By jakeh at TNR, 10,29, 2102:
...CRS, do you have any links to any Obama promise to "address the de facto segregation in America"? I don't recall that, nor do I know how he would do that. Nor do I recall his ever promising to deal head-on with urban crime, which, while a nasty problem, is one that is seen mainly as a local one, and is low on the national agenda. (Chicago is dealing with an increased murder rate basically due to the vagaries of gang politics, and not, say, due to a lack of police officers. Chicago has among the most cops per capita in the nation, and other forms of crime are down.) Nor do I recall foreign aid to Africa featuring prominently in Obama's professed agenda. Meanwhile, I think that Obama would point to the economic stimulus, health care, education reform, community college funding, and student aid -- measures that, while addressed to the nation as a whole (and, in the case of education reform, not measures that I happen to agree with), are geared toward lifting those who are struggling, softening the blow of an economic downturn that minority communities, blacks especially, feel most acutely, and moving toward more equal opportunity. How many black people still have a union job, or any job, due to Obama's rescue of the domestic auto industry, or the stimulus aid to the states? How many black people are able to collect unemployment benefits because Obama extended them in the midst of an economic downturn, and against Republican opposition, because he recognized that individuals are not responsible for macroeconomic forces beyond their control? My guess is that black voters generally see in Obama what I see -- a smart, decent guy (uniquely so for a politician, on both counts) with his heart in the right place, who's been unfairly vilified and obstructed, who's nevertheless managed to get a lot of good things done (including the historic passage of health care reform, which, for me, is almost accomplishment enough for a four-year term), who would like to be able to do a good deal more, and who still represents the still almost unbelievable fact that a liberal black man (an intellectual, besides) occupies the White House and is a strong leader at home and abroad. Some of the luster may have worn off the soaring rhetoric we fell in love with in 2008, but that was inevitable, and, that rhetoric still marks him as a uniquely inspiring politician in my book, and, as far as I can tell, he has followed through on it to a remarkable degree. I can't say that Obama has done everything right, but liberal and liberal black dissatisfaction I think stems mainly from unrealistic expectations...
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
Sunday, October 21, 2012
The Case For Not Liking Obama
A big issue in U.S. presidential elections, apparently, is "likability." It's a factor easy to underestimate compared to policy positions and other matters of substance. But when I consider my own affective responses to politicians, it's obvious how much I'm affected by how I like or dislike a particular candidate, that jostling with or against considerations of substance.
I've thought from just after he came into real public prominence how much, for reasons I have trouble articulating, I dislike Obama. That had me fervently wanting Hillary to beat him. And it poses a notional dilemma for me as I consider who I'm notionally voting for in the upcoming election. I subscribe pretty solidly to Democratic policies but my dislike inclines me notionally away from Obama and to Romney, who I genuinely like and whose policies I can live with.
Finally, I've read something, today in fact, by a good, young conservative writer, Matthew Continetti, hit piece though it is, that puts well why I don't like the guy:
....Remember when President Barack Obama was likable? Once upon a time the public viewed the incumbent more favorably than his challenger by large margins. These days Obama’s favorable and unfavorable ratings are similar to Mitt Romney’s. The televised debates have unveiled the current administration as alternately listless, manic, angry, soporific, rude, bullying, aloof, and thin-skinned. Americans who have just begun to tune into the election are seeing the president unmediated. They no longer are looking at him through the scrim of fawning press, majestic settings, and roaring crowds. And they are discovering that Obama is not so likable at all. He is actually something of a jerk.
Those who read coverage of the Obama administration closely will have known this for a long time: The president is cold, abstract, prickly, and insular. His brand of cerebral partisanship is better suited for liberal blogging than for leading the free world. He doesn’t enjoy interacting with strangers or even with associates outside his immediate clique. He has few close friends. He relies on about half a dozen senior advisers. His impromptu speech is given to cutting, sarcastic remarks.
Put him in front of an adoring and obsequious audience and he will be charming and suave. But the real Obama is revealed the second you remove the klieg lights. This isn’t a guy who will spend his post-presidency more or less running the Democratic Party, a la President Bill Clinton. Obama will spend his retirement as a solitary member of the irritable left, receiving honorary degrees, appearing on MSNBC, and scribbling for Salon.
The president’s unsociability is one of those obvious facts that are conveniently overlooked. Earlier this week Neera Tanden, the president of the liberal Center for American Progress, caused a mini-controversy when New York magazine quoted her saying, “Obama doesn’t call anyone, and he’s not close to almost anyone. It’s stunning that he’s in politics, because he really doesn’t like people.” Tanden, who has worked for Obama, later “clarified” her remarks. What she meant to say, she tweeted, was that Obama “is a private person.” Note, however, that one can be a private person and still not “like people.” Tanden did not really take back her words. Nor should she. Her initial comments were factual and honest.
A “Democrat deeply familiar” with the Clinton-Obama relationship said pretty much the same thing to Ryan Lizza a few months ago: “Obama doesn’t really like very many people.” A Chicago Democratic donor told Jane Mayer this summer, “He’s not the kind of guy I would go out and have a beer with.” “One United States diplomat” told Helene Cooper of the New York Times in September that Obama is “not good with personal relationships; that’s not what interests him.” That paper’s story on Valerie Jarrett, the president’s closest aide, describes Obama as “introverted” and his social circle as “small.” Michael Lewis’s profile of Obama shows a loner who broods over his decisions, spends time reading and writing and playing basketball with a tightly knit group, and says his biggest difficulty as president is “faking emotion.” His media puppets admit that the president is an emotionless “Spock.”
This combination of arrogance and detachment has been a political problem. Obama has paid a price whenever his unlikable personality has emerged in unscripted moments. There was his promise to meet with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea in the first year of his presidency. There was the time when he told Hillary Clinton that she was “likable enough.” There was his stubborn insistence to raise taxes on capital gains and dividends even though it would raise less revenue. There was his explanation that the white working class didn’t like him because “they cling to their guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them.”
