The Cold Hard Facts of Bi-Partisanship

It's 2000 all over again with a lot of talk about bi-partisanship between the Bush administration and the Democratic leadership in Congress.

But, believe me, bi-partisanship is not going to happen and its not going to happen because the Republican Party can't afford to have it happen.

The cold hard fact is that the Republicans are a natural minority party and have been so since the Great Depression and the New Deal.

Of course, the Republicans used to be a minority party because the upper and middle classe whites they represented were smaller than the Democratic constellation of the working class whites, blacks, liberals, and the South. Things have changed dramatically since the seventies, but the Republicans still emerge with a minority. Now, its because their Southern and rural base is declining. Urban areas like Phoenix, Denver, and Las Vegas are mushrooming while reliably white Republicans are leaving places like rural Colorado, Nebraska, or North Dakota and are being replaced by Hispanics and telecommuting Californians. That's why the Democrats are becoming more competitive in Colorado, Arizona, and Nevada and why the "natural base" of the Republicans is beginning to shrink back to depressed farm areas and the old Confederacy. The Republicans still control most of the land, but a majority of the people are leaning toward the Democrats.

Consequently, the Republicans don't have many options. I guess one can imagine that the Republicans can give up their base and try to out-Democrat the Democrats like Schwarzenegger is doing in California. If Bush does try to do bi-partisanship this is exactly what activist conservatives will accuse him of doing. However, given the hostility of blacks, hispanics, and independents to the right-wing, this doesn't seem viable. And it's not like the administration has any bi-partisanship skills to start with.

No, if the Republicans hope to win elections outside their Southern and rural base, they have to keep diggging deeply into their traditional bags of tricks. Even then, the Republicans are in a tough spot. Perhaps most importantly, the Republicans need to come up with a new stream of wedge issues to turn independents and traditional Democratic constituencies against the Democratic leadership. There are some candidates out there--mostly warrantless wiretapping, anti-immigrant proposals, support for Bush judicial nominees, and attacks on gay marriage. Maybe Republicans could rally around McCain's idea of putting 100,000 more troops on the ground (They could call it "Really Winning") and challenge the Dems to either put up or shut up on Iraq. However, the Republican think tanks haven't developed much in the way of new wedge ideas since privatizing Social Security and invading Iraq. The Republicans have both the presidency and an extensive communication apparatus in Fox and talk radio for promoting divisive new ideas. They just don't have the ideas to work with.

The Republicans also need to engage in a relentless demonizing of Democratic Party and liberal personalities as a second method for turning independents and traditional Democratic constituencies against the Democrats. Here, they are on stronger ground. Fox News, right-wing talk show hosts like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, and religious and conservative activist groups are just as committed to demonizing the Democrats as ever. Limbaugh is especially skilled at micro-analyzing Democratic documents and events to reveal the inevitable hypocrisies, absurdities, and self-contradictions. Likewise, Bill O'Reilly will continue his one-man cultural war and Ann Coulter will show as much contempt toward liberals as humanly possible. But if the conservative media is going to have any success at this game, they need the Bush administration to continue to feed it the red meat of creative new wedge issues. If the Bushies go bi-partisan, the talk show zealots won't want to, or be able to, help them.

The third dimension of any Republican come-back would have to be relentless negative advertising against the Democrats on every important issue before Congress. Every debate would have to be a hundred million dollar debate like the health care debate in 1994. One Republican tactic has been to be so aggressive that a battle-weary public is willing to go along with them just to bring the issue to a close. Perhaps the Republicans would have to go to the mat on every issue in order to make a comeback. But the Republicans could only enhance the present permanent campaign if they had even more obscene amounts of money than they have now. Really obscene money hard to raise when the Republicans don't have the leverage to extort it from business.

The Republicans have little choice. Their only chances for success are either continued hyper-aggression or waiting for the Democrats to blow it. However, I've never felt that waiting was part of the right-wing game.

Kentucky Might Avoid Embarrassment After All

If the Democrats get a majority in the Senate, Kentucky Republican Mitch McConnell will NOT become the Senate Majority leader. The whole country can breath easier. Now that Tom DeLay is out of politics, McConnell is the leading practitioner of the politics of extortion in the United States. As outlined in a recent newspaper expose, McConnell's office and affiliates are famous for hitting up potential corporate donors as legislation affecting them is being considered. It would have gotten a lot worse if McConnell became Majority Leader. The apparent success of the Democrats has saved the nation, the state of Kentucky, and probably McConnell himself from a lot of scandal and embarrassment.

RSI Gets Close

No one got the election more right than Red State Impressions. I had the Dems gaining 25 in the House and six in the Senate. The current numbers have the Dems up 28 in the House and up four and ahead in two in the Senate.

Not Too Bad

My predictions last Tuesday are looking pretty good. I predicted that the Dems would gain six in the Senate and 25 in the House. At 1:30am on Wednesday, the Dems are five up for the Senate and 24 up for the House according to CNN.

Not Too Bad!

Big Win for Dems in Kentucky

This might be a good sign for Speaker Pelosi. Ann Northup, a twelve-year Republican member of the House from Louisville lost to her Democratic opponent, John Yarmuth. Northup has always been considered vulnerable because of the large Democratic registration edge in Louisville. This year, the Democrats finally turned the corner on her.

Bonus Comment: If the Dems do take the House, Speaker Pelosi will lead a retreat from Tom DeLay's "culture of extortion" to the more normal "culture of corruption."

A Not So Unlikely Couple

Two thoughts that go together--Saddam Hussein is guilty and the American occupation of Iraq has failed.

Happy About Tuesday

Right now, I'm pretty happy about the mid-term elections on Tuesday even if my prediction about the Democrats gaining majorities in the House and Senate don't pan out. No matter what happens on Tuesday, the 2008 election is setting up very well. Rick Santorum is way behind and George Allen is no longer a legitimate presidential candidate even if he is re-elected. That means th the rigjht-wing doesn't have a strong candidate for the Republican nomination.

John McCain might be a strong candidate of n0n-right Republicans, but he seems to be shrinking before our eyes as he campaigns for other Republicans. The conventional wisdom is that McCain would beat Hillary. I'm beginning to think that the conventional wisdom is way off track.

The Republicans might have one more round of success with baiting liberals, but the formula is weakening and success would mean that the Republicans would be accountable for the next two years of the war in Iraq.

It couldn't happen to nicer people.

The only cloud in my silver lining is the possibility that Santorum could win re-election in Pennsylvania.

Predictions for Next Tuesday

It's November, there's elections, and I'm a political scientist. So, it's time to predict.

House--Democrats pick up 25 seats and Nancy Pelosi becomes speaker, but they don't have a "working majority." Karl Rove has an impressive get out the vote operation, but the Republicans won't be able to get enough of their new voters from 2004 to vote again. As a result, the Democrats pick up a lot of seats in Rust Belt states from Indiana to Connecticut. The main effect of the Democrats' very small, ten seat majority, is that they will be able to play their "hedgehog" game of obstructing the Bush administration's initiatives more effectively.

Senate--The Democrats pick up the six seats they need to form a majority but not enough of a majority to have a lot of effect on the Bush administration. To make this prediction, I'm relying on Claire McCaskell to win in Missouri and James Webb to win in Virginia. It looks like Harold Ford is going to be defeated after a brilliant campaign.

The Kerry Apology Challenge

Democratic candidates should distance themselves from Kerry's remarks about the military, but that isn't all they should do. Democratic candidates should also challenge their opponents to apologize for their support of the invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration's conduct of the occupation, and the tremendous waste of American and Iraqi lives involved.

The statements of Democratic candidates should go like this. "John Kerry's remarks on American soldiers were inappropriate and offensive. If American soldiers had not performed so magnificently in Iraq, the situation would be even worse than it already is. At the same time, I call on my opponent to admit that the invasion of Iraq was misguided and that Bush administration's incompetence has guaranteed the failure of the occupation. Admitting the failure of the current course of action is extremely important if we're ever going to act more effectively and my opponent should dissociate him or herself from the ineffectiveness of the Bush administration now."

Kerry Pulls a Cheney

John Kerry's comment yesterday about students needing to stay in college so they don't get "stuck in Iraq" was stupid. The comment demeaned American troops in Iraq by implying that they weren't smart enough to go to college and it's an example of a real weakness among liberals--a bias against working-class guys. Kerry's remark was also false because a healthy percentage of the National Guard members would have college degrees.

Yet, Kerry should keep trying. Prominent Democrats need to be aggressively stupid until they figure out a way to be aggressively smart. Usually, it's figures like Dick Cheney who make aggressively over-the-top comments and the Democrats who are "outraged," "offended," and demanding apologies in response. These exchanges always make the Republicans look aggressive and strong and the Democrats look weak and whiny. Cheney's telling Kerry to "fuck yourself" on the Senate floor is a great example of this. Likewise, Kerry himself looked pretty strong yesterday when he lashed out at the Bush administration in response to their outrage over his comments.

Prominent Democrats have been ducking in their political foxholes for too long. They need to take a more aggressive stance toward the Bush administration, the war, and the Republican culture of extortion in Washington. Kerry blew it yesterday, but his over-the-top skills will improve if he gets more practice.

How Appealing the Naivete?

Last night I participated in a forum on the mid-term elections on my campus at Morehead State University. My contribution was to emphasize the importance of next Tuesday's elections for determining the strength of the right-wing.

But the audience had other ideas. They wanted the conflict between the right-wing and the rest of the country to be over. A couple of the African-American students talked about reconciliation and healing. It's an appealing naivete. The students want an America that is more hopeful and less vicious than the one we have right now. They just don't understand the extent to which that better world has to be fought for.

Much like the Confederates that so many of them admire, the last thing that people on the right want is any kind of reconciliation with liberals, African-Americans, feminists, gay rights activists, or even moderates and traditional conservatives. For prominent media figures on the right like Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, and Gordon Liddy, a slashing viciousness and vindictiveness is their preferred way fo life. The same was the case with Tom DeLay. Moreover, that's precisely what their followers admire in them. If there were any kind of genocide in the U. S., they would all be eager to pick up their NRA-protected weapons and start shooting.

