Quote of the day

"If the Protect America Act is allowed to expire, Americans will be at risk."

John Boehner, House Republican Minority Leader.

H.R. 5349: To extend the Protect America Act of 2007 for 21 days

Nay OH-8 Boehner, John [R]

My thoughts on the remaining candidates for 2008

Seems like CPAC every year lowers the political discourse into cheap name-calling, etc. Last year it was with a predictable Ann Coulter moment, this year with Mitt Romney's reprehensible "Democrats want to surrender to terrorists" concession speech (as usual Jon Stewart gives the best response). Here are my thoughts on the remaining candidates:

Barack Obama

• Pros: huge upside with his potential to rally the country around him and get new people involved in politics (which will come in handy during the coming recession and exit from Iraq). Good tech policy.
  
• Cons: so hyped that an Obama presidency would probably be a big disappointment no matter how successful he actually is. Poor health care plan. Inexperienced.

Hillary Clinton

• Pros: good health care plan. Smart and experienced. Two for one deal with Bill Clinton.
• Cons: half the country has an irrational hatred for her. Tries to pass stupid restrictions on video games. Political dynasties are bad (1981-2013 with either a Bush or Clinton in the White House).
  

John McCain:

• Pros: his nomination/election might see the implosion of the Republican party. Experienced. Surprisingly sane by the standards of today's GOP.
  
• Cons: trigger happy. Old. Opposes torture and suspension of habeus corpus, but caved in to Bush on the Military Commissions Act by allowing the President to define torture and exclude who retains their habeus corpus rights (rendering the Act meaningless).
  

Mike Huckabee:

• hahahahahaha.

I voted via absentee ballot in Massachusetts for John Edwards primarily because of his anti-poverty platform, his health-care plan, and other domestic policy stuff. Unfortunately Edwards withdrew before my vote was counted. If I could re-vote, I'd probably vote for Obama. It's unfair to Hillary that two of my primary reasons against her are out of her control (media coverage/irrational hatred, and dynasty), but life isn't fair and no-one's entitled to the Presidency.

The biggest surprise? That I agree with TDAXP!

Giuliani's out of the race!

Phew. I figured given how much I've written on this blog bashing Giuliani, I'd get to gloat a little bit at his total failure. Apparently he will endorse McCain, the winner of Florida. I guess next week it will all be decided. My guess is that it will be Obama vs. McCain, just like TDAXP hopes.

Iowa and New Hampshire

Lots of hot air has been expended on the Iowa and New Hampshire results. I don't really know much about American elections (who caucuses? just vote!), but at least I am cognizant of that fact. Our mainstream news outlets are apparently clueless about their own ignorance ("We were wrong? Must have been those New Hampshire racists!"). After Obama won Iowa, he was about to be crowned king and Hillary was finished - a few days later, and it's neck-and-neck. McCain was supposed to be finished this past summer, now he's the new front-runner.

Intrade.com has a fascinating graphic showing McCain's comeback. The graph shows how much Intrade.com traders valued contracts on McCain winning the GOP presidential nomination. The payoff of the contract, if McCain wins the nomination, is 100; otherwise it is zero. So in November and December of 2006, traders valued McCain's stock at 55ish. By July 2007 it fell to around 5, and after New Hampshire it has climbed back to around 35 - the highest of the Republican contenders.



National polls largely mirror this trend. I assume Intrade.com traders were trading on the information of national polls, Iowa, New Hampshire and other primary polls, the financial situation each candidate is in, etc. The problem is that people look at all this data and think it means more than it does, because it's all we have - and any pundit that says "I don't know" won't be invited back on TV.

Soft support for candidates means that poll numbers are flexible. High voter turnout also upsets polling data, which is based on sampling from different demographics based on who has historically turned out to vote in the past. I'm sure lots of other things confound poll numbers too. Thus the polling numbers that our chattering classes obsess over in truth don't mean very much. And so to take it one step further, the output of the chattering classes doesn't matter very much either (except to the degree that other people take it seriously).

My point is not that McCain was always going to make a comeback and that pundits should have known - there was nothing fated about his remarkable turnaround. My point is that the value-added of these pundits is minimal and that their assertions are almost always over-confident.

An Odd Couple

Pat Robertson endorsed Giuliani for President yesterday. This was a surprise to me - the only thing Robertson and Giuliani share is that they are both crazy.

