Martin Luther King on War

Cynthia Tucker of the Atlanta Constitution quoted the passage below from a King speech in 1967 as part of an essay on the response of Christians to the war in Iraq.

"I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today — my own government."

However, King's comment resonates far more broadly in American society than that. The U. S. is the most violent of the advanced industrial nations by far. There's more murder, more rape, more police, more prisoners, more prisons, and more executions than any of the countries of Western Europe or Japan. Almost as heartbreaking as the violence itself is the way that violence is romanticized in the American media. It is hard to say which American television, movies, and popular music romanticize more: theft, fraud, murder, and serial murder or the almost equally violent investigation and punishment of crimes by the police apparatus. In fact, the glamorization of violence by the media is so pervasive that it is almost impossible to escape or avoid.

Nevertheless, it is important to remember King's observation that "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today" is our own government. We normally associate the evil of violence with "bad guys" like Osama bin Laden, but the destruction that the Bush administration has caused in Iraq--perhaps hundreds of thousands of Iraqis dead-- outstrips anything that bin Laden has either done or projected. Going even beyond that, the right-wing routinely rhapsodizes over the possibility of upping the level of violence in the Middle East to WWII levels where we nuked Hiroshima and firebombed Hamburg and Dresden.

Obviously, America can't just give up the path of violence cold turkey. If we did we would have the cultural version of delirium tremens, the hallucinatory disorder that alcoholics and drug addicts fall into when they stop consuming their substance of choice too quickly. But we can resume the work of developing alternative skills and strategies for dealing with problems both here and abroad.

The Dance of Bigotry

Creative Bigotry. Another semester is about ready to start at Morehead State University in Kentucky next week. Because I teach African-American thought early in my Intro to Political Theory class, one of the first things I encounter is the newest rationales for racism. When ideas like "blacks are just as racist as whites" peter out, new or recycled ideas like "stereotypes are real" pop up to take their place. Last fall, a student told me to the approval of other white students that racism was causeded by "blacks complaining about racism." Like other dimensions of American culture, white racism has a creative vitality.

Dancing around Anti-immigrant bigotry. In Texas, the town of Farmers Branch near Dallas has adaopted legislation that bans illegal immigrants from renting apartments. According to businessman Andrew Mungeon, the whites in town "don't like Mexicans" and passed anti-immigrant legislation as a result of their bigotry. Illegals, legal immigrants, and Hispanics in general responded by moving out of Farmers Branch and even avoiding the town.

For Tom Bohmier, the leader of a group backing "the city's push against illegal immigration," the charge of ethnic bias is "hogwash. We're going after illegal immigrants." But then he added the kicker: "the message is we are trying to slow down the degradation of our city." "The degradation of our city" is a code phrase for the sentiment that hearing Spanish spoken in the streets and stores, seeing commercial advertisements in Spanish, and the presence of brown-skinned people is a "degradation" of traditional culture, i. e., white culture. Of course, the sentiment that any Hispanic presence beyond tokenism is a "degradation" is a very powerful ethnic bias. Like "color-blind" rhetoric in relation to blacks, opposition to illegal immigration is a mask for a desire to cleanse American society of hispanic culture.

Entangling White Liberals. White liberals generally don't recognize the extent to which the traditional bigotries have begun to entangle them as well. Today's Houston Chronicle has a comment on the efforts of conservative Southern Republicans to use "Democrat" rather than "Democratic" as an adjective --as in Democrat Party, Democrat proposals, and "Democrat" members of Congress. The official rationale for this effort is the idea that "Democratic" has a favorable association with "democracy" that Republicans want to deny to the Democrats. But the real reason is the underlying sense of power over the Democrats that conservatives can claim by "naming" them something they don't want to be called. The ungrammatical sound of "Democrat" Party is also appealing to the anti-intellectualism of conservatives. By imposing "Democrat" as an adjective, conservatives can impose their own sense of moral superiority on the liberal artsy-ness they associate with the Democrats. From the right-wing point of view, liberals are associated with fields like law, science, and the arts, and these fields are characterized in terms of deficiencies in manhood and power--in other words as gay or feminine. In giving the Democrats an ungrammatical name, conservatives experience themselves as imposing their values over wimpy, limp-wristed liberals thus ensnaring white liberals in their homophobia and misogyny.

Killer Rabbits Whose Time Has Come

The Troops are Cold. The lead is hot, but the troops are cold. President Bush got a stiff reception among American troops at Fort Benning, Georgia today. Bush used to get wave after wave of enthusiastic ovations from soldiers and Marines. Now, he gets the same stare from the soldiers that he would get from Cindy Sheehan.