It's precisely because of their relentless aggression that the activist right will remain a dangerous force even if they lose their power in Congress next Tuesday. And they will remain dangerous until they no longer control the Republican Party.

Webb pulling ahead?

Talking Points Memo has a couple of polls with Jim Webb pulling ahead of George Allen in Virginia. If Webb wins, the Dems will have to win one of the two Senate races in Tennessee and Missouri to move into the majority. Virginia, Tennessee, and Missouri are all red states. They would all be extremely disappointing for the Republicans.

Instead of viewing this election as another 1994, I see it as the beginning of a sea change. As the Republican Party moves right, the Democrats are gradually cleaning them out of the Northeast, making progress in states like Colorado, and are beginning to flip Ohio to blue. Having made themselves into the party of rural whites, the Republicans are beginning to pay the price.

Rove Still a Genius?

Will Karl Rove still be a genius next Wednesday? Perhaps. When the campaign began, Rove had a depth strategy for minimizing the Republican losses that could be expected as a result of the failed war in Iraq, Republican scandals, and the general bumbling of the Bush administration. The bottom line was that Rove wanted to defend Republican majorities by making the Bush administration the "lion that roared." Rove had Bush and Cheney on the road promoting the dichotomies of Republican "resolve" vs the "cut and run" Democrats and Bush's "toughness" on interrogation against the willingness of the Democrats to give rights to terrorists. Rove could count on every bit of red meat rhetoric being echoed effectively by Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, and the rest of the attack media.

Second, the huge Republican money edge would make it possible for Rove to carpet-bomb Democratic candidates with attack ads over the last three weeks of the election. Rove talks a lot about making elections "local." What he means is that he'll use negative advertising to make the elections about their smear campaigns.

Finally, Rove and his allies have built up a get out the vote apparatus that is far superior to anything on the Democratic side. Rove has a comprehensive knowledge of the American political landscape down to the precinct level and he has built up an organizational apparatus that had enormous success in getting out potential Republican voters in 2004.

Rove has already lost the policy dimension of his strategy and might be losing on the negative advertising as well. The problem Rove faced all along as a strategist was that the bad news kept piling up for the Bush administration. September and October have been no different. The Bush administration didn't look very strong when North Korea held their nuclear test. Likewise, the Mark Foley scandal, replaced the "strength and resolve" that Rove wanted to project with an image of sleaziness that was even more powerful than the Abramoff scandal. The situation in Iraq continued to deteriorate as the American military's efforts to stabilize Baghdad bogged down. Right now, there's not much lion left in the Republican Party. Even the attack media has struggled. Limbaugh and Hannity are practically begging Republicans to turn out next Tuesday.

The main question now is the extent to which the right-wing roaring machine is still formidable. Blanketing the airwaves with negative advertising, the Republicans have struggled to take unfavorable issues like the war and the economy out of the Senate campaigns in Virginia and Tennessee. Even where negative advertising has not forced them to focus on defending themselves, it has bullied candidates like Harold Ford and James Webb into devoting their resources to attacking the advertising. In this way, Rove has been successful in making elections local because they've transformed the key Senate contests into referendums on his own advertising.

Even this may not be working. Despite George Allen's attempts to smear Democrat James Webb for passages in his novels, Webb moved ahead in at least three of the polls that were published yesterday. Rove's candidate in Tennessee hasn't established any distance from Harold Ford despite the focus on the racist advertising of the Republicans.

If the Republican ground game doesn't inspire rural and exurban white voters to go to the polls in much larger numbers than predicted, Rove will have failed and the Democrats will win majorities in both the House and the Senate. But does that mean it was a bad strategy. I don't think so. To the contrary, I believe that Rove has been very effective in working with a particularly bad hand. Given the thoroughgoing failures of the Bush administration and the foolishness of Republican candidates like George Allen, Conrad Burns, and Kurt Weldon, there was every reason to expect the Republican right-wing to be dispirited and unfocused. Indeed, it's easy to imagine a lot of Democratic strategists giving up the ghosts. Indeed, many Democrats are still worried about "blowing it" despite their many advantages.

For their part, Rove and people like Ken Mehlman have energetically sought to turn every misstep and scandal into more attacks on the Democrats. In Ken Burns's documentary on the Civil War, the late Shelby Foote emphasized that Robert E. Lee was brilliant on defense as well as offense. In the same way, Karl Rove has been brilliant in defense of the increasingly hopeless Bush administration.

The Unstable Stasis

In some ways, there actually isn't much at stake in this election. Stasis rules now and stasis will continue to rule after next Tuesday. Even if the Democrats win the House and the Senate, the political landscape won't change much. The Bush administration will still be pursuing the failed war in Iraq, torturing Afghan farmers, and fighting off corruption charges from the DeLay/McConnell years. Nothing's going to change there.

There won't be much change from the Democrats either. The Democrats are not going to push for exit from Iraq legislation and tax increases. They won't be doing that many investigations either. Instead, the Democratic leadership will continue to spend most of their energy fending off the right-wing attack media.

Because of the on-going stasis, both sides will be gearing up for the more decisive election in 2008.

Can't You Feel the Earth Move?

Elections 2008: Hillary Clinton has moved ahead of John McCain, 51-44%, in polling for the 2008 presidential election. Obviously, the poll is not a reliable indicator of who's going to win in 2008. The first primaries are still fifteen months away. But it's still significant. Democratic Party insiders assume that Hillary is unelectable because she's too "polarizing." However, Hillary's 51% matches the best that George Bush has done in two presidential elections. The 2008 election will probably be polarizing anyway. As a result, the most important question is who can squeak through to win a toxic political environment and who can govern in a polarized country. Hillary not only looks electable, she is the best qualified to govern in an environment that will still include a hyper-aggressive right wing. She's tough, disciplined, and smart, and she's not above going toe-to-toe with right. All of those qualities are going to be needed because any Democratic president is going to have to stand up to 12 hours a day of hostile examination by right-wing radio.

Can't You Feel the Earth Move: Of course, things could get worse. The tide of anger and bitterness over the Bush administration and the war in Iraq keeps rising. It can be seen in the the on-going disgust over the incompetent response to Katrina, popular reaction to the Mark Foley scandal, and Lou Dobbs' campaign against the "war on the middle class' on CNN. Today, Kevin Tillman, the brother of Pat Tillman, the slain poster boy for post-9/11 war fever, came out with a scorching denunciation of the Bush administration on Truthdig.com. Referring to the Bush administration, Kevin Tillman wonders why "the same incompetent, narcissistic, virtueless, vacuous, malicious criminals are still in charge of this country." Although I agree with Tillman, his eloquent rant introduces the possibility that American politics will start to fragment the same way that Iraq is fragmenting. If the Bush administration is filled with "incompetent, narcissistic, virtueless, vacuous, malicious criminals," the Democratic opposition has been characterized by incompetent, narcissistic, virtueless, vacuous opposition. If both of them are nominated for the presidency, Hillary Clinton and John McCain may find themselves appealing to an electorate that is holding them both accountable for the disasters of the Bush years. As polarized as the nation has been during the Bush years, the situation may be worse by 2008.

Another Wild Card in the Deck. The other wild card in the American deck will be the activist right-wing--the religious right, anti-abortion activists, disappointed neo-conservatives, small government idealists, neo-confederates, and their fellow travelers. There is not going to be a major party candidate on the right-wing of the Republican Party in 2008. The three Republicans who poll best are John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, and Newt Gingrich--none of whom is affiliated with the right. All of the potential right-wing standard bears have been disqualified by failures in leadership (Bill Frist), revelations of their racism (George Allen), upcoming electoral defeat (Rick Santorum), and lack of name recognition among Republicans (Sam Brownback). If the right runs a third-party candidate, they will be guaranteeing their worst nightmare--a Hillary presidency. If McCain or Giuliani win, the right knows that it's in at least four more years of condescending pats on the head. Disgusted with the Bush administration for failing to deliver on its promises and disgusted with the American people for our tolerance of divorce, pre-marital sex, the sin-soaked popular culture, and gay rights, the right might be another source of seething anger for 2008 and beyond.

Bush Folding His Cards In Iraq

Donald Rumsfeld announced yesterday that the Bush administration is still committed to its strategy of "clear, hold, and build" in Iraq. The idea is for American troops to clear areas of insurgent forces and for the Iraqi Army to hold those areas and gradually engage in a social and economic rebuilding process.

But it's just not happening.

The situation for the American military in Iraq is somewhere between retreat and irrelevance. American forces have retreated from the strategy of clearing insurgents out of the cities and towns of Anbar province. Instead, American military units are posted on large bases outside Anbar towns and cities. This keeps American troops safer. It also avoids the ineffective sweeps of 2005 where American troops would move into a town to find that the insurgents (and all men of military age) had simply moved on to other towns. What made the sweeps useless is that the U. S. did not have enough troops to stay continuously on the offensive. As a result of ending the sweeps, however, Anbar has become "an al-Qaeda stronghold" according to one senior American officer.

In other words, the safety-conscious American military is no longer doing the "clearing" necessary for the "clear, hold, and build" strategy to work.

One of the problems with the situation in Anbar is that the U. S. moved troops to Baghdad to address the sectarian bloodshed that was unleashed after insurgent attacks on Samarra in March. Nevertheless, despite the concentration of American assets, the U. S. military has not been able to make itself relevant to the sectarian bloodshed. American policy has been to engage in "sweeps" against both Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias, but death squads and assassins on both sides continue to carry out their work as if American forces aren't there. The Shiite militias pose a particularly difficult problem. Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army and SCIRI's Badr organization are not only integrated into the Maliki government, but are the strongest and the most popular forces associated with the government. To the contrary, the Iraqi Army is a creature of the American military. To destroy the Shiite militias would make the Iraqi government even more of an empty shell and make the American occupation even more unpopular with the Shiite population than it is now.

