« December 31, 2006 - January 6, 2007 | Main | January 14, 2007 - January 20, 2007 » January 7, 2007 - January 13, 2007 ArchivesJanuary 7, 2007SomilibloggingI basically share Brad Plumer's take. Jonathan Edelstein tries to lay out two scenarios -- one optimistic and one pessimistic. His inclination is to be a pessimist. Obviously, though, nobody can know for certain about this kind of thing. Sufficiently wise leadership by various relevant actors could save the situation. Serious Strategic ThinkerWord on the street is that they're putting a Navy guy in charge of CENTCOM because that's supposed to scare Iran. Either that, or it's because we're actually planning to start a war with Iran. In which case I'm scare. But now: Brunch. The Magic 20kDavid Brooks gives us a pretty standard surge narrative: For over three years, President Bush sided with the light-footprint school. He did so for personal reasons, not military ones. Casey and Abizaid are impressive men, and Bush deferred to their judgment. So, given all that, would adding troops now help? "Many in and out of the administration think so, hence all the talk about a surge — putting 20,000 more troops into Baghdad, finally occupying the dangerous neighborhoods, finally starting a jobs program, finally forcing national reconciliation." Brooks actually thinks it's too late for this. Instead, we should combine a surge with "giving up the dream of national reconciliation and acknowledging that Iraq is in the process of dividing itself" and "using adequate force levels (finally!) to help those who are returning to sectarian homelands. It would mean erecting buffers between populations where possible and establishing order in areas that remain mixed." A bunch of questions arise. Is it really plausible that the difference between a stable democratic Iraq and the current mess is whether or not there were 20,000 more troops there in 2006? Note that 20,000 just coincidentally happens to be the number of troops currently logistically available for a surge. The standard "more troops" doctrine has always maintained that the initial occupation force should have included 400,000-500,000 troops, not 20,000 more troops. It's just too trivial a number to make a real difference (except, of course, to the people who will see their deployments extended, to those who die on extended deployments, to their wives, children, husbands, etc.). What's more, almost four years into the war, if Bush is about to implement yet another new strategy and Brooks thinks that strategy is doomed to fail, isn't it time to just give up on the war? To stop offering further helpful suggestions? Why is Brooks so nanchalant about the wastage of lives looming in what he acknowledges is a doomed military escalation. Birthday BashTeresa Wiltz says Agent Zero's birthday party got a boost from the unseasonable weather: The naked painted ladies, part of the evening's entertainment -- and yes, naked naked, save for a thong and a head-to-toe paint job -- don't have to worry about goosebumps ruining the effect of all that . . . paint. Frankly . . . I'm concerned. The extravaganza seems out of step with Arenas's chipped-shoulder ideology. Also, if he realizes that being young and rich could lead to tons of fun parties, where's he going to find the time to take his dogs on the treadmill. It's a worrying situation. The saving grace is that all these fans seem determined to vote Vince Carter into the All-Star Game, giving Gilbert the snub the Wiz need. If we get really, really lucky somehow the coaches will fail to select him, too. Kidd! Billups! Redd! Can't deny those guys. Grill or Broil?I was cooking swordfish with a friend last night, and her fish cookbook (James Peterson's Fish & Shellfish) makes the following observation: Although grilling and broiling are similar techniques—in some parts of the United States the two words are used interchangeably—grilling is used here to mean cooking over, but not in contact with, the heat source. Broiling is cooking under the heat source. Here's the question: Which parts of the United States? Perhaps the southeast which is really the region I don't know anyone from. Initially, we thought we couldn't think of any examples of people using "broil" to mean "grill" or vice versa, but Burger King does refer to its burgers as "flame broiled" when I would say they're grilled. Term LimitsIn answer to Nicholas Beaudrot's question about term-limits for congressional committee chairs I don't think such limits are optimal policy. They are, however, superior to the leading alternative -- strict seniority. The main impact of term limits is to enhance the power of the congressional leadership vis-a-vis committee chairs. That's because all fairly senior members know that there's bound to be a reasonable amount of limits-related churn, making the leaders' views on what your next assignment should be very important. This, in turn, is an important thing to do because the US government simply has too many veto points -- bicameralism, the need for presidential ascent, strong judicial review, and fairly strong federalism make it quite difficult to legislate in the United States. The era of strong committee chairs (and of strong committees) introduced even more veto points into the system, giving special interests extraordinary ability to frustrate popular general-interest legislation. Term limits have led to stronger leadership and weaker committee chairs and that's a good thing, even if ideally you might achieve that same result some other way. January 8, 2007Benchmarks A-Go-GoNYTimes today: "President Bush’s new Iraq policy will establish a series of goals that the Iraqi government will be expected to meet to try to ease sectarian tensions and stabilize the country politically and economically, senior administration officials said Sunday. Among these 'benchmarks' are steps that would draw more Sunnis into the political process, finalize a long-delayed measure on the distribution of oil revenue and ease the government’s policy toward former Baath Party members, the officials said." Benchmarks, whoah! I remember back in December 2005 when benchmarks were surrender and only cheese-eating surrender monkeys thought we needed them. But of course Bush changed his mind on October 25, 2006, telling