My internet service has been disrupted since last night and my laptop is on the fritz so I’ve been offline until this moment — where I am blogging from the beautiful new Santa Monica public library.
The place is crammed full of people, in the stacks, online at the 50 or more modern computers that are available to the public or sitting comfortably in easy chairs in this free wifi environment with their laptops — some of them ancient but still servicable. There are a whole bunch of kids in the great children’s sections being taught how to read and love books. And there are a ton of elderly who are hanging out in a nice peaceful, comfortable environment in the presence of other people instead of sitting all alone.
Can I just say how valuable these kinds of public services are to a community and how much those who are usually lucky enough to be able to afford all these luxuries like broadband or wi-fi or new computers take such things for granted? This is the type of thing our tax dollars pay for and when we “starve the beast” it’s the first thing that goes. Yet without it we will further stratify out society and make it impossible for a vast number of people to be productive, informed, connected citizens.
This is one of those great examples of important government functions that Bill Sher suggests we talk about in his book “Wait! Don’t Move To Canada.” So I’m talking about it.
Today, I’m one of those people who needs this public service. I’m damned glad to have it and proud to pay my taxes to support it.
(Of course, this is Santa Monica, so I can buy a delicious soy latte right here too. Is this a great blue state or what?)
When President Bush and his advisers decided to allow President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran into the country to address the United Nations, their strategy was simple: containment.
There would be no visits to other cities where he could denounce Washington or question Israel’s legitimacy. There would be no opportunities, beyond his speech to the General Assembly, to turn questions about his nuclear intentions into repeated diatribes about America’s nuclear arsenal.
It turned out that Mr. Ahmadinejad had a Plan B.
The scope of his determination to dominate not only the airwaves but the debate became evident yesterday evening, when he entered a hotel conference room on the East Side with a jaunty smile, a wave and an air of supreme confidence.
Sounds to me like the only person trying “to dominate not only the airwaves but the debate” was George W. Bush who did everything he could to, in the Times’s own words practice “containment” of Ahmadinejad.
The issue of whether it was a good or bad thing to provide Ahmadinejad an opportunity to yak it up in public is a separate one from the issue of whether the Times is once again kowtowing to Bush propaganda directives. It is perfectly consistent to be revolted by Ahmadinejad’s Holocaust denial and be horrified by the notion that the American media has once again capitulated to pressure from the Bush administration. I may address the former in a day or so [I do so below in the second update], but the notion that the newspaper of record would report, with a straight face, that Bush tried and succeeded in totally suppressing Ahmadinejad’s access to American media, but characterize the Iranian president, and not Bush, as the one trying to dominate the debate, is simply bizarre. And freaky. And very scary.
The prospect of living through a repeat of 2002/2003, when it was simply impossible to determine the truth from any American media source of influence – my God, please, not again.
[Update: I want to add that I know the people at the Times are not stupid and probably did see the contradiction, yet chose to print Bush propaganda spin anyway. Why? I suspect word has come down from above that discussion is over (not that there ever was any in the way Americans understand it), the die is cast, it’s happening. Bush is not planning to go to war, but is going to war with Iran, and with that in mind the Times doesn’t wish to appear to be coddling this season’s black hat.
Don’t bother praying that the Bush/Iran war will be short. It won’t be. As to what to do, I haven’t the foggiest idea. But I think I can detect the outline of what Bush is up to. Unlike 2002, there won’t be some 7 months of what Rice laughingly called “diplomacy.” It was, from Bush’s standpoint, a pointless, useless, exercise and a waste of time. Who says Bush doesn’t learn from his mistakes? This time the official New New Product launch seems, in a word, imminent.
And man, there is nothing that would please me more than, two months from now, for all of you to write me and accuse me of being entirely wrong, irresponsible, and alarmist.]
[Update: After some serious thought on the issue, informed as always by the commenters here, I think I’ve sorted out what I think about providing Ahmanidejad with a platform in the American press. It is a difficult call and I may change my mind as I think about it some more and learn more.
Ahmanidejad’s Holocaust denial is odious and inflammatory, but that is all it is. It is not fact-based, of course, and therefore, it is not news and not interesting and should be noted, en passant, unless directly relevant to other issues. Please note the “directly.” I am not saying to “hide” his views; I’m saying that there is no newsworthy reason to harp on them (by the way, several commenters urged me to consider that Ahmanidejad’s been poorly translated. I’m sure he has, and I’ve read some of Juan Cole’s posts on the subject and while it’s important to understand exactly what he’s saying, the gist is perfectly clear. Whether Ahmanidejad’s a properly understood anti-Semite or a misunderstood one really is not the point: it is difficult either way to make a case that he likes Jews (let alone Israel) or even that he’s merely indifferent to Jews (and yes, I suspect you will let me have it in comments, but you will have to show me stronger evidence than a misconstrued remark to convince me Ahmanidejad is not anti-semitic as well as anti-Zionist). What is germane is whether his anti-semitism directly informs his remarks and actions on issues critical to Iran’s self-interest, and the world’s, including Israel.)
While his Holocaust denial has neither truth nor value as news, Ahmanidejad’s view of the present world situation, and Iran’s place in it, is an extremely important view for Americans to have unexpurgated access to. Therefore, Americans need to hear quite a bit from Ahmanidejad and other Iranians. Journalists, however, would be derelict if they reported only his most inflammatorily stupid remarks, and neglected to report also what he says about crucial issues to US/Iranian/Middle East relations.