Ideas Whose Time Has Come. And Gone. In "The Case Against Tokenism," Martin Luther King cites Victor Hugo as saying "that there is nothing more powerful in all the world than an idea whose time has come." That applies for bad ideas as well as good ones. In late 2002 and early 2003, the Bush administration's invasion of Iraq was a bad idea whose time had come and anybody who resisted was castigated as a feckless wimp. Almost four years of failed occupation later, the original power of the idea of invasion only enhances the disgust over its failure.

The Rabbit and the L. Like his father, President Bush's popularity was never very stable even when his job approval ratings were 90%. In my posting for the Slate's Fray, I portrayed this instability through images of killer rabbits coming into Bush's boat just like one came into Jimmy Carter's and an "L for loser" appearing on his forehead. Now that 70% of the population disapproves of the surge, it's safe to say that the killer rabbits of helpless incompetence began to fill Bush's boat during the Katrina debacle and that the failure of the Iraq occupation has stuck the "L" permanently on Bush's forehead.

The Countdown. There are 740 days until the inauguration of the next President. After that Bush with his killer rabbits and his" L for loser" on his forehead head back to Texas. Now, that's an idea whose time has already come.

Bush Talking into a Familiar Void

President Bush was stripped down to essentials in his speech tonight. There was no smirk, no swagger, no inspiring anecdotes, no Michael Gerson poetics, no vibe with his audience, and no real effort to convince. All George Bush offered was an "I'm going to keep doing this" to a public that was not interested in listening. In fact, you could almost feel the contempt of the American public on President Bush as he spoke, feel the depth of our desire not to see or hear him anymore. Peering into this particular void is something that President Bush has done many times, as a drunken son confronting his father, a thoughtless student seeing his teachers, a failed businessman meeting creditors, and losing Congressional candidate seeing the rejection in the eyes of his voters. Perhaps President Bush is as familiar with this experience as he is with anything else in the world. Perhaps he has had the tragic sense that he would face the depths of contempt again as President.

Many people learn from failure and rejection and become more thoughtful, mature, and wiser men and women as a result. To the contrary, much of what has defined George Bush as a person has been his refusal to learn from his failures or grow as a human being.

That refusal to mature was on painful display again in tonight's speech. Although President Bush has switched some of the tools in his Iraq policy kit, he is not changing his thinking in any substantial way. As was the case at the time of the invasion, President Bush's speech tonight employed a set of magical assumptions to make the transition from American occupation to democratic self-government seem plausible in Iraq.

Before last November's Congressional elections in the United States, Bush and his advisers assumed that elections would have the magical effect of reconciling Shiite and Sunni, drying up support for insurgents and militias, and creating effective Iraqi government. The opposite has been the case. Elected Iraqi politicians have been so lackadaisical that it took them six months to even form a government while the government itself has been monumentally corrupt and ineffective. It was also riddled with militia loyalists. Thus, when the Samarra mosque was destroyed Shiite militias were armed to the teeth, committed to militancy, and ready to engage in the death squad campaigns that have since engulfed Baghdad and the surrounding area.

In tonight's speech, President Bush claimed that there were no magic bullets for the situation in Iraq, then made several magical assumptions anyway. The first was that embedding the extra five brigades of American troops in Iraqi units would make it possible for the Iraqi Army to take the lead in secure Baghdad. Embedding American troops in Iraqi units was a suggestion of the Iraq Study Group and Iraqi troops certainly have fought better alongside Americans. However, the assumption that the Iraqi Army can take the leading role in reconquering Baghdad is pie in the sky thinking on a large scale. Shiite militias like the Badr Brigade and the Mahdi Army are already embedded in the Iraqi Army and it is unlikely that the Iraqi Army is going to be either motivated to fight or perhaps even fight at all when they are called upon to invade Shiite neighborhoods and confront the Shiite militias. Moreover, an American/Iraqi invasion of Shiite neighborhoods could spark the same kind of mass revolt among Shiites as the American presence in Anbar has sparked among Sunnis. Ultimately, the new American policies for Baghdad have a better chance of making things worse than better.

After President Bush assumed that Baghdad would become secure, he further assumed that security would bring about reconciliation between the Sunnis and Shiites around the elected government. This is not a plausible way of thinking. It is the fathers and sons of those Sunni and Shiite neighborhoods that the American/Iraqi forces are going to be attacking this spring. If neighborhood men of military are either killed or (more likely) forced to move out, there is going to be a small likelihood of any kind of reconciliation with the Iraqi/American military let alone their traditional sectarian enemies. As the philosopher John Locke noted, military conquest usually results in a continued state of war between the conqueror and the subject population. That has been the case between American troops and the population of Anbar. Even if American forces and our allies reconquer Baghdad, it is likely that the population will remain hostile to both us and their usual enemies.

