David Cay Johnston is the rock star of tax reporting in USA. He recently wrote a book with a provocative title 'Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich--and Cheat Everybody Else'. I havent read it.
But City Pages of Minnesota recently interviewed him:
In ancient Athens there was a flat tax, and when the Athenians had a flat tax, Athens was a tyranny. That?s where we get the word from. When the moral philosophers of Athens reasoned that those people who got the greatest economic benefit from living in Athens had the moral obligation to bear the greatest burden of maintaining the society that made them rich. That is, when they invented taxation based on ability to pay, they also invented democracy."
Good interview - although I should note here that I do not completely share his views and certainly not his opinion of unions.
Harold Meyerson's new column 'A Tale of Two Texans' is the second most e-mailed story in the Washington Post website this morning.
Last saturday LA Times had an understated, but sobering op-ed on the co-option of doctors in military's administration of torture in Guantanamo Bay and Iraq.
I grew up in a social environment that had an abiding respect for the written word and for doctors. I have known about torture by some practioners of medicine in Nazi concentration camps. But I always felt that it was a complete aberration anyway - that most people who go into medicine and practice medicine maintain some fundamental commitments to morality and ethics.
When I read that alongside this Newsweek story on Pentagon's thoughts about putting assassination squads in the middle east, I start questioning my basic assumptions about democratically elected governments of our times (obviously, we are not talking about Kazakhstan here where the president boils his political opponents or about West Africa where torture and cruelty have lost their power to shock).
I dont see any hope at all of things getting any better anytime soon.
NYT has a good story on Europe's angst about 'multiculturalism'. Generally speaking, I think this 'multiculturalism' business is really code for European unease with Islamic fundamentalism. It has lately come to the fore thanks both to the French spectacle over headscarves (Via Amardeep) and the killing of Theo van Gogh.
On the convergence of fear, hypocrisy and fanaticism
a) Last Thursday?s (12/9/2004, A15) Wall Street Journal had a story by John Carreyrou and Ian Johnson on French Muslims:
Although the government denies it, the new measures amount to a sharp break with France?s deeply ingrained tradition of secularism that forbids involvement by the state in religion ?France has long wrestled with how to integrate its growing Muslim population, estimated at 5 million to 7 million people among a population of 60 million. This fall it enacted a law that prohibits wearing religious symbols in public schools- a measure promoted as a broad ban, but that was conceived to keep Muslim girls from wearing headscarves. The state justified the ban by invoking the same secular tradition that it is now subverting, some French Muslim leaders argue.
Further muddling the government?s justification is the fact that France?s church-state separation is hardly absolute: The government and municipalities own-and are responsible for maintaining-Catholic churched built before a 1905 statute erected a wall between the religious and secular sphere.
The new measures are the latest expression of a government campaign to promote a ?French Islam? that is in harmony with France?s republican ideals and devoid of foreign theological influences. France is increasingly worried that poorly trained, mostly foreign imams who preach in mosques and prayer room across the country are spreading a radical brand of Island that can lead to terrorism and alienation from the French society. This year, it deported eight imams on the ground that they were fomenting anti-Western sentiment and violence with their sermons
..In Germany, senior politicians have called for imams to preach only in German, a demand that was amplified after a television crew filmed a Turkish-speaking imam at a Berlin mosque declaring Germans to be malodorous and unkempt infidels destined to burn in hell. The German state has set up a university-level program in Islamic theology meant to train imams?
b) Also last week, David Brooks educated the long suffering readers of New York Times Times about ?Natalism?. In that article, he introduced us to one Steve Sailer:
Garance Franke-Ruta deconstructed the Steve Sailer reference in this post. In a follow up post, he gave a a closer look to the data presented by Brooks. (If you are a David Brooks watcher, here is a Mathew Yglesias post on another Brooks column)
c) Via Amardeep, I found this article in Times .It explains a New Line?s decision to remove references to church in an upcoming screen adaptation of Philip Pullman?s ?His Dark Materials?.
'His Dark Materials' is (apparently) a trilogy about two kids fighting the church.
Amardeep notes:
d) In Locana, Anand remembered a day in India in Dec, 1992:
I find it interesting that this time the White House could not find anyone of stature on wall street willing to sell his dignity to add his name to the footnotes of history.
Both Josh Marshall and Marshall Whittman have comments worth reading.
Across the ocean, Guardian tried to be funny.
What a mess ....
I am terrible with predictions (I too expected a narrow Kerry victory). But since that has never stopped me, here is what I see as the major fallouts in immediate future of the Bush win this morning:
1) Iraq is of course going to remain a disaster. I dont see any country coming up with the additional troops necessary to give the US troops the breathing room needed to do a good job. Bush will either have to add new divisions to the existent army (unlikely) or institute a draft (also unlikely) to be able to do this with any probability of success. Even if US decides to add new divisions, the necessary approval process, recruitments and trainings will probably takes months, if not years.
This administration is likely to choose the domestically painless option of letting Iraq get Beirutized. The only remaining hope is that Allawi will prove to be a capable thug and keep Iraq relatively bottled up.
2)The $ - With the deficit as big as it is, I suspect that only the belief that the second term would be the belt tightening term has not led to a serious slide so far (and obviously thanks to the the East Asian central banks too). I find this administration fiscally reckless. The market has been brooding over that for some time now. Barring serious intervention from the European central banks, I see $ sliding against the Euro for some time.
3) Scandals - Investigative reporters will be kept busy. All the scandals that the government was struggling to keep under wraps over the last few months - the theivary in Iraq, the espionage scandals in Doug Faith's shop in the ministry of defence et al - will start leaking out. There is also no incentive to do dicey stuff to hide them any longer. The memory of these scandals will fade in 4 years.
4) Big media - The White House is gonna be brutal on the national press corp to get them to toe the line. The broadcast media will make some further moves to court the right leaning audience, but there is no chance that they would be loved back by the Fox audience.
4) Supreme court - This is the big prize. With two to three justices expected to retire over the next few years, this election will likely yield the most conservative Supreme court in a very long time. Bush is gonna get the opportunity to shape the direction of the court for the next 20 to 30 years.
