Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

CFB’s

by digby

Memo to reporters: when George Will, Chris Matthews and other pundits complain that Clinton’s major problem is being too “strident” it’s a similar type of slur as saying Obama is “articulate.” This is a dogwhistle term; in this case it means “castrating feminist bitch.”

I’ve never heard any of them ever complain that tub-thumping, preaching Republicans, male or female, are “strident” even though they most certainly are if you look at the literal meaning of the word:

stri·dent

1.making or having a harsh sound; grating; creaking: strident insects; strident hinges.
2. having a shrill, irritating quality or character: a strident tone in his writings.

For some reason it’s only liberal women who evoke this word among the chatterers.

You’d think that Hillary Clinton, of all people, would have put that stereotyping to rest, considering her painfully public marital problems and centrist-ish policy positions. But no. She’s the top Dem-Fem and therefore any passion or strength sounds “harsh” and “grating” to the delicate ears of the beltway mavens.

Poor lil fellas; it sure doesn’t take much to make their little minds shrivel, does it?

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A Fourth Branch?

by digby

We have all discussed the unprecedented power of Dick Cheney in this administration ad nauseum, but this post from David Kurtz at TPM introduced a whole new element I hadn’t been aware of.

I assumed that Cheney believed the power of the Vice President (such as it is) derived from the executive branch. Apparently, however, he believes the office of the Vice President has power of its own that derives from both the legislative and executive branch:

I’ve gone from being open to the idea of an Imperial Vice Presidency to being convinced that historians will debate whether something approaching a Cheney-led coup d’etat has occurred, in which some of the powers of the Executive were extra-constitutionally usurped by the Office of the Vice President.

Last week, in trying to break the lock on who actually works in the OVP–which the Vice President refuses to reveal–the guys at Muckraker stumbled across this entry from a government directory known as the “Plum Book”:

The Vice Presidency is a unique office that is neither a part of the executive branch nor a part of the legislative branch, but is attached by the Constitution to the latter. The Vice Presidency performs functions in both the legislative branch (see article I, section 3 of the Constitution) and in the executive branch (see article II, and amendments XII and XXV, of the Constitution, and section 106 of title 3 of the United States Code).

It appears that Cheney’s office submitted this entry in lieu of a list of its employees, as federal agencies must do. It sounds like something Cheney’s current chief of staff, David Addington, might have written. Cheney and Addington have been the among the most powerful proponents of the theory of a “unitary executive,” but there are indications that they have also advanced, though less publicly, a theory of a constitutionally distinct and independent vice presidency.

WTF?

I had always known that Cheney was running the show, but I assumed he did it purely by using the power of the executive branch and manipulation of the presdient. I had no idea that he might have secretly carved out a previously unenumerated institution that derives its power from both the legislative and executive branches. What in the hell has really been going on in this administration?

Larry Wilkerson called it a “cabal” around Dick Cheney. But it seems to have been more than that. They created a shadow government and developed a constitutional theory to support it.

The undemocratic streak in the Republican Party continues apace. Each time they get power, they seek ways to weaken the nation’s understanding of what is acceptable in our democracy and what our constitution provides. (And keep in mind that it is entirely self-serving — they will turn all of that around without a moment’s thought when it suits them to challenge the opposition.)

The Libby trial has provided an excellent opening to look into this issue. Kurtz writes:

A hearing on the constitutional role of the vice president might be an excellent place to start. From all indications, Cheney has amassed considerable power due to his experience and savvy vis-a-vis the President’s relative lack thereof. But that is a separate issue from the constitutional role of the OVP, and whether, or in what ways, various statutory regimens, particularly in the national security arena, apply to the OVP.

By custom and tradition, the Vice President’s role had been circumscribed by how little express power and authority the Constitution granted the position. Hence, all the jokes over the years about the vice presidency. But in a move that is decidedly anti-conservative, in the conventional sense, Cheney moved to fill the void. I fear that what we will eventually find are structural flaws that were deliberately exploited by the OVP, which in turn further undermined constitutional and statutory structures.

This is important and the congress should not let it pass unexamined. The nation needs to know if some precedent has been set for making a vice-president a power center outside the commonly understood three branches of government.

It’s something out of a political thriller, I know, and it’s hard to wrap your arms around. But there is a part of me that wonders if it wasn’t a plan. It never seemed likely to me that the big money boys of the GOP would trust their fortunes to the blithering fool they set forth as president. Let’s just say that I wouldn’t be surprised if some conversations before the fact took place.

Kurtz also wonders how, if this is true, Cheney deals with the supremely arrogant decider. It’s not hard for me to imagine at all. Arrogant morons are very easy to manipulate. You just tell them what to think and then tell them they thought of it.

