Left Flank

After reading O'Sullivan's Shrewd Sanctions: Statecraft and State Sponsors of Terrorism (2003) about a year ago, but this was the first time I've listened to her, particularly about the Iraq War. O'Sullivan disagrees with a Democratic proposal to withdraw precipitously, because withdrawal will cause Iraqi politicians to retreat into their partisan communities and eschew the sort of nationalizing reforms Baghdad needs to enact.

Of course, that's if one argues Iraq should, or can, achieve centralized, as opposed to a federal, government.

The New York Times' John F. Burns and Dexter Filkins (the 'lunatic in the parish') talk about the Iraq War (now about a 'sectarian war, not al-Qaeda') and this week's Petraeus/Crocker ('candid, conforms to what is happening') testimonies on Charlie Rose. Burns can se the first signs of a 'tipping point', but it's still, in General Petraeus' words, 'reversible'.

About William F. Buckley, Jr., tributes have flourished. I watched Firing Line occasionally, and, although the debate format kept my interest, Buckley's taunting often didn't. Sometimes I wondered if he would fall out of his chair and choke on his pen. But, the devilish taunting was never to my liking, so it's fitting to post this with a Charlie Rose retrospective. I enjoy Charlie Rose in a way I didn't like Buckley. I also admired John McEnroe, with his tortured windmill serve, but his histrionics annoyed me just the same. Perhaps because my temper is vitriolic, I just can't appreciate someone who taunts. I have to sublimate lest I start swinging a pipe.

In the same way I admired Buckley's Catholicism. However, I inherited a Lutheranism I'm still sublimating, and I'm dámn angry about it. I'm ignostic due to the fanatical faith Lutheranism foisted on me, that God is just too dámn inscrutable and remote, and Christ is a luxury most peons don't deserve. Somewhere in my youth I lost joy. Buckley was less skeptical, and a little more animated.

Buckley's Catholicism was not the docile faith of the working-class Irish or Italian. Instead, he was very much in the mold of the English Catholic, for whom religion is a fighting faith against the prevailing Anglican Church. Thus, Buckley would feel no compunction in challenging American Catholics' deeply held support for welfare capitalism or later in rebelling against Pope John XXII's Pacem in Terris.

Yet the key to Buckley is to understand that he was a rebel, but not a heretic. He fancied himself and his politics to be anti-establishment, yet he was part of the American establishment against which he rebelled. He never went so far as to be cast out, or to attempt to be cast out.

Yet, as Judis himself pointed out, Buckley was tactful.

In 2004, when I had lunch with Buckley at a French restaurant a few miles from his house in Stamford, I asked him what exactly made Bush a conservative. He pondered for a moment, then said, "Well, he's a patriot and he believes in God." By this definition, of course, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton would qualify as conservatives, too. Then again, it's never been entirely clear to Buckley just what constitutes an American conservative. "I confess that I know who is a conservative less surely than I know who is a liberal," he wrote in 1970. "Blindfold me, spin me about like a top, and I will walk up to the single liberal in the room without zig or zag and find him even if he is hiding behind a flower pot. I am tempted to try to develop an equally sure nose for the conservative, but I am deterred by the knowledge that conservatives, under the stress of our times, have had to invite all kinds of people into their ranks to help with the job at hand."

Buckley, a paragon of courtesy, will not say so, but I suspect he questions today the wisdom of having opened the gates quite so wide. For now, in the winter of his discontent, and from his perch above the partisan fray, he is watching the disintegration of the movement that has dominated U.S. politics for the past quarter-century--the movement Buckley did so much, perhaps more than anyone else, to create.

Now, there's a denouement only a Lutheran could appreciate.

The DLC's Harold Ford, Jr. offers good reasons on Charlie Rose why one should vote for the Democrats, either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, and not John McCain. in November, 2008.

