I had to report for jury duty today and must do so tomorrow as well, although I’ve managed so far to wriggle out of being on an actual jury. Since I spent most of the day sitting around in the jurors’ “lounge,” I had plenty of time to read the New York Times. Until I get caught up with things and can sit down to blog, I’ll link to a couple of op eds in the Times to keep you entertained.
First, Tim Pritchard argues against conventional wisdom that the invasion of Iraq went just fine and that it was just the occupation that hit some bumps. He writes,
In fact, the short fight to get to Baghdad and the long one in which coalition forces have been engaged ever since have much in common. All the information about the nature of the trouble to come was apparent from the very first days of the war. If lessons learned then had been incorporated into military and political thinking, it would have injected a much needed dose of realism at an early stage.
Pritchard tells the story of the battle of Nasiriya in March 2003. The Marines, to their surprise, were met with heavy resistance from Shiite civilians — the people they had come to rescue from Saddam Hussein.
Of course, there were fanatical Sunni Saddam Fedayeen troops, as well as some desperate foreign jihadis, who fought that day. But untold hundreds of those who picked up weapons were simply civilians intent on defending homes against foreign invaders. The potent and complex mix of insurgency — Sunni and Shiite militants, foreign fighters and civilians — that causes such chaos in Iraq today was already apparent during the battle of Nasiriya. …
… what was most striking at Nasiriya in those very early days of the war was the refusal of freedom-deprived Iraqis to come forward and support coalition forces. At best, the civilians stood by and watched the American war machine thunder into town. At worst, they ran to arms stashes, grabbed AK-47s and took to the streets. Four days into the invasion, and already, instead of coming together, Iraqis were falling back into their faiths and tribes and killing coalition forces and each other.
I’m leaving out a lot of chilling stuff; you will want to read all of this. Fortunately it’s not behind the subscription firewall.
Thomas Edsall’s op ed is behind the subscription firewall, but I’ll quote from it more generously.
The G.O.P. is the party of risk, aggression, military assertion and dominance — an approach that led to the implosion in Iraq and the Republicans’ defeat in November. Now the Democrats have a chance to demonstrate a core difference in how the two parties calculate and manage risk.
In “Fiasco,†Thomas Ricks describes the results of the Republican approach: “Bush’s decision to invade Iraq … ultimately may come to be seen as one of the most profligate actions in the history of American foreign policy. … The U.S.-led invasion was launched recklessly, with a flawed plan for war and a worse approach to occupation.â€
While inflicting destruction on the Iraqis, Bush multiplied America’s enemies and endangered this nation’s military, economic health and international stature. Courting risk without managing it, Bush repeatedly and remorselessly failed to accurately evaluate the consequences of his actions.
The embroilment in Iraq is not an aberration. It stems from core party principles equally evident on the domestic front. For a quarter-century, the Republican temper — its reckless drive to jettison the social safety net; its support of violence in law enforcement and in national defense; its advocacy of regressive taxation, environmental hazard and pro-business deregulation; its ‘remoralizing’ of the pursuit of wealth — has been judged by many voters as essential to America’s position in the world, producing more benefit than cost.
While some Republican long shots have paid off handsomely (the Reagan administration’s accelerated arms race arguably drove the former Soviet Union into bankruptcy), now the dice are turning up snake eyes. In November, voters concluded that the Bush administration had run one risk too many. After 40 years of ascendancy, the G.O.P. has provided Democrats with an opening.
The question is, of course, if the Dems are up to taking advantage of that opening. Edsall isn’t terribly confident that they are. But this paragraph provides some points for discussion:
Nonetheless, buried in a morass of campaign-season evasion were the outlines of a potentially salable political program. Representative Rahm Emanuel, the Democratic Caucus chairman, pointed out that 16 of the seats the party won in November were suburban or exurban. He contended that the election marked the emergence of a new “metropolitan†populism, “a revolt of the center against the Rovian model of polarization politics.†In Emanuel’s view, “Prescription drugs, gas prices and economic populism are no longer associated with blue-collar downscale voters. Office park workers can be just as populist as industrial workers — they are struggling under rising college and health care costs too. They resent giveaways to H.M.O.s; they don’t want subsidies to oil companies when oil is 68 bucks a barrel. We are going to deal with the oil royalty issue, and we can cut the interest rates for student loans.â€
I’ve got mixed feelings about Emanuel. But does anyone have any thoughts on “metropolitan” populism?
