Category Archives: Iraq War

What Righties Mean by “Support”

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Along with “the troops,” another entity righties claim to “support” is “the family.” As in “marriage” with “children.” So one assumes righties will be disturbed by this story by Blaine Harden in today’s Washington Post:

Punctuating a fundamental change in American family life, married couples with children now occupy fewer than one in every four households — a share that has been slashed in half since 1960 and is the lowest ever recorded by the census.

As marriage with children becomes an exception rather than the norm, social scientists say it is also becoming the self-selected province of the college-educated and the affluent. The working class and the poor, meanwhile, increasingly steer away from marriage, while living together and bearing children out of wedlock.

Does this mean President Bush’s Healthy Marriage Initiative isn’t working? The HMI, you might remember, was George Bush’s cure-all for welfare. Bush budgets carved money out of Medicaid and other “entitlements,” but in 2006 HMI was allocated $750 million ($150 million per year for five years). The goal of HMI is to increase the number of children raised by married couples. (Here is a good analysis of HMI by Emily Amick of Wellesley College.)

The point of the marriage initiative isn’t just to provide children with stable homes, but also to raise families out of poverty. For quite a while righties have noticed that, statistically, poor families are likely to be single-parent families. Therefore, deep thinkers like these geniuses at the Heritage Foundation concluded that if only poor women could be persuaded to get married (like it never occurred to them before) they’d automatically be on the road to the Middle Class. Robert Kuttner explained in 2002:

When the welfare reform program of 1996 comes up for renewal later this year, it will have a new emphasis — wedding bells. The Bush administration wants to spend $300 million of scarce welfare funds to encourage marriage and another $135 million promoting premarital chastity.

Several governors have already jumped the (shot)gun with state programs to promote marriage, not just for welfare recipients but for everyone. Some conservatives, like Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation, would go further and provide $4,000 bounties for poor people who marry.

But the Blaine Harden article suggests righties were putting the cart before the horse. It wasn’t the erosion of marriage causing poverty, but increasing financial instability causing an erosion in marriage.

Marriage has declined across all income groups, but it has declined far less among couples who make the most money and have the best education. These couples are also less likely to divorce. Many demographers peg the rise of a class-based marriage gap to the erosion since 1970 of the broad-based economic prosperity that followed World War II.

“We seem to be reverting to a much older pattern, when elites marry and a great many others live together and have kids,” said Peter Francese, demographic trends analyst for Ogilvy & Mather, an advertising firm.

Another grim trend for the “family values” crowd — Sharon Lerner writes in today’s New York Times that women in industrialized nations are having fewer children.

To the dismay of pundits and politicians alike, women in industrialized countries and elsewhere have been bearing fewer and fewer children. More than 90 states have fertility rates below the replacement level of 2.1 children per woman, and the trend, which began in the early 1960s, is already leading to fewer workers, graying populations and dire predictions about vanishing peoples.

The Right will tell you this is the doing of those liberal anti-family, pro-Hollywood types. But wait …

Curiously, Europe’s lowest birthrates are seen in countries, mostly Catholic, where the old idea that the man is the breadwinner and the woman is the child-raiser holds strong. Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece have among the lowest fertility rates in Western Europe. Meanwhile, countries that support high numbers of working women, like Finland, Norway and Denmark, have among the highest birthrates.

And how did this happen?

One explanation is that the more traditional countries face particular challenges when their women do start to work. In these countries, the welfare of the family is still typically seen as the responsibility of individuals rather than of the government, according to Peter McDonald and Francis Castles, who are demographic theorists. And with little public support for working mothers forthcoming, women are likely to think they must choose work or motherhood. At least for now, it seems, many are choosing neither. Statistics show that women in these countries are both less likely to work and less likely to bear children than their counterparts in, say, Scandinavia.

Scandinavia?

In Scandinavia, extensive public child-care systems offer a slot to virtually every child under 5 whose parents work. Do such programs have an effect? Some experts have linked changes in Sweden’s birthrate to paid-maternity-leave policies. And according to Ronald Rindfuss, a sociologist, Norwegian women who live in towns with more day-care slots available have more children and become mothers earlier. The timing of births is important, because lower fertility rates may owe something to the fact that many women inadvertently delay becoming pregnant until it’s no longer biologically possible.

So what about the United States? Immigrants to the rescue —

Looking at America’s fertility rate, which now hovers around replacement level, you could assume that the U.S. has escaped such problems. But in fact, it’s the relatively large families of new immigrants that are staving off a population crisis — and masking the difficulties women face when they try to “have it all.” With a largely hands-off approach to family policy, the U.S. spends far less than other wealthy countries on child care while guaranteeing no paid parental leave. As a result, being an employed parent may be more difficult here than in countries now experiencing even the most severe baby droughts.

In his 2002 TAP article linked above, Robert Kuttner remarked that, on the American Right, having “family values” means being opposed to having government do anything that might actually help families.

With no sense of contradiction, the welfare reformers demand that single mothers work or lose all benefits — so much for Mom staying home. But missing from the equation is high quality childcare, so necessary to reconcile working motherhood, sane family life, and healthy children, whether for single moms or working couples.