President Bush has always thought that if he showed enough "will," these kinds of problems would just go away. Like magic! Of course, that hasn't been the case and that's why all the previous Bush administration plans for "Victory in Iraq" have failed so completely. As he enteres the last two years of his administration, President Bush is letting the American public know that he is about to change his thinking now. He's listening to us as little as we're listening to him.

Down to George W., Laura, and the dog?

Last fall, President Bush said he wouldn't withdraw from Iraq even if Laura and his dog Barney were the only ones supporting him.

Well, it's almost gotten to that.

According to a Washington Post report today, the support for President Bush's plan to increase the American troop presence in Baghdad is limited to White House aides, hawks like John McCain, and think tank neo-conservatives like Frederick Kagan. Everybody else--most of the military brass, the Democratic majority in Congress, and public opinion are opposed to the President. The split in public opinion is interesting. A majority of the American public opposes the surge by a small 48%-45% margin. But disapproval of the surge is somewhat of a velvet glove over the iron fist of 72% disapproval of Bush's handling of the war.

Republicans in Congress "ask not" for whom the bell of 72% disapproval tolls--they know it tolls for them in the 2008 election. As a result, Republican leaders like Trent Lott are withholding their approval as well.

The President's speech is tonight. Perhaps Laura should bring his dog as a show of support.

Maybe The Right Should Be Concerned

Conservative authors like Peter Wood seem to be awfully worried about civility these days. Perhaps they fear that the failure of the Bush administration is going to expose them to widespread public scorn and are seeking to head it off in advance.

Sources of Counter-Surge

The Basic Surge Idea: According to Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno, the new ground commander in Iraq, the plan for the upcoming operations of American and Iraqi forces in Bagdad will be to target the Shiite militias as well as the neighborhoods that host Sunni insurgents. By July or August, he expects to have established military control over Baghdad at which point it would seem that civilian economic and political reconstruction would take higher priority.

The idea would be to clear extremist Shiite militias and Sunni insurgents out of Baghdad, then hold them through civilian reconstruction. Odierno think the overall project would take two to three years.

Sounds relatively simple doesn't it?

Unfortunately, Odierno and the American command make the mistaken assumption that American military power is stronger than the Iraqi resistance. Ultimately, this is not the case. Gen. Odierno is confident American troops can defeat both the Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias in battle and force them far enough underground than they are no longer able to operate in the open. However, there are many reasons to think that the Iraqi resistance can either pick the American occupiers to death or engage in their own kind of counter-surge. Either way, the Iraqis may turn out to be the stronger force. Drawing from a June 19 post to my "Caric Comment" blog, I ouline some reasons for thinking this below.

1. Religious/Ethnic Fervor. The first and most important reason is the escalating religious sectarianism of both the Shiite and Sunni populations. Outside Kurdish controlled areas, Iraq is a much more religiously motivated society than it was before the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and the intensity of sectarian passion on both the Sunni and Shiite sides has made much of the country into an ethnic and religious tinderbox. The power of Muslim sectarianism in Iraqi society can be seen in the explosion of violence after the Samarra bombing in March. When new American troops come into Baghdad, they will only be seeking to control the outcomes of heightened sectarianism in death squad killings and other violence. They won't have any impact on the intensified religiosity and sectarian communal solidarity itself.

The first potential challenge would most likely come from the Shiite community. If the U. S. seeks to destroy the Mahdi Army and it's political, military, and social service apparatus, they could be faced with a general revolt by the Shiite population, especially the people in the Sadr City slum. If that's the case, then the first result of the American surge will have been a major escalation of the popular insurgency and American troops would have to put down the revolt before they sought to establish order.

If the Shiite population does not revolt, there is the likelihood that the Mahdi Army apparatus would fragment (in the same way that the Sunni insurgency fragmented) with small groups of Shiites making it their business to pick off American troops through bomb attacks, small arms fire, and a mortar here and there. While seeking to suppress the low level attacks, the American military command would have to be very wary of not doing anything to spark a large-scale Shiite uprising through indiscriminate killings, targeting the wrong people, and the like. They would also have to worry about not sparking widespread civil disobedience campaigns.

2. Hostility to Occupation. A second source for mutating crises is the hostility of the Iraqi Arab population to the occupation. From the grieving relatives of those killed by the occupation armies, to teen-agers cheering the destruction of American vehicles, to Prime Minister Maliki complaining about the frequent murders of Iraqi civilians, the occupation long ago wore out its welcome with the host Iraqi population. Another 7,500 to 20,000 busy American troops is going to frustrate the Iraqi population much further. Given that Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias are thoroughly embedded in Baghdad neighborhoods, clearing out the militias might mean having to conquer and occupy the whole populations of the neighborhoods in question. That would only make local residents even more disposed to house the insurgents, volunteer for suicide attacks, provide warnings for American troops, and the like.

