And this time it was Nancy Pelosi who made headlines because of it. Of course, many failed to understand the context in which the Speaker of the House donned the scarf, but some have taken the time to explain it. The Cunning Realist and Garance Franke-Ruta provide much needed clarity and background.

James Joyner has the best round-up so far.

And the Hillary-Obama ticket will win in 2008, according to Dick Morris in an interview with PJM.

Peter Beinart argues that "George Bush has screwed John McCain one more time". I fear he is right and that he is also correct in arguing that McCain has taken a position of conviction when it comes to supporting the troops surge. But that, alas, may not win you any elections and that is something that will also ultimately affect the Giuliani card.

And McCain is fully aware of the consequences. In the latest edition of Vanity Fair, Todd S. Purdum paints a picture of a man constantly challenged by finding the right balance between political expediency and doing what is right:

McCain says he understands how little public support there would be for more troops. "I read the polls all the time. But does that mean I'm not going to do what is morally right? I look you straight in the eye, my friend, and tell you: I want to be president of the United States. I don't want to be president of the United States so badly that I'm going to do something that I know is not right for the security of this nation and the young men and women that are defending it. So, if this position makes me viewed as too militaristic, or unrealistic, or whatever it is, I will more than happily take those political consequences, because I'll sleep a hell of a lot better."

Well said. Note that these words were spoken before Bush's speech last week.

Not just in Europe is boomer retirement a pressing issue according to Robert Samuelson:

I know many bright, politically engaged boomers who can summon vast concern or outrage about global warming, corporate corruption, foreign policy and much more -- but somehow, their own Social Security and Medicare benefits rarely come up for criticism.

Our children will not be so blinded to this hypocrisy. We have managed to take successful programs -- Social Security and Medicare -- and turn them into huge problems by our self-centered inattention. Baby boomers seem eager to "reinvent retirement'' in all ways except those that might threaten their pocketbooks.

And that explains why some real issues - and I can list a few of my own - which not only require a change in spending priorities but a change in thinking patterns hardly get any attention from those seeking public office these days.

Dan Drezner - in the WaPo - makes an inventory of the various ideas that seek to reinvigorate US foreign policy. This excerpt in particular struck me as thought provoking:

On at least one key dimension, all the contenders for Kennan's throne agree. They all stress the importance of fostering open markets to advance economic development and U.S. power. Just one problem: As Benjamin Page and Marshall Bouton point out in "The Foreign Policy Disconnect: What Americans Want From Our Leaders but Don't Get ," the greatest gap between U.S. policy elites and the American public revolves precisely around international economic policy. As the recent midterm elections demonstrated, economic populism plays far better with Americans today than does free trade.

The grand strategy that wins out in the end may be the one that -- regardless of specific positions on Iraq or terrorism -- convinces Americans that it is possible to have free and fair trade at the same time. By a hair, then, the front-runner is Lieven and Hulsman's ethical realism. By economizing on other forms of power projection, ethical realism potentially frees up resources to cushion the domestic costs of globalization.

As Drezner concedes, markets alone are insufficient to form a viable and sustainable platform for long-term foreign policy.

Most of my analysis of Europe's problems has always been that social and moral decay are going hand in hand with the inability to address the immediate challenges posed by globalization. The recent popularity of both Europe's extreme left and right plug into this new economic alienation, witness the rejection of the draft EU constitution.

The challenge it would seem for both the American and European elites is to initiate a steady journey towards further economic liberalization at home and abroad. On the domestic side, it will equip the West to better deal with challenges coming from for instance China and India and it will at the same time forge deeper relationships with these emerging economic powerhouses. And like us, these are equally interested in quelling the disruptive forces of jihadism or resurgent collectivism in their respective backyards.

Yes, there were a few die hard conspiracy theorists who had braved the cold to hand out leaflets indicating that the Twin Towers had come down as the result of bombs planted by the US government, but even they could not prevent the warmth and excitement of an evening with Rudy:

“Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the next president of the United States, Mr. Rudy Giuliani”

I never thought I would hear this in a Vancouver theater, but last night I did and the audience was no less excited than an American one: Rudy is indeed still the mayor of the world. It is a reputation that gives him an incredible amount of currency abroad and it may be a crucial asset if this next president needs to enlist some real support in unifying the west in its struggle with global terror.

The presentation was centered around Rudy‘s principles of leadership (goals, optimism, accountability, preparation, communication and teamwork) which are all discussed in his book on the subject matter. I won’t bore you with the details as it has all been documented and equally well promoted over time, but Rudy can dive into a reservoir of endless anecdotes and turn these business and life lessons into highly entertaining stuff.

The evening was scripted and rather than have the audience fire off questions, local newspaper editor Patricia Graham probed the man who had just launched his 2008 exploratory committee. And that is where Rudy moved into more interesting territory. He was for instance quick to point out that last week’s election most likely would not represent a shift away from the major goal in Iraq: ensuring the establishment and survival of an accountable government. The one thing that differs from before was the bi-partisan nature of the effort, but the trick would be to accomplish that goal without deviating from that key objective. In that he also neutralized the expectation that Jim Baker’s Iraq Study Group would come up with any dramatic changes and he linked this argument back to his leadership principle: remain focused on your goals. So no return to Kissingerian realism and settling for some useful authoritarian partners if that would allow the US an early exit, at least that is how I interpreted Giuliani's message.

Graham then asked where he stood on stem cell research, abortion, gun control and gay marriage. Giuliani was a lot more forthcoming on this then he would be had he been performing somewhere deep in America’s heartland I suspect. He fully supports the right to opt for abortion (although using the standard qualifier that as a person he would never make that choice), he endorses stem cell research, control of handguns and did not see any obstacles to civil unions for gays. “Well, you sound like a Canadian liberal!” countered Graham which was a nice cue for Rudy to drill home his other, more conservative, side. Cutting taxes, balancing budgets and an aggressive foreign policy, Rudy’s list was even spontaneously interrupted by a round of un-Canadian applause when he insisted on a determined effort to pursue the war on terror. And the latter is probably safe in the hands of the man who tells his audience that he continues to think about 9/11 everyday, and who also quite perceptively believes that America still hasn’t fully absorbed what happened on that day.

Walking back to my car it occurred to me that the issues that some of the organizers had wanted to see addressed – urban decay and crime – had not gotten all that much attention from the man who vigorously cleaned up New York. But that was not what the smartly dressed crowd had come for. While they made their way home among the omnipresent panhandlers and drug addicts it became clear that an evening with Rudy is exactly like his term as mayor of New York: a rapid exercise in how to get tangible results with a prescient lesson in foreign policy at the tail end. Despite his perceived tendencies to ‘Canadian values’, that should position him well for his 2008 run. His track record, vision as well as his political capital outside the US is unmatched by any other candidate in the current field of contenders for 2008.

As I mentioned yesterday, this old-new analogy will be part of the Rumsfeld lexicon and stay with us for a long time. It was one of the things he was absolutely right about. There is a distinction between the tired, careful, economically moribund and static part of Europe personified by especially Chirac’s France and Schroeder’s Germany and the dynamic and pragmatic youngsters that are building something new on the rubble of the former Soviet Empire. Poland, the Czech Republic, the Baltic states: they know exactly what they missed out on for some fifty years and are in a serious hurry to reclaim it, unhindered by strife-inducing immigration, regulation and deep complacency.

And that is also a reason to be not all that negative about Europe, although personally I would not like to be sandwiched in between Old Europe and Putin’s Russia. But some readers see the opportunity and here is an e-mail I got from a Dane last week after linking to quotes from Steyn’s new book:

Since I am planning to follow your example and leave Western Europe, we probably have a similar outlook, although I plan to move to Estonia.

Mark Steyn's idea of "Europe" seems to come from the British and American intelligentsia. He ignores the fact that there is a New Europe which is fast-growing (economically), pro-American, and almost Muslim-free.

In addition, there are vast distinctions among various Old European and New European countries. There is no easy analysis, but the Rumsfeld distinction is quite helpful in understanding a very underreported phenomenon.

I have a lot of respect for age, so that is not the issue here. Still, I wonder what has excited West Viriginia voters to return an 89-year old former klansman to the Senate with a 64-34 margin. And: the longest serving Senator in American history will not be a titular senator, he will most likely head the Senate Appropriations Committee again.

The markets were up today. And for a good reason:

Some investors said a divided government would prevent either party from controlling the economic agenda, clearing the way for corporate earnings and economic data to influence shares.

``A stalemate between the president and the Congress is usually a fairly bullish thing,'' said Barton Biggs, who helps manage $1.6 billion at Traxis Partners LLC in New York. ``The fundamentals are what's going to drive this market, not the political events that just happened.''

Exactly.

Dean Barnett writes on Hugh Hewitt's blog today:

The biggest disappointment of the past six years has been the White House’s ongoing inability to express the rationale for the so-called war on terror. For most of you reading this site, the rationale is obvious and well known: There exists an enormous segment of the Muslim world that seeks our destruction. Either we transform our malefactors, or the world’s fate will be unimaginably horrific.

This is a long war, and yet leading Republicans including the one in the White House have yet to articulate why it’s necessary.

He is right and it is a point often put forward here. The Bush approach to terror has always been reactive rather than proactive, laying out a vision and try and rally the nation behind it has never been an easy task for someone essentially lacking that vision. And yes, the notion of 'sacrifice' is totally absent: America got a tax cut during a time of war. But what is also part of the White House's inept messaging is the far more difficult acknowledgement that jihadism is religious and not political in nature. The danger of 'crusader' rhetoric and other politcally correct sentiments ensured that more than five years after 9/11 large segments of the western world are still oblivious of the real threat.

And I use 'western world' with very good reason, as in Europe this is an equally hard nut to crack. The Times today ran a passionate editorial following the sentencing of al-Qaeda operative Dhiren Barot. It is another textbook case of conversion, radicalization and sophistication. But above all one of serious warning:

The Barot case underlines the character of terrorism, its international tentacles, chameleon adaptability and ability to exploit Western fads and weaknesses. It should, and will, make more urgent the need to penetrate and disarm the mindset that kills in the name of a deity. It is a threat that no democratic society can ignore.

The time has come for Republicans and Democrats, Americans and Europeans to find common ground, recognize this lethal enemy and fight it relentlessly. If not, terrorists like Barot will succeed in executing their sickening plans on both sides of the ocean:

His expertise and professionalism in surveying the nine London hotels, three stations, synagogues, banks and Underground lines targeted for destruction is matched only by his sadism in contemplating how he could increase the panic and human suffering caused by exploding gas cylinders, napalm, nails and a radiation bomb.

Donald Rumsfeld is stepping down.

There will be a lot of discussion about his legacy, his successes and his failures. His 'Old Europe, New Europe' classification comes to mind as classic Rumsfeldian analysis, undiplomatic, blunt, but designed to survive the test of time.

My comments last night on the senate balance where off to the extent that I was working from CNN's numbers who put Lieberman in the Democratic camp, and they still do. Incorrect, he ran as an independent and as a reader points out:

What everybody is overlooking is that if the Democrats take VA, MO and MT they still need Lieberman’s vote to control the Senate. Now, politically he is a good fit for them, but they really treated him poorly and he would not be amiss if he required some major mea culpae and demanded an important position.

And Lieberman could demand the same from the GOP. As of last night he has become a very powerful man in Washington, and rightly so as he stood his ground and fought for it.

That is how Christopher Hitchens qualifies last night's results.

So today is the day, and rather than give you my views on the impending divided house, I will leave you with updates and worthwhile links throughout most of the day.

First off, take a look at how the team of contributors at TCS is considering the outcome of today's ballot, especially Stephen Bainbridge's expectations:

For fans of limited government, nothing's better than divided government. Compare the average growth of per capita government spending when the GOP ran Congress and Bill Clinton sat in the White House (0.3%) or Ronald Reagan as President faced down a Democrat Congress (1.7%) with the boom times for big government when a single party held power under George Bush 41 (3.1%) or Jimmy Carter (2.9%). On Tuesday, the American should -- and will -- give fans of limited government a present by turning Congress over to the Democrats.

Ongoing reporting is of course everwhere, but do check out Pajamas Media, which will have video crews embedded at the Lieberman and Schwarzenegger headquarters in Connecticut and Los Angeles.

Joe Gandelman is rounding up some political obituaries and expert predictions.

Towards a divided house? Here is an excellent blog that is exclusively focused on the need to curb unchecked single party rule: Divided We Stand, United We Fall.

Pollster is a good source for results, and it also explains exit polls.

Lots, lots at The Corner. Keep scrolling.

7:45 PM A reader weighs in on the implications of a divided house:

You’re absolutely right that a divided government has its advantages. One thing is for sure, we’ll start seeing a lot more vetoes coming out of the White House. The Democrats have been very successful at keeping their peace throughout this election cycle but I suspect one of the first things the Democrats will do start impeachment proceedings. One reason is payback for what the Republican Congress did to Clinton, which in my opinion was appropriate (Impeachment but not removal from office). Their stated reason will be lying, “illegal” wiretapping, Guantanamo Bay, etc… Revenge and BDS will the true reason. It is going to be a dangerous distraction. If you think you’ve heard rhetorical vehemence, brace yourself. The Democrats will use Congress as a platform to paint Bush (and Republicans in general) as the most hideous of criminals. I believe they will be very effective.

And also has some trenchant comments on the local situation in New Mexico:

Here in New Mexico, our Congresswoman Heather Wilson (R) will almost certainly lose to the sitting State Attorney General Patricia Madrid, who in January will be known as the only person in Washington D.C. who can make George Bush sound articulate. There are serious allegations of corruption and malfeasance surrounding her and I suspect that by the time the next election rolls around she’ll be a resident in a Federal prison. But this is a heavily Democrat state, and many people are knee-jerk voters – no matter the party.

9:10 PM The divided house argument is of course in no way an endorsement of the Democratic Party, but more an acknowledgment that certain excesses need to be curbed. And it is a veritable test for the Democrats to show America and the world that they are able to offer a viable alternative in 2008. That, under the best of circumstances, will remain a phenomenal struggle for that party.

9:15 House to Democrats, Senate split?. Very likely, if Webb wins Virginia, Talent keeps Missouri and Tester captures Montana.

10:12 Talent is in trouble, and Allen-Webb is a recount. This will not be resolved tonight it seems.

10:15 Larry Kudlow explains the possible market reaction:

US stock market futures are down a few tenths of a percent in Hong Kong trading on the news of a Dem takeover of the House. However, Japanese stocks are down 180 points or more than 1% on the US political news. My hunch is that Japan fears a dovish shift in US foreign policy on the global terror war. Any US weakness in Iraq will reverberate very poorly in Japan as it might affect N. Korean policy expectations. If the Dems take the Senate, look for a major stock sell-off worldwide and in US.

Not sure about that. But if there's a sell-off it will be shortlived given the prospects of reduced spending and balanced budgets. Surely Kudlow should have mentioned that.

10:20 I have a 5:50 AM spinning class tomorrow morning, so off to bed.

I have been a longtime fan of Camille Paglia, in particular because she is a non-conventional thinker and able to destruct both the left and the right with her razor sharp wit. The interview with her yesterday in Salon - in which she covers a variety of current topics - is a must-read.

While clearly identifying Iraq as a mess and Bush as "out of his depth" this onetime Democrat has no qualms about reducing her party to absolute rubble. More importantly, she understands the challenges of our future better than most of her contemporaries, note the following:

But my generation of baby-boom Democrats hasn't done much deep thinking about international issues except in terms of postmodernist fragmentation or fuzzy, smiley-face multiculturalism. We desperately need better candidates.

As for looking to the future here are Paglia's key indicators of impending doom:

I'm worried about the future of America insofar as our academically most promising students are being funneled through the cookie-cutter Ivy League and other elite schools and emerging with this callow anti-American, anti-military cast to their thinking. How are we ever going to get wise leadership or sophisticated diplomacy from people who have such a distorted, clichéd view about everything that's wrong with the United States?

And my favorite:

The more liberal parents are, the less contact their children have with religious ideas. That will surely disable our future American leaders from being able to understand the religious commitment of Islamic fundamentalists. Liberal journalists often seem incredulous about how anyone would seek death for religious principles. But that was the entire history of early Christianity, when the saints willingly sought martyrdom. We're heading into that world again.

Paglia is not calling for a religious revival, but for a measure of historical and religious awareness. Looking around me I am astounded to note how incredibly shallow historical knowledge is these days, especially among the 'well-educated' middle classes, the group supposedly forming the backbone of our society. It is one of the key reasons why western societies are so divided over rogue nations going nuclear and Muslim zealots blowing themselves up on commuter trains: most of us simply can’t recognize the phenomenon, much less conceive of any action to protect ourselves against it.

Even as a secular person, I would still strongly advocate to regain some of the moral bearings that religion has given us and at the same time try and raise a new generation with some basic historical awareness. The fact that I grew up in a house stacked with historical works and a father who had seen – and taken me – to war cemetery after war cemetery in Europe did at least leave me in a position where I could write the stuff that I write here on this site.

And Paglia is therefore on the mark in arguing that the absence of any clear leadership from either the right or the left in these challenging times is so troubling. So far we’ve been lucky in escaping any real disaster but we better start investing in a new generation that is bound to face situations where luck is no longer a sufficient enough tool to ward of our destruction.

Have a good weekend. Next week it will be Theo Van Gogh week over here.

Andrew Sullivan is promoting his new book, The Conservative Soul which I haven't read as yet, but the many reviews so far tell me we all should.

If you have the time I recommend the interview Sullivan did with Hugh Hewitt yesterday. Transcript here and audio here. Not sure if it is all that enlightening, but it is a highly entertaining debate.

A reader asks:

A lot of bloggers, like Instapundit, have been mentioning that current good economic news does not seem to be helping the Republicans. I wonder, if markets continuously discount for future events, are the markets showing a preference for a power shift to the Democrats? If so why? Are they sensing a change in War on Terror strategy would reduce costs and associated risks? A possible reversal on tax cuts is warranted? Or is the market predicting any power change in Washington DC will be over shadowed by positive earnings projections etc.

There are two things here. Firstly, despite public perception, there is not an awful lot of good economic news to speak of and secondly, I would argue that most market movements are fairly immune to possible election outcomes. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t manipulate the economic news. Note Amity Shlaes’ comments earlier today:

The politicization of economics is especially evident in the blogosphere, where supposed economic Web sites are really about economics and politics advancing the agenda of one or the other party.

It is tempting to argue that surging stock markets are evidence that sound Republican economic policies are paying off, but such claims lack any empirical basis. Yes, it is an argument propagated by the right during a challenging election cycle for them, but those commentators should bear in mind that they would also argue, correctly, that Bill Clinton was in no way responsible for the stock market boom of the 1990s.

The uptick in the Dow that we have seen over the past few weeks is largely due to the fact that US equities as an asset class have been undervalued in recent years. This, judging from my own portfolio, applies in particular to the heavyweights that constitute the Dow Jones whose recent rise everyone got so excited about. The real estate boom – to some extent influenced by Bush flooding the market with cash – and rising commodity prices have contributed to the relative underperformance of stocks. Slipping commodity prices may benefit the stock market, but any recent gains are sure to be wiped out if the expected downturn in real estate materializes. Neither the Republicans, nor the Democrats will have any material influence on these developments which to a large extent are driven by global market movements. For now I would prefer to keep my eyes on Ben Bernanke, rather than rely on short-term market movements and a set of desperate politicians trying to interpret them to their advantage.

