WFB, RIP

It still reads pretty damn fresh, doesn't it? There was a man.

He's been called the most consequential journalist in American history. That's about right. More than any other man of letters, of his time or any other, Buckley changed the world.

This speech by one of Bill's protege's gets it about right.

It's difficult to explain the impact of Bill Buckley on my life. I had a very modest upbringing. I was a bright kid in a blue-collar neighborhood. I didn't fit in. I adopted a sort of snide, condescending liberalism, born out of the '60's anti-war movement as my defense mechanism, I guess. I thought the hipppies were cool. I worshipped the Beatles. Conservatism was the last possible thing on my mind.

High school was not my scene. Not a jock because of some physical issues (hypermobile knee joints), not quite a nerd either, I settled into a cigarette and dope-smoking, guitar-playing quasi-intellectual. You know, the kind that thinks Rolling Stone is serious journalism. Hunter Thompson seemed to me to be the zenith of all that is great. Lots of drugs, gonzo journalism, elemental, stream of consciousness, Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie, Fear and Loathing. I will say this. Fear and Loating in Las Vegas is still about the funniest thing I ever read.

And then I read Buckley. Of course, the words were bigger, but the ideas! They were huge. They are timeless.

Thank you, Bill Buckley, for teaching me your vision of America. Thanks for giving everyone your great life.

I'll close with a few of his oh-so-well-chosen words, which could easily have been written last week:

"I happen to prefer champagne to ditchwater," said the benign old wrecker of the ordered society, Oliver Wendell Holmes, "but there is no reason to suppose that the cosmos does." We have come around to Mr. Holmes' view, so much so that we feel gentlemanly doubts when asserting the superiority of capitalism to socialism, of republicanism to centralism, of champagne to ditchwater — of anything to anything. (How curious that one of the doubts one is not permitted is whether, at the margin, Mr. Holmes was a useful citizen!) The inroads that relativism has made on the American soul are not so easily evident. One must recently have lived on or close to a college campus to have a vivid intimation of what has happened. It is there that we see how a number of energetic social innovators, plugging their grand designs, succeeded over the years in capturing the liberal intellectual imagination. And since ideas rule the world, the ideologues, having won over the intellectual class, simply walked in and started to run things.

Run just about everything. There never was an age of conformity quite like this one, or a camaraderie quite like the Liberals'. Drop a little itching powder in Jimmy Wechsler's bath and before he has scratched himself for the third time, Arthur Schlesinger will have denounced you in a dozen books and speeches, Archibald MacLeish will have written ten heroic cantos about our age of terror, Harper's will have published them, and everyone in sight will have been nominated for a Freedom Award. Conservatives in this country — at least those who have not made their peace with the New Deal, and there is serious question whether there are others — are non-licensed nonconformists; and this is dangerous business in a Liberal world, as every editor of this magazine can readily show by pointing to his scars. Radical conservatives in this country have an interesting time of it, for when they are not being suppressed or mutilated by the Liberals, they are being ignored or humiliated by a great many of those of the well-fed Right, whose ignorance and amorality have never been exaggerated for the same reason that one cannot exaggerate infinity.

Rest in peace, Bill. Well done!

Jerome Slater holds forth in today's Buffalo News with a column that could have been written a year ago. Indeed, the article is accompanied by a photo of dispirited US troops--taken a year ago. And we even get the dreaded Q-word in the headline. (Quagmire!) Despite the undeniable success of the Surge, Dr. Slater chooses to trot out the same old tired arguments people have been making for the past fve years to support immediate withdrawal from Iraq. Could it be that his critics have become so obsessed with George W. Bush that they've taken on the very qualities they find so odious in him? I.E., an inability to change direction despite changes in circumstances?

Slater, who is best-known for papers he has written defending Yasser Arafat, cites six major costs and consequences of the Iraq war to support his larger point that we've already lost, and presumably should get on with surrendering.

1.) The Human Costs

Rightfully so, Slater goes straight to the heart of the matter--namely the cost in lives; nearly 4000 soldiers, 1000 civilians killed, perhaps 30000 wounded on the American side. Slater then goes on to cite a discredited Lancet story that inflates the Iraqi total to something like a million war-related deaths. More beleivable estimates hover somewhere around 30000, which is terrible enough.

