Month: February 2006

Limited Nativism

by digby

Tristero has already linked to this great interview with Mark Danner and I too recommend that you read it if you haven’t already. It’s interesting in dozens of different ways, but I wanted to highlight something specific:

TD: They’re really extreme American nationalists, though you can’t use that word in this country.

Danner: That’s true, and they combine with this belief in great-power America an almost nativist distrust of international institutions. That’s the difference between Truman America and this regime in its approach to foreign policy. They put international institutions in a similar class with terrorism –- that is, weapons of the weak.

Ah. Yes, they have very skillfully stoked this nativism with distrust of international institutions. This has long been an effective tool on the right from the Panama Canal to the UN black helicopter crowd. Recently, they have stoked this nativism with distrust of our allies too. I have been quite amused to see all of the rightwingers clutching their pearls about “alienating our friends” after their performance in 2003 in which some of them were actually agitating to attack France and Germany. Watching them stutter and dissemble about our great and valued ally the United Arab Emirates is just funny. Freedom falafels anyone?

But then this port deal doesn’t really fit the storyline, does it? It’s not about an international institution or a real ally. From what we’ve seen these last few years, they would never have gone to such lengths to defend it if it were. It’s about an international corporation and that goes beyond borders, beyond alliances and beyond institutions. That’s sacred ground to the big money boys of the Republican establishment.

I don’t know if people are consciously aware of this distinction, but if they were I don’t think they would be impressed by it. Basically, the Republicans are saying that we cannot trust long standing internatinal institutions, long standing international law or even long standing close allies — but we should take it on faith that international corporations, even those owned by dodgy middle eastern monarchies, can be trusted not to harm our national security. Their all encompassing belief in the market has extended to national security.

This nativist impulse that has been so skillfully exploited by the Republican party is not allowed beyond the boardroom door. Is this ok with the white working class Republican base? I wonder.

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Programmed Cynicism

by digby

I had noticed the propensity of the gasbags to characterize Democratic criticism of the Dubai ports deal as a craven political move to Bush’s right. Media Matters has gathered together quite a comepndium of quotes, many of them not coming from the openly right wing media. My favorite is this one, from Evan Thomas of Newsweak:

THOMAS: One thing that strikes me is — it is hilarious to watch the Democrats, who are all against racial profiling except in this case, where they’re racially profiling an entire country, and the Hillary Clintons — there’s a lot about Hillary Clinton in the other subtext here. Hillary and the Democrats need to get somehow to the right of President Reagan on something.

Nice of him to confuse Bush with St. Reagan. Those Republican talking points are potent, aren’t they?

But let’s examine the entire statement for perfectly layered GOP spin, shall we? First of all, the Democrats’ response is “hilarious.” It’s absurd to think that they could be serious about national security. They are, as always, ridiculous. Especially compared to the suave, smoothtalking insiders like Thomas.

Second, the idea that this is racial profiling is right out of the wingnut playbook. It’s called the “I know you are but what am I” strategy. They accuse Democrats of being racists/sexist/ageist, whatever, to put them on the defensive. Democrats still care about hypocrisy and second guess what they are doing when this happens. The GOP, on the other hand, has no problem apeing liberal talking points on their own behalf (often with a snide smirk on their face) and pretending to be offended by things they are not offended by. Picture Orrin Hatch going on and on about Democrats being racist for opposing Janice Rogers Brown, the sharecropper’s daughter.

Dems could turn the tables if they would get all red in the face and start railing about political correctness and the right’s being in the pocket of arab terrorists and racial minorities, but they don’t play that game very well. It is, after all, fucked-up race baiting no matter how you slice it. I suspect that we are going to have to find a way to live with this nonsense and have faith that a majority of the American public can see through their little performance. Liberals have built up many, many years of credibility on this issue. We know who we are and so does everyone else. (And the idea of the Republicans defending Arabs from left wing prejudice is guffaw-inducing to anyone who isn’t drunk on 151 — or a member of the DC press corps. This alone clinches the argument.)

The most serious part of Thomas’ smug criticism is the part about the Democrats, particularly Hillary, desperate to “get to the right of Bush” on national security. It is evidently incomprehensible to Thomas and the rest of the beltway courtiers that the Democrats might be legitimately concerned about the topic. They persist in this ridiculous assumption even though we are dependent on what even they must finally be realizing is the most incompetent administration in history. Doesn’t that make these people, who live in New York and Washington, just a little bit nervous?

