During the past 39 years since the Six-Day War, the United States did not force Israel to pull out of the West Bank, but more than once acted to block Israeli military actions. Over time, we have grown accustomed to the Americans saving us, not only from the Arabs, but from ourselves too. Not in this war. It is still unclear whether this war was coordinated with the United States; only the release of government records of the past three weeks will shed light on this. Whatever the case may be, the impression is that the Americans are linking the events in Lebanon to their failing adventure in Iraq.
As I wrote last week, it’s true that it’s a fallacy that the US has ever really been an honest broker — but there was utility in the fiction for just such times as these. The over-the-top GWOT rhetoric (and policy) has perverted our role in the world. It’s true that the UN, for instance, was often a shallow debating society, but it provided a very useful way to allow parties to back down without losing face. It didn’t solve every problem, but it could solve some. But that wasn’t good enough for these guys who believe that getting their opponents to say “uncle” is the only way to manage world events.
Bush and his neocon megalomaniacs really are arguing that they can eradicate evil if we just kill enough people to show evil who’s boss. And then we will give birth to utopia. (Don’t ever let another conservative accuse you of being naive again…)
I suspect the truth at this point is that they have no idea what to do about the hell they’ve unleashed so this is the best they can do — the old Strangelovian “I’m not saying we won’t get our hair mussed…10-20 million tops.”
Rush’s website links to this story about an Ohio University poll which found that over a third of Americans suspect that the Feds helped the 9/11 terrorist attacks or didn’t act to stop them. Rush’s site then blares:
[T]he Hearts & Minds Crowd Can’t Bring Themselves to Confront Enemy Hate…Poll: 1/3 of Americans Say 9/11 Was Inside Job, 1/3 of Americans are Democrats — Do the Math
Sargent looks at the poll in question and concludes:
…the poll also asked whether respondents approve or disapprove of President Bush. The answer? Thirty-five percent approve, 59 percent disapprove — almost exactly what polls of the national electorate show. So there you have it — it’s very clear that the respondents of the poll almost perfectly reflect the makeup of America in general. Yep, Rush lied again.
I dunno. It looks to me as if the third of the country who believe the US was involved in 9/11 must be Bush supporters. After all, they represent a third of the electorate. Can’t Rush do simple arithmetic?
Scott Winship has written a much discussed article about the netroots which I will let you all read for yourself rather than expound on it at length tonight. I would just say that I think the central problem with this entire conversation about whether the netroots are too liberal or whether the country will recoil in horror at the sight of impassioned progressive activists is that there is an assumption that the body politic holds a rigid set of beliefs to which the parties must adapt. I think that is a wrong assumption — or incomplete anyway.
Winship believes the netroots are more liberal than the party as a whole. Setting aside all the reasons why this may or may not be true (and there are plenty of reasons to believe it’s not) let’s assume for the sake of argument that he’s right. But let’s also agree for the sake of argument to take bloggers at their word that they want to unseat the Republicans and win elections. If both those assumptions are correct, how would one reconcile them?
How about if the plan is to pragmatically adapt as necessary in the short term to realities that require compromise, while at the same time embarking on a long term project to persuade the country through argument, ideas and political rhetoric that liberalism is in their best interest? And let’s suppose that we try to increase the number of liberals and partisans in the congress wherever possible, in order to balance out those moderates Michael Tomasky talks about here whom we know are going to necessarily be required to gain a majority? Let’s call it pragmatic liberalism.
While I believe that liberalism is the best way to govern in a free society, that doesn’t mean I’m unaware of what’s currently politically achievable. Like most bloggers I understand that there are regional, tribal and structural factors that play into our politics as much as ideology. But perhaps some of us see our keyboards as a way, over time, to persuade people to come over to our side. There is a lot of preaching to the choir, to be sure. But the idea is to get liberal ideas back into circulation — at dinner tables, water coolers, church picnics and, of course, the media. If the country is politically conservative I have to believe that it’s at least partially because conservatism or psuedo-conservatism is the only ideology that’s being discussed. It certainly is the only ideology that’s considered respectable.
So for both ideological and practical reasons I believe that somebody has to make a case that it’s good for individuals and the country as a whole to be liberal. The Party gave up on that a while back so activists and writers and others are stepping into the breach. Is that really such a bad thing?