6) Education - I dont know a great deal about the subject and probably should keep my mouth shut. But I do think that Bush genuinely wanted to do something constructive. I think his instincts were right, although his executions have been disastrous (like everywhere else). The empirical data from the Texas schools on which some of his policy prescriptions rested now appear tainted. Get ready for act two.
7) More Tax cuts
8) Health care - Fucked
9) Economy: - I think the over all shape of the economy is going continue to get better (so long as you dont mind the dollar bleeding) even though it is not going make us ecstatic
10) Stem cell researchers: California will pick up the best minds among those who are not moving to Europe
Daniel Drezner looks at the positive side.
I am going to try very hard to write as little as possible about US politics. Let this be a rare outburst!
Like many others, I too have followed the presidential debates and found Kerry's responses (largely) more substantive and more consistent . More importantly, Kerry's assertions in the debate, even when they were wrong, were largely in the exeggerations category. Bush's or Cheney's assertions, when they were wrong, were often in the 'lies' category and they were more frequent.
Media's narrative often failed to make this qualitative difference in the responses by the candidates or by the respective campaigns. This is not because the media is evil, but simply because mainstream media is not equipped to deal with outright distortions or disengeneuousnesses in a way that common men with their incredibly crowded lives can process quickly or easily (ie except for the political news junky population).
Television spcially, has killed nuances from public discourse. Initially, when TV popped up as a significant player in the media landscape, it tripped politicians (e.g. Nixon's disastrous TV appearances). But spinmeisters learnt fast and in the intervening decades have mostly succeeded in coopting the broadcast media.
The other sociological change has probably happened in the psychographics of mediamen. From what I read, the earlier generation of pressmen were not very well-paid (except for Time-Life and a few notable exceptions) and people could still bootstrap themselves into the newsroom through a route that often included the mail room and night schools. Today, increasing media consolidation and attractive pay in national media (specially in TV) has ensured that you need a good college education and certain degree of sophistication upfront. It has become an atractive career option (and as it should be). This has ensured that there is now a certain degree of similarity in the psychographics of the spinner and the spinned. A socially adversarial relationship doesnt exist anymore (And let me be clear that I am not mourning that at all. But it just happens to be another check that doesn't exist anymore.)
Thirdly, the straight media simply has not figured out how to deal with outlets like Fox. Mike Doogan, A letter writer in Romanesko's had it right:
"The problem is that Fox News and the Washington Times are not a balance for the New York Times and ABC News. The latter two are journalistic organizations; the former are propaganda outlets. It's confusing to a lot of people, because Fox looks like a news channel and the Washington Times looks like a newspaper.
But the truth is that journalism is a process, not a product. A journalist attempts to collect, as even handedly as possible, as many facts as possible, and to fashion them into a narrative that readers and viewers can understand. A propagandist uses facts selectively, in an attempt to convince readers and viewers of the truth of a pre-determined position."
The emergence of outlets like the Fox seems to have stupefied the press and have forced the advertisement dependent cable outlets like CNN and MSNBC to gradually move rightward over the last few years in a desperate attempt to hold on to their audience.
Lastly, a general media and campaign fascination with gotcha moments (and this really is the true gift of television - a penchant for theater) ensured that both candidates were afraid of even trying to give honest, complex answers. Most of the time, the candidates were more intent on getting their talking points across than actually debating each other. This message discipline' brought down the significance and the interestingness of the debate. I dont blame the candidates for this. Anyone who tries for an honest debate will get destroyed in the current environment.
It was left to John Stewart, the comic genius of America, to bring to the fore media's complicity in perpetuating spin in the US national discourse. In a widely downloaded and commented upon TV interview in Crossfire, Stewart savaged the crosstalk duo for their participation in a make-believe that "hurts America". It needs to be said that Stewart himself is no longer a subversive comedian on the margins of mainstream consciousness. His every utterence is now widely reported and dissected. As Slate noted he won't be able to get away with his 'I am only a comedian' act for very long.
But it is still highly amusing that it took the 'court jester' to announce on primetime television that the emperor has no clothes. I wonder wheather CNN will ever call Stewart back again.
I disagree with Prashant about the election in USA. I think Paul Glastris closer to the truth; the current US election campaign is a story of Homeric proportions:
Watching the whole sorry episode of swift boats slowly explode over the airwaves over the last few weeks and then engulf the USA presidential campaign was a surreal experience.
Looking at John Kerry today, it is obvious that the man who made this speech in 1970 (you have to scroll down to the "statement of John Kerry" or see here) is not the man who is standing for election today; although I like to believe that some of that idealism has survived 35 years of politicking, however faded it might be.
I can understand that many Americans may not agree with my judgement there (just try convincing passengers in any bus or train in Uttar Pradesh that not all Jawans may had acted honourably during their missions in Punjab or Kashmir. The unique blinkers that fervent nationalism provides you with are more pronounced in USA) Indian mythologies are in the past, Americans mythologize their present. So I can understand that many Americans are still pissed at the stance that Kerry took after coming back from war. But the fact that a group of people can rewrite what actually happened and can get away with it was something that I did not think possible; that it is considered standard operating procedure speaks volumes about the vulnerabilities of the electronic media and how pressure groups can exploit them.
Somehow, I can't help thinking about Adam Cohen's op-ed on Thoreau in NYT today.
Timothy Noah has an interesting story in Slate today on Ostracizing the people who were right on Iraq; It would have been funny if it did not involve so many dead, maimed or otherwise destroyed people.
What can I say? I lived there for quite some time; I love the place. I have some very happy memories there. And now they have elected a serial sexual predator with some very disturbing personality traits to run the state.
A few years back I had attended an e-commerce presentation by a dour banker from Minnesota. He was wearing a pinstriped suit during summer in San Jose. He started off with the announcement, ?Yes, Jesse Ventura is the governor of Minnesota. Yes, I know that he was a WWF wrestler. And no, unlike what you may think, not all of us voted for him. And I would not like to discuss this during the Q&A session?. I wonder what would my Californian friends who now do ?.
Gray Davis was no one's idea of a brilliant statesman. He was an uninspiring, run off the mill politician who had hidden the gigantic budget deficit from the electorate; Kind of what Gov. Pataki did in New York. But The Terminator is not an improvement. Schwarzenegger had spent the last two months studiously avoiding answering any policy questions. I suspect that he would be like Bush, hostage to a trusted coterie of advisers.
