Syrian Kids Are Good Enough To Kill For, Not Good Enough To Save

On Syria, I have for the last several years stuck to the position that (a) it's an incredibly complicated and delicate situation with many moving parts that (b) doesn't admit to easy or obvious answers. During the Obama administration, I observed that many Republicans seemed to deal with this difficulty by waiting for Obama to tip his hand as to what he would do, so they could immediately and fervently advocate the opposite. This being a bad way to come to one's policy beliefs, I decided I would refrain from making sweeping pronouncements favoring or denouncing either interventionist or non-interventionist activities.

That logic continues to hold with respect to the recent airstrike launched by the Trump administration, done in response to a horrifying chemical weapon attack perpetuated by the Assad regime that yielded some ghastly images of dead or wounded Syrian men, women, and children. I don't think it is something that should evoke strong feelings -- if for no other reason than it was virtually entirely symbolic (the targeted airfield quickly was restored to operational status). In terms of actual, tangible policy towards Syria, the main differences between Trump and Obama can expressed succinctly as follows:

Trump would rather Syrian children die in Syria than survive in the US.

That's all. I suppose you could also say that Trump's wildly oscillating views on whether Assad should stay or go count as a "difference", and it doesn't strike me as implausible that the Trump administration publicly declaring that we no longer wanted Assad out is what emboldened the dictator to launch his chemical strike.

But really, this is the main difference. Syria is a complex, difficult situation, but what's incontestable is that it is producing a refugee population which wants nothing more than to escape the horrifying violence in Syria. The Obama administration wanted to rescue those civilians. The Trump administration insists that they stay in Syria and die. That's the function of the refugee ban. That's Trump's signature policy vis-a-vis Syria. Not a few rockets from a Navy destroyer.

Anyone who is chest-puffing about the toughness of Trump re: Syria who isn't appalled by the refugee ban gets a first-class ticket to my list of people whom I have no interest in listening to on Syria.

That was the main point I wanted to make, but briefly I also want to discuss concerns over the lack of explicit congressional authorization for the strike. The lack of congressional authorization is what deterred Obama from attacking Assad directly, though he did launch airstrikes targeting ISIS in Syria on a regular basis, and in any event Obama previously had attacked Libya without authorization (misgivings over the results of that action no doubt acted to stay Obama's hands when Syria proceeded to flare up). While I'm not opposed to congressional authorization requirements per se, the fact is that Congress virtually never presses the issue and it's therefore been a non-issue for every presidential administration in my lifetime -- used almost exclusively as one-off partisan attacks. Congress, indeed, seems very much to prefer not having the responsibility for authorizing military force rest on its shoulders -- the same voices crowing about how Trump is strong and Obama is weak seemed utterly uninterested in actually getting the Republican Congress to actually commit to voting to endorse such actions.

So I can't bring myself to care about the lack of congressional authorization either way. Presidents of all parties and stripes take actions like this regularly, it is not worse nor better when President Trump does it. Ditto international law issues, where (as Julien Ku wryly observes) everyone thinks the attack on Syria was illegal except for virtually all the governments in the world.

And Nikki Haley's Reputation Was Ruined Forever

The Obama administration struggled when it came to Syria. That struggle was honestly arrived at. It pitted a brutal tyrant, massacring his own people, against a deeply unstable region beset by factionalism (of which ISIS was only the most terrifying), coupled with an America chastened in its ability to effectuate positive regional change at gunpoint from the debacle in Iraq and, more recently, Libya. That is not a cocktail which lends itself to any simple solution.

Of course, some people were less forgiving. Lee Smith at Tablet was brutal in lambasting Obama for his softness on Syria. And perhaps nobody was more viciously targeted than his UN Ambassador, Samantha Power, whom Smith deemed the "Ambassador from Hell." Power had and remained a constant and vocal critic of Assad and his barbaric attacks on civilian populations. But her inability to actually translate such vocalizations into tangible actions aimed at getting Assad out made her into a monster. Syria would be her everlasting shame.

Sadly, as much as some folks might miss it, Obama is no longer the President. Donald Trump occupies the Oval Office, and Nikki Haley is our UN Ambassador. A change of tone in the air? You could say so: Haley just announced that the US no longer cares if Assad stays or goes at all. She's right in line with the rest of the Trump administration -- Sean Spicer lectured the press corps that we needed to accept the "political reality" of Assad's leadership.

Now just to be clear: My opening paragraph continues to reflect my view on Syria. It doesn't become less knotty or nettlesome just because Trump's in office. And while I am (I believe justly) skeptical of the Trump administration's ability to successfully navigate such a delicate and thorny situation, there is no obvious path for Trump to take that one can fairly lambaste him for foregoing.

But Smith clearly didn't agree. He had no hesitation about drawing deep from the rhetorical well, and never assuming complexity when malice would suffice. So can we look forward to blistering editorials about how Nikki Haley is forever tarnished, a tool of genocidaires with the blood of countless Syrians on her hands? Can we expect him to speak of Trump's "deliberate" decisions to allow civilians to die, the better to snuggle up to his pals in Russia?

Color me dubious. Once Obama's gone, it's amazing how passé these hysterics suddenly get.

Our First Jewish President

Harold Pollack, responding to Barack Obama's declaration that no one over the age of eight should ever put ketchup on a hot dog, tweeted #FirstJewishPresident. Really, it just marks him as a man of Chicago.

But it did get me to thinking: In the same vein that people once called Bill Clinton our first Black President, could one say that Barack Obama was our first Jewish President?

