Going To School
by poputonian
I imagine Digby will have something to say about this later, but for now I would suggest reading this amazing guest post by BigTentDemocrat at TalkLeft.
What Barack Obama Needs To Learn From Richard Hofstadter, Abraham Lincoln and FDR
Very satisfying … better than coffee in the morning.
Fogies
by digby
Those clever boys over at TNR are at it again today:
With all due respect, I think Mike missed the key passage in the Obama interview he linked to earlier. This one clearly takes the cake:
Q: You probably saw what Atrios said: let’s not talk about process, let’s actually exercise some leadership. How would you-
A: I, I, I, I don’t think I understand the criticism. I mean, I didn’t read the article.
Whaaa???!!! You don’t read Atrios, Senator Obama? I mean, as a U.S. Senator, isn’t it kind of your obligation to keep up with who’s a “whiny ass titty baby” and who’s just a “wanker”? Unbelievable.
Atrios responds here.
I think this is a great insight, however, from one of TNR’s commenters:
In looking at Scheiber’s post again, I now realize what it reminds me of … Steve Allen’s infamous reading of the lyrics to “Be-Bop-A-Lula” on his TV show in the 1950s.
Like Scheiber, Allen probably thought he was putting that whole uncouth new genre in its place.
There is an element of “that’s not music, it’s just noise!” to this little dustup.
(Whatever you do, don’t tell these guys about hip-hop. They’ll have an aneurysm.)
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Conservative Progression
by digby
One of my favorite hawkish pundit rationalizations of the last year or so, since it has become evident even to them that Iraq is a cock-up of epic proportions, is that even if it looks bad right now, it could improve in the next 30 years or so in which case everything will turn out all right in the end and everybody will be happy. Indeed, if you look at it in the long sweep of history, even if Iraq devolves into outright civil war, the US did the right thing by “laying the foundations for peace.” (David Ignatius rather famously set that forth in this op-ed.)
However, I’ve never seen this so interestingly explained as is has been today by David Brooks:
In 1848 a democratic revolution swept across Europe, and then promptly collapsed. Thousands of protesters were killed in the streets. Authoritarian regimes were re-established. Some called 1848 “the turning point when Europe failed to turn.”
And yet that wasn’t true. Anti-democratic regimes did regain power, but within decades they had enacted most of the reforms the revolutionaries of 1848 had asked for. Constitutions were written. Suffrage was expanded. Welfare systems were created.
Conservative authoritarians enacted these reforms reluctantly, and with cynical motivations. But they knew they had to keep up with the times to retain their grip on power and to forestall more radical change. Democracy didn’t move forward in a burst of glory, but in a long slog of gradual concessions made by reluctant conservative reformers.
I wonder if, when we look back at the world of today from some future vantage point, we will see an echo of that pattern.
(Interesting that he calls the the reluctant acquiesers conservative authoritarians. Without irony, too.) But his point is that progress always happens so just because conservative authoritarians stand in its way doesn’t mean anyone should get their panties in a bunch. They’ll get it together eventually.
Brooks takes his look into the future:
We’ll see a burst of democratic change that swept the world between 1980 and 2005. Authoritarian regimes collapsed, sometimes under their own weight (the Soviet Union), sometimes amid outside pressure (the Philippines) and sometimes by force (Iraq). In places where the fabric of society was thick, nations maintained their equilibrium and democratic dreams were realized. But in nations where totalitarianism had been strongest, and civil society most brutally pulverized, liberation begat chaos.
In these places, the old political order was the only source of social authority, and once that was removed everything was permissible. The worst people in the nation were given free rein to prey upon the best. In Iraq, that meant brutal violence, rampant crime and a sectarian power struggle that produced unimaginable horror.
In Russia, the chaos produced a culture of plunder and gangsterism that rewarded the dishonest. A large share of the population was set free to drink themselves to death, with the average lifespan of the Russian man declining by seven years.
Moreover, the Western liberators were complicit in and discredited by the chaos. In Russia, the West sent in economists and technocrats. Coming from places that had always been stable, they took for granted the moral foundations that undergird stability. They didn’t see that Russia lacked these foundations, and that any institutions they built on top would simply be perverted.
