Shorter Wall Street Journal: Because other people have come to the right conclusions about Pakistan for prudential reasons and we didn’t, that must mean that our wrong, ideologically-driven conclusions about Georgia, Lebanon, Ukraine and Iraq (which have all gone up in smoke) make sense.

P.S. The absurdity of the WSJ preaching the good word of democratism while sneering at realism in the same week that their golden boy Saakashvili has put 500 civilians in the hospital is obvious, but really needs to be stated once more.

Glenn Greenwald makes the obvious and right point:

If the violence in Iraq continues to decrease — and even if one accepts the most dubious of premises in order to see it all in the best possible light (the decrease will endure, it’s because of the Magical Surge, the de facto ethnic cleansing can reverse itself, etc.) — that rather obviously doesn’t mean that the war has achieved anything positive, either in that country or for our own. It just means that we have begun to contain some of the monstrous harm which our invasion unleashed there.

As I have said before, returning violence in Iraq to its late 2005 levels is hardly a clear-cut triumph.  It’s as if to say, “Well, we’ve stopped the bleeding from this gaping wound, so that means that the other seventeen wounds will also soon heal.”  It is an accomplishment as far as it goes, but hardly one that changes anything fundamental about the overall futility or injustice of the war.

The debate over torture in the US has descended into tragic farce. Some on the right are so determined to always take the toughest position possible on any war on terror question that they sound like a Stephen Colbert parody of themselves [bold mine-DL]. ~James Forsyth

True enough, but it isn’t just that defenders of torture sound like this parody, but that they embrace torture in the conviction that they are morally superior on account of their strong support for torture, which some of them no longer even bother to deny is torture.  You see this quick progression towards embracing and normalising the atrocious in other places as well.  If some wartime tactic results in many civilian deaths, there is a swift move from lamenting the loss of life to rationalising that “these things happen” accidentally to endorsing Dresden and Nagasaki without qualification to calling for “pre-emptive” nuclear strikes on countries that have never attacked us.  When Israel was fighting in Lebanon last year, the progression went from stressing the IAF’s tremendous restraint to justifying its disproportionate violence.  Policies of aggression and domination always lead to this same thing: the degradation and brutalisation of the one who employs brutality, leading to a progressive loss of moral judgement as more and more things become permissible for the sake of the broader scheme.

I know the old “11th Commandment” notion has been observed mostly in the breach, but McCain and Giuliani have decided to abandon any pretense to collegiality.  If McCain keeps hitting Giuliani on his criminal associates (there’s a phrase that usually doesn’t help candidates), they could wind up badly damaging each other before the voting begins. 

Also, this exchange will hardly help the GOP improve its image after all of the many problems with corruption of House members in recent years.

Via Noam Scheiber

It has been so obvious this week that it seemed a bit like piling on to observe that Saakashvili’s declaration of a state of emergency (like a certain other allied dictatorial ruler we know) and violent repression of civilian protesters are just the latest expression of the one-man despotism that Saakashvili created in Georgia in the wake of the so-called “Rose Revolution.”  Like its successors in Ukraine, Lebanon and Kyrgyzstan, the Rose Revolution narrative has come to its predictable, unhappy conclusion where the revolution is supposedly “betrayed” (The New York Timestook up this line Saturday) or fails to “fulfill its promise” or is “thwarted” by malevolent forces, when the entire thing was a sham from the beginning.  The Guardian offers a typical lament (though, to their credit, they do not engage in the easy Russia-bashing that commentary on Georgia often becomes).  Even now, Ralph Peters is offering up one version of this disappointment with how the “revolution” turned out:

The Saakashvili regime shone from afar – but grew rotten within. 

But there was never anything that “shone” about the “Rose Revolution,” except perhaps the glaring hypocrisy of the “revolutionaries.”  Movements that rally around the statue of Stalin are not the bringers of liberal reform.  But at least Peters recognises Washington’s role in enabling Saakashvili (John McCain, this means you), while you can expect to hear plenty of wailing about how our high hopes were dashed by another disappointing foreign nation.

