Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Be Careful What You Ask For

by digby

St John’s not getting much sleep tonight.

In a surprise twist in the debate over Iraq, Rep. Silvestre Reyes, the soon-to-be chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said he wants to see an increase of 20,000 to 30,000 U.S. troops as part of a stepped up effort to ‘dismantle the militias.’

McCain’s the big tough guy who’s been saying 20,000 more troops is the answer. What happens if he gets them? Does he flip flop and say it was too late after all when things don’t go well? Does he blame the troops for not being able to get the job done? It’s quite the dilemma for the man who thought he had a fool proof way to run as the only one in Washington who knew how to fight and win the war like a man.

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Space Cookies

by digby

Kevin Drum wonders why NASA is all excited about going to the moon.

Valuable minerals? Manufacturing of rocket fuel and “other materials”? Scientific laboratories? Did they crib this stuff out of a science fiction novel from the 50s? The scientific community seems barely able to think up anything useful to do with the International Space Station, and that even has zero gee as a selling point.

I love the space program, but if we’re going to spend a few hundred billion dollars on this program shouldn’t they at least pretend that they’re going to accomplish something?

Oh, they are. They are:

Space Policy.

Though the Bush administration’s attempts to realize a Pax Americana in the Middle East is the subject of sustained international debate, there’s been less attention to the White House’s dream of American hegemony in space. (This isn’t an accident: The current National Space Policy was released to the public at a moment when few reporters were around—5 p.m. on October 6, the beginning of Columbus Day weekend.) The Defense Department now has orders to “deny, if necessary, adversaries the use of space capabilities hostile to U.S. national interests.”

Exactly what this means in practical terms remains to be seen. But as Aviation Week and Space Technology recently reported, the new directive now has “military space commanders… discussing ‘space control’ and ‘space superiority’ issues with unusual candor” after years of those “politically sensitive terms [being] off limits.” Among the few Democrats who appear to have taken notice is Al Gore, who, according to the magazine, told the audience at a recent private conference that this “may be the most serious strategic error in the entire history of the United States of America.” Will Bob Gates be sympathetic, opposed, or indifferent to letting generals with stars in their eyes push the new policy to the limits? Stay tuned.

Never let it be said that the Republicans are not focused. No matter what happens they just keep right on going with every harebrained scheme any crazed wingnut ever dreamed up on a AEI week-end acid trip.

Maybe somebody needs to ask St. John McCain about this.

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Understanding The Moment

by digby

Chris Bowers wrote a very poignant post about Barack Obama that expresses the bewildered dismay I think I lot of us feel when we read or hear our leaders still using us as a foil to distance themselves from their own base. It’s so disheartening to see someone we hope will be a brilliant leader make the mistake of running against the Party just when it is finding a new sense of unity — and the other side is having an identity crisis.

It’s worth recalling where these “Sistah Souljah” impulses came from and look at whether they make any sense in today’s politics. The term applies to Bill Clinton’s repudiation of some hot rhetoric after the LA riots, which happened smack in the middle of the presidential campaign. Souljah, a political activist and writer/rapper, had been widely quoted (out of context) in the mainstream media as saying, “if Black people kill Black people every day, why not have a week and kill white people?” Clinton responded to that comment with “If you took the words ‘white’ and ‘black’ and you reversed them, you might think David Duke was giving that speech.”

This was interpreted as part of his “centrist” campaign to be tough on crime and welfare, which, after twelve years of Welfare Queen and Willie Horton demagoguing, was deemed to be a necessary step to Democrats taking back the presidency. (In those days, remember, the GOP lizard brain appeals were more directly racial. They hadn’t yet adopted their new language of religious code to obscure their regional and racist strategy.) Clinton had made the calculation that if he could neutralize those issues and run on an economic message aimed at the middle class, he could win. (It was also an attempt to marginalize Jesse Jackson, at that time a major institutional player in the party, and widely considered to be a drag on the Democrats’ presidential chances in the south.) The three days of televised riots presented a very serious threat to that plan.

