Today’s Must Read: President Bush polls from his gut and finds “most Americans” support his policies.
I guess I’m an interloper on the Republicans’ presidential primary debate, but I can’t help noticing that they’ve again alighted on the question of whether we should examine the role that our own foreign policy played in setting the stage for the 9/11 attacks. Indeed, whether our foreign policy played any role whatsoever in setting the stage for the attacks.
This is a silly debate in which two entirely distinct questions are intentionally conflated. First, did our pre-9/11 foreign policy play a role in creating 9/11? Of course, it did. Does anyone imagine that 9/11 would have taken place if the US were not the dominant military power in the Middle East? Into that catch-all one can add in the Persian Gulf War, US bases in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf States, US support for Israel, US support for Egypt. Ron Paul is saying that had we pursued a Taftian isolationist foreign policy that 9/11 might well not have happened. And again, that seems undeniable.
This only gets us to the question of whether these were wise policies in the first place and whether they were worth their apparent costs. There’s a big difference between assigning blame and recognizing some cause and effect relationships from our actions in the world. To do otherwise is simply to put more kinds of discussion off limits and fasten us more tightly to our own failed policies. And this is particularly relevant to how we unwind the trap we’ve created in Iraq, with our own presence in the country and to an extent the situation we’ve created quite apart from our presence, becoming a factory of terror for export around the world.
The Romney camp struggles to adjust to the surprisingly good poll numbers he’s been enjoying of late. That and other political news of the day in today’s Election Central Morning Roundup.
“Just the facts, Ma’am.”
Scott Winship sits down at TPMCafe’s Table for One to discuss empiricism in progressive politics.
Democrats continue to hold off on call for special prosecutor in U.S. attorney probe.
A lot of TPMtv viewers have been wondering about those curious logos at the beginning and end of each show: Veracifier and nextnewnetworks. We tell you what they’re all about, and do our best to explain just what exactly that made-up word “veracifier” really means, in today’s episode of TPMtv …
What the other side eats …
From the start of a promotional email from HumanEventsOnline.com …
Someday soon, you might wake up to the call to prayer from a Muslim muezzin. Millions of Europeans already do.
And liberals will still tell you that “diversity is our strength” — while Talibanic enforcers cruise our cities burning books and barber shops… the Supreme Court decides sharia law doesn’t violate the “separation of church and state” … and the Hollywood Left gives up gay rights in favor of the much safer charms of polygamy.
If you think this can’t happen, you haven’t been paying attention, as the hilarious and brilliant Mark Steyn — the most popular conservative columnist in the English-speaking world — shows to devastating effect in his New York Times bestseller, America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It.
Will the media and pundits cede Rudy the appearance of having national security experience based on nothing more than the fact that he was Mayor of New York City on 9/11?
Sure looks that way, if this from The Politico and this from MSNBC are any indication.
Uh oh. Alaskan federal corruption investigation finally touches Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK).
Dissent in the ranks of Milton’s army. 
We’re breaking the rules a bit with this week’s TPMCafe Book Club. We’ve assembling a distinguished group of economists to discuss Christopher Hayes’ feature Nation article “Hip Heterodoxy.”
James Galbraith, Tyler Cowen, Max Sawicky, David Warsh, Diane Coyle, Thomas Palley and Paul Krugman will be joining Hayes to discuss his argument that the field of economics is policed by a neoclassical mafia that creates taboos and enforces boundaries.
Blood will be drawn.