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Getting It Right

by digby

John Edwards was clear and concise today about Iran on Meet The Press, saying explicitly that a military strike would strengthen Ahmadinejad and would be a mistake. When Russert pressed him about whether we could ultimately “let” Iran get a nuclear weapons, he said it would be a bad thing, but that there were many, many steps to take before we get to that — and that he just didn’t know at this point.

That seems to me to be a decent way of framing it. He’s not “taking any options off the table” but he is saying that a military strike would be counter productive and there’s plenty of time to deal with this problem, which leaves some room to maneuver. (The real problem is rebuilding any trust in the United States’ intentions in the mideast and around the world, and that’s something else entirely.)

I think it’s been hard for Democrats to grasp just how unpopular and discredited George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are with the American people and the world. (It’s understandable since they were inexplicably held up on a pedestal for years by the press.) But they have fallen now and there is no benefit to backing their crazy schemes.

Edwards was good on Iran today and good for him.

(He was not so good on gay marriage, however, for reasons I just can’t fathom. He’s not fooling anyobody on either side of the fence. Might as well take a stand.)

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Saturday Night At The Movies

The Other Half Of The Sky

By Dennis Hartley

With Nancy P in da house and Hillary in the race, I’m actually thinking 2007 could be the year my depression finally breaks (started back around, oh, November of 2000). I think it’s a good time to screen some female empowerment films!

My personal favorite on the theme is an outstanding and overlooked drama from 1995 that was originally presented as a three-part miniseries in the UK, The Politician’s Wife. Juliet Stevenson delivers a tour-de-force performance as Flora, the staunchly supportive wife of Duncan Matlock, an ambitious rising star in England’s conservative Tory party.

A scandal erupts when Duncan is caught with his pants down by the notorious British tabloid press. His fling with an “escort” girl (Minnie Driver) quickly becomes fertile ground for muckraking, as he happens to be the Minister of Family (oops). At first, Flora suffers in silence, desperately wanting to believe her husband’s assurance that it was only a regrettable one night stand. She caves to pressure from Duncan’s handlers (including her own father) to keep a brave face in public, “for the sake of the party”.

But when a conscience-stricken member of the Minister’s inner circle slips Flora some irrefutable evidence proving that the “fling” was in fact a torrid year-long affair, her pain turns to bitterness and anger. Fueled by the deep sense of betrayal and growing awareness of Duncan’s wanton abuse of his powers, she hatches a clever and methodical scheme to subvert his political capital (i.e. to drain his precious bodily fluids, figuratively speaking).

The beauty of Paula Milne’s script lies in the subtle execution of Flora’s revenge. Avoiding the usual “Hell hath no fury” clichés, Milne’s protagonist (not unlike Livia in I, Claudius) finds her empowerment through an assimilated understanding of what makes the members of this particular boy’s club tick; she is then able to orchestrate events in such a manner that they all end up falling on their own swords (keep your friends close, but your enemies closer). Intelligently written, splendidly acted, and not to be missed.

Regular Digby readers have likely screened my next pick many times, but it wouldn’t hurt to brush up on our cheerleading skills and see The Contender again. Any movie featuring Jeff Bridges as the prez, who appoints Joan Allen (brilliant performance) as the successor when his VP kicks the bucket is aces in my book. Hell, just the part about a VP kicking the bucket alone makes me moist. Gary Oldman is scary as an ultra conservative senator who opposes the nom. So the wingnuts decried it as a Hollywood liberal fantasy fulfillment. Fuck ‘em. Watch it again, with a Republican under each arm.

Encore! A Woman Called Golda, First Monday in October, Bandit Queen, Evita, Elizabeth I, Norma Rae, Erin Brockovich, Silkwood, Gorillas In The Mist, An Angel At My Table, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, The Fortunes & Misfortunes of Moll Flanders (PBS), Antonia’s Line, Prime Suspect (series),The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Thelma & Louise, Jackie Brown,Working Girl, Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore

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Real America

by digby

In contrast to the hysterical, rock star reaction Bush received at the NY Stock Exchange:

On Tuesday, President Bush popped in for a surprise visit to the Sterling Family Restaurant, a homey diner in Peoria, Ill. It’s a scene that has been played out many times before by this White House and others: a president mingling among regular Americans, who, no matter what they might think of his policies, are usually humbled and shocked to see the leader of the free world standing 10 feet in front of them.

But on Tuesday, the surprise was on Bush. In town to deliver remarks on the economy, the president walked into the diner, where he was greeted with what can only be described as a sedate reception. No one rushed to shake his hand. There were no audible gasps or yelps of excitement that usually accompany visits like this. Last summer, a woman nearly fainted when Bush made an unscheduled visit for some donut holes at the legendary Lou Mitchell’s Restaurant in Chicago. In Peoria this week, many patrons found their pancakes more interesting. Except for the click of news cameras and the clang of a dish from the kitchen, the quiet was deafening.

