One comment. Billmon writes about the disgusting “exterminate all the brutes” mindset, and behavior, of the Israeli army:
This all might be considered normal military behavior for, oh say, a Bosnian Serb militia captain, circa 1991, but when the political and military leaders of an allegedly civilized state start talking this way, something big is going on, and going wrong.
Yes, indeed, something big is going on. It’s the opening skirmishes of a Middle East – wide war, brought to you by the losers who gave the world Iraq 2006.
And brother, is it ever going wrong.
Can an enormous, dreadful, and pointless war be averted? Yes, but it will require an American opposition to Bush willing to speak truth loudly, not a party so terrified of upsetting Americans’ beautiful minds it doesn’t have the courage to put the Iraq war and Bush’s mad behavior front and center.
For those who think that things are much better in the mainstream media since the disgraceful selling of the New Product in fall 2002 through March ’03, Media Matters today will set y’all straight. Two reports about television stood out.
Kinda makes you sick to your stomach, doesn’t it? Now I know there’s a fine line between entertainment and news, but first of all it ain’t *that* fine. Second of all, none of this is entertaining.
Meanwhile, am I the only one who’s noticed the all the shameless puff pieces disguised as reporting on John Bolton, despite the fact that he is universally loathed and has accomplished next to nothing except the impossible, namely to make the US even more of a laughingstock internationally than it already was?
For those of you who are having trouble keeping track of all the allegiances among the various countries, groups, militias and terrorists in the mid-east, Slate put together a handy dandy interactive Middle East Buddy List
Wandering through the nation’s op-ed pages is like ambling through a dojo. Each writer has his own particular style, technique, finishing move. There’s Tom Friedman, who rushes in with the Implausible Conversational Anecdote, links it to an Off-Topic Invocation Of World Travels, and finishes you with a Confusing Metaphor From Above. Or there’s Maureen Dowd, who deploys Unfounded Personal Speculation mixed with Confusing Allegories till she’s set up her killing blow: Insinuation of Character Defect. It’s impressive stuff.
The deadliest op-ed columnist, however, is unquestionably David Brooks. He’s the drunken boxer of the opinion page, luring you into a false sense of security with Banal Observations that comfort through Faux Bipartisanship until you’re ready for the Illogical Conservative Conclusion. Today’s column is an archetypal example of the master at work: a series of cogent critiques of Hillary Clinton’s college aid proposals that effortlessly glide through research demonstrating their uselessness, a couple lavish compliments to Clinton and her team, and finally a conclusion that explains the only way to increase college attendance is to encourage two-parent homes, fundamentally reform schools, and increase church-sponsored mentoring programs. Funny thing — this is exactly the rightwing’s agenda! And yet it comes wrapped in such warm bipartisanship and elevated chin stroking that you’d never notice Newt Gingrich silently mouthing along in the background.
And then there’s Krugman who wanders in from the alley and while the other columnists are practicing their qigong he just plants a facer on the opposition.
Destroy The Village In Order To Save It: Part Deux
by digby
“Our mission and our goal is to have a lasting peace — not a temporary peace, but something that lasts,” said Bush. “We want a sustainable ceasefire. We don’t want something that’s, you know, short term in duration.”
This is the middle east he’s talking about. Apparently somebody has told him that getting a lasting peace there is just a matter of resolve. If only people hadn’t accepted all these temporary ceasefires in the past, everything would have been straightened out by now. (He’s not saying they wouldn’t have gotten their hair mussed…)
I know he’s just an idiot who doesn’t even have the barest grasp of simple logic. But when children are being killed and maimed, you’d think they could at least have the foresight to come up with a talking point that doesn’t make “collateral damage” sound like a moral concept by comparison. This idea that in order to achieve longterm peace you can’t have a temporary ceasefire is gibberish, yes, — but it is immoral too. Apparently, he really doesn’t grasp the fact that during a “short-term” ceasefire actual human beings are not being killed — real people with jobs and homes and lives and everything.
