2007.02.16

Auf Wiedersehen!
[ General ]

Well, hello. As you can see, SiS has gone on, well, shall we call it a Billmon hiatus? Let us not say farewell, but rather Au Revoir.

Let me leave you with some required reading:

Ted Rall: WHY TO STAY IN IRAQ AND HOW TO GET IT RIGHT (and why we wont)

NEW YORK–In last week’s column I marveled in passing that the rightie hawks who started the
Iraq War with a myriad of excuses–fictional WMDs, delusions of spreading democracy, phony links to 9/11, Saddam’s plot to kill Bush’s dad–can’t summon up a single compelling reason to keep fighting. They say we have to “finish the job.” What job? They won’t say.

We can’t leave Iraq, Bush says, until we “win.” But victory (finding a stash of rusty poison gas canisters from the
Iran-Iraq War? setting up a Shiite theocracy? proving that Mohammed Atta was Iraqi?) remains undefined.

Despite ample evidence to the contrary, the hawks still assert that you can’t support the troops without supporting their mission. Republican frontrunner John McCain (news, bio, voting record) claims that Senate Democrats have “no confidence in both the mission and the troops who are going over there.” How bogus. If your friend has a lousy job, he won’t fault you for encouraging him to look for another one. Missions can be changed.

I hate this war. It is a pointless, bloody waste. I’ve been against it since 2001, when the Bushies started floating the idea of “taking out” Saddam. Despite my firm antiwar stance, I wrote last week, I could come up with more compelling reasons to stay in Iraq than the Republicans’ usual lame talking points.

Numerous readers wrote to ask me to do just that.

I love academic exercises. What if Hitler had won World War II? What if Bush had won the 2000 election? I still think the Iraq War is unwinnable. Yet with this essay I’ve decided to cave in to popular demand as well as a perverse desire to help out ahistorical career sociopaths
Dick Cheney and William Kristol. And so, as requested, here are some real reasons to fight and keep fighting in Iraq, and some strategy suggestions that will never be carried out.

First, the good reason to invade Iraq: Penance.

Saddam Hussein was a creation of the United States, armed and financed by the Reagan and Bush 41 Administrations, which used Iraq to wage a devastating proxy war against the new Islamic republic of Iran during the 1980s. Saddam’s torture and murder of thousands of Kurds took place under Reagan-Bush’s watch.

International reaction to the March 2003 invasion might have been downright favorable if Bush 43 had said something like this: “We Americans have a shameful history of propping up dictators. That policy is no more. Today we go to Baghdad to remove a tyrant we supported, but Saddam is only the beginning of our responsibility to clean up the messes our
CIA has made around the world. After Iraq, our armed forces will remove U.S.-backed autocrats in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakh…um, I’ll post a list on the White House website.”

Second, the good reason to stay in Iraq: Human rights.

If stopping the genocides in Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia and now the Darfur region of Sudan was the right thing to do, why not in Iraq? Soldiers and militia irregulars loyal to the U.S.-installed Maliki regime are carrying out genocidal ethnic cleansing against Iraq’s Sunni minority. Tens, if not hundreds of thousands, of Iraqis have been murdered. Millions have been evicted from their homes at gunpoint, forced to flee for the border with nothing but the clothes on their backs. It is our humanitarian obligation to help them, not least because our war started the bloodletting.
Third, the right way to stay in Iraq: Colonialism.

We have 150,000 troops in Iraq. They’re stretched so thin that many are now on their third or fourth deployments. There aren’t enough of them to control the streets; even the Baghdad airport road is owned by the insurgents. After Bush’s “surge,” there will be a mere 170,000, still far short of the 400,000 to 500,000 General Eric Shinseki got himself fired as Army Chief of Staff for daring to suggest would be needed to secure occupied Iraq.

Security is the key to everything: economic recovery, political stability, ending sectarian violence. U.S.-enforced martial law and nighttime curfews can keep death squads and insurgents off the streets, creating the conditions that will eventually encourage investment, a free press and the rise of a modern nation-state. But the killers can only be kept at bay if American forces are present on every single street in every town, 24-7. To pull that off in a country the size of Iraq, Shinseki’s estimate is, if anything, too conservative.

Of course, this “flood the zone” strategy would ultimately prove fruitless after the eventual American withdrawal. The religious fanatics and other factions who are driving the disintegration of Iraq would merely wait our departure, then fight anew. So there’s only one logical conclusion: Don’t ever leave.