In introducing that argument with respect to Bill Clinton, Toni Morrison argued as follows:

After all, Clinton displays almost every trope of blackness: single-parent household, born poor, working-class, saxophone-playing, McDonald’s-and-junk-food-loving boy from Arkansas. And when virtually all the African-American Clinton appointees began, one by one, to disappear, when the President’s body, his privacy, his unpoliced sexuality became the focus of the persecution, when he was metaphorically seized and body-searched, who could gainsay these black men who knew whereof they spoke? The message was clear: “No matter how smart you are, how hard you work, how much coin you earn for us, we will put you in your place or put you out of the place you have somehow, albeit with our permission, achieved. You will be fired from your job, sent away in disgrace, and—who knows?—maybe sentenced and jailed to boot. In short, unless you do as we say (i.e., assimilate at once), your expletives belong to us.

Morrison's argument mixed elements of Clinton's background, his personal style, and the particular way he was targeted and maltreated by his opponents. I think a similar connection can be made between Obama and the Jews.

I noted before he was even elected that Obama seemed to "get", in his bones, the Jewish connection to Zionism in a way that is rare to see among non-Jews. In terms of background, Obama initially rose to prominence through scholastic excellence, most prominently embodied when he was elected President of the Harvard Law Review. His cerebral style -- concerned with argument and persuasion, believing that we can reason our way through problems while being a bit uncomfortable with the back-slapping, good-ol'-boys club mentality of Washington politics -- seems quintessentially Jewish. In terms of how he handles himself, in terms of what he values, and in terms of how he approaches politics, Barack Obama could very easily pass for a Jew.

And then there are the conspiracy theories. Obama's political career has been beset by a series of ever-more ridiculous conspiracy theories. Birtherism is just the tip of the iceberg. We saw Obama launching Jade Helm as a prelude to taking over Texas, Obama seeking to become UN Secretary General in order to take over the world, and of course Obama revealing himself to be the Antichrist and taking over all of human existence. I could go on more or less indefinitely.

This particular form of oppression is very much Jewish in character. A few years ago, I joked that if you ever get "conspiracy theories" as a pub trivia category, you can save time by just putting down "Jews" for every answer -- odds are that, whatever the theory, somebody has pinned it on us. The conspiracy theory may well be the central organizing feature of anti-Semitism, and it may well also be the central distinctive component of the opposition to the Obama presidency -- managing to ramp up even the fevered "Clintons had Vince Foster murdered" pitch that prevailed at the end of the prior Democratic administration. On this front, Barack Obama -- presumed to be at the forefront of every domestic and global calamity, secretly plotting with shadowy cabals and foreign enemies to bring us into ruin -- was very much the first Jew in office

Finally, there's the fact that -- while Obama is overwhelmingly popular among most Jews -- about 25% loudly declare the man utterly detestable. Which is pretty Jewish in its own right, come to think of it.

As the days of the Obama presidency come to a close, I grow ever more impressed by all he accomplished in office, and proud that my community stood firmly and decisively beside him in two successful elections. One day, hopefully in my lifetime, we will have an actual Jewish President, just as we eventually got an actual Black President and how we'll soon (knock on wood) have an actual female President. But until that day, we could do far, far worse than to identify ourselves with the Obama legacy.

Anti-Semitism as Structural and the Iran Deal Debate

Given that three of my last eight posts have been about the question of anti-Semitism as part of the Iran deal debate, it may surprise you that I've actually been reading even more articles which touch on the issue without comment. These include Jonathan Greenblatt (solid piece), Yair Rosenberg (thoughtful), Jon Chait (good except for the title), James Tarento (blech), Matt Duss and Todd Gitlin's rebuttal to that awful Tablet editorial (strong), and Lee Smith's rejoinder (predictably dreadful).

This has been a trying issue for me, since it puts to the teeth one of my lodestone political commitments: namely, that one folks make an "=ism" charge (be it anti-Semitism or anything else), we should take it seriously it not facially dismiss it as opportunistic or made in bad faith. Obviously, and as my previous posts make clear, I find the particular charges leveled here difficult to swallow. But since my aforementioned principle does not contain a "unless I, David Schraub, personally think the charges aren't going to hold water" exception, that's no object. And I will say that I've recognized this tension from moment one and tried to mold my posts according to said principles. While I've certainly been cutting in my responses to Smith in particular, I have endeavored to explain why his allegations are wrong on their substance, rather than simply dismiss them as part of some pattern or practice of opportunistic wolf-crying. There is a difference between rejecting a charge on its merits after engaging with it, and refusing to consider it in the first place, and I've done my best to stay within the former camp.

Take, for example, the "lobbying" question, which has been a core area of contention between myself and people like Smith. My litmus test for discussion here has always been broad by design: Is the challenged behavior plausibly anti-Semitic under a plausible theory of anti-Semitism? That standard is designed to allow for considerable breadth both in matters of theory (what do we think anti-Semitism is?) and interpretation (what is the best reading of the challenged statements?). And I think that "lobbying" does clear that preliminary hurdle for discussion: the practice of demonizing a nefarious Jewish lobby as fundamentally illegitimate and destructive of political discourse is sufficiently embedded in Western culture such that -- when the term is deployed on an issue where Jewish contributions to the debate have high salience -- it is worth at least investigating the possibility of anti-Semitism. Now, as I've made clear, I think the results of that investigation are wholly exonerative: the use of "lobbying" in this debate has been entirely indistinguishable from standard, boilerplate usages of the term across all manner of political discussions, making it infeasible to impute it to anti-Semitism here. But that's how one concludes a discussion, not how one initiates it, and I think it is worthwhile to maintain that discussion.

All that said, I've also realized that I've been baited into having a conversation about anti-Semitism on terms that don't really track how I think the issue should be addressed. All the talk about "dog whistles" (much less Tablet's explicit invocation of white power rallies) casts anti-Semitism in a particular mold: a matter of bad intentions and deliberate (if sometimes sotto voce) deployments. Such debates go to the state of mind of the relevant actor, and determining that is inherently a judgment call. If one thinks of the President as a miserly, underhanded figure who's long displayed hostility to Jewish causes, one will be inclined to impute bad motives. If one thinks of him as someone who has consistently enjoyed the support and friendship of the Jewish community and in turn proven himself time and again to be an ally, by contrast, that inference will sound ridiculous. There isn't much that can be done to resolve that debate.

