Jay Reding.com

The Iraqi Constitutional Referendum went off incredibly well this weekend, with less violence and more turnout than even the historic January elections. Over 10 million Iraqis went to the polls, and even Sunni regions saw strong turnout - a very positive sign for the future of Iraq. It appears that Salah-al-Din and al-Anbar provinces voted against the Constution, but the Sunni-majority province of Diyala approved it. Nineveh, the province containing the city of Mosul is still being counted, although it appears that the referendum will not be rejected by a margin of two-thirds, the number needed to throw out the Constitution. 3 provinces must reject the document by a larger than two-thirds majority for the process to start over.

The most crucial aspect of all this is the further legitimization of the political process. The Sunnis know that even if the Constitution passes this week, the December elections will give them the chance to further influence it, ensuring that the Sunnis can have the chance to speak out on issues such as federalism and oil revenues. That Great Compromise has helped allay some of the fears of Iraq’s Sunni population, and it appears as though the political process has gained the kind of legitimacy it needs.

The relative peace of the elections also shows how effective Iraqi security and police forces have become. The elections would have provided a very tempting target for mass-casualty attacks, yet the violence this weekend was light. The professionalism and skill of the Iraqi police helped save lives during the elections and kept the terrorists at bay - the level of violence was lower than it was in January.

This second historic election is yet another step towards a functioning Iraqi polity. Despite the naysayers, every measure of life in Iraq is getting better. Electrical production is up. Security is slowly but surely getting better as US and Iraqi forces go on the offense and secure towns along the Euphrates corridor. The political process has gained legitimacy and Iraqi civil society is developing rapidly. Per-capita GDP could reach $3,000 by the end of the year. If Iraq can continue to develop at this rate, Iraq could rapidly become a powerhouse in the region and an exporter of something more crucial than even oil - the idea of democratic civil society.

The disparity between the reality in Iraq and the reporting on Iraq has always been great, but just as the media continues flogging the old “quagmire” meme, in a month of nearly continuous antiterrorist operations along the heart of the Iraqi insurgency, US troops had fewer casualties than nearly any month since the fall of the Hussein regime. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand why the idea that Iraq is a “failure” is so abjectly contradicted by the facts. In the last month and a half US and Iraqi forces - including Iraqi forces acting solely with US air and artillery support - have raided key towns along the Euphrates smuggling corridor in al-Anbar province, capturing and killing hundreds of insurgents and disrupting material and logistical links to terrorist cells in places like Mosul and Baghdad. The political end of the stabilization of Iraq has seen great strides as Sunni leaders embraced the political process and the incredibly difficult issues of the Iraqi Constitution were met not with acrimony and violence, but with negotiation and compromise. The long task of reconstruction has also continued, helping restore key services to areas of Iraq that Saddam utterly neglected for decades.

Restoring a nation that has been battered by decades of totalitarian rule and nearly two decades of continuous warfare is never an easy task - yet both Afghanistan and Iraq have gone from tyranny to nascent democracy in the last four years. For all the consternation about how Bush’s policies in Iraq have been a failure, the results keep showing otherwise. Both countries have now had two successful democratic elections and antidemocratic forces such as the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Iraq continue to be defeated not only on the battlefield, but also in the hearts and minds of the populace.

The road to victory is never an easy one, and any period of democratic development always entails movement of two steps forward, one step back for some time. No doubt there will be hurdles and setbacks along the way, but those who continually argue for failure sadly and utterly fail to understand both the people of the United States and of Iraq.

The nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court is the singular worst decision of the George W. Bush administration. It has split the Republican base from the President in a way that has not happened previously and reinforced the charges of cronyism on the part of his Administration. There’s simply no other way to put it - Miers is the worst possible choice.

Even if Miers were a committed conservative, she does not possess the judicial acumen necessary to be an adequate member of the Supreme Court of the United States. Given that there are many doubts about her views on Constitutional jurisprudence (such as it is), the risks inherent in nominating someone with no practical experience and no real record should have torpedoed the idea instantly.