As the media themselves have told us ad nauseum, everything is narrative. If that’s so then this port deal is emblematic of the larger story of Bush’s incompetence in waging the war on terrorism — the lack of awareness, the wasted money, the wrong strategy, the failed execution — all of it. iraq showed the world that our intelligence is terrible and that our military is stretched by a simple war and occupation. Katrina showed the world that our response to an emergency is worse than it was before 9/11. For all the talk about loose lips sinking ships, I can’t think of anything any whistleblower has done that gives al Qaeda more information about our vulnerabilities than the terrible performance of this administration.

The Democrats have long been complaining about Bush’s laissez faire attitude toward homeland security, Hillary being at the forefront. That isn’t running to Bush’s “right” which makes very little sense when it comes to the war on terrorism. (To really run to his right a Democrat would have to endorse a pre-emptive nuclear strike on Finland.) It’s criticizing a very real flaw in Bush’s national security strategy. In Hillary’s case, if it’s politics, it the old adage “all politics is local.” She represents New York and there are ample pragmatic reasons for her to take on Bush’s lackadaisical approach to homeland security. In fact, I suspect that her constituents demand it, and for good reason. It already happened to them once. She has been talking quite sepcifically about port security for some time — as was John Kerry, who the media also ridiculed as being a hilarious, flip-flopping opportunist.

Perhaps if they would take their eyes off their mirrors for a minute or two, the elite media could entertain the thought that these Democrats are not talking out of their asses. This is a legitimate issue. The worst terrorist attack in American history took place on the Republicans’ watch and they’ve fucked up everything they’ve touched since then. Perhaps codpieces and trash talk aren’t adequate to the task at hand.

Thomas is one of the biggest purveyors of the smug, cynical conventional wisdom that permeates the political media. Long after it was rasonable to defend this unpopular president’s alleged prowess on national security they did it. And they refuse to let go of the notion that no matter how fucked up the Republicans are, the Democrats are worse. Winning elections may not even change this. I’m beginning to suspect that this is a generational identification with GOP political values, where good government or nuanced policy is always pooh-poohed by the these kewl kids who see governance through the lens of the puerile college Republican style of political combat. It may take a new generation of people who haven’t mistaken dorky DC hipster cynicism for insight.

Like this guy, for instance.

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Mark Danner

by tristero

I’m gonna take about a week off for personal stuff and to collect my thoughts on a topic I’ve been meaning to post about. But I did want to share this truly superb interview with reporter Mark Danner, whose work is some of the best being done by an American. Read it all. Here are some excerpts:

It underlines [the Bush administration’s] policies in all kinds of areas, their belief that the overwhelming or preponderant power of the United States can simply change fact, can change truth. It is quite indicative of their policy of public information inside the United States. They don’t care about people who read the New York Times, for instance. I use that as a shorthand. They don’t care about people concerned with facts. They care about the broader arc of the story. We sit here constantly citing facts — that they’ve broken this or that law, that what they originally said turns out not to be true. None of this particularly interests them.

What interests them is the larger reality believed by the 50.1 percent that they need to govern. Kenneth Duberstein said this recently — he was chief of staff to Ronald Reagan — that this administration is unique in that they govern with 50.1 percent. He was referring not to elections but to popularity while governing. His notion was that Reagan would want to get 60 to 65 percent backing him, while the Bush people want a bare majority, which means they have a much more extremist policy because they’re appealing to the base. It makes them very hard-knuckle when approaching politics, simply wanting the base plus one.

