Steve Beren, changer extraordinaire: from Socialist to Republican

The New Neo Posted on by

When I read that ultraliberal Jim McDermott‘s eminently safe seat in the mostly-Seattle 7th District of Washington was being challenged by a Republican who was actually attempting to mount some sort of viable campaign, I was intrigued. And I was further intrigued when I learned that the challenger, Steve Beren, is no ordinary Republican.

McDermott, one of the most antiwar and far Left members of Congress, has got himself quite an opponent, one who is aware of the steeply uphill battle he faces and but is nonetheless uniquely equipped to fight it with vigor. And that is because Beren himself is no stranger to the far Left. In fact, he was a card-carrying member of it–and I mean that quite literally.

I wondered how this former Marxist, former atheist, and former antiwar activist ended up a hawkish Republican as well as a self-described patriot and Christian. I decided to interview Mr. Beren, who graciously consented to allow himself to be recorded. Here is an approximate transcript of the first portion of that interview (the second will follow tomorrow).

My emphasis was less on the Congressional campaign itself–although you can (and should! Beren for Congress!!!) follow the Beren link and read all about it–than on Beren’s remarkable process of change, both political and personal.

NEO (N): What influenced the formation of your early political opinions?

BEREN (B): I was a high school junior and senior in 1967-1968, and the Vietnam War was the main political issue of the day, bar none. At that time I was–not unlike most members of my generation–near draft age, and vulnerable to pacifist arguments that war was unjustified. Around that time I also read Orwell’s 1984””which of course is a critique of dictatorships, but also of any government, the false intentions of government, and the misuse of language by government.

Lyndon Johnson’s government was under a barrage of criticism for the war, and that book made me susceptible to arguments that our government had bad intent. I took part in demonstrations in high school, and I witnessed clashes with police. The demonstrators may have purposely clashed with them, but that wasn’t apparent to me as a participant””-and so the accusations that fascism was around us seemed true. Then I got on a lot of committees, including the Peace and Freedom Party, and eventually I joined the Young Socialist Alliance in 1968, my freshman year at City College of New York. I was ready for far Left activity and I stayed committed to that for a goodly amount of time.

[N]: Do you think you were rebelling against your family? Or were you raised in this sort of political atmosphere?

[B]: My own family were Democrats; a little bit antiwar, but not activists of any sort. Initially, at 12 or 14 I’d supported the war, back when Johnson was first sending more troops. I remember having a discussion with my mother in the 1964 campaign–she supported Johnson because she thought Goldwater was going to send troops. But I told her Johnson was likely to do the same thing.

[N}: So it turned out you were a good prognosticator, even at that age. When did your change happen, and why?

[B]: Well, I was a Young Socialist, as I said””-obviously, I didn’t remain a young Socialist””but I joined the Socialist Party in 1970. And I was a supporter till early 1991. In December of 1990 I resigned, stating I hadn’t changed my mind–I was still a committed Socialist, I’ve been doing this 22 years. But now I’ll do it from the sidelines and be an active supporter, but not a member anymore.

[N]: So your fling with Socialism wasn’t just a youthful flirtation–you were in for the long haul.

[B]: You know, when you go to college campuses these days, you’d think the Greens were the future of the electorate. Well, when I joined the Socialists, you’d think the same thing. It was the heyday of Cleaver and the Black Panthers and you’d wonder–is that the future of the country? The answer is yes, unless they change their minds and vote for Reagan twice. Most people change their minds.

A lot of people went from Socialism to left liberalism, and those people went into Hollywood, or teaching, or social work, for example. But some continued their activities. In my case, I had no other career. I didn’t do what normal people do—have a career, a family, establish oneself. Most people may have political views, but they’re a human being first. But I was a Socialist organizer first””

[N]: So you were a true believer–

[B]: Yes, an activist and a believer.

1990 was the year that Socialism was failing all over world. I didn’t think that way, but in retrospect it affected me, as great events do. So I finally did what most people do when they graduate college—got a middle class job, saved money, and I found out I was good at it. I was making the transition most people make after college.

1n 1992 I still thought about voting Socialist””but I voted for Clinton. I became a Democrat almost out of reflex. Around 1993 I did another thing (at 40) that most people do when younger—I examined spirituality, thought about religion, read about religion. 1993-1995 was a very heavy transition period for me, and in 1995 I became evangelical, and I started attending church.

