Posted 7:10 PM by Josh Chafetz
SAINT JACK OF TURTLE BAY: President Bush has nominated former Missouri Senator John C. Danforth to be the next American Ambassador to the United Nations. Sen. Danforth had a sterling reputation and excellent relationships with his colleagues on both sides of the aisle, and confirmation is seen as almost guaranteed. He has been the Administration's Special Envoy to Sudan since 2001, and I hope that he will use his new position to try and focus more world attention on the horrors of Darfur.

Posted 5:34 PM by Patrick Belton
TIAN'ANMEN SQUARE, 3-4 JUNE, 1989: We shall never forget.

Posted 10:25 PM by David Adesnik
OUR IMPERILED DEMOCRACY: Picking up where Josh left off, I thought I'd compose a list of which of our Presidents "didn't live in a time when [their] bad decisions could imperil our democracy." That way, if anyone wants to complain about Bush in historical context they can do so properly. So here goes:

Definitely lived in a time in which their bad decisions could imperil our democracy:

Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Jackson, Buchanan, Lincoln, A. Johnson, Grant, Wilson, Hoover, F.D. Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, L.B. Johnson, Nixon, Reagan, G.W. Bush.

Probably lived in a time in which their bad decisions could imperil our democracy:

Monroe, J.Q. Adams, Van Buren, Tyler, Polk, Taylor, Fillmore, Pierce, McKinley, T. Roosevelt, Taft, Carter, Clinton, G.H.W. Bush.

Sort of lived in a time in which their bad decisions could imperial our democracy:

Hayes, Arthur, Cleveland (I), Harrison, Cleveland (II), Harding, Coolidge.

Did NOT live in a time in which their bad decisions could imperil our democracy:

W.H. Harrison, Garfield.

Now, I'm sure you will find some of these decisions controversial. But I can say with confidence that American democracy was safe in March and April of 1841 as well as from March through September of 1881. So here's my idea for a Kerry slogan: "Bush: Only safe for 10 months every 228 years." Who wouldn't respond to that?

Posted 10:10 PM by David Adesnik
TIME FLIES: Just got into New Haven -- this weekend is my 5th reunion. I have broadband where I'm staying, but not much time on my hands. Besides, I am firmly committed to blogging while sober.

Posted 5:04 PM by Josh Chafetz
THERE ARE MANY, MANY, MANY STUPID THINGS IN THIS COLUMN, beginning with the central argument of the piece. I'm sure lots of people will have fun fisking it. But I wanted to focus on a minor point that the piece's author gets oh-so-very wrong:

You know that I don't like George W. Bush and his crew. I think he is the worst president in our nation's history. Maybe Andrew Johnson was worse, I don't know, but he didn't live in a time when his bad decisions could imperil our democracy and the stability of the world. Bush does.

Andrew Johnson didn't live in a time when his bad decisions could imperil our democracy. Ponder that for a minute.

Okay, minute up. Andrew Johnson was Abraham Lincoln's Vice-President. Let's see, did anything happen during Lincoln's presiency that "imperil[ed] our democracy?" Johnson was a Southern Democract, whom Lincoln picked in 1864 as part of a national unity ticket. Johnson was a strong states' rights advocate, and after Lincoln was assassinated, he infuriated the Republican Congress by quickly forgiving former Confederates and advocating a quick and lenient Reconstruction period. He argued that states should refuse to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment, and he vetoed the Freedman's Bureau Act, the Civil Rights Act of 1866, and the Reconstruction Act of 1867. (The Fourteenth Amendment was ratified, anyway, and Congress overrode Johnson's veto on all three Acts -- indeed, Johnson had more vetoes overridden than any other President in American history.) And, of course, the Reconstruction Republican House impeached him, although the Senate fell short of the necessary two-thirds supermajority by one vote.

In brief, Johnson was President immediately after the most awful crisis in the history of the Union. Slavery had just been abolished. And Johnson opposed pretty much all of the major legislation designed to help the newly freed slaves or to prevent the enactment of the Black Codes.

Sure sounds like "his bad decisions ... imperil[ed] our democracy" to me ...

Posted 3:06 PM by Patrick Belton
WELL THEY ALL LOOK ALIKE TO US WATCH, #28: In a series of recurring problems which grounded all air travel today in England and Wales, controllers systematically mistook Glasgow (habitually in Scotland) for Cardiff (generally to be found in Wales). We at OxBlog know that telling confusing Celtic capitals from each other can be awfully confusing, and are pained by the recent suggestion, to whomever it should be attributed (the initials PB and DA have both been suggested...), that the English are simply no good at telling foreigners apart....

Posted 2:55 PM by Patrick Belton
THERE WILL BE A NEW DCI: Tenet announces that he will be stepping down as director in July. Former DDI and NIC chair John E. McLaughlin will become interim director when Tenet's resignation takes effect.

Posted 11:22 AM by Josh Chafetz
WHAT DOES IT SAY THAT, of the two possible Kerry running mates getting much of the buzz, one is co-chairman of Bush-Cheney '04 in Arizona, and the other is a registered Republican who says he will "probably" vote Bush in November? Oh, and both have said categorically that they don't want the job.

Even if he picks someone charismatic like Edwards, won't the eventual Veep pick look disappointing compared to the hype surrounding McCain and (increasingly) Zinni?

Relatedly, Howard Fineman seems to suggest in the first graf of his column yesterday that Kerry should choose his Veep now to reclaim some of the publicity that Clinton is about to steal from him. But that seems precisely wrong -- Kerry should wait until Clinton has had a couple of weeks of publicity, then announce his Veep choice, so as to steal the spotlight back. If he announces now, then the Veep choice, like everything else, will be swept away by the Clinton publicity tidalwave.