“Sorry to interrupt you,” Bush said to a group of women, who were sitting in a booth with their young kids. “How’s the service?” As Bush signed a few autographs and shook hands, a man sitting at the counter lit a cigarette and asked for more coffee. Another woman, eyeing Bush and his entourage, sighed heavily and went back to her paper. She was reading the obituaries. “Sorry to interrupt your breakfast,” a White House aide told her. “No problem,” she huffed, in a not-so-friendly way. “Life goes on, I guess.”

No wonder he was so thrilled the next day when the frat-rat traders fell to their knees in worshipful rapture.

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Impressive And Gratifying

by digby

I don’t know how many of you saw the giddy reception that President Bush received on the floor of the NY stock exchange last week, but it was one for the books. It was captured best by CNN, which carried it live. Their Wall Street reporter came pretty close to climaxing on live television:

PHILLIPS: Well, normally, Susan Lisovicz is the most exciting thing on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, but she has a little competition today — Susan.

SUSAN LISOVICZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Kyra, in the 214 years of the New York Stock Exchange, the world’s biggest exchange has seen a lot of famous people — world leaders, CEOs, athletes — but only one sitting president of the United States came during trading hours. That was Ronald Reagan in 1985.

That is changing at this moment. President George W. Bush, we believe, has just entered the building, and he may pass right behind me. Of course, the president of the United States using Wall Street as his stage to talk about his economic policy, and there’s a lot to talk about that is quite favorable to the Bush administration.

We’ve had 7.2 million jobs created since 2003. The jobless rate historically low, 4.5 percent. We just got the first look at the fourth quarter GDP coming in better than expected at 3.5 percent.

Of course, the stock market itself has been hitting record after record. We’ve been talking about it for the last couple months. Gas prices have been getting lower. And certainly, that is something that the president wants to talk about, Kyra.

And I can tell you that I think the reception that he will get here on Wall Street will be a little bit more enthusiastic than perhaps the reception he gets with the new Democratic majority in Congress.

The president saying today and, certainly, leading up to this visit, that he will certainly try his best to make sure that there are no tax increases. That is something that investors favor. They also like the fact that President Bush has been a proponent of more liberal trade policies. That is something that he’s talked about earlier this week when he visited the headquarters of Caterpillar in Peoria — East Peoria, Illinois…

PHILLIPS: We can actually see a wide shot now of all the reporters. Has everything just come to a standstill as everybody awaits the president?

LISOVICZ: That is a very good point. This is a — the world’s biggest stock market, Kyra, and for the last 30 minutes, trading has just about come to a halt. It’s extremely quiet. People are very excited.

I can see traders holding baseballs, baseballs in their hands for the president to sign. They’re just very excited about the president coming here. This is a very rare occasion, and it’s a historic moment.

And the one thing about this is there are people on this trading floor, there are people and they’re excited about someone.

PHILLIPS: Like the guys right there next to you.

LISOVICZ: Exactly. I know…

PHILLIPS: Can you talk to them? Ask these guys, are these some of the traders to your left, Susan?

LISOVICZ: Yes. How do you feel about the president of the United States?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I’m excited to see him. I’m excited to see him. The president of the United States, one of the greatest presidents we have…

LISOVICZ: OK, Kyra, I’m hearing a lot of applause right now, a lot of — a lot of people cheering. And I don’t know if you can see me anymore…

PHILLIPS: Actually, I can see the president right now, Susan. He’s actually — and I’m not quite sure where you are in proximity — in…

LISOVICZ:…It’s a very — it’s a very big buildup to a very big visit, Kyra.

PHILLIPS: Well, I can imagine. And I’ll give you an idea of what’s going on right now. Everybody is flocked around him, Susan. He’s shaking hands with all the various traders. And you can see the Secret Service is, of course, all around him, and kind of working him through the crowd.

…And you mentioned the last president to come visit the New York Stock Exchange — there’s only been two, right? Ronald Reagan, and now president Bush.

LISOVICZ: That’s correct.

PHILLIPS: What kind of effect did Reagan have when he came to visit? Is this — do you think this is more of a P.R. move, or does this really affect things economically, trading wise, investor wise? I mean, what type of effect do you think this has truly outside of a P.R. move?

LISOVICZ: President Reagan was here in 1985 during trading hours. Kyra, he actually came again in ’92 with Mikhail Gorbachev, but he came to talk about his economic policy. And he’s absolutely beloved on Wall Street, as you can imagine.

And it’s almost stating the obvious that — that this is his audience. This is a conservative crowd. This is the kind of community where less government intervention is something that is applauded. Lower taxes, that’s something that investors like. More trade policies, that’s something investors like. They want to see it translate to the bottom line…

PHILLIPS: Can you see him?