This is the height of hypocrisy from both Giuliani and Robertson. Back in May, Giuliani attacked Ron Paul for suggesting that American actions started a chain of events resulting in the attacks of September Eleventh. Here's the transcript of that debate:

REP. PAUL: ...Have you ever read the reasons they attacked us? They attack us because we've been over there; we've been bombing Iraq for 10 years. We've been in the Middle East -- I think Reagan was right...
MR. GOLER: Are you suggesting we invited the 9/11 attack, sir?
REP.
PAUL: I'm suggesting that we listen to the people who attacked us and the reason they did it...
MR. GIULIANI: Wendell, may I comment on that? That's really an extraordinary statement. That's an extraordinary statement, as someone who lived through the attack of September 11, that we invited the attack because we were attacking Iraq. I don't think I've heard that before, and I've heard some pretty absurd explanations for September 11th. (Applause, cheers.) And I would ask the congressman to withdraw that comment and tell us that he didn't really mean that. (Applause.)

Here are Pat Robertson's comments shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, which are still on his website - he has never apologized for them or retracted them. He essentially blames people like Giuliani, who is pro-choice, for convincing god to lift the divine shield previously protecting the US:

We have allowed rampant pornography on the Internet, and rampant secularism and the occult, etc. to be broadcast on television. We have permitted somewhere in the neighborhood of 35-40 million unborn babies to be slaughtered by our society.
We have a court that has essentially stuck its finger in God's eye and said, "We are going to legislate You out of the schools and take Your commandments from the courthouses in various states. We are not going to let little children read the commandments of God. We are not going to allow the Bible or prayer in our schools." We have insulted God at the highest level of our government. Then, we say, "Why does this happen?" It is happening because God Almighty is lifting His protection from us. Once that protection is gone, we are vulnerable because we are a free society.
...
So what we say to you today is, if you are not right with God then get your life right with God. Think of the things in your life that are wrong. Think of the careless indifference. Think of the poor who you could have helped. Think of the Scripture you have ignored. Think of the time you should have been spending in prayer, when you were watching television or focusing on pornography or tuned into the Internet. Think of the things you have done in your own life and think of the indifference to the sin of this nation that you have just passed by and said, "Well, that is just the way it is. We have to have freedom." Think of it!
Don't ask why did it happen. It happened because people are evil. It also happened because God is lifting His protection from this nation and we must pray and ask Him for revival so that once again we will be His people, the planting of His righteousness, so that He will come to our defense and protect us as a nation.

Robertson also endorsed Jerry Falwell's hateful comments towards non-religious people, gays, the ACLU, etc., blaming them for September 11th as well. Robertson also called for a nuclear terrorist attack on the United States back in 2003. Giuliani, of course, is Mr. Protector-Against-Terrorism-Extraordinaire. Politics makes for strange bedfellows...

These people vote...

Video from Crooks and Liars. The face of the authoritarian follower is shown by this video (wmv).

There are three requirements for what Bob Altemeyer calls "Right-wing Authoritarianism". They are:

1. Authoritarian submission (unquestioning submission to authority)
   
2. Authoritarian aggression (basically the Two Minutes Hate)
   
3. Conventionalism (mindlessly following social conventions)
   

In this video, we see numbers 1 and 2 on clear display. First, aggression:

"I think people have very long memories about Bill Clinton and what it was like to live through that hell..."

"Going through Hillary Clinton is just nothing but socialists and communism."

"Hillary Clinton does not have American values... to her, everything's the world, not the United States, we're not important."

"If Clinton has the opportunity, she'll end America as we know it."

Second, submission:

Q: "Why Giuliani?"
A: "He is strong. He's strong, he's what we need."

Readers of this blog will know I love to hate on Giuliani. It's because he scares me. However, just as scary are his followers.

Irony or lunacy?

Inspired by Glenn Greenwald's examination of the nutcases that want to bomb Iran, Digby digs up an article from 2003 by Michael Ledeen at the National Review. An excerpt:

So the French and the Germans struck a deal with radical Islam and with radical Arabs: You go after the United States, and we'll do everything we can to protect you, and we will do everything we can to weaken the Americans.

Michael Ledeen is actually taken seriously on by many Republicans and members of the current administration. His grand conspiracy theory is especially ironic, considering today's news:

Three suspects allegedly trained in Pakistan by an Al Qaeda-linked group have been arrested for plotting massive car-bomb attacks on US troops and other Americans near US military bases and German airports, authorities said yesterday...

The trio in Germany allegedly planned simultaneous strikes on three soft targets that might have included nightclubs, bars, restaurants, or airports frequented by American soldiers and tourists, according to German and US law enforcement officials. Because the confiscated materials could have produced the equivalent of about 1,000 pounds of TNT, the casualty toll could have far exceeded the transport bombings that killed 52 people in London in 2005 and 191 people in Madrid in 2004, officials said.