I suppose it might seem so to people who don’t believe in liberalism which is what I suspect is really at the core of this dispute. One of the reasons that pragmatic liberals like me no longer trust the DLC (which I did for many years) is that it no longer seems to be a tactical and strategic organization that tries to find new ways to accomplish liberal goals, which is what I originally understood it to be. The DLC now seems to be actively hostile to liberalism itself. That’s a very big difference and deeply concerning to me.
It’s one thing for the Democratic establishment to adopt their process argument that the “Real Americans” hate liberalism and so liberals should be quiet. It’s quite another if they don’t like liberalism themselves. Which is it, do you suppose?
If it’s the first then they need to consider that it’s important for Democrats to try to persuade some of those people rather than continue the failed triangulation experiment forever. It’s not working. If it’s the latter then we should ask what their vision really is for the Democratic party because if it isn’t at least based on liberal ideology then I honestly don’t know what it is.
Update: For a more pungent view of the DLC, check out this column by Matt Taibbi. It’s quite uncivil — and he’s not even a blogger.
Atrios points out that this “Qana was staged” conspiracy theory is not just a blog phenomenon. Indeed it isn’t. Rush is touting it daily on his show, as I mentioned here. This is a Republican Noise Machine Special. They don’t do this stuff on their own.
The WaPo article to which Atrios links effectively debunks the theory and then asks this question:
Who killed the Hashems and Shalhoubs, if it wasn’t an Israel bomb? Korvet and the other bloggers don’t offer any theories.
Rush certainly has one:
You know who really killed those people are the Hezbos. Hezbollah killed those people. Hezbollah put those people in that building and brought the rocket launchers in close by, knowing full well that the launcher would be targeted. That building didn’t fall for eight hours after it was hit. What do you bet that the Hezbos finished the job that the Israeli bomb did not actually complete? What do you bet they killed their own people for the PR aspect? These people cannot compete militarily with any industrialized nation, so they have to fight the PR and the spin war. And it is amazing to me to see how easily the duped US and world media is.
It’s quite clever really because it comports quite nicely with the official line that Hezbollah is not only the cause of Lebanese suffering but that they are doing everything for PR effect:
PRIME MINISTER BLAIR: It’s very obvious what the strategy of terrorism is, and of the actions that Hezbollah took. Their strategy is to commit an outrage that provokes a reaction, and then on the back of the reaction, to mobilize extreme elements, and then try and create a situation which even moderate people feel drawn to their case. That’s the strategy
There are plenty of dittoheads out there who are more than ready to take the next leap and believe that Hezbollah is actually staging the atrocities.
This is not a blog phenomenon and it’s not even a talk radio phenomenon. This is a RWNM phenomenon and that means it’s sanctioned by the Party.
In a decisive 1–0 decision Monday, President Bush voted to grant the president the constitutional power to grant himself additional powers.
“As president, I strongly believe that my first duty as president is to support and serve the president,” Bush said during a televised address from the East Room of the White House shortly after signing his executive order. “I promise the American people that I will not abuse this new power, unless it becomes necessary to grant myself the power to do so at a later time.”
The Presidential Empowerment Act, which the president hand-drafted on his own Oval Office stationery and promptly signed into law, provides Bush with full authority to permit himself to authorize increased jurisdiction over the three branches of the federal government, provided that the president considers it in his best interest to do so.
“In a time of war, the president must have the power he needs to make the tough decisions, including, if need be, the decision to grant himself even more power,” Bush said. “To do otherwise would be playing into the hands of our enemies.”
The problems is, this ain’t no joke. In case you haven’t had the dubious pleasure, meet David Addington.
Somebody bring Little Lord Lieberman some smelling salts before he faints dead away. He is shocked, simply shocked, at the unbridled incivility of bloggers, who are just so unseemly and ill-bred. He could just die, he’s so mortified by their outrageous behavior. If he didn’t have a campaign to run, why he’d just lie on his fainting couch and sip some laudenum until all the bad people just faded away…
HARTFORD — Joe Lieberman today called on Ned Lamont to cut all ties to a Lamont campaign activist who posted a racially offensive picture of Lieberman in blackface on an influential national website.
The doctored photo, which features Lieberman standing next to Bill Clinton, was posted by Jane Hamsher, a Hollywood producer and a prominent blogger. Hamsher moved to Connecticut two months ago specifically to campaign with Ned Lamont, travels regularly with the Lamont campaign, raises money for the Lamont campaign, routinely spreads misinformation and make insulting comments about Joe Lieberman.