Also relatedly, John J. Miller and Michael Crowley are debating the merits of potential Kerry Veep picks over at Opinion Duel. Like pretty much everything with which Mike is involved, it's well worth reading. (That's not to slight Miller's contributions, but I think Mike is one of the most perceptive and most underrated inside-the-Beltway journalists. And he, like Grunwald, has a nice outside jumpshot, to boot.)

Posted 12:20 AM by David Adesnik
DOUBLE-D VS. THE FEMINISTE: Prof. Drezner has an interesting encounter.

Posted 11:33 PM by David Adesnik
DOES SISTANI REALLY SUPPORT ALLAWI? That the question Swopa asks. A good question, too. For the record, my comment that Allawi "apparently" has Sistani's support reflected the WaPo's observation that "Although he is secular, [Allawi] reportedly has the support of the country's top Shiite cleric." But Swopa makes a good case that we've misunderstood Sistani before and that American correspondents in Iraq haven't learned their lesson.

UPDATE: Well, that answers that question. Sort of.

Posted 6:52 PM by David Adesnik
"CONSERVATIVES SHOULD HAVE SEEN THIS COMING": That's what Frank Foer wrote about Ahmad Chalabi ten months ago. But that was a long time ago, back when Pentagon officials were calling Chalabi the "George Washington of Iraq" and WSJ editorialists were describing him as a democratic visionary.

Anyhow, it now looks that Chalabi did exactly what everyone thinks he did -- tell Iranian intelligence that we broke their codes. Noam Scheiber says the news has already "flooded [his] stomach with more bile than [he] can handle for one day." I'm not sure exactly how much bile that is, but I have a feeling that a lot of people in Iraq are going to suffer from much more than an upset stomach because of Chalabi.

Posted 6:23 PM by David Adesnik
GOING ON THE DEFENSIVE? Spencer Ackerman continues to blog up a storm about Iraq. Today, Spencer takes a close look at the negotiations designed to produce a new Security Council resolution for Iraq.

Yesterday, Ackerman tore into American generals for suggesting that their new priorities will be to focus on the protection of Iraqi infrastructure and government officials. Spencer writes that

Leaving insurgents and militias--and every militia in Iraq is just tomorrow's pool of insurgents--unchallenged except for responding to discrete flare-ups will make it that much harder for the U.S. to protect the new government...By not conducting offensive operations, we're giving the extremists time and breathing space to regroup, resupply and redouble their efforts at murdering the new government and throwing the political process, such as it is, off track.

Unfortunately, I think Spencer is mischaracterizing the army plans. Lt. Gen. Thomas Metz, the officer in charge of day-to-day operations, has issued a

clear warning to "anybody who misinterprets our focus away from combat operations and onto other things like Iraqi security capacity and infrastructure protection."

"We will always maintain a quick-reaction force, with very lethal combat capability," he said. "If someone thinks there is a vacuum and wants to enter it with conventional forces, you better believe we are ready."

Now, it is fair to ask whether the emergence of new priorities had anything to do with our decision to accept a flawed settlement with Sadr's forces in Najaf while allowing former Ba'athists to run Fallujah. Metz's comments about Fallujah lean in that direction. Still, I think the army and the (ex-)CPA should be given more time to show that their approach works. On the other hand, OxBlog's correspondent in Fallujah warns that the situation there has become a fiasco and will be exposed by a major American publication in the coming weeks. I guess we'll see.

Posted 11:05 AM by Patrick Belton
SOMETHING NOT QUITE ADDING UP HERE: I don't really feel any particular need either to defend or to villify Ahmad Chalabi here, but there's one bit to the story as it now stands that I don't quite understand.

So as CNN and other news outlets are now reporting, Chalabi becomes aware that the United States has cracked the codes by which Iran encrypts its secret transmissions. Chalabi gives this information to the Iranian intelligence chief in Baghdad, who relays it to Tehran - but using one of the codes which he'd just become aware that the Americans had cracked. The Americans, reading this transmission (as they had cracked the Iranian codes - see previous sentence), then become aware that Chalabi had passed this information on to the Iranian intelligence station in Baghdad.

This doesn't quite seem to add up - which doesn't mean that Chalabi didn't betray us, is indeed our friend, or is even a nice guy - but why wouldn't the Iranians, who are apparently good at this game, relay the information to Tehran via a courier, instead of using a compromised channel? It seems they'd only act they way they did if: (1) their station chief in Baghdad was phenomenally stupid (which is, I suppose, always a possibility), or (2) if they had a grievance against Chalabi, and/or (3) believed that souring his relations with Washington was more in their nation's interests than, say, using the cracked code to send misleading information to the Americans. I suppose there's also one remaining possibility, (4) that they assumed in error that they had a safe code they could rely upon - but such a calculation is bound to be risky, once you know that the Americans have broken at least some of your codes - and why risk losing a valuable means for misdirecting one of your major adversaries, when you could test the safety of your different channels by (as they indeed did) transmitting test messages to see whether the Americans would act in such a way to indicate they'd read them?

Again, this isn't to say that Chalabi is a nice guy, or that I'd want to open a joint banking account with him in Jordan - but I'll still be curious to see if some of these incongruencies become settled as the story unfolds.

Posted 6:04 AM by Josh Chafetz
MILESTONE: I just finished a draft of the final chapter of my dissertation. Hey Josh: What are you gonna do now that you have a complete draft of your diss? I'm going to Disneyla edit like a madman, actually ...

Until now, there was a pretty big part of me that never really believed I'd finish this thing. But with a full draft and two months until my (self-imposed but pretty firm) completion deadline, I'm pretty confident at this point.

Relatedly, today is the day the Yale Law faculty officially votes degrees to the graduating 3L's (congratulations to you all, by the way!). I mention that because, if I hadn't come to Oxford first, I'd be a lawyer (or at least a law school graduate -- opinion seems divided on whether you become a "lawyer" when you graduate from law school or when you pass a bar) today. Strange to think...