Richard Carlson said as much about the “revolution” three years ago:

This has left Georgia–and George Soros–with a one-leader, one-party government, a far cry from a noble experiment in democracy. 

Note that the Saakashvili regime has described the protest marches as part of an attempted “coup,” which should remind us how easily language can be manipulated by those in power.  When Saakashvili leads the protests, they are a peaceful expression of “people power” and their calls for the President’s resignation are the legitimate expressions of the will of the people, but when the exact same thing happens and is led by Saakashvili’s opponents it is part of a “coup.”  Yet what Saakashvili did in 2003 was nothing less than a coup, albeit one that he could cloak in the rhetoric of defending the integrity of the electoral process.  The point is that neither 2003 nor today is there any real “people power” movement in Georgia, or rather every faction can lay claim to the mantle of “people power” when it suits it and then abandon it upon acquiring actual power.  None of this has anything to do with functioning representative democracy, but with the exploitation and domination of a country by one set of elites or another (to which a cynic might reply: there’s a difference?).  The current leader of the anti-Saakashvili bloc is an associate of Berezovsky, so it really is a case of being forced to choose between jumping into the fire or the frying pan. 

The only reason why any Americans pretended to believe Saakashvili’s propaganda was because of Georgia’s importance in offering a route for oil pipelines that circumvent Russia and as a possible future Caucasus base for NATO or U.S. forces.  Otherwise, the spectacle of one Caucasian strongman overthrowing another would not merit anyone’s sympathy.     

I heartily wish that the Georgians could have something like decent and representative government.  But no such government will ever come from the Saakashvilis of the world and their Soros-backed exercises in mass deception.  Maybe something better will come out of all of this, assuming that Saakashvili can be persuaded to relinquish power peacefully.  If not, I fear that Georgia’s ruler may plunge the country into some unmanageable conflict that will bring terrible harm to Georgia.  May our Orthodox brethren in Georgia be granted peace and an end to civil strife, for their sake and the sake of the entire region.

Cross-posted at Antiwar.com Blog

Pat Robertson has a broadcasting network?  Really?  I had no idea!  Coverage of Giuliani on his network already had been generally positive for some time.  Evangelicals are also probably capable of changing channels to find other news sources (some may even be able to read!), but I suppose that would be more ridiculous speculation on my part.

While I’m talking about polls today, the Pew survey from the end of last month has many interesting pieces of information.  On party ID, including leaning independents, the Democrats have a 14-point advantage, and the Democrats win every comparison between the two parties on questions of ethics and competence.  As the summary says:

And the Democrats’ advantage over the Republicans on party affiliation is not only substantially greater than it was four years ago, but is the highest recorded during the past two decades.  

The survey reveals extensive demoralisation in the GOP as well. 

In a Clinton/Giuliani match-up, Clinton wins 51-43%.  Broken down by region, Giuliani gets only 43% of the vote in the East.  Giuliani’s best region is, strangely enough, the West, where he manages to get 45%.  Giuliani loses every region, every age group (among 18-29 year olds, he gets trounced 59-40), and every education level.  Despite being the most liberal Republican on immigration on the national stage he only receives 38% support from Hispanics (perhaps we can lay the old chestnut of liberalising immigration policy for votes to rest now?).  Despite his nominal Catholicism, he loses the national Catholic vote by 6 points, though he does prevail among white Catholics.  He is underperforming among men (49%) relative to past GOP candidates, and he does far worse among women (37%) than Bush ever did, reducing the GOP share of women’s votes to Dole-esque levels.  So much for social liberalism broadening the party’s appeal.  Giuliani actually performs worse than Bush did among both urban and rural voters, and loses to Clinton among both urban and suburban voters.  Surely one of the rationales for Giuliani’s candidacy is that he would improve the GOP’s standing with urban voters, but it doesn’t seem to be the case.  As I’m sure has been noted elsewhere, Giuliani supporters are largely voting against Clinton rather than for Giuliani, and I don’t blame them.  Who could actually be for Giuliani anyway?  

