Bush's Final Target?

Ninety-nine percent of the time, I don't like it when I see analogies between George Bush and Hitler or right-wing activists and the Nazis. "Cheap Shot!" I think. "Exaggerated!" "Useless!" "Where's the beef" of events that could be analogized to the Reichstag fire, the assasinations of inconvenient allies like Ernst Röhm, Kristallnacht, the concentration camps, the genocide of the Jewish population, the invasion of one country after another? As repugnant as the American right is, I've almost always thought that it is more appropriate to compare them to the segregation South than the Nazis.

But one Nazi analogy has lingered persistently with me--the thesis that Hitler finally wanted to destroy Germany itself as a punishment for it's failure in the war. Hitler's

mission, according to [Joachim] Fest, was ultimately nothing more than destruction. Destruction of the European political order, destruction of undesirable peoples and finally the destruction of the German people themselves. Even though the war was lost months if not years before, Hitler persisted in having the remnants of the German army defend Germany and ultimately Berlin. Thousands died daily and the city was turned into rubble not because there was hope of victory, but because the German people had failed in carrying out his fantasy of destroying the world. Fest argues that in those final days Germany itself was Hitler's final target. The German people had to be punished.

Bush administration figures have always defined the Iraq war in terms of a task that they've assigned the American people that are suspiciously like the terms in which Hitler defined WWII for the German people. Much as Hitler assigned the "destruction of undesirable peoples" as the "task" or the "destiny" of the German people, Bush administration figures have assigned the Iraq war to the American people as a kind of task or test. According to Condoleeza Rice, it's "a generational commitment to helping the people of the Middle East transform their region." George Bush emphasized "the resolve of our great nation is being tested" while Dick Cheney believes that the war is a "test of American character."

These statements strike me as having a Hitler-like dimension because they imply that the American people would deserve whatever consequences came to us if we "failed" in our mission as the Bush administration. Whatever we got hit by subsequent to our failure, whether it would be attacks on our shipping, tunnels, or airports, more 9-11's, dirty bombs, or nuclear weapons, it would be our own fault because our failure to carry out the Bush administration's vision for the war on terror revealed fundamental deficiencies in our national make-up.

From the perspective of the Bush administration, evidence of American failure would be all around. Only a third of the American public supports the war while large majorities disapprove of the president's leadership, are pessimistic about the outcome of the war, and believe we're on the wrong track. Even worse, the American public clearly supported the Democrats in the recent showdown over war funding with more than 60% wanting a timeline for American withdrawal from Iraq and majorities preferring that the Democrats manage the war. Rather than showing the "character" and "will" needed to fulfill it's destined mission, the American public is rejecting the messenger just like the ancient Israelites rejected the prophets.

Nobody in the Bush administration has explicitly formulated this indictment, but this kind of thought seems to be the immediate context for the (drunken-sounding) exercise in presidential chest-thumping described by Georgie Ann Geyer (via Digby) below:

But by all reports, President Bush is more convinced than ever of his righteousness. Friends of his from Texas were shocked recently to find him nearly wild-eyed, thumping himself on the chest three times while he repeated "I am the president!" He also made it clear he was setting Iraq up so his successor could not get out of "our country's destiny."

What Bush means here is his Democratic "successor" Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. Bush must not have much confidence in all of the Republican candidates who have pledged themselves to continue President Bush's strategies in Iraq anyway. That will be part of the American nation's failure as a people, our failure to elect someone as president in 2008 that Bush could see as a worthy successor.

But George Bush seems to have one more card up his sleeve. He can "set Iraq" up so that a Democrat won't be able to withdraw. In other words, Bush can force the situation to deteriorate so badly that even the most anti-war Democrat would be forced to keep a troop presence to fulfill "our country's destiny" of establishing an Iraqi base for the projection of American power in the Middle East.

If Geyer's quote is correct, the surge might be "intended" to be a self-defeating strategy designed to make Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias more formidable and destrucive. That would be treasonable in the sense that President Bush would be enacting policies that with the intention of making our enemies stronger, i.e., aiding and abetting our enemies.

Or perhaps, President Bush can already see that the surge is failing and has decided to let it keep failing as a way to constrain his successor.

Ultimately though, "setting up Iraq" to force his successor to fulfill "our country's destiny" is a way to force the American people to fulfill the destiny he has assigned us. It's George Bush's way of punishing us for not having the "character" to support his mission on our own.

Can Fred Thompson Sell the War?

If Fred Thompson wants to be President, there's two things he has to do. The first is to convince Republican primary voters that he can sell the war in Iraq to general election voters. Opposition to the war is about 65%. That means Thompson has to show that he can change the minds of 15% of the population. If Thompson can't make it seem like his Reaganesque acting ability, "craggy" good looks, and charm can cut into the anti-war majority, then he's not going to win the nomination. Of course, Thompson would then have to go out and sell the war to the general public.

I don't think it's going to work.

A Note on Sectarian Killing in Iraq

The Washington Post had this short notice on killings in Baghdad in a story on Iraq yesterday.

Gunmen dressed in police uniforms staged a well-coordinated kidnapping at Iraq's Finance Ministry and abducted five Britons. Two vehicle bombings in Baghdad killed at least 44 people and injured 74. And the bodies of 32 men -- all shot and tortured, some handcuffed and blindfolded -- were found in two locations north and south of the capital on Tuesday, a senior Iraqi security official said.

In government statistics on deaths in Iraq, the 44 people who were killed in the bombings are considered "insurgent attacks" while the 32 bodies dumped around Baghdad are listed as "sectarian killings." Before the beginning of the surge in February, there was some justification for this distinction because a higher percentage of Sunni insurgent killings were directed at government officials, police stations, and the Iraqi army. Thus, they could be legitimately listed as insurgent attacks against the Iraqi government. Since February however, it seems that more and more insurgent attacks have been car bombs directed against the Shiite civilian population. As a result, the "insurgent attacks" have become sectarian killing as well.

Babies All Around!

I don't usually give a lot of personal news on this blog, but two of my friends and colleagues had babies yesterday. Both girls! Best to Amanda and to Verdie.

Lieberman Optimistic, America Mission Doomed!

Joe Lieberman was in Baghdad today on a "surprise visit" and told a CNN correspondent that he saw progress and that "he did believe that this surge eventually would pay off and it would start to break the insurgency."

Of course, that means we're doomed.

Lieberman's always been optimistic about the war in Iraq but things keep getting worse.

Here's Lieberman in November 2005 (via Glenn Greenwald).

Does America have a good plan for doing this, a strategy for victory in Iraq? Yes we do. . . Mistakes, some of them big, were made after Saddam was removed, and no one who supports the war should hesitate to admit that; but we have learned from those mistakes and, in characteristic American fashion, from what has worked and not worked on the ground in Iraq. The administration's recent use of the banner "clear, hold, and build" accurately describes the strategy as I saw it being implemented last week.

Lieberman is just as optimistic about the surge as he was about the "clear, hold, build" strategy of 2005. Unfortunately, "clear, hold, and build" is also the concept behind the surge. It's just that Petraeus is going to put American outposts in Iraqi neighborhoods as the core of his "hold" strategy.

And it's still not working.

Far from "breaking" the insurgency, the surge has made the Sunni insurgents stronger. American troops have not been putting nearly the pressure on the Sunni insurgents that the Shiite death squads had been putting on them after the bombing of the Samarra dome. Consequently, Sunni insurgents are more active in the Baghdad area with more car bombings and more attacks on Shiite marketplaces, funerals, and gathering spots. That's why overall deaths in Iraq are still high even though the "sectarian" killings by Shiite death squads are down.

Maybe we'd do better if Joe Lieberman was a pessimistic worry wart.

The Duke in the Parellel Universe

John Wayne's 100th birthday was last weekend. The Duke was one of my heroes when I was a little kid. But he wasn't the biggest. He wasn't as big in my mind as Gene "Big Daddy" Lipscomb of the Baltimore Colts (no. 76) or Johnny Unitas. Actually, very few of Wayne's movies made it to my local theater in Waverly, NY. So, my main images of the West came from Bonanza, Matt Dillon, and Clint Eastwood in Rawhide--"My heart's calculating, my true love will be waiting, be waiting at the end of my ride." What a tune! But the "Sons of Katie Elder" was a big event for my brother and me and we all had John Wayne on our minds when we played cowboys and Indians.

However, John Wayne is still a top draw in what Crooked Timber calls the parellel universe of the right-wing. Conservatives have such an aversion to post-Sixties America that their heroes have to be at least forty years old. Then there's the problem of reality. Conservatives don't want to be associated with the New Deal, the GI Bill, or the national high way program, all of which they still see as socialism. They don't want to be associated with with McCarthyism (Ann Coulter being the exception), and conservatives don't want to be tarred with segregation either. Because the reality of the conservative "golden age" was so questionable, conservatives tend to like fictional heroes rather than actual people. Harvey Mansfield's Manliness treats Wayne's movie characters along with the Gary Cooper character in High Noon as the only adequate examples of manliness in post WWII America. Bill Murchison argues in a TownHall.com column today that Wayne's movie characters are examples of "dignity and valor and honor [and doing] the right thing for the right reasons" that are no longer heeded in contemporary culture.