Posted 2:05 AM by David Adesnik
THE UNKINDEST CUT: The headline of the actual story in the WaPo (print & online editions) reads "Many Hurdles Ahead for US". But on the WaPo homepage, the story gets listed as "White House is Hopeful Tide has Turned in Iraq." (Technichal question: Do the WaPo and NYT file cached versions of their respective homepages? It's frustrating to link to headlines that disappear.) Anyhow, talk about being set up for a fall:

With the introduction of both a new Iraqi government and a new U.N. draft resolution, the Bush administration senses the beginning of the end to its controversial and costly intervention in Iraq...

President Bush was almost giddily buoyant during a Rose Garden news conference about Iraq's interim government...Not since the "Mission Accomplished" photograph aboard the USS Lincoln on May 1 last year, when Bush declared an end to major combat operations in Iraq, has the administration appeared as upbeat about the future.

The funny thing is, Bush didn't actually say anything terribly optimistic at yesterday's press conference. I'm guessing he did appear quite giddy, however, since his moods tend to be fairly transparent. (Either that, or he is a far better actor than Ronald Reagan ever was.) I guess you might say that Bush learned the lesson of the "Mission Accomplished" debacle: don't go on the record as an optimist if you aren't pretty damn sure that the breaks will go your way. After all, when the administration gets dealt its next blow in Iraq, what are the critics going to say? That the President's smile was too broad back on June 1st?

UPDATE: The WaPo has changed the headline on its homepage to "Many Hurdles Still Ahead for United States in Iraq".

Posted 8:45 PM by David Adesnik
IS PERVEZ PERVERSE? President Musharraf of Pakistan has a column in today's WaPo that would be extremely persuasive if it weren't written by a corrupt dictator.

Posted 8:34 PM by David Adesnik
HAITI STILL A TOTAL MESS: Not that it's surprising. Still, I think there is no question that the Bush administration did the right thing by forcing Aristide out and sending in US troops. (For an argument to the contrary, see Randy Paul.) Those troops will soon return home, to be replaced by a larger contingent of Brazilians. Rebuilding Haiti is clearly a good cause and our allies in Europe and Latin America are willing to pick up where the US left off.

Posted 6:08 PM by David Adesnik
LEAVE HISTORY TO THE PROFESSIONALS, TOM: Invoking Germany and Japan as precedents for nation-building in Iraq doesn't really work. There are some very important lessons to be learned, but critics can (and will) immediately point out that the invasion of Iraq was no World War II and that America doesn't have thorough-going European support like it did in '45. Pretty much, starting in about Germany and Japan means starting up an unproductive discussion about Iraq.

However, since Tom Friedman mentioned Germany and Japan first, I think it's a good idea to respond. Friedman writes that

I have a "Tilt Theory of History." The Tilt Theory states that countries and cultures do not change by sudden transformations. They change when, by wise diplomacy and leadership, you take a country, a culture or a region that has been tilted in the wrong direction and tilt it in the right direction, so that the process of gradual internal transformation can take place over a generation...

We did not and cannot liberate Iraqis. They have to liberate themselves. That is what the Japanese and Germans did. All we can hope to do is help them tilt their country in a positive direction.

Bollocks, bollocks, bollocks. The shock of defeat and the sudden infusion of American ideals provoked a radical transformation of both German and Japanese society and culture. For the best English-language accounts of these transformations, see From Shadow to Substance by Dennis Bark & David Gress and Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II by John Dower.

Way back in October 2002, Dower predicted that Iraq would not become another Japan because the US did not have the will power to endure the occupation. OxBlog half-agreed with Dower. I said that will power was, in fact, the critical issue, but that it was too early to dismiss the Bush Administration's commitment to nation-building. As things have turned out, the issue isn't commitment but competence.

So, does incompetence mean that we should settle for a tilt rather than a transformation? In some respects, perhaps. But there is no reason to compromise on our insistence that Iraq must have an elected government that respects the rights of its citizens. That alone would amount to a transformation. And if such a government can survice, Iraqis will have plenty of opportunities to liberate their culture and society from the legacy of Saddam.

Posted 5:42 PM by David Adesnik
"DIVERSE GOVERNMENT TAKES SHAPE IN IRAQ": That the banner headline on the NYT homepage right now. The article that goes along with it is almost as upbeat as the headline. After all, is there anything that the NYT approves of more than diversity?

Anyhow, I'm not impressed with the handover. Yes, I know -- OxBlog is always supposed to be more upbeat than the NYT. I just feel that this is one of those formal occasions that gets big headlines because it's a formal occasion and not because it really matters. The fact remains that this is a caretaker government with partial sovereignty.

Strangely, even the Times' account of Bush's remarks about the transition doesn't even challenge any of the President's vague assertions or remind readers of the weaknesses in his speech from last week. In fact, the article doesn't even bother quoting a Kerry campaign spokesman or other Democratic figure. It is as if someone snuck a whole lot of ecstasy tablets into the water filtration system on West 43rd St.

UPDATE: The WaPo coverage is pretty soft, too.

Posted 5:38 AM by Patrick Belton
ADVERT OF THE DAY AWARD: goes to the campaign in the Dublin International Airport, lining the corridor between arrivals and passport control, which features roughly thirty posters of the fetching Hungarian Miss Europe, Zsuzsanna Laky, over a caption reading (roughly), 'If you want her, you need to take all of us. Budapest: A European Capital, 2004'. Talk about putting your best face forward....

Posted 1:38 AM by David Adesnik
BELATED MEMORIAL DAY THOUGHTS:

We don't really celebrate many of our holidays as intended here in the USA, but in the middle of a time of war it really does seem worth thinking a bit about the extraordinary courage and dedication shown by the members of the armed forces, especially today's all-volunteer force. It's remarkable as you drive through the outside-the-beltway part of Virginia and northern North Carolina just how frequently you see signs in local businesses admonishing passers-by and customers to support the troops. And, indeed, they deserve our support.

