Dylan Matthews

Dear Son of Acheson's Ghost

Reading a speech by Barack Obama is always a transcendent experience; it's the process of seeing all of your desires for government and for policy translated into eloquent, pervasive oratory. But more so than most, Obama's foreign policy speech from today is phenomenal. This is what liberal institutionalism should look like in the 20th century. The first thing that strikes you is just how much Obama knows what he's talking about. He demonstrates a complete mastery of international issues from nuclear proliferation to climate policy to arms control to poverty. He focuses on issues often ignored, such as loose nukes and the lack of knowledge of critical languages (Arabic, Mandarin, Urdu) in the armed forces. He proposes sometimes innovative (his proposal for a independent nuclear fuel generating organization that would prevent peaceful nuclear research from being used as a cover for nuclear weapons development) and sometimes heterodox (his proposal, which I obviously support, to add 65,000 soldiers and 27,000 Marines to the armed forces) but always great policies. But more than that, he grasps the fundamental concepts that should guide US foreign policy for the foreseeable future. Take this section:

Many around the world are disappointed with our actions. And many in our own country have come to doubt either our wisdom or our capacity to shape events beyond our borders. Some have even suggested that America’s time has passed.
But while we know what we have lost as a consequence of this tragic war, I also know what I have found in my travels over the past two years.
In an old building in Ukraine, I saw test tubes filled with anthrax and the plague lying virtually unlocked and unguarded – dangers we were told could only be secured with America’s help.
On a trip to the Middle East, I met Israelis and Palestinians who told me that peace remains a distant hope without the promise of American leadership.
At a camp along the border of Chad and Darfur, refugees begged for America to step in and help stop the genocide that has taken their mothers and fathers, sons and daughters.
And along the crowded streets of Kenya, I met throngs of children who asked if they’d ever get the chance to visit that magical place called America.
So I reject the notion that the American moment has passed. I dismiss the cynics who say that this new century cannot be another when, in the words of President Franklin Roosevelt, we lead the world in battling immediate evils and promoting the ultimate good.
I still believe that America is the last, best hope of Earth. We just have to show the world why this is so. This President may occupy the White House, but for the last six years the position of leader of the free the world has remained open. And it’s time to fill that role once more.

Wow. Obama gets it. He understands that the US needs to remain the world leader. He understands that we are the best possible candidate for that role. But even more critically, he understands the need to use that power benevolently, as a bulwark of humanitarianism, not of nationalism or imperialism. He is such a Fukuyaman. But no, it gets better:

We have heard much over the last six years about how America’s larger purpose in the world is to promote the spread of freedom – that it is the yearning of all who live in the shadow of tyranny and despair.
I agree. But this yearning is not satisfied by simply deposing a dictator and setting up a ballot box. The true desire of all mankind is not only to live free lives, but lives marked by dignity and opportunity; by security and simple justice.
Delivering on these universal aspirations requires basic sustenance like food and clean water; medicine and shelter. It also requires a society that is supported by the pillars of a sustainable democracy – a strong legislature, an independent judiciary, the rule of law, a vibrant civil society, a free press, and an honest police force. It requires building the capacity of the world’s weakest states and providing them what they need to reduce poverty, build healthy and educated communities, develop markets, and generate wealth. And it requires states that have the capacity to fight terrorism, halt the proliferation of deadly weapons, and build the health care infrastructure needed to prevent and treat such deadly diseases as HIV/AIDS and malaria.

Yes, Yes, YES! He does not go the easy route and attack Bush's democratization rhetoric. He instead states, correctly, that its folly was not in its intent but in its hamhandedness. He understands, better than many on the left, that the US can and should promote liberty both positive and negative worldwide, and that doing so does not render us an empire. This is why I'm so incredibly excited about Obama. Not the rhetoric, though that's great, but the deep, nuanced understanding of the subtleties of the world and what is needed from the world's leader in the coming years. No other candidate shows this grasp of the situation. Nay, no other politician in recent years has a better diagnosis and prescription. As I've said before, the next president's job will be to undo the damage done by Bush. But Obama has shown that he can do far more than just that. He can take America's global standing, moral authority, and moral merit to levels previously unseen.

