The American Conservative

Last night Obama said that Russian support of Serbia to block Kosovo independence would be “unacceptable,” which means that he finds the illegal partition of Serbia to be acceptable–see how that plays in Cleveland.  That means that he supports our government’s violation of international law in recognising Kosovo, and then went on to suggest that the countries that have recognised Kosovo have “certain obligations” to stop Kosovo from being invaded.  It’s true that he didn’t bluntly say that he would resist a Russian-backed invasion, but he implied as much.  So he endorsed the administration’s reckless recognition of Kosovo, where we have literally no national interest, and then compounded that error by saying that the recognition imposed obligations on us to defend the “sovereignty” of Kosovo.  Obama supports the violation of Serbian sovereignty and the U.N. Charter, and then thinks that we have obligations as part of “the international community” to stop another state from upholding that sovereignty.  Hegemonists have a very clear rule about state sovereignty: it is essential to international order when they want to make it count, and it is an archaic relic of the 17th century when it gets in their way.  Obama has learned this rule quite well already.   

Recognising separatist states, especially in Europe where our chief interest is stability, is how the Balkan Wars of the ’90s became international conflicts that drew in outside powers.  It is how the West could make the wars of Yugoslav succession into an occasion for isolating and humiliating the rump Yugoslavia and backing up the historic proxies of…Germany, bizarrely enough.  It is through the persistent mistaken belief that outside powers have some stake in the conflicts of the Balkans that great powers collide with one another and risk a more general war.

Instead of being brought down by all this Farrakhan talk, we should have some choreography by Farah Khan instead. 

P.S.  Yes, it’s been a long day.

Obama On The Lookout 

If they try to pigeonhole him [Obama] as a liberal, he will refuse to perch in such a hole. He is a golden falcon, not a fat pigeon. ~Tony Blankley

So I was listening to the debate tonight as I was working on something else, and I heard Clinton flub Medvedev’s name.  Like Philip Klein, I thought it was a blunder on her part.  I didn’t pay much attention to this, since I was recovering from my horror after listening to Obama’s answer on Kosovo, which was far worse than what I expected (and I was already expecting something pretty bad).  For someone not interested in “rash” or “dumb” wars, he seemed to leave the door open to fighting the Russians over Kosovo much more than he should have (i.e., not at all).  This is simply crazy, and it amazes me that he keeps getting away with saying such reckless things. 

Back to Clinton.  Granted, I pay attention to the scene in Russia more than most, I go to a Russian church and I have taken a little bit of Russian, so maybe I’m bound to know how to pronounce Medvedev’s name, but I don’t think it’s a “gotcha question” for someone aspiring to be the President to know the name of the future President of the only other state with a nuclear arsenal on the scale of Russia’s and to be able to say it without stumbling.  In another era, not that long ago, being unable to come up with the name of the Soviet premier would have been viewed as a major lapse; if this blunder had been committed by Bush in 2000 or Obama today, the “inexperience” angle would be played up for all it was worth.  Frankly, being unable to name the leaders of other major powers around the world ought to count against a candidate.  It’s not as if you’re being asked to name the prime minister of the Netherlands (Balkenende) or the the president of Indonesia (Yudhoyono).

Where did the day go?  I have been running around all day for one thing or another, and I am worn out.  In coming days, I hope to have some new Bolingbroke material to blog about.  The old line from The Craftsman may not adorn Eunomia now, but the spirit of my favourite reactionary radical lives on.

I said, ‘That’s a very un-American thing to say.’ I mean, this is a country that based on religious freedom. ~Josh Romney

Obviously, Mormons are free to take offense at evangelical and other Christian opposition to their religion, and I would be surprised if they didn’t, but could we please be spared this “un-American” argument?  First of all, it’s not very edifying, since it assumes that there’s something “un-American” about disagreements that inevitably arise between religions in a pluralistic society.  It also implies that the content of a religion is ultimately irrelevant to public life, and that the price of pluralism is the devaluing of truth.  Those assumptions are themselves extremely dangerous to a healthy religious pluralism in a free society.  It is supposed to be “un-American” to make these disagreements a reason for not voting for someone, which isn’t persuasive at all.  The more often I hear this argument, the more I resent the idea that you are somehow lacking in patriotism or American-ness if you take seriously that a candidate has significantly different fundamental beliefs that you don’t and can’t hold.  Besides, simply as a matter of tactics, berating people for being bad Americans is not a terribly good way of persuading them.

