Month: April 2015

QOTW: Hillary Clinton

by digby

It wasn’t from this week. It’s from a while back. But it’s good:

And then read this from Lindsay Beyerstein about Pervi Patel, the woman who was convicted of feticide. In Indiana.

I realize that it’s fashionable in some circles to think that women are featherbrains for caring about this when neoliberal schemes are ruining the world and all. But there’s a case to be made that if women were empowered here and around the world they might just make be useful allies in turning that scheme upside down. Think of it as an untapped resource.  In any case, a few of us can walk and chew gum at the same time and be concerned with both issues.

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Heresy from Huckleberry

by digby

If anyone took Lindsay Graham seriously as a presidential candidate, this would sink him:

Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz’s argument that the Second Amendment provides the “ultimate check against government tyranny” is a bit too extreme for potential 2016 rival and fellow Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC).

“Well, we tried that once in South Carolina. I wouldn’t go down that road again,” Graham said, in an apparent reference to the Civil War. “I think an informed electorate is probably a better check than, you know, guns in the streets.”

Speaking to a few reporters near the Senate floor Thursday, Graham was answering questions from TPM about the Texas firebrand and presidential candidate’s argument made in a fundraising email that the Second Amendment confers a right to revolt against the government.

“The 2nd Amendment to the Constitution isn’t for just protecting hunting rights, and it’s not only to safeguard your right to target practice. It is a Constitutional right to protect your children, your family, your home, our lives, and to serve as the ultimate check against governmental tyranny — for the protection of liberty,” Cruz wrote in the email Thursday, with the subject line “2nd Amendment against tyranny.”

Graham demurred. “I’m not looking for an insurrection. I’m looking to defeat Hillary,” he said. “We’re not going to out-gun her.”

While a consistent supporter of gun rights, Graham voiced a more mainstream legal view of the Second Amendment, as the Supreme Court first articulated in the landmark 2008 case District of Columbia v. Heller, that individuals have a right to possess a firearm for lawful self-defense.

“I think the Second Amendment allows people to protect their homes and their property and be secure in their persons,” the senator said. “I think in a democracy the best check on government is voter participation. I think the First Amendment probably protects us more there.”

There is no more fundamental a belief among the right wingers than that the 2nd Amendment is the super-Amendment that makes all the others possible. The NRA has convinced their followers that they are perpetrating an act of patriotism by owning guns and that democracy is only made possible by their willingness to fight for gun rights. Graham is way behind the curve on this and if he were running for re-election in the Senate this time, I suspect these comments would make him vulnerable. You are not allowed to have common sense about guns and be an elected Republican, especially not in the South. He might as well have said he was pro-choice and loves Obamacare.

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Hillary Clinton, Progressives & the Uphill Climb

by Gaius Publius

The increasing likelihood that Hillary Clinton may achieve the Democratic nomination for president without a serious challenge from the left has progressive discussion groups abuzz. There are, of course, a variety of opinions on whether this is good or bad. What I’d like to do here is define what “good” and “bad” mean in this context.

This puts a lot of issues under one umbrella — most of them economic — like student debt, banker fraud, abuse by the national security state, abuse by police, wage depression, wage theft, accelerating income and wealth inequality, immigration policy (which has a strong economic aspect, since illegal immigration is economically encouraged by the very forces that decry it), and the like. Call these the Warren Wing concerns, spotlighted by a Piketty awareness.

Notice that these “good” outcomes don’t equal each other; nor do they necessarily include each other. The first “good” is a progressive good, the second is a party good. Is the Democratic party a progressive party? There’s the source of the problem. Clearly it’s not, at least to date, in a great many of its policies, starting with the current push to pass TPP, the next NAFTA-style trade agreement. What Obama is doing to pass TPP is beyond extraordinary, and it will take both progressives and Republicans in the House and (perhaps) the Senate to keep it off his desk. (Read the link to see what I mean by “beyond extraordinary.”)

There’s a reason there’s a “Warren Wing” in the party, and a reason why it’s opposed and hated by most of the party’s leaders.

