I’ve avoided the gory details of the Swift Vets/TNG charges for the reasons I’ve explained below; I simply assume that Bush gamed the system both to get an assignment he wanted, and when he was done with it, to get out of doing what he didn’t want to do, and that Kerry gamed the system – possibly to get some of his medals, certainly to shorten his stay in Vietnam and to shorten his active duty so he could run for office.

But the latest batch of documents about Bush’s service – and the charges being made that they were forged – piqued my interest, because the controversy that immediately circulated around them was just so Hollywood. The documents, according to certain commentators, show the characteristics of having been done with a word processor, not a typewriter. How could the press not catch something so obvious? I was loving it as just something out of a bad thriller, so I had to go check them out myself.My cynicism about the whole thing was very strong, until I saw the August 18th memo, and the superscript ‘^th‘ on the 147^th.

I used a Selectric for a long time, and can’t remember that key. Maybe someone else can?

But somehow, some of the accounts are suggesting that the White House itself released these documents?

Is anyone else as puzzled about this as I am? I’m getting some popcorn, it’s going to be an interesting day.

I’ve argued with various friends on the issue of the liberal media; on one hand, the national media does – obviously and blatantly – embody the values of the upper-middle-class, urban people who staff it; but on the other it has a certain – attraction – to the current order that makes it more a voice of the establishment (which happens to be liberal) than one attached to liberal principles.

It’s hot enough in Los Angeles this week that random strangers are bursting into flame as they walk along the sidewalks, which makes motorcycling unattractive, and riding in air-conditioned minivans quite attractive to me (TG sniffs that I’m a wimp). So I drove to a lunch meeting and listened to KPCC, the local non-KCRW progressive Pacifica station as I headed down the 405.They were rebroadcasting an interview with Michael Kinsley, now the opinion & editorial editor of the Los Angeles Times; he gave a Q & A with Larry Mantle as a part of the Zocalo series at the LA Central Library (wonder if Patterico went…).

Listen to the whole thing (RealPlayer).

But here’s a telling quote (go to 21:32):

“I don’t think we should subsidize small businesses. Small businesses are owned by people who are generally wealthier than the people who own big businesses. Big businesses are owned by pension funds for working people, by and large.”

Not only is he profoundly wrong on the facts (I’ll go dig around a bit), and worse, wrong in terms of where jobs and innovation are created, but his mad love for the status quo just shines though that phrase.

And as a basis for criticism of the Democratic Party – which is accused of being in thrall to certain groups in Big Business that’s willing to buy off blocks of votes of ‘working people’, and so being an unholy alliance between the media companies and poverty pimps – it just shines.

William Pfaff, the columnist for the IHT and New York Review of Books (and author of ‘Fear, Anger and Failure: A Chronicle of the Bush Administration’s War on Terror, from the Attacks of September 11, 2001 to Defeat in Baghdad in 2003’ – which ought to give you a sense of his position on the war) has a column up in the IHT that explains how he thinks we’re missing the boat on the war on terror.

Of course, he’s wrong both on matters of fact and theory. But there’s something that he made me think about so let me roll it out for you as well.His core claim is:

Terrorism and the measures adopted against it acquire reciprocal momentum that is all but impossible to stop once a certain threshold has been crossed. That threshold was crossed in Russia last week, with potentially enormous consequences for civil liberties in that country, for civil peace in the Caucasus and possibly for the existing peaceful relationship between Russia and America.

This is why issues of nationalism, irredentism and religion – the usual motives for terrorist outrages – are so desperately dangerous. Ignored or misinterpreted, assigned to spurious international causes, they can do immense damage. They have to be dealt with in their natural dimensions.

Note that he doesn’t believe in an ‘international terrorist movement’ – he thinks it’s a straw man erected by nationalist leaders to keep from dealing with the real, local causes of terror.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has mistakenly (or culpably) assigned an international cause to his crisis. He has followed George W. Bush and Ariel Sharon in identifying his national problem as “international terrorism.” This is not true. Putin’s terrorism problem is specific to him and to Russia. America’s terrorism problem is specific to the United States, its past, its foreign relationships and its policies. Israel’s is a matter of Israel’s relationship with the Palestinians.