Forget spreading democracy. If we’re serious about dominating the Middle East and access to its oil and gas we have to turn Iraq into a permanent colony like Puerto Rico. As the Brits did in their Indian Raj, America ought to encourage ambitious men and women to seek their fortunes in U.S.-occupied Mesopotamia. They should marry the locals and start families and patrol the streets as part of a new national draft.

What’s that, you say? Young Americans don’t want to move to Iraq? The United States doesn’t have the troops to triple or quadruple our current commitment? Americans don’t want to pour trillions of dollars into a hellhole where hundreds of billions have already disappeared?

I’ve felt exactly the same way–since 2001. Which is why I’ve been against this endeavor from the beginning. America doesn’t have the will, or the budget, to do Iraq right.

(Ted Rall is the author of “Silk Road to Ruin: Is Central Asia the New Middle East?,” an in-depth prose and graphic novel analysis of America’s next foreign policy challenge.)
Next: UNPERSONS
Previous: MEMO TO REPUBLICANS: SHUT UP, SHUT UP, SHUT UP!

Good luck out there.

Walter Moore aka Thomas Colereux
Maximus Clarke aka AKW Geheimbundler

Posted by colereux at 7:32 pm

Comment

2006.12.15

Failing forward
[ Iraq ]

Juan Cole explains the news - and paints a worst-case scenario about the Senate…

How the Republicans are Stealing the November Elections, Or, Bushes and Bonapartes

…the Michael Rounds Coup would be a small thing compared to the Iraq War Coup now being conducted by W. You thought that the American people had spoken? They want the troops out? They want to be extracted from the quagmire? Too bad…

..and what it all means for Iraq.

…So Bush’s response to the clear public demand for a change of course and a disengagement? It is to run to Henry Kissinger’s apron strings. And what does the Butcher of Chile and Indonesia urge? That Bush should put another 40,000 US troops into Iraq!

The problem is that Iraq is a 500,000 troop problem. Another 40,000 are just going to anger locals. And, apparently, they would be sicced on the Shiite Mahdi Army in hopes of permanently crippling the Sadr Movement headed (in part) by Muqtada al-Sadr. And maybe they’d be used in a new offensive against the Sunni Arab guerrillas.

Let me explain why it won’t work. It won’t work because Iraqis are now politically and socially mobilized. This means that they have the social preconditions for effective political and paramilitary action (they are largely urban, literate, connected by media, etc.) And they are politically savvy and well-connected. They are well armed, gaining in military experience, and well financed through petroleum and antiquities smuggling and through cash infusions from supporters abroad. The Mahdi Army fighters can be defeated by the US military, as happened twice in 2004. But they cannot be made to disappear, as they were not in 2004. That is because they are an organic movement springing from the Shiite poor, and are the paramilitary arm of a large social movement with a national network and ideology.

Attempts to crush popular movements once they have mobilized have most often failed. No attempts at counter-revolution in France in the 1790s were successful. Even powerful empires like Austria were helpless before the mobilized French infantry (who for the first time used large numbers of conscripts).

Posted by colereux at 6:46 pm

Comment

2006.11.27

Damned if they do, damned if they don’t
[ General ]

The Washington Post, voice of the D.C. establishment, says the Democrats better not move too slowly:

Go-Slow Strategy in Congress

Moving cautiously on tough issues such as illegal immigration, Democrats risk agitating voters.

But they better not move too fast either:

It sounded simple enough on the campaign trail: Free the government to negotiate lower drug prices and use the savings to plug a big gap in Medicare’s new prescription-drug benefit. But as Democrats prepare to take control of Congress, they are struggling to keep that promise without wrecking a program that has proven cheaper and more popular than anyone imagined.

The second article is particularly odious. Here’s another sample:

Drug-company lobbyists, Bush administration officials and many congressional Republicans are preparing to block any effort to increase federal control over drug prices, saying the Medicare benefit is working well. They contend that instead of saving money, government negotiations could raise drug prices for all consumers while limiting choices for people on Medicare.

“This is going to be much more of a morass than people think,” said Marilyn Moon, director of the health program at the American Institutes for Research and a former trustee of the Social Security and Medicare trust funds. Negotiating drug prices is “a feel-good kind of answer, but it’s not one that is easy to imagine how you put into practice.“

How hard exactly is it to imagine the government negotiating with Big Pharma for lower prices? I can imagine it. Given that the Veterans Administration already does it (as the article eventually admits), I don’t think it could be that mind-boggling. Except if you’re a Republican: making government work for the benefit of ordinary people seems to stump them every time.

