UNRAVELING THE "ANTI-WAR" PARTY'S ILLOGIC
Suppose that, being unemployed, I propose to go to the church, passing Mazzini's shop and buying some candles, make a votive offering to the Virgin and pray for help in finding a job.

My four family members all object, but for different reasons.

My father agrees that I should get a job. But he objects to the plan because he's an atheist and thinks all religion is a load of hooey.

My brother agrees that I should get a job, and thinks that praying for one could be effectual. He objects because he is a Protestant and thinks that candles and Virgins are a distortion of the Christian religion.

My sister is a Catholic and is all for burning candles and praying to the Virgin. But she objects because she doesn't think I should be looking for a job, but should pursue further education instead.

And my mother objects because she knows that Cabroni's, which is just a little further than the church, sells candles for half the price that Mazzini's does.

Now, all four of my family members object to the plan, and if I proceed with it, they may all feel similarly offended. And perhaps they'll even have a certain impulse to make common cause. But they can't, because their objections are not only different but quite incompatible. If they try to pack their arguments into one, it will end up something like this:

"You wasted money at Mazzini's for candles that were cheaper at Cabroni's, to pray in a manner using candles and icons of the Virgin which is a distortion of the Christian faith, to a God who doesn't exist anyway, for a job that you shouldn't even be looking for because you ought to be getting more education."

The trouble with this is, first, it is not particularly coherent, second, none of my family members actually agree with the whole thing.

The anti-war movement is in a position similar to that of my four family members.

Bush and Blair had a plan: using a relatively small number of troops, with the stated motive of capturing and neutralizing the threat of WMDs, but with or without explicit UN authorization, we would attack and deal a swift knock-out blow to one of the nastiest regimes in the Middle East, then occupy the country and supply large dollops of reconstruction aid so that the country could get back on its feet, while politically laying the foundations for a democratic constitution, which, in turn, would trigger a "democratic domino effect," leading ultimately to the dissolution of all the disgusting old dictatorships in the Middle East.

Now, there are many possible objections to this plan, and a lot of them are quite plausible.

The pacifist objection: All wars are bad. Even in self-defense no individual has the right to kill (the Amish / Gandhian position) or must apply it only as the very last resort. No country should ever fight unless its borders are violated, and even then it should take the obligation with the utmost seriousness.

The national-interest objection: The US should wage war only when there is a compelling national interest. Saddam's WMDs, if he has any, are not a sufficiently large threat to justify the expenditure of money and diplomatic capital that the war will require. As for the Iraqis' freedom, or the lives of the children destroyed by sanctions, these are no part of the US national interest.

The anti-American objection: America is a cruel, vicious, greedy imperialist power, and all its works are bad. We must oppose all the actions of this "totalitarian democracy," for they are always in the interest of enhancing its capitalistic and corporate power.

The UN, international law objection: The war against Saddam can only be legitimately waged with the authorization of the UN. Since the interpretation of Resolution 1441 was unclear, and since some members of the UN Security Council clearly did not think it authorized a war, a second, clearer resolution would be needed.

The anti-democratic objection: Democracy and freedom are bad, opening the door to libertinism, chaos, and crime. Iraq should be ruled by an iron fist, not the will of the people.

The "human rights" objection: In the course of war, the US was likely to end up violating human rights; at Abu Ghraib, they did so. Human rights are sacred and must not be violated. (This is perhaps the most transparently weak of all the arguments, since Saddam's regime, as well as all the Arab regimes and about half the regimes on the planet, violate human rights much worse than the abuses at Abu Ghraib.)

The anti-Arab objection: Arabs are a benighted people who can't handle democracy. Trying to bestow it on them is misguided, and doomed to end in failure.

The anti-colonial objection: Colonization is bad and occupying Iraq is like a new phase of colonialism. (This is also one of the dumber objections, since the occupation is fairly obviously temporary.)

The anti-Islam objection: Muslims are fanatics and unfit for democracy. America should stay away from that bad crowd.

The al-Qaeda objection: the caliphate must triumph! For the infidel to be present on the lands of Islam is an affront to our faith, and must be avenged! This will set back the cause of jihad, through which all Muslim lands are regained for the caliphate from their treasonous, apostate rulers.

The philanthropy-first objection: The Iraq war may benefit a lot of people, but if the US will spend $100 billion, it could do more good by providing AIDS drugs to Africa free, and putting more money into various kinds of foreign aid.

Now many of these arguments have some merit, but they can't really be combined with each other. If you place a high value on order, you have to understand that this may sometimes involve sacrificing human rights. If you want to establish the caliphate, you probably aren't bigoted against Muslims. If you are a pacifist, then you can't accept the idea that the US should deploy force calculatingly so as to advance its national interests. In fact, pacifist arguments would fit very uncomfortably with international law arguments, too, since enforcing international law sometimes involves a resort to war. Pacifists, supporters of international law, al-Qaedists, human rights advocates of the more fuzzy-headed and quixotic kind, conservative anti-Arab bigots, soulless supporters of the US national interest whatever the cost, all may agree on this, but they are still deeply divide. If they try to mingle their arguments together, the result will be deeply incoherent.

That is more or less what has happened in the past year and a half. People who oppose the war in Iraq for completely different and incompatible reasons try to make common cause, to join their arguments together, and infuse the resulting arguments into the mainstream media's interpretation of the war. They have succeeded, but the result is vastly illogical and irrational, and an unbearable tangle of cognitive dissonance lies within. It's painful to watch the anti-war crowd writhe.

