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Book Now at WeeklyStandardCruise.com 888-471-3882 Contents June 5, 2017 • Volume 22, Number 37

2 The Scrapbook Social scientists unbound, Prince Charles the non-prophet, & more 5 Casual Lee Smith’s elder abuse 6 Editorials Winning the 9/11 Wars • Generation Trump? • Indefensible Articles

10 The Republican To-Do List by Fred Barnes Congress may still accomplish big things

11 Prime-Time Conspiracy Theory by John McCormack The Seth Rich nonsense and how it spread

13 They Deserve Our Gratitude by Jonathan V. Last Serving the country by serving Trump

2 14 Hubris in the U.K. by Andrew Stuttaford Theresa May’s ‘dementia tax’ misstep

16 Misreporting Iran by Kelly Jane Torrance The ‘moderate’ is also a liar with blood on his hands

17 Japan Returns by Christopher Caldwell To find China on the doorstep

19 Unprecedented? by Jay Cost Trump is hardly the first president to be­surrounded by attackers

20 In Praise of the Aircraft Carrier by Geoffrey Norman Always on the verge of obsolescence, yet always proving its worth Feature

5 22 Unfinished Business by Thomas Joscelyn What it will take to make America safe again Books & Arts

30 Tigers at Bay by John Psaropoulos They’re roaring, but for how long?

32 A Soldier’s Word by Judy Bachrach Harsh truths, and merciful lies, about war

22 33 Magic Lantern by William H. Pritchard It’s been a century since we met J. Alfred Prufrock

35 Rested and Ready? by Jonathan Marks The American engine could use a tune-up

37 Object Lessons by Dominic Green For Henri Matisse, the outward appearance reflects an inner life

39 Uncompromised by John Podhoretz An artist’s vision for ‘Twin Peaks: The Return’

37 40 Parody ‘Snow White’ is problematic

COVER: A U.S. ARMY SOLDIER RESTS AFTER NIGHT-LONG FIGHTING IN FALLUJAH, IRAQ, NOVEMBER 9, 2004; SCOTT NELSON / GETTY THE SCRAPBOOK Stanford Prison Experiment, Anyone? or nearly 40 years, the federal nign behavioral interventions” can only because we mistrust anything F government has enforced the exempt themselves from seeking the done in the name of “efficiency.” “Common Rule.” The rule required approval of their IRB, so that once Drunk with the deference journal- researchers in the social and medical they have all their human guinea ists and laypeople show them, social sciences to get the approval of an in- pigs lined up, they can just let ’er rip, scientists of all sorts are throwing off dependent review board, or IRB, for scientifically speaking. the shackles of professional norms. their federally funded experiments. To cite another example: According The purpose of the boards, which to NPR, members of the American are usually set up by the research- Psychiatric Association are hoping to ers’ universities, is to protect human repeal the APA’s “Goldwater Rule,” research subjects—college students, which forbids members from pro- usually—from potentially harmful nouncing on the psychological health experiments. The most infamous ex- of public figures whom they haven’t ample is the Tuskegee syphilis study, examined personally. Its name comes conducted by the U.S. Public Health from the notorious magazine story in Service, which allowed syphilitic pa- 1964 that reported more than a thou- tients to go untreated for decades in sand head-shrinkers had declared the name of medical research. then-candidate Barry Goldwater psy- Nothing like Tuskegee is taking chologically unstable. place today, so far as we know. Even so, Unburdened by the Goldwater the IRBs serve as a useful stay against Rule, APA members will at last be overenthusiastic researchers whose free to pronounce that any public fig- sense of their own virtuous mission ure they disagree with is nuts. You might lead them to disregard the con- don’t suppose they’re thinking of sequences of their research methods. Donald Trump, do you? Whatever After all, scientific researchers—the you think about the various screws producers of all that “data” that big loose in the president’s psyche, the thinkers are forever citing in service The new rule won’t take effect confusion of professional judgment of one special interest or another—sit until next year, and not everyone likes with political belief would be a ter- pretty high in the saddle these days. the change. Tom George, a bioethicist rible development. Now those researchers think they at the University of Texas, told the It pains the Scrapbook to find it- ought to be policing themselves. And New York Times: “There seems to be self on the side of regulations and federal regulators seem to agree. a major paradigm shift going on away gag rules. But the exalted role social In January the Department of from the original goal of the IRB to scientists have assumed in the public Health and Human Services relaxed protect human subjects and toward conversation requires that we view its regulations governing the use of the convenience of researchers in the them with redoubled scrutiny and the review boards. For example, psy- name of so-called efficiency. I find skepticism. “Trust Us, We Know chological researchers who believe that of deep concern.” What We’re Doing” is a suspicious their experiments entail only “be- The Scrapbook does too, and not motto for any profession. ♦

this is being reported by Marine Corps Leatherneck Ladies Marine Pfc. Maria Daume Times: “A growing chorus of critics” ith all due respect to the Ma- say that having two-tiered fitness W rine Corps, “The Few, The requirements “creates a double stan- Proud, The Gender-Neutral” just dard and implies that female Marines doesn’t have the same ring to it. are not as physically capable as men.” Yet there is now a movement in the What’s being implied here is a bio- corps—even backed by some female logical reality and one that’s not open jarheads—to require women to meet to debate. With incredibly rare excep- the same physical fitness standards quite a laudable development, though tions, women simply aren’t as physi-

as the men. In some respects, this is we have to scratch our heads at how cally capable as men when it comes USMC IMAGES, BIGSTOCK; BELOW, ABOVE

2 / The Weekly Standard June 5, 2017 to the most arduous tasks related to combat. But the standards aren’t just about biology, they are wrapped up in questions of what roles women should have in the Marines. The corps had been the last hold- out among the armed services, resist- ing political demands that women be allowed in combat infantry units. But last year the Marines finally buckled under pressure. So far, they have kept this transition from becoming a com- plete disaster by requiring that any women who serve in key combat po- sitions meet the same physical fitness standards as the men. In the year since the infantry was opened to both sexes, exactly one woman—Marine Pfc. Maria Daume—has joined the infantry via the traditional entry-level training process requiring her to pass the de- manding fitness requirements, such as evacuating a 214-pound body while wearing a fighting load. (Aside from being obviously physically gifted, Pfc. Daume was born in a Siberian prison and was orphaned before being adopted. Everything about her seems exceptional.) Despite the “growing chorus of critics,” the Marine Corps Times re- ports the corps has no plans to cre- ate a single physical fitness standard for all Marines just yet. Even though a lot of female Marines sincerely en- dorse raising standards for women, bureaucratic logic would likely dictate splitting the difference by easing the standards for men. Certainly women Apocalypse Now nonsense about a few inches of sea- can make—and have made!—incred- rise; nothing so trivial as coastal ero- ible contributions to our military, but he Prince of Wales did not mince sion; no focus on the plight of the war is dangerous business and surviv- T words in warning about the rav- polar bear. No, the prince had a loud- al often depends on the strength and ages of global warming. No piddling er alarm he was sounding, one about speed of the soldier next to you. the Future of Mankind: The “threat So we salute Pfc. Daume, but as of catastrophic climate change,” he a general rule, female Marines will said, “calls into question humanity’s never be as physically capable as men, continued survival on the planet.” and the prospect of eroding standards These strong words, The Scrap- to place women in combat situations book hastens to point out, come from will disproportionately endanger March 2009, when Prince Charles was them. A generation ago, draft-dodg- visiting Brazil. That date is significant ing hippies asked, “How many men because the prince was convinced that have to die for a lie?” We regret to say time was, even then, running out. And that the fact we’re now asking how not in some vague, way-off-in-the-dis- many women have to die for one is not tant-future kind of running out: The

TWS PHOTO ILLO: PRINCE, DAN MARSH; BEAR & FIGURE, BIGSTOCK TWS PHOTO ILLO: a sign of social progress. ♦ reckoning was to be upon us on a very

June 5, 2017 The Weekly Standard / 3 specific timeline. “The best projec- been mugged. Here, the mugging is tions tell us that we have less than one coming from Sacramento legislators hundred months to alter our behavior and bureaucrats. Pass the popcorn. before we risk catastrophic climate The plot goes like this: In January, a change, and the unimaginable horrors new law took effect in California crack- www.weeklystandard.com that this would bring.” ing down on the scourge of fake auto- Stephen F. Hayes, Editor in Chief This was not an offhand bit of graphs. According to the San Francisco Richard Starr, Editor scaremongering. The ticking dooms- Chronicle, the law “requires any dealer Fred Barnes, Robert Messenger, Executive Editors day clock was so central to HRH’s re- (defined as a ‘person who is principally Eric Felten, Managing Editor Christopher Caldwell, Andrew Ferguson, marks that the speech was titled “Less in the business of selling’ autographed Lee Smith, Senior Editors Than 100 Months to Act.” items for more than $5) to provide Philip Terzian, Literary Editor Kelly Jane Torrance, Deputy Managing Editor Of course, 100 months from a certificate of authenticity with the Jay Cost, Mark Hemingway, Matt Labash, Jonathan V. Last, March 2009 just happens to be right sale.” The law further “requires a cum- John McCormack, Tony Mecia, about now. So where is the irrevo- bersome documentation process, and Michael Warren, Senior Writers Rachael Larimore, Online Managing Editor cable catastrophe? Where are the un- the records must be retained for seven Ethan Epstein, Associate Editor imaginable horrors? years.” Fail to comply, and you’re li- Chris Deaton, Jim Swift, Deputy Online Editors Hannah Yoest, Assistant Literary Editor There are reasons to think that the able for damages, plus “civil fines of 10 Priscilla M. Jensen, Assistant Editor prince’s predictive powers are not in- times the actual damages.” Tatiana Lozano, Editorial Assistant Jenna Lifhits, Alice B. Lloyd, Reporters fallible. For example, he also declared Philip Chalk, Design Director in Brazil that we “will soon see prices Barbara Kyttle, Design Assistant Contributing Editors for oil rocket again.” Well, he wasn’t Claudia Anderson, Max Boot, Joseph Bottum, alone in missing the shale oil revo- Tucker Carlson, Matthew Continetti, Terry Eastland, Noemie Emery, Joseph Epstein, David Frum, lution. But how could he have been David Gelernter, Reuel Marc Gerecht, expected to divine the technological Michael Goldfarb, Daniel Halper, Mary Katharine Ham, Brit Hume, Thomas Joscelyn, future? One might ask, in the same Frederick W. Kagan, Charles Krauthammer, Yuval Levin, Tod Lindberg, Micah Mattix, spirit, how Charles could claim to have Victorino Matus, P. J. O’Rourke, a crystal ball on the climate. John Podhoretz, Irwin M. Stelzer William Kristol, Editor at Large But that would be unfair. The Scrapbook is happy to recognize the But here’s the twist: The Chron- MediaDC good prince as a visionary expert. We icle reports that the new law is “caus- Ryan McKibben, Chairman will take him at his word that 100 ing anguish for an unlikely victim.” Stephen R. Sparks, President & Chief Operating Officer Jennifer Yingling, Audience Development Officer months after March 2009 it will be Caught in the law’s grip, it turns out, Kathy Schaffhauser, Chief Financial Officer too late to do anything to save human- are local bookstores that hold book- David Lindsey, Chief Digital Officer Alex Rosenwald, Director, Public Relations & Branding ity from climate catastrophe. That signing events with authors. The Mark Walters, Chief Revenue Officer said, since it’s too late to do anything co-owner of one independent chain, Nicholas H. B. Swezey, Vice President, Advertising T. Barry Davis, Senior Director, Advertising now, we guess there’s no reason to lis- Book Passage, told the paper, “If we Jason Roberts, Digital Director, Advertising ten to the climate experts telling us to had to do everything this law requires, Paul Plawin, National Account Director Andrew Kaumeier, Advertising Operations Manager do this, that, and the other. After all, it would kill our author event program, Brooke McIngvale, Manager, Marketing Services what’s the point? As Charles told us which is the bedrock of our business.” Advertising inquiries: 202-293-4900 100 months ago, now is when we will The bookstore is suing the state. Subscriptions: 1-800-274-7293 no longer be able to “ensure our very The bookstore crackdown could The Weekly Standard (ISSN 1083-3013), a division of Clarity Media Group, ability to survive.” Our fate is sealed. tragically endanger the appearance is published weekly (except the first week in January, third week in April, One consolation, at least: We don’t of one author coming in to talk about, first week in July, and third week in August) at 1152 15th St., NW, Suite 200, Washington, DC 20005. Periodicals postage paid at Washington, have to listen to any more climate pre- according to Book Passage’s website, DC, and additional mailing offices. Postmaster: Send address changes to The Weekly Standard, P.O. 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4 / The Weekly Standard June 5, 2017 CASUAL

photographer was setting up his cam- The Case of the Missing Stylist era and lights. Sontag asked where the stylist was. Pardon me, I asked. The person who is going to take care of my makeup and hair, said Sontag. dward Said saved my life. naked on the cover of your maga- This wasn’t going to end well for And I don’t mean that the zine. I probably could’ve gotten away me. Sontag knew a lot about photog- work of the late American with a celebrity profile of Immanuel raphy—the art, she’d written a book intellectual and Palestin- Kant. “Here in the Grill Room, Henry about it, and the profession, she was Eian activist rescued me when I needed Kissinger walks by us and nods at the in a long relationship with the famous intellectual or emotional or moral author of the Critique of Pure Reason, celebrity photographer Annie Lei- sustenance. Sure, at one point in my who puts another forkful of arugula in bovitz. Sontag was a very attractive political odyssey, Said’s work was his mouth . . .” woman whose casual beauty won her important to me. Even now, though Tina green-lighted the interview the adoration of several generations my ideas about the Middle East have with the two unwell writers, and I of followers. I suspect both age and changed a great deal since my graduate arranged for a hotel suite in midtown illness had understandably made her school days when I met Said, I believe more protective of her appearance, that Orientalism, his most famous book, especially now that she was going to offers valuable, if skewed, insights into be photographed alongside a man that volatile region. When I say Said whose countenance age and illness saved my life, I mean it literally. You seemed to have made finer, sharper, see, one snowy afternoon in the late tragic. Sontag was right to be angry. I ’90s, Susan Sontag was going to kill me. believe she screamed at me. I was working at Talk magazine, Eventually, Said rose from his chair, founded by the former editor of unfolding his tall frame. “Susan,” he the New Yorker, Tina Brown, who said, and took her arm and walked had the staff on 24-hour call looking her into the other room in the suite. I for what was hot and what generated don’t know exactly what he said, but buzz. As the editor of the book sec- I like to imagine it was something tion, I was competing with celebrity along the lines of, “Susan, you are wranglers who promised, for instance, beautiful. God, you’ve always been a cover shot of Tom Cruise—in the gorgeous, and are more beautiful now nude, more or less. There’s not a lot than ever. The photographs will be of buzz with poets, novelists, and fine because you are beautiful.” biographers. Even if their books are That’s what I imagine he said— hot and buzzy, their lives and looks along with blaming me for being such are rarely glossy magazine material. Manhattan, a caterer, and the photog- a dolt. They came out a couple of min- But Said, one of New York’s best- rapher to capture what would no doubt utes later and sat for the pictures and known intellectuals right then and be stunning and dramatic black-and- then we started the interview. It was a dramatically photogenic guy, had white images of the two major intellec- terrible, but when I turned off the tape- just published a memoir, Out of Place. tual figures of the moment. recorder after an hour of two intel- Was this buzzy enough? I consulted Said was the first to arrive. A bliz- lectuals performing for each other, a with my friend and colleague Jim zard was starting to take shape out- stillness settled over them both. Now Surowiecki, who suggested that we side and as he shook the snow out of they were really talking, and listening do a story pairing Edward Said with his hair, it occurred to me I’d dragged to each other. The part not on tape was another writer, a woman—how about a sick man through the biggest snow- fabulous. He talked about music, and Susan Sontag? She’d published a novel storm of the year. I asked if he wanted she explained how and why her idea recently, and here’s the hook—they some tea. We talked about his memoir, of novels had changed since she was a were both suffering from illnesses! which soon turned into a conversation young essayist. They were wonderful Wouldn’t that be a great story—putting about his father, whom he remem- together. I could’ve listened to them all two New Yorkers in their 60s together bered very fondly. afternoon but eventually of course they to discuss not feeling well! Soon after, Sontag arrived. She and had to go, and walked back out into In retrospect I don’t know why Tina Said exchanged greetings. They had the cold blizzard. let me do it. Maybe nothing else mat- indeed known each other a very long

BRITT SPENCER ters if you have Tom Cruise nearly time. I’d never met her before. The Lee Smith

June 5, 2017 The Weekly Standard / 5 EDITORIALS

Winning the 9/11 Wars Manchester, in the aftermath of the bombing

n April 30, 2012, Barack Obama’s top counter­ allies because of its ideological appeal, media presence, con­ terrorism adviser made a bold prediction: It was trol of territory in Iraq and Syria, its branches and networks O possible to envision a world in which al Qaeda’s in other countries, and its proven ability to direct and inspire central leadership would “no longer [be] relevant” to the attacks against a wide range of targets around the world.” United States and the organization itself would be elimi­ Neither al Qaeda nor the modern jihadism it pioneered nated. “If the decade before 9/11 was the time of al Qaeda’s will be gone anytime soon—as the brutal attack in Manches­ rise, and the decade after 9/11 was the time of its decline, then ter, England, reminded us this past week and as the excellent I believe this decade will be the one that sees its demise,” cover story by Thomas Joscelyn makes clear. But efforts to boasted John Brennan. downplay jihadist terror came to an end on the final day of This wasn’t an analytical assessment. It was a political the Obama administration. claim, coming just six months before the 2012 election, at the Donald Trump made clear in his speech May 21 in beginning of the Obama administration’s coordinated public Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, that he recognizes the threats posed relations campaign to portray al Qaeda as “on the run.” Like by radical Islam and that he is not reluctant to speak about his boss, Brennan was reflexively dismissive of the jihadists’ those threats in a direct and forceful way. These are impor­ desire to capture territory and build a radical Islamic state. In tant and welcome changes. But they won’t win the 9/11 wars. a June 29, 2011, speech, Brennan had dismissed “al Qaeda’s What was true under George W. Bush remained true grandiose vision of global domination through a violent under Barack Obama, and what was true under Barack Islamic caliphate” as “absurd,” a “feckless delusion.” Obama remains true under Donald Trump: We cannot Brennan went on to become Obama’s CIA director. ISIS prevail in this long war without strong, resolute Ameri­ went on to capture large chunks of Syria and Iraq and declare can leadership. itself a global caliphate. And al Qaeda went on to recruit thou­ Can Donald Trump provide it? We’d like to believe so, sands of jihadists, building new guerrilla armies in South and Trump has among his many national security advisers Asia and Syria, as well as in hotspots throughout North and some of the finest minds on the subject. There are nonethe­ West Africa. These forces joined existing al Qaeda branches less many reasons to temper expectations. in Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen, and elsewhere, all of which The biggest question is the president himself. Trump is grew. Al Qaeda’s men have conducted hundreds of attacks, an instinctive non-interventionist and has been for decades. while seizing more territory than the group ever possessed And yet he has said consistently that he will defeat ISIS, before. ISIS, an outgrowth of al Qaeda in Iraq, “maintains al Qaeda, and other jihadists. This tension will have to be the intent and capability to direct, enable, assist, and inspire resolved one way or the other: The 9/11 wars cannot be won transnational attacks,” according to recent testimony from without the United States playing the dominant role, which Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats. “ISIS continues will require a heavy lift from the U.S. military, intelligence

to pose an active terrorist threat to the United States and its professionals, and diplomats. ELLIS / AFP GETTY IMAGES PAUL

