Looked at from the anthropological point of view religion can be seen as an elaborate (and spontaneous) way in which communities remove what is most precious to them (i.e. all that concerns the creation and reproduction of community) from the erosion of the market. A cultural conservative, such as I am, supports that enterprise. I would put the point in terms that echo Burke and Chesterton: the free market provides the optimal solution to the competition among the living for scarce resources; but when applied to the goods in which the dead and the unborn have an interest (sex, for instance) it wastes what must be saved.

Consider the horrors of peace. [. . .]

It looks as if the realists have won the day in the matter of Darfur. Or, to phrase it in another way, it looks as if the ethnic cleansers of that province have made good use of the "negotiation" and "mediation" period to complete their self-appointed task. As my friend Johann Hari put it recently in the London Independent: "At last, some good news from Darfur: the genocide in western Sudan is nearly over. There's only one problem—it's drawing to an end only because there are no black people left to cleanse or kill."

By some reliable estimates, the Sudanese government or "National Islamic Front" has slain as many as 400,000 of its black co-religionists—known contemptuously as zurga ("niggers")—and expelled perhaps 2 million more. This appalling achievement has been made possible by a very simple tactic: The actual killers and cleansers, the Arab janjaweed militias, are a "deniable" arm of the Sudanese authorities. Those authorities pretend to negotiate with the United Nations, the United States, and the African Union, and their negotiating "card" is the control that they can or might exercise over said militias. While this tap is turned on and off, according to different applications of carrot and stick, the militias pretend to go out of control and carry on with their slaughter and deportation. By the time the clock has been run out, the job is done.

If it were not for the efforts of a few brave journalists and humanitarian workers, and at least one American soldier attached to the African Union "peacekeepers" who went public in disgust at what he had seen, the Sudanese government might have gotten away with the whole thing. But we have more than enough filmed and photographic evidence of Sudanese planes and helicopters, flying close support to janjaweed operations, to say with certainty that the relationship between the two is the same as between the Rwandan authorities and the "Hutu Power" mobs who destroyed the Tutsi population. In other words, a Rwanda in slow motion, and in front of the cameras and the diplomats. What was all that garbage about "never again"? What was the meaning of Clinton's apology to the Rwandans? What did Colin Powell mean when he finally used the word "genocide" to describe the events in Darfur, just before resigning as secretary of state and becoming an advocate for more realism all round?

And what on earth was I thinking when I employed that "carrot and stick" cliché a couple of paragraphs above? Carrots there have been. Only the other day, according to the New York Times, the Bush administration granted a waiver to the sanctions ostensibly in place against the Khartoum government in order to allow it to spend $530,000 on a lobbyist in Washington. Well, one would not want to deny a government indicted for genocide the right to make its case. That would hardly be fair. Meanwhile, the State Department has upgraded Sudan's status on the chart that shows "cooperation" in the matter of slave-trafficking. Apparently, you can be on this list and still be awarded points for good behavior. A hundred-plus congressmen recently signed a statement accusing the administration of "appeasement," which seems the only appropriate word for it.

But that's about the extent of the protest. How can this be? Surely the administration did everything that could have been asked of it. Abandoning any sort of "unilateralism," it pedantically followed the Kofi Annan script of multiparty negotiations and patient diplomacy. It allowed the inspectors more time. It exhausted all avenues short of war and never even threatened the use of force. By the use of sanctions, it kept Sudan "in its box." And it has got exactly what anyone might have predicted for such a strategy. Perhaps that's why there is so little protest. After all, we know that "war is not the answer." And now Sudan has Darfur province in its box. It has taken the land and gotten rid of the people.

Any critique of realism has to begin with a sober assessment of the horrors of peace. Everybody now wishes, or at least says they wish, that we had not made ourselves complicit spectators in Rwanda. But what if it had been decided to take action? Only one member state of the U.N. Security Council would have had the capacity to act with speed to deploy pre-emptive force (and that would have been very necessary, given the weight of the French state, and the French veto, on the side of the genocidaires). It is a certainty that at some stage, American troops would have had to open fire on the "Hutu Power" mobs and militias, actually killing people and very probably getting killed in return. Body bags would have been involved. It is not an absolute certainty that all detained members of those militias would have been treated with unfailing tenderness. It is probable that some of the military contractors would have overcharged, and that some locals would have engaged in profiteering and even in tribal politics. It is impossible that any child of any member of the Clinton administration would have been an enlisted soldier. But we never had to suffer any of these wrenching experiences, so that we can continue to wish, in some parallel Utopian universe, that we had done something instead of nothing.