The source of terrorism in Russia since the late 1990s has been the ethnic nationalist uprising in Chechnya that Russian authorities have brutally been trying to stop.

Today there certainly are international reinforcements fighting for the Chechens, and there are increasing numbers of radical Islamic teachers and clerics in the Caucasus. Like Iraq, the region has become a battlefront in the war of Islamic radicals against the infidels. But to hold them responsible for what has happened in Chechnya is like insisting that “regime remnants and foreign terrorists” are the only ones doing the fighting in Iraq.

The affairs retain their national causes, and the only hope of solution remains national. But once the terrorist action-reaction auction begins, it is almost impossible to stop. Russia has already invaded Chechnya twice to “end terrorism,” but terrorism simply got worse. Ariel Sharon’s entire career has consisted in failed attempts to solve Israel’s problem of national existence by brute destruction of what he considers its enemies. The United States invaded Afghanistan and overturned the Taliban government, but the terrorists took to the hills and the country is in political and social pieces. And now there is Iraq.

He’s misreading matters on several levels, but we ought to keep in mind one thing which he may be getting right – that there are specific geopolitical drivers that make terrorism an attractive proposition for certain populations, and that we ought to be splitting those off as a key element in our struggle against terrorists. He has a point in that, but it’s not enough by itself.

Here’s what he’s missing, and it’s relatively simple.

What’s the difference between the horror of Columbine and the greater horror of Middle School #1?

State support.

It’s the difference between two crazy kids with guns and homemade explosives and a platoon armed with military weapons and professional-grade demolition gear. It’s the difference between a group that has the patience and resources to preposition guns and explosives months before, and two kids who learn to shoot by playing Doom and going to the neighborhood rifle range.

I don’t think that dismantling the network of state support for terrorism will end terrorism; I think that – as long as we’re fighting Bad Philosophy, people who think like James Wolcott will decide they don’t want to wait for a hurricane, but to do a little damage on their own.

But that damage will be far more limited – even though still tragic – while the scale of damage that will be done by terrorists with state resources knows no clear upper limit.

That’s why I supported the war in Iraq, and continue to do so. because the immediate objective must be to break down the network of state sponsors of terror, and Iraq was probably the best place to start.

Pfaff ignores the reality of state support for terror in other states – as the Arab world uses the Palestinian proxy soldiers to fight their war with Israel ‘to the last Palestinian’; he ignores the reality of Saudi and Iranian – and Iraqi – support for transnational terrorist organizations, and the support by those organizations for local terrorists.

But the problem of facts on the ground isn’t his biggest one.

His message is clear – we’ve lost.

He posits terrorism as a part of an ‘auction of violence’ in which each side raises the bid against the other, and suggests that

The religious fanatic has no tangible goal to be satisfied. He – or she, as we increasingly find – wants paradise and the destruction of heretics. For such a person, the terrorism auction has no earthly limit.

and

If the terrorist auction has a tangible value, such as an independent Chechnya (if that is what the Beslan terrorists wanted: nobody has yet said what they wanted, assuming that they wanted anything tangible), there is no solution except to give it to them. Everyone knows how to solve the tangible and national part of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. An acceptable compromise of their national claims was agreed to long ago. The clash of eschatological expectations between some Israelis and some Palestinians is what continues to make that solution impossible.

(emphasis added)

Now when one person says something like this, it’s possibly careless writing or a slip of the tongue. But when you hear it twice, it begins to sound like a movement.

“…give it to them.”

And in so doing, prove to every group with a grievance and a high tolerance for blood that they can get what they want if they kill enough children.

I’ve argued before that the war on terror stands on three legs:

1) kill or capture the terrorists;
2) harden the targets;
3) provide countervailing ‘philosophies’

To that, on rereading my post on Boyd and terrorism, I’ll add something which may mirror what he and Matt said, but is in my mind profoundly different.

From ‘Patterns of Conflict‘, slide 108:

Action:

Undermine guerilla cause and destroy their cohesion by demonstrating integrity and competence of government to represent and serve needs of the people – rather than exploit and impoverish them for the benefit of a greedy elite.*

Take political initiative to root out and visibly punish corruption. Select new leaders with recognized competence as well as popular appeal. Ensure that they deliver justice, eliminate grievances and connect government with grass roots.*

Infiltrate guerilla movement as well as employ population for intelligence about guerilla plans, operations, and organization.

