January 4, 2006
In an exchange with reporters on Sunday, President Bush made a vigorous defense of the NSA domestic-spying program which included a misleading statement:
The NSA program is one that listens to a few numbers, called from the outside of the United States and of known al Qaeda or affiliate people. In other words, the enemy is calling somebody and we want to know who they're calling and why. . . .1
The program isn't limited to calls originating outside the country. His claim to the contrary has been interpreted as another example of Mr. Bush's "dysfunctional relationship with the truth,"2 probably an unfair appraisal, although understandable given the history. His aides are reported to have corrected the record: "The White House, clarifying the president's remarks after his appearance, said later that either end of the communication could in fact be outside the United States."3 In an earlier press conference, Mr. Bush had managed to get the country-of-origin concept straight: the calls intercepted "are from outside the country to in the country, or vice versa."4
His claim that domestic calls don't come within the program is more intriguing. The passage last quoted continues: "So in other words, this is not a -- if you're calling from Houston to L.A., that call is not monitored." An alert reporter noted that, if international calls contained such critical information that the government could not comply with FISA, the same might be true of domestic calls.
Q . . . You say you have an obligation to protect us. Then why not monitor those calls between Houston and L.A.? If the threat is so great, and you use the same logic, why not monitor those calls? . . .
THE PRESIDENT: We will, under current law, if we have to. We will monitor those calls. And that's why there is a FISA law. We will apply for the right to do so. And there's a difference -- let me finish -- there is a difference between detecting so we can prevent, and monitoring. And it's important to know the distinction between the two.
Q But preventing is one thing, and you said the FISA laws essentially don't work because of the speed in monitoring calls overseas.
THE PRESIDENT: I said we use the FISA courts to monitor calls. It's a very important tool, and we do use it. I just want to make sure we've got all tools at our disposal. This is an enemy which is quick and it's lethal. And sometimes we have to move very, very quickly. But if there is a need, based upon evidence, we will take that evidence to a court, in order to be able to monitor calls within the United States.
The only sense one could make of that is that no domestic call could fall into the "prevention" category, and mere "monitoring" can wait on the FISA process. That's hardly persuasive.
One possible explanation of these odd comments is that President Bush doesn't understand the program he authorized. Another is that the program is more extensive than admitted, and Mr. Bush's statements are his clumsy way of disguising that. Perhaps it's a combination of the two. News reports have suggested that all international calls have been monitored, not just the selected, al Qaeda-related calls mentioned by the President;5 domestic calls have been intercepted, although inadvertently and in small numbers;6 and the program may have begun in 2001, prior to known Presidential authorization.7 We may find that there is still more to it.
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1. www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/01/20060101.html
2. Robert Parry, www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010306Q.shtml
3. The New York Times 1/2/06.
4. www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/12/20051219-2.html
5. The Boston Globe 12/23/05.
6. The New York Times 12/21/05.
7. The Washington Post 1/4/06.
January 7, 2006
In his most recent column, Richard Cohen wrote that Tuesday was a good day for Senator John McCain: "Jack Abramoff pleaded guilty to various charges of corruption and . . . across town, the Department of Homeland Security announced it would henceforth depart from its customary procedure and award its anti-terrorism grants on the basis of merit." 1 However, Mr. Cohen's point wasn't that the Senator had cause for celebration of victories, but rather that the events simply showed the sort of mess he has said Washington is. Distributing security grants on the basis of need rather than as pork is progress, but I suppose that the point is that it should be a no-brainer, and the fact that it has taken this long is a sign of how bad things are. As to the Abramoff story it is true that Senator McCain hasn't had a great deal of success in changing the way Washington does business by regulating its financing, and Abramoff is the poster boy for the prevailing system.
Last Friday, Senator McCain had a similar day. President Bush signed the defense appropriations bill, which contains the McCain anti-torture amendment. Bush and McCain had gone toe to toe on this one, and Bush had backed down, abandoning his veto threat. However, in the peculiar passively-tough style of this administration, the President announced, quietly, that he hadn't given in after all and, by the way, his powers are unlimited.
The announcement was contained in a "signing statement" issued in conjunction with his approval of the defense bill. The significance of signing statements in the accretion of presidential power was disclosed, at least to me, in an article in The Boston Globe reporting that President Bush had "reserved the right to bypass the law under his powers as commander in chief." 2
Indeed he had.
The "President's Statement on Signing of H.R. 2863" consists of a series of declarations as to how sections of the bill will be interpreted. As to the McCain amendment, it says this:
The executive branch shall construe Title X in Division A of the Act, relating to detainees, in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President to supervise the unitary executive branch and as Commander in Chief and consistent with the constitutional limitations on the judicial power . . . ." 3
The President reserves the right to declare that the amendment has no force; as Commander in Chief, he can do whatever he wants. The Globe reported that the Washington director for Human Rights Watch called the signing statement "an 'in-your-face affront' to both McCain and to Congress." So it was; Senator McCain lost another battle, one which further demonstrates how bad things are. (We'll see who wins the war; McCain has challenged the President's rewriting his amendment).
The signing statement goes beyond ignoring Congress and establishing executive-branch interpretation. It also in effect directs the courts to comply. The passage quoted rests its interpretation not only on the President's powers as Commander, but on "the constitutional limitations on the judicial power." In other words, it asserts that the courts cannot interfere with any exercise of the President's authority if it is declared by him to involve his war powers, a position which the administration already has taken, with a frightening degree of success, in litigation. The statement goes on to declare that the amendment creates no private right of action; that may be a correct interpretation, but it is one for the courts to make.
According to Dr. Christopher Kelley, a political scientist who has studied such things, the use of the signing statement to establish presidential power dates to the Reagan administration.44 That use was advocated in 1986 by none other than Samuel Alito. In his view, "the issuance of interpretive signing statements . . . would increase the power of the Executive to shape the law." 5
Tucked away in the quote from the signing statement is this intriguing phrase: "the constitutional authority of the President to supervise the unitary executive branch." "Unitary executive" is a code for presidential power. This, too was a revelation to me. (I thought that I had been paying attention, but there it is.)6 The term logically is related to a desire to bring executive branch agencies under more direct and detailed presidential control. However, the Bush administration has appropriated the concept to justify its drive for unchecked power. The phrase only recently has attracted any attention, but it has been used repeatedly enough that we might have noticed it; Dr. Kelley estimated that President Bush had used it 95 times, in signing statements and executive orders, by April, 2005. Perhaps the clash with Senator McCain will drag the Bush theory of executive power into the light.
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1. "McCain's Day to Crow," The Washington Post 12/5/06.
2. Charlie Savage, "Bush Could Bypass New Torture Ban, 1/4/06.
3. www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/12/20051230-8.html
4. "Rethinking Presidential Power - The Unitary Executive and the George W. Bush Presidency," April, 2005. www.users.muohio.edu/kelleycs/paper.pdf
5. "Using Presidential Signing Statement to Make Fuller Use of the President's Constitutionally Assigned Role in the Process of Enacting Law," www.archives.gov/news/samuel-alito/accession-060-89-269/Acc060-89-269-box6-SG-LSWG-AlitotoLS WG-Feb1986.pdf
6. Dr. Kelley and Tom Engelhardt (www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=46791) point out that the term was used by Dana Milbank of The Washington Post in November, 2004 in describing the views of David Addison, now Cheney's chief of staff.
January 10, 2006
President Bush spoke to a veterans' group on Tuesday. Little of what he said was new, and much of it was a rerun of his speeches last month. However, he did, for the first time I can recall, drop a specific hint about partial withdrawal. Prefaced by the familiar stand-up, stand-down formula, he said this: "our commanders on the ground have determined that we can decrease our combat forces in Iraq from 17 to 15 brigades by the spring of 2006. . . . This adjustment will result in a net decrease of several thousand troops below the pre-election baseline of 138,000 U.S. troops in Iraq."1 He went on to say that he expects to "discuss further possible adjustments with the leaders of Iraq's new government" later in the year. He added the now-standard swipe at Rep. Murtha: withdrawal won't follow "artificial timetables set by Washington politicians." Mr. Bush instead vowed that instead it would be conditioned on Iraqi progress; however it's likely that, as November approaches, such progress will be detected. Withdrawal actually will be due to an artificial timetable set by Washington politicians.
Since the declared criteria are unlikely to be met, it is fortunate that political pressure will force some reduction in force. The human cost of the occupation has settled into an incredibly consistent pattern, 848 military deaths in 2004 (2.317 per day), 846 in 2005 (2.318 per day).
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1. www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/01/20060110-1.html
January 12, 2006
President Bush went before another audience of supporters yesterday in his ongoing attempt to demonstrate that only he stands between us and the next terrorist attack and that everything he has done was both necessary and lawful. Most of his address and his answers to softball questions repeated standard formulas, but some of it was revealing.
The current, revised, fallback, self-justifying rationale for our involvement in Iraq is found in this sequence of claims:
I understand that the intelligence didn't turn out the way a lot of the world thought it would be. . . . But Saddam Hussein was a sworn enemy of the United States. . . . I mean, the guy was a threat.1
(Saddam was a threat because he might have loaded his non-existent WMD on my imaginary UAVs.)
We gave the opportunity to Saddam Hussein to open his country up. It was his choice. He chose war, and he got war. And he's not in power, and the world is better off for it.
(So he let inspectors in and they didn't find any WMD; big deal. He had a bad attitude, and we just knew that there was something wrong. He was evil, and that's enough.)
. . . Now that I've made the decision, we must succeed in Iraq. . . . Now that we're there, in my humble opinion, we have got to succeed.
(Never mind whether we should have invaded or whether we've bungled everything so far. We can't quit while we're behind, so we must blunder ahead and hope that something, somehow goes right.)
. . . The enemy has got one weapon -- I repeat to you -- and that's to shake our will. I just want to tell you, whether you agree with me, or not, they're not going to shake my will. . . .
(If I admit that this all was a colossal mistake, I'm going to look really bad.)
. . . I know a lot of people want our troops to come home -- I do, too. But I don't want us to come home without achieving the victory. We owe that to the mothers and fathers and husbands and wives who have lost a loved one. . . . I feel strongly that . . . we can't let their sacrifice go in vain.
(See above.)
Mr. Bush made other points about Iraq:
The hardest decision I made as your President is to put troops into harm's way, because I understand the consequences. I see the consequences when I go to the hospitals. I see the consequences when I try to comfort the loved ones who have lost a son or a daughter in combat. I understand that full -- firsthand: War is brutal. And so I didn't take the decision lightly.
His firsthand knowledge exists only in the imagination of his speechwriters, and he's given no sign of concern about the suffering of others.
. . . When you put these kids in harm's way, we owe them the best equipment, the best training, and a strategy for victory. . . .
When did he honor that commitment? The recent stories about the delays in providing body armor are only the latest revelations of unpreparedness and unconcern.
Mr. Bush made this confused comment about troop levels: "I don't know if you've noticed recently, but we're beginning to reduce presence in Iraq based upon the recommendation of our commanders. We've gone from 17 to 15 battalions." On Tuesday, he had said "our commanders on the ground have determined that we can decrease our combat forces in Iraq from 17 to 15 brigades by the spring of 2006." Leaving aside his uncertainty about battalions v. brigades, his statement yesterday described a plan as an accomplished fact. It also reflected an enthusiasm for force reduction which has been notably absent until now.
Then there is the NSA spying program. The President said yesterday "It's been authorized, reauthorized many times." This is the sort of self-referential analysis which might appeal to an aspiring dictator: he authorized it, so "it's been authorized." In a slightly more objective vein, he offered this justification: "I have the right as the Commander-in-Chief in a time of war to take action necessary to protect the American people." This is the spurious "unitary-executive," unlimited-presidential- powers argument.
"And secondly, the Congress, in the authorization, basically said the President ought to -- in authorization of the use of troops -- ought to protect us. Well, one way to protect us is to understand the nature of the enemy. Part of being able to deal with this kind of enemy in a different kind of war is to understand why they're making decisions they're making inside our country." That is no more convincing; the resolution adopted after 9/11 provides as follows:
Resolved . . . That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.2
There is nothing there about domestic surveillance. Former Senator Daschle has made clear that such authority was rejected.
Recognizing the controversy over his actions, Mr. Bush added "There will be a lot of hearings and talk about that, but that's good for democracy -- just so long as the hearings, as they explore whether or not I have the prerogative to make the decision I made[,] doesn't [sic] tell the enemy what we're doing." It's difficult not to conclude that the enemy he had in mind is his political opposition.
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1.www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/01/20060111-7.html
2. http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c107:2:./temp/~c10781Jqnu::
January 26, 2006
The Washington legislature has before it a proposal regarding employer-provided health coverage. It would direct any employer with 5,000 or more employees to
(a) Spend at least nine percent of the employer's payroll on health care services expenditures; or
(b) Pay to the director [of the Department of Labor & Industries] an amount equal to the difference between the employer's health care services expenditures and an amount equal to nine percent of the employer's payroll."1
(For nonprofit or governmental entities, the standard would be 7%). Amounts paid to the Director would be deposited to an existing Health Services Account which is used "for maintaining and expanding health services access for low-income residents, maintaining and expanding the public health system, maintaining and improving the capacity of the health care system, containing health care costs, and the regulation, planning, and administering of the health care system."
The bill is similar to one passed in Maryland this month over its governor's veto. Wal-Mart has been central to the discussion in both states.
Columns expressing opposition to the bills have been remarkable in number and more so in their enthusiasm for Wal-Mart. In the space of three days in late November, when the campaigns to sustain or override the Maryland veto were under way, defenses of Wal-Mart were provided by John Tierney in The New York Times ("The Good Goliath"), Sebastian Mallaby in The Washington Post ("Progressive Wal-Mart. Really") and Michael Medved in The Seattle Times ("Attention, Wal-Mart Critics").
The introduction of the bill here (bills, actually; there are identical House and Senate versions) prompted more editorializing. P-I Business writer Bill Virgin opined that they proceed from "the legally and morally dubious notion that government has any business dictating how much companies should pay for anything, outside of taxes and fees for government services." There goes the minimum wage. The P-I editorial page concurred ("the bills call for a troubling state incursion into the private sector"), but it moved beyond that formulaic response to propose a more radical cure: "The health care solution lies in a broader, national rethinking of the way health care is delivered and funded, not more jerry-rigging [sic] of an increasingly outmoded employer-provision model." However, any serious proposal for national health care would result in still more anguished cries from conservatives, as they would see not mere intrusion into companies' affairs but the dreaded shadow of socialism.
The legislation received a boost from a state report leaked on Tuesday which reportedly shows that, "throughout 2004, an average 3,180 Wal-Mart employees were receiving state-funded medical assistance, including Medicaid, for themselves or for a dependent."2 That was the largest number for any Washington employer. Second, at 1,824, was McDonald's, including employees of company stores and franchises. Safeway had 1,539, good for third place. The estimates of employees are about 16,000 for Wal-Mart, 12,000 for McDonald's and 16,000 for Safeway, producing percentages of 19.8, 15.2 and 9.6 respectively.
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1. HB 2517, SB 6356: §4.
2. The Seattle Times 1/24/06.
January 28, 2006
Last Monday President Bush took real questions from a real audience at Kansas State University. It is a mark of his limitations that this is news, especially as he didn't exactly venture into hostile territory.
The exchange which has had the most play concerned a suggestion that Mr. Bush see "Brokeback Mountain," which left him embarrassed and incoherent. The answer, though, was less interesting than the question: "You're a rancher. A lot of us here in Kansas are ranchers. I was just wanting to get your opinion on 'Brokeback Mountain,' if you've seen it yet? You would love it. You should check it out." 1 The preamble apparently was intended to suggest that ranchers might have a different view of the movie than others. However, what struck me about it is the description of Mr. Bush as a rancher, which he certainly is not. It was especially strange coming from someone who ought to be able to tell one when he sees one. Maybe the Kansan was being polite or maybe the first sentence was just part of a peg to hang the question on, but it is typical of the willingness of Americans to accept the false picture that Mr. Bush's handlers have painted of him.
The most significant example of that phenomenon is the conception of Mr. Bush as our protector against terrorist attacks. This is virtually the only area in which his ratings, or those of the administration, have remained positive. In polls taken this month by CBS, CNN-USA Today-Gallup, ABC-Washington Post, and CBS-New York Times, Mr. Bush was regarded favorably by 51 or 52 percent in "handling terrorism" or "handling the campaign against terrorism." When the question was put differently, asking whether the government can prevent terrorist attacks, the results in several polls did not reveal overwhelming confidence, but the generally positive responses ranged from 50 to 69 percent, presumably reflecting well on the President:
Pew Research, Jan. 4-8, 2006:2
In general, how well do you think the U.S. government is doing in reducing the threat of terrorism: very well, fairly well, not too well, or not at all well?
Very Well - 16 Fairly Well - 50CBS, Jan. 5-8, 2006:
How much confidence do you have in the ability of the U.S. government to protect its citizens from future terrorist attacks: a great deal, a fair amount, not very much, or none at all?
A Great Deal - 21 A Fair Amount - 48
CNN-USA Today-Gallup, Jan. 20-22, 2006:
How much confidence do you have in the Bush Administration to protect U.S. citizens from future acts of terrorism: a great deal, a moderate amount, not much, or none at all?
A Great Deal - 30 A Moderate Amount - 34
ABC-Washington Post, Jan. 23-26, 2006:3
How much confidence do you have in the ability of the U.S. government to prevent further terrorist attacks against Americans in this country: a great deal, a good amount, only a fair amount or none at all?
A Great deal - 19 A Good amount - 31
At first glance, it's difficult to see where these results come from. It's true, and has been emphasized by the administration, that there has been no attack since September 11, 2001. However, that attack occurred on the Bush watch and there are numerous, reasonably well-publicized indications that the administration not only was unprepared for it but was careless about the potential threat before 9-11 and dishonest about its record afterward. The government remains unready in many respects and Katrina showed what a mess Homeland Security is.
Responses in the two most recent polls offer possible clues to the results. Perhaps people buy the argument that, by fighting in Iraq, we are forestalling attacks here.
ABC-Post:
Do you think the war with Iraq has or has not contributed to the long-term security of the United States? IF YES: Has it contributed to the long-term security of the United States a great deal, or somewhat?
A Great Deal - 32 Somewhat - 21 Has Not - 45CBS-NYTimes, Jan. 20-25, 2006:
As a result of the United States' military action against Iraq, do you think the United States is more safe from terrorism, less safe from terrorism, or hasn't it made any difference?
More safe - 39 Less safe - 19 No difference - 40
However, that positive response is not based on either the President's performance or the public's view of the outcome.
ABC-Post:
Do you approve or disapprove of the way Bush is handling . . . the situation in Iraq?
Approve - 39 Disapprove - 60CBS-NYTimes:
Do you approve or disapprove of the way George W. Bush is handling the situation with Iraq?
Approve - 37 Disapprove - 59
ABC-Post:
All in all, considering the costs to the United States versus the benefits to the United States, do you think the war with Iraq was worth fighting, or not?
Worth fighting - 44 Not worth fighting - 55
CBS-NYTimes:
Looking back, do you think the United States did the right thing in taking military action against Iraq, or should the U.S. have stayed out?
Right thing - 47 Stay out - 50
Here's another possible answer:
ABC-Post:
Please tell me whether the following statement applies to Bush or not:
He is a strong leader: Yes - 52 No - 48
He can be trusted in a crisis: Yes - 53 No - 47CBS-NYTimes:
Do you think George W. Bush has strong qualities of leadership, or not?
Yes - 53 No - 45
These ratings seem to be based primarily on tough talk. To take a recent example, the debate over domestic spying has produced mixed responses to specific questions, but Mr. Bush's defiant stance, asserting that he's doing what must be done to catch terrorists, probably has enhanced his ratings in the two categories above. Since the NSA program was revealed, the "yes" responses in the ABC poll have jumped five and four points respectively and the CBS "yes" also went up by four.
Finally, Mr. Bush undoubtedly benefits from a more general public view about the how the parties rate on national security; according to the ABC-Post poll, people apparently think this:
Which political party, the (Democrats) or the (Republicans), do you trust to do a better job [of] . . .
Handling the U.S. campaign against terrorism
Democrats - 41 Republicans - 46
even though they think this:
Handling the situation in Iraq
Democrats - 47 Republicans - 40
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1.www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/01/20060123-4.html
2. Poll results, except for the recent ABC-Washington Post, at www.pollingreport.com/terror.htm
3.www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/polls/postpoll_ethics_012706.htm
When I have stopped at the "Current Events" section of Barnes & Noble over the last few years, I have been struck by the number of pop-political books by conservatives whining about the potent threat to America posed by liberalism. (I must confess that I'm judging these books by their covers - or, more specifically, by their titles - as I have better things to do with my money than to learn where Ann Coulter has found evidence of treason.) A sampling:
Slander: Liberal Lies about the American Right
Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on TerrorismMona Charen
Do-Gooders: How Liberals Hurt Those They Claim to Help (And the Rest of Us)
Useful Idiots: How Liberals Got It Wrong in the Cold War and Still Blame America
Bernard Goldberg
100 People Who Are Screwing Up America (And Al Franken is #37)
Sean Hannity
Deliver Us from Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism and Liberalism
Let Freedom Ring: Winning the War of Liberty over Liberalism
Michelle Malkin
Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone Wild
Michael Savage
The Enemy within: Saving America from the Liberal Assault on Our Schools, Faith and Military
My usual response has been to wonder what planet these folks live on; liberalism isn't much of a threat here. However, two commentaries I have read in the past few days suggest a reason for this wave of apparent paranoia.
One is a review by Thomas Frank, in the current issue of Harper's, of 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America. Mr. Frank begins with an observation that suggests that he finds the book as detached from reality as all of them seem to me: "History will record that in the week our laissez-faire government fiddled while a major city drowned, the fourth most popular non-fiction book in the land, according to the New York Times, was an itemized account of the ways in which liberals are ruining the country." He notes that it "offers each of the genre's trademark maneuvers the tone of perpetual indignation, the strident pseudopopulism, the assumption that liberals run things even when they manifestly don't . . . ." However, he believes that the seemingly irrelevant ranting serves a purpose:
It is true that the anti-liberal genre is a predictable one, offering little by way of novelty or critical thinking, and as such it is rarely taken seriously in reviews. This is a mistake. Anti-liberalism is, in my judgment, as important to the thirty-year dominion of the right as is any promise of balanced budgets or program for "compassionate conservatism"; it is, without doubt, a more powerful faith than the free-market fundamentalism peddled by Wall Street and its retinue of subsidized libertarians. . . .1
He's right: anti-liberalism can be a weapon with which to intimidate the opposition; it can be a rallying cry, a cause that binds the right together; or, at least, it can be a device for focusing the right's view on the opposition and away from its internal contradictions.
The other source is David Brock's book, Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative; it was published in 2002, but I'm just reading it now. Reflecting on the origins of the conservative movement, Brock says that Newt Gingrich
introduced a new style of Republicanism, based on confronting and demonizing the liberal culture that supported the big government idea. Newt understood that conservatism thrives only when it has an enemy, and in the Cold War's wake, Newt declared war again, this time on the domestic enemy, the Democratic Party and the "corrupt liberal welfare state" it sustained. . . . 2
Communism had served as the enemy, but that war had been won and another enemy was required. As an illustration of the transition to the domestic war, Brock offers a quote from an article by Irving Kristol. The following is a longer passage from that article, placing Kristol's statement within the context of his move from liberalism to neoconservatism, which was accompanied by a loathing for his former home:
. . . Resistance to the imperialist designs of communist totalitarianism was essential, of course. How to make such resistance maximally effective was a political challenge, as was resistance to the ever-mounting passion for appeasement evident in liberal circles.
But what began to concern me more and more were the clear signs of rot and decadence germinating within American society a rot and decadence that was no longer the consequence of liberalism but was the actual agenda of contemporary liberalism. . . .
For me, then, "neoconservatism" was an experience of moral, intellectual, and spiritual liberation. I no longer had to pretend to believe what in my heart I could no longer believe that liberals were wrong because they subscribe to this or that erroneous opinion on this or that topic. No liberals were wrong, liberals are wrong, because they are liberals. . . .
. . . There is no "after the Cold War" for me. So far from having ended, my cold war has increased in intensity, as sector after sector of American life has been ruthlessly corrupted by the liberal ethos. . . . We have, I do believe, reached a critical turning point in the history of the American democracy. Now that the other "Cold War" is over, the real cold war has begun. . . .3
This received official blessing at the Republican convention in 1992, when Rich Bond, Chairman of the Party, declared "We are America. Those other people are not." 4 This real-America argument remains central to Republican propaganda and to the image of the parties created by that propaganda.
Communism still had its uses in the early 90s; during the 1992 campaign, Bill Clinton was labeled a communist for having traveled to Moscow. Of course, equating liberals to communists was hardly a new dodge, but, with the threat of communism fading, equating the two at that point served primarily as a jump-start for the new paradigm: liberals as liberals are the enemy. As Brock puts it, Gingrich's "analogy of American liberalism to world Communism made it possible for us to continue to divide the world into white hats and black hats, to channel our fears in a new direction. No longer would the Democrats simply be opposed; they would be destroyed."5
All of this resembles a description of the views of the German political philosopher Carl Schmitt:
. . . Schmitt takes the question with which all political theory must begin What is politics? and reformulates it as: What is "the political" (das Politische)? By "the political" he does not mean a way of life or a set of institutions, he means a criterion for making a certain kind of decision. Morality finds such a criterion in the distinction between good and bad, aesthetics finds it in the distinction between beauty and ugliness. What is the criterion appropriate to politics? Schmitt answers in his characteristically oracular style: "The specific political distinction to which political actions and motives can be reduced is that between friend and enemy."6
Not only is politics, in this view, a struggle with the enemy, a group is defined by that struggle, defined by the selection of an enemy:
. . . [F]or Schmitt a collectivity is a political body only to the degree that it has enemies. . . . Enmity is a precisely defined relation that arises when, and only when, I recognize that certain persons or groups are "existentially something different and alien," and represent "the other, the stranger." Schmitt does not use the term "existential" casually; he believes that defining one's enemies is the first step toward defining one's inner self. "Tell me who your enemy is and I'll tell you who you are". . . . 7
This is contemporary American conservatism. Contrary to its reputation as the source of political ideas, it is literally a reactionary movement, taking its strength and its identity from swearing the destruction of that mild, inoffensive, ineffectual creature, contemporary American liberalism. As Frank puts it, in a somewhat lighter vein,
Politics, according to this view, is not really a struggle for state power or the marshaling of movements or an effort to bring economic forces under control, as historians or sociologists might tell you; it is instead a war between personality types. The problem that we go into politics in order to solve, ultimately, is people liberal people. It is not a problem that can be fixed with tax cuts or government programs but only by getting liberals somehow to stop to stop their liberalizing, stop "inflicting their inanity on the rest of us," stop "screwing up America" by saying the offensive things they say.8
It has worked, as the reluctance of Democrats to take anything but safe, centrist positions demonstrates.
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1. "Taking Names: Anti-liberalism in theory and practice," Harper's February, 2006, p. 85.
2. Blinded by the Right, p. 60.
3. "My Cold War," reprinted in Neoconservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea, pp. 481-86. One of the annoyances of reading Blinded by the Right is that there are no footnotes or endnotes, so finding sources often is difficult. Here the author did identify the quote as being from The National Interest in 1993. Blinded does not even have an index.
4. Brock offers no source for this quote. I found several versions, some slightly different: "We are America, the other side is not" or "We are America, they are not America."
5. Blinded by the Right, pp. 60-61.
6. Mark Lilla, The Reckless Mind: Intellectuals in Politics, p.57.
7. The Reckless Mind, pp. 56-57.
8. "Taking Names," p. 88.
February 11, 2006
The failure to mount challenges to the administration in Congress usually has been analyzed, appropriately enough, in terms of the aimlessness and spinelessness of the Democratic members. However, there also has been an institutional failure. An article Wednesday suggested, in the context of the domestic-spying issue, that some in the Senate are beginning to be concerned about this: "If the president is not checked, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle argue, then the constitutional balance of power could shift away from the Congress for at least a generation."1
The balance of power shifted some time ago, and it isn't clear to me where the generational reference comes from. Whether the pendulum swings back probably depends on two factors: the partisan lineup and the war issue. Whenever Congress and the President again represent different parties, Congress will become more assertive; however, whenever a President can wave the battle flag, there will be a tendency to grant sweeping power, and each concession in that area makes the next contest harder for Congress to win. If it continues to acquiesce in the permanent-war paradigm, the shift also will be permanent.
The article quoted Sen. Lindsey Graham as an example of the new enlightenment: "I'm for the president's inherent authority to conduct the war, but not to neuter the other two branches." That comment was made during the testimony of Attorney General Gonzales about the NSA surveillance program. However, Senator Graham began his questioning by telling the AG "I find your testimony honest, straightforward. You[r] legal reasoning is well articulated."2 That takes a fair amount of courtesy, deference or self-deception. (He did add that he didn't agree with everything that Gonzales said.)
The Senator then asked this: "About hiding something about this program, is it not true that the Congress has been briefed extensively -- at least a small group of congressmen and senators -- about this program?" Apparently the parenthetical doesn't, in his view, detract from his claim that Congress knew all about the spy program, even though the few who were notified were sworn to secrecy. Never mind: somehow everyone was supposed to have known.
After Gonzales' predictably affirmative response, Graham continued with his argument that Congress is to blame for allowing the spy program to continue: "And if any member of this body believes that you've done something illegal, they could put in legislation to terminate this program, couldn't they? Isn't that our power? . . ." Yes, again. Then, apparently addressing Congressional critics, the Senator added "Well, I would think, if you believe that our president was breaking the law, you'd have the courage of your convictions and you'd stop funding for it. . . ." However, that was just a bit of partisan rhetoric; he doesn't believe in confrontation:
Now, it seems to me there's two ways we can do this. We can argue what the law is, we can argue if it was broken, . . . or we can find consensus as to what the law should be. And I associate myself with Senator DeWine as to what I think it should be. In a dangerous and difficult time for our country, I chose inquiry versus inquisition, collaboration versus conflict.
That noble sentiment offers the administration a pass on its violation of the law.
Here's what Senator DeWine thinks the law should be:
. . . I truly believe that the American people expect the president of the United States, in a time of national emergency and peril, to take actions to protect them, even if those actions are not specifically authorized by statute. . . .
Second, though, it is clear that there are serious legal and constitutional questions concerning whether the Fourth Amendment's reasonable requirement for searches requires the president, after a period of time, after a program has been in place for a period of time, to come to the Congress for statutory authorization to continue such actions.
Legal scholars, Mr. Attorney General, can and certainly are debating this issue. But what is not debatable is that both from a constitutional as well as from a policy point of view, the president and the American people would be stronger -- this country would be stronger and the president would be stronger -- if he did so, if he did come to the Congress for such specific statutory authorization.
