Beyond Propaganda

Republicans are drumming up terrorism fear to try to win the elections

This is not unpredictable at all. Apparently Michael Chertoff was calling for tougher terrorism laws on the Sunday circuit. The argument this time around is that US authorities still do not have enough power when it comes to dealing with domestic terrorism. They hold up British law as an example.

Before the left-wing reacts to this by saying "Holy crap, the Patroit Act wasn't enough for these guys?" Let's actually look at what they are requesting. The following is from a WSJ article:

"I think we should always review the law," Mr. Chertoff told "Fox News Sunday." "Certainly the ability to be as nimble as possible with surveillance, and their ability to hold people for a period of time gives them a legal advantage. We have to have a legal system to allow us to do that rather than punishing people after the fact."

I'm sure other bloggers will have better insight into why being able to hold people for 28 days without charging them with a crime provides an advantage over the 48 hours US authorities are granted. I also want an explanation of why it is so hard to call up a judge and get permission for sullvenlence.

But here are my suggestions to Democrats. If these points turn out to be legitimate, let them pass into law and don't complain too loudly. Tell them, "yes, under the circumstances, given this information these are good ideas. Let's pass them and kick some terrorist ass." This would completely deny the Republicans any ground on this issue. No doubt Republicans will make this as hard as possible for Democrats to stomach. They will include unneccessary provisions aimed only at pissing Democrats off. The response in that case might be to introduce their very own, responsible and credible law-enforcement bill.

Kevin Drum's Forbearance

Over at Political Animal Kevin Drum writes this:

FORBEARANCE....Over at bloggingheads.tv, Robert Wright mentions something that's been on my mind for a while. He's talking with Ann Althouse about the war in Lebanon and makes the following observation:

What I think is actually sometimes the smartest thing to do in response to terrorist provocation, which is forbearance, is very hard to counsel. [But] if you ask what kind of shape would Israel be in if they had done a day's worth of retaliation, and since then just endured any missiles, and said, "OK, look, at this point there's no excuse for what they're doing, we're not even fighting them," I think Israel as a nation would be more secure than they are.

But it's very hard to convince people of that, and I admit that rhetorically it's hard to make that a winning strategy.

...It's human nature to demand action following an attack. Any action. Counseling restraint in the hope that it will pay off in the long run is politically ruinous.

But our lives may depend on figuring out how to make this case. If it wasn't obvious before, it should be obvious by now that conventional military assaults are usually counterproductive against a guerrilla enemy like the ones we're fighting now. We can't kill off the fanatics fast enough to win, and in the meantime the war machine simply inspires more recruits, more allies, and more sympathy for the terrorists. It's not the case that conventional military force is always useless in these cases — the Afghanistan war still holds out hope of success — but as Praktike says, it usually results in a terrorism own goal.

This is an argument I'm pretty sympathetic to. It lies close to my argument for why the Iraq War was a bad idea. But I see some problems.

First, an immediate unilateral retreat might have been perceived as a defeat for Israel. That would havbolstereded Hezbollah and been bad for Olmert domestically. Of course, this might not be true. Israel certainly diminished their reputation for ass-kicking anbolstereded Hezbollah by fighting for several weeks with no clear victory in sight.

Second, and more importantly: Hasn't Israel been restrained about attacks from Hezbollah for several years now? It was my understanding that Hezbollah has been tossing a few rockets into northern Israel for years prior to the recent war. How much sympathy did noretaliatingng for so long win them?

This is not my endorsement of military occupation in response to terrorism. I still don't believe that is effective, but I don't think Israel would have come out ahead in this case by doing nothing.

The Real Right-Wing

I thought this was interesting:

Sheik Yousuf Al-Qaradhawi: Kerry, who ran against Bush, was supported by homosexuals and nudists. But it was Bush who won [the elections], because he is Christian, right-wing, tenacious, and unyielding. In other words, the religious overcame the perverted. So we cannot blame all Americans and Westerners.