I continue to hold out hope that people like Ledeen are actually engaged in a long-term punking of the right-wing media (National Review, FrontPageMag, WorldNetDaily, etc.). Perhaps they were inspired by Alan Sokal and are engaged in a long-term project to destroy right-wing credibility on matters of national security.

Of course this would have to be an extremely wide-spread Sokal-conspiracy, involving Douglas MacKinnon as well, who has his own crazy ramblings.

Giuliani's Foreign Policy Vision - the Ugly

This is the final, Ugly, part of "The Good, Bad and the Ugly" looking at Rudy Giuliani's foreign policy essay.

The Ugly

"We are all members of the 9/11 generation."

My only response is to send you to this Onion article from February 21, 2007: Giuliani To Run For President Of 9/11. When the absurd passes without notice, satire is dead.

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"Whom we choose to talk to is as important as what we say... Holding serious talks may be advisable even with our adversaries, but not with those bent on our destruction..."
"...This is not to say that talks with Iran cannot possibly work. They could -- but only if we came to the table in a position of strength, knowing what we wanted."
"The lesson is never talk for the sake of talking... the theocrats in Iran need to understand that we can wield the stick as well as the carrot..."
"The time has come to refine the diplomats' mission down to their core purpose: presenting U.S. policy to the rest of the world."

Essentially Giuliani's conception is diplomacy is one of imperial diktat. Which is to say, it is exactly the same as Bush's vision of diplomacy his first 6 years in office (there are signs his stance on diplomacy is changing) and it will fail.
And as for talks with Iran from "a position of strength", that would require us leaving Iraq, as our 150,000 soldiers in Iraq are basically hostages to Iranian goodwill (see page 5 about American logistics in Iraq). In addition, our carrier task forces in the Persian Gulf are easily within range of Iran's Yakhonts and Raad cruise missiles, against which the U.S. Navy has no reliable defense, and our bases in the Persian Gulf are within range of Iran's 12 (at least) Kh-55 cruise missiles. The military situation between the US and Iran is one of offense and counter-offense, rather than defense, which points towards high casualties on both sides. The recent American tradition of launching airstrikes or cruise missiles on a third-world country with impunity is not applicable here. The American position of strength against Iran is a long-term economic one, not an immediate military one, so if Giuliani refuses to talk to Iran except from a position of strength, there is the prospect of a collapsing Iranian regime launching a war designed to capture southern Iraqi oil resources to shore up its own economy and solidify popular support. Such a war would be one American diplomacy could have prevented.

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"For U.S. diplomacy to succeed, the U.S. government must be united... Members of Congress who talk directly to rogue regimes at cross-purposes with the White House are not practicing diplomacy; they are undermining it."

This is a direct attack against Nancy Pelosi and other members of Congress for visiting President Bashar Assad of Syria, a (bipartisan) visit that drew a lot of criticism from people who think Democrats should stay home and leave the Congressional trips to meet the Syrian dictator to Republicans like Arlen Specter, Frank Wolf, Robert Aderholt, etc. The notion that the President is the sole determiner of foreign policy is at odds with American history, but totally congruent with the Bush/Cheney vision of how government works.

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"America must remember one of the lessons of the Vietnam War... Many historians today believe that by about 1972 we and our South Vietnamese partners had succeeded in defeating the Vietcong insurgency and in setting South Vietnam on a path to political self-sufficiency. But then American withdrew its support, allowing the communist North to conquer the South. The consequences were dire... a newly energized and expansionist Soviet Union, and a weaker America. The consequences of abandoning Iraq would be worse."

Giuliani repeats the myth that America's defeat in Vietnam was because it was "stabbed in the back" by liberals, Democrats, antiwar protesters, hippies, "the Other". The reasoning goes that since America never lost a major tactical battle yet lost the war, it must have been betrayed by un-American elements at home. This is similar to the reasoning of Paul von Hindenburg, Erich Ludendorff, and other Germans about Germany's loss of World War One. Both arguments are false. America lost Vietnam because its Army felt a possible conflict in Europe against the Soviet Army was a higher priority than the ongoing conflict against Vietnamese Communists (similar to John Nagl's argument), because of the irrationality, fear and overreaction of the policymakers who conceived and executed the policy (Barbara Tuchman's argument), and a variety of other reasons. The notion that many on the Right have that Democrats are "aiding the enemy" is scarily similar in my opinion to the "stabbed in the back" view in 1919 Germany and 1975 America.

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Overall, Giuliani's essay demonstrates the same obsession with power that I wrote about earlier. His view of the world as driven by the twin engines of power and ideology pervades the entire piece. Such a Welanschauung leaves no little room for compromise - ideology structures goals, which, being ideological, are non-negotiable, and power determines the ability to accomplish those goals. For more on this by a better writer than me, see Glenn Greenwald's essay on Giuliani's authoritarian traits.