Why is the childcare link missing? Because of conservative ideology: socially provided childcare violates ”traditional values” and costs public money.

Scholarly assessments of the welfare reform experiment reveal a bitter paradox: The more that single mothers ”succeed” by getting off welfare and staying in low-wage employment, the more their unsupervised teenage children are placed at risk.

Kuttner brings up the Scandanavian factor:

So if the administration were serious about promoting healthy marriages and flourishing children (and not just throwing a steak to the religious right), it would be pushing several other policies — jobs that paid living wages, high quality child care, paid parental leaves, sex education that includes birth control as well as early teen abstinence, and generous treatment of children who happen to be born to single parents.

Won’t this just reward single parenthood? In Norway, public policy provides all of these supports, yet a higher percentage of kids grow up with both their parents, more mothers are in paid work, and far fewer families and children are poor.

But policies such as these accept the realities of modern family life and they challenge archaic notions of sex roles and traditional values beloved by the religious right. They also cost tax dollars that were just given away to multimillionaires.

So when righties say they support “family values,” this doesn’t mean supporting families and children. It means supporting an idea of “families” and “children.” Real families and children must fend for themselves. Likewise, when righties say they support “the troops,” this does not, in fact, mean supporting the troops. It means supporting an idea of “troops” as part of their idea of glorious victory in the magnificent war in Iraq (meaning a fantasy of Iraq, not the actual place).

And, of course, “support” means a conceptualization of support. It doesn’t extend to concrete support, such as raising tax dollars to pay for body armor, or hospital care, or covering one’s own precious skin with a uniform and going off to fight in Iraq (the actual place).

I hope that’s clear.

In the Strife of Truth With Falsehood

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Back in 1845, American poet James Russell Lowell wrote a poem, published in the Boston Courier, protesting the Mexican War. Some time later the words were set to “Ton-y-Botel” by Welsh composer Thomas J. Williams and became the hymn “Once to Every Man and Nation.” [Workplace warning: The page plays a midi file upon opening.] First verse:

    Once to every man and nation, comes the moment to decide,
    In the strife of truth with falsehood, for the good or evil side;
    Some great cause, some great decision, offering each the bloom or blight,
    And the choice goes by forever, ’twixt that darkness and that light.

While stumbling around looking for something else I came across a post by rightie blogger Carol Platt Liebau, who misplaces “Once to Every Man and Nation” in the Civil War era, and then claims it as a pro-war hymn. Talk about the strife of truth with falsehood! The pseudo-conservative struggle to mangle and destroy all of American history, institutions, and democracy itself continues.

Last verse:

    Though the cause of evil prosper, yet the truth alone is strong;
    Though her portion be the scaffold, and upon the throne be wrong;
    Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown,
    Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above His own.

Let’s hope. Anyway, I say Liebau owes James Russell Lowell an apology and her readers a public correction.

Update: I’ve found at least one source that calls what Lowell wrote an “abolitionist” poem, although the large bulk of references say it was an antiwar poem. However, no one calls it a “pro-war” poem.

More Shame

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Riverbend:

Let me clear it up for any moron with lingering doubts: It’s worse. It’s over. You lost. You lost the day your tanks rolled into Baghdad to the cheers of your imported, American-trained monkeys. You lost every single family whose home your soldiers violated. You lost every sane, red-blooded Iraqi when the Abu Ghraib pictures came out and verified your atrocities behind prison walls as well as the ones we see in our streets. You lost when you brought murderers, looters, gangsters and militia heads to power and hailed them as Iraq’s first democratic government. You lost when a gruesome execution was dubbed your biggest accomplishment. You lost the respect and reputation you once had. You lost more than 3000 troops. That is what you lost America. I hope the oil, at least, made it worthwhile.

Irreconcilable Differences

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Jeff Jacoby has written a Boston Globe column titled “Irreconcilable positions: support troops, oppose war.” It begins:

WHAT DOES IT mean to support the troops but oppose the cause they fight for?

It is not at all irreconcilable to oppose the Iraq War but wish to support the troops fighting the war. “Supporting the troops” means seeing to it they have whatever they need to stay as safe and healthy as possible, both while at war and after. It means providing state-of-the-art body armor now, not three years from now, maybe. If they are wounded, it means providing first-class medical care, not parking them in moldy, roach-infested hospital.

Bill Maxwell writes in the St. Petersburg Times (“White House delivers surge in lies, hypocrisy“):

Here is a substantive example of the reality of who supports the troops and who does not. The Washington Post reported last week that the Army, which has suffered the largest number of fatalities, began the Iraq war in 2003 with an estimated $56-billion shortage of equipment – including advanced Humvees equipped with armor kits designed to reduce troop deaths from roadside bombs.

Well, guess what? Nearly four years later, the Army, the Marine Corps and the National Guard still do not have an adequate number of Humvees equipped with the needed FRAG Kit 5 armor manufactured with more flexible materials that slow projectiles and contain debris, thus causing fewer deaths.

Is this support of our troops?

Pentagon brass and the president have known about these shortages from the beginning. And, while saber rattling, they have known all along that serious shortages of the new armor have been responsible, directly and indirectly, for hundreds of U.S. deaths.