I think that one of the sad consequences of Democrats being so hapless these last few years is that these silly Republicans have gotten it into their heads that the whole world works like the American political system. If you humiliate your enemy enough, they will become like “neutered barnyard animals” who will happily go along with their second class status. But that only works when the other side is comfortable and fat and enjoying the perks of the status quo as much as the victors. In the real world this is a very provocative and dangerous way to try to manage human events. It tends to create hatreds that can’t be mitigated by a nice slice of political pork down the road.
I’ve always been quite fond of this statement by Bush back in 2001, which I think perfectly reflects his temperament:
The American people must understand when I said that we need to be patient, that I meant it. And we’re going to be there for a while. I don’t know the exact moment when we leave, David, but it’s not until the mission is complete. The world must know that this administration will not blink in the face of danger and will not tire when it comes to completing the missions that we said we would do. The world will learn that when the United States is harmed, we will follow through. The world will see that when we put a coalition together that says “Join us,” I mean it. And when I ask others to participate, I mean it.
That’s been working out really well for us, don’t you think?
That was at the zenith of Bush’s post bullhorn power and I don’t think he’s progressed one moment past that point. When you combine it with the neocon obsession with war as the answer for every problem, you get an administration that sees sustained violence as the only way to achieve lasting peace and that the problem in the middle east is that there just hasn’t been enough of it over the years.
It’s as if “1984” were true, except that Big Brother is a hulking, braindead thug.
Number of Iraqis who had access to potable water before invasion: 13 million
Number of Iraqis who have access to potable water, according to the April 2006 SIGIR report: 8 million
Number of Iraqi physicians registered prior to the invasion: 34,000
Number of Iraqi physicians who have been murdered or fled the country since the invasion: 14,000
Infant mortality rate in Iraq: (Middle East average is 37, sub-Saharan Africa average is 105): 102
Average number of daily attacks by insurgents in June 2004: 45 Average number of daily attacks by insurgents in June 2006: 90
Rank of Iraq on the “failed states” index: 4
Rank of Afghanistan on the “failed states” index: 10
Rank of Iraq among all nations as a training ground for terrorists:1
The last we heard from Joe Lieberman, (who isn’t talking about foreign policy on the campaign trail, apparently) was that there was tremendous progress being made in Iraq, especially on the political front. Here’s the index on the political situation:
Amount requested by the President in his Fiscal Year 2007 budget for democracy promotion in Iraq: 0
Percent of Iraqis who say they are optimistic about their future: 30 percent
According to a recent World Public Opinion poll, percent of Iraqis who approve of a timeline for U.S. withdrawal: 70 percent
Degree of corruption in Iraq on the Transparency International 2005 Corruption Perceptions Index (on a scale of 0-10, with 0 representing “highly corrupt” and 10 representing “highly clean”): 2.2
Number of corruption cases that have been filed since the Iraqi Commission on Public Integrity was established in 2004: 1,400
Approximate number of Iraqi families internally displaced as of February 2006 (prior to February 22 bombing of Shiite shrine in Samarra): 3,000
Approximate number of Iraqi families internally displaced as of June 2006, according to Iraq’s Ministry of Displacement and Migration: 21,731 or 130,386 people
Number of Iraqi civilians killed in May, according to data from the Iraqi Health Ministry and the Baghdad morgue: 2,669
Number of Iraqi civilians killed in June, according to data from the Iraqi Health Ministry and the Baghdad morgue: 3,149
Civilian death toll in Iraq in June 2006: 100 per day
Rank of Iraq in Minority Rights Group International’s list of peoples most under threat from persecution, discrimination, and mass killing: 1
The number of passports issued in the past ten months, according to the U.S. Committee for Refugees:2 million
Percent of Iraq’s professional class that has left the country since late 2003:40 percent
You have to wonder what it would have looked like if it were going badly.
Update: The Poorman has a post up about one of those displaced Iraqis — a catblogger named Raghda, whose family finally gave up and left the country.
When the present batch of Democratic consultants finally give up the ghost – that is, part this world for the next, ie. croak – it is my fervent wish that they be consigned a special space in hell where they’ll be forced to watch unto eternity these Ed Sullivan shows with all the Beatles performances removed. I seen the shows recently so I realize that is an extremely cruel fate to wish on anyone. They deserve it.
Democrats plan to press for a minimum wage increase and “tough, smart” national security in their final push to wrest power from the Republicans in the November elections.
