Category Archives: War on Terror

Why Democrats Make Me Crazy

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One of the few points that Right and Left agree on these days is that the Democratic Party is seriously screwed up. We disagree as to how and why it is screwed up, yes. But even the party’s most loyal supporters can be driven to despair by what passes for Dem Party leadership.

Robert Kuttner’s opinion piece in today’s Boston Globe illustrates a part of the problem. Kuttner quotes Harry Reid singing the praises of Senator Russ Feingold:

”An example of how people really appreciate your standing up for what you believe is Russ Feingold, the only person [in the Senate] to vote against the Patriot Act — the only person. The Republicans in 2004 spent tons of money going after him on that one issue, and it didn’t matter because people believed that Russ Feingold did it because he thought it was the right thing to do.”

How nice. But, Kuttner writes,

Now, the Patriot Act is about to be extended, with only the most trivial sops to civil liberties. And guess who is all alone, yet again?

Senator Russ Feingold.

When Democrats agreed to support an extension making only superficial changes, Feingold vowed to filibuster. On Thursday, the Senate voted to end debate. Exactly two other senators voted with Feingold. One was octogenarian Robert Byrd of West Virginia, who carries a copy of the Constitution around in his pocket. The other was the flinty former Republican Jim Jeffords of Vermont, the Senate’s lone independent.

Reid, who so admires Feingold’s courage, left Feingold all alone yet again.

This reminds me of what the Dems did with Congressman Jack Murtha. Murtha had the courage to stand up and present an alternative to the Bushie “stay the course” Iraq policy. Once the inevitable personal smears of Murtha, including slanders of his service record, picked up steam on the Right, it seems to me most Democrats retreated behind cover and left Murtha alone and exposed. This in spite of the fact that Murtha’s proposal polled well, as Chris Bowers explained at MyDD last month. Chris wrote,

People want to hear alternatives on Iraq, and they like what Murtha has proposed. Republicans would rather slander a veteran. If only we had an administration in charge of this country that was willing to listen to strong, pragmatic, and popular approaches to policy, rather than one that is hellbent on theory, ideology, and national division. If only we had a Democratic opposition that was willing to support strong, pragmatic, and popular ideas on troop deployment in Iraq when those ideas arise from within their own ranks. Right now, I don’t think we have either.

I’ve written before that the Dems in Washington are so snakebit by the VRWC that they won’t stand up for progressive policy proposals even when polls show strong popular support for those proposals. Makes me crazy, I tell you.

Feingold didn’t pay a political price for voting against the Patriot Act. “Indeed, last year, when John Kerry carried Wisconsin by a bare 12,000 votes, Feingold sailed to reelection by more than 330,000 votes,” Kuttner says.

So what are the Dems afraid of?

Kuttner continues,

What better moment to reign in Bush’s extra-constitutional power-grab than when the Patriot Act is up for review? But, no. That might seem ”un-Patriotic” (get it?). As Feingold declared,”If Democrats aren’t going to stand up to an executive who disdains the other branches of government and doesn’t worry about trampling on the rights of innocent Americans, what do we stand for?”

Good question. As Harry Reid correctly observes, Bush can wave the bloody shirt of 9/11 all he wants; voters don’t punish legislators such as Feingold who stand up for principle. One such principle, surely, is that this nation must remain a constitutional democracy. That notion is also good politics. It has been since 1789.

Feingold’s courage needs to be honored, not by celebrating him as a brave loner, but by following his leadership. Legislators of both parties need to preserve our liberties, despite ominous claims of permanent war and unchecked power. If not, God save the Republic.

I think a large part of the Dems’ problem is that too many influential Dems — Hillary Clinton comes to mind — won’t lead, won’t follow, and won’t get out of the way.

If you google for “what’s wrong with democrats” you are treated to a wealth of opinions. The answer is economic populism, says one. Or they need to have vision. They need think tanks like the righties’ think tanks. They need to pay attention to the base. They need to ignore the base. Whatever.

I’m thinking that Step One might be to learn to watch each others’ backs. Until they learn to do that, I’m not sure “vision” will help them much.

See also: Michael Grunwald, “In Defense of Finger-Pointing“

Oops

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I doubt this was intentional — I just pulled this screen capture off Memeorandum:

Two news items collide — at the top, a pack of righties attack Al Gore for speaking frankly to a mainly Saudi audience about mistreatment of Arabs in America after 9/11. Judging from the reaction of the righties, you’d have thought Al had announced his engagement to Osama bin Laden.

Among the headlines: “The Gorebot: attacking America from the fountainhead of jihad”; “Al of Arabia”; “Al Gore Slanders America” (that’s our gal Michelle Malkin); and “Al Gore Sells Out to the Saudis” (Captain Ed).

The news stories following: “Report: U.S. Is Abusing Captives” and “UN inquiry demands immediate closure of Guantanamo.”

I got a kick out of the accidental juxtaposition, although to be fair the juxtaposed stories are about two different incidents of abuse. Of the first (from the Associated Press)—

Gore told the largely Saudi audience, many of them educated at U.S. universities, that Arabs in the United States had been “indiscriminately rounded up, often on minor charges of overstaying a visa or not having a green card in proper order, and held in conditions that were just unforgivable.”