…

The icebergs are floating by. I’ve used the phrase to indicate that a process of scandal we’ve come to know, with an expected series of steps, has come to an end. Before, you had, as Step 1, revelation of wrongdoing by the press, usually with the help of leaks from within an administration. Step 2 would be an investigation which the courts, often allied with Congress, would conduct, usually in public, that would give you an official version of events. We saw this with Watergate, Iran-Contra and others. And finally, Step 3 would be expiation — the courts, Congress, impose punishment which allows society to return to some kind of state of grace in which the notion is, Look, we’ve corrected the wrongdoing, we can now go on. With this administration, we’ve got revelation of torture, of illegal eavesdropping, of domestic spying, of all kinds of abuses when it comes to arrest of domestic aliens, of inflated and false weapons of mass destruction claims before the war; of cronyism and corruption in Iraq on a vast scale. You could go on. But no official investigation follows

…

[During the Reagan administration] At a time of real dominance by the Times and Post, and the administration came forward, denied the [El Mozote massacres in El Salvador] took place, and was able to make its views stick. And remember we knew [the Reagan administration was covering up about their knowledge of the death squads]…

That leads me to a conclusion I came to then: that in many stories it’s not the information, it’s the politics. It’s not that we were lacking information. It’s that, when that information came out, it was denied and those in power were able to impose their view of reality. Political power decided what reality was, despite clear information to the contrary. When I look at our time I see that phenomenon writ large.
…

I think it’s widely known at the top of the administration that Iraq is a failure. It’s also been recognized by many that, in strategic terms, the Iraq war could turn out to be a catastrophe because it’s essentially created a Shia Islamist government sympathetic to Iran and, among other things, made it impossible for the U.S. to adequately pressure Iran on the nuclear issue.

…

[O]ne is perilously close to arriving at the conclusion that reality doesn’t matter. When I look at the pieces on the inside pages of the papers about the stealing of funds in Iraq by American officials, when I realize that no one is likely to be punished for this, I think of the novels of [Milan] Kundera, of his vivid descriptions of what it was like to live in Eastern Europe in the 1950s and ’60s — in the Soviet system where everyone realized the corruption, the abuse of power, the mediocrity of the government, the yawning gap between what was said and what was really going on, but no one could do anything about it

…

Actually, to reach the point of being a TFN [a Totally Fucked-up Nation], I think we have a long way to go. We’re at a very low point in the political evolution of this country. I’ve certainly not lived under an administration as radical in its techniques, its methods, and its beliefs as this one. I’ve seen nothing like it in my lifetime.

It’s a difficult time for those of us who care about the truth and who don’t believe, as I think this administration does, that the truth is actually determined by what those in power think. I take comfort from the fact that a lot of people don’t believe that.

Like Mark Danner, I’m glad that the US is not yet Sierra Leone. The problem is that Bush just takes that as a challenge, rolls up his sleeves, smirks a few times, and then proceeds blithely about his God-given mission to wreck the United States in every way he can think of.

Follies

by digby

Arthur Silber has written a very compelling series of posts featuring Barbara Tuchman’s “The March of Folly” in several different contexts and it led me to go back and read it. It’s an amazing analysis of a certain kind of willful governmental stupidity borne of hubris, mental laziness and bad judgment, and it’s quite clear that we are seeing it being carried out right before our eyes. She defined “folly” this way:

To qualify as folly for this inquiry, the policy adopted must meet three criteria: it must have been perceived as counter-productive in its own time, not merely by hindsight. This is important, because all policy is determined by the mores of its age. “Nothing is more unfair,” as an English historian has well said, “than to judge men of the past by the ideas of the present. Whatever may be said of morality, political wisdom is certainly ambulatory.” To avoid judging by present-day values, we must take the opinion of the time and investigate only those episodes whose injury to self-interest was recognized even by contemporaries.

Secondly a feasible alternative course of action must have been available. To remove the problem from personality, a third criterion must be that the policy in question should be that of a group, not an individual ruler, and should persist beyond any one political lifetime. Misgovernment by a single sovereign or tyrant is too frequent and too individual to be worth a generalized inquiry. Collective government or a succession of rulers in the same office, as in the case of the Renaissance popes, raises a more significant problem.

Certainly, the first two criteria apply in spades. It’s that last, that got my attention. In order for the current quagmire to be truly considered folly it must persist beyond any one political lifetime. In my view it already has.

Via Arthur again, here’s Tuchman describing the thought processes of Lyndon Johnson during Vietnam:

Like Kennedy, Johnson believed that to lose South Vietnam would be to lose the White House. It would mean a destructive debate, he was later to say, that would “shatter my Presidency, kill my Administration, and damage our democracy.” The loss of China, he said, which had led to the rise of Joe McCarthy, was “chickenshit compared with what might happen if we lost Vietnam.” Robert Kennedy would be out in front telling everyone that “I was a coward, an unmanly man, a man without a spine.” Worse, as soon as United States weakness was perceived by Moscow and Peking, they would move to “expand their control over the vacuum of power we would leave behind us … and so would begin World War III.” He was as sure of this “as nearly as anyone can be certain of anything.” No one is so sure of his premises as the man who knows too little.