In other words, the price of making of the American Army making itself relevant in Baghdad might be destabilizing the situation even further. American units might end up staying in their bases in Baghdad just like they're staying in their bases in Anbar.

Of course, if American troops are mostly staying in their bases and DAB (driving around Baghdad) rather than clearing out the enemy, perhaps they're not serving a useful function at all.

Sifting Through Amara

Everything about the the Mahdi Army partial takeover of Amara yesterday was disastrous. Most importantly, it was the first open assault on an Iraqi city by anti-American forces since the American re-taking of Falluhah in November, 2004. Keeping large-scale insurgent forces from taking over large cities (Amara has 340,000 residents) has been one of the few claims to success that the American military can make over the last two years. Along with the continuing large-scale violence in Baghdad, the take-over of Amara is an indication that the situation in Iraq is regressing and that the American military is becoming increasingly irrelevant to the many little civil wars that are going on.

Perhaps more important, the Mahdi army's activity in Amara looks like a strong indication of the balance of power between the militias and the Iraqi army and police. The militias are stronger. This presents the Maliki government with a dilemna. If Maliki goes along with the American idea of dismantling Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army and SCIRI's Badr Brigades, he would be destroying the most effective sources of power in the Shiite community and making all Shiites more vulnerable to Sunni insurgents and terrorists. If Maliki does not go along, the Shiite community itself might splinter into a Hobbesian war of all against all and lose the support of the American military.

It's hard to tell which option is worse. However, there can't be much doubt that both scenarios represent a further weakening of the American position in Iraq.

Dick Cheney Used to Be a Genius

Dick Cheney--Vice President Dick Cheney was on Rush Limbaugh yesterday claiming that the government in Iraq was doing "remarkably well." In a way, you have to admire the brazen quality of Cheney's lies whether it's about mobile bio-labs, "six months and we're out," "they'll greet us with flowers," or the insurgency is in "its last throes." After his term is up, Cheney could open up an interactive, online exhibit where he tells his favorite lies. He can call it Dick Cheney's fantasyland. But all is not well in Dick's fantasy world. The fact that the veep could not come up with an exciting new lie this close to the election is a sign that he and his staff aren't fully engaged.

Lou Dobbs--One of the things that's killing the Bush administration is that conservative figures like Lou Dobbs and Joe Scarborough are becoming dismissive critics. From all appearances, Lou Dobbs used to be a business-oriented media guy. Now, however, Sweet Lou is taking up class warfare in opposition to the Bush administration and the Republicans. According to Dobbs,

"It's been a tough decade for the American middle class, which has been experiencing stagnant wages in the face of rapidly increasing costs for health care and prescription drugs, soaring energy prices and escalating tuition costs. But worst of all, the middle class is up against a Congress that is driven by powerful corporations and dominant special interests."

If the Democrats were more committed to being coherent, that would be the Democratic attack line on the Bush economy.

Karl Rove--I'm one of the people who think that Karl Rove is a real political genius. The same for Tom DeLay and Newt Gingrich for that matter. They've remade American politics since the 1992 election. Jacob Weisburg at Slate, though, is a skeptic who thinks that this election is the first real test of Rove's abilities and that Rove will prove himself a genius only if the Republicans keep their majorities in the House and Senate. Talk about overly high standards. Hannibal, Napoleon, and Robert E. Lee all lost in much bigger ways than Rove is going to lose, but they're still bona fide military geniuses. What makes Rove a genius is that he has created a seamless architecture of money, policy, and media for electing Republican candidates despite the unpopularity of the conservative agenda and the weaknesses of his own candidates. Given the disastrous war in Iraq, the incompetent response to Katrina, popular unhappiness with the economy, and the endless litany of Republican scandals, the Republicans deserve to lose both the Senate and the House by wide margins. As it is, the Republicans still have a good chance to hold the Senate even if the House is lost. If Rove can hold the lost Republican seats in the House under twenty and maintain a tie in the Senate (that can be broken by Dick Cheney), he would still be a bona fide genius in my book.

O'Reilly another Cronkite--Sort of

President Bush didn't sound very good during his interview with Bill O'Reilly today. Bush had the usual array of excuses and rationalizations for the failure of his Iraq and North Korea policies. But O'Reilly was almost as skeptical of Bush's ideas as Keith Olbermann and Steve Colbert and that falling away from the faith on O'Reilly's part made Bush look just as bad as Lyndon Johnson looked when Walter Cronkite gave up on the Vietnam War.

Republicans: We Deserve to Lose

This is the quote from a David Broder column that appeared in today's Lexington Herald-Leader:

"If I have heard it once, I have heard it a dozen times: Major Republican figures, including top officials of several past GOP administrations and Congresses, say, "We deserve to lose this election."

I wonder if Newt Gingrich was in that group.

Was It Just Optimism?

The chief of the British Army, Gen. Richard Dannatt came out in favor of a British withdrawal today. According to Gen. Dannatt, the presence of British troops are "exascerbating" the security problems in Iraq rather than making them better. Gen. Dannatt added that the original Bush/Blair plan for Iraq might have relied more on "optimism" than anything else.

"Optimism" might be a mild term for the Bush administration's initial ideas for occupying Iraq.

Plan 1:
The first Bush "plan" was to:
1. install Ahmed Chalabi as the new Iraqi leader;
2. retain most of the Saddam Hussein administrative apparatus;
3. pay for Iraq's reconstruction through oil revenues.
4. Get out after six easy months.

Plan 2
The second Bush plan was to train an Iraqi military to take over the fight against the insurgency from the American military with an assumption that the U. S. would have drastically weakened the insurgency.

Under Plan 1, the new bosses would be pretty much the same as the old bosses except that the Chalabi at the top would be answerable to the Bush administration instead of the ghost of dictators past like Saddam.

However, Chalabi was a convicted felon in Jordan, had no popular base in Iraq, and could not be taken seriously because of his lack of connection with the Shiite religious establishment.

There also was no chance that the long-suffering Shiite majority was going to tolerate the continued operation of Saddam's bureaucratic apparatus.

The first Bush plan was ludicrous from the beginning.

Plan 2 was not as obviously hopeless as the original plan, but still has failed.

The primary problem has been the Iraqi military and police forces. At best, the Iraqi military is more loyal to their ethnic groups and militias than they are to the Iraqi government. At worst, they have been riddled with insurgent infiltrators.

The middle ground is also discouraging. The Iraqi military and police often been unwilling to fight the insurgents the American way, preferring to form death squads on the side. In a weirdly ironic development, the death squads have replaced the American military as the primary opposition to the insurgency in Baghdad. As a result, American generals are in the awkward position of trying to make the world's best army relevant to the Iraqi sectarian bloodbath. There's some implicitly "good"news there in the sense that the Shiite population can defend itself, but it now looks like the American legacy in Iraq is going to be years, perhaps decades, of slaughter.

Right now, it takes optimism to see any kind of stable situation emerging in Iraq. Anything else is just delusion.

Five Things I Think About North Korean Nukes

1. Axis of Evil 2, Bush 1. With North Korea testing it's nuclear weapon despite five years of Bush administration blustering and the Iranians bankrolled Hezbollah's successful defense against the Israelis, the Bush administration's only win against the Axis of Evil has been the invasion of Iraq, a victory that divided American government, undermined American global credibility, and weakened the American military. Like the Greek king Pyrrhus, the Bush administration can't afford many more such victories.

2. Did the Bush Administration win or lose? It would appear that the Bush administration's strategy of cutting off contact with the North Koreans didn't work. The Bush administration certainly failed to successfully pursue the American interest of keeping the North Koreans from having nukes. But does the Bush administration care about American interests. It seems not. Once the North Koreans didn't cave in to the Bush administration's blandishments, the Bushies seemed to lose interest. Maybe they didn't care whether North Korea had nuclear weapons.

3. Birds of a Feather. Evidently, the North Korean test did blow off nuclear material even though it was generally unsuccessful. That creates a symmatrical status quo. The U. S. has a failed missile defense system to protect us against North Korea's failed bomb.

4. The Democrats. Do the Democrats have a North Korea policy or did they get lost on the way to the game? Again

5. The Real Threat. Sure, Kim Jong-il is eccentric and unpredictable, but North Korea's bomb is only half the size of Hiroshima, North Korea doesn't have al-Qaeda supporters in its military and intelligence services, and Kim doesn't have to deal with a weekly assasination attempt. That's why I'm much more worried about Pakistan than I am about North Korea.

The Bad Grammar of Hyper-Aggression

The Republicans let the nation know over and over that the real war for them is the war against the Democrats. The Bush administration says it's on the offensive against global terrrorism, but American policy in Iraq is an essentially defensive, keep casualties as low as possible, let's not have the war on the front page position. However, the administration and the Republican leadership keep the offensive going against the Democrats at all costs.

Today, Rep. Jack Kingston of Georgia sent a note to Nancy Pelosi demanding to know if Pelosi and the minority leadership were keeping the Mark Foley scandal under wraps until just before the election. I would say "democratic" leadership, but Kingston insists on the bad grammar of "democrat leadership. Like most conservatives, Kingston assumes that ignorance and macho aggression are closely allied.

Here's the quote from Kingston's statement:

"Just as it must be determined whether any Republican members or political operatives were aware of and attempted to conceal Mr. Foley's activities, it must also be determined whether any Democrat members or political operatives were aware of and attempted to conceal these same activities."

I guess it's an interesting possibility, but Kingston has no more evidence that Pelosi was covering up the Foley scandal than the Bush administration had for WMD in Iraq.

The key point is that evidence and truth matter just as little for the Republican leadership in the U. S. anymore than they've mattered in Iraq--perhaps less. Perhaps the Bush administration and the Republican leadership would do better if they fought al-Qaeda with the same intensity they fight the Democrats.

