empty desert is as suitable for habitation as anywhere else, and argues that Jordan and Egypt will be only too happy to give up their territory to a new Palestinian state so that Israel can keep part of the West Bank and Gaza, defying all history and logic.

I can understand that there's no small amount of self-interest here, I wouldn't want to have to move either, but come on.

I loved Today's Doonesbury.

I can't remember which blogger it was (Atrios?) which noted that the Washington Post has a journalistic form of multiple personality syndrome... that the news pages were very aggressively going after Bush, whereas the Op/Ed pages were just as aggressively pushing the spin. Whoever it was, he nailed it when it came to this Washington Post editorial, which was attacking former veep Gore and his recent speech for Moveon:

Mr. Gore, who not so long ago was describing Iraq as a "virulent threat in a class by itself," validated just about every conspiratorial theory of the antiwar left. President Bush, in distorting evidence about the Iraqi threat, was pursuing policies "designed to benefit friends and supporters." The war was waged "at least partly in order to ensure our continued access to oil." And it occurred because "false impressions" precluded the nation from conducting a serious debate before the war.

This notion -- that we were all somehow bamboozled into war -- is part of Mr. Gore's larger conviction that Mr. Bush has put one over on the nation, and not just with regard to Iraq.

These paragraphs show a trend that goes on throughout this editorial- it pooh-poohs the supposed "conspiracy theories" of the left without actually rebutting them. Said "conspiracy theory" is, of course, that of the relative coordination of the right in America, which should be relatively uncontroversial were it not for the strenuous denials of those who either know better or damned well should.

(I'd hope that the Post falls into the latter camp.)

I'm not going to go into heavy quotation because you've all heard this before, so I'll just summarize the basic points and respond:

1) Gore's claim that there wasn't a "proper debate" is nonsense: there was a lot of debate.

Answer: Gore's claim was based on the idea that the debate was operating under false pretenses; that people were engaging in it believing that the administration had evidence of Hussein's deception and dangerousness that it actually did not, and knew it did not. The full power of the conservative movement was bent to convincing the people of the validity of that information, and of the validity of Bush's reaction.

(Not that the latter was hard- the case was practically teleological if you bought Bush's arguments, which was part of the problem. It's hard to argue by attacking assumptions, which is why controlling those assumptions is so important.)

2)The belief in "conspiracy theories" discredits Mr. Gore, as it's insulting to believe that Bush has some sort of "propaganda machine".

Answer: Every political party has a propaganda machine. Indeed, almost every organization of any stripe does. It's what Public Relations is all about, and it's the raison d'etre of spin doctors. It's hard to think that there's such a thing as "propaganda" in modern American society, but it's undeniably true. Bush is not exceptional in that.

What is exceptional about the Republican machine (it doesn't belong to Bush, but it benefits him) is its sophistication, breadth, and tactics... that it's willing to not only put the spin out there, but change the ground rules by which their position is understood. This is partially done by right-wingers "working the ref", but this is what Bush's intelligence games are all about, too: changing the background upon which the debate takes place.

This is why the lies and redefinition are so important. He's using the power and legitimacy of the presidency to support Republican propaganda.

3)Gore's wrong because the Democrats voted for the war resolution.

Answer: Democrats had their eyes on one date: November 2002. Their vote had precious little to do with policy and everything to do with politics. The vote still remains legitimate, of course, but it can't be used as proof that the Republicans were right and that the Democrats truly supported them. Besides, Democrats maintain that they were lied to about this, or at least mislead, and the Post never did explain why exactly this impression is wrong. It's a circular argument... they're saying that the claim that the Democrats were mislead is wrong because of their vote, when the question is whether the vote was made while they were mislead.

4)Gore's wrong because Democrats voted for USA PATRIOT.

Answer: The World Trade Centre had just been destroyed; positions then seemed justifiable that seem wrong today. We didn't know then that Bush would use this as an excuse to Iraq, we didn't know that Bush would lie about it, we didn't know that Bush would so badly abrogate his duties to national defense... we didn't know a lot of things that we do now.

Finally, and this ain't exactly new:

5)Gore and the Democrats are doomed because they're trying to be both anti-Bush and for national security.

Answer: Bush is a danger to national security. Period. His weak domestic spending on national security is dangerous. His needlessly belligerent and naive foreign policy is dangerous. His extremely poor handling of the war on Iraq and its aftermath is dangerous. The problems that said war created for information-gathering in the war on terrorism is dangerous. His poor handling of the war on terrorism in particular is dangerous. His abandonment of Afghanistan and the Afghani people is dangerous. His fetish for secrecy is dangerous. His outrageous mistreatment of American soldiers is dangerous. The Washington Post is dead wrong on this. If you're for national security, criticizing Bush just makes sense. Period.

Is this editorial really worth this long response? Probably not. It's poorly written, tendentious, and full of holes you can fly a space shuttle through. It'll also likely be forgotten, the metaphorical "fart in the wind". Still, it's a useful example of the kind of talking points that Democrats are only going to hear more of in the coming months, and engaging those talking points is going to be critical in ensuring that Bush doesn't get to own the issue that he's so manifestly screwed up: foreign policy and national security.

Edit: Atrios eviscerates the Post here for inconsistency and here for deliberately misquoting Gore.

