Hewitt Blog

A fine column on Iraq from John Podhoretz, which concludes:

Political change doesn't win wars. That's what we've learned, painfully and horribly. Only winning wars wins wars.

President Bush needs to decide, as soon as possible, that he is going to win this war - that the bad guys are going to die, that we are going to kill them and that we will achieve our objectives in Iraq. That is the only way forward for him if he doesn't want to end up in ignominy.

The clock is ticking. He has only a week, maybe two, to change course dramatically. To choose to win, and to direct the military to do so.

Or we are sunk, and so is he.

Mel Gibson has a new movie coming out this week, “Apocalypto.” When the world last took notice of Gibson a few months ago, he was drunkenly accusing Jews of starting all the wars in the world. Gibson’s outrageous outburst allowed his critics from “The Passion of the Christ” days to take an annoying victory lap while the rest of us contented ourselves with wondering exactly how many beers it takes to turn a normal person into an anti-Semite.

Me, I didn’t go into “I’m mortified” overdrive because of Gibson’s outburst, and lord knows it wasn’t because I have particularly thick skin. It’s just that I worry a lot more about what people will do than what they feel in the privacy of their own hearts. Thus, the guy talking Jihad at the radical mosque down the road causes me a lot more concern than the guy harboring bigoted thoughts but who lacks a plan to put them into action. I know some people think that Gibson’s movie “The Passion” was a vehicle for him to express his anti-Semitism, but I didn’t see the movie that way when I saw it at the multiplex and still don’t. And again, I’m not exactly the hardest to offend Jew on the block.

With the debut of “Apocalypto,” Hollywood finds itself on the horns of a dilemma. Word is the movie is pretty smashing; while some critics and viewers will be turned off by the trademark Gibson violence that lards the flick, it’s nevertheless being widely hailed as an audacious creative triumph. Were it made by an auteur who hadn’t spewed an anti-Semitic monologue over the summer, it would be a surefire Oscar contender.

THIS IS WHERE THINGS GET RICH. According to this New York Times article, the Hollywood community will have to decide just how much weight they should give to Gibson’s off-screen antics when assessing his artistic output. Says the Hollywood power-player Ari Emmanuel, “People in the entertainment community, whether Jew or gentile, need to demonstrate that they understand how much is at stake in this by professionally shunning Mel Gibson and refusing to work with him.”

The fact that Hollywood-types feel free to stand as the judge of other people’s character is a delightful irony. On the whole, the entertainment community has never been known for its rock-ribbed pious ways. I have a feeling that if we sampled our entertainers and their support network, few of them would have verbal outbursts ranking in their top ten of recent moral shortcomings. The fact that some members of the Academy deem it their right to judge an artist’s moral worth would be a dangerously slippery slope if the members of the Academy were at all serious about the endeavor.

Of course, they’re not and they never would be. In the Times story, Times’ reporter Sharon Waxman lumps Gibson in with Leni Riefenstahl as morally deficient filmmakers. The distinction between Riefenstahl, who used her considerable talent to significantly aid history’s most murderous regime, and Gibson, who used vile racist language but who has never harmed anyone, seems lost to Waxman. The moral obtuseness of this comparison, which I have little doubt that many of Gibson’s critics would find quite apt, is appalling.

Also interesting is that in cataloguing artists lacking the moral right stuff, Waxman didn’t mention my favorite moral leper of an artist, Woody Allen. Of course, Allen’s never had an anti-Semitic outburst which is perhaps the only hanging offense in the Hollywood values structure. He did, however, leave his wife for his wife’s then 20 year-old daughter. In some value systems, that would be worse than any imaginable verbal harangue. A couple of years after Allen’s personal depredations became public, the Academy larded his badly overrated “Bullets Over Broadway” with multiple Oscar nominations.

From Gwyneth Paltrow to the Dixie Chicks to every guest who appears alongside Bill Maher in his weekly idiot-fests, it’s apparent that our entertainers feel their insights regarding matters of import simply must be heard. With Hollywood types playing an increasingly prominent role in our political dialogue, it’s good to have a handle on the moral structure that the community brings to the table. It’s little surprise that “sensitivity” reigns supreme. It’s even less surprising that words speak louder than actions.

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From South Carolina's The State:

The senator then pounced on a member’s announcement that the club would hold its annual Christmas party at the state Department of Archives and History where members could view the original copy of the state’s Articles of Secession.

Biden asked, “Where else could I go to a Rotary Club where (for a) Christmas party the highlight is looking at the Articles?”

Biden was on a roll.

Delaware, he noted, was a “slave state that fought beside the North. That’s only because we couldn’t figure out how to get to the South. There were a couple of states in the way.”