And what did Giuliani ignore? In 6000 words, he says nothing about global climate change, an indication of the audience he is playing to. There was also nothing about Pakistan, particularly odd as it is pivotal to the century-defining conflict Giuliani believes in. I assume this is because in the case of Pakistan, Giuliani's approach of American imperial dictation based on hard power is not only practically impossible but conceptually impossible, as it is widely acknowledged that we have no leverage over any key actors.

Giuliani still scares me.

Giuliani's Foreign Policy Vision - the Bad

This is part 2 in a 3-part series (the Good, the Bad and the Ugly) looking at Rudy Giuliani's essay in Foreign Affairs.

THE BAD

"Above all, we must understand that our enemies are emboldened by signs of weakness... Our retreat from Lebanon in 1983 and from Somalia in 1993 convinced them that our will was weak."

This argument is used to bludgeon into submission those who wish to change policy by telling them it is a "sign of weakness." In fact America's "will" IS weak when concerning areas like Lebanon and Somalia, because Americans can't find them on a map. Why should we send our children to die in places we didn't even know existed? Those who advocate a militarist foreign policy typically berate Americans and their politicians for being "weak" when Americans refuse to support ill-conceived or ill-executed military blunders (like Iraq, Somalia, Lebanon, etc.). The blunder is American policy-makers trying to play hegemon with a public that isn't willing to accept the costs. Unfortunately this is an error made to some degree by all the candidates (at least all the ones that have a shot).
This argument is also related to something Ugly - the obsession many politicians, in my opinion especially those on the Right, have with showing strength and power. More on this in the Ugly section.

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"The purpose of this fight must be to defeat the terrorists and the insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan and to allow these countries to become members of the international system in good standing... Our aim should be to help them build accountable, functioning governments that can serve the needs of their populations, reduce violence within their borders, and eliminate the export of terror."

Well at least Giuliani defines "victory" here. However this goal is out of reach in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Afghanistan has never had a functioning government by Western standards and one popping up soon is unlikely. Any government that is able to solidify power in Iraq and function normally will probably have accrued that power through the widespread use of violence, and thus could never be a member of the international system "in good standing."

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Giuliani has a section of the essay titled "A Stronger Defense," in which he argues that "The idea of a post-Cold War 'peace dividend' was a serious mistake... we must rebuild a military force that can deter aggression and meet the wide variety of present and future challenges." Here is his wishlist:

1. A minimum of ten new brigade combat teams
2. More submarines
3. More modern long-range bombers
4. More in-flight refueling tankers
5. A global missile defense system
6. A constellation of satellites "that can watch arms factories everywhere around the globe, day and night, above- and belowground"
7. Increased surveillance and screening at ports

Later if I have time I'll add up the cost of all these systems. Combined with a long-term presence in both Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as all the other places Giuliani says he wants to go, the budgetary pressure would be enormous. Add to this the fact that Giuliani doesn't harbor the same antipathy towards social programs that Bush does, plus a Democratic Congress likely to want to spend on social programs, and you have the possibility of a skyrocketing federal budget deficit.

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"[The UN] has not lived up to the great hopes that inspired its creation... International law and institutions exist to serve peoples and nations, but many leaders act as if... institutions, not the ends to be achieved, were the important thing."

The idea that international institutions are tools to be discarded after they have served the purpose of some national state is short-sighted, in my view. I would have put this in the "Ugly" section, but Giuliani tempers this statement by saying in the next paragraph "the great objectives of humanity would become even more difficult to achieve without mechanisms for international discussion." From reading the whole section dealing with institutions it seems that Giuliani is trying to back off from appearing to be a John Bolton-esque UN "reformer" while still appealing to those pundits who feel the UN is a waste of time. In the end I think Giuliani's point is that nation-states matter and institutions don't, except to the extent that the United States can use them.

This concludes the relatively longer Bad section. Check back tomorrow for the truly Ugly stuff.

Giuliani's Foreign Policy Vision - the Good

Tom Barnett, TDAXP, and and commenters at Little Green Footballs (I don't really need to link to them) are all impressed with Rudy Giuliani's essay in Foreign Affairs. I am not. Of course in a nine page essay he says some things I agree with - I will highlight those first to get the distasteful task of agreeing with Rudy Giuliani out of the way, and then I will point to the somewhat longer list of things I think are silly and/or dangerous. In the spirit of Soob and his deconstruction of Obama's essay, I will list it as the Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

Because this post was getting really long and it's getting late, I will post the Good, Bad and Ugly parts as three separate posts.