Notes on the Foley/Hastert Scandal

What would you have done if you were in Dennis Hastert's shoes and you had heard that a powerful ally like Mark Foley had sent some sexually inappropriate messages to pages?

That's a fair question. Would you have negligently ignored the issue like Dennis Hastert? Would you have believed Foley when he claimed he was innocent? Or would you have pushed the issue to ensure that the congressman was not sexually propositioning congressional pages?

I know what I would have done because I've been in a version of that situation. As an interim department chair, a female student and her brother brought me a series of inappropriate e-mails from a faculty member. Those e-mails were MUCH less salacious than Foley's messages to pages, but the messages made it clear that the faculty member was engaged in a seduction campaign against the student.

My immediate response was to file a sexual harassment charge. That would ensure that the matter would be further investigated and that the university affirmative action officer would come to a decision. Dennis Hastert should have done the same thing. He should have ensured that the Mark Foley accusations were further investigated to find out if there was more. Instead, Hastert just took Foley's word that he wasn't engaged in anything appropriate. Foley was lying, but Hastert was negligent to believe him without engaging in furher investigation.

Good News--More American Troops Dying in Iraq

Unfortunately, the headline is true. The biggest danger the American Army has in Baghdad is not being relevant to the sectarian struggles between the Shiites and Sunnis? The fact that thirteen American troops have died in Baghdad over the last three days is a strong indication that somebody sees the American military as worth attacking. There's not much doubt now that the U. S. military is a player in Baghdad. The big question now is whether the military can achieve its objectives of diminishing or eliminating the sectarian bloodbath. Right now, there's no evidence that such is the case.

The Two Sides of Rummy's Survival

There's a lot of speculation from Bob Woodward's upcoming book on the pressures to fire Donald Rumsfeld after the 2004 election.

The obvious reason is that firing Rumsfeld would have been a political disadvantage. Letting Rumsfeld go would have made it look like Bush actually was dissatisfied with events in Iraq while he was telling everyone how wonderful things were. In other words, Bush decided to keep failing in Iraq rather than make himself look like a liar.

But, I think that Bush has deeper reasons for keeping Rumsfeld. Bush admires aggressive, over-powering men like Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Nolan Ryan, or Roger Clemens of the Houston Astros. Wishing that he had an overwhelming personality or athletic ability himself, Bush has a deep admiration for other men like that. In this way, Bush likes the way that Rumsfeld runs roughshod over the military because he's always wanted to run roughshod over things himself.

Conversely, George Bush has a deep empathy for failure. Having failed with four oil companies before being set up with the Texas Rangers, Bush knows the frustration, futility, and impotence of doomed projects more than the vast majority of men and women. As a result, Pres. Bush would have more empathy with Rumsfeld's failures as defense secretary than he would for people who are having success.

So, Rumsfeld survives even as Baghdad falls apart. The wannabe in Bush admires the arrogant brashness of Rumsfeld while the loser in Bush commiserates with Rumsfeld's failures.

How Much Bolder Can They Get

Tonight President Bush claimed that withdrawal from Iraq would 'embolden the terrorists.' Probably, but how much bolder can the terrorists be than they are now?

Falling Off a High Wire

There is a report on CNN that Terrell Owens, celebrated wide receiver for the Dallas Cowboys, attempted to commit suicide by overdosing on pain pills, and was saved from such a gruesome and wasteful death by a friend.

I'm glad to see that someone was there to help him.

Owens has been on the high wire of making high levels of demands on his environment and even higher levels of demands on himself for years. It's a good thing that someone was there when he fell off.

George Allen's Head

This week's George Allen crisis involves a college teammate at the University of Virginia saying that Allen often used the n-word with other whites on the UVA football team. According to Dr. Ken Shelton's interview with Salon, Allen once took the head of a deer that had been killed by a member of his hunting party and put it in the mailbox of a nearby black resident.

Everything about the incident was vintage racism--looking for an opportunity to intimidate and disgust his friends, employing blacks as a kind of "favorite target," and then treating it as a huge joke. Dr. Shelton decided to go to the press after he saw clips of the "macaca" incident: "When I saw the look in his eye in that camera and using the word 'macaca,' it just brought back the bullying way I knew from George back then," Shelton said.

For George Allen, racism was attractive because traditions of white racism in the United States provided what was for him an extremely appealing outlet for his bullying. Unlike a lot of "passive racists" who react to things they see and hear about blacks, Allen went out of his way to engage in racial harassment and surround himself with Confederate flags and other symbols of white supremacy. For Allen, the virulence of his racism was an outlet for the aggressive bullying at the core of his personality.

Decoding the NIE

“Key Judgments” of the April 2006 National Intelligence Estimate have been declassified. To put the issue simply, initial U. S. operations in Afghanistan “seriously damaged” al-Qaida, but the invasion of Iraq has resulted in a reversal of that progress and led to the growth and diffusion of the “global jihadist movement.” Because of the weakening of al-Qaeda, there is less of an immediate threat than there was in 2001, but the growth of the global jihadist movement will lead to more attacks on U. S. interests “at home and abroad.”

How has the invasion of Iraq led to growth in global jihadism?
1. “The Iraq conflict has become the cause celebre. for jihadists, breeding a deep
resentment of US involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for
the global jihadist movement.”

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

In other words, the jihad against the American occupation in Iraq is creating a new wave of terrorist leaders, operatives, and fighters trained in operations against the American military. When those terrorists return to their home countries, they are greeted by an audience that is highly receptive to the global jihadi message because of the intense and widespread Muslim resentment of the occupation.

If it were not for the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq, the global jihadist movement would be much weaker. The NIE mentions several reasons for this. Most importantly, the jihadist program of sharia based governance is unpopular with the majority of the Muslim population. Likewise, many important Muslim clerics oppose global jihad and there has been at least a potential for democratization. However, the enormous resentment of Arab and Muslim populations over the U. S. invasion of Iraq keep these factors from resulting in a weakening of global jihadism. At this point, the appeal of jihadism is based on resentment over the American occupation of Iraq and the endemic corruption and stagnation of Muslim nations. The NIE gives the impression that the invasion of Iraq has become the most important factor stimulating the growth of global jihadism.

The NIE engages in a little wishful thinking concerning how global jihadism could be countered. Encouraging the “Muslim mainstream” to disavow the global jihadists, the possibility of defeating the jihadists in Iraq, and the death of high profile leaders like bin Laden and al-Zarqawi in “rapid succession” are all posed as developments that could reduce the appeal of global jihadism. However, the NIE doesn’t express much confidence that any of these events will happen soon (although Zarqawi, of course, has been killed).

Right now, the major factor cited by the NIE as discouraging attacks on the U. S. is that Europe presents such an inviting target. Despite our $500 billion military, cultural and geographical isolation appears to be the strongest weapon in the American arsenal.

The NIE Key Judgments are written in the driest possible bureaucratic language. However, it is necessary to point out that the NIE’s emphasis on connecting the occupation of Iraq to the growth of global jihadism makes the NIE a left-wing document. Left-wing war critics of the Bush administration have been arguing that an invasion of Iraq would stimulate global terrorism since even before the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Being correct is no consolation for the disastrous outcomes of the Iraq invasion, but acknowledging that the invasion was doomed to make the war on terrorism worse is an important element in rethinking American policy for the future.

Bushies Focusing Their Delusions

Today, Condoleeza Rice is claiming that the Bush administration did "at least as much" as the Clinton administration to fight al-Qaeda before 9-11.

I doubt there will be any investigation of Rice's claims, but Rice is wrong and she knows she's wrong. That's a nice way to say she's lying.

Before 9-11, the Bush administration was completely focused on promoting missile defense as their most important defense priority. Missile defense was one of those peacetime defense scares where people like Donald Rumsfeld promoted the idea that Chinese and North Korean missiles were a threat to the U. S. that could be met once and for all by anti-missile missiles. It was all non-sense. North Korea has only the crudest nuclear bombs, if that. They're at least as long a way from having nuclear missile technology as the U. S. is from having a functioning missile defense. When North Korea does have missile technology, it will be easy for them to evade missile defenses. It turns out that evading defensive missiles is a lot easier and cheaper than developing them.

Because they were focused on selling the whole missile defense delusion, the Bush administration downgraded the reality of the terrorist threat. In fact, Bush's national security team dismissed the concerns of the Clintonistas, pushed counter-terrorism coordinator Richard Clarke out of the "principals meetings" down to the deputies meetings, and laughed off the warnings of both Clarke and George Tenet. Just as George Bush spent all of August, 2001 on vacation in Texas, the Bush security team was taking a vacation from counter-terrorism.

Unfortunately, the reality of 9-11 didn't disconnect the Bush team from their delusions. They merely switched from missile defense to invading Iraq.

Bob Schieffer Preacher

Going for the easy patriotism points, Bob Schieffer decided to use his soapbox on Face the Nation to lecture about American democracy by comparing the Bush/McCain compromise on torture to the state of things in Venezuala and Iran.

"It's not a perfect plan, but it shows how we do things in a democracy — out in the open — and in accordance with the law even when dealing with the worst of the worst. "

Unfortunately for Schieffer and patriots everywhere, things don't look so good in the real world of the Bush administration. In fact, the Bushies have been doing everything they can to flout the Constitution, the War Crimes Act, military regulations, and international law concerning the handling of prisoners. Likewise, the Bush administration prefers to do everything in secrecy and kept Congress and the public in the dark as much as possible about CIA prisons, the rendition of detainees, torture practices, and various exercises in data mining. If anything, the Bush administration has been making an effort to be as much like the "worst of the worst" as possible.