[…]
The doctored photo appeared on the front page of the Huffington Post website earlier today, along with another invective-filled blog post by Hamsher.
“I have taken a lot of abuse in this campaign from Ned and his supporters, been hit with a lot of lies and smears, but this has got to be a new low,” Lieberman said.
“This is one of the most disgusting and hurtful images that has been used in American history, it’s deeply offensive to people of all colors, and it has absolutely no place in the political arena today.
“I am calling on Ned Lamont to denounce this disgusting photo immediately and sever any and all connections to Jane Hamsher. He should ban her from traveling with his campaign any more, stop accepting money raised by her, stop funneling information through her, and take off the links to her blog on his website.”
Dear me.
Keep in mind that it is the Great Hawk of the Democratic party there having a full-on, foot stomping hissy fit over some blogger. Jayzuz. No wonder nobody trusts the Democrats to defend the country.
(For those of you who haven’t been keeping up with all the tedious minutia in the Liberman blogosphere, here’s Jane’s apology.)
Oh, and by the way, somebody had better loosen Joe’s corset strings and get out the ammonia — according to the latest poll, Lamont now leads Lieberman 54-41. No wonder he’s feeling lightheaded.
Note: The quotes are from the press release. No link available.
There’s a fascinating conversation going on around the blogosphere about the “young turks” vs “the fogies” in the Democratic party that feeds into my critique of the establishment as having an irrational fear of hippies. This latest discussion stems from an observation by Matt Yglesias that a lot of young people don’t remember the age of bipartisanship and only see the polarized political world of 1998 on. Therefore, they see a politics that is far more partisan than those who came before.
I find this fascinating because I think I am twice Yglesias’s age and have been following politics very closely for more than thirty years. Yet I was first shocked, then radicalized by the actions of the modern GOP during the 90’s and I believe exactly as he does that hyper-partisanship is going to be with us for the forseeable future.
I have written before that I had signed on to the DLC experiment and certainly backed Clinton all the way as he found himself under perpetual seige from the Republicans, beginning in the 1992 campaign and not letting up until he left office eight years later. But throughout his term as I watched the mainstream press allow itself to be manipulated by GOP operatives and succumb to tabloid entertainment values, I saw Republican leaders like Tom DeLay and Newt Gingrich rise to the top of their party prescribing a scorched earth political style and using focus group tested rhetoric like “depraved” and “sick” to describe their political opposition. I observed a system that became so warped and unrecognizable that it would impeach a president over a personal indiscretion in spite of a large majority of the public being against it. The stolen election of 2000 was merely the icepick on the cake.
By the time all that was over, I no longer saw how it could be possible to forge a consensus or even fashion reasonable bipartisan compromise with these people. While Clinton had been somewhat successful in holding back the tide through his exceptional political skills, it seemed clear to me that the Republicans were determined to kill any remnant of the bipartisan governing style. As it turned out I was right. Since they took power they have consciously ruled with as little Democratic support as they can get away with, finding symbolic cover as necessary with cooperative Democrats like Joe Lieberman. They have consciously marginalized the opposition (or as Hillary said, ruled the government like a plantation) — and in the process have governed this country in the most dangerous, irresponsible way possible leaving the us with massive debt, international instability and a weaker moral center.
I do not think there is any hope of bringing these people around. And frankly, considering their track record, I think it’s delusional to believe otherwise. At some point, you have to recognize that you are dealing with something that is irredeemable in its present form. Modern conservatism has a malignant core. If they lose power over the next few years, as seems likely, I have no doubt they will rediscover the joys of bipartisanship when they find themselves in the minority. But the modern Republican party must undergo fundamental internal change before it can be trusted. I’m not sure that will happen in my lifetime considering the seeds that have been sown.
Perhaps it’s harder to see that from the inside and that’s why many of the establishment “fogies” seem to believe that this is a temporary state that can be turned back. From where I sit out here, though,I see a new era and we’d better get used to it. The Southern realignment is complete and the regional pull remains a very powerful force in American politics. There is some evidence that people are gathering together with like minded others more than ever, exacerbating the polarization. Most importantly we are riding a wave of vast cultural and social change, both as a nation and as a species, which people will either roll with or resist — and that is naturally reflected in our politics.
