Bush and Brown: not joined at the hip, but still…

The New Neo Posted on by

Take a look at this video. I was struck by the similarity of the two men’s strides and posture. Look particularly at the part where Bush crosses over to the right of the screen (Brown’s left) and they separate a bit (it begins at around 00:53 and lasts till they start speaking).

As an ex-dancer, I tend to notice body language more than most people. When I first saw this clip it seemed to me that the two men were walking with such a similar gait, and are of such similar size and stature, that from afar they would be nearly indistinguishable.

What are they conveying? Resolve and energy, and a certain arm-swinging—and, in the case of Bush, ever-so-slightly bowlegged—athleticism (or ex-athleticism), as well as that vaunted Anglo-American togetherness that seems to still have currency. As Bush says in his address, men who “really want to get something done.”

You may or may not agree, of course, with that “something,” or how it was defined by Bush: “an obligation to work for freedom and justice around the world.” But I think you can see in the way they walk that they believe they want to get something done.

Not joined at the hip, it’s true. But perhaps not so far apart after all.

Up on the roof: mosques and the rules of engagement

The New Neo Posted on by

The intrepid Michael Totten has some of the best reporting out of Iraq these days. Read his riveting eyewitness (minus night goggles, but armed with camera) account of a night raid in Baghdad with the 82nd Airborne on the lookout for curfew violators, both dangerous and not so dangerous.

Problem is, it’s hard to tell at the outset which variety of unidentified night wanderer you’re dealing with. Sometimes it’s hard to tell even at the endpoint of the encounter. But Totten will help you understand what it’s like for the troops these days patrolling the darkened streets of Baghdad.

Note the following exchange between Totten and a soldier concerning the rules of engagement under which our military must currently operate:

“They have a little bunker up [on the mosque roof],” he continued. “You can’t see it from here, but it has sand bags and sniper netting around it.”

“What are you going to do?” I said.

“Nothing,” he said. “It’s a mosque.”

“They’re violating curfew,” I said, “and stalking us in the dark from a militarized mosque. And you aren’t going to do anything?”

“Our rules of engagement say we can’t interfere in any way with a mosque unless they are shooting at us,” he said.

You could say that this is what PC considerations run amok have led to: killers know they can set up shop with impunity as long as they do so in a mosque. On the other hand, they also know that as soon as they start shooting from there, they are fair game.

It’s a situation in which our forces can only react after the fact, not before, although we all know the truth of the old adage “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” In this case, however, respecting mosques and their sanctity has the (supposed) added benefit of not inflaming the locals over what might be seen as random, poorly motivated attacks on Muslim places of worship.

It seems to me that when troops go into a mosque that’s been equipped with sandbags and sniper positions it ought to be understood as a necessary defensive action taking place in a mosque that’s already been “militarized,” in Totten’s phrase, by the insurgents/terrorists. The locals are not dummies; they’d get why this is being done, and that they themselves are ultimately also the targets of those taking refuge in that mosque.

But I’m not in Iraq (and unlike Totten, I’m not planning a trip any time soon). I truly don’t know which approach is best. I wish I knew whether these rules of engagement are in place because the military experts on the subject of fighting insurgencies have decided they are best in the long run, or whether it’s just a result of lawyers being ultra-careful and tying the hands of the military unduly.

I do know that the situation is a good example of the complexities of fighting this sort of war, which has to occur on so many levels—military, cultural, and psychological. That, unfortunately, includes the necessity to traverse the metaphorical minefield of Muslim religious sensitivities as well as the actual minefields of insurgent and terrorist explosives.

[ADDENDUM: Think about contributing to the tip jar if you so desire. And Michael, please stay safe.]

[ADDENDUM II: Oh, and I almost forget: here’s the inspiration for the title of this post.]

Arab perceptions of suicide bombers: depends on the target?

The New Neo Posted on by

Michael Barone has written a RealClearPolitics column about a series of worldwide Pew polls. Trends indicate that majorities in most countries express satisfaction with the quality of their personal and economic lives and dissatisfaction with the way their countries are headed.

One small and somewhat tangential detail of Barone’s column caught my eye, and that was this:

…the Pew Global survey showed sharply reduced numbers of Muslims saying that suicide bombings are often or sometimes justified as compared with 2002. That’s still the view of 70 percent in the Palestinian territories. But that percentage has declined from 74 percent to 34 percent in Lebanon, from 43 percent to 23 percent in Jordan, and from 33 percent to 9 percent in Pakistan.