Schieffer compared Hugo Chavez to one of the comic arch-villain in the old Batman series. It was an apt comparison. But the Bush administration doesn't escape the shame of Batman comparisons. Like Michael Keaton's obsessive, murderous Batman, the Bush administration is scarcely more moral than the insurgents they are fighting even if we are more moral than our Iraqi government allies who are taking chain saws to people as they kill them. The Bush administration is also like Adam West's Batman in being so comically inept that you have to wonder if they'll make it to commercial. And whether the Bush administration is Keaton-murderous or West-inept, the bad guys are far from intimidated and global terrorism keeps getting stronger now that it has a new home in Western Iraq.

However, unlike Batman or Hugo Chavez, the murderous ineptitude of the Bush administration has real world consequences for the well-being of Iraq and the United States.

Our Rogue Nation

The details of the understanding between on the military tribunal legislation are still being discussed, but I believe is that the McCain/Bush compromise will enshrine the status of the U. S. as a rogue nation into American law.

To date, the Bush administration has been conducting its torture exercises and rendition policy on an ad hoc basis outside American military codes and statutory law as well as international law. If the current proposals pass (and pass muster with the Supreme Court, the situation will change from the Bush administration being an outlaw government to the United States being an outlaw nation.

George Allen One Ups Trent

A day after acknowledging his Jewish heritage, George Allen pledged to spend the rest of his life fighting discrimination of all kinds. Allen must have seen some really bad poll numbers yesterday. After all, when Trent Lott got in trouble over his Strom Thurmond comments, all he did was pledge support for affirmative action.

Of course, it would have been nice if Allen had admitted that the despised liberals had been right about racial, ethnic, and religious issues along and that he had been wrong. But that would be too much to expect from someone who can't be honest with himself let alone others.

Musharaff Bites the Hand

President Pervez Musharaff claimed today that the Bush administration had told him that the U. S. would bomb Pakistan "back to the stone age" if he didn't cooperate with us in the war on terror.

Of course, Musharaff's public announcement of that threat is tantamount to a declaration of independence from the Bush administration.

No doubt Musharaff sees the Bush administration as weak and wants to give them the back of his hand.

But he should have gotten in line with the rest of our former allies.

The Family That Potters Together

If you don't know what a horcrux is, you should probably move on to the next blog.

Today, my wife called me from work at 10:30am to tell me that she'd figured out that Harry Potter was a horcrux and that he would have to kill himself in order to kill Voldemort.

That's because we're a Harry Potter family--multiple copies of all six books, tapes of all six books, all four movies, and access to Harry Potter web sites.

So, we talk a lot about what's going to happen in Book 7.

Here's our Family Ideas:

1. Harry Potter is going to die in Book 7. Voldemort has to die too. It may end up that Harry, Voldemort, and Snape all die.
2. Harry is going to find the four missing horcruxes by performing legilimency on Voldemort
3. RAB is Regulus Black, the brother of Sirius Black
4. Draco Malfoy has become a werewolf (adapted from one of my students).
5. There's going to be trouble in Voldemort's camp because of the destabilizing presence of Severus Snape and Draco Malfoy (if he lives very long).
6. Dumbledore was on to Snape. That's why he gave Snape the jinxed Defense Against the Dark Arts job.
7. Because Voldemort is a much more accomplished wizard than Harry, J. K. Rowling still has to provide mechanisms to even the odds.
Harry's assets:
Harry is mentally stronger than Voldemort (Book 4)
Harry has access to Voldemort's mind (Book 5).
Voldemort has Harry's blood in him (Book 4)
Wormtail is going to aid Harry (Book 3)
Dissension among the Death Eaters (my assumption)
Harry can now apparate (a major equalizer)
Harry has Hermione to figure out several of the major puzzles
Harry's friend Ron has one good idea per book

Mary eventually decided that Harry couldn't be a horcrux because of questions about why Harry wouldn't have been more attracted to the Dark Arts if he had part of Voldemort's soul. I'm not so sure. The idea that Harry would have to die himself in order to kill Voldemort would solve a lot of problems. I'm willing to give it more thought before I give up on it.

Further Notes on Family Values

It's also useful to note that family values rhetoric has also contributed to the movement for gay marriage. Just like everybody else in the United States, gay people have seen that the value of marriage and children has increased dramatically since the 1980's. Consequently, more gays and lesbians want to enjoy the benefits of marriage and give their love to children.

Unintentionally providing a positive impetus to the gay rights movement is one of the few real contributions that right-wing evangelical groups like Focus on the Family have made to American society.

Unfortunately, such pressure groups are so blinded by their focus on self-righteously promoting their bigotries, raising money, and piling up political influence that they can't see the millions of gay people who honestly want to live as married couples and parents.

However, it's worth mentioning that Jesus saw that kind of self-righteousness in the Pharisee movement of Ancient Judea and condemned the Pharisees in Matthew 23 by calling out again and again: "Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites" before giving details on their crimes.

Family Values Kidnappings

Today, a woman broke into a home in Lonedale, MO, slashed the throat of a new mother, and stole an eight-day old infant. There have been similar cases of baby-knapping in Kentucky over the last couple of years as well.

One likely cause of baby kidnapping is the "family values" rhetoric that has become so dominant in American society. Because the paraphernalia of traditional families--two-parents, stay-at-home moms, abstinence until marriage, the perfect wedding-- has been hyped so relentlessly, the value of babies has increased to the point that not having children has become intolerable for many men and women. In some cases, not having children has become so intolerable that couples steal newborns rather than be deprived.

Maybe it's time to start thinking positive thoughts about childlessness again.

There is Some Justice in the World

After Michigan's 47-21 thrashing of Notre Dame today, Charlie Weis has become yesterday's genius.

Sunshine for the President

There seems to be a ray of sunshine in the gloom that surrounded President Bush yesterday. Amidst the rebellion against the president's plans for military tribunals, the impending indictiment of Bob Ney, and the continued carnage in Baghdad, it looks like gas prices are headed for a serious drop. An article in the McClatchy papers indicates that prices could fall from the current average of $2.59 all the way to $1.15 in the next few months. Maybe we won't need all that Iraqi oil now.

The Conservative Opposition to Bush

Pres. Bush, VP Dick Cheney, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld spent the better part of two weeks before the 9-11 commemorations seeking to redefine the Iraq War. The line was that bin Laden was like Hitler, that "victory" was the only alternative in Iraq, and that opposition to the war was morally confused at best, vaguely treasonous at worst.

On Sept. 12, Bush's opponents began to strike back, led not by the ineffective Democrats, but by traditional and moderately conservative Republicans and military figures. Democratic leaders like Harry Reid were too busy being offended and outraged to do anything meaningful. However, President Bush's image had barely faded from tv screens when Pentagon officials leaked a report by a Marine intelligence officer claiming that Anbar province was "lost" to the American cause and that al-Qaeda was now the most important political force in Western Iraq. The next day, Marine Maj. General Zilmer dug the knife in deeper by claiming that troop levels in Anbar were fine unless the military actually wanted to defeat the insurgents.

So much for staying the course.

The counter-offensive then spread to the Senate where John McCain mobilized opposition to Bush's plan for military tribunals by producing a letter from former Joint Chiefs Chair John Vessey claiming that Bush was undermining "the moral basis which has generally guided our conduct in war throughout our history." Heavy stuff.

By today, the Republican rebellion had generated enough steam that Bush went to Capital Hill in person. But McCain had another ace up his sleeve, a supportive letter from a figure who has far more credibility than President Bush, Colin Powell.

Whichever side can move opinion among moderates and traditional conservatives will have a good shot at winning elections in 2006 and 2008. The events of the last couple of days indicate that the Bush administration may have already lost that game even if the Democrats have yet to find the stadium.

Victory versus Reality

You know things are bad. The Bush administration must have known that the situation in Iraq are really bad when they felt compelled to call in six conservative columnists on Tuesday to meet with the President. Mona Charen was there and has a column today emphasizing Bush's view that "victory" is the only option in the war against Islamic extremism.

Somebody needs to tell the generals. Unfortunately, the word on victory has not seeped back to American commanders in al-Anbar, the rebellious North Carolina-sized Iraqi provice where we have thirty thousand troops. According to Gen. Richard Zilmer, that's enough to fulfill the current mission of training Iraqi troops, but not nearly enough for defeating the insurgency in Anbar.

"Marine Maj. Gen. Richard C. Zilmer told reporters . . . that he has enough U.S. troops - about 30,000 - to accomplish what he called his main mission: training Iraqi security forces. 'Now, if that mission statement changes - if there is seen a larger role for coalition forces out here to win that insurgency fight - then that is going to change the metrics of what we need out here.'"

Not only is victory not the "only" option, it appears that victory is not an option at all.

Even the right-wing columnists know this. Although sympathetic to Bush, Charen ends her column by quoting Canadian columnist Peter Worthington: "There has never been an unpopular winning war or a popular losing war."

If the generals and the right-wing rats are jumping the "victory" ship, it's time for Bush to think about "reconfiguring" our military posture in Iraq.

Before We Bury Syria

The terrorist attack on the U. S. Embassy in Syria looks like a one day story. But perhaps we should think about it a little longer.

Syrian guards stopped four terrorists from entering the U. S. Embassy compound. According to the Fox web site, there are usually thirty Syrian guards outside the embassy and a contingent of Marines inside. So, if the terrorists had entered the compound, they probably would have been killed quickly anyway.

So, why attack the American embassy? There must have been easier targets in Damascus for Syria's homegrown al-Qaeda group. Why not the Saudi, Egyptian, or Jordanian embassies? Why not Hezbollah offices?

To answer this question, it is useful to think about what would have happened if the Syrian defense of the American Embassy had been half-hearted or cowardly. Of course, the answer is that there would have been plenty of speculation among the American right over whether Syria had sponsored or planned the terrorist attack and increased pressure to launch an invasion of Syria despite the deteriorating situation in Iraq. There are a lot of reasons to think that the al-Qaeda group in Syria would have welcomed such an invasion. Like the American invasion of Iraq, an invasion of Syria would have removed a secular Arab regime and led to a rapid growth of Islamist attitudes among the Syrian population. Even better from the view of the terrorists, an American invasion of Syria would have been likely to help al-Qaeda recruiting and lead to more terrorist incidents in the future.