But if the right is looking for conservative heroes, they should focus on the current Republican resistance to Bush administration abuses rather than fictional artifice. There's General Shinseki and his testimony about the need for hundreds of thousands of troops in Iraq, Richard Clarke and his expose of Bush 9-11 malfeasance, the Tillman family and its effort to expose the cover-up of Pat Tillman's death, and the men and women in the CIA, State Department, and Pentagon who criticized Bush administration intelligence claims. More currently, federal prosecutors like David Iglesias have shown an enormous sense of "dignity and honor" by refusing to prosecute specious voter fraud claims.

All of these figures are Republicans, they're all conservatives, and they've all done "the right thing for the right reasons." If the right-wing wants to publicize these Republican heroes, they can call them the "new Dukes" of the Bush era. They don't even have to link me.

The Woes of the Third Tier Democrat

John Dickerson of Slate reviews the various ways that Bill Richardson flubbed his interview on Meet the Press yesterday and ends by emphasizing in a mocking way that Richardson will have to change his message. He used to ask voters to "give him a second look." But "after Sunday's Meet the Press, the message will have to be: OK, how about a third look?

In fact, Democratic primary voters aren't even going to give Richardson a first look let alone a second or third look. The same is the case with Chris Dodd and Joe Biden let alone Dennis Kucinich, or Mike Gravel. Even though there's seven months until the Iowa caucuses, it's clear by now that they're all wasting their time. The Democratic campaign is structured in such a way that none of them has a ghost of a chance to win or even contend.

The problem for the third tier candidates is that Democratic voters are happy with Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama as first tier candidates. They both have strong national reputations, tremendous media exposure, lots of fund-raising ability, and strong campaign teams. Given the strength of Clinton and Obama candidacies, it would be very difficult to imagine either Bill Richardson, Chris Dodd, or Joe Biden catching lightning in a bottle and rising from their current 1-3% to become contenders in any case.

However, what closes the deal on third-tier irrelevance is John Edwards is the clear heir-apparent to first tier status if something happens to Hillary or Obama. And if something happened to Hillary, Obama, and John Edwards, Al Gore would reluctantly enter the race to ensure a Democratic victory in what promises to be a good year for Democratic candidates.

In other words, the third-tier candidates have no chance whatsoever. They might as well be trying to ice skate in a hot tub.

Peace to Cindy Sheehan

There's a report on CNN that Cindy Sheehan has decided to leave the peace movement and return to her hometown in California. Bless her. Ms. Sheehan is a mighty woman who's strived imaginatively and effectively to end the misbegotten war in Iraq. The fact that she hasn't succeeded says much more about the rigidity and corruption of our political system than it does about the quality of her efforts as a war protester. She deserved infinitely better than what she got and I wish her well as she figures out what to do next.

A Memorial Day Note

Today, I went with my wife's family to the grave of her father who had served in Europe during WWII. But while they talked, laughed gently, and remembered Tom Carew of New York City, I couldn't help but think about the wasted deaths of the more than 3400 American troops who have been killed in Iraq. And think about them with a special sense of grief and appreciation.

In our discourse about the men and women who have fought in America's wars, there's an emphasis on American soldiers as fighting to "defend freedom." In fact, the Iraq war has been fought in the name of the most feckless imperial scheme that can be imagined. For the neo-conservatives who planned the war, the invasion of Iraq was the lynchpin of a grotesquely foolish vision of also invading Syria and Iran and establishing a direct American hegemony over the Arab world.

But the foolishness of Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz was our foolishness because they were the duly elected officers of an elected government that enjoyed broad national support in the United States for the invasion. In other words, the soldiers and sailors who have died in Iraq have died for our national foolishness rather than our national freedom.

That's why Memorial Day is such a uniquely appropriate holiday in relation to wars like the war in Iraq. Given that we as a nation wasted the lives of the soldiers in those wars, we owe those who died in Iraq a debt beyond that which we owe to those who died in wars that actually did defend American freedom like WWII or the Revolutionary War. The least we can do for those who have died in Iraq is to give them our best words, wrap their memories tightly in our national myths, and then go forth and end this misbegotten war as soon as we possibly can. In that way, we can do better by the memories of those who died in Iraq than we did by them when they were alive.



That's what makes their deaths particularly

Hillary: A Role Model Conservative Wife

The New York Daily News claims that Hillary campaign might be hurt by new books because "voters will be reminded of the Clintons' endless personal dramas."

I doubt it.

The biggest revelation today from Carl Bernstein's A Woman in Charge is that Bill wanted to divorce Hillary in favor of a power company executive in 1989 but that Hillary refused him because of her concerns for Chelsea.

"What if she were on her own? She didn't own a house. She was concerned that if she were to become a single parent, how would she make it work in a way that would be good for Chelsea?"

The right-wing opposes divorce because it creates single-parent families that conservative writers believe are harmful to children. Conservatives urge men and women to give their marriages every possible chance. Isn't this exactly what Hillary Clinton did when confronted by Bill's disloyalty and infidelity? She thought of her daughter's welfare first and told one of her friends that "there are worse things than infidelity."

Sounds like a role model for a conservative wife to me. Maybe James Dobson should have her on his show.

Dick Cheney, West Point, and Basic Values

Matthew Yglesias raises a point about this passage from Dick Cheney's West Point speech.

As Army officers on duty in the war on terror, you will now face enemies who oppose and despise everything you know to be right, every notion of upright conduct and character, and every belief you consider worth fighting for and living for. Capture one of these killers, and he'll be quick to demand the protections of the Geneva Convention and the Constitution of the United States. Yet when they wage attacks or take captives, their delicate sensibilities seem to fall away.

For Yglesias, our own "delicate sensibilities" about "basic principles of human rights and human dignity" are falling away "in Dick Cheney's America." But Yglesias is far too mild about Cheney's speech at West Point. It's monstrous that someone like Dick Cheney was even invited to speak at West Point let alone what he had to say about the Geneva Convention and the Constitution of the United States. Like Yglesias, Democratic politicians and writers on the left are generally content to point out against Cheney that our attachment to "basic principles of human rights and human dignity" is what makes us superior to "murderous fanatics" like al-Qaeda. But it should be clear that these "basic principles" are not accepted by Dick Cheney and that the principles of human rights and dignity are being looked on with increasing suspicion by the activist right in general. This refusal to accept these kinds of American values makes Dick Cheney an extremely inappropriate choice to speak at any kind of national ceremony.

Before discussing human rights or the Constitution, it should be emphasized that Cheney does not adhere to army values of" loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity, and personal courage." Cheney was a completely shameless draft dodger who has been reported as getting his wife Lynne pregnant so he could get another deferment as a father. His lack of any kind of sense of duty was magnified by the fact that he was also a strong supporter of the Vietnam War. As Vice-President, Dick Cheney told whopping lie after enormous whopping lie to promote and then defend the Iraq invasion. Cheney swore an oath to uphold the Constitution when he took office, but has shown a complete lack of integrity by doing everything in his power to undermine both the spirit and the letter of the Constitution. Dick Cheney is the last person who should be invited to speak at any gathering of those who believe that courage, duty, integrity, or loyalty to the U. S. Constitution are paramount values.

It should be clear that Cheney does not agree with "basic values of human rights and dignity," the system of checks and balances in the American Constitution, or the rule of law. For Cheney, all of these things are for "delicate sensibilities" which means that he sees them all as effeminate impediments to action. Instead, Cheney should be seen as someone who would be more comfortable in a military dictatorship or some other kind of authoritarian regime but had the misfortune of living in the United States at a time when democratic values were being solidified and extended. I wouldn't be surprised if Cheney was sympathetic with Harvey Mansfield's call for "one-man rule" or Newt Gingrich's advocacy of military tribunals for war opponents.

This is why Cheney's speaking at West Point is dangerous as well as inappropriate. One of the democratic traditions that Cheney would find to be a "delicate sensibility" is civilian control over the military. Given Dick Cheney's systematic resistance to democratic traditions as vice-president, one can't help but wonder if Cheney's speaking at a military institutions is an entirely safe thing for American democracy.

Don't Take DeLay's Name (Entirely) in Vain

A Washington Post editorial today takes Rep. John Murtha to task for being too much like Tom DeLay, the former Majority Leader when the Republicans controlled the House. Certainly, DeLay's combination of bullying, corruption, dandyism, and preening self-righteousness makes him easy to caricature. Like a lot of conservatives (Alberto Gonzales, Scooter Libby, and George Bush himself), Tom DeLay is a little guy who tries to make up for his lack of size by being tougher-than-thou in a weenie boy kind of way. If the right ever gets its military tribunals, one-man rule, or military coup, DeLay would torture liberals with a fervor that only the most committed Christians are capable of.

But DeLay wasn't just a master of "the old games of pork-for-votes and vote-my-way-or-else" as the Post claims, he was also a political genius for our times who the Democrats should take seriously as an example.

Here's a couple of examples of DeLay's political innovations and how the Democrats can learn from him.

1. Tom DeLay was the inspiration for the "K Street Project" that forced Democratic lobbyists out of most corporate lobbying. As DeLay himself said, when the Republicans became a majority in 1994, the lobbyist ratio was 60-40 in favor of the Democrats. By the time DeLay left Congress in 2006, the ratio was 70% Republican to 30% Republican. To restore lobbying parity, the Democrats have to engage in their own "K Street Project." But why should the Democrats stop there? They should demand that the activist right-wing be excluded from important lobbying positions and refuse to deal with corporations, trade associations, and umbrella groups that kowtow to the far right.

