Speedkill

Peter Beinart’s The Good Fight is an interesting, but flawed, book.

Beinart’s book breaks down into two parts. The first half of the book is a history of cold war liberalism and its influence on American foreign policy. Beinart lionizes Harry Truman as a model for hawkish liberal foreign policy, as would be expected from a hawkish liberal. As others have pointed out, his portrait of Truman and his history of the cold war is oversimplified and a bit contrived. Beinart attemps to paint Truman as more of a multilateralist than he may actually have been, using NATO as an example of deference to foreign countries. Just how much influence other countries in NATO had or wanted is debatable, though it does look like Truman made some statements in the direction of allowing other countries to have a say. More than you can say for the current administration, but it doesn’t make Beinart’s examples any more convincing. In all honesty, I wonder about the point of this half of the book. Beinart wants to make some points by analogy, but is 100 pages of history necessary? It feels like an extended introduction more than a necessary portion of the book. Given the short length of the book (just over 200 pages), I’m inclined to think it’s just padding.

The second half is a critique of Bush’s approach to the war on terrorism and an argument for what we should actually be doing. Beinart makes a powerful argument for taking the war on terrorism seriously. Instead of seeing actual harm from terrorists as the main worry, he points out that further attacks will almost certainly curail our freedoms more than they already have been. So while terrorists will likely not cause a lot of actual damage, they’re still a threat to our country due to the fear they create.

Beinart continues with an explanation for terrorism. This is where he begins to go off course. He correctly notes that it is who we are that causes terrorism, but what we do. He correctly notes that our presence in Saudi Arabia is a major contributor to terrorism, but also argues that the poverty of the region is a significant cause.

Now, we know suicide terrorists are not poorer and less educated than the societies they come from. It’s the opposite, in fact. The data we have shows that. Beinart argues that this is a result of skimming off the top:

Terrorist groups are, after all, like any other employer: They accept the best candidates who apply. The University of Pennsylvania’s Marc Sageman estimates that only 10 to 30 percent of the people trained at Al Qaeda camps in the 1990s were invited to join the organization. And of those, an even smaller number were selected for spectacular attacks like 9/11, which require living undercover for years in the West. By design, these jihadist elites are more cosmopolitan, and better educated, than the movement they represent.

This is decent enough as an explanation of why terrorist organizations pick more upscale people. It doesn’t help Beinart’s argument much, though. He wants to claim that improving the Arab world socially and economically will solve our problems. First, it shows al Qaeda’s goals have a significant political attraction to people who are doing pretty well in life. Second, what makes al Qaeda so deadly is the competence brought by more cosmopolitan recruits. Shouldn’t we be focused on that? Without the people to organize, direct, and carryout complex operations, the threat just isn’t so impressive. Beinart’s claim is that the poor and uneducated masses in the Middle East provide crucial support to groups like al Qaeda. This is true enough. The nature of suicide terrorism is such that it depends on a replenishing pool of recruits along with popular support in order to hide among a population. Now, improving the living conditions of the Middle East isn’t going to decrease the pool of important recruits for al Qaeda. If anything, it increases them, as there will be more competent educated people in the region. What about the overall support of a community? Even if the poor are more likely to join a group like al Qaeda, we know that al Qaeda attracts the non-poor in significant numbers, as I said above. What guarantee do we have that the political attraction will diminish enough that the low level support of communities will disappear? None. I think Beinart fails to provide a full argument that his proposed remedies will do enough. His only example is the tsunami that devasted Indonesia. The citizens of that region became much less hostile to our war on terrorism after we reversed ourselves and offered a great deal of aid to them. However, Indonesia is hardly a significant source of recruits in the first place. Places that meet Robert Pape’s criteria (occupation by a democracy of a different religion) would be a real test.

Beinart’s proposed solutions are good in and of themselves, but I’m skeptical about their efficacy in eliminating jihadist terrorism. Sure, if we make Saudi Arabia look like Germany, it’s hard to imagine it spawning a significant number of bin Ladens. But how long is that going to take? 30 years? 50? We’re at rock bottom and we have the overwhelming hostility of the region to deal with. Perhaps we should be pursuing such policies, but I’m not sure we should be thinking it’s a good solution. Certainly we can’t abandon the region (which would, in all likelihood, solve our problems), but going the opposite direction is likely to take a long time and probably make things worse before they get better.