There was his remark that the Cambridge police acted “stupidly” when they arrested a Harvard professor. There was his attack on Scott Brown for driving a pickup truck; his snide retort to John McCain that “the election’s over”; and his jibe that “shovel ready was not as shovel-ready as we expected” (which provoked laughter from his “jobs council”). This year we’ve heard Obama say “the private sector is doing fine,” that he’s “always struck by people who think, it must be because I was just so smart” that they’ve been successful, and that the attacks on our embassies across the Great Middle East were “bumps in the road” to Arab democracy. When Obama says what’s on his mind, his political team runs for the hills.
The debates have made the president’s dilemma worse. Obama has not masked his prideful contempt for Romney. He “told friends that he respected Mr. Romney’s intellect,” the Times reported, “but had come to view his rival as a less formidable adversary as he learned more about him from reading research books and watching his campaign.” He went into the first debate in Denver thinking he would end the race on October 3.
But a huge audience watched as Romney dissected the last four years and Obama responded with a mix of condescension and apathy. The president seemed always to be smirking and looking down at his notes. He barely could mount a defense of his record. He returned again and again to his vision of a fair America. But this was not enough even for his most slavish supporters. Andrew Sullivan called him “effete.” Michael Tomasky asked, “Does Obama even want to win the election?”
The first debate inaugurated a shift in the race toward Romney that hasn’t abated. And the left drew exactly the wrong lesson from it. The left believed Obama had failed because he was insufficiently rude, and the Obama campaign seems to have agreed with them. But that meant Obama was trapped. He had to be more combative, but he also had to retain his likability. Doing both was not an option. Obama chose combat, in keeping with his long-run campaign strategy of maximizing turnout among Democratic Party client groups.
So we got a Joe Biden who spoke under his breath, interrupted Paul Ryan at every turn, raised his voice, gesticulated grandly, cackled during discussions of the Iranian nuclear program, and grinned so wildly that he looked like he was channeling Jack Nicholson’s portrayal of the Joker. We got an Obama who was more engaged but also came across as angry and heated and ready to challenge Romney to a duel. We got a Democratic ticket that, per Chris Matthews’s suggestion, looks like it is auditioning to replace the Cycle on MSNBC.
Obama’s anti-Romney spirit may make for a more disagreeable and somewhat more interesting debate. Television ratings benefit. But how does it solve the weak economic recovery? How does it reassure voters looking for solutions on jobs, health care, the deficit, and energy? How does it improve the president’s image, or restore his poll numbers?
The cliché is that the more likable candidate usually wins the election. Morris Fiorina, one of my favorite political scientists, says that isn’t actually the case. Maybe. What we know for sure is what Washington has known all along: Obama doesn’t like people.
And increasingly, people don’t like him.
Sunday, October 7, 2012
On Obama's 2007 Video
Andy McCarthy:
...To be generous, Obama’s performance is disgusting. Cynically adopting the black dialect of the American South, a dialect utterly alien to him, he demagogues against Washington’s supposedly selective waivers of the Stafford Act — legislation that requires communities hit by disasters to match 10 percent of federal aid. They waived it for 9/11, he tells the crowd, and they waived it when Hurricane Andrew hit Florida: Those communities were allowed to keep their one dollar for every ten federal dollars. But when he comes to Hurricane Katrina, which devastated the largely African-American population of New Orleans, Obama implies that Congress refused the waiver: “What’s happenin’ down in New O’leans? Where’s yo’ dollar? Where’s yo’ Stafford Act money? . . . Tells me that somehow the people down in New O’leans they don’t care about as much.”
In fact, ten days before Obama gave that speech, Congress had waived the Stafford Act requirement for Katrina. He was well aware of that fact, too. After all, he was one of only 14 senators to vote against the waiver. It was part of a bill to fund the war effort in Iraq. That is, to pander to his Bush-deranged, anti-war base, Obama decided that squeezing New O’leans was a price worth paying. Then, he lied about what happened in order to foment racial resentment — an atmosphere that he calculated would help his presidential bid...
and:
In fact, ten days before Obama gave that speech, Congress had waived the Stafford Act requirement for Katrina. He was well aware of that fact, too. After all, he was one of only 14 senators to vote against the waiver. It was part of a bill to fund the war effort in Iraq. That is, to pander to his Bush-deranged, anti-war base, Obama decided that squeezing New O’leans was a price worth paying. Then, he lied about what happened in order to foment racial resentment — an atmosphere that he calculated would help his presidential bid...
and:
The Perpetual Failure to Understand Obama's Double Consciousness
- John McWhorter
- October 4, 2012 | 7:08 pm
The recent uproar over President Obama’s 2007 speech to black pastors is yet another example of how white people—or at least some of them—don't get it about black people.
A strange note for me to strike, I know, but the fact is that there’s nothing at all surprising in the fact that the President talks, worships, and even thinks in different ways depending on who he’s around. It would appear either that W.E.B. DuBois’ classic formulation about black people having a “double consciousness” hasn’t gotten around as much as it should or that certain people think it ceased to apply sometime around 1965. It didn’t.
DuBois mentioned black people feeling a “two-ness—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings.” Yet when I was little, not having read that yet and not yet in a position to glean it from experience, it would sometimes irritate me when my parents would start speaking more “blackly” when we had black friends over, or when they were with their relatives. They didn’t talk that way around me and my sister. It struck me as phony that they would suddenly break out in a different way of expressing themselves.
What I didn’t know was that most black Americans have two ways of talking: around black people, what linguists call Black English, and standard English around others. The two bleed into one another to an extent: most black people have a dusting of “blaccent” when speaking standard, and few even in their most unbuttoned moments speak purely Black English. However, the oscillation between the poles is constant.
This is what Obama, as a black American man, does. It is largely subconscious, which is why most black people as well as white have been rather perplexed as linguists identify a “language” or “dialect” called Ebonics. However, it’s very much there and scientifically identifiable. I have been thrown several times by many whites’ feeling that Obama is faking it when he sounds blacker talking to the NAACP—until I recall my initial feeling about my parents. This time, conservative pundits watching the 2007 tape are even venturing that Obama’s Ebonic cadence is his “real” self and that the standard English he uses in public is the put-on.
But both are him. Americans easily miss something most people in the world find ordinary: that one often speaks quite differently in different situations. Arabs, whose colloquial Arabic is practically a different language from Modern Standard Arabic, would readily understand Obama’s speech repertoire, for example, as would Swiss Germans, most Italians, etc.
