Fear works. What works better?
A Discovery Channel bulletin last month described an interesting psychological experiment:

In an experiment by researchers Jeff Greenberg, Sheldon Solomon, Mark Landau and Tom Pyszczynski, a group of students was asked to think about its own death and another group to think about a non-death-related topic. Then the students were asked to read campaign statements of three hypothetical political candidates. Each candidate had a different leadership style: charismatic, task-oriented or relationship-oriented.

A charismatic leader, explain the researchers, is one who emphasizes a simple message of the greatness of the nation and of a heroic triumph of good over evil.

The students who were reminded of their own mortality before reading the campaign materials were almost eight times more likely to vote for the charismatic candidate — regardless of where they rated themselves on the political spectrum. There was no increase for the two other candidates. (via Smijer)

Bruce Schneier's analysis of DHS terror alert warnings, "How long can the country stay scared?," is worth mentioning here as well:

The DHS's incessant warnings against any and every possible method of terrorist attack has nothing to do with security, and everything to do with politics. In 2002, Republican strategist Karl Rove instructed Republican legislators to make terrorism the mainstay of their campaign. Study after study has shown that Americans worried about terrorism are more likely to vote Republican. Strength in the face of the terrorist threat is the basis of Bush's reelection campaign. (via Jens Scholz)

Schneier points out that even Israel, which sees a lot of terror attacks, doesn't issue vague warnings of the 'yellow/orange/red' variety, and favors 'behind the scenes' police work out of the public eye. He may be right, but I'd prefer not just feeling like a passive potential victim. A possible, if fairly vague alternative is the "pack, not a herd" notion coined by Jim Henley -- who doesn't mean snooping on neighbors with it either, and is aware of the vigilantism problem "packs" might invite. Henley coined his term in the context of the DC sniper attacks,; he was rightly taking issue with law enforcement secretiveness:

Diffuse [the responsibility for our safety] . Give us the information and the tools to better defend ourselves. Tell us what you know. [...]

...Don't keep us a herd. Make us a pack. Tell us what we need to know.

On the other hand, I agree with Chad Orzel as well that it's not just vigilantism, but state-sponsored vigilantism that's just around the corner with this kind of stuff -- and state and vigilantes can reinforce eachother. (E.g., Interahamwe -- "those who stand together" -- which arguably took 'pack, not a herd' to one kind of murderous extreme.) I hasten to add that Henley has nothing at all like this in mind, of course, saying for instance "If 'a pack, not a herd' ends up making us less like citizens and more like a barracks, I want no part of it." But if the notion is certain or even just likely to head in the barracks direction or worse, its attractions don't outweigh its drawbacks.

Meanwhile, without giving up on the "pack" idea, there's an even simpler alternative for the government: "don't just do something, stand there." The color code alert system should be scrapped in favor of some grown-up discussion about security and sensible precautions individuals can take.* If specific terrorist targets and plans become known, specific warnings and countermeasures can be publicized. The DHS alert system, by contrast, is just a "CYA" crock that's more for the administration's good (whichever administration that turns out to be) than the public's.


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* I don't endorse or pretend to have read every recommendation you will find here. It does seem to me a good place to start; other suggestions are welcome.

UPDATES: More preparedness links: (9/5)The America Prepared Campaign - Get Prepared web page; DHS/Ready.gov Get a Kit site
posted by Thomas Nephew at 11:10:00 PM -- |    

 
Chechen, Arab pigs kill Russian children
A terrible, terrible end to the ordeal in Beslan. MSNBC forwards the AP report "Hundreds killed, hurt in Russian school siege":

Ninety-five victims were identified — many of them children whose shattered, bloodied bodies were placed on lines of stretchers — and Interfax quoted unnamed sources in the regional Health Ministry as saying more than 200 people were killed by fire from the militants or died from their wounds.

More than 700 others were injured, officials said.

Russian authorities insisted that the militants initiated Friday’s violence as emergency teams entered the school, with the hostage-takers’ permission, to collect the bodies of several men who had been executed earlier.

An explosives expert told NTV television that the commandos charged into the building after bombs — hung in basketball hoops by the hostage-takers — exploded. A sobbing young girl who escaped the school told NTV that a suicide bomber blew herself up in the gym where children were kept captive.

We may or may not learn that Russian methods were as described here. On the one hand, Russian security forces went in hard in the Moscow theater hostage taking. On the other hand, townspeople, reporters, and parents don't appear to be disputing the official account (yet). The attackers seem to have been a right bunch of bastards:

Alla Gadieyeva, 24, who was taken captive with her 7-year-old son and mother, said the militants displayed terrifying brutality from the start. One gunman, whose pockets were stuffed with grenades, held up the corpse of a man just shot in front of hundreds of hostages and warned: “If a child utters even a sound, we’ll kill another one."

