Kos said something quick and stupid yesterday…

[Update: And has now, in act of true courage, pulled it off his site without explanation. Here’s a screenshot of it, in case you need to be reminded. Which side is it again that’s fighting against Oceania? ]

…and followed it up today with something longer, more honeyed in tone, and saying exactly the same thing.

There’s been much ado about my indifference to the Mercenary deaths in Falluja a couple days ago. I wrote in some diary comments somewhere that “I felt nothing” and “screw them”.

My language was harsh, and, in reality, not true. Fact is, I did feel something. That’s why I was so angry.

Well, it’s good that he did feel something …it’s just not clear he felt anything for the four people killed and brutalized; so from his point of view, the operative point isn’t the “screw them,” it’s the “I felt nothing.” It’s a characteristic of the people I oppose in this whole Bad Philosophy thing that feelings are what matters – that one’s emotional state is all-important; it’s how it makes you feel that matters, and whether your feelings are genuine.

I was angry that five soldiers — the real heroes in my mind — were killed the same day and got far lower billing in the newscasts. I was angry that 51 American soldiers paid the ultimate price for Bush’s folly in Iraq in March alone. I was angry that these mercenaries make more in a day than our brave men and women in uniform make in an entire month. I was angry that the US is funding private armies, paying them $30,000 per soldier, per month, while the Bush administration tries to cut our soldiers’ hazard pay. I was angry that these mercenaries would leave their wives and children behind to enter a war zone on their own violition.

So I struck back.

So by attacking – striking back at – the dead civilians, he somehow felt he could remedy an injustice – the disregard by the media of the soldiers who were killed that day.

Unlike the vast majority of people in this country, I actually grew up in a war zone. I witnessed communist guerillas execute students accused of being government collaborators. I was 8 years old, and I remember stepping over a dead body, warm blood flowing from a fresh wound. Dodging bullets while at market. I lived in the midsts of hate the likes of which most of you will never understand (Clinton and Bush hatred is nothing compared to that generated when people kill each other for politics or race or nationality). There’s no way I could ever describe the ways this experience colors my worldview.

And, by extension, there’s no way any one of us who hasn’t shared his experiences can judge

Here he wraps himself in the accusation-proof flag of victimhood, spins, and bows to the audience.

Back to Iraq, our men and women in uniform are there under orders, trying to make the best of an impossible situation. The war is not their fault, and I will always defend their honor and bravery to the end of my days. But the mercenary is a whole different deal. They willingly enter a war zone, and do so because of the paycheck. They’re not there for humanitarian reasons (I doubt they’d donate half their paycheck to the Red Cross or whatever). They’re there because the money is DAMN good. They answer to no one except their CEO. They are dangerous, hence international efforts (however fruitless they may be) to ban their use.

I’ll skip over the whole “we have a volunteer army” argument as too obvious, and point out that the motivation of the contractors – like the motivation of the soldiers, or the motivation of the private contractors charging hazard pay to work in Iraq – is probably a little more complex than that. And that – as with the overarching importance of his feelings above, the fact that he besmirches the dead by challenging their motivations – rather than their actions – speaks volumes.

So not only was I wrong to say I felt nothing over their deaths, I was lying. I felt way too much. Nobody deserves to die. But in the greater scheme of things, there are a lot of greater tragedies going on in Iraq (51 last month, plus countless civilians and Iraqi police). That those tragedies are essentially ignored these days is, ultimately, the greatest tragedy of all.

It’s funny; many of us are debating the issues around the war and around what to do. I certainly don’t feel that I am ignoring the deaths that happen in Iraq every day (I do, however, believe it is important to put them into context, so that we are able to make intelligent judgments about where we are and what to do).

The reverence for life of the antiwar movement would be funny if it were not so wrapped up in the issues of Bad Philosophy. What matters isn’t whether the world as a whole or even the set of people we’re taking about is better or worse off – what matters is whether you can make sure you are morally isolated from any taint of blame.

I don’t think you can live in the world and be isolated that way. Kos does. And, of course, that attitude helps as he takes money from Jim Moran, friend of the Jews (and MBNA) to help run his campaign.

Here’s the second part of Andrew’s argument, including (about halfway down) his suggestions for what we do now.

Point: The Iraq War caused severe damage to international and domestic institutions, probably on purpose

From my perspective, a consistent and unfortunate habit of the Bush Administration across many issues has been self-confidence and self-righteousness so extreme that all restraints imposed by law or tradition are seen as hindrances. The Executive of the strongest power the planet has ever seen must not be encumbered (at least when the incumbent is a "good man" from the Republican Party).