2. My impression is that DeLay was behind the "no negotiations" position that Congressional Republicans, then the Bush administration, took with the Democrats after Newt Gingrich was ousted as Speaker in 1998. Of course, Gingrich was getting rolled by the Clinton administration every time they locked horns. So, there was a practical reason for the Republicans to avoid negotiations. But DeLay (and others) also made the refusal to negotiate and compromise into an moral principle. For the conservative right, there are only three options on any issue: victory, appeasement, or surrender. Those who compromise are "appeasing" the enemy and the Democrats and all their constituencies are just as much the "enemy" as Osama bin Laden.

Democratic politicians often act like they'd like to re-establish the friendly competition they had with Republican leaders like Bob Michels in the House or Bob Dole in the Senate. They just need to get over that. The Republican leadership and the activist right in general views them as enemies and Democrats need to view the Republicans, especially the far right, as enemies in turn. For the Democrats, it's a matter of being realistic about the political environment. If the Democrats and any of their constituency groups want to be successful, their first order of business is to figure out how their going to fight and further the right-wing opposition.

3. The final item here is the legislative redistricting battle in Texas. DeLay is under indictment because he recruited corporate money to help the Republicans gain enough East Texas seats for in the Texas legislature to force another round of Congressional redistricting in 2002. Leaving aside the corruption, DeLay's willingness to seek a round of Congressional redistricting outside the normal ten-year realignments was pure political genius. He saw an opportunity to solidify the Republican majority in the House of Representatives and was willing to ignore the tradition of realigning every ten years in order to accomplish his goals.

If the Democrats want to win the presidency and maintain their majorities in Congress, they need to engage in this kind of political creativity as well. Leading Democrats need to stop worrying so much about traditions, comity with the opposition, long-established friendships, and things like that and figure out innovative strategies for furthering their cause. The Republican leadership stopped worrying about traditions, friendships, and things like that in the early nineties. The Democrats need to embrace the new reality.

Looking for Another Candidate?

It looks like journalists are already tired of covering Hillary/Obama and Rudy McRomney. I've seen recent articles on wannabes Richardson and Huckabee, Michael Bloomberg, Chuck Hagel, Bloomberg/Hagel, Bloomberg/Gore, and Big Al himself.

But none of these seem likely.

The best bets for more candidates in the party primaries are Fred Thompson and Newt Gingrich announcing in the fall, pushing Mitt Romney (already old news) back into fifth place, and posing a threat to McCain. I would bet that Newt is the bigger threat because he's the more orthodox conservative, but I'll exercise some MSM even-handedness and mention that Thompson does have his Reaganesque acting career going for him.

The most significant threat for a meaningful third party candidacy won't come from Richardson or Chuck Hagel. It will come from the right-wing of the Republican Party if either Giuliani or McCain get the nomination. The disgust with Giuliani and McCain on the right is so intense that some entrepreneurial politician will be there to take up the conservative cause.

Maybe Newt will see an opportunity in an independent candidacy as "the real conservative."

What Happens When We Withdraw?

I'm always surprised that so few people think of Iraq in relation to the long-term civil wars in Central and South America. People always jump to Bosnia and Rwanda as models for what will happen in Iraq. they should be looking at Columbia, Guatemala, and El Salvador instead. But I believe that what happens when we withdraw will be shaped by the banana republic characteristics of Iraq.

1. Iraq will have a weak, corrupt government with limited control over Iraqi territory. There is little reason to think that Iraq will have anything other than a Shiite government. There are two sources of corruption. First, traditionally downtrodden Shiite elites are looking at the government as a mechanism for acquiring "real" private wealth for the first time. Second, the government has become a means to finance the Shiite militias that are integrated within the government structure. Iraqi governments will not be not strong enough to exercise much control over either Sunni or Kurdish territories. They won't be able to exercise much control over Shiite militias as well.

2. The Iraqi government won't collapse and will be too strong for insurgents to overthrow. The al-Maliki government itself is weak, but the Shiite militias that are its true power base are too strong for either al-Qaeda or Sunni insurgents to overthrow. One of the unacknowledged facts of the sectarian civil war of 2006 was that the Shiite militias had the upper hand over Sunni insurgents in and around Baghdad. When we leave the Shiite militias will re-assert themselves in ways that keep either al-Qaeda or the Sunni insurgents from overthrowing the government. Actually, al-Qaeda might not be much of a threat in Iraq after an American withdrawal. There are only 1200 to 2,000 al-Qaeda fighters in Iraq and it seems that Sunni tribal forces are becoming increasingly intolerant of al-Qaeda's operations in Sunni areas. After an American withdrawal lowers the motivation for al-Qaeda volunteers to come to Iraq, al-Qaeda probably will become even less of a factor.

3. The Negligible Genocide factor. There are a lot of worries about a genocide if the U. S. leaves. There shouldn't be. Genocide occurs when one side has overwhelming power in relation to the other. That's not the case in Iraq. The Shiite militias would have the upper hand after an American withdrawal, but the Sunni populations are very well armed and more than capable of defending themselves. Instead, the situation looks like it has a potential for a long drawn out civil war like the one going on in Columbia.

I can see a role for American forces in Iraq. We can help the Iraqis guard against external invasions, help train the formal Iraqi military, and shield against any dangers from al-Qaeda. Otherwise, I think the Iraqis will manage on their own. They'll manage poorly but they'll still manage.

Dick Cheney: Enemy of the State

Dick Cheney spoke to graduates of the U. S. Military Academy today. I don't know why he was invited. No government official since James Buchanan has weakened the United States as much as Dick Cheney.

New Hillary Books Coming Out

Hillary Clinton books are falling like autumn leaves next week. There's A Woman in Charge: The Life of Hillary Rodham Clinton by Carl Bernstein, Extreme Makeover by Bay Buchanan, and Her Way: The Hopes and Ambitions of Hillary Clinton, by Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta.

Either the publishers don't have much faith in these books or they're making extremely poor marketing decisions! If the publishers have confidence, why wouldn't they wait until right before the primary season. Or, better yet, until after Hillary is the official Democratic candidate? My guess is that the publishers don't see any of these books as anything special and are therefore rushing to print to make sure they don't get overshadowed by the other books.

My suspicion is that the books will end up making Hillary look pretty good by reminding people of all the crap's she's gone through and how (relatively) well she's dealt with it.

Not that I actually would buy the books.

Bush: Defeat With Dignity

NOT MUCH PILING ON. I haven't seen a whole lot of piling on from the defeat of the Democrats on Iraq war funding yesterday. CNN and Fox headlines focused just as much on Democratic pledges to keep fighting as they did on Bush winning. There was relatively little gloating from a right-wing blogosphere that's extremely agitated about immigration (here's an exception). Even President Bush refrained from a lot of gloating. Why the sudden lack of preening from people who have made preening an art form?

BUSH'S OWN TIMETABLE. Instead, what the Bush administration did was put out its own timetable for withdrawal. According to the New York Times, administration officials led by Condoleeza Rice and Robert Gates are floating ideas of reducing the number of American troops to 100,000 and changing the mission from combat to training Iraqi troops. President Bush mentioned these ideas at yesterday's press conference as well. In certain ways, this is just a return to Gen. Casey's strategy for withdrawal in 2005 and 2006 and has been posed several times before. It may also be a sop to a public opinion which was 2/3rds in support of the Democratic timeline strategy. My impression though is that Bush realizes that the game is up in Iraq, but is determined to withdraw on his own timeline rather than timelines dictated by the Democratic opposition. The administration seems to be giving up on the two main goals of the surge--stabilizing Baghdad and promoting political reconciliation between Shiites and Sunnis. Given that there is going to be no "victory," Bush seems to be angling for "defeat with dignity."

IN ADDITION. Glenn Greenwald scoffs at the Times story about reducing troops by half and produces a variety of quotes from war supporters to that effect over the last four years. And he's right to a large extent. So does Atrios (linking Greenwald). However, there is more debate and division within the warmaking machine than Greenwald acknowledges. It turned out that the Iraq strategy of Gen. Casey and Gen. Abizaid was to get the bulk of American troops out of the country as soon as possible.

Another item that leads me to believe that war advocates might actually want to reduce the U. S. military presence in Iraq is that Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell was emphatic about it. “I think that the handwriting is on the wall that we are going in a different direction in the fall, and I expect the president to lead it . . . In other words, I think he, himself, has certainly indicated he’s not happy with where we are. And I think we are looking for a new direction in the fall.”

Mitch McConnell is my senator here in Kentucky and he cares about the well-being of the Republican Party much more than anything in his own life and much more than Dick Cheney. I interpret McConnell's remarks as indicating that the President had better get in front of troop withdrawals or Republicans are going to suffer major reverses in 2008. In other words, the pressure on Bush to retreat from the surge is real and there's at least some chance that Bush will respond by "going in a different direction" in the near future.

Some Surprisingly Good News

Daily Kos has a report of a poll taken by SurveyUSA where Beshear is ahead of Fletcher 64-32% in the Kentucky governor's race.

