After centuries full of vibrant interaction, of marrying, sharing and selling across sects and classes, Baghdad has become a capital of corrosive and violent borderlines. Streets never crossed. Conversations never started. Doors never entered.
Sunnis and Shiites in many professions now interact almost exclusively with colleagues of the same sect. Sunnis say they are afraid to visit hospitals because Shiites loyal to the cleric Moktada al-Sadr run the Health Ministry, while Shiite laborers who used to climb into the back of pickup trucks for work across the Tigris River in Sunni western Baghdad now take jobs only near home.
I'm told, though, that the sectarian-segregated crews have done a really good job of painting many schools. Many schools. Why do you hate America?
CPAC goes for Multiple Choice Mitt. My early guess is that out of Romney, Giuliani, and McCain, the Massachusetts governor is likely to be the least-awful president if he wins and also the least-likely to win if he gets the nomination. So I'm all for conservatives falling in love with the guy.
There's a nice profile in The Politico of Winslow Wheeler, director of the military reform project at the Center for Defense Information. As the article makes clear, the quest to see defense spending decisions driven by something other than pork-barrel considerations and lobbying clout is a thankless one, but with luck he'll find at least some measure of success in a Democratic congress.
Like Duncan, I recently took a gander at the works of The Left and the experience was . . . bracing. It used dirty words! It hated the troops! And people of faith! Especially people of faith who were also troops. Hated them with nasty, dirty, nasty dirty words. At times, it said that ice cream was more delicious than capitalism.
Ross Douthat mostly says everything that needs to be said, but let me just state it very clearly -- the idea that Ronald Reagan's charisma and sunny disposition won landslide victories for Barry Goldwater's substantive views on the size and scope of government is false. Very false.
Reagan was, famously, the political beneficiary of a backlash against the liberalism of the 1960s and 1970s. The important thing to remember about this is that unless you think people were lashing back against the Peace Corps, this was a backlash entirely against programs that didn't exist during Barry Goldwater's 1964 campaign. It was only after Goldwater lost that "welfare as we knew it," Medicare, Medicaid, major federal involvement in education, federal environmental policy, federal consumer safety regulations, affirmative action, etc. came into exist. Reagan's political mobilization was aimed at a subset of this post-Goldwater flowering of big government. He didn't tilt against Medicare, by far the biggest Great Society program. And he certainly didn't campaign for the repeal of the New Deal (indeed, he repeatedly explicitly disavowed any intention of doing so).
The Goldwater-Reagan similarity is that they both led "conservative" factions of the GOP against "accommodationist" factions. But between 1964 and 1976 the country experienced a massive policy revolution that shifted the status quo way, way, way to the left of where it had been. Reagan then simultaneously shifted the GOP to the right of where Gerald Ford had initially positioned it while shifting the conservative movemenet to the left -- to acceptance of a federal responsibility for retirement security and quality education, to acceptance of the Civil Rights Act (opposition to which was, of course, Goldwater's only reliable vote-getter in '64), and to acceptance of popular middle class entitlement programs.
Since my primary area of interest in foreign policy, I've been facing something of a conundrum in looking at the Democratic primary candidates for the simple reason that, as best I can tell, stated foreign policy views during a presidential campaign have almost no relationship to things that happen in office. So you try to look a bit at personnel. I saw recently that Barack Obama had hired Dan Shapiro, formerly of Bill Nelson's office, to be a consultant on Middle East issues but didn't know what to make of that. Richard Silverstein, however, has a potential observation:
I would note that before joining the Obama campaign, Dan Shapiro served as Jewish outreach coordinator for Senator Bill Nelson. Nelson was one of the first U.S. senators to visit Bashar Assad in Syria and take home the message that Syria wants peace and negotiation with Israel. I don't know what role, if any, Shapiro played on that trip. But I admired the guts it took for Nelson to buck our country's declared policy of isolating Syria.
Again, though, for all we know Shapiro's role in the trip was to advise Nelson not to do it so the significance of this is less than totally obvious. This leads me to recall that nobody seems to mention this, but former Rep. David Bonior, who's gone to work for John Edwards, is not only a noted labor leader, but also quite possibly the Israel lobby's least-liked legislator in recently history.
Yes, it's true, The Weekly Standard decided that the best candidate to assess the ongoing progress of the Bush/McCain/Kagan surge plan was Fred Kagan's wife, Kimberly. Worse, Andrew Sullivan reports that she was on the planning team her husband put together to write the surge plan in the first place.
