The American Conservative

While Fouad Ajami criticizes Obama for his “detached tone” when discussing the Islamic world, for signaling a “fatigue” with Iraq and the Middle East, and for adopting a more Realpolitik approach towards the region, a new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds that nearly two-thirds of Americans continue to believe the Iraq war is not worth fighting and 70 percent say Obama should fulfill his campaign promise to withdraw U.S. forces from the country within 16 months.

So it’s the American people who are experiencing a fatigue with the Middle East, starting with Iraq, just as Obama seems to be turning to those who supported the decision to go to war to manage his Middle East policy. But I still remain hopeful that Ajami is right in his criticism of Obama.

“GOP to Detroit: Drop Dead!”

So may have read the headline Friday, had not President Bush stepped in to save GM, Ford and Chrysler, which Senate Republicans had just voted to send to the knacker’s yard.

What are Republicans thinking of, pulling the plug, at Christmas, on GM, risking swift death for the greatest manufacturing company in American history, a strategic asset and pillar of the U.S. economy?

The $14 billion loan to the Big Three that Republican senators filibustered to death is just 2 percent of the $700 billion the Senate voted to bail out Wall Street. Having gone along with bailouts of Bear Stearns, AIG, Fannie, Freddie and CitiGroup, why refuse a reprieve to an industry upon which millions of the best blue-collar jobs in America depend? Read More…

Somebody get the cane — there, at his straining white neck supporting that big moon-swooning-over-himself head — and get Chris Matthews off the stage.

He is already running for US Senate, using his nightly two-hours of Hardball – not to mention his half-hour Sunday “round table” on NBC — as vehicles for what ought to be the biggest campaign train wreck in the history of Pennsylvania. Sure he’s coy — he’s not officially raising money or announcing formally that he’s exploring a run against 78-year-old Republican Sen. Arlen Specter (at that point, one would hope Matthews and his Human Ego Project would be off-mic for good, per some federal campaign finance law and on pure principle. Some journalists do have some of those left, and those that do should be completely outraged at the way he continues to operate). But the word is out, and contrary to conventional wisdom, all viewers ain’t stupid. Matthews doesn’t want to wreck a good thing, at least for now. He gets free air time to kiss up to political patrons like PA Gov. Ed Rendell and popular Philly radio jocks like Michael Smerconish, while his corporate masters at General Electric can at least hope for MSNBC’s ratings to pull out of the can.

That’s right — MSNBC is still the lowest rated out of the “big three” cable news networks, which still have a very small piece of the overall TV market, so this Matthews flap shouldn’t matter at all in the broader scheme of things. And Matthews is really only a “journalist” by courtesy — being that he and the network have baked up this fantasy that a former political operative and speechwriter who now barks inane questions at bemused guests (many who are as cloyingly desperate as he for the Washington on-air fix) while getting off on his own perceived intellectual vigor, is actually a working journalist.

But I just hate it when the corporate media behemoths get to have it both ways — NBC clinging to its misty water-colored news creds by lionizing its beefier personalities like the late Tim Russert, and wheeling out warmed-over bloviators like Tom Brokaw, and then indulging a guy who is very obviously abusing the privilege, not to mention shamelessly hawking cheesy airport books, sucking up to corrupt Wall Street profiteers and playing off NBC programming like god-awful Saturday Night Live clips as though they delivered breaking news tantamount to earthquakes and war.

Tonight, Matthews broke all records for greasiness when he tried to outdo Sarah Palin, railing against all those — in his sentiments — angry, shiftless Iraqis mobilized around the journalist who threw his shoes at President Bush yesterday. (Americans think it’s funny, he said, that these Iraqi men seem to have so much time on their hands to protest, ha, ha. Please, Matthews, don’t speak for me). How dare this man throw shoes, he said, or protesters burn the stars and stripes when the U.S sacrificed 4,000 men and women so people like that journalist could have the freedom to attend a perfectly reasonable, finely orchestrated event in which the President of the United States could whitewash the bloody scar that is his Iraq outside?

