A clown suit would fit Lou Dobbs really well:
Truth, Fiction and Lou Dobbs - New York Times: The most common complaint about him, at least from other journalists, is that his program combines factual reporting with editorializing. But I think this misses the point. ... The problem with Mr. Dobbs is that he mixes opinion and untruths.
Robert Scheer is shrill:
Worse Than Watergate, by Robert Scheer, AlterNet: …But don't blame Gonzales; he's just another lightweight zealot exploited by the Cheney White House. Not that Gonzales isn't a thoroughly loathsome character deserving of Senate rebuke and worse. He has been party to dragging this nation down in the eyes of the world, ordering and justifying torture while shredding the limitations on imperious governance that have been the hallmark of American liberty.
Yet while the man has been associated with a pernicious assault on our freedoms, he has never been the independent actor, but rather a dutiful toady carrying out the wishes of a tightly monitored White House with the blessings of the president.
It writes:
Rising Hegemon: Maximum Wanker: William Kristol and Fred Kagan ladies and gentlemen, together in what can only be described as the ickiest long-term companionship ever!
Congressional battles calling into doubt our commitment to winning in Iraq have been the major threat to progress since the president began pursuing the right strategy in January. The president, supported by congressional Republicans, has beaten back that threat. Now he needs to deal with his own administration, which has not made up its collective mind to support the president's strategy wholeheartedly. Mixed messages from Bush's advisers and cabinet undermine the efforts of our commanders in the field.
Here is Duncan:
Eschaton: Deep Thoughts From Tom Friedman: 05/30/03 on Charlie Rose: I think it [the invasion of Iraq] was unquestionably worth doing, Charlie.... We needed to go over there, basically, um, and um, uh, take out a very big state right in the heart of that world and burst that bubble, and there was only one way to do it.... What they needed to see was American boys and girls going house to house, from Basra to Baghdad, um and basically saying, "Which part of this sentence don't you understand?" You don't think, you know, we care about our open society, you think this bubble fantasy, we're just gonna to let it grow? Well, Suck. On. This.O kay.That Charlie was what this war was about. We could've hit Saudi Arabia, it was part of that bubble. We coulda hit Pakistan. We hit Iraq because we could.
And Duncan comments:
Ladies and gentlemen, America's premier foreign policy columnist. I'm sure there's more there, but there are limits to the sacrifices I will make for blogging. (thanks to Janeane the Acerbic Goblin)
And comments further:
When I was a younger lad man, there was no one around to tell me that Tom Friedman was an utter buffoon. I'm sure someone I knew thought he was a buffoon, maybe many people, but as Tom Friedman unsurprisingly wasn't the central subject of many conversations it wasn't too likely to come up. Obviously he must be a very serious person, as he writes bestselling books on very serious things, has a very influential column in the New York Times, is treated reverentially when he goes on the teevee, etc... I'm not quite sure when I realized that little Tommy was a buffoon. I did force my students to read one of his books (among others of course) and by the end I think we'd all decided he was a buffoon. I think that if there's one contribution to humanity that liberal blogs have made it's the fact that they have greatly increased the number of people who understand that he is a buffoon.
NY Times: "We Have Grown Accustomed to This President’s Disconnect from Reality" -- The ITT List: From the NY Times editorial “War Without End”: Never mind how badly the war is going in Iraq. President Bush has been swaggering around like a victorious general because he cowed a wobbly coalition of Democrats into dropping their attempt to impose a time limit on his disastrous misadventure. By week’s end, Mr. Bush was acting as though that bit of parliamentary strong-arming had left him free to ignore not just the Democrats, but also the vast majority of Americans, who want him to stop chasing illusions of victory and concentrate on how to stop the sacrifice of young Americans’ lives. And, ever faithful to his illusions, Mr. Bush was insisting that he was the only person who understood the true enemy.
[...]
[W]e have grown accustomed to this president’s disconnect from reality and his habit of tilting at straw men, like Americans who don’t care about terrorism because they question his mismanagement of the war or don’t worry about what will happen after the United States withdraws, as it inevitably must.
The really disturbing thing about Mr. Bush’s comments is his painting of the war in Iraq as an obvious-to-everyone-but-the-wrongheaded fight between the United States and a young Iraqi democracy on one side, and Al Qaeda on the other. That fails to acknowledge that the Shiite-dominated government of Iraq is not a democracy and is at war with many of its own people. And it removes all pressure from the Iraqi leadership — and Mr. Bush — to halt the sectarian fighting and create a real democracy.