I also don't think it's a particularly useful frame. While anti-Semitism certainly can take the form of explicit (or implicit) prejudicial attitudes, I think it is better to generally theorize it as a structural phenomenon -- exploring how the grooves of our social practice result in situations where Jewishness is problematized, leveraged against the Jews, or otherwise is blocked off from inclusion in democratic deliberation on full and equal terms. One question I've heard from some folks who, like me, are skeptical that the President is campaigning on anti-Semitism to drum up support for the Iran deal have asked "who is it supposed to appeal to? Who are the gentile fence-sitters who will come around to support the deal once they realize its an opportunity to stick it to those disloyal, warmongering Jews?" But even I, fellow-skeptic, can answer this one: The target of such a campaign isn't the goys, it's the Jews -- namely Jewish Democrats. The point (the argument goes) is to tell those politicians that if they vote against the deal they're among the bad Jews, the disloyal Jews, the one's at the beck and call of a foreign power. You don't want to be a bad Jew, do you? And that argument, which leverages the insecure position Jews have against them, would obviously be anti-Semitic.

Now, one thing we can say about the "bad Jews" argument is that it cuts both ways: for every person saying (explicitly or implicitly) "you're a bad Jew if you vote against the deal", there's someone else saying "you're a bad Jew if you vote for it. You're a Jew-in-name-only, you'll sacrifice your people out of blind loyalty to the Democratic Party, Evangelicals are better Jews than you, you Kapo, you who (in Huckabee's striking words) would lead your fellows straight to the oven doors." This argument is anti-Semitic in in the same way the above one is -- it leverages Jewishness against the Jews -- and to the extent it is being made by folks like Governor Huckabee it is equally condemnable to any Daily Kos cartoon attacking Schumer for dual loyalty. This is one of the great joys of the Jewish condition -- we're always taking it from all sides.

But the larger point is that the "bad Jews" argument doesn't need to be made, to be made. That's not a "dog whistle" argument: I did not write "doesn't need to be made loudly to be made". It doesn't need to be made at all. Even if the President finds this entire line of argument appalling, and has no intention (explicit or implicit) of leveraging it -- it's still there. The grooves of society still place Jews in this precarious position, and so we still feel the pressure to demonstrate that we're true patriots who don't vote on provincial lines (or, for that matter, that we're more than just liberals-with-surnames-containing-"Stein", we're Jews and our progressive politics are reflective, not betrayals, of that identity). That's the point of looking at structural phenomena -- it isn't about bad guys using either racist bullhorns or sneaky dog whistles. Structural anti-Semitism is like potential energy -- the fact that it is there, available to be harnessed at any time, is sufficient to effect the risk calculus and thereby alter behavior.

One important dimension of anti-Semitism is political -- specifically, the idea that Jews dominate politics and use their dominant position to oppress and exclude others. This isn't always a visible problem when Jews aren't advocating anything that steps on the toes of powerful interests, but it becomes a big issue when Jewish political advocacy becomes salient on a sharply divided issue (like the Iran deal). For all our supposed political clout, Jews are very uncomfortable when put in a situation where we're a noticed player in an ongoing and contentious issue, precisely because there is nothing worse for the Jews than being seen as ("being seen as", of course, being a matter of perception that need not match reality) the driving force for a policy that many people sharply oppose (or vice versa).

So it's not surprising at all that many Jews -- no matter their politics -- are uncomfortable with the progression of the Iran deal debate. This is a terrible issue for us, one where "Jewish-identified" issues are placed smack in the middle of a fraught and contentious debate, in a cultural context wherein Jews successfully defending their interests (however conceived) in a contested forum is considered to be proof of a political malfunction. But these problems aren't problems of dog whistles; they're problems of structure. The debate thus far has obscured that important truth, and caused many people to misdirect their fire.

It's Outrageous To Suggest Feeding Tablet Editors To Fire Ants

Tablet Magazine has a sternly-worded editorial which concludes as follows:

We do not accept the idea that Senator Schumer or anyone else is a fair target for racist incitement, anymore than we accept the idea that the basic norms of political discourse in this country do not apply to Jews. Whatever one feels about the merits of the Iran deal, sales techniques that call into question the patriotism of American Jews are examples of bigotry—no matter who does it. On this question, we should all stand in defense of Senator Schumer.

Alas, as has become the norm of Tablet columns in this ilk -- and it is depressing to see the flaw migrate from Lee Smith articles to the editorial board itself -- what's missing in the editorial is any evidence that anybody in the Obama administration (or that matter, anybody at all) has subjected Senator Schumer to "racist incitement". Certainly, the Obama administration has opposed Schumer's opposition -- surely that's not objectionable -- but there is nothing in their comments that is remotely outside the bounds of normal political discourse. Nothing about "dual loyalty" or lack of patriotism, or even the more benign bugaboo complaints about "lobbyists" (and, to reiterate, if complaining that one's opinions are being influenced by big money and lobbyists is an anti-Semitic dog whistle, then every political debate our country has seen in the past half-century has apparently been dominated by neo-Nazis). The absolute worst thing you can find is a tweet by a former Obama staffer "the base won’t support a leader who thought Obamacare was a mistake and wants War with Iran," The "War with Iran" bit might be a cheap shot, but just the normal kind. And aside from that, everything one hears is entirely unremarkable political jostling.