John Scalzi has a wonderful diatribe on his weblog.
NYT?s skeptical editorial was also good.
Josh Marshall is on a roll. He has the best follow throughs on at least two different stories that have the potential to influence the political dynamics of this country. If he is not on your bookmarks yet, take a look.
The world's smallest political quiz says that I am a centrist.
A quiz that I took last year said that I am a borderline-left libertarian (left-right -0.50, Authoritarian/Libertarian: -3.79). Unfortunately, I can no longer find that quiz online. It was rather interesting.
I recently read Dr. Arnold Kling's rejoinder to Kristol's neo- conservative agenda and Brink Lindsey's slightly older post on his libertarian worldview (via Prashant Kothari).
Both are polished, seductive arguments. But the trouble with manifestos is that it glosses over details that do not fit the ideological boundaries. The real life is messy and full of compromises. Also, people have a way of subverting good intentions of any kind. Just like conservatism is not about racial prejudice, but it has ended up as a subculture under the republican umbrella or endemic corruption is not expected to be a part of socialism, but that it what it created everywhere; I am afraid, oligopolies that may result from a lbertarian free rein will lead to its own kind of excesses.
However, if I have to set markers, I would say that I have a lot more sympathy for the libertarian agenda (as opposed to the party bearing that name) than I do for neoconservatism. The trouble specifically with libertarian ideology is that it does not provide for any exception for stuff like, say, education. Education, to me, is the great equalizer. And only big government can administer a secular education for the poor. Libertarianism also does not make any allowance either for the greed or the foolishness which is inherent in people.
I am not advocating socialism here. In India, I saw the damages that socialism can do to a country. I am a free marketeer who has acquired over the last few years a large dose of respect for the idea of strong market regulations and of regulatory bodies . I am still working my way to a viable political philosophy. But I do find certain tenets of libertarianism appealing.
I really am through talking about Iraq; at least for the foreseeable future. But I want to point you to this interesting post about the 'not so hidden agenda' in Iraq by Edward Hughes. He quoted from a fascinating document (In MSWord) that Barry Ritholtz wrote for his clients BEFORE the Iraq war started. Barry incidentally has a cool economics /market weblog that is definitely worth checking out.
Edward also speculated about the Iraq war in a post two days back in which he quoted Elliot Otti. Otti articulated much better what I now feel about the subject.
The vision of Iraq as a shining beacon of democracy and prosperity in the Middle East is likely to remain just that, an illusion. I think Juan Cole nailed it when he said that the best scenario that can be reasonably hoped for is if Iraq turns out similar to the way India is now: corrupt, inefficient, flawed, but reasonably democratic, reasonably multicultural, and reasonably peaceful.
This is the best case scenario, and it's going to take between half a trillion to a trillion dollars to achieve it, an amount that the US taxpayer is largely going to have to bankroll alone. Given that this was not a deal they signed up knowingly for, unlike the West Germans, how much will they collectively stomach? How deep will they reach into their wallets before they say "Enough is enough", and vote in a new administration on a platform of withdrawal from Iraq? And what happens to Iraq in such a case? (My guess: look at Iran).
It's easy to dismiss such concerns .... Unfortunately, liberation does not always bring a better future with it. Forty years after liberation from the British, oil-rich Nigeria has suffered a terrible civil war, numerous lesser insurgencies, decades of brutal military dictatorships, a few years of corrupt civilian governments, and the end result is that, sad as it may be, the standard of living of the average Nigerian is now lower than it was at independence. The collapse of the Soviet Union led not to prosperity in Russia, but the exchange of crony socialism for the worst kind of crony capitalism, and a drastic decline in living standards for Russians not fortunate enough to be part of the incrowd when the looting of State-held institutions commenced under Yeltsin.
I think there may be some light at the end of the tunnel. The shocking death yesterday of the UN envoy in Iraq demonstrates that Iraq is in danger of becoming a magnet for all sorts of loonies. It is actually in the interest of the international community now to clean up the mess that US is creating in Iraq. I suspect that the other western countries may now figure out some face saving way of entering the fray in Iraq. That may not make Iraq a 'shining beacon of democracy', but anything would be better than this.
The WMD justification for war has been unravelling for some time now. The carefully worded, meticulously researched article by Barton Gellman and Walter Pincus in Washington Post has destroyed whatever credibility that the US government?s original case for war had.
It is beginning to dawn on me that politics as it is practiced in the Western world is not very different from the way politics is practiced back home in India. The sleaze touches almost everyone. The politicos in US run a way more sophisticated operation, though if you dig deep as you make your way down south, you are bound to feel queasy.
I was not especially bothered about the disintegrating case for war on this side of the Atlantic. I don?t think truthfulness is this US government?s strong point. I also felt (and still feel) that the overthrow of Saddam was a good thing anyway. But what followed seems to be worse. I also had a soft corner for Blair. I believed that his support for war was based on his conviction and that the sleaze did not reach 10, Downing Street. It was of course my political naivet?.
The Hutton enquiry is giving tantalizing glimpses of the British government?s decision-making process (A more accessible Guardian coverage here). You see the footprints of Blair?s staff all over the place. That is what is so fucking sad. It is unquestionable that Gillian did a sloppy job of reporting the events. His credibility may never recover. BBC did not exactly cover itself in glory. It is now becoming evident that Alastair Campbell did not force anyone to insert the 45 minute claim into the dossier. But the crux of the BBC story was essentially correct; that the British government let questionable intelligence take center stage in their dossiers in order to sex up the case for war. The whole war of words by the British government against BBC over the semantics of their reportage distracted from that. Many people now suspect that Campbell may have feigned the outrage in order to distract attention from the story. (Whatever may be the case, you have to be impressed by Campbell as an operator!)
But if the case for WMD was completely manufactured and the relationship between iraq and Al Quaida never existed, we are bound to wonder why did the US and British governments decide to invade Iraq. At a simplistic level the answer is easy. If done right, it gives US a powerful military presence in the Middle East, a US friendly government in a country which has the second largest oil reserve in the world and allows them to alter the balance of power in the middle east. It also allowed the neoconservatives to play the fantasy game of bringing democracy to the middle east (I used to be a believer in that fiction, but looking at the chaos that the last few months of US occupation has created in Iraq, I see Beirut, not Japan.). I do think democratization of Iraq could have worked and it was possible to create in Iraq a role model for the entire Middle East. But Bush?s foreign policy team has neither the depth or maturity nor the cultural sensitivity to accomplish that. It was a right war, but wrong warriors. It was also a wrong call on my part.