The Abu Ghraib scandal brings all this silliness to the surface. It will take years for the world to recover from the intellectual atrocity of the "anti-war" crowd. But I blame the Europeans above all. So Germans think that:

"America must now prove to the world that it is different from the dictatorships it is fighting against."

It's difficult to express adequate contempt for this point of view. There are many plausible arguments against the war that overthrew the world's most murderous tyrant, but human rights is most definitely not one of them. How stupid are the Germans, to think that proof of America's moral superiority to Saddam's murderocracy is somehow lacking?

What is deeply, deeply humiliating is that we are allies of the Europeans? Can we please put an end to this wretched trans-Atlantic relationship?! I don't mind paying the price of diplomatic isolation, higher oil prices, greater risk of terror attacks, whatever, just as long as we don't have to call these mindless, cringing, wretched hypocrites our allies.

A CONSOLATION
In the spring of 1945, the Soviet army descended upon Germany and exacted its vengeance in a vast orgy of rape and murder. There were literally millions of rapes and summary executions as the Soviets visited upon the Germans what the Germans had visited upon so many other countries.

A friend of mine in Moscow told me that "you're the new Nazis." He admitted that we hadn't committed Nazi-scale atrocities yet, but predicted that "tens of millions of dead" was just a matter of time. All right, well, suppose he's right, we are the Nazis, and the world will fight back and crush us and, like the Germans in 1945, we will suffer at their hands what others did to us. What do we have to expect?

I should say that I think I probably could be "broken" by torture. I was once in the hospital and had an allergic reaction to a drug which... well, perhaps the drug should say nameless, but it caused extremely painful muscle spasms, so that my parents commented that it looked like I was possessed by a demon. I remember the sheer horror, not knowing when the pain would strike, or where, or when it would end. I remember screaming, howling for the nurses to come, enraged that they attended to other patients even though there was really nothing they could do. I used to say that if I ever became a spy and were captured, all they would have to do is say, "Talk or you'll get a dose of Reglan, and I'd tell them whatever I knew."

By contrast, when the world avenges itself upon our new Nazi empire, we will be... hmm... hooded, stripped naked, left in the cold for a few hours, given a bunch of empty threats... Honestly, I can take that. It would be annoying, but it wouldn't "break" me. If that's the worst vengeance we'll suffer, I'm not going to lose any sleep over it.

IN DEFENSE OF AL QAEDA
It might not be so bad if Al Qaeda won. The truth is, they don't want to rule the whold world necessarily; at least they're not going to insist on it in the short run. They just want to unite the lands which are currently Islamic under a caliphate, and dissolve the corrupt states that currently exist there. Life under the caliphate might not be so bad. The early Muslims were actually quite tolerant towards Christians and Jews, "People of the Book," and they were enamored of scholarship, too. Islamic architecture is beautiful, it feels like you're living in a fairy tale. Indeed, my last experience in a Muslim country-- Uzbekistan-- was the most wonderful week of my life.

Don't get me wrong, they have to be beaten. Like the socialists, Al-Qaedists are utopians: their goal is appealing, actually, but not really attainable, and meanwhile they are willing to resort to barbarities in order to reach it; inevitably, the vision ultimately can only sink under the weight of the barbarities by which it is pursued. But at least there's a basic quantity of logic, conviction and courage in al-Qaeda that I can respect, which is more than I can say for mainstream public opinion in Europe or, their newly-recruited ally, the US mainstream media. What European public opinion seems to have concluded, and even US public opinion is shifting towards, dragged by the relentless image war waged by the media, is that the war in Iraq was not justified because it led to things like prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib (plus, needless to say, the abuses at Abu Ghraib were not militarily necessary). This conclusion is so infuriatingly illogical that to watch it played across TV screens constantly has made me pretty much despair of civilization. This world is populated by idiots!...

The National Review saved me. I don't usually like these people (they're too far right for me) but all of a sudden they're an oasis of sanity in a world gone mad. Here they dissect the media's extravagant bias. And here they describe how the chaos in Iraq is following the script of the Zarqawi memo (an intercepted memo in which Iraq's top terrorist describes his strategy.)

Thank you, National Review, from the bottom of my heart. Maybe logic is not totally dead.

WILL NEOCONSERVATISM LOOK INWARDS?
Here's a stylized history of the decades after World War II: stylized, to be precise, so as to provide a road map which I hope America will follow again. America suffered a devastating attack (Pearl Harbor, September 11th) and responded with a massive mobilization of its economic and moral resources for a war against tyranny and terror; it overthrew the regime which attacked it (Japan, the bin Laden-sponsored Taliban) as well as another somewhat irrelevant but disgustingly wicked regime (Hitler's Germany, Saddam's Iraq). Meanwhile, as an answer to the misguided fanatics with whom we were fighting, and to give our soldiers something worth fighting and dying for, our leaders (Roosevelt, Bush) articulated and made America the self-appointed proselytizer of a lofty creed of freedom. We won the wars and freed a lot of people, and became very much in love with ourselves and exhilarated by what we could achieve.

But then, after the war took a sordid turn (Korea and early Vietnam; prisoner abuse in Abu Ghraib) we began to doubt ourselves, and the struggle (against communism, against Islamofascism) took an introspective turn. We began to ask: how well do we really exemplify the ideals we are trying to propagate? We began to take the beam out of our own eye, so that we could see clearly to take the mote out of our brother's eye. Last time, this led to the 1960s, the civil rights struggle, the war on poverty. This time...

I'm not sure whether the new economic ideas of the Bush team, described here in The Economist, really represent neoconservatism looking inwards, but it's interesting to think about.