Richard Fernandez at the Belmont Club makes an excellent observation about the French riots:

Some may deride Chirac or de Villepin as appeasers. However the probable truth is that no one has yet figured out how to stop a vigorous ideology in its tracks. The West's own experience with Nazism and Communism shows that both accommodation and confrontation can fuel, rather than retard their growth. There is no magic formula; and perhaps there is no formula.

And that explains why politicians from both sides of the aisle struggle to find the right message, especially when it is election time. The intractability of violence fueled by cultural disconnects and social breakdown – a void nicely filled by religion – calls for a pragmatic diversion to ‘easier’ topics. And that is not just a European phenomenon:

With his party facing a difficult midterm election, President Bush is focusing on the positive this week: a growing economy he is using to try to persuade voters to keep Republicans in power in Congress.

White House advisers say Bush is not trying to change the subject from a deteriorating situation in Iraq, and that he will continue to talk about Iraq and the war on terrorism as the Nov. 7 election nears. But Bush advisers said they think the president should get more credit for recent positive economic news.

It all depends on how you look at it. But I see some eerie parallels in the ways in which both American and European politicians steer away from the hard issues and try to lull the electorate back into a sense of oblivious complacency. In the meantime we have a fully fledged civil war in Iraq and a nascent one in the streets of Paris.

Nice Frum quote:

Hillary Clinton is a fanatic pretending to be a moderate; Al Gore is a moderate pretending to be a fanatic. And with impressive credulity, the authentic fanatics in the Democratic base are aligning themselves behind the faux-fanatic rather than the genuine article.

It supports my initial liking of Al Gore, although that preference was to a large extent informed by the hope of an early Clinton dismissal during the late 1990s. Frum's point also highlights how each candidate presents a challenge for both Democrats and undecided centrists and why Gore and Clinton are probably not the best material to put on the 2008 Democratic ticket.

I rarely watch TV these days, but when Andrew Sullivan, Arianna Huffington and Dennis Prager appear on one panel hosted by Larry King, it is time to switch on the old box. There's a transcript here.

The conclusion is that apart from a few electoral pockets here and there, the Foley affair will not have a material impact, nor will Iraq sway voters in any particular direction. And as much as I agree with some panelists on the unrestrained spending and resulting deficits, they so far have only fueled the US economy. Fiscal pain is always deferred and it will be up to future Congresses to help America in digesting the current excesses, never a painless exercise. What I do think is that the issue of control and balancing power will play a potentially decisive role. The GOP panelists were clearly on the defensive and Andrew Sullivan was correct in stating that:

“You know, Larry, I think what some voters are thinking is maybe it's about time we had divided government. Regardless of whether you're a Democrat or Republican, doesn't it work better, sometimes, when there's some group there that actually checks the power of other people?”

And whatever view you have, divided government worked pretty well with Gingrich and Clinton. Maybe it's time to put a check on the Republicans, by having one of the houses with a different party”

The halcyon days of the 1990s and the resulting budget surpluses were indeed to a large extent the work of the balancing act between the Clinton and Gingrich camps (built on the Reagan foundation of the 1980s). Voters have an intuitive understanding about balance and curbing excess, and it is that broader instinct that will likely create a shift back to a divided government.

Churchill-Roosevelt, Reagan-Thatcher, Bush-Blair, and now possibly McCain-Cameron? The Arizona Senator's speech at the British Conservative Party Annual Conference this weekend looks at the past, but also at the future. Key quote:

Inspirational leadership challenges people. It does not seek to mislead them into a false sense of complacency or hide the realities, no matter how intimidating, of a threat. No solution to any great problem can succeed or even be convincingly proposed if the full dimensions of the problem are obscured from public knowledge. Be honest and brave and determined to place the country's interests before anything else, even our personal interests, and the people will give us our chance.

It neatly captures the challenge of having clear and honest political leadership waging a war on behalf of a society that can't be all that bothered to fight let alone pay for it.

Michael Stickings has a good one over at The Reaction.

Roger Simon interviews Senator Joe Lieberman, here.

UPDATE: Roger has some background notes that are definitely worthwhile reading. And, one of my readers commented as follows:

Independent minded Democrats are moving toward the fringe.

Independent minded Republicans are moving toward the center.

In the short run, this is better for the Republicans, but in the long run it is worse for them. I believe the odds of a national (third way) realignment are increasing.

It has been a while since I discussed the disappearing center and to some extent that theory still holds. It is just that a new center is emerging.

Andrew Sullivan is more than a little disgusted over the Bush administration’s fiscal profligacy. The end of small government conservatism it appears. Well, not so in Canada where the Harper government is extraordinary careful in managing the huge surpluses that the country’s economy keeps spewing out:

The Stephen Harper government racked up a $13.2-billion surplus for last fiscal year, all of which will go toward reducing the national debt.

This is one of the largest single debt repayments in Canadian history. It will help bring Canada's debt down to $481.5-billion.

And:

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty and Treasury Board President John Baird announced the surplus Monday afternoon, when they also announced cuts to government spending this year and next.

It should be noted that this is one brave move in handling the budget, especially considering the fact that Harper and friends are still in minority territory. While throwing the Canadian electorate some appetizing bones - the GST cut in particular – they have remained principled bookkeepers. If following an early election next spring they will get a parliamentary majority the temptation of radically cutting taxes could be too much even for Harper, but judging from these fresh numbers, he has some room.

Michael Barone looks at how the US is changing and how no one was able to accurately project the current trends. Therein lies a sliver of hope for Europe: there is potential for the various doomsday scenarios to be debunked. Immigration patterns may change and yes, the joy of having sex without contraceptives may eventually be rediscovered.

… Maher Arar, a Canadian national of Syrian descent, changing flights in the US in September 2002, detained and deported to Syria by US authorities where he was held captive and tortured before being released. He is now back in Canada and making frequent media appearances to discuss his case. This has been front page news in Canada for months now and I find it somewhat surprising that only now it is getting traction in the blogosphere, the reason probably being that Maher Arar was a suspected terrorist, making it difficult for some to advocate the man's rights.

An excerpt form a post I wrote more than two years ago and yes, bloggers continue to be relatively mum about this issue apart from a select group of American left-of-center blogs keen to acquire some ammunition in the ongoing torture debate. This however is not strictly a torture case, but it warrants some critical examination in a way that should be of interest to both the left and the right.

As most of you know, Maher Arar was fully exonerated earlier this week by an independent Canadian commission of inquiry which ruled that Arar has been the victim of inaccurate RCMP intelligence reports and deliberate smears by Canadian officials. Note that these reports were provided to US officials who wasted no time to deport Arar to Syria (he holds dual Syrian-Canadian citizenship) and that the smear emerged following Arar’s return to Canada after a less than pleasant stay in one of Boy Assad’s prison facilities.

There is just too much here to capture in a brief narrative – and you have to make a distinction between the Canadian and American angle here - but let me summarize what is significant:

1. The deliberate smears did their work to the extent that many commentators – and that includes me – while being aware of the problematic behavior of both Canadian and US officials either neglected to defend Mr. Arar or at least presume his innocence. There always was a whiff of jihadist guilt associated with the man, so why bother? Looking away was the better option, an attitude that continues to this very day. Yet, for the sake of honoring independent judicial inquiries we now have to accept that Arar is not guilty of any crime and that he did not deserve the abuse meted out to him by the Canadian, US and Syrian governments.

2. As Majikthise points out, the damage to counter-terrorism operations is phenomenal. There can be little doubt that RCMP heads are going to roll over this affair and even if they don’t, Canada’s venerable police operation will think twice before sharing information with US counterparts. No prizes for guessing what this will do to the already challenged cross-border security situation on the 49th parallel.

3. Like the Hirsi Ali case (where Dutch neocon minister Verdonk ditched Hirsi Ali out of political expediency) it turns out that those who we believed to have staked a certain position in the debate over Islam, terrorism and all that comes with it, would not necessarily remain pure in adhering to that position. The same is true here, but the reverse. Canada’s left-of-center Liberal government (defeated in early 2006) was responsible for this fiasco by adopting an almost Rumsfeldian recklessness in handling this terror suspect. At the same time it wasted no opportunity to distance itself from the Bush administration in order to placate a testy and not overly pro-American electorate. Odd and duplicitous behaviour.

4. In a way this affair also echoes the themes I touched on earlier this week. We can’t under any circumstance allow jihadist terror to put us in a position where the lives of Muslims in general are deemed to be of lesser value. We may not realize it, but the very necessary break with politically correct multiculturalism has gone to an extreme where exactly that is happening. Muslim minorities in western societies need to be assisted and compelled to become the Jews of 17th century Amsterdam, not the Jews of 20th century Warzaw.

5. And torture? Not sure here. There is a good argument to be made that the US simply deported Arar based on immigration law and that there was no arrangement to let its ‘friends’ in Damascus extract some information from the Syrian-Canadian suspect. Seriously, since when have we partnered with Damascus in fighting terror?

So there you have it. My gut feel tells me that we will never learn the real truth here, but the Arar affair provides us with a microcosm of things that can go wrong when pursuing terror suspects. Obfuscating the truth, imperiling future security operations, dishonesty, political expediency, nascent racism and a dose of physical abuse. Incredible failure, highlighting a level of moral ineptitude that will cost us dearly in fighting jihadism.

The anti-war left is now going after Joe Lieberman, leaving the folks at Daily Kos to wonder if the Democrats would really be better of without the Connecticut senator. To me the 'Dump Joe' campaign is nothing short of an incredibly short-sighted move of the hardcore left in the Democratic Party to capitalize on superficial emotions driven by Iraq. If the Democrats start 'dumping' the wiser and more centrist statesmen in their party it will risk ending up in the exact place where it can ill afford to be: the fringe.

In his TCS-column Lee Harris finds an answer to a question which has bothered me for quite a while and that is Why Isn't Socialism Dead? Key excerpt:

Thus, in the coming century, those who are advocates of capitalism may well find themselves confronted with "a myth gap." Those who, like Chavez, Morales, and Castro, are preaching the old time religion of socialism may well be able to tap into something deeper and more primordial than mere reason and argument, while those who advocate the more rational path of capitalism may find that they have few listeners among those they most need to reach -- namely, the People. Worse, in a populist democracy, the People have historically demonstrated a knack of picking as their leaders those know the best and most efficient way to by-pass their reason -- demagogues who can reach deep down to their primordial and, alas, often utterly irrational instincts. This, after all, has been the genius of every great populist leader of the past, as it is proving to be the genius of those populist leaders who are now springing up around the world, from Bolivia to Iran.

From socialism to jihadism - perish the thought that they join forces - the hard battle is again the one of reason against the one of irrational myths. Sorry for wrecking your Sunday, but it seems to me that this century may be as bloody as the last one.

Prescient piece from Daniel Henninger in OpinionJournal today, key quote:

If in 2006 we think that if Iraq would go away the world would not be too different than the world before September 11, then Moussaoui may in time prove right: "America you lost. I won!"

Yes - my review of United 93 made a similar point, here.

Over at GayPatriot. Key excerpts:

One crucial difference between the US and Europe is this: in the US, the question of whether “Christianism” represents a threat to American secular democracy has long been the subject of brutally frank and passionate public debate; in most of Europe, by contrast, an equally honest, no-holds-barred debate about the threat of European Islam remains unimaginable. And Europe is paying the price for it.

And:

Many leftists, including some gay “leaders,” actually admire Islam for the same reason they once admired Soviet Communism – because it’s the only big-time ideology that won’t knuckle under to American capitalism, which, in their eyes, is the world’s great evil.

Read the whole thing.

Here's a long but fascinating piece by Martha Bayles on how America could potentially polish its cultural image abroad:

During the Cold War, the battle for hearts and minds was conceived very differently from today. While threatening to blow each other to eternity, the United States and the Soviet Union both claimed to be defending freedom, democracy, and human dignity. Without suggesting for a moment that the two sides had equal claim to those goals, it is nonetheless worth noting that America’s victory was won on somewhat different grounds: security, stability, prosperity, and technological progress.

Our enemies today do not question our economic and technological superiority, but they do question our moral and spiritual superiority.

My comment to this would be that the absence of moral and spiritual coherence in our society is something that plays into our enemies' hands in two ways. In the first place, Islamic purism provides an alternative but more importantly, the lack of a strong moral compass prevents us from effectively waging a battle, be it a physical one or one of ideas.

Hat tip: The Cunning Realist

NOTE: Martha Bayles blogs about film and culture over at Serious Popcorn.

For some obscure reason I always find myself going through the morning of 9/11 step by step, minute by minute, hijacked plane by hijacked plane. Even now there are days when I try to relive it and bring some order into that chaotic morning. If you go and see United 93 – which I did yesterday – you will go through exactly the same, an almost real-time experience of reliving of what happened that morning. And order you need to create as the movie reveals the chaos and confusion that governed the various flight control centers, something brought home poignantly by the fact that a number of the actors are in fact the actual people that manned these centers on 9/11.

Walking out of the theater there wasn’t the feeling that there was anything new or revolutionary, no; all the facts were very clear and transparent before and after watching the film. The advance question was what director Ron Greengrass would make of it all, and it is fair to say he delivered, even in the parts where speculation was required to fill in some of the factual blanks. While everyone is hyped over the contrast between the praying hijacker and some passengers reciting the Lord’s Prayer, I was taken aback by one other peculiar confrontation. It’s the moment where one of the flight attendants hurries back to the center of the plane to help a severely injured passenger – knifed by one of the terrorists – and flashes the Red Cross emergency kit in front of a terrorist with a look on her face saying, “Please”. The hijacker relents and allows her to treat the dying man, but it was probably the one area where Greengrass’ creative license was used a little too generously.

Yet, it did a number of important things. It highlighted that the hijackers struggled with a degree of uncertainty, it pinpointed the religious aspect with the obvious Red Cross crusader connotation, but above all it allowed the viewer to distill a measure of hope that things might work out well – something that defies logic and yet you’re tempted by it. It gives you something to cling to during the final minutes: there is hope; maybe the airliner will land safely after all. That expectation is fueled by the presence of a pilot with one-engine experience among the passengers who bravely declares that with radio help from the ground he could possibly land flight 93. You’re drawn into the possibility that the passenger revolt might actually work.

So my re-piecing and re-ordering of events may after all be a subconscious attempt to find that redeeming shard of information that will somehow transform 9/11 into something more palatable, something that can neutralize the fear and uncertainty created on that day. Yet, I know better but the omnipresence of the question “Is it too soon?” over the past week indicates that many actually think that the shrill reality of that day can not be revisited again. It points to a feeling that America is still busy looking for facts that can sanitize the horrendous attacks into something that won’t be as haunting, something that won’t repeat itself.

And therein of course do we find United 93’s ultimate strength. The savage and dreadful way in which the plane falls into the hijackers' hands, the ultimate futility of the resistance and the definitive crash into that field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, throws the bare facts once more in front of America and the world at large. There are no redeeming points, there was no hope on that day and any group that is capable of hijacking and crashing four commercial airliners within a few hours is no doubt poised for more in the future. But that knowledge remains something that many would like to blot out conveniently, something which we have also witnessed in Europe following its first encounters with jihadist terror. The justifiable and positive instinct to move on has a nasty fellow traveler called the willingness to forget.

So, there can’t be enough United 93-type films. The test will be in how they evolve over time. Not only will more facts see the light of day, but our attitudes and perceptions will develop to a level where again the events of that morning are reworked and reinterpreted. As long as we keep doing that there is hope that we can face and fight that very real and lethal terrorist threat. But, if we give in to sanitizing history and creating false expectations we are lost. Greengrass' film provides a sliver of hope that we will not give in and have the ability to fight, but the story of 9/11 needs to be retold relentlessly before I can really begin to believe that.

NOTE: There is a huge round-up of blogger reviews over at Hot Air.

AFTERTHOUGHT: I did review one other Greengrass film earlier: Bloody Sunday. That by the way was not exactly a balanced and overly factual piece of work, but it proves the point that filmed entertainment has indeed an unusual capability to rewrite history.

With another news conference Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad further upped the ante, defying the world on Iran’s insistence to increase its nuclear capabilities. It may be worthwhile to note that we’ve been here before and, no, I am not talking about the bungled attempt to desist North Korea from going nuclear. In the early 1960s a deep and definitive rift between China and the Soviet Union opened up the possibility for the US to neutralize China which was on the verge of detonating its first atomic weapon.

The National Security archives provide a trove of documents on America’s stance during the 1960-64 period, and they reveal quite clearly that John F. Kennedy did at a number of instances seriously contemplate pre-emptive action against China. It is of course impossible to establish what would have happened if Kennedy would not have been assassinated, but Lyndon Johnson, probably aware of the Cold War realities and the uncertain state of the Soviet-China relationship, moved in the other direction:

During the fall of 1963 Policy Planning Council staffer Robert Johnson established himself as the national security bureaucracy's chief analyst on the Chinese nuclear problem. Although President Kennedy and his advisers had given momentum to thinking about using force against Chinese nuclear facilities, Johnson tried to push official thinking in another direction: to consider the possibility that for a variety of reasons, a nuclear China would not be as ominous or act as recklessly as some had feared.

[ … ]

Prepared against the background of a possibly imminent Chinese nuclear test, Robert Johnson again considers both pre-emptive action and alternative responses to the PRC's nuclear weapons program. It notes "very and long-lasting political costs" associated with a pre-emptive strike. It also explores options, in the absence of pre-emptive action, for reducing the likelihood of proliferation as well as the potentially adverse political-psychological impact of a Chinese test on its neighbors.

It is hard to compare present day Iran to 1960s China, but it would seem that at every turn attempts to halt nuclear proliferation beyond the two original superpowers have failed. It was believed at the time that India for instance could be prevented from becoming a nuclear power, nations like Pakistan and North Korea weren’t even considered as ever acquiring the lethal technology.

The Soviet angle and the political impact prevented the elimination of Mao’s nuclear adventures; today other geo-political considerations have replaced the Cold War constraints. It prompts the conclusion that barring a miracle, Iran will become a nuclear force within the foreseeable future. Better start preparing for that.

China detonated its first bomb on October 16, 1964 in the Gobi Desert.

Whenever I post some critical notes on George Bush, you can bet that readers will weigh in. Here is one that takes on Peggy Noonan whose reflections on Bush were part of the original post:

Ms. Noonan has fetishized the Reagan presidency as a Demosthenesean age. To criticize Bush in general terms, while generalizing the Reagan presidency as an age of ideal administration as she has done is absolutely ludicrous Nearly every presidency in the past 140 years has been very much a mixed bag; the best presidents of that time interval have become judged as among the best for a.) achieving a few big things while b.) causing the least harm in other areas. The Constitutional limitations on the President strongly bias any President's effect toward falling into this realm of limited effect in most areas, powerful effect in a few. I think it is fair to say that Reagan was effective in reducing taxes and confronting the Soviets, while, in every other major area, he left things basically in the mess he found them. And he does deserve great credit for those two achievements.

Question: Would Reagan have continued to work with Don Rumsfeld?

