The World Doesn't Get the Islamist Threat
Just Another Coincidence?
By Tony Blankley
Tuesday's front-page New York Times headline on Hezbollah/Israeli fighting -- "International Force Is Favored, But No Nation Commits Troops" -- was widely received with giggling "Well, duh's!" In a way, it was funny. While the Europeans agreed that international troops should be sent in to stop the fighting, the article ended with a quote that "The Germans recommended the French, the French recommended the Egyptians, and so on."
But if one scratches just beneath the surface of the headlines, the great strategic failure of America since Sept. 11, 2001 can be detected in the fourth paragraph of the N.Y. Times article:
"There has been strong verbal support for such a force in public, but also private concerns that soldiers would be seen as allied to Israel and would have to fight Hezbollah guerrillas who do not want foreigners, let alone the Lebanese Army, coming between them and the Israelis." Well, of course they don't.
From my extensive conversations with Europeans, high and low, I don't doubt the accuracy of that statement. Most Europeans and far too many Americans still see Hezbollah terrorism as just part of that "Arab Israeli mess" in the Middle East. (And, of course, Hezbollah doesn't want foreigners to stop them from killing). But more importantly, most of the peoples of the world -- including the United States -- still don't believe that radical Islamist terrorism is a grave, worldwide challenge to civilization.
And therein lies our great strategic failure to date. So long as most people -- certainly most Europeans, perhaps most Americans -- see Islamist terrorism as merely the more or less disconnected actions of a relatively small number of fanatics, then Europeans will never send their sons to fight and die to defeat it. And, of course, they particularly won't send their sons to risk death for the "Jewish state" of Israel or the "imperialist" United States. And who can ask any parents to risk sacrificing their sons for some foreigners -- whether despised or not?
President Bush has failed in five years to successfully make the case either to America or to the Western world that we are, in fact, in a mortal, worldwide struggle, what my old boss Newt Gingrich recently called World War III; what I called "The West's Last Chance" in my book last year; and what I and many others have called the clash of civilizations.
Only when that case has been made persuasively will the real struggle for victory begin. Only then will Europe raise armies to fight -- not for Israel or the United States -- but for their own survival.
And we are not without resources. Europe -- from Poland to the Atlantic, from Sweden to Greece -- is over 700 million strong. Hindu India is over a billion. North America is over 400 million. It is absurd to think that such a mass of civilization cannot send sufficient troops to smash -- door to door and hand to hand if necessary, and it probably will be necessary -- a few thousand Hezbollah fighters. For that matter, a force could be raised to clean out the tribal lands in northern Pakistan and the Islamist/anarchic Horn of Africa and wherever radical Islamists have cover and succor. (Currently, in Lebanon and throughout the world, peaceable Muslims understandably can't resist the violent threat of their radical co-religionists. We must give them a chance to be partisans for civilization.)
But such martial force can only be raised and sustained on the foundation of broad and deep public support.
Now, with the whole world watching the unfolding chaos, would be an excellent time to start that public education process. The president should give a series of major speeches on the nature of the worldwide threat. He must rise above his previous efforts with more blunt, honest and detailed analysis -- not merely well-worn phrases.
But much more is needed. The Senate and House Foreign Relations Committees should hold extensive, high-octane, public, joint, select hearings in the next two months on the nature of the threat. Let the best advocates for each perception testify. Former presidents, princes, generals and specialists should all come and testify. Congress can and must give both depth of analysis and sustained public attention to such a presidential initiative.
The media should give major front-page and top-of-the-news attention to such a great debate. It is not enough for Fox, the Washington Times, The Wall St. Journal editorial page, talk radio, selected authors and the blogs to carry on the debate. The mainstream media should join in giving prolonged prominent coverage in conjunction with such hearings.
In five years we have, remarkably, never had such a sustained effort to publicly debate the nature of the danger. At the outset of the Cold War, Congress spent years holding hearings on the "red menace." Some people think they overdid it. I do not. But it required that sort of an effort to establish the public support and bipartisan judgment over 50 years that communism was, in fact, a worldwide threat to civilizations. It was such a threat; and it was defeated. But only because the public, for 50 years, understood the danger and voted for politicians who were prepared to vote trillions for defense.
Until the American and European publics have become convinced of the present danger to them, we will continue to stumble, take half measures and fail to adequately defend ourselves. Before action, must come belief; before belief must come understanding; before understanding must come education and debate. In the beginning was the word. It is time to begin.
Wednesday, July 26, 2006
Tuesday, July 25, 2006
From Chronicles:
You Have To Draw the Line Somewhere
By Scott P. Richert
From Catholic World News : US Senate backs embryo research:
After a lively debate on July 18, the Senate voted 63- 37 in favor of a proposal to increase taxpayer support for stem-cell research using “leftover” embryos from fertility clinics. Support for the bill fell just short of the two-thirds majority that would be required to override a presidential veto.
Presidential spokesman Tony Snow said that Bush would carry out his threat to veto the legislation, exercising his veto power for the first time since he came to the White House in January 2001. “The president is not going to get on the slippery slope of taking something living and making it dead for the purposes of scientific research,” Snow told a television audience.
No—the President will only take something living and make it dead for the purposes of exporting democracy.
(Don’t get me wrong—I’m glad President Bush may finally exercise the veto. But as my sister Monica, a research scientist in cell and molecular biology, and I pointed out in the June 2003 issue of Chronicles, the commitment of President Bush and his administration on this issue has always been suspect. Would he have vetoed this legislation if it had come up in 2005? More importantly, will he veto it if it comes up again in 2007?)
UPDATE: As if to make my point in the paragraph above (about the suspect commitment of President Bush), here are two remarks from White House Press Secretary Tony Snow today in response to a question about whether President Bush is worried that the veto will hurt Republicans in November:
And I’ll tell you what, it’s worth pointing out one thing — actually several things on stem cells. Number one, the President is the first ever to have financed research using embryonic stem cell lines.
And:
I just don’t think it will. I think a President acting on conscience — a President who, again — Bill Clinton, as President, didn’t authorize any of these lines. This is a President who’s spent more money on embryonic stem cell research and stem cell research generally than any President in American history. He’s got the track record. What’s happening now is that people are trying to politicize it by accusing him of standing in the way of science, when he’s the guy who’s made it possible to open up the way to science.
And yet every “conservative” “Christian” organization in America—including those who did not support President Bush’s previous decision—applauded him for his “bravery” today. How quickly we forget. Thank you, Tony Snow, for reminding us.
You Have To Draw the Line Somewhere
By Scott P. Richert
From Catholic World News : US Senate backs embryo research:
After a lively debate on July 18, the Senate voted 63- 37 in favor of a proposal to increase taxpayer support for stem-cell research using “leftover” embryos from fertility clinics. Support for the bill fell just short of the two-thirds majority that would be required to override a presidential veto.
Presidential spokesman Tony Snow said that Bush would carry out his threat to veto the legislation, exercising his veto power for the first time since he came to the White House in January 2001. “The president is not going to get on the slippery slope of taking something living and making it dead for the purposes of scientific research,” Snow told a television audience.
No—the President will only take something living and make it dead for the purposes of exporting democracy.
