Mercury Rising Reminds Us that Brent Scowcroft Has Always Been Shrill. Always

The planet writes:

Mercury Rising: Wars Then And Now: In case anyone you know still says "but we had NO IDEA invading Iraq would turn out so badly!", please feel free to shove this in their faces:

Brent Scowcroft, who remains close to the Bush family, urged the President to concentrate on trying to broker peace between the Israelis and Palestinians while separately pursuing terrorist threats to the United States. But he said that by going to war with Iraq without linking President Saddam Hussein and September 11, Washington was risking a conflagration in the Middle East that would also engulf its efforts to defeat global terror groups.

His warning came as a former British Chief of Defense Staff said that Britain risked being dragged into a "very, very messy" and lengthy war if it supported a US military assault on Iraq. Field Marshal Lord Bramall called on Tony Blair to exercise caution, saying that an invasion to topple Saddam may not be morally or legally justified.

"You don't have license to attack someone else's country just because you don't like the leadership," he told BBC Radio 4's World This Weekend. "We are supposed to be taking a lead on the moral issues of the world."

Mr Scowcroft, chairman of the President's foreign intelligence advisory board, said: "It's a matter of setting your priorities. There's no question that Saddam is a problem. He has already launched two wars and spent all the resources he can working on his military. But the President has announced that terrorism is our number one focus. Saddam is a problem, but he's not a problem because of terrorism."

Mr Scowcroft added that he had no doubt a US military campaign could dislodge Saddam. But he added: "I think we could have an explosion in the Middle East. It could turn the whole region into a cauldron and destroy the War on Terror."

Jeebus, Save Us! Zbigniew Brzezinski Is Shrill!

Via the Sandwichman of Maxspeak:

MaxSpeak, You Listen!: COMPARE AND CONTRAST: by the Sandwichman: Zbigniew Brzezinksi, July 20, 2006:

I hate to say this but I will say it. I think what the Israelis are doing today for example in Lebanon is in effect, in effect -- maybe not in intent -- the killing of hostages. The killing of hostages.

Chickenhawks with Xacto Knives!

David Sirota outshrills everybody, as he observes that the weapon of choice of the chickenhawk is the Xacto knife:

Sirotablog: SOLDIER: 101st Keyboarder refuses to answer hypocrisy: The New Republic was one of the strongest and most aggressive voices pushing for the invasion of Iraq. Their editor, Peter Beinart, led the charge.... Here's an excerpt from a piece by Second Lt. John Renehan in this week's Chronicle of Higher Education:

In 2004, shortly before I left for basic training, The New Republic ran a piece in which Peter Beinart, then the magazine's editor, bemoaned the increasingly narrow demographics of those who serve and the consequent emergence of 'two countries' -- one that serves, and a second, more-affluent one that thinks of service as a thing done by other Americans. Notably, Beinart admitted his own mixed feelings on being a member of the nonserving elite, wondering aloud what he might say when a child of his someday asks, 'What did you do in the terror war, Daddy?'

Impressed, I wrote a letter to Beinart praising his frankness and noting my own decision to join the military -- one prompted by similar callings of conscience. Then I offered him what I called a 'public-spirited challenge': One of The New Republic's own should serve, and the magazine should write about it...It was a naïve sort of thing to write. My girlfriend took a look at the letter and said, 'You know they're never going to print this, don't you?' I did. But they did print it -- with a notable omission. My 'public-spirited challenge' had been excised, leaving only praise for Beinart.

[T]hat members of the 101st would resort to selectively editing an Army lieutenant's sincere letter to the editor in order to dishonestly heap praise on themselves... tells you all you need to know.... In their comfortable bubble, war is all just a fun little political game based on Washington's false definition of "strength" as a politician willing to sit in their guarded, air conditioned Beltway office and call in airstrikes and ground assaults - regardless of the consequences for the targets or America's national security...

The Duck of Minerva Is Shrill!

It is recommended that only trained professionals read National Review. Only. Trained. Professionals. For all others, the risks are just too high:

The Duck of Minerva: John Podhoretz: fearless intellectual: Just when you thought the Corner couldn't become any more of refuse pile than it already is, J-Pod brings forth a defense of his "kill them all and let got sort them out" approach to counter-insurgency. Turns out, he's a courageous intellectual posing the tough questions...

Useful Advice from the High Shrill Ones

Grand Heresiarch Andrew Northrup explains Mel Gibson to us:

Q: Gibson apparently blew a 0.12 on a breathalizer, which is only 150% the legal limit. What is that, like 3 beers? I barely even mention the Jews until I've put away a 20-pack. Is Gibson a wuss?

A: No. Alcohol affects different people differently, and different people metabolize alcohol differently. A volume of alcohol which would impair one person's judgement would leave another person entirely unaffected. One person could tolerate a blood alcohol level of 0.10, while this same concentration would make another person violently ill. It is entirely dependent on the individual. Additionally, breathalizers are notoriously inaccurate.

However, it is possible to determine a person's blood alcohol level very precisely by listening to who they start raving about being the source of all the world's problems:

Blood Alcohol Level	Presumed Source of All World's Problems
0.00-0.08	people who don't listen to each other
0.09	that guy over there who keeps looking at you sideways like he's got some kind of a fucking problem and wants his teeth kicked out
0.10	your so-called "friends" who act like they're your friends to your face but really they aren't really your real friends
0.11	the government
0.12	the Jews
0.13	the Belgians
0.14	the English monarchy
0.15	the media
0.16	the Jew media
0.17	the Belgian Jew media police
0.18	the International Society of Ham Radio Enthusiasts
0.19	the DMV
0.20	the KGB
0.21	the KLF
0.23	Emerson, Lake & Palmer
0.24	Emerson and Lake, but not Palmer. Palmer's all right, man. Those other guys, they think it's all about that fucking woo-woo stuff, and they think they're so great, but it's not about that bullshit, you know? Palmer, man, you're all right. You're all right. And you know what? I don't care how gay it sounds: I fucking love you, man!
0.25	Emerson, Lake & The Jews
0.26	Geddy Lee*
0.27 +	Canada

* This is actually true.

Anthony Cordesman Is Shrill!