Nice bit about conservatives and the press on Tapped:

Tapped is of two minds... On the one hand, we're sick of watching conservatives work the ref -- see Tim Graham's painfully tedious posts on The Corner, in which softball questions to Democrats from network anchors, newsweekly coverage of Howard Dean and replays of Democratic political ads during chat shows are all evidence of 'liberal bias.' Pace FOX, conservatives have zero interest in an objective press, they just know it pays to mau-mau those who do. When it comes to policy, press objectivity favors conservatives, who have mastered the art of the press-friendly white paper. During coverage of tax cuts and budget policy, for example, the nuttiest supply-side nostrums get equal time with the opinion of mainstream economists. If The New York Times or The Washington Post had been explicitly partisan papers, for instance, Tapped is convinced neither of President Bush's tax cuts would have passed Congress at the size they did. Debates over the effects of Bush's policies were covered not on empirical grounds but as 'he said, she said' arguments. It was a national disgrace.

But for the most part, the objective press provides reliable, accurate information to the public. And this is no small thing. As an opinion journalist and blogger, Tapped absolutely relies on these papers to get it right, even if we give them guff when they don't.

The difference here is that there's often a gulf between showing "both sides" and "getting it right". There are definitely situations where things it's all about opinion and things are too muddied to take a position, but (to use an extreme example) you wouldn't want to present the claims of the Simon Weisenthal Centre and Holocaust deniers in a "fair and balanced" manner.

Journalists seeking objectivity need to place themselves somewhere between these extremes, and need to remember that whether it serves the right or the left, their job is primarily to ferret out the truth. The newfound (and somewhat postmodern) relativisms of modern conservatives aside, that is not only possible, it's essential.

It's sometimes entertaining to watch a columnist so adroitly miss the point. To this end, I present to you Charles Krauthammer on the Israeli fence:

The State Department is proposing that the United States play hardball with Israel -- reducing badly needed loan guarantees -- if it proceeds with the barrier it is erecting between Israeli and Palestinian populations. With this, the State Department joins the latest Palestinian propaganda ploy -- inverting cause and effect, and making the fence the issue, rather than the terrorism that made the fence necessary.

The Israelis are not happy with the fence. They love the land as much as the Palestinians, and scarring it with any barrier is so painful to Israelis that for years they resisted the idea. The reason they finally decided to build it is that they could no longer in good conscience refrain from taking the one step that could prevent Palestinian suicide bombers from sneaking into Israel to blow up innocents.

Krauthammer goes on to say that there's nothing in the "road map" about the fence, and that it's necessary to prevent Palestinian militants/terrorists from attacking Israeli civilians. All fine and good, but what stunning is that he completely misses the real fear about the fence... that the Israelis "love the land" so much that they're attempting to slowly annex it!

The whole reason that the fence is creating so much anxiety is because of the long-standing Palestinian perception that the settlement process is an attempt to slowly crowd them out of "Judea and Samaria". This is one of the biggest obstacles to peace; the Palestinians (rightly or wrongly) believe that if they do not wage war on the Israelis, the Israelis will simply (and peacefully) build settlement after settlement. This process doesn't even require that the Israelis do it purposefully; all they need to do is allow their more extremist factions the lattitude to do what they wish by either benign neglect or waffling on the issue. Considering the divisive Israeli political system, this isn't exactly a difficult task, and as long as the belief exists that the West Bank is ordained to the Jews by God, there will be little traction for the idea of removing the settlements. They will simply multiply until they're numerous enough that the argument that the Palestinians should simply be sent to Jordan becomes an inevitability.

(This rational argument in favor of militancy is rarely discussed in the blogosphere, by the by; it certainly doesn't factor into the "Palestinians are animals" argument made by those ironically named "anti-idiotarians".)

Now, this isn't a justification for terrorism, because terrorism rarely acheives its goals; the paranoia and anger only intensifies the desire to "stay the course". What this situation requires is a hard border between the two countries, and reassurement of the Palestinians that this sort of "creeping eviction" will not take place. This is precisely why the fence's location is a bad idea- there is the perception that this fence around the settlements will become a de-facto border. The Palestinians (and their supporters) will believe that if the Israelis succeed in moving the border once, they'll do it again, and that the fence is proof that the Israelis have absolutely no intention of removing the settlements and, thus, are tacit supporters of the settlements.

The ironic and tragic part is that this will only increase the power of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad and the like, because they'll be able to more easily convince ordinary Palestinians that extremism and violence are the only way to fight back, because peace will mean slow national oblivion. This means that the PA will be unable to act against them, as the attempt will mean civil war and, inevitably, oblivion for the PA.

The State department knows this, the Bush Administration almost certainly knows this, and even the Israelis likely know this, so I find it extraordinarily hard to believe that Mr. Krauthammer somehow doesn't.

(Krauthammer addresses the idea of civil war, but only as Abbas' "excuse" for violating the road map plan... that Abbas may have a point is utterly ignored.)

The only answer, then, is that he doesn't care. Which is fine. He's entitled to that opinion. It doesn't mean, however, that we have to listen to him, or anybody else that advocates acts that feed Palestinian fears and then rails against the reaction to those fears.

No, terrorism is not acceptable, and should not be condoned. The first step to proving that is not simply to kill terrorists, but to ensure that those that the terrorists are supposedly "fighting for" understand that they don't need them. The best way to do that with the Palestinians is to convince them that peace will not bring slow oblivion. To that end, the fence is a serious step backwards.

From Condi's editorial today:

Soon after the conclusion of World War II, America committed itself to the long-term transformation of Europe. Surveying the war's death and destruction -- including the loss of hundreds of thousands of American lives -- our policymakers set out to work for a Europe where another war was unthinkable. We and the people of Europe committed to the vision of democracy and prosperity, and together we succeeded.

See what I'm talking about? And this is a former college professor.