6 / The Weekly Standard June 5, 2017 Take Libya. On April 20, Trump hosted Italian prime In the 1960s, history called the Baby Boomers. They minister Paolo Gentiloni at the White House. After their didn’t answer the phone. meeting, a reporter asked Gentiloni what kind of help he Confronted with a generation-defining conflict, the expected from the Trump administration in efforts to stabi­ cold war, the Boomers—those, at any rate, who came to be lize Libya and asked Trump if he saw a U.S. role in helping emblematic of their generation—took the opposite path from their parents during World War II. Sadly, the excesses of to provide that stability. Gentiloni expressed gratitude for Woodstock became the face of the Boomers’ response to their U.S. assistance in the struggle to keep post-Qaddafi Libya moment of challenge. War protests where agitated youths from turning into a safe haven for ISIS and other jihadists. derided American soldiers as baby-killers added no luster to “We need a stable and unified Libya,” he said. “The U.S. their image. role in this is very critical.” Few of the leading lights of that generation joined the Trump contradicted Gentiloni one second later: military. Most calculated how they could avoid military service, and their attitude rippled through the rest of the I do not see a role in Libya. I think the United States has right century. In the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s, military service didn’t now enough roles. We’re in a role everywhere. So I do not see occur to most young people as an option, let alone a duty. that. I do see a role in getting rid of ISIS. We’re being very But now, once again, history is calling. Fortunately, the effective in that regard. We are doing a job, with respect to present generation appears more reminiscent of their grand­ ISIS, that has not been done anywhere near the numbers that parents than their parents. we’re producing right now. It’s a very effective force we have. We have no choice. It’s a horrible thing to say, but we have Well, over the last decade, history has taken its usual cun­ no choice. And we are effectively ridding the world of ISIS. I ning and circuitous path. The hope that the 9/11 generation see that as a primary role, and that’s what we’re going to do, would ride to the country’s rescue turned out to be prema­ whether it’s in Iraq or in Libya or anywhere else. ture. Young people were attracted to Barack Obama as can­ In the same breath, then, the president says the United didate, and stayed mostly loyal to him as president. But every States has no role in Libya but will play the primary role in generation is entitled to one mistake. ridding the world of ISIS, including in Libya. And then in 2014 a host of young candidates from the 9/11 Although ISIS has lost ground, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s generation, mostly Republicans, were elected to office. Some loyalists continue to operate in Libya. As does Al Qaeda in had served in the military and some not, but they seemed to the Islamic Maghreb and its more covert network. Authori­ manifest, in various ways, a kind of seriousness and impres­ ties in the United Kingdom believe that Salman Abedi, the siveness of the sort Dean Barnett had seen in a few of their terrorist bomber in Manchester, may have traveled to Libya peers. And with Hillary Clinton as the prohibitive favorite to for training. Abedi’s brother and father were arrested there. be the Democratic nominee—and what better embodiment In January, the United States bombed two training camps in was there than the Clintons of so much that was wrong with Libya thought to be tied to the Islamic State’s “external plot­ the boomers?—it seemed that the GOP, by contrast, could ters”—operatives targeting Europe and beyond. become a grand new party, the vehicle of a generation pos­ Ridding Libya of ISIS will require more of this, not less. sessed of an ethic of self-government and responsibility. Ridding the world of ISIS, al Qaeda, and other jihadists— Then came Donald Trump. It turned out the baby boom­ even just diminishing the threat they present—will require a ers’ assault on the nation’s well-being hadn’t yet spent itself. concerted, global effort led by the United States. Indeed, the boomers had saved the worst for last. The moral clarity Trump has provided helps define the Now a new Pew study suggests that almost a quarter challenge ahead. It doesn’t win the war. of those between 18 and 30 who in late 2015 identified as —Stephen F. Hayes Republican or who leaned Republican have changed their minds and abandoned the GOP. The Republican party, for all its problems, had a couple of years ago seemed on the verge of being led by a crew of younger and more impressive men and women. Instead it now has Donald Generation Trump at its helm, and the young are deciding that party isn’t for them. What can be done? President Trump isn’t going any­ where in the near future. But he can perhaps be pre­ Trump? vented from defining Republicanism—and for that matter, conservatism—down. n a cover story in this magazine almost a decade ago, For there is a big difference between a Republican the late Dean Barnett hailed “the 9/11 generation” party that allows itself to become a subsidiary of the I and held out the hope—nay, the expectation—that Trump Organization and a party with leaders who stand they would contribute more to the nation than their par­ against Trump or at least apart from him. There is a big ents, the baby boomers: difference between a party that embraces a Trumpian

8 / The Weekly Standard June 5, 2017 future and one that defines its own future. There’s a big of OCO, repeatedly describing it as a “slush fund.” In writ­ difference between a party of resentment and a party of ten answers sent to the Senate for his confirmation as OMB reform, between a child-like party and a youthful party. director, he vowed to abolish the practice. And not only The key to the GOP’s future is not so much the oscil­ has he turned the 2018 estimate into a cap, but the Trump lating hourly and daily fortunes of Donald Trump. It is the budget cuts the annual OCO forecast to just $10 billion by behavior of other Republican leaders. Do they excuse 2022, a figure that all but returns to pre-9/11 levels. the inexcusable? Do they defend the indefensible? Do they The biggest problem for the Pen­tagon is that the fail to denounce what deserves denunciation? Trump budget approach makes it almost certain that So far the signs aren’t altogether encouraging. So Congress will be unable to follow a normal appropria­ far, almost all the party’s leaders have chosen to accom­ tions process—although you could almost say that con­ modate themselves to Trump rather than embrace the tinuing resolutions, threatened government shutdowns, spirit of the 9/11 generation. These leaders are excused, sequestration, and last-minute “cromnibus” bills are the to a degree, by the novelty of the situation that confronts new normal. The combination of overall spending reduc­ them and the unusual character of the challenge. But tions and very deep cuts in domestic programs ensures they can’t duck responsibility forever. This is a genera­ that the Trump proposal is, as Sen. John McCain put it, tion-defining moment. “dead on arrival.” —William Kristol This is something that won’t surprise Mulvaney. We’ve seen this movie before, with Mulvaney frequently play­ ing a prominent, if secondary, role. More than likely, he is pleased with the prospect of a congressional trainwreck that will work to constrain federal spending closer to the austere levels set in the Budget Control Act. For budget Indefensible hawks like Mulvaney, disrupting the Pentagon’s fiscal plan­ ning is a virtue. olling out the Trump administration’s formal However, the budget as proposed would almost cer­ 2018 budget, acting Pentagon comptroller John tainly deal a fatal blow to the administration’s larger leg­ R Roth confessed that Defense secretary James Mat­ islative agenda, health care and tax reform as well as any tis “hasn’t spent one moment” looking beyond the com­ infrastructure spending and border walls. If Donald Trump ing budget year. But even a cursory glance at the plan wants to make America great again, Mick Mulvaney wants makes one wonder whether he paid much attention to this to make America fiscally prudent again. year, either. The Republican leadership in Congress already had Once again, White House budget director Mick a lengthening list of reasons to distance itself from the Mulvaney seems to have pulled a fast one on the Pentagon. White House, and its performance in “repealing and From the draft “skinny” budget outline produced in March, replacing” Obamacare has raised doubts about its abil­ it was already apparent that there would be no Trump ity to govern. Moreover, Mitch McConnell and Paul defense buildup. But this time around, Mulvaney—previ­ Ryan have twice before negotiated budget compromises ously a leading member of the deficit-obsessed Freedom with Democrats, and the path to a deal—a combination Caucus in the House of Representatives—has managed to of both defense and domestic discretionary spending weld shut the one safety valve Congress has used to miti­ increases—is plain. Indeed, many Democrats understand gate the cuts mandated in the 2011 Budget Control Act. the need to begin to repair the military and support the Now the funding for Overseas Contingency Operations, higher defense spending levels outlined by McCain and or OCO, is no longer an estimate of what the military’s his counterpart on the House Armed Services Committee, war-related costs might be. It has become a cap, an upper Rep. Mac Thornberry. But not at the cost of further cuts limit, a fixed amount. to domestic programs. And while the $65 billion for OCO in 2018 specified Beyond the practical political gains that would come in the Trump request might seem like a lot of money, it’s from preventing a budgetary train wreck, this is also an $18 billion less than the $83 billion Congress just approved opportunity to reaffirm fundamental principles within for 2017. The likelihood that the pace of U.S. military Republican ranks. Neither the Trump cult of personality operations will decrease by almost a quarter next year— nor the Mulvaney cult of accountancy befits the party of stepped-up activity in the Middle East alone has already Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and Reagan. Just because reduced overall munitions stocks to an 18-month sup­ Secretary Mattis can’t spare a moment to plot the rebuild­ ply—is near zero. And here’s another point of comparison: ing of the American military doesn’t mean that Congress— Trump’s 2018 OCO request is almost $10 billion less than the body with the ultimate constitutional responsibility in the average for each year of the second Obama term. such matters—shouldn’t do so. While in Congress, Mulvaney was a die-hard opponent —Thomas Donnelly

June 5, 2017 The Weekly Standard / 9 they making progress? Who knows? But David Leonhardt of the New The Republican York Times wrote recently there’s “an alarmingly large chance” Repub- licans will agree on a bill. As you To-Do List might expect, Leonhardt is a critic of whatever Republicans are up to—in this case, he says it would amount to “taking health insurance from their Congress may still accomplish big things. fellow citizens.” by Fred Barnes When Republicans are blamed for this, it’s usually because they would epublicans are not dead yet. notion that his troubles will prevent eliminate Obamacare’s gun at the In the House, they are moving them from making any headway is head of every American forcing them R ahead briskly on tax reform. a myth fostered by Democrats and to buy health insurance. Without this In the Senate, Republicans are talking the media. mandate, the Congressional Budget privately in hopes of agreeing on how On the contrary, the appointment Office estimates millions will choose to repeal and replace Obamacare, the of a special counsel to oversee the FBI not to buy insurance. They probably House having already passed its bill investigation of Trump, his campaign, won’t change their minds until the overhauling the health care system. and Russia is a blessing in disguise for “essential health benefits” imposed And there may be a third item on Republicans. “Strategically, it really by Obamacare are tossed out and less the GOP agenda with a far more expensive policies are allowed. enduring impact than changes Democrats refer to those who in the tax code or health care. voluntarily decline to buy It’s the possibility of another insurance as having “lost” it or vacancy on the Supreme having had it “taken away.” Court—the second for President Democrats and their media Trump—leading to a conserva- allies tend to ignore what tive majority for years to come. Republicans actually favor— In all this, Republicans are that is, a freer market in health not overly optimistic. Indeed, care in which people can buy the two legislative initiatives (often with subsidies) the would be difficult to enact in level of insurance they want. any year. Tax reform is often Republicans, unfortunately, proposed, but it hasn’t been Mitch McConnell, right, talks to the media after do a pathetic job of selling this approved by Congress since a weekly Senate Republican luncheon, May 23. product to the public. 1986. And then it had bipartisan They do better on tax reform. backing. Today, Democrats are totally helps,” says Rep. Peter Roskam (R-Illi- No help is needed from Trump, even if opposed. “It’s not your father’s Demo- nois). It doused the anti-Trump fever, he could deliver it. The key here is to cratic party anymore,” a Republican for now anyway. rally around a single bill. The White official laments. What gives the GOP hope for suc- House, McConnell, House speaker Republicans are comfortable in cess? On health care, it’s the role of Paul Ryan, and the chairmen of the dealing with taxes, but that’s not true Senate majority leader Mitch McCon- tax committees, Orrin Hatch at Sen- with health care. It’s a Democratic nell. He’s organized a series of meet- ate Finance and Kevin Brady at House obsession. Republicans have a history ings at which senators search for Ways and Means, have agreed to come of fumbling the issue. And despite common ground not so much on up with one. rumors that Justice Anthony Ken- repealing Obamacare—Republicans They have a ways to go. A point of nedy, 80, may step down after nearly agree on that—but on what should contention is the border-adjustment 30 years on the court, he may decide replace it. That’s the hard part. tax, a levy on imports that would create that writing landmark opinions beats The meetings are not idle discus- a level international playing field with retirement. A Reagan nominee, he is sions. The senators are under pres- countries that apply a value-added tax the court’s lone centrist. sure, both from McConnell and the (VAT) to imports. It makes sense, but Republicans on the Hill know grassroots. He believes it’s critical for it has enemies, particularly retailers Trump won’t be much help. But the Republicans to follow through on what whose wares are produced abroad. they have promised to do since Obama­ Both Brady and Roskam, chair- Fred Barnes is an executive editor care was enacted in 2010. Last week, man of the Ways and Means subcom-

at The Weekly Standard. senators met twice in one day. Are mittee on tax policy, are persuasive NEWSCOM

10 / The Weekly Standard June 5, 2017 defenders of the border tax. But Trea- sury Secretary Steven Mnuchin con- tends it stands in the way of a bill Prime-Time Republicans can agree on. It’s not dead, as the New York Times claims, but Mnuchin’s intervention may be Conspiracy Theory too much to overcome. Meanwhile, should Kennedy announce his retirement when the court finishes its term late next month, The Seth Rich nonsense and how it spread. Republicans will be in an enviable posi- by John McCormack tion. Trump has committed to choosing a nominee from a list of conservative t 4:20 a.m. on July 10, 2016, WikiLeaks 12 days after Rich’s death. judges and jurists—the same list from gunshots rang out in Wash- The conspiracy was stoked by Julian which he picked Justice Neil Gorsuch. A ington, D.C. When Metro- Assange of WikiLeaks and by Donald Trump has a way of making trou- politan Police Department officers Trump ally Roger Stone in 2016, but ble for himself, but he was on his arrived at the scene, about two miles it wasn’t until the middle of May that best behavior after selecting Gorsuch north of the U.S. Capitol, they found a textbook case of media malprac- to fill the late Antonin Scalia’s seat. Seth Rich, a 27-year-old employee of tice resulted in the conspiracy theory And Gorsuch was a superb witness the Demo­cratic National Committee, being widely promoted outside the in confirmation hearings, unflappa- lying down but “conscious fever swamps. ble and pleasant. and breathing with appar- On May 15, a pri- Confirmation won’t be as easy a ent gunshot wound(s) to vate investigator named second time, though Democrats have the back,” according to the Rod Wheeler said in lost the ability to filibuster. A nominee brief police report avail- an interview with the in his or her late 40s or early 50s who able to the public. Rich Washington, D.C., Fox hasn’t ruled on cases involving abor- was transported to a local TV affiliate that he tion or gender issues would be ideal. hospital where he died “absolutely” had sources Trump interviewed four candidates shortly before 6:00 a.m. in the FBI who had seen before deciding on Gorsuch. Judge The murder has never “tangible evidence on Thomas Hardiman of the 3rd U.S. been solved. Police have Rich’s laptop that con- Court of Appeals came in second. Lon- not revealed what, if any- firms he was communi- gevity matters. Gorsuch is 49, Hardi- thing, Rich may have said cating with WikiLeaks man 51. Scalia, by the way, was on the about his attackers during prior to his death.” court for 27 years after President Rea- the final hundred minutes Seth Rich Wheeler’s investigation gan, who appointed him, left office. of his life. Rich’s brother was funded by wealthy To defeat a nominee, three Repub- told the Washington Post in January Dallas businessman (and Breitbart lican senators would have to defect. that emergency responders said “they News contributor) Ed Butowsky, but It would take a real issue—unlike the were very surprised he didn’t make Wheeler had signed a contract with fake ones drummed up against Gor- it. He was very aware, very talkative.” the Rich family that he would speak such—for that to happen. Would Dem- Police have suggested it may have about his investigation only with the ocrats insist that no president under been a robbery gone wrong. None of family’s permission, which he did not investigation by a special prosecutor Rich’s possessions was taken, but there receive for any of his recent interviews. should be allowed to choose a Supreme were signs of a struggle—Rich had A spokesman for the family says when Court justice? Maybe, but that doesn’t bruises and his watchband was torn, they agreed to the arrangement they sound like a winning argument. according to his family. weren’t aware of Wheeler’s dubious Consider, finally, what’s at stake It remains a heartbreaking mys- reputation. (Wheeler has claimed in this year and next. The prospect, tery, but the reason Seth Rich’s mur- the past that gangs of lesbians carry- assuming Kennedy retires, of a reli- der became a national story this ing pink pistols are roaming the coun- ably conservative court, the dream of month is because of the conspiracy try and raping young girls.) Despite Republican presidents since Eisen- theories surrounding it—namely the Wheeler’s penchant for spreading hower. Tax reform. Obamacare out, a claim that Seth Rich was involved wild stories, his claim, once elevated new health care system in. That tri- in the hacking of DNC emails, a by the local Fox TV interview, quickly fecta may be a long shot. But a new batch of which were published by zipped around the Internet: “Dead justice and tax reform? Quite possi- DNC Staffer ‘Had Con­tact’ with ble, I’d say. And in Trump’s first two John McCormack is a senior writer WikiLeaks,” read the Drudge Report

VIA LINKEDIN years, no less. ♦ at The Weekly Standard. banner headline. “Not Russia, but

