His policy is being fixed around the facts, sort of
Sometimes we amaze even ourselves. In our 1st London post yesterday, we listed a couple of themes that we expected to surface in the coverage. Of course, reality-based people everywhere quickly zeroed in on the "flypaper" zombie -- the DoA rationale for the ability of the Iraq war to attract global terrorists there to be killed. Andrew Sullivan's ears were burning while this was going on, and as usual, his response merits the curate's egg -- some admission of past flaws, but the old rhetorical tricks still in play nonetheless:
Now for some criticism from the left, i.e. from Atrios and Kos. (Atrios Dowdifies my [flypaper] quote, making it seem as if I wrote it, while in context I'm actually relating the arguments of someone in the Bush administration.) ... And to be honest, I still don't know how to judge [flypaper]. I'm not prepared to dismiss it out of hand; but the evidence against its efficacy also seems to me to have accumulated over the past couple of years ... I don't think the debate is over, or that the concept was obviously nutty from the start ... But this blog is a little different. It's an attempt to think out loud, which means there will be shifts over time in argument and emphasis. It may appear wishy-washy or excitable or whatever. But it's my best attempt to figure things out as I go along. If you don't like it, read someone else. If you have a point to make, please email me. I try and read as much criticism of my fallible work as I can.
Note the pleasing word "Dowdify" -- gotta get the digs in at the New York Times even when under fire. And is his last sentence an admission that he reads Sullywatch? But on balance, despite the reluctance to toss flypaper completely, it's not so bad.
He's also engaged in a feud with James Taranto of OpinionJournal, who has been deliberately peppering recent editions with Old Sully quotes, especially as they relate to Gitmo, and Sully gets around to a riposte:
Yesterday, James Taranto took yet another dig at my early attitude to reports of "poor treatment" of terrorist captives. In January 2002 and for a while thereafter, I somewhat summarily dismissed reports of mistreatment of detainees as probably enemy propaganda and certainly not something that should worry us too much ... I'm not proud of those sentences, but they rested on a basic level of trust that of course enemy combatants might be treated roughly, but would not be subject to systematic abuse, torture or beatings ... This was the Bush administration, people I trusted. I had no idea - and perhaps I should be held responsible for my naivete - that memos were being written allowing for torture and abuse to occur under the legal cover of a president's wartime authority ... But after Abu Ghraib, I obviously changed my tune. The facts available to me changed; and so I changed my mind. When the facts available to me change, I change my mind. But then I guess I'm not James Taranto.
Given who he's battling, all well and good. But, a point often made by his critics, there was ample evidence of Dubya's mendacity even by 2002, not least from Paul Krugman on fiscal policy, which functioned as a clear leading indicator for anyone concerned about how the GWOT would be managed.
Then though, he goes and ruins everything. After assuring us he's not Taranto, we get this:
EPIPHANY WATCH: Just as in the U.S. after 9/11, some who once dismissed terrorism as an over-rated threat have begun to change their minds a little.
Terrorism as Epiphany -- this is vintage Taranto, item #3 in our list from yesterday. We don't know about Taranto's religiosity, but as a knowledgable Catholic, Sully has no excuse for this.
UPDATE: It's fallibility week for The Right. Glenn Reynolds, who has favoured torture, flypaper, Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, budget deficits, and generalised reactionary lunacy, issues a remarkable speedy admission of error:
ERROR-CORRECTION UPDATE: Reader []writes that I'm wrong, and that some of the Canons -- including the one mentioned above -- do accept AA batteries. She's right, I'm wrong. I had read the contrary somewhere a while back, and either it was always wrong, or Canon has changed. Anyway, I should have noticed. Sorry.
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query flypaper. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query flypaper. Sort by date Show all posts
Tuesday, September 26, 2006
The flypaper zombie
In a remark likely to embarrass even its intended beneficiaries, the Wall Street Journal politics blog reports --
... the Bush administration got a political boost from Iraq’s president. In an interview on the PBS show The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said he disagreed with the [National Intelligence Estimate] report’s contention that the Iraq war had worsened the global terrorist threat. "I think the invasion of Iraq reduced the danger of terrorism on the United States of America because all terrorist groups are now concentrating on Iraq," he said.
Thus, the flypaper theory is back, and as usual left unsaid is any discussion of when the Iraqi people volunteered to get caught in the crossfire. Note also that Talabani is Kurdish, so his sense of how Iraq gains from being a shooting gallery might be a bit warped.
UPDATE: Flypaper may be all that's left of the Iraq war rationale, given the now declassified findings of the National Intelligence Estimate --
The Iraq conflict has become the "cause célèbre" for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of US involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement.
Meaning that the only hope of success is to attract all these people to Iraq.
FINAL UPDATE: Right on cue, the flypaper enthusiast James Taranto at the Wall Street Journal wheels it out in connection with the killing by British troops of Bagram escapee Omar al-Farouq (who was hiding in Basra, not participating in the insurgency):
we know the argument is that if Saddam Hussein hadn't been toppled, Faruq wouldn't have been in Iraq. That is, he wouldn't have been in Iraq where allied troops could kill him.
But wasn't the accusation against Saddam that terrorists were taking refuge there while he still ruled?
... the Bush administration got a political boost from Iraq’s president. In an interview on the PBS show The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said he disagreed with the [National Intelligence Estimate] report’s contention that the Iraq war had worsened the global terrorist threat. "I think the invasion of Iraq reduced the danger of terrorism on the United States of America because all terrorist groups are now concentrating on Iraq," he said.
Thus, the flypaper theory is back, and as usual left unsaid is any discussion of when the Iraqi people volunteered to get caught in the crossfire. Note also that Talabani is Kurdish, so his sense of how Iraq gains from being a shooting gallery might be a bit warped.
UPDATE: Flypaper may be all that's left of the Iraq war rationale, given the now declassified findings of the National Intelligence Estimate --
The Iraq conflict has become the "cause célèbre" for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of US involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement.
Meaning that the only hope of success is to attract all these people to Iraq.
FINAL UPDATE: Right on cue, the flypaper enthusiast James Taranto at the Wall Street Journal wheels it out in connection with the killing by British troops of Bagram escapee Omar al-Farouq (who was hiding in Basra, not participating in the insurgency):
we know the argument is that if Saddam Hussein hadn't been toppled, Faruq wouldn't have been in Iraq. That is, he wouldn't have been in Iraq where allied troops could kill him.
But wasn't the accusation against Saddam that terrorists were taking refuge there while he still ruled?
Friday, January 14, 2005
Stuck on Spin
There can't be a worse moment for members of a personality cult than when they had constructed a whole edifice of justication around a particular remark of the Leader, and then the Leader goes and retracts the remark. It's like that moment in Animal Farm that we referred to another context recently, where Napoleon was initially against Snowball's windmill, but suddenly he was for it, causing some doubt amongst the non-porcine population of the farm. And so it is today with Dubya's (safely post-election) regrets about his "Bring them on" and "Dead or alive" remarks. [More from Dan Froomkin here].
[Dubya] I don't know if you'd call it a regret, but it certainly is a lesson that a president must be mindful of, that the words that you sometimes say -- I speak plainly sometimes, but you've got to be mindful of the consequences of the words. So put that down. I don't know if you'd call that a confession, a regret, something
So take for instance the reactionaries at the Wall Street Journal online editorial page (James Taranto's OpinionJournal), who leapt to the task of defending the original remarks:
You don't defeat an enemy by putting your sensitive, vulnerable, nurturing side on display. And a little swagger is essential to the warrior culture ... Besides, David Warren [Canadian hack] notes that there's a very good reason to want to "bring them on" in Iraq:
[Warren quote] "President Bush has also, quite consciously to my information, created a new playground for the enemy, away from Israel, and even farther away from the United States itself. By the very act of proving this lower ground, he drains terrorist resources from other swamps. This is the meaning of Mr. Bush's "bring 'em on" taunt ... What the media and U.S. Democrats affect not to grasp, is that the soldiers are now replacing targets that otherwise would be provided by defenceless civilians, both in Iraq and at large ... It is carefully hung flypaper" [end Warren quote]
Flypaper, we [WSJ] would add, that seems to have entrapped the president's domestic opponents as well as the country's foreign enemies.