All together, it is remarkably thin gruel. Yet paucity of evidence did not stop Tablet from deploying an orgy of histrionic rhetoric to back up its non-case: "It's the kind of dark, nasty stuff we might expect to hear at a white power rally, not from the President of the United States", "the kind of naked appeal to bigotry and prejudice that would be familiar in the politics of the pre-Civil Rights Era South," "This use of anti-Jewish incitement as a political tool is a sickening new development in American political discourse, and we have heard too much of it lately—some coming, ominously, from our own White House and its representatives." It would be exceptionally lovely if any of these allegations were connected to anything the President actually had said, but it's hard to collect quotes whilst hyperventilating I suppose. "It’s gotten so blatant that even many of us who are generally sympathetic to the administration, and even this deal, have been shaken by it," but not so blatant that one can find a direct quote by the President to back up the case.

All that being said, I certainly do not disagree with the statement that Chuck Schumer should not be subjected to racist incitement of any sort stemming from his opposition to the Iran deal. Since the fact that this hasn't, you know, happened apparently is no bar, allow me to go on the record with a few other non-occurrences which all people of goodwill should sternly oppose:

• Mitch McConnell should not be beaten and left in a ditch.
• It would be grotesque for anyone to call for Nancy Pelosi to be buried neck deep in sand at the low-tide mark.
• Regardless of whether or not you like the Dallas Cowboys, it is uncalled for to demand cleansing the entire state of Texas with a holy fire.
• Jewish representatives who vote for the Iran deal should under no circumstances be forced to parade naked through King's Landing as a condition for entering their synagogues.
• Even if the United States men's boxing program fails yet again to medal at the 2016 Olympics, we absolutely should not reinstate the Roman policy of "decimation" as a punishment.
• No matter how he performs at the next debate, Donald Trump should not be hanged from a noose constructed from his own hair.

No matter what one's views are on the Iran deal, surely we can agree that none of these outrageous actions is tolerable in American society. I look forward to a Tablet editorial devoted to each of them over the coming weeks.

How Many Angels Can One Pinhead Support?

Conspiracy theories are a funny thing. They often start with a small mistake -- an implausible inference elevated to obvious truth, an unremarkable coincidence elevated to a dastardly plot, or just a simple mistake of fact -- and then build elaborate structures of belief upon that basic, but flawed, foundation. Done long enough, the core mistake can be buried under so much debris that it can be difficult to suss out again. But for those who were there from the beginning, it is an amazing thing to watch one tiny miscomprehension spiral into so much more.

A few weeks ago, I remarked on Lee Smith's astounding attempt to convert boilerplate rhetoric by the President against "Washington lobbyists" into an "anti-Semitic dogwhistle" regarding the Iran deal. Smith provided no reason why such generic, and commonplace, language should in this case be read as a sly attack on Jews, and I spotted none in my own analysis. The week following on Facebook, I tackled Smith's next layering of the charge. This time, in addition to bizarrely asserting that the release of Jonathan Pollard was an attempt to tar Jews with "dual loyalty" accusations, he misquoted Secretary of State John Kerry as saying Israel would be "to blame" for the failure of the Iran deal, when in reality he said Israel would be "blamed" for it. While I understand that grammar can be difficult, this is not a small distinction given that the former is dubious while the latter is unquestionably true to anyone who understands how anti-Semitism and Israel interact in international political discourse. But from the initial misplaced inference we now have a pattern for Smith, a pattern so obvious only a blind sheep could miss it.

And so we get to this week's entry, which contends that Obama is targeting three Jewish Democratic Senators -- Ben Cardin of Maryland, Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, and Chuck Schumer of New York -- with "dual loyalty" accusations if they break with the administration on this issue. What's his evidence? A New York Times editorial entitled "Republican Hypocrisy on Iran" that does not ever refer to any of the three putative targets. This is a masterstroke of the genre: the proof that (a) the Obama administration is (b) targeting these three Jewish Senators is a column (a) not authored by the Obama administration that (b) doesn't even allude to the three Senators. Sprinkle in some unsupported talk of an Obama-backed primary challenge to any defectors, and the hysterical assertion that generic urgings that politicians evaluate the deal on its merits rather than be swayed by lobbyists (that word again!) is "'Jew-baiting' of the sort that one might associate with Father Coughlin back in the 1930s," and you've got a column worthy of a 9/11 troofer.

And yet no doubt for Smith each layer, enforces the others, until the whole thing carries an aura of invulnerability unbreachable by simply sniping at this or that element. Isn't it odd that the President would resort to anti-Semitic rhetoric in pursuit of a policy most Jews support? Not odd, says Smith, just even more "perverse". Is it weird that a President supposedly so hostile to Jewish influence would engage so directly with the Jewish community on this issue? Nay, it is merely so he can elevate his "good Jews" (which, to reiterate, is apparently "most of us"). From such tiny scraps such grand conclusions drawn. It's awe-inspiring, in its way. But it's not serious political analysis.

BorkBorkBorkBorkBork

Poor Loretta Lynch. Of course Republicans are going to try and sink her. Or people who share her name. Whatever. It's nothing personal. Does anyone think there is anyone Obama could nominate for his first open cabinet position under this Senate and have it go through smoothly? He could have put up the vengeful ghost of Robert Bork and Republicans would still be baying for a scalp.

Poor Loretta Lynch. I hope she realized that she's the bait to be devoured in the hope that the monster is satiated.

There's the Word I Was Looking For

My general view, and problem, with Bibi Netanyahu is that I think he's a giant political coward whose only interest is in short-term political self-preservation. Jeffrey Goldberg's account of ongoing tensions between Bibi and the Obama administration is interesting in its own right, but particularly valuable in summing up my views of the Israeli Prime Minister in one evocative word: "chickenshit".

Yeah, that sounds about right.