The American invasion of Iraq has given global terrorism such a lift that it looks like the terrorists are seeking an encore in Syria.

Fortunately, the terrorist attack failed. Unfortunately, the terrorists were probably correct in thinking that the Bush administration could be manipulated into another disastrous invasion.

Blogging about Value

Getting What He Deserves: Congratulations to Deion Branch, wide receiver, for leaving the New England Patriots and getting a $39 million contract from the Seattle Seahawks. It was good to see Branch get what he deserves. Branch is an exciting wide receiver who is making his mark in the NFL after being unfairly ignored at the University of Louisville in Kentucky. The Patriots are a bullying organization dedicated to giving their players the shaft at contract time. Their recent success is an insult to fair-minded people everywhere.

Short-sighted people might kvetch that Branch was already highly paid at $1 million, but we should be congratulating anybody who is able to lift their standard of living against a greedy, bare-knuckled management like that of the Patriots.

Not Adding Much: Sen. Harry Reid, the Democratic leader in the Senate, was on the floor today complaining about President Bush "politicizing" the 9-11 remembrances with his speech. That adds nothing to the debate. The Bush administration has been politicizing 9-11 almost from the time that the planes hit the towers. Instead of just criticizing Bush for being partisan, Reid should be a lot more partisan himself and mount an attack on the Bush's administration's obsession with politicking the war in Iraq rather than fighting it. If Harry Reid were half as good at political leadership as Deion Branch is at football, the Democrats would be doing a lot better.

Loss Leader Strikes Again: Fortunately for the Democrats, Dick Cheney is still Vice-President and President Bush still trusts him. Viewing 9-11 as an opportunity to fulfill his dreams of an imperial presidency in a more authoritarian nation, Dick Cheney has used his position to pursue the fantasies of the right rather than promote "the general welfare." One would think that Cheney's stock would have fallen after he lied the country into the pointless invasion of Iraq. However, having repeatedly felt the sting of failure as a presidential son himself, President Bush has an extraordinary level of empathy for high level incompetents like Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. So, Cheney was leading the charge of Bush defenders on last Sunday's talk shows and has been assigned to work out a compromise on Bush's proposal for military tribunals. Needless to say, prospects for success are bleak.

FAA Gambles Again in Lexington

The bodies from the recent crash have barely been buried, but Blue Grass Airport in Lexington, KY has already gone back to its "normal" understaffing.

According to today's Lexington Herald-Leader, the traffic control tower at the airport was getting ready to have a radar unit in Indianapolis take over so that the controllers in Lexington could take a break.

It appears that the FAA normally pays controllers overtime rather than letting them take breaks for meals and refocusing.

One wonders how many crashes it will take before the FAA stops gambling with controller staffing.

Stop Being Offended

I didn't see the ABC docudrama on 9-11. Not having a television is part of the price my wife and I pay for being progressive parents.

But the outrage of the Clinton administration officials goes on. The former counter-terrorism guru Richard Clarke was the one who was outraged tonight.

I'm tired of the outrage. I'm tired of Democrats and liberals being outraged, disgusted, and offended over the provocations of the Bush administration and right-wingers everywhere. I'm tired of seeing Harry Reid, Chuck Shumer, Bill Clinton, and Al Gore acting like they're personally wounded every time the Republicans lie about them. It makes them look weak which, of course, is precisely what the right-wing wants to see.

Instead of being offended, they should just fight. The docudrama on 9-11 should have been seen as an opportunity. If Rush Limbaugh's producer friends can produce trash about 9-11, why can't the thousands of left-leaning writers, producers, and directors start creating shows about the Bush administration's decisions to invade Iraq. Personally, I'd like to see a scene where Dick Cheney explains to a junior staffer that conservatives don't have to tell the truth. I'd also like to see Condi Rice make an aside to Scooter Libby about how easy it was to manipulate the President. A little dramatization would help everybody understand the Bush adminstration better.

The Democratic leadership thinks that people in the Red States want to see the Democrats be more religious. Perhaps. But here in Kentucky, I've found that people want to see the Democrats show more toughness and determination. And they're right. If the Democrats win in 2008, they'll have to take on a debilitating war in Iraq, keep up and expand the police efforts to foil terrorism, and fend off an avalanche of low-blows and innuendo from the right-wing attack machine. People in states like Kentucky want to see that the Democrats are tough enough to handle the job.

One way we can show that is to stop being offended.

9-11: Digging the Hole Deeper

In my office, I keep a picture of a plane plowing into the World Trade Center.

I also keep a picture of an American soldier carrying a body bag of another American soldier.The two photographs go together because the Bush administration decided to leverage the 9-11 attacks into an invasion of Iraq and an effort to establish right-wing social and political dominance in the United States.

The horrific viciousness and destructiveness of the terrorist attacks will always be paired with the monumental cynicism of the Bush administration's response. Defense neo-cons like Paul Wolfowitz had been hoping for a pretext to invade Iraq. 9-11 gave them their chance. Irving Kristol, John Bolton, and John Yoo chafed at the constraints of the American Constitution, American human rights laws, and international law. 9-11 allowed them to luxuriate in the romance of torture, run roughshod over due process, and create an illegal international system of secret prisons. Karl Rove and Dick Cheney wanted a bigger stick for beating the Democrats and liberals. 9-11 was the biggest stick of all.

Ultimately, bin Laden and the Bush administration will only get part of what they deserve. The Bush administration and the right will meet their electoral Dien Bien Phu in 2008 if not this November. But many of them deserve to be arrested for crimes against humanity. Bin Laden won't live long after the Bush administration leaves office. The main thing keeping him alive and global terrorism in business is world-wide revulsion over the Bush administration and the war in Iraq. Yet, even though Bin Laden's days are numbered, he won't receive nearly as many deaths as he deserves.

There is a certain mutual dependence between the Bush administration and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida. More than twenty-nine hundred people died at the World Trade Center and the number of American soldiers who have died in Iraq is also climbing toward 2,900. Al-Qaeda's attack on the World Trade Center gave the Bush administration it's chance to pursue the plans for global political and military domination that conservative think-tankers had been dreaming up since the fall of the Soviet Union. Likewise, Bush's invasion of Iraq allowed bin Laden to see his dreams of global jihad come to life. Both sides get to live out their fantasies.

Still, I should have a third picture-a picture of those who have died in Iraq as a result of the invasion. There have been more than 50,000 deaths in Iraq over the last three years, now at a rate of 1,500 dead civilians per month. It's like Iraq has had more than 16 of it's own 9-11's and Iraq's civilian dead are just as much a part of the 9-11 story as the dead in New York, the Pentagon, and Pennsylvania, or the American combat casualties. It's not like the Bush administration and al-Qaeda have killed all the thousands of Iraqi's themselves, but Bush and bin Laden started the chain reactions that led to the nightmare in Iraq today and they should share in the blame for the many thousands of Iraqis who have died as a result of their fantasies.There may yet be some redemption for 9-11. I hope there is. Right now though, the Bush administration and al-Qaeda have merely teamed up to dig the hole deeper.

Little Sympathy for Clintonistas

Clintonistas like Madeleine Albright and Bruce Lindsey are chuffed that ABC's upcoming docu-drama on 9-11 shows them in a bad light.

Even though I support Hillary for President, I don't have too much sympathy for them. The Clinton Administration didn't mess up as badly as the Bush people, but they still blew it in the run-up to 9-11. After the attacks on the Cole and the African Embassies, the Clinton Administration should have gone to war against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. The Clintonistas had access to the intelligence, they were definitely worried about al-Qaeda, and they had the military at their disposal. They should have acted.

For some reason, however, they were more focused on Saddam Hussein.

Bush Shows Why We're Losing in Iraq

President Bush's speech yesterday was a minor masterpiece of opportunism. Mounting a strong defense of Guantanamo, CIA prisons overseas, rendition of suspects to foreign countries, and the use of torture to interrogate suspects, President Bush argued that all of those illegal procedures had been important in heading off further terrorist attacks after 9-11. The President then capped off the performance by demanding that Congress pass legislation to legitimate military tribunals that used evidence gained through torture and deprived suspects of the right to know much of the evidence being used against them.

What made the speech masterful was that Bush and his team knows that most Americans support the extra-legal apparatus for dealing with terror suspects. As a result, Bush was able to remind voters of their bedrock support for prior Administration initiatives in the war on terror and then demand that the Democrats in Congress either affirm Bush's defiance of the Constitution, American law, and international law as valid or engage in their own defiance of American public opinion. Either way, the Democrats will end up looking weak--weak and ineffective in their opposition to the President or weak in their determination to fight terrorism.

It's all very clever. It's a bold stroke at a time when the Bush administration has looked increasingly inept in its efforts to cope with the deteriorating situation in Iraq.

However, the Bush administration's political opportunism is also a large part of the reason why we are doing so poorly in Iraq. For the Bush administration, the war in Iraq has first and foremost been a political war against the opposition Democrats. Much of the reason the Bush administration did not plan for the occupation, engaged in long-term denial of the seriousness of the insurgency, and took such a blase approach to Abu Ghraib was that they saw political disadvantage in admitting that there were problems to be addressed. After these mistakes, the administration then decided that doing what was necessary to retrieve the situation was intolerable because it would involve admitting errror. Consequently, Bush did not remove Donald Rumsfeld or re-evaluate the ineffective occupation tactics, did not move the increasingly disconnected Dick Cheney out of his policy-making roles, failed to send more troops to Iraq, and gave up on economic reconstruction despite the deterioration of the Iraqi economy.

This was the recipe for disaster in Iraq. Focused on not letting the Democrats get the upper hand in the political debates at home, the Bush administration neglected to do the basic things that were necessary for a successful mission in Iraq. The result has been an on-going failure that has the potential to turn into a major disaster.

