Buckley

I suppose I have to say a word or two about William F. Buckley, though admittedly I have a better memory of Robin Williams' impression of him than the man himself (also, while Christopher Buckley's conservative writings leave me cold, his novel Thank You For Smoking was entertaining).

This is of course another case of the conservative whitewash. After death you cannot find anyone to say a bad word about the guy, even his adversaries, and the hagiography is amped up to ridiculous heights. While Rick Perlstein gave a moving tribute this morning, it seems to me that little is spoken about the man who believed AIDS patients should be tattooed, who opposed World War II, who was the greatest defender of Joseph McCarthy in America, and whose National Review was a cornerstone of opposition to the civil rights movement. Buckley, having spawned a conservative movement that left him behind, became almost sympathetic at the end of his life, and the conservatives praising him today weren't singing the same tune just a few short months ago.

"Aren't you embarrassed by the absence of these weapons?" Buckley snaps at Podhoretz. He has just explained that he supported the war reluctantly, because Dick Cheney convinced him Saddam Hussein had WMD primed to be fired. "No," Podhoretz replies. "As I say, they were shipped to Syria. During Gulf War I, the entire Iraqi air force was hidden in the deserts in Iran." He says he is "heartbroken" by this "rise of defeatism on the right." He adds, apropos of nothing, "There was nobody better than Don Rumsfeld. This defeatist talk only contributes to the impression we are losing, when I think we're winning." The audience cheers Podhoretz. The nuanced doubts of Bill Buckley leave them confused. Doesn't he sound like the liberal media? Later, over dinner, a tablemate from Denver calls Buckley "a coward". His wife nods and says, "Buckley's an old man," tapping her head with her finger to suggest dementia.

Of course, everyone who doesn't cotton to the agreed-to tenets of conservatism must be tossed aside, even the... founders of conservatism. But I don't hold that the enemy of my enemy is my friend in every case. I wish his family to have some peace, but I'm disinclined to raise a glass for the likes of William F. Buckley. Unless you can find me any instance of him raising said same glass for anyone below his station.

...I should also add that the main reason Buckley's passing makes me sad is that we don't have any public intellectuals anymore. I'm not one who thinks the culture has been "dumbed-down" necessarily, but the time where someone could be famous for having ideas has clearly passed. And that's ultimately not a good thing. To the extent that the blogosphere represents a return to that in a different venue is somewhat hopeful, but it's, you know, still the Internets. That Bill Buckley's intellectual ancedent is Jonah Goldberg should bring shrieks of horror to pretty much everyone.

Those Dirty Arabs

I've been following from afar the National Review debacle. One of their correspondents was fabricating all kinds of things in Lebanon, claiming he witnessed accounts that he didn't see, etc. This is actually pretty much standard reporting for right-wing propaganda outlets, and barely worth a mention, except for the fact that these same outlets spent months and months hammering other news sources for their so-called bogus reporting.

But the proof in where the wingnuts lie on this issue came in Kathryn Jean Lopez' apology:

"[W]e “should have provided readers with more context and caveats” – the context that Smith was operating in an uncertain environment where he couldn’t always be sure of what he was witnessing, and the caveats that he filled in the gaps by talking to sources within the Cedar Revolution movement and the Lebanese national-security apparatus, whose claims obviously should have been been treated with the same degree of skepticism as those of anyone with an agenda to advance.

As one of our sources put it: “The Arab tendency to lie and exaggerate about enemies is alive and well among pro-American Lebanese Christians as much as it is with the likes of Hamas.” While Smith vouches for his sources, we cannot independently verify what they told him." (emphasis added)

Basically, the excuse for horrible reporting is that Arabs are filthy liars. I know, then National Review can leave the Middle East and stop relying on those sources. Just leave and stop endangering the world.

This assumption of superiority over the Muslim hordes can also be seen in Norman Podhoretz' reaction to the Iran NIE, which he views in the most obvious, sensible way: the CIA is trying to sabotage Bush, because they're promoting the views of those Muslim liars.