Chaos Muppets

Impeachment is the word of the day, as after faux-scandal after faux-scandal have failed to stick, Republicans have finally found a government act that everyone agrees was an abuse of power (the IRS audits). Now, from what we know if the IRS scandal at this stage talk of impeachment is obviously ludicrous. Nonetheless, Jon Chait argues that Republicans should let the crazy fly.

It's an interesting question, to be honest. Our constitutional system depends on norms to function, and what we've seen these past few years is what happens when these norms start to breakdown -- when it becomes acceptable to try and kneecap entire wings of government by refusing outright to confirm any agency appointees, or to hold the entire economy hostage through the debt ceiling, or, for that matter, by tossing "impeachment" around every time Obama hears a sneeze without saying "God bless you." Our political system (defined crudely as who wins and loses elections), by contrast, is zero-sum -- it doesn't matter how much the American people hate you so long as they hate the other guy more. Chaos, as Littlefinger reminds us, is a ladder, and a calculated decision to sow chaos certainly can end up redounding to one party's benefit. The system is calibrated to respond to people who stay within well-defined borders, and when a player comes along who openly flouts those rules, he can gain a distinct advantage. This is why the Joker is Batman's most dangerous foe -- his behavior defies even those norms which govern how criminals behave.

But that chaos can aid its progenitors does not mean it always will, and the truly chaotic actor is by definition incapable of ceasing setting fires just because its no longer in his interest. The problem for Republicans is that I don't think this is planned chaos. The Clinton impeachment, for example, was obviously farcically weak on its merits, but at least it could be plausibly sold as a political strategy. It turned out to be a bad gambit -- the American people reacted badly, and the GOP was tarred as a bunch of overzealous hypocritical loons -- but they at least could claim that outcome was apparent only with the benefit of hindsight.

By contrast, today it seems quite clear that all the impeachment chatter is not a calculated strategy but simply an uncontrollable reflex. Impeachment was uttered about Solyndra and Fast and Furious. A number of high-profile Republicans have contemplated it for one alleged offense or another. World Net Daily convened a panel to discuss impeaching Obama over no less than a dozen different "scandals" ranging from the Libya war to Cap and Trade. Rob Portman gets elder statesman points for not being ready to commit to impeachment yet.

Republicans were convinced in 2012 that Benghazi was their ticket to victory, and were shocked that American voters didn't seem to think the Obama administration did anything wrong. One could say they've learned nothing. But I think the problem is deeper. The impeachment talk is no longer a political strategy -- its just the raw result of the conservative id flailing about, and Republicans can no longer keep it under control.

AIPAC Won't Object to Hagel

Word in from Peter Beinart is that AIPAC will not oppose former Sen. Chuck Hagel's (R-NE) nomination as Defense Secretary (perhaps Bernard Avishai will issue a retraction? Or perhaps not). Beinart notes that this is consistent with AIPAC's key interest in differentiating itself from the "pro-Israel" far-right (groups like the ECI and RJC), as the worst thing that could possibly happen to Israel's standing in the US is if it became known as a annex of partisan Republicanism. As Jeffrey Goldberg points out, AIPAC is not stupid and has no interest in sacrificing its bipartisan credentials over a nomination fight. In the words of a top AIPAC official, "we don’t deal with nominees. We deal with policies." And from my vantage, anything that puts daylight between AIPAC and the far-right is good news.

In any event, this seems to falsify at least one of two claims: (1) the "Israel Lobby" is indomitable, and no mortal can long resist its wrath, or (2) the "Israel Lobby" can't countenance anyone who registers any sort of criticism of Israel whatsoever. In Hagel, we have someone who has criticized Israel before (and it's worth reiterating that this distinguishes him from precisely nobody who's ever had any opinion on Israel -- including far-right groups like ZOA), and AIPAC is perfectly content to see him confirmed. Despite this, I predict AIPAC's neutrality on this issue will have zero impact on any of the rhetoric surrounding it, because said rhetoric remains untethered from anything AIPAC actually does.

Making Lemons out of Lemonade

This is a very interesting and, in its way, very tragic column by Peter Beinart on the potential nomination of former Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE) as Secretary of State. Beinart starts off by observing that AIPAC is not exactly VP of the Chuck Hagel fan club, which is probably true enough. He then predicts that AIPAC will not publicly oppose Hagel's nomination. Why? Because they "can't win." Hagel has too much support amongst both Democrats and Republicans. Well, ring up another for the supposedly indomitable Israel Lobby. And of course, it's possible that AIPAC won't oppose Hagel because they don't think he's worth opposing.

But moving on -- Beinart does predict that some folks will be pretty vociferously anti-Hagel: the putatively "pro-Israel" groups to AIPAC's right. Groups like the Emergency Committee for Israel, or the Republican Jewish Coalition, or the Washington Free Beacon, will hardly share AIPAC's sense of prudence.

Now, what does Beinart take from this? That AIPAC will have been "outflanked", "look[ing] like the loser in a fight it didn’t want to have." Which is strange, because I see it as "AIPAC consciously putting distance between itself and groups to its right," which is an unabashed gain for the good guys. Indeed, the more that AIPAC views entities like the ECI and company as obstacles to its continued influence and Israel's continued security, the better, since AIPAC still does have plenty of influence and I'd love for some of that clout to go towards taking Noah Pollak down a peg.

But Beinart is too excited at seeing AIPAC in a bind that he's missing an opportunity to take back the center. The way Beinart puts it, any time AIPAC doesn't join the far-right on something Israel-related, it's because it can't, not because it doesn't want to. The group is as right-wing as it possibly can be, and any act that seems more centrist is to be cheered not because it signifies that the lodestone of pro-Israel is tacking center, but because it purportedly signifies that the lodestone of pro-Israel is losing its grip.