(Don’t get me wrong—I’m glad President Bush may finally exercise the veto. But as my sister Monica, a research scientist in cell and molecular biology, and I pointed out in the June 2003 issue of Chronicles, the commitment of President Bush and his administration on this issue has always been suspect. Would he have vetoed this legislation if it had come up in 2005? More importantly, will he veto it if it comes up again in 2007?)
UPDATE: As if to make my point in the paragraph above (about the suspect commitment of President Bush), here are two remarks from White House Press Secretary Tony Snow today in response to a question about whether President Bush is worried that the veto will hurt Republicans in November:
And I’ll tell you what, it’s worth pointing out one thing — actually several things on stem cells. Number one, the President is the first ever to have financed research using embryonic stem cell lines.
And:
I just don’t think it will. I think a President acting on conscience — a President who, again — Bill Clinton, as President, didn’t authorize any of these lines. This is a President who’s spent more money on embryonic stem cell research and stem cell research generally than any President in American history. He’s got the track record. What’s happening now is that people are trying to politicize it by accusing him of standing in the way of science, when he’s the guy who’s made it possible to open up the way to science.
And yet every “conservative” “Christian” organization in America—including those who did not support President Bush’s previous decision—applauded him for his “bravery” today. How quickly we forget. Thank you, Tony Snow, for reminding us.
Bleeding Lebanon
By Thomas Fleming
“Bleeding Lebanon” is the ripest fruit of the Bush administration’s catastrophic foreign policy. In similar crises, previous administrations at least pretended to make diplomatic efforts to arrange cease-fires and find grounds on which a tenuous peace might be maintained. As my friend Ron Hatchett points out, in a Dallas Blog article posted on this site, Ronald Reagan, though a strong supporter of Israel, took effective measures to discpline Israel during the 1982 invasion of Lebanon. In the present case, however, both President Bush and his Secretary of State have openly supported Israel and chosen to treat the invasion of Lebanon as a morally responsible act of self-defense. It is only as an afterthought and in response to international criticism that Secretary Rice has seen fit to visit the region, but the best she can offer is a peace-keeping mission to be sent just after the nick of time, that is, after the IDF has accomplished its mission.
If there had ever been any doubts that the security of Israel was Bush’s primary motive for invading Iraq, those doubts have been dispelled by his unequivocal support for a war against Lebanese civilians that is being condemned around the world. Our Iraqi “allies” seem to understand. A headline in the LA Times tells the story: “Iraqis find rare Unity in Condemning Israel.” Even some Iraqi Christians have joined with Sunni and Shiite Muslims in condemning Israel and her bullying big brother. Perhaps they have seen the news stories describing Israel’s inexplicable attacks on Christian neighborhoods.
There are many solutions to the Lebanese crisis being floated in the press, ranging from plans to bomb Syria and Iran to inviting Syrian participation to sanctions against Israel, though, admittedly, no major player in the US would dream of suggesting the last of these. But, before rushing prematurely into a solution that might make matters worse, perhaps we should be clear as to what has happened and where America’s interests lie.
The temptation, in any conflict that engages the attention of Americans, is to choose a side and believe the propaganda told about it. If we are Christian Zionists, then Israel is a righteous nation doing too little to defend its people from Islamic terrorists. If we are tired of our Zionist foreign policy, then we may conclude that Israel is a bellicose national socialist state, guilty of war crimes against the unoffending Lebanese. If truth be told, however, none of the sides (Israel, Hezbollah, Lebanon, Syria, Iran) is guiltless. Hezbollah, undoubtedly, incited the current conflict, with a manifest disregard for the lives of the Lebanese people. While Hezbollah is, from one point of view, a legitimate political organization and a recognized party in Lebanon, it also has a long history of violence and terrorism. I say “violence and terrorism,” because not all of Hezbollah’s violence can be described as terrorism. Killing or kidnapping Israeli soldiers is an act of war, not terrorism, while randomly shelling Israeli cities is terrorism.
But if Hezbollah’s initial missile strikes were acts of terrorism, so is the much greater Israeli campaign that has so far killed nearly 400 Lebanese, mostly civilians. This is ten times the number of Israelis who have died in the conflict. If sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, that makes Israel ten times more terrorist than Hezbollah. If the Muslim terrorists are recklessly sending missiles every which way into Israel, the IDF is deliberately targeting civilian neighborhoods. They say it is because they believe they have located missile launchers or military installations or vehicles carrying weapons. In many instances, this belief was mistaken. Everyone is now a target, whether they are residents of formerly peaceful neighborhoods or fleeing refugees. IDF officers tell of finding tunnels with exits under mosques—clearly an advance justification for shelling Muslim shrines. It hardly matters whether or not the Israelis are telling the truth, because they are guilty either of deliberate mass murder or a reckless disregard of human life that amounts to the same thing.
It is important not to forget the history. Hezbollah amounted to very little until Israel’s failed invasion of 1982. Then, as now, they thought they could roll up all resistance, but the Lebanese and their (then) Syrian allies proved to be tougher than they imagined. When Israel retired to a neutralized border zone, she did not give up her mischief, and the result was, as Martin Van Creveld concludes, hardly in Israel’s interest. Van Creveld is not only a leading defense expert in the Middle East but also a rabid Israeli nationalist. The entire paragraph, from Van Creveld’s book Defending Israel (2004), is worth studying:
“Fourteen years into the struggle, Israel, then under the rule of Begin and Sharon and unable to make headway, decided on a massive invasion of Lebanon. First it mobilized most of its armed forces. Net, it overran half the country, inflicted thousands upon thousands of casualties, took thousands more prisoner, forced hundreds of thousands to flee their homes, and brought almost a million Lebanese under its rule. The crowning glory came when it occupied Beirut and stood by as its Christian allies committed large-scale atrocities in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatilla. The amount of firepower it used was unprecedented in the annals of the Middle East; yet none of these measures stood the slightest chance of showing results. Within two weeks of the beginning of the invasion, a vicious guerilla war got under way. Soon enough, hardly a day passed, without vehicles being attacked, buildings blown up, and soldiers killed. In 1985 Israel decided to cut its losses and withdrew to a “security zone” in the south, again to no avail. Having suffered approximately 1,500 casualties in dead alone—proportionally more than the US took in Vietnam—Israel ended up by conceding defeat and withdrawing across the international border in the south.”
Israel not only underestimated the resistance, Van Creveld argues, but it overestimated the power of Hezbollah: “They pretended to take seriously its claim that its real goal was to conquer Jerusalem.” Refusing to recognize Lebanon as a sovereign nation, Israel insists on flying into Lebanese territory, constantly provoking Hezbollah.
Far from being a softie or peacenik, Van Creveld favors withdrawal from the settlements to defensible boundaries and the construction of a protective wall, which, coupled with high tech weapons, could effectively deter terrorism as well as invasion. Writing several years ago, he also revealed that the Israelis knew about the improved weapons in Hezbollah’s possession and the whereabouts of their fortifications. “If worst comes to worst,” he concludes, “the entire are could oance again be overrun and the terrorist infrastructure demolshed in short order—forty-eight hours or less. Hizbollah’s own leaders are well aware of these facts. That is one reason why they procured long-range rockets.”
These are the same long-range rockets that the US government, eager to punish Iran, reported as the great surprise. Is the administration lying or simply ignorant. For the sake of our security, I hope they are lying.