Posted by Maximus at 2:11 pm

Comment

Blast from the past
[ General ]

This story is astonishing — right out of the Cold War days of the ’60s or ’70s. I’d say there’s a John le Carré novel waiting to be written about this. But Martin Cruz Smith, who wrote Gorky Park in the early ’80s, may have already written it. His last novel, Wolves Eat Dogs, features a couple of suspicious deaths in contemporary Russia, caused by deliberate poisoning with radioactive isotopes.

Ironically, the dead man gave an interview about the KGB’s use of poisons in 2004:

On several occasions in the past decade, the successor agencies to the K.G.B. in Russia and other countries once in the Soviet sphere have come under suspicion of giving drugs or poisons to prominent critics. And while the authorities have repeatedly denied ordering such actions, the former intelligence officials say they find many of the allegations credible.

“The view inside our agency was that poison is just a weapon, like a pistol,” said Alexander V. Litvinenko, who served in the K.G.B. and its Russian successor, the Federal Security Service, from 1988 to 1999 and now lives in London. “It’s not seen that way in the West, but it was just viewed as an ordinary tool.”

Mr. Litvinenko said a secret K.G.B. laboratory in Moscow, still operated by the Federal Security Service, which is known by its Russian initials F.S.B., specializes in the study of poisons.

Posted by Maximus at 12:11 am

Comment

2006.11.24

The wreckage of conservatism, part 3
[ General ]

Adam Bramwell concludes his essay in this month’s American Conservative magazine by comparing the lockstep servility of today’s right with what George Orwell envisioned in 1984. Not an original idea, but Bramwell fleshes it out quite well:

First, like Ingsoc, conservatism has a hierarchical structure. Like Orwell’s “Inner Party,” those at the top of the movement have almost perfect freedom to decide what opinions count as official conservatism. The Iraq War furnishes a telling example. In the run-up to the invasion, leading conservatives announced that conservatism now meant spreading global democratic revolution. This forthright radicalism—this embrace of the sanative powers of violence—became quickly accepted as the ineluctable meaning of conservatism in foreign policy. Those who dissented risked ostracism and harsh rebuke.

Had conservative leaders instead argued that global democratic revolution would not cure our woes but increase them, the rest of the movement would have accepted this position no less quickly. …

Second, conservatism is concerned less with truth than with distinguishing insiders from outsiders. Conservatives identify themselves in part by repeating slogans (“we are at war!”) that, like “ignorance is strength,” are less important for what (if anything) they say than for what saying them says about the speaker. At the same time, to rise in the movement, one must develop a habitual obliviousness to truth, or what Orwell labeled “doublethinking.”

Anyone who expresses too vociferously too many of the following opinions, for example, cannot expect to make a career in the movement: that the Soviet Union was not the threat that anti-communists made it out to be, that the current tax system discriminates in favor of the very wealthy, that the Bush administration was wrong about the Iraq invasion in nearly every respect, that the constitutional design itself prevents judges from deciding cases according to the original meaning of the Constitution, that global warming poses small but unacceptable risks, that everyone in the abortion debate—even the most ardent pro-lifers—inevitably engages in arbitrary line-drawing. …

Third, and closely related to doublethinking, the conservative movement engages in selective editing of history. When events have a tendency to disconfirm ideology, down the memory hole they go. Thus, conservatives do not recall their dire warnings about the Soviet Union during the Cold War or about the economy after the Bush I or Clinton tax increases. On the Iraq invasion, they will not remind you of their claims that Iraqis would welcome us as liberators, that the world would soon be applauding the Iraq invasion, or that events in Lebanon and the Ukraine heralded global democratic revolution. …

As in 1984, the ability to forget that any of these events ever occurred signals one’s loyalty to the movement. (Hence, the rise of hawkishness against Iran, not four years after the last effort to sell a war to an otherwise balky public.) [Emphasis mine. –M] …

Fourth, conservatism is entertaining. Understanding the world, though rewarding, provides nothing like the pleasures of a “Two Minute Hate,” a focused, ritualized denunciation of enemies. To induce its own Two Minute Hates, conservatism, like Ingsoc in 1984, manufactures bogeymen such as “judicial activists,” “so-called realists,” or “moral relativists” that become symbolic representations of detested outsiders. … Rooting for conservative ideology is as engrossing to its partisans as rooting for the local football team is to its fans. …

The most distinguishing feature of conservatism is its misleading name. Lexically, “conservatism” denotes caution, prudence, and resistance to change. Conservatism the ideology, however, has if anything tended towards recklessness. “Nuke ‘em!” has always been a popular conservative sentiment, never more so than today with respect to the Muslim world.

