Zuzu’s Petals Are All Dried Up
by digby
That’s courtesy of Dave at Seeing the Forest. He writes:
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The Afghan War Gets The Speech It Deserves
by tristero
One of the strangest things about Obama’s strange speech last night was that it was awful. What a mess of a speech, from the person who often spoke so eloquently during the campaign that people like Garry Wills actually compared his oratory to Lincoln’s! That this made the final draft simply defies belief:
America — we are passing through a time of great trial. And the message that we send in the midst of these storms must be clear…
I’m hardly an expert on formal English so maybe some professional can explain away what appears to me both an egregiously bad mixed metaphor (does a trial actually have storms? I thought it had challenges) and an improperly formed parallel construction (shouldn’t it be “trials”-plural- and “storms”?). But even if this phrase is technically acceptable, it sure is terrible writing, and terribly unpersuasive.
As was the content. What are those troops being sent to Afghanistan to do, exactly? It sounded to me like Obama was saying they would mostly be training the (corrupt) Karzai government’s troops and doing little fighting. But if mostly what they’re doing is teaching, then why are 30,000 more American soldiers needed in Afghanistan?
That’s for starters. If the Afghan war ever made sense – it never did to me: I opposed it in ’01 and continue to – certainly it doesn’t now. Here’s what Obama said he wants the buildup to accomplish:
…as Commander-in-Chief, I have determined that it is in our vital national interest to send an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan. After 18 months, our troops will begin to come home. These are the resources that we need to seize the initiative, while building the Afghan capacity that can allow for a responsible transition of our forces out of Afghanistan.
So Obama’s goal in sending more troops is to “seize the initiative.” What the hell could that possibly mean? Not destroying al Qaeda, surely. Not even crippling al Qaeda. It appears that Obama’s is seeking not to eliminate a threat to the United States, let alone end the war, but rather merely to stop losing so badly. For 18 months.
And Obama expects Americans, not to mention Afghans and others, to lay down their lives for such a ludicrous, not to mention puny and obviously ineffective, objective?
Later in the speech, Obama does seem to imply a slightly broader military goal beyond simply “not losing.” But exactly what that goal is remains maddeningly unclear. Is it to capture/kill al Qaeda’s leaders? But they’re not in Afghanistan and American troops are not (officially) in Pakistan. Is it to destroy the Taliban? Evil people they certainly are, but the Taliban didn’t attack the US, al Qaeda did.
And so on. It just doesn’t add up.What Digby said:
I am sympathetic to many of the difficult decisions Obama has to make. This one, I have little doubt about. Escalating the war is a mistake. There is no “winning” and establishing another imperial outpost in the area is provocative and dangerous. This is not like health care where you have to weigh whether it’s better to take half a loaf than nothing at all — it’s a crystal clear issue of liberal principle.
Indeed it is.
There surely will be anti-war marches in the months ahead and I’ll be there. But as far as expressing effective opposition to Obama’s nonsensical strategy, marches and demonstrations are hardly sufficient. Liberals need to make it crystal clear that Democrats who support this folly can depend upon zero support in the upcoming elections. I say this fully aware that witholding support could very well lead to the dreadful result of more Republican extremists in Congress, something this country really can’t afford.
But we have no choice. If the Democratic party today doesn’t have viable candidates who are prepared to oppose this crazy policy, it sure as hell will have them two elections hence. I realize that opposing the election of Democrats at a time when the opposition party has literally gone off the deep end puts this country at serious risk of another extreme rightwing takeover. But I don’t think liberals have much choice but to take that risk. We are talking about potentially thousands upon thousands of human deaths for an utterly pointless war. This liberal – and I’m hardly the only one – can neither support nor excuse what is now officially the Obama/Afghan War.
No way, no how, under no circumstances.
FYI
by digby
For those who need a clear, comprehensible overview of the Afghanistan escalation speech, Spencer Ackerman has it here.
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Puppets!
by digby
Olbermann featured this on WPITW tonight. I think it’s the best report I’ve seen on the Tiger Woods Saga:
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The Speech
by digby
Is this one of those deals where they left an old speech on the teleprompter by mistake?
