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An Insult
Hillary Clinton has a top-notch web operation, and here's what they've sent out in defense of the proposition that her support for the war was not, in fact, support for the war:
Hillary was referring to this statement from her October 10, 2002 speech, which is fairly straight forward:
My vote is not, however, a vote for any new doctrine of pre-emption, or for uni-lateralism, or for the arrogance of American power or purpose -- all of which carry grave dangers for our nation, for the rule of international law and for the peace and security of people throughout the world.
Yglesias says the only critical comment he could find that was critical of the rush to war was a press release about homeland security funding. During that time, as in her October 2002 speech, she advocated for an increased emphasis on inspections and a peaceful solution. Here are some citations:
JANUARY 2003: HILLARY SENDS LETTER TO POWELL, URGES HIM TO CONTINUE ROBUST INSPECTIONS: "If our words about supporting UN inspectors have any meaning and if we truly want the United Nations to be effective, we must act to support the UN arms inspectors ...Additionally if we are truly serious about supporting the UN inspections we should increase our intelligence support to the inspectors." [Letter to Colin Powell, 1/31/03]
MARCH 2003: HILLARY URGES 'PEACEFUL SOLUTION,' PUSHES BUSH TO 'ENLIST MORE SUPPORT' FROM ALLIES: "'It is preferable that we do this in a peaceful manner through coercive inspection'...[T]he senator said the Bush administration still had work to do at convincing the American public and the rest of the world that Hussein presented a real threat that might require military action. 'The administration should continue to try to enlist more support,' she added." [AP, 3/3/03]
Honestly, I think this is a little bit childish and something of an insult to the intelligence of liberals everywhere. I'm opening to forgiving candidates who supported the war. Lots of people supported the war. I supported the war. And Hillary Clinton supported the war. When the war began, Clinton made a statement about it. I quoted that statement yesterday and you can read it here. It was a statement of support for the war.
Everybody knows this and it's silly to pretend otherwise. The idea that we're now supposed to spend the time between today and Iowa having a debate about whether or not Clinton backed a pre-emptive military attack on Iraq is a little bit insane. The war occurred, it occurred with her support, and it was a pre-emptive war. I don't think this is a difficult question.
Questions
Is there some reason you can't donat eto political candidates (Obama, Clinton) using PayPal? Also, when did the max contribution go from $2,000 to $2,300? Did McCain-Feingold index the cap to inflation? And why is the Clinton campaign asking for contributions of up to $4,600? I understand you can de facto double the limit by donating once for the primary and once for the general election, but this seems different.
At CFR; December 15, 2003
Excerpts from a fairly long and detailed speech:
Turning to Iraq, yesterday was a good day. I was thrilled that Saddam Hussein had finally been captured. Like many of you, I was glued to the television and the radio as I went about my daily business. We owe a great debt of gratitude to our troops, to the president, to our intelligence services, to all who had a hand in apprehending Saddam. Now he will be brought to justice, and we hope that the prospects for peace and stability in Iraq will improve.
I was especially pleased that the capture was led by the 4th Infantry Division, whom I visited in Kirkuk and had a a briefing from the commander, General Odierno, and during that briefing was given some insights into the efforts to apprehend Saddam. And it's very good news indeed that they have come to fruition.
This General Odierno, let's recall. Moving onwards:
This moment, however, cannot be just about congratulating ourselves and the Iraqi people for this capture. It should be a moment where we step back and consider how now to go forward. What is it we can do today, based on the circumstances of yesterday, that will strengthen our hand and move the Iraqis closer to a time when they can have self-government and create a stable, free, democratic Iraq?
I was one who supported giving President Bush the authority, if necessary, to use force against Saddam Hussein. I believe that that was the right vote. I have had many disputes and disagreements with the administration over how that authority has been used, but I stand by the vote to provide the authority because I think it was a necessary step in order to maximize the outcome that did occur in the Security Council with the unanimous vote to send in inspectors. And I also knew that our military forces would be successful. But what we did not appreciate fully and what the administration was unprepared for was what would happen the day after.
It has been a continuing theme of my criticism and others that we would be further along, we would have more legitimacy, we would diminish the opposition and resentment that is fueling whatever remains of the insurgency if we had been willing to move to internationalize our presence and further action in Iraq. I believe that today. And in fact, I think that we now have a new opportunity for the administration to do just that.
I suppose you could subject this to some tortured readings but, again, the position seems fairly clear. Clinton voted to give Bush the authority to launch a war, knowing full well what she was doing. She has various disagreements with Bush's conduct of the war, but not with the basic strategic logic underpinning it. In December 2003, she continues to support the war and to support the president's maximalist war aims of "a stable, free, democratic Iraq."
Ice Dancers Needed
I'm not entirely sure whether or not I ever attended a Rangers game when I was a kid. If I did, though, I don't remember it. Last night, however, courtesy of a friend I was able to watch the Caps game from the Steptoe & Johnson luxury suite (because nothing says hockey like a white-shoe law firm ... even funnier, they share the suite with a French company) and one can't help ask oneself, "where are the cheerleaders?" My buddy was trying to tell me it would be too hard to recruit people with the requisite skating skills, but I don't find that very convincing, the world must be awash in young women who used to figure skate and then had to abandon their olympic dreams. I'd certainly believe that per-unit labor costs for ice cheerleaders might be higher than for, say, the Wizards Dance Team but you could address that by simply fielding a smaller squad, there's no need to go down to zero.
Phone Haters
I wonder sometimes if there's a common psychological profile to blogging's early adopters. One interesting data point is that I, like Amanda and Atrios absolutely despise talking on the phone. This is why even though I like writing and I like politics, I could never in a million years be a "real" political journalist. I can get through a conversation with, say, my dad but as a general matter I just absolutely hate to talk on the phone and will always use email, IM, or SMS if it's even vaguely plausible as a substitute.