While this clearly makes sense to me, there are others who feel quite strongly that permitting Ahmanidejad a platform to say anything to the American people tacitly condones his anti-semitism. It’s not an entirely bogus argument – it’s quite true that providing proponents of “intelligent design” creationism a microphone imbues them with a false credibility they don’t deserve. A similar argument could be made with Ahmanidejad.
However, it’s not Ahmanidejad we must hear from. It is the president of Iran who happens, right now, to be Ahmanidejad. The benefits of hearing from the president of Iran trumps any concerns about elevating his presumed status through exposure on CNN and the networks. When and if Ahmanidejad is again an anonymous nobody with no power or influence, then it is no longer necessary to listen to anything he has to say. Before then, we simply have an obligation to listen.
“Would you say the same if this was 1934 and his name was Hitler?” Of course I would. Listening to Hitler wasn’t the problem. It was refusing to understand that Hitler was Hitler that led to catastrophe. Hitler both lied and was simultaneously quite candid about his intentions, but the only way to separate one from the other was to study Hitler and that took, among other things, listening to and reading him. If Ahmanidejad has even the slightest chance of harming the world as badly as Hitler did, it behooves us to learn as much as we can about him. And by us, I don’t mean “the Government,” I mean you and me. It is our duty to be informed and vote for informed representatives who will take our informed opinions into account. The fact that this is true only in principle -and non-existent under Bush – doesn’t relieve us of our duties as citizens, however.
Here’s another argument that could be made in support of keeping Ahmanidejad from conducting interviews with the press and others. While many folks seem to have forgotten this, many former hostages believe Ahmanidejad was directly involved with the Iranian hostage crisis. When the story broke, I took one look at the pictures and felt that it was a virtual certainty he was one of the captors.
While I fully understand, and partially share, the revulsion of those who were held hostage in Iran by Ahmanidejad and his buddies, I’m afraid that, like it or not, his position as a powerful Iranian makes it imperative to hear from him.
But again, not everything he says is interesting. His opinions on the Holocaust are as batty as Crazy Mel’s and don’t deserve news-space. His call to debate Bush is hilarious. But there are hundreds of questions that could be asked, hundreds of things he could be told about the situation in the US, all of which might be helpful in lessening tensions.
So Blitzer interviews the codpiece today and actually makes some news.
But before that, here’s what we heard:
Blitzer: Osama bin laden is still at large. Ayman al Zawahiri is still at large. What went wrong?
Bush: (agitated) A lot went right. Khalid Sheik Mohammed, if we can get a good bill out of the senate and the house is gonna go on trial. Ramzi bin al-Sibh. Abu Zubaydah
Blitzer: The main guys are still at large
Bush: (more agitated) Well, no question Osama bin Laden is at large, but the men who ordered the attack ann about 75-85% of the Al Qaeda that was involved in the planning and operating the attacks are in jus…
Blitzer: But the United States is the most powerful country in the world
Bush: (pissed) … can I just finish?
Blitzer: Why can’t we find these guys?
Bush: (red-faced) Wolf, Wolf. Thank you. Give me a chance to finish… Uuuh…
Osama bin Laden is in hiding.
And we’re still spending a lot of time trying to find him. But the key thing the American people have gotta know is that security comes not only with getting him which I’m convinced we will, but also doing other things to protect ’em. One is to dismantle Al Waeda. Two is to listen to phone calls of Al Qaeda calling the United States and responding to that. Three is to get information so we can prevent attack.
Getting bin Laden is important but doing, putting thins in place, putting procedures in place that protect you is equally important and we’re doin’ both.
Did everyone get that? Bin laden is in hiding which is why we can’t find him. And we’ll put “KSM” on trial if Bush can get a “good bill” out of the senate. Otherwise … he’ll have to keep him at Gitmo forever without a trial
It’s becoming more and more evident that Bush’s war on terrorism consists of getting the country sucked into middle east quagmires and institutionalizing random torture, endless detention and warrentless wiretapping of Americans. I feel so safe.
Meanwhile, Bush went on to say that he think Musharref is a good guy who wants to bring Al Qaeda to justice because they tried to kill him. Several times. (This is how the decider thinks of all global politics — it’s all about the leaders’ personal feelings.) Blitzer asked if there were others in Pakistan who might not have the same committment. Bush answered:
Eeeeee…maybe. Maybe. There no queastion there’s a kind of hostile territory, the remote regions of Pakistan that makes it, uh, easier for somebody to hide. But we’re on the hunt. We’ll get him.
Blitzer asked if he would give the order to kill or capture bin Laden if they had actionable intelligence that he was in Pakistan. Steely-eyed rocket man looked in the camera and said “absolutely.”
Musharref was not amused, apparently. He was asked about this at a press conference and said:
We would not like to allow that at all. We will do it ourselves. We would like to do it ourselves.
Bush knew he wasn’t supposed to say that but he couldn’t help himself. This was the correct talking point, from his press conference last week:
Q Thank you, Mr. President. Earlier this week, you told a group of journalists that you thought the idea of sending special forces to Pakistan to hunt down bin Laden was a strategy that would not work.
THE PRESIDENT: Yes.
Q Now, recently you’ve also —
THE PRESIDENT: Because, first of all, Pakistan is a sovereign nation.
Let’s all get the laughter out of our system, ok? Ok.
Continue:
Q Well, recently you’ve also described bin Laden as a sort of modern day Hitler or Mussolini. And I’m wondering why, if you can explain why you think it’s a bad idea to send more resources to hunt down bin Laden, wherever he is?
