John Cole comments on Michelle Obama’s pledge to “take no prisoners” as she helps her husband fight to get the Olympics for Chicago:

You know who else hosted an Olympics?

Hitler.

Just saying…

QED.

Megan McArdle calls for an extension of Godwin’s Law that would put an end to “using the word fascist to apply to the current, or indeed previous, administration.”

How is this helpful?  Has clarifying the distinction between fascism and socialism really added to most peoples’ understanding of what the Obama administration is doing?  All this does is drag the specter of Hitler into the conversation.  And the problem with Hitler was not his industrial policy–I mean, okay, fine, Hitler’s industrial policy bad, right, but I could forgive him for that, you know?  The thing that really bothers me about Hitler was the genocide.  And I’m about as sure as I can be that Obama has no plans to round up millions of people, put them in camps, and find various creative ways to torture them to death.

I agree with her conclusion but not her argument.

Last things first: The Final Solution was possible because Nazi Germany was a fascist state and therefore no one dared question Hitler’s orders.  Genocide is, however, not a necessary outgrowth of fascist ideology nor have most genocides been carried out by fascist governments. Benito Mussolini, the Founding Fascist (if you will) wasn’t a mass murderer and Pol Pot, Idi Amin, and Omar al-Bashir aren’t fascists. The genocide was what made Hitler evil, not what made him a fascist.

With that out of the way, I completely agree that dubbing American presidents and their policies fascist is not a helpful way to advance the debate.   See, for example, my previous decisions of Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism and the Obama cult of personality.  While there may be aspects of the Bush or Obama policies that have something akin with Communism or Nazism or Fascism or whathaveyou, those terms have so much extraneous baggage that the discussion invariably strays from the actual thing being criticized.  [As Dave Schuler points out in the comments, there's a name for this: "poisoning the well."]

We should be careful here to differentiate name-calling from the actual substantive argument.  It’s a very different thing to argue that bringing up the idea of nationalizing health care makes you a Marxist/Socialist/Communist than to argue that enacting a given policy will naturally lead down a road to ever-more-powerful government.   So, Friedrick Hayek’s Road to Serfdom is a different than Ann Coulter’s Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism or even Al Franken’s Lies (And the Lying Liars Who Tell Them): A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right.

Readers may be familiar with the Green Lantern Theory of Geopolitics (short version: the US can do whatever it wants if it just has even willpower). Now, it appears we can add another member of the Justice League to our understanding of foreign policy. On Friday, author Andrew Klavan had a piece in the WSJ comparing Batman and George W. Bush (yes, you read that correctly): What Bush and Batman Have in Common

A cry for help goes out from a city beleaguered by violence and fear: A beam of light flashed into the night sky, the dark symbol of a bat projected onto the surface of the racing clouds . . .

Oh, wait a minute. That’s not a bat, actually. In fact, when you trace the outline with your finger, it looks kind of like . . . a “W.”

There seems to me no question that the Batman film “The Dark Knight,” currently breaking every box office record in history, is at some level a paean of praise to the fortitude and moral courage that has been shown by George W. Bush in this time of terror and war. Like W, Batman is vilified and despised for confronting terrorists in the only terms they understand. Like W, Batman sometimes has to push the boundaries of civil rights to deal with an emergency, certain that he will re-establish those boundaries when the emergency is past.

Call me crazy, but I am betting pretty heavily that the producers of the latest Batman flick aren’t out to sing the praises of the 43rd president, but oh well.

Klavan’s piece seems to have two basic points within it. One is about about foreign/security policy under the war on terror and the other is about movies on general.

The Batman Theory of Foreign Policy. The logic here appears to be the brute force and general havoc is sometimes necessary when going after the bad guys. Batman works in the shadows and seeks to control crime in Gotham by brute force and by doing things that the cops can’t do. However, Klavan’s view that one can actually look at Batman as even a useful allegory about the war on terror illustrates perhaps the key problem with what has been the underlying logic in much of the Bush administration’s approach to counter-terrorism, i.e., that it is that it is all very simply: just punish the bad guys.

There are two basic assumptions inherent in the overall approach: 1) whatever the good guy does in pursing the bad guy is ultimately good and is justified because the good guy only wants good, and 2) the good guy only using his powers against the bad buys. It assumes above all else that it is easy to identify the bad guys, as in movies (or the comics) where they wear costumes and they are quite obvious in their malefaction. For example, the most ardent supporters of the administration think that this is the way the War on Terror works–for example, that everyone at Gitmo is obviously a terrorist (even if we know that that is not the case) and that they are all on the same level as Osama bin Laden and the 9/11 hijackers. In that world, just having the wrong name or being in the wrong place at the wrong time isn’t a problem as the wrong people are never punished or harmed because, again, we know who the bad guys are and no mistakes are ever made. In the comics, only the bad guys are punished and they deserve everything that they get. The neoconservatives like to think that that is what happens in real life, but it isn’t and one cannot formulate policy based on that notion as whenever a nation-state starts to throw its weight around, innocents will always be hurt and to pretend otherwise is foolishness.

Indeed, it would seem that we thought that that Batman approach was going to work in Iraq: jump in, defeat the supervillan (Saddam) and his henchmen and that would solve all the problems. Lest anyone didn’t notice, unlike in the comics, defeating the head honcho didn’t fix everything in Iraq–not by a longshot.

And, I suppose that when it comes to Dubya’s Rogue’s Gallery, the less said about Osama bin Laden the better, or the fact that Bush ultimately negotiated with Kim Jong Il and with the Iranians as well.

“Conservative” Movies. Part of what Klavan is dealing with as well is that notion that Batman represents a specific type of “conservative” movie:

“The Dark Knight,” then, is a conservative movie about the war on terror. And like another such film, last year’s “300,” “The Dark Knight” is making a fortune depicting the values and necessities that the Bush administration cannot seem to articulate for beans.

In regards to movies and ideology he states:

time after time, left-wing films about the war on terror — films like “In The Valley of Elah,” “Rendition” and “Redacted” — which preach moral equivalence and advocate surrender, that disrespect the military and their mission, that seem unable to distinguish the difference between America and Islamo-fascism, have bombed more spectacularly than Operation Shock and Awe.

Why is it then that left-wingers feel free to make their films direct and realistic, whereas Hollywood conservatives have to put on a mask in order to speak what they know to be the truth? Why is it, indeed, that the conservative values that power our defense — values like morality, faith, self-sacrifice and the nobility of fighting for the right — only appear in fantasy or comic-inspired films like “300,” “Lord of the Rings,” “Narnia,” “Spiderman 3″ and now “The Dark Knight”?

