The Purge

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Following up yesterday’s post on replacing U.S. attorneys — Paul Krugman writes in today’s New York Times,

There’s something happening here, and what it is seems completely clear: the Bush administration is trying to protect itself by purging independent-minded prosecutors. …

… Since the middle of last month, the Bush administration has pushed out at least four U.S. attorneys, and possibly as many as seven, without explanation. The list includes Carol Lam, the U.S. attorney for San Diego, who successfully prosecuted Duke Cunningham, a Republican congressman, on major corruption charges. The top F.B.I. official in San Diego told The San Diego Union-Tribune that Ms. Lam’s dismissal would undermine multiple continuing investigations.

In Senate testimony yesterday, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales refused to say how many other attorneys have been asked to resign, calling it a “personnel matter.”

As I wrote yesterday, U.S. attorneys usually are appointed at the beginning of a president’s term and serve for that term. it is not normal to replace U.S. attorneys in the middle of a term except in cases of gross misconduct. I don’t know if the current rash of mid-term firings is unprecedented, but if there is a precedent I haven’t found it.

For a long time the administration nonetheless seemed untouchable, protected both by Republican control of Congress and by its ability to justify anything and everything as necessary for the war on terror. Now, however, the investigations are closing in on the Oval Office. The latest news is that J. Steven Griles, the former deputy secretary of the Interior Department and the poster child for the administration’s systematic policy of putting foxes in charge of henhouses, is finally facing possible indictment.

And the purge of U.S. attorneys looks like a pre-emptive strike against the gathering forces of justice.

As I wrote yesterday, it isn’t necessarily scandalous for a U.S. attorney to be forced to resign. Incoming administrations often ask all or most of their predecessors’ U.S. attorneys to resign. But mid-term firings for no clear reason do look suspicious. And the Bush Administration, through the Patriot Act, has found a way to circumvent the constitutional requirement that U.S. attorneys be confirmed by the Senate. President Bush can appoint “interim” attorneys with no limit on how long the “interim” period will be. So if he doesn’t get around to sending the nominations to the Senate in the next couple of years — well, he’s busy. Got brush to cut, you know.

If someone finds the Krugman column republished outside the firewall, please add the link to the comments.

In other news about the Bush Administration’s contempt for the rule of law and civil liberties — see this New York Times editorial.

It is hard to render a convincing apology when you are not really apologizing. Consider Charles Stimson, the deputy assistant secretary of state for detainee affairs, who has been trying to spin his way out of his loathsome attempt to punish lawyers who represent inmates of the Guantánamo Bay internment camp.

Last week, Mr. Stimson expressed his “shock” that major American law firms would represent terrorism suspects, hinted that they were paid by unsavory characters and suggested that companies should reconsider doing business with them. On Wednesday, Mr. Stimson said he apologized and regretted that his comments “left the impression” that he was attacking the integrity of those lawyers.

It was not just an impression. It was exactly what he did. Mr. Stimson actually read out a list of law firms during an interview with a radio station friendly to the Bush administration.

On top of that, Alberto Gonzales is blaming lawyers for the delays — some as long as five years — in bringing detainees to trial. The editorial continues,

There’s no truth to that. The cause of the delay in bringing any Guantánamo detainee to trial is Mr. Bush himself. He refused to hold trials at first, then refused to work with Congress on the issue and claimed the power to devise his own slanted court system. Mr. Bush went to Congress only when the Supreme Court struck those courts down. The result was a bill establishing military tribunals for detainees that is a mockery of American justice.

No No Alberto

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Unreal:

Specter: Now wait a minute, wait a minute. The Constitution says you can’t take it away except in the case of invasion or rebellion. Doesn’t that mean you have the right of habeas corpus?

Gonzales: I meant by that comment that the Constitution doesn’t say that every individual in the United States or every citizen has or is assured the right of habeas corpus. It doesn’t say that. It simply says that the right of habeas corpus shall not be suspended.

This is not an official transcript. When the real transcript goes online, please alert me.

Update: See Robert Parry at Consortium News.

Responding to questions from Sen. Arlen Specter at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Jan. 18, Gonzales argued that the Constitution doesn’t explicitly bestow habeas corpus rights; it merely says when the so-called Great Writ can be suspended.

“There is no expressed grant of habeas in the Constitution; there’s a prohibition against taking it away,” Gonzales said.

