Nation-Building

David Greenberg on being a liberal, as opposed to being a conservative:

I think there's another reason for this budding re-embrace of liberal: the fight against Islamist jihadism. Whatever our views of Bush's policies, liberals and conservatives agree that what divides the West from the terrorists is our commitment to liberal values--liberal in the broad sense of the term that denotes the Enlightenment traditions of freedom, equality, and human rights. Search for the term liberal on sites like that of the Progressive Policy Institute and you'll rarely find it used in distinction to Bush-style conservatism--but often invoked in distinction to al-Qaeda-style fundamentalism. Even the Bushies use "liberal values," if only rhetorically, to describe their project of democratizing the Middle East.

In this context of international conflict, liberal suddenly drops its associations with Volvos and lattes and starts to evoke more noble images of education, voting, free speech, and freedom of religion. It's starting to sound like a label we don't have to run from at all.

count me as a proud Liberal, too. In fact I would go further and say that those who eschew "liberal" for the term "progressive" - those who might rule out Harold Ford or Jim Webb as being insufficiently pure - are just as much my political opponents as the (regrettably) mainstream of the modern Republican party. If the Progressives want the color blue, and the Republicans want the color red, they can have them. Liberals and Conservatives, however: go Purple!

(via Blake)

Continue reading/discuss I, Liberal ...

At RedState, Leon has a lengthy post about eugenics, a topic on which he and I are in large agreement upon. However, he introduces the topic by quoting Charles Darwin, and in so doing leaves out critical context. The complete context is as follows (courtesy of Darwin Online):

Natural Selection as affecting Civilised Nations.

In the last and present chapters I have considered the advancement of man from a former semi-human condition to his present state as a barbarian. But some remarks on the agency of natural selection on civilised nations may be here worth adding. This subject has been ably discussed by Mr. W. R. Greg, and previously by Mr. Wallace and Mr. Galton. Most of my remarks are taken from these three authors. With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilised men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilised societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.

The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy, if so urged by hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature. The surgeon may harden himself whilst performing an operation, for he knows that he is acting for the good of his patient; but if we were intentionally to neglect the weak and helpless, it could only be for a contingent benefit, with a certain and great present evil. Hence we must bear without complaining the undoubtedly bad effects of the weak surviving and propagating their kind; but there appears to be at least one check in steady action, namely the weaker and inferior members of society not marrying so freely as the sound; and this check might be indefinitely increased, though this is more to be hoped for than expected, by the weak in body or mind refraining from marriage.

emphasis mine. Leon protested that he did not accuse Darwin of wanting to end humanitarianism, but the omission is highly misleading. In an essay whose thesis is the evils of eugenics, it is relevant that Darwin himself considered it evil.

In fact a very good argument - moral and scientific - could be made against Eugenics, and invoking Darwin on the side of the angels here would lend such an argument immense rigour. Leaving out the quote however tends to imply that eugenics is a logical extension of Darwin's theory of evolution (note: not abiogeneis!). That is a conclusion many readers at RedState might be predisposed towards.

It is also worth noting that Darwin considered marriage an instrument of eugenics that was permissible and non-evil. In one sense there is a continuum of eugenics, with deliberate choice between adults at one end (ie, marriage selection) and outright withholding of humanitarian aid at the other. The middle area is more difficult. Into it fall questions like "designer babies" and the entire abortion debate. There is a vast landscape of debate between tehse extremes, in other words, and Darwin is planted solidly at one end - the end that I myself and Leon both occupy. It is a shame that Darwin's work on evolutionary theory has predisposed social conservatives against him, since in many ways Darwin would be a great ally indeed.

It is also worth noting that Leon invokes the topic as a critique against stem cell research, but frankly I think that the relevance of stem cells to eugenics is poor. There is no culling of certain embryos on the basis of their genetic properties, and no consideration of race whatsoever.

Continue reading/discuss Darwin and eugenics ...