It is the linguistic reflection of that double consciousness. The video also reanimates the perplexity among many that the cerebral, mixed-heritage Obama, who seemed so much “past race,” could turn out to have been a member of a church led by a flaming leftist, anti-white pastor like Jeremiah Wright. This, however, was no more of a surprise from a black person of Obama’s generation than the bipolar speaking repertoire.
To be both successful in mainstream America and black-identified is a delicate business. Commonly, the way people wangle the equipoise is to maintain a visceral kind of allegiance to in-group folkways and concerns while building most of one’s life around a more mainstream essence. Peggy Noonan once got this just right, describing Obama’s Wright phase as typifying a “barbaric yawp,” to use Walt Whitman’s term, of opposition that one may maintain in response to your people’s past oppression even while you are moving forward in what you actually do with most of your waking moments.
This is not, as the right would like to have it about Obama, phony. It is a bedrock of being human to harbor contradictory impulses: religious belief in the face of science, intuition versus intellection. Such contradictions are staples of any respectable, much less engaging, biographical portrait, for example.
And it means that brown-skinned superstars of a certain age these days will regularly have their Jeremiah Wright moments. Michelle Obama’s was the “This is the first time I’m really proud of my country” gaffe, surely more of a salute from the heart to the black struggle than a reasoned take on America’s entire history during her lifetime. Then there was Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s “wise Latina” line, designed to appeal to a particular demographic rather than the nation as a whole.
As such, why would anyone be surprised that Obama, when speaking to a black audience and not as carefully self-monitored as he soon would be when his candidacy truly took fire, might venture that the government’s response to Hurricane Katrina was hindered at least in part by racism? It is crude to suppose that this is the “real” Obama and that the law professor weighing all sides of an issue, and the current cerebral President, is a pose. For better or for worse, parsing Katrina as a story of racism is a staple of black discourse, as is viewing inner cities as on some level a matter of racist neglect. Obama, with a certain crowd, will certainly dip into such views.
This is his double consciousness in action, just like the black-inflected speech patterns and the comfort hearing sermons by a black preacher who never got the news that the sixties ended. “Two warring ideals ideals in one dark body” indeed—except that the ideals are not exactly at war in people like Obama. Rather, Obama’s “black” side is a seasoning.
More to the point, Obama’s having a black side that comes out more with black people is ordinary. Anyone seriously worried that it means he is some kind of stealth candidate or poseur is backing themselves into the corner of seeing roughly 19 out of 20 black Americans in the same light.
The Perpetual Failure to Understand Obama's Double Consciousness
- John McWhorter
- October 4, 2012 | 7:08 pm
The recent uproar over President Obama’s 2007 speech to black pastors is yet another example of how white people—or at least some of them—don't get it about black people.
A strange note for me to strike, I know, but the fact is that there’s nothing at all surprising in the fact that the President talks, worships, and even thinks in different ways depending on who he’s around. It would appear either that W.E.B. DuBois’ classic formulation about black people having a “double consciousness” hasn’t gotten around as much as it should or that certain people think it ceased to apply sometime around 1965. It didn’t.
DuBois mentioned black people feeling a “two-ness—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings.” Yet when I was little, not having read that yet and not yet in a position to glean it from experience, it would sometimes irritate me when my parents would start speaking more “blackly” when we had black friends over, or when they were with their relatives. They didn’t talk that way around me and my sister. It struck me as phony that they would suddenly break out in a different way of expressing themselves.
What I didn’t know was that most black Americans have two ways of talking: around black people, what linguists call Black English, and standard English around others. The two bleed into one another to an extent: most black people have a dusting of “blaccent” when speaking standard, and few even in their most unbuttoned moments speak purely Black English. However, the oscillation between the poles is constant.
This is what Obama, as a black American man, does. It is largely subconscious, which is why most black people as well as white have been rather perplexed as linguists identify a “language” or “dialect” called Ebonics. However, it’s very much there and scientifically identifiable. I have been thrown several times by many whites’ feeling that Obama is faking it when he sounds blacker talking to the NAACP—until I recall my initial feeling about my parents. This time, conservative pundits watching the 2007 tape are even venturing that Obama’s Ebonic cadence is his “real” self and that the standard English he uses in public is the put-on.
But both are him. Americans easily miss something most people in the world find ordinary: that one often speaks quite differently in different situations. Arabs, whose colloquial Arabic is practically a different language from Modern Standard Arabic, would readily understand Obama’s speech repertoire, for example, as would Swiss Germans, most Italians, etc.
It is the linguistic reflection of that double consciousness. The video also reanimates the perplexity among many that the cerebral, mixed-heritage Obama, who seemed so much “past race,” could turn out to have been a member of a church led by a flaming leftist, anti-white pastor like Jeremiah Wright. This, however, was no more of a surprise from a black person of Obama’s generation than the bipolar speaking repertoire.
To be both successful in mainstream America and black-identified is a delicate business. Commonly, the way people wangle the equipoise is to maintain a visceral kind of allegiance to in-group folkways and concerns while building most of one’s life around a more mainstream essence. Peggy Noonan once got this just right, describing Obama’s Wright phase as typifying a “barbaric yawp,” to use Walt Whitman’s term, of opposition that one may maintain in response to your people’s past oppression even while you are moving forward in what you actually do with most of your waking moments.
This is not, as the right would like to have it about Obama, phony. It is a bedrock of being human to harbor contradictory impulses: religious belief in the face of science, intuition versus intellection. Such contradictions are staples of any respectable, much less engaging, biographical portrait, for example.
And it means that brown-skinned superstars of a certain age these days will regularly have their Jeremiah Wright moments. Michelle Obama’s was the “This is the first time I’m really proud of my country” gaffe, surely more of a salute from the heart to the black struggle than a reasoned take on America’s entire history during her lifetime. Then there was Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s “wise Latina” line, designed to appeal to a particular demographic rather than the nation as a whole.
As such, why would anyone be surprised that Obama, when speaking to a black audience and not as carefully self-monitored as he soon would be when his candidacy truly took fire, might venture that the government’s response to Hurricane Katrina was hindered at least in part by racism? It is crude to suppose that this is the “real” Obama and that the law professor weighing all sides of an issue, and the current cerebral President, is a pose. For better or for worse, parsing Katrina as a story of racism is a staple of black discourse, as is viewing inner cities as on some level a matter of racist neglect. Obama, with a certain crowd, will certainly dip into such views.