That's from Matt. He adds: "It seems to me that this is probably best done by providing them with some leadership that knows how to do its job properly." I half agree, but I think that for this one day, we should just focus on the troops and their personal sacrifices.

Posted 1:36 AM by David Adesnik
MATT YGLESIAS = ERIC CARTMAN? Why does Matt have an insatiable need to poke things with sticks?

Posted 11:56 PM by David Adesnik
ARE THE JOURNALISTS LISTENING? When bloggers ask whether blogs matter, what they really mean is whether professional journalists respond to our questions and demands. We don't expect politicians to listen to us. We don't expect corporate executives to listen to us. But we see ourselves as journalists' next-of-kin and therefore deserve their attention.

While bloggers may argue about whether journalists listen, Rachel Smolkin actually went out there and asked a whole lot of actual journalists whether they make time for blogs. Most of the answers are pretty non-committal. The most interesting comes from NYT correspondent Jodi Wilgoren, who showed some interest in Wilgoren Watch. However, her critics

"typically did not reflect much knowledge about or understanding of mainstream journalism," Wilgoren says, and often came from passionate Dean supporters. "I got many, many letters accusing me of being a tool of the Republican administration or trying to destroy Howard Dean."

I think Wilgoren is throwing the baby out with the bath water. Certainly, some of her critics are mindless leftists. But even OxBlog thought that her coverage of Dean was harsh and unfair.

Now, the irony here is that Wilgoren is quite liberal herself, as one can tell from her efforts to whitewash the crimes of David Gilbert and Kathy Boudin. While Wilgoren deserves credit for at least looking at blogs, I think that her reaction may become typical for mainstream journalists, i.e. find a few online critics you can label as ignorant and use their prejudice to justify ignoring the blogosphere as a whole. According to NYT ombudsman Daniel Okrent,

"In some instances, some [blogs] are so partisan -- even though they're right in many instances -- they're immediately discredited within the newsroom because of their partisanship," [Okrent said]. "If the comment comes from someone who isn't identified as a partisan, they take it much more seriously."

This Okrent quote comes from an excellent column by Marc Glaser which addresses many of the same issues that Smolkin's essay does. Whereas Smolkin looks at the issue more broadly, Glaser focuses on a specific incident in which National Debate editor Robert Cox forced NYT editorial page editor Gail Collins to make an official policy change that imposed tougher standards on her columnists.

Now, it's hard to say whether Cox got a response from the Times because he was a blogger or because he was right. After all, non-blogging readers sometimes get responses as well if they're right. However, the fact that Cox got the Times' attention by posting a parody of their website -- thus provoking the threat of the lawsuit -- suggests that his medium played an important.

The Cox case provides an interesting contrast with the Trent Lott affair, which Rachel Smolkin covers quite nicely. As I see it, the difference between the two is that Cox was directly challenging the competence and authority of professional jouralists, while Josh Marshall and others helped bring down Trent Lott by converting journalists to the anti-Lott cause.

I think both sorts of influence are quite significant, although the Cox variety is somewhat more interesting because it demonstrates that when bloggers go head to head with the pros, they can still come out on top.

Now, last but not least, we come to Dan Drezner and Henry Farrell's effort to conduct a systematic survey of which blogs journalists actually read. I think that their approach is important since Smolkin's essay is rather anecdotal and Glaser's focuses only bloggers' success.

The results of Dan and Henry's survey aren't exactly a surprise. Journalists read the same blogs that bloggers read: Sullivan, Reynolds, Marshall, etc. But that is still a very significant finding because it demonstrates that journalists have developed a surprisingly similar sense of who is worth reading in the blogosphere. (Sadly, OxBlog didn't make the Top 10. Oh well.)

If there is one thing I'd add to all of these worthwhile contributions, it's that we still need to develop a better idea, in our own minds at least, of what role(s) blogs are supposed to play. Smolkin tends to suggest that blogs set themselves up as an alternative to mainstream, reportorial journalism. But I like Jay Rosen's take better:

Almost all of the op-ed writing in America used to be on op-ed pages. That is no longer true. Weblogs have taken over part of that territory. And while the best of them may have 'opinion clout,' the simple fact that they have some territory alongside Big Media is significant.

Bloggers are never going to replace correspondents. But we may be able to knock off Maureen Dowd.

Posted 11:14 PM by David Adesnik
CALL IT A HUNCH: The WaPo has an interesting analysis of the time stamps on the Abu Ghraib prison photo. One fact that really struck me was that soldiers in the 372nd began to abuse prisoners within two days of arriving at Abu Ghraib.

That being the case, it's very hard to imagine how the abuse could have taken place without some sort of green light from either military intelligence or superior officers. Yes, it is possible that these few soldiers were so sadistic that they leapt at the opportunity to commit human rights violations. But the alternative is too compelling to be ruled out.

Posted 1:48 PM by Patrick Belton
DISPATCHES FROM KABUL: OxBlog's Afghanistan correspondent is back afield, and sends in part one in a series of despatches to us:

Part I: Arrival

As a kindness to the daily herd of travelers waiting to see if their flights show up, the departure lounge of Kabul airport has been decorated with inadvertently funny signs. "No accompanists allowed beyond waiting area" -- once you pass through security, you're singing a capella. And there's the official list of items which are forbidden in one's handbag:

1. The handbag.
2. Explosives and military matters.
3. Gases and passions.

We showed up, handbags, passions, and all, in the early afternoon to a mostly empty airport -- the major commercial flights are all scheduled to depart in the morning. We were headed from Kabul to northern Afghanistan for a three-day tour of the almond groves with a couple California nut experts. (They pronounced almond to rhyme with "salmon," something I never quite got used to). The airport staff handed us flattering little Frequent Flyer -- Kunduz bag tags and hurried us through security to our two-prop AirServ charter plane. We scrunched into our seats; the pilots elbowed their way down the two-foot-wide aisle, buckled up, then craned their heads back for a conversational safety lecture.