LISOVICZ: I see — I see the — yes, I do see him. I see his gray head. I’m getting pushed back, but I’m…

PHILLIPS: What do you want to know from the president, Susan?

LISOVICZ: I would like to know what he thinks he can achieve with the majority — with the Congress he can no longer count on to support him in terms of some of the policies he’s proposing.

I don’t know if you can hear that, Kyra. There’s a chant of “Bush, Bush, Bush”, and here he comes.

PHILLIPS: All right. We’re going to let you try and get the moment, Susan. Go ahead.

LISOVICZ: He’s about 15 feet away, and he’s shaking hands. He looks like he’s in good spirits. And he has plenty of people who are trying to expedite his walk. Almost like a gauntlet, but it’s a very friendly gauntlet.

PHILLIPS: I can imagine. It’s a tough time right now. Everything has been centered on Iraq and the Iraq strategy and what is he going to do as he appoints his new head for the military commands in Iraq and Afghanistan and that region. He always seems…

LISOVICZ: Five feet away, Kyra.

PHILLIPS: OK. Go for it, Susan.

LISOVICZ: President Bush, welcome to Wall Street. Welcome to Wall Street.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Good to be here, thanks.

LISOVICZ: What do you think of the reception here?

BUSH: I’m impressed and grateful.

I’ll bet.

If you can believe it, it goes on like that for ten more minutes at least. Read the transcript if you want to see the complete giggly insanity, (but you have to see the video to get the full effect.)

I was reminded of this apalling display this morning when I read Rick Perlstein’s review of Terry McAuliffe’s new book in today’s NY Times.

McAuliffe taught Democrats that to win they had to learn to play with the billionaires. But there were, as the economists say, “opportunity costs.” In 400 pages of blow-by-blow, one momentous event passes with barely a whisper: the 2002 elections. Some hoped that President Bush’s ties to Enron would make 2002 a Democratic year. Instead, Democrats lost the Senate. As the televised face of the party, McAuliffe got in some hard punches on Enron, but Republicans replied that he himself had made an $18 million profit from a mere $100,000 investment in the controversial communications company Global Crossing.

Sour grapes, McAuliffe insists, quoting his comeback to Sean Hannity: “What are you, jealous or something? … It was a great company.”

…You might say the more proximate wrongdoing was going on TV in an election year in which corporate greed was the Democrats’ best issue and saying a company that had only not quite swindled millions of pensioners and individual investors was “great” — and then being so un-self-aware as to brag about it in your memoir.

That group on the stock exchange floor is Bush’s real base and he’s been tremendously successful for them. But their loyalty has less to do with sheer self-interest than people think. That little display on the floor of the stock exchange shows how out of touch with reality those moneyed interests have become. The stock market may have finally recovered, and perhaps these guys aren’t paying the high taxes they might be, but the world is going to hell in a handbasket and this simpleton of a president is spending the country into oblivion on crazy wars that could cause more long term damage to American business than any tax or regulation ever could. Talk about being unable to see the forest for the trees.

This is a tribal identification as strong as southern evangelicals or Berkeley liberals, and no matter how much Terry McAuliffe wines and dines these folks, they do not identify with working people and an activist government. It’s fine with me to take their money, but a big mistake to fail to calculate the costs of depending too strongly on it.

Perlstein points out that the two great Democratic populists, FDR and LBJ, may have travelled easily in moneyed circles, but they used their power to influence business not the other way around.

McAuliffe says in his book:

“People ask me all the time what the trick to fund-raising is. They always want to hear that there is some secret. But it’s simple enough, and I’ll spell it out in black and white: As a fund-raiser you’re selling belief. You’re selling vision. You’re selling hope. You’re selling dreams.”

Perlstein says: The question is: what dreams, and whose?

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Stop It Now

by digby

James Fallows:

Deciding what to do next about Iraq is hard — on the merits, and in the politics. It’s hard on the merits because whatever comes next, from “surge” to “get out now” and everything in between, will involve suffering, misery, and dishonor. It’s just a question of by whom and for how long. On a balance-of-misery basis, my own view changed last year from “we can’t afford to leave” to “we can’t afford to stay.” And the whole issue is hard in its politics because even Democrats too young to remember Vietnam know that future Karl Roves will dog them for decades with accusations of “cut-and-run” and “betraying” troops unless they can get Republicans to stand with them on limiting funding and forcing the policy to change.

By comparison, Iran is easy: on the merits, in the politics. War with Iran would be a catastrophe that would make us look back fondly on the minor inconvenience of being bogged down in Iraq. While the Congress flounders about what, exactly, it can do about Iraq, it can do something useful, while it still matters, in making clear that it will authorize no money and provide no endorsement for military action against Iran.