What that means for the campaign is that Fletcher will have to unleash a wave of negative ads in order to bring down Beshear's 36% of the Republican vote.

If Beshear were really smart and energetic and had some cash laying around, he's launch some sort of humorous ad to pre-empt the attack ads to come from Fletcher--maybe bring out one of Mitch McConnell's bloodhounds with a voiceover saying "you don't have to be a bloodhound to smell what's coming from Ernie Fletcher, etc.

The Creation Museum and Christianity

This account is from the New York Times story on the opening of the Creation Museum in Northern Kentucky:

There are 52 videos in the museum, one showing how the transformations wrought by the eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980 reveal how plausible it is that the waters of Noah’s flood could have carved out the Grand Canyon within days. There is a special-effects theater complete with vibrating seats meant to evoke the flood, and a planetarium paying tribute to God’s glory while exploring the nature of galaxies.

The Museum captures the heart of contemporary, evangelical Christianity--putting on a good show.

It's Over!

The House and Senate have both passed war funding bills and sent them to Bush. I'm disappointed because this means that the war will still be going strong in January 2009 when the next president takes office. As Jinchi pointed out in a comment, that means that another thousand American soldiers will be dead along with thousands of Iraqis. At the same time, I also feel forgiving toward the Democratic leadership. I believe they performed well and hope they learned some lessons that they can apply to their confrontation with the White House. I'm sure it's coming sooner or later.

Hillary and Obama voted "no." No surprise there.

Just One More War

According to Steven C. Clemons of The Washington Note (via Matthew Yglesias), Dick Cheney is becoming increasingly frustrated with the Bush administration's attempts to engage in diplomacy with Iran and is developing a plan to induce an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities.

This White House official has stated to several Washington insiders that Cheney is planning to deploy an "end run strategy" around the President if he and his team lose the policy argument. The thinking on Cheney's team is to collude with Israel, nudging Israel at some key moment in the ongoing standoff between Iran's nuclear activities and international frustration over this to mount a small-scale conventional strike against Natanz using cruise missiles (i.e., not ballistic missiles).

I'm not sure how reputable a writer Clemons is or how valid his sources are. But the idea of Dick Cheney orchestrating his own war against Iran did remind me that I've always wanted to rewrite Phil Collins' "One More Night." With apologies to Mr. Collins.

One More War

One more war, one more war
Ive been trying ooh so long to bomb them
Let you know how I feel
And if I should have a heart attack just help me back
So I can make you see

Please give me one more war, give me one more war
One more war cos I cant wait forever
Give me just one more war, oh just one more war
My heart can't go on forever

Ive been sitting here oh so long
Waiting to bomb them in Tehran
And I was wondering should I call you
So you'll bomb Tehran too

Please give me one more war, give me just one more war
Oh one more war, cos I cant wait forever
Please give me one more war, ooh just one more war
Oh one more war, cos I cant wait forever
Give me one more war, give me just one more war
Ooh one more war, cos I cant wait forever

If you nuke their nurseries
I will always be with you
bomb their colleges and universities
I will follow you

Give me one more war, give me just one more war
Oh one more war, cos I cant wait forever
I know you're asking why fight Iran
Guess you've got much to learn
But if you change your mind you know that Ill be here
And we'll make their oil fields burn

Give me just one more war, give me just one more war
Ooh one more war, cos I cant wait forever
Give me just one more war, give me just one more war
Ooh one more war, cos I cant wait forever

Eviscerating Joe Klein

Joe Klein and Neo-liberalism. Joe Klein of Time magazine has served for a long time as the far left wing of the conservative media apparatus. Like Jonathan Alter or Thomas Friedman, Klein is a neo-liberal whose journalistic work functions to promote conservatism to moderate and liberal audiences. The Kleins of the world might be registered Democrats but they have far more respect for business leaders and generals than they have for consumer activists or MoveOn. Lashing out at Democrats far more frequently than figures like Rush Limbaugh or Mitch McConnell, neo-liberal journalists are keenly interested in liberal rationalizations for conservative initiatives like invading Iraq, warrantless wiretapping, NAFTA, and privatizing social security. However, "liberal" issues like gay rights, re-invigorating the union movement, and addressing the growing wealth gap hold little interest for them.

Joe Klein and neo-liberal journalism were one of the main reasons that liberalism was silenced during the initial debate over the Iraq invasion. As pundits for newspapers, news magazines, and "liberal" outlets like The New Republic, NPR, and Slate, neo-liberal commentators amplified all of Dick Cheney's and Colin Powell's claims about Iraq while undercutting anti-war arguments about an invasion working in favor of al-Qaeda and fomenting sectarian conflict. Because neo-liberals also served as the semi-official voices of "liberalism" on Sunday interview shows and debate shows, liberal and anti-war voices were largely excluded from the debate over invading Iraq.

However, because of the disaster in Iraq and the general failure of the Bush administration, neo-liberals are now on the endangered species list. Joe Klein in particular is being whipsawed between declining interest in the neo-liberal point of view and rising competition from a "new" liberal media. Because of the rising tide of disgust with Bush and the right-wing, the liberal readers of magazines like Time are losing interest in neo-liberal views. Where neo-liberals who justified the right were once considered "independent," now they're just thought of as Bush apologists. At the same time, any favorable comment about Bush that Klein makes is subject to derision and insult from the new breed of liberal bloggers, comics, and commentators. There used to be a time when being able to talk with important people was a measure of a journalist's own importance. However, now that the Bush administration is ridiculed as absurd and incompetent, the journalists who talk with the important people in the Bush administration now risk being tarred with the same brush.

Greenwald on Klein. All of this is a long set-up for a discussion of liberal blogger Glenn Greenwald's evisceration of Joe Klein in his Salon blog today. Using "senior military officials" as sources, Klein claimed in a "fair and balanced" kind of way that there was good news as well as bad news from Iraq. The "good news" was that Sunni tribal leaders had come over to the American side in Anbar province and were now serving as an effective fighting force against al-Qaeda. This is where Greenwald cuts Klein down to weenie boy status. Klein was a tool of the Bush administration for repeating their one "good news" talking point about Iraq. Klein was also ignorant about Iraq because the "Sunni tribal leaders" story has been known for months. In other words, Joe Klein was not just a tool of the administration but a poorly informed tool. At the same time, Greenwald points out that Klein was using anonymous sources to get out everyday Bush administration talking points. Instead of protecting his sources from retaliation, Klein was apparently using anonymity as a cheap way of make an old story seem like it still was important.

Again, what conceivable journalistic justification is there for granting anonymity to government sources to recite the Government Line? It has no value other than to lend the government position enhanced though unmerited credibility

For Greenwald, Klein's balancing "bad news" that Iraqi Shiites had little interest in conceding anything to the Sunni minority is much more of a ritual gesture than anything like real objectivity. Actually, Greenwald could have gone further here. Klein's advice to Iraqi Shiite leaders is that they need to get over the "battered child syndrome" that makes them wary of the Sunnis and grow up. That's also the advice that neo-liberals like Klein give to the left when they criticize American government. Klein wants the Shiites to "grow up" and be a man like Joe Klein so they can do the bidding of the "senior military officials" and other really important people that Joe Klein talks to because he's a grown-up.

Finally, Greenwald tears off Klein's last fig leaf when he argues that Klein is merely repeating the standard "Beltway script" that war that the progress of the surge can't be fully evaluated until September when General Petraeus makes his report. In other words, Greenwald is revealing that Joe Klein, "important Washington journalist" working for a "prestigious news organization," isn't even writing his own material. It's more accurate to say that Klein is working up yet another simulation of the same Beltway script used by David Broder, Cokie Roberts, and other Establishment journalists.

Joe Klein's Inner Weenie Boy--What Glenn Greenwald reveals what Joe Klein means by "growing up." He means giving up his own voice--intellectually castrating yourself-- so that he can serve as a mouthpiece for the Beltway point of view. For guys like Joe Klein, manliness is defined as talking, socializing, and agreeing with "the really important people" (or the "big swinging dicks" of the world) on the significant issues of the day. It's identifying his manhood with the phallus of their power rather than his own insignificant penis.

This makes Klein a weenie boy in my book. Conservative figures like the president, Alberto Gonzales, and Rush Limbaugh are weenie boys in the sense that they compensate for their sense of male inadequacy by being especially aggressive in their politics. Working the weenie- boy symbolic magic in a slightly different way, Joe Klein compensates for his own sense of male inadequacy by identifying with "important people" like George Bush and Dick Cheney. In my opinion, this is the bottom of the identification of Joe Klein and the Bush administration. It's all about compensating for what you don't think you have. In this case, the weenie boy in Joe Klein recognizes himself in the weeniness of the Bush White House and loves what he sees despite the failure of the war and the overall incompetence of the administration.

The Newt Scenario, plus Mitt's still a Twit

One of these days, the media may succeed in puffing Mitt Romney up into a major candidate. It is clear, however, that such a day has not yet arrived.

In a Diageo/Hotline poll of Republican candidates, Romney's still at 8% which puts him behind Giuliani (26%), McCain (17%), Newt Gingrich (10%) and Fred Thompson (9%). Despite five months of campaigning, Romney still hasn't made himself as compelling a figure to Republican voters as either Gingrich or Fred Thompson.