I can't say that I really know anything about Mike Huckabee. It strikes me, though, that he's the kind of person I would expect to see win a Republican nomination -- a white Protestant conservative Republican governor who's never deliberately antagonized conservative leaders and also doesn't seem to be a weirdo. Michael Scherer bothered to learn some facts and write the profile for Salon. He says Huckabee's charming. His political approach:
"If I really know what it means to follow Jesus, it means no kid goes hungry tonight," he said, at one stop in Iowa. "It means no wife gets the daylights beat out of her by some alcoholic abusive husband. It means no kid lives in a neighborhood where he is scared to death of some child predator that is going to pick him up and carry him off. It means not one single elderly person has to make the choice between food or medicine." Unlike former Sen. Rick Santorum or Sen. Sam Brownback, Huckabee does not spend time pounding the pulpit over baby murder and sodomy. He's a self-styled "compassionate conservative," a poll-tested concept that worked once before. But while President Bush discarded the slogan like a prom queen's sash, Huckabee wants to convince America that he is the real deal.
Huckabee is, obviously, a longshot. The odds favor Giuliani and McCain. Nevertheless, over the long haul I think it's clear that the Huckabee approach -- marrying religious traditionalism with some kind of revived effort to cope with domestic social policy problems -- is more promising for Republicans than the tax cuts and war platform of a Giuliani.
I have no particular doubt that Jim Nicholas, Bush's appointee to run the Department of Veterans Affairs, may well have screwed things up but would it kill The New York Times to make it clear that Walter Reed is not a VA hospital? It's an Army facility where they treat wounded soldiers, and it's administratively distinct. Ann Hull and Dana Preist at The Washington Post, by contrast, go wide with a look at other military medical centers comparably situation to Walter Reed. Suffice it to say that there are further problems here:
Hundreds of soldiers contacted The Washington Post through telephone calls and e-mails, many of them describing their bleak existence in Medhold.
From Fort Campbell in Kentucky: "There were yellow signs on the door stating our barracks had asbestos."
From Fort Bragg in North Carolina: "They are on my [expletive] like a diaper. . . . there are people getting chewed up everyday."
From Fort Dix in New Jersey: "Scare tactics are used against soldiers who will write sworn statement to assist fellow soldiers for their medical needs."
From Fort Irwin in California: "Most of us have had to sign waivers where we understand that the housing we were in failed to meet minimal government standards."
The article does go on to note some veterans problems; in particular great difficulty actually getting benefits people are entitled to because the administration doesn't seem to have actually enhanced the VA's capability to deliver services very much while it's also massively ramped up the supply of wounded veterans in need of service. Chalk the declining conditions at the military hospitals up as another victory in the GOP passion for contracting out government services.
Agent Zero gets the Klosterman treatment in PLAY. It's an eminently readable piece, but it leaves me disquieted. Bethlehem Shoals gets at much of the problem, but let me attempt to rephrase somewhat. At its best, Gilbert's game is mercurial. It's not only that he can hit a very long three if that's the only shot available at the end of the clock; he sometimes will take that shot early in the clock, calmly walking the ball up the court, realizing that his defender hasn't deigned to guard him closely that far out. He also has a move where, for no real reason, he just keeps dribbling and dribbling doing nothing until there's not enough time left for a drive to the basket and then makes the drive because he's that fast.
But he's not just a dude with a quick drive and a long range, he's a guy who might take that long shot at any time and can blow past you at any time -- it's never too early, never too late, he plays with no conscience. This is important to making him effective. The risk of the long bomb early in the clock sets up the drive. The risk of the drive late in the clock sets up the long bomb. That's Basketball 101, but it's also Gilbertology 101; all the rest of the "weirdness" serves to render the predictable cultivation of unpredictability once again unpredictable. Other players have "so many ways to beat you" applied methodically; Gilbert has crazy skills and is a crazy man, you never know what he's going to do. This is part of his game not part of his marketing pitch.
Ron Brynaert at Raw Story makes the convincing case about GOP passion for privatization of government services and the problems at Walter Reed. Jim Henley reminds me that I posted on the general problem here last month -- it's not as if there are dozens of United States Armies all competing against one another to run the best hospitals and choosing among a variety of suppliers of hospital services in a dynamic marketplace where the Army that runs a bad hospital goes out of business.
You've got private profits, private corporations, privatization, and all sorts of other private stuff, but you don't have a market you have a patronage mill and you have suffering soldiers. The correct way to privatize government services if you don't think they should be provided by the government is to just have the government not perform the service. If it's something you think the government should provide -- medical care for injured soldiers would be, I think, an uncontroversial case -- then the government needs to provide it.
Caught live on tape, Mitt Romney hangs out back stage with Ann Coulter discussing his plan to name her his Vice Presidential nominee, Coulter's admiration for his deft abortion flip-flopts, and Romney's meeting with James Dobson in which he made some early efforts to smooth over the whole is Romey a Christian issue.
This comes to me via Dave Weigel who observes that "Romney apparatchiks Barbara Comstock and Jay Sekulow work to keep the camera at bay, but they fail to protect their wooden candidate from looking like an awkward fanboy." Also check out Russell Arben Fox on Mike Huckabee.
