This is something so bizarre it could come straight out of the most paranoid passages of a Thomas Pynchon novel:
Without their knowledge, millions of Americans and foreigners crossing U.S. borders in the past four years have been assigned scores generated by U.S. government computers rating the risk that the travelers are terrorists or criminals.
The travelers are not allowed to see or directly challenge these risk assessments, which the government intends to keep on file for 40 years.
The government calls the system critical to national security following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Some privacy advocates call it one of the most intrusive and risky schemes yet mounted in the name of anti-terrorism efforts.
Virtually every person entering and leaving the United States by air, sea or land is scored by the Homeland Security Department’s Automated Targeting System, or ATS. The scores are based on ATS’ analysis of their travel records and other data, including items such as where they are from, how they paid for tickets, their motor vehicle records, past one-way travel, seating preference and what kind of meal they ordered…
The Homeland Security Department called the program ”one of the most advanced targeting systems in the world” and said the nation’s ability to spot criminals and other security threats ”would be critically impaired without access to this data…”
Government officials could not say whether ATS has apprehended any terrorists…
The government notice says some or all of the ATS data about an individual may be shared with state, local and foreign governments for use in hiring decisions and in granting licenses, security clearances, contracts or other benefits. In some cases, the data may be shared with courts, Congress and even private contractors.
”Everybody else can see it, but you can’t,” Stephen Yale-Loehr, an immigration lawyer who teaches at Cornell Law school, said in an interview…
In a privacy impact assessment posted on its Web site this week, Homeland Security said ATS is aimed at discovering high-risk individuals who ”may not have been previously associated with a law enforcement action or otherwise be noted as a person of concern to law enforcement.”
Ahern said ATS does this by applying rules derived from the government’s knowledge of terrorists and criminals to the passenger’s travel records.
Ahern declined to disclose any of the rules…
The Homeland Security privacy impact statement added that ”an individual might not be aware of the reason additional scrutiny is taking place, nor should he or she” because that might compromise the ATS’ methods.
Nevertheless, Ahern said any traveler who objected to additional searches or interviews could ask to speak to a supervisor to complain. Homeland Security’s privacy impact statement said that if asked, border agents would hand complaining passengers a one-page document that describes some, but not all, of the records that agents check and refers complaints to Custom and Border Protection’s Customer Satisfaction Unit.
Homeland Security’s statement said travelers can use this office to obtain corrections to the underlying data sources that the risk assessment is based on, but not to the risk assessment itself. The risk assessment changes automatically if the source data changes, the statement explained.
”I don’t buy that at all,” said Jim Malmberg, executive director of American Consumer Credit Education Support Services, a private credit education group. Malmberg said it has been hard for citizens, including members of Congress and even infants, to stop being misidentified as terrorists because their names match those on anti-terrorism watch lists. He noted that while the government plans to keep the risk assessments for 40 years, it doesn’t intend to keep all the underlying data they are based on for that long.
I can’t help imagining the conversation between Keith and Mick after they heard about ATS, as to who has the higher score. I wouldn’t be surprised if it came to blows.
But seriously, folks, this is serious. For forty years – forty years! – your terrorist risk score will be kept on file, but not apparently the underlying data. And you have no right to see or “directly challenge” them. And it can be used in job assessments.
And did you notice – it’s easy to miss – that this program’s not only being used to identify existential threats to the country, but also for criminal activity. Like, say, getting arrested for wearing a “Bush=Terrorist” t-shirt at a shopping mall, perhaps.
Josh Marshall is chronicling the rapidly emerging rightwing “stab in the back” meme in which George W. Churchill was betrayed by both the American and Iraqi people. Big surprise. It’s an interesting series of posts and I urge you to read them all. Here’s an excerpt from one:
Stanley Kurtz’s excuse: “The underlying problem with this war is that, from the outset, it has been waged under severe domestic political constraints. From the start, the administration has made an assessment of how large a military the public would support, and how much time the public would allow us to build democracy and then get out of Iraq. We then shaped our military and “nation building” plans around those political constraints, crafting a “light footprint” military strategy linked to rapid elections and a quick handover of power. Unfortunately, the constraints of domestic American public opinion do not match up to what is actually needed to bring stability and democracy to a country like Iraq.”
It may be a form of literary grade or concept inflation to call it irony. But the irony of this ludicrous statement is that from the outset it has been the American political opposition (the Democrats) and the internal bureaucratic opposition (sane people in the US government and military, not appointed by George W. Bush) who’ve pushed for a much larger military footprint in Iraq and much more real nation-building. These weren’t ‘domesic political constraints’. These were ideological constraints the adminstration placed on itself.
