In direct contravention of my wife's explicit instructions, herewith I inaugurate my first blog. Long may it prosper.

For some reason, I think I have something to say to you. You think you have something to say to me? Email me at: gideonsblogger -at- yahoo -dot- com

 
By the way, following up from yesterday's post on the Senate, here's my pre-debate prediction for the Electoral College and the race for the Presidency: Bush: 296/Kerry 242. Here's the state-by-state breakdown:

Don't bother counting - it's Bush:
Alabama (9)
Alaska (3)
Georgia (15)
Idaho (4)
Indiana (11)
Kansas (6)
Kentucky (8)
Louisiana (9)
Mississippi (6)
Montana (3)
Nebraska (5)
North Dakota (3)
Oklahoma (7)
South Carolina (8)
South Dakota (3)
Texas (34)
Utah (5)
Wyoming (3)
Subtotal: 142

Bush by solid margins:
Arizona (10)
Arkansas (6)
Colorado (9)
Missouri (11)
North Carolina (15)
Tennessee (11)
Virginia (13)
Subtotal: 75; Running total: 217

Close, but not so as you'd need a recount; Bush wins:
Ohio (20)
West Virginia (5)
Wisconsin (10)
Subtotal: 62; Running total: 279, enough for victory

Bush by a whisker; recount fight potential if these states prove the margin of victory:
Iowa (7)
Nevada (5)
New Mexico (5)
Subtotal: 17; Running total: 296

Don't bother counting - it's Kerry:
District of Columbia: 3
Hawaii: 4
Massachusetts: 12
New York: 31
Rhode Island: 4
Vermont: 3
Subtotal: 57

Kerry by solid margins:
California: 55
Connecticut: 7
Delaware: 3
Illinois: 21
Maryland: 10
Michigan: 17
New Jersey: 15
Subtotal: 128; Running total: 185

Close, but not so as you'd need a recount; Kerry wins:
Oregon: 7
Pennsylvania: 21
Washington: 11
Subtotal: 39; Running total: 224

Kerry by a whisker; recount fight potential if these states prove the margin of victory:
Maine: 4
Minnesota: 10
New Hampshire: 4
Subtotal: 18; Running total: 242

Of course, I reserve the right to completely change my predictions based on the debates . . . or based on anything else. And obviously the "barely" states I'm allocating based on my lucky 8 ball; it could easily be Kerry in New Mexico or Bush in New Hampshire. I do think the above Electoral College prediction is consistent with a clear but not overwhelming Bush margin in the popular vote of two to four points. If the margin gets up into the 5 to 6 point range, though, some of the close Kerry states will tip over into Bush's column.

We'll see what actually happens in 5 weeks, eh?

posted by Noah at 3:50 PM

 
Critical comments on my recent Iraq postings come in 2 flavors:

1. Wow, sounds terrible. What are we doing there? Why don't we just leave?
2. You are too pessimistic. Things are going much better than the media tells us. We are winning. Why aren't you pulling for the good guys?

To #1 people I have one answer: don't conflate the question of "should we have gone in" with "should we just get out." The answer to the first can be "no" while the answer to the second can be "no"as well. It's also possible, by the way, to believe that the answer to both questions is "yes" - this is, in fact, Mr. John Derbyshire's position, as I understand it.

We can debate, on Mondays and Wednesdays, whether it was a good idea to go into Iraq. On Tuesdays we can debate whether yes, we should have gone in, but nonetheless we should have done everything different from the way President Bush did it; this is, I believe, the official New Republic position on the matter. And on Thursdays and Fridays we can debate what we're going to do now. And we'll still have our weekends free.

To #2 people all I can say is: I've been sold that bridge one too many times. Anti-Bush bias, anti-Chalabi bias, anti-Israel bias, anti-Arab bias - I've been told too many times that some combination of the foregoing is the reason why we don't get the "real" story from the press, and that everything is going much better than we are led to believe. All such arguments, at this point, are getting filed in the tubular verticle-access cabinet as they say.

Will there be a positive news cycle from Iraq one of these weeks? I'm sure there will. But it's funny how it's often the same people who say it will take years to know whether the war was a success when things are going poorly also are quick to point to any good news as a sign that we're turning the corner. I'm trying to be at least reasonably consistent.

Yes, it is still possible that Iraq will be a sunnier version of Algeria - meaning, that the jihadis are going to alienate the population, we and Allawi are going to hang tough, and thereby we'll ultimately win this thing (in the sense that Iraq does not become a state of total chaos a la Somalia or an Afghan-style Taliban state, but stabilizes as a single sovereign state that is at least neutral towards the US). There is a good argument that the jihadis are losing globally (that's the thesis of Gilles Kepel's last book, Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam, an excellent work that was completed just before 9/11 (my comments from just after reading it are here), and appears to be the theme of his new book as well, The War for Muslim Minds. This argument applies to Iraq as well.

