Monday, May 14, 2007
Kudos for Dodd
Whenever a Democratic candidate breaks free from the leave-it-to-the-market theology that has afflicted public policy in this country since the Daze of Reagan, he (there is no chance it will be a she!) deserves credit. Therefore credit must go to Chris Dodd for proposing – horror of horrors! – an outright tax on carbon emissions along with a number of other laudable (though “moderate”) proposals for combating global warming. Among the latter, let us praise him for his proposal to spend $50 billion annually for research on renewable energy sources, and for proposing to raise automobile CAFE standards to 50 miles per gallon within the next ten years. Meanwhile, the so-called top-tier candidates -- including the best of them, John Edwards – still wallow in the “carbon trading” miasma of the free marketeers. If they get their way, be sure that corporate polluters will find ways to do whatever they want. Only in the dream world of free market ideologues are markets not infinitely manipulable, especially in a “global” economy where monopolization is the rule and inequality reigns. Straightforward taxation may seem old-fashioned. It is certainly not enough to address the catastrophes ahead. But it is a step in the right direction or, at least, a step back from the wrong direction. That such a proposal can now emanate from within the Party of Pusillanimity is a hopeful sign.
Saturday, May 12, 2007
POP Weasels
With a few honorable exceptions, the POP, the Party of Pusillanimity, collaborated with Republicans from the moment the Bush government set out to bring “freedom and democracy” to the Middle East – in other words, to take the offensive in behalf of U.S. oil and arms interests and right-wing Zionists. Some collaborated out of conviction but, being Democrats, pusillanimity and its concomitant, opportunism, were considerations too. After the 2006 elections, the Democratic leadership determined that it was time to move beyond abject collaboration. After all, the majority of voters had finally caught on: Bush’s wars were failures, even when measured against the objectives Cheney and Bush promoted; and it was plain to nearly everyone that their continuation was doing the country and the world grave harm. Voters also realized that Bush’s wars were flagrantly illegal and immoral and therefore indefensible according to even the most generous conceptions of what justifies war. Democratic majorities in the House and Senate could hardly ignore their constituents’ views in these matters. Nevertheless, they have so far been unwilling to rise to their Constitutional duty to stop the wars by stopping their funding, and to rid the world of Cheney and Bush by impeaching them and then bringing them to justice. Pusillanimity alone does not explain their reluctance. Weasel rationales also guide their thinking, even as they become more transparently preposterous with each passing day.
From the time that the Reagan administration took it upon itself to vanquish “the Vietnam syndrome,” the consensus view among both Democrats and Republicans has been that American military power must be projected throughout the world, and must never again be defeated. Another defeat would make it harder for the economic elites Democrats and Republicans serve to have their way. This is why the U.S. cannot “cut and run” in Iraq or, worse still, be thrown out of the country, as it was in Vietnam. Therefore, so long as there is any chance that the situation can be “turned around,” there is nothing to do but the same old same old – with the addition of as much “surge” as a broken army and an increasingly broken treasury can sustain. For those of us who do not salivate at the prospect of perpetual war, this argument is so blatantly unconvincing that even Republicans are turning against it. The fall back position then is to let the new guy, the hapless General Petraeus, have a go at it – at least through the summer. When he fails, we can be sure that the situation will be represented as a partial success and that the political class, if it remains on its present course, will give him or his successor yet more time to wreak carnage – that is, if it hasn’t already done so by caving in now to Bush’s intransigence.
Meanwhile, can anyone this side of Joe Lieberman really believe that the United States invaded Iraq for any morally worthwhile purpose, much less to promote “freedom and democracy?” Nevertheless, the idea continues to be promoted as conventional wisdom by both Democrats and Republicans and in the mainstream media. This has the effect of making it more likely that there will be another war like this one, if only we can figure out how to do it right. [There is still a danger that this will happen sooner rather than later and that Cheney and Bush will again be the perpetrators – this time in Iran.] In this respect, as in so many others, the media is on board with Bush. Even he conceded that “mistakes were made” (not by him, of course). But they were made in good faith. Thus the killing, maiming and torturing must be weighed against the good intentions of our leaders. It’s a familiar story; it’s how conventional wisdom has long cast the Vietnam War – as a “tragedy” in which good men (and women) did bad things for reasons beyond their control. This is nonsense, of course; the Vietnam War was no tragedy, it was a travesty of morality and law. So too are today’s Bush wars. There are now more than a few Democrats in Congress who understand this well. But, so long as the POP leadership stands in the way, only the most courageous of them will do more than talk about it.
The most insidious of the Democrats’ weasel rationales is the argument the leadership employs for standing in the way of principled and courageous positions. They claim that the party must proceed slowly in order to bring along as many legislators, Democratic and Republican, as they can muster. In other words, their declared view is that the way to end a self-defeating, illegal and immoral war is to oppose it lamely while supporting it financially. This is too “strategic” by half. Republicans will bolt from the Cheney/Bush fold when they realize that they must if they want to be reelected. Incremental opposition by the lesser evil party will not force this realization upon them, and neither will it make it easier for them. Unfortunately, that task fell long ago to an intractable Iraqi resistance and an incompetent Bush government.
Democrats can facilitate the inevitable outcome by acting on clear and principled positions; in other words, by “walking the walk.” Or they can continue to make things worse by talking one way and acting another. The 2006 election and the primary campaigns for 2008 have created a situation that calls for principled positions and courageous stands, not for alliances of convenience between POP weasels and their GOP counterparts. The problem is how to get a Clintonized party to see this -- and then to do more, much more, than just “talking the talk.”