So, he did what he did and received huge plaudits from the punditocrisy. Jesse had a fit and that made everyone even happier. And Clinton won, for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was the candidacy of Ross Perot. (Whether you agree that Perot took votes from Clinton or Bush, there’s no doubt he scrambled that election.) It became, however, a matter of conventional wisdom that Democrats needed to distance themselves from their “special interests” and liberal base in order to win elections.

Now, fifteen years later, it’s become a tic, a reflexive point that is no longer used for any specific purpose but rather serves as a political ritual designed to assure the conservative political establishment that the candidate does not associate himself or herself with undesirable liberals. The members of the base who have been used for a decade and a half as the human sacrifices to the pundit Gods of the beltway are starting, quite naturally, to rebel. It’s not, however, just because they are sick of being scapegoated; it’s because it’s become part of the predictable “braindead politics” of Washington that Clinton so rightly ran against in the first place.

I don’t blame Bill Clinton for doing what he did. Indeed, I give him credit for having the guts to point to a specific act instead of adopting the modern mealy mouthed rhetoric (“some on the left need to stop …”) which at least allowed for an honest debate about something identifiable and real. And, in the wake of the riots, as part of a serious national debate about “law and order” and race in the middle of a presidential campaign, it made sense for a Democrat to try to thread that needle.

At that point it had been two decades of Republicans running against amnesty, acid, abortion — and, of course, civil rights. Democrats were ready to try new things. And Clinton already had all the liberal heuristics in his corner. He was only 46 years old and the first baby boomer candidate. He had extremely respectable anti-war and civil rights credentials. He listened to rock music and had a feminist wife and and a marriage of equality. He had even run McGovern’s campaign in Texas. Most importantly, he was comfortable with modern life, which after Reagan and Bush senior, had the fresh whiff of the future. (After all, the boomers, unlike most generational cohorts had been very politically active since they were teen-agers and had been waiting to take the reins for a long time.) Because of all those signifiers, he was forgiven all this tacking to the right because we believed that in his heart he was one of us. The passing of the torch to our generation stood in for liberalism.

The conditions that made that work were unique and it was a fleeting moment of liberal satisfaction anyway. Instead of being able to calm the waters, Clinton’s presidency immediately ushered in an unprecedented surge of right wing extremism — helped along by an unexpectedly hostile press and an emerging partisan media machine. They were anything but mollified by his rightward tack and used all the subtle, symbolic characteristics that we liberals all liked so much, to assassinate his character. Perhaps it was inevitable. Bill Clinton, or someone like him, was probably needed to exorcize the perceived sins of the liberal left.

But in that process, modern conservatism also began to discredit itself with the public. They never again reached the high water mark of 1994 and despite their very sophisticated efforts to portray George W. Bush as the “good” Clinton in 2000 they didn’t manage to convince a majority of the people to vote for him. The conservative era that began a quarter century ago had started to sputter. 9/11 momentarily stalled the progression (and perhaps even changed its direction in some unexpected ways now that Bush has so thoroughly discredited the Republicans’ greatest political strength — national security.) Bush’s grand failure has accelerated a process of political rejection I thought would be much slower. Today it is the right that requires the litmus tests and demands that their candidates show fealty to the extremist elements in their midst. It is those radicals, not the exaggerated hippie chimera the beltway keeps trying to conjure, who are making average Americans recoil.

So my problem with Democrats these days is not what they did back in the 90’s. That’s water under the bridge. It’s that they are failing to seize the moment right now. The most recent (imperfect) analogy I can think of is 1980. The Republicans seized that moment of national “malaise” and discontent to go mainstream. After that election it became a matter of faith among millions of Americans that “they didn’t leave the Democratic party, the Democratic party left them.”

The Republicans understood that the ship had finally made its turn, that many of the folks were unnerved by all the social and economic change of the previous 15 years. (And they knew they could leverage that discontent against everybody’s favorite scapegoat in times of trouble — African Americans, who also happen to be Democrats.) Over time they convinced a lot of people that they actually were “conservatives” but in that moment it was all about simply identifying with the great swath of Americans who were tired and fed-up — and pointing the finger at the opposition.