When children fainted from lack of sleep, food and water, their masked and camouflaged captors simply sneered, she said, adding that adults implored children to drink their own urine in the intolerable heat of the gym.

She and other hostages said there was a little water but no food the first day. The hostages got nothing to eat or drink after that.

Gadieyeva told of three days of unspeakable horror — of children so frightened they couldn’t sleep, of captors coolly threatening to kill off hostages one by one. The gym where they were held was so cramped there was hardly room to move.

Who's responsible?

Valery Andreyev, Russia’s Federal Security Service chief in the region, said 10 Arabs were among 27 militants who were killed. The ITAR-Tass news agency, citing unidentified security sources, reported the hostage-taking was the work of Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev, who had al-Qaida backing.

If so, here's to long, drawn-out, painful deaths for Basayev and his comrades.

For a lengthy analysis of Basayev and his tactics, see "A Face of Future Battle: Chechen Fighter Shamil Basayev," written by Major Raymond C. Finch, III in 1997. It examines the similar 1995 Budennovsk hospital hostage-taking incident that Basayev masterminded.


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UPDATE, 9/9: The hostage takers may not have included Arabs after all.
posted by Thomas Nephew at 11:53:00 PM -- |    

 
Zell Miller: a uniter, not a divider
Why link to Andrew Sullivan on Zell Miller and Ken Layne's comment about him? Both of them have roughly 10,000 times as many readers as I do. Still, when does that ever stop me:

Zell Miller's address will, I think, go down as a critical moment in this campaign, and maybe in the history of the Republican party. I kept thinking of the contrast with the Democrats' keynote speaker, Barack Obama, a post-racial, smiling, expansive young American, speaking about national unity and uplift. Then you see Zell Miller, his face rigid with anger, his eyes blazing with years of frustration as his Dixiecrat vision became slowly eclipsed among the Democrats. Remember who this man is: once a proud supporter of racial segregation, a man who lambasted LBJ for selling his soul to the negroes. His speech tonight was in this vein, a classic Dixiecrat speech, jammed with bald lies, straw men, and hateful rhetoric.

Ken Layne, who really is on an almighty roll*, reflects:

Thank you, Zell. Now we understand. Sorry about wishing the Bush Administration all the best after 9/11. Sorry I ever entertained the thought that these vicious pigs might find redemption in defending our country with honor.

Matt Welch was shaken, not stirred:

The crowd inside the Garden was absolutely howling for blood during the applause lines of Zell Miller's militaristic, Niedermeyer-like rant. As I watched a 45 foot image of the snarling senator on the big screen, I found myself thinking that this was the most frightening political speech I had ever seen in my life. I don't think I've ever been as uncomfortable at a political rally.

Matthew Yglesias writes that Sullivan "correctly views tonight's display as yet another step in the Party of Lincoln's long, strange transformation into the Party of Jefferson Davis." (Speaking of which, check out The New Republic book review -- "Against Appomattox" -- of Newt Gingrich's alternate histories of the Civil War.) (Speaking also of which, reflect on Miller's "duel" wish.) Yglesias, too, felt he was a little too close to the action for comfort:

Watching that speech from inside the hall, I was genuinely afraid at one or two points. The audience was so enthused by his frankly fascistic remarks that at any moment I thought the distinguished Senator might point up and say "see, there, right there is one of these unpatriotic liberal journalists busy abusing the freedoms our soldiers fight to protect -- he must be destroyed for the safety of the Republican" and that Matt Welch and I would need to fend for our lives against the onrushing hordes.

Of course it didn't quite come to that, but I don't believe I've ever heard a more disgusting speech delivered in the English language. The fact that I couldn't see a single person on the floor who seemed to feel anything less than the utmost enthusiasm for that lunacy was, well, a bit disturbing.

This isn't exactly a cross-section of America, of course -- but it's not just some bunch of die-hard liberal activists, either.

The Dixiecrat infestation has reached chest-burster stage in the Republican Party. Stand well back.


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* What conservatives?, Terror Twilight.
posted by Thomas Nephew at 2:03:00 AM -- |    

 
Yeah, that would be pretty good
Zell Miller wishes we lived in the day where he could challenge Chris Matthews to a duel:

MATTHEWS: Senator, please.
MILLER: You know, I wish we...
MILLER: I wish we lived in the day where you could challenge a person to a duel.
MILLER: Now, that would be pretty good. (via Josh Marshall)

Matthews got all apologetic for daring to challenge specific elements in Miller's speech -- "I feel bad that you are upset with me, Senator. I have never had this kind of a fight with you before." -- so his spine transplant hasn't quite taken yet. Marshall also links to an interview/demolition of Zell Miller and his convention speech by CNN(!) reporters Greenfield, Woodruff, and Blitzer.

