Another fairly major problem with the “soft partition” idea: it’s not terribly popular among Iraqis (see question 13) with only 28% (of Iraqi Arabs) in favour.  Naturally, the solution that is being touted by such “realistic” pols as Joe Biden is the one that is the most unlikely to be accepted by the people who actually inhabit the country.

Via Ross and Franke-Ruta, here is a CBN profile of Mike Huckabee.  According to the report, he does support the teaching of creationism (not ID) “alongside evolution,” which came as something of a surprise to me.  Intelligent Design is custom-made as the pseudo-scientific alternative that a pol can invoke without bringing down quite the same measure of criticism on himself.  Even McCain (whose campaign is apparently now going to have “faith” as its theme!) has hied himself to the Discovery Institute to pay homage to the latest fad.  ID is, of course, quite different from “creationism” and “creation science,” in that ID assumes that much of evolutionary theory and cosmology is correct, but holds that modern theory fails to account for the presence of orderliness and intelligence in the universe.  (ID does not so much account for these things as it asserts them and waves its hands melodramatically as it asks, “Why, oh, why will the oppressive scientific community not heed our arguments?”) 

“Creationism,” on the other hand, holds that more or less literal accounts of Biblical creation are entirely, “factually” true and creation science is founded on the notion that the claims are empirically verifiable.  The thinking here seems to be that if archaeology can verify many historical references in the Old Testament, “creation science” should be able to do the same for prehistoric times.  If there is geological evidence of the event that the Bible (and the Epic of Gilgamesh, stories about Manu, etc.) records as the Flood (at the end of the last ice age), that is apparently not supposed to be taken as evidence that modern geology and paleontology are reasonably reliable and accurate fields of science, but rather as proof that 95% of what geologists and paleontologists say about the age of the earth and the history of life on earth is wrong or badly distorted.  Hence you have such travesties as the Creation Museum.   

As you may remember, the governor was one of three candidates who raised his hand in response to the question about who didn’t believe in evolution.  In the following debate, given a chance to elaborate on this, Huckabee gave his somewhat famous “I’m not running to write eighth grade science textbooks” line.  In the past, however, he has made this sort of statement:

But I think schools also ought to be fair to all views. Because, frankly, Darwinism is not an established scientific fact. It is a theory of evolution, that’s why it’s called the theory of evolution. And I think that what I’d be concerned with is that it should be taught as one of the views that’s held by people. But it’s not the only view that’s held. And any time you teach one thing as that it’s the only thing, then I think that has a real problem to it.  

Indeed!  The kids have been deprived without having a proper education in the four humours and epicycles in addition to modern biology and heliocentrism.  After all, who can really say how, or even whether, the planets orbit the sun?  How unfair to privilege one view over another!  That is effectively what the governor was saying.  This is ridiculous. 

You have to enjoy Huckabee’s standard refrain of “it’s a theory, not a fact!”  As I have said before regarding ID:

That theories are constantly revised does not make theoretical knowledge less certain or less reliable than the “factual”–there is, or should be, the awareness that no theory ever has the final word, but that it is the best word available to us to date. Indeed, without theoretical frameworks to structure it, factual “knowledge” is often just a jumble of unrelated information. What ID proposes to do is to say, “The theory of evolution has not, as of yet, accounted for all of the complexities of biological phenomena, and therefore we declare it simply insufficient and propose to fill in the ‘gaps’ with a non-empirical, non-scientific explanation.”   