In Iraq, the American liberators didn’t understand what would happen if brutalized Iraqis were left in a state of nature, and didn’t or couldn’t impose a humane order.
Yes those brutalized regimes just couldn’t get it together and nobody could really help them. It was sad. But fear not. Everything turns out ok in the end with the help of some good old fashioned conservative authoritarianism:
So if the first stage of the democratic era in these places was liberation and the second stage was chaos, the third stage was conservative restoration. Unlike the Western democrats, the conservatives — Putin in Russia, the theocrats and strongmen who came to dominate Iraq [can you believe it? — d] — did understand the desire for order. They understood the people’s desire to live in an environment in which it was possible to lead a dignified life. They shared the feeling of national shame that had come amid the chaos and the longing to restore national prestige. In short, they had a deeper understanding of human nature than the technocrats who came to modernize them.
These conservatives did have their shortcomings:
The autocrats created nations that were not totalitarian but not free. On the one hand they sought to stifle liberty in order to secure their grip on power. Democracy activists were arrested and TV stations suborned. On the other hand, as in 1848, the democratic forces did not go away. The people, especially the growing middle classes, longed for freedom. New technologies threatened centralized power.
You see, if everybody just has a little patience, waits a few decades maybe, a century in some cases, it will all turn out just fine. The key is that progress just “happens” sort of inevitably (certainly without the hard work of those icky “progressives” who keep plugging away for decades for equality and freedom.)The conservative authoritarians will eventually give way because otherwise they have to govern with terror which is “unstable.” (Thank goodness for small favors.)
(One wonders about his little fantasy about democracy activists arrested and TV stations being suborned. Seeing as he writes for the NY Times, you’d think he’d see a little foreshadowing in his own backyard, but I don’t think he does…)
If this pattern is true, and future historians do look back on our period this way, then a crucial task for U.S. foreign policy in the years ahead will be to cajole semi-autocratic regimes — in places ranging from Russia to the Middle East and even China — into making gradual democratic reforms. At the moment we do this badly, alternating between bold speeches that call for revolution and craven diplomatic gestures that suggest capitulation.
Why not here? This is the most powerful question in the world today: Why not here? People in Eastern Europe looked at people in Western Europe and asked, Why not here? People in Ukraine looked at people in Georgia and asked, Why not here? People around the Arab world look at voters in Iraq and ask, Why not here?
Thomas Kuhn famously argued that science advances not gradually but in jolts, through a series of raw and jagged paradigm shifts. Somebody sees a problem differently, and suddenly everybody’s vantage point changes.
”Why not here?” is a Kuhnian question, and as you open the newspaper these days, you see it flitting around the world like a thought contagion. Wherever it is asked, people seem to feel that the rules have changed. New possibilities have opened up.
The question is being asked now in Lebanon. Walid Jumblatt made his much circulated observation to David Ignatius of The Washington Post: ”It’s strange for me to say it, but this process of change has started because of the American invasion of Iraq. I was cynical about Iraq. But when I saw the Iraqi people voting three weeks ago, eight million of them, it was the start of a new Arab world.”
So now we have mass demonstrations on the streets of Beirut. A tent city is rising up near the crater where Rafik Hariri was killed, and the inhabitants are refusing to leave until Syria withdraws. The crowds grow in the evenings; bathroom facilities are provided by a nearby Dunkin’ Donuts and a Virgin Megastore.
The head of the Syrian Press Syndicate told The Times on Thursday: ”There’s a new world out there and a new reality. You can no longer have business as usual.”
[…]
Why not here?…this is clearly the question the United States is destined to provoke. For the final thing that we’ve learned from the papers this week is how thoroughly the Bush agenda is dominating the globe. When Bush meets with Putin, democratization is the center of discussion. When politicians gather in Ramallah, democratization is a central theme. When there’s an atrocity in Beirut, the possibility of freedom leaps to people’s minds.
Not all weeks will be as happy as this one. Despite the suicide bombings in Israel and Iraq, the thought contagion is spreading. Why not here?