Don't be worried. Some viewers were shocked when you changed shape before their eyes and grabbed the Bush-defending guests with your suckers and rent them into shreds and gobbets with your parrot-like beak. But ratings are up:
Crooks and Liars » Matthews Gets Fired Up: On yesterday's "Hardball" Chris Matthews was in rare form and fired up about Iraq, Immigration and fact-free Republican Presidential candidates. During his interview with Democratic Presidential candidate, Senator Joe Biden (D-DE) he slams President Bush for his Iraq rhetoric and playing the terror card when it suits him, but his main target was Republican Presidential candidate, Rudy Giuliani. Matthews questions why Giuliani has been allowed to spout off the wall , fact-free talking points and nobody has stepped up to challenge him. I think this quote to Biden after watching a clip of Giuliani says it all: Matthews: "Absolute B.S., Senator. Absolute B.S."
UPDATE: John Dickerson and "Jerry" protest that Dickerson is not parodying himself, but trying to maintain a nuanced position: to the extent that children inject themselves (and to the extent that Bush and Cheney inject them) into the echo chamber, they lose their zone of privacy.
John Dickerson could drive anybody shrill:
John Dickerson: Political families: The president and Dick Cheney should have a wide zone of privacy when it comes to their families. Their daughters didn't ask to enter the political echo chamber, and so they shouldn't be forced to live in it. (Though, the Bush twins did speak at the 2004 Republican convention, and a Cheney daughter worked at the State Department.)
Brian Beutler succumbs:
Allow me to suggest that the Bush twins weren't forced to speak at the Republican convention against their will and that Liz Cheney probably had some "help" getting the job that she "asked for" at the "State Department". And that, on top of all that, Mary Cheney has worked publicly on behalf of her father, who heads what some might call an atypical family (vice-president and whatnot)...
John Podesta, establishment Democrat, is shrill!
Bill Clinton's former chief of staff says "Congress must oppose toothless supplemental": ThinkProgress, the blog for the Center for American Progress (CAP), the organization run by President Clinton's former chief of staff John Podesta, published a stern commentary today in opposition to the Iraq war supplemental agreement negotiated by Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi. ThinkProgress notes that "this victory for President Bush is a defeat for the American people." They go on to say that congressional leaders, including Nancy Pelosi, "need to live up to their word," and that "anyone who supports accountability for President Bush’s Iraq policy must reject this blank check for war."
ThinkProgress wouldn't take this bold a position on the most important legislation in America today, in opposition to the Democratic leadership in the House and Senate, without the Center for American Progress's approval. And you'd better believe that the Center isn't going to approve of such an important statement of policy without John Podesta personally signing off. The man was the former White House chief of staff - we can assume he doesn't miss details. Things get even more interesting when you consider that inside the beltway CAP is perceived by many, rightly or wrongly, as a front for Hillary's presidential run. And there is no way, in my view, that CAP's position on the supplemental helps Hillary (who would prefer to remain perpetually obtuse when it comes to Iraq).
Podesta is a big deal in Washington. If he's not happy with this "compromise," to the point of publicly challenging Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, and putting Hillary in an awfully uncomfortable position, then that means discontent with the way the Democratic party leadership is handling Iraq goes far deeper than a few "crazy" bloggers or the party's supposedly-liberal base.
Five years, *Washington Post.* Five years:
Ashcroft's Complex Tenure At Justice - washingtonpost.com: the account of a nighttime hospital confrontation between Ashcroft and Bush aides -- provided Tuesday by Thompson's successor, James B. Comey, to the Senate Judiciary Committee -- prompted something of a reappraisal of Ashcroft by some on the left last week. Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) praised his "fidelity to the rule of law." The Wonkette Web site posted the headline: "Ashcroft Takes Heroic Stand." Under a similar headline, "John Ashcroft, American Hero," Andrew Sullivan expressed astonishment on his Atlantic magazine blog that "John Ashcroft was way too moderate for these people. John Ashcroft"...
Unbelievable.
He's shrill in a right-wing Neanderthal conservative-Republican way, but it's still shrillness, and it's still impressive:
David Frum's Diary on National Review Online: Immigration Thoughts: With the immigration * compromise * in the Senate, President Bush and the Senators have detonated the slow-motion trigger on a Republican debacle in 2008. Let's count the ways:
- The typical (median) American worker has seen his income stagnate under George W. Bush. Immigration is not the only reason for this wage stagnation, but it is certainly one of the reasons. With this immigration bill, the GOP is telling hard-pressed workers: Go look to somebody else to help you.