That’s quite a trend. What does it represent?

My theory is quite simple: the targets of suicide bombings have changed since 2002. Back then, during the height of the Second Intifada, suicide bombings were mainly directed against Israel. Now their victims are mostly Arabs.

I’m unable to find a website detailing the exact figures comparing the demography of suicide bombing targets, then and now. And, of course, it depends on how one defends “suicide bombings.”

In a certain sense, 9/11 was a suicide bombing (or at least a suicide attack), but it’s not usually conceptualized that way. The term, and the public perception of it, is usually limited to the sort of modus operandi that was popularized by the Palestinians vis a vis the Israelis: explosives in a backpack or strapped to the body, or an explosion-laden car with driver still in it, detonated in a crowd of innocent people in a public or semi-public place, destroying both the victims and the perpetrator in one horrific moment of carnage designed to strike fear and trembling into the heart and mind.

Back in 2002 we were treated to statements by public figures such as Egyptian psychiatrist Dr. ”˜Adel Sadeq, chairman of the Arab Psychiatrists Association and head of the Department of Psychiatry at ”˜Ein Shams University in Cairo, who glorified the “ecstasy” of suicide bombers and praised them as a tool of the defeat of Israel (watch the video here to view Sadeq’s peculiar affect, and see my previous post about him here, containing a fuller transcript of his words).

That was then; this is now. Israel’s security fence is in place and has had its intended effect: a tremendous drop in the number of suicide bombings in Israel in the last few years.

But suicide bombings haven’t died out, to coin a phrase. Strangely enough, in a move that most did not predict back in 2002, their targets have shifted—not to Western nations such as the US or Britain, nor to Bali or Australia or other countries that have had isolated but well-publicized and horrific incidents—but to the Arab world itself.

In particular, Iraq has become the home of the suicide bomber, with Pakistan coming up behind. Apparently, old habits die hard—plus, of course, the logistics are easier. The intended targets are Arabs and Muslims, as are the perpetrators. This is Arab on Arab (and/or Muslim on Muslim) violence (not an unusual occurrence, historically speaking), and designed to further the political aims of factions in that world who don’t see their actions as a cause of possible Arab/Muslim backlash.

I have no way of knowing whether I’m correct, but I hope the results of this poll represents that backlash. It would be even better if the backlash extends to the use of suicide bombers as a tool against Israel and the US, although I very much doubt it.

[ADDENDUM: See also my post on suicide bombing: explanations vs. excuses.]

Schumer: Bush’s future Supreme Court nominations are guilty until proven innocent

The New Neo Posted on by

It seems the gloves are off—not that they ever were really on.

Senator Schumer has flung down the gauntlet (can’t resist those glove metaphors) and said that the Democrats need to oppose all of President Bush’s future Supreme Court nominations, “except in extraordinary circumstances.”

This, of course, is a reversal of the Constitutional charge concerning the Senate’s participation in these matters. And this is despite the fact that Schumer made the speech at a meeting of a group that calls itself “The American Constitution Society.” Of course, since it also describes itself as “one of the nation’s leading progressive legal organization,” we can assume this is a very liberal organization.

According to Article II Section 2 of the Constitution, which enumerates Presidential powers, the executive branch appoints Supreme Court justices with the “advice and consent” of the Senate. This, of course, doesn’t mean that Senators must consent to presidential Supreme Court appointees. But it has meant—at least till certain relatively recent, more consistently obstructionist, decades—that traditionally it was only under extraordinary circumstances that the Senate would fail to confirm appointments, considered to be a prerogative of the executive branch. And, of course, it stands to reason that a President would be appointing Justices aligned with his/her own point of view. The balance of powers put into place by our foresighted founding fathers clearly placed this power with the President, with Congress occupying a very subsidiary role.

Shumer knows how to read a legal document; after all, he’s a lawyer, although he’s never practiced. But Schumer is a political animal through and through—he entered politics right after graduating from Harvard Law as a twenty-three year old, and never looked back. In fact, he has never held a job outside of politics.

Unfortunately, it shows. Not that such a history is necessary to flex Congressional muscles unduly. Nor is that practice limited to liberal Democrats—in the past, Newt Gingrich did some (unsuccessful) bullying himself when he tried to shut down Congress in a showdown with President Clinton.

But Schumer is certainly shameless in his partisanship, and in his contempt for the Constitution. He considers, strangely enough, that the “progressive” Senators who voted for Justice Roberts’s confirmation (he was not among them; Schumer held firm at “nay”) were “hoodwinked” during the hearings when Roberts said, among other things, that he thought judicial precedent was important and would respect it.