So there it is -- the genesis of the flypaper theory, that was quickly elevated into core pro-war spin once the WMD wild goose chase was becoming apparent, constructed around something Dubya now wishes he hasn't said. There's that moment with flypaper when you take pity on the futile flapping of the fly and just squelch it. But in this case we wonder if the fly will maintain that he wanted to be stuck there?
[Dubya] I don't know if you'd call it a regret, but it certainly is a lesson that a president must be mindful of, that the words that you sometimes say -- I speak plainly sometimes, but you've got to be mindful of the consequences of the words. So put that down. I don't know if you'd call that a confession, a regret, something
So take for instance the reactionaries at the Wall Street Journal online editorial page (James Taranto's OpinionJournal), who leapt to the task of defending the original remarks:
You don't defeat an enemy by putting your sensitive, vulnerable, nurturing side on display. And a little swagger is essential to the warrior culture ... Besides, David Warren [Canadian hack] notes that there's a very good reason to want to "bring them on" in Iraq:
[Warren quote] "President Bush has also, quite consciously to my information, created a new playground for the enemy, away from Israel, and even farther away from the United States itself. By the very act of proving this lower ground, he drains terrorist resources from other swamps. This is the meaning of Mr. Bush's "bring 'em on" taunt ... What the media and U.S. Democrats affect not to grasp, is that the soldiers are now replacing targets that otherwise would be provided by defenceless civilians, both in Iraq and at large ... It is carefully hung flypaper" [end Warren quote]
Flypaper, we [WSJ] would add, that seems to have entrapped the president's domestic opponents as well as the country's foreign enemies.
So there it is -- the genesis of the flypaper theory, that was quickly elevated into core pro-war spin once the WMD wild goose chase was becoming apparent, constructed around something Dubya now wishes he hasn't said. There's that moment with flypaper when you take pity on the futile flapping of the fly and just squelch it. But in this case we wonder if the fly will maintain that he wanted to be stuck there?
Friday, December 28, 2007
Flypaper reverses polarity
The Wall Street Journal's lead editorial (subs. req'd; alt. free link) is about Benazir Bhutto's murder --
With the jihadists losing in Iraq and having a hard time hitting the West, their strategy seems to be to make vulnerable Pakistan their principal target, and its nuclear arsenal their principal prize.
Apparently the idea for al Qaeda to hit Pakistan -- their home base -- never occurred to them until now. Indeed, it only occurred to them after the success of the surge. An additional complication is that the whole point of the Iraq adventure was once flypaper -- that it would draw all terrorists into a losing battle on that front, relieving the rest of the world of terrorism. It would appear that the terrorists have exercised their option to return home and resume normal service from there.
With the jihadists losing in Iraq and having a hard time hitting the West, their strategy seems to be to make vulnerable Pakistan their principal target, and its nuclear arsenal their principal prize.
Apparently the idea for al Qaeda to hit Pakistan -- their home base -- never occurred to them until now. Indeed, it only occurred to them after the success of the surge. An additional complication is that the whole point of the Iraq adventure was once flypaper -- that it would draw all terrorists into a losing battle on that front, relieving the rest of the world of terrorism. It would appear that the terrorists have exercised their option to return home and resume normal service from there.
Thursday, December 14, 2006
The new flypaper
The old one was the Iraq war rationale which claimed that a war there would concentrate all the world's evildoers in one place. It was a crock. Andrew Sullivan is developing a new one --
So: one last face-saving effort [in Iraq], hoping for a miracle. Then: get the hell out. Perhaps six months redeployment to Kurdistan to protect the only secure haven left, before complete disengagement. Then use the Sunni-Shia regional war to divert Islamist terror away from the West and toward the Arab states that have enabled it.
Actually it's somewhere between flypaper and a Lord of the Rings analogy. But it's equally hubristic in its claim that a bloodbath can be effectively managed from a distance.
So: one last face-saving effort [in Iraq], hoping for a miracle. Then: get the hell out. Perhaps six months redeployment to Kurdistan to protect the only secure haven left, before complete disengagement. Then use the Sunni-Shia regional war to divert Islamist terror away from the West and toward the Arab states that have enabled it.
Actually it's somewhere between flypaper and a Lord of the Rings analogy. But it's equally hubristic in its claim that a bloodbath can be effectively managed from a distance.
Thursday, November 11, 2004
Stuck on our own flypaper
Wasn't the logic of flypaper, one of the cooked up ex post rationales for invading Iraq, that a war there would attract all the super-duper evildoers to one place, thus making all of them fight concentrated US firepower? But this wasn't meant to be something that the US imposed on itself:
[New York Times] Insurgents opened a new front in Mosul and killed 13 in a Baghdad car bomb, while U.S. troops moved into Falluja's south.
Wasn't the logic of flypaper, one of the cooked up ex post rationales for invading Iraq, that a war there would attract all the super-duper evildoers to one place, thus making all of them fight concentrated US firepower? But this wasn't meant to be something that the US imposed on itself:
[New York Times] Insurgents opened a new front in Mosul and killed 13 in a Baghdad car bomb, while U.S. troops moved into Falluja's south.
Tuesday, May 01, 2007
The GWOT is on another planet
Powerline's Deacon --
By now you have probably seen or heard the breathless reports that incidents of terrorism were up worldwide in 2006. This is the MSM's take-away on the State Department's Country Report on Terrorism 2006. However, as Matthew Sheffield explains, the validity of this take-away depends on the meaning of worldwide. The numbers show a sharp increase in terrorist attacks in Iraq, where 2006 was a bad year indeed, and these attacks cause the total number of attacks and deaths to have increased world-wide. However, if one factors out the Middle East, which in the State Department's report does not include Afghanistan, there is no increase. If one also factors out Afghanistan, there's a decrease.
So taking out all the bad numbers, they are actually good numbers. In the same post, Hindrocket adds --
The numbers are also consistent with the fact that al Qaeda has proclaimed Iraq the central front in its war against civilization. It is reasonable to surmise that this focus has contributed to the decline in terrorist incidents in other parts of the world. Likewise, if al Qaeda were no longer tied down in Iraq, it is reasonable to expect that terrorism in other parts of the world would increase.
Got it? First the post excuses the overall rise in terrorism by saying that it's mostly in Iraq. But then it says if the US withdrew from Iraq, the terrorism would get redistributed to the rest of the world, and therefore that global terrorism would indeed be higher than if the US had never invaded Iraq. Not the first time, proponents of the flypaper theory of Iraq entangle only themselves.
By now you have probably seen or heard the breathless reports that incidents of terrorism were up worldwide in 2006. This is the MSM's take-away on the State Department's Country Report on Terrorism 2006. However, as Matthew Sheffield explains, the validity of this take-away depends on the meaning of worldwide. The numbers show a sharp increase in terrorist attacks in Iraq, where 2006 was a bad year indeed, and these attacks cause the total number of attacks and deaths to have increased world-wide. However, if one factors out the Middle East, which in the State Department's report does not include Afghanistan, there is no increase. If one also factors out Afghanistan, there's a decrease.
So taking out all the bad numbers, they are actually good numbers. In the same post, Hindrocket adds --
The numbers are also consistent with the fact that al Qaeda has proclaimed Iraq the central front in its war against civilization. It is reasonable to surmise that this focus has contributed to the decline in terrorist incidents in other parts of the world. Likewise, if al Qaeda were no longer tied down in Iraq, it is reasonable to expect that terrorism in other parts of the world would increase.
Got it? First the post excuses the overall rise in terrorism by saying that it's mostly in Iraq. But then it says if the US withdrew from Iraq, the terrorism would get redistributed to the rest of the world, and therefore that global terrorism would indeed be higher than if the US had never invaded Iraq. Not the first time, proponents of the flypaper theory of Iraq entangle only themselves.
Monday, December 15, 2008
Closer to the truth
At one level it's deserving that George Bush's "Rudolph One" photo-op trip to Iraq was dominated by the al-Baghdadiya shoe-thrower. But it does mean that yet another brazen repackaging of the Iraq war (presumably a component of the Bush Legacy Project) will be missed. Here's Bush speaking to the single safe non-Republican audience before which he can appear, the troops --
This is my fourth trip to Iraq -- and you've probably heard I'm heading into retirement -- (laughter) -- so it's going to be my last trip as the President. But thanks to you, the Iraq we stand in tonight is dramatically freer, dramatically safer, and dramatically better than the Iraq we found eight years ago.