The archetypical example is related to the War on Terror on its domestic front. In the case of José Padilla, the Bush Administration has torn up literally eight centuries of Anglo-American law that established the right of citizens to trial before a neutral tribunal. The Bush Administration’s position is that American citizens may be detained incommunicado, indefinitely, without any recourse to the courts, entirely at the President’s pleasure. I start with this example because even a number of conservative lawyers [Volokh, link is audio file; Viet Dinh] are opposed, as are some of the pro-war readers of this blog.

The Iraq War is the first implementation of the Bush Doctrine of Pre-emptive War, and Iraq is to the doctrine of casus belli as Padilla is to the Bill of Rights. There have been several blog arguments on whether the Administration claimed that Saddam constituted an "imminent threat". The pro-war position, oddly enough, is in the negative. Now, it’s beyond question that the Administration portrayed Saddam as all manner of terrifying threat: "grave and gathering", "immediate", "mushroom cloud". (Donald Rumsfeld on "Meet the Press" denied ever using "immediate threat" and was then left looking silly when Thomas Friedman read his own words back to him.) Given that we were going to war—war!—with Saddam, what exactly was the problem with calling him an imminent threat? The answer, I believe, is that "imminent threat" is a term-of-art in international law, and acting against such a threat is as justified as self-defense after an attack is already underway. (See in particular, 1967 Israeli attack on the Egypt.) So if we called Saddam an "imminent threat" then there would be nothing novel, no bounds broken, in the Bush Doctrine. The faulty intelligence isn’t the reason Bush avoided this one specific word, because the Iraq we actually invaded was neither imminent, nor grave, nor capable of mushroom clouds, nor very threatening to American security at all.

Bush, in campaign mode, ridicules the idea of multilateralism as holding America‘s security hostage to France. But the interesting thing is, when Al Qaeda attacked us, even though we hardly needed permission from the world to take out the Taliban, not only permission but all sorts of aid were given to us freely. Doesn’t the refusal of so many of our allies to do likewise for Iraq tell us something? (The idea that it tells us they are cowards founders, since they, too, were at little risk from Iraq.) The truth is, this Administration, especially VP Cheney, disdain multilateralism—at least they did until we started to need help extricating ourselves from Iraq. I opposed the Iraq War in part, then, because bad as multilateral institutions are, they are still better than the alternative. I also opposed it because I think that the greatest success of the American Revolution was to give us a government of laws and not of men, which I take to mean that our democratic system succeeded because it is designed to survive times when incompetent (Harding) or even malevolent (Nixon) men are in charge, unlike the rival monarchies which alternated between enlightened princes and despots. I think we should be doing everything possible to replicate this arrangement in the international sphere, and organizations like the UN and the EU must be part of this process. And certainly the Padilla case shows that Bush understands nothing of this dynamic at all.

Point: The Iraq War was sold with falsehoods and lies, and should have been opposed on that basis if no other.

Let’s be blunt: even though I find the humanitarian argument for the Iraq War insufficient, it’s much, much better than the argument by the Administration at the time. That argument was based almost entirely on the putative threat, and on spurious connections between Saddam and the 9/11 attack (largely by VP Cheney), and there can’t be any force to an argument whose premisses are not true. Out of the rival threat assessments available to the Administration before the war, they chose to be deceived utterly by a convicted grifter, Ahmad Chalabi, whom we are still paying hundreds of thousands of dollars monthly. This was no innocent error. Chalabi told the marks what they wanted to hear: not only about WMD, but about his internal resistance movement ready to create a pro-American and pro-Israel (!) Iraq. Better intelligence was available from the United Nations team under Hans Blix, whom we literally chased out of Iraq at the beginning of the invasion. We insulted our allies (but, again, this was seen as a side benefit) with Secy Powell’s Power Point show, not one slide of which has been verified. When the inspectors reported that our Chalabi-based WMD tips, detailed to the level of GPS coordinates, didn’t work out, we didn’t re-evaluate our intelligence. Instead, Cheney announced we would "discredit" the inspectors. It’s safe to assume he hasn’t apologized.

Those of you who don’t think that knowingly false propaganda contributed to public acquiescence in the war: something like half of the country believes that most of the 9/11 hijackers were Iraqi, when of course the correct number is zero. On 9/12, what reason would anyone have for this erroneous belief? None. I suspect at that time those Americans who could answer the question at all would remember that nearly all of the terrorists were Saudi. The error came from frequent and deliberate juxtaposition of Saddam and 9/11 in repeated speeches that (with the exception of an egregious statement by Cheney that Bush was forced to repudiate) were not literally untrue, but which were designed to leave a false impression.