Worst Speech Ever
This is really shocking:
In a pattern that would become familiar, however, a chill quickly followed the warming in relations. Barely a week after the Tokyo meeting, Iran was included with Iraq and North Korea in the "Axis of Evil." Michael Gerson, now a NEWSWEEK contributor, headed the White House speechwriting shop at the time. He says Iran and North Korea were inserted into Bush's controversial State of the Union address in order to avoid focusing solely on Iraq. At the time, Bush was already making plans to topple Saddam Hussein, but he wasn't ready to say so. Gerson says it was Condoleezza Rice, then national-security adviser, who told him which two countries to include along with Iraq. But the phrase also appealed to a president who felt himself thrust into a grand struggle. Senior aides say it reminded him of Ronald Reagan's ringing denunciations of the "evil empire."
Once again, Iran's reformists were knocked back on their heels. "Those who were in favor of a rapprochement with the United States were marginalized," says Adeli. "The speech somehow exonerated those who had always doubted America's intentions."
In short, Michael Gerson and Condoleezza Rice, purely in order to make a speech that (a) sounded good, and (b) pretended not to be exclusively about Iraq, set the United States on a collision course with Iran. That's really got to be a historic speechwriting blunder.
Naturally enough, Gerson's paid a high price for his role in instigating this destructive conflict. After continuing to serve for years in the White House he's been forced to accept a humiliating position as a Council on Foreign Relations fellow and a columnist for some obscure magazine called Newsweek.
Howard on Obama
As you've all no doubt heard, John Howard made the odd decision to lash out and attack Barack Obama today. One thing I haven't seen mentioned on American blogs is that I know Howard's Australian critics think he's a racist. As in John Quiggin's observation that "Whenever it has appeared possible to ride a wave of prejudice in Australia, Howard has sought to do so, sometimes successfully and sometimes not." So his brief intervention into US politics may just be part of that pattern and have nothing in particular to do with Obama, Iraq, our election, etc.
Mistakes Were Made
In today's New York Times:
Mark Penn, Mrs. Clinton’s chief strategist, said in an interview: “It’s important for all Democrats to keep the word ‘mistake’ firmly on the Republicans and on President Bush. Senator Clinton has been very clear that we, as a party, should keep the focus on Bush — these were his mistakes. Ultimately that’s very important, not just for her, but for the entire Democratic party.”
Ah, Mark Penn; innerant font of polling wisdom for DLC and HRC alike. His October 5, 2004 op-ed is always worth revisiting:
But after Bush changed his campaign tactics to tack back toward the center, Kerry believed his drop in the polls could be fixed by adding more "edge" to his message. He moved to make his opposition to Bush's conduct of the war in Iraq the centerpiece of his campaign message, a message with tremendous appeal to the Democratic base but whose appeal to swing voters is uncertain. Now there is a renewed opportunity to win back this group of voters who report that they have already definitely decided their vote, but who have repeatedly changed their minds this year. . . .
We might all learn a lesson from Bill Clinton in 1992. He won by making the Persian Gulf War irrelevant to the election. He focused on swing voters, with plans for welfare reform and middle-class tax cuts, and he drove the economy, not the war, as the central defining issue. In 1996 he focused on a plan to balance the budget and cruised to a landslide victory.
The difference between 1992 and 2004 (or 2008 for that matter) is, obviously, that the war was over by 1992, which made it much easier to render irrelevant. The idea that swing voters don't care about the deployment of over 100,000 American soldiers and Marines into a war zone, meanwhile, strikes me as slightly insane. The idea of Mark Penn serving as chief strategist for a presidential nominee (or, worse, a president) should send shivers down the spine of liberals everywhere.
Mark Penn Redux
To be clear, the reason I say liberals should fear Mark Penn actually has little-to-nothing to do with Iraq. My strong guess is that Penn and I disagree about foreign policy, but that would just be inference based on the people and organizations he's associated with; he doesn't have a strong profile on the topic and I don't really know what it thinks. The trouble with Penn is his monomaniacal insistence that what the Democratic Party needs to do is move to the right on economic issues in hopes of becoming more appealing to prosperous white men.
I'm not sure if Jon Chait's 2002 Penn takedown is available to non-subscribers (maybe this works) but if so it should be read. Alternatively, this (PDF) from Ruy Teixeira makes many of the same points albeit at greater length. The "populism" debate inside the Democratic Party isn't really my issue and I have mixed feelings about some aspects of it, but I think it's fairly clear to everyone that relatively downscale white voters -- especially, but not exclusively, women -- who tend to have progressive views on many topics are where the electoral action is. I bet these guys like Penn's ideas, though.
Any Port in a Storm
Deranged ersatz theologean Michael Novak has a truly inspired argument about why the US shouldn't take the lead in tackling global warming even though we're the ones using the lion's share of the energy:
A reader wrote to Jonah the other day that Americans constitute 5 % of the world's population but use 25% of the world's energy. Another way to look at it is to ask, What is energy? It used to be the backs of humans and animals. Then it was water wheels and wind mills. Surely, America today does not use a large proportion of the world's horse power, oxen power, and other old-fashioned sources of energy. Today, when we say "energy," we usually mean gasoline for the combustion engine, nuclear power, electricity, the use of natural gas, modern sources like that. The United States pioneered in virtually every source of what in the modern world counts as energy. You might say we invented nearly 100 % of it, and have already shared about 75% of it with others. Not as good as we might yet do (as China and India become the world's largest users of modern energy), but pretty darn good, don't you think?
Seriously. People publish articles this guy writes. The 25 percent calculation is off-base because it doesn't count oxen?
It's interesting how money impacts political ideas. One doubts that any of these various rightwingers were actually humming along and then got bribed by energy companies to come up with the outlandish conservative arguments you here on this score. Rather, the money's just sort of out there ready to flow to individuals who make outlandish arguments and to publications and institutions that associate themselves with such people and such arguments. Under the circumstances, the human mind proves remarkably supple and creative. Next thing you know, the Bangladeshis are all in our debt for generously allowing them to burn gasoline so who cares if they wind up drowning when the glaciers melt.