Schumer quickly brushes aside the fact that it is hardly unheard of for Justices to end up surprising the public when they actually get on the bench. Although he mentions Earl Warren—who became a tremendous liberal in one such reversal—as one of the prime examples, Schumer says, “Those days are over, as people have come to understand the central importance of the Court and the need to not take chances.”

The need not to take chances—an odd way to put it. Supreme Court Justices are nominated for life in order to free them from political considerations, or having to answer to anyone. Their character and their intellect are their qualifications, and they are presumed to rule on the merits of each decision as they see fit, which includes the possibility of growth and change. Precedent—as Schumer well knows—is not sacrosanct, even to conservatives.

Is Schumer really as in love with following precedent as his speech would indicate? Of course not; the Warren Court, one of the most liberal ever, repeatedly smashed precedent in its rulings, and no doubt Schumer applauds that Court’s iconoclasm—or, rather, what he might call its “progressivism.”

Is Schumer upset because Roberts and Alito misled the Senate when they said they would respect precedent? Doubtful indeed. If their decisions had been in line with Schumer’s politics he would almost certainly have considered any divergence with whatever they said at Senate hearings, or with precedent, to be evidence of change and growth.

No, what it boils down to is that Schumer is hopping mad they turned out to be more conservative than he’d thought. And even in this he can hardly consider himself “hoodwinked.” As he himself points out, Bush indicated he wanted to appoint Justices in the mold of Scalia and Thomas. He also admits that the judicial records of Roberts and Alito were quite conservative. He’s just surprised that they’ve continued that way after making nicey-nicey to the Senate. He shouldn’t be.

Schumer indicates that if President Bush gets any more chances to appoint future Supreme Court nominees, they should be considered to be something like defendents in a trial with the burden of proof against them—guilty, as it were, until proven innocent. Guilty of what? Of being the sort of Justice President Bush wants:

The burden of proof lies with the nominee to prove that he is something other than what the President chose him for.

Schumer seems to think that his words will not come back to bite him if a Democrat becomes President and tries to nominate Supreme Court Justices of his/her own. Either he believes that Republicans will take the high road and be less obstructionist than he and his fellow “progressives,” or he thinks Republicans will do so poorly in 2008 and 2012 that Democrats will have the Senate numbers to override any Republican attempts to similarly block virtually all Court nominations.

I suggest that Schumer should rely on his experience as a political animal, and think again.

Winning in Iraq: ah, but what does the military know?

The New Neo Posted on by

There are various mantras about the Iraq war that have become popular these days. One of them is that there is no military solution, only a political one. Another is that the surge isn’t working, sometimes modified lately to read: the surge isn’t working enough, or the surge is only working temporarily, or the surge is working militarily but not politically. And so on and so forth.

There’s no question that many proponents of these mantras are invested in the surge not working; after all, they’ve staked their political lives on that fact. Others are just following what they read in their favorite media outlet of choice. Still others no doubt have made considered judgments after weighing whatever evidence is out there; I don’t know what percentage of the whole this latter group represents, but I’m afraid it’s rather miniscule.

We in this country have a civilian, not a military, government. There’s a division of labor between the two, with the Defense Secretary and Commander in Chief ordinarily being civilians (unless, of course, the President is an ex-General such as Eisenhower; a rare exception to this rule). Most voters, of course, don’t have a military background either, since women seldom do and most men young enough to have only known the volunteer armed forces (which would be most men today) have not served.

Obviously, I’m not a proponent of the idea that only those who’ve served in the military can have an opinion on war (a variant of the “chickenhawk” argument). Nor do I think that only police can have an opinion on crime, or only doctors on health care, or any one of a zillion variations on that theme. To be responsible voters we all must come to conclusions on these and a host of other issues.

Some of those topics are complex, however, and expert opinion by those with experience in the field should have a certain weight. This is certainly true of military matters. Of course, as with all topics, it’s not difficult to find an expert on either side of an issue, and to cite the expert who agrees with the opinion you’ve already formed. That’s why so many people toe the party line; it takes quite a bit of time and effort to evaluate the often complicated technical information involved—and, of course, “a mind is a difficult thing to change.”

But we do need to take cognizance of what experts say on a topic, and the experts on war are the military. And in the main, what they say can be summarized as, “The surge is working somewhat; give it a chance. A premature withdrawl would be far worse, both for us, the military, and the Iraqis.”