- As complicated as this immigration deal is, it rests on a simple compromise: The Democrats get the amnesty they want - in exchange for the Republicans getting the guest-worker program they want. By identifying the guestworker program as the GOP's highest immigration priority, the deal also identifies the GOP as a party that in the crunch puts employers' interests first.
- Even before the deal, Democrats entered the 2008 cycle unified and energized; Republicans, divided and demoralized. The president and the senators have now managed to divide and demoralize their party even further.
- The deal scrambles the 2008 race, in ways deeply unhelpful to the party. The deal has wounded all three of the GOP front-runners: McCain because he is deeply implicated in it; Giuliani because he has tacitly endorsed it; Romney because it has added one more flip-flop to his already too lengthy list of reversals. The deal helps the two undeclared Republicans, Gingrich and Thompson - both of whom, alas, are much less electable on a national ticket than the three declared front-runners
- The White House/RNC defense of the deal only enrages Republican voters. When Tony Snow delivers a speech to the Council on National Priorities arguing that George W. Bush has been tougher on illegal immigration than any president ever... well, he invites jeers and derision. Of the 35 million foreign-born people in the United States, some 8 million have arrived since 2001. Of the 12 million estimated illegals in the United States, some 4 million have arrived since 2001.
- As we have seen in both the Harriet Miers fight and the Dubai ports deal, this White House's first instinct when faced with dissent in the ranks is to insult and abuse its strongest supporters. "Sexist"; "elitist"; "registered bigots" were some of the terms cast during the previous fights. Brace yourselves for much, much worse. This is no way to win friends and influence people. And triggering an internecine party conflict on the eve of a difficult and dangerous election is no way to re-elect a damaged incumbent party.
- And unfortunately the White House's second instinct when confronted with dissent is to revert to incompetent spin. Unlike the Clinton administration, which lied with a fluency and bravado that will impress PR hacks for decades to come, the Bush administration stumbles, flusters, and eventually disheartens even its staunchest supporters. Or, as my friend Bill Walsh puts it, they cannot even tell the truth convincingly.
- The deal will worsen Republican prospects among Hispanic voters. Over the years, the Republicans have done not too badly with Hispanics, typically winning about 35%-40% of the Hispanic vote as compared to under 10% of the black vote.
Republicans have done so well because until now, the highly diverse Hispanic population has not voted as an ethnic bloc. Now we ourselves are forcing that to change. It's as if this Republican president and these Republican senators have said, "Hmm. Can we invent an issue that will teach Cuban-American doctors, Honduran day laborers, and Mexican-American army officers to think of themselves as a unified ethnic group? Can we then provoke a fight that all of them (whatever their diverging practical interests) will treat as a symbol of acceptance in American society? And can we then stage-manage this fight to ensure that two-thirds of our party will have no choice but to fall on the wrong side of it?" Nice work, guys.
We should pursue whether, next year, we can get David Frum out here at the West Coast satellite campus of the Ancient and Hermetic Order of the Shrill--halftime at the Hoover Institution and halftime here at U.C. Sunnydale.
It's the fault of CNN's John King:
The Media Hides Iraq Reality [Oliver Willis: Like Kryptonite To Stupid]: CNN's John King. “If we showed people the full extent of what we see every day in Iraq, we would either have no one watching us because they couldn’t stand to see the pictures, or we would get so many letters of complaint that some organization would come down on us to stop.” If you're not doing your job, you're complicit.
Atrios reminds us of one of the *New York Times's* many fine, fine moments:
Eschaton: Mission Accomplished Day: Another look back.
Elisabeth Bumiller: WASHINGTON, May 1 -- President Bush's made-for-television address tonight on the carrier Abraham Lincoln was a powerful, Reaganesque finale to a six-week war. But beneath the golden images of a president steaming home with his troops toward the California coast lay the cold political and military realities that drove Mr. Bush's advisers to create the moment. The president declared an end to major combat operations, White House, Pentagon and State Department officials said, for three crucial reasons: to signify the shift of American soldiers from the role of conquerors to police, to open the way for aid from countries that refused to help militarily and -- above all -- to signal to voters that Mr. Bush is shifting his focus from Baghdad to concerns at home.... "This is the formalization that tells everybody we're not engaged in combat anymore, we're prepared for getting out," a senior administration official said...