Here I must admit that my pre-existing animus against George W. Bush probably contributed to my belief that most of his WMD allegations weren’t true. Even in my dreams, though, I didn’t guess that they had simply decided on WMD as an expedience because the Administration was divided on other rationales. And those other rationales would never have gotten enough support in the Congress and in the American public to support a war. I don’t think that sending the President (State of the Union), the Vice President, and much of the Cabinet out to snow the American people is healthy for our democratic political system, nor is insulting the intelligence (pun intended) of our allies good for our position in the world, and I think that the war should have been resisted on these grounds alone.

Point: Even before the war, there were reasons to believe we were entering a quagmire.

Here I have to admit, I was one of the war’s opponents who overestimated the difficulty of taking Baghdad. I knew it would happen, but I expected it to take many more months. (I suppose it’s an open question whether the Ba’ath militants conceded the conventional battle more quickly in order to preserve themselves and their ammunition for guerrilla tactics.) Hence, when I criticize the Administration for its dreadful planning for the aftermath, it must be discounted by the fact that they were right and I was not about the conventional battle. However, it appears as if the serious misjudgment of what Iraq would be like the Day After was systemic, originating to a great degree in over-reliance on Chalabi [another link]. Now even proponents of the war are left wondering how we are going to get out of Iraq without a civil war following our departure, and without remaining as sitting ducks. Too late.

Point: What we could do now.

Armed Liberal suggested that besides rehearsing why I opposed the war (which is something of a moot point, except to the extent that I think the Administration responsible for this error should not be returned to office), I mention how I think the situation can be improved.

• Apologize publically to our allies for the falsity of the Powell slide show and for the way we pressured them on the basis of forged and faked "intelligence". We need to restore our working relationship with our allies (we also need their money, cooperation from their police forces, and contributions of troops).
• Have the IRS review Chalabi’s tax returns, and on finding his 1040 omits bribes and kickbacks, bring him back to the USA for trial. First, just as with the death of Saddam, it’s good to punish the wicked. Second, we will be sending a message that we do not wish to set up yet another corrupt and eventually brutal leader who just happens to be better aligned with our geopolitics (see under: Karimov). Third, having fleeced us with tall tales of his connections inside Iraq, Chalabi is now fleecing the Iraqis with tales, not all tall, that he possesses indispensable influence with the American overlords.
• We need Arabic speakers in our armed forces desperately, enough that we can stop discharging the ones who are homosexual. Seriously, we need to increase the existing strategic language initiatives.
• Offer Jordan a Marshall-type Plan for infrastructure development contingent on continued liberalization.
• Sharon, for his own political reasons, seems to have gotten the hint that we won’t tolerate any more settlement expansion. However, he’s gotten into unrelated trouble. If he’s replaced by Benjamin Netanyahu, we make a public insistence that there are no more expropriations of Arab lands in the Territories for eventual Jewish Israeli civilian use. (We back it up with monetary threats.)
• Increase armed presence (not necessarily USA) in Afghanistan with an eye to stopping the deterioration there. All those warlords can change sides back to the Taliban, if it ever seems to be in their best interests.
• Fire anyone who doesn’t perform. Kofi Annan just sacked people he held responsible for not protecting the UN mission in Baghdad. Has Bush ever fired anyone for incompetence, as opposed to leaking uncomfortable but true facts? (Answer: Yes, the former head of the INS. Any others?)

We can’t follow Spain out of Iraq. For them, it was a contribution to America, more than a token gesture, but hardly mission-critical. Also, Spain leaving is their way to repudiate Bush’s policy. Defeating George Bush is itself such a repudiation, so it isn’t necessary for us to withdraw and make matters worse. (Of the Democratic candidates, only Kucinich and perhaps Sharpton called for immediate withdrawal.) Perhaps if we cede control of the reconstruction to the UN, even though our own personnel would be most at risk, we can get Spain and other countries to return or commit new troops. Recall, experts in occupation in the former Yugoslavia say that we have no more than half the necessary number of troops. Do you still think Rummy knows better? I realize if we are unable to negotiate such an arrangement, none of my suggestions outlines any other way we are going to get out of Iraq with our pride and the Iraqi nation intact and not in civil war. If there were some program, any program, to guarantee this, frankly, I think at this point George Bush would implement it, too. As Max Cleland put it, "Welcome to Vietnam, Mr. President. Sorry you didn’t go when you had the chance."

The pictures and story from Falluja are horrible. As we should, we recoil from the rage and inhumanity of the actions that led to them, and try to figure out how to respond. On one of my email lists, the discussion is between those who want to respond with massive destruction and those who – equally hopeless about the future of Iraq – want to simply leave.

I’ll offer the photo linked here (note that it is slightly, but not horribly, graphic) as evidence why we shouldn’t do either.Note the dateline: Marietta, GA, 1915. That’s where Leo Frank was brutally lynched.