Van Creveld is probably too sanguine about the ease with which Hezbollah can be eliminated, but his warnings against Israel’s reckless aggression and the consequences should be heeded. In blindly supporting Israel, President Bush is turning the Muslim world—and most of Europe—against the US. Even in the short run, Israel cannot control Lebanon any better than the US is controlling Iraq. In the long run, Israel’s renewed adventurism may spell the end of Israel and unending terrorism against the United States.
What can be done? President Bush’s idea, that we should tell the Syrians to control the situation, is utterly inane. We forced the Syrians out of Lebanon a year ago, and in their occupation they succeeded in only one thing: uniting the Lebanese against Syria. A large UN peace-keeping force, well-armed and under instructions to use deadly force against both Hezbollah militants and the IDF in Lebanon, could do a great deal, but President Bush would never allow such a force to be sent. Anything less will only aggravate the crisis.
Of course, the US or a set of Arabic allied nations could perform the same peace-keeping mission, but the only sensible goal, as the Saudis maintain, is to strengthen Lebanon to the point that it can defend itself against its enemies. If that is impossible, then Lebanon should be partitioned. Part could be given to Syria, and a Christian mini-state could be set up, under European (preferably French) auspices. But there is one pre-condition for any workable arrangement. The US must control the raging pit bull it has unleashed in the Middle East. Previous American Presidents have made this effort, albeit with imperfect success. The Bush administration’s refusal to issue even a rhetorical challenge to PM Ehud Olmert is, perhaps, the most serious failure of his administration and represents a far greater threat to American security than the suicide bombers of September 11.
By Thomas Fleming
“Bleeding Lebanon” is the ripest fruit of the Bush administration’s catastrophic foreign policy. In similar crises, previous administrations at least pretended to make diplomatic efforts to arrange cease-fires and find grounds on which a tenuous peace might be maintained. As my friend Ron Hatchett points out, in a Dallas Blog article posted on this site, Ronald Reagan, though a strong supporter of Israel, took effective measures to discpline Israel during the 1982 invasion of Lebanon. In the present case, however, both President Bush and his Secretary of State have openly supported Israel and chosen to treat the invasion of Lebanon as a morally responsible act of self-defense. It is only as an afterthought and in response to international criticism that Secretary Rice has seen fit to visit the region, but the best she can offer is a peace-keeping mission to be sent just after the nick of time, that is, after the IDF has accomplished its mission.
If there had ever been any doubts that the security of Israel was Bush’s primary motive for invading Iraq, those doubts have been dispelled by his unequivocal support for a war against Lebanese civilians that is being condemned around the world. Our Iraqi “allies” seem to understand. A headline in the LA Times tells the story: “Iraqis find rare Unity in Condemning Israel.” Even some Iraqi Christians have joined with Sunni and Shiite Muslims in condemning Israel and her bullying big brother. Perhaps they have seen the news stories describing Israel’s inexplicable attacks on Christian neighborhoods.
There are many solutions to the Lebanese crisis being floated in the press, ranging from plans to bomb Syria and Iran to inviting Syrian participation to sanctions against Israel, though, admittedly, no major player in the US would dream of suggesting the last of these. But, before rushing prematurely into a solution that might make matters worse, perhaps we should be clear as to what has happened and where America’s interests lie.
The temptation, in any conflict that engages the attention of Americans, is to choose a side and believe the propaganda told about it. If we are Christian Zionists, then Israel is a righteous nation doing too little to defend its people from Islamic terrorists. If we are tired of our Zionist foreign policy, then we may conclude that Israel is a bellicose national socialist state, guilty of war crimes against the unoffending Lebanese. If truth be told, however, none of the sides (Israel, Hezbollah, Lebanon, Syria, Iran) is guiltless. Hezbollah, undoubtedly, incited the current conflict, with a manifest disregard for the lives of the Lebanese people. While Hezbollah is, from one point of view, a legitimate political organization and a recognized party in Lebanon, it also has a long history of violence and terrorism. I say “violence and terrorism,” because not all of Hezbollah’s violence can be described as terrorism. Killing or kidnapping Israeli soldiers is an act of war, not terrorism, while randomly shelling Israeli cities is terrorism.
But if Hezbollah’s initial missile strikes were acts of terrorism, so is the much greater Israeli campaign that has so far killed nearly 400 Lebanese, mostly civilians. This is ten times the number of Israelis who have died in the conflict. If sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, that makes Israel ten times more terrorist than Hezbollah. If the Muslim terrorists are recklessly sending missiles every which way into Israel, the IDF is deliberately targeting civilian neighborhoods. They say it is because they believe they have located missile launchers or military installations or vehicles carrying weapons. In many instances, this belief was mistaken. Everyone is now a target, whether they are residents of formerly peaceful neighborhoods or fleeing refugees. IDF officers tell of finding tunnels with exits under mosques—clearly an advance justification for shelling Muslim shrines. It hardly matters whether or not the Israelis are telling the truth, because they are guilty either of deliberate mass murder or a reckless disregard of human life that amounts to the same thing.
It is important not to forget the history. Hezbollah amounted to very little until Israel’s failed invasion of 1982. Then, as now, they thought they could roll up all resistance, but the Lebanese and their (then) Syrian allies proved to be tougher than they imagined. When Israel retired to a neutralized border zone, she did not give up her mischief, and the result was, as Martin Van Creveld concludes, hardly in Israel’s interest. Van Creveld is not only a leading defense expert in the Middle East but also a rabid Israeli nationalist. The entire paragraph, from Van Creveld’s book Defending Israel (2004), is worth studying:
“Fourteen years into the struggle, Israel, then under the rule of Begin and Sharon and unable to make headway, decided on a massive invasion of Lebanon. First it mobilized most of its armed forces. Net, it overran half the country, inflicted thousands upon thousands of casualties, took thousands more prisoner, forced hundreds of thousands to flee their homes, and brought almost a million Lebanese under its rule. The crowning glory came when it occupied Beirut and stood by as its Christian allies committed large-scale atrocities in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatilla. The amount of firepower it used was unprecedented in the annals of the Middle East; yet none of these measures stood the slightest chance of showing results. Within two weeks of the beginning of the invasion, a vicious guerilla war got under way. Soon enough, hardly a day passed, without vehicles being attacked, buildings blown up, and soldiers killed. In 1985 Israel decided to cut its losses and withdrew to a “security zone” in the south, again to no avail. Having suffered approximately 1,500 casualties in dead alone—proportionally more than the US took in Vietnam—Israel ended up by conceding defeat and withdrawing across the international border in the south.”
Israel not only underestimated the resistance, Van Creveld argues, but it overestimated the power of Hezbollah: “They pretended to take seriously its claim that its real goal was to conquer Jerusalem.” Refusing to recognize Lebanon as a sovereign nation, Israel insists on flying into Lebanese territory, constantly provoking Hezbollah.
Far from being a softie or peacenik, Van Creveld favors withdrawal from the settlements to defensible boundaries and the construction of a protective wall, which, coupled with high tech weapons, could effectively deter terrorism as well as invasion. Writing several years ago, he also revealed that the Israelis knew about the improved weapons in Hezbollah’s possession and the whereabouts of their fortifications. “If worst comes to worst,” he concludes, “the entire are could oance again be overrun and the terrorist infrastructure demolshed in short order—forty-eight hours or less. Hizbollah’s own leaders are well aware of these facts. That is one reason why they procured long-range rockets.”
