Bomb Iraq!
by digby
Gosh, I get a kind of warm feeling remembering those good old days back in 2002, when we were all hunkered down around Atrios’ place, watching the metaphorical skies fill with fireworks. We even had our own campfire song:
If you’ve got no other reason, bomb Iraq (clap, clap)
If you’ve got no other reason, bomb Iraq (clap, clap)
If you’ve got no other reason, other than election season
If you’ve got no other reason, bomb Iraq (clap, clap)
Ah yes. Chalabi, we hardly knew ye.
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Air War
We got ourselves an air war.
Hersh told us why a few months ago:
In recent weeks, there has been widespread speculation that President George W. Bush, confronted by diminishing approval ratings and dissent within his own party, will begin pulling American troops out of Iraq next year. The Administration’s best-case scenario is that the parliamentary election scheduled for December 15th will produce a coalition government that will join the Administration in calling for a withdrawal to begin in the spring. By then, the White House hopes, the new government will be capable of handling the insurgency…
A key element of the drawdown plans, not mentioned in the President’s public statements, is that the departing American troops will be replaced by American airpower. Quick, deadly strikes by U.S. warplanes are seen as a way to improve dramatically the combat capability of even the weakest Iraqi combat units. The danger, military experts have told me, is that, while the number of American casualties would decrease as ground troops are withdrawn, the over-all level of violence and the number of Iraqi fatalities would increase unless there are stringent controls over who bombs what…
Within the military, the prospect of using airpower as a substitute for American troops on the ground has caused great unease. For one thing, Air Force commanders, in particular, have deep-seated objections to the possibility that Iraqis eventually will be responsible for target selection. “Will the Iraqis call in air strikes in order to snuff rivals, or other warlords, or to snuff members of your own sect and blame someone else?” another senior military planner now on assignment in the Pentagon asked. “Will some Iraqis be targeting on behalf of Al Qaeda, or the insurgency, or the Iranians?”
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This military planner added that even today, with Americans doing the targeting, “there is no sense of an air campaign, or a strategic vision. We are just whacking targets – it’s a reversion to the Stone Age. There’s no operational art. That’s what happens when you give targeting to the Army – they hit what the local commander wants to hit.”
One senior Pentagon consultant I spoke to said he was optimistic that “American air will immediately make the Iraqi Army that much better.” But he acknowledged that he, too, had concerns about Iraqi targeting. “We have the most expensive eyes in the sky right now,” the consultant said. “But a lot of Iraqis want to settle old scores. Who is going to have authority to call in air strikes? There’s got to be a behavior-based rule.”…
Robert Pape, a political-science professor at the University of Chicago, who has written widely on American airpower, and who taught for three years at the Air Force’s School of Advanced Airpower Studies, in Alabama, predicted that the air war “will get very ugly” if targeting is turned over to the Iraqis. This would be especially true, he said, if the Iraqis continued to operate as the U.S. Army and Marines have done – plowing through Sunni strongholds on search – and – destroy missions. “If we encourage the Iraqis to clear and hold their own areas, and use airpower to stop the insurgents from penetrating the cleared areas, it could be useful,” Pape said. “The risk is that we will encourage the Iraqis to do search-and-destroy, and they would be less judicious about using airpower – and the violence would go up. More civilians will be killed, which means more insurgents will be created.”
Even American bombing on behalf of an improved, well-trained Iraqi Army would not necessarily be any more successful against the insurgency. “It’s not going to work,” said Andrew Brookes, the former director of airpower studies at the Royal Air Force’s advanced staff college, who is now at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, in London. “Can you put a lid on the insurgency with bombing?” Brookes said. “No. You can concentrate in one area, but the guys will spring up in another town.” The inevitable reliance on Iraqi ground troops’ targeting would also create conflicts. “I don’t see your guys dancing to the tune of someone else,” Brookes said. He added that he and many other experts “don’t believe that airpower is a solution to the problems inside Iraq at all. Replacing boots on the ground with airpower didn’t work in Vietnam, did it?”