So your first bottom line is — Democrats are united in winning the White House. Progressives are divided in winning with Hillary Clinton. In a nutshell, that presents a problem for Democrats and for Hillary Clinton. It’s possible she could lose if progressives don’t support her in sufficient numbers.

What Do the Polls Say?

I’ll just summarize this and let you click through, since I want to get you to the next section. There have been a number of polls on Clinton’s popularity and electoral chances. The latest is from Gallup, an organization that does not “lean left.” Their bottom lines are three:

• Clinton’s favorable rating is 48%, her lowest since 2008
• 54% of Democrats prefer to have a competitive primary
• Still, 57% of Democrats want her as 2016 nominee

On the last point, if you drill down to “Democratic-leaning independents,” that 57% becomes 53%. This makes a nice story: “A majority wants her as the nominee.” Invert that, though, and it becomes: “Between 43% and 47% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents do not want her as the nominee.”

Click through for the underlying data if you like. I hope, though, you see the problem. This could be “bad” in both senses above, since it opens the door to any Republican nominee who seems sane. It’s a given that the Republican will be the most well-funded presidential candidate in the country’s history, an instant advantage in a campaign marketplace that resembles product-perception manipulation more than anything related to ideas — what I’m calling a Campbell’s Soup campaign.

How Upset Are the Most Upset Progressives?

In a word, very. I want to quote something I received via email from a respected progressive writer and thinker, reproduced with permission. It does not matter who wrote this. I can say personally that I’ve heard this view expressed a hundred times at and since the last Netroots Nation:

The economic left has no hope in this miserable process. HRC [Hillary Clinton] is a creature of Wall Street. It comes naturally to her, with her background in elite schools and her status in the political and wealth circles. It is utterly impossible to imagine that she will do anything for people past a tiny raise in the minimum wage. Her judicial appointments will be [people like] Stephen Breyer, not [people like] Ruth Bader Ginsberg. Her cabinet will be filled with people like Penny Pritzger and Larry Summers.

I simply won’t participate. I won’t vote and I won’t help her. She has no charisma for the left, and little for anyone else. The Republicans will put up the usual clownish excuse for a leader, but it really doesn’t matter. I expect more people than ever will just refuse to participate after a hate-filled campaign. The oligarchy will feed the serfs just enough to keep them from revolting, and enforce their will with the usual repressive police force. The recent publicity for murderous cops will die out, and soon they’ll be killing poor whites too. It’s going to be ugly everywhere….

“I simply won’t participate.” Read those paragraphs again, just to be sure you absorb what it says. It says quite a bit. You don’t have to agree with the writer or her/his ferocity. Just know that this thinking — and feeling — is far more widely held on the activist and intellectual left than even the “left” understands. Why? Because progressives tend not to say this to progressives inclined to disagree … or inclined to say back to them: “But … Republicans!” They had that conversation years ago, and they’re done with it.

It doesn’t matter what I think of Hillary Clinton, nor does it matter what you think of her. I know quite a few people who think quite highly of her. The problem is those polling numbers, and all those progressives who don’t think highly of her. They are going away and aren’t coming back.

Do Voters See Clinton the Way Disaffected Progressives Do?

If you look at the charges leveled by the writer above, you’ll see several that have almost entered the “mainstream” — the body of “what everyone knows to be true,” whether true or not. She’s:

• “A creature of Wall Street”
• An insider with a “background in elite schools”
• Someone with “status in the political and wealth circles”
• Likely to appoint the Robert Rubins and the wealthy, like “Penny Pritzker and Larry Summers”

Whether she is or isn’t, does or doesn’t do any of these things, that perception will likely stick, despite the attempt to swing her campaign — remember, this is nothing more than image manipulation — in a pro-populist (pro-Warren Wing) direction.

She can waffle on her policies, but that will confirm the concerns. She can state her policies explicitly — for example, would she veto TPP if it crosses her desk? — but even that may not be enough, because again, this is nothing more than an exercise in image manipulation, and you have to be believed to be successful.

And regardless of what she says or does, the Republican machine will find her most vulnerable positions (among other things), including those bulleted above, and hit the public with them constantly. If people are inclined to believe something, a manipulative ad campaign is already halfway home, and Republicans are pros at this, masters with doctor’s degrees in crowd manipulation.