It’s a brutal piece — and correct in every detail. Read the whole thing.

Incidentally, I just watched Michael Radford’s adaptation of Orwell’s dystopia for the first time last weekend. It’s faithful to the book, and evokes what Orwell, writing in 1948 Britain, might have envisioned as he wrote. But I’d like to see someone take another crack at filming the story, in a style that contemporary audiences would connect with. Nowadays, Winston wouldn’t be “correcting” old newspaper articles for the Ministry of Truth: he’d be editing archival video for Fox News.

Posted by Maximus at 1:44 am

Comment

The wreckage of conservatism, part 2
[ General ]

After addressing the Iraq War, Adam Bramwell’s piece in The American Conservative goes on to expose the intellectual vacancy at the heart of the conservative movement:

Every movement throws off disgruntled outsiders (conservatives sometimes call them “paleoconservatives”) who feel bitterly their loss of power. They write obsessively, sometimes quite fancifully, on the alleged perfidies of the mainstream. …

Some, for example, carry on the Cold War obsession with the so-called “crisis of the West.” Convinced that history at some point took a wrong turn, they pore over ancient texts in search of some Hermetic insight into the fatal error. (Not surprisingly, this approach has little popular appeal, although it still commands respect among professional conservatives.) The notion of a crisis of the West, however, grossly overestimates the importance of ideas; indeed, it requires an unphilosophical and almost paranoid ability to treat ideologies (most conspicuously, liberalism) as living, breathing omnipresences to which intentions, tactics, strategies, feelings, disappointments, and conflicts can all be attributed.

I confess to having been influenced by “crisis of the West” thinking in my younger days; it’s an idea that has many variations on both right and left. Everything went wrong — so the story goes — with the rise of modernism… or the Industrial Revolution, or the Enlightenment, or the Renaissance, or the Reformation, or the Great Schism. Pick your poison.

All of these are merely variations on the myth of the Golden Age. And all of them deny agency, freedom of thought, and authenticity of experience to the hundreds of millions of human beings who have lived since the theorist’s chosen moment where Things Fell Apart. This kind of thinking — which does seem to be present in every form of conservatism I’ve ever encountered — designates most people throughout history as mindless, helpless sheep.

The solution to all society’s problems, conservatives of all stripes maintain, is for the wise few to wrest the train of history back on to the proper, long-abandoned track. Never mind how improbable this transformation may be (e.g., making the U.S. into the “Christian nation” it never was, turning the entire world on to one’s own small, obscure flavor of supremely correct religious belief, establishing a constitutional monarchy in America — yes, I’ve heard them all). Achieving a mass-scale reactionary revolution — turning back the clock of the world — is the ultimate reponse that conservatism offers to all of our many ills.

That’s not to say that contemporary American conservatism has thought through its program and defined its goals in concrete terms. The romance of returning to the Golden Age seems to be enough: that, and utter obeisance to the movement’s leaders. And Bramwell addresses this topic too…

Posted by Maximus at 12:54 am

Comment

The wreckage of conservatism, part 1
[ Iraq ]

In an extraordinary essay in The American Conservative magazine, former National Review director and trustee Adam Bramwell calls the movement to account for its manifold sins — starting with its failure to articulate any coherent policy in response to 9/11:

NR declared that we were “at war” when we were not, for reasons that it did not specify, against enemies that it could not define, and to achieve goals that war does not advance. [The editorial] “Defining Victory” dresses up as policy but inchoate thirst for vengeance against someone, anyone who hates us. …

NR’s subsequent editorials offered one nebulous metaphor after another. After curing diseased bodies and draining bathtubs, NR was changing “the political map of the Middle East,” erecting a “new model for Middle Eastern governance,” “transforming the geopolitical balance in the Middle East,” and establishing a liberal “beachhead.” Bodies, bathtubs, swamps, maps, models, balances, beachheads: each metaphor conceals a paucity of analysis.