Ross Douthat points out that I was skeptical that conservatives would feel pressure to distance themselves from Ann Coulter in response to her "faggot" remarks but, in fact, many conservatives have so distanced themselves. And good for them. I assumed they wouldn't because, frankly, calling Edwards a faggot is pretty small potatos for Coulter. Obviously, I'd forgotten the Conservative Rule of Decency which is that calling, explicitly or implicitly, for one's political rivals to be killed and/or imprisoned is fine, but using naughty language is not. Coulter, by unleashing the other F-Bomb, joined me in forgetting this rule and wound up being punished.
Still, it still is odd. If Coulter had accused Edwards of Treason nobody on the right would have batted an eye. But these are the rules of the game. Of course, nobody's actually fired Coulter for anything so it's not like her little screwup has really cost her anything.
I don't think this is an endorsement Obama had to make for political reasons. As Dick Morris says, he's sitting pretty--he can be anything he wants to be. He could be a lot more Gary Hartish! He must want to be an old-fashioned unionizer. [But he has to win the Iowa caucuses, dominated by unions--ed Teachers' unions! They're already organized. They don't need no stinking card-check.** As for New Hampshire--look what the unions did for Mondale in 1984. ... And if Obama doesn't really believe in the card-check, wouldn't it still be smart for the GOPs to make him pay a price for selling out to the unions? That's a lot more important sign that he's a business-as-usual pol than his failure to repudiate David Geffen for taking some heartfelt shots at the Clintons.. ... ]
The endorsement in question is of the Employee Free Choice Act. Kaus is, I think, stuck in a time warp. Obviously, Obama would earn the undying enmity of all the unions in Iowa and New Hampshire (and everywhere else, for that matter) if he declined to endorse EFCA. That would be bad. What's more, at this point in time everyone in progressive politics is for card check. All the bloggers are for it. Here's Jon Chait in The Los Angeles Times in favor of card check. Here's the DLC in favor of card check. Here's a New Republic editorial praising unions.
The consituency for Kaus-style union-bashing in the Democratic Party is just gone. Obama would lose the support not just of the unions but of everyone if he didn't endorse card check. What's more, Obama's a liberal community organizer -- of course he's for making it easier to form a union.
Joe Klein names a few characteristics of right-wing extremists, including:
believes that homosexuals are condemned to hell.
believes that there are inferior religions.
Obviously, I hold no such beliefs. But these beliefs are widespread. What's more, I don't really think it's fair to condemn people for holding them. To me the belief that gay sex acts are immoral is false and hard-to-justify. It's not, however, politically objectionable unless the believer goes on to believe that government policy should be aimed at criminalizing gay sex acts or discriminating against gays or lesbians. After all, there are tons of religious prohibitions (Muslims don't drink alcohol, Hindus don't eat beef, Jews don't eat pigs, Pentacostalists don't dance) that I don't agree with, but that I also don't have a problem with unless the believers want to turn them into legal prohibitions.
On the inferior religions point, I think it's even clearer. I would expect a religious believer to believe that his religion is "the best" and that the others are "inferior" in some sense. Likewise, there's nothing wrong, really, with Christians believing that non-Christian faiths are inferior to Christianity in that they don't result in the salvation of your immortal soul. The problem would be if someone thought there should be legal discrimination against people who believe in non-favored faiths.
A couple of days ago, I saw a broadcast sitcom -- a Friends re-run -- for the first time in years. It was a slightly bizarre experience. In particular, the show is punctuated with . . . pre-recorded laughter. Then, today, at Catherine's request I watched How I Met Your Mother. And, I have to say, until I heard it I never really considered the possibility that contemporary sitcoms are still relying on this device. It's bizarre. Lighthearted half-hour cable shows -- Entourage, The Sarah Silverman Program, Curb Your Enthusiasm, etc. -- seem to get by quite well without it.
Which is to say nothing of the "humor." Obviously, I didn't grasp the subtle nuances of the show. But (by design) you don't need to actually know who any of the characters are or anything about them to get the "jokes." Indeed, the jokes could have been from a Friends episode that aired in 1995 -- apparently the only comedic premise available to sitcom writers is that women like relationships whereas men are afraid of commitment. No, wait, they also have jokes based on homophobia.
UPDATE: In many ways, though, the awfulness of The Black Donnellys renders all other TV-related complaining irrelevant.
With a little help from Glenn Greenwald, Jim Henley's been reading an old 1998 New Republic article by Condoleezza Rice's new "counselor," Eliot Cohen. It's all about how we must reject the dogmas of the past and embrace the new imperial future:
One cannot separate the so-called “soft power” of the United States–the global dominance of its culture, beginning with its language–from its military strength.
Rock fans around the world listen in English; so do fighter pilots. The same information technologies that make the Internet a decidedly American phenomenon provide the nervous systems of American military power. Free trade rests on common consent, to be sure, but would it exist absent America’s military dominance?
Henley has some fun with the apparent claim here that American popular music is popular because of our military might. It is, of course, well known that the Beatles and the Rolling Stones became so popular in the 1960s because the British Empire was then at its peak.