Nope, it didn’t.
I’ve said over and over again that stay or withdraw is not the issue. Bush will screw it up either way. U.S. military airstrikes have significantly increased in Iraq. And it all makes poltical sense. What better way to boost poll approval ratings hovering at 33% (way, way, too high imo) than to bring the troops home? Airstrikes’ll do that. Nevermind it will make the situation far worse than it already is (hard to believe, but true). It will be an Iraqi problem; a large American presence will be history. And Bush’s poll numbers will rise.
Tragically, the beginning of a plan to find a real-world solution to the dangerous mess Bush created in Iraq will have to wait until January, 2009 when a hopefully sane president will take over. In the meantime, thousands will die for no reason at all except that an incompetent, bumbling, and frightened fool is president of the United States.
Makes you kind of angry, doesn’t it?
It’s So Easy. Replace The “Q” With “N” And…
by tristero
Hooyah! Iran is now the new Iraq. Read all about it here. From the article:
The strategy document declares that American-led diplomacy to halt Iran’s program to enrich nuclear fuel “must succeed if confrontation is to be avoided,” a near final draft of the document says.
Fortunately, we’ve got the combined diplomatic genius of Condoleeza Rice and John Bolton spearheading the effort to avoid “confrontation.”
China’s leaders, it says, are “expanding trade, but acting as if they can somehow ‘lock up’ energy supplies around the world or seek to direct markets rather than opening them up — as if they can follow a mercantilism borrowed from a discredited era.
That sounds about right. Only America has the right to ‘lock up’ engergy supplies and follow a mercantilism from a discredited era. Where does China get off, anyhow?
Interestingly, the document includes the United States itself in its assessments:
“Recent trends regrettably point toward a diminishing commitment to democratic freedoms and institutions,” the document reads.
Oops. They were talking about Russia. An understandable mistake on my part.
Moving right along, it’s still the case that the worst ideas remain official American policy.
But chief among the sections that remain unchanged is the most controversial section of the 2002 strategy: the elevation of pre-emptive strikes to a central part of United States strategy.
“The world is better off if tyrants know that they pursue W.M.D. at their own peril,” the strategy says.
Um, er…I think the lessons the world learned from Iraq is the critical importance of nuclear defense against the US – it’s worked for NoKo, after all – and that the US is too overcommitted and unpopular to stop anyone else from acquiring them.
And the final sentence of the article notes a curious oversight in the National Security Strategy 2006:
It stays away from the subject of global warming.
But this is not the final draft. I’m sure the complete text will have a lot to say about global warming and what the Bush administration is doing to ameliorate its effects.
Early Spring Reading List
by tristero
(Note: Links are to Powells Books, a fine independent bookseller.)
Mark Danner on the Downing Street Memos and then some. Danner is one of the greats of the American press. Not to be missed.
The Enemy of My Enemy: The Alarming Convergence of Militant Islam and the Extreme Right. And now you know why Horowitz has been so swift to insist that it’s liberals who are in bed with Osama. But seriously, this could be a terrific book. The thing is that the author, George Michael, is going to have to define the “extreme right”, because obviously many rightwing conservatives – eg Flemming Rose, Franklin Graham, the Dobson scum, etc. – clearly loathe islamism, if not Islam itself. But it sure is mighty curious how close islamist values mirror christianist ones.
Since both these books won’t be out until April, that gives me plenty of time to finish off Jonathan Israel’s masterpiece, Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity 1650-1750, all 834 pages of it. And it’s wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. In related reading, I’ll also have time to complete my first serious pass through Spinoza’s writings since college. Folks, you ain’t read nuttin’ ’til you’ve read his Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. The word on the street (grin) is that Spinoza is dry, cold, and difficult. Not true. I find him deeply moving and, well, not exactly easy on occasion, but clear as a bell most of the time and worth every second. I’ve been gobbling up excerpts from this set of selections from Spinoza’s work. It includes the complete Ethics, which I’ve just started and don’t expect to grok for many, many years. There are the usual disputes in academe about translations, but the ones here, by Curley, seem more than adequate.