Despite their vacuity, the metaphors have inspired specific policies. In defending the invasion and occupation of Iraq (and possible attacks on Syria or Iran), conservatives invoke 9/11 with astonishing alacrity. I once heard an NR senior editor, a man revered for his high-mindedness, begin his defense of the Iraq occupation by reminding the audience that on 9/11 “they” attacked “us.” In his mind as in others’, the invasion of Iraq has so inescapable a connection to 9/11 that only a traitor or fool would deny it. …

Every nation has a faction zealous for national glory and horrified by decadence and dishonor; in the United States, a famously idealistic country, that faction emphasizes the blessings that American power confers upon all mankind. Today, we call them neoconservatives, but in some sense they have always existed.

After 9/11, neoconservatives championed any war that we waged in reaction. In this, they were acting opportunistically but not hypocritically: in their view, 9/11 is what happens when the United States suffers any challenges to its authority. The rest of the movement knew only that it wanted a ruthless response. Neoconservatism just happened to provide a convenient ideological infrastructure with which to justify metonymic revenge against some Muslim Arab or other.

This cuts to the dark, racist heart of right-wing support for the Iraq war: it’s always been about striking back at Arabs and Muslims, whether the Arabs and Muslims in question had anything to do with 9/11 or not.

But Bramwell has a lot more to say, about the intellectual vacancy of the entire conservative movement. I think I’m going to need a couple more posts to get through it all.

Posted by Maximus at 12:40 am

Comment

2006.11.15

Class struggle
[ Politics as Warfare, Newzak ]

Jim Webb, senator-elect from Virginia, speaks the unspeakable — amazingly, on the op-ed page of the Wall Street Journal!

The most important–and unfortunately the least debated–issue in politics today is our society’s steady drift toward a class-based system, the likes of which we have not seen since the 19th century. America’s top tier has grown infinitely richer and more removed over the past 25 years. It is not unfair to say that they are literally living in a different country. Few among them send their children to public schools; fewer still send their loved ones to fight our wars. They own most of our stocks, making the stock market an unreliable indicator of the economic health of working people. The top 1% now takes in an astounding 16% of national income, up from 8% in 1980. The tax codes protect them, just as they protect corporate America, through a vast system of loopholes.

This kind of raw economic populism is tremendously exciting. It’s also the greatest heresy imaginable in contemporary American politics, at least to the three heads of the beltway establishment hydra (the Dems, the GOP, and the media).

But Webb, we are told, is a “conservative” Democrat because he’s opposed to gun control. The brainless quality of typical media discourse is amazing. I wonder: why did the Journal give Webb this opportunity? They may be rabid right-wing propagandists, but they didn’t become the organ of the plutocracy by being stupid. Do they want to alert their elite readership to the rising tide of populist revolt immediately, the better to plan for its suppression / subversion? We shall see.

Posted by Maximus at 12:50 pm

Comment

2006.11.10

Letter to the New York Times
[ Politics as Warfare, Iraq, Newzak ]

I was amazed to read Adam Nagourney’s post-election analysis of the Democrats’ strategy. The article gives the impression that Rahm Emanuel was single-handedly responsible for the party’s decision to openly and aggressively question President Bush’s Iraq war policies.

In fact, Emanuel and others within the Democratic establishment mostly resisted this idea — until Ned Lamont, running a campaign based on opposition to the Iraq war, soundly defeated Joe Lieberman in the Connecticut primary last August.

Lamont — who never received the full support of the Democratic establishment — went on to lose to Lieberman in the general election. But his primary victory proved to Democrats across the country that speaking out strongly against Bush’s failures in Iraq was a winning strategy. (Indeed, Lieberman himself rapidly morphed from a supporter into a critic of Bush’s war.)

Yet Nagourney’s article never once mentions Lamont’s name, or the pivotal role that his primary win played in shifting the national debate.

Posted by Maximus at 6:23 pm

Comment

2006.11.08

Meanwhile…
[ General ]

…in Colorado Springs, Haggard begins spiritual ‘restoration’:

The process includes counseling, in groups and alone, and prayer. Each restoration is unique, with a program tailored for the needs of the participant.

“From the Christian perspective, we think in terms of prayer, we think in terms of what we call godly counsel, where godly men who are clean themselves insert themselves in the life of the one who is struggling,” London said.

No comment.

But on a related subject: Digby has posted some of the paintings that adorn Ted Haggard’s New Life Church. These were featured in the print edition of last year’s profile of the megachurch in Harper’s.