Cross-posted from Good Will Hinton:

In the wake of David Kuo's story about the White House paying lip service to conservative evangelical Christians, I have given a lot of thought to how political parties treat their various constituent groups. It is painfully obvious that the Republican party treats conservative Christians as a foregone conclusion. And they are one of many groups like this. Isn't the Religious Left headed by Jim Wallis and his Sojournors organization a similar foregone conclusion for the Democrat party? Does anyone honestly believe that this group would ever vote Republican?

One constituent group in America really knows about this. The black community in America has long been taken for granted by the Democrats. But they are finally starting to turn the tables. Not only are many blacks across the country running for office as Republicans, but many black voters are now voting Republican for the first time. The point isn't that some blacks are now voting Republican; the same holds true if they are long voted Republican and now voted Democrat. The important thing is that politicians are now less able to get away with meaningless rhetoric and demogoguery aimed at getting the black vote.

Hopefully, we will see the same maturity in the Christian community. We are already starting to see many conservative evangelical Christians speak out about environmental issues and buck the stereotype. Maybe we will start seeing the Christian community start rejecting the demogoguery and fear-mongering rhetoric that often comes from Republican politicians.

Continue reading/discuss Don't Be A Foregone Conclusion ...

Increasingly, it seems that outright withdrawal from Iraq is just as flawed a panacea as "stay the course" in terms of winning the war on Terror, which is the real ball our foreign plicy with respectt to Iraq should be keeping an eye on. To that effect I just added a pile of links to the @NB feed on the right sidebar that have basically summarized the current state of afffairs: civil war between Shi'a and Sunnis, Internecine power struggles between Shi'a, and unification of Sunni insurgents, tribal leaders, and even ex-Ba'ath against Al-Qaeda. Throw in the likelihood that the Baker Hamilton commission will probably recommend a "soft" partition of Iraq (which will suit the Shi'a and the Kurds just fine), and it seems that our options of where to go from here need to be subtle indeed. In fact just such a subtle proposal was just floated by Greg D in which he proposes an Iraqi Dayton Accords; the nuance of his proposal is such that it is almost guaranteed to be misrepresented, especially by the strident "stay the course" crowd, but also by the vocal left which sees withdrawal from Iraq as the sine qua non of a Democratic majority's agenda after the election in a few weeks.

However, it is unquestionable that having a Democratic majority in the House will put pressure on the Administration to be more receptive to nuance. One could argue that the creation of the Iraq Study Group and Baker's involvement was really a recognition of the inevitable. The biggest obstacle to peace really are the present crop of stay-the-course partisans who dominate all discourse about Iraq. The concern that the Democrats might try to force an end to the war is largely overblown given that even with a majority, they are still a fairly diverse caucus, and there is hardly concensus on what to do in Iraq next. Of course, it suits die-hard GOP stalwarts to deny this, such as at RedState.

In a related vein, I had a discussion with a very well-known conservative blogger (who has not yet given me explicit permission to share his identity) that really threw the impending potential shift in our Iraq strategy (should the Democrats take control) into stark relief. The transcript follows:

 

