Former president Jimmy Carter’s new book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid has, according to Democracy Now, been completely ignored by the print media:
… the nation’s newspapers have largely ignored Jimmy Carter’s book since its publication two weeks ago. The book hasn’t even been mentioned in the news pages of the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Boston Globe or Los Angeles Times.
But, interestingly, the points raised in his book about the apartheid in Palestine are debated elsewhere, even in Israel. Carter points out on Hardball:
… the people in this country, in America, never know about this [apartheid], they never discuss this, there‘s no debate about it, there‘s no criticism of Israel in this country. And in Israel, there is an intense debate about the issues in this book. In this country, no.
He reiterates this point in the Democracy Now Q & A:
So the book is deliberately — I wouldn’t say controversial, but it’s deliberately designed to be provocative, because, as I said earlier, in Israel and in Europe, these kind of issues are debated every day, in a most vehement way, particularly in Israel. Pros and cons, arguing back and forth, in the news media, television, radio, the major newspapers. Never, in this country, do you hear any of these issues proposed publicly by an elected member of the House or the Senate or in the White House or NBC or ABC or CBS, New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times. Never. And I think it’s time for Americans to start looking at the facts about the Mid-East situation. And only then, and based on the knowledge of the facts, will we ever have a chance to move forward and consummate a peace agreement that would give Israel what they need and what they deserve — permanent peace, recognized by their neighbors and all Arab countries and the rest of the world — and the Palestinians to have their human rights, their land and a chance to have their own state, side by side, living in peace with their Israeli neighbors.
On the Hardball segment last Tuesday, Carter deconstructed the book’s title along with its purpose, which in part is to stimulate the debate:
Let‘s look at the entire title, if you don‘t mind. The first word is Palestine, which involves the land that belongs to the Palestinians, not the Israelis. I didn‘t refer to Israel, because there‘s no semblance of anything relating to apartheid within the nation of Israel.
And I also emphasized the word ‘not‘ — that is, peace, and not apartheid. That is what I hope to accomplish with this book, is sort of move to that goal. But there‘s no doubt that within the Occupied Territories—Palestinian land—that there is a horrendous example of apartheid. The occupation of Palestinian land, the confiscation of that land that doesn‘t belong to Israel, the building of settlements on it, the colonization of that land, and then the connection of those isolated but multiple settlements—more than 200 of them—with each other by highways, on which Palestinians can‘t travel and quite often where Palestinians cannot even cross.
So the persecution of the Palestinians now, under the occupying territories—under the occupation forces—is one of the worst examples of human rights deprivation that I know. … What is being done to the Palestinians now is horrendous in their own territory, by the occupying powers, which is Israel.
They‘re taken away all the basic human rights of the Palestinians, as was done in South Africa against the blacks. And I make it very plain in this book that the apartheid is not based on racism, as it was in South Africa. But it‘s based on the desire, of a minority of Israelis to acquire land that belongs to the Palestinians and to retain that land, and then to exclude the Palestinians from their own property and subjugate them, so that they can‘t arise and demonstrate their disapproval of being robbed of their own property. That‘s what‘s happening in the West Bank.
The transcript at Democracy Now covers most of what you get from the one at Hardball, but also goes beyond it with more information and assertions, and mentions three possible options for Israel. I would recommend that it be read first before delving into a debate here. Also, it’s worth reiterating that Carter is not ascribing racist underpinnings to this case of apartheid, and its use is only in reference to what is happening inside Palestine, not within Israel. In Israel, he acknowledges that Palestinians have full voting rights and are not separated out (by the State) from other Israeli citizens.