A relevant quote from that article:

The atrium is a soaring foyer adorned with the flags of the nations and guarded by another bronze warrior angel, a scowling, bearded type with massive biceps and, again, a sword. The angel’s pedestal stands at the center of a great, eight-pointed compass laid out in muted red, white, and blue-black stone. Each point directs the eye to a contemporary painting, most depicting gorgeous, muscular men—one is a blacksmith, another is bound, fetish-style, in chains—in various states of undress. My favorite is The Vessel, by Thomas Blackshear, a major figure in the evangelical-art world. Here in the World Prayer Center is a print of The Vessel, a tall, vertical panel of two nude, ample-breasted, white female angels team-pouring an urn of honey onto the shaved head of a naked, olive-skinned man below. The honey drips down over his slab-like pecs and his six-pack abs into the eponymous vessel, which he holds in front of his crotch. But the vessel can’t handle that much honey, so the sweetness oozes over the edges and spills down yet another level, presumably onto our heads, drenching us in golden, godly love.

It’s raining men! Hallelujah!

Posted by Maximus at 11:15 pm

Comment

The morning after: 2006
[ Politics as Warfare, Schadenfreude ]

I’d hoped to do more posting up to and during the election, but a vicious case of strep throat had me sidelined for much of the last week. I was in too much pain to concentrate on anything other than mindless TV watching. (I was also unable to follow thru on my plans for final-weekend phone banking with MoveOn.)

Now the penicillin is clearing up my throat, and the Dems’ Congressional victories are lifting my spirits. We have the House, and it looks like we’ll take the Senate. The DSCC just issued this statement:

Both Jon Tester and Jim Webb have won their races in Montana and Virginia but want to make sure that every vote is counted. We expect to have official results soon but can happily declare today that Democrats have taken the majority in the U.S. Senate.

Montana Vote Situation: Jon Tester leads Conrad Burns by approximately 1,700 votes (as of 11am EDT) and counting. In Silver Bow County (Butte), a Democratic stronghold, votes are still being counted but Tester is winning there with 66% of the vote. We expect to gain the majority of these uncounted votes and to add to Tester’s margin.

Montana Process: When the counting phase is completed, a canvass will verify the vote tallies. That process could take as long as 48 hours, and must begin within three days and end within seven. Unless the canvass shows the margin to be within ¼ of 1%, there is no recount. As the loser, Burns would have to request the recount. When the votes are all counted, we expect to be outside that recount margin.

Virginia Vote Situation: Jim Webb is up by approximately 8,000 votes and once the provisional ballots are counted, we expect Webb’s margin to increase. (Please note that VA absentees were included in the tallies from last night.)

Virginia Process: A canvass is underway to verify the results and we expect that process to finish within a day or so. To be in recount, the margin needs to be less than 1% and Allen (as the loser) would have to request it. Because of Virginia voting laws, the margin would have to be much tighter than it currently is to see any change in the outcome. Given the current margins, that is highly, highly unlikely.

Tonight, I’ll celebrate with Maud, GMB, and other friends, in the same way we commemorated the Libby indictment and Lamont’s primary win.

Speaking of Lamont: Ned deserves kudos for a very important achievement. His defeat of Lieberman in the primary convinced Democrats across the country that the Iraq war was actually a winning issue for Dems in this election cycle. He may have ultimately lost to Holy Joe’s principle-free, self-serving, crypto-Republican campaign. But along the way, he empowered his party to openly repudiate Bush’s “stay the course” mantra… and to claim victory by standing up against GOP fearmongering.

Posted by Maximus at 1:25 pm

Comment

2006.10.30

The GOP is ready to hijack the “stolen elections” meme
[ General ]

Digby expressed something that I’ve been concerned about for a while:

The Republicans have figured out something that the Democrats refuse to understand. All political messages can be useful, no matter which side has created it. You use them all situationally. The Republicans have been adopting our slogans and memes for years. They get that the way people hear this stuff often is not in a particularly partisan sense. They just hear it, in a sort of disembodied way. Over time thye become comfortable with it and it can be exploited for all sorts of different reasons.

In this instance, there has been a steady underground rumbling about stolen elections since 2000. Now, we know that it’s the Republicans who have been doing the stealing —- and the complaining has been coming from our side. But all most people hear is “stolen election” and they are just as likely to paste that charge onto us as they are onto them. It’s like an ear worm. You don’t know the song its from, necessarily, but you can’t get it out of your head.

We have created an ear worm that the Republicans are going to appropriate — and they will use it much more aggressively and effectively than our side did. They are already gearing up for it.

This would explain why Fox News recently aired this segment.

Posted by Maximus at 9:47 pm

Comment

He’s come right out and said it
[ General ]

Bush attempts to terrorize America again:

Campaigning for Republicans, President Bush said Monday that “terrorists win and America loses” if opponents of his Iraq policy triumph in next week’s elections.

