But now on his third deployment in Iraq, he is no longer a believer in the mission. The pivotal moment came, he says, this past February when soldiers killed a man setting a roadside bomb. When they searched the bomber’s body, they found identification showing him to be a sergeant in the Iraqi Army. ~The New York Times

Via Yglesias

Staff Sgt. Safstrom sums up my thoughts pretty well when he asks about Iraq: “What are we doing here? Why are we still here?”

So this Chris Muir “there’s so much good news from Iraq you can’t even believe it” cartoon is making the rounds this weekend.  A little bit of digging will reveal that at least a few of the pieces of “good news” Muir cites in his cartoon are over two years old and come from this story.  You will find references there to the 47 embassies, the 1,100 building projects, and the 364 schools.  (Query: how many of the 47 embassies are for countries that were not bribed, er, persuaded to join the “coalition of the willing”?)  Many of the other items can be found in web entries that are almost as old (via Atrios).  In fact, with just this latter 2005 source you can account for almost every claim in this cartoon, which was published today.  If all of these claims were true two years ago, and there has been nothing happening since then to augment or change these numbers, that would seem to suggest that whatever progress there was in Iraq at the start of 2005 has stalled.  No word, of course, on how many of these 364 schools are still open today.  How could there be, when Muir is simply recycling two-year old stories as if they were recent accomplishments?  What does it say about the “good news from Iraq” crowd that they have to reach back almost two and a half years to pull up this information, especially since the last year and a half has been generally so miserable?  This is a bit like Southerners in 1864 still congratulating each other on the victory at Chancellorsville, even though a few things had happened in the two years that followed that could possibly have had some bearing on the present state of the war.

Does it not trouble pro-war Republicans and conservatives in the least that their rattling off of statistics about Iraqi education and health care infrastructure comes off sounding a bit like a progress report to the People’s Congress in Beijing or the bragging of some tinpot dictator about how many children his reforms have put into school?  Take away the numbers and it is hard not to be reminded of Forest Whitaker’s Idi Amin talking about Ugandans being rich and driving “big cars.”  The reality was somewhat less impressive.

Update: The enthusiasm with which today’s Muir cartoon has beenembraced by some on the right is just sad.  This cartoon isn’t a Memorial Day commemoration of our fallen soldiers.  Instead, it enlists a day intended for venerating fallen American patriots in the bad cause of flacking for the administration.

“Congress voted yesterday to provide our troops with the funding and flexibility they need to protect our country,” Bush said in a statement Friday.

“Rather than mandate arbitrary timetables for troop withdrawals or micromanage our military commanders, this legislation enables our servicemen and women to follow the judgment of commanders on the ground,” he added. ~AFP

Once again, a mutant strain of Vietnam Syndrome has come to dominate the debate over the war.  Disillusioned Vietnam hawks have told a story about Vietnam that suits the interests of many groups, so it has become something of a consensus view.  According to this story, it was terrible micromanagers from Washington who doomed an otherwise “winnable” conflict to ultimate failure.  Because, you see, it was the White House selecting bombing targets, and not the collapse of ARVN, that led to the collapse of South Vietnam.  Mr. Bush decided long ago that no one would confuse him for a President who was extremely familiar with the details of his own war, and has made a fetish of his own hands-off approach to the war.  He is the Decider who prefers to defer to those under his command. 

Ever since 1975, it has been the mantra of most politicians, especially Republican politicians, that they will follow the judgements of military commanders during wartime and will essentially cede most decisionmaking to these commanders (all the better to wash their hands of whatever comes out of the conflict, I suppose).  Critics of the President, particularly Democratic members of Congress, have decided that their best course of action is to get into a contest with Mr. Bush to see who can follow the “commanders on the ground” more assiduously.  Mr. Bush’s failure, as Obama will tell us, is that he does not pay attention to the situation “on the ground,” while Mr. Bush will retort that he will not tolerate politicians (which apparently does not include himself) meddling in these affairs.  When it comes to a choice between Congress and the “commanders,” as Mr. Bush memorably told us not long ago, he is “the commander guy.” 