Or not exactly nothing. The United States ended up supporting the French military intervention in Rwanda, which was mounted in an attempt not to remove the genocidaires but to save them. Nonintervention does not mean that nothing happens. It means that something else happens. Our policy in Darfur has not just failed to rescue a stricken black African population: It has actually assisted the Sudanese Islamists in completing their policy of racist murder. Thank heaven that we are tough enough to bear the shame of this, and strong enough to forgive ourselves.

This really has received very little popular press--and for a not very surprising reason. The bad guys are Muslims (as are the victims). To show you how effective the left has been on confusing the masses, one of my wife's students a term or two back wrote a paper about what was going in Darfur--and about how Christians were exterminating Muslims.

There are no Christians involved in this genocide, as either genocidal monsters or as victims--but the left's continual drumbeat about how Christianity and the Republican Party is the source of most of the world's problems, and how Muslims are victims, had confused this student to the point that she had apparently read multiple accounts of what was happening in Darfur--and the only way that it fit into the left's "Christians bad, Muslims victims" framework was to read that the victims were Muslims and the monsters were Christians.

No more rosy scenarios. After watching his credibility and approval ratings crumble over the course of 2005, President Bush completed a rhetorical shift Sunday night by abandoning his everything-is-OK pitch to Americans and coming clean: He was wrong about the rationale for going to war in Iraq; he underestimated the dangers; the country has suffered "terrible loss"; and the bad news isn't over.

More than a few Freepers have pointed out that Jennifer Loven, the author of this piece, "is married to Roger Ballentine, who is president of Green Strategies, a consulting firm specializing in energy and environmental issues, and was previously deputy assistant to President Clinton for environmental initiatives and chairman of the White House Climate Change Task Force. He also sits on the board of directors of Solar Electric Light Fund (SELF) along with actors Ed Begley, Jr. and Larry Hagman." Why am I not surprised by this?

White House Credibility Defense Shifting
By Jennifer Loven
Associated Press

Monday 21 July 2003

WASHINGTON -- The White House defense of President Bush's now-disavowed claim that Iraq was seeking uranium in Africa has evolved over the last two weeks: blame others, stonewall, bury questions in irrelevant information and, above all, hope it will go away.

So far, none has worked.

In question: 16 words in Bush's Jan. 28 State of the Union speech: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

At issue: the credibility of the president's allegation that Saddam was rebuilding a nuclear weapons program. The assertion that Iraq was trying to buy uranium was a key component of that claim -- and a key piece of Bush's justification for war.

The flap started on July 6, when an envoy sent by the CIA to Africa last year to investigate the uranium claim contended that the Bush administration ignored -- and possibly manipulated -- his findings. In a New York Times op-ed article, Joseph Wilson, former U.S. ambassador to Gabon, said it was highly doubtful that any transaction took place.

The next day, the White House acknowledged that Bush should not have made the claim because of concerns about the intelligence behind it. The documents allegedly showing an Iraq-Niger uranium connection turned out to be forgeries.

Then-White House press secretary Ari Fleischer tried to shut down the story in its tracks, insisting it was old news.

In a way, it was.

National security adviser Condoleezza Rice had said almost a month earlier that Bush was wrong to include the uranium claim in his speech, but that the White House had not known about intelligence doubts until afterward. Her acknowledgment received little attention.

That changed with Wilson's statements. Democrats in Congress and on the presidential campaign trail demanded an investigation into whether Bush purposely exaggerated intelligence.

With its press staff unable to quell the controversy, the White House brought in bigger guns -- Secretary of State Colin Powell, Rice, the president himself and even, later, British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

But, after two weeks, a White House usually adept at controlling stories merely by dismissing questions and waiting them out has had no luck.

The central questions -- asked over and over -- were not changing:

* Who knew what when -- especially the president?
* Why was it so important to include the statement in the speech?
* Who was responsible for putting it in?
* Why has the president refused to take responsibility for uttering it?

Only the White House's explanations shifted -- often contradicting themselves in the process.

There was the "no big deal" approach. Four days into the controversy, as Bush was dogged with questions while visiting Africa, Powell said there was no intention to deceive and called the outcry "overwrought and overblown and overdrawn." His defense was a bit backhanded -- the president's statement, he said, had been determined to be "not totally outrageous."

With that tack unsuccessful, the next day was blame the CIA day.