In case you think those horrors are in our distant past, I’ll suggest that Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Michael Schwerner would probably feel differently – if they were alive.

While some might disagree, I think I can safely say that the American South is, today, civilized.

Andrew Lazarus has been one of the most fervent – and yet thoughtful – opponents of the war in Iraq in our comments, and I thought it would be a good idea to invite him to set out his whole argument in a more expansive format.

By Andrew Lazarus:

Armed Liberal has very generously suggested that I write my reasons for opposing the Iraq War. I appreciate the opportunity, both because the exercise has allowed to determine in my own mind which arguments I feel are most cogent, and because from now on in the comments, I can just incorporate my prior arguments by reference.

Point: The assault on Iraq contributes little, if anything, to the personal security of Americans.
On 9/11, the United States suffered a dastardly attack masterminded by a transnational guerrilla movement with hundreds (perhaps thousands) of members organized into cells in at least half a dozen countries. Their leader was Osama bin Laden, and their headquarters was, roughly speaking, Afghanistan, which they controlled through their allies, the Taliban. This attack followed several other Al Qaeda operations against other American targets. This organization is unquestionably the greatest threat to American lives, and we got off to a great start by attacking it on several fronts. First, we used a combination of our own military, our ally (the Northern Alliance), and a combination of threats and bribes with the various warlords of Afghanistan, to overthrow the Taliban. (We promised the Afghans a better life, which we are delivering very, very fitfully, notwithstanding their splendid new constitution.)

Iraq had nothing to do with the 9/11 attack, and the defeat of the Saddam government does nothing to disrupt Al Qaeda’s command structure, which is elsewhere. It does nothing to seize Al Qaeda’s financial assets, which instead are being located by the much-derided law enforcement methods. It does nothing to deprive Al Qaeda of war materiel. It does nothing to discover the identities of sleeper agents, who were not controlled from Iraqi soil (with the possible exception of Ansar Al-Islam, over which the Saddam government had no control). Iraq was not even a source of Al Qaeda operatives.

Meanwhile, every dollar we spend on the Iraq War is a dollar we don’t spend on finding Osama bin Laden. Every soldier we commit to Iraq is a soldier who is not in Afghanistan, including crack Arabic-, Pashtun- and Dari-speaking special forces whom we redeployed from the Osama search to the Saddam search. What I find most incredible is that the response of the Spaniards to the ability of Al Qaeda to commit a terrorist act in Europe (as well as other acts in Asia and Africa) without any difficulties imposed by the Iraq War is taken as “appeasement”. The theory that Western security can be vouchsafed by attacking a third party (evil as it was) has been tried, and found wanting. The Spanish punished a government that was unable to protect them because it didn’t try.

Faced with the obvious, that none of whatever success we have enjoyed in locating Al Qaeda agents and frustrating their plans is in any way related to anything captured or interdicted in Iraq, proponents of the war propose various grandiose general theories to explain why the Iraq War has made us safer.

The flypaper theory posits that by attracting Islamoterrorists to Iraq, we are first distracting them from conducting further attacks in the United States, and second localizing them where our superior conventional military strength can annihilate them. The first argument is weak. For one thing, on 9/10/2001 we could have made a similar, mistaken, claim about the success of the Clinton and Bush anti-terrorism policies pursued until then. Even more important, this line of reasoning falters on Al Qaeda’s post-Iraq attacks in Europe. The second argument is scarcely any better, for while it might apply to a traditional army being lured to a strongpoint and destroyed, it makes no sense in talking about a fairly small terrorist movement which will not attack in massed formation, and which moreover can abandon Iraq for other countries if the heat is too great.

More realistic than the flypaper theory is the theory that Arab governments everywhere will be so awed by the American military might in Baghdad, and the bases we will establish there with or without the consent of the Iraqi government, that they will cooperate in the fight against terrorism. (Why the fate of the Taliban isn’t sufficient example is unclear to me.) Perhaps it is because, as Rumsfeld said, Iraq has better targets. There is evidence of a weak effect along these lines, although Libya and Syria were both seeing some liberalization before 9/11. Overall, the collapse of the Tunisia meetings and the lack of any forward motion for Bush’s Middle East Initiative suggests that the benefits are limited. Perhaps the anti-American forces inside and outside of these governments have done the addition and decided that we simply have no troops to spare to occupy any more countries. Or perhaps the country most closely linked to Al Qaeda, namely, Saudi Arabia, figures its close personal friendship with the Bush family will continue to exempt it.