And I think that's a mistake. The pro-Israel left may not be best buddies with AIPAC, but they're not preordained to be our adversary either. It is those right-wing groups like the ECI that are the real threat from within the "pro-Israel" camp, and if they're dumb enough to actively marginalize themselves from mainstream organization, you have to take that and run with it.

Just Why Do We Have Employment Discrimination Laws?

A provision in President Obama's proposed American Jobs Act would prohibit employers from discriminating against prospective employees on the grounds that they are currently unemployed. This is in response to reports that some companies are limiting job openings by explicitly turning away job-seekers who are not currently employed elsewhere.

In the Washington Post, Charles Lane takes aim at the proposal, with a hearty concurrence from Jonathan Adler. While I don't have a strong opinion yet on the provision itself (having just learned of it), I have to say I find Lane and Adler to be very unpersuasive critics. Both, in my view, give a short-shrift to the purposes that underlie employment discrimination law -- narrowing its ambition in ways that would not just obviate the need for an "unemployment discrimination" provision, but many other anti-discrimination provisions they claim to support.

Lane makes the case that for some firms in some cases, it is perfectly rational to discriminate on basis of immediate past employment history. For example, a company might prefer a candidate who is up to date on current trends in the industry versus one who would need time to get up to speed. Consequently, we should be reluctant to "assign malicious intent without a lot more specific information", and trust the market to punish firms that do discriminate in an inefficient manner.

Lane's argument could be (and sometimes is) used against all employment discrimination laws (if it's really irrelevant, the market will solve, otherwise, it's rational market choice and should be left alone). Adler at least makes an effort to preserve some of them by analogizing to racial discrimination, where, for much of our nation's history, a company who attempt to hire in a non-discriminatory fashion would be beset by boycotts, intimidation, and violence. Even though racial discrimination is inefficient and race is not relevant to job qualifications, it would persist because no company could break from the status quo and hire racial minorities without incurring huge costs. Employment discrimination laws are justified in such cases to solve a first mover problem (and, notably, companies would prefer such a law to be in place for that very reason).

The first problem with this distinction is that it probably doesn't apply today -- it seems unlikely that in 2011 a company which did hire Blacks would face a coordinated campaign of violence and intimidation as a result -- which means it is hard for Adler to avoid arguing that employment discrimination law as a whole has passed its prime and should be repealed (which maybe he does think, I don't know). But in any event, the second, larger problem is that it doesn't even touch on a different rationale behind employment discrimination laws: that certain sorts of appraisals should be restricted even where they're arguably relevant, either because they're morally inappropriate or because we believe whatever efficiency gains might exist from a free market system are outweighed by the damage done to the discriminated-against group member and general American values of inclusion.

The obvious example on this front is discrimination on basis of disability. One clearly can think of many cases where disability is relevant in an employment decision; and far more where it is isn't so clearly irrelevant so as to demand an inference of "malicious intent". Nonetheless, we bar it anyhow, both because we think the harms it imposes upon the disabled outweigh whatever efficiency gains would manifest from an open market, and because we've made an assessment that such discrimination is morally suspect as a general rule. The ADA, of course, has not been an economic catastrophe -- whatever economic losses it has created by barring "efficient" discrimination we appear happy to absorb as a cost for a more inclusive American society.* Meanwhile, we don't have the ADA because we think employers are malicious -- this is the misleading strawman that tells us that for their to be discrimination, there must be some villain cackling about how much he hates minorities. Not at all -- we often have anti-discrimination laws not because there are evildoers who need to be warded off, but rather because there is a maldistribution of opportunity in our society that we view as unfair.

Now, one element of disability discrimination law (indeed, most employment discrimination provisions -- race is a notable exception) is that if an employer actually can prove that the disability is relevant to bona fide occupational qualification (BFOQ), then that is a valid affirmative defense. So we don't even ban this sort of "efficient discrimination", we just force employers to back it up. This defense apparently is incorporated into the proposed unemployment discrimination provision. Indeed, it appears that provision is stricter still -- barring such discrimination only when it was the sole rationale for the employer decision (thus giving a pass to "mixed motive" cases, where employment status was one reason among others for the employer's decision).

Lane recognizes these caveats but darkly warns that they'll be "endlessly litigated before settled case law emerged" and thus will act as a deterrent to company hiring (Adler concurs). This is unlikely: as noted, the provisions parallel already extant statutory rules in Title VII. Far from being a judicial blank slate, it overlays itself upon anti-discrimination rules that are quite settled and well-known to HR professionals -- they stand out only in that they track the weakest threads of contemporary anti-discrimination law. It would be difficult to imagine a new regulation that would be more easily absorbed by the business community. Adler's assumption that companies will simply avoid hiring people at all for fear of being sued under the new provision seems more than a little melodramatic.

* It is also possible that there is a separate sort of first mover problem being solved here, where it was irrational for any one firm to recalibrate itself to be inclusive towards the disabled but a net utility boost could come once we unlocked the potential of a hitherto underutilized segment of our society. One thing that I think capitalism does very well is that it is adaptable to varying sets of constraints: when a new restriction is imposed, firms don't throw up their hands and give up, they look for new ways to create wealth and utility consistent with the new regime.

Not a "Right of Return" Question, or, Josh Rogin Needs To Read Better

Foreign Policy Magazine blogger Josh Rogin has a piece up announcing "White House: Jewish 'refugees' right of return should be 'on the table'".

I read that, and I was rather shocked. "Right of return" for Jewish refugees? That would be rather bizarre. While there were a little less than a million Jewish refugees forced to flee from their homes in Arab countries during the time surrounding the War of Independence, they've never asked for or desired a "right of return". Rather, there demand has always been for monetary compensation for the property they lost (or that was expropriated from them). This, of course, parallels the generally proposed restitution for Palestinian refugees (that it should come via monetary compensation, not a "right of return" to Israel proper). As JIMENA (Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa) puts it, the Jewish refugees and their descendants don't want to return back to Libya or Yemen or Iraq. "They want the international community to recognize their plight and integrate full compensation of their lost property as part of a final Middle East peace agreement."