Byron York, "“The idea is to develop with the Iraqi government a series of benchmarks — oil, federalism, constitutional reform, there’s like 20 different things — and have that developed in a way that they’re comfortable with and we’re comfortable with." That prompted Thomas Ricks' October 26, 2006 takedown "Bush's Proposal for Benchmarks Sounds Familiar" noting that Bush's remarks "left unclear how the benchmarks would be different from previous times when the United States has set out intentions, only to back down." Never fear, though. There's a new strategy now: Benchmarks! NukesVia Robert Farley, an article noting that "The Bush administration is expected to announce next week a major step forward in the building of the country’s first new nuclear warhead in nearly two decades." One of the worst-covered aspects of the Bush foreign policy has been this element of proliferation policy -- namely, that one major source of our difficulty in getting the multilateral non-proliferation process to prevent Iran and North Korea from going nuclear is that we keep breaking the rules. The NPT requires the legitimate nuclear powers to be taking steps to disarm, toward an eventually goal of global nuclear abolition. We're going in the other direction, hoping, in essence, for Iran to be subject to restrictions tighter than what the NPT requires of Iran, while the United States (and Israel, and now India as well) can violate its terms or refuse to join its framework without consequence. Brute force is the only way you could possibly enforce that sort of ruleset. If the actual goal were non-proliferation -- as opposed to asymetrical proliferation -- it would be easy to find alternatives to war. Concern TrollsJon Chait gets bitten then bites back: Some would suggest that the right's newfound obsession with tone is not only hypocritical but an attempt to stifle criticism through arbitrary criteria, much like campus PC-niks. But I would not suggest that because that would be an angry thing to say, and I do not want to do any more damage to civil discourse than I already have. Quite so. Normally, though, it seems to me that bloggers get bitten thusly, from time to time by Chait. It's obviously true that the blogosphere (and especially its progressive arm) involves a degree of vulgarity that wouldn't pass muster on television or in print, but the actual significance of this tends to escape me. Nevertheless, a lot of MSM types seem to enjoy pointing to this arbitrary stylistic difference between bloggers and "real" writers as a means of pre-empting consideration of criticism. Inequality: Is it Real?Alan Reynolds' longer paper making the argument that inequality hasn't increased in the United States is now available. I've had some time to look into this dispute since his initial op-ed came out, and nothing in the lengthier paper addresses any of my considerable concerns about his argument. Reynolds notes that the tax return data on which Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez based their work have some flaws. He does not, however, address what has to be considered the overwhelmingly most important reason for preferring the Piketty-Saez approach to the use of Census Bureau figures -- the Census doesn't count high incomes. It does something known as "top coding" where people are asked to report their household income according to a series of thresholds (less than X, X-Y, Y-Z, Z-A, A-B, over B) and then everyone who reports as being at or higher than the top threshold is counting as if they were at the threshold. The explosion in income for the top one percent that Piketty and Saez report (and bigger explosion for the top 0.1 percent, top 0.01 percent. etc) doesn't show up in the Census data because the Census doesn't measure very high incomes. At times, Reynolds seems to be misinterpreting or misrepresenting his own data. He makes a big deal about how there's a large discontinuity in the tax data around the 1986 Tax Reform and that this can make changes look bigger than they really were. The conclusion he wants to reach, however, is that there's been no trend toward inequality. If you look at his table on page five, however, you can see that both before and after the discontinuity, there's a clear upward trend in the percentage of total income going to the top one percent. I would recommend Pittkey and Saez's rebuttal for more on this. To make a long story short, Reynolds has me very convinced that journalists have frequently oversimplified or slightly misrepresented the inequality situation in the past oftentimes by mentioning the Pittkey/Saez paper. I'm not at all convinced, however, that we haven't seen a large increase in inequality. What's more, it's pretty clear that Reynolds and the venues in which he's publishing (Cato, WSJ editorial page) would oppose policies aimed at curbing the growth in inequality even if they did believe (or, perhaps, acknowledge) it was happening, which offers relatively little reason to regard this as a good-faith effort to measure the level of inequality in America. UPDATE: To get a good look at the slipperiness we're dealing with here, check out the Cato Editor's blurb (emphasis added): There are frequent complaints that U.S. income inequality has increased in recent decades. Estimates of rising inequality that are widely cited in the media are often based on federal income tax return data. Those data appear to show that the share of U.S. income going to the top 1 percent has increased substantially since the 1970s. A new study by Cato scholar Alan Reynolds shows that these claims are wrong in both their premises and their conclusions. In “Has U.S. Income Inequality Really Increased?,” Reynolds concludes, “There is no clear evidence of a significant and sustained increase in the inequality of U.S. incomes, wages, consumption, or wealth since the late 1980s.” Even if you believe that there's no "clear" evidence of a "significant and sustained" increase in inequality since the late 1980s this, rather clearly, wouldn't rebut the assertion that "the share of U.S. income going to the top 1 percent has increased substantially since the 1970s." People who would portray the two claims as contradictory are much more interested in convincing you that there's no inequality