Yes, it's no doubt self-serving, but there's a reason she can get away with it.

Odd reversal by George "Stoner" Will:

(Yeah, I'm re-reading Franken. "Chickenhawk brigade" is classic stuff)

The 2004 election, even more than most elections, will turn on the parties' ability to turn out their committed supporters. And some in the White House are beginning to worry about Dean because he understands that venting may be a practical precursor to governing: Venting energizes the party's base.

That is why some in the White House say they worry that Dean might be an especially dangerous opponent. But, then, Br'er Rabbit said, 'Please, Br'er Fox, don't fling me in that briar patch.'

See, this is what confuses me... I hadn't really heard from anybody aside from Will here that the White House doesn't want Dean as an opponent. On the contrary: a thousand stories and editorials talk about how the Republicans are chortling with glee at the prospect of facing McGovern redux. So while Will may well be correct about the "briar patch", he seems to be either completely missing the picture or deliberately obscuring it.

As most readers probably already know, there was a car bomb atttack on the Jordanian Embassy:

A powerful car bomb exploded outside the Jordanian embassy on Thursday, hurling vehicles in the air and killing at least 11 people, including a woman and two children, morgue officials said. More than 50 people were wounded in the blast.

Lieutenant-General Ricardo Sanchez, commander of U.S. ground forces in Iraq, called the bombing of the embassy a terrorist attack and said it was "the worst on a soft target" since Baghdad fell to U.S. forces on April 9.

...Shortly after the blast, young Iraqi men stormed the embassy gate and began destroying pictures of Jordanian King Abdullah II and his late father, King Hussein. They were shouting anti-Jordanian chants but were quickly dispersed by U.S. forces and Iraqi police.

Anti-Jordanian chants? Say it with me now: "uh oh". It is very much not good news, especially because nobody can be sure if it's because Jordan allowed asylum to Hussein's daughters, or because of its relatively pro-American stance.

In any case, this could become a huge problem, as Jordan is one of the most pro-western countries in the region; if Iraqis maintain this attitude even after they develop some sort of democratic government, it could turn two prospective U.S. allies against each other, and seriously endanger the reformist agenda of Jordan's King Abdullah.

(Somehow, I doubt that the PNAC types planned for this little eventuality, either.)

Edit: Steve Gillard (at his classy new digs), said much the same thing. Congrats to Steve on the new blog, but one complaint: permalinks are a necessity nowadays.)

Iain J. Coleman brought up something in the comments thread for this post about the First World War.

Demosthenes, the Great War may have faded from the North American mind, but I assure you it still looms large in Europe. It's continually revisited in popular history, popular drama, and even one excellent comedy series ("Blackadder Goes Forth"). The memorials are still places of pilgrimage.

If anything, the First World War is more culturally important in Europe than the Second. Indeed, one will sometimes hear people refer to the 1914-1945 war.

This is something I had meant to mention, and didn't, and I'm grateful to Iain for reminding me. Yes, attitudes towards the two wars are different in Europe, very much so. Europe and the United States took two different lessons away from the Wars. Europe took away the lesson that nationalism (and even it's more positive counterpart, patriotism) can be suicidal and fatal, especially on a crowded supercontinent where nationalisms can push against each other like punks in a mosh pit. It had almost killed them; if one looks at the damage it did to the continent and the ease with which the Russians mopped up the remains of Central and Eastern Europe to build their network of satellite states, one could even say it had.

The United States, on the other hand, due to its popular mythology of having singlehandedly won the Second World War (and collective amnesia about the first, except for a similar belief of singlehanded victory), came away with the idea that nationalism and patriotism are not just important, but absolutely vital. When this was paired with the reality that American nationalism has always been tied to certain laudable ideas about freedom, society, business, and civil and human rights and faced with another superpower that America believed was a dire threat to all of those, "rallying 'round the flag" to an extent that most Europeans would find distasteful and dangerous only makes sense.

(In this case, the "North American" label doesn't apply. Canadians took away a much different series of lessons, and I'm honestly not well versed in the Mexican WWII experience.)

Now that the Cold War is over, and the United States is the single hegemonic power, those lessons are conflicting with one another. The Europeans see America's nationalism as mirroring their own, and constantly see a replay of the Great War in the offing. Americans, on the other hand, see WWII in whatever they do, wherever they go, and whoever they see... it always comes back to Hitler, and Stalin, and Roosevelt, and Churchill, and Chamberlain, and the so-called "Greatest Generation".

(That term always grates against my ears; even though I have deep respect for those that lived through WWII, I have just as much respect for the forgotten soldiers of WWI.)

In any case, thanks again to Iain. And to Ed Fitzgerald and his insights into how the current conflict(s) echo the opening of the Great War. Which is what I worry about, because we've become much, much better at killing people than they were.

It's official: Schwarzenegger is in. This is a big surprise to me and to a lot of other people, as the understanding was that he wouldn't run; maybe he changed his mind when he saw the competition.

As to whether he can win... that's a different story. If the Republicans seriously back him, then he's probably got an excellent shot, as he has party connections that many of the other candidates can't match and a higher profile than anybody else in the race, including, perhaps, Davis himself. Issa is a lightweight compared to Arnold, as is Rioriden. Plus, Arnold is the only one that might be able to rise above the problem of the sheer number of candidates; campaigners are going to go through hell just dealing with helping people locate their candidate, let alone the problem of sound-alikes. People may pick Arnold simply because he's the most recognizable, and if he has the Republican machine backing him, well....