If you need some hand-holding getting into Spinoza – as I did – Israel’s book has some superb, concise chapters on Spinoza’s works that can help as a guide. I would skip The Courtier and the Heretic by Matthew Stewart, about Spinoza and Leibniz, which got some good reviews recently. I read it, and yes, it’s a very fast read, but that’s because most of the book is taken up with biographical stuff and very little detail of their philosophies. But I suppose if all of this is brand new to you, Stewart’s book is a good way to get a toe wet. But definitely go on over to Spinoza himself. Beautiful. And if you already know him, you might want to read him again, just to remind yourself that there once was a time when people thought a reality-based government was a pretty good idea.
Planning Ahead
by tristero
To add one more observation to Digby’s post about how Republicans are using the censure effort to rally the Republican base:
The GOP has been anticipating a serious effort to hold Bush accountable for his incompetence for years. For example, here is Jed Babbin from National Review Online in 2003. He’s worrying what might happen to poor George Bush if there’s another serious terrorist attack in the US:
If such an attack succeeds, the Democrats have been positioning themselves to benefit from it. All the talk of inadequate funding for homeland security — as if pouring money on Rainbow Tom Ridge will solve anything — is a predicate to their strategy. Bush will be blamed for protecting us inadequately. If the damage is sufficiently severe, and the economy tanks, they may even try to impeach him. If you think they can’t do that, think again.
But even 2003 seems a little late to start planning the pushback strategy we’re seeing against Feingold. My rough guess is that they started to develop it within days of the Supreme Court decision in 2000 that put Bush in the White House. That’s why this effort to “rally the base” is so organized and the message is so meticulously tailored: this isn’t an attack on Bush, but on the Republican Party which, as we all know, is the true party of America. It’s also why it’s an easy sell to a compliant, lazy press; they’ve been told to anticipate it for years, and “what it really means” when it finally happens.
Dig: Republicans started planning Clinton’s impeachment in November, 1992. Y’wanna bet when they’ll start working to impeach the next we-should-be-so-lucky Democratic president? Y’think they haven’t started? Wanna bet?
Our Best Interests
by digby
What an interesting article. Apparently, David Kirkpatrick is on the “conservative beat” this week for the NY Times and has the big scoop that the Republicans are all atwitter with scary tales of Democrats impeaching the president if they take the House and Senate. “Conservative beat” sources like Limbaugh and Weyrich and the Wall Street Journal editorial page are quoted saying that they are gleeful and excited that the Democrats have handed them this present and it’s onward to victory!
How generous of them to give this warning so that Dems have a chance to dodge that bullet. That’s why the “conservative beat” of the New York Times is such a godsend for liberals. When concerned Republicans need a platform from which to warn the Democrats about where they are going wrong they know they can go there and get their message out. In this case they feel it is only fair to give Democratic politicians a heads up that if they pursue things like Feingold’s motion the Republican base will go wild.
They humbly remind them that the Republicans paid big time for impeaching president Clinton. (Why, if they hadn’t done that they might have an even bigger majority in the House, Senate and Supreme Court than they have today!) I’m sure that the Democrats will take heed and not make the mistake of giving the Republicans any issue with which to motivate their base.
The question is, what are Democrats going to do to motivate theirs?
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Bad Instincts
by digby
There is still a lot of angst, it appears, both in Washington and the blogosphere over Feingold’s censure motion. It seems that substantively, the party agrees that Bush broke the law and deserves to be censured, but there is a division among most of the blogosphere and virtually the entire establishment about whether this is a canny move politically. (See these two post by Kevin Drum and Glenn Greenwald respectively for the essence of the argument within the blogosphere.)