I must agree with Alexander Hamilton in this case when he made the following argument in the Federalist #76:

To what purpose then require the co-operation of the Senate? I answer, that the necessity of their concurrence would have a powerful, though, in general, a silent operation. It would be an excellent check upon a spirit of favoritism in the President, and would tend greatly to prevent the appointment of unfit characters from State prejudice, from family connection, from personal attachment, or from a view to popularity. In addition to this, it would be an efficacious source of stability in the administration.

The Senate’s role is to “advise and consent” on judicial nominations in the fashion that Hamilton argued. The Senate should not obstruct nominees for partisan political purposes - at the same time they should not provide a rubber stamp to an unqualified nominee.

Unless Harriet Miers demonstrates an undiscovered aptitude on matters of Constitutional law, the Senate of the United States should exercise their Constitutional rights and refuse to confirm the nomination of Ms. Miers. Political concerns must take a back seat to the values of the Republic, and the relationship between Ms. Miers and the President clearly does not allow her to be a dispassionate justice, nor does she possess the kind of understanding of Constitutional law that any member of the Supreme Court should have. Her gender, educational history, or any other side issue is irrelevant. Harriet Miers is simply unfit for office.

For the good of the party, and more importantly for the good of the Republic, the Senate should end this travesty.

Events in Iraq are reaching another turning point as the constitutional referendum approaches. One of the key challenges in Iraq has been getting the Sunni community to accept the legitimacy of the political process. Yesterday, that goal got a major shot in the arm as the largest Sunni political party reached a deal with the Kurds and the Shi’ites. The deal means that the Iraqi parliament has the opportunity to reevaluate the Constitution after the December parliamentary elections. This deal gives the Sunnis incentives to provisionally approve the Constitution in October and vote for more Sunni representatives in the Parliament in December. It’s an important political compromise that will help allay some of the fears of Iraq’s Sunni minority.

The importance of this compromise cannot be understated. The alienation of the Sunni community feeds into the largely-Sunni insurgency which is responsible for much of the anarchy in the Sunni Triangle and al-Anbar Province. The Iraqi people are sick and tired of the constant violence and depravation. They want security, reliable electricity, and opportunity. The insurgency has nothing to offer them but death and continuous strife - and even the Iraqi Sunnis are realizing that the political process is their best shot at keeping their communities safe. Nobody has any interest in having Iraq fall into anarchy. The Sunnis know that the Shi’ites would come after them. The Iraqi Shi’ites are not ethnically or theologically like Iranian Shi’ites and have little love for the Iranians. The Kurds have been the whipping-boys of the Middle East for centuries and don’t want Turkey or another hostile power erasing the many gains they’ve made in Iraqi Kurdistan.

Over a year ago I quoted Samuel Huntington’s work on democratization theory. What is going on in Iraq is part of the process of a state transitioning from absolute autocracy to a representative system of government. Two and a half years ago, Iraq was still under the bootheel of the Hussein regime. Today, they’re a fledgling democracy. The true story of Iraq isn’t what went wrong, but how we managed to achieve what’s been achieved now.

At the same time, we must understand the mind of our enemy. We now know what al-Qaeda’s strategy for Iraq is, and it begins with a US withdrawal. Any withdrawal of US forces would give al-Qaeda the greatest victory it has ever achieved. It is absolutely and completely irresponsible to do such a thing, and any politician advocating that position is advocating us surrendering in the war on terrorism. This is not 2003. The war is done. Saddam is gone. We are now fighting for the independence of Iraq alongside the Iraqi people, and we have the moral and political obligation to finish the job.

The Zawahiri letter makes clear what al-Qaeda’s larger strategy is, but it is also based on al-Qaeda’s fantasy ideology in which they can create a pan-Muslim caliphate under shari’a that will rise up and utterly wipe away the jahiliyya of the West.

As President Bush noted, the goals of al-Qaeda are incompatible with a decent human society. The Zawahiri letter gives us a clearer understanding of how fracture al-Qaeda is after four years of war with the United States. Ayman al-Zawahiri, the #2 man in al-Qaeda is stuck in the mountainous Afghan-Pakistan border, he’s begging his subordinates for cash. He’s cut off from operational planning. He apparently didn’t even know of the London attacks. In other words, we’re winning this war.

Al-Qaeda knew from the beginning where our weaknesses were. They knew that if they could play by the General Giap rules, they could convince the American people to spin a victory into a defeat. They’re playing on our fears, our insecurities, and the hateful partisanship of the left.