It has never been clear to me whether the Wall Street Journal is, on net, a force for good or a force for evil. The excellence of the news pages is offset by the atrociousness of the editorial pages. Plus the editorial pages gain additional weight and power by their association with the excellent news pages. Would the world be a better place without the Wall Street Journal? Unclear. Would the world be a better place if the Wall Street Journal's news pages were replaced by news pages of the quality of, say. Murdoch's New York Post? Probably not--but even on this I am still a bit uncertain.
Franklin Foer of the New Republic and his homies, however, have no dobts whatsoever. They say the Wall Street Journal is a mighty force for good, and its editorial page--well, they can't bring themselves to even hint that the Wall Street Journal has an editorial page.
Craven. Mendacious. Journamalists.
Frank Foer and Company: This should be a pivotal moment for liberals--a time to dial back their relentless hostility to newspapers and start crusading for them: We don't mean to sound naïve about the shortcomings of these institutions.... But you need only consider the contributions of the Journal to understand the stakes of the present moment... the great chronicler of capitalism... one of the most important checks against its excesses. The paper has regularly exposed important failings of the market--from the leveraged buyouts and insider trading of the 1980s to the stock manipulation of recent years. In the era of deregulation, it's hard to imagine that the government would have uncovered these epic cases of malfeasance.
Sadly, these great feats haven't won the newspaper business liberal love. There are many, especially in the blogosphere, who can't wait to dance on the graves of the crusty old MSM "gatekeepers." They champion the rise of "citizen journalism," as techno-enthusiasts like to describe the bloggers and their Wikipedia model of media: Unlike the MSM brontosaurs, bloggers will actually report the truth without fear of losing access to Washington cocktail parties or pressure from corporate bosses....
But there's a problem with the new order they imagine... bloggers chasing Truth without the shackles of objectivity. You can always dismiss a blogger, or a partisan paper like the New York Post.... But... [with the] Wall Street Journal... this complaint... rings so empty. The MSM makes an earnest (albeit occasionally flawed) effort to achieve a neutral understanding of events, and that's the source of an authority and prestige that even its harshest critics... must respect....
While the MSM's authority and prestige persist, they are in peril.... Newspapers themselves have squandered the sense of self-confidence that they once oozed.... [T]he timidity that characterized prewar WMD reporting and led the Times to sit on its domestic wiretapping stories for a year....
How can newspapers recover their mojo? For starters, they should stop sounding apocalyptic.... [P]rofit margins at most papers remain high.... The crisis in newspapers relates more to perceptions than the actual bottom line. While the Times, the Post, and the Journal are still run by their founding families... they must answer to investors who continue to demand cost-cutting that boosts share prices but undermines their mission.
As stewards of their papers, the Sulzbergers, the Grahams, and the Bancrofts have exuded the best spirit of Progressive-era elites, a commitment to reform and independence...
A less craven and mendacious New Republic would say that the Bancrofts have betrayed the Progressive spirit of reform by refusing to take steps to generate a reality-based editorial page. And as for Donald Graham--I have a stack of emails from print Post reporters telling me what they think of his commitment to whitewashing the Bush administration.
A remarkably scurvy crew. Encountering any of them should drive you shrill:
Isaac Chotiner: [I]t's ridiculous people would make policy judgments based on the compensation deal [Wolfowitz] worked out for his partner.... [C]laiming that Wolfowitz's actions regarding his companion give an accurate window into his actual feelings on poverty and corruption seems like a pretty simplistic way to look at how human beings work...
Isaac Chotiner: I have no idea whether Paul Wolfowitz broke The World Bank's ethics rules (although the Times' report on the subject today makes the charges against him seem pretty sketchy)...
James Kirchik: [T]he fecklessness of those who somehow claim that Paul Wolfowitz's alleged intervening to help out his girlfriend undercuts the World Bank's anti-corruption campaign.... [L]iberals are increasingly adopting the "no enemies on the left" strategy.... The corollary to this is that there must be "no friends on the right."... Wolfowitz's critics could care less about the fact that there is little to no evidence of wrongdoing. What they care about is that he was a Republican who was an architect of the Iraq War, which has no bearing on the good job he's done at the World Bank...