It’s now some seven months ago that the first real cracks in the Bush façade appeared following the Katrina mess. Flipping through the various comments after some of the White house reshuffles – and the ongoing Rumsfeld imbroglio - of recent it appears we are in the middle of peeling away another layer that somehow insulated Bush from a more definitive reckoning of his presidency. Yes, the Hewitts and Coulters remain steadfast in their support, but the ranks of critical conservatives is growing, take for instance Peggy Noonan who addresses the stubbornness and inflexibility of this presidency. One step further is former Bush-endorser Greg Djerejian who has essentially given up on this president by associating him with tragedy.

Noonan’s piece in particular brings home one of my basic peeves about this president and that is the near absence of a vision when he came to power and the lack of a core set of principles that guided him to Washington in the first place. The confrontation with terror on American soil put this administration on a certain course and in the absence of a coherent set of targets a few approximate and arbitrary markers were put in the sand. They can’t be moved, nor can there be any changes to the core team that put those markers in the sand in the first place. The reason for that is of course straightforward, although few on the right dare to make it explicit: pruning the team means pruning the Bush approach, refuting the orginal strategy. It would require a return to a point where the president is to provide the comfort that whatever the changes, his vision remains intact and the revamped new team can trust on the chief executive’s political instincts. The problem is of course that there never was a grand vision to begin with, nor can we put a lot of stock in Bush’s ability to guide, adjust and adapt.

No, this is not a move to extricate myself from my support for Bush now that the tidings have become increasingly uncertain. The Bush goals of fighting terror, and establish democracy in Iraq are just and require commitment and yes that famous term, stubbornness. But the doctrinaire approach on which it is built creates many unnecessary and often inexplicable disasters. It is the inability of the chief executive to foresee, pre-empt and address these adequately that leave many Bush-supporters with varying degrees of bitterness wondering how on earth we are going to get to that finish line in January 2009.

One big conspiracy, according to the online version of Der Spiegel.

James Na explains in his Seattle Times why he is a conservative, and how that term differs from libertarianism and classical liberalism. I've always qualified myself as a classical liberal, and going by James' definition I still see no major differences between that and conservativism. Judge for yourself, I guess the relative degree of importance you attach to national security, morality and free enterprise would label you either a libertarian or a conservative.

Only hours following Lyn Nofziger's death another core member of the Reagan-crew has died, Caspar Weinberger at age 88.

It's interesting to note that the Washington Post in the first paragraph announcing his death mentions that Weinberger "was a central figure in the Iran-Contra scandal". It's odd, but it would seem to me that there were at least a number of other Reagan era officials (McFarlane, Poindexter, North) who were central to the Iran-Contra disaster. It was the National Security Center that was the epicenter of Iran-Contra, not the Pentagon.

Although Weinberger was indicted the first thing that comes to mind when thinking about him were his ruthless budgetary skills, first in Governor Reagan's team in California and later in Washington as Secretary of Defense. The military build-up during the Reagan years that were instrumental in defeating the Soviet Union and which ironically created sizeable deficits can to a large extent be attributed to "Cap the Knife". May he rest in peace.

UPDATE: WaPo has now changed its first paragraph and it now reads that Weinberger "got ensnared in the Iran-Contra scandal". Ah, the beauty of online editing.

Lyn Nofziger, one of the earliest Reaganites and one of the Gipper's most solid advisers died earlier today of cancer at the age of 81. May he rest in peace.

Factoid: he was one of the few American political personalities that I've seen in person. In early 1999 I had breakfast at the Hay-Adams in DC and an American colleague of mine pointed across the room at a table and said: that's Lyn Nofziger, Nixon's Press Secretary. Quietly I continued my breakfast not sure how to repsond. Although Nofziger did indeed serve under Nixon as a deputy assistant to the president for congressional relations, I was quite surprised that someone my age would identify him with Nixon - and attribute the wrong position - and not Reagan.

Jonathan Schlein attended an interesting luncheon with Hendrik Hertzberg, former TNR editor and speechwriter for Jimmy Carter. Especially Hertzberg's take on Hillary is worth your while.

Yes, the 'moderate muslim' label has been under some pressure as few know exactly what it means and even fewer believe that the so-called moderates actually have a strong enough ablity to act as a voice of reason, to drown out the radical noise. Still, there is value in the concept and as Max Boot explains, much more so when we talk about nation states:

Ostensibly unified by religious belief, the Muslim world is in fact deeply divided by culture, ethnicity, sect and geography. Most Qataris and Malaysians have no interest in joining an anti-Western jihad; they are too busy getting rich trading with the West.

Boot is right, and the same applies to Indonesia too. But I would add that this conclusion shouldn't give way to unfettered optimism about our moderate friends. They have to balance phenomenal domestic and religious pressures, often having to turn a blind eye to less than moderate players. That particular knowledge has fueled the ports controversy which it seems has now been resolved with a palatable compromise.

Christopher Hitchens has written an eloquent rebuke of Fukuyama's departure from neo-conservatism, but I don't think Hitch is right all the way:

Fukuyama's essay betrays a secret academic wish to be living in "normal" times once more, times that will "restore the authority of foreign policy 'realists' in the tradition of Henry Kissinger." Fat chance, Francis! Kissinger is moribund, and the memory of his failed dictator's club is too fresh to be dignified with the term "tradition."

We won't return to 'normal times' that much is certainly clear. Still, the furtherance of the free west's interests will continue to include Kissingerian arrangements with some unsavory characters and benevolent dictators. Free and open elections in Egypt and Pakistan may be preferable, but they could return new leaders compared to whom Hosni Mubarak and Pervez Musharraf are dreamlike partners. In our quest to bring freedom and democracy we will have to accept that the purity of our objectives will have to be polluted from time to time.

At Pajamas Media's WMD Files, there are new videos from this weekend's Intelligence Summit featuring interviews with Saddam tape translator Richard Miniter, former CIA-director James Woolsey and author Bill Tierney.

Is the neo-con movement past its peak? Judge for yourself when you evaluate Francis Fukuyama thought provoking piece in the NYT. There are three things worth noting as they reflect themes often presented here on Peaktalk:

What is initially universal is not the desire for liberal democracy but rather the desire to live in a modern — that is, technologically advanced and prosperous — society, which, if satisfied, tends to drive demands for political participation. Liberal democracy is one of the byproducts of this modernization process, something that becomes a universal aspiration only in the course of historical time.

Which of course finds its proof in the emerging nations of East and South-East Asia where freedom has lagged wealth creation.

And some words for Europe too:

Meeting the jihadist challenge is more of a "long, twilight struggle" whose core is not a military campaign but a political contest for the hearts and minds of ordinary Muslims around the world. As recent events in France and Denmark suggest, Europe will be a central battleground in this fight.

Precisely, although the political struggle will be accompanied by surges of violence that may come perilously close to militarizing Europe's streets.

And nailing down the jihadist threat:

Radical Islamism is a byproduct of modernization itself, arising from the loss of identity that accompanies the transition to a modern, pluralist society. It is no accident that so many recent terrorists, from Sept. 11's Mohamed Atta to the murderer of the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh to the London subway bombers, were radicalized in democratic Europe and intimately familiar with all of democracy's blessings. More democracy will mean more alienation, radicalization and — yes, unfortunately — terrorism.

Fukuyama's has a valid point in arguing - like Fareed Zakaria in The Future of Freedom - that in creating stable and free societies, the social and economic foundations will have to come first. Democracy can only thrive when a stable and civic society is already in place. And that of course is the ultimate pitfall in Iraq and the Palestinian territories, where the 'democracy first apporach' has turned out to be a dicey game given the absence of any civic structure and basic prosperity. But that doesn't mean these projects have failed, nor would it imply that neo-conservatism is past its peak. But, a number of assumptions have to be tested against our democratization experiences in the Middle East and against the realization that there are no quick and easy fixes. We will need some tweaks and adjustments and we will even have to work with democratically elected regimes - yes, that's you Hamas - that do not quite fit our standards of governance.

NOTE: Roger Simon has some comments on the journalistic aspects of Fukuyama's piece.

There was precious little appetite on my part to weigh into the Dick Cheney commotion, so I won't. But do check out Virginia Postrel, entirely my sentiments.

UPDATE: As usual, Peggy Noonan gets it:

Why would they be thinking about this? It's not the shooting incident itself, it's that Dick Cheney has been the administration's hate magnet for five years now. Halliburton, energy meetings, Libby, Plamegate. This was not all bad for the White House: Mr. Cheney took the heat that would otherwise have been turned solely on George Bush. So he had utility, and he's experienced and talented and organized, and Mr. Bush admires and respects him. But, at a certain point a hate magnet can draw so much hate you don't want to hold it in your hand anymore, you want to drop it, and pick up something else. Is this fair? Nah. But fair has nothing to do with it.

There was a time when Al Gore did everything in his power to insult his hosts, something considerably different from his appeasement performance this week in Jiddah. Both speeches, eight years apart, however share one common theme: Al's total lack of self-restraint.

NOTE: At the time I actually was quite supportive of Gore's remarks in support of Malaysia's sacked and jailed former Deputy Prime Minister, Anwar Ibrahim. However, anyone could have predicted - and should have advised the then Vice President of the United States - that lecturing your Malaysian host in public would at best, be counter-productive.

With the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on the NSA Terror Surveillance Program starting today, Pajamas Media has launched another theme blog, The NSA Files. And it includes some live reporting from the scene with a confused senator who has never heard of Pajamas Media. Go and check it out.

Not long after I posted the entry below we were hit by some heavy winds here and all the power was knocked out for close to twelve hours. As a result I missed the State of the Union, but judging from the reactions I didn't miss that much. There is a good round-up of reactions available at PJ media.

At first I was disappointed in election the results. Then I remembered that even 6 months ago, a Harper victory was unthinkable. Pundits spent the summer calling for his head, and insisting that a leadership change would be required before Canadians would ever elect a Conservative government. And now we are disappointed with a minority! While it is not yet Morning in Canada, as Pieter points out, Harper has a chance to prove to voters that more than one party can be trusted to govern.

Adam Radwanski has an excellent piece in the National Post this morning, describing the Tory turning point.

It was 10 months ago, and the Conservatives seemed to be falling apart at the seams. As the local media snorted contemptuously at the party's decision to hold its first national convention in a province where it was a non-factor, dissidents patrolled the convention floor's hallways campaigning against Stephen Harper while social conservatives handed out anti-Charter buttons. Deputy leader Peter MacKay was openly picking fights with Harper while his equally ambitious girlfriend, Belinda Stronach, threw a lavish party designed to upstage the rest of the weekend's events.

Through it all, Martin's cadre of advisors were having a good laugh. What they didn't realize was that the Tories had one big advantage: They were capable of learning from their mistakes. And that weekend was their turning point.

So who should be learning from this example?

The US Democratic Party. Liberal pandering aside, Canadian and American voters are not really that different.

Harper and the Conservatives have shown that voters respond to calmly delivered policy, not angry rhetoric. They've shown that in order to be elected, you need to look and act like you might not trash the place. If you do that, you can convince voters to give you a chance. It's even better if your opponents don't respond to your strategy, and only rely on attacking you personally.

Harper proved that vitriol, as satisfying as it may be to the party faithful, will never win over an undecided.

But the Democrats were completely unable to learn this lesson after the 2004 defeat. There's still time for 2006, but given the recent hysterics, there's no evidence anyone in party HQ is even talking about calming down and acting like they could actually govern.

When all you do is oppose, you will be the opposition.

James Na of Guns and Butter reminds me that the GOP used to be the “blue party”:

Actually, the color scheme was the same here too. The GOP was blue (after all, blue is the universal color for conservatives everywhere) and the Democrats were red (as are the Social Democrats in, say, Germany).

But the media sprang the change on us a few years ago. I am not easily given to conspiracy theories, but I smell the rat here. Red usually connotes danger, blood, radicalism and so on, usually all bad things. I think the media in the U.S. flipped the color scheme to tar the Republicans with the negative connotations.

I’ve always associated “red” with communism and socialism and blue with conservatism (like in Britain) or classical free-market liberalism (in The Netherlands). It's odd that in this case American exceptionalism may be a mainstream media construct.

Or as OpinionJournal argues, Still Morning in America.

The Conservatives are still well ahead in the polls and 55% of Canadians now believe that a conservative government is a good thing for their country. So if that pattern holds until next Monday, does that mean we are going to see a huge exodus of all those disgruntled and angry Democrats who moved north after George Bush was re-elected in 2004? Where can they go now? Europe?

Maybe North Americans on both sides of the border are beginning to realize that their continent is worth preserving and worth fighting for? Possibly, but in Canada’s case there are many other factors contributing to the impending change of government, but I just couldn’t resist floating this thought.

The other show that is not to be missed: the Alito confirmation hearings. There are many sources to keep up to date on this, but Pajamas Media just brought some structure to the avalanche of blogger reactions and analysis: Mondo Alito. Enjoy.

Whenever I think about this issue my thoughts inevitably go back to Frederick Forsyth’s classic thriller The Odessa Files where, if I remember well, the good guy breaks the fingers of a tied up bad guy in his quest for a vital and urgent piece of information. The reason is obvious, we sometimes have to go beyond what we think is morally right in order to achieve a victory of good over evil. But I remember it so well as it was the first time I learned that we, the good, sometimes have to act in ways that clearly conflict with what we've learned to be good or right.

Now, I’ve stayed deliberately mum on this matter as it requires a lengthy assessment and I didn’t really find any enthusiasm to dig into it. However it came up briefly last week and one of my faithful readers jumped on it immediately and pointed me to Andrew McCarthy’s article on NRO which outlines the flaws in John McCain’s argument for a ban on torture:

The best way, the honest, bright-line way, is to acknowledge that there are circumstances in which coercive interrogation would be appropriate; to be forthright about what those circumstances are and the lengths you would be willing to go; to require personal approval by a very high-ranking executive-branch official who would then be accountable; and to prove you mean business by aggressively prosecuting anyone and anything that does not meet the rigorous standards you've taken pains to establish.

Well, that at least constitutes a standard and goes against what seems to be a legally supported policy that actually encourages torture as Andrew Sullivan argues on an almost daily basis on his site. We’ve all grown up with the notion of American – or allied – soldiers as morally superior beings who would be far above the unrestrained evil of the enemies we fought over the past century. But it is Victor Davis Hanson who reminds us that:

There were American soldiers--sometimes in furor over the loss of comrades, sometimes to obtain critical information--who executed or tortured captured Japanese and German prisoners. Those who did so operated on a de facto "don't ask, don't tell" understanding, occasionally found it effective and were rarely punished by commanding officers. Even so, soldiers never descended to the levels of depravity common in the Wehrmacht or the Soviet and Imperial Japanese armies.

Correct, and take note that in Europe at one point we were actually lead to believe that Soviet soldiers were good guys too.

The question is whether the imminent threat of terror should now allow us to formalize that what wasn’t written down during for instance World War II. In doing so, we may create the inherent danger that we ourselves as the proponents of moral rightness set ourselves on a journey to depravity. There are a few layers to this, not only do we want to be seen as morally just, we realize that if we give that key virtue up we may well have lost the very battle we’re fighting. There’s an interesting essay up over at Norm’s by Eve Garrard which looks at Michael Ignatieff’s position on this issue which is summarized as follows:

He thinks we should engage in something like moral trade-offs, allowing some strengthening of security at the expense of respect for rights, but also insisting that we have to accept some insecurity - maybe even some lives lost - in order to preserve core aspects of our democratic rights.

This appears to be a compelling position, but to go back to McCarty’s guidelines for coercive interrogation it begs the question as to how we can strike the right balance of security and insecurity. And: how can you possibly translate these to anything but the broadest and most general guidelines for the troops out in the field where change and uncertainty are constant? And is it likely that the executive branch will take responsibility, knowing that they will be held to an extremely high standard? And to go back to McCain, would the presence of this very definition still not tarnish the image of the United States and it allies?

On balance I am inclined to support McCain, but at the same time realize that physical coercion needs to be a measure of last resort that troops in the field have to rely on in case the situation warrants it. You can’t codify torture; it would be a ridiculous and morally abject exercise. But recent experiences have highlighted the necessity to find some form of regulation in order to ban excesses; we can unfortunately not go back to the WWII "don't ask, don't tell" model. By putting a torture ban in place America will be seen to have taken a moral high ground and it will help in extinguishing the seeds of wicked behavior. What it won’t do is make explicitly when physical coercion can be used or to frame it differently: once McCain legislation is in place we have to start thinking about the various exclusions that should apply to it. There may yet be a need to break a few fingers.

NOTE: More discussion about this over at the Belmont Club.

A day to remember. Here are a few select links to quality blogs:

Juliette Ochieng, who takes the opportunity to draw your attention to a very worthwhile charity;

Hootsbuddy's Place;

Kate McMillan;

Tim Worstall;

and Donald Sensing.

And of course there was another milestone speech from George Bush who it seems has found the right tone and content to bring across the challenge we are facing today:

These militants are not just the enemies of America or the enemies of Iraq, they are the enemies of Islam and they are the enemies of humanity.

And we have seen this kind of shameless cruelty before, in the heartless zealotry that led to the gulags, the Cultural Revolution and the killing fields.

Like the ideology of communism, our new enemy pursues totalitarian aims.

Its leaders pretend to be an aggrieved party representing the powerless against imperial enemies. In truth, they have endless ambitions of imperial domination and they wish to make everyone powerless except themselves.

Let's see where we stand with regards to the al-Qaeda strategy and the overall jihadist threat. This weekend I will take a closer look at a new analysis to which I was alerted by a reader and which will tie in nicely to the Bush speech.

It's a busy day for me today, so limited posting. If there's one thing I would recommend you read today, it's Greg Djerejian's analysis of the current state of the presidency, including some recommendations for Bush.

Later today, President Bush is expected to announce his new SCOTUS nominee. John Hawkins organized a poll among conservative bloggers asking for their most favorite and least favorite candidates. The results are here. The preferences are quite clear: Janice Rogers Brown and Michael Luttig are the favorites, while everyone hopes that we're not going to have a sort of Miers-replay with an Alberto Gonzales nomination. PoliPundit conducted a similar poll earlier.

It's all becoming a little bit too predictable when it comes to putting forward names, so here are my surprise nominees: Theodore Olson and Maureen Mahoney.

UPDATE: It's Samuel Alito.

Some refreshing perspective about the Plame affair.

Roger Simon:

It's obvious too that the Plame Affair is not at all about some minor not-so-covert CIA official, but about Iraq. It is a replaying of the war on other turf.

Mark Steyn:

Well, I would hope that there are no indictments, because I don't see that there is anything significant about the Valerie Plame leak that makes this leak so much more important than all the other leaks that have come out...the CIA has been leaking against this president for years, for example. I don't understand why leaking the name of Valerie Plame, which isn't a crime, should be the most important leak ever to come out. The real issue here is that Joe Wilson should never have been sent to Niger on that mission in the first place. The president was right on this. British intelligence, French intelligence, and even a former prime minister of Niger agree that Saddam Hussein was trying to acquire uranium from Niger. Why have we got into a huge criminal investigation, defending some obscure matter relating to the spouse of a buffoon, and an unqualified fraud who basically lied about everything he discovered in Niger?

