Archive for 2004
Radley Balko has a number of things to say in response to my original post, calling libertarian foreign policy “pacifism combined with isolationism” and calling libertarians not “serious” in the area.
So, first off, the pacifism and isolationism comment was, admittedly, a bit of hyperbole. But, I don’t give libertarians all that much credit — as Balko does — for supporting the Afghanistan invasion. Aside from a few true nuts, no one at that time, right after 9/11, was arguing that we shouldn’t invade. However, last year, Cato began urging that we cut out of Afghanistan — right as our efforts to stabilize the country were paving the way for a big payoff: the election that went off without a hitch this October.
As for the question of libertarianism and seriousness, Balko decided to take this comment as an invitation to reargue whether America should have invaded Iraq, pulling out quotes from the administration about how easy the invasion would be and how we’d be greeted as liberators and then contrasting those to the “serious” assessments from Cato types about how tough the war would be.
Fair enough, so far as it goes — though my point was that libertarians don’t have anything serious to say about the War on Terror going forward (not that they didn’t have any legitimate concerns before the war).
Still, to fight fire with fire a bit:
* Balko favorably quotes William Niskanen as saying, “American popular support may not be sufficient to prosecute a sustained war against Saddam.” Which part of this was prescient? That removing Saddam would be a protracted affair (the insurgency being a different matter)? Or that the American people would quickly turn tail (which they did not do on Nov. 2)? I just don’t get this one.
* Balko also quotes Christopher Preble as complaining that nation-building in Germany and Japan was a waste because we still have some troops there and “this lingering troop presence has given rise to a virulent anti-Americanism.” I’ll take German-style anti-Americanism any day over the status quo ante.
And speaking of bad predictions:
* Writing about going into Afghanistan in October of 2001, Cato’s David Boaz — my old boss — wrote: “It won’t be an easy task; the Soviet Union learned that in a nightmare decade.” Hey, it wasn’t an unreasonable concern — but nor were some of the optimistic scenarios for Iraq all that unreasonable, given the reception we had just received in Afghanistan.
We can all have fun picking out quotes. But it just reinforces my assertion that all libertarians seem to have to say these days is, “It ain’t our problem.”
Julian Sanchez has a good response to the arguments I’ve been making this week, posted here.
He makes the pivot that I am trying to encourage libertarians to make as to what they have to offer that’s positive in the War on Terror.
So far his answer seems to be: not much. And that’s fine. I don’t have the answer to that question yet either.
But I’m going to have more thoughts on it in a Tech Central Station piece on Friday. So stay tuned.
One more commenter who agrees with me, before I get to bed very late.
Matthew Vadum writes:
I’m more or less a libertarian and can confidently say that libertarians generally have nothing to say on foreign policy that’s worth listening to. They just don’t understand it. They think their ideology is a substitute for a knowledge of history.
I report, you decide.
Commenter Justin has this to say:
To the extent that you’ve put forth an argument here, it’s a straw man. No one I hear talks of “pacifism” or a refusal to go to war. Cato’s scholars defended the invasion of Afghanistan, which would run against pacifist principles. And “isolationism” is a comfortable epithet for those who want to send other people’s children off to die on a crusade, but I would prefer to label opposition to the Iraq war as prudence. Take a glance at any of the “MSM” these days, and you’ll see what interventionism brings. Freedom, unfortunately, is not on the march.
You can’t pursue our current course of foreign policy without the sorts of anti-libertarian measures at home that you lament. You unfortunately think each can be assessed and conducted in isolation of the other. Curbs on civil liberties, if one insists on inflaming public opinion among one-sixth of the world’s citizens, will necessarily be forthcoming.
And fighting encroachments on U.S. economic strength, I would argue, is not best served by extracting $200 billion for a military occupation in a land that presented no threat to U.S. national security.
Also, I’m not sure whether you derive your libertarianism from an antiseptic consequentialism or if you believe in any conception of rights, but if it’s the latter, I hope your libertarianism would tell you something about the justice in killing ten or twenty thousand innocent people who did nothing to provoke being attacked. I don’t think that necessarily amounts to “pacifism,” as you seem to charge it does.
If you’re a consequentialist, you presumably object to the postal service because you believe that the government is so incompetent that it can’t effectively deliver the mail. Simultaneously, however, you seem to believe that a massive social engineering project to overhaul the social fabric of a millenia-old culture is well within “the West’s” grasp. If you can reconcile those positions, I’d be interested to hear it.