Rudy Giuliani and John McCain are the two first tier Republican candidates but neither of them is actually increasing their votes. In particular, Giuliani seems to be coming back to the pack. I had previously guessed that Newt might enter the race if his own numbers got up to 20%. I'm still convinced that Gingrich will run, but I'm beginning to wonder if Giuliani slipping down to 20% might be Newt's trigger.

I still believe that Newt's basic chance of winning the GOP nomination comes from the likelihood that Mitt Romney is going to unleash a barrage of negative advertising against McCain in an effort to become Giuliani's main challenger. My bet would be that Newt would benefit more from Romney's money than Romney himself.

There is also a real possibility that there will be no clear Republican front-runner at the end of the primary season. The conventional wisdom is that candidates who win Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina establish an irreversible momentum going into the big state primaries on Feb. 5, sweep the big states, and coast from there. There is some chance though that nobody is going to sweep the big states and that the Republican presidential race will be a hard slog right through to the end.

If that's the case, I still see Newt as a potential winner because he's the most "natural" conservative among the top five candidates.

It Ain't Over Till It's Over

The Democratic leadership in the House and Senate have formulated an Iraq war funding bill with no timelines, an extremely weak enforcement mechanism for benchmarks, an increase in the minimum wage, and about $20 billion in domestic spending.

If the bill passes, it will represent an almost complete capitulation of the Democratic leadership to President Bush's demands.

But I'm beginning to wonder the war funding bill actually is going to pass. Nancy Pelosi has already said that she would vote against it which makes me wonder if the Speaker's office is going to "whip" the legislation (twist arms to ensure that it will pass) and ultimately whether the legislation will pass without leadership support. Depending on Republican votes to make up for liberal defections doesn't seem to be an entirely reliable mechanism for passing the legislation either.

Ultimately, there's some chance that Congress can't pass a war funding bill that Bush would be willing to sign.

Joe Klein: Campaign Consultant

It appears that Joe Klein, a columnist for Time magazine and author of Primary Colors, does political consulting on the side. According to Bob Shrum, John Kerry's campaign manager, Klein often called Kerry with unsolicited advice during the 2004 presidential campaign.

Klein himself was trying to play many parts. He was not only reporting on the campaign and preparing to write a book about consultants; he was also a constant critic and yet another sometime adviser. After the Kerry appearance at the Iowa Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner, he told [Kerry spokesman] David Wade: "Great speech, but it's too late"--then turned around and stalked away. With Klein, it was almost always too late for us, in part because we didn't always take his persistent advice. He would chastise Kerry on the phone when he didn't like a speech, counseling both Kerry and me about what the canddiate should say and what our strategy should be.

TPM wonders if Klein was not inappropriately blurring the line between reporter and political candidate. However, I've always thought that the MSM normally takes the "consultants-eye view" of political campaigns in their reporting. Klein's heavy-hitter status gave him a chance to live the fantasy of consulting a presidentuial candidate during an important election.

Reaching Two Dead Ends on Iraq

This topic deserves a lot more attention than I'm going to give it here, but the war effort in Iraq may have reached two dead ends today.

The first dead end was reached by the Democratic leadership which appears to have given up on its effort to seize control of the war from the Bush administration and is agreeing to provide four more months of war financing without either a timeline for withdrawal or meaningfully enforceable benchmarks. The main left-wing blogs are not happy but not too surprised either. Word of a 90% Democratic cave-in emerged last week and it turned out that there were only two ways to force a military withdrawal from Iraq--pass a bill with a veto-proof majority or don't pass a war funding bill at all.

The second concerns the surge itself. It appears from a David Ignatius Washington Post op-ed that "senior administration officials" have concluded that the surge is not going to work. The two major goals of the surge were to stabilize Baghdad and push the Maliki government to pass legislation designed to reconcile Shiite and Sunni factions. It appears that "senior administration officials" have decided that the American military is not going to stabilize Baghdad. Instead, "The Iraqi government [itself] needs to show that it can take control of the capital." Of course, the major key to stabilizing Baghdad was to control the sectarian killing that was making the entire city into a kind of killing field. But American officials also have decided that they aren't going to be able to stem sectarian violence either. "'Sectarian violence is not a problem we can fix," said one senior official."

The American military is also convinced that the surge is a loser. "[T]he new head of Central Command, Adm. William Fallon, has publicly stated his view that the surge strategy is just "chipping away at the problem" and that "reconciliation isn't likely in the time we have available.'"

It's easy for those on the left to miss the significance of the emerging thinking about the surge because of David Ignatius' predictable mainstream media conclusion that "bi-partisanship" is needed to change course in Iraq. In fact, Ignatius' "senior officials" (my guess would be Defense Secretary Robert Gates) and the military are beginning to openly adapt the views of war opponents and the Democratic congressional leadership. The "post-surge plan" is to focus on training the Iraqi military, engaging in special forces operations against al-Qaeda, and securing Iraq from invasion by Turkey, Iran, or Saudi Arabia (mostly Turkey). The Democrats have been producing plans like this for a couple of years now with Hillary Clinton wanting to keep 75,000 American troops stationed inside Iraq while John Murtha wants those troops stationed just outside Iraqi territory. The only difference is that the current "post-surge" plan entails going after the sectarian militias that the Democrats would just as soon leave alone.

In other words, "senior officials," the American military, and leading Democrats all agree that the U. S. should cease combat operations in Iraq and retreat to a supporting role. For better or worse, that probably won't be enough to move President Bush off his "dead-ender" position. If Hillary or Obama win in 2008, however, there will be a broad elite consensus on the Iraq policy that needs to be adopted when they take office.

P. S. Fred Kaplan's Slate article on Ignatius' op-ed comes to some of these conclusions as well.

I Swallowed Hard and Voted Beshear!!

Democratic and Republican primaries for governor are being held in Kentucky where election day is a state holiday just it should be all over the country. I took my two daughters with me to the polling station as a civics lesson and said a couple of things about how important it was to vote.

In the Democratic primary, I voted for Steve Beshear for the same reasons I supported John Kerry. Beshear is a well-known name, he's solid, and he's electable in a year when the Republicans are fielding a weak incumbent in the hapless Ernie Fletcher.

Like Kerry, however, Beshear is far from being a lock to beat Fletcher and Daily Kos and MyDD are much too optimistic about his chances. Beshear is so colorless it's painful, seems to lack a killer instinct, and is an easy target for negative advertising because of his advocacy of casino gambling and work as a lawyer/lobbyist.

Worst of all, Beshear probably won't be able to match Fletcher's fund-raising.

But Beshear is easily the best candidate the Democrats can field. So, I'm going to swallow hard and support him as much as I can.

Blank Check Ready To Be Mailed

There's a couple of reports that the Democratic leadership is ready to cave into President Bush on Iraq war funding. The first reports on the Fox web site were under a banner that read something like "Democrats Waving White Flag." In dealing with the right-wing, it's important to remember that they define everything in terms of domination. Either they're dominating and the left is surrendering or the left is forcing them to surrender. There's no compromise.

Who Cares about Jimmy Carter?

"Careless" speech is in the eyes of the beholder. When Jimmy Carter chastised George Bush for being "the worst" foreign policy president in American history and engineering "an overt reversal of America's basic values," he was expressing conventional opinion on the failure of the Bush presidency. Yet, Carter caught so much grief that he was forced to backtrack and refer to his own remarks as "careless or misinterpreted."

But there has hardly been a peep from either the left or the right over Newt Gingrich calling for military tribunals to lock people up for opposition to the war in Iraq. Gingrich is like Carter in the sense that Gingrich is expressing a conventional wisdom. It's just that Gingrich's conventional wisdom is the cw of the right where Carter's was the cw of the broader American population. However, Gingrich's advocacy of military tribunals for suppressing domestic dissent is far more significant for the future of American democracy than Carter's personal attack on Bush.

Gingrich is the one who should be controversial here not Carter. One of the fatal weaknesses of both moderates and people on the left is our underestimation of the enormous disgust that the right-wing has with American culture and American political institutions.

We need to pay a lot more attention to Newt Gingrich and people like him.

Back to the Bottom of Bronchitis Hell

My ten-year old had a great tenth birthday party Saturday night. The only problem was that she woke up the next day with a stomach bug and threw up about ten times. I got the bug too which means that I'm taking a return trip to bronchitis hell.

So, it's back to short, infrequent posts while I figure new techniques for breathing without coughing.

Gingrich: End Democracy as We Know It

I caught a video of Newt Gingrich on Meet the Press today explaining how he would win the war in Iraq. The third item in Newt's 6 point plan was particularly eye catching.

Encourage the development of a military tribunal system to lock people up the way Abraham Lincoln would have done it.

When Gingrich mentions "locking people up" through a military tribunal system, he is referring to war opponents. The key is the Lincoln reference. When conservatives like Gingrich talk about military tribunals in relation to Abraham Lincoln, they emphasize that Lincoln had the leading Copperhead, or Southern sympathizer, Clement Vallandigham of Ohio, brought before a military tribunal and convicted. For conservatives, the Vallandigham case established a decisive precedent for presidents having domestic opponents of a war arrested and brought before military courts. Former Reagan defense official Frank Gaffney argued recently in a Washington Times column that the Lincoln precedent meant that members of Congress like Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan should be subject to arrest. Obviously, the same would apply to the leadership of anti-war organizations like MoveOn.org, the proprietors of popular left-wing blogs like DailyKos and MyDD, and anti-war figures like Michael Moore as well.