Lincoln's Birthday Blogging
Lots of people have noted Bill Kristol's efforts to argue that 1858-vintage Barack Obama would have been a slavery supporter. The really noteworthy thing here, however, isn't Kristol's novel take on race relations, but his continuing effort to paint Abraham Lincoln as some kind of Kristol-style war enthusiast. Clearly, Lincoln was no pacifist, but nothing could be further from the truth. He was a staunch opponent of the Mexican War which he saw as driven by the political power of slaveholders and a desire to expand the same, rather than by the moral principles of international relations or a sound assessment of the national interest. Nor was he eager to embrace a military conflict with the South. He believed that slavery was a great evil, but also saw that civil war would be incredibly destructive, a great evil of its own. Lincoln opposed Stephen Douglas' compromise-at-any-cost mentality that would merely serve to further entrench slavery. His hope, however, was to preserve the union peacefully and end slavery through the methods of the political process.
It's harder to imagine anything more un-Kristolian than Lincoln's reflections on all this in the second inaugural address:
Continue reading "Lincoln's Birthday Blogging" »
Why Bomb Iran?
Josh Marshall is, if anything, being significantly too generous to the attack Iran brigades in his answer to his third question "Would successful aggressive action against Iran materially improve our current situation in Iraq?" It's obvious, I think, that aggressive action against Iran would make our situation in Iraq much, much worse. We can debate how much of what we see in Iraq today Iran is responsible for; I think it's clear the administration is seriously exaggerating this, but it sort of doesn't matter. What can't be debated is that much more could be done. Shiite groups could be spending more time killing American troops. What's more, Iran could be giving such groups much better weapons than they have today. As I've pointed out before, just look at Hezbollah, whose weaponry is vastly more sophisticated than anything we've seen in Iraq. If we start bombing Iran, Iran has at its disposal cheap, effective means of retaliating against US forces in Iraq.
Bombing Iran in response to alleged Iranian meddling in Iraq won't help anything in Iraq in part, I think, because it isn't designed to. Rather, the Bush administration thinks it can't sell a second counterproliferation war against a Gulf country beginning with "Ira" because it's just too absurd. Hence, it would be nice to gin up a casus belli with Iran that's only tangentially related to the nuclear program. Not that bombing will help us with that problem either, but it's at least widely believed that it will. I don't think even the Bush administration is dumb enough to think that attacking Iran will help stabilize things in Iraq; the Iran-Iraq nexus is just a red herring designed to make it politically difficult to oppose what they're doing.
"Clinton Rules"
It's quite true as GFR and Greg Sargent point out that Hillary Clinton, like her husband, seems to get uniquely bad treatment at the hands of the MSM. Since a big part of what bloggers do is attack the press for being unfair to Democrats, one assumes this means we'll see many newspapers articles being unfair to Clinton and many blog posts complaining about them.
Still, I think it's important for liberals not to let Clinton's good fortune in her enemies distract people from basic realities. The precise nuances of what everyone's said about Iran so far aside, it's pretty clear that Edwards and Clinton have similar records as officeholders, that Obama has a somewhat more liberal record than those two, and that Edwards has positioned himself to the left of Obama and Clinton in terms of what he's laid out so far in the campaign. Precisely how one should evaluate Edwards versus Obama in that context isn't obvious to me. And, again, it doesn't just follow from the fact that Clinton is clearly the least liberal of the three that she shouldn't be the Democratic nominee. Perhaps you, like Clinton, have views that aren't especially liberal. Alternatively, perhaps you think Clinton's less-liberal positioning is a price that needs to be paid for electoral purposes. I can think of any number of things one might say about this and, obviously, there's more to life than just ideology -- competence, intelligence, judgment, character, etc. all matter.
But insofar as we're talking about ideology, we should be clear. Clinton, like her husband, is both hated by the right and treated unfairly by the press and a not very liberal politician, coming from the party's more centrist wing and flanked by advisors from the same. In a general election, she'd clearly be the progressive choice against Giuliani, McCain, Romney, etc. but is clearly the less progressive choice vis-a-vis Edwards and Obama. I don't think the fact that she's mistreated by the press should distract people from this basic point. What's more, garnering bad press is a bug, not a feature, when you're looking for a candidate. Which is all, I suppose, by way of introducing my Guardian piece about Clinton's Iraq War revisionism.
Groundhog Day
I caught some of To The Point on NPR yesterday (I believe you can get a podcast of the episode here) in particular, the segment where they were talking about the Bush administration's allegations abotu Iranian weapons. It's really one of the best shows on the radio, so it was no surprise to see that this was a very informative rundown spelling out what, exactly, was being alleged, which elements there was circumstantial evidence for, which elements the evidence was more direct for, what we know and don't know about the organization of the Iranian government, etc.
Still, though, there was a disturbing atmosphere of propaganda in the air. Everything was introduced as "the military claims" or "military intelligence claims," never "the Bush administration claims" even though you'd have to be pretty foolish not to see this as an administration initiative. The wider context of Iran policy debates was missing in action. Instead, there were just some claims; claims coming from the military; claims that might be wrong in some respect, but were clearly issued in good faith. It's a pretty bad scene. You might think that having gone through this exact same scenario a few years ago something would have been learned. Instead what mostly seems to have been learned is that the administration can't afford to have its own claims attributed to itself and so wants to have them attributed to military intelligence.
Insurgency in Somalia
Mortar rounds and rockets slammed into Somalia’s capital early Monday in a series of attacks that killed a six-year-old boy and his father as they slept and wounded at least seven people, witnesses said.
Gee, who could have predicted that. The strategic folly is that now that the US and Ethiopia have intervened so heavily against the Somali Islamists, it probably will become the case that a formerly local conflict takes on more of the aspects of a bin Laden-style global jihad; at least some of the young men who cut their teeth in the Somali insurgency will probably end up moving on elsewhere. Already, destabilization is prompting large, deadly refugee flows. The United States, in our way, has come up with the useful solution that the Transitional Federal Institutions should talk to Sheikh Sharif Ahmed who's believed to be the leader of the more moderate faction of the Islamic Courts Union. Perhaps bringing him on board could generate national reconciliation?