And I’m not sure who or what you’re likening to Michael Moore, but that would also be interesting to hear.
The commenter here makes a number of points. To address just a few…
Firstly, I don’t accept the idea that just because a person, or group of people, supported the war in Afghanistan that that support exempts them from being charged with pacifism (a term I am obviously using loosely, and perhaps too loosely) or isolationism, generally. There is hardly a person alive (though I say hardly because I have met such people) who would say that America should not have — or didn’t have the right to have — invaded Afghanistan. When a terrorist group allied with a country’s government kills 3,000 American civilians, there is not even a question as to whether or not you respond with force.
The question facing America after Afghanistan was what else do we do to confront the threat of global terrorism. Stopping at Afghanistan — whether or not the next step was invading Iraq — would not have been a wise choice.
Secondly, and lastly, the commenter asks me how I can find the federal government too incompetent to deliver the mail, yet trust it to spread democracy. Well, I am all for postal privatization, but, you know what — the mail, ultimately, does get delivered.
Likewise, the federal government has spread democracy in the world quite successfully in the past — and it is one of America’s proudest achievements. Germany and Japan, rebuilt and reborn after World War II. Eastern Europe, now liberated from Communism. And now, Afghanistan, starting down the path toward democracy.
Has the sacrifice in Afghanistan, small in both blood and treasure, not been worth it? Would libertarians prefer a world with the Taliban?
In short, there are other people who can deliver the mail. For now, only we can deliver democracy.
Commenter S.S., at Julian Sanchez’s blog, has this to say (one of my few defenders — what can I say, I’ve pissed a few people off here):
Once again, the problem with libertarianism is the Libertarian Party.
Too many LP candidates, who get presumptive “speaker for the movement” status in the popular press, have had a moonbat [stance of] pacifism/isolationism.
[That’s] coupled with the fact that libertarian thinking on foreign relations has, until 9/11, been relegated to largely “we hates Commies,” “bring the troops home,” and “international trade is good.”
Especially when you compare it to the depth of thought that, say driver’s licenses, taxi licensing policy, welfare, federal deficit spending, drug policy, and so on have received.
The difference is fairly stark. Reason has made a start in the latter problem, but the former remains as of this past election.
This gets at the problem. Libertarians are so fascinated with domestic policy, and minutiae generally — and I, truly, am as guilty as anyone here at times — that we have a hard time turning our attention to the big, complicated, messy problems of the world. I think it’s largely because on many domestic issues we believe we have really, really good ideas that could actually help solve problems. Abroad, things look more hopeless, so, often, we don’t even want to engage.
Does the first lady know about this?
I’ve been getting e-mails saying that the new secretary of education, Margaret Spellings, is a fox. So: I report, you decide.
(The president certainly seems to have made his decision.)
With all of the speculation about who Time magazine will pick as their “man — I mean person/concept/machine — of the year,” everyone’s overlooked the obvious choice.
It just seems to be his year.
Thanks to everyone who’s been sending in great responses to the debate on the future of libertarianism. I’ll post some more soon, with some short thoughts attached. I can’t print them all, unfortunately, but it’s all very illuminating.
The responses on the future of libertarianism have been great, and I’ll keep posting the interesting ones, along with comment.
Again, you can e-mail: editor@rhsager.com.
What’s this idea showing up everywhere that somehow Bush should be appointing cabinet members who disagree with him?
What?
I know it’s supposed to make him look afraid of dissent and all, but it looks like efficient management to me.
As always, Hillel Halkin has a thoughtful column on Israel and the Palestinian Arabs in The New York Sun:
A leadership headed by a man who calls the intimidating murder of two of his bodyguards “unintentional shooting in the air” is not going to be able to achieve either of these things. It will not have the will to impose law and order on gunmen and suicide bomb dispatchers within its own ranks, let alone on those belonging to opposition organizations like the Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and it will not have the ability to renounce the extreme negotiating positions that the holders of the guns espouse.
Nor is it just the holders of the guns who espouse them. Much of the Palestinian street does, too. If the Palestinian Authority holds the democratic elections it has promised, not just to choose Arafat’s heir, but also to elect a new Palestinian Legislative Council, the current members of which have been serving since 1996, this will not be a body disposed to compromises with Israel.