Beinart makes solid arguments that Bush’s policies are wrong and the ideas of the Michael Moores of the world are not much better. Beinart’s solution is more palatable than either of them, but I wonder if it’s really what we need. I’m all for national greatness liberalism and promoting reform in the Arab world, but I have my doubts about it being the solution.

So, I was flipping channels a bit ago and went past C-SPAN. I was slightly surprised at what they have on. They have Alex Jones and a bunch of like minded people discussing 9/11. When I say discuss, I mean ranting about how 9/11 was an inside job. That’s what’s on C-SPAN.

So, what, is the next show a panel discussion on how the Holocaust is a Jewish conspiracy? Surely C-SPAN has some useful programming somewhere.

Our topic: Dave Budge linked to a post on The Huffington Post. Wulfgar is less than happy.

The post Budge linked to is a list of “75 questions to ask progressives.” To give you a taste, I’ll quote what Budge quoted:

- IF ‘dissent is patriotic’ then why are you guys being so brutal to Joe Lieberman for dissenting from you on Iraq?

- If gay marriage is such a slam dunk civil right, why did you sit on your asses while Clinton AND Gore came up with and signed the Defense of Marriage Act?

- Can you explain globalization and why it’s bad without sounding like a gibbering idiot?

-Is ‘progressive’ the best euphemism you’ve got?

-How come all of you were suspicious of Arianna when she was a Republican yet think her aspirations now that she’s a ‘progressive’ are based upon deep conviction?

- Are israeli soldiers more contemptible than terrorists?

-Could it be possible that your ‘all Republicans are stupid or evil’ schtick from bumpersticker to watercooler to cocktail chatter causes everyone else to feel very uncomfortable, but they just chalk
up your rudeness to a simple mind?

-Did you know that satellite imagery reveals that Barbara Boxer is actually a lemur?

-do you think JFK would approve of Michael Moore?
-do you think RFK would approve of Teddy Kennedy?
-do you think Teddy Kennedy would approve of reduced fat Pringles?

Dave says when introducing the list:

People who know me understand that I don’t have a prudish bone in my body and I too engage in unseemly name calling. There are some times when only one word will do justice in a descriptive passage. I do, however, more enjoy when offensive comments are bit more heady.

I think that’s enough set up. I’m inclined to agree with Budge about “offensive” or vulgar commentary. When such comments are in the service of an argument or illustrate a point, I have no problem with them. I’m a huge fan of Penn & Teller’s Bullshit!, a show that reaches extraordinary heights of vulgarity and one that I disagree with fairly often (damn libertarians). I’m hardly nice to some of the people I ridicule on here, as well.

I can’t say that the list in question really qualifies, though. It consists of a) jokes targeting liberal figures, which are funny if you happen to dislike the particular figure, but aren’t exactly thoughtful and b) gotcha questions that seem insightful to people who aren’t liberals and possess a certain mental portrait of them. It’s neither offensiveness for the sake of riling people up, which is its own topic and is rarely pushed as a serious part of political debate, nor is it vulgarity in the service of a point. It’s bottom of the barrel political sniping. Take the question: “If ‘dissent is patriotic’ then why are you guys being so brutal to Joe Lieberman for dissenting from you on Iraq?” If you’re a progressive and you can’t come up with a response to that question in about half a second, you’re an idiot. There is no shortage of idiotic progressives. There’s also no shortage of idiotic conservatives, libertarians, centrists, anarchists, communists, marxists, and so on. Mocking the idiots who associate themselves with a position on the political spectrum is a worthwhile goal, but pretending you’re mocking all of the people who have a certain ideology while making arguments that only stump the idiots is not. It and the related phenomenon of holding up the idiots as representative of an ideology seem to be why our discourse is so awful.

Maybe that’s more than this topic is worth, but blogs have inserted a great deal of vulgarity into national discourse. They are often filled with empty vitriol, so you have to be pretty dense not to understand some of the disdain from people like those who run TNR. On any given day, TNR has plenty of seriously argued pieces. Weakly argued pieces? There are plenty of those, too. What they rarely contain is the mindless partisan ranting that infests places like DKos. Ranting that serves no purpose other than to polarize us and keep us from solving much of anything. As blogs grow more popular at the expense of opinion journalism, I’m not entirely sure things are going to get better. The “elitism” of TNR or the polarizing vulgarity of DKos and Atrios? Forgive me for thinking that choice is not exactly cut and dry.

TNR rips Baucus:

There is something a bit troubling about the Democrats’ current obsession with discipline, as though there were no higher aspiration than matching the ruthless efficiency of the House Republicans. A political party is not the same as a Third World liberation movement. It ought to accommodate moments of dissent and occasional deviations from the party line without the forms of retribution that have recently taken hold in the liberal blogosphere.

