So, in other words, Osama bin Laden & Co. get to determine the legitimacy of our policies because these terrorists are the truest expression of the will of the people? Isn’t this a bit like saying a farmer can’t clear a field if it might upset a rattlesnake? ~Jonah Goldberg

Goldberg continues to confirm every criticism I have made of him, and has managed to distinguish himself here as even less impressive than I had thought.  You do have to be fairly dense to conclude the things quoted above based on what Ron Paul said last night.  Obviously, Paul never said anything of the sort.  He wasn’t talking about legitimacy or illegitimacy of policy (though he could have in certain cases to good effect), but instead was effectively talking about whether a given policy is prudent and wise.  Policies that help to produce violent, suicidal attacks appear to Dr. Paul to be poor policies.  I wonder why.  He said nothing about “the will of the people” here or anywhere else.  Non-interventionists would obviously oppose entanglements overseas regardless of whether terrorism resulted from these entanglements, but how much more reasonable is the non-interventionist view when these entanglements do result in terrorist attacks?  If Goldberg would declare, as he has, that Robert Taft is “irrelevant” to the present moment, he may as well chuck almost the whole of the history of U.S. foreign policy.  Oh, that’s right, he and his confreres have done exactly that, just as non-interventionists have been claiming for some time.     

If the goal of U.S. foreign policy is to secure the national interest and strengthen American national security, it is very simply unwise to make policies that demonstrably contribute to additional, unnecessary threats to our national security.  If interventionist policies and military deployments overseas contribute to “blowback” that directly harms citizens of the United States, it is reasonable to argue that these policies helped to cause these negative unintended consequences and that they are therefore more desirable, different policies that should be pursued.  Those held hostage by terrorist demands are those who inflexibly refuse to adjust policy out of fear of showing weakness.  They offer no solution to the threat, but propose war after deployment after intervention to allegedly combat the problem their preferred policies helped to create and in so doing only magnify and deepen the problem.  Their fear of appearing weak is itself a fundamental flaw that dooms them to keep perpetuating the same errors that helped land us in this predicament.  

Reagan’s decision to withdraw from Beirut was the right one at the time, but obviously the better, earlier decision would have been not to intervene in Lebanon.  The decision to leave Beirut appears now, in distant hindsight, as a contributing factor to emboldening jihadis because the government kept intervening in Muslim countries, deploying armies in the Islamic world and harrassing certain Muslim countries.  Those errors contributed far more to what came later than did the belated decision to leave a place where we should never have been.  Constant meddling combined with relatively quick withdrawals is assuredly a lousy combination, which is why we should stop intervening in the first place.  If Goldberg isn’t interested in Taft, maybe he could try something a bit more recent, such as the Powell Doctrine–at least back when Powell actually believed in his own doctrine. 

We were wrong to be bombing Iraq in the 1990s.  First of all, it was illegal under international law.  More than that, it was pointless and served no American interest.  We were wrong to have tried to strangle Iraq with sanctions.  The Gulf War had little, if anything, to do with American interests.  At most we were fulfilling our obligations to the U.N.  (This is part of the reason why non-interventionist conservatives also have little time for the U.N., since enforcing its mandates has become a frequent excuse for meddling in countries that have nothing to do with us.)  As for policy towards the Soviets, containment and opposition to Soviet power did not necessarily entail wars in Asia, least of all in Vietnam, which even the author of the original “Containment” article opposed as foolish and misguided.  Goldberg would probably respond that George Kennan is also irrelevant.       

To persist in the belief that U.S. policies had nothing to do with 9/11 or, even worse, that they may have had something to do with it but it is absolutely unacceptable to change them anyway is to hold a position in which you effectively declare your indifference to the damage to U.S. national security that these policies inflict.  You have taken the view that there are more important things than securing this country.  I suppose a person could take that position, but he has to be pretty obnoxious to sit in judgement of anyone else’s foreign policy views.   

Of course, war supporters also routinely cite the authority of Al Qaeda higher-ups when they think it bolsters their arguments for remaining in Iraq.  Listen to what Zawahiri said–we can’t leave, we’d be playing right into their hands!  Supporters of the war are only too happy to take Bin Laden or Zawahiri as oracles and to take them far more seriously than anyone else does when it suits them.  To take note of what Al Qaeda members have said before or even immediately after their attacks is, however, off limits, because that way points towards a potential exit from the mess that interventionists have helped create.

Alex Massie recovers from the shock of Maureen Dowd attempting to write about European politics and delivers some of the best ridicule aimed at Dowd I have seen.  He achieves this mostly by letting Dowd speak for herself, which is always calamitous and bad for her reputation.

All bigots and frauds are brothers under the skin. ~Christopher Hitchens

I suppose this means that Hitchens has many more siblings than we thought.