Despite the controversy, an outcome that not too many were willing to put their money on given this administration's solid track record of staying the course in the face of adversity. In most circumstances a commendable approach, but this particular nomination started to create deep fissures in the conservative movement and, equally important, impact the credibility of this president. Conservatives can now rightfully claim a victory, as well as take credit for creating the groundwork for a new, viable and potentially more conservative candidate with at the very least an impressive judicial track record. For the Bush team it is a humiliating setback and for the first time since coming to office it is now under attack from a number of different directions. It has lost the strength of the initiative and that could create some serious paralysis, barely a year into the second term. Not a good sign.

How pacifism evolved into anti-patriotism and how Churchill came to be viewed with suspicion. Can the US learn some lessons from interbellum Britain?

A civil rights champion, dead at age 92:

Parks' moment in history began in December 1955 when she refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white man in Montgomery, Alabama.

Her arrest triggered a 381-day boycott of the bus system by blacks that was organized by a 26-year-old Baptist minister, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

The boycott led to a court ruling desegregating public transportation in Montgomery, but it wasn't until the 1964 Civil Rights Act that all public accommodations nationwide were desegregated.

It's important to remember what she stood for and it is equally important to ensure that her name will never be abused to promote any other cause than the one she stood for: basic human rights.

What cronyism? It seems our corner store owner from Dallas, a strong favorite for the job, lost out to Ben Bernanke. He's got a impressive resume.

UPDATE: Marginal Revelution has lots on Bernanke, keep scrolling.

Yes, TV has lost most of its luster. Still, there are gems to be had and Donny Deutsch' interview yesterday with "conservative-libertarian" rockstar Ted Nugent and wife was absolutely priceless. There's no transcript of it online but if I find it I will link it. The bottom line: the Nugents enjoyed being thrown the kind of questions one can expect from a mainstream Manhattan media star who doesn't like gun ownership and "supports the war effor in Iraq, but ...". The Nugents, with a smile on their face, cruised comfortably through the interview while Deutsch was getting visibly irritated as he lost ground as the chat went on.

Next step for Nugent: a run to become Michigan's next governor. And Deutsch has political ambitions too.

Neo-neocon has an important question for you to answer. I’ve given it some thought and here is my answer:

It's called aging gracefully.

UPDATE: See, it's all part of a marketing and branding strategy.

David Frum today penned another searing column about Harriet Miers underlining that the conservative storm over this nomination continues to gather steam. And bloggers are moving the story, in his column Frum for instance refers in detail to yesterday’s poll at RWN where the debate continues today.

Michael Stickings is engaging in some overkill by doing what I concluded was not the best use of my time, but he still has two worthwhile round-ups for you to read, here and here.

The one thing that struck me today was that the quality of the debate is increasingly being affected by a proliferation of ridiculous assertions, the latest of which is the following:

Joining her husband in defense of Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers, Laura Bush today called her a "role model for young women around the country" and suggested that sexism was a "possible" reason for the heavy criticism of the nomination.

Well, that was the one argument that we didn’t hear so far. The conservative campaign to elevate Janice Rogers Brown to the Supreme Court should be more than sufficient to put the notion of “sexism” to rest, but somehow the White House is losing its grip on the media process and even failed to keep the first lady on track. Not a pleasant spectacle. Rather embarrassing if you ask me.

John Hawkins at RWN has polled the conservative blogosphere on Miers and the results are here. My input was as follows: Yes, Bush made a poor decision in nominating Harriet Miers but it hasn’t changed my view of the president (in fact I am surprised that 53% of respondents is taking a less than favorable view of Bush, I mean we’ve known him now for some five years). And no, Bush should not withdraw the nomination; it would be a move that would only compound the political damage. And finally should Republican Senators vote against Miers? Impossible to answer now, it’s time for the confirmation hearings to do their work so that we can make an informed decision and render a final judgment on this nomination.

Sullivan: "I'm beginning to think that this appointment was an expression of the president's contempt for the conservative intelligentsia. They are now returning the favor"

Oxblog has identified his successor.

I’ve been out most of the day, and just catching up on all the Miers stuff. It appears that one projection has failed to materialize and that is that the initial conservative outcry would subside after some analysis and reflection. Things look different after a night's sleep. Well, the contrary is true judging from Michelle’s round-up and the Bush press conference appears to have fueled the fire even further. Michael Stickings, a moderate pro-Roberts blogger, weighed in with his summary last night and Greg Djerejian is always worth quoting:

The Achilles heel of this President has become such displays of bovine worship at the altar of some warped conception of loyalty. Be loyal, yes, but demand excellence and competence and, yes, accountability in critical postings dear God! I'm now forced to conclude that Bush, after such a hugely good show with Roberts, is nevertheless willing to be unserious and even reckless, more so than his father, with appointments to the highest court in our land. Look, she might prove a Scalia rubber-stamp, and conservatives will be happy that she votes 'right'. But a man of character and vision wouldn't stoop to such a low threshold of what makes a good SCOTUS pick. He would look for an intellectual leader, a bona fide constitutional thinker. We all know who they are, and that there were far more distinguished picks available. Instead, Bush went for a relative mediocrity.

Could this be a botched nomination?

Commenting on the Supreme Court matters is not one of the core topics on this blog, but it’s hard to ignore this one. The fury and disbelief on the right-side of the spectrum is overwhelming. An excellent round-up can be found over at Michelle Malkin's and of course Professor Bainbridge’s take is not to be missed, while Hugh Hewitt appears to be one of the very few to support the nomination of Harriet Miers. There’s little that I know about the new nominee so I reserve some judgment, but it seems that she is a judicial lightweight compared to other candidates and her closeness to Bush was instrumental in elevating her to the top slot.

A good place to go for analysis is the left blogosphere since they’re not as emotionally invested in this nomination as the right. Over at Washington Monthly, Amy Sullivan points out some of the political reasoning that underpins this nominee:

Yes, Miers is a Bush crony, and that's surely part of the story, but the bigger point is that Bush and Rove are practical politicians who know perfectly well that the kind of candidate the activist base likes is wildly unpopular with the public, because the ultraconservative agenda itself is wildly unpopular with the public. A "distinguished constitutionalist track record" is the last thing Bush and Rove want. A cipher is the best chance they have to get a real conservative on the court, and they know it.

No Bork or Thomas, but that doesn’t mean we will have an easy confirmation process and it is probably going to be far more interesting than the Roberts hearings. If she survives them then the outcome will probably be "no change" as Orin Kerr over at Volokh earlier today commented:

Another thought is that, if Miers is confirmed, it seems quite possible that the effect of George W. Bush's two Supreme Court picks will be to retain the basic balance of the Supreme Court. Despite all the hullaballoo about the Court shifting to the right, the basic direction of the Court may remain "as is." It's hard to predict this, of course, as I have no idea how Miers would vote. But it seems plausible to me that Roberts will be a slightly more liberal version of Rehnquist, and Miers will be (if confirmed) a slightly more conservative version of O'Connor. The net result would be little change in the basic direction of the Court.

And that will cement the Bush legacy. On the international front, a radical; domestically, a profligate centrist. As for the latter, we saw that coming a long time ago.

Is it time for Tom DeLay to move on? Should a potentially spurious indictment trigger the end of a political career? The problem isn’t so much whether DeLay is guilty or not, the issue is that the indictment comes on top of a number of other affairs that have put the House majority leader in a negative light. There’s a whiff of corruption around DeLay and it is hard to dissolve it.

It reminds me of Clinton’s second term. Although the campaign to unseat him in the end did not have the substance it should have had, there was ample reason for Clinton to step down because: (a) it was a major distraction for the executive branch of the US government and (b) it imperiled the chances of a Democratic candidate during the 2000 election. Had Clinton stepped down it would have left Al Gore with some time to clean up and establish credentials which in turn would have put him in a far stronger position to defeat George Bush.

The DeLay situation is not exactly comparable. The 2006 election will, even with Tom Delay at the helm, be an uphill struggle for the Democrats. The party is devoid of ideas and has the unenviable task to try and unseat a number of strong incumbents. But that doesn’t mean that the GOP can cruise comfortably to a strong ballot-box showing next year. The conservative camp is increasingly divided and the endless spending bills that have come out in the wake of the hurricanes have made it clear that some fresh leadership may be required otherwise the real electoral dangers will present themselves in 2008. With that in mind it may be best for the good of the party to apply some long-term thinking and that means that Tom DeLay should step aside, permanently.

Media hype and tabloid journalism contributed to an exaggerated picture of what happened during the aftermath of hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. The real story is coming out now, but some of the damage may already have been done as the federal response is largely framed on the media perpetrated assumption that it failed, argues Matt Stinson.

The other area where the media have gone in overdrive – with a similar impact on policy and long term perceptions – is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Richard Brandes who has set up a website dealing solely with this issue is now guestblogging at Solomonia where he shares some of his ideas about the subject.

The launch of Pajamas Media is getting closer and the opportunity it has, judging from just these two examples, is phenomenal.

"If I've lost Malkin, I've lost the conservative blogosphere"

More here.

"Boxer undergoes brain surgery after fight"

Read the headline on CNN and I immediately clicked it, thinking something untoward had happened to Barbara Boxer ...

Debbye - who has returned from a hiatus caused by some unfortunate circumstances - clarifies the Bush statement of today. A good thing since mainstream media's headlines can never be taken at face value.

Michael Brown has been relieved of his duties in the Katrina disaster area, while staying on for the time being as FEMA-chief. Joe Gandelman has a comprehensive round-up with comments, links and blogospheric reations.

Hugh Hewitt interviewed Mark Steyn yesterday, discussing Katrina. Steyn understands what went wrong:

Well, I think the question of what went wrong is a very simple one. It actually has a failed local and state government. And when you're in that situation, there's a limit to what the national government can do, particularly when you're talking about a national government that has to basically span a continent. You know, DeTocqueville understood this in 1840, when he published Democracy in America. He said a nation can establish a free government, but without municipal institutions, it cannot have the spirit of liberty. And that's the point. That's what we saw on September 11th, that it was in the Mayor and the police and the fire departments, and the other municipal institutions in New York, that you saw the spirit of liberty, and you measured the health of that society. And that's what has failed with this guy who's the mayor of New Orleans, and with this governor of Louisiana, and this hysterical meltdown by Senator Landrieu of Louisiana.

Yes. We shouldn't let the federal response go unquestioned, but once more: the origins of this human debacle are local.

The avalanche of Katrina assessments continues and here's a round-up of three voices from the west. What's interesting is that all three take a similar position by arguing that the root of all problems can be found in Louisiana itself, without exonerating the botched federal efforts.

First, LA-based Cathy Seipp:

None of which means that New Orleans, with a poverty rate twice the national average, and a crime rate ten times the national average, didn’t have problems at the local level before disaster struck. As former congressman Billy Tauzin used to say, “half of Louisiana is under water, and the other half is under indictment.” I can’t recall any event during our various episodes of natural disaster and civil unrest in L.A. that resembles what’s been going on in New Orleans, even granting that the hurricane itself was worse than anything we’ve faced.

Then Bob Williams of the Washington-based Evergreen Freedom Foundation:

The actions and inactions of Gov. Blanco and Mayor Nagin are a national disgrace due to their failure to implement the previously established evacuation plans of the state and city. Gov. Blanco and Mayor Nagin cannot claim that they were surprised by the extent of the damage and the need to evacuate so many people. Detailed written plans were already in place to evacuate more than a million people. The plans projected that 300,000 people would need transportation in the event of a hurricane like Katrina. If the plans had been implemented, thousands of lives would likely have been saved.

And finally my Seattle-based friend Matt Rosenberg points to the New Orleans born but now Ashland, Oregon based writer Mike Green who traces the failed relief efforts back to the moral and ethical decline of New Orleans, something that went largely unnoticed on the federal level:

The lesson our nation is bound to learn from this historic disaster is that without a moral compass, ethical boundaries and a profound understanding that public servants should serve the public, our leaders simply occupy positions of power to serve themselves. It is evident in the establishment of 30+ years of deliberate inadequate curriculum and teaching in New Orleans public schools. It is evident in decades of enormous amounts of corruption throughout the city’s political construct. It is evident in the prejudiced and criminal judges that headed the region’s judicial system. It is evident in the area’s corrupt cops.

But even more important is the lesson revealing the fact that while all of this man-made devastation could continue in the south, the national leaders in congress and the White House said nothing. None endeavored to help the people of New Orleans prior to hurricane Katrina. None lifted a finger to notify the nation that the seedy underbelly of New Orleans actually controlled the city itself and much of the state of Louisiana. Yet, the people there knew.

We're moving into consensus territory. Yes, the federal response was inadequate, but the rot somehow started from below.

To complete a day of Katrina blogging make sure you read Richard Baehr's column in which he deflates seven popular myths that have been perpetuated by the media. Baehr is right in arguing that it's not just FEMA's Michael Brown's head that needs to roll. It's perplexing to see that people who until some eight days ago had never heard of the man now feel that his dismissal should top the list of priorities. Yes, his position may have become untenable, but I really would like to see how an independent investigation would rank Governor Blanco and Mayor Nagin once their actions and inactions have been scrutinized. An educated guess would be that they wouldn't fare any better than Brown. Possibly worse.

The debate rages on and it will continue to do so for months to come. My initial take involved a discussion of the Delta Works, something that the NYT picked up today in an article about flood control (via Zacht Ei and Defensetech).

More interesting is the political debate which is now all over the map, some on the right blasting Bush and some on the left taking on state and especially the New Orleans city government. The impact on the overal Bush agenda has been discussed at lenghth, but Dan Drezner notes that the foreign policy agenda could suffer some immediate damage.

My take on the affair started off with a discussion of the media hysteria which has continued unabated and gained some extra momentum now that the entertainment sector has offered its unequalled expertise in the matter. The first-prize goes to Celine Dion whose comments I would qualify as "distrurbingly entertaining".

For now there's little need to expand on my earlier posts, but if the situation changes then I will surely add my views.

Earlier today I alluded to the CNN interview that Anderson Cooper had with Mary Landrieu (D-Louisiana) where the latter resorted to some emotionless political blather, defying Cooper who was actively playing the populist card. That was Thursday and apparently Mary has been getting some advice on how to conduct her media performances in the wake of hurricane Katrina. Red State updates us on her emotional helicopter ride:

She talked about people in the houses who might be floating near their roofs, holding their babies.

She said that the prisoners were evacuated from the prison so that they wouldn't go wild in the city. She said that she would assault the President of the United States if he criticized the sheriff. She screamed that the President had gotten a photo op down there, that the President had cut the budget, and she burst into tears.

On the ground, through crying, she said that she wants all the assets the President has, all the military, unlimited resource, and she called for a cabinet level person who reports to the President to take charge of the efforts in Louisiana. (Some on the conservative side have already suggested Rudy Giuliani or Colin Powell.)

Verging on tears again, Landrieu begged the President to "please stop taking photo ops and come see this devastation."

I know that she has been greatly affected by this terrible tragedy, but her partisan gestures in the face of calamity are beyond crass.

Well, it's her flip-flop that is beyond crass. There was a time when I liked and respected Senator Landrieu, but I may have to revisit that opinion.

UPDATE: Punditguy reminds us of what would happen to you and me if we were to follow the same media advice that Landrieu got.

Like everyone else I have been watching, reading and digesting Katrina related news over the past few days and wondered after a while how to make sense of it all and compress my thoughts into one single post. Well, here it is. Two things occurred to me:

POPULISM
It probably happened while watching Nancy Grace and her coverage of events for CNN. Nance’s indignation this week reached unprecedented levels, shouting at her guests and excessively shaking her head and rolling her eyes when word got out of that “more press conferences, more meetings” were underway. Like everybody else, she was angry, rightfully, but anger has always been one of her trademark assets using it to draw more viewers into CNN’s depleting audience. Her usual rants about flawed juries and inept prosecutors seek to do one thing: attract the angry and invite the disgruntled with sensational news. The opportunity to do the same this week on a much larger scale was perfect, there were outraged Americans all over the place and it was thus relatively easy for Nancy to draw them together and use the collective fury to drag those responsible in front of a national audience.

It went beyond the simple “it’s Bush” as some realization set in that flawed and inept decision making could be found at various government levels, often going back years. A reader condensed this sentiment succinctly by pointing to the fact that during the Clinton years emergency planning decisions were equally flawed and that the disconnect is essentially between those who govern and the governed:

“ … it really does little good to engage in partisan finger pointing. It would be more productive to research and understand the political class and how they make cost benefit decisions”

People are clueless about how governments plan, budget and allocate resources. And if governments fail, they become subject to a public anger that while in essence justified, often fails to come up with sound arguments. And evidence of this wasn’t restricted to just Nancy Grace and her show. At the same network Anderson Cooper took on Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu, a Democrat, who was in no way prepared for Cooper’s onslaught and resorted to the typical bland statements that are often the hallmark of out of touch political elites. A better response came from Bill Clinton and George Bush Sr. who - also on CNN – came under fire and tried to quell some of the public concern by pointing to the complexity that governments often face under circumstances brought on by natural disasters.

So, that was the overarching them of the week it seems. The inability of elected or appointed officials to effectively deal with the disaster and a consequent lack of skill in trying to communicate with a populace that got angrier and angrier, fired up by the many media that were more than happy to channel the popular fury into all of our living rooms.

That’s the populist aspect of it all. And if populist sentiments in Europe these days generally come from the right, in America they tend to come from the left. Without pausing for a second to digest the federal-state-municipal and historical perspective the anti-Bush forces jumped on Katrina and its aftermath at the opportunity that had eluded them for five years: the chance to finally nail Bush with some hard facts, at home, in America. That brings me to my second point.

THE ENDANGERED LEGAGY
And there was lots to pick from: impoverished blacks, global warming, surging oil prices, inadequate budgets, national guards on duty in Iraq, a president holidaying on his ranch, the pickings were rich. Now, if you debunk all the frivolous and uninformed nonsense then there was still more than enough left to start taking down the policies of the Bush administration in a manner that the media (see above) were more than happy to embellish. There are two parts to this development, the White House response and the implications for Bush’s policies and his eventual legacy.

First, the response. Andrew Sullivan asked wittily Where’s Cheney? My question is: Where was Andy Card? Who is managing the president these days? Could no one in the White House have foreseen the long-term implications of this disaster? Is it true that like any second-term situation (Reagan, Clinton) when some of the better people have moved on (in this case Hughes, Fleischer) a president is left with a second-tier team which is incapable of reading the various signs from the outside world and being able to manage a response? They just gave away one of their key assets: the Comforter-in-Chief. The White House was slow off the mark and that has undoubtedly caused some immediate political damage. Meshed together with the underlying criticisms it can start to tarnish Bush’s overall policy platform and consequently his legacy.

The Bush-critics can now – rightfully or not – link tax cuts to the failure of emergency preparedness and question the ability to plan and fund operations in Iraq. All of a sudden there’s a lot more meat to the wild claims of the first-term and many are - given the emotion mentioned beforehand – far more willing to believe it. And then there are the political opportunists on the right who may see future electoral benefits in starting to distance themselves from this president. It has happened before.