There was a reason that President George H.W. Bush and President George W. Bush both came to Congress prior to the respective wars in Iraq, even though some people argued -- and would still argue today -- that such resolutions were legally, constitutionally, unnecessary.
Presidents are always stronger in the conduct of foreign affairs when Congress is on board.
Statutory authorization and congressional oversight for this program would avoid what may be a very divisive, hurtful debate here in Congress. . . .
Mr. Attorney General, we need meaningful oversight by the Intelligence Committee, followed then by whatever statutory changes in the law might be appropriate.
Perhaps that could be interpreted as an assertion of Congressional authority, but it strikes me as a timid plea to be allowed to have a part in the grand cause. In his view, "some four years into this program this debate could be put aside," as if we had been laboring a known issue for that long, rather than recently discovering four years of deceit.
Senator DeWine suggested that FISA could be amended to exempt "surveillance of international communications where one party to the communications is a member of or affiliated with Al Qaida or a related terrorist group" - thus accepting the administration's dubious description of its project - in exchange for classified "oversight." He ended his first round by offering Gonzales an opportunity to claim that the FISA process is too time consuming, which he took. This, then, is the approach with which Senator Graham associated himself.
On the plus side, Senator Graham made clear that he did not intend, in voting for the post-9/11 force resolution, to authorize domestic spying; he added a pointed comment: if the administration persists in such arguments, it may have difficulty getting future force resolutions, or they may be loaded with exceptions.
The statement quoted in the news article was made in the course of a rambling series of questions about inherent presidential authority in the context of prisoner abuse:
Now, to the inherent authority argument, taken to its logical conclusion, it concerns me that it could basically neuter the Congress and weaken the courts. And I'd like to focus a minute on the inherent authority of the president during a time of war concept.
*** And if you take your inherent authority argument too far, then I am really concerned that there is no check and balance. And when the nation's at war, I would argue, Mr. Attorney General, you need checks and balances more than ever, because within the law we put a whole group of people in jail who just looked like the enemy.
As noted below, Senator Graham has acted on that belief, but only to the extent of preventing abuse, not of challenging detention.
In the second round of questions, Senator Graham, again echoing a suggestion by Senator DeWine, expressed his desire to "engage in a collaborative process with the administration to see if we can resolve this tension." He returned to his concerns regarding the inherent-authority argument, about which, appropriately, he feels strongly. However, he allowed Gonzales to put him off with generalities about the sharing of power by Congress and the President. Senator Graham said some very sensible things, but this was not, on the whole, an exercise in defiance.
Senator Graham's voting record on the issue of relative power of the branches is equally mixed. He joined with Senator McCain to oppose abuse of prisoners, which resulted in passage of an anti-torture amendment to the defense appropriations bill. That certainly goes in the plus column, but it remains to be seen what Congress will do with the President's statement that he will ignore the amendment if it pleases him to do so; Senator Graham allowed the Attorney General to slide on that issue. The Senator sponsored another amendment, dealing with prisoners at Guantánamo, which has some virtue but must be placed on the debit side of the ledger. It subjected the bizarre and unjust procedures followed by the administration to some limited Congressional and judicial oversight, but denied meaningful habeas corpus rights, which is a stunning concession to arbitrary executive power, especially considering that the Supreme Court recently recognized such rights. The Court, at least in its pre-Roberts and Alito form, was less willing to defer to the "war president."
Of course, Senator Graham is not alone in his ambivalence. Senator Levin co- sponsored the Graham amendment. He justified this by saying that it would have been worse without his intervention, which may well be true, but it still is another instance of Democratic capitulation. The pattern is that Democrats give in to or compromise with Republicans, who then give in to or compromise with the White House. The present administration is the most incompetent in memory, so the results are not good.
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1. "Senate Toughens Scrutiny of Wiretapping," The Christian Science Monitor 2/8/06.
2. Transcript of the hearing at www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/06/AR2006020600931.html
February 25, 2006
President Bush made another neo-Wilsonian speech Friday; as usual it was to a sympathetic audience, this time the American Legion.1 He announced that the administration is following a "forward strategy for freedom," which the Washington Post reported as if it were something new.2 In fact it is a rerun of a slogan ("forward strategy of freedom") embedded in a pompous speech delivered by Mr. Bush in November, 2003, as he sought a fallback rationale for the invasion of Iraq.3 Vice President Cheney repeated the slogan in March, 2004.4
The strategy was described as applying not only to Iraq but to the "broader Middle East," which seems to include the region otherwise known as Central Asia. The theory was that our example, lectures and arms would bring democracy to that region, which would in turn bring freedom and peace. It hasn't worked out well. Iraq is in flames. Democratic elections have produced governments we don't like, leading to our meddling in Iraq and our attempts, thus far clumsy and ineffective, to undermine Hamas.
While one Post reporter was announcing the supposedly new forward strategy, another reported its demise, or at least extreme ill health, in a story captioned "U.S. Looks to Baghdad to Deal With Violence." In other words, we're finally moving toward disengagement in Iraq. One would not know that, however, from the President's speech, which strung together the standard frightened-defensive-imperialist clichés and added a new one, perhaps not the most felicitous given recent events: "We will stay in the hunt, we will never give in, and we will prevail."
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1. www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/02/20060224.html
2. "Bush: U.S. Setting a 'Forward Strategy for Freedom', " 2/24/06.
3. www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/11/20031106-2.html. Excerpts are included in my note of 11/7/03.
4. www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/03/20040317-3.html
February 28, 2006
President Bush's image as a strong leader and protector of national security took a serious hit this month. The problem arises from the acquisition, by a company based in the United Arab Emirates, of a British company which operates terminals in several U.S. ports. The acquisition of Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company (P&O) by Dubai Ports World (DPW) was approved by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), an interagency group which includes the Secretaries of Homeland Security and Defense and the National Security Advisor.1 When the approval became known, a wave of protests followed.
On February 21, President Bush held an impromptu press conference on Air Force One to respond to the criticism, and came across as dense. "I really don't understand why it's okay for a British company to operate our ports, but not a company from the Middle East, when our experts are convinced that port security is not an issue . . . ." 2 The President omitted to mention that DPW is not merely foreign-owned, but owned by Dubai, one of the Emirates of the UAE. A foreign government would, in effect, manage the ports, which might tend to explain the criticism.
He positioned himself as a foe of bias: "I want those who are questioning it to step up and explain why all of a sudden a Middle Eastern company is held to a different standard than a Great British [sic] company." Considering the administration's attitude toward the Middle East - declaring Iraq and Iran to be two-thirds of the axis of evil, invading one and threatening the other, along with Syria - that statement is more than a little weird.
Asked whether his State of the Union pledge to free us from addiction to Middle Eastern oil might have given similar offense to Saudi Arabia, the President responded that he hoped that King Abdullah would understand that "it's not in our interest to be dependent, when it comes to our economic security, and for that matter, national security, in a market that is volatile." Being dependant on a foreign government for port operations apparently doesn't suggest a national security issue to him.
Upon returning to the White House, the President made another statement on the ports controversy.3 He again skipped by the question of government ownership, referring to the purchaser as "a company out of the UAE." He made two points, and made them twice each in a manner which suggested that he was reciting talking points; here's the first round:
. . . If there was any chance that this transaction would jeopardize the security of the United States, it would not go forward. . . The company is from a country that has been cooperative in the war on terror, been an ally in the war on terror. . .
I think it sends a terrible signal to friends around the world that it's okay for a company from one country to manage the port, but not a country that plays by the rules and has got a good track record from another part of the world can't manage the port.[sic]
"Another part of the world" is the Middle East: we don't want to send a negative signal to Middle Eastern counties. Harassing, arresting, imprisoning and torturing Muslims apparently hasn't done that, in his view, nor has invading and destroying one of those countries, nor threatening to undermine the Palestinian government.
One might have assumed from the comments on the plane, which included a threat to veto any legislation blocking the deal, that this is an issue with which the President is closely involved. (The repetitious and hesitant comments on the ground might have led to another conclusion, although with Mr. Bush one never knows.) It turned out that he learned of the sale about the time the rest of us did, had no part in the decision to approve it, wasn't told about it until after it blew up, and very possibly knows no more about it even now than we do.
His noninvolvement was revealed by the White House the next day.4 The issue "didn't rise to the presidential level" at the time of the review and decision, according to Press Secretary Scott McClellan; the President found out about it through news accounts. What did he do upon becoming aware of the transaction? "Well, one thing that the President did . . . was go back to every Cabinet member whose department is involved in this process and ask them, are you comfortable with this transaction going forward? And each and every one expressed that they were comfortable with this transaction going forward." Although that was described as "one thing," no other action was identified. Oddly, there was no mention of consultation with the National Security Advisor, who is a member of CFIUS, or with the Homeland Security Advisor.
This is only the most recent indication of the degree to which the government is being run by people other than the President, and here it appears that even telling him what's being done isn't a major consideration. Even if one were to assume that the security issue is as unimportant as the administration claims, those who made the decision had to know that it was, to use the cliché, sensitive. Yet the President was not informed, let alone consulted.
To digress a bit, one aspect of the presidential-bubble theory which has puzzled me is the role of the White House staff. Mr. Bush is disengaged, so I would expect to see a strong staff; someone has to run the place. However, the staff seem notably weak; two important examples are the offices of White House Counsel, filled by Alberto Gonzales and Harriet Miers, and National Security Advisor, by Condoleezza Rice and Steven Hadley. If the President, who is notoriously uninterested in the news, learned of the port controversy through the media, what does that say about his staff? Mr. Cheney indeed must be in charge.
Returning to Mr. Bush's statements, we have his claim that the UAE "plays by the rules" and is "an ally in the war on terror." The transcripts of his comments are accompanied on the White House web page by a "Fact Sheet" on "The United States - UAE Bilateral Relationship" which includes this: "The UAE provides U.S. and Coalition forces unprecedented access to its ports and territory, overflight clearances, and other critical and important logistical assistance." 5 However, the UAE's record is decidedly mixed. As the 9/11 Commission put it, in the period before the attacks,
The United Arab Emirates was becoming both a valued counterterrorism ally of the United States and a persistent counterterrorism problem. From 1999 through early 2001, the United States, and President Clinton personally, pressed the UAE, one of the Taliban’s only travel and financial outlets to the outside world, to break off its ties and enforce sanctions, especially those relating to flights to and from Afghanistan. These efforts achieved little before 9/11.6
A planned attack by air on a bin Laden camp in Afghanistan was scrubbed in 1999 because "an official aircraft of the United Arab Emirates" had been spotted there, and "policymakers were concerned about the danger that a strike would kill an Emirati prince or other senior officials who might be with bin Laden or close nearby." 7
Two of the 9-11 bombers were natives of the UAE. Others of the nineteen traveled through Dubai en route to the U.S. and were assisted by an al Qaeda agent there. Money for the attack was transferred through there. That, according to the usual script, would make the UAE an enemy and a target. After all, Mr. Bush won support for the invasion of Iraq by misleading Americans into thinking that it was involved in 9-11. Nuclear technology passed through Dubai on its way from Pakistan to Iran, North Korea or Libya. According to some reports, Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani nuclear smuggler, operated from warehouses near the Dubai port.
Somehow, this history raises no questions.
What it comes down to is that the UAE is useful to us. For that reason, we are prepared to ignore its dark side, as we have with Saudi Arabia. We are prepared to do that because both counties are trading partners and major sources of oil, and presently lend us support in our Middle Eastern adventures. The administration's Wilsonianism hides more cynical realism than it likes to admit.
What of the merits of the dispute? It's difficult to be sure because the facts aren't clear, at least to those of us dependant on the media or official government statements for enlightenment. The implications of the deal depend on the degree to which foreign companies "manage" port operations. If that puts them in a position to determine what comes into the country, there is a serious security issue.
An evaluation by the Coast Guard indicates that the concerns are not imaginary. On February 27, the Senate Homeland Security Committee released a portion of an otherwise classified Coast Guard report which stated as follows: "There are many intelligence gaps, concerning the potential for DPW or P&O assets to support terrorist operations, that precludes [sic] an overall threat assessment of the potential DPW and P&O Ports merger." 8 It mentioned the "security environment" at terminals, personnel backgrounds and foreign influence as specific issues. No explanation has been offered for the approval of the purchase in light of this assessment.
Despite the ambiguities, some general conclusions are possible as to the underlying issue and as to the course of the debate so far. Some liberals and free-traders have suggested that only hysteria or ethnic bias could explain the negative reactions, but that's hardly the case. It seems obvious that turning port operations over to a UAE-owned company impairs national security. Perhaps the impairment is minor, but it is naïve or disingenuous to say, as the President has done, that there is none. The charge of ethnic bias ("racism" in some formulations) is a smokescreen. Also, it is, in theory, easily disposed of: bar any foreign company from managing our ports.
The argument that the ports are insecure regardless of who operates them is irrefutable, but it is beside the point except insofar as it reveals the administration's negligent approach to port security. The alternative argument, that the identity of the operator doesn't matter because Homeland Security is on the job, is too ludicrous to deserve an answer.
The claim that the port deal is a symptom of our fiscal improvidence, which has resulted in selling ourselves to foreign companies and governments, certainly is valid and deserves far more attention that it has received. However, unless there are no available domestic port operators, it too is beside the point.
Bush's guru Karl Rove said recently "Republicans have a post-9/11 worldview and many Democrats have a pre-9/11 worldview." Port security is an issue on which 9-11 does in fact require a change of attitude, but Rove's spin won't work this time.
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1. The full roster: Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, the Assistant to the President for Economic Policy, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, the U.S. Trade Representative, the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers,
the Secretaries of Homeland Security, Treasury, State, Defense, and Commerce and the Attorney General. See www.treas.gov/offices/international-affairs/exon-florio/
2. www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/02/20060221-1.html
3. www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/02/20060221-2.html
4. www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/02/20060222-5.html
5. www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/02/20060222-10.html
6. 9/11 Commission Report, p. 138.
7. Id, 137-38.
8. "Coast Guard Intelligence Center assessment of the DPW purchase of P&O;" http://news.findlaw.com/wp/docs/terrorism/coastguardintelstmnt.html March 4, 2006
Miscellaneous notes about two sets of op-ed pages:
Those in Thursday's Seattle Times revealed some difficulty with English. One of the editorial staff, in a column criticizing the Mayor's push for a tunnel to replace the Alaskan Way viaduct, said that "Nichols' in-your-face politics are presumptive and spendy." Apparently the intention was to say that his politics are presumptuous. (I assume that she knows that her last word is an invention.)
The staff attach captions to letters received from readers. One of the captions, "If spooked, lay low," also suggests the need for a remedial English class.
Thursday's captions also were notable for an attempt to be clever, usually producing a mixture of strangeness and obscurity. The prize goes to one applied to a letter about the Dubai port-management controversy. Commenting on the President's late notice of the transaction, the letter writer said "Looks like he's wiretapping the wrong people." The caption read "They really tail your move for hours." On its face, that's merely another nutty one, perhaps vaguely referring to surveillance. It probably was a parody, although a pretty bad one, of a slogan for Continental Airlines, "We really move our tails for you," long ago abandoned as sexist. The Letters Editor must not have enough to do.
Two other columns were interesting and provocative: E.J. Dionne on the influence of religion in politics and Rick Steves on our militarist budget.
The former, "Catholic Democrats: not an oxymoron," noted that the Catholic Church has lost its way, descending to interference in American politics in the service of a single issue, abortion, in the process aligning itself with a party with which it disagrees on many other issues. Dionne praised a recent statement by Catholic Congressional Democrats aimed at restoring the separation of church and state and independence of conscience: "In all these issues, we seek the church's guidance and assistance but believe also in the primacy of conscience. In recognizing the church's role in providing moral leadership, we acknowledge and accept the tension that comes from being in disagreement with the church in some areas."
Steves' column, entitled "The real threat to U.S. security," argued that the "greatest risk to our society today is not Islamo-fascist terrorism, but the people who use that term to scare us. As the human, fiscal and ecological damage caused by our nation's economic priorities grows, it's becoming clear that we're addicted to more than oil - we're addicted to military spending, too." He pointed out that there are urgent needs to which the money now spent on the military could be applied, and that our image and ability to do good works abroad is harmed by what we use that military budget for. His suggestion of a proper level of military spending probably is unrealistic, but he's on firm ground in arguing that we need to redirect spending and to do something about the deficits that put us at the mercy of counties holding our IOUs.
Anyone concerned about our imperial posture should read The New American Militarism, an excellent study by Andrew Bacevich. He said this, referring to the Constitution:
Nothing in that compact, as originally ratified or as subsequently amended, commits or even encourages the United States to employ military power to save the rest of humankind or remake the world in its own image nor even hints at any such purpose or obligation. To the contrary, the Preamble of the Constitution expressly situates military power at the center of the brief litany of purpose enumerating the collective aspirations of "we the people." It was "to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity" that they acted in promulgating what remains the fundamental law of the land.
*** The beginning of wisdom and a major first step in repealing the new American militarism lies in making the foundational statement of intent contained in the Preamble once again the basis of actual policy. Only if citizens remind themselves and remind those exercising political authority why this nation exists will it be possible to restore the proper relationship between military power and that purpose, which centers not on global dominance but on enabling Americans to enjoy the blessings of liberty.
Such a restoration is long overdue. . . . From the invasion of Cuba in 1898 to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, policymakers have acted as if having an ever larger perimeter to defend will make us safer or taking on burdens and obligations at ever greater distances from our shores will further enhance our freedoms. In fact, apart from the singular exception of World War II, something like the opposite has been the case.1
A column in yesterday's New York Times deals with one of those burdens far from our shores. Nearly three years into the debacle in Iraq, Thomas Friedman still thinks that there is some point in being there, but is unhappy that we didn't send more troops. That failure, he said, made it impossible to answer the "Big Question," which somehow relates to what the Iraqi government - if there ever is one- will do, which determines how long we remain. At least I think that is what he tried to say. What he actually said, in part, is this:
Since the start of the Iraq war, it's been clear that "victory" rested on the answer to one Big Question: Was Iraq the way Iraq was because Saddam was the way Saddam was, or was Saddam the way Saddam was because Iraq was the way Iraq was a country congenitally divided among Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds that can be held together only by an iron fist.
Why that was the Big Question (and what it means) and why anyone would be uncertain whether there were serious divisions in Iraq and what "victory" is and why in God's name we are there all are mysteries to me, but then the world doesn't look flat to me either. If American troops are in Iraq twenty years from now, Friedman still will be musing about the Big Question and telling us, as he did yesterday, that "[t]his is the season of decision."
On the same page, Paul Krugman wrote about "George the Unready," with reference to the Iraqi insurgency, Katrina and the Medicare drug plan. The original unready monarch also was known as Ethelred the Redeless, which means, more or less, Ethelred who had no wise counsel. Wise counsel no doubt can be found in Washington, but it isn't welcome in the White House because George II finds it to be personally offensive. Why anyone would be shy about telling the current monarch that he hasn't a clue is another mystery to me, but then he strikes me as an insecure nincompoop, not the bold and intimidating leader that others somehow perceive.
However, the monarchy may survive despite its failures and ignorance. Ethelred the Unready was besieged by the Danes; George the Unready but Lucky has only the Democrats to contend with.
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1. The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War, p. 209.
March 12, 2006
President Bush told us in his radio address on Saturday that he will give a series of speeches to mark the anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. Judging from his brief description, they may be a rerun of the speeches in December. However, at least for the moment, the excuses for invading Iraq have shrunk to something approaching the vanishing point. Here is Saturday's version:
Amid the daily news of car bombs and kidnappings and brutal killings, I can understand why many of our fellow citizens are now wondering if the entire mission was worth it. I strongly believe our country is better off with Saddam Hussein out of power. Under Saddam Hussein, Iraq was an enemy of America who shot at our airplanes, had a history of pursuing and using weapons of mass destruction, threatened and invaded his neighbors, ordered the death of thousands of his citizens, and supported terrorism.1
In this telling, weapons of mass destruction are merely an historical artifact, a relic of the 80s and early 90s. Ties to al Qaeda have evaporated; the terrorism issue is reduced to Iraq's support for other groups which posed no similar threat to us. The last invasion of a neighbor occurred in 1991, and we'd already had a war about that. Saddam's brutality toward his people is a makeweight. A connection to 9-11 no longer is worth even a hint.
The entire case for the war has come down to Iraq's shooting at - and missing - planes which were enforcing the no-fly zones, something which it had done frequently for years. A CNN report in February, 2001 noted that, in 2000 "the Pentagon recorded 366 violations or provocations by the Iraqis in the two no-fly zones . . . ." That year, there were 80 "strike days," days on which Iraqi targets were attacked by American or British aircraft. In 1999, there were 700 "violations or provocations" and 163 "strike days." 2 It would require extreme credulity to believe that, in March, 2003, this was the reason for invasion.
The occasion for the CNN report was the decision in February, 2001 to strike targets in Iraq outside the no-fly zones, which had not occurred since 1998. A recent comment by the President includes an odd but revealing reference to his view of Iraq at that time.
In his remarks at Kansas State in January, Mr. Bush made reference to the no-fly zones and, in doing so, revealed that 9-11 was the excuse, not the reason for going to war with Iraq. He started out with the usual story that 9-11 forced a reassessment of security issues, and ended with his supposed attempts to avoid war, but in the middle gave the game away:
[B]ecause oceans no longer protect us, the United States of America must confront threats before they cause us harm. In other words, in the old days we could see a threat and say, well, maybe it will cause harm, maybe it won't. Those days changed, as far as I'm concerned. Threats must be taken seriously now, because geography doesn't protect us and there's an enemy that still lurks.
And so early in my first term, I looked at the world and saw a threat in Saddam Hussein. And let me tell you why I saw the threat. First of all, there was an immediate threat because he was shooting at our airplanes. There was what's called no-fly zones; that meant the Iraqis couldn't fly in the zones, and we were patrolling with British pilots. And he was firing at us, which was a threat -- a threat to the life and limb of the troops to whom I'm the Commander-in-Chief. He was a state sponsor of terror. . . He had used weapons of mass destruction. And the biggest threat that this President, and future Presidents, must worry about is eapons of mass destruction getting in the hands of a terrorist network that would like to do us harm. . . .
. . . I told you, the last option for a President is to send troops into combat, and I was hoping that we could solve the issue, the threat, the threat to the United States by diplomatic means.
So I went to the United Nations. . . .3
Iraq was in the cross-hairs from inauguration day; from that standpoint, 9/11 provided the excuse to pull the trigger.
We still are in Iraq; what is the rationale for that? Sometimes it's been democratization, but that has worn thin, so on Saturday the President needed to mix in terrorism:
After the liberation of the Iraqi people, al Qaida and their affiliates have made Iraq the central front on the war on terror. By helping the Iraqi people build a free and representative government, we will deny the terrorists a safe haven to plan attacks against America. The security of our country is directly linked to the liberty of the Iraqi people. . . .
That contains a concession, however inadvertent: Iraq became the front line only after the invasion; we created the supposed central front on the war on terror. He also offered a variation on the an exit strategy; rather than the generalized stand up - stand down formula, the plan now has a geographical component:
In the coming months, we will help prepare more Iraqi battalions to take the lead in battle, and Iraqi forces will assume responsibility over more territory. Our goal is to have the Iraqis control more territory than the Coalition forces by the end of this year. And as Iraqis assume responsibility over more territory, this frees American and Coalition forces to concentrate on hunting down high-value targets like the terrorist Zarqawi and his associates.
Objective assessments of Iraqi military forces make it doubtful that they can exercise meaningful control over any territory without help, even if a government ever is formed to direct them. However, disengagement of American ground forces almost certainly is the plan, perhaps for assignment to new missions, but perhaps for withdrawal; by November, bringing some troops home may loom larger than catching Zarqawi.
The casualty count is one possible indication that this repositioning already is under way. American military deaths are down this year, even as civilian Iraqi deaths rise. This may reflect a change in the insurgency, a move from resistance to civil war, but it also may reflect American absence from the war zones. In any case, after losing 2.3 per day in 2004 and 2005, we're sacrificing 1.8 per day this year. In addition, deaths have decreased each month for four months, the first such development during the war. That decline is from a relatively high point, 96 in October, so it may not be as significant as it seems, but it has occurred during the period of increased chaos, suggesting that the disengagement has begun, that maintaining order is being left to the Iraqis. Secretary Rumsfeld's recent comments point that way.
Realistically, Iraqi forces probably will fail to maintain order, but it may be in the administration's political interest to pretend that they are succeeding.
* Actually, the invasion was in 1990, but Iraq was driven from Kuwait in early 1991.
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1. www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/03/20060311.html
2. http://archives.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/meast/02/16/no.fly.zones/index.html
3. www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/01/20060123-4.html
March 29, 2006
I often avoid watching the President's speeches; reading the transcripts is depressing enough. However, when one is in a place where the only TV options in English are Mr. Bush on CNN and the endlessly repetitious BBC segments, an address by the President is high entertainment. For that reason, I saw the speech he delivered in Cleveland.1
Mr. Bush said that he wanted to discuss "our need to achieve victory in the war on terror" and reminded his audience that the "central front on the war on terror is Iraq." He then told them about pacifying the town of Tal Afar. However, in introducing that story, he acknowledged, as he had done in his radio address on March 11, that terrorism in Iraq is the result of, not the excuse for, the invasion: "After we removed Saddam Hussein in April 2003, the terrorists began moving into the city."
Unlike other speeches which have been riddled with slogans and applause lines, Cleveland's was dull, consisting in large part of the Tal Afar story; in telling it, Mr. Bush took a long time to make his point, which is that there is a new, successful approach to restoring order.
Iraqi and army coalition forces spent weeks preparing for what they knew would be a tough military offensive. They built an 8-foot high, 12-mile long dirt wall that ringed the city. This wall was designed to cut off any escape for terrorists trying to evade security checkpoints. Iraqi and coalition forces also built temporary housing outside the city, so that Tal Afar's people would have places to go when the fighting started. Before the assault on the city, Iraqi and coalition forces initiated a series of operations in surrounding towns to eliminate safe havens and make it harder for fleeing terrorists to hide. . . .
Mr. Bush attempted to convince his audience that, as a result of this new approach, a corner has been turned, but his claim was more careful and qualified than usual:
The terrorists have not given up in Tal Afar, and they may yet succeed in exploding bomb [sic] or provoking acts of sectarian violence. The people of the city still have many challenges to overcome, including old-age [sic] resentments that still create suspicion, an economy that needs to create jobs and opportunity for its young, and determined enemies who will continue trying to foment a civil war to move back in. . .
I wish I could tell you that the progress made in Tal Afar is the same in every single part of Iraq. It's not. . . .
I have difficulty believing that he converted any doubters or even propped up any wavering supporters with that tale. A qualified success requiring a major operation three years into the war simply reinforces the impression that we are bogged down.
Toward the end of his speech, he noted the anniversary of the invasion and offered justifications for it: Saddam was removed because "his regime was defying U.N. resolutions calling for it to disarm; it was violating cease-fire agreements, was firing on British and American pilots which were enforcing no-fly zones. Saddam Hussein was a leader who brutalized his people, had pursued and used weapons of mass destruction, and sponsored terrorism." The alleged violation of cease-fire agreements is new, but the rest is familiar.
In the question period, Mr. Bush denied ever making a connection between 9-11 and Saddam: "I don't think we ever said -- at least I know I didn't say that there was a direct connection between September the 11th and Saddam Hussein. . . . I was very careful never to say that Saddam Hussein ordered the attacks on America." The form of the denial admits haw deceitful it is: he has been careful to only imply the connection, which he had done a few minutes earlier:
The terrorists who are setting off bombs in mosques and markets in Iraq share the same hateful ideology as the terrorists who attacked us on September the 11th, 2001. . . .
*** The security of our country is directly linked to the liberty of the Iraqi people -- and we will settle for nothing less than victory. Victory will come . . . when Iraq is not a safe haven for terrorists to plot new attacks against our nation. . . .
On the day following the Cleveland speech, the President held a press conference which has become famous for the exchange with Helen Thomas.2 Ms. Thomas' question was a bit garbled:
I'd like to ask you, Mr. President, your decision to invade Iraq has caused the deaths of thousands of Americans and Iraqis, wounds of Americans and Iraqis for a lifetime. Every reason given, publicly at least, has turned out not to be true. My question is, why did you really want to go to war? From the moment you stepped into the White House, from your Cabinet -- your Cabinet officers, intelligence people, and so forth -- what was your real reason? You have said it wasn't oil -- quest for oil, it hasn't been Israel, or anything else. What was it?
However, the message was clear enough: she noted that the reasons given for the war have been proved false, asked why Bush wanted to go to war and implied that he had wanted it from the beginning of his term. Cross-talk followed in which she tried to keep him on the point and he did his best to avoid it. Most of his answer was a speech about 9-11, al Qaeda, the Taliban and Afghanistan. At the end he did talk about Iraq, but ignored the issue of his pre-9/11 intentions:
I also saw a threat in Iraq. I was hoping to solve this problem diplomatically. That's why I went to the Security Council; that's why it was important to pass 1441, which was unanimously passed. And the world said, disarm, disclose, or face serious consequences . . . And when he chose to deny inspectors, when he chose not to disclose, then I had the difficult decision to make to remove him. . . .
This is not the first time that he has justified the invasion by claiming that Iraq refused to admit inspectors, and may not be the last, as no one seems to challenge that claim.
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1. www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/03/20060320-7.html
2. www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/03/20060321-4.html
April 3, 2006
Before heading to Mexico, the President gave two more speeches about Iraq. It's difficult to see why the White House thinks that this campaign is a good idea. The number of people who can be persuaded by these after-the-fact arguments must be very small, especially as the excuses for the war have passed from the dubious to the ludicrous. The parties seem to have their arguments backward: Democrats should be attacking the war and domestic spying, Republicans should be changing the subject.
However, it's clear that the White House is obsessed with defending its decision to go to war. The new National Security Strategy1 devotes a significant amount of space to justifying it.
Like the 2002 version, the current Strategy is a peculiar document. It is presented in the form of a series of lists, something one might expect to see at the ends of chapters in a junior-high-school textbook. (Now, class, who can tell me the four things effective democracies do?) It is larded with claims and descriptions which are so unsophisticated that it is incredible that the authors are in or near positions of power. It reminds me, as do most of the Administration's policies and actions, of a comment by Gertrude Himmelfarb; in describing one of her college professors, she referred to "the kind of cognitive dissonance - the discrepancy between reality and ideology - that only truly learned and clever people can achieve." 2 This document demonstrates that such a disconnect is not limited to academics, and probably not to learned and clever people.
The Strategy presents a weak case for the invasion of Iraq. Under the heading "Iraq and Weapons of Mass Destruction," it acknowledges that there were no WMD, implies that there was a reasonable suspicion that they existed, points out that Saddam had done bad things in the past, accuses him of defying "disarmament obligations" and concludes that "[w]ith the elimination of Saddam's regime, this threat has been addressed, once and for all." However, the flaws in the argument don't matter: all of the shifting rationales are increasingly irrelevant, except insofar as they reveal the Administration's efforts to continue its program of deception. The January, 2003 British memorandum disclosed by The New York Times on March 27 further demonstrates that we were heading for war, whether or not there were WMD.