Yesterday I received some pleasant news: my paper abstract was accepted for the 33rd Byzantine Studies Conference, which will be held this October at the University of Toronto.  As one conference season ends, so another already has begun.  This will be my first time in Toronto, and indeed my first time in Canada, which should be interesting in itself.  Do any Canadian readers and/or associated Canadian bloggers have good recommendations for restaurants or things to do in the evening in Toronto?  We will likely not be driving up, so recommendations close to the area of the university would probably be ideal. 

Friends of Eunomia are welcome to attend the talk, though I suspect they will require registration for attendees.  I will, of course, be speaking about matters related to imperial religious policy and monotheletism.  Try to contain your enthusiasm.

The elder Podhoretz warns against a modern equivalent of “Finlandization.”  And not a moment too soon!  Just imagine: if we yielded to a fate of Finlandising, we might suffer from the blights of prodigious cell phone production, EuroVision contests and reindeer!  Stop the madness!*

* I refuse to answer seriously any article that takes the existence of something called “Islamofascism” as a given.

So do you suppose that the story that Ashcroft, Mueller and top Justice officials threatened to resign to protest the illegality of the NSA domestic surveillance program (you know, the one that the President has “inherent powers” to authorise) will have any effect on the standard refrain from administration defenders about the original legality of this program?  No, I didn’t think so, either.

I suppose you have to hand it to the folks at FoxNews–they wanted to see candidates taking out their opponents at the knees, and they got some mildly memorable exchanges as a result.  But what is the real result?  Anyone bothering to watch this debate would have come away with a firm impression that the people in this field really, really don’t like taxes, largely support some means of torturing detainees while using euphemistic terms to talk about it (with only Ron Paul and McCain dissenting, naturally), are against terrorism and for the most part oppose abortion.  Oh, yes, everyone also opposes excessive spending, but no one (except Ron Paul) can think of a single program or department that he would eliminate that he can actually name.  During the last two-thirds of the debate that I heard, no one (except, of course, Ron Paul) gave any indication that he would depart in the slightest from Bush’s foreign policy.  Bushism does live.  Indeed, it stalks the land like a revenant, seeking victims on which it can feed.  The Democratic candidates have to be delighted.  If this is their opposition, almost any one from their fairly mediocre gang of candidates will do just fine in any match-up. 

Again, Ron Paul made the right points regarding torture and foreign policy, but by design these questions bring up those two areas where he is indubitably right and (sadly) entirely at odds with the party’s core voters.  He attempted to give full, intelligent answers to explain the idea of blowback, but obviously lacked the time to do this completely.  Giuliani unwittingly revealed himself to be surprisingly ignorant about the issue where is supposedly strongest when he said that he had “never heard” anyone say what Dr. Paul had said–if he has never heard that Al Qaeda attributes their attacks to our presence in the Gulf and the no-fly zones and sanctions against Iraq, and if he has never even heard of the idea of blowback, what sort of national security candidate is he?  Naturally, the crowd lapped it up, further lowering my opinion of the average voter.

I’m a little bit late to the debate tonight.  The sound quality of Fox’s live stream video is poor, so it’s difficult to hear what the candidates are saying.  I suspect that I won’t be missing anything important if I don’t catch every word. 

Gilmore has said he favours sanctions on Iran (surprise, surprise), Romney says that (yawn) Washington is broken, McCain is in deep denial about the causes of the ’06 defeat.  Quote from McCain: “We did not lose the election because of the war in Iraq.”  No, it was just too much spending!  Huckabee jumps on the tax-cutting bandwagon (again).  Brownback embarrasses himself with a shameless plug for ethanol.  (Note to Brownback camp: when asked about how to lower fuel costs, do not mention ethanol, which contributes to higher gas prices in the Midwest!)  Tommy Thompson bores us by reiterating how many vetoes he has had. 

Ron Paul rattles off the federal departments he would eliminate–hurrah!  “We can’t change anything until we change our philosophy about what government should do.”  Go, Ron!      

Gilmore reminds us that, yes, he also cut taxes.  He is the “consistent conservative,” and other people are not.  We get it.  Hunter hits his marks on trade with China and encouraging domestic manufacturing.  Tancredo reminds us that many of his colleagues are massive hypocrites about spending.  “Follow the Constitution,” Tancredo says.  That would make him only the second candidate, after Ron Paul, to mention the Constitution in any shape, way or form.   

Gilmore nails Giuliani, Huckabee and Romney.  Goodbye, 11th Commandment!  (Apparently, earlier in the debate Romney also repeated his idiotic “it’s about Sunni and Shia and a caliphate” routine.)  Giuliani runs and hides behind fearmongering about Hillary–but the questioner won’t let him off the hook.  Giuliani runs and hides behind George Will.  This is the bold, decisive leader that Republicans want?