Matthews’ guests tonight, who included Rajiv Chandrasekaren, author of Imperial Life in the Emerald City, (who knows a thing or two about court jesters and sycophants) seemed mildly flummoxed — wasn’t this the same guy who had them on a while back to rail against neocons and Dick Cheney and misguided preemptive war? Nevermind, Matthews has rural constituents he has to patronize now — you know, those voters “who cling to their guns and their religion” and who couldn’t possibly know anything about why some poor Iraqi who had been kidnapped by his own people and detained by U.S forces and lives in a country with 30 percent unemployment might want to insult George W. Bush.

Just turn it off, you might say. Fair enough. Leave it to karma — you bet. But all this week we have had to stomach a parade of Bush Administration officials trying to sell this dung that the Iraqi people are better off now than they were under Saddam Hussein. Meanwhile, there are stories like these (the irony in the MSNBC-WaPo co-branding not lost here) that cling like storm detritus and break your heart, and we find out only today that the American taxpayer has poured billions of dollars into a feel-good reconstruction plan that never happened. Chris Matthews, who could never muster enough of his self-proclaimed skills at “hardball” to talk about the hired “message force multiplers” who sold this war on the Pentagon’s behalf (mostly because it’s hard to do that and be supplicant at the same time) is now doing the same thing, covertly trying to sell himself to the people of Pennsylvania. If that’s not grounds for a kick in the can, or even a small cry of protest from the Rapidly Shrinking Base of Principled Persons Who Still Watch TV News, I don’t know what does.

Yes, he was. Christopher Caldwell writes,

In the name of justice we ought to recall that there was one candidate who did foresee our predicament with considerable accuracy when it still lay far in the future. Ron Paul, in almost every speech he made during the Republican primaries, spoke of bubbles, reckless credit growth, and the “unsustainability” of present policy. So why isn’t there more demand for the common-sense solutions he put forward?

Indeed. Perhaps TWS might also recognize that Congressman Paul has been right on another disastrous area of recent American policy, namely foreign affairs. Don’t bet on it.

The Israeli left-of-center newspaper Haaretz is reporting that the Obama administration will offer Israel a “nuclear umbrella” which will consist of a strategic agreement whereby Washington will carry out a devastating nuclear attack on Iran if the Mullahs use a nuclear weapon to attack Israel.  Haartez has unusually good sources within the Obama transition team, so the story should be taken seriously.  It is also somewhat similar to the Hillary Clinton pledge to “obliterate” Iran, made during the Democratic primaries, so it clearly reflects the thinking of the soon-to-be Secretary of State.  Martin Indyk, Clinton-era ambassador to Israel and a frontrunner to become Obama’s special envoy to the Middle East, has also supported such an arrangement.

If the story is accurate, it raises a number of questions, some of which are being raised by the Israelis themselves.  First, the description of the proposed agreement makes it appear that Washington will be responsible for retaliating for an Iranian attack.  Given the size of Israel, an Iranian attack, if successful, would virtually destroy the country, meaning that the American pledge would not achieve the objective of protecting Israel.  Second, Iran does not have a nuclear weapon now and it is far from clear that it will ever have one.  Nevertheless, the guarantee suggests that the Obama Administration accepts that Iran will some day have such a weapon and it appears to concede that there is no way to stop such a development.  If the Obama team believes that it is possible to stop the weapons program, there would be no need for the guarantee.  Third, what would be the American response under the guarantee if Israel were to attack Iran first, triggering the response from Tehran?  The situation would be analogous to allowing Georgia to enter NATO so it can attack Russia.  If there are no restraints on Israeli behavior, the United States could be drawn willy-nilly into a nuclear war due to the action of a tiny client state.  And finally fourth, what is the quid pro quo?  If the United States is willing to guarantee Israel’s security, it should be able to demand something from Israel, like the evacuation of the West Bank and the creation of a Palestinian State. 

If providing some form of security guarantees to Israel as part of a larger game that would lead to a viable Palestinian state on one hand and would restrain Israel’s aggressive behavior on the other, it might actually be something worth considering.  General James Jones, who will be Obama’s National Security Adviser, has floated the idea of placing NATO troops as a peacekeeping force on the West Bank.  The idea has been attacked because it would mean that the soldiers would likely be assailed by both sides, but it would also protect the Palestinians, stop the growth of settlements, and provide some breathing space for a modus vivendi to be worked out. 

“Something is rotten in the state,” says Marcellus in “Hamlet.”