As they say, read the whole thing.

It may be just this possibility that has the administration carrying on so about how Iranians are behind the killing of Americans even though it is an absurdity. They would like to create the conditions where they can say that anyone failing to back action in Iran is failing to protect the troops.

In a sane world, the congress would move very quickly on this before that notion jells. But it won’t, because they believe they must allow the president to have all “options on the table,” — a “duty” which Republicans repeatedly failed to fulfill when Clinton was in office and which an earlier group of Democrats understood to be nonsense. Still, that seems to be where they are, at least with respect to Iran. Not only are they not prepared to stop it, they are either silent on the issue or actively supporting the premise upon which the president’s argument is built.

Still, we must at least begin to make this case and this James Fallows article is an excellent first step. I particularly liked this part, because it is absolutely true and shows the seriousness of the danger we are in:

If we could trust the Administration’s ability to judge America’s rational self-interest, there would be no need to constrain its threatening gestures toward Iran. Everyone would understand that this was part of the negotiation process; no one would worry that the Administration would finally take a step as self-destructive as beginning or inviting a war.

But no one can any longer trust the Administration to recognize and defend America’s rational self-interest — not when the President says he will carry out a policy even if opposed by everyone except his wife and dog, not when the Vice President refuses to concede any mistake or misjudgment in the handling of Iraq.

We are dealing with an administration that handled the overriding message of the mid-term election by doing exactly the opposite and escalating the war. They are not responsive to anything, not even political considerations. They are obsessed with their own legacy and if that means selling their own party down the river, they will do that too. There is nothing to stop them.

Fallows continues:

According to the constitutional chain of command, those two men literally have the power to order a strike that would be disastrous for their nation. The Congress has no official way to prevent them from doing so — it is interesting, and alarming, to think that in practice the safety valve might be the professional military, trained to revere the chain of command but faced with what its members would recognize as ruinous instructions.

Seymour Hersh said a year ago that it took the generals everything they had to keep a tactical first strike of Iran “off the table.” I’m not holding my breath that they can or will stop this.

Here’s Hersh from April 2006:

There is a growing conviction among members of the United States military, and in the international community, that President Bush’s ultimate goal in the nuclear confrontation with Iran is regime change. Iran’s President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has challenged the reality of the Holocaust and said that Israel must be “wiped off the map.” Bush and others in the White House view him as a potential Adolf Hitler, a former senior intelligence official said. “That’s the name they’re using. They say, ‘Will Iran get a strategic weapon and threaten another world war?’ ”

A government consultant with close ties to the civilian leadership in the Pentagon said that Bush was “absolutely convinced that Iran is going to get the bomb” if it is not stopped. He said that the President believes that he must do “what no Democrat or Republican, if elected in the future, would have the courage to do,” and “that saving Iran is going to be his legacy.”

As Bush and Cheney get more and more unpopular, their legacy becomes more and more predicated on the fact that they did the unpopular thing for the greater good. The more unpopular they get the more they have to prove.

Update: Matt Stoller makes the case that out of all the presidential candidates, Wes Clark is the one leading on this issue. (Bill Richardson too.)

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Fool Me Once

by digby

May 24, 2002

Rumsfeld: No Plans to Invade Iraq

The United States has no plans to invade Iraq or any other country, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Friday, but he refused to discuss the Bush administration’s thinking about how to deal with Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein

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February 2, 2007

Gates: We’re “Not Planning” To Attack Iran

With respect to Iran, first of all, the president has made clear; the secretary of State has made clear; I’ve made clear — nobody is planning — we are not planning for a war with Iran.

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Bad Consequences

by digby

Further to my post below, you should read this new interview with John Edwards by Ezra Klein at TAPPED on the topic of Iran. He tries to clarify his remarks on Iran and they are satisfying in some respects but not so in others.

Here’s the part I find interesting:

So, I just want to get it very clear, you think that attacking Iran would be a bad idea?

I think would have very bad consequences.

So when you said that all options are on the table?

It would be foolish for any American president to ever take any option off the table.

Can we live with a nuclear Iran?

I’m not ready to cross that bridge yet. I think that we have lots of opportunities that we’ve … We’re not negotiating with them directly, what I just proposed has not been done. We’re not being smart about how we engage with them. But I’m not ready to cross that bridge yet.

And I think the reason people react the way they do — I understand it, because, when George Bush uses this kind of language, it means something very different for most people. I mean when he uses this kind of language “options are on the table,” he does it in a very threatening kind of way — with a country that he’s not engaging with or making any serious diplomatic proposals to. I mean I think that he’s just dead wrong about that.