From the time that the Reagan administration took it upon itself to vanquish “the Vietnam syndrome,” the consensus view among both Democrats and Republicans has been that American military power must be projected throughout the world, and must never again be defeated. Another defeat would make it harder for the economic elites Democrats and Republicans serve to have their way. This is why the U.S. cannot “cut and run” in Iraq or, worse still, be thrown out of the country, as it was in Vietnam. Therefore, so long as there is any chance that the situation can be “turned around,” there is nothing to do but the same old same old – with the addition of as much “surge” as a broken army and an increasingly broken treasury can sustain. For those of us who do not salivate at the prospect of perpetual war, this argument is so blatantly unconvincing that even Republicans are turning against it. The fall back position then is to let the new guy, the hapless General Petraeus, have a go at it – at least through the summer. When he fails, we can be sure that the situation will be represented as a partial success and that the political class, if it remains on its present course, will give him or his successor yet more time to wreak carnage – that is, if it hasn’t already done so by caving in now to Bush’s intransigence.
Meanwhile, can anyone this side of Joe Lieberman really believe that the United States invaded Iraq for any morally worthwhile purpose, much less to promote “freedom and democracy?” Nevertheless, the idea continues to be promoted as conventional wisdom by both Democrats and Republicans and in the mainstream media. This has the effect of making it more likely that there will be another war like this one, if only we can figure out how to do it right. [There is still a danger that this will happen sooner rather than later and that Cheney and Bush will again be the perpetrators – this time in Iran.] In this respect, as in so many others, the media is on board with Bush. Even he conceded that “mistakes were made” (not by him, of course). But they were made in good faith. Thus the killing, maiming and torturing must be weighed against the good intentions of our leaders. It’s a familiar story; it’s how conventional wisdom has long cast the Vietnam War – as a “tragedy” in which good men (and women) did bad things for reasons beyond their control. This is nonsense, of course; the Vietnam War was no tragedy, it was a travesty of morality and law. So too are today’s Bush wars. There are now more than a few Democrats in Congress who understand this well. But, so long as the POP leadership stands in the way, only the most courageous of them will do more than talk about it.
The most insidious of the Democrats’ weasel rationales is the argument the leadership employs for standing in the way of principled and courageous positions. They claim that the party must proceed slowly in order to bring along as many legislators, Democratic and Republican, as they can muster. In other words, their declared view is that the way to end a self-defeating, illegal and immoral war is to oppose it lamely while supporting it financially. This is too “strategic” by half. Republicans will bolt from the Cheney/Bush fold when they realize that they must if they want to be reelected. Incremental opposition by the lesser evil party will not force this realization upon them, and neither will it make it easier for them. Unfortunately, that task fell long ago to an intractable Iraqi resistance and an incompetent Bush government.
Democrats can facilitate the inevitable outcome by acting on clear and principled positions; in other words, by “walking the walk.” Or they can continue to make things worse by talking one way and acting another. The 2006 election and the primary campaigns for 2008 have created a situation that calls for principled positions and courageous stands, not for alliances of convenience between POP weasels and their GOP counterparts. The problem is how to get a Clintonized party to see this -- and then to do more, much more, than just “talking the talk.”
Sunday, May 6, 2007
The Illogic of Non-Withdrawal
According to the New York Times, Democratic leaders in the House and Senate are in a tizzy because their party’s candidates for President are out of line with their efforts to negotiate a war-funding bill with George W Bush. All they want is to be left in peace to voice opposition to the war while funding it. But now two of the three top tier candidates are ahead of them: John Edwards wants them not to cave in to Bush on deadlines; Hillary Clinton wants to rescind authorization for the war. What Barack Obama wants, nobody knows. [By espousing “new ideas” without saying what they are, his candidacy increasingly resembles Gary Hart’s two decades ago, but without the “Monkey Business.” On Edwards’ and Clinton’s proposals, see the entries for May 3 and May 4 below.] The Democratic leadership has a problem that the candidates don’t: they have to keep their “blue dog” (more right wing than most) Democrats on board without disconcerting the rest of their fold. Part of the problem is the inevitable time lag. When the Clintonites Schumer and Emanuel went out looking for candidates to run in Senate and House races, it hadn’t yet dawned that, by November of 2006, almost anybody who was not a Republican and who was running in any but the most solid of Republican districts would win. This is more true today. Clinton herself knows it. But that’s only part of the story. The larger problem for the leadership in the Senate and the House is that, in Congress, money rules. Candidates too have their donors to toady to but, in the end, their strength, early in a primary campaign, is how responsive they are to voters’ wishes. This is why they can afford, for now, to ignore the forces pulling Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi to the right.
Even so, they’re not that far ahead. Edwards is not quite for defunding the war, though his proposal could have that consequence. Clinton certainly is not on board for defunding the war, though her proposal adeptly obfuscates her view. How can they justify their positions? How can the Democratic leaders in Congress justify the even worse position they will end by promoting? Leaving aside the Bush talking point about how the war should be managed by generals “in the field,” not by “politicians in Washington DC,” a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black, the more articulate remnants of the formerly self-confident War Party claim that the war’s “opponents” in Congress -- the ones who want to continue to fund the war, though only for a fixed period of time -- are “intellectually incoherent.” They are absolutely right: it makes no sense to be against a war and then to fund it. But even the incoherent have (unsound) arguments. The Democrats have at least four. Two are peculiar to their party; two they share with the War Party generally.
All four arguments make a mistake that is so obvious that I’ll only state it once: that while they would rule out defunding the war now, defunding it later (even if “later” just means a few months from now) is just fine. Unless these Democrats are prepared to argue that something, they know not what, will happen between now and “later” that somehow changes everything, their position is nonsense. It warrants no further discussion. Their arguments against immediate withdrawal (or, equivalently, against defunding the war now) are not much better. But it is instructive to see where they go wrong.
TWO RELATED, SPECIFICALLY DEMOCRATIC BAD ARGUMENTS
1) At all costs, the Democratic Party must not appear “soft on defense.” To defund the war outright would violate this inviolable requirement.