And last, and most ridiculous, is the triple-bank-shot theory that we will establish such a wonderful democracy in Iraq (doing what, I ask, with Fallujah?) that flowers begin to bloom over the entire region. Instead, the popularity of the United States is at low ebb both in Europe and the Arab countries. The existing democracy in Spain, much less any democratic states that might arise in the Middle East, has just repudiated our program. It says something about the PR capabilities of people like Richard Perle that they are seen as “realists” with this millennial fantasy, while antiwar liberals seeking to work in the realm of the possible are dismissed as fools.

To follow.

Point: The Iraq War was not worth the damage to international structures. Point: The Iraq War could not be sold to Congress and the American people on the basis of humanitarian arguments (even though these were to some extent valid) and was therefore sold on the basis of exaggerations, unproven assertions, falsehoods, and outright lies, and should have been opposed for the damage it caused to the American political structure.

The brutal attacks on American contractors (albeit paramilitary contractors) is all over the news. Go read Phil Carter’s take on it.

Though American taxpayers will pay the bill, it is the Iraqis who will suffer. The deteriorating security situation will disproportionately hurt contractors, relief agencies and non-governmental organizations much more than it hurts the military. The US Marines and US Army can adjust to a more threatening environment much more easily than these civilian agencies can. And it is these civilian agencies that do the majority of good for the Iraqis. The tough task now is to convince the Iraqi population of this fact, so that they take the lead in stopping their own insurgent brethren.

I have a proprietary interest in the Marines in Falluja. They are the young men and women I packed supplies with for Spirit of America, and they are the ones pushing us to get them tools – literally right now, tools – to help improve the lives of the Iraqis they deal with every day.

I have quickly read through many posts above, and clearly I am entering this debate at a late hour. So here I will try to avoid repeating too many of the arguments that were raised above and instead concentrate on two issues which I think deserve separate consideration but that you appear to want to lump together. These are: Who is to blame for 9/11? Is the Bush Doctrine a better policy for fighting terrorism than the Clinton Doctrine (for want of a better term).

Yes, that’s definitely the $64,000 question. Let’s assume for the moment that Gore would have done the same thing as Bush in Afghanistan (under the doctrine); the issue then becomes Iraq.

Despite my reply, I am not saying Bush is entirely to blame for 9/11. I was trying to be provocative and I am glad it achieved that purpose. What I am challenging, and what I do not think you can prove, is the charge imbedded in your argument that places the majority of the blame on 9/11 on Clinton.

You’re off here; If I meant to blame Clinton, I would have blamed Clinton. In the 10 years before 2001, we had three presidents, Bush, Clinton, Bush (hold the jokes, please). I’ll say that all three share blame.

Even though later you state that you think the proportion may be equal, based on many of your other comments I’m not sure you really believe this. And the reason why I am accusing you of this is because I will argue that the belief that Clinton was primarily responsible for 9/11 is a critical tenet of the Bush Doctrine, and without using this argument evidence supporting the utility or purpose of the Bush Doctrine is sorely lacking.

Why not accept that I mean what I say, rather than presume? I do think that pre-9/11 policies – which are typically, and probably unfairly, called ‘Clinton policies’ are the problem; and that GW Bush’s policies do represent a break with that tradition – which I’ll argue is a good thing, given the effect of the policies.

My belief that the majority of the blame for 9/11 falls on Bush is based on the testimony of Richard Clarke under oath, George Bush (interview with Bob Woodward for his book), and Condi Rice (many TV interviews). It is based on the growing realization that Bush downgraded terrorism as a priority after he took office. It is based on the fact that it happened on Bush’s watch. And his failure to admit responsibility for the act but instead blaming it on Clinton is part of my concern (as you put it, a “Buck Stops Here” point), because it calls into serious question Mr. Bush’s ability to look at the situation more objectively and critically evaluate what might have gone wrong. An important component of fighting the GWOT is to figure out what happened; Bush has put up roadblocks at every turn. To suggest this is a “distraction” is equivalent to saying that our leaders do not have to explain their actions to the public.

Can you point me to cites that support this broad conclusion? (Both that antiterrorism was Clinton’s highest priority and that Bush objectively downgraded it?) All I have are budget numbers that suggest that Bush was spending a lot more money on it.

This evidence is convincing to me and suggests that rather than simply carrying Clinton’s policy forward, as you argue, Bush actually relaxed the policy because perhaps it wasn’t “grand” enough (“weather” vs. “climate”, as you put it). To follow this forward, then, it can be argued that his failure to support the Clinton Doctrine could have led to what is now regarded by some as its biggest failure—9/11.

OK, your suggestion is that 9/11 was a failure of execution; mine is that it was a doctrinal failure. My evidence is relatively simple; in the face of a fairly well-executed set of responses – under the old ‘Clinton’ doctrine – terrorist attacks against US interests continued and in fact escalated from 1980 onward.

