JOE'S FSCHNIZZLE


You would think with the insurgent nature of Dean's campaign that he would be doing strongest among young voters. But according to the latest ABC/Washington Post poll that is not the case. Dean's support among Democratic primary voters drops from 31% overall to 26% among voters ages 18-30. The main beneficiary of this drop-off surprinsingly is Lieberman, who polled 9% overall, but 15% in the 18-30 bloc. The most likely reason for Liberman's added pull among younger voters is most likely not his condemnation of the moral lapses of the video game industry or his goofy "dad" jokes. On the contrary, it has everything to do with his hawkish views on national security. As opposed to the Boomers, younger voters view national security through the lens of 9/11, not Vietnam. Therefore, it is only natural that the liberal hawks might skew a bit younger.


This unease with the Dems dovishness among younger voters will have a significant impact in the general election. According to the same poll, younger voters were the only group to state a preference for Dean over Bush on domestic issues (46% to 43%, while overall voters supported Bush 50% to 39%), yet when asked who they would support in the general election, 18-30 year olds chose Bush 55% to 41% (overall Bush 55% to 37%). One more indication that not only is Lieberman's firm stance on national security essential to keep America safe from terror, it is also essential to keep America safe from four more years of the Bushies plundering the American treasury for the benefit of their corporate cronies.

DEAN AND DEMS FOREIGN POLICY DISASTER


There was little surprising in the speech that Howard Dean gave yesterday. It could be summed up by the photo of Warren Christopher standing in the background of the lectern - behind all of the bluster, Dean is simply a mainstream Dem who will reverse Bush's radical course and bring us back to mainstream policies of the Clinton era. The problem is, that in contrast to its excellent record on most domestic issues, on foreign policy the Clinton Administration was not an unqualified success. Sure, it handled the details of diplomacy, international trade, and important unsexy issues like securing ex-Soviet weaponry well. But on the big challenges faced by the post-Cold War era - rogue states, failed states, Islamic terror and the impotence/irrelevance of international security organizations it failed miserably to rise to the occasion with a new vision. The current Dems, with the exception of Lieberman, fail to understand this and promote policies to address an alternate reality in which the UN is functional, the Europeans are not obsessed with coralling American power and ideology is irrelevant.

There is much that is problematic with the neocons radical approach that had driven the Bush Admistration's foreign policy agenda: its impatience with details, its blanket reliance on unitilateral solutions and its ideological puritanism that have fueled out-of-control turf wars with the State/CIA realist establishment. But on the big issues - on the importance of democracy promotion and the impotence of current international institutions for global security, they are correct. Perhaps one day, the Dems will move beyond their worship of the Clinton years to develop a foreign policy agenda that will create real multilateral alternatives to the neocon's vision. Until then, the United States is better off with the semi-competent execution of the Bush Agenda than with a flawless execution of a neo-Clintonian alternative.

SADDAM IS CAUGHT


The Butcher of Baghdad is now in U.S. custody, and on the road to being tried for his crimes by the Iraqi people. Some quick thoughts on what this means for the year ahead.


In Iraq, this is a major blow to the Baathist part of the terrorist coalition fighting to prevent the U.S. from establishing a stable, democratic Iraq. We will now be primarily facing the foreign jihadis who had flooded the country and have declared it their primary front in the war on America. Without the post-Baathist infrastructure however, the jihadis will be increasingly isolated. While there is still much to do in Iraq, the capture of Saddam greatly improves the prospects for success


This of course is a disaster for the anti-war wing of the Democratic party, banking on quagmire in Iraq as the means to attack Bush in 2004. There is no adequate response to the blunt words of Joe Lieberman, that if the country followed the advice of Howard Dean and Co., Saddam would still be in power, rather than in prison. Despite this, I doubt that this will stem the gathering momentum of Dean. That the war in Iraq is a disaster is a matter of faith for the cultural left. They will wait for the first piece of bad news to renew their assault on Bush's policies, oblivious the lack of traction these charges are making outside of their own circle.