That’s true enough for those who thought the war was even feasible from the get — and there were plenty of us who didn’t think so, which Josh acknowledges. But to the extent Democrats supported the war they certainly believed that Bush should have gotten UN backing, created a large coalition, put more boots on the ground and hired smart people who knew something about nation building, none of which he did.
I had actually assumed during the run-up that Bush thought he could get a large international coalition to join him simply because he was the president of the United States and when he told countries to join us, he meant it — and they would be so impressed with his mighty codpiece and magnificent “gut” they would do as they were told. I had long believed that it was when that failed that the large scale occupation force was no longer possible. That turned out to be wrong. Bush never gave a damn about a coalition, he wanted to use Rummy’s light force and he thought that democracy would magically happen because people everywhere just wanna be free. He has been revealed to be even more of an idiot than we previously thought.
But if the current stab-in-the-back argument is that the American people should have supported the war more, perhaps the people who are making that argument should go back and look at what the American people actually thought at the time we went in. It’s not something that couldn’t have been anticipated. A majority backed the war if the US could get an international coalition together. Throughout the run-up polls said over and over again that Americans expected Bush to get UN backing. He did not feel he needed to do that, he lied repeatedly, invaded anyway and once the invasion began most Americans rallied because they felt they had no choice. They hung in longer than they had any reason to.
So Kurtz is essentially right. The public had never fully approved of the war in the first place. But I don’t know why this translates to some sort of failure on the part of the public. It’s Bush’s fault for going ahead anyway and then making the whole mid-east FUBAR. His job — and the job of his followers — was to get the public on-board. They didn’t make an honest case and now they have to deal with the consequences.
I’m sorry that these starry-eyed neocons who looked at George Bush and saw a genius are disappointed that the rest of the country didn’t support their vision. They were given more of a chance to prove themselves than dreamers and fools usually are — and they failed on a grand scale. This is what the Bushites deserve and what they should expect for ram-rodding through a war without real public support and then screwing it up royally. The families of all these dead and wounded soldiers, unfortunately, didn’t deserve this and neither did the poor Iraqis who didn’t know they were going to be guinea pigs in a 7th grade neocon thought experiment based on cartoons and psycho-babble.
Blaming the American people is an excellent political strategy, however, and I hope these conservatives keep it up. There’s nothing that betrayed voters like more than to be called stupid, cowardly and traitorous. (I know I’ve been enjoying it for the last couple of decades.) I’m sure all those independents and moderates who now see through Bush and the Republicans are going to love it too. It really clarifies your thinking.
This isn’t the 1970’s. They aren’t going to get away with blaming the cowardly public this time. There are no hippies to hate —- just millions of average, taxpaying, middle class Americans who know damned well when they’ve been lied to. And if they don’t, there are many of us out here who will remind them.
It really does seem as though the cardinals of DC punditry are constitutionally incapable of believing that George W. Bush has ever — in the real sense — gotten anything wrong or that they, the Washington establishment, has gotten anything wrong over the last six years.
I don’t like to use such words but I can only think to call the denial and buck-passing sickening. I can’t think of another word that captures the gut reaction…
…Let’s first take note that the ‘blame the American people for Bush’s screw-ups’ meme has definitely hit the big time. It’s not Bush who bit off more than he could chew or did something incredibly stupid or screwed things up in a way that defies all imagining [assert the DC punditocracy]. Bush’s ‘error’ here is not realizing in advance that the American people would betray him as he was marching into history. The ‘tragedy’ is that Bush “bit off more than the American people were willing to chew.” That just takes my breath away…
…This is noxious, risible, fetid thinking. But there it is. That’s the story they want to tell. The whole place is rotten down to the very core.
Indeed it is. And many us found DC conventional wisdom sickeningly corrupt long before nearly 3,000 American troops died and countless tens if not hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died. Had Josh truly comprehended, say, what Somerby’s been writing for years and years and years, it wouldn’t have taken Josh 1/10th so long to join us reality-based freaks. Still, welcome to the club.
Jesus H Christ. I’m watching some “Democratic strategist” named Rich Masters agree with Joe Scarborough that Jim Webb had made a rookie mistake by failing to kiss George W. Bush’s ass when the jerk got snippy with him. Scarborough and whichever GOPbot they have on there agrees that it really reflects badly on the democratic party as a whole and Webb should apologise.