At a deeper level, many people suspect that US did this in order to walk away from Saudi Arabia. There was a very persuasive story in FT a few days back. (I would try to look it up and quote from there). Commentators in Guardian also speculated about that.
The American people in the heartland, the people that this administration care about, don?t seem to care much about the innuendos and misrepresentations made in the case for war. And this government doesn?t care about international public opinion. But people obviously care about the deaths. They do care about the cost of waging this war. And the elections are coming.
Bush has a smart team of political advisers who would not let the daily trickle of deaths compromise his prospects for elections So whatever may had been the underlying reason for war, I now fear that in order to show a rosy picture back home and extricate itself before the 2004 election the US is going to continue to penny-pinch in Iraq and hand over the running of reconstruction and war to the private contractors of the kind that used run wars in West Africa. However, if the western world now washes its hands off Iraq, it would lead to its Beirutization, an exponential increase in religious fundamentalism, and a disaster that the future generations will pay for.
Mr. Timothy Noah posed a good question in Slate the other day. Why this lie?
It was known for months even to people like me, who don?t have anything to do with politics, that the British and US governments had exaggerated the WMD threat posed by Iraq in order to gain public support for war. Most people (including me) did not feel badly about it since we all agreed that Saddam was a thug and deserves to the thrown to the dustbin of history. But even those who did not think that the war was right, did not feel they could question the underlying ussumptions of war because a. the war was a popular idea b. The president had stratospheric ?ratings? and c. they could not prove that the WMD allegations were wrong.
But now that the body bags are trickling back home and sheer deprivation that the Iraqis are going through is evident to at least the media savvy, the atmosphere is slightly different. People can also afford to be more critical now because of the following chain of events:
-The fact that Joseph Wilson IV decided to open his mouth, gave an opening to the sceptics.
- The situation in Iraq has emboldened the press to follow through. Through the almost daily coverage by David Sanger of New York Times and Walter Pincus & Dana Milbank of Washington Post (who Bush snubbed in a press conference a few months back), political America is slowly reconstructing what happened behind the curtains.
- The uncharacteristic fumbling of White House compounded this. It became blatantly evident even to last day of Ari Fleisher in White House that there is serious bullshitting going on (Both TPM and Milbank had fun with it). A friend of mine from college once told me that if you wanna lie, you really gotta stick to your script. You can?t keep changing it. It is the rapid changing story line that caught every one?s attention.
-Lastly, it matters that the administration has completely pissed off the spooks. CIA leaked like there is no tomorrow. It really depends on the contrite one and his gang how long does the story last.
Meanwhile, it is feeling more and more like a John le Caree novel.. There seems to a war on against Wilson who set the ball rolling. If this story is correct, then the vendetta has already killed his wife?s career. In a rather hilarious turn of events, the ABC news reporter who reported the troop?s disaffection on TV was outed as not only gay, but also Canadian in Drudge report, apparently at the instigation of White House officials! (I don?t think any army will like to see its troops to vent in front of television cameras, but killing the messenger seems rather crude even for this administration.)
Across the ocean, Dr. David Kelly, one of the sources for Andrew Gillian?s story on BBC seem to have committed suicide after his grilling in parliament. The ministry of defense there fed him to wolves was hoping to provoke BBC into revealing their source. I felt sick as I read this. No one, neither the British government, nor the BBC comes out smelling of roses.
In Capital Influx Elizabeth Spiers quoted a funny,
"You know, I'm really disappointed in our military. I can't believe we haven't managed to plant weapons of mass destruction in Iraq yet. We were so good about planting shit [weapons caches, drugs] in Latin America in the 70s... I think I've lost my faith in the military industrial complex."
Update: Excellent backgrounder on why this is important in TPM.
I don?t intend to write regularly, or at great length about Iraq. I also suspect that only by 2008 would US may debate more earnestly and objectively about this particular misadventure. For now, I just plan to jot down from time to time, my impressions of what has been catching my interest.
I have been following the unfolding ?Who is Salam Pax?? story a tad obsessively. Many may had already read the Guardian news story which finally identified Salam Pax as a 29-year-old Iraqi architect. Incidentally, he is also writing a fortnightly column
in The Guardian.
Peter Mass was one of the Western journalists working in Iraq who was getting requests to look up Salam Pax while he was there. When he got back to the States and got down to actually reading up Salam?s weblog, he realized that Salam Pax has also been working as an interpreter for foreign journalists in Iraq. He thought it funny that both Salam Pax and him have been moving around in the same circles. He read further and it slowly dawned on him that Salam Pax has been his own interpreter in Iraq! ( Story here).
There is some conservative anger directed at Salam largely because he is being equally dismissive of the new American administration as he has been of Saddam?s. I wonder when would people figure out, that from an every day life perspective, food, safety and basic utilities are at least as important as that elusive ?thingy? called ?freedom?.
Salam Pax caught the imagination of people here largely because he is the only Iraqi commoner with a Western mind, writing on the net in an interesting way. The Iraq debate on the weblog space has largely been about Western men arguing with each other about the morality and/or logistics of intervention in Iraq. There are very few genuine Iraqi voices at the fray. Those that are there are so clothed in religiosity and / or fundamentalism of some hue or other that people elsewhere can?t relate to them. Salam Pax represents is the kind of people America wanted to liberate. So his enthusiasm for the intervention gave emotional vindication to the conservatives. Now that he is turning bitter about the occupation, those folks are feeling betrayed.
The other interesting thing to watch has been the constant leaks from the intelligence agencies on both sides of the Atlantic. The most palatable explanation of the leaks coming out of UK and USA is that the US and British administrations grossly exaggerated the risks of WMD from Saddam. Guradian has a very good summary of the story so far. Timothy Gorton Ash in an interesting essay said that 'distorted intelligence on Iraq is part of an Orwellian world of fabricated reality'.
