THOUGHTS ON TONY BLAIR AND BRITAIN:

“The U.K. matters,” says one senior administration official. “In the 1950s, British power appeared to be ebbing. Now British power seems to be growing. The Europeans who have sided with us have managed to put their countries on the map as global powers. I question the whole basis that Blair hasn’t gained anything. He’s gained a tremendous amount.”

Hmm. The protesters don’t get that, but apparently lots of other people do: “Protests begin but majority backs Bush visit as support for war surges.”

Imagine.

JEFF JARVIS, on caring people, and why they matter.

I’LL BE ON HUGH HEWITT’S SHOW at 8 Eastern, with Eugene Volokh, talking about the Massachusetts gay marriage case. Go here and click “listen online” if it’s not on the air in your area.

Interestingly, Democrats seem to be running away from the decision. Why, I wonder?

Here is a poll on the subject, finding that young people are split, but old people are heavily against it.

UPDATE: SKBubba is wondering why it’s such a big deal.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Lots of posts, not all of them cheerful, on this subject over at The Volokh Conspiracy. Here are some earlier thoughts on the subject. And don’t miss this column by Radley Balko on getting the state out of the marriage business entirely.

FREDERICK FORSYTH’S LETTER TO GEORGE W. BUSH:

Today you arrive in my country for the first state visit by an American president for many decades, and I bid you welcome.

You will find yourself assailed on every hand by some pretty pretentious characters collectively known as the British left. They traditionally believe they have a monopoly on morality and that your recent actions preclude you from the club. You opposed and destroyed the world’s most blood-encrusted dictator. This is quite unforgivable.

I beg you to take no notice. The British left intermittently erupts like a pustule upon the buttock of a rather good country. Seventy years ago it opposed mobilisation against Adolf Hitler and worshipped the other genocide, Josef Stalin.

It has marched for Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Khrushchev, Brezhnev and Andropov. It has slobbered over Ceausescu and Mugabe. It has demonstrated against everything and everyone American for a century. Broadly speaking, it hates your country first, mine second.

Eleven years ago something dreadful happened. Maggie was ousted, Ronald retired, the Berlin wall fell and Gorby abolished communism. All the left’s idols fell and its demons retired. For a decade there was nothing really to hate. But thank the Lord for his limitless mercy. Now they can applaud Saddam, Bin Laden, Kim Jong-Il… and hate a God-fearing Texan. So hallelujah and have a good time.

Somehow, I think W. will follow that advice. . . .

JOHN LEO:

The showpiece of antiliberal humor is one that appalls a good many conservatives: South Park, Comedy Central’s wildly popular cartoon saga of four crude and incredibly foul-mouthed little boys. . . . This is a new paradigm in pop culture: Conventional liberalism is the old, rigid establishment. The antiliberals are brash, funny, and cool. Who would have thought?

Who, indeed?

UPDATE: Well, this guy, I guess. . .

ANOTHER UPDATE: Read this, too.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Ed Paul thinks there’s more going on culturally than just South Park:

Saturday night, I had a real feeling that maybe conservatives are doing even better than they think in the culture wars. I was walking out of Master and Commander which is a compendium of what used to be called the manly virtues. Courage, honor, tenacity, loyalty and tolerance are all on display without a whiff of irony. Even an appreciation of the arts and education are included without any astonishment that warriors could value those things. Master is not an anomaly. Black Hawk Down and They were Soldiers Once and Young were both straightforward depictions of heroism unaccompanied by knowing smirks.

At the moment it is almost impossible to imagine Hollywood producing a Mash or Catch 22 or Doctor Strangelove ( Although I hasten to add Strangelove will always be in my top five movies.) It wouldn’t dare. They may still smile knowingly over their designer water at home but not in their films.

Are things really going as well as all that?

JOHN KERRY on Saddam and WMDs: “Tall John stood up for linking Saddam with 9/11 not once, but twice, in his two most significant foreign policy speeches. Of course, that was many months, and several Kerrys, ago.”

IRAQ ROUNDUP: There’s lots of great stuff, including photos, on Kevin Sites’ blog.

I haven’t had a chance to look through it, but Brookings has an Iraq index page that’s an effort to pull together lots of data to form a big-picture view of what’s going on in Iraq. (Dale Amon has a smaller-scale effort going on, too.) And Sgt. Strkyer’s has a good Iraq-news page. And if you’re not checking out Rantburg, or The Command Post (link is to its Iraq page), then you might want to. And don’t miss this Iraq reconstruction roundup from Winds of Change.