COMMENT: Let the immorality of this argument be noted: it puts winning elections above doing the right thing. However, its main problem is its plain speciousness. That the Democrats must not seem soft on defense has been an axiom of Democratic Party strategy at least since the McGovern defeat of 1972. The conventional wisdom, from then on, was that being “soft on defense” explains the party’s crashing defeat in that election. This is “bullshit” in the sense Harry Frankfurt perspicaciously analyzed in his best seller of that name. McGovern lost not because he was “soft” on anything, but because his party deserted him. Between 1968 and 1972, the anti-war movement usurped the place of the Cold War liberals and labor leaders who had run the party from time immemorial. The McGovern campaign was their opportunity for revenge; McGovern became their scapegoat. Note, though, that there is a more plausible claim that is almost the inverse of the conventional wisdom: that, in the 1968 election, Nixon beat Humphrey because the Democrats were not “soft” enough.
2) The Democratic Party must, at all costs, “support the troops.” To defund the war now would violate this requirement too.
COMMENT: Of course, Democrats, like all Americans, should support the troops. But contrary to what we are told by the entire political class, Democrat and Republican, and by the mainstream media, we do not owe the troops support for their “service” to us. They have done us no service; quite the contrary. The Iraq war harms us all; and therefore so do they who carry it out. We owe the troops support because we are complicit in a system that turned good people into economic conscripts, obliged to fight and kill for, yes, “malefactors of great wealth” because they had no better prospects. That same system, and the political regime that superintends it, lets the rest of us, the vast majority, go on about our lives undisturbed. This is grossly unjust. It calls for indemnification. So, yes, we should support the troops. But how does placing them in harm’s way, turning them into purveyors of murder and mayhem, and otherwise disrupting their lives and the lives of their families – count as supporting them? This is another one of those questions that would answer itself, if not for the fog that engulfs our political culture.
Here too reaction to the anti-Vietnam War movement is exacting a toll. Supposedly, those of us who opposed that war didn’t support the troops. Supposedly, it was all the rage, back then, to spit upon soldiers who were fortunate enough to return home alive. Is there a shred of evidence that this ever happened? It certainly didn’t happen regularly; that it did is an urban legend. But there was a good deal of metaphorical spitting. It was done by the government of the United States, and the victims were – and still are – the veterans of that disastrous war. It is even worse now for the veterans of the Bush wars. The problem is not confined to Walter Reed.
TWO RELATED, “BIPARTISAN” BAD ARGUMENTS
3) Immediate withdrawal, the consequence of defunding the war, would make the situation in Iraq worse. The United States has a responsibility not to let that happen.
COMMENT: The United States certainly does have a responsibility; the situation that would purportedly be made worse by immediate withdrawal is one that the United States created. But this is an argument for reparations; not for staying the course, with or without a “surge,” and continuing to make things worse.
There is however a grain of truth in this all too familiar argument. The “surge,” touted as a new strategy, is just a feeble intensification of the old strategy. But, in principle, with enough troops, a semblance of order could be imposed – in Iraq or anywhere else. However the Bush government cannot come close to finding enough troops, without restoring a draft; and, even if they could, they would have to keep them in Iraq indefinitely, something they cannot afford to do. Moreover, the only way this strategy could work well enough to permit the repression ever to be lifted would be for constructive political changes to take place under its aegis. But, if experience has shown anything, it is that the effects of the U.S. occupation are just the opposite. It has already produced a civil war; a more brutal and sustained occupation would turn Iraq into an utterly failed state – with the most dire imaginable consequences for the region and the world.
4) Immediate withdrawal, a consequence of defunding the war, would lead the “terrorists” to “follow us home.”
COMMENT: This should be called the Flypaper Theory: U.S.troops draw the terrorists to themselves and then kill them. Does anyone except neo-cons, John McCain and Joe Lieberman believe it? Is it news to anyone that the terrorists can already follow us home, and that the presence of American troops in Iraq leads neither to their annihilation nor to their sequestration? It’s worth remembering that there were no terrorists in Iraq until the United States made it possible and even necessary for them to go there. At the risk of restating the obvious: the longer the US occupation continues, the greater the risk of terrorists “following us home” becomes.
* *
The evident shortcomings of this last exercise in illogic raise another point, the most important of all. Islamic terrorism has become a problem, thanks largely to American policies. The Iraq War has increased the danger it poses by orders of magnitude. But the threat of terrorism against the United States and its interests abroad can be diminished substantially and abruptly. It’s no secret how: eliminate the irritants that generate it. The first and foremost is the Iraq War itself. Everyone knows what the others are too:
(a) unqualified American support for whatever the Israeli government chooses to do to the Palestinians whose land it occupies;
(b) unqualified American support for brutal and corrupt oligarchs and authoritarian rulers throughout the Islamic world;
(c) the expanding American military presence in the region.
Post-2006 Democrats can stop the Iraq War if their constituents force them to find the courage. As matters now stand, though, there is as much chance that they will end (a) as that they will declare themselves opposed to the troops. They are too much in the thrall of the Israel lobby. (b) and (c) are, if anything, even more intractable. Strategic control of oil resources in the Middle East and Central Asia has become the cornerstone of American policy in these regions. To execute that policy, the U.S. needs compliant local rulers and it needs to be able to project military force. This is why Bill Clinton was as bad on these counts as George W Bush. It could hardly be otherwise: the oil interests both parties serve insist upon it.
Until genuinely transformative, grass-roots politics changes the conditions that make (a), (b) and (c) facts of our political life, the threat of devastating blowback will remain, even after the Iraq War ends. The Democratic primaries can have very little to do with any of this; as with elections generally, they can only ratify changes that have already been forged outside the electoral arena. Without massive popular support, no political leader, certainly no Democratic candidate, will be in a position to move seriously on (a), (b) or (c); not even if one of them were to be miraculously transformed into a genuine statesman (or stateswoman). Only an aroused people can make progress in these areas, just as in the case of Iraq. We are a long way from that point, and therefore a long way from combating terrorism decisively. But we can advance towards that end by holding Democrats, or at least the ones who are amenable to doing the right thing, to account.