The Wall Street Journal Editorial Page: This is the same kangaroo court that last month leaked its guilty verdict to the Washington Post before Mr. Wolfowitz even had a chance to plead his case. Our sources who have seen the committee's report tell us it is especially critical of Mr. Wolfowitz for daring to object publicly to the committee's methods and thereby bringing the bank's name into disrepute. The Europeans running this Red Queen proceeding prefer that they be able to smear with selective leaks without rebuttal.... If the Bush Administration now abandons Mr. Wolfowitz as he faces a decision from the bank's board of governors, it will not only betray a friend but hand the biggest victory yet to its audacious enemies in the George Soros axis.
Martin Peretz: I have my differences with Paul Wolfowitz, serious differences, in fact. But I also know some of his critics, many of whom are really just his tormentors. For the obvious reasons, one of which is not that he tried to give a pay boost to his girlfriend. After all, the lady was at the Bank before him. Was she to be punished because her boyfriend became head of the Bank? The pros at the World Bank measured their success by whether they got the cash out of the building, not whether the money did any good. The Bank's governors and staff are part of the enormous economic development bureaucracy that sups as if they were managers of a very successful hedge fund. Who are they to criticize Wolfowitz or Shaha Riza, his companion, because he slated her to get what is merely an upper middle class pay raise?...
Marin Peretz: I've had a feeling all along that Wolfowitz's new troubles were hatched by his political enemies in the World Bank because he has been trying to make it more effective, more honest, and less politicized. These are complicated matters, and he has addressed them clinically with the intention to get results and not only install new procedures. You can imagine how a bloated and pampered bureaucracy would resent a truly practical person who makes practical judgments being at its head. The resentment of him within the Bank also derives from his role in the Iraq war...
Ruth Wedgwood: In 2005, the ethics committee surprisingly denied Wolfowitz's written request that he be allowed to recuse himself from all decisions touching on Riza's status because of their relationship. Then it disqualified her from remaining at the bank yet insisted that she be compensated for this disruption to her career. Next, it insisted that Wolfowitz re-enter the chain of command to execute its advice concerning Riza. And now, board members apparently have criticized Wolfowitz for doing exactly what the ethics panel directed...
Bret Stephens: [I]t has also gone mostly unnoticed that among the letter's signatories is former HR vice president Richard Stern... [who] resigned from the bank in 2000 when his brother, Nicholas, was appointed chief economist.... At the time, then-bank President Jim Wolfensohn... [said] that while "you can't have brothers and sisters [working together at the bank, as president] you are entitled, under Article 5, to run the business as you want, and if you want to vary the rule, you can."... Much has also been said about the role of Xavier Coll, the vice president for HR, who is supposed to have allowed Ms. Riza's raise and promotion without actually "approving" it.... But if Mr. Coll really believed the terms of Ms. Riza's package violated bank rules, he had a fiduciary responsibility to object and even resign. That he did not says nothing about Mr. Wolfowitz but everything about Mr. Coll...
Kenneth Anderson: Why such animus against Mr Wolfowitz? Some say it reflects hostility to reforms and others point to the interest of European contributors in a chance at the bank presidency.... [T]he real scandal does not centre on Mr Wolfowitz. The real scandal is the arbitrariness of an ethics committee and its muddled advice... an ethically dubious venture to bring down the president. None of this speaks well of the bank’s internal processes, or the likelihood of effective internal reforms...
Tim Haab says all politicians are STUPID:
All politicians are idiots and other obvious thoughts on high gas prices, by Tim Haab: I'm angry. I can't believe we're right back where we were a year ago. Gas prices are rising and Congress is trying to do something about it. Eighty-two Democrats and 3 Republicans in the House have proposed the Federal Price Gouging Prevention Act (H.R. 1252) otherwise known as the FPGPA, pronounced STUPID. So let's take a look a the STUPID price gouging bill...
The STUPID price gouging bill will make it a federal crime to:...sell crude oil, gasoline, natural gas, or petroleum distillates at a price that is unconscionably excessive or indicates the seller is taking unfair advantage [of] unusual market conditions (whether real or perceived) or the circumstances of an emergency to increase prices unreasonably.
Unconscionable excessive? Unfair advantage? Increase prices unreasonably? Yikes.
Allow me to interpret. The STUPID bill makes it a federal crime to:
...sell crude oil, gasoline, natural gas, or petroleum distillates at a price that makes my constituents complain because they are too lazy to drive less at higher gas prices.