From there it is only a small step to start chipping away at the pillars that are supporting this administration’s strategy for the War on Terror. Many voices on the right are ready to abandon Bush and preparing for Rudy Giuliani in 2008, who would indeed be the best pick. But think about it, we have a good three years on the meter with Bush. If populist sentiments and short-term emotions start to really undermine this presidency, then not only the chances of the hands-on mayor to capture the White House are in danger, but even the better parts of the Bush legacy run the risk of being obliterated. Katrina's onslaught will be with us for decades to come.

UPDATE: Here's an answer about the whereabouts of the Bush team:

The White House is "very, very slow sometimes," says a former Administration official. Besides, members of the A team were on vacation: chief of staff Andy Card was in Maine; Dick Cheney was in Wyoming; even Condoleezza Rice was out of town, shoe-shopping in Manhattan. Many of Bush's best p.r. minds, including media adviser Mark McKinnon, were in Greece at the wedding of White House communications director Nicolle Devenish.

Next summer, stay closer to home.

Some interesting links on Katrina over at German weekly Der Spiegel:

Former Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal points to budgetary cuts by the Bush administration as the main culprit. Look, if there's blame to be apportioned, let's also take a close look at the action (or inaction) of Congress. And the same applies to the executive and legislative branches in both Louisiana and Mississippi. It seems that there's a very nasty debate brewing over the Katrina aftermath that may reach far deeper - as a domestic issue - than Iraq ever will.

And Germany's environment minister, Juergen Trittin, weighed in linking the hurricane to US climate protection policies. Don't get worked up about the latter, it's election season in Germany and the ruling coalition is not looking good in the polls, some last minute anti-Americanism on the back of a natural diaster sounds like a pretty desperate move to me.

Here's the list with links to where you can donate.

One of the reasons that I haven’t blogged about the devastation in the Gulf Coast area is that there is little that I can add to the various reports that we have seen over the past few days. In fact, it was surprising to see how much was written about it by numerous bloggers without really contributing anything that wasn’t already covered elsewhere. That however is changing right now, with analysis and finger pointing well underway. Andrew Sullivan provides a few interesting comments as well as a link to Mark Kleiman who has some pointed questions about maintaining the flood controls and levees, and, who should be bearing the associated costs. These are valid points as it puts into focus how the wealthiest nation in the world failed to implement a technically viable defense against the water in area that was known to pose some risks, to put it mildly.

That’s again something where my background comes into play, The Netherlands being a country that was essentially wrested from the water with nearly half of the country still being well below sea level. And it wasn’t that long ago (1953) that a disastrous flood devastated the south-western province of Zeeland (the one that gave its name to that country down under), killing some eighteen-hundred people and ruining a vibrant economy. It resulted in the construction of one of the world’s most ambitious infrastructure projects called the Deltawerken or Deltaworks:

Twenty days after the flood of 1953, the Delta commission was inaugurated. The commission would give advice about the execution of the Deltaplan, that would, in the long run, increase the safety of the Delta area. Although safety was the number one priority, the seaways De Nieuwe Waterweg and the Western Schelde would have to stay open, because of the economic importance of the ports of Rotterdam and Antwerp. In order to be able to build dams in the rivers' mouths, some auxiliary dams would first have to be built in the Zandkreek, the Krammer, the Grevelingen, and the Volkerak. These dams were known as 'compartment dams', since they would divide the large area of water into multiple compartments. In 1959, the Delta Law was passed, in order to organise the construction of the dams. The building of the 'Deltaworks' was such an enormous project, that it was sometimes referred to as the 'eighth wonder of the world' - and not without good reason.

The project was executed during the 1960s and 1970s and many Sunday trips during my childhood were spent visiting the construction progress of the many dams, dykes and locks that were part of this phenomenal project. The Deltaworks were completed during the 1980s and they work as there haven’t been any floods of note since 1953.

Of course there were downsides to all of this and to address Kleiman’s issues directly, for the Dutch it was a matter of national survival and there consequently was never a real debate about it being a national or provincial responsibility, something that’s hardly ever an issue as Dutch provinces do not have the authority to levy income taxes. The project was therefore almost exclusively funded by the central government and there were no creative project financing structures with private sector participation which would probably be part of the deal were it funded today. The cost over time of course exceeded the initial budgets by far, and some of that increased cost resulted from some typically Dutch pragmatic solutions that were devised around some highly controversial parts of the project:

There was some unexpected resistance against the construction of a closed dam, because people were concerned that the unique salt water environment of the Eastern Schelde would cease to exist. Specifically, not only the environment, but also the fishing industry would suffer from a dam. In 1976, the Dutch government agreed to an alternative plan: instead of building a closed dam, an open barrier would be built, containing a number of sluices that would only be closed during heavy storms and high water levels. The unique freshwater environment and the favourable fishery conditions would be maintained. Sixty-two openings, each forty metres wide, would be installed to allow as much salt water through as possible.

The net result of it all was a safe barrier against the seas but it also helped to create one of the most powerful Dutch government departments, the Ministry of Transportation and Waterworks, which once the project was completed became reluctant to see itself reduced to a regular ministry with a much smaller budget. With rising water levels as a result of global warming the department has of course enthusiastically embraced the opportunity to obtain budget increases in order to see to it that the Dutch water defenses meet 21st century standards.

This experience doesn’t give a really clear answer to what Washington (together with Jackson and Baton Rouge) should do now to prevent a repeat of the Katrina flooding. But, there is a viable technical model that can be worked from and there should be ways to share the risks of such an ambitious undertaking between federal, state as well as private participants. Above all, the affected areas need to get on their feet and there’s nothing that works better to fire up an economy then huge investments in infrastructural projects that take many years to complete.

UPDATE: John Hawkins has some questions about the cost of it all too.

Unfortunately I missed John Hawkins'deadline with my submission, but the results of Right-Of-Center Bloggers selecting their least favorite people on the right make a good read. Conclusion: if you're too close to the center, you're in trouble, but if you are too far on the right you're equally disliked. It won't matter to Andrew Sullivan or Ann Coulter, but if the right blogosphere is indicative of conservative sentiments - and I think it is - then John McCain's propsects for 2008 are increasingly bleak.

David Shribman discusses the increasing likelihood of a Clinton-McCain run-off in 2008. There can be no doubt that if Hillary enters the race she will move it to the center of American politics. In that case the Republicans may well decide to opt for a candidate that can capture that center, which happens to be a white-haired war hero in his seventies who is detested by his party’s conservative base. But he may be the most experienced, determined and above all visionary candidate the Republican Party can field. Remind you of anyone?

In anticipation of Bernhard Goldberg’s new book 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America, John Hawkins conducted a poll of the right-of-center blogosphere to see who they thought was screwing up America. The results are here and the list surprises me somewhat. If there are two things that are screwing up the United States - or any other Western democracy for that matter - then it’s the marriage of moneyed interests and politicians, and the debased aspects of a consumer culture teetering on the edge of good taste.

As such my submission featured both the Clintons, but also Tom Delay who I believe was under justifiable scrutiny recently precisely because of unethical behavior that linked politics and cash. Rightwing bloggers should examine their home turf too when cleaning the American house which isn't necessarily screwed up by Democrats only. Entrenched interests, both left and right, have a habit of ruining great democracies.

As for culture, no entertainment personality made John’s final listing unless you count Michael Moore as one. Yet, they should be a major feature as conservatives should remind themselves that it’s not gay America that is making a mockery of marriage, but the likes of Britney Spears who together with Paris Hilton featured very high on my list. Both women have done everything they can to take cultural consumption to even lower levels: more sex, more stupidity, recycling old tunes, as long as it sells big, it's cool. As for Michael Moore, he didn’t even feature on my shortlist since he’s not screwing up America but rather his own artistic record with highly implausible assertions and ludicrous theories. He's a joker that spices up the political debate with patent nonsense and as such should be considered an American asset. What we should ask ourselves is why it is that people like Moore can become extremely successful multi-millionaires. The answer to that question is more likely to point us in the direction of who is really screwing up America.

READER COMMENT:

I agree with the thrust of your post in citing societal trends, rather than a Gang of 100 as the source of America's ills. However, I would offer a slight disagreement of the two you cite: The most dangerous strains in US society arise from 1.) people who lie in order to effect large changes in US society, and 2.) the capture of government's fiat power by economic rent seekers.

Good point(s).

Via Andrew comes this interesting essay from Frank Furedi about the arrival of the populist movement. In the US it has left Democrat leaders wondering how on earth it’s possible that blue-collar voters can support the Republicans, while on the old continent the Eurocrats are baffled as to why citizens are able to vote against a project that they should know “is best for them”. On both sides of the ocean the populist movement is deeply despised because it is creating electoral shockwaves that complacent elites failed to foresee and which are hard for them to counter in a creative and constructive way:

One reason why the political class so dislikes populist movements is that it experiences them as a direct challenge to its values and worldview. This clash of values became evident during the recent referendums in Europe, where it was obvious that the 'No' campaigns were speaking a language that was morally and emotionally incomprehensible to the political class. The political class talked of subsidiarity, transparency, efficiency, human rights and protocols, while their opponents were discussing the problems of everyday life. By their very existence, the 'No' campaign calls into question the values of an increasingly technocratic and managerial oligarchy.

The entrenched political classes and their supporters in the media and academe have too much at stake - their credibility for one thing – to hastily adapt to new political realities and absent sound arguments they will often hastily embark on ill-defined counter attacks. A good example is the late Pim Fortuyn who was smeared as a fascist and more recently the right-of-center blogosphere received the honorable distinction of “digital brownshirts” from a former presidential candidate.

It’s hardly new and it will be used again and again. Comparisons to Nazi Germany may seem frivolous on this side of the ocean, but in Europe they are a very potent tool to help alter the dynamics of a political debate. Let me give you a recent example. The well-known Dutch writer Geert Mak produced a little booklet called “Doomed to Vulnerability” earlier this year, in which he tried to put the Dutch nation’s reaction to the horrendous Van Gogh murder into perspective. While it’s an interesting read, it doesn’t take Mak very long to arrive at the crux of his argument when he describes the anger of the unsettled Dutch populace:

History never repeats itself. What we do know from our bitter experiences as Europeans, is that processes of radicalization can go in any given direction. The disdain for the “soft” parliament, for intellectuals that ‘do not understand the people’, for justice and rationality; the leaders that promise a new unity and a liberalization of their fears; the existing political parties who in their silence and opportunism help create a vacuum in which these types of movements originate: we have see it all before. What people say here and there, what a few columnists write, it can all become reality, proper government policy, packaged in formal policies and civil throne speeches.

In popular language this phenomenon of describing your political opponent has been given a name, “demonizing”, and by painting current populist sentiments and politicians who play to these sentiments as a re-emergence of fascism, Mak too easily steps away from bringing up solid political arguments to counter what he sees as the populist threat. After the Dutch and French ‘no’ the fraught yes-camp equally tried to disqualify the electoral outcome as cheap and uninformed sentiments that could spell a deep and dark danger to Europe's society.

Now that years of correct political thinking and unquestioningly accepting that what is “good for us” are under sustained and critical attack, expect the vested elites to fight back vehemently using whatever means possible. It will create a very poor debate destined to steer society away from finding creative and new solutions to old problems. That in turn will indeed lead to more radicalization as Mak argues, but rather than applying that to the populists it will become the hallmark of those desperate to cling to power. North Americans, but especially Europeans, will be in for a very bumpy ride with some very nasty politics until hopefully some new equilibrium is achieved. The current populist movement has told us clearly that the old one is broken beyond repair.

UPDATE: Welcome Instapundit readers, feel free to look around, drop an e-mail (top right hand corner) and from time to time, return.

Natural disasters, mass immigration, corruption, wars, all factors that in the past have contributed to the weakening of once great empires. There was one other famous accelerator of societal decline. What was it? Oh yes, nepotism.

This weekend will mark the 30th anniversary of the fall of Saigon. Wunderkraut remembers and his post also explains why with time and events (Iraq) we have started to look differently at the Vietnam War.

Via Sullivan, here's an interesting study conducted by AEI on Homeland Security spending. As you might expect the outcome is not particularly pretty, from the concluding remarks:

Yet, because most of the money is allocated on a political basis rather than a sound cost benefit analysis, much of the new spending will not result in sound security. In other words, the security we are getting against terrorism is likely to be ineffective, yet comes at an enormous expense.

It's a double whammy: the nightmare of creating a new administrative behemoth combined with some hefty political spending. The report has a long list of such pork items, the $2.5 billion for “highway security,” which consists of building and improving roads is surely a beauty that will be instrumental in averting the next terrorist attack.

But all of the money spent is going somewhere and from direct experience I know that large segments of the software industry are wetting their fingers in anticipation of huge DHS contracts. Integrating, reinventing and updating databases from a variety of law enforcement agencies is actually the area where most effort should be focused and where outlays will be siginificant. And then there's the scope for the implementation of new technologies. If you can stand the long sales cycles it's an area where a lot of money is going to be made going forward.

With the nomination to head up the World Bank, Paul Wolfowitz is rewarded for years of government service. And the past few months have demonstrated that the Deputy Defense Secretary's vision to bring democracy to the Middle East was essentially the right one. He can now help developing democracies with their economies, but I would actually have preferred four more Wolfie years at the Pentagon.

Wunderkraut, a new blog to me, reports on the latest example of NPR bias.

Will look at the president's speech later tonight and have some comments and a round-up of reactions later.

With today’s inauguration a good deal of attention has already shifted to who will step in George Bush’s shoes when he leaves office four years from now. It’s an interesting question and it is not at all strange that it is getting a lot of attention since there seems to be a broad consensus that the Democratic nomination is essentially Hillary’s. John Hawkins polled the blogosphere and they have picked their most favorite and least favorite candidates. The hands-down favorite is Condi Rice who was no doubt boosted by her strong performance during this week's senate confirmation hearings, but I remain to be convinced that she's material for an elected position. This was my submission for preferred candidates:

Rudy Giuliani - On the basis of experience, leadership, determination and vision Giuliani leads the pack and in addition to that he is the only one in the Republican camp (together with Schwarzenegger) who is credibly carrying the Reagan torch. Some have argued he got burned by the Kerik affair, but that’s insignificant in the long run. His personal life may well be compensated with his 9/11 record and he will carry the state of New York.

John McCain – He may be a little past his peak and he will have a hard time uniting the Republican umbrella, but I have always had a soft spot for the Vietnam veteran from Arizona. In a time of war his vision and experience are of paramount importance. And although he may not get the Christian right behind him in its entirety, he will be the man to capture the center and that may be the right strategy for 2008. If Hillary is the competition, McCain, like Giuliani, has a good shot.

Marc Racicot – The former Montana governor is hardly ever mentioned but if there’s one Bush-camp enforcer that would have access to their support and phenomenal fundraising machine it would be Racicot (pronounce “Ross-co”). He appears to be a sensible conservative with hands on executive experience and his tenure as Chairman at the GOP could be seen as “being groomed” for more. Watch him.

Tom Ridge – The former Homeland Security boss was rumored as one of the candidates to be on the Bush ticket in 2000 and with good reason. Experienced leadership capabilities, the right credentials for the War on Terror and able to stake out centrist positions if need be, which could prove to be the decisive skill in 2008. He may however opt to stay in the private sector raking in some good cash.

Dick Cheney - Look, I know Cheney won’t run but to me he is the solid rock on which the Bush-house is build. Clever, informed, shrewd, more experience than any other contestant and most of all I think Dick is the guy that would allow you to go to sleep knowing that the world is in safe hands. Pity he won’t run.

Out of the group often mentioned for 2008 I would not be comfortable with Jeb Bush, as much as I like him as a human being and politician. Professor Bainbridge also likes him and quotes from the excellent piece on Jeb in the Economist’s Lexington although he failed to quote the gem of that piece, arguing the following about Jeb Bush:

“He drank deep of products of conservative think-tanks at a time when George was drinking deep of the world’s distilleries”

The reason is that another Bush would be counterproductive is that too much dynasty building is just not compatible with a dynamic and open democracy. If either Jeb or Hillary gets in in 2008 there will have been two families to have controlled the White House over a period of twenty-four years with a worst case scenario of a thirty-six year Clinton-Bush era. Attempting to promote democracy around the world may run into some unavoidable jeers and a consequent credibility gap.

Of course all options are open but I think it’s fair to say that with a likely Clinton effort the Republicans may have to go with someone that can capture the center. And of course, we may well end up, as usual, with an untested Governor.

Some of the best analysis of the cabinet shuffle is coming from David Frum. In essence, Rice failed at the NSC and Powell did not fit in the Bush team from an ideological perspective. With that in mind the recent shuffle is good news, there will be no major shifts in policy but depending on who will be running NSC there's likely to be far better co-ordination between State and Pentagon. And with that we can expect smoother and more consistent execution of foreign policy.

Maybe it’s overshadowed by so many other events this week but John Ashcroft’s resignation and the ascension of Alberto Gonzales as the new Attorney-General seems to not have been getting the attention it probably should have. First, with regards to John Ashcroft’s departure I think I share the sentiments echoed by Roger Simon who is not only able to give Ashcroft credit but puts his record in perspective:

But I am now absolutely certain that those who thought or are still thinking that John Ashcroft is or was a dangerous fundamentalist are lying to themselves or to us. Ashcroft, whatever his idiosyncracies, his prudish desire not to be photographed with nude statues, etc., was fully aware of one of Jesus' greatest teachings - render unto Caesar what is Caesar's - and behaved accordingly. Nothing remotely happened during his tenure to dispute this. We owe Ashcroft a debt of gratitude for his service during exceptionally difficult times.

And Roger is hardly a conservative. So what to make of Gonzales? There are many moderates who have started to jump up and down and argue that Bush has found a moderate to fill the vacant slot at the Justice Department. The fact that Gonzales is Hispanic only adds to that peculiar fascination but I think it is a flawed assessment, it is wishful thinking. Yes, Gonzales has taken a moderate stance on racial issues but that doesn’t turn him into a moderate or a liberal. He crafted the legal framework for Guantanamo Bay, he worked hard to substantiate the veil of secrecy around Dick Cheney’s energy commission, in short he's a solid Bush loyalist and more likely to defend whatever comes from the White House than craft a unique version of his own. The notion that as a Hispanic he would gravitate to more centrist positions is ludicrous, on the contrary. Successful immigrants tend to have fairly conservative positions as much of their success is underpinned by values that are usually found on the right and what they have achieved is something they want to defend and preserve.

Arguing that Gonzales is a move to the center doesn’t hold water and at the same time it’s not a move rightwards either. At the end of the day things will pretty much continue as they are and that may not be such a bad thing after all.

NOTE: Here's a great round-up of media reactions to Gonzales' appointment.

In what he describes as a small act of nastiness Professor Bainbridge reports that Ann Coulter was almost “pied” the other day at the University of Arizona, evidence of the escalating debate between the left and the right.

The days that pie throwing were considered to be clownish acts of protest are long over. It was shortly after Pim Fortuyn was murdered in the Netherlands a few years ago that those who had pied him at a book presentation shortly before his death were apprehended. They spent a considerable amount of time in detention and although they were cleared of any links to the actual assassin it had become clear that pie-ing in effect puts the spotlight on a person as a potential target. That message was heard in Canada not to long ago when the man who pied Alberta Premier Ralph Klein got a 30-day jail sentence. It will be interesting to see what will happen to the Arizona pie-throwers but it should be evident that you only need one nut to throw more than just a pie and things will get really ugly. Throwing pies, a slippery slope.