June 5, 2017 The Weekly Standard / 11 an Inside Job?” asked Breitbart News. family of Seth Rich, subjecting them Internet troll and convicted hacker And then Wheeler’s story quickly to the unwanted attention of conspir- from New Zealand who goes by the fell apart. On the afternoon of May 16, acy theorists and the scurrilous claims name “Kim Dotcom.” Wheeler told CNN’s Oliver Darcy that their son and brother was a thief Devotees of this wild, anti-Amer- that he was relying solely on informa- who had betrayed his colleagues and ican conspiracy theory dwell on the tion from a FoxNews.com reporter employer. Moreover, they had spread fact that Rich’s belongings were not named Malia Zimmerman. “I only got far and wide the insane claim that taken—proof, they say, that it wasn’t that [information] from the reporter agents acting on behalf of a major an attempted robbery. They don’t at Fox News,” Wheeler told CNN. political party or presidential candidate ask why assassins wouldn’t be smart Zimmerman had published a story on assassinated a young man as retribu- enough to take the wallet to make it May 16 at FoxNews.com in which she tion for leaking emails. Like conspir- look like a robbery, why they’d get claimed a single anonymous federal acy theories about 9/11 and the Iraq into a physical altercation with Rich, source told her Rich had sent over war, this bizarre theory fuels the belief or why they would leave him breath- 40,000 emails to WikiLeaks. “I have that America is no better than some ing and conscious. They pretend seen and read the emails between Seth despotic country like Russia. Rich was killed in a safe neighbor- Rich and Wikileaks,” Zimmerman’s D.C.’s local Fox affiliate and hood, when dozens of murders and alleged source supposedly told her. FoxNews.com bear responsibility for hundreds of armed robberies have The FoxNews.com story also publishing such thinly sourced and occurred in the area in recent years. quickly fell apart. “[A] current FBI damaging stories, and Fox owes a They ignore the fact that the FBI official and a former one completely better explanation of why it retracted had detected the DNC computer discount the Fox News claim that an its story. But the news sites and breach long before July 2016, that FBI analysis of a computer belong- media personalities who regurgi- U.S. intelligence agencies agreed Rus- ing to Rich contained thousands of tated the story also bear responsibil- sian hackers were to blame, and that e-mails to and from WikiLeaks,” ity for promoting it. That includes Republican officials who have seen NBC’s Alex Seitz-Wald reported. former speaker of the House Newt the intelligence accept the claim that “Local police in Washington, D.C., Gingrich, who uncritically repeated Russian hackers were responsible. never even gave the FBI Rich’s laptop it on Fox & Friends on May 21. But Even Donald Trump, who initially to analyze after his murder, accord- perhaps the worst actor of all in this cast doubt on Russian responsibility, ing to the current FBI official.” twisted game of telephone is Fox said after an intelligence briefing: “I “I am confident that the FBI never News host Sean Hannity. think it was Russia.” played any role in the investigation Hannity repeatedly used his pri- But the thing about conspiracy the- of Seth Rich’s murder,” Rich fam- metime show to promote the con- orists is that their beliefs tend to be ily spokesman Brad Bauman tells spiracy theory to millions of viewers. non-falsifiable. Flip any fact or set of me. According to Bauman, “local On May 16, Hannity touted “explo- facts, and they will come up with an law enforcement did examine the sive developments in the mysterious argument why the opposite set of facts laptop.” D.C. police told the family murder of former DNC staffer Seth still proves their theory. You might be that “there was no evidence on the Rich that could completely shatter tempted to laugh them off if not for laptop in any way, shape, or form the narrative that, in fact, WikiLeaks the very real damage they cause. tying anybody with WikiLeaks or was working with the Russians, or “Imagine living in a nightmare anybody associated with WikiLeaks” that there was collusion between the that you can never wake up from,” to Seth Rich. Since that time, “the Trump campaign and the Russians.” Rich’s parents wrote in the Wash- family has [had] the laptop, the fam- Hannity let Wheeler spout off ington Post. “Imagine having to face ily has always had the laptop,” Bau- on air and never reported later that every single day knowing that your man adds. NBC disputed the Fox Wheeler had backtracked. Hannity son was murdered. Imagine you have report on May 17, but FoxNews.com never reported on his TV show that no answers—that no one has been didn’t retract its report until May 23. FoxNews.com retracted its own brought to justice and there are few A vague statement from FoxNews. story, only saying on May 23 that he clues leading to the killer or killers. com said that the story was “not ini- would “out of respect for the family’s Imagine that every single day, with tially subjected to the high degree of wishes, for now, [not discuss] this every phone call you hope that it’s the editorial scrutiny we require for all our matter at this time.” The family had police, calling to tell you that there reporting. Upon appropriate review, immediately objected to coverage, but has been a break in the case.” the article was found not to meet those Hannity went silent only after pres- “Imagine that instead,” they con- standards and has since been removed.” sure had been put on his advertisers. tinued, “every call that comes in is a Zimmerman and Fox News spokesmen As the story disintegrated, Hannity reporter asking what you think of a declined further comment. grasped at straws, going so far as to series of lies or conspiracies about the By then the damage was done. promote on Twitter unsubstanti- death. That nightmare is what our The baseless stories had wounded the ated and bizarre assertions from an family goes through every day.” ♦

12 / The Weekly Standard June 5, 2017 witness an inauguration—period,” proclaimed Trump’s press secre- They Deserve tary, in ludicrous contradiction of all evidence.) President Trump browbeats allies Our Gratitude (remember his heated conversation with Australian prime minister Mal- colm Turnbull) while sharing clas- sified information with strategic Serving the country by serving Trump. competitors (as he did in the meeting by Jonathan V. Last with the Russians), all while sowing confusion about America’s strategic om Ricks is disappointed commitments (see his on-again, off- in General H. R. McMaster. again views of NATO). And his two T On May 15, during Donald closest advisers are his daughter and Trump’s hebdomas horribilis, McMas- her husband. ter, the president’s national secu- Put aside politics and ideology, con- rity adviser, appeared briefly outside servatism and liberalism and nation- the White House to attack a story alism. None of that is what makes in the Washington Post. The Post Trump’s administration extraordi- piece alleged that the president had nary. If Newt Gingrich were president revealed classified information to and pursuing the exact same policy Russian diplomats during a meeting agenda, it would be an invigorating in the Oval Office. McMaster said experience. Depending on your poli- the Post story was “false.” The next tics, it might be exhilarating or mad- day, in a more formal press briefing, dening, but it would not be terrifying. he amended this claim, saying that Donald Trump is no Newt Gingrich. “the premise of that article was false.” Which leads us back to McMas- And he then went through a series of ter. General H. R. McMaster is one of maneuvers which might charitably be the handful of grownups in a position described as non-denial denials. of authority in Trump’s administra- All of this prompted Ricks to write tion. What would you have him do? a short piece about McMaster for For- Resign? McMaster is one of the last eign Policy. Ricks knows McMaster lines of defense within the adminis- from ten years ago, when McMas- Bush or Reagan or Gore or Clinton or, tration in the event that the president ter was the colonel in charge of the God help us, John Kasich—it would decides to do something catastrophi- 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment in be bad for McMaster to humiliate him- cally unwise. Iraq. Ricks respects him a great deal. self the way he did. We’d expect a man And even if you don’t believe Which is probably what caused him of principle and character to refuse McMaster would stand up to Presi­ to write that “my guess is that when such an errand and, if necessary, resign dent Trump in such a situation, he’s McMaster was trotted out before the rather than carry it out. doing an enormous service just sit- cameras last night, he gave up a little But this is not a normal administra- ting in his chair at the National Secu- piece of his soul.” A good deal of the tion. President Trump is being scru- rity Council. If he were to resign, his non-Trump world seemed to agree: tinized by a special prosecutor 120 replacement could be another oppor- General McMaster was on the way days into his term. He seems to set his tunistic Russophile like Mike Flynn. to becoming exhibit No. 537 in how agenda by watching cable news. (Recall Or worse. Trumpism corrupts. his March tweet-storm about Guan- It’s precisely because Donald But there is an alternate reading of tánamo Bay composed while watch- Trump is what he is that McMaster events in which McMaster’s tortured ing Fox & Friends.) He has, by his own was right to do what he did. Amer- defense of President Trump isn’t a dis- admission, no grasp of public policy. ica is almost certainly better off with appointment at all—in which it might (“Nobody knew health care could be so McMaster running the NSC. If stay- well be heroic. complicated.”) Twenty-four hours after ing in that job means courting humil- Let’s stipulate that in a normal being sworn into office, he sent his iation in an effort to keep Trump administration—if the president were press secretary out to insist that more happy, then what McMaster did was people had attended his inauguration self-sacrifice. He jumped on a gre- Jonathan V. Last is a senior writer than had attended Barack Obama’s. nade, at some cost to his reputation,

at The Weekly Standard. (“This was the largest audience to ever in order to serve the country. THOMAS FLUHARTY

June 5, 2017 The Weekly Standard / 13 A year ago in these pages (“Think­ for a cabinet, what would clearly be the number of the elderly who find ing the Unthinkable,” May 9, 2016), best for the country are appointees of it difficult or impossible to cope on James W. Ceaser and Oliver Ward substance, who might have opposed their own, and there has been a cor- argued that should Trump become Trump but have not burned every responding growth in the expense of bridge with him and who if asked president, it would be invaluable to to serve would do so with a certain caring for them. In the U.K., govern- have good people working for him degree of independence and with a ment will pay for nursing-home care, even—especially—if you opposed willingness to depart if the president but only after the person staying there his administration: did not deal with their counsel respon- is down to his or her last £23,250 in sibly. By this reasoning, even ardent assets (roughly $30,000). If Methuse- Should good and qualified persons, supporters of a Stop Trump move- despite serious reservations about lah is looked after in his own home, ment should see the wisdom of main- however (something that saves the the suitability of Trump for the pres- taining a potential group of quality idency, make themselves available if cabinet appointees from whom Trump state money), the value of his resi- asked? The risk of doing so, besides might pick. These people should be dence is not counted in that total: He the danger of becoming tainted by shielded, rather than shunned. gets to hang onto his house and pass association, is that it might once it on to his heirs. Responding to the again add a measure of credibility The same logic suggests that even widespread perception that the system to a campaign. The advantage is the chance that Trump, as both candi- those most appalled by the president was too harsh, David Cameron’s coali- date and president, will receive com- should appreciate, not castigate, Gen. tion government had earlier brought petent advice and perhaps prove McMaster. Instead of piling on, we all in reforms that included the introduc- willing to accept some part of it. As ought to honor his sacrifice. ♦ tion (delayed until 2020) of a porous and less than comprehensive “cap” of £72,000 on what anyone could be charged for social care. May’s idea was very different. Hubris in the U.K. Instead of a cap there would be a floor. To put it far too simply, the last £100,000 in assets would be shielded. Theresa May’s ‘dementia tax’ misstep. Apart from that, there would be no limit on how much Methuselah could by Andrew Stuttaford be asked to pay. Turning the screw still tighter, the old boy would no pecial advisers to political longer be doing his heirs much of a leaders need to get out more. favor by staying on at home. Under S Prime Minister Theresa May’s May’s rules, the value of the house decision to sneak what was quickly could be used to defray the cost of his labeled a “dementia tax” into the care, although (if he preferred) only Conservative party’s general elec- after his death: Compassionate con- tion manifesto (the British gen- servatism lives on. eral election will be held on June 8) People with Alzheimer’s and other was reportedly heavily influenced forms of dementia can be relatively by Nick Timothy, a Rasputin (with physically fit, at least initially. They beard to match) in the court of a can live on for quite a while, and the prime minister with few confidants. bill for looking after them can rise It was inserted into the manifesto at accordingly: A lifetime (or lifetimes) the last minute absent, reportedly, of savings could thus be wiped out by much consultation to speak of with bad luck or a bad gene. On the other those who would be actually facing hand, be fortunate enough to be the voters. That was a mistake. A protester outside a May discussion killed off, say, by cancer or a kindly Within days of the manifesto’s of the ‘dementia tax,’ May 22 coronary, and the state will still pick release, one poll showed that the certainly due, in no small part, to the up the tab. The thought that some Tory lead had dropped by 5 percent- dementia tax (or, to describe the culprit diseases were to be rendered more age points to (a still immensely com- more politely, one of the new proposals equal than others obviously didn’t fortable) 12 percent. This was almost for the funding of “social care”). worry May’s team overmuch. And Medical progress is uneven. Life­ the prospect of draining wealth from Andrew Stuttaford works in the international spans have been extended, but bod- the wealthier they considered a fea- financial markets and writes frequently ies and minds have struggled to keep ture, not a bug. May intends to drag

about cultural and political issues. up. There has been rapid growth in the Conservative party to the left. A NEWSCOM

14 / The Weekly Standard June 5, 2017 further slice of redistribution would attracted such people, our people, to the insurance they might need. Risks not come amiss. her version of Conservatism. of this type are best very widely To believe this was either good And our people have already paid pooled. In Britain that means either politics or good policy was nuts. Vot- a disproportionate amount of tax to extra funding by the taxpayer or cut- ing turnout among the over-65s (some fund a welfare state that, if May got backs in government spending else- three-quarters of whom are home-own- her way, might stick them—at a time where: Whatever some may claim, ers) is high, and, at the time the elec- when they were essentially helpless— there are places to look for the latter. tion was called, they strongly favored with another, possibly monstrous The last time that May’s government the Conservatives. Well, they did: The bill, a dying-too-slowly tax, lest the took aim at our people (by attempting “dementia tax” (which could hit mil- death tax itself (Britain’s inheritance to increase FICA-style charges on the lions of people) has triggered some of tax) was not enough to do the trick. self-employed), it had to back down. their deepest anxieties about what lies The richest could, in all likelihood, And despite dishonest denials in recent ahead in what’s left of their lives. weather the costs. As is so often the days of a U-turn, that looks to be how Mrs. May might not have much case with redistributive taxation, it will go with the dementia tax. There time for Mrs. Thatcher, but she would those who would be hurt the most will be a cap, although, significantly have done well to remember the Iron would be the aspirational, the mid- and cynically, May has not yet said how Lady’s reluctance—fueled both by dling successful: Our people. high it will be. fear of punishment at the polls and The private sector can do only so That evasion may be one reason to of damage to the country—to do any- much to defray the costs of long-term suspect that the majority she seems thing that could hurt “our people.” home care. It would be a challenge on course to win will not be too big. Our people save, our people own their for insurers to offer affordable cover- Which may be for the best. May’s homes, our people want to pass some- age against a risk that is so unpredict- opponent, Labour’s far-left Jeremy thing onto the next generation. These able and, potentially, so large, even Corbyn, cannot be trusted with any were qualities that Thatcher rightly to the young. Those foolish enough degree of power. But the dementia tax believed were good for the social to have entered middle age (let alone is a reminder that the over-promoted and economic health of the nation, anything grayer) by now would have Theresa May cannot be trusted with qualities that, as she also understood, a vanishingly small chance of finding too much. ♦

What Do Small Businesses Really Think?

THOMAS J. DONOHUE that 60% of business owners expect and more of their time. The same PRESIDENT AND CEO their revenues to increase, and number reported difficulty in U.S. CHAMBER OF COMMERCE 29% plan to hire more workers over finding qualified employees for open the next year, compared with just positions. The evidence continues to Small businesses are on the front 6% who expect to reduce their stack up—burdensome regulations lines of growth, accounting for workforces. In addition, those and the widening skills gap are a two-thirds of new jobs and half of planning to increase investments in drag on small business growth. These our country’s economic output. Their their companies outnumber those are challenges that the Chamber is experiences and perspectives tell us planning to pull back. That’s the committed to solving. a lot about where our economy is good news. Despite these concerns, we’re headed—and what our leaders in However, small business owners encouraged that the majority of small Washington should be doing to help. were less optimistic about the economy businesses are ready to grow. This To dive deeper into the attitudes and overall. Only one-third believe that new quarterly Index will continue concerns of these business leaders, the U.S. economy is in good health, to provide deep insights into the the U.S. Chamber of Commerce with a quarter saying it’s in poor or constantly evolving challenges teamed up with MetLife to launch a somewhat poor health. Owners offered facing the small business community, new quarterly Small Business Index. a slightly more positive take on their and the Chamber will continue The first edition, released last week, local economies, with 42% grading communicating these insights to our showed that small business owners are them favorably. This pessimism reflects government. It’s more important than feeling bullish about prospects for their the need for stronger economic growth ever for our leaders to listen up, tune own businesses but are skeptical about to unlock the full potential of the small in, and ultimately buckle down to the health of the American economy. business sector. address the issues taking place on the The Index surveyed 1,000 small What’s behind this outlook? front lines of growth. Job creation and business owners around the country According to the Index, one in economic prosperity depend on it. and found that roughly 6 in 10 feel four small business owners said positive about market conditions for that government, regulatory, and Learn more at their companies. The Index revealed licensing tasks are taking up more uschamber.com/abovethefold.

June 5, 2017 The Weekly Standard / 15 mercilessly and monumentally any move” made by “these opportunists Misreporting Iran and riotous elements.” The govern- ment injured thousands and killed up to two dozen. But his opponent Raisi The ‘moderate’ is also a liar with blood was part of a four-man “death commit- tee” that executed as many as 30,000 on his hands. by Kelly Jane Torrance dissidents in 1988. The media did not frame the elec- omplaints of media bias seem wins reelection by wide margin, giving tion, however, as a choice between to be reaching a fever pitch— the moderate cleric another term to see the lesser of two evils. NBC News C from conservatives and liber- out agenda.” An Associated Press story began a story the day before the elec- als alike. Right-wingers accuse a broad that ran in thousands of outlets was tion with this summary of the stakes: swath of the press of trying to under- headlined “Iran’s president trounces “Iranian women have made signifi- mine the presidency of Donald Trump. hard-liner to secure second term.” cant strides under moderate Presi- Left-wingers lament the airtime and It wasn’t just “mainstream” or “lib- dent Hassan Rouhani, but many fear credence outlets give to Trump sup- eral” media that covered the story that progress could stall if a hardline porters. Both groups object to what this way. “Iran’s President Hassan rival wins Friday’s presidential elec- the media report and how they tion.” The opening sentence report it, but they point fingers of the New York Times’s elec- at different culprits. Neither tion report echoed that view: seemed to notice last week that “Riding a large turnout from one big story was narrated the Iran’s urban middle classes, same way by virtually every President Hassan Rouhani outlet: the presidential elec- won re-election in a landslide tion in a country where chants on Saturday, giving him a of “Death to America” are a mandate to continue his quest routine occurrence. to expand personal freedoms “In the closing stretch of and open Iran’s ailing econ- Iran’s presidential race, it’s a omy to global investors.” moderate reformer against Rouhani has brought “sig- a hard-line cleric,” PBS News- nificant” progress to Iranian Hour reported in the run-up to Rouhani visiting Khamenei after the latter’s women and is on a “quest to Iran’s May 19 election. Those prostate surgery, September 10, 2014 expand personal freedoms”? who know anything about life One woman elected to parlia- in Iran—or how many of its citizens Rouhani won re-election by a wide ment last year was stopped from taking have been deprived of it in the last few margin Saturday, giving the moder- her seat, apparently because a picture years—should have bristled to discover ate cleric a second four-year term” of her without a head scarf surfaced. It’s that the “moderate reformer” was was the first sentence of the election true that during the campaign, Rou- incumbent president Hassan Rouhani. report on the Fox News website. The hani paid lip service to the notion of With 57 percent of the vote, he soundly Wall Street Journal began its coverage easing prohibitions in one of the most beat “hard-line” challenger Ebrahim thus: “Moderate Iranian President restrictive societies on earth. He did the Raisi, who garnered 39 percent. (Two Hassan Rouhani won re-election by same thing in the race that brought him other candidates split the rest.) And a wide margin Saturday, defeating a into office in 2013—and went on to stories announcing his win invariably hard-line challenger . . .” prove his words were empty. Freedom included in the headline or first sen- You might think that reporters sim- House summarized the situation in tence at least one of the same adjectives ply forgot to put the word “relative” the country earlier this year: “Human PBS used. “Iranian President Hassan in front of “moderate” in describing rights abuses continued unabated in Rouhani wins re-election in victory for Rouhani—a moderate in Iran could 2016, with the authorities carrying out moderates,” CNN announced. “Iran’s be very different from a moderate in Iran’s largest mass execution in years moderate president Hassan Rouhani the United States, after all. Rouhani is and launching a renewed crackdown secured his re-election this morning,” a cleric who, as head of Iran’s Supreme on women’s rights activists.” Iran is CBS News declared, while ABC News National Security Council, was a leader second only to China in executions. reported: “Iran’s President Rouhani in brutally ending student protests in In analyzing the election, the Wall Tehran in 1999. He stated then, “Our Street Journal claimed, “Many Ira- Kelly Jane Torrance is deputy managing revolution needs a thorough cleanup,” nians gravitate toward Mr. Rouhani

editor of The Weekly Standard. and declared the regime would “crush because of his relatively tolerant views COURTESY OF THE SUPREME LEADER