These are the same long-range rockets that the US government, eager to punish Iran, reported as the great surprise. Is the administration lying or simply ignorant. For the sake of our security, I hope they are lying.
Van Creveld is probably too sanguine about the ease with which Hezbollah can be eliminated, but his warnings against Israel’s reckless aggression and the consequences should be heeded. In blindly supporting Israel, President Bush is turning the Muslim world—and most of Europe—against the US. Even in the short run, Israel cannot control Lebanon any better than the US is controlling Iraq. In the long run, Israel’s renewed adventurism may spell the end of Israel and unending terrorism against the United States.
What can be done? President Bush’s idea, that we should tell the Syrians to control the situation, is utterly inane. We forced the Syrians out of Lebanon a year ago, and in their occupation they succeeded in only one thing: uniting the Lebanese against Syria. A large UN peace-keeping force, well-armed and under instructions to use deadly force against both Hezbollah militants and the IDF in Lebanon, could do a great deal, but President Bush would never allow such a force to be sent. Anything less will only aggravate the crisis.
Of course, the US or a set of Arabic allied nations could perform the same peace-keeping mission, but the only sensible goal, as the Saudis maintain, is to strengthen Lebanon to the point that it can defend itself against its enemies. If that is impossible, then Lebanon should be partitioned. Part could be given to Syria, and a Christian mini-state could be set up, under European (preferably French) auspices. But there is one pre-condition for any workable arrangement. The US must control the raging pit bull it has unleashed in the Middle East. Previous American Presidents have made this effort, albeit with imperfect success. The Bush administration’s refusal to issue even a rhetorical challenge to PM Ehud Olmert is, perhaps, the most serious failure of his administration and represents a far greater threat to American security than the suicide bombers of September 11.
Democrats' Version of John McCain
By Debra Saunders
Months ago, I was lunching with some savvy Democrats, when one of them asked me: What is the problem with all those Republicans who can't stand maverick GOP Sen. John McCain? As a McCainiac, I warmed to the subject. I disagree with McCain on illegal immigration and other issues, but I like the fact that McCain appeals to Democrats and independents and that he can work with senators on the other side of the aisle. I appreciate McCain's efforts to curb Washington's runaway spending and wish more Republicans followed his lead on fiscal restraint. What is more, I think McCain in the White House could go a long way in healing the country's ugly partisan divide. Then again, I added, Democrats have their own maverick -- Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman. Unlike Dems who ran from their support of the Iraq resolution, Lieberman has remained stalwart. He has forged relations with the Bush White House and joined McCain and Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., in fighting pork-barrel spending.
That's when the table got quiet. It is one thing for Democrats to feel superior to rube Republicans who don't like McCain because he is not sufficiently doctrinaire. When, however, a Democrat gets along with Republicans and espouses moderate positions, well then, he is a turncoat, plain and simple. The episode demonstrated how voters value bipartisanship -- from the other side, only.
And that was before rich-guy and cable exec. Ned Lamont waged his primary challenge to Lieberman, who is serving his third term in the Senate. Just six years ago, Democrats hailed Lieberman as Al Gore's running mate -- a position that spoke of the party's confidence that the Connecticut senator was qualified to take over the presidency, should something happen to a President Gore. Now, among the Democratic base, his name his mud.
A new Quinnipiac poll shows Lieberman trailing Lamont, garnering 47 percent of likely voters in the Aug. 8 Democratic primary, compared to Lamont's 51 percent. The poll also showed Lieberman handily winning a general election, if he runs as an independent against Lamont and Republican Alan Schlesinger, as well as Lamont beating Schlesinger in a two-man race, if by a lesser margin than Lieberman would enjoy. Of course, Connecticut Democrats have every right to reject Lieberman because they disagree with his policies. The fact that he is an incumbent does not mean that he should own his Senate seat for life.
That said, Lieberman is a cut above the routine D.C. politician who habitually runs from difficult votes and unpopular positions. While his constituents have soured on the war in Iraq, Lieberman is sticking by his early support of the war -- even if it costs him re-election. He has shown a dedication to principle that voters like to think they want. Except that the Nedheads -- as Lamont's supporters are called -- object to Lieberman's support of President Bush. As the Weekly Standard's Matt Continetti reported, the most popular campaign button among Nedheads features Dubya's embrace of Lieberman after his 2005 State of the Union address. They are incensed that Lieberman is not a Bush hater. Indeed, the Nedheads are so angry about the Big Hug that they are willing to torpedo a man who campaigned against Bush in 2000.
Hoover Institution fellow Morris Fiorina told me it scares him to watch the extremes dominate each party as they chase moderates out of office. In this case, Connecticut Dems may be "willing to sacrifice" a shot at taking control of the U.S. Senate from the GOP -- Lieberman would be the surer bet to win in November -- "for the sake of their ideological purity."
While many Democrats say they want to see an end to partisan rancor, Fiorina added, Lamont's supporters "are the kind of people who thrive on partisan rancor." Where moderates see bipartisan bonhomie, they see a traitor.
As Fiorina sees it, when busy moderates sit out primaries, they "abandon the field to all those people who have extreme views." You can forget all those "re-elect Gore" bumper stickers so dear to the angry Left. Because Lieberman gets along with the president of the United States, they have a new slogan: Dump Joey.
By Debra Saunders
Months ago, I was lunching with some savvy Democrats, when one of them asked me: What is the problem with all those Republicans who can't stand maverick GOP Sen. John McCain? As a McCainiac, I warmed to the subject. I disagree with McCain on illegal immigration and other issues, but I like the fact that McCain appeals to Democrats and independents and that he can work with senators on the other side of the aisle. I appreciate McCain's efforts to curb Washington's runaway spending and wish more Republicans followed his lead on fiscal restraint. What is more, I think McCain in the White House could go a long way in healing the country's ugly partisan divide. Then again, I added, Democrats have their own maverick -- Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman. Unlike Dems who ran from their support of the Iraq resolution, Lieberman has remained stalwart. He has forged relations with the Bush White House and joined McCain and Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., in fighting pork-barrel spending.
That's when the table got quiet. It is one thing for Democrats to feel superior to rube Republicans who don't like McCain because he is not sufficiently doctrinaire. When, however, a Democrat gets along with Republicans and espouses moderate positions, well then, he is a turncoat, plain and simple. The episode demonstrated how voters value bipartisanship -- from the other side, only.
And that was before rich-guy and cable exec. Ned Lamont waged his primary challenge to Lieberman, who is serving his third term in the Senate. Just six years ago, Democrats hailed Lieberman as Al Gore's running mate -- a position that spoke of the party's confidence that the Connecticut senator was qualified to take over the presidency, should something happen to a President Gore. Now, among the Democratic base, his name his mud.
A new Quinnipiac poll shows Lieberman trailing Lamont, garnering 47 percent of likely voters in the Aug. 8 Democratic primary, compared to Lamont's 51 percent. The poll also showed Lieberman handily winning a general election, if he runs as an independent against Lamont and Republican Alan Schlesinger, as well as Lamont beating Schlesinger in a two-man race, if by a lesser margin than Lieberman would enjoy. Of course, Connecticut Democrats have every right to reject Lieberman because they disagree with his policies. The fact that he is an incumbent does not mean that he should own his Senate seat for life.