THE GOOD

"...the Voice of America program must be significantly strengthened and broadened... Our entire approach to public diplomacy and strategic communications must be upgraded and extended, with a greater focus on new media such as the Internet."

Bush has done effectively nothing to create a counter-narrative to the "imperialist America wants to kill all Muslims" narrative used by al-Qaeda to gain recruits. Giuliani would change that, something a lot of people have been calling for (especially MountainRunner).

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"We should open [NATO's] membership to any state that meets basic standards of good governance, military readiness, and global responsibility, regardless of its location."

The argument for a "Global NATO" is, in my opinion, a good one.

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"Foreign aid... does not lead to lasting prosperity because it cannot replace trade. Private direct investment is the best way to promote economic development. The next U.S. president should thus revitalize and streamline all U.S. foreign-aid activities to support -- not substitute for -- private investment in other countries."

"More people in the United States need to understand how helping Africa today will help increase peace and decency throughout the world tomorrow... Ultimately, the most important thing we can do to help Africa is to increase trade with the continent. U.S. government aid is important, but aid not linked to reform perpetuates bad policies and poverty."

I have posted my thoughts on the trade vs. aid debate before, here, here and here. His second quotation seems like a throwaway paragraph for the purposes of mentioning Africa and Darfur (Africa is mentioned all of one time, and if its importance is to "decency" rather than geopolitics, that means we will continue to effectively ignore Africa). However while I think policy towards Africa is important, I also don't think there's all that much individual governments can do - the most helpful interventions will come from institutions and private investment.

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Sadly, that concludes the Good part. I'll post the Bad part and hopefully the Ugly part as well tomorrow.

Various things

Tonight I am leaving to go on vacation for all of next week. So, this is the last blog post for a week and a half.

Various things:

Who'd have expected Newt Gingrich to show up at a conservative function and declare:

"Republican political doctrine has been a failure."

"None of you should believe we are winning [the War on Terror]... We are in a phony war ... we have not been taking this seriously."

Well then. I suppose he isn't running for the Republican nomination in 2008.

Also TED has released some videos from its conference in Africa last June. I'll post two of them

In the first, a clearly very nervous William Kamkwamba (I mentioned him earlier here) explains how he build a power-generating windmill out of a bicycle, wooden boards, a pulley and some plastic tubing. In the second, Nigeria's former finance minister continues the trade vs. aid debate.

Republicans hate their candidates, part 2

At Salon, confirmation that current Republican poll numbers for 2008 are largely meaningless.

Why the Republicans don't like their candidates.

(Republicans can't stand their own candidates)

GOP to oust Cheney?

Yesterday, the Washington Post had an opinion piece titled "A GOP Plan To Oust Cheney", by Sally Quinn. While it highlights an interesting idea (a Republican revolt against Cheney), it consists solely of conjecture, hypotheticals and vague unsourced claims written in the passive voice, with the occasional personal attack (like a sarcastic reference to Cheney's lesbian daughter). But given Sally Quinn's position as a Washington socialite (daughter of an important general, married to the former editor of the Washington Post, has no accomplishments to speak of - as DC-establishment as you get), the article is pretty important. To me, it is a signal that the Washington establishment has finally completely rejected Cheney, and adopted Fred Thompson as their own - naturally, for reasons that have nothing to do with policy.

Quinn nominates Fred Thompson to replace Cheney because the Republican Party's top 3 2008 candidates are poor fits.

That leaves Fred Thompson. Everybody loves Fred. He has the healing qualities of Gerald Ford and the movie-star appeal of Ronald Reagan. He is relatively moderate on social issues. He has a reputation as a peacemaker and a compromiser. And he has a good sense of humor.
He could be just the partner to bring out Bush's better nature -- or at least be a sensible voice of reason. I could easily imagine him telling the president, "For God's sake, do not push that button!" -- a command I have a hard time hearing Cheney give.

The reasoning here is pretty ridiculous. Apparently Fred Thompson is qualified to be Vice President (and President, as Quinn states he should use the VP spot to run for President in 2008) not because of managerial skill, or intelligence, or judgment, and not because of any accomplishments he has to his name (he has none). Instead it is because he has "movie-star appeal", can tell a good joke, and because of what Sally Quinn can imagine him saying.

The most absurd thing about Quinn's endorsement of Fred Thompson is that, on the issues that Quinn states are alienating Republicans from Cheney (Iraq and Iran), there is no appreciable difference between Cheney and Thompson. According to Quinn,

As the reputed architect of the war in Iraq, Cheney is viewed as toxic.