So again, it would be very strange and very interesting for someone to ask about a Jewish "right of return", and it would be stranger still for an Obama administration official to say it is "on the table".

Alas, as it turns out, the simplest explanation appears to be the right one here--Rogin just made the entire "right of return" thing up. Here's the "full exchange", as relayed by Mr. Rogin:

"While Palestinian refugees have concerns that are understandable and need to be dealt with in the peace process, there was no reference in the president's speech to the approximately one million Jewish refugees that emerged from the same Middle East conflict. I'm talking about Jews from Arab and Muslim countries who were forced out of their homelands where they had lived for centuries," said B'nai B'rith International Director of Legislative Affairs Eric Fusfield.

"The international community has never acknowledged their rights and their grievances," Fusfield continued, "[C]an the U.S., as the peace process move forward, play a role in advancing the rights and concerns of these Jewish refugee groups and help ensure that as refugee issues are dealt with... that the focus will not just be on one refugee group but on all refugee groups emerging from the same conflict?"

[Obama administration official Ben] Rhodes responded: "Certainly the U.S., in our role, is attuned to all the concerns on both sides to include interests among Israel and others in Jewish refugees, so it is something that would come up in the context of negotiations. And certainly, we believe that ultimately the parties themselves should negotiate this. We can introduce ideas, we can introduce parameters for potential negotiation."

What's missing in that passage? Any mention of a "right of return". It's just not there, Rogin made it up out of whole cloth. I'm not sure why; possibly because he didn't realize there are other ways of "advancing the rights and concerns of these Jewish refugee groups" other than via a "right of return"? That would be weird -- it's not like monetary compensation for historical wrongs is some sort of novel and outlandish proposition. It's frankly baffling how this error was made -- and again, this wasn't a single slip -- he put it in the item title. But whatever -- however it is Rogin went astray, the point is, his post is flatly and flagrantly inaccurate, and needs to be corrected.

I emailed Mr. Rogin informing him of his error earlier today, but I haven't heard back (and he hasn't issued a correction). And in the meantime, since folks on the internet are already making hay over how this is an embarrassment for the Obama administration, it's important to push back against this egregious journalistic error now. Let's be clear -- if an Obama administration official had said this, it would be a grievous mistake. But he didn't say that. This was a case of a journalist completely blowing it, and other folks running with it.

And, as someone who has written before about the history of Jewish refugees from Arab countries and their (typically ignored) claims for restitution, I think it's a terrible thing that -- when a Jewish official (here, from B'nai Brith) finally got that question on the table, and an administration official responded positively to it -- the issue immediately got misrepresented and contorted in a way that only makes it less likely that these people will ever see a dime. Folks like Noah Pollak, who were smugly talking about how there "are no Jewish refugees today", effectively dismiss these people's claims for historical compensation, and betray ignorance of Israel's internal political dynamics, where such restitution is a must-have for certain political parties (notably, Shas) to sign onto any peace deal.

UPDATE: Here was my stab at delineating a just solution for all refugees, a couple years back.

Being Better = Cheating

Shorter Newsreal:

Obama's proposal to let states offer alternative health care plans so long as they "can cover as many people as affordably and comprehensively as the Affordable Care Act does, without increasing the deficit" is a trick, because (unlike single-payer, which meets this requirement handily) every GOP health plan covers fewer people at greater cost. This demonstrates, not that Republicans don't have a serious agenda with respect to health care, nor that single-payer is a good idea, but that Obama is "cheating".

DOJ No Longer Will Defend DOMA

This just out from the DOJ:

In the two years since this Administration took office, the Department of Justice has defended Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act on several occasions in federal court. Each of those cases evaluating Section 3 was considered in jurisdictions in which binding circuit court precedents hold that laws singling out people based on sexual orientation, as DOMA does, are constitutional if there is a rational basis for their enactment. While the President opposes DOMA and believes it should be repealed, the Department has defended it in court because we were able to advance reasonable arguments under that rational basis standard.

Section 3 of DOMA has now been challenged in the Second Circuit, however, which has no established or binding standard for how laws concerning sexual orientation should be treated. In these cases, the Administration faces for the first time the question of whether laws regarding sexual orientation are subject to the more permissive standard of review or whether a more rigorous standard, under which laws targeting minority groups with a history of discrimination are viewed with suspicion by the courts, should apply.

After careful consideration, including a review of my recommendation, the President has concluded that given a number of factors, including a documented history of discrimination, classifications based on sexual orientation should be subject to a more heightened standard of scrutiny. The President has also concluded that Section 3 of DOMA, as applied to legally married same-sex couples, fails to meet that standard and is therefore unconstitutional. Given that conclusion, the President has instructed the Department not to defend the statute in such cases. I fully concur with the President’s determination.

I think this makes sense. It is exceptionally difficult to justify declining heightened scrutiny to gays and lesbians; as my Comment points out, the lack of constitutional protection for GLBT persons is more attributable to the badly inconsistent use of "political power" as an operative element in the Court's tiered-scrutiny jurisprudence than anything that can be truly characterized as a "legal" reason (the DOJ announcement also buttresses my larger claim that the constitutional status of gay legal claims will rise in tandem with their increased political and social clout -- the DOJ explicitly notes both legal and political advances by gay rights forces as part of the reason for its reversal). Where there is explicit precedent -- however bogus -- that anti-gay classifications receive rational basis review, it makes sense to defend the law on that axis. Where that precedent is absent and we are reviewing the law of the legal land untainted, the clearly correct position is that these laws are subject to heightened scrutiny, and cannot survive it.

Who Could It Be?