Yeltsin

You know, reading all the remembrances of the newly deceased Boris Yeltsin's presidency, I was most struck by this line by Robert Farley: "I'm not sure what else we could have expected." Well, I personally think it's quite clear what we should have expected, and it's what we got in every other country in the Warsaw Pact: capitalism and liberal democracy. Poland got it. Czechoslovakia got it. Hungary got it. Even the Baltic states got it, and they weren't even independent during the Cold War. But Boris Yeltsin wasn't Lech Walesa, or Vaclav Havel. He was a corrupt, inept alcoholic, and should be remembered as the leader during Russia's Weimar era, the all-too-brief interregnum between one tyranny and the next. And just as the Weimar Republic paved the way for Hitler, so Yeltsin paved the way for Putin. Indeed, he even proclaimed that he wished Putin to be his successor. Yeltsin at best allowed and at worst actively helped dictatorship take root in Russia. His legacy should be accordingly negative.

He Made It! Top of the World!

Let me congratulate Matt Yglesias on translating his blogging into a full-time job at The Atlantic. He's a fantastic blogger, one of the first I read, and the one with whom I find myself agreeing more than anyone else. As with Ezra, Matt was one of the bloggers (along with Kevin Drum and Josh Marshall) who originally got me into this addictive, time-consuming, and immensely rewarding habit, and so it's great to see him get promoted in the media food chain. If anyone's earned it, it's him.

This Isn't Right. This Isn't Even Wrong.

You know, I don't usually read op-eds by cabinet members and other high-ranking Bush administration officials because, generally, high-ranking Bush administration officials are not serious people. But this op-ed from Michael Chertoff is just so beautiful in its atrociousness that it deserves comment. For one thing, this opening sentence is beyond self-parody:

As the rubble of the Twin Towers smoldered in 2001, no one could have imagined a day when America's leaders would be criticized for being tough in protecting Americans from further acts of war.

Dear God. Not only does he mention 9/11, and the Towers specifically; he mentions rubble. Not just that, but the rubble is smoldering. Wow. But, no, it gets better:

Now, less than six years later, that day has arrived.
Since Sept. 11, a conspiracy-minded fringe has claimed that American officials plotted the destruction. But when scholars such as Zbigniew Brzezinski accuse our leaders of falsely depicting or hyping a "war on terror" to promote a "culture of fear," it's clear that historical revisionism has gone mainstream.

Really? The best he can marshall against thoseofus who think that terrorism isn't that big of a deal is that we're just like nutjob conspiracy theorists? Not just that, but he treats it as a truism that these things are equivalent. It's a beauty of a non sequitor.

Brzezinski stated the obvious in describing terrorism as a tactic, not an enemy ["Terrorized by 'War on Terror,' Outlook, March 25]. But this misses the point. We are at war with a global movement and ideology whose members seek to advance totalitarian aims through terrorism. Brzezinski is deeply mistaken to mock the notion that we are at war and to suggest that we should adopt "more muted reactions" to acts of terrorism.
The impulse to minimize the threat we face is eerily reminiscent of the way America's leaders played down the Ayatollah Khomeini's revolutionary fanaticism in the late 1970s. That naive approach ultimately foundered on the kidnapping of our diplomats in Tehran.

Yeah - if only we had responded to Khomeini militarily earlier. Because, you know, when we did it went fabulously.

A sensible strategy against al-Qaeda and others in its ideological terror network begins with recognizing the scope of the threat they pose. Al-Qaeda and its ilk have a world vision that is comparable to that of historical totalitarian ideologues but adapted to the 21st-century global network.

Yeah, see, the difference between al-Qaeda and the Nazis and Communists is that al-Qaeda hasn't successfully invaded almost all of Europe, and it hasn't amassed thousands and thousands of hydrogen weapons. Really, this isn't that hard, Mike.

Is this actually a war? Well, the short answer comes from our enemies. Osama bin Laden's fatwa of Feb. 23, 1998, was a declaration of war, a self-serving accusation that America had somehow declared war on Islam, followed by a "ruling" to "kill the Americans and their allies -- civilians and military . . . in any country where it is possible to do it."
Since then, bin Laden and his allies have sought to carry out acts designed to strike at our global system of security, safety and economy. I am reminded of that every day when I see threat assessments and other evidence of a militarized and networked foe.

Yeah, a lot of crazy people "declare war" against the US and "[seek] to carry out acts designed to strike at our global system of security, safety and economy". See Ted Kaczynski, or Timothy McVeigh. That doesn't render them the prime concern of US security policy.