Steve Benen contacted some insiders who told him this:
First, a lot of Dems were bothered by the fact that Feingold took the party off-message. The DP World controversy was still reverberating, and congressional Dems had hoped to keep the momentum going this week with a vote on the “Sail Only if Scanned (S.O.S.) Act,” which requires more effective scanning techniques be implemented at our ports, and a bill that would expanding government scrutiny of foreign investments. Instead, both of these are getting less attention because of interest in Feingold’s resolution.
Second, there’s a sense that Feingold helped bring Republicans together. As of last week, the GOP’s fissures were showing and all the talk was about Republicans on the Hill exerting independence from the White House. Now, Feingold’s resolution has pushed the GOP back together again and Republicans are back on the offensive. Some Dems think the censure resolution basically helped the GOP get off the ropes.
Third, there was not even a hint of party strategy on this. The past couple of years, there’s been an effort to try and have Dems coordinate more on major political and policy initiatives. Coordinating Dems is like herding cats, but there’s been some progress of late. Feingold, however, decided to go his own way; he announced his resolution without even letting his colleagues know it was coming and with no real regard for what it would do for the party’s short-term agenda. Some see this as a slap in the face — if Feingold wanted party support, they said, he should have worked within the party. Instead, Feingold took the lead, and no one followed.
Fourth, Dems saw that Bush was starting another series of Iraq speeches, and the party was ready to pivot from ports to the war. Roll Call noted today that Dems want to “play offense on Iraq.” Yesterday, however, whenever a Dem senator tried to talk about the war, reporters just asked about Feingold.
And fifth, one Senate staffer in particular said if Feingold wanted to push warrantless searches again, there were (and are) effective alternatives to a censure resolution. The staffer told me:
“Rather than just rush to a vote, which would be stupid, we want to get Specter to hold a hearing on it in Judiciary where it has been referred. Imagine a hearing with a panel of experts discussing whether Bush’s behavior deserves censure. Wouldn’t that be much better as a first step then a rushed vote in which we lose and R’s declare victory and say we were silly?”
None of these reasons hold up for me. They do not denote timidity, so much as a kind of political blindness. Let’s take them one by one:
One: The port legislation is being reported right now on CNN. And it is being reported with as much fanfare as it ever would have been. But it is as dry as tinder. The mojo of the port deal is past. It did its job. It helped to further drive the president’s approval ratings into the dirt and split the Republicans. Any thought that the controversy could be effectively extended by legislation announced in a press conference by Nancy Pelosi is wishful thinking. There’s no reason not to do it, of course. But it isn’t an excuse to be angry at Feingold.
Two: Please tell me that the Democrats are not going to withhold criticim of Bush because it might make Republicans rally around him. Karl Rove and Tom DeLay have run the GOP with an iron fist for almost eight years. The Republicans have lost the ability to function without them. They are confused and rudderless and they will run back and forth toward Bush and against him dozens of times over the next few months. They literally don’t know where to turn.
Yes, Feingold probably did bring Republicans together. For five full minutes until the latest polls came in which have George W. Bush at 33% today. Do Democrats really think that Republicans can turn that around if they vote for this censure motion? (If they do then Rove and Delay have already done their jobs well. They have convinced the Democrats that the GOP is omnipotent.)
Three: It’s apparently true that Feingold didn’t consult with the party. But considering the response I can sort of see his point. They are so unimaginative and so sluggish that he didn’t see the use in playing the party game. If party coodination means being forced to wait for them to hold plodding press conferences about x-raying cargo boxes, then it’s hard to see why anyone who wants to take the fight to the Republicans would bother.
I can see why they are angry about it. They were caught short. But they need to move more quickly on this stuff. Planning is great, but you can’t always control events. How you deal with things coming from left field is important — they failed on this one, making it worse for themselves by ducking the press and dithering about their response. I think Democrats have lost touch with their political instincts. This is one of those things that a smart old fashioned pol would have been able to either finesse or respond to properly off the cuff. (They should have called Bill Clinton — he was good at that sort of thing.)