Yesterday's speech by President Bush was more of the same. Although effective in the short term, it has to be seen as yet another example of the Bush administration's disastrous prioritizing of short-term political manuevering over effective policy.

Home Schooling Offensive

There isn't much spare money in Eastern Kentucky--for anything but religious education that is. When a schism developed in the Rowan County Christian Academy two years ago, funding quickly materialized for a new K-12 Christian school that was ready to open for the fall 2005 semester.

But the larger schism is within the middle and upper middle-class of rural and Southern states like Kentucky. The majority of the bankers, small businessmen, administrators, government officials teachers, doctors in small towns like Morehead, KY seem to be aligned with the larger urban and secular culture in the United States. They serve on local public school boards, work on the parent-teacher committees, promote science teaching in the school systems, support school theater programs, and engage in health outreach to rural areas.

However, another chunk of the middle-class is so profoundly alienated that they are seeking to create a network of alternative Christianized institutions. Promoting home-schooling is a big part of effort to create an insular, Christian culture. The Rev. R. Albert Mohler, Jr. of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary has called for an "exit strategy" for public schools while the Southern Baptist Convention and other evangelical groups are debating resolutions for an "exodus" toward home schooling.

So, what is so repulsive about public schooling to the hard-core evangelical community? Of course, evangelicals object to mandates against school prayer, initiatives in sex education, teaching of evolution, and tolerance toward gays. Nevertheless, what I hear a lot from home schoolers though is fear of "peer group influence" on religious children.

According to the Considering Homeschooling Ministry, "homeschoolers avoid harmful school environments where God is mocked, where destructive peer influence is the norm, where drugs, alcohol, promiscuity and homosexuality are promoted."

Believe me, there is very little if any mocking of God in public schools in states like Kentucky. But peer influence is the norm and rural kids are pushed by the other kids toward booze, pill-popping, blow-jobs, and premature sex with older guys. Like the larger American society, public school can be a tough, unforgiving and corrupt place where kids can lose their way easily in the complex web of school demands and peer-group temptations. Nevertheless, evangelicals take a very narrow and short-sighted view of the issue. Instead of obsessing so much about the temptations of peer group culture, evangelicals should focus on making schools, and indeed American society at large, into a more forgiving place.

George Allen: Plagiarist

Given Sen. George Allen's bullying mentality and racism, it's no surprise that he lacks a sense of decency in other areas. Today on the Senate floor, Allen cut in front of Dick Durbin to submit a bill on veteran's benefits that was identical except for one word to the bill that Durbin himself was set to submit.

Allen's showing the same sort of self-destructive tendencies that Sen. Jim Bunning showed in his 2004 re-election campaign in Kentucky. However, Allen will have a more difficult time than Bunning because former Navy Secretary James Webb is a much stronger opponent than the Democrat who ran against Bunning.

Allen's leading by three in Slate's most recent poll composite. If Allen's plagiarism has any media legs, it could give Webb the additional two points he needs to nose ahead.

George Allen is the right-wing's favorite son candidate for 2008. Evidently, there aren't any decent and competent bullies out there for the right to back.

The "Chestless" Bush Administration

Quite often, the right-wingers unintentionally reveal truths about themselves and their friends in the Bush administration.

Rush Limbaugh's Viagra sex odyssey to the Dominican Republica is one example. Limbaugh's inability to get it up on his own and his preference for Dominican prostitutes to any girlfriend says volumes about the right-wing fear of women.

Recent articles by Mark Steyne and David Warren about the Fox correspondents recently released in Gaza also say a lot about the Bush administration. Warren accuses Steve Centanni and Olaf Wiig of being "chestless" men because they underwent phony conversions to Islam rather than risk being killed by their captors.

Glenn Greenwald hits back by pointing out that right-wingers like Sens. John Cornyn of Texas and Pat Roberts of Kansas have no problem citing their fear of terrorism as a motivation for giving up our constitutional rights as Americans.

But Greenwald doesn't go far enough.

Isn't the "chestless" cowardice of the Bush administration one of the main reasons the American mission is going so poorly in Iraq. Of course, what the Bush administration fears most is the American public instead of global terrorism. Bush and his people were afraid to go to the American public and get support for their full ambitions of invading Iraq, Syria and/or Iran. They refused to debate their delusions. Likewise, they were afraid to put the U. S. on a war footing because raising taxes and reinstituting the draft would have entailed a lot of public debate. The Bush administration also was too afraid to ask for more troops and higher levels of resources when the situation started getting tough in 1004. That's because the Bush administration could not bring themselves to admit that they'd been wildly over-optimistic at the beginning of the occupation.

President Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld need the Viagra of absolute certainty to keep themselves going in the face of their fears of the American public, the media, and the Democrats. Bush and his people are afraid of those who disagree with them, afraid of any kind of negotiation, and so afraid of uncertainty that they refuse any kind of internal dialogue when making decisions. As President Bush famously stated, he refuses to negotiate with himself.

Bush, Cheney, and the neo-con utopians of the first George W. administration thought that the invasion and occupation of Iraq would entail as little difficulty as Rush Limbaugh's sex tourism. But the Bush administration's fearful and "chestless" rigidity doomed the American mission to failure as soon as resistance began to coalesce.

Out of Luck in Lexington

The FAA wasn't meeting it's own standards on the morning that Comair Flight 5191 crashed in Lexington, KY. The FAA requires two traffic controllers, one to monitor the radar and one check traffic on the ground. There was only one. The FAA requires controllers to have eight hours of sleep. That controller had only two hours of sleep.

There had been construction at the airport and the pilot ended up going to the wrong runway for his take-off. If the FAA had followed its own procedures, an air traffic controller would have corrected the pilot error.

But they did not and forty-nine people died as a result.

That's one corner the Bush administration shouldn't have cut in order to have lower taxes.

Hook em Rummy

Once again today, Donald Rumsfeld trotted out the Munich analogy when talking about war opponents. In Rummyworld, Osama bin Laden is Hitler and war opponents are all Neville Chamberlains trying to take the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia and give it to Germany.

Of course, Rumsfeld isn't serious. But his comments raise the question of what is the best analogy for the American situation in Iraq.

Let's try sports.

What's happening to the United States in Iraq is the equivalent of the $200 million New York Yankees finishing in last place in a Class A league like the South Atlantic League. Or the Texas Longhorns being regularly beaten by lousy high school football teams. That's how bad the U. S. is doing in Iraq.

Of course, highly successful sports organizations like the Yankees and Texas Longhorns are subject to constant criticism and enormous pressures even if they're winning at the highest levels. If they were doing anywhere nearly as badly as the Bush administration is doing in Iraq, these elite sports organizations would have cleaned house several times, rethought their commitment of resources, and revamped all their strategies.

They certainly wouldn't have been dumb enough to "stay the course."

Signs of the GOP Apocalypse

In my home town in Kentucky, an Iraq veteran just moved next door to a local judge. The vet has "impeach Bush" bumper stickers on his car and a big Kerry/Edwards sign in his living room window.

The John Mark Karr Triangle

John Mark Karr did not develop his fixation with confessing JonBenet Ramsey's murder by himself. To the contrary, Karr's confessions seem to have deep roots in the sprawling culture of American media. In fact, Karr's confessions might be best thought of as emerging out of a triangle of licit and illicit cultural media. One point of the triangle was Karr's own involvement with child pornography and pedophelia which seemed to be both longstanding and intensifying. The child porn interests would have put Karr into contact with a system of sex stereotypes that Karr a different kind of guy than the weird uncles and step-fathers that girls used to be warned about. But Karr's interests were not as far out of the mainstream as Bill O'Reilly and other pedophilia crusaders think.

The media pornographying of JonBenet Ramsey's murder was a strong point of connection to the cultural mainstream for Karr and forms the second point of the Karr triangle. It is doubtful that Karr's sexual fantasies would have focused so intently on JonBenet Ramsey if tabloid magazines and reality tv had not transformed the little girl's murder into a ten-year peep show. Although most people did not go into the same child pornography detail as Karr, his obsessions with Jon Benet were shared by millions. If anything, the long-running JonBenet porn show was heightened by the blanket coverage of every detail of Karr's arrest, flight to LA, and the sexual detail of his phony confessions. Perhaps Karr's ultimate fantasy was to become the new star of the JonBenet sex/murder show in the role of JonBenet's murderer. And it worked for awhile. The coverage was blanket. The ratings were huge. If Karr received a nickel for everytime people peeped in on him as he was being processed in the legal system, he could afford all the child pornography he wanted.

But why was Karr's fantasy focused on "confession" as opposed to copy cat murders, enacting similar kinds of scenarios with girls in Thailand, going to peep shows, or something like that. The principal mainstream cultural reference point for confession in American society would be the vast world of police dramas, crime investigation programs, reality crime shows, local news reporting on crime, and action, police, and investigation movies. Of course, there's plenty of left-wing commentary on the importance of fear in American culture, for example in Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine. However, there is little emphasis on the importance of police images in American society--the pleasures that American audiences derive from entertainment based on the criminal investigations, interrogations, legal manuevering, and imprisonment that break the perpetrator. Perpetually afraid of crime and terrorism, we get a special kick out of the media destruction of the criminal and terrorist. I'm no exception here. I used to love cop shows like NYPD Blue and Homicide: Life on the Streets before I unhooked from television. One of my favorite movies is the incredibly righteous L.A. Confidential.

Just like John Mark Karr seemed eager to get himself inside the on-going JonBenet porn show, he also seemed eager to insert himself into the world of crime drama. Karr has been panting to get into the machinery of criminal investigation and justice--to be interrogated, arrested, and taken before judges and consult with defense lawyers, speak to the media, and finally be committed to prison. A big part of Karr's fantasy was to be punished by the judicial system for the crime of killing JonBenet Ramsey and he might still get his punishment wish from the child porn rap in California. For better or worse, the punishment fantasy is a big part of American culture in general.