me: let me ask you something
him: sure
12:27 PM me: do you believe that a Democrat majority will be genuinely narrow in its ideologic spread?
him: On some key things, yes.
The war above all.
12:28 PM me: theres considerable spread on the war
already
look at Steny Hoyer, for example
him: Not where Iraq is concerned.
There's merely debate on how fast to leave.
me: and he will be number 2 in line after Pelosi
No, Hoyer is a "stay" Dem.
him: Sorry, but I disagree. The Democrats will end the war in Iraq, Hoyer or no.
12:29 PM Hoyer is not a moral leader by any stretch, and he does not speak for the party on that count.
me: ive been a pretty strong supporter of staying in Iraq myself, but I confess that my attitudes are slowly shifting.
theres a key dynamic that most analysts tend to miss
him: Which is what?
12:30 PM me: the key is this. What is more important to our long term goals:
1. denying Al Qaeda victory
2. denying the Iraqi insurgenyc victory
12:31 PM him: You cannot lose to one without directly buttressing the cause of the other.
I believe your formulation contains a fallacy: namely, that there is a meaningful separation between the two, vis a vis the broader jihadist movement that we are fighting.
me: no, i am going stricltly by Abizaid's assessment, Joshua.
12:32 PM and he makes that separation crystal clear, as do those who are familiar with eth jihadi message forums
like Cordesman, Darling, etc
i do my due diligence.
him: Abizaid is wrong in this.
We are fighting more than al Qaeda in this war.
12:33 PM me: John Abizaid knows that, I think.
him: Sorry, but if he believes that there is a meaningful separability between jihadist A and jihadist B, he is wrong.
me: how are you defining jihadist?
12:34 PM him: Muslim + Ready to Kill for the Faith = Jihadist. A large group.
me: you dont draw any dictintion between a foreign ALQ fighter and a local sunni iraqi?
12:35 PM him: Sure, I'm aware that they have different specific motivations. But there's no reason to not do our utmost to kill them both.
If one wins, the other draws moral and material support from that victory.
me: actually, not true.
him: We cannot capitulate to either. We should learn from Lebanon, Somalia, and Lebanon.
me: if anything their goals are completely diametrically opposed.
12:36 PM him: Not where we infidels are concerned, they're not.
me: I think the Islam issue is cloudinng the analysis here. Yes they are functionally muslim groups btut in fact a strategy for victory shoudl seek to divide them further, not lump them together.
12:37 PM for the sunni iraqi its about occupation
for the ALQ jihadi its about islam.
him: Which is why the Sunni Iraqi seeks to kill local Shi'a and Christians, yes?
12:38 PM Sorry, but this has all the meaningful qualities of trying to separate German and Italian facists. You cannot coexist with either.
me: the sectarian conflicts are a separate layer.
did I just know propose coexistence?
i dont think i advocated that.
12:39 PM i am discussing way to put these two foes at each others' throats. Not choose one to cuddle up with at night.
Im not your average leftist. By now I think I deserve that benefit of teh doubt.
him: Well, given that neither will wipe out the other -- and we want that fate for both of them -- I don't see the point on more than a tactical level.
me: then read this:
http://abuaardvark.typepad.com/abuaardvark/2006/10/alqaeda_declare.html
him: I know. But you are an incorrigible optimist.
12:40 PM me: give me your opinion on that link.
him: Can I read it later in the day? Work calls.
me: ok

I should note that I consider my correspondent above a friend and an honorable man. But it is clear that his responses above are reflective of a broader, fundamental unwillingness to look at the actual data in favor of a domestic-politics tinged lens. The violence in Iraq? all about Islam persecuting Christians. The Democratic agenda? Withdrawal, impeachment, utter discipline for humiliating America's sake alone.

Let me be absolutely clear. If the Republicans were offering a genuine plan for strategic victory, one that took the differing motives of the various Iraqi factions and neighbors of Iraq into account (most especially Syria and Iran, with whom diplomatic negitiations towards common interests are essential to ANY victory), then I would vote GOP in five weeks. It IS Iraq, stupid - and the GOP is stuck in a loop. At this point, a Democratic majority is the only way to break the policy logjam and allow some actual reality-based strategy to proceed.

Continue reading/discuss Withdrawal vs stay the course: false choices ...

Another Armey’s Axiom says that if it is about power, you lose. And unfortunately when it comes to James Dobson, my personal experience has been that the man is most interested in political power.

As Majority Leader, I remember vividly a meeting with the House leadership where Dobson scolded us for having failed to “deliver” for Christian conservatives, that we owed our majority to him, and that he had the power to take our jobs back. This offended me, and I told him so.

In a later meeting Dobson and a colleague came into my office to lobby against a trade bill, asking me to stop the legislation from going to the House floor. They were wrong on the issue, and I told them no. Would you at least postpone the vote, they asked? We have a direct mail fundraising letter about to go out to our membership, they said.

I wondered then if their opposition to the bill was driven less by their moral compass and more by the need to rile their membership and increase revenue. I wondered then, if these self-appointed Christian leaders, like many politicians, had come to Washington to do good, but had instead done well for themselves.