In addition to forcing them to endorse immediate withdrawal, we must also force them to acknowledge how insidious talk of “redeployment” and of continuing the so-called Global War on Terror is. Almost all the party’s war funders are guilty on these counts. What they have in mind when they talk about redeployment and more competently fighting the War on Terror could well make (a), (b) and (c) worse. We must make sure this doesn’t happen by insisting that the troops not be redeployed anywhere but home – not in so many months or years, but now! None of the top three candidates are there yet, but Edwards is so far the closest. We must not let him – or anyone else – off the hook.
Even so, they’re not that far ahead. Edwards is not quite for defunding the war, though his proposal could have that consequence. Clinton certainly is not on board for defunding the war, though her proposal adeptly obfuscates her view. How can they justify their positions? How can the Democratic leaders in Congress justify the even worse position they will end by promoting? Leaving aside the Bush talking point about how the war should be managed by generals “in the field,” not by “politicians in Washington DC,” a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black, the more articulate remnants of the formerly self-confident War Party claim that the war’s “opponents” in Congress -- the ones who want to continue to fund the war, though only for a fixed period of time -- are “intellectually incoherent.” They are absolutely right: it makes no sense to be against a war and then to fund it. But even the incoherent have (unsound) arguments. The Democrats have at least four. Two are peculiar to their party; two they share with the War Party generally.
All four arguments make a mistake that is so obvious that I’ll only state it once: that while they would rule out defunding the war now, defunding it later (even if “later” just means a few months from now) is just fine. Unless these Democrats are prepared to argue that something, they know not what, will happen between now and “later” that somehow changes everything, their position is nonsense. It warrants no further discussion. Their arguments against immediate withdrawal (or, equivalently, against defunding the war now) are not much better. But it is instructive to see where they go wrong.
TWO RELATED, SPECIFICALLY DEMOCRATIC BAD ARGUMENTS
1) At all costs, the Democratic Party must not appear “soft on defense.” To defund the war outright would violate this inviolable requirement.
COMMENT: Let the immorality of this argument be noted: it puts winning elections above doing the right thing. However, its main problem is its plain speciousness. That the Democrats must not seem soft on defense has been an axiom of Democratic Party strategy at least since the McGovern defeat of 1972. The conventional wisdom, from then on, was that being “soft on defense” explains the party’s crashing defeat in that election. This is “bullshit” in the sense Harry Frankfurt perspicaciously analyzed in his best seller of that name. McGovern lost not because he was “soft” on anything, but because his party deserted him. Between 1968 and 1972, the anti-war movement usurped the place of the Cold War liberals and labor leaders who had run the party from time immemorial. The McGovern campaign was their opportunity for revenge; McGovern became their scapegoat. Note, though, that there is a more plausible claim that is almost the inverse of the conventional wisdom: that, in the 1968 election, Nixon beat Humphrey because the Democrats were not “soft” enough.
2) The Democratic Party must, at all costs, “support the troops.” To defund the war now would violate this requirement too.
COMMENT: Of course, Democrats, like all Americans, should support the troops. But contrary to what we are told by the entire political class, Democrat and Republican, and by the mainstream media, we do not owe the troops support for their “service” to us. They have done us no service; quite the contrary. The Iraq war harms us all; and therefore so do they who carry it out. We owe the troops support because we are complicit in a system that turned good people into economic conscripts, obliged to fight and kill for, yes, “malefactors of great wealth” because they had no better prospects. That same system, and the political regime that superintends it, lets the rest of us, the vast majority, go on about our lives undisturbed. This is grossly unjust. It calls for indemnification. So, yes, we should support the troops. But how does placing them in harm’s way, turning them into purveyors of murder and mayhem, and otherwise disrupting their lives and the lives of their families – count as supporting them? This is another one of those questions that would answer itself, if not for the fog that engulfs our political culture.
Here too reaction to the anti-Vietnam War movement is exacting a toll. Supposedly, those of us who opposed that war didn’t support the troops. Supposedly, it was all the rage, back then, to spit upon soldiers who were fortunate enough to return home alive. Is there a shred of evidence that this ever happened? It certainly didn’t happen regularly; that it did is an urban legend. But there was a good deal of metaphorical spitting. It was done by the government of the United States, and the victims were – and still are – the veterans of that disastrous war. It is even worse now for the veterans of the Bush wars. The problem is not confined to Walter Reed.
TWO RELATED, “BIPARTISAN” BAD ARGUMENTS
3) Immediate withdrawal, the consequence of defunding the war, would make the situation in Iraq worse. The United States has a responsibility not to let that happen.
COMMENT: The United States certainly does have a responsibility; the situation that would purportedly be made worse by immediate withdrawal is one that the United States created. But this is an argument for reparations; not for staying the course, with or without a “surge,” and continuing to make things worse.
There is however a grain of truth in this all too familiar argument. The “surge,” touted as a new strategy, is just a feeble intensification of the old strategy. But, in principle, with enough troops, a semblance of order could be imposed – in Iraq or anywhere else. However the Bush government cannot come close to finding enough troops, without restoring a draft; and, even if they could, they would have to keep them in Iraq indefinitely, something they cannot afford to do. Moreover, the only way this strategy could work well enough to permit the repression ever to be lifted would be for constructive political changes to take place under its aegis. But, if experience has shown anything, it is that the effects of the U.S. occupation are just the opposite. It has already produced a civil war; a more brutal and sustained occupation would turn Iraq into an utterly failed state – with the most dire imaginable consequences for the region and the world.
4) Immediate withdrawal, a consequence of defunding the war, would lead the “terrorists” to “follow us home.”
COMMENT: This should be called the Flypaper Theory: U.S.troops draw the terrorists to themselves and then kill them. Does anyone except neo-cons, John McCain and Joe Lieberman believe it? Is it news to anyone that the terrorists can already follow us home, and that the presence of American troops in Iraq leads neither to their annihilation nor to their sequestration? It’s worth remembering that there were no terrorists in Iraq until the United States made it possible and even necessary for them to go there. At the risk of restating the obvious: the longer the US occupation continues, the greater the risk of terrorists “following us home” becomes.