AUDIENCE: Hoo-ah!
THE PRESIDENT: And as a result of the sacrifices of our troops, America is safer, and America is more secure.
AUDIENCE: Hoo-ah!
THE PRESIDENT: I want to take you back to what life was like eight years ago here in Iraq.
Note that the eight years was mentioned twice and therefore not a mistake. Thus his claim now is that Iraq was a problem he was handed coming into office.
Perhaps Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie think that's a handy way to implicitly blame Bill Clinton for the war, but it's a strange argument for Bush to make. Does he mean that he was actually gunning for Saddam from Day 1 and 9/11 or WMD was just a handy way of doing it? That's certainly what his March 2003 behaviour might lead one to believe, when it was him, and not Saddam Hussein, who kicked out the UN inspectors.
One other thing from the speech --
Killers who wanted to take the lives of Americans back home have been brought to justice before they reached our shores.
Can the White House name a single terrorist plot against America that has been interrupted by the war in Iraq?
UPDATE: Bush cavalierly admits that he was looking for someplace to turn into a battlefield against al Qaeda. Flypaper is back. Shame about the death toll.
White House photo by Eric Draper
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
The limits of holy war
It's a common assumption that Islamist militants are always in search of the next battlefield struggle that can be labelled jihad. Indeed, this assumption formed the flypaper rationale for the US invasion of Iraq i.e. the claim that even if extremists weren't in Iraq under Saddam, they would come to fight the invasion so that we could fight them there so we don't have to fight them over here etc. It was dodgy at the best of times and now we have a test case: Syria --
BAGHDAD, Feb 22 (Reuters) - Two Islamist militant groups in Iraq have rejected a call by al Qaeda to aid Syrian rebels in their revolt against President Bashar al-Assad, saying sending weapons and fighters across the border would only worsen the conflict.
Sunni Islamist al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri has backed an increasingly violent revolt against Assad, who is from an offshoot of Sh'ite Islam, and is fighting to maintain his grip on 12 years of autocratic rule in mostly Sunni Syria.
The Islamic Army in Iraq, composed of Sunni Arabs and former Iraqi army officers, whose aim was to end U.S. military presence and influence in Iraq, said it would support the Syrians morally in their fight against Assad, but would not dispatch fighters.
"We are against sending fighters, money and weapons to Syria ... we are waiting for the Syrian people to decide their fate but we are supporting their aspirations morally," a senior leader, who declined to be named, told Reuters on Wednesday ... The Islamic Army leader accused al Qaeda of trying to "steal the revolution" and said if armed fighters were sent, Assad, who blames foreign-backed terrorists for the nearly year-old unrest, would use it as a pretext for his crackdown.
"We do not want to interfere so as not to allow anyone to steal their revolution as al Qaeda has done. We don't want to give the regime a pretext that can be used against the rebels," he said ... Sheikh Khalid al-Ansari, a senior leader with the Islamist militant al-Rashideen Army, said his group supported the fall of Assad but warned that arming Syria's opposition would create an increasingly sectarian conflict.
"We support the Syrian revolution 100 percent and the fall of the Assad regime," Ansari told Reuters. "But we do not accept sending weapons, money and fighters to Syria because this will lead to the creation of a sectarian war that will target innocent people similar to what happened in Iraq and we do not want to repeat the same experiment."
Yes these are militant groups. But they calculate their odds, anticipate how their participation will affect the overall situation, and they learn. That's not the usual portrait of these groups.
BAGHDAD, Feb 22 (Reuters) - Two Islamist militant groups in Iraq have rejected a call by al Qaeda to aid Syrian rebels in their revolt against President Bashar al-Assad, saying sending weapons and fighters across the border would only worsen the conflict.
Sunni Islamist al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri has backed an increasingly violent revolt against Assad, who is from an offshoot of Sh'ite Islam, and is fighting to maintain his grip on 12 years of autocratic rule in mostly Sunni Syria.
The Islamic Army in Iraq, composed of Sunni Arabs and former Iraqi army officers, whose aim was to end U.S. military presence and influence in Iraq, said it would support the Syrians morally in their fight against Assad, but would not dispatch fighters.
"We are against sending fighters, money and weapons to Syria ... we are waiting for the Syrian people to decide their fate but we are supporting their aspirations morally," a senior leader, who declined to be named, told Reuters on Wednesday ... The Islamic Army leader accused al Qaeda of trying to "steal the revolution" and said if armed fighters were sent, Assad, who blames foreign-backed terrorists for the nearly year-old unrest, would use it as a pretext for his crackdown.
"We do not want to interfere so as not to allow anyone to steal their revolution as al Qaeda has done. We don't want to give the regime a pretext that can be used against the rebels," he said ... Sheikh Khalid al-Ansari, a senior leader with the Islamist militant al-Rashideen Army, said his group supported the fall of Assad but warned that arming Syria's opposition would create an increasingly sectarian conflict.
"We support the Syrian revolution 100 percent and the fall of the Assad regime," Ansari told Reuters. "But we do not accept sending weapons, money and fighters to Syria because this will lead to the creation of a sectarian war that will target innocent people similar to what happened in Iraq and we do not want to repeat the same experiment."
Yes these are militant groups. But they calculate their odds, anticipate how their participation will affect the overall situation, and they learn. That's not the usual portrait of these groups.
Monday, August 18, 2014
So much for flypaper
From the US State Department announcement of additional sanctions against ISIL and Al-Nusra Front following the UN Security Council resolution on Friday --
Abu Mohammed al-Adnani, born Taha Sobhi Falaha in Syria, is the official spokesman for and a senior leader of ISIL. Al-Adnani is ISIL’s main conduit for the dissemination of official messages, including ISIL’s declaration of the creation of an Islamic Caliphate. Al-Adnani was one of the first foreign fighters to oppose Coalition forces in Iraq before becoming ISIL’s spokesman.
Recall that one of the ex post justifications for the 2003 invasion of Iraq was that the resulting fighting would attract bad guys from around the world to Iraq where they could be efficiently eliminated.
Abu Mohammed al-Adnani, born Taha Sobhi Falaha in Syria, is the official spokesman for and a senior leader of ISIL. Al-Adnani is ISIL’s main conduit for the dissemination of official messages, including ISIL’s declaration of the creation of an Islamic Caliphate. Al-Adnani was one of the first foreign fighters to oppose Coalition forces in Iraq before becoming ISIL’s spokesman.
Recall that one of the ex post justifications for the 2003 invasion of Iraq was that the resulting fighting would attract bad guys from around the world to Iraq where they could be efficiently eliminated.
Sunday, August 27, 2006
Feeble and unserious, indeed
Since Mark Steyn suddenly seems to be flavour of the month again on the right, an issue comes to mind. Today brings news that the Fox News reporter and cameraman (Steve Centanni and Olaf Wiig) freed in Gaza recorded videos at gunpoint claiming that they had converted to Islam before they were released. Does Steyn's advice, offered in mockery to deceased hostage Ken Bigley, still apply in such situations --
If you're kidnapped, accept you're unlikely to survive, say "I'll show you how an Englishman dies", and wreck the video. If they want you to confess you're a spy, make a little mischief: there are jihadi from Britain, Italy, France, Canada and other western nations all over Iraq – so say yes, you're an MI6 agent, and so are those Muslims from Tipton and Luton who recently joined the al-Qaeda cells in Samarra and Ramadi. As Churchill recommended in a less timorous Britain: You can always take one with you. If Mr Blair and other government officials were to make that plain, it would be, to use Mr Bigley's word, “enough”. A war cannot be subordinate to the fate of any individual caught up in it.
And, if you don't want to wind up in that situation, you need to pack heat and be prepared to resist at the point of abduction. I didn't give much thought to decapitation when I was mooching round the Sunni Triangle last year, but my one rule was that I was determined not to get into a car with any of the locals and I was willing to shoot anyone who tried to force me. If you're not, you shouldn't be there.
None of the above would have guaranteed Mr Bigley's life, but it would have given him, as it did Signor Quattrocchi, a less pitiful death, and it would have spared the world a glimpse of the feeble and unserious Britain of the last few weeks.