First, I am not sure why these are “conservative” movies, per se (although of those mentioned, 300 was pretty clearly embraced as a neoconservative opus—see a discussion of this here.). I don’t think that it is legitimate to say that the presence of a clear good guy and a clear bad guy means that a movie is necessarily “conservative.” While Klavan asserts that these views can somehow only be projected by Hollywood by “putting on a mask” the main thing that all of these movies have in common is that they are all fantasies and are ultimately simple tales where the good guys and bad guy are clear and the script can control how the tale ends (indeed in all of these movies we know from the very beginning that Good with triumph over Evil—which is at least in part why we go see them in the first place). The sad thing is that in the real world it is rarely that simple, and even when it is the end of the story is not predetermined.

I have seen none of the “left wing” films he cites, so cannot comment on their content, however to compare their box office performance to the blockbuster fantasy films (and I have seen all of those listed except 300) in question is absurd. Even if they had been realistic yet “conservative” films about the war on terror, they would have likely bombed as well. Let’s face facts: mass appeal movies are escapist vehicles, and realistic films tend not to do that well at the box office. Indeed, I suppose that United 93, which I did see, was a realistic “conservative” movie about terrorism and it hardly had the same box office as the LotR trilogy. United 93 simply wasn’t entertaining, while The Return of the King was.

The only “realistic” movie that I suspect that Klavan would consider “left wing” of this type that I can think of that I have seen was The War Within, which did show the radicalization of a young Pakistani man as the result of a rendition by the CIA. The film’s goal was not to justify terrorism but it did make the clear argument that bad choices made by the US and its allies can have horrible consequences. Such films may not make us cheer, but they may make us think, which is hardly a bad thing.

On the Evil Question. Understand, I am not saying that there isn’t evil in the world, there clearly is (and yes, sometimes people don’t want to call it that). I will even admit that I initially applauded Bush’s “Axis of Evil” notion, but the reality is, stark views of the world work better in the world of fiction than in the real one and often make it more difficult to accomplish one’s goals. For example: if one of our national goals is to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, then having tagged them as “evil” makes dealing with them a tad difficult. How does one sit down and talk to evil? After all, as Klavan notes, Batman simply pummels evil. Beyond that, if I have called you evil, do you really want to talk to me? And there is the fact that by invading one Axis state (Iraq) we upped the ante on the security dilemma for the Iranians making the acquisition of nuclear weapons even more desirable to them from their point of view. Ultimately we haven’t been well-served by this approach.

In the movies Mordor is an unrepentant, unredeemable place filled with nothing but evil (Sauron, Nazgûl, Orcs and the like). If it is destroyed, nothing good dies; no innocents are harmed. However, the same cannot be said, for example, of North Korea or Iran. Even if one casts Kim Jong Il or Mahmood Ahmejinedad in the Sauron role, the people of those states are as often the victims of their governments rather than the teeming minions of evil. Beyond that, in the movie the destruction of evil is ultimately a fairly simply thing: put Ring A in Volcano B. Sure it was hard to get there, and there was self-sacrifice along the way, but it was still a pretty easy plan. There is no such easy path in the real world, which is why comic books and fantasy novels aren’t particularly good blueprints for foreign policy.

Arthur Silber is, as am I, fascinated by the cult of personality surrounding Barack Obama.  He notes some anecdotal creepy gushing on a local radio show and then

Reactions of this kind to Obama are fairly common. No, they are not this extreme much of the time, but such statements are far from unusual. And many of Obama’s less obviously deluded supporters fall along the same continuum. Take a look at the woozily sentimental, intellectually reprehensible remarks collected at the beginning of “Obama’s Whitewash,” the third excerpt here, and the comments here. Moreover, this kind of reaction — an emotion-driven response utterly devoid of coherent ideational content, a response that leads far too many people to be enthusiastically willing to believe virtually anything that Obama might proclaim and to follow him anywhere — is one that Obama and his campaign explicitly seek to elicit.

People had better wake the hell up, and they had better study some history very damned fast. I have sometimes remarked, and I repeat the warning here, that the twentieth century was a nonstop train of horrors — yet in one sense, the most terrible and horrifying aspect of the twentieth century is that we learned absolutely nothing from it.

Among the horrors of the twentieth century were several notable leaders who initiated events that led to slaughter and destruction on an ungraspably monumental scale. These charismatic leaders evoked a response from their followers almost identical to that called forth by Obama. These leaders specialized in “personal stories of political conversion.” Doesn’t anyone see the connection? Doesn’t anyone remember any of this?

This, incidentally, from a man who can scarcely imagine voting for a Republican.

James Benjamin goes further:

Although I seriously doubt that Obama is the next Hitler, his followers are every bit as authoritarian as those who followed Bush (or Schwarzenegger, as I seem to recall) just a few years ago, and that’s something a despot, a strongman would want.

[...]

I would not be at all surprised if either Obama himself were revealed to be some sort of wild card authoritarian in his own right, and/or numerous of his followers were wild card authoritarians – i.e., those who can pose as “leftists” but once in a position of power begin to crack down on dissent much like the right-wingers we all know and loathe. Obama’s own embrace of warmongers, neoliberals, and of course of the awful FISA bill that is likely destined to pass does not bode well for those who wish to continue arguing that he is “progressive” (whatever that is supposed to mean any more). The behavior by groups of Obama fanatics on some of the community blogs (lots of bully tactics as I recall) and the apparent efforts by Obama partisans to shut down individually run anti-Obama blogs is a relatively mild expression of that authoritarianism; we should keep in mind that we’re still early in the game.

Jesse Taylor believes this line of reasoning has guano-level sanity and snarks, “While he lacks any political element of fascism in his platform, he makes up for it in some people liking him a lot, which is like 60% of fascism anyway.”

Obama is quite possibly the most charismatic politician of my lifetime.  Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton both had superb oratorical skills and charismatic personalities but neither made crowds swoon to the extent Obama does.  John Kennedy was murdered before I was born and it’s hard for me to assess him apart from the strange fascination and conspiracy theories surrounding the assassination plot.  Perhaps Dwight Eisenhower and, certainly, Franklin Roosevelt had it.