The purpose of the war was not gain or national defense. It would have been a simpler matter had it been either, for it is easier to finish a war by conquest of territory or by destruction of the enemy’s forces and resources than it is to establish a principle by superior force and call it victory. America’s purpose was to demonstrate her intent and her capacity to stop Communism in a framework of preserving an artificially created, inadequately motivated and not very viable state. The nature of the society we were upholding was an inherent flaw in the case, and despite all efforts at “nation-building,” it did not essentially change.

In the illusion of omnipotence, American policy-makers took it for granted that on a given aim, especially in Asia, American will could be made to prevail. This assumption came from the can-do character of a self-created nation and from the sense of competence and superpower derived from World War II. If this was “arrogance of power,” in Senator Fulbright’s phrase, it was not so much the fatal hubris and over-extension that defeated Athens and Napoleon, and in the 20th century Germany and Japan, as it was failure to understand that problems and conflicts exist among other peoples that are not soluble by the application of American force or American techniques of even American goodwill. “Nation-building” was the most presumptuous of the illusions. Settlers of the North American continent had built a nation from Plymouth Rock to Valley Forge to the fulfilled frontier, yet failed to learn from their success that elsewhere, too, only the inhabitants can make the process work.

Wooden-headedness, the “Don’t-confuse-me-with-the-facts” habit, is a universal folly never more conspicuous than at upper levels of Washington with respect to Vietnam. Its grossest fault was underestimation of North Vietnam’s commitment to its goal. Enemy motivation was a missing element in American calculations, and Washington could therefore ignore all the evidence of nationalist fervor and of the passion for independence which as early as 1945 Hanoi had declared “no human force can any longer restrain.” Washington could ignore General Leclerc’s prediction that conquest would take half a million men and “Even then it could not be done.” It could ignore the demonstration of elan and capacity that won victory over a French army with modern weapons at Dien Bien Phu, and all the continuing evidence thereafter.

American refusal to take the enemy’s grim will and capacity into account has been explained by those responsible on the ground of ignorance of Vietnam’s history, traditions and national character: there were “no experts available,” in the words of one high-ranking official. But the longevity of Vietnamese resistance to foreign rule could have been learned from any history book on Indochina. Attentive consultation with French administrators whose official lives had been spent in Vietnam would have made up for the lack of American expertise. Even superficial American acquaintance with the area, when it began to supply reports, provided creditable information. Not ignorance, but refusal to credit the evidence and, more fundamentally, refusal to grant stature and fixed purpose to a “fourth-rate” Asiatic country were the determining factors, much as in the case of the British attitude toward the American colonies. The irony of history is inexorable.

Deja-vu-vu. I think it’s pretty clear that history will judge Vietnam and Iraq as related wars, much as WWI and II were related, one growing out of the other. (The last election more or less dramatized it like a movie of the week.) The Republicans clung to their delusions for more than a quarter of a century believing that the Vietnam war was lost because it was sabotaged by the civilian leadership and the fecklessness of the American public. They nurtured their resentment through almost three decades, unappeased even by the fall of the Soviet Union. They, and many Democrats as well, never questioned their assumptions about the “illusion of American omnipotence” and they never understood that “problems and conflicts exist among other peoples that are not soluble by the application of American force or American techniques of even American goodwill.” In fact, they carefully nurtured all those fancies and when they finally gained the power and opportunity, they immediately set about trying to prove their point — again. The results are as predictable and as bad they were the first time.

I think that many of us over these last few years have felt as if we were living under water. Everything has seemed vaguely distorted. Communication and movement had an odd quality of density and resistance. We spoke out. We marched. We called our representatives. But it seemed as if our words sounded garbled and muffled in some way.