Somebody's been feeding that Miller boy somep'n -- either that or he's off some meds or other and hearing voices. Here's what he said about John Kerry in March 2001:

In his 16 years in the Senate, John Kerry has fought against government waste and worked hard to bring some accountability to Washington. Early in his Senate career in 1986, John signed on to the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Deficit Reduction Bill, and he fought for balanced budgets before it was considered politically correct for Democrats to do so. John has worked to strengthen our military, reform public education, boost the economy and protect the environment ..." (via Ken Layne; emphasis added)

When Jeff Greenfield asked Miller to explain this praise three years ago, Zell replied, "Because that was the biographical sketch that they gave me."

Good dog, Zell! Roll over, Zell! You should have seen how happy you made George H. W. and Barbara Bush, yukking it up in the stands while you used the speech they gave you. Hope you get a biscuit or something out of the deal.


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UPDATE, 9/3: Video of the Matthews/Miller exchange can still be found at an "MSN Video" site. The link (via Wizbang, where they think Miller looked good) may only lead you to the portal for the site; if so, search for "zell miller" and/or look in the "News/NBC News" section.
posted by Thomas Nephew at 1:07:00 AM -- |    

 
A fistful of fact-checking: Martens vs. Pipes on Tariq Ramadan
Daniel Pipes, the director of Middle East Forum and a well-known writer on Middle Eastern affairs, recently wrote an article for the New York Post, "Why Revoke Tariq Ramadan's U.S. Visa?," welcoming that Department of Homeland Security (DHS) decision. Tariq Ramadan is a Swiss national who is also a devout Muslim and religious scholar. But in his seemingly authoritative, link-rich article, Mr. Pipes strongly implies that Ramadan supports Islamist terrorism.

One Scott Martens of A Fistful of Euros took the time to "factcheck his ass," as the nice warblogger expression goes, in a lengthy article titled "Daniel Pipes on Tariq Ramadan: Why French literacy still matters." Even discounting for Martens' freely given acknowledgment that he thought little of Pipes in the first place, the result is an absolutely devastating blow to Daniel Pipes' credibility.

Martens shows that Pipes relied on the fact that most New York Post readers are not going to be able to read the French articles he cited even if they followed his links to them online. Pipes then proceeded to twist one Tariq Ramadan quote or factoid after the other beyond recognition.

In one of the most egregious examples, Pipes states, "Along with nearly all Islamists, Mr. Ramadan has denied that there is "any certain proof" that Bin Laden was behind 9/11." Martens translates Ramadan's actual statement as follows:

A: So far, investigators have not put forward any clear or definitive proof of his guilt. The likelihood is very great, but some questions remain unanswered: the difference between the extreme sophistication in the build-up to the attack and the accumulation of mistakes afterwards is impressive. Why leave so many tracks and never claim responsibility for the attacks? There are still too many incoherent things about it to be able to definitively designate who is responsible. But whoever it is, bin Laden or someone else, we need to find them and prosecute them. (emphasis added)

But the kicker is that Ramadan made this statement to Swiss journalist Nicolas Geinoz on September 22, 2001 -- a scant 11 days after the attack! Even the White House took a couple of days to express confidence it was Bin Laden's doing. And at any rate, Ramadan called for finding and prosecuting whoever did the attacks.

Another example is Pipes' claim that Ramadan "publicly refers to the Islamist atrocities of 9/11, Bali, and Madrid as "interventions," minimizing them to the point of near-endorsement." But again, translating the French "Le Point" article involved yields a different impression. Martens provides the full statement involved:

[Ramadan]: From the suburbs of France to Muslim society, you will find no support, except for some miniscule amount, for the actions in New York, Bali or Madrid. We must not confuse the Iraqi and Palestinan resistance movements with pro-bin Laden acts.

Martens asserts that the French word intervention can be best translated as "action" in the above context. But even if you used the English word "intervention," Ramadan's statement appears to be nothing at all like a 'near-endorsement' of the 9/11, Bali, and Madrid terror attacks: there's "no support" for them either way. Ramadan has since published his own rebuttal to Pipes in the Chicago Tribune; he says the word 'intervention' was used first by the French journalists interviewing him.