But our advantages relative to what the Algerian government had to work with - we've got much higher-quality and less corrupt forces; we have more money; we can make a plausible pitch to the hearts and minds - have to be weighed against our disadvantages. We're a bunch of dirty foreigners occupying their country, and operate under international scrutiny that was not applied to the Algerian generals. There are all these other cross-currents apart from the jihadi problem that contribute to Iraqi instability. The domestic police and security forces are ill-trained, green, at least somewhat corrupt, and contain too many pro-insurgent elements. And, key point, we're not fighting for our lives and status the way the Algerian military was, while the insurgents are fighting not only for their national honor but for $1 trillion in oil.

It is not enough to say that most Iraqis hate the insurgents. *Do they hate them enough to die fighting to keep them out of power?* We don't know the answer to that question, yet. Most South Vietnamese didn't want the Communists to win; 1 million boat people proved that pretty decisively. They lost anyhow. And even if we knew the answer to that question was "yes" that only answers the most pressing question about Iraq. All the other simmering difficulties remain. And remember: I'm not even talking about what it would take for Iraq to be a democracy. I'm talking about what it would take to get out and not leave chaos and civil war behind.

Look: this is not a partisan issue for me. I actually want to figure out what to do. It's readily apparent to me that Bush is winging it, and that the last thing he's going to do is talk straight to the country about how the war is going. It's also readily apparent to me that Kerry has no better clue about what to do. Kerry has taken every position it's possible to take on almost every aspect of the Iraq issue. In 1997 he said was pounding the tub loudly for war to stop Saddam from acquiring WMD and threatening America. In the primaries he said anyone who didn't think deposing Saddam made America safer was unfit to be President. He voted against the Gulf War and for the Iraq war, and then voted not to fund the latter war effort. He defended that vote by saying he really objected that the war effort was funded with debt rather than taxes . . . but then he also said we're (a) not spending nearly enough on the war and reconstruction effort; (b) spending way too much when there are such pressing needs at home. When asked what he'd do differently from Bush he says, "everything" and then lists things the Bush Administration is trying to do right now. He's hopeless. So: what follows?

posted by Noah at 2:38 PM

 
Quick politics post: how is the Senate shaping up?

Currently, I'd bet on the GOP gaining 1 seat. Worse than that should leave them distinctly disappointed. But the map doesn't look as favorable as it did just a short while ago, I'd say.

I've said before I think Bush is favored to win, though I think current polls overstate the likely margin and that he could still well lose. But it's not obvious to me whether he'll have strong positive coattails (as in his 2002 campaigning) or negligible ones, or even negative ones (as in 2000).

Specifically, I wonder (a) whether Bush is going to campaign in some states that the GOP Senate candidates are vulnerable in, and (b) whether there will be any meaningful ticket-splitting by people who are not thrilled with Bush but are appalled by John Kerry, and wind up voting for a Democratic Senate candidate while pulling an ambivalent or reluctant lever for Bush. I particularly am thinking about the confluence of the two factors: states that are heavily Bush-favored, where Bush campaigning made a difference in 2002 but where he will not have time to visit in 2004, and where there are chunks of the GOP base who are less than thrilled with certain aspects of Bush's performance.

There are basically nine interesting races to watch this year. Two might barely have been interesting - Georgia and Illinois - but it's already clear that the GOP will pick up a seat in Georgia and the Democrats will pick one up in Illinois. Two others - California and Washington - are depressing because lousy Democrat incumbents are going to win yet again. I don't know what it will take to get rid of Boxer and Murray. Then there are five incumbents that looked like they might be vulnerable a year ago if the right challenger came along - for the GOP, Kit Bond in Missouri and Arlen Specter in Pennsylvania; for the Dems, Blanche Lincoln in Arkansas, Harry Reid in Nevada and Byron Dorgan in North Dakota - but they are cruising to reelection at this point.

That leaves the following nine races:

Alaska: is nepotism a natural and admirable human inclination or a political scandal? My bet is Murkowski bites it, and the Democrats pick up a seat here. Even if Bush does well nationally, he's not going to go to Alaska to campaign for her, and Alaskans won't have any trouble splitting their vote.

Colorado: I think Coors is going to pull this one out, for two reasons. First, Coloradans liked Ben Nighthorse Campbell, and they voted to keep Allard in 2002, who was a lot less appealing than Coors. So I'd think Coors would have a good shot. Second, I think Bush is going to keep campaigning in the state even if Kerry pulls out, as they say he has. Why? Because the polls at the Presidential level are still too tight, and Bush *has* to win this state. Because Bush wants this Senate seat to stay in the GOP column, and his presence in the state could make a difference. And because Bush needs to defeat the referendum on allocation of Electoral Votes (which would allocate them proportionally to the popular vote in the state) or 4 to 5 of Colorado's 9 votes pretty much automatically go to Kerry. I think Bush's presence will put Coors over the top. But you know, I don't know how the campaign is going, the polls are pretty much neck-and-neck, and Karl Rove thought Bush should campaign in California in 2000, so who knows what brilliant ideas he has this time.