A MAJOR KOREA-RELATED FISKING, over at The Marmot’s Hole.

UPDATE: More here.

MORE EUROSCANDALS:

The European Union is failing to keep track of huge annual subsidies, and 91 per cent of its budget is riddled with errors or cannot be verified, a financial watchdog said yesterday.

The European Court of Auditors refused to certify EU accounts for the ninth successive year, saying Brussels has failed to match reform rhetoric with a genuine change of culture. Abuse is said to be endemic in the Common Agricultural Policy, which still consumes almost half the £65 billion budget.

Checks on subsidy claims for suckler cows found that 50.2 per cent of animals in Portugal and 31.2 per cent in Italy were false. The “error rate” in forage and crop acreage was 89.7 per cent in Luxembourg, 42.9 per cent in Sweden, 34.5 per cent in France and 19.2 per cent in Britain, despite increased use of satellite photography to spot fraud.

Sheesh.

A REPUBLICAN PRESIDENT AS PERCEIVED IN LONDON: Some interesting experience.

WAR, POLITICS, AND PROTEST: A roundup over at GlennReynolds.com.

MY OFFICE IS A BATTLEFIELD. No, that’s not a metaphor for the state of my desk (er, well, actually it is a metaphor for the state of my desk, but that’s not what I mean). The Law School is in the Fort Sanders neighborhood, so called because it’s the site of Fort Sanders, whose siege played the decisive role in the Siege of Knoxville during the Civil War, opening the path for Sherman’s march to the sea. There were cannon, trenches, telegraph wire (substituting for barbed wire, which hadn’t quite been invented), and snipers, one of whom played an important role.

I mention this because of Antoine Clark’s remark that “I continue to despair at the difficulty that anglosphere writers have in comprehending the humiliation of occupation. Admittedly this is for the best of reasons: Washington DC was last under foreign armed occupation in 1812, London in 1066.” (Arguably, of course, London remains under foreign armed occupation, but we’ll let that pass by.)

In fact, of course, the American South knows what it’s like to lose a war, and to be occupied, which may possibly explain why the American South is also far more military-minded than other parts of the United States — or, for that matter, than London. And the American South certainly didn’t like being occupied. Reconstruction was very unpopular, and my grandmother can still tell stories that she heard from her grandmother about Union soldiers passing through and stripping the place bare of everything except what they were able to hide, and of the years (decades, really) of privation that followed the war.

But American southerners know something that apparently a lot of other people seem to have trouble with: how to lose a war and not hold a grudge. (Much of one, anyway). The monument shown above illustrates that; it sits about a block from my office (click the picture for a bigger image; you can see a closeup of the inscription here if that’s too hard to read on your display). As late as the Spanish-American War, there was considerable doubt about whether southerners would turn out to fight for the United States. They did. (My great-grandfather was one of them).

There are a lot of reasons for that, but the American experience of reconciliation after one of the world’s bloodier and more divisive conflicts is one that perhaps ought to get more attention. It may be that, like so many things American, it is exceptional. But maybe not.

Meanwhile, with the Civil War in mind, reader Gregory Birrer points out that Europe never changes:

I have been reading a little book I picked up while in Gettysburg recently, entitled, “Memoranda During The War” by Walt Whitman. It is a compilation of his notes from about 3 years worth of visits to War hospitals in and around Washington D.C. from 1862 – 1865. Toward the end he inserts some interesting political commentary (mixed in with a variety of topics) that sounds as if it could have been written today. Here’s the piece:

Attitude of Foreign Governments toward the U.S. during the War of 1861-’65 –
Looking over my scraps, I find I wrote the following during 1864, or the latter part of ’63: The happening to our America, abroad as well as at home, these years, is indeed most strange. The Democratic Republic has paid her to-day the terrible and resplendent compliment of the united wish of all the nations of the world that her Union should be broken, her future cut off, and that she should be compell’d to descend to the level of kingdoms and empires ordinarily great!There is certainly not one government in Europe but is now watching the war in this country, with the ardent prayer that the united States may be effectually split, crippled, and dismember’d by it. There is not one but would help toward that dismemberment, if it dared. I say such is the ardent wish to-day of England and of France, as governments, and of all the nations of Europe, as governments. I think indeed it is to-day the real, heart-felt wish of all the nations of the world, with the single exception of Mexico–Mexico, the only one to whom we have ever really done wrong, and now the only one who prays for us and for our triumph, with genuine prayer.