(One thing, though: I honestly doubt that this will mean anything for the possibility of Bush taking California next year. Schwarzenegger's fame will be an asset for his own run, but I doubt even a famous Republican Governor will do anything for Bush. Those choosing Arnold for his fame won't care about his backing Bush, and Yellow-dog Republicans would vote for Bush anyway.

Edited for spelling and grammar

Last night during a conversation, half-jokingly, I referred to WWI as the "forgotten war", as it seems that people are poorly educated about the war, and its lessons are almost always ignored and minimized in the face of the more "popular" Second World War. I wasn't being serious. After reading this letter to the editor in the Washington Post today, however, it struck me that perhaps I was more right than I had wanted to believe.

On May 13, 2002, The Post published a letter and photo of mine describing the neglected and vandalized condition of World War I markers along the upper reaches of 16th Street NW. Originally, both sides of the street had hundreds of small concrete blocks, at intervals of about 10 or 15 feet, each with a copper name badge of a D.C. soldier killed in action.

Most of the markers are long gone. I found only one that still had a badge. It was for Pvt. John A. Kendall, U.S. Army, killed in action in France on Oct. 16, 1918 -- only 26 days before the Armistice.

My letter brought a message from Alice McConnell, a local resident -- and John A. Kendall's niece. Pvt. Kendall, I learned, had been a resident of Washington for 16 years. He was employed at Gregg's dairy, and his, wife, Annie, worked at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. He reached France in May 1918. His letters seldom talked about the fighting but touched more on things back home.

I checked to see whether Pvt. Kendall was buried at Arlington National Cemetery, and indeed he was. I visited his grave. Ms. McConnell had thought that her uncle was buried in France, so I was glad I could clear that up and sent a photo of his grave.

Meanwhile, the few remaining World War I markers continue to decay. If they can't be replaced, couldn't the remaining markers be preserved in a museum?

With all the money and time being spent on the World War II memorial in the heart of the national Mall, perhaps we could help preserve the memory of the earlier world war.

-JOHN LOCKWOOD

We could. We definitely should. Yet, by and large, we don't. The first World War languishes in the North American mind, it seems, as merely a mishmash of images of trench warfare, mustard gas and barbed wire. The rhetoric, actions, and most importantly the lessons of the first World War seem largely unremembered. That could simply be my perception, of course, but this letter seems to confirm that this is the case.

What is unmistakable, however, is how those lessons do not enter the public discourse. Lessons about inflexible, petty, ideological leadership; about the horror and madness of war; about the possibility that that horror could be in the service of foolish causes; about the uselessness and destructiveness of vengeance as a motive both before, during and after the war; and about how nationalism and patriotism can force a country to commit collective Seppuku. Perhaps most importantly, however, it shows us that the drumbeats of war feed off their own echoes, so that even the weakest tapping can quickly reproduce itself into a deafening boom, especially when that quiet tapping is at the behest of a convenient lie. (Witness Austria and Serbia). WWI shows us that the pacifists have a point- that the most horrible wartime tragedies in history can be fought for no good reason at all.

That lesson, however, is inconvenient much of the time, and it's certainly not one that people want to hear. So when one hears of war, one hears of the Second World War. There is endless pontification about the evils of appeasement (despite that entire line of argument being factually incorrect), about the necessity of just war, about the benefits of the just conquerer, and about the absolute rightness and greatness of those who fight in an epic conflict of good vs. evil. That said just conflict was unquestionably due to the mistakes made by the very same allies during the aftermath of the first war is never mentioned; the reality that Hitler would have never risen to power were it not for the opportunity presented by the plight of interwar Germany goes mostly unmentioned. Unmentioned, of course, except as yet more proof of the wisdom of those that fought WWII. Their generosity in rebuilding the countries that they conquered is constantly brought up as a teleological justification for convenient warfare. This is, of course, nonsensical; worldwide war created the mess in the first place.

(Vietnam was a different story entirely, but one utterly sabotaged by the fatally flawed-yet incredibly convenient- argument that the media was somehow responsible for the loss.)

I'm with Mr. Lockwood. The lessons, stories, and history of WWI is at least as important as those of WWII, even if it wasn't as responsible for the current American hyperpower status as its successor. They are yin and yang, entirely connected; the second as the war that proves that war can be necessary and right and the first as the war that proves that it can be unnecessary and evil. They are not merely "two parts of the same historical conflict", although there is truth to that: they are the two parts of a profound lesson about the human condition, about international relations, and about statecraft... and the worst folly in America today is that only one is really remembered and understood.

The entire discussion about war, peace, and justice will remain fatally flawed until both sides are engaged. Those who are bludgeoned with the "good war" need to be able to respond with its opposite. That won't happen, though, if the "Great War" remains forgotten.

Mark Kleiman linked to a very interesting interview with Michael Walzer, and discussed Walzer's insights into the third Gulf War. (Yes, believe it or not, it was the third: the first was Iran/Iraq, the second was Bush I/Iraq, and the third was Bush II/Iraq). I don't necessarily agree with what Walzer said about the war (I view multilateral consensus as being more valuable than he does, largely from a "soft power" perspective), but I am very impressed with one section that Kleiman didn't address. It's a summary of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict that really resonates with me.