Dan Drezner reminds us of what is going to be the one of the more unusual senate races: the one in Illinois between Obama Barack and Alan Keyes. The latter has already fired a few opening salvos labeling Obama a “terrorist” and suggesting the repeal of the 17th Amendment, which established the direct public election of senators as opposed to an election by state legislators. Keyes’ assertion that that was a critical campaign issue was enough to get Dan to move into Democrat territory and lie down for a while. Many have ridiculed the GOP’s choice - some even suggested a Democrat plot - and believe that this race will be won hands-down by Barack.

Yet, Alan Keyes is hardly an idiot. In fact he is one of the more cerebral Republicans with an impressive academic background and on the public front he served as ambassador to the UN under Reagan. Most will remember him as a candidate in the 2000 presidential primaries where during one debate he addressed George W. Bush as “Massa Bush”. Still he got some decent results during those primaries and his ability to debate and orate combined with the color of his skin turned him into material to set the Illinois senate race on fire. And that’s what he’s doing. There will definitely be more interesting stuff from both the Republican and the Democratic candidates for this senate seat than what is coming from the two men slugging it out for the White House. Barack is the face of tomorrow’s Democrats; Keyes is an influential intellectual who will help shape conservative thinking for years to come.

Barack’s chances are far better than Keyes’ whose career as a behind the scenes thinker who can make the odd public appearance to stir up the base, whenever that’s necessary, suits him far better than elected office. In fact extreme positions don’t work in elections where there are no life and death issues at stake (although Keyes would dispute that) but they can certainly help direct the discussion on a national level in a certain direction. Phyllis Schlafly however believes that Keyes can replicate the upset in the 1950 senate race in the same state by the illustrious Everett Dirksen. While interesting, I think the comparison goes of track on a number of points but I am prepared to be surprised.

And, repealing the 17th Amendment is not as odd as it seems, there are some democracies where to this very date the Senate is indeed appointed by regional legislators. But it is hardly a critical campaign issue. Alan Keyes however got what he wanted by raising the issue: attention, although debating him on it would be a perilous undertaking. That’s why the 2004 Illinois senate race is indeed an amazing race.

When I marveled at the impact of liberal Americans eligible to vote in Canada in local elections, it never occurred to me that since most, if not all, of them are still American passport holders they can equally help swing close contests in the US. The Kerry campaign did think of it and Diana Kerry, the candidate’s sister, is now campaigning in Canada to get as many expatriate Americans to register for their absentee ballots, by some estimates there are anywhere between 400 and 500,000 Americans living in Canada.

With a few exceptions they are not likely to be in the Bush camp, although with so many Vietnam draft dodgers and their offspring up north you would have to wonder about their inclination to vote for a candidate who has built his campaign on his Vietnam record. They may have become so Canadianized that they can’t be bothered to vote either way. In any case, Canado-Americans presumably get to vote in the state in which they resided before they left the US and thus can have a significant impact in a number of hotly contested swing states. It would be interesting to see some numbers after the November election.

This is an OTB Traffic Jam Entry

… and Stephen Green fisks the effort. It has always struck me that Sullivan’s approach to US politics differs when he’s writing for non-US media compared to his blog or articles he pens for other American outlets. It therefore doesn’t surprise me that his move to Kerry was unveiled in a British newspaper. Although he is entitled to his view and dispensing advice to voters, I question the Kerry overture and its timing, as it flies in the face of most of what he has argued about Bush and Kerry over the past few years. If anything, if you would extrapolate Andrew’s thinking then a vote for Bush – no matter how much you dislike him for abandoning real conservative positions – would be crucial in cementing support for the pro-active approach the president has taken in the War on Terror. That war is the core challenge of our time and a point reiterated almost daily on, yes, the Daily Dish. To take Andrew’s advice and throw our weight behind Kerry because of the (failed) FMA, Abu Ghraib and the budget would send the wrong signal to the outside world as it would imply that the American voter clearly repudiates the efforts in especially Afghanistan and Iraq. By supporting Bush, voters this year will support the War on Terror, which with all its flaws and problems, is in far better hands of the diligent, committed, experienced and focused Bush team. That has been Sullivan’s argument until very recently, and now he shifted his support in an uninformed way (we still have to see what comes out of this week’s DNC in terms of policy positions) to a man whom he despised only a number of months ago.

I started reading blogs during the 2000 Florida recount when I saw Sullivan on CNN and to this day he remains my first port of call in the morning, or late at night when his next-day posts are up. That will continue unabated, he’s a great writer and I agree with most of what he says but his latest move, in Andrew’s own words, seems a little unhinged.

UPDATE: Andrew responds, Katie has a great round-up of reactions across the sphere and over at Michelle's there's a debate over Andrew's pledge week. I have always pitched into Andrew's pledge drives as part of my round of Christmas gifts and will continue to do so, his debate generating capabilities alone are worth quite a few bucks.

The Democratic Convention kicked-off today and it will be the first convention to be blogged, Dan Drezner has a great round-up of convention related blogs and blogging initiatives. More evidence that big media is catching on. I will pen my thoughts on Kerry’s anointment later this week, when we will hopefully have a better sense of the agenda that will underpin his campaign.

Like Megan, I do not have an awful lot to add to the Sandy Berger saga. However I can suggest a possible line of defense the former NSC head can use to justify his unfortunate behaviour:

"I tried to walk a fine line between leaving the classified documents on the table and stuffing them in my trousers. But I recognize that I did not fully accomplish that goal”

This remains the classic Clintonist line of defense, by adding “inadvertent” to this argument he will have a watertight explanation for his actions.

Good to see that the same-sex marriage issue has now been sent to the venue where it belongs: the states. Senator John McCain put it succinctly:

"The founders wisely made certain that the Constitution is difficult to amend and, as a practical political matter, can't be done without overwhelming public approval. And thank God for that"

Let’s see how the individual states deal with this, and if anyone on the Republican side dares to touch this thorny issue during the campaign.

Just saw Jeff Jarvis on CNN’s Aaron Brown to talk about Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, together with Jeff Greenfield. I haven’t seen the movie and my initial reaction is: I probably won’t as I would get very irritated having to sit through the extreme and inflammatory misrepresentation of facts that Moore is serving up this time. But the anger wouldn’t be directed so much at Moore, it would be directed at the stupidity and ignorance of the many people who I know will buy into Moore’s rhetoric, accept it and treat it as the gospel, and then propagate it. Greenfield, Jarvis and Brown seemed to agree that a movie like this primarily has a big impact on youngsters and when a movie that juxtaposes Saddam/al-Qaeda and the USA points to America as the bad guys, you know we are in for some challenging times ahead. It’s a subscriber link but the Vancouver Sun reported today that more than 40% of Canadian youth in the age group 14 to 18 see “the U.S. as an evil global force”. Numbers like this render me speechless but you can bet that with Moore being in the limelight in the months ahead these numbers are not going to come down.

But it’s not the restive adolescent group only. There are many mature adults who after Bowling for Columbine (which I discuss here) fell for the flawed logic presented by Moore. There’s a huge chunk of the well-educated middle classes that will see Moore’s latest movie as the validation of what they had been thinking for a long, long time. Remember, Reagan proved them wrong, socialism and communism collapsed, but here's a new cause that the chattering classes can rally behind with renewed vigor. Not long after 9/11 a group of academics I occasionally had a beer with were grateful to see ”evidence” online that the plans to build a pipeline into Afghanistan really were the source of a conflict between the Bush and bin-Laden families and that 9/11 and the removal of the Taliban were all directly related to developing and exploiting oil resources in the Middle East. Again, well-educated people in North America and Europe will once more point the finger to a democratically elected leader and say: ”you’re evil, you’re the bad guy”. Our enemies are having a field day and that is what makes me livid, in the face of suicide attacks, bombs on trains and beheadings we fail to close ranks and I wonder if Michael Moore in his quest to unseat Bush realizes the real damage that he is inflicting on our free society.

But Moore has a right to his opinion; the style and tone however contribute to a polarization that is scary. It’s a sad week for a democratic open debate where a former Vice President sees it fit to call bloggers “digital brownshirts” and the current VP, not someone beyond controversy either, uses the f-word against a senator. It’s only June so imagine where the vocabulary will be in November. Iraq is no Vietnam, but the debate over the war on terror at large is becoming poisoned and since the threat of terror is of a far greater magnitude than anything, as we know now, that endangered us in the Cold War era we can only hope it will not lead to a fatal divide.

By the way, I do not think that Al Gore lost his mind, he’s always been like this although now all the constraints of protocol have fallen away: Gore unleashed. Even as VP he was known for using extreme oratory to make a point. And sometimes he had a point, anyone remember this?

Bush gets a major boost from McCain? Who would have thought that? Well I did. At the end of the day John McCain is a Republican and for all the daydreaming about a Kerry/McCain ticket and the hope that someday McCain will take the reins of the Republican Party to steer it away from the direction that George W. Bush has given it, what we need above all is a reality check. Make no mistake, I have always been a strong proponent of the Arizona Senator but when he lost out in the 2000 primaries he must have realized that the only way forward was to join the ranks of the party and to support the new leader. The straight-talking express was great while it lasted but if McCain had continued to ride his bus after 2000 he would have been on a road to political irrelevance, rejected by the Republicans, viewed with suspicion by the Democrats. If you want to effect change, desire to direct your party away from its present course, better to stay in your party to help and shape that direction.

And so it is with Andrew Sullivan. Bush’s intention to find a way to outlaw gay marriage appears to have been the final straw for Andrew who has now stated he can no longer support Bush. Whether or not Sullivan was ever inside the Republican tent is not relevant, one of the strongest Bush supporters in the blogosphere has thrown the towel in the ring and decided to migrate to political no-man’s land as supporting Kerry would, judging from Andrew’s site, be unthinkable. My sense is that Andrew has overreacted and failed to take a route that in the long run would have yielded much better results and that is to stay under the Republican umbrella as a constructive long-term contributor. Ronald Reagan became President of the US at age sixty-nine, and one of the reasons for that late ascendancy to power was that he had first relegated himself to the political wilderness after he left the Democratic Party and then it took him close to fifteen years to change the course of the Republican Party. Change takes time and if you really believe in the conservative underpinnings of the Republican Party you do not achieve that much by slamming the door and declaring you no longer are supporting its nominee for the White House. But then Andrew is a very popular journalist and blogger, so he can probably take a few liberties but I don’t think Republican strategists are keen to sound out our Daily Disher in the near future.

That however doesn’t change my view about Andrew. He was the first blogger I discovered and he’s still the first port of call during morning coffee. I agree with him on most issues and share the intelligent comments of this blogger on the abuse that has been hurled at Andrew. But let’s face it, Bush’s first term has been marked by many ups and downs and it is the right of every Bush supporter, wherever he or she is, to criticize his record and come up with solutions because for many of us, and I certainly speak Andrew’s language here, we believe in the conservative dream that the Republican visionary Reagan laid out in the 1980s. Running up huge deficits by erroneously comparing 2004 to 1982 deserves criticism, launching a successful justifiable pre-emptive strike against Iraq only to see it tarnished by poor execution raises questions and going after one particular minority in an anachronistic way deserves disapproval. But that doesn’t mean the support for Bush should end abruptly. It means that Bush should listen to these critics, both in and outside his party, and recalibrate some of his policies in order to cement the achievements of his first term.

Barring any disaster Bush will probably have a fairly uncomplicated journey to re-election; Kerry is just not credible presidential material. That in turn means that Bush will have to start thinking about his legacy and about giving true meaning to his uniter-not-a-divider mantra. To me there’s only one real option open to him and that is to act on some of the criticisms and think about a reshuffle of his team as there are some clear deficiencies in the group that currently executes the President’s wishes. By having stayed inside his party John McCain can play a role in that process and exert some influence, I still am enough of a dreamer to see him take over the Pentagon, who knows. Sullivan has in a way disqualified himself for a while to exercise influence in conservative circles. Given his well-thought out ideas, views and abilities that’s a pity, but then to help bring about change in the Republican camp may take a very long time and Sullivan is surely young enough to reconsider some of his rash decisions.

And while we are at the subject of meager political talent I am definitely not looking forward to the upcoming Bush-Kerry contest, interesting though it will be. Come to think of it, we have to wait another four years for a Rudy-Hillary spar.

Well, I am still here, still reading the news, visiting blogs but barely having the time to create material for this site like I used to. I want to thank all of you who keep coming to Peaktalk despite the dearth of posts, your interest is really appreciated and in a way I am honored that many of you keep coming back knowing that there’s probably little chance of fresh content.

But there’s a lot going on out there that warrants discussion so I will try - whenever there’s time – to share some of my thoughts with you. The momentum John Kerry is building up combined with vocal Bush supporters deserting the president over WMD, deficits and his Meet the Press appearance are contributing to the US and the western world at large losing their focus. Andrew Sullivan kindly reminds us today:

And yet while this country is at war, some are trying to make the issue of the president's National Guard service decades ago a real issue; others want to split the country in two with a constitutional amendment to bar gay couples from any civil rights or benefits. We have lost sight of the central issue of our time. We owe it to the dead to remember again, to keep our focus - and press on.

Indeed, but the pressures on Bush and Blair (man, they’ve aged over the last 12 months) are coming perilously close to a justification of the position that Iraq should not have been invaded and that the War on Terror needs a rethink. This also happens because it’s so easy to abandon Bush and adopt the flavor of the month, but those who do so fail to see the big picture or the “central issue”. What’s going to happen in this election year is going to be crucial, and for that reason alone I will try and endeavor to keep this blog going.

What frustrated me most during the 2000 election campaign was the pre-ordained coronation of both Bush and Gore. The straight talking diversion provided by John McCain was fun while it lasted but the final outcome was never in question, nor was the futility of Bill Bradley’s campaign. While many on the left and right (hoping for that the sharp and engaging left-right debate) applauded the Dean phenomenon, I lamented it, even before one ballot was thrown in the box it seemed the race was pretty much a foregone conclusion. While I am not thrilled about either Kerry or Gephardt (it will not surprise you that if I were a Democrat, Lieberman would be the preferred option) it seems that together with Edwards and Clark we may yet see a battle where no one is able to claim that crown very easily. Let’s hope so, but bear in mind that it won’t really start until we’re in New Hampshire.

Like me, Megan McArdle was intrigued by the Child’s Pay video, selected as the winner out of a group of 30 second anti-Bush commercials. My take was: the deficit is going to be an important topic for the upcoming campaign. Megan, in a very good must-read piece says, the Democrats can argue what they want about the deficit, they are equally prone to deficit spending and it is an illusion to accept the Clinton years as a benchmark for Democratic fiscal prudence:

But the Democrats don't want to cut spending; they want to raise it. Dean and his brethren (with the possible exception of Wesley Clark) seem to have spending plans for every dollar they bring into the treasury through tax increases. If they want to publish a remotely truthful campaign document, they will thus have to admit that they aren't going to do a damn thing about the budget deficit.

And that is what makes the entire issue so depressing, both parties pay lip service to that great principle of balanced budgets, but once in office it is just too irresistible to tinker with taxes and spending, and the outcome is nearly always in the red. The American taxpayer is going to be stuck with a hefty bill regardless. Megan is correct about the 1990s and the fact that the boom produced surpluses, a similar pattern could be seen in Europe and Canada. The point however is: where do we go from here? The French and the Germans have already breached the 3.0% deficit limit put on them by the Euro’s Stability Pact and now even the Dutch are sailing very close to the wind. The only country that has miraculously avoided deficits is Canada where the debate is focused around the actual size of the surplus, honestly. It should be important to note that deficits are financed by debt that needs to be serviced and the substantial interest payment load weighed heavily on Canada’s finances in the 1980s and 1990s. But now a point has been reached where the new Finance Minister is going to ask Canadians how quickly they feel the government should pay down its debt (second best debt/GDP ratio of the G7 nations), and if there should be a formal debt-reduction target. It could be that number crunchers in Canada have warned politicians that there will be some very heavy spending requirements down the road if the country wants to maintain its publicly funded healthcare and pension plans. But we can’t be too sure that ballot-box driven politicians would necessarily listen to sound advice like that.

That brings me back to deficits as an election issue. I doubt that any large portion of the electorate in any western country is sophisticated enough to assess the impact of deficits on their economies, the way excessive spending is used to buy votes and the longer term impact of a heavy national debt load. An electorate that is leveraging itself to the hilt with mortgages, credit cards and car leases is ill-equipped to do that. “Child’s Pay” is a great video but few would understand the real significance and Megan reminded me that the real economical issue for individual voters, apart from taxes, will be: what is my chunk of these great spending plans the candidates are tabling? A depressing thought indeed.

According to PunditFilter the blogosphere is baffled at the amount of attention former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill is getting. Yet, when I check out the various entries most of the bloggers seem to focus on the planning for the invasion of Iraq, which to me is a non-issue as I said yesterday. The point is however that the O’Neill story is a bombshell not so much because of Iraq, that’s just a little kicker for the media, no, it is the first time that a senior inside member of the Bush team discloses the inner workings of that team (Dan Drezner and Brad DeLong have some very insightful posts dealing with this issue) and alerts the outside world to what is now becoming a problem that has even got some Bush supporters questioning the wisdom of voting for him: the deficit. And then there’s the announcement that O’Neill will be investigated for leaking documents. This story is big as it is going to hurt Bush in a far more serious way than anything relating to Iraq, as it focusing on Bush’s perceived weaknesses as an effective and hands-on leader and on his greatest fear for not securing a second term: the economy.

So what’s the big deal about the deficit? On an ideological level it has bewildered many fiscal conservatives that Bush would break the bank and that he is not showing any signs of stopping. Democratic ads zeroing in on the future liability all of sudden are less of a quaint and desperate attempt to unseat a highly popular President, they contain stuff to think about. On a practical level we can argue that in order to boost the economy, finance the war on terror and fund a few other necessary plans the Bush administration had little room but to go into deficit, and yes we can to some extent defend those deficits, but while doing it discovered that other questionable tool for boosting economic fortunes: devalue your currency. The bigger the deficit, the greater the loss of confidence in the US Dollar. A reader alerted me to Econopundit’s view who says that in the long run the dollar will hold its own, but so far the greenback has tanked in a very dramatic way versus a number of other currencies. In itself it may bring short-term export driven relief and help adjust the huge trade imbalances, in the long run depreciated currencies will hurt an economy by affecting productivity and adding huge borrowing costs that eventually will need to be underwritten by the American taxpayer. With that knowledge there’s one clear conclusion: O’Neill’s ruminations, whether you like them or not, will have a material impact on the presidential campaign.

The anti-war crowd must be jumping up and down over Paul O’ Neill’s revelations in his recent book. The fact that the Bush administration had started to plan the invasion of Iraq only days after being inaugurated and thus well before 9/11 is to many irrefutable evidence that the terrorist attacks had nothing to do with Iraqi Freedom. Well, they’re wrong, and as Glenn Reynolds highlights, the US had been in a state of war with Iraq since 1991 and even the Clinton administration considered war at more than one instance. For a new administration there’s a phenomenal amount of policy planning to be undertaken and as Iraq had continued to be an unresolved and threatening issue it is hardly a surprise that the President would have ordered a strategic plan, including a number of options, for Iraq. It would be a concern if Bush hadn’t planned for it.