* *
The evident shortcomings of this last exercise in illogic raise another point, the most important of all. Islamic terrorism has become a problem, thanks largely to American policies. The Iraq War has increased the danger it poses by orders of magnitude. But the threat of terrorism against the United States and its interests abroad can be diminished substantially and abruptly. It’s no secret how: eliminate the irritants that generate it. The first and foremost is the Iraq War itself. Everyone knows what the others are too:
(a) unqualified American support for whatever the Israeli government chooses to do to the Palestinians whose land it occupies;
(b) unqualified American support for brutal and corrupt oligarchs and authoritarian rulers throughout the Islamic world;
(c) the expanding American military presence in the region.
Post-2006 Democrats can stop the Iraq War if their constituents force them to find the courage. As matters now stand, though, there is as much chance that they will end (a) as that they will declare themselves opposed to the troops. They are too much in the thrall of the Israel lobby. (b) and (c) are, if anything, even more intractable. Strategic control of oil resources in the Middle East and Central Asia has become the cornerstone of American policy in these regions. To execute that policy, the U.S. needs compliant local rulers and it needs to be able to project military force. This is why Bill Clinton was as bad on these counts as George W Bush. It could hardly be otherwise: the oil interests both parties serve insist upon it.
Until genuinely transformative, grass-roots politics changes the conditions that make (a), (b) and (c) facts of our political life, the threat of devastating blowback will remain, even after the Iraq War ends. The Democratic primaries can have very little to do with any of this; as with elections generally, they can only ratify changes that have already been forged outside the electoral arena. Without massive popular support, no political leader, certainly no Democratic candidate, will be in a position to move seriously on (a), (b) or (c); not even if one of them were to be miraculously transformed into a genuine statesman (or stateswoman). Only an aroused people can make progress in these areas, just as in the case of Iraq. We are a long way from that point, and therefore a long way from combating terrorism decisively. But we can advance towards that end by holding Democrats, or at least the ones who are amenable to doing the right thing, to account.
In addition to forcing them to endorse immediate withdrawal, we must also force them to acknowledge how insidious talk of “redeployment” and of continuing the so-called Global War on Terror is. Almost all the party’s war funders are guilty on these counts. What they have in mind when they talk about redeployment and more competently fighting the War on Terror could well make (a), (b) and (c) worse. We must make sure this doesn’t happen by insisting that the troops not be redeployed anywhere but home – not in so many months or years, but now! None of the top three candidates are there yet, but Edwards is so far the closest. We must not let him – or anyone else – off the hook.
Friday, May 4, 2007
The Reaganite Love Feast
Last night’s Republican “debate” underscores the importance of the Democratic primaries. It is unthinkable that even an electorate that could give George W. Bush a popular majority the second time around could find straws to grasp in that sorry lot. If I’m wrong about that, then there’s only one possible explanation: that in founding the Home of the Brave and bringing the world’s teeming masses to its shore, the Intelligent Designer who oversees all that was, is and will be made another one of His very big mistakes.
Could anybody actually watch? I tried, but whenever it got to be Tommy Thompson’s turn, I’d lose it. He was my guv for too many years. He may not have been the worst governor or even the worst Secretary of Health and Human Services in America (or the world), but he is surely the most repellent. How could anyone look at him and not switch immediately to almost any other channel to watch his namesake? I have no idea how bad Fred Thompson’s politics are, but at least he’s a better actor than any of the declared contenders or, for that matter, the Gipper himself.
According to the pundits – who, after all, know best – the three main contenders before are still the three main contenders after. Thus the Democratic candidate will likely run against either a piss poor mayor who had some good days when the Bush boy was still cowering in a bunker in Nebraska and for a few weeks thereafter; a war-monger and unrepentant war criminal of unstable disposition and with an almost Clintonite knack for pandering; or a family, family, family guy who raises only one serious question – what were the good people of Massachusetts thinking?
An even bigger question is how they could find ten contenders who make George W. Bush look good by comparison? If the Democrats, any Democrat, can’t win against any one of them, then -- well, words fail. This is why, barring unforeseeable changes of circumstance or a total eclipse of the light of reason, the Democrats will win in 2008. This is why it is urgent that Clintonism be defeated. With each passing day, Edwards seems more and more like the best (least bad) way. Obama – we’re waiting.
Could anybody actually watch? I tried, but whenever it got to be Tommy Thompson’s turn, I’d lose it. He was my guv for too many years. He may not have been the worst governor or even the worst Secretary of Health and Human Services in America (or the world), but he is surely the most repellent. How could anyone look at him and not switch immediately to almost any other channel to watch his namesake? I have no idea how bad Fred Thompson’s politics are, but at least he’s a better actor than any of the declared contenders or, for that matter, the Gipper himself.
According to the pundits – who, after all, know best – the three main contenders before are still the three main contenders after. Thus the Democratic candidate will likely run against either a piss poor mayor who had some good days when the Bush boy was still cowering in a bunker in Nebraska and for a few weeks thereafter; a war-monger and unrepentant war criminal of unstable disposition and with an almost Clintonite knack for pandering; or a family, family, family guy who raises only one serious question – what were the good people of Massachusetts thinking?
An even bigger question is how they could find ten contenders who make George W. Bush look good by comparison? If the Democrats, any Democrat, can’t win against any one of them, then -- well, words fail. This is why, barring unforeseeable changes of circumstance or a total eclipse of the light of reason, the Democrats will win in 2008. This is why it is urgent that Clintonism be defeated. With each passing day, Edwards seems more and more like the best (least bad) way. Obama – we’re waiting.