When these Democrats go on TV and fail to correct the record they turn these ridiculous manufactured flaps into news stories for the benefit of of the kewl kidz and the Republicans alike. I don’t know what it will take to get them to stop doing it. They are making Jim Webb into one of the “crazy” guys like they made Gore and they made Dean. Don’t they get that whenever a Democrats stands up to a republicans the establishment turns around and says they are nuts. Why are they helping them?
But there is more to this story than meets the eye. George Will got the vapors and called for the smelling salts this morning over Webb’s allegedly boorish behavior, which is what’s fueling the story today. But Will completely misrepresented what was said. George W. Bush acted like a prick, not Webb.
Wednesday’s Post reported that at a White House reception for newly elected members of Congress, Webb “tried to avoid President Bush,” refusing to pass through the reception line or have his picture taken with the president. When Bush asked Webb, whose son is a Marine in Iraq, “How’s your boy?” Webb replied, “I’d like to get them [sic] out of Iraq.” When the president again asked “How’s your boy?” Webb replied, “That’s between me and my boy.”
Will says the episode demonstrates Webb’s “calculated rudeness toward another human being” — i.e., the President — who “asked a civil and caring question, as one parent to another.”
But do you notice something missing from Will’s recounting of the episode?
Here’s how the Washingon Post actually reported on the episode the day before Will’s column:
At a recent White House reception for freshman members of Congress, Virginia’s newest senator tried to avoid President Bush. Democrat James Webb declined to stand in a presidential receiving line or to have his picture taken with the man he had often criticized on the stump this fall. But it wasn’t long before Bush found him.
“How’s your boy?” Bush asked, referring to Webb’s son, a Marine serving in Iraq.
“I’d like to get them out of Iraq, Mr. President,” Webb responded, echoing a campaign theme.
“That’s not what I asked you,” Bush said. “How’s your boy?”
“That’s between me and my boy, Mr. President,” Webb said coldly, ending the conversation on the State Floor of the East Wing of the White House.
See what happened? Will omitted the pissy retort from the President that provoked Webb. Will cut out the line from the President where he said: “That’s not what I asked you.” In Will’s recounting, that instead became a sign of Bush’s parental solicitiousness: “The president again asked `How’s your boy?'”
Will’s change completely alters the tenor of the conversation from one in which Bush was rude first to Webb, which is what the Post’s original account suggested, to one in which Webb was inexplicably rude to the President, which is how Will wanted to represent what happened.
It’s virtually impossible to see how that could have been the result of mere incompetence on Will’s part. Rather, it’s very clear that Will cut the line because it was an inconvenient impediment to his journalistic goal, which was to portray Webb as a “boor” who was rude to the Commander in Chief, and to show that this new upstart is a threat to Washington’s alleged code of “civility and clear speaking” (his words). On that score, also note that in the original version, Webb said “Mr. President” twice — and neither appeared in Will’s version.
George Will is a liar, pure and simple. But, for some reason (I have my suspicions) certain Democrats are also blaming Webb. The flap really got started with some unnamed Democratic staffer idiot who said yesterday “I think Webb is going to be a total pain. He’s going to do things his own way.” (I wonder if his initials are Marshall Wittman?) That was what got the storyline rolling.
But it wasn’t seen as a Webb gaffe originally. Yesterday, CNN had characterized the exchange entirely differently:
SCHNEIDER (voice-over): Jim Webb became a Democrat and ran for the Senate for one big reason, Iraq.
JIM WEBB (D), VIRGINIA SENATOR-ELECT: I was an early voice warning against the implications of invading and occupying Iraq.
SCHNEIDER: Webb has special credibility on Iraq. He was a military officer who served in Vietnam, a former secretary of the Navy under President Reagan, and he has a son serving in Iraq.
(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)
SCHNEIDER: He wore his son’s old combat boots during the campaign.
WEBB: I have tremendous admiration for my son and for everyone else who is serving there that they need to be led properly.
SCHNEIDER: Webb took on President Bush directly.
WEBB: But the keyword is leadership, which has been a scarce commodity among this administration and its followers.
SCHNEIDER: President Bush saw Webb at a White House reception for new members of Congress this month. Webb had this exchange with the president which he confirmed to “The Washington Post.”
How’s your boy, Bush asked? I’d like to get them out of Iraq, Mr. President, Webb replied. That’s not what I asked you, Bush said. How’s your boy? That’s between me and my boy, Mr. President, Webb said.
The White House incident is costing a lot of tut-tutting in Washington. A Democratic Senate staffer told “The Post”, I think Webb is going to be a total pain. He’s going to do things his own way — shock, horror. Webb reassures his colleagues…
WEBB: I’ve spent four years as a committee counsel in the Congress. I know how the process works.