The question that conservatives are posing is, do we care? Considering the regular discovery mass graves in Iraq, of children buried alive, of men killed at gunpoints, I don?t think anyone disputes that the world is well rid of Saddam. It does leave a very bitter taste in mouth though, that the US and British administrations deliberately mislead, or at best grossly exaggerated, the threats posed by Saddam?s Iraq. That by itself would not have mattered much if the US government seemed genuinely committed to Iraq. Where I come from, I have very low expectations from politicians. Disinformation or lies by this administration, whatever you may choose to call it, does not shock me greatly any more.
To me, the more important question has always been, would this government make enough of a commitment, to create in Iraq, a just, humane and prosperous society. Most liberals have always felt that this administration does not have the patience and inclination for nation building. And I must admit that the post war management of Iraq is so incredibly badly handled that you have to agree. There is only a very small window that you get when you have so much good will that you can make magic happen. I suspect that window of opportunity is running out in Iraq and the air of empire building rather than nation building has slowly been pervading the airwaves.
Let me wrap up with some good news about the looted treasures from the Iraqi museum.
Dr. Delong has both a serious explanation and a not so serious explanation of why Bush administration treasury secrataries tend to be accident prone. (times story here).
Delong has had some terrific posts in the last few weeks. I am yet to digest most of them. Take a look.
Update: NYT editorial on the subject.
William Pfaff has a succint summary of the enduring influence of Leo Strauss on American conservative movement in America. Scary stuff presented quite well.
Salam Pax's 'Where is Raed' weblog is now UPDATED. I, and most people who maintain weblogs and know of Salam Pax, gave up on this guy as dead. Well, he appears to have survived the Iraq war!
Today, among other things, 7000 years of cultural history in Iraq got looted.
As the looting and the killing and the burning continues, crowds in Baghdad ransacked a mental hospital for 36 hours. Two patients unable to swallow water without assistance died of thirst. Four women patients were raped.
Volunteers are dumping rotting, unclaimed corpses into mass graves. (via Electrolyte which has a good thread on it)
By all available indications, the water supply and the medical situation in Iraq is beyond desperate.
The pols running the war, laughed General Shinseki out of court when he suggested in his senate deposition that hundreds of thousands of troops will be needed to keep peace in Iraq. Gen. Shinseki of course ran the war in Bosnia. He looks more and more prescient every day. Now the common men are paying in blood for the arrogance of politicians.
Under the Hague treaty protecting the museum was a coalition responsibility. This is specially inexplicable since the marines are protecting the oil ministry in the same city. How many does it take to protect a museum? I hate to sound sarcastic. But this is probably a good time for the art dealers to take up the lobbying to change Iraq's export laws again.
I guess there is also something sick about feeling so distressed about the looting of a museum when so many people are dieing and getting maimed every day.
Update: Mefi has a thread going on about the looting in Baghdad.
Dan Rhodes, the 'retired writer' in an interview in The Telegraph:
Update: Sounds like he is having second thoughts about the retirement thing. (Via Bookslut)
Neal Pollack talks about the insanity of war:
Lieutenant Colonel Tim Collins of the British Army, on March 20th, in a speech to his troops, that is worth remembering today:
You will be embarrassed by their hospitality even though they have nothing. Don't treat them as refugees for they are in their own country. Their children will be poor, in years to come they will know that the light of liberation in their lives was brought by you.
If there are casualties of war then remember that when they woke up and got dressed in the morning they did not plan to die this day.
Allow them dignity in death. Bury them properly and mark their graves. .....
You will be shunned unless your conduct is of the highest for your deeds will follow you down through history. We will bring shame on neither our uniform or our nation."
(the last two links via Electrolyte)
Finally, it is 'over'. I don't know what the future holds for Iraq, for middle east, for the greater world. Unless US spectacularly messes up, they should be able to build big time on the happiness of the people on the streets of Baghdad today. As one my colleagues said, the economy should get a boost from all the 'reconstruction' efforts. Oil prices should come down.
I am also very glad that someone dear to us whom the corps was sending to Kuwait next week, no longer needs to go there. War is hell not only on the civilians on the war zone and the soldiers, it is psychological hell for the old parents, wives, lovers watching from far away.
But today, from one rather jaded Asian in another corner of the world, let me just offer my good wishes to the people of Iraq.
I hope the US administration doesn't screw up, even though deep in my heart I know that history of US intervention in Asia (except in Japan) is a history of screw ups. I worry that the long term impact of this US intervention in Iraq may be disastrous for USA, middle east, the economy, the fragile world peace (non US western media shares the unease). But as I indicated in my previous posts, no one deserves Saddam. I dont have a great deal of faith in this administration's foreign policy or its humanity. But who knows, something good may actually come out of it.
Sy Hersh's highly anticipated story on the battle between Rumsfeld and Pentagon is now online in today's New Yorker. The fact that Pentagon is leaking this stuff speaks volumes. (Update NYT has a good follow up story).
I am reasonably sure that US military will correct course and sort out this mess over the next few weeks. If all the stories about the non-pause in the media are any indication, the course correction is already under way.
Rumsfeld is a political survivor. Unless things start turning really bad in the battlefield, he too will survive this. Though the fact that the knives are already out can not bode well for him. He doesn't seem to have made very many friends!
Josh Marshall posted some scary speculations from a former diplomat about where this war may be headed. I don't think it is going to be as bad as he outlined. I think US will win militarily without great cost. But the political costs are already enormous. We are going to see a huge polarization between the modern West and what might be increasingly Islamized middle east. And this polarization will work more to the detriment of the people in middle east. They will take shelter in religious fundamentalism. Unless a joyous mob greets the coalition in Baghdad, this is going to set the people in middle east back by at least 20 more years.
I did not think that it is possible to mess up the overthrow of an obviously unpopular thug from power. But we are obviously watching that in slow motion.
The war enjoys enormous support at home. It took two different presidencies, thousands of dead American soldiers and the fear of draft to wake up the people in USA about Vietnam. With half the Americans believing that Iraqis were responsible for 9/11, I don't see support for war flagging.
I hope this war gets over soon. The question is what will follow. I would like to believe that democracy in Iraq is on the agenda. Marshall outlined another scary scenario. I wish I could say with conviction that it is paranoia on his part.