problem than they are in finding out what's happening with inequality. Do Not Underestimate Our EnemiesPowerLine does battle with itself, emerges unscathed, frightened, but ultimately stronger for the ordeal. Tidal MarshDCist tries in vain to convince the political journalism world that Washington, DC is not, in fact, located on a swamp. At best, portions of Washington are tidal marsh. At the same time, much of the city is elevated above the river and has never had any even vaguely marshy attributes. What's more, we don't have to put up with straneg odors, only the metaphorical stench of corruption. When Belorussians AttackAll of Europe gets cut off from crude oil supplies, apparently. Somewhat ironically, for the past few years the hot foreign policy concern has been that Russia would use its energy reserves to try and coerce Western European countries into doing something or other. Instead, Western Europe is being cut off as Belarus attempts to coerce Russia. At least maybe that's happening. Alternatively, it might just be an accident. Watch that Passive Voice!John Podhoretz offers the observation that "If Democrats offer a genuinely serious AMT reform that manages to cut taxes for tens of millions of middle-class people, the constituency for vetoing such a reform on the grounds that it would involve a tax-rate increase on those making more than $150,000 a year could fit comfortably into a Tokyo hotel room." Larry Kudlow responds that "Using $150K as a threshold means a school teacher and a cop. Not exactly rich people." J-Pod with a help from some readers notes in response that "Only 5 percent of American households report earnings higher than $157,000 a year" and follows up arguing that precise salaries for cops and teachers is irrelevant, the point is that "Five percent is a lot of households, true — 5 million or so. But to write as though a $150,000 salary in America puts you smack dab in the middle of the middle class, which was Larry's rhetorical purpose, just doesn't jibe with the way lives are lived in America." Kudlow doesn't seem to have an answer to that, but Ramesh Ponnuru manages to weigh-in on Kudlow's side with a further observation: The Clintonites thought that they were raising taxes only on the top 2 percent of Americans and cutting taxes for a lot of people (by expanding the earned income credit). They got branded as tax hikers anyway. (And it would have been a tough vote for them even if they hadn't raised the gas tax as part of the deal.) Advice to always eschew the passive voice can be abused, but Ponnuru should consider the lack of agency in that story. Who branded the Clinton administration as "tax hikers" for their plan to raise taxes on a tiny minority of wealthy Americans while cutting taxes for a larger class of working poor people? Could that have been conservative politicians? And how well would that campaign have worked had the conservative politicians not been assisted by conservative pundits? These things don't just happen. January 9, 2007The Goldberg VariationsTo echo my man Spencer, someone should let Jeffrey Goldberg know that whatever you want to call the fact that the Democratic base thinks fighting AIDS should be a top foreign policy priority means, it can't mean that Democrats are retreating from internationalism. We're looking at an intense concern for the well-being of foreigners who live in states too poor or too chaotic to take care of them properly and, perhaps, concern about the second-order consequences of indifference to their fate. As Henley likes to say here, the specter of "isolationism" in this context is merely "a reluctance to travel a long distance to kill foreigners at great expense." Meanwhile, why would you be listening to Evan Bayh to put your finger on the pulse of things? Bayh says it "would be tragic" if Iraq makes people too hesitant to launch a war against Iran "because Iran is a grave threat. They’re everything we thought Iraq was but wasn’t. They are seeking nuclear weapons, they do support terrorists, they have threatened to destroy Israel, and they’ve threatened us, too." While Bayh's analysis of this would obviously be more credible if he hadn't been wrong about Iraq, his analysis is also simply wrong. What "we thought Iraq was" was a country likely to acquire a nuclear weapon that it was likely to deploy in an unprovoked first strike against the United States (possibly delivered via al-Qaeda) as well as a promising venue for an experiment in democratization-by-occupation. Not only was Iraq none of those things, but Iran is none of those things easier. And so it goes for Goldberg. His basic view seems to be that if you're an "internationalist" you must agree with him that the war in Iraq should be continued indefinitely, perhaps escalated à la Bush/McCain, and then expanded to Iran. But if this is internationalism -- if it means committing an endless series of military blunders -- then who needs it? These policy prescriptions need to be defended on the merits, but their exponents don't quite seem to be able to muster that. Surging BackwardsBrian Ulrich notes that the escalation of American military involvement in Iraq is going to be achieved, in part, by withdrawing forces from Afghanistan which is apparently an "economy of force" operation where the important thing is simply not to allow it to drain too many resources from the government's top priority of wasting resources in Iraq. Sad to say, but I think it's all-but-inevitable at this point that Afghanistan will, due to neglect, be passed the tipping point by the time we get a new president in this country. Klein on WarJoe Klein's 2003 proclamation that war was probably the right decision combined with his unrelenting hostility to doves makes it a bit hard to believe Klein when he says he's been opposed to the Iraq War since 2002. Nevertheless, when Al Gore delivered his "coming out" speech against the war in September '02 Klein seemed to agree with Gore: And he raised a crucial distinction: A war against Iraq and the war on terrorism are not identical. Indeed, an immediate attack (in January, one assumes) on Saddam Hussein—which everyone expects, and we must hope, will result in a rapid success—could complicate the larger campaign. A successful war against Iraq raises at