There you have it. Republicans = America. Democrats = terrorists. This may be the most vile and offensive thing a U.S. president has said on the campaign trail in my lifetime.

A great Democrat said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” The motto of this Republican administration seems to be “The only thing we have is fear itself.”

Posted by Maximus at 9:21 pm

Comment

2006.10.25

Winning hearts and minds?
[ Iraq ]

In Iraq, it’s situation normal: all f***ed up:

In Falluja on Monday, American troops, responding to a report that a fire truck had been hijacked by insurgents, stopped a fire truck matching the description, the command reported. As the truck’s four occupants “exited quickly,” the statement said, the troops opened fire, killing them.

American troops later found that the men were actually firefighters responding to an emergency call and were not riding in the hijacked truck.

I am not unsympathetic to the troops. I imagine that if I were in their situation, legitimately fearing for my life at every roadside encounter, I’d be trigger-happy too.

The tragedy — actually, the outrage, because it was and is entirely preventable — is that they are in this situation at all.

A war in which the occupying army guns down firefighters on their way to answer a call is simply unwinnable. This is only the latest in a long and horrifying line of such events. We know for certain that this will happen again, because our forces are in the position of killing the innocent to keep themselves safe.

Some claim that the insurgents are to blame, because, by hiding among the general population, they are making civilians into human shields. But that is an age-old reality of guerilla warfare. Knowing this fact does not wash the blood off of our troops’ hands.

We have a choice: continue to participate in a situation in which we know for certain that we will kill many more innocents, or withdraw. Those in power who believe in pushing forward at any cost have willingly signed the death warrants of countless Iraqis and Americans.

Posted by Maximus at 1:56 pm

Comment

2006.10.23

Bush cuts and runs from “stay the course”
[ Lie of the Day ]

ThinkProgress documents the denial.

So is Bush 1) knowingly lying, or 2) delusional?

This is a man who has also claimed that we found WMDs in Iraq, and that we invaded because Saddam wouldn’t let UN weapons inspectors in.

Posted by Maximus at 9:37 pm

Comment

2006.10.11

North Korea
[ Lie of the Day, Politics as Warfare ]

Josh Marshall rebuts the GOP’s attempts to (yet again) blame Clinton:

…[L]et’s review the salient facts one more time.

“Failure” =1994-2002 — Era of Clinton ‘Agreed Framework’: No plutonium production. All existing plutonium under international inspection. No bomb.

“Success” = 2002-2006 — Bush Policy Era: Active plutonium production. No international inspections of plutonium stocks. Nuclear warhead detonated.

Face it. They ditched an imperfect but working policy. They replaced it with nothing. Now North Korea is a nuclear state.

Posted by Maximus at 11:46 am

Comment

2006.10.03

I think the Dems just took Congress
[ Politics as Warfare, Schadenfreude ]

Bush Expresses Confidence in Hastert:

President Bush today professed shock, dismay and disgust over revelations that a disgraced former Republican congressman sent sexually explicit messages to teenaged boys who served as congressional pages, but he expressed confidence in House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) in the face of calls for his resignation over the matter.

Speaking to reporters during a visit to a school named after him in Stockton, Calif., Bush said he was sure that Hastert “wants all the facts to come out” about the behavior of Mark Foley, 52, a Florida Republican who resigned his House seat Friday as the scandal was emerging.

Amazing. Bush has just gotten on board a sinking ship. The conservative base is already enraged at Hastert:

There was intense anger among social conservative activists in Washington yesterday, and some called for House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) to resign. …

Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council and an important social conservative leader, said “there’s a real chance” that the episode could dethrone the Republican majority. “I think the next 48 hours are critical in how this is handled,” he said, adding that “when a party holds itself out as the guardian of values, this is not helpful.” …

David Bossie, who runs a group called Citizens United, called yesterday for Hastert’s resignation and said other conservative leaders are likely to follow suit. Bossie said the initial e-mails alone, which included Foley’s request of a minor’s picture, should have prompted an immediate inquiry. “That was a cry for an investigation,” Bossie said. “Why couldn’t the speaker of the House muster the will to stop this?”

Leaders from about six dozen socially conservative groups held a conference call late yesterday afternoon, and participants were described as livid with House GOP leaders.

“They are outraged by how Hastert handled this,” said Paul M. Weyrich, a conservative activist who participated in the call. “They feel let down, left aside. How can they allow a guy like [Foley] to remain chairman of the committee on missing and exploited children when there is any question about e-mails?”