This section of the Strategy states that "pre-war intelligence estimates of Iraqi WMD stockpiles were wrong," and draws lessons from the experience, all of them designed to deflect blame from the White House. We need better intelligence; less manipulation of it is not mentioned. "It was Saddam's reckless behavior that demanded the world's attention, and it was his refusal to remove the ambiguity that he created that forced the United States and its allies to act." There isn't much doubt that Saddam brought this on himself in a variety of ways, including bluffing about WMD, but blaming it all on him is too convenient; the U.S. was not "forced to act." The final moral drawn is that "the world is better off if tyrants know that they pursue WMD at their own peril." Actually the lessons seem to be, based on our dealings with Iraq and North Korea, that possession of WMD is a defense but pretending to be on the verge of possession is dangerous, especially if your country has oil.
Under the heading "Afghanistan and Iraq: The Front Lines in the War on Terror," there is a modified form of the "central-front" theory: "The terrorists today see Iraq as the central front of their fight against the United States." Do they see that because Mr. Bush has made that claim repeatedly? In any case, the argument here is that we must not withdraw before Iraq is secure because the terrorists will have shown us to be weak: "They want to defeat America in Iraq and force us to abandon our allies before a stable democratic government has been established that can provide for its own security. The terrorists believe they would then have proven that the United States is a waning power and an unreliable friend." In this view, the issue is not defeating the terrorists, but preventing their claiming a victory; image, not substance.3
We may be in that situation, but the Strategy does not acknowledge that it our blunders which have put us there. Certainly it does not face up to the fact that Iraq has shown that we are not the invincible power of the 2002 version.
The Strategy makes no distinction between adversaries in Iraq: "When the Iraqi Government, supported by the Coalition, defeats the terrorists, terrorism will be dealt a critical blow. We will have broken one of al-Qaida's most formidable factions - the network headed by Zarqawi - and denied him the safe haven he seeks in Iraq." It implies that we are battling only Zarqawi and al Qaeda, even though the Administration has acknowledged that foreign jihadists are a small part of the insurgency.
This ambiguity about adversaries runs through the entire document. The word "enemy" appears a dozen times, but in most places it is used as a synonym for "terrorist," which is virtually meaningless; it confuses a method with persons or entities and is too inclusive to be useful. On the other hand, "terrorist" is limited to Muslims: "The transnational terrorists confronting us today exploit the proud religion of Islam to serve a violent political vision . . . . These terrorists distort the idea of jihad into a call for murder against those they regard as apostates or unbelievers - including Christians, Jews, Hindus, other religious traditions, and all Muslims who disagree with them."
The plan for Iraq includes restoring its "neglected infrastructure." However, other statements by the Administration make clear that little more will be done. In December, the goal was reduced to "targeted reconstruction" and in January it was reported that no new funds would be sought. Today's Washington Post reports that a program to build 300 primary-care clinics was scaled back to 142, of which 6 have been completed. The contractor will attempt to finish 14 more and will be allowed to abandon the others. In January, the office auditing reconstruction estimated that, because funds have been consumed, "the American reconstruction effort would be able to finish only 300 of 425 promised electricity projects and 49 of 136 water and sanitation projects."
The plan also includes working with the Iraqi government to "reform" Iraq's economy to one "based on market principles." This ideology-driven project has been misguided from the outset.
The focus on the market is not confined to Iraq. Even though the ostensible focus of the Strategy is on national security, it devotes a large fraction of its text to free-market, free-trade economics.
Throughout, the aims of the Strategy are stated in terms of democracy and freedom. As is inevitable in a document framed in noble generalities, there are contradictions. One is recognized, our reaction to the "victory of Hamas candidates in the recent elections in the Palestinian territories." The constant refrain that democracy is the solution to all problems becomes embarrassing when an election conceded to have been "free, fair, and inclusive" produces a government we don't like. The dilemma is solved by finding that there are "principles of democratic government, including protection of minority rights and basic freedoms" and declaring that "any elected government that refuses to honor these principles cannot be considered fully democratic, however it may have taken office."
The next paragraph of the Strategy presents one of the unrecognized contradictions: "We have a responsibility to promote human freedom. Yet freedom cannot be imposed; it must be chosen." This, coming from the occupiers of Iraq, reveals a large measure of cognitive dissonance.
The new document carries over from the 2002 version a formula regarding pre-emption: "The greater the threat, the greater is the risk of inaction - and the more compelling the case for taking anticipatory action to defend ourselves, even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy's attack. There are few greater threats than a terrorist attack with WMD." If that had been the mindset during the Cold War, Armageddon would have occurred long ago. Fortunately, more mature minds made policy in those days.
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1. http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss/2006/nss2006.pdf
2. On Looking into the Abyss: Untimely Thoughts on Culture and Society (1994), p. 108.
3. Preserving our image or reputation issue emerged, as early as August, 2003, as a fall-back argument for persevering in Iraq.
April 10, 2006
I get only a small amount of news from television, or at least from television first. A significant part of my daily dose of facts and opinions comes via the internet, but my main source still is print, primarily newspapers. Even a large percentage of the internet news is originally from that source. For that reason, the state of the newspaper business is distressing, as to both performance and survival.
As to the latter, the local scene is not happy. The Post-Intelligencer struggles. The Times claims to be losing money every year and its situation is complicated by the sale of the Knight-Ridder chain, which owns 49.5% of Times stock. The most likely outcome is the survival of the Times, possibly not under Blethen family control, the demise of the P-I and Seattle's descent into one-paper status. That outcome may have been hastened by the recent agreement between the papers to submit their disputes to binding arbitration.
Nationally, the situation is not much more encouraging. Since 1998, according to a report by the Newspaper Association of America,1 the percentage of adults reading a weekday newspaper has dropped from 58.6% to 51.6%, for Sunday from 68.2% to 59.6%.
The NAA report confirms that young people avoid newspapers: the two age brackets which read them the least are 18-24 and 25-39. The report spins the demographics by stating "As adults mature, readership increases," but a more likely interpretation is that as young adults age, total readership will drop. This is worrisome, as younger Americans do not seem to be getting much news from other sources. The electorate is not well informed now and, based on the trends, probably will be less so in the future.
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1.www.naa.org/thesource/the_source_newspapers_by_the_numbers.pdf
April 15, 2006
The criticism received by Defense Secretary Rumsfeld from retired generals prompted President Bush to issue a statement of support. The Los Angeles Times described it as "forceful and unequivocal," and the Washington Post termed it "an unequivocal vote of confidence," but it strikes me as something well short of that. Here it is, in full:
Earlier today I spoke with Don Rumsfeld about ongoing military operations in the Global War on Terror. I reiterated my strong support for his leadership during this historic and challenging time for our Nation.
The Department of Defense has been tasked with many difficult missions. Upon assuming office, I asked Don to transform the largest department in our government. That kind of change is hard, but our Nation must have a military that is fully prepared to confront the dangerous threats of the 21st Century.
Don and our military commanders have also been tasked to take the fight to the enemy abroad on multiple fronts.
I have seen first-hand how Don relies upon our military commanders in the field and at the Pentagon to make decisions about how best to complete these missions. Secretary Rumsfeld's energetic and steady leadership is exactly what is needed at this critical period. He has my full support and deepest appreciation. 1
Mr. Rumsfeld was given difficult tasks during a difficult time, and he has shown energy and leadership and has listened to the generals. Has he performed well, made the right decisions, produced the results desired? No comment.
In the Post's opinion, Mr. Bush intervened to "make it clear he will keep the embattled defense secretary." For now, yes.
Secretary Rumsfeld offered this reply to the criticism: "I respect their views, but obviously out of thousands and thousands of admirals and generals, if every time two or three people disagreed, we changed the secretary of defense of the United States, it would be like a merry-go-round." That's an oddly weak and detached response, not exactly "I'm in charge here." (I'm also a little puzzled by his arithmetic: the sources I found indicate that our complement of generals and admirals is about 870, not "thousands and thousands.")
The New York Times, which thought that the President's statement "strongly endorsed" the Defense Secretary, interpreted it as "part of a strong effort by the White House to fend off criticism of the handling of the war." That's no doubt true, but the connection between that effort and supporting Mr. Rumsfeld may not be permanent. Perhaps I'm reading more between the lines than is there, but the White House has been eager to blame the intelligence services for false statements about the reasons for the war and it would be equally tempting to blame the DoD for its conduct. Thus far, that hasn't happened, but I wouldn't take yesterday's tepid
endorsement as precluding it.
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1. www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/04/20060414.html
April 25, 2006
The President's job-approval ratings in polls taken in April range from 39% to 32%; the gap between his approval and disapproval ratings is between -18 and -28. 1 His speeches recently have done nothing for his numbers and the new policy of taking real questions has only made matters worse. The polite denunciation he received during a question period on April 6 summed it up for many: "I would hope, from time to time, that you have the humility and grace to be ashamed of yourself." The White House has recognized that the wheels are falling off, and has applied the usual remedy: shake up the staff.
It's too early to think that this is a crippled administration, or that Democrats will recapture Congress. Many things could happen to reverse Republican fortunes. The most obvious, if not necessarily the most likely, possibility is some good news from Iraq. Public discomfort with the war is based far more on the perception of failure and incompetence than on bad policy and dishonesty, less still on the belief that it is an unjust war. A diminution in violence, especially if combined with a partial withdrawal, could boost Mr. Bush's numbers significantly, drawing the party along.
However, panic is taking hold in some corners of GOP-land. One indication of this comes in the form of complaints that the Republicans have deserted their base. I found one expression of the concern on the web site of the North Carolina Republican Roundtable, a conservative Republican site.
I have been flooded with correspondence from across my home state of Texas and the country, and the sentiments are those of frustration, anger, and futility. I have received a number of e-mails from people who have been working to get Republicans elected for the past 20, 25, or 30 years, and they are now saying that they are thinking of "sitting this one out.". . .2
The author is CEO of GOPUSA, also a conservative Republican organization. Here is what he thinks the anger and frustration are about:
With the 2006 elections at hand, it is impossible for Republicans to run as reformers as they did in 1994. Republicans have control, so what is a reformist message supposed to mean? Trust us, because we're serious this time? The trust has been strained to say the least, and the approach must be a "back to basics" platform which addresses key conservative issues. A clear plan of how to decrease spending (not slow down it's [sic] rate of growth), to address immigration reform from a "respect for the rule of law" perspective, to overhaul and reform the tax system to make it fair for all Americans, and to secure America's borders in the ongoing war on terror will go a long way to galvanizing the base.
He warns that "Republicans leaders need to know that despite media spin and commentary on recent immigration rallies, Americans . . . don't favor amnesty."
Two recent op-ed columns made similar comments about the base, again with pointed reference to immigration. In a column in The Washington Post, Craig Shirley complained that the "immigration reform debate has highlighted a long-standing fissure in the GOP between the elitist Rockefeller business wing and the party's conservative populist base." Mr. Shirley apparently has just noticed that business interests, not social conservatives, are in control: "most conservatives felt that after the victory of Ronald Reagan and the Republican Revolution of 1994 their point was made and the country-clubbers would know their place. They were wrong." 3
He thinks that "the Republican Party is now unraveling" after a post-9/11 truce. Resentment (presumably by the conservative populists) "is growing over steel tariffs, prescription drug benefits, a League of Nations mentality, the growth of government and harebrained spending, the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, the increasing regulation of political speech in the United States and endemic corruption."
He claims that the "business elites are interested in a large supply of cheap labor and support unfettered immigration and open borders." The Los Angeles Times' house editorial supported that view Tuesday, calling for legislation that improves border enforcement but "legalizes the flow of labor the U.S. relies on." Conservatives want to seal the border or, as Mr. Shirley puts it, the "populist base supports legal immigration but is concerned about lawlessness on our border,
national sovereignty and the real security threat posed by porous borders."
Mr. Shirley considers it doubtful that the two wings "can continue to coexist and preserve the Republican majority." The "Rockefeller wing" is hostile toward the "Reagan populists;" his comments make clear that the converse also is true. As a result, conservatives are beginning to "consider and in some cases cheer the possibility that the GOP may lose control of Congress this fall." The breakup of the Republican coalition will come; I wouldn't have expected it to come soon, but if conservatives are so angry at business types that they hope for defeat, perhaps it will.
The other column appeared in The Seattle P-I; the author, Bruce Hawkins, identifies himself as a "business consultant who is active in the Republican Party." He too analyzes the party's woes in terns of lack of fidelity to conservative-populist principles, and claims that
. . . many voters . . . want social programs rolled back, not increased through a prescription drug giveaway. They want illegal immigration stopped and borders controlled; they don't want amnesty, green card voting and a choice of Spanish or English at ATMs. They want to see the fruits of the war on terrorism, not $3 a gallon gasoline and nuclear threats. They want U.S. troops supported, not prosecuted for humiliating captured combatants.4
He offers a 10-point program for electoral success which includes abolition of the income tax, rooting out "political correctness" in the armed services, withdrawing support from (and membership in?) the United Nations and nationalizing all U.N. property "in repayment of U.N. debt."
This is pretty silly stuff, but it is similar to the more rational versions in its resentment that the base has been ignored: "Bush's numbers are in the red because his former majority feels forgotten."
Business types are unhappy too. The Washington Legal Foundation runs an ad periodically on the New York Times op-ed page. On Monday, its usual litany of complaints against regulation was captioned "Amnesty for Honest Businessmen." It took a shot at immigration policy and it accused the administration of enforcing those dastardly liberal regulations: "Let's get this straight - a paralyzed federal government can ignore our border security laws for at least 12 million illegal aliens, yet has the resources and a relentless obsession to criminalize what's left of America's free enterprise system?"
Discontent from another perspective appeared in a column by John Tierney in Tuesday's NYTimes: His subject was the statement by the FDA, in a press release on April 20, that marijuana "has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States." He described it as "the kind of statement given by a hostage trying to please his captors, who in this case are a coalition of Republican narcs on Capitol Hill, in the White House and at the Drug Enforcement Administration." The FDA's decision is but one example of the subservience in the
Bush administration of science to politics. However, Tierney points out that, in this case, it may be bad politics; red states as well as blue have adopted medical-marijuana laws. "For G.O.P. voters fed up with their party's current big-government philosophy, the latest medical treatment from Washington's narcs is one more reason to stay home this November."
These complaints, and especially the way they are framed, may reflect a problem inherent in conservative politics: people who don't like government don't like it even when their folks are running it.
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1. The worst numbers in each set are from the most recent (CNN) poll. See www.pollingreport.com/BushJob.htm
2. Bobby Eberle, "GOP Success Hinges on Bringing Back the Base," 4/14/06;
www.ncrepublicans.com/opinion_eberle_gopsuccess_base_apr06.html
3. "How the GOP Lost Its Way," 4/22/06. Mr. Shirley "is the author of 'Reagan's Revolution,' a book about the 1976 campaign" (apparently meaning Reagan's unsuccessful attempt to take the nomination away from Ford). "His firm has clients concerned with immigration issues."
4. "Republicans need to commit to winning," 4/24/06.
April 30, 2006
On Friday, the State Department issued its annual report on world terrorism, entitled - eccentrically, clumsily - Country Reports on Terrorism 2005.1 Last year, it omitted the usual appendix, Chronology of Significant Terrorist Incidents. After much criticism, a separate Chronology was released, by a different agency, the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC). The Chronology is missing again this year, but the State Department report includes a Statistical Annex prepared by the NCTC. Although there no longer is a day-by-day description of incidents, there are a few totals, which were not provided in earlier years.
It is difficult to compare the results to those in earlier reports because of the changes in format (and to compare them to the MIPT report mentioned below because of differences in methodology). However, it is clear that the number of terrorist attacks in Iraq has increased dramatically. A Washington Post story by Karen DeYoung reported that the NCTC now records 866 terrorist incidents in Iraq in 2004, even though its Chronology last year did not include numbers and listed fewer incidents than that. (Ms. DeYoung kindly advised me by e-mail that the tally of 866 was announced at a news conference in July, 2005). According to this year's Statistical Annex, there were 3,474, 31% of the world total of 11,111. The Annex tells us that "Iraq accounted for . . . 55% of the fatalities (approximately 8300)," but does not offer the exact numbers.
The text of the Country Report acknowledges that terrorist attacks in Iraq are a frequent occurrence.2 "Widespread terrorism and violence continue to plague Iraq. Numerous attacks and kidnappings in Iraq targeted foreign aid workers, contractors, and other non-combatants." In part because of a tendency to emphasize and perhaps exaggerate the role of al Qaeda, the only solution suggested as part of that statement is "[s]taunching the flow of foreign terrorists into Iraq. . . ." 3 However, there is a hint of another approach hidden in the description of one of the groups of terrorists, who are identified as Sunni Arab rejectionists: "Many in their ranks are recognizing that they can achieve political objectives by engaging in the political process." 4 Perhaps. The Post reported today that the Iraqi President, Jalal Talabani, and American representatives have met with some insurgents and Talabani thinks that "a deal could be reached." It will be interesting to learn whether the insurgents' demands include American withdrawal and whether the administration can spin such a bargain as a victory.
Another source of data on terrorist attacks is the National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism (MIPT). Its reports5 show the increases in terrorist attacks in Iraq since the invasion in March, 2003:
2000: 4 terrorist incidents; 0 fatalities
2001: 3; 1
2002: 14; 3
2003: 147; 539
2004: 850; 2,4736
2005: 2,337; 6,235
On April 24, the Congressional Research Service issued a report estimating the financial cost of the war. It noted that we spent about $6.4 billion per month in Iraq during fiscal year 2005.7
U.S. military deaths rose in April, after five months of declines, to 72, bringing the total to 2400.
In its Report, the State Department, led by the administration's most loyal spinner, offered this tired, absurd, deceitful justification for the chaos and the deaths: "Iraq remains a key front in the global war on terror." The reality is that an unjust, unnecessary and imprudent war now has cost 2,400 American, 214 coalition and uncounted Iraqi lives. It has turned part of Iraq into a terrorist-ridden slum. It is costing us upwards of $6.4 billion per month, or $76.8 billion per year. That is more than the annual budget of any federal discretionary category other than Defense, more than Education and Justice combined, more than Homeland Security, State & International Programs and Treasury combined, more than Corps of Engineers, Energy, EPA and Veterans' Affairs combined, more than Agriculture, Interior, Labor, NASA and Transportation combined.8 Along with the administration's other exercises in fiscal madness, it has accelerated our decline into financial dependency on foreign investors, notably China.
We must put an end to this self-destructive, immoral adventure.
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1. www.state.gov/documents/organization/65462.pdf
2. See pp. 13, 130
3. P. 126
4. P. 130
5.http//www.tkb.org/IncidentRegionModule.jsp?startDate=01%2F01%2F2004&endDate=12%2F31%2F2004&domInt=0&pagemode=national®ionid=1&countryid=&sortby=&imageField.x=36&imageField.y=8 6. The numbers for 2003 and 2004 have been modified from those shown a year ago, which were as follows: 2003 - 147/561; 2004 - 785/2,354.
7. Summary, "The Cost of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Other Global War on Terror Operations Since 9/11." www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL33110.pdf
8. Budget, Summary Tables, Table S-3; www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/fy07/browse.html
[The following entry was somehow dropped (or, perhaps, never posted). I discovered that only on 10/14/08, and posted it then.]
May 8, 2006
One of the more depressing aspects of the current state of American politics and culture is that it will leave legacies which will haunt future generations. Policies such as pre-emptive war and practices such as extraordinary rendition can be abandoned by the next administration. Some effects, such as our diminished standing and influence, can be reversed over time. However, other trends are more ominous, in part because simply changing administrations may not alter them or because their effects are already so dire as to defy reversal.
Among the ominous circumstances are those pertaining to our fiscal condition, including the budget deficit and the national debt. Perhaps the administration is not addressing those problems because the President can't distinguish between the former and our balance of payments. In a recent appearance, he said this:
There are two types of deficits that I want to describe to you. One is the current account deficit. It's the deficit that -- we're on plan to cut in half by 2009. There's an interesting debate in Washington about how do you deal with a current account deficit? By the way, we -- and the area where we're able to affect the deficit the most, because through some of the programs you described called, discretionary spending. . . . .1
Later, in the midst of a long discussion of the budget deficit, he repeated his formula: "[N]o question we have a current account deficit. I have submitted a budget that says we can cut it in half by 2009."
What the administration has proposed to "cut in half" is the federal budget deficit. "Current account deficit" refers to the negative balance of trade with other countries or, as the Council of Economic Advisers puts it, "the excess of imports and income flows to foreigners over exports and foreign income of Americans." 2
Whether due to Mr. Bush's confusion or not, the administration isn't doing much about the budget deficit. The plan to cut it is a game of smoke and mirrors.
Mr. Bush inherited a budget surplus, $128.2 billion in fiscal 2001. 3 His first full fiscal year, 2002, saw a deficit of $157.8 billion. He not only won't cut that in half, he won't match it; the current forecast for 2009 is $194 billion. Even though the pledge invariably is to "cut the deficit in half," the actual goal, as revealed in budget documents, is to cut in half the ratio of the deficit to gross domestic product. (This is not a unique bit of obfuscation; the Clinton administration indulged in it once that I recall). The ratio to be halved was carefully selected: it is the one for fiscal 2004, which produced the worst deficit of the Bush era. As a further fudge, the starting point was an inflated estimate of the deficit made in February, 2004, which predicted that the deficit would be 4.5% of GDP. 4 That conveniently placed target may be met (and the actual 2004 ratio of 3.6% may be halved), although the administration's tax-reduction and spending proclivities make that less than a sure thing.
A better measure of Mr. Bush's contribution to the nation's fiscal condition is his record to date. The deficits for 2002-2005 were 157.8, 377.6, 412.7, and 318.3 billion dollars. Leaving aside the inherited surplus, he more than doubled the deficit before promising, sort of, to halve it. That of course increased the national debt: on October 1, 2001, when his first full fiscal year began, the national debt, in round numbers, was $5.806 trillion; on May 5, 2006 it was $8.357 trillion, an increase of $2.551 trillion.5
Finally, the budget figures combine all revenues and expenditures, not just the so-called on-budget items. Social Security, an off-budget category, is running a large surplus ($173.5 billion in 2005), which makes the total picture look much better than it is (assuming, of course, that the Social Security funds being borrowed to cover the on-budget deficit are repaid). The other off-budget item is the operating account of the Postal Service, which ran a $1.8 billion surplus in 2005. The only years in recent history in which the on-budget figures were in surplus were 1999 and 2000. Mr. Bush actually inherited an on-budget deficit of $32.4 billion for fiscal 2001, to which he has added on-budget deficits of 317.4, 538.4, 568.0,and 493.6 billion dollars through fiscal 2005; 2006 is expected to resemble last year.
National debt numbers combine debt held by "the public," including foreign investors, and internal government debt. Of the $8.3 trillion total debt, about $1.9 trillion is owed to Social Security and $1.5 trillion to other government accounts, primarily retirement, Medicare and unemployment insurance funds. 6 In a sense, that's good news, as it's better to be indebted to oneself than to other creditors, especially foreign governments. The bad news is that it is tempting to solve a fiscal problem by killing Social Security, especially as it would serve ideological ends as well.
Of the roughly 4.9 trillion in publicly-held debt, something over 2.2 trillion is held by foreign governments or investors, of which more than 260 billion is held by China and more than 80 billion by OPEC,7 not a healthy situation and one that is destined to get worse.
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1. www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/04/20060406-3.html
2. Annual Report, p. 35; www.whitehouse.gov/cea/ch1-erp06.pdf
3. Unless otherwise noted, the numbers are from a Congressional Budget Office publication, Historical Budget Data, www.cbo.gov/budget/historical.pdf. Years mentioned are fiscal years, beginning October 1; fiscal 2006 began 10/1/05.
4. See "Summary," Mid-Session Review, Fiscal Year 2006; www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2006/pdf/06msr.pdf
5. www.publicdebt.treas.gov/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/~www/opdpen.cgi
6. CBO: Current Budget Projections; www.cbo.gov/budget/budproj.pdf
7. www.treas.gov/tic/mfh.txt
May 9, 2006
Articles in today's Washington Post provided an addendum to my note yesterday. In one, reporters Jonathan Weisman and Shailagh Murray examined the report of the House Budget Committee accompanying the budget resolution for fiscal 2007. On page 121, they discovered, is this ticking bomb:
Resolved, by the Senate and the House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That subsection (b) of section 3101 of title 31, United States Code, is amended by striking out the dollar limitation contained in such subsection and inserting in lieu thereof $9,618,000,000,000.
If the joint resolution is enacted to raise the debt limit to the level contemplated by this resolution, the limit will be increased from $8.965 trillion to $9.618 trillion, an increase of $653 billion.
Two months after the debt ceiling was raised from 8.18 trillion to 8.965 trillion, our faithful fiscal stewards find that another 653 billion of debt is required. If adopted, it would be the fifth increase in the debt limit under Bush. The first came in June 2002, when the limit established in 1997, 5.95 trillion, was increased to 6.4; in May 2003 it went to 7.38, in November 2004 to 8.18, and in March to its present level.
The other article advised us that one of Mr. Bush's signature tax cuts would be extended, ensuring that "investors," who, by the merest coincidence, tend to be wealthy folk, will pay a reduced tariff on their capital gains. "Even though they are not set to expire until 2008, Republicans say extending the dividend and capital gains cuts now through 2010 is vital to preserve economic stability and maintain a robust investment climate . . . ." Yes, and Iraq had WMD.
May 12, 2006
In Wednesday's Washington Post, Robert Samuelson described a supposed paradox:
You hear the refrain all the time: The economy looks good statistically (4.7 percent unemployment), but it doesn't feel good. Although the United States is the wealthiest nation in history, our quarrels and quibbles with our prosperity are unending. Why doesn't ever-greater wealth promote ever-greater happiness?
Much of his answer consisted of a gratuitous shot at J. Kenneth Galbraith, who died April 29. (In this he followed the lead of his fellow Post columnist, George Will).
Once past that detour, Mr. Samuelson concluded that people are unhappy because they want too much: "material desires seem infinite." Could it be that, although some economic numbers look good, ordinary people are not sharing in the benefits? Of course not:
It's often said that only the rich are getting ahead; everyone else is standing still or falling behind. . . . But over any meaningful period, most people's incomes are increasing. . . . People feel "squeezed" because their rising incomes often don't satisfy their rising wants -- for bigger homes, more health care, more education, faster Internet connections.
Greed is the problem - for "everyone else."
I was puzzled by his statement that incomes are increasing. This was his evidence: "From 1995 to 2004, inflation-adjusted median family income -- for families precisely in the middle -- rose 14.3 percent, to $43,200, the Federal Reserve says." He didn't identify his source, but it turns out to be a Fed bulletin published this year;1 it shows the results of a Survey of Consumer Finances conducted in 1995, 1998, 2001 and 2004 which asked respondents to report their income for the preceding year. Therefore, Mr. Samuelson's comments actually compare 1994 with 2003, but the data for those years do indeed show a 14.3% increase in median real family income. Being neither an economist not a statistician, I can't evaluate the methodology, but I note that the population, apparently about 4,500 people, includes "a standard, geographically based random sample and a special oversample of relatively wealthy families. Weights are used to combine the two samples to make estimates for the full population." Maybe that's sound, but it seems an odd way to find the mid-point.
In any case, there are other measures. The Census Bureau report of real median household income2 shows a slightly higher 2003 income, $44,482,3 but an increase 1994 - 2003 of only 9.4%. The Fed report indicates that its data on "families" are comparable to the Census data on "households." The definitions of income appear to be the same except that the Fed includes capital gains, not likely a significant factor for most households. According to one study, the median ($40,000 to $50,000) income bracket accounted for 1% of the dollar amount of capital gains in 2003. 4
An incomplete but meaningful indicator of income for working people is average weekly earnings. The Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that they increased by only 7.2% between December 1994 and December 2003, and have fallen by about 1% since then.5
Mr. Samuelson didn't mention that the Fed shows that the increase in family income from 2000 to 2003 was only 1.6%. For that period, the Census Bureau shows a decline of 3.4%, and another small decline in 2004.
Using these alternative numbers, dissatisfaction about income isn't as much of a mystery.
Mr. Samuelson noted that income is not the only problem. "The other great frustration is that it has not eliminated insecurity." He doesn't make clear whether "it" is the expanding economy or the increase in wages, but either way, he's right. "People regard job stability as part of their standard of living. As corporate layoffs increased, that part has eroded." He could have added vanishing pensions and health care benefits to the list, along with worries about Social Security. The mystery vanishes.
Mr. Samuelson concluded with this homily: "The pursuit of affluence does not always end with bliss." The solution to dissatisfaction apparently is for people to control their desires and to know their place in the economic order.
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1. Recent Changes in Family Finances; www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/bulletin/2006/financesurvey.pdf
2. Historical Income Tables - Households; www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/histinc/h06ar.html
3. Both use 2004 dollars.
4. The Tax Policy Center; www.taxpolicycenter.org/TaxModel/tmdb/
TMTemplate.cfm?DocID=818&topic2ID=60&topic3ID=62&DocTypeID=1
5. Total Private Average Weekly earnings; http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/surveymost?ce
May 28, 2006
President Bush was asked, during his joint appearance with Prime Minister Blair, "which missteps and mistakes of your own [in Iraq] you most regret." Here's his full, rambling answer:
Sounds like kind of a familiar refrain here -- saying "bring it on," kind of tough talk, you know, that sent the wrong signal to people. I learned some lessons about expressing myself maybe in a little more sophisticated manner -- you know, "wanted dead or alive," that kind of talk. I think in certain parts of the world it was misinterpreted, and so I learned from that. And I think the biggest mistake that's happened so far, at least from our country's involvement in Iraq is Abu Ghraib. We've been paying for that for a long period of time. And it's -- unlike Iraq, however, under Saddam, the people who committed those acts were brought to justice. They've been given a fair trial and tried and convicted.1
That has drawn mixed reviews. Elisabeth Bumiller's story in the New York Times on May 27 was captioned "With a Few Humble Words, Bush Silences His Texas Swagger;" apparently she (or whoever wrote the caption) seemed to think that a significant change had taken place.
Dan Froomkin, in his Washington Post blog, quoted another of the favorable notices: "For those who trace Mr. Bush's own reluctance to acknowledge errors in Iraq, his statements on Thursday night seemed to mark a crossing of a major threshold." However, he had a different reaction:
Bush expressed regrets last night for some of the cowboy rhetoric of his first term, and he acknowledged that the horrific prison abuse at Abu Ghraib was a big mistake.
But he wasn't really conceding much. In the former case, he was expressing regret about style, not substance; and in the latter case, the only harm he acknowledged was to America's reputation - while taking no responsibility for any role he might have had in creating the conditions in which such atrocities could take place.