Something missing, boys and girls? Like the Iraq war, perhaps? Or the awful economy?
And guess what? When you avoid a subject, no matter what it is, you leave the field wide open for Republicans – who are so fluent in Newspeak by now that they don’t even hesitate a beat – to define the playing field for you:
Danny Diaz, a Republican National Committee spokesman, said: “It is both ironic and amusing that Democrats believe they are making a final argument to the American people, while being incapable of deciding how much to raise taxes on working families or how quickly to retreat from Iraq.”
Trying arguing from those premises.
And that, in the opinion of the Dems’ most lavishly compensated advice-peddlers, is the problem. You can’t, so it’s best to avoid the subject. Nevermind that avoiding talk about a war that’s costing the mothers of American soliders thousands of their children’s lives – and for no purpose whatsoever – is just about the worst thing you could possibly do if you were trying to convince someone you were a serious alternative to Republican incompetence. Nevermind that avoiding talk on insisting that the Paris Hiltons and Dick Cheneys of America pay their fair share is simply insane. Better to avoid these subjects altogether than taking the effort to set a level playing field for these subjects. That would take work.
What should the Dems have done? Made Iraq and tax breaks for the Scaifes and the Ahmansons the central issues or at least define them clearly and loudly and long before the Republicans. Instead, they will now face an uphill rhetorical battle trying to counteract Republican rhetoric. And the Republicans will repeat Diaz’s crap until Democrats won’t be able to avoid it.
Will the Dems win either house or both in November? Let’s put it this way: if they do (and God help us if Republicans continue their assault on the fabric of American government unopposed), it will be because the Republicans couldn’t hide any longer how dangerously awful they are. Democratic victories will come in spite of their best efforts to remain powerless. And Republicans will easily reverse any Democratic wins in ’08.
Why? Please. How much effort do you think it will it take a Republican propaganda machine that comes up with lines like “how quickly to retreat from Iraq” to blame Democrats for anything that goes wrong in the next two years if Dems actually control a house or two of Congress? Talk about cakewalks! (Well to be literate, “pieces of cake,” cakewalks are dances.)
Now there are responsible people, for example Sean Wilentz in this important article in The New Yorker, who apparently feel the march into fascism hasn’t progressed to the point where they’re all but irreversible. I disagree. The assault on American values and institutions has been so thorough and relentless over the past 6 years they cannot be effectively counteracted simply by wresting temporary control of a house of Congress, especially if that control is won by avoiding talking about the important things that are going on. Think of all the extremist judges and bureaucrats Bush has placed in power. Think of all the good people who fled the CIA in the past few years. Sorry, Sean, I love your new book but I think you’ve misunderestimated the extent of the damage.
It’s now generally accepted, once again and hallelujah for that, that avoiding reality is a Really Bad Thing and that Bushism is premised on avoiding reality. However, an opposition strategy that fails to confront head-on the disasters of Iraq, Afghanistan, the tax breaks for the wealthy, and the increasingly fascist nature of mainstream Republicanism is also entirely divorced from reality. If anything, it is even more so in some ways. And just like Bushism, it is doomed to spectacular failure.
Here’s hoping I’m wrong. But I’m afraid I’m not. The pity of it all is that if mainstream Democrats would simply ditch the consultants and speak the truth, it would be utterly persuasive. There are some good people there – Kerry, Pelosi, Obama, Dean, Reid, Clark – and feel free to substitute/add others, they’re are dozens of great politicians in the Dem party. But the campaign advice they are getting is just godawful.
And thus, eternal Ed Sullivan without the Beatles, without Elvis, without Buddy Holly – man, do they have it coming. There will be no mercy.
A decorated sergeant and Arabic language specialist was dismissed from the U.S. Army under the ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy, though he says he never told his superiors he was gay and his accuser was never identified.
One further point in re: Digby’s post on the neocons’ alarm that Rice is misleading Bush into accepting diplomatic rather than military approaches to Iran, Hizbollah, NoKo, etc. On the face of it, the notion that Bush is seriously pursuing diplomacy is laughable. Rice surely is incompetent, but there is no possible way anything she says or does will prevent Bush from waging further war in the Middle East.