I'd braced myself for a bumpy ride, but the skies were friendly -- and the view from the air so breathtaking I probably wouldn't have noticed if we'd dropped an engine. The mountains of Panjshir rose up like a white wall to our right, and to the left was the great central massif of Afghanistan, with ridge after snow-capped ridge rippling out to the horizon. Mohibi, our Afghan companion, pointed out the winding ravines running up to Bamiyan at the heart of the country. I was glued to the window for the whole flight. The mountains became hills, the hills gently rolling grassland, and we dropped smoothly into Kunduz.

The trip quickly became less smooth. We had sent up a couple of drivers the day before -- and, per our company's new security policy, we had called up the ex-military guy who runs the main protection racket in Kabul and asked him to send two cars full of hired "shooters" for our defense. However, when we arrived at Kunduz airport (which is a couple miles out of town), we found ourselves alone save for a handful of curious airport guards. After a couple of heated phone calls, our drivers showed up, speeding like the devil. Turned out they'd been ready to leave for the airport on time, but the shooters had taken a little while to muster up. As we spoke, our security escort arrived: two SUVs full of skinny, scruffy, shabbily clad Panjshiri irregulars, chain-smoking and casually brandishing their Kalashnikovs as they piled out of their cars. They didn't look very impressive. I imagine the Soviets thought the same thing.

We took off for town. The roads around Kunduz are unpaved, and throw up tremendous clouds of fine white dust as you drive along them. Somehow, our shooters managed to lose us in the cloud. I asked where they'd gone. Mohibi doubtfully said, "I think I saw them turn back to the airport." I asked why on earth they would have gone back to the airport. Mohibi shrugged and said, "Because the sky is so high" -- a wonderful Afghan phrase, which I heard him use a lot over the next few days. The shooters later caught up with us, and chewed out our drivers at length for "losing" them again. They then informed us that today, they were only contracted to escort us around Kunduz city, and that if we were going to drive out of the city for site visits we would need to pay them extra for petrol. This so irked our Afghan companion that he told them to get lost and meet us tomorrow morning. We drove around for the rest of the afternoon cheerfully unprotected.

Kunduz is a small provincial capital, with half-paved streets full of colorful horse-drawn carts. It's the city where the Taliban lost the war for the North back in 2001 (also losing one John Walker Lindh as a captive to the conquering Northern Alliance), and it was the first (and so far the only) city outside Kabul to get its own ISAF peacekeeping force. Course, there was already a pretty robust peace to keep -- unlike, say, the cities of Herat or Mazar-e-Sharif, Kunduz had no mighty warlord or clashing commanders to make life difficult for occupying troops, and it's well away from the Taliban resurgence. The surrounding countryside reportedly has a bit of a bandit problem, but the roads north to Tajikistan are open again. Power wires that were yanked down and sold as copper to Pakistan during the war are going back up, with electricity two or three hours a day.

The farm country around Kunduz is simply beautiful: broad fields of golden wheat and brilliant green rice, densely planted stands of poplar, old almond trees shading the fields. And when you head south out of the city, you quickly find yourself driving through my stereotype of a Central Asian landscape: a broad tableland of pasture and wheat fields, with a wall of nearly treeless pale green hills springing up at the horizon, and the snowy mountains of Badakhshan drifting sky-blue in the distance.

As we drove, I jokingly asked Mohibi why the Afghans referred to the mountains as the Hindu Kush -- seemed odd, given that they're in a resoundingly Muslim-majority region. "Well, you see, once there was an Afghan and a Hindu traveling together from Hindustan to Afghanistan," Mohibi informed me, beaming. "The Hindu had a very warm wolf skin coat, and the Afghan had only a shirt, but he had enough money, and he was very clever. So he said to the Hindu, give me your coat and I will give you all my money. The Hindu was greedy, he said okay. So the Afghan took the coat. When they came to the mountain, the Hindu realized it was so cold, so he said, I will pay you double, just give me back the coat. The Afghan said no. Soon the Hindu drop dead. The Afghan take all his money and keep the coat. That is why they call it 'Hindu' -- meaning Hindu -- and 'Kush' -- meaning kill." I learn something new every day.

We visited a bunch of farmer associations, orchards, and nurseries that afternoon. Our visiting California consultants had brought along sacks of cheap plastic animals, the kind you can buy by the hundred in most dollar stores in the States, and handed them out one at a time to the local kids wherever we went. It was a nice idea -- you never saw a little molded plastic pelican inspire such mirth and delight. They said that whenever they went to Mexico, they brought toy soldiers, but had thought better of it in this case.

The "Modesto boys" also dispensed little snippets of agronomical wisdom, but the whole three-day trip was mostly an excuse for our Deputy Head of Project for Agriculture to drive around the north and get a feel for the place. The Afghan farmers spread out blankets, carpets, and pillows in the shade of the almond trees, gave us juice boxes imported from Pakistan, and tried to draw our attention away from the opium poppies three fields over. When it finally began to get dark, we drove back to the German guesthouse in Kunduz.

Our dinner topics that night included rhetting, scutching, and hackling. You might think this was just the common South Asian expat game of describing the grotesque symptoms of whatever stomach virus we contracted from last night's salad. But no -- one of our companions was astonished to find that the local Afghans only used flax as an oilseed, and had never heard of linen. He immediately launched into a Heineken-fueled explanation of every step in the process of extracting flax fibers and turning them into tablecloths. As you might expect for a process older than the English language, it's got its own highly specific medieval-sounding vocabulary. Afghan and American alike, the rest of us listened with baffled interest.