Like Silber, it worries me when people get so emotionally involved in their leaders.  I’m not concerned that Obama is going to annex Canada and start the ethnic cleansing of white working class Appalachians and people named Larry;  Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin were evil men, not good ones who went mad with too much power.

Then again, I don’t think that George Bush or Arnold Schwarzenegger (or even Rudy Giuliani) are “authoritarians,” “despots,” or “strongmen,” either.  Executives naturally believe in the rightness of their cause and seek to push the envelope of their power when they’re being thwarted by inconvenient institutions.  Some do so more than others.

The problem with cults of personality in the American experience is it that it furthers our tendency to trust government to take care of us.  FDR was well meaning in constructing the New Deal and the vast machinery of government bureaucracy needed to support it to combat the unique challenges of the Great Depression; unfortunately, the solution long outlasted the crisis.  Similarly, I believe torture, rendition, habeus corpus suspension, the Department of Homeland Security, and the other over-reactions to the 9/11 attacks were well intentioned measures to make us safer.

Both Obama and his opponent, John McCain, have a streak of crusading righteousness in them that leads to a dismissiveness to criticism.  Some of our best and some of our worst presidents have had it.   Fortunately, we have a set of institutions — separation of powers, checks and balances, federalism — and a political culture that make realizing authoritarian ideals difficult.

via memeorandum

The war against Jihadists and Islamo-Fascists has been won; each and every last one of these vermin has been eradicated courtesy of the United States Government. Unfortunately, the victory is quite literally in name only.

The Bush administration has launched a new front in the war on terrorism, this time targeting language. Federal agencies, including the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security and the National Counter Terrorism Center, are telling their people not to describe Islamic extremists as “jihadists” or “mujahedeen,” according to documents obtained by The Associated Press. Lingo like “Islamo-fascism” is out, too.

The reason: Such words may actually boost support for radicals among Arab and Muslim audiences by giving them a veneer of religious credibility or by causing offense to moderates.

For example, while Americans may understand “jihad” to mean “holy war,” it is in fact a broader Islamic concept of the struggle to do good, says the guidance prepared for diplomats and other officials tasked with explaining the war on terror to the public. Similarly, “mujahedeen,” which means those engaged in jihad, must be seen in its broader context. U.S. officials may be “unintentionally portraying terrorists, who lack moral and religious legitimacy, as brave fighters, legitimate soldiers or spokesmen for ordinary Muslims,” says a Homeland Security report. It’s entitled “Terminology to Define the Terrorists: Recommendations from American Muslims.” “Regarding ‘jihad,’ even if it is accurate to reference the term, it may not be strategic because it glamorizes terrorism, imbues terrorists with religious authority they do not have and damages relations with Muslims around the world,” the report says.

Language is critical in the war on terror, says another document, an internal “official use only” memorandum circulating through Washington entitled “Words that Work and Words that Don’t: A Guide for Counterterrorism Communication.”

The memo, originally prepared in March by the Extremist Messaging Branch at the National Counter Terrorism Center, was approved for diplomatic use this week by the State Department, which plans to distribute a version to all U.S. embassies, officials said. “It’s not what you say but what they hear,” the memo says in bold italic lettering, listing 14 points about how to better present the war on terrorism.

“Don’t take the bait,” it says, urging officials not to react when Osama bin Laden or al-Qaida affiliates speak. “We should offer only minimal, if any, response to their messages. When we respond loudly, we raise their prestige in the Muslim world.”

“Don’t compromise our credibility” by using words and phrases that may ascribe benign motives to terrorists.

Some other specifics:

_ “Never use the terms ‘jihadist’ or ‘mujahedeen’ in conversation to describe the terrorists. … Calling our enemies ‘jihadis’ and their movement a global ‘jihad’ unintentionally legitimizes their actions.”

_ “Use the terms ‘violent extremist’ or ‘terrorist.’ Both are widely understood terms that define our enemies appropriately and simultaneously deny them any level of legitimacy.”

_ On the other hand, avoid ill-defined and offensive terminology: “We are communicating with, not confronting, our audiences. Don’t insult or confuse them with pejorative terms such as ‘Islamo-fascism,’ which are considered offensive by many Muslims.”

Michael van der Galien initially thought this was “silly” but came around once he thought about it.

Because I’ve seen this argument unfolding for years, I mostly share the bemusement of Steve Benen, who points out, “it took the Bush administration more than six years to figure this out?” And he’s also right that, “if a President Clinton or President Obama had issued the identical directive to administration officials, what do you want to bet they’d be slammed as politically-correct terrorist coddlers?”

Interestingly, one of the more prominent voices pushing for this policy change was Dave Kilcullen, a key member of David Petraeus’ brain trust, who was touting the need for better language in Small Wars Journal and elsewhere last summer.

Jim Guirard took that message to heart and put out a dictionary of alternative words to use. Some examples:

irhab (eer-HAB) — Arabic for terrorism, thus enabling us to call the al Qaeda-style killers irhabis, irhabists and irhabiyoun rather than the so-called “jihadis” and “jihadists” and “mujahideen” and “shahids” (martyrs) they badly want to be called. (Author’s lament: Here we are, almost six years into a life-and-death War on Terrorism, and most of us do not even know this basic Arabic for terrorism.)

Hirabah (hee-RAH-bah) — Unholy War and forbidden “war against society” or what we would today call crimes against humanity. Among the many al Qaeda-style crimes and sins which constitute this most “unholy war” are such willful, and unrepented transgressions as those enumerated in the next section of this proposed glossary of terms.

mufsiduun (moof-see-DOON) — Islam’s word for evildoers, sinners and corrupters whose criminality and sinfulness, unless ended and sincerely repented, will incur Allah’s ultimate condemnation on Judgment Day; Islam’s optimum antonym for “mujahiddin.”

munafiquun (moon-ah-fee-KOON) — hypocrites to Islam who pretend to be faithful to the Qur’an but who willfully violate many of its basic rules, mandates and prohibitions.

Practically, I don’t see a shift in language this dramatic taking place. And the idea that people who think sawing off the heads of living hostages on video is fine will change their mind because Condi Rice starts calling it irhab and the perpetrators mufsiduun rather than jihadists and butchers strikes me as dubious. If it’s not obvious to you that such conduct is barbaric, I’m not sure that a new lexicon will do the trick.

Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders has debuted a new film that compares Islam to fascism. No rioting has yet ensued.

Iran and Indonesia on Friday condemned a film by a Dutch lawmaker that accuses the Koran of inciting violence, while Dutch Muslim leaders urged restraint.