Is this support of our troops?

Yet Jeff Jacoby, who (I infer) “supports” the troops, doesn’t write a word about armor or hospitals. Indeed, he only obliquely refers to the war in Iraq. Instead, he writes about the “cause.” What does it mean to support the troops but oppose the cause they fight for?

But what is the cause? If the cause is making the United States safer from terrorism, then it is perfectly logical to support the cause and oppose the war. The war is counterproductive to that cause. This was the conclusion of a National Intelligence Estimate of April 2006 portions of which were declassified and released in September 2006. It says,

We assess that the Iraq jihad is shaping a new generation of terrorist leaders and operatives; perceived jihadist success there would inspire more fighters to continue the struggle elsewhere.

• The Iraq conflict has become the “cause celebre” for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of US involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement. Should jihadists leaving Iraq perceive themselves, and be perceived, to have failed, we judge fewer fighters will be inspired to carry on the fight.

We assess that the underlying factors fueling the spread of the movement outweigh its vulnerabilities and are likely to do so for the duration of the timeframe of this Estimate.

I also wish everyone could read James Fallows’s “Declaring Victory” article from the September 2006 Atlantic Monthly, which I’m very sorry is available only to subscribers. However, I have blogged about this article here, here, and here, here, and probably elsewhere. In this article Fallows interviews a number of national security experts for their assessment of where the U.S. stands in its counterterrorism efforts. Fallows’s experts and the NIE came to pretty much the same conclusions.

Among other things, the NIE and the Fallows experts agreed that the war in Iraq is growing the threat of terrorism against the United States, not reducing it. Very briefly, Bush’s Folly is not only increasing the number of Islamic hotheads who want to strike America; it is also diverting many national security resources that could be put to better use elsewhere.

I realize that the cause keeps changing even as the war goes on. As Frank Rich wrote,

Oh what a malleable war Iraq has been. First it was waged to vanquish Saddam’s (nonexistent) nuclear arsenal and his (nonexistent) collaboration with Al Qaeda. Then it was going to spread (nonexistent) democracy throughout the Middle East. Now it is being rebranded as a fight against Tehran. Mr. Bush keeps saying that his saber rattling about Iran is not “a pretext for war.” Maybe so, but at the very least it’s a pretext for prolonging the disastrous war we already have.

And then there’s the democracy thing. There’s an outstanding article about this in the March issue of Harper’s magazine (not yet online). It is by Ken Silverstein, and titled “Parties of God: The Bush Doctrine and the Rise of Islamic Democracy.” Silverstein explores a paradox — that, if Middle Eastern countries actually became democratic, Islamists would control large blocs, if not majorities, in every one of those countries. This may account for the fact that the Bush Administration’s best allies in the region are not democracies (e.g., Saudi Arabia; Jordon).

Jacoby doesn’t say what the cause is, either, although I take it he thinks it has something to do with liberty.

America is a free country, but it is not the Michael Moores or the ROTC-banners or the senatorial loudmouths who keep it free. They merely enjoy the freedom that others are prepared to defend with their lives. It is the men and women who volunteer to wear the uniform to whom we owe our liberty. Surely they deserve better than pious claims of “support” from those who are working for their defeat.

Now, I have thought about it at considerable length, and I say honestly that I have no idea what Jacoby is talking about. Exactly what does fighting a war in Iraq have to do with America being a “free country”? And what does Jacoby mean by “free country,” anyway? Does it mean that the United States governs itself, and is not a vassal state of some other country? Or does he mean the people of the United States enjoy political liberty because the government respects their rights? Or both? Those are both perfectly fine things, and I support them. But what does either one have to do with Iraq?

Republicans’ hysterical shrieking notwithstanding, Islamist jihadists are not an existential threat to the United States. And Geoffrey Stone notes today that the Bush Administration has has broken new ground in gathering information about protesters of the war. What does that say about the connection between the Iraq War and liberty, pray tell?

But let’s pretend for a minute that there is a cause, that we all agree on what it is, and that it serves the interests of the whole United States, not just some special interest groups therein. With that assumption in mind, let’s go back to Jacoby’s question, What does it mean to support the troops but oppose the cause they fight for?

The answer to that would, I think, depend on what the cause is. And since we’re dealing with a hypothetical cause, we can only give a hypothetical answer. But I still don’t think such a position is necessarily irreconcilable.

Jacoby continues,

No loyal Colts fan rooted for Indianapolis to lose the Super Bowl. No investor buys 100 shares of Google in the hope that Google’s stock will tank. No one who applauds firefighters for their courage and education wants a four-alarm blaze to burn out of control.

The Colts fan may have bet on Indianapolis, but otherwise there’s no rational reason for anyone to do any of those things. But the situation in Iraq is not comparable to any of those things. There are a great many rational reasons to be opposed to the war there. Jacoby seems to be saying that opposition to the war is irrational. Then he goes on …

Yet there is no end of Americans who insist they “support” US troops in Iraq but want the war those troops are fighting to end in defeat. The two positions are irreconcilable. You cannot logically or honorably curse the war as an immoral neocon disaster or a Halliburton oil grab or “a fraud . . . cooked up in Texas,” yet bless the troops who are waging it.

