Vintage Christopher Hitchens, wherein he shreds the execrable George Galloway upon his “testimony” before the U.S. Senate subcommittee “that has been uncovering the looting of the U.N. Oil-for-Food program”. I hope you will read the entire essay, as it is impossible to convey Hitch’s compelling logic - and certainly not his wit:
EVERY JOURNALIST HAS A LIST of regrets: of stories that might have been. Somewhere on my personal list is an invitation I received several years ago, from a then-Labour member of parliament named George Galloway. Would I care, he inquired, to join him on a chartered plane to Baghdad? He was hoping to call attention to the sufferings of the Iraqi people under sanctions, and had long been an admirer of my staunch and muscular prose and my commitment to universal justice (I paraphrase only slightly). Indeed, in an article in a Communist party newspaper in 2001 he referred to me as “that great British man of letters” and “the greatest polemicist of our age.”
No thanks, was my reply. I had my own worries about the sanctions, but I had also already been on an officially guided visit to Saddam’s Iraq and had decided that the next time I went to that terrorized slum it would be with either the Kurdish guerrillas or the U.S. Marines. (I’ve since fulfilled both ambitions.) Moreover, I knew a bit about Galloway. He had had to resign as the head of a charity called “War on Want,” after repaying some disputed expenses for living the high life in dirt-poor countries. Indeed, he was a type well known in the Labour movement. Prolier than thou, and ostentatiously radical, but a bit too fond of the cigars and limos and always looking a bit odd in a suit that was slightly too expensive. By turns aggressive and unctuous, either at your feet or at your throat; a bit of a backslapper, nothing’s too good for the working class: what the English call a “wide boy.”
…
The bad faith of a majority of the left is instanced by four things (apart, that is, from mass demonstrations in favor of prolonging the life of a fascist government). First, the antiwar forces never asked the Iraqi left what it wanted, because they would have heard very clearly that their comrades wanted the overthrow of Saddam. (President Jalal Talabani’s party, for example, is a member in good standing of the Socialist International.) This is a betrayal of what used to be called internationalism. Second, the left decided to scab and blackleg on the Kurds, whose struggle is the oldest cause of the left in the Middle East. Third, many leftists and liberals stressed the cost of the Iraq intervention as against the cost of domestic expenditure, when if they had been looking for zero-sum comparisons they might have been expected to cite waste in certain military programs, or perhaps the cost of the “war on drugs.” This, then, was mere cynicism. Fourth, and as mentioned, their humanitarian talk about the sanctions turned out to be the most inexpensive hypocrisy.
Pete du Pont, former governor of Delaware, comments on US tax reform, in particular the Steve Forbes proposals. First some useful statistics from Steve Forbes’s new book, “Flat Tax Revolution”:
1) The tax code has been amended 14,000 times and is 60% longer since Ronald Reagan’s presidency.
2) The cost of compliance in terms of taxpayer time has risen 67% in the past decade and a half.
3) Americans spend more than six billion man-hours each year filling out tax forms at a cost to the economy of $200 billion.
And here’s a brief summary of the Forbes plan:
There is a better solution, one advanced almost 10 years ago by the National Commission on Economic Growth and Tax Reform (of which I was a member): “a single, low tax rate with a generous personal exemption”–a flat tax.
Under a flat income tax there would be one rate–Mr. Forbes recommends 17%, with a personal exemption of $13,000 per adult and $4,000 per child or dependant, along with a $1,000 per child tax credit. Thus a family of four would pay no federal income tax on its first $46,000 of income. There would be no double taxation of dividends, no capital gains taxes, death taxes, or taxes on Social Security benefits. The tax return would be simpler and easier to fill out: From your wages and salary subtract your personal and dependent exemptions and multiply the result by 17%. It would almost be a tax on a postcard, a huge improvement over the massive complexity of the Internal Revenue Code. (Corporate profits would be taxed at a flat 17% too.)
Feldman’s comments are worth a read - a law professor’s take (he was a senior adviser for constitutional law to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq). He believes forcing the draft to a deadline was a bad idea, that the resulting document is nevertheless very encouraging, but the inability to resolve Sunni concerns is a real risk.
A brief excerpt, definitely not a substitute for reading the complete essay:
Despite the Sunni recalcitrance and Shiite inflexibility that marred negotiations, the proposed constitution is a work of which Iraqis could justifiably be proud. For example, some leaked early drafts expressly endorsed the Shiite clerical establishment and promised that Islamic law would trump equality if the two should collide. The final version, however, is far more egalitarian, guaranteeing the equality of all Iraqis before the law regardless of sex, religion or ethnicity. It also ensures that women will, initially anyway, constitute a quarter of the national legislature, a far higher percentage than in our own Congress nearly a century after women’s suffrage.