But talk to the cleverer Republicans around the Bush-Cheney campaign, and it becomes clear that a much more comprehensive agenda exists. It centres on equipping Americans to compete in the global economy by reducing tax, trade, legal and regulatory burdens as well as revamping education and training. The goal is not simply lower taxes, but the eventual elimination of all taxes on investment income. Republicans will use a second term to push an “ownership society” in which people can prepare for their health-care and retirement costs with individual, portable accounts.

What would you have done in the Iraqis' shoes? Ask yourself that. Most of them want security, democracy, peace, but to get them takes civil engagement, cooperation, taking risks. Would you have founded a political party, a newspaper, or a business? Would you have volunteered for the Iraqi police, and done your duty even when some friends saw you as an infidel, and the insurgents were trying to kill you? Or would you have succumbed, been part of the passive masses who seem to be letting a pack of bloodthirsty fanatics hijack their future? Maybe you've never thought about it... But I suspect the administration has. They've done a lot of soul-searching. And now they're bringing liberation home. They're going to see whether we have what it takes to get out of dependency and make the world a better place, by being entrepreneurs, by not relying on the government to subsidize our retirement, by competing in the global economy.

Well, here's hoping that that's what they have in mind. Here's my stake in this fight: if Americans came to believe that they really were competitive in a global economy, maybe we wouldn't be afraid to open the borders and let that global economy flow in.

DISILLUSIONING THE WORLD
Things have gotten bad when newspapers in China and Iran can broadside the US on human rights grounds. In Iran, where the official ideology considers America the "Great Satan," and China, where communist ideology traditionally holds that America is the ringleader of capitalist imperialists, prisoner abuse is a useful confirmation of the revolutionary narratives that legitimize the regime. Thus the People's Daily:

Then why did he Pentagon turn a blind eye to these savage acts? One reason is that atrocity like maltreatment of prisoners of war is seemingly a common practice in the history of American army. During the Vietnam War, US soldiers broke into a rural hospital where they killed 64 wounded people and raped and killed more than 70 nurses at a stretch; and the world-shocking My Lai Village massacre has become a symbol of indiscriminate killing by US troops during the Vietnam War.

The writer goes on to harangue the idea of American exceptionalism, and here he has a point:

The "America exception" is also an outward manifestation of the "America superiority" theory. The US neo-conservatives, cherishing a little short of fanatic missionary feeling, not only regard themselves as persons chosen by the God, who carry the mission of saving and leading the whole human race, but also are convinced that only the American social system and values are the best, which should therefore be vigorously promoted worldwide. In the eyes of Americans, civilizations and social systems different from those of America are "barbarous", or even "evil", if not "tyrannical", so they don't deserve humane treatment at all. In the words of former US President Reagan: Only the language (force) they understand can be used in having dealings with them.

The statement is unfair in some ways. Reagan's problem was neither with other "civilizations"-- we had amicable enough relations with non-Western democracies and even funded Afghan freedom fighters against the Soviets-- nor with "social systems"-- we got along just fine with socialist-leaning Scandinavia-- but with other political systems that were authoritarian and denied human rights, like communism; he believed they only understood the language of force, and he was quite right about that. As for "the mission of saving and leading the whole human race..." Well, yes, in a way. I mean, we saved Europe from the Nazis and led them through the Cold War. They couldn't have defended themselves against the Soviets without us. People all over the world are embracing market democracy, mostly of their own free will. The rights of man, democracy, freedom of speech, a whole range of inventions and technologies, a society without extreme poverty, now the Internet: time and again, America leads the way. We do have a "chosen people" complex, and we're not the only ones-- almost every nationality from the Jews to the Chinese to the Japanese to the Poles to the Russians to the English to the Germans and above all, gad!, the narcissistic and conceited French, has had some kind of "chosen people" complex during its history-- but ours is the most public, and it can hardly help but rub other people the wrong way.

This neocon offers the following olive-branch: yes, we Americans have a mission to try and save the whole human race as best we can, but so does every nation and every human being; we should all be on the lookout for an opportunity to do something good for others. We just happen to have been well-favored, and at this particular moment, we have a whole lot to give, whether it be the Internet, our language as a global lingua franca, liberty for Iraq, or the example of prosperous, free democratic capitalism that all may emulate who so desire. More and more, China too has much to give: cheap goods, a market for the products of their Asian neighbors, and perhaps they could even oblige us by trying to articulate the secret of their marvellous economic growth, so that poor countries can emulate that. Neoconservatism means liberty, equality and fraternity for every human being on God's great earth. In the struggle to get there, let each give according to his ability, and be given unto according to his need.

A TASK FOR BLAIR
Here's a suggestion for Tony Blair, let's he takes it: suggest publicly to Donald Rumsfeld that he resign.

Blair is little esteemed by the British public nowadays, the "poodle" charge has started to seem more convincing. But he is very popular in America. He even, I suspect, has some sway over American opinion.

If Blair made the case against Rumsfeld, it would play very well, I think, at home. Some Americans might hold it against him, but a lot, I think, wouldn't. If the French did it, we would spit. But Blair has a lot of political capital here. At the worst, this would be a way for Blair to transfer his political capital from the US to the UK, where it does him more good. At best, he might even increase his capital in the US, if people thought his influence was salutary, and of course increase it in Britain too.

Tony would probably even help his friend George, in the process. He wouldn't blame Bush for the scandal, of course. Rumsfeld is a polarizing figure; his resignation would help Bush move towards the center.

Moreover, this seems to match Tony's character of late: an "adrenaline junkie," constantly risking his career, doing something surprising and desperate. If you think about it, it's almost a no-brainer! C'mon, Tony!...