THE PRESIDENT: We are, Richard. Thank you. Thanks for asking the question. They were asking me about somebody’s report, well, special forces here — Pakistan — if he is in Pakistan, as this person thought he might be, who is asking the question — Pakistan is a sovereign nation. In order for us to send thousands of troops into a sovereign nation, we’ve got to be invited by the government of Pakistan.
Secondly, the best way to find somebody who is hiding is to enhance your intelligence and to spend the resources necessary to do that; then when you find him, you bring him to justice. And there is a kind of an urban myth here in Washington about how this administration hasn’t stayed focused on Osama bin Laden. Forget it. It’s convenient throw-away lines when people say that. We have been on the hunt, and we’ll stay on the hunt until we bring him to justice, and we’re doing it in a smart fashion, Richard. We are. And I look forward to talking to President Musharraf.
Look, he doesn’t like al Qaeda. They tried to kill him. And we’ve had a good record of bringing people to justice inside of Pakistan, because the Paks are in the lead. They know the stakes about dealing with a violent form of ideological extremists. And so we will continue on the hunt. And we’ve been effective about bringing to justice most of those who planned and plotted the 9/11 attacks, and we’ve still got a lot of pressure on them. The best way to protect the homeland is to stay on the offense and keep pressure on them.
See, “the Paks” are supposed to be in the lead. Bush just couldn’t force himself to say that again when Blitzer cornered him on the issue. And Blitzer cornered him on the issue because this weird stuff about Waziristan and Pakistan’s deal with al Qaeda is very hard to square with our alleged committment to fighting the next Hitlerstalinfascists.
How Bush is able to get away with playing the Codpiece card when he’s obviously completely stymied with Afghanistan, Pakistan and al Qaeda is beyond me. It takes guts to do it, you have to give him that. And in the six weeks before an election in the United States of the 21st century, guts are the only thing that matters.
Bill Sher of Liberal Oasis has a new book and it’s a great guide for those who are looking for common sense arguments to use as an activist and in your every day life.
Here’s an example:
Promote the Three R’s of Liberal Government
Don’t refer to “the government” and feed the image of a distant, oppressive entity. Always speak of “our government,” to accurately paint government as an extension of the people that we control and direct.
Don’t accept that the core debate between Democrats and Republicans is whether government should be big or small. Define liberal government as representative, responsive, and responsible and conservative government as elitist, callous and reckless.
In conversations about politics, cite examples from your community where our government makes a positivie difference in people’s lives, such as when veterans receive good medical care from a veterans Administration facility or children get access to the Internet at school or in a library thanks to federal funding. At the same time, point out instances where the lack of government involvement made a situation worse, such as when electricity deregulation increased rates and degraded service.
Don’t leave it to anti-government conservatives to criticize our government in places where it is not working well. The more we lead the charge for reforming ineffective government, the more credibnility we will have when proposing effective government solutions and the harder it will be for conservatives to exploit those examples and fan overall distrust of government.
The book is full of down-to-earth advice like this as well as a thorough analysis of our goals and prospects. And it’s written in the clear and entertaining prose you find on Liberal Oasis every day.
I’m sure you already know that Bill Sher is one of the sharpest bloggers around. His insights are always invaluable and this book very nicely distills his best stuff into one inspiring, but practical, guidebook.
A lot of people have questioned why I think the Democrats have decided to let McCain run with the torture issue. It’s because that’s what the press was reporting last week.
So there you have the president’s, perhaps, chief foe on this issue, again, as dug in as he is. On the other side of the aisle, Democrats, Wolf, have been pretty much trying to sit back and let John McCain and his colleagues fight it out for them. The senator from New York, Chuck Schumer, who is in charge of getting Democrats elected and reelected this Fall, here is what he had to say. He said “when conservative military men like John McCain, John Warner, Lindsey Graham and Colin Powell stand up to the president, it shows how wrong and isolated the White House is.”
So, Democrats are happy to have John McCain fight their political fight for them right now. As for Republicans, who are allies of the president here, and there are a lot of them on Capitol Hill, they have been meeting behind closed doors, trying to figure out the best strategy to echo the arguments that Mr. Bush is making in the Rose Garden today, because, as you noted, this legislation will be on the House floor next Wednesday and possibly on the Senate floor, which is where there will be a big fight as early as next week as well, Wolf.
Schumer’s statement doesn’t mean he’s going to vote for whatever McCain comes up with, but it sure sounds like it’s possible. In any case, the bill that was passed out of the armed services committee is terrible, so even if McCain “succeeds” Democrats still can’t, in good conscience, vote for it.
President of the Center for Constitutional Rights, Ratner said today: “The Warner-Graham-McCain bill denies habeas corpus to all aliens held outside the United States and currently in U.S. custody. And ‘outside’ includes Guantanamo.
“However in the case of those who have been found to be unlawful enemy combatants by Combatant Status Review Tribunal (combatant status review panels used at Guantanamo) it gives a meaningless court of appeals ‘review’ — a review that examines whether or not the U.S. complied with its own procedures — but not … a real court hearing with factual development as habeas corpus requires.
“For those aliens detained outside the U.S. that have not had CSRT hearings — the high majority — in facilities like Bagram in Afghanistan, the Warner bill simply abolished habeas or any other court review.
“The consequences are breathtaking. The U.S. can pick up any alien, even a legal permanent resident in the U.S., and take them to an off-shore prison and hold them forever without any kind of court hearing.
“While all the attention on this legislation has focused on Geneva conventions and military commissions, the Warner alternative, like the administration bill, authorizes lifelong detention without habeas or any genuine review whatsoever.”