Update: Dday live blogged it so I didn’t have to. All I can say is ditto:
“Jon Stewart’s going to have a field day matching up the surge speech from Bush on Iraq with this surge speech. They are interchangeable.”
Update II: To those who insist that I have no right to feel betrayed, please be advised that I don’t. I am not even surprised. All the Democrats but Kucinich ran on the platform of winning “The Good War” just as Kerry did in 2004.
Unfortunately, there wasn’t anyone on the ballot last November who wasn’t promising to escalate to one degree or another, so I had to make my choice based on other criteria. Since the Republican Vice Presidential candidate couldn’t find Afghanistan on a map and the doddering presidential candidate was more bellicose than General Buck Turgidson, it wasn’t that difficult.
But I was never going to support this. I think it’s a terrible waste of life and money and will do nothing to enhance our security or the well being of the Afghan people. I have no faith that it will be over by the time Obama leaves office. These things have a life of their own. It’s about politics — geo and national and the fact that he declined to push the war tax tells us pretty clearly where he comes down.
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Hearts N Minds
by digby
From tonight’s speech:
“The 30,000 additional troops that I am announcing tonight will deploy in the first part of 2010 – the fastest pace possible – so that they can target the insurgency and secure key population centers. They will increase our ability to train competent Afghan Security Forces, and to partner with them so that more Afghans can get into the fight. And they will help create the conditions for the United States to transfer responsibility to the Afghans.”
“Because this is an international effort, I have asked that our commitment be joined by contributions from our allies. Some have already provided additional troops, and we are confident that there will be further contributions in the days and weeks ahead. Our friends have fought and bled and died alongside us in Afghanistan. Now, we must come together to end this war successfully. For what’s at stake is not simply a test of NATO’s credibility – what’s at stake is the security of our Allies, and the common security of the world.”
“Taken together, these additional American and international troops will allow us to accelerate handing over responsibility to Afghan forces, and allow us to begin the transfer of our forces out of Afghanistan in July of 2011. Just as we have done in Iraq, we will execute this transition responsibly, taking into account conditions on the ground. We will continue to advise and assist Afghanistan’s Security Forces to ensure that they can succeed over the long haul. But it will be clear to the Afghan government – and, more importantly, to the Afghan people – that they will ultimately be responsible for their own country.”
At this point they don’t even believe that it is a country, so we have a long, long way to go. Whenever I hear this stuff I think “Forget it Jake. It’s Chinatown.” (If you’ve seen the movie, you’ll know what I mean.)
I don’t know whether Obama will use the words “Hearts and Minds” in his speech tonight, but I’m pretty sure that’s the spirit he means to convey. Here’s a little historical chronology on the use of that phrase:
FEBRUARY 13, 1818 Writing to a Baltimore newspaper editor, U.S. founding father John Adams describes the American Revolution as being “in the minds and hearts of the people, a change in their religious sentiments of their duties and obligations.”
1934 U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt uses the term frequently in his speeches to soothe a body politic battered by economic turmoil: “In these days it means to me a union not only of the states, but a union of the hearts and minds of the people in all the states and their many interests and purposes, devoted with unity to the human welfare of our country.”
JUNE 1952 The phrase gets used for the first time in its modern sense — to refer to counterinsurgency objectives — during the Malayan Emergency, an uprising by local rebel forces to oust British colonial rule. “The answer [to defeating the insurgents] … rests in the hearts and minds of the Malayan people,” says Gen. Sir Gerald Templer.
APRIL 2, 1963 In the thick of the Cold War, “hearts and minds” creeps into U.S. counterrevolutionary rhetoric. “Perhaps most significant of all is a change in the hearts and minds of the people — a growing will to develop their countries,” President John F. Kennedy tells Congress. “We can only help Latin Americans to save themselves.”
MAY 4, 1965 U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson says that “ultimate victory [in Vietnam] will depend upon the hearts and the minds” of the Vietnamese. But the policy doesn’t match the rhetoric, and a brutal, escalating campaign of pacification ensues, further alienating the South Vietnamese population.
