tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-52788642011-04-21T20:21:45.075-04:00I came here for an argumentOpinions from the extreme center left. E-mail at LMaggitti@AOL.com.Larryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06362180220882903114noreply@blogger.comBlogger361100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5278864.post-1170379870887201192007-02-01T20:17:00.001-05:002007-02-01T20:52:01.916-05:00Read this sobering post by Arthur Silber on the road to war with Iran. My own take on all of this is marginally (but only marginally, and not meaningfully) different from Arthur's. While I think that it's certainly quite possible that, as with Iraq five years ago, the adminstration has already decided to go to war with Iran, come hell or high water, I think that a slightly more likely Larryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06362180220882903114noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5278864.post-1170362433469827332007-02-01T15:39:00.000-05:002007-02-01T15:42:54.076-05:00Glenn Greenwald, one of my new favorite bogs (the blog, of course, isn’t new; my embarrassingly recent appreciation of it is) provides a useful counterpoint to a recent David Brooks column. Shorter Brooks: the Iraq fiasco hasn’t caused the American public and their elected leaders to question the cause of empire. Glenn disagrees.I want to agree with Glenn’s optimism, and I do to some extent. Larryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06362180220882903114noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5278864.post-1170352546819616762007-02-01T12:55:00.000-05:002007-02-01T14:15:08.930-05:00After some delay, I think I’m ready to start posting here. I sort of got distracted by a wasteful little flame war in comments at IOZ.Before going further, I want to comment on that briefly. I don’t hold any real animosity towards those guys, despite the fact that they were real assholes to me. They are, after all, right on the big question, even though I (increasingly) disagree with their ideas Larryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06362180220882903114noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5278864.post-1169310389764971152007-01-20T11:16:00.002-05:002007-01-20T11:45:18.486-05:00Sometimes I almost have more respect for the hawks than so called "moderates." Hawks at least have a vision of the truth to which they are faithful. A monsterous and loathsome vision, of course, but at least a vision.Then you have someone like Richard Cohen. This post by Chris Floyd (via A Tiny Revolution) is a perfect eviscerate of Cohen and his ilk.Reading that post brought to mind this recent Larryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06362180220882903114noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5278864.post-1169258499558300462007-01-19T20:56:00.000-05:002007-01-19T21:17:40.123-05:00So, where am I coming from? In terms of Domestic policy, still center left. In terms of Bush, still ... not a fan, only more so. In terms of the central issue of our age, the war on Terra and associated domestic issues ... well, I've moved a considerable direction towards what may fairly be called an isolationist position. More particularly, and with credit to IOZ, I've become a fan of our first Larryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06362180220882903114noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5278864.post-1169256453308765992007-01-19T20:23:00.000-05:002007-01-19T20:39:24.193-05:00Okay, here I go.I stopped doing this after only two weeks, despite recieving a couple of mentions and some favorable comments from semi-prominent bloggers (yikes, re-reading my blog, I see I had either links or e-mails from Drum, Drezner, and Yglesias - couldn't have asked for a nicer start), because I realized just how much time it would take to do it right. I mean, it's easy to just type out Larryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06362180220882903114noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5278864.post-1169256038870121912007-01-19T20:19:00.000-05:002007-01-19T20:22:51.510-05:00Testing, testing, is this thing on?I'm considering starting this thing again. Almost four years have passed, and there have been many changes, both life changes and in my politics.Larryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06362180220882903114noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5278864.post-933103632003-04-26T16:24:00.000-04:002003-04-26T16:25:59.000-04:00Atrios says that John Lott's done; "Put a Fork in Him," and links to a Tim Lambert post with lots (ahem) of damaging information. But the best evidence that Atrios is right may be this: even Instapundit seems to be abandoning ship.Larryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06362180220882903114noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5278864.post-932947062003-04-26T09:49:00.000-04:002003-04-26T10:12:39.000-04:00I haven't said anything about Rick Santorum's asinine remarks, primarily because just about everyone in the blogosphere, liberals and libertarian leaning conservatives alike, has been all over him, and there isn't much left to say.