Arafat’s legacy lives on in death — his own and those of his victims, both Israeli and Palestinian.
Commenter Kevin B. O’Reilly writes:
Mr. Sager, your position doesn’t make any sense. First, Reason has clearly become more of a cultural affairs magazine and less of a policy primer. I don’t think it ever has had much luck with policy types in D.C. Certainly, their foreign policy coverage is limited.
Second, I don’t think it’s fair to characterize Cato’s writings on the Iraq war and the war on terrorism as endless bitching. You may disagree with their prescription — which is to focus on actual, not hypothetical threats, while reducing unnecessary military engagements in the Middle East and around the world — but it’s a fully-formed critique with a carefully outlined alternative.
Third, there’s not much evidence to show that Cato’s stance on the Dubya’s Iraq misadventure has weakened its hand in other areas. Cato has long been one of the leading proponents of Social Security choice and tax simplification, two of Dubya’s priorities for a second term.
Last, someone of a different political persuasion could easily argue that Cato — or any libertarian think tank — ought to surrender, say, its stubborn insistence on ending the drug war or opposing the most heinous elements of the Patriot Act. This argument only flies if one accepts the proposition that the critique of the libertarian position is correct *or* giving up the position would in any way advance the libertarian agenda in other areas.
All fair points, I’d say, and some of them were addressed below in my response to Julian Sanchez.
I’ll argue only with your last point. While libertarian positions on domestic topics like the drug war are the logical outcome of a coherent belief system, there’s nothing in libertarianism that provides much inherent guidance on foreign policy. It’s not unreasonable to talk about shifting the movement’s default stance away from pacifism and toward a strong defense.
Commenter Anthony F. Lewis writes:
The pacifist position of the Libertarian Party is irrational in today’s world. In a strained effort to appear consistent (i.e. proponents of a “non-coercive” government) the party has adopted a foreign policy position that has solidified its position as a philosophical debating society, not as a political party with real-world aspirations of holding power some day.
If you consider most of the Founding Fathers to be libertarians, you have to also consider that they had no trouble fighting for their beliefs.
Interesting point. I’d say, however, that much like libertarianism as a philosophy, the wisdom of the founding fathers (on which I rely in almost all other endeavors, including buggy repair) has little to tell us about foreign policy today.
The position of a small, vulnerable set of former colonies in danger of being ripped apart or swallowed by any number of world powers is simply too far removed from that of the world’s only superpower to bear much comparison or analogizing.
Reader J.S. writes:
I was a libertarian … until 9/11. Then I became a patriot, while the libertarian leadership ran arm-in-arm with the Michael Moores.
Add their self-destructive attitude about immigration, and I’ve come to the conclusion that libertarians value principle over common sense.
If there was a party of libertarian hawks, I would jump at the chance.
While I disagree with any implication that the libertarian leadership — or even Michael Moore, though that’s a closer case — is unpatriotic, this isn’t an uncommon view these days. I see it a lot with people writing in to The Post. (I also think immigration is a bogus issue as re terrorism, but that’s a can of worms for another day.)
Reader T.C. writes:
As libertarian Republican I am indeed concerned about the future of the libertarian movement. I never cease to be amazed at the political naiveté of those who support the
Libertarian Party.The LP has achieved absolutely nothing except to have helped to elect several liberal Democrats who would very likely have lost but for the presence of an LP candidate to take away votes from the Republican candidate.
Libertarians could do far more for the cause of limited government and free markets if they would work within the Republican Party and help to elect conservative candidates.
While many conservatives leave a lot to be desired from the libertarian perspective, the vast majority of conservative officeholders are with us on far more issues than the leftwing Democrats who would otherwise be elected.
Libertarians have to grow up and recognize that politics is a serious business not to be trifled with.
A common view. But how well does it hold up given the Bush assault on gays and civil liberties?
Reason’s Julian Sanchez responds to my original post as follows:
Now, usually, the charges of “pacifism” and “isolationism” come from people whose conception of the live policy option consists of a stark choice between full-blown invasions on the one hand and docile acquiescence to the implementation of Shariah in the U.S. on the other. It is, at any rate, a profoundly silly inference from opposition to the war in Iraq, which is really the most one can gather from Cato or Reason, both of which (to the extent Reason takes institutional positions… which is minimal) supported the actions in Afghanistan. As I recall, the purportedly isolationist argument against action in Iraq involved the (now clearly enough accurate) observation that it would be both a distraction from and a drain upon efforts to consolidate the power of the new regime in Afghanistan and neutralize it as an Al Qaeda base of operations.