Is it not indeed strange? America, made up of all, cheerfully from the beginning opening her arms to all, the result and justifier of all, of Britain, Germany, France, and Spain – all here – the accepter, the friend, hope, last resource and general house of all – she who has harm’d none, but been bounteous to so many, to millions, the mother of strangers and exiles, all nations – should now I say be paid this dread compliment of general governmental fear and hatred?…….Are we indignant? alarm’d? Do we feel wrong’d? jeopardized? No; help’d, braced, concentrated, rather.

We are all too prone to wander from ourselves, to affect Europe, and watch her frowns and smiles. We need this hot lesson of general hatred, and henceforth must never forget it. Never again will we trust the moral sense nor abstract friendliness of a single government of the world.

“Never again?” Apparently, we need to be reminded from time to time. European hopes for our descent were frustrated then by the greatness of the American spirit, which both ended the war and — more importantly — managed to build a great nation without bitterness. May it be so again. And may the Europeans who resent it continue to gnash their teeth.

UPDATE: Virginia Postrel has observations.

THE MASSACHUSETTS SUPREME COURT has ruled that gay marriage is constitutionally protected. The link to the opinion is here, but I can’t get it to work, probably due to enormous traffic. Not having read it, I can’t offer much of a commentary except that I think it’s a plausible outcome for reasons spelled out in this article that I coauthored with Dave Kopel, and that if, as reported, Lawrence is mentioned a lot, it probably also fits nicely with the arguments made by Randy Barnett, here, about the libertarian underpinnings of that decision. Sorry — too busy to do more at the moment. More later.

UPDATE: This link seems to work. Just select “Opinions” and then click on “Goodridge v. Dept. of Health,” currently the second opinion on the list. Weirdly, the synopsis appears at the top of “Commonwealth v. Platt,” currently the top of the opinion list. Some sort of technical error, I imagine. I’m pasting the synopsis in the “extended entry” area below, in case it gets lost. Just click “more” to read it.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Virginia Postrel is concerned: ” All hell will now break out. I only hope that the movement toward gay marriage survives the ensuing backlash.”

I don’t think things will be quite that bad. But then, I’m an optimist. And also read her interesting comments on why opposition to gay rights has become a bigger deal in some quarters.

(more…)

HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS IN IRAQ — by the New York Times? That’s the report on Healing Iraq, which posts a letter from an Iraqi property owner to Arthur Sulzberger about harassment and property seizure at the hands of guards employed by the Times in Baghdad:

My family has a property in the green zone in down town Baghdad on Abi-Nuas street. The New York Times rents the adjacent property. For several weeks now my brother Ali Al Ali has been denied automobile access to our property by security guards. Until two days ago we thought this was a coalition security measure. Now we known these guards are not coalition personal but are instead the private security force employed by your news paper.

The family property has two store fronts. Yesterday (Saturday November 15, 2003) my brother and two hired men were in one of the stores installing shelves. My brother lost his livelihood in the war and needs to open this store to make a living. His efforts were interrupted by several of the security guards employed by your paper. He was knocked roughly to the floor and threatened. Your guards pointed there AK-47 rifles and my brother and his work men and told them they would be shot if they did not leave immediately.

I feel sure if learned the United States Army was responsible an incident such as this you would feel obligated to publish the story and condemn the act.

In this his case I respectfully suggest you have an obligation to do somewhat more.

Read the whole thing, as they say. Er, especially if you either (1) work for the Times or (2) want to do a story on this report of thuggish behavior.

MICKEY KAUS notes that Howard Dean was praising Bush’s war on terror in June of 2002, and speculates on his shift:

But there’s a second, more troubling interpretation, which is that Dean shifted to a strong anti-war position not because of Bush’s Iraq actions, but because he saw that that was where the Democratic party’s activist base wanted him to go. In June 30, 2002, after all, it wasn’t very hard to see the Iraq conflict looming on the horizon. President Bush had already included Iraq in his “axis of evil.” Vice-President Cheney had toured the Middle East to drum up support for an effort to topple Saddam. On June 17, 2002–two weeks before Dean praised Bush’s “good job”–former President Clinton delivered a speech criticizing Bush for concentrating on Iraq instead of the Israeli-Palestinian issue.

The whole post is quite interesting. From my own perspective, I have to say, I’m less interested in what Dean thought then than in what he’d do with the war on terror in the future. He’s said some encouraging things about that — but if, in fact, he’ll bend with the wind from the Democratic base on these issues, it’s troubling.