Gonzales’s remark left Specter, the committee’s ranking Republican, stammering.

“Wait a minute,” Specter interjected. “The Constitution says you can’t take it away except in case of rebellion or invasion. Doesn’t that mean you have the right of habeas corpus unless there’s a rebellion or invasion?”

Gonzales continued, “The Constitution doesn’t say every individual in the United States or citizen is hereby granted or assured the right of habeas corpus. It doesn’t say that. It simply says the right shall not be suspended” except in cases of rebellion or invasion.

“You may be treading on your interdiction of violating common sense,” Specter said.

Specter helped create this monster. I hope he’s sorry now.

U.S. Attorneys: It’s the Replacing, Stupid

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By itself, forcing the resignations of at least seven U.S. attorneys is not necessarily scandalous. Presidents may fire U.S. attorneys, and they do so routinely at the beginning of a new administration.

It is unusual to fire U.S. attorneys in mid-term except in cases of gross misconduct, which doesn’t appear to be the case for the forced resignations under discussion. I don’t yet know how often that’s been done. But the larger issue here is not so much the firing (although the firing is an issue) as it is the replacing. The Bush White House appears to have found another way to gut the Constitution and usurp powers that belong to another branch of government.

Since the office of United States Attorney was created by the Judiciary Act of 1789, U.S. attorneys have been subject to Senate confirmation, per the DOJ’s own web site and Article II, Section 2, paragraph 2 of the Constitution:

He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.

The White House didn’t directly nullify the “advice and consent” clause. Instead, through a provision in the Patriot Act reauthorization that went into effect last year, the Attorney General can appoint “interim” replacements who can serve indefinitely without confirmation. Mark Agrast of the Center for American Progress explains:

The administration has managed to bypass the confirmation process by taking advantage of an obscure provision slipped into last year’s PATRIOT Act amendments. Until then, the U.S. Attorney General was permitted to appoint an interim U.S. Attorney for a maximum of 120 days, after which time the vacancy would be filled by the federal district court until a successor could be confirmed. The new provision removes the 120-day expiration date, allowing the Attorney General to appoint interim U.S. Attorneys on an essentially permanent basis, without Senate confirmation.

Precisely why the seven attorneys were forced out of office remains unclear. The most controversial “replacement” so far is J. Timothy Griffin, a former aide to Karl Rove, who will become the new U. S. attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas. Griffin is replacing Bud Cummins, who was appointed by President Bush in 2001. Per Paul Kiel of TPM Muckracker,

Former Arkansas USA Bud Cummins told the Wall Street Journal that “a top Justice official asked for his resignation in June, saying the White House wanted to give another person the opportunity to serve.” Cummins was finally forced out in December, replaced with Timothy Griffin, formerly the research director of the Republican National Committee.

“Wanted to give another person the opportunity to serve”? What the hell kind of reason is that?

The New York Times:

The Bush administration has appointed an extreme political partisan as the new United States attorney for Arkansas. Normally, the Senate would have vetted him, and quite possibly blocked his appointment. But the White House took advantage of a little-noticed provision of the Patriot Act, which allows it to do an end run around the Senate.

Certainly, the firings look fishy. One of the attorneys was the “Duke” Cunningham prosecutor . Another (allegedly being sacked because of his “management style“) had been engaging in high-profile investigations into companies and executives fraudulently backdating stock-option grants. But in some cases no clear and obvious reason for the “firings” jumps out of news stories.

You can read Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s objections to the “replacings,” here.

It’s the Replacing, Stupid

I want to be sure we’re all clear about this issue, because the Right wants you to think the issue is mostly about the firing, not the replacing.

For example, NRO columnist Andrew McCarthy (in his artfully disingenuous way) justified the new “procedure” by explaining, “One of President Clinton’s very first official acts upon taking office in 1993 was to fire every United States attorney then serving,” except for Michael Chertoff.

It was just politics, plain and simple.

Patronage is the chief spoil of electoral war. For a dozen years, Republicans had been in control of the White House, and, therefore of the appointment of all U.S. attorneys. President Clinton, as was his right, wanted his party’s own people in. So he got rid of the Republican appointees and replaced them with, predominantly, Democrat appointees (or Republicans and Independents who were acceptable to Democrats).

I dug an article about this episode out of the New York Times archives. On March 24, 1993, Attorney General Janet Reno demanded the resignation of all United States Attorneys. At the time, this prompted accusations from the Right that the Clinton Administration was trying to save the political career of Rep. Dan Rostenkowski. (If that was the plan, it didn’t work.)