But unfortunately, because the Westerners - Americans and others - want to flatter these people on account of the elections, a disaster occurs. In order to succeed and win the elections, he flatters these people, rather than saying to them: No, you are sinning against yourselves, against society, and against humanity. This is forbidden. Instead of leveling with them, people flatter them to win their votes. This is the disaster that has befallen humanity.

Read the whole interview, it is very short. No comment for now, but I might have more to say on this later.

Passed on via Andrew Sullivan.

The Real Right-Wing

I thought this was interesting:

Sheik Yousuf Al-Qaradhawi: Kerry, who ran against Bush, was supported by homosexuals and nudists. But it was Bush who won [the elections], because he is Christian, right-wing, tenacious, and unyielding. In other words, the religious overcame the perverted. So we cannot blame all Americans and Westerners.

But unfortunately, because the Westerners - Americans and others - want to flatter these people on account of the elections, a disaster occurs. In order to succeed and win the elections, he flatters these people, rather than saying to them: No, you are sinning against yourselves, against society, and against humanity. This is forbidden. Instead of leveling with them, people flatter them to win their votes. This is the disaster that has befallen humanity.

Read the whole interview, it is very short. No comment for now, but I might have more to say on this later.

Passed on via Andrew Sullivan.

Should Democrats Be Scared?

I'm seeing a lot of articles trying to explain why Lamont's victory is a bad sign for the Democrats. One of the most sensible is this article on Slate. Jack Weisburg says that Lamont represents an anti-war movement that is not only anti-Bush and against the current war, but represents a weak stance against terrorism in general. He compares this to the 1970's era Democrats purging themselves of Vietnam era leaders and embracing the anti-war movement.

I don't think Lieberman got in trouble because he originally supported the war. I don't think he lost because he was tough on terror. There are plenty of Democratic Senators who supported the war and aren't calling for an immediate withdrawl that aren't facing a primary election threat. The reason I think Lieberman lost was his die-hard support of the President on the war. Last December Lieberman came out and said,

It’s time for Democrats who distrust President Bush to acknowledge that he will be the commander in chief for three more critical years and that in matters of war we undermine presidential credibility at our nation’s peril.

As Weisman himself pointed out, Ned Lamont only decided to run for office after reading an editorial by Lieberman that painted a rosy picture of Iraq. Good for him, good for CT, good for the USA.

Republicans are Scared

Tony Snow made some interesting comments today:

Democracies operate on different principles than totalitarian states. In a democracy, you have to respond to the will of the people. In a democracy within the United States, whether it be Joe Lieberman and Ned Lamont competing for votes in Connecticut or on the local level dealing with the needs for people to have safe streets, good schools and services they can depend upon, those are the things -- you respond to the state desires of the people. In totalitarian states, the despot alone has the opportunity to declare what he or she wants to do, and frankly, quite often they are much more war-like.

Democracies respond to the will of the people. Amen Tony. That must be a scary thought for you. He also mentioned that a "white flag" in Iraq is the same as a white flag against terror. Desperation.

Government Popularity and Exchange Rates

This is a "Markets are Emotional not Rational" paper if I ever saw one. They are able to conclude that exchange rate shocks can affect political popularity and that political popularity can affect exchange rates.

Polls and Pounds: Public Opinion and Exchange Rate Behavior in Britain
This article examines the relationship between government popularity and exchange rate movements in Britain since 1987. It argues that: (1) unexpected drops in the government's public support lead to currency depreciations and increased exchange rate volatility, and (2) unanticipated depreciations hurt the government's public support. It estimates separate models of the exchange rate and government voting intention iteratively and recursively. At each iteration, measures of exchange rate and public opinion shocks are generated. These generated variables are employed in the next iteration of estimates, including measures of political shocks in the model of exchange rate behavior and measures of exchange rate movements in the model of voting intention. This enables, therefore, the measurement of both the political costs of currency depreciation and the exchange rate consequences of political competition.
http://www.qjps.com/qjps/vol1/iss1/art3/

I saw this on New Economist.