Florida: I think the GOP has the edge here as well, but I'm very interested in one little aspect of the dynamic in this race. Martinez was heavily favored by the Bush White House in the primary. He's a former Bush cabinet member, so you'd expect Bush to back him. But he's also Cuban, and Bush needs to keep high support from the Cuban community to win Florida again (and by a more convincing margin this time). So Bush came out pretty strongly and obviously for his guy. Is there any resentment against Florida Republicans who did not back Martinez in the primary? I frankly don't expect that any such resentment would overcome the positive response from Cubans or Martinez's generally positive profile as a candidate. But it will be interesting to see, if Martinez loses and Bush wins, where the ticket splitters are from, geographically, ethnically and politically.

Louisiana: Don't know much about the race, but isn't the GOP due for some good luck down here? Anyhow, Vitter is polling well and I think the oddsmakers favor him for ultimate victory, so I do, too.

North Carolina: Bowles in a walk. He should have won against the awful Liddy Dole in 2002, and would have with a better campaign. This year, he's got a better campaign, and his opponent's best line of attack is that Bowles once worked in (horrors!) the Clinton White House. Somehow, I don't think that's going to be enough to turn the tide. Bowles is a very decent guy, and I think he'll be a good Senator - much, much better than the departing John Edwards.

Oklahoma: You know, the Republicans have been counting this chicken for quite a while, but I don't think it's going to hatch. Carson, from all reports, is a pretty strong candidate. Yes, Coburn has had a bad news week or two, so perhaps I should cut the current polls some slack. But Bush is not going to have time to come to Oklahoma to stump for him, and Coburn's bad news was basically his own doing. This one will be close, but I think the Democrats have a very good shot at a pickup here. Particularly if Kerry is clearly going down, they'll pour resources into races like this one.

South Carolina: DeMint looks like he's going to mop the floor with Inez Tenenbaum. With Senator Lindsey Graham, prospective Senator Jim DeMint, and Governor Mark Sanford, the South Carolina GOP should be in a position to have a lasting - and positive - impact on the national party. Something to be proud of.

South Dakota: Forgive me, but I think Daschle is going to win this one pretty clearly. It's really tough to win a fight with the party leader, and Daschle is not a rookie at this game. This is another race - like Oklahoma - where I think coattails might be negative; i.e., if Kerry falls into a serious swoon, Democrats will direct money and energy here to keep hope alive. But it will certainly be close.

And finally . . .

Wisconsin. Wisconsin?!?!? Why Wisconsin? Well, don't get me wrong; I think Russ Feingold is going to win, though by a relatively tight margin. The only reason I mention this race is that I think Bush is going to win Wisconsin in November, even if the election is very close. He's currently leading in several polls by a few points; he's also leading in Iowa and tied in Minnesota. This is not California circa 2000, a waste of GOP time and energy; there is a real change happening in this part of the country, and Bush is rightly going to spend time and money here all the way to the end. In any event, the race for Senate in the state has barely begun, but while Feingold fits the quirky profile that these states seem to love, he's always won close and Bush's aggressive pitch in the state could just conceivably tip the state to the GOP. I don't expect it; I think Feingold will keep this seat for the Democrats. But there's a political sea-change happening in Fighting Bob Lafollette and Tailgunner Joe McCarthy.

(Aside: *why* this change is happening is a good question. I think there is a temperamental and a demographic reason. The temperamental reason is: this is the heart of the Progressive tradition in American politics, and the Democrats have abandoned that tradition. The party that wants to change things, reform programs - that's the GOP. The Democrats opposes or moderates the GOP direction of reform, as the GOP opposed or moderated the Democrats in their heyday as the party of change. So for the Progressive temperament, the GOP is a better home than the Democrats today. The demographic reason is: as the Democrats become more and more the party of non-white minorities (including Hispanics), the GOP gets whiter and whiter. And Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa are very white parts of the country (each is at least 90% white and at most 4% Hispanic). The same demographic trends that have driven California and are driving Arizona, Nevada and Colorado in a more Democratic direction are driving Wisconsin, Iowa and Minnesota in a GOP direction. Of course, there are very white Democratic states - e.g., Vermont - and very racially mixed GOP states - e.g., Texas. I'm not suggesting that the demographic factor is some kind of universal predictor. But I do think it's a key factor in the transformation of this region.)

So if you tally the above, you'll see turnovers in Georgia, Florida, Louisiana and South Carolina for the GOP, Illinois, Alaska and Oklahoma for the Dems, for a net gain of 1 seat for the GOP. (Dems retain North Carolina, South Dakota and Wisconsin; the GOP retains the open seat in Colorado.)

How much could this change? Well, Georgia, South Carolina, Illinois, North Carolina and Wisconsin are, I think, unlikely to vary from my prediction. And I think betting on toppling an incumbent party leader who's won several election (i.e., Tom Daschle) is a silly thing to do. So there are five real tossups: Florida, Louisiana, Alaska, Oklahoma and Colorado, all open seats. I have the GOP winning three of the five. But Democrats are currently polling ahead in all but Louisiana, but Louisiana has this weird system where all the candidates from both parties compete in one election, so the polling is hard to interpret. So I wouldn't bet a lot of money on more than a 1 seat gain, and certainly not on a gain of more than 2 seats. But hey, you never know.

posted by Noah at 6:08 PM

 
So what is the war in Iraq about now, anyway?