The crowd loved it.

1) STOP THE PRESSES!!! – Sam Brownback has entered the presidential race. Bad news for you, Duncan Hunter. That ironclad lock you had on the least-plausible Republican candidacy has disappeared overnight.

But perhaps I’m getting ahead of myself. Brownback hasn’t actually entered the race. He has merely released the following statement:

“I have decided, after much prayerful consideration, to consider a bid for the Republican nomination for the presidency.”

Color me as unimpressed by that statement. At this critical point in history, can we really afford a leader so prone to vacillation that he requires “prayerful consideration” regarding whether he should even “consider” doing something. Is this how it will be if he’s in the White House? One can only shudder.

2) ALREADY TOO MANY PIXELS HAVE DIED in covering the JimWebb/George W. Bush dust-up, but I found this Daily Kos diary interesting. As even casual observers of the imbroglio know, Webb’s son was near an IED when it exploded a few days before his father’s and the president’s confrontation. The Kos Diarist reveals for the first time publicly that “Bush actually knew of Jim Webb's son's close brush with death shortly before their White House meeting.”

While the source for the Kos diarist’s knowledge is the not-particularly reliable or reputable Congressman Jim Moran, it adds an additional wrinkle to the story. To my mind, it makes the President’s inquiry a more caring rather than pro-forma gesture than it initially seemed. It also makes his response to Webb’s belligerent standoffishness small but understandable.

Of course, the Kossacks see it differently. The diarist delicately puts it:

“George W. Bush is now revealed to be the boorest of the boors, the lowest of the lows, the crudest of the crude. I hope he gets his due punishment in hell, or the International Court of Justice in The Hague, whichever comes first.”

The Kossacks’ unrelenting hatred for all things Bush reminds me of an old joke:

A guy walks into a psychiatrist’s office and the shrink begins showing him some Rorschach pictures. The first is of a squiggly blob – the guy says it looks like two people making love. The next is a series of geometric shapes – the guy says it looks like two people making love. The last is a series of straight and squiggly lines – the guy says it looks like two people making love.

The psychiatrist says, “I think I’ve diagnosed your problem. You’re obsessed with sex!”

The guy responds, “Me? You’re the guy making all the dirty pictures!”

3) WAKE ME IN ’08 – John Bolton has signaled his intention to resign from his post at the U.N. Doubtlessly the Democrat-controlled Senate will insist on sending a new emissary to Turtle Bay who will play better with the Syrians, Iranians, and Annans who populate the place. More depressing still, George Mitchell is rumored to be on the shortlist of replacement possibilities.

The link above goes to Allah’s place where he has Lou Dobbs’ video tribute to Bolton as well as one of Bolton’s greatest hits. Bolton was a voice of moral clarity at a time and place where there haven’t been many. It is a sad day when such a voice has been silenced.

4) VDH IN RARE FORM – Hugh already linked to VDH’s Friday piece, but if you haven’t read it yet, you really should. It’s an excellent summation of where the domestic intellectual battle regarding the war stands right now.

It calls to mind something from my childhood. I went to high school in the early 1980’s and the liberals of the time were convinced that nuclear weapons were evil. They thought a unilateral nuclear freeze would be neat. They were sure Ronald Reagan wanted to blow up the world. And when debating the topic, they would inevitable bray, “We already have enough nuclear weapons to blow up the world 30 times? Why do we need so many and why would we possibly need more?”

Of course, they asked theses questions only rhetorically, and had no appetite for a discussion regarding the necessary redundancy of systems because of the differing vulnerabilities and reliabilities between ICBM’s, sub-based missiles and bomber-based weapons. They were comfortable in their ignorance, and determined to remain so.

Rhetorically, when engaging such people, there were two possible tacks to take. One was to reflect their simplistic tone regarding Reagan and say in effect that they were bad people who wanted to blow up the world. The other was to give them the benefit of the doubt that they were arguing in good faith and then go about the hard task of convincing them they were wrong. The latter was the more difficult course; since many of these people were stubborn and stupid, convincing them of the folly of their ways was no mean feat. It was a lot more fun fighting fire with fire, but it wasn’t at all productive.

To get anywhere today, we’re going to have to awaken our country to the danger that the Islamists represent. If people understood the dangers, most of them would be a lot less forgiving of stunts like the one performed by the flying Imams. And most would be horrified that we’re slipping back into a mode of fighting terrorism merely by law enforcement techniques. But we’re going to have to win a lot of intellectual arguments to get our countrymen to where they need to be.