What’s the Answer?

The real answer, of course, is a primary in the Democratic party, with a candidate from the real (i.e., credible) left who will give voters a place to park an anti–neo-liberal, anti–Third Way protest vote.(I’ll have more on Clinton as a proponent of Third Way policies later.) This would replicate what Sen. Eugene McCarthy did in 1968 — he gave Lyndon Johnson a realistic “sense of the party” in a way that polling could never do.

If Hillary Clinton survives a process like that, she may not be the most progressive candidate, but she will know the degree of Democratic support she has among progressives and those less progressive. Without a process like that, she enters the main event never having done battle, never having tested the degree of her real support among Democratic voters.

A surprise there would be a “bad” on both counts listed above.

GP

(A version of this piece first appeared at Down With Tyranny. GP article archive here.)

Christie and Huckabee Social Security cage match

by digby

I wrote a piece for Salon this morning about Big Chris Christie’s working his way back into the hearts of the Villagers with strident calls to cut Social Security:

There is nothing like a big, macho Republican demanding that the government cut the meager benefits of the old and sick to get the Washington press corps stimulated, as Chris Christie proved again last week. The political media couldn’t find enough superlatives to describe him. They excitedly said his plan was “provocative, and risky“, that he was smartly positioning himself as “one guy willing to talk straight about the government’s unsustainable finances” — which was all part of the narrative of him being a hero who is “authentic and brave and tells it like it is.” What a man.

This classic beltway assumption — that cutting the safety net is the very essence of political courage and ideological integrity — goes all the way back to the early days of Ronald Reagan, when he was making stuff up about Social Security going broke in 1964. The trend continued well into the ’90s and ’00s, culminating with the press’s cheerleading for George W. Bush’s ambitious attempt to slash the program in 2005. But it took on even more of a febrile quality when, early in his term, Barack Obama mused about hopes for a Grand Bargain which included cuts to “entitlements.” There had always been Democrats who backed the idea, but it came as a happy surprise to the political establishment that one who was portrayed as being very liberal would join the chorus.

But something’s stirring on the right. Big Man Mike Huckabee isn’t having it:

So what to make of Mike Huckabee coming out swinging on this issue on Friday and taking Christie and the others to task in no uncertain terms?

“I don’t know why Republicans want to insult Americans by pretending they don’t understand what their Social Security program and Medicare program is,” Huckabee said in response to a question about Christie’s proposal to gradually raise the retirement age and implement a means test.

Huckabee said his response to such proposals is “not just no, it’s you-know-what no.”

“I’m not being just specifically critical of Christie but that’s not a reform,” he said. “That’s not some kind of proposal that Republicans need to embrace because what we are really embracing at that point is we are embracing a government that lied to its people–that took money from its people under one pretense and then took it away at the time when they started wanting to actually get what they have paid for all these years.”

He added that he had no intention of endorsing Paul Ryan’s plan either. This is very unusual for a Republican. They may not want to take that vote for cutting the program, especially since their base is very much among those who benefit from it, but they are never this unequivocal about it. It’s extremely rare for them not to issue any disclaimer about The Deficit and The Government Spending Too Much, etc, etc. To come right out and take the retirement age and means testing off the table — that actually is the “bold” and “authentic” breaking-with-conventional-wisdom for which the beltway media had already Christie all the credit.

Have the progressives finally made some headway on this issue? Lindsey Graham came out against cutting SS too. It’s hard to imagine, but if there’s actually some open discord on this issue among the right wingers, we may finally turned the tide. They’ll never quit, of course. And Wall Street wants that money. But what this does is put a lot more pressure on Democrats to keep their grubby hands off the program. And that’s a big relief.