3. Ineffective Government. The third reason for the relative strength of the insurgency is the relative weakness of the Iraqi government. The inexperience of Iraqi politicians with governing makes the infiltration of the government by insurgents and sectarian militias easy, corruption an appealing first choice, compromise extremely difficult, and concerted action apparently impossible. Needless to say, the Iraqi government has not been able to exercise control over the hostile Sunni population. However, it doesn't seem to exercise any kind of legitimate authority over its Shiite constituents or its own personnel either. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is speaking a lot of brave words about punishing military units that don't report to Bagdad for surge operations, but it seems doubtful that Maliki and Iraqi generals can count on Shiite soldiers to suppress (rather than join) the Shiite militias. The Iraqi government is an especially flimsy paper tiger.

4. The Bush administration. Finally, there is the lack of effort by the Bush administration. It would be a lot easier for the Americans to deal with the problems of Baghdad if people in Baghdad had 24 hours of electricity, readily available gas, and stable employment. There is talk of doubling the money for economic reconstruction, but that will probably be a drop in the bucket. Ultimately, the Bush administration is not strong enough to change any of the economic conditions that contribute to continually escalating violence in Iraq.

As a result, the likely outcome of the surge is the same as the drug war in the United States. Like the DEA and the police in the United States, the American military will be very active, exercise a lot of ingenuity, and round up a lot of bad guys. However, because the American military does not have the power to dampen religious sectarianism, overcome hostility to the occupation, or strengthen the Iraqi government, American generals will find themselves in a situation where small incidents can morph into large-scale surges in violence that render the whole operation futile. It's very difficult to see the surge as being anything but another failure.

Bush's Mormon Rock?

In Utah, support for the Iraq War has fallen to 44%, but President Bush's job approval remains extraordinarily high at 56% in Utah compared to 30% nationwide. It would be interesting to see numbers on President Bush's support among Mormons vs Protestants and Catholics. Perhaps Mormonism serves as a bedrock of President Bush's support much like the Jewish vote for Democrats.

Six Months of RSI

Today is the sixth month anniversary of Red State Impressions. This is the 201st post and I'm pretty happy that I've been able to keep up a six days of posting per week rate. RSI seems to have about 30 readers, mostly from a collection of my Morehead State and Slate Fray friends. Thanks to everybody, especially the Morehead State College Republicans. There's nothing like a diverse audience.

I'm currently trying to link up to other left-wing blogs in an effort to expand my audience. Of course, there are millions and millions of other bloggers doing the same thing.

We'll have to see.

From Bush to Romo to the Future

Bush's Gamble. The surge is essentially the gamble that George Bush is taking to not be a failure. If the surge and ultimtely the whole mission fail, everything about George W. Bush was wrong, things that George Bush believes in just as much as Karl Marx believed in the downfall of capitalism. The strutting, the smirk, the bombast, the big gestures, the cockiness, the confrontationalism--if the surge fails, these were all impotent hot air . . . talking the talk but not being able to either get the job done or understand what the job is. From George W's point of view, the invasion of Iraq was supposed to be the ultimate testimony to the validity of his worldview and worth as a man. If the surge fails, the war will mock his worldview and trumpet his failure as a man right through the last phony tribute at his state funeral.

But Bush would be wrong to heap all his failures onto himself. Bush's bombastic cockiness is the style among both and white and black males and Southern white guys in particular. Bush's style is practically the only style that right-wingers allow themselves to adopt. Bush and Cheney represent a particularly narrow, contemporary American style of masculinity that's pitched in opposition to the liberal acceptance of feminism. The failure of the war in Iraq represents not only a personal failure for Bush, but a collective failure for the right-wing and faux macho manliness. Bush can take comfort in that he hasn't failed alone. It "takes a village," actually a very big village, to create a failure as monumental as the failed war in Iraq.

Tony Romo. Tony Romo mishandled a snap and cost the Dallas Cowboys their playoff game with the Seattle Seahawks. But Tony Romo isn't George Bush. Romo showed in his first year as a starter that he is a championship caliber quarterback. Where George Bush's way of living his life has brought himself and the United States as a country to the brink of disaster, Romo's performance this year shows that he has been living the right way as he prepared to become an NFL quarterback. He may have blown the Seattle game, but Romo showed that he can compete at the top of an extremely demanding profession and fans should have patience with him.