It's the trade element of this, however, that's truly pernicious. Cohen would like us to believe that basic commerce and prosperity require us to join him down the path where "citizen and soldier alike must brace themselves for the occasional imperial fiasco" and "accept the uncomfortable notion that they are wielding military power in a way that is historically unusual for a country that has long viewed empires with proper republican suspicion." There is, however, just no reason whatsoever to believe this. If we stopped seeking to coercively dominate the Middle East then . . . all those Japanese cars would just disappear from the dealerships? International capital flows would stop? China would shut down the iPod factories? Europeans would turn their back on Coca-Cola? I mean, yes, the US navy and allied military forces need to be strong enough to prevent pirates from ruling the high seas but this has approximately nothing to do with the imperial vision Cohen and co. have in mind.
Realistically, the imperialist conception of world affairs is inimicable to the spirit of commerce which requires us not to see politics as an endless series of zero-sum standoffs in which power is used to facilitate parasitic exploitation. In the domestic sphere, this is the difference between the mentality of the businessman and that of the gangster. Internationally, we see the trader versus the conquistador; the liberal spirit of international cooperation versus the grim gaze of the imperialist.
More importantly, the claims "sound right wing" but actually they provide the best argument for single-payer health insurance to be found: "The link between health and health care is murky, so let's just save money on our health system."
A few important differences, though, since Cowen isn't actually a left-wing single-payer advocate. It's not just that you can save money, but there are also significant gains from the point of view of equality and social justice. What's more, a single-payer system does allow you to funnel additional health care resources to a handful of areas -- notably prenatal and postnatal care and pediatrics -- where it's uncontroversially the case that delivery of non-expensive services brings about some significant gains. Beyond that, though, if you want to make people healthier you need to talk less about health care and more about the dread lifestyle.
It's a few days old at this point, but Barack Obama's speech in Selma, Alabama is worth a read. He faced a somewhat tricky task. A white politician goes to such an event merely to pay homage to the giants of the past and their struggle, and to pledge fealty to the contemporary leaders of the African-American community. Obama's task is to identify himself as a leader of that community. But worse as the leader -- as the President of the United States. But this is presumptuous. What did Obama do? Are his accomplishments greater than those of the older generation that marched at Selma and elsewhere? No. His accomplishments are lesser. He is in a position to go further than they were not because of his efforts but because of their efforts. How to gain their support?
Obama, in his speech, aims for an analogy with Joshua. Not, compared to Moses, the greater leader of the Jewish people. But, rather, the successor; the one designated to build on Moses' work and lead the people into the promised land. Certainly, I'm not a grizzled veteran of the Civil Rights movement, so I can't say for sure how this will play, but it seems pretty clever to me.
I think it can also work as a larger metaphor. Progressives these days have a sometimes angsty relationship with the social movements of the 1960s and 70s. The sense that, ultimately, these movements failed and the Democratic Party came to disaster through its association with them is inescapable. And yet precisely what we don't want to do is mimick the smarmy neoliberals of the 1980s and 1990s, forever full of scorn, forever eager to blame the left for the right's malgovernment, forever looking to get ahead by knifing an ally in the back.
Arguably, Obama's hit on the right way to think about all this. The movements of yore accomplished a great deal and were absolutely right about the biggest issues of their time. But they made some mistakes. Mistakes that are dwarfed by the scale of their accomplishments; but nonetheless mistakes that carried a high price. Conveniently enough, 2008 could mark the end of 40 desert years launched by Nixon and capped by Bush. Enough time gone by for old wounds to heal, perhaps, and for a new generation of political leadership to redeem the promises of that earlier era.
GFR comments on and heartily excerpts some paywalled Nick Kristof content about Barack Obama's experiences growing up partially in Indonesia. "He once got in trouble for making faces during Koran study classes in his elementary school," writes Kristof, "but a president is less likely to stereotype Muslims as fanatics -- and more likely to be aware of their nationalism -- if he once studied the Koran with them." One would certainly hope so. On the other hand, the last major American political figure to be knowledgable about Indonesia was . . . Paul Wolfowitz. And we all know how that turned out.
Meanwhile, Democrats who opposed the surge sure do look foolish now that it's working so well.
Rich Lowry says Rudy Giuliani has what it takes to be the antidote to George W. Bush's incompetence:
Giuliani’s axioms of governance, described in his book “Leadership,” now read as a kind of rebuttal to Bush’s hands-off management style. One of his rules is “Always Sweat the Small Stuff.” Another is “Prepare Relentlessly.” He delivered annual 90-minute State of the City addresses without a prepared text: “I presented it from my own head and heart, not from a page.” And “Everyone’s Accountable, All of the Time.” Giuliani kept a two-word sign on his desk: “I’M RESPONSIBLE.”
Famously the first CEO president, Bush has had his reputation as an executive trashed by Katrina and Iraq. Bush had seen his role primarily as setting goals, then remaining resolute and confident about them. But the resolution and confidence are self-defeating if the goals aren’t matched with the appropriate means. Bush has been ill-served by his willingness to stand by failed subordinates (thereby eroding any sense of accountability), by his relative lack of interest in details and by his inability to establish coherence within his own government.