But I entertain an even darker suspicion. It is that the intelligence community, which has for some years now been leaking material calculated to undermine George W. Bush, is doing it again. This time the purpose is to head off the possibility that the President may order air strikes on the Iranian nuclear installations. As the intelligence community must know, if he were to do so, it would be as a last resort, only after it had become undeniable that neither negotiations nor sanctions could prevent Iran from getting the bomb, and only after being convinced that it was very close to succeeding. How better, then, to stop Bush in his tracks than by telling him and the world that such pressures have already been effective and that keeping them up could well bring about “a halt to Iran’s entire nuclear weapons program”—especially if the negotiations and sanctions were combined with a goodly dose of appeasement or, in the NIE’s own euphemistic formulation, “with opportunities for Iran to achieve its security, prestige, and goals for regional influence in other ways.”

The intimation here is obviously that the intelligence community will push to the front any lie given to them by "those people".

It should always be mentioned that N-Pod is a top national security advisor to Rudy Giuliani. This is the belief at the highest level.

Authoritarian Narcissist

I don't think that Giuliani's sudden love for the Red Sox controversy is going to go away; he probably just lost New York and maybe New Jersey if he makes the general election, and New Hampshire Red Sox fans really don't want some Yankee fan's support.

But that's about the least important piece of news on Rudy there is. What people are slowly coming to understand is that he's surrounded himself with the most crazed bunch of lunatics he could possibly find to set his Middle East policy.

Mr. Giuliani’s team includes Norman Podhoretz, a prominent neoconservative who advocates bombing Iran “as soon as it is logistically possible”; Daniel Pipes, the director of the Middle East Forum, who has called for profiling Muslims at airports and scrutinizing American Muslims in law enforcement, the military and the diplomatic corps; and Michael Rubin, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute who has written in favor of revoking the United States’ ban on assassination.

The campaign says that the foreign policy team, which also includes scholars and experts with different policy approaches, is meant to give Mr. Giuliani a variety of perspectives.

Yes, all the way from "Bomb Iran" to "BOOOOOOMMMMMBBBBB Iran!"

We're finally starting to see some real scrutiny of the rogue's gallery with whom Giuliani has associated. Norman Podhoretz prays for an attack on Iran daily, and while the advisors aren't running for President, there appears to be little difference between Rudy's views and theirs. (Not to mention that Rudy has the heroin kingpin vote all locked up, and they openly talk about how he made deals with "guys like me.")

And we know how this will play out: imperial adventures, more massive military projection throughout the world, unilateralism, more contempt for allies, and more moral relativism on fundamental principles of civilized societies, allowing for the worst kinds of abuses as long as he maintains power.

“I wanted to ask you two questions,’’ she said. “One, do you think waterboarding is torture? And two, do you think the president can order something like waterboarding even though it’s against U.S. and international law?’’

Mr. Giuliani responded: “Okay. First of all, I don’t believe the attorney general designate in any way was unclear on torture. I think Democrats said that; I don’t think he was.’’

Ms. Gustitus said: “He said he didn’t know if waterboarding is torture.”

Mr. Giuliani said: “Well, I’m not sure it is either. I’m not sure it is either. It depends on how it’s done. It depends on the circumstances. It depends on who does it. I think the way it’s been defined in the media, it shouldn’t be done. The way in which they have described it, particularly in the liberal media. So I would say, if that’s the description of it, then I can agree, that it shouldn’t be done. But I have to see what the real description of it is. Because I’ve learned something being in public life as long as I have. And I hate to shock anybody with this, but the newspapers don’t always describe it accurately.”

That's just transparently false. The technique of waterboarding as used by the Khmer Rouge and other totalitarian societies is extremely clear. You can talk about "fine lines" and determining what "aggressive questioning" is and joke about how sleep deprivation doesn't fall into a banned category, but it's all fully untrue. There are very specific statutes regarding torture, human rights courts around the world have included both torture and abnormal sleep deprivation, and Giuliani is simply trying to change the definition.

Rudy Giuliani is an authoritarian narcissist, the worst combination of Bush/Cheney contempt for dissent or any countervailing power, combined with absolutely no conscience that would check himself personally. He would be, as many have put it, George Bush on steroids.

Ahmadinejad spoke at a college!!! Is America still whole?