I therefore do not accept 9/11 as de facto evidence against Clinton’s approach, and I think it is nearly impossible to prove otherwise given the many uncertainties surrounding the planning and execution of the attack (e.g., how can we be sure it wasn’t scheduled to occur during Clinton’s administration?).

Well, given that 9/11 is the culmination of a ling string of attacks escalating in intensity, sophistication, and damage, I think I do have a kind of a case. I’m open, as always, to counters.

You seem to think you have a better grasp of the workings of our intelligence/law enforcement bureaucracy than I do, which is very likely true, but never-the-less it remains a distinct possibility that, yes, perhaps 9/11 could have been prevented by Bush if he brought the full resources of government to bear on the threats he was being made aware of in his briefings.

In retrospect, history is always pretty obvious. The problem, of course, is that we have to live it in prospect. If we took all the threats on the ‘threat board’ in the Summer of 2001, and devoted the full attention and resources of the government to each of them…we’d have run out of attention and resources when we got to #2.

And aside from 9/11 (and if blame is 50:50 as you argue, we should remove it from consideration for the sake of argument), what is your evidence that the Clinton Doctrine was an “obvious” failure?

See above.

Because a theory based on one data point is not a theory but a case study, and clearly basing policy—let alone a “doctrine”— on such flimsy evidence is highly dubious, to say the least.

WTC I, WTC II, USS Cole, Khobar Towers, U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, U.S. Embassy in Dar es Salaam…I count 6 data points, and could probably find more if I looked.

If it is that worldwide terrorism has been escalating without repercussion during the “10-years” prior to 9/11, how do you know it wouldn’t have been worse without his policies? This is not evidence, it is conjecture. And how would you judge the recent escalation in worldwide terrorism in this regard, as a failure of the “Bush Doctrine”?

A damn intelligent question. I’ll suggest that you look at this very good paper on “wicked problems” in national security. My old professor, Horst Rittel, who came up with the notion, had these characteristics for wicked (as opposed to ‘tame’) problems:

Some specific aspects of problem wickedness include:

6. Wicked problems have no given alternative solutions. There may be no solutions, or there may be a host of potential solutions that are devised, and another host that are never even thought of.

I think this pretty well defines the place we’re in in solving these problems, and so I’ll have to kinda push back on your suggestion that we can somehow model ‘what-ifs’ in this case.

Finally, I am honestly baffled by repeated assertions that a major problem with Clinton’s approach was that it treated terrorism as a crime, rather than an act of war. Everyone felt this way prior to 9/11, this is, was, and should be a legitimate concern of our leaders.

Yes, as I’ve noted before, pretty much everyone prior to 9/11 felt this way; Bush is making a claim that he felt differently (hence his desire for a different strategy, and possibly, Clarke’s removal), but that’s unproven as well. What is proven is that he acted differently after 9/11.

Making the leap to a policy of pre-emption as Bush did so rapidly and without careful thought on the implementation or repercussions is in some way worse than not doing anything, IMO. As I said before, the idea of pre-emption puts us on extremely shaky moral ground, since it places an unrealistic and unachievable burden on the prosecutors (the US government). This therefore leads to an indefensible assertion of moral superiority on the part of the prosecutors, since it is essentially a policy substantiated by faith, not proof. And I would argue that Bush’s failure to recognize this flaw in policy has in fact dealt it perhaps a fatal blow, since the failure to find WMDs in Iraq does not inspire faith in US intelligence or Bush’s sincerity.

Well, if you have problems making a moral distinction between us and the Islamist terrorists, or Saddam, this is gonna be a short discussion. I have no problems making that judgment, and think the evidence for it is obvious enough that it doesn’t merit much discussion.

As for the general idea behind the Bush Doctrine, I think there is an exceptionally strong argument to be made against the idea that the “war on terra” should be focused primarily on state-sponsored groups. In glancing through the posts above I noticed that Fareed Zakaria’s name popped up, so I presume Zakaria’s recent argument (which I have read and agree with) against this view has been presented. I know that a lot of “evidence” has been cited that could be interpreted as support for the idea that this policy has made some changes in the way some states operate WRT terrorism. But whether this has any significant impact on the GWOT is, IMO, highly unlikely. It’s still “whack a mole”, but the moles are states, not individuals or small groups. Only time will tell if this has a more global effect, but claims that it will are just fortune telling. However, it strikes me and many other observers that the long term prognosis is much worse, not better, and that the global climate for generating terrorists is as good or better than it has ever been, thanks to Bush.

I’m glad you at least acknowledge that there may be evidence that it’s working; I’ll take that as an opening. I’ll get to the ‘observer effect’ in a later post.