5) THE OTHER SON ALSO RISES (HT: Hugh) – Jeb Bush can’t run for president in ’08 because the country is Bushed out. But if his name were, say, Pataki, he’d be one of the front-runners for the nomination. As a hugely successful Governor of the country’s most important swing state, a Jeb Pataki would be tough to beat. Besides, Jeb Bush is I believe the only male member of his family who has mastered speaking English in complete sentences.

The Wall Street Journal reports today that Jeb might be ready to endorse Mitt Romney soon, at least implicitly. One thing you’ll learn about Romney – there aren’t a lot of people who have a lot to do with him who emerge anything less than completely and entirely impressed. There’s also buzz that Jeb might join Mitt on the ticket as his number two.

6) FF THE WHO? - I received a note today that on Michael Medved’s show today it was being discussed that James Baker has adamantly denied ever saying that thing about the Jews and that the only source for the comment was Jack Kemp. Given my commentary last week, it was only fair that I report this.

That being said, my attitude towards his coming prescriptions for achieving Middle East peace in our time remains hostilely indifferent. At best.

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From the Wall Street Journal profile of Jeb Bush (subscription required):

While the governor has been vague about his own plans, there are few secrets about where his sympathies lie for 2008. Two of his chief political operatives have allied themselves with Republican Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, who is considering a presidential bid.

Mr. Romney is viewed as a social conservative, to the right of presumed Republican front-runner Sen. John McCain of Arizona. That dovetails with Mr. Bush's view of himself: "I'm conservative admittedly and unashamedly. I don't apologize for it."

I spent a decent portion of the weekend re-reading Francis Fukayama’s “The End of History and The Last Man.” When published in 1992, Fukayama’s work sent critics, especially conservative critics, into paroxysms of ecstasy. “Bold, lucid, scandalously brilliant,” gushed Charles Krauthammer. “Exhilarating and sobering” proclaimed George F. Will. “Provocative and elegant” said some guy from U.S.A. Today.

The thesis of “The End of History,” or at least its shorthand, is by now probably familiar to most of you: The fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of communism showed that liberal democracy was the culmination of all political systems. The historical search for the perfect (or least crappy) system of governance had ended, and liberal democracy was the victor.

In recent years, Fukayama’ work has become a subject of mockery. Although he never proclaimed and explicitly declaimed that his thesis meant things of historical consequence would stop happening, that’s largely how his book has been bastardized, particularly by those who probably haven’t read it. Especially after 9/11, anti-Western triumphalists have enjoyed sniffing whenever the mood strikes them, “End of history? Ha!”

Even amongst those who have read the book and presumably understand it, Fukayama has emerged as an often convenient punching bag. In his outstanding new book, “The War of the World,” Harvard professor Niall Ferguson manages to take a gratuitous swipe at Fukayama in the opening pages.

CONFESSION TIME: MY INTENTIONS FOR RE-READING Fukayama were less than noble. I was having a conversation recently with another writer (a name you’d all recognize) and we agreed that Fukayama’s initial support for the Iraq war and his subsequent denunciation was pathetic. Yes, “pathetic” was the word we settled on. In truth, I went back to “The End of History” this weekend after a 12 year absence to see how poorly it had aged.

I was shocked to see that “The End of History” not only has aged well, it has matured magnificently. The triumphalism that critics larded upon the book is oddly absent. Fukayama’s writing was far more cautious than his fans’ (including this one’s) reactions. Fukayama wasn’t saying that we had reached the ending of history’s story and that all had turned out well. All he was saying that the search for “the best” system of government had been resolved; that didn’t mean the story was over or that even the most interesting parts had been written.

In two particular areas, Fukayama was almost eerily prescient. The first was his treatment of Islam. Fukayama mentions Islam on the grand total of three pages in his master-work. But each time he mentions it, he does so to acknowledge that in terms of developing political systems, the Islamic world has been largely off the grid for the best millennium. He also acknowledges the threat that Islam poses to the “victor,” liberal democracy:

“The appeal of Islam is potentially universal, reaching out to all men as men, and not just to members of a particular ethnic or national group. And Islam has indeed defeated liberal democracy in many parts of the Islamic world, posing a grave threat to liberal practices even in countries where it has not achieved political power directly.”

Remember, this was written in 1992, a year before the first attack on the World Trade Center.

THE OTHER AREA WHERE FUKAYAMA was extraordinarily prescient was in describing what kind of people might emerge from the comfort that liberal democracies produce. He makes repeated mention of the C.S. Lewis phrase “men without chests” to characterize the kind of loathsome creatures that might emerge from our splendid modern societies. Fukayama was writing 15 years ago; I bet he’s surprised at how rapidly chestless we’ve all become.