This is a hard question for me to answer with any sort of brevity, given my long involvement in Zionist politics in the Jewish diaspora and in Israeli politics too, as a frequent visitor. I recently published an article in Dissent, 'The Four Wars of Israel/Palestine,' explaining my position, which I will try to summarise here. These are the four wars: there is a Palestinian war to destroy and replace the state of Israel, which is unjust, and a Palestinian war to establish a state alongside Israel, which is just. And there is an Israeli war to defend the state, which is just, and an Israeli war for Greater Israel, which is unjust. When making particular judgements, you always have to ask who is fighting which war, and what means they have adopted, and whether those means are legitimate for these ends, or for any ends. Most of the people attacking Israel or defending it, and most of the people attacking the Palestinians or defending them, don't even begin to do the necessary work.

Highlight mine. Thank you, Mr. Walzer. This is one of the chief reasons why the whole conflict has been so frustrating for me, and he set it out quite well: there isn't just one conflict here, but several. The problem is that those who are pushing the unjust wars will often mask themselves within the rhetoric of the just ones, and jump back and forth whenever convenient. (This is noticably apparent on websites about the conflict, which usually feature top-level pages that use the rhetoric of the just wars, and only get to their real aims and the justifications for same when you burrow down several levels and/or switch languages.)

He employs this criteria quite well, too:

I can't do that work here, but I will suggest some of the judgements that I think it leads to – most crucially these two: Palestinian terrorism, that is, the deliberate targeting of civilians, should always and everywhere be condemned. And Israeli settlement policy in the occupied territories has been wrong from the very beginning of the occupation. But this second wrongness doesn't mitigate the first: Palestinian attacks on the occupying army or on paramilitary settler groups are justified – at least they are justified whenever there is an Israeli government unwilling to negotiate; but attacks on settler families or schools are terrorist acts, murder exactly. (I want to insist that this is not special pleading: I am old enough to have made similar arguments at the time of the Algerian war: FLN attacks on French soldiers or on OAS militants were justified; putting a bomb in a café or a supermarket in the French section of Algiers was murder.) And similarly, Israeli attacks on Hamas or Islamic Jihad fighters are justified; dropping a bomb on an apartment house in Gaza was a criminal act.

This is well put (and the comparison with another conflict is apt). It also provides a useful counter to the absolutist use of the label "terrorist" as well.

Perhaps my favorite quote from the interview that Kleiman didn't address, however, is its closure:

It is hard work trying to sustain an oppositionist politics in the US today – especially when part of what I feel I have to oppose is the idiocy of many of my fellow oppositionists: knee-jerk anti-Americanism, old left dogmatism, and the rejection of any fellowship larger than the sect of the politically correct and the morally pure. I live on the left, but quarrel with some of my neighbours, and in the aftermath of 9/11 the quarrels have gotten more intense. But I would resist the idea that I am 'working' on these quarrels. They are just occasionally necessary engagements.

Not much more to add, here; it echoes my frustration with the "hard left", not the least reason being that it gives those centrists who try to derive their credibility from being close to the right more ammo in their quixotic fight to keep losing debates and elections to their erstwhile rightist comrades.

I like what this guy has to say, though. Don't agree with all of it, especially on Iraq (as I said above), but it's interesting.

Edit: that being said, I still think that "can there be a decent left" article was astoundingly silly and ill-thought-out. I'll put it down to having had a bad week and wanting to get out some frustrations, or wanting to provoke some discussion. Which the article certainly did, although probably not what he had in mind.

I'm starting to have a vision of what 2004 is going to look like. And it looks like chaos. Open warfare: between political partisans, between ideologies, between movements; between groups that believe that there is literally nothing more important than winning the election in November.

This article is one reason why. It shows the growing anger (if not hatred) that many Democratic partisans have towards the president, and their hunger for a party and a candidate that is willing to fight him.

While Democratic leaders in Washington debate strategy and demographics for the 2004 election — the wisdom of campaigning from the left, right or center — something far more visceral is at work in the first caucus state, and in other Democratic redoubts.

There is a powerful disdain for the Bush administration, stoked by the aftermath of the war in Iraq and the continuing lag in the economy...

Gordon Fischer, chairman of the Iowa Democratic Party, said this week that he saw "an incredible amount of antipathy toward the Bush administration" in the party, much more than the Democratic hostility toward the first President Bush.

Geoff Garin, a pollster who is working for Senator Bob Graham of Florida, who is seeking the Democratic nomination, said the Democratic anger toward Mr. Bush was "as strong as anything I've experienced in 25 years now of polling," and perhaps comes closest to the way many Democrats felt about President Richard M. Nixon.

Nixon. Probably the most divisive figure in politics, a politician easily the most hated by liberals than anybody else in the 20th century... and she's saying that the anger against the sitting president is greater than that against Nixon.

Then, of course, they coalesced around McGovern. Now it seems that the "angry democrats" are attaching themselves to Howard Dean. Whether or not he's as liberal as some believe (he isn't), and whether or not he's as much of an attack dog as people claim (he isn't that either), it's pretty clear by now that the Dean campaign is being propelled by a combination of the American interest in the "insurgent" candidate and this absolute desire to remove Bush.

It's not that this is Howard Dean's invention. Both Dean and Joe Trippi, his campaign manager, have claimed that they were both unprepared and shocked by the response. Dean himself was quoted as saying that he thought the website had been "hacked" when he found out that over four million dollars had been quickly raised through internet sources. The blogger interest in Dean, too, seems propelled partially by this underlying anger and resentment of the president. Dean is the voice of their discontent, and the focus of it. He's also not stupid; he and Trippi are planning to channel this energy into the creation of an army of volunteers and donors that the Republic has never seen before. Four hundred and fifty THOUSAND people is the target by this fall. While many of these may be those who are simply interested in getting involved with what may become a social event, there will be a large proportion that are fanatical supporters; as I had mentioned above, turning activists into zealots is part of Trippi's gameplan. If it works, there will be nothing else like it, ever. Remember, these people will likely be the same people that believe that Bush was illegitimate in the first place; as one conservative magazine put it, they won't be fighting an election, they'll be "overthrowing a tyrant". One that, they believe, threatens the safety and security both American and the world.