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“Lord of the Shadows” — the Bush legacy
by Tom Sullivan

Following up this morning on the must-read Der Spiegel article on the origins of an Islamic State (IS) cooked up by former Saddam Hussein intelligence officers. A trove of documents Der Spiegel obtained late last year reveal the architect of the Islamic State to be a former Iraqi colonel, Samir Abd Muhammad al-Khlifawi, known to IS as Haji Bakr or else “Lord of the Shadows.” Bakr died in January 2014 after implementing his “blueprint for a takeover … not a manifesto of faith, but a technically precise plan for an ‘Islamic Intelligence State’ — a caliphate run by an organization that resembled East Germany’s notorious Stasi domestic intelligence agency.” Bakr and his agents would exploit others’ extremist faith to recruit an army. The Syrian civil war provided the chaos they needed to implement their plan.

Bakr survived quality time in U.S. custody at Camp Bucca and Abu Ghraib Prison to eventually form “a powerful underground organization.” He and a group of former Iraqi intelligence officers conceived a new Islamic State. They made Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi the figurehead. “They reasoned that Baghdadi, an educated cleric, would give the group a religious face” that would attract foot soldiers from abroad. They preferred foreigners rather than Syrian rebels. (Local recruits might be reluctant to commit the atrocities necessary to instill the fear needed for control.) Spies would infiltrate towns and pave the way for takeover:

The spies were told to note such details as whether someone was a criminal or a homosexual, or was involved in a secret affair, so as to have ammunition for blackmailing later. “We will appoint the smartest ones as Sharia sheiks,” Bakr had noted. “We will train them for a while and then dispatch them.” As a postscript, he had added that several “brothers” would be selected in each town to marry the daughters of the most influential families, in order to “ensure penetration of these families without their knowledge.”

The spies were to find out as much as possible about the target towns: Who lived there, who was in charge, which families were religious, which Islamic school of religious jurisprudence they belonged to, how many mosques there were, who the imam was, how many wives and children he had and how old they were. Other details included what the imam’s sermons were like, whether he was more open to the Sufi, or mystical variant of Islam, whether he sided with the opposition or the regime, and what his position was on jihad. Bakr also wanted answers to questions like: Does the imam earn a salary? If so, who pays it? Who appoints him? Finally: How many people in the village are champions of democracy?

Those who cooperated could be used. Potential leaders who might resist could be quickly disappeared. It had worked for Saddam Hussein. Using “ninja outfits, cheap tricks and espionage cells camouflaged as missionary offices,” Der Spiegel reports, Bakr’s shadowy team of Iraqi veterans created the Islamic State to reclaim the region they had lost to the American invaders and the leadership positions they had lost after Paul Bremer, George W. Bush’s head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, dissolved the Iraqi army by decree in May 2003.

I once read a manual ostensibly distributed by U.S. intelligence operatives to Central American rebels during the Reagan administration. Among other tactics, it taught insurgents how to spoof assassinations of respected village leaders to make it look as if the central government had murdered them. Villagers previously reluctant to join the rebels, angered by the “government” killing of local elders would be tricked into joining the people who actually killed them. Not so different from the IS false-flag operations Der Spiegel recounts.

In another odd parallel (no, they’re not equivalent), it appears what Haji Bakr and his team have done resembles a strategy U.S. politicos have used for decades: co-opting the religious right as foot soldiers for accomplishing secular goals. (Are they that gullible everywhere?) If Der Spiegel’s reporting is correct, the Islamic State’s jihadis have no idea they are being used by former Saddam intelligence operatives to help retake Iraq and the region for themselves and not for Islam at all. After Syrian rebels killed Haji Bakr, they scooped up “computers, passports, mobile phone SIM cards, a GPS device and, most importantly, papers. They didn’t find a Koran anywhere.” So it goes.

Style: More confident and focused than even in his well-received announcement speech. Led off with a string of jokes about Clinton, kids, and campaigns. Then turned earnest, keeping the crowd hushed and largely rapt, culminating with a resounding, sustained standing ovation. 

Substance: Laid out his agenda on taxes, education, and other issues with more purpose than detail, but made it powerful by fusing it with vivid descriptions of America’s needs.
Best moment: Closed with an extended passage about the nation’s future and the urgency of moving in a new direction immediately.

Worst moment: Rambled a bit at the end of the first third of his remarks—but that’s a quibble.