I haven't been following or blogging about the Scooter Libby trial, but Jeff Lomonaco, who's been covering it for the Prospect, makes a very good bottom-line point: "Vice President's main adviser has just been convicted of obstructing an investigation not just of himself but of the Vice President." Insofar as Libby looks unlikely to flip on Cheney, it appears the effort to obstruct the underlying investigation can be deemed a success.
A while back, I was distraught by how early the presidential campaign season had begun since I found the 2004 primaries somewhat excrutiating. Now, I'm anticipating big fun covering the GOP field:
Mitt Romney is the most freakishly transparent liar I've ever witnessed. His party is desperately reliant on playing the Christian card on election day, but most traditionalist Christians deny that his religion counts as Christianity. He can't decide which state he's from, invested major resources in barely winning a Conservative Political Action Committee straw poll last weekend, and, for his trouble, managed to snag the endorsement of Ann Coulter at the same time she was calling John Edwards a "faggot."
Then there's McCain. To the kind of liberal who spent 2002 fantasizing about McCain beating Bush in '04 on the Democratic ticket, his pathetic decline is probably a sad story. To me, it's more like a funny one -- like when that guy slipped and fell down a flight of stairs and it all looked very painful but he was a huge jerk anyway. McCain is old. And sick. And obviously so. He has the misfortune of being both the most conservative candidate in the race and the one most hated by conservatives. His website makes it look like he's campaigning for Führer. Worst of all, George W. Bush's Iraq policy is so crazy that it's managed to ruin McCain's devilishly clever positioning on Iraq.
SUNDAY NIGHT PLENARY - The U.S. and Israel: Tradition and Transcendence
Two eloquent voices from diverse backgrounds explore the history of U.S. involvement in the Middle East and how Americans from all faiths can find common cause in supporting Israel.
Pastor John Hagee
Author and Scholar Michael Oren
Special Guest Eitan Wertheimer, Chairman of the Board of ISCAR
Who's John Hagee? Sarah Posner can tell you all about it. I'll just note this:
In Hagee’s telling, Israel has no choice but to strike at Iran’s nuclear facilities, with or without America’s help. The strike will provoke Russia -- which wants Persian Gulf oil -- to lead an army of Arab nations against Israel. Then God will wipe out all but one-sixth of the Russian-led army, as the world watches “with shock and awe,” he says, lending either a divine quality to the Bush administration phrase or a Bush-like quality to God’s wrath.
But Hagee doesn’t stop there. He adds that Ezekiel predicts fire “‘upon those who live in security in the coastlands.’” From this sentence he concludes that there will be judgment upon all who stood by while the Russian-led force invaded Israel, and issues a stark warning to the United States to intervene: “Could it be that America, who refuses to defend Israel from the Russian invasion, will experience nuclear warfare on our east and west coasts?” He says yes, citing Genesis 12:3, in which God said to Israel: “I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse him who curses you.”
To fill the power vacuum left by God’s decimation of the Russian army, the Antichrist -- identified by Hagee as the head of the European Union -- will rule “a one-world government, a one-world currency and a one-world religion” for three and a half years. (He adds that “one need only be a casual observer of current events to see that all three of these things are coming into reality.”) The “demonic world leader” will then be confronted by a false prophet, identified by Hagee as China, at Armageddon, the Mount of Megiddo in Israel. As they prepare for the final battle, Jesus will return on a white horse and cast both villains -- and presumably any nonbelievers -- into a “lake of fire burning with brimstone,” thus marking the beginning of his millennial reign.
So you see, John Hagee, who wants to see Israel adopt a hawkish foreign policy that he believes will result in its destruction at the hands of a Russo-Arab alliance is a friend of the Jews. By contrast, everyone who thinks a little pressure to make peace could wind up helping Israel in the long run is an anti-semite.
This is true. In all honestly, though, I would at least think Ross might be a Huckabee enthusiast, even though his campaign is obviously doomed. It also bears mentioning that Huckabee isn't even my favorite Republican -- that honor goes to Chuck Hagel who I guess isn't officially running. At a minimum, though, he should toss his hat into the ring and run an anti-war campaign saying real conservatism is about limited government and traditional values at home, and that in foreign policy terms neither limited government nor traditional American values nor traditional Christian values supports Bush-style neo-imperialism. He won't win, but it'd be nice to see someone keep the Terrible Three on their toes.
As a general matter, I find the conservative inability to get enthused about a dark horse -- pick a dark horse, any dark horse, and get enthused -- totally impossible to comprehend. Is everyone really so excited about John McCain drooling his way through a general election?
Over the weekend, Mitt Romney called for repealing McCain-Feingold. Which made me wonder about the candidates' record on the issue. McCain's we know about.