One of the few bloggers to rise to Santorum's defense was Clayton Cramer, but several other bloggers have criticized his homophobic defense of Santorum, including Larryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06362180220882903114noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5278864.post-932141712003-04-24T22:06:00.000-04:002003-04-24T22:10:28.000-04:00Another post on books, especially since my first post had at least one interested reader. The books I recommended in my last post were a bit ... well, eclectic. In the future, I plan to focus on a specific theme when I post about books. Today's theme: religion in fiction.
First, a preface. I was raised Catholic, and am now agnostic. However, I don't have the level of hostility towards Larryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06362180220882903114noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5278864.post-932121022003-04-24T21:22:00.000-04:002003-04-26T09:49:40.000-04:00Eugene Volokh writes:HUGH HEWITT SHOW: About to do the debate about whether adult, consensual incest should be illegal on the Hugh Hewitt Show; my opponent will be John Mark Reynolds at Biola University. I was on the show with him once in the past, about the Dini matter, and much enjoyed it.Strange topic - I can understand why people might want to make consensual incest illegal in the nation as aLarryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06362180220882903114noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5278864.post-932105302003-04-24T20:49:00.000-04:002003-04-24T21:22:15.000-04:00This is a profoundly depressing post from Daniel Drezner regarding the situation in Afghanistan. Daniel is no alarmist, and tends to be somewhat optimistic about our prospects for success in the middle east. If you read the post you'll see why his normally optimistic viewpoint is absent. I'm not going to quote from it; you really need to read the whole thing to get the full impact.
It does Larryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06362180220882903114noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5278864.post-932074622003-04-24T19:43:00.000-04:002003-04-24T21:22:31.000-04:00Good new - one of my favorite bloggers, Tacitus, is back. I put him on my blogroll, hoping he'd be back, and my faith has been rewarded. I disagree with Tacitus more often than I agree with him, but I love his site, becuase of his reasonableness, the thoughfulness of his posts, the generally high quality of his comment section, and his humility. Regarding the latter quality, consider the Larryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06362180220882903114noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5278864.post-931210222003-04-23T12:45:00.000-04:002003-04-24T20:55:38.000-04:00More bad news from Iraq; according to the Washington Post, U.S. Planners Surprised by Strength of Iraqi Shiites:As Iraqi Shiite demands for a dominant role in Iraq's future mount, Bush administration officials say they underestimated the Shiites' organizational strength and are unprepared to prevent the rise of an anti-American, Islamic fundamentalist government in the country.There's more. I'm Larryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06362180220882903114noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5278864.post-931055262003-04-23T07:20:00.000-04:002003-04-23T12:49:07.000-04:00I haven't seen much comment on this article from yesterday's New York Times:Acknowledging that Democratic opposition and a revolt among moderate Republicans had forced them to lower their ambitions, Bush administration officials said today that they were considering scaling back President Bush's proposal to eliminate the tax that individual investors pay on stock dividends.Its good news, I Larryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06362180220882903114noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5278864.post-930391402003-04-22T07:04:00.000-04:002003-04-22T07:08:48.000-04:00Check out God Only Knows: Rogue deity must decide which side he is on in Reasononline. Its a bit facile, but an amusing take on the variety of petitions that God must be receiving these days.Larryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06362180220882903114noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5278864.post-930386242003-04-22T06:45:00.000-04:002003-04-23T07:20:20.000-04:00Rumsfield denies plans for permanent bases. From the New York Times:Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld denied today that the United States had plans for establishing permanent military bases in a postwar Iraq, and said such an impression could damage the administration's efforts to pacify and rebuild the nation.Well, he is certainly right about that last point. I'm skeptical of Rumsfield's Larryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06362180220882903114noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5278864.post-929881252003-04-21T12:02:00.000-04:002003-04-22T06:47:56.000-04:00If this Washington Post article is right, the long occupation scenario is looking a lot less likely.
Josh Marshall shares his thoughts on the Post article:The subtext of the whole piece is, "It's gonna cost a lot more than we thought, it looks really complicated, so let's just give them a good running start, send over a few water purifiers, and then get the hell out."