Yes, they have their own agenda and their own biases. But they’re the best we have. I’ve read a great many articles and blogs written by those in the military, or with a military background (hi, Austin!), and overall I’ve been extremely impressed by their knowledge, insight, intelligence, attention to detail, and efforts to be evenhanded and fair.

I can’t say the same for most members of Congress who are pressing for withdrawal, or most discussion of the war in the press by non-military journalists, which tends to be the opposite: simplistic and nakedly partisan, often inaccurate about simple facts, and with a tendency to ignore consequences.

Some might say that those in the military know only about killing people, not the all-important winning of hearts and minds in a place such as Iraq.

The evidence points to the contrary. General Petraeus is an expert on exactly the type of war we are fighting in Iraq. It’s often said that “he wrote the book.” But what is this book of his, exactly? Take a look at the Counterinsurgency Field Manual, written to provide guidance for this new type of war we increasingly face.

No, I haven’t read Petraeus’s book myself, but I’ve heard it praised highly and I can only assume he’s attempting to follow its recommendations in Iraq—after all, they are his own recommendations. But to get an idea of the sort of things that Petraeus and the army think about nowadays, here’s a list of the book’s chapters.:

Aspects of Insurgency; Aspects of Counterinsurgency; Integrating Civilian And Military Activities; Key Counterinsurgency Participants and Their Likely Roles; Civilian and Military Integration Mechanisms; Tactical-Level Interagency Considerations; Intelligence Characteristics in Counterinsurgency; Predeployment Planning and Intelligence Preparation of the Battlefield; Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Operations; counterintelligence and Counterreconnaissance; Intelligence Cells and Working Groups; Protecting Sources; Host-Nation Integration; Designing Counterinsurgency Campaigns And Operations; The Nature of Counterinsurgency Operations; Logical Lines of Operations; Targeting; Learning and Adapting; Developing Host-Nation Security Forces; Police; Leadership and Ethics; Warfighting Versus Policing; Proportionality and Discrimination; Detention and Interrogation; Sustainment; Logistic Support to Logical Lines of Operations; Employing Linguists; Establishing Rapport; Authority to Assist a Foreign Government; Authorization to Use Military Force; Rules of Engagement; Internal Armed Conflict; Airpower In Counterinsurgency; Air and Space Information Operations; High-Technology Assets; Low-Technology Assets.

I think you’ll agree that the depth and breadth of thought there compares rather favorably with that of Congress, or the average journalist (or even the above-average journalist). I think you’ll also agree this doesn’t seem to be a purely military solution, but one that emphasizes integration with the politics and the people of the country involved.

Civilians can, do, and must try to evaluate the military situation in Iraq and form an opinion, and of course military experience is not necessary to do that. But it would be hard to do it responsibly by discounting what the military experts say. And, in general, it would be easier to do it if one has some sort of military knowledge already, a context in which to place the present facts.

As a member of the Boomer generation, and one who had personal experience of the Vietnam draft years (including a boyfriend who served there in combat), I’m grateful the draft is over. I think the military’s capabilities have improved tremendously since those years, and I have no interest in going back. But the one advantage I can see that the old draft system had was that it gave most men (not women, but that’s another story) some sort of military training and knowledge.

Right now, only about 55% of eligible voters are estimated to have actually cast ballots in the 2004 Presidential election. The total number of votes cast was about 122 million, so by my calculations there are about 221 million potential voters in the US today.

How many are veterans? There are about 24.5 million veterans in the US today, and since I assume they are all of voting age that would represent about 12% of the total. Forty percent of them are age 65 and over, and so one can deduce that the majority of the vets are on the older side, and that percentages of voters who’ve served in the armed forces will decrease as time goes on.

What of Congress? According to this Boston Globe article, less than 30% of members of Congress are veterans (and here are some more details about the Congress that served from 2003 to 2005; you’ll see that most of those veterans were Vietnam-era or older). The Globe article also states that this percentage is way down from previous times—for example, in 1974 nearly 80% of Congress had served in uniform. That’s quite a difference—although it certainly didn’t lead to support of the Vietnam War in that case (some of that lack of support was the result of the perception that the military commanders had lied about the war in the late Sixities: see this).

Some of this decline in the number of veterans in Congress probably represents the greater prevalence of women there these days, and of course much is the result of the demise of the draft. But whatever the cause, the result is that far fewer members of Congress at present have military experience and knowledge of any sort, compared to the past.