Ms. Bumiller noted that not everyone was pleased with the possibly-new Bush:
"Sad day in Crawford, they're hanging their heads," said William J. Bennett, the former education secretary and conservative radio talk show host. Mr. Bennett said many of his listeners expressed dismay at what they considered Mr. Bush's groveling.
"One of the attractive things about the president is that he talks Texas," Mr. Bennett continued. "But what broke my heart is when he said, 'I need to be more sophisticated.' What is this, Kerry talk? Is he going to use 'elan' the next time he speaks?"
Mr. Bennett's taste for the President's unsophisticated language may be a fall-back position for one who feels a need to support a Republican president but doesn't have a principled reason. Mr. Bennett can't apply the standards he insisted upon for President Clinton:
. . . What makes our society tick, aside from good governance and competence, is good character. And good character is not some abstraction. It is one of those tangible, very real human attributes that we know, and appreciate, when we see it.2
In addition to pointing out lack of competence, one certainly could argue that Mr. Bush lacks good character, but that's a rather subjective test; character is in the eye of the beholder, at least in politics. However, Bennett offered some criteria:
. . . A president whose character manifests itself in patterns of reckless personal conduct, deceit, abuse of power, and contempt for the rule of law cannot be a good president. . . .3
In that passage, Bennett argued that Clinton's "reckless personal conduct," and his attempts to hide it disqualified him from high office. But applying tests of deceit, abuse of power and contempt for the rule of law produces far worse marks for Bush. Bennett later added "dishonesty and lack of accountability" to his list of presidential sins. Again, Bush fails; one example, as Froomkin noted, is his refusal to accept responsibility for the policies, rhetoric and attitudes which led to Abu Ghraib.
The notion that Mr. Bush is a straight-talking Texan is a little off the mark. True, he often adopts a folksy manner, especially in answering questions. However, leaving aside the manner and the accent, his statements are, shall we say, postmodern. Postmodern speakers and writers are not bound by meaning, content, truth or any such obsolete paradigms. Mood, style, obscurity and distracting pretension are the hallmarks; a little arrogance doesn't hurt. So with Mr. Bush.
In 1995, Alan Sokal wrote a parody of postmodern theory4 which was accepted and published as a serious article by Social Text, a quarterly journal which describes itself as a "daring and controversial leader in the field of cultural studies." Dr. Sokal later revealed his hoax:
Like the genre it is meant to satirize . . . my article is a mélange of truths, half-truths, quarter-truths, falsehoods, non sequiturs, and syntactically correct sentences that have no meaning whatsoever." 5
What a succinct description of the Bush method, apart from correct syntax. Postmodernism is anti-intellectual in effect; so is Bushism, and Mr. Bush is anti-intellectual in style as well, which endears him to William Bennett. Postmodernism uses obscurity to hide its lack of content; Bushism uses it to hide its agenda and the facts.
In explaining his motivation, Dr. Sokal offered a quote from a critique of relativism:
. . . The displacement of the idea that facts and evidence matter by the idea that everything boils down to subjective interests and perspectives is - second only to American political campaigns - the most prominent and pernicious manifestation of anti-intellectualism in our time." 6
In addition to making the connection between relativism and politics, that too describes the Bush rhetoric: suppression of facts, disdain for evidence, and making truth and reality dependant on a perspective, in this case viewing everything through the "prism" of 9/11.
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1. www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/05/20060525-12.html. His comment actually had been "bring 'em on" or, formalized in the White House transcript, "bring them on."
www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/07/20030702-3.html
2. The Death of Outrage, p. 36.
3. Id, at 38.
4. "Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity." This and the article in the following footnote are at www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/
5. "Transgressing the Boundaries: An Afterword."
6. Larry Laudan, Science and Relativism
May 30, 2006
Memorial Day should be an occasion to honor those who have sacrificed in the service of their country, but a speech by George W. Bush makes it all tawdry. His address at Arlington National Cemetery1 was mercifully brief, and it omitted the tired, deceitful rationales for the Iraq war that he paraded on Saturday at West Point. However, it contained one line which summed up his hypocrisy nicely: "In this place where valor sleeps, we are reminded why America has always gone to war reluctantly, because we know the costs of war." Soppy, insincere poetry followed by two false - for him - statements: a classic Bush formal speech.
Bob Herbert's column in Monday's New York Times was a more fitting observance of Memorial Day:
Look around and ask yourself if you believe that stability or democracy in Iraq -- or whatever goal you choose to assert as the reason for this war -- is worth the life of your son or your daughter, or your husband or your wife, or the co-worker who rides to the office with you in the morning, or your friendly neighbor next door.
He was being kind, mentioning only the fall-back, noble reasons, not the discredited ones with which the war was sold.
There is no shortage of weaselly politicians and misguided commentators ready to tell us that we can't leave Iraq -- we just can't. Chaos will ensue. Maybe even a civil war. But what they really mean is that we can't leave as long as the war can continue to be fought by other people's children, and as long as we can continue to put this George W. Bush-inspired madness on a credit card.
Start sending the children of the well-to-do to Baghdad, and start raising taxes to pay off the many hundreds of billions that the war is costing, and watch how quickly this tragic fiasco is brought to an end.
In The Rise of the Vulcans, James Mann told us that Winston Churchill is a hero to some of the hawkish members of the administration. Mr. Herbert dealt with that in a comment on the recent joint appearance of the President and the Prime Minister:
Nothing new came out of the Bush-Blair press conference. After more than three years these two men are as clueless as ever about what to do in Iraq. Are we doomed to follow the same pointless script for the next three years? And for three years after that?
Leadership does not get more pathetic than this. Once there was F.D.R. and Churchill. Now there's Bush and Blair.
June 7, 2006
In an op-ed in the Washington Post on May 21, Richard Vigeurie added his voice to the chorus of conservative complaints about President Bush and the Republicans. Out of a long list of actions and programs, Mr. Vigeurie could find only two to praise, tax cuts (although too small) and the missile defense system. The negative side of the ledger includes No Child Left Behind, the Medicare prescription drug benefit, increased spending generally, the McCain-Feingold campaign finance bill, the "Bridge to Nowhere" transportation bill, the Harriet Miers Supreme Court nomination, the Dubai ports deal, the Hurricane Katrina response, "which proved that the government isn't ready for the next disaster," a war in Iraq that "drags on because of the failure to provide adequate resources at the beginning, and with exactly the sort of 'nation- building' that Candidate Bush said he opposed," inattention to the "rising threat" of China and Russia, "shoveling money" into the United Nations "despite its refusal to change," and an immigration plan which includes amnesty; the last was "the tipping point."
However, one of the conservative complaints has prompted action by Mr. Bush and Congress. Mr. Viguerie asked "Where is the campaign for a constitutional amendment to prevent liberal judges from allowing same-sex marriage?" The President responded with a show of support for the "Marriage Protection Amendment," even though no one expected it to pass. This usually has been analyzed in terms of rallying the base, which it may have done. Standing up for doomed proposals is part of the Republican success story, as Thomas Frank pointed out in What's the Matter with Kansas? However, it also could be interpreted as wasting limited political capital as the Senate is about to vote on another bill dear to the base, one which might pass.
Social conservatives have expressed anger recently at the domination of the Republican Party by monied interests. However, they have only themselves to blame. They have bought the reactionary economic line of that breed of conservatives, including repeated, massive, irresponsible tax cuts. Exactly why they have done this is a mystery, as it is in the personal interest of few of them. A corollary mystery is why self-proclaimed true Christians have decided that helping the rich and ignoring the poor is Biblical. Whatever the explanation, social conservatives enthusiastically line up to support tax cuts.
The cut presently being considered is elimination of the estate tax; the Senate is expected to vote on it soon. Many people, not just conservatives, have been fooled into thinking that the estate tax (or as it is called by its foes, the "death tax"), will affect them, and that it causes the breakup of family farms and businesses. Both the rhetorically useful label and the misrepresentation of the impact of the tax have been peddled by various pro-business or anti-tax groups. Washington's Senators are being pushed toward supporting repeal by ads showing a man and his son, just ordinary folks, going fishing, with a voice-over telling us about the threat to their dreams from the death tax.
The ad is sponsored by the Free Enterprise Fund. Its web site1 describes the ad campaign under the heading " 'Free Enterprise Fund Calls on Senator Cantwell: "Stop Taxing Washingtonians' Dreams.' Repeal the Death Tax- Immediately. Permanently. Completely." The FEF has the following agenda:
Permanent tax cuts, dividend and capital gains
Repeal the Death Tax
Reform Sarbanes-Oxley
Cut Government Spending
Reform the Tax Code (Low, Flat and Simple)
Reform Social Security: "Stop the Raid. Start the Accounts"
Reform Healthcare
Expand Free Trade
Curb Federal Regulation
"Reforming" Social Security means private accounts. The FEF is so hostile to Social Security that it argues that "For increasing numbers of workers, Social Security is no new deal. It's a raw deal."
FEF's tax agenda is self-explanatory, but it is important to note whose agenda it is. The "Policy Council" of FEF consists of Jack Kemp, Arthur Laffer and Lawrence Kudlow. Jack Kemp has been crusading for lower taxes for about thirty years. Apparently he still believes, in the absence of any supporting evidence, that tax cuts always result in economic growth and increased tax revenue. Arthur Laffer, of the appropriately-named curve, seems to be the principal source of that fantasy. Lawrence Kudlow is candid in his desire to benefit the top fraction of one per cent of Americans. Voters, and Senators, should keep that in mind as they view propaganda claiming that lots of people are at risk if we retain the estate tax.
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1. www.freeenterprisefund.org/index.php
Three prisoners at Guantánamo hanged themselves. Given the conditions of their endless confinement, this hardly can come as a surprise. The conditions alone should have made it obvious that desperation would set in; if the government needed a further sign, it was provided by the numerous prior suicide attempts.
The administration, however, managed not only surprise and shock but resentment and paranoia. Colleen Graffy, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy, described the suicides as a "good PR move to draw attention" and "a tactic to further the jihadi cause." Ms. Graffy apparently has learned from her boss, Karen Hughes, Mr. Bush's longtime spinmeister.
The commandant of the prison, Rear Admiral Harry B. Harris, added his bit: "I believe this was not an act of desperation, but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us." Perhaps Zarqawi committed suicide too, just to spite us, asymmetrically.
Apparently the decedents had been keeping track of the Supreme Court's docket. Gen. Bantz J. Craddock, head of the Southern Command, speculated that the suicides may have been designed to affect the Court's decision in the Hamdan case: "This may be an attempt to influence the judicial proceedings."
Finally, a Pentagon spokesman reassured us that Guantánamo is "a professionally run, humane detention facility." I'm not sure that the terms "professional" and "humane" could be applied to any activity of this administration, certainly not to its treatment of prisoners of the "war on terror."
June 14, 2006
Tim Eyman isn't having a good month.
Amid much bluster, he had to admit that he had failed to collect enough signatures for Referendum 65. It would have required a public vote on a bill passed by the Legislature this year which added "sexual orientation" to the categories protected under state anti-discrimination statutes. His tactics and stunts, including showing up at the Secretary of State's office in a Darth Vader costume, and even his involvement with the referendum, have irritated his allies in the signature drive. Faith and Freedom Network, a conservative Christian lobbying group, intended to file a referendum after failing to defeat the bill in the Legislature. Eyman filed first, and Faith and Freedom decided to collaborate with him, but now wishes it had gone its own way. One spokesman for Faith and Freedom called Eyman's antics "embarrassing." Another said that part of the reason for the failure of the signature drive was "resistance" to Eyman, who was seen as "an interloper." 1 The spat between the former allies played out on Faith and Freedom's web site, in the form of an anti-Eyman column and Tim's response, both full of recriminations.2
According to former Republican Party Chairman Chris Vance, Eyman is "hijacking issues and shoving his way into an issue because it's become a business for him. . . . I think it's hurting the legitimate perception of the initiative process." 3
Eyman's other setback involves his signature issue, tax cuts.
He succeeded in putting Initiative 722 on the ballot in November, 2000. Up to that time, Washington statutes allowed any taxing district to increase the taxes levied by the district by as much as 6% without a vote of the people. In the language of the statute, the maximum allowed to any taxing district in any year was 106% of the highest amount levied in the three preceding years. I-722 would have reduced that to 102%. It passed, but was challenged immediately, leading to a Superior Court decision in February, 2001 declaring it unconstitutional, a common fate for Eyman initiatives. That decision was affirmed by the Supreme Court in September, 2001.
In January, 2001, Eyman filed I-747, and qualified it for the November, 2001 ballot. I-747 lowered the permissible annual increase to 1%. However, it described the proposed change as a reduction from a limit of 102% to 101%, which would have been accurate only if I-722 had become law. It never had; its effectiveness was enjoined in November, 2000 pending the constitutional ruling. I-747 stated that it was amending I-722, but by the time of the election in November, 2001, I-722 was completely and finally out of the picture. I-747 passed easily.
The misleading nature of 747, describing a reduction from 2% to 1% when the actual reduction was from 6% to 1%, was obvious at the time, but little remarked. However, this week, the King County Superior Court declared 747 unconstitutional on that ground. It is the result of a leisurely challenge. According to the docket, the suit, by Whitman County and several organizations, was filed in January, 2005, more than three years after the election. The ruling was on a motion on the pleadings, something which normally would occur very early in the progress of a lawsuit, but in this case the motion was not filed until two months ago.
The Superior Court's opinion summarizes its ruling as follows:
When I-747 went to the voters on November 6, 2001, the voters were incorrectly led to believe they were voting to amend I-722. They were incorrectly led to believe they were voting on a change in the tax increase cap from two percent to one percent. Instead, they were voting on a change from six percent to one percent. The voters were misled as to the nature and content of the law to be amended, and the effect of the amendment upon it. The constitution forbids this. 4
All of that is clear except, perhaps, the last sentence. How do we get from the misleading nature of the initiative to the conclusion that it is unconstitutional? The support offered by the Superior Court for its conclusion isn't overwhelming. Two Supreme Court cases are cited for the proposition that amendatory statutes, including initiatives, must disclose the effect of the amendment on existing law. I-747 failed to do that, at least to do it clearly, but those decisions are not factually similar and not compelling authority.
The Superior Court opinion does not address, apparently because the plaintiffs did not raise, another misleading aspect of the initiative. The preamble to I-747, entitled "Policies and purposes," includes this statement: "The Washington state Constitution limits property taxes to 1% per year; this measure matches this principle by limiting property tax increases to 1% per year." The two provisions "match" only in the use of the figure 1%; otherwise they deal with entirely different concepts. The Constitution provides that the aggregate of all tax levies, by the state and all taxing districts, shall not, in any year, exceed 1% of the value of that property. The initiative would have limited the tax levy of a district to 101% of its highest levy in the three preceding years. One refers to all tax levies in the state, and applies its percentage test to value. The other refers to increases by individual taxing authorities and applies its percentage test to a prior levy. However, a reader of Eyman's prologue might be misled into thinking that the initiative merely intended to enforce a constitutional limit.
The potential for confusion is increased by the fact that neither provision is easily understood; an article in Thursday's Seattle Times attempted to explain the effect of I-747, but didn't get it quite right. The confusion increases when the exceptions to the rules are added.
One of the oddities of all this is that Eyman filed I-747 while the fate of I-722 was in doubt. That would have been a peculiar strategy under any circumstances, but drafting 747 as a modification of the threatened 722 was plain dumb. The final section of 747, "Legislative intent," suggests that it was filed in a fit of pique at the challenge to 722. Here is Tim's reminder that "politicians" had better not mess with him:
The people have clearly expressed their desire to limit taxes through the overwhelming passage of numerous initiatives and referendums. However, politicians throughout the state of Washington continue to ignore the mandate of these measures.
Politicians are reminded:
(1) All political power is vested in the people, as stated in Article I, section 1 of the Washington state Constitution.
(2) The first power reserved by the people is the initiative, as stated in Article II, section 1 of the Washington state Constitution.
(3) Politicians are an employee of the people, not their boss.
(4) Any property tax increase which violates the clear intent of this measure undermines the trust of the people in their government and will increase the likelihood of future tax limitation measures.
We've had enough of this sort of ignorant, reactionary, pseudo-populist posturing. It's too much to hope that Eyman has been chastened by recent events, but perhaps his followers will realize that the real Tim Eyman isn't their protector who will do battle with the "politicians," but is just the professional politician in the funny suit.
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1. Seattle Times, 6/7
2. www.faithandfreedom.us/weblog/2006/06/following-is-statement-on-behalf-of.html
3. Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 6/6.
4. http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/news/local/links/I747decision.pdf
June 25, 2006
Several of the reports of Patrick Fitzgerald's decision not to prosecute Karl Rove described it as a victory for Rove or the White House. It's a measure of the condition of the administration, morally and politically, that having an unindicted senior advisor counts as a triumph.
Frank Rich's column last Sunday was captioned "Karl Rove beats the Democrats again," but his point was that the Republicans, despite their woes, are likely to win in November unless the Dems wake up. As Mr. Rich noted, Rove still is following the script that he wrote in early 2002: Republicans are the party of national security. This year's version is uglier: "too many Democrats . . . are ready to give the green light to go to war, but when it gets tough, when it gets difficult, they fall back on that party's old pattern of cutting and running. They may be with you at the first shots, but they are not going to be with you for the last, tough battle." 1 This sort of bluster should be embarrassing, coming as it does from an armchair warrior and spokesman for an administration that has made a mess of its crusade.
However, in accordance with the Rove script, the House passed, 256-153, a chest-thumping, flag-waving, resolution on Iraq:
*** Whereas it is essential to the security of the American people and to world security that the United States, together with its allies, take the battle to the terrorists and to those who provide them assistance;*** Whereas by early 2003 Saddam Hussein and his criminal, Ba'athist regime in Iraq, which had supported terrorists, constituted a threat against global peace and security and was in violation of mandatory United Nations Security Council Resolutions;Whereas the terrorists have declared Iraq to be the central front in their war against all who oppose their ideology;
*** Whereas the United States and Coalition servicemembers and civilians and the members of the Iraqi security forces and those assisting them who have made the ultimate sacrifice or been wounded in Iraq have done so nobly, in the cause of freedom; andWhereas the United States and its Coalition partners will continue to support Iraq as part of the Global War on Terror: Now, therefore, be it
Resolved, That the House of Representatives--*** (3) declares that it is not in the national security interest of the United States to set an arbitrary date for the withdrawal or redeployment of United States Armed Forces from Iraq;
(4) declares that the United States is committed to the completion of the mission to create a sovereign, free, secure, and united Iraq; . . .
My first reaction was to conclude that the House Republicans had shot themselves in the foot. According to polls, Iraq is the most important issue to voters, a majority disapprove of the way the war is being conducted and, depending on the way the question is asked, a majority or near-majority favor withdrawal. Going on record in favor of the war and against bringing the troops home seems, to borrow Mr. Rich's word, counterintuitive.
Similarly, Rove and Bush seem to be painting themselves into a corner. While Congress, at the White House's urging, accuses Democrats of wanting to cut and run, Bush pledges that Republicans won't wave "the white flag of surrender." 2 How will that play with people who want the withdrawal to begin? Won't they be offended at being called cowards? How will the brave talk be squared with a major withdrawal when that happens, as is likely, before "victory"? If a drawdown happens or is promised just before the election, won't it be seen as grossly political?
Mr. Bush also justifies his policies by claiming that Iraqis support them, just as they tell us they don't. On the way back from Baghdad, he told reporters that the Iraqi leaders he met are "worried almost to a person that we will leave before they're capable of defending themselves. . . ." 3 At the "President's Dinner," he said this: "Talk about a deadline before we've done the job sends chills throughout the spines of Iraqi citizens who are wondering whether or not the United States has the capacity to keep its word." However, the Iraqi President and Vice-President reportedly had asked Mr. Bush, when he was in Baghdad, for a timetable for withdrawal.4 The Iraqi National Security Advisor, in an op-ed in the Washington Post, looked forward to reducing foreign troops to fewer than 100,000 by year's end and to removal of most of them by the end of next year.
The eventual removal of coalition troops from Iraqi streets will help the Iraqis, who now see foreign troops as occupiers rather than the liberators they were meant to be. It will remove psychological barriers and the reason that many Iraqis joined the so-called resistance in the first place. The removal of troops will also allow the Iraqi government to engage with some of our neighbors that have to date been at the very least sympathetic to the resistance because of what they call the "coalition occupation." If the sectarian issue continues to cause conflict with Iraq's neighbors, this matter needs to be addressed urgently and openly -- not in the guise of aversion to the presence of foreign troops.
Moreover, the removal of foreign troops will legitimize Iraq's government in the eyes of its people. . . .
The Iraqi Prime Minister presented a plan to Parliament today which includes a timetable for the assumption of security duties by Iraqi forces.
General Casey, apparently unaware that he would be cutting and running, has prepared a plan for withdrawing two brigades, about 3,500 troops,* in September and more next year. As usual, the forecast is conditioned on the progress of Iraqi efforts. No doubt Mr. Bush would claim that his stand-up, stand-down formula had been followed, but unless the Iraqis can eliminate all acts of terrorism, the rhetoric about white flags and his pledge not to accept "anything less than complete victory" might sound a little hollow: we'd be abandoning the central front in the war on terror, telling the Iraqis to win the war for us.
However, whatever illogic there is behind the bluster doesn't matter because the bluster is the point. Republicans aren't counting on fooling the people, let alone on being consistent, but on intimidating their opponents, and it may still work. One hundred forty-nine Democrats voted against the House resolution, but 42 supported it, including Rick Larsen and Adam Smith from this state.
In the Senate, two amendments to a defense appropriations bill came up for a vote on Thursday. Senator Kerry's proposal was the more ambitious; it included this:
(1) For purposes of strengthening the national security of the United States, the President shall redeploy, commencing in 2006, United States forces from Iraq by July 1, 2007, in accordance with a schedule coordinated with the Government of Iraq, leaving only the minimal number of forces that are critical to completing the mission of standing up Iraqi security forces, conducting targeted and specialized counterterrorism operations, and protecting United States facilities and personnel.
***
(3) The President should maintain an over-the-horizon troop presence to prosecute
the war on terror and protect regional security interests.
That went down to defeat 13-86, with only twelve Democrats plus Senator Jeffords voting in favor. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell were opposed, along with most of the big names: Biden, Byrd, Clinton, Dodd, Feinstein, Levin, Lieberman, Obama, Reid, Schumer. The amendment wasn't going to pass, but a united stand would have established a position, and the party badly needs a position on something. Here there would have been the bonus of getting on the right side of an issue and possibly increasing chances for victory in November.
The good news is that the Democrats didn't capitulate entirely. Senator Levin offered a milder alternative amendment:
. . . (b) Congress makes the following findings:
***
(12) The current open-ended commitment of United States forces in Iraq is unsustainable and a deterrent to the Iraqis making the political compromises and
personnel and resource commitments that are needed for the stability and security
of Iraq.
(c) . . .
(1) . . .
(D) the President should--
(i) expedite the transition of United States forces in Iraq to a limited presence and mission of training Iraqi security forces, providing logistic support of Iraqi security forces, protecting United States infrastructure and personnel, and participating in targeted counterterrorism activities;
(ii) after consultation with the Government of Iraq, begin the phased redeployment of United States forces from Iraq this year; and
(iii) submit to Congress a plan by the end of 2006 with estimated dates for the continued phased redeployment of United States forces from Iraq, with the understanding that unexpected contingencies may arise; . . .
This lost, 39-60, but it received the support of 37 Democrats, suggesting that opposition to the war, in some form, could become a party position.
However, there seems to be no hurry to make it one. The issues statement released few days ago by Sen Reid and Rep. Pelosi does not mention Iraq. Following the vote on the Levin amendment, Senator Reid declared that the Republicans "stand alone that there should be no plan and no end in Iraq. They want an open-ended commitment, and the American people and the Senate Democrats cannot agree to an open-ended commitment." However, the "Real Security" plan devised by the Democrats in March contented itself with this: "Ensure 2006 is a year of significant transition to full Iraqi sovereignty, with the Iraqis assuming primary responsibility for securing and governing their country and with the responsible redeployment of U.S. forces." That's difficult to distinguish from the administration's plan. Like the Republicans, the Democrats seem to sticking with the strategies of 2002 and 2004; apparently the Dems haven't tumbled to the fact that they lost.
They should pay more attention to Rep. Murtha, who had this to say about Rove's taunt:
He's sitting in his air-conditioned office on his big, fat backside, saying stay the course. That's not a plan. . . . We've got to change direction. You can't sit there in the air-conditioned office and tell troops carrying 70 pounds on their backs inside these armored vessels hit with IEDs every day, seeing their friends blown up, their buddies blown up - and he says stay the course? Easy to say that from Washington, DC.5
That's not an elegant statement, and ad hominem attacks aren't my favorite form of political argument, but it takes a stand and makes a valid point, and Rove & Co. can't honestly complain about the style, having asked for it.
_______________________________
* Correction 6/27/06: 3,500 each, 7,000 total
1. Concord (NH) Monitor, 6/13/06: www.concordmonitor.com; http://thinkprogress.org/2006/06/18/murtha-rove
2. "Remarks by the President at the 2006 President's Dinner," www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/06/20060619-14.html
3. "White House Briefing," 6/15/06;
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2006/06/15/BL2006061500879html
4. www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/news/world/14823067.htm
5. http://thinkprogress.org/2006/06/18/murtha-rove
July 3, 2006
It's fortunate for the Seattle Times that the P-I is failing. If the Times had a strong competitor, it might be in trouble.
On Friday, the editorial and op-ed pages of the Times were exact duplications of those published on Thursday. The next day's edition carried a single editorial page, as is the custom on Saturdays, in the Local News section. However, Friday's two pages showed up there as well. The only acknowledgement of the error was a note on the first page of that section stating that we would find Friday's pages "reprinted" inside.
At least including Friday's pages provided some substance to Saturday's paper; the truncated editorial section which the Times runs on Saturdays rarely has any. June 30th's was no exception; it offered as its only editorial a eulogy for the retiring rock group Sleater-Kinney. It's possible that their passing is important enough to deserve the only column on the editorial page; never having heard them, I can't be sure. However, I doubt it, a conclusion reinforced by the description of the band's music: "a welcome eruption of noise;" "warbling yells, mesmerizing guitars and pounding drums." I realize that newspapers increasingly are written by and for youngsters, but this seems a bit much. Leaving musical criticism aside, there are more important issues.
At least the Times staff took the page seriously enough to write a column about something. The P-I also has a shrunken editorial section on Saturdays, which it calls "Saturday Spin." The only staff contributions are a few squibs printed under the heading "Snark Attack" and an invitation for letters from readers called "Horsey's Burning Question." This week's question was "can you ignore the war or does it intrude?" The notion that anyone could be sufficiently unaware of or unconcerned about the war that it would have to "intrude" is as peculiar as editorializing about a rock band. David Horsey is usually far more perceptive and involved.
I confess to being an old fogy who is obsessive about the war, which no doubt influences my reaction to both offerings.
In addition, it could be argued that this isn't the time to be criticizing newspapers. Republicans are laying down another of their smokescreens, this one an attack on the treasonous New York Times, which disclosed that the government has been monitoring bank transactions. The program involves information provided by an organization known as SWIFT, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication. Mr. Bush led the attacks, alleging that the
disclosure was "disgraceful," that "for a newspaper to publish [such a leak] does great harm to the United States of America," and that the disclosure "makes it harder to win this war on terror." Others have chimed in, claiming that the article told terrorists something they did not already know. Thus far, there is no evidence of that.
One of the lame attempts to show damage came from Tony Snow. Asked whether terrorists didn't already know about SWIFT, he said he was "absolutely sure" they didn't.1 However, Dan Froomkin pointed out in his web column on June 28 that SWIFT is not exactly a secret; its web site tells the world all about itself, including this: it "has a longstanding history, beginning in the 1990s, of cooperating with authorities such as central banks, treasury departments, law enforcement agencies and international organizations such as the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) in their efforts to prevent misuse of the financial system." The FATF web site describes that organization as "an inter-governmental body whose purpose is the development and promotion of national and international policies to combat money laundering and terrorist financing." It was formed by the G7 conference of 1989.
The U.S. Treasury Department web site tells us that it established an Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence in April, 2004. Former Secretary John Snow marked its second anniversary by noting that it is designed to "attack the financial underpinnings of terrorists. . . ." A report lists numerous successes in disrupting terrorist financing and notes that the Department works through FATF. 2
The fact that the government was pursuing terrorism financing networks was known from the beginning of the post-9/11 anti-terrorist campaign. President Bush issued an executive order on September 24, 2001, which provided in part that
The Secretary of State, the Secretary of the Treasury, and other appropriate agencies shall make all relevant efforts to cooperate and coordinate with other countries . . . to achieve the objectives of this order, including the prevention and suppression of acts of terrorism, the denial of financing and financial services to terrorists and terrorist organizations, and the sharing of intelligence about funding activities in support of terrorism.3
This order was publicized through a Rose Garden press briefing.4 Mr. Bush opened that by grandly announcing, "At 12:01 a.m. this morning, a major thrust of our war on terrorism began with the stroke of a pen. Today, we have launched a strike on the financial foundation of the global terror network." He was determined to make sure that everyone knew how serious he was about disrupting terrorist financing:
The reason why we held this statement in the Rose Garden is it helps the American people understand we are waging a different kind of war. . . . It is a war that will require the United States to use our influence in a variety of areas in order to win it. And one area is financial.
Although the President now pretends that the program was a deep secret, in that briefing he made its outlines clear:
. . . We've established a foreign terrorist asset tracking center at the Department of the Treasury to identify and investigate the financial infrastructure of the international terrorist networks.
It will bring together representatives of the intelligence, law enforcement and financial regulatory agencies to accomplish two goals: to follow the money as a trail to the terrorists, to follow their money so we can find out where they are; and to freeze the money to disrupt their actions.
We're also working with the friends and allies throughout the world to share information. We're working closely with the United Nations, the EU and through the G-7/G-8 structure to limit the ability of terrorist organizations to take advantage of the international financial systems.5
At the news conference, Secretaries O'Neill and Powell also referred to action through the G7/G8.
These sources do not lay out the entire program, but unless we're dealing with really dumb terrorists, they knew without reading the Times that any money transfers were being watched and had a fair idea how that was being done. The Republican outrage is exaggerated, to say the least.
The New York Times was not alone in making the disclosure. The story appeared on its web site and those of the Los Angeles Times and the Wall Street Journal at about the same time, the evening of June 22, and in their papers the next day. Only the NY Times has been honored with the administration's wrath, so protecting national security isn't the issue at all. The Times has been on the administration's hit list since its disclosure of the NSA program, and it is a convenient "liberal" target in an election year; all the rhetoric is driven by political opportunism. The Republicans can't run on their national security record, so they run on national-security posturing.