Pipes most politically substantive point -- although insufficient to revoke a visa, I would think -- is that Ramadan "has praised the brutal Islamist policies of the Sudanese politician Hassan Al-Turabi." In his Tribune piece, Ramadan responds:

Nothing of what I said about al-Turabi's policies is remotely favorable. After visiting Sudan in 1994, I wrote: "Nonetheless, one must clearly say that the present regime does not offer minimal guarantees for political pluralism, that opposition parties are muzzled and that cronyism is the rule. Muslims are called to remain vigilant, for the opposition of the United States and Israel is not enough to support the `Islamic' character of a project."

On rereading Pipes' article, I suppose careful New York Post readers might have sensed a pattern of innuendo anyway: "Intelligence agencies suspect... "; "Osama Bin Laden studied with Tariq Ramadan's father in Geneva..." (Well, there you have it. What more evidence would we need, even if it were true -- which according to Ramadan is not the case.) But while there's just enough faux scholarship to make the casual reader nod and say "yup," Pipes' evidence proves either weak or nonexistent on further examination. As Mr. Martens puts it:

Daniel Pipes thinks we're all either to stupid or too scared to actually question the nonsense he passes off as scholarship. He relies on an American audience that is unable to check his sources, because when they do, they find out that Daniel Pipes is an empty suit.

If, as Lee Smith writes in the American Prospect, Tariq Ramadan "believes Islam will replace Judaism and Christianity," then as a secularist I find that mildly distasteful, but no more so than I feel about similar sentiments by, say, Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell on the eventual triumph of Christianity. That comparison is actually pretty unfair to Ramadan, whose language is apparently rarely if ever as overbearing as Robertson's or Falwell's.

Meanwhile, needful to say, the kind of bad-faith, trumped-up charges and innuendoes Pipes makes against Ramadan are wrong. Someone who both concocts smears like this one, and has a presidential appointment to the "United States Institute of Peace" should and must be denounced. Shame on him.

And if these kinds of charges are indeed why the DHS revoked Ramadan's visa, then Pipes isn't the half of it: shame on the DHS as well.


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MORE: Aziz Poonawalla has a several posts up about Ramadan, all worth reading. Glenn Reynolds thinks "Unless there's more to this story than we know so far, I'd say that it's not a good idea." Martens and Reynolds both point to separate Volokh posts about Ramadan; Volokh says that the government is right to bar aliens "simply on suspicion of connections with terrorists," and should not have to obtain "proof in court of criminal conduct" to do so -- and thus illustrates the power of the Pipes smear. posted by Thomas Nephew at 10:01:00 PM -- |    

 
Not your call to make, Senator McCain
Not so very long ago, Senator John McCain called the Swift Boat Veterans attacks "the same kind of deal" Bush supporters pulled on him four years ago. Yet he has now pressured Kerry to drop an effective advertisement ("Old tricks" on the Internet, "Shame" on the unreleased TV ad) pointing out that very thing. AP reporter Deb Riechmann reported:

...McCain said he wanted Kerry to stop using him in advertising that denounces the anti-Kerry swift boat group. "I very much do not want them to use clips from my primary campaign against the president," said the Republican, who lost to Bush in 2000 and is joining the president on the campaign trail this week. The Kerry campaign pulled those ads on Thursday. (via Salon)

Kerry wasn't alone in seeing a familiar -- and effective -- Bush tactic. Wayne Slater, Dallas Morning News writer and author of a book about Karl Rove, was recently quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle: "In every case, the approach is the same: You have a surrogate group of allies, independent of the Bush campaign, raising questions not about the opponent's weakness but directly about the opponent's strength,'' Slater said. "In every case it works."

I was part of the McCain swoon back in the spring, briefly hoping that he and Kerry might join ranks, marginalize the loony right, and form an unbeatable ticket. McCain decided against that, and therefore that's the right thing all around. Just as I don't regret my daydream of a "sanity unity" ticket, I hold no grudges against McCain for going his own way (unless the whole pas de deux was a calculated trick from the outset by McCain, which seems unlikely as far as I know).

But I must say it's disappointing hypocrisy on McCain's part to ask Kerry to stop pointing out Bush's m.o. and his clear association ("I can see why he's mad at us") with the Swift Boat Innuendists and Liars by using McCain's own words from a similar situation four years ago. And it seems like foolish chivalry to me for John Kerry and his campaign to honor that request.