Overall: Speaks about the American Experience and his own family history like an old pro, making him seem wise and thoughtful beyond his years. Continues to hit his stride, creating believers within the party and the press. When he leverages his youth to make his optimism seem more organic, he stakes a greater claim than Walker, Bush, and the rest of the field to being the right leader for a better future. Enshrined his place in the top tier more solidly than ever before.

Oh yeah, baby ! He’s hot!!

At the other end of the spectrum is poor old Rick Perry.

Style: Populist, anti-Washington message delivered in an intense but sometimes rambling manner. Not particularly funny, accessible, or soothing, despite nods toward optimism. On occasion let loose the manic arm-waving that he made infamous in the Granite State last cycle. 

Substance: Advocated corporate tax reform, talked energy policy, but stubbornly remained above 30,000 feet. 

Best moment: Talked about President Obama and the Mexican border in a crowd-pleasing, Texas-tough way. 

Worst moment: Wordy, dark description of the recent American past that meandered and stalled out without much audience reaction. 

Overall: Strong, mainline, conservative message, but delivered with flashes of his more lampoonable style—not the cup of tea of voters who continue to see and hear echoes of ‘12. Despite his many strengths, this version of Rick Perry cannot win the Republican nomination, and every time he acts like this at a high-profile event, he wastes more than an opportunity: He digs a deep hole even deeper.

And then there was this guy who I didn’t even know was running:

Style: Talked rapidly, sometimes shouting, perhaps in an effort to seem forceful and driven. Showed little humor (beyond an opening clunker of a Clinton/e-mail joke), and little finesse. Occasionally hugged the side of the lectern, or wandered briefly away, only to return moments later.

Substance: Called for lower individual and corporate tax rates; elimination of the inheritance tax. Offered only generalities during an extended foreign policy section.

Best moment: Brought determination to his presentation, but no moments stood out.

Worst moment: The starkness of the line “President Obama doesn’t believe in America” turned into a downer even with a partisan audience that has little love for the current occupant of the Oval Office.

Overall: Largely unknown, even to many activists and the press; got some attention simply by being on the card. But didn’t give people a true sense of his heart, his history, or his hopes. Too dark and negative to be considered a happy Gilmore. Still, enough buzz in the room to likely encourage him to stay at it in the months ahead.

The other big names, Jeb, Walker, Christie all got solid “Bs” so they have plenty of potential. The weirdos like Bolton and Trump weren’t all that appealing. Go figure.

So there you have it. The America’s Got Political Talent re-cap from TMZ. Or rather Bloomberg. Whatever. You don’t need to watch the pundits next week, they’ll all be regurgitating this swill as if it actually means something.

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Cretins in our midst

by digby

I have been known to get downright violent when I see people doing this at the beach. I can’t even begin to tell you the level of loathing I have for these worst examples of the human species when I see it:

Well, just when you think people can’t be anymore savage and disgusting… a group of 4 in their 20’s took a baby sea lion off the beach last night, put it in the trunk of their car and drove off. Witnesses saw the group throwing things and teasing the animals, who based on their size were left on the beach as the mother foraged for food. They got a blanket, wrapped it around the juvenile pinneped and put it in the trunk of their car and left. The witnesses called police when they saw the group teasing the animals… but they left by the time LAPD arrived. The car was described as a 2 door black Honda Civic. The occupants are described as being total assholes. Earlier in the night LAPD cited and called parents of several drunk juveniles who were partying at the beach.

Here’s the official story:

Nasty bites and federal prosecution are just two of the risks for whomever stole a baby seal lion from its mother on Dockweiler State Beach early Sunday morning, according to a wildlife expert.

Pete Wallerstein of Marine Animal Rescue told City News Service that sea lions “have a bite 10 times greater than a pit bull,” and he is concerned that someone may have been bitten when one of two sea lion pups was taken from the beach sometime before 3:30 a.m. Sunday.

Wallerstein said he went to the beach after security officers alerted him that two baby sea lions had come to shore, and one had gotten stuck in some nearby bushes.