That was none other than David Brooks in February of 2005.
Can someone remind me again why i am supposed to take these people seriously? This is some kind of bi-polar reality in which they “believe” certain things one day and then as soon as they are no longer able to hold the facts at bay, simply shift to a completely different stance without so much as a backward glance at their own mistaken judgment. (Josh Marshall documented a similar shape shift from Robert Kaplan earlier this week.) I guess being a hawkish pundit means never having to say you’re sorry.
Liberals have plenty of internal disagreements. The punditocrisy can talk of little else. But at least these internal disagreements don’t usually happen inside each individual liberal’s head.
How a country like the US can support freedom and democracy, and what tools should be used, is a valid question. There has always been the problem of a mighty superpower seeming to throw its weight around having the effect of creating a certain human resistence to its influence. Nobody has an easy answer to that question, but most liberals believe that the best, if not perfect, hope lies in international law and institutions.
But, honestly, anybody who thought that it was a good idea to illegally (and virtually unilaterally) invade and occupy a middle eastern nation that had not attacked anyone, in the name of freedom and democracy was nuts. (To compound the error by thinking that you could use torture and humiliation in the process and still somehow be seen as a valiant liberator is simply mind-boggling.) If there is ever a case in human events in which you cannot adopt an “ends justify the means” philosophy it’s in the realm of spreading liberal values. The minute you do it, you have defeated yourself.
This was not a difficult thing to understand for those who actually believe in liberal values. It seems, however, to still elude those who for the last decade, at least, have been swinging wildly from one position to the other without even pausing for breath. David Brooks has managed to go from starry-eyed neocon optimist to dreary, cold hearted realist in less than 18 months. I shudder to think where he and his friends might land by 2008.
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Danger Spreading?
by digby
Arthur Silber has been bellowing about Iran for some time now, convinced (as is Seymour Hersh) that the administration is really quite serious about attacking. (Whether or not forces within the administration or the military gather to prevent this is an open question.) Today, Arthur homes in on the question of this latest somewhat inexplicable actions by Israel and how it may relate to this plan.
He quotes Drudge’s latest screaming headline:
Israel has information that Lebanese guerrillas who captured two Israeli soldiers are trying to transfer them to Iran, the Foreign Ministry spokesman said. Spokesman Mark Regev did not disclose the source of his information.
Arthur comments here.
I do not have adequate tin foil today to comprehend the full spectrum of issues. But let me just say that I would not find it suprising for the Bush administration hard liners to work in concert with the Israeli hard-liners to gin up a crisis that ends up “requiring” action against Iran. It is to the political advantage of both groups to do so. I certainly don’t know that this has happened but from watching this administration operate for the past six years I do know that it could happen. And that’s scary enough.
Certainly, it’s quite odd that the US seems to be simply sitting on the sidelines diplomatically and throwing ill-advised potshots from the sidelines. Arthur quotes this passage from an article by Jim Lobe:
“The combination of our own diplomatic disengagement, our blaming Syria and Iran, and our giving the Israelis a green light [for their military campaign] has inflamed the entire region,” according to Clay Swisher, a former State Department Middle East expert and author of the Truth About Camp David, who just returned from Lebanon last week.
It’s always likely that this sort of thing is just typical Bushian incompetence. But I would never discount the idea that there is a wrongheaded Cheneyesque plot behind it as well. There often is.
Matt Yglesias also discusses this a bit yesterday in a TAPPED post, quoting from a Yossi Klein Halevi essay that claims this is all part of a plan for Israel to finally destroy Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran. Matt wryly observes:
Let me just go on the record as saying that as bad an idea as bombing Iran may be, doing so as part of a wildly impractical scheme for Israel to launch a general Middle Eastern war is significantly less appealing.
Meanwhile, I totally understand why establishment liberal foreign policy types don’t like to talk about Israel, but things are getting to the point where I don’t think total silence in the face of dramatic goings-on is very viable.
No kidding. What the hell is going on?
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March 7, 2003 Revisitedby poputonian
How could anyone have known back then that invading Iraq was going to be a mistake wrought with negative consequences?