Yes, as some critics point out, the text certainly reflects many of the Islamic preferences of those who elected the majority Shiite political coalition. And it prohibits laws that contradict “the provisions of the judgments of Islam.” But it simultaneously bans laws that contravene “the principles of democracy” and the fundamental rights guaranteed by the constitution. This innovative formulation goes far toward establishing Islamic and democratic values on equal footing - more so than any other constitution in the Islamic world. In a similar vein, the draft confers on Iraqis all the rights contained in international agreements that Iraq has signed, provided these do not contradict the principles of the constitution itself.
Note that the stipulation that at least 25% will be female compares to the US senate/house figure of 15%.
Although things look bad today, the game is not yet quite over. Should the constitution be rejected on Oct. 15, everyone can head back to the negotiation table and try again. In fact, the worst outcome might be a passage of the draft despite widespread rejection by Sunni voters. While it is apparently too late to change the text, Shiites and Kurds can still reach out to Sunni voters and try to convince them that they would flourish under the constitution. This would require a few public concessions, including commitments not to form a southern mega-region that leaves the impoverished Sunnis trapped between de facto Shiite and Kurdish states.
A constitution is just a piece of paper, no better than the underlying consensus - or lack thereof - that it memorializes. If Iraq adopts a constitution that reflects a profound and unresolved national split, violence and eventual division of the nation will follow. Ordinary Iraqis and American soldiers will be the losers. So will the ideal of constitutional government.
There are two shockers in this NYT piece on the latest Pew survey on the US population.
The lesser shocker is “64 percent said they were open to the idea of teaching creationism in addition to evolution, while 38 percent favored replacing evolution with creationism”. Similar above-majority findings on creationism have been found in earlier polls.
The greatest shock is this news:
President Bush joined the debate on Aug. 2, telling reporters that both evolution and the theory of intelligent design should be taught in schools “so people can understand what the debate is about.”
If G. W. Bush believes in “intelligent design” I’ll eat my hat - dang politics! A theory of what could be motivating people to take such an anti-science position was offered by a Pew official:
John C. Green, a senior fellow at the Pew Forum, said he was surprised to see that teaching both evolution and creationism was favored not only by conservative Christians, but also by majorities of secular respondents, liberal Democrats and those who accept the theory of natural selection. Mr. Green called it a reflection of “American pragmatism.”
“It’s like they’re saying, ‘Some people see it this way, some see it that way, so just teach it all and let the kids figure it out.’ It seems like a nice compromise, but it infuriates both the creationists and the scientists,” said Mr. Green, who is also a professor at the University of Akron in Ohio.
Perhaps - why doesn’t Pew undertake a survey to tease apart where these ideas come from?
Here’s a previous post on Steven den Beste’s wonderful takedown of creationism: The Human Eye: A Design Review.
The subtitle of this remarkable Hitchens essay is “The case for overthrowing Saddam was unimpeachable. Why, then, is the administration tongue-tied?”
LET ME BEGIN WITH A simple sentence that, even as I write it, appears less than Swiftian in the modesty of its proposal: “Prison conditions at Abu Ghraib have improved markedly and dramatically since the arrival of Coalition troops in Baghdad.”
I could undertake to defend that statement against any member of Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International, and I know in advance that none of them could challenge it, let alone negate it. Before March 2003, Abu Ghraib was an abattoir, a torture chamber, and a concentration camp. Now, and not without reason, it is an international byword for Yankee imperialism and sadism. Yet the improvement is still, unarguably, the difference between night and day. How is it possible that the advocates of a post-Saddam Iraq have been placed on the defensive in this manner? And where should one begin?
Please read the entire essay - I’m confident you will be rewarded.
In Divided They Stand David Brooks takes a sane look at the proposed Iraqi constitution - drawing on analysis by Peter W. Galbraith and Reuel Marc Gerecht:
…Gerecht is also upbeat about this constitution. It’s crazy, he says, to think that you could have an Iraqi constitution in which clerical authorities are not assigned a significant role. Voters supported clerical parties because they are, right now, the natural leaders of society and serve important social functions.
But this doesn’t mean we have to start screaming about a 13th-century theocratic state. Understanding the clerics, Gerecht has argued, means understanding two things. First, the Shiite clerical establishment has made a substantial intellectual leap. It now firmly believes in one person one vote, and rejects the Iranian model. On the other hand, these folks don’t think like us.
What’s important, Gerecht has emphasized, is the democratic process: setting up a system in which the different groups, secular and clerical, will have to bargain with one another, campaign and deal with the real-world consequences of their ideas. This is what’s going to moderate them and lead to progress. This constitution does that. Shutting them out would lead to war.
The constitution also exposes the canard that America is some imperial power trying to impose its values on the world. There are many parts of this constitution any American would love. There are other parts that are strange to us.
But when you get Galbraith and Gerecht in the same mood, you know something important has happened. The U.S. has orchestrated a document that is organically Iraqi.
It’s their country, after all.
For some useful insights into petrol consumption and prices, see this Tigerhawk post - and don’t miss his link to the inflation-adjusted USA Gasoline Price History.
