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Neo Conflab

By Julia TurnerUpdated Friday, June 6, 2003, at 6:53 PM ET

Vanity Fair, July 2003; New Republic, June 16; National Review, June 16
Sam Tanenhaus' Vanity Fair assessment of the neoconservatives—he calls the intellectual clique the "new establishment" and compares them to Kennedy's "Best and Brightest" and Truman's "Wise Men"—elicited a chorus of rebuttals before it even hit newsstands. In the piece, Paul Wolfowitz notes that Bush & Co. considered many rationales for war in Iraq, but focused on WMD as a casus belli "for bureaucratic reasons … it was the one reason everyone could agree upon." The comment steamed anti-war sorts wondering where exactly the WMD are at, and the Weekly Standard's William Kristol devoted an editorial to parsing the differences between the Pentagon's transcript of the interview and the quotes in Tanenhaus' piece, arguing that "Tanenhaus mischaracterized Wolfowitz's remarks, that Vanity Fair's publicists have mischaracterized Tanenhaus's mischaracterization, and that Bush administration critics are now indulging in an orgy of righteous indignation that is dishonest in triplicate." Meanwhile, on the New Republic's Web site, Robert Lane Greene declines comment on the accuracy of the transcription and argues that Wolfowitz's comment is "actually quite reassuring," reasoning that if the "squabbling" departments of Defense and State could agree that Iraq had WMD, the intel "must have been pretty compelling."

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Tanenhaus, however, touches only briefly on the recent war and instead describes lucidly how Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, and William Kristol attained the influence they have today. A telling moment: Wolfowitz's realization that Bush II did not share his father's "squeamish" distaste for military intervention abroad. "Two things became clear," Wolfowitz recalls. "One, he didn't know very much. The other was he had the confidence to ask questions that revealed he didn't know very much." [Correction, June 9, 2003: This comment was attributed to Richard Perle, not Paul Wolfowitz.] It's the sort of attitude that might make one heed the advice of smarty-pants advisers.

But the National Review chimes in with its own (unwitting and pre-emptive) rebuttal, arguing that the neocons don't hold as much sway as everyone thinks they do. Ramesh Ponnuru argues that if a neocons advocate military intervention on purely moral grounds, and plain old conservatives support such actions only if American interests are at stake, then the war in Iraq was a conservative war, since we fought it to protect American interests there.

He has a point: Even if Wolfowitz's comment suggests that a fundamentally neocon war was sold with a conservative gloss, it's true that the conservative rationale is what convinced many to support the war, which means "the establishment" may still be out in left—or right—field.

Texas Monthly Texas Monthly, June 2003
When a celebrity profile begins with a reporter and a star chatting amicably in said star's car, most readers feel an irresistible urge to keep flipping. Resist! At least when tackling Texas Monthly's take on Owen Wilson. Writer John Spong and Wilson—dissatisfied with aspects of their actual conversation—decide to co-write a better, if imaginary, interview. The conceit makes for a lively piece, and the process reveals both that Wilson gives good e-mail, and that he cannily recasts himself as a put-upon sidekick when directors push him to star. … A home-state take on Alberto Gonzales—Bush's White House counsel and a likely Supreme Court nominee—doesn't add much to what's already known: Gonzales is exceedingly loyal to Bush; he got Dubya out of jury duty in a 1996 drunken-driving case that would likely have required the then-governor to testify about his DUI before it was widely known; and he's a judicial cipher.

New York Times Magazine, June 8
A special issue on the "Sink-or-Swim Economy." The lead story argues that our economy has become increasingly efficient since World War II. On a micro level, it's incredibly volatile, with companies launching and folding, hiring and firing every day; on a macro level, those transactions average out to gradual growth. Which means "the price of ever greater collective stability is ever greater individual insecurity." … How do you get an Iraqi oil refinery up and running? Peter Maass reports on the collaboration between a young GI and a possibly corrupt former Baathist who are trying to do just that; the piece suggests that rebuilding Iraq will require workers with a willingness to improvise, no matter what their prior party affiliation. … Robert Draper explains how one pharmacist got rich by selling diluted prescriptions to dying cancer patients. … Also, points this week to the Ethicist for finding a way to use the phrase "felonius chipmunk."

Department of Ominous History
Last week, John B. Judis argued in the New Republic that would-be imperialists should heed the advice of Woodrow Wilson, who argued for "a liberal internationalism" instead. This month Jared Diamond argues in Harper's that modern leaders should study the demise of the Maya civilization. Diamond points out that for the Maya, environmental calamities brought on by overpopulation and deforestation rapidly led to malnutrition, infighting, and political collapse. Today, Diamond writes, Americans feel immune to such catastrophe; successful societies tend to believe that they would never do "obviously dumb things, like cutting down their forests, watching their topsoil erode, and building cities in dry areas likely to run short of water." But a list of the world's most environmentally stressed countries would include most of the world's political trouble spots, and Diamond emphasizes that in a globalized world, Bangladesh's environmental troubles can easily become our own.