Today, it’s the Republicans who are seen as captives of their own worst impulses which is why it is so out of sync and dissonant for Obama and others to still be triangulating against their own base. It feels odd — discordant. The Democratic rank and file are no different than millions of average people in this country who are feeling uncomfortable with the radicalism, incompetence, hubris and corruption of the Republican party after six years of one party rule — and a quarter century of conservative consensus. And the activist base from which these politicians are trying to distance themselves is where the energy and future of this new majority party rsides. Why would you run from them just when the other side’s consensus is starting to fray? It’s far more politically useful to present them to the public as the average people they really are. We’re all just like you — regular everyday citizens who believe that the country needs a new direction.

As we have seen, triangulating can sometimes be the politically smart thing to do. But not right now. This is the political moment for the Democrats to seize the mantle of the mainstream — to argue that we are the big tent, where people of conscience from all over the political spectrum are coming together, concerned about our nation, ready to work in common cause. The Republican party has abandoned the concerns of the American people. The Democratic party is the party that will secure the future.

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Check Their Hands

by poputonian

With eager Democratic candidates edging toward the starting blocks, be sure to check their hands for blood. John Edwards, Evan Bayh, and Hillary Clinton each made a fundamental error in judgment that should cost them any chance for the Democratic nomination. They traded 700,000 human lives, give or take, to build their own presidential credentials, to appear “strong on defense” and “tough on terror.” But they all flunked the judgment test.

Wesley Clark, as inexperienced politically as he might be is a better choice for the Democratic nominee.

So is Al Gore, even though he thought Joe Lieberman would be a good running mate. Oops.

So is Howard Dean, although he sometimes gets loud and lets it all hang out.

Even Barack Obama with his religious pandering is a better choice.

In fact, instead of categorizing the candidates as Republican and Democrat, why not go with Clean Hands and Bloody Hands as the name of each group. Doing so would put all the Republicans and the Democrats who sold out into one bucket, and those with sound judgment in another. Seems easy enough.

But just to be fair, let’s double-check to see how a Senator might have processed the known information at the time of the Iraq War vote:

But, Mr. President, I am increasingly troubled by the seemingly shifting justifications for an invasion at this time. My colleagues, I’m not suggesting there has to be only one justification for such a dramatic action. But when the Administration moves back and forth from one argument to another, I think it undercuts the credibility of the case and the belief in its urgency. I believe that this practice of shifting justifications has much to do with the troubling phenomenon of many Americans questioning the Administration’s motives in insisting on action at this particular time.

What am I talking about? I’m talking about the spectacle of the President and senior Administration officials citing a purported connection to al Qaeda one day, weapons of mass destruction the next day, Saddam Hussein’s treatment of his own people on another day, and then on some days the issue of Kuwaiti prisoners of war.
…
But the relentless attempt to link 9-11 and the issue of Iraq has been disappointing to me for months, culminating in the President’s singularly unpersuasive attempt in Cincinnati to interweave 9-11 and Iraq, to make the American people believe that there are no important differences between the perpetrators of 9-11 and Iraq.

Mr. President, I believe it is dangerous for the world, and especially dangerous for us, to take the tragedy of 9-11 and the word “terrorism” and all their powerful emotion and then too easily apply them to many other situations — situations that surely need our serious attention but are not necessarily, Mr. President, the same as individuals and organizations who have shown a willingness to fly planes into the World Trade Center and into the Pentagon.