least three nettlesome questions. . . . Now that said, Klein would hardly be unique if he found himself skeptical about the war in summer/fall 2002 only to be convinced by the administration's late 2002 PR push and Colin Powell's infamous 2003 UN speech (there was certainly some point in 2002 when I became very skeptical about the war before becoming re-convinced of its wisdom), but back in September '02 he was pretty anti-war. Enemy of the StateIf I may pile on a bit late, the truly odd thing about Sean Hannity's "Enemy of the State" feature is the specific locution -- state -- which is so deeply at odds with the quasi-populist tradition of the American right. Not enemy of the nation, enemy of the country, enemy of the people, enemy of America, but enemy of the state. The particular blend of authoritarianism and anti-statism that's typical of American conservatism from Tailgunner Joe to Liberality for All is incoherent, but at least it gives crypto-fascists the comfort of staying crypto. Hannity by contrast has simply lost it. On the most obvious level, he seems confused about the fact that he's not an agent of the state and has no business proclaiming who the state's enemies are. Yes, the Pravda-like qualities of Fox News and the ease with which one can go from being an unofficial spokesman for George W. Bush at Fox to being an official spokesman for him in the West Wing may induce confusion, but surely Hannity is aware on some level that he's not a government employee. The episode reaches its bizarre peak when Hannity issues the demagogue's standard disclaimer -- "[Sean] Penn can say whatever he wants" -- such a cliché that Hannity must be honestly unaware of how nonsensical such a disclaimer is when branded with a chiron branding the speaker an enemy of the state for his words. Then Hannity states, oddly, that Penn "speaks only for himself and other bad actors" when expressing the sentiment that Hannity is a "whore" and the Bush administration personnel "bastards." That's crazy. Lots of people, including your humble blogger, think Hannity is a bastard and that Bush's key aides are bastards. The Stalinist aesthetics here, moreover, are absurd. Since when is Penn a bad actor? Since he began expressing political views conservatives don't like? Give me a break. Striking SomaliaA small-scale special forces raid on an al-Qaeda cell in Somalia sounds like a good idea to me. The article, however, is quite unclear as to who the targets of the operation were, whether or not we hit them, etc. Presumably more information will come out later. One thing I wish I understood better was the specops people's love of the AC-130 gunship whose primary attributes (loud, slow, hard to maintain) don't seem all that appealing. Cult of PersonalityDave Weigel sticks up for Joe McCarthy who was "was (in his mind, at least) protecting American tradition, religion, and capitalism against the threat of Communism, which if implemented would abolish all of that. Hannity, like far too many Fox News pundits and radio hosts, are protecting George W. Bush against criticism from, well, everyone, from Pat Buchanan and Justin Raimondo to Cindy Sheehan and Dennis Kucinich." I think there's something to that. Fox News, in particular, seems much more invested in the greater glory of George W. Bush than in anything even resembling a set of ideas. The Pundit Mobius StripI wonder if really elite pundits like Joe Klein ever feel weird about writing that something might look bad even though it makes sense on the merits. After all, Klein has a substantial ability to affect how things are perceived. He notes that "Just because [liberals are] right about Iraq, and about this escalation, it doesn't mean they won't be blamed by the public if the result of an American withdrawal is lethal chaos in the region and $200 per barrel oil" which is true. On the other hand, if American withdraws and Joe Klein and other similarly situated people all focus their energy on placing the blame where it belongs -- on the war's architects -- then the odds are pretty good that liberals won't be blamed. The Note's "Gang of 500" business is a joke, but only sort of. A rather small number of writers, producers, and editors for ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Time, Newsweek, and the Associated Press substantially determine how things will be play in the press. If those people decide that doing something will "look weak" and then cover it as if it does "look weak" it then will, in fact, look weak. If they determine the reverse, the reverse will probably happen. Matt Want iPhone!I worry about my friends sometimes. Why would Catherine want some lame bag for her birthday when Apple just announced the iPhone, a.k.a. the Coolest Thing Ever (sorry, Wii). Young Ezra Klein, meanwhile, is all sad that the iPhone will be exclusively available through Cingular's utterly whack network. But so what? As long as it can sometimes complete a call, I'll be thrilled. I can't sign up soon enough. Apparently, though, they're not actually available until June. Changing TunesMichael Hirsch reports: Most top U.S. military officials—even members of George W. Bush’s administration such as National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley—did not recommend a “surge” or escalation of U.S. troops into Iraq when they were interviewed by the Iraq Study Group last fall, says group member Leon Panetta, a former White House chief of staff under Bill Clinton. Instead of a surge—which the president plans to announce in a speech to the nation tomorrow—these officials recommended at the time that more U.S. advisers be embedded in Iraqi units, Panetta says. That later led the bipartisan commission co-chaired by James Baker and Lee Hamilton to come to the same conclusion, he says. Panetta also says that the officials interviewed knew that one of the Study Group’s central recommendations—that U.S. advisory teams in Iraq be quadrupled—was largely incompatible with a ramp-up of troops. The reason? In order to increase the number of U.S. advisory teams to that degree, American combat brigades must be withdrawn so the officers in those units can be turned into advisers. That is apparently not going to happen now, at least not quickly. Notably, according to the interview even