The alternative to war isn’t pacifism, it’s the boring but notably less catastrophic project of squeezing your existing enemies without unnecessarily creating new ones through the kind of “isolationist” international cooperation that the Iraq war has made so much more difficult. And while I think “clash of civilizations” rhetoric buys too much into Bin Laden & company’s eschatological conception of what’s going on, it’s truly startling that someone who so fully endorses it would simultaneously see the battle as one to be won primarily through crude force of arms rather than the slower but more necessary process of selling western liberalism in the Muslim world.
Now, first of all, I don’t in any way see the choice facing America as one between “full-blown invasion” and “docile acquiescence to the implementation of Shariah in the U.S.”
But, of course, we both know we’re dealing with hyperbole.
The point, however, is this: While I admit that the case for going to war in Iraq was not clear cut in 2002-2003, and people of good will and good judgment had their differences on the issue, everything changed after the decision to invade was made.
It is in the debate now that I am accusing much of the libertarian community of being less than constructive (and politically self-destructive). Much like the far left, libertarians have largely either thrown up their hands and said “Not our problem, we didn’t start it!” or called, more or less, for America to cut and run.
For an example of the first approach, I would ask readers to conduct the following non-scientific experiment: Go to Reason’s Web page — main page — and find a piece of analysis that deals with Iraq not as a political issue, but as a policy issue.
It’s not impossible. You’ll find Jeff Taylor’s piece on “The Pentagon’s ongoing manpower crunch.” Fine. And then … well, I could be missing a piece or two out of the extensive contents listed there (it’s late and I’ve had some long nights recently), but this is slim pickings.
Does Reason — or, alternately, its various writers — really have so little to say about what America should actually do in Iraq, going forward?
Yes, libertarians can rightly protest that they never wanted any part of the dirty business in the first place and go on worrying about taxes and regulations and intellectual property wars, but it’s a recipe for losing relevance.
I’ve dealt here, so far, mainly with Reason. So, turning to Cato. (Do we really only have two major institutions? Ugh…)
Here are two of their policy paper titles since the war:
“Iraq: The Wrong War”
“Can Iraq Be Democratic?” (Cato’s answer: no)
And so on…
To be fair, a big part of the problem is that libertarians simply don’t have much of a bench when it comes to foreign policy. Partly, that’s because we’ve never run the damned country, so what would we have ever needed with a foreign policy? We’ve just tried to exert our weight strategically on domestic issues. And also, libertarianism, as a philosophy of government, simply doesn’t give much guidance as to what a country might do outside its own borders.
Sanchez ends his post extolling “the slower but more necessary process of selling western liberalism in the Muslim world.” I agree with him 100%.
Bringing me to some praise of Reason and a request: More Charles Paul Freund, please. Freund has consistently articulated in Reason’s various print and digital outlets a picture of how Western culture is influencing, and could continue to influence and liberalize, the Arab world. Culture was part of the strategy that brought down the Evil Empire, and it could prove just as useful against the Axis of Evil (yes, I know people are wincing to hear that old chestnut of a phrase).
Freund points the way forward for libertarians (at least partly).
So, shorter rant: Maybe Iraq was a distraction (I don’t think it was at all, but I also don’t think that’s the relevant point here), but now it’s time to talk about how to finish it. And calling for a quick withdrawal might make libertarians feel nice, but no one serious thinks that is a prudent or moral path — that’s why the American people rejected it on Nov. 2.
OK, starting to get some good responses to my posts here and here.
I’m going to start posting some of the responses I’ve received from the comments section, via e-mail and on other blogs.
I’ll give some short comments in response, also. I’m not necessarily trying to draw anyone into protracted debate, but it’s worth getting some of these arguments out in the open.
And, to my many friends in the libertarian movement (in its various institutional forms) this is of course all undertaken in the spirit of talking about the future of the movement, not attacking any of its various members.
I’m posting the things I am about the future of libertarianism for the purpose of getting a discussion started, because I think there’s a real danger of our philosophy becoming politically irrelevant.
So, I’m eager to hear from libertarians, Republicans and Democrats worried about maintaining a strong defense policy, defending and expanding economic liberalism and protecting civil liberties.