My career advanced and my Christianity advanced. Over the next few years I considered myself no longer a Socialist, I was a patriot, pro-military. I considered this compatible with liberalism, and I described myself as a liberal Democrat. I was also a managerial worker. My ex-Socialist friends broke off relationships with me””-you didn’t get that sort of job unless you were undercover.

[N]: To your friends you’d already gone over to the dark side. But it seems your change process happened fairly slowly.

[B]: Yes. Some say it was like Paul on the road to Damascus, but it took much longer.

[N]: It was a long and winding road to Damascus.

[B]: When I speak from knowledge on my tour, as an insider, people say, “Oh great, 180-degree turn overnight.” But it wasn’t; it was a slow and gradual turn. I didn’t become a Republican till the Bush reelection campaign in ’04.

[N]: That turn—liberal Democrat to Republican Bush-supporter—was almost as big a turn as the other, Socialist to liberal Democrat. How did the recent one come about?

[B]: We all were traumatized by 9/11. I’m a native New Yorker who’s lived in Seattle since 1987. I knew people who died at the WTC. It was impossible to believe, shocking. The difference between 9/11 and 12/7/41 [Pearl Harbor] is that with 9/11 some people went into denial, and therein lies our disunity.

After 9/11, I was thinking “I’m a patriot.” To me it was a December 7th moment. But I knew there was an antiwar movement waiting in the wings, who would seek to disrupt the unity. When I mentioned that fact back then, everyone was shocked. It was thought to be a quirky point of view. I called up Barry Farber, a New York talk show host from the past whose show I’d appeared on before. He’d been the voice of New York talk radio for conservatives in the 60s, 70s, and 80s.

I called him—he was elderly now—and asked, “Do you remember me?” I’d been on his show a lot in the past as a Socialist, a union guy. I said I want to speak as a former antiwar person on why I support this war, and against disunity. That started to lead to my transition. At that time everyone was still agreeing. But soon the antiwar movement grew and disunity began.

I contacted every blogger and talk show I knew of, and Young Democrat and Young Republican chapters, saying, “Here’s my bio, here’s my website, I want to come to your campus and speak.” And already, at that early time, I got lots of hate mail from the Young Democrats: don’t send me that, you’re a traitor.

[In Part II, Beren describes his post-9/11 activities and further change experience, and how his knowledge of thinking and strategies on the Left—gleaned from two decades of his own intense Leftist activism and study—gives him a special knowledge of the tactics, goals, and arguments on the Left.]

One small step for Neil Armstrong: the wheels of justice grind slow, but they grind exceedingly fine

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s been a long time coming, but vindication is finally here for astronaut Neil Armstrong.

That’s actually–ahem–Neil A. Armstrong. Don’t forget that A, like Armstrong did! Except it turns out he didn’t forget it, he just spoke it too quickly for the human ear and brain to record.

But not too quickly for the machine, apparently. Now technology has finally caught up with his fleeting but all-important article, the word “a,” thanks to Peter Shann Ford, an Australian computer programmer whose software analysis of Armstrong’s “That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind” has found the missing word Armstrong had always insisted was there (hat tip: Austin Bay).

Somehow the news is very satisfying to me, although it hardly qualifies as earth- (or moon-) shattering. But that misquote had always grated. It made no sense even when I first heard it, which was when it was originally transmitted and televised in July of 1969. The black-and-white images were grainy and blurred, something like the primitive ultrasound by which I first was able to view the outlines of my son’s tiny form in utero many long years later (or actually, not so very many, come to think of it).

But it still seemed wondrous–men on the moon! Walking and talking! And when Armstrong said what sounded to me and to everyone else like, “One small step for man, one giant step for mankind,” the reaction was “Waah? What’d he say?”

It made no sense, and the grammarians among us have been ever-so-vaguely annoyed by that ever since. But not nearly so much as Armstrong himself. I’m glad he’s still alive to see the record set straight.

[NOTE: Some comments to this post focused on the idea that Armstrong had been perceived as making a grammatical error. My response is that it wasn’t about grammar, actually. Both sentences are perfectly grammatical, as far as I can see.

For me and most others, it was about meaning. The sentence was meant to go from the tiny to the large, in a sort of poetry. To me, it should have conveyed: “I’m only one man taking a step at this moment, but I represent the hopes and dreams and efforts of all humankind.” When Armstrong said “man” instead of “a man,” I felt that contrast between the small individual and the aggregate group was lost.]