In any event, as I recall righties banged their pots and howled something fierce about these firings as part of their campaign to destroy Bill Clinton, even though it was a standard practice for an incoming president to replace U.S. attorneys.

Back in 1993, David Johnston of the Times wrote,

All 93 United States Attorneys knew they would be asked to step down, since all are Republican holdovers, and 16 have resigned so far. But the process generally takes much longer and had usually been carried out without the involvement of the Attorney General.

Battles of the Past

Ms. Reno is under pressure to assert her control over appointments at the Justice Department. She was Mr. Clinton’s third choice for Attorney General and arrived after most of the department’s senior positions were already filled by the White House.

The comments of Ms. Reno and Mr. Stephens evoked the pitched battles of the past, when independent United States Attorneys resisted removal by new administrations.

In 1969, for instance Robert Morgenthau, now the Manhattan District Attorney, resisted efforts by the Nixon Administration to replace him as United States Attorney in New York until he was given what he called an “ultimatum” by President Richard M. Nixon to leave office.

In 1978, Attorney General Griffin B. Bell removed David W. Marston as United States Attorney in Philadelphia, provoking charges, never proved, that a lawmaker under scrutiny by Mr. Marston’s office had urged President Jimmy Carter to remove the prosecutor.

Four-Year Terms

United States Attorneys are appointed to serve four-year terms at the pleasure of the President. It was unclear whether Ms. Reno initiated the request for resignations or whether it was pressed on her by the White House. The Attorney General said it was a “joint decision.”

Likewise, in 2001 the Bush Administration replaced Democratic prosecutors with Republican prosecutors. This was expected. And it’s entirely beside the point.

About halfway through his NRO column, McCarthy admits that the Patriot Act did change the procedure for appointments. But McCarthy called the old process “a bizarre arrangement.”

Previously, under the federal code (Title 28, Section 546), if the position of district U.S. attorney became vacant, it could be filled for up to 120 days by an interim appointee selected by the attorney general. What would happen at the end of that 120-day period, if a new appointee (who would likely also be the interim appointee) had not yet been appointed by the president and confirmed by the senate? The old law said the power to appoint an interim U.S. attorney would then shift to the federal district court, whose appointee would serve until the president finally got his own nominee confirmed.

And what was wrong with that?

Law enforcement is exclusively an executive branch power. The Constitution gives the judiciary no role in executive appointments, and the congressional input is limited to senate confirmation. U.S. attorneys are important members of the Justice Department — the top federal law enforcement officers in their districts. But while the attorney general runs the Justice Department, U.S. attorneys work not for the AG but for the president. They are delegated to exercise executive authority the Constitution reposes only in the president, and can thus be terminated at will by the president. Consequently, having the courts make interim appointments made no practical sense, in addition to being constitutionally dubious.

Basically, McCarthy is arguing that the Senate’s “advice and consent” role is purely ceremonial — to rubber stamp the appointments of the President. Under the previous system, if the appointment proved to be controversial and was hung up in the Senate, the President could either withdraw the nominee and appoint somebody else, or the courts would appoint an interim attorney to serve while the President and the Senate haggled. And this, to McCarthy, is unacceptable.

So yes, a president who wanted to bypass the Constitution’s appointments process could fire the U.S. attorney, have the attorney general name an interim appointee, and simply refrain from submitting a nominee to the senate for confirmation. But we’ve also seen plenty of abuse from the Senate side of appointments — and such abuse was not unknown under the old law. Though the president can nominate very able U.S. attorney candidates — just as this president has also nominated very able judicial candidates — those appointments are often stalled in the confirmation process by the senate’s refusal to act, its imperious blue-slip privileges (basically, a veto for senators from the home state of the nominee), and its filibusters.

How dare those Senators question the decisions of the Lord High Decider!

McCarthy finally falls back on the most fundamental principle of conservative ethics — Billy did it first!

It’s worth noting, however, that the same Democrats who will be up in arms now were mum in the 1990s. President Clinton not only fired U.S. attorneys sweepingly and without cause.

Which, as I explained above, is a red herring.

He also appointed high executive-branch officials, such as Justice Department civil-rights division chief Bill Lann Lee, on an “acting” basis even though their positions called for senate confirmation. This sharp maneuver enabled those officials to serve even though it had become clear that they would never be confirmed.