You can e-mail either by using the link on the left, or to editor@rhsager.com.
I’ll post the most interesting responses.
Given this and this column today, and this column last week, it’s clear I’m sure that I’m thinking a lot about the future of libertarianism these days. These columns give the broad outlines of my thinking — I think.
Basically, libertarians have long been a small group, but one with an outsized amount of influence due to financial resources and proximity to Republican power. But if we’re taken for granted, and if we don’t think more creatively about how to achieve our political goals (i.e. whom our allies are), we risk utter irrelevancy in a post-9/11 world with a tendency toward increasing state power.
The columns linked above deal pretty much exclusively with domestic issues, though.
The main problem with libertarians right now, frankly, is their inability to have anything serious to say regarding foreign policy. Pacifism combined with isolationism, as preached more or less by many at Cato and Reason is neither the popular nor the correct answer to the threat of global terrorism. And hunting Osama bin Laden, as was the Kerry solution, is, frankly, just an idiotic personalization of a phenomenon that ultimately, make no mistake about it, amounts to a historic clash of civilizations.
The West has to win this conflict, but it also has to realize that it can lose, too.
Part of winning, I firmly believe, is fighting the encroachments of government upon our civil liberties and upon the economic strength we need to prevail.
Until mainstream libertarians get this, and find something substantive to say about it — as opposed to bitching endlessly about Iraq and sounding more and more like Michael Moore — they will, quite deservedly, lose more and more influence in national politics.
I am, to be direct, looking at you, Cato and Reason.
By coincidence, I’ve actually got two articles out today on the future of libertarianism. This one, from Tech Central Station, asks whether there is a new Federalism Coalition to be formed with disaffected Democrats, sick of what they see as the theoconservative takeover of federal politics?
It seems that the trial lawyers have really caught the political imagination of the Left in America. Progressives, disaffected by the results of the most recent federal election, have hit upon a new strategy: forum shopping. Or, as it used to be called, federalism.
Libertarians should be thrilled.
…
A large number of disenfranchised Democrats seem willing to form a leave-me-alone coalition. They don’t want Bush and his theologians deciding whether or not to fund stem-cell research, they want California to step in if the federal government won’t. They don’t want a federal constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, they want their individual states to decide.
…
With an open-ended, complicated and potentially catastrophic War on Terrorism to occupy the federal government for the foreseeable future, might this not be the perfect political coalition to start exploring: people on the right and left who just want people on the other side to leave them alone.
There are more than a few problems with the idea — as Reason editor Nick Gillespie pointed out to me recently, federalism is virtually always a position of convenience taken by people shut out at the federal level — but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth exploring very, very seriously. It might not be the foundation of a new party, but it could be the foundation of any number of beneficial compromises.
Bush II Bellwethers for Libertarians
Published by November 16th, 2004 in Misc. Self Promotion. 1 CommentI have a column in The Post today on prospects for libertarians in Bush II (or is it Bush II II?).
Basically, things aren’t looking so hot:
Is all the attention being paid to the religious right making you nervous about having voted for President Bush? Here’s some advice for moderate and libertarian-leaning Republicans: Don’t jump ship quite yet . . . but keep your life vests ready.
The moderate and libertarian wings are still an important chunk of the GOP. A Rasmussen poll earlier this year found that Libertarian voters alone make up about 10 percent of the national electorate.
These folks like their taxes low and their gays married (or at least civil unioned). And they mostly stuck with Bush on Nov. 2, despite a ballooning deficit and not-so-subtle gay-baiting, because they trusted him (and not John Kerry) on the war.
Now, however, buyer’s remorse is setting in. Jerry Falwell has resurrected his Moral Majority of the 1980s as the Faith and Values Coalition, and Karl Rove is promising a renewed push for an anti-gay marriage amendment to the Constitution.
So will socially liberal, fiscally conservative voters be pushed out of their traditional home in the GOP over the next four years?
The answer, or at least how to determine the answer over the next year, follows.
A thought occurred to me today — if it really rises to the level of a thought, that is.
The Unabomber, you know, unabombed people to get his manifesto into the papers, to get an audience.
Nowadays, a million unabombers self-publish, without ever having to blow up anyone or live in a small, plywood shack in Montana.
So, if Ted Kaczynski were going nuts in 2005, as opposed to 1995, would he be a blogger?