And there has also been a strong sense of inevitability. Certainly, since the impeachment the country has been steamrollered into a bizarre and aberrant political reality, never more than after 9/11 when the administration began agitating for this absurd, incomprehensible war. Despite its utter madness, I think most of us knew it was unstoppable. And it wasn’t just us moonbats who knew it; it was the CIA and the state department. It was all of Europe and even Saddam himself. I suspect this is yet another feature of folly — the sense among those who know better that there is no way to change the course of the event, that you are speaking a language nobody can understand.

Now, after we are dug in deeply with so much blood and money wasted, salvation requires repudiation of the Iraq war, the Bush doctrine and the cruel, undemocratic policies of the “war” on terrorism. I don’t know if anyone has the strength to do that. It must be said that Lyndon Johnson was correct in that he would be mercilessly attacked for being weak if he withdrew from Vietnam. That’s a political fact and it is what will happen if a Democratic administration tries to draw down the GWOT. (Not that we shouldn’t do it, I’m just saying that the price will be high.) It’s one of the main reasons why we should never start these things unless absolutely forced to. They are very difficult to end.

What or who will successfully put a coda to this ongoing folly? I don’t see it in either party, to tell you the truth. But it’s what I’m going to be looking for. This is the central challenge of millenial America: how can the most powerful nation on earth survive such monumental folly?

If you are interested in this topic, I urge you to read Arthur’s long entire series on Iran and Tuchman’s “March of Folly.” Oh my.

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Extremes

by digby

Kos highlights an interesting story today about the fears among the political establishment of the of grassroots extremists:

While some view the evangelical church as above all a force for promoting conservative values, others see it as polarizing as well, fueling candidates who tap into the passions of activists and values voters but not the broader electorate.

“It’s great, because it creates a lot of energy and helps broaden a movement, but the downside is you can also get pulled in a more extreme direction,” said Erik Smith, who worked in the 2004 race for both Tom Coburn and a multimillion-dollar independent Republican ad campaign.

“There is real power there . . . but there are some real limits to it, and those limits have to be heeded,” said Jonah Seiger, an evangelical strategist.

The Republicans are very concerned about how they appear to the mainstream and worry incessantly about how these activists will pull the party too far to the right.

Not.

That paragraph actually reads like this:

While some view the Internet as above all a democratizing force, others see it as polarizing as well, fueling candidates who tap into the passions of activists and ideological voters but not the broader electorate.

“It’s great, because it creates a lot of energy and helps broaden a movement, but the downside is you can also get pulled in a more extreme direction,” said Erik Smith, who worked in the 2004 race for both Dick Gephardt and a multimillion-dollar independent Democratic ad campaign.

“There is real power there . . . but there are some real limits to it, and those limits have to be heeded,” said Jonah Seiger, an Internet strategist who also heads the board of advisers for the Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet at George Washington University.

Unlike Democrats, Republicans do not question whether it is a good thing to have hard working, committed activists. They just say thank you.

Rather than worry about being “pulled in a more extreme direction” they confidently accept support wherever they can get it and openly court their base. They proudly run on the label “conservative” and would not dream of marginalizing their most energetic partisans. Democrats, not so much.

Note to the clueless DC insiders: the blogosphere is only “extreme” to the extent it is extremely impatient with people like you. We believe that your strategy of caution has failed and we are agitating for a more aggressive Democratic politics. After a partisan impeachment, a stolen election in 2000, an illegal war and an unprecedented executive power play we think this is a pretty serious situation. In fact, we see this as political civil war. You apparently think that is “extreme.” We think it is common sense.

Perhaps it would be easier for these people to understand if we speak like Republicans and use stupid Civil War analogies to make a point, so here goes:

We believe that the DC establishment is running the war like George McClellan and we think his cautious strategy is losing us the war. It’s not because we aren’t all on the same side or don’t have the same goals. It’s that the McClellans of the establishment are temperamentally inhibited at a time when aggression is called for. We believe the party needs to fight like Grant.

If that civil war analogy is too complicated I’m sure I can find a cartoon or children’s book to illustrate it. We are not ideologues. We are simply demanding that elected Democrats stand firm on our convictions and be willing to go toe to toe with Republicans. It isn’t complicated. When Lincoln was asked to relieve Grant after Shiloh, he said, “I can’t spare this man — he fights.” That’s what we’re talking about.