Let me say that the President is right that we’ve got to view the world, the threats and our own national security in a very different light since 9-11. There are shocking new threats. But, Mr. President, it is not helpful to use virtually any strand or extreme rhetoric to suggest that the new threat is the same as other preexisting threats. Mr. President, I think common sense tells us they are not the same and they cannot so easily be lumped together as the President sought to do in Cincinnati.
…
I’m not hearing the same things at the briefings that I’m hearing from the President’s top officials. In fact, on March 11 of this year, Vice President Cheney, following a meeting with Tony Blair, raised fears of weapons of mass destruction falling into the hands of terrorists. He said, “We have to be concerned about the potential” — potential — “marriage, if you will, between a terrorist organization like al Qaeda and those who hold or are proliferating knowledge about weapons of mass destruction.” So in March, it was a potential marriage.

Then the Vice-President said, on September 8, without evidence — and no evidence has been given since that time — that there are “credible but unconfirmed” intelligence reports that 9-11 ringleader Mohammed Atta met with an Iraqi intelligence official several months before 9-11. We’ve seen no proof of that.

And finally then, the Secretary of Defense follows on September 27 of this year and says, “There is bulletproof evidence of Iraqi links to al Qaeda, including the recent presence of senior al Qaeda members in Baghdad.” I don’t know where this comes from, Mr. President. This so-called potential marriage in March is beginning to sound like a 25th wedding anniversary at this point.

The facts just aren’t there, or at least they have not been presented to me in the situations where they should have been presented to me as an elected Member of this body. In other words, the Administration appears to use 9-11 and the language of terrorism and the connection to Iraq too loosely, almost like a bootstrap.

For example, I heard the President say in Cincinnati that Iraq and al Qaeda both regard us as a common enemy. Of course they do. Well, who else are we going to attack in the near future on that basis alone?

Or do we see an attempt to stretch the notion of harboring terrorists? I agree with the President, if any country is actively harboring or assisting the terrorists involved in 9-11, we have to act against them. But I don’t think you can bring within the definition of harboring terrorists the simple presence of some al Qaeda members somewhere in Iraq. After all, Mr. President, apparently we have al Qaeda agents active in our country as well. They are present in our nation as well. How can this be a sufficient basis on its own?

Therefore, Mr. President, without a better case for al Qaeda’s connection to Saddam Hussein, this proposed invasion must stand on its own merits, not on some notion that those who question this invasion don’t thoroughly condemn and want to see the destruction of the perpetrators of 9-11 and similar terrorist attacks on the United States.

An invasion of Iraq must stand on its own, not just because it is different than the fight against the perpetrators of 9-11 but because it may not be consistent with, and may even be harmful to, the top national security issue of this country. And that is the fight against terrorism and the perpetrators of the crimes of 9-11.

In fact, I’m so pleased to see one of the most eloquent spokesmen of this viewpoint here in the Senate chamber, Senator Graham, who has done a terrific job of trying to point out our top priorities in this area. He said, “Our first priority should be the successful completion of the war on terrorism. Today we Americans are more vulnerable to international terrorist organizations than we are to Saddam Hussein.”
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In any event, I oppose this resolution because of the continuing unanswered questions, including the very important questions about what the mission is here, what the nature of the operation will be, what will happen concerning weapons of mass destruction in Iraq as the attack proceeds and afterward, and what the plan is after the attack is over. In effect, Mr. President, we’re being asked to vote on something that is unclear. We don’t have answers to these questions. We’re being asked to vote on something that is almost unknowable in terms of the information we’ve been given.
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Mr. President, we need an honest assessment of the commitment required of America. If the right way to address this threat is through internationally-supported military action in Iraq and Saddam Hussein’s regime falls, we will need to take action to ensure stability in Iraq. This could be very costly and time consuming, could involve the occupation — the occupation, Mr. President, of a Middle Eastern country. Now, this is not a small matter. The American occupation of a Middle Eastern country. Consider the regional implications of that scenario, the unrest in moderate states that calls for action against American interests, the difficulty of bringing stability to Iraq so we can extricate ourselves in the midst of regional turmoil. Mr. President, we need much more information about how we propose to proceed so that we can weigh the costs and benefits to our national security.
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I do believe that the American people are willing to bear high costs to pursue a policy that makes sense. But right now, after all of the briefings, all of the hearings, and all of the statements, as far as I can tell, the Administration apparently intends to wing it when it comes to the day after or, as others have suggested, the decade after. And I think, Mr. President, that makes no sense at all.