1974 The Academy Award-winning Vietnam documentary, Hearts and Minds, helps cement the phrase’s negative connotations.
SEPTEMBER 14, 2005 U.S. President George W. Bush justifies the invasion of Iraq by hailing the possibility of a political transformation of the Middle East. “Across the world, hearts and minds are opening to the message of human liberty as never before,” he tells the U.N. General Assembly.
2006 Scholars begin to describe China’s foreign policy, particularly in Africa, as designed to win the “hearts and minds” of global elites.
SEPTEMBER 19, 2006 Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad deploys the term in a defiant speech to the U.N.: “Would it not be easier for global powers to … win hearts and minds through … real promotion of justice, compassion, and peace, than through” continuing to assemble nuclear weapons?
DECEMBER 15, 2006 The U.S. Army and Marine Corps release a revised “Counterinsurgency Field Manual,” drawing on historical counterinsurgency lessons as well as recent experience in Iraq. The manual calls for a minimal use of force. “Protracted popular war is best countered by winning the ‘hearts and minds’ of the populace,” it reads.
2009 U.S. President Barack Obama uses the phrase in his campaign to reset relations with both the Muslim world and Russia. “[Abiding by the Geneva Conventions] … will make us safer and will help in changing hearts and minds in our struggle against extremists,” he says on January 9. And in Moscow six months later: “[By] mobilizing and organizing and changing people’s hearts and minds, you then change the political landscape.”
Obviously, it’s used in a variety of ways. But to someone of my age, this concept goes back to an earlier quagmire in which the country was sucked into spending a vast amount of its own and others’ blood and treasure in a quest to “stop the spread” of something (communism, terrorism, religious fanaticism) that this kind of operation, run by foreigners, simply can’t accomplish in any positive way. Aside from the embarrassing arrogance of asserting that this country has the moral authority to “help” people against their will, it’s a lie.
The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the standoff with Iran and all the other obsessions with the mideast are at least informed, if not entirely motivated, by larger geopolitical efforts to maintain stability at a time of impending competition over resources and access to them — oil. Sure that’s simplistic, but it’s at the “heart” of what’s going on in the leadership’s “minds.”
We don’t talk about any of that because it might lead us to get serious about changing our way of life and evidently nobody important thinks that’s the right way to deal with the problem. And frankly, among many of our elites, maintaining a military presence everywhere is necessary to preserve American global dominance. Period.
That map is part of a great series by Mother Jones called “Mission Creep.” Click here to see the animated version.
That’s the debate we never have.
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Dead Patriots
by digby
Estate planners like to jokingly warn their clients to sleep with one eye open in 2010 because it’s commonly referred to as the “throw momma from the train” year. You can see why that is, here:
You’ll all recall why that happened. The Bush administration wanted to lower the estate tax but they didn’t want to take responsibility for adding to the deficit. So they had it “sunset” in 2010 after they’d brought it to zero, knowing that it would be pulling teeth to reinstate it once it had been eliminated.
Democrats are now in charge and one might expect that they’d do the responsible thing and reinstate the law to its pre-Bush levels, particularly when the entire village is working itself into some kind of mass hysteria over the deficit. But guess what?
House Democratic Leader Steny Hoyer said the chamber will vote this week to permanently extend the estate tax rates scheduled to expire at the end of 2009, but the road will be tougher in the Senate.
The House will take up a bill introduced by Democrat Earl Pomeroy last week to extend the current policy of taxing estates over a $3.5 million threshold at a rate of 45 percent.
That’s the lowest level of the Bush tax cuts. True, it doesn’t eliminate them completely in 2010 as the Bush legislation pretended to do, but nobody seriously expected that to happen. Bush and the boys gambled that the 2009 congress, no matter which party had the majority, would never vote to raise the taxes back to their previous levels. And it looks like they made a good bet.
“We believe that a permanent extension of the existing law is the best policy,” Steny Hoyer, the chamber’s majority leader, told reporters.
Preserving the current rates will be harder in the U.S. Senate, because that body’s rules require a way to pay for it.
A 10-year extension of the tax would cost an estimated $234 billion versus allowing the tax to revert to a higher rate in 2011, as currently scheduled, according to congressional aides.