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No Retreat, No Surrender

by tristero

In comments to a previous post about South Dakota’s imminent approval of coathangers for abortion, reader goodasgold wrote

I couldn’t live in South Dakota. It would hurt too much. I wonder where all this will lead. I live in California. I feel safe.

The sentiment is understandable. Why live someplace that seems hellbent on trumpeting its ignorance of reality? Why go somewhere that all but brags of its cruelty to the poor?

Indeed, that’s what pro-coathanger legislation is all about. The rich and the middle class will always have access to safe abortion. Making abortion illegal is quite simply class warfare, aimed at the poorest women and families.

That is all it is. It is one thing if your religious beliefs require you to bring a pregnancy to term. No one in the United States will, or should, stop you, It’s a very, very different situation to use your religion as a shield to deflect sharp criticism of your political activism and demand that abortion be made dangerous and illegal. That is not religious belief. That is simply heartless, cruel, and immoral politcking. The cynical operatives who demand that the state approve coathanger abortions by banning legal ones in no way can claim the moral high ground, America’s laws are very clear: no group has the right to inflict their religious proclivities on the rest of us.*

However, I think goodasgold is wrong, as the troll Par R, inadvertently, reminds us. Par R apparently lives in South Dakota and writes:

God bless and keep you safe in California, since we sure as Hell don’t want your type living among us up here! Thanks.

To translate out of Troll-ish, Par R is saying, “Ignorance and tyranny will flourish wherever liberalism is absent.” For that reason, it is vital that more liberals move to South Dakota, not less.

Liberals should move to South Dakota not to “impose” their values, of course. For as we all know, coercion is what religious nuts do, not liberals. Liberals have a long, consistent history of strong opposition to laws that force people to conform to a specific “politically correct” or “religiously correct” moral code. Nope, more liberals should move to South Dakota for one reason only: To become proud, loyal, and productive South Dakotans. The state simply needs more liberals if it is to become a better South Dakota and it needs less unprincipled politicians advancing an anti-American theocratic agenda.

Contrary to christianism, with its unhealthy obsession on deadly punishment and diseased sex, liberalism is a world view that is life affirming. It posits that human beings have the ability and the will to construct a moral life, and a happy, prosperous one in a civil community regardless of our differences. That is what is meant, in a political context, by “all men are created equal.” And liberalism has succeeded. It is in states where liberalism is in short supply that poverty reigns, and ignorance, and a great deal of crime.

The answer to South Dakota’s real problems is not tyranny, either religious or secular (and make no mistake: oppressing the poor, by denying them access to a safe medical procedure, certainly is tyrannical). Both are the desperate solutions of the ignorant and the fearful. No, the answer begins with informed, careful, and reasoned thought. In a word, the answer begins with liberalism. By contrast, nothing could be further removed from reality, nothing could be more irrelevant to the problems South Dakota faces than the thoughtless and clueless theocracy the pro-coathanger crowd desire. And that is why more liberals are needed in South Dakota.

Liberal South Dakotans surely hold different values than California liberals. Speaking for the moment as a New York liberal, I certainly hope so! (grin)

Therefore, more liberals in South Dakota will bring to the state a personal and civil philosophy that will make South Dakotans of all political stripes even prouder of their state than they already are. They will give all South Dakotans more genuine reasons to sneer at how awful and foolish life is in California (and New York), not less. More liberals in South Dakota will focus the state’s resources on genuine issues, not well-marketed faith-based cure-alls that cure nothing. Issues, like passing laws to ban abortion, are not only immoral because of their viciousness to the poor. They are immoral because they waste valuable time and resources better spent addressing real problems.

Liberalism – a philosophy of reason, compassion, tolerance, and hard-headed realism unemcumbered by utopianism – is the only civic philosophy that is flexible enough to encompass the wildly different needs of a wildly disparate America. The notion of a “godless” liberal is one more rightwing myth. The vast majority of American liberals agree that, on a personal level, the “good life” is lived with God’s help. They are also aware that what is meant by God or God’s will is no business of the state to define; one group’s position on God’s will can in no way be privileged in the business of an American polis. The sooner South Dakota’s legislature stops trying to to do so and gets down to the real business of running the state, the better. And that requires more liberals in South Dakota, not more theocrats thumping Bibles and obsessing about other people’s sex lives.

And so, goodasgold, start packing.