The airing of the neocon nutjobs’ views at this time has a different purpose. It is part of a blatant attempt to define the limits of acceptable discourse on Israel/Hizbollah so that the only sensible position – an immediate halt by Israel of all hostilities and a withdrawal from Lebanon – is framed as so far left as to be beyond the pale of serious discussion. The Bush/Rice position – let’s not too be too hasty about asking Israel to stop killing UN observers and Lebanese civilians – looks in comparison as the path of sober moderation, a compromise between the views of all serious observers.
Just as in 2002, there is a deliberate attempt to marginalize anyone in the reality-based community. And once again, the views of those to the right on Israel get defined as the reasonable center so the extreme right – Perle and Gingrich – are reframed merely as to the right and worthy of attention. In the process, genuine moderates are swept off to a far left corner. You want Israel to withdraw now? Forget it. Did you just mention Edward Said? Come on, get real.
Assuming no new terrorist attacks in the US, it is arguable whether again recasting the moderate/right center as far left will work as well as it did for drumming up support for the lunatic notion of invading Iraq. But it may confuse folks long enough for Bush to feel he has the “support of the people” to attack Iran. And that is all that is needed.
Conservative national security allies of President Bush are in revolt against Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, saying that she is incompetent and has reversed the administration’s national security and foreign policy agenda.
The conservatives, who include Newt Gingrich, Richard Perle and leading current and former members of the Pentagon and National Security Council, have urged the president to transfer Miss Rice out of the State Department and to an advisory role. They said Miss Rice, stemming from her lack of understanding of the Middle East, has misled the president on Iran and the Arab-Israeli conflict.
“The president has yet to understand that people make policy and not the other way around,” a senior national security policy analyst said. “Unlike [former Secretary of State Colin] Powell, Condi is loyal to the president. She is just incompetent on most foreign policy issues.”
The criticism of Miss Rice has been intense and comes from a range of Republican loyalists, including current and former aides in the Defense Department and the office of Vice President Dick Cheney. They have warned that Iran has been exploiting Miss Rice’s inexperience and incompetence to accelerate its nuclear weapons program. They expect a collapse of her policy over the next few months.
“We are sending signals today that no matter how much you provoke us, no matter how viciously you describe things in public, no matter how many things you’re doing with missiles and nuclear weapons, the most you’ll get out of us is talk,” former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said.
What is he, 10? Is he seriously suggesting that we should launch a military attack for “viciously describing things in public?”
Mr. Gingrich … said Miss Rice’s inexperience and lack of resolve were demonstrated in the aftermath of the North Korean launch of seven short-, medium-, and intermediate-range missiles in July. He suggested that Miss Rice was a key factor in the lack of a firm U.S. response.
“North Korea firing missiles,” Mr. Gingrich said. “You say there will be consequences. There are none. We are in the early stages of World War III. Our bureaucracies are not responding fast enough. We don’t have the right attitude.”
Several of the critics have urged that Mr. Bush provide a high-profile post to James Baker, who was secretary of state under the administration of Mr. Bush’s father. They cited Mr. Baker’s determination to confront Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein in 1990.
A leading public critic of Miss Rice has been Richard Perle, a former chairman of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board and regarded as close to Mr. Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Mr. Perle, pointing to the effort by the State Department to undermine the Reagan administration’s policy toward the Soviet Union in the late 1980s, has accused Miss Rice of succumbing to a long-time State Department agenda of meaningless agreements meant to appease enemies of the United States.
“Condoleezza Rice has moved from the White House to Foggy Bottom, a mere mile or so away,” Mr. Perle wrote in a June 25 Op-Ed article in the Washington Post that has been distributed throughout conservative and national security circles. “What matters is not that she is further removed from the Oval Office; Rice’s influence on the president is undiminished. It is, rather, that she is now in the midst of “and increasingly represents” a diplomatic establishment that is driven to accommodate its allies even when (or, it seems, especially when) such allies counsel the appeasement of our adversaries.”