Which is true — the bleeping U.S. Department of Justice issued a report admitting it’s true — and which I doubt was news to the audience. Righties seem to think that all “foreigners” are stupid and will not know anything about our treatment of them unless we explain it to them. But all human being appreciate not being treated like idiots. Mr. Gore’s talk probably did more to assure Arabs we can be honest and reasonable than all of Karen Hughes’s pathetic efforts combined.

(What makes this speech treasonous in rightie minds is that Al Gore delivered it to an Arab audience. These same people razz Gore for everything he says in this country, too, however. According to the Right, “Al Gore speaking” is, by definition, treasonous.)

Oh, and speaking of “the fountainhead of jihad,” the Associated Press reported Saturday (via Avedon) that

A company in the United Arab Emirates is poised to take over significant operations at six American ports as part of a corporate sale, leaving a country with ties to the Sept. 11 hijackers with influence over a maritime industry considered vulnerable to terrorism.

The Bush administration considers the UAE an important ally in the fight against terrorism since the suicide hijackings and is not objecting to Dubai Ports World’s purchase of London-based Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Co.

And Republicans ask if we can trust Democrats to keep us safe from terrorism. Snort.

The second news story is about treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay. Maggie Farley of the Los Angeles Times writes,

A draft United Nations report on the detainees at Guantanamo Bay concludes that the U.S. treatment of them violates their rights to physical and mental health and, in some cases, constitutes torture.

It also urges the United States to close the military prison in Cuba and bring the captives to trial on U.S. territory, charging that Washington’s justification for the continued detention is a distortion of international law.

The report, compiled by five U.N. envoys who interviewed former prisoners, detainees’ lawyers and families, and U.S. officials, is the product of an 18-month investigation ordered by the U.N. Commission on Human Rights. The team did not have access to prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.

“We have fallen pretty far when the UN is lecturing us on our human rights violations,” says Steve Soto.

From the Telegraph:

The UN Human Rights Commission report, due to be published this week, concludes that Washington should put the 520 detainees on trial or release them.

It calls for the United States to halt all “practices amounting to torture”, including the force-feeding of inmates who go on hunger strike.

Jeanne d’Arc describes this:

Guards have begun strapping detainees into “restraint chairs” like the one pictured to the left, using riot-control soldiers to keep them still (no details on that), and forcing long plastic tubes down their nasal passages and into their stomachs. The tubes are inserted and removed so violently that prisoners bleed and pass out. Too much food is put in the tubes, which causes prisoners to defecate on themselves.

If you’re strapped into a “padded cell on wheels,” while a tube is forced down your nose, that means you’re no longer refusing meals.

This will sully America’s reputation for generations. Yet the righties are up in arms about Al Gore? Amazing.

On to Iran

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Philip Sherwell of The Telegraph reports that the Pentagon is planning a military blitz of Iran.

Strategists at the Pentagon are drawing up plans for devastating bombing raids backed by submarine-launched ballistic missile attacks against Iran’s nuclear sites as a “last resort” to block Teheran’s efforts to develop an atomic bomb.

Central Command and Strategic Command planners are identifying targets, assessing weapon-loads and working on logistics for an operation, the Sunday Telegraph has learnt. …

… “This is more than just the standard military contingency assessment,” said a senior Pentagon adviser. “This has taken on much greater urgency in recent months.”

The Telegraph also provides a brief history of Iran’s nuclear program, here.

You all remember the “axis of evil” line from the 2002 SOTU speech, I’m sure. The “axis” of dangerous nations was North Korea, Iran, and Iraq. Of the three, Iraq was the weakest and least dangerous; naturally, we squandered our military and spoiled diplomatic resources by invading Iraq, leaving the problems in Iran and North Korea to fester.

(For an account of Bush’s serial screwups regarding North Korea see “Blame Bush for North Korea’s Nukes.” Note that you have to scroll past a bunch of junk after the February 10 post to read the rest of it. I don’t have any way to edit the junk out, sorry.)

James Fallows, whose articles on Iraq for the Atlantic Monthly are indispensable reading, wrote in December 2004:

The decisions that a President will have to make about Iran are like those that involve Iraq—but harder. A regime at odds with the United States, and suspected of encouraging Islamic terrorists, is believed to be developing very destructive weapons. In Iran’s case, however, the governmental hostility to the United States is longer-standing (the United States implicitly backed Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s), the ties to terrorist groups are clearer, and the evidence of an ongoing nuclear-weapons program is stronger. Iran is bigger, more powerful, and richer than Iraq, and it enjoys more international legitimacy than Iraq ever did under Saddam Hussein. The motives and goals of Iran’s mullah government have been even harder for U.S. intelligence agencies to understand and predict than Saddam Hussein’s were.

And, most critically, the Shiite clerics in charge of Iraq have developed close ties to the majority Shiite government in Iraq. Indeed, there is a very real danger that Iraq is becoming a puppet of Iran, in spite of Bushie attempts to make it a puppet of the U.S. It is likely a U.S. strike on Iran would set the Iraqi insurgency on fire; even the U.S.-powered Iraqi government would turn against the U.S.