But the TFI Prime Minister wants none of it, counting on the fact that, at the end of the day, the U.S. is going to keep backing him as long as he can describe his adversaries as linked to al-Qaeda.
Dual Loyalty
Oh, man. As part of The New Republic continuing campaign to demonstrate that there's no Israel Lobby and if there is it would never try to silence anyone, today's website features a second rebuttal to John Judis's article defending Israel critics against charges of anti-semitism:
It is ironic that Judis, a senior editor at The New Republic, lends credibility to accusations of dual loyalty. If this is the case, then TNR is certainly guilty, for, more than any other journal of opinion, it has made the case that support for Israel should be a key component of U.S. foreign policy. Judis lends credence to a double standard. When some Jewish intellectuals in the 1980s made the case in favor of NATO's hard line in Europe in the face of the Soviet Union's "peace offensive," no one accused them of having dual loyalty to the NATO countries of Western Europe, even though they were supporting policies of extended nuclear deterrence. Then, as now, they argued that it was in the vital interests of the United States to take these measures.
To me, the striking thing is how infrequent it is to actually see non-critics of America's Israel policy make the argument that current policy serves the vital interests of the United States (TNR's editorial line, for example, from which some authors obviously deviate, has tended to deny that American policy should be governed by considerations of the national interests; the recent TNR article on the Iranian nuclear program didn't so much as mention American interests). I would genuinely be interested to read an article making the case that it serves American interests to make Israel the largest recipient of American foreign aid dollars. Were someone to put together a strong argument to that effect, then others could read it and put together counterarguments. I think we could, then, have a reasonably civil disagreement about a fairly standard political question, "should our policies be like this or would it be better to change them like this?" instead of a vicious argument about whether Israel is "bad" or its critics are anti-semites.
After all, it's not as if the US's failure to appropriate $3 billion in annual aid to Costa Rica is driven by a sense that Costa Rica is a uniquely horrible country. In fact, it's a rather nice country. We're just not that generous with our foreign aid. But Israel's a weird target for all that aid. Why not a poorer country like Bangladesh? Or one more objectively threatened like Taiwan? At the end of the day, I don't think a failure to think these things through actually constitutes "dual loyalties," it just constitutes a failure to think these things through. A rigorous assessment of national interests might prompt a clash of sentiments or loyalties, so people simply don't do it; and the core element of America's policy vis-à-vis Israel -- heavy financial support whose rationale is unclear -- just goes undiscussed.
Who's Running This Campaign?
So . . . Amanda Marcotte's resigned from the Edwards campaign after all, apparently once a fairly tame remark in her review of Children of Men prompted another Donohue outburst. Marcotte's explanation -- roughly that she didn't want to feel constrained in what she could write, and also that she didn't want to drag the Edwards campaign down -- makes perfect sense. Indeed, that's why think I wouldn't take a job even with a candidate I was super-enthusiastic about -- I like to speak (and blog) my mind in a way that's not conducive to being on the staff of a presidential campaign.
But that's where things get puzzling to me. How is it that the Edwards campaign didn't manage to say in advance that people were going to have to stop blogging if they want to work on the campaign? Similarly, based on their own reaction to the controversy it appears that nobody at the campaign decided to vet Marcotte before they hired her? Presumably, these were both decisions handled at a fairly low level (I doubt Edwards himself was huddled in a room with three top advisors discussing blog hiring policy for hours until after controversies started breaking out) but it all seems a little amateurish. Whoever came up with the health care plan seems really smart, maybe they should ask his or her advice on more things.
North Korea Deal
Good news, I would say. Of course the fly in the ointment is that we could have gotten a better version of this deal years and years ago had Bush and Cheney not stomped on it. The tragedy of it is that not only could we have gotten this deal years ago, but the personnel who were ready to get it have been there inside the administration all along, being overruled by the blinkered ideogues they work for.
I was joking earlier today that we should just send Christopher Hill to Teheran to try and work something out. It turns out, though, that Hill's opposite number as Assistant Secretary for Near East Affairs David Welch is another career foreign servive officer with a long record. Odds are he could do a fine job, too, were it not for the fact that, like the rest of the Cossacks, he works for a crazy Czar.
Assassination Vacation
One thing to consider about the Glenn Reynolds / Hugh Hewitt assassination strategy for coping with the Iranian nuclear program ("we should be responding quietly, killing radical mullahs and Iranian atomic scientists") beyond the obvious is how we once again see conservatives (or in Reynolds' case "libertarians") displaying an almost childlike faith in the competence, honesty, and efficacy of the federal bureacracy insofar as that bureacracy is tasked with dishing out lethal force that they would never in a million years ascribe to, say, the people in charge of the Endangered Species Act.
I mean, how is this going to work? We're talking, presumably, about the clandestine branches of the same intelligence agencies who can't decide what the state of the Iranian nuclear program is, don't know where Iran's nuclear facilities are, and are unsure who, if anyone, in the Iranian government is responsible for Iranian weapons winding up in Iraq. Nevertheless, Reynolds believes they have an off-the-shelf plan for placing assasins in close proximity to key Iranian nuclear scientists. But not only for doing this, but for doing it quietly! American agents are infiltrating Iran killing Iranian scientists and religious leaders and none of them get caught. How? Are there really dozens of Farsi-speaking ninjas working for the CIA? I was going to compare this to a fun-but-stupid movie like The Bourne Identity but the point of that movie (and its sequal) is actually that if you somehow did build a hyper-competent utterly secret government agency it would likely become a cesspool of corruption and abuses of power.
Clinton and Iraq; Again
Okay. In October of 2003 I went to the New American Strategies for Peace and Security Conference. A widish range of views was represented there, but it was a basically anti-war group." Great damage was done to America's own security and to the fabric of multilateral cooperation by the manner in which the United States pursued virtually unilateral war in Iraq," said the mission statement, "While the immediate war aim of overthrowing Saddam Hussein succeeded, the collateral damage was immense, and it continues." In short, a speech before this group would have been a good time for a US Senator who'd seemingly voted in favor of the war a year ealier to clarify that she thought invading Iraq had been a mistake.