Mr. Perle’s article was said to have reflected the views of many of Mr. Bush’s appointees in the White House, Defense Department and State Department. Mr. Perle maintains close contacts to U.S. ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton, Undersecretary of State for Arms Control Robert Joseph, Deputy National Security Advisor Elliot Abrams and Mr. Cheney’s national security adviser, John Hannah. A major problem, critics said, is Miss Rice’s ignorance of the Middle East. They said the secretary relies completely on Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns, who is largely regarded as the architect of U.S. foreign policy. Miss Rice also consults regularly with her supporters on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Chairman Richard Lugar and the No. 2 Republican, Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska.
[…]
The critics within the administration expect a backlash against Miss Rice that could lead to her transfer in wake of the congressional elections in 2006. They said by that time even Mr. Bush will recognize the failure of relying solely on diplomacy in the face of Iran’s nuclear weapons program.
“At that point, Rice will be openly blamed and Bush will have a very hard time defending her,” said a GOP source with close ties to the administration.
They’re all 10.
Look, I think Condi Rice is a bad Secretary of State, but not for those reasons. She’s a bad Secretary of State because she is loyal to a delusional moron and can’t contain the crazies like those who are speaking in that article. If she really is some sort of dovish appeaser, she certainly has been ineffectual. She has been, after all, the National Security Advisor and Secretary of State for the last five years of non-stop warfare.
But this isn’t really about Condi anyway. Remember Newtie’s speech to AEI right after the invasion?
It’s been barely a week since the U.S. took control of Baghdad, but the Pentagon is already embroiled in a new war, this time with the State Department… Gingrich, who is close to Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld, aimed the full fury of his rhetorical fire at the State Department, accusing it of actively subverting President George W. Bush’s agenda in Iraq and beyond.
“The last seven months have involved six months of diplomatic failure and one month of military success,” Gingrich charged, adding, “Now the State Department is back at work pursuing policies that will clearly throw away all the fruits of hard-won victory.”
It was a stunning attack from someone so closely identified with Rumsfeld and the neo-conservative hawks around him. “I’ve never seen a wholesale attack on America’s entire diplomatic establishment like this,” said Charles Kupchan, a foreign-policy expert at Georgetown University. “This is fundamentally about ideology and the efforts of the neo-conservatives to institutionalize their victories over the moderate and liberal internationalists.”
[…]
Kupchan also said it was unlikely that Gingrich, as a member of the Policy Board, would not have cleared his remarks with top officials. The fact that Gingrich’s remarks were leaked to the Washington Post in advance is also highly significant. So is his choice of venue. The AEI — where Gingrich is a Fellow — is where Bush presented his most comprehensive proposal yet for democratizing Iraq and the Arab world nearly two months ago. It is also home to the former chairman of the Defense Policy Board, Richard Perle and several other neo-conservative analysts who have been the most outspoken about promoting “regime change” in the Middle East and U.S. military dominance in the world.
Gingrich was careful to insist that he was not faulting Secretary of State Colin Powell, whom he depicted as a prisoner of the Department and its Near East bureau. But he charged that the administration was split between two “worldviews”: the State Department worldview as one of “process, politeness, and accommodation,” and president’s worldview was that of “facts, values and outcomes.” [hahaha — d] Gingrich said that the Pentagon appeared far more faithful to the latter. When the State Department failed to persuade key allies, such as Turkey, South Korea, France and Germany to support Washington, it was the Pentagon who brought along Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan, according to Gingrich, thus making it far easier to go to war. “The military delivered diplomatically and then the military delivered militarily in a stunning, four-week campaign,” he declared.
Damn, these neos really smoke the good shit, don’t they? And they are so high they just keep on being obliviously wrong in exactly the same way, decade after decade.
Whether they will succeed in mau-mauing Condi and/or persuading Bush that she’s making him look like a wimp is anybody’s guess. He’s just that stupid and he might believe it. I suspect the real problem is that Junior may not trust Uncle Dick the way he once did and that means that the neos are probably going to have to do better than this to really get their war on. The best they can hope for is that through continued incompetence and incoherence, their greatest desire — World War III — will start by accident.
Hey, a lil’ neocon boy can dream, can’t he?
Oh and by the way, I’m looking forward to hearing the shrieks and bellows from noted civil rights activist Ann Coulter that criticizing Condi Rice for being incompetent is racist.