Romney, it turns out, has—surprise, surprise—been on both sides of campaign-finance reform. In his 1994 race, Romney came out for banning political action committees, limiting spending on federal races (something the Supreme Court has not allowed), and opposed allowing larger contributions. All told, those positions place him to the left of McCain-Feingold, which doubled the allowable size of individual donations to candidates. In his 2002 race, he took the position that campaign contributions should be taxed at a 10 percent race, with the proceeds going to public funding of all campaigns.
Taxing campaign contributions to fund a public financing system is a longstanding pet notion of mine. Have I mentioned that I voted for Mitt Romney in 2002? Mistakes were made, but he was, um, rather different back then. In Romney's defense, none of these past positions is strictly inconsistent with support for repealing McCain-Feingold. Someone covering the Romney campaign should just ask the candidates straightforwardly if he still adheres to those 1994 and 2002 vintage positions.
Peter Baker in The Washington Post: "For an administration that [i.e. the Libby trial] has been unusually opaque and mostly insulated from aggressive congressional oversight and prosecutorial investigation, it may seem like a gut-churning harbinger." There's much truth to this. The list of persons potentially facing criminal liability for actions undertaken at the behest of George W. Bush or on behalf of his administration is extremely long. Of course, in practice it's exceedingly unlikely that Bush himself or, say, Donald Rumsfeld will ever face prosecution for war crimes they've ordered, but there's at least a chance. And from the top various forms of criminality go all the way down and fan out throughout the agencies.
This, it always seemed to me, was one of the great unreported pretexts of the 2004 election. Team Bush was, substantially, fighting for its continued freedom. The mere fact of re-election, however, greatly shields them. Without a successor to try to put into the White House, there's really very little impediment to the administration not only stonewalling at any turn, but simply handing out pardons whenever necessary. That's how his dad did business and it worked.
The All Wise Voices of Reason at The Washington Post editorial board poo-poo the Libby verdict and conclude with a sniff: "Mr. Fitzgerald was, at least, right about one thing: The Wilson-Plame case, and Mr. Libby's conviction, tell us nothing about the war in Iraq."
Come now. That reads like a dispatch from, say, mid-2004 when there was a serious debate in this country about the Iraq War. From the vantage point of March 2007 what could we possibly learn that would change our minds about the Iraq War. We learned, years ago, that the WMD case was a mess. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians have died. Nuclear proliferation in Iran and North Korea has gotten worse. Thousands of American soldiers are dead. Tens of thousands more are wounded, many of them seriously. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent. And nothing has been accomplished. There was nothing left for the Libby conviction to possibly tell us about the war; the war debate ship left the port years ago.
I got all excited because I thought Michael Ledeen was linking to an official announcement here:
I think the appeasers ought to have a candidate in the Republican primaries, and he's their ideal standard-bearer. So far as I know, he never met a dictator he didn't want to appease.
Turns out to just be some speculation. It's worth considering the charges here. Appeasement, as we know, is bad because when tried vis-a-vis Adolf Hitler it didn't succeed. Is it really so implausible that during Chuck Hagel's term in the Senate, from 1996 to the present day, he feels the United States has not encountered any genuinely Hitleresque dictators on the world stage?
This, of course, is the perplexing thing about the Munich analogy. It's made with a sort of eerie constancy, like the world is just chock-a-block with Hitlers. The salient fact about Hitler, however, and the world situation in the 1930s, is that it was unusual time and Hitler an unusual person. The suggestion that we should make recourse to strategies that, allegedly, would have, in retrospect, have been optimal for coping with Hitler as our regular basis for dealing with foreign leaders who don't eagerly submit to American hegemonic aspirations is daft.
Matt, people ask me, how could you have ever supported this war? It was a crazy time in American life. Today, for example, we're around the house listening to Love is Dead, the 1996 classic from The Mr. T Experience, pop-punk favorites from my youth. The heart and soul of the Experience, of course, is Dr. Frank. Doctor Frank has a blog. Back in the day, it was full of posts like this:
It's too bad he hasn't been giving speeches like this all along, but it's welcome nonetheless. After weeks of "leaks" and trial balloons about proposed scenarios for post-Saddam Iraq, the administration seems to have, at last, committed itself to the pro-democracy, neo-con program, or at least something along those lines. At the very least, any further waffling, wobbling, or backtracking, any hint that our efforts at Liberation will be less than sincere or thorough, any nod to the stability-at-all-costs mantra of Foggy Bottom and the GHWB alumni, can now be criticized fairly powerfully with a playback of the President's own words.
You have to understand, this isn't a rightwing propagandist blogging here. It's a freaking punk rock star. And, yes, he concludes with a parenthetical "Of course, in practical terms, the bluster-o-meter matters much less than the fact that the French attempt to wound the US by bringing down the Blair government appears to have failed." Fuck France!
And, I suppose, in some sense invading another country for no reason at all is sort of the most punk rock thing ever. Uncritically accepting the statements of the nation's political leaders, though, isn't so punk. I should have listened to Green Day but everyone knows they sold out.