Can anything justify this kind of loss of life? My position is that if the effort prevents an even larger loss of life, that may make it worthwhile. We can know with some certainty what the costs are associated with a course of action we have taken, what we cannot ever know is what would have happened if we had made a different choice. Perhaps some perspective is in order.

The loss of our soldiers to actual combat fatalities is much lower than 4000. Many have lost their lives in accidents, which unfortunately are part of life in the military whether we're at war or not. In five years of war in Iraq, total fatalities have averaged about 800 per year. During the '90's the military averaged about 1000 deaths per year, without being at war in Iraq. We lost about 3000 innocent civilians in one day on 9/11.

Here at home during the five years of war, we've probably lost something like 20000 young people to violence in our cities. Which is more regrettable?

What would have happened had we not gone to Iraq? Isn't it possible, if not likely, that the course of the war on terror would have gone much worse? Let's imagine that instead of going to Iraq, we pursued bin Laden into Pakistan, as so many war critics said we should have.

Might that not have provoked a much worse outcome? Isn't it fairly easy to see how radical Islamists could have toppled Musharaf, gotten control of Pakistan's nukes and maybe even used them on our forces?

Or, failing that, had we backed down after massing our troops in Kuwait, wouldn't that have emboldened all our various adversaries to ramp up their own WMD programs?

Maybe it's time to acknowledge that the situation in Iraq as of 2003 was not about to resolve itself on its own. Iraq was under UN sanctions dating back to the first Gulf War. Saddam was massively violating those sanctions, (with the help of our "allies") while robbing the Oil-for-Food program blind. And while we were unable to find stockpiles of weapons, the Duelfer report, and Saddam himself have indicated that he was ready and able to restart those programs the moment sanctions were lifted. Let's not forget that the sanctions themselves were responsible for killing tens of thousands of the most vulnerable Iraqi's. Namely children.

I think it's fairly easy to see that other courses of action frequently advocated by Iraq war critics such as Slater could easily have resulted in greater loss of life. Just one more attack on US soil could have done it. Conflict in Pakistan could have done it. An emboldened (in the wake of US backdown on Iraq) Ahmadinejad, Assad, Khaddafi, or bin Laden could have done it.

In any event, a precipitous withdrawal from Iraq would almost certainly lead to a very large loss of life.

2.) The Economic Costs

War costs money. Slater uses the figure of $1.3 trillion, which I won't dispute. It's wrong, however, to consider all of that as squandered. Money paid to our troops, for example, is not exactly wasted. And much of that sum goes back into our economy as payments to US firms (the evil military-industrial complex). I've seen estimates of the economic loss from 9/11, just one day, at about $1 trillion. And that was pure loss--destroyed property, lost business, higher insurance premiums, devastated careers, the list goes on and on.

Although it won't be easy or quick, our effort in Iraq could lead to a more stable, peaceful Middle East, which in turn should lower the risks of more 9/11's. Maybe that's worth a lot of money.

3.) Worsening Terrorism

Although he cites none, Slater asserts, "virtually all experts on terrorism agree that the Iraq War has given the next generation of Islamic fanatics both the motivation and the practical military experience to carry out new acts of global terrorism."

Given that they were willing to fly planes into buildings before we toppled Saddam, I'm not so sure Islamic fanatics were short on motivation in the first place. As for their practical experience, most of that amounts to being killed by the US military. If anything, I imagine the experience of actually going up against our soldiers has not been terrifically motivating. People don't usually get motivated by getting their brains blown out.

He goes on to say that the fact that we have not been attacked in six and a half years is, "not because of the Iraq War but despite it". That's nothing but an unsubstantiated assertion. The facts are that during the nineties, when we took a law enforcement approach to fighting terror, we were attacked about every eighteen months. Since 9/11, and going on the military offensive against terror, zero attacks.

What do you think, gentle reader? Coincidence?

4.) Declining Military Capability

I'll just ask this. If Islamic fanatics have gained practical military experience by getting slaughtered by our troops, isn't it possible that our guys have learned a thing or two also?