Obama has a point, as far as it goes, since Mr. Bush’s obliviousness is now proverbial, but speaking about “the ground” in Iraq has moved beyond an appeal to realism and a desire to measure results in the real world to a convenient trope that allows antiwar Democrats the room to claim that they are actually more hard-headed and tough-minded than Mr. Bush with respect to winning the war.  This approach may be quite appealing to some presidential candidates, since it seems to make it possible to be antiwar and in favour of a more vigorous, “effective” war at the same time.  It is understandable why everyone now wants to fixate on the reality “on the ground,” since so many of the tactical and administrative errors of the first four years have been a product of the administration’s old hostility to empirical evidence, history and any expertise that might contradict received ideological maxims, but the phrase itself has become a cliche–so much so that Mr. Bush has embraced it–and it has ceased to mean very much.  Indeed, “commanders on the ground” and “situation on the ground” are fast approaching the meaninglessness of such stock phrases as “support the troops,” “cut and run” and, everyone’s favourite, “we’re fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them here.” 

These phrases no longer refer to any actual coherent policy position, nor do they really refer back to anything in reality.  They are slogans used to say something in a less direct, but even more effective way.  When you want to say, “The administration is incompetent,” you say, “The President is ignoring the situation on the ground.”  Charges of incompetence are a dime a dozen in government, but this other accusation conveys the special quality of Mr. Bush’s incompetence–he is ignoring the situation on the ground.  That sounds much worse for Bush, which is why Democrats prefer to say this. 

Likewise, when you want to say, “We’re going to keep fighting this war forever,” you say, “We are following the advice of the commanders on the ground.”  It doesn’t matter what the advice of the commanders might actually be.  It doesn’t even matter whether the politicians actually follow that advice.  The commanders might unanimously call for withdrawal, but what matters is the attitude of the politician who expresses his respect and support for the decisions of the “commanders on the ground.”  This shows that he has the requisite hawkishness to be taken seriously on national security by people in the establishment. 

When you want to say, “Bow before the President,” you say, “Support the troops.”  We can tell this is the case because the phrase is quite often invoked at those moments when critics say something against the President.  Since virtually no one is saying anything against the troops, calls to “support the troops” might seem redundant, except that the phrase has next to nothing to do with the troops any longer.  There are uses of the phrase that may refer to actual troops, but very often this is almost incidental.  When you want to say, “I want to continue this war forever and ever,” you say, “We’re fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them here.”  Fighting forever is what this phrase logically entails, because it implies that “they” will attack us “here” if we stop fighting “over there,” which means that we can never be safe unless we keep fighting “over there” against “them.”  Instead of saying something as crazy as that, it is much better to cast the entire conflict in strictly defensive terms.    

So there is an obsession with this “ground” on which the commanders are operating and with which Mr. Bush has virtually no acquaintance.  Since Mr. Bush was once a National Guard aviator, perhaps his lack of attachment to “the ground” is understandable.  It seems to me that all the other commanders–those on the sea, for instance–must be feeling terribly hedged in and micromanaged, since it is only the “commanders on the ground” who are given this much flexibility and leeway.

Troparion 

Blessed art Thou, O Christ our God, Who hast revealed the fisherman as most wise By sending down upon them the Holy Spirit; Through them Thou didst draw the world into Thy net. O Lover of Man, Glory to Thee!

Kontakion 

When the Most High came down and confused the tongues, He divided the nations; But when He distributed the tongues of fire, He called all to unity. Therefore, with one voice, we glorify the all-holy Spirit!

Magnification

We magnify Thee, O Life-giver Christ, And we honor Thy most Holy Spirit, Whom Thou didst send from the Father unto Thy disciples.

A very joyous and blessed Holy Feast of Pentecost to you all.

Here is Ron Paul’s appearance on Bill Maher.