The big gaping hole in the Bush Doctrine, as I’ve said here before, is the seeming indifference to domestic security. Contrary to Dan’s prior comments, there is a lot that can be done to better defend ourselves against terrorism at home, to better prepare to deal with the outcome of attacks so that there severity is minimized, and we are not doing anywhere near enough in this regard.

I actually completely agree with you. Sadly, I think the Democratic notions of how to better implement domestic security are equally stupid; I owe Bruce Schnier a review of his excellent (if too-casually written) book on the subject.

So in sum I completely reject as unverifiable the idea that Clintons’ policies were a failure, and that Bush’s policies are the necessary alternative. Perhaps you, and most Americans, want a simply articulated “Doctrine” that can be summed up in one or two sentences. I am comfortable with a more comprehensive approach that fully takes into account the complexities and magnitude of the terrorist threat and is not based on faith, predictions or some biased or outdated view of world events. And I want my leaders to acknowledge these uncertainties and complexities; if they don’t, they are not fighting terrorism, they are running a political campaign.

Sadly, the Clinton approach is equally subject to ‘faith’ and lack of verifiability. I’m kind of amused that you’d suggest otherwise; no foreign policy – or in fact no policy at a scale larger than neighborhood planning – is ‘objectively verifiable’. It’s all contingent, it’s all based on faith and the best data and judgment we can gather.

I’ve criticized Bush in the past for not doing enough to build that faith, and I’ll continue to do so. But your lack of faith isn’t completely his fault.

I’m having one of my bang-my-head-against-the-keyboard moments again. If you wonder why I do it more often when liberals do something amazingly boneheaded, it’s because I’m a liberal, and I JUST HATE IT when I see things that convince me that we’re going to be sleeping on the porch for the next few weeks.

In the course of an interesting post on what we should require from journalists – in terms of disclosing or aligning their own interests – Atrios casually mentions this:

“Since when is having an abortion a controversial act?”

Well, to about half the country, it’s a damn controversial act – and even if you think they’re wrong (as I do) might it not be just a little bit smart to at least do them the courtesy to acknowledge that, well, “this is kinda controversial but I don’t see it as an issue here?”

If Atrios (or anyone else) cares, it’s tin-eared acts like that which drive home the point that the Democrats just flat aren’t interested in people who don’t live in Cambridge or Brentwood. Yes, this is an isolated slip of the keyboard, by one person who isn’t standing in the center of party politics.

But it’s a perfect character note for why we’re at risk of losing the election – and a lot of elections in the coming years, until we learn just a little bit of humility.

Wow. The DLC has published a rip-roaring condemnation of the alliance between the New Left and radical Islamism by Fred Seigel, whose work I’ll be looking out for. (hat tip to praktike in the e-voting comments, below) he opens with a sharp summary:

In the new era, Communist red and Islamist green, joined by more than a dash of Nazi brown, have increasingly forged an anti-liberal alliance that sees Israel and the United States as its common enemies. They all believe, in different ways, that if only the United States and Israel could be destroyed, the world could return to the idyllic harmony that prevailed before Jewish capitalism polluted it.

and then follows with a stunner that I hadn’t heard before:

The most dramatic example of the conjoining of the hard left and Middle East extremism can be found in a French prison — in the person of Carlos the Jackal, the most famous terrorist of the 1970s. Born Illich Ramirez Sanchez in Venezuela, Carlos led numerous terrorist attacks in the name of the Palestinian cause and other revolutionary undertakings; he is now serving a life sentence. Once a convinced Marxist-Leninist, he has converted to Islam on the grounds that “only a coalition of Marxists and Islamists can destroy” the United States and its allies. In a book he managed to sneak out of prison and publish on the first anniversary of 9/11, Carlos lauds Osama bin Laden and praises “revolutionary Islam” as the only route to just societies.

Connects the legacy of 1968 to the current policies:

Behind the incessant drumbeat, intensified after 9/11, lies a political program based on a relentlessly negative meld of anti-Semitism, anti-Americanism, and anti-globalism. For the ideologues of the BBC, the Guardian, and other leading European journals — all 1968ers come to power — the past quarter-century has been an era of crushing disappointment. Once they placed their faith in Third World liberation movements abroad and a state-run economy at home. But both failed. Repeatedly cuckolded by history, they were increasingly defined by their hostilities rather than their hopes.

(and it should be noted that there are strong historic connections between the current European leadership and the elements of the radical left such as Sanchez – Joschka Fischer, current FM of Germany, was a member of a radical street-fighting group, one of whose members was apparently part of Sanchez’ attack on an OPEC conference in Vienna in 1975.