A Sobering Moment

An early Delta commuter flight to Atlanta went down in Lexington, KY this morning with reports of 49 dead and one critically injured.

My wife and kids have taken that flight several times.

Other people from my home town as well.

I'm going about my day, but I'm wondering in the back of my mind if anybody I knew was on the plane.

Stumbling Blocks for the Right

The right-wing keeps stumbling. One of their stumbling blocks has become the police. At least some national police organizations have come out in favor of gun control. Likewise, the local cops in Oklahoma think that gaining the cooperation of illegals is more important than enforcing immigration law. Consquently, the police resist efforts by right-wing activists to get them to round up illegal immigrants. Florida police have also made it clear that they aren't going to enforce immigration law as they seek to address "guat-bashing" robberies of Guatemalan immigrants.

The Dwarf Presidency

Astronomers have downgraded Pluto from planet to dwarf planet. Does this mean that the Bush administration is a dwarf presidency?

In fact, the Bush administration has shrunk so much politically that its moons are no longer in orbit. At their height immediately after the 2004 election, President Bush was the center of a sprawling political apparatus that included his political operation, K Street lobbying groups, conservative think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute, right-wing talk radio, and the religious right.

The links between the Bush administration and the conservative apparatus started loosening as a result of Bush's declining popularity. However, with the failure of Israel's attack on Lebanon, the Bush planetary system began to break up. Conservative think tanks and radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh and Laura Ingraham have started talking about the "failure" of the Bush administration and begun to set their own right-wing agendas of bigger, better wars. The FDA decision to allow Plan B contraceptives to be sold over the counter indicates that the Bush administration is no longer master of its own domain as well.

Now, it might be better to think of the Bush administration as part of a right-wing asteroid belt rather than a presidency. Like the James Buchanan and Herbert Hoover administrations, Bush is beginning to look more like Ceres and Pluto than Jupiter or Saturn.

George Allen: The Bullying Roots of His Racism

Last week, Sen. George Allen of Virginia made a lot of news with the "macaca" epithets he directed at an Indian-American journalist. There's not much doubt that it's racism on Allen's part. He has a long history of collecting Confederate memorabilia and lynching images.

So, where does Allen's racism come from? He grew up in Southern California, is smart enough to have gotten top grades in law school at the University of Virginia, and would have spent some time around black people as the son of George Allen, the legendary football coach.

There's some evidence that Allen's racism grew out of his bullying personality. Yesterday, Ryan Lizza of the New Republic published some excerpts from a book that Allen's sister Jennifer Richard wrote about growing up in the Allen family.

What's interesting about Allen's bullying is that it was both style and behavior. Allen's behavior was the kind of rough stuff that's no longer tolerated by the authorities--hanging his sister over the rail at Niagara Falls, beating up his brothers and sisters regularly, and persistently vandalizing an out-of-place Green Bay Packers fan. His sister's term for Allen's style is "country thug." Allen loved "Hee Haw" and especially the dumbest character on the show. According to Allen's sister, "[George's] favorite character was the big, slow-witted Junior. Junior tried to tell jokes yet always failed to remember the punch line. There was also something mildly country-thuggish about Junior that I think George felt akin to."

That's Allen in a nutshell--the super-smart guy who got a huge kick out of feeling superior to the ignorant hick stereotype, such a kick that he adapted the country thug style for himself with its "pork-chop sideburns, greasy-haired scalps, and almost the same broken-toothed look as the inmates on George's favorite album, Johnny Cash, Live from Folsom Prison." By adapting the determined ignorance of the "hick" style, Allen could always feel superior to his environment even as he identified with the environment. It looks like George Allen was somewhat like George Bush in always feeling uncomfortable with equality. Unlike George Bush, however, Allen was successful in adapting a persona that eliminated equality from his life.

Allen's racism must have come easily to him. The bullying personality, the refusal of equality, the country thug personality--post-sixties white racism speaks to all of that. Unlike the racism of the post-segregation South, a significant strand of the white racism that emerged after the sixties was more of a reveling or celebration of refusing equality to blacks more than anything else. Allen's romance of the Confederacy did not develop because his ancestors had fought for Robert E. Lee or had emotional commitments to segregation. In Allen's commitment to the Confederacy, racism served and continues to serve as a celebration of bullying and ignorance.

Bush Blowhards at War

John McCain made an interesting statement in Ohio yesterday complaining about the Bush administration's rhetoric in the war on Iraq.

"Stuff happens, mission accomplished, last throes, a few dead-enders. I'm just more familiar with those statements than anyone else because it grieves me so much that we had not told the American people how tough and difficult this task would be."

"The American people"--What's McCain talking about? Of course the American people weren't prepared for a long occupation. The Bush administration itself was unprepared for the war. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Rice were all addicted to their own tough-guy posturing. Saddam was a "pushover." American troops would be "greeted with flowers." Iraqi population had a "highly educated," "secular," population. Oil revenues would pay for the war. We'll be "out by Christmas." "Freedom is on the march." Bush's people believed that "Mission Accomplished" banners meant that the mission was already accomplished. That's why they did no planning, didn't commit enough troops, didn't seal off the borders, and didn't destroy the weapons caches until it was too late.

The second fact about the Bush administration is that they didn't have the political courage it took to win the war after things got tough. By summer 2004, the Mahdi army uprising in Najaf and the insurgent takeover of Fallujah should have let everybody know how difficult the Iraq occupation would be. But the Bush administration did not have the courage to go back to Congress and the American public to ask for more troops, more money for economic reconstruction, and a generally higher level of commitment in Iraq. Instead, the Bush administration and surrogates like Joe Lieberman worked out the rhetorical trick of claiming that every escalation of the insurgency was a sign of insurgent "desperation" and their ultimate demise. That's what Cheney meant by his "last throes" comment. Ultimately, the Bush administration tried to talk the insurgency to death rather than defeat it.

Perhaps the American military could not have stabilized the situation in Iraq even with higher levels of troops and resources. However, the blowhard spirit and political spinelessness of the Bush administration ensured that the occupation would wind up in failure.

Another Strain on the American Psyche

CNN has a banner headline on its website about John Mark Carr making "unsolicited comments" to law enforcement officers.

How desperate can the media be to have people care about John Mark Carr. Pretty soon they'll be reporting on Carr going to the bathroom.

Oops, the media has reported on that too.

The Strain on the American Psyche

Yesterday, President Bush claimed that the war in Iraq is "straining the psyche of our country."

You could say that.

The Bush administration went into the invasion thinking that George Bush was Abraham Lincoln and George Washington reincarnated, that the invasion and occupation would be as easy as the Ohio State Buckeyes beating New Mexico State, and that we'd be out of there in six months after Iraq became a fluorishing democracy.

But Bush turned out to be another James Buchanan, the occupation looks more like 0-11 New Mexico State than Ohio State, and Iraq is not going to have a fluorishing democracy any more than the Arizona Cardinals are going to the Super Bowl.

That's a "strain" on the American psyche because of the central role of domination/humiliation images in American culture. Take your pick of images--Simon Cowell and off-key singers, Dr. Phil and the the world of ineffective losers, Jack Welch of GE firing the bottom 10% of his executives every year, Grand Theft Auto, or all the women who get rejected on the Bachelor.

We're a society that's fallen in love with the feeling of domination and we get a special kick out of humiliating anyone who looks like a failure. So, our psyche is "strained" now that we as a nation are on the frustrated, don't know what to do next, pretty sure nothing's going to work side of the track.

That might not be a bad thing though. We might have been on the wrong path anyway.

The Future of the War

Hopefully, the future of the Iraq War will be approached with a lot more honesty than the war itself. Much of that future will be the care of Iraq War veterans--vets with amputated limbs, vets with post traumatic stress disorder, vets seeking college education, vets who are unemployed, and vets who have a lot of difficulty with civilian adjustment.

As was the case with Vietnam, the nation owes Iraq War vets an enormous debt for demanding that they fight in such a pointless, counter-productive war. We should be careful that we devote the full measure of the resources needed to assist returning vets just as the vets were ready to give the full measure of their devotion to our country when they were in Iraq.

CNN had an item today on a study that revised the number of Vietnam vets who suffered post-traumatic stress disorders down from 30% to 18%. Given that many vets have served several tours in Iraq, it seems likely that Iraq vets will have an even higher rate for post-traumatic stress. If the U. S. draws down it's troop commitment to Iraq as quickly as we should, we're going to have at least 100,000 men and women seeking re-entry into mainstream American life. They should be greeted with just as much enthusiasm and warmth in the U. S. that Dick Cheney wrongly predicted they would be greeted with in Baghdad.

The Republicans Get Their Lieberman

The Republicans like Joe Lieberman so much they've now got their own Lieberman, Sen. Chuck Hagel from Nebraska.

Sen. Hagel is just as out of touch with the Bush administration and the Republicans as Lieberman is with the Democrats. Yesterday on Fox News Sunday, Hagel sounded more like John Murtha or Ned Lamont than a conservative Republican from the Great Plains. Hagel views Iraq as being just like Vietnam, wants to withdraw American troops within a year, opposes the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping program, and wonders how the Republicans became the party of big government.

And Hegel is a particular thorn in the Bush administration's side. Because Sen. Hagel served in Vietnam, he has an aura of authenticity on the war that draft dodgers like Dick Cheney and George Bush can't match. That's why progressive Democrats like Arianna Huffington are as quick to headline the criticisms of "war-hero" Chuck Hagel as the Bush administration is to trumpet "liberal Democrat" Joe Lieberman.

Red State Impressions agrees a lot more with Hagel and the Democrats than Lieberman and the Republicans. In a way, however, both Hagel and Lieberman serve a crucial function in the war debate. By bucking the dominant position of their own parties, Hagel gives the public an opportunity to focus on the facts of the situation in Iraq and form their own judgment.

As Hagel said, the war in Iraq is a "real" as opposed to just another wedge issue.