They have an action recommendation that’s worth doing:
The debate around these bills misses the point: both versions strip away the fundamental right to habeas corpus, the right to challenge your detention in a court of law, not to be locked up under the President’s say-so, guilty or innocent, never to be heard from again.
An amendment in play could take out this dangerous measure – please use our site to fax your senators and tell them to support the Specter-Levin Amendment on habeas corpus when it gets introduced. The bills are S.3901, The Military Commissions Act of 2006, sponsored by Senator Warner and S.3861, The Bringing Terrorists to Justice Act of 2006, sponsored by Senator Frist. Please call your Senators at (202) 224-3121 IMMEDIATELY, especially if they are among the 26 we’ve identified below as critical in this fight.
This is what is happening to innocent people under our system today. It’s right out of Kafka and it won’t change because St John the Annointed and Huckelberry Graham stage a fake fight with the president. The whole scheme is untenable and the Democrats need to delay this legislation at the very least until after the election.
This rush to pass it before Novemeber should be everyone’s first clue that this thing is a sham. Unless somebody puts a poison pill in the McCain/Warner/Graham legislation that we haven’t seen, I have a feeling a bunch of Dems are going to roll on this piece of garbage and another step toward American becoming a rogue superpower will have been taken for political reasons. That’s how we got into Iraq, after all.
And, sadly, this whole thing will end up giving John McCain one more notch in his belt as the savior of the republic.
You can access a simple form and the addresses and phone numbers of senators at the link above if you want to let them know that you expect them to support the Specter-Levin amendment.
McCain and the other GOP senators have indicated they would be willing to amend domestic U.S. law, especially the War Crimes Act, to permit at least some “enhanced” CIA techniques. They are also willing to pass legislation that would deny many rights to detainees at Guantánamo Bay and allow them to be held indefinitely.
Bush has always said that he wanted to “clarify” Article III and I predict that they will soon have a “breakthrough” that says they have found a way to do just that — by amending the War Crimes Act.
Senator John Cornyn of Texas, a Republican on the Armed Services Committee who has supported the president’s legislation, said Tuesday morning that the White House had agreed to work within the War Crimes Act to refine the obligations under Common Article 3.
“There’s agreement on the goal,” Mr. Cornyn said, “that is, that we continue to comply with our international treaty obligations and all of our domestic laws, but at the same time not tie the hands of our intelligence officials.”
[…]
The senators propose to provide clearer guidelines for interrogators by amending the War Crimes Act to enumerate several “grave breaches” that constitute violations of Common Article 3.
That’s the Kabuki. Here’s the rub:
Several issues appeared to remain in flux, among them whether the two sides could agree on language protecting C.I.A. officers from legal action for past interrogations and for any conducted in the future. Beyond the issue of interrogations, the two sides have also been at odds over the rights that should be granted to terrorism suspects during trials, in particular whether they should be able to see all evidence, including classified material, that a jury might use to convict them.
I predict that McCain and Graham are prepared to do the big el-foldo on all that and take the “victory” on amending the Geneva Convention which was never really in dispute in the first place. They will be heroes, the president will claim victory like he always does and everyone will get exactly what they need. (Man, I’ll bet Joe Lieberman is kicking himself that he didn’t get a piece of this. It’s his kind of bipartisan deal.)
But regardless of how this Geneva/torture Kabuki comes out, let’s not forget that the McCain, Warner, Huckelberry bill is already a very, very bad bill that no Democrat can in good conscience support.
It’s important to understand that although Senators McCain, Graham and Warner are getting a lot of great press on their disagreements with President Bush, and are being widely championed as brave defenders of human rights, the bill they have authored in the Senate is not a good bill; it is merely less terrible than the one the President is pushing. The press has either been hoodwinked on this score or has been complicit in downplaying this aspect of their handiwork. I choose to believe that it is the former: hence this post.
In particular, the McCain-Graham-Warner bill, like the President’s, would prevent anyone detained in Guantanamo Bay (or any other detention facility outside the U.S.) from challenging what has been done to them in court except as an appeal from the decision of a military commission.
That means that if the government decides never to try an individual before a commission, but just holds them in prison indefinitely, there is no way that they can ever get a hearing on whether they are being held illegally– because they are not in fact a terrorist; or a hearing on whether they are being treated illegally– because they have been abused or tortured or subjected to one of the Administration’s “alternative sets of procedures”– a.k.a. torture lite.(read on)
I think Bill Kristol’s partially right about how this plays politically in his essay called “The Trap:”
There is now a clear and live contrast between Bush and the Democrats on an important issue in the war on terror.
Wait a minute, you say–it’s not just Democrats who oppose Bush. Four Republicans joined the Democratic senators–John McCain, John Warner, Lindsey Graham, and Susan Collins. Colin Powell is with them. So the Democrats have cover.
No, they don’t. The fact that McCain has badly damaged his 2008 presidential chances doesn’t mean the Democrats can’t be hurt in 2006. True, there could be a dozen GOP votes for the Democratic alternative on the floor of the Senate next week. There were a dozen Democratic votes for Bush’s tax cuts in 2001. It didn’t prevent Republicans from distinguishing themselves from Demo crats on taxes. A few defections won’t prevent Republicans from saying–truthfully–that there is a real difference between the two parties on the war on terror, and that they stand with Bush and against Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi.
Democratic candidates will respond that McCain also stands with them. It won’t help. The American people don’t agree with McCain on this. And they’re not going to be persuaded by some of the arguments made by Bush’s critics. Let Democratic candidates try to argue that, unless we go even further than required by the 2005 legislation sponsored by McCain (which Bush’s proposal embraces), al Qaeda might react by not treating Americans decently. Let Democratic candidates try to defend the notion that we’ll get lots of credit in Europe by going the extra mile–as if the 2005 detainees legislation generated any good will there. Let Democratic candidates align themselves with world opinion (as interpreted by Colin Powell), and join in expressing doubt about “the moral basis of our fight against terrorism.”