Then our Deputy Head began to argue that our project should focus on getting Afghans to invest in "tree bonds" -- selling the ten-year income stream from a poplar grove. Apparently it worked in Bolivia. When someone questioned whether Afghan poplars were really a secure investment, the Deputy Head shook a finger in our collective faces. "I've worked in international development for forty long years, and it's been one failure after another. You try an idea, you hope it'll work, and it never does. But this, this works. This is my home run." The prospect of working in this field for four decades and coming out of it with a single success -- and tree bonds, at that -- was a bit discouraging.

We eventually crashed in our mildewed, over-warm rooms. I woke up around six and washed my hair in the sink (no functional shower) before hitting the road again.

more to follow....

Posted 6:02 AM by Patrick Belton
OUR HONOURED DEAD: General Logan's General Order #11, officially established Memorial Day (then called Decoration Day) in 1868. The day is celebrated officially in the United States by the placing of a small flag onto each grave at the Arlington National Cemetery, and the laying of a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier by the President.

PBS has a tribute. The White House Commission on Remembrance encourages the observance of one minute of silence at three o'clock in recognition of the nation's war dead.

They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
-Laurence Binyon, Trinity College, Oxford, 1914

Posted 5:14 AM by Patrick Belton
ON A PERSONAL NOTE....Congratulations to OxBlog's good friends Hae Won and Wilson! Those of us who've already bought shares in the institution of marriage have a strong interest in keeping the share price high and protecting our investment, so thanks, you guys! :)

Posted 12:37 AM by David Adesnik
GANDALF & SEX AND THE CITY: Did you know that Kim Cattrall debuted on Broadway opposite Ian McKellen in Chekhov's Wild Honey?

Posted 10:39 PM by David Adesnik
WES CLARK, SUPERPUNDIT: Suddenly, he's everywhere. A cover story in the Washington Monthly. A share of the cover from TNR's special issue on Iraq. What is it that Wes Clark wants to say?

With regard to Iraq, Clark has two big ideas -- one new and one old. The old idea is that if we're nice to Europe, it will send its soldiers over to Iraq to die for our cause. Given that the French have already said that their soldiers will never, ever serve in Iraq, that approach probably won't work. Clark's new idea is that the United States must

involve regional governments in Iraq's reconstruction, giving them a seat at the table in that country's development so they understand that they are not the next targets of regime change.

By regional governments, Clark actually does mean Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia, etc. Of course, has to wonder how we can help Iraq become more democratic by involving some of the world's most repressive dictatorships in its reconstruction. The closest Clark comes to answering this question is when he writes that

Of course, the United States will likely differ sharply with the positions some of these states take, but it is better to hash out such issues at the negotiating table than in vitriolic exchanges via the media.

Actually, I prefer vitriolic exchanges via the media. Compromising with Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia about the future of Iraq means selling out the Iraqis we supposedly liberated.

Now what about Clark's cover essay in the Washington Monthly? It's supposed to be the big think-piece in which he demonstrates that he can apply the lessons of history to solve those problems that ignorant neo-cons just don't understand. (Translation: "Please, please Mr. Kerry, make me your Secretary of State!") Of course, to apply the lessons of history, you actually have to know some history first. Let's start with the last two sentences of Clark's essay:

If the events of the last year tell us anything, it is that democracy in the Middle East is unlikely to come at the point of our gun. And Ronald Reagan would have known better than to try.

Actually, promoting democracy at gunpoint was exactly what Reagan was all about. Remember Nicaragua? You know, the country where the United States sent guns to brutal right-wing guerrillas in the hope that they would promote democracy?

Bizarrely enough, that strategy worked despite its appalling cost in terms of Nicaraguan blood. A similar strategy, perhaps even bloodier, did the trick in El Salvador. Unfortunately, things in Afghanistan didn't turn out as well. Now, Clark has gone on the record saying that he voted for Reagan. As far as I can tell, he must've confused Reagan with Mondale.

Getting back to the point, the big lesson that Clark draws from our experience in the Cold War is that cultural engagement is the secret to victory. He writes that

During the 1950s and 1960s, containment...[entailed] holding the line against Soviet expansion with U.S. military buildups while quietly advancing a simultaneous program of cultural engagement with citizens and dissidents in countries under the Soviet thumb...

[In the 1980s], Western organizations provided training for a generation of human-rights workers. Western broadcast media pumped in culture and political thought, raising popular expectations and undercutting Communist state propaganda. And Western businesses and financial institutions entered the scene, too, ensnaring command economies in Western market pricing and credit practices.

Unless Clark is talking about China, I really can't think of any Communist state whose command economy even came close to being "ensnared" by Western corporations. As for Western media, the West Germans were pretty much the only ones who reached a Communist audience, but not in the Soviet Union. And as for the 1950s and 1960s, there were really no "cultural engagement" programs of any significance. In short, Clark's history of the Cold War is basically imaginary.

So there. I've now spent far too much time criticizing someone whom Democratic voters (except in Oklahoma) decided wasn't good enough to be their candidate for President. But when you're a graduate student, you feel compelled to expose the ignorance of anyone who tramples on your area of expertise. How demented.

Posted 10:19 PM by David Adesnik
CHALABI CENTRAL: Laura Rozen is a professional journalist whose blog has become the uber-source for liberals following the Chalabi scandal. Rozen seems to be extremely well-informed although her resentment of the neo-cons is palpable and vehement. (Yes, I know. Most liberals believe that being extremely well-informed and extremely resentful of the neo-cons go hand in hand. But I think you get what I'm saying.)

Posted 10:02 PM by David Adesnik
WHAT LIBERAL MEDIA? Kevin Drum is bashing Fred Barnes. While you can judge the merits their arguments for yourself, what really interests me is how the biggest ideological divide between myself and moderate liberal bloggers such as Kevin and Matt Yglesias is the issue of media bias. Neither of them will give an inch on this issue and constantly denounce conservative criticism of the media as disingenuous or even dishonest.