Measured by intent, capability and consequence, fanatical Islamist ideologues have declared -- and are prosecuting -- what is, by any objective rendering, a real war.
Intent: Today's extreme Islamist groups such as al-Qaeda do not merely seek political revolution in their own countries. They aspire to dominate all countries. Their goal is a totalitarian, theocratic empire to be achieved by waging perpetual war on soldiers and civilians alike. That includes the use of weapons of mass destruction.
Capability: The fanatics' intent, while grandiose, is not entirely fanciful. Islamist extremists such as those in al-Qaeda, the Taliban and associated groups from North Africa to Iraq and South Asia are fighting for and sometimes achieving control of territory in which they can train; assemble advanced, inhumane weaponry; impose their own vision of repressive law; and dominate local life. To be sure, as Brzezinski observes, the geographic reach of this network does not put them in the same group as the Nazis or Stalinists when they achieved first-class military power. But without relentless vigilance and effort from the civilized world, Islamist extremists could gain control of a state or establish a network of radical "statelets" in the Middle East, Africa and Asia.
Consequence: The events of Sept. 11 highlight the dramatic difference between the consequences of Islamist extremist war-making and those of the political terrorist attacks unleashed against the West in the 1970s. The Sept. 11 attacks were the most devastating single blow ever visited upon our homeland by foreign enemies. The Islamist extremists' plot last summer to blow up multiple transatlantic airlines in Britain threatened a similarly devastating -- but thankfully unrealized -- consequence. Both episodes demonstrate that the terrorist ideologues aim to achieve not only a massive loss of life but also substantial disruption of our international system of travel and trade.
Simply put, our foes have declared their intent to make war, have demonstrated a capability to prosecute war and have laid on us the horrific consequences commensurate with war.

The intent here is irrelevant - a lot of crazy people intend to accomplish impossible thigns. The capability argument is laughable - there are already two major governments controlled by Islamist extremists, Iran and Saudi Arabia, governing 90-plus million people, and they are not exactly rolling across the Middle East Hitler-style, or even threatening the US in any sense. And the only consequence cited - 9/11 - isn't really that great of a consequence. As has been said again and again, a loss of 3,000 lives - while tragic - isn't a nation-transforming event, and should not constitute a major, foreign policy-shaping event.

In the aftermath of Sept. 11, our allies correctly perceived al-Qaeda's strikes as acts of international aggression. By Sept. 12, the U.N. Security Council had passed a resolution vowing to respond, and NATO began its unprecedented move of declaring the attacks to be aggression against all of its members.
That radical Islamist fanatics have not yet achieved all the elements of state power should not blind us to the global threat they pose. This globalized war has theaters from traditional battlefields in Afghanistan and Iraq to the streets and alleys of cities where al-Qaeda-trained killers lurk. Moreover, this war cannot be won by arms alone; "soft" power matters. In these ways, our current struggle resembles the Cold War. As with the Cold War, we must respond globally. As with the Cold War, ideas matter as much as armaments. And as with the Cold War, this war requires our patience and resolve.
Perhaps the rhetoric of war makes Brzezinski and others uncomfortable. But history teaches that the false comfort of complacency is a dangerous indulgence in the face of a determined enemy.

Comparing this to the Cold War is an insult not only to George Kennan, Dean Acheson, and others who formulated the policy of containment, but to the Soviets. The Soviets had over 200 million people, half of Europe, thousands of nuclear weapons, and a massive military budget to marshall. Al-Qaeda doesn't have one percent of that power. And the last paragraph, conveniently, was debunked here a couple weeks ago. Simply put, complacency is a far lesser threat than overreaction.
Where does Bush find these people?

Why French Politics Sucks in '07

By all indications, conservative Nicolas Sarkozy and Socialist Ségolène Royal will advance to the second round of France's presidential election. According to exit polls, they received 30% and 24%, respectively, while centrist François Bayrou received 19% and fascist Jean-Marie Le Pen received 11%. This being France, the fifth-place candidate, with 4%, was Trotskyist Olivier Besancenot. These are, well, not very good choices. Sarkozy's campaign strategy has consisted mostly of pandering to Le Pen's racist scumbag base, while Royal seems to have both a curious conception of civil liberties and no idea what the hell she's talking about. Both have their pros: Sarkozy seems better on economic/welfare policy, while Royal has promised to legalize gay marriage. But basically, the next French president is going to be pretty awful. I guess I'm leaning slightly toward Royal, but it's hard to get very excited about either of them.