SADDAM IS CAUGHT


The Butcher of Baghdad is now in U.S. custody, and on the road to being tried for his crimes by the Iraqi people. Some quick thoughts on what this means for the year ahead.


In Iraq, this is a major blow to the Baathist part of the terrorist coalition fighting to prevent the U.S. from establishing a stable, democratic Iraq. We will now be primarily facing the foreign jihadis who had flooded the country and have declared it their primary front in the war on America. Without the post-Baathist infrastructure however, the jihadis will be increasingly isolated. While there is still much to do in Iraq, the capture of Saddam greatly improves the prospects for success


This of course is a disaster for the anti-war wing of the Democratic party, banking on quagmire in Iraq as the means to attack Bush in 2004. There is no adequate response to the blunt words of Joe Lieberman, that if the country followed the advice of Howard Dean and Co., Saddam would still be in power, rather than in prison. Despite this, I doubt that this will stem the gathering momentum of Dean. That the war in Iraq is a disaster is a matter of faith for the cultural left. They will wait for the first piece of bad news to renew their assault on Bush's policies, oblivious the lack of traction these charges are making outside of their own circle.

I CHOOSE JOE


I've been thinking long and hard about who to support for the Democratic nomination. I am squarely in the Anyone But Dean camp, for the central reason that his nomination is a validation of the knee-jerk left-wing opposition to the war in Iraq. Kerry voted against the first Gulf War, which while being the wrong position, was a coherent position - as opposed to his waffle on this war. I give Gephardt credit for showing the Dems a way to victory in 2004 (hawkish on terror, but uncompromising on the economic issues), but I his protectionism is simply too much for me. So that left Clark, Edwards and Lieberman.


Clark is probably the most electable candidate in the field. His resume will close the national security gap better than any other Dem could hope. Secondly, Clark's experience puts him a better position to craft an independent response on the critical challenges on the war on terror, rather than rely on the "wisdom" of the old Clinton team, which botched the issues when they were in office. And if Clark had demonstrated that independence so far, I'd be on board already - but he hasn't. Rather, Clark has pretty much spat out the same tired nostrums of multilateralism and realism that most of the other candidates have so far. Frankly, I'm uninspired. Despite that, Clark is still the candidate I'm most likely going to pull the lever for on March 2d, because he has the best chance of emerging as the ABD candidate.


John Edwards on the other hand, is inspiring, his poll number notwithstanding. He has not only developed the most creative and insightful domestic policy initiatives of any candidate, but has also honed the best message to challenge Bush. And with his charisma and personal skills, he has the ability to be a powerful messanger as well. Unfortunately, after 9/11, I can't afford to simply choose a candidate based on his domestic agenda and Edwards does not have a coherent foreign policy agenda. His political instincts led him to support the war, but I get no sense that he did it with any conviction. Nor does Edwards have anything original to say about what to do next in Iraq. I have no doubt that at least at first, an Edwards administration would simply be Clinton redux on the foreign agenda.


My heart has always been with Lieberman. Long before he was chosen to be vice-president, I believed his combination of religious conviction (allowing him to claim the cultural center without yielding ground on the rights of women and gays), agressive Wilsonian foreign agenda and pragmatic left-of-center socioeconomic positions were ideal for the party and the country.


I'd have committed long ago if I actually believe Joe had a shot to win this thing. Alas, he is too moderate in policies to win the nomination, and too moderate in temperment to win the election (he's
too much of a mensch to last 10 rounds with the Bushies, who play as dirty as the heavy in a pro wrestling match).