The problem with al-Qaeda’s fantasy ideology is that it is a shared fantasy - shared by members of the media and the intelligentsia who think that American cannot, nor should it, win this war. What Orwell called the “objectively pro-fascist” left is alive and well. Is there really any doubt that a George Galloway or a Michael Moore wants the Iraqi people to be truly free? There are many on the far left whose hatred of America itself outweighs their desire to see a free Iraq - should they even have any. There are many on what has become the “mainstream” of the left whose hatred and partisanship would rather have Iraq fall than Bush succeed. For many on the left, this isn’t about Sunnis and Shi’ites, Iraqis and Iranians, Jordan or Syria, democracy or autocracy. This is all about who sits in the White House and Congress in the next election.

That kind of shameful shortsightedness is a greater weapon to al-Qaeda than any suicide bomb. It is precisely that which provides them the wedge they need to achieve a victory in Washington they could never hope to achieve in Baghdad.

The political labels of Democrat or Republican are in the larger sense irrelevant. It is about defeat or victory in a war against a totalitarian ideology. The arguments that are flying around about WMDs and who lied about what are completely irrelevant. It no longer matters whether Saddam had WMDs or not. Right now al-Qaeda is in Iraq, and if Iraq falls, we fall with it. Iraq may or may not have been crucial to the war on terrorism in March of 2003. It is no longer doubtable that it is right now.

We can either fight the battles of 2003 or we can win the war we’re fighting now. We can choose whether or not al-Qaeda’s fantasy ideology comes to pass or not - and if our values mean a damn, we dare not allow that to come to pass.

While Bush is taking a pounding over the nomination of Harriet Miers (and for very good reason, I might add), he also delivered on of his best speeches on the war at the National Endowment for Democracy. While Bush may be taking heat on domestic policy, he hasn’t gone wobbly on the war at all. Bush thankfully understands why a withdrawal from Iraq is a horrible idea:

We know the vision of the radicals because they’ve openly stated it — in videos, and audiotapes, and letters, and declarations, and websites. First, these extremists want to end American and Western influence in the broader Middle East, because we stand for democracy and peace, and stand in the way of their ambitions. Al Qaeda’s leader, Osama bin Laden, has called on Muslims to dedicate, quote, their “resources, sons and money to driving the infidels out of their lands.” Their tactic to meet this goal has been consistent for a quarter-century: They hit us, and expect us to run. They want us to repeat the sad history of Beirut in 1983, and Mogadishu in 1993 — only this time on a larger scale, with greater consequences.

Second, the militant network wants to use the vacuum created by an American retreat to gain control of a country, a base from which to launch attacks and conduct their war against non-radical Muslim governments. Over the past few decades, radicals have specifically targeted Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan, and Jordan for potential takeover. They achieved their goal, for a time, in Afghanistan. Now they’ve set their sights on Iraq. Bin Laden has stated: “The whole world is watching this war and the two adversaries. It’s either victory and glory, or misery and humiliation.” The terrorists regard Iraq as the central front in their war against humanity. And we must recognize Iraq as the central front in our war on terror.

It is currently irrelevant whether or not Iraq was a base of terrorism before 2003 - it most certainly will be if we do not strengthen Iraqi military and political institutions so that they can fight terrorism. We’re coming closer to that end, but it remains the height of irresponsibility to advocate a troop withdrawal that would turn Iraq into a petri dish for terrorism.

President Bush is right on when he describes the psychology of al-Qaeda. When we withdrew from Somalia in 1993 after the bodies of US servicemembers were paraded through the streets of Mogadishu, it made bin Laden and the rest of al-Qaeda believe that the United States was little more than a paper tiger. Yes, we’d launch a few furtive cruise missile raids, but we didn’t have the stomach to put boots on the ground and finish the job. Our invasion of Afghanistan disproved that theory - but now it’s being put to the test in Iraq.

Make no mistake about it: al-Qaeda wants us to leave Iraq. They want the major strategic victory and the massive morale boost it would come from a handful of terrorists defeating the largest military in the world. And like it or not, those who advocate a withdrawal are playing right into the hands of al-Qaeda, willingly or not. Such an action would turn Iraq into an even more dangerous version of Afghanistan and erase everything that we’ve done in the past four years. It is absolutely irresponsible to advocate such a plan of action, and those who do so are deserving of the harshest condemnation.

