Is the treatment that Shaha Riza has received the “nastiest character assassination” that Christopher Hitchens has seen in his lifetime?  He thinks so.  So, it’s nastier than the character assassination carried out against, to name a few, John Tower, Clarence Thomas, Pat Buchanan, Max Cleland, Jim Webb and Pim Fortuyn (the latter then being actually assassinated as a result)?  It is nastier than all of these (which involved various smears, including accusations of criminal conduct, cheap attacks against the person’s patriotism or frequent comparisons to Nazis) to suggest that the woman effectively got a pay raise as a result of being Wolfowitz’s woman?  Somehow I don’t think that’s worse.

His speech started on judges and pivoted to Scooter Libby. No one understood why he [Thompson] was talking about Libby [bold mine-DL]. ~Hotline

AmSpec‘s Prowler gives more details on the Thompson speech, but the reaction of Hotline’s CNP informant is telling.  Indeed, why would anyone in any given audience understand Fred Thompson’s bizarre obsession with the defense of Scooter Libby?  The only thing more bizarre than this would be teary-eyed testimonials about the integrity of Karl Rove or an expression of the deep, abiding respect one has for the planning skills of Donald Rumsfeld.  Does any sensible Republican ’08 candidate actually want to associate himself with the cause of a convicted felon whose chief claim to fame is that he always does the bidding of his master, Dick Cheney?   

If they came to hear about judicial tyranny and the need for judicial restraint and strict constructionists (or whatever boilerplate they are expecting), they will naturally be perplexed by references to a perjury case that most people didn’t follow very closely and which most people don’t consider to be one of the burning issues of the day.

Michael Crowley is surprised that 40% think it wasn’t a mistake to invade Iraq, but he really shouldn’t be.  Just look at the responses to one of the other questions (“Do you consider the war in Iraq to be part of the war on terrorism which began on September 11, 2001, or do you consider it to be an entirely separate military action?”) to understand this view.  43% believe Iraq is part of the “war on terrorism,” so it is not in the least surprising that 40% think invading Iraq was the right thing to do.  Until that absurd and false connection between Iraq and the jihadi war is broken definitively and completely in the public mind, you will continue to have large numbers of people who believe that invading Iraq was absolutely right.  I would be fascinated to see how these people would answer questions about WMDs, Iraq-Al Qaeda ties and the like.  Almost certainly, many would agree with statements that would make even Weekly Standard subscribers cringe in embarrassment.

Winning is everything. Fighting ruthlessly may not please the safe-at-home moralists, but it’s losing that’s immoral. ~Ralph Peters

But if winning were everything, we could take a page out of Dean Barnett’s handbook and bomb the place into oblivion.  Since winning isn’t everything, we don’t do that, because we are, thank God, not quite the hideous monsters Ralph Peters would like us to be.  There’s a reason why it is exceedingly difficult to try to dominate another country by force in a just way: in the end, either you cease to be just, or you cease to dominate.  This is why highly civilised empires and great powers cannot retain their dependencies and colonies and satellites when the native people decide that they must go; attempts to retain the colonies or satellites by force always degenerate into brutality and then often fail anyway. 

Upon their return in 1945, the French committed summary executions of Algerians to show that they were once again in control (perhaps because “the only thing they understand” is force?), which marked the beginning of the end of French control: such ruthlessness, which would presumably be applauded by Peters because it shows a desire to “win,” caused profound resentment and hatred and a desire for independence, which was eventually realised after a long and nasty war.  Peters’ recommendations were followed in Algeria.  Ruthlessness was the order of the day before very long, and this was effective in winning battles and equally effective in losing the war by pushing more and more Algerians into the independence camp.  We no longer live in the age of Timur, when a reputation for building mountains of skulls will intimidate and horrify a people into submission.  Some might even call this progress.  In modern warfare, ruthlessness by an occupier is met with ever greater levels of resistance once the people in a country believe that the dominant power has no particular right to exercise any power over them.   

Peters’ line only makes sense in the context of a just war, since loss in a just war would also be a defeat for the effort to remedy some great wrong committed against you.  Failure to see a just cause through to a successful end would indeed be immoral (this does not mean that unconditional surrender is therefore somehow a moral demand to make).  But we’re not talking about a just cause.  We’re talking about the occupation and domination of Iraq.

“I am not happy with the Republican Party today,” Hagel said. “It’s been hijacked by a group of single-minded almost isolationists, insulationists, power-projectors.” ~CBS

Insulationist?  Is that someone who believes strongly in winterising the entire country?  What is an “almost isolationist”?  Does it make any sense to call one of the more activist, interventionist periods in Republican Party history an era of the “almost isolationists”?  Hagel uses it, I suppose, because he considers it an insult to call someone an isolationist, since he is typically just the opposite.  This is the sort of word that a “power-projector” type would throw at those who are more interested in securing this country.  Hagel would know something about the “power projectors,” since he has traditionally been one of them until today.  He had no qualms about projecting power against Yugoslav civilians, nor did he ultimately resist the drive to project power against Iraq.  It seems to me that you have to have a lot of gall to complain about a hijacking in which you were a participant.  This is the hijacker who says, “Well, when I signed on I didn’t realise you were actually going to take over the plane–I only agreed to threaten to take over the plane, so don’t blame me!”