SCHNEIDER: Webb’s confrontation is a striking contrast to the pictures of Democrats meeting with President Bush and pledging cooperation and bipartisanship. It’s also not the way things usually get done in Washington, but it is what a lot of people voted for.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
SCHNEIDER: Webb did not run as a typical politician. And it doesn’t look like he’s about to change now that he’s gotten elected — Wolf.
I can’t help but wonder why Democratic spokespeople are out there today portraying this as a “mistake” when Schneider had seen it as a sign of Democratic spine just yesterday afternoon. Unless they are literally taking their marching orders from the lying George Will, this seems to me to be a public spanking from the establishment of both parties.
The fact is that George W. Bush acted like an ass when a US marine, war hero, father and US Senator said that he’d like to see his son brought home from Iraq. We’ve all seen how he acts when he gets snippy. In fact, it’s legendary. Here’s one of my favorites:
The American people must understand when I said that we need to be patient, that I meant it. And we’re going to be there for a while. I don’t know the exact moment when we leave, David, but it’s not until the mission is complete. The world must know that this administration will not blink in the face of danger and will not tire when it comes to completing the missions that we said we would do. The world will learn that when the United States is harmed, we will follow through. The world will see that when we put a coalition together that says “Join us,” I mean it. And when I ask others to participate, I mean it.
A lesson for correspondents covering Mr. Bush: When abroad, stick to English in the president’s presence.
Offenders might otherwise find themselves in the situation David Gregory, an NBC News White House correspondent, who appeared to raise Mr. Bush’s ire Sunday afternoon at Élysée Palace when he asked a rather in-your-face question to a tired president, then broke into French to seek Mr. Chirac’s opinion.
Perhaps Mr. Bush thought the French question was directed at him, or perhaps he thought Mr. Gregory was showing off. Whatever the case, Mr. Bush, his voice dripping with sarcasm, said “Very good, the guy memorizes four words, and he plays like he’s intercontinental.” (Mr. Gregory offered to go on in French, but that only made things worse.)
“I’m impressed ?que bueno,” said Mr. Bush, using the Spanish phrase for “how wonderful.” He added: “Now I’m literate in two languages.”
It’s a standing joke among the president’s top aides: who gets to deliver the bad news? Warm and hearty in public, Bush can be cold and snappish in private, and aides sometimes cringe before the displeasure of the president of the United States.
Webb replied to him in a serious fashion and Bush snapped at him. It’s what he does. He doesn’t like being challenged and he rarely is. Look what he said about Karl Rove on the day after the election: “I obviously was working harder in the campaign than he was.” Sure it was a joke, but it was a nasty thing to say — especially to his longtime political partner — whom he calls “turdblossom.”
The man is a rude prick. Webb doesn’t seem inclined to put up with rude pricks, even when they are president of the United States. And somebody in the Democratic party apparently doesn’t like that. Now why is that?
Update: One of the Webb-sites writes that he has heard the exchange was even worse than reported. Webb’s kid came under heavy fire a couple of weeks ago and three of his comrades died. Bush is said to have approached him with a snotty tone, like “nice boy you have there — be a shame if anything happened to him” sort of thing. I have no way of knowing if this is true. But it is, at least, believable. Bush has a very nasty sense of humor and there’s no doubt he could say something in that tone with crude intent. This is the guy who mocked Karla Faye Tucker begging for her life. He doesn’t have a lot of limits.
[UPDATE: The tall man in comments wrote, in response to this post: “Please provide one instance of contemporary American Christians being this bloody, you delusional moron.” He would be, of course, entitled to his opinion of my mental state, had he only read what I wrote. But he didn’t.
I wrote that christianists, NOT Christians, CAN get this bloody. Some recent examples, mentioned in comments are, of course, Eric Rudolph and Timothy McVeigh. David Neiwert also has an example of some christianist terrorists caught a few years ago with an enormous arsenal, apparently within weeks of deployment. This is not to mention those christianists, eg the Phelps family and Christian Reconstruction followers of Rushdoony who are perfectly prepared to execute men who have consensual sex relations with other men (ditto women), and others.
And that’s for starters.
These people are an insult to genuine Christians. That is why I insist upon distinguishing between political activists and extremists who exploit the symbols of Christianity and Christianity itself.]
To those who thought the Taliban was gone, driven out by the “successful” US invasion of Afghanistan, think again. This is also an object lesson in what happens when political extremists use religious texts to drive their will to power. This is why America’s christianists who, Rushdoony teaches us, can get just as bloody, must be fought:
The gunmen came at night to drag Mohammed Halim away from his home, in front of his crying children and his wife begging for mercy.