Bay Buchanan (Pat’s sister) and the Washington Times have also called for Hastert’s resignation. The base is not going to be pacified on this, even by Bush. In fact, it just makes Bush and his whole administration look more loathsome. The entire leadership of the GOP is now united in working to alienate their core voters and keep them away from the polls next month.

The Foley scandal is shocking in itself, yet it’s only the latest manifestation of what must be one of the most corrupt Congressional regimes in the country’s history. I don’t think any other October surprise can top this one.

Posted by Maximus at 6:25 pm

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2006.09.29

Pushback
[ General ]

E.J. Dionne correctly interprets Bill Clinton’s anger at Chris Wallace: it wasn’t unprovoked, it was pushback against malicious, false propaganda:

Sober, moderate opinion will say what sober, moderate opinion always says about an episode of this sort: Tut tut, Clinton looked unpresidential, we should worry about the future, not the past, blah, blah, blah.

But sober, moderate opinion was largely silent as the right wing slashed and distorted Clinton’s record on terrorism. It largely stood by as the Bush administration tried to intimidate its own critics into silence. As a result, the day-to-day political conversation was tilted toward a distorted view of the past. All the sins of omission and commission were piled onto Clinton while Bush was cast as the nation’s angelic avenger. And as conservatives understand, our view of the past greatly influences what we do in the present.

A genuinely sober and moderate view would recognize that it’s time the scales of history were righted. Propagandistic accounts need to be challenged, systematically and consistently. The debate needed a very hard shove. Clinton delivered it.

Posted by Maximus at 1:49 am

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2006.09.26

“Why I’m Mad”
[ General ]

Will Bunch writes to David Broder:

The night I became angry came in March 2003, the night that your friends and colleagues in the White House press room took a dive at a nationally televised press conference, and refused to challenge the president’s specious grounds for war. I was furious over what my profession — the one where you had once inspired me a generation ago — had now become. And frankly, a lot of people on the left side became angry, too — because, frankly, nobody was listening when they were nice. Protest marches of half a million got inside-the-A-section type coverage; at least a little vitriol finally got your attention, Mr. Broder.

And this was all before so much else happened — the made-up terror alerts, the chucking of the Geneva Convention and the torture and abuse that followed, the illegal spying, the willful defiance of laws enacted by Congress, the ignoring of the fundamental right of habeas corpus. I won’t waste a lot of space chronicling it all, because you know it all. You know it all…and yet you have done nothing.

That’s because your cynicism is degenerative disease, and it leads to paralysis. You were the dean overseeing the Great Game of American politics, and then some bad guys came along and changed all the rules, and you tried so very hard not to notice. Now that the unlawful nature of this presidency is becoming recognized by a majority, you are praying for a deus ex machina, this fictional “independence party” that will not just save America but most importantly save you, save you from having to make a choice.

It’s too late for that now, Mr. Broder. I do not blame you; I did not want to make this choice either; it chose me. I would have been much happier, frankly, spending my 40s the way that you spent your 40s, fighting for a Pulitzer Prize instead of fighting to preserve the basics of a democracy and a free press, the things that you and I and America were able to take for granted for so long. Nor do I expect you to join us; frankly, if that happens, it would probably would not happen until America has already fallen into the abyss, and I hope and pray that it does not come to that.

In the meantime, this journalist will use every weapon in his arsenal to preserve the values that allowed our craft to flourish in America — including the weapon of anger. That may offend you from time to time; I guess on some level I hope that it doesn’t.

Either way, don’t expect me to apologize for it.

Posted by Maximus at 8:01 pm

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2006.09.25

Pouring gasoline on the fire
[ General ]

We knew it all along, but now the U.S. intelligence community confirms it:

A stark assessment of terrorism trends by American intelligence agencies has found that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks.

The classified National Intelligence Estimate attributes a more direct role to the Iraq war in fueling radicalism than that presented either in recent White House documents or in a report released Wednesday by the House Intelligence Committee, according to several officials in Washington involved in preparing the assessment or who have read the final document.

The intelligence estimate, completed in April, is the first formal appraisal of global terrorism by United States intelligence agencies since the Iraq war began, and represents a consensus view of the 16 disparate spy services inside government. Titled “Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States,”’ it asserts that Islamic radicalism, rather than being in retreat, has metastasized and spread across the globe.

Posted by Maximus at 1:29 am

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