Root Causes

So I was catching up with my BloggingHeads after my trip and was struck by a point Matt Yglesias makes near the end of this segment. John Edwards, Matt points out, disavowed his support for the war in Iraq not because the war's fundamental premise (i.e. that it's somehow a good idea to mount a full-scale invasion of a country just because it has biochemical weapons) was totally wrong, but because the factual underpinning of that premise (that Iraq had biochemical weapons) was wrong, and that he should have been more skeptical of the intelligence that suggested that said premise was right. Suffice it to say, this should count as a substantial mark against Edwards (and Hillary) and a substantial mark in favor of Obama, whose initial opposition to the war was based on an understanding that the mere possession of not-terribly-threatening weaponry by an unfriendly government does not render that government an imminent threat to American security, that said possession should not trigger a massive military response, and that the costs of such an invasion/occupation would far outweigh the benefits. Obama's position is much farther removed from the Bush doctrine than that of Edwards, who more or less embraces the doctrine in its entirety, objecting only to the war's handling and to the intelligence used to promote it. Inasmuch as the next presidential term will serve as the beginning of a process of undoing (or trying to undo) the damage done by Bush to America's standing in the world, electing a president who understands just how fundamentally rotten Bush's policy framework is will be essential.

Francisco Franco Is, In Fact, Still Dead

Oh, come the hell on Eugene Volokh. I expected the uproar over Harry Reid's factual statement that the US lost the war in Iraq to come from the usual far-right, wingnut sources - the National Review, the Weekly Standard, Redstate, LGF, Malkin, etc. - but not from a usually sensible conservative such as yourself. Look - the US lost the war in Iraq by any reasonable set of measures. It didn't fulfill our stated aims, which, if anyone still remembers, were to disarm Iraq of its WMDs and end its "support" for terrorism; whereas before the war Iraq had no WMDs and no ties to al-Qaeda, today not only is al-Qaeda active in Iraq but insurgents in Iraq now possess and use chemical weapons. And when one uses a gain/loss measure of victory instead, the picture isn't any prettier. Gain: we deposed an unfriendly dictator. Losses: we got an unfixable failed state and associated civil war in his absence, squandered any and all international support for US global leadership, spent up to $2 trillion, etc., etc. So by the two standards by which victory in a war is usually judged, not only did the US lose, but it lost very, very badly. This shouldn't be all that hard to surmise. In fact, it hadn't occurred to me that serious people actually believed that the US hadn't already lost. It's bizarre.
This reminds me, though: in the nine major inter-state wars the US has involved itself in (1812, Mexican, Spanish, WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Gulf, Iraq), it doesn't have a particularly stellar record. It won five, to be sure (Mexican, Spanish, WWI, WWII, Gulf), but it lost two (Vietnam, Iraq) and tied two (Korea, 1812). So it's not as if the US is particularly invincible, militarily speaking, though it's often spoken of as being so.

Kerrey Can't Fail

Long-time readers know of my firm conviction that Bob Kerrey was and remains the greatest person ever. Therefore, the possibility that he'll not only return to the Senate but add to the Democratic Senate majority in the process is fairly awesome. Let's just hope that he actually runs.
P.S. Kerrey is, in fact, considering the race, though he still says that the chance of him running is remote. But again, let's hope he follows through.

Valid Points

Matt Yglesias is right: this McSweeney's article about 2008 is pretty brilliant. And, for the record, everyone knows that the best U2 album was Achtung Baby.

In Soviet Russia, Hand Cranks You

Having read basically everything in Slate since 2002, I can say with relative authority that this article on Skymall is quite possibly the greatest thing ever published by that august institution. Really. What other article features excerpts like this:

Most of you are familiar with the ads in airline magazines, and I'm sure at one bored, tarmac-sitting moment or another you must have wondered why a certain kind of product is featured in their pages. Well, Skymall is an airline magazine that features nothing but airline magazine ads.
Nothing but ads for such essential items as the "Readylight® Handcrank LED Flashlight." (Skymall advertisers are big on "handcrank" items. Handcrank enthusiasts implicitly foresee a crisis in which all forms of power on the planet will fail, and you'll be able to generate light only with the help of a crank.)
The ad for the SnacDaddy® chicken-wing array tray—headlined "Where the wings have no shame"—appears in the Late Spring '07 issue of Skymall, which I found in the seat pocket on a Delta flight. This was just pages from an ad for "the world's largest write-on map mural," probably useful for keeping an eye on the fast-moving global catastrophe that will make your many handcrank devices the envy of your crank-deprived neighbors.

Maybe this is only funny because I was recently reading Skymall on a flight, and noticed the "pop-up hot dog cooker" that the author of this article also notices. Or maybe it's just totally bloody hilarious. I'm betting on the latter.