Post-2008--In January, 2009, George Bush will be gone, but his shadow will still hang over Washington and the country. The "Ricky Bobby" style of macho bluster that George Bush adopted (or did the movie copy Bush) will still be a force in American culture. If American society is going to pull itself out of the muck of the Bush administration, we're going to have to adopt a new political ethic. As an alternative to macho bluster, we should look at the energetic problem-solving ethic in American offices, factory-floors, military units, housebuilding sites, locker rooms, and NASCAR garages. In a problem solving ethic, the first virtue is having the maturity and self-confidence needed to recognize problems and opportunities and take responsibility for the reality of the situation. This is the virtue that we need to extend from workplaces all over the country to the political arena as we shovel our way out from under the legacy of the Bush era.

Capping Off a Bad War

It just gets dumber and dumber. Matthew Yglesias links to a Jim Miklaszewski NBC report on the thinking going into the surge. Miklaszewski claims an administration source “admitted to us today that this surge option is more of a political decision than a military one.” Miklaszewski goes to say that the administration is seeking to salvage some kind of success out of Iraq.

If this is the case, the administration is paring what Al Gore calls the "biggest strategic mistake" in American history with the "biggest political mistake" in American history.

So far, reports on plans for a surge indicate that 20,000 more troops will be stationed in Iraq for eighteen months. Miklaszewski indicates that the additional troops will be sent to stabilize Baghdad (although he doesn't say whether the troops will be leaning on the Sunnis or the Sadr City Shiites) while the training of Iraqi troops is accellerated under the command of new general Petraeus. The new slogan will be "Surge and Accelerate."

If the increase in troops begins in February, 2007, an eighteen month commitment would put the end of the surge in July or August 2008. Though more than zero, the chances of success for the surge are very low. If the American command focuses on clearing the Sunni neighborhoods of insurgents, that will mostly free the Shiite militias for more death squad activities. If they focus on the Shiite militias, they run a serious risk of igniting a general Shiite rebellion to go along with the Sunni insurgency. If the military command tries to do both, they'll just dissipate their energies to little effect in Baghdad.

But the consequences in the United States will be enormous. An eighteen month commitment means that the U. S. will have 170,000 troops in Iraq through the entire presidential primary season. If the mission is not clearly successful, Republican candidates for the presidency will be in a difficult bind. They will be under intense pressure from the conservative media and Republican primary voters to support President Bush at the same time that the war grows less and less popular with the general electorate. This won't be a problem for Sen. John McCain. As John Dickerson of Slate points out, the surge is McCain's big policy initiative and he'll either sink or swim with it. However, all of the other presidential and Congressional Republican candidates will be tied just as tightly to the surge as McCain and a lot of them will sink in the 2008 election if the surge doesn't succeed.

Unless the surge in Iraq is surprisingly successful, President Bush is practically guaranteeing a big Democratic win in 2008 and a couple of elections beyond that. That would make the Bush surge the biggest political miscalculation in American history.

William Rehnquist's DT's

The great thing about the William Rehnquist psychosis story was that I have inside knowledge of Rehnquist's condition as a result of my historical research.

In fact, Rehnquist did not suffer from psychosis; it was delirium tremens, a topic on which I have two forthcoming articles.

With psychosis, a mental condition often connected to "a history of traumatic incidents" predisposes a person to hallucinations, paranoia, and the like.

Delirium tremens is a short-term outcome of withdrawal from a substance on which a person's brain had developed severe dependence. Delirium tremens, known as "the dt's," is generally associated with sudden withdrawal from heavy-duty alcohol consumption. A local doctor told me of a case where a severe alcoholic suddenly got religion, stopped drinking cold turkey, and ended up in the hospital with the dt's. But delirium tremens can be linked to opium and other substances as well.

For William Rehnquist to have hallucinations of CIA plots and wander into a hospital lobby, he must have been heavy into placidyl, even heavier than the triple the normal dose he was supposed to be taking. Because his brain was so dependent for its functioning on the placidyl, it went haywire when he stopped taking it.

The really odd thing about delirium tremens (and another thing that differentiates delirium tremens from psychosis) is that a person can fall asleep after several days of hallucinations stemming from the dt's and wake up perfectly rational.

Except in Rehnquist's case that is. Rehnquist was probably closer to the real world when he was hallucinating CIA plots than he was in his normal right-wing thinking. After all, there have been a lot of CIA plots, but the only "Warren Court excesses" are in the delusions of the right.

The New Jerry Ford Pooper-Scooper Era

I thought all the pageantry over Jerry Ford's funeral was creepy. However, Jerry Ford did blaze a trail that the next two or three administrations are going to have to walk over the next years. Just as Jerry Ford had to clean up from Richard Nixon and the Vietnam War, succeeding administrations stretching out who knows how long are going to have to clean up the mess created by George Bush and his Iraq War. Getting the troops out of Iraq, closing Guantanamo, shutting down the rendition system, dismantling the data mining operation, and dealing with all the legal recriminations from the Iraq War--the next administration is going to have to pick its way through all these minefields with the expectation that it will be handing off some of the problems to the next administration after that. Succeeding administrations are also going to have work out the health care mess, straighten out the budget, and handle what's likely to be a long list of scandals left over from the era of right-wing government. That's not to mention dealing with the next economic downturn.