The 46-year-old schoolteacher tried to reassure his family that he would return safely. But his life was over, he was part-disembowelled and then torn apart with his arms and legs tied to motorbikes, the remains put on display as a warning to others against defying Taliban orders to stop educating girls.
Mr Halim was one of four teachers killed in rapid succession by the Islamists at Ghazni, a strategic point on the routes from Kabul to the south and east which has become the scene of fierce clashes between the Taliban and US and Afghan forces.
Last week tristero approvingly linked to this exceptional essay in the NY Review of Books by Mark Danner in which he synthesizes certain aspects of recent books on the Bush administration and tells a very straighforward tale of what went wrong with the Iraq war.
Now, I have long agreed with the thesis that the chances of success were nil no matter how well the “plan” (whatever it was) was carried out. And I am fully prepared to wade through the many comments that will inevitably come stating that this is all part of a grand plan for oil or permanent bases or world domination or whatever, which will all be true to some extent or another. But as word finally begins to trickle out from this previously leak-proof administration, it’s becoming clear that John DiUlio’s early observations of the Mayberry Machiavellis was spot on. There was no “plan.” There was just wishin’ and hopin’ and competing visions and magical thinking. It was as bad as any of us imagined in our craziest blog posts.
This was an unusually incompetent group at everything but domestic electoral politics (and it turns out that they weren’t even all that good at that.) They may have had big plans and big ambitions, but they never had even the first clue about how to implement them. And they were led by a man of such shallow character and dim intellect that they could not learn.
This all proves that it really matters who the president is. It matters a lot. We will be electing a new administration in less than two years and it’s important to try to learn from this, beyond ideology, beyond partisanship. The Bush administration debacle is not, after all, confined to Iraq. There was Katrina as well, along with untold numbers of domestic, economic and foreign policy crises that have been put into motion and haven’t yet come to fruition. The malfeasance wasn’t confined to Don Rumsfeld or Doug Feith.
Here’s a rather long excerpt from Danner’s piece that I think begins to explain just how important the choice of president is, no matter how many “grown-ups” you surround him with. (I urge you to read the wholething however for the full flavor of the dysfunction and ineptitude of the Bush White House) :
Rumsfeld’s war envisioned rapid victory and rapid departure. Wolfowitz and the other Pentagon neoconservatives, on the other hand, imagined a “democratic transformation,” a thoroughgoing social revolution that would take a Baathist Party–run autocracy, complete with a Baathist-led army and vast domestic spying and security services, and transform it into a functioning democratic polity—without the participation of former Baathist officials.
How to resolve this contradiction? The answer, for the Pentagon, seems to have amounted to one word: Chalabi. “When it came to Iraq,” James Risen writes in State of War,
the Pentagon believed it had the silver bullet it needed to avoid messy nation building—a provisional government in exile, built around Chalabi, could be established and then brought in to Baghdad after the invasion.
This so-called “turnkey operation” seems to have appeared to be the perfect compromise plan: Chalabi was Shiite, as were most Iraqis, but he was also a secularist who had lived in the West for nearly fifty years and was close to many of the Pentagon civilians. Alas, there was one problem: the confirmed idealist in the White House “was adamant that the United States not be seen as putting its thumb on the scales” of the nascent Iraqi democracy. Chalabi, for all his immense popularity in the Pentagon and in the Vice President’s office, would not be installed as president of Iraq.
Though “Bush’s commitment to democracy was laudable,” as Risen observes, his awkward intervention “was not really the answer to the question of postwar planning.” He goes on:
Once Bush quashed the Pentagon’s plans, the administration failed to develop any acceptable alternative…. Instead, once the Pentagon realized the president wasn’t going to let them install Chalabi, the Pentagon leadership did virtually nothing. After Chalabi, there was no Plan B.
An unnamed White House official describes to Risen the Laurel-and-Hardy consequences within the government of the President’s attachment to the idea of democratic elections in Iraq:
Part of the reason the planning for post-Saddam Iraq was so nonexistent was that the State Department had been saying if you invade, you have to plan for the postwar. And DOD said, no you don’t. You can set up a provisional government in exile around Chalabi. DOD had a stupid plan, but they had a plan. But if you don’t do that plan, and you don’t make the Pentagon work with State to develop something else, then you go to war with no plan.