What's so depressing Larryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06362180220882903114noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5278864.post-929315252003-04-20T10:40:00.000-04:002003-04-20T10:46:13.000-04:00A few days ago I commented on this Andrew Bolt column. Roy Edroso has a similar, but much better written, take on it. Scroll down to "'Meme' is a prettier word than 'lie'"; permlink not working.Larryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06362180220882903114noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5278864.post-929281372003-04-20T08:35:00.000-04:002003-04-21T12:06:56.000-04:00Mark Kleiman has an early post mortem of the war. His conclusion:That brings the antiwar folks about even, I'd say. The long-term foreign policy fallout, in the Middle East and elsewhere, remains anyone's guess, though my impression is that it's more likely to be net bad than net good. On the other hand, that the lives of ordinary Iraqis are likely to be much more pleasant over the next ten Larryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06362180220882903114noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5278864.post-929092372003-04-19T20:19:00.000-04:002003-04-20T17:08:42.000-04:00A few days ago I discussed the dilemma of, on the one hand, the need for a fairly long-term occupation of Iraq for a real democracy to take hold, and on the other hand, the fact that we will be viewed as colonialists if we stay too long. Kevin Drum (responding not to my post, but to a Fred Barnes column) thinks that the answer to dilemma is the UN:I suspect there's no really good solution to Larryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06362180220882903114noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5278864.post-928861462003-04-19T09:22:00.000-04:002003-04-19T23:17:08.000-04:00There is nothing really new in this Michael Tomasky piece in TAP on line, but its worth reading on a couple of levels; as a warning that we can't let the right get away with tarring mainstream liberals with the statements and beliefs of the lunatic fringe, and as a call for liberals to keep the pressure on the Bush administration to keep its promises to the Iraqi people:.If members of the Larryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06362180220882903114noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5278864.post-928861172003-04-19T09:21:00.000-04:002003-04-19T09:28:07.000-04:00Post-Pan-Arabism
An optimistic take on the effect of the Iraq war on the pernicious doctrine of Pan-Arabism by Charles Paul Freund in Reason online. I hope he's right.Larryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06362180220882903114noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5278864.post-928731482003-04-19T00:35:00.000-04:002003-04-20T10:51:36.000-04:00And Now For Something Completely Different
Okay, almost a week of blogging, and every post has been about the damn war. I'm depressing even myself. Here are some book recommendations; some of them are pretty obvious choices, but anyone who has missed any of these should get reading immediately:
Fiction
Ian McEwan - Atonement. Almost painful to read at some points, but so well written that its Larryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06362180220882903114noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5278864.post-928664962003-04-18T21:35:00.000-04:002003-04-19T23:15:10.000-04:00I haven't said much about the lack of discoveries of WMD in Iraq, partly because its a bit premature. But I want to comment on this post by Jonah Goldberg. Jonah doesn't think that the antiwar "crowd" will be able to "crow" about it if no WMD are found:Well, just to be clear Alterman and indeed almost all of the antiwar crowd were on record saying they had no doubt that Saddam had WMD. The Larryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06362180220882903114noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5278864.post-928656522003-04-18T21:11:00.000-04:002003-04-18T21:49:52.000-04:00Josh Marshall, after commenting on the protests in Iraq, says something that should be obvious, but apparently isn't:But it should be a sober reminder to everyone that none of this is going to be settled by one day of good or bad photo-ops. The die is cast. Like it or not, the fate of America and Iraq are now fastened together for at least several years. I don't pretend to know how it's going to Larryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06362180220882903114noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5278864.post-928317702003-04-18T07:18:00.000-04:002003-04-18T07:20:15.000-04:00I'm planning a long post expaining why I'm sceptical about the prospect of bringing democracy to Iraq. I'm trying to find something at least a little original to bring to the debate. In any event, my scepticism is based not so much on doubting our intentions to bring democracy to Iraq (I do have some doubts, though to a lesser extent than many people on the left), but more on the difficulty of Larryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06362180220882903114noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5278864.post-927864812003-04-17T12:45:00.000-04:002003-04-18T21:16:17.000-04:00John Cole (Scroll down to "The'Moderate' Left") doesn’t like a recent post from Kos. Now Kos, who I generally like a lot, has been a bit over the top lately, and a few of Cole's points are well taken. Overall, though, it almost looks like Cole read Kos’ post and decided to mock it by putting together a response that was even more over the top and poorly reasoned. His post almost works on that Larryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06362180220882903114noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5278864.post-927503002003-04-16T21:39:00.000-04:002003-04-17T12:44:19.000-04:00What next in Iraq?