But as of now, anything short of a Dean nomination and a Bush victory is a longshot, so I might as well take place in the struggle for the soul of Democratic party. The reality is that the Dems simply do not understand the realities of a post 9/11 world. The left is hostile to American power, a toxic mix of Jeffersonian isolationism and globalist utopianism. The Clintonian center is in denial as to the failures of the Clinton years, refusing to understand the limits of multilateralism and realism, that the same policies that worked so well in the areas of trade would fail to contain Sadaam or create a viable, peaceful Palestinian state. Lieberman in contrast presents a muscular Wilsonian alternative - unyielding in its commitment to human rights and democracy, but pragmatic in its means. Lieberman rejects both the knee-jerk unilateralism of the neocons and Cheyney-Rumsfeld Jacksonians as well as the knee-jerk multilateralism of the Dem opposition. He is a lone voice of sanity in the foreign policy discourse of the Dems and the country as a whole.


So, as long as I'm picking the longshot - I might as well back my favorite. Go Joe, go.

ISLAM DOES NOT NEED A POPE


In a fascinating but thoroughly flawed essay, Edward Feser makes the argument that Islam, rather than needing a reformation, needs a Catholicization. There are three fundamental errors in Feser's argument. First, there is the Catholic revisionist claim that the Protestant Reformation far from being the central event towards the creation of liberal democracy in the West, was a step backwards from the perspective of reason and freedom. Second, that Islam is like Protestant Christianity – devoid of a legal tradition and therefore is prone to religious totalitarianism. Finally, that the cause of Islamic nations current lawlessness is Islamic heterodoxy, not orthodoxy.


The first mistake Feser makes is historical (or more likely polemical) – the limiting the consequence of the Reformation to simply the creation of Protestantism. The legacy of the Reformation goes far past that of Luther, Calvin or Henry VIII. The real fruits of the Reformation – religious toleration and separation of church and state – came later, as a result of the Dutch Revolt, the 30 years war and the English Civil War (and Glorious Revolution). So while the humanism of Michaelangelo’s Rome may compare favorably to Calvin’s Geneva, it pales in comparison to Spinoza’s Amsterdam or Locke’s London.


The second mistake is an ignorant portrayal of Islam. It is ironic that such an admirer of Aquinus does not recognize how much Aquinus's work parallels and builds upon the great medieval Islamic thinker, Ibn Rashid and Ibn Sina. Feser, however, is too committed to his patently false linkage of Islam as Protestantism, and lumping the two together in opposition to legalistic, rational Catholicism. While Islam lacks a centralized hierarchy, it very much has "an effective mechanism for an application of the principles of an ongoing Tradition to new circumstances." Sharia is no less a legal system than canon law than is Anglo-American common law less a legal system than code-based system. For centuries the system (at least as practised in the Sunni world) was extraordinarily effective at adapting to different cultural contexts without fracturing the unity of Islam. Feser's critique is somewhat more accurate for Shi’a Islam in that it invests more authority in individual leaders, and thus is prone to Protestant-like splintering in a way Sunni Islam is not, but Shi'a leaders must still justify their innovations as within the bounds of sharia.


The problem faced by Islam is not that there does not exists a mechanism to react to change, but that modernity posed such dramatic change that traditional tools of sharia could not address. Thus, it is a uniquely modern problem that Islam's center is unable to de-legitimize radical movements. This weakening of the traditional centers of Islamic jurisprudence has been combined with the political success of the radicals – who have in turn used alliances with authoritarian regimes to suppress and co-opt the traditional centers of Islamic learning and jurisprudence. Thus is it is not the lawlessness of Islam that led to the lawlessness in Islamic states, it is the lawlessness of Islamic states that has led to a lawlessness within Islam. One needs to look no further than strictures placed on women in Wahhabi Arabia and Taliban Afghanistan – which can not be justified under traditional sharia.


In some respects, the idea of an Islamic Pope, who can issue the equivalent of a Vatican II is appealing. In some ways, this is precisely what the Aga Khan has done for the Ismailis, greatly improving their condition. But this is not only unrealistic, it distracts from the core need for both Islam and the Islamic world – to separate state and religion. For Islam to truly adapt to the modern world – its various movements must be required to compete in the marketplace of ideas, and no longer rely on allied regimes to quash their theological rivals. What Islam needs is not a Pope, nor a Luther, but a Locke.