Actually, I was wrong. There is one other group like it: the Movementarians, Wurlitzer, whatever. Their fortune depends almost entirely on Bush's continued success, as does the success of their foreign and domestic policy. If Bush gets thrown out in 2004, everything crashes to the ground. The new president will see little need to follow Bush's policies, and absolutely no need to listen to those that propped him up previously. There will almost certainly be a purge of neo-conservatives within the government, and it will happen relatively quickly. (The Department of Homeland Security will be turned upside down practically overnight.) The Republicans' entire plan for remaking the world will not just be in jeopardy; it will be doomed. Whether one agrees or not with Bush's policies is immaterial here: all will agree that Bush's backers will believe that they cannot let this happen, at any cost.

Thus, 2004. If Dean gets the nomination, or even if he doesn't, there will be an army of politically activated, angry, and nearly fanatical Democrats with a single goal: get the pretender off the throne. There will also be an army of political activated, desperate, and nearly fanatical Republicans with a single goal: keep their man around for that all-important second term. They already loathe each other: the former believes the latter to be psychotic and megalomanaical warmongers and profiteers, and the latter believes the former to be treasonous socialists who want America to die in flames. Appeals to bi-partisan consensus will likely be offered by the Republicans, who will have both 2002 and Grover Norquist's "Bi-partisanship is date rape" line thrown back in their faces. The media will focus less on the rhetoric, and more on the war. Civility is out the window; Republican calls for it will likely be quickly rebutted as well by the "Bourgeous riot" of 2000, where the Republicans proved that they have little taste for civility where it doesn't benefit them. Dirty tricks are out of bound only insofar as they might be found out.

The media is also going to be the home of a nasty fight as well, as the mechanism of the Wurlitzer goes up against an army of email writers, bloggers, and the reality that there will be people devoting all their free time to ensuring that anything Bush or his supporters say will be "fact-checked" by google and Lexis/Nexis and responded to within minutes.Even if Dean doesn't have his own oppo research (which is unlikely), he will barely need it.

(Indeed, the very mechanism of election is in question; the controversy over the voting machines isn't going away, and Democrats aren't going to forget that it is quite possible a Republican temporarily switched parties in order to alter the ballots in Florida to benefit Bush; even if that wasn't the case, truth is of very little importance nowadays.)

So we get a war. The Republican base against the Democrat base. The Wurlitzer against Dean's army. (I would not be overly surprised if we hear that term first being used in the mainstream media before the year is out.) The immovable object against the irresistable force, with no concept of civility, fairness, or restraint accepted, let alone followed. All of this, too, against a backdrop of an American populace that is newly re-engaged with politics, which understands how important this is, and which will likely be as evenly divided as it was in the past. I have a vision of the most brutal election campaign that the Republic has ever seen, and I don't think I like it, and even less like that it may be necessary.

And that's not even getting into what the anti-globo types will do. Or, God forbid, Al Qaeda.

Obviously, "Cheney" was a mixup. Sorry.

Well, as I and others had suspected, Powell is not going to be staying in the Bush administration if they get re-elected:

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and his deputy, Richard L. Armitage, have signaled to the White House that they intend to step down even if President Bush is reelected, setting the stage for a substantial reshaping of the administration's national security team that has remained unchanged through the September 2001 terrorist attacks, two wars and numerous other crises.

Armitage recently told national security adviser Condoleezza Rice that he and Powell will leave on Jan. 21, 2005, the day after the next presidential inauguration, sources familiar with the conversation said.

Honestly, it would have been more of a surprise if he had decided to stay. Powell had always been a centrist anomaly in this administration... even when he was toeing the line (as was the case during the runup to the Iraq war) he was considered an outsider; he rarely commanded the kind of presidential attention and respect that Rice, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Cheney, and others. The (no doubt Wurlitzer-inspired) attack on State by Gingrich at AEI and in Foreign Policy made this crystal clear.

This didn't escape the post, either:

The current administration has been characterized by fierce policy disputes, often between Powell and more hawkish members, and a reshuffling likely would significantly change the tenor and character of the foreign policy team.

Although Bush appears to value the range of opinions he has received from his chief national security advisers, he may feel free if he wins a second term to realign his foreign policy more closely to the harder-edged, conservative view exemplified by Vice President Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, according to Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter's national security adviser.

Indeed, this will almost certainly be the case; there is little indication that the Bush administration values anything like moderation or plurality in its foreign policy, excepting that which improves their domestic political standing. The second Bush administration, however, will be completely unhampered by re-election considerations, and whatever coattails Bush has or doesn't have in 2006 will likely be due to domestic events that we can't easily predict, rather than his choice of foreign policy. Kos seems to think otherwise, arguing that "Powell is the administration's lone symbol of moderation...[his] perception of moderation is more important than ever." While this may be the case, I don't think moderation in foreign policy would win Bush any votes.

(Even among his supporters, who'd buy that argument?)

On the other hand, it may be, possibly, that Powell isn't leaving because he's being pushed out. Maybe he's seen the writing on the wall, and thinks that Bush is going to crash, hard, if he wins the election in 2004, and will bring down all those who are associated with him. If he majorly goofs foreign policy, or if the domestic situation remains bad (the quite-possible shift from the current economic malaise to heavy inflation or, worse, stagflation would turn Bush radioactive), the neo-cons and the extremist Movementarians would be in serious trouble; the Republicans would need to move moderate, and fast. Powell would then be in an excellent position to claim ground as the spokesman of the "moderate wing" of the Republican party. He could either make a bid for the presidency directly, or sign on as the vice-president on somebody else's ticket.