Here are two excellent discussions of the New Hampshire primary. I'm very excited about the fact, that the primaries are not over: Obama did not crown himself and slay Hillary! There's four viable factors, and then two solid wildcards in both parties. It's like the NFL moving from three to four divisions. I agree the political stakes are so high, these races have to last until at least March. At this point, I'm voting for a Democratic candidate who can lead to the best official Democratic presidential nominee in November.

And then, in both discussions, Hurlburt's impression that "identity politics is more complicated". I'm proud that two multiracial men and a white woman can run for the Democratic label, but that's just not important as issues such as, in order, healthcare, Iraq, and globalization/economy. And here, I'm disappointed in my choices, in the way the issues positions are distributed amongst the candidates. I really want Governor Richardson and Senator Edwards to push Obama and Clinton to earn their position atop the polls and money sweepstakes. I would prefer the next president aimed some of his/her war-making powers at economic issues, both globally and domestically, including healthcare and immigration. And, I also would prefer a president with a strategic vision of the world supporting America's place in it, not just two placeholders tossing grenades about singly troubling states.

What if Islam never existed?

It's an intriguing question. But Graham E. Fuller spares no praise for a world where art was inspired by the Qur'an, or where God-intoxicated men devote themselves to study or ecstatic activity, like the Sufis. Still, the bare geopolitical outlines of a world without Islam is not unrecognizable:

This, then, is the portrait of a putative «world without Islam.» It is a Middle East dominated by Eastern Orthodox Christianity—a church historically and psychologically suspicious of, even hostile to, the West. Still riven by major ethnic and even sectarian differences, it possesses a fierce sense of historical consciousness and grievance against the West. It has been invaded repeatedly by Western imperialist armies; its resources commandeered; borders redrawn by Western fiat in conformity with its various interests; and regimes established that are compliant with Western dictates. Palestine would still burn. Iran would still be intensely nationalistic. We would still see Palestinians resist Jews, Chechens resist Russians, Iranians resist the British and Americans, Kashmiris resist Indians, Tamils resist the Sinhalese in Sri Lanka, and Uighurs and Tibetans resist the Chinese. The Middle East would still have a glorious historical model—the great Byzantine Empire of more than 2,000 years' standing—with which to identify as a cultural and religious symbol. It would, in many respects, perpetuate an East-West divide.

Fuller asserts that "ethnicity, nationalism, ambition, greed, resources, local leaders, turf, financial gain, power, interventions, and hatred of outsiders, invaders, and imperialists" are more bedrock causes for the tensions in the region. "In the face of these tensions between East and West, Islam unquestionably adds yet one more emotive element, one more layer of complications to finding solutions. Islam is not the cause of such problems." Indeed, Islam might be a saving grace.

Fuller's argument is pertinent especially when conservative commentators like William F. Buckley (5:25) talk about the "Christian alternative". I wouldn't dispute the existence of religious support for political concepts, like freedom, but the Church history contradicts its own scriptural support. If scrolls imbued with false divinity can cause Christian practitioners to pause, then, if Fuller is correct, so might Muslims seek a reason not to quarrel over those deeper human truths.

A remarkable «Discussion about Counterinsurgency on The Charlie Rose Show. Two scholars, Sarah Sewall and Montgomery McFate take credit for their contributions to The U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual, and offer further commentary on Iraq and Sudan. Both praise the US military organization's adaptation to the counterinsurgency model and caution that «the American way of war» will probably never recur. Both bemoan how American political leadership lags the military leadership's ability to understand and accept local conditions outside of American standards. Sewall for her part also cautioned about how to minimize the consequences of withdrawal in Iraq, and how little the counterinsurgency model might apply to that war. Finally, there is the hope American political and military leadership will not evaluate the counterinsurgency model based on the failures in Iraq.

A must-view interview!

If not for so many other reasons, this conversation with Hans Blix highlights how the North Korean nukes negotiations impacts the Iranian crisis. But, of course, there's what he has to say about Iraq, too.