So, Mr. President, I believe that to date the Administration has failed to answer the key questions to justify the invasion of Iraq at this time. Yes, September 11 raises the emotional stakes and raises legitimate new questions. This makes the President’s request understandable, but it doesn’t make it wise.

I am concerned that the President is pushing us into a mistaken and counterproductive course of action. Instead of this war being crucial on the war on terrorism, I fear it could have the opposite effect.

And so this moment — in which we are responsible for assessing the threat before us, the appropriate response, and the potential costs and consequences of military action — this moment is of grave importance. Yet there is something hollow in our efforts.
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We are about to make one of the weightiest decisions of our time within a context of confused justifications and vague proposals. We are urged, Mr. President, to get on board and bring the American people with us, but we don’t know where the ship is sailing.

That’s good judgment by Senator Feingold. Other Senators gave similar speeches. Each Senator now running for president had an opportunity to hear Feingold’s floor speech. But for some, presidential ambition carried more weight and clouded their thinking.And now they have blood on their hands.

Grown-ups

by digby

Via Atrios and TPM I see that John McCain is sharing his sophisticated foreign policy views again:

“Well in war, my dear friends, there is no such thing as compromise; you either win or you lose.”

Heavy duty. And how would we win the war if John McCain were in charge?

“One of the things I would do if I were President would be to sit the Shiites and the Sunnis down and say, ‘Stop the bullshit,’” said Mr. McCain, according to Shirley Cloyes DioGuardi, an invitee, and two other guests.

See? There’s nothing complicated about this. If only we had a straight talkin’ president who would just cut through all the crap and take charge maybe we wouldn’t be in this mess today:

Bush: You see, the thing is what they need to do is to get Syria, to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit and it’s over.

If people like what Bush has been doing these past six years, they’re gonna love McCain. He too is a big believer in the Classical Shitstopping school of foreign policy.

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Bitchin’ Bolton

by digby

tristero got to it before I did, but I did want to comment on the petulant, immature president we are forced to put up with for two more years. Not only did he send out the snotty statement about Bolton’s resignation that tristero quotes below, he held a photo-op and talked to the press slumped down in his chair, lip curled, obviously pissed off. He said this:

“I’m not happy about it. I think he deserved to be confirmed. And the reason why I think he deserved to be confirmed is because I know he did a fabulous job for the country.”

You’d think he’d be used to failure after experiencing it his entire life but he doesn’t seem to he handling it well. His arrogance has always been there, throwing his weight around, peppering his speech with phrases like “I told the American people they were gonna have tah be patient and I meant it.” But now there’s a darker edge to it. I see no signs that he’s ready to see reason on a judgment call like Iraq.

Meanwhile, here’s a fun trip down memory lane with John Bolton from The Nation. Very informative.

But for sheer Bolton surreality, nothing beats Atlas Shrugs’“interview” with him:

What I most admire about John Bolton is his steely demeanor and moral clarity. His spectacular fortitude in the face of scoundrels, liars, and internationally sanctioned criminals never fails to surprise and delight me. What was completely unexpected was the other side of Bolton. He was funny, thoughtful, deliberate. I really enjoyed the chat.

Atlas: If I could I’d like to talk about you. [he is looking at me askance, laughing here] What formed you……….what is your favorite book?

JB: That’s a good question actually. I’d say one of the things that made a big impression on me was Edmund Burke’s book Reflections on the Revolution in France and I’ve read a lot of John Locke and that had a big impact on me and Ayn Rand.

Atlas: You’re just saying that to make me feel better……..

JB: No it’s true.

Atlas: Growing up, were you one of many?

JB: No, I had one sister, nine years younger.

Atlas: So you were the oldest. Your parents were tough? Encouraging? Non approving?.
Trying to figure out where you developed that spine of yours……..I find that quality rare. There’s a lot of it in that administration.