American government will be an exercise in political pooper-scooping for some time to come--the New Jerry Ford era.

The Pelosi Prelude?

By being elected Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi has become another symbol of the freedom and equality that women have achieved over the last forty years. That's great! But there's a serious wrinkle in her story. Pelosi won because she's a political work horse--a top fund-raiser, demanding task-master, and tough arm-twister when it comes to keeping the Democrats in line. Pelosi has lots of friends, but she also brags about getting even with her enemies. The last six years has seen the most poisonous partisanship since the Civil War and Nancy Pelosi has thrived amidst all the bitterness and contention. In other words, Pelosi got to be an important symbol because she's so good at being a hack.

The next big question is the nature of the next big breakthrough. Hillary Clinton is going to be running for President in the same manner that Pelosi ran for Speaker. Like Pelosi, Hillary is Obviously, Hillary is more comfortable as an inside worker than a charismatic or visionary. But does Hillary get to be the ultimate symbol of progress for women by being a policy, fundraising, and campaign grinder? In fact, the unpopularity of the war is likely to make either Hillary or Barack Obama the next President and much of the question between them will be whether the American people want an insider "work horse" like Hillary or a visionary "show horse" like Obama. Will the next symbolic breakthrough be the woman who has been tested in the white heat of Whitewater, Monica, and right-wing hate campaigns or the black man who promises an alternative to the current viciousness?

My money's on Hillary. It's not like the right-wing is going to go away after 2008 and I believe that we're still going to need the kind of bare-knuckled fighter that Hillary can be.

Either way, Nancy Pelosi is a prelude to the next big thing.

The Tiny Tim Approach to War

The Plan. According to McClatchey, President Bush's plan is to send 15,000 to 20,000 troops to Baghdad for 3 months. The upside is that a short-term effort avoids political fallout for the Republicans. The problem is that such a small bump in the military presence has little chance to succeed. This idea also has no support in the United States. By compromising between a larger surge and withdrawal, President Bush is doing what he's been doing for the last two years--sitting tight and hoping for more miracles like the capture of Saddam Hussein and the death of Zarqawi.

Could We Have Ever Won? In a feeble attempt at contrarian thinking, Slate editor Jacob Weisberg seeks to undercut assumptions that the U. S. could never have won in Iraq. But the chances for a successful occupation were always very small. The Bush administration made sure there was no chance with their wishful thinking about not needing to plan for the occupation, their "see no evil" approach to the first evidence of an insurgency, and their failure to do basic things like clean up the weapons dumps and secure the borders. It was all Tiny Tim "tip-toe through the tulips stuff." The Bush administration acted as though miracles were going to happen if only they thought happy thoughts about Iraq.

But that doesn't mean that we would have been more successful if the Bush administration had been more reality-centered. In fact, the whole American political and military establishment was completely unprepared to manage a successful occupation. American policy-makers had little practical knowledge of Iraqi society, there were relatively few Arabic speakers working for the American military and intelligence services, and neither the Army brass nor the troops on the ground had any training in occupying hostile foreign countries. Likewise, the American public was completely unprepared for the huge commitment of money (i. e., tax increases) and troops (the draft) needed for a full commitment to Iraq.

The U. S. had just as much chance to win in Iraq as the Confederates had to win the American Civil War. Unfortunately, the Bush administration and the American right is packed with spiritual descendants of the Confederate fire-eaters.

It's Good to Be a Good Old Boy!

Mrs. RSI is an award-winning nurse in the Rowan County School System in Eastern Kentucky. Last fall, she switched from the Middle School with about 1,200 students to an elementary school with 150 students.

A very reasonable thing to do that should do wonderful things for her well-being.

What happened to Mrs. RSI's former clerk was not so wonderul though. In December, the clerk was punched by her boyfriend, a boyfriend who was also the father of her child. But it was the clerk who was arrested instead of the boyfriend because she retaliated by scratching him in the face and pushing him.

The son of a prominent local doctor, the boyfriend apparently has a teflon "good old boy" coating that even Ronald Reagan would envy.

When the local county attorney recommended that the clerk get an emergency protection order, or EPO, against her boyfriend, the local judge refused to sign it.

Feeling endangered, the clerk moved to another county 50 miles away and got a judge in that county to sign the EPO.

But the state police in this county mysteriously "lost" the EPO before it could be served.