Seal-off guerilla regions from outside world by diplomatic, psychological, and various other activities that strip-away potential allies as well as by disrupting or straddling communications that connect these regions with the outside world.

Deploy administrative talent, police, and counter-guerilla teams into affected localities and regions to inhibit guerilla communication, coordination, and movement; minimize guerilla contact with local inhabitants; isolate their ruling cadres; and destroy their infrastructure.

Exploit presence of above teams to build-up local government as well as recruit militia for local and regional security in order to protect people from the persuasion and coercion efforts of guerilla cadres and their fighting units.

Use special teams in a complementary effort to penetrate guerilla controlled regions. Employ (guerillas’ own) tactics of reconnaissance, infiltration, surprise hit-and-run, and sudden ambush to: keep roving bands off-balance, make base areas untenable, and disrupt communication with the outside world.

Expand these complementary security/penetration efforts into affected region after affected region in order to undermine, collapse, and replace guerilla influence with government influence and control.

Visible link these efforts with local political/economic/social reform in order to connect central government with hopes and needs of people, thereby gain their support and confirm government legitimacy.

Idea:

Break guerillas’ moral-mental-physical hold over the population, destroy their cohesion, and bring about their collapse via political initiative that demonstrates moral legitimacy and vitality of government and by relentless military operations that emphasize stealth/fast-temp/fluidity-of-action and cohesion of overall effort.

*If you cannot realize such a political program, you might consider changing sides.

(emphasis and footnote his)

This is dealing with guerrilla warfare, not terrorism, but I believe that the precepts apply there just as clearly. ‘Root causes’ must be a part of the solution – but are not and never will be the solution themselves.

Was I too harsh on Matthew? I’m thinking about it.

I just got this in the email, and since I’m convinced that I’m getting waaay too serious about the election…

Votergasm

A GOTV campaign for those willing to step up and meet one of the three levels of commitment:

* Citizen: I pledge to withhold sex from non-voters for the week following the election.

* Patriot: I pledge to have sex with a voter on election night and withhold sex from non-
voters for the week following the election.

* American Hero: I pledge to have sex with a voter on election night and withhold sex from non-voters for the next four years.

I’m not brave enough to click on their link ‘Plan an Election-Night Party‘…

Whew! Good thing for me TG’s absolutely going to vote…

Wow. I’m not a frequent Delta flyer, but if this story pans out I’ll be an even less frequent one. Apparently a Delta affiliate wouldn’t allow other passengers to give up their seats for a soldier on leave. (hat tip to Rev. Sensing and the Marine Corps. Moms)

I’ve fired off the following note to Chataqua Airlines, at their marketing@rjet.com address, and I’ll report back on what I hear. You may want to send them a note as well…be civil; as I note, we don’t have all the facts yet.

Please forward this note to Bryan Bedford, your CEO.

According to the account in the Benton Courier of September 3rd, your staff refused passage on Delta flight 6281 to a Benton soldier coming home on leave from Iraq, and further refused to allow other paying passengers who offered to allow her to exchange their seats to allow her to travel home.

I sincerely hope that this isn’t true. I’m hard-pressed to imagine that an airline that uses this as it’s mission statement:

OUR VISION: We believe that every employee, regardless of personal beliefs or world-view, has been created in the image and likeness of God. We seek to become stronger from our diversity. We seek personal respect and fulfillment from our work. Most of all, we seek to recognize the dignity and potential of each member of our Republic Airways Holdings Family.

would act so inhumanely.

I’ll await your reply.

Look, maybe he should just hire some bloggers. I’ll suggest a few, if anyone from the campaign wants to email me and ask. Believe me, the blog brain trust that’s trying to run his campaign for free could not do a worse job that the clowns running it now (I’ll note that there was a Clinton transplant today – about which more later – and as much as I’d like to, I probably can’t blame them for this – yet).

Let’s go to the papers.

Here are three examples the campaign should consider when it’s deciding who’s going to eat the jar of jalapenos.
First, the stutter-step campaign staff replacement (I said I was going to deal with the Clinton transplant).