Islam critic Geert Wilders launched his movie on Thursday evening. Titled “Fitna”, an Arabic term sometimes translated as “strife”, it intersperses images of the September 11, 2001 attacks and other Islamist bombings with quotations from the Koran. The film urges Muslims to tear out “hate-filled” verses from the Koran and starts and finishes with a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammad with a bomb under his turban, originally published in Danish newspapers, accompanied by the sound of ticking. The image ignited violent protests around the world and a boycott of Danish products in 2006. Many Muslims consider any depiction of the Prophet as offensive.

Iran called the film heinous, blasphemous and anti-Islamic and called on European governments to block any further showing. Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation and a former Dutch colony, also condemned the film. “We are of the view that the film has a racist flavor and is an insult to Islam, hidden under the cover of freedom of expression,” a foreign ministry spokesman said. “We call on Indonesian people not to be incited.”

The Dutch Islamic Federation went to court on Friday to try to stop Wilders from comparing Islam to fascism, saying he incited hatred of Muslims. “A substantial number of people will associate Islam only with violence,” lawyer Ejder Kose said.

One wonders where they’re get such an impression? Perhaps this explains it:

Dutch authorities reported a calm night in contrast to the unrest that swept the country after the murder by a militant Islamist in 2004 of Dutch director Theo van Gogh, who made a film accusing Islam of condoning violence against women.

Dutch security officials raised the national risk level to “substantial” this month because of the Wilders film and perceptions of an increased al Qaeda threat. Wilders has been under heavy guard because of Islamist death threats since the murder of director van Gogh. Support for his anti-immigration Freedom Party rose in anticipation of the film to about 10 percent of the vote.

To be sure, there’s a childishness to Wilders’ antics, which are clearly designed to poke a stick at Muslim sensibilities. But the constant rioting and resort to violence at these provocations rather bolster his case.

Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende said in a televised speech on Thursday he rejected Wilders’ views and was pleased by the initial restrained reactions of Dutch Muslim organizations.

The European Union supports the Dutch government’s approach and believes the film serves no purpose other than “inflaming hatred”, the Slovenian EU presidency said in a statement: “The European Union and its member states apply the principle of the freedom of speech which is part of our values and traditions. However, it should be exercised in a spirit of respect for religious and other beliefs and convictions.”

That’s fine so far as it goes. On the other hand, not resorting to criminal violence when films and cartoons irritate you is a minimum requirement of citizenship in a free society, not something which ought bring praise from the prime minister.

And the idea that the EU “supports” freedom of speech by saying that it shouldn’t be exercised in a controversial way makes one wonder if they understand the concept at all. I agree that lumping all Muslims in with the extremists is bad manners, to say nothing of being incorrect. But that’s my view as an individual. It’s problematic when governments and quasi-governmental bodies make these sort of declarations, as it suggests a chilling effect.

Taking a page from Christopher Hitchens’ book, Jim Henley admits that he was right on the Iraq War.

Predicting ahead of time that a given war is a bad idea isn’t particularly hard, frankly. It’s a bimodal choice (War/No War) and wars are almost always “bad” in some sense that would be defensible down the road even if the political objectives used as justification for the war are achieved. Getting it right for the right reasons, though, is much harder and Henley did that.

His prescription for doing so in future cases, though, is a mixed bag.

War is a big deal. It isn’t normal. It’s not something to take up casually. Any war you can describe as “a war of choice” is a crime. War feeds on and feeds the negative passions. It is to be shunned where possible and regretted when not. Various hawks occasionally protested that “of course” they didn’t enjoy war, but they were almost always lying. Anyone who saw invading foreign lands and ruling other countries by force as extraordinary was forearmed against the lies and delusions of the time.

The opener — “War is a big deal. It isn’t normal. It’s not something to take up casually.” — is quite right. Because we have an awesome conventional military advantage over any conceivable opponent, too many people think war is an easy call and should be the first best choice for dealing with bad foreign policy situations. It isn’t.

That said, the extreme conclusion — “Any war you can describe as “a war of choice” is a crime.” — is unjustified. The United States has never fought a war that couldn’t legitimately be called a “war of choice.” Without having chosen war, however, we would not have achieved our independence, ended slavery, of defeated European fascism. Wars are almost always tragic and they seldom produce a short-term gain that exceeds their toll. Sometimes, though, they’re worthwhile.

Had I known what I know now about Iraq’s WMD program, I wouldn’t have supported the invasion. Democracy promotion is not a reason to chose war. The goals we set out to achieve were worthwhile but the odds of reaching them were so slim that it wouldn’t have been worth the cost in blood and treasure to try. Sometimes, though, longshots pay off and, had we managed to quickly replace Saddam with a stable, democratic government, we wouldn’t be having this conversation now.

The pop psychology of “War feeds on and feeds the negative passions. It is to be shunned where possible and regretted when not. Various hawks occasionally protested that “of course” they didn’t enjoy war, but they were almost always lying” strikes me as unworthy of the piece. To be sure, the clinical nature of televised high tech warfare can seem too much like an action movie. And it’s easy to cheer when a building thought to contain Saddam Hussein gets hit by a missile. But it’s silly to suggest that we chose wars for the thrill of it.

The closer — “Anyone who saw invading foreign lands and ruling other countries by force as extraordinary was forearmed against the lies and delusions of the time.” — is essentially just a restatement of the opener. Yes, we should be more skeptical of bold claims of quick, easy victories. Yes, we should be more demanding of answers on exit strategies and contingency options. Yes, we should be skeptical of hype and fight against the emotion of the moment.

I’m not absolutely sure that doing those things would have stopped us from going into Iraq five years ago. We had been, as Jim himself was reminding people more than five years ago, in a state of war with Saddam’s regime since August 1990. There was a longstanding, bipartisan consensus that he was a bad actor, trying to development nuclear weapons, and needed to be removed from power. Despite more than a year of public debate leading up to the war, we ultimately concluded, as evidenced by sweeping votes in both Houses of Congress, that war was our best option.

The initial aim of war — the removal of Saddam’s regime — was achieved much more easily than all but the most naive proponents believed. It was the post-”major combat operations” transition phase that went horribly wrong. That might have happened even if we had done everything right, which we decidedly did not. The planning was inadequate, critical decisions were bungled, and the strength and size of the ensuing insurgency grossly underestimated.