***

Freedom works. Freedom is a gift from God Almighty, and we have a responsibility to protect it. Christians face a temptation to power when we are fortunate enough to have a majority of support in Congress. But government can never advance a faith that is freely given, and it is corrosive to even try. Just look at Europe, where decades of nanny-state activism— including taxpayer support for churches and for religious political parties— have severely eroded the faith. In America today, too many of our Christian leaders fail to recognize the temptation to power and the danger it holds for our society and our faith.

And so America’s Christian conservative movement is confronted with this divide: small government advocates who want to practice their faith independent of heavy-handed government versus big government sympathizers who want to impose their version of “righteousness” on others through the hammer of law.

This is essential context for David Kuo's new book about the exploitation of the Religious Right by the present Administration. And as Digby points out, it's not that the Administration thinks that teh Christian leaders are dupes. It's that the Administration and the Christian leaders both think ordinary Christians are dupes. Kudos to Armey for calling it to its face.

Continue reading/discuss in praise of Dick Armey ...

Let me direct your attention to an outstanding discussion taking place at The New Republic Online between Damon Linker, author of The Theocons: Secular American Under Siege and former editor of First Things, and Ross Douthat, an associate editor of the Atlantic Monthly and author of Privilege: Harvard and the Education of the Ruling Class.

In this discussion, Douthat and Linker pretty quickly get down to a large root of their disagreement, the "liberal bargain". Linker describes the "liberal bargain" thusly:

Like every other citizen, you must be willing to accept what I call "the liberal bargain." In my book, I describe this bargain as the act of believers giving up their "ambition to political rule in the name of their faith" in exchange for the freedom to worship God however they wish, without state interference. What does this mean, in practical terms? It means that your belief in what the Roman Catholic Church believes and teaches is irrelevant, politically speaking. It simply shouldn't matter whether or not you think that justice has a divine underpinning, anymore than it should matter whether you prefer Jane Austen to Dostoevsky. In a word, liberal politics presumes that it's possible and desirable for political life to be decoupled from theological questions and disputes.

In his response, Douthat says that this "liberal bargain" is the root of the disagreement.

Yet that's precisely what you seem to think the "liberal bargain" is intended to do--to discriminate against religious motivations in politics in a way that it doesn't discriminate against, say, the motivations of a secular social engineer seeking an earthly utopia. Sure, you do offer a way out for religious believers who want to put their faith-based ideas into action: As long as they're willing to make nonreligious arguments for their ideas, you generously allow, they're welcome in the public square. So the abolitionists and civil rights agitators pass your test, because "the goals for which they worked--the emancipation of the slaves, the right to vote, economic opportunity for all citizens--were perfectly defensible in secular-civic terms." (You also suggest, generously, that the pro-life movement might pass it as well.)

Douthat goes on to argue against the arbitrary standard of politcal involvement.

If you're the arbiter of what the liberal bargain means, then I want no part of it. The American experiment has succeeded for so long precisely because it doesn't force its citizens channel their "theological passions and certainties ... out of public life and into the private sphere." It forces them to play by a certain set of political rules, yes, which prevent those passions and certainties from creating a religious tyranny. But it doesn't make the mistake of telling people that their deepest beliefs should be irrelevant to how they vote, or what causes they support.

I am going to inject myself into this conversation as I have as lengthy a history and experience with the Religious Right as anyone. While I am often critical of the Religious Right, particularly in its blind devotion to the Republican party, I am going to side with Douthat here and take his point a little deeper.

A legitimate concern that many Christians have is that religious belief has been pushed into the realm of the private. Early in the 20th century, Enlightenment philosophy said that certain ideas were fine for private belief but had no place in the public arena of thought or politics. So it is fine to have whatever private beliefs you like, just don't talk as if they have any bearing on others.

The fallacy of this viewpoint is that it assumes that it is possible to take a "neutral" viewpoint. That somehow we can take some non-biased approach to various public topics. I hope that this is an obvious myth to all my readers. I'm not sure why some people think that by removing any mention of the divine that one's beliefs become anything other than just that.