Again, I don’t see why not. The troops are our fellow Americans who have been put in danger, and the “cause” for which they fight makes no sense. We want to get them out of danger, but for a lot of reasons (Republicans) we are unable to do that legally. Until we can get them out of danger, we support them in any way we can.

Jacoby’s position makes sense only if one assumes that the troops and the cause are, somehow, indivisible. Jacoby doesn’t seem to grasp that “the troops” are individual human beings and not some amorphous, soulless entity created by the military-industrial complex.

Jacoby, unfortunately, continues,

But logic and honor haven’t stopped members of Congress from trying to square that circle. The nonbinding resolution they debated last week was a flagrant attempt to have it both ways. One of its two clauses professed to “support and protect” the forces serving “bravely and honorably” in Iraq. The other declared that Congress “disapproves” the surge in troops now underway — a surge that General David Petraeus , the new military commander in Iraq, considers essential.

And which the Joint Chiefs unanimously opposed. See also Gen. William E. Odom, “Victory Is Not an Option.”

Jacoby:

It was a disgraceful and dishonest resolution, and it must have done wonders for the insurgents’ morale. Democrats hardly bothered to disguise that when they say they “support and protect” the troops, what they really intend is to undermine and endanger their mission.

The Democrats want to endanger their mission? The troops‘ mission, which is indivisible from the troops? Never mind that no one knows what the bleeping mission is any more. Jacoby has decided there is no rational reason for opposing troop escalation, and now he’s saying the Democrats are trying to “undermine” it. Makes them look pretty bad, huh?

The Politico, a new Washington news site, reported Thursday that the strategy of “top House Democrats, working in concert with anti war groups,” is to “pursue a slow-bleed strategy designed to gradually limit the administration’s options.”

“The Politico” has turned out to be the new online branch of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy. Politico congressional bureau chief John Bresnahan coined the phrase “slow-bleed” to characterize the Democrats’ strategy in dealing with the administration on Iraq. But the RNC then circulated a letter that attributed the phrase to the Democrats, claiming that “slow bleed” is what the Dems call their Iraq policy. Expect “slow bleed” to be the Right’s favorite phrase for a while.

Can we say “disgraceful and dishonest,” Mr. Jacoby?

If they had the courage of their convictions, they would forthrightly defund the war, bring the troops home, and brave the political consequences. Instead they plan a more agonizing and drawn-out defeat — slowly choking off the war by denying reinforcements, eventually leaving no alternative but retreat.

After yesterday’s farce in the Senate, in which Republicans blocked a bleeping debate on a bleeping nonbinding resolution, I’m not entirely sure what Jacoby thinks the Dems could do. At this point I believe most of them want to end the war and bring the troops home as quickly as practicable. If there’s to be a “slow bleed,” as opposed to a quicker and cleaner redeployment, it will be the Republicans causing it.

That is how those who oppose the war “support” the troops — they “slow-bleed” them dry. Or they declare that the lives laid down by those troops were “wasted,” as Senator Barack Obama did last Sunday. Obama later weaseled away from that characterization , but the gaffe had been made. And like most political gaffes, it exposed the speaker’s true feelings.

One rarely finds a column by Jacoby that isn’t pure weasel. This one is a fine example. Anyway, I’d like Jacoby to explain to me how American lives aren’t being wasted in Iraq, seeing as how there’s no discernible cause or mission they’re fighting and dying for.

And why wouldn’t Obama feel that way? If an American serviceman dies in the course of a war that toppled a monstrous dictatorship, opened the door to decent Arab governance, and has become the central front in the struggle against radical Islam, his death is not in vain.

Actually the war toppled a monstrous dictatorship and replaced it with a monstrous chaos that Iraqis hate even more than they hated Saddam Hussein. It no more opened a door to “decent Arab governance” than I can fly. And I’ve already discussed what a crock it is to think the Iraq War is going to reduce radical Islam.

It is the sacrifice of an American hero, the last full measure of devotion given in the cause of freedom. But if he dies in the course of a senseless and illegitimate invasion — which appears to be Obama’s view of Iraq — then his life was wasted. If that’s what you believe, Senator, why not say so?

I guess he did, and the Right threw a fit about it.

Obama’s is merely the latest in a series of senatorial comments that offer a glimpse of the left’s anti military disdain.

By now it should be pretty obvious that it’s righties like Jacoby who truly disdain the military. They’re just cannon fodder to him, not people.

Smart people who work hard become successful, John Kerry “joked” last fall, but uneducated sluggards “get stuck in Iraq.” Osama bin Laden is beloved by Muslims for “building schools, building roads . . . building day-care facilities,” Washington Senator Patty Murray explained in 2002, while Americans only show up to “bomb in Iraq and go to Afghanistan.” Obama’s Illinois colleague Dick Durbin took to the Senate floor to equate US military interrogators in Guantanamo Bay with “Nazis, Soviets in their gulags,” and similar mass-murderers, such as “Pol Pot or others.”