UPDATE: As Dave Weeden reminds us in an e-mail, Steyn has in fact embraced his former position regarding the Gaza hostages. Sidenote: the David Warren that also features in that Glenn Greenwald link is a pioneer of the flypaper justification for the invasion of Iraq. By which logic, the two Foxmen should have been completely safe in Gaza, with all the bad guys attracted to Iraq.
If you're kidnapped, accept you're unlikely to survive, say "I'll show you how an Englishman dies", and wreck the video. If they want you to confess you're a spy, make a little mischief: there are jihadi from Britain, Italy, France, Canada and other western nations all over Iraq – so say yes, you're an MI6 agent, and so are those Muslims from Tipton and Luton who recently joined the al-Qaeda cells in Samarra and Ramadi. As Churchill recommended in a less timorous Britain: You can always take one with you. If Mr Blair and other government officials were to make that plain, it would be, to use Mr Bigley's word, “enough”. A war cannot be subordinate to the fate of any individual caught up in it.
And, if you don't want to wind up in that situation, you need to pack heat and be prepared to resist at the point of abduction. I didn't give much thought to decapitation when I was mooching round the Sunni Triangle last year, but my one rule was that I was determined not to get into a car with any of the locals and I was willing to shoot anyone who tried to force me. If you're not, you shouldn't be there.
None of the above would have guaranteed Mr Bigley's life, but it would have given him, as it did Signor Quattrocchi, a less pitiful death, and it would have spared the world a glimpse of the feeble and unserious Britain of the last few weeks.
UPDATE: As Dave Weeden reminds us in an e-mail, Steyn has in fact embraced his former position regarding the Gaza hostages. Sidenote: the David Warren that also features in that Glenn Greenwald link is a pioneer of the flypaper justification for the invasion of Iraq. By which logic, the two Foxmen should have been completely safe in Gaza, with all the bad guys attracted to Iraq.
Friday, May 26, 2006
Bush's biggest regret
One of the few interesting moments in the Bush-Blair news conference was when they were both asked to describe their own mistakes in the Iraq war. Bush specified the "Bring it on" remark -- note, he admits only to a rhetorical mistake and not any tactical mistakes, the biggest of which was surely the failure to secure Baghdad in the summer of 2003 (or 2004). But leave that aside, 2 points. First, it's not news: Bush has admitted this precise mistake over a year ago. Second, as we noted at the time, the warbloggers had constructed a rationale for the invasion around the original remark, a remark that Bush now wishes he had never made. Flypaper, RIP.
UPDATE: Dan Froomkin notes that there was nothing new in the regret, and that it's disengenuous even taken on its own terms.
UPDATE: Dan Froomkin notes that there was nothing new in the regret, and that it's disengenuous even taken on its own terms.
Wednesday, October 12, 2005
Epiphanies all round
It had to happen. Andrew Sullivan had gotten so far with his persona of New Sully, implacable foe of the powers-that-be, but he had to revert to being duc de Sully, faithful servant of the royal court. And indeed, much as his namesake:
Sully was not popular. He was hated ... by all because he was a favorite, and selfish, obstinate and rude. He amassed a large personal fortune, and his jealousy of all other ministers and favorites was extravagant. Nevertheless he was an excellent man of business, inexorable in punishing malversation and dishonesty on the part of others, and opposed to the ruinous court expenditure which was the bane of almost all European monarchies in his day. He was gifted with executive ability, with confidence and resolution, with fondness for work, and above all with deep devotion to his master. He was implicitly trusted by Henry IV and proved himself the most able assistant of the king in dispelling the chaos into which the religious and civil wars had plunged France.
Despite his disgust about the royal budget, the irresistible pull of the royal court exerts itself again with his revived flypaper/fly-trap theory [will add link when he's unhacked] -- that the Iraq war was necessary so that Arabs could experience first hand the impact of Islamist terrorism:
... internal Muslim division ... a fortunate by-product of failure to pacify the country. By allowing chaos and disorder to engulf many Iraqi lives, the coalition may have undermined Jihadist appeal by exposing their willingness to slaughter other Muslims in their bid for a new Caliphate ... by forcing the battle into the heart of the Middle East, rather than in the West, the coalition is exposing internal rifts and dividing the Muslim world into its sane and insane camps. If the sane camp wins, we all win ... But if we can keep the fldegling Iraqi state somewhat stable, the potential benefit is that by using schismatic divisions in Islam, we can help isolate and undermine al Qaeda and Jihadism in general ... But the strategy is not a crazy one, even if it has emerged from the wreckage of incompetence.
This is just a rehashed version of the Epiphany theory pushed by the Wall Street Journal, that 9/11 was necessary to show Americans the threat of terrorism, and that the Saudis needed something similar to happen to them. Sully ups the ante by hoping that the bringing home of terrorism causes a schism within Islam that the West can ride to its own advantage -- not the kind of delicate operation that one wants this White House in charge of.
While this is a shite (one i) strategy for a war, there is one bit of supporting evidence for the effect it postulates -- the now fully released letter from al Zawahiri to al Zarqawi, which makes clear the split between al Qaeda HQ and its franchise in Iraq on the strategy of killing civilians and Shia:
But Mr. Zawahiri ... pointedly [warns] Mr. Zarqawi that such strikes amounted to "action that the masses do not understand or approve."
In the letter, Mr. Zawahiri compared the fierce war of resistance that Iraqis and foreign fighters have waged in Iraq since March 2003 with the speedy fall of Afghanistan's Taliban government after the American-led invasion there in 2001.
"We don't want to repeat the mistake of the Taliban, who restricted participation in governance to the students and the people of Kandahar alone," Mr. Zawahiri wrote. "The result was that the Afghan people disengaged themselves from them. Even devout ones took the stance of the spectator and, when the invasion came, the emirate collapsed in days, because the people were either passive or hostile."
"Therefore," Mr. Zawahiri wrote, "I stress again to you and to all your brothers the need to direct the political action equally with the military action, by the alliance, cooperation and gathering of all leaders of opinion and influence in the Iraqi arena."
This shreds the media criticism of the right, who complain that the Western media reports deaths from terrorism with the implicit goal of undermining the war back home. In fact, Zawahiri makes clear that it is precisely these images that undermine the insurgency and leave room for the split that Sully has now noticed. Incidentally, of interest to Irish readers must surely be that Zawahiri's last sentence above could easily be rephrased as "the Armalite in one hand and the ballot box in the other" -- perhaps soon to be the latest evidence on links between Northern Ireland and the GWOT.
It had to happen. Andrew Sullivan had gotten so far with his persona of New Sully, implacable foe of the powers-that-be, but he had to revert to being duc de Sully, faithful servant of the royal court. And indeed, much as his namesake:
Sully was not popular. He was hated ... by all because he was a favorite, and selfish, obstinate and rude. He amassed a large personal fortune, and his jealousy of all other ministers and favorites was extravagant. Nevertheless he was an excellent man of business, inexorable in punishing malversation and dishonesty on the part of others, and opposed to the ruinous court expenditure which was the bane of almost all European monarchies in his day. He was gifted with executive ability, with confidence and resolution, with fondness for work, and above all with deep devotion to his master. He was implicitly trusted by Henry IV and proved himself the most able assistant of the king in dispelling the chaos into which the religious and civil wars had plunged France.
Despite his disgust about the royal budget, the irresistible pull of the royal court exerts itself again with his revived flypaper/fly-trap theory [
... internal Muslim division ... a fortunate by-product of failure to pacify the country. By allowing chaos and disorder to engulf many Iraqi lives, the coalition may have undermined Jihadist appeal by exposing their willingness to slaughter other Muslims in their bid for a new Caliphate ... by forcing the battle into the heart of the Middle East, rather than in the West, the coalition is exposing internal rifts and dividing the Muslim world into its sane and insane camps. If the sane camp wins, we all win ... But if we can keep the fldegling Iraqi state somewhat stable, the potential benefit is that by using schismatic divisions in Islam, we can help isolate and undermine al Qaeda and Jihadism in general ... But the strategy is not a crazy one, even if it has emerged from the wreckage of incompetence.