George W. Bush is the only president we have and he has set forth a preventive war doctrine which says that we will stop threats before they appear. That is the “option” we are discussing here in the real world and it most certainly is the one that both Edwards and Clinton knew they were leaving “on the table.” If, in two years, there is a different president and he or she says “all options are on the table” he or she will be able to define what that means. Right now it means what George W,. Bush says it means and he is, before our eyes preparing a war with Iran. (He may provoke some PR stunt in iraq to “justify” it, but nobody over the age of five will believe it — and I doubt that he really wants anyone to.)

Here, again, is what Edwards said in Herzliya:

“Iran must know that the world won’t back down. The recent UN resolution ordering Iran to halt the enrichment of uranium was not enough. We need meaningful political and economic sanctions. We have muddled along for far too long. To ensure that Iran never gets nuclear weapons, we need to keep ALL options on the table, Let me reiterate – ALL options must remain on the table.”

That’s a pretty emphatic endorsement of keeping ALL options, which includes the Bush Doctrine, on the table, don’t you think? And since Bush is going to be president for two more years that means that our presidential candidates, whether they mean to be or not, are endorsing his right to exercise that option. Believe me, if Bush goes forward and we are looking back two years from now, nobody is going to parse that statement to mean that he didn’t really back Bush’s right to do this.

What they will be left with, if anybody is left with anything, is an argument that while they thought it should be left on the table, they didn’t ever really mean for him to use it —– or that they wanted him to do other things first — or some other nonsense that will sound just as convoluted as their excuses about the Iraq war resolution did in the last election.

This actually isn’t a hypothetical question, you see. George W. Bush is doing this as we speak. The question today is, “Do you believe he has the right to attack Iran preventively or don’t you?”

Politicians apparently feel they must say that they can’t take any options off the table. But there is no reason they must go before a particular political constituency and forcefully imply that they would use the Bush Doctrine against Iran if it failed to meet certain conditions. The Bush Doctrine must be repudiated not reinforced. Until we restore the post WWII international legal consensus against wars of aggression, we are going to be attacking countries who quite rationally have decided that they are better off getting nukes while the getting’s good.

The Bush Doctrine is not a non-proliferation policy. It’s a recipe for disaster and until Bush is out of office it pays to remember that he’s the guy who can pull the trigger. It’s not a good idea to say things that anyone, including Bush, may very well see as an endorsement of doing that.

One more thing:

Let’s go a bit farther. What does Iraq say about the feasibility and the bar for invading countries in the Middle East?

It means that we have to be much more careful. And even, you know, there seems to be some consensus about what Iran is doing, but we ought to be very critical when analyzing the information we’re getting on Iran, too.

Careful? The Bush Doctrine of preventive war depends upon clairvoyant intelligence, much less the half assed intelligence we have just foolishly proved to the world that we actually have. After the humilating debacle in Iraq, the crediblity of US intelligence has been so badly damaged that it will take many years and demonstrations of good faith to repair it. Therefore, nations all over the world are justifiably a tad suspicious about any tough talk from the US about “what it knows.” This is one of the huge strategic problems we face in the middle east. Nobody, including Americans, believe a word this government says.

You can’t just pretend that problem doesn’t exist and carry on with diplomatic tropes like “all options are on the table.” That means something very specific now and it has to be addressed. I would even go so far as to say that a direct repudiation of The Bush Doctrine is the first and most important step the US must take to crawl out of this hole these nuts have dug for us. Democrats must lead the way, not blindly mouth political cliches about “options” in front of war hungry audiences. We can’t do this a second time.

*To be clear. I don’t mean to pick on Edwards and Clinton particularly. He’s clearly backing down from his comments, but that’s exactly the problem. Dems have to stop endorsing this crazy warmongering and then backing off. It not only gives the president cover to do what he wants (not that he needs or cares about cover) but it makes it impossible for the Democratic party to make coherent foreign policy. It’s going to hamstring us for the next five years if they do this again.

And it isn’t just these guys (although I consider all presidential candidates to have an obligation to lead on this issue.) I’m hearing very little coming from any Dems about Iran. (Jim Webb does keep asking for Condi’s “research” as to whether the Bush administration believes it has the right to attack without congressional approval, so that’s something. And Wes Clark has been consistent on this issue.) And yet every day we are seeing more evidence that Bush is turning up the heat, creating an environment where they can claim a phony cassus belli, it’s all over the news — and we’re still hearing campaign cliches and counter-productive sabre rattling. C’mon.

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Bad Move

by digby

I am starting to get agitated about our Democratic leaders’ approach to Iran. John Edwards’ recent comments while in Israel were disturbing enough. Now Hillary Clinton has used the same language.

Calling Iran a danger to the U.S. and one of Israel’s greatest threats, U.S. senator and presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton said “no option can be taken off the table” when dealing with that nation.