I don’t think it’s quite the electoral smash for Republicans he thinks it is nor has Mccain “badly damaged” his chances in 2008. Bush is going to give him a big sloppy kiss when this is all done and everything will be forgiven. But it’s still a trap. I think the Dems are thinking that McCain et al are going to get this bill delayed until after the election. Maybe they will. Or maybe they can stall it in conference and they have their fingers crossed that they will win in November and can derail the thing.
But what in the hell are the Dems going to do if McCain makes a deal and this thing gets to the floor? Are they actually going to vote for a bill that eliminates habeas corpus for terrorist suspects? Because if they don’t, you know what the Republicans are going to be saying, don’t you? After all, the saviors of the republic and guardian kinghts of the constitution say this bill is ok. The only reason the Dems can possibly have for opposing it now is that they are terrorist loving cowards.
I have to assume the Dems have good reasons for letting McCain run with this. But they are certainly placing a lot of trust in a man who is running for president from the opposing party. If Democrats in 2006 end up voting for this McCain/Warner/Graham monstrosity based on nothing but McCain’s word they have learned nothing. Unless they are willing to filibuster a month before the election, which I seriously doubt, the Republicans will have backed them into exactly the same corner they did with the Iraq war resolution and the Homeland security bills in 2002. I’m not going to believe it until I see it with my own eyes, but I’m worried.
My piece from earlier about why liberal hawks shouldn’t have supported the invasion of Iraq on the merits, unfortunately comes to mind as I read Sam Gardiner’s paper (pdf) at the Century Foundation that everyone’s talking about. He’s been convinced that the US has been preparing the ground in Iran for military action since last spring.
He writes this:
The real U.S. policy objective is not merely to eliminate the nuclear program, but to overthrow the regime. It is hard to believe, after the misguided talk prior to Iraq of how American troops would be greeted with flowers and welcomed as liberators, but those inside and close to the administration who are arguing for an air strike against Iran actually sound as if they believe the regime in Tehran can be eliminated by air attacks….[But] no serious expert on Iran believes the argument about enabling a regime change. On the contrary, whereas the presumed goal is to weaken or disable the leadership and then replace it with others who would improve relations between Iran and the United States, it is far more likely that such strikes would strengthen the clerical leadership and turn the United States into Iran’s permanent enemy.
….At the end of the path that the administration seems to have chosen, will the issues with Iran be resolved? No….Will the United States force a regime change in Iran? In all probability it will not….Will the United States have weakened its position in the Middle East? Yes….After all the effort, I am left with two simple sentences for policymakers. “You have no military solution for the issues of Iran. You have to make diplomacy work.”
That sounds, once again, as if the administration is rushing headlong into something that is a very bad idea. But then, it’s not surprising, is it?
Here we are, a few weeks before another important election in which the Republican hold on power is threatened and suddenly the shit is coming down. The terrorists are all going to be running in the streets if we don’t hurry, hurry, hurry and pass the president’s torture bill. Iran is on the verge of getting nukes and sending them to kill you in your beds any day now. The world is a horrible, frightening place and if you don’t know it you are a fool. All that’s standing between us and chaos is a man and his codpiece.
Richard Holbrook was on Blitzer today and was terribly confused by all this. It made me laugh:
Holbrook: And today’s events — and Jack Cafferty really got it right — President Bush’s speech was pretty good as speeches go, but the theater here is remarkable. A hunk president, the world’s leading anti-Semite, has been elevated to a mano a mano on the world stage today by circumstances which I don’t understand. I don’t understand why President Bush would have allowed himself to be scheduled on the same day as Ahmadinejad.
BLITZER: Could he change that, or is that something that is up to the United Nations?
HOLBROOKE: That’s a technological issue. I’d leave it to the current ambassador, but let me just put it this way: Had I been in that job, I would have done everything I could to prevent them talking on the same day so that — to prevent the kind of conversations you and Jack Cafferty correctly were just having.
This is just theater today, but a tiny pipsqueak leader and an anti-Semite of the worst order, the worst since Hitler in some ways, is being given this co-equal status. That’s what we’re talking about.
Really, Dick. You aren’t that stupid are you? They desperately need to make that pip-squeek leader equal to Bush so that Bush can be seen “standing up to him” and smiting him. The theater at the UN today was boffo and it was the whole point. There’s an election to win.
And meanwhile, playing on screen #2, we had the macho, resolute president demanding that the congress approve his “tough” interrogation techniques while the Senators proved that Republicans are independent mavericks who follow their own equally resolute moral code. God bless the Republican Party, it has it all. Only they can save us from the Islamofascists and keep America clean and pure and good at the same time. Vote GOP or die.
I don’t know if it will work again. This trillion dollar franchise is getting a little bit stale. But damn, the production values are awesome. They not only know how to put lipstick on this pig, they give it botox and liposuction.
Update: I don’t mean to suggest that this is only about electoral politics. That dictates the timing but it doesn’t mean they aren’t serious about confronting Iran or legalizing torture. It’s all part of the same game. I think they’ve proven they like exercizing power in all the ways that that implies.
BLITZER: … the International Atomic Energy Agency stops short of flatly saying they are building a bomb.