Wallerstein freed the stuck pup, but said two Los Angeles police officers told him some people had wrapped the other sea lion pup in a blanket, put it in their vehicle and drove away. That’s a federal crime punishable by a fine of up to $10,000 and a year in jail.

The people who took the pup could also run into an issue taking care of it, Wallerstein said.

“It’s hard to feed them and they need water,” he said.

Wallerstein said that baby sea lions often come to shore, and are having an issue with starving.

There have been record numbers of babies on the beach, starving. They don’t know why. It’s horrible.

For anyone who lives here in Southern California and sees these baby sea lions on the beach, this is the proper protocol:

Do not approach or touch the animal. It is a federal offense to disturb them, and they may bite when threatened. Marine Mammals / pinnipeds are protected under the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972.

Do not push, chase or coax the animal back into the water. It may need rest and if you push it back in the water it may drown.

Do not pour water on the animal. Pouring water on it may only further serve to debilitate a sick or injured animal.

Do not feed. Feeding the animal something other than what it is accustomed to may lead to illness and even death.

When I’ve seen people prodding or otherwise bothering the animal, I call the cops and a lifeguard. And then I cover my mouth with my hand and run up to the people warning them that these animals have a dreaded disease that’s killing people all along the West Coast and even the slightest exposure could lead to extreme illness. Most of them are such dumb idiots they believe me and walk off quickly. The one’s who don’t usually just laugh like the barbaric scumbags they are until the authorities show up and then they scatter.

WTF is wrong with people?

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Sunday Funnies

by digby

.@GroverNorquist on the #IRS: “It’s awful, it’s incompetent, it’s not doing its job” @FoxNews @MariaBartiromo
— Sunday Futures (@SundayFutures) April 19, 2015

That would be because Norquist and company are drowning it in the bathtub. Feature, not bug.

Also too, what’s the matter with Kansas? Brownback’s the matter with Kansas:

And:

Also too: not one innocent person has ever been executed. Luckily, we’ve caught all the bad convictions before they got that far. Whew …

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Yet another terrifying lesson in the perils of blowback


by digby

Der Spiegel has published a fascinating must-read about the real brains behind ISIS and how it came to be. They’ve come into possession of documents from a shadowy figure who was the real mastermind. And guess what? He was not really a religious fanatic at all. He was a top strategic thinker in Saddam Hussein’s military. And he didn’t plan to create an Islamic State per se, but rather a totalitarian state in the mode of East Germany using religion as the ostensible motivation and cover.

You have to read the whole thing to understand how much we seem to be misunderstanding the original of this “caliphate” business — at least the original intention. (Who knows what it has really morphed into today …) This part,  however, is of serious importance to anyone who follows national security policy and wants to ensure the US doesn’t contribute to more disasters like the one currently happening in the middle east:

There is a simple reason why there is no mention in Bakr’s writings of prophecies relating to the establishment of an Islamic State allegedly ordained by God: He believed that fanatical religious convictions alone were not enough to achieve victory. But he did believe that the faith of others could be exploited.

In 2010, Bakr and a small group of former Iraqi intelligence officers made Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the emir and later “caliph,” the official leader of the Islamic State. They reasoned that Baghdadi, an educated cleric, would give the group a religious face.

Bakr was “a nationalist, not an Islamist,” says Iraqi journalist Hisham al-Hashimi, as he recalls the former career officer, who was stationed with Hashimi’s cousin at the Habbaniya Air Base. “Colonel Samir,” as Hashimi calls him, “was highly intelligent, firm and an excellent logistician.” But when Paul Bremer, then head of the US occupational authority in Baghdad, “dissolved the army by decree in May 2003, he was bitter and unemployed.”

Thousands of well-trained Sunni officers were robbed of their livelihood with the stroke of a pen. In doing so, America created its most bitter and intelligent enemies. [my emphasis] Bakr went underground and met Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Anbar Province in western Iraq. Zarqawi, a Jordanian by birth, had previously run a training camp for international terrorist pilgrims in Afghanistan. Starting in 2003, he gained global notoriety as the mastermind of attacks against the United Nations, US troops and Shiite Muslims. He was even too radical for former Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden. Zarqawi died in a US air strike in 2006.