The Bush 41/Clinton years marked a signal decline into chestlessness. Both presidents presided over numerous misguided attempts to make life fair. Bush’s “Americans with Disabilities Act” remains (with the arguable exception of campaign finance reform), the single most damaging piece of legislation of the past 25 years. It wasn’t so much the provisions of the Act that were so harmful, although they represented an unacceptable amount of governmental overreach into private sector affairs. It was the message that the act gave to all Americans – If life has treated you unfairly, we’re from the government and we’re coming to help.

Clinton continued this philosophy during his eight years in office. Although his effort to socialize medicine and ensure equally mediocre medical treatment for all was thankfully thwarted, Clinton tried to rectify numerous wrongs done to people by fate. There was no matter so picayune that it could escape the notice of his Oval Office. Be it mandating the time a delivering mother spent in the hospital, the existence of Midnight Basketball programs or extending paternity leave by government fiat, the Clinton government tried to instantly gratify any and every citizen’s desire.

But we have never looked as chestless as we have during the past three years at war. We literally fear antagonizing our enemies in Iran and Syria. Domestically, the burden of deaths equal to 5% of those suffered in Vietnam has been repeatedly cited as evidence that we must withdraw from the greatest challenge of our era. For all his “bring it on” posturing, has there ever been a more chestless national figure than John Kerry? (Okay, Jimmy Carter, but you catch my drift.) If America is to prevail in this generational challenge, we better find our men with chests in a hurry.

IN SHORT, FOR ALL THE DERISION it has taken since 1992, the conservative critics had it right at the time: Francis Fukayama’s “The End of History and The Last Man” was and remains a masterpiece.

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On Friday, Victor Davis Hanson wrote an important piece for NationalReviewOnline --reprinted at his own web site-- which assessed and categorized the two prevailing views in America on the war.  The creeping appeasement of the majority view concludes that the global war on terror "is insidiously winding down to a police matter," and further asserts that the "[b]illions spent in lives and treasure in Iraq did not make us any safer; the passing of time, the dissipation of passions, and increased vigilance did."

"If there ever were need for strong military action and invasion,"  The "Majority Opinion" asserts, "that time is clearly past, at least for now."

VDH goes on to chart the "Minority Dissent."  Here are the key graphs describing its core convictions:

We really are in a global war. Its dimensions are hard to conceptualize since our enemies, while aided and abetted by sympathetic Middle Eastern dictatorships, claim no national affinity. Indeed, the terrorists deliberately mask the role of their patrons. The latter, given understandable fears of the overwhelming conventional power of the United States military, deny culpability.

In an age of globalization and miniaturized weapons of mass destruction, it is even more difficult to convince Western publics that they may well face peril from state-sponsored terrorists every bit as great as what the Wehrmacht, Imperial Japan, or the Red Army once posed.

While there are regional theaters of conflict predicated on local grievances — as in the multiplicity of fighting during World War II in China, Ethiopia, Poland, Finland, France, North Africa, the Balkans, Russia, the Pacific, etc. — there is nevertheless once more a transnational ideology that seeks to force its worldviews on others.

Like fascism or Communism, Islamism galvanizes millions with its reductionist claims of Western liberal culpability for widely diverse Muslim gripes from Afghanistan to the West Bank. Rather than seeing a plethora of grievances that can be individually addressed, it is more valuable and accurate to understand the problem as a general complaint that in turn manifests itself in different regions and circumstances. While Cypriots or Tibetans don’t blow themselves up over lost land or honor, those energized with Islamist ideology often do. While Hindu, Christian, or Buddhist fundamentalists don’t appreciate popular culture mocking their religion, Islamists are the most likely to assassinate or threaten the novelist or cartoonist as the supposed blasphemer.

Islamic fascism exists, then, as a reactionary creed that sees traditional Islamic culture threatened with Western-inspired global liberalization and modernization. Drawing on the Middle East’s sense of misery and victimization by others, its narrative harkens back to a purer age.

VDH clearly signs the Minority's dissent, as do I and most serious people.  I think the ISG's report will be a one week story, and that the Administration, still run by those believing in the reality and danger of the war, will continue to pursue victory in Iraq and will not shrink from the almost inevitable confrontation with Iran or from backing Israel and Lebanon's democrats in a confrontation with Syria.  All three top tier candidates for the presidency from the GOP side --Mayor Giuliani, Senator McCain, and Governor Romney-- are all in the same camp as the president, and thus the 2008 campaign will be fought over this divide. 