Fred Thompson, March 2003, pre-OIF:

FRED THOMPSON, ACTOR: With all the criticism of our president's policy on Iraq lately, Americans might ask, What should we do with the inevitable prospect of nuclear weapons in the hands of a murderous and aggressive enemy? Can we afford to appease Saddam, kick the can down the road? Thank goodness we have a president with the courage to protect our country. And when people ask what has Saddam done to us, I ask, what had the 9/11 hijackers done to us -- before 9/11?

And now:

WALLACE: What would you do now in Iraq?
THOMPSON: I would do essentially what the president's doing.

Quinn says:

...as the administration's leading proponent of an attack on Iran, [Cheney] is seen as dangerous.

Fred Thompson says:

"I think the bottom line with Iran is that nothing is going to change unless there is a regime change."

Sally Quinn belongs in a gossip column, not on the op-ed page.

Republicans can't stand their own candidates

Why else would Fred Thompson, who hasn't even announced yet and hasn't participated in any debates, be the leading Republican candidate in South Carolina? His website has links to help you give him money, raise money for him, ask friends to give him money, call talk radio, etc., but his political positions are buried within his biography - basically nobody has any real idea of what he would do as President. They just know that he isn't Mormon (Romney), doesn't support "abortion on demand" (Giuliani), and isn't a "maverick" (McCain). As long as Fred Thompson doesn't open his mouth and try to say anything substantive, he doesn't alienate anyone. Looks like right now, that's good enough.

Damage Control

A few random stories that I'm too lazy to look at really in depth:

Intelligence policies shift - Pentagon spy chief rolling back some of Rumsfeld's strategies

As previously noted, the new Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence (USDI), Jim Clapper, is trying to undo some of the damage done by Rumsfeld and his number two, Stephen Cambone. Now this is expanding beyond merely undoing policies (like TALON) and moving towards a greater cooperation with the rest of the Intelligence Community.

Retired Lt. Gen. James R. Clapper Jr. is aligning the Pentagon's intelligence initiatives with those of the director of national intelligence, John M. McConnell, and will begin to count McConnell as his boss - a significant shift from the autonomy the office enjoyed under Rumsfeld.

Hopefully the end result will be a greater unity of effort. Michael Tanji:

USDI was more oversight/coord than command element. This "fixes" that.

However it seems to me that, since this is a "memorandum of understanding" rather than any substantive change (which I think would require an Executive Order), it could be ended at any time by the USDI, whether Clapper or someone in the future.

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Cheney Attempting to Constrain Bush's Choices on Iran Conflict: Staff Engaged in Insubordination Against President Bush

Bureaucratic infighting in the White House - Cheney versus everyone else.

The Pentagon and the intelligence establishment are providing support to add muscle and nuance to the diplomatic effort led by Condi Rice, her deputy John Negroponte, Under Secretary of State R. Nicholas Burns, and Legal Adviser John Bellinger. The support that Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and CIA Director Michael Hayden are providing Rice's efforts are a complete, 180 degree contrast to the dysfunction that characterized relations between these institutions before the recent reshuffle of top personnel...
This White House official has stated to several Washington insiders that Cheney is planning to deploy an "end run strategy" around the President if he and his team lose the policy argument. The thinking on Cheney's team is to collude with Israel, nudging Israel at some key moment in the ongoing standoff between Iran's nuclear activities and international frustration over this to mount a small-scale conventional strike against Natanz using cruise missiles (i.e., not ballistic missiles).

When people call Cheney and Bush "warmongers," it sounds very cliche and trite, but really John Oliver is correct: the Vice President does "mong a good war. Who knows where he'll mong next?!"



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Finally, Al Gore has a good essay on the wastage of our moral authority. This is related to Wes Clark's recent speech that I mentioned earlier.

Giuliani scares me.

I am worried about the intersection of two aspects of a possible Giuliani presidency. The first is his apparent belief that a Democratic political victory will lead to dead Americans. The second is his natural predilection towards authoritarianism.

I can think of two instances in which two similar factors combined with bad results. The first was in WW2, when FDR and the governors of Western states believed that Japanese Americans were a threat to the United States. That belief, combined with the domestic power of the military (led by some racist generals), led to American concentration camps for 110,000 Japanese Americans. Fred Korematsu challenged the power of the government to implement concentration camps, and the Supreme Court sided with the government. Not a proud moment in American history.