For most of America, the conservative-liberal divide focuses on Iraq, both the invasion and its aftermath. Yet in spite of my relative optimism about both, I share Kevin and Matt's sense that all of the big decisions have been close calls and that a strong case exists for both sides. So why has the issue of media bias become so divisive? My best guess is that because bloggers depend so much on mainstream journalists, even the slightest differences in our perception of their work become greatly magnified. But again, that's just a guess.

Posted 5:46 PM by Patrick Belton
MORE ON ALLAWI: Just to follow up on David's post below, the Arabic page of Allawi's Iraqi National Accord party spells his name أياد علاوي - that is, with no shadda over the لا ('la'), and the shadda is generally not meant to be omitted.

On the other hand, the INA's English pages consistently spell his name 'Allawi', suggesting that it's probably the more appropriate English spelling.

Posted 4:55 PM by David Adesnik
THE CASE AGAINST ALLAWI: Courtesy of Spencer Ackerman. Ackerman overdoes it, but makes some good points. Unfortunately, he doesn't look at the all-important relationship between Allawi and Sistani, which is supposedly good.

On a related note, there seems to be persistent disagreement about whether to spell the Prime Minister's name "Alawi" or "Allawi". I haven't seen the PM's name spelled out in Arabic, but I'm guessing that the relevant issue is whether or not there is a pronunciation marker known as a "shadda" over the 'L' in Allawi's name. The role of the shadda is to double the sound of a consonant, so it would turn 'L' into 'LL'.

Posted 4:42 PM by David Adesnik
THE GREATEST GENERATION -- OR THE MOST LASCIVIOUS?

Guy Kemp, 85, a former Navy Seabee who served in the Pacific, found himself jitterbugging to "Chattanooga Choo-Choo" with a woman he didn't know.

Hey, I hope I'm that energetic at 85. Here at OxBlog, we've only got respect for the millions who served in the War. We just think they need a little ribbing, too.

Posted 12:55 PM by Patrick Belton
RAIN ON YOUR WEDDING DAY NOT REALLY IRONIC, RESEARCHERS FIND: OxBlog favourite Belle Waring, just one of the many excellent bloggers to be found over on Crooked Timber, points out that the preponderance of situations in the Alanis Morrisette Song 'Ironic' were not, in fact, ironic:

A recent post on our blog about whether any of the situations in the Alanis Morrisette Song �Ironic� were, in fact, ironic, has garnered unexpected interest. I looked at the lyrics more carefully, and I think perhaps half could be said to qualify in an extended sense, that is, they seem like dramatic irony. So: �rain on your wedding day� is unquestionably not ironic, it�s just somewhat unfortunate. But I�ll give her �death-row pardon two minutes late�, I guess, if we accept a certain notion of irony I outline below.

Posted 8:48 AM by Patrick Belton
AND D�J� VU ALL-OVER-AGAIN HEADLINE OF THE DAY: 'Hamas leader killed in Israeli helicopter strike.' From CNN.

Posted 8:38 AM by Patrick Belton
AMBITION ODDLY PHRASED QUOTE OF THE DAY: From WaPo: Although some Kerry staff aides cringe at their nickname, Holbrooke jested upon hearing that he is called a Pooh-bah, "It's the highest rank I've ever held, and I hope by the end of the campaign to be promoted to pasha."

Posted 8:01 AM by Patrick Belton
I'M GLAD THERE'S AN ACADEMY, BECAUSE: how else then would we have articles such as On Toothpicking in Early Hominids, by W.A. Agger, T.L. McAndrews, and J.A. Hlaudy, Current Anthropology (45:3), June 2004, Page 403ff.

Posted 2:12 AM by David Adesnik
MORE GORE: Robert Tagorda points out a rather uncomfortable contradiction in the Vice President's recent speech.

Posted 2:02 AM by David Adesnik
KERRY ON IRAQ: The Bush-Cheney website has posted a rather clever interactive page that allows you to click on a given date and see what John Kerry was saying about Iraq at the time. There is no smoking gun which allows you to say "Ha! I knew he was a hypocrite!", but it is amazing how many different positions Kerry can appear to take without actually contradicting himself. On the other hand, Kerry seems to recognize that his criticism of the President can only go so far. It's not an easy position to be in.

Posted 8:03 PM by David Adesnik
A TALE OF TWO KERRYS: Both the WaPo and NYT have put up detailed summaries of Kerry's recent remarks about foreign policy. The headlines are all that you need to tell the difference between the two papers perspectives. Since noon, the top story on the WaPo website has been "Kerry: Security Trumps Promoting Democracy". On the NYT homepage, the third bullet point beneath a story about Iraq has a link entitled "Kerry Faults Bush on Security Issues". (NB: These are the headlines on the front page of the WaPo and NYT, respectively. The URLs for the articles have slightly different ones.)

So, what did Kerry actually say? The first sentence in the WaPo account reads:

Sen. John F. Kerry indicated that as president he would play down the promotion of democracy as a leading goal in dealing with Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, China and Russia, instead focusing on other objectives that he said are more central to the United States' security.

Not what I'd like to hear, but not an unreasonable position either. After all, how much has Bush done for democracy in any of those countries? One might even say that the President's lofty rhetoric and minimal follow-through have reinforced certain dictators' suspicions that the US only cares about Al Qaeda.

Of course, just because Kerry's position is reasonable doesn't mean the NYT should've ignored it. The NYT piece is almost entirely about Kerry's comments on North Korea and his belief that the Bush administration is excessively preoccupied with Iraq.

Now, it's probably worth mentioning that a WaPo correspondent conducted the interview with Kerry. Thus, that paper has an incentive to turn it into big news while the NYT has an incentive to play it down. Still, I would've appreciated at least one sentence describing Kerry's demotion of democracy to a secondary United States objective.