Our knowledge of the world, like the knowledge of the past or any other subject of study, is always limited and provisional, but clearly some answers and some theories are more valid than others.  Huckabee’s view on teaching both creationism and evolution is effectively a rejection of the idea that it is possible for reasoning people to discern between theories that are more consistent with empirical evidence and those that are less so or entirely inconsistent.  Instead, Huckabee thinks we should be “fair” to all of the views “held by the people.”  This is taking the right’s flirting with an anti-diversity love of “intellectual diversity” a bit far, wouldn’t you say?* 

I take Huckabee’s point that such cultural fights over education policy really are not relevant to being President, or at least they shouldn’t be since education ought to remain a strictly local and state matter, but the argument that Huckabee is making in the statement above is actually a very strange one for a conservative to make.  What he is saying is that there are many equally valid truths, truth is not one, and to privilege the best or most coherent explanations of phenomena is to stifle or shut out a free and fair exchange of ideas.  Presumably Huckabee does not believe this when it comes to moral and spiritual truths about the obligations men owe each other or about the nature of man or the existence of God.  Cultural conservatives do not think we should actually be “fair” to all views “held by the people” on matters of abortion and marriage when it comes to setting public policy and passing laws, but rather insist quite strongly (and, to my mind, rightly) that there are right answers that rule out the alternatives as unacceptable and false. 

I suppose the complaint Huckabee is making here is that science, or any kind of scholarly research, is not democratic.  By democratic here, I mean not only that anyone can have his own ideas about science, which is less worrisome, but that everyone’s views are entitled to equal respect and public affirmation.  Obviously, everyone’s views are not so entitled, and certainly not when it comes to specialised fields of study. 

Having said all that, I think the Genesis account of creation ought to be taught in those schools where the parents want it taught, along with an education in the cultural inheritance of the Christian civilisation to whose last remnants they belong, but not in science class.  The establishment clause has nothing to do with this, and this is not a First Amendment issue.  It is a matter of good education and common sense.  The fundamental objection that so many Christians have to the teaching of evolution is the significance that is attached to the theory in the name of evolutionism, which secularists push to deny the existence of God and reject the authority of the Bible.  If there were not the notion that their religion and everything they are teaching their children to believe were being openly derided and denied through the teaching of evolution, there would be a great deal less resistance.  Encouraging that resistance to the teaching of evolution, rather than mobilising the same people against the courts’ hostility to religion in the public square and public schools, is self-defeating.       

The secular West has already done away with any hierarchy of religious truth some time ago.  More’s the pity.  Indeed, religious truth as something real and binding is not taken very seriously in our culture, though there are many individuals who accept that it is.  Christians have to plead for some minimal acknowledgement of their own beliefs in schools that they fund with their taxes, and even here they are usually unsuccessful.  In effect, religious claims have been reduced to the level of “private” opinion, and every effort to drag them out of this prison is met with powerful hostility. 

We allow for pluralism regarding ideas and things that our culture already acknowledges to be irrelevant to the organisation and running of social and political life.  You can always tell what a culture values most highly by how much control those in authority attempt to exercise over its particular sphere.  People generally permit the widest scope of “freedom” in those things that do not concern them and do not really matter to them.        

Now Huckabee would ironically have us abandon standards of truth in at least one area of secular study in the name of religion, or rather in the name of “representing” the views of religious citizens in the classroom.  “Let’s be fair!” the man says.  As I thought conservatives used to argue whenever the latest multiculti fad was sweeping through the schools, schools do not exist for the purpose of “representing” the diversity of society (and attempts to make them do this are generally a waste of time, when they are not efforts at ideological indoctrination).  Schools exist for educating children in those fundamental subjects and abilities of analysis and reasoning that will make them more humane and more capable to take up their duties as citizens.  (Yes, I know how old-fashioned that sounds given the state of things, but there it is.)  It seems blindingly obvious to me that instructing children in the religious heritage of their own country and civilisation is an essential part of a proper education, if only to make them culturally literate human beings who are not cut off from the riches of Western art and literature.  Both are incomprehensible without a grounding in the history and teachings of Christianity, and it is no coincidence that I learned virtually nothing of those things in my formative education, receiving cant about diversity instead.  A proper education in Western culture and religion, however, has nothing to do with talking about Genesis in biology class.  Without the former, creationist school boards might triumph everywhere and achieve nothing of lasting significance. 