JB: My father was a firefighter in the city of Baltimore, my mother was a housewife.

Atlas: YAY, the great American story.

[…]

Atlas: Do you find it is less difficult, more difficult getting things done in this political climate?

JB: When I was in earlier administrations I was in assistant secretary level positions working hard on my issues and I didn’t pay as much attention to the broader…….

Atlas: the big picture? [Atlas interrupting? WTF?]

JB: So when I see it now, it’s probably more discouraging how much there is to do.

Atlas: Discouraging how? Discouraging how much there is to do? Or discouraging as in –is it do-able?

JB: Oh its do-able, under the right circumstances. I’m not so naive that I would be doing it if I didn’t think there was a chance which makes it in some senses more frustrating. You can see sometimes how close you can get and yet you can’t finish a particular thing. Like Iran, I’ve been working on this for three and a half years

Atlas: And you’ll be working on it for three and half more.

JOB: I hope not, I hope not because now that it’s in the Security Council, now is the time to say this is their chance that either they give up their pursuit of nuclear weapons or we go to what the President said, we do something else.

Atlas: We do something else? That’s a little vague, don’t you think? Deliberately vague?

JB: Yeah, sure absolutely. The President said I never take options off the table. And you’ve got to be that way. Look this has happened to me enough times before …. if I said, well — I’ll give you an example……after the invasion of Iraq, after Saddam was overthrown I said something in a BBC interview like I hope the governments of Syria and Iran take notice of what’s just happened and I got into enormous trouble for that because it sounded like I was threatening the invasion of Iran and Syria.

Atlas: yeah but you get in enormous trouble for waking up in the morning

JB: Well that’s true too.

to be continued

More to come guys, but right now I am going to take a break, head downstairs, meet up with some AIPAC folks, and have me a glass of pinot noir…………I’ve had it. Long day. But great.

You can’t make this stuff up. Read on to find out how Pammy and John propose to nuke Lebanon.

Today is the worst day of her life:

Anybody happy about this is an America hater. The tyranny of the minority strikes again.

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Big Al

by tristero

Read this from Al Gore, and then I have a question for you:

“[I]t’s almost too easy to say, ‘I would have heeded the warnings [about an al Qaeda attack in the summer of ’01].’ In fact, I think I would have, I know I would have. We had several instances when the CIA’s alarm bells went off, and what we did when that happened was, we had emergency meetings and called everybody together and made sure that all systems were go and every agency was hitting on all cylinders, and we made them bring more information, and go into the second and third and fourth level of detail. And made suggestions on how we could respond in a more coordinated, more effective way. It is inconceivable to me that Bush would read a warning as stark and as clear [voice angry now] as the one he received on August 6th of 2001, and, according to some of the new histories, he turned to the briefer and said, ‘Well, you’ve covered your ass.’ And never called a follow up meeting. Never made an inquiry. Never asked a single question. To this day, I don’t understand it. And, I think it’s fair to say that he personally does in fact bear a measure of blame for not doing his job at a time when we really needed him to do his job.

“And now the Woodward book has this episode that has been confirmed by the record that George Tenet, who was much abused by this administration, went over to the White House for the purpose of calling an emergency meeting and warning as clearly as possible about the extremely dangerous situation with Osama bin Laden, and was brushed off! And I don’t know why — honestly — I mean, I understand how horrible this Congressman Foley situation with the instant messaging is, okay? I understand that. But, why didn’t these kinds of things produce a similar outrage? And you know, I’m even reluctant to talk about it in these terms because it’s so easy for people to hear this or read this as sort of cheap political game-playing. I understand how it could sound that way. [Practically screaming now] But dammit, whatever happened to the concept of accountability for catastrophic failure? This administration has been by far the most incompetent, inept, and with more moral cowardice, and obsequiousness to their wealthy contributors, and obliviousness to the public interest of any administration in modern history, and probably in the entire history of the country!”

Here’s the question.