What they should do is extend the 2009 rates to 2010 and then let the whole damned thing go back to where it was before Bush took office. These politicians and their rich patrons should not be able to have it both ways — lowering taxes on the wealthy while pretending that they aren’t raising the deficit and then screaming about deficits and complaining about raising taxes when the whole thing blows up.
Estate taxes should be high. This is not an aristocracy and the concentration of wealth in this country is already distorting our society in myriad ways. And if the deficit is the biggest threat to the American way of life the billionaires keep insisting it is, then perhaps the wealthy dead among them can be asked to help their country in its time of need even if the live ones are too “talented” and “productive” to be asked to sacrifice.
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Escalation And the Crazies
by digby
Andrea Mitchell questioned Dan Balz about his series in the Post about their recent polls of the Republican Party.( They’re very confused. In fact the only thing they are clear about is that they are very angry and unhappy with everything.)
This exchange struck me:
Mitchell: First of all 61% of all Americans and 85% of Republicans say that they are unhappy with the way things are going. But it also show that by twice as many, the drop off from the last year, the sort of toxic quality of the opposition. If you look at how Republicans and independent leaning Republicans have really dropped off in a big way from support for the president. It’s gone from 48 to 84 in the past year.
Balz: The opposition to this president coalesced very quickly in a very solid way. I think it certainly surprised the White House how quickly the opposition coalesced against him. And particularly among conservative Republicans almost anything this president did and does have been against
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The chart accompanying her comments shows that the question is actually “how satisfied are you with the way the country’s political system is working?” and that 61% of all respondents say they are unsatisfied compared to 64% back in 2007. Not much of a change. But only 48% of Republicans were dissatisfied at that time compared to 84% now. Golly, what do you suppose has changed?
Conservative Republicans simply do not believe that Democrats are legitimate. it’s not a matter of disagreeing with policies or compromise or anything else. They simply do not think that the Democratic party led by liberals (and they are all liberals in in their minds) can be allowed to govern the country. It doesn’t “belong” to them, they have no claim on it. And I think that it was almost criminally naive for anyone with any political memory to have thought otherwise.
I always hoped that the Obama people understood that the campaign rhetoric of reconciliation that was necessary to elect a Democrat as the first black president was not going instantly transform the nature of the opposition. I got why they would need to sell the candidacy as a transformative moment that signaled the final healing of centuries old wounds and ushered in a new era of bipartisan comity. They had to portray the candidate as someone with an almost supernatural ability to transcend the old divisions and bring people together because of the historic nature of his candidacy.
It would have made a lot of people nervous if they’d realized the electing any Democrat, and particularly the first African American, would galvanize the moribund right wing into its current froth. In fact, more than a few people might have voted for McCain just to avoid it. (I suspect that there were many who were reluctant to vote for Clinton because they already knew what kind of reaction she brought out among the far right — and the media.) It was smart to avoid that.
But I find it very difficult to understand why the professional political people would have actually believed such a thing. The history of the right wing in this country is clear and while the crazy waxes and wanes, it is always present and it always acts in total opposition to liberalism. At a time when the Republican Party has been reduced to its most conservative essence, both in a regional and an ideological sense, complete with Godlike demagogues with their own powerful echo chamber, it was not difficult to see that they were going to be an impenetrable wall of opposition. I honestly could never believe anyone thought otherwise.
But we are coming to an unusual moment, of which I can’t totally predict the outcome. Balz put it this way:
Now it will be interesting in the context of this decision, to give General McChrystal basically what he had asked for in numbers if not in terms of a timetable, whether the Republicans who have been critical of the president for dithering for not being willing to back up his commanders will in fact support him on this decision and whether that has any impact. My guess is that over the long term that will not affect people’s political views, Republicans’ views of the president in the election next year.
He is correct that it will not affect Republicans’ views of Obama. They will continue to loathe and despise him even if they support his war policy, which everyone is assuming they will do.
I honestly don’t know if that’s true. They would certainly be hypocrites if they didn’t. He’s doing exactly what the sainted Generals want him to do and it’s a fundamental requirement of freedom loving conservatives everywhere that the nation put itself wholly into the hands of the military and never question its judgment about anything.