Woodward tends to blame “the broken policy process” on the relative strength of personalities gathered around the cabinet table: the power and ruthlessness of Rumsfeld, the legendary “bureaucratic infighter”; the weakness of Rice, the very function and purpose of whose job, to let the President both benefit from and control the bureaucracy, was in effect eviscerated. Suskind, more convincingly, argues that Bush and Cheney constructed precisely the government they wanted: centralized, highly secretive, its clean, direct lines of decision unencumbered by information or consultation. “There was never any policy process to break, by Condi or anyone else,” Richard Armitage, the former deputy secretary of state, remarks to Suskind. “There was never one from the start. Bush didn’t want one, for whatever reason.” Suskind suggests why in an acute analysis of personality and leadership:
Of the many reasons the President moved in this direction, the most telling may stem from George Bush’s belief in his own certainty and, especially after 9/11, his need to protect the capacity to will such certainty in the face of daunting complexity. His view of right and wrong, and of righteous actions— such as attacking evil or spreading “God’s gift” of democracy—were undercut by the kind of traditional, shades-of-gray analysis that has been a staple of most presidents’ diets. This President’s traditional day began with Bible reading at dawn, a workout, breakfast, and the briefings of foreign and domestic threats…. The hard, complex analysis, in this model, would often be a thin offering, passed through the filters of Cheney or Rice, or not presented at all.
…This granted certain unique advantages to Bush. With fewer people privy to actual decisions, tighter confidentiality could be preserved, reducing leaks. Swift decisions—either preempting detailed deliberation or ignoring it—could move immediately to implementation, speeding the pace of execution and emphasizing the hows rather than the more complex whys.
What Bush knew before, or during, a key decision remained largely a mystery. Only a tiny group—Cheney, Rice, Card, Rove, Tenet, Rumsfeld—could break this seal.
This says it all. Bush had been this way when he was governor of Texas. We knew, for instance, that he’d had his aides read him short abstracts of death penalty reports rather than reading them himself — and he never questioned their assumptions. The man had not ever been truly interested in the job of governance, nor did he take it particularly seriously.
Still, one would have thought that when it came to running the most powerful nation in the world he would have grown in the job. He didn’t. He and Cheney created a small,insular circle of incompetent advisors that fed his ego and his tiny mind. What wasn’t clear until now is how well they controlled him. It turns out — not so much.An amazing amount of power resides in the person of the president, regardless of how dim or ill informed he is, and as that anecdote shows, when the president speaks, even if he has no idea of the consequences of his decision, people obey.
His romantic and childlike belief in the magical “democracy” that was created for public consumption by the greeting card poets on the rightwing welfare rolls led him to make a fateful decision that was both right and wrong at the same time. But he made it and there was no other plan and neither he nor anyone else seemed to think that was a problem. The tinker bell strategy in full effect.
Danner continues:
Suskind describes how many of those in the “foreign policy establishment” found themselves “befuddled” by the way the traditional policy process was viewed not only as unproductive but “perilous.” Information, that is, could slow decision-making; indeed, when it had to do with a bold and risky venture like the Iraq war, information and discussion—an airing, say, of the precise obstacles facing a “democratic transition” conducted with a handful of troops—could paralyze it. If the sober consideration of history and facts stood in the way of bold action then it would be the history and the facts that would be discarded. The risk of doing nothing, the risk, that is, of the status quo, justified acting. Given the grim facts on the ground—the likelihood of a future terrorist attack from the “malignant” Middle East, the impossibility of entirely protecting the country from it—better to embrace the unknown. Better, that is, to act in the cause of “constructive instability”—a wonderfully evocative phrase, which, as Suskind writes, was
the term used by various senior officials in regard to Iraq—a term with roots in pre-9/11 ideas among neoconservatives about the need for a new, muscular, unbounded American posture; and outgrowths that swiftly took shape after the attacks made everything prior to 9/11 easily relegated to dusty history.
The past—along with old-style deliberations based on cause and effect or on agreed-upon precedents—didn’t much matter; nor did those with knowledge and prevailing policy studies, of agreements between nations, or of long-standing arrangements defining the global landscape.
What mattered, by default, was the President’s “instinct” to guide America across the fresh, post-9/11 terrain—a style of leadership that could be rendered within tiny, confidential circles.
America, unbound, was duly led by a President, unbound.
I blame the media for this. After 9/11 they lost their minds and became unthinking hagiographers and adminstration cheerleaders to an absurd extent. The man’s halting, incoherent first press conference after 9/11 scared me more than the attacks and yet the press corps behaved as if they were in the presence of a God whose stuttering, meandering gibberish were words uttered from on high. He was called a genius and compared to Winston Churchill. Paeans to his greatness were turned into best sellers. His “gut” was infallible. It was patently obvious that he was in over his head and yet this bizarre, almost hallucinogenic image of the man emerged in the media that actually made me question my sanity at times. It took years for this trance to wear off with a majority of the public and even longer in the media. It was one of the strangest phenomenons I’ve ever observed.