The immediate cause for the media’s intensified interest in Fischer’s past is the court trial of Hans-Joachim Klein, who has faced proceedings since last autumn because of his participation in the 1975 attack on the Vienna OPEC conference.

Klein was a member of Fischer’s group before he took part in the assault on the OPEC conference under the command of “Carlos,” alias Ilich Ramírez Sánchez. Later he dissociated himself from terrorism and went underground. Some of Fischer’s close friends…including Tom Koenigs (at present director of the civilian UN administration in Kosovo), Daniel Cohn-Bendit (European parliamentary delegate for the French Greens) and the cabaret artist Matthias Beltz…were in contact with Klein. He was arrested in France in September 1998 and sent to Germany. Fischer has been called as a witness in the Klein trial and, after initial reservations, was set to give evidence on January 16 in Frankfurt.

Going through the leadership of the EU and EU nations, there are many more alumni of 1968 radicalism – as there are in US politics, including yours truly)

That’s the kind of stuff I want to see from my party, and that’s what I wish I’d hear from its standardbearer.

JK UPDATE: Welcome to the party, DLC. We’d… kind… of… noticed… that… too… a while ago. And reader Yehudit offers yet another example: a U.S. neo-Nazi leader doing the rounds of Muslim functions across North America.

Also in today’s L.A. Times, a frightening story in which election results are changed by electronic voting machine problems – and there’s not a damn thing we can do about it.

Although some Orange County voters cast the wrong electronic ballots in the March 2 primary, potentially altering the outcome of one race for a Democratic Party post, Registrar Steve Rodermund said he will certify the results of the election today.

In a report circulated late Monday to the Board of Supervisors, Rodermund acknowledged for the first time that his office’s failures could have affected a race … and gave ammunition to critics of electronic voting.

The report said 33 voters out of 16,655 in the 69th Assembly District received the wrong ballots and were unable to vote for six open seats on the Democratic Central Committee.

The candidate who finished seventh in that contest, Art Hoffman, trailed sixth-place candidate Jim Pantone in the final count by 13 votes. However, 99.7% of Orange County ballots were cast properly in the primary, Rodermund will tell supervisors today before certifying the election results to the secretary of state.

There are election-day issues in most elections (as we all can remember from 2000, right?) But e-voting machines are a particular problem, as presently constituted, because without a permanent paper trail, the votes – stored as records in a database – must be taken on faith.

In Florida, we could at least go back and try and figure out what happened. With paperless e-voting machines, there’s just no way.

There are a lot of things that can make e-voting work; open-source software and ISO9000 audits are two of the ones that I support.

Paper records are another, and I’d like to invite you to email California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley and suggest that he require them before electronic voting machines can damage another election. In this election, things worked out amicably.

In the case of the 69th Assembly District seats on the Democratic Central Committee, The Times analysis estimated that 19 to 38 voters had miscast ballots. Neither Hoffman, leading at one point, nor Pantone said they planned to challenge the outcome. Democratic Party Chairman Frank Barbaro said the party would resolve the inequity internally so the county wouldn’t face an expensive election.

We probably won’t be so lucky again.

Kerry is going to announce today that he would open the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to pressure OPEC to lower prices in order to lower the price of gasoline.

In the L.A. Times this morning:

Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kerry will announce a plan today in San Diego for reining in skyrocketing gas prices, saying President Bush has done nothing to stop increases that are hurting average Americans.

Kerry’s campaign said Monday night that the candidate would use a rally at UC San Diego this morning to propose increasing pressure on OPEC to produce more crude oil and to suggest that the United States should temporarily let supplies in its Strategic Petroleum Reserve be depleted, making more gasoline available for consumers.

So, let’s see. AT a time when our relations with the Arab states are as precarious as they have ever been, when Venezuela (another major source of imported oil) is in turmoil, and when domestic production is starting a long decline, Kerry wants to drain the SPI – the stock that exists to cushion shocks caused by cutoffs of imports (hence the name Strategic) so Soccer Mom and Soccer Dad can drive their H2 Hummers and Hemi Rams and not feel it in the pocketbook.

I’m hopeful that – unlike Kerry’s advisers – those who read this are smart enough to see why that might not be a good idea.

One of my major discomforts with Bush is his unwillingness to put the nation on notice that we’re at war, and that this war will require sacrifice from those of us who don’t wear uniforms as well. A gas tax or tax on oil imports would be a good start. We need to wean ourselves from dependence on easily-interrupted foreign oil, and at the same time, make the public point that our troops are not in the Middle East to steal the oil, but instead to respond to a violent threat.

Kerry could have taken that issue and run with it. But instead, he’s pandering to his suburban constituency, and doing it in a way that shows how unserious he is about our current situation.

I’m still on the fence, but Kerry’s team just gave me a hard push.