If you read the speech Senator Hillary Clinton actually gave, I think you'll see that's not what happened. She criticized many aspects of the Bush administration's conduct of the war, voiced support for the basic mission ("we seek to build democratic institutions in Iraq"), and certainly didn't say anything that would tend to contradict one's basic intuition that the pro-war vote was a pro-war vote. And on some level, I think she deserves credit for all that. It's easy to go into a room and tell people what they want to hear, but she didn't.
The Battle of the Big Men
I forgot to link to any articles about it, but it's pretty hilarious that Etan Thomas and Brendan Haywood keep getting into fights. One always wishes that somehow Thomas' mind, heart, or spirit could be transplanted into Brendan Haywood's body. He looks like a very good center, but sure doesn't play like it. I dunno how many times the fans have been reduced to incoherent rage watching him blow a layup when he could have dunked it.
No New Thing...
Is this "new Baghdad crackdown" part of the new Baghdad security initiative, or is it an even newer plan that supersedes the old new plan Bush and Maliki announced just after the New Year?
Question of the Day
Which of these lovely ladies wins the Ultimate Princess Showdown and takes the title of world's hottest princess?
My first instinct was to go with Sleeping Beauty, since it's right there in the name -- she's hot. But then, of course, there's Belle. And for that matter, Snow White is "the fairest of them all." I'm afraid that Princess Jasmine, Cinderella, and Ariel are out of luck.
Time for a Change
I think the only time I've ever mentioned Roger Cohen on this site was to complain about something, but today's piece about why it's time for "an end to uncritical American support of Israel, a real push to persuade Olmert to engage with Abbas, enough boldness to reach beyond the details to a vision of what is needed to bring a Palestinian state into being." A minor emendation would be that Cohen says "the Democrats who now control Capitol Hill have shown little inclination to debate a related subject, Israel and Palestine, where a shift in American policy at a time of fluidity could make an important difference." The truth is in some ways better and in other ways worse. The House Committee on Foreign Affairs' Middle East Subcommittee is having a hearing today on the "Next Steps in Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process." The trouble is that the subcommittee's arranged for the roster of witnesses to be former AIPACer Martin Indyk, David Makovsky from WINEP, and Daniel Pipes.
On the other hand, as Daniel Levy points out there are some positive developments as well that people could lend their support to:
Rep. Susan Davis (D-CA) has introduced House Resolution 143 urging the President to appoint a Special Envoy for Middle East Peace. H. Res. 143 has already attracted a number of co-sponsors, including Jewish members and Congress’ only Muslim member. (Co-sponsors include Blumenauer (D-OR), Ellison (D-MN), Klein (D-FL), McCollum (D-MN), Schiff (D-CA)). H. Res. 143 includes a lot of sensible language such as “it is directly in the national interest of the US to reengage both sides…a lasting peace…will reduce tension in the region…help repair America’s image in the international community…and help reduce Iranian influence in the region” (Read the full resolution here and for the APN campaign see here).
That would be good.
Let's Get Rosy!
One thing I worry about on the Iraq issue is that the anti-war side has tended to be fighting with one hand tied behind our back. People mostly try to be relatively honest about the fact that leaving Iraq is not likely to produce a particularly happy outcome, people who nominally agree with us about the policy write columns saying we're still being too cozy, and meanwhile on the other side people just make up all kinds of crazy lies. It's a difficult way to win an argument. So I'm glad Robert Dreyfuss went and wrote up (via Kevin Drum) the optimist's guide to leaving Iraq since, as he says, "If it was foolish to accept the best-case assumptions that led us to invade Iraq, it's also foolish not to question the worst-case assumptions that undergird arguments for staying."
Fundamentally, I don't think anyone really does or can know what will happen when we leave. I personally tend to be a pessimist as a general matter and would put my bet on a fairly poor outcome if you made me. But things also could go not so bad. In particularly, the widely held view that you'd see a Saudi Arabia versus Iran proxy war inside Iraq strikes me as unsupported. Just over the past few months those two countries have been working together to try to prevent violence and disorder in Lebanon and there's no particular reason to think they couldn't do the same in Iraq.
Nice Guys
Take a look at Amanda Marcotte's hate mail (Paul Bernard of Scottsdale, Arizona writes "i like the way you trash talk i don’t particularly want to have sex with you but i would like a blow job") -- pretty mind-blowing stuff.
Do Work
To me, the most interesting thing about the John Amaechi book isn't his sexual orientation, but his frank admission (via Steve Sailer) that he didn't like playing basketball and didn't try very hard at it. "I respect the game of pro basketball. I just don't think it's all that important. I wasn't going to be embarrassed by Jerry Sloan because basketball had a proper role in my balanced life and I didn't blindly worship a game he made pretty much the entirety of his existence." Or, later in the book, "Why does the performance of so many players decline after they sign multiyear guaranteed deals? It's a little thing called human nature. Plenty of guys - Karl Malone and John Stockton are the obvious examples - play hard no matter how much they make. Other guys lack the discipline. Predicting which player falls into which category is the key to scouting."
This connects to something we've discussed before -- the number of people who have the baseline physical characteristics necessary to be an effective NBA center is vanishingly small. This creates an unusual situation where people can get paid millions of dollars to play that role without being especially committed to doing it well. 6' 4" men are reasonably rare, but also common enough that they're only going to get to be NBA players through fanatical devotion to the game. A really big guy, though, can make it at least marginally without even enjoying basketball. You also get intermediate cases like the frustrating Brendan Haywood who seems to be someone who realizes he can continue to make millions for years and years as a mediocre center with an inconsistent effort level.