16 / The Weekly Standard June 5, 2017 on freedom of expression.” Rouhani might put off potential voters,” the Has Its Own Hard-Line Populist, and offered a self-centered thanks for his New York Times noted, reporting that He’s on the Rise.” The national-affairs win on Twitter: “Great nation of Iran, Raisi “campaigned as a corruption correspondent for the Nation tweeted you are the winner of the election.” fighter and called on Iran to solve that the “worldly & moderate candi- But the social media site is banned in its own economic problems without date prevailed” in an election with high Iran—only those who have figured help from foreigners.” He promised voter turnout and said, “Lesson for the out how to get around the censorship to offer more in government hand- US!” Jane O’Meara Sanders, the wife of could read the tweet. As Freedom outs, but voters rejected them. Rou- Democratic presidential candidate Ber- House notes, “News and analysis are hani helped secure the nuclear deal nie, re-tweeted the message and added, heavily censored” in Iran. As are all that has allowed Iran to do increased “Iranians show the world how it’s forms of art. The nonprofit gives some business with foreigners, and he cam- done.” Neither mentioned—and it was examples: “In June 2016, filmmaker paigned on the notion that he could usually buried in media coverage of the Hossein Rajabian, his brother, musi- open up the economy even more. election—that the president of Iran has cian Mehdi Rajabian, and an associ- When Rouhani took office, Iran’s to answer to someone far more power- ated musician, Yousef Emadi, began unemployment rate was 16 percent; ful than the United States Congress or serving three-year prison sentences it’s now 11 percent. Supreme Court. Ultimate hardliner Ali after being arrested in 2015 for alleg- Many commentators claimed the Khamenei remains the head of state edly distributing underground music. United States could learn from in Iran. Days before the election, Rou- In October, the writer and activist Gol- the story they spun of Rouhani’s win. hani made a point of mentioning “the rokh Ebrahimi Iraee was taken to jail One New York Times piece leading up to exalted leader, whose hand I am willing to begin serving a six-year sentence the election carried the headline “Iran to kiss dozens of times.” ♦ for her authorship of an unpublished story about the practice of execution by stoning in Iran.” Opponents of the government not only have trouble running for office Japan Returns in Iran—candidates must be approved by the Guardian Council, whose mem- bers are appointed by Supreme Leader To find China on the doorstep. Ali Khamenei and Iran’s chief justice, who is himself appointed by Khame- by Christopher Caldwell nei—some of them can’t even be men- tioned. Former president Mohammad Tokyo He has managed relations with Khatami backed the Green Movement t is not yet obvious that the domi- the new U.S. administration skill- that sprung up after the 2009 reelection nant political leader of the Age of fully. Those who know him say he of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad looked to I Donald Trump will be Donald understood off the bat that Trump have been fixed. Iranian media are not Trump. Others are vying for that dis- was to be taken “seriously, not lit- permitted to mention Khatami’s name, tinction, including Theresa May of erally.” At Mar-a-Lago, where they quote his words, or show his picture— Britain and Shinzo Abe of Japan. Like spent two days together in February, and he supported Rouhani in the 2013 Trump, Abe came to power on a claim the two bonded over their respective election. Rouhani promised during that his country’s economy had been ill-treatment in their country’s news that race to free Green Movement lead- mismanaged. He felt the interests of media. Abe explained that Japan pays ers under house arrest; they remain in his nation were poorly understood by a higher share (75 percent) of U.S. mili- captivity and haven’t even faced trials. politicians at home and sometimes dis- tary expenses on its territory than any No wonder most Iranian voters men- respected abroad. He is close to world other ally. Nor was Trump’s bolt from tioned in Western media over the last leaders who feel similarly—Benjamin the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade week wouldn’t give reporters their full Netanyahu of Israel and especially Nar- agreement negotiated over years, a names. The New York Times, for exam- endra Modi of India, with whom aides dead loss—negotiating the deal helped ple, quoted a woman “who did not want say he has electric sympathy. He is Abe break the hold of agricultural lob- to be identified for security reasons.” close to Vladimir Putin of Russia, too, bies on his party machinery. This was a The election doesn’t look to have whom he has met 17 times. In 2013, consensus view of politicians and polit- been fought mainly over freedom, he visited Yasukuni shrine, where his ical observers on a mid-May study trip either. “Raisi has refrained from rais- country’s war dead are memorialized. arranged by the Japanese Ministry of ing any of the social issues his fac- The visit was controversial abroad. Foreign Affairs. tion usually cares so much about, Unlike Trump, Abe has ushered in such as Islamic dress codes and seg- Christopher Caldwell is a senior editor a return to political normalcy since he regation of men and women, as they at The Weekly Standard. returned to power in 2012, following

June 5, 2017 The Weekly Standard / 17 half a decade in which Japan’s leader- mid-century. But the birthrate is rising sea. Each country is a chokepoint for ship changed as frequently as that in a again, to 1.46 per woman (the U.S. rate the other. Japan’s shipping lanes to Per- cacique-ridden banana republic. Abe is now 1.87 and falling). For the time sian Gulf oil and European consumer himself began that period, resigning being, a tight labor supply means auto- markets run through the South China in 2007 after barely a year in power mation is an asset, not a threat, and Sea. But the long Japanese archipelago, to treat his Crohn’s disease. Five PMs jobs (washing windshields, keeping which runs from Russia through Oki- would follow, from both Abe’s conser- parks clean) are still plentiful for the nawa to Taiwan, pins China in shallow vative LDP (the usual party of govern- unskilled. Japan has the world’s low- waters, as long as the U.S. 7th Fleet is ment) and the progressive DPJ. One of est crime rate. This vast country—with allowed to operate all along the archi- the progressives, Yukio Hatoyama, was more people than the United States pelago. That is why the Chinese have so irresolute in his promise to close a had when it won World War II—sees began launching extraordinary probes U.S. military base in Okinawa that Jap- fewer than a thousand murders a year. of the uninhabited rocks known as the anese pundits gave him the nickname Chicago saw 762 last year. Senkaku Islands, say Japanese officials, “Save As . . . ,” after the word-process- Abe must now spend some of the sending as many as 500 Chinese fish- ing command. credibility won on domestic issues ing boats along with 15 cutters—often At the end of the Cold War, Japan to manage the most complex foreign “gray hull” Navy boats painted as accounted for 15 percent of world policy challenges Japan has faced in Coast Guard craft. GDP, and American politicians feared China is also spreading its influence it would dominate the world. But a financially. Sri Lankan strongman and quarter-century of stagnation followed. former president Percy “Mahinda” Raj- China rose. Americans demanded apaksa borrowed billions from China the movement of Japanese manufac- to build an international airport in his turing facilities to the United States. podunk hometown. When he could not While still the third-largest economy, pay them back, China agreed to accept Japan today commands 6 percent of a 99-year lease on a port as a good-faith world GDP at most. Japan was lec- gesture. The vast infrastructure loans tured, scolded, and threatened over its being made to Uzbekistan and other welfare state (the assets of its pension Central Asian countries as part of Chi- A Japanese surveillance plane over system alone run into the trillions of na’s New Silk Road initiative risk put- the Senkaku Islands, October 13, 2011 dollars) and its policy on immigration ting them all on the hook. This process (which is, basically, not to have any). the postwar era. Chief among them is reminds Japanese people of the way And yet a lot of what looked to be the imminent nuclearization of North China’s Ming dynasty operated 500 liabilities for Japan in an information- Korea, which in May made a test- years ago. You could also compare it to age economy have turned out to be launch of a ballistic missile, its seventh, the mountain of Latin American and boons. A year ago, the Wall Street Jour- into Japanese waters. Ordinarily this other loans that the United States emit- nal Tokyo bureau chief Peter Landers would be a problem for South Korea as ted in the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s before summed up Japan’s enviable stability well, but it has been a scandal-ridden lobbying the debtor countries to sup- in two numbers. First, the foreign- election season in Seoul. The new pres- port a rewriting of the rules of the inter- born in Japanese society—nannies ident, human rights activist Moon Jae- national economy. from the Philippines and Indonesia in, has been less interested in answering Things are changing. Having and property speculators from China— North Korean provocations than in ended its self-imposed ban on arms- account for 1.3 percent of the popula- unifying all Koreans around the idea of dealing in 2014, Japan is now sell- tion. That is a tenth of the level in the Japanese historic injustice. Starting in ing anti-submarine reconnaissance United States and Western Europe. the 1990s, activists began demanding systems and patrol vessels to Malay- Second, Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda apologies and money for the conduct of sia and Vietnam, and boats to the made $3.5 million in 2015 to run the the Japanese military in World War II, Philippines. Abe has considered largest and most successful car com- when it dragooned females, many of amending Japan’s pacifist postwar pany in the world, turning a $20 bil- them Korean, into serving as “comfort constitution—for the first time— lion profit. By contrast, General Motors women” for its troops. to permit its “self-defense forces” to CEO Mary Barra got a 70 percent raise It is through China—which pro- become a full-fledged military. Until to $28.6 million to run a company that vides almost all of North Korea’s some new defense arrangement can since the Obama administration has imports and is the only major buyer be devised, the waters and airspace in been in part a government concession. for its coal—that North Korea must be which four of the world’s half-dozen Japan is tied with Germany as the brought to heel. It is unclear whether largest militaries operate (China, Rus- oldest country in the world. It has China has stopped coal imports as sia, and North and South Korea) are a median age of 46 and its popula- promised. But China is also busy prob- going to be defended by the United

tion may fall below 100 million by ing Japan’s military defenses by air and States if they are defended at all. ♦ NEWSCOM

18 / The Weekly Standard June 5, 2017 president. But how is this any different from its attitude toward other Republi- Unprecedented? can presidents in the last half-century? Was not the media harder on Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George Trump is hardly the first president H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush than they were on Democratic presidents? to be ­surrounded by attackers. by Jay Cost Of course. The press is made up almost uniformly of Democrats, and there is an resident Donald Trump seems obviously liberal slant to much of the to be suffering a political death “mainstream” news. But this has been a P of a thousand cuts—from constant problem for Republicans—and anonymous sources throughout the not an insuperable one. Many Republi- government providing information to can politicians have thrived despite the the press about his missteps, misjudg- hammering they took from the press. ments, and misbehavior. The Trump Maybe the press is more partisan administration and its allies are up now than it was in the past, but this in arms, blaming an unprecedented is mitigated by the fact that this is an effort to smear the president and industry in a swift decline, and con- undermine democracy itself. servatives have more opportunities to This defense rings false. The forces from the Constitutional Convention. get their message out than ever before. arrayed against Trump are hardly That we have had a deep state since Yet Trump is in a substantially worse unprecedented—presidents have had the 1790s demonstrates a fundamental political position at this point in his to deal with such challenges again truth: Public officials are not always administration than any Republican and again, ever since the country was going to follow the party line. They president since the invention of public founded. The real difference is Trump are human beings, after all, capable of opinion polling. himself, who is supplying his oppo- exercising their own judgment, based It is axiomatic that one can- nents with seemingly endless opportu- on their own interests and understand- not explain change with a constant, nities to embarrass him. ings of right and wrong. This is human and the deep state and our partisan Conservative supporters of Trump nature, and it has influenced the course press are constants. The difference have a new favorite catchphrase— of American politics since the very is Trump himself. He has comported the “deep state,” meant to convey an beginning. Even assuming that today’s himself in ways unbecoming a chief occult alliance of anti-Trump officials leakers are motivated by politics, rather executive. That this misbehavior has in and around the government who than concern for the general welfare been aired publicly does not, cannot are intent on destroying him. This is and anxiety that Trump is serving it excuse Trump. a convenient excuse, but the deep state poorly, hardly excuses Trump. It is the Did the deep state instruct Trump is nothing new, at least if it is under- duty of the president, in his capacity as to tweet that President Obama was tap- stood as executive officials and bureau- head of the executive branch, to manage ping his phone line? No. Did it insist crats who offer up information outside these officials—not to bellyache when that Trump ask FBI director James the chain of command. After all, Mark his mismanagement leads to politically Comey to go easy on Michael Flynn? Felt served as “Deep Throat” for Bob embarrassing leaks. Of course not. Did it induce him to fire Woodward and Carl Bernstein dur- Many of the leaks have come from Comey in a spectacularly incompetent ing the Watergate scandal, helping to the White House itself, which is staffed way, then brag about it to the Russian bring down the Richard Nixon admin- with Trump’s own people. News out- foreign minister? Nope. Did it encour- istration. Indeed, the deep state is as lets have taken of late to bragging about age him to keep the counsel of politi- old as the government itself. Thomas how many sources they have inside the cal hacks and dandified showmen with Jefferson was infuriated that Alex- West Wing. Such leaks are not a prod- too-close relations with the Russian ander Hamilton seemed to be shar- uct of the deep state at work, but rather government? Again, no. ing confidential cabinet discussions Trump’s inability to staff the White Did our partisan press dupe Trump on foreign policy in his anonymous House with competent officials who into being rude on his telephone call articles. James Madison, for his part, can be counted on to remain loyal to with the Australian prime minister? suggested in his articles that Hamil- him in times of trouble. Did it insist that he mismanage the ton was a monarchist, a view informed And what of the notion that the Republican effort to repeal Obamacare? by Hamilton’s confidential speeches president is beset by partisan enemies, Did it pen the poorly written execu- especially in the press? No doubt this tive order regarding immigration from Jay Cost is a senior writer is true to some extent, in that the press Muslim-majority countries, then botch

at The Weekly Standard. is manifestly ill-disposed toward the the rollout of the order? Did it force THOMAS FLUHARTY

June 5, 2017 The Weekly Standard / 19 him to make the manifestly untrue manage the executive branch. That the The Enterprise had been deployed in statement that his inauguration crowd deep state is pointing this out to a parti- the Arabian Sea for seven months to was comparable to Obama’s? Nonsense. san press does not alter the basic facts of enforce the no-fly zone over Iraq and Donald Trump is responsible for all the situation. was two days into its return trip. The these errors. And importantly, they are Trump is the author of his own mis- carrier turned about and was joined by, quite different from the mistakes that fortune. The challenges he faces are no its relief, the Carl Vinson to begin air previous commanders in chief have different from those other presidents operations against al Qaeda. Two carri- made. In sum, they point to a man who have had to encounter. Blaming the ers, on station, less than 48 hours after is out of his depth, who lacks the dis- deep state or the partisan press is sim- the 9/11 attack. cretion, acumen, and temperament to ply shooting the messenger. ♦ All this, and much more, was back- ground for the day’s proceedings, which kicked off with the air group commander and his subordinate squadron commanders from the USS In Praise of the Eisenhower. And who better to talk about power projection? I recalled the old joke about the country boy being Aircraft Carrier interviewed by a scholar researching his thesis on rural religious practices. “Do you believe in baptism by immersion?” the college type asks the Always on the verge of obsolescence, yet always son of the soil. proving its worth. by Geoffrey Norman “Believe in it?” comes the reply. “Believe in it? Hell, boy, I seen it done.” Pensacola of large deck air-capable warships.” The aviators on this first panel had he staging is perfect. A raised It is both a timely debate and one personally and strenuously projected dais with a formation of A-4 that never seems to end. Does the power for more than seven months in TSkyhawks suspended overhead, United States really need aircraft car- the eastern Mediterranean, the Red in the signature colors and markings of riers? Can it afford them? The argu- Sea, and the Arabian Gulf. They flew, the Navy’s Blue Angels. The venue is ments against the carrier come down day and night, dropping bombs in the the National Naval Aviation Museum, to cost and vulnerability as they always war on ISIS. which occupies space adjacent to Sher- have, and they run hot and cold. These The aviators tended to speak in man Field on the naval air station in days, they are running very hot. Not technical locutions and acronyms. But Pensacola—the birthplace of naval avi- quite so hot as they did in the days this was something a curious civilian ation and home of the Blue Angels. after World War II and before Korea, could actually find reassuring. This The museum is not a busy, up-tempo when the Truman administration can- wasn’t Tom Cruise playing Top Gun, military installation, so today’s event, celed construction that was underway though more than one of the panelists its 30th annual symposium, qualifies on a new super carrier and was busy during the symposium would say he as an exciting day. Past themes—with mothballing the carriers that remained had been inspired to join the Navy and speakers ranging from former Presi- in the fleet just as thousands of soldiers fly by that hit movie from the summer dent George H. W. Bush to Secretaries poured across the 38th parallel. The of 1986. These were professionals, and of the Navy John Lehman and James Korean War made the need for carriers they talked the language of their pro- Webb—have focused on the battles plain again. fession—one that happens to require of Midway and Coral Sea, the sto- Our fleet today might be said to their leaving home for months at a ries of legendary squadrons like the descend from the first nuclear-pow- time to go abroad and do dangerous Black Sheep, and overviews of entire ered carrier, the Enterprise, which was things. The blandness of their presen- conflicts: the Vietnam war, Operations commissioned in 1961. Enterprise saw tations spoke to their mastery. Desert Storm and Iraqi Freedom. service around the globe, notably six There was one moment that struck This year, however, the focus is on deployments off Vietnam during that an emotional note. Commander Bren- battles of the future, budget battles, war, which was a busy one for carri- dan Stickles introduced himself and that is. The assorted admirals, ensigns, ers, and sailed until 2012. Retired Navy told the audience that his small home- and civilians have gathered to consider captain Sterling Gilliam, the museum’s town outside of New York had lost “Power Projection in the 21st Cen- director and impresario of this year’s eleven people during the 9/11 attacks, tury” and more specifically, “the role symposium, was the same age as the people who commuted to the city to Enterprise were the same age when he jobs in the twin towers. Geoffrey Norman, a writer in Vermont, is a served as one of the squadron com- “That works out to one person frequent contributor to The Weekly Standard. manders in the ship’s air wing on 9/11. every three blocks,” he said. So his