Yglesias concludes and I agree:
My contention would be that the polarization phenomenon is a largely irreversible feature of the current social and political landscape, and that progressives need to learn to deal with it better rather than trying to transcend it.
Moderate Kevin Drum, another fogie like me, (with a much more even temperament) says this:
Why should anyone even moderately left of center spend more than a few minutes a week worrying about a barely detectable liberal drift in the Democratic Party? Will the tut-tutters not be happy until CEOs make 1000x the average wage instead of the mere 400x they make now and the 200x they made during the Reagan years? How much farther to the right do they want Dems to go?
Beats me. As with foreign policy, I fundamentally believe that domestic politics is primarily a battle of public opinion, and scorched earth policies mostly come back to haunt you. At the same time, you still have to fight like you mean it and you have to adapt to your opponents’ tactics. Worrying about lefties in the Democratic Party when the GOP is led by a guy named George Bush is like worrying about the Michigan Militia when a guy named Osama is driving airplanes into your buildings. The fogies need to get real.
It’s exhausting and uncomfortable to think of a politics of endless partisanship. But it’s a fact to which we can adapt and adapt we must. The good news is that liberals and progressives, being forward thinkers, open minded and looking to the future are, by nature, good at adaptation and able to do so quite easily once they wrap their minds around something. I actually feel optimistic that progressives will realize that the era of bipartisanship we once understood as the natural order of things is not the only way to govern effectively. We can beat them on the field of ideas. But we have to engage.
I certainly hope it isn’t true that Joe Lieberman’s campaign is actively courting the College Republicans to help with their canvas this week-end. There are some groups that really should be beyond the pale.
Here’s a little refresher course in college Republican campaigning. From Franklin Foer’s great article on this year’s College Republican “elections”:
Behind the scenes, in the campaign war rooms, small armies of veteran Republican operatives and congressional staffers toil. That’s because there’s much more at stake in the elections than a swish post-college gig. After campaign finance reform, the College Republicans reinvented themselves as a big-time 527–a group legally allowed to spend an infinite amount of its own money on campaigns–with a budget of over $17 million. They have a massive network of operatives to send into the field to bolster candidates, and they have patronage to spread among friends and through direct-mail firms. In other words, it’s well worth tearing a Shermanesque path to the sea to control College Republicans, no matter the carnage–and no matter the expense. Michael Davidson said he spent an estimated $200,000–raised off high-rollers who normally sign checks to senators and presidential wannabes–trying to claim the grand prize.
But the significance of the crnc goes beyond that. The Committee is the place where Republican strategists learn their craft and acquire their knack for making their Democratic opponents look like disorganized children. Many of the biggest-brand Republican operatives–from Karl Rove and Lee Atwater, to Charlie Black and Roger Stone, to Jack Abramoff, Ralph Reed, and Grover Norquist–got their starts this way. Walking through the halls of the convention, it is easy to see the genesis of tactics deployed in the Florida recount and by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Republicans learn how to fight hard against Democrats by practicing on one another first. “There are no rules in a knife fight,” Norquist instructed the young conventioneers in a speech. And, while Norquist described a knife fight, the Gourley-Davidson rumble transpired around him.
[…]
… Gourley received the blessing of the outgoing chairman, Eric Hoplin. But, in reality, he had won the blessing of a force more powerful than a single politician. He had won the blessing of an entity that College Republicans speak of in hushed tones and that they compare to the Empire in Star Wars–the Establishment.
When College Republicans invoke the Establishment, they mean a clique of former College Republicans–now grown-ups playing politics at the highest level–who will trample anyone to maintain their clique’s control of the organization. Like all good cabals, it is hard to know exactly who belongs to the Establishment and how Machiavellian their meddling is. Before his tumble from grace, the lobbyist Jack Abramoff would lend College Republicans his skybox at the MCI center, donate money, and lead training sessions. (In 2002, the crnc paid Jack Abramoff for “accounting & legal services.”) Rove reportedly keeps tabs, and Norquist invites the group’s chair to attend his celebrated Wednesday gathering of conservative big shots. But the convention offered some more suggestive examples of the Establishment’s methodology. Just past 2 a.m. on Saturday, wavering delegates from Louisiana received calls from Morton Blackwell, the legendary veteran of the Goldwater and Reagan campaigns, urging them to vote for Gourley. It was a perfectly calibrated tactic. “A 19-year-old Republican will generally do whatever a demigod of the conservative movement like Morton tells them,” one Davidson supporter griped.