None of the failures in the stabilization operation can be attributed to the lust for violence, the sense that war was business as usual, or the manipulation of Karl Rove and company. Mostly, that’s a combination of hubris and the sweet but misguided sense that people everywhere are just like us and that, liberated from their oppressors, they’ll immediately transform into Sweden.

Goldberg, Kevin Holtsberry, and Steve Dillard take exception to the assertion in my recent post on The Conservative Minority that “the modern Conservative Moment seems to be dominated by the shrill nonsense of Coulter and Jonah Goldberg and Michael Savage and Neil Boortz.”

First, it’s a good sign that conservatives at least recognize that being associated with these people is counterproductive.

As for Goldberg, the inclusion is perhaps too broad. He’s taken over as editor of NRO’s The Corner and he’s one of the more temperate voices there. Stylistically, he’s not a bomb thrower in the mold of Coulter, let alone a flaming nutbag like Savage.

He’s on the list almost exclusively by virtue of his book, Liberal Fascism, and the recent controversy over it. While I get the desire to rebut the notion that Fascism is right-wing phenomenon and therefore somehow comparable to American mainstream conservatism, the argument that American liberals are proto-Fascists is quite silly. The use of inflammatory titles, while an excellent publicity vehicle for selling books, is decidedly unhelpful if one’s purpose is to advance serious argument.

There is, however, a stark difference between Coulter, who seriously argues that liberals are traitors, fascists, or whathaveyou, than cutesy publicity stunts.

There’s been a lot of discussion around the blogosphere about the, um, difficulty some brick-and-mortar bookstores seem to have in ensuring that customers can acquire a copy of Jonah Goldberg’s new book, Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning (Amazon sales rank as of this posting: #6). Prof. Reynolds has posted several reader comments to the effect that they had trouble finding a copy of the book even at large chain stores (and, not infrequently, despite the presence of prominent displays hawking left-wing books).

As it happens, someone gave me a Barnes & Noble gift card for Christmas so, for the first time in a long while, I went to a local B&N over the weekend (I used to work for the best locally-owned bookstore in the city before they gave in and sold out to Borders, which I still patronize almost exclusively when I go to a brick-and-mortar bookstore due to the fact that a number of my former coworkers are still employed there and the selection and service remain as excellent as they were back when). I was considering buying Mr. Goldberg’s book, but had not decided, so I looked for a copy.

And I couldn’t find a single one. Anywhere. I looked in New Nonfiction. Nothing. I looked in Current Affairs. Nothing. Politics. Nothing. General Nonfiction. Nothing. At that point, I gave up.

I’d note, however, that there weren’t any displays heavily promoting books from the “other side,” either. In fact, the (smallish) New Nonfiction table wasn’t even completely covered and no stack on it was more than three or four books deep (the former bookstore employee in me recoils at such negligence).*

So I decided to use my gift card on a gaming book I need. Unable to even find any such books, much less the one I was looking for, I asked for assistance. According to their computer system, the store has a section devoted to the subject. It also believes that the store has copies of several such books on an endcap somewhere. Well, to make a long story less long, the service desk employee not only had no idea what I was talking about, she took me to an unrelated section of the store, and neither of us could find either the alleged section or endcap.** In the end, since they offered free shipping, I ordered the book I wanted to be delivered to my home.

The point of all of this is to underscore that, while there are certainly times that bookstore employees decide to make buying a book of which they disapprove harder (as I can certainly attest happens, having seen it firsthand), it nevertheless behooves one to recall Napoleon’s maxim:

Never ascribe to malice that which can adequately be explained by incompetence.

UPDATE (1/18/08): As of this update, the book’s Amazon.com Sales Rank is #1. Prof. Reynolds is giving credit to all the leftie bloggers who slagged the book without reading it.

UPDATE (1/19/08): Thouroughness demands that I make note of the evidence suggesting that my willingness to ascribe the problem to simple incompetence may have been too generous. It’s possible that incompetence and malice are intertwined here. If, however, the book does indeed debut on the New York Times Bestseller List this week, as rumoured, they’ll have little choice but to stock it. And, per the standard policy of most bookstores, to sell it at a discount.

* [EDIT: For clarity, let me add that this store is about the same physical size as the one in which I worked and in which we carried over 100,000 titles. IOW, they aren't lacking for space. Heck, they have three full shelving units, front and back, of nothing but trade paper manga.]

** Thereby confirming every prejudice I’d ever had about this place since, as an employee of the chain’s local competitor, a customer told me they’d never go back in there after hearing a service desk employee ask another what section would have “Ren-ee Dess-carts’” books in it.

Linda Chavez argues that, of the Republican candidates seeking the presidency, only John McCain and Rudy Giuliani are qualified.

Many of the Republicans, whatever else their appeal, simply don’t have the experience to lead America during wartime. Mitt Romney doesn’t have the gravitas needed; he’s too eager to please, willing to shape his positions according to the polls.

Much the same can be said of Mike Huckabee.

Ron Paul is a bona fide crank. Last week we learned, for example, that he not only opposes the war in Iraq, but that he regards the Civil War as a mistake as well.

And Fred Thompson? He should go back to “Law and Order.”

That’s the entirety of her argument against the rest of the field. Granting the limitations of an 800-word syndicated column, that’s a rather shallow dismissal.

Gravitas was thrown around a lot in the 2000 cycle but it’s a self-fulfilling modifier. If one thinks someone has what it takes to be president, you think he has gravitas; otherwise, you don’t.

That Romney seems to change his positions on major issues in short order, conveniently aligning himself with the electorate to which he’s seeking to appeal, is a much more reasonable basis for rejecting him. It’s rather hard, though, to make that particular charge stick against Huckabee. After all, his positions on many social issues are well to the left of the GOP base.

That Paul is a “crank” is perhaps not a particularly difficult case to make. But the fact that he “opposes the war in Iraq” is hardly a major piece of evidence in that regard; indeed, that puts him decidedly in the American mainstream. And, while I disagree with Paul that quickly ending slavery could have been accomplished by having Uncle Sam simply pay owners for their slaves, the belief that an internecine battle in which over half a million Americans were killed should have been avoided is hardly the height of insanity.

Chavez’ dismissal of Thompson doesn’t even qualify as half-assed. Why, exactly, should he go back to acting?

Indeed, while devoting more time to her two favorites, she doesn’t exactly tell us why she thinks they’re qualified. She thinks we live in a dangerous world and need serious men to lead us. But what makes them serious? She doesn’t say.