That said, Lieberman is a cut above the routine D.C. politician who habitually runs from difficult votes and unpopular positions. While his constituents have soured on the war in Iraq, Lieberman is sticking by his early support of the war -- even if it costs him re-election. He has shown a dedication to principle that voters like to think they want. Except that the Nedheads -- as Lamont's supporters are called -- object to Lieberman's support of President Bush. As the Weekly Standard's Matt Continetti reported, the most popular campaign button among Nedheads features Dubya's embrace of Lieberman after his 2005 State of the Union address. They are incensed that Lieberman is not a Bush hater. Indeed, the Nedheads are so angry about the Big Hug that they are willing to torpedo a man who campaigned against Bush in 2000.
Hoover Institution fellow Morris Fiorina told me it scares him to watch the extremes dominate each party as they chase moderates out of office. In this case, Connecticut Dems may be "willing to sacrifice" a shot at taking control of the U.S. Senate from the GOP -- Lieberman would be the surer bet to win in November -- "for the sake of their ideological purity."
While many Democrats say they want to see an end to partisan rancor, Fiorina added, Lamont's supporters "are the kind of people who thrive on partisan rancor." Where moderates see bipartisan bonhomie, they see a traitor.
As Fiorina sees it, when busy moderates sit out primaries, they "abandon the field to all those people who have extreme views." You can forget all those "re-elect Gore" bumper stickers so dear to the angry Left. Because Lieberman gets along with the president of the United States, they have a new slogan: Dump Joey.
A Proportionate Response is Madness
By Richard Cohen
If by chance you have the search engine LexisNexis and you punch in the words "Israel'' and "disproportionate,'' you run the risk of blowing up your computer or darkening your entire neighborhood. Just limiting the search to newspapers and magazines of the last week will turn up "more than 1,000 documents.'' Israel may be the land of milk and honey but it certainly seems to be the land of disproportionate military response -- and a good thing, too.
The list of those who have accused Israel of not being in harmony with its enemies is long and, alas, distinguished. It includes, of course, the United Nations and its secretary general, Kofi Annan. It also includes a whole bunch of European newspapers whose editorial pages call for Israel to respond, it seems, with only one missile for every one tossed its way. Such neat proportion is a recipe for doom.
The dire consequences of proportionality are so clear that it makes you wonder if it is a fig leaf for anti-Israel sentiment in general. Anyone who knows anything about the Middle East knows that proportionality is madness. For Israel, a small country within reach, as we are finding out, of a missile launched from any enemy's back yard, proportionality is not only inapplicable, it is suicide. The last thing it needs is a war of attrition. It is not good enough to take out this or that missile battery. It is necessary to re-establish deterrence: You slap me, I will punch out your lights.
Israel has been in dire need of such deterrence ever since it pulled out of Lebanon in 2000 and, just recently, the Gaza Strip. In Lebanon, it effectively got into a proportional hit-and-respond cycle with Hezbollah. It cost Israel 901 dead and Hezbollah an announced 1,375, too close to parity to make a lasting difference. Whatever the figures, it does not change the fact that Israeli conscripts or reservists do not think death and martyrdom are the same thing. No virgins await Jews in heaven.
Gaza, too, was a retreat. There are many ways to mask it, but no way to change the reality. The government of then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon concluded that Israel was incapable of controlling a densely populated area full of people who hated the occupation. Israel will in due course reach the same conclusion when it comes to the West Bank, although the present war has almost certainly set back that timetable. The fact remains that for Israel to survive, it must withdraw to boundaries that are easily defensible and hard to breach.
It's clear now that those boundaries -- a wall, a fence, a whatever -- are immaterial when it comes to missiles. Hezbollah, with the aid of Iran and Syria, has shown that it is no longer necessary to send a dazed suicide bomber over the border -- all that is needed is the requisite amount of thrust and a warhead. That being the case, it's either stupid or mean for anyone to call for proportionality. The only way to ensure that babies don't die in their cribs and old people in the streets is to make the Lebanese or the Palestinians understand that if they, no matter how reluctantly, host those rockets, they will pay a very, very steep price.
Readers of my recent column on the Middle East can accuse me of many things, but not a lack of realism. I know Israel's imperfections, but I also exult and admire its achievements. Lacking religious conviction, I fear for its future and note the ominous spread of European-style anti-Semitism throughout the Muslim world -- and its boomerang return to Europe as a mindless form of anti-Zionism. Israel is, as I have often said, unfortunately located, gentrifying a pretty bad neighborhood. But the world is full of dislocated peoples and we ourselves live in a country where the Indians were pushed out of the way so that -- oh, what irony! -- the owners of slaves could spread liberty and democracy from sea to shining sea. As for Europe, who today cries for the Greeks of Anatolia or the Germans of Bohemia?
These calls for proportionality rankle. They fall on my ears not as genteel expressions of fairness, some ditsy Marquess of Queensberry idea of war, but as ugly sentiments pregnant with antipathy toward the only state in the Middle East that is a democracy. After the Holocaust, after 1,000 years of mayhem and murder, the only proportionality that counts is zero for zero. If Israel's enemies want that, they can have it in a moment.
By Richard Cohen
If by chance you have the search engine LexisNexis and you punch in the words "Israel'' and "disproportionate,'' you run the risk of blowing up your computer or darkening your entire neighborhood. Just limiting the search to newspapers and magazines of the last week will turn up "more than 1,000 documents.'' Israel may be the land of milk and honey but it certainly seems to be the land of disproportionate military response -- and a good thing, too.
The list of those who have accused Israel of not being in harmony with its enemies is long and, alas, distinguished. It includes, of course, the United Nations and its secretary general, Kofi Annan. It also includes a whole bunch of European newspapers whose editorial pages call for Israel to respond, it seems, with only one missile for every one tossed its way. Such neat proportion is a recipe for doom.
The dire consequences of proportionality are so clear that it makes you wonder if it is a fig leaf for anti-Israel sentiment in general. Anyone who knows anything about the Middle East knows that proportionality is madness. For Israel, a small country within reach, as we are finding out, of a missile launched from any enemy's back yard, proportionality is not only inapplicable, it is suicide. The last thing it needs is a war of attrition. It is not good enough to take out this or that missile battery. It is necessary to re-establish deterrence: You slap me, I will punch out your lights.
Israel has been in dire need of such deterrence ever since it pulled out of Lebanon in 2000 and, just recently, the Gaza Strip. In Lebanon, it effectively got into a proportional hit-and-respond cycle with Hezbollah. It cost Israel 901 dead and Hezbollah an announced 1,375, too close to parity to make a lasting difference. Whatever the figures, it does not change the fact that Israeli conscripts or reservists do not think death and martyrdom are the same thing. No virgins await Jews in heaven.
Gaza, too, was a retreat. There are many ways to mask it, but no way to change the reality. The government of then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon concluded that Israel was incapable of controlling a densely populated area full of people who hated the occupation. Israel will in due course reach the same conclusion when it comes to the West Bank, although the present war has almost certainly set back that timetable. The fact remains that for Israel to survive, it must withdraw to boundaries that are easily defensible and hard to breach.
It's clear now that those boundaries -- a wall, a fence, a whatever -- are immaterial when it comes to missiles. Hezbollah, with the aid of Iran and Syria, has shown that it is no longer necessary to send a dazed suicide bomber over the border -- all that is needed is the requisite amount of thrust and a warhead. That being the case, it's either stupid or mean for anyone to call for proportionality. The only way to ensure that babies don't die in their cribs and old people in the streets is to make the Lebanese or the Palestinians understand that if they, no matter how reluctantly, host those rockets, they will pay a very, very steep price.