Indeed, even if the Movementarians manage to muddle through, he might be a useful addition for establishment candidates interested in a running mate with a reputation for moderation. Considering the possibility of some heavy duty Democratic contenders in 2008 (Hillary being the party's worst kept secret, but there are others), I wouldn't be overly surprised if he has this in mind.

In any case, State is likely to become something very different. That worries me, as it has a reputation of being a home for diplomatic understanding relatively free of ideology, and if Gingrich's twaddle about pushing morality is any indication, that's the first thing that's going to go. The sort of ideological filters that inform Administration policy will likely become de rigeur for the State department. While this isn't going to bother the administration or its supporters much, it will help to ensure that there's absolutely no check on Bush's policies, and if even one of those policies is ill-conceived or poorly executed, the results would be catastrophic.

Considering that the only means by which Bush has been able to claim success so far is by redefining terms, that seems almost inevitable.

I can't believe it. I just can't believe it. It's as nuts as it is brilliant. You probably heard it somewhere else earlier, but for those that didn't, check this out:

From Friday the 25th of July through Monday the 29th, 9,621 Americans joined together to demonstrate the power of the grassroots-- and raised over $508,000 in the Dean Team vs. Bush-Cheney Challenge. Your tremendous accomplishment has enabled us to do this.

Beginning Monday, Howard Dean is going up on the air in Austin, Texas. In a television commercial recorded late this week, he will invite the people of Texas to join us in building the great grassroots campaign of the modern era-- whether by signing up online or using our new toll-free number, which will be revealed on Monday.

Unbelievable. Dean's going after Bush in his home state of Texas... a state that most people agree there is no chance Democrats can win in 2004. A state that it's very likely most of the other Democratic candidates will not even campaign in, let alone focus on, and a state that is practically synonymous with the "southern strategy" that helps keep the Republicans in power.

So why is it he doing it? I've heard various explanations: that the delegates are numerous and up for grabs, that Texas isn't as Republican as people think, that there will be a ton of free media coverage that will very likely be extremely positive and that it pulls him out of the "pack" and sets him up as an opponent to Bush. All of these are undoubtedly true; the media coverage could be dicey, however, as newsmedia love covering the horse race and could play this up as a foolish waste of money.

But all those miss the point. It's not just about media, and it's not just about delegates, and it's certainly not just about positioning. It's about activism.

The people of Texas know George W. Bush better than anyone. Throughout this campaign, Howard Dean has been standing up to George W. Bush, and what better place to stand up against what George W. Bush has done to the economy and our nation than in Bush's home state of Texas.

When we've said we're building a grassroots campaign in all 50 states, we've meant all 50 states. You have enabled us to bring Howard Dean's message to Texas. Help spread the word to the rest of the country by forwarding this blog entry, and ask your friends in every state to join us.

We'll have the commercial on the web at the right time, sometime over the weekend. There will be more coming. But on Monday, Howard Dean goes up on the air in Texas.

Remember exactly what he's done here: he's taken extra money from an online fundraiser and plowed it into attacking the person who is largely driving Dean's activism: President Bush. Those donors (and their fellow activists) are the real target. Dean is giving them exactly what they want. Their money is going towards fighting Bush, in a bold and audacious way. They were the first ones to know, and they're being endlessly lauded for their support. They feel like they're important, like they make a difference, and that's absolutely vital. If they were fanatical before, they'll be zealots now.

The thing is, this is probably the most important goal for Dean to set. Dean is not going to have the money that the Republicans enjoy, and the Dem establishment may turn its back on him if he wins the nomination. (They shouldn't, it'd be stupid, but it's possible.) He also doesn't enjoy the support of something like the conservative movement, which will be foursquare behind Bush and (Dean must realize) fighting just as fanatically to keep their man in power in the face of the "peacenik" Dean. He may not even get the unions, who back Gephardt, and their membership may not be too enthralled about someone they consider anti-war anyway.

Enter the Deanniks.

Dean and Trippi obviously aren't stupid men, and since they aren't stupid, they must have noticed the weirdest aspect of current American political history: "outsider" organizations. Whether it's due to disgust or disinterest with the mainstream parties and candidates or not, there is this remarkable trend within the American polity of people coalescing around outsider campaigns. It happened with Perot, who was actually a serious threat before he dropped out in '92, it happened with McCain, and it arguably happened with Nader (although Nader wasn't nearly so popular as the other two.) These people attracted hordes of devoted followers, often simply through sheer power of personality, honesty, and bloodymindedness. Being seen as a little nuts doesn't hurt, either.

(This is one big reason why '04 isn't '72; McGovern didn't fit this pattern at all.)

I think it may be Trippi's key strategy, and it may be one that he and Dean ride to the White House. The problem with these candidates in the past is that they've either been third party candidates (Nader, Perot) and thus without a chance of winning, or were up against a party machine so disciplined and powerful that they just couldn't get over the hump (McCain). They've never been one of the "big two" in a race, and that's what Dean is going for. He must know that the party machine is writing off this election while it preps Hilary for 2008 (not certain, but likely) and knows he must therefore build his own machine or lose; this sort of tactic is the best way in turn-of-the-millennium America of doing so.