Greenwald skewers Friedman, easy pickings as those of us who have been appalled by his writings for years know. But Greenwald truly advances the dubious discipline of Tom Friedman Studies: The poor guy went back and reviewed Friedman’s pre-war columns and noticed among the scrambled metaphors, stupid aphorisms, basic grammatical mistakes, and bad analogies an incredibly dishonest pattern. I’ll leave it to you to go to Glenn’s site and read that part; it is well worth your while. What especially interested me was later on in the post, as it is apropos of our own discussions here:
It is not merely the case that having been pro-war doesn’t count as a strike against anyone. That is accurate. But far worse, the opposite is also true. It is still the case in Establishment Washington that having been pro-war in the first place is a pre-requisite to being considered a ‘responsible, serious’ foreign policy analyst. And having been anti-war from the start is the hallmark of someone unserious. The pro-war Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden are serious national security Democrats but Russ Feingold, Nancy Pelosi and Jack Murtha are the kind of laughable losers whom Democrats need to repudiate.Establishment Washington really is not interested in how to end this horrendous and despicable debacle we unleashed in Iraq. They are not interested in how to maximize U.S. interests. They are only interested in how to find a way to bring this disaster to some sort of slow resolution that looks as though it is a respectable and decent outcome — anything that makes it seem like it wasn’t a horrendous mistake in the first place.
That is exactly right. And it is outrageous. Why? Because it means that Bush/Iraq will be repeated real soon now somewhere else, by people who think the only problem was that Bush didn’t know how to do war right.
It seems that the Bush family has a habit of getting bent out of shape when new Senators don’t properly kiss their asses:
At his first White House reception with Bush Sr., Wellstone wasted no time in buttonholing the president about his progressive priorities. When Wellstone finally let him be, President Bush was heard asking an advisor, “Who is this chicken shit?”
I suppose before one becomes a Senator one might think that one has the right to speak seriously to the president about important issues when one is in his presence. Equal branch of government and all that rot. Apparently, that’s simply not done. At least it’s not done if the President is named Bush.
Perhaps the key to solving this particular problem is to not have any more presidents named Bush. Ever.
Since Hullabaloo seems to be obsessed with Josh Marshall’s posts of yesterday, I will continue with this observation from one of our readers on the subject of Stanley Kurtz’s offensive proposition that poor little Bushie was unduly constrained by the cowardly American public from doingwhatneededtobedone:
The other side of this stupidity is that Bush is under no real constraint to care what the American on the street thinks of his war, and in fact has not really given any indication of doing so.
PRESIDENT BUSH: …Look, people didn’t agree with my decision on Iraq, and I understand that. For Europe, September the 11th was a moment; for us, it was a change of thinking. I vowed to the American people I would do everything to defend our people, and will. I fully understood that the longer we got away from September the 11th, more people would forget the lessons of September the 11th. But I’m not going to forget them. And, therefore, I will be steadfast and diligent and strong in defending our country.
I don’t govern by polls, you know. I just do what I think is right. And I understand some of the decisions I made are controversial. But I made them in the best interest of our country, and I think in the best interest of the world. I believe when you look back at this moment, people will say, it was right to encourage democracy in the Middle East. I understand some people think that it can’t work. I believe in the universality of freedom; some don’t. I’m going to act on my beliefs so long as I’m the President of the United States. Some people say, it’s okay to condemn people for — to tyranny. I don’t believe it’s okay to condemn people to tyranny, particularly those of us who live in the free societies.
Bush really believes he’s some sort of Jesus-like figure and he’s made his disasterous decisions without any regard to the desires of the public.He has made a fetish of it. He believes he is morally superior to the hoi polloi. To now say that he has been restrained by the people is ridiculous. When he got into office with a dubious one vote majority on the Supreme Court he governed as if he had a mandate. He never cared what the congress thought — just ran roughshod over them. The man has always done exactly what he wanted to do.
The only public support he has ever cultivated (at Rove’s careful direction) was the 35% or so of his red-meat base or the business interests that paid for his presidency. On foreign policy he operates from his “gut” which means that he picks and chooses, without analysis or informed knowledge, from a variety of advisors with no thought to coherence or how such decisions might be implemented. Even Cheney cannot adequately control him. It could just as easily be decisionmaking by Ouija board. The problem is not that the public failed to approve of Bush’s harebrained schemes. The problem is Bush’s scemes themselves.