Until recently, however, I was never quite sure if Bush himself believed it. It appears that he did. Big time. And that belief in his own hype created a completely dysfunctional organization. I suspect that what started out as a shield by Cheney and Rove to narrow the influences upon him may have morphed into a bubble designed to keep him from completely spinning out of control. But it couldn’t keep him from making decisions, and make them he did, without thought or analysis or knowledge. His belief in his “gut” and God’s anointment has been leading this nation since 9/11. Combined with Cheney’s megalomaniacal belief in untrammelled executive power it has been a disaster.(In fact, Cheney could not have chosen a better subject to more thoroughly discredit his theory than Junior.)
I understand that it is difficult to know in advance what constitutes a real leader. A resume isn’t enough to make one (although it’s certainly better than not having one at all) and depending on personality or symbols isn’t enough either. I don’t know what the magic formula is. I do know that when someone speaks like a fool and acts like a spoiled child and appears to be “intellectually uncurious” and has never done anything in life that would give you a clue that he knows how to govern or lead — well, it’s not a good idea to make that person the most powerful person on the planet. If we’ve learned nothing else, I hope we have learned that.
The president matters. But whether or not we want to have a beer with him or whether or not we approve of his private life is not what matters about him or her. These are false hueristics and they don’t add up to leadership any more than years of political experience translates into great political skills. Citizens need to think a little bit harder about this choice, look a little deeper, ask some serious questions. Part of the job is certainly PR and a president does have to be the star of the national TV show for four years. But it’s a lot more than that and Americans need to rediscover a healthy sense of the requirements of this particular job.
Most importantly, the people who work in politics and the media need to take this more seriously. Presidential politics isn’t American Idol, it’s a contest for the leadership of the United States of America and putting together an “electable” package cannot be the only focus. And it goes without saying that this kewl kidz and mean girls nonsense from the press has to stop. The past six years have been a tragedy and we desperately need some thoughtful, intelligent, competent leadership to set this right.
I agreed to participate in an academic survey of political blogs. The people doing it are interested also in hearing from blog readers so if you are interested in participating, you can go to this link and take the survey. If they ask, choose tristero, as Hullabaloo is not listed.
At a private reception held at the White House with newly elected lawmakers shortly after the election, Bush asked Webb how his son, a Marine lance corporal serving in Iraq, was doing.
Webb responded that he really wanted to see his son brought back home, said a person who heard about the exchange from Webb.
“I didn’t ask you that, I asked how he’s doing,” Bush retorted, according to the source.
I’ve omitted Webb’s response, which you are more than welcome to read about at the link, because I want to focus entirely on the unspeakable callousness Bush displayed here.
Folks, political enemy or friend, that is no way – ever– for anyone to talk to the father of a kid who’s in a combat zone.
This is the same man who reminisced about his hell-raisin’ during a speech at the worst natural disaster in American history. This is the same man who, when, asked to name his greatest achievement while president, “joked” that it was when he caught a large fish in his fake pond on his Crawford estate – sorry, ranch. This is the same man who, when informed that a second plane had hit the World Trade Center in less than 10 minutes, sat reading “My Pet Goat” in a children’s classroom. This is the same man who, in front of a supporter who he assumed wouldn’t report it, mockingly imitated a woman about to be executed in his state.
NEWSWEEK:Your grandfather was Muslim, but you are a Christian. What did you think of the pope’s original comments about Islam and how the reaction played out?
Barack Obama: Well, I think that we live in a time where there are enormous religious sensitivities, and I have no doubt that the pope did not intend to offend the Muslim faith any more than many of us sometimes say things in a different context that aren’t intended to cause offense. But I think all of us, particularly religious leaders, have to be mindful that there are a lot of sensitivities out there. Now, the flip side is that there are those in the Muslim community who are looking to take offense and are constantly on the lookout for anything that would indicate that the West is somehow antagonistic toward Islam. Did he say anything that he needed to apologize for?
You know, I leave it up to the pope. He made an apology and I wouldn’t challenge his judgment on it. Did you read what he said?