Three lies in a row, Jacoby. Jacoby cannot so much as sneeze without being disgraceful and dishonest. Here are links to the facts about each quote: John Kerry, Patty Murray (see also this); and Dick Durbin.

Next:

It goes without saying that many Democrats and liberals take a back seat to no one in their admiration and appreciation of the US military. But there is no denying that a notable current of antimilitary hostility runs through the left as well. Examples are endless: ROTC is banned on elite college campuses. San Francisco bars a historic battleship from its port. Signs at antiwar protests urge troops to “shoot their officers.” An Ivy League professor prays for “a million Mogadishus.” Michael Moore compares Iraqi insurgents who kill Americans to the Minutemen of Revolutionary New England.

I’m not going to fact check those. By now it’s clearly established that “facts” and “Jeff Jacoby” have irreconcilable differences. Even if true, these are isolated incidents, and anyway, Jacoby wants to keep the troops in Iraq. I’d say that’s antimilitary.

From the Bill Maxwell column linked above:

To surge or not to surge could be a great and honest national debate. It certainly is a needed debate. But we are not having an honest debate.

We are being fed devious semantics about who supports our troops and who does not. To Republicans backing the surge, wanting to bring our troops home and take them out of harm’s way is tantamount to being the enemy of our troops.

Think how illogical this position sounds: If you want to save the lives our soldiers, if you do not want to see another limb blown off, if you do not want to see another brain pierced by shrapnel and if you want little children to see their parents return home safely from the battlefield, you do not support the troops.

Back to Jacoby, final paragraph:

America is a free country, but it is not the Michael Moores or the ROTC-banners or the senatorial loudmouths who keep it free.

Nor, might I add, disgraceful and dishonest Boston Globe columnists who can’t string two sentence together that aren’t a lie.

They merely enjoy the freedom that others are prepared to defend with their lives. It is the men and women who volunteer to wear the uniform to whom we owe our liberty. Surely they deserve better than pious claims of “support” from those who are working for their defeat.

They deserve better than pious claims of “support” from the disgraceful and dishonest likes of Jacoby. They deserve to be brought home from Bush’s Folly.

See also:

Glenn Greenwald, “Gen. Odom explains basic reality to Hugh Hewitt and the ‘Victory Caucus‘”

Rep. Jerry McNerney: “Why supporting the troops means opposing the president.”

Also also: “Bring Them Home” bumper sticker, t-shirt; “Love America, Leave Iraq” t-shirt.

Update: Mark Steyn descends into madness.

Sloppy Contradictions

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Frank Rich in tomorrow’s New York Times (outside the firewall here):

…for all the sloppy internal contradictions, the most incriminating indictment of the new White House disinformation campaign is to be found in official assertions made more than a year ago. The press and everyone else seems to have forgotten that the administration has twice sounded the same alarms about Iranian weaponry in Iraq that it did last week.

In August 2005, NBC News, CBS News and The Times cited unnamed military and intelligence officials when reporting, as CBS put it, that “U.S. forces intercepted a shipment from Iran containing professionally made explosive devices specifically designed to penetrate the armor which protects American vehicles.” Then, as now, those devices were the devastating roadside bombs currently called E.F.P.’s (explosively formed penetrators). Then, as now, they were thought to have been brought into Iraq by members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. Then, as now, there was no evidence that the Iranian government was directly involved. In February 2006, administration officials delivered the same warning yet again, before the Senate Intelligence Committee.

So why are the Bushies hyping this stuff again now?

After General Pace rendered inoperative the first official rationale for last Sunday’s E.F.P. briefing, President Bush had to find a new explanation for his sudden focus on the Iranian explosives. That’s why he said at Wednesday’s news conference that it no longer mattered whether the Iranian government (as opposed to black marketeers or freelance thugs) had supplied these weapons to Iraqi killers. “What matters is, is that they’re there,” he said. The real point of hyping this inexact intelligence was to justify why he had to take urgent action now, no matter what the E.F.P.’s provenance: “My job is to protect our troops. And when we find devices that are in that country that are hurting our troops, we’re going to do something about it, pure and simple.”

Darn right! But if the administration has warned about these weapons twice in the past 18 months (and had known “that they’re there,” we now know, since 2003), why is Mr. Bush just stepping up to that job at this late date? Embarrassingly enough, The Washington Post reported on its front page last Monday — the same front page with news of the Baghdad E.F.P. briefing — that there is now a shortfall of “thousands of advanced Humvee armor kits designed to reduce U.S. troop deaths from roadside bombs.” Worse, the full armor upgrade “is not scheduled to be completed until this summer.” So Mr. Bush’s idea of doing something about it, “pure and simple” is itself a lie, since he is doing something about it only after he has knowingly sent a new round of underarmored American troops into battle.

The real goal is to provoke war with Iran, of course.

See also Derrick Jackson, “The Wrong World War.”

The Senate’s Turn

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Let’s do a little live blogging — I’m waiting for the Senate Iraq War resolution vote and listening to Senators of both parties, all of whom seem a bit ragged today. The Republican point of view seems to be —

1. A nonbinding resolution will have no effect. However,

2. This same resolution will defund the war, leave our soldiers stranded and helpless in the Middle East, and enable an Islamofascist takeover of the United States.