For Gingrich, "locking people up" means jailing hundreds if not thousands of war opponents and silencing anybody else who might be opposed to the war. At least implicitly, Gingrich believes that "winning the war" means abrogating the free speech, free press, freedom of assembly, habeas corpus, and other due process rights for the entire American population. In other words, the effort to create democracy in Iraq would have the effect (at least temporarily) of ending democracy in the United States.

Celebrating The Republican Resistance

There has been considerable commentary today on the left's new view of John Ashcroft into a hero of the Constitution. I'm not sure about the left-wing credentials of Chuck Schumer and Wonkette, but celebrating Ashcroft seems to be the order of the day.

Curiously enough, Ashcroft himself remains silent.

A more general revaluation of conservative Republicans is in order for commentators on the left. There's been an on-going "Republican Resistance" to the phony intelligence, war planning, torture policies, and other monstrosities perpetrated by the Bush administration. And it is time that the left began giving credit to Richard Clarke, State Department Staffers, anonymous Pentagon leakers, and unnamed personnel stationed in Iraq. Needless to say, those who have been delaying, leaking, protesting, and refusing to carry out Bush policies are still Republicans and still conservatives. However, they have served the country well at a time when the Bush administration has been trying to undermine basic American values and institutions.

They all deserve a lot of credit--Not just John Ashcroft.

More on Moore

From Salon's review of Michael Moore's "Sicko."

When Moore interviews Tony Benn, a leading figure on the British left, his larger concerns come into focus. Benn argues that for-profit healthcare and the other instruments of the corporate state, like student loans and bottomless credit-card debt, perform a crucial function for that state. They undermine democracy by creating a docile and hardworking population that is addicted to constant debt and an essentially unsustainable lifestyle, that literally cannot afford to quit jobs or take time off, that is more interested in maintaining high incomes than in social or political change.

Benn just misses one of the ironies of American life. We have a "docile and hardworking population" that is little interested in large-scale "social or political change." However, we also have an enormous amount of personal aggression in the United States. There are much higher rates for murder, rape, violent crime, and other kinds of interpersonal violence in the U. S. than in comparable countries. If Americans are docile toward social, economic, and political authority, we are extremely and destructively aggressive toward our families, friends, girlfriends, co-workers, and acquaintances. The only legitimate social targets for our aggression are those who complain about or criticize the reigning political-economic system--those on the left who complain about economic injustice, blacks who criticize racism, feminists, and gay rights activists. Americans certainly are docile in many ways but we're also sitting on a volcano of anger.

It Could Have Been Worse

Like a lot of people, I've got a bright yellow "W: Worst President Ever" bumper sticker on my car. Jimmy Carter jumped on the "Worst Ever" bandwagon by saying that "I think as far as the adverse impact on the nation around the world, this administration has been the worst in history." In other words, the Bush administration is the worst ever because the invasion of Iraq and their general foreign policy have been such an unmitigated disaster. But he goes further and here is where you have to wonder if things could have gotten even worse. Carter is just as disturbed by the "overt reversal of America's basic values" embodied in the torture policy, Guantanamo, warrantless wiretapping, and other forms of Bush lawlessness. Given the unpopularity of the Bush administration, it is likely that Bush's assault on "basic American values" will be reversed when a Democratic president takes office in 2009. But what if the invasion of Iraq had been more successful. Would that mean that the Bush administration's "reversal of America's basic values" would have been successful as well? Perhaps there is a silver lining to American failure in Iraq after all.

Defeated By Democracy

ONE MORE CUP OF B.S. FOR THE ROAD. In his Sunday op-ed, David Broder gives George Bush and Tony Blair as much man-love as he can without making his readers throw up. According to Broder:

"History will record that both of them saw the threat to the West posed by terrorism and responded courageously. The wisdom of their policy and the conduct of their governments are not likely to be judged as highly."

That's nonsense. Bush leveraged the 9-11 attacks into the invasion of Iraq that neo-conservatives had been dreaming about since 1991. More than anything else, the invasion of Iraq was an exercise in self-indulgence and the only courage the Bush administration showed was the courage to pamper themselves.

DEFEATED BY DEMOCRACY. Broder doesn't mention that Bush and Blair have been defeated by the democracy that they so dishonestly promoted as a justification for the invasion. Blair was pushed out before he could get the Labor Party trounced in the next British elections and Bush has lost so much credibility that he's more of a national joke than a national leader. Ultimately, all Bush and Blair had was each other. Well, maybe Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, and Alberto Gonzales as well. And of course, David Broder.

Maybe they can all get together for a group hug when Bush leaves office in January 2009.

Turning Dreams Into Productivity

My nine-year old daughter is still nine but she's celebrating her tenth birthday a day early with a sleepover for five of her closest friends. And they're watching the 1995 movie "A Little Princess."

This line spoken by the evil Mrs. Minchen to the heroine Sarah is particularly compelling:

"It's a cruel, nasty world out there, and it's our duty to make the best of it. Not to indulge in ridiculous dreams, but to be productive and useful. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

Mean-spirited people like the Mrs. Minchen character used to get special joy out of crushing the spirits of little children like Sarah because their dreams did not correlate with the harshness of the real world.

Unfortunately, those were the good old days. The "productive apparatus" of American society can no longer afford to leave dreams alone. The idle dreams of children have to become productive if Americans are to have either the new computer programs, new medicines, new movies, and new novels or the profits that derive from American creativity.

In many ways, that's what American education is about--turning innocent dreaming into productive creativity.

It really is a cruel world.

Conservatives Sick over "Sicko"

Both the Fox and the CNN websites are reporting positive reviews of Michael Moore's new film Sicko. That will make Michael Medved, Ann Coulter, and other right-wing commentators very sick. Perhaps they'll all be traveling to Havana for treatment.

Toward a Second Veto

TODAY, the Bush administration rejected attempts by the Democratic leadership to cut a deal on war funding. They didn't accept proposals for withdrawal deadlines the president could waive, benchmarks with consequences, and or the removal of domestic pork for that matter. The Bush administration said they weren't going to compromise and they didn't compromise.

WHAT'S NEXT FOR THE DEMOCRATS?

GREG SARGENT of TPM suggests that the Iraq funding battle has boiled down to either Bush caving and accepting Democratic mandates or the Democratic leadership caving and giving Bush what he wants.

I don't think that's quite the case, at least not yet.

THE CURRENT SITUATION: BUSH VERSION. For the Bush administration, the main point is to show how tough they are. They're eager to play chicken with funding for the military mission in Iraq and don't care about consequences for American troops. Thus, they view the funding battle is a win-win situation. If the Democrats cave, Bush can gloat about how much tougher than hs is than the Democrats. If the Democrats go to the mat and cut off funding, then Bush can blame them for any negative consequences for American forces in Iraq.

But, Bush's position weakens daily because the surge is such a loser. More American troops are dying, Baghdad isn't any more secure, and the military situation is actually deteriorating in provinces outside Baghdad.

The military failure in Iraq tars everything Bush has done. The overseas kidnappings, torture policy, and warrantless wiretapping all look like exercises in criminal behavior rather than national security strategy.

Likewise, Bush's refusal to negotiate with Congress looks more like petulance than principle.

THE CURRENT SITUATION: DEMOCRATIC VERSION. The situation is more complex for the Democrats. Their ultimate policy objective has been to seize control of the war and force the withdrawal of American combat troops. But there's only two ways that can happen and both now appear impossible. First, Congress would have to pass legislation to cut off funding for the war with a veto-proof majority. That was always impossible. Second, Congress could just not pass war funding at all and just let the money for the occupation run out. But it doesn't appear that the Democratic leadership wants that kind of confrontation.

However, the Democrats have succeeded politically. Pelosi and Reid have shown that they're determined and tenacious and that they can get legislation passed. These were things that were seriously in doubt in January when Democratic majorities took control of the House and Senate.

At the same time, Pelosi and Reid have shown that they're willing to negotiate with the Bush administration in good faith. Unlike the Bush administration, the Democrat have demonstrated that they're more committed to American interests than their partisan agenda. The Democrats have swung public opinion in their direction. Almost 2/3rds of the American public wants either the immediate withdrawal of American combat forces or a mandatory timetable for withdrawal. Although Bush controls the "bully pulpit," the Democratic leadership has rallied public opinion around withdrawal from Iraq.

All in all, the Democratic leadership has done better than people expected, including people on the left. As Greg Sergent observes, the Dems have "consistently hung much tougher than anyone expected and [have] steadily defied expectations in the process." And they've probably done a great deal better than Bush himself expected.

PUSHING TOWARD A SECOND VETO. In this context, the Democrats have accumulated some political capital and I believe they should invest it in the conflict over Iraq war funding. The best thing the Democrats can do is send up another bill that Bush will most likely veto. Pelosi could send up another bill with a withdrawal timeline, a bill with enforcable benchmarks for the Iraqi government, or a short-term bill like the House has passed that forces the Bush administration to come back for more money in August. I've come to favor benchmarks. The Bush administration has announced that it believes in benchmarks, the public supports benchmarks, and benchmarks are targeted to the Iraqi government rather than American troops. All of these things make benchmarks more appealing to the American public and more painful for the Bush administration to veto.