VIVA LA REVOLUCION
Aznar is fallen, Bush is trailing, Blair is mistrusted and half-discredited, and the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandals are alienating Europe, report the Christian Science Monitor.

Not that the current US administration was very popular in the first place among European citizens, resentful of what they see as Washington's arrogance in world affairs. A poll published in March by the Pew Foundation found that President Bush's approval ratings were 39 percent in Britain (the highest of the seven countries surveyed), 15 percent in France, and 14 percent in Germany.

The Abu Ghraib photographs also emerged following several difficult weeks for the US-led occupation forces in Iraq, when a lot seemed to be going wrong for them, including a Shiite uprising and sustained resistance in Fallujah. Those events appeared to comfort most Europeans in their conviction that the war was wrong in the first place.

What the heck?! Make up your mind! Do human rights matter, or not? Since the coalition's invasion was the only way Saddam could be overthrown at the time, to say the war was wrong is to say that it would be better if Saddam Hussein were still in power. Write that one hundred times on the blackboard, you "anti-war" (or, to put it more accurately, "pro-Saddam's-continuing-war-against-the-Iraqi-people") crowd. IT WOULD BE BETTER IF SADDAM HUSSEIN WERE STILL IN POWER TODAY. IT WOULD BE BETTER IF SADDAM HUSSEIN WERE STILL IN POWER TODAY. IT WOULD BE BETTER IF SADDAM HUSSEIN WERE STILL IN POWER TODAY. IT WOULD BE BETTER IF SADDAM HUSSEIN WERE STILL IN POWER TODAY. IT WOULD BE BETTER IF SADDAM HUSSEIN WERE STILL IN POWER TODAY. IT WOULD BE BETTER IF SADDAM HUSSEIN WERE STILL IN POWER TODAY. How does that make you feel? Think of the mass graves. Think of the 60,000 children a year murdered by UN sanctions, with UN personnel and Saddam merrily profiteering above them-- "over their dead bodies," so to speak. How does that make you feel? IT WOULD BE BETTER IF SADDAM HUSSEIN WERE STILL IN POWER. IT WOULD BE BETTER IF SADDAM HUSSEIN WOULD STILL BE IN POWER. Keeping writing, little Saddam-lovers who protested against freedom in the streets of London, who scoff and scoff at Bush as a "cowboy," who cling to the heartless ancien regime of "international law," keep writing until you can almost imagine that you've achieved your wish, that Saddam's statue is still standing tall and smiling in every Iraqi square, proud father, owner, possessor, jailor of the Iraqi people, and the torture rooms-- real torture, involving extreme physical pain and not merely the bluff of growling dogs, rape and not just minor pervertedness, and on a massive scale, and forever, and unpublished, and unpunished-- were still operational, and people could not speak their minds even to close friends for fear of informants, and people were cut off from the world, in grinding and deepening poverty... IT WOULD BE BETTER IF SADDAM HUSSEIN WERE STILL IN POWER... Can you do it? Can you keep writing? Does your conscience rebel? Or does it succumb to the ritual of euthanasia?...

And now you're horrified by Abu Ghraib photos and think the war was a mistake? To say this is illogical is not nearly strong enough. This is a declaration of war on logic. This is seizing logic's neck in your bare hands and strangling it with all your might, driving it to its knees, hurling it on the ground, kicking, stabbing, ripping it apart, and burying it-- in a Baathist mass grave, let's say. The US has violated human rights in Iraq, maybe, depending on where you draw the lines. Saddam violated them a thousand times worse, and everybody knows it. And he would still be doing it now were it not for the US occupation. These are stone cold facts. They cannot be doubted.

You may think you are on the brink of triumph. The leaders who adventured into Iraq are being defeated. First Aznar, Poland's Miller, now perhaps Berlusconi, and perhaps Bush's head on a platter come November...

Well, I have news for you: this is not the end. For we, the neocon revolutionistas, hundreds of thousands strong, live on, and we will not forget, we will not back down. We have a dream. We believe, in the president's words, that "the desire to live in freedom" burns in each human soul, even those with a different color of skin. We believe that to whom much is given, much is required, that the wealth and strength of our nation creates an obligation for us to give it back to the oppressed of this earth in the form of "the spread of freedom throughout the world." We do not accept the constraints of an "international law" that legitimizes dictators, or a corrupt UN that condones and profiteers by the misery of their victims.

Know, you friends of the tyrant, that your crimes are great, and you remain unforgiven. We may accept a change of subject in the conversation (politeness too has its demands) but we stand ready, when the opportunity arises, to argue our case, and to argue our case is to win, for justice is on our side as clearly as the day differs from the night. We have no wish to "repair the trans-Atlantic alliance," because Europeans' values are repugnant to us, living in their immigration-restricted fortress, lavishing subsidies on their farmers, and piously mouthing support for such noble principles as human rights and democracy while scorning the nation that is willing to do something about it. Perhaps my threat to win an argument against you does not sound especially ominous. It is so easy to dodge an honest argument, after all: change the subject with impatient disdain, make various irrelevant points, pretend to misunderstand, and after all, most of world opinion is on our side. Ah, but the cognitive dissonance of your position will only increase. IT WOULD HAVE BEEN BETTER IF SADDAM WERE STILL IN POWER. IT WOULD HAVE BEEN BETTER IF SADDAM WERE STILL IN POWER. You have popularity, we have principle, and principle is stronger in the end.

So defeat us in elections if you like, but the movement, the inspiration of Operation Iraqi Freedom will live on.