Hillary Two/Obama Still Zilch
The better to annoy the freedom fries crowd, why not, like Zagat’s, rate the Democratic candidates the way the French grade baccalaureate exams – on a scale of zero to twenty? Then John Edwards would merit, say, a ten for urging Democratic legislators to throw Bush’s veto of their war funding bill back in his face for as many times as it takes to get him to back off. [This was essentially what Mike Gravel proposed in the April 26 South Carolina debate and, apart from most of what Dennis Kucinich said there, it was the best idea to come out of that spectacle.] By this standard, Hillary Clinton deserves at least two points for agreeing to co-sponsor Robert Byrd’s proposal to have Congress’ war authorization expire after five years – that is, in October. Five years ago, twenty-three Senate Democrats opposed the war. Back then, that was not enough cover for Clinton. Evidently, she now calculates that she can’t afford not to side with Byrd. Still, we must give credit where it is due. If she’d apologize for having voted for the war in the first place, as Edwards did long ago, she could get a point or two for that as well.
But lets not make too much of a good thing. Robert Byrd has been, from the beginning, an honorable opponent of Bush’s wars. He is as aware as anyone of the threat the Cheney/Bush administration poses to constitutional government. But he still thinks that Congress has it within itself to assert its constitutional role, and that the courts will back them up. I fear he is mistaken. Since the days of Truman, Congress has allowed its indisputable authority to declare war to lapse. In the aftermath of the Vietnam War, it tried to reassert a semblance of the authority the republic’s founders assigned to it by passing the War Powers Act. Then, while it abjectly acquiesced, a succession of Presidents from Reagan through Bush, including Bill Clinton, undid even that timid measure. Meanwhile, as the recent ruling on so-called partial birth abortions makes clear, the Supreme Court has become little more than a vehicle for its white conservative Catholic males to do as they please. The Roberts Court will give the Cheney/Bush administration carte blanche – unless they violate Constitutional arrangements so starkly and unambiguously that it would lose its last semblance of legitimacy if it didn’t intervene. That’s a high standard. If the Supremes can go along with the de facto nullification of habeus corpus, they will surely find a way to allow the ‘unitary executive’ to make war in the face of a bill like Byrd’s. In a word, Byrd’s proposal won’t work. It is important symbolically, but it will not end the war.
What will work because there can be no doubt that Congress still has the right is defunding the war. There is similarly no doubt that Congress can remove Cheney and Bush from office. Were Congress to defund the war and were Cheney and Bush to wage it anyway, either they would have to go or the Constitution would. In these circumstances, Republicans of integrity – they exist, probably in similar numbers to Democrats – would rise to the occasion. However they won’t help precipitate it. That is a task for the Democratic majorities in both legislative chambers. But, of course, they won’t do anything of the sort. That would require a backbone. As we know, unlike the GOP, the POP, the Party of Pusillanimity, suffers from a congenital lack of one.
Nevertheless, the fact remains: Robert Byrd is a man of principle. Therefore, the question arises: what is Hillary doing with him? In part, it’s the horse race: by supporting his measure she can inch ahead of Obama for a while in the hearts and minds of Democratic voters. But you don’t stay married to Bill for so long without becoming slicker than that. I would speculate therefore that she realizes that, inadvertently, Byrd has contrived a way for Democrats to let Bush off the hook; to give him the money he wants. They can let him have his war – and therefore not look “weak on defense (sic)” -- with whatever passes for a clear conscience in the POP by funding the war and then rescinding its “authorization.” In other words, they can pass a resolution that, in a better world, would precipitate a constitutional crisis, but that in the actual world amounts to nothing more than a symbolic gesture. On balance, it is a good thing for Hillary to be less of a War Democrat by supporting the end of the Iraq War even to this extent; it’s bad that Obama still hasn’t signed on. But, as with everything else Clintonite, the good in her gesture is opportunistic posturing and little, if anything, more.
Note: there is an interesting article on Obama by Larissa MacFarquhar in the May 7 New Yorker. It’s not quite a puff piece, though it does depict Obama as, above all, a man of vision. However its “argument” boils down to the claim that Obama’s vision for America has more to do with his character than his policies, and that what is remarkable about his character is, as a former teacher of his at Harvard Law School put it, his calm -- that he is like someone “able to lower his blood pressure at will.” That may be fine for quashing white fears about black male rage. But does it translate into a vision for governance? So long as Obama’s score remains zilch, it’s anybody’s guess.
But lets not make too much of a good thing. Robert Byrd has been, from the beginning, an honorable opponent of Bush’s wars. He is as aware as anyone of the threat the Cheney/Bush administration poses to constitutional government. But he still thinks that Congress has it within itself to assert its constitutional role, and that the courts will back them up. I fear he is mistaken. Since the days of Truman, Congress has allowed its indisputable authority to declare war to lapse. In the aftermath of the Vietnam War, it tried to reassert a semblance of the authority the republic’s founders assigned to it by passing the War Powers Act. Then, while it abjectly acquiesced, a succession of Presidents from Reagan through Bush, including Bill Clinton, undid even that timid measure. Meanwhile, as the recent ruling on so-called partial birth abortions makes clear, the Supreme Court has become little more than a vehicle for its white conservative Catholic males to do as they please. The Roberts Court will give the Cheney/Bush administration carte blanche – unless they violate Constitutional arrangements so starkly and unambiguously that it would lose its last semblance of legitimacy if it didn’t intervene. That’s a high standard. If the Supremes can go along with the de facto nullification of habeus corpus, they will surely find a way to allow the ‘unitary executive’ to make war in the face of a bill like Byrd’s. In a word, Byrd’s proposal won’t work. It is important symbolically, but it will not end the war.
What will work because there can be no doubt that Congress still has the right is defunding the war. There is similarly no doubt that Congress can remove Cheney and Bush from office. Were Congress to defund the war and were Cheney and Bush to wage it anyway, either they would have to go or the Constitution would. In these circumstances, Republicans of integrity – they exist, probably in similar numbers to Democrats – would rise to the occasion. However they won’t help precipitate it. That is a task for the Democratic majorities in both legislative chambers. But, of course, they won’t do anything of the sort. That would require a backbone. As we know, unlike the GOP, the POP, the Party of Pusillanimity, suffers from a congenital lack of one.