First, let me float the happiest possibility: that both PM Allawi and what you read in the papers are both accurate. Most Iraqis actually want Allawi's government to succeed and want America to help it do so; most Iraqis are more grateful to America than hateful towards us. But, at the same time, the country is wracked by enormous, mass-casualty violence, which the Iraqis are incapable of bringing under control, and which threatens the viability of any regime.

Could this be true? (We'll return to whether I think it is true later on.) Yes. For this to be true, all we have to believe is that *most Iraqis are focused on keeping their heads down.* If you have a population that is mostly apathetic, and just wants to avoid getting killed, then it doesn't take too many bad actors to make the country a mess.

Should that be encouraging to us? Not especially, because if the Iraqis are sufficiently apathetic that a small number of bad actors can throw their whole country into chaos, then they are sufficiently apathetic to acquiesce when one of the bad actors seizes power. This is, nonetheless, the most optimistic scenario, because it suggests that all we have to do is kill the bad guys to bring a reasonable degree of peace and stability to Iraq. This rosy scenario appears to be the way the Administration looks at the situation.

The second possibility: Iraq is Algeria. Not Algeria under the French; Algeria under Bouteflika. Algeria, remember, was almost taken over by radical Islamists in an election over 10 years ago. The military junta that had run Algeria, horrified by the prospective results, cancelled the election, thus commencing a brutal civil war that killed over 100,000 Algerians. But note one key fact: the Algerian Islamists lost the civil war.

Why did they lose? Because they did not win - meaning, they could not militarily defeat the government. And in the process of fighting, they escalated their attacks on ordinary Algerians to such a level of ferocity that they lost their base of popular support. Indeed, the level of violence that the Algerian Islamists resorted to was inversely proportional to their degree of popular support - as they lost support, they got more violent, and as they got more violent, they lost support.

The terrorist insurgents in Iraq certainly are very violent. And they have been indiscriminate in applying that violence to ordinary Iraqis as well as to foreign occupiers. Does that mean they will lose popular support? I think the key to that question is another question: do they appear to be losing? The Algerian Islamists, as the war wore on, spent increasing energy bombing and shooting backsliders rather than focusing on the government. The Iraqi insurgency doesn't seem to be moving in that direction, at least not yet. If it does, that'll be lousy news for the ordinary Iraqis targeted, but good news for the overall progress of the war.

The third possibility: Iraq is Lebanon. That is to say, the country is fracturing into a multi-sided civil war between ethnic/religious groups.

Thinking about Iraq as a civil war, there are at least 5 wars going on. The first is a civil war in the Sunni heartland between Allawi and those clans that would replace him. People talk about Baathist "dead-enders" but who actually believes in Baathism as an *ideology* anymore? I doubt anyone does. Rather, I assume what's primarily driving the insurgency in the Sunni triangle is a struggle for dominance between those clans who were on top under Saddam and those with the strongest ties to Allawi.

So that's war #1: war within the Sunni triangle. War #2 is the struggle between the Sunni and Shiite Arabs for control of the country. The Shiites know they have the numbers to prevail if Iraq moves to a system of proportional representation or some other pure majoritarian electoral system. So that's the direction Sistani is pushing. Al-Sadr, the young hothead, is pushing in the same direction, violently. The Shiites themselves are hobbled on the one hand by their (entirely realistic) fears of being abandoned yet again and the endemic ridiculousness of their politics, infected as it is by the legalism and clericalism that makes Shiism so familiar to observers of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish world. The Sunni Arabs, meanwhile, know they don't have the numbers in-country. But they have most of the technocrats, most of the old officer corps of the army, and the support of the wider Arab world.

To date, war #2 has not been much in the headlines. But that's because it's being fought by proxy. Allawi, in fact, is partly trying to win war #1 by winning war #2 - which, in turn, he's trying to win by intervening in war #3.

What's war #3? War #3 is between al-Sadr and the older Shiite leadership typified by Sistani. Sistani understands that America is both a dangerous enemy and a dangerous friend. He wants to avoid antagonizing us *and* to get us out of there as soon as he can. He treats the Iranians and the Sunni Arabs of Iraq the same way. Sistani knows that the Shiite Arabs have gotten the shaft all through history in Iraq; historically, their only choices have been subjugation to Sunni Arabs and subjugation to Shiite Persians. But precisely because he knows how weak and vulnerable his community is, he's playing a relatively patient, careful game.

But a hothead is just naturally going to appear to more young people. Taking on America and the Sunni Arabs at once is a good way to make a name for yourself among angry young Shiites. And there's a big youth bulge demographically in Iraq. We killed a lot of al-Sadr partisans in the battle for Najaf, and war #3 appears to be quiescent right now. But the long-term prospects for a reasonably peaceful Iraq depend upon Sistani's approach dominating the Shiite south.