There are two possible explanations for the Democrats proposal of the STUPID bill. 1) They think the public is too stupid realize they are trying to "do something" by proposing a STUPID bill, or 2) They are idiots. Since Env-Econ readers obviously represent a cross-section of the public, and since Env-Econ readers are smart enough to know that this bill is STUPID, I have to conclude that 1) is logically impossible and therefore, 2) must be true. So we've now proven that Democrats are idiots. We're halfway there.
In looking into the STUPID price gouging bill, I came across the Republican Study Committees reports on the STUPID price gouging bill. In it, they list a set of alternative proposals for lowering gas prices. They are:
- Streamline the environmental hurdles to building new oil refineries.
- Make it easier for small refineries to increase capacity.
- Allow more offshore (e.g. Outer Continental Shelf) and inland (e.g. Arctic National Wildlife Refuge) oil drilling.
In other words...screw the environment and roll back new source review.
- Temporarily suspend the gas tax.
...because driving more is always a good short-term solution.
- Temporarily suspend the gas tax and temporarily suspend spending on all transportation earmarks in the most recent surface transportation reauthorization bill.
...because driving more on crappy roads is an even better short term solution.
- Permanently reduce the gas tax.
...because driving more on crappy roads is an even better LONG term solution.
- Waive or repeal gas formulation (e.g. oxygenation) requirements under the Clean Air Act and related regulations.
...because somehow removing solutions to environmental externalities is what everyone wants.
...because we like free-markets especially the kind that subsidize our buddies.
...I actually like this one because it removes an inefficient policy.
So the Republican solution is to remove all of the policies that are designed to capture the external costs of driving whcih in turn would increase the social costs of driving. Hmmmm...lower the individual cost of driving which will actually increase the overall social cost of driving. Republicans are idiots.
Since independents don't matter, I conclude my proof. All politicians are idiots.
Look, in all seriousness. High gas prices are NOT an economic or political problem. They are the result of the natural workings of markets. There is nothing wrong with the market--and no reason, other than self-preservation and the false appearance of being able to do something, for politicians to intervene. Supplies are decreasing--both temporarily through unexpected refinery shut-downs and permanently through stock depletion. Demand is increasing--both in the U.S. and worldwide. Both of these will cause gas prices to rise and that's good. If gas prices don't rise, we will consume gas even faster and run out sooner. Higher gas prices encourage conservation and encourage investment in alternatives. High gas prices might be uncomfortable while we search for viable long-term solutions, but they're more comfortable than the alternative: no gas and no solutions.
Yes, it is Kevin Hassett of the American Enterprise Institute:
Does Economic Success Require Democracy?: When Kenneth Arrow was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1972, one of the contributions the awards committee cited was his miraculous "impossibility" theorem. Decades from now, Arrow’s theorem, originally drawn in his doctoral dissertation, will be viewed as the 20th-century idea that best anticipated the 21st century.... A government is really just a mechanism that makes collective decisions for a large number of citizens who have different preferences.... In the U.S., we send signals with voting to help the government aggregate preferences.... [N]o voting scheme can be devised that will create a government that has rational preferences, where rationality is defined precisely by Arrow as meeting a number of conditions. Democracy might be a form of government that many prefer to live under, but there is nothing theoretically compelling that suggests that it is the form of government that best reflects the underlying preferences of citizens. As a result, democracies will not necessarily outperform other types of mechanisms for preference aggregation as a route to economic prosperity. Democracies will not always win.
In the latter half of the 20th century, this observation seemed irrelevant. The United States, with its free markets and democracy, defeated the Soviet Union, with its centrally planned economy and party dictatorship. But in the 21st century, things look different. Dictatorships, as in China, appear to have learned from the failure of the Soviets. While they continue to oppress political opponents, they allow a high level of economic freedom within their borders. So far, this approach is working, and in a big way.... [T]he countries that are economically and politically free are underperforming the countries that are economically but not politically free.... [U]nfree China had a growth rate of 9.5 percent from 2001 to 2005. But China was not the whole story--Malaysia’s GDP grew 9.5 percent from 1991 to 1995, Singapore’s GDP grew 6.4 percent from 1996 to 2000, and Russia’s grew 6.1 percent from 2001 to 2005.... Dictatorships are not hamstrung by the preferences of voters for, say, a pervasive welfare state.
So the future may look something like the 20th century in reverse. The unfree nations will grow so quickly that they will overwhelm free nations with their economic might. The unfree will see no reason to transition to democracy. Meanwhile... it seems unlikely that free citizens will choose to reduce their own political freedoms. Democracies will stay in the game, but, as Arrow showed long ago, their victory is not assured.
