Well, not really, but Josh Marshall has one and it's damn good. I wish he would write them more frequently. There seems to be a post-Memorial Day lull in the volume of scandals to cover.
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A Substantive Post About the Issues
31 May 2007 03:07 pm
Comments (18)
But Maynard, certain idiots and liars (see www.corner.nationalreview.com, e.g.) make for such an interesting bestiary of various American and otherwise English-speaking -- see Mark Steyn -- political pathologies, it's impossible to look away. With the exception of Derb, who is a racist but at least accepts empiricism, the Corner holds the macabre fascination of a terrible intellectual carwreck.
Besides, Josh posts on non-US Attorney stuff like what, every seven months? Well worth the wait, but still....
I have mixed feelings about Josh's post. He starts by discounting the e-mailer's statement, and then by the end almost endorses it.
Basically, one can either have a very dark view of the nature of these people (they are completely, knowingly dishonest about their true motivations) or a slightly less dark view (they are dishonest with themselves as well as us about their motivations). But both seem to be arguing that they have a single motivation (control of oil), that their conduct is consistent with that motivation, and that their other purporter motivations were not determinative.
I think Josh is almost certainly more correct than the e-mailer, but it strikes me as classic nuance to make one's statement less extreme, more palatable. And while that's good, it doesn't fit on a bumper sticker.
It's also a little weird - talkingpointsmemo over the last few days has finally opened up to an honest discussion about what really happened in this country. Why 4 years after the fact? I wonder why this is now safe to say? Because the Bush administration finally admitted they wanted permanent military bases? That's what they've been going for all along.
Apparently, it was "irrational" or "deranged" to attribute motives to them, clearly inferable from their actions, that they had not admitted. Why? We need to start have discourse where we focus on the actions of politicians, not their statements.
A little ways downstream of that post is another one from Marshall, which gives a pretty good take on Cheneyesque Grand Strategy:
"In one sense what we are talking about here is simply US-backed globalization based on neo-liberal economic principles. This is a story we're all familiar with. In a modified form at least it's an agenda I agree with. And part of this broad meta-discussion is the role of US hard power in providing the undergirding of a neoliberal world economic order -- much as pre-WWI free trade era was an ideological and economic construct made possible by the dominance of the British Navy.
Okay, so set all that to one side. And let's get at another part of the question.
I think the perceived need to exercise de facto physical control over these oil resources points to a different goal, a different perception of the kind of world system we're trying to build and where we fit into it. It suggests that we no longer believe we will continue to have the sort of economic and political clout that will allow us to maintain our standards of living and power in the world. So we need to lock down physical control of the oil now with our military power -- the lagging indicator of national decline. In other words, we need to use it before we lose it. It's a very pessimistic vision. And a strategy that's really not panning out so well. "
I think you guys have come to the right conclusions. I can't see how you missed this. When Kerry in the debates said, "These bases have a permanent characteristic to them," my response was duh. Of course, they do. That's how this works.
The thing that I would disagree with is this idea that securing the oil production isn't a good idea for the U.S and the world. Everyone understands that oil supplies aren't going to last forever(except for people who do global warming modeling). And if you've set yourself up to be the global world power, then you need to act like it.
I think the reason it's getting talked about now is that Republican and Democratic politicians thought the idea might work. Now Democrats and some Republicans think we won't pull it off(which we might not), so its okay to talk about it.
Kerry obviously understood in 2004 the strategy. He lost for a reason.
If the aim was to control the ME's resources, does democracy really play a role? Seems like a lot more carrots, albeit smaller ones, would need to be deployed, as opposed to just dealing with a puppet despot. I think the key phrase was 'democracy and [subsequent] chaos.'
However, it could be estimated that a government composed mainly of a generation of subjugated Shiites would be easily sated, whereas in the case of simple regime change the ante would be continuously upped as the new boss became as entrenched as the old one.
I think the greatest argument for the democratic goals of the administration was their premature attempts to turn Iraq into a free-market paradise. Although there is no glut of pragmatism in Bush's ME policy, even the neocons must have realized that anarchy could (and did) curtail all those plans. Installation of a new tyrant would have also 86'ed their grand capitalist experiment.
I love these "substantive" Josh Marshall posts. So unlike my own.
Okay, I should probably add that *of course* oil was one of the reasons the U.S. invaded Iraq. This is self-evident and can't be denied by anyone. The Middle East is only significant for three interrelated reasons in order of importance: 1) it has lots of oil, 2) it's a hotbed for radical terrorist idealogy, and 3) it has all the holy cities and shrines. You can dress it up with fancy rhetoric and high-minded ideals but that's the core of the situation. Nobody cares about Africa, do they?
That being said, it seems clear to me that the principal architects of the Iraq War were motivated mostly by neoconservative idealogy, including the President. I really believe that Bush invaded Iraq because he thought it would create a new flowering of liberal democracy in the Middle East (and also because Saddam Hussein tried to kill his dad). Oil was probably an incidental concern, at least to him.
Now of course Bush is just being a stubborn retard. So I don't agree with Josh Marshall in that regard. The rest of us recognize that the best way to rescue the Middle East democracy project is to initiate a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq. Bush, though, really thinks staying in Iraq is the best way to do this!
Right Korha. Bush is all about democracy. As evidenced by new stories every day. Let's see what's at the top of Kevin Drum's blog.
Oh yes:
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2007_05/011409.php
PURGEGATE UPDATE....Tom Hamburger of the LA Times writes today about Tom Heffelfinger, one of the U.S. Attorneys whose name turned up on a list of potential firees a few weeks ago. But why was this "embodiment of a tough Republican prosecutor" targeted? What had he done?