So, um, Belle Waring's right about this. What to make of, say, the Pussycat Dolls trying to market themselves as feminist (via Jessica)? Well, it shows that marketing people are clever yet unscrupulous.
Never forget this classic blog post in which Brendan Nyhan finds Charles Krauthammer using the same "appeasement" quotation in separate columns about Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea.
I by no means begrudge airport baggage screeners their newfound union rights. Still, the speed, alacrity, and daring with which the Democrats pushed forward on this issue does make a telling contrast with the parties sloth and timidity in taking the progressive side in other fights about national security issue. Just as during the 2002 Homeland Security debate, you see that the Democratic Party is very substantially the creature of public sector unions. When an issue is important to them, Democrats will really fight for it. Not just lip service -- they'll run meaningful political risks on behalf of the public sector unions.
To stop a war with Iraq? To halt torture? Illegal surveillance? Suddenly you see a lot less speed, a lot less determination, and a lot less backbone. Not that I begrudge the unions their influence, either. They won it fair and square -- with organizing, with money, with volunteers, with discipline, with clear requests, etc. As you see with any influential group, securing influence takes work. Sadly, there are virtually no institutions of any consequence organized around providing a progressive take on the substance -- as opposed to labor procedures -- of national security issues. And until that changes, you'll keep having what we have today; a Democratic Party with very clear ideas about whether or not airport screeners should be represented by unions, but very hazy ideas about how to deal with Iran.
Brendan Nyhan has a smart take on yesterday's bogus Times story about some of Barack Obama's investments that "raise questions" about this and that. In fact, once you read through the whole article then go back and read it again to try to make sense of it, you'll see that no questions are, in fact, raised. Instead, Barack Obama made some financial transactions that the Times has no evidence were improper and for which there does not appear to be any realistic motive for improper action (nobody, for example, profited financially from the transaction) and for which there are perfectly plausible explanations.
The Times reporter, in short, saw something that did arguably raise questions. He looked into it. He found nothing. Then rather than printing nothing -- since, after all, that's what he found -- he instead went to press with a story that "raises questions" -- a formulation that simply amounts to a presumption of guilt. It raises the question of when America's newspapers just threw in the towel and decided they had no real obligations to inform their readers rather than mislead them.
George Will, preternatural optimist, says the GOP has three good choices for president. What about the Terrible Troika's dubious commitment to conservatism? Well, Will argues, Ronald Reagan didn't have a conservative record as governor. I'm not sure how true this is. Nevertheless, it's a classic form of argument that proves too much. I mean, would Mario Cuomo have been the greatest conservative president of all time. His record was really unconservative.
Recall these arguments from 1999-2000. People would point out that Bush seemed plainly not up to the job of running the United States of America. Some observed that Harry Truman didn't seem up to the job either. Ergo, not being up to the job must be a good thing. Or something. But, no. It turns out that Bush just wasn't up for the job.
Back in 1993, Rudy Giuliani plays the family card, deploying Donna Hanover's love and affection for him and his legendary skills as a father for political gain:
Nowadays, of course, young Andrew Giuliani is a bit older and not on speaking terms with his father. The source of the fight seems to be that Rudy not only divorced Andrew's mother, but insisted on publicly humiliating her in that uniquely classy Giuliani way. Mitt Romney, famously, is the only practicing monogamist among the Three Stooges.
I've finally gotten the chance to get through Joseph Cirincione's report for the Center for American Progress on recommended Iran policy options. They come out in favor of a sensible strategy they call "contain and engage." The basic idea is that you maintain a running dialogue with Iran offering carrots in exchange for verifiable steps at disarmament, while simultaneously maintaining a running dialogue with America's main allies and the other major powers about ratcheting-up Iran's diplomatic and economic isolation. The idea is to ensure that the United States is consistently the reasonable party, consistently the one prepared to strike a deal, and therefore that international diplomatic momentum remains on our side.
Among sensible people this is one major school of thought. The other, represented by Flynt Leverett's late 2006 report for the Century Foundations holds that we should be aiming at a "grand bargain" to resolve all the outstanding bilateral issues. This is, obviously, an appealing vision. The Center's authors say they "agree with the vision of a 'grand bargain' outlined by Middle East expert and former Bush administration official Flynt Leverett, who argues that the resolution of the nuclear issue requires 'an overarching framework in which outstanding bilateral differences are resolved as a package'" but that they think this is "not practical." Leverett, by contrast, thinks it's not practical to separate the issues.
I have no idea how to decide who's right about that, but it's a pretty small difference at the end of the day, since "engage and contain" could easily become "grand bargain" if the "engage" track seemed headed in that direction. It would be nice to have sensible people running the country.
In the midst of yet another post on unions, Tyler Cowen observes: "By the standards of labor economics, it does not suffice to note that the 1950s had both a more equal income distribution and more unions, or to call Western Europe a kinder, gentler place. Those citations don't sort out cause and effect, and in fact we do have more advanced ways of scrutinizing the data."