The Iraq invasion was the result of an absurd amalgam of greed, rage, naivete and hubris that was Shakespearean in its complexity. But for the president and many of his followers it was quite simple:
In State of Denial, Woodward recounts how Michael Gerson, at the time Bush’s chief speechwriter, asked Henry Kissinger why he had supported the Iraq war:
“Because Afghanistan wasn’t enough,” Kissinger answered. In the conflict with radical Islam, he said, they want to humiliate us. “And we need to humiliate them.” The American response to 9/11 had essentially to be more than proportionate—on a larger scale than simply invading Afghanistan and overthrowing the Taliban. Something else was essential. The Iraq war was essential to send a larger message, “in order to make a point that we’re not going to live in this world that they want for us.”
He is, of course, being disingenuous. (It’s Kissinger, after all.) Iraq was a secular government, for all its ills. Invading it had nothing to do with radical Islam. Kissinger may be a nobel prize winning Harvard professor but his remarks are entirely based on lizard brain primitivism. And it’s that primitivism that informed George W. Bush’s vaunted “gut” and led the most powerful nation on earth into Iraq for no good reason.
It’s similar to what happens when a wild animal like a bear comes down out of the hills and mauls someone. Back in the day they used to round up a posse (now they call in the professionals) grab their guns and go out to kill the bear. It doesn’t really matter which bear just that the defenders of civilization can bring home a bear carcass and show everyone that if a bear kills one of them they are going to get revenge — preferably by killing one that was even bigger than the one that did the killing. They always say that it was because the bear was dangerous and it had developed a taste for human blood or something like that. (The people don’t ever really know if the dead bear is the one, do they?) The purpose isn’t really to kill the bear that did the deed. And it isn’t as Kissinger says, to show the other bears that they will be killed if they do this again. It’s to quell their own fear by proving to themselves that they are not helpless.
George W. Bush was very, very frightened after 9/11 and for a variety of motivations his administration persuaded him that killing the Iraq bear would make him feel better. The public’s support or lack of support was irrelevant.
Update: For a perfect example of post 9/11 pants-wetting masquerading as Kissingerian message-sending, here’s Tom Friedman:
No, the axis-of-evil idea isn’t thought through – but that’s what I like about it. It says to these countries and their terrorist pals: “We know what you’re cooking in your bathtubs. We don’t know exactly what we’re going to do about it, but if you think we are going to just sit back and take another dose from you, you’re wrong. Meet Don Rumsfeld – he’s even crazier than you are.”
There is a lot about the Bush team’s foreign policy I don’t like, but their willingness to restore our deterrence, and to be as crazy as some of our enemies, is one thing they have right. It is the only way we’re going to get our turkey back.
You can smell the fear all over those words, can’t you?
Update II: Just so there is no mistake. I am not insulting hunters or any other professional who deals with wildlife. This is a (lame) parable not a comment on the culture of gun owners. Nor is it meant to imply that people who work for animal control do not care about the animals or do not try to insure that the animals they kill are indeed dangerous animals. My point was that it didn’t matter if the animal that they killed was the “guilty” party in order that the fear in the community (or among some hunters who are more like George Bush)is quelled.
What I was trying to say was that Josh now sounds as shrill on the subject of the corrupt DC punditry as the rest of us. That’s all. Of course, I wasn’t disparaging Josh’s yeoman’s work on Social Security and the just as important community building among at least some liberal public intellectuals and journalists. I was merely expressing bemusement at Josh’s change in attitude. Yes, indeed, Josh, Somerby has been right for years. The discourse is so bad it truly boggles the mind. For Josh to catch on now is, how can I put it? both welcome and extremely odd. It’s not that the meme du jour of the pundit class – blaming the American people for the atrocities in Iraq – is such an escalation of stupidity in their rhetorical defense of Crawford’s Own Churchill. It’s just more of the same crap that the rest of us have been shrieking about for years now.