The Mormon Factor
Chris Cillizza runs down some polling indicating a healthy, albeit surmountable, level of skepticism about the wisdom of voting for a Mormon among Republican primary voters. In some ways, I think this may be a bigger problem for Romney than Cillizza quite sees. The trouble, as I see it, has to do with Romney's convenient conversion to social conservatism over the past two years or so. One assumes that to win, Romney is going to need to talk about his newfound commitment to abortion-banning and gay-hating and the most obvious way to do that would be within the context of talking about his deep Christian faith and so forth. But while that might work great for a Protestant or a Catholic, I don't think it goes over so well if your deep faith is something most Christians consider weird and, indeed, not really Christian.
Similarly, it's hard to do the standard JFK-style "my faith is not an issue" thing if you're simultaneously trying to convince politically mobilized Christian traditionalists that you're the candidate for them. It seems to me that this winds up being a very difficult sweet spot to locate. Indeed, under normal circumstances it would seem almost crippling to me. Romney's good fortune, however, is that the leading contenders are Rudy Giuliani and John McCain, neither of whom are exactly what you'd call social conservative heros either.
Today's Iran Post
I want to say something about Undersecretary of State Nick Burns' presentation on Iran policy which I attended this afternoon, but for now just follow along with Spencer Ackerman's points that Burns says it's now US policy that al-Qaeda is less important than Iran and his willingness to go beyond the president's claims about the Iranian government's culpability for weapons getting into Iran. Meanwhile, here we have Hillary Clinton following the precedent that's been set by Harry Reid and some other Democratic leaders in staking out a clear stance on presidential authority to initiate a war with Iran:
It would be a mistake of historical proportion if the administration thought that the 2002 resolution authorizing force against Iraq was a blank check for the use of force against Iran without further Congressional authorization. Nor should the president think that the 2002 resolution authorizing force after the terrorist attacks of 9/11 in any way authorizes force against Iran. If the administration believes that any, any use of force against Iran is necessary, the president must come to Congress to seek that authority.
As a matter of politics, optics, etc. I like to hear this kind of thing from our major Democratic legislators. As a citizen concerned about the course of events in the world, the problem is that I continue to think it's false. The War Powers Act grants the president authority to initiate hostilities against anyone he likes for a period of sixty days. The Clinton administration's Department of Justice, meanwhile, took the view that, by granting the Clinton administration's request for an emergency supplemental appropriation for military operations in Kosovo, congress had implicitly authorized the continuation of hostilities after the sixty day time frame. The Bush administration, for obvious reasons, is unlikely to take a more restrictive view of presidential power in this regard than did its predecessor. Meanwhile, congress is very unlikely to refuse to grant a supplemental appropriation to continue hostilities if they are initiated -- just look at their view on providing supplemental appropriations for Iraq.
UPDATE: Sorry, my initial effort to cut-and-paste what Clinton said went a bit awry and I had her saying the wrong thing. The correct line is up there now.
UPDATE II: Okay, as Henley points out, the War Powers Act actually requires "a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces." Obviously, the administration is already laying the groundwork for a suitable predicate along these lines with this IED business. Which, when you think about it, is more than Clinton bothered to do in Kosovo.
Regrettably, a Second Israel Post in a Single Day
Perhaps I'm misreading, but it seems to me that in his reply to Alan Wolfe David Greenberg seems to indicate that to accuse Israel of "war crimes" is, as such, to engage in anti-semitism. Ironically, however, when going through his list of who the anti-semites are, Greenberg clarifies: "I don't mean mere critics of Israeli policies, such as of the occupation of the West Bank or the building of the security fence or of the Lebanon incursion. Criticize away!" Well, okay, fair enough. But what if one were to criticize the Israeli occupation of the West Bank in part on the grounds that the settlement-construction program there, initiated in the 70s but continuing throughout the Oslo era, was and is in violation of international law. In short, war crimes have been committed. Similarly, Human Rights Watch has documented war crimes on both sides of the Summer War in Lebanon.
Is it really anti-semitism to point this out?
Similarly, to Jeffrey Herf anyone who thinks the "Israel lobby" (this is not really a term I'm enthusiastic about) is more powerful than Herf does is an anti-semite. Again, I would suggest he think harder about this. Clearly, people are going to disagree about precisely how powerful any given lobbying group is; these disagreements can't all be chalked up to various forms of racial animosity. If Mearsheimer and Walt overestimate the power of the Israel lobby, mightn't they just be mistaken? Especially in the absence of actual evidence that Mearsheimer, Walt, Jimmy Carter, Kenneth Roth, etc. actually have some sort of animosity toward Jewish people, isn't it safer to conclude that disagreements about Israel's policies and America's policies toward Israel are just disagreements about controversial political issues? People say a lot of heated things in political debates.
Off The Table
Ken Baer, author of Reinventing Democrats: The Politics of Liberalism from Reagan to Clinton, an excellent sympathetic history of the DLC, on Iran policy: "The reason why Obama, Clinton, and Edwards are all refusing to take the military option off the table is because there is no credible expert on Iran, nonproliferation, or any combination of the two who would advise them to do so."
Really? None? Ray Takeyh, Council on Foreign Relations Fellow and author of two books on Iran along with Vali Nasr, another CFR fellow and author of three books on Iran or Shia politics, think we should eschew military threats in favor of engagement. Joseph Cirincione, formerly senior associate and director for nonproliferation at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and currently something or other at the Center for American Progress, thinks there's no military option whatsoever here. Baer vents some more:
And as for those who doubt the strategy of no nukes, no options off the table, my only question is: what is that based on? Again, is there any person with real experience with the Iranians, diplomacy, or nonproliferation who has argued that? If so, let’s hear it. But – to my mind – rightly, the major candidates are listening to seasoned experts on this issue, and are thus sticking with the above formulation of no nuclear Iran, no options off the table.