This is just a rehashed version of the Epiphany theory pushed by the Wall Street Journal, that 9/11 was necessary to show Americans the threat of terrorism, and that the Saudis needed something similar to happen to them. Sully ups the ante by hoping that the bringing home of terrorism causes a schism within Islam that the West can ride to its own advantage -- not the kind of delicate operation that one wants this White House in charge of.
While this is a shite (one i) strategy for a war, there is one bit of supporting evidence for the effect it postulates -- the now fully released letter from al Zawahiri to al Zarqawi, which makes clear the split between al Qaeda HQ and its franchise in Iraq on the strategy of killing civilians and Shia:
But Mr. Zawahiri ... pointedly [warns] Mr. Zarqawi that such strikes amounted to "action that the masses do not understand or approve."
In the letter, Mr. Zawahiri compared the fierce war of resistance that Iraqis and foreign fighters have waged in Iraq since March 2003 with the speedy fall of Afghanistan's Taliban government after the American-led invasion there in 2001.
"We don't want to repeat the mistake of the Taliban, who restricted participation in governance to the students and the people of Kandahar alone," Mr. Zawahiri wrote. "The result was that the Afghan people disengaged themselves from them. Even devout ones took the stance of the spectator and, when the invasion came, the emirate collapsed in days, because the people were either passive or hostile."
"Therefore," Mr. Zawahiri wrote, "I stress again to you and to all your brothers the need to direct the political action equally with the military action, by the alliance, cooperation and gathering of all leaders of opinion and influence in the Iraqi arena."
This shreds the media criticism of the right, who complain that the Western media reports deaths from terrorism with the implicit goal of undermining the war back home. In fact, Zawahiri makes clear that it is precisely these images that undermine the insurgency and leave room for the split that Sully has now noticed. Incidentally, of interest to Irish readers must surely be that Zawahiri's last sentence above could easily be rephrased as "the Armalite in one hand and the ballot box in the other" -- perhaps soon to be the latest evidence on links between Northern Ireland and the GWOT.
Thursday, July 07, 2005
London
We're getting the same news as everyone else so not much point in posting about actual events. Instead some relevant previous posts:
1. Selective interpretation of claims of responsibility -- the case of Abu Hafs al-Masri [Brigades, that is, not to be confused with the similar-sounding Abu Hamza al-Masri, the loony cleric, who like the Brigades, is nicknamed for his nationality, Egyptian].
2. Flypaper
3. Terrorism as an "Epiphany"
4. Madrid.
UPDATE: Our first note of what will be many entries in the annals of reactionary idiocy: Christopher Hitchens, who can't get his facts right:
Looking for possible timings or pretexts, one of course comes up against the meeting of the G8 powers in Edinburgh and perhaps the imminent British spot in the rotating chair of the European Union.
Imminent? It already is.
2ND UPDATE: Send in the buffoons -- Rummy shows the poor adaptability of rhetoric across borders:
Statement by Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld on London Bombings
... Before long, I suspect that those responsible for these acts will encounter British steel. Their kind of steel has an uncommon strength. It does not bend or break.
The problem is that for many people, mention of "British Steel" invokes two things: Judas Priest, or the bad old days of British industrial collapse.
UPDATE 10 JULY: Our item #1 above has increased in relevance; the Brigades have now claimed responsibility for the bombing. And UPDATE 20 JULY: The Brigades issue a threat -- one month for UK, Italy and Denmark to withdraw from Iraq or further attacks will take place.
We're getting the same news as everyone else so not much point in posting about actual events. Instead some relevant previous posts:
1. Selective interpretation of claims of responsibility -- the case of Abu Hafs al-Masri [Brigades, that is, not to be confused with the similar-sounding Abu Hamza al-Masri, the loony cleric, who like the Brigades, is nicknamed for his nationality, Egyptian].
2. Flypaper
3. Terrorism as an "Epiphany"
4. Madrid.
UPDATE: Our first note of what will be many entries in the annals of reactionary idiocy: Christopher Hitchens, who can't get his facts right:
Looking for possible timings or pretexts, one of course comes up against the meeting of the G8 powers in Edinburgh and perhaps the imminent British spot in the rotating chair of the European Union.
Imminent? It already is.
2ND UPDATE: Send in the buffoons -- Rummy shows the poor adaptability of rhetoric across borders:
Statement by Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld on London Bombings
... Before long, I suspect that those responsible for these acts will encounter British steel. Their kind of steel has an uncommon strength. It does not bend or break.
The problem is that for many people, mention of "British Steel" invokes two things: Judas Priest, or the bad old days of British industrial collapse.
UPDATE 10 JULY: Our item #1 above has increased in relevance; the Brigades have now claimed responsibility for the bombing. And UPDATE 20 JULY: The Brigades issue a threat -- one month for UK, Italy and Denmark to withdraw from Iraq or further attacks will take place.
Wednesday, June 29, 2005
If it doesn't feel good, don't do it
If Dubya's speech last night was supposed to offer greater candour, there is much analysis here of why it didn't. Here's another example. Having hitched his wagon to the flypaper strategy, you'd think he'd be eager to list the nationalities of foreign fighters in Iraq. He was, up to a point:
Our military reports that we have killed or captured hundreds of foreign fighters in Iraq who have come from Saudi Arabia and Syria, Iran, Egypt, Sudan, Yemen, Libya and others.
"and others." Like some European countries that, for whatever reason, Dubya doesn't want to annoy right now, via the Sunday Times:
ABOUT 70 young Muslim men have left Britain to join the insurgents who are fighting coalition troops in Iraq, senior security sources have revealed.
At least three have been killed in combat, including one whose role in an Iraq suicide bombing in February was disclosed by police only last week.
The growing problem of militants from Britain travelling to Iraq has been highlighted by Eliza Manningham-Buller, director-general of MI5, in recent briefings to Tony Blair.
Looks like the straight-talkin' Dubya is letting diplomatic niceties interfere with speaking the truth to the Merkin people.
UPDATE 29 JUNE: God forbid we have anything semi-complimentary to say about James Taranto's OpinionJournal.com, but they also make note of Bush's unusual country list above and pursue the logic of one of his famous promises, that countries harboring and supporting terrorism will also feel the wrath of the US -- yet these countries have not. Broadening the list to western countries would of course have complicated that issue even more.
Our military reports that we have killed or captured hundreds of foreign fighters in Iraq who have come from Saudi Arabia and Syria, Iran, Egypt, Sudan, Yemen, Libya and others.
"and others." Like some European countries that, for whatever reason, Dubya doesn't want to annoy right now, via the Sunday Times:
ABOUT 70 young Muslim men have left Britain to join the insurgents who are fighting coalition troops in Iraq, senior security sources have revealed.
At least three have been killed in combat, including one whose role in an Iraq suicide bombing in February was disclosed by police only last week.
The growing problem of militants from Britain travelling to Iraq has been highlighted by Eliza Manningham-Buller, director-general of MI5, in recent briefings to Tony Blair.
Looks like the straight-talkin' Dubya is letting diplomatic niceties interfere with speaking the truth to the Merkin people.
UPDATE 29 JUNE: God forbid we have anything semi-complimentary to say about James Taranto's OpinionJournal.com, but they also make note of Bush's unusual country list above and pursue the logic of one of his famous promises, that countries harboring and supporting terrorism will also feel the wrath of the US -- yet these countries have not. Broadening the list to western countries would of course have complicated that issue even more.
Thursday, February 17, 2005
The evolution of the terrorist species
There's surely an irony in the fact that while Dubya's administration doesn't believe in the theory of evolution and doesn't want anyone else to believe it either, his handpicked CIA chief nicely outlines a geopolitical version of the theory now unfolding in Iraq:
In his first public appearance as U.S. spymaster, CIA Director Porter Goss told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence there was an emerging terrorist threat from experienced fighters now battling U.S.-led forces in Iraq later joining international militants.
"Those jihadists who survive will leave Iraq experienced in and focused on acts of urban terrorism. They represent a potential pool of contacts to build transnational terrorist cells, groups and networks," Goss said.
Now remember that the one-time (albeit ex post) logic for invading Iraq was 'flypaper' -- a fight that would attract terrorist pests to a single point where they could be killed. It seems therefore that the US has created a new class of, er, superfly.