McCain describes his bad policy positions as “leadership.”  He pretends that his immigration position has something to do with border security.  Huckabee defends himself more aggressively and confidently.  He makes Giuliani look pathetic by comparison.  Romney fends off the attack competently, but not decisively.  Brownback defends his amnesty position by calling on Reagan’s amnesty.  Tommy Thompson seems to take up for ESCR in existing lines, but also shows himself to be fairly informed.  Giuliani tries to play a libertarian card on abortion.  Huckabee gives a fairly effective rebuttal, but becomes repetitious with his examples of dedication to life. 

Romney repeats his conversion story.  Who buys this stuff?  Tancredo hits the other candidates for cynical conversions and weakness on immigration.  He remains too undisciplined and unfocused.  McCain lies that he doesn’t support amnesty.  Romney tries to move himself away from McCain on immigration, and scores a couple points.  He gets a final shot at McCain on both immigration and campaign finance reform (which is shameless, since he once upon a time supported McCain’s campaign finance bill and advocated for even more radical restrictions).  Giuliani goes for his immigrant ID card idea again.  Hunter reminds us of the border fence that “I built” in southern California, and reminds us of the extension of the fence he supported; he hits the administration on being lax in building the fence. 

Ron Paul invokes Robert Taft and non-interventionist foreign policy!  He defends the conservative, constitutionalist antiwar position.  He pins 9/11 on interventionist foreign policy!  Unfortunately, Giuliani wins the crowd with his attack on Paul.  He calls on Paul to withdraw his statement.  Naturally, Paul doesn’t withdraw. 

McCain gets a bizarre round of applause for his comments on the battle flag.  Huckabee handles his parole-of-murderer question as well as he possibly could have.  Tancredo pushes back on a global warming question.

FoxNews tries to impose a torture litmus test.  McCain gives a fairly decent answer in which he says, basically, “Don’t torture.”  Giuliani offers a euphemism for torture, while saying that he is against torture.  Romney actually gives a reasonably intelligent answer to this gotcha hypothetical, and then makes robust pro-Guantanamo remarks.  “Enhanced interrogation techniques”–Romney gets a prize for most euphemistic term for torture.  Brownback gestures strongly.  Gilmore reminds us of all his resume points–he has the experience.  Gilmore’s act gets old pretty quick.  Huckabee also gestures strongly.  Huckabee talks about sacrifice. 

Paul hits the others for using “Newspeak” on torture.  Then becomes slightly unfocused.  Tancredo invokes Jack Bauer (groan).  Asked about the lack of minority candidates, Gilmore begins reading off his resume again.  Romney sends a love note to the Department of Education and No Child Left Behind.  Hunter bangs the old China drum again (and makes some good points). 

Clearly, Giuliani did much better in his second outing, and he was able to manipulate the crowd with his 9/11 references better than before.  Romney was much less polished, McCain didn’t seem quite as old, Hunter continued to perform well.  Huckabee did reasonably well.  Gilmore, Tommy Thompson and Tancredo become more forgettable by the day.  Paul made all the right points and did relatively well considering his limited opportunities.  If we have to pick a “winner,” Hunter probably won.

President-elect Sarkozy, who was elected on a pro-American and pro-Israel platform, is considering offering an important job in the new conservative government to a former socialist foreign minister known for his anti-American and anti- Israel opinions. ~The New York Sun

The Sun is referring here to Hubert Vedrine, who famously dubbed America a “hyperpower” and did not mean it as a compliment.  Even so, I have been somewhat surprised that Americans took offense at this, since hyperpower really just means superpower, and most of the Americans who don’t like Vedrine or France are just fine with America being described as a superpower.  Even though hyper and super have the exact same meaning, one carries a subtle connotation of excess and the other, in conventional usage in English, has the connotation of surpassing excellence.  People here love Superman, but the same people would regard Hyperman as a sugar addict with serious control problems.  Go figure.

Back to the article.  This lede captures perfectly the incredibly self-obsessed way in which many American journalists look at foreign elections and foreign politics.  Sarkozy, whose campaign was almost entirely one focused on reviving the French economy, combating unemployment and establishing law and order, did not run on a “pro-American and pro-Israel platform.”  Arguably, had he made his campaign so explicitly one of foreign policy questions he might well have lost, since he would have seemed to be preoccupied with all the wrong issues.  Of partly Jewish background and an admirer of American economic success, Sarkozy is perhaps less critical of Israel and America, but he is not even as robustly supportive of Mr. Bush’s policies as the German Chancellor.  He has stated that France and America are strong allies, but allies can and will disagree with each other.  This is only a “pro-American” position if you rather foolishly believe that Chirac was “anti-American” because he argued against invading Iraq (a position that must now seem quite friendly and helpful to the United States).  Sarkozy ran on a platform of domestic reform and economic revitalisation, plus keeping out the Turks.  If anyone can figure out how that has anything to do with America and Israel, I congratulate you on your ingenuity.

At least he didn’t talk about the “quiet violence” of rapacious tornado damage insurance agents.  Considering that Obama has made at least two awesome gaffes in the past two months, shouldn’t he have already been dubbed the new Joe Biden by now?