Sorry Maha, but my thought on metropolitan populism is that responsible, intelligent, well educated citizens do not “wiggle out” of actually serving on juries. That is how we end up with seemingly incomprehensible jury verdicts which lead conservatives to suggest that the system is broken and we need to do away with pesky rights like the right to trial by jury. Of course we are far down the slippery slope toward eliminating the rest of the Bill of Rights, but pleased do not subscribe to Kerry’s cynical view that only the dumb, the poor and the uneducated serve on juries. As to metropolitan populism, there are enough smart people in suburbia and exurbia who realize that they are middle class and will always be middle class and that the government run by the GOP is only there to help the rich. Add to the realization that Jesus probably would not bomb anything or torture anybody and the disconnect between their values and Dumbya’s values becomes clear.
Sorry, terry, but when I said “wriggle out” I should have said “lucked out,” because I asked for no exemptions (indeed, in Westchester County they don’t give any), and reported for duty. I was in a pool of jurors for a criminal trial, but the trial settled before jury selection began. I’ll go back tomorrow and might be picked for another trial. I am prepared to serve if chosen, but I really don’t want to spend the next two or three weeks listening to a criminal case (do you?).
So, dear, you can take your lecture and shove it up your ass. Thanks much.
I’m pretty sure I loathe Emmanuel — but I think he is onto something on “metropolitan” populism, as long as it is not the only kind of populism.
I did GOTV last month in an exploding exurb in the CA’s central valley full of two income families that had decamped the fog belt for cheaper housing. They have need a lot of things: better schools, sensible growth controls, infrastructure the private developers left out, soccer fields. They look to government for those things. Their kids will grow up and be expected to go to college. The Party that helps will get credit.
But — they ditched the city not only for cheaper housing, but also to move away from the Black, brown and poor part of the Democratic constituency that needs another kind of populism: job creation, enforcement of anti-discrimination laws, rejection of police brutality.
The Democratic conundrum is how to keep the two kinds of populism in the same coalition.
Metropolitan populism, like the old fashion kind, gets fired up when things get bad enough. These exurban/suburban types were only too happy to buy the right’s lollipops of me-first tax cuts, get-the-government-off-my-back Reagan optimism, but now that the bills are coming due from the backside of the same, they’re starting to feel the pinch themselves and are experiencing buyers remorse.
There’s more to it than just economic issues. Many of these people who managed to escape to the suburbs are educated enough to be nervous, if not angry, about the anti-Enlightenment religious right’s grip on power. They’re also horrified by the wanton waste and incompetence of the current crop of rightists. Beyond the Reagan lollipops, they want good, cheap government.
I think Emanuel is onto something. All the Dems have to do is demonstrate competent, rational leadership on the type of problems the metro populists face – in other words, deliver on good, cheap government. This is something liberalism is traditionally good at.
There is a hard calculation here as well: delivering on the problems facing this demographic – simply by being competent, practical and non-ideological (you know, the kind of government we used to have) – I suspect is much cheaper/easier than trying to solve the difficult or intractable problems facing the destitute and lower classes (traditional populists). The former group, with the easier set of problems, is in a better position financially to help fund political campaigns, than the latter, who are in no position to contribute. I’m certain this is not lost on Emanuel.
I’m clueless about metropolitan populism..The best I can determine is he’s referring to the upper middle class feeling the pinch financially and resenting it.
My take on “metropolitan” populism is that it’s something like trickle-up crap. Or, put another way, we’re in it so deep it’s finally reached the middle class.
..Or, put another way, we’re in it so deep it’s finally reached the middle class.
You have a way of expressing a subject in the simplest, most direct terms. This nails it.