The Word Wildlife Fund
When writers use $2 words that send readers reaching for their dictionaries, are they just being precious, or are they making a valiant effort to save endangered words from extinction? This week's potential dodo: eleemosynary. It means "of, relating to, or dependent on charity," according to the American Heritage Dictionary and was tossed into a food piece in the NYT Magazine.

The New Yorker, June 9
What's it like to ride in the Goodyear blimp? Propellers make it surprisingly noisy, David Samuels reports, despite the dirigible's peaceful, lumbering appearance. What's it like to fly one? Very few people know, since there are fewer blimp pilots than astronauts, but Samuels describes how Goodyear's newest pilot patiently earned his wings. … Susan Orlean reports from the 2003 World Taxidermy Championships and focuses on the arcane details of high-caliber taxidermy—eye selection, tail fluffing, whiskers, poses, and hides. One man entered a panda bear he'd fashioned from the skins of two black bears, one of which he bleached white; a lifelike pair of sparrows won. … A truly funny "Shouts and Murmurs" rolls around about as frequently as the Ides of March. But this week's is worth a read—Frank Gannon imagines Donald Rumsfeld evasively ordering breakfast at Denny's. (Though a curmudgeon might take off points since the secretary of defense has become a bit of a comedic sitting duck.)

Newsweek, Time, and U.S. News & World Report Newsweek, Time, and U.S. News & World Report, June 9
Newsweek's cover asks whether a fetus should have rights; the piece inside cites recent scientific and legal developments as reasons to resurrect the provocative question. Advances in fetal medicine make unborn children operable patients; 28 states now criminalize violence to fetuses at various stages of development, counting them as victims independent of their mothers. Abortion rights activists are concerned that according fetuses legal standing will pave the way for a reversal of Roe v. Wade.

Where, oh where have the WMD gone?
Now that the hunt for Saddam's unconventional weapons is looking more futile every day, all three mags analyze the intelligence the Bush team used to claim that Iraq had WMD in the first place. Time's piece highlights a tendency within the administration—and particularly the Department of Defense—to treat the darkest interpretation of sketchy intelligence data as fact; Newsweek cites allegations that the administration "misused" the limited intel it received from the CIA but also suggests that the agency should have found more conclusive evidence. Newsweek and U.S. News both note that Colin Powell played a key role in weeding out wild claims before his speech to the United Nations.

And where are all the M.D.s?
Time reports on a growing crisis in malpractice insurance; increasingly steep costs have doctors around the country moving to low-premium states, taking up less risky specialties, and even quitting medicine altogether. Some see the astronomical sums juries often award in malpractice cases as the culprit, and advocate tort reform as a solution. Others argue that tort reform won't work, pointing to states with caps on malpractice damages where insurers have kept their premiums high, and raked in the ensuing profits.

While we're at it, where are the fish?
U.S. News reports on our empty oceans, offering news both bad and good. On top of last month's study showing that some fish populations have dropped 90 percent since World War II, a new study argues that fish farming can be just as detrimental. Farmed salmon are fed ocean-caught fish, which perpetuates the devastating industry, and shrimp farmers often decimate mangrove swamps. The magazine heralds as good news a report suggesting that new fishing equipment could reverse these trends but does not address how tough it might be to implement such changes.

Weekly Standard Weekly Standard, June 9
It appears that the coin neocons tossed after Baghdad fell—you know, the one with Syria on one side and Iran on the other—has finally landed. Looks like Iran's next. First Lawrence F. Kaplan argued in last week's New Republic that the United States must keep Tehran from obtaining nuclear weapons, because no one else is likely to. And this week, the Standard leads with a piece on "the Mullahs' Manhattan Project," arguing that if the Bush team has credible intel suggesting that Iran is harboring al-Qaida operatives, "the administration tempts an ugly fate by not responding militarily." (Though the missing-WMD flap suggests that deciding whether intel is credible is an inexact science.) The piece also argues that the United States should punish (commercially) countries that offer Iran nuclear-related technology, and threaten to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities pre-emptively if they don't comply.

Correction, June 9, 2003: In Vanity Fair, the comments about President Bush ["One, he didn't know very much. The other was he had the confidence to ask questions that revealed he didn't know very much."] were attributed to Richard Perle, not Paul Wolfowitz.