Reporting on Lee on February 26, 1998, the New York Times noted: “Under a Federal law known as the Vacancy Act, a person may serve in an acting capacity for 120 days. But the [Clinton] Administration has argued that another Federal law supersedes the Vacancy Act and gives the Attorney General the power to make temporary law enforcement assignments of any duration.”

To be clear, Lee’s appointment was as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, not as U.S. attorney, and I assume a different part of the federal code applied. The situations are similar in principle, of course. Here is the New York Times article McCarthy cites, and here is a New York Times editorial about the Republicans’ war against Bill Lann Lee.

This story is long and complicated, but in a nutshell, Orrin Hatch, as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, sat on Lee’s nomination. Literally. He scheduled no committee hearings; he just ignored the nomination. The Republicans found Lee’s nomination unacceptable because he had a long record of supporting civil rights and equal opportunity and other scary socialist stuff. Clinton kept him in the job through recess appointments, in the same way John Bolton became a UN ambassador.

McCarthy screams about hypocrisy; where was he when Orrin Hatch sat on Bill Lann Lee’s nomination? Was he wringing his hands because the presidents’ nominee wasn’t allowed an up-or-down vote in the Senate? Somehow, I doubt it.

For the record, I don’t like recess appointments, either, except in case of genuine emergency. But aren’t you just damn tired of Republicans who want the Dems to abide by a stricter set of rules than they accept for themselves? And isn’t there some way we can amend the Constitution so that Washington politicians act like grown ups?

Bye, Art. It’s Been Fun.

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I remember being an Art Buchwald fan while I was still in elementary school, which was about two centuries ago. We were both a lot younger then.

Art Buchwald died yesterday at the age of 81. He kept working right to the end; there’s an archive of recent columns here. If anyone can find some of his older work online, let me know.

    “Whether it’s the best of times or the worst of times, it’s the only time we’ve got” — Art Buchwald, 1925-2007

Update: More from the Library of Congress.

Bushies Know Best

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You’ll like this one. Suzanne Goldenberg writes for the Guardian:

The Bush administration’s most senior legal official said today that US courts were not fit to make decisions on national security and should show deference to the White House.

I should have warned you at the top of the post to sit down and stay calm.

In remarks made after a talk at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative thinktank, the attorney-general, Alberto Gonzales, said: “I don’t think that a judge is equipped at all to make decisions about what is in the national security interest of our country.”

Mr Gonzales’s comments come a few days after a Pentagon official provoked a national backlash after suggesting large corporations boycott law firms that defend detainees at Guantánamo.

You, there! You banging your head against the wall! Stop that right now!

The Associated Press reports (emphasis added),

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales says federal judges are unqualified to make rulings affecting national security policy, ramping up his criticism of how they handle terrorism cases.

In remarks prepared for delivery Wednesday, Gonzales says judges generally should defer to the will of the president and Congress when deciding national security cases. He also raps jurists who “apply an activist philosophy that stretches the law to suit policy preferences.”

‘Scuse me while I go bang my head against the wall. At least I didn’t throw up, like some people.

Big Tent Democrat explains,

I think the Attorney General could not be clearer. He advocates the vitiation of the Constitution by the judiciary when the President so desires. He is unfit for the office of Attorney General. He should be removed from office.

On the other hand, AG Gonzales has decided the National Security Agency’s domestic surveillance program will be subject to FISA approval, after all. (Glenn Greenwald is, as ever, the go-to guy for in-depth explanation of FISA.)

I understand Mr. Gonzales is scheduled to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee tomorrow.

Speaking of atrocities, my buddy the Talking Dog (who is not an atrocity; more of a shepherd-newfoundland mix, I think) interviews H. Candace Gorman, one of the attorneys Alberto Gonzales thinks should be boycotted because she represents detainees at Guantánamo. Good stuff.

After the Surge

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Yesterday Baghdad suffered its worst day of carnage in more than a month. Most of the violence appears to have been at the hands of Shiites, targeting Sunnis.

MSNBC reports that the Sunni nation of Saudi Arabia is thinking about sending troops into Iraq “should the violence there degenerate into chaos.” Would the Saudi troops favor the well-being of Sunnis, while Iran is backing the Shiites? Is this really a good idea?