Clash of civilizations: the modern world comes to the Amish

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The headlines that announced the killings of five young girls in an Amish school (“Amish School Shootings”) seemed more than oxymorons. It seemed as though matter was colliding with antimatter in a meeting of opposites that shouldn’t have been able to even exist in the same dimension. The killings appeared–for the first moment at least–quite literally, impossible. But in retrospect, why should they be?

When I was a child, a mass murder in a school–any school–seemed just as incomprehensible. But recent decades have erased that perception, and now schools are relatively commonplace settings for shootouts, so much so that security measures are also commonplace.

But in Amish country? Among the most peaceloving and pacifist people in the US, perhaps the world?

The gunman was not Amish; that was somehow a relief to hear. But it seems his life until the last few months gave no hint of what was to come: a pleasant family man, a good father and husband, who had nevertheless secretly been building up a stockpile of armaments and ammunition, waiting and planning carefully for this day.

The human heart can be a dark, unknown, and unknowable place, the human mind likewise. I would not be surprised if an autopsy of the killer were to reveal some organic lesion such as a brain tumor in a vital area connected with judgment and aggression. Or perhaps that’s just what I want to believe, because it would appear to provide a neat explanation when in fact there can be no neat explanations for such an outrage.

The killer selected his victims carefully. All were female children, the most vulnerable-seeming of the already vulnerable. And why the Amish? They were nearby. But perhaps there was more. If part of the gunman’s aim was to shock as well as kill, to commit an act especially outrageous in its targeting of those ordinarily most removed from violence, he certainly succeeded.

But the same thing that made the choice of victims so shocking makes them especially logical, because those who are particularly defenseless make the best victims of all. The Amish are pacifists and are committed to nonviolence; they don’t believe in having guns, and there was no security at the school.

Crime was not a total stranger to the Amish, even before this particular event:

Crime among the Amish is rare, but not unheard of. Almost always, it is an outsider who takes advantage of a Amish hospitality, naé¯ve by modern standards, to steal and even murder.

Amish schools are similar to many country schools of old:

School doors are commonly unlocked during the school day…The schools themselves are one-room affairs with outdoor bathrooms, and have many windows to let in the sunlight since there is no electricity. There is usually just one teacher – most often a young, single, Amish woman – who sometimes has a helper..There are no guards.

The dedication of the Amish to nonviolence and pacifism is long and deep. The original Amish emigrees to this country were motivated, among other things, by their refusal to serve in the military of their native Switzerland. Another anti-military detail is their refusal to this day to wear buttons, associated in their eyes with military uniforms:

[The Amish’s] pacifism and social conscience cause some of them to be drawn to left-of-center politics, while their generally conservative outlook causes others to favor the right wing. They are nonresistant and rarely defend themselves physically or even in court; in wartime, they take conscientious objector status; their own folk-history contains tales of heroic nonresistance.

Heroice nonresistance is wonderful, but it has its limitations against a crazed gunman. I want to make one thing very clear, however: by discussing the pacifism of the Amish, I am not suggesting for a moment that their nonviolence caused this attack. And security precautions might not have prevented it, either. But as a sometimes student of the phenomenon of pacifism (see this), I’ve puzzled over the dilemmas it presents.

I don’t know much about the deepest philosophical underpinnings of Amish thought, but my hunch is that this incident will not cause them to change their ways. Nor should it. Nonviolence is at the heart of the belief system of these strong people, and their society will absorb this blow.

The existence of a pacifistic culture is only possible, however, under two conditions: if all societies were pacifist, or if the pacifists live under the umbrella of another society that does have a police force and army and other protections against violent predators and attacks.

Those protections are far from perfect, of course. And the very society that is not pacifist–and that therefore needs a police force–is the same society that is generating the violence from which we (and the Amish) need protection.

But until the day the lion lies down with the lamb, an event I don’t see on the horizon–or any horizon that involves human beings–how do we best protect ourselves? And what is the price of such protection, in the psychological and spiritual sense?

These are questions the Amish may be facing today, or perhaps tomorrow. They are questions they’ve faced before, no doubt, when they made the decision to be pacifists and to shun much of modern life. The latter was probably thought to be protective, and for quite a while it was.

The Amish not only do not believe in violence, they do not believe in anger or recrimination, not even now:

“It’s just not the way we think. There is no sense in getting angry,” said Henry Fisher, 62, a retired farmer…He also said he did not expect additional security such as locks on schools because this was a “freak accident…”

A 25-year-old Amish man who declined to give his name said he lost his 13-year-old niece in the shooting and another niece aged 11 was in stable condition in a Philadelphia hospital.