Further, unlike Iraq, Iran really does have weapons of mass destruction. Fallows wrote that “the Iranian regime would conclude that America was bent on its destruction, and it would have no reason to hold back on any tool of retaliation it could find.” Among other near certainties, Israel would be drawn into all-out war before you could say “ayatollah.” Also,

Unlike Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, a threatened Iran would have many ways to harm America and its interests. Apart from cross-border disruptions in Iraq, it might form an outright alliance with al-Qaeda to support major new attacks within the United States. It could work with other oil producers to punish America economically. It could, as Hammes warned, apply the logic of “asymmetric,” or “fourth-generation,” warfare, in which a superficially weak adversary avoids a direct challenge to U.S. military power and instead strikes the most vulnerable points in American civilian society, as al-Qaeda did on 9/11. If it thought that the U.S. goal was to install a wholly new regime rather than to change the current regime’s behavior, it would have no incentive for restraint.

And the Pessimist at The Left Coaster warns that other nations — notably China and Russia — are making noises about siding with Iran against us.

In other words, a strike on Iran carries terrible risks, much greater risks than did a strike on Iraq. And we know how that turned out.

There is a possibility that the Pentagon is just saber-rattling to encourage Iran to be more compliant with IAEA weapons inspectors and with the UN Security Council. That would be a sensible thing to do. But the Bushies hate the UN Security Council, and they hate the IAEA even more. You’ll remember that in the buildup to the Iraq invasion, IAEA president Mohamed ElBaradei was telling everyone who would listen that Iraq did not have nuclear weapons capability; was not even close. And he was right. Thus did ElBaradei become Public Enemy #2 to the Bushies, behind Saddam Hussein himself. They hated him so much they had the NSA tap his phone to find evidence against him, as part of an effort to have him replaced at IAEA. As evidence of the high regard in which the Bushies are held, the rest of the world supported ElBaradei, who last year was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

The Bushies, for whom every frustration becomes a personal vendetta, would pot-roast their own babies before they’d do anything to help the IAEA and ElBaradei.

On the other hand, Karl may figure he could use Iran to do to the 2006 elections what he accomplished with Iraq in the 2002 elections. The Republican Noise machine will spew out visions of mushroom clouds hovering over American cities, and the Dems will fail to put up a cohesive challenge. Hmmm. Sounds like a plan.

World War III, anyone?

Blabbermouth Bush

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You know a guy is a screwup when incompetence is the least of his problems. It’s not that President Bush is trying to do what’s good for America, and failing; it’s that he doesn’t give a bleep about what’s good for America. Bush’s only concern is Bush. If you want proof, just consider how he plays with national security.

Jonathan Alter writes for Newsweek (web only):

For crass political reasons—namely to advance his position on the National Security Agency spying story—the president chose to use a speech to the National Guard Association to disclose details of a 2002 “shoe bomb” plot to blow up the U.S. Bank Tower, the tallest building in Los Angeles. While the plot had been revealed in general terms in the past, the White House this week arranged for Bush’s counterterrorism adviser, Frances Fragos Townsend, to explain to reporters in a conference call exactly the kind of details that Goss claimed on the op-ed page helped the enemy. “We are at risk of losing a key battle,” Goss wrote. “The battle to protect our classification system.”

That system is at particular risk when it is exploited for political purposes.

Presidents can declassify anything they like, of course. But what other purpose could Bush have had than to “remind” us that we’re supposed to be afraid of terrorists? “[L]et’s be clear” Alter writes, “on what this was: a deliberate effort to use declassification for partisan purposes, in this case, defending the administration’s policy on NSA surveillance, which Karl Rove says publicly will be a big part of the 2006 midterm campaign.”

Townsend employed the Bushie trick of placing dots in a way that assumes connection, much the way Bush and his surrogates linked Saddam Hussein to 9/11 in the public mind without explicitly stating there was a connection. In this case, Townsend did not claim the NSA program had anything to do with foiling the Los Angeles plot. Yet Townsend left a trail of breadcrumbs between Los Angeles and the NSA nonetheless. “[W]e use all available sources and methods in the intelligence community,” she siad, “but we have to protect them. So I’m not going to talk about what ones we did or didn’t use in this particular case.”

Dutifully, Fox News host John Gibson followed the crumbs. As Media Matters reports,

Gibson suggested a link on the February 9 edition of Fox News’ The Big Story with John Gibson. When guest P.J. Crowley, former special assistant to President Clinton, noted that the Los Angeles terror plot was foiled by the CIA, not the NSA, Gibson responded: “They’re the same kind of thing … the same animal” Later in the program, while purporting to “[c]onnect the dots,” Gibson lumped together the alleged Library Tower plot and the “controversy over the use of high-tech spying.”

Kool-aiders across America are now certain that the NSA spy program stopped the bombing of Los Angeles, and how can those soft-headed libruhls be so stupid not to trust the President? Don’t they remember 9/11?

Yeah, just like we remember Iraq didn’t have anything to do with it. But let’s go on …

Via True Blue Liberal, Maureen Dowd writes in her column today:

Vice President Dick Cheney bitterly complains that national security leaks are endangering America. Unless, of course, he’s doing the leaking, tapping Scooter Libby to reveal national security information to punish a political critic.

President Bush says he will not talk about specific security threats to America. Unless, of course, he needs to talk about a specific threat to Los Angeles to confuse the public and gain some cheap political advantage.

The White House says it has done everything possible to protect the homeland. Unless, of course, it hasn’t. Then it can lie to hide the callous portrait of Incurious George in Crawford as New Orleans drowned.