While it's sort of inevitable that different papers provide different accounts of the same event, the difference here seems to have ideological connotations. After all, it was just three days ago that a NYT news analysis column declared that Kerry and Bush had almost identical positions on Iraq -- totally disregarding Kerry's demotion of democracy to a secondary objective there.

Of course, one could turn this whole analysis around and say that the WaPo is promoting its own agenda which just happens to resemble the one that we favor here on OxBlog. But given that one of the unspoken principles of campaign coverage is that journalists have an obligation to point out significant differences between the candidates, it's hard to understand how the Times could ignore remarks made by Kerry that are so completely at odd with the positions taken by Bush.

Posted 5:32 PM by Patrick Belton
WRONG, WRONG, WRONG.

(Wrong.)

Posted 3:25 PM by David Adesnik
A DAMN USEFUL SITE: I really like Memeorandum. Basically, it's a site that complies a list of the Big Media stories most linked to by bloggers on all sides of the political spectrum. Without any pretensions of being scientific, it does a surprisingly good job of filtering out the noise and delivering the news that people actually care about.

Posted 3:23 PM by David Adesnik
TERRORISTS UNLEASH PLAGUE OF CICADAS: MSNBC reports that John Ashcroft will believe anything. I can't vouch for the MSNBC reports, but it definitely fits with my prejudices about Ashcroft.

Posted 3:16 PM by David Adesnik
DEVIL'S ADVOCATES: The NYT reports that Richard Perle & Co. stormed into Condi Rice's office to demand that Jerry Bremer stop beating up on Ahmad Chalabi. How embarrassing. Leo Strauss must be rolling in his grave.

Posted 12:28 PM by Patrick Belton
CAPTION OF THE DAY award goes to BBC, for its caption accompanying a photograph which accompanied a report on violent protests taking place at the end of an EU-Latin America summit in Guadalajara: 'The rioters did not appear to be promoting a particular cause'.

Posted 5:47 AM by Patrick Belton
IRANIAN PLANS TO 'TAKE OVER' BRITAIN: This from segments of Iran's Revolutionary Guards opposed to President Khatami's policy of 'dialogue of civilisations', and via Al-Sharq al-Awsat, and MEMRI. More convincingly, they're making an effort at recruiting suicide volunteers to be sent to Iraq, Lebanon, and Palestine.

Posted 12:54 AM by David Adesnik
FASCINATING NONSENSE: I have absolutely no idea what to make of the polls coming out of Iraq. The most comprehensive poll, conducted by USA Today/CNN/Gallup, starts out sounding like a White House press release. More Iraqis say they are better off rather than worse off since the invasion. More than 60% think Iraq will be better off in five years than it was before the invasion.

Then the news gets even better: 40% of Iraqis identify democracy as the best form of government for Iraq, with only 12% preferring an Iranian model. 50% think that five years from now Iraq will be a democracy, with no other form of government getting more than 12 percent. (Imagine asking Americans the same question!) Finally, and almost unbelievably, an overwhelming majority of Iraqis favor constitutional provisions protecting freedom of religion (73%), freedom of assembly (77%), and freedom of speech (94%).

Now here's the bad news: The CPA approval rating is just 23%, with 46% against it. The split for the US as a whole is 23-55. The UN split is 33-23 with 37 undecided. 50% say the US isn't serious about establishing a democratic system, while 37% say it is. 55% say the US won't leave unless it is forced out. When it comes to occupation forces, 45% want them gone after June 30th while another 45% don't.

By the way, don't forget to adjust all of these numbers about 15% in the unhappy direction, since the Kurds are cheerleaders for the Bush-Cheney re-election effort. For example, 96% of them see the US favorably and 98% believe it wants to promote democracy in Iraq.

So, what can one say about numbers like this? First of all, despite the apparent contradictions, I think the numbers are probably sound since an ABC News poll in February got very similar results. According to ABC, Iraqis are happy with how things are, think they're getting better, but want the US out. 49% want democracy and only 21% want an Islamic state (but 28% want a strong leader "for life". Also, another finding that I could only believe after reading it in both polls was that a strong majority of Iraqis have favorable opinions of the new police and armed forces.

Albeit hesitantly, I'm going to describe these polls as good news. It would be almost unthinkable for Iraqis to still have a positive opinion of an occupying power this long after the initial invasion. But the Iraqis' optimism about the future and faith in democracy suggest that the country may really have a chance.

Posted 12:51 AM by David Adesnik
FOUR YEARS TOO LATE: "[Gore's] speech was extraordinary � blunt, colorful and delivered with the kind of passion you seldom see in politics anymore." Then again, most swing voters don't exactly share the opinions of Bob Herbert.

Posted 12:48 AM by David Adesnik
SO FUNNY I FORGOT TO LAUGH: Someone's research assistant should be editing his boss' material.

Posted 12:34 AM by David Adesnik
TYPICAL NEO-CON BULLSH**:

Sudanese peasants will be naming their sons "George Bush" because he scored a humanitarian victory this week that could be a momentous event around the globe � although almost nobody noticed. It was Bush administration diplomacy that led to an accord to end a 20-year civil war between Sudan's north and south after two million deaths.

If the peace holds, hundreds of thousands of lives will be saved, millions of refugees will return home, and a region of Africa may be revived.

Not exactly what you expect from Nick Kristof, is it? As Kristof points out, there still a long way to go in Sudan:

While Mr. Bush has done far too little, he has at least issued a written statement, sent aides to speak forcefully at the U.N. and raised the matter with Sudan's leaders. That's more than the Europeans or the U.N. has done. Where are Tony Blair and Jacques Chirac? Where are African leaders, like Nelson Mandela? Why isn't John Kerry speaking out forcefully? And why are ordinary Americans silent?

I just don't understand the guy. Three days ago, he was telling us that "Our embrace of Mr. Sharon hobbles us in Iraq even more than those photos from Abu Ghraib." Well, this much I can say: radical mood swings are a Kristof hallmark. Plus, Nick has really cute kids.