So: why do I say Allawi is trying to win war #1 by winning war #2 through intervening in war #3? Allawi is the one who effectively ordered American troops into Najaf. He did that to force a confrontation with al-Sadr, a confrontation he knew could end one of two ways: with a face-saving climb-down negotiated by Sistani (which would be a victory for Sistani in war #3) or with violent defeat of the al-Sadr folks at the hands of the Americans (which would be a victory for the Sunni Arabs in war #2). Either outcome would demonstrate that Allawi was in charge, which is important in the struggle for power in war #1.

War #4 is the war in the north. The Kurds are busy consolidating their territory, driving out Arabs and Turkmen - and the Americans are helping them. Right now, we think the Kurds can be kept nominally in a territorially unified Iraq if they get substantial autonomy, control over their oil revenues, and if they become kind of the equivalent of the Sikhs for Americans in Iraq (i.e., the ethnic group not party to the dominant split in the country - Hindu/Muslim in India, Sunni/Shiite Arab in Iraq) that gets used as auxiliary troops by the imperial power. Right now, there's remarkable unity *among* the Kurds, which was not the case in the mid-1990s, which suggests that on the Kurdish front at least our bargain is working. But it runs the risk of sparking a full-scale civil war between Kurds and Arabs (and Turkmen) over Kurdish ethnic cleansing.

War #5 isn't really a separate war, but rather my catchall for the interests of neighboring powers who are intervening actively in Iraq. Iran is backing al-Sadr; their objective is victory for the radicals in war #3. Whether Iraq collapses into chaos or becomes an Iranian strapy is secondary. Iran's rivals enemies in the region are Saudi Arabia and Turkey. Saudi Arabia is a rival for Islamic leadership; Turkey is a rival for ethnic dominance throughout Central Asia. Both Saudi Arabia and Turkey have been moving officially in a more friendly direction vis a vis Iran, a trend that began before the Iraq war. The Iraq war has accelerated that trend to the extent that both countries have pulled away from America, but the underlying reasons for the rivalry remain and Iraq could just as easily provoke conflict between these powers as unite them. Turkey is already getting very agitated about Kurdish activities in Iraq; all it would take is one massacre of Turkmen or, worse, one incursion by Kurds across the border into Turkey and we could see a Turkish intervention in northern Iraq. Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, doesn't really have a functional foreign policy at this point. But the thing that unites conservatives and radicals in Saudi Arabia with respect to Iraq is: a Shiite-dominated government must not emerge there. So to the extent they have the power to affect the outcome, they will endeavor to prevent that.

(I deliberately leave out one power who looms large in the neocon imagination: Syria. That's because I believe we're potentially on the brink of real news in Syria. Yes, that country has disappointed over and over again. But there are indications that Bashar Assad has broken free of Sheikh Nasrullah's spell and is actually considering a settlement with Israel and a withdrawal from Lebanon in exchange for American aid and welcome back into the family of nations - a Libya deal, in other words. This would be very good news. Why do I say this is possible? Well, there have been troop movements reported in Lebanon that are consistent with a withdrawal of at least some forces from the country, and the Israeli press is reporting more serious talk of a deal on the Golan. If Syria *did* make a Libya-type deal, that would be very good news for the region and for America, but it would not end the terrorist threat to Israel or Iraq from Hezbollah, which is an authentic popular movement. The neocon assumption that groups like Hezbollah would not exist but for Syrian and Iranian sponsorship is not really true; Hezbollah benefits clearly from that sponsorship, but they will not go away if that sponsorship is withdrawn because they have developed a life of their own. Al-Qaeda is the same. This is the big flaw in the whole neocon approach to the war: the assumption that state actors are the dominant factors, when in some cases they really are not. We're learning that the hard way in Iraq. Our biggest risk is state *capture* by terrorists - which is what happened in Afghanistan, and could happen in Pakistan, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq or, it appeared at one time, Algeria.)

All these wars interact. And there's no contradiction between saying that most Iraqis are apathetic and just want to avoid getting killed *and* that there's an Islamist insurgency of ferocious violence but low popular support causing chaos in the country *and* that there is a multi-sided civil war brewing. Indeed, the complexity of the situation is what is making it so hard for the Americans to make any real progress; fighting on one front may help on others or may make others even worse. (We saw both effects when we intervened in Najaf, and we are seeing both effects from our use of the Kurds.)