Nevertheless, the fact remains: Robert Byrd is a man of principle. Therefore, the question arises: what is Hillary doing with him? In part, it’s the horse race: by supporting his measure she can inch ahead of Obama for a while in the hearts and minds of Democratic voters. But you don’t stay married to Bill for so long without becoming slicker than that. I would speculate therefore that she realizes that, inadvertently, Byrd has contrived a way for Democrats to let Bush off the hook; to give him the money he wants. They can let him have his war – and therefore not look “weak on defense (sic)” -- with whatever passes for a clear conscience in the POP by funding the war and then rescinding its “authorization.” In other words, they can pass a resolution that, in a better world, would precipitate a constitutional crisis, but that in the actual world amounts to nothing more than a symbolic gesture. On balance, it is a good thing for Hillary to be less of a War Democrat by supporting the end of the Iraq War even to this extent; it’s bad that Obama still hasn’t signed on. But, as with everything else Clintonite, the good in her gesture is opportunistic posturing and little, if anything, more.
Note: there is an interesting article on Obama by Larissa MacFarquhar in the May 7 New Yorker. It’s not quite a puff piece, though it does depict Obama as, above all, a man of vision. However its “argument” boils down to the claim that Obama’s vision for America has more to do with his character than his policies, and that what is remarkable about his character is, as a former teacher of his at Harvard Law School put it, his calm -- that he is like someone “able to lower his blood pressure at will.” That may be fine for quashing white fears about black male rage. But does it translate into a vision for governance? So long as Obama’s score remains zilch, it’s anybody’s guess.
Thursday, May 3, 2007
Bravo for Edwards (Sort of)
The bad news this morning (May 3) is that the Party of Pusillanimity (POP) is about to unleash yet another Profile in Cowardice. Once Bush, Pelosi and Reid work out a “compromise” – that is, a way for the Democrats to save face – Bush will get his blank check for murder and mayhem in Iraq. No surprise there. But there is good news too. There is now at least one “serious” candidate for President, John Edwards, who seems to have broken free from the Clintonites – carving out a genuinely center-left position. It remains to be seen whether Obama will follow suit.
First, some definitions. [For more elaboration, see my POLITICAL KEYWORDS (Blackwell, 2007).] What left and right mean is impossible to explain precisely because, being spatial metaphors, they are relational notions; left is defined in contrast to right, and vice versa. This is why they have no fixed meaning. Political parties and social movements that everyone understands to be on the Left, in the notional sense that has been current at least since the French Revolution, have left and right wings, as do movements and parties of the Right. As with any continuum, there are also finer gradations. How many there are, and how they should be described, depends on the context. For Democrats today, the left is comprised of a handful of progressives in the so-called Progressive Caucus, and a few members of the Black Caucus. Most of these left Democrats are now organized into the Out of Iraq Caucus. They are a small group, far smaller than the constituencies they speak for. Before the 2006 election, they could have all fit into an airport limo with room left over for luggage. Now, there are a few more of them. Unlike their opposite numbers in the Republican Party of the early Clinton years, they have never managed to leverage their power by acting strategically. They have no Newt to show them the way and, so far, nothing even approximating his Contract on America. Like many (probably most) Americans, the Democratic left wants to defund the war, and bring the troops home now. There is only one Presidential contender so far among them: Dennis Kucinich, a non-starter. Russ Feingold, a Senator of no fixed political orientation, appears to have joined the left on this issue. When the fix is finally in, it will be interesting to see how many Senate allies he has.
The Democratic right is for timetables and redeployments and the like. I’ll examine their tortured logic in a subsequent posting. Its moral and intellectual level rivals Bush’s, though its conclusions are marginally less inhumane. It appears that there are two wings among the Democratic right: the true believers in a more competent “War on Terror,” and the classical Clintonites, who only want to position themselves in what they take to be the most advantageous way for the 2008 elections. Again, it remains to be seen whether Obama must be counted among them.
The political center is almost never a figurative midpoint between the left and the right. Neither is it an ‘intermediary’ or ‘golden mean’ in the sense familiar from Aristotle. Aristotle’s terms denote positions that are appropriate to prevailing circumstances. There is no reason to think that centrist positions are always or, for that matter, ever appropriate in this sense. Rather, what counts as centrist is whatever is proper to the political mainstream at particular times and places. Center is therefore even less amenable to a general characterization than left and right. Typically, the Center leans towards one or another pole on the spectrum. However, it is almost always at some remove from these poles. The center is also where most political leaders gravitate insofar as they are susceptible to pressure from the constituencies they purport to represent. The Democratic right is obviously not very susceptible to such pressure: it targets the median dollar, not the median voter.
In a political ad, quickly contrived and supposed to air today, the Edwards campaign breaks definitively with the right. It calls on Congress not to cave on a funding deadline; in effect, to stop aiding and abetting Bush’s war. This is a centrist or, better, center-left position in the current context in the sense that it is friendly to the idea of defunding the war, without quite going “all the way.” In this respect, Edwards’ position on Iraq now resembles his position on health care. There too he does not quite call for what the left does – universal coverage under a single payer plan run by the government, not by parasitic insurance companies. But his plan, which I also intend to discuss in subsequent postings, is open to this possibility in the sense that, if implemented, it could devolve into the left position. There is clearly a pattern here.
For a party still mired in Clintonism, a genuinely center-left alternative that can win over the Grand Old POP is a trend to encourage. It’s a step away from lesser evilism and therefore welcome news.