Eric Umansky needs all ten tentacles to count the ways:

Eric Umansky: "Stupid, Incompetent, and Obsolete": Military analyst Anthony Cordesman rips the strategy so far by Israel--and the U.S.:

Most modern combat...will be wars against enemies that use terrorism, insurgency, and asymmetric tactics and fight at the political and ideological level. Winning will require victory at that political and ideological level, and in the tactics of shaping the psychological, perceptual, and media dimensions of the conflict.

Defeating the enemy will not be more important than winning the support, or at least tolerance, of the population. Local, regional, and global perceptions of the conflict will be as important in sustaining a war, and in terminating conflict on favorable and lasting terms, as the number of enemies captured and killed.

Israel has so far failed to understand this in Lebanon as the US to some extent failed to understand it in Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq. This is all too natural in wartime, and Israel - unlike the US with the exception of the attacks on 9/11 -- is under direct attack. “Understandable,” however, is not “excusable” in modern war. Carelessly seeking immediate tactical advantage at the cost of major strategic risks and penalties is stupid and dangerous. Creating more enemies than you kill is self defeating; making it politically and ideologically impossible to end a war and so is spreading new levels of anger and hatred to other countries and/or factions....

Modern war is going to be war fought by both state and non-state actors that seek to compensate for US, Israeli, and other countries' conventional military superiority by using populations and civil facilities as a shield, and constantly finding and exploiting new ways to use civilian casualties and collateral damage as ideological, political, psychological, and media weapons. It is also a duel that favors the enemy actor. It is easier and cheaper to disperse, shelter, hide, and collocate, and then exaggerate and lie if civilian casualties and collateral damage occur.

The officer or official who responds by accusing such enemies of being cowards or endangering their own people is simply stupid, incompetent, and obsolete. Quite aside from the fact that the US and UK found no problem in using the same tactics against Nazi Germany, and democratic resistance fighters have used them in many wars, such talk is based on the fundamental strategic and tactical fallacy that wars have rules based on the past. Enemies always seek to fight on advantageous terms and modern enemies will seek to fight below our level of conventional military advantage at the tactical level and above it at the ideological level.

It is equally stupid, incompetent, and obsolete to simply call such enemies “terrorists” and talk about “democracy.” This may work within the confines of Israel or the Beltway, but wars are being fought for the minds and perceptions of very different people with very different values. Ethnic identity; perceiving such tactics as authorized by God or as the only workable route to liberation and “freedom fighting;” putting faith and culture first are military realities that no amount of prattle about universal Western values is going to defeat.

It may simply be too late for Israel to react in this war. It entered it based on deeply flawed grand strategic and tactical principles, and seems to have fought the ideological and political dimension on the basis of the perceptions of Israelis and Americans. The IAF and IDF have so far been clumsy in both air and artillery operations, and sought tactical advantage at serious risk of excessive civilian casualties and collateral damage. Military cultures do not change in mid-operation and the incredibly clumsy IDF and Israeli government response to Qana is a case in point. Israel will, however, have to learn in the future if it does not want to take a largely passive region and turn it into an active enemy.

The question for the US is will it learn in time to win in Iraq and Afghanistan, and seek the new military reality it faces in shaping its force transformation. One critical case will be the battle of Baghdad, where any major American mistake could alienate large numbers of Sunnis - or more seriously - turn a large number of Shi'ites against the US. Baghdad is a political struggle for stability and security; not a counterinsurgency campaign...

More broadly, however, the Bush Administration and US military need to drastically reshape their priorities and methods to deal with suspected terrorists and detainees.

Gail Collins Is Shrill!

For many, many moons Gail Collins and the *New York Times* editorial board remained deaf to the keening madness of the shrill. "You don't know what it's like in there!" ex- and current administration staffers would say, weeping, at cocktail parties and dinners as they recounted stories of the mendacity, malevolence, disconnection from reality, and sheer incompetence of George W. Bush and his administration. But the *New York Times* treated George W. Bush and his enablers as a normal--albeit Republican--president accompanied by normal political and policy maneuvering.

Now, however, the dead, uncaring stars have aligned. And things have changed

At long last, Gail Collins and the New York Times editorial board succumbs to shrill unholy madness:

A Senate Race in Connecticut - New York Times: The United States is at a critical point in its history, and Mr. Lieberman has chosen a controversial role to play.... Mr. Lieberman is not just a senator who works well with members of the other party. And there is a reason that while other Democrats supported the war, he has become the only target. In his effort to appear above the partisan fray, he has become one of the Bush administration’s most useful allies as the president tries to turn the war on terror into an excuse for radical changes in how this country operates.

Citing national security, Mr. Bush continually tries to undermine restraints on the executive branch: the system of checks and balances, international accords on the treatment of prisoners, the nation’s longtime principles of justice. His administration has depicted any questions or criticism of his policies as giving aid and comfort to the terrorists. And Mr. Lieberman has helped that effort. He once denounced Democrats who were “more focused on how President Bush took America into the war in Iraq” than on supporting the war’s progress....

[T]his is no time for a man with Mr. Lieberman’s ability to command Republicans’ attention to become their enabler, and embrace a role as the president’s defender. On the Armed Services Committee, Mr. Lieberman has left it to Republicans like Lindsey Graham of South Carolina to investigate the administration’s actions. In 2004, Mr. Lieberman praised Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for expressing regret about Abu Ghraib, then added: “I cannot help but say, however, that those who were responsible for killing 3,000 Americans on September 11th, 2001, never apologized”... a good example of how avidly the senator has adopted the Bush spin and helped the administration avoid accounting for Abu Ghraib.

Mr. Lieberman prides himself on being a legal thinker and a champion of civil liberties. But he appointed himself defender of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and the administration’s policy of holding hundreds of foreign citizens in prison without any due process. He seconded Mr. Gonzales’s sneering reference to the “quaint” provisions of the Geneva Conventions. He has shown no interest in prodding his Republican friends into investigating how the administration misled the nation about Iraq’s weapons....