First Rice, then Bush pointed fingers at the CIA for not removing the claim while vetting the speech. CIA Director George Tenet, back in Washington, completed the well-scripted mea culpa by accepting full responsibility and absolving Bush.

But Democrats still weren't letting it go.

Rice appeared on three Sunday talk shows to offer a new explanation: Bush's remark was technically accurate because he correctly described what the British government had reported.

And who knows, Fleischer emphasized the next day, the British could be right. "We don't know if it's true," he said, "but nobody -- but nobody -- can say it is wrong."

Scott McClellan, who succeeded Fleischer as chief spokesman, also tried to dismiss questions. Over four days, he told reporters 20 times that the particular question they were asking had already been "addressed."

On July 16, he said claims of White House exaggeration were "nonsense" and accused skeptics of trying to "politicize this issue by rewriting history." He read five-year-old statements by Democratic Sens. John Kerry -- now running for president -- and Carl Levin urging action to confront Saddam's possession of weapons of mass destruction.

At the same time, the White House tried to redirect the debate onto the overall danger posed by Saddam's chemical and biological weapons -- uranium or not -- and onto Bush's resolve in acting to confront that threat.

With that came the Bush and Blair show, first with Blair's speech to a joint meeting of Congress last Thursday and then at a news conference with the president.

The two leaders defended their decision to go to war and said their prewar claims about Iraq's weapons would ultimately be proven right.

On Friday came the document dump.

The White House took the rare step of declassifying and releasing eight pages of the 90-page top-secret National Intelligence Estimate that was used to write the questioned portions of the State of the Union address.

But instead of putting a lid on the controversy, the documents were likely to raise more questions -- as they also showed prewar divisions within the U.S. intelligence community. The State Department, for instance, termed the reports that Saddam was shopping for uranium in Africa "highly dubious."

As for Bush, he has addressed the matter only in broad terms, saying he is confident in his decision to go to war. Once, he praised the intelligence he relied on as "darn good."

"We will find the truth," Bush said beside Blair. "And that'll end all this speculation."

Only time will tell.

I was there. I am one of those very neoconservatives. And today I expose the truth behind the plot to change the world.

The gathering was the London launch of the Henry Jackson Society, an organisation – at this stage little more than a website and a group of supporters – named after the great Democrat senator and anti-communist campaigner, Henry ‘Scoop’ Jackson.

Jackson was a traditional New Deal liberal, a trade unionist who believed in nationalisation and price controls, and a civil rights campaigner. But his real impact, and his legacy, lay not in domestic but international politics. He was an implacable opponent of the received foreign policy wisdom of détente with the Soviet Union. As the Henry Jackson Society’s founding statement puts it: “He believed that this was an unprincipled accommodation, which abandoned the wider cause of human rights, as well as compromising security. Jackson’s core belief was that democratic governments should consider the internal character of foreign states when dealing with them.”

[. . .] The parallels with today are striking. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Tuesday’s gathering was that it was genuinely all-party. The event was hosted by two MPs, Michael Gove, a Conservative, and Gisela Stuart, a former minister under Blair. Denis MacShane, Europe Minister until June, is a signatory of society’s statement of principles.

The truth which I expose today is that the Henry Jackson Society is not a secret cabal designed, as one Guardian columnist put it last week, to create “a new governing consensus of the right” but quite the opposite. It has neoconservative members. But it also has social democrats and traditional conservatives. Socialists would feel comfortable with its aims - “the spread of democracy, using all realistic and available means - not only on idealistic grounds, but also because this is the surest guarantee of…security.” And it is not about American dominion but the very absence of empire. There is indeed a mission to change the world. But it is to rid it of tyranny and to give all people the liberty as we enjoy in the West.

Welcome to the Henry Jackson Society

The Henry Jackson Society is a non-profit organisation that seeks to promote the following principles: that liberal democracy should be spread across the world; that as the world’s most powerful democracies, the United States and the European Union – under British leadership – must shape the world more actively by intervention and example; that such leadership requires political will, a commitment to universal human rights and the maintenance of a strong military with global expeditionary reach; and that too few of our leaders in Britain and the rest of Europe today are ready to play a role in the world that matches our strength and responsibilities.

The Henry Jackson Society intends, therefore, to provide a platform for much-needed discussion and research. It will attempt to mobilise support behind a principled policy of democratic realism. For further elaboration please see our Statement of Principles.

SYRIANA (POTENTIAL PLOT SPOILER) [Rich Lowry ]
You might not want to read any further if you plan on seeing it because I'll reveal key elements of the plot...