WHERE TO GET YOUR NEWS
I've become totally convinced that the Washington Post is a far superior newspaper to the New York Times, and the gap is widening. Even Tom Friedman, the lively eulogist to globalization and supporter of Saddam's overthrow, is writing junk like this, with the punchline: "Do we have any chance of succeeding at regime change in Iraq without regime change here at home?" Gag. A few more quotes will highlight just how clueless Friedman is:

And, of course, why did the president praise Mr. Rumsfeld rather than fire him? Because Karl Rove says to hold the conservative base, you must always appear to be strong, decisive and loyal. It is more important that the president appear to be true to his team than that America appear to be true to its principles.

C'mon, Friedman, isn't it obvious that Bush would be better off, politically speaking, firing Rumsfeld as a hostage to public opinion? Bush's conservative base will vote for him anyway, duh. He needs swing voters. He was loyal against his political interests.

Or this:

Why didn't the administration ever use 9/11 as a spur to launch a Manhattan project for energy independence and conservation, so we could break out of our addiction to crude oil, slowly disengage from this region and speak truth to fundamentalist regimes, such as Saudi Arabia?

Obviously, because such a plan would never work, and is completely against the will of the American people, which is why Congress voted down the nutcase Kyoto Treaty 95-0. Maybe on Planet New York this plan would get some support, but the New York Times is suppose to be a national newspaper; this nonsense has no place.

The news is slanted, the editorial page is ponderous, pompous, partisan and out-of-touch. Ugh.

One alternative to the NYT is to go straight to the primary sources and read Bush's speeches. Bush's speeches are a "primary source," and thus have inherent advantages over a "secondary source" like the New York Times. Traditionally, secondary sources have the advantage of being more balanced, investigative, and so on, but nowadays I honestly think that President Bush's speeches are superior to the New York Times as a source of "fair and balanced news," aside from their primary source advantage. For example, here, where, after a pat on the back to beleaguered Rumsfeld, he describes troop movements:

We have made clear commitments before the world, and America will keep those commitments. First, we will take every necessary measure to assure the safety of American and coalition personnel, and the security of Iraqi citizens. We're on the offensive against the killers and terrorists in that country, and we will stay on the offensive. In and around Fallujah, U.S. Marines are maintaining pressure on Saddam loyalists and foreign fighters and other militants. We're keeping that pressure on to ensure that Fallujah ceases to be an enemy sanctuary. In northern sectors of the city, elements of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force are prepared to strike at terrorist fighters and prevent a resurgence of violence and chaos. South of the city, the Marines are disrupting enemy attacks on our supply routes and routing out anti-coalition fighters.

In the towns of Ramadi and Husabayah and Karmah, Marines are on the offensive, conducting hundreds of patrols and raids every day. The enemy in Fallujah is hiding behind an innocent civilian population, and calculating that our coalition's use of force will alienate ordinary Iraqis. Yet, every day our troops are responding with precision and discipline and restraint. We're taking every precaution to avoid hurting the innocent, as we deliver justice to the guilty.

Then he goes on to discuss political reconstruction:

Our second great commitment in Iraq is to transfer sovereignty to an Iraqi government as quickly as possible. Decades of oppression destroyed every free institution in Iraq, but not the desire to live in freedom. Like any proud country, the Iraqi people want their independence. The Iraqi people need to know that our coalition is fully committed to their independence, and we're fully committed to their national dignity. This is a reason the June 30th transfer of sovereignty is vital. The Iraqi people, and men and women across the Middle East, are watching closely, and they will see America keep its word.

The United Nations special envoy, Mr. Brahimi, is now back in Iraq, consulting with diverse groups of Iraqis. In the next few weeks, important decisions will be made on the make up of the interim government. As of June 30th, Iraq's interim government will assume duties now performed by the coalition, such as providing water and electricity and health care and education. A key strategic goal of our coalition is to help build a new Iraqi army and civil defense corps and police force and facilities protection service, and a border guard capable of defending and securing the country.

Who needs journalists when the president is doing such fine reporting himself, infused with allusions to American ideals which make the heart beat with patriotic pride, which inspire you to be a part of the cause, which educate the conscience? However, secondary sources have their advantages, so let's turn now to a good newspaper, the Washington Post.

This piece on double standards with respect to the Geneva Convention confirms my preference for Rumsfeld to resign, though my respect for him is undiminished. Here's the key:

"If you were shown a video of a United States Marine or an American citizen in control of a foreign power, in a cell block, naked with a bag over their head, squatting with their arms uplifted for 45 minutes, would you describe that as a good interrogation technique or a violation of the Geneva Convention?" The answer is obvious, and Marine Gen. Peter Pace, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Paul D. Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense, honestly provided it. "I would describe it as a violation," Mr. Pace said. "What you've described to me sounds to me like a violation of the Geneva Convention," Mr. Wolfowitz said.

Case closed -- except that the practices described by Mr. Reed have been designated by the commanding general of U.S. forces in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, as available for use on Iraqi detainees, and certified by the Pentagon as legal under the Geneva Conventions. According to the International Committee of the Red Cross, they have been systematically applied to prisoners across that country. And earlier this week, the bosses of both Mr. Pace and Mr. Wolfowitz, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard B. Myers, defended the techniques as appropriate.

Rumsfeld's resignation, done properly, could highlight the idealistic nature of the enterprise in Iraq-- not that reasonable people can doubt the idealistic nature of the enterprise, but the last two years, sadly, have revealed that reasonable people are a small minority in this world. As much as possible, it shouldn't look like a humiliation; rather, he should explain that expediency, and a failure to think through the issue properly, led to the adoption of practices which, while not flagrantly inhumane or cruel (individual actions of some soldiers may have been inhumane or cruel, but those were aberrations, not policy) led to legal inconsistencies and demand an overhaul of detention policies.