If Mr. Lieberman had once stood up and taken the lead in saying that there were some places a president had no right to take his country even during a time of war, neither he nor this page would be where we are today. But by suggesting that there is no principled space for that kind of opposition, he has forfeited his role as a conscience of his party, and has forfeited our support.... [T]his primary... it has become a referendum on his warped version of bipartisanship, in which the never-ending war on terror becomes an excuse for silence and inaction. We endorse Ned Lamont in the Democratic primary for Senate in Connecticut.

Welcome, Gail and crew! Glad to have you aboard!

Welcome, Chris Matthews!

We had long thought that Chris Matthews was an ex-Boston machine politician who had an eye for the main chance and thought he could become rich by tacking right. But no!! He is one of the Great Old Ones in disguise!!

Welcome, Chris Matthews. Is it wet enough for you in your suite? We have tried to match the climate of drowned R'lyeh...

Think PRogress: Matthews: The War in Iraq United "the Disparate Pieces of Shia Radicalism into a Frankenstein Monster:

MATTHEWS: Two years ago, King Abdullah of Jordan warned me of what was coming in the mideast. His prediction was dead. He spoke of his fears and what the United States was doing in iraq, toppling one government, electing another, was creating what he called a Shia crescent, from Tehran through Baghdad to Beirut that threatened to dominate the Arab world, challenging modern Sunni governments in Egypt and Saudi Arabia and others with an axis of Shia power based in Iran.

When I look at the map today, that Shia crescent the King foretold has come to light.... We converted Iraq from a country which has fought revolutionary Iran for eight years to a bloody stand still to a Shia dominated ally of Iran and created a boulevard of common religion and common regional politics.

Did you hear the new Iraqi leader take sides with Hezbollah in a struggle with Israel? This is the emerging threat, not just to the moderate Sunni countries including Egypt and Jordan who formed and honored treaties to Israel and us. Our brave soldiers have fought, died and been dismembered in Iraq only to connect the disparate pieces of Shia radicalism into a Frankenstein monster that has come to life right there on our TV screens and worse yet in the vicarious mideast where young arabs found a hero named Hezbollah.

Fareed Zakaria Is Shriller than Ever!

Via Think Progress:

Think Progress: Zakaria: Rumsfeld "Seems In A Parallel Universe and Slightly Deranged": Newsweek editor Fareed Zakaria ripped into Donald Rumsfeld this morning on ABC's This Week. Transcript:

[If I were running against conservatives,] I would make up a campaign commercial almost entirely of Donald Rumsfeld's press conferences, because the man is looking -- I mean, it's not just that he seems like a bad Secretary of [Defense]. He seems literally in a parallel universe and slightly deranged. If you listen to what he said last week about Iraq, he's living in a different world, not a different country...

"Slightly" deranged, Fareed?

The Whiskey Bar Is Shrill

The Bartender at the Whiskey Bar is really shrill:

Whiskey Bar: Axis of Weevil: No, the big mistake we repeated, according to Frum, is underestimating the strength of Iraq's "internal enemies" and the willingness of hostile neighbors to provide them with sanctuary and support:

Only the US has tried to pretend that the war zone stops at the international border. In some horrible rerun of Vietnam, the US has let the enemy establish safe havens just on the other side of the line, from which it draws supplies and reinforcements with impunity.

Now this is a bit unfair, in my opinion, because it's easy to understand why the Pentagon and the Cheney administration lowballed the potential for guerrilla warfare. They were told by some pretty world-class foreign policy experts that they didn't have to worry about the risk of guerrilla warfare. And who were these experts? Why, David Frum and his mentor, Richard Perle.

Here's what the two of them had to say about it in their 2004 book, An End to Evil:

Now the pessimists are quivering because the remnants of the Baath Party have launched a guerrilla war against the allied forces in Iraq. These guerrillas are former secret policemen and informers, the regime's specially recruited enforcers, murderers, torturers, and rapists . . . But it is wrong to describe these paid killers as a "national resistance," as some even normally sensible people have sometimes done. For a dozen years after Appomattox, former Confederate soldiers terrorized their neighbors, robbed trains, and killed Union soldiers. Was the Ku Klux Klan a "national resistance"? Was Jesse James?

Well, seeing how the Iraqi version of the KKK is on the verge of running our sorry asses out of the country, I guess the answer to that question is yes. And it would appear Frum now agrees, since he seems to have been reduced to a "quivering" plate of strawberry-kiwi jello. Welcome to the Pessimists Club, David. You're going to love the initiation rites.

The other Vietnam-era boo boo that has Frum weeping and tearing his clothes is the Army's failure to stop the Grand Kleagles and Imperial Wizards of the Sunni Klavern from establishing safe havens in neighboring countries, like Syria.

Now it's not clear the rat lines into and out of Syria played a very big part in the growth and success of the domestic resistance movement -- as opposed to the imported Al Qaeda wannabes like Abu Zarqawi. Certainly Iran has played a very important role in building up its favorite Shi'a political parties and helping infiltrate their militiamen into the Iraqi security agencies. But at least up until fairly recently, this was just the Cheney administration's idea of good, solid nation building -- not the 21st century version of the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

In any case, this is another problem the experts told us we didn't have to worry about -- the expert in this case being Paul Wolfowitz, a.k.a. Wolfowitz of Arabia. Here's Wolfy expounding his theory of "desert impotence" to the Washington Post in June 2003:

I think it is worth emphasizing that these guys lack the two classical ingredients of a victory in a so-called guerrilla war if that's what you want to say they're conducting. They lack the sympathy of the population and they lack any serious source of external support. (emphasis added)

Really David, if you can't take Paul Wolfowitz's word for these things, who can you trust?

It should be clear from the sources cited that Frum's problems are all in his head -- probably the result of too many nights spent smoking dope with Ward Churchill or reading the collected works of Noam Chomsky. Iraq is not collapsing into chaos and ruin. Iran is not poised to pick up the pieces. Only "sunshine patriots" and "weak-kneed media elites" believe such things. Why, Dave and Dick even warned us about people like that:

The gloomsayers were unembarrassable. Having been proven wrong when they predicted the United States would sink into a forlorn quagmire in Iraq, they reappeared days later to insist that while military victory had been assured from the beginning, the United States was now losing the peace.