One thing's for sure: we're learning a lot about the Middle East. Expensive education, though.

posted by Noah at 8:38 AM

 
I'm not sure there's another pundit out there with the chops to say what George Will is saying about the neocons. (Steve Sailer directed me to the piece.) I say that because Will is clearly a member in good standing of the new Conservative establishment (he's neither a Buchananite exile nor a Scowcroftian managerial Republican type) and has a strong record of support for Israel. He's not a crank; he's not someone who thinks he lost his job to a neocon; and he's not an Arab-sympathizer. And he's not harping on supposed dual-loyalty (which is mostly a canard and a distraction; there is an *enormous* difference morally between *betraying your country* and being infatuated with a friendly foreign country - as Jefferson was with France, Hamilton with Britain, and various Americans over the decades and centuries have been with Free Cuba, Republican Spain, Nationalist China, Wilhelmine Germany . . . there are probably more instances that I'm not thinking of). He's just saying: these guys are wrong. Badly wrong, dangerously wrong, blindly wrong. He's not hitting below the belt, but he's not pulling his punches. That's a good standard to aspire to, whether one agrees with him or not.

As for whether I agree with him . . . yeah, basically. Do I look forward to a newly dictatorial Russia? No. Do I think America can do much to promote democracy in Russia at this point? No. If there was a window of hope in Russia, that window has closed. Our *best* hope at this point is a cautious, rational dictatorship that bides its time and tries to rebuild the country, and knows that antagonizing America is just a stupid thing to do at this point. *That* Russia I would happily form an alliance with, dictatorship or no. I don't consider that the most-likely outcome. Between the extraordinary power of organized crime, the decrepit condition of the Russian military, the demographic implosion . . . Russia is going to be very, very lucky to avoid chaos and civil war on the one hand, or an ultranationalist, expansionist dictatorship on the other. Putin is very bad. And we could do much, much worse.

The world is full of dictatorships that we have no choice but to deal with. Just in the Muslim world: Egypt, Pakistan, Libya, Uzbekistan, Algeria . . . it's not a short list. *No one* - not even Jonah Goldberg - *actually* wants to go out and conquer and occupy the whole world to make it safe for democracy, if such a thing were even possible. And guess what? The next Administration - Democrat or Republican - is not going to go on a worldwide crusade to make the world democratic. Nor has this one: we were dealing with lots of dictatorships before the Iraq war, and we're dealing with lots of them now. There's no alternative.

Now, to answer Steve's question ("how did they [the neocons] do it?") I'm puzzled why it's so puzzling to him. The neocons did *not* radically reorient American policy. We'd been fitfully at war with Iraq for over a decade. Clinton almost went to full-scale war with Saddam in 1998 over the expulsion of the weapons inspectors. It was not a crazy idea post-9-11 to say: we've got to take care of business in the region, and Saddam is part of our unfinished business. As for WMD: I know Greg Cochran says he figured out there was no nuclear program in 5 minutes of research. Tom Friedman also says he never bought the WMD argument. But the British and Italian intelligence services thought he had a serious nuclear program. Ken Pollack, a Clinton-era expert on the region, wrote a whole book about the imminent Iraqi nuke. So forgive me if I don't blame myself or the Bush Administration for taking the question seriously in 2001 and early 2002.

No, the question is not how did we get on that bus but why we pulled out the steering and the breaks and threw away the road map.

I've been re-reading my own writing on the subject. In late 2001, I was completely gung-ho: I linked to pieces by Laura Mylroie, believed the whole Atta-Prague meeting business, was convinced Saddam was well on his way to a nuclear weapon, and gave Ahmad Chalabi the benefit of the doubt as someone who was friendly to America. Why? Well, a lot of the right-wing press had been thumping the tub about Iraq for years, and so had the hawkish left (i.e., The New Republic). Saddam had twice gotten closer to having the bomb than anyone thought before his efforts were wiped out by force.

And yes, there was 9-11. And before 9-11 there was the situation in Israel. People forget just how terrible was the Oslo War launched by Arafat after the Camp David talks. Israelis, and Jews who loved Israel, seriously worried about the survival of the country in the face of a seemingly limitless number of kamikaze attackers who targeted civilians - and this after Barak had caved on virtually everything at the negotiating table! The message of the Oslo War, like the message of 9-11, reverberated with me and with most people who are at all friendly to Israel: these people can't be negotiated with. And if they can't be negotiated with, they have to be eliminated. And Saddam got dumped into that psychological bucket, correctly or not.

But over the course of 2002, I started to pay close attention to the whole Iraq question. And a few things became clear: that Ahmad Chalabi was a very dubious character saying some very unlikely things; that Iran and Turkey were, in opposite ways, real problems in any attempt to resolve the Iraq problem (Iran because they would try to inflame the Shiites in the south, and Turkey because they would object to further empowerment of the Kurds); that the reconstruction of Iraq would be enormously expensive and that there was no chance of a quick transition to a stable post-Saddam regime.

And so what's hard to understand is: why did the Administration ignore this stuff? Not why did Rumsfeld listen to Wolfowitz or Bush listen to Rumsfeld - why did Wolfowitz believe this stuff? Why didn't everyone see the sheer unlikelihood of success in our endeavor? Sitting on the outside, I assumed that the Administration had evaluated all this stuff and come to the conclusion that war was necessary, and that we were doing everything we could to assure success. But that's clearly not the case: we did almost *nothing* to assure success. Why?