This is his double consciousness in action, just like the black-inflected speech patterns and the comfort hearing sermons by a black preacher who never got the news that the sixties ended. “Two warring ideals ideals in one dark body” indeed—except that the ideals are not exactly at war in people like Obama. Rather, Obama’s “black” side is a seasoning.
More to the point, Obama’s having a black side that comes out more with black people is ordinary. Anyone seriously worried that it means he is some kind of stealth candidate or poseur is backing themselves into the corner of seeing roughly 19 out of 20 black Americans in the same light.
- John McWhorter
- October 4, 2012 | 7:08 pm
The recent uproar over President Obama’s 2007 speech to black pastors is yet another example of how white people—or at least some of them—don't get it about black people.
A strange note for me to strike, I know, but the fact is that there’s nothing at all surprising in the fact that the President talks, worships, and even thinks in different ways depending on who he’s around. It would appear either that W.E.B. DuBois’ classic formulation about black people having a “double consciousness” hasn’t gotten around as much as it should or that certain people think it ceased to apply sometime around 1965. It didn’t.
DuBois mentioned black people feeling a “two-ness—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings.” Yet when I was little, not having read that yet and not yet in a position to glean it from experience, it would sometimes irritate me when my parents would start speaking more “blackly” when we had black friends over, or when they were with their relatives. They didn’t talk that way around me and my sister. It struck me as phony that they would suddenly break out in a different way of expressing themselves.
What I didn’t know was that most black Americans have two ways of talking: around black people, what linguists call Black English, and standard English around others. The two bleed into one another to an extent: most black people have a dusting of “blaccent” when speaking standard, and few even in their most unbuttoned moments speak purely Black English. However, the oscillation between the poles is constant.
This is what Obama, as a black American man, does. It is largely subconscious, which is why most black people as well as white have been rather perplexed as linguists identify a “language” or “dialect” called Ebonics. However, it’s very much there and scientifically identifiable. I have been thrown several times by many whites’ feeling that Obama is faking it when he sounds blacker talking to the NAACP—until I recall my initial feeling about my parents. This time, conservative pundits watching the 2007 tape are even venturing that Obama’s Ebonic cadence is his “real” self and that the standard English he uses in public is the put-on.
But both are him. Americans easily miss something most people in the world find ordinary: that one often speaks quite differently in different situations. Arabs, whose colloquial Arabic is practically a different language from Modern Standard Arabic, would readily understand Obama’s speech repertoire, for example, as would Swiss Germans, most Italians, etc.
It is the linguistic reflection of that double consciousness. The video also reanimates the perplexity among many that the cerebral, mixed-heritage Obama, who seemed so much “past race,” could turn out to have been a member of a church led by a flaming leftist, anti-white pastor like Jeremiah Wright. This, however, was no more of a surprise from a black person of Obama’s generation than the bipolar speaking repertoire.
To be both successful in mainstream America and black-identified is a delicate business. Commonly, the way people wangle the equipoise is to maintain a visceral kind of allegiance to in-group folkways and concerns while building most of one’s life around a more mainstream essence. Peggy Noonan once got this just right, describing Obama’s Wright phase as typifying a “barbaric yawp,” to use Walt Whitman’s term, of opposition that one may maintain in response to your people’s past oppression even while you are moving forward in what you actually do with most of your waking moments.
This is not, as the right would like to have it about Obama, phony. It is a bedrock of being human to harbor contradictory impulses: religious belief in the face of science, intuition versus intellection. Such contradictions are staples of any respectable, much less engaging, biographical portrait, for example.
And it means that brown-skinned superstars of a certain age these days will regularly have their Jeremiah Wright moments. Michelle Obama’s was the “This is the first time I’m really proud of my country” gaffe, surely more of a salute from the heart to the black struggle than a reasoned take on America’s entire history during her lifetime. Then there was Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s “wise Latina” line, designed to appeal to a particular demographic rather than the nation as a whole.
As such, why would anyone be surprised that Obama, when speaking to a black audience and not as carefully self-monitored as he soon would be when his candidacy truly took fire, might venture that the government’s response to Hurricane Katrina was hindered at least in part by racism? It is crude to suppose that this is the “real” Obama and that the law professor weighing all sides of an issue, and the current cerebral President, is a pose. For better or for worse, parsing Katrina as a story of racism is a staple of black discourse, as is viewing inner cities as on some level a matter of racist neglect. Obama, with a certain crowd, will certainly dip into such views.
This is his double consciousness in action, just like the black-inflected speech patterns and the comfort hearing sermons by a black preacher who never got the news that the sixties ended. “Two warring ideals ideals in one dark body” indeed—except that the ideals are not exactly at war in people like Obama. Rather, Obama’s “black” side is a seasoning.
More to the point, Obama’s having a black side that comes out more with black people is ordinary. Anyone seriously worried that it means he is some kind of stealth candidate or poseur is backing themselves into the corner of seeing roughly 19 out of 20 black Americans in the same light.
Tuesday, September 18, 2012
Exchange On Iranian Red Lines
Me:
Jeffrey Goldberg:
...And Netanyahu's specific anxiety is not unreasonable: The White House position is that the U.S. will keep Iran from possessing a nuclear bomb. It is fair to ask, as Bibi is asking: Does that mean you will let them have a warhead design, sufficient enriched uranium, and a missile system capable of delivering a nuclear warhead, so long as they don't actually finish building the device and then mating it to a delivery system? In other words, what if Iran is only technically non-nuclear? What if it would only take Iran a month to put together a nuclear bomb from the moment the decision is made? What will you do then? And how will you know, for sure, that they are doing it? American officials have promised Israel and the Arab states that their intelligence is good enough that they will know when Iran is approaching the nuclear threshold. But obviously the record of the American intelligence community is not without its flaws (the same holds true, of course, for Israel, and the Europeans.) ...
Understanding why Bibi frustrates Obama, this sounds sensible to me. Trying to understand this matter logically confounds me. If the premise is, however unstated, "We'll never take military action against Iran to stop them from going nuclear," then I can see coherence in U.S. policy. Never state the premise, act as if the premise doesn't exist, make sounds like military options "are on he table," keep increasing all pressure short of military action, and hope for the best, understanding the key to this policy is prevention short of military action and that failing containment.