Go here to support Ron Paul’s campaign.

As long as the Church Abroad existed as an independent entity, it implicitly challenged the authority of Moscow to speak for the Russian Church. It consistently denounced the collaboration of the church with the Communist Party, called for a more positive valuation of Russia’s prerevolutionary and anticommunist past [bold mine-DL] and served as a hopeful beacon to Orthodox Christians in Russia seeking an alternative.

Many in the Church Abroad wonder how this merger went through at all. The process was secretive, and there has even been speculation that some American businessmen with Russian ties helped to push it along. But now having accepted Moscow’s authority, the former Church Abroad faces many questions. Can its leaders press Moscow to reject the church’s tradition of collaborating with both the Kremlin and the KGB? Can they hold on to the church properties they have maintained for the past 80 years? Will the Moscow Church dispatch pro-Kremlin clergy to promote political aims? And, above all, can the leaders of the Church Abroad stem the tide of defection from the disappointed faithful that has already begun? ~Nadia Kizenko

Prof. Kizenko (she is a professor of history at SUNY Albany) makes a number of strange or false statements here.  In the past, the Church Abroad did serve an important function as a witness to Russian Orthodoxy free from any hint of Soviet influence, but the need for such an independent witness is no more, because the USSR is no more.  In the past, the Church Abroad did challenge collaboration with the Communist Party, but that party is no longer in power and the days of the “godless authority” are over.  The language of “merger” and “acquisition” is entirely inappropriate to the restoration of full communion between Christian brethren.  It suggests that the Church of Christ is merchandise to be bought and sold, as if our bishops were like the soldiers at the Crucifixion casting lots for the garments of the Lord.  This is an outrageous thing to suggest, but Prof. Kizenko’s language is meant to conjure up images of sordid and crooked dealings or the idea of the reconciliation of Orthodox Christians in terms of a hostile takeover more familiar to the readers of the Journal.

Members of what was the Church Abroad have valued and continue to positively value much of prerevolutionary Russian culture and history because it is also the culture and history nourished by the Russian Orthodox Church.  The ethnic Russians among Russian Orthodox outside Russia also have a natural admiration and love of their ancestral country, and they impart this admiration and love to new converts as part of the cultural traditions of their people, and I consider this all to the good.  In the last decade and a half, however, the Russian Orthodox in Russia have also begun to recover and rediscover the prerevolutionary past.  The Moscow Patriarchate has glorified the Holy Royal Martyrs and commemorates them among the Saints of the Church, which was a significant and important acknowledgement both of the Holy Royal Martyrs’ sanctity and martyrdom and of crimes of the persecutors who slew them and who also slew all the new martyrs of Russia.  Naturally, Prof. Kizenko fails to mention any of this.

The process of reconciliation was not secretive.  It was the fruit of the work of a joint commission made  up of representatives from the Synod and the MP, and information about their work was routinely made available.  The Sobor in San Francisco last year included lay and clerical representatives from every diocese in the Synod.  Each step was taken with the knowledge of all bishops and the laity of their respective dioceses.  Nonetheless, it was obviously and necessarily never going to be a “democratic” process, but was going to be one worked out by the bishops invested with the authority first given to the Holy Apostles to teach and lead the people of God.  The question of property has been or is in the process of being settled, and this has by and large meant the preservation of the status quo as far as questions of ownership and management are concerned.  Administratively and practically, the Synod’s institutional structures remain intact.  The key differences from the past are that communion has been restored and we recognise and commemorate Patriarch Alexy as the chief hierarch of the Russian Orthodox Church.

There will be more to come in the next few days, but this is all I have time to write right now.