Check out this hilarious flash animation on US aid to Afghanistan.
USA today has a cool map charting the progress of US troops over the last 7 days.
Talking of maps, this is the mother of all maps resources for Iraq.
As I speculated yesterday, Al Jazeera did get DOSed. There is also a lot of anti war hacking going on.
One of the more surprising ironies of this war is that Wall Street Journal (print edition) has one of the most objective war coverages, while Washington Post seems to be kinda selective about what it prints and how it is presented.
Hindu has an interesting news item that claims that US is trying to instigate a Shia uprising by pushing Majid Al Khoei militia into Basra. (For those who don't know, Hindu is a staid, solid paper, not given to hyperbole). I love a popular uprising as much as the next person. But I am not hot on the idea of Shia militias or any religious fanatics for that matter. I should have thought that US learnt at least that from Afghanistan.
Talking Points Memo has been consistently providing terrific analysis of disastrous US diplomatic efforts and its potential impact.
This image of Elizabeth Heathman, 4 years old, clutching a photo of her father St. Kelly Heathman of third infantry is heart wrenching. (via comments at the Agonist.org).
Incidentally, Agonist got mentioned by by both NYT and CNN today. I think Sean Paul is doing a much better job than most of mainstream US media.
I don't quite know how they are doing it, but this site is hooked on to all the war TV channels that you can think of, including Al Jazeera. (via Russian Beauty). Incidentally, Al Jazeera now has a news site in English. From what I can see so far, it does seem biased, but it also provides information earlier than the US media. (Update: I hear that the site is in the middle of a Denial of Service attack. Alternately, it has gone down under the traffice. Not that it was providing objective news! But at least it was an alternate source.)
Ha'aretz has a good, objective analysis of the war over the last 3 days (via TalkingPointsMemo).
I think Reuters has the best ongoing news coverage. Slate has an interesting guide deconstructing pundits & another guide to news sources on the web. The TV coverage makes me want to throw up.
Among the weblogs, Agonist is doing a damn good job. Kevin Sites, a CNN photographer, started an interesting photoblog from inside Iraq. But it looks like CNN made him stop. The only Iraqi blogging from Baghdad (that I know of) has been silent since last friday. I hope he and his family are alright.
Christopher Albritton is stumbling around somewhere in Norther Iraq and is updating his blog from there. Nick Denton is posting the e-mails that he is getting from his journalist friend inside Iraq.
This is depressing.
There is something vulger about the broadcast media's anticipation of 'Shock and Awe'. They seem to be treating it like a giant reality show.
I am very glad that Saddam will to be gone. I think whoever or whatever replaces him will be at least better than him and I hope that Iraqi people will have a better life than they do now. Salam Pax's post expresses that hope too.
I am under no illusion that the US administration is engaging in this war primarily to take out nuclear weapons. The recycled cold warriors that manage defence policy in this administration lost their souls a very long time back.
Be that as it may, Iraqi people will still have a much better shot at life after this. They may not be greatly better off. It is possible that the majority of their oil wealth will be sucked off by large US corporations rather than by Saddam's cronies. But I hope that they don't have to live constantly under fear after this.
The wreck of the international order, organizations, and protocols that follows this, will take years to heal. In that, the US government is not behaving very differently from the way the Romans or the Brits did before them or the Chinese may do 50 years down the line. I am not shocked into disbelief. But this cynic's heart still despairs.
What makes me feel really nauseous are remarks, comments like this quoted in Atrios:
AAARRRRRRGGGGH!!!!!
I have been watching Fox almost non-stop (save for 20-30 minute 'naps') since Wednesday nite! I even took off work yesterday. So this morning I'm on my way into work, and Rush starts reporting that sirens going off in BaghDAD (thanks for the pronunciation, Shep)! I have THE WORST luck ever!
Someone should post screen captures from Fox for those of us cubicle bound saps.
42 posted on 03/21/2003 9:27 AM PST by dware (ingredients include mechanically separated chicken and beef parts) "
If anyone wants to know what a wargasm looks like, click that thread then go weep for your country.
Power and weakness by Robert Kagan in Policy Review articulated the viewpoints of many in the current Bush administration. It was a highly influential article that gets quoted a lot. It is also very long (over 27 pages).
In 'Europe and America: Some know more about war', William Pfaff in IHT considers people who are looking at the same issues from a different looking glass.
Nex stop Baghdad? by Kenneth Pollack in Foreign Affairs magazine is the precursor to Pollack's highly influential book 'The threatening storm: the case for invading Iraq'. Pollack was the former director for gulf affairs at the National Security Council during the Clinton administration. The link is to the abstract of the article. To read the complete article, you gotta pay. Josh Marshall has an interview with Pollack in his weblog. Also, you may want to read Marshall's current thoughts on the subject. A lot of people are going through similar hand wringing.
An unnecessary war by John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt does a fairly decent job of countering the argument of Kenneth Pollack that Saddam is ?unintentionally suicidal.? It goes on to say that
effectively what it did.
Dreaming of democracy by George Packer is an article on Iraqi dissidence built around the story of Kanan Makiya. Packer has a heart and writes with sympathy and knowledge.
This is transcript of a conversation with General Anthony Zinni. Retired Marine General Anthony Zinni commanded the US Central Command from 1997 to 2000. He was also President Bush's special emissary for Palestine-Israel dispute. In this conversation, he speaks against a war with Iraq now.
Guardian website has a collection of 30 interviews that present a spectrum of viewpoints.
Just what I needed. A weblog from Baghdad. (via Oblomovka)
I think I am going to follow Anil's example and have a daily links side bar kind of thing. However, I want to loosely categorise the links so that I can look them up later if I want to. I'll figure it out as I go along ...
Michael Wolff has a highly readable story in NY Metro about the ouster of Ann Godoff from Random House. (via mobilives)
Five wars of globalization is an analysis of how cross border illicit trades in drugs, arms, intellectual property, people, and money are raging and how governments are losing that fight. I haven't read it yet. But it looks like a damn good read. (via Z+blog)
Timothy Garton Ash's article on Anti-Europeanism in America is very well written. There is thread on this on mefi somewhere. I'll link to it later.