The number of threats is not decreasing. They are only transforming and changing the guise.  As during the Third Reich era, these new threats show the same contempt for human life and claims to world exclusiveness and diktat. ~Vladimir Putin

This should reassure many of Putin’s critics.  He is also not above using the same cheap invocations of WWII propaganda to advance his views, which gives him something in common with many of his Western critics.  The Russians say that he was not referring to America, which means that he might have been using the commemoration of victory over the Nazis to make the same sort of ham-fisted connection between WWII and the current fight with jihadis that is so popular in some circles over here.  I sense an opportunity for a meeting of the minds: Rick Santorum and Vova, together at last!

Maybe Reihan is right.  Maybe a sequel to 28 Days Later is one of the best movies around.  There is a long and respected tradition of endless numbers of horror sequels, so I suppose it’s only fair that the 28 crowd gets its own franchise.  As post-apocalyptic horror goes, 28 Days Later is pretty hard to beat.  I don’t see how you can even attempt a sequel of something as grim and unnerving as that one (except, naturally, that you, the studio executive, want to make a lot more money).  Of course, it could be worse–they could start making prequels.

For democracy’s future, these are real problems. But there’s an even bigger one: democracy is not improving people’s lives. In Bangladesh, among the most corrupt countries in the world, many were thrilled when the military seized power in January. By most accounts, Russians like how Vladimir Putin has ruled. And though Chávez is one of Latin America’s least democratic leaders [bold mine-DL], he’s also one of the most popular. In many countries that have embraced democracy since the cold war’s end, free elections haven’t reduced corruption, violence or poverty. ~Peter Beinart

Take note that whenever Beinart talks about the decline of political freedom and someone being the “least democratic,” he is constantly conflating being liberal with being democratic.  There is no doubt that Chavez has been robustly, obnoxiously democratic.  That’s exactly the problem.  If he has become a democratic despot, he is not any less democratic for that. 

Incidentally, unless you are an outspoken journalist, a Chechen, a Georgian (or, more recently, an Estonian) or one of Russia’s seven liberals (five of whom live outside the country), why wouldn’t you like the way Putin has governed?  His tenure has coincided with, if not necessarily caused, improved living standards and has provided some stability and order where there was rather more lawlessness and chaos in the recent past.  Of course, people may like the way a government runs things and the government may still be horribly wrong in what it has done, but when you frame it this way it is obvious why Russians overwhelmingly approve of how Putin has ruled.  If you lived in Russia and were not a particularly political person, you probably would appreciate the relative improvement of the Putin era over that of Yeltsin.

Remember also that the Thais were also very enthusiastic when the military deposed Thaksin and seized power.  This is because democratic government will sometimes not only fail to reduce corruption, but will instead breed it.  Even if it does not encourage corruption, democracy is only as vigilant and honest as the electorate and entrenched power interests want it to be.  If elected representatives have no interest in checking executive corruption, there is nothing in a constitutional arrangement that will prevent it.  Even so, corruption charges against Thaksin and both major parties in Thailand made Thais very tired of his demagogic rule–and he has been one of the relative success stories of Asian democracy.

There is no reason why democracy should necessarily reduce corruption.  For every advance in open and accountable government democracy might theoretically bring, it introduces two opportunities for new graft, patronage and deal-making.  Only extensive reform legislation backed up by an ethos that tells people that it is actually wrong to help your cousins and friends game the system will effectively combat most basic corruption. 

There is no reason why democracy should curb violence or alleviate poverty.  Democracy politicises difference and aligns people along lines of mass identity: it requires well-established habits of abiding by the procedural rules of democratic government to keep these contestations from becoming either blatantly corrupt or violent.  Democracy concerns the equality of citizens, the nature of the distribution of power and the theoretical origin of political authority.  At its most basic, it is majority rule, and even in its indirect forms it is simply a mechanism for expressing consensus.  If most of the people in a nation embrace views that perpetuate internecine conflict or poverty or both, being able to vote and have representatives vote on legislation are fairly useless for addressing problems of violence and poverty.  Democracy is only as pacific as the people in a society (and perhaps less), and it has absolutely no direct relationship to the economic success of a society.  Those who think that participatory government will make them richer haven’t been paying much attention. 