Lieutenant General David Petraeus wasn't on board for a surge when the ISG spoke to him six months ago. All of which reminds me, in essence, that I should link to Michael Hirsch more often. What's more, this Center for American Progress report on congressional options vis-a-vis military deployments is vital stuff that I'll probably write more on tomorrow. When is a Lobbyist-financed Junket not a Junket?When, as Brian Beutler points out, the junket is organized by a 501(c) 3 organization affiliated with a lobbying organization rather than by the lobbyists as such. As Beutler notes, the major beneficiaries of this loophole are the Aspen Institute, which I think legitimately isn't a lobbying group, and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee which, self-describing as "America's pro-Israel Lobby," clearly is a lobbying outfit. My assumption, though, is that AIPAC won't be alone among major lobbying groups for long, and that lots of trade associations are going to be developing a newfound interest in establishing not-for-profit "educational" institutions in the near future. Takeover, Meet BacklashThe Gilbert Arenas backlash begins. UnderestimationI don't really know how to respond to Jason Zengerle trotting out the hearty chestnut that proponents of withdrawal from Iraq such as myself are in danger of "underestimat[ing] the consequences of it." I had a draft of a long post written. I decided to delete it. I don't see a point in getting tied down in side issues about who is and isn't being too cavalier about what. I'll just say that my opposition to prolonging or escalating the American military deployment in Iraq has nothing to do with optimism about the consequences of withdrawal and everything do to with pessimism about the efficacy of either "surging" or staying the course. If Zengerle -- or Joe Klein or whomever -- has an argument in favor of surging that he'd like to present, I'll happily respond to it but it's weird to just debate tone with people who are disinclined to reach a judgment on the substantive issue at hand. January 10, 2007Unofficially SpeakingSuper-loyal readers may have been paying attention the afternoon of December 26 when I noted Major Kelley Thibodeau seemingly going off her game to explain that "Officially, we haven’t put anybody in Somalia. The Americans don’t go forward with the Ethiopians. They are training Ethiopians in Ethiopia." According to Daveed Gartenstein-Ross the truth is that: U.S. ground forces have been active in Somalia from the start, a senior military intelligence officer confirmed. “In fact,” he said, “they were part of the first group in.” It's also looking more like that AC-130 strike was directed against some random anti-Ethiopian fighters rather than "an al-Qaeda cell" as per the initial claim. I'm not sure I grasp why the administration prefers to mislead about this stuff. I don't approve of a policy of having the United States directly insert itself into Ethiopia's issues with the Islamic Courts Union, but this hasn't seemed to me to be an incredibly popular position. I would think Bush would be bragging about his involvement in Ethiopia's swift conquest of Somalia. Perhaps the administration just lies on principle? Surgers Versus The SurgeThe Washington Post reports that America's generals don't think much of Bush's plan "to add up to 20,000 troops to the 132,000 U.S. service members already on the ground." Interestingly, even though they don't put it that way, even th eauthors of the surge plan think this is a bad idea: "Kagan and Keane both emphasized that the surge has to be both substantial (minimum 30,000 troops) and sustained (minimum 18 months)." A Kagan-Keane sized escalation won't be mounted because the Joint Chiefs say it's logistically impossible. But according to Kagan and Keane success requires "a surge of at least 30,000 combat troops lasting 18 months or so. Any other option is likely to fail." This is the sort of thing that can make a man shrill; I'm not sure what other indication you need that this cruel farce is being undertaken in bad faith. Or does Bush have some actual reason to believe that the number of additional troops required for the Iraq mission to succeed just so happens to be the exact number of troops who it's logistically possible to send? That's be a hell of a coincidence, wouldn't it? What Can be Done?I taped a diavlog with Ann Althouse on Monday during which we wound up mostly agreeing that the Democratic congress was unlikely to change very much about Iraq, largely because they can't change very much. As I noted yesterday, however, after we recorded the episode, the Center for American Progress released this briefing paper on congressional powers over military deployments and also organized a conference call on the subject. Armed with said facts and information, I'm now much more inclined to think the Democrats have some options. I continue to worry, however, that if Democrats merely try to halt the surge, the issue would be regarded as non-justiciable. Marty Lederman doubts this, but let me try to sketch out a scenario. The Bush administration requests supplemental funding for Iraq. The congress, as per the Center's suggestion, attached a provision to the appropriation mandating that troop levels not rise above some target figure. Bush signs the appropriation and issues a signing statement saying that his commander in chief power allows him to blah blah blah. Then Bush simply orders some brigades to Iraq such that force levels would pass over the cap and the orders duly pass down the chain of command -- troops begin to move. What happens next? Someone sues? The Supreme Court orders one of the division to return to the USA? Which one? Federal courts normally give wide deference to executive authority on national security measures and I just find it very hard to imagine them getting involved in that kind of a dispute. Just as I say in my column on the personnel shakeup I think that for better or for worse (which is to say for worse) we're more-or-less stuck with Bush and his poor decisionmaking no matter what anyone else says or does. Ah, The GooseMona Charen gives us some of that good, principled, serious conservative national security policy analysis: "The President also plans to ask for a larger army – a little late and so necessary! It will be interesting to see how the Democrats in Congress handle that one. All that talk of supporting the troops. . ." For better or for worse, expanding the end strength of the Army has been a longstanding Democratic Party policy proposal. It was, for example, part of John Kerry platform. Did Charen or anyone else at NRO ever suggest that George W. Bush's longstanding opposition to this idea impugned his patriotism or level of support for our troops? Markets Work!John Hollinger, discussing the Derek Fisher trade goes all pinko: "Often when a trade is made commentators will cop out and say, 'I think this deal will help both teams.' Usually they're full of it, but every so often a deal plays out that really does have strong benefits for both sides." I don't have a quantitative analysis at my fingertips, but I think it's rather frequent for trades to benefit both teams, just as market exchanges often do in the non-sports world. Even in a classic unequal deal like the Iverson trade, it's still the case that Philly's better off with some cap room, two additional draft picks, and a solid shot at tanking the season than they would have been with an unhappy Answer. Philadelphia moved from a bad, hopeless situation to a bad situation where there's some hope and Denver obviously improved its team by acquiring Iverson. FlashbackVia an indignant Martin Peretz, a New York Times article about voice recordings of Saddam Hussein discussing his brutal repression of the Kurds in the late 1980s. Remarks Peretz, "Saddam thrills to say, 'Yes, they will kill thousands.' And, yes, roughly 180,000 Kurds were killed by chemical warfare. So, please, stop this nonsense about how he didn't deserve to die." At the time of the killing, of course, Peretz was using his perch as owner and editor in chief of The New Republic to print articles like the classic April 1987 Laurie Mylroie / Daniel Pipes collaboration "Back Iraq: It's Time for a U.S. Tilt". UPDATE: The theory has been raised in comments that Saddam was a swell dude at the time of publication and only became evil later during 1988's Anfal campaign. I would recommend a read of chapter one and chapter two of the Human Rights Watch Anfal Report which deals with events before the publication of the Mylroie/Pipes article. The worst was yet to come, but things were pretty damn bad already. Certainly nobody genuinely concerned about the well-being of Kurdish people would have been urging a pro-Iraqi tilt. Tomorrow's Talking Points TodayGet your GOP Bush Iraq speech talking points right here. These are from the House Armed Services Committee and these come from the House Republican Conference. Suffice it to say that the general plan seems to be to attack attacks on the idea of escalation without defending escalation as such. Call it the Zengerle/Klein strategy. Now in T-Shirt Form"No Surge" Bush Surge Protector t-shirts now available. Also Swag t-shirts if that's more your thing. The SpeechI've neither seen it nor read it since I was at the Wizards game where DC won despite Agent Zero scoring "only" 20 points on horrible 5-16 shooting. Goes to show crazy things can happen. Thus, the surge is a good idea. Just kidding. It's still crazy. But as I say, haven't read or seen the speech yet (will get on that). For now, let me note the reaction of Michael Gerson, currently pretending to be a foreign policy expert at CFR but in fact Bush's speechwriter 2000-2006: The speech was direct, strong and detailed. But the policy announced tonight matters far more than the words—and that policy represents a major shift. For the first time since the fall of Baghdad, the president has set out a realistic plan to secure the citizens of that city in order to allow political and economic progress to move forward. Gerson goes on, offering the level of BS one would expect from the man who wrote the presidents BS for so many years, but just consider this: Gerson concedes that the administration proceeded for years without a realistic plan! January 11, 2007Speech IIOkay, looked at the text. The main thing people are noting is that there's nothing new here. Like every other "new" strategy for Iraq the president has unveiled (and I think this is the third) it isn't actually new, it's more of the same. That, however, isn't quite true. Bush argues that in the past "there were too many restrictions on the troops we did have." I think this is a quiet reference to complaints that have been bubbling for some time on the time that the rules of engagement on American forces are too restrictive. So, in short, we're going to keep doing what we've been doing for. But we'll have somewhat more troops doing it and they'll be unleashing a somewhat larger level of violence. This last thing, if I'm correct, runs totally against the doctrine in General Petraeus' counterinsurgency manual but it suits General Odierno's tastes, the president's tastes, and the views of conservative pundits, so why not go for it? The other, and even more important, new thing is that Bush seems to be saying here that he intends to start one or two new wars: Succeeding in Iraq also requires defending its territorial integrity and stabilizing the region in the face of extremist challenge. This begins with addressing Iran and Syria. These two regimes are allowing terrorists and insurgents to use their territory to move in and out of Iraq. Iran is providing material support for attacks on American troops. We will disrupt the attacks on our forces. We will interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria. And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq. It's hard to see how will do these things without launching military attacks on Iran or Syria. He goes on to talk about how he "ordered the deployment of an additional carrier strike group to the region" and, of course, he put a Navy guy in charge of CENTCOM. A Most Ingenius Paradox!Tavernise and Burns reporting from Baghdad note that "As President Bush challenges public opinion at home by committing more American troops, he is confronted by a paradox: an Iraqi government that does not really want them." For the purposes of being non-shrill and non-alienating it's generally a good plan to avoid the term, but the key to this paradox is, of