Who should be his running mate?

Oh. And to those who claim Al Gore is humorless, read this:

Do you know if President Bush has seen the movie [An Inconvenient Truth] yet?

Well, he claimed that [he] would not see it. That’s why I wrote the book. He’s a reader.

ps. Gotta take a break, get some stuff done. Back in 2 weeks or so.

Bolton’s Resignation

by tristero

George W. Bush:

“I am deeply disappointed that a handful of United States Senators prevented Ambassador Bolton from receiving the up or down vote he deserved in the Senate.”

You see? We’re not that far apart anymore, are we? Both Bush and I essentially agree it is deeply disappointing that a handful of senators would object to John Bolton representing the United States at the UN.

They should have unanimously opposed that neo-Bircher nutjob.

The Consequences Of Withdrawal

by tristero

I don’t think Krugman is entirely right about this:

It’s true that terrible things will happen when U.S. forces withdraw. Mr. Bush was attacking a straw man when he mocked those who think we can make a “graceful exit” from Iraq. Everyone I know realizes that the civil war will get even worse after we’re gone, and that there will probably be a bloody bout of ethnic cleansing that effectively partitions the country into hostile segments.

But nobody – not even Donald Rumsfeld, it turns out – thinks we’re making progress in Iraq. So the same terrible things that would happen if we withdrew soon will still happen if we delay that withdrawal for two, three or more years. The only difference is that we’ll sacrifice many more American lives along the way.

If you are looking for a clearcut exposition of blatant moral imperatives, you wont’ find it in what’s to follow as I discuss what Krugman said. Nor is this a finished, coherent argument. It’s a first attempt to sort out a way to grasp the enormous problems Krugman’s column discusses. I’m posting it in the hopes that you can help clarify some of this for me.

While for the most part I think Krugman has it right, I think he errs is in one specific way. To use the dessicated language that so many pompous foreign policy types like to employ to keep themselves from contemplating the carnage behind their words, Krugman commits what I think is something close to a scaling error.

Where I part with Krugman is at the level of the individual where I think Krugman simply is wrong to claim that the results will be the same regardless of what Bush does or doesn’t do. The horrors to come – and I agree there will be a lot no matter what- will take substantially different paths on individual people and their families depending upon whether and when the US withdraws. Different brothers will die, different mothers will live lives of abject misery. And, while, yes, the same Bush-connected scumbags will reap the most profits regardless of what happens – the Bechtel and Halliburton criminals – different lower-level parasites will become fantastically rich exploiting Iraq.

Krugman doesn’t mention it, but the familes of the dead to come will blame the US – including you and me – if Bush leaves. Or the families of the dead to come will blame the US – including you and me – if Bush stays. But those families willl surely be different ones. And they will hate us more vehemently than we can possibly imagine. In that sense, the intensity of the trauma and hate will be the same. But the situation, and its consequences, will be different depending upon what Bush does. Both will be tragic, but different.

Now, if – if – the US government were run by even halfway decent women and men, the question of the extent of the inevitable tragedies to come would make it very important to argue which alternative would lead to more carnage, leaving or staying in some capacity. Even then, the only sensible alternative would become quite clear, I think, after only the briefest discussion: get out of Iraq. But given the Bush administration, its lust for war, its corruption, its dishonesty, and its sheer incompetence, there is nothing to argue about. The troops should leave. Starting today. Their presence is worse than pointless. American kids are killing and getting killed solely because the most powerful individual on the planet is too much of a coward to admit error and won’t order their withdrawal. There is no other reason they are there. They can do no genuine good – but will increasingly foment tremendous, compounding catastrophes – while they remain in Iraq, They should leave. Now.

That’s what should happen. What will happen is this. Bush will stay and things will get so chaotic and awful that Iraqis (and Americans) will remember this as a time when the decisions about what to do were both crystal clear and pretty hopeful. Or Bush will leave in such a fashion as to put the rest of the world – not to mention the Middle East – into more of a panic than it’s already in. Or Bush will try to have it both ways, combining – as he did, for instance, with stem cells – the stupidest moral reasoning with the most worthless policy.