So he builds this army of fanatics. What good will it do? Well, Dean's key goals are a large number of small donations (he said two million $100 donations, but it need not be that extreme), and getting out the vote so that as many likely Demo-leaning and insurgent-leaning (Perot/McCain) voters get to the polls and vote for him as possible. Couple the two together, and he could cobble together enough votes in enough states for victory.

This GOTV effort is a little different than most. It isn't about demographics, as Ruy Teixeiras seems to believe. It is, in fact, exactly about that concept of strategic activation that I mentioned earlier. Normally these sorts of things are aimed at demographics, but they don't have to be (direct mail certainly isn't). This is about identifying those who like to climb on the insurgent bandwagon, and exploiting them for the benefit of a mainstream, "big two" candidate for the first time since Perot got this thing rolling. Thing is, the best way to do something like this is to have boots on the ground, and this army of zealots is the best way to do so.

(The fact that they're largely wired will also help during the media war. Letter-to-the-editor campaigns, oppo research, information dissemination and such will be a snap. The Dean Defense Forces aren't going anywhere, and they're just gonna get more and more dedicated and, well, loud as Bush starts attacking Dean. Gore never had anything like this.)

Thus we get back to the ad, and why it's brilliant. It helps build this army, it makes people feel good about being in this army, it ensures that they'll support Dean as much as they're financially able and encourage others to do so, and assuming Dean doesn't forget about them during the "lurch to the center", he'll have an on-the-ground electoral machine that this country has never seen before.

(Of course, this depends on Dean winning the nomination. I have no idea about that, and many of the Dean backers have said they'll support the Dems no matter who they nominate, possibly barring Leiberman. It just got a fair bit likelier today, however, and I'm increasingly convinced that Dean is building the campaign of the 21st century. Whether or not he wins, what he's doing right now matters.)

Wisdom:

I didn't come around to my liberal views for the fun of bashing the insufficiently pure of ideology. It wasn't so I could join a club where I liked everybody personally, presuming such a thing exists. But I've occasionally got sidetracked into the pointless entertainment that it provides, because you know, human beings are endlessly perverse.

The Liberal movement, while correctly reviling Joe McCarthy, seems to have internalized him. And I never expected that. But nobody expects the Liberal Inquisition.

'Right. You're in. Listen. The only people we hate more than the Romans are the [***]ing Judean People's Front. ...And the Judean Popular People's Front. ...And the People's Front of Judea.'

'...We're the People's Front of Judea!' - Life of Brian, by Monty Python'

Natashac wrote this in response to the conflicts within the left, especially Democratic partisan's attacks on Lieberman for being insufficiently liberal, Chomsky for being too critical, and Nader for helping Bush get elected. It's not that Natasha necessarily believes that the criticism isn't warranted, and even a cursory look will reveal that it goes both ways (Greens attacks on "Republicrats" are at least as wrongheaded as Democrats' attacks on Greens, and are exacerbating the conflict).

Natasha knows something, however, that myself and others have pointed out time and time again: the unity of the conservative movement is their strength, and the division of liberalism is their weakness. This isn't a new insight; it's exactly the reason why Lenin was able to take control in Russia, and the current conservative movement is nothing if not Leninist in strategy (if not ideology).

This is, of course, one of the major reasons that we get the odd spectacle of conservatives advising Democrats and picking and choosing "acceptable liberals". They know that fomenting division is the way they'll win, and they know the best way to do that is to try to paint one group as acceptable and one group as not. The ideology of the groups barely matters- the point is that both groups will pull apart.

The "embraced" group will believe that it is the only "acceptable, mainstream" group, and will attempt to retain that by attacking the other as unrealistic and unwilling to compromise, egged on by the conservatives saying "you don't want to be part of that, do you?" (The "anti-American" charge is absolutely key to this tactic.) They'll start pulling closer and closer to their "friends" as the division grows wider and wider between them and the other group, and yet they'll remain unsuccessful because they are torn between the concepts and ideology of those they're trying to ingratiate themselves with, and the concepts and ideology that they supposedly believe.

The other "repelled" group, stung by this rejection, overcompensates and starts valuing purity and difference over everything else, and attacks the "accepted" group for being traitors, insufficiently pure and noble, too willing to compromise. Often enough, they'll latch onto forms of ideology and theory that emphasize the need for purity, and usually claim that the only way to succeed is through some sort of "revolution" (whether real, conceptual, or whatnot) that will inevitably come from the public finally realizing that they've been hoodwinked. Of course, they don't, largely because they usually aren't. Mythology aside, the people's revolution never comes. Change, inevitably, must come from both below and above.

Meanwhile, the undivided opposition reaps the benefits of both power and influence, uses the levers of the state to increase these divisions, and laughs all the way to dynastic control of government. This accentuates the differences, as the two groups get desperate, and more and more extreme. The only way out of this is to do exactly what the Republicans (and the Leninists, for that matter, although I'm not exactly fond of them) did to win. Put aside the differences and work in tandem for a single goal: removing the opposition from power. It won't work immediately, it requires patience, and it may require all sorts of odd, oblique moves that don't make sense at first but have a larger strategic goal (such as building all those think tanks).

Still, it's necessary. There will be no revolution, and aping the other guys will never pay off. As long as people keep on thinking they do, they're hopeless.

(By the way, for those who think that this is solely about liberalism, go talk to a Canadian Progressive Conservative about electability, powerful parties, and the problem of people valuing "purity" over winning elections. He'll bend your ear. He has nothing better to do, because the Liberals have all the seats. The ideology is immaterial. The attitudes and tactics are the key.)