*Having been subjected to idiotic propagandising in middle and high school about the glories of Diversity and multiculturalism, I recognised the shallowness and vapidity of both a long, long time ago.  I also noticed early on that a diversity of ideas and particularly political ideas was not welcomed.  I am very familiar with and in favour of this kind of criticism of the diversity cult.  However, an enthusiasm for intellectual diversity (which, I would add, many on the right do not have when it comes to certain intramural policy debates) is not a license for dressing up willful ignorance or anti-intellectualism as a legitimate alternative to a prevailing view.

If you were one of the ten people who actually read all of Paul Berman’s long essay on Tariq Ramadan, you will be very excited to hear that Ian Buruma has attached his counterblast to a review of Podhoretz’s latest “book.”  For everyone else, it will seem like a very odd diversion away from what had been up till then a fairly interesting review article in which he quite properly mocks the notion of “Islamofascim” and related idiocies.  In related neoconiana, James has a response to Beinart’s review of the latest from Ledeen and Podhoretz.

Reacting to theseposts, a commenter at Ross’ blog wrote:

No wonder politicians give up and rely on scripts; this kind of henpecking the details and failing to engage on the larger point that Fred Thompson counts himself an unapologetic patriot who generally sees the US foreign policy as good. I’d think his judgement could be addressed on that point without dithering about body count.

Yes, why “dither” about facts?  Why be concerned with historical accuracy?  It’s not as if a deficient understanding of the past could have any consequences for the quality of policymaking. 

Speaking of “larger points,” one might engage the larger point that Thompson lends credibility to the stereotype of the “unapologetic patriot” as unthinking, ignorant and boastful patriot, which in turn does so much to give proper American patriotism a bad name in the world.  One might engage the larger point that Thompson’s answer reflects not so much patriotism as it does chauvinism, since the patriot, as Chesteron said in Napoleon of Notting Hill, boasts not of the largeness of his country but of its smallness.  One might engage the point that Thompson largely ducked the question about America’s unpopularity today by jumping into a refrain about how much more Americans have sacrificed than all other nations for the “liberty and freedom of other peoples.”  Or a Thompson defender might engage the larger point that ignoring the contributions of our British, French, Commonwealth and other free European allies is an amazing thing for a presidential candidate to do in the announcement of his candidacy.  This is someone who allegedly wants to be President.  He claims to be prepared to run our foreign policy during what he regards as a crucially important time in a major worldwide struggle, and this struggle requires cultivating and tending alliances that have been badly strained over the past few years.  He chooses to launch that effort with an insult to some of our oldest and best allies. 

Suppose for a moment that Thompson genuinely doesn’t know that his statement was, in fact, false–is that supposed to encourage us to regard him well?  Haven’t we had quite enough of presidential candidates who relish their own lack of knowledge about the rest of the world and the history of other nations?  The gaffe, if we can call it that, is indicative of the sort of detail-free campaign he seems intent on running, and yet another example of a Republican who thinks that foreign policy is two parts nationalist rhetoric and one part bombast.  

Here’s another point.  If a Canadian or, God help us, a French politician were to make some similarly overblown statement, the reaction in certain circles in this country would be one of hysterical outrage at the expression of “anti-Americanism.”  Our pols are free to say whatever foolish, ignorant thing they please and can ignore U.S. allies whenever it suits them, but just watch those pols issue denunciations of those same allies the moment their leaders utter the ‘wrong’ thing or fail to show their gratitude to America for all that we have done for them.

At the same time, the Republicans’ conservative base doesn’t have much taste for the realists who dominated foreign-policy thinking in past GOP administrations (except for über-adviser Henry Kissinger, who has managed to transcend these divides with the same aplomb he has shown in past campaigns). For Republicans “there’s no upside in declaring, ‘These are my advisers.’ The base hates realists, and neocons are too controversial,” says sometime Romney adviser Dan Senor, former spokesman for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq. “So the thinking is, don’t define yourself by foreign-policy advisers.” ~Michael Hirsh

It’s not entirely clear to me why “the base” would be so hostile to foreign policy realists (hate seems like an especially strong word), given the way things have gone over the last few years, but then I suppose I have a hard time understanding a group of people that still supports the President.  I guess year after year of talk radio, blogs and pundits telling Republican audiences that “stability” and “realism” are basically codewords for treason and defeatism has a corrosive effect after a while.  If you were someone who read and watched and listened to daily “conservative media” reports that are telling you incessantly that Islamofascism is on the march and that the restored caliphate (with Venezuelan help) is blazing a trail straight for Dubuque (or wherever), it is quite natural that “realism,”‘ grounded as it is in some measure of actual knowledge about the rest of the world, would not seem very good to you. 