But apostasy comes in gradations: There is heterodoxy, and then there is Montana Senator Max Baucus. Baucus isn’t in the mold of Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who flirted with reasonable ideas taboo among Democratic constituencies. He doesn’t take quirky procedural stands, à la Russ Feingold. He’s not even a Zell Miller-like figure who rhetorically strafes his party but does little substantive damage. What Baucus does is use his influence as the top Democrat on the Finance Committee to systematically undercut his party and enable George W. Bush’s most egregious domestic legislation. So why does his party entrust him with so much responsibility?

…

If you look closely enough at recent domestic policy debacles, you’ll invariably see his fingerprints. Facing George W. Bush’s massive tax-cut proposal in 2001, Baucus undermined the Senate Democrats’ strategy of forcing concessions by maintaining a united front. In private negotiations with his GOP counterpart, Chuck Grassley, Baucus produced a bill that handed the White House virtually all of its top priorities. Afterward, he boasted that he’d done Democrats a favor, since they “would have been in trouble in 2002 just saying no to every one of the president’s proposals.” We shudder to think what might have happened had the Democrats been labeled “obstructionist.”

My goodness! It’s almost like something you’d read on Kos. The fascists have taken over! Someone alert Lee Siegel!

I think I need to understand Jews better. I bear them no ill will. Some of them are good, kind and charitable people, and I have no desire to debate or convert them. I do think they are wrong about the biggest question and I will admit to occasionally viewing them with the kind of bewilderment often shown to me by Christians who can’t quite understand why the Good News of Jesus’ death and resurrection has not reached me. However, there is something I am missing about Jews: what I simply do not understand is why they’re so greedy.

So we disagree about religion. I’m sometimes at odds with Yankee fans, people who like rap music and people who don’t like animals, but I try to be civil. I don’t know many people who wake up thinking of new ways to keep the Jews out of the economy, but many people who believe in the Torah seem to find their neighbors terribly oppressive, particularly if the folks next door are Christians. I just don’t get it.

This must sound condescending and a large generalization, and I don’t mean it that way, but I am tempted to believe that behind Jewish greed there are oftentimes uncomfortable personal histories. Even the history of the people as a whole may have something to do with it. Perhaps their greed is the result of a past where Jews have been occasionally victimized without good reason. Perhaps it’s become genetic after being so insular throughout history. They had to become unscrupulous in order to survive. They thought they needed to ensure their survival against perceived aggressors by controlling the banks. I would ask for forgiveness from the angry Jews who do these things, but I doubt it would help. I fear it’s become too ingrained. We can’t apologize for wanting a stake in our own economy and we must remain vigilant in fighting the attempts of those who would take it from us.

Some of our leaders obviously betray the ethical code they claim to live by, but that code remains a critique of them and also of every thing we do to betray the better part of our nature. But our world is better and kinder and more hopeful because of the efforts of those who fight for our economic rights.

To be called to a level of goodness and vigilance in the face of such cunning and deviousness may seem a lost cause and an attack on the followers of the Jewish faith. However, such a vision need not be seen as a red flag to the people of Moses. I can humbly ask whether my Jewish brothers and sisters really believe that their lives are better, richer and more hopeful by clinging to their desire for more money and more power. I can agree to make peace with Jews whom I believe ask too much for their place in life here on planet earth if they will agree to make peace with me and with others who they perceive as oppressors. I believe that if we all treat each other with respect, we can work towards a fairer world for all. I urge my Jewish brothers and sisters to conduct themselves as the golden rule urges: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

And to try a little positivity. Last week I met up with a Jewish friend of mine to talk about school and life. He runs a bank here in town and we discussed some of the policies he has regarding his gentile customers. He told me “I think the difference between us is not so great. We are all human beings, we are all God’s creatures, and we should treat each other with fairness and respect.” Now there’s a Jew I can believe in.

…

So, think I can get that published in Newsweek?

(via The Secular Outpost)

I used to think Tony Snow wasn’t too bad for a right-wing Fox commentator. Sure, he’s said some stupid crap, but he was much more reasonable than, say, Brit Hume. Now that Snow is going to be Bush’s press secretary, I don’t know. I can’t imagine anyone of any integrity wanting to do that job for anyone. And for this administration? Even worse.

That’s as much thinking as I’m doing tonight. I’ve spent too much time working on a project for one of my classes. Damn robot (the project, that is).