The second instance is Richard Nixon and Watergate. Nixon believed that journalists, protesters, and people inside his administration were deliberately undermining him , the United States, and its efforts in the Vietnam War. Combined with Nixon's fetish for secrecy, covert actions and executive power, this almost led to the implementation of domestic detention camps for anti-war protesters under the Huston Plan. The only reason it wasn't implemented, it seems, was J. Edgar Hoover's personal dislike for Tom Huston combined with a fear for his legacy, as he was getting old. (1)

In both of these cases there were two variables. The first was the identification of a domestic threat. The second was the failure of oversight and of leadership, from FDR and the Supreme Court in the first instance, and from the White House and F.B.I. knowingly and willingly breaking the law combined with the total lack in institutionalized legislative and judicial oversight in the second instance.

A Giuliani presidency would have both variables. He has identified a domestic threat, arguing that Democratic victories will lead to dead Americans. In terms of oversight, Giuliani will be as bad as Bush in terms of secrecy and "Executive Privilege," and some say he'd be worse(2). He's already admitted that, as President, he would want the authority to arrest American citizens with no review (although he'd use the power "infrequently").

Giuliani is not a person I can trust with Presidential power.

(1) Christopher Andrews, For the President's Eyes Only, pages 366-369.

(2) "The first serious problem is structural and political: A man who fought the inherent limits of his mayoral office as fanatically as Giuliani would construe presidential prerogatives so broadly he’d make George Bush’s notions of “unitary” executive power seem soft." Jim Sleeper. Why Rudy Giuliani Really Shouldn't Be President.

When it rains, it pours

A slew of scandals have hit the news lately that would make President Bush sweat if he actually read newspapers.

Scooter Libby found guilty of perjury and obstruction of justice. Remember when Bush promised to restore "honor and dignity" to the White House in 2000? Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame's civil suit against Libby, Cheney, Rove and Armitage is also coming up soon.
By the way, who knew that Scooter Libby wrote a book filled with prostitution, pedophilia, bestiality and necrophilia? I can't find the New Yorker article online, but this is from the google cache of Close Reading Dept. Scooter's Sex Shocker, by Lauren Collins:

Other sex scenes are less conventional. Where his Republican predecessors can seem embarrassingly awkward—the written equivalent of trying to cop a feel while pinning on a a corsage—Libby is unabashed:
"At age ten the madam put the child in a cage with a bear trained to couple with young girls so the girls would be frigid and not fall in love with their patrons. They fed her through the bars and aroused the bear with a stick when it seemed to lose interest."
And, finally:
"He asked if they should fuck the deer."
The answer, reader, is yes.

Anyway, back to Bush's scandals:

Walter Reed hospitals found in deplorable shape. People are getting fired left and right, including the commander of the hospital, Maj. General Weightman, his replacement, Kevin Kiley, and the Secretary of the Army, Francis Harvey. Bush portrays still himself as Mr. Support the Troops.

A slew of U.S. attorneys are fired because they didn't engage in partisan investigations. David Iglesias, one of the fired attorneys from New Mexico, says that Representative Heather Wilson and Senator Pete Domenici, both Republicans, both pressured him to finish investigations of Democrats in time for November elections. A clause slipped in to the second installment of the Patriot Act by a staffer of Senator Arlen Specter, without the Senator's knowledge, allows the Department of Justice to replace U.S. attorneys with "temporary" replacements that serve indefinitely without Senate confirmation.

The FBI's use of National Security Letters is riddled with errors and has no oversight. This is probably the least surprising of all of them, given that Bush explicitly said in a signing statement attached to the Patriot Act that the executive can do whatever it wants as long as they can tangentially relate it to national security.

Mark Klein, former AT&T employee who went public a little while ago about the NSA installing secret rooms in phone companies' buildings in order to suck up all the data that passes through there, had an ABC Nightline feature on him and the story. The new bit of news is that the L.A Times editor killed the story because the documents Klein supplied were too technical and he "could not figure out what was going on."

Two guys are suing the NSA for wiretapping them. While the NSA has been wiretapping everybody, it's difficult to establish standing in court because you can't prove that you specifically been harmed or wiretapped. Wendell Belew and Asim Ghafoor, two lawyers in Oregon, were shown Treasury Dept. papers with their phone logs on them, evidence they can use in court to establish standing.

A lot of this stuff has to do with the Department of Justice. Attorney General Gonzales might be on his way out (or so I can dream). Senator Specter is pissed, saying "One day there will be a new attorney general, maybe sooner rather than later." Maybe Specter is just pissed that he got hoodwinked by his own staffer in that business about replacing U.S. attorneys.

Giuliani

Why is Giuliani taken seriously as a Presidential candidate? Oh right, he was mayor when something bad happened in his city.

Sometimes the Onion sums up everything perfectly.

Read the Mahablog for stuff you should know about Giuliani if you are considering voting for him. Parts one and two.