Some of the results on the Democratic presidential race are also worth noting.  Clinton actually does better among voters who want immediate withdrawal from Iraq (50%) than she does among proponents of staying and supporters of gradual withdrawal.  Simultaneously, two of the most outspoken antiwar candidates of this cycle, Edwards and Richardson, actually lose support the more antiwar the voters are.  In other words, the more fiercely antiwar Democratic voters are, the more irrational their voting patterns become, in that they are supporting the objectively least antiwar candidate in the field at a greater rate than their less antiwar fellows.  And then they wonder why the Democratic Party is dominated by people who don’t take them seriously.

Steve Kornacki in The New York Observer notes what I sensed from the beginning and what most everyone has come to realise: Fred Thompson’s campaign is awful.  The original movement to bring Fred into the race never made any sense to me from the first time it was mentioned, but once he was in and his polling started to pick up it seemed as if the absurd campaign without a rationale had a chance.  Since a Romney or a Giuliani victory always seemed inherently ridiculous and impossible (I still think so), I started to assume that Thompson would somehow succeed as his rivals faltered or imploded.  Support for Thompson never made any sense, I thought, so why should his objectively bad performance change anything?  Maybe the GOP really is desperate enough for an unimaginative nostalgia-driven campaign that Thompson could still be competitive, but I now doubt it.  In reality, as we all know, Romney is gaining strength, McCain is reviving, Giuliani remains in the front nationally, and Thompson is withering.

As Kornacki put it:

But the reality is more like this: A tired man half-heartedly pedaling a generic message, his fatigue practically contagious.

The notion that Mr. Thompson would overwhelm his G.O.P. foes and power his way to the nomination has long since been dismissed. No one now thinks he’ll win Iowa, or even factor in New Hampshire, for that matter. Now, the talk is that he’ll make a stand in South Carolina, which will somehow catapult him toward a dominant performance in the February 5 mega-primary.

But it’s tough to see him meeting even those radically lowered expectations. The problem is that the smart guys (and gals—like Mary Matalin) who coaxed Mr. Thompson into the race badly misread the reasons for the G.O.P. base’s depressed state. The Thompson crowd chalked it up to bloodless litmus test politics.

And nothing seems to say “bloodless” better than Fred Thompson on the stump.

Update: Here is some more information from the Orangeburg Times-Democraton Thompson’s faltering campaign:

Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson mocked a rival for trying to buy South Carolina this week, but the former Tennessee senator’s campaign hasn’t taken advantage of even the cheapest publicity: a sign outside its headquarters.

Steven Stark analyses that same WSJ/ABC News poll and concludes that Obama has plenty of his own liabilities, though they are different from Clinton’s.  He’s right about that, but I would also point out that part of the alleged appeal of Obama’s candidacy (his supposed “freshness,” representing a break with the past, being inspiring, etc.) does not seem to be distinguishing him from Clinton among Democratic voters. 

When Democratic primary voters are asked (question 25 and following) to rate Clinton on “being inspirational and an exciting choice for president,” 64% give her the top two ratings available.  When they rate Obama, he can only get 56%.  One of the central elements of Obama’s campaign is supposed to be that he is the inspirational and exciting representative of a new generation, etc., but Democratic voters are apparently (inexplicably) more inspired  and excited by Clinton.  (She does have an exclamation point on her campaign signs, so maybe that has something to do with it.)  Likewise, on the question of “bringing real change to the country,” Clinton outscores him again among Democratic primary voters 63 to 52.  If he can’t convince members of his own party that he is more inspirational and more likely to bring change–two signature themes of his campaign–than Hillary Clinton, he hasn’t a chance of convincing anybody else.