They seem to be having some sort of procedural squabble. The Republicans are whining that they aren’t being allowed a “fair debate.” Please …

Harry Reid is speaking now; he is accusing Senate Republicans of trying to stop a vote on a nonbinding resolution that might embarrass President Bush. Party loyalty is asking too much, Reid says.

A week ago the Senate Dems were complaining that Republican maneuvering had stopped a debate. Margaret Talev, Renee Schoof and Steven Thomma write for McClatchy Newspapers (February 9):

Having banked on the promise that Democrats would force a change of course in Iraq if they won control of Congress, some of the people who helped the Democrats get there are growing impatient.

They’re frustrated that Democrats sank so much energy into a nonbinding resolution then dropped the bipartisan plan of Sens. John Warner, R-Va., and Carl Levin, D-Mich., like a hot potato when Republican leaders who support President Bush maneuvered them into a corner.

All the finagling has gotten in the way of a formal debate or vote in the Senate on Bush’s plans for Iraq. …

… Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., said her constituents thought Republicans were trying to protect Bush “from the embarrassment of a public way of saying `you’re wrong’ in a bipartisan fashion.”

But she’s frustrated by a Senate rule that lets the minority party put the majority in a corner because 60 of the 100 members must agree to force a debate or a vote. …

Many Republicans say the Warner-Levin resolution is pointless and that without the force of law it could demoralize the troops. They say the president’s troop increase in Iraq should be given a chance.

So they said they’d block consideration of the resolution unless Democrats also debated a resolution by Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., that would support the troops and take no position on a troop increase.

Democrats saw a trap: If they backed Gregg’s resolution, then didn’t get 60 votes on Warner-Levin, the only formal statement out of the Senate would voice no opposition to the troop increase. If they rejected Gregg’s, opponents would run ads accusing them of hurting the troops.

Their decision: Hold off on a formal debate. Senators who are critical of Iraq policy have been waiting a long time for a debate, though, which they couldn’t get when Republicans were in charge.

That was last week. Now they’re having a roll call vote on whether to close debate on the resolution so they can go forward to the vote.

Lieberman voted with the Republicans against cloture. Susan Collins voted with the Democrats for cloture.

Chuck Hagel voted yes, also.

This isn’t the resolution vote, remember. They’re just voting on whether to close the debate.

A bobblehead on CNN is saying that there don’t appear to be enough “yes” votes to close debate.

A talking head on MSNBC says that the Dems will probably fall four votes short. Forty-nine Dems (probably) will vote yes for cloture (Lieberman voted no; Tim Johnson is still in the hospital).

Yes, they are four votes short; 56 votes yes; 34 votes no. They needed sixty. Reid is saying a majority in the Senate just voted against the surge, although of course that’s not official. Ten Republicans didn’t bother to show up. Seven Republicans voted for cloture. I’ll try to find a list and post it later.

Update: What Oliver Willis says.

Yesterday’s Man

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Rudy Giuliani praised George W. Bush for his “leadership” and “foresight” and compared him to Abraham Lincoln. I’m not kidding.

Michael Finnegan reports fot the Los Angeles Times:

Republican presidential hopeful Rudolph W. Giuliani praised President Bush’s war leadership on Saturday and mocked supporters of a nonbinding congressional resolution condemning the U.S. troop buildup in Iraq.

The former New York City mayor came to Bush’s defense as he promoted his White House candidacy at a California Republican convention. Drawing parallels between Iraq and America’s Civil War, Giuliani compared Bush’s political troubles to Abraham Lincoln’s. When the Civil War was unpopular, Giuliani said, Lincoln “kept his eye ahead.”

“He was able to say, ‘I know my people are frustrated, and I know my people are angry at me.’ ” But after weighing public opinion, Lincoln had “that ability that a leader has — a leader like George Bush, a leader like Ronald Reagan — to look into the future,” Giuliani said.

Giuliani’s defense of the currently unpopular president comes as he is portraying himself as a decisive leader unafraid to buck public opinion. …

… America, he added, is “very fortunate to have President Bush.”

That’s his campaign speech?

Giuliani made the rounds of Republican constituency groups at the convention, attending small meetings of women, Jews, Asian Americans and lawyers.

But not African Americans? Maybe he’s afraid they know how he behaved after the Diallo shooting.

But he canceled a plan to take questions from members of the conservative California Republican Assembly. The group’s president, Mike Spence, called it “your basic snub.”

The question is, can Giuliani be a bigger whore than he already is? Or has he hit the limits? There even have been reports that Giuliani has shifted his former pro-choice position further right.

Seems to me Giuliani is taking entirely the wrong direction if he expects to be a viable candidate. The one and only attribute he’s got going for him is a perception — a questionable perception — that he’s a take-charge guy who would be tough on terrorism. But if he can’t stand apart from the Miserable Failure-in-Chief and sell himself as someone who would take a new direction, what’s the point?

It’s Personal

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Katharine Hayhoe and Andrew Dessler, professors of geoscience and atomospheric science respectively, write that science has spoken.