The Seattle Times redeemed itself this morning with a house editorial denouncing the administration's attacks, and making this basic point: "The debate should not be about the role of the press, but about the alarming lack of oversight of the executive."
___________________________
1. www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/06/20060627-3.html
2. www.ustreas.gov/press/releases/reports/tfi_factsheet.pdf
3. www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010924-1.html
4. I learned this from an article in the Houston Chronicle; http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/printstory.mpl/%20nation/4017008
5. www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010924-4.html
July 5, 2006
If the Senate had moved the flag-desecration amendment on its way, no doubt President Bush would have waved the amendment, along with the flag, in his speech yesterday. He would have bragged that he had protected not only the homeland but its symbol. Instead, the Constitution has been spared, temporarily, from tinkering.
The amendment failed of passage by one vote. It was made that close by the "yes" votes of fourteen Democrats, including Senator Reid, again unwilling to take a stand. He was joined by, among others, Senators Bayh, Feinstein and Rockefeller. Their work was done for them by the Independent, Sen. Jeffords, and three Republicans, two of whom were surprises, to me at least: Sens. Bennett, Chafee and McConnell.
The amendment would have empowered Congress to "prohibit the physical desecration of the flag of the United States." The operative word is an odd one. Most dictionaries define desecration as an act which profanes or violates the sacredness of some object. Is the flag a religious icon? Some definitions accept a broader usage: to treat disrespectfully or outrageously. Therefore, assuming that Congress had the looser definition in mind, the language of the amendment makes sense, barely. Of course, the language is appropriate under the more restrictive definition if one assumes that the flag is sacred. However, in a way that's what the amendment was intended to establish, which would make the whole precess circular.
It would have been interesting to learn which acts, under any definition, would constitute desecration. Burning the flag at a political rally seems to be the sole focus, but many other usages would come under scrutiny, wasting endless time in making fine distinctions about acts and motivations. How about the President's signing a flag? He did that on July 24, 2003,1 an act prohibited, or at least disapproved, by federal statute, 4 USC § 8 (g): "The flag should never have placed upon it . . . any mark, insignia, letter, word, figure, design, picture, or drawing of any nature."
The core issue is freedom of speech. Such an amendment would be the first repeal of any part of the Bill of Rights, not something to be undertaken lightly, certainly not to solve a virtually nonexistent problem. The flag burning amendment would have been the symbolic equivalent of a ban on criticizing the government.
_______________________
1.www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A44591-2003Aug25
July 12, 2006
In his column in the Washington Post on May 8, Sebastian Mallaby said "It's been a long time since honest believers argued that tax cuts pay for themselves." Apparently, in his view, the President and Vice President aren't honest believers, as they both peddle that line. True, they don't say explicitly that cuts "pay for themselves," but that's the message.
President Bush made a little speech on the economy yesterday. He had some good numbers to report, and of course bragged that they were the result of his policies - or more accurately, his policy; he really has only one: tax cuts. One the subject at hand, he said this:
We cut the taxes on the American people because we strongly believe that the American people should lead us out of recession. Our small businesses flourished, people invested, tax revenue is up, and we're way ahead of cutting the deficit -- federal deficit in half by 2009.1
Cutting taxes will increase tax revenue; as a bonus it will cut the deficit, a strange claim for an administration which has increased the national debt by more than 2.6 trillion dollars. Just how pathetic this administration is in fiscal policy and performance is shown by the boast that the deficit may be only 296 billion.
Mr. Bush's adherence to the Laffer myth is even clearer in some of his earlier comments, such as this in February:
One of the interesting things that I hope you realize when it comes to cutting taxes is this tax relief not only has helped our economy, but it's helped the federal budget. In 2004, tax revenues to the Treasury grew about 5.5 percent.
That's kind of counter-intuitive, isn't it? At least it is for some in Washington. You cut taxes and the tax revenues increase. See, some people are going to say, well, you cut taxes, you're going to have less revenue. No, that's not what happened. . . .2
Again, in May: "Tax relief has helped a growing economy, which means more tax revenue for the federal treasury." 3 The Vice President added his endorsement: "The evidence is in, it's time for everyone to admit that sensible tax cuts increase economic growth, and add to the federal treasury." 4
This counter-intuitive proposition actually may be valid in some circumstances, although not in many and not in the present ones. A good summary was given by Mallaby:
When you have extremely high rates of taxation -- say, 70 percent-plus -- there may be something to this claim: When rates are that high, the rich go to extraordinary lengths to evade taxes and aren't motivated to earn more, so it's not crazy to argue that tax cuts might boost tax receipts. But you have to go back to the 1970s to find tax rates that high. When the top income tax bracket is in the 30 to 40 percent range, nobody serious believes that tax cuts change behavior enough to pay for themselves.
The forecasting of the effects of tax cuts on revenue is something less than an exact science, which alone ought to induce more caution into the administration's claims. In addition, serious attempts at that forecast do not support its position. N. Gregory Mankiw, former Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors under Bush, co-authored a paper5 last year which found that, for "capital income," the "feedback [revenue growth from tax cuts] is surprisingly large." However, the happy news is hardly an endorsement of the Laffer curve. According to the report's jargon, "in the steady state, the dynamic effect of a cut in capital income taxes on government revenue is only 50 percent of the static effect. That is, one-half of a capital tax cut pays for itself." Either the steady state is an abstraction, or it is a condition reached only over a very long time. A table included in the paper shows that after fifty years, the feedback (or dynamic effect, or offsetting revenue) is only 48.4%. By either measure, over any meaningful time frame at least half of the cut is a dead loss to revenue. According to both the table and the text, in the first five years, the feedback would be 21.3%, in the first ten years, 29.1%, after twenty-five years 42.0%. For "labor taxes." the steady-state benefit is 16.7% and the five, ten and twenty-five-year figures are 13.5%, 14.3% and 15.8%. If these results are surprisingly large, what have Bush, Cheney and the Laffers been relying on in saying or implying that all of the lost revenue comes back?
A Congressional Budget Office estimate is even less helpful; assuming a 10% cut in all income taxes, it forecast a "feedback" of 1% to 22% in the first five years and of between minus 5% and plus 32% in the second five years.6
Leaving aside the effects on revenue, the administration's more general claim that it cut taxes to stimulate the economy can't be taken seriously. Bush simply wants tax cuts; he wanted them when everyone thought there would be a surplus, and he wanted them when a deficit appeared.
Peter G. Peterson, Commerce Secretary under President Nixon, is among those Republicans who see the folly of the Bush tax-cutting practices. He noted that, although President Reagan "made many positive, even historic contributions. . ., the tripling of the national debt that occurred during his White House tenure is certainly not among them." He had hoped that the Bush administration would have a better record, but odds weren't good once Mr. Cheney declared that the lesson of the Reagan years was that deficits don't matter.
Mr. Peterson, along with other elder statesmen, tried to redirect the administration's thinking about tax cuts:
. . . In the spring of 2001 five board members of The Concord Coalition, former senators Sam Nunn and Warren Rudman, former Fed chairman Paul Volcker, former Treasury secretary Bob Rubin, and myself, held a press conference. We argued that fiscal stimulus made plenty of sense so long as it was (first) temporary, (second) targeted at individuals or businesses that would spend it, and (third) not going to worsen our longer-term fiscal outlook. The Bush administration went in the opposite direction on all three counts.7
If its tax cuts can't be justified as stimulus, the administration can fall back on an alternative theory. As Mr. Mallaby put it, "tax cutters have clung to a separate faith: that tax cuts will force matching cuts in spending by the government." Cutting taxes to "force" spending cuts is almost as strange a concept as cutting taxes to raise revenue. It would work only if the government couldn't run deficits. Forcing spending cuts was David Stockman's fall-back plan after he discovered that the Laffer curve wasn't holy writ, but his book The Triumph of Politics tells in detail how it didn't work. It still doesn't.
William A. Niskanen, Chairman of the Cato Institute, demolished the alternative theory in a comment8 published in 2004: "For nearly three decades, many conservatives and libertarians have argued that reducing federal tax rates, in addition to increasing long-term economic growth, would reduce the growth of federal spending by 'starving the beast.' " However, that hasn't happened. In 2002, Mr. Niskanen published a study showing that "the relative level of federal spending over the period 1981 through 2000 was coincident with the relative level of the federal tax burden in the opposite direction; in other words, there was a strong negative relation between the relative level of federal spending and tax revenues." To put it even more simply, as revenue went down, spending went up. He noted, in 2004, that the first three years of the Bush administration followed that pattern. One of the explanations he offered for this phenomenon is that "acceptance of the 'starve the beast' position has led too many conservatives and libertarians to be casual about the sustained political discipline necessary to control federal spending directly and to succumb to the fantasy that tax cuts will solve this problem."
In addition to fantasy, Republican fiscal practices are notable for their irresponsibility. Niskanen pointed out that cutting taxes "only shifts part of the burden of government spending to future generations." Jonathan Rauch, in an article discussing Niskanen's findings, put it more pungently. Conservatism isn't starving the beast. "It is fueling the beast's appetite. And the beast has a credit card." 9
Yesterday Mr. Bush delivered the administration's reaction to all of the negativism in the reality-based community, neatly encapsulating both the fantasy and the irresponsibility: "Some in Washington say we had to choose between cutting taxes and cutting the deficit. . . . Today's numbers show that that was a false choice." It's morning in America; we can have it all.
_______________________________
1.www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/07/20060711-1.html
2.www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/02/20060208-7.html
3.www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/05/20060517-2.html
4.www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/02/20060209-9.html
5.http://post.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/mankiw/papers/dynamicscoring_05-1212.pdf
6.www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/69xx/doc6908/12-01-10PercentTaxCut.pdf
7. Running on Empty (2004), pp. xxii, 8
8.www.cato.org/pubs/policy_report/v26n2/cpr-26n2-2.pdf
9.www.jonathanrauch.com/jrauch_articles/cut_taxes_grow_gover/index.html
July 20, 2006
I thought that Tim Eyman, having demonstrated that he's a clown as well as a self-promoter and professional agitator, would have convinced everyone to ignore him. He made the point a month ago by appearing at the Secretary of State's office dressed as Darth Vader. He returned two weeks later to file petitions for his newest project, Initiative 917, the latest effort in his obsessive drive for $30 auto-license tabs. This time he was Buzz Lightyear, complete with costume and script: "Politicians will increase vehicle tabs to infinity and beyond if I-917 doesn't pass." 1Cute.
I was too optimistic. Despite Eyman's antics and the artificiality of his crusade, the Seattle Times offered Eyman space on its July 13 op-ed pages for a column promoting I-917.
However, one of the Times' reporters has a lower opinion of Mr. Eyman than the editorial page editors. In a column on Wednesday, David Postman complained that Eyman's web site stated that he had "succeeded at qualifying I-917 for the ballot." That isn't the case; it hasn't been certified by the Secretary of State because signatures still are being counted and validated. Postman's blog reported later in the day that Eyman has revised his claims. The language Postman objected to was contained in a pitch for more contributions. Here's the current version, with the altered language in italics:
Each year, from January through June, we ask that you focus your donations toward the signature gathering campaign.
Each year, from July through December, we ask that you focus your contributions toward HELP US HELP TAXPAYERS - the compensation fund for Tim[,] Jack, and Mike.
Now that I-917's signature drive is completed, we ask that each and every one of you send in your most generous contribution so we can continue our fight on behalf of taxpayers.
In either version, the message is that Eyman and friends have done such good work for the people that we have an obligation to pay their salaries - and perhaps to reimburse Tim for the costumes.
________________________________
1. The (Everett) Daily Herald;
www.heraldnet.com/stories/06/06/30/100loc_c2eyman001.cfm
July 24, 2006
The President's veto of the stem-cell research bill and his comments on that occasion make little sense, and his claim that his decision is rooted in respect for human life can't be take seriously.
Five years ago, Mr. Bush decided to authorize federal funding of stem cell research, but only on existing lines. This in effect approved the use of stem cells from embryos which had been destroyed in extracting the cells, despite his disapproval of that practice. However, the funds could not be applied to research on cells from embryos destroyed after that date.
Mr. Bush explained his decision on August 9, 2001;1 it is one of his more thoughtful and articulate statements. He described the path to the problem: the creation of excess embryos during in-vitro treatment, some of which do not survive frozen storage, some of which are donated to infertile couples and some of which are used for research. He held out the hope of progress in using adult stem cells or other less controversial methods, but acknowledged the scientific opinion that embryonic stem cell research was uniquely promising. He recognized the potential for dealing with diseases such as Alzheimer's and referred to a letter from Nancy Reagan. He worried about devaluing human life and crossing a line which would open an ethical Pandora's box. He expressed his opinion that stem-cell research destroys the embryo's "potential for life" and added a simile that drives the present debate: "Like a snowflake, each of these embryos is unique, with the unique genetic potential of an individual human being." Mr. Bush summed up as follows:
As a result of private research, more than 60 genetically diverse stem cell lines already exist. They were created from embryos that have already been destroyed, and they have the ability to regenerate themselves indefinitely, creating ongoing opportunities for research. I have concluded that we should allow federal funds to be used for research on these existing stem cell lines, where the life and death decision has already been made.
That was a good political compromise, but it does seem inconsistent to oppose the destruction of embryos but conclude that it's morally acceptable to take advantage of their destruction simply because it's already happened. His position has a whiff of Pilate to it. That also is shown by the fact that the only issue he decided was federal funding. He made no attempt then nor, as far as I know, has he made any attempt since then to prohibit research on other embryos. Mr. Bush seemed to wash his hands of that by noting without comment that some excess embryos "have been donated to science and used to create privately funded stem cell lines."
A "fact sheet" issued by the White House added these conditions for funding:
Federal funds will only be used for research on existing stem cell lines that were derived:
(1) with the informed consent of the donors;
(2) from excess embryos created solely for reproductive purposes; and
(3) without any financial inducements to the donors.2
Fast forward to 2006. The bill which Mr. Bush vetoed imposed these conditions on federal support:
(1) The stem cells were derived from human embryos that have been donated from in vitro fertilization clinics, were created for the purposes of fertility treatment, and were in excess of the clinical need of the individuals seeking such treatment.
(2) Prior to the consideration of embryo donation and through consultation with the individuals seeking fertility treatment, it was determined that the embryos would never be implanted in a woman and would otherwise be discarded.
(3) The individuals seeking fertility treatment donated the embryos with written informed consent and without receiving any financial or other inducements to make the donation.3
That includes the conditions imposed in 2001. The crucial difference is that the bill would not limit funding to lines produced before August, 2001; it would allow future destruction of embryos.
The President's veto message4 repeated some of the observations included in his 2001 statement, but it was slanted more obviously toward the negative conclusion. It again stated the issue in terms of federal funding: "If this bill were to become law, American taxpayers for the first time in our history would be compelled to fund the deliberate destruction of human embryos. Crossing this line would be a grave mistake and would needlessly encourage a conflict between science and ethics that can only do damage to both and harm our Nation as a whole." Why the nation is not imperilled by such research funded by private sources, and now by some states, is not made clear.
At his press conference, Mr. Bush repeated the funding argument, declared that there is no scientific need for additional embryonic stem cell lines, and took the ethical argument to a new level.5 Surrounded by Snowflke families, he pointed out that each of the children present had grown from a surplus embryo; this was a demonstration of the point he made in 2001: each embryo has the potential to produce a child. However, he went a step further: "This bill would support the taking of innocent human life in the hope of finding medical benefits for others. It crosses a moral boundary that our decent society needs to respect, so I vetoed it." No longer does the embryo merely have the potential for life; it is a human life.
Unless there is to be a fundamental change, either abandoning in-vitro fertilization or limiting the number of embryos created, many will be discarded. The bill which the President vetoed would use only those. The choice, therefore, isn't between preserving or destroying human life; it is, even putting it in Mr. Bush's terms, between destroying it wastefully of destroying it usefully.
In the background of Mr. Bush's objections is a sense that we are approaching some sort of limit, not simply in morals but in our capacity to understand, accept and adapt to what science is up to; the world is moving too fast and it is headed in a frightening direction. This feeling is natural and widely held. It may not be a valid reason to stop scientific research, but it has created sympathy for his position. Most of us are appalled by the notion of human cloning, and he's appealing to the same sense of revulsion.
However, Mr. Bush isn't consistent. He seems to have no problem with the basic procedure involved in creating embryos. In 2001, he described it matter-of-factly: the excess embryos "are the product of a process called in vitro fertilization, which helps so many couples conceive children. When doctors match sperm and egg to create life outside the womb, they usually produce more embryos than are planted in the mother. Once a couple successfully has children, or if they are unsuccessful, the additional embryos remain frozen in laboratories." Some are "adopted," shipped across the country, unfrozen and implanted in unrelated women. That already sounds like a science-fiction story, with Frankenstein overtones. However, Mr. Bush casually passed by that boundary. Therefore, it's impossible not to conclude that his veto simply reflects a desire to pander to the sentiments of his antiabortion supporters, who believe that their position requires considering every stage in development, from the fertilized egg forward, to be fully human.
The administration has based its stem-cell policy on respect for human life. The 2001 fact sheet put it thusly: "The President's decision reflects his fundamental commitment to preserving the value and sanctity of human life . . . ." His veto message this year, as noted, claims that the legislation "would support the taking of innocent human life." His 2001 statement included this declaration of principle: "I worry about a culture that devalues life, and believe as your President I have an important obligation to foster and encourage respect for life in America and throughout the world." How consistent is Mr. Bush on the issue?
We have his record as Governor of Texas to demonstrate that respect for human life imposes no limitations on his application of the death penalty. The number of executions, the summary way in which clemency was denied, and the mocking of Karla Faye Tucker show us that snuffing out lives doesn't bother him very much. 6 He has claimed, and his press secretaries have claimed, that he supports the death penalty because it saves other lives. There isn't much evidence to support that argument. More to the point, it is one which Mr. Bush rejects in the stem-cell debate.
Then there is war. As with the death penalty, one can argue that killing people is justified if it saves other lives. Up to a point, Mr. Bush's policy is no different than that of any general or president who has had to make that judgment. However, again there is a cavalier attitude which belies any claim to respect human life. The entire toll of the Iraq war, begun unnecessarily and deceitfully, lies outside the bounds of the doctrine of just war. The doctrine of preemption, the fantasy that we must run around the world stamping out evil, and the casual way in which we discuss invading more countries all reflect a view that lives are expendable. The support for Israel's bombing of Lebanon, whatever one thinks of the merits of the Israeli position, is another example. The situation is dire enough to have forced a belated attempt to rescue Americans, but the Lebanese, whether aligned with Hezbollah or not, are unimportant; their lives are secondary to Israel's "right to defend itself." We are accelerating shipments of munitions to Israel while ignoring international demands for a cease-fire.
In addition to inferring President Bush's attitude toward loss of life from his policies, we can look at his comments about casualties in Iraq, both American and Iraqi. As to Americans, he offers expressions of regret so programmed and unnatural that their falsity leaps out: "We value life. And we weep and mourn when soldiers lose their life." Former Press Secretary McClellan expressed the artificiality of these statements perfectly: "Well, the President . . . has often said, and I believe he will continue to say, that we mourn the loss of every fallen soldier." Plug in mourning where appropriate.
Another clue to Mr. Bush's insincerely about casualties is his tendency to move directly from a discussion of them to an attempt at comedy. I pointed to one such example on {January 27, 2005}. Here's another: On December 12, 2005, the President spoke to the Philadelphia World Affairs Council.7 In the question period he was asked how many Iraqi civilians had been killed. He answered - casually, as the video8 shows - "30,000, more or less." Matthew Rothschild commented on what came next:
While it's a relief, I suppose, to know that Bush understands that his war has killed at least 30,000 Iraqis, does even that figure mean anything to him? He acted as though it were a totally acceptable number. In fact, as David Sirota has noted, Bush in the very next breath made a joke as he interrupted the next questioner to say, "I'll repeat the question. If I don't like it, I'll make it up." . . . . To segue from the deaths of 30,000 Iraqis and 2,140 US soldiers to a poor attempt at humor is to reveal a frightening callousness.9
Secretary Rice arrived in Lebanon today, an unscheduled stop on a trip to Israel. She declared "We are concerned about the humanitarian situation." Presumably "we" includes her boss. It will be interesting to see whether his "concern" for the "humanitarian situation" develops into an attempt to save lives, a real-world respect for human life.
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1.www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/08/20010809-2.html
2.www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/08/20010809-1.html
3.See http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/thomas: HR 810 ENR
4.www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/07/20060719-5.html
5.www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/07/20060719-3.html
6. See Prejean, "Death in Texas," http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17670
7.www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/12/print/20051212-4.html
8. There is a video on the White House web site, but it's easier to find this answer in a video of "The Daily Show" of July 20, 2006.
9.www.progressive.org/mag_wx121305
July 28, 2006
The futility of Secretary of State Rice's trip to the Middle East has underscored the shortcomings of our policy in that region, and hers as well. It is easy to see why some critics have accused the administration of being the servant of Israeli interests. We have been aggressive toward its enemies - Iraq, Iran, Syria - have refused to push it toward a decent and constructive settlement with the Palestinians, and now wink while it destroys Lebanon along with Hezbollah. Our aggression usually is attributed to the neocons and their fellow travellers; the passive or disconnected responses have borne the stamp of Dr. Rice.
In February, 2001, having just settled into office, she announced the new policy toward Israel: Making a clear break with Mr. Clinton's hands-on approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Condoleezza Rice, President Bush's national security adviser, said that more responsibility for future negotiations should be left to the Israelis and Palestinians themselves, and that the United States would be careful before intervening as a mediator. ''We shouldn't think of American involvement for the sake of American involvement." 1
That has been refined into a policy of not thinking of American involvement at all.
The Israeli campaign against Hezbollah, leading to devastation in Lebanon, has brought a similar response. In an appearance at the State Department on July 21, 2 billed as "Special Briefing on Travel to the Middle East and Europe," Dr. Rice stated "We do seek an end to the current violence and we seek it urgently. More than that, we also seek to address the root causes of that violence so that a real and endurable peace can be established." It is clear that "root causes" are more important than an end to the violence, which clearly engenders no sincere sense of urgency. "A ceasefire would be a false promise if it simply returns us to the status quo . . . ." Virtually anyone else, viewing a bloody conflict, would opt for restoring the status quo, for its own sake - ending the killing - and as a means of addressing the root causes in the absence of gunfire and explosions.
Two interpretations have been put on this irrational statement of policy: Dr. Rice's academic, unrealistic view of the world, or a desire to let Israel destroy Hezbollah, and as much of Lebanon as necessary. Take your pick; either one disqualifies her as a diplomat.
In answering a question about her slow response, she said "I could have gotten on a plane and rushed over and started shuttling and it wouldn't have been clear what I was shuttling to do." Actually, there couldn't have been any shuttling, as the administration refuses to talk to Hezbollah, Syria or Iran.
In the same answer, the Secretary offered the first of two very strange observations on the situation: "What we're seeing here, in a sense, is the growing - the birth pangs of a new Middle East and whatever we do we have to be certain that we're pushing forward to the new Middle East not going back to the old one." That has been reviled as equating death and destruction to birth. It also raises the question of what the new Middle East should look like. Perhaps her answer is that it would be more peaceful, but the administration's priorities have not to this point included peace, so one has to wonder.
One of the more intriguing interpretations, which I offer only for its ironic value, is that she is using coded end-times language. Postings on religious-prophecy web sites have speculated that Dr. Rice may be one of the initiated because she has used a phrase, "birth pangs," which they use as a description of the beginning of the end times. They take that meaning from two more or less identical passages:
And you will hear of wars and rumours of wars; see that you are not alarmed; for this must take place, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places: all this is but the beginning of the birth pangs.
Matthew 24:6-8; see Mark 13:7-8.3
Is Condi signalling the beginning of the end? Possibly, but if so, it's more likely to appear in a non-prophetic, real-world, bungling, insane form.
Secretary Rice launched another odd turn of phrase during her July 21 press conference. She noted that Lebanon is "a young, democratic government," and charged that "those extremists," presumably meaning Hezbollah, "want to strangle it in its crib." Dr. Rice was in a maternal frame of mind that day.
She liked the latter phrase so well that she repeated it when she arrived in Jerusalem to talk to Prime Minister Olmert: "I have no doubt there are those who wish to strangle a democratic and sovereign Lebanon in its crib. We, of course, also urgently want to end the violence." Some of the news reports made the second sentence into a separate paragraph, apparently noting the lack of clear connection between the two statements. Taken together or separately, they are strange. Israel's attacks are doing a good job of strangling Lebanon and, as noted, her concern about the violence appears to be more rhetorical than real.
For a former professor, Dr. Rice has always exhibited an unusual inability to make sense. Undoubtedly this is due in no small part to the fact that the policies she advances are destructive, the actions she has been called upon to justify are inexcusable, and the administration's modus operandi is one of secrecy and deceit. However, Rumsfeld and even Cheney can make those acts and policies sound more plausible. Of course, Rice looks good next to Bush, the bumbler-in-chief.
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1. The New York Times, February 9, 2001.
2. www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2006/69331.htm
3. New Revised Standard Version.
July 31, 2006
The war in Iraq may be entering a new stage. For several months, many of the terrorist attacks have been part of a civil-religious war rather than an insurgency. To this point, American troops have not been closely involved in controlling the sectarian violence. American casualties have declined again; July had the second-lowest fatality rate since March, 2005. However, now we are sending more troops into Baghdad as part of an ambitious plan to control individual neighborhoods. If American troops become enmeshed in the civil war, the casualties may increase again. If the public sees that Americans are dying to keep Sunnis and Shias from killing each other, public support for the war may fall still further.
Two recent web columns pointed out the change in the fighting, and found indications that the administration has undertaken a new mission. On Wednesday, Dan Foomkin spoke of "a whole new war" and said "President Bush and national security adviser Stephen Hadley yesterday for the first time publicly acknowledged the momentous shift in the role for U.S. troops in Iraq, from fighting terrorists to trying to suppress religious violence." David Corn, also on Wednesday, quoted from the same statement by Hadley (discussed below), and from one by General John Abizaid: "The sectarian violence that's taking place in the Baghdad area and up north towards Diyala province is probably the gravest threat to stability that there is in the country right now."1 News reports now are assuming the fact of the new mission: "President Bush said this week that he had decided to bolster American forces in Baghdad to try to stem the tide of Sunni-Shi'ite violence -- now seen as a greater threat to Iraq than the Sunni-led insurgency." 2 Has the administration announced or acknowledged any such policy?
President Bush and Prime Minister Malaki held a joint press conference Tuesday morning.3 The only reference to a new war came in answer to the last question, which asked the Prime Minister to comment on General Abizaid's statement. At first, Mr. Malaki tried to finesse the question, but then said this: "The most important element in the security plan is to curb the religious violence, because we will not allow any Iraqis to use this background. This is one of the main objectives of the security plan."
President Bush was more realistic than usual about conditions in Baghdad, and said that more American troops would be sent there, but did not indicate any change of focus. He described the violence in his usual simplistic terms: "a new democracy is emerging and there are people who are willing to use terrorist techniques to stop it. That's what the murder is all about. People fear democracy if your [sic] vision is based upon kind of a totalitarian view of the world."
During a press conference Tuesday afternoon,4 Mr. Hadley stated that al Qaeda had attempted to foment sectarian violence, and seemed to say that it had succeeded; in any case, the fighting in Baghdad has changed:
You've now seen the emergence of death squads and armed groups on right and left, and they're doing great damage to the civilian population. . . . It's something that we've seen occur since February, and it is a new challenge. This isn't about insurgency, this isn't about terror, this is about sectarian violence. His comment is emphatic as a description of the situation, but it doesn't declare a change in policy. The inference is that his description, combined with the plan to send more troops, indicates that we are about to intervene in the religious conflict.
No policy change was revealed by Prime Minister Malaki's address to Congress on Wednesday.5 His speech certainly was approved, and likely written, by the White House. It was the mixture as before: Iraq is the central front in the war on terror; Iraq and the U.S. are partners in that fight; Iraq is being rebuilt after the depredations of Saddam Hussein; terrorists want to defeat democracy.
The war on terror is a real war against those who wish to burn out the flame of freedom. . . .
It is your duty and our duty to defeat this terror. Iraq is the front line in this struggle, and history will prove that the sacrifices of Iraqis for freedom will not be in vain. . . .
. . . Should democracy be allowed to fail in Iraq and terror permitted to triumph, then the war on terror will never be won elsewhere. . . .
. . . Iraq has gone from a dictatorship to a transitional administration, and now to a fully fledged democratic government. This has happened despite the best efforts of the terrorists who are bent on either destroying democracy or Iraq. . . .
Do not think that this is an Iraqi problem. This terrorist front is a threat to every free country in the world and their citizens. . . . Confronting and dealing with this challenge is the responsibility of every liberal democracy that values its freedom. Iraq is the battle that will determine the war. . .
The party line was still in evidence Wednesday afternoon, when the President and Prime Minister Malaki visited an Army base; they continued to refer to the terrorists in the usual, non-religious terms.6 Mr. Malaki said "we are happy to be partners in this holy task of fighting terrorism and establishing democracy."
Terrorists still carry out, on a daily basis, these crazy actions against innocent civilians: their suicide bombs, their car bombs against the innocent civilians who have nothing to do with the conflict in Iraq. They want to kill democracy, as they kill humans.
Mr. Bush expressed his amazement that "some people decide to kill innocent lives to stop freedom."
At least to that point, the administration had not signalled any change in mission or in its rationale, justification, excuse - whatever term you prefer - for our continued entrapment in the chaos of Iraq. With two possible exceptions, that remained true through the weekend.
On Friday, the President and Prime Minister Blair held a joint press conference.7 The one indication of a change in the paradigm is this statement by Mr. Bush made, somewhat irrelevantly, in the course of defending his inaction regarding Lebanon: "There is suffering in Iraq because terrorists are trying to spread sectarian violence and stop the spread of democracy." That doesn't quite say "we're now sending troops to Baghdad to help put down a sectarian-civil war." A few lines later, he offered the usual stuff: "Isn't it interesting, as a democracy takes hold in Iraq, that al Qaeda steps up its efforts to murder and bomb in order to stop the democracy?"
The President's Saturday radio address8 mostly reflected the official fantasy:
. . . From Kabul to Baghdad, to Beirut, and beyond, we've seen the birth of democratic governments that are striving to serve their people, reject terror, and work for peace. We're also seeing those who oppose democracy fighting its progress with all the destructive power they can muster.
We see this in Hezbollah's attacks on Israel, in the suicide bombings that kill innocent Iraqis, and in al Qaeda's campaign of terror across the world.
The enemies of freedom have shown their ability to set back our efforts with deadly attacks, but ultimately they will fail. . . .
In Iraq, we will help Prime Minister Maliki's unity government defeat the terrorists, insurgents, and illegal militias and establish a democracy in the heart of the Middle East. . . .
If one were searching for hidden clues, "illegal militias" might be taken as a reference to religious violence, but it hardly amounts to the disclosure of a new policy.