Again, I must be careful to state that this does not mean they can’t have valid opinions. But it does make it easier for them to ignore the complicated facts as they are reported, and merely go with their own biases and preconceptions, which is something Congress—and most people—do quite well, anyway.

Waiting for September and Petraeus’s report, and then actually giving it a fair hearing, may be beyond the powers of Congress. And, of course, military expertise is no guarantee of lack of bias. But I, for one, would like to see members of Congress who demonstrate a higher level of analysis of and knowledge of the actual military facts being reported so far, and who are willing to withhold judgment (and hold their tongues), at least until that September day of reckoning.

I can dream, can’t I?

[ADDENDUM: Here’s a piece by an ex-military man on what’s happening with the surge to date.]

A short review course on how to write for the media about Israel and Palestine

The New Neo Posted on by

Okay, class, I know it’s been said before, including by me. But I promise I’ll be (relatively) brief this time.

Here’s how you write about Israel and Palestine if you’re a journalist today—even, apparently, if you work for the Voice of America.

Oops, my bad. It seems the Voice of America doesn’t write its own copy anymore. Scroll down to the bottom of the article and you’ll see, “Some information for this report was provided by AFP [Agence France-Presse], AP and Reuters.”

‘Nuff said.

Well, not quite enough. The problem begins with the headline, “Israeli airstrike kills three Palestinians.” There so many different ways to properly convey the idea contained in the story, but this really isn’t one of them. The advantage it has, though, is that the person who merely glances at the headline and fails to read the story—a practice that’s not at all unusual—might be left with the impression that it may have involved the killing of innocent civilians. Or even that it probably involved the killing of innocent civilians—perhaps even the wanton and knowing and purposeful killing of innocent civilians.

Those people (what percentage of the whole?) who soldier on to read the entire text discover something different. The dead in this case were actually members of a “militant” group known as “Islamic Jihad,” and include its commander (and please see this for my earlier in-depth discussion of the use of the word “militant” in this and similar contexts).

Wonder what those “militants” promote, and what philosophy might motivate them? Can’t imagine, can we, despite the title they give their group?

Since the article is short, I’ll present the entire text for those who didn’t feel like following my link:

The Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad says an Israeli airstrike in the Gaza strip has killed three of its members, including a top commander.

The Israeli army confirmed the strike on a vehicle carrying the militants Thursday in Gaza City.

Earlier Thursday in the southern Gaza Strip, Palestinian medical officials said Israeli forces killed a Hamas militant during a military operation.

The Israeli army said the operation was aimed at preventing terrorist threats. The area is a source for rocket fire into Israel.

In the occupied West Bank, the Israeli military said a Palestinian man tried to stab a soldier near a Jewish settlement. It said another soldier hit the attacker in the head, seriously injuring him.

Palestinian witnesses say that during a scuffle an Israeli soldier shot the man, who later died of his wounds.

The only use of the word “terrorist” is in the fourth paragraph, preceded by the words “The Israeli army said.” So these guys are just militants—unless we take the Israeli government’s word for it.

In an alternate universe, the article might have been headlined, “Palestinian terrorists killed by Israeli airstrike.” Or perhaps even, “Israeli airstrike kills Islamic Jihad commander and two confederates.” Or…

Fill in the blanks yourself. And don’t be surprised if this post draws trolls; have you ever noticed that anything about Israel nearly always does?

Ode to Jet Blue

The New Neo Posted on by

I took the redeye last night from San Francisco, and I’m pleased to report it was a textbook flight. However, what’s the deal when the plane takes about five and a half hours to traverse the entire country and the ride home from Boston (waiting at airport, plus bus, a trip that should not be more than two) takes about the same?

But I love Jet Blue. Not only were we on time taking off, we were on time arriving, and I adore those little maps on the TV that track your flight (Nebraska=big state). Jet Blue seems to have responded to the problem with peanut allergies by offering cashews—a much tastier nut, IMHO. The flight wasn’t totally full, and so the man next to me had an extra seat to stretch out his approximately 6’7″ frame. And no crying babies; they all slept like—well, like babies.

Security rules included the fact that a young woman attempting to take a photo of her grandfather boarding the bus was stopped and told no pictures were allowed. And although the burly driver loads all suitcases on and off the bus, he is not allowed to take the bags off the little rent-a-carts—that’s the responsibility of the passengers.

It’s hot and humid here, and a far cry from Muir Woods. But the garden’s looking pretty fine:

garden-july.jpg

astilbe-july.jpg

Back to more weighty matters tomorrow.