He expressed resignation rather than anger. “I think it was going to happen. God has his hand in it,” he said….

There’s a limit to how much any of us can protect ourselves, or our children. The Amish have an especially restrictive code about this, and are highly unlikely to compromise a stable way of life because of this “freak accident.”

And the rest of us continue to make our own individual decisions about how much worry is too much, and what measures to take to keep ourselves as safe as possible without making it an obsession. Buy a gun? Learn karate? Carry mace? Move to the country? Barricade your kids in the house? Let them ride the subway? Security alarms? What sort of lock is best?

We make our own decisions knowing that ultimate safety is impossible. And the Amish make theirs, knowing the same. The answers are different, the dilemma universal.

As Bob Woodward morphs into Kitty Kelly, Vietnam’s shadow hovers over us all

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Bob Woodward has done an about-face from the relatively Bush-approving stance of his last two books on the administration. The present one, State of Denial, is by all accounts a description of a quarrelsome and conflict-ridden administration, with Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Kissinger as the main sources of trouble.

Woodward, of course, had his glory hour during Watergate, when he and Carl Bernstein slayed the Nixonian dragon, if not quite single-handedly or even quadruple-handedly. With the help of long-anonymous informant Deep Throat (recently revealed to be the FBI’s Mark Felt), Woodward and Bernstein not only were instrumental in publicizing and explaining the Watergate scandal, but became heroes of a movie, in which their roles were played by Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman.

It turns out that informer Felt had an agenda. But then, who doesn’t?

That’s the problem with this sort of journalism, both then and now. It requires scrupulous fact-checking and source-checking by the authors, to make sure what they are printing is the truth, because the reader lacks even the usual ability to do so afforded by knowing the name and exact position of the source.

Even history-writing is difficult to get right; witness the David Irving trial (and see this post of mine for a discussion of some of the issues involved in the writing of accurate history). Historians use sources and documents that are named and ordinarily available to other scholars for cross-checking, and even then there are arguments. But a book that relies on secret sources for nearly all of its information–as Woodward’s apparently does–is especially suspect. And this is true whether it supports some point of view I happen to agree with, or not.

So, what do you do when all of the people Woodward is talking about say he’s–to put it rather more kindly than one otherwise might–talking out of his hat? If the picture Woodward paints of the Bush White House is one that’s copasetic with yours, you might be likely to say “Of course they’re saying he’s lying; they’re all liars anyway, and they’re trying to protect Bush and themselves.” If you’re on the other side, you might be more inclined to wonder if Woodward’s sources have gotten things a tad wrong, for one reason or another.

At least when Laura Bush and General Abizaid deny Woodward’s allegations that they asked for Rumsfeld’s resignation, we know who they are, and we can try to evaluate what they’re saying and why. Not so for Woodward’s sources; we simply have to trust him and evaluate him.

That’s just not possible, I’m afraid. Not just for Woodward, but for anyone who relies on this “reliable-but-unnamed-sources-tell-all” method. Whether the author be Woodward, Sy Hersh, or Kitty Kelly, it’s a titillating but ultimately unsatisfying experience.

As for Woodward, who knows? But he does have his own history, biases, and motivations. As a member of the increasingly tiresome boomer generation in which I must plead inclusion myself, his formative political experience was Vietnam and Watergate. As a major player in the latter, his investment is particularly keen, and the tendency to compare (or even equate) Iraq with the former and the Bush administration with the latter might be hard to resist.

When I read this recent Washington Post article, the following passage leapt out at me:

Woodward also tells Wallace that aged Republican war-horse Henry Kissinger is closely advising Bush, telling him there is no exit strategy other than victory.

“Woodward adds. ‘This is so fascinating. Kissinger’s fighting the Vietnam War again because, in his view, the problem in Vietnam was we lost our will.’ . . .

There were many problems in Vietnam, and I think analogies to the Iraq war are facile and mostly incorrect. However, there are certain general principles that apply to both, and surely “losing our will” is one. It’s a danger of all such conflicts–especially with much of the press doing its utmost to make sure that happens. I’ve written before about Vietnam, and at great length (see this, for example), and there is a decent argument to be made for the fact that Vietnamization was working far better than we knew in the early seventies, and loss of will caused Congress to abandon the ARVN when it actually had some chance of winning.