Readers of my recent column on the Middle East can accuse me of many things, but not a lack of realism. I know Israel's imperfections, but I also exult and admire its achievements. Lacking religious conviction, I fear for its future and note the ominous spread of European-style anti-Semitism throughout the Muslim world -- and its boomerang return to Europe as a mindless form of anti-Zionism. Israel is, as I have often said, unfortunately located, gentrifying a pretty bad neighborhood. But the world is full of dislocated peoples and we ourselves live in a country where the Indians were pushed out of the way so that -- oh, what irony! -- the owners of slaves could spread liberty and democracy from sea to shining sea. As for Europe, who today cries for the Greeks of Anatolia or the Germans of Bohemia?
These calls for proportionality rankle. They fall on my ears not as genteel expressions of fairness, some ditsy Marquess of Queensberry idea of war, but as ugly sentiments pregnant with antipathy toward the only state in the Middle East that is a democracy. After the Holocaust, after 1,000 years of mayhem and murder, the only proportionality that counts is zero for zero. If Israel's enemies want that, they can have it in a moment.
Monday, July 24, 2006
‘Catch a Wave,’ by Peter Ames Carlin
Bad Vibrations
Review by BRUCE HANDY
I MUST own 40 books about the Beatles, another 30 about Bob Dylan, and maybe 20 more about Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys. Then there are the CD’s and DVD’s by these artists overflowing my meager New York City shelf space, not to mention the back issues of Mojo and Uncut piled up beside my bed. (Those are popular British music magazines that pretty much cover only 60’s bands, though they occasionally leaven the mix with stories about contemporary groups like the Clash.) All of which raises questions: How many live versions of “Gotta Serve Somebody” do I really need to own? How much more insight do I need into Ringo’s reasons for briefly quitting during the “White Album” sessions? Am I not an adult? What’s wrong with me?
Don’t laugh. If you’re not like me, you may well know someone who is; at the very least you’ve seen the type portrayed in Jack Black movies. Clearly, as the enabling flow of product attests, I am not alone in these passions. I do think it’s healthy that of two recent big books about the Beatles, Bob Spitz’s 983-page biography and the recording engineer Geoff Emerick’s 387-page memoir of his work with the group, I bought only the latter; that while I read Dylan’s memoir and watched Martin Scorsese’s Dylan documentary on DVD, I have so far studiously avoided the freshly published 832-page “Bob Dylan Encyclopedia” every time I pass it in my local Barnes & Noble; and that, following the boom in Brian Wilson ruminations that accompanied the release two years ago of his finally finished “Smile” album (for more than three decades it had been rock’s great lost masterpiece), I wasn’t all that enticed by the prospect of reading “Catch a Wave: The Rise, Fall and Redemption of the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson,” by Peter Ames Carlin, a former writer for People magazine and currently the television critic for The Oregonian in Portland.
If myths are tales we tell over and over to help make sense of the world or pluck some resonant chord in our psyches, then the life stories of the great 60’s pop stars — not just Lennon and McCartney, Dylan and Wilson, but also Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Marvin Gaye, the Supremes, even Bobby Darin — are some of our era’s most potent secular myths, only a notch below Kennedy legends. These are stories of hubris, of heroic deeds followed by terrible fates (or, at least, runs of embarrassing albums in the 70’s and 80’s); of ambitious young men and women venturing forth from provincial backwaters — Liverpool, northern Minnesota, California’s sub-Los Angeles sprawl — to awe the world with their genius; of the humble-born revealed as godlike, only to be humbled again; of ancient themes dressed up in bad haircuts and psychedelic cravats. The more familiar the elements of the tale, of course, the more ritualized the telling: But as the audience at Newport was about to discover on that fateful summer night in 1965, the times they were indeed a-changin’.
The Beatles’ narrative, in mythic strokes — or, if you prefer, caricature — is the story of two friends, John Lennon and Paul McCartney, whose powers were unbounded until they fell under the spell of calculating females (Yoko Ono and, to a lesser extent, Linda Eastman) who lured them away from the Eden of their glorious partnership. Dylan and Wilson can’t blame girls for their falls from grace: in the popular imagination they are Icarus figures, singed by their own daring. Dylan, pushed to the limits of human endurance by his muse and the burden of being an oracle, crashed his motorcycle in 1966 after a string of brilliant albums and apocalyptic concerts and retreated to Woodstock a shrunken, gnomic figure, content to show flashes of the old magic by releasing a solid album once or twice a decade. He’s the one who got away.
Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys’ producer and leading songwriter, took a much harder and longer tumble after abandoning “Smile,” the album he had begun working on in the summer of 1966 as a follow-up to the group’s melancholy masterpiece, “Pet Sounds.” As the sessions wore on into 1967, the record, intended as a kind of album-length suite, or, in Wilson’s famous description, “a teenage symphony to God,” began generating impossible-to-justify buzz — this was going to be the record that revolutionized pop, a 12-inch vinyl messiah. Even Leonard Bernstein genuflected, as host of a CBS special on rock. But Wilson, his head cluttered by drugs and blossoming mental illness, began to lose his way in the maze of his own ambition. At the same time, he was trying to fend off his angry band mates — among them his two brothers, Carl and Dennis, and his cousin Mike Love — who saw “Smile” as too sharp a detour from the surf and hot-rod songs that had made them rich. “Don’t mess with the formula” (or more colorful words to that effect) is how this perspective was summed up by Love, the story’s villain, during the recording of “Pet Sounds.” (His image is routinely booed at Wilson’s concerts, as if he were Snidely Whiplash.) Family versus ambition — not the easiest conflict to square, even for those of us who aren’t drug-addled. And so, with perfection still over the horizon, Wilson abandoned “Smile,” in the process becoming a shattered man who would spend the next 20-odd years in a wilderness of insanity and self-indulgence before righting himself and eventually reclaiming his visionary mantle with the triumphant version of “Smile” he finished with a new band in 2004.
Reality, of course, is less romantic than legend, though at times chewier and more interesting. The original “Smile” had some shiveringly beautiful passages, but a lot of the album, judging from bootlegs and official releases, would have been oddly hermetic, the musical equivalent of navel gazing — navel gazing of a high order, but still. The finished version has some nice moments, and presents itself with a veneer of coherence, but you wouldn’t trade it for your copies of “I Get Around” and “California Girls.” Was Mike Love right, then? Nah. But “Smile,” perhaps, is a better story than it is a listen. And as Carlin reminds us, Wilson in real life further muddied the myth of his tragic, spectacular ruin by making plenty of lovely, occasionally even ethereal music after his breakdown, music that was ignored by fans hungering for the history-changing masterwork they couldn’t have.
But is there really anything “new,” as they say, to say about Wilson and the Beach Boys? Not really, at least on the evidence here — don’t go looking for revisionist theories about Al Jardine being the group’s real genius — though Carlin seems to have spoken to everyone close to Wilson who’s still alive, and some who aren’t. He has also dug up some illuminating new documents and recordings, transcripts of family squabbles, druggy parties and such, that flesh out the story more fully than earlier tellings did. And I’ve never seen a diagnosis of Wilson quite as precise as the one Carlin offers: “mildly manic-depressive with a schizo-affective disorder.”
