Now you see it, now you don't: Syria's bombed nuclear facilityOne of the brainier conservatives to emerge from the Bush White House (and he's a Canadian Tory of all things) is David Frum, who famously gave us the much derided "axis of evil" coinage and in his spare time writes learned essays on George Eliot. Why much derided? Because an axis denotes a partnership or alliance, usually a nefarious one, and Daniel Koffler would sooner compliment Chelsea Clinton on her parentage at a dinner party at Leon Wieseltier's house than a Stalinist would collaborate with a mullah, or a Sunni help a Shia work the detonator on an IED. I read that on the Internet so it must be true.

Yes, well, I believe the relevant Latin is de te fabula narratur -- the joke's on you:

For years we have heard that it was impossible, inconceivable, that states such as Syria, North Korea, Iran or Saddam Hussein's Iraq could ever co-operate with each other. We were told that Shiite Iran could never possibly ally with Sunni terrorist groups such as Hamas or al-Qaeda. Yet again and again, over the past half dozen years, we have witnessed just that. North Korea did help Syria. Iran and North Korea did exchange technology. Iran did subsidize Hamas. Al-Qaeda leaders did find refuge in Iran.

You know, it's almost like they form an axis or something.

Syria wasn't even in the original Iran-NoKo-Iraq troika, so I guess it's an alternate if one of the regulars can't live up to its mustache-twirling malevolence on the designated day. Unfortunately, Barack Obama's go-to man on nukes, Joseph Cirincione, last September sounded more like Seymour Hersh when he dismissed the possibility that North Korean scientists could be helping Syria build a plutonium processing facility:

"This [early news of the Syrian facility] appears to be the work of a small group of officials leaking cherry-picked, unvetted 'intelligence' to key reporters in order to promote a pre-existing political agenda. If this sounds like the run-up to the war in Iraq, it should. This time it appears aimed at derailing the U.S.-North Korean agreement that administration hardliners think is appeasement. Some Israelis want to thwart any dialogue between the U.S. and Syria."

The leftist response to this, judging from how Talking Points Memo, et al. have alighted on Damascus's similarly themed "nothing to see here, folks" denials of wrongdoing, is to say that even if the Assad regime were guilty, it's all the fault of the Bushies for creating an atmosphere of plausible deniability after their Iraq caper. No one now believes the official intelligence -- except of course when it gives Iran a clean bill of health, or otherwise thwarts the "hard-liners" from arguing anything that could be used to make a case for military intervention.

What a shame, too. Had Israel not destroyed Syria's almost-completed reactor, we would have had another rogue state with WMD for the White House to confront in a cowboyish manner, demonstrating yet again its blatant disregard for negotiation and dialogue. Think of all the missed editorials and blog posts, then weep.

Fascist Isolationist: Charles Lindbergh It's doubtful that Barack Obama would like to be compared to Charles Lindbergh, but over at the Guardian's "Comment is Free" blog, Mark Schmitt attempts to resurrect ol' Charlie and groups not only Obama alongside the pro-Nazi isolationist but oddly, himself as well.

As Schmitt explains in his piece, the origins of this grouping lie in what he sees as Obama's principled refusal to wear an American flag lapel pin because doing so, according to the junior Senator from Illinois, has become "a substitute for I think true patriotism..." There's an element of truth in this sentiment, and I don't for a minute doubt Obama's patriotism. I think his decision not wear the pin, however, is morally and politically obtuse, as 1) it only provides fodder for the right-wing smear machine, but, more importantly, 2) even if you do believe that patriotism has been hijacked by the political right (which, to some degree, it has) that in no way obviates your ability, or, dare I say--your duty--to express your own patriotism. Obviously, wearing a lapel pin is not the only way to do that, but it's a small way, and nor does it automatically associate you with those people whom you believe are cheapening patriotism. But Schmitt thinks otherwise, and calls for the actual taking down of American flags, the removal of pins, in other words, throwing out the legitimately patriotic baby with the jingoistic bathwater.

But onto the heart of the matter, which is Charles Lindbergh. Following a bloggingheads.tv discussion Schmitt did with David Frum (he of "axis of evil" fame), Frum later remarked on another webisode that he was afraid that the Bush administration and conservatives in general has been driving people on the left, like Schmitt, to embrace views akin to "Charles Lindbergh." Of this comparison, which other liberals have found to be odious (even if they can't spell his name correctly), Schmitt writes:

Some people found comparing me to Lindbergh offensive, given that Lindbergh in the 1930s was "a notorious isolationist Hitler-fancying anti-Semite." Perhaps I should have been offended, but I wasn't, because I assumed Frum was referring mainly to Lindbergh's isolationism and his opposition to US entry into World War II as a prominent member of the America First committee.

So Schmitt would have been offended had he thought Frum meant to compare him to "a notorious isolationist Hitler-fancying anti-Semite," but he's not offended because he believes Frum was merely comparing him to Lindbergh for the latter's opposition to entry into World War II (Schmitt, methinks, fancies the "notorious isolationist" part, not the "Hitler-fancying anti-Semite" aspect of Lindbergh). Frum's comparison may have been totally unfair--but Schmitt doesn't seem to think so; he has no problem being compared to Charles Lindbergh, as long as it's just the isolationist Lindberg, not the anti-Semitic Lindberg. Glad we got that out of the way.

There are not many journalists or politicians who come to mind as being radical enough in their view to warrant comparison to Charles Lindbergh (Pat Buchanan, Ron Paul and Justin Raimondo immediately come to mind) and the few that do are on the political right. I never thought I'd see the day when someone on the Left would have no problem being associated with Lindbergh-esque isolationism. But it's good to see that Schmitt is at least being honest.