course, imperialism. Iraq is, legally, a sovereign nation, but Nouri al-Maliki is, practically speaking, in no position to contradict White House dictates. Privately, however, "aides to Mr. Maliki have been saying for weeks that the government is wary of the proposal." So to sum up, neither the American military nor the American congress nor the American people nor the Iraqi government nor the Iraqi public wants an American military escalation. Naturally, we're getting one. Sounds Good to MeLots of activity on the health care policy front recently. For detailed analysis of the Schwarzennegger plan you should turn to Jonathan Cohn and Ezra Klein. What I'll say is that insofar as universal health care plans that I'm not enthusiastic about go, this is the kind of plan you're looking for -- one proposed by Republicans. I think there's a big difference between the sort of measures it might be reasonable to accept as part of a compromise the other side proposes and the sort of concessions that it makes sense for progressives to concede in advance. For more the kind of thing I'd like to see the good guys fighting for, check out this plan from EPI and public policy golden boy Jacob Hacker: What Health Care for America would do is simple: every legal resident of the United States who lacks access to Medicare or good workplace coverage would be able to buy into the "Health Care for America Plan," a new public insurance pool modeled after Medicare. This new program would team up with Medicare to bargain for lower prices and upgrade the quality of care so that every enrollee would have access to either an affordable Medicare-like plan with free choice of providers or to a selection of comprehensive private plans. This, to me, is good. It compromises away from the ideal end-state, but does so in a smart way. The idea is less to appease the insurance companies (nice to achieve, but probably impossible) than it is to simply appease people who are happy with their current health insurance situation. Now, as it happens, it seems to me that if this plan were implemented and succeeded on any level it would, in fact, speed up the already rapid unraveling of the employer-based system and can expect to be opposed tooth and nail by insurance companies, but from where I sit, that's inevitable -- the forces of progress are fated to an arduous generational struggle against the health care industry and there's not much to be done about it. "Hail Mary"Metaphors are very important, in politics as elsewhere. Michael O'Hare tries a bit to pick apart the metaphor of escalation as a "hail mary" pass, but I think he misses the central point. In a football game, the point of a hail mary play is that it's a desperate gamble embarked upon by a team that has nothing to lose. It's a risky, low percentage play and running it tends to increase your chances of losing the football game. But when the only alternative is certain defeat, it looks more appealing. This, however, is because all losses are equal in football. Wars peripheral to the national interest aren't like that. Leaving Iraq in a shambles will have bad results, possibly even very bad results, but it's not as if we need to attempt one last desperate gamble or else the nation faces certain destruction. The point of view from which the hail mary metaphor makes the most sense is if your primary concern is not the interests of the United States of America but the reputation of George W. Bush and other leading architects of war. From that point of view, the difference between initiating and then losing a war at great cost and initiating and then losing a war at even greater cost really is minimal, much like in a football game. From Bush's point of view, conceding that his Iraq policy has failed is so catastrophic to his ego and reputation that it makes perfect sense to ask other people to bear any burden and pay any price for even the smallest sliver of a hope of even deferring the problem successfully. For the country, though, it doesn't make sense at all. This is What We've Waited ForI suppose the main problem with labeling the troop increase an "escalation" is that it's hard to know what to call the continuation of the other escalation, as our deployment of naval assets (and officers) and verbal threats to Iran is backed up by attacking an Iranian consulate in Kurdistan and holding six diplomatic personnel hostage. Hat tips to Jonah G. and Ackerman. There are more legal wrinkles here than I would have thought, but on the foreign policy level the implications seem clear. Cutting OffRuss Feingold says "Some will claim that cutting off funding for the war would endanger our brave troops on the ground. Not true. The safety of our service men and women in Iraq is paramount, and we can and should end funding for the war without putting our troops in further danger." I tend to agree. Let me propose, however, a terminological switch. Talk of "cutting off funding" for the war implies that the troops will be sitting there in Iraq and then one day -- bam -- run out of money. The funding issue, however, is a red herring to anyone not steeped in the arcana of the legislative process. Before the 2006 midterms, most Democrats were happy to call for a "phased redeployment" of American troops out of Iraq. That language was politically viable and describes sensible policy. The right thing to do after the election is for congress to mandate a phased redeployment of American troops out of Iraq. Yes, it's true, that the means by which such a mandate would be achieved are financial, but the money isn't the crux of the matter. The proposal on the table is to redeploy our forces. It was the proposal before the election and with the election won, Democrats should be writing legislation to mandate it. Bush will presumably veto such legislation, but that's the best the congress can do and the congress should do its best. But don't talk about the money, talk about the troops. The Case Against Steve BlakeChris Webber wants to go to Miami, Detroit, San Antonio, Dallas, or the LA Lakers. I was going to say that though it's not going to happen, I'd sort of like to see a Webber return to Washington, where we could use some backup power forward action. But of course DC plays too fast a pace for Webber. Then