I’m not picking on him, I hope, but the reason that Biggio struggled in clutch situations and against good pitchers couldn’t be more obvious. He was an overachiever, and he knew what he was doing. Against a weak pitcher, a pitcher not really in command of his material, Biggio could take control of the at bat and drive it toward a good conclusion. When the pitcher was not really focused, Biggio was. But when the pressure was on and there was somebody on the mound who knew what he was doing, Biggio had limited ability to step up. Maybe this was not as true in the 1990s. I hope. We’ll figure the data and put it online. ~Bill James

Speaking as a long-time Astros fan (since 1984), I have followed all of Biggio’s career in Houston.  Besides his ability on the field and his consistent, if quiet, offense, I appreciated the increasingly rare example of a player staying with the same team for decades.  However, Biggio’s accomplishments aside, from the time I really started paying attention every year to the regular season, I noticed that Biggio was one of the worst clutch hitters ever.  He swung at and struck out on more low-and-outside pitches that just about anyone I had ever seen, and year after year he would fall for the same pitch.  This seemed to get worse in playoff games, but that was probably the effect of disappointment that once again the Astros had left two men stranded on base in yet another inning during a game they ended up losing 2-1 or 4-2.  I would love to have my impressions be wrong, but after watching the Astros for nearly twenty years with Biggio on the team I am pretty confident that James’ hypothesis will be demonstrated by the evidence.

In the next issue of TAC (2/25), Brendan O’Neill provides an excellent summary of the case against Obama, focusing on his hyper-ambitious interventionism.  Here’s a short excerpt:

Obama’s stress on how everything is interconnected not only sets up the United States to intervene everywhere, but it makes any coherent strategy impossible.  If every problem is an American problem, how would Obama set priorities or address one crisis instead of another?  It’s a question he hasn’t begun to answer.

Obviously, I agree with this analysis entirely, and I’m pleased to see this view of Obama catching on with others.  As I said in one of my first responses to Obama’s Council on Global Affairs speech:

Obama believes that by stressing interdependence and globalisation that he has seriously addressed complexity in foreign affairs, but he has simply replaced one rigid scheme with another, and in that scheme every problem on earth is potentially our problem.  If every problem is our problem, and everyone’s security is “inextricably linked” to our own, how can any President set priorities or address one crisis rather than another when all are potentially just as relevant and connected to American security?  

If there is any temptation to make comparisons with McGovern ’72, it should be clear after reading this that no one could be more vehemently opposed to the idea that America should come home than Barack Obama.  The two major party candidates offer competing hegemonist visions, and both of them are dreadful, but there are grounds for thinking that an antiwar voter has more to lose overall by backing Obama, which should be a sobering reality for those who understand how dangerous McCain is.  Far from challenging the “mindset” that led to the war in Iraq, Obama possesses the very same mindset that says that we govern the world and must police it.

Granted, in-laws don’t always get along very well, but this is ridiculous (via Shawn Macomber).  There is something disturbingly fitting that the one wielding the knife was the Clinton supporter.  Apparently disagreement about health care mandates is more powerful than I had thought.

Eight months late, Clinton has started hitting Obama hard on foreign policy, making arguments that sound strangely like one of my old columns.  It’s an interesting last-minute gambit, but one that makes little sense at this stage of the contest.  It isn’t as if she’s going to rack up even larger super-majorities in Laredo because Obama is “impulsive” in his Pakistan position, or dent his advantages in Houston because he might meet with Raul Castro.  Obviously, she’s trying to push the same lame “experience” argument she has been pushing for over a year, while also trying to cast doubt on Obama’s judgement, but even though her critique of Obama on foreign policy may make a certain amount of sense it hardly works to her benefit.  If he has an incoherent or mistaken view, she can hardly claim to be much better.  That sums up the entire campaign fairly well.

Meanwhile, one poll shows Obama leading in Texas.  If that holds up, Clinton can look forward to retirement sooner rather than later.  Without a Texas win, she will have a hard time resisting calls for her to drop out.