Next column: Iraq is a mess, argues David Ignatius, but he mentions that there are pockets of stability, particularly where the British (there's a reason those fine old chaps were so good at empire) are in charge. He also worries that the country is in the process of partition. The conclusion resembles my new position slightly:

The truth is, Colin Powell's "Pottery Barn rule" doesn't apply: We did break it, but we don't own it. We have a moral obligation to help Iraqis repair the damage, but we can do so only with their consent -- "slowly, slowly," as the Arabs like to say.

The way I would put it is that Iraq's (invasion-triggered) revolution against Baathist tyranny is their business; we certainly can and should help in the spirit of democratic solidarity, but we have to give the madcap give-and-take of revolution its space, and our position ought to be that of a well-wishing bystander, not the protagonist.

Will Bush be re-elected? Well, I haven't lost the faith, but the polling data seem a bit ominous. Bush's approval rating is lower than those of former winners, but higher than those of former losers:

Matthew Dowd, senior adviser for the Bush-Cheney campaign, said Bush occupies a unique position compared with former presidents. In past campaigns, Bush's predecessors have either been above 53 percent in approval by the time of the election and been reelected, or have been below 46 percent and been defeated.

"We're in that place where no presidential reelection campaign has ever been," he said. "People say this is a referendum on the president. It's both a referendum on the president but also a referendum on the alternative."

What is ominous is that this is shaping up to be a year of wacky, unforeseen electoral swings to the left. Thus India goes the way of Spain. I still welcome the result but this implication for US foreign policy is one I hadn't thought of:

The sharpest discontinuity is likely to come in relations with the United States and possibly with U.S. allies such as Israel. India has become a leading customer for Israeli weapons technology. With Mr. Vajpayee in office, the Bush administration hoped that India might be persuaded to send peacekeepers to Iraq -- a remarkable shift from the Cold War, when India proudly led the Non-Aligned Movement and seized every opportunity to tweak American leadership. The Congress Party-led coalition is expected to swing back to traditional anti-Americanism, sounding off against the United States at the United Nations and perhaps challenging U.S. influence in the Middle East by launching its own peace initiative. All of which would test the Bush administration's reserves of forbearance and tact. But then again, who knows? India's democracy excels at defying expert predictions.

Hmm. I've been reading a book of European history, and it's striking the way the socialists gained power all over Europe in the aftermath of World War II. Somehow the message of wartime solidarity against the Nazis translated into an embrace of socialism, despite the enormous popularity of Churchill and De Gaulle, both men of the right, as war leaders. Maybe the wave of left-wing victories-- in Spain, in France's regional elections, now in India, displays the same phenomenon.

Spain and India, in fact, show this parallel: in each case, the economy was booming, the incumbent's performance was impressive, and the incumbent was leading in the polls until the last minute... and yet was defeated. Now, maybe there's a lesson for the Democrats: they should have nominated a naive but appealing left-winger like Howard Dean, and people would have been skeptical, then at the last minute cast their votes with him. Hmm... instead, we have John Kerry, a convictionless but ambitious, grim, lousy person, who can't get a bounce even during a prisoner abuse scandal, which should be his best moment since he began his career by condemning war crimes in Vietnam. Anyone for President None of the Above? Well, not me, of course...

To conclude my advice about where to get your news, a simple analogy will help. Bush's speeches are like fresh fruit, straight off the trees. Washington Post articles are like fruit well-cooked in tasty dishes by good cooks, turned to pies and cobblers. The New York Times is like fruit rotting, spoiled, covered with flies.

INDIA SHIFTS LEFT
The (right-wing, Hindu nationalist) BJP has just lost the elections in India, and power will probably shift to a coalition led by Congress and including the Communists. The story warmed my heart for some reason. China and India, the world's most populous countries, are both growing fast; now they're starting to concentrate on letting the poorest benefit from growth. Very good news: the world is becoming more egalitarian on the grand scale...

IMMIGRATION: WHAT HAPPENED?
Back in January, Bush expressed some admirable sentiments:

Reform must begin by confronting a basic fact of life and economics: some of the jobs being generated in America's growing economy are jobs American citizens are not filling. Yet these jobs represent a tremendous opportunity for workers from abroad who want to work and fulfill their duties as a husband or a wife, a son or a daughter.

Their search for a better life is one of the most basic desires of human beings. Many undocumented workers have walked mile after mile, through the heat of the day and the cold of the night. Some have risked their lives in dangerous desert border crossings, or entrusted their lives to the brutal rings of heartless human smugglers. Workers who seek only to earn a living end up in the shadows of American life -- fearful, often abused and exploited. When they are victimized by crime, they are afraid to call the police, or seek recourse in the legal system. They are cut off from their families far away, fearing if they leave our country to visit relatives back home, they might never be able to return to their jobs.

The situation I described is wrong. It is not the American way. Out of common sense and fairness, our laws should allow willing workers to enter our country and fill jobs that Americans have are not filling. (Applause.) We must make our immigration laws more rational, and more humane. And I believe we can do so without jeopardizing the livelihoods of American citizens.

Yes, yes, a thousand times yes!!! But the initiative seems to have vanished. I can't find any more news about Bush's immigration proposal anywhere. Blame politics, sure, but who: the conservative base did not react to the proposal well, but the Democrats immediately charged that it was just a "political ploy." They offered a counter-proposal... and then what? Nothing, as far as I can tell. It seems to me the Democrats' counter-proposal was the political ploy: they offered an act they knew wouldn't pass so they wouldn't have to defend it in front of the voters! [If so, they are] Lying scoundrel scum! It makes me want to see the Democrats fry, but it also makes me much more anxious about supporting Bush. The immigration proposal was the biggest reason for my burst of passion for Bush in the spring. If that has been dropped... sad, sad, sad.