Christians make a fair criticism when they react to being told that their beliefs are not an acceptable viewpoint in public life but that other "God-removed" perspectives are acceptable. I'm not sure how Linker's modern liberalism is anything but "religious".

I am concerned that this continued push of "religious beliefs" into the realm of the private is simply a way for some to exclude others out of the conversation.

Continue reading/discuss Linker v. Douthat: A Debate Over the "Liberal Bargain" and Theocons ...

my feeling is that the nuke tested by NK was a fake, or at best a dud. Thats not wishful thinking; I am getting it from here and here. Keep in mind that NK's entire strategy has been to rattle the cage and scream. Then the various powers that be give it a bribe to shut up for a time. They need to continually up the ante to maintain this strategy - so the suggestion that they have a weapon is more important and valuable to them than the actual weapon (sort of teh inverse of the Israeli position of actually being in possession but never acknowledging it officially).

NK is a pile of independent mini fiefdoms run by local power apparatchiks. As James Fallows writes in a must-read piece, NK is likely following the standard Seven Stages of Collapse:

Phase One: resource depletion;

Phase Two: the failure to maintain infrastructure around the country because of resource depletion;

Phase Three: the rise of independent fiefs informally controlled by local party apparatchiks or warlords, along with widespread corruption to circumvent a failing central government;

Phase Four: the attempted suppression of these fiefs by the KFR once it feels that they have become powerful enough;

Phase Five: active resistance against the central government;

Phase Six: the fracture of the regime; and

Phase Seven: the formation of new national leadership.

North Korea probably reached Phase Four in the mid-1990s, but was saved by subsidies from China and South Korea, as well as by famine aid from the United States. It has now gone back to Phase Three.

The whole government there exists for one reason: to maintain the power and lifestyle of their <0.0001 % elite. Jong Il is a classic buffoon - he's the Zaphod Beeblebrox figure, the guy who wields ostensible power to draw attention away from those who really do.

The only reason that NK gets the bribes is because Seaoul is a hostage. And 20+ million semi-starved peasants who become Somebody's Else's Problem should the regime fail.

And it amazes me that people think that a nation that looks like a prehistoric wasteland from space at night can actually maintain the infrastructure required for nuclear weapons. Anyone with a glimmer of understanding about what it takes to manufacture a working weapon should be incredibly skeptical.

What do we do, then? Perhaps surprisingly to some of you, I think there wasn't much else we could do. So I don't fault the Bush Administration for yesterday's events. We need to stop giving the NK its bribes, and ride out the ensuing collapse. But we need to be frank about the fact that the collapse is coming and put into place some preparation for it, something that the present Administration is probably not going to do given its preoccupation with other messes ofits own making.

So we have to wait until new leadership in 2008 and hope that NK's feeble society can still keep itself somewhat together for another decade while we get ready for the biggest humanitarian crisis in Asia that looms on the horizon.

Continue reading/discuss NUK nuke skepticism ...

RedState's military roundtable looks at Kerry's election promise of doubling the number of special operations forces (SOF) and goes into detail on why such men can't be mass-produced.

The recruitment issue boils down to two numbers:

1. How many young men in the general military population are physically and mentally capable of SOF?

2. What percentage of those men become SOF?

It is a fairly obvious statement that the answer to #2 is nowhere close to 100% (more likely, < 1%). However as the essay above makes clear, that percentage is likely impossible to raise. So the best route to increasing the pool of SOF is to address #1.

Namely, if the answer to #1 is N, and the answer to #2 is p, then the total number of SOF = Np. Since p is effectively fixed, N is the only variable left to adjust.

I think that we have to adopt a "trickle down" approach. Financial incentives therefore would serve to increase N - and broaden the pool of those men who might at some point be exposed to the opportunity to be challenged and inspired enough to consider SOF.

There are many young men in urban environments who are full of potential but are ultimately wasted. Any young punk on the street today can be a fearless warrior and honorable officer tomorrow. The issue is to increase the incentive for that punk to take a chance on a military career, to inspire them with a vision of something beyond their present existence.