I think David Frum badly needs to sit down and re-read his own book. Maybe then he'll remember that Iraq is a stunning success -- a role model for the war on terrorism, the key to democracy in the Middle East, the cure for the heartbreak of halitosis and a lot of other wonderful things, although I can't think of any more at the moment.

Former DepSecState Richard Armitage Is Shrill!

He says:

Armitage Fears Bombing Campaign Will "End Up Empowering Hezbollah" : Richard Armitage dramatically broke ranks with his neoconservative allies yesterday, saying in a radio interview that he feared it was impossible to eliminate Hezbollah through airstrikes, and that by attempting to do so, "you're going to end up empowering Hezbollah, and perhaps introducing an element into the body politic in Lebanon that will take some great period of time to recover from." Armitage also criticized the Bush administration for refusing to talk directly to Syria....

Armitage was Assistant Secretary of Defense under President Reagan when the U.S. Embassy in Lebanon was bombed in 1983, and served as second-in-command at the State Department under President George W. Bush. In 1998, he signed the Project for a New American Century letter to President Clinton urging regime change in Iraq.

The Bush administration has thus far "giving a tacit blessing" to the escalating Mideast violence. During crisis talks in Rome yesterday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice bucked the "entreaties of nearly all of her European and Arab counterparts" to push for a ceasefire.

Full transcript:

NPR: You were an assistant secretary of defense back in 1982, when a peacekeeping force was sent into Lebanon, a multinational force stationed there but ultimately forced to withdraw. Talk to us about that, and what we might draw from that.

ARMITAGE: It was a very troubled time, actually, and sooner rather than later we became involved %u2014 or were seen as taking sides %u2014 in someone else%u2019s civil war. And ultimately we lost 241 Naval and Marine personnel.

NPR: In the bombing of the%u2026

ARMITAGE: Yes, in the October %u201883 bombing.

NPR: Are there parallels between that peacekeeping force and now?

ARMITAGE: Well, I remember with stunning clarity one of our Israeli interlocutors sitting in my office, telling me that, %u201CDon%u2019t worry about this peace in Galilee operation. We understand our neighbors very well. We understand them better than anyone. We know all the dynamics of the situation in Lebanon.%u201D And that turned out not quite to be the case. I suspect that people in government now are also hearing that from Israel. Don%u2019t get me wrong %u2014 if I thought that this air campaign would work, and would eliminate Nasrullah and the leadership of Hezbollah, I think it would all be fine. But I fear that you can%u2019t do this from the sky, and that you%u2019re going to end up empowering Hezbollah, and perhaps introducing an element into the body politic in Lebanon that will take some great period of time to recover from.

NPR: An element into the body politic that as yet we do not know?

ARMITAGE: I think we do not know. And we%u2019re not, as far as I%u2019m concerned, using all the levers that we have, such as having the Secretary of State talk to the Syrians. I think they want to get involved. I think they want to become more central to a solution, and you might as well give them the opportunity. If they step up to it, fine. If they don%u2019t, we%u2019ll know them for what they are.

Using Your Tentacles Properly...

P.Z. Myers is offering lessons in the Lower Fetid Pond just north of Cthulhu Hall here on the Miskatonic University Campus at sundown:

Pharyngula: Squid attack!: If anyone is interested in writing a Lovecraftian horror novel and getting all the details just right, I recommend this paper by Kier and Leeuwen. They used a high-speed camera to capture exactly how a squid, Loligo pealei, strikes and seizes its prey. Isn't it beautiful? In the first frame, you can see the animal poised with its arms and tentacles pointed like an explode at the target, a shrimp. Then, as the squid slides forward, the two tentacles race forward with impressive speed (these frames are 10msec apart; the whole sequence occurs in a bit more than a tenth of a second), and the eight surrounding arms peel back and form a lovely writhing flower of suction cups and waving hydrostatic grasping organs. Oh, this is such a splendidly baroque little carnivore.

The Shrill Fred Kaplan Speaks

Fred Kaplan is shrill--driven shrill by that wild witless bird that is Condi Rice:

Condi's witless optimism about the Middle East. By Fred Kaplan: There Are Worse Things Than the Status Quo: At her press conference on Friday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice revealed—-far more articulately, if unwittingly, than any other official has in some time—-just what is so dangerous about President George W. Bush's foreign policy.... Asked why she hadn't flown to the region earlier or engaged in "shuttle diplomacy," as some had suggested, Rice replied, "I could have gotten on a plane and rushed over and started shuttling, and it wouldn't have been clear what I was shuttling to do. … I have no interest in diplomacy for the sake of returning Lebanon and Israel to the status quo ante. I think that would be a mistake." Then came the killer sentence, the sentiment that explains so much about what's gone wrong with American diplomacy and not just in the Middle East:

What we're seeing here is, in a sense, the growing—-the birth pangs of a new Middle East, and whatever we do, we have to be certain that we're pushing forward to the new Middle East, not going back to the old Middle East.

How many souls over the decades have sallied forth into the desert, beaming with bright eyes and blueprints for a "new Middle East," only to bog down in the dunes, blistered by sunstroke and bitten by scorpions? It's not so much the blithe arrogance that's troubling.... It's the stunning confidence in this belief... they're willing to push ahead with their vision even at great sacrifice of political stability and human life.... "I could have... rushed over and started shuttling," but "it wouldn't have been clear what I was shuttling to do." Well, for starters, you could have saved hundreds of lives, preserved billions of dollars in property, and perhaps stemmed the tide of rising anti-Israeli (and, by extension, anti-American) passion....

A cease-fire without a political solution, Rice said, would have meant we'd be back "in six months again or in nine months or in a year, trying to get another cease-fire."... Sociologists often say that fighting urban crime requires eliminating the "root causes." Here too there are disputes over just what those root causes are. But cities don't wait until they've figured it out before taking action; they hire police to hit the streets and go after criminals.... Secretary Rice spoke like a big-city mayor who, in the middle of a crime wave, announces that he's not going to put more police on the streets; he's going to convene a summit to address the wave's root causes.

There's nothing wrong with convening a summit; but, meanwhile, put police on the streets....