I have nothing substantive to post, so I’m just going to make this comment. I believe this is exhibit a of reason 2 here. Bizarre.

This is a fine article. The MNA is a hysterically far-right organization with a habit of absolutely bizarre behavior. Yesterday, they published an article on Hersh’s latest reporting. There’s no real content; it’s a laundry list of personal attacks on Hersh. But it’s sorta fun to read:

So that’s the gist of Seymour Hersh’s article appearing in the New Yorker, a magazine that’s so snobbish even their cartoons are unfunny — unless you’re stoned on marijuana in which case everything gets a giggle.

Yeah! Stupid snobs.

Former military intelligence officer and NYPD detective Sidney Francis called Hersh’s article the “rantings of a has-been investigative reporter on crack.”

…

When Hersh made some false claims about the Iraq invasion plans, Pentagon adviser Richard Perle called him “the closest thing we have to a terrorist.”

…

But it’s when Seymour Hersh visits the halls of higher education that he shines the most. This is when he’s able to take off his gloves and flex his leftist muscles. His diatribes are well regarded by the dwellers of academia’s ivory towers, but they differ little from those of Michael Moore, Al “Stuart Smalley” Franken or Rosie O’Donnell.

One of these is not like the other…

Here’s what Seymour Hersh said during a keynote speech he gave at an ACLU event:

“I’ll tell you what an Israeli told me. And the Israelis as you know — a very tough, hard-nosed Israeli told me at one point, about all this — he said, you know, we hate the Arabs. This is a guy who spent his career in the intelligence service and, you know, his hands are bloody. He said, we hate the Arabs, and the Arabs hate us, and before 1948, we’ve been killing Arabs, and they’ve been killing us. But I have to tell you something, he said. We know somewhere down the line, we’re going to have to live with these people, much as we can’
t stand them, they’re going to have to be our neighbors. And if we had done in our prisons to the Arabs what you have done to the Arabs in your prisons, we couldn’t live that way.”

Not only does Hersh make up stories about the US military, he also makes them up about imaginary Israelis — or Israelis too dumb to know their own history of fighting terrorism and their enemies. Mr. Hersh has a lot to learn from the “pajama bloggers” about accuracy.

I like this kind of journalism. They state their thesis and gather evidence to support it. In this case, they claim Hersh is making this up. Their support? Uh, I’ll get back to you on that.

The only half-serious claim they make in the article is that Hersh hasn’t proved some of his stories. Seems to be a rather weak objection. He does rely on anonymous sources for a lot of his reporting, but it seems like he turns out to be right when we get more information.

Now, the closer:

Hersh, by his own admission, plays loose and fancy-free with the truth. New York Magazine writer Chis Suelentrop wrote the follow: “On the podium, Sy[mour] is willing to tell a story that’s not quite right, in order to convey a Larger Truth. “Sometimes I change events, dates, and places in a certain way to protect people,” Hersh told me. “I can’t fudge what I write. But I can certainly fudge what I say.”

Seymour Hersh is the last person to revive radical-chic in New York or anywhere else for that matter.

Yes, Hersh is a liar because he tries to protect his anonymous sources from being outed. For shame!

As an aside, I think the MNA needs a better editor.

So, as I said earlier, the Chronicle no longer has the opinions section linked anywhere online. What happened? This:

Beginning February 28th, 2006, the Chronicle’s Free website has undergone some major changes. We have added quite a bit of content from the Associated Press to the website which can be seen in the links in the left hand navigation. Opinions, Letters to the Editor, At Home, Business to Business, Carve, and some other local news and sports articles have been dropped from this Free Website. However, all of this local content and more can still be viewed online in the E-Chronicle.

The E-Chronicle is free for some subscribers, but not for the rest of us. Now, I don’t understand this. Is anyone really going to subscribe to the E-Chronicle (which was rather slow and pointless, as I remember) without subscribing to the print version? The only reason I go to the Chronicle’s website is the opinion section, typically to get a link for a letter to the editor. I now have no reason to visit, meaning I won’t see the ads, which is their primary source of revenue from the website. I can’t help but think this is a silly tradeoff. Is anyone going to subscribe to the print version for the opinion section? I doubt it. Will they lose traffic because of it? Probably. I don’t get it.

Curiously, after the minor redesign of the Chronicle’s site, there doesn’t seem to be a link to the Opinions/Letters section. Now it even appears that the old URL is broken. I find this rather annoying.