Yes this means disproportionately target the underclass for recruitment. But what a majestic means of class uplift!

This is why I think that a new GI Bill for the 21st century - the need to grow the force, not build it - has promise to solve all the manpower issues, not just with SOF but also for the greater counterinsurgency role that teh general Army will be expected to play. More men attracted to military service means a rising tide that will float all boats.

Continue reading/discuss grow the force, II ...

Last week I attended a speaker series at Oglethorpe University in Atlanta at which Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue. As this speech was given at a university, Governor Perdue took the opportunity to give more of a motivational talk about the importance of trust. He spoke much about the importance of trust in politicans and how trust begins with those around you and then ripples outward into other relationships.

I can't help but think about this speech as a brewing controversy develops over state legislation that passed this past session that saved Governor Perdue $100,000 in taxes. As reported by the Atlanta Journal Constitution:

[Rep. Larry] O'Neal, a Republican from Warner Robins, spent about two minutes that night — March 29, 2005 — discussing House Bill 488, a lengthy, 28-section measure. The bill, among other things, was designed to allow Georgians to delay paying state taxes on land they sell in Georgia if they buy similar property in another state.

He mentioned a last-minute change, which would make the tax break retroactive to land sales made in 2004.

And just like that, Gov. Sonny Perdue saved an estimated $100,000 in state taxes.

The governor signed the bill into law on April 12, 2005 — three days before taxes were due. Then he took advantage of the tax break on his 2004 tax return, according to his staff.

Without the backdated tax break, the governor would have had to pay taxes on money he made in 2004 by selling property he owned in Georgia. Later that year, he used $2 million in proceeds from the sale of that Georgia land to buy 19.51 acres near Florida's Walt Disney World.

Like many political scandals, this one is hard to follow and impossible to state unequivocally that Purdue is in the wrong here. The circumstances are certainly suspicious but we don't convict people in this country on suspician.

That being said, this appears to be a perfect case for Governor Perdue to earn some trust and to show his character, which he spoke much about last week. Purdue could diffuse this situation by returning the tax savings to the state and stating that while he had done nothing wrong in taking advantage of the tax break, that he would return the money so as to avoid any appearance of impropriety. It isn't like Perdue can't afford the $100,000. Afterall, what is trust and character worth.

Of course, many Democrats who are criticizing the Governor over this issue are no more trustworthy. The Atlanta Journal Constitution also reported about the legislators who passed this bill:

Lawmakers call the end of each legislative session the "dangerous hour," because they often don't have time to read everything before casting votes. Small committees of legislators — called conference committees — bring rewritten legislation before the House and Senate, and lawmakers place their trust in colleagues presenting the bills to let them know what's going on.

So legislators like [Democratic State Rep. Don] Wix, who figured something was up, still voted for it. So did longtime House Ways & Means Committee member Jeanette Jamieson (D-Toccoa), who runs a tax service.

"It was so obvious the way it was written that it was slid in there in a way where it would be considered at the busiest time," she said. "I accepted what was said from the well. I recognized it probably was a tax bill for somebody."

After reading in the AJC that Perdue benefited from the change, Jamieson, the 22-year legislator said, "I was disappointed in the way it was handled. We had just blindly passed a major tax break for the governor."

Shame on Jamieson and Wix!!! Are you kidding me? Jamieson admits right here that she figured that this bill was a tax bill for someone but she voted for it anyways. Do the people of Toccoa, Georgia know this about their state representative?

I'm not sure how Georgia Democrats can assail Governor Perdue about a bill that appears to have been tailored to save him money when their own state representatives voted for it without dissent.

This is actually a sad story about the overall lack of trust that I believe most voters feels towards their elected officials. This isn't a Republican or Democrat issue. Until people vote with their, um, vote, there is little chance that we will ever start trusting politicians again.

Cross-posted at Good Will Hinton

Continue reading/discuss Can We Trust Politicians? ...

But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.

(Federalist Papers #51)

Mary Madigan posed some interesting questions a couple of days ago, and then followed up with some answers, assessing whom the US Government considers an ally and who it considers an enemy in the war on terror. In my opinion, her answers betray a profound and dangerous naievete.