Muir woods in captivity

The New Neo Posted on by

During my short stay in San Francisco, I’ve managed to go to Muir Woods in Marin. I hadn’t been there in a couple of decades (who’s counting?), but the memory of its majesty and mystery had stayed with me.

There’s something about a grove of ancient redwoods that can’t fail to engender awe. That’s why Muir Woods was set aside by Teddy Roosevelt back in 1908 as a protected national monument, and remains in a relatively pristine state today as one of the most easily accessible and most-visited old-growth redwood forests.

My recollection of Muir Woods involved strolling among the tall, broad, shaded giants, the sunlight breaking through to dramatically highlight the tops. Huge fallen trunks served to support the growth of other, lighter trees, and ferns and other shade plants covered much of the forest floor. The bark of the redwoods was swirled and convoluted, festooned with swollen burls at odd intervals, and a beautiful rich reddish-brown color. The trees seemed to be placed in harmonious groupings that formed the beautiful and almost infinitely varied patterns that only nature can provide.

It all remains, almost unchanged. But the experience has changed. I was fortunate enough to be there on a day with relatively few visitors and beautiful weather, but Muir Woods has become an exhibit in a zoo, caged off from the interfering hands and feet of we humans who now watch it, if not from afar, then from a slight remove.

A few feet above the forest floor, an elevated boardwalk has been built to guide the visitor down the proper path. It has rails high enough to discourage climbing overboard, and signs warning against doing so. The sensation is somewhat odd compared to the days of old when the visitor could walk at will, meandering in whatever direction seemed most appealing. Now there’s only the approved way to go.

I’m sure there’s plenty of reason for the change. People, being people, have no doubt tried to take home a souvenir (or two, or three or four or more) from the forest. The dilemma of what to do about it is an old one.

Those who originally appreciated and loved areas such as Yosemite, or the redwood forests that originally covered much of California and were harvested for lumber, disagreed about what to do to preserve some the wild and glorious lands that were still left undeveloped.

Muir Woods is named for John Muir, whose life illustrated some of those dilemmas. Muir was the proponent of some of the more extreme tenets of what is known as the preservationist (as opposed to conservationist) movement. His position was that of the purist: no development of any kind, and the smaller the human imprint the better. Muir was the champion of the idea that humans were nothing special and should not consider themselves any higher than any other life form.

This attitude has reached its pinnacle (so far) in PETA members, who focus more on animals than on natural wonders such as redwood forests. Muir (also the founder of the Sierra Club) was opposed by more moderate conservationists such as Pinchot, who believed there was a way to intelligently manage national resources without leaving them untouched, although both men opposed what they considered the reckless exploitation of natural resources.

We are their heirs, and similar disagreements persist today concerning areas such as ANWR in Alaska and whether oil production and the natural wildlife there can peacefully coexist. Muir Woods itself is serene and silent on the issue, but human beings are not; the argument goes on.

Guilt by association: General Petraeus and the company he keeps

The New Neo Posted on by

Well, it didn’t take long, did it? General Petraeus, who wrote the book on counter-insurgency fighting, whose Princeton PhD. dissertation analyzed the bloody consequences of the withdrawal from Vietnam, who was unanimously confirmed by Congress when appointed as Iraqi commander, is now officially a liar and a right-wing stooge.

Why? It appears to be a combination of two factors: the surge is having some positive results and Petraeus is reporting that fact, and he gave an in-depth interview to the likes of Hugh Hewitt (labeled a lunatic by Matthew Iglesias at the Atlantic Online, who also says—without really explaining why—that no one should go on Hewitt’s show).

If you actually read the interview transcript, it appears that Hewitt has somehow managed to keep from foaming at the mouth as he queries Pertraeus, whose answers to Hewitt’s questions seem judicious and measured. The General offers some good news, it’s true, but also some bad news about the surge—the latter including the spotty reliability of Iraqi forces, for example.

No one who reads the article with an open mind could find much actual evidence on which to question either Petraeus’s competence or his efforts at candor and balance. Ah, but that doesn’t stop those partisans on the Left who have a powerful interest in the surge not working, and in discrediting anyone—even a man with the impeccable credentials of Petraeus—who might have the gall to say otherwise.

And so they are killing the messenger by concentrating on criticism of the receiver of the message: Hewitt, who is indeed a partisan. As, of course, are they.