Couldn’t one just as easily retort that McCain is an old geezer who’s out of touch with his party? Or that Giuliani is a one-trick pony with a tendency toward fascism?

It’s probably true that most of us ultimately make such judgments at a gut level and apply intellectual reasoning post hoc. We instinctively gravitate towards certain candidates and find ourselves put off by others. But those in the professional punditry business ought at least do us the service of offering up some analysis.

Photo source: Charlie Neibergall/AP.

Monday’s essay by Christopher Hitchens defending the term “Islamofascism” drew quite a bit of blogospheric reaction. Matt Yglesias responds to it with what amounts to a straw man and yet backhandedly makes a valid point.

[The term] provide[s] a spurious patina of unity and sameness to diverse phenomena involving Muslims Behaving Badly so that al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, Iran, Assad, Saddam, Iraqi insurgents, Somali Islamists, plus sundry oppressive folk practices common in portions of the Islamic world like female genital mutilation in parts of Africa, “honor killings” in parts of South Asia, etc. The question to ask ourselves is what, if anything, is accomplished by devising and deploying a term that unites all those phenomena.

No reasonable reading of Hitch’s piece does any such thing. He asks, “Does Bin Ladenism or Salafism or whatever we agree to call it have anything in common with fascism?” and then identifies several characteristics:

• “movements … based on a cult of murderous violence that exalts death and destruction and despises the life of the mind.”

• “hostile to modernity (except when it comes to the pursuit of weapons)”

• “obsessed with real and imagined ‘humiliations’ and thirsty for revenge”

• “chronically infected with the toxin of anti-Jewish paranoia”

• “inclined to leader worship and to the exclusive stress on the power of one great book”

• “a strong commitment to sexual repression—especially to the repression of any sexual “deviance”—and to its counterparts the subordination of the female and contempt for the feminine.”

• “despise art and literature as symptoms of degeneracy and decadence”

While there may be important differences, these factors do make Salafism very similar to Mussolini-Franco-style fascism.

The problem, as Matt’s post illustrates, is that the label “Islamofascism” will be misused and misunderstood, both through legitimate confusion and intentional distortion. Our enemies will use it as further evidence that the West considers Islam as a whole a threat akin to fascism and our friends will use the word lazily in a way that will help fuel this misperception.

Further, there is a lumping together of the domestic policy of pre-modern societies and the much more dangerous attempts to export Salafist theology. It’s the latter, not the former, that should be the focus of Western concern.

In what Universe can Islamofascism Awareness Week be called “racism”?

Oh, I get that the kids who made the flyer don’t understand want to admit that there’s a distinction between someone decrying the theological/political concept “Islamofascism” and the rather more general issue of someone being “Islamophobic.” But the former is not simply a subset of the latter. And, anyway, Islam isn’t a race, it’s a religion — one which happens to be embraced by people of pretty much every racial group.

Even if you were to accept, arguendo, that Islamofascism Awareness Week is an example of Islamophobia,* it isn’t racism. So why even bring that word into it?

UPDATE (James Joyner): I find it amusing, on a variety of levels, that the group in question calls itself “Students for Conservitivo-Fascism Awareness.”

* For the record, I am in agreement with Instapundit Reader Randy Bean: the real “hate speech” here is that directed at YAF.

All signs point to France rejoining NATO’s military structure more than forty years after declaring its independence and kicking the alliance headquarters out of Paris. Norman Polmar provides some background:

France is expected to soon rejoin NATO’s military command after a 40-year absence. The French government withdrew from the NATO military structure in 1966 (although remaining a member of NATO’s political-policy structure). France’s new president, Nicolas Sarkozy, has placed strong emphasis on France’s relationship with the United States. And, he recently declared that he would soon undertake “very strong” initiatives on European defense and give France “its full place” in NATO. Subsequently, Defense Minister Herve Morin said that he was “convinced that European defense will make no progress unless France changes its political behavior within NATO.”

It’s important to recall that, despite notable differences, France has remained a NATO ally:

Despite having withdrawn from the NATO military structure, French naval forces conducted bilateral exercises with other NATO navies, including the U.S. Navy. And, certain U.S.-French weapon agreements were undertaken, especially for upgrading American-built tanker aircraft and ship-launched missiles. The French joined other NATO forces in the Bosnia conflict as well as the 1991 assault on Iraq to free Kuwait, which Iraqi forces had taken over the previous summer.

Although the previous French government was not supportive of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, the French did send forces to Afghanistan. However, earlier this year France withdrew its 200-strong special forces from Afghanistan; those ground troops were participating in the U.S anti-terror operation code-named Enduring Freedom. The then-Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie said, “There is a general reorganization of our [troops].” However, the 1,100 French troops engaged in the separate, NATO-led International Security Assistance Force remain in Afghanistan.

U.S. forces have also worked with French forces in Djibouti in northeast Africa. (Djibouti is a small, impoverished republic just north of the Horn of Africa on the strait of Bab el-Mandeb. It is bordered by Ethiopia, Somalia, and Eritrea, an area of great political and economic turmoil.) The United States has used the French military-air base in Djibouti for several combat and support operations in the region. Indeed, the case can be made that—despite its public stance—the French have been most helpful to several U.S. military activities.

Still, full integration is not only a positive step for Transatlantic relations but significant militarily. And it serves French interests, too, as Denis MacShane explains:

[I]t is hard to see how a sovereign, French-alone geopolitics has helped advance French national interests or made the world safer.

Mitterrand was unable to shape an effective Balkans politics despite huge public pressure in France to stop the Serb siege of Sarajevo and killings of Catholic and Muslim opponents. In the end it was American air power and the ruthless application of Nato military-political diplomacy that stabilised the Balkans.

Jacques Chirac believed he had the magic touch with Arab leaders, whom he endlessly courted. But French soldiers are now bogged down in Lebanon and Afghanistan, unable to move and unwilling to fight. Despite the grand noise of sending French troops to Lebanon after the 2006 conflict with Hezbollah, France has been unable to prevent the flow of arms from Iran and Syria into Lebanon as Islamist forces prepare for another assault on Jews living in Israel.

While the rest of Europe, starting with socialist Spain in the 1980s and followed by post-communist Europe a decade later, scrambled to join the organisation, France maintained its Gaullist indifference to a Nato that was searching for a new role.