20 / The Weekly Standard June 5, 2017 deployment was an opportunity for n These resulted in 1,423 “kinetic went over budget by so much that him to “take the fight to the enemy.” events” with 1,598 weapons delivered. some of the weapons systems that were His air wing commander, Capt. Leading one to ask, “If we don’t designed into the ship had to be left off Marc “Stem” Miguez, later described need big carriers, why are we working as a way of saving some money. And as the enemy as “people who need to be them so hard?” Why the long deploy- with any big project, whether a weap- eliminated from this earth,” and prom- ments with the constant resupplies ons system or not, the real test comes ised the audience that “Mosul will fall.” at sea so that the crews will be eating when it is operational. If it performs So those were warriors up there on well, which is a big thing when you are over time, then the delays in getting it the dais even though, most of the time, working 16-hour days in close spaces into service are forgotten and the costs they spoke softly of things like OFRP. or on a dangerous, noisy flight deck? that ran beyond budget are amortized. (That would be the optimized fleet (There was, Spedero tells his audience, The people at the symposium believe response plan.) one near-crisis in this regard when the Ford will easily prove to have been Stickles and I talked a little after the there was no fresh lettuce for the admi- worth the price. Certainly this is true panel. He is a jet jockey, certainly, but ral’s salads for several days.) of its first commanding officer, Rear that is not the end of it. He is a graduate Even as the role of the carrier was Admiral John “Oscar” Meier, who of the Naval Academy with an MBA in being dissected at the symposium speaks with me after lunch and again, international business from the Uni- in the evening, over a cocktail. versity of North Carolina and another Meier speaks softly and deliberately advanced degree from Harvard’s Ken- but can’t conceal the pride he feels in nedy School of Government. He is his new ship. There is nothing about good at his work, obviously, or he the Ford that doesn’t rivet his attention would not be a squadron commander, and admiration. This, he says, is an flying the EA-18G “Growler,” which entirely new carrier. New design, new is described in the literature as an technology, all the way down to the “advanced airborne electronic attack catapults that the president seems to platform.” (Professionals, at ease with think are, somehow, too digital. acronyms, shorten this to “AEA plat- “This ship is designed for growth,” The USS George H. W. Bush form.”) Stickles describes his mission says Meier, who waxes rhapsodic even in this concise fashion: “For us, every in Pensacola, the USS George H. W. about the “plasma arc waste destruc- antenna is a target. And there are a lot Bush was carrying on the work of the tion system,” which incinerates the of antennas out there.” Eisenhower and the Truman. And in ship’s garbage into fine ash. And don’t Stickles thinks and writes seri- the Pacific, the Stennis was making its forget the air-conditioning. All that ously about the future of his profes- presence felt off Korea while the Rea- machinery and steel tends to make sion. His article in the U.S. Naval gan was conducting training opera- ships hot. The forward portion of an Institute’s April 2016 Proceedings jour- tions off Japan. aircraft carrier has always been an nal, under the title “The Twilight of Another obvious question: If the especially hot part of the ship. But not Manned Flight?” examined the arrival carrier is obsolete—vulnerable and too on the Ford, says Admiral Meier. To of unmanned aircraft and what they expensive—why are so many nations which someone in the audience says, portend for the carrier fleet and its so eager to acquire them? China, India, “Next you’ll be telling us your sailors mission. In short, the day seems to Russia, the U.K. are volunteering for the special sea and be coming when aviators as we know Whatever its distant future, the air- anchor detail.” A little Navy humor. them will be obsolete. craft carrier is plainly not on any list of The essence of Meier’s feeling for But, then again, maybe not. In the endangered weapons systems and the the ship and its future is in something present, the case for the carrier can be proof lies in what they are doing, every he says about the men and women in made by reading from the logbook. day, around the globe. the crew and their enthusiasm for their In a late morning panel, Captain Paul mission and the Ford. “It is going to Spedero, commanding officer of the he newest of the U.S. Navy’s carri- last for 50 years,” he says. “For the life USS Eisenhower, sums up his ship’s T ers is the Gerald Ford. It has been of the ship.” recent deployment in relief of the completed but still needs to go through I suppose my expression asked the Harry S. Truman. more tests before joining the fleet, question for me. How does he know? n The ship was deployed for 241 sometime later this year at the soonest “It is baked,” he says, “into the days and spent 21 days “underway” and at least three years beyond the date steel.” between its home port at Norfolk and originally estimated. Three years and The debate over the carrier is the Mediterranean. billions of dollars. not going away and will, no doubt, n Its aircraft flew 12,831 sorties. Nobody, of course, is happy about intensify. Count on the carrier itself n Of these, 2,054 were combat the delays. But, for perspective: The and its advocates to mount a very

U.S. NAVY sorties. Enterprise, the first nuclear carrier, strong defense. ♦

June 5, 2017 The Weekly Standard / 21 Unfinished Business What it will take to make America safe again

By Thomas Joscelyn On May 22, the West was reminded, once again, of the persistent threat when a jihadist detonated a shrapnel- onald Trump is fond of claiming that laden bomb at the conclusion of an Ariana Grande con- his predecessor mismanaged America’s cert in Manchester, England. The bombing, for which role in the world. “And I have to just the Islamic State claimed responsibility, targeted chil- say that the world is a mess. I inherited dren who just wanted to see a favorite pop star. At least a mess,” the president noted during a 22 people were killed and 64 wounded. Britain, like Paris Djoint press conference with King Abdullah of Jordan in and Brussels before it, was put on high alert as officials the Rose Garden on April 5. “Whether it’s the Middle worried that a follow-up attack was in the works. Western East,” he continued, “whether it’s North Korea, whether officials have worked around the clock for years to pre- it’s so many other things, whether it’s in our country— vent just such attacks. The casualty count would be much horrible trade deals—I inherited a mess.” higher if not for their efforts. Thousands of potential ter- The world is an inherently messy place, and each presi- rorists now tie up counterterrorism and law enforcement dent is left with problems unresolved by the man who pre- resources throughout Europe and the United States. The ceded him. But when it comes to America’s fight against U.S. and allied governments are rightly focused on the terrorism, Trump has a point. Barack Obama claimed that jihadist threat—not on the work of bathtub manufactur- he brought the war in Iraq to a “responsible end” and ers or automakers. promised do the same in Afghanistan. In reality, he ended Barack Obama does not bear all the blame; he inher- neither of the 9/11 wars. While Obama was arguing that ited the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan from his predecessor, the “tide of war is receding,” new conflicts emerged and George W. Bush. The Arab uprisings occurred on Obama’s old ones intensified. watch, and they opened new opportunities for the jihad- Obama always had a tin ear for the psychological impact ists in countries where they had only a minimal presence of terrorism. He liked to tell his staff that the number of beforehand. The revolutions were beyond America’s con- Americans killed in terrorist attacks each year was smaller trol, but Obama did little to counter the growing jihad- than the number who perished in car accidents or by slip- ist menace and even exacerbated problems. He sought ping in the bathtub. But this argument is myopic. Jihadist to downplay or dismiss every jihadist threat during his groups, not automobile manufacturers, are fighting for the presidency. With few exceptions, such as the killing of control of entire countries. The terrorist threat over here Osama bin Laden, there is little Obama can point to as a only grew as they gained ground over there. There have been counterterrorism success in his eight years in office. large-scale plots, such as the Islamic State’s assault on Paris The Trump administration is currently crafting its in November 2015 and the March 2016 Brussels bombings. own counterterrorism strategy. An 11-page draft memo Small attacks have become widespread. The December 2015 was leaked to Reuters on May 5, and in keeping with shooting in San Bernardino and the June 2016 nightclub the president’s views on foreign policy, the administra- massacre in Orlando both shocked this nation. Such attacks tion seems to be planning to call on America’s allies to are often described as the work of “lone wolves,” but this is do more. “We need to intensify operations against global misleading. Al Qaeda has long sought to inspire individu- jihadist groups while also reducing the costs of American als to strike out on their own. The Islamic State took this ‘blood and treasure’ in pursuit of our counterterrorism tactic further, using online applications to both attract and goals,” the document reads. “We will seek to avoid guide recruits in the West. The emergence of the so-called costly, large-scale U.S. military interventions to achieve caliphate in 2014 created a new justification and urgency for counterterrorism objectives and will increasingly look to believers to lash out in their home countries. partners to share the responsibility for countering terror- ist groups.” Thomas Joscelyn, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of There’s nothing wrong, in principle or in practice, Democracies, is a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard. with asking our allies to do more. President Trump was

22 / The Weekly Standard June 5, 2017 Medics rehydrate a member of the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division who was overcome by heat and exhaustion while conducting a mission intended to deny sanctuary to al Qaeda and Taliban fighters along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, July 23, 2002.

never likely to order nation-building projects or massive AMERICA’S LONGEST WAR troop deployments. But it is worth noting that Obama ate in 2009, Obama ordered 30,000 additional troops described his approach to counterterrorism in terms to Afghanistan. But he promised that the Americans remarkably similar to those used in the Trump memo. In L deployed under his leadership would come home his last major counterterrorism speech, on December 6, before the conclusion of his reelection campaign, and he 2016, Obama noted that the current war effort against delivered on that pledge. the Islamic State cost “$10 billion over two years, which “We’ve broken the Taliban’s momentum in Afghani- is the same amount that we used to spend in one month at stan, and begun the transition to an Afghan lead,” Obama the height of the Iraq War.” “Instead of pushing all of the announced in September 2012. “Next month,” he continued, burden onto American ground troops,” he said, “instead “the last of the troops I ordered as part of the surge against of trying to mount invasions wherever terrorists appear, the Taliban will come home, and by 2014, the transition to we’ve built a network of partners.” Afghan lead will be complete.” The soldiers came home, Obama’s plan, too, was built around reducing “the but the Taliban’s “momentum” was never truly broken. It costs of American ‘blood and treasure.’ ” It’s a fine goal was just slowed. Even Obama eventually realized he had to and, in some ways, a sensible one. Limiting the number keep more American troops in Afghanistan than he origi- of American casualties has to be any president’s top con- nally planned. Today, more than 15 years after we invaded cern. Nor can America be the primary force in every coun- Afghanistan in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, large parts of the try that faces a jihadist fight. Substituting others’ boots country are falling back into the hands of the Taliban. reduces the cost to U.S. taxpayers. But an “Allies First” According to the Special Inspector General for Afghan- strategy has its limits. There is no better example than the istan Reconstruction, who reports directly to Congress, ongoing war in Afghanistan, where America’s partners are at least 164 (40 percent) of Afghanistan’s 407 districts

SCOTT NELSON / GETTY struggling to keep the jihadists at bay. were either contested or under the insurgents’ control or

June 5, 2017 The Weekly Standard / 23 influence in February. The jihadists are able to execute spec- by the United States) fueled the generation of jihadists from tacular assaults like the April 21 raid on an Afghan military which al Qaeda arose. It is not difficult to imagine what a base near Mazar-e-Sharif that left more than 100 dead. The second vanquished superpower would do for their cause. number of civilian casualties has increased as well. The U.N. “Allah has promised us victory and America has prom- Assistance Mission in Afghanistan reported in February that ised us defeat, so we shall see which of the two promises will 11,418 civilians were killed or wounded in 2016. By contrast, be fulfilled,” Mullah Omar, the Taliban founder, once said. 5,969 civilian casualties were recorded in 2009—Obama’s He passed away in 2013, but his words are beginning to look first year in office. prophetic. Indeed, an American retreat would be widely Testifying before the Senate in early February, Gen. regarded as a vindication not just of Mullah Omar and his John W. Nicholson, who leads all NATO and U.S. forces in Taliban heirs, but of Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda. Afghanistan, said that a “few thousand” more troops were needed to stabilize the war effort. He called the conflict a THE TALIBAN-AL-QAEDA ALLIANCE stalemate, but there is no denying the Taliban gained signifi- art of the Obama administration’s strategy for end- cant ground over the previous year. ing the Afghan conflict was an attempt to separate President Trump’s national security adviser, Lt. Gen. P the Taliban from al Qaeda. It was a fool’s errand, H.R. McMaster, who held commands in both Iraq and as anyone aware of the overlapping structures and inter- Afghanistan, reportedly wants to send ests of the two understood. But several thousand more U.S. soldiers for eight years, Obama’s advisers to the country. Their primary mission built a policy in Afghanistan on would be to train additional Afghan The thought of sending this deeply flawed assumption. forces in the hopes of stemming the more Americans off Since well before the 9/11 Taliban’s advance. There are currently to fight in a seemingly attacks, al Qaeda’s chieftains 8,300 U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan, so intractable war in have been loyal to the Taliban’s the total proposed force would still be a Afghanistan would overall leader. In June 2016, far cry from the 100,000 or so troops sta- Ayman al Zawahiri, who fol- tioned there in 2010-11. be disheartening for lowed bin Laden as the head of al Some in the Trump administration any president. But Qaeda, swore a blood oath to the object to even this modest strategy. The the restoration of the Taliban’s emir, Mullah Haibatul- Washington Post reported that Afghani- Taliban, or anything lah Akhundzada. In December, stan is now “derisively” called “McMas- close to it, would have as something of a commemora- ter’s War” by his West Wing rivals. tion of the Obama policy failure, White House counselor Steve Bannon dire consequences the Taliban released a lengthy has been particularly vocal in opposing for the United States, video celebrating the historical any troop escalation in Afghanistan— particularly because it alliance. There was footage of as he opposed the president’s decision would be seen as the al Qaeda and Taliban figures— last month to strike the Syrian air- result of our capitulation. living and dead, including bin field from which the Assad regime had Laden and Mullah Omar—and launched a chemical attack. It’s easy to no hint at all that the Taliban see why Bannon is willing to give up on Afghanistan. The regretted the collapse of its rule in Afghanistan in the landlocked nation bedeviled foreign powers long before the wake of the U.S. invasion in October 2001. Taliban ever rose to power. The Afghan government is rife Al Qaeda commanders are integrated with their Tal- with corruption and often unreliable. Over the last 16 years, iban counterparts throughout the Afghan insurgency to 2,387 Americans have perished in the war for Afghanistan this day. The man who runs the Taliban’s military opera- and 20,261 others have been wounded. The thought of send- tions, Sirajuddin Haqqani, is particularly close to al Qaeda. ing more off to fight in a seemingly intractable war would be He and his father, Jalaluddin, were among bin Laden’s disheartening for any president. earliest allies. But the restoration of the Taliban, or anything close to Throughout his tenure as president, Obama repeatedly it, would have dire consequences for the United States, par- insisted that al Qaeda was “decimated” and “on the run.” ticularly because it would be seen as the result of our capitu- He was willfully blind to the situation in Afghanistan lation. The myth that faith in Allah was sufficient for the until the end. “Today, by any measure, core al Qaeda— mujahedeen to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan in the organization that hit us on 9/11—is a shadow of its the 1980s (ignoring the billions of dollars in arms supplied former self,” Obama claimed in his December valedictory

24 / The Weekly Standard June 5, 2017 speech. It is true that al Qaeda suffered significant losses from Afghan soil in 2017, and a complete U.S. withdrawal at American hands in Obama’s eight years in office. But would only make it easier for them to do so. the organization has survived the war on terror; it has Al Qaeda has been expanding throughout South Asia. evolved and it has grown. In September 2014, Zawahiri announced the creation of a In October 2015, the U.S. military made a startling new entity: Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS). announcement. Over the course of five days, a joint team He explained that after two years of negotiations and plan- of American and Afghan forces had raided an al Qaeda ning, several preexisting al Qaeda-allied groups in Paki- training camp far bigger than the one that produced the stan and its neighboring countries had merged. Almost 9/11 hijackers and their comrades. The facility was nearly immediately after this announcement AQIS members 30 square miles—about half the size of Washington, D.C. It attempted to hijack a Pakistani frigate and fire its mis- was located in the Shorabak district of the southern Kanda- siles at Indian and American warships. The goal was to get har Province and had gone unnoticed for months, even as India or the United States to retaliate for a perceived attack it churned out scores of new trainees. The whole of Shora- by Pakistan and start a regional war. The plot, which was bak district was overrun by the Taliban early this year. carried out by terrorists who had infiltrated Pakistan’s The massive camp is indicative of a bigger problem. The navy, was narrowly averted while it was in motion. Obama administration routinely downplayed the extent of Thus far, the Trump administration has said little about al Qaeda’s footprint in Afghanistan. The CIA estimated in how it plans to fight the Taliban-al Qaeda axis. The U.S. late June 2010 that there were just “50 to 100” al Qaeda operatives inside Afghan- istan. U.S. officials stuck with this assessment for years, even as contradic- tory evidence mounted. Files recovered in Osama bin Laden’s compound in May 2011, for instance, demonstrated that his men were operating in at least eight different Afghan provinces as of June 19, 2010. Just one al Qaeda “bat- talion” operating in the provinces of Kunar and Nuristan, the files showed, had 70 members. The U.S. military continued to launch raids against al Qaeda positions, but the “50 to 100” range remained fixed. U.S. officials finally conceded in Taliban fighters in western Afghanistan gather to listen to their leader, November 3, 2015. April 2016 that the extent of al Qaeda’s operations inside Afghanistan had been underestimated. military has been mainly focused on fighting the Islamic In December, just weeks before the end of the Obama State’s upstart presence in eastern Afghanistan—known as administration, Gen. Nicholson noted that 250 al Qaeda ISIS-K, for Khorasan, an old name for the wider central operatives had been killed or captured in Afghanistan since Asian region. Three American soldiers were killed during the beginning of 2016. raids on ISIS-K positions in Nangarhar Province in April, One of those killed was an especially important target. and there is no question that the group poses a challenge. Faruq al Qahtani had been tasked by Osama bin Laden But it is not the gravest threat to Afghan security. At the with organizing al Qaeda’s relocation to Afghanistan from height of their power, the Islamic State’s representa- northern Pakistan in 2010 at the peak of the Obama admin- tives controlled approximately ten Afghan districts and istration’s drone campaign. A significant number of al contested several others. Today, they control at most three. Qaeda leaders and fighters made the move, which allowed That is a far cry from the Taliban-led insurgency, which them to survive the drone onslaught. Qahtani and his men either dominates or is challenging Afghan and NATO fought alongside their Taliban comrades. But that was not forces in more than 160 districts across the country. his sole mission. After Qahtani was struck down in Octo- The Taliban has its allies, too. Iran long ago cut a deal ber 2016, the Pentagon announced that he had been “one with it to counter America’s presence in the region. The of the terrorist group’s senior plotters of attacks against the Russians have provided rhetorical support at the very min-

JAVED TANVEER / AFP GETTY TANVEER JAVED United States.” Al Qaeda is still plotting against America imum. Pakistan remains as duplicitous as ever, fighting

June 5, 2017 The Weekly Standard / 25 some jihadists and allowing others to roam free. What Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) for America’s com- little leverage we have in Pakistan today would surely be plete withdrawal at the end of 2011. The claim is false. lost in the event of our withdrawal from Afghanistan. The Obama celebrated his “ending” of the Iraq war throughout Taliban was, after all, originally a Pakistani proxy. his 2012 reelection campaign. It was a point of pride for NATO countries may be willing to contribute more him, not a lament. forces to the Afghan war. And despite the Afghans’ many Leon Panetta, Obama’s secretary of defense from 2011- problems, they will always be the ones doing the major- 13, wrote in Time in 2014 that the president was never ity of the fighting and dying in this war. NATO and the interested in negotiating a new agreement. The Obama Afghans can do more, of course, but are most likely to do administration was “so eager to rid itself of Iraq that it was so with the spur of a significant American commitment. willing to withdraw rather than lock in arrangements that would preserve our influence and

interests,”CHINA Panetta explained. Obama’s RUSSIA Black Sea rationale is also belied by the fact that KAZAKHSTAN when he eventually sent American troops Aral Sea TURKEY back into Iraq in 2014, he did so with- Caspian UKRAINE Sea out a new SOFA. Difficult negotiations with the Iraqi government aren’t the rea- SYRIA INDIA LEBANON son Obama closed the door on Iraq. He AFGHANISTAN SUDAN IRAQ believed that the jihadists weren’t a seri- IRAN UZBEKISTAN ous threat to American security. Nonetheless, as his two terms came JORDAN MOLDOVA PAKISTAN INDIA to an end, Obama argued that his ROMANIA KUWAIT KYRGYZSTAN course correction in 2014 left President BULGARIA Persian Trump with a successful strategy for Gulf Gulf of Oman SAUDI TAJIKISTANdefeating the Islamic State. During his ARABIA DecemberYEMEN 6 speech, Obama said, “the Indian Arabian Sea Ocean resultsERITREA are clear: ISIL [Islamic State] hasGulf of Adenlost more than half its territory.