Update: Ilya Somin at Volokh Conspiracy uncritically embraces the extensively error-ridden article by Prof. Kizenko.  I am continually impressed at how willing some people are to make their political hostility to the Russian government the deciding factor in judging the merits of the reconciliation of the two parts of the Russian Orthodox Church.  I wonder whether these critics would ever be satisfied with a reunion with Moscow unless the Patriarch of Moscow actively undermined Putin’s rule (never mind that this would be directly contrary to the injunctions of the Apostle and centuries of Orthodox tradition).  It is these critics, not the Orthodox hierarchs, who are making political concerns the priority, which rather exposes their real concern, which is to encourage schism and spiritual sickness for the sake of scoring political points against a Russian government they do not like.  This is very wrong, and it has to be fought at every turn.  Insisting on persisting in the old division because Putin’s regime is authoritarian would be like urging Catholics around the world to go into schism because Catholic bishops had supported the pro-Catholic Nationalists in the Spanish Civil War.  Maybe there were and are people who urged such measures, but happily few or none listened.  Let us hope that the same will be the case today. 

Correction: In an earlier update, I had briefly confused Prof. Kizenko with an entirely different Kizenko who was connected to a pro-Yushchenko group.  I am reliably informed by those who know Prof. Kizenko that she almost certainly has nothing to do with such groups.  She is a Russian Orthodox Christian.  She simply happens to be badly mistaken in what she wrote in her article.

Money maintains the Republican/Democratic duopoly of trivialized politics. It confines the debate over U.S. policy to well-hewn channels. It preserves intact the cliches of 1933-45 about isolationism, appeasement and the nation’s call to “global leadership.” It inhibits any serious accounting of exactly how much our misadventure in Iraq is costing. It ignores completely the question of who actually pays. It negates democracy, rendering free speech little more than a means of recording dissent. ~Prof. Andrew Bacevich

There are many problems with this argument, not least of which is that about a fifth of Hispanics in America are Protestants, mostly evangelical Pentecostals and Baptists. Almost all of Bush’s political gains among Hispanics have come from this group, which gave him 44 percent of their vote in 2000 and 56 percent in 2004. Hispanic Protestants tend to be conservative on social policy.  And many conservatives, I’d be willing to bet, would feel more cultural affinity with Hispanic Baptists in their church pews than they would with Huntington’s colleagues in the Harvard faculty lounge. ~Michael Gerson

This is amusing to read.  Gerson knocks anti-immigration populists as “lowbrow,” but wants to stir the populist pot against pointy-headed academics by pushing a crude evangelical identity politics that will supposedly unite Anglos and Latinos in their shared derision for scholars.  Gerson joins naked anti-intellectualism to anti-patriotic policy proposals.  An inspiring combination!  His motto might be, “We’re ignorant and transnational.”

Note that Gerson doesn’t tell us about the four-fifths of Hispanics who aren’t Protestant.  He doesn’t tell us what their politics are like, nor does he tell us about the cultural values they possess, because he probably knows, or at least guesses, that this information would be distinctly unhelpful to the cause of selling out his country.  The final lines, deploring national chauvinism, might have some credibility if they did not come from a former speechwriter of an administration that has masterfully honed the rhetoric of national chauvinism for the purposes of promoting aggressive warfare.  About that rather un-Christian behaviour, Gerson naturally never has anything to say.

If the Republican Party cannot find ways to appeal to natural entrepreneurs, with strong family values, who are focused on education and social mobility, then the GOP is already dead. ~Michael Gerson

That might be the case.  There is no obvious evidence that most Hispanic voters necessarily fit this bill, nor is there much evidence that the Hispanic voters who do fit this bill want to have an amnesty.  In any case, why does appealing to such voters have to involve a massive subversion of the law and the active encouragement of still more mass immigration?

For a certain kind of conservative, any attempt to grant a legal status to illegal immigrants is as welcome as salsa on their apple pie. ~Michael Gerson

Is there some reason why granting legal status to illegal immigrants should be received any more enthusiastically?  Also, salsa-on-apple-pie is just about as clumsy and blunt a metaphor as it gets.  The only worse way to say what Gerson means to say about these people (“these people don’t like Mexicans”) would be to talk about a tequilla-soaked flag.  This guy was a speechwriter?  For the President?