Here’s Hewitt’s response. In it he quotes Andrew Sullivan as saying:

….such a decision to cater to one party’s propaganda outlet [the Hewitt interview] renders Petraeus’ military independence moot,” Sullivan declared. “I’ll wait for the transcript,” he continued, before not waiting for the transcript. “But Petraeus is either willing to be used by the Republican propaganda machine or he is part of the Republican propaganda machine. I’m beginning to suspect the latter. The only thing worse than a deeply politicized and partisan war is a deeply politicized and partisan commander. But we now know whose side Petraeus seems to be on: Cheney’s. Expect spin, not truth, in September.”(emphasis added.)

So, let’s summarize. Despite his previous reputation as a knowledgeable man and a straight shooter (and all of that “supporting the troops” stuff on the part of the Left/liberals), if a commander gives an interview to someone on the Right, his veracity is immediately and deeply suspect. Petraeus is only allowed to give interviews to the NY Times and the Boston Globe and the New Yorker and the Nation—outlets that may not even be asking to interview him, for all we know—or his entire reputation is trashed.

It’s guilt by association, and there’s no need to point out the parts of the interview that are suspect; it’s the thing itself. The only good—and nonpartisan—interview would apparently be one with Seymour Hersh.

It’s not as though Petraeus has only been interviewed by Hewitt or the Right, either. Here’s a bunch of his recent interviews with venues that seem fairly varied: CBS and CNN to balance out Fox, for example.

The grouping includes a quote from Harry Reid in late April saying that he won’t believe Petraeus if he says there’s progress in Iraq, because whatever the General may say to the contrary, it isn’t happening there. Now, there’s another truly open and nonpartisan mind, like Sullivan’s and Iglesias’s.

And they call Petraeus biased.

Greetings from San Francisco

The New Neo Posted on by

I’m in San Francisco for a few days for a family get-together. It’s the usual beautiful summer here, with clear skies and only an intermittent bit of the fog for which the city is famous, just enough to give a slightly mysterious atmospheric mist now and then.

I arrived very late Thursday night and didn’t get to the house where I’m staying until the wee hours of the morning. Between the rigors of travel and the late hour, by the time I finally got to sleep I was fairly well-zonked.

Which explains why the earthquake failed to even wake me up.

The next morning people were talking about it. As earthquakes go, it was relatively mild, but there was enough of a kick in it that even the natives woke up, sat up, and took notice. Not me.

This, however, continues a long tradition of mine, which is this: far more often than chance would dictate, a noticeable earthquake occurs within twelve hours of my appearance in any city in the state of California. So, perhaps I should issue an alert when I’m about to arrive.

Terrorism and American geographic exceptionalism

The New Neo Posted on by

One aspect of the traditional idea of American Exceptionalism included the notion that its geography kept the US safe from foreign invasion. This was historically true for the most part.

Pearl Harbor was the singular exception, as far as I know, and it constituted an attack rather than an invasion. Although shocking to the American public, it occurred very far away, in a territory rather than a state, involved military targets, and was perpetrated by a nation at war (not with us—not yet—but at war nevertheless).

Even in World War II the logistics were such that it was not practical to invade or even to attack the US mainland, although there were some attempts at small-scale sabotage.

The post-WWII spread of nuclear weapons to the Soviet Union ushered in something quite new: a Cold War between ideological enemies armed with weapons that could destroy either nation. My generation therefore was the first one brought up with the idea that American geographic exceptionalism had effectively ended.

However, mutual assured destruction—or perhaps the relative sanity of the two nation-players—meant that despite the long duration of the Cold War and the bitterness with which it was fought in non-nuclear proxy wars such as Vietnam, the US remained uninvaded and unattacked, which may have allowed us to consider ourselves relatively invulnerable. And the fall of the Soviet Union only compounded this feeling.

That was true until 9/11, an event that had various unique characteristics. Not only was it the only attack on the mainland, it involved civilian targets, and was perpetrated by an extra-national group that had declared war on the US but had previously been seen as ineffectual, and by actors who had been living among us.

On 9/11 that group was spectacularly successful. But because of its shadowy and terrorist nature it was poorly understood by most people in this country, who had to try to play catch-up to learn what al Qaeda stood for and why it had seen fit to attack us in such a manner. This hasn’t been easy, since al Qaeda’s reasoning is both murky and seems quite different from traditional Western, state-motivated, casus belli.

That difficulty allows the various groups in the West to fill in the blanks in accord with our various positions, agendas, and philosophies. Are the terrorists rational actors, or rageful zealots? Can they be stopped by reason and/or concessions, or can they only be killed? Is this true, as well, of the states they are allied with, such as Iran? If killed, will that fact motivate more people to join this particular cult in love with death, or will it discourage the recruitment of jihadis?