EARLY ELECTIONS
Kristol and Kagan, the potent neocon duo, give an opinion that fits neatly with my new angle (move towards a pullout). Will they influence the administration? Certainly, the administration has changed course a number of times...

ON PROPAGANDA
Tech Central writes about the war of images, and makes some good points, but focuses on how Americans are getting fed up:

Right now the Middle American psyche is being overwhelmed with reasons to hate the entire Arab world; and yet the Bush administration insists that we are in Iraq to help the Arabs. Unfortunately, the administration seems to be completely unaware of how sick and tired of Arabs the average American has become, unaware because it is politically incorrect to express such sentiments of outright hostility: but what is politically incorrect to express is all too often the motive force behind those sudden and spontaneous movements of the popular psyche that only seemed to come from nowhere because they came from a place unfamiliar to most pundits and paid prophets, namely, the gut level feelings of the average guy.

It's weird, in a way, that the global media is biased against the United States, the world's leading information society; weird, but true. Take this quote (same source as above):

Liberals complain that the Bush administration's approach is too simplistic. Quite frankly, it is nuanced to the point of incoherency. It asks of Americans that they hate only "the bad guys" in the Arab world, while it simultaneously calls on Americans to be willing to sacrifice their sons and their pocketbooks in order to create a happy future for "the good guys" in the Arab world. Yet our television and computer screens are full of the images of the bad guys of the Arab world doing unspeakably ghastly things to us, while we search in vain for the image of even one of the good guys for whom our nation has staked its resources and its prestige. Show us just one photograph of Iraqis publicly denouncing this gruesome act as a slander against Islam and a blasphemy against God.

I'll give you an Iraqi publicly denouncing these acts: the great Omar, who writes (with fine sarcasm):

The bottom line, and to talk more seriously, is that the picture the media are giving us about Iraq is almost convincing, even to me, if it wasn’t for this insignificant detail [the booming Iraqi economy], and something must be done to make it right before most Iraqis start to realize that! But to be fair our Arab and Muslim brothers, supported by the legitimate Arab leaders and cheered by most of the major media are aware of that, and of the dangers of the vicious cycle of (prosperity-stability-more prosperity-more stability) that the Americans and the Iraqi traitors (like myself) are trying to establish. They (our brothers) are doing all that they can; bombing oil pipelines and ports, beheading foreigners in the name of Iraqis and Allah, attacking electricity stations, creating chaos that allows thieves to loot everything they can, yet it’s still not working!! The Iraqi Dinar stands stable despite the fact that some Arab governments formally warned their citizens from dealing with it, the oil production is increasing, the markets are full of goods, most Iraqis are busy working, studying selling and buying and the average income is rising!

Please, all those who care about the poor Iraqis and want to save them from the brutality of the American invaders and who want to prevent the Americans from stealing our fortune; meaning Bin laden, Zagrawi and their followers, Arab and Muslim tyrants, our good friend monsieur Dominique de Villepin, all the pacifists of the world, the major media, and in short, all those who hate America and obviously love Iraq: Get your s**t together and DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT or else one or two years from now Iraq will be…a prosperous country, and then we will never forgive you for letting us down when we needed you!

Omar, however, does not have a news station. All we have is al-Jazeera, biased against America and ruthlessly propagandistic (the Iraqi bloggers can't stand it) and our own news stations, biased towards bloodshed and pornography, rejoicing that the prisoner abuse scandal gives them a chance to emulate the worst sex-and-violence excesses of Hollywood. Are a handful of abused prisoners more important than the tens of thousands of now-better-paid schoolteachers and doctors, the refugees returning home, the prisoners released? Now, but they get better ratings.

I'm not exactly lamenting that we're losing the war of images. It's a structural problem: that's what we do. What can you do about it?

SACRIFICE COMRADE RUMSFELD AND BLUFF THAT WE'RE LEAVING!
The title is only half-serious...

All right, when I first saw the pictures of prisoner abuse in Iraq, I was in Mozambique (just got back) and I felt ashamed to be an American. My guts turned to jello with this fear, can we control our own soldiers? Is this like in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, where the morals and constraints of civilized society fall away, where noble purposes turn into cruelty and corruption, men degenerate almost into beasts? It was disgusting to see that Americans were practicing torture, "teaching the world torture," as The Guardian put it...

Then I started thinking about it. Did those prisoners ever even suffer any pain?! Maybe, but honestly in all the pictures I've seen and stories I've heard, I can't think of any evidence that pain was inflicted on Iraqi prisoners. This is not to say that what was done was acceptable. But when I think of the word "torture," what it denotes for me is the ultimate extreme of physical pain. Of course, I haven't really researched this, maybe it's worse than I thought. But I will draw this line: it's absurd to talk about "torture" when pain wasn't inflicted. In fact, if I imagine myself in the position of those Iraqi prisoners, at least from what I've seen so far, it doesn't even really frighten me much. Sitting naked in a cell for six hours. Cold, humiliating, sure, but hey, whatever, I've experienced worse. I want to emphasize that the abuse may have been worse than what I've picked up so far from the headlines and newscasts; maybe pain was involved. And it's harder to imagine what it would be like to have Marines bluff that dogs will bite you. Of course, it doesn't seem bad to me, because I know that the dog won't actually bite, but what if you really believed it would?...