First, some definitions. [For more elaboration, see my POLITICAL KEYWORDS (Blackwell, 2007).] What left and right mean is impossible to explain precisely because, being spatial metaphors, they are relational notions; left is defined in contrast to right, and vice versa. This is why they have no fixed meaning. Political parties and social movements that everyone understands to be on the Left, in the notional sense that has been current at least since the French Revolution, have left and right wings, as do movements and parties of the Right. As with any continuum, there are also finer gradations. How many there are, and how they should be described, depends on the context. For Democrats today, the left is comprised of a handful of progressives in the so-called Progressive Caucus, and a few members of the Black Caucus. Most of these left Democrats are now organized into the Out of Iraq Caucus. They are a small group, far smaller than the constituencies they speak for. Before the 2006 election, they could have all fit into an airport limo with room left over for luggage. Now, there are a few more of them. Unlike their opposite numbers in the Republican Party of the early Clinton years, they have never managed to leverage their power by acting strategically. They have no Newt to show them the way and, so far, nothing even approximating his Contract on America. Like many (probably most) Americans, the Democratic left wants to defund the war, and bring the troops home now. There is only one Presidential contender so far among them: Dennis Kucinich, a non-starter. Russ Feingold, a Senator of no fixed political orientation, appears to have joined the left on this issue. When the fix is finally in, it will be interesting to see how many Senate allies he has.
The Democratic right is for timetables and redeployments and the like. I’ll examine their tortured logic in a subsequent posting. Its moral and intellectual level rivals Bush’s, though its conclusions are marginally less inhumane. It appears that there are two wings among the Democratic right: the true believers in a more competent “War on Terror,” and the classical Clintonites, who only want to position themselves in what they take to be the most advantageous way for the 2008 elections. Again, it remains to be seen whether Obama must be counted among them.
The political center is almost never a figurative midpoint between the left and the right. Neither is it an ‘intermediary’ or ‘golden mean’ in the sense familiar from Aristotle. Aristotle’s terms denote positions that are appropriate to prevailing circumstances. There is no reason to think that centrist positions are always or, for that matter, ever appropriate in this sense. Rather, what counts as centrist is whatever is proper to the political mainstream at particular times and places. Center is therefore even less amenable to a general characterization than left and right. Typically, the Center leans towards one or another pole on the spectrum. However, it is almost always at some remove from these poles. The center is also where most political leaders gravitate insofar as they are susceptible to pressure from the constituencies they purport to represent. The Democratic right is obviously not very susceptible to such pressure: it targets the median dollar, not the median voter.
In a political ad, quickly contrived and supposed to air today, the Edwards campaign breaks definitively with the right. It calls on Congress not to cave on a funding deadline; in effect, to stop aiding and abetting Bush’s war. This is a centrist or, better, center-left position in the current context in the sense that it is friendly to the idea of defunding the war, without quite going “all the way.” In this respect, Edwards’ position on Iraq now resembles his position on health care. There too he does not quite call for what the left does – universal coverage under a single payer plan run by the government, not by parasitic insurance companies. But his plan, which I also intend to discuss in subsequent postings, is open to this possibility in the sense that, if implemented, it could devolve into the left position. There is clearly a pattern here.
For a party still mired in Clintonism, a genuinely center-left alternative that can win over the Grand Old POP is a trend to encourage. It’s a step away from lesser evilism and therefore welcome news.
Wednesday, May 2, 2007
Hyper-Clintonism: the Case of George Tenet
When it came to helping Cheney and Bush decimate Iraq and elevate the likelihood of blowback exponentially, no Democrat came close to Bill Clinton’s old spymaster, George Tenet. Not even if you count Joe Lieberman. Hillary doesn’t hold a candle.
When it comes to unctuous charm, once again Tenet has no rivals. Not even Vladimir Putin. George Bush looked through Putin’s eyes into his soul and saw that he was good; could he have failed to give the old Clinton hand equal scrutiny? Not likely, not even if the Commander-In-Chief was busy on vacation at the time. In Putin’s case, something was evidently lost in translation; understandable when an omnipotent Being is whispering in your ear. In Tenet’s vetting, Bush must have been similarly distracted. But the language was 100% American. Still Bush got took. There’s only one possible explanation. When opportunism calls, George Tenet can charm the pants off anybody. Can Hillary? It’s a question that, as they say, answers itself.
Then there is the philosophical dimension. Philosophers have always wondered, along with Bill, what “is” is. For all his self-serving fatuousness, the man was deep. But “slam dunk”? That’s a concept even a Bush boy can understand. Thus does the spymaster’s kiss and tell memoir raise Clintonism to a whole new level. Our hospitals and cemeteries have the bodies to prove it. So too, on a much grander scale, do the ones Iraqis manage, against all odds, to maintain. So many lives lost and ruined! Be sure of it, though: like Bill and Hillary, only more so, the old Clinton spymaster feels everybody’s pain – all the way to the bank.
When it comes to unctuous charm, once again Tenet has no rivals. Not even Vladimir Putin. George Bush looked through Putin’s eyes into his soul and saw that he was good; could he have failed to give the old Clinton hand equal scrutiny? Not likely, not even if the Commander-In-Chief was busy on vacation at the time. In Putin’s case, something was evidently lost in translation; understandable when an omnipotent Being is whispering in your ear. In Tenet’s vetting, Bush must have been similarly distracted. But the language was 100% American. Still Bush got took. There’s only one possible explanation. When opportunism calls, George Tenet can charm the pants off anybody. Can Hillary? It’s a question that, as they say, answers itself.
Then there is the philosophical dimension. Philosophers have always wondered, along with Bill, what “is” is. For all his self-serving fatuousness, the man was deep. But “slam dunk”? That’s a concept even a Bush boy can understand. Thus does the spymaster’s kiss and tell memoir raise Clintonism to a whole new level. Our hospitals and cemeteries have the bodies to prove it. So too, on a much grander scale, do the ones Iraqis manage, against all odds, to maintain. So many lives lost and ruined! Be sure of it, though: like Bill and Hillary, only more so, the old Clinton spymaster feels everybody’s pain – all the way to the bank.
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