Being a well-positioned "good old boy" means you don't have to pay a price for assaulting women, don't have to say you're sorry, and don't even have to stop.

Football Crazy in Kentucky

Kentucky. Nobody noticed, but Kentucky has become a football state rather than a basketball state. Louisville and the University of Kentucky both convincingly won their bowl games over ACC opponents and both should be ranked after all the bowls are done with Louisville in the Top 5. To the contrary, neither the Louisville nor the Kentucky basketball teams are ranked and neither looks like it's going to go anywhere.

But it goes farther than that. The main reason that the Louisville and Kentucky basketball teams have declined is the broader decline of high school basketball in Kentucky. High schools in Louisville, the Mountains, and Western Kentucky just aren't churning out championship caliber basketball players like they used to. The last consensus top recruit to come out of Kentucky was Rajon Rondo of Louisville three years ago. The next top guy will be Darius Miller, a junior out of Mason County who's already got scholarship offers from Kentucky and other top schools. That's just not enough for either Kentucky and Louisville to be the Top Ten teams they used to be.

Big time football recruiters have no such problem. Coaches from Tennessee, Ohio State, Notre Dame, and the Florida powers swarm the state every year from Mayfield near the Mississippi River to Ashland on the Ohio. With a population of only 3.6 million, Kentucky can not have the same volume of great football players as Florida, Georgia, and Texas, but star quarterbacks and 270 pound linebackers have replaced skinny basketball players from the Mountains as the state's top sports icons.

The transition from basketball to football is probably not a good thing. Football is a much more conservative game than basketball and Kentucky has become a more conservative state as football has become more prominent. But it's important to be good at something. And given that the state of Kentucky has gotten good at football, I'm all for it.

RSI Visits TomDeLay.com

Tom DeLay, the former majority leader of the House of Representatives, has created his own blog in an effort to do for conservatives what Huffington Post and Daily Kos achieve on the left.

It doesn't work. While in the House of Representatives, DeLay was the living embodiment of the hard-headed mentality of the Republican leadership--"The Hammer." However, DeLay's blog is an exercise in conservative political correctness and punch-pulling. Unsurprisingly, DeLay doesn't do "conservative nice" all that well.

Today's entries include a column on Nancy Pelosi where "NJ Conservative" takes Pelosi to task for breaking her promise to promote greater civility by excluding Republican proposals and amendments for her "first 100 hours" push" on the minimum wage, Medicare prescriptions, and ethics.

So Nancy Pelosi is breaking her promises about "including Republicans." Big deal! If that's the worst thing Pelosi does as Speaker of the House, she'll be a huge success.

Of course, TomDeLay.com is in a difficult position on "civility" because DeLay himself pioneered so many techniques for belittling and excluding the Democrats. However, "NJ Conservative" didn't even mention that Pelosi's tactics are testimony to the popularity of Republican positions on cutting taxes, benefiting small business, curtailing abortions, and other issues. Pelosi didn't want to allow Republican amendments because she was afraid they'd put the Democrats in uncomfortable positions. It takes a mighty weak Republican to ignore that fact and "NJ Conservative" appears to be a very weak.

But not as weak as DeLay himself.

DeLay writes an incredibly insipid response to a letter from a Massachusetts conservative concerning the chances of turning Massachusetts back into a Republican state. After mentioning that Republicans were able to change their fortunes in Texas, DeLay goes on:

"Things can change, but it takes a lot of research, hard work, talent, determination and a relentlessly pursued strategy for victory to get started. I believe that our conservative ideals are embraced by a majority of Americans. We just need to unite our movement by articulating how we can move America forward better than our opponents. "

Pablum from beginning to end. As a "conservative strategist and grass roots leader," DeLay should be offering some hint of what "relentlessly pursued strategy for victory" he would offer to Massachusetts Republicans. In fact, re-establishing a Republican presence in New England has to be a high priority for conservatives if they want to be a national movement. However, DeLay doesn't even have the conservative energy needed to take a shot at Teddy Kennedy let alone tell Massachusetts and New England Republicans how they can climb out of their particularly deep hole. What DeLay is ultimately telling his correspondent is that he doesn't have the time or energy to think about New England.

From the evidence of his blog, Tom DeLay is a spent force in conservative politics. Maybe he should go into lobbying instead.

The Surge Effect Begins

They Can't Hide. According to Robert Novak, only 12 or 13 out of 49 Republican Senators support the planned increase in American troops in Iraq. Also, "two Republican senators who face an uphill race for reelection in 2008," Gordon Smith of Oregon and Norm Coleman of Minnesota, have already defected from Bush's Iraq policy. But if President Bush pushes through with Frederic Kagan and Jack Keane's plan to put 30,000 more troops in Iraq for at least 18 months, the surge is going to have the same effect on incumbent Republicans that the best of the Marines have on global terrorists. The surge will ensure that Republicans are harried with damaging attack ads, blown up in their safe constituencies, and tossed aside like three-day road kill no matter how well-liked they are.