With all due respect, it seems to me that Democratic candidates are saying what Baer thinks they should say because this is what people like Baer -- consultants and speechwriters -- are saying they should say. Takeyh, Nasr, and Cirincione aren't obscure figures; the only way you could reach the conclusion that all credible experts think military options should be on the table would be if you hadn't made any effort to canvass the experts. Contrary to Baer's assertions, one can think the military option should be off the table without either being a pacifist or having one's head in the sand about the potentially problematic consequences of a nuclear Iran. The problem with the military option is that it's more likely to speed up Iranian acquisition of a nuclear bomb than it is to halt it. Thus, if you're concerned about an Iranian nuclear weapon -- as opposed to, say, "looking tough on defense" -- you'll favor policies likely to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear bomb, rather than policy likely to "look tough" while failing.
The Political Table
In re: the subject below, GFR says she thinks "it would be a politically disqualifying act for any presidential candidate to take military action off the table in dealing with a country that is a potential regional threat, and that it would be folly for any group on the left to demand this of them." As I say, my strong guess is that this is what Ken Baer thinks as well, since he is an experienced political consultant but doesn't seem to discuss the merits of this issue with a particularly wide range of experts.
I'm open to that possibility. There are many things which I believe to be true which I also believe it would be unwise to say in a presidential campaign. On the other hand, I have no idea what the evidentiary basis for the claim that saying "all options are on the table" with Iran is necessary to be politically viable in America. Before everyone rushes to accept that judgment, I think people should present some backing for the claim. Polling data, focus groups, something. Similarly, before liberals demand that candidates explicitly foreswear military options we should consider that politics is politics. My preference would be for candidates to not say anything at all about whether or not military options are "on the table." I think inserting that phrase into speeches is a hollow effort to "look tough" that accomplishes nothing, while inserting the reverse phrase into speeches would be weird. Candidates should just say what they think we should do.
Lederman on War Powers
People may have missed it, but in comments yesterday Marty Lederman left the following remarks with regard to presidential war powers:
1. The War Powers Resolution does not prohibit any initiation of hostilities. Section 2, which Jim Henley quotes, is merely hortatory -- it expresses Congress's view of when the President can act unilaterally as a matter of constitutional authority. It does not itself impose any limitations. (And as Dellinger pointed out, *everyone* agrees that section 2 is inadequate as a descriptive matter, although there's a lot of dispute about how far the President's constitutional powers extend.)
2. The War Powers Resolution does require the President to get congressional approval if hostilities last beyond 90 days. The OLC Opinion that Matt links concluded (controversially) that appropriations statutes for Kosovo provided the requisite congressional approval for going beyond 90 days there. A similar question would arise if an Iranian conflict goes beyond 90 days; but we're not there yet, obviously.
3. The big question here is not the War Powers Resolution, but the Constitution. What sorts of hostilities can the President initiate unilaterally under the Constitution? Matt is right that the Clinton Administration took a very broad view -- see Haiti, Bosnia Bosnia and Kosovo, for starters; we basically concluded that congressional pre-approval is only required for a complete, or total, war (see footnote 5 of the Bosnia opinion, hinting that the Korean War might have been unlawful because Congress had not authorized it in advance).
The Bush Administration view is broader than that, if that's possible. There is no doubt Bush believes he has the authority to initiate all-out war with Iran, although of course the initial forays will be more limited than that (e.g., "surgical" strikes) -- which even the Clinton Administration would have viewed as constitutionally permissible.
So as a *practical* matter, the issue is determined -- the President believes he has the power, and he won't hesitate to exercise it.
Unless.
Unless Congress actually passes a statute, probably over Bush's signature, that would *prohibit* military action against Iran. Bush might go ahead anyway, in the teeth of such a statute, because in this respect his views of executive authority go way beyond Clinton's. But that truly would be an unprecdented constitutional showdown.
And it, too, is hypothetical, because Congress won't enact such a statute.
Therefore, what's most interesting about this whole incident is Hillary Clinton taking a narrower view of presidential authority than Bill did as President -- that *any* use of force against Iran requires congressional approval! Frankly, I'm surprised she has expressed such a view. Be interesting to see how Edwards and Obama respond.
Clearly, as long as George W. Bush is president, I think presidential war powers, like presidential powers in all respects, should be as sharply limited as possible. On the actual merits of the issue, I'm not really sure how I think the congress-president balance in such matters should go. As a general matter, I tend to think parliamentary systems as seen in Britain or Canada are superior to our method of government. A system like that puts less formal restraint on the head of government in terms of his ability to act, but also makes it much easier to dump a head of government whose policies have failed and whose leadership is widely considered inept.
Gum Game
Abstinence-only sex ed strikes again in disgusting ways, forcing schoolchidren to share pieces of gum. Aside from being a gross classroom activity, abstinence-only sex ed's record of increasing STD infection rates is, of course, a serious flaw.
Beers on Iran
Here's a portion of an email that went out from Rand Beers:
Military action against Iran is unwise
There is widespread agreement that although some within the administration may be pushing for war, a strike on Iran would run significantly counter to U.S. interests in the current environment. Military action would spark even greater anti-US violence in Iraq. Iran might also escalate violence in the wider region and attack American targets using its own agents or Hezbollah. There would almost certainly be a negative public reaction from the Islamic world, and that reaction would circumscribe the ability of Arab governments to work with us on issues of common interest such as Iraq or the Middle East peace process. Further, we cannot guarantee that an air strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities would effectively set back the nuclear program. Based on the current state of that program, even a successful military operation sustained over many days might only set back the program by as little as two to four years.
Tough, no-nonsense diplomacy with Iran is working
This administration’s choices have often been more about posturing and rhetoric than effective engagement. Sadly, these actions are also inadvertently or consciously escalatory, possibly pushing America down a path toward a conflict that we neither want nor need. Following Ahmedinejad’s humiliating defeat in the Iranian elections in December, he was ferociously attacked (including in newspapers associated with Supreme Leader Khamenei) for having brought down sanctions on Iran. There is now a vigorous debate in Tehran over whether Iran’s nuclear program is worth the risk of additional international opprobrium. The diplomatic “carrots and sticks” seem to be working. Unfortunately, the administration’s ham-handed military posturing and rhetoric risk torpedoing these efforts and offering Ahmedinejad a reprieve. We should be fostering this debate with a mix of sanctions and diplomacy, not undermining it.