And they are even more likely to respond to entreaties from a congressman. Patrick McHenry, a dough-faced 29-year-old freshman representative from North Carolina and former crnc treasurer, went to war on Gourley’s behalf. “I got a call. They said, ‘The congressman is on the line,'” University of North Carolina junior Jordan Selleck told me. “He basically said that we’d be screwed if we didn’t switch to Gourley. Our careers in politics would be over.” As Jennifer Holder, who served as a state chair in the ’90s, lamented, “There are a lot of sharks infesting the kiddie pool.”
It’s offensive that these people are coming out to help Joe Lieberman win a Democratic primary, and every Democrat in Connecticut should be appalled. But it is plain stupid to let these people anywhere near a Democratic campaign. Joe’s consultants should be very wary.
Via TBOGG I see that another crazed neocon is having a public breakdown. Here’s Michael Ledeen:
The greatest failure of our leaders, with rare exceptions, is their refusal to see the war plain, which means Iran and Syria (might as well call them “Syran,” since they operate in tandem, with Tehran pushing most of the buttons). It was never possible to “win in Iraq” so long as we insisted on fighting in Iraq alone. You can not win a regional war by playing defense in one country. It was, and remains, a sucker’s game. Syran pays no price at all for killing our kids and our allies in Iraq and Afghanistan, and now in Gaza and Lebanon/Israel.
Syran reasonably concluded that there was no price to pay for killing us, and so they predictably expanded the scope of the war. Our leaders do not see this whole; they see each component as a separate issue. They see that Hezbollah is an Iranian entity. They see Iranian Revolutionary Guards officers at work in Lebanon and Iraq. They know the best weapons in the war come through Syran and in many cases are manufactured by Syran. Any logical person has to conclude that you cannot win this war without defeating Syran.
Did you get the impression from that statement that he thinks the US should be fighting Iran and Syria? I know I did. But apparently that’s completely incorrect. He writes just two paragraphs later in the same article:
Meanwhile, a collection of frauds, writing in places like Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, and Mother Jones, continuously recycles a story saying that a neocon (code for “Jewish”) conspiracy duped Bush into going to war in Iraq, and is now arranging the invasion of Iran. Documented lies, like those peddled by Joe Wilson to New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, are treated as reliable. Fantasies about American armed forces operating covertly in Iran, like those written by Seymour Hirsh, get taken seriously. And people like me are accused of masterminding the whole thing, even though I oppose a military campaign against Iran.
TBOGG points out that’s technically correct. He is agitating for war with Syran, which is not the same as agitating for war with Iran at all. It has two different letters in it, you see.
I would say this the latest evidence of a broad neocon crack-up, but you can’t really use Ledeen as any kind of a guage. He has always been looney tunes. Remember, before the Iraq war he was agitating for war with Islamofascist France and Germany. (Oh excuse me — Islamofascist Fermany, not the same thing at all.) He’s a little excitable:
Assume, for a moment, that the French and the Germans aren’t thwarting us out of pique, but by design, long-term design. Then look at the world again, and see if there’s evidence of such a design.
Like everyone else, the French and the Germans saw that the defeat of the Soviet Empire projected the United States into the rare, almost unique position of a global hyperpower, a country so strong in every measurable element that no other nation could possibly resist its will. The “new Europe” had been designed to carve out a limited autonomy for the old continent, a balance-point between the Americans and the Soviets. But once the Soviets were gone, and the Red Army melted down, the European Union was reduced to a combination theme park and free-trade zone. Some foolish American professors and doltish politicians might say — and even believe — that henceforth “power” would be defined in economic terms, and that military power would no longer count. But cynical Europeans know better.
They dreaded the establishment of an American empire, and they sought for a way to bring it down.
If you were the French president or the German chancellor, you might well have done the same.
How could it be done? No military operation could possibly defeat the United States, and no direct economic challenge could hope to succeed. That left politics and culture. And here there was a chance to turn America’s vaunted openness at home and toleration abroad against the United States. So the French and the Germans struck a deal with radical Islam and with radical Arabs: You go after the United States, and we’ll do everything we can to protect you, and we will do everything we can to weaken the Americans.
The Franco-German strategy was based on using Arab and Islamic extremism and terrorism as the weapon of choice, and the United Nations as the straitjacket for blocking a decisive response from the United States.