No one outside the Bush Administration seems to think the so-called “surge” — which Senator Clinton said today is a “losing strategy” — will have any significant impact on the violence. Still, Congress is not moving all that fast to stop it. Renee Schoof writes for McClatchy Newspapers:

Although most Democrats and some Republicans oppose Bush’s 21,500-member troop increase, Congress isn’t moving very fast to try to stop or alter the plan. Democratic leaders in both houses want their first step to be a resolution calling on lawmakers to go on record as being for or against Bush’s Iraq plan.

Democrats say they have a solid Senate majority against the plan, including perhaps one dozen Republicans, so the resolution is effectively a symbolic vote of no confidence in Bush’s war plan. Only after that vote will they look at ways to use Congress’ power over funding as a hammer.

This may make sense as political strategy, but I fear that by the time Congress does anything concrete the “surge” will be a fait accompli.

On the other hand, this was just posted at WaPo —

Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) announced legislation today capping the number of troops in Iraq at roughly 130,000, saying that lawmakers should take an up-or-down vote on President Bush’s plan to send additional troops to the country and not settle for the non-binding resolution several Senate leaders prefer.

But for the moment, let’s look ahead to post-surge Iraq. Paul Krugman’s column on Monday called the surge/escalation/augmentation the “Texas Strategy.”

Mr. Bush isn’t Roger Staubach, trying to pull out a win for the Dallas Cowboys. He’s Charles Keating, using other people’s money to keep Lincoln Savings going long after it should have been shut down — and squandering the life savings of thousands of investors, not to mention billions in taxpayer dollars, along the way.

The parallel is actually quite exact. During the savings and loan scandal of the 1980s, people like Mr. Keating kept failed banks going by faking financial success. Mr. Bush has kept a failed war going by faking military success.

The “surge” is just another stalling tactic, designed to buy more time.

I wrote something along the same lines last April, although I wrote about Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling. I wrote then:

It would have worked out if we’d just stayed the course, the chief executive said. Everything would have been fine if people had had more faith. We failed because we were attacked by people who wanted us to fail.

Bush in Iraq? No, Jeffrey K. Skilling in court.

The former Enron CEO, on trial for multiple counts of conspiracy and fraud, told the court yesterday that Enron’s slide into bankruptcy was caused by a loss of faith.

The Enron execs genuinely seem to have believed that if only they could have kept their losses hidden and maintained the illusion of success a little longer, the Good Profits Fairy would have come along and bailed them out eventually. (And who’s to say that the Bush Administration wouldn’t have given them enough war and disaster profiteering contracts that they’d be riding the gravy train today?) So, in their own minds, they did not fail. As for the bad decisions that put them in a hole to begin with — hey, stuff happens.

Bush’s plan seems to me even more cynical. He just wants to keep the illusion going on long enough that the failure doesn’t happen on his watch. The fact that the “illusion” has already mostly evaporated doesn’t seem to bother him.

On the other hand, maybe he still thinks the Victory Fairy will turn up after all. Robert G. Kaiser wrote in the Sunday New York Times:

In other words, the national security adviser told the president 42 months after this disastrous war began that we can still fix it. A few well-placed bribes plus Yankee ingenuity — pulling this lever, pushing that button — can make things turn out the way we want them to.

Kaiser’s article is really good; you should read it all.

Along the same lines, as John Cole of Balloon Juice points out today, the “Who lost Iraq” mythos is already being written. Be sure to read the whole post for examples from rightie blogs. John Cole concludes,

So they have all the bases covered, you see! If we win, it is because these brave stalwarts stuck it out on their blogs, and lavished unrelenting praise on the troops and the President. They stayed the course, you see, and because of them the troops could get the job done!

If we lose, it wasn’t because of anything this administration, the Pentagon, or their blind support for a leadership that didn’t deserve it. It is because of the lying ass media and those pussy Democrats.

Heads, I win; tails, you lose.

Outside the Bush Administration and its True Believers, conventional wisdom says winning in any meaningful sense is no longer an option. The real questions revolve around disengagement (how’s that for a euphemism?) from Iraq — when, and how? And then after that, we’ll all be wallowing in the political fallout for some time.

Harold Meyerson has an excellent column in WaPo today discussing how that fallout might fall. He looks at the last two presidents who bailed the nation out of unpopular wars — Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon.