There's surely an irony in the fact that while Dubya's administration doesn't believe in the theory of evolution and doesn't want anyone else to believe it either, his handpicked CIA chief nicely outlines a geopolitical version of the theory now unfolding in Iraq:
In his first public appearance as U.S. spymaster, CIA Director Porter Goss told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence there was an emerging terrorist threat from experienced fighters now battling U.S.-led forces in Iraq later joining international militants.
"Those jihadists who survive will leave Iraq experienced in and focused on acts of urban terrorism. They represent a potential pool of contacts to build transnational terrorist cells, groups and networks," Goss said.
Now remember that the one-time (albeit ex post) logic for invading Iraq was 'flypaper' -- a fight that would attract terrorist pests to a single point where they could be killed. It seems therefore that the US has created a new class of, er, superfly.
Saturday, November 06, 2004
Devaluing the values voters
Remember when we said that we wouldn't be reading any of the post-election punditry, given its inevitable reliance on a bogus notion of morality? We lied. At least a little. Because we ventured into some of the election analysis in Saturday's New York Times. One thing is clear -- Dubya's blue state boosters have reacted pretty badly to the implication of the election they have common cause with the likes of Ella-May from Mobile, Alabama.
So there's a big pushback against the already famous moral values question on the exit polls and the related focus on gay marriage as the sleeper issue in the election. The morals question acted like flypaper to the Dubya-voting respondents. It's pretty tough being someone like David "smart conservative" Brooks, moving in the urbane circles of Ardmore Pa. and Bethesda Md. and seeing the messianic appeal of Dubya to JesusCountry voters.
So Brooks, in a piece called "the values-vote myth" and Andrew Sullivan, inter alia, push a two-part critique: (1) the percentage of voters from various religious classifications didn't change much from the 2000 election, so there's no sign of a new voting block being driven to vote by moral issues, and (2) the moral values question on the exit poll itself is flawed, because it's a catch-all term picking up "none of the above" responses in the poll.
Both elements of the critique are, of course, shite. First, unchanged voter composition: elections are decided by numbers, not percentages. Both parties did a much better job of voter mobilisation than 2000 -- there is more of every category voting, but, at the risk of sounding like an economist, there's still the question of how each party managed to appeal to those additional voters. Republicans needed additional numbers of evangelical voters to offset highly motivated new Democratic voters i.e. they needed an issue to tip previously lukewarm evangelicals into going to the polls. And what better than conjuring up for such people the spectacle of weddings involving men of the same gender in polygamous marriages with household pets?
Second, the flawed poll question. Gary Langer, the ABC director of polling, who was on the committee that selected the question (against his wishes) says:
This distortion comes from a question in the exit poll, co-sponsored by the national television networks and The Associated Press, that asked voters what was the most important issue in their decision: taxes, education, Iraq, terrorism, economy/jobs, moral values or health care. Six of these are concrete, specific issues. The seventh, moral values, is not, and its presence on the list produced a misleading result ... this hot-button catch phrase had no place alongside defined political issues on the list of most important concerns in the 2004 vote.
Notice the circular logic here: I, the pollster, believe that elections are decided by "issues." Therefore, any voter response to something that is not "an issue" is evidence that the poll question is wrong. But look at the actual campaign that Dubya ran: short of specific policy proposals, and long on references to his own leadership, resolve, and moral values (including the phrase hijacked from the Vatican, his reverence for a "culture of life").
And it's telling that analysts who, unlike Brooks and Sullivan, are unencumbered by the need to disassociate themselves from a particular narrative, are likewise skeptical:
But Bill McInturff, a Republican pollster, called critiques "garbage.''
"The people who picked moral values as an issue know what that means," he said. "It's a code word in surveys for a cluster of issues like gay marriage and abortion."
Mr. McInturff said that if "moral values" was really a "catchall" with a confused meaning, then more Democrats would have picked it. Of the 22 percent who chose "moral values," 80 percent were Bush supporters, 20 percent were Kerry supporters. "It's self-selected by people for whom these issues are very important for their votes," he said, adding that the margin by which Mr. Bush carried these voters arguably made the difference in the election.
So here's our word of probably useless advice for disappointed liberals: tune out the self-serving drivel of the crypto and smart conservatives, and the self-hating liberals (like Richard Cohen). What's wrong with taking seriously the winning side's own explanation of how they won?
UPDATE: As a special service to our readers, we link here to the schedule of Bill Maher's show on HBO this week, for additional chances to catch a bizarre spectacle involving the aforementioned Andrew Sullivan, brought to national attention by James Wolcott.
FURTHER UPDATE [Nov 15]: The angry old man of the Vast Rightwing Conspiracy is pushing the Brooksian line, with his own nasty insinuations thrown in. Charles Krauthammer, who we previously posted about when he was using the Stalinist trick of equating dissent with mental illness, has that plus so much more in this section from his currrent rant (in the Washington Post and WSJ):
In the post-election analyses, the liberal elite, led by the holy trinity of The New York Times -- Krugman, Friedman, and Dowd -- just about lost its mind denouncing the return of medieval primitivism. As usual, Maureen Dowd achieved the highest level of hysteria,
Here's an experiment: suppose that a liberal columnist referred to the 'holy trinity' of the neocons, Krauthammer, Wolfowitz and (say) Andrew Sullivan, and went on to label Ann Coulter as 'hysterical' -- anyone want to guess what the lines of attack from the right would be?
EVEN FURTHER UPDATE [Nov 17]: Brad DeLong links to a post that is very apropos the question of whether voters think about "issues" the same way that pollsters do.
ONE FINAL UPDATE (Dec 23). Opinion polls are shown a clear plunge in support for the Iraq war. The plunge is pronounced since the election. Pundits scratch their heads and wonder why Dubya got elected if the war was so latently unpopular -- it's as if those voters were all worked up about other issues in election season ... like moral values!
Remember when we said that we wouldn't be reading any of the post-election punditry, given its inevitable reliance on a bogus notion of morality? We lied. At least a little. Because we ventured into some of the election analysis in Saturday's New York Times. One thing is clear -- Dubya's blue state boosters have reacted pretty badly to the implication of the election they have common cause with the likes of Ella-May from Mobile, Alabama.
So there's a big pushback against the already famous moral values question on the exit polls and the related focus on gay marriage as the sleeper issue in the election. The morals question acted like flypaper to the Dubya-voting respondents. It's pretty tough being someone like David "smart conservative" Brooks, moving in the urbane circles of Ardmore Pa. and Bethesda Md. and seeing the messianic appeal of Dubya to JesusCountry voters.
So Brooks, in a piece called "the values-vote myth" and Andrew Sullivan, inter alia, push a two-part critique: (1) the percentage of voters from various religious classifications didn't change much from the 2000 election, so there's no sign of a new voting block being driven to vote by moral issues, and (2) the moral values question on the exit poll itself is flawed, because it's a catch-all term picking up "none of the above" responses in the poll.
Both elements of the critique are, of course, shite. First, unchanged voter composition: elections are decided by numbers, not percentages. Both parties did a much better job of voter mobilisation than 2000 -- there is more of every category voting, but, at the risk of sounding like an economist, there's still the question of how each party managed to appeal to those additional voters. Republicans needed additional numbers of evangelical voters to offset highly motivated new Democratic voters i.e. they needed an issue to tip previously lukewarm evangelicals into going to the polls. And what better than conjuring up for such people the spectacle of weddings involving men of the same gender in polygamous marriages with household pets?
Second, the flawed poll question. Gary Langer, the ABC director of polling, who was on the committee that selected the question (against his wishes) says:
This distortion comes from a question in the exit poll, co-sponsored by the national television networks and The Associated Press, that asked voters what was the most important issue in their decision: taxes, education, Iraq, terrorism, economy/jobs, moral values or health care. Six of these are concrete, specific issues. The seventh, moral values, is not, and its presence on the list produced a misleading result ... this hot-button catch phrase had no place alongside defined political issues on the list of most important concerns in the 2004 vote.
Notice the circular logic here: I, the pollster, believe that elections are decided by "issues." Therefore, any voter response to something that is not "an issue" is evidence that the poll question is wrong. But look at the actual campaign that Dubya ran: short of specific policy proposals, and long on references to his own leadership, resolve, and moral values (including the phrase hijacked from the Vatican, his reverence for a "culture of life").