That's the mystery to me: not how the neocons got Iraq at the top of the foreign policy agenda (that's just inertia from pre 9-11 days speeded up by 9-11-induced urgency) nor why they thought toppling Saddam would be a good thing for America and its allies, most notably Israel, but why and how the decisionmaking process got so broken that contrary argument and evidence couldn't break through? *That's* what's bizarre. And *that's* what Bush hasn't done anything demonstrable to correct. And *that's* the biggest argument against his reelection. Which is why I think Kerry should be making just that argument.

posted by Noah at 3:01 PM

 
Now, politics.

First, I didn't hear the President's speech (or any other speech at the convention) because I was in Canada on vacation at the time. But I must admit, I was considerably underwhelmed reading it in print. It wasn't as bad as the Kerry speech . . . but that's about all I can say in its favor.

What was wrong with it? Well, I thought Bush had three big things to accomplish in his speech. One: reassure voters about his judgement, particularly in handling the war. As I explained last month, people feel good about Bush's values and the conviction with which he holds them. They know he's decisive and they believe he's resolute. Their concern is: does he make *good* decisions? Bush needed to reassure people on that score. This was his toughest job and the most important one; this is the one negative on matters of character that could sink this President, and frankly, perceptions of character matter more than just about anything in these races.

Two: articulate a coherent rationale for a second term. Bush was extremely specific about what he was running to accomplish in 2000. Kerry said essentially nothing about his plans in his convention speech, which I think accurately reflects his disinclination to do anything about anything. Bush needed, as he did in 2000, to explain why we need to elect him, what he is out to accomplish and, in broad strokes, how he's going to do it, and wrap it up in a package that only he can carry across the threshold.

Three: Bush needed to pull the coalition together. Part of every election campaign is tying together disparate groups of voters, keeping that unstable coalition together as you cross the finish line. Bush needed to articulate his agenda in such a way that the various parts of his coalition heard the most important things they needed to hear, but also in such a way that these disparate groups agreed they belonged together in the same broad coalition.

I think Bush basically failed at all three tasks. On the first, he offered essentially nothing. The foreign policy message of the whole convention was, I think, badly off, and the positive bounce from all the 9-11 stuff could evaporate quickly if Bush cannot dispel the key concern about his character. Bush is not backing off from democracy happy-talk; he's pushing it more and more. Bush is not admitting the difficulties in Iraq; he just keeps asserting that he is determined to prevail, and smearing opponents of the war as aiding and abetting the enemy. He is making a stand in the corner he painted himself into. That's very, very risky.

Mind you: I don't expect nor want Bush to repudiate the Iraq war, nor do I think it was inappropriate of him to talk about 9-11, or even to focus on it. But, as I said before the convention, Bush needs to be concrete, down-to-earth, and realistic in his description of his own foreign policy. He does not need to soar rhetorically and talk about saving the world. He did exactly the opposite. And while it probably thrilled people in the room, I don't think it will wear well for the rest of the campaign.

On the second point, again, I think Bush flubbed it. We got a grab-bag of proposals - for health care, education, etc. etc. - a Federal cornucopia with no price tags . . . and then a swipe at Kerry for proposing $2 trillion in new spending. The cognitive whiplash was just too much for me. I was finally convinced that Bush has no idea how his agenda fits together, and that he doesn't care. Which was very depressing for me. I know Bush is capable of tying his preferred policy mix together into a coherent bundle, because he did it in 2000. He did not do it this year. So far as I can tell, what Bush *really believes* is: (a) he stands for freedom and low taxes and against big government spending; (b) whenever and wherever someone is hurting, it's government's job to move, and deficits don't matter. No one can honestly and coherently believe both these things at once, but after his speech, I'm convinced Bush does. It's not just a matter of necessary political compromise. This is what he believes. Very depressing.

I want to stress something here as well. I'm not a libertarian, and I know Bush isn't a libertarian. I don't think running against government is what he believes or what he should do, nor is it what I would want him to do. But if Bush believes in an activist government - which clearly he does - he needs to explain what distinguishes his government activism from the other team. Bush could defend much of his spending - No Child Left Behind, the AIDS initiative, the faith-based initiative - as an effort to make government more *effective* by making it *accountable* and infusing it with *good values.* That's an explanation that could be persuasive to middle-middle-moderates and to much of the conservative base, even if not to libertarians. Bush did this effectively in 2000. He did a lousy job of it this year. And as a consequence, one is left wondering: why do we need to vote for him to get these goodies? Why not trust Kerry to deliver them just as well or better? Kerry can win both ways against Bush-as-Lyndon Johnson: if you *want* an activist government, why not vote Democrat? And if you *don't* then why vote Bush? Why not vote for a protest candidate - or for the guy (Kerry) who at least pays lip-service to fiscal discipline?