As the first Republican to occupy the White House since the coming of the New Deal, Dwight Eisenhower could have chosen to divide the public and try to roll back Franklin Roosevelt’s handiwork. In fact, he didn’t give that option a moment’s consideration. Social Security and unions, he concluded, were here to stay; any attempt to undo them, he wrote, would consign the Republicans to permanent minority status. Ike also ended the Korean War without attacking Democrats in the process.

And then there’s Nixon —

For Nixon, politics was about dividing the electorate and demonizing enemies. Even as he drew down U.S. forces, he did all he could to inflame the war’s already flammable opponents in the hope that however much the people might dislike the war, they would dislike its critics more.

Do we even have to ask which way the Bushies are likely to go? And consider that the damage Nixon did lived on long after him; much of it is still impacting politics (and hurting Democrats) today. I realize that a lot of people, including me, are impatient with the Dems for being cautious. But they have good reasons to be cautious.

It is possible to lose even if we win. By that I mean that it’s possible the Dems could grow the spine to confront the President and force a withdrawal from Iraq, and yet get the worst of the post-war fallout, which would put the Republicans back in business.

It’s likely that the aftermath of our Iraq adventure will be a nasty business, both here and in the Middle East. Please note what I’m saying here. I’m not saying we should stay in Iraq, but that it’s possible the violence and destabilization will escalate after we leave and create new foreign policy problems that we cannot ignore, the way we pretty much ignored Southeast Asia after Vietnam. I ask again, please read this carefully and don’t whine at me that I am some kind of Bush supporter, because I think these bad things are likely to happen if we stay, also. But the Right is not going to make that distinction, and all crises that arise from the Middle East for the next quarter century are likely to stir up fresh howls about Who lost Iraq? You can bet the Dems in Washington realize this and are thinking hard about it right now.

For the Bloggers

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Requests for brother and sister bloggers — first off, brother blogger Gary Farber is going through a rough patch and could use some help. Please.

Jane Hamsher has received a third diagnosis of breast cancer; send some healing thoughts.

Send American Street some love, just because.

I still can’t bring myself to update my blogroll, but it’s time to say “happy trails” to the following blogs —

Billmon’s Whiskey Bar is closed.

Jeanne d’Arc’s Body and Soul has been out of business for a while.

Fafblog hasn’t been updated since July, alas.

Michael Bérubé announced his retirement from blogging a few days ago.

All great blogs; they’ll be missed.

[PS] I should have included BOP News as well, which is no more.

Augment the Objections

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In Salon today, Gary Kamiya writes that

A real, broad-based antiwar movement would immediately put an end to the war — and put the Bush presidency out of its misery.

But there is no significant antiwar movement. And there isn’t going to be one unless Bush completely loses it and decides to attack Iran. (Insane as this idea is, Bush might see it as the only way to simultaneously destroy what he regards as a Nazi-like threat and save his shattered presidency.) This isn’t Vietnam, where hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets to protest. This is the new, post-draft America, where a subclass of poorly paid professional warriors does the bidding of a power elite. With some notable exceptions, Cindy Sheehan being the most famous, the warriors and their families, those who pay the price, do not protest. And the rest of the country, not facing death or the death of immediate family members, doesn’t care enough to.

I agree with the first sentence in the quote, but Kamiya loses me when he declares he wants an antiwar movement just like the good ol’ days of Vietnam, when “hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets to protest.”

The Vietnam era antiwar movement was wonderfully effective — at re-electing Richard Nixon in 1972. But at stopping the war, not so much.

Every time I write that I get slammed by people who say I’m wrong. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Eric Alterman —

The first serious historical research I ever did was when I was researching my honors thesis as an undergraduate. I wanted to study the origins of neoconservatism, the Six Day War, and Vietnam—this was back in 1981—and my adviser, Walter LaFeber—insisted that I learn a little context first by examining the attitudes of the entire country to the war and the antiwar movement. I poured over the polling data and found to my surprise, that in many ways, the antiwar movement was counterproductive. Many Americans didn’t like the war but they really hated the counterculture. If supporting Nixon was a way to get back at the hippies and protesters and rioters, they were willing to do it, even if it meant extending a war they thought to be already lost.

I’m sure people who were completely immersed in the movement and had little substantive contact with outsiders saw things differently. But if, like me, you did spend time with people outside the movement, the impact of protests on public opinion was a painful thing to watch. To grab attention the protests became increasingly outrageous and flamboyant, and the more outrageous and flamboyant they became, the more the “straights” turned to Richard Nixon to protect them from the “dirty hippies.”