And, by the way, just what is this "new Middle East" that Rice sees rousing in its "birth pangs"? Is it really better than the creature of old? Does she think it's a sibling of the peaceful, tolerant, democratic Middle East that her president believed would rise up in the wake of Saddam Hussein's collapse? That toddler didn't turn out so well. Is there any sign that the pangs of Lebanon might produce a gentler kid than the pangs of Iraq? If there is a new Middle East on the horizon, it's more likely to bear crescent arcs and hidden imams. It's not a creation that any Western diplomat should be "pushing forward." Its potential emergence provides still more reason to contain all violent outbursts as quickly as possible, not to let them run their course.

Warren Christopher Is Incapable of Being Shrill

Warren Christopher is physically incapable of being shrill:

A Time To Act: A Time To ActBy Warren ChristopherFriday, July 28, 2006; A25: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's just-concluded trip to Lebanon, Israel and Rome was an exercise in grace, bravery and, to my regret, wrongly focused diplomacy. Especially disappointing is the fact that she resisted all suggestions that the first order of business should be negotiation of an immediate cease-fire between the warring parties. In the course of her trip, the secretary repeatedly insisted that any cease-fire be tied to a "permanent" and "sustainable" solution to the root causes of the conflict. Such a solution is achievable, if at all, only after protracted negotiations involving multiple parties. In the meantime, civilians will continue to die, precious infrastructure will continue to be destroyed and the fragile Lebanese democracy will continue to erode.

My own experience in the region underlies my belief that in the short term we should focus our efforts on stopping the killing. Twice during my four years as secretary of state we faced situations similar to the one that confronts us today. Twice, at the request of the Israelis, we helped bring the bloodshed to an end. In June 1993, Israel responded to Hezbollah rocket attacks along its northern border by launching Operation Accountability, resulting in the expulsion of 250,000 civilians from the southern part of Lebanon. After the Israeli bombardment had continued for several days, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin asked me to use my contacts in Syria to seek their help in containing the hostilities. I contacted Foreign Minister Farouk Shara, who, of course, consulted with Syrian President Hafez al-Assad. After several days of urgent negotiations, an agreement was reached committing the parties to stop targeting one another's civilian populations. We never knew exactly what the Syrians did, but clearly Hezbollah responded to their direction.

In April 1996, when Hezbollah again launched rocket attacks on Israel's northern border, the Israelis countered with Operation Grapes of Wrath, sending 400,000 Lebanese fleeing from southern Lebanon. Errant Israeli bombs hit a U.N. refugee camp at Cana in southern Lebanon, killing about 100 civilians and bringing the wrath of international public opinion down upon Israel. This time Shimon Peres, who had become prime minister after the assassination of Rabin, sought our help. In response, we launched an eight-day shuttle to Damascus, Beirut and Jerusalem that produced a written agreement bringing the hostilities to an end. Weeks later, the parties agreed to a border monitoring group consisting of Israel, Syria, Lebanon, France and the United States. Until three weeks ago, that agreement had succeeded for 10 years in preventing a wholesale resumption of hostilities.

What do these episodes teach us? First, as in 1996, an immediate cease-fire must take priority, with negotiations on longer-term arrangements to follow. Achieving a cease-fire will be difficult enough without overloading the initial negotiations with a search for permanent solutions. Second, if a cease-fire is the goal, the United States has an indispensable role to play. A succession of Israeli leaders has turned to us, and only us, when they have concluded that retaliation for Hezbollah attacks has become counterproductive. Israel plainly trusts no one else to negotiate on its behalf and will accept no settlement in which we are not deeply involved. Further, based upon my experience in helping bring an end to the fighting in the Balkans, the Europeans are unlikely to participate in a multinational enforcement action until the United States commits to putting its own troops on the ground.

Finally, Syria may well be a critical participant in any cease-fire arrangement, just as it was in 1993 and 1996. Although Syria no longer has troops in Lebanon, Hezbollah's supply routes pass through the heart of Syria, and some Hezbollah leaders may reside in Damascus, giving the Syrians more leverage over Hezbollah's actions than any other country save Iran. Syria has invited a direct dialogue with the United States, and although our relations with Syria have seriously deteriorated in recent years (we have not had an ambassador in Damascus for more than a year), we do not have the luxury of continuing to treat it with diplomatic disdain. As the situations with North Korea and Iran confirm, refusing to speak with those we dislike is a recipe for frustration and failure.

Because Hezbollah has positioned itself as the "David" in this war, every day that the killing continues burnishes its reputation within the Arab world. Every day that more of the Lebanese infrastructure is turned to dust, Beirut's fragile democracy becomes weaker, both in its ability to function and in the eyes of its people. The impact is not limited to Lebanon or Israel. Every day America gives the green light to further Israeli violence, our already tattered reputation sinks even lower. The reluctance of our closest allies in the Middle East even to receive Secretary Rice this week in their capitals attests to this fact. It is time for the United States to step forward with the authority and balance that this moment requires.

Former DepSecState Richard Armitage Is Shrill!

He says:

Armitage Fears Bombing Campaign Will "End Up Empowering Hezbollah" : Richard Armitage dramatically broke ranks with his neoconservative allies yesterday, saying in a radio interview that he feared it was impossible to eliminate Hezbollah through airstrikes, and that by attempting to do so, "you're going to end up empowering Hezbollah, and perhaps introducing an element into the body politic in Lebanon that will take some great period of time to recover from." Armitage also criticized the Bush administration for refusing to talk directly to Syria....

Armitage was Assistant Secretary of Defense under President Reagan when the U.S. Embassy in Lebanon was bombed in 1983, and served as second-in-command at the State Department under President George W. Bush. In 1998, he signed the Project for a New American Century letter to President Clinton urging regime change in Iraq.

The Bush administration has thus far "giving a tacit blessing" to the escalating Mideast violence. During crisis talks in Rome yesterday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice bucked the "entreaties of nearly all of her European and Arab counterparts" to push for a ceasefire.

Full transcript:

NPR: You were an assistant secretary of defense back in 1982, when a peacekeeping force was sent into Lebanon, a multinational force stationed there but ultimately forced to withdraw. Talk to us about that, and what we might draw from that.