I read what he said. And, as I said, I think he is mindful that he did not want to cause offense or pain, and to the extent that he did, I think he felt it necessary to apologize. My point, I guess is that all sides in the current environment have to be very careful how we talk about faith. I gave a speech recently in which I said that Democrats, for example, should not be afraid to talk about faith. But I think we’ve got to do so in a way that admits the possibility that we are not always right, that our particular faith may not have all the monopoly on truth, and we’ve got to be able to listen to other people. You know I think one of the trends we are seeing right now, and which I think is causing so much political grief both domestically and internationally, is that absolutism has become sort of the flavor of the day.
And lukewarm water will dilute it, I guess. He’s completely right that Democrats need to get with the program and recognise that we don’t have a monopoly on truth. All this absolutism has got to stop. It’s a big problem for us:
Barack Obama’s efforts to reach out to evanglical Christians in preparation for his possible Presidential campaign is running into very stiff resistance from the Christian right. As the Chicago Tribune reported recently, Obama is set to attend a huge evangelical gathering in California on Dec. 1, at the invitation of megachurch Pastor Rick Warren, the evangelical superstar who wrote The Purpose-Driven Life. Analysts have interpreted Obama’s scheduled appearance as a sign he’s working much harder than Dems ordinarily do to win over Evangelicals.
But the appearance is now provoking an intense backlash from leaders of the Christian right. They are calling on Warren to disinvite Obama from the event because of his liberal positions, especially abortion rights — or as one of those leaders put it, Obama’s support of “the murder of babies in the womb.”
Obama’s efforts are running into fierce resistance. For instance, an open letter from a group of Christian-Right figures — including Phylis Schlafly, Tim Wildmon and others — criticizes the invitiation by citing Obama’s pro-choice stance and his support for condom distribution in answer to the AIDS epidemic, “not chaste behavior as directed by the Bible.”
Then there’s this press release from the National Clergy Council, an umbrella group representing various conservative denominations. In the release, Rob Schenck, president of the group, did not mince words: “Senator Obama’s policies represent the antithesis of biblical ethics and morality, not to mention supreme American values.”
Obama’s attempted inroads with evangelical voters may end up being successful, but not without a significant struggle from leading figures in that movement.
Not a problem. Democrats just need to stop being so absolutist about abortion, birth control, free speech, civil rights and religious freedom and then everyone will be Democrats. (Except liberals, but who wants to be in the same party with those losers anyway?)
Let me be clear about this. I do not dislike Obama nor do I think his conciliatory tone is necessarily incorrect. There is utility in showing the religious right’s fundamental intolerance if nothing else. I do find his split-the-difference, triangulation tiresome, however, in the same way I find the news media’s he said/she said analysis lazy. It does not clarify anything, it obscures reality and it makes it difficult for Democrats to take a stand on the social justice issues that might just inspire some people of faith. You will notice that in his statement above about absolutism he only calls out two groups by name — Democrats and Muslims. Yet, there is no more intolerant group of people in this entire country than the religious right. By failing to “include” them by name in his call for conciliation he validates their phony argument that they are the victims of intolerance.
I don’t have any sense that he really understand what he’s up against with the right, but it looks as though he’s going to find out. I will be very impressed if he goes into the belly of the beast at Warren’s church and resists the temptation to trash secular liberals to make cheap points before a hostile crowd. I’ll be even more impressed if he takes it as an opportunity to challenge their assumptions about themselves.
Show us the money, Obama. Psycho-babble platitudes about “listening” are not going to carry you to the White House. Start talking.
After reading all about Arlen Specter and the Military Commisions Act, which revokes habeas corpus and permits evidence obtained by torture to be admissible if the military, without oversight, says it doesn’t violate Geneva, I was truly hoping the article would end with an exciting statement from the Dems that they would make reversing this montrosity a major priority. Hah!
Leahy, the incoming chairman of the Judiciary Committee, voted against the Military Commissions Act and denounced its habeas provisions in especially harsh terms. But there are no signs that the new Democratic majority will take on habeas corpus anytime soon. Few Democratic politicians seem enthusiastic about proposing legislation that will principally benefit accused Al Qaeda terrorists, and, in the unlikely event that Democrats passed such a bill, it would face a certain veto from President Bush. The Supreme Court – not Congress – is likely to be the only hope for a change in the law.”This is definitely not going to be the first thing out of the box for us,” one Democratic Senate staffer said. “We make fun of Specter, but we’re basically leaving it up to the Courts, too.”
“Principally benefit accused Al Qaeda terrorists?” Exactly what are they accused of doing? Oh, sorry, that’s right, I have no business asking that question, do I? And by the way, why do I want to know? Better turn myself in now…
This is a time bomb, ladies, gentlemen, and Republicans.