Obviously, that is true. Equally obviously, it sounds bad to speak in a disparaging way about empirical studies. That said, the result of my meta-survey of the empirical economics literature on unions is that it's . . . rather murky. Under the circumstances, I'm really not sure there's anything wrong with the heuristic methods Cowen disparages here. High levels of unionization are associated with politico-economic orders that are congenial to those of us of a certain political persuasion. Strong unions are simply part of the social democratic issue suite; social democrats support strong unions, strong unions support social democracy, and strong unions are partially constitutive of social democratic politics and policies.
Efforts to empirically disentangle the precise nature of the interrelationships here are, of course, an interesting scholarly endeavor and I don't begrudge anyone for spending their time looking into it. As a matter of political commitment, though, there's great wisdom in the example of anti-union semi-liberal Mickey Kaus who wisely recognizes in his book that he's abandonned egalitarian politics as they are traditionally understood. Consequently, I'm not sure it's in any real way worthwhile for non-specialists to engage in this debate since I assume we can all do an adequate job of Googling to try to find papers that support our conclusions or asking readers with access to superior specialized search tools to help us out.
Jacob Weisberg has a very excellent column on "four unspeakable truths about Iraq" that, frankly, surprises me for making all four dovish truths about Iraq, without some token poke at liberals. I actually don't think his fourth truth is true, though:
fourth and final near-certainty, which is in some ways the hardest for politicians to admit, is that America is losing or has already lost the Iraq war. The United States is the strongest nation in the history of the world and does not think of itself as coming in second in two-way contests. When it does so, it is slow to accept that it has been beaten.
I really think this is wrong. We won the war in Iraq. Saddam Hussein and his regime were deposed. We installed a new regime. The Sunni Arab insurgency remains active and will continue to remain active for osme time, but shows no realistic capability of defeating the regime we installed. We won the war. This is not Vietnam where the VC and PRVN drove US forces from the country, toppled the US-backed regime in Saigon, and unified the country under control of the Communist Party.
The problem in Iraq is that, we won a hollow victory. Defeating Saddam and replacing him with a new regime based around exiled Shiite political parties has a negative impact on America's strategic position in the world. Even were Iraq to grow substantially less chaotic over the next 2-5 years this would continue to be the case. The win-lose frame, while factually wrong, is also politically counterproductive. As Weisberg indicates, voters are reluctant to declare defeat for understandable psychological reasons. But there's no need to do that here. It's the fact of American victory that makes further involvement so untenable -- this is what winning looks like and, frankly, it looks like shit; there's no earthly reason to keep doing this; becoming "more successful" at backing the Maliki government wouldn't accomplish anything.
That'll be my quote of the day, courtesy of a nice but clueless older man who stopped by the Black Cat around 7:30 to wonder why all these people were standing on line in the cold. We were there to get the last of the tickets (all the ones available through Ticketmaster had sold out in a flash) available for the Dismemberment Plan's two nights only charity reuinion non-tour. And it only took waiting around in low-thirties weather for a bit more than three hours for the tickets to wind up in my hands.
Sweet, sweet victory. Why they didn't schedule these dates for the larger (and, frankly, far superior in terms of acoustics and sight lines despite the larger size) 9:30 Club is just one of those things I'll have to ponder, I suppose.
The great leader Petraeus says the surge is so successful it may need to get surgier, with even more troops thrown into the mix. This is, I think, the trouble with trying to solve Iraq's problems through sheer force of numbers at this point; if there are signs of improving conditions does that mean you need more troops (in which case what are you achieving) or fewer troops (in which case the problems will just come back)? The American strategy for Iraq can't be that we need an endlessly escalating military presence forever.
Through no fault of anyone's in the military, meanwhile, the administration has managed to become totally confused about our objectives in the region, where we're no longer sure if we're fighting Iran or al-Qaeda, if we're encouraging or discouraging sectarian conflict, if we favor Sunnis or Shiites. Under the circumstances, we can't possibly be brokering a viable political settlement; we don't even know what our goals are.
U.S. Bombards Iraq with Arcade Fire Hype ‘Operation Relentless Overkill’ Pounds Insurgents
. . . But even as American cargo planes blanketed insurgent positions with reprints of Arcade Fire puff pieces from The New Yorker and The New York Times, Iraqi insurgents fiercely fought off the waves of relentless indie band hype. Hassan El-Medfaii, a leading insurgent in the southern city of Basra, said that despite the relentless carpet-bombing of gushing Arcade Fire reviews, he was resisting attempts to compel him to buy the over-praised new CD.
I know the Americans’ game, and I won’t fall for it,” Mr. El-Medfaii said. “They tried this a couple of years ago with The Strokes.”
As Henley concedes, Neon Bible is, however, actually really good. My tentative conclusion, however, is that it's a non-trivial step backwards from Funeral.
... that Scooter Libby shouldn't be pardoned? Because Charles Krauthammer really wants to see it happen. As an approach to national policy, doing the reverse of what Krauthammer recommends will get you 87 percent or so of the way to perfection.