On Feb. 2, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its fourth assessment report on the science of global warming. The report was written by hundreds of climate scientists from 130 countries. It has been reviewed by thousands of other climate scientists and hundreds of government agencies, and it has been opened for public review as well.

This IPCC report is perhaps the most thoroughly vetted document in the history of science. For this reason, its assessments are widely regarded as the most authoritative summaries of what we know about global warming.

So what does this new report tell us?

In short, after many tons of study and evaluation, science has reached consensus, and that consensus is “The Earth is warming, and most of that warming is very likely due to human activities.”

But the American political Right says that science can take its consensus and shove it.

Last week it was widely reported that the American Enterprise Institute, a rightie “think” tank (more of an anti-think tank, actually), offered $10,000 to scientists who would refute the report. Now, Steven F. Hayward and Kenneth P. Green of AEI write in the Weekly Standard that these stories are inaccurate. Sorta. If you read their rebuttal carefully, you see that they take umbrage at the AEI being called a “lobbying group” in some stories. And yes, AEI has received more than $1.6 million from Exxon Mobil, but that was over a seven-year period.

But what about the $10,000?

The AEI just wanted to help, say Hayward and Green. IPCC had identified some “uncertainties,” and the AEI is looking for “scientists, economists, and public policy experts” who would write essays “analyzing” the IPCC’s work. “We couched our query in the context of wanting to make sure the next IPCC report received serious scrutiny and criticism,” they said, clearly implying previous reports had received insufficient scrutiny and criticism. People writing these essays would receive a $10,000 honorarium.

Our offer of an honorarium of up to $10,000 to busy scientists to review several thousand pages of material and write an original analysis in the range of 7,500 to 10,000 words is entirely in line with honoraria AEI and similar organizations pay to distinguished economists and legal scholars for commissioned work.

Andrew Dressler, a professor of atmospheric science at Texas A&M, wrote on his blog,

Also note: they’re willing to pay $10,000 to the authors. That’s A LOT of money for this type of activity. It was enough that it made me think, “maybe I should get involved with this.” Then I snapped back to reality.

[note added 7/31: My wife read this blog, saw the figure of $10,000, and asked me sweetly, “Are you SURE that climate change is real? We could really use the money.”]

To anyone in academia, $10,000 to write a 7,500- to 10,000-word essay is huge. Most academics are not going to make $10,000 on all of their papers, books, and essays combined in their lives. It’s like offering the ten-year-old next door $1,000 to wash your car. Jackpot, dude.

But Dressler points out that AEI was asking scientists to render a subjective opinion, not a scientific analysis. He quotes the letter AEI sent to scientists and boils the inquiry down to the question What’s the policy value of climate models? And that’s a subjective judgment. It’s fairly obvious that AEI was fishing for someone who would say that there was too much uncertainty about climate change to know precisely which remedies should be applied, which could then be spun into “it’s too soon to change policy.” But of course the AEI was careful not to say that explicitly.

The game the anti-science Right is playing is simply to exploit any cracks in the consensus. Since never in the history of science have all the scientists in the world been in 100 percent agreement on any theory or model of anything, that’s not hard to do. And this lack of 100 percent certainty equals doubt, and doubt soon becomes a reason not to bother about policy change. Until there is 100 percent agreement (which will never happen), then we can’t even think about policy.

We can only wish the Weekly Standard had applied the same principle to the story that Mohamed Atta met with Saddam Hussein’s agents in Prague.

What really struck me, however, is the paranoid tone of the Weekly Standard piece. It is titled “Scenes from the Climate Inquisition: The chilling effect of the global warming consensus.”

The “climate inquisition”? Yes, Hayward and Green allege they are the victims of a campaign to stifle dissent on the part of Climate Nazis.

Desperation is the chief cause for this campaign of intimidation. … The relentless demonization of anyone who does not fall in behind the Gore version of the issue–manmade climate catastrophe necessitating draconian cuts in emissions–has been effective

According to Hayward and Green, the “media frenzy” that surrounded the $10,000 honorarium story, plus the fact that the IPCC announced its findings a full three months before their complete 1,400-page report will be published suggests that something’s not kosher in Science Land. “There appear to be some significant retreats from the 2001 IPCC report,” they sniff. In the Weekly Standard‘s alternative universe, principled scientists are brewing a backlash against the inquisition. They conclude:

The climate inquisition is eliminating any space for sensible criticism of the climate science process or moderate deliberation about policy. Greenpeace and its friends may be celebrating their ability to gin up a phony scandal story and feed it to the left-wing press, but if people who are serious about climate change hunker down in their fortifications and stay silent, that bodes ill for the future of climate policy and science generally.

The hundreds of climate scientists from 130 countries who participated in the IPCC are, of course, not serious about climate change. They are stooges of the left-wing press, and the left-wing press is out to destroy the AEI and all it stands for, just because. That a huge majority of the earth’s scientists believe we have only a limited time to save the planet is not, to Hayward and Green, the reason the IPCC and the left-wing press are out to get them.