STEPHEN F. HAYES’ story about the Saddam / Al Qaeda connection continues to be widely ignored. (And for those who keep sending me the link to the Pentagon’s non-denial denial on this, I mentioned it in my first post on the subject — where I also linked Josh Chafetz’s comments on why it doesn’t, in fact, undercut the Hayes story. Read this, too.)

Compare the non-attention that this story has received with the credulous reception of the Center for Public Integrity’s bogus study claiming cronyism in Iraq reconstruction contracts.

But, you see, it has been decided that “Bush lied” in suggesting a Saddam / Al Qaeda connection, and mere evidence can’t be allowed to get in the way of such a trope. Especially with less than a year until the election. Here’s more, if you’re interested.

INSTAPUNDIT GETS RESULTS: Last week I called attention to the rather laughably anti-Bush agenda of a workshop sponsored by the International Society of Political Psychology. This week, according to John Ray, they’re saying that members are departing in droves, as this letter from the ISPP’s President reports:

It is readily understandable why reservists and Gis would decide not to reenlist, but a puzzle to me that scholars in our field would not “reup” in ISPP. We haven’t invaded anybody, searched unsuccessfully for weapons of mass destruction or kept combatants from other disciplines locked up without even access to their professional journals. I am therefore baffled that many of you have not renewed your membership, and write to urge you to reconsider.

I, for one, find it “readily understandable” why people don’t want to maintain their membership in an organization as trivial and politicized as this. And that, of course, means that I don’t deserve any credit. Organizations that trivialize and politicize themselves tend to lose members. And they tend to be mocked on InstaPundit. But correlation isn’t causation.

UPDATE: Reader Karl Bade emails:

Apparently, ISPP President Lebow thinks snide mockery is an effective method of getting people to re-up their memberships. What does this say about his grasp of political psychology?

Heh. The letter as a whole says rather a lot. The first premise of political psychology is apparently to assume that everyone holds the same political vews that you do.

I THOUGHT THEY BANNED HATE SPEECH IN BRITAIN:

But the Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, branded Mr Bush as “the greatest threat to life on this planet” whose policies will “doom us to extinction”. The mayor also said that he did not recognise Mr Bush as a lawful president and he condemned America’s rapacious capitalist agenda.

I guess that’s only for people who say things that are politically incorrect. But is Bush safe with government officials spouting in such inflammatory fashion? If some loony takes a shot at Bush, I’m blaming Ken.

HERE’S A PHOTO OF THE ANTI-TERRORISM DEMONSTRATION IN NASARIYAH via Sgt. Stryker.

SOMEBODY’S CATCHING ON: “The director of Amnesty International USA warns that the left must confront terror with the same zeal that it battles Bush — or risk irrelevance.” Indeed.

Jeff Jarvis rounds up some advice.

UPDATE: Apparently, the head of Amnesty in Britain hasn’t caught on, as she’s slouching toward irrelevance with another bit of foaming-at-the-mouth anti-Americanism:

THOUSANDS of people will take to the streets in Britain next week to voice their anger, frustration and political opposition to President George W Bush’s policies.

Some [Like the American head of Amnesty! — Ed.] will criticise these protestors, writing off their views as knee-jerk anti-Americanism. But the critics should think before condemning them.

Why? Because after almost three years of President Bush’s “war on terror” many would argue that the world is now a more dangerous and divided place than it was immediately after 9/11.

Two years and two months is “almost three years?” Well, Amnesty has never, at least lately, let a fear of exaggeration get in the way of a good anti-American line. This doesn’t seem to reflect British opinion, though:

More than half of Labour supporters back US President George Bush’s state visit to Britain, according to a survey.

They were among an overall 43% of voters who told pollsters ICM they welcomed the visit – some 7% more than the 36% who said they would prefer the President to stay away. Twelve per cent were undecided.

The survey, published in The Guardian as Mr Bush flies to the UK, contradicted the widely-held assumption that the visit will damage Prime Minister Tony Blair.

It recorded improved ratings for the Prime Minister personally, as well as a slump in opposition to the war in Iraq.

And it indicated that public opinion in Britain is overwhelmingly pro-American, with 62% of respondents agreeing the US was “generally speaking, a force for good”, compared to 15% who described it as “an evil empire”.

Heh. Iraqis are marching against terrorism, and antiwar sentiment is slumping. “Irrelevance,” indeed.