September 2, 2004:

Kerry has taken the unusual step of dispatching campaign manager Mary Beth Cahill, senior strategist Tad Devine and pollster Mark Mellman to New York to breakfast with political reporters today, just hours before Bush delivers a nationally televised speech accepting his party’s nomination for another four-year term.

The Cahill-led mission is to quell speculation that a major staff shake-up could be in the offing – much like the one that resulted in Cahill taking charge of an under-performing Kerry campaign last fall – and that the Kerry organization is troubled by the Democratic nominee’s slipping poll numbers.

September 6, 2004:

…in a 90-minute telephone conversation from his hospital room, [Clinton] offered John Kerry detailed advice on Saturday night on how to reinvigorate his candidacy, as Mr. Kerry enlisted more Clinton advisers to help shape his strategy and message for the remainder of the campaign.

…

The conversation and the recruitment of old Clinton hands came amid rising concern among Democrats about the state of Mr. Kerry’s campaign and criticism that he had been too slow to respond to attacks on his military record or to engage Mr. Bush on domestic policy. Among the better-known former Clinton aides who are expected to play an increasingly prominent role are James Carville, Paul Begala and Stanley Greenberg, campaign aides said.

It’s not a shakeup, it’s not, it’s not (continued)…

Mr. Kerry’s aides emphasized that this was an expansion of the staff for the fall campaign and did not represent another upheaval of the Kerry campaign. Still, several Democrats outside the campaign said the influence of Mr. Clinton and his advisers could be seen over the past few days in Mr. Kerry’s attacks on Mr. Bush’s domestic policies. They said the Clinton team had been pressing Mr. Kerry to turn up the intensity of his attacks on those policies after a month spent largely avoiding engaging the president.

The installation of former Clinton lieutenants is creating two distinct camps at Mr. Kerry’s campaign headquarters on McPherson Square in downtown Washington.

Yeah, those kind of silent transitions make for clear lines of authority in any project team!!

Next, the counterattack. On the www.johnkerry.com website (wouldn’t it make sense to make it kerryedwards.com or something similar? And to brand it as Kerry-Edwards, instead of John Kerry for President?) a list of 143 lies told during the GOP convention. There are two problems here. As many have pointed out, it appears that the Kerry campaign has decided that it’s a good idea to include four statements by McCain in that – yes, to call McCain, who is for better or worse, the moral center of the Senate – a liar X 4. Smooooooove! Can I get the name of the staffer who thought that was a good idea?

And the page consists of a list of 143 claims made at the convention with the author of each claim. Example:

Franks Distorted Kerry’s Comments About Fighting War on Terrorism.

129. Franks: “Some argue that we should treat this war as a law enforcement issue. Some say we should fight a less aggressive war — that we should retreat into a defensive posture and hope that the terrorists don’t attack us again.” [Remarks at Republican National Convention, 9/2/04]

Other Countries Making Substantial Contributions

130. Franks: “Some have ridiculed the contributions made by our allies, but I can tell you that every contribution from every nation is important.” [Remarks at Republican National Convention, 9/2/04]

Martinez Said Bush’s Policies Helped All Americans.

131. Martinez: “Not only does President Bush believe in the American dream, but his policies are helping people across our country to realize their own American Dream.” [Mel Martinez, 9/2/04]

Martinez Said Kerry Wanted to Raise Taxes.

132. Martinez: “President Bush wants to cut taxes, and John Kerry wants to raise taxes.” [Mel Martinez, 9/2/04]

Holy crap. They don’t even know how to Fisk.

Would it have killed someone to have one of the interns who normally is driving around Washington looking for crack for the senior campaign team – and I can’t think of another explanation of how someone who is supposed to be playing at the top level of the toughest sport in America could do so incredibly badly – to just, say, make an argument, provide a link, suggest some reason why Tommy Franks is lying other than WE SAY SO?? How stupid are these people, and how stupid do they think we are??

I don’t want this campaign to be decided by ineptitude. It’s like watching a motorcycle race that gets decided because one riders mechanic forgot to put oil in the engine.

But the stupidity may not stop at the crack-using staff level, and that’s what worries me.

Kerry gave a speech yesterday, at Canonsberg Pennsylvania.

Under pressure from some Democrats to change the subject from national security — regarded by many as President Bush ‘s strongest issue — Kerry tried to focus exclusively on the economy and other domestic topics at a neighborhood meeting but supporters raised Iraq.

