Category: Politics

I’m not really a huge Bob Woodward fan, but Bush at War looks kind of interesting based on this piece. I can’t say I find Bush’s attitude to be inherently distasteful, but I am interested in his management style.

“I do not need to explain why I say things. — That’s the interesting thing about being the President. — Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don’t feel like I owe anybody an explanation.”

Woodward’s got an agenda, even if it’s only “I want to be the guy who reveals shocking things,” but still. Interesting stuff. It’s not often you get a good view into what a President is thinking, and for whatever reason, Bush seems to have opened up to Woodward.

There’s been some discussion of a certain controversial painting of late. Interesting topic. James Lileks claims that a hypothetical “Self-Portrait of a Racial Cleanser” wouldn’t get the same treatment on campus. “The painting would be draped in a day.”

How quickly we forget. In 1998, Stephen Hunter trashed Tony Kaye’s American History X in the Washington Post. He called it “rank, repelling hypocrisy.” He accused it of allowing “its fantasy versions of American Nazis to spew their blackest, cruelest vomitus of hatred” while taking “energy and vitality (and ticket-selling notoriety) from the electricity of that hatred.”

These are the same objections Lileks levels at “Self Portrait of a Martyr.” He is simply wrong when he claims that his hypothetical skinhead painting would receive different treatment. We’ve seen that painting, and it drew the same sorts of objection. There’s no double standard here.

Pop quiz!

What’s the difference between attending a rally organized by some pretty unpleasant Communists who support Hussein (a hard core dictator) and supporting the dictatorial Putin?

Apparently, a week or so. You know, Putin cheated in his elections too. Just saying.

Another pop quiz!

What’s the difference between supporting Putin’s right to crush his rebels however he wants and supporting Iranian students threatening an uprising? Just a day, in that case.

Does Putin have more moral ground than Iraq or Iran? Oh, sure. I don’t actually think that the Chechen rebels are precisely as admirable (or despicable) as Iranian students protesting the Iranian regime. But please, let’s make our praise of Putin a little more sophisticated then “Our country, our dead, our solution.” Cause that line of reasoning applies to the dictators you don’t like, too.

I begin to think that “Anti-Idiotarian” is code for “low rent Rush Limbaugh.”

It never ever dies. Senator John Warner, the probable new Armed Services Committee chairman, wants to review the Posse Comitatus.

I’ve written about this before, elsewhere, but since LiveJournal has no search function I’m not gonna track it down. Suffice it to say that military training does not correspond to police training, and that there is no compelling reason to involve the military in law enforcement. “It would be nice” is not a compelling reason. Neither is “it might be handy.”

Katha Pollitt’s Letter to an Ex-Contrarian (from the Nation) is very much worth reading. Context: Christopher Hitchens is a leftist — former socialist, in fact — who’s been pondering the nature and necessity of our war on terrorism of late. He left The Nation because he wasn’t comfortable there any more. A complex guy.

The first paragraph of Pollitt’s letter is mean-spirited; a man ought to be able to call himself a contrarian without being required to spend his life absorbing brickbats and stones. If he wants to quit writing for The Nation, he should go ahead and do it.

The rest of the letter is a nice recovery. It’s not just directed at Hitchens, of course; it’s directed at every right-wing pundit who claims that the anti-war protestors don’t count because the protests were organized by Communists. It’s 2002 and McCarthy is alive and well in America. Communist organizers taint the protests, but Bush’s views on privacy don’t taint his actions? Odd standards indeed. Pollitt skewers them.

(Link by way of Electrolite.)

You know something’s gone terribly wrong in pundit-land when the legendary Instapundit suggests — perfectly seriously — that Turkey ought to be in the NAFTA orbit. There’s really a failure of perspective there, and it’s a very telling one. When you’re a nation that sits between Europe and the Middle East, EU trade is going to be more important to you than the “orbit” of a trade agreement on the other side of the world. Turkey would be insane to snub the EU in exchange for NAFTA involvement.

The entire blurb is interesting, actually, when you think about it. He quotes James Bennett, who says “If Europe is really to become the rival hegemon and power bloc its enthusiasts predict, it makes sense for America to blunt this rivalry by making a generous alternative offer to compatible nations such as Britain and Ireland.”

It does? I mean, sure; it does if your goal is a world in which the United States is a single dominant world power. It would also make sense if the EU appeared to be a power bloc which is inherently opposed to the principles on which the United States was founded. (Democracy, free speech, all that stuff.)

As is, however, I really don’t see it. There’s an inherent, fundamental value to diversity of viewpoints among entities of equal power. It is insurance against one entity developing pathological social behavior and acting poorly. Optimally, you don’t want the entities to be enemies — see also the Cold War — but I don’t think there’s a Cold War brewing between the US and the EU.

If I were purely concerned with the United States, I might not care. “Who cares if the US gets weird, as long as we have good lives?” Then again, I might care, because a very weird US might do unpleasant things to my freedom. (More unpleasant things.) It’s an outside change, but an EU that rivals the power of the US isn’t a very big drawback. Basic risk management analysis.

I’d rather see Britain as a partner than as a servant.

The UN Security Council unanimously approved the US-scribed resolution on Iraq. Yay; the UN works. “Only because we made ‘em!” Yes. Sometimes diplomacy requires convincing other countries to agree with you; expecting abject obedience is the attitude of a bully.

It’ll be interesting to see what happens next.

While it is probably true that France opposes war with Iraq due to oil, it is also true that the US has a financial motivation for invading Iraq. If the fact that France profits from the current situation leads us to speculate that such profit is their primary motivation, we ought to take equal note of the equivalent situation over on the US side.

Particularly if the division of wealth is already taking place.

Politicans can be so gutless.

“If we try to make defense, foreign policy the overriding issue we will lose, because the country is with the president on this issue,” [Representative Martin] Frost said. I’m gonna go out on a limb here: perhaps you should not be making policy decisions based on what will win elections, but rather on what you believe? Or what you said when you ran for office?

I’m going to miss Dick Armey. Best voice for privacy in Congress this year.