Also, someone ought to tell that judge that Bappi Lahiri became famous only through outrageously ripping other people's music. They should have forced the prosecution to listen to some of the crap that this guy produces. (via Anil)
The note provides an exhaustive analysis of the State of the Union address and its media coverage.
It goes on to note:
Quoted from document 27 of this Electronic Briefing Book in National Security Archive. via Dave's blog.
Dave Barry's books and columns are an absolute riot. It is good to see that we have sent his new weblog to the top of blogdex today.
Ed Keating lost his job in NYT over the report that he staged a photograph for a sensitive NYT story. Village Voice seems to the only publication that (kind of) defended him.
For example, when Keating was detained by Serb soldiers in Kosovo in 1999, he charmed his captors by playing a mean version of "Mr. Tambourine Man" on the harmonica. In 1991, when Keating was covering the riots in Crown Heights, he was almost beaten to death by a crowd of black men. Two transit cops discovered his bloody body and took him to the hospital, where he got 50 stitches in the back of the head. ....
Keating has always landed on his feet, but few expected him to survive the wrath of Times executive editor Howell Raines and managing editor Gerald Boyd. ..... After all, Columbia's School of Journalism is the home of the Pulitzers and a training ground for Times employees. Given the Times' cozy relationship with Columbia, CJR's allegations carry more weight than they would coming from an antagonist. "
(both links via Romenesko's media news)
Keating was part of the NYT team that won a pulitzer last year for its coverage of 9/11 (he was also arrested by the NY port authority police for photographing the recovery of bodies of their fellow workers). His photo essay Rt 66: A Journey Across America is still available in the NYT archive.
It can be argued that a lot of photojournalism is orchestrated by someone or other. That many more important events are either staged or manipulated by or for photographers. But still this doesn't feel right.
I hope Keating manages to pick up the pieces of his life and continue to make great images.
...Trust me: we're going to miss Rubinomics. Maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of our lives. "
From Off the Wagon by Paul Krugman.
Krugman also makes a reference to Brad Delong's post on the subject that I linked to earlier.
To my mind, Paul Krugman's op-eds provide one of the most cogent and accessible deconstructions of the US economic policy. Washington Monthly did a very good, balanced story on him last Dec. Pretty much everything that he writes on the web can be found here
In case you did not see it before, check out this hilarious reply that Krugman wrote in response to the question of a drstrangelove-ga in 'google answers'. (Original google thread here).
A lot of times, I have to reread Brad DeLong a couple of times to get what he is trying to say.
I am not sure I completely understand all the arguments for and against the relationship between deficit and long term economic growth presented in the comments section . But none of those detract from his core argument of why it's time for Glenn Hubbard to quit as CEA Chair.
A more accessible story that provides background is here.
Update: Two defences of Glen Hubbard
Doug Marlette has a gift for pissing people off.
My favourite has always been Doonsbury. Trenchant, acerbic and an 'equal opportunity offender'.
Phoebe Gloeckner's website has some interesting stuff. (via Susannah Breslin's guestblog on Boingboing).
Update: Also see Best and worst of comics in Times (via LinkMachinego)
This whole Trent Lott episode has brought so many ugly things about American political life to the surface, that I have trouble believing in the basic fairness of the system. I used to think that people who percolate up to higher offices tend to have at least their belief systems right. Argh! Lott simply happened to be in the eye of the storm. He certainly isn't alone in his beliefs and neither is the triumph of politics over ethics as infrequent as we would like to believe.
I do think that the world continues to get better for the vast majority of people. Dartung has some cheerful news in his weblog. But Good eventually triumphing over evil is just so much crap that we are given as children.
Happy holidays.
PS: In case you saw the unedited version of this post earlier: Yes, I abridged the post. I'll take another stab at the financial regulation stuff later.
"There's been much head scratching on the Hill as to why Democrats, un-led by outgoing Senate Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle's comments on the Lott controversy, took so long to react to Senate GOP Leader Trent Lott's keen historical reflections. Best answer we've heard is from one Democratic staffer who noted this is the time of year when office space is allocated for the new Senate next month. And who's in charge of those decisions? Of course -- Trent Lott."
(via In the loop)
I wanted to write about my weekend (which was nice), but instead I read 'Stability, America's enemy' an old commentary on American foreign policy by Ralph Peters. It is incredibly erudite and sweeping in scope. I don't agree with a lot of what Mr. Peters says, but it is thought provoking and definitely worth reading. (via The heart of things)
I hope I am not being gullible in finding relief in Musharraf's statement. Folks back home are unstressed. Thanks to years of abuse of public trust by the politicians, Indians have gotten inured to the rhetoric. While I am not a fan of BJP, I have more faith on the humanity of Vajpayee's defence team than of Musharraf's. India also has overwhelming superiority in conventional forces. I don't really know whether a structured nuclear command structure exists inside Pakistan. If India escalates beyond a certain point, the temptation to do to lasting damage to India can be very high amongst some sections in Pakistan. So, Musharraf's statement is a huge relief, though I don't know to what extent one should trust the General.
I read depressing news all weekend. I read the incredibly sad story (by Bruce Feldman) of a fifteen year old prodigy whose life was pretty much destroyed by the college football team, apathetic college authorities and clueless parents (via metafilter). It is when I read stuff like this; I feel that in a lot of ways people in India are much, much better off. I read this devastating indictment of Robert Mugabe's reign in Zimbabwe (via Lakefx) by Philip Gourevitch. I urge you to read it even if it churns your stomach. The world needs to know what is going on out there. I have also started reading Robert Kaplan's 'Soldiers of God'. The first chapter is called 'Walking through a minefield' and is depressing as hell.
I need some cheerful news!
A post on the reactions in Paris to Le Pen's surprising win (is it?). In other news: Metafilter is still down and I was reassured to find that others are showing withdrawal symptoms too.
Update: More on the Le Pen win- Caterina posted from France about the popular reaction on the streets of Paris. Paul Krugman's NYT column (registration needed) tries to draw parallels between USA and France using the Le Pen upset victory as an example. And yes, and metafilter is up again. Apparently, it was Verizon's T1 line acting up ...
Not trying to turn this into a world affair weblog!. But I just wanted to point out that Douglas Rushkoff now has a weblog. His posts on the middle-east conflict (and a few of the comments on them) are worth reading (via mefi).