BOLTON: They have stopped short, but they’ve also refused to say that Iran’s program is purely peaceful. It may just take one piece of information that the IAEA published. Iran has documents from AQCON[A.Q Kahn], the great nuclear proliferator from Pakistan about how to fabricate uranium metal into hemispheres. There’s only one use of uranium metal formed in the hemisphere, and that’s to form a nuclear weapon. But nothing to do with peaceful uses of nuclear power.
BLITZER: But you understand why some people are skeptical of the Bush administration’s stance given the failures on the weapons of mass destruction intelligence leading up to the Iraq war?
BOLTON: Quite honestly, I think it’s few and far between, people who are skeptical of what direction Iran is taking. Where there have been disagreements with our European friends and even with Russia and China have been over how to handle it. But I will say, it’s not — this is not a dispute over intelligence. Obviously, intelligence can be wrong in several different directions. This is fundamentally a dispute I think within the security council about when to impose sanctions.
BLITZER: Because I raise the question because going into the war with Iraq, all of the intelligence communities in Europe and the Middle East and United States, they seem to be convinced that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. We now know he did not, so maybe all of the intelligence communities as far as Iran are wrong right now for whatever reason.
And I say that only because the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Richard Lugar, the ranking Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, a member of the intelligence committee, Carl Levin of Michigan, they told me recently that U.S. intelligence on Iran — they don’t believe is very good.
BOLTON: Well I think our intelligence could get much better, let’s put it that way. But don’t forget, intelligence was wrong about Saddam Hussein in 1990, ’91 too when they didn’t think they were close to developing a nuclear weapon, where the IAEA had no proof, but where after that war, we learned a lot about what Saddam Hussein was up to.
So as they say, intelligence can be wrong in a lot of directions. There is no doubt that the strategic decision that Iran has been following for close to 20 years has been to get not only a nuclear weapons capability, but to enhance the range and accuracy of their ballistic missile forces as well and that combination is extraordinarily dangerous.
BLITZER: How close, based on the information you have, is Iran to building a nuclear bomb?
BOLTON: Well, this is where the intelligence estimates vary and they vary all over the lot. I think precisely because of our uncertainty about the exact state of Iran’s nuclear program, we have to treat their clear effort to get a nuclear weapon capability as very serious and not to assume that the intelligence estimates that put it off for many years are necessarily going to be right.
When you see a regime seeking the capability and you see a president like Ahmadinejad denying the existence of the Holocaust, calling for Israel to be wiped off the map, sponsoring conferences with names like the World Without the United States, this is something that it’s not only capabilities, it’s intentions that you have to take seriously.
BLITZER: So you think it’s realistic to assume if they had a bomb, they would actually use it?
BOLTON: I think it’s realistic in a regime that is the central banker of international terrorism that is seeking a ballistic missile capability far beyond any legitimate defensive needs they might have, but which also puts arms and weapons in the hands of terrorists today. We’ve got a threat if they had the weapon, they could not make it with a ballistic missile, they could give it to a terrorist group like Hamas or Hezbollah as well.
BLITZER: Well that sounds very ominous, even much more dangerous than what the United States feared going into the war with Iraq. I assume the military option is being dusted off if it’s not more advanced?
BOLTON: Well I think we’ve said repeatedly we never take the military option off the table, but President Bush has been emphatic for several years now our preferred way of dealing with the Iranian program is through peaceful and diplomatic means and he emphasized that again this morning at the U.N.
BLITZER: If those peaceful diplomatic means don’t work, sanctions don’t get off the ground, if there’s no change in the Iranian position, what happens then?
BOLTON: Well that’s why we say we don’t take any option off the table about, but our effort at the moment, our concentration, our focus is on getting it resolved through diplomatic means. Through sanctions, if need be.
BLITZER: Is it credible to think that the U.S. could destroy Iran’s nuclear weapons program, assuming they have one?
BOLTON: I think they should believe that.
BLITZER: Do you think the U.S. could that with air strikes, with cruise missiles, with — presumably they spread out their facilities around the country and they’re deep underground. They learned the lessons of the Iraqis back in 1981 when the Israelis destroyed their reactor.
BOLTON: Well I’m not sure what the Iranians have really learned and I don’t want to get into a hypothetical how it might happen. But I do think that the president has been very clear over a number of months that it’s unacceptable for Iran to have nuclear weapons. I think when he says it’s unacceptable, I think what he means by that, it’s not acceptable.
BLITZER: Is Senator Voinovich of Ohio right when he compares Ahmadinejad to Hitler?
BOLTON: I think any man who denies the existence of the Holocaust and calls for Israel to be wiped off the map hasn’t learned the lessons of history and I don’t know what kind of comparison you can draw other than that.
BLITZER: Would you make a similar comparison?
BOLTON: That’s not my function. I mean, what I do is follow the policies set by the president and the secretary. We all have our personal opinions. I think it’s unacceptable for the head of a member government of the United Nations that says — the charter of which says we are to resolve our differences by peaceful means to have somebody like that calling for another U.N. member state to be wiped off the map.
BLITZER: Is that why you don’t think the president or other top officials should be meeting with Iranian leaders right now?
BOLTON: Well, we have made an incredibly generous offer to Iran on the nuclear question, even though they are a principal state sponsor of terrorism. We’ve even been willing to put that aside to say we would be prepared with the Europeans and the Russians and the Chinese to sit down with Iran if they do one thing, they suspend their uranium enrichment activity. And that’s not the U.S.’ condition, that’s the European’s condition, it’s the Security Council’s condition, it’s the IAEA’s condition.