If the administration does intend to insert itself, and American troops, into a religious conflict in Iraq, it hasn't said so, at least not plainly. Perhaps it will think better of any such plan and retreat before acknowledgement becomes necessary.
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1. www.army.com/news/item/2192
2. The Boston Globe (AP) 7/30/06
3.www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/07/20060725.html
4.www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/07/20060725-4.html
5.www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/26/AR2006072600872.html
6.www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/07/20060726-1.html
7.www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/07/20060728-1.html
8.www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/07/20060729.html
August 7, 2006
After testimony Thursday by Secretary Rumsfeld and Generals Pace and Abizaid, Senator McCain predictably said that we must stay the course in Iraq. Senator Warner, in a joint interview on PBS with Senator Reed, made a less predictable comment: because Iraq is descending into sectarian warfare, which no one anticipated, the President might have to ask for further authority from Congress to maintain troops there. That sounded, briefly, as if he had got a clue. However, he added hastily that he fully supported, etc., etc. Here's the essence; Senator Warner is referring to the resolution authorizing war against Iraq:
Now, the resolution in my judgment was drawn up at a time when none of us, from the president on down, could ever envision the seriousness of this situation now, in terms of sectarian violence, and -- and I underline -- just the possibility of a civil war.
Now, if that were to come about, I think the American people would ask, "Well, which side are we going to fight on? Or do we fight both? And did we send our troops there to do that? We thought we sent them there to liberate the Iraqis, which we have done at a great sacrifice, 2,500-plus.
And therefore it seems to me Congress should focus on a dramatic change if our troops are to be employed in that type of combat. . . . 1
However, his final sentence indicated that the reconsideration might be all for show: "We would have to go back and focus on what we have done and determine whether or not we have to do anything further to support the president." After an answer by Senator Reed and an attempt by the moderator to move to another subject, Senator Warner interrupted to make that clear:
All right, now I really got to say that I strongly support the president, and he has the authority to deploy our forces as he sees it's in our best interest. And in my judgment, it is absolutely essential that we continue to support this Iraqi government and to try and enable the Iraqi people to accomplish their desire to have a freedom, a stabilized country, and to exercise sovereignty.
So I'm not suggesting in my warning that Congress may have to go back and debate -- we do that, we owe that obligation to the American people. But this senator wants to support, hopefully, the continuation of this mission to succeed.
His belated recollection that success in Iraq is essential made any new resolution irrelevant.
Senator Warner's caution isn't shared by everyone A column by David Broder, also on Thursday, suggests that a significant change of opinion may be under way. Mr. Broder is so much a part of the establishment that any departure from its worldview is worthy of note. His new argument proceeds from a conclusion that prolonging the war in Iraq and the attacks on Lebanon has more to do with image than reality and that those missions therefore do not deserve support.
If you think there is an echo in the air when officials discuss the twin crises in Iraq and Lebanon, you're not hearing things. In both cases the argument for carrying on the destructive current policy comes down to a claim that "we can't afford to let the other guy win."
***
In both cases, the argument is not that continuing on the present course will necessarily or probably yield a positive result. On the contrary, it is basically a claim that it is unacceptable to change -- because the other side will claim a victory.2
Perhaps both image and substance are involved: a reluctance to admit defeat but also a genuine fear of the consequences of losing; Broder doesn't buy that:
But if Hezbollah in Lebanon and the insurgents in Iraq really are deadly threats to Israel and the United States, respectively, then those nations should have used their full military might -- which is overwhelming -- to deal with the menace.
They haven't done so - or, at least the U.S. hasn't; it may be too early to judge the Israelis, although Broder doesn't think so:
In both cases, the leaders of government failed to make the kind of commitment that could have produced a lasting victory.
Now they are reduced to saying that they cannot accept defeat. That is a terrible turn.
But once the hope for victory is gone, the issue remains: What do you do? The answer from Bush and from Olmert is: Carry on. Do not waver. And do not question the logic of prolonging the agony.
I don't know what Broder's definition of "victory" for the U.S, in Iraq might be, but that's probably irrelevant to his current analysis. He doesn't suggest a solution, but asks a provocative question: "Can we think about the costs of carrying on, without an end in sight, against Hezbollah and the insurgents in Iraq?"
Virtually everyone, including those who supported - or did not question - the invasion of Iraq, has come to realize that the war has been botched. Some have concluded that no important gains now are possible and that the sacrifice being imposed on our troops and the Iraqis is unjustified. Senators Warner and McCain probably are hopeless, but some, for example Senator Clinton, nose to the wind, may see Broder's analysis as a safe route toward the final conclusion: there must be an end to it.
Mrs. Clinton took a step in that direction by lecturing Secretary Rumsfeld at a hearing last week and by later calling for his resignation. Maureen Dowd captured the opportunistic positioning:
The enunciation of a clear sentence about the war in Iraq by Hillary Clinton means that there must be an election coming up.
***
When Hillary and Rummy square off, it is a gladiatorial contest of two masters at hauteur, self-righteousness, scriptedness, infighting and belief in their own manifest destiny.
As Ms. Dowd pointed out, the dramatic primary challenge to Senator Lieberman has awakened the slumbering Democratic centrists to the political risks, if not the moral bankruptcy, of the pro-war position: "Hillary wants to avoid Joe Lieberman's fate by arguing that how the administration went about this war has caused all the problems, not that it went to a needless war she supported. . . ." 3
Another indication of the shift, like Broder's but more significant, is found in Thomas Friedman's latest column.4 Mr. Friedman's views are, in a sense, a model for Sen. Clinton's stance, in that he has supported the war but criticized its conduct. However, his position has been clearer than that of most of the liberal fellow travelers: in his view, the invasion wasn't about any threat to the United States; it was justified by the prospect of remaking the Middle East in our image. Neocons shared that vision, but most of them cloaked it in warnings about Saddam's weapons and terrorism. Mr. Friedman recognized that Saddam was "deterrable through conventional means" 5 and dismissed the claim of an Iraq-al Qaeda connection: "every time I hear them repeat it I think of the Gulf of Tonkin resolution. You don't take the country to war on the wings of a lie." 6 Dismissing the ostensible reasons for the war, he told us this:
The ''right reason'' for this war was the need to partner with Iraqis, post-Saddam, to build a progressive Arab regime. Because the real weapons of mass destruction that threaten us were never Saddam's missiles. The real weapons that threaten us are the growing number of angry, humiliated young Arabs and Muslims, who are produced by failed or failing Arab states -- young people who hate America more than they love life. Helping to build a decent Iraq as a model for others and solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are the necessary steps for defusing the ideas of mass destruction, which are what really threaten us.7
That is the Friedman doctrine in all its naked amorality and foolishness: invade a country which is no threat to us, kill some of its people and send some of our forces to their deaths in order to impose a more decent regime; cure the ills of the Muslim world and eliminate its hostility to America by invading a Muslim country and imposing our form of government.
Actually, it wasn't always completely naked: sometimes he wrapped it in a gossamer shroud of concern for the sufferings of Iraqis under Saddam: "The 'moral reason' for the war was that Saddam's regime was an engine of mass destruction and genocide that had killed thousands of his own people, and neighbors, and needed to be stopped." 8
The project floundered from the start, and Mr. Friedman was critical from an early date of the administration's conduct of the war. More than two years ago, he reached the conclusion that Rumsfeld should go, not for Sen. Clinton's opportunistic political reasons, but accompanied by the same refusal to acknowledge that there is a more basic problem than inept execution. The Abu Ghraib scandal was the trigger:
We are in danger of losing something much more important than just the war in Iraq. We are in danger of losing America as an instrument of moral authority and inspiration in the world. I have never known a time in my life when America and its president were more hated around the world than today. . . .
This administration needs to undertake a total overhaul of its Iraq policy; otherwise, it is courting a total disaster for us all.
That overhaul needs to begin with President Bush firing Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld - today, not tomorrow or next month, today. . . .9
Later in 2004, Mr. Friedman began to despair, but again stopped short of questioning the decision to go to war. He reiterated the "importance of producing a decent outcome in Iraq, to help move the Arab-Muslim world off its steady slide toward increased authoritarianism, unemployment, overpopulation, suicidal terrorism and religious obscurantism," but concluded that "this B ush team can't get us there, and may have so messed things up that no one can." He did go beyond mere tactics and execution, and faulted Republican domestic politics: "[E]ach time the Bush team had to choose between doing the right thing in the war on terrorism or siding with its political base and ideology, it chose its base and ideology. . . ." For example, instead of paying for the war (and sending more troops, which Mr. Friedman wanted), it cut taxes.10
His reappraisal also included a sense of betrayal, of desertion by the administration of pro-war liberals who had gone out on a limb for Bush: "What I resent so much is that some of us actually put our personal politics aside in thinking about this war and about why it is so important to produce a different Iraq." However, Friedman didn't so much support the Bush war as cheer it on because he wanted to invade Iraq for different reasons. As he said earlier,
. . . I have to admit that I've always been fighting my own war in Iraq. Mr. Bush took the country into his war. . . .
. . . Finding Iraq's W.M.D.'s is necessary to preserve the credibility of the Bush team, the neocons, Tony Blair and the C.I.A. But rebuilding Iraq is necessary to win the war. I won't feel one whit more secure if we find Saddam's W.M.D.'s, because I never felt he would use them on us. But I will feel terribly insecure if we fail to put Iraq onto a progressive path. . . .11
Bush's war didn't matter much, but Bush has messed up Friedman's war, and that's serious.
Both wars had gone so badly that, by early 2006, Mr. Friedman began to move from criticism to opposition; recognizing the increase in sectarian violence, he said "Americans will not, and should not, baby-sit an Iraqi civil war. The minute they sense that's what's happening, you will see the bottom fall out of U.S. public support for this war." 12 On another occasion he described the new role as babysitting anarchy. That metaphor popped up a third time in his latest column: "It is now obvious that we are not midwifing democracy in Iraq. We are baby-sitting a civil war." Putting troops in harm's way is an odd form of "baby-sitting," but at least he understands that his project and the administration's are heading down the tube.
Friedman still won't admit that the whole venture was unjustifiable, but he seems to have concluded that there is no excuse for going on:
[T]he administration now has to admit what anyone -- including myself -- who believed in the importance of getting Iraq right has to admit: Whether for Bush reasons or Arab reasons, it is not happening, and we can't throw more good lives after good lives.13
Perhaps my criticism of Mr. Friedman's opinions isn't entirely fair. He does see that the Iraq adventure has failed, his reasons for supporting it were noble (though foolish and morally obtuse), and he has progressive ideas on other subjects. But he is an influential commentator, which made his support for the war significant, and he must take some of the blame for it.
Certainly there are far more benighted and equally influential sources of opinion, for example William Kristol, whose latest contribution to our enlightenment is a comment on the Connecticut primary. There's no reappraisal here:
[W]e have a president who knows we are at war with jihadist Islam. And he is willing to stake his presidency on that fight, and to support others, like Israel, who are in the same fight.
It's become clear, by contrast, that the Democratic party doesn't really want to fight jihadism. It's just too difficult. . . .
Referring to a letter from Democratic Congressional leaders to President Bush, Kristol mocked their concerns: they
seemed to criticize the (belated) redeployment of troops "into an urban war zone in Baghdad." And they complained that "there has been virtually no diplomatic effort to resolve sectarian differences, no regional effort to establish a broader security framework, and no attempt to revive a struggling reconstruction effort"--as if these are the keys to success.
But success is not really what the Democrats have in mind. They want retreat. . . .
Switching to criticism of ordinary Democrats, Kristol denounced their responses to a poll on the war between Israel and Hezbollah: a majority thought Israel's response too harsh and wanted the U.S. to take a more even-handed approach. Imagine!
However, Senator Lieberman hasn't been infected with this leftist poison: "What drives so many Democrats crazy about Lieberman is not simply his support for the Iraq war. It's that he's unashamedly pro-American." Kristol obviously is slipping if he must resort to silly neo-McCarthyism.
Whatever the outcome on Tuesday, Lieberman need not worry about his political future:
There is a political opportunity for the Bush administration if the Democrats reject Lieberman. If he's then unable to win as an independent in November, he would make a fine secretary of defense for the remainder of the Bush years. If his independent candidacy succeeds, it will be a message to Bush that he should forge ahead toward victory in Iraq and elsewhere. . . . Is it too fanciful to speculate about a 2008 GOP ticket of McCain-Lieberman, or Giuliani-Lieberman, or Romney-Lieberman, or Allen-Lieberman, or Gingrich-Lieberman? Perhaps. But a reinvigorated governing and war-fighting Republican party is surely an achievable goal. And a necessary one. 14
John Nichols wrote an article for the current issue of The Nation entitled "A Fight for the Party's Soul," referring to the Connecticut primary. I've resisted the notion that the primary is that important, to the party or to the nation. However, Kristol's dream of a war-fighting party with Lieberman in the lead may have convinced me.
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1.www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/middle_east/july-dec06/military_08-03.html
2. "Doubling Two Bad Bets?" http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/02/%20AR2006080201388.html
3. The New York Times, 8/5/06
4. The New York Times, 8/4/06
5. Times, 1/22/03
6. Times, 2/19/03
7. Times, 6/4/03. Mr. Friedman deserves credit for realizing that the Palestinian crisis needed solving, something to which the administration gives only lip service.
8. Ibid.
9. Times, 5/6/04
10. Times, 10/3/04
11. Times, 6/4/03
12. Times, 3/3/06
13. Times, 8/4/06
14. "Anti-war, Anti-Israel, Anti-Joe: The New Democrats" http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/ %20Articles/000/000/012/537qsphp.asp
August 10, 2006
I thought that William Kristol's comment on the Lamont-Lieberman race was low, but the postmortems are worse yet. Dick Cheney offered his analysis:
And as I look at what happened yesterday, it strikes me that it's a perhaps unfortunate and significant development from the standpoint of the Democratic Party, that what it says about the direction the party appears to be heading in when they, in effect, purge a man like Joe Lieberman . . . especially over the issue of Joe's support with respect to national efforts in the global war on terror.
The thing that's partly disturbing about it is the fact that, the standpoint of our adversaries, if you will, in this conflict, and the al Qaeda types, they clearly are betting on the proposition that ultimately they can break the will of the American people in terms of our ability to stay in the fight and complete the task. . . .
[I]t would seem to say a lot about the state the party is in today if that's becoming the dominant view of the Democratic Party, the basic, fundamental notion that somehow we can retreat behind our oceans and not be actively engaged in this conflict and be safe here at home. . . . So we have to be actively engaged not only in Afghanistan and Iraq, but on a global basis if we're going to succeed in prevailing in this long-term conflict.1
Stripped of all the Vice Presidential hemming and hawing, the message is: a vote for an opponent of the war in Iraq is a vote for al Qaeda. It doesn't go any lower. It would be scurrilous if the Republicans really were the party of strength and security. Given their pathetic record, including utterly botching their war in Iraq, Cheney's reaction reaches a new extreme not only in cheap politics but in hubris and plain stupidity.
Senator Lieberman seized on the arrest of terrorists in Britain to attack Lamont:
"If we just pick up like Ned Lamont wants us to do, get out by a date certain, it will be taken as a tremendous victory by the same people who wanted to blow up these planes in this plot hatched in England," Mr. Lieberman said at a campaign event at lunchtime in Waterbury, Conn. "It will strengthen them and they will strike again." 2
Has Joe not noticed that the plot was hatched while we remain in Iraq? He's fully into the Republican playbook, making his own reality.
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1. www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/08/20060809-2.html
2. www.nytimes.com/2006/08/10/washington/10cnd-lieberman.html
August 11, 2006
Ron Suskind's book The One Percent Doctrine is famous, appropriately, for its disclosure of that doctrine. It was laid down by Vice President Cheney in the context of a specific issue, but allegedly became the administration's guiding principle:
one percent chance that Pakistani scientists are helping al Qaeda build or develop a nuclear weapon, we have to treat it as a certainty in terms of our response. It's not about our analysis, or finding a preponderance of evidence. It's about our response.1
Suskind points out its implications. Preemptive - or, more accurately, preventive - war is an application: "prevention based on suspicion." 2 More broadly, the Cheney Doctrine, as Suskind also calls it, denigrates the importance of evidence, an approach which not only justifies whatever those in charge want, but fits nicely with the President's limitations.
Most of the book is a narrative about intelligence gathering in the wake of 9-11. Suskind paints a generally sympathetic picture of the CIA and of George Tenet. However, one throw-away comment in the Afterword, based on a conversation with Tenet, might be considered a better insight into the quality of our intelligence. Talking about the importance of a proper data-sharing system, Tenet said
. . . This is about the cop on the beat in Redmond, Oregon, who sees anomalous surveillance activity outside of the Microsoft headquarters, being able to plug that data into a digital communications system to find out if we've seen this in Abu Dhabi, in Ankara, in Indianapolis, or Detroit, and what did you do about it. How should I think about it, and what measures should I take. . . . 3
The fact that the CIA director didn't know where one of the world's most famous companies is located might explain a lot.
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1. P. 62
2. P. 150
3. P. 342
August 17, 2006
Many of the administration's claims about Iraq, as well as news reports and commentary, speak of the prospect of U.S. victory or defeat. I have found this puzzling and annoying. The latter reaction is due to the fact that the war was and is unjust, unnecessary, wasteful and potentially self-destructive, so that the very concept of "victory" is inappropriate. The references are puzzling because the terms rarely are defined. In order for "victory" or "defeat" to be meaningful terms, there must be a defined goal, so that we may determine whether a given state constitutes victory or defeat or, relative to an earlier state, a movement in one direction or the other.
Part of the problem is that the administration has had an assortment of goals, some existing simultaneously, some seriatim; some declared, some not; some existing prior to the invasion, some arising out of the chaos that followed; some consistent with others, some not.
The President not only has declared victory to be the goal but has asserted that he will accept nothing less than "complete victory," a perch from which he will have to climb down unless a very forgiving definition is adopted.
Let's look at the inventory. I've tried to list the goals which have been stated or implied, but I'm working partly from memory, so no doubt I've missed some categories or aspects that merit attention. I've omitted some subsidiary themes such as privatizing the Iraqi economy, some rhetorical flourishes ("we have fought for the cause of liberty and for the peace of the world") and the late, desperate claim that we invaded because Iraq shot at planes enforcing the no-fly zones.
For the sake of brevity, sometimes I'll refer to the administration as "we," although the identification is offensive.
The supposed source of authority is the resolution adopted by Congress in October, 2002:
The President is authorized to use the Armed Forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate in order to --
(1) defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq; and
(2) enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq.
Let's begin with the second item.
1. Enforcing the United Nations resolution. The relevant UN declaration at the time of the invasion was Resolution 1441, which deplores Iraq's various failures and obstructive acts, but
Decides . . . to afford Iraq, by this resolution, a final opportunity to comply with its disarmament obligations under relevant resolutions of the Council; and accordingly decides to set up an enhanced inspection regime with the aim of bringing to full and verified completion the disarmament process established by resolution 687 (1991) and subsequent resolutions of the Council. . . .
The invasion in March, 2003 was an obstruction, a rejection and a supersession of the Resolution, not an attempt to enforce it.
2. Eliminating Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Iraq's alleged WMD formed the backbone of the national-security provision in the authorization granted by Congress, and eliminating them ostensibly was the principal goal of the invasion. If that were to be taken seriously, we would have suffered a massive defeat: there were no WMD; we have incurred an appalling cost in lives and money and have created all manner of new troubles for nothing. However, the goal was as illusory as the weapons, so the concept of victory or defeat hardly applies.
When it became obvious that there were no WMD, the goal was restated: eliminating Iraq's WMD programs. Those didn't exist in any meaningful sense either, so the ultimate fallback is that we have eliminated the possibility of the activation of such programs and the development of such weapons. If that has become the test, we have achieved victory, just as we would have if we had invaded Monaco.
We're still slogging on, so there must be something else.
3. Breaking the Iraq-al Qaeda connection. There was no meaningful connection, so in the first analysis this falls into the same category as WMD. However, a connection has been created by the occupation: although al Qaeda was not active in Iraq before March, 2003, it is now. In that sense, we have suffered - created - a defeat.
4. Winning the war on terror. This has two distinct phases.
a. Pre-invasion. Invading Iraq was alleged to be part of the "war on terror," and to that end a connection was claimed between Iraq and al Qaeda. Up to a point, this is another way of expressing item 3, and the same analysis applies, but this concept is broader.
After 9-11, striking back was considered necessary in order to deter further attacks. Invading Afghanistan and deposing the Taliban was not enough, especially as bin Laden had escaped. To move the target, a connection was implied between Iraq and 9-11. Crushing Iraq would send the desired message - don't support terrorism - without the ambiguity of the Afghan result.
It's difficult to test message-sending theories. There hasn't been another attack on the U.S. - that's the administration's favorite - but there might not have been one anyway, and one might occur tomorrow, as recent events in Britain show. Conversely, since March, 2003 there have been attacks around the world, but they might have occurred without the Iraq war. The one clear measure is the amount of terrorism in Iraq, and on that basis, this aim has failed.
b. Post-invasion. As the occupation became bloody and chaotic, phase two began: in order to retain support for the war, the administration declared that Iraq was the front line in the war on terror, and identified the Iraqi insurgency with worldwide terrorism. This created a new and daunting goal; in order to succeed, we would have to eliminate not only the activities of al Qaeda in Iraq, but also the native Iraqi resistance to occupation. The development of widespread sectarian violence makes success even less likely.
5. Imposing regime change. In the administration's early public statements this was a possible concomitant of the first two: in order to destroy the WMD and eliminate the al Qaeda connection, Saddam and his government might have to be removed and replaced. On the eve of the war, Press Secretary Ari Fleischer admitted that the war goals were disarmament "and regime change," although the latter was not part of the UN mandate.
Actually it was a principal goal all along, one discussed within the Bush administration before 9-11. At least as an aspiration, it was older still. In 1998, the Republican Congress passed and President Clinton signed the "Iraq Liberation Act," which declared "It should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq and to promote the emergence of a democratic government to replace that regime."
By a simplistic measure, this goal has been reached: Saddam is gone and a new government has been installed. However, for all the talk of sovereignty, that government remains a quasi-puppet and it certainly does not exercise control over the country, so the change of regime is at best incomplete.
6. Eliminating Iraq as a regional threat. At one time this was not an idle concern, as demonstrated by the invasion of Kuwait. However, after 1991, Saddam was, in Vice President Cheney's phrase, bottled up. He was, that is, until it became useful to claim otherwise. Iraq is not now a military threat to anyone, so here is another illusory victory.
7. Bringing democracy to Iraq. Again, this could be regarded as accomplished if we aren't too demanding: the Iraqi government is in form democratic. However, as the government exists primarily on paper, and is incompetent, this is a phantom victory. Even the form is less our accomplishment than Ayatollah Sistani's; we initially established authoritarian rule, and the American plan would have inserted an undemocratic stage into the process of creating an Iraqi government, postponing popular elections until a later date.
8. Bringing freedom to Iraq. We could claim victory under this heading, although only in a superficial sense: the dictator has been deposed, but Iraqis enjoy few of the attributes of genuine freedom. This really isn't a significant test; "freedom," as in Operation Iraqi Freedom, is primarily a slogan.
9. Ending Saddam's brutal treatment of his people. This reason for attacking Iraq was in the mix from an early date; it was included in the charges against Saddam in the 2003 State of the Union address. However, it always has seemed to be a makeweight; like bringing freedom, it was a noble sentiment not to be taken seriously. As such, it would fall in the category of illusory goals.
To the extent that it was a real criterion of success, there has been victory, as long as one defines the issue very narrowly; Saddam is no longer brutalizing anyone. However, many Iraqis have been killed or disabled by American arms, and terrorism, rare before the invasion, now is rampant. This issue is best left in the illusory-goal category; we can't honestly claim a victory.
10. Establishing Iraq as a beacon. The administration and its neocon and neolib supporters wanted to install a democratic regime in Iraq as a way of spreading freedom, hope and modernism in the Middle East, which in turn would diminish the appeal of radical Islam and bring peace. This one is a dead loss.
11. Proving our power and will (pre-invasion version). Invading Iraq was a show of American military power, a declaration of hegemony. That goal has met defeat. One of the lessons of Iraq is that American power is far more limited than we would like to think.
Another application of the theory is that displays of power act as a deterrent; strength prevents attacks but perceived weakness invites them. This version is incapable of being tested. See category 12b.
12. Proving our power and will (post-invasion version). After things fell apart, a negative version was substituted: if we were to withdraw, it would be seen as weakness. This has, in turn, two forms.
a. Not allowing Iraq to become a terrorist haven. This argument has been made with no apparent sense of irony even though, before the invasion, Iraq was alleged already to be such a haven. In addition, this argument conflicts with the claim that it is better to fight terrorists in Iraq than have them running around the world; see item 13.
b. Preventing attacks on America. Sometimes it is stated simplistically that withdrawal from Iraq will invite attacks on America. Usually, the claim is that if we withdraw "before the job is done," attacks will follow, which dumps the problem into another category.
Whatever the exact analysis, we seem to be staying primarily to avoid a negative inference, although now it seems to be less a matter of American strength and will than Mr. Bush's. He said this on December 18, 2005:
It is also important for every American to understand the consequences of pulling out of Iraq before our work is done. We would abandon our Iraqi friends and signal to the world that America cannot be trusted to keep its word. We would undermine the morale of our troops by betraying the cause for which they have sacrificed. We would cause the tyrants in the Middle East to laugh at our failed resolve, and tighten their repressive grip. We would hand Iraq over to enemies who have pledged to attack us and the global terrorist movement would be emboldened and more dangerous than ever before. To retreat before victory would be an act of recklessness and dishonor, and I will not allow it. 1
That sounds like a desperate rationalization by a man whose ego will not permit him to admit having made a mistake.
13. Fighting them there so that we don't have to fight them here. Sometimes the President's warning has been generic: we are fighting the enemy in Iraq so that we do not "meet him again on our own streets, in our own cities." Other times he has imagined specific targets: New York, St. Louis, Los Angeles. This argument is an inconsistent alternative to category 12a: since we aren't keeping terrorists from setting up shop in Iraq, we'll treat that as an advantage: their coming to Iraq plays into our hands; we'll defeat them there. As Condoleezza Rice put it, "They would have been fighting and committing terrorist acts someplace in the world. They're now drawn to Iraq, where, frankly, we are in a position to confront them and to disable them." 2 The President later offered essentially the same strange rationale.
Clever of us to have drawn them in. However, we won't win that battle either, so see category 14.
14. Standing up the Iraqi military. Because it is obvious that the U.S. is not going to end the fighting in Iraq, a fallback position has been created: we will bring the Iraqi government to the point where it can, to some unspecified degree, control the violence, at which point American troops can begin to withdraw.
Perhaps because the Iraqi military hasn't done much standing up, the official line may be shifting responsibility still further, to Iraqi civilians. A report in the Washington Post last week quoted General Caldwell, spokesman for the "multinational force:"
"The key thing about this operation is that . . . it counts on the Iraqi citizens," said Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell. "They have to be involved. The Iraqi people have to want this to work. If they are not involved, if they're not willing to commit, if they're not willing to be a part of the solution, then there is no solution."
15. Making Iraq as an ally in the war on terror. I've seen this goal expressed only once; it's really just a reformulation of several of the others.
16. Creating an empire. A number of the Bush-era employees of the executive branch were members of the Project for the New American Century. Over the signatures of Elliott Abrams, Dick Cheney, Zalmay Khalilzad, I. Lewis Libby, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, among others, it issued a Declaration of Principles in 1997 which set out a program for American empire, although without using that term. In 1998, the Project sent a letter to President Clinton; it was signed by Abrams, Richard L. Armitage, John Bolton, Khalilzad, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Robert B. Zoellick, along with William Kristol and Richard Perle. The letter urged the President to "enunciate a new strategy that would secure the interests of the U.S. and our friends and allies around the world," primarily by taking action against Saddam Hussein. It concluded that "removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power. . . now needs to become the aim of American foreign policy." Kristol has referred to this expansive concept of American power as "benevolent hegemony;" others have talked frankly about empire.
Whatever the label, it is a dangerous illusion and, if it formed one of the goals of the Iraq war, which seems likely, we have suffered another defeat.
17. Establishing permanent bases. Apart from such bases as might be necessary to serve other goals, the military wanted to establish permanent bases to replace those being removed from Saudi Arabia. That still appears to be the plan, despite denials, but whether that will happen is an open question.
18. Controlling oil supplies. This idea has emerged in several forms. There has been widespread speculation that the invasion was prompted in part by a desire to control Iraqi oil. An alternative theory is that the removal of Saddam was necessary because of the threat that he would control regional supplies. This is a carryover from 1991; see item 6. Finally, Mr. Bush expressed this fear, in 2005: "If Zarqawi and bin Laden gain control of Iraq, they would create a new training ground for future terrorist attacks; they'd seize oil fields to fund their ambitions..." 3 Saddam and Zarqawi are out of the picture and bin Laden hasn't entered it, so versions two and three give us a victory of sorts. The first goal never has been admitted, so there can't be any official declaration of success or failure. However, access to Middle Eastern oil has been a core principle of American foreign policy for decades, so it would be strange if it had not entered into the war plans; it's clear that it did.
As with bases, the outcome is in doubt.
19. Aiding the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. From an early date, the administration alleged that removing Saddam Hussein would have collateral benefits. Vice President Cheney included that in one of the comprehensive descriptions of the administration's Iraq fantasy:
. . . Another argument holds that opposing Saddam Hussein would cause even greater troubles in that part of the world, and interfere with the larger war against terror. I believe the opposite is true. Regime change in Iraq would bring about a number of benefits to the region. When the gravest of threats are eliminated, the freedom-loving peoples of the region will have a chance to promote the values that can bring lasting peace. As for the reaction of the Arab "street," the Middle East expert Professor Fouad Ajami predicts that after liberation, the streets in Basra and Baghdad are "sure to erupt in joy in the same way the throngs in Kabul greeted the Americans." Extremists in the region would have to rethink their strategy of Jihad. Moderates throughout the region would take heart. And our ability to advance the Israeli-Palestinian peace process would be enhanced, just as it was following the liberation of Kuwait in 1991.
The reality is that these times bring not only dangers but also opportunities. . .4
At that point, any projected benefits were simply part of the general flow of freedom. Later, Paul Wolfowitz speculated that Israel, with Iraq out of the way, was militarily secure and could take bolder moves toward an accommodation with the Palestinians. On other occasions, the claim has been that removing Saddam removed his payments to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers.
Like most of the goals, this one has not been reached, and our policies are not likely to move us in that direction.
In June, the House of Representatives adopted a support-the-war resolution. It reprises many of the administration's claims, theories and goals:
Whereas the United States and its allies are engaged in a Global War on Terror, a long and demanding struggle against an adversary that is driven by hatred of American values and that is committed to imposing, by the use of terror, its repressive ideology throughout the world; . . .