Bush, to his credit, understands fully that those who argue that this war is unwinnable are wrong. This war is very much unwinnable, and for the first time Bush really elucidates why:

Islamic radicalism, like the ideology of communism, contains inherent contradictions that doom it to failure. By fearing freedom — by distrusting human creativity, and punishing change, and limiting the contributions of half the population — this ideology undermines the very qualities that make human progress possible, and human societies successful. The only thing modern about the militants’ vision is the weapons they want to use against us. The rest of their grim vision is defined by a warped image of the past — a declaration of war on the idea of progress, itself. And whatever lies ahead in the war against this ideology, the outcome is not in doubt: Those who despise freedom and progress have condemned themselves to isolation, decline, and collapse. Because free peoples believe in the future, free peoples will own the future.

Bin Laden’s values are incapable of producing a healthy and productive society. They are incapable of meeting basic human needs. Islamic radicalism is damned by its own internal contradictions, just as Communism was. The oppression of radical Islamism runs counter to the innate human desire to be free and to have the power to effect change. Across the Middle East, the old ideologies of autocracy and stasis are being challenged by a generation that was raised with an increasing understanding of what it is to be free. Like Communism in the 1970s-1980s, some leaders are tentatively embracing change, while others are trying to control it. And like the wave of freedom that swept through the totalitarian states of the Eastern Bloc, a wave of change is sweeping across the Middle East, from Beirut to Tehran, and the old orders will either have to adapt to it or have it sweep them away.

This is the speech Bush should have given a long time ago, and it is unfortunate for him that he waited until now to find his voice and clarify these issues. With the criticisms over FEMA’s response to Hurricane Katrina, the out-of-control levels of government spending, and the nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court, Bush is facing a political firestorm. However many faults the Bush Administration may have, and they are legion at the moment, he is one of the few leaders who possesses a true understanding of our war on terrorism. We cannot afford failure in Iraq, and we have an obligation to finish the job we started. Defeat in Iraq would be defeat in the wider war, and it is time that Bush’s childish critics stopped advocating defeat and working towards doing what we need to achieve victory.

The Washington Post has another piece on how media sensationalism harmed the rescue efforts in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina:

Five weeks after Hurricane Katrina laid waste to New Orleans, some local, state and federal officials have come to believe that exaggerations of mayhem by officials and rumors repeated uncritically in the news media helped slow the response to the disaster and tarnish the image of many of its victims.

Claims of widespread looting, gunfire directed at helicopters and rescuers, homicides, and rapes, including those of “babies” at the Louisiana Superdome, frequently turned out to be overblown, if not completely untrue, officials now say.

The sensational accounts delayed rescue and evacuation efforts already hampered by poor planning and a lack of coordination among local, state and federal agencies. People rushing to the Gulf Coast to fly rescue helicopters or to distribute food, water and other aid steeled themselves for battle. In communities near and far, the seeds were planted that the victims of Katrina should be kept away, or at least handled with extreme caution.

The sensationalistic reporting by the media cost valuable time and potentially lives. It flooded critically important communication channels with unfounded rumors, hampering rescue efforts and confusing first responders. The media’s first goal in an emergency is to get people the right information about where to go and what to do. Instead, the media took any rumor it could get its hands on and spread it uncritically and unthinkingly - which means that horror stories like the 30-40 dead at the Convention Center - stories which were utterly false - were spread as truth across the media.

The story also contains this gem:

“The television stations were reporting that people were literally stepping over bodies and violence was out of control,” said Blanco press secretary Denise Bottcher, who was at the governor’s side. “But the National Guardsmen were saying that what we were seeing on CNN was contradictory to what they were seeing. It didn’t match up.”

That should sound familiar to people who have been paying attention to the real story of the war in Iraq.

It is becoming painfully evident that the media has an agenda, and that agenda has overwhelmed any semblance of journalistic ethics. The media’s hatred of the Bush Administration has shaped the media’s coverage of events, ensuring that most stories in the mainstream media - even ones on unrelated topics - are steeped in an endemic cultural bias. Bloggers have made careers out of pointing out the many transparent examples of media bias, yet the media’s institutional arrogance is causing them to try to hold onto their crumbling worldview despite declining readership and ratings.