again, so do the Lakers. He should consider adding slow, slow Houston to his list of possible destinations. Meanwhile, in other trade news Earl Boykins is heading to MIlwaukee in exchange for Steve Blake. Blake was on the Wizards for my first two season in town, and I consider him a contender for worst player in the league. His 3.6 points on 43.5 TS% (that's .349 from the field, .279 behind the arc, .550 from the stripe) in 17.7 minutes per game this season fail to impress but so do his substandard defense and rebounding. I date the emergence of the Wizards as an NBA team worth following to the departure of Blake and Juan Dixon from the squad. Both are bad players but, of course, the Wizards (like many teams) have any number of fairly bad players on the roster. The trouble is that both excelled at Maryland, were popular with the local fans (enthusiastic cheers every time they came in even though they sucked), and had clearly been acquired for this reason. Acquiring players because of real or imagined fan appeal -- especially when said appeal is based on the player's former status as an amateur -- is the management strategy of the damned (see also Charlotte Bobcats) on a par with gimmicks like adding Michael Jordan to your front office (see also, um, the Charlotte Bobcats) and the best thing a franchise can do is firmly wash its hands of such business. To wax non-quantitatively for the moment, it sends a terrible message to fans and players alike -- we all recognize a certain tension between business objectives and sports objectives, but any decent ownership and management group should, at a minimum, be putting winning games firmly at the center of its business strategy. Put together a good team, and the fans will follow. This, meanwhile, is crying out for comment. It almost seems like trolling. Republicans in Disarray!All 233 Democrats joined by 82 Republicans voted yesterday to raise the minimum wage. Of course, the 2006 swing in congress was substantial, but it wasn't nearly that big. If 82 Republicans are prepared to raise the minimum wage, why didn't it go up last congress? And what happened to the vaunted GOP discipline? Why are the Democrats so orderly all of a sudden. In short, nothing succeeds like success. The major perk of being in the majority is that in addition to having more votes than the other guy (the numerical difference between the majority and minority parties is not especially large, nor was it in the previous two or three congresses), you get to decide what gets voted on. A GOP majority blocks minimum wage increases but not bringing them to the floor for a vote. Or, even better, by brining them to the floor but only paired with a bunch of special interest giveaways and giant tax cuts. That way, Republicans who want to be on record as "for" a minimum wage get to vote for one, while a coalition of Democrats and other Republicans vote the bill down. With the Democrats in charge, though, things are different -- you get a vote on a clean bill. What's more, since the bill is going to pass one way or another, every even vaguely Republican member may as well vote for it. Consequently, the GOP caucus is suddenly thrown into chaos. The New Liberalism: ConservatismThe same Cohen column that inveighed against Bush-bashers contained an endorsement of what he called "an expression of moderate sanity," a document titled "American Liberalism and the Euston Manifesto," which, he explained, "precisely because of its sanity...has received too little attention." Cohen celebrates this manifesto--which, naturally, embraces the incompetence dodge--as an alternative to "sterile screaming in the wilderness, tired of the comfortably ensconced 'hindsighters' poring over every American error in Iraq, tired of facile anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism masquerading as anti-Zionism." I think three is an undercount, but the point stands. It's very strange for a manifesto calling for a new American liberalism to include so many people whose primary emotional focus is hatred of liberals. January 12, 2007Going ExtremeDavid Shorr reminds us that there's more to be said about Jeffrey Goldberg's New Yorker article than I'd gotten to previously. For example, Goldberg notes that "Polls also show that a sizable minority of Democrats now feel that the war in Afghanistan was a mistake--thirty five per cent." Peter Beinart cites a similar poll to likewise make the point that liberals have become crazed peaceniks. Goldberg would, however, do well to provide some analysis of the substantive question. From where I sit, this comes down to a slightly semantic issue. If by "the war in Afghanistan" we mean something like the general idea of a war aimed at deposing the Taliban leadership and killing or capturing key al-Qaeda figures then, no, the war wasn't a mistake. If, however, by "the war in Afghanistan" we mean the actually existing war in Afghanistan then it clearly does look like a mistake. After all, to a remarkable degree the administration managed not to accomplish its objectives. Most al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders survived, they continue to enjoy safe haven in portions of Afghanistan and Pakistan (albeit smaller portions than they once did), and for a couple of years now the Taliban has been successfully reasserting itself in its core areas while the Karzai government is failing to stabilize or control any substantial portion of the country. Now, if a pollster ever calls me and asks "was the war in Afghanistan a mistake" I'll say "no" because I understand how these things are interpreted. But I think there's a clear sense in which it was a mistake. Certainly, mistakes were made. I think this Project on Defense Alternatives report on Operation Enduring Freedom ultimately goes too far in terms of pure Monday morning quarterbacking but it certainly raises a lot of good issues and I don't see how anyone could deny that very serious mistakes have been made in Afghanistan that have substantially undermined the rationale for the war. The Question of the DayJim Webb is really one of the most exciting things to happen to our politics recently; the personification of potentially worthy electoral trends who's managed to pull it off not by embracing militarism but by showi |