Well, it certainly is in the state of Illinois.

Yet on hearing U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald describe a plot by his governor to sell his Senate seat — “conduct (that) would make Lincoln roll over in his grave” — how did reform President Barack Obama respond?

“I had no contact with the governor or his office, and so I was not aware of what was happening. … And as I said, it is a sad day for Illinois. Beyond that, I don’t think it’s appropriate to comment.”

“A sad day for Illinois” — that was it.

But FBI Special Agent in Charge Robert Grant could not contain his revulsion: “If (Illinois) isn’t the most corrupt state in the United States, it’s certainly one hell of a competitor. I think even the most cynical agents in our office were shocked.” Read More…

P.J. O’Rourke observes:

The Government is bailing out Wall Street for being evil and the car companies for being stupid. But print journalism brings you Paul Krugman and Anna Quindlen.

Read on.

Okay, I know that the Fuzzies were Sudanese followers of the Mahdi and that the Somalis are ethnically different, but they all do have bushy hair, which is what Kipling was referring to.  I have been following the debate over what to do about the Somali pirates with some interest, particularly as assiduous readers of this website will recall that I some time ago advocated the Pompey the Great solution to eliminate the problem.  Currently, there is the Bill Kristol solution making the rounds, which would essentially require invading the country, while those opposed to Kristol keep invoking the familiar liberal-minded tropes, i.e. that poverty is the root cause of the piracy and that it is impossible for a US marine to distinguish a pirate from a farmer.  

Well, I am never one disinclined to take a whack at Kristol, but the turn the other cheek crowd has it somewhat wrong even if Kristol is, as usual, looking for regime change.  Recent press accounts make it clear that the pirates have a lot of money and well established lavishly appointed villas that serve as the bases for their forays.  They are also armed will an array of weapons served by well appointed arsenals that they have supplied with their ransom money and seagoing high speed boats that are too big and heavy to haul up out of the water and hide in the bushes.  A judicious use of force to destroy those bases and the equipment and boats would reduce their capabilities considerably and it would take them a long time to reequip and regroup.  It would be a proportionate and targeted use of naval resources to solve a serious problem, precisely what our Founding Fathers might have had in mind when they created the navy and marine corps.

Poor Gideon Rachman. Yesterday he wrote a typically even-handed, or perhaps very mildly progressivist, piece about the onset of world government. I linked to it below. The article, which had its author’s email address at the bottom, was also picked up by Matt Drudge. Today, Rachman woke up to find more than 200 emails, most of them horribly abusive, from enraged anti-globalists.

Today, Rachman blogs that “the whole experienced has given me an insight into the mindset of the gun-toting, bible-bashing, nationalistic bit of the United States.” True to an extent, but surely most of “gun-toting, bible-bashing, nationalistic bit” (it’s more like a chunk) of the United States do not spend their days reading Matt Drudge-linked articles from the Financial Times. Rachman, understandably wounded, has gone too far. Many respondents, he explains, were “End of Days” enthusiasts. No doubt they were, but a few–200 is not that many–hatemail nuts should not be conflated with the vast cross-section of America’s firearm-fond, flag-waving Christians.

Rather, the lesson here should be that a disturbingly high number of people who comment–the noble example of TAC’s polite and intelligent commenters outstanding–under web articles are mad and nasty and best ignored. Look around the web: it is often astonishing to see the levels of hatred and viciousness that the most harmless words can engender. The Internet places none of society’s constraints upon its users, so webman resorts to his default human setting: outright, depraved hostility. It’s quite scary when you think about it.

A snap election to Quebec’s National Assembly took place on  Monday and Jean Charet’s Liberals won a bare majority over the sovereigntist Parti Quebecois 66 seats to 51 for the PQ. The real story of this desultory election (only 54 percent of Quebec voters took part in it) was the collapse of Quebec’s conservative (by Quebec standards) party the Action Democratic du Quebec or the ADQ. It was in early 2007 that the ADQ supplanted the PQ as the official opposition to Charet’s Liberals with 41 seats. Now they’ve been reduced to just seven seats and 16 percent of the vote.

The results may very well be the Icarus landing of the wunderkind of Quebec politics, the 30-something Mario Dumont, who is the creator of the ADQ and helped it reach unprecedented heights.

Read More…