Pritchard’s article was an eye-opener for me, not realizing as he put it, that the invasion itself included events which offered critical clues for correcting intelligence assumptions in the earliest days before our troops even reached Baghdad. I knew about the absolutely stupid decision to leave unguarded those huge plastic explosive storage depots. Now, reading this account of the battle of Nasiriya, which describes Shiites and Sunnis going for weaponry to battle ‘invaders’, that [later in time than Nasiriya] oversight about the storage depots takes on an even greater aura of stupid.
I wonder just how much the military on the ground in Iraq was
micro-managed out of competency by Rumsfeld. And I wonder about the extent to which ground commanders’ decisionmaking was co-opted by Bush and Rove’s overarching political goal of creating a nice set of ‘story lines’ [Mission Accomplished banner, statue coming down, etc].
To borrow a worn catch-phrase from the righties, I think we need to ‘stay the course’ until the job is done, but the job needing done is to pull all the Bush administration shenanigans out into the disinfecting sunlight.
terry: Some of us, probably the majority, don’t get reimbursed by our employers for time spent on juries. Or they have family obligations that a court schedule cannot accommodate. That is why many people do try to get out of it. I thought that was common knowledge.
Well without seeking to have my rectum enlarged, my point is that of course I would not want to spend two or three weeks sitting on a jury of any sort–actually a criminal case is likely more interesting then a civil one. Very few cases last that long and there are a lot of people who do “wiggle out” of serving on juries by responding to voir dire questions in a manner that assures they will be excused. I do not like paying taxes, obeying commands from people in authority, pulling to the side when emergency vehicles come by, getting in the general check out line when I have more than 10 items, coming to a complete stop, showing identification and having my possessions searched before getting on an airplane etc, but if we are going to live in a society than we have to have some rules. I apologize if you did not “job” the system, but you can understand why “wiggle out” suggested you had. I do not know whether it is a partisan trait, but I personally think that people in general are more me oriented and less society oriented all the time and often feel like I am the sucker for playing by the rules without protest. Of course it could just be that I am getting old and cranky.
Maybe we should discuss the relationship between the monthly expenditure of 6-8 billion dollars in Iraq, and the up-swing of metropolitan populism. I can’t think too well in the billions of dollars, so I convert billions into thousands of millions and it become easier to comprehend in my mind. We’re spending 8 thousand million dollars a month in Iraq. That’s a lot of cake…could be why they said Iraq would be a cakewalk.
Wow Ok,,,since I am a regular reader of this great blog I didn’t take Maha’s” wiggle out” comment the same as some did I guess.My first thought was a plea bargin, since the system seems to work that way a lot… but then it occured to me that if Maha got stuck in a case where the circumstances made it impossible for her to be fair?How much greater duty could she do then to step aside?There are a million other logical reasons like that , that do come up and as long as she was there at the ready to serve she has done her duty.I respect that she shortened the story with the “wiggle” phrase in question and I frankly don’t think she owes the world the explaination, but being the person she is she gave one..and my reaction to that is that we should remember this is another humans life we are invading in a way, and we should show some respect for her right to privacy.We are all guests here, brought together to share the thoughts of our host regarding issues , not to judge the hosts person life.
If she chooses to share parts of her life with us that is up to her and there are boundries that come with that…frankly some things are none of our damn business.What if ,say ,she had “wiggled out” of serving because it was a rape trial and she had been a victim of such a crime? Does she have to tell the world that here in order to be respected for wiggling out?.I am not saying this is the case but what if it were??..
I respect everyone who comments here, whether I agree with them or not, but I just wanted to point out our host is not some robo -writer and is due respect and privacy with regard to issues of a personal nature.Maybe sometimes she writes so well we forget she is human
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Donna, I agree with most of what you say, except I am not sure what course it is we are staying or if perhaps in all the corners we turned we have gotten off course…it seems cleaning up after george is not going to be a small task..the trick now is not letting him get us in any deeper.
you can understand why “wiggle out†suggested you had.
You could have asked. I spent six hours waiting in the courthouse, which included more than two hours standing outside the courtroom while the lawyers argued before the case was settled and we were dismissed. We never got to voir dire. Also, we were told to expect that case two take at least two weeks, maybe three. No, I do not know what the case was about.