This is why Bush largely flubbed the third point as well, though he did better on this score than on the others. No, he didn't reassure people about his judgement; no, he didn't present a coherent vision for a second term. But he did basically talk to the nation as a whole, and he did seem to be cognizant of some of the different interest groups in his coalition and how to keep them happy. But if I were a grumpy Republican, or if I were an Independent who was not positively motivated by either the Iraq war or by Bush's social-issues agenda . . . then it would be hard for me to find anything to get me excited about Bush and his campaign.

I think Bush is still the odds-on favorite to win. Forget the recent puffy polls; this race is going to get tight. But Bush is favored because he looks like he's pulled decently ahead in Ohio, because I think he's more likely than not to win Florida, and if he wins those two states it's hard for Kerry to win even if he picks off both New Hampshire and Nevada. The electoral map is just slightly tilted Bush in a neck-and-neck race. But Bush has absolutely not put this away. If Kerry gets some message discipline, if Bush continues not to engage publicly with reality as opposed to rhetoric, and if Kerry is smart in the debates, then Dan Rather's absurd bias and the Swift Vets' sniper attacks will not win this race for Bush. *He* has to win it; no one can win it for him.

If the race tightens as I expect it to, the debates could be terribly important for both candidates. If Kerry is smart, what he will do is press Bush hard, across the board, in the first debate, with substantive attacks. Why hasn't Bush fired anyone for 9-11, for the Iraq WMD mess, for the Ahmad Chalabi mess, for the looting, for Abu Ghraib? Why are the only people who leave the Administration people like Larry Lindsey who admit the inconvenient truth? Why didn't Bush tell Congress the price tag of the Medicare drug bill? Why was that bill written to favor drug companies rather than the taxpayer? Why won't Bush admit that Iraq has not turned out as expected, by any stretch of the imagination? You pick your favorite attack.

Kerry should not allow Bush to turn the tables on him and demand that Kerry come up with better - consistent - answers than Bush has. Kerry should, with every question, make this a referendum on Bush, and a referendum on his character at least as much as on his policies. Because, you know, people don't vote on policies. I mean, there are people who vote on guns, or abortion, or other single-issue matters. But most people vote on character: will this person make good decisions, decisions that are the ones I would want him to make, decisions that will benefit me and my family, decisions that are right for the country. Kerry has to bolster the impression among many voters that Bush's decisionmaking process is severely flawed, and that the country is suffering for it. I do not think there's a majority who understands the difference between Kerry and Bush's economic policies or between their foreign policies in any kind of detail. Nor do I think there's anything close to a majority who can be convinced that Bush is venal, corrupt, in the pocket of special interests, whatever. But put together the 40% or so die-hard Democrats with the tidy number of people who think the country is going the wrong way, and Kerry wins. The way to win those people over is: undermine their confidence in the President, in his judgement and his character.

The debates are a key forum for Kerry to press the attack, because Bush can be rattled, just as he was in the primary campaign when he debated McCain. He was never rattled debating Gore, but you know, Gore walked right into Bush's trap because Gore, exceptionally for a politician, has almost no ability to read a situation. Bush stood there like a deer in the headlights in the first debate and Gore still lost because he came off as an arrogant prig; no one even listened to what he said. But the dynamics will be different this time. Yes, Kerry is also an arrogant prig, and he's no wizard at reading a situation. But expectations are much higher of Bush this time. Structurally, Bush is on the defensive, because he's the incumbent. If Kerry keeps Bush there, and questions his character, Bush could lose his cool. And if he loses his cool, and Kerry keeps his, Bush will lose the debate.

And Bush cannot afford to lose a debate. Three draws, yes; if Kerry can't draw blood, Bush wins by default. But a single loss could be fatal if it upsets the dynamics of the race late in the game.

Again, I think Bush has the edge: because Kerry is a terrible candidate, the electoral map favors Bush, he has momentum, etc. I also think the economy will be at least mildly supportive of Bush over the next couple of months, not that it makes much of a difference at this point; people's opinions about the economy don't change that quickly. But if Bush starts coasting and listening to his own happy-talk, he could have a very rude awakening some time in October, and by then it will be too late.

posted by Noah at 2:04 PM

 
No, I haven't been on vacation all this time. Just been very, very busy at work since I got back. So sue me: they pay me for my time; this is a hobby.

Before I get back to any blogging, let me just discharge an obligation: Yom Kippur is right around the corner, so anyone whom I've insulted or injured by language I used on this site, whether intentionally or unintentionally, whether I am aware of the harm done or whether I am unaware, I ask your forgiveness.

And to those who feel I have led them astray from the truth or from right thinking, let me first assure you that I have never intended to do so, but let me also ask forgiveness of you as well for any harm I have done without intention.

It's a good discipline for any writer to read back over his old work. The early months of this blog make for a lot of embarrassing reading for me, not only because I was incredibly undisciplined in my verbosity but also because of the degree to which I engaged in cheerleading and bloviating, aspects of blog and print commentary (particularly on the Right) that I myself have criticized. But it's not all embarrassment; there are things I'm proud of as well.

I hope you will find more such in the future.

posted by Noah at 1:51 PM