An apology: I haven’t addressed the right to safe and legal medical care very much in the past. The reason is that it is self-evident that all citizens have a right to such care, even if they are poor. Therefore, what’s there to argue over? The fury over the use of coat hangers has always puzzled me. Yes, honest people can come to radically different conclusions as to whether their pregnancy should or should not be terminated. But an American government clearly has no right to impose a conclusion. Therefore the politicization of the abortion issue has always struck me as a thinly disguised war against providing safe health care to the poor, especially women, rather than anything that engages a genuine moral issue which, in abortion’s case, is a private one.

I still think this is true. But it is becoming clear to me that, not only because the issue of safe medical care for all Americans is an important issue in itself but because the right to such care impacts many other important issues, all of us must once again speak out, loud, clear, and often in favor of Roe v. Wade.

True, I’ve done so several times before, and just as unequivocally as I’ve done so here. But I feel a need to speak out even more. I recognize that others have sensed this need long before I have. They were right, I was wrong and I apologize. To say that there were (and are) issues that were just as serious is no excuse, of course. But that was, and is, the case for me.

As I’ve said before, it has become very hard to be an American. The assault from the extreme right on American values has been relentless and highly organized since (at least) the second Clinton term. Nearly as bad, the Democrats have, as a party, failed miserably to stand behind its finest members – people like Kerry, Murtha, and Dean – or its modern principles, which are based in liberalism. The fact that being an American is very hard work these days also is no excuse. Please accept the apology and I’ll try to make up for it with more posts on the right of all Americans to safe, legal medical care. That care is dangerously undermined whenever the access to abortion on demand is challenged. The dangers of illegal abortion primarily fall on poor women (and honest, competent doctors who provide abortions despite the potential for imprisonment), but the dangers of making access to medical procedures contingent on religious correctness are dangers for everyone, including those who, for personal/religious reasons, will carry all viable pregnancies to term.

*Note to rightwing religious nuts: Disagree with me all you want, but don’t try to claim I am “prejudiced against religion,” yadda yadda because I would truly hate to embarass you. There is abundant public proof of my longstanding admiration and deep respect for religious observance and devout practice.

My contempt and disgust is focused entirely on political activists like bin Laden, Antonin Scalia, Randall Terry, or the late Meir Kahane, who hide behind the skirts of priests to advocate theocracy. (And yes, that is precisely Scalia’s agenda which is why he’s mentioned here in the company of his peers: his remarks here fall barely one or two commas short of advocating a full overhaul of American jurisprudence and the establishment of a christianist theocracy)

Now if you’re an extra crunchy and sleazy rightwing nut you might sneer, “What about Martin Luther King? You object to him speaking out when he saw injustice?” To which there is only one response:

Your comparison is deeply insulting. King’s peers are Gandhi and Nelson Mandela, so if you want to discuss him by comparing him to those other great human beings, I am only too happy to join you. But I will not demean KIng’s achievements by dignifying, with a response, any mention of him in the rhetorical company of cheap slimeballs like Pat Robertson or Rick Santorum. What next, shall we “discuss” whether FDR is the moral equivalent of Hitler? Or whether the Bible authorizes slavery? It’s still a free blogosphere so go somewhere else and spew.

Creating A Better Circumstance

by digby

This William Kristol quote from this morning is another step in the eventual disavowal of Bushism. You see, just as it was in Vietnam, the know-nothings in Washington won’t let the military leaders take the gloves off which is why we are having so many problems.

This will, of course, be folded into the standard one size fits all conservative whine that alleges conservatism cannot fail on its own terms. Not even neo-conservatism, which isn’t conservatism at all except to the extent it prefers war over other means of change.

Indeed, the neos have the civil war in Iraq already built into their utopian vision. Much as David Ignatius said that if in 30 years Iraq is doing as well as Lebanon is today then the invasion can be seen as a success, for years some neocons have held that in order to make a nice US dominated Iraq, the massive death and destruction of a war and then civil war might be just what the doctor ordered. From a very depressing article by Robert Dreyfuss:

In a paper for an Israeli think tank, the same think tank for which Wurmser, Richard Perle and Douglas Feith prepared the famous “Clean Break” paper in 1996, Wurmser wrote in 1997 : “The residual unity of the nation is an illusion projected by the extreme repression of the state.” After Saddam, Iraq would “be ripped apart by the politics of warlords, tribes, clans, sects, and key families,” he wrote. “Underneath facades of unity enforced by state repression, [Iraq’s] politics is defined primarily by tribalism, sectarianism, and gang/clan-like competition.” Yet Wurmser explicitly urged the United States and Israel to “expedite” such a collapse. “The issue here is whether the West and Israel can construct a strategy for limiting and expediting the chaotic collapse that will ensue in order to move on to the task of creating a better circumstance.”