Although Iraq’s dominant Baath Party was secular, the two systems ultimately shared a conviction that control over the masses should lie in the hands of a small elite that should not be answerable to anyone — because it ruled in the name of a grand plan, legitimized by either God or the glory of Arab history. The secret of IS’ success lies in the combination of opposites, the fanatical beliefs of one group and the strategic calculations of the other.

Bakr gradually became one of the military leaders in Iraq, and he was held from 2006 to 2008 in the US military’s Camp Bucca and Abu Ghraib Prison. He survived the waves of arrests and killings by American and Iraqi special units, which threatened the very existence of the IS precursor organization in 2010, Islamic State in Iraq.

For Bakr and a number of former high-ranking officers, this presented an opportunity to seize power in a significantly smaller circle of jihadists. They utilized the time they shared in Camp Bucca to establish a large network of contacts. But the top leaders had already known each other for a long time. Haji Bakr and an additional officer were part of the tiny secret-service unit attached to the anti-aircraft division. Two other IS leaders were from a small community of Sunni Turkmen in the town of Tal Afar. One of them was a high-ranking intelligence officer as well.

In 2010, the idea of trying to defeat Iraqi government forces militarily seemed futile. But a powerful underground organization took shape through acts of terror and protection rackets. When the uprising against the dictatorship of the Assad clan erupted in neighboring Syria, the organization’s leaders sensed an opportunity. By late 2012, particularly in the north, the formerly omnipotent government forces had largely been defeated and expelled. Instead, there were now hundreds of local councils and rebel brigades, part of an anarchic mix that no one could keep track of. It was a state of vulnerability that the tightly organized group of ex-officers sought to exploit.

Attempts to explain IS and its rapid rise to power vary depending on who is doing the explaining. Terrorism experts view IS as an al-Qaida offshoot and attribute the absence of spectacular attacks to date to what they view as a lack of organizational capacity. Criminologists see IS as a mafia-like holding company out to maximize profit. Scholars in the humanities point to the apocalyptic statements by the IS media department, its glorification of death and the belief that Islamic State is involved in a holy mission.

But apocalyptic visions alone are not enough to capture cities and take over countries. Terrorists don’t establish countries. And a criminal cartel is unlikely to generate enthusiasm among supporters around the world, who are willing to give up their lives to travel to the “Caliphate” and potentially their deaths.

IS has little in common with predecessors like al-Qaida aside from its jihadist label. There is essentially nothing religious in its actions, its strategic planning, its unscrupulous changing of alliances and its precisely implemented propaganda narratives. Faith, even in its most extreme form, is just one of many means to an end. Islamic State’s only constant maxim is the expansion of power at any price.

So the genesis of ISIS is really in the inane decision to “de-Bathify” and leave a bunch of highly trained soldiers (many of them trained by the US) humiliated and without any means of support — then later imprison them all together for years so they could hatch plans to re-take the region and wreak revenge on their enemies. It could not be any dumber.

But then we knew that at the time.This review of Imperial Life in the Emerald City will remind you what happened if it all seems so far away:

Imperial Life is the bureaucratic story of Iraq’s Year 1, the year after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, when the United States was the legal occupying power and responsible for the country’s administration. The primary mechanism for that work was the Coalition Provisional Authority, headquartered in the Green Zone, a blast-barrier-encased compound created around Hussein’s Baghdad palace, on the west bank of the Tigris. Chandrasekaran, The Washington Post’s Baghdad bureau chief during this period, catalogs a lethal combination of official arrogance and ineptitude behind those walls that doomed Iraq to its bloody present every bit as much as insufficient military manpower did.

To begin with, the C.P.A.’s recruitment policy would have shamed Tammany Hall. Loyalty to George W. Bush and the Republican Party was apparently the prime criterion for getting work at the C.P.A. To determine their suitability for positions in Iraq, some prospective employees were asked their views on Roe v. Wade. Others were asked whom they voted for in 2000. Republican congressmen, conservative think tanks and party activists were all solicited by the White House’s liaison at the Pentagon, James O’Beirne, to suggest possible staffers.