On Friday, Dan Balz of the Washington Post reported this statement from McCain:

I think from what we learned during the campaign, the president's people were behind that [a third-party ad attacking him] and many, many other things that happened in South Carolina. But the most important aspect of this whole thing for me is to not look back in anger. ... For to me to look back in anger at something that happened in the year 2000 is, one, sore loser, which Americans don't like, and two, would impair my ability to serve the country.
(via the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

Fine, Senator, don't look back in anger, don't be a sore loser. But don't think you get to ask the rest of us not to remember Bush/Rove tactics, or that Dubya's newest buddy once froze him in the headlights about them. How or whether to remember history, even if you were in it, is not a call you get to make.

The BagNewsNotes blog notes that the Kerry ad can still be seen at the American Museum of the Moving Image "Living Room Candidate" online exhibit.
posted by Thomas Nephew at 10:39:00 PM -- |    

 
Providentially?
I've been known to agree with the occasional Charles Krauthammer column; he favors directness, and has a gift for finding the right word. But in a recent column, "The Pressure-Cooker Theory," those very traits have generated a slanderous, unforgiveable insult to his political opponents.

Krauthammer's subject is the "loathing," the "hostility, resentment, envy and disdain" that Democrats and liberals feel towards Bush. To explain this unaccountable antipathy, Krauthammer recounts some familiar history, beginning with the bitterly contested Florida 2000 election recount. Krauthammer makes the fairly unassailable assertion that 9/11 then ended partisan argument for a while:

Came Sept. 11 and a lid was forced down. How can you seek revenge for a stolen election by a nitwit usurper when all of a sudden we are at war and the people, bless them, are rallying around the flag and hailing the commander in chief? With Bush riding high in the polls, with flags flying from pickup trucks (many of the flags, according to Howard Dean, Confederate), the president was untouchable.

The Democrats fell unnaturally silent. For two long, agonizing years, they had to stifle and suppress. It was the most serious case of repression since Freud's Anna O. went limp. The forced deference nearly killed them.

But then Krauthammer continues:

And then, providentially, they were saved. The clouds parted and bad news rained down like manna: WMDs, Abu Ghraib, Richard Clarke, Paul O'Neill, Joe Wilson and, most important, continued fighting in Iraq.

Providentially? Providentially?!

That would imply Democrats rejoiced at the deaths of hundreds of American soldiers since the "end of major combat operations in Iraq," rather than mourning them.

That would imply the main thing liberals saw about revealing the identity of a covert CIA operative was that it might prove embarrassing to the Bush administration, rather than that it might prove lethal to that operative or her contacts, or damaging to American intelligence about WMD around the world.

That would imply that the first thing I thought when I saw a grinning American soldier atop a heap of Iraqi detainees was "at least that'll mess up Bush's week," instead of the sickened disappointment I felt.

That would imply that my main reaction to Richard Clarke's book and testimony was to rub my hands and say "maybe we're going to win this election," instead of the wistful feeling that with a little more care (and a little more luck), many of the tragedies of the past four years might have been averted.

That would imply that many of us exchanged high-fives when no WMDs and not even any WMD programs worth the name were found in Iraq, instead of feeling like fools for believing this administration had some solid evidence about them that it just wasn't sharing with the rest of us.

And that would imply that any of these were due to providence, to fate, to an act of God -- instead of being due to inadequate planning for a war supposedly critical to America's security, to a propensity for cheap payback against political opponents, to leadership -- military and civilian -- that was at best incompetent and criminally unconcerned about torture and prisoner mistreatment, to an arrogant disregard for the prior administration's advice and work, and to a reckless appetite for tidbits of evidence supporting a prejudice at the expense of diligent analysis in the search for truth.

There hasn't been a single solitary thing that's been "providential" about any of this. It's been one absurd, disappointing, disheartening, sickening, frightening thing after the other. After four years of George W. Bush, we're repeatedly stopping Ted Kennedy at an airline gate for questioning, terrorist groups have had their recruiting posters photographed for them by the U.S. Army's 800th Military Police Brigade -- and Iraqi uranium, the potential fuel for the nuclear weapons we feared, is missing in action. Yeah, I feel a lot safer now. Let's not change horse's asses in midstream.

I'm a liberal and a Democrat -- and I love this country fiercely. Its history is both human and proud, its people's achievements are both quotidian and magnificent. For someone to claim I or most Democrats welcome any of the setbacks of the past four years as "providential" ammunition in a power struggle is a calculated insult and slander that I will not forgive. Charles Krauthammer's occasional flashes of brilliance can't conceal an acidulous, nasty political disposition that I think many have been reluctant to hold against the wheelchair-bound pundit. For me, that ends today: Krauthammer is a hatchet man with a pen, whether he walks into a room or rolls into it. He can go Cheney himself. posted by Thomas Nephew at 2:20:00 AM -- |