ARMITAGE: It was a very troubled time, actually, and sooner rather than later we became involved – or were seen as taking sides – in someone else's civil war. And ultimately we lost 241 Naval and Marine personnel.

NPR: In the bombing of the –

ARMITAGE: Yes, in the October bombing.

NPR: Are there parallels between that peacekeeping force and now?

ARMITAGE: Well, I remember with stunning clarity one of our Israeli interlocutors sitting in my office, telling me that, "Don't worry about this peace in Galilee operation. We understand our neighbors very well. We understand them better than anyone. We know all the dynamics of the situation in Lebanon." And that turned out not quite to be the case. I suspect that people in government now are also hearing that from Israel. Don't get me wrong – if I thought that this air campaign would work, and would eliminate Nasrullah and the leadership of Hezbollah, I think it would all be fine. But I fear that you can't do this from the sky, and that you're going to end up empowering Hezbollah, and perhaps introducing an element into the body politic in Lebanon that will take some great period of time to recover from.

NPR: An element into the body politic that as yet we do not know?

ARMITAGE: I think we do not know. And we're not, as far as I'm concerned, using all the levers that we have, such as having the Secretary of State talk to the Syrians. I think they want to get involved. I think they want to become more central to a solution, and you might as well give them the opportunity. If they step up to it, fine. If they don't, we'll know them for what they are.

The History of the Shrill

Now that Peggy Noonan has joined the Ancient, Hermetic, and Occult Order of the Shrill--those who have been driven into shrill unholy madness by the mendacity, incompetence, malevolence, and disconnection from reality of George W. Bush and his administration:

OpinionJournal - Peggy Noonan: Republicans hearken back to Reagan... they agreed with what he did... they believe he was a very fine man.

This is not now how they feel about Mr. Bush....

William F. Buckley this week said words that... had the power to make one sit up and take notice.... Mr. Buckley's judgments... raise the question of what Bush's political philosophy is--I mean what he thinks it is.... He doesn't believe in smaller government. Or maybe he "believes" in small government but believes us to be in an era in which it is, with the current threat, unrealistic and unachievable? He believes in lower taxes. What else? I continually wonder, and have wondered for two years, what his philosophy is--what drives his actions.

Does he know? Is it a philosophy or a series of impulses held together by a particular personality? Can he say?... People... feel safer with a sense that their leaders have aims that are intellectually coherent. It would be good for the president to demonstrate that his leadership is not just a situational hodgepodge, seemingly driven and yet essentially an inbox presidency, with a quirky tilt to the box...

Now that there is nobody at all not paid-for who thinks George W. Bush has any business sitting in the Oval Office, it is time to answer some of the questions the yung'uns have about the origins of the Order of the Shrill, which I date to an exchange between me, Tyler Cowen, and Andrew Northrup:

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Tyler Cowen: I've had enough. Here is our latest foreign policy initiative: "New US curbs on travel to communist-ruled Cuba went into effect on Wednesday..." Here is the full, sad story. Here are more details about the human costs of the policy. Here is some material on America's failed use of sanctions against Cuba. What do you have to do to join The Ranks of the Shrill? Does someone have to send you an E-Invite? Posted by Tyler Cowen

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Tyler Cowen Seeks to Join the Ranks of the Shrill: Archive Entry From Brad DeLong's Webjournal: By the power vested in me by Paul R. Krugman, and through the invocation of the ideas of Adam Smith, Friedrich Hayek, Lord Acton, John Stuart Mill, and all the other friends of liberty, I hereby enlist and welcome Brother Tyler Cowen to The Ranks of the Shrill.

The Poor Man: The Coalition of the Shrilling: Brad DeLong intones the forbidden verses which consecrates an aspirant into the Occult and Hermetic Order of the Shrill:

By the power vested in me by Paul R. Krugman, and through the invocation of the ideas of Adam Smith, Friedrich Hayek, Lord Acton, John Stuart Mill, and all the other friends of liberty, I hereby enlist and welcome Brother Tyler Cowen to The Ranks of the Shrill.

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Krugman R'lyeh wagn'nagl fhtagn! Aaaaiiiiii!!!!

Posted by The Editors at July 2, 2004 09:18 AM

Comments

That is not shrill which can eternal lie, And with strange aeons even shrillness may die. Posted by: Hal at July 2, 2004 09:57 AM

Why does Yog-Sothoth, the goat with a thousand young, hate America? Posted by: Tweety Fish at July 2, 2004 10:13 AM

Yog-Sothoth hates America too, but every student of the dark lore knows that Shub-Niggurath is the black goat of the woods with a thousand young. Now, if you'll excuse me I must go and re-heat my breakfast burrito. Posted by: Comic Book Guy at July 2, 2004 10:48 AM...

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More seriously (or is it less seriously?), those were (and these are) strange days.

I guess it started, I think, with that extremely strange and not-very-analytical Svengali of the Bush Social Security reform plan, Peter Ferrara, who wrote back in 2001 about "the fierce, shrill, and unreasoned denunciations of allowing workers the freedom to choose a personal-account option for Social Security may impress the gullible... and denounced:

..the highly irascible Paul Krugman...

That was, I think, the start of a very peculiar meme: a piling-on of critics of Bush--especially of Paul Krugman--whose sole criticism was that he was "shrill." The critique was neither that he was a bad economist, nor that his accusations that the Bush administration was lying about a whole bunch of stuff were incorrect (indeed, one of Paul's most vicious critics, Andrew Sullivan, gloried in the fact that Bush was lying about his tax cut. See http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2005/05/yes_andrew_sull.html). So if you wanted to attack Krugman, but could not attack him because his analytics were right, and could not attack him because his accusations of Bush administration dishonesty were correct, what can you do? Well, a bunch of right-wingers led, IIRC, by Mickey Kaus and Andrew Sullivan found a way.

Here's Kaus:

"Comparative Advantage" by Nicholas Confessore: "[Krugman] is obviously a very smart guy, basically liberal, with complicated views, who once recognized when his own side was wrong. And at some point he switched and became someone who only sees what's wrong with the other side, in fairly crude terms," says Mickey Kaus. "The Bush tax cut is based on lies. But it's not enough to criticize a policy to say that it's based on lies. You have to say whether it's good or bad for the country."