Before the war began, Frederick M. Burkle Jr. was assigned to oversee Iraq’s health care system. He had a r?m?o die for: a physician with a master’s degree in public health, and postgraduate degrees from Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth and Berkeley. He also had two bronze stars for military service in the Navy, as well as field experience with the Kurds in northern Iraq after the 1991 gulf war. A week after the liberation, he was told he was being replaced because, Chandrasekaran writes, ”a senior official at USAID told him that the White House wanted a ‘loyalist’ in the job.”

That loyalist was James K. Haveman Jr., who had been recommended by the former Michigan governor John Engler. Haveman’s r?m?ncluded running a Christian adoption agency that counseled young women against abortions. He spent much of his time in Iraq preparing to privatize the state-owned drug supply firm — perhaps not the most important priority since almost every hospital in the country had been thoroughly looted in the days after Hussein was overthrown.

On page after page, Chandrasekaran details other projects of the C.P.A.’s bright young Republican ideologues — like modernizing the Baghdad stock exchange, or quickly privatizing every service that had previously been provided by the state. Some of these ideas would have been laudable if they were being planned for a country with functioning power and water supplies, and that wasn’t tottering on the brink of anarchy.

But how could these young Americans have known what life was like for ordinary Iraqis since they never left the Green Zone? Instead, they turned the place into something like a college campus. After a hard day of dreaming up increasingly improbable projects, the kids did what kids do — headed for the bar and looked for a hookup. As for the Iraqis, they were conspicuous by their absence.

Presiding over this unreal world was the American viceroy, L. Paul Bremer III, who comes across in this book as a man who has read one C.E.O. memoir too many, a man who knew his mind and would not have his decisions changed by the inconvenient reality of Iraqi life just outside the blast barriers. All of this would be funny in a Joseph Heller kind of way if tens of thousands of Iraqis and thousands of American soldiers weren’t to die because of the decisions made by the C.P.A., the Pentagon and the White House.

In Chandrasekaran’s account, all the arrogance, stubbornness and desire for career advancement crystallized at the end of March 2004, when Bremer decided to shut down a newspaper published by the radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr. With typical high-handedness, he made the decision without thinking through the possible consequences. He had no military backup plan if Sadr decided to fight and, predictably, Sadr’s Mahdi Army did fight back. Within a few days four American private security operatives were ambushed and killed in Falluja, their mutilated bodies hung from a bridge over the Euphrates. Suddenly, a year after overthrowing Hussein, the United States was fighting Shiite insurgents on one front and Sunni insurgents on another.

I’m sure most of you recall the accounts of the Bush administration’s malfeasance during the early post-war. (If not, you should read the book — it’s mind-boggling.) You cannot fully comprehend the debacle that was the Iraq war without recalling those early decisions. Yes, the invasion itself was so daft it’s hard to believe we actually did it. But I don’t think anyone, including the Democrats who foolishly went along with it, were prepared for the astonishing ineptitude of the Bush administration in the aftermath in which they hired inexperienced college interns, GOP hacks and operatives and ideological zealots to “re-build” the country in the image of the Heritage Foundation’s fondest wet-dreams. (I always thought Imperial Life in the Emerald City should actually be turned into a musical comedy in order to get the true feel for the outrageousness of the whole thing..)

I think we always knew that the seeds of the current debacle were being planted during that period. But I didn’t know before this latest article that ISIS specifically stemmed from Saddam’s old coterie. It’s certainly possible that his original idea has simply morphed into a catch-all terrorist “brand” kind of like Coke or Kleenex. But the fact that it was originally cooked up by Saddam’s old henchmen as a way to re-take their territory using the current religious fanaticism of the moment as an inspiration is yet another terrifying lesson in the perils of blowback.

Update: The hits just keep on coming. Yet another case where our alleged desire to “help” ended up in disaster.

Sobering statistic ‘o the Day

by digby

USA: 22% of the world's prison population. 4.6% of world population overall.— ian bremmer (@ianbremmer) April 19, 2015

Huh. Now why would that be? I’m sure the fact that vast numbers of the incarcerated are black has absolutely nothing to do with it.

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