The attorney general can claim that torture and warrantless wiretapping are legal, and can mislead Congress. Unless, of course, enough Republicans stand up and say, as Arlen Specter told The Washington Post, that if that lickspittle lawyer thinks all this is legal, “he’s smoking Dutch Cleanser.”

The president doesn’t know the Indian Taker Jack Abramoff. Unless, of course, W. has met with him a dozen times, invited him to Crawford and joked with him about his kids.

The Bushies can continue to claim that the invasion of Iraq was justified because Saddam was a threat to our security. Unless, of course, he wasn’t, and the Cheney cabal was simply abusing the trust of Americans to push a wild-eyed political scheme.

A pattern, as they say, emerges.

Update: The Medium Lobster (the Wise; the All-Seeing) explains Bush national security policy.

Taking the Bait

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Via Buzzflash — what they’re not telling us about the Mohammed cartoon controversy and why the violence is erupting now and not when the cartoons were first published in September 2005.

According to this blogger, the cartoon controversy erupted because of a classic rightie-style misdirection campaign perpetrated by the Saudis. The plan was to get people worked up about the cartoons to take public attention away from the deaths of 350 pilgrims at the Hajj.

These were not unavoidable accidents, they were the results of poor planning by the Saudi government.

And while the deaths of these pilgrims was a mere blip on the traditional western media’s radar, it was a huge story in the Muslim world. Most of the pilgrims who were killed came from poorer countries such as Pakistan, where the Hajj is a very big story. Even the most objective news stories were suddenly casting Saudi Arabia in a very bad light and they decided to do something about it.

Their plan was to go on a major offensive against the Danish cartoons. The 350 pilgrims were killed on January 12 and soon after, Saudi newspapers (which are all controlled by the state) began running up to 4 articles per day condemning the Danish cartoons. The Saudi government asked for a formal apology from Denmark. When that was not forthcoming, they began calling for world-wide protests. After two weeks of this, the Libyans decided to close their embassy in Denmark. Then there was an attack on the Danish embassy in Indonesia. And that was followed by attacks on the embassies in Syria and then Lebanon.

Many European papers, including the right-wing German Springer media group, fanned the flames by reprinting the cartoons. And now you have the situation we are in today, with lots of video footage of angry crowds and the storming of embassies and calls for boycotts of Danish and European products. [emphasis added]

What did I say about not taking bait?

Meanwhile the Right Blogosphere has gone foaming-at-the-mouth, hair-on-fire crazy over the cartoon controversy. They’ve worked themselves up to a screaming pitch about the mad dog Muslims who are fixing to massacre Europe. They have gone off the insufferable self-righteousness scale because most American newspapers will not republish the cartoons, and those newspapers and the State Department and, of course, liberals are all wussie sell-outs of democratic principles.

Can we say they’ve come unhinged? I think we can.

Michelle Malkin, who must have steam coming out of her ears by now, wants to know what the Left has to say. In the past couple of days a few leftie bloggers have offered opinions, including me. Here’s a sampler.

Via Roxie, Josh Marshall says,

… there is a hint of the absurd in this story, the way continents of people get swept up in reaction to some simple pictures. But this episode seems like a model for what I imagine we’ll be living with for the rest of our lives. There’s something peculiarly 21st century about this conflict — both in the way that it’s rooted in the world of media and also in the way that it shows these two societies or cultures … well, all I can think of to use is the clunky 21st centuryism — they can’t interface. The gap is too large. The language is too different. One’s coming in at 30 degree angle, the other at 90.

He’s not letting rioting Muslims off the hook:

An open society, a secular society can’t exist if mob violence is the cost of giving offense. And that does seem like what’s on offer here. That’s the crux of this issue — that the response is threatened violence and more practical demands that such outrages must end. … So liberal mores versus theocratic mores. Where’s the possible compromise? There isn’t any. On the face of it this gets portrayed as an issue of press freedom. But this is much more fundamental. ‘Press freedom’ is just one cog in the machinery of a society that doesn’t believe in or accept the idea of ‘blasphemy’. Now, an important cog? Yes. But I think we’re fooling ourselves to reduce this to something so juridical and rights based.

And it’s not just Muslims:

I don’t want to imply this is only a Muslims versus modernity issue. I know not all Muslims embrace these views. More to the point, it’s not only Muslims who do. You see it among the haredim in Israel. And I see it with an increasing frequency here in the US. Is it just me or does it seem that more and more often there are public controversies in which ‘blasphemy’ is considered some sort of legitimate cause of action — as if ‘blasphemy’ can actually have any civic meaning in a society like ours. Anyway, you get the idea.

The idea I get is that this entire clash appears to be happening on the Right end of the political scale. Muslim extremists and western wingnuts are whipping each other into a mutual hate frenzy. Liberals, for the most part, aren’t getting caught up in it. We’re not taking the bait.

This next paragraph of Josh Marshall’s is brilliant, so I’m going to quote it even though it stretches the scope of this post a tad.

Much, probably most of what gets talked about as the ‘war on terror’ in politics today is a crock — a stalking horse for political power grabs, a masquerade of rage and revanchism, a running excuse for why we’ve made so many stupid decisions over the last five years. In some cases, on a more refined plain, it’s rooted in intellectual or existential boredom. But beyond all the mumbojumbo about how we’re helping ourselves by permanently occupying Iraq and running the country’s finances into the ground, there is a conflict. There is a basic rupture in the world.

Wow, that’s good.