Four: Iraq is what’s killing the Republicans in the polls. Democrats will be talking about Iraq every day in one way or another far into the future. And other things are going to come up to interrupt their plans to “pivot” on the war at any particular time. They need to learn to deal with this.
Five: Well yes, by all means a strategy whereby we count on Specter to hold “real” hearings is spot on. What could possibly go wrong? Why, if we wait until after the 2008 election, he might even do it.
I said this yesterday and I’ll repeat it. This image of “powerlessness” at a time when the Republicans are on the ropes is the biggest problem we face for the fall elections. If Democratic pols don’t understand that they are flirting with terrible grassroots defeatism, then they are going to lose. They must take action (and I don’t mean boring press conferences and 10 point plans) or it won’t matter a damn if the Republicans are on the ropes — demoralized Democrats are not going to bother with them. Come on. Speak for us. If not now, when?
Defeatism: acceptance and content with defeat without struggle. The term is commonly used in the context of war: a soldier can be a defeatist if he or she refuses to fight because he or she thinks that the fight will be lost for sure or that it is not worth fighting for some other reason.
I might just point out that in the few primaries so far, the Democrats have not had an exceptional turn-out. Maybe it means nothing. But it might also be a canary in the coal mine.
Jane and ReddHedd have all the numbers for your Senators. Make a call. These people need to hear from us.
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Establishment Claws
by digby
Here’s a new group that it seems to me is worth supporting. Contrary to popular myth, Democrats have always supported the military and are very religious. But we do believe that everyone, especially those in the military, have a right to be free of religious or political coercion. Here’s yet another former Republican and Reagan official who has come over to our way of thinking:
Former Reagan White House counsel, Air Force veteran, U.S. Air Force Academy graduate and activist, Mikey Weinstein, today announced the launch of a new nonprofit organization, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), which is dedicated to ensuring that all members of the United States Armed Forces fully receive the Constitutional guarantees of religious freedom. Weinstein, who filed a federal lawsuit last October to halt illegal proselytizing and evangelizing throughout the Air Force, will serve as president of the charitable organization.
The Military Religious Freedom Foundation will serve as a watchdog organization – educating the public and the media on issues related to the separation of church and state within the Armed Forces, and litigating when necessary. Weinstein is joined by some of the nation’s leading military and civic leaders who have united together as founding members of the board. The MRFF will also work with local leaders throughout the country to coordinate grassroots efforts.
“I created the Military Religious Freedom Foundation so that others could join in the fight to assure that our Armed Forces preserve the Constitutional guarantee of the separation of church and state and ensure that junior officers and enlisted personnel are protected from coercive proselytizing and evangelizing by their superiors,” said Weinstein.
[…]
Weinstein began his efforts to combat the disregard of the Constitutional guarantee of the separation of church and state within the Armed Forces when he learned that his sons, cadets at the Air Force Academy, were subjected to taunts and derision because of their Jewish faith and that each had faced proselytizing both from their peers and superiors. He led a nearly two-year struggle to end evangelical religious bias at the United States Air Force Academy, reaching out to government officials and Air Force academy leadership. When these efforts failed, Weinstein, a practicing attorney, took the next step and filed a lawsuit against the Air Force.
A founding tenet of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation is that it adheres “strongly to the principle that religious faith is a deeply personal matter, and that no American has the right to question another American’s beliefs as long as these beliefs do not unwontedly intrude on the public space or the privacy or safety of another individual,” according to the foundation’s mission statement.
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Abu Ghraib: More Details
by tristero
Go read it. Look and watch. And remember:
Although the photos are a disturbing visual account of particular incidents inside Abu Ghraib prison, they should not be viewed as representing the sum total of what occurred.
Your tax dollars at work, boys and girls. Truly an education in how Bush is bringing democracy to Iraq.
(BTW, I would imagine that at least a few folks will download all this stuff before the Feds try to get Salon to pull it, so it will be available somewhere. Nevertheless, you should get over there soon.)