If this claim is true about “the base,” it confirms my suspicion that there are no GOP “realist” candidates running for President because foreign policy realism doesn’t go down well with the primary voters and activists these days.  The “realists” supposedly refuse to “name the enemy” and do not “understand the threat” as such luminaries as Rick Santorum and Norman Podhoretz do.  The voters and activists have definitely become members of Bush’s Republican Party, and the majority of the candidates could not break out of this stranglehold even if they wished to do so.  Of course, in one important respect, it wouldn’t matter whether there were candidates being advised by foreign policy realists or not.  As I have said before:

Among politicians, all of the “realists” more or less embrace the continuation of the war.  Their very balance-of-forces, stability-centered view of foreign affairs dictates that they support an American presence in Iraq for the foreseeable future.  

Because while Obama is still seen as the insurgent candidate challenging Hillary’s Democratic establishment camp, he has actually been recruiting ex-Clintonites in large numbers. Behind the scenes, Obama and Hillary have been engaged in a vicious battle for the best and brightest officials of the 1990s, those who mastered “working the system in Washington” a decade ago. The competition has grown so fierce that several Obama officials who were once Friends of Bill tell me they have been threatened with becoming pariahs by the Hillary camp if she wins the nomination. In response, the Obama campaign has only revved up its recruiting effort of midlevel former Clinton officials. “The Obama pitch is, ‘You’ll never be in the inner circle’ with Hillary,” says Gene Sperling, Sen. Clinton’s top economic advisor. ~Michael Hirsh

Obama’s “transformed,” “unconventional” foreign policy will be steered by former Clinton officials and the odd Brookings advisor.  His foreign policy will manage to combine all of the excessive ambition and overreach of his progressive internationalism and the destructive, interventionist instincts of “centrist” Democratic foreign policy staffers.  On foreign policy, Obama and Clinton are becoming almost indistinguishable.

“Maybe the times have changed, and the Webcast and his celebrity are enough. Maybe he and his tactics are the wave of the future,” Cullen said, adding a stinging comparison between Thompson and the failed 1985 launch of a new Coca-Cola formula. “Or maybe he’s the New Coke.” ~The Washington Post

Well, Thompson does want to rekindle ’80s nostalgia, so a New Coke candidacy sounds just about right.

George Ajjan’s blog on Syrian politics, syriapol: A Syrian Democracy Project, is a great resource for commentary and news about the country.  He also has a very interesting post that reproduces an article of his on Syrian identity and history.  The following exchange seems crucial for grasping how Syrians (broadly speaking) understand their identity:

Sometimes Lebanese, Jordanian, or Palestinian friends will ask me what my origin is:

“Halabi,” I proudly reply.
They respond with a confused look. “Souri, yaeni…”
“La, halabi.”
“I don’t understand, why don’t you just say that you are Syrian?”
“Why don’t you?”

Understanding this view seems to me to be a basic prerequisite for understanding the politics within and relationship between the Syrian Republic and Lebanon in particular.

P.S.  Halab is Aleppo, for those who might not be familiar with the Arabic name.

Ross has some good remarks on the previous post, and he’s right to note that WWII casualty estimates vary.  My original statements were based on this source, while the Wikipedia entry gives some different numbers.  While the figures are different, the other source does show that British, French and Commonwealth forces suffered more losses in absolute terms and in proportion to their national populations.  Let me repeat: I do not point this out to denigrate American sacrifice in WWII, which deserves the highest respect, but to insist that Americans remember the sacrifices of the other nations that were on our side in the war.  That shouldn’t be too much to ask from candidates aspiring to be President, or have I missed something?