Anyway, elsewhere on the Left Blogosphere, Dr. Atrios says,

I’m not too sympathetic with the notion that anything under the cover of religion is automatically entitled to deference. On the other hand, “don’t be an asshole” about peoples’ religious beliefs when they aren’t trying to impose them on you seems to be reasonably good etiquette. The cartoons weren’t funny and the visual portrayal of Mohammed was done just to “be an asshole” without any larger point to it. It’s like parading around in blackface just for the hell of it. There’s no point other than “I’m doing this to see who I can piss off.” I certainly defend the right to piss people off, though not always the decision to do so.

Sensible. Shakespeare’s Sister takes note of Atrios, and adds,

I’m not totally sure I would classify radical Islamists as not trying to impose their religious beliefs. I believe that is, in fact, one of their primary goals, both religious and political, which makes me inclined to feel that commentary on those goals, even in the form of cartoons likely to offend, is fair game, and therefore defensible. (The flipside of that is that I find this response of radical Muslims, including calls to kidnap Danes and “cut them into as many pieces as the number of newspapers that printed the cartoons,” and assertions that this conflagration never would never had erupted “if a 17-year-old death edict against writer Salman Rushdie been carried out” because “then those lowlifers would not have dared discredit the Prophet,” indefensible.) I’m a bit concerned that in our attempts to rebuke the rightwing onslaught to denigrate all of Islam as fundamentally violent, we have begun to minimize the reality that there is indeed a segment of Islam that actively seeks to convert infidels and slaughter those who refuse. It strikes me as dangerously naïve to ignore the ambitions of an extremist Islamic element who, given the first opportunity, would happily impose their religious beliefs on the rest of us, and just because a jihadist hasn’t knocked on one’s door peddling their wares doesn’t make it any less true.

Steve Gilliard has a long post that I urge you to read. It includes an interlude by Steve’s blogging partner, Jen, who is more sympathetic to the Danes than is Steve.

Jazz at Running Scared links to and explicates a rightie blog post, and observes:

The bottom line is this: Shackleford is at least coming very close to admitting what many on the far Right clearly seem to believe, but are not willing to openly state. That is, we are not simply fighting terrorists and radical extremists, but are in fact engaged in a holy war against Islam.

This, IMO, gets to the heart of why the Right Blogosphere is obsessed with this story, the way they were obsessed with the recent French riots. They want a holy war against Islam. They are itching for it. Not that any of them would volunteer to fight, of course … See also Jazz’s post “The Bloodlust of the Unhinged Right Wing.”

The Green Knight sums it up:

There’s still the fact that the rioters are being idiots. Sometimes, there’s no good guy. A newspaper prints cartoons that are meant to “test the limits of political correctness” (i.e. to offend people on purpose, i.e. to be an asshole); the completely over-the-top result is riots around the world.

Nope. No good guy here.

Not that Malkin will ever link any of this.

See also a Muslim’s opinion.

Update: See also Amanda at Pandagon: “We’re All Batshit Crazy Crusaders Now.” Georgia10 asks, “Where the hell is Karen Hughes?” And Steve M writes to Michelle Malkin.

Update update: Malkin is still claiming the Left is “silent” on the cartoon issue. If you want to click on Malkin’s links to other rightie comments on the so-called “silence” of the Left, you see a whole lotta straw man arguments — e.g., “I’m hearing this argument – that only Muslims are fair game for criticism, and that editorial cartoonists never, ever savage Christianity or Judaism” — followed by examples of anti-Bush cartoons that skewer Bush’s religiosity. And one crude cartoon savaging Ariel Sharon and the Israeli Likud party is provided as an example of something “anti-Semitic.” The examples are all from the British press, btw; apparently the blogger couldn’t find examples from American media that were nasty enough to suit him.

Then the fellow goes on to say (in effect; I am, of course, paraphrasing) that because these British cartoons offended him, then American newspapers had better publish the Mohammed cartoons to defend freedom of expression. Yes, once again we see the foundation of all American conservative moral principles — they do it too.

Permanent Bases?

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I just participated in an informative conference call with Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA) and former senators Bob Graham and Gary Hart. The congresswoman is organizing SecureUS PAC to help Democrats talk about and actually run on national security issues. In short, Harman, Graham, et al. believe it’s past time for Dems to stop conceding national security as an issue to the GOP and to call Bush to account for the absolute mess he’s made of it.

It’s amazing to me that Dems are still afraid of the national security issue (except for the Lieberman-Clinton axis who show how macho they are by supporting the war). But after seeing parts of Gov. Tim Kaine’s tepid response to the SOTU I’m afraid that’s still the case.

From the SecureUS web site:

• Americans from both political parties and swing voters want leaders who will protect America with strong and sensible national security policies. Democratic candidates must be able to articulate those policies if they are going to win on Election Day.

• The old ways of defending America have not worked against present and future threats. We no longer face armies on the march. Today, we face terrorist networks and outlaw regimes attempting to acquire chemical, biological or nuclear weapons and attack our homeland. We need bold, fresh thinking on how to stop these threats.

SecureUS plans to train Dem candidates to talk about national security issues effectively in the 2006 campaigns. I hope this works.

Gary Hart said something that I know will interest some of you — is the U.S. building permanent bases in Iraq? Hart said he has heard from people in a position to know that the US is “welding steel and pouring concrete” for at least four and perhaps as many as 12 permanent bases. He speculated the government in Iraq will “invite” the U.S. (at our insistence) to keep a permanent force of 50,000 or so troops in Iraq. Sounds plausible.