0 250 500 ISILETHIOPIA has lost control of major popula- YEMEN MILES tion centers. Its morale is plummeting. Its recruitmentGEORGIA is drying up. Its com- manders and external plotters are being taken out, and local populations are turning against it.” Pointing to the campaigns in Mosul IRAQ AND SYRIA and north of Raqqa, the group’s “self-declared capital,” resident Obama was always dismissive of any Obama added: “The bottom line is we are breaking the jihadist threat emanating from Iraq. He described back of ISIL. We’re taking away its safe havens.” P the Islamic State and its predecessor organiza- It may be the case that the zenith of the Islamic State’s tion as a “kind of mafia” and the “jayvee team,” even as power is past. But Obama’s use of ad hoc allies and proxy its fighters were laying the groundwork for their caliph- fighting was an outgrowth of his hasty withdrawal and ate. Underpinning Obama’s casual dismissal was, as he eventual reversal; it was never a cogent strategy. Iraqi told the New Yorker in January 2014, the idea that “jihad- government forces melted away quickly as the Islamic ists who are engaged in various local power struggles State’s killers marauded their way through the country and disputes” aren’t a serious threat to the West. Today, in 2014. The United States worked to rebuild their capa- the Islamic State’s tentacles reach around the globe, from bilities in the years since, but there is no good reason to Southeast Asia, through the Middle East and Africa, all think the Iraqi army can stand on its own. What’s more, the way into the heart of the United States. many of the anti-Islamic State actors fighting in Iraq are Obama was never going to keep nearly 150,000 troops allies of Iran, which is fomenting an anti-American revo- stationed in the country when he took office. But even a lution throughout the region. small contingent would have interrupted the rise of Abu Iranian expansion was the poison pill in Obama’s plan Bakr al-Baghdadi’s caliphate. Obama and his surrogates for the Islamic State. Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces

liked to blame the Iraqi government’s refusal to enter a (PMF), which are involved in the battle for Mosul and STANDARD THE WEEKLY

26 / The Weekly Standard June 5, 2017 operations throughout Iraq, have strong ties to Iran and Complicating matters is the fact that America’s cho- the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). During the sen partners in Syria include members of the Kurdish height of the Iraq war, the IRGC’s elite Quds Force hunted Peoples’ Protection Units (YPG), which is affiliated with American-led coalition forces. The deputy commander of the Kurdi­stan Workers’ party (PKK), a U.S.-designated the PMF is Abu Mahdi al Muhandis, who has long worked terrorist organization. The Trump administration has with both the IRGC and Hezbollah, the notorious Iranian decided to deepen this alliance, which was first struck terror proxy in Lebanon. In 2009, the Treasury Department under Obama. Earlier this month, the president approved designated Muhandis a terrorist for his role in orchestrating a plan to directly arm the YPG, which is the leading part- attacks against Americans and allied forces in Iraq. Today, ner in the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). There may he and his men fight as part of the coali- be no other choice at this point. tion against the Islamic State. The Shi- The SDF has played a crucial role ite jihadists battling Baghdadi’s goons President Trump is aware in taking territory from ISIS in in Iraq do not serve America’s long- that Iranian aggression northern Syria, including the city term interests, they serve Iran’s. of Tabqah and the surrounding President Trump is aware that Ira- throughout the region area, which are key to the western nian aggression throughout the region is one of Obama’s most approach to Raqqa. is one of Obama’s most troubling lega- troubling legacies. During The movement for Kurdish cies. During his speech in Saudi Arabia his speech in Saudi Arabia independence is gaining momen- on May 21, he said that “no discus- on May 21, he said, ‘From tum, but hopes for a new state are sion of stamping out this threat would mired in internal rivalries. Amer- be complete without mentioning the Lebanon to Iraq to Yemen, ica has Kurdish allies in both Iraq government that gives terrorists all Iran funds, arms, and and Syria, but they are far from three—safe harbor, financial back- trains terrorists, militias, a unified force. The presence of ing, and the social standing needed for and other extremist YPG/PKK fighters in Iraq has recruitment.” Trump meant Iran and groups that spread caused persistent problems for continued, “From Lebanon to Iraq to the Kurdish regional government, Yemen, Iran funds, arms, and trains destruction and chaos which is coordinating the anti- terrorists, militias, and other extrem- across the region. For Islamic State fight in the north of ist groups that spread destruction and decades, Iran has fueled the country. America’s Kurdish chaos across the region. For decades, the fires of sectarian partners in the battle for Mosul Iran has fueled the fires of sectarian conflict and terror.’ (the Peshmerga) are sometimes conflict and terror.” It was important allied with our Kurdish surrogate for the president to make it clear that ground forces in the fight to take the United States views Iran as a major source of terrorism, Raqqa (YPG/PKK), but they also clash with each other. but it is not at all easy to see how the new administration Turkey’s government, moreover, is vehemently opposed will untangle the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq from to the YPG/PKK and, more generally, to any expansion of Iranian interests. the Kurdish regional footprint. The Turks present prob- If Obama could claim some progress against the Islamic lems in their own right, beginning with President Recep State in his December speech, he could not claim vic- Tayyip Erdogan’s increasing autocracy. The country is a tory. The campaign has been a slog. The fighting to liber- safe haven for numerous bad actors, from senior Hamas ate Mosul began seven months ago. The Islamic State is operatives to al Qaeda figures, and has been the main jihad- close to losing the city but is also still operating through- ist pipeline into Syria. out Iraq, having quickly reverted to a potent insurgency Throughout all of this, Bashar al-Assad’s genocidal in many of the areas it lost. The fight for Raqqa has yet to regime remains a power in Syria. Without the support of begin. It is under threat from multiple directions, but the Iran and Russia, Assad would long since have been sent jihadists have had ample time to build a defensive house of to the gallows. Iranian-backed Iraqi militias have been horrors for their approaching enemies. The group has also deployed to Syria on behalf of the butcher of Damascus, and redeployed its forces, securing ground along the Euphrates today Assad is safer than he has been in years. If Obama had River and in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor, one of the acted more urgently in 2011 when Assad first started his organization’s longtime strongholds. The end of the caliph- campaign of mass murder, the region and Europe—which ate may be in sight, but the end of the Islamic State in Iraq has taken in hundreds of thousands of refugees—might look and Syria is not. much different today. There is no serious effort, U.S.-led or

June 5, 2017 The Weekly Standard / 27 otherwise, to hold Assad accountable for his crimes. While as an ally against Saudi Arabia. While the Houthis are not it is tempting to suggest that wholesale regime change a purebred Iranian terrorist organization like Hezbollah, should be America’s policy in Syria, only naïve ideologues they are increasingly anti-American, even firing missiles at could overlook the fact that Sunni jihadists are the strongest U.S. ships off the coast of Yemen. They draw crucial sup- force opposed to Assad. port from former Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh, The U.S. focus on fighting the Islamic State has who was pushed aside in 2011 during the Arab Spring. obscured another problematic development: the rise of al Saleh wants to reclaim power, and he has cut a deal with Qaeda in Syria. In the first three weeks of 2017, the Defense the Houthis, previously his foes, in an attempt to get it. Department launched airstrikes it says “killed more than AQAP is a major force in Yemen. The group took advan- 150 al Qaeda terrorists” in Syria. One target was the Shaykh tage of the Houthi offensive against Hadi to claim parts of Sulayman training camp, which southern Yemen. After the United has been operational since at least Arab Emirates and the Sau- 2013. More than 100 al Qaeda fight- In April, Asim Umar, head dis intervened in 2016, AQAP’s ers were killed in that attack alone. forces melted away, declaring it Al Qaeda has also built up al-Nusra of Al Qaeda in the Indian was better to leave Yemen’s more Front, which Brett McGurk, whom Subcontinent, announced urban areas intact rather than Obama appointed as special presiden- that ‘America is not only raze them in a bloody intra-Arab tial envoy for the Global Coalition to fleeing from Afghanistan, fight. The jihadists lived to fight Counter ISIS in 2015, has described but [giving] up the another day. before the Senate as al Qaeda’s “larg- The Trump administration est formal affiliate in history.” U.S. leadership of the world. has already stepped up the air officials estimate that al-Nusra has The “America first” slogan campaign in Yemen. The United amassed at least 10,000 fighters. is the first step.’ Umar States launched more than 80 Between September 2014 and detected the problem in airstrikes against AQAP between December 2016, the Obama admin- Trump’s rhetoric: It is January and May. The previous istration launched repeated drone high was 41 bombings in all of strikes against individual al Qaeda not clear that there is 2009. President Trump has also terrorists residing in Syria. But they any difference between approved riskier operations. One were not as significant as the bomb- putting American interests Special Forces raid in January ings in January. The bulk of al-Nus- first and retreating from gained notoriety for the death of ra’s forces, which now fight under our pre-eminent position a Navy SEAL in an intense fire- the name of the Assembly for the fight at an AQAP compound, Liberation of the Levant, long went around the globe. which also led to numerous civil- untouched, and, though they are bat- ian casualties. tling both Assad and Iran’s Shiite militiamen, no American America’s chief partners in the Yemen fight, the UAE ally is currently fighting this group on the ground. and Saudi Arabia, are focused on hitting the Houthis and reinstalling Hadi in power. But AQAP also fights the YEMEN AND SOMALIA Houthis, which makes for uncomfortable bedfellows. hen President Obama announced his strategy Hadi’s men are also sometimes AQAP’s battlefield allies. for fighting the Islamic State in September Meanwhile, no ground force is significantly opposing W 2014, he said it would mirror his administra- AQAP. The UAE does have troops who skirmish with tion’s efforts in Yemen and Somalia. Within months, the them, but such clashes are so far minor. The situation is Yemen plan was a shambles. further complicated by the fact that Saudi Arabia is widely The U.S. government had been relying on Abdrabbuh accused of carrying out indiscriminate bombing raids. Mansur Hadi’s government, supported by targeted drone The troubles in Somalia are similar to those in Yemen. strikes and Special Forces operations, to suppress Al Qaeda The African Union Mission in Somalia and government in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). But in January 2015, forces are struggling to contain al Shabaab, the local al Hadi was forced into exile when Houthi rebels stormed Qaeda branch. Earlier this month, a Navy SEAL died the presidential palace in the Yemeni capital, Sanaa. The in a battle with the group—the first American killed in Houthis adhere to their own peculiar brand of Shia Islam combat in Somalia since the “Black Hawk Down” episode and opposed the Sunni-dominated Yemeni government. of 1993. Under Obama, American service members were They have been cultivated by Tehran, which views them to “advise, assist, and occasionally accompany regional

28 / The Weekly Standard June 5, 2017 forces.” In late March, Trump approved a plan that allows “the enemy in their strongholds” and prevent “the return them to “provide additional precision fires in support of ” home of escaped foreign fighters.” The previous week, dur- our local allies. American service members are going to be ing testimony before the Senate Select Committee on Intel- called upon to do more in Somalia. ligence, Director of National Intelligence Daniel R. Coats sounded less optimistic. He warned that the Islamic State WHAT IS TO BE DONE? would maintain “enough resources and fighters to sustain n late April, Asim Umar, the head of Al Qaeda in the insurgency operations and plan [terrorist] attacks in the Indian Subcontinent, released a provocative mes- region and internationally” for the foreseeable future. I sage. In it, he asked, “What is becoming of that very In other words, the U.S. intelligence community is not America?” and took direct aim at Trump’s foreign policy. expecting the defeat of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s enterprise “America is not only fleeing from Afghanistan, but with anytime soon. America’s allies are moving slowly in Syria. the jihadist strikes conducted against it by the sons of the In Iraq, we have already witnessed how quickly jihad- Muslim ummah, inshaAllah, inshaAllah, it will also flee ists can rebound from a defeat. To make matters worse, from, and give up the leadership of the world. The ‘Amer- no American-backed force is ready to move on al Qaeda’s ica first’ slogan is the first step.” Umar detected the problem in Trump’s “America first” rhetoric: It is not clear that there is any difference between putting American interests first and retreating from our preeminent position around the globe. It is striking that Umar sees the Trump doctrine as the “first step” to the demise of American “leadership of the world.” It doesn’t have to be this way. The new president is right when he says he “inherited a mess.” He can begin to fix it by setting the record straight with the American people. We are still fighting a global war against jihadism. Al Qaeda is very much alive and, contrary to the Obama administration’s assertions, remains an international organization active on multiple continents. While the Islamic State has taken its lumps, it is not close to a total defeat. Today’s enemies may not possess the industrial might and war machines of yes- An anti-U.S. protest in Sanaa, Yemen, by Houthi backers, May 12 terday’s foes, but they are persistent and committed to an anti-American ideology we cannot afford to ignore. strongholds in northwestern Syria. Iran has used the war Trump and his advisers can explain why Afghani- against the Islamic State to pursue its long-term objective stan—the original 9/11 war—remains an essential fight. of becoming the regional hegemon, expanding its foot- The 9/11 hijackings were launched from Afghan soil, and print in Iraq, Syria, and beyond. The president should an American retreat in Afghanistan would be a clear vic- have the U.S. military developing aggressive options for tory for the Taliban-al Qaeda axis. Obama’s total with- fighting the jihadists in Iraq and Syria and for maintain- drawal from Iraq in 2011 proved disastrous, and a replay ing our position as the chief regional broker. of that scenario in South Asia—where Pakistan, the only Speaking before the National Governors Association nuclear-armed state infested with jihadists, is located— on February 27, President Trump reminisced about the could be worse. Trump should quickly approve the good old days as he remembers them. “We have to start McMaster plan to send more troops to Afghanistan. They winning wars again,” he said. “I have to say, when I was will not win the war, but they can stem the tide of the young, in high school and college, everybody used to say jihadists’ advance. The Trump administration wants our ‘we haven’t lost a war’—we never lost a war—you remem- NATO allies to step up their commitments. NATO fol- ber.” Trump pointed out that “now we never win a war.” lows America’s lead, not the other way around. “We never win,” he reiterated. “And we don’t fight to win. The multi-sided proxy wars in Iraq and Syria are a ter- We don’t fight to win. So we either got to win, or don’t rifying mess. During a press briefing on May 19, Secretary of fight it at all.” He then complained about the vast sums Defense James Mattis said that the American strategy, on its spent fighting in the Middle East since 2001. present course, would “annihilate” the Islamic State. Mattis The jihadists believe, as al Qaeda’s Asim Umar said ear- praised President Trump for delegating more authority to lier this month, that eventually America won’t fight at all.

NEWSCOM his military commanders and for blessing a plan to surround The president of the United States can prove them wrong. ♦

June 5, 2017 The Weekly Standard / 29 Books&Arts

Toy factory, Lianyungang, Jiangsu Province, China Tigers at Bay

They’re roaring, but for how long? by John Psaropoulos

here is little doubt among the economy by size, state players tend economic forecasters that The End of the Asian Century to distort legislation and deprive the pri- over the medium term, War, Stagnation, and the Risks vate sector of growth opportunity in key Asia’s emerging econo- to the World’s Most Dynamic Region industries such as transport and energy. by Michael R. Auslin Tmies—China and India foremost Yale, 304 pp., $30 The lingering hand of the state among them—are expected to drive affects finance. The Organisation for global economic growth. Taken as one, Economic Co-operation and Develop- the region from India to Japan is not of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) ment estimates that corporate debt has only the biggest market for raw materi- will grow by more than double that rate soared from 120 percent of GDP five als, energy, and the shipping industry (5.2 percent in 2018), and even though years ago to over 160 percent today. that carries them; it is both the Euro- growth is forecast to slow in China, it In most emerging markets, it stands pean Union’s and the United States’ will still stand at an enviable 6 percent closer to 60 percent. Two-thirds of that biggest trading partner. next year. In India, it will be 7.7 percent. debt belongs to state-owned enter- As a region, it is also more robust The sustainability­ of this growth is an prises, and much of it may be subject than either the EU or the United States, object of study for obvious reasons. In to write-downs. Nonperforming loans where the International Monetary China, the key trading partner on whom have risen fourfold in the last three Fund forecasts that growth will rise much of the region’s and the globe’s years, particularly “special mention from 1.6 percent last year to 2 percent prosperity rests, concerns currently loans,” offered on lenient terms. next year. In contrast, the Association focus on finance and the state. Chinese banking statistics are opaque First, there are concerns that state- by Western standards, and nonperfor- John Psaropoulos writes from Athens for the owned enterprises, with all their attend­ mance is thought to be underreported. Daily Beast, the Washington Post, and ant nepotism and inefficiency, still But given that China’s banking system

other publications. dominate. While they are only a fifth of is now the biggest in the world—and IMAGINE CHINA / AP

30 / The Weekly Standard June 5, 2017 that even less accurate reporting exists such as corporate over-indebtedness, a be at risk in purely economic terms. of a shadow banking industry living off looming real-estate bubble, and environ- But that is not what makes this book the largesse of state investments—the mental degradation. important to a Western reader: The potential effects of a Chinese finan- Here, Michael R. Auslin under- real cause for concern is that the Chi- cial meltdown can only be imagined. takes the ambitious task of revealing nese Communist party can apparently The “regulatory windstorm” recently the potential for disruption in Asia proceed unreformed—and in the proc­ unleashed by China’s banking regula- by assessing the political, economic, ess, attempt to rewrite the rules of the tor must be taken as a sign that Chinese demographic, and defense risks of global economy. authorities, too, are concerned about the not just China, but also India, Japan, The fact that despite the industry systemic risk of defaults. Korea (north and south), Indochina, of its people, China’s growth “remains A final element of concern over Chi- and the large archipelagic states of the driven by the state and private business na’s financial system is that its capital western Pacific. This is an analytical sectors and not yet by consumers,” controls are creating too high a surplus carousel on the potential for armed or that “since the Tiananmen Square inside the economy—last year alone, conflict sparked by North Korea; the massacre of 1989, the party has become Chinese households accumulated $5 tril- appalling poverty of India, where a ever more isolated from the citizenry lion—instead of allowing that money third of the population still lacks elec- and is seen as corrupt, inefficient, and to be invested overseas. This not only tricity and literacy; gender inequal- often brutal . . . distrusted and disliked deprives other economies of growth; it ity throughout southeast Asia, which by the vast majority of the popula- puts all of China’s eggs in one basket. leaves the talents of half the population tion,” means that individual rights are Second, there are fears of a hous- outside the economy; the combination set at zero for a large proportion of the ing bubble. House prices have surged of reform gridlock and demographic world’s population. Other dictators in by a staggering 10 percent of GDP in decrepitude in Japan; and the general the region, and as far away as Iran and two years, yet entire cities’ worth of resistance to transparency, account- Sudan, receive material and diplomatic real estate goes unsold and uninhab- ability, meritocracy, and democracy succor from China’s stance—people ited because of overcapacity. A hous- through much of the region—values who “threaten their neighbors, oppress ing bubble would further undermine that, in the West, have underpinned their people, or seek to destabilize the financial stability. sustained economic and social devel- international order,” as Auslin puts it. Third, the rising level of inequality opment for two centuries. This means that China, more goes unaddressed. The Communists potently than Russia, challenges can claim a victory against poverty in he End of the Asian Century brings the American and European world- the countryside, but this has happened T a great deal of knowledge, and two view and international order. Even thanks to China’s growth rather than decades of experience, to the layreader. in Europe, China has launched the redistribution. The IMF study reveals For the nonexpert on Asia, it is equiva- “16+1” forum of former Warsaw Pact that what applies in capitalist econo- lent to a concentration of lectures, com- countries in a direct challenge to the mies largely applies under socialism plete with references. For that alone, European Union. Not surprisingly, as well: Less educated, older, and non- anyone interested in the geopolitical American influence in the Far East is state workers have been those most risks of the region and the global econ- now weighed against China’s, where hurt most by the transition from a low- omy will find it worthy of their time. “smaller nations feel pressured to pick skilled, rural economy to a manufac- Its quality as an Asian panopticon is sides, when their greatest desire is to turing economy. both its strength and weakness, how- antagonize neither.” Indeed, China’s Fourth, President Xi Jinping has ever. The problems of Vietnam, the direct challenge to American power chosen to uphold the standard Chinese Philippines, and Indonesia simply don’t in the Pacific, now taking the tangible policy of resisting political liberalization. measure up to the magnitude of the risks form of military runways on once- Freedom House has tracked a sharp in China. This lack of focus means that insignificant atolls, means that the uptick in authoritarianism and a move there is no overarching conclusion—for United States will be called upon to away from civil freedoms. In the last what conclusion can one draw from so shore up its security mantle. year, Beijing has imposed strict super- disparate a set of nations?—and means Auslin omits to mention that vision standards for NGOs, increased that this study amounts to no more than China is flexing its soft power, too. surveillance of people through the Inter- the sum of its parts. Under the One Belt One Road initia- net, and imprisoned human-rights More important, The End of the tive, launched in 2013, Beijing is to lawyers and their clients for months, or Asian Century fails to prioritize its spend almost a trillion dollars build- years, without charging them. political preoccupations over the eco- ing infrastructure around the world Given all this, there are justifiable nomic. The competitiveness of Asia, to extend the reach of its exports. This concerns about whether the Chinese based as narrowly as it is on explosive is, perhaps, the largest such spend- Communist party can competently man- population growth (followed by pre- ing program ever conceived, dwarfing age a transition to slower growth and an cipitous population drop), cheap labor, even the Marshall Plan. And like the aging population, as well as address risks and willing buyers abroad, might truly Marshall Plan, it will have political