(Never mind, of course, that Paul always spent a lot of time, space, wordcount, energy, and breath criticizing the substance of Bush's idiot policies. Yes, they were bad for the country--and Paul said why.)

And here's Sullivan:

www.AndrewSullivan.com - Daily Dish: I have long found Paul Krugman an insufferably pompous, shrill, Bush-bashing pseudo-populist...

The accusation--the only line of critique--is that Paul "only sees what's wrong with the other side, in fairly crude terms," or--in shorthand--is "shrill."

God alone knows why they thought this line of attack would do anything other than shred their own reputations. God knows why others took up this line of attack. But take off it did, both as a narrowly-focused attempt to degrade the reputation of Paul Krugman, and as a broader attempt to marginalize all who pointed out that the policies of the Bush administration were (a) stupid, and (b) justified by lies, and it took off both among the yahoos of the right and also among the denizens of the center-left.

Why did it take off? I think the reasons were well laid out by Nick Confessore:

"Comparative Advantage" by Nicholas Confessore: On balance, Krugman's record stands up pretty well. On the topics he writes about most often and most angrily--tax cuts, Social Security, and the budget--his record is nearly perfect. "The reason he's gotten under the White House's skin so much," says Robert Shapiro, a former undersecretary of commerce in the Clinton administration, "is that he's right. None of it is rocket science."

So if dismantling the facade of lies around, say, Bush's tax cut is so easy to do--and makes you the most talked-about newspaper writer in the country--why don't any other reporters or columnists do it themselves? Because doing so would violate some of the informal, but strict, rules under which Washington journalists operate. Reporters usually don't call a spade a spade, unless the lie is small or something personal. When it comes to big policy disagreements, most reporters prefer a he-said, she-said approach--and any policy with a white paper or press release behind it is presumed to be plausible and sincere, no matter how farfetched or deceptive it may be.

Similarly, among pundits of the broad center-left, it's considered gauche to criticize the right too persistently, no matter the merits of one's argument. The only worse sin is to defend a politician too persistently; then you become not a bore, but a disgrace to the profession and its independence--even if you're correct...

This seemed to hit the nail on the head: it was (and is) considered impolite to take what the Bush administration said about the rationales for its policies seriously. Consider the Washington Post's Richard Cohen, sneering on September 16, 2004 at those who took Bush's impact on the country seriously:

I was only briefly enamored of George W. Bush... who went to war in Iraq for stated reasons that turned out to be baseless and for unstated reasons that have yet to be publicly acknowledged... neoconservative foreign policy agenda in which violence plays too prominent and casual a role.... chilled by assertions of near-royal power... choice of judges, his energy policy, his unilateralism or the manner in which he has intruded religion into politics.... I nevertheless cannot bring myself to hate Bush.... In fact, Bush haters go so far they wind up adding a dash of red to my blue...[1]

In this context, given that criticisms of George W. Bush and the malevolence, mendacity, incompetence and disconnection from reality of him and his administration are--no matter how sound their analytics or how true their factual claims--going to be dismissed by many as impolite and "shrill," why not have some fun with and embrace the term?

And so the idea was off and running...

Faisal grabbed the website http://shrillblog.blogspot.com/, after emailing "must. resist. temptation. to set up. shrill.org group weblog" and being answered "Why is this temptation to be resisted? :-)." Andrew introduced the conceptual link to H.P. Lovecraft. (Wikipedia has the appropriate background reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cthulhu http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lovecraft http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necronomicon.)

And the ranks of the shrill are now... impressive indeed. Even the truly cowardly are now shrill. Only the bought-and-paid-for have not joined the ranks of the highly critical who have been driven into shrill unholy madness by the mendacity, malevolence, incompetence, and disconnection from reality of George W. Bush and his administration.

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Krugman R'lyeh wagn'nagl fhtagn!

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[1] And, of course, it was only a month later that Cohen became what he had sneered at:

I do not write the headlines for my columns. Someone else does. But if I were to write the headline for this one, it would be "Impeach George Bush."... Not since the Spanish-American War has the United States gone off to war so casually, so half-cocked and so ineptly.... Yet from Bush comes not a bleep of regret, not to mention apology. It is all "steady as she goes" -- although we have lost our bearings and we no longer know our destination. (Don't tell me it's a democratic Middle East.) If the man were commanding a ship, he would be relieved of command. If he were the CEO of some big company, the board would offer him a golden parachute -- and force him to jump...

The Poor Man Institute for Freedom, Democracy, and a Pony Is Shrill

Andrew Sullivan's idiocy is the trigger. This is the polite part of Sifu Tweety's "episode":

The Poor Man Institute: Wed 26 Jul 2006: Your professional pundit class in action: Sully Pooh, putting the “Andrew Sullivan” back in “Andrew Sullivan is a worthless fucking hack“:

I finally saw the Gore movie yesterday. It’s thoroughly persuasive about the reality of global warming and the contribution of carbon dioxide emissions to it.

I’ll give you a minute to let this sink in. Three weeks ago, the evidence for global warming was akin to Dick Cheney’s case for Iraq’s WMD - but now, having seen a f------ Hollywood movie about global warming starring famous former VP Al Gore, well, he finds the science persuasive. I’m very pleased, and I hope this change of heart lasts until Dan Quayle comes out with a movie about how the Earth’s not really getting warmer, it’s just that we’re all getting cooler. I would now like everyone to observe a moment of silence for that big tragic accident that tragically killed all the scientists in the world, leaving no way for professional pundits such as Sullivan or Gregg Easterbrook or Ron Wanker Bailey to figure out what all’s the dillio-yo-yo until someone got around to making a movie about it. It took you long enough, Al!

Shrillness Rises to Dangerous Levels...

Billmon at the Whiskey Bar reads Michael Abramowitz and Robin Wright, and his shrillness rises to dangerous levels. Trained professionals are establishing a containment field. But it may not hold:

Whiskey Bar: Hirohito Effects: Today's Washington Post story on Operation Midwife is just chock full of them. Some of my favorites:

The United States had been hoping to enlist moderate Arab allies in an effort to pressure Syria and Iran to rein in Hezbollah, but the Saudi move yesterday seemed to cloud that initiative.