Ummmm... Kevin, the democracies are a lot richer than the non-democracies. Doesn't that indicate that democracy is a superior form of government? Even to try to enunciate your idea that Russia's economy today is "outperforming" the econonmy of the United States--well, let's give the mike back to Kevin Hassett:
[T]here is nothing theoretically compelling that suggests that it is the form of government that best reflects the underlying preferences of citizens.... Russia’s [economy] grew 6.1 percent from 2001 to 2005.... Dictatorships are not hamstrung by the preferences of voters for, say, a pervasive welfare state.
There is nothing to be done but to collapse onto the floor in helpless laughter.
President Ahmednijad, Osama bin Laden, and Morton Kondracke: all three want to see the U.S. intervene in Iraq on the side of the Shiite ethnic-cleansing militias. Ahmednijad because he wants Iraq to be Shia rather than mixed; Osama bin Laden because he thinks a Shia Iraq will radicalize the world's Sunnis and swing them to his side.
And Morton Kondracke because--well, he gives no reason, other than that his heart is two sizes too small, and his brain is at least four sizes too small as well:
RealClearPolitics - Articles - Plan B For Iraq: Winning Dirty: By Mort Kondracke: Without prejudging whether President Bush's "surge" policy will work, the administration and its critics ought to be seriously thinking about a Plan B, the "80 percent solution" - also known as "winning dirty."... The 80 percent alternative involves accepting rule by Shiites and Kurds, allowing them to violently suppress Sunni resistance and making sure that Shiites friendly to the United States emerge victorious.
No one has publicly advocated this Plan B, and I know of only one Member of Congress who backs it - and he wants to stay anonymous. But he argues persuasively that it's the best alternative available if Bush's surge fails. Winning will be dirty because it will allow the Shiite-dominated Iraqi military and some Shiite militias to decimate the Sunni insurgency. There likely will be ethnic cleansing, atrocities against civilians and massive refugee flows.... Winning dirty would involve taking sides in the civil war - backing the Shiite-dominated elected government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and ensuring that he and his allies prevail over both the Sunni insurgency and his Shiite adversary Muqtada al-Sadr, who's now Iran's candidate to rule Iraq....
Bush wants to establish Iraq as a model representative democracy for the Middle East, but that's proved impossible so far - partly because of the Sunni insurgencies, partly because of Shiites' reluctance to compromise with their former oppressors and partly because al-Qaida succeeded in triggering a civil war. Bush's troop surge - along with Gen. David Petraeus' shift of military strategy - is designed to suppress the civil war long enough for Iraqi military forces to be able to maintain even handed order on their own and for Sunni, Kurdish and Shiite politicians to agree to share power and resources. The new strategy deserves a chance, but so far civilian casualties are not down, progress on political reconciliation is glacial, and U.S. casualties have increased significantly....
Prudence calls for preparation of a Plan B. The withdrawal policy advocated by most Democrats virtually guarantees catastrophic ethnic cleansing - but without any guarantee that a government friendly to the United States would emerge. Almost certainly, Shiites will dominate Iraq because they outnumber Sunnis three to one. But the United States would get no credit for helping the Shiites win. In fact, America's credibility would suffer because it abandoned its mission. And, there is no guarantee that al-Sadr - currently residing in Iran and resting his militias - would not emerge as the victor in a power struggle with al-Maliki's Dawa Party and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, led by Abdul Aziz al-Hakim.
Iran formerly backed the SCIRI and its Badr Brigades but recently switched allegiances - foolishly, my Congressional source contends - to al-Sadr, who's regarded by other Shiites as young, volatile and unreliable. Under a win dirty strategy, the United States would have to back al-Maliki and the Badr Brigades in their eventual showdown with al-Sadr. It also would have to help Jordan and Saudi Arabia care for a surge in Sunni refugees, possibly 1 million to 2 million joining an equal number who already have fled.
Sunnis will suffer under a winning dirty strategy, no question, but so far they've refused to accept that they're a minority. They will have to do so eventually, one way or another. And, eventually, Iraq will achieve political equilibrium. Civil wars do end. The losers lose and have to knuckle under. As my Congressional source says, "every civil war is a political struggle. The center of this struggle is for control of the Shiite community. Wherever the Shiites go, is where Iraq will go. So, the quicker we back the winning side, the quicker the war ends.... Winning dirty isn't attractive, but it sure beats losing."