But if Obama can be taken at his word, that his policy truly is to stop Iran from going nuclear, even using force, then I don't understand the refusal to draw a properly worded, properly conceived red line. Reports from the disinterested international monitoring agency indicate Iranian refusal to cooperate with inspectors, increasing its enrichment of uranium, other technical signs I don't fully understand which, apparently, raise troubling inferences of Iranian nuclear intentions.
The refusal to formulate an appropriate red line seems to me to signal an ultimate unwillingness to take action. The best argument I can deduce coming from the administration is that, as put by Panetta, "drawing red lines will paint the U.S. into a corner." But to my admittedly layman's logic, I can't follow this line of reasoning. Surely the U.S. understands that which, if it really means to stop Iran including by military action, it will not tolerate Iran going beyond. If so why not state it, of course appropriately, sufficiently qualified for contingencies and its own flexibility? Then the U.S. will have, generally, specified what will trigger action and Iran will need to take that generally specific ultimatum into account in its forward movement and the U.S. will have put flesh on the bare bone of its public commitment.
I'd like to understand the reasoning that resolves my perplexity here. What am I missing?
Me:Well, my own analysis is that Israel shouldn't take military action against Iran and that Iran ultimately is a rational actor in these matters regardless of its nightmare, apocalyptic rhetoric and its utter internal and international perfidy.
In my view containment will be the inevitable policy.
On the other hand, what I think matters not. I'm not living in Israel surrounded by militants rhetorically committed to her destruction and the only country in the world, as I'm aware, whose existence is repeatedly existentially threatened merely by reason her existence, which is by the way a beacon of humane civilization compared to what surrounds her and is near to her. I'll leave her life and death decisions to Israel as she decides to make them through her unique-to-the-region democratic processes.
But all of this is beside my precise question: again, given Obama's public commitment to preventing Iran going nuclear including the use of force, and assuming Obama in this means what he says--"I don't bluff"--I, again, don't understand the reasoning for the U.S. refusal to formulate a red line.
I don't see the answer to that in any of the above commentary.
Neil: I think there is reason to worry that America may not be ready to go to war in the region (again) to protect an increasingly ugly Israeli state. Personally, I would be against such a war. Israel is an ally only in the sense that she would like very much to have our aid and protection, in return for which our concerns about settlements are set aside with contempt and our President is accused of throwing Israel under the bus? It is time to re-think our relationship with Israel, but it is not Obama who is to blame if this alliance has come to an end.
Me:
Just to be clear and to move this discussion down from a possible level of abstraction, the issue is not red lines as a general proposition, but rather a stated U.S. red line at this time concerning Iran’s nuclearization.
And, again, just for clarity, my assumption is that Obama means what he says when he says he won’t let Iran go nuclear his means including force. So for these purposes that sincere intention is a given. (Which in itself may be a kind of red line, it occurs to me.)
Your first point of your two part case is that a red line will signal a limit to diplomatic action. And then use a chess analogy, the end game, and liken a red to a hardened condition for war, an ultimatum, in your words, “making difficult negations more difficult.” The problem with this point is that” it ain’t necessarily so.” If it’s not necessarily so, then it’s your and others’ speculative judgment as to what might happen were a red line enunciated. But why is that judgment better than the judgment that a red line may be more efficacious here than not? Here let’s recall Goldberg’s sympathy for Bibi’s exasperation:
... And Netanyahu's specific anxiety is not unreasonable: The White House position is that the U.S. will keep Iran from possessing a nuclear bomb. It is fair to ask, as Bibi is asking: Does that mean you will let them have a warhead design, sufficient enriched uranium, and a missile system capable of delivering a nuclear warhead, so long as they don't actually finish building the device and then mating it to a delivery system? In other words, what if Iran is only technically non-nuclear? What if it would only take Iran a month to put together a nuclear bomb from the moment the decision is made? What will you do then? And how will you know, for sure, that they are doing it? American officials have promised Israel and the Arab states that their intelligence is good enough that they will know when Iran is approaching the nuclear threshold. But obviously the record of the American intelligence community is not without its flaws (the same holds true, of course, for Israel, and the Europeans.)...
To this need be added the fact that it appears from the IAEA August 2102 reporting that, as I have read, Iran’s nuclear program is performing faster and better than in any prior period, despite tough sanctions and cyber warfare. Iran continues to produce, in the midst of the latest ratcheted up sanctions, 3.5 percent enriched uranium at the fastest rate ever – 62 percent faster than the end of 2011—and is using more centrifuges than ever before. Iran continues to accelerate its production of 20 percent enriched uranium; the production rate has more than tripled since the end of last year. Iran’s stockpile of 3.5 percent and 20 percent enriched uranium could already yield, with further enrichment, enough highly enriched uranium (HEU), uranium enriched above 90 percent, for several nuclear devices. To the content of this latest report needs further to be added, so we remind ourselves, that negotiations over years and including in Istanbul, Baghdad, and Moscow have failed. It’s a reasonable inference that the Iranians are playing time, not negotiating in good faith and hell bent on completing their project.
Me: You have shifted the ground you're polemically standing on. Your first argument rested on stated red lines hobbling diplomacy and making war more likely, though you "conceded" the efficacy, (is "need"too strong?) of internal red lines, known to the commander and his advisors. Now you're arguing that a precipitous going to war in Iraq, which is a matter of some argument, means what: no stated red line or do away entirely with the concept of red lines? The latter means incoherence, no real policy whatsoever. The former as the basis of defining a causus belli is functionally indistinguishable from the latter. Bush was hell bent on going to war, Cheney who held then powerful sway even more so, not even wanting to go to the U.N., (the resulting S.C. Resolution being what by the way? Nothing other than a RED LINE.) The haste in Iraq isn't attributable to red lines, private or public. It's attributable to precisely what it was--haste.