In an emergency, accurate information is one of the most important lifesaving tools the average citizen can have. If the media cannot provide that, then the media is only serving to add to the chaos, which is unacceptable. The slipshod reporting that came out of Hurricane Katrina only confirms why the media is one of the least trusted institutions in American society.

The media’s credibility is sinking rapidly, and if the media can’t get the story right without adding their own lurid embellishments when the story is right in our own backyard, why in the world should we trust the media to accurately and fairly tell us of the events in Iraq, Afghanistan, or anywhere else?

President Bush has nominated White House counsel Harriet Miers to replace Sandra Day O’Connor on the Supreme Court. Bush made an excellent choice with Chief Justice Roberts. With this choice, he utterly blew it.

Miers is first and foremost unqualified for the job. She has an extensive list of accomplishments, but none of which qualify her to be an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. She has not served on any of the Federal Circuit Courts. She may have a sharp legal mind, but she doesn’t have the paper trail to prove it.

As a nominee for a Circuit Court, she would have been an acceptable choice. But nominating someone of her limited qualification to the nation’s highest court is a major strategic mistake. The Democrats are out for blood, and the Republicans aren’t going to have much more than lukewarm support for Miers.

Miers is not going to receive much support from conservatives who were hoping for someone in the legal and intellectual mold of a Scalia or a Rehnquist. Instead, we got one brilliant legal mind and one more Souter. The last thing that conservatives want on the Court is another Souter when so many critical legal issues hang in the balance.

Miers is not an adequate nominee, and President Bush has blown it with the base. For their own political good, Republican Senators had better start telling the President to find a more appropriate pick.

Ed Morrissey - Captain’s Quarters:

All that being said, I find this pick mystifying. Miers just turned 60 years old, not exactly ready to retire but potentially giving up at least a decade for the Bush legacy on the Supreme Court. Other women with judicial experience and/or a stronger track record of conservatism could have been found. She didn’t graduate from a top-drawer legal school (SMU), and she didn’t clerk for a highly influential jurist (US District Judge Joe Estes).

Not only does Harriet Miers not look like the best candidate for the job, she doesn’t even look like the best female candidate for the job. If judicial experience is a liability, why not Maureen Mahoney, who is younger, has argued cases at the Supreme Court, and worked within the Deputy Solicitor’s Office after clerking for William Rehnquist? Better yet, why not nominate J. Michael Luttig or Michael McConnell, with their brilliant and scholarly approaches to the law and undeniable qualifications through years of judicial experience? Why not Edith Hollan Jones, if Bush wanted to avoid the confrontation that Janice Rogers Brown would have created?

Miers may make a great stealth candidate, but right now she looks more like a political ploy. Color me disappointed in the first blush.

Power Line - Miers is “a disappointment”:

I’m sure that she is a capable lawyer and a loyal aide to President Bush. But the bottom line is that he had a number of great candidates to choose from, and instead of picking one of them–Luttig, McConnell, Brown, or a number of others–he nominated someone whose only obvious qualification is her relationship with him.

UPDATE: Senator Thune has this to say:

The nomination and confirmation process of Judge Roberts was a fine example of the Senate performing its Constitutional responsibility of advice and consent. Just as Judge Roberts received a fair up-or-down vote after a thorough examination by both Republicans and Democrats, I expect the same treatment for Harriet Miers. However, I will reserve judgment on this nominee until the Senate studies her qualifications. It has been my expectation that President Bush would nominate someone in the mold of Justices Scalia and Thomas and it is my hope that Harriet Miers will prove to be such a person.

I think it’s a prima facie case that Miers does not have the requisite qualifications to be a Supreme Court nominee, but Thune and the rest of the Senate does owe her at least a fair hearing. Sadly for the Republic, I don’t think there’s anything that a fair hearing would reveal that would make her seem any more qualified than she already appears - and there’s a good chance that things will come out that will make her seem less qualified.

Based on a previous job as a lawyer for big entertainment companies, her positions on such important issues as intellectual property law, the DMCA, fair use, and other key issues are likely to be less than palatable. The more I look, the less I see to like. The President blew it, and he blew it bigtime.