Whereas it is essential to the security of the American people and to world security that the United States, together with its allies, take the battle to the terrorists and to those who provide them assistance; . . .
Whereas by early 2003 Saddam Hussein and his criminal, Ba'athist regime in Iraq, which had supported terrorists, constituted a threat against global peace and security and was in violation of mandatory United Nations Security Council Resolutions;
Whereas the mission of the United States and its Coalition partners, having removed Saddam Hussein and his regime from power, is to establish a sovereign, free, secure, and united Iraq at peace with its neighbors;
Whereas the terrorists have declared Iraq to be the central front in their war against all who oppose their ideology; . . .
Whereas the terrorists seek to destroy the new unity government because it threatens the terrorists' aspirations for Iraq and the broader Middle East; . . .
Whereas Iraqi security forces are, over time, taking over from United States and Coalition forces a growing proportion of independent operations and increasingly lead the fight to secure Iraq; . . .
Whereas the United States and its Coalition partners will continue to support Iraq as part of the Global War on Terror:
Now, therefore, be it
Resolved, That the House of Representatives--(3) declares that it is not in the national security interest of the United States to set an arbitrary date for the withdrawal or redeployment of United States Armed Forces from Iraq;
(4) declares that the United States is committed to the completion of the mission to create a sovereign, free, secure, and united Iraq; . . .
(7) declares that the United States will prevail in the Global War on Terror, the noble struggle to protect freedom from the terrorist adversary.
WMD have disappeared from the picture and there is no hint of Iraqi involvement in 9-11. The fighting in Iraq is in some vague way connected to the war on terror. Our continued presence is required until - when? It isn't clear. What happens to paragraph (4) if Iraq decides not to be "united?" How long do we wait for it to be "secure?" The House has been reduced to parroting an assortment of administration rationales. I wonder whether the sponsors of the resolution were able to read it aloud with a straight face.
Analyzing the administration's goals in Iraq is useful in establishing how dishonest, foolish and inept it has been. It doesn't help to explain why we must stay the course, especially as the administration and its supporters refuse to recognize the costs, human, financial and political. We're there, God knows why; we'll get out God knows when.
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1. www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/12/20051218-2.html
2. ABC "Nightline," 9/18/03
3. www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/08/20050830-1.html
4. www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/08/20020826.html
August 22, 2006
President Bush held a press conference Monday. Apparently the White House thought that damage control was in order: the conference was called on less than two hours notice (see Dan Foomkin's comments) and there was little on the agenda. The President's preliminary statement was limited to a few meaningless remarks on Lebanon. There were questions directed to that issue, but the significant exchanges related to Iraq.
Since Autumn, 2003, there has been recurrent speculation about an exit strategy, driven by various statements from the administration. Some have been specific, if hedged, forecasts about troop levels; some have been more general, such as the recurring optimism about Iraqi political and military progress. In a sense, the administration has been locked into this game from the beginning. It claimed - and its level of preparation suggests that it foolishly expected - that Iraqis would welcome us as liberators and that Iraqi institutions would survive and produce a peaceful post-invasion society. Therefore, the scenario went, American troops would not be needed to keep the peace, prop up the government or keep warring factions apart; force
levels could be reduced to those needed to man permanent bases.
President Bush usually has discouraged speculation about any reduction in force, but in January he said that "our commanders on the ground have determined that we can decrease our combat forces in Iraq from 17 to 15 brigades by the spring of 2006." Two days later he said "We've gone from 17 to 15 battalions [sic]." This burst of enthusiasm for partial withdrawal was short-lived, however. He soon returned to his evasive maybe-someday mode. It must be said that, by design or circumstance, Mr. Bush has, leaving his comments in January aside, avoided any impression that he's going to withdraw troops in order to help Congressional Republicans in November.
On Monday, he seemed to put the lid down firmly on that possibility. Asked whether it's time for a new strategy, he offered a statement of defiance:
The strategy is to help the Iraqi people achieve their objectives and their dreams, which is a democratic society. That's the strategy. The tactics -- now, either you say, yes, its important we stay there and get it done, or we leave. We're not leaving, so long as I'm the President. . . .
No, we're not leaving. The strategic objective is to help this government succeed. . . . Now, if you say, are you going to change your strategic objective, it means you're leaving before the mission is complete. And we're not going to leave before the mission is complete. . . .1
In the ellipses, he said that leaving would send a negative message to reformers, give the terrorists a safe haven and invite them to attack us here. In other words, same old same old. There is no new strategy, nor is there any indication of one in the works. The President's comments indicate that staying now is an end in itself.
Mr. Bush was asked about the Vice President's claim that voting for Ned Lamont aided al Qaeda. Although the question referred to terrorists and al Qaeda, the answer focused on Iraq. Apart from that, it was one of his more coherent statements, and one which tried to place the war above partisan politics:
What all of us in this administration have been saying is that leaving Iraq before the mission is complete will send the wrong message to the enemy and will create a more dangerous world. That's what we're saying. It's an honest debate and it's an important debate for Americans to listen to and to be engaged in. In our judgment, the consequences for defeat in Iraq are unacceptable.
He also distanced himself from accusations of lack of patriotism2 and delivered a powerful punch line: "This has nothing to do with patriotism; it has everything to do with understanding the world in which we live." It could be questioned whether the Bush administration does understand the world as it is, or even tries to, but it may be able to fool people into thinking that it does. The President added another line - I can't imagine that these were not preprogrammed - which also could be an election slogan: "if we ever give up the desire to help people who live in freedom, we will have lost our soul as a nation, as far as I'm concerned." However, even leaving aside the half-apologetic, it's-just-my-opinion ending, that may be too long on flag-waving and too short on meaning to survive.
Although this short speech was impressive by Mr. Bush's standards, it was decorated with stock phrases about sending bad messages by withdrawing, and it betrayed confusion about a basic issue concerning defense against terrorism. Referring to the recent District Court decision striking down the Terrorist Surveillance Program, Mr. Bush offered this statement:
And, therefore, those who heralded the decision not to give law enforcement the tools necessary to protect the American people simply don't see the world the way we do. They see, maybe these are kind of isolated incidents. These aren't isolated incidents, they're tied together. There is a global war going on. And somebody said, well, this is law enforcement. No, this isn't law enforcement, in my judgment. Law enforcement means kind of a simple, singular response to the problem. This is a global war on terror.. . .
First he complained that the decision will interfere with law enforcement, but then, apparently remembering the administration's war-not-law-enforcement formula, he reversed course. No one called him on it, which is especially strange in the light of the law-enforcement approach of the British to the airliner plot.
Mr. Bush was asked whether all the negative consequences of withdrawal weren't the result of invading. He ducked, asking the reporter to imagine an Iraq with the capacity to produce WMD, neither responsive nor factual. He then fell back on 9-11:
You know, I've heard this theory about everything was just fine until we arrived, and kind of "we're going to stir up the hornet's nest" theory. It just doesn't hold water, as far as I'm concerned. The terrorists attacked us and killed 3,000 of our citizens before we started the freedom agenda in the Middle East.
The reporter, apparently inclined toward lèse majesté, asked, "What did Iraq have to do with that?" Surprised, the President stumbled, then admitted that Iraq had nothing to do with 9-11, disingenuously claimed that no one in the administration ever suggested that the 9-11 attacks "were ordered by Iraq," and recited several of his standard justifications for starting the war.
Asked whether he is disappointed by the lack of progress "in bringing together the sectarian and ethnic groups," he said no, an answer that is difficult to take seriously. He added a rambling response which included this: "You know, I hear a lot of talk about civil war. I'm concerned about that, of course, and I've talked to a lot of people about it. And what I've found from my talks are that the Iraqis want a unified country, . . ." To me, that showed that he's worried about civil war but unwilling to admit that it's happening or that his policies have brought it about.
However, a different interpretation was advanced in a Reuters article 3 on Tuesday: Bush's talk of civil war may indicate that he's looking toward an exit strategy. The theory apparently is that the American people would not support further involvement in Iraq if they thought the mission is to damp down a civil war, so he's encouraging talk of civil war to prepare us for an exit. Since public opinion already is against the war, and favors movement toward the exit, this seems like an odd, redundant strategy, and it conflicts with Mr. Bush's pledge not to leave without victory. It also would have to be a recent invention, as his comments two weeks ago were dismissive of the very notion of civil war: "You know, I hear people say, well, civil war this, civil war that. The Iraqi people decided against civil war when they went to the ballot box." 4
Many people - I was one of them - thought that political pressure would force some movement toward withdrawal before November. Perhaps it will happen yet, but there is no evidence of such a plan now.
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1.www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/08/20060821.html
2. His sincerity is suspect; see David Corn's comment.
3.www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/21/AR2006082100800.html
4.www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/08/20060807.html
August 30, 2006
What role will Iraq play in the election this year? It's anyone's guess. An article in The Washington Post on Saturday claimed that "[m]ost Democratic candidates in competitive congressional races are opposed to setting a timetable for pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq, rejecting pressure from liberal activists . . . ." 1 On the other hand, a column in the same paper on Monday2 found evidence that Republican candidates are distancing themselves from the Bush stay-the-course position, and that some are calling for troop reductions. The article and the column offered contrary interpretations of the position of one Democratic candidate in Connecticut. Ironically, the bolder Republicans and the more timid anti-war Democrats wind up in the same position: vaguely advocating withdrawal but refusing to speak of deadlines or timetables.
Leaving those reports aside, it's clear that the Democrats are divided as to how to deal with the war. Some support it. Some oppose it, but many of them are unwilling to take a strong position, afraid of being accused of insufficient blind patriotism. One Democratic challenger expressed resentment at having to deal with a problem not of his making: "It is like dropping a raw egg and asking me what my plans are for putting it back together." 3
Because they are so afraid of the cut-and-run label, Democrats probably will not make Iraq a major issue, running on domestic issues instead, but that strategy failed in 2002 and 2004 and there is no obvious reason that it would succeed this time.
The administration and its supporters also have a dilemma, with two aspects: what to do now and how to justify further sacrifice. Having no new ideas, their solution is to tell everyone that the mess cannot be tolerated but, if we are patient, the egg will clean itself up. Meanwhile, they continue the intimidation of those who might otherwise point out the futility of staying the course; Secretary Rumsfeld did his bit Tuesday with a warning about "fascism"and a tirade against blame-America-firsters.
Many pundits supported the war. Some have turned against it, recognizing either the initial error or the illogic of continuing. Others persist, creating for them a dilemma similar to the administration's: how to justify going on. Sunday's Washington Post provided an illustration of the latter position, in a column by David Ignatius entitled "Iraq: Still Worth Some Waiting."
Mr. Ignatius thinks that we should wait because the Iraqi military will be much better next year:
The new Iraqi security forces, totaling 325,000, will mostly be in place by year's end, says Lt. Gen. Martin Dempsey, who is responsible for training. Dempsey tells me that next year he hopes to consolidate this force, teaching the Iraqis mundane skills, such as logistics management, that make a modern army work. . . .
Leaving aside that fact that an Iraqi army has been promised before, this is an unimpressive forecast. If, next year, we still will be teaching Iraqis mundane skills, how long will it be before they are, to use the military adjective du jour, a "robust" force? Exactly how much waiting does Mr. Ignatius have in mind? He says, casually, "We'll be out of Iraq, one way or another, over the next few years." He disdains "[r]ushing the process because of American impatience. . . ."
What, in his opinion, justifies continued sacrifice? It isn't the dream of a peaceful and secure Iraq:
An Iraq that's actually run by Iraqis again won't be perfect. In the early years, it will be corrupt and disorderly: The Baghdad airport probably won't work as efficiently when it's returned to Iraqi control; insurgents will probably still be setting off roadside bombs. . . .
So are we staying just to turn over a somewhat less chaotic country?
If Mr. Ignatius had offered a clear statement of why we should invade Iraq, it might be possible to infer his present justification from it. However, it is difficult to discern from his early columns exactly what he had in mind. Like Mr. Bush, he made the decision based on feeling: "My own gut tells me that this is a war worth fighting." (Jan 31, 2003) On a visit to Kuwait: "Here, you feel in your gut that liberating Iraq will be a gift to the Iraqi people, and probably to the Arab world as a whole." (March 14, 2003) "My belief in the justice of this war is visceral. Reason has pounded away at it, but it's still there . . . ." (March 18, 2003)
Apparently his viscera were influenced by the Friedman doctrine. He described his view this way on October 2, 2005:
I thought the war made sense three years ago, not because of the putative weapons of mass destruction or the al Qaeda threat but because I hoped that toppling the Arab world's most repressive regime could open the door to positive change in the region. I still believe that, but I shudder at the administration's postwar mistakes and at the human cost of the war.
The last statement does him credit, but one must ask whether the human cost was invisible to him at the beginning. Possibly it was; on March 24, 2003, he offered this comparison: "The big difference from Vietnam is that this war is probably winnable - and quickly, too." Mr. Ignatius is a thoughtful person, and he has pointed out some of the weaknesses in the pro-war position, but that has had remarkably little effect on his opinion.
My criticism of writers like Ignatius and Friedman is a result of my dismay at the role played by the media in facilitating the war. Some of that was passive, a willingness to accept and repeat the dubious arguments for war. Ignatius revealed a distorted view of that history in a column on April 27, 2004:
The media offered a wide range of reporting and opinion before the war, including some skeptical assessments of Saddam Hussein's WMD threat and his links with al Qaeda. Our biggest failure (and my own) was that we didn't ask enough questions about the administration's planning for postwar Iraq.
He was mistaken on both counts. There was too little skepticism, and the most important error was the failure to question the justification for war. As to the failure he saw, Mr. Ignatius offered this explanation:
In a sense, the media were victims of their own professionalism. Because there was little criticism of the war from prominent Democrats and foreign policy analysts, journalistic rules meant we shouldn't create a debate on our own. And because major news organizations knew the war was coming, we spent a lot of energy in the last three months before the war preparing to cover it -- arranging for reporters to be embedded with military units, purchasing chemical and biological weapons gear and setting up forward command posts in Kuwait that mirrored those of the U.S. military.
The last sentence contains too pathetic an excuse to deserve a rejoinder. The second addresses issues that have been raised elsewhere: do the media follow or lead the opposition party in criticizing the government? Which should they do? Not being a journalist, I can't say with certainty that there are no such rules as he cites, but I doubt that they exist. His claim is a cop-out for the failure of the news media to assume the independent, questioning role which they must play as representatives of the people; the protection of the First Amendment was bestowed on the press because of that role. In addition, all of this deals only with the media's passive failures. Advocacy of the war by columnists can't be excused by any supposed rule about waiting for the opposition party.
It's true that the Democrats were fooled or intimidated by the administration's propaganda. Their folly perhaps explains, but does not excuse, the failure of the media. The converse, of course, also is true, which takes us full circle to the Democrats' campaign strategy.
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1. Jim VandeHei and Zachary A. Goldfarb, "Democrats Split Over Timetable For Troops; In Close Races, Most Reject Rapid Pullout," 8/27/06
2. E. J. Dionne Jr., "Slowly Sidling To Iraq's Exit," 8/29/06
3. See fn. 1
September 6, 2006
The White House press corps usually has seemed to me to be too easy on the President, especially in its failure to ask follow-up questions raised by his statements. Part of the problem is that reporters go into these sessions with preset questions, which they ask even though circumstances would suggest others. Mr. Bush comes in with programmed answers, which rarely address the questions, so we end up with a bizarre sort of double irrelevancy.
I try to follow the President's statements carefully, but almost always by reading the transcripts. That's convenient and eliminates the need to watch his silly mannerisms. However, I did decide to watch the video of a recent press conference 1 and came away with more sympathy for the reporters. Mr. Bush's long, meandering, repetitive, unresponsive answers, stuffed with noble but transparently insincere stock phrases, would cause anyone's attention to drift. All the more remarkably, therefore, there were several follow-up questions on that occasion, one which challenged his answer and at least two which suggested that he hadn't answered the original question.
However, performance at the briefings isn't the only problem. Some of the reporters who occasionally ask tough questions go on the air and deliver bland summaries which follow the administration line or at least adopt its terminology. Perhaps the problem is located further up the corporate ladder.
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1. www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/08/20060821.html
October 11, 2006
Returning home from a trip to the UK, where news about this country was surprisingly scarce, we found that Congress had, by passing the Military Commissions Act, validated the Bush administration's march toward authoritarian rule. Any reversal or even slowing of that process depends on throwing the Republicans out of Congress, but the Democrats, in part because some of them are complicit, are incapable of declaring a simple truth: the Bush administration is, in virtually every way imaginable, a menace, following insane policies which will turn the country not only into an autocracy and an international pariah but into an economic and environmental wasteland.
Republicans helpfully served up another scandal, involving Rep. Foley and pages, but the Dems again seem incapable capitalizing on it even though this grabs the attention of the media where more substantial issues do not. On October 7, The New York Times reported that, of people it interviewed in Virginia, "many said that the episode only reinforced their reasons to vote for their two Republican incumbents. . . ." One declared that the issue in the Foley mess is homosexuality and the Dems are more "tolerant of . . . that lifestyle." Perhaps those were hopelessly reactionary voters, but the Democrats aren't getting their message across. They need to convince voters that the GOP is only rhetorically the party of high moral standards. Foley's misdeeds and the failure of the House leadership to act promptly are significant because they are part of a pattern. Every reference to Foley or Hastert should include DeLay, Abramoff, Cunningham and Ney, along with Halliburton and other crony companies. Having made that point, the Dems could move on to showing that the GOP is all talk as to other issues, such as national security and fiscal responsibility.
Two Congressional races in Washington have attracted attention. When we went through our accumulated mail, there were a half-dozen fliers from the National Republican Congressional Committee dealing with the 8th District. None of them said anything about the Republican incumbent, Dave Reichert; instead they attacked his opponent, Darcy Burner, in several cases attacking her for being "a negative campaigner." Republicans have no sense of irony, let alone shame.
No Democrat ever has been elected to Congress from the 8th District, but demographics are changing and the contest is closer this year than before. Reichert is a bland candidate, relying mostly on his reputation as the sheriff who (finally) caught the Green River serial killer. Polls show them virtually tied, hence the rather panicky national effort.
In addition to holding Reichert's seat, the GOP has or had hopes of capturing Washington's junior Senate seat, now held by Democrat Maria Cantwell. The National Journal called her opponent, Mike McGavick, "the GOP's best Senate challenger in the country," and on Sunday a Seattle Times columnist described him as "the Republicans' best Senate candidate in our state in years." However, his campaign doesn't reflect that.
In late July, McGavick, former CEO of Safeco, was sued by a shareholder who is challenging his golden parachute, estimated in the complaint at $28 million; other sources put it at $17 million. The suit is based on allegations of corporate waste and violation of securities laws, but other criticism has focused on politics. The money was paid long after McGavick announced his intention to run for the Senate; Washington Democrats filed a complaint with the Federal Elections Commission in April, claiming that it was an illegal campaign contribution. McGavick denounced the FEC complaint, but hasn't said much about the civil suit.
Recently he attempted to neutralize another potentially embarrassing issue by confessing, without apparent pressure, to a DUI citation several years ago. However, he fudged the facts, something which became known within days, eliminating any advantage of a pre-emptive disclosure. It is difficult to understand how he thought he could get away with the sanitized story.
McGavick has been criticized for running a radio ad accusing Senator Cantwell of ignoring state interests by opposing a bill which would have extended the deductibility of the state sales tax. Considering that the sales tax provision was a cynical sweetener attached to a bill repealing the estate tax, McGavick's argument was neither fair nor candid. Sen. Cantwell has sponsored separate legislation to allow the deduction, which makes McGavick's ad downright deceitful. Despite the criticism, the audio still is available on his web site.
Actually, the candidate's name appears to be Mike! McGavick, that being the form it takes on his web site, on signs and in ads. I don't know what we're supposed to make of that. Is he afraid we have the wrong McGavick in mind? "No, dammit, not Ed McGavick: Mike!" Or is this an attempt to show he's dynamic? His unimpressive early TV ads might have raised concern about that. (His more recent ads aren't much better; see a comment on them by Michael Kinsley.)
On his web page, links also are emphatic: "McGavick Blog!" "Open Mike! Tour." When I looked at his page around the beginning of August, each of his policy statements was preceded by a large red exclamation point, as if to suggest it was something pretty startling. Here's an example:
! Congress must make hard choices to get the deficit under control. Those hard choices must be made with urgency or we will leave our children with a crippling national debt. Congress must learn to live within its means like the rest of us, Congress cannot spend more than it earns.
His not very original solution: "If we were to focus on reforming this government, we could balance the budget without raising taxes."
In the interval, his issues statements have been rewritten, omitting the exclamation points and altering the text. The last quote now is a slogan attached to his "policies for fiscal responsibility," which include sensible suggestions such as ending earmarking and auditing the Department of Defense budget, along with mindlessly counterproductive policies such as making tax cuts permanent and eliminating the estate tax.
His current statement on the "war on terror" is more or less the same as the old, minus the emphasis. It includes this:
We cannot retreat from our moral obligation to finish the job of helping Iraq achieve its goal of a democratic government. To do less is to allow evil to succeed and to put our own security in danger.
U.S. forces should come home from Iraq when the job is finished. Setting a politically driven timetable for troop withdrawal gives the advantage to America’s terrorist enemies.
These party-line flights from reality should be enough to send Mr. McGavick back to the business world.
However, he is running against an incumbent who is not hugely popular. Senator Cantwell also has a minor scandal to deal with, albeit an obscure one, involving possible favoritism to a lobbyist who hasn't repaid a loan from her. Perhaps because of the obscurity, the story hasn't had much traction. Her lack of popularity, at least among Democrats, has had to do with Iraq. Until this summer, Senator Cantwell expressed no regrets or even meaningful second thoughts about voting for the war resolution. Finally, in August, she posted this statement on her campaign blog:
If the Congress knew then, what we know today, even the Republican leadership would not have brought it to a vote.
If the Bush Administration had done the hard work of building an international coalition to really contain Saddam, there would have been no vote.
If I knew then everything that I know today and the Republican leadership still brought it up for a vote, I would have voted no.
While mistakes were made in the way Bush took us to war, the Republican led Congress has not done its job of providing aggressive oversight of the Iraq war. In the days ahead, the Congress must use the power of the purse to hold the Bush Administration accountable for more progress towards beginning to bring our troops home this year.
We will always make sure our troops have everything they need to do their jobs well, but we will look at other cost cutting measures.
I am for changing the course in Iraq, my opponent is for staying the course. I oppose permanent bases in Iraq, my opponent does not share that belief. We do have different views of where to go next in Iraq.
The Iraqis must take over responsibility for their own security this year.
Even that concession came only after McGavick had taken the same position as stated in paragraph three, and the statement now appears on her campaign web site only under blog archives (for August 15). Senator Cantwell still deflects questions about her war vote by saying that she wants to look forward, but she seems to look forward only to a succession of half-measures. Her policies certainly don't reveal any sense of urgency about disengagement. On her Senate web site, she offers this:
Maria believes we must get Iraqis on their feet and U.S. troops home. She voted for the Levin-Reed Amendment to encourage the Iraqis to take complete control of their own future. . . . The Bush Administration must do more to garner international support for the new Iraqi government. . . . She voted for the Biden Amendment to affirm that the U.S should not stay in Iraq indefinitely, it should not construct permanent bases in that country, and the U.S. should not seek to exercise control over Iraqi oil.1
Her campaign web site says much the same, adding that "2006 must be a year of transition, when we bring more of our troops home and work to achieve stability through greater international cooperation." 2
On August 4 Senator Cantwell wrote a letter to President Bush about Iraq policy, but even the crisis in Baghdad only suggested to her that we should encourage the Iraqis to do better:
This week in testimony before the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee General John Abizaid indicated that if rising sectarian violence in Iraq is not stopped, it could lead to full-scale civil war. Mr. President, we must change course and push the Iraqis to find a political solution to their differences so that we can meet our goal of the new Iraqi government taking over security by year end.3
However the Senator's comments are interpreted, she has moved only reluctantly away from supporting the war, and any changes have come in the form of small steps, a serial tweaking of her position.
It's no wonder, given this record, that she has had criticism from the left, which included a sit-in at her office by anti-war activists in April. On June 2, the Seattle Times published an op-ed column by one of those activists, a local pastor named Rich Gamble, entitled "Cantwell can't hide from her position on Iraq." Rev. Gamble's claim that "her position on Iraq has been and remains indistinguishable from George Bush's" is an exaggeration even leaving aside her August comment, but her position, like the President's, has involved an element of denial and still reflects an unwillingness to face facts.
Polls have been erratic. Those taken in late September show Cantwell leading McGavick 50-40, 54-42, 50-43, 49-40 and 48-42. The last, by Rasmussen, now shows the race "leaning Democrat" rather than safely in the Democratic column, as before. Although primary challenges are behind her, the Senator faces a possible challenge from the left in the final election. In November, Cantwell and McGavick will be joined by the Green candidate, Aaron Dixon, Libertarian Bruce Guthrie and an Independent, Robin Adair. Dixon and Guthrie support prompt withdrawal from Iraq, and Adair may also (she's virtually invisible). If they draw off significant liberal votes, Cantwell could be in trouble, assuming that the Rasmussen estimate is correct. However, the two polls which include the minority-party candidates don't show that. Survey USA has Cantwell 54, McGavick 42, Dixon 3, Guthrie 1, Adair virtually 0, undecided 3; Mason-Dixon shows Cantwell 50, McGavick 40, others 1, undecided 9. 4
Rev. Gamble declared "I for one will not vote for any candidate who supports the continuation of the war. To do so would make me an accomplice to the suffering caused by this war; and unless candidates understand that their support of the war ensures their electoral loss, the war will continue." I applaud the sentiment, but it can lead to a self-defeating conclusion.
Perhaps he intended his comments only to apply to the primary, although the context suggests otherwise: "Given that the two candidates for Senate with statewide visibility and adequate resources both support the war, people opposed to the war face a challenge." Perhaps Cantwell's August statement has changed his view. However, his appeal to abstract principle is characteristic of a number of voters who, as Matthew Rothschild put it, "proudly want to declare where they stand in the voting booth."
The only possibility of a change in direction, on Iraq or anything else, is the election of a Democratic Congress. Next month we will have a choice among two candidates who can be elected and three who can't. Selecting one of the latter, or staying home, may salve the conscience and demonstrate higher moral standards than the viable candidates, but it won't accomplish anything else. Mike McGavick appears to be a good man, but he will vote the Republican line. Maria Cantwell won't always vote as liberals would like, but she's more apt to do so than McGavick. The choice is clear, and no amount of self-congratulation will absolve those who put the good at risk by insisting on the perfect.
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1.http://mikemcgavick.com/default.asp
2.http://cantwell.senate.gov/issues/foreign_affairs.cfm
3.http://www.cantwell.com/issues/nationalsecurity/
4.http://cantwell.senate.gov/news/record.cfm?id=261556
5. For links to the polls, see www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2006/senate/wa/washington_senate_race-9.html
October 16, 2006
On Sunday The Seattle Times endorsed Dave Reichert for reelection, leading off with this faint praise: "While there is a compelling reason for change in Congress, the case to replace Congressman Dave Reichert in the 8th District has not been made." The Republicans are trashing the country, and Reichert is, for the most part, a loyal foot soldier, so the case for replacing him is self-evident. Even if he occasionally votes against the party line, as the Times tries hard to establish, he votes, as all Republicans do, to organize the Congress under their control, which is enough to disqualify him this year.
The Times conceded that Reichert's position on global warming might be a tad behind the curve, but the rest of its editorial reads like a Republican press release. The endorsement and the unrealistic picture painted of the contenders puzzled me, but my resident political analyst immediately offered the explanation: Reichert must be against the "death" tax. Sure enough, a June 23 note on his Congressional web site confirms his support for repeal of the federal estate tax, and includes this marvelous statement by the Congressman:
. . . Permanent relief from the death tax is important for family-owned businesses such as the Seattle Times Company, a fourth- and fifth-generation family business that is a fixture in our area. By approving this important measure, we are once again taking bold action to reduce unnecessary and unjust taxation on the American people.1
Much of the editorial could have been written by the Reichert campaign, so it's only fitting that part of his issues statement sounds like it was written by the Times. Certainly is was written with the Blethen family's support in mind and, on this issue, the family's support means an editorial endorsement.
Judging by her web site, Ms. Burner is not exactly a fervent opponent of estate-tax repeal, but a item on the Washington State Labor Council page reported that, at a forum on July 7, she and Rep. Jay Inslee "expressed their commitment to retaining fair estate taxes." No Times support for her.
Also on Sunday, the P-I opinion pages carried a debate on the Initiative 920, which would repeal the state's version of the estate tax. The opposition was offered by Bill Gates, Sr., the pro-repeal position by Carolyn Logue, identified as state director of the National Federation of Independent Business. Ms. Logue claimed that repeal "is in everyone's interest," but her argument was incoherent. It seems that her point really is the same as the Blethens': we want our children to carry on the business, and they won't be able to do so if they must pay taxes on the transfer. No evidence for such an effect was offered.
The statement in favor of the initiative in the voters' pamphlet tells us of the impact on the next generation. Under the caption "Young people hardest hit by a death tax . . ," it tells us (cue violins) "Young people look forward to an economically successful life. They don't need another tax on their family's hard-earned assets." Those poor heirs and heiresses don't need another cruel and unfair impediment to their success and happiness. Next we'll hear that unearned wealth should be a protected category under anti-discrimination laws.
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1. http://www.house.gov/reichert/press06/6.23.06.shtml
October 24, 2006
When I visited the Seattle Times' web site on Sunday, I was asked to complete a questionnaire designed to improve the page. However, the categories did not include the improvement it and the print version need most: removing the Blethen family and their representatives from the editorial board. The Times brags constantly about its independence, but that means only that it isn't part of a chain. It needs editorial independence, so that political endorsements and other
editorial decisions can be made for reasons other than the dynastic dreams of the Blethens.
On October 16, I noted the coincidence between the Times' endorsement of Dave Reichert and his position on the estate tax. The Times also has endorsed Rick Larsen, the Democratic incumbent in the 2d. That might look like a deviation from the one-issue paradigm, but no: Rep. Larsen also dislikes the federal estate tax. He voted for repeal in 20021 and again this year.2 He voted against the trifecta bill later this year because he thought that the minimum wage deserved an uncluttered up or down vote, but reiterated his desire to "fix" the estate tax.3 The Times can support Democrats like that.
It continued the pattern by endorsing Cathy McMorrris in the 5th District. Like Reichert, she is a one-term Republican incumbent and, like Reichert, a supporter of estate tax repeal.4 The Democratic Challenger, Peter Goldmark, has nothing about the estate tax on his web site, but stated in an interview that repeal is an example of how the Bush administration is "trying to feather the beds of the richest 2%."5 That puts him, along with Darcy Burner, in the Times' reject file.
