The sort of thing that terrifies me

You can cower in fear of 'terrists' if you want. I choose to be terrified by the prospect of Idiocracy as prophecy.


The results of a study conducted for the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Public Policy Center is the sort of thing that scares me much worse than any terrorist.

• Only 15% of Americans can identify the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court (John Roberts). To contrast: 66% know at least one of the judges on American Idol.
• Only 30% realize that the Supreme Court is the last stop on the litigation train. 32% believe that Supreme Court decisions can be appealed, and 38% either "didn't know" or "weren't sure."
• 55% do not know that when the Supreme Court rules 5-4 on a case, that decision is the law of the land and must be followed.
• 14% believe that 5-4 decisions are sent back to congress for further consideration, 7% believe it goes back to the lower courts, and 34% simply "don't know."

It is easy to take the civil rights away from a group of people who do not know they have them.

I see ignorance among the populace as a far graver threat to the American way of life than any terrorist anywhere. I don't care how determined or deranged that terrorist might be. Until the nation as a whole gets smarter than a fifth grader, we are screwed - seven ways from Sunday.

The analogy was apt, but I do not think it was the one he meant to draw

[Updated below]

Something - okay, most things - about Bush's speech today at the VFW convention bothered me. But most disquieting was the passage where he seized on The Quiet American by Graham Greene.

In 1955, long before the United States had entered the war, Graham Greene wrote a novel called "The Quiet American." It was set in Saigon and the main character was a young government agent named Alden Pyle. He was a symbol of American purpose and patriotism and dangerous naivete. Another character describes Alden this way: "I never knew a man who had better motives for all the trouble he caused."

After America entered the Vietnam War, Graham Greene -- the Graham Greene argument gathered some steam. Matter of fact, many argued that if we pulled out, there would be no consequences for the Vietnamese people. In 1972, one anti-war senator put it this way: "What earthly difference does it make to nomadic tribes or uneducated subsistence farmers in Vietnam or Cambodia or Laos whether they have a military dictator, a royal prince or a socialist commissar in some distant capital that they've never seen and may never heard of?"

Talk about missing the point! The book was not about the way we left Vietnam - it was written as a warning after the first U.S. military advisers had been sent to that nation. The book is about stumbling into a brutal war because hubris and a belief in exceptionalism overrides common sense.

I am not surprised that Bush has not read the book (which is obvious, or that analogy would never have been made) but I expect that his speechwriters have a modicum of understanding and at least a couple of classes in Modern American Literature.

If they had, they would have never opened him up to the comparison I am about to make - that even if he was well-intentioned (in aWol's case, I doubt that very much). Bush's efforts, like those of the fictional Alden Pyle, are doomed to failure.

Update: David Shuster on MSNBC this evening totally eviscerated the resident's pathetic rhetoric. H/T Crooks & Liars...with video! (And fwiw, I agree with John Amato - time to give David his own show!)

The Middle East: just waiting out the ineffectual and counterproductive Bush administration

Throughout the Middle East, there seems to be a degree of resignation in the air – a sense that Gaza will suffer for the remainder of the Bush administration, and once he is out of the way, the dialogue will commence. The next administration will talk to Hamas, and so will the Israelis. "They'll have to," said Dr. Eyad Sarraj, a Palestinian human rights activist "because they'll have seen that Hamas can deliver."

The looming end of the Bush regime underpins the political thought throughout the region. The political leaders of the region are looking forward to the end, preparing for change, and readying themselves for the coming dialogue.

Throughout the region, the disdain is virtually palpable, even among people like Dr. Sarraj, who consider themselves friends of the United States. The aura of just waiting it out does not bode well for any future Bush administration initiatives where the Israel/Palestine dilemma is concerned.

This sense of resignation and time-biding offers context for Condi’s recent embarrassingly inept trip to the region. (We know it was a failure because we didn’t hear anything about it.) The trip was such a flop that the tepid response by the Saudis that they might consider attending a U.S. sponsored summit was hailed as a significant development.

One Egyptian diplomat put it about as bluntly as possible "No one likes American policy."

The Israeli’s are equally critical:

A senior Israeli official sat silently for several seconds after he was asked which negotiating approach was most likely to lead to progress in peace talks with Israel's Arab neighbors. Then he laughed and, in flawless English, suggested to a colleague that he must not have understood the question. "I don't see any promising pathway," he said. "There is a huge gap between the rhetoric and what people believe."

The Israeli government understands that to have peace with Syria "means giving back the Golan Heights," the strategic high ground that Israel seized in 1967, and "we're willing to discuss it," he said. But with Bush insisting "from the Oval Office" that the U.S. won't talk to Syria, nothing can be expected. "The Syrians really want to talk to the United States," the official said. Even among government officials in Iraq there's little embrace of Bush policy, and surprising expressions of distrust.

Former Mossad chief Efraim Halevy, with three decades in clandestine service, sworn to protect the Jewish state from enemies such as Hamas, now speaks aloud what was unthinkable until recently. “It is time to negotiate with the movements leaders.” (The leaders he now advocates dialogue with are the same leaders Mossad has made a policy of targeting for assassination.)

The Hamas takeover of Gaza in June effectively split the Palestinians into Gaza, controlled by Hamas, and the West Bank, politically dominated by the more secular Fatah party and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his appointed prime minister, Salam Fayad.

In response, the White House has rolled out what it calls a "West-Bank-first" strategy. (Without batting an eyelash that the strategy was “Gaza First” right up to the moment it blew up in their faces.)

The “new” approach envisions financial, political and diplomatic support for Mr. Abbas and Fatah. The thinking is that life can be improved in the West Bank to such a degree that support for Hamas will evaporate in both the West Bank and Gaza. Simultaneously, Washington maneuvers to work with Israel to isolate Hamas further, while refusing to talk to the leaders.

"I don't say we should talk to Hamas out of sympathy to them. I have no sympathy whatsoever for Hamas. I think they are a ghastly crowd," Mr. Halevy says. "But I have not seen anybody who says the Abbas-Fayad tandem is going to do the job."

Mr. Halevy says defeating Hamas politically is unrealistic, given its enduring popularity among Palestinians. Hamas defeated Fatah in Palestinian parliamentary elections last year.

"The danger is that they will not be defeated, that they will become more despairing...and they will no longer feel constrained by anything, because there is nothing left for them to hope for," he says.

Then he said something that truly gives me hope. When the former Mossad chief finally “gets it” there is reason to rejoice. "We don't need their recognition," he says. "We are a sovereign state...They need us to recognize them. The shoe is on the wrong foot." (Really, who cares whether Hamas recognizes Israel or not?) We're dealing in issues which are existential to free society," Mr. Halevy says. "When you look around for potential allies in this war, sometimes you have to settle for strange bedfellows."