Yes, we need to replace equipment, and yes, we need a bigger military, but reenlistment rates remain very strong, and we now have experienced, battle-hardened troops. Not to mention the ascendance of new leaders like David Petraeus, who have demonstrated an ability to succeed. That's pretty important.

Why is it when decrying the negative effects that the war has had on our military, no one ever mentions what the effect would be of making Iraq a loss? Do you think the military would appreciate throwing away the sacrifices of 4000 of their brethren? How would that affect morale?

When we fight, people die and equipment gets destroyed. That's why we have a military. If our military can't handle a small-scale conflict like Iraq, we're in serious trouble.

5.) Nuclear Proliferation

Slater proposes the rather dubious proposition that the Iraq War has sent the message to our other adversaries that they should rush to get nukes to avert an American attack. I think that the message of the war is more like, "If we think you are engaged in WMD, we're coming to get you." Admittedly, that threat has been diluted by the aftermath of the Iraq operation, but the fault for that lies much more with the anti-war Americans who have done so much to undermine US policy.

In any case, it has always been true that acquiring nukes will strengthen one's strategic position. That would have been true regardless of whether we invaded Iraq.

6.) National Reputation

I'm not so sure our reputation is so severely damaged. France, for example, just elected an overwhelmingly pro-American leader. Likewise, in Germany, the anti-American Schroeder is gone, replaced by the more friendly Merkel.

Besides, while of course we would prefer to be popular, we can never let ourselves be put in the position of jeopardizing our own national security just for the sake of remaining popular. I think any of us would prefer to be safe than popular.

As I suggested at the top, I think it's ironic that some of Bush's harshest critics seem to posess the very qualities that they so frequently criticize in him; namely an inability to change course in the face of new evidence, a failure to consider all the possibilities, and a lack of honesty.

Dr. Slater does get one thing right, in my judgment. This is likely to be a long, drawn out conflict with Islamic fanatics. Taking them on in Iraq is one part of that. We can, and should have a healthy debate about whether that remains a worthwhile course of action. Let's also strive to remain open-minded and intellectually honest in that debate.

Finally, perhaps one way to measure would be to evaluate the six variables enumerated in Dr. Slater's piece, but from the perspective of al Qaeda. We can perhaps take some comfort from the fact that in each of these categories, the cost to al Qaeda for having taken us on in Iraq is immeasurably worse for them than for us, provided we don't lose heart and walk away.

steely dan my old school

Eric Clapton, eat your heart out!

Bubbles Always Burst

The most vivid experience with a bubble I ever had was in March of 2000. It was at the height of tech-mania, and PALM had recently been partialy spun-off to the public by parent company 3Com. 3Com spun 15% of the company off and retained 85%. Within a few weeks, PALM stock had soared so much that the 15% of the company trading had a 3x greater market value than the parent co., which still owned 85% of PALM.

It suddenly became apparent that the market had completely lost its moorings as these cultish tech fiends just drove valuations past any sane level. It was as if everyone in the market just sort of looked around at everyone else, and we all realized we were Wily Coyote hanging in the air. That was the end of the bull market.

The Obamaniacs remind me of the tech fiends. They've run their candidate up to dizzying heights on the basis of... nothing much.

Now I'm wondering if the Michelle Obama, "For the first time in my adult life, I'm actually proud of America" gaffe is the PALM moment. The moment when the pros in the party look around at each other and think, "Holy Shit! Did she just say that?"

I'll posit that lots of folks are thinking, "What's the big deal? I'm ashamed of my country most of the time, too."

I'll just close by saying that there millions and millions of guys like me who are immensely proud of their country. Guys who feel like, if you hate it so much here, why don't you just leave, you smug, Ivy-league, delusions of grandeur-having, Chardonnay-sipping, Che-Guevara tee-shirt wearing, peace march going, Communist sympathizing, military-hating, Toyota Prius driving, chip on your shoulder-having bitch.

The Republicans are going to beat you like a rented mule with that one.

FISA Follies



Sandy: I want you to kill every gopher on the golf course!

Carl Spackler: Correct me if I'm wrong Sandy, but if I kill all the golfers, they're gonna lock me up and throw away the key...

Sandy: Not golfers, you great fool! Gophers! The little brown, furry rodents!

Carl Spackler: We can do that; we don't even have to have a reason. All right, let's do the same thing, but with gophers -!