As his subtitle suggests, the author is enamored of the Wilson myth — it’s a selling point, after all, and it’s not without truth — but Carlin is too scrupulous to ignore more nuanced shadings and contradictions; his Wilson is both a victim, too fragile for this world, and a passive-aggressive manipulator, a man who, at times, willfully squandered his talent. Carlin tells his story well and sensitively, and only rarely lapses into glib rock-critic-ese (e.g., “As the 1960’s drew to a close, the sun-washed optimism the Beach Boys had once given voice to seemed to have been subsumed by the darkness that had always hovered on its fringes”). The pacing of his narrative, however, is sometimes perverse. The Beach Boys’ signing of their first contract with Capitol and the scoring of their first national chart successes zip by in two pages, while whole chapters are devoted to the recording of the group’s crummy middle- and late-70’s albums and its endless touring as an increasingly cranky oldies act. Fans of entropy will find much to delight them.
One more caveat: Like many people who write about rock — and this is a particular peril for those writing about the Beach Boys, who seem to feel they must wrestle not only with the meaning of the band but also, alas, with the inevitably curdled meaning of California itself — Carlin tries to justify his subject by dragging in grad-school-worthy names for extra credit. Thoreau, Twain, Melville and Steinbeck all make appearances in these pages, despite never having gotten bugged driving up and down the same old strip or spilling Coke all over your blouse. Greil Marcus would be proud, but others may grit their teeth. Still, while this might not be the best possible book about Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys, for now it’s the best one down here where mortals tread.
Bruce Handy, a frequent contributor to the Book Review, is a senior articles editor and writer at Vanity Fair.
Bad Vibrations
Review by BRUCE HANDY
I MUST own 40 books about the Beatles, another 30 about Bob Dylan, and maybe 20 more about Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys. Then there are the CD’s and DVD’s by these artists overflowing my meager New York City shelf space, not to mention the back issues of Mojo and Uncut piled up beside my bed. (Those are popular British music magazines that pretty much cover only 60’s bands, though they occasionally leaven the mix with stories about contemporary groups like the Clash.) All of which raises questions: How many live versions of “Gotta Serve Somebody” do I really need to own? How much more insight do I need into Ringo’s reasons for briefly quitting during the “White Album” sessions? Am I not an adult? What’s wrong with me?
Don’t laugh. If you’re not like me, you may well know someone who is; at the very least you’ve seen the type portrayed in Jack Black movies. Clearly, as the enabling flow of product attests, I am not alone in these passions. I do think it’s healthy that of two recent big books about the Beatles, Bob Spitz’s 983-page biography and the recording engineer Geoff Emerick’s 387-page memoir of his work with the group, I bought only the latter; that while I read Dylan’s memoir and watched Martin Scorsese’s Dylan documentary on DVD, I have so far studiously avoided the freshly published 832-page “Bob Dylan Encyclopedia” every time I pass it in my local Barnes & Noble; and that, following the boom in Brian Wilson ruminations that accompanied the release two years ago of his finally finished “Smile” album (for more than three decades it had been rock’s great lost masterpiece), I wasn’t all that enticed by the prospect of reading “Catch a Wave: The Rise, Fall and Redemption of the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson,” by Peter Ames Carlin, a former writer for People magazine and currently the television critic for The Oregonian in Portland.
If myths are tales we tell over and over to help make sense of the world or pluck some resonant chord in our psyches, then the life stories of the great 60’s pop stars — not just Lennon and McCartney, Dylan and Wilson, but also Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Marvin Gaye, the Supremes, even Bobby Darin — are some of our era’s most potent secular myths, only a notch below Kennedy legends. These are stories of hubris, of heroic deeds followed by terrible fates (or, at least, runs of embarrassing albums in the 70’s and 80’s); of ambitious young men and women venturing forth from provincial backwaters — Liverpool, northern Minnesota, California’s sub-Los Angeles sprawl — to awe the world with their genius; of the humble-born revealed as godlike, only to be humbled again; of ancient themes dressed up in bad haircuts and psychedelic cravats. The more familiar the elements of the tale, of course, the more ritualized the telling: But as the audience at Newport was about to discover on that fateful summer night in 1965, the times they were indeed a-changin’.
The Beatles’ narrative, in mythic strokes — or, if you prefer, caricature — is the story of two friends, John Lennon and Paul McCartney, whose powers were unbounded until they fell under the spell of calculating females (Yoko Ono and, to a lesser extent, Linda Eastman) who lured them away from the Eden of their glorious partnership. Dylan and Wilson can’t blame girls for their falls from grace: in the popular imagination they are Icarus figures, singed by their own daring. Dylan, pushed to the limits of human endurance by his muse and the burden of being an oracle, crashed his motorcycle in 1966 after a string of brilliant albums and apocalyptic concerts and retreated to Woodstock a shrunken, gnomic figure, content to show flashes of the old magic by releasing a solid album once or twice a decade. He’s the one who got away.
Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys’ producer and leading songwriter, took a much harder and longer tumble after abandoning “Smile,” the album he had begun working on in the summer of 1966 as a follow-up to the group’s melancholy masterpiece, “Pet Sounds.” As the sessions wore on into 1967, the record, intended as a kind of album-length suite, or, in Wilson’s famous description, “a teenage symphony to God,” began generating impossible-to-justify buzz — this was going to be the record that revolutionized pop, a 12-inch vinyl messiah. Even Leonard Bernstein genuflected, as host of a CBS special on rock. But Wilson, his head cluttered by drugs and blossoming mental illness, began to lose his way in the maze of his own ambition. At the same time, he was trying to fend off his angry band mates — among them his two brothers, Carl and Dennis, and his cousin Mike Love — who saw “Smile” as too sharp a detour from the surf and hot-rod songs that had made them rich. “Don’t mess with the formula” (or more colorful words to that effect) is how this perspective was summed up by Love, the story’s villain, during the recording of “Pet Sounds.” (His image is routinely booed at Wilson’s concerts, as if he were Snidely Whiplash.) Family versus ambition — not the easiest conflict to square, even for those of us who aren’t drug-addled. And so, with perfection still over the horizon, Wilson abandoned “Smile,” in the process becoming a shattered man who would spend the next 20-odd years in a wilderness of insanity and self-indulgence before righting himself and eventually reclaiming his visionary mantle with the triumphant version of “Smile” he finished with a new band in 2004.
Reality, of course, is less romantic than legend, though at times chewier and more interesting. The original “Smile” had some shiveringly beautiful passages, but a lot of the album, judging from bootlegs and official releases, would have been oddly hermetic, the musical equivalent of navel gazing — navel gazing of a high order, but still. The finished version has some nice moments, and presents itself with a veneer of coherence, but you wouldn’t trade it for your copies of “I Get Around” and “California Girls.” Was Mike Love right, then? Nah. But “Smile,” perhaps, is a better story than it is a listen. And as Carlin reminds us, Wilson in real life further muddied the myth of his tragic, spectacular ruin by making plenty of lovely, occasionally even ethereal music after his breakdown, music that was ignored by fans hungering for the history-changing masterwork they couldn’t have.
