The War in Lebanon

Juan Cole notes an interesting Zogby poll today. The headline result shows the US public dubious about the government's support of Israel:

Americans were split as to whether current U.S. policy is as fair with the government in Lebanon as it is with Israel – 35% agreed the U.S. was equally fair to both nations, while 37% said the U.S. favored Israel. Another 28% said they were not sure.

Israel and Hezbollah had been fighting for nearly a month before an agreement on a cease–fire was struck and went into effect earlier this week.

Overall, Do you agree or disagree that U.S. policy is as fair with the democratic government of Lebanon as it is with the democratic government of Israel?

The poll found a clear majority favoring US neutrality, and suggested that the perception that the US favored Israel--certainly a correct perception--indicates that the government is out of step with the people. I wouldn't disagree.

On the other hand, no one surveyed thought that the US should take Hizbollah's side. This is the most significant finding, I think. A majority of the population wants the US to stay out of, well, the rest of the world, as much as possible, except when threatened or when selling cars, movies, hamburgers, or Jesus Christ. That there's still a large segment that wants the US to support Israel in this war indicates relatively strong backing. And of course the votecounters know that the pro-Israel public will vote on their preference, whereas the others won't. One reason why no politician will try to appeal to the anti-Israel public is because the one that exists, such as it is, will not pay back at election time. As I suggested previously, this is a case in which partisanism restricts the range of public deliberation.

Has the Blogosphere Become HyperPartisan?

Today Josh Marshall and Kevin Drum both strike a note of disappointment over the disappearance of an intellectual middle ground in the blogosphere. They recall an earlier, happier time when bloggers like themselves had a freer range of play in policy debates. They're right, of course. It was only a few years ago when Drum and Marshall on the middle left could have something like a conversation with Sullivan and Instapundit on the right. Now when they reference across the aisle at all it's to play gotcha. They think that the Bush years produced this, but I think it was more specifically the election of 2004. By election day, left and right networks of blogs had become pretty self-enclosed.

Is there anyone to blame for this? I don't think so. In fact, it replicates the development of the political press in the first half of the nineteenth century, though in somewhat accelerated fashion. I've commented on this before. Both the technology and the authorial styles of blogging are very similar to nineteenth century partisan newspapers, which, by the end of the 1820s, had become hyper-partisan. The difference between the two situations is that blogging has mainstream journalism existing alongside it, while nineteenth century partisan newspapering WAS mainstream journalism. This only means that the partisanism of the blogosphere is not as momentous, and in fact could be a lot more extreme without justifying real alarm.

Hyperpartisanism in the nineteenth century DID justify real alarm. Left and right together beat up on the extremes, and did what they could to promote the violent suppression of such exotic movements as abolitionism, feminism, and socialism. Read what mainstream newspapers had to say about antislavery activists, or better yet about African-Americans, and it will knock you for a loop.

Today's blogosphere alarmism is about the power of the extremes. I'm not worried about that. It would be nice if the blogosphere had continued to model an open and somewhat nonpartisan arena of deliberation. But too much gravity pulled the other way. I worry about the forces in public discourse that make it harder to argue unpopular truths. I don't think the blogosphere is one of them. Here's a nice test that today's headlines offer. Who in US politics has openly criticized US support for Israel's attacks on Lebanon? Which Senators and Representatives have staked out a position on the middle east that a neutral observer could call unfriendly to Israel? Who, for instance, has called for freezing US funds until Israel ceases to bomb targets that are not clearly military? I'm unaware of any. Now, personally, I wouldn't promote such a position, but I would say that it should not be outside the bounds of public discourse. And it isn't in the blogosphere. But it is in Congress. So what does this tell us?

Flying while Ay-rab

The recent arrests and dramatic announcements of the UK-centered terrorist plot to bomb flights to the US have had the usual twisted political effect. The Pres-o-dent and his operatives have loudly proclaimed them a vindication of counter-terrorism policies. Whoah. The only thing more absurd is, if you can imagine it, what they would have said if the attacks had succeeded. "Orwellian" is an overused word, but what do you call it when the failure of the Iraq War is trotted out as the justification for the war itself? The increasing threat of terrorist attacks resulting from the War is a retroactive excuse for why the War is necessary to prevent terrorist attacks.

Weirder yet is the way some commentators seize on these arrests--achieved through assiduous human intelligence--a "mole" inserted after the 7/7 subway attacks--as a vindication of the NSA wiretap program.

And today more evidence has emerged that the announcements themselves were timed according to political calculation, and that, perhaps, the arrests themselves had been made prematurely because of US pressure to produce headlines that would turn the political discourse back to terrorism. Of course we can believe this to be the case. It's happened routinely in the past.

But the mystery remains as to why the Pres-o-dent's men can be so confident that this news--this very bad news--should shore up their political support. No, it's not very mysterious. They can count on an instinctive anti-Ay-rab racism to square this circle. The great public will not make the connection between Bush administration policies and the threat of terrorism because it's Ay-rabs we're talking about, and they're BORN terrorists.

But if you're not convinced, check out two news stories that became front-page material in the wake of the UK arrests. One involves a group of Egyptian study-abroad students who for some reason decided not to go to Bozeman, Montana to attend the month-long course they'd signed up for. Suppose they'd been from Ukraine; would anyone have cared? And the news stories carefully point out that there is no suspicion of terrorism-related activities. So why is this news?

The other story involves three Ay-rab types from Texas who were pulled over in Michigan for driving while Ay-rab. Their van was found to contain a thousand cellphones, the prepaid disposable kind. They say they buy them from suppliers and then sell them for $5 a piece more, but that, because Texas is already saturated, they drove up to Michigan, where law enforcement officers now suspect they want to blow up the big bridge at Michilimackinac. Sure, with a thousand cellphones and no explosives. Suppose these three hapless Ay-rabs had been Mexicans. Would they be sitting in jail waiting for someone to post $750K in bail a piece? OK, maybe, but would it be news? And would anyone think they were terrorists?

But, as I've asked many times already on this blog, where's the payoff for any politician to point this out? Only on the horizon. And you can't count on the news media to help you, either. They're too busy trying to put human faces on the problem--demonic, Ay-rab, bearded Muslim human faces.