And it's telling that analysts who, unlike Brooks and Sullivan, are unencumbered by the need to disassociate themselves from a particular narrative, are likewise skeptical:
But Bill McInturff, a Republican pollster, called critiques "garbage.''
"The people who picked moral values as an issue know what that means," he said. "It's a code word in surveys for a cluster of issues like gay marriage and abortion."
Mr. McInturff said that if "moral values" was really a "catchall" with a confused meaning, then more Democrats would have picked it. Of the 22 percent who chose "moral values," 80 percent were Bush supporters, 20 percent were Kerry supporters. "It's self-selected by people for whom these issues are very important for their votes," he said, adding that the margin by which Mr. Bush carried these voters arguably made the difference in the election.
So here's our word of probably useless advice for disappointed liberals: tune out the self-serving drivel of the crypto and smart conservatives, and the self-hating liberals (like Richard Cohen). What's wrong with taking seriously the winning side's own explanation of how they won?
UPDATE: As a special service to our readers, we link here to the schedule of Bill Maher's show on HBO this week, for additional chances to catch a bizarre spectacle involving the aforementioned Andrew Sullivan, brought to national attention by James Wolcott.
FURTHER UPDATE [Nov 15]: The angry old man of the Vast Rightwing Conspiracy is pushing the Brooksian line, with his own nasty insinuations thrown in. Charles Krauthammer, who we previously posted about when he was using the Stalinist trick of equating dissent with mental illness, has that plus so much more in this section from his currrent rant (in the Washington Post and WSJ):
In the post-election analyses, the liberal elite, led by the holy trinity of The New York Times -- Krugman, Friedman, and Dowd -- just about lost its mind denouncing the return of medieval primitivism. As usual, Maureen Dowd achieved the highest level of hysteria,
Here's an experiment: suppose that a liberal columnist referred to the 'holy trinity' of the neocons, Krauthammer, Wolfowitz and (say) Andrew Sullivan, and went on to label Ann Coulter as 'hysterical' -- anyone want to guess what the lines of attack from the right would be?
EVEN FURTHER UPDATE [Nov 17]: Brad DeLong links to a post that is very apropos the question of whether voters think about "issues" the same way that pollsters do.
ONE FINAL UPDATE (Dec 23). Opinion polls are shown a clear plunge in support for the Iraq war. The plunge is pronounced since the election. Pundits scratch their heads and wonder why Dubya got elected if the war was so latently unpopular -- it's as if those voters were all worked up about other issues in election season ... like moral values!
Monday, September 20, 2004
Washington's Belfast follies
There are at least two bad ways to run the War on Terror. One is to make up strategy as you go along. The other is to repeatedly draw the worst of strategies from previous Wars on Terror. There's already ample evidence of the first approach from Dubya but now -- as we warned months ago -- Northern Ireland is coming along to bolster the second. And in case the Northern Ireland musings to which we draw your attention seem outside the mainstream media and policy circles, don't expect it to stay that way; remember that flypaper began a piece of warblogger rubbish (that the war in Iraq was good because it was attracting the world's super-terrorists to Iraq to be killed) but before long was showing up as respectable mainsteam opinion.
And so it is with Northern Ireland. We drew your attention before to how the infamous "torture memos" drafted by Dubya's lawyers relied on the human rights cases brought against the British government in the European Court of Justice in the 1970s. Now comes internment. It's all so predictable. Michelle Malkin puts it into circulation with a book tied in with cable news channel appearances. The book is analytically shoddy, but that doesn't matter -- the idea is now in play. So for instance, the Crooked Timber blog catches someone seeing Michelle's analysis of internment of Japanese-Americans in WWII, and upping the ante with Northern Ireland in the 1970s:
[Crooked Timber excerpt from a linked article] Great Britain's [sic] indefinite internment policy, formalized in 1973 following the recommendations of a famous report authored by Lord Diplock on the situation in Northern Ireland, was allowed to lapse in 1980...Though his reform [sic] proposal...made preventive detention a matter of administrative, not judicial, oversight, the new policy reasserted civilian control and included due process safeguards. No less a figure than the secretary of state for Northern Ireland made initial detention determinations. Within a period of 28 days, an administrative official would then review each case with the option to extend the detention.
This account is so pathetic that it has us wondering if the author is actually a Sinn Fein plant so skillfully does it embarrass the kind of policies than the Shinners would oppose. If you know anything about the north, try to contain your laughter as you see the glowing references to Diplock (whose name is normally associated with the use of non-jury trials in the north), and the idea that internment had safeguards because it was placed in the hands of administrative officials. Yes folks, the original Securocrats.
And we're supposed to be impressed that the Secretary of State had to sign off on these things. Technically, Dubya and Rummy had to sign off on a whole bunch of stuff related to the Gitmo and Abu Ghraib detainees, but of course they were nowhere to be found in the chain of responsibility when things went pear-shaped. But when you're done laughing, remember: this kind of idiocy is influential in the US right now.
There are at least two bad ways to run the War on Terror. One is to make up strategy as you go along. The other is to repeatedly draw the worst of strategies from previous Wars on Terror. There's already ample evidence of the first approach from Dubya but now -- as we warned months ago -- Northern Ireland is coming along to bolster the second. And in case the Northern Ireland musings to which we draw your attention seem outside the mainstream media and policy circles, don't expect it to stay that way; remember that flypaper began a piece of warblogger rubbish (that the war in Iraq was good because it was attracting the world's super-terrorists to Iraq to be killed) but before long was showing up as respectable mainsteam opinion.
And so it is with Northern Ireland. We drew your attention before to how the infamous "torture memos" drafted by Dubya's lawyers relied on the human rights cases brought against the British government in the European Court of Justice in the 1970s. Now comes internment. It's all so predictable. Michelle Malkin puts it into circulation with a book tied in with cable news channel appearances. The book is analytically shoddy, but that doesn't matter -- the idea is now in play. So for instance, the Crooked Timber blog catches someone seeing Michelle's analysis of internment of Japanese-Americans in WWII, and upping the ante with Northern Ireland in the 1970s:
[Crooked Timber excerpt from a linked article] Great Britain's [sic] indefinite internment policy, formalized in 1973 following the recommendations of a famous report authored by Lord Diplock on the situation in Northern Ireland, was allowed to lapse in 1980...Though his reform [sic] proposal...made preventive detention a matter of administrative, not judicial, oversight, the new policy reasserted civilian control and included due process safeguards. No less a figure than the secretary of state for Northern Ireland made initial detention determinations. Within a period of 28 days, an administrative official would then review each case with the option to extend the detention.
This account is so pathetic that it has us wondering if the author is actually a Sinn Fein plant so skillfully does it embarrass the kind of policies than the Shinners would oppose. If you know anything about the north, try to contain your laughter as you see the glowing references to Diplock (whose name is normally associated with the use of non-jury trials in the north), and the idea that internment had safeguards because it was placed in the hands of administrative officials. Yes folks, the original Securocrats.
And we're supposed to be impressed that the Secretary of State had to sign off on these things. Technically, Dubya and Rummy had to sign off on a whole bunch of stuff related to the Gitmo and Abu Ghraib detainees, but of course they were nowhere to be found in the chain of responsibility when things went pear-shaped. But when you're done laughing, remember: this kind of idiocy is influential in the US right now.
Sunday, March 14, 2004
Madrid
So by stalling for 48 hours with the Blame the Basques strategy, the Partido Popular may sneak through in Sunday's election, and provide valuable time for the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy to cook up some spin about these attacks. Part of this will involve a simple cut-and-paste of their 9/11 rhetoric, with the 9 changed to a 3, but as Sullywatch notes, this puts them out of step with European practice, which is to put the date first. If the VRWC was watching CNN en Espanol like us, instead of getting their news nuggets from Fox News, they would know that the correct designation along date lines is 11-M.