If the Democrats send up a bill with enforcable benchmarks, there is the possibility that Bush would sign the legislation just to throw the Democrats off balance. But the chances of that are slim. The 30% of the public that still supports Bush is insisting that he only sign a "clean bill" with no restrictions on Bush's freedom of action. If Bush caves in to the Democrats, his support base would most likely collapse and he might as well resign.

But a second veto also entails risks for Bush. If the public perceives the Democrats as having negotiated in good faith, the Bush administration will seem even more arbitrary, rigid, and peevish than it seems already and public opposition to Bush might harden to the point that there will be a consensus for a quick withdrawal as soon as Bush leaves office. Dick Cheney has announced that he doesn't particularly care about the future of the Republican Party, but Republicans in the House and Senate do care and they might finally start acting to undercut the war themselves and help prepare the way for a post-Bush withdrawal.

Perhaps the Democrats won't be able to seize control of the war from Bush before he leaves office. However, by continuing to push on the issue of war funding, they can create the conditions for a national consensus on withdrawing from Iraq as soon Hillary or Obama is sworn in as president. The Democrats may not be able to force withdrawal now, but they are creating conditions that will make withdrawing from Iraq easier in the future.

A Great President!

It appears that Paul Wolfowitz's resignation today as president of the World Bank was contingent on the Bank's board publicly accepting Wolfowitz' "contention that he acted "ethically and in good faith.'"

Maybe that will work for George Bush as well.

Perhaps President Bush and Dick Cheney would resign if Congress, the media, left-wing bloggers, and the nation at large just accept Bush's contention that he's a great president.

Hey, I never said I would never compromise my ethics for a good enough cause and this is a good enough cause.

So here goes!

"George Bush is a great president, one of the greatest presidents in American history."

More Muttering About Dictatorship From the Right

Conservatives might think of democracy as a noble goal for Iraq, but they're not sure it's such a good idea for the United States. As RSI has noted here and here, right-wing intellectuals like Thomas Sowell and Harvey Mansflield have recently begun expressing a yearning for one-man rule, military coups, and the abrogation of First Amendment rights. The underlying problem, it appears, is that the right expects the Republicans to lose in 2008 and conservative op-ed writers are already passing around the sour grapes.

Yesterday, however, Kevin Hassett of the American Enterprise Institute published what looks like a bolder and more systematic claim for dictatorship as the best political system for business. Hassett focuses on data that "dictatorships with free enterprise systems" have been growing faster than "democracies with free enterprise systems." But the fast growth of China and Singapore is not Hassett's point. Actually, the data itself is specious because the dictatorships are developing countries starting from a very poor economic base while democracies like the U. S. and France are mature and prosperous economies. Hassett acknowledges this:

"[N]early all of the unfree nations are developing countries. History shows they grow faster, at least for a while, than mature nations."

What Hassett wants to emphasize instead is the general point that dictatorships might be better for economic growth in general because "dictatorships are not hamstrung by the preferences of voters for, say, a pervasive welfare state." "Burdened" by public opinion, political parties, an independent media, and relatively free political speech, democracies inevitably develop welfare states of one kind of another. As a result, the only way that a "free market" paradise can be either brought into being or sustained is through dictatorship. Interestingly enough, Hassett seems to believe that a one-party Communist state like China is more friendly to business than a free country like the U. S.

In my opinion, Hassett's argument for dictatorship is a more serious threat to American democracy than those of other conservatives. Hassett seems to be saying to the corporate interests that finance the American Enterprise Institute that dictatorship in the U. S., France, and Germany might be just as favorable to their interests as dictatorship in China. It turns out that the "communist threat" to the U. S. is that American business might adapt Chinese communism as its preferred model for American society.

It will be interesting to see if more of this kind of literature emerges.

Why was Ashcroft Fired?

THE JAMES COMEY DRAMA. Today, liberal bloggers (here and here) and journalists are focused on former Deputy Attorney General James Comey's testimony about the hospital drama in 2004 where a very sick John Ashcroft refused to override Department of Justice lawyers and give approval to President Bush's warrantless wiretapping program.

Not that Bush cared about Ashcroft's opinion. He was going to adapt the program over Ashcroft's nearly dead body. However, Bush did eventually back off when Comey and other DOJ lawyers drew up letters of recommendation in protest.

THE REPUBLICAN RESISTANCE. One of the great, relatively untold, stories of the last five years has been the resistance of Republican bureaucrats to the reckless and lawless policies of the Bush administration. For the last five years, federal prosecutors, State Department officials, national security apparatchiks like Richard Clarke, intelligence analysts at the CIA, General Shalikashvili, mid-level bureaucrats, and retired generals have all provided an important first line of defense against Bush administration abuses. Despite long-standing partisan loyalties to the Republican Party, these men and women testified truthfully to Congress when they knew the truth could cost them their careers, pursued corruption investigations, leaked out important information that the Bush administration was either ignoring or covering up, spoke to the media, and wrote important books. They put their country over their self-interest, their loyalty to the Republican Party, and their loyalty to conservativism and provided important service to the country at a crucial time.

James Comey was as loyal a Republican as you can get. According to Sidney Blumenthal, Comey's

adherence to the principles of the Federalist Society lent him an imprimatur as a reliable conservative. He served as counsel to the House Judiciary Committee during the impeachment of President Clinton. His partisanship was considered so solid that he was named head of the Bush transition team for the Justice Department.

Yet, Comey did not seem to hesitate when he threatened to resign over Bush administration's initial warrantless wiretapping proposals. That took a lot of guts and a lot of character. Comey did another service by testifying about the whole episode.

Like other bureaucrats involved in the Republican resistance to the Bush administration, however, Comey probably won't get the credit he deserves.

ASHCROFT'S FIRING. John Ashcroft deserves praise as well. In fact, one has to wonder if Ashcroft wasn't fired after the 2004 election because of his refusal to sign off on the illegal wiretapping program. One of the worst things that can be said about the Bush administration is that it seems like willingness, indeed eagerness, to break the law gradually became one of the more important qualifications for employment. Though far from a liberal, Ashcroft deserves credit for refusing to authorize the law breaking involved in the first version of the Bush warrantless wiretapping program.

Jerry Falwell: The Old Bull's Gone (Revised, Updated)

THE ERA HAD ALREADY ENDED. After Jerry Falwell died today in Lynchburg, Howard Fineman wrote that his death was "The End of an Era." But Falwell's era had been over for years. After Falwell broke up the Moral Majority in 1989, the initiative, money, and day to day influence on the right shifted toward figures like James Dobson. Falwell became an old-bull senior statesman without a lot of real clout--sort of like the Teddy Kennedy of the right.

MORE FUNDAMENTALLY, Jerry Falwell's goal of creating a majority political coalition around "the defense of traditional values" was not realized. Christian conservativism grew dramatically, but maxed out at 20% of the population and has peaked as a political force. Seeking to seal their political control without majority support, conservative Christians ranging from Karl Rove to Tom DeLay and Monica Goodling have engaged in a wide range of unethical and criminal manuevers. As a result, Christian conservatism has become a watchword for preening arrogance, systematic deceit, and monumental incompetence more than anything else. If Falwell and Pat Robertson opened up a new era of Christian involvement in politics, the younger men and women of the Bush administration and Republican have ensured that the Christian right would be ensnared in their own failures. If Jerry Falwell ushered Christian conservativism into the political arena, he lived to see both the ascendancy of Christian conservatives in the Bush administration and their downfall before he finally died.

Once again, the era of Jerry Falwell ended well before he died.

Yet, I've always viewed Jerry Falwell as also being a progressive force in American society in some ways. Having lived in Chapel Hill, NC during the height of Falwell's Moral Majority, Jim Bakker's PTL, and Jimmy Swaggert's ministry, and watched them regularly on television, I don't have the personal animus against the Christian right that characterizes many people on the left. That was especially the case after I visited my first wife's grandmother in Hamlet, NC in 1982 and found that she was making monthly donations out of her social security to Jimmy Swaggert. Of course, I didn't like the fact that Swaggert was hoodwinking an 83 year-old widow out of her retirement but I was also impressed by the vitality of the conservatism that led her to donate. Falwell and the other personalities of the right may have been repulsive but they were also interesting.

SO THEN, what gave Falwell a progressive dimension? Having gotten his start in the politics of white racism, Falwell began to articulate a post-segregation language of conservative politics in the South and thus helped the white South make the transition out of the era of lynching, Bull Connor, George Wallace, and mass resistance to desegregation. Falwell had been part of the Southern resistance to desegregation at least through the mid-sixties when he was criticizing Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights movement. However, the defense of segregation was no longer part of Jerry Falwell's agenda in 1979 when he started the Moral Majority and some years later he was renouncing his past racism. Falwell was still a bigot launching vicious attacks on gays and defending apartheid, but the Moral Majority and other organizations in the new right were no longer defending lynching, denying blacks the right to vote, or excluding blacks from educational institutions and basic services. Falwell's transition out of segregation may have been reluctant, halting, incomplete, and dishonest, and it may have involved an enormous amount of nostalgia for the segregationist past. However, if American progress toward integration was going to be sustained, American conservatism had to move away from the defense of segregation and the advocacy of white supremacy. For better or worse, Jerry Falwell was one of the main figures in conservatism who made this happen.