Russian officers now work at Nato headquarters in Brussels and Russian MPs outnumber French politicians at the important Nato parliamentary assembly meetings, where top US generals explain their thinking to and take hard questions from European and North American policy-makers.

In the 1960s, America was the supreme military power outside the communist bloc. Today, America is a wounded beast. Its soldiers are surrounded by a growing Islamist enemy in Iraq and Afghanistan. America’s leaders are looked upon with dismay by pro-Americans and with open contempt by much of the political class in Europe.

While many Europeans hanker after the pleasure of soft power, the enemies of democracy have no compunction about using hard power.

Germany is the strongest defender of soft power and refuses to allow her soldiers to do any fighting in Afghanistan. Yet the arrest of German citizens trained by al-Qa’eda in Pakistan and ready to kill fellow Germans en masse shows that for jihadists, Frankfurt is as much a target as London or Madrid. The lack of success of the occupation policies in Iraq is not appeasing Islamist armed violence. The former German foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, called fundamentalist jihadi politics “the new totalitarianism”.

The democracies failed in the 1930s to arm themselves against fascism. After 1945, the lessons were learnt. Nato sent an unmistakable message to Stalinist ideology that on the armed front democracy would defend itself.

De Gaulle had the luxury of pulling France out of Nato because the alliance had already stabilised Europe. Is the new French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, prepared to be as bold as de Gaulle and say the time has come for France to re-enter Nato? It would send the clearest signal possible to the enemies of democracy that the new totalitarianism, to use Fischer’s words, will not pass.

The Cabinet minister Ed Balls has rightly argued in a report just published that Palestinians need economic development. So does every part of the Arab and Muslim world from Morocco to Pakistan.
But economic development will not take place without a defeat of jihadi terrorism. That needs harder power. Nato with France reintegrated can shape a European dimension to a new security policy aimed at helping the elected governments of Afghanistan, Lebanon, and in due course, Pakistan – even Iraq – to defeat their external enemies.

France outside Nato makes the concept of a common European defence policy difficult – if not impossible. France in Nato can take the lead, with Britain, in the long overdue rationalisation of Europe’s military policy, profile and procurement.

[...]

No European nation can alone exercise effective military puissance. A new Nato and a new integrated military unity in Europe would send the enemies of democracy a clear message that they will not win.

While the United Nations Security Council remains the preferred vehicle for collective security, for a whole host of reasons, the requirement for unanimity among its Permanent Members, including authoritarian Russia and China, almost always takes that option off the table. Despite its divisions — especially given its rapid membership expansion — NATO is a far more wieldable tool. The full participation of France would make it a more viable one.

Several days after the story of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Columbia University visit inflamed the blogosphere, professional outrage monger David Horowitz has weighed in. Robert Stacy McCain has the story on the front page of today’s Washington Times.

Columbia University’s invitation to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak at the Ivy League school’s New York City campus tomorrow is a “disgrace,” says conservative author David Horowitz, a Columbia alumnus. “Why are they inviting the Persian Hitler to Columbia?” Mr. Horowitz said in a telephone interview with The Washington Times. “It’s a disgrace. … What Columbia is doing is giving moral support to genocide, and as an alumni, I am deeply ashamed.”

[...]

University President Lee Bollinger has said the Ahmadinejad invitation is in keeping with “Columbia’s long-standing tradition of serving as a major forum for robust debate.”

Naming a list of current and former Bush administration officials, Mr. Horowitz said, “Just ask yourself … do you think any of those people would be invited to Columbia by the president of the university under the pretext of a ‘robust debate?’ ”

Mr. Horowitz, the author of more than 20 books, said he’s never been invited to lecture at Columbia, “certainly not by Lee Bollinger.” Currently promoting the paperback edition of his book “The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America,” Mr. Horowitz said: “There are nine professors from Columbia in my book — that should tell you something. No other university has more than about three.”

Columbia’s invitation to Mr. Ahmadinejad is an example of the current climate at America’s universities, he said. “It shows that these people do not appreciate that we’re in a war,” said Mr. Horowitz, who has promoted legislation and organized a campus group, Students for Academic Freedom, to “end political abuse” at universities. “The curriculum today teaches students to be sympathetic to our enemies.”

The very idea that academics, qua academics, can be “dangerous” is baffling; it does, however, put Horowitz’ views on Ahmadinejad into proper perspective. A February 2006 excerpt at his FrontPage site gives a good taste of his argument. Here’s a sampling:

Not all of the professors depicted in this volume hold views as extreme as Ward Churchill’s, but a disturbing number do. All of them appear to believe that an institution of higher learning is an extension of the political arena, and that scholarly standards can be sacrificed for political ends; others are frank apologists for terrorist agendas, and still others are classroom bigots. The dangers such individuals pose to the academic enterprise extend far beyond their own classrooms. The damage a faculty minority can inflict on an entire academic institution, even in the absence of a scandalous figure like Ward Churchill, was recently demonstrated at Harvard, when President Lawrence Summers was censured – the first such censure in the history of the modern research university in America — because Summers had had the temerity to suggest in a faculty setting an idea that was politically incorrect.

One of the professors profiled in this text, Columbia University’s Todd Gitlin, explained the achievements of faculty radicals in an essay that appeared in 2004. After the Sixties, Gitlin wrote, “all that was left to the Left was to unearth righteous traditions and cultivate them in universities. The much-mocked ‘political correctness’ of the next academic generations was a consolation prize. We lost – we squandered the politics – but won the textbooks.”

Because activists ensconced in programmatic fields like Black Studies and Women’s Studies also teach in traditional departments like History and English ,and influence them as well, the statements by Rorty and Gitlin may actually understate the ways in which a radical left has colonized a significant part of the university system and transformed it to serve its political ends. In September 2005, the American Political Science Association’s annual meeting, for example, featured a panel devoted to the question, “Is It Time To Call It Fascism?” meaning the Bush Administration. Given the vibrant reality of American democracy in the year 2005, this was obviously a political rather than a scholarly agenda.

Only at the margins and taken to an extreme is this sort of thing “dangerous.”

Churchill was, until fired for reasons unrelated to his rantings, an underqualified crank teaching in a bogus “discipline” whose very existence is coalesced around a political agenda. Black Studies and Women’s Studies are, with rare exceptions, ideology masquerading as scholarship. The topics they study are often quite important; my strong preference, however, would be for it to be done within the context of more rigid methodologies within departments of history, sociology, political science, or what have you.