As reality closes in on the Right, righties are retreating into deeper and more pathological levels of denial. This week a report by the Pentagon inspector general concluded that Douglas Feith and his team at the Pentagon “cooked” intelligence to support invading Iraq (the New York Times calls this the “build a war workshop“)

And how does the Right respond? Yesterday, Hot Air latched on to a retraction in the Washington Post. It appears a Post story attributed quotes to the inspector general report that had actually been said by Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.). Therefore, Hot Air concludes, all of the allegations against Feith were fabricated by Levin and were not the conclusions of an independent report.

Except there was an independent report by the Pentagon inspector general, and it did conclude that Doug Feith fed false information to the White House. The inspector general, Thomas A. Gimble, testified about this to the Senate last week. And Gimble said,

We found that the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy developed, produced and then disseminated alternative intelligence assessments on Iraq and Al Qaida relations which included conclusions that were inconsistent with the consensus of the intelligence community and these were presented to senior decision-makers.

But in Rightie World, the allegations against Feith have been retracted. And you know they will believe Feith is the innocent victim of a leftie inquisition as long as they live.

To righties, the concerns of the Left are all about them. It is beyond belief that some people might be legitimately concerned about the conduct of the nation, or the survival of the planet. No; it’s personal. Those loony lefties want to destroy the Right because, you know, they are haters who want to destroy everything that’s good and pure and decent that comes with big profit margins.

Meanwhile, Republicans are dredging the nation’s asylums scientific community looking for anything that will cast doubt on the IPCC report. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said last week “For twelve years, the leadership in the House of Representatives stifled all discussion and debate of global warming. That long rejection of reality is over.” I believe the Speaker is wrong.

Update: Bill Kristol says Obama would have been pro-slavery. These people are a bleeping freak show.

Update update: The freak show continues — Mark Steyn, “don’t ruin economy because of tiny temp rise.”

More updates: Andrew Sullivan Nigel Calder explains that scientists don’t understand how science works (and he does). Angry Bear, whom I hope is not a polar bear, rips up Mark Steyn (ouch). Ron Chusid tells us how conservatives determine the truth.

Feet to Fire

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Margaret Talev, Renee Schoof and Steven Thomma write for McClatchy Newspapers:

In Washington, Democrats are blaming Republicans for the Senate’s failure so far to vote on a resolution opposing a troop increase in Iraq.

But in the heartland, some voters say such excuses no longer are good enough.

Having banked on the promise that Democrats would force a change of course in Iraq if they won control of Congress, some of the people who helped the Democrats get there are growing impatient.

They’re frustrated that Democrats sank so much energy into a nonbinding resolution then dropped the bipartisan plan of Sens. John Warner, R-Va., and Carl Levin, D-Mich., like a hot potato when Republican leaders who support President Bush maneuvered them into a corner.

All the finagling has gotten in the way of a formal debate or vote in the Senate on Bush’s plans for Iraq.

Sometime last week Senator John Tester was on Hardball last week saying that if the Dems couldn’t get a majority for a nonbinding resolution, something more forceful would be even more unlikely. And that makes sense, but …

National polling shows that a majority of Americans support a resolution opposing the troop increase. National independent polling organizations haven’t assessed reaction to the stalled Senate debate.

It’s only about a month into the 110th Congress, and the appropriations bills – where Democrats have the real power to attach strings to military spending if they can muster the will and support – are weeks away from consideration. Still, there’s mounting pressure on Democrats from their base across the country.

At least 22 state legislatures are considering resolutions urging Congress to stop the deployment of more U.S. troops to Iraq, said David Sirota, the Montana-based co-chairman of the Progressive States Network.

Harr Reid says the Senate Dems will “redouble their efforts” when the Senate reconvenes after a recess at the end of this month. Sometime in March, in other words.

The House Dems are vowing to fight harder.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said the House couldn’t let members go home Feb. 17 for a weeklong recess empty-handed. So the House plans to begin a three-day debate Tuesday and vote on its own resolution opposing the troop buildup.

The Senate Dems seem to think they were outmanevered by the Republicans.

Many Republicans say the Warner-Levin resolution is pointless and that without the force of law it could demoralize the troops. They say the president’s troop increase in Iraq should be given a chance.

So they said they’d block consideration of the resolution unless Democrats also debated a resolution by Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., that would support the troops and take no position on a troop increase.

Democrats saw a trap: If they backed Gregg’s resolution, then didn’t get 60 votes on Warner-Levin, the only formal statement out of the Senate would voice no opposition to the troop increase. If they rejected Gregg’s, opponents would run ads accusing them of hurting the troops.

Their decision: Hold off on a formal debate.

But ya know what, folks? With the war as unpopular as it is, and Bush as unpopular as he is, what the hell are the Dems afraid of? This just plain makes no sense.

I think they should make an announcement that they tried to compromise with the Republicans, but the Republicans are ducking the issue of Iraq, so they should go back to Senator Feingold’s resolution and vote on that, and let the GOP be damned if they don’t allow it to pass.

It’s time to hold Dem feet to fire. Call, write, fax, email every Dem on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (remember to be nice to Russ Feingold). Call, write, fax, email Harry Reid and your own senators, whoever they are, if they’re Dems. Tell ’em to crank it up and fight.