Beers, we'll recall, has worked on the National Security Council under presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush. Nevertheless, Ken Baer keeps assuring me that there are no experts out there who think airstrikes should be off the table.
No Experts Here!
Even the liberal Ken Pollack doesn't seem super-psyched about all options being on the table:
I wish I could tell you that it is impossible, but I don’t think it is. I think a war with Iran would be very messy and would cost us a lot more than we would gain. While many members of the Administration agree with that, others do not, and some seem willing to risk it to accomplish other goals. I am very concerned both by the President’s military moves toward Iran (like moving a second aircraft carrier and Patriot anti-missile batteries to the Persian Gulf, and ordering the U.S. military to use “all necessary means” to shut down Iranian activities in Iraq) and his unnecessarily threatening rhetoric toward them. Some degree of quiet pressure on Iran to stop their more damaging operations in Iraq could be useful, and the Iranians probably would back down under those circumstances; but the President’s policy risks engaging Iran’s nationalist pride, its strategic interests, and its real fear of the United States.
For those just joining us, the point at issue here is Kenneth Baer's assertion that "The reason why Obama, Clinton, and Edwards are all refusing to take the military option off the table is because there is no credible expert on Iran, nonproliferation, or any combination of the two who would advise them to do so." Nevertheless, many experts -- Pollack, Rand Beers, Joseph Cirincione, Ray Takeyh, Vali Nasr, etc. -- seem to me to feel that military strikes would be counterproductive and that threatening them is useless at best, harmful at worst.
And Then There's Rudy
Issues with Democrats aside, the goofball incoherence of Rudy Giuliani on the key national security issues of the day is worth noting:
Mr. King asked if Mr. Giuliani would agree that the Senate would have voted unanimously against the war if it were known that Mr. Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction.
“Yes, I guess,” he said, but he added that such a vote would say nothing about whether the war was right.
Giuliani says he thinks the war was right (obviously, he has a low opinion of Republican Senators) but that if he'd been president he would have invaded with "maybe 100,000 to 130,000 more" troops than Bush deployed even though no such volume of additional troops was available. "Of course there were mistakes," according to Giuliani, which merely proves what a great man Bush is: "Lincoln made mistakes. Roosevelt made mistakes. Eisenhower made mistakes."
One quirk of American politics is that leading presidential candidates normally go into the campaign with little if any foreign policy experience. Most, however, at least recognize this as a problem and try to study up as part of the campaign effort. Giuliani comes to us as a rare duck -- a candidate whose signature issue is national security but who doesn't know anything about national security, and therefore won't study. Result: Nonsense, combined with temperamental authoritarianism.
More Haywood Blogging
Ric Bucher writes:
Laugh if you want, but Etan Thomas' -- and many analysts' -- favorite punching bag, has the team's best plus-minus ratio and the Wizards are 10-2 when he starts.
Really? The only source of plus-minus I know of is 82 Games.com which has the Wizards' plus-minus leader as Gilbert Arenas. Just as you would think, after Arenas comes Caron Butler and after Butler comes Antawn Jamison. Haywood comes after Jamison.
Seriously, This Again?
The most annoying of all possible arguments:
“In hundreds of conversations I’ve had with Iranian intellectuals, journalists, and human rights activists in recent years, I invariably encounter exasperation,” writes Danny Postel in Reading “Legitimation Crisis” in Tehran: Iran and the Future of Liberalism, a recent addition to the Prickly Paradigm pamphlet series distributed by the University of Chicago Press. “Why, they ask, is the American Left so indifferent to the struggle taking place in Iran? Why can’t the Iranian movement get the attention of so-called progressives and solidarity activists here? Why is it mainly neoconservatives who express interest in the Iranian struggle?”
Obviously, most Americans simply don't take a ton of interest in events abroad at all, which is a fairly unfortunate trend. Among those people who do take such interest, there's simply no sign of indifference on the left to conditions in Iran. See, for example, Human Rights Watch's Iran page. Or Amnesty International's Iran page. The AFL-CIO's Solidarity Center does stuff on Iran. So does the Feminist Majority Foundation. In short, roughly every organization on the left that you would expect to deal with human rights conditions in Iran does, in fact, speak out on Iranian human rights issues and try to improve them.
Here on this blog and others we're also seeking to prevent a war with Iran that, as Garance Franke-Ruta points out, will, among other things, have the consequence of crushing the Iranian reform movement. Maybe I can write the "why are liberals such apologists for North Korea?" version of this book -- I don't have evidence to back my claims up, but, hey, who needs evidence?
But Which Table?
And, yes, obviously if Iran decides to bomb American nuclear facilities (or something) then fighting back should be on that table. It is worth noting that if Iranian agents blew up American nuclear facilities that we would presumably (and not wrongly) consider that to be a serious act of terrorism, as well as a legitimate casus belli.
Awkward Teen Years
According to the Pew Center's typology test I'm . . . a liberal. You're shocked, I know. Lets learn more about us:
Basic Description
This group has nearly doubled in proportion since 1999, Liberals now comprise the largest share of Democrats and is the single largest of the nine Typology groups. They are the most opposed to an assertive foreign policy, the most secular, and take the most liberal views on social issues such as homosexuality, abortion, and censorship. They differ from other Democratic groups in that they are strongly pro-environment and pro-immigration, issues which are more controversial among Conservative and Disadvantaged Democrats.
Defining Values
Strongest preference for diplomacy over use of military force. Pro-choice, supportive of gay marriage and strongly favor environmental protection. Low participation in religious activities. Most sympathetic of any group to immigrants as well as labor unions, and most opposed to the anti-terrorism Patriot Act.
Who They Are
Most (62%) identify themselves as liberal. Predominantly white (83%), most highly educated group (49% have a college degree or more), and youngest group after Bystanders. Least religious group in typology: 43% report they seldom or never attend religious services; nearly a quarter (22%) are seculars. More than one-third never married (36%). Largest group residing in urban areas (42%) and in the western half the country |
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