Now that the war is pretty much over, opponents of the war need to articulate a vision of what should come next. Yes, not an original thought, but nonetheless true & worth discussing.
My own feeling is that, while I'm opposed to the whole notion of forcibly imposing democracy, now that we are there I'd like to see us leave Iraq with a functioning democracy if possible. I Larryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06362180220882903114noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5278864.post-927241372003-04-16T12:49:00.000-04:002003-04-16T13:02:16.000-04:00Were they wrong?
Andrew Bolt, via Instapundit (yeah, I know I said he was unreadable. So sue me; I guess I'm just a glutton for punishment), wants the anti war left to be "held ... accountable." Bolt’s article is an intersting contrast to the post by Daniel Drezner that I comment on below. Drezner's post is, in my opinion, wrong on some points but basically reasonable. Bolt’s article is ... Larryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06362180220882903114noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5278864.post-926427952003-04-15T07:09:00.000-04:002003-04-16T21:43:12.000-04:00Syria
Jeff Huo, in the comments section to this post by Matthew Yglesias, suggests that we should wait to see if our experiments in forcible imposition of democracy succeed in Iraq and Afghanistan succeed before we consider taking on Syria. He then asks:
"But I ask you again, Matt, the same question I asked earlier; suppose we *can*, despite my doubts, rebuild Iraq by military force into a Larryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06362180220882903114noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5278864.post-926193702003-04-14T21:22:00.000-04:002003-04-15T12:45:31.000-04:00The Neo-con "conspiracy"
Kevin Drum is really on a roll lately, most recently with this post on The Economist and the Neo-con "conspiracy."
It seems to me that one can take the position that the Bush administration hasn't bought into the more extreme version of the neo-con vision, but to suggest that people worried about that vision are some sort of deluded conspiracy theorists is beyond crazy.Larryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06362180220882903114noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5278864.post-926158952003-04-14T20:19:00.000-04:002003-04-14T20:19:32.716-04:00Welcome to anybody coming here from Daniel Drezner's blog; he was gracious enough to link to my discussion of one of his posts. I just got started, so there isn't much content yet, but I expect to have more soon. I haven't decided yet whether I'm going to enable comments; if anyone has any comments, e-mail me at LMaggitti@ AOL.com.Larryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06362180220882903114noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5278864.post-925747282003-04-14T06:33:00.000-04:002003-04-14T21:06:28.000-04:00Glenn's descent into Rush Limbaughism
Great post from Kevin Drum on the transformation of Glenn Reynolds. Glenn lately has been unreadable. I have to disagree with Kevin on one point, though. I never thought Glenn was a model of even-handedness, but his seething hatred for anyone against the war started coming through at the beginning of the war, not afterward. I've always been baffled by Larryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06362180220882903114noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5278864.post-925536252003-04-13T21:28:00.000-04:002003-04-13T21:44:40.000-04:00Let me introduce myself. My name is Larry Maggitti, I'm an attorney in New York City, though I don't plan to blog much on the law. I'll be blogging about the war, politics, and whatever else strike my fancy. My politics, in brief: very liberal on social issues, more moderate on fiscal issues. Mostly in favor of free trade (more so than the Bush administration appears to be), a deficit hawk Larryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06362180220882903114noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5278864.post-925466192003-04-13T18:50:00.000-04:002003-04-14T20:14:55.000-04:00Daniel Drezner has a relatively reasonable, but still flawed, take on the "does victory in Iraq defeat the anti-war arguments?" issue. Daniel agrees "that many of the anti-war arguments had to do with issues beyond the question of how the war would play itself out." However, he identifies three areas in which he says that anti-war arguments have been at least partially disproven by the war: (1)Larryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06362180220882903114noreply@blogger.com0