June 5, 2017 The Weekly Standard / 31 ramifications, cultivating markets and it by force, but that American and press freedom in the West has been fall- fostering loyalties. European societies are losing confi- ing for over a decade, while authori- There is a further effect of China’s dence in the qualities that make them tarian leadership and nationalism are strident defiance of the Western order. enviably different from China and Rus- gaining currency, boosting partisanship The fall of communism in Europe was sia. Western societies are lured by the and straining political systems to the oversold as a final victory for capital- nationalist siren song that their liberal point of distorting them. ism, that would in theory sow a middle systems will not stand up to state capi- The economic threats to Western class demanding democracy in for- talism and its alleged ability to make capitalism from lack of reform in Asia mer Communist states. This has not up for their waning qualities. This loss are, indeed, real. But the political prob- yet happened, and social scientists are of confidence is evident in the fact that lems are homegrown. ♦ divided about whether it will. The open society and international trade sys- tem America built after World War II B A appear to be insufficient to overthrow & Evil Empires. Even worse, since the 2008 financial crisis, they appear unable to provide quality of life to this genera- A Soldier’s Word tion and equal opportunity to the next. Harsh truths, and merciful lies, about war. The United States may be transition- ing from the land of greatest economic by Judy Bachrach and social opportunity to a country of increasingly entrenched privilege, growing inequality, and a falling labor n January 26, 1945, this force participation rate. is what an American sol- Home Front to Battlefront The sensible remedies Michael Aus- dier in Belgium wrote An Ohio Teenager in World War II lin suggests for building leverage over home to his parents: by Frank Lavin authoritarian regimes in Asia are pre- O Ohio, 304 pp., $34.95 cisely the ones America cannot enact I’m warm and comfortable now, and sitting here in front of a fire. And because of growing self-doubt. These this is one of the times when I fall would include using the Trans-Pacific into sympathy with home. ized—that this 1945 letter written in Partnership to create a swirling vortex I don’t think I ever realized or the last year of World War II would be of trade among democracies—eventu- appreciated before how lucky I am. his last, and I don’t know when I’ve ally, perhaps, luring China and other You know, the four of us make a ever been so moved—moved to tears, grand family. There’s nothing mate- illiberal regimes into greater account- rial we don’t have that we could actually—by a bald white lie. ability and rule of law. They would also want. . . . I wish I could be aware of A month earlier, the Battle of include raising the cap on H-1B visas this when we’re all together. I imag- the Bulge had begun through the for skilled workers to pre-9/11 levels, ine you feel pretty much the same Ardennes forest in eastern Belgium, cultivating Western political values, way, don’t you? Well, maybe we will a deadly conflict that caught Allied appreciate it after this. and expanding State Department My thanks for being such grand forces completely off guard thanks exchanges that target future business parents, with my love. to an intelligence failure, and it and political elites. Be seeing you—Carl would continue for yet another ter- Unfortunately, these are precisely the rible month. By the time the salutary patient, extrovert policies the Trump In other words, Carl—the Ohio- words “warm and comfortable” were administration has declared void. The born soldier Carl Lavin, 18 when he penned, young Carl’s platoon had lost Trans-Pacific Partnership has gone enlisted and a member of the 84th 20 of its 40 members, and the frozen by the board, and State Department Infantry Division at the time he wrote earth, insubstantial utensils, and bitter budgets are earmarked for reduction. this—was offering his distant parents weather made the digging of foxholes Many Americans seem to have forgot- back home in Canton an epistolary by GIs especially brutal work. By the ten that what made America great was goodbye cloaked in the kindness of end of the battle, there were 100,000 its willingness to spend time and money concealment and the remembrance German casualties, as well as 81,000 building multilateral alliances that of unstinting affection. It was possi- American casualties. strengthened democracy and free trade. ble—maybe probable, as the boy real- So, almost certainly, Carl Lavin was And herein lies the greater threat: not seated by a cozy fire when his note not that the combined pressures of Rus- Judy Bachrach, a contributing editor to was dispatched to the folk in Canton. sia, China, and other illiberal regimes Vanity Fair, is the author, most recently, of But that’s the way war then was: teen- that find transatlantic hegemony has Glimpsing Heaven: The Stories and age boys growing old, careworn, and grown long in the tooth will overthrow Science of Life After Death. selfless overnight—old and selfless

32 / The Weekly Standard June 5, 2017 enough to airmail terrified parents deadly serious, a question that could I decided, well, this is a hell of a time to back home that kind of fictive comfort, get you shot if answered incorrectly. start to become a conscientious objec- in part because the parents needed the tor. I finally decided that yes, I would kill him. I’m ashamed to admit that lies, and in part because the military But equally intriguing: Who was the final reason was that this would censors demanded them. Mickey Mouse’s girlfriend? ultimately be an opportunity to have the experi- In Carl Lavin’s old age, there would got reduced to joke status by the ence of positively killing someone and be a change, a reflective remorse over very men it was designed to protect, knowing that I’d killed. I wouldn’t some of this forced narrative, as Frank although only when the fortunes of have to wonder anymore what it felt like to kill somebody. So I did. I just Lavin, his son and compiler of the war improved for the Allies. In time, shot him. . . . He never moved. I’ve had many letters that compose Home Front its sardonic revival became “a uni- a queasy experience about it ever since. to Battlefront, points out. The cen- versal statement of meaninglessness,” sors “blocked off the heart and soul according to Lavin, a shorthand way As the old man reveals to his son, of our experiences,” he told his son. for weary soldiers to describe the the German soldier had been cut down “We were repeatedly reminded by our insanity of combat. In fact, many of by Carl Lavin’s first shot. But to me, officers to give no details as to place, the important revelations here occur that’s not the point. There aren’t many actions, casualties. . . . This was in case decades after war’s end: Carl’s reflec- men willing to tell the whole truth some mail would fall into the hands of tions on the one death of a German about a war—and not just about World the enemy.” soldier he is certain he inflicted, for War II—any war. Not to the reading There is, therefore, an occasional instance; his reminiscences of initial public and, maybe above all, not to sameness in the contents of some of confusion about whether the enemy their own offspring. That’s the thing the letters contained in this volume soldier was, in fact, really dead or just about war: It kills not only soldiers of lovingly compiled war and postwar lying on the ground immobile; his ini- and civilians, it often kills the truth. missives: constant pleas for candy and tial reluctance (confided with stunning But Carl Lavin was willing to take his reading matter; references to a certain candor to his son) to ensure by firing chances. As he points out, he came out Edith, who (the soldier prophesizes, yet another shot that the German was of World War II whole—absolutely incorrectly) “I’m going to continue to absolutely, and without question, dead. whole, even though only 15 percent of love . . . for a long, long time.” There “Do I really want to take a human his company survived that way. The are mentions of Sugardale, the family- life after having shot at him, and he’s rest were killed or wounded. owned meat products company in Ohio. just lying there?” is how the elder “I was impossibly lucky,” he tells But oddly, it is that very repetition that Lavin recalls his wartime thoughts. his son. ♦ gives this compilation its compelling honesty. This is what soldiers write, especially when they are forbidden to B A write everything. Lovers, chocolates, & home, siblings, and parents: These are what they think about and yearn for when they are tired and cold, anxious, Magic Lantern scared, and uncertain about tomorrow. It isn’t only the letters themselves It’s been a century since we met J. Alfred Prufrock. that win over the reader, however. by William H. Pritchard Frank Lavin, a onetime Reagan White House political director and, later, ambassador to Singapore, fills in the ne of the quieter celebra- rienced a rocky marriage, to say the martial and historical gaps his father tions of a literary centen- least—both of them frequently ill was forbidden to provide. From the nial may be the one for with minor complaints, even as her younger Lavin we learn, for instance, Prufrock and Other Obser- psychological state grew increasingly that because certain German soldiers Ovations, T. S. Eliot’s first book of poems, disturbed. Eliot taught at a couple were expert at infiltrating Allied lines, published in 1917. of private schools and gave evening American units Eliot was then 29 years of age and extension lectures to adults; but his had published a number of poems, financial situation was unsettled until, quickly adopted security measures, essays on philosophic topics, and in March 1917, he went to work at challenging other soldiers by asking reviews. Married to Vivienne Haigh- Lloyd’s Bank in London, in the colo- them about popular culture, mat- Wood in 1915, he and his wife expe- nial and financial department. ters that the infiltrators would be In the fall of the previous year, he had unlikely to know. ‘Who was Mickey Mouse’s girlfriend?’ became the William H. Pritchard is the author, written to his brother Henry describing challenge called out by Carl and his most recently, of Writing to Live: that year as “in some respects, the most platoon. During the battle, it was Commentaries on Literature and Music. awful nightmare of anxiety that the

June 5, 2017 The Weekly Standard / 33 mind of man could conceive.” At about ten was that “the first essence of poetry unspecified). Sinclair countered the the same time, Vivienne wrote to Eliot’s is beauty,” and that the “unmetrical, charge of obscurity by admitting that mother describing (among other things) incoherent banalities” of such upstarts in these poems, Eliot’s “thoughts move the state of her husband’s underwear: would eventually be corrected. Waugh very rapidly and by astounding cuts,” “Still thick and in fair condition . . . but concluded by alluding to a “classic a fine summing-up of their technique. it needs incessant darning. Darning alone custom in the family hall” in which a And that was it for the early reviews of takes me hours out of the week.” In the drunken slave was displayed by way T. S. Eliot’s first book. letter to his brother, Eliot had expressed of warning family members of the per- One hundred years later, what has worry that his poem “The Love Song of ils of unbridled self-expression. When survived from Prufrock and Other Obser- J. Alfred Prufrock,” published two years Ezra Pound came to review Prufrock and vations? All the poems would be per- previously, might be his “swan song.” Other Observations he mocked “a very old manent in the Eliot canon; he was Working at the bank brought some alle- chap” (Arthur Waugh) for comparing not—unlike, say, W. B. Yeats or W. H. viation to both financial and domestic the younger poets to “drunken helots,” Auden—to revise, much less to expunge, troubles; he began to write poetry again, Pound providing words that weren’t in particular poems. With very minor and in August 1917, Prufrock and Other the review. exceptions, they stand in Eliot’s Collected Observations was published. In fact, the reviewers of the Prufrock Poems (1962) as they stood at the begin- It was a slim yellow pamphlet volume were more indifferent to the ning. An uncontroversial estimate of brought out by the the Egoist, a small poems than outraged by them, as Arthur the poems that most count in this first publisher of which Ezra Pound was the book would single out three: “The Love leading force, and consisted of 12 poems, Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” “Portrait of beginning with “Prufrock” and ending a Lady,” and “La Figlia Che Piange.” with “La Figlia Che Piange.” Pound had My introduction to Eliot, in col- been instrumental in getting Harriet lege, came by way of the subtle class- Monroe, editor of the American maga- room presence of Reuben Brower, close zine Poetry, to publish “Prufrock” in reader extraordinaire. Brower began his 1915, after some forcible coaxing. (The classes on Eliot not with “Prufrock” “best poem I have yet had or seen from but with “Portrait of a Lady,” an easier an American,” Pound insisted.) Eliot, as poem partly because it has a more sta- well, thought it by far his best poem. ble narrative presence. A young man In the volume he followed it with visits an older lady (in Boston, say), “Portrait of a Lady,” then two poems— then goes away (to Paris?), and comes “Preludes” and “Rhapsody on a Windy back to a changed, unsatisfactory, guilt- Night”—written earlier and under the tinged relationship. What made the influence of Jules Laforgue. There were poem memorable for me was Professor a number of shorter poems, like “Morn- Brower’s voicing aloud lines such as ing at the Window,” “Cousin Nancy,” T. S. Eliot (1919) the following: and “The Boston Evening Transcript” We have been, let us say, to hear the latest that could be thought of as illustrations Waugh had been. The anonymous Pole of the observations of the book’s title. reviewer in the Times Literary Supplement Transmit the Preludes, through his hair Distinct from the other poems in the found them to be “untouched by any and finger-tips. volume, “La Figlia Che Piange” was, genuine rush of feeling,” while the Liter- “So intimate, this Chopin, that I think and would continue to be, the purest ary World thought they were satiric teas- his soul Should be resurrected only among friends expression of lyric Eliot. In his biogra- ings aimed at reviewers. Prufrock “was Some two or three, who will not touch the phy of the poet, Peter Ackroyd summed found to be neither witty nor amusing,” bloom up the character of these poems: “Exam- and Eliot was advised that “he could do That is rubbed and questioned in the ples of dramatic virtuosity, conceived finer work on traditional lines.” concert room.” in terms of monologue and dialogue, “A keen eye as well as a sharp pen,” —And so the conversation slips ‘scene’ and character.” declared the New Statesman, citing Among velleities and carefully caught Yet this does little to suggest the the appropriateness of Observations regrets originality—at least the oddity—of in the title to characterize the poems. Brower introduced me to the pleasure the poems taken singly and together. The only significant reviews, aside of reading the lines as they might be Evelyn Waugh’s father, Arthur, was not from Pound’s, were by the novelist May heard (Robert Frost called it “ear-read- taken by such originality, reviewing an Sinclair and the American poet—and ing”), and it is those accents that remain anthology of 1915 in which “Prufrock” Eliot’s Harvard friend—Conrad Aiken. with me even as the “content” has dis- and other Eliot poems had appeared. Aiken praised the “psychological real- appeared. Of the three poems, “Portrait” What Eliot and these young poets in ism” of the poems and called Eliot an may be categorized as a monologue

their eagerness to be clever had forgot- “exceptionally acute technician” (details with analogies to Laforgue and Robert HOPPE / MANSELL THE LIFE PICTURE COLLECTION GETTY IMAGES E.O.

34 / The Weekly Standard June 5, 2017 Browning. Its overall apologetic note, a character in a dependable frame that adequate, or the least inadequate, words diffident and uncertain, would not be binds together the poem’s constituent to describe it. Perhaps, for that rea- heard for the last time in Eliot’s work. parts. One of those parts is Prufrock’s son, the poem, more than any other of Eliot placed “La Figlia Che Piange” disclaimer of Shakespearean gravity Eliot’s, has showed its continuing life to at the end of the volume for good reason: and weight: No! I am not Prince Ham- curious readers of poetry, many of them It is a beautiful instance of the lyric poet let nor was meant to be. When Harriet younger ones. Along with Robert Frost’s able (at least at the beginning) to catch Monroe objected to this section as out “The Road Not Taken,” it is one of the an elusive, personal mode of feeling: of keeping with other parts of the poem, few modern poems today’s undergradu- Pound wrote her that he, too, disliked it, ates have read, or at least heard about. Stand on the highest pavement of the but that it was an “early and cherished Its final six lines are presumably stair— Lean on a garden urn— bit” that Eliot wanted to include, and about the mermaids J. Alfred Prufrock Weave, weave, the sunlight in your hair— would do the poem no harm. So much has heard singing, but their words Clasp your flowers to you with a pained for the necessity of having a consistently and word-music are such as to take us surprise— dramatized speaker. beyond any reference. In Denis Don­ Fling them to the ground and turn As noted in his review of Prufrock, oghue’s excellent formulation: “We are With a fugitive resentment in your eyes: Conrad Aiken called T. S. Eliot an excep- not allowed to escape from the words But weave, weave the sunlight in your tionally able “technician,” but failed into another place.” hair. to hazard any remarks about that tech- The poem goes on to complicate itself nique. One sympathizes with Aiken’s I have seen them riding seaward on the waves by introducing an “I” who seems to be silence on the subject, since Eliot him- Combing the white hair of the waves arranging a tableau for the woman of the self was to write, in prefacing the second blown back first stanza and her putative lover. Not edition of his first book of essays, “We When the wind blows the water white and the least of complicating aspects are the cannot define even the technique of black. irregular lines of the three “stanzas”— verse; we cannot say at what point ‘tech- We have lingered in the chambers of the each slightly different from the oth- nique’ begins or where it ends.” Thus sea ers—and the unpredictable, but quite Eliot had to content himself with defin- By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown wonderful, rhyming. In her perceptive ing poetry as “excellent words in excel- Till human voices wake us, and we review of the Prufrock volume, May lent arrangement and excellent metre.” drown. Sinclair called “La Figlia” no less than A bit of a leg-pull here, surely. But “a unique masterpiece.” the amount of words spilled about “Pru- After a hundred years, “Prufrock” But of course, the poem that frock” in this and the preceding century remains as fresh and unaccountable as it counts most is “The Love Song of J. suggests a never-ending effort to find seemed to its first readers back then. ♦ Alfred Prufrock.”

Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against B&A the sky Like a patient etherized upon a table; Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, Rested and Ready? The muttering retreats The American engine could use a tune-up. Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels And sawdust restaurants with by Jonathan Marks oyster-shells:

It proceeds through various shift- ing rhythmical and emotional patterns, e will soon, TED talks which project an overall eloquence of promise, travel to the The Complacent Class inadequacy that more than once pauses beach in driverless The Self-Defeating Quest to consider itself: cars, where our arti- for the American Dream by Tyler Cowen ficialW blood cells will enable us to stay It is impossible to say just what I mean! St. Martin’s, 256 pp., $28.99 But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves underwater for hours. But we may pre- in patterns on a screen: fer the virtual reality we will be able to inhabit thanks to direct brain implants, nentially, our biggest problem may be “Prufrock” threw the nerves in pat- which will have replaced unfashionable adjusting to all the dynamism. terns that had not been seen or heard headsets. As change proceeds expo- That’s one story. But Tyler Cowen, before in English poetry. It is impos- professor of economics at George Mason sible to say just what he or it means, Jonathan Marks is professor of politics at University and coauthor of the won- because impossible to hold Prufrock as Ursinus College. derful blog Marginal Revolution, has

June 5, 2017 The Weekly Standard / 35 another. America is much less dynamic want, “a world of . . . stable wealth and can be filled by other, worse ideas.” and progressive than most of us imag- satisfied ownership” rather than “per- Cowen is probably right that Ameri- ine. We think we are a start-up nation petual personal churn” emerges. Lives- can society is less dynamic than most but new firms have been “declining matching makes it possible, for its best of us think, and he may be right that a since the 1980s.” We think we are a practitioners are good enough to cause great reset is coming. But his story of mobile nation, but the “interstate migra- a “decline of American restlessness.” why we find ourselves here is uncon- tion rate has fallen 51 percent below its Millennials, Cowen thinks, are vincing. In particular, Cowen oversells 1948 to 1971 average.” We think that mastering this new world. They are the connection between restlessness we are moving, however slowly, toward good at finding satisfaction in “having and progress. Alexis de Tocqueville, racial integration, but the “average black some of their niche preferences ful- who Cowen thinks may be “the primary student attends a school that is about filled for the sake of their own inter- theorist for the decline of American 8.3 percent white.” We have been stalled, nally developed happiness.” That is restlessness,” helps us see the problem in many respects, for some time. with Cowen’s account. Cowen reads In The Complacent Class, Cowen con- him as fearing that “American rest- siders the “social roots” of this stagna- lessness might contain the seeds of its tion. We cannot blame monopolists or own demise.” Restlessness brings prog- white supremacists because, sadly, the ress, which brings “sluggish satisfac- “villain is us,” the “growing number tion” and, eventually (in Tocqueville’s of people in our society” who accept or words), “brutish indifference about the insist upon “resistance to things new, future.” But that is not how Tocqueville different, or challenging.” sees it at all. Here is his account. I wish Cowen had skipped the term In aristocratic, immobile ages, “complacent class,” because it describes nobles, because their taste for well- a group that is neither altogether com- being is satisfied “without trouble,” placent nor exactly a class. It includes are free to apply themselves to “some wealthy people who correctly “believe more difficult and greater undertak- their lives are very good,” middle- ing” than securing material goods. As income people who have dug in, hoping for the people, they become “habitu- to “hang onto . . . a pretty decent life, ated to poverty” and their thoughts whatever its stresses,” and low-income turn to otherworldly goods. The nobles people, too disillusioned even to riot. are complacent, in Cowen’s terms, but Cowen, in any case, deals mainly with Tyler Cowen their complacency is coupled with the those who are pretty satisfied, who capacity to take on grand projects. sometimes complain about social nice for them but bad for progress In mobile, democratic ages, how- evils but lack a “sense of urgency” because millennials have “less inter- ever, the rich, the poor, and the mid- about them. est in grand projects or topping previ- dling can—and do—turn almost After the “rebellion of the 1960s and ous records of achievement.” exclusively to a “search for material early 1970s,” Cowen thinks, Ameri- Cowen predicts a “great reset,” inti- enjoyments.” Where religion is not cans sought calm and have, to a point, mations of which may be found in the in a position to direct their gaze to found it in “a lower crime rate, more strange politics of our moment. The the future, democratic peoples are safety for most of our kids,” and other quest of the complacent class for greater “naturally brought to want to real- security gains. Today, not just secu- security and contentment has led them ize their least desires without delay.” rity but contentment is within reach to places like Park Slope and Ann Arbor, Under these conditions, one still has for many: “Matching” is the fruit of whose residents “would be horrified if the restlessness, indeed the “tumult,” the one grand project of our recent you pointed it out [the segregation] in of democracy; but that restlessness past, the wiring of the world, which their neighborhoods” but find a way distracts us from everything but the enables us to seek just the right music (thanks, artisanal cocktails!) to live with present. This dynamic, not a decline in on Spotify, just the right doll on eBay, it. The country is increasingly charac- restlessness, could lead (as Tocqueville and just the right mate on Match. terized by “superclusters of cooperation sees it) to “brutish indifference about com. But matching can be an innova- among the quality cooperators and a fair the future.” Alexis de Tocqueville’s tion-suppressing innovation and has amount of chaos and dysfunctionality analysis, wherein restlessness is less a “helped to cement in a lot of segrega- elsewhere.” The complacent class can no pioneer spirit than an attention deficit tion, stasis, and complacency.” When longer convince even themselves that we disorder, contradicts Tyler Cowen’s. the savvy and resource-rich find it live in a dynamic society that will soon Tocqueville’s analysis also suggests easy to marry each other, rather than enough lift everyone who merits lifting. a different picture than Cowen’s of the boy next door, and otherwise find But “without a strong ideology and a the state of modern souls. Tocqueville

it easier to acquire exactly what they strong belief in the future, the vacuum found a “singular melancholy” beneath COURTESY OF TYLER COWEN

36 / The Weekly Standard June 5, 2017 the surface of American dynamism and account at odds with other analyses “A good actor can have a part in 10 attributed it to, among other things, that find them to be at least as materi- different plays,” he said in 1951, “one the “futility” of the quest for content- alistic, image-conscious, anxious, and object can play a role in 10 different ment, in which the possession of some depressed as prior generations. Cowen’s pictures.” The first room, “The Object goods is no impediment to the imagi- mind is too fertile not to consider the as Actor,” traces the career of a silver nation of “a thousand others that death possibility that information technology chocolate pot. The pot was a wedding will prevent [us] from enjoying if [we and matching provide an “illusion of gift from the painter Albert Marquet do not] hasten.” For this and other security, stability, and control” rather following Matisse’s marriage in 1898 to reasons, the democratic impulse leaves than actual control over lives still led Amélie Parayre. In the watercolor Still democratic peoples always restless, and in the physical world. That the com- Life and Heron Studies (ca. 1900), never sometimes surprisingly sad. placent class cannot have, in the long previously exhibited, Matisse gets to It would be simplistic to use this term, the security it seeks is one of know his new companion: Miniature age-old account of the quest for con- Cowen’s main contentions. But even in sketches of the pot are washed in yel- tentment to explain our millennials. the short term, millennials, “the finest lows, brown, blue, and mauve—a kind But I was surprised by Cowen’s account product” of the complacent class, may of audition. of millennials as uncommonly good well be, for better or for worse, as rest- In the early oil Still Life with a Choco- at finding internal contentment, an less as their predecessors. ♦ late Pot (1902), the pot poses with an orange on a red book. The orange turns the globed belly of the pot dark red and B A green; the tonal resonance is so forceful & that the pot and the orange seem to be held in a gravitational dance, like the sun and the moon. In Dishes on a Table Object Lessons (1902), the pot stands again on a red ground, this time a tablecloth. But with- For Henri Matisse, the outward appearance out the orbiting orange, the pot turns reflects an inner life. by Dominic Green racing green and silvery white. In Bouquet of Flowers in a Chocolate Pot (1902), the pot is swollen and its Boston wooden handle protrudes like a pro- o endow Emma Bovary boscis. Life is not still in a still life: It is with his feelings, Gustave Matisse in the Studio as though the pot is eating the bouquet. Flaubert endowed objects Boston Museum of Fine Arts Yet in Interior with Young Girl Reading through July 9 with her feelings. When (1905-06), the pot is a placid compan- TRodolphe reneges on his promise to ion to Matisse’s daughter Marguerite. elope, Emma is prostrated by “brain Washed by soft pink in the bourgeois fever.” The trappings of sainthood tomatoes blue? Why did he cherish a setting for which it was designed, the substitute for erotic satisfaction: “She statuette of a “dwarf from Java” with pot extends its neck gracefully and bought rosaries and wore holy med- a head too big for its body? How, we retracts its handle by turning its back. als. She wished to have in her room, still ask, did he do it? In Still Life With Blue Tablecloth by the side of her bed, a reliquary Matisse in the Studio is a study in (1909), the pot is flaming red, as though set in emeralds that she might kiss it the secret life of objects and the magi- combusting within. It turned out that every evening.” cal candor of Matisse’s art. Curated by Matisse was more faithful to the choco- “Take that table, for example,” Helen Burnham of the Museum of Fine late pot than to Amélie. She divorced Henri Matisse (1869-1954) said to the Arts, Ann Dumas of the Royal Acad- him in 1939, but the pot, doughty with American painter and writer Clara T. emy, and Ellen McBreen of Wheaton age, retains its fascination in Still Life MacChesney in 1912. “I do not liter- College, the exhibition presents more with Seashell on Black Marble (1940). ally paint that table, but the emotion it than 80 artworks—paintings, draw- Yet there are rivals for Matisse’s produces upon me.” Matisse’s teacher, ings, bronzes, cut-outs, and prints— affections, especially a pewter jug. In Gustave Moreau, had told him that he with 39 objects from Matisse’s studio. Still Life with Lemons (1914), the jug is was destined to “simplify” painting. Some of the paintings are held in pri- a picture within a picture and a theo- But condensing and clarifying brought vate collections. Many of the objects retical guide to the eye. As a black- new intensity and candor. Why, are loans from the Musée Matisse in on-white sketch on the wall, it is MacChesney asked, were Matisse’s Nice and have never left France before. the flattest object and plane in a pic- The five rooms of this magnificent ture of flattened objects and planes. Dominic Green is a fellow of the Royal exhibition reveal more about Matisse Again, when the Woman on a High Historical Society. than a mountain of monographs. Stool (1914) bobs uneasily in a sea of

June 5, 2017 The Weekly Standard / 37 gray, the sketch of the jug anchors Sculpture (1912), Matisse completes in Nice—all those bright mornings both composition and color. In Vase Pygmalion’s artifice and closes the and languid afternoons—and nicer of Anemones (1918), the jug supports historical circle, rendering her as a still to construct fantastical Arab inte- and amplifies the delicate vase, like a peach-toned nude. riors in his studio. chaperone to an ingénue; but now the The third and fourth rooms, “The In “Studio as Theatre,” perspec- jug is ripely curved. Face” and “Studio as Theatre,” con- tive dissolves. Hanging haitis (pierced In reality, the side of the physi- trast two methods of staging and char- and appliquéd cotton textiles) from cal jug is entirely flat. Matisse has not acterization. “The Face” pairs African Egypt color the sunlight that filters imposed an abstract ideal of flatness masks with Matisse’s oil portraits and through their fretwork. The “sym- but responded to its actual expres- sculpted heads. In Portrait of Madame pathy between objects” blends flesh, sion. This pattern recurs in the second Matisse (1913), Henri paints Amélie furniture, and fabric in a single deco- room, “The Nude.” Matisse rative plane. In Odalisque on collected African sculptures a Turkish Chair (1928), the and ethnographic nude pho- brown frame of an octagonal tographs because of their chair takes on flesh tones so “broader meaning”—a sculp- that the model’s right arm tural language that broadened appears to be joined at the his visual response. In the oil elbow to one of the chair’s Standing Nude (1906-07), a spindles. In the drawing photograph from a French Seated Odalisque and Sketch catalogue of poses, Subject (1931), the crook of the evoking the idea of surprise or model’s raised leg and the modesty (1906), acquires mas- ripple of her stomach are sive buttocks and shoulders echoed in the arcade open- and a mask-like face. In Four ing between the chair’s legs. Studies of a Nude (1910), the Flaubert’s Bouvard and abstraction develops from Pécuchet lack intrinsic quali- an académie (a representa- ties and create each other in tional Western nude), passes costume: “They had put on through a pair of figures with smocks, like medical students longer and more rigid lines, in operating theaters, and by and then arrives at a self- the light of three candles they contained, upright posture were working on their bits of close to that of a Fang reli- cardboard.” The “emotion” quary figure from Gabon or that Henri Matisse seeks is Equatorial Guinea. not that of false appearances That posture recurs in ‘Goldfish and Sculpture’ (1912) but accurate perceptions. To the primitivized brothel capture “the environment study Seated Figure with Violet Stock- as a white mask of blank-eyed, tight- which the object creates” he creates an ings (1914). As Matisse moves lipped accusation. The formality of the environment that places objects in ten- between forms and media—from mask exposes the “true character” of sion. “I am afraid,” he admitted to his European to non-European, sculpture his subject; the “true character” requires son Pierre in 1940, “of getting down to painting—the object comes to life. the mask as an intermediary. Mean- to work tête-à-tête with objects that I In the pagan Eden of Bonheur de Vivre while, in Self-Portrait (1906), Matisse myself have to animate with feelings.” (1905-06), Matisse posed a classical grants himself the expressed features of In 1946, Matisse gave a photograph nude. She acquires a twisted torso the European tradition. to Louis Aragon. The photograph, and callipygous buttocks in the sculp- When Emma Bovary falls into the taken by Hélène Adant, was one of ture Reclining Nude I (1907); then she clutches of the draper Lheureux— several documenting the objects in enters the oil Blue Nude (1907). She a handler of textiles whose surname Matisse’s studio. His jugs, bowls, is now an odalisque with a face and a promises happiness no deeper than the tables, and African sculptures line biography, and her subtitle, Memories surface of his products—she becomes up before a curtain, as though taking of Biskra, and the palm trees behind a northern odalisque: “She abandoned a bow. On the back, Matisse wrote: her allude to her Algerian birthplace. herself to this easy way of satisfying all “Objects which have been of use to me In the reddish oil study Bronze Figure of his whims.” In his lifetime, Matisse nearly all my life.” In the cutouts in (1908), she is back in Matisse’s stu- was accused of shallow decorativeness the final room, “Essential Forms,” the dio, turning her head as the neck of a and sensual pandering, especially after house lights are up. The artist joins his

jug strokes her waist. In Goldfish and abandoning Paris in 1921. It was nice objects in an encore. ♦ COURTESY OF THE MUSEUM FINE ARTS BOSTON

38 / The Weekly Standard June 5, 2017 decessors, the show leashed Lynch’s B A astounding visual sense and hypnotic & narrative storytelling both to the classic demands of a whodunit and the clas- sic form of a TV cop buddy show, and Uncompromised the results were initially spectacular. The show’s two-hour pilot, directed by An artist’s vision for ‘Twin Peaks: The Return.’ Lynch, remains the high-water mark of by John Podhoretz network drama until the advent of the HBO era. But the vertiginous rise of Twin Peaks avid Lynch has not made a closely resemble reading a novel in pig in the national consciousness was fol- movie or a television show Latin. And the parts that do involve tell- lowed, after the first season, by the in a decade. But his over- ing a story—the story of what has hap- show’s stark creative and cultural col- whelming talent—a talent pened to the hearty, soulful, mystical lapse. Lynch blames the demand by the Dall but unmatched in cinematic his- FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper in the network that he and co-creator Mark tory—for transferring to the screen the 25 years since the events in the original Frost reveal the identity of Laura Palm- jarring and unforgettable images (and Twin Peaks—are so wooden and unin- er’s killer in the second season. It was, he sounds) that haunt his unconscious volving they suggest that Lynch is delib- said, “a question we never really wanted has not been dimmed by his absence. erately testing our patience with the goal to answer.” Lynch felt that he had com- The first 4 hours of the 18-hour series of encouraging us to switch the thing off. promised too much with the demands of he has just cowritten and directed for That goal makes a certain amount narrative, and thereafter he committed Showtime—Twin Peaks: The Return— of sense if you consider Lynch’s ori- himself to filmmaking that would not make that clear. There are scenes here, gins as a filmmaker. He began as an require him to offer any answers. moments here, flashes here, alternately art student who made a hand-stitched With one exception, Lynch spent shocking and dazzling and terrifying nightmare of an art house movie called the following 15 years making a series and repulsive and compelling, that you Eraserhead (a portrait of extreme paren- of increasingly incomprehensible but will remember for the rest of your life. tal anxiety), shown at midnight in the indelibly evocative melodramas in But these first four hours also make it 1970s. Eraserhead is brilliant and pro- which characters swap identities or lit- sadly apparent that Lynch remains stub- foundly punishing. The latter is par for erally transform into different people bornly determined to place his visions at the course for avant-garde work, which with no explanation. The best of these the center of his work to the exclusion of abjures the very idea of audience; the movies, 2001’s Mulholland Dr., is a ber- all else. This determination lost him the former far less so, given how lousy most serk stunner that provides us absolutely mass audience he won for himself in the avant-garde crap is. Shockingly, Lynch no directorial assistance in figuring out 1980s when he chose to leash his unique then transmuted himself into an Oscar- that, for most of its running time, we sensibility—a combination of surreal- nominated A-list director with 1980’s are watching the desperately happy fan- ism and lurid psychosexual melodrama The Elephant Man and 1986’s Blue Vel- tasy of a suicidal lesbian actress who has straight out of the most disturbing drug- vet. The Elephant Man is rooted in the hired someone to murder the movie star store-paperback pulp—to conventional prestige Masterpiece Theatre form, while who was once her beloved. The point is storytelling tropes. His commercially Blue Velvet is built on the framework of that there’s no dismissing David Lynch: successful work was also his most artis- a small-town film noir. Both are extraor- He’s too remarkable, even when he tically successful for precisely this rea- dinary, disturbing, and enduringly sad. drives you mad. son. Alas, Lynch clearly resents that fact And both feature Lynch giving full rein That open channel to his gorgeously and has spent the last 25 years resisting to his darkest imaginings while leading purple right brain, and that stubborn it. And never more so, and never more the us through a story with a beginning, commitment to his corkscrew vision of pointedly, than in the new Twin Peaks. middle, and end. the world, marks Lynch as one of the few Its nightmares and dreams and sur- In 1990, Lynch’s work as the pri- filmmakers who genuinely deserves to real sequences astonish, but they do not mary creative force behind the original be called an “artist.” The fact that Lynch tell a story. If you are unfamiliar with Twin Peaks series on ABC marked him got somewhere north of $100 million to the Twin Peaks series and movie Lynch as the unlikeliest impresario of addic- make Twin Peaks: The Return exactly as made between 1990 and 1992, you may tive water-cooler TV ever to emerge in he wished is some kind of divine reward find watching this update like reading Hollywood. Its portrait of a small north- for sticking to his guns, even though I’m a book in Latin when you have little western town coping with the murder of pretty sure it would have been better for Latin. If you are familiar, it will more a high school Madonna/whore named American culture itself if he had con- Laura Palmer had both gut-wrenching tinued to work at finding the sweet spot John Podhoretz, editor of Commentary, emotional power and a surprising depth between his internal obsessions and his is The Weekly Standard’s movie critic. of humanity. Even more than its pre- audience’s need to be told a tale. ♦

June 5, 2017 The Weekly Standard / 39 PARODY

June 5, 2017 A

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