Kenichi Ohmae has written a terrific article on China's economic juggernaut, 'Profits and Perils in China, Inc.' (registration required), in the current issue of strategy + business. I dont like his implied advise to the Western governments to ignore the human rights situation in China. But as reportage, its a great read.
As an Indian, I am sad that India has not been able to achieve what China is poised to. As a strong believer in free market economy and human rights, I am slightly alarmed by the conclusions drawn by Ohmae. But his description of what he calls Chung-hua Inc. (Chung-hua, or Zhong Hua, as it is spelled in Beijing, translates into English as ?China,? and actually means ?the prosperous center of the universe.?) sounds right.
Russia is finding the going much tougher. Esther Dyson is probably the only person who seems really positive about Russia's economic outlook. In the current issue of Wired (not yet available online) she had forecast that in the next few decades Russia will be ahead of Uniter States in software development. But software development expertise alone, unless it is followed by infrastructural development in other spheres, won't be able to bootstrap the entire country's economy. It would, however, create a large cosmopolitan middle class that would become a catalyst for all sorts of interesting social changes. We know that one in India.
I know this is all over the net. But I simply can't resist this. From 'Washington Post', Nixon, holding forth on homosexuality:
"You know what happened to the Greeks. Homosexuality destroyed them. ....Do you know what happened to the Romans? The last six Roman emperors were fags. . . . You know what happened to the popes? It's all right that popes were laying the nuns. ....That's been going on for years, centuries, but when the popes, when the Catholic Church went to hell in, I don't know, three or four centuries ago, it was homosexual. . . . Now, that's what happened to Britain, it happened earlier to France. And let's look at the strong societies. The Russians. Goddamn it, they root them out, they don't let 'em hang around at all. You know what I mean? I don't know what they do with them. ....Dope? Do you think the Russians allow dope? Hell no. Not if they can catch it, they send them up. You see, homosexuality, dope, uh, immorality in general: These are the enemies of strong societies. That's why the Communists and the left-wingers are pushing it. They're trying to destroy us."
Provocative op-ed by Thomas Friedman in today's NYT. Friedman's argument is that while the Bush administration may have shown lack of forethought and pigheadedness in defining an 'axis of evil' where no such axis exists, there is no doubt that evil exists in those countries and this administration's willingness to take on those regimes is encouraging. While on the subject of 'Axis of evil': this satire by Andew Marlatt of National Post is hilarious.
I usually dont give much credence to conspiracy theories. Most such theories tend to be idle speculation. Nevertheless, 'United Flight 93 Crash Theory Home Page' seems to bring out some interesting inconsistencies in the flight 93 story that we know so well. (via Rebeccablood). I think that even if that flight actually was shot down ( it seems highly unlikely that something this big can be kept secret), under the circumstances it was fully justified.
I can't resist the temptation to post this Justice department cover-up. Hilarious! (via Mefi).
Audio and text of Martin Luther King's 'I have a dream' speech. It is one of the most powerful speeched that I have ever read. First time I heard it was on TV - I was a kid in high school in India. I still get goosebumps when I read it now.
Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former CIA spy in the Middle East, argues that the only way to douse the fires of Islamic radicalism is through stunning, overwhelming, military force.
Atlantic Unbound | Interviews | 2001.12.28
This Is Not a Test is a great op-ed piece in today's NYT about the latest flare-up between India and Pakistan in today's NYT
Russia - its history, its land, its art and literature has always inspired awe in my mind. I dont quite understand what is happening in Russia today. Usually whatever happens there is of epic proportions and usually tragic in natureThis A story in today's LA Times about Putin's Q&A with the people make me feel so sad. I come from a country where people expect very little from there politicians. So a little bit of decency makes them grateful. And the politicians exploit that. Putin's exploitation of the media seems to be in similar vain. A lot of people write that this guy is different. That even KGB can breed a decent man. I certainly hope so. The tragedy of Russia, its maffia,its nuclear arms, its hard working and bitter and bright engineers,its alocoholism, the stoicism of its people - it all has the potential of coalascing into something very sad and potentially dangerous for the world.
A Hatred Smoldering In the Hills is a sad poignant story from a year old issue of NYT. I got the link while browsing through caterina.net. That site has references to lots of interesting books, art, music etc.
'Rising Threat, Uneven Response' (washingtonpost.com) is another good story on US response to Terrorism during the Clinton years. Together they give a fairly comprehensive view of US thinking on terrorism during those years and what really went wrong.
'Broad Effort Launched After '98 Attacks' (washingtonpost.com) is a fascinating story about the behind the scene efforts to take out Bin Laden during the Clinton presidency.
This was the original, rather rambling Jonah Goldberg?s article on National Review about what John Walker's crossing the line and the media commentary on the subject says about the American society. It predictably took off on what he calls 'libertarians' and not so predictably took off on Andrew Sullivan too. I thought that it was rather well written and had some interesting, provocative ideas. It caused a predictable furore. Subsequently a lot of people including Andrew Sullivan (www.andrewsullivan.com) published rejoinders and Goldberg has been penning rebuttals ever since. I think what he wrote originally (including the NYT link the article points to) is worth reading. I havent bothered to read the subsequent articles
I rather like Jonah Goldberg's writing. At various points of time in my life, I have called myself a liberal or a centrist. I usually hate to declare myself - since you are then kind of expected to defend all sorts of orthodoxies associated with that position - that you may not agree with. And the label becomes a royal pain. Also I realize that my political and moral beliefs have evolved quite a bit over the last few years as I migrated across different cultural and gegraphical boundaries. If you are intellectually honest and lead an vibrant life where you are open to ideas - the absolute positions that you have taken in the past may in hindsight seem embarassing. Well, what I am trying to say here is - by Goldberg's definition, I would probably be considered a libertarian.
Thomas Friedman's columns in NYT are almost always very lucid, articulate, specially when he is writing about the middle East or Islamic fundamentalism. His years as foreign correspondent in the middle east light his commentary.Spiritual Missile Shield is right in the sense that Islamic countries do need better quality of leadership. I dont really agree with his view of the masses being hungry for a new breed of leaders. But that is food for another day.