“U.S. policy must be clear and unequivocal: We cannot, we should not, we must not permit Iran to build or acquire nuclear weapons,” the Democrat told a crowd of Israel supporters. “In dealing with this threat … no option can be taken off the table.”

Here’s Edwards:

Although Edwards has criticized the war in Iraq, and has urged bringing the troops home, the former senator firmly declared that “all options must remain on the table,” in regards to dealing with Iran, whose nuclear ambition “threatens the security of Israel and the entire world.”

“Let me be clear: Under no circumstances can Iran be allowed to have nuclear weapons,” Edwards said. “For years, the US hasn’t done enough to deal with what I have seen as a threat from Iran. As my country stayed on the sidelines, these problems got worse.”

Edwards continued, “To a large extent, the US abdicated its responsibility to the Europeans. This was a mistake. The Iranian president’s statements such as his description of the Holocaust as a myth and his goals to wipe Israel off the map indicate that Iran is serious about its threats.”

“Once Iran goes nuclear, other countries in the Middle East will go nuclear, making Israel’s neighborhood much more volatile,” Edwards said.

Edwards added, “Iran must know that the world won’t back down. The recent UN resolution ordering Iran to halt the enrichment of uranium was not enough. We need meaningful political and economic sanctions. We have muddled along for far too long. To ensure that Iran never gets nuclear weapons, we need to keep ALL options on the table, Let me reiterate – ALL options must remain on the table.”

This is very, very discouraging. In a different world, perhaps it could just be chalked up to rhetorical excess and presidential politics and leave it at that. But in our world today, those are words that will be used to justify what the Bush administration is planning to do. It’s deja vu all over again.

These Democrats are explicitly and openly endorsing the Bush Doctrine of preventive war. There can be no other way to read this and I cannot think of a greater mistake at this juncture for the Democratic party to expressly align itself with such lunacy. What are they thinking?

Rather than creating a serious multi-lateral non-proliferation regime during these dangerous years, the Bush administration pushed this radical and dangerous program of dealing with our “problems” around the world and it has dramatically backfired. Instead of reducing the threat of nuclear armed nations we have forced Iran and North Korea to push up its nuclear programs. They are not stupid. They noticed that we invaded a country that didn’t have any WMD and they further noticed that we did it in spite of having no convincing intelligence that they had them. You don’t have to be an evil genius to see the lesson in that.

Via Matt Yglesias I found this excerpt from ex-neocon Frances Fukuyama’s new book that spells it out perfectly:

A second lesson that should have been drawn from the past five years is that preventive war cannot be the basis of a long-term US nonproliferation strategy. The Bush doctrine sought to use preventive war against Iraq as a means of raising the perceived cost to would-be proliferators of approaching the nuclear threshold. Unfortunately, the cost to the US itself was so high that it taught exactly the opposite lesson: the deterrent effect of American conventional power is low, and the likelihood of preventive war actually decreases if a country manages to cross that threshold.

The logic of the Bush Doctrine and the invasion of Iraq have actually hastened Iran’s nuclear program. And the fact is that many experts have pragmatically accepted this as a fait accompli at this point and have moved along to contemplate the consequences. Jacques Chirac “inadvertantly” let the cat out of the bag a few days ago:

By sketching out a scenario of Iran armed with a nuclear bomb and staring down Israel, the French president gave the world a glimpse of the new balance of power in the Middle East that western governments may be contemplating.

While such musings are commonplace in think tanks and conferences, they have a different resonance coming from the president of France, which has joined the United States and Europe in asserting that Iran will not be allowed to develop a bomb.

“Jacques Chirac said what many experts are saying in the world, even in the United States — that a country that has the bomb doesn’t use it and applies the rationale of deterrence,” former foreign minister Hubert Vedrine commented.

Foreign policy expert Pascal Boniface agreed that Chirac “spoke as an expert and not as a head of state” at a time when the United Nations is seeking to put more pressure on Iran to give up its nuclear activities.

“In the official diplomatic discourse, these are things that are just not said,” added Boniface of the Institute of International and Strategic Studies in Paris.

In an interview this week to three publications, Chirac minimised the threat posed by a nuclear-armed Iran, saying that Tehran would have to take into the account the fact that it would be “razed to the ground” if it launched a strike on Israel.

“Having one or perhaps a second bomb a little later, well that’s not very dangerous,” Chirac said in the interview to the New York Times, the Paris-based International Herald Tribune and the French weekly Nouvel Observateur.

“Where would Iran drop this bomb? On Israel?” he asked. “It would not have gone off 200 metres into the atmosphere before Tehran would be razed to the ground,” Chirac was quoted as saying by the three publications.