Now O’Neill’s tenure can hardly be considered memorable and he himself no doubt realizes this as well. It must be a somewhat disappointing turn of events if what could have been the crowing piece on a long and impressive career, ends in dismissal. As a wealthy man, O’Neill doesn’t need to sell a lot of books to ensure a comfortable retirement, but that retirement could be so much sweeter if as many people as possible will have taken notice of what he had to say about his stint in the Bush Administration. That’s why O’Neill is throwing some heavy ammunition into both his book and publicity tour, and of course he is getting ample attention. But on one point he may be positioning himself for an after the fact validation of his warnings:

Suskind writes that O'Neill warned Vice President Dick Cheney of the consequences of a growing budget deficit, only to be told that Ronald Reagan's two-term presidency showed "deficits don't matter."

If it turns out that the reckless spending mode the administration is now is going to have long term detrimental effects, O’Neill will have made his point for posterity. That’s why we should probably be reading his book.

Update: Robert Tagorda makes a similar point: let’s see what the former Secretary has to say about economics, not foreign policy.

To be honest if NASA can pull off a manned mission to Mars then one of my childhood dreams will be fulfilled and I hope I will live to see it. My initial reaction to this ambitious plan however was similar to Dan Drezner’s. That fiscal restraint has gone out of the window a long time ago we all knew, but to throw a mission to Mars and the Moon into the mix is taking the spending spree to unprecedented levels. It could be a political move with the upcoming campaign in mind, but the Bush team has inadvertently given some great material to the Democrats: “first he spends a fortune to go to Iraq and now he wants your money to go to Mars?” And that is a mild one, I can think of nastier stuff. The point is that with a recovering economy and consolidation of affairs in Iraq it might work and be a great sell but the Bush team has taken a bit of a gamble here. Grandiose projects like this are left better to a second term when a President can built his legacy uninterrupted by electoral concerns, now it could come back to haunt him in a number of unpleasant ways.

If I read the various comments on the likely Bush-Dean battle I increasingly see comments on the radicalization of the debate where two extreme options will emerge. No longer that battle for the infamous center, although some would qualify Bush’s move on illegal immigration move as just that. It is therefore not a foregone conclusion that the political center has gone, but looking beyond the US it may well be that the popular politicians who successfully danced in the middle in the 1990s have fallen out of favor.

Take Canada where the Liberals have had an iron grip on power over the past decade by sometimes playing the left card, and sometimes the right card. It worked remarkably well, it kept the leftist core in the party at ease, and many free-market fiscal conservatives were enchanted by the tax cuts and balanced books. Yet, the world changes and in face of the new global realities it is imperative that the new Liberal leader and Prime-Minister, Paul Martin, starts rebuilding the relationship with the US because it is the country’s largest trading partner and there are many joint security issues. Not only that, US-Canadian relations are one of the key issues on the agenda of the newly unified right in Canada and Martin has no choice but to move in that direction if he wants to have some success at the ballot box later this year. As a liberal in Canada you can cut taxes, trim spending and even send troops to Afghanistan and keep the left-wing of your party quiet, cozying up to George Bush is another thing altogether and it has been one of the key reasons why pollsters see a huge exodus of voters in the direction of the hard left New Democrats. That challenge could in turn weaken the Liberal Party to such an extent that liberal conservatives might wonder whether continued support for the centrist Liberals makes any logical sense: why support a losing option in the middle if there’s a viable option on the right? The net result: the Liberals could loose their grip on power and become a minority party stuck between emboldened parties on the left and right. The end of a pragmatic centrist hold on power. An overly optimistic (or pessimistic, depending on where you stand) scenario? Maybe, but take a look at what happened in The Netherlands.

The Dutch Labour Party, until the mid-1980s solidly on the tax-and-spend left fell out of voter favor during that decade and realized that the only journey back to power was embracing the middle. The Dutch Labour Party became fiscally conservative and pro-market in its coalition with the Free Market Liberals (the Dutch right) and like Clinton in the US and Chrétien in Canada performed a clever dance in the middle which combined with a stock market boom and low interest rates ensured budget surpluses and lower taxes, a feast not seen in the lowlands since the 17th century. While in North America the war on terror had started to divide the centre, a different set of domestic issues started to spoil the party for the Dutch centrist coalition and the centre practically collapsed when Pim Fortuyn drove a wedge in that very center and the electorate delivered an unprecedented majority to the Dutch right. Labour was nearly decimated as a result of departing voters, many of whom delivered a huge boost to the up to that point small and irrelevant Socialist Party, an old style socialist group whom I have come to describe as Stalinist. It was earlier this week that the telegenic new Labour leader – not a union leader or academic as before, no, a former HR manager from Royal Dutch Shell – called out for a renewed élan for Labour for if the party would not be able to gain strength and confidence it would lose voters to the hard left and the right. Again, like in Canada we see how a left-liberal party that managed to stay in power by capturing the middle ground is now abandoned by that evaporating center.

Although the mechanics are a little different, the same appears to be unfolding in America where Dean has clearly staked his political gamble on a course that is materially different from what Clinton achieved in the 1990s. It should make it easier for Bush to collect votes in the middle now, not only by playing the war on terror card but also by pointing out that left-liberal economic platforms are not really designed to benefit the middle classes, or if they are they don’t always work out that way. So he can stay comfortably in his right corner without having to make too many moves into the middle ground. That’s why Andrew Sullivan earlier this week endorsed Howard Dean: it ensures clarity in politics, a healthy and intense debate that was so lacking on both sides of the ocean during the 1990s. It is one of my main gripes with Clinton, I could never tell where the man stood and what he wanted. Nor could many others which led to low voter turn-outs, again a phenomenon that occurred in Europe as well. With the disappearance of the center that terrible enemy of democracy - voter apathy - may now disappear, together with that very unsatisfying and unclear political center.

Catching up on interesting stuff around the web, Jane Galt opens up the discussion about the Republicans and 2008. Interesting because I have been wondering who the Republican Crown Prince would be and some think it might indeed be Giuliani. I agree, but I do not think he would have to take on Hillary for her senate seat in order to get her out of the way and establish national credentials. Hillary’s term ends in 2006 which means contesting that seat to get into the White House in 2008 doesn’t make sense for either Rudy or Hillary. As for a national platform: if the Governor of Vermont can launch a national campaign, so can Rudy.

He faces two real problems though: he may not be entirely palatable to the rural social conservative base and by 2008 he will have been absent from the national stage for a very long period. The 9/11 effect will wear off and there is a limited amount of book deals to be had. Running for Governor of New York seems pointless, who wants to have that job after having been the Mayor of NY City? The answer may well be that if the Republican leadership believes he is a viable candidate he needs to be drawn back into the administrative fold, upon Bush’s re-election later this year there may be some interesting executive assignments where Giuliani can not only contribute as an experienced leader but stay in the national - and global - limelight to establish a platform for 2008.

Andrew Sullivan is having his annual pledge week and I am contemplating what to contribute. I sent two checks his way over the past two years, but I have yet to see any Sullivan traffic coming my way. Still, he will get a piece of our annual Christmas charitable budget although a lot of it has been consumed by the cancer foundation and local playschool and scholarship funds. Why should I as a fellow blogger throw some money Sullivan’s way? Because I like him, because he’s good, because his British and 1980s inspired view of the world is so recognizable to me and because I think that his request for cash is genuine. And while he doesn’t do it every day, sometimes his assessment of a development is pretty compelling, like today’s take on Gore and Dean.

While we are at it, if Sullivan is right then the Republicans have an exceptional opportunity to capture the Clinton middle ground in 2004 and retain their hold on the executive and legislative branches for at least another four, maybe even eight years. By doing that they take advantage of the deep rift that is splitting their Democratic opponent, much like the Liberal Party in Canada has done by capturing the center and taking advantage of a divided right. As we are seeing in Canada it takes a long time for such a division to heal, but if a group is shut out of power long enough they will eventually set aside their most fundamental differences in order to recapture control of the political process. Yet, in the case of the Democrats that would require uniting behind a personality that may be a unifier in her own party, but outside of that remains both divisive and controversial.

Via Betsy’s Page I found the Electoral Vote Calculator for the 2004 Presidential Election. The electoral votes for each state have been adjusted based on the 2000 census and you can run any scenario you like, it’s a great toy to use when you’re on a boring conference call or something like that. The latest scenario I ran was using 2000 as a base case, but I let the Democratic candidate pick up Florida while Bush would pick up Maine and Oregon. Result: 270-268 in favour of Bush.

If it is argued that Bush is stubborn, then I would argue he will absolutely stick with Rumsfeld despite the mounting criticism. The attention on Rummy following his leaked memo (this site got a lot of hits from people googling for Rumsfeld+memo, but ended up reading my take on a much older memo dealing with North Korea) has increased considerably, some media citing mounting criticism among senior Republicans as well as White House officials. The question though is whether the Rumster will hang on for another term if Bush is re-elected. If the Bush campaign is, as it should, centered around continuity then the president will have to ensure that progress in the War on Terror as well as progress in Iraq not only gets appropriate coverage in American media but also that the current Secretary of Defense has his name attached to it. Ditching Rumsfeld now implies admitting that Rumsfeld was a liability in executing the administration’s defense strategy and that would create far more damage than letting the Secretary serve out his term and let him exit gracefully after Bush’ re-election if there’s a need to do that at that point in time. If however Rumsfeld is able to validate the current strategy with continued success, then he may, despite being well over seventy, serve another term as part of Bush’ strong national defense team.

John McCain has always fascinated me and his record as a Vietnam veteran no doubt contributed to that as did his vibrant campaign for the presidential nomination a few years back. Many on both the right and left liked him, yet it seems that he has drifted out of that orbit of fascination and Iain Murray tries to shed some light on why that’s happening. Iain’s arguments dealing with McCain dragging his feet over a lease deal that the Pentagon has negotiated with Boeing appear to be valid, but to write-off McCain just because of that is going a bit too far and I would be interested what else caused people to become so disenchanted with him. At least he has voted against a pay-rise for senators and his concerns over the way in which troops are deployed in Iraq bespeak reasonable analysis. Interestingly, there may be other reasons why some are becoming irritated with the Arizona Senator. Presidential candidate Lieberman’s comments that he will appoint McCain as Secretary of Defense if elected may have something to with that, McCain’s quasi-Democratic status does not sit well with the Republican base at large. But then neither does Lieberman’s status as pro-War Democrat with his potential electoral base. You see, even in the center life can be tough sometimes.

Roger Simon's reaction following the Schwarzenegger victory is that politics in America will never be the same and that it could be construed as a revolt of the pragmatic center, ending the two-party system as Americans know it. My initial reaction is, be careful what you wish for. In Canada the multi-party system has come to a virtual end as one party was able to capture the center and benefited handsomely from the fact that the far-left deconstructed itself with an outdated ideology and the right started to quarrel leaving a divided right. Recent elections, especially those at the federal level, have allowed for swift and huge victories at the polls for the Liberals in the center, and with no apparent restructure of fortunes on the right, it appears Canada has drifted to become a single party state. Single party rule with all its institutional implications is a dangerous and disturbing development for any society. Now, I am not saying that Simon advocates this particular scenario; it is just one that comes to mind when analyzing his predictions.

A similar unfolding of events in America is highly unlikely as it would mean that the Republican Party would have to move so far to the center that it can afford to loose its social conservative constituency and capture the bulk of Democrat voters. That may work in California but I would doubt that it can be replicated in the rest of the nation; however it could happen in the long run. The death of the tax-and-spend left, the growing consensus for a tough foreign policy following September 11 and the move towards adopting liberal values (accommodating gay marriage, less restrictions on drug use, flexibility on abortion) will eventually spawn a new political stream but I can not see that happen overnight. In Canada, that political stream came into being by a left-of-center party moving to the right combined with a self-destructing right. If Simon is right we would have to see a right-of-center party moving to the middle and a journey to irrelevance by the Democrats. It could happen, yes, but it will be a while before America at large follows the California template.

Where’s the Plame affair on Peaktalk? No analyses, comments, or better still, some comparisons with similar affairs in Europe? From the moment the news broke earlier this week I knew that it would be covered in extenso by the blogosphere and that I just did not feel like jumping on it and trying to do something I knew everyone else would do: cover it, analyze it and launch some homemade theories. In a way it is too early for that and I made the decision to sit this one out and see what happened, and so far, it did not get me too excited. Like the early days of Whitewater. Even Sullivan was reluctant to jump on it, some were a bit too enthusiastic jumping on it and some are even tired of it already and have opted to take a break.

According to Andrew Sullivan, Schwarzenegger today has demonstrated that smears don’t work anymore. What he means is, come clean with all your past transgressions and then there’s no one that will be able to smear or blackmail you during a campaign and with private lives out in the open we will enter a new area in politics. He’s right to an extent, for it would certainly have been easier for Arnold to be upfront about this rather than having to fight back the accusation at a fairly late stage. If you enter a campaign with a clean slate then the debate itself will center less on someone’s past and probably more around the issues at stake. If there’s one person that was able to prove that it was Pim Fortuyn who was so open about his promiscuous gay life that it had become an absolute non-issue during the campaign, in fact he won praise for his openness. Since his political views were so compelling, he was unstoppable during last year’s election campaign in The Netherlands and it took a nut with a gun to end his electoral march. It would be a phenomenal achievement if that openness could be replicated in the US, so that we did not get distracted over petty crimes such as sexual grossness, college binge drinking and smoking marihuana. That last minute DUI thing about Bush in 2000 was irritating in a number of ways and should have been disclosed well before the start of the campaign. A clean campaign would be less fun though, but if everyone would be able to focus on the political debate that debate might get livelier and better and that's what it is all about. Come clear and focus on the content.

CalPundit analyses Senator Kennedy’s statement to the press which I also happened to discuss yesterday, and asks the question if the senator knows more about routing funds to foreign leaders, which is what Kennedy accuses the Bush team of. Maybe he does, and if he does he would most certainly not give us the answer as that would immediately undermine the other statement made during that same press conference:

Kennedy told the AP he also was worried the war in Iraq had drawn America's attention away from possible threats from al Qaeda, problems in Afghanistan and North Korea's nuclear program.

So, if Bush is routing funds to other countries to facilitate troop deployments, is that not part of the war on terrorism? Routing funds to the South Koreans, is that not related to what's unfolding in North Korea? The administration continues to spend money on fighting the war against terrorism and rogue nations, and that is probably evidenced by funding activities in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Turkey, Iraq and maybe even Saudi Arabia, to name a few. Maybe the senator will care to acknowledge the numerous arrests that recently have been made in Pakistan, Thailand, Indonesia and Afghanistan. It appears the senator is shooting off weird conspiracy theories, and I will add to that: shooting off theories for effect only.

If the Democrats are serious about unseating Bush next year they will have to ensure that they will be making some inroads in the red states of the American heartland, I pointed out earlier this week that positioning Wesley Clark probably has something to do with that. Today’s comments by Ted Kennedy about the Iraq war being a fraud that was made up in Texas defy belief. It will only strengthen the notion that America’s security is in better hands with the Bush team and it will no doubt help rally the Texans in an even stronger fashion behind the President, a sentiment that will probably be replicated in other red states. Massachusetts bred arrogance does not go down well in the rest of America, here’s more from the senator:

Kennedy told the AP he also was worried the war in Iraq had drawn America's attention away from possible threats from al Qaeda, problems in Afghanistan and North Korea's nuclear program. "I think all of those pose a threat to the security of the people of Massachusetts much more than the threat from Iraq. Terror has been put on the sidelines for the last 12 months," Kennedy said.

So it is the security of the people of Massachusetts that's at stake? Whatever national platform the Democrats are trying to build for America’s security, Ted Kennedy can be counted on to destroy it. Even Democratic elder statesman Ed Koch underlined the importance of security last week by stating his support for the way Bush has handled things so far. At the same time Koch pointed out that Senator Kennedy’s predictions about Iraq had failed to materialize:

"Nobody wants [to see U.S.] casualties. But the fact that they were as minimal as this was miraculous," he contended, especially "when you had all the people like Kennedy predicting thousands of body bags." Then, broadening his criticism to include other anti-war Democrats, Koch complained, "It's an outrage that they conduct themselves the way they are."

If you will read my post below about how a ruling party has taken advantage of disarray among the opposition in Canada then it is not hard to see that serious divisions in the Democratic Party will most likely ensure another four years of Bush at the helm. With national security and the global war on terror being the issue that is a comforting thought.

Retired General Wesley Clark has launched his bid for the presidential nomination today. It is an interesting move, but it does not seem that Clark is really presidential material, just yet. We have seen little of him outside his comfort zone of military and foreign affairs, and he does not have the broad appeal that Colin Powell had when he retired from the military. And his exploits in Kosovo will not appeal to the American public at large, they’re just on a different level, it’s not Desert Storm. You need to have some of that magnitude to capture the public’s imagination; think of Eisenhower, his military career put him in an excellent position to capture the White House. Clark’s move could be part of a broader realization among Democrats that they need to beef up the current field of candidates with someone that can play the national security card convincingly. And: although Clark’s born in Chicago he will be launched as a Southerner in the race and so far the Democrats have not found a Southern magnet, Edwards and Graham are hardly registering on the radar screen these days.

Clark will run for as long as he is able to do so financially, but he is being positioned as a running mate for the two Northeastern front-runners who are just too liberal and have too little cloud outside their geographical areas to have a real chance at momentum during 2004. Clark is bright enough to have figured this out, he would no doubt see a presidential nomination as a phenomenal and unexpected bonus. If he gets the slot on either the Dean or Kerry ticket he will be happy enough, and the Democrats will be able to put forward a reasonably credible ticket to challenge Bush.

As an avid movie fan I always keep track of the Academy Awards and until recently, I always watched the Oscar ceremony. Over the past decade there has been a move away from American type moviemaking for the masses to independent and artsy movies (thanks especially to Miramax) the latter trend culminating in an Oscar for American Beauty a few years back. Everyone was going berserk over what a great movie that was, but after having seen in twice I fail to see what all the hype was about, yes, it was a good story, it had some great acting and unique humor but overall it was nowhere near an Oscar for best movie of the year in my opinion. Americans just started to emulate what Europeans had done for years by making movies that were not targeted for the mass public but to a smaller elite that was willing to look at experimental movies and increasingly able to comprehend unusual scripts and now these movies had gone mainstream. Again, Europeans had been doing that for as long as the medium has been around and they had similarly done that when making documentaries. I grew up watching phenomenal documentaries on prime-time television, most of them either Dutch or British. These were great documentaries as they set out with a problem or question and sought to resolve it by interview, historical footage and analysis. You always felt that you had learned something and if the filmmakers had been unable to reach a conclusive answer or conclusion, they would also let you know what prevented them from reaching that conclusion. Watching North American TV it is near impossible to find such documentaries; it’s all micro-blurbs lacking any thorough analysis. Yet, there are some documentary makers that are willing to take on controversial topics and we are led to believe, since he got an Academy Award for it, that Michael Moore is one of them.