I don’t know why all that sounds so familiar, but it does. I feel like I was sitting right here at my desk some time in the not too distant past, reading speeches about an evil man who wanted to kill Americans and gassing people like in the holocaust and centrifuges and aluminum tubes and security council resolutions and mushroom clouds…
It was fall, too … just after labor day. Must be deja vu.
They couldn’t possibly try this again before another mid-term election, could they?
And the country isn’t going to fall for it again, are they?
The ongoing back and forth about why liberal hawks shouldn’t have supported the invasion of Iraq because they should have known that the Bush administration was incompetent or known it was impossible to succeed continues. And all those things are correct. But I never hear anyone discuss why invading Iraq was a bad decision on the merits.
For reasons I’ve never been able to fathom, a whole bunch of liberal hawks accepted the premise of the Bush Doctrine without considering the ramifications of such a doctrine and whether it was wise to adopt it. Right after 9/11 the Doctrine was a simple formulation that if a government harbored terrorist enemies of the United States, they too were considered an enemy of the United States. That made some sense, particularly as it was applied to Afghanistan. After all, the Taliban didn’t just have terrorists in its midst, it was actively working with them and supporting them. Deposing them was an obvious reaction to the terrorist attacks and very few but the purely pacifist (a thoroughly respectable but extremely rare principle in our culture) objected to it. Indeed, most Americans, hawk and dove alike, agreed after 9/11 that any government that would actively help such criminals as bin Laden had to be stopped.
But soon the Bush Doctrine took on a new character altogether which came almost verbatim from an infamous Defense Department document written by Paul Wolfowitz in 1992 (and rejected by Bush’s father.) I won’t go into the details of that (if you’re unfamiliar with that you can read up on it here) except to point out that the concept of preventive war was folded into the Bush Doctrine and accepted as if it had always been there and that the nation had embraced it just as they’d embraced the much simpler, earlier doctrine. They had also very cleverly hijacked the term “pre-emptive” (which had long been an accepted form of self-defense) to mean the more sinister and illegal term “preventive” which had been rejected by all civilized nations for decades. And lo and behold, Iraq was immediately seen as the first nation in need of such “pre-emption.”
We all knew that certain members of the Bush administration had been obsessed with Iraq for a decade for reasons that had nothing to do with terrorism. And while their obsession did not automatically delegitimize their argument to go into Iraq after 9/11, it certainly should have given liberal hawks some pause. Here was, after all, a group of people who robotically insisted “9/11 changed everything” and yet it had not, evidently, changed their view on Iraq at all, nor had they even taken a moment to reassess. You could smell the opportunism in the air and that should have made smart people skeptical. Nobody knew for sure what the state of Iraq’s WMD arsenal or programs were, of course (although the shaky nature of the “evidence” certainly made my tin-foil hat chirp and squawk like crazy.) But we did know that he had successfully been contained for twelve years and after 9/11 there were good reasons not to rush into anything without a full reassessment of everything. And my God, were they ever rushing into it.
Virtually none of the foreign policy establishment were concerned that invading Iraq was a bad strategy in light of the threat of terrorism. It was obvious that we would inflame the Islamic radicals and create more of them — an American occupying army in the mideast at a time of rising extremism and anti-American fervor was about as provocative an act as could have been imagined. This argument was glossed over as some sort of appeasement when, in fact, it was extremely salient. Why on earth would you go out of your way to aid the recruitment of your enemy unless it was absolutely necessary? The administration may need to play to its base with useless strongman preening but there was no excuse for liberal hawks not to care about this argument.
But the greatest strategic error was dismissing the possibility that by occupying Iraq it would empower Iran in the process. This was indoubtedly seen as pessimism or immoral realpolitik by the neocons and liberal hawks, but it was a very serious consideration that we are now seeing played out before our very eyes. It’s quite clear that the most successful beneficiary of our Iraq policy has been Iraq’s longtime rival, Iran. Had Iraq really presented the existential threat the administration claimed, it might have made sense. But nobody but the most deluded of neocons believed that Saddam was planning to launch drone planes filled with nukes and chemical weapons at the US. There should have been more attention paid to the ramifications of empowering Iran before we invaded Iraq by people who should know better. (The great irony is that the administration is now recycling the same fearmongering to use against Iran — instead of “gassed his own people” it’s “denies the holocaust.” SOS)
So, in the months before we went into Iraq the situation was this:
The Bush Doctrine was morphing before our eyes into a permission slip for unilateral aggression based on nothing more than guesswork about a possible future threat, degrading our moral authority before the war even started.
Many of our allies were balking which meant that we would potentially lose valuable cooperation on terrorism and would have a much harder time coalition building in the future.
Saddam had been successfully contained for more than a decade and could have stayed contained for some time, even if the hyped up threat assessment had turned out to be correct.
The evidence for terrorist ties between Iraq and al Qaeda was virtually non-existent and there was no reason to believe that they would ever have the same goals. Conversely, invading iraq was likely to empower islamic extremism in Iraq and elsewhere.
We rushed into it as if it were an emergency when Saddam had done nothing for years. This meant that planning (which never happened anyway) would have had to be done on a crisis basis, increasing the chance of mistakes and missteps.
We were commmitting our military to a non-urgent long term operation at a time when we needed them to be flexible for the emerging threats of the new era of Islamic extremism.
We knew that upending the structure of the middle east before we had a chance to fully assess the situation could result in empowering the actors we wanted to marginalize, both state and non-state.