In short, the terrible history of the rest of the first ten years of the new millenium will be terrible but, contra Krugman, it unfold very differently at the personal level, depending on what the ignorant rhinestone cowboy with his hand on the nuclear button decides to do. Facing those different realities, understanding them, planning for them, is critical.

Krugman is very right, and courageous, to make it clear that things will get much worse if the US pulls out. But that is absolutely no reason to delay withdrawal another millisecond. It will also get much worse if the US stays. The time to start planning for the aftermath is now, but lets be clearheade in realizing that that aftermath will be radically different in its horrors depending upon Bush’s actions.

As I promised, this is not a satisfyingly coherent post. But perhaps, somewhere, there’s an idea or two that could spark some interesting thoughts for you.

“It’s Wrong To Say It”

by digby

So I see that Joe Klein is going on television and regurgitating halfway digested cocktail party chatter again. He doesn’t seem to have a basic understanding of what kinds of things you can “say outloud” and what kinds of things you can’t. It’s a continuing problem for him.

From ThinkProgress:

On the Chris Matthews Show yesterday, Time magazine senior writer Joe Klein said of Sen. Barack Obama’s (D-IL) support for setting a timetable for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq: “That may well be true, but it’s wrong to say it.”

Apparently Klein overlearned his lesson from earlier this year when he blurted out that a nuclear first strike should be on the table.

A few weeks ago, I made a mistake while bloviating on the Sunday morning television program This Week With George Stephanopoulos. I said that all military options, including the use of tactical nuclear weapons, should remain on the table in our future dealings with Iran. I was wrong on three counts.

First, my words were a technical violation of a long-standing protocol: A diplomat friend tells me that while it is appropriate to say, “All options should remain on the table,” the direct mention of nukes — especially any hint of the first use of nukes — is, as Stephanopoulos correctly said, “crossing a line.” If George had asked, “What about nukes?” the diplomatic protocol would have been to tapdance: “I can’t imagine ever having to use nuclear weapons,” or some such, leaving the nuclear door open, but never saying so specifically. In truth, I was trying to make the same point, undiplomatically — which comes easy for me: If the Iranians persist in crazy talk about wiping Israel, or New York, off the face of the earth, it isn’t a bad idea if we hint that we can get crazy, too. One can easily imagine the unthinkable: a suitcase nuclear weapon, acquired from the former Soviet Union by Iranian agents, detonated in New York, London or Tel Aviv. A nuclear response certainly would have to be on the table then — and the military would be negligent if it weren’t studying all possible nuclear scenarios.

Klein seems to have difficulty understanding why people should say certain things publicly and why they shouldn’t. Speaking casually about pre-emptive nuclear strikes and how we need to make other countries think we are crazy is not a bad idea because it is impolitic — it’s a bad idea because it is immoral and unthinkable and invites the world to loathe, shun and band together to oppose us as a rogue superpower. The Bush administration and all the perpetually wrong pundits like Klein seem to truly believe this playground logic that says unless the world thinks we are insane they will not respect us. (I can only speculate about the psychological factors that lead to such an absurd conclusion.)

Withdrawing from Iraq, on the other hand, is a serious policy discussion which must be imposed on the administration and discussed publicly because they have given the nation no reason to believe they will do anything reasonable unless they are forced to do so. In fact, they seem intent upon going “full steam ahead” no matter what the people think, so in this case it is in our best interests to let the Iraqis and the world know — outside the official White House policy — that Americans favor withdrawal. Bush’s resolute idiocy has put the country in this unfortunate position.

Klein had to be schooled about why it’s a bad idea to advocate for a first strike and now he’s saying that everyone should keep mum about timed withdrawal in the face of a president who insists that he will stay the course till doomsday. Clearly, hanging around with fellow social conservatives Hugh Hewitt and Bill Bennet has taken its toll on his ability to reason. That’ll happen.

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