Is Kissinger still fighting Vietnam? Or is he simply standing for a basic principle of winning wars against insurgencies and terrorists?

There’s no doubt that many people in this country are still fighting the Vietnam war–just take a look at the enormous number of comments on my “A mind is a difficult thing to change” posts about Vietnam, for starters.

And it would be foolish to think that Woodward isn’t still fighting the Vietnam War, as well.

At the hospital: waiting it out

The New Neo Posted on by

Yesterday morning I was awakened by a phone call from my mother’s caretaker, the sort of phone call no one likes to get. She said my mother was having tingling and numbness in her left arm and left leg, which happens to be the distribution of the stroke she had last summer.

And everything had been going so well recently with her. Things had stabilized to the point where she was comfortable and relatively content, if not happy. I reminded myself that there was no reason to imagine they wouldn’t continue to go well. This event could be big, even the Big One; or it could be nothing at all, or next to nothing at all.

I felt a strange calm above the eerie fluttering in my gut as I drove to the hospital and met them there. My mother was already in a hospital bed, looking unfrail and quite herself (she’s one of the few ninety-two-year olds I’ve ever seen with a full head of thick hair, albeit white). Her nervousness was palpable, and she’s a lousy reporter–“when did it start?” “Are you having any weakness?” “Is it worse now, or before?” are all challenging and perhaps unanswerable questions for her at this point.

So we played the waiting game. The man in the next bed had a prostate operation gone bad, a painful infection. This is the sort of thing one cannot help overhearing. The flimsy curtain does almost nothing to hide the anguish and turmoil and the small and large humiliations of the emergency room vigil, both for the patient and the furrow-browed relatives. It works only marginally better than the hospital gown serves to guard the privacy of the body, slipping and sliding and riding up, exposing this and that at intervals.

Intervals. Why are there no clocks in these waiting rooms? Because if there were, time might be seen to pass in excruciatingly slow increments. Because when the doctor says “I’ll be back in a few minutes,” it’s not really a good idea to count those minutes too closely.

So one waits. One waits to hear news that will either change a life, or let it go on much as before. One waits to see whether the numbness will progress to weakness and then to virtual paralysis–as it did last time–or even worse. One waits to see whether this particular precious life will turn more tragic, or stay its fairly decent course a while longer.

It’s not really so different from any other day, any other moment in which life can change in an instant. The only real difference is that in the hospital waiting room that fact is highlighted with sudden sharpness.

And there’s the illusion that it’s time-limited, as well. We’ll learn her fate in “a few minutes.” But the fate we learn is only today’s fate and that minute’s fate, and that’s all we ever know.

The results of the CAT scan were excellent. No new damage. The symptoms began to resolve. My mother began to smile. She ate a turkey sandwich and had a ginger ale. The doctors told her the provisional diagnoses, just guesses on their part: a TIA, or a complex migraine. Go home, relax, go about your business.

So we did. And so we do.

Krauthammer’s Law extended: we are all Jews now

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Charles Krauthammer’s column “Turning up Jewish” is both funny and serious. Funny because his thesis–that, scratch a politician these days, and you get a Jewish ancestor–though hyperbolic, is based on the odd but true fact that it’s now a campaign plus to talk about Jewish roots, and such roots seem to turn up in the most unlikely of places. Serious because it reflects on two controversial points: the fact that Jews are high-achievers, overrepresented and illustrious in so many fields; and the phenomenon of the Jew who keeps the fact of his/her Jewishness (or Jewish birth) a secret, even from his/her children.

The last two points would each require a book–or a thousand books–to explain, or to attempt to explain. I’m not going to tackle them right now. But what of all those Jewish ancestors? I don’t know what’s made it something politicians want to talk about lately. But, given that they do, I don’t think it’s so very strange that so many are popping up. The fact is that most of us have far more variety in our ancestry that we believe. So if you’re looking for such a thing, it’s not all that hard to find.

Krauthammer states his law as follows: Everyone is Jewish until proven otherwise. He’s talking about politicians, and he’s exaggerating to make a joke. And the politicians of whom he speaks are mostly rather closely related to their secret Jewish ancestors, as it turns out. But if you go back in time long enough, perhaps everybody is Jewish. In fact, perhaps everybody is everything, or a tiny little bit of everything.