The last thing I needed when I got home was some snot ass lecture about how I’m shirking my civic duty. I actually hadn’t been feeling too frazzled about it until I read your comment. Thanks loads.
I think Swami hit the nail on the head. (Maybe his expertise in hardware). It’s hard to get a grip on the size of the debt we are incurring – and it’s hard for me put in perspective with the overall budget – and the unfunded priorities like Social Security, and the dream of health care for all.
Part of this translates to populism; some voters who would vote for ‘consevative’ values are alarmed by out-of-control spending, a mismanaged war, corruption and cronyism, obscene debt, and a reality that is out-of-touch with the mainstream. I’m a fan of FDR, but I keep a historical perspective; he was in the White House for 16 years. He got the New Deal passed after a lot of populist ideas proved thier worth. Voters and elected officials gradually signed on to more radical ideas for the people. “Populist” and ‘mainstream’ is a good place to start; we have not been there for a while.
The three core principles of ReThug policy for the last whatever….
Big Ass Kick Butt Military…spend whatever obscene about of money the DOD asks for.
Cut dem taxes to the bone…it’s your fukin’ money.
Smaller more efficient government….
So simple even the dumbest voter can grasp these.
But even the dumbest voter starts to wonder when….
We have a fukin’ war every ten years or so which the ReThugs lose. And no I ain’t talkin’ about Gulf War I nor Bosnia. They were not wars. And check who was President when Korea, Vietnam, and now da War in EyeRack went down.
And ‘folks’ are starting to realise that those ‘tax cuts’ were more like subsidies for the super-rich. Paris Hilton got the money your school board was gonna spend on new books. People notice that.
Smaller government…well no, not really. Stupider, less effective yeah. Hell yeah.
So…the voters, even the dumb ones have had enough ReThug bullshit, but…
How does this bear on the topic?
Well the voters have gotten what they voted for: A pack of incompetent lying boobs who can’t manage their way out of a wet paper bag much less Iraq.
If you believe people who are lying to you. You pretty much deserve what you get. So…
Quit whinin’ about it and take action!
Bad news on the doorstep..
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16062351/site/newsweek/
and they are ecstatic over the new choice for Secretary of Defense…Looks like we’re in for two more years of bleeding in Iraq. Maybe in another two years we’ll be more receptive to wisdom.
justme, the course I propose is sort of like a complete truth-telling for the whole nation about what, who, how led us to 1]the Iraq mess and 2]the trashing of America’s honor with torture, and renditions, 3] the enormous debt piled up, plus 4] so much destructiveness of the common good on the domestic front, destructiveness hiding behind Orwellian titles like “clear skies initiative’, ‘no child left behind’. I could go on and on.
It was such a tremendous relief to see the Democrats take power away from the Republican rubber-stampers and that will slow the Bush destructiveness down, and maybe keep him and his vile team from digging us in deeper.
But the process of successfully leading and maintaining new national direction, in my opinion, requires a lengthy ‘stay the course’ of ‘educational’ exposure of what has occurred under Bush. That truth-telling lifts consciousness, all the while a Dem majority is also countervailing Bush.
#17 makes so much sense to me. The truth will come out either: now when we can still save some part of our country, or later, after our country is destroyed.
What drives me about this is the bedrock geopolitical reality that Iraq is sitting on top of 10 % of the known oil reserves, and our country is hopelessly addicted to oil. Iraq is called “the prize” by oilmen because the oil is near the surface and is of high quality. $30/bbl oil was probably a goal when we invaded – had we been able to “liberate” the country and tap the oil at that price, the Republicans would’ve been in power for the rest of our lives and beyond, IMO.
IMO we’re no different than the junkie who knocks over a 7-Eleven because he needs the till to get his fix. Our self righteous silence about our addiction is just as damning, if not more, since we had such glorious pretenses going in, and have murdered so many thousands in the name of our ambitions. I am certain Osama is overjoyed beyond his wildest dreams.
An acquantaince of mine wrote Truth Heals, and we desperately need to face the truth.