Part of the reason, government documents and other evidence suggest, is that he tried to protect voting rights for Native Americans.
....Citing requirements in a new state election law, Republican Secretary of State Mary Kiffmeyer directed that tribal ID cards could not be used for voter identification by Native Americans living off reservations. Heffelfinger and his staff feared that the ruling could result in discrimination against Indian voters. Many do not have driver's licenses or forms of identification other than the tribes' photo IDs.
....Newly obtained documents and interviews with government officials suggest that what displeased some of his superiors and GOP politicians was...his actions on Indian voting.
About three months after Heffelfinger's office raised the issue of tribal ID cards and nonreservation Indians in an October 2004 memo, his name appeared on a list of U.S. attorneys singled out for possible firing.
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Like I said. Liars or idiots.
"I think the greatest argument for the democratic goals of the administration was their premature attempts to turn Iraq into a free-market paradise." -- EpicureanQuaker
I have to disagree here. If they really cared about democracy, they would have left the state factories, banks, and other nationalized industry intact until political conditions became calm; instead, rather than accept the conquered nations' longstanding economic structure and just a teensy bit of socialism, the invaders (us) destroyed, or "privatized," that well-established state commercial and industrial network, throwing something like half the population out of work, and contributing to middle class flight from the country (which is now almost complete).
That strikes me as ideological, or even theological, in its devotion to free trade orthodoxy and ignorance of reality.
I'd also note that it doesn't seem like there was any coherent or single strategy that was pursued by the American government, but rather that a number of different factions in the government, with different motivations (the Cheney-Rumsfeld ultra-nationalist brutalists, the NeoCon/American Leninists of the Wolfowitz-Perle variety, careerists like Rice and Tenet, political operatives like Andy Card and Karl Rove, Bush himself, with his Oedipal complex and gigantic chip on his shoulder) came together on the idea of War in Iraq as the panacea, as the ultimate solution to their individual problems.
For the NeoCons, it would spread Global Democratic Capitalism to the benighted Arabs; for Rumsfeld-Cheney (and apparently Thomas Friedman (!)), it was necessary to hit back blindly and furiously, like Kennan's dinosaur, at some vague approximation of the Sept. 11 terrorists, and the Iraqis were the ones they could "do" most easily. For Rove and Card, and toa lesser extent Rice and Tenet, it would sway the President's political fortunes in the right direction, while for Bush himself, it was a final and unsubtle Fuck You to the Old Man.
By which I mean, yes, it was always about an American Raj, or forward base, or lilypad, or whatever the hell it's called nowadays.
Hohoho, Bush obviously has his hands in some dirty business here in the states. I wouldn't deny that.
Nevertheless, Bush also has a Middle East Democracy Project that he's made the centerpiece of his administration. I, personally, think he really just means what he says about this. Which isn't to say that other people and supporters of the Iraq war don't have different agendas or that Bush's Democracy Project isn't influenced consciously or unconciously by those other agendas.
Korha, I think that what everyone is trying to point out is that the administration considered privatization and the dismantling of the state sector took priority over creating a functional government in Iraq. Now, it may be that the reason for this is because they conflate privatization with democracy, but there it is. It's not enough to listen to what the Bush administration says. They might even believe what they're saying. It's more important to look at what they do. And what they do lends more credence to Josh's analysis than to yours.
My recollection (e.g., from James Fallows' big article in the Atlantic) is that the oil companies were a lot less enthusiastic about the Iraq Attaq than was the Israel Uber Alles crowd.
(The Israelis themselves weren't all that crazy about America invading Iraq -- they hated Syria and Iran more than Iraq -- but the faux sabras in DC and NYC were the leading voices for the invasion.)
I think the ultimate explanation, however, comes down to George W. Bush's awareness that he didn't have the talent or dedication to be a reasonably competent "inbox" President like his dad, who dealt with events as they occurred. Instead, the younger Bush decided to drive history by rolling the dice on a few big gambles, most notably Iraq. If he was right, he would be a successful President. If he was wrong, well, it's not like he'd be all that much more unsuccessful than if he didn't drive events.
Great points, Ben C...there's something tragically fitting about the 'Herman's Head'-style thinking that greenlighted this war, and how this superficial groupthink led to such a fiasco. Those are some things I explore further.
Thanks, EQ. "Herman's Head" _is_ sort of tragically apt, so for solace I turn to Hermann Hesse; STEPPENWOLF really speaks to the times, especially the great assaults on Harry Haller by the rightist/nationalist Weimar press... sounds a lot like what we're getting today.
In above post, I don't mean the rightwing attacks were "great," just Hesse's accurate and prescient description of 1927's version of the Right Wing Noise Machine.
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Comments closed June 14, 2007.
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Heads in the Sand
I subscribe to a laqrge number of podcasts from think tanks and universities, which raises the issue of how does one decide what is worth listening to.
Personally I've found that a very good heuristic is exactly what Josh describes. Anyone who thinks that the whole Iraq fiasco was ultimately about democracy, and that the Bush team seriously care about democracy abroad (especially since they don't seem to care much about it at home) is either an idiot or has an agenda, and in both cases is worth skipping over to the next piece of audio.
(This generalizes of course:
Anyone who starts off telling you that tax forms are too complicated, and that the solution is the flat tax, is lying to you.
Anyone who claims that terrorism is the most serious threat that has ever faced the US, or that it is even in the top ten current most serious threats facing the US, is lying to you.
And so it goes. The world is full of very smart, decent people, trying to explain it to you. Don't waste your time on the idiots and the liars.)
Posted by Maynard Handley | May 31, 2007 4:14 PM