Nobody wanted more nuclear armed countries and it would have beenvery positive if there had been some sort of program besides the keystone cops running willy nilly in the middle east making things worse over the past five years. But there wasn’t. Sadly, it’s too late for that and logic dictates that Iran may get nukes. It is very unfortunate that it came to this. But you also have to recognise that as unpalatable as it might be to have another nuclear armed nation in a volatile region, it doesn’t really take us much closer to the end of the world or even the end of Israel, despite all the kooky talk coming from Ahmadinejad.

Attacking Iran, however, just might. The repurcussions of such a move would cut the last frayed ties with many allies, finally destroy all of our moral authority and convince the world that we are a super-power to be contained not an international leader that can be relied upon to behave rationally. It is a disasterous strategic move on virtually all levels that only someone with a puerile “might makes right” strategic vision would even contemplate.

Normally one would think that all this sabre rattling is an attempt to get them to back down or even just to distract the country from the debacle unfolding in Iraq. But this administration is irrational and they are more closely aligned than ever with the neocon faction, which remains in some time warp circa 2002.

Fukuyama:

What I find remarkable about the neoconservative line of argument on Iran, however, is how little changed it is in its basic assumptions and tonalities from that taken on Iraq in 2002, despite the momentous events of the past five years and the manifest failure of policies that neoconservatives themselves advocated. What may change is the American public’s willingness to listen to them.

That will not happen (or will be irrelevant) if the Democratic candidates are once again publicly boosting this dangerous nonsense with bellicose statements to AIPAC as Clinton did the other day and Edwards did earlier. I understand that Israel has deep concerns about Iran, but the AIPAC people are being as myopic as the neocons and failing to see that they are in much greater danger — as is the whole world — if the US goes down this path. Democrats have got to either persuade these folks that they are wrong or they’ve got to simply walk away if they are going to be required to match this provocative Bushian sabre rattling in order to keep their support. It’s helping Bush make his case for attacking Iran and any Democrat who helps him do that is helping along an impending catastrophe.

Despite her thinly veiled support of the Bush Doctrine, the AIPAC people at the dinner at which Hillary spoke did not feel she was bellicose enough, according to the NY Post:

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton drew grumbles at a pro-Israel dinner in Times Square last night when she encouraged “engaging” with Iran before taking stronger action to keep it nuke-free.

Clinton said she wasn’t sure “anything positive would come out of it” and she didn’t know if it was “the smartest strategy to take,” but added, “There are a number of factors that I think argue for some attempt to do what I have suggested.”

She called for a better understanding of how Iran “really functions,” warning actions beyond sanctions could increase danger in the region.

“I also want to send a message, if we ever do have to take more drastic action, to the rest of the world that we exhausted all possibilities,” said Clinton, who earlier rapped President Bush for refusing to engage Tehran.

Clinton’s remarks at the Marriott Marquis were met with little applause , and after she left the stage, several people said they were put off by the presidential candidate.

“This is the wrong crowd to do that with,” said one person at the dinner, noting the pro-Israel crowd wanted to hear tougher rhetoric.

That’s the bind that Dems are in when dealing with AIPAC and I’m sympathetic. This is a strong constituency which has been very supportive in the past. But AIPAC’s position is delusional and wrong and Democrats have got to extricate themselves from this thinking and repudiate the Bush doctrine if they are going to undo this horrible tangle in the middle east. It’s going to be nearly impossible to do even if Bush doesn’t attack Iran. If he does, it’s probably impossible.

From a political standpoint, there is no margin in Democrats backing this in any way shape or form. It is not enough to leave a little out that says “we would have exhausted all possibilities.” It’s the failure to repudiate the Bush Doctrine that binds them to Bush’s actions.

I think they are foolishly counting on Bush not following through which is a shameful miscalculation if not political malpractice — you simply have to assume after observing him all these years that he will. He and Cheney are desperately unpopular and they have come to believe that their legacy will be redeemed by history, so parochial concerns about popular support or public will in their own time are irrelevant. Indeed, I think they probably believe they have to do this in order that history will clearly see how they bucked the tide of popular opinion and expert advice to remake the middle east. It’s all they have.

Democrats cannot abet this, not even rhetorically, to satisfy a powerful lobbying group that may be as mad as the neocons and the Bush administration. This time, they will not be let off the hook. Bush is out in two years and if any of them are on record talking trash about Iran at this delicate moment, they will be held accountable for what follows.

Scott Ritter says it here:

While President Bush, a Republican, remains Commander in Chief, a Democrat-controlled Congress shares responsibility on war and peace from this point on. The conflict in Iraq, although ongoing, is a product of the Republican-controlled past. The looming conflict with Iran, however, will be assessed as a product of a Democrat-controlled present and future. If Iraq destroyed the Republican Party, Iran will destroy the Democrats.

We’ll be lucky if it only destroys the Democratic party. The stakes are actually much higher for all of us than that.

Update: Uh Huh

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