After waiting almost three years, I finally saw Serenity last night. I’ve not the time for a full review at the moment, but here’s the short version: Serenity is the best damn space opera I’ve ever seen. It’s better than Star Trek, it’s better than Star Wars. Joss Whedon is one of the best damn writers out there. Some cast members didn’t get much screen time, but every second they had was gold. Everything about this film worked.

More later - but if you haven’t seen this film - even if you never saw a minute of Firefly - you’re missing out on one hell of a great flick.

Serenity is classic space opera. You have your likable rogue for a captain, his intrepid crew, some evil baddies, and a dangerous secret that threatens to tear the universe apart. The difference between Serenity and the rest of the space opera genre is that Serenity is a character piece first and foremost. Joss Whedon has a ear for dialogue that unmatched in the industry, and he uses it to great effect in Serenity. The famous one-liners that made the show such a joy to watch are in abundance in this film, and nearly every character gets one.

Nathan Fillion’s Mal Reynolds is exactly the character that fans of the TV series know and love. His complex blend of loyalty, cynicism, heroism, and independence are all on display. It’s inevitable that Mal will be compared to Han Solo, but Mal is a much more layered and nuanced character. Despite Mal’s nihilism and cynicism, it’s was always made clear that he loves his ship and his crew, and the film shows that as well, especially in some of the more touching moments. Fillion really proves his acting chops in this film, and he is one of the things that holds it together.

And fans of the original series will be in awe of the production values on this film. Serenity is the same ship from the series, but seeing it in all it’s high-definition glory on the big screen is an incredible sight. The sets and production design for this film are spectacular, and every effects shot works in this movie. Unlike other films, Serenity doesn’t rely on special effects - there is some fantastic CGI work from Zoic and Rhythmn and Hues, but they never distract from the core of the story. Unlike other films that have the words “Star” and “Wars” in the title, the character moments never feel like a distracting segueway to the next set piece battle sequence.

The rest of the cast is equally excellent. Alan Tudyk’s Wash has that same sarcastic edge, Gina Torres remains the stoic warrior, Adam Baldwin’s Jayne is still Jayne, Jewel Staite’s Kaylee is thinner, but still cute as a button (and gets the best line of the whole movie), and while Shepherd Book and Inara have left the crew, they still get a chance to effect the plot and have some good character moments.

Sean Maher’s Simon Tam and Summer Glau’s River Tam get a lot of attention in the film, and the mysteries surrounding what the Alliance was trying to do with River is finally revealed - almost right away. But, as always, there’s a catch, and River’s hidden knowledge is the main plot thrust of the movie. Again, both characters are the same as they were on TV, and Summer Glau still has the almost supernatural grace she showed in the series. Although something tells me that Whedon has a bit of a foot fetish…

And Chiewetel Ejiofor is excellent as the sinister Operative who chases the crew. I like him in Dirty Pretty Things, and in Serenity his unnatural calm lends just the right level of creepiness to his character. He makes an excellent foil for Mal throughout the plot, and he makes for exactly the kind of sci-fi bad-ass villian one would expect for a movie of this sort.

I won’t spoil plot points, because there are some huge ones in this movie. The film has plenty of visual nods to the original series, in-jokes that only fans would get, but someone who has never seen the series will not at all be lost in this film. (Although you really should - Firefly is one of the best TV series ever aired, and the pilot is the best TV pilot of all time, hands down.) The film changes the Firefly universe in deep ways, and the revelations in the film are enormous.

Fans of the series will love this film. People who have never seen the series will love this film. People who don’t normally like SF will love this film. It’s not a redefinition of the genre. It doesn’t add anything particularly new to the tried-and-true space opera formula. It does do that formula better than any other film I’ve seen. Serenity doesn’t try to hit you over the head with pop psychology, it doesn’t have pretensions of being more than what it is, but it manages to be something better than the sum of its parts anyhow. The strength of Firefly was always in the way in which the characters were never quite what you thought - and Serenity manages to find that same interplay in its two short hours.

Whedon is a master, and Serenity is an example of a master at the top of his game. It is one of the best movies I’ve seen in some time, and it deserves to be recognized as such.