Jeffrey Goldberg:
...And Netanyahu's specific anxiety is not unreasonable: The White House position is that the U.S. will keep Iran from possessing a nuclear bomb. It is fair to ask, as Bibi is asking: Does that mean you will let them have a warhead design, sufficient enriched uranium, and a missile system capable of delivering a nuclear warhead, so long as they don't actually finish building the device and then mating it to a delivery system? In other words, what if Iran is only technically non-nuclear? What if it would only take Iran a month to put together a nuclear bomb from the moment the decision is made? What will you do then? And how will you know, for sure, that they are doing it? American officials have promised Israel and the Arab states that their intelligence is good enough that they will know when Iran is approaching the nuclear threshold. But obviously the record of the American intelligence community is not without its flaws (the same holds true, of course, for Israel, and the Europeans.) ...
Understanding why Bibi frustrates Obama, this sounds sensible to me. Trying to understand this matter logically confounds me. If the premise is, however unstated, "We'll never take military action against Iran to stop them from going nuclear," then I can see coherence in U.S. policy. Never state the premise, act as if the premise doesn't exist, make sounds like military options "are on he table," keep increasing all pressure short of military action, and hope for the best, understanding the key to this policy is prevention short of military action and that failing containment.
But if Obama can be taken at his word, that his policy truly is to stop Iran from going nuclear, even using force, then I don't understand the refusal to draw a properly worded, properly conceived red line. Reports from the disinterested international monitoring agency indicate Iranian refusal to cooperate with inspectors, increasing its enrichment of uranium, other technical signs I don't fully understand which, apparently, raise troubling inferences of Iranian nuclear intentions.
The refusal to formulate an appropriate red line seems to me to signal an ultimate unwillingness to take action. The best argument I can deduce coming from the administration is that, as put by Panetta, "drawing red lines will paint the U.S. into a corner." But to my admittedly layman's logic, I can't follow this line of reasoning. Surely the U.S. understands that which, if it really means to stop Iran including by military action, it will not tolerate Iran going beyond. If so why not state it, of course appropriately, sufficiently qualified for contingencies and its own flexibility? Then the U.S. will have, generally, specified what will trigger action and Iran will need to take that generally specific ultimatum into account in its forward movement and the U.S. will have put flesh on the bare bone of its public commitment.
I'd like to understand the reasoning that resolves my perplexity here. What am I missing?
Me:Well, my own analysis is that Israel shouldn't take military action against Iran and that Iran ultimately is a rational actor in these matters regardless of its nightmare, apocalyptic rhetoric and its utter internal and international perfidy.
In my view containment will be the inevitable policy.
On the other hand, what I think matters not. I'm not living in Israel surrounded by militants rhetorically committed to her destruction and the only country in the world, as I'm aware, whose existence is repeatedly existentially threatened merely by reason her existence, which is by the way a beacon of humane civilization compared to what surrounds her and is near to her. I'll leave her life and death decisions to Israel as she decides to make them through her unique-to-the-region democratic processes.
But all of this is beside my precise question: again, given Obama's public commitment to preventing Iran going nuclear including the use of force, and assuming Obama in this means what he says--"I don't bluff"--I, again, don't understand the reasoning for the U.S. refusal to formulate a red line.
I don't see the answer to that in any of the above commentary.
Neil: I think there is reason to worry that America may not be ready to go to war in the region (again) to protect an increasingly ugly Israeli state. Personally, I would be against such a war. Israel is an ally only in the sense that she would like very much to have our aid and protection, in return for which our concerns about settlements are set aside with contempt and our President is accused of throwing Israel under the bus? It is time to re-think our relationship with Israel, but it is not Obama who is to blame if this alliance has come to an end.
Me:
Just to be clear and to move this discussion down from a possible level of abstraction, the issue is not red lines as a general proposition, but rather a stated U.S. red line at this time concerning Iran’s nuclearization.
And, again, just for clarity, my assumption is that Obama means what he says when he says he won’t let Iran go nuclear his means including force. So for these purposes that sincere intention is a given. (Which in itself may be a kind of red line, it occurs to me.)
Your first point of your two part case is that a red line will signal a limit to diplomatic action. And then use a chess analogy, the end game, and liken a red to a hardened condition for war, an ultimatum, in your words, “making difficult negations more difficult.” The problem with this point is that” it ain’t necessarily so.” If it’s not necessarily so, then it’s your and others’ speculative judgment as to what might happen were a red line enunciated. But why is that judgment better than the judgment that a red line may be more efficacious here than not? Here let’s recall Goldberg’s sympathy for Bibi’s exasperation:
... And Netanyahu's specific anxiety is not unreasonable: The White House position is that the U.S. will keep Iran from possessing a nuclear bomb. It is fair to ask, as Bibi is asking: Does that mean you will let them have a warhead design, sufficient enriched uranium, and a missile system capable of delivering a nuclear warhead, so long as they don't actually finish building the device and then mating it to a delivery system? In other words, what if Iran is only technically non-nuclear? What if it would only take Iran a month to put together a nuclear bomb from the moment the decision is made? What will you do then? And how will you know, for sure, that they are doing it? American officials have promised Israel and the Arab states that their intelligence is good enough that they will know when Iran is approaching the nuclear threshold. But obviously the record of the American intelligence community is not without its flaws (the same holds true, of course, for Israel, and the Europeans.)...
To this need be added the fact that it appears from the IAEA August 2102 reporting that, as I have read, Iran’s nuclear program is performing faster and better than in any prior period, despite tough sanctions and cyber warfare. Iran continues to produce, in the midst of the latest ratcheted up sanctions, 3.5 percent enriched uranium at the fastest rate ever – 62 percent faster than the end of 2011—and is using more centrifuges than ever before. Iran continues to accelerate its production of 20 percent enriched uranium; the production rate has more than tripled since the end of last year. Iran’s stockpile of 3.5 percent and 20 percent enriched uranium could already yield, with further enrichment, enough highly enriched uranium (HEU), uranium enriched above 90 percent, for several nuclear devices. To the content of this latest report needs further to be added, so we remind ourselves, that negotiations over years and including in Istanbul, Baghdad, and Moscow have failed. It’s a reasonable inference that the Iranians are playing time, not negotiating in good faith and hell bent on completing their project.
Further, built into your first point are questionable conclusions that need to demonstrated and not just asserted. For example, why need setting a red line limit signal a limit to diplomatic efforts and what does it even mean to say this?