It seems to me that there are a number of true statements about the current high cost of gasoline and American public policy:
1. Gasoline prices are high by historical standards, but not as high as they were during the Carter years.
2. Someday, perhaps in the near future, gasoline prices will be higher than they are today.
3. Someday, perhaps in the near future, gasoline prices will be lower than they are today.
4. Higher fuel prices have an impact on the economy, but because we produce an additional dollar of GDP with a lot less energy today than in 1979, high fuel prices have much less impact than they once did.
…
8. A huge part of our gasoline consumption is structural. Housing developments are built miles from essential businesses like grocery stores, liquor stores and coffee shops. In many suburbs even in dense places like New Jersey you have to drive a couple of miles to get to the first retail business. To a great degree, we have built high gasoline consumption into the political decisions that we have made at the town zoning board.
I am writing all of this from the bench in front of the Tupper Lake, New York public library, which is the only WiFi hotspot for miles. I had to drive 5.4 miles to get here, and will now drive 5.4 miles back. Blogging takes gasoline, too.
On point #8, that structural component is a consequence of both the general absence of urban planning and the political dominance of developers. More Walmarts, more concrete is a Good Thing for developers and for economic growth.
It is theoretically possible to achieve similar results, without the transport inefficiency and endless concrete sprawl, by investing pre-development in mass transit infrastructure to lead the growth to suit the planned development. The obvious political problem with that utopian concept is that it requires advance thinking and spending - very challenging for democracies. France appears to have had some success in such pre-development transport infrastructure investing - how it was achieved politically is an open research topic.
Michelle Malkin says it very well:
…Michael Yon would win hands down for Gates of Fire. Read it, print it out, pass it around, send Michael your support, and keep the Deuce Four soldiers in your thoughts and prayers.
Hugh Hewitt also has many comments and links to Michael Yon’s work.
UPDATE: Don’t miss Jack Kelly’s commentary:
…Yon is doing the best reporting being done from Iraq, as you can tell for yourself by visiting his website.
I’m jealous of Michael, mostly because he is there and I can’t get my paper to send me back, but also by the sneaking suspicion that if I were back in Iraq, embedded with U.S. troops, I wouldn’t be doing as good a job as he is.
There is a double tragedy here: First, that no major news organization has picked up Michael’s dispatches and given them the space they deserve. Second, that few (if any) of the “mainstream” journalists in Iraq are making any effort to emulate him…
More exclusive from-Iraq commentary on Austin Bay’s blog.
My friend, who writes under the name “The Iraqi,” has sent me an analysis of the Iraqi constitution and the Iraqi constitutional process. As he said in an email to me a month ago, his opinions are his opinions– but hey, that’s democracy. He makes his points, and often makes them bluntly. Example: ” Federal Iraq? Fine with me, but no loopholes, no secession, one army, no lebanization, and Islam should be a source not the source.”
“The Iraqi” has a number of well-described concerns about rushing the constitution. He closes
I add my humble voice to the number of respectable Iraqi intellectuals www.elaph.com [Arabic site] who proposed a 5-year waiting period before writing a constitution, mean while we can still use the interim one.
In this Tech Central Station essay What Academic Freedom? Pejman Yousefzadeh quotes the invaluable legal blog Volokh Conspiracy on the DOJ memo and the Berkeley law students petition demanding that the University of California fire memo author, now professor, Yoo:
These charges just don’t square with the facts. As pseudonymous legal blogger Juan Non-Volokh points out, Yoo’s memo
“did not advocate torture; it did not even advocate forgoing Geneva Convention protections for Al Qaeda and Taliban detainees. To the contrary, it explicitly took no position on the matter and made clear that the President could, pursuant to his authority as commander-in-chief could impose the Geneva Convention’s requirements on military personnel. It was a legal memorandum written on behalf of a client, not a policy recommendation.”
For lawyers, an interoffice memo — such as Yoo’s — is not meant to advocate a particular argument. Advocacy comes only in briefs or memos of points and authority that are presented to a court. The writer of a brief or a memo of points and authorities will take a certain side, and will zealously argue it in an effort to persuade the reader (the judge) of the rightness of the position taken in the brief or memo.
Interoffice memos, on the other hand, are designed to explore and give both sides of an issue. Any conclusions will be tentative so as to allow readers of the memo the maximum possible flexibility to question or disagree with the conclusions of the memo. Even if the lawyer does not like what he/she finds in the course of researching an issue, even if the findings are not favorable for the lawyer’s client, the lawyer’s duty is to fairly and accurately report the law in the memo.
In writing his memo, Yoo did not editorialize on what the law should be. Instead, he found out what the law is on the issue of the Geneva Convention’s applicability. His conclusions may be debatable — it should surprise no one that legal issues become the subject of fierce debate — but that does not mean that Yoo’s findings should be renounced or that he should be dismissed from his teaching position.
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