If only we could all shut up, like World War Two

War ain't going so well? Baghdad Bill says "Clap harder!"

Glenn Greenwald was on Alan Colmes' radio show yesterday along with Frank Gaffney. Frank Gaffney wrote an op-ed in the Washington Times that was based on an entirely fabricated Abraham Lincoln quotation about how Congressmen shouldn't question their President during wartime. Podcasts of Alan Colmes' show are available here in parts one, two and three.

In part two, Jeff from Evansville Indiana said "Had we had done this in World War Two, you'd be speaking German now and you'd probably be in [unintelligible]."

Frank Gaffney replied "I think Jeff's absolutely right, that's the kind of accountability I think people ought to be held to."

Apparently there is this myth that nobody criticized the government in World War Two. In fact we had an election in 1944 in which Thomas Dewey "campaigned vigorously" against FDR, accusing him of abusing his authority as President and questioned FDR's fitness to be President.

There was also extensive debate over FDR's prosecution of the war in general. Senator ALbert B. Chandler of Kentucky, William Randolph Hearst, and Charles Lindberg all believed that the United States should not have gotten involved in the European theatre for a variety of reasons. Chandler thought the danger of Japan forcing China out of the war was an even greater danger than that of Germany forcing the Soviet Union out. Lindbergh on the other hand was isolationist, claiming "The three most important groups who have been pressing this country toward war are the British, the Jewish and the Roosevelt administration."

Opponents of the "Europe First" strategy (designed to knock out Germany first, as it posed an immediate existential threat to the UK and USSR) organized as the "America First Committee." According to Wikipedia its membership included Lindbergh, Gerald Ford, Sargent Shriver, Potter Stewart (future Supreme Court justice), the chairman of Sears, Roebuck and Co., Sinclair Lewis, e. e. cummings, and Gore Vidal. On the Senate Floor, Senator Chandler and Senator Arthur Vandenberg from Michigan publicly criticized FDR's strategy Europe First strategy in 1943, and probably many others did as well (I'm working from some sources I collected for a paper in undergrad and kept around on my computer. See the end of my post for a list of them.)

Another interesting twist in comparing World War Two to the current conflict is looking at who was calling for self-censorship when. In the current conflict, The Nation has repeatedly criticized people like Frank Gaffney and Bill Kristol who call for silencing dissent: examples here, here, here, here, and I'm sure there are many other examples. However, in 1943, The Nation wrote that while the final responsibility for determining the amount of forces to commit to each theater of war rests with the President, “he may justly ask that its weight be not increased by irresponsible propaganda either in Congress or the press.” (Planes for the Pacific. The Nation, APril 24, 1943, pages 579-580.) Contrast this to Arthur Krock of the New York Times, who wrote that the press "was being barred by armed American soldiers from that access to the sources of legitimate news which is the custom of democracy and the guaranteed privilege of responsible journalism." (Arthur Krock. "Strategy Senate Issue." New York Times, May 19th, 1943, page 4.) Of course others in the Times called the debate "reckless" and "irresponsible." (Callender, Harold. “Churchill Takes Part in a Congress Debate.” New York Times, May 23rd, 1943, page E3.)

So basically, the next time somebody spouts the old "In World War Two, everybody got on board! If Howard Dean was around in World War Two, we'd all be speaking German!" shtick, please shoot them down. It is a false and dangerous narrative.

I'll leave you with visual proof of domestic dissent in World War Two. Cecil Jensen, a cartoonist for the Chicago Daily News, explicitly criticizes the Europe First strategy by showing an Allied soldier chasing after Hitler while giving merely a passing glance to a bomb with a lit fuse, labeled "Japs" (the caricaturization is pretty racist, but it was 1943, even Bugs Bunny was racist). The cartoon was published in the New York Times on May 23rd, 1943.




Sources:

Callender, Harold. “Churchill Takes Part in a Congress Debate.” New York Times, May 23rd, 1943, page E3.

“Debate on Strategy.” New York Times, May 19th, 1943, page 24.

Krock, Arthur. “Strategy Senate Issue.” New York Times, May 19th, 1943, page 4.

“Planes for the Pacific.” The Nation, April 24, 1943, pages 579-580.

“Senate Debates ‘Beat Japan’ Cry.” New York Times, May 18th, 1943, page 5.

Steele, Richard W. “Franklin D. Roosevelt and His Foreign Policy Critics.” Political Science Quarterly, Volume 74, Number 1, 1979, pages 15-32.

Trussell, C. P. “Congress Pleased by Churchill Talk.” New York Times, May 20th, 1943, page 3.