I saw the headline: "GOPer calls Obama administration 'corrupt'", and immediately guessed "Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA)!"

And, no surprise, I was right!

Apparently, Issa realized he might of stepped too far when he said Obama himself was "corrupt", but still -- let the witch-hunts begin!

Has the President Condemned Marx Yet?

Like Pejman Yousefzadeh and (apparently) the rest of the Jewish community, I'm personally outraged that the Obama Administration has yet to discover time travel, and thus was unable or unwilling "to forcefully speak out against instances of anti-Semitism in the Democratic Party" -- namely, a statement by Rep. James Moran (D-VA) from September 2007 (over a year before President Obama took office). One would think if you're going to have one keynote example of Obama's supposed unwillingness to take on anti-Semitism, it would be a good one -- "good" defined here as "not requiring one to violate the laws of physics."

Shifting tactics from examples of Democratic anti-Semitism that occurred before Obama took office, Mr. Yousefzadeh then turns to examples that don't involve Democrats, also mentioning a collection of anti-Semitic cartoons posted on "progressive blogs". Alas, most of them show up on Indymedia, which, as the name might hint at, isn't associated with the Democratic Party (of course, even if some random yahoo who identifies as a Democrat says something anti-Semitic, that doesn't actually obliged the President to issue a response). Perhaps we can merge the two complaints together and inquire why the President hasn't come out against Lenin?

And don't get me started on the ridiculous double-standard wherein we can impute the President's "unwillingness" to condemn cartoons published on a website that 99% of Americans have never even heard is evidence of his contempt for Jews, but dare mention* racism amongst the Tea Partiers and you're playing the dreaded Race Card.

* Or, since Mr. Yousefzadeh, despite his recitation of Jews' apparent fear that we'll be "tarred as racist by a charismatic president who is a gifted orator," doesn't actually give an example of President Obama calling anybody -- much less a Tea Partier -- racist, have a "supporter" do it. Apparently, Obama's oratorical skills are so great that they transmute onto all the faithful.

Stand By Your Ad, Mark II

Democrats, led by President Obama, are trying to reverse the influence of corporate money on elections in the wake of Citizens United, have hit on some interesting ideas:

One provision would require the chief executive of any company or group that is the main backer of a campaign advertisement to personally appear in television and radio spots to acknowledge the sponsorship, the officials said.

These are akin to the "I'm Barack Obama, and I approve this message" bits you see at the end of every candidate ad, except applied to corporations (and presumably, unions and other such groups). Kevin Drum applies this standard to a California Proposition being pushed by Pacific Gas & Electric designed to force public competitors out of business. The ads, of course, feature "the most reasonable looking soccer mom you've ever laid eyes on, and it's in heavy rotation financed by PG&E's millions." But would they be as effective if the CEO of a massive power company was forced to come on at the end? Maybe not.

Mushrooms Are Pretty

President Obama has issued a revision of when the US will use nuclear weaponry:

Mr. Obama’s strategy is a sharp shift from those of his predecessors and seeks to revamp the nation’s nuclear posture for a new age in which rogue states and terrorist organizations are greater threats than traditional powers like Russia and China. It eliminates much of the ambiguity that has deliberately existed in American nuclear policy since the opening days of the cold war. For the first time, the United States is explicitly committing not to use nuclear weapons against nonnuclear states that are in compliance with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, even if they attacked the United States with biological or chemical weapons or launched a crippling cyberattack. Those threats, Mr. Obama argued, could be deterred with “a series of graded options,” a combination of old and new conventional weapons. “I’m going to preserve all the tools that are necessary in order to make sure that the American people are safe and secure,” he said in the interview in the Oval Office.

For the past half-century, much of the world lived under the shadow of a nuclear threat -- the idea that we were a button-press away from global annihilation. The goal of many was to try and put the nuclear genie back in the bottle -- to forestall what to many seemed like an inevitable trek to self-imposed extinction. Basically, this new policy restricts (to the extent that a positivist statement of policy by an actor empowered to reverse that decision literally whenever he so choices can be a "restriction") the use of our nuclear arsenal to either (a) cases of nuclear attack or (b) states not a part of the NPT. But apparently, a substantial chunk of the population prefers a world where it is entirely unknown whether and when the US will unleash apocalyptic waves of destruction. The person who sent this to me said it made it wonder if Obama should be tried for "treason". Roger Simon inquires "Does he hate us? Does he hate this country?" Meanwhile, actual military policy expert Robert Farley notes that we are perfectly capable of projecting conventional deterrence through our massive conventional arms advantage. The threat to bring nukes to a chemical or biological weapons fight was never credible in the first place, both because of the difference in scale of destruction and because we can sufficiently deter through conventional means. Finally, as Whiskey Fire points out, the whole problem with the new form of threats we face (from terrorist organizations and other NGOs) is that we're skeptical of whether conventional deterrence postures work against them at all, dissipating the defensive force of nuclear weaponry.

Last Chance

Thomas Sowell goes off the deep end in his paranoid delusions about the Obama administration:

The ruthless and corrupt way this bill was forced through Congress on a party-line vote, and in defiance of public opinion, provides a road map for how other "historic" changes can be imposed by Obama, Pelosi and Reid.

What will it matter if Obama's current approval rating is below 50 percent among the current voting public, if he can ram through new legislation to create millions of new voters by granting citizenship to illegal immigrants? That can be enough to make him a two-term President, who can appoint enough Supreme Court justices to rubber-stamp further extensions of his power.

When all these newly minted citizens are rounded up on election night by ethnic organization activists and labor union supporters of the administration, that may be enough to salvage the Democrats' control of Congress as well.

If only we had launched a military coup like you recommended last time, Sowell! Now, having seen a bill passed by Congress (shudder) and facing the prospect of voters voting (oh noes!), we're really caught on the edge of the precipice.