BRUCE ROLSTON has some thoughts regarding reports that NATO will be involved in Iraq. He thinks that it’s a good thing. Once again, it depends to a large degree on what you think will happen next.

AS I’VE SAID BEFORE, they aren’t anti-war, they’re just on the other side:

Tamsin Smith
BBC reporter in Rome

A group of Italian anti-war militants is raising funds to support the armed Iraqi resistance, the BBC has learned.

The discovery comes as Italy mourns 19 men killed in a suicide attack in Iraq last week.

The “Antiimperialista” organisation’s internet campaign asks people to send “10 Euros to the Iraqi resistance”.

Absolutely shameful. I love this: “They are currently organising an anti-war demonstration in Italy next month, and it remains to be seen whether news of the fund-raising activities will deter more moderate anti-war activists from attending.”

Any bets? You know, someone will probably accuse me of “blurring the line” between anti-war protesters and, well, traitors. But it’s the BBC that’s doing the blurring here. If they called them “terrorist sympathizers” or “Italians who support those who are killing their countrymen” that would be different. But they’re not willing to do that. Why not?

UPDATE: Reader Raymond Sauer emails: “How can a BBC reporter say ‘anti-war militants’ with a straight face?”

I think they have classes for that.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Meanwhile, in Iraq, Healing Iraq reports:

Huge anti-terrorism demonstrations were held in Nassiriyah yesterday by students association condemning the attacks on the Italian force carrying signs such as ‘No to terrorism. Yes to freedom and peace’, and ‘This cowardly act will unify us’. I have to add that there were similar demonstrations in Baghdad more than a week ago also by students against the bombings of police stations early this Ramadan. I hope the demonstrations advocates that bugged me are satisfied now. There are also preparations for anti-terror demonstrations before Id (end of Ramadan holidays).

You’ll have to scroll, as his permalinks are bloggered. It’s in the 11/16 8:15pm post. Hmm. The Italians call themselves anti-imperialists, but they seem to be supporting the small group that wants to rule Iraq in opposition to its people, don’t they?

As another reader writes: “Funny you don’t hear about this sort of thing in the news.” Yeah, it is. Maybe some of those guys need to get away from their newly-hired Baathist minders.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Here’s more information about the “anti-Imperialistas” and their fundraising efforts.

A READER WRITES:

I was arguing with someone over the weekend about the demonstrations planned for when Mr. Bush goes to London this week. I made the point that we would never see an anti-Al Qaeda demonstration against atrocities like the one in Istanbul, and was pointing out the hypocrisy (and corruption) of this. (Andrew Sullivan ran a quote from an American ex-pat in England who was afraid to go to one of these demonstrations to express his support for the U.S.)

But it occurred to me that we should have such demonstrations, and I wondered if bloggers could organize such things, here and elsewhere. How about a day or multiple days) of protest against fanaticism, violence, anti-Semitism, and the murder of civilians (not to mention people at prayer, for God’s sake)?

It’s time to turn this thing around, don’t you think? The anti-Americanism out of Europe is ridiculous at this point, when such things are routinely occurring there and elsewhere. I’m tired of it, and tired that Istanbul can pass as just another day, while Bush in London mobilizes thousands. We need to speak up.

Indeed. Though there’s no hypocrisy about Istanbul. If Bush were bombing synagogues, they probably wouldn’t protest that.

UPDATE: Well, in a way what the reader asks for is already happening.

IT’S A BATTLE OF THE LIEBERMANS! I kind of like Joe Lieberman. But not everyone does.

PORPHYROGENITUS pulls a tidbit from the John F. Burns story I linked over the weekend — American journalists in Iraq have hired their old Saddamite “minders” as factotums.

And we wonder why the news is bad. As Porphyrogenitus notes:

So our “free press” are so annoyed by and opposed to censorship that they’re employing their own minders now that Saddam is no longer able to pay them. And we wonder why the quotes they get from Iraqis – who aren’t stupid and do know who worked for the Ba’athist regime – tell the interpreters the things they do, and the interpreters then tell the reporters, who then report back to America in a certain tone. If we’ve been wondering why there is such a disconnect between what the news reports are saying about conditions and attitudes in Iraq, and what independent people who go there without hiring on ex-Iraqi Information Ministry minders to screen information for them say about Iraq, well now we know.

Yes, we do. And perhaps this sort of blatant hypocrisy colors the Iraqis’ views of Americans in general.