...at least if I understand them. It's the hardest-to-understand movie I've seen since Mulholland Drive. It is based very loosely on Bob Baer's See No Evil. It's been a while since I looked at his book, but if recall correctly it was about how the CIA had seen its operational capabilities degraded in recent decades and how he was sold out for being too aggressive in Iraq by a pusillanimous administration back in Washington (Clinton's). This has been translated into a movie about a CIA conducting assassinations abroad at the behest--or so it seems to be suggested--of big oil companies.

What annoyed me most about the movie was the way it reflected the Left's incoherent grappling with Bush's foreign policy. On the one hand, a group called the Committee for the Liberation of Iran (CPI)--think PNAC--was portrayed negatively. So the idealists are evil. On the other hand, the CIA and the Bush-like administration behind it are portrayed as plotting against a reformer in a Saudi-like country. So the cynics are evil. Both promoting reform and opposing it are wrong. Perhaps this is supposed to be moral complexity, but it is really just attacking anything associated with the Bush administration.

Now, there are plausible criticisms to be made of the Bush administration: for being unrealistic, for being incompetent, for being naïve, all the rest of it. But none of these criticisms would allow a Hollywood lefty making them to feel morally superior, so instead a Bush-like administration is created that is a cynical operation coolly trying to kill off liberal democratic reformers. Don't they realize that the administration would kill for Middle Eastern reformers? That it is desperate to find them and promote them wherever it can?

The Hollywood left, at least as reflected in Syriana, doesn't have the courage of its cynicism. It has to pretend that it is on the side of liberal reform, when it dropped that cause about three years ago...

The screenwriter of Syriana, Steve Gaghan, penned a little piece in the latest issue of The Writers Guild journal "Written By" (I'm a TV writer), that offers more insight into where he and Clooney were coming from and--big surprise--it's the usual tortured, emotional lefty angst.

Thanks for seeing the movie so I won't have to.

Here in France, where no accusation against America or Israel is too scurrilous for official dissemination and mass consumption, Finkielkraut was beaten almost senseless for developing, with utmost precaution, a thoughtful analysis of the riots. Going beyond the simplistic sociological description of ghettoized youths bursting out in frustration against discrimination and unemployment, Finkielkraut analyzes the violence as a nihilistic attack against the French Republic. He points out the dangers inherent in romanticizing the riots as the justified revolt of the wretched of the earth. And he has the courage to mention that the perpetrators of the street violence are, for the most part, black and/or Muslim…born in France but anchored to an ethno-religious identity that makes their integration well nigh impossible. He cautions against a misguided anti-racism that may become the totalitarian menace of the 21st century, as was Communism in the latter half of the 20th.

Every detail of the extensive Haaretz interview merits debate and reflection. But the prevailing dhimmitude climate leaves no room for debate: It is forbidden to criticize Islam.

Finkielkraut's forthright search for the truth led him into the heart of the "Seine-y triangle," where Le Monde, Le Nouvel Observateur, Télérama, and Libération dictate the lockstep thinking that stifles French minds. A collage of excerpts from the Haaretz interview, slapped together by Sylvain Cypel, was published in Le Monde ("Finkielkraut's Deviant Voice", 26 November). Not only were the excerpts deliberately slanted to make Finkielkraut look bad, but the words attributed to him had been re-translated into French from a Hebrew translation of the original French interview. A linguistic crime.

Mouloud Aounit, executive officer of the Mouvement contre le racisme et pour l'amitié entre les peuples, announced that he was suing the philosopher for racism and hate speech. The MRAP, originally a Communist-inspired movement against racism and anti-Semitism, is now distinguished for associating with notorious Islamists and defending their causes. The NGO-infiltration strategy pays off -- instead of coming on like a scary cloak-and-qur'an cell pronouncing a fatwa against Finkielkraut, the MRAP stands proudly as a government-subsidized anti-racist association and unashamedly goes public with a vicious assault on Finkielkraut that has been raging for years on Islamist and fellow traveler websites. And the mainstream media join the mob.

[. . .] There is every indication that the street fighting will recur. And expand. And guerilla warfare against thinkers who explore the deep-seated causes of this conflict will certainly intensify. Alain Finkielkraut, who is admired for his broad learning, intellectual finesse, open heart, and open mind, knows how to defend himself. But he is too lucid to ignore the long term implications of the personal attacks currently aimed at him. Whatever distress this may cause today must be overshadowed by a far greater and ultimately inconsolable distress at the collapse of intelligent discourse in this France that he loves so deeply.