It completed the picture on Sunday by endorsing Mike McGavick for the Senate, and in doing so took a small but defensive step toward candor: "Critics will note that McGavick supports the elimination of the federal estate tax, a cause for which The Seattle Times has campaigned many years. That is part of why we endorse him, but not most of it. We endorsed Cantwell six years ago, knowing her position on the estate tax, and could endorse her again." But they didn't, and the "not most of it" dodge is thoroughly unconvincing; the editorial had to reach to find other reasons to prefer McGavick.
The paper still maintains an anti-"death tax" web site;6 it endorsed Initiative 920, which would repeal Washington's estate tax.
The Times' news department has maintained some distance from the editorial position, but is uncomfortable enough with it to feel compelled to acknowledge the problem it creates. At the end of an article yesterday on I-920, under the heading "What's Frank Blethen's involvement in the campaign to defeat the estate tax?", the reporter acknowledged that "Seattle Times Publisher Frank Blethen has been active over the years in lobbying against the state and federal estate taxes." He also disclosed that the Times and other Washington newspapers have contributed to the initiative campaign. A spokesman for the opposition to 920 asserts that such contributions amount to a breach of trust with their readers. In response, the reporter offered a statement on journalistic ethics:
Kelly McBride, the ethics group leader at The Poynter Institute, a Florida journalism think tank, said it's an uncomfortable topic for newspapers, but publishers have a right to be politically active. "A good newsroom will create a system to insulate the journalist from those attempts to wield power and influence, and then explain what that system is to the readers," she said.
That's where newspapers fall short, she said. "We haven't made a habit of explaining ourselves very well, so of course they're cynical. They have no idea how we do our job, and in the absence of any explanation, they assume the worst, which is human nature. That's why we have to take responsibility for our own
reputation."
The Times' contributions to the campaign have been very modest; it's the editorial slant and the Blethens' long-term advocacy of repeal that raise the question. Oddly, the reporter made no attempt to show how the Times creates the necessary insulation.
A locally owned newspaper may be a good thing. A newspaper with credibility would be better.
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1.http://www.house.gov/larsen/news/press2001-2002/pr_020606_realestate.html
2.http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/109/house/2/votes/315/
3.http://www.house.gov/list/press/wa02_larsen/PR_072906_Minimum_Wage.html
4.http://mcmorris.house.gov/issues_taxes.shtml
5.http://liberalgirlnextdoor.blogspot.com/2006/06/peter-goldmark-all-cattle-and-hat.html
6.http://www.deathtax.com/deathtax/index.htm
October 29, 2006
It's always a challenge to know whether any given utterance by a member of the Bush administration is an example of how dumb or delusional he is are or how dumb he thinks we are. The latest test was provided by the declaration that Iraq policy cannot be described by "stay the course."
On Monday, October 22, Dan Bartlett declared, incredibly, that "It's never been a stay-the-course strategy." 1 That prompted this exchange at Tony Snow's press briefing the same day:
Q Is there a change in the administration 'stay the course' policy? Bartlett this morning said that wasn't ever the policy."
MR. SNOW: No, the policy -- because the idea of "stay the course" is you've done one thing, you kick back and wait for it. And this has always been a dynamic policy that is aimed at moving forward at all times on a number of fronts. . . .
So what you have is not "stay the course," but, in fact, a study in constant motion . . .
. . . There has been considerable, and continues to be, action on the economic front. And obviously, we're continuing to cooperate in security. That is not a "stay the course" policy.2
But hadn't the President repeatedly said that it was? Snow claimed that a search had revealed only eight instances of the use of that phrase. (Leave aside whether that is enough to establish that it was the policy). By the next day, responses, many with video, showed that his count was off by at least twenty. On October 27, Dan Froomkin reported that the Compilation of Presidential Documents (did you know there was such a resource? I didn't) "contains 52 such public utterances by the President since 2003." 3 Actually, his count is a little high; in three cases, the term was used by someone other than President Bush, and two instances referred only to Afghanistan. One represented the beginnings of Mr. Bush's pullback from the phrase. That leaves 46 or 47 depending on how one views the last, still many more than eight and several times the number necessary to make "it's never been our strategy" ludicrous.
The President's statement on the subject seems to fall into the delusional category. How else to explain saying "stay the course" 46 times and then claiming "we've never been stay the course?"4
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Mr. Bush attempted, in a press conference on October 25, to explain the new paradigm.5 In the prepared introduction, he said this:
Americans have no intention of taking sides in a sectarian struggle or standing in the crossfire between rival factions. Our mission is to help the elected government in Iraq defeat common enemies, to bring peace and stability to Iraq, and make our nation more secure.
How are we to defeat those common enemies, while operating in an area of warfare between rival factions, without being in the crossfire? If staying out of that line of fire actually had been our policy, we would not have sent large numbers of troops to Baghdad. Two paragraphs later, he acknowledged, without further comment, that we had done so: "we have moved additional coalition and Iraqi forces into Baghdad so they can help secure the city and reduce sectarian violence."
Although we are not, Mr. Bush says, setting deadlines or contemplating withdrawal, "We're pressing Iraq's leaders to take bold measures to save their country. We're making it clear that America's patient [sic] is not unlimited."
He was asked "Mr. President, the war in Iraq has lasted almost as long as World War II for the United States. And as you mentioned, October was the deadliest month for American forces this year -- in a year. Do you think we're winning, and why?" His answer, after the usual irrelevant ramble:
The ultimate victory in Iraq, which is a government that can sustain itself, govern itself, and defend itself, depends upon the Iraqi citizens and the Iraqi government doing the hard work necessary to protect their country. And our job is to help them achieve that objective."
Leaving aside that this translates into "restoring what we destroyed," it is a meaningful answer. But instead of stating whether that goal is being achieved, he said "my view is the only way we lose in Iraq is if we leave before the job is done." On its face, this doesn't make much sense; it sounds suspiciously like "stay the course" repackaged. (For what it may be worth, Donald Rumsfeld doesn't think that there has been any change, in policy or in slogan.6)
Pressed as to whether we are "winning," Mr. Bush changed the subject from Iraq:
. . . Most of al Qaeda that planned the attacks on September the 11th have been brought to justice. Extremists have now played their hand; the world can clearly see their ambitions. You know, when a Palestinian state began to show progress, extremists attacked Israel to stop the advance of a Palestinian state. They can't stand democracies. Extremists and radicals want to undermine fragile democracy because it's a defeat for their way of life, their ideology.
Finally providing an answer of sorts, he returned to the current mantra: "We're winning, and we will win, unless we leave before the job is done." Again: "This notion about, you know, fixed timetable of withdrawal, in my judgment, is a -- means defeat. You can't leave until the job is done."
There was a good deal of fencing about benchmarks v. timetables. Whatever the distinction, the question remains: what do we do if the progress expected or demanded of the Iraqis doesn't occur? Even though he raised the issue, Mr. Bush fell back, incoherently, on an old ploy: refuse to answer "hypothetical questions:"
THE PRESIDENT:. . .And there's probably going to be some bones of contention during these discussions, but, nevertheless, we'll respect the fact that the Iraq government is sovereign, and they must respect the fact that we've got patience, but not unlimited patience.
Q What happens if that patience runs out?
THE PRESIDENT: See, that's that hypothetical Keil is trying to get me to answer. Why do we work to see to it that it doesn't work out -- run out? That's the whole objective. That's what positive people do. They say, we're going to put something in place and we'll work to achieve it.
Although vague about strategy and progress, Mr. Bush was emphatic about the stakes:
If we do not defeat the terrorists or extremists in Iraq, they will gain access to vast oil reserves, and use Iraq as a base to overthrow moderate governments across the broader Middle East. They will launch new attacks on America from this new safe haven. They will pursue their goal of a radical Islamic empire that stretches from Spain to Indonesia.
A threatened Muslim landing on the moon will be next.
Later that day, Mr. Bush met with sympathetic journalists, and the level of confusion increased. In an opening statement,7 he attempted to draw a distinction between his responsible use of electronic surveillance and the naive views of those who have criticized his methods:
. . . You know, it's an interesting world in which people are not willing to listen to the words of an enemy, but in this case, we're able to listen to the enemy and find out what the enemy thinks and publish their thoughts. The Commander-in-Chief must listen carefully and take their words extremely seriously.
Other parts of the world, and some here - and I'm not casting dispersion [sic], I'm just giving you a sense - I'm telling you what's on my mind. I am in disbelief that people don't take these people seriously, as if they're some kind of incompetent, and/or isolated people. They're plenty competent, they're plenty tough, and they're plenty ambitious.
The next passage apparently was one of his backhanded attempts to tie Saddam Hussein to 9-11:
You know, they kind of - there is al Qaeda central, there is [sic] al Qaeda look-alikes, there is [sic] al Qaeda want-to-bes. They're dangerous. Some are more dangerous than others. And we have got special teams and special operating teams, as well as intelligence teams, pressuring them a lot.
And we're pretty successful. We have upheld doctrine. And we take threats - the doctrine is "if you harbor" - and we upheld that doctrine, of course, in Afghanistan. And then we're taking these - we're dealing with threats. I made the right decision on Saddam Hussein. . . .
A little later, still in his introduction, he seemed to reverse course again (flip flop?) on the policy: " This stuff about 'stay the course' - stay the course means, we're going to win. Stay the course does not mean that we're not going to constantly change." Then back to the Iraq/9-11 axis:
My attitude about our - look, I'm into campaigning out there: People want to know, can you win? That's what they want to know. I mean, there's - look, there's some 25 percent or so that want us to get out, shouldn't have been out there in the first place - and that's fine. They're wrong. But you can understand why they feel that way. They just don't believe in war, and - at any cost. I believe when you get attacked and somebody declares war on you, you fight back. And that's what we're doing.
But those who opposed the war did so for a variety of sound reasons, not merely out of absolute pacifism. One of the obvious reasons to oppose the invasion of Iraq was that we were not "fighting back," but starting an unrelated war.
Clearly the President was in campaign mode and hoping to avoid a defeat by communicating with real Americans:
I view this as a struggle of good versus evil, by the way. I don't think religious people murder. I think people are misusing religion to justify their murder. And a lot of Americans understand it that way. Maybe it's not nuanced enough for some of the thinkers and all that stuff - that's fine. But that's exactly what a lot of people like me think. And my job is to make it clear to the American people the stakes, and to spell it out as plainly as I can. And a lot of people understand it.
Good v. evil; us v. them: simple formulas from simple people for simple people.
His comments, even before taking questions, often lapsed into incoherence. Again describing his campaigning, Mr. Bush said
. . . I've worked rope lines and the wife says, I'm emailing my husband after the event. I said, tell her the commander - tell him the Commander-in-Chief respects him - send - and all of a sudden the guy - wow, Mom, I saw the President. It is amazing when there is that direct communication. . . .
If only he could remember with whom he was communicating.
The President had difficulty keeping clear the relationship between withdrawing and winning. At his press conference, he said "the only way we lose in Iraq is if we leave before the job is done" and "we will win, unless we leave before the job is done." Perhaps the audience of sympathetic journalists led him to forget his lines. In any case, he told them "If we're there and can't win, we're gone. If we can't win, I'll pull us out. If I didn't think it was noble and just and we can win, we're gone." This discrepancy was pointed out by reader of Dan Froomkin's column who commented, "That struck me as an unbelievable contradiction of all logic -- 'the only way we can't win is if we leave, but if we can't win, we'll leave' -- so is he saying that if we don't stay in Iraq, we'll leave?"
Another attempt at interpretation, also via Froomkin:
Kathleen Parker, one of the conservative writers who was invited to participate in the interview, writes today: "Bush tried to clarify what 'winning' is. . . .
"This is a little tricky, so pay attention.
"First, 'winning' is closely tied to 'staying the course,' another term seeking definition the past few days. As of this writing, 'staying the course' means 'winning,' which means 'not losing,' but you knew that.
"And what does 'not losing' mean? According to Bush, it means not leaving. Which no one wants to hear, but there it is. . . .
"At this point, the only real question, said Bush, is whether we can help the Iraqi government succeed. 'Not only can we help them, we must help them,' he said.
"Which means not leaving. Which means not losing. Which means winning, maybe, as currently defined." 8
Of course.
The first question in this session was about a possible recommendation from the Baker commission, which the President ducked. The follow-up was odd: "In your previous press conference, I noticed that twice you mentioned Jimmy Baker. Was that a - I interpreted it, probably over-interpreted it that you were being respectful, but not deferential to - " Mr. Bush always refers to people by nicknames - our ambassador to Iraq is "Zal" - so Mr. Baker wasn't being singled out for disrespect. The President said "I've known him forever," which was enough. Instead, he went on one of his rambles, stopping along the way to be optimistic about conditions in Iraq:
And I certainly - don't be writing - don't write me down as hopelessly naive and trying to always put lipstick on the pig, but I understand there's got to be - you know, life is moving. People are living their lives, schools are opening. And it - and yet, this is a war that you don't measure platoons storming hills. You measure - evidently, the measurement is violence. Well, if the absence of violence is victory, no one will ever win, because all that means is you've empowered a bunch of suiciders and thugs to kill.
That pass at defining victory made no sense, and later he seemed to reverse the formula:
. . . I want it over with, with victory. And I'm trying to figure out a matrix that says things are getting better. I think that one way to measure is less violence than before, I guess.
But violence is increasing, so he tried again, but more or less gave up the attempt:
The frustration is that the definition of success has now gotten to be, how many innocent people are dying? And if there's a lot dying, it means the enemy is winning. That doesn't mean they're winning. It means they're - the question is really, how tough are the Iraqis? . . .
An intellectually challenged man, whose role it is to explain policy more than to make it, whose attention is focused on the Congressional campaign, is attempting to explain a strategy that makes little sense. The result, not surprisingly, is confusion. "[M]y job is to explain as clearly as I can to the American people exactly what's happening." Unfortunately, he can't do that either, even if, as is very unlikely, he really wants to. He hasn't a clue.
In the course of trying to show that he's all principle and no politics, Mr. Bush seemed to abandon the paradigm shift: "If they came in here, if Rove and them [sic] came in here and said, okay, here's what the focus groups are saying, change, I'm not changing. Now, maybe you'll say, oh, God, if only Bush had changed." He's back to staying the course, maybe, for now.
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1.http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/10/23/us.iraq/
2.http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/10/20061023-2.html
3.http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/linkset/2005/04/11/LI2005041100879.html. His column includes a link to a search result for "stay the course" and "Iraq."
4. Mr. Bush to George Stephanopoulos, 10/22/06. Full interview at http://abcnews.go.com/ThisWeek/ Relevant excerpt at http://thinkprogress.org/2006/10/22/bush-stay-the-course/
5.http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/10/20061025.html
6.http://thinkprogress.org/2006/10/24/rumsfeld-stay-course/
7. Transcript, http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MDE1ZTY5MzEwN2ZmNmQ3ZThiMzM3Yzk0=
8. The full text of her column is at http://www.townhall.com/Columnists/KathleenParker/2006/10/27/%20dying_to_win
November 6, 2006
Michael Kinsley contributed a column to the New York Times book section on Sunday. It was a perceptive account of the state of American politics, wrapped around comments on ten recent books. He began by noting the unfortunate results of Republican rule - "unjustified tax breaks for the rich, a miserable war in Iraq, unbelievable indifference to civil liberties" - but noted that "this doesn't prove any flaws in democracy itself. Maybe it's what people want."
No, that can't be it. People can't really want things that are so obviously wrong. The system must be broken. "If self-interest cut the other way, that would be one thing. But the self-interest of most citizens coincides with what I believe, or so it seems to me. So in a fair fight, my side should win." Well, maybe that's a bit much, but it seems fair to say that many votes for Republicans are votes against self-interest. What's the explanation? "If my side doesn't win, that proves the fight is not fair. The other side is cheating."
Unfashionable though it might be, that's one answer. Mr. Kinsley noted that it is considered "tiresome" - one might add borderline unpatriotic - "to complain that the White House was stolen in 2000." As Justice Scalia has said, we should simply "get over it," i.e., give the Court and the others involved a pass. Kinsley's reaction is the same as mine: "Call me bitter: I am not over it and don't want to be over it. I still find it shocking that democracy was so openly subverted, and even more shocking that so few others seem to share my shock." He describes the decision in Bush v. Gore as probably the most "knowingly stupid" Supreme Court decision in history. It's worse than that: Mark Crispin Miller described it aptly as "the Rehnquist putsch," part of the "coup" that elevated George W. Bush to the presidency.
However, Mr. Kinsley concluded that the "great flaw in American democracy is not electoral irregularities, purposeful or accidental. . . It's not the broken promises and the outright lying, although we're getting close. The biggest flaw in our democracy is . . . the enormous tolerance for intellectual dishonesty." He's of the opinion that this is a problem which can't be solved by electoral reform: "Intellectual dishonesty can't be banned or regulated or 'capped' like money. The only way it can be brought under control is if people start voting against it." I'm not persuaded that truth in advertising cannot be imposed on electioneering, but he's right that the best cure is voter disgust.
However, that leads us to an unpleasant fact: too many voters are ignorant or lazy. A study reported a few days ago found that the candidate listed first on the ballot picks up, on average, two percentage points, often enough to win. Political advertising obviously is based on the notion that voters can be fooled. Polls have shown that many hold views which clearly are false. The Pew Research Center reported that 84% of voters say they have heard "a lot" about Sen. John Kerry's "botched joke" about the war in Iraq, but only 26% say they have heard a lot about President Bush's statement that he will keep Donald Rumsfeld as secretary of defense. Trusting voters to reject political lies isn't a promising plan.
True, it isn't fair to place the entire blame on the voters. Neither the media nor the opposition party have done much to educate them as to just how bad the current regime is. For most of this year, people seemed to be getting the point without much help. Now polls show them drifting back toward the Republicans. Tuesday may simply open another chapter in the tragedy.
I know, I sound like a typical Democrat: analyzing defeat while there still might be victory. Let's hope that voters tomorrow show that I'm foolish rather than they.
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1. Scalia likes the line so much that he repeats it. See http://explore.georgetown.edu/news/?documentID= (Georgetown U. 10/19/06);
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/14/AR2006041401370.html (Switzerland 9/06); http://www.lawschool.com/getoverit.htm (U. Michigan 11/16/04)
November 14, 2006
The administration's twists and turns in policy - more accurately, in rhetoric - leave everyone confused, including its employees. We were told recently that it is flexible, not unimaginative or stubborn, that "stay the course" never was its policy or mindset. However, Secretary Rice seems not to have seen the memo. Asked about the effect of the election, she said
. . . the American people were not voting for anything less than a success in Iraq. And the President has been very clear that we will certainly make adjustments to our policy. . . But the American commitment to the goals that took us to Iraq remains absolutely steadfast and that is what is important.
QUESTION: So you're saying that the U.S. will stay the course?
SECRETARY RICE: The United States will certainly keep after the goal that took us to Iraq, because it's too important to our own security. Iraq has to be successful for America to be secure. And so we will maintain that course. 1
Perhaps there is a subtle distinction there. "Stay the course" implies sticking with it to the end. "Maintain the course" only speaks of the present heading; one could change course if, say, an iceberg loomed ahead. (Would the captain of the USS Bush have sense enough to do that? Another matter). More likely Dr. Rice, like the rest of us, just has difficulty keeping up.
The President refuses to consider deadlines or timetables; conditions on the ground must dictate any changes. However, it was reported today that General Abizaid has demanded that the Iraqis produce "a firm timetable for when Iraq's security forces could take full control of the country." 2 If they established a timetable, would we do the same, despite the President's denials, or are timetables only for Iraqis?
With or without timetables, the administration is attempting to restate the goal in Iraq in a way to make it attainable, thereby facilitating an exit, but also to make it sound important, so that it will look like an accomplishment, not merely the termination of a colossal waste of lives and money.
General Pace gave a number of interviews, ostensibly to mark Veterans' Day, but also to talk about the new flexibility. He offered an interesting observation about the elusive nature of the concept of "victory," and then defined it in minimalist terms:
Asked by one interviewer whether the United States is winning the war in Iraq, Pace replied: "You have to define 'winning.' I don't mean to be glib about that. "Winning, to me, is simply having each of the nations that we're trying to help have a secure environment inside of which their government and people can function. . . .
"You are not going to do away with terrorism," Pace continued. "But you can provide governments in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere with enough security capacity to keep the acts below a level at which their governments can function." 3
The reporter commented that his definition "seemed to depart from the administration's more ambitious stated goal of building a democracy in Iraq." So it does, but the General is on the same page as the President, who told us two weeks ago that the "ultimate victory in Iraq . . . is a government that can sustain itself, govern itself, and defend itself, . . ."
However, Secretary Rice fantasized that the voters expressed a steadfast commitment to "the goals that took us to Iraq" and that we will maintain a course toward those goals, apparently failing to note that they are in the dustbin.
The Baker Commission is due to report, or advise, or something, soon. No doubt further rhetorical refinement, and confusion, will follow.
______________________________
1.http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2006/75767.htm
2.http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/13/AR2006111300301_pf.html
3.http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/10/AR2006111001679_pf.html
November 27, 2006
In the near future, the Iraq Study (Baker-Hamilton) Group, a Pentagon review board and the White House all will produce some sort of analysis of the situation in Iraq, and presumably some decision or list of options regarding future action. Members of Congress have submitted their ideas and will continue to do so. Pundits are punditing, or whatever it is that they do. Suggestions by ordinary citizens might seem to require a certain immodesty; after all, compared to the experts what do we know? However, there are these considerations:
Making policy, as opposed to strategy, is still the right of the people, even in post-9/11 Bushland. Criticism of the war involves a resort to first principles: democracy, freedom, law, peace, morality and common sense. Pointing out the gap between those standards and the administration's aims and practices is a genuine example of speaking truth to power. Reiterating those principles and insisting on adherence to them is an exercise in reaffirming who we are, or ought to be. Besides, how could we, ignorant as we are, get it any more wrong than the experts?
With that in mind, here are excerpts from a column in Sunday's Washington Post by Senator Chuck Hagel, with my comments. Senator Hagel is one of the most forthright and sensible members of Congress, and consistently has been more realistic about Iraq than the administration. Some of the observations in his column are on target and, as a whole1 it is a step in the right direction. It is about a bold as former supporters of the war are willing to be. However, his analysis is distorted by the illusion that the invasion of Iraq proceeded from noble motives, an illusion shared or professed by many, which often limits criticism to matters of strategy and tactics. Here it produces a need for an "honorable" withdrawal. If that is merely soothing rhetoric, no harm has been done. If it becomes a condition, if the adjective is given any real meaning, the exit may be delayed indefinitely.
There will be no victory or defeat for the United States in Iraq. These terms do not reflect the reality of what is going to happen there. The future of Iraq was always going to be determined by the Iraqis -- not the Americans.
Iraq is not a prize to be won or lost. It is part of the ongoing global struggle against instability, brutality, intolerance, extremism and terrorism. There will be no military victory or military solution for Iraq. . . .
Iraq certainly was not, in the beginning, part of any such global struggle, and it takes some imagination to see it in that light now. Abandoning talk of victory would be a large step forward; the challenge will be to persuade the President to take it.
The time for more U.S. troops in Iraq has passed. We do not have more troops to send and, even if we did, they would not bring a resolution to Iraq. Militaries are built to fight and win wars, not bind together failing nations. We are once again learning a very hard lesson in foreign affairs: America cannot impose a democracy on any nation -- regardless of our noble purpose.
Senator McCain needs to reflect on the first three sentences; he needs to, that is, if his comments about more troops are sincere, and not merely part of his campaign for the Republican nomination. The claim of noble purpose is nonsense, and it's difficult to believe that Senator Hagel doesn't know that.
We have misunderstood, misread, misplanned and mismanaged our honorable intentions in Iraq with an arrogant self-delusion reminiscent of Vietnam. Honorable intentions are not policies and plans. . . .
Here is an example of limiting criticism to execution because of the noble-motives or "honorable-intentions" fantasy, although his criticism of the execution is apt.
America finds itself in a dangerous and isolated position in the world. We are perceived as a nation at war with Muslims. Unfortunately, that perception is gaining credibility in the Muslim world and for many years will complicate America's global credibility, purpose and leadership. . . . The world will continue to require realistic, clear-headed American leadership - not an American divine mission.
I'm not sure how he reconciles rejection of divine mission with the notion that we had noble aims in invading Iraq. The rest is true, and the war for which he voted is an important cause our isolation and Muslim perception.
The United States must begin planning for a phased troop withdrawal from Iraq. The cost of combat in Iraq in terms of American lives, dollars and world standing has been devastating. We've already spent more than $300 billion there to prosecute an almost four-year-old war and are still spending $8 billion per month. . . .
We are destroying our force structure, which took 30 years to build. We've been funding this war dishonestly, mainly through supplemental appropriations, which minimizes responsible congressional oversight and allows the administration to duck tough questions in defending its policies. Congress has abdicated its oversight responsibility in the past four years.
All of this is true, and I hope that the Democratic leadership takes it to heart. Sen. Hagel might have added that most of that money has been borrowed, which has made us even weaker.
It is not too late. The United States can still extricate itself honorably from an impending disaster in Iraq. The Baker-Hamilton commission gives the president a new opportunity to form a bipartisan consensus to get out of Iraq. If the president fails to build a bipartisan foundation for an exit strategy, America will pay a high price for this blunder -- one that we will have difficulty recovering from in the years ahead.
The signals thus far do not indicate an overwhelming desire on the part of the President to embrace commission recommendations, bipartisanship or withdrawal, but at some point even he must recognize the futility of staying the course. Senator Hagel's advice may nudge him toward that conclusion.
The distinction between forms of withdrawal - "honorable" exit, "cutting and running," admitting failure, and ending something which never should have been started - is elusive and growing more so with time. However, if rhetoric about honor will move things along, by all means call the departure honorable. Just don't define the terms.
_________________________________
1. The entire column is here.
December 2, 2006
A few days ago someone commented that President Bush was traveling to Amman for a meeting with Prime Minister al-Malaki because he wanted to give the impression of still being in control of the Iraq agenda. The expected release of the Iraq Study Group (Baker-Hamilton commission) report, and speculation about its contents, had begun to dominate the news, and Mr. Bush's passive attitude - waiting to hear from the 'experts," waiting to hear from his generals - had added to the impression of drift. It was enough to make fans of the war wonder whether W. really was up to the job.1 Mr. Bush added to those concerns and undercut the supposed program by stating that he would ask the Iraqi Prime Minister "What is required and what is your strategy. . . ", not sounding much like the Decider.
Any thought that Bush might dominate the media, even for a few days, evaporated quickly. A memo by National Security Advisor Hadley, reporting on a meeting with al-Maliki, was leaked. It described the Prime Minister as "a leader who wanted to be strong but was having difficulty figuring out how to do so." It concluded that "the reality on the streets of Baghdad suggests Maliki is either ignorant of what is going on, misrepresenting his intentions, or that his capabilities are not yet sufficient to turn his good intentions into action." 2 That no doubt made Al-Malaki feel eager to meet the emperor. Some of his Shiite supporters, who wish to end the "occupation," staged a protest of the meeting. Al-Maliki cancelled the first of two scheduled meetings, possibly in reaction to the memo, possibly because of the Shia protest. Either way, it was a snub of the President. The memo made Mr. Bush's later praise of the Prime Minister - "he's the right guy for the job" - ludicrous.
Detailed and obviously intentional leaks of the Baker report put it back on page one. Everyone paid more attention to its recommendation for withdrawal than to the tired formulaic statement of resolve which had been delivered by the President in Riga: "I am not going to pull our troops off the battlefield before the mission is complete." 3
An article in yesterday's Washington Post stated that the Baker commission "plans to recommend withdrawing nearly all U.S. combat units from Iraq by early 2008 while leaving behind troops to train, advise and support the Iraqis. . . ." Mr. Bush's public statements don't suggest that he is likely to accept such a recommendation, but there is widespread hope that he will do so, under pressure from Congress and the public. If so, it will require an embarrassing reversal. Not only has he boasted repeatedly of staying the course, but on Thursday he said, apparently with the Baker commission in mind, "I know there's a lot of speculation that these reports in Washington mean there's going to be some kind of graceful exit out of Iraq. We're going to stay in Iraq to get the job done, so long as the government wants us there." 4
Even if the Baker report were accepted, it isn't clear that much would change. As the Post put it, "The call to pull out combat brigades by early 2008 would be more a conditional goal than a firm timetable, predicated on the assumption that circumstances on the ground would permit it. . . . But panel members concluded that it is vital to set a target to put pressure on Iraqi leaders to do more to assume responsibility for the security of their country." That doesn't sound radically different from the administration's formula. Congressional Democrats, returned to power by an electorate sick of the war, show little inclination toward boldness, decisiveness or specificity.
Mr. Bush has other sources of advice: a Pentagon review, one by the White House, and, we learned today, a parting memo from Donald Rumsfeld. Undoubtedly the Vice President will have words of wisdom. While we wait to learn how all of this will sort out, Americans, other coalition troops and Iraqis continue to die. As to the Iraqis, one of the increasingly unconvincing arguments for remaining is that our departure would loose all the violent forces and cause a bloodbath. However, Iraqi casualties are approaching a level at which anything much worse is difficult to imagine. More to the point, there isn't anything tangible to suggest that departure
later would produce less chaos than leaving now. The argument, of course, is that we will use the extra time to train and equip the Iraqis to maintain order, but that is an old and discredited story.
American military fatalities continue to average more than two per day. The administration has run out of excuses for the sacrifice, but it seems likely that many more will die while we slowly disengage.
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1. See, e.g., Rich Lowry's "Bush adrift" of 11/27/06; http://www.townhall.com/columnists/RichLowry/%202006/11/27/bush_adrift
2.http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/29/world/middleeast/29mtext.html
3.http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/11/20061128-13.html
4.http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/11/20061130-1.html
December 24, 2006
An old friend sent me a birthday card this year (last year? - senility, you know) which said that growing older just means that we have been friends longer. It's a lovely sentiment, but it might have been more accurate to say that the anniversary merely marked another year of my being tiresome company. Age serves to exaggerate tendencies, and most of mine were short on charm to begin with. I become more irascible with each passing year. My current preoccupations, largely the result of the depressing state of politics and the culture, make my conversation predictable, limited and boring.
My disposition toward easy annoyance and rude reaction was given a nudge this week, as we returned from vacation. Officious, incompetent and indifferent security and travel-industry people set the tone, and our fellow passengers, having been treated like cattle for hours, began acting as such. The consequence, at least for me, was reactive abuse directed alike toward the deserving and the relatively innocent.
I'd like to say that it's all George Bush's fault - so many things are - but then I'd just be emulating his practice of never admitting a mistake or accepting responsibility.
Occasionally I have a brief moment of insight and apologize for my rudeness or obsessive behavior, but that can become as annoying as the original performance. Mostly, I just muddle along. Being content not to have made a fool of one's self may seem to be setting the bar a little low, but the fact is that I count any day a success in which I have neither given serious offense nor done anything egregiously stupid.
Perhaps a visitation by Marley's ghost is in order.
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