Go back only two generations and each person has four grandparents; one step further gives eight grandparents. Mathematically speaking, it doesn’t take all that long to hit the big big numbers. In fact, I read a book ages ago (I recall it as The Tower of Names, although my efforts to look it up right now have failed me–both Google and Amazon have drawn an uncharacteristic blank) that asserted one only has to go back a surprisingly small number of generations and we all are related, because the number of ancestors expands and interrelates in some elegant mathematical fashion I no longer remember.

If any person looking for a single Jewish ancestor is willing to go back far enough, one wouldn’t be all that hard to find, even though Jews themselves are surprisingly scarce, given their enormous visibility and the amount of hatred directed their way.

Geneology buffs–and I’m not one of them–are a bit like those who believe in past lives. That is, they tend to pick and choose among ancestors. Whoever talks about the ancestor who went to debtors’ prison, or the past life in which one was a ragpicker? It’s the illustrious or royal ancestors or lives we prefer to talk about. For geneologists, they are probably also the easiest to research, as well. But they are the tip of the iceberg.

The bottom of that iceberg is the far larger number of unknown and inglorious progenitors, and those of different ethnic origins. So if it’s Jews you’re looking for, you can probably find them.

Anger makes strange bedfellows: trolls and jihadis

The New Neo Posted on by

I’m back from DC and naturally have a backlog of things to do, the way it always is when one goes away. So I wasn’t online much today, and the troll commentary has managed to pile up on the previous thread. I’ve left it all there so far, although I may delete it later. As I know I’ve said before, sometimes I leave such comments up because they are so very instructive about the techniques and thought processes of a certain segment of the Left.

Why would trolls think such “argument”–amounting mostly to ad hominem attacks and insults–would convince anyone of the truth of their cause? On the face of it, that doesn’t make sense. But the argument of a troll only masquerades as argument; it’s not really meant to convince. It’s meant to harass, and to strut a sort of macho aggressiveness (my strong sense, even if saying it is not PC, is that the vast majority of trolls are male).

Trolls exist to disrupt a blog. That’s their entire raison d’etre. Trolling is a strange and sorry way to spend any of the precious hours of one’s life, but there you have it.

It must have its own rewards for the troll. Every time a person responds to a troll, the troll feels good. Every time the blogger has to write a post like the one I’m writing now, the troll feels good. Every time a blogger has to change from one form of comments to another in order to increase banning capacity (as I’ve had to do previously, and will probably do again soon in a major reorganization of the blog when I get some time) the troll feels especially, exceptionally good.

It’s interesting that the previous thread, the one that drew so many trolls (or so many sock puppets–take your pick; I don’t even feel like taking the trouble to check who’s who right now, although I can easily do that) was about the ubiquity and free-floating quality of Muslim rage. When you think about it, there isn’t much reason that Leftists and jihadis should have much in common, although politics (and hatred of neocons) does make strange bedfellows. But one of the things both groups share is their rage, and their pride and even glee in expressing it.

Leaked intelligence report: what fuels jihadi rage?

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s an interesting discussion of the reaction to the partially leaked report of the NIA, widely quoted in the media as saying the Iraqi War has fueled the creation of more terrorists.

It seemsto me to be a tautology that, with an ideology such as Islamist totalitartianism, attempts to fight back would not be expected to damp down terrorism, especially at first. The important fact is that the alternative–failing to fight back–doesn’t discourage terrorism, either; it encouraged it.

If one considers each alternative, the realization is that neither works particularly well in achieving that goal in the short run. And right now, even though five long years have passed since 9/11, that only represents the short run in the war against Islamist totalitarianism, which is the current source of most terrorism today.

In fact, this is a war we’ve been fighting at least since 1979, the year of the Iranian revolution, whether we’ve acknowledged it or not. And the number of terrorists has continued to be fueled. It was fueled by Carter’s pallid reaction to the hostage crisis. It was fueled by appeasing the terrorist Arafat. It was fueled by the 80s and Reagan’s inaction. It was fueled by the 90s and Clinton’s inaction. It was fueled by the sight of the burning WTC towers. It was fueled by the cartoons of Mohammed. It was fueled by–well, you get the idea.

Now of course it turns out that the leaked report didn’t really say exactly what the press purported:

Here’s the relevant bit:

The Iraq conflict has become the cause celebre for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of US involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement. Should jihadists leaving Iraq perceive themselves, and be perceived, to have failed, we judge fewer fighters will be inspired to carry on the fight.