The Massachusetts senator, who has said he would have voted to give Bush the authority to use force if necessary against Iraq even if he had known at the time that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction, has struggled to draw clear contrasts with the president.

“I would not have done just one thing differently than the president on Iraq, I would have done everything differently than the president on Iraq,” Kerry said.

He denied that he was “Monday morning quarterbacking.”

“I said this from the beginning of the debate to the walk up to the war. I said, Mr. President don’t rush to war, take the time to build a legitimate coalition and have a plan to win the peace.”

Kerry said Bush had failed on all three counts. He called the president’s talk about a coalition fighting alongside about 125,000 U.S. troops “the phoniest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“You’ve about 500 troops here, 500 troops there and it’s American troops that are 90 percent of the combat casualties and it’s American taxpayers that are paying 90 percent of the cost of the war,” he said. “It’s the wrong war, in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Kerry, like Bush, promised that the United States would stay the course in Iraq until the country is secure, saying: “We have to do what we need to do to get out and do it right.”

He pledged to internationalize the forces in Iraq and do a better job of fighting “a more effective, smarter” war on terror that he said would actually make Americans safer.

Although he declined to set a precise timetable for pulling out U.S. troops, Kerry said it would be possible if certain conditions were met, such as bringing allies to the table to help with security and reconstruction.

He also said Washington should make it clear to the world that the United States had no “long-term designs to maintain bases and troops in Iraq.

“We want those troops home and my goal would be to try to get them home in my first term and I believe that can be done,” he said.

I’m so un-nuanced that I not only don’t see a clear policy in this, but see an amazing straddle – we’ll stay until the country is secure, but I’ll promise to try and get them home in the next four years. A message designed to both piss of both sides of the issue here, but on the other hand, at least he’s not sending a clear message to the other side wither.

Sheesh. Hire Kevin Drum, will you?

He must have thought it was white boy day. It ain’t white boy day, is it?

– Gary Oldman, as Drexl Spivey, in True Romance

Every so often I just feel like it’s ‘Bad Philosophy Day’; either I see an egregious example of it, or else someone raises the issue and joins the team fighting the War On Bad Philosophy.

Today we get both.

Via Harry’s Place and Jonathan Derbyshire, a couple of interesting quotes from people who are enlisting on our side:

T]here is not just an equivalence, but a blend, between the Islamism that condemns the Western liberal democracies and the international pseudo-Left intelligentsia that condemns them as well.

… We can be certain … that the performance of the Western intelligentsia has never been worse. Before the collapse of the Warsaw Pact regimes, the intelligentsia was merely deluded. After the collapse of the World Trade Center, it has gone haywire. Essentially a branch of the home entertainment industry, the Left intelligentsia circulates, almost entirely for its own consumption, opinions even more contemptuous of ordinary people than used to prevail on the Right.

– Clive James in the Times Literary Supplement (subscription).

The James article is about Isaiah Berlin, and in the summary posted on the public TLS site, James goes on to say:

Though Berlin wrote comparatively little about the twentieth century’s worst horrors, there wasn’t much he didn’t know about them. The question is how much he usefully wrote about them: a question worth trying to answer, because on the answer will eventually depend how much we continue to value him.

That’s interesting to me, since I have become fairly convinced that Berlin’s book ‘The Roots of Romanticism’ writes usefully about the philosophical ground that grew these 20th Century horrors. If there are any TLS subscribers out there who can send me the whole article, I’d be grateful.

And then there are those signing up for the other side.

I once went through an S.J. Perelman/Dorothy Parker phase in my reading when the Algonquin Round Table was the center of the universe. Alexander Wolcott, the Times theater critic sat near the center of that universe. He was apparently insufferable – The Man Who Came To Dinner was written about him – the owner of an immense ego, and devoid of empathy (Harpo Marx was one of his best friends and describes him well in ‘Harpo Speaks,’ his autobiography).