Having finally had a chance to watch Bowling for Columbine (thanks to Rachel Lucas who alerted me to the fact it was out on DVD) I had more or less the same feeling after having seen American Beauty: what’s all the fuss about? Is this great documentary making? And going straight to the heart of the matter: can you take this guy so serious that you have to get angry with him or be upset with him? As much as I disagree with Moore, I could not get angry or upset with him, for one simple basic reason: it was an interesting yet poorly crafted documentary that utterly failed in bringing the message across it was seeking to bring across, and violated one of the basic tenets of documentary making: it failed to analyze the problem it set out to discuss. Here’s why.

The basic problem with Moore’s production is that he sets out to give you the idea that he has identified a problem and that he seeks to analyze and come up with some sort of conclusion in relation to that problem. He sets out to investigate why America is a violent society known for a proliferation of guns, and in particular why that society produced two teenagers that set out to shoot and kill dozens of their classmates on an April morning in 1999. As many others I was equally disturbed by the Columbine shootings and I got somewhat excited when Moore started to compare the US to Canada, to Germany and to Britain to see how crime levels, gun ownership and violence statistics compared in order to answer the question as to why the US is more violent than any other Western industrialized nation. Good idea, compare and contrast, clarify differences, eliminate possible answers and get closer to an answer or solution. Yet, Moore never even gets close to finalizing his analysis, finding real answers or patiently laying out facts and let the audience draw its own conclusions. Whenever he gets close to some of that he starts jumping all over the place and undoes all his preparatory work, throws in some irrelevant facts for effect and moves on leaving his audience deeply confused. The best example was the violent death of a 6-year old at the hands of another 6-year old using a handgun. He outlines what happened, introduces some of those that were present, uses some 911 transcripts for effect (all fine and valid documentary techniques) but then he dances off to welfare reform, pointing to the fact that the mother of the 6-year old killer was kicked off welfare and was now working for “the rich” and all of a sudden we end up in California where Moore is trying to interview Dick Clark, the owner of the restaurant chain where the mother worked for “the rich”. I was completely lost but the approach underlined the fundamental approach Bowling for Columbine uses, and that is that facts and rational analysis should never get in the way of great effects.

What effect is he after, or: what is Moore's agenda? Moore will have us believe that we are all the victim of a great conspiracy: the same guys that control oil, build arms, build pipelines in Afghanistan, fueled the dot-com boom, were behind Enron and got us into Vietnam are now also in the fear business and out of fear we buy guns which in turn is good for these guys as they also happen to control the gun industry. It is all one big conspiracy and for good measure he throws in September 11, leaving the audience under the impression that the same group that gets us to buy guns is the same group that somehow was responsible for the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon. Without using the words Moore is pretty clear: it is all one vast right-wing conspiracy. Another example is the repeated claim that the Columbine shooting took place on the day “the US launched one of its heaviest bombings on Kosovo”. That should have read, “NATO launched one of its heaviest bombings on Serb troops in Kosovo, Serb troops that were in the business of ethnically cleansing unarmed Kosovar citizens”. And although Moore has some great points (I agree with him that we are a society of fear) he fails to put the responsibility of all of this on us or on our media. In fact he benefits in a royal way from that media culture (which is why he fails to really criticize it?), his soundbites are perfectly in sync with what today’s media consumer wants which is why many media give Moore airtime: it drives revenue.

Moore is not an idiot; in fact I think he is pretty smart. He knows that we live in a world of short blurbs launched for effect and his documentary does precisely that. In doing that he also uses one of the very old tactics that the left is known for: throw mud and somehow, some of it will stick. That’s why in a discussion about gun violence in the US we end up in Kosovo, and that’s why Dick Clark is casted as responsible for a 6-year old girl dying of bullet wounds. Moore knows this and in the featurettes on the DVD you can see his smile and his twinkling eyes are evidence of the fact that “hey, I threw some random thoughts together, put a label on it, threw it around a few times and guess what, I got an Oscar for it”. Moore is right to be gleeful; I cannot deny him that. And he continues doing it, one of the featurettes has him talking to Joe Lockhart, former Clinton Press Secretary and while I was hoping for some sort of intellectual debate it is yet another round of soundbites (“the rich never get screwed, we get screwed, we are the screwees”) leaving me perplexed as to what the intellectual content of it all was. Then there’s the piece where he discusses his Oscar acceptance speech (which the Academy wisely not allowed him to use on his DVD). Moore knows that this unprepared speech was pretty bad, so he uses the DVD as an opportunity to polish it and make it somewhat nicer and throw in some other contortions: the people booing him were actually booing the people that were cheering, not him. I have to hand it to him, he knows how to get a message across and manipulate the facts, but for those of us with a bit of grey matter it is just a little too obvious. It tells you something about the intellectual capabilities of those that buy into Moore’s view of the world. This also highlights the danger. In the run up to Iraq many criticizing that effort were readily repeating the out of context facts distributed by Moore: “the USA is a nation of warmongers, they even went to war in Kosovo!” Context please?

And that is why his documentary is not a documentary, it is a hyped-up overrated videoclip that raises some interesting issues but does not do anything beyond that. Awarding this with an Oscar was, like the award for American Beauty, meant more as signal that some wanted to get across than about the quality and content of that production. Overrated material but still interesting to watch.

Some media continue to play up the idea of a rift between the State Department and the Pentagon. I alluded to this last week when discussing the appointment of Paul Bremer as the new civilian administrator of Iraq, which by many was interpreted as a victory by State over the Pentagon. Critics of this administration however put Bremer in the hawk box and did not see it as a victory of State at all. And then last week everyone jumped on Newt Gingrich comments regarding Powell’s visit to Damascus, citing it as further proof that the gap between State and Pentagon was widening. We need to do a reality check here.

While there are arguably some differences in the approach to foreign policy between State and Pentagon and both may propagate divergent solutions to certain foreign policy issues, at the end of the day both State and Pentagon are integral parts of one and the same administration, namely the Bush Administration. Both are essentially tools that the President has at its disposal to execute foreign policy. If diplomacy does not work we can use force, and we can make diplomacy work because our hand at the negotiation table is pretty strong given the military arsenal we have at our disposal. Powell’s visit to Syria was an excellent example of how we can get this mechanism to work, by outlining the new strategic conditions in the Middle East we are finally able to address past wrongs. We can now encourage “new standards of behaviour” as Powell said, which in my mind is one of the better lines that has come out of the State Department this year. Some will qualify language like this as bullying by the US, I would call it a muscular foreign policy that is legitimately used to address terrorism, dictatorships and the development of weapons of mass destruction by rogue nations. In other words it is sound foreign policy. A bit of State first, and if it does not work, we’ll use a bit of Pentagon. While both State and Pentagon will try to influence the President it is ludicrous, to use the Gingrich term, to assume that the US Government is run along the lines of a bottom-up model. At the end of the day it is a top-down model and it is the President who is pulling the levers of foreign policy. So far, this has been working quite well.

Solport last week alerted us to the importance of Bob Graham, like I did a little while ago here. The interesting thing about Graham's candidacy is of course his Floridian origins, but more than that he is a candidate that carries some weight when it comes to attracting the middle ground. I bet he will be able to lure more Republicans into Democrat arms than John Kerry or Howard Dean. Graham was in the picture to be on the Gore ticket, but there were apparently some issues over his suitability and one of the reasons was that he keeps meticulous diary notes which some considered to be odd and might expose him to some sensitive information coming out in public. In any case Bob Graham is back and interestingly, he hit the news on Sunday with some expected attacks on the Bush administration (economy, concerns over war on terror) but also with some good points like comments on Syria's sponsorship of Hizbollah and Hamas. These are coming straight from the Ledeen book on terror and will help Graham to position himself to the right of Bush. He also alerted us over North Korea:

"I'm surprised we're treating North Korea with such kid gloves," he said. "We went into Iraq on less ... We made a mistake early on by not engaging the North Koreans on a one-to-one relationship and allowed the situation to deteriorate. Now we're paying the price for that deterioration."

Correct, Bob. Both his comments on Syria and North Korea will go down well with foreign policy hawks and therefore Bob Graham is a credible candidate going forward, although he is more likely to end up as a Lieberman running mate, as I do not think he comes across as a candidate that is able to connect with the man on the street. I am not trying to give some strategic advice to the DNC here, really, but I am just getting excited over what promises to be a very interesting campaign next year. Both the democratic primaries and the showdown between Bush and the Democratic challenger will prove to be a lot more interesting than the entire boring 2000 campaign and I include the Florida recount in that. I can’t wait.

Today the White House broke its silence over the Santorum issue and it is evident that they will stand by him, there will definitely not be a Trent Lott style reckoning here.

There are a number of reasons for this support, one of them being that Santorum has a very good working relationship with the President as opposed to Lott. The more important reason however is an electoral one as dropping Santorum would really alienate the GOP’s large conservative base. As I discussed earlier, it was alienating that very conservative base that cost Bush Sr. a second term. The GOP has to maneuver very carefully here in order to ensure that as many people as possible stay under the Republican umbrella and going out to bat for gay Americans just does not make electoral sense at this point in time. Yet, Bush may have lost some valuable voters over this issue and he will need to mend some fences over the next few months otherwise this issue will come back to haunt him during the campaign trail. By not disapproving Santorum’s comments, Bush will open himself to criticism that he believes that the government does have a role to play in people’s private lives and that may cost him more than just a few gay votes.

With the Trent Lott affair well behind us, the Republican Party once again finds itself in a negative spotlight, this time as a result of the comments made by Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, who has, in summary, equated homosexuality with incest. It appears that once again some serious damage has been done and that the senator’s attempts to alleviate his comments are in effect making the situation worse as they suggest Santorum has no problem with gays but believes that the sex they engage in is illegal. Underlying his comments is an apparent belief that government has a role regulating the private lives of its citizens. This is something that the Republicans can not afford with, as Karl Rove has acknowledged earlier this month, a close 2004 Presidential election race ahead.

The Republican Party is an amalgamation of various interest groups including old-fashioned rural conservatives, religious interest groups, anti-abortionists, Cuban refugees, anti-government libertarians, urban business and professional elites, crime fighting law and order advocates, and yes, even some Hollywood types. The trick is to keep the party unified and to assure that all these various interest groups find themselves under that same Republican umbrella when it comes to election time. That umbrella will also have to extend to certain minorities that until recently found their home in Democratic circles and both gays and African Americans are key examples. Homosexuality has gone mainstream and many gays are affluent professionals that have very little in common with the tax and spend left. In fact they are more at ease with a political party that emphasizes freedom from government interference. Many African Americans have been able climb the social ladder and are also likely to go with a party that promotes low taxes and freedom from government interference. There are many voters in the middle who, given the right message, will migrate to the right and cast their vote for George Bush.

An interesting article in the Economist this week dispels the notion that Bush Sr.’s election loss was the result of the slow economy (he won Desert Storm but lost the economy). The article suggests that a collapse of the Republican political machinery was the key factor of the 1992 defeat and that to a very large extent that collapse was the result of alienating the party’s conservative base. With Iraq behind us and a challenging economy ahead Bush today will above all have to ensure that all the constituent parts of the Republican Party are under its umbrella and at the same time ensure that ditherers in the middle will find some good reasons to vote Republican. By letting senators like Lott and Santorum disseminate reasons to not vote Republican, the party finds itself in a hotspot where it can ill afford to be. Bush has already made considerable progress in creating a unique platform for a variety of interest groups that may carry him into a second term, but if off the cuff comments from some senators start to affect the strength of his platform it is going to be a very close race indeed.

Foreign policy is the exclusive domain of a federal or national government. That may seem to be an obvious statement but in the months leading up to the Iraqi war there were many city councils in North America that spent hours deliberating the need to go to war in Iraq and formally adopt motions that dealt with this issue. It reminded me of Europe in the 1980s when various cities and even small villages declared themselves “nuclear weapon free zones”. I happened to live in one of those nuke free cities and it infuriated me as there was of course no point for the local council to get into what was essentially the domain of the national government for if they had wanted to deploy nukes in our municipality they would have, simple as that. The basic problem was that left-leaning city councils felt it was necessary to help shape foreign policy, the mistake they made was that they were doing it in the wrong venue and at the expense of local taxpayers.

I was reminded of this when Alberta’s Premier Ralph Klein stepped up to the plate to support the US. A very admirable move as frustration in Canada about the way the federal government deals with the US and its war in Iraq is mounting but I am afraid Klein has overstepped the boundaries of his provincial domain, as much as I agree with him. If we let state, provincial and municipal entities into the realm of foreign affairs it could potentially be harmful to policy being developed at the national level. Ralph Klein is a great conservative and he should use his excellent political skill set to put together a right of the center political force in Canada that can replace the current government at the next elections. That would really help the US.

The Command Post reports that Portland Fire Bureau officials ordered US flags removed from downtown fire engines, concerned that their presence might provoke dangerous confrontations with anti-war demonstrators. Well, I thought this sort of bizarre defeatism was restricted to Europe as I reported earlier on a similar event the day before yesterday. Denying you have a flag to be proud of, denying you have military, all in order to appease the appeasers ?

I had resolved to not longer write about anti-war and 'peace' demonstrators but yesterday I spent exactly one minute watching a report from a peace rally in the US and the stupidity and ignorance of what I saw prompted me to throw in one more post on this phenomenon.

An interviewer asked a middle aged man if he thought that rallying against the war could not be seen as unpatriotic. The man replied that he thought it would be an act of patriotism to bring the troops back immediately. This response is a piece of seriously flawed logic and I will tell you why. Not long ago I was watching a documentary on the failed rescue mission in Somalia in 1993 on which the movie "Black Hawk Down" is based and during which a significant number of American troops died. When interviewing one of the surviving servicemen the question was asked what bothered them most. One surviving task force member put it like this (and I am paraphrasing this): " The worst thing was that the political leaders pulled all the American troops out of Somalia immediately after the failed mission. We could not finish our job. All our buddies that died, died in vain."

The world has changed since Vietnam. This is no longer an army of unmotivated drafted soldiers, this a modern, professional and very committed force of troops taking its task very seriously and is dedicated to finish whatever assignment it has at hand. This is also something that former General Wesley Clark at CNN has pointed out a number of times over the past few days. If you think pulling them out is patriotic, you do not understand the professional dynamics that govern these committed soldiers. Finishing the job, that is patriotic.

Sitting in front of the TV last night watching the first military activity, the aircraft carriers and stealth bombers, it hit me again how important a strong military is. Diplomacy is great and it very often works but a strong military apparatus is a vital ingredient to back up the diplomatic effort. It sounds obvious but for too long the world has relied on the goodwill of nations. The power balance between the US and the Soviet Union and the relative impotence of what we now call rogue nations made the world a relatively easy place to live in. Diplomacy usually worked, and if it did not there was always financial pressure with which some third world deviants could be brought into line. Massive power as is now amassed in the Gulf area was unheard of during the cold war era. If there was military action, it was usually limited and short in nature. As a result, the cold war period bred a generation of politicians and diplomats whose fundamental belief was that conflicts could be resolved through negotiation and, through multilateral institutions. The ethnic conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda and the rise of terrorist sponsoring states such as Iraq, North Korea and Iran require the international community to fundamentally reshape its thinking and the way it deals with regional conflicts that may spread to other parts of the world. Diplomacy, however laudable, is only a part of the “conflict resolving package”, it can never stand on its own, at least not anymore.

The difficulty of the cumbersome process that we have gone through with the UN is evidence that the international community at large is going through a very difficult phase of reshaping its thinking. The world after the fall of the Soviet Empire is not the loosely knitted group of states that will migrate to prosperity and democracy as we were hoping after the fall of the Berlin Wall. On the contrary, smaller nations that have developed a capability to destabilize the world together with terrorist groups that wage an asymmetrical war have created a world that needs an entirely different way of conflict management. The US coalition currently active in Iraq is only the first step in the direction of dealing with a dramatically different world, and that message is starting to sink in now, although very slowly. Don Rumsfeld was right about the “Old Europe and New Europe” comparison but it extends well beyond Europe. The world community at large needs to reshape its thinking and for now the US is taking the lead, yet others will have to face the new realities. Given the reactions to the start of hostilities that will probably take a while.

The faster Saddam’s regime collapses, the stronger the case for building and maintaining a state of the art military and it should not be the US alone to do that. It is the duty of those who value their freedom and wish to preserve it and are willing to pay a heavy price for that. It reminds me of this great poster of Ronald Reagan: “Peace through Strength”, more than ever a vital message.

It must have been September last year when the Bush administration put forward its doctrine of pre-emptive strikes. I must say I was quite pleased to see that the concept of rolling back rogue nations was actually getting implemented at the highest levels. I was however not keen about the prospect of having to listen to all the verbal abuse that would come from the usual suspects following this important policy initiative.

Let me fast forward to the present and note that a number of the so-called usual suspects (France, Germany, Canada) seem to have a problem with the fact that going into Iraq does not only mean disarming Saddam but also getting rid of him for good. This weekend Canada’s PM Chretien started to backtrack on earlier statements because he was concerned about the potential of who will be next on the list to be disarmed and disposed of. What was he thinking? That we would go into Iraq, disarm Saddam, and then pack up and go? The usual suspects always seem to think that the idea of pre-emption is equal to an unleashed and unrestrained America that goes wherever it likes using the full gamut of its military capability to do whatever it likes. This very simplistic view ignores the considerable constraints on the policy of pre-emption. Let me outline what I think they are and I will not include the United Nations as the past few weeks have clearly demonstrated that obtaining UN approval for any military action is no longer a very productive way of going to war to protect your citizenry from biological, chemical and possible nuclear attacks.

So, what are the constraints placed on pre-emption? I think they are: (a) approval from Congress to use military force; (b) public opinion in the U.S. and in the countries allied with the U.S. and (c) the physical capability to use a military apparatus for various pre-emptive strikes. If you look at these constraints it is not hard to connect the dots and say, the constraints on using pre-emptive strikes are the constraints placed on any executive power by a free, democratic and open society. The Bush administration has to work with Congress, has to deal with the public at large and has to make sound judgment calls in allocating the necessary resources to the Pentagon’s budget which in turn is driven by Congress which in turn answers to the American voter. The test of the ballot box combined with the unique force of public opinion act as checks and balances on the Administration’s ability to wage war. This is exactly why acts of pre-emption are so justified as they are validated by the very people they seek to protect.

Did Tony Blair not get a vote of approval in the House of Commons last week to go to war? Did George Bush not seek approval from Congress? Are Bush and Blair likely to go to their respective legislatures for any pre-emptive strike on say North Korea and will they in doing so not factor in the public mood as well as any upcoming election? I think they will and it is therefore that free societies should have the inalienable right to undertake pre-emptive military action when necessary. The assumption that free societies should not have this right is ludicrous for if you make that assumption you are effectively saying, yours is not a free society.

Just think of the reverse. Is Saddam going to convene the Iraqi parliament to discuss his next military adventure? Maybe he will and in that case imagine of what will happen to the dissenting members in his Baath party. Will they be doing press interviews? I don’t think so. A close examination of dictatorships around the world tells us that it is precisely in these totalitarian societies that the executive embarks on military adventures without any legislative approval or public support. On the contrary, the unfettered executive dictator usually blows his entire budget on military gadgets while leaving his population at large in dire circumstances. Healthcare in North Korea? Pension plans in Iraq?