Wilsonianism

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Following up the last post — at the Los Angeles Times, Andrew J. Bacevich asks “What Isolationism?”

IN HIS STATE of the Union address on Tuesday, President Bush worked himself into a lather about the dangers of “retreating within our borders.” His speech bulged with ominous references to ostensibly resurgent isolationists hankering to “tie our hands” and leave “an assaulted world to fend for itself.” Turning inward, the president cautioned, would provide “false comfort” because isolationism inevitably “ends in danger and decline.”

But who exactly are these isolationists eager to pull up the drawbridges? What party do they control? What influential journals of opinion do they publish? Who are their leaders? Which foundations bankroll this isolationist cause?

The president provided no such details, and for good reason: They do not exist.

Nonexistence is of little consequence to the Right, of course. They do love their boogeymen over there. Witness the mythical “liberal elite” that is the cause of all evil in America. It doesn’t exist, either, yet belief in it fuels much of rightie politics.

Bacevish, a professor of international relations at Boston University, continues with some interesting observation of isolationism in American history and its opposite, the Wilsonian tradition. He concludes,

Can America be America absent Wilsonian ideals? Perhaps not. But an America intoxicated with its self-assigned mission of salvation while disregarding prudential considerations will court exhaustion, both moral and material. Our present circumstances may not dictate a full retreat. But they do require a revived appreciation of what we can and cannot do. Contriving phony charges of isolationism to dodge tough, practical questions is not only dishonest, it is reckless and irresponsible.

Irresponsible! My goodness, can that be? On the Right, the only “responsible” discourse starts with “I love Dear Leader.”

But this reminded me of something Glenn Greenwald said yesterday about the SOTU speech:

The award for most ambitious statement in the speech would have to go to this passage:

    Abroad, our nation is committed to an historic, long-term goal: We seek the end of tyranny in our world.

Is that really our foreign policy goal now – “the end of tyranny in our world”? This sounds a lot like something which third-grade students or beauty pageant contestants say when asked what their greatest hope for the world is. It also sounds like something which justifies and, if followed, guarantees endless wars.

And you know that in earlier times if a Democratic president had said something about “the end of tyranny in our world,” the Right would have been up his ass about it a split second later. Conservatives have been deriding “Wilsonianism” for decades. But now that their boy is more Wilsonian than Wilson, that tune has changed.

Which is why I think Steve Soto is right when he says Democrats can move to Bush’s right on national security. They can do this not by taking the Clinton-Lieberman road and supporting a Wilsonian war, but by getting real.

Richard Wolffe and Holly Bailey write in Newsweek (web only),

The president’s strategy of defeating terrorism with democracy faces fundamental challenges in the Palestinian territories, Lebanon and Iran. In all three places, terrorists and militants have attracted more popular support, not less, through the ballot box.

Democrats have a rare opening to be more hawkish than Bush on terrorism. They could argue, like Jordan, that the current goal must be to fight militants and terrorists—not to move towards more democracy. They could argue, like Bush himself in 2000, that the job of the U.S. military is to win war, not build nations. …

… five years in office have left the White House straining under the weight of its own contradictions. Iraq was never meant to be a war about terrorists or democracy. It was a war launched to disarm a dictator with weapons of mass destruction. By lumping the two together out of political necessity, the White House seems to have lost focus on the single goal that voters really care about: killing off Al Qaeda.

I’m not sure Bush was ever clear in his own mind what the Iraq War was meant to be, but never mind. This is right; this is exactly what the Dems should be doing.

Update: See also Matt Y.

A Fast One

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Though we may be frustrated by their lame-ass political news coverage, somebody at the New York Times is a great editorialist. Go there now and read “The March of the Straw Men.”

President Bush is not giving up the battle over domestic spying. He’s fighting it with an army of straw men and a fleet of red herrings. …

… Let’s be clear: the president and his team had the ability to monitor calls by Qaeda operatives into and out of the United States before 9/11 and got even more authority to do it after the attacks. They never needed to resort to extralegal and probably unconstitutional methods.

Mr. Bush said the warrantless spying was vetted by lawyers in the Justice Department, which is cold comfort. They also endorsed the abuse of prisoners and the indefinite detention of “unlawful enemy combatants” without charges or trials.

The president also said the spying is reviewed by N.S.A. lawyers. That’s nice, but the law was written specifically to bring that agency, and the president, under control. And there already is a branch of government assigned to decide what’s legal. It’s called the judiciary. The law itself is clear: spying on Americans without a warrant is illegal.

One of the oddest moments in Mr. Bush’s defense of domestic spying came when he told his audience in Nashville, “If I was trying to pull a fast one on the American people, why did I brief Congress?” He did not mention that some lawmakers protested the spying at the briefings, or that they found them inadequate. The audience members who laughed and applauded Mr. Bush’s version of the truth may have forgot that he said he briefed Congress fully on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. We know how that turned out.

Yep. We do.

Freedom Is Slavery, and Other Republicanisms

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Here are the rules: Republicans own the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and all issues touched by the attacks. Therefore, when a Republican waves the bloody WTC tower, so to speak, to stir up emotional support for a GOP policy, that is not politicizing 9/11. Because they own 9/11, see. However, whenever a Democrat mentions 9/11 in any context, that is politicizing 9/11.