But is there really anything “new,” as they say, to say about Wilson and the Beach Boys? Not really, at least on the evidence here — don’t go looking for revisionist theories about Al Jardine being the group’s real genius — though Carlin seems to have spoken to everyone close to Wilson who’s still alive, and some who aren’t. He has also dug up some illuminating new documents and recordings, transcripts of family squabbles, druggy parties and such, that flesh out the story more fully than earlier tellings did. And I’ve never seen a diagnosis of Wilson quite as precise as the one Carlin offers: “mildly manic-depressive with a schizo-affective disorder.”
As his subtitle suggests, the author is enamored of the Wilson myth — it’s a selling point, after all, and it’s not without truth — but Carlin is too scrupulous to ignore more nuanced shadings and contradictions; his Wilson is both a victim, too fragile for this world, and a passive-aggressive manipulator, a man who, at times, willfully squandered his talent. Carlin tells his story well and sensitively, and only rarely lapses into glib rock-critic-ese (e.g., “As the 1960’s drew to a close, the sun-washed optimism the Beach Boys had once given voice to seemed to have been subsumed by the darkness that had always hovered on its fringes”). The pacing of his narrative, however, is sometimes perverse. The Beach Boys’ signing of their first contract with Capitol and the scoring of their first national chart successes zip by in two pages, while whole chapters are devoted to the recording of the group’s crummy middle- and late-70’s albums and its endless touring as an increasingly cranky oldies act. Fans of entropy will find much to delight them.
One more caveat: Like many people who write about rock — and this is a particular peril for those writing about the Beach Boys, who seem to feel they must wrestle not only with the meaning of the band but also, alas, with the inevitably curdled meaning of California itself — Carlin tries to justify his subject by dragging in grad-school-worthy names for extra credit. Thoreau, Twain, Melville and Steinbeck all make appearances in these pages, despite never having gotten bugged driving up and down the same old strip or spilling Coke all over your blouse. Greil Marcus would be proud, but others may grit their teeth. Still, while this might not be the best possible book about Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys, for now it’s the best one down here where mortals tread.
Bruce Handy, a frequent contributor to the Book Review, is a senior articles editor and writer at Vanity Fair.
Sunday, July 23, 2006
Buckley: Bush Not A True Conservative
By Thalia Assuras
Stamford, Conn., July 22, 2006(CBS) President Bush ran for office as a "compassionate conservative." And he continues to nurture his conservative base — even issuing his first veto this week against embryonic stem cell research.
But lately his foreign policy has come under fire from some conservatives — including the father of modern conservatism, William F. Buckley.
CBS Evening News Saturday anchor Thalia Assuras sat down for an exclusive interview with Buckley about his disagreements with President Bush.
Buckley's Stamford, Conn., home is a tranquil place that allows Buckley to think, write and spend time with his canine companion, Sebastian.
"He's practically always with me," Buckley says.
Buckley finds himself parting ways with President Bush, whom he praises as a decisive leader but admonishes for having strayed from true conservative principles in his foreign policy.
In particular, Buckley views the three-and-a-half-year Iraq War as a failure.
"If you had a European prime minister who experienced what we've experienced it would be expected that he would retire or resign," Buckley says.
Asked if the Bush administration has been distracted by Iraq, Buckley says "I think it has been engulfed by Iraq, by which I mean no other subject interests anybody other than Iraq... The continued tumult in Iraq has overwhelmed what perspectives one might otherwise have entertained with respect to, well, other parts of the Middle East with respect to Iran in particular."
Despite evidence that Iran is supplying weapons and expertise to Hezbollah in the conflict with Israel, Buckley rejects neo-conservatives who favor a more interventionist foreign policy, including a pre-emptive air strike against Iran and its nuclear facilities.
"If we find there is a warhead there that is poised, the range of it is tested, then we have no alternative. But pending that, we have to ask ourselves, 'What would the Iranian population do?'"
Buckley does support the administration's approach to the North Korea's nuclear weapons threat, believing that working with Russia, China, Japan and South Korea is the best way to get Pyongyang back to the negotiating table. But that's about where the agreement ends.
"Has Mr. Bush found himself in any different circumstances than any of the other presidents you've known in terms of these crises?" Assuras asks.
"I think Mr. Bush faces a singular problem best defined, I think, as the absence of effective conservative ideology — with the result that he ended up being very extravagant in domestic spending, extremely tolerant of excesses by Congress," Buckley says. "And in respect of foreign policy, incapable of bringing together such forces as apparently were necessary to conclude the Iraq challenge."
Asked what President Bush's foreign policy legacy will be to his successor, Buckley says "There will be no legacy for Mr. Bush. I don't believe his successor would re-enunciate the words he used in his second inaugural address because they were too ambitious. So therefore I think his legacy is indecipherable"
At 81, Mr. Buckley still continues to contribute a regular column to the National Review, the magazine he started 51 years ago.
By Thalia Assuras
Stamford, Conn., July 22, 2006(CBS) President Bush ran for office as a "compassionate conservative." And he continues to nurture his conservative base — even issuing his first veto this week against embryonic stem cell research.
But lately his foreign policy has come under fire from some conservatives — including the father of modern conservatism, William F. Buckley.
CBS Evening News Saturday anchor Thalia Assuras sat down for an exclusive interview with Buckley about his disagreements with President Bush.
Buckley's Stamford, Conn., home is a tranquil place that allows Buckley to think, write and spend time with his canine companion, Sebastian.
"He's practically always with me," Buckley says.
Buckley finds himself parting ways with President Bush, whom he praises as a decisive leader but admonishes for having strayed from true conservative principles in his foreign policy.
In particular, Buckley views the three-and-a-half-year Iraq War as a failure.
"If you had a European prime minister who experienced what we've experienced it would be expected that he would retire or resign," Buckley says.
Asked if the Bush administration has been distracted by Iraq, Buckley says "I think it has been engulfed by Iraq, by which I mean no other subject interests anybody other than Iraq... The continued tumult in Iraq has overwhelmed what perspectives one might otherwise have entertained with respect to, well, other parts of the Middle East with respect to Iran in particular."
Despite evidence that Iran is supplying weapons and expertise to Hezbollah in the conflict with Israel, Buckley rejects neo-conservatives who favor a more interventionist foreign policy, including a pre-emptive air strike against Iran and its nuclear facilities.
"If we find there is a warhead there that is poised, the range of it is tested, then we have no alternative. But pending that, we have to ask ourselves, 'What would the Iranian population do?'"
Buckley does support the administration's approach to the North Korea's nuclear weapons threat, believing that working with Russia, China, Japan and South Korea is the best way to get Pyongyang back to the negotiating table. But that's about where the agreement ends.
"Has Mr. Bush found himself in any different circumstances than any of the other presidents you've known in terms of these crises?" Assuras asks.
"I think Mr. Bush faces a singular problem best defined, I think, as the absence of effective conservative ideology — with the result that he ended up being very extravagant in domestic spending, extremely tolerant of excesses by Congress," Buckley says. "And in respect of foreign policy, incapable of bringing together such forces as apparently were necessary to conclude the Iraq challenge."
Asked what President Bush's foreign policy legacy will be to his successor, Buckley says "There will be no legacy for Mr. Bush. I don't believe his successor would re-enunciate the words he used in his second inaugural address because they were too ambitious. So therefore I think his legacy is indecipherable"
At 81, Mr. Buckley still continues to contribute a regular column to the National Review, the magazine he started 51 years ago.
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