But let's not them frame the issue as follows: the 200 deaths are a worthy sacrifice for a worthy war in Iraq, of which Spain was justified in being a part. No. Those 200 people died because the Iraq war was stupid. Remember how it was sold -- it was part of the War on Terror. Saddam was habouring terrorists. And even the subsequent insurgency generated a new rationale -- the flypaper theory. The insurgency would attract terrorists from around the world to fight against the overwhelming force of the US military in Iraq, saving the rest of the world from their activities. Anyone who tried to make opposing points -- that Iraq was a problem but not a terrorist problem, that the war in Iraq would distract from the pursuit of al Qaeda -- was shouted down as a traitor, or worse still, as a French-lover.
A few months ago, the rumour in Washington was that Dubya would seek to appoint the now retired Jose Maria Aznar to succeed Kofi Annan. 11-M shows that Aznar is a buffoon who liked to play global statesman one year ago in the Azores, and now 200 people from Madrid have paid the price for his neglect of real threats to Spain. Maybe putting him in Annan's position would be part of Dubya's brilliant plan to destroy the UN entirely.
Meanwhile, in the Irish satellite operation of the VRWC, the news of al Qaeda involvement came too late for the Sunday papers. Because the Sunday Independent, David "Simply British" Trimble, and the Republic's Justice Minister Michael McDowell, are all hooked on the ETA theory because it's a way to flog the IRA:
...the Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble, who is in Washington for the annual St Patrick's Day political gathering, called on Sinn Fein and the IRA to end its close links with ETA and other foreign terrorist groups.
Mr Trimble said: "It's not absolutely clear yet who perpetrated these terrible deeds in Spain but ETA is still the prime suspect for it. I say to Mr Adams and Sinn Fein that they must end all links with ETA and terminate the party's globe-trotting around the world to fraternise with similar revolutionary elements."
....Meanwhile, the Minister for Justice, Michael McDowell has stepped up his attack on Sinn Fein/IRA.
He said: "Let me say clearly that republicanism does not speak in muffled voice through a balaclava...No true Republican movement in modern Ireland would make common cause with the narco-terrorists of the Communist FARC in Colombia; or with the repressive Castro regime of Cuba; or with the murderous zealots of ETA."
But let's not them frame the issue as follows: the 200 deaths are a worthy sacrifice for a worthy war in Iraq, of which Spain was justified in being a part. No. Those 200 people died because the Iraq war was stupid. Remember how it was sold -- it was part of the War on Terror. Saddam was habouring terrorists. And even the subsequent insurgency generated a new rationale -- the flypaper theory. The insurgency would attract terrorists from around the world to fight against the overwhelming force of the US military in Iraq, saving the rest of the world from their activities. Anyone who tried to make opposing points -- that Iraq was a problem but not a terrorist problem, that the war in Iraq would distract from the pursuit of al Qaeda -- was shouted down as a traitor, or worse still, as a French-lover.
A few months ago, the rumour in Washington was that Dubya would seek to appoint the now retired Jose Maria Aznar to succeed Kofi Annan. 11-M shows that Aznar is a buffoon who liked to play global statesman one year ago in the Azores, and now 200 people from Madrid have paid the price for his neglect of real threats to Spain. Maybe putting him in Annan's position would be part of Dubya's brilliant plan to destroy the UN entirely.
Meanwhile, in the Irish satellite operation of the VRWC, the news of al Qaeda involvement came too late for the Sunday papers. Because the Sunday Independent, David "Simply British" Trimble, and the Republic's Justice Minister Michael McDowell, are all hooked on the ETA theory because it's a way to flog the IRA:
...the Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble, who is in Washington for the annual St Patrick's Day political gathering, called on Sinn Fein and the IRA to end its close links with ETA and other foreign terrorist groups.
Mr Trimble said: "It's not absolutely clear yet who perpetrated these terrible deeds in Spain but ETA is still the prime suspect for it. I say to Mr Adams and Sinn Fein that they must end all links with ETA and terminate the party's globe-trotting around the world to fraternise with similar revolutionary elements."
....Meanwhile, the Minister for Justice, Michael McDowell has stepped up his attack on Sinn Fein/IRA.
He said: "Let me say clearly that republicanism does not speak in muffled voice through a balaclava...No true Republican movement in modern Ireland would make common cause with the narco-terrorists of the Communist FARC in Colombia; or with the repressive Castro regime of Cuba; or with the murderous zealots of ETA."
Tuesday, August 26, 2003
All terrorism is local
Much of the reactionary blog community seems to have followed the example of the Dear Leader and taken August off. So in the absence of the daily barrage of lunacy on Opinionjournal.com, one has to go the Wall Street Journal editorials to see the underlying mentality at work. We've noted before two recurring themes of much of the reactionary commentary on terrorism: the Epiphany Theme and the SPECTRE theme.
The first compares a terrorist event to the first sighting of the Messiah, in its ability to open our eyes to things we just hadn't seen before. The second views terrorist events as being coordinated from a stylish Bauhaus style bunker, in which various aspiring Dr. Evils (Kim Jong Il, Osama, Saddam, Yassir Arafat, and Jacques Chirac) allocate terrorist resources in reaction to strategic moves by the US. The two themes collide in today's WSJ editorial on the Bombay atrocity:
...All of this [Bombay] once again shows how the fight against terrorism is global. That's a lesson that doesn't yet seem to have fully hit home in India, judging from New Delhi's recent rejection of a U.S. request to send 15,000 troops to help restore order and combat terrorism in Iraq...
...The U.S. has recognized that India has its own terror problem, and has pressured Pakistan to stop winking at terrorists in Kashmir...We think India could have helped build even closer U.S. ties had it decided to send troops to Iraq. The U.S. has driven a wedge into the center of Muslim terrorism with its occupation of Iraq, and it is looking to see who its friends really are.
As usual one gasps at the implicit and explicit "logic" here: India is not serious about fighting terrorism because it wouldn't send troops to Iraq, but thanks to the bombing, maybe it now will get serious; Iraq is the center of Muslim terrorism -- can they name a single Islamic terrorist event outside Iraq attributable to Iraqis? And since even the editorial seems to agree that the Indian terrorism problem is concentrated in Kashmir, how exactly does invading Iraq amelioriate that problem? Unless they mean the preposterous flypaper theory, within which global terrorist resources are allocated by SPECTRE into the Iraq trap laid for them by the US.
Ever get the feeling that US foreign policy is being run by people who think Bombay is a brand of gin and Kashmir is a Led Zeppelin song?
Much of the reactionary blog community seems to have followed the example of the Dear Leader and taken August off. So in the absence of the daily barrage of lunacy on Opinionjournal.com, one has to go the Wall Street Journal editorials to see the underlying mentality at work. We've noted before two recurring themes of much of the reactionary commentary on terrorism: the Epiphany Theme and the SPECTRE theme.
The first compares a terrorist event to the first sighting of the Messiah, in its ability to open our eyes to things we just hadn't seen before. The second views terrorist events as being coordinated from a stylish Bauhaus style bunker, in which various aspiring Dr. Evils (Kim Jong Il, Osama, Saddam, Yassir Arafat, and Jacques Chirac) allocate terrorist resources in reaction to strategic moves by the US. The two themes collide in today's WSJ editorial on the Bombay atrocity:
...All of this [Bombay] once again shows how the fight against terrorism is global. That's a lesson that doesn't yet seem to have fully hit home in India, judging from New Delhi's recent rejection of a U.S. request to send 15,000 troops to help restore order and combat terrorism in Iraq...
...The U.S. has recognized that India has its own terror problem, and has pressured Pakistan to stop winking at terrorists in Kashmir...We think India could have helped build even closer U.S. ties had it decided to send troops to Iraq. The U.S. has driven a wedge into the center of Muslim terrorism with its occupation of Iraq, and it is looking to see who its friends really are.
As usual one gasps at the implicit and explicit "logic" here: India is not serious about fighting terrorism because it wouldn't send troops to Iraq, but thanks to the bombing, maybe it now will get serious; Iraq is the center of Muslim terrorism -- can they name a single Islamic terrorist event outside Iraq attributable to Iraqis? And since even the editorial seems to agree that the Indian terrorism problem is concentrated in Kashmir, how exactly does invading Iraq amelioriate that problem? Unless they mean the preposterous flypaper theory, within which global terrorist resources are allocated by SPECTRE into the Iraq trap laid for them by the US.
Ever get the feeling that US foreign policy is being run by people who think Bombay is a brand of gin and Kashmir is a Led Zeppelin song?
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