Commenting on the latter portion of the question first, the U.S has in broad terms, it may be argued, and as above suggested set a red line in the sense of its public position that, as Panetta, said at one point in one interview with CBS, as I have read, “If... we get intelligence that they are proceeding with developing a nuclear weapon the we will take whatever necessary steps to stop it.” And we have of course Obama’s already noted public commitment on the issue. The problem with these statements is they are vague and somewhat all over the place and Iran, as it proceeds according to the IAEA reporting, is not much deterred by them, signaling to my mind lack of clear resolve. So the argument flowing from this point, it strikes me, that this is an opportune time to set more clear, coherent, consistent and understandable marker. As well, let’s not confuse deadlines with red lines. While the former may obstruct negotiations and make war a certainty, the latter need not do so. Proscribed conduct, something functional and unacceptable, will be a trigger not an artificial deadline.
The second point in my just asked question is why does setting such a red line stifle negotiation? Iran is given to know where it stands and must take inot account the consequences of its actions within that set framework. For, there are times when the best way to prevent the need to use force is to communicate clearly its possibility. If the U.S really means it has a military option and will act on it, it needs to be unambiguous about that as a general matter. Iran will know there are real limits to how long talks can go on and how long it can stall while it proceeds apace with its project in the meantime. I’d argue, as my premise has it, if the U.S. is serious then Iran must understand there is no middle ground or choice between negotiations and preventative strikes. At some point, when the line is crossed, the former gives way to the latter.
There is a further problem with the antimony between a red line and diplomacy: if the U.S.’s commitment is serious then likely an action, following what Panetta said, showing a clear move toward getting a bomb -- such as throwing out the IAEA inspectors, revelations about other secret nuclear facilities, clear and sustained evidence of enrichment above 20 percent, or further weaponization -- would be expected trigger a U.S. military response. As you say yourself, “A red line is something useful for the President to define for himself, among his closest advisers...”
But, for example, the NATO treaty sets red lines as do many existing security agreements which America has been party to for decades after the WW 11. And WW 11 is instructive because its lesson is the consequences by the ongoing and consistent refusal of European leaders in the 1930s to establish clear lines for German action. The NATO red line affirmed over the decades by successive presidents contributed to collapse of the Soviet Union. Article 5 of the NATO treaty says:
“The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognised by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.”
In the result, I’m unpersuaded by the first point in your two part case.
Your second point is even more unpersuasive. The argument is it promotes war, for BIbi can yell “breach”and then perforce war, even if U.S. experts are at odds about a breach. As if, Israel will make the U.S. do something it doesn’t want to do. As if, there couldn’t be that same disagreement about a breach even if the red line was kept, as say it should it be, private. My interpretation of a sub text of your comment, and particularly, your second point is that you resist the foundation set up by the premise: that Obama means what he says. A red line makes force—and I distinguish between the tailored use of force and war, for precision, clearer thinking, and to avoid the emotive power of the latter term—more discernible, its possibility more transparent, not more likely. You I think tend to conflate the two out of rearing back from force’s possibility, the transparency of that possibility clearly not to your liking.
Neil: By the way, isn't Goldberg one of those who believed invading Iraq was a good thing, necessary even, because supposedly Iraq was at or beyond the nuclear red line of that time? I don't think there is mych hope for the red line advocates. We have all heard the cry of "wolf" before and have regretted giving credit to these people. Mr Netanyahu evidently is in the same place as Goldberg was when he wrote of Saddam Hussein, "There is some debate among arms-control experts about exactly when Saddam will have nuclear capabilities. But there is no disagreement that Iraq, if unchecked, will have them soon ... There is little doubt what Saddam might do with an atomic bomb or with his stocks of biological and chemical weapons." I think the red line proponents should be aware of the discredited legacy they are stepping into, but nothing is more difficult than learning from one's mistakes.Commenting on the latter portion of the question first, the U.S has in broad terms, it may be argued, and as above suggested set a red line in the sense of its public position that, as Panetta, said at one point in one interview with CBS, as I have read, “If... we get intelligence that they are proceeding with developing a nuclear weapon the we will take whatever necessary steps to stop it.” And we have of course Obama’s already noted public commitment on the issue. The problem with these statements is they are vague and somewhat all over the place and Iran, as it proceeds according to the IAEA reporting, is not much deterred by them, signaling to my mind lack of clear resolve. So the argument flowing from this point, it strikes me, that this is an opportune time to set more clear, coherent, consistent and understandable marker. As well, let’s not confuse deadlines with red lines. While the former may obstruct negotiations and make war a certainty, the latter need not do so. Proscribed conduct, something functional and unacceptable, will be a trigger not an artificial deadline.
The second point in my just asked question is why does setting such a red line stifle negotiation? Iran is given to know where it stands and must take inot account the consequences of its actions within that set framework. For, there are times when the best way to prevent the need to use force is to communicate clearly its possibility. If the U.S really means it has a military option and will act on it, it needs to be unambiguous about that as a general matter. Iran will know there are real limits to how long talks can go on and how long it can stall while it proceeds apace with its project in the meantime. I’d argue, as my premise has it, if the U.S. is serious then Iran must understand there is no middle ground or choice between negotiations and preventative strikes. At some point, when the line is crossed, the former gives way to the latter.
There is a further problem with the antimony between a red line and diplomacy: if the U.S.’s commitment is serious then likely an action, following what Panetta said, showing a clear move toward getting a bomb -- such as throwing out the IAEA inspectors, revelations about other secret nuclear facilities, clear and sustained evidence of enrichment above 20 percent, or further weaponization -- would be expected trigger a U.S. military response. As you say yourself, “A red line is something useful for the President to define for himself, among his closest advisers...”
But, for example, the NATO treaty sets red lines as do many existing security agreements which America has been party to for decades after the WW 11. And WW 11 is instructive because its lesson is the consequences by the ongoing and consistent refusal of European leaders in the 1930s to establish clear lines for German action. The NATO red line affirmed over the decades by successive presidents contributed to collapse of the Soviet Union. Article 5 of the NATO treaty says:
“The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognised by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.”
In the result, I’m unpersuaded by the first point in your two part case.