To a large extent, Nixon successfully made his ’72 campaign a referendum on the antiwar movement, not the war. As I saw it, the protesters handed Nixon a red herring issue that helped him avoid having to answer for bombing Cambodia.

Yes, Americans turned against the Vietnam war, and the war ended eventually. But who can say it was the antiwar protests that turned them? The bigger factor, I think, was watching the carnage and insanity on television every evening. There were real journalists in them days, children, and they told it like it was.

I’m wildly ambivalent about public protests. In the past four years I’ve participated in a few of the big protests and marches in New York and Washington. Some of these were positive and uplifting, and some made me cringe. None received the media coverage they deserved, and none had any measurable impact on Iraq War policy.

That said, I admit that if we could muster large numbers of Americans to march in the streets in an orderly manner this might have a real impact. Public protesting, done well, really does make a difference. Unfortunately, when it’s done badly it makes another kind of difference.

Yesterday was Martin Luther King day. Whenever I write these cautionary notes about public protests, someone brings up the big civil rights marches led by Martin Luther King in the 1960s. These protests had a spectacular effect on public opinion and helped bring about much positive change. But those marches were disciplined. As I wrote here, the marchers wore suits and dresses (I learned recently that MLK directed the marchers to dress this way; it didn’t just happen). They marched in a solemn and orderly manner. They waved many American flags. Their chants and signs didn’t contain language you couldn’t repeat to your grandmother.

The anti-Iraq War marches I’ve attended often were more like street carnivals than Martin Luther King’s civil rights marches. The glitter and goofiness are fun, but exactly why should marching against war be fun? Is war some kind of joke?

Some people think protesting is about “expressing themselves,” which seems to mean showing off and/or acting out whatever adolescent angst they haven’t yet resolved. But if you look at the really successful public protest movements — those led by Gandhi and MLK come to mind — you don’t see a collection of people “expressing themselves.” You see people complying with exacting discipline for the sake of a cause. You see people who understand that the cause is more important than their egos.

When a large number of people come together for a public demonstration, they do so to create one great big body that speaks with one great big voice. When a large number of people come together to engage in individual self-expression, however, the result can be one great big mess.

And may I add that goofy costumes and giant puppets are for circus parades, not for a solemn and serious cause. (OK, I’m an old grouch. I admit it.)

One of the more famous figures of the Vietnam era antiwar movement, Tom Hayden, had some interesting observations last November in the San Francisco Chronicle. I disagree with some of Hayden’s conclusions, but he’s worth quoting nonetheless.

…according to Gallup surveys, a majority of Americans came to view Iraq as a mistake more rapidly than they came to oppose the Vietnam War more than three decades ago. So how could there be a peace majority without a peace movement?

Foreign Affairs, the journal of the foreign policy establishment, wondered about this riddle in a 2005 essay by John Mueller reporting a precipitous decline in public support for the war even though “there has not been much” of a peace movement.

In January, when congressional opinion was shifting against the war, a Washington Post analysis made eight references to “public opinion,” as if it were a magical floating balloon, without any mention of organized lobbying, petitioning, protests or marches. That was consistent with a pattern beginning before the invasion, when both the New York Times and National Public Radio reported that few people attended an October 2002 rally in Washington, only to admit a week later that 100,000 had been in the streets.

Hayden thinks the marches and protests are having an impact after all. But then he says,

It is true there have been periodic lapses in street protests since 2003, but these can be explained by the surge of activists into anti-war presidential campaigns like that of Howard Dean. Not only were thousands involved, but MoveOn.org’s voter fund raised $17 million in 2004, most of it from 160,000 contributors averaging $69 donations.

In this year’s election, MoveOn activists made 1 million calls to their elected officials, and poured thousands of dollars and volunteers into campaigns. New Hampshire elected to Congress Carol Shea-Porter, a woman previously known for pulling up her outer garment to display an anti-war slogan.

To disregard forces such as these in the definition of the anti-war movement is a sleight-of-hand, something like eliminating Eugene McCarthy’s New Hampshire campaign in March 1968 from the history of the anti-Vietnam movement.

Exactly. There is an antiwar movement. But today’s antiwar movement is a lot less reliant on public protests and street theater than the old one was. And that’s a good thing. Why would anyone think we should return to the tactics of 1971 if, as Hayden says, the current movement is more effective?