Milblog Black Five launches a retaliatory PhotoShop strike. [Via Instapundit]. Not sure about the accompanying rant, but the picture is worthy of Team America.
Was listening to an interview with footloose world music DJ Andy Kershaw on Radio 5 this morning (he's been to North Korea a number of times) and wondered why he was so reluctant to acknowledge the numbers of political prisoners in the land of Kim. The figures came from those well-known warmongers at Amnesty International. Kershaw argues that we're being fed propaganda about the regime.
David Aaronovitch has come across AK before:
Perhaps you heard Andy Kershaw’s two-part Radio 3 series on North Korean music three years back and agree with him that the lifestyle in the Democratic Republic is simply a little quaint...
And The Daily Ablution picked up this press quote a while ago:
As for feared dictator Kim Jong Il, Mr. Kershaw says some people argue that he's "an unelected madman ... but the same could be said about George Bush".
In fairness to Kershaw, I see that Eric the Unread has linked to an unflinching extract from the programme on Iran.
I'm listening in to Kershaw's Pyongyang travelogue right this minute. Good radio, although the jaunty tone certainly is jarring. Would he have been quite so breezy about, say, Apartheid-era South Africa?
To "Dave" or not to "Dave"? Daniel Finkelstein has a point when he says that the term is a sign of right-wing crustiness. Still, I think you can safely use it as shorthand when you have doubts about handing over the country to a clique dominated by ex-pupils of That School and former stalwarts of the Bullingdon Club. (In case you missed it, the Sunday Times has more on the pros and cons of the Eton effect.) Trying to present Cameron as just another hard-working, ordinary bloke doesn't work for me. If it does for most people, well, fine. Maybe I'm just out of touch.
On the other hand, I've been thinking about the criticism Cameron took for his recent references to neo-cons, lib-cons and America. And, somewhat to my surprise, I've decided he was right after all. Does a leader in his fragile position ever have a choice in these things? Seems to me a lot of Cameron's foreign policy instincts are neo-con, yet he appreciates how tainted the word has become on this side of the Atlantic.
What's more (and I never thought I'd hear myself say this) there's no longer any mileage in pursuing a doggedly pro-American foreign policy. Tony Blair has tried that, and how much of a reward did he ever get from Washington, apart from a few nice banquets? One thing that's struck me over and over in talking to American colleagues and acquaintances in the last few years is that, deep down, the overwhelming majority of them simply aren't interested in Britain or Europe. (Given the amount of dumb anti-Americanism over here, I don't blame them sometimes.)
But they also behave as if they have nothing to learn. The conversation about multiculturalism is a good example. I happen to think our model has worked well in many respects, but needs reform. I don't think it's been a disaster. American commentators consistently assume that their version is the one to imitate. But again, I think it's done well in some ways, and not in others. (The conversation about immigration, for instance, is more open and honest in Britain, relatively speaking, than it is in the States.) One reason I started this blog (he said, grandiosely) was that I thought there could be a conversation about what we can learn from each other. I'm not sure that's the case any more.
Robert Kagan, wise as ever, has a a few questions about that leaked National Intelligence Estimate suggesting the war in Iraq has stirred up jihadism around the globe:
There were no quotations from the NIE itself, so all we have are journalists' characterizations of anonymous comments by government officials, whose motives and reliability we can't judge, about intelligence assessments whose logic and argument, as well as factual basis, we have no way of knowing or gauging.
For what it's worth, I don't find it hard to believe that the insurgency - as opposed to the invasion itself - has been a recruiting sergeant. After all, the post-war mess leaves America looking weak and indecisive. But Kagan asks the right question, surely:
There is, in addition to all this, a question of context. What should we do if we believe certain actions might inspire some people to become potential terrorists? Should we always refrain from taking those actions, or are there cases in which we may want to act anyway? We have pretty good reason to believe, for instance, that the Persian Gulf War in 1991, and the continuing presence of American troops in Saudi Arabia after the war, was a big factor in the evolution of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda. We are pretty sure that American support of the Afghan mujaheddin against the Soviet occupation forces in the late 1970s and early '80s also contributed to the growth of Islamic terrorism.
Knowing this, would we now say that we made a mistake in each of those cases? Would an NIE argue that we would be safer today if we had not helped drive the Soviets from Afghanistan or Saddam Hussein from Kuwait? The argument in both cases would be at least as sound as the argument about the most recent Iraq war.
[Via RealClearPolitics]
UPDATE: The NY Times has more on the details published with George Bush's blessing.
Gordon Brown may be a good guy, but the special relationship still looks frail. If only I could feel quite as optimistic as Washington Post man Sebastian Mallaby:
Some commentators, reacting to [Gordon] Brown's emphasis on British national identity, predict that the country may be entering a prickly phase -- the Frenchification of British foreign policy, you might call it. But my hunch is that the Anglo-American affair will resume relatively soon: most likely, the day after George W. Bush leaves office. Despite all those opinion polls that show anti-Americanism running at alarming levels, the pull of pro-Americanism is strong and growing stronger in Britain.
Hard to take exception to David Cameron's latest pronouncement. I could have done without the jab at neocons, but the bit about the need for humility seems fair enough:
I believe that it is now vital for our strategic and security interests that we challenge anti-Americanism. That means reviving the best traditions of the special relationship. And it means developing with America a tough and effective foreign policy for the age of international terrorism: a policy that moves beyond neo conservatism, retaining its strengths but learning from its failures.
UPDATE: Comment Central links to a handy ConservativeHome checklist of War on Terror goals and policies.
An e-mail on that post about the outbreak of soccerphobia among American conservatives:
There's an odd combination of defensiveness and aggression that seems to characterise much of the American Right's response to soccer as
well as an ugly nativist streak that, frankly, borders on the xenophobic (and I write this as someone who has defended or tried to contextualise many of the myths told about American conservatives on, say, the BBC). Why they can't simply say, "Well, I can see why lots of people love the game, but it's not for me" and leave it at that is beyond me. (Though the line about overtime and the EU was quite funny).
Then again, sweeping generalisations about an entire continent are
scarcely confined to one side of the Atlantic.
Atlantic Review's Joerg Wolf has put together a very good round-up, including this piece from The American Thinker:
My theory is that Americans have neither the belief system nor the temperament for such a Sisyphean sport as soccer. We are a society of doers, achievers, and builders. Our country is dynamic, constantly growing, and becoming ever bigger,
richer, and stronger... We do not labour for the sake of labouring. And we like our sports teams to score. ..
That soccer may be "the most popular sport in the world" speaks volumes—but not about America’s lack of sporting knowledge or sophistication, as soccer aficionados like to argue. Rather, I think it reflects the static, crimped, and defeatest attitudes held by so many of the other peoples on earth.
I'm clinging to the hope that it's a spoof. If so, it's pretty convincing. Thankfully, some conservatives do understand what the game means.... One of the comments that disappeared along with yesterday's posts included a link to Jeff Gedmin's column in Die Welt. There's a copy over at Medienkritik:
I've got it and I've got it bad. There is simply no feeling like being able to watch two, or even three games a day. I'm not sure how I ever lived without this. On days when there have been no games I feel listless, anxious, without purpose. On Saturday, I watched England vs. Portugal and France vs. Brazil at a party and found myself annoyed because a couple people were talking during the games. I don't mean like, "Eckball, this could be tough,"or "Hey, that yellow card was a joke." These guys were running a conversation about politics without as much as an eye on the screen. I should have thrown these losers out.
Jeff will be in London soon for a conference, so I hope to swap World Cup stories with him then.