Jerry Falwell and the early religious right also brought millions of people into politics who had not previously been connected to public life. This is what I've seen living in North Carolina and Kentucky over most of my adult life. I've seen the Moral Majority bumper stickers, the big-time televangelism, the burgeoning of the right to life movement, and the mass mobilization of the religious right around various political campaigns culminating in the Bush re-election campaign of 2004. Of course, the people Falwell brought into politics were highly conservative and bigoted toward African-Americans, feminists, gay people, the North, the West coast, and cities everywhere. However, the effect of bringing so many people into politics has been profoundly democratizing and profoundly liberalizing to the extent that rural areas in places like Kentucky are now exposed to the whole range of social and political debate. That's a progressive thing even if there is a constant risk of right-wing authoritarianism becoming dominant.

All's Well

It turned out that the little boy was at his aunt's all along. All's Well That End's Well.

A Scary Moment

There's a lot of police cars at the foot of our street. A little boy is missing and the police are looking for the boy and (I assume) talking with his parents. He's a great kid. I hope they find him quickly.

A Coaching Conundrum?

Todd McCorkle, the women's golf coach at Georgia, resigned recently following allegations of inappropriate sexual remarks and behavior to the female golfers on his team.

McCorkle, who had coached women's golf teams to two national championships, engaged in a wide range of offensive behavior. Among other things, he showed the Paris Hilton sex video to the team, shared "offensive jokes and comments, including remarks about bras and underwear color," and referred to team members as "sexy" as they were going to team functions. Some of McCorkle's remarks also referred to "male anatomy."

One player wrote that "he is randomly rubbing your back or flipping hair, or pat on butt - and otherwise not think anything about it - but with all the other stuff feels wrong."

In reading the SI.com article (which I reprint in full below), I got the impression that McCorkle was engaged in "male bonding" with his female golfers rather than explicitly heterosexual behavior. Like other forms of pornography, the Paris Hilton sex video would be something that guys would share with each other. Because the primary object of guys watching the video would be to "share" the fetish of watching Paris Hilton have sex, the primary sexuality would be the homoerotic bonding with the other guys rather than attraction for Ms. Hilton.

The same is the case with the comments about bras, panties, and "male anatomy." From John Amaechi's book on life as a gay man in the NBA, it turns out that heterosexual basketball players often talk about "male anatomy" in homoerotic ways. Likewise, what's more homoerotic than patting someone on the butt all the time?

McCorkle's problem seemed to be this. He wanted to treat his female golfers like "the guys" in the sense that he wanted to share his homoerotic fetishizing about women with them. As a women's golf coach, McCorkle was in a homoerotic paradise of female objects that he could fetishize over with "the guys" and he seemed to be extremely eager to do so. But the downside was that McCorkle was sharing his fetishes with the women he was fetishizing. He was demeaning women and effectively bragging about it to the women he was demeaning. It was sexually inappropriate and unprofessional.

Interestingly enough, the University of Georgia viewed McCorkle as salvageable. Besides suspending him and putting him under a "no tolerance" mandate, George also ordered him to undergo a lot of sexual harassment training. McCorkle ultimately decided to resign on his own. From the perspective I outlined in the previous paragraph, however, Georgia's approach was a good idea. I'm not sure that McCorkle understood the harmful character of much homoerotic male fetishizing in general or why female athletes would not be willing to share those fetishes with him. Sexual harassment training might have done McCorkle some good.

The conundrum here is whether McCorkle's behavior would have been appropriate if he had been coaching a men's golf team. If male homoeroticism was inappropriate in the context of a female sports team, would it be any more appropriate for a male team.

Some of McCorkle behavior was unprofessional whatever the context. Showing the Paris Hilton would be inappropriate for a coach to show players in any circumstances. But I'm wondering if a male coach would be viewed as inappropriate if he shared the whole range of standard homoerotic behaviors with the male members of his team. These would include the comments on "male anatomy" and talk about female underwear as well as the whole range of butt-patting, towel-snapping, chest-bumping, high fiving, and other kinds of homoerotic bonding associated with sports.

My sense is that some male homoeroticism would be seen as inappropriate from a coach (talk about male anatomy and female underwear) but that the butt-patting, etc. would be seen as just being "enthusiastic."

But I still wonder what would happen if someone complained. Maybe it's all inappropriate.


ATHENS, Ga. (AP) — Todd McCorkle's sudden decision to resign as the women's golf coach at Georgia last week followed complaints from players about his inappropriate sexual comments and jokes, according to documents obtained Monday by The Associated Press.

McCorkle's resignation was announced May 7 and came three days after a memo in which he was told he would have to go through extensive anti-harassment training and would be suspended without pay for July. McCorkle instead quit, but athletic director Damon Evans said he would remain employed in another undisclosed job.

In the memo, University of Georgia executive director for legal affairs Steve Shewmaker told McCorkle several players had complained about the coach's behavior.

"We also recommend a close supervision of your interactions with your team, as any further conduct on your part that is a violation of this policy should result in immediate additional disciplinary action, up to and including termination of your employment with the university," the memo reads.

McCorkle said Monday he was not asked to resign, but acknowledged the "situation has placed a cloud over the program and I felt like it was in everyone's best interest for me to step down."
"In my tenure at Georgia I have unintentionally made comments that have made some of my players uncomfortable," McCorkle said in a statement. "I want to be clear in saying that this was not my intention or desire.

"I have learned through this experience that I must be 100 percent professional at all times. I would like to thank the University of Georgia for all the opportunities they have afforded me. Life is full of learning experiences and unfortunately this experience has cost me something that is dear to both me and my family."

The memo was one of several documents obtained in response to an open records request by the AP. Other documents included handwritten statements from several players, whose names were blacked out.

They reported that McCorkle shared a sexually explicit Paris Hilton video from the Internet with the team. There were a number of reports of McCorkle's sexual comments to players and a brief mention by one player of inappropriate physical contact.

"He is randomly rubbing your back or flipping hair, or pat on butt - and otherwise not think anything about it - but with all the other stuff feels wrong," the unidentified player wrote.

Players reported McCorkle shared offensive jokes and comments, including remarks about bras and underwear color. Some remarks were more explicit, referring to male anatomy.

The university's investigation began in April. Art Leon, the father of Georgia's No. 1 player, Taylor Leon, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution his complaints to Evans led to the investigation.

"I'm the person that initiated it," Leon told the paper. "He doesn't need to be a coach of women's golf anywhere. He got what he deserved."

The memo from Shewmaker informed McCorkle he violated the university's Non-Discrimination Anti-Harrassment Policy.

"This finding is based, in part, on your statements made during our investigation," Shewmaker wrote. "For example, you admitted you told one of the team members she looked 'sexy' on the way to the SEC tournament banquet."

Added Shewmaker: "Your comments had the effect of creating a hostile or offensive environment which interfered with the team members' ability to participate in or benefit from an educational program or activity."

McCorkle, who coached the Lady Bulldogs to the 2001 NCAA championship, said last week he was leaving the team to assist his wife, LPGA golfer Jenna Daniels, with her career. McCorkle also coached Arizona to the 2000 NCAA championship before becoming Georgia's coach in June of 2000.

"Big B" Makes His Move

Today's my 53rd birthday. So I thought I'd write a domestic post. The RSI family includes a mom, dad, two girls ages 12 and 9, and four pets. Since this post is about one of the pets, I'll go into more detail about them. We have a dog, Missy, who is an Australian blue heeler mix. Actually, she's about as blue as Kentucky blue grass which means not blue at all. Now, Missie weighs about 50 pounds, and has the herding instincts you'd expect from a blue heeler. She likes chasing the deer as well. The three cats include two indoor cats and an outdoor cat--"Big B" who came to live with us as a stray kitten.

At a trim 8 pounds and black with some white markings, "Big B" is all business. As the biggest of our admittedly runty group of cats, "Big B" is the boss cat and lets the other cats know it as soon as they venture outside. But "Big B" has ambitions. For the last year, "Big B's" also taken the initiative with the dog as well, often swatting her with a paw as the dog is coming out the door. Missy will chase "Bib B" and often catch him if she can get behind him. She refers to this as her "catch and release" program for chasing cats. However, "Big B's" swatting is extremely annoying to our canine, annoying enough that Missy sometimes backs up from going outside if she sees her nemesis on the porch.

Over the last week, "Big B" has started to go after even bigger game. Now, our courageous cat is swatting our 12 year old daughter when he wants to be fed. Even though she weigh at least 10 times as much as the cat, our daughter doesn't seem to intimidate "Big B" at all. It's like he's working his way up what he sees as the family hierarchy, targeting first the dog then taking on one of the girls.

Unfortunately for our no 1 daughter, we parental units have decided at least temporarily to back the cat. It's just too funny not to. When our daughter complains about being swatted, we just tell her to feed the cat before we fall all over ourselves laughing.

But maybe we shouldn't feel so smug. We could be giving "Big B" even bigger ideas.