I’m assuming that James Wolcott is his son, because the ego and lack of empathy track well, and James seems to think that he’s been promoted from the center of the Algonquin’s literary lunch club to the center of the universe. Here’s his latest, in its entirety:

I root for hurricanes. When, courtesy of the Weather Channel, I see one forming in the ocean off the coast of Africa, I find myself longing for it to become big and strong–Mother Nature’s fist of fury, Gaia’s stern rebuke. Considering the havoc mankind has wreaked upon nature with deforesting, stripmining, and the destruction of animal habitat, it only seems fair that nature get some of its own back and teach us that there are forces greater than our own. Sure, a hearty volcano can be enjoyable. Burning rivers of lava: so picturesque. But a volcano is stationary, like Dennis Hastert after a big lunch. It doesn’t offer the same dramatic suspense. Hurricanes are in unpredictable flux. They move, change direction, strengthen, weaken, lose an eyewall, repair an eyewall; they seem to have volition and opera-diva personalities.

So there’s something disappointing when a hurricane doesn’t make landfall, or peters out into a puny Category One. Reporters and weather announcers may profess relief and gratitude that residents were spared the full unleashing of the vortex, but their coverage belies this. They love having reporters shouting into microphones on rain-lashed beaches as the stray yacht gets flung around like a bath toy. The helicopter shots of rows of mobile rooms smashed as if stomped on by a giant boot are money shots to the news networks.

Hurricane Frances also has a heraldic quality. Camille Paglia observed on Salon in February, 2003 that the explosion of the Columbia shuttle on the eve of the war on Iraq was a “stunning omen,” one that would make a Roman general think twice. A catastrophe strewing death, fire, and human remains across Bush’s home state of Texas was inauspicious to our undertaking; and so it has proven to be. Frances is the second hurricane to afflict Florida, home of brother Jeb, in rapid succession.

The gods are not pleased.

He’s got the decency to title it ‘An Ignoble Confession,’ so I’ll grant him something for that.

But what he’s really doing is expressing the same sentiment as the people who were secretly thrilled to watch the jumpers from the WTC on 9/11, because:

When the towers started collapsing and all chaos broke loose, I felt actual excitement. Here was an event that broke banality. Finally, here was something meaningful. I had grown so tired of the meaningless fluff our continent had become so enamored with. Here was an issue of raw emotions. I was glad that this was happening to snap people back into reality, to snap them back to mortality. My last sinful thought was that of genocide — lets just send nuclear missiles to all of the Middle East and let it be done once and for all.

(emphasis added)

And that – that fatigue with daily life (or, better, the daily lives of others) and the search of the overarching, true, genuine, transformative moment – is what it must feel like when you pull the lanyard on your explosive vest.

Some people just buy them from better tailors than others.

Smart leftie Nathan Newman has started a group blog on labor movement issues, at www.laborblog.org. While I’m sure WoC’s more libertarian audience may find some things to disagree with, I’ll suggest that a lively debate about how to structure policy to make the lives of the middle 60% of the income curve better is probably a darn good thing.

From the L.A. Times, “Russian School Takeover Stirs Self-Criticism Among Arabs“:

…on Saturday, some prominent Arabs came forward with a more sobering interpretation: Corrupt, repressed Arab and Islamic societies have become breeding grounds for terrorism. It’s a judgment often heard among Western critics but rarely voiced in heavily censored Arab rhetoric.

“Most perpetrators of suicide operations in buses, schools and residential buildings around the world for the past 10 years have been Muslims,” wrote Abdul Rahman Rashed, general manager of the popular Al Arabiya television channel. In a blunt column in the pan-Arab newspaper Asharq al Awsat, Rashed listed attacks carried out by Muslims in Iraq, Russia, Sudan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen.

“Our terrorist sons are an end product of our corrupted culture,” he wrote. “The picture is humiliating, painful and harsh for all of us.”

In the long run, it is the Arab people themselves who will bring peace to this conflict. Hopeful glimmers like this may be the start – I desperately hope.

Here’s some good news for a Sunday morning:

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – The most-wanted Saddam Hussein aide in Iraq, Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, was captured in the town of Tikrit on Sunday, Iraq’s defense ministry said.

The ministry said Ibrahim was captured by members of Iraq’s national guard backed by U.S. forces. Tikrit was Saddam’s hometown and one of the powerbases of his regime.

Iraqi Minister of State Wael Abdul al-Latif told Reuters it was “75 to 90 percent certain” the captured man was Ibrahim. He said 70 of the man’s supporters were killed and 80 captured when they tried to prevent him being seized.