Such black neoconservative fantasies—which view the Middle East as a chessboard on which they can move the pieces at will—have now come home to roost. For the many hundreds of thousands who might die in an Iraqi civil war, the consequences are all too real.

This is where the Straussian beast of neoconservatism rears its ugly head.[and says hello its mate, perverted trotskyism. ed] Their vaunted starry-eyed idealism about spreading democracy is a pile of crap. They, like all imperialists, seek domination. They went along with the cockamamie idea to give the Iraqi people the opportunity to surrender peacefully and do it our way. Those purple fingers should have made them feel really good about themselves. But they aren’t cooperating. Which means, sadly, that it’s time to accept reality. We tore the country apart, now we’ll let the crazy wogs have it out.

The big challenge now is to “limit and expedite the chaotic collapse in order to move on to the task of creating a better circumstance.” When you look at it that way, everything’s going according to plan. Too bad about all the dead people.

Meanwhile neocon shills like Kristol will soothe the rubes with tales of how the Bush administration tied the military’s hands. If they’d have let them go they could have gotten the job done in a couple of weeks. We could have bombed em back into the stone age if necessary. After all, everything turned out just great with Japan and Germany. But, no. They wouldn’t let our brave men and women get the job done. (Of course you can’t blame them too much. It was the dominant Democrat hippies who made them do it.)

It gives the Republicans a good excuse to run on “restoring honor” to the country. The rubes eat it up and get all excited about proving ourselves in the next war. A war we must fight for freedom and democracy, of course. Because we’re so good.

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Vinaigrette

by digby

Kevin at Catch is calling it a day and now I have one less funny blogger from whom to steal great material. Damn. I hate when that happens. He is one of those guys who likes to go into the belly of the rightwing blogospheric beast and examine the entrails with insight and humor. It is a valuable service and I will miss him.

We met (virtually, of course) during the Wes Clark campaign when both of us were asked to do an online interview with the general. Back in those golden, olden days, that was quite an unusual thing. We were asked to submit five questions. Kevin and I both asked four probing, deeply complicated queries about long term foreign policy strategy and one fun “personal” question. They picked the personal questions, of course. Kevin’s was “what’s your favorite salad dressing” and mine was “of all your postings overseas, what country did you enjoy the most?” (answers: vinaigrette and Panama.) I was lucky enough to get one “real” question in the mix as well so I didn’t suffer the overwhelming disapprobation of the Clarkies who accused Kevin of wasting the general’s and the community’s time with this silliness. (Clarkies are a serious bunch.) We bonded.

Kevin may be leaving the blogosphere but he will be long remembered around these parts. His memorial is the term “bedwetters.” That’s what I call a contribution.

I assume that Kevin knows his great eye and superior snark are always welcome on this blog should he feel the overhwelming urge to post. And you know he will feel the urge eventually. It’s hard to go cold turkey. Yelling at the TV just doesn’t have the same kick. Plus it annoys people. Your loved ones quickly realize they didn’t miss you that much after all and are relieved to hear the sounds of your angry typing. I’m guessing. Not that I would know, of course. I’m very even keeled.

In case you missed it, here’s Kevin’s interview with TBOGG. A classic.

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They Are NOT Eliminating Abortions In South Dakota

by tristero

They are approving coathangers for use as medical instruments.

Who Says Dems Don’t Ask The Tough Questions?

by tristero

Now, I’m not saying that I completely agree with this, but I do think it is worthy of a full, thoughtful discussion.

Note to wingnuts: In case it is lost on you, the sentence above is one I have found on right wing discussion boards regarding whether gays are moral lepers, abortion doctors deserve the death penalty, or whether torture may be a good thing on occasion. In other words, this is satire.