Still, these people aren’t dangerous. Most of us reading and writing blogs are products of the university system and were exposed to these ideas along the way. Most of us rejected them as silly even as 18- and 19-year-olds.

Presumably, the answer to “Is It Time To Call It Fascism?” is No. Is a discussion of presidential power and the limitations on civil liberties in the name of national security a worthwhile endeavor for political scientists? Absolutely.

Todd Gitlin couldn’t be much further from me ideologically. Still, when I taught a Politics of Communications class a dozen years ago, I selected one of his books to use as one of the course texts. He’s a leading scholar in the field and he argues his anti-Establishment perspective very well. I don’t think many of the students came away converted to his way of thinking. They were, however, forced to grapple with some ideas that were otherwise foreign to them and to thus re-examine their own. That’s the essence of a university education.

Unlike Churchill, Gitlin, and the other 108 scholars mentioned in the book, Ahmadinejad is a very dangerous man. He expresses some genuinely evil ideas and has the wherewithal to carry some of them out. The idea of him possessing nuclear weapons is frightening.

But . . . the Persian Hitler?

He is, according to prominent human rights groups, a bad guy.

According to Amnesty International, dissidents who oppose the government non-violently face harassment, torture and execution and the election of Ahmadinejad signaled the defeat of “pro-reform” supporters. According to Human Rights Watch, “[r]espect for basic human rights in Iran, especially freedom of expression and assembly, deteriorated in 2006. The government routinely tortures and mistreats detained dissidents, including through prolonged solitary confinement.”

Human Rights Watch described the source of human rights violations in contemporary Iran as coming from on the one hand the Judiciary, accountable to Ali Khamenei, and on the other to members directly appointed by Ahmadinejad. Again according to Human Rights Watch, “[s]ince President Ahmadinejad came to power, treatment of detainees has worsened in Evin prison as well as in detention centers operated clandestinely by the Judiciary, the Ministry of Information, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.”

Tolerance of public protest varies under Ahmadinejad. Human Rights Watch writes that “[t]he Ahmadinejad government, in a pronounced shift from the policy under former president Mohammed Khatami, has shown no tolerance for peaceful protests and gatherings.”

In January 2006 security forces attacked striking bus drivers in Tehran and detained hundreds. The government refused to recognize the drivers’ independent union or engage in collective bargaining with them. In February government forces attacked a peaceful gathering of Sufi devotees in front of their religious building in Qum to prevent its destruction by the authorities, using tear gas and water cannons to disperse them. In March police and plainclothes agents charged a peaceful assembly of women’s rights activists in Tehran and beat hundreds of women and men who had gathered to commemorate International Women’s Day. In June as women’s rights defenders assembled again in Tehran, security forces beat them with batons, sprayed them with pepper gas, marked the demonstrators with sprayed dye, and took 70 people into custody.

Horrible stuff, surely placing him in the running for Most Despicable Dictator.

On the other hand, Hitler is several rungs up the ladder from him in the standings for Most Despicable Dictator of All Time. Ahmadinejad has not, for example, rounded up and systematically murdered millions of people or launched a world war. Were I Jewish, I’d prefer my foreign leaders calling me names and denying that the Holocaust took place to, say, actually conducting a Holocaust.

Further, as I noted last week, Bollinger has not invited Ahmadinejad to a forum presenting him as a hero. He’s insisted that half the time be alloted to questions and answers, including some rather pointed questions of his own about Ahmadinejad’s policies and outrageous statements.

Do I think Bollinger would love to have Karl Rove or Alberto Gonzales or John Ashcroft or Dick Cheney in for such a forum? Absolutely. He’d do it tomorrow, I’d bet. My guess, however, is that none of them would actually submit themselves to the process.

A University of Florida student was tasered for asking John Kerry a long question.

U.S. Sen. John Kerry’s speech at the University of Florida came to a dramatic close Monday, shortly after a vocal audience member was hauled off by police and shot with a Taser gun. The audience member was preliminarily identified by UF officials as Andrew Meyer, a UF student in the College of Journalism and Communications.

Toward the conclusion of Kerry’s UF forum, Meyer approached an open microphone at the University Auditorium and demanded Kerry answer his questions. The student claimed that University Police Department officers had already threatened to arrest him, and then proceeded to question Kerry about why he didn’t contest the 2004 presidential election and why there had been no moves to impeach President Bush.

A minute or so into what became a combative diatribe, Meyer’s microphone was turned off and officers began trying to physically remove him from the auditorium. Meyer flailed his arms, yelling as police tried to restrain him. He was then pushed to the ground by six officers, at which point Meyer yelled, “What have I done? What I have I done? Get away from me. Get off of me! What did I do? … Help me! Help.” Police threatened to user a Taser on Meyer if he did not “comply,” but he continued to resist being handcuffed. He was then Tased, which prompted him to scream and writhe in pain on the floor of the auditorium.

After the incident, Capt. Jeff Holcomb of the UPD said Meyer had been charged with disrupting a public event and placed in the Alachua County Jail. Holcomb said there would be an investigation into whether the officers used force appropriately, adding that employing a Taser gun would only be justified in a case where there was a threat of physical harm to officers.

Here’s the video:

I’ve been at plenty of these sort of forums and find these idiots who try to take them over by haranguing about some nutty agenda quite annoying. The use of potentially deadly force, however, strikes me as an excessive reaction.

Michelle Malkin has quite a bit of information on this one, including an account from an emailer who claims he was in attendance and notes that Meyer has a reputation for doing outrageous things in order to gain publicity. Still, he looks like a pretty skinny kid and was rather clearly unarmed. You’d think two trained police officers could subdue him without tasers.

Clayton Craymer observes that, “RoboSenator seems to be either completely and utterly unaware of this amazing sequence of events taking place in front of him–or completely and utterly unconcerned about it. Either way, it doesn’t say much for John Kerry.” I can’t tell from the video but it’s quite likely Kerry simply had no clue about the tasering and just figured the nut was screaming to further disrupt the event. Speakers faced with this sort of disruption are generally embarrassed or flustered and tend to respond with either lame attempts at humor or simply pretending it’s not happening.

Ed Driscoll uses the opportunity to get in a nice parody of Kerry:

You know, education, if you make the most of it, if you study hard and you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, uh, you, you can do well. If you don’t, you get zapped by campus security for getting too rowdy during an appearance by a man that some leading historians believe may have once been a candidate for the presidency.

In any event, this speech will surely be seared — seared! — into the kid’s memory.