There’s also a divide between those who see that in this technological age such groups do threaten us in a major way, and must be stopped, and those who consider them to be largely incompetent and easily contained.

The former group realizes that, to terrorists, American geographic exceptionalism is no more. The modern global economy and its enhanced communications and flow of material, the extraordinary number of foreigners already residing in this country with more entering all the time (both legally and illegally), and the relative ease of obtaining weapons with a destructive power that heretofore was limited to states, have ended that. 9/11 had the extra added feature of allowing us to see that extraordinary strategic creativity (for want of a better word) could allow terrorists to use ordinary devices such as airplanes as weapons of great destructive power.

As far as “invasion” goes—traditional invasion is no longer necessary to attack the US. Another way of looking at it is that an invasion has already occurred—albeit of mostly peace-loving immigrants and visitors who are intent on minding their own business. But among those millions terrorists can hide, as they did prior to 9/11, and can hatch plans to wreak various forms of destruction.

This was known as a possibility before 9/11, but was not really credited. Now instead of a hypothetical, it is a fact. One of the other myths that was exploded—along with 3,000 people—on 9/11 was that foreigners who actually have lived in this country for any length of time would come to appreciate it, or at least to like Americans well enough to lose the intense hatred that would make them capable of committing the mass murder of innocent civilians. We Americans consider ourselves to be a genial society. The persistence of the rage of the 9/11 perpetrators in the face of somewhat lengthy stays here for many of them was a shock of major proportions.

It’s been almost six years since 9/11, and those years have featured no significant organized terrorist attacks on our shores, despite our actions in Afghanistan and Iraq, actions which certainly could be considered provocative. People of different political persuasions interpret this fact in ways that stem from their own pre-existing notion of things, because the truth is that we don’t know exactly why this has been true.

Many on the Right consider the lack of post-9/11 terrorist attacks here to be a combination of two things: anti-terrorist efforts by this administration nipping such plans in the bud, as well as the knowledge of the terrorists themselves that it would be in their interests not to provoke the American public into more forcible retaliation and awareness. If the American public is somewhat of a sleeping giant right now, then let sleeping giants lie.

Many on the Left consider the lack of successful post-9/11 attacks here as evidence that the terrorists are weak and incompetent (inherently so; not from anything the Bush administration has done, of course!) and that 9/11 was a rare exception, never again to be repeated. For this reason, all announcements of the thwarting of new plots must be trivialized and/or considered to be propagandist inventions of the nefarious Bushies. But in addition, I wonder whether the attitude of the Left is somehow a remnant of the long-held idea of geographic exceptionalism; certainly the Left considers America exceptional, although ordinarily in a negative way.

And so, divided we stand. Or sleep. Whether an awakening will occur, and whether it will be a rude one, is everybody’s guess.

Apologists for terror: liberty vs. social equality

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve been reading a collection of essays in the book The Survival of Culture by Hilton Kramer and Roger Kimball. In a piece entitled “Burke and Political Liberty,” by Martin Greenberg, the author is discussing the French Revolution and its excesses, and how it was that so many political figures of the time made excuses for the path the Jacobins took.

For example, the relatively moderate Roland defended them by saying that their “vengeance mingled a sort of justice,” and praised them for showing restraint in not murdering everyone they could.

It turns out that Roland’s own wife ended up being the victim of the revolutionaries’ “sort of justice,” at which point he killed himself. But that was later.

Greenberg’s summary of the position of apologists for the Reign of Terror is well worth reading, and is relevant today when thinking of the many Leftists in the West who have become apologists for a different form of terror—the Islamist totalitarian variety:

How did intelligent, cultivated people, then and later, come to excuse these abominations which ordinary simplicity sees for what they are? One answer, of course partial, seems to be the deep shift, anticipated by Rousseau, of moral feeling away from concern for liberty to concern for social justice.

For “social justice” please substitute any of the following: social equality, racial equality (or “justice”), ethnic equality (or “justice”), cultural equality (or “justice”), and economic equality (or “justice”) and you have the motivation behind much of Leftist thought and action. The fact that such equality is a fake “justice,” the fact that it cannot actually be attained by human society, and the fact that all efforts towards achieving it end up profoundly compromising liberty are ignored by its champions, who have as much difficulty now giving up their Utopian dream as they did then.

Perhaps more.