Ross mentions that Thompson was responding to a question about the declining popularity of the United States.  His complete answer was this (quote near the bottom of the page):

Well, part of that comes with being the strongest, most powerful, most prosperous country in the history of the world.  I think that goes with the territory.  We’re more unpopular than we need to be.  That’s for sure, but our people have shed more blood for the liberty and freedom of other peoples in this country [sic] than all the other countries put together….And I don’t feel any need to apologize for the United States of America. 

America was also “the strongest, most powerful, most prosperous country in the history of the world” during earlier periods in the last century and this did not cause as much widespread hostility.  If some resentment and envy come with the territory of being a superpower, even this cannot account for the extent and depth of negative feeling towards our government (and perhaps towards our country).  Thompson says that he feels no need to apologise for the U.S., which is fine as far as it goes, but apparently he does feel the need to trumpet our vast moral, military and political superiority in just the sort of arrogant way that drives so many people around the world to resent America, or at least to resent our government.  It isn’t enough to say that we have more power and wealth than any country ever, but on top of that he feels he has to make the (false) claim that our nation has more accumulated virtue than all other nations on the planet put together.  For those seeking the beginning of an explanation of why even formerly relatively favourably inclined nations now have very sharply negative views (e.g., Turkey) of our government and our country,  they could do worse than to look at the mentality expressed in Thompson’s remarks.

During his appearance on The Tonight Show, Fred said something that is rather stunningly and obviously untrue:

Our people have shed more blood for the liberty and freedom of other peoples … than all the other countries put together.

There’s nothing terribly edifying in this kind of claim of national nobility-through-high body counts, but you have to wonder what the man could possibly have been thinking that would cause him to say this.  Even leaving aside WWI, where the claims to fighting for liberty are a bit more strained (and where all other belligerents lost far more people than America), this claim is demonstrably false.  It requires either an amazing ignorance about the past or contempt for American allies in WWII. 

Britain and France entered WWII at least officially to safeguard the independence of Poland, which I think gives them some right to claim that they suffered their losses for the sake of the “liberty” of other peoples.  In 1940 alone in a war fought on behalf of Poland, the French lost 90,000 KIA, and the British lost over 68,000.  The British, Commonwealth and Free French soldiers who died during the war were certainly fighting at least in part for “the liberty and freedom of other peoples,” and the number of their fatalities and casualities was necessarily higher than that of the United States.  Our casualties were on the order of 600,000 killed and wounded, while British and Commonwealth casualties (not including India’s 100,000) were approximately 915,000, which does not include civilian deaths in Britain and France.  If we were to judge these losses according to the size of the populations of the different countries, the disparity would be even greater.  Given how much smaller its population was, Britain’s losses were proportionally over three times as great as ours. 

None of this is to minimise the sacrifices that Americans have made.  But leave it to some showboating politician to take something noble and admirable and distort it as part of his talking points, insulting the war dead of our best allies in the process.  This claim of Thompson’s is just the sort of nationalist mythologising that we could stand to have much less of nowadays.  It doesn’t speak well for the management of foreign relations in any future Thompson Administration that the man has no idea how much the rest of the Allied nations sacrificed in WWII.

P.S. It might also be noted that Americans, like all other nations, did not enter the wars of the 20th century primarily because they were interested in fighting for the “liberty and freedom of other peoples.”  Those justifications followed once the country was already involved.  In the process of fighting for our own national interests, we also happened to be defending the cause of the “liberty and freedom of other peoples,” but had we not been provoked and had our government not already been so eager to intervene America would not have done much in the way of fighting on behalf of others’ freedom.  The reasons given for our involvement in the world wars were those of self-defense and retaliation, just as other nations were technically fulfilling their treaty obligations to allied states or fighting in self-defense as well.