Further, wherever the GOP has used 9/11 as part of an emotional appeal for a GOP policy (which is not politicizing), Democrats may not criticize that policy. Because to do so “politicizes” the policy and is an insult to the memory of those who died on 9/11.

Further, whenever the Republicans stir up fear of terrorism to justify curbing civil liberties protected by the Bill of Rights, that is “resolve.” As in, we must be resolved to compromise our constitutional heritage and the freedoms our forefathers fought and died for, because of 9/11. To do otherwise is an example of “pre-9/11” thinking, as well as an insult to the memory of those who died on 9/11.

Whenever someone (such as a Democrat) expresses reluctance to jettison long-established civil liberties for the sake of security, that is an example of “paralyzing self-doubt.”

In the post-9/11 world we must be resolute and decisive. We must not hesitate to destroy the Bill of Rights in order to save it.

Phrases like “Article II authority,” “separation of powers” and “right to privacy” are code words for paralyzing self-doubt. We no long stand on constitutional principles in the face of events; rather, we allow events to dictate our constitutional principles. Anyone with any resolve at all knows this.

Because our President is a man of action and resolve, he doesn’t have to bother with following laws passed by Congress regarding surveillance, nor should he be expected to ask Congress to revise regulations to make them easier to follow. He can just ignore them. Anyone who wants to make the President accountable to the law is risking the lives of American citizens.

Whenever a Republican, such as Vice President Richard Cheney, claims that a controversial Bush Administration policy would have prevented the 9/11 attacks if only we’d had it sooner, that is an example of reasoned political discussion.

Whenever anyone else brings up the myriad clues we had before 9/11 that a terrorist attack involving al Qaeda cells and hijacked airplanes crashing into major landmarks like the World Trade Center, which the Bush Administration ignored, that is not reasoned political discussion. It is irresponsible discussion; nothing but ‘connect-the-dots’ reporting.”

Real Americans don’t connect dots. Connecting dots lets the terrorists win.

I must admit that before today I didn’t understand these rules. But then I read “Our Right to Security” by Debra Burlingame.

It’s all clear to me now.

Bush and the Cultivation of Fear

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An editorial in today’s Washington Post:

THE BUSH administration’s distortion, for political purposes, of the Democratic position on warrantless surveillance is loathsome. Despite the best efforts of Karl Rove, the White House deputy chief of staff, and Ken Mehlman, the Republican National Committee chairman, to make it seem otherwise, Democrats are not opposed to vigorous, effective surveillance that could uncover terrorist activity. Nor are the concerns that they are expressing unique to their party. Republican Sens. John McCain (Ariz.), Arlen Specter (Pa.), Chuck Hagel (Neb.), Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.) and Sam Brownback (Kan.) have expressed legal doubts about the surveillance program. Do they, too, have a “pre-9/11 worldview,” as Mr. Rove said of the Democrats?

Believing there should be constraints on unchecked executive power is not the same as being weak-kneed about the war against terrorism. Critics are suggesting that President Bush should have gone through normal procedures for conducting such surveillance or asked Congress to provide clear legal authority for the National Security Agency activity. They are not contending that such surveillance shouldn’t be conducted at all. No leading Democrat has argued for barring this kind of potentially useful technique.

But you wouldn’t know that to listen to the GOP spin. “Let me be as clear as I can be — President Bush believes if al Qaeda is calling somebody in America, it is in our national security interest to know who they’re calling and why,” Mr. Rove said at the Republican National Committee winter meeting last week. “Some important Democrats clearly disagree.” Mr. Mehlman named names. “Do Nancy Pelosi and Howard Dean really think that when the NSA is listening in on terrorists planning attacks on America, they need to hang up when those terrorists dial their sleeper cells inside the United States?” he asked.

This editorial isn’t as bold as might seem at first glance. I realized it doesn’t blame President Bush himself for any of this fear mongering, even though he’s been playing the same games. On the other hand, for once, WaPo doesn’t claim Dems are just as guilty. It’s a start.

Also in Wapo, Eugene Robinson — who deserves more attention from us liberals, btw — writes,

Once upon a time we had a great wartime president who told Americans they had nothing to fear but fear itself. Now we have George W. Bush, who uses fear as a tool of executive power and as a political weapon against his opponents.

Franklin D. Roosevelt tried his best to allay his nation’s fears in the midst of an epic struggle against fascism. Bush, as he leads the country in a war whose nature he is constantly redefining, keeps fear alive because it has been so useful. His political grand vizier, Karl Rove, was perfectly transparent the other day when he emerged from wherever he’s been hiding the past few months — consulting omens, reading entrails — and gave the Republican National Committee its positioning statement for the fall elections: Vote for us or die.

[Update: Several people have noted that FDR spoke the “nothing we have to fear” line in 1933, about the Great Depression. But FDR spoke about fear and freedom from fear in many other speeches, such as in the “four freedoms” speech from 1941. Since he didn’t use quotation marks I don’t believe Robinson was claiming FDR delivered that exact line about facism, but was just recalling it as a theme FDR used in speeches throughout his presidency.]