What we have here is a failure to communicate...



There's an absolute plague of illegality that Congress should address. This is a matter of even greater urgency than issuing a contempt citation against Harriet Myers or even whether Roger Clemens used steroids. (He did).

I'm referring of course to the rampant, wanton disregard of red lights by ambulance drivers. Everyone knows that running red lights is against the law, and yet every day in America EMT's, thinking only about saving the lives of their passengers, violate that staute. It's time to open them up to millions of class action suits. It's going to be pretty difficult for Democrat lawmakers to continue to raise the kind of money they need to hold Congress unless the trial bar finds a new industry to pillage. The medical profession is just about tapped out and the insurance industry is learning how to defend itself. But wait... without ambulance drivers, who would they chase?

Apparently, House Democrats need to preserve the ability to launch a plague of junk, class-action lawsuits against telecom companies for the unspeakable offense of having answered their government's call at a time of great national peril. It's evidently an irresistible two-fer to on the one hand be able to speak in the high-minded terms that nitwit ACLU types who've only recently discovered a sort of misguided constitutional fundamentalism would love, while delivering a financial bonanza to their most important constituency.

It's exactly the sort of cynical ploy that so many have found dismaying, and which, to be fair, cost Republicans their control of Congress. Although, to their everlasting credit, Republicans never knowingly weakened national security to pay off an iterest group. They just loaded up bills with earmarks.

One wonders what all those newly minted Obamaniacs might think of their party if they understood just how the old sausage factory actually works.

And weakening national security is exactly what not passing the Senate bill will accomplish. Make no mistake.

We've now placed ourselves in the absurd position of needing a FISA warrant to monitor phone conversations between two foreigners both located outside the United States. Even the Senate bill severely compromises the President's inherent constitutional authority to intercept enemy communications.

Funny, huh?

Tour de Farce

I'm afraid I'm going to have to retract my Hillary prediction. I never thought I'd be saying this, but I almost feel sorry for her. Almost. One scarcely knows where to begin.

There's something almost Buffalo-like in her failure, minus, I suppose, any endearing qualities. Just epic, humiliating, gut-wrenching, inescapable Little Miss Sunshine failure on a global stage. Before this is over, I suspect we'll witness not just a little welling, but huge, wracking sobs, complete with snot bubbles and maybe a little vomit.

It's been gratifying to watch as Democrats discover that gee whiz, those Clintons aren't very nice people. Despite the fact that Hillary has what passes as credentials on the Dem side, she can't do what Obama can, or what her husband could do from the podium. The Dems need the hearts and flowers. Shoulda stayed a Goldwater Girl. Repubs will vote for a competent plugger like HRC. (See McAmnesty, er, McCain)

Actually, the rise of Obama, in a perverse way, somewhat rehabilitates the Democrat party in my eyes. The Clinton era laid bare the raw, mendacious nature of Dem politics at its worst. It starts out with lots of flowery language, but it always ends up like mud wrestling. At this juncture, Obama seems to have made a comparatively clean rise (although I imagine someone will find some dirt on him--actually I imagine the Clintons already have some dirt on him, which will be released through a third party), and may not actually owe anyone too much. Given the choice between naive idealism and brutish thuggery, I'll take idealism.

Will the Clintons go quietly? I could see them putting up a hell of a fight because that's what they do. I can see Hillary winning in the general. I can see the Clintons going to the mattresses because they believe she has the best chance in the general. I think they're right. I also think they owe it to themselves and their party to throw everything including the kitchen sink at Obama, because if they don't, the Republicans surely will.

Let's don't forget Florida and Michigan. To me, the Dems best chance is the Hillary/Obama ticket. But if things keep going the way they are, it's going to be very hard to deny Obama the top of the ticket. Can't see HRC settling for #2, can you?

Meanwhile, the Dems are about to nominate a hopelessly unqualified candidate with an unbelievably pedestrian slate of discredited, old-school liberal policies. What's even more unsettling is, he might win.

Now, he shouldn't, but he might. There might be just enough stupid young voters, blacks, single moms, and old hippies to push him over the top--especially against an old, unexciting John McCain.

I hope the market, the economy, and the country survive!