The late Israeli prime minister Yitzak Rabin is admired by liberals: he came close to ending the Israeli-Palestinian struggle, he began negotiating with Arafat, and he was assassinated by a Jewish extremist in 1995. A tragedy. To negotiate with the Palestinians like that, to consider giving up territory, was something the Israeli leadership had not brought itself to do for a generation. Why was Rabin in a position to do that? He could afford to make concessions because of an earlier show of strength: he had brought an end to the Palestinian intifada, by breaking legs. Instead of killing defiant Palestinian crowds, he instructed Israeli forces to break their legs.

Breaking legs was a humane move (at least, so one argument runs) because it was not killing. It was a substitute for killing, a way to exercise state power (which in the last analysis consists large of force and violence, or the threat thereof) without killing.

As Rabin came up with a substitute for killing, it seems the American forces have come up with a substitute for torture-- namely, fear and humiliation. To avoid killing, the Israelis broke legs; to avoid inflicting pain, we seemed to have decided to make liberal use of nakedness. I wish they hadn't, especially because things like being forced to masturbate (though not painful, but in fact, strictly speaking, the opposite) are just gross and seem to undermine America's dignity. But to howl about the "inhumanity" of it seems to miss the point; instead, it shows what kind of substitutes a state which forbids itself certain extremes of inhumanity (such as torture) come up with. At the risk of being tedious, here's the disclaimer again: if actual torture took place, my reaction is rather different; and I haven't figured out what to think about the bluffing yet.

I'm partly glad to see the media hysteria over the photographs, which is quite ridiculous but in a reassuring way. The old danger is that we'll get addicted to violence, that our standards, our morals, will slip bit by bit, that we'll be desensitized, that it's a "slippery slope," etc. That's happened before: I know about the massacre at Mylai in Vietnam and all that. What the media reaction shows is: this clearly has not happened to us, and the threat of this sort of thing happening again is a huge incentive to everyone concerned to be on their best behavior. I think the warning will be effective.

Despite my not being all that exercised by what I've seen of prisoner abuse (this is dangerous ground, so let me repeat the disclaimer: if genuine torture has actually taken place, my reaction is different) I'd like to see this end Rumsfeld's career. This is an unfair, unscrupulous view on my part. I am mostly pro-Rumsfeld. It seems to me the strategy of fewer troops in Iraq (compared to the larger number that others said would be needed) made sense, if only because, as far as I understand, not that many troops are available. I love his "old Europe" and "new Europe" line too. But he's served well and a reshuffle would be nice. With Rumsfeld gone, Powell would suddenly have a lot more clout; and while I think Powell has been wrong about some things, Powell would be a great face for the administration right now. I also want to see Cheney go. Again, I'm somewhat pro-Cheney, really; I think it was brave of an old Bush I Administration man to change tack and become a radical; and I don't buy the junk about Halliburton corruption blah-blah-blah. But, again, the reshuffle would be refreshing. I say, nominate Bill Owen, the genuinely conservative governor of Colorado, for vice-president. A Bush-Owen ticket might even have a bit of credibility on the deficit; it would shift the focus from foreign affairs a bit.

Moreover, I think the prisoner abuse scandal would be a good occasion to start gesturing towards a withdrawal. Again, I'm not despondent about how things are going in Iraq, I don't think we're doing a terrible job, I don't think the administration made so many mistakes, I think Iraq has a bright future. But I've done a rethink of the rationale for war, leading to a position that's a bit odd, but see how it flies. We had a right to overthrow Saddam, sure, no question, because he was just a murdering thug ruling by terror with no legitimacy whatsoever; we even owed it to them, since we had supported Saddam in enough small ways that we had some responsibility for his being in power. But we didn't exactly have a right to occupy the country and write a constitution for it, like we did in Japan and Germany. In Japan and Germany, we had a right to reconstruct their societies, because those societies had threatened their neighbors and even us, because the Japanese and the Germans were perpetrators, but the Iraqis were victims, they didn't support Saddam, didn't fight for Saddam, so we didn't need (so much) to reconfigure their society for ours or anyone else's safety. We triggered a revolution is what we did, and revolutions are fast-paced and devour their children and they can be ugly but you hope for the best. Naturally we have a tin ear for revolution, and I think we may be getting in the way. Now, the Iraqi silent majority is grateful for the end of Saddam and afraid of civil war, and I don't think they actually want us out, not right away anyway. So I think we should bluff that we'll start pulling out, not because anyone's defeated us (they haven't, that's plain for everyone to see after we smashed the insurgents in Fallujah) but because of "discipline problems in the army." And then we'll let the odd Iraqi politician take responsibility for asking us to stay in this or that locality a bit longer... This will help bring moderate leaders into the spotlight.

Well, all of that sounds a bit hare-brained, maybe. I'm pretty upbeat about the whole thing, though. If you want to see why, read Omar's blog about the booming economy, or The Mesopotamian or even Zeyad, who backhandedly undermines the hysteria about prisoner abuse by describing the plight of Iraqi doctors:

[There has been] an alarming increase in the number of assassinations and abductions of Iraqi intellectuals and top medical professionals recently in Baghdad.

"They scream and whine about abuse of prisoners, most of who are criminals, but I don't recall anyone mentioning what we have gone through let alone condemning it, which was much worse. Now they are openly calling the Americans to release thousands of those criminals from Abu Ghraib.", a relative of ours told us a couple of days ago.

The point here-- that Iraq has much more serious problems than the hazing of some prisoners, and they don't spring from the Americans, but from the "insurgents" and terrorists-- should be so blase and well-understood by now as to bore everybody. Is it?