For all those reasons one could see not just that it was an impossible task or that the Bush administration would mess it up but that it was simply a bad idea when the circumstances after 9/11 dictated that we be smart about national security. 9/11 didn’t change everything but you’d think the threat of terrorism and assymetrical warfare would have changed the neocon and liberal hawk’s longtime assumptions about the efficacy of traditional military power. If there was ever a time for realism — in the pure sense of the word — it was then. Instead, we had the right lashing out incoherently at their ancient demons and the liberal hawks naively believing that it was a good idea to express our goodness and greatness through a military action that was quite obviously unnecessary at that moment and for which the risk far outweighed the benfit.
We all know that the result was even worse that we feared. We couldn’t know they did no planning at all for the occupation. It didn’t occur to us that they would literally bring in 20 something college Republicans to run the reconstruction. I couldn’t imagine they would botch it so thoroughly on every level that we have now exposed ourselves as something of a paper tiger when it comes to such unilateral actions. It’s weakened us considerably. (And it’s also brought us to a very frightening point…) The abandonment of moral authority with aggressive war and torture, the lost opportunities in Afghanistan, the empowering of Iran are all fall-out from this terrible decision and while we couldn’t necessarily know exactly what would happen, there was NO DOUBT that the outcome was unpredictable. Great powers can’t afford to run dangerous military experiments with unpredictable results unless it’s absolutely necessary. Blowback tends to be rather extreme.
The administration dazzled the nation with a big show and the media was chomping at the bit to have a “real” war that they could cover. But when you stripped away all the hysterical rhetoric it was clear then that even if the Bush administration had been capable of preventing Iraq from descending into chaos and achieving all its goals, liberal hawks should have known that rushing into war in the spring of 2003 was a bad idea anyway.
In the midterm election on November 7, Bush predicted Democrats won’t win either the House or the Senate. “I believe these elections will come down to two things: one, firm belief that in order to win the war on terror there must be a comprehensive strategy that recognizes this war is being fought on more than one front, and, two, the economy.” Bush said the price of gasoline, which has been falling rapidly, is one of the “interesting indicators” that the press should watch carefully. “Just giving you a heads up,” he added.
Now, Digby observed that Bush must have told Them – the Oil “Them” – to open the spigot. And indeed, gas prices have fallen. But in truth, it’s a leap of faith to suggest that the lower oil prices this election seas…sorry, I meant, this fall, had anything to do with the fact that there are 2 oilmen running the United States and their political ass is on the line. I wouldn’t presume to suggest, say, that Bush, Cheney, and Rice begged the cartels and companies to temporarily ease off on the pricegoug… sorry, the utterly fair profit margin they’re taking.
No, what interests me is Bush’s confidence that the election is in the bag. And him giving his rightwing press pals a “heads up.” A heads up. For what? The world anxiously awaits. And I’m not kidding.
I remind you: Bush don’t bluff. Bush do whatever the hell he wants to do. If I were Betting Bill Bennett, I’d lay even odds that the Mayberry Machiavelllis got a little treat in store for the rest of us this fall. And no, I’m bettin’ it ain’t jes’ gamey voting machines, which goes without saying.
As it happens, I’ve kept a short list of October surprises I’ve been working on and I was gonna wait until, you guessed it, October, but given that the “heads up” comment seems to have slipped under the radar a little, I thought I’d release it now to draw a little attention to the very probable threat behind Bush’s remark.
Potential October Surprises
1. Osama bin Laden is captured or killed. That would explain why Osama’s name’s been cropping up in Bush’s speech after so long an absence. Somewhat possible.
2. Another attack on the continental US. This seems unlikely to me, not only because Bush/Rove would never plan such a thing -they didn’t in the past and they won’t in the future, people. Nor will they let bin Laden or any of the zillion of new enemies Bush and Cheney have created do 9/11 part deux from their neglect. Why? The country simply won’t unite behind Bush if he neglects to protect us a third (or fourth) time during his regime. He got a free pass on September 11, ditto for anthrax. But after Katrina, a spectacular attack on the “homeland” ain’t gonna play too well.
3. A nuclear strike, either on Iran or somewhere else like NoKo, unilateral, pre-emptive, and announced as a fait accompli. Bush has, after all, started military ops against Iran, according to Sam Gardiner. Not that likely, but I was getting jumpy one night, and the paranoia overruled my desire to sleep.
4. The exquisitely-timed revelation of a major financial or sexual scandal involving major Democrats. I think this is very likely.
5. Rumsfeld will resign for “health reasons.” Very likely, imo. Everyone loathes him. His replacement? Well, the kind of mentality that would replace a bozo like Ashcroft with a worse bozo like Gonzales…who’s to say? Jerry Boykin? Nah, not even Bush is that stu…as I was saying…who knows who will replace Rumsfeld? But I think Rumsfeld is about to pursue a career for which he has genuine talent: Comic poetry.
6. Bush got bupkus and the “heads up” really is a bluff, which means he psyched us out and so we waste tons of time and bucks trying to figure out what’s he holding and come up empty. I think that’s highly unlikely. He’s a liar but he’s no bluffer, if you can get your heads around that. (And if you do, you can ‘splain it to me sometime ’cause I can’t.)
7. Gas prices will fall. Oh, right, that happened already, but it’s not enough to tip the election his way.
Feel free to imagine other surprises Bush may be concocting. Maybe his ever creative lawyers have found a legal means to strip Massachusetts, New York, and Vermont, and so on of their statehood and annex them as single counties in New Alabama, New Mississippi, or New Texas. The ultimate gerrymander. Maybe, lawyers are standing by ready to contest each and every Democratic victory that slips past Diebold.
Go for it, boys and girls. Emulate Karl Rove. Let your imagination, eh… rove free. What’s Bush planning?