Trained professionals may be called to the scene:
Matthew Yglesias: It's no surprise to see that James Kirchick, assistant to New Republic editor in chief Martin Peretz, shares his patron's passion for the cause of keeping Paul Wolfowitz in office at the World Bank. Kirchick says Wolfowitz's critics are making baseless charges: "As Jon Chait noted in his excellent Netroots article, liberals are increasingly adopting the 'no enemies on the left' strategy that the right has used so effectively for decades to police its own ranks . . . Wolfowitz's critics could care less about the fact that there is little to no evidence of wrongdoing. What they care about is that he was a Republican who was an architect of the Iraq War, which has no bearing on the good job he's done at the World Bank."
That's preposterous. Kirchick is talking about a Sebastian Mallaby column. Mallaby wrote for The Economist for over a decade, supported the Iraq War, and is the author of a recent book about the World Bank. He doesn't dislike Wolfowitz as bank president because he can't abide by Republicans or Iraq War supporters. He dislikes Wolfowitz because he thinks he's a bad choice to run the Bank. And Mallaby, unlike Kirchick or Peretz, knows something about the World Bank (Chait is no doubt thrilled to have his work cited favorably in this context by a fellow bold seeker of the Truth like Kirchick).
More surprising is Isaac Chotiner's post below in which he doesn't understand why Wolfowitz's corrupt dealings would undermine World Bank anti-corruption efforts. The reason is that said efforts are taking place in the world of power-politics rather than the world of abstract logic. The Bank is in a position to try to use its financial clout to force developing world governments to alter their policies. How well something like that works will have something to do with whether people in the developing world are inclined to believe that coercion is being deployed out of honest concern for their well-being or else if it's some kind of imperialist scam. Wolfowitz's behavior, and the Bush administration's tolerance of it, makes it highly non-credible that his anti-corruption stance is motivated by sincere concern for good governance. And when people doubt the motives of would-be reformers, that makes it very hard to achieve reforms.
Let me join Atrios in warning the Bush Administration: It would be inappropriate and dangerous for them to use nuclear weapons against Paul Wolfowitz:
Eschaton: More Wolfowitz: ABC: "IN A SIGNIFICANT SHIFT A WHITE HOUSE OFFICIAL SAYS 'ALL OPTIONS ARE ON THE TABLE' IN THE CONTROVERSY OVER WORLD BANK PRESIDENT PAUL WOLFOWITZ." They might nuke him?
Afghanistan and Iraq as just "places to begin":
Ezra Klein: Dispatches From When The Country Went Crazy: Kill 'em All Edition: While writing this post yesterday, I came across this gem from Paul Berman, writing in a January 2004 Slate forum reconsidering the Iraq War. "[The] largest of facts," he wrote, "is the rise of a certain kind of political movement—movements animated by paranoid hatreds, by apocalyptic fantasies, and by the fanatical desire to kill people en masse. These have been the big totalitarian movements, Nazism, Fascism, Stalinism, and a few others—movements whose greatest goal was to destroy liberal civilization...The totalitarian visions live on. Only, instead of being called fascism or some other name from the past, the visions of the present are called radical Islamism and Baathism and suchlike, with doctrines duly descended from their European progenitors—the totalitarianism of the modern Muslim world."
I forget the elegant disingenuousness with which the war was often sold. Notice how Berman recasts a fight against Saddam Hussein as a war against a unified totalitarian ideology. This despite the fact that the Baathism, under Saddam's Iraq, and radical Islamism, under Khomeini's Iran, had spent over a decade killing each other (with America arming not one, but both). Notice how these movements are ripped of positive -- which is different than "good" -- goals and recast as a mindless attack on "liberal civilization."
But that's just the start of the crazy. Remember, here, that Berman was the author of the hugely influential liberal hawk manifesto Terror and Liberalism, and a main character in George Packer's The Assassin's Gate. He goes on to write: "Sept. 11 did not come from a single Bad Guy—it was a product of the larger totalitarian wave, and the only proper response was to comprehend the size and depth of that larger wave, and find ways to begin rolling it back, militarily and otherwise—mostly otherwise. To roll it back for our own sake, and everyone else's sake, Muslims' especially. Iraq, with its somewhat antique variation of the Muslim totalitarian idea, was merely a place to begin, after Afghanistan, with its more modern variation."
Iraq and Afghanistan were just places to begin! We were supposed to take on every country with a whiff of autocracy and a useable set of prayer mats! It's staggering stuff.