But can they force themselves to join Obama en masse on anything? Perhaps. Most people believe they will. But I think it’s a hard road for many of them to take regardless of the policy and I suspect that many of them are looking for a way to oppose it. The only thing I’ve seen so far is the George Will approach, which is almost frighteningly rational, and the Tony Blankley/Fred Thompson approach which basically says we should get out because Obama is too much of a wimp to fight the war properly no matter what. (I would suspect that at least some Republicans might glom on to that one.)
If the Republicans can find a reason to oppose Obama on Afghanisatan they could theoretically form a coalition with liberals who are opposed to the war for principled reasons and defeat any further requests for funding. I have no doubt that they would love to see Obama defeated on something at this point, but whether or not they’d be able to stomach doing it on national security is unknown (and probably unlikely.) But it’s something to keep an eye on.
Now the president can do this unilaterally so the congress doesn’t technically have anything to say about it. But David Obey is trying to force a vote with his tax proposal. And according to some sources the White House is going to go back on its promise to not use the supplemental process to fund this escalation with a request in early Spring. (Murtha said they can’t pay for this escalation without one.)So congress will likely be weighing in in some fashion.
So Obama should worry about Republican support because if he still thinks he is dealing with a rational opposition on any level he’s deluding himself. They could very well be willing to blow themselves up in order to ruin him. And frankly, I don’t know that they would be blowing themselves up. Republican voters hate him so much they couldn’t care less as long as he loses — and they’ll buy any excuse if it’s coming from the right people. It’s not that hard to see them at least split on it. (Indeed, the cracks are already beginning to show.)
And that would mean Obama would have to get nearly every Democrat to vote to escalate the war, a task which Emmanuel is putting his whole heart into doing in any case. But it may not be that easy.
I am sympathetic to many of the difficult decisions Obama has to make. This one, I have little doubt about. Escalating the war is a mistake. There is no “winning” and establishing another imperial outpost in the area is provocative and dangerous. This is not like health care where you have to weigh whether it’s better to take half a loaf than nothing at all — it’s a crystal clear issue of liberal principle.
Update: Dana Bash on CNN says it’s hard to find Democrats who are supportive of the escalation. She called in “remarkable.”
We’ll see.
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The Big Squid
by digby
Bethany McLean is the business writers who had the temerity to question why Enron was speaking gibberish on analyst calls back before their ignominious fall from grace. She was dismissed by all the MOUs of course. How silly of her to wonder why nothing these people made any sense. They were making muneeeee! Today McLean has a fascinating article in the new Vanity Fair about the Bloodsucking Vampire Squid itself, Goldman Sachs.
My favorite thing is that despite everything, they seem to have convinced themselves that they didn’t need to be bailed out by the government last fall — that they were doing just fine. In fact, they seem to believe that they were innocent bystanders, good samaritans actually, who are getting a bad rap. And it couldn’t be farther from the truth:
It’s hard to find anyone outside the firm who doesn’t see this as revisionist history. Combine that with further proof of Goldman’s worldview—namely, the huge amount of money its people will earn this year ($16.7 billion has already been set aside for compensation, which could translate into an average of $700,000 per Goldman employee)—and you get rage. Widespread rage. “Complete crap,” says a senior financier, about Goldman not needing the government’s help. “It is a bunch of bullshit,” says a former Goldman Sachs managing director.
Well. One wonders if Goldman employees are packing heat these days because they are afraid of the peasants with pitchforks or their fellow bankers:
“I just wrote my first reference for a gun permit,” said a friend, who told me of swearing to the good character of a Goldman Sachs Group Inc. banker who applied to the local police for a permit to buy a pistol. The banker had told this friend of mine that senior Goldman people have loaded up on firearms and are now equipped to defend themselves if there is a populist uprising against the bank.
These guys really are something aren’t they? First they seem to actually believe that “populists” are coming to take over their bank and second that they could “defend” it with pistols. Good God, these people really do think they are John Galt, don’t they?
Read the McLean article if you have time. It’s fascinating. It would seem tht the magic of Goldman is that they are very, very smart and they are so important that they don’t have to care about any of their customers, including the vastly wealthy. It ends up looking more like some sort of protection racket than a business. Very interesting stuff.
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