Sounds pretty logical to me. Exactly what might be expected. In the short run, terrorists are energized by conflict and the chance to fight the Great Satan. In the long run, if we are victorious, they shouud be discouraged. At least, we think so.

Of course, one could also say that defeat breeds resentment, and that portions of the Islamic world have been brooding about revenge for the ignominy of defeat since their debacle at the Gates of Vienna. Or was it the Battle of Lepanto? Then again, we have the fall of the Ottomon Empire; I seem to recall Osama mentioned that in his post-9/11 vindication message.

The truth seems to be that Islamic totalitarian rage is extraordinarily versatile in its ability to find alternative fuels to stoke its fire.

Neo at the Press Club

The New Neo Posted on by

I’m going to be posting lightly today, for two reasons. The first is some connectivity problems (I’m still in DC at a friend’s place, and the signal goes in and out with total unpredictability). The second is that it’s a travel day for me.

But here for your perusal is a photo that includes me, taken at the National Press Club event by the esteemed Baron Bodissey. The Baron is discreet.

Pajamas in Washington DC

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve been in DC since yesterday and busy, busy, busy, although one of the things I’ve not been busy with is writing and blogging. I should be returning to my regularly scheduled program of blogging shortly, but for now I’ll just briefly describe the events.

One never knows how these things will turn out, but this one has been wonderful, although a bit of a whirlwind. So many bloggers and/or journalists in one room makes for a heady experience. The official panel discussion is the centerpiece, and last night’s distinguished itself by being fascinating, substantive, and entertaining. But the panel was only part of what people come here for (they really come for the appetizers, of course–and these were not too shabby–and the bar).

No, the main deal is talking to other bloggers, and to the other assembled luminaries. Among the bloggers I got to meet for the first time were the mysterious Baron Boddissey, as well as Fausta, and the globe-hopping Michael Totten. Then there are literary and journalistic luminaries such as the petite and charmingly French Nidra Pollner, the petite and charmingly American Claudia Rosett, both of whose work I admire greatly; it was good to be able to tell them so in person. Likewise Michael Barone (looking exactly as he does on television–although that’s what one expects, it’s always a little bit unexpected, as well), the pajamas-clad (well, for part of the evening, anyway) and entertaining Richard Miniter, and the witty Cliff May.

There were so many wonderful bloggers there that it would become a tedious laundry list to mention even half of them. But there was nothing tedious about the experience of meeting them–or, in many cases, renewing what’s now becoming an old acquaintance and even a friendship. As I’ve said before, blggers in person are a highly energized and intense bunch, and we sure can talk. And talk and talk and talk, into the wee hours of the morning.

I’m about to do some more talking–and a bit of sightseeing and eating as well. So I’ll cut this short by simply recycling a piece I wrote from the last Pajamas meetup back in November of 2005.

The cast of characters is a bit different in its details–and another change is that Roger Simon no longer wears a fedora (the shaved head is the current look). But it’s still true that:

I find it an extraordinary experience to meet people backwards: that is, to meet their minds first and their bodies second. You get to know people in a totally different way as, day after day, you read what they are thinking without ever having met them in the flesh.

You don’t even realize how many preconceptions (and perhaps misconceptions) you are building up until you meet the person him/herself. Sometimes the meeting shatters those preconceptions utterly. Far more often, however, the person you meet is both similar and somewhat different from the one you had expected: younger, older; livelier, shyer; more fidgety, calmer; funnier, more solemn. Then you superimpose the new template on the old and merge the two, and now you know the person in a fuller, rounder sense.

And so it is that I am very happy to have met these and so many other old friends (and new), and to have made the pictures of them in my mind’s eye more complete.

The ex-President’s analysts

The New Neo Posted on by

Forgive me for being so slow on the draw to post a link to the latest Sanity Squad podcast, but yesterday I spent the day flying to Washington, DC and then doing the Pajamas Media thing.

The Squad talks about President Clinton’s interview with Chris Wallace, including the larger issues it raises: blame, responsibility, narcissism, strategy, and the behavior of ex-Presidents.

The spook who came in from the cold

The New Neo Posted on by

Take a look at a new blog (new to me, at least)–and an interesting one–by someone who claims to be a former US military intelligence officer. I like the title: In From the Cold, paraprasing the John Le Carre novel (via Roger Simon).

The blogger’s pseudonum is “Spook 86” (his age? the year he came in from the cold?) See what you think.

Light blogging day. I’ve been traveling–will fill you in later.