And there I probably should leave it. But I won’t. Not when Josh insists that “For what it’s worth, I think substantially more troops would have made a big difference earlier on.” They wouldn’t have.
Bush/Iraq was a stupid, immoral idea with no chance – except in the technical, mathematical sense – of success. The failure of people as intelligent and right on as Josh Marshall to recognize this, coupled with the inability of those of us who were right from the start to gain anything close to a respected public voice in the media all but dooms this country to repeat the Bush/Iraq war. And soon.
And that is something I am 100 percent certain I have no intention of sitting idly by and have happen again. It is my strong belief that one important component that led to the political environment that allowed Bush to start this crazy war was that well-intentioned, smart people refused to speak up when they could have. Perhaps Atrios is right, that only Powell could have prevented Bush/Iraq, but the list of people who didn’t bother trying is long. Had more people like Josh been as forceful in opposing the war as Josh has been in opposing Social Security destruction…well, who knows, but I for one would have liked to see it happen.
Josh makes his fundamental error even clearer:
I know there are a lot of people who either think that Iraq was a doable proposition that was botched or a project destined for failure no matter how it was handled. There are, needless to say, fewer and fewer in the former category. And I’d basically class myself in the latter one, if pushed. But both strike me as needlessly dogmatic viewpoints which make it harder to learn from the myriad mistakes that were made while telling us little about how we extricate ourselves from the mess.
In other words, it is counter-productive, he says, to assert dogmatically that Bush/Iraq was doomed from the start or coulda been a smashing success with more competent leadership (but he reluctantly belongs in the “impossible” category ).
Not so. As I have argued on many occasions, the failure of Bush/Iraq was a spectacular intellectual failure. From the standpoint of those who were not far-right ideologues, it was a failure to recognize immediately an absolutely crazy idea and label it as crazy before it had the chance to be taken seriously. These were no trivial, excusable blunders, but some of the worst, most easily avoidable errors of judgment in American history.
It is not dogmatic to state that there was no genuine moral justification for Bush/Iraq, and that people as sensitive as Josh and far more influential failed to realize that, or did realize it, and failed to speak out. It is not dogmatic to state that even a cursory glance at the history of democracy demonstrates that it is nearly impossible (as well as immoral) to impose democracy by force of arms and that the specific factors that enabled the rare successes were conspicuously missing in Iraq. Finally, it is not dogmatic to state that it is totally absurd to think that “better leadership” would have led to a “better result” for Bush/Iraq. Better leadership would never have seriously considered invading and conquering Iraq in the first place.
Perhaps if there was even some hint of sanity in the mainstream American discourse about foreign policy I would be less insistent on this. But the truth is that the only people who have seriously good microphones are all those people who were wrong about Bush/Iraq from the start. Until there is, at the very least, some sense that this country’s opinion leaders are prepared to listen carefully to those who got it right, I will continue to give those who got it wrong, and persist in getting matters of war and death wrong, a very hard time.
I never want to live through a repeat of 2002/03, ever, not to mention the ghastly aftermath we must now watch get far worse for at least two more years.The way I see it, one of the best ways I can help make sure that doesn’t happen is to terminate, with extreme prejudice, any attempt to let those who were wrong get off the hook, especially if they persist in continuing to misapprehend their contributing role. I’m glad that Josh is now so disgusted at the repellent fluffers in Washington that he has let himself write truthfully, even at the risk of seeming shrill. However, I am not glad that Josh still doesn’t grasp fully the deep and extremely dangerous failure of intellectual judgment that lies behind the opinion that more troops or a better president would have led to a more “desirable” outcome. After being so wrong on Bush/Iraq, a reluctant admission that if you want to be dogmatic about it then I side with the ‘impossible’ dogmatists, makes me fear that when Cheney and Bush start up in earnest over Iran, the same misjudgment will doom any attempt to oppose it.
So I will continue to call him, and others far more influential than he, on their failure of intellectual judgment until I am confident that those of us who know better are fairly represented in the Amercian public discourse.
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.