This naievete is most evident in her unthinking acceptance of the government's arguments regarding Tariq Ramadan. She notes that he was recently denied a visa to enter the US (for an invited profesorship at the University of Notre Dame), for allegedly providing "material support" to a "terrorist organization".

In actual fact, Tariq Ramadan has never provided material support to a terrorist organization. Rather, he himself voluntarily disclosed to the US government that he had donated a small sum of money to Palestinian relief charities. Of these donations, Ramadan says,

...the State Department cites my having donated about 600 Euros to two humanitarian organizations (in fact a French organisation and its Swiss chapter) serving the Palestinian people. I should note that this was not something that the State Department’s investigation revealed. To the contrary, as the State Department acknowledges, it was I myself who brought these donations to the State Department’s attention. The U.S. government apparently believes that the organizations to which I gave small amounts of money have in turn given money to Hamas. But the organizations to which I donated are not deemed suspect in Europe, where I live. I donated to these organizations for the same reason that countless Europeans - and Americans, for that matter - donate to Palestinian causes: not to provide funding for terrorism, but because I wanted to provide humanitarian aid to people who are desperately in need of it.

Now you may be of the opinion that all Palestinians are terrorists, and that all organizations that seek to provide them relief from their miserable existence are really fronts for active terror orgs. I will mince no words - such a view makes you a jafi, and a traitor (in effect, if not in intent) in the war on terror. A more reasonable and non-traitorous interpretation is that some such organizations are indeed terror fronts, and that some people's donations have indeed ended up in the pockets of Hamas. I don't think that is in dispute. But Mary assumes foreknowledge and intent to actively finance terrorists on Tariq Ramadan's part. On what basis? Ramadan is a role model for his lengthy life's work in articulating the neccessity of muslim assimilation into European society - a body of work that Mary has assuredly not read. I urge people of less prejudiced inclination to read Tariq Ramadan's own words on the issue and judge for yourself.

Based on her willful acceptance of this slander against Tariq Ramadan, Mary goes on to conclude,

Some self-proclaimed pious, moderate Muslims still consider Ramadan to be a role model despite his involvement with terrorism, instantly negating their claims of being pious or moderate.

Then for the record, I am not moderate, nor do I wish to be considered as such. (With respect to being pious, I invite Mary to reflect on her own piety before judging mine.)

Instead of an actual moderate like Tariq Ramadan, whose life's work in fostering a Western muslim identity directly supports our long-term goal in the war on terror of transformative change in muslim societies, Mary instead cites Wafa Sultan and Ayaan Hirsi Ali as archetypical muslim moderates. In other words, Mary prefers a definition of "moderate" that is extreme rather than mainstream - a truly Orwellian feat.

The recent National Intelligence Estimate concluded that "the Muslim mainstream emerges as the most powerful weapon in the war on terror" and this is a theme that Dean has attempted in his own way to force conservatives to understand. Muslims like Irshad Manji, Wafa Sultan, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali are not the muslim mainstream - they in fact are opportunists who profit by positioning themselves outside the mainstream. 'Aqoul recently had a three-part series on these three women entitled "Anger as Analysis" (I, II, III) that is a must-read, for anyone sincerely interested in why muslims such as myself instantly dismiss the credibility of anyone purporting to use these them as role models for "moderate" muslim behavior.

In essence, this is the basic conundrum at the heart of the Bush Administrations' approach to the war on terror. As Mary notes, the official US government position on Tariq Ramadan is to exclude him, and the official position on Hirsi Ali and Wafa Sultan is to embrace them. Why? Ramadan argues,

I am excluded not because the government truly believes me to be a national security threat but because of my criticisms of American foreign policies in the Middle East; because of my opposition to the invasion of Iraq; and because of my criticism of some of the Bush administration’s policies with respect to civil liberties.