Your second point is even more unpersuasive. The argument is it promotes war, for BIbi can yell “breach”and then perforce war, even if U.S. experts are at odds about a breach. As if, Israel will make the U.S. do something it doesn’t want to do. As if, there couldn’t be that same disagreement about a breach even if the red line was kept, as say it should it be, private. My interpretation of a sub text of your comment, and particularly, your second point is that you resist the foundation set up by the premise: that Obama means what he says. A red line makes force—and I distinguish between the tailored use of force and war, for precision, clearer thinking, and to avoid the emotive power of the latter term—more discernible, its possibility more transparent, not more likely. You I think tend to conflate the two out of rearing back from force’s possibility, the transparency of that possibility clearly not to your liking.
Me: You have shifted the ground you're polemically standing on. Your first argument rested on stated red lines hobbling diplomacy and making war more likely, though you "conceded" the efficacy, (is "need"too strong?) of internal red lines, known to the commander and his advisors. Now you're arguing that a precipitous going to war in Iraq, which is a matter of some argument, means what: no stated red line or do away entirely with the concept of red lines? The latter means incoherence, no real policy whatsoever. The former as the basis of defining a causus belli is functionally indistinguishable from the latter. Bush was hell bent on going to war, Cheney who held then powerful sway even more so, not even wanting to go to the U.N., (the resulting S.C. Resolution being what by the way? Nothing other than a RED LINE.) The haste in Iraq isn't attributable to red lines, private or public. It's attributable to precisely what it was--haste.
Monday, September 17, 2012
A Few Comments on On The Road At TIFF
The world famous (at least all over Toronto) Toronto International Film Festival is on. It's all too much hassle for me even if I can get a glimpse of Bruce Willis's shadow.
In the old days, we used to worry not too much about the movies and tried to crash as many parties as possible and hit the clubs where the great and near great would mingle and get down.
But those days have passed and I'm o
In the old days, we used to worry not too much about the movies and tried to crash as many parties as possible and hit the clubs where the great and near great would mingle and get down.
But those days have passed and I'm o
k with a glass of Ovaltine and working on my collection of used bottle caps from around the world.
My better fraction, however, is entirely into it, each year organizing herself to take in a score of movies in about 10 days. (Today she got to sit right behind Dustin Hoffman at a showing of Ben Affleck's Argo.) She'll take me to a couple of them.
So yesterday I took some time off--I've been doing so much of that of late, I forget how to spell baristerre--and went with her to see On The Road, a 2012 treatment by a Brazilian director of Kerouac's novel, the concluding sentence of which never fails to take my breath away:
...So in America when the sun goes down and I sit on the old broken-down river pier watching the long, long skies over New Jersey and sense all that raw land that rolls in one unbelievable huge bulge over to the West Coast, and all that road going, and all the people dreaming in the immensity of it, and in Iowa I know by now the children must be crying in the land where they let the children cry, and tonight the stars'll be out, and don't you know that God is Pooh Bear? the evening star must be drooping and shedding her sparkler dims on the prairie, which is just before the coming of complete night that blesses the earth, darkens all the rivers, cups the peaks and folds the final shore in, and nobody, nobody knows what's going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old, I think of Dean Moriarty, I even think of Old Dean Moriarty the father we never found, I think of Dean Moriarty...
Anyway, against the grain of a few critical comments I checked out after, I liked it more than I didn't. It dragged some; the guy playing Dean, though compelling and charismatic, didn't get across Dean's manic energy--which needed something like Tom Cruise's frenetic moves at the beginning of Rain Man; the voice and voiceovers of Sal Paradise were dead on and magnetic and Sal's hip equanimity is precisely conveyed; but the look was wrong; Kerouac was all American handsome, with a muscular, athletic build of the football player he was; but Sal of the movie was somehow attenuated in his physicality and had a quiet, bookish and odd sort of good looks, not conveying (at least my) impression of Kerouac's noted all American good looks; and the guy playing Carlos Marx (Allen Ginsberg) was flat trying too hard.
But for all that, and I mean for all that, the movie was continually engrossing even when it dragged some; it conveyed (at least my sense of) the spirit and feel of the novel; and the replication of the times is unerring.
I won't spoil the interesting ending, which if I'm remembering, is a fresh imagining of the novel's ending.
So, again, for me, for this movie, the ayes have it.
My better fraction, however, is entirely into it, each year organizing herself to take in a score of movies in about 10 days. (Today she got to sit right behind Dustin Hoffman at a showing of Ben Affleck's Argo.) She'll take me to a couple of them.
So yesterday I took some time off--I've been doing so much of that of late, I forget how to spell baristerre--and went with her to see On The Road, a 2012 treatment by a Brazilian director of Kerouac's novel, the concluding sentence of which never fails to take my breath away:
...So in America when the sun goes down and I sit on the old broken-down river pier watching the long, long skies over New Jersey and sense all that raw land that rolls in one unbelievable huge bulge over to the West Coast, and all that road going, and all the people dreaming in the immensity of it, and in Iowa I know by now the children must be crying in the land where they let the children cry, and tonight the stars'll be out, and don't you know that God is Pooh Bear? the evening star must be drooping and shedding her sparkler dims on the prairie, which is just before the coming of complete night that blesses the earth, darkens all the rivers, cups the peaks and folds the final shore in, and nobody, nobody knows what's going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old, I think of Dean Moriarty, I even think of Old Dean Moriarty the father we never found, I think of Dean Moriarty...
Anyway, against the grain of a few critical comments I checked out after, I liked it more than I didn't. It dragged some; the guy playing Dean, though compelling and charismatic, didn't get across Dean's manic energy--which needed something like Tom Cruise's frenetic moves at the beginning of Rain Man; the voice and voiceovers of Sal Paradise were dead on and magnetic and Sal's hip equanimity is precisely conveyed; but the look was wrong; Kerouac was all American handsome, with a muscular, athletic build of the football player he was; but Sal of the movie was somehow attenuated in his physicality and had a quiet, bookish and odd sort of good looks, not conveying (at least my) impression of Kerouac's noted all American good looks; and the guy playing Carlos Marx (Allen Ginsberg) was flat trying too hard.
But for all that, and I mean for all that, the movie was continually engrossing even when it dragged some; it conveyed (at least my sense of) the spirit and feel of the novel; and the replication of the times is unerring.
I won't spoil the interesting ending, which if I'm remembering, is a fresh imagining of the novel's ending.
So, again, for me, for this movie, the ayes have it.
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