OK, now, I know what you’re thinking. “Una” hated/hates technology. But he was willing to use Industrial Era printing presses to get his manifesto out there. Why not the Internet?
I suppose, though, that he still might have unabombed people to drive traffic to the blog. But Blog Ads might have worked better.
Rod Paige’s departure from the Bush cabinet, and his replacement by educrat Margaret Spellings, is very bad news for proponents of urban school reform. Paige understood the importance of choice, even if he wasn’t allowed to enforce the choice provisions of No Child Left Behind — meant to give kids in persistently failing schools the right to move to non-failing schools.
Now, the status quo ex ante will obtain. Take New York City, for example. This year, Schools Chancellor Joel Klein and Mayor Bloomberg have effectively decided to ignore the law’s choice provision, allowing kids to rot in failing schools and telling them that “capacity” problems prevent them from having any schools to which to transfer.
Of course, “capacity” is not a valid excuse under NCLB — it’s just another way of saying that the administration is going to protect middle-class schools, or, more to the point, middle-class parents who they don’t want mobbing City Hall.
Some — like Education Committee Chairwoman Eva Moskowitz and members of the State Board of Regents — have been trying to force the city’s hand on this, and get more kids out of failing schools. But they’ve had no leverage. The federal Department of Education wasn’t going to sanction New York City, so Bloomberg and Klein could ignore the law.
However, for a time it seemed that a second Bush term might hold the promise of an unbound Paige, ready to get tough with New York’s weak-willed politicians. Now, that hope is no more.
A note here, however: I should make clear that I disagree with NCLB on its most basic premise, that the federal government should be involved in local educational issues. But if any part of the law ever had a chance of working, it was the choice provision. In some places, including New York City, it has, at the very least, provided some pressure to create more charter schools. Now, even that benefit may be neutralized, as choice no longer seems to hold any place in Bush’s education agenda.
Perhaps Paige will involve himself with the choice movement now from outside the administration.
By the way: Doesn’t this guy look great for 71? He was by The Post’s offices earlier this year. We all thought he was in his fifties. Best of luck to him.
And, of course, the French would like to name a street or a square after their beloved Arafat.
Do these people just wake up every morning asking themselves, “What’s the most evil thing we could do today?”
One major part of Yasser Arafat’s legacy, of course, is the legitimization of terrorism as a political tool — at least as far as Europe is concerned. Here, we have an interview with Hani Al-Hassan of the Fatah Central Committee, translated by the invaluable MEMRI TV Monitor Project:
In Fatah we have a rule: the armed struggle sows and the political struggle reaps. … We think that the current period is a phase of sowing, until we see results in the international position.
We see today that there is a change in the world. Europe has changed and its position has become more clearly in our favor. America is bogged down in Iraq and doesn’t know what to do.
…
Therefore, there are opportunities. We will see now whether the political situation allows us to reach political results and to bring about a change in our favor. Otherwise, we will go back to sowing.
Let’s be explicit here. European appeasement has cost — and will continue to cost in the foreseeable future — the lives of thousands of Jewish men, women and children.
There can be absolutely no debate as to who are the good guys and who are the bad guys, here. There’s no question as to who are the murderers and who are the victims. Yet the Europeans, having failed to complete the Holocaust — again, to be explicit, primarily in Germany and France — are continuing their war against the Jews by other means.
As I’ve said before, the appeasers should burn in hell. They are as guilty as the terrorists.
This teacher paid her 16-year-old students to have sex with her and also gave them pot and alcohol.
The deals just keep getting sweeter for these adolescent males.
But, the best part of the story — she’s been suspended with pay. God bless the teachers unions.
Well, it appears that the violent infighting is beginning in the wake of Yasser Arafat’s death (the violent mourning got started almost immediately, and the vicious — but not violent — infighting started next to his bed in France).
Fatah gunmen opened fire on former prime minister and current PLO president Mahmoud Abbas Sunday.
It was not clear if the gunmen had planned to assassinate Abbas or just frighten him. Reporters for Al-Jazeera and other Arab TV stations at the scene described the incident as an assassination attempt on the life of Abbas and Dahlan.
However, the two men denied that they had been targeted, saying the shooting was the result of confusion and over-zealousness.
Riiight. I suppose Abbas’s thinking is he’ll be harder to hit the faster he spins. Should be fun to watch.
Many happy returns, guys.
The left loves federalism.
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