Cutting Off the Right. Another casualty of the surge might be the presidential aspirations of John McCain. McCain is already slipping in the polls as a result of his support for the war. If the surge turns out to be as unpopular as this blog believes, then McCain's candidacy will sink further. But here's the conundrum. How many Republicans other than Chuck Hagel of Nebraska have consistently expressed scepticism about the Bush administration's conduct of the war? Because there's almost none, McCain's anti-war flank will be forever safe and he might win the Republican primary only to be chewed up Mondale-style in the general election. The other problem for McCain would be the possibility of the religious right, the neo-con faithful, and corporate interests teaming up to field a third-party candidate from the right.

Lieberman Too Neo-Conservative for GOP? Connecticut Republicans might have to rethink their votes for Joe Lieberman. Not only is Lieberman the only Democrat to support the surge, but he is far out in front of most Republican Senators as well. Perhaps Independent Joe has become too much of a neo-con for Republicans as well as Democrats and Independents.

Blood Sacrifices

Sharing Out Saddam. It's now emerging that the execution of Saddam Hussein served as a blood sacrifice carried out by the Iraqi government for the benefit of the Shiite people. Prime Minister Maliki expedited Saddam Hussein's execution in a manner contrary to Iraqi law so that it could serve as an Eid "gift" to the Shiite people. According to Wikipedia, the Eid ul-Adha holiday is known as the feast of the sacrifice in which Muslims sacrifice their best animals to honor the willingness of Abraham to sacrifice his son Ismael to God. The meat from the sacrifice is then shared out among the family and the community. In this sense, Saddam's death was like a sacrifice being shared out among the Shiite community.

Vaunting Over the Dead. When the guards began to shout "Moqtada! Moqtada!" as Saddam was being arranged for execution, Saddam Hussein responded with a sneer, "Moqtada. Is this how real men behave?" The Bush administration would have agreed. In the U. S. , vaunting over the criminal is limited to the moment of capture or to weak and questionable men. After that, ceremony dictates silence for police, judges, prison officials, and executioners as they grind the criminal into dust. Not having to talk is the true expression of the state's power. By arranging the execution of Saddam as a sacrifice for the Shiite people, the Maliki government denied the Bush administration the satisfaction of performing Saddam's execution according to American protocol. The Bush administration and the American right desperately wanted to enjoy Saddam's death as a consolation for the disappointment of the war. Now the manner of Saddam's death is just one more in a long series of disappointments.

The American Dead. In American Christianity, the only blood sacrifice that counts is the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. However, the basic communion ceremonial has the same purpose as Eid in the sense that it is a sharing of Jesus' blood and body among the religious community. In the U. S., other kinds of sacrifices are often categorized under the heading of "useless sacrifice," indicating that they have no purpose or positive outcome. As the headlines today announce that 3,000 American troops have died in Iraq, the implication now is that their death has been a useless sacrifice by the Bush administration. Bush officials have been determined in their efforts to ensure that the death of American soldiers do not become a public symbol of Bush's failure and incompetence. That's why there have been no pictures of dead American soldiers on Iraqi battlefields, only a few pictures of flag draped coffins, and very little in the way of pictures of funerals for American soldiers. The Bush administration wants the soldier's deaths to be defined as a private loss for families rather than a public loss for American society as a whole. They don't want the "useless sacrifices" of American soldiers to be a public symbol of the uselessness of the war itself.

The Surge as Public Sacrifice. The Bush administration is getting ready to increase the number of American troops in Iraq by 25-35,000 despite opposition from the military, public opinion, Congressional Democrats, and the recent report of the Iraq Study Group. In fact, it's hard to find anybody outside the right-wing echo chamber who supports an escalation of Aemrican participation in Iraq. Like conservatives in general, the Bush administration thinks of manhood in terms of defying both institutional and broader public opinion in the United States. Not caring about what people think is part of what makes conservatives more virtuous than the rest of American society in their own minds. But Bush officials may be at a more crucial turning point than they think. More troops in Iraq are going to mean more fighting for American troops, more deaths, and more pressure to make dead American troops into public symbols of the futility of the Iraq War. I can't help but wonder if there's also a greater possibility that the American public will turn on the Bush administration in revulsion over all the "useless sacrifice" in Iraq. There are a variety of ways to grind repudiated leadership into the dust--refusals to serve in Iraq, civil disobedience, protesting appearances outside presidential compounds. However, my own opinion is that the American public will be quietly taking out their revulsion on Republican candidates for several elections to come.