In other words, the official government position is to reject the genuine ideological ally - the one who can appeal to the muslim mainstream. And embrace those who utterly reject and who are rejected by the mainstream, lauded by the very enthusiastically pro-war conservatives like Malkin and Robert Spencer as genuine moderates. The rationale by which an ally or an enemy is defined, then, is not whether they would provide support in our long-term goal of promoting Enlightenment values in the muslim world (values which Ramadan has internalized and forms the basis of his critique against the Administration). It is simply whether they provide "muslim cover" to the war in Iraq.

In this sense, the war on Iraq has been an abject failure, because it has become the sine qua non of the war on terror. All other avenues by which we might pursue our objectives are rendered secondary to it. Even on the most important front of all - the front of the mainstream muslim mind, we are essentially cutting and running, so that political support for the ground war in Iraq can be maintained.

Aside. As it is Ramadan, I have very little time for much other than a drive-by, so my post here will have to stand on its own merits without my active defense against the inevitable chorus of dissent in the comments. If that is insufficient, so be it.

Continue reading/discuss Tariq Ramadan and the false godesses of muslim moderation ...

We need someone to remind us who we are. The Bush administration keeps telling us we’re safer than we were five years ago. I don’t feel safer. There’s this huge sword swinging around. Our leadership, with all its display, is acting just like the terrorist wants us to act, then suggests we are dead wrong if we disagree. It makes all of us out to be acting just like the terrorist wants us to act. But we’re not that way. I watched the buildings burning on Sept. 11, and at some point got on email and messaged everybody I knew that we should think what the terrorists would want us to do, and then do the opposite thing. Nobody objected, or disagreed. So it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know how to fight a terrorist. We just all need to be brought together in this quiet, firm, fight, and quickly.

Michael Grant, in a brilliant essay that simply must be read in full.

Continue reading/discuss Reaction is Osama bin Laden's sword ...

I have been astounded and deeply disappointed to see the tack that RedState has taken in terms of spinning the Foley-page sex scandal. The worst offender is Erick, who seems to have become a sort of Majority Whip for his fellow Editors. First he tried to blame the media. Then he tried to blame the victims. Now he's trying to blame the Democrats. Weren't Republicans once the "Daddy party" of personal responsibility? Apparently no longer, now they are one-trick ponies interested solely in power for its own sake.

Let us be clear. It doesn't matter even the slightest if the House GOP leadership knew of the sexually explicit IM messages prior to this past weekend. The truth is that they knew that there were questions about Representative Foley's behavior as far back as 2001, and chose to do nothing rather than investigate. In essence:

Here’s how one senior Democratic aide summed up the Foley situation this morning for The Note: “The R’s desperately want this to be about whether or not they knew of the sexually explicit e-mails/I.M.’s.

“Most parents we talked to over the weekend (including my own conservative R mom) feel the issue is that the R’s were given and ignored a huge warning with the first set of e-mails.”

“Had there been an investigation at that time, the sexually explicit emails may have been uncovered. But, Members lost that opportunity when the R’s chose to protect Foley instead of those kids.”

Yesterday, no less a conservative bastion than the editorial page of the Washington Times called for Speaker Hastert to resign. As a result, Erick grudgingly concedes that yes maybe Hastert should indeed resign, but only after the elections. As one commentator puts it,

What value are we compromising by letting Hastert finish out this Congress?

Gerry Daly's comment about what Hastert should have done provides some much needed moral clarity, which has been sorely lacking at RedState of late.

How about 1) refer the matter to the committee charged with oversight of the Page program, and 2) perform due diligence by asking other Pages what they knew-- points made in the Washington Times editorial.

The biggest problem for Hastert is that, after the William Jefferson kerfuffle broke, he took a position that looked like he was all for protecting Congressmen from accountability. With the Foley fiasco, that is now looking like it may be a pattern.

Moral leadership, due diligence, and protecting young teenagers entrusted to the care of the House from ANY potential threat. Those are the values that have been compromised.

Incidentally, it also seems that Condoleeza Rice lied to the 9-11 Commission. She is really very bad at lying. This actually angers me more than the Foley issue, but we can deal with Rice later.

Continue reading/discuss What next was he supposed to do? ...