What are Beinart’s answers?  Of course, it wouldn’t be to drop the idealisation of democracy.  That would make too much sense.  Instead, we should have “debt relief, open markets and foreign aid that really make a difference in a poor country.”  The first one makes a fair amount of sense (the refusal to bail out Argentina led to the implosion of their economy, the destruction of their middle-class and the backlash against pro-market policies), but the other two seem like invitations for populist backlash on the one hand and ever-greater corruption on the other.  Throwing foreign aid money at the rest of the world will not aid very many foreigners, except for those who happen to be among the government officials responsible for handling the money.

Today Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez is cloning himself in Bolivia and Ecuador. ~Peter Beinart

If that doesn’t create a bipartisan consensus against cloning, I don’t know what will!

Four months into the primary season, the Republican candidates are all running way to the right on domestic policy, talking about tax cuts and porkbusting and abandoning the territory that Bush tried to swipe from the Democrats; meanwhile, the man currently leading in the GOP primary polls, Rudy Giuliani, seems to have decided that his path to the nomination requires a frontal assault on the party’s social-conservative consensus. The only place where there hasn’t been any serious deviations from Bushism is foreign policy, and particularly the war in Iraq, which is the one place where I thought deviations were most likely. ~Ross Douthat

I think Ross is being far too hard on himself here.  I read Ross’ piece on the staying power of Bushism not too long ago, and it made sense to me at a time when the primary contest had already started taking the shape it now has.  Let’s take it point by point.  Ross wrote:

All of the prominent candidates, for instance, champion fiscal restraint, but none are [sic] likely to revive the small-government conservatism that Bush deliberately abandoned. 

This is a true statement for both prominent and obscure candidates, save Ron Paul and perhaps Tom Tancredo.  Ron Paul is like a voice crying in the wilderness (as usual) in the midst of a field of people who are mostly either perfectly content with the current size and scope of government of the Bush Era or who focus their criticism on the excessive deficit spending of the last few years.  Who among the leading candidates is making a real small government agenda an important part of his campaign?  Of course, everyone always talks about tax cuts and reforming the tax code, but Mr. Bush was one for tax cuts and spending increases.  Sam Brownback can talk about killing the tax code with a “dull axe,” but we will wait in vain for the “compassionate conservative” to take that dull axe to any federal programs.  If anything, the prominent candidates aim to close this gap between revenues and expenditures by being more skeptical about cutting taxes (cue John McCain saying that he will follow the deficit to the gates of hell).  The candidates will make noises about shrinking government, the same way that Mr. Bush made similar noises during the primaries when he needed to fend off attacks from the right, but they are not making any proposals to this effect.  I think Ross has taken their Reagan-mania too much to heart: they are mouthing empty platitudes, not making concrete statements about policy.  That is a problem in itself, but it doesn’t make Ross’ analysis wrong.  Ross is much more right than he allows on this point in particular.

Keeping social conservatives happy and engaged is important for these candidates, and we have not yet seen whether any of them can actively spurn them and get away with it.  It is true that Giuliani has decided to take the Balaclava approach to wooing social conservatives, but it is not at all clear that this is a smart or winning strategy.  The merest whiff of a Fred Thompson candidacy has started to collapse Giuliani’s once-formidable position at the head of the pack, and his more openly pro-choice candidacy promises to hurt his position still more.  McCain tried to run to Bush’s left in 2000 and he was crushed; Giuliani wants to run to the left of Bushism, which is already pretty far to the left, and will almost certainly suffer the same fate.

The near-unanimity of the candidates on backing Bush’s foreign policy in almost every particular has already been noted before.  Ross had good reason to think that someone other than Ron Paul would break with the administration on Iraq or foreign policy more broadly, but here he has assumed a rational response to the failure of Bush’s foreign policy that you might expect from a foreign policy realist.  This makes sense, since I believe Ross is basically a realist, but it imputes to most of the candidates understanding of foreign policy that they do not seem to have.  As a matter of political self-interest for the general election, they should be running away from Iraq as fast as they can, except for the baffling reality that Republican voters overwhelmingly support the war and the “surge” and seem to think that victory is just around the next “corner.”  The party has truly become Bushified, and now the ’08 candidates are stuck playing to a base that embraces Bushism at a time when most of the country loathes it. 

In what sense have most of the candidates, especially the “prominent” ones, actually moved away from Bushism, by which Ross means “social conservatism and an accommodation with big government at home, and a moralistic interventionism abroad”?  In reality, they haven’t moved very far from Mr. Bush’s chosen ground at all, which is why all of the insipid Reagan chatter is that much more depressing.  The candidates seem to believe quite genuinely that if they invoke certain talismanic words and names that the primary voters will respond with Pavlovian automaticity.  Most of them do not feel obliged to take up policy positions that might actually reflect a commitment to smaller, limited government, because they seem to think that simply saying that they are against big and wasteful government will do the trick.  Don’t ask them what they would do differently–they like Reagan, and that’s enough, isn’t it?