Recently a kind person forwarded to me a social psychology paper called “American Roulette: The Effect of Reminders of Death on Support for George W. Bush in the 2004 Presidential Election.” The authors are Florette Cohen and Daniel M. Ogilvie of Rutgers University; Sheldon Solomon of Skidmore College; Jeff Greenberg of the University of Arizona; and Tom Pyszczynski of the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. This paper is not online, but if you want a copy call Blackwell Publishing at (781) 388-8448.

The authors argue that in the 2004 election, the late October taped appearance of Osama bin Laden had the effect of swinging votes to Bush.

… a week before the election Senator John Kerry was reported to have a slight edge. On Friday, October 29, Osama Bin Laden’s videotaped threat reminded Americans of the death and destruction of 9/11. Americans once again became anxious as the Terror Alert was raised and the Bush administration relentlessly raised the specter of death should John Kerry be elected President. On November 3 Bush was declared the winner of the election by a margin of 3.5 million popular votes. From a terror management perspective, the United States’ electorate was exposed to a wide-ranging multidimensional mortality salience induction. Bush’s rise in popularity after September 11, 2001 and eventual victory in the 2004 presidential election seems highly likely to have been influenced by the appeal of his leadership style (i.e., proclaiming himself divinely ordained to rid the world of evil) to an electorate that was continually reminded of the trauma of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

(I love the part about how “the United States’ electorate was exposed to a wide-ranging multidimensional mortality salience induction.” There’s something about soc-psych jargon that just makes my heart go pitty-pat.)

The study involves lots of chi-squares and p values, and N = diverse numbers. But to explain very plainly and crudely, Cohen et al. found that test subjects were more likely to support Bush after being reminded they might die in a terrorist attack. The authors also cited other studies that showed people gravitate to charismatic leaders when they are afraid. And they wrote,

Allegiance to charismatic leaders may be one particularly effective mode of terror management. In Escape from Freedom, Eric Fromm (1941) proposed that loyalty to charismatic leaders results from a defensive need to feel a part of a larger whole, and surrendering one’s freedom to a larger-than-life leader can serve as a source of self-worth and meaning in life. Ernest Becker (The Denial of Death, 1973) posited that when mainstream worldviews are not serving people’s need for psychological security, concerns about mortality impel people to devote their psychological resources to following charismatic leaders who bolster their selfworth by making them feel that they are valued participants in a great mission to heroically triumph over evil.

Sound familiar?

This paragraph inspired me to google for Fromm. I dimly remember Fromm from college required reading lists, but I’m sorry to say I don’t retain a lot from those days. I remember going to college, but exactly what I did there is a bit hazy. It’s been a lot of years.

In any event, the googling brought me to this. To condense, Fromm argued that freedom causes anxiety and a sense of aloneness in some people. Coping mechanisms for this condition include automaton conformity, authoritarianism, destructiveness, and individuation. Taking these one at a time —

Automaton conformity: Fearful people can gain a sense of power by acting like everyone else, holding the same beliefs and values, purchasing the same products, and believing in the same morals. They give up much of their individuality, but they feel more secure.

Along these lines, have you ever noticed how righties believe with an absolute, pure faith that their beliefs and values are the beliefs and values of the majority, even when polls say otherwise? I noticed a long time ago that being one of the herd is terribly important to righties. If you argue them into a corner, they nearly always fall back on “most people agree with me, not you looney lefties.”

Authoritarianism contains a paradox — by giving up power to the powerful, the powerless feel more powerful. Put another way, we submit to a leader by submerging our individual identity with the identity of the leader, and thus become powerful like the leader. The more slavishly devoted to the leader we are, the more powerful we think we become. Or at least that’s what it feels like.

Destructiveness refers to destroying people we think keep power away from us. Thus the Right’s obsession with a powerful “liberal elite” that controls society in spite of the fact that it doesn’t exist.

This is the pathology that is contemporary American “conservatism” — great masses of Americans are afraid — of the world, of modernity, of diversity — and to cope with their fears they have submerged themselves in a cult of personality organized around George W. Bush. Righties want to see themselves as part of a powerful army of righteousness that stands united against perceived enemies, such as Islamic terrorists or liberals. And the more fearful they become, the deeper they submerge themselves into the cult. Until, at last, anything approximating “objective reality” is a distant memory.

Oh, that last thing Fromm talked about, individuation, is the ability to be yourself and enjoy true freedom. People at this stage don’t need a personality cult.

Let’s go back to Eugene Robinson. “While Bush gives off none of Rove’s Sith-lord menace,” Robinson writes, “he has made the cultivation of fear a hallmark of his governance.”

You got that right, Eugene. And fear is what rallies the faithful. How else to explain so many people blind to such staggering incompetence?

When the most recent Osama bin Laden tape emerged, I watched some cable TV bobbleheads schmooze about how this would help Bush’s popularity ratings. And why would that be? Why wouldn’t the appearance of the guy Bush vowed to get “dead or alive” more than four years ago remind us of what a flopping incompetent Bush is? Could it be that we are a nation of sheep? Is rallying to Bush some kind of conditioned fear response? Must be, because it sure as hell isn’t rational.

“A great wartime leader rallies his citizens by informing them and inspiring them,” writes Robinson. “He certainly doesn’t use threats to our national security for political gain. He doesn’t just point at a map and say ‘Boo.'”

That’s right. But a great wartime leader ain’t what we got. What we got, is Bush. And what we need, to be freed from his incompetence and his culties, is the mother of all interventions.