Professor Hanson has once again stated clearly the stakes and the perspectives.  Clip and save or bookmark.  My only quarrel is in his titles.  The "Majority Opinion" is clearly the party of appeasement (and it includes some Republicans but is mostly made up of Democrats) and the party of victory (and it contains some Democrats, but is mostly made up of Republicans.)  The 2006 elections have had the useful effect of clarifying the struggle between these two camps, and it isn't over the minimum wage or fixes, small or large, in the prescription drug program. 

UPDATE:  The uniformed military gets it.  General Pace's study group will provide a serious assessment of the war.  The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) provides a glimpse of that assessment's likely recommendations:

As demands mount to pull U.S. troops out of Iraq, a growing number of senior military officials are arguing that the only way to salvage the situation is to add more U.S. forces and more U.S. money....

Right now there are about 140,000 U.S. troops in Iraq. Though there are no firm plans for an increase, some military officials said that as many as 30,000 more troops could be needed. Most of the U.S. troops would be focused on patrolling Baghdad and training the Iraqi Army....

The push among the uniformed military to do more in Iraq is being driven, in part, by a small study group working for Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The group's work, which is classified, lays out several options for Iraq. But it seems to favor a temporary increase in U.S. forces as part of a broader effort to build the Iraqi Army, says an officer familiar with its work.

The officers' recommendations largely run counter to Mr. Rumsfeld's own ideas, which were revealed in a leaked memorandum written by Mr. Rumsfeld in early November and published yesterday by the New York Times. In the memo Mr. Rumsfeld suggests a pulling back of U.S. forces to bigger bases and possible withdrawals of U.S. troops "so the Iraqis know they have to pull up their socks, step up and take responsibility for their country."

"The notion that we can't provide protection for people in one of the capital cities of this world [Baghdad] is just rubbish," says retired Gen. Jack Keane, who has made trips to Iraq to meet with commanders and provide recommendations to senior military officials. Gen. Keane, who advocates sending more U.S. forces into Baghdad neighborhoods and bolstering the Iraq Army, says he is speaking for himself.

Active duty Army officers have also stepped forward publicly in recent days to call for a redoubling of the U.S. commitment in Iraq. Col. Bill Hix, who spent 13 months in Iraq as the chief strategist for Gen. George Casey, wrote last week in Stanford University's Hoover Digest that more money is needed in the country for reconstruction. At the same time he suggested that it would be a mistake to pull out U.S. troops. "Iraq is simply in no position to progress politically or economically without assistance," wrote Col. Hix, who is now a strategist in the Pentagon. He suggests finding $20 billion to revive the anemic and largely ineffective U.S.-led reconstruction effort.

UPDATE 2:  Michael Barone gets it.:

Bush, like Truman and Churchill, seems determined not to concede defeat. And remember that for Truman on Korea and for Churchill after Dunkirk, no promising military courses were immediately apparent. Truman, after firing Gen. Douglas MacArthur, had forsaken the threat -- a nuclear attack -- that his successor Dwight Eisenhower deployed to get the communists to agree to a truce.

But Truman's perseverance despite his 22 percent job approval -- much lower than Bush's -- was essential in preserving the independence of South Korea, which now has the world's 14th-largest economy. Churchill, facing Hitler alone, could promise only "blood, toil, tears and sweat" until his enemies' mistakes -- Hitler's attack on the Soviet Union, the Japanese strike on Pearl Harbor -- gave him the allies that made victory possible.

Churchill's stubbornness prevented a Nazi victory in midsummer 1940.

We should keep in mind, as well, Bush's repeated vow not to allow Iran to get nuclear weapons. That's in tension with the Iraq Study Group's expected recommendation of direct negotiations with Iran: The obvious quid pro quo for Iranian help in stabilizing Iraq would be dropping our opposition to Iran's nuclear program. In fact, the opposite approach may be what's needed.

I don’t normally do the lengthy-quote-and-link-thing, but I’m making an exception for this stirring piece of insight that comes from Jack Kelly:

Many bright young people have enlisted to fight and have re-enlisted after tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. That the reason is a mystery to Rep. Rangel, Sen. Kerry and many other Democratic leaders is troubling for the future of our country.

I know something about the reason. My draft number was 363. I'd have gone after women and children. But in 1970, I dropped out of law school to join the Marines as a private. I had reasons both noble and base. I was bored with school, tired of cold Wisconsin winters. I wondered if I were man enough to be a Marine. But mostly, it was because my country was at war.

Our country is again at war. Yet it does not occur to Charlie Rangel or John Kerry that bright young people today enlist in the Armed Forces to protect their homes, their families, our freedoms.

For many Democrats, being an American is all about rights, not duties.

Read the whole thing.

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