The right wing in this country really can't take debate, whether it's debating laws (talking about surveillance will kill Americans!!!!) or a powerless clown like Ahmadinejad at Columbia. Even President frickin Bush understands that a country that's confident in their democracy can afford to hear WORDS without turning to jelly:

President Bush said Ahmadinejad's appearance at Columbia "speaks volumes about, really, the greatness of America."

He told Fox News Channel that if Bollinger considered Ahmadinejad's visit an educational experience for Columbia students, "I guess it's OK with me."

Bollinger, the President of Columbia, was so caustic toward Ahmadinejad, calling him a "petty and cruel dictator) (he apparently doesn't get the Iranian political hierarchy either), that it was clear he had been cowed by the right into being overly belligerent. But the point of open debate being vital to society was proven when Ahmadinejad claimed that his country doesn't have any homosexuals. I know some members of the right immediately responded to that by booking flights to move there, but the point is that such a patently ridiculous statement exposed Ahmadinejad for the fool that he is. We should be encouraging that, not stifling it.

And here's another debate we really SHOULD be having. Apparently the Senate exists only to make Sense of the Senate resolutions, but this one is scary (naturally, Lieberman wrote it):

(b) Sense of Senate.--It is the sense of the Senate--

(1) that the manner in which the United States transitions and structures its military presence in Iraq will have critical long-term consequences for the future of the Persian Gulf and the Middle East, in particular with regard to the capability of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran to pose a threat to the security of the region, the prospects for democracy for the people of the region, and the health of the global economy;

(2) that it is a vital national interest of the United States to prevent the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran from turning Shi'a militia extremists in Iraq into a Hezbollah-like force that could serve its interests inside Iraq, including by overwhelming, subverting, or co-opting institutions of the legitimate Government of Iraq;

(3) that it should be the policy of the United States to combat, contain, and roll back the violent activities and destabilizing influence inside Iraq of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, its foreign facilitators such as Lebanese Hezbollah, and its indigenous Iraqi proxies;

(4) to support the prudent and calibrated use of all instruments of United States national power in Iraq, including diplomatic, economic, intelligence, and military instruments, in support of the policy described in paragraph (3) with respect to the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran and its proxies;

(5) that the United States should designate the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps as a foreign terrorist organization under section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act and place the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps on the list of Specially Designated Global Terrorists, as established under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and initiated under Executive Order 13224; and

(6) that the Department of the Treasury should act with all possible expediency to complete the listing of those entities targeted under United Nations Security Council Resolutions 1737 and 1747 adopted unanimously on December 23, 2006 and March 24, 2007, respectively.

When we have the President being advised on Iran policy by the guy who is pleading to blow it up, this kind of resolution is not only unhelpful, it's dangerous. We'll see if we have a functioning democracy today by seeing if the Democrats can manage to strike this nonsense down.

So Soon?

The International Association of Fire Fighters' video about Rudy Giuliani's tenure in New York City and his disrespect of firefighters, Rudy Giuliani: Urban Legend, was released on the Internet yesterday, and it's pretty devastating.



I'm not sure why this would start off with a union boss' comments instead of the firefighters themselves (even though the IAFF is a fairly nonpartisan union), and I really don't understand why this is coming out now, 5 months before the first votes in Iowa and 16 months before the general election. The Swift Boat campaign against John Kerry filled a news gap in August of 2004, very close to the Presidential cycle, and its momentum, driven by the press, carried through to Election Day. There's no way you can achieve that 16 months out. I respect the firefighters union for trying to educate the public about Rudy's record (his lying to the 9/11 Commission and blaming the firefighters for ignoring the evacuation order, when they never got it, is particularly despicable). They should have waited, though, for maximum impact. Although, there is I suppose a merit to defining him early. I mean, if this becomes the measure of Rudy, it's something:

"Rudy has used the horrible events of September 11 to create a persona that is an elaborate fabrication," says IAFF General President Harold Schaitberger. "He is nothing more than a shameless self-promoter."

The fact that a Rudy Presidency would essentially be a third Bush term, with the likes of Norman Podhoretz arguing and praying for the bombing of Iran from inside the White House, is also a significant frame that I'd like to see explored.