Yes, TV footage of Arab women and children being blown to bloody bits does tend to put a damper on such things. Maybe Shrub should ask the Saudis to ban TV? (Even if it's not in the Koran, I bet they could get one of their pet sheikhs to make something up.)

The kingdom remains perhaps the most important American ally in the Arab world, and King Abdullah's views carry influence with Bush.

There's that cautious "perhaps" again. Does the Post know of any other Arab ally that supplies the world with 10 million barrels of oil a day? The Dauphin doesn't hold hands with just anybody, you know. (But no petting below the waist: That's AIPAC territory.)

"The response to the humanitarian problem caused so far has not been adequate," said a senior U.S. official involved, who insisted on anonymity to speak frankly about the situation. "It's an issue for us."

Gosh. That was frank, wasn't it. And I'm sure the Cheney administration will get right on it -- just as soon as FEMA finishes cleaning up after Hurricane Katrina.

Some U.S. officials say they have been disappointed with earlier warnings to Israel -- which have gone unheeded -- about the wider regional repercussions of military tactics. "There has been considerable damage to infrastructure and civilians," the senior official added. "We're puzzled by some of the targets."

Puzzled. As if Lebanon were one big acrostic, and the President was having trouble figuring out that "W" is also the first letter in "War Crimes."

As always, I've saved the best for last:

Another issue is the composition of an international force to keep Hezbollah away from Israel's border. Israel wants a muscular force that could either disarm Hezbollah or prevent future attacks. But U.S. officials acknowledge the limited interest in another coalition force in the Middle East. (emphasis added)

Limited interest. This one makes the Middle East sound like a church picnic, and the "new Europeans" a bunch of parishioners who've had just a bit too much to eat: Uncle Sam: Some fried Lebanon, Brother Poland? Poland: (burps) No, really, I couldn't. That Iraq rump roast has given me gas. Pass the Pepto-Bismol.

I don't know how much they're paying Michael Abramowitz and Robin Wright to crank out this crap, but it's gotta be a lot more than the old Pravda writers used to get. But they're worth it: Your typical Pravda story would have you dozing and dreaming about tractor parts in no time. But this stuff is almost good enough for The Daily Show.

Billmon Is Shriller than Ever!!

Now he--Tom Ricks, of the Washington Post--tells us. And this drives Billmon shrill:

Whiskey Bar: Department of the Bleedin' Obvious: Stop the presses. Tom Ricks, intrepid war correspondent for the Washington Post, has an urgent news flash. He reports that in the months following the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the U.S. Army forgot the lessons of Vietnam!

But there is also strong evidence, based on a review of thousands of military documents and hundreds of interviews with military personnel, that the U.S. approach to pacifying Iraq in the months after the collapse of Hussein helped spur the insurgency and made it bigger and stronger than it might have been.

Now I know this new information will come as an shocking surprise to readers of Whiskey Bar -- or Steve Gilliard's News Blog or Antiwar.com or William S. Lind's columns or, oh, I don't know, a couple of hundred other left-wing and paleocon blogs and web sites. But since it's in the Washington Post I guess it must be true. How could the rest of us have been so stupid not to have seen it??? It must be because we didn't review all those thousands of documents and do all those hundreds of interviews. Still, it's instructive, or at least amusing, to take a look back at what Tom Ricks actually reported at the time the Army was allegedly forgetting all those critical lessons of Vietnam. Here's Tom in July 2003, just as the guerrilla war he now says the Army didn't know how to fight was getting started:

As Iraqi fighters launched guerrilla strikes, the U.S. Army adopted a more nimble approach against unseen adversaries and found new ways to gather intelligence about them, according to dozens of soldiers and officers interviewed over the last week . . . At the same time, the frequency of attacks has declined in the area northwest of Baghdad dominated by Iraq's Sunni minority, long a base of support for Hussein . . .That decrease is leading senior commanders here to debate whether the war is nearly over. (emphasis added)

And here he is again a couple of months later, continuing to relay all that yummy "good" news:

Senior U.S. commanders here are so confident about their recent successes that they have begun debating whether victory is in sight. "I think we're at the hump" now, a senior Central Command official said. "I think we could be over the hump fairly quickly" -- possibly within a couple of months, he added. (emphasis added)

I could go on and on, but really, what's the point? Only that Ricks is as responsible as anyone for leading the American people (and the military itself) to believe the war was being won -- quickly and decisively...

Gregory Djerejian Is One of Our Most Honored and Insane Members:

And boy is he shrill. Via the Shrill Libertarian One of Los Angeles:

Once Upon a Time...: Calling War Lovers Anonymous: Is it possible, even with Lebanon's Cedar Revolution now lying in ruin, even with Iraq bleeding profusely, even with Afghanistan (and portions of Pakistan) increasingly seeing a reconstituted neo-Talib and al-Qaeda presence--is it really possible that Bush would listen to an unholy alliance of unrepentant, incorrigible and increasingly reckless neo-cons (Krauthammer, Kristol's Standard, most of NRO etc.), crude Jacksonians (Bolton, Steyn) and hotted up evangelical rapturists (the legions of Hewitts)? (By the way, when will another prominent neo-con--say, for example, the brightest one of them all to have served in government, in my view Paul Wolfowitz--stand up and pull a Fukuyama, by remonstrating some of his prior tutees for their too abundant enthusiasms, so as to help calm things down a tad?) Friends, these days, given the near total dearth of quality political leadership in Washington, given a media that, in the main, can only be described as severely cretinized and moronic, given a sense of pervasive paranoia and incompetence and fear gripping swaths of the country like a national mania, of sorts, well, anything is possible. But let us fight the good fight here for a sense of judiciousness and intelligence in our foreign-policy making. It is time to stop speaking messianically of root causes willy-nilly, and absolutist solutions, and eradication of this or that writ large, and rather to confront an exceedingly complex neighborhood with more deftness and realism and sobriety and, yes, humility. Hopefully someone is listening...