The speech that follows was surely heard by the key planners in America, including everyone in the White House. It was delivered to the United Nations Security Council just days before the Iraq invasion. The speaker used the same reports and evidence available to the US. Note how accurate his comments were:
– He correctly ascertains the degree to which Iraq represented a threat to the world, and to its neighbors.- He identifies the convergence of international institutions as the reckoning force that was successfully disarming Iraq.- He debunks the Iraq / al Qaeda link.- He predicts that innocent families would suffer.- He forecasts the postwar carnage.- And, he zeroes in on the Bush administration’s disingenuous motives for war.
He did all this before the Iraq invasion; I’ll keep his identity hidden until the end of the post.[Excerpted]
I would like to thank Mr. Blix and Mr. ElBaradei for the presentation they have just given us.
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And what have the inspectors told us?
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Significant evidence of real disarmament has now been observed.
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Therefore, I would like solemnly to address a question to this body, and it’s the very same question being asked by people all over the world. Why should we now engage in war with Iraq? And I would also like to ask, why smash the instruments that have just proven their effectiveness? Why choose division when our unity and our resolve are leading Iraq to get rid of its weapons of mass destruction? Why should we wish to proceed by force at any price when we can succeed peacefully?
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War is always an acknowledgment of failure. Let us not resign ourselves to the irreparable. Before making our choice, let us weigh the consequences. Let us measure the effects of our decision. And it’s clear to all in Iraq, we are resolutely moving toward completely eliminating programs of weapons of mass destruction. The method that we have chosen worked.
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The information supply (inaudible) has been verified by the inspectors and is leading to the elimination of banned ballistic equipment. We must proceed the same way with all the other programs: with information, verification and destruction. We already have useful information in the biological and chemical domain.
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With regard to nuclear weapons, Mr. ElBaradei’s statement confirmed … the IAEA will be able to certify the dismantlement of Iraq’s program.
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What conclusions can we draw? That Iraq, according to the very terms used by the inspectors, represents less of a danger to the world than it did in 1991, that we can achieve our objective of effectively disarming that country. Let us keep the pressure on Baghdad.
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The adoption of Resolution 1441, the assumption of converging positions by the vast majority of the world’s nations, diplomatic action by the Organization of African Unity, the League of Arab States, the Organization of the Islamic Conference and the non-aligned movement, all of these common efforts are bearing fruit.
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The American and British military presence in the region lends support to our collective resolve. We all recognize the effectiveness of this pressure on the part of the international community, and we must use it to go through with our objective of disarmament through inspections.
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As the European Union noted, these inspections cannot continue indefinitely. The pace must therefore be stepped up. That is why [we] wants to make three proposals today.
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First, let us ask the inspectors to establish a hierarchy of tasks for disarmament, and, on that basis, to present us, as quickly as possible, with the work program provided for by Resolution 1284. We need to know immediately which priority issues could constitute the key disarmament tasks to be carried out by Iraq.
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Secondly, we propose that the inspectors give us a progress report every three weeks. This will make the Iraqi authorities understand that in no case may they interrupt their efforts.
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And finally, let us establish a schedule for assessing the implementation of the work program. Resolution 1284 provides for a time frame of 120 days. We are willing to shorten it if the inspectors consider it feasible.
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The military agenda must not dictate the calendar of inspections. We agree to timetables and to an accelerated calendar, but we cannot accept an ultimatum as long as the inspectors are reporting cooperation. That would mean war. That would lead the Security Council to relinquish its responsibility.
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By imposing a deadline of only a few days, would we merely be seeking a pretext for war? As a permanent member of the Security Council, I will say it again: [We] will not allow a resolution to pass that authorizes the automatic use of force.
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Let us be clear-sighted. We are defining a method to resolve crisis. We are choosing how to define the world we want our children to live in.
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These crises have many roots. They are political, religious, economic. Their origins lie deep in the turmoil of history.
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There may be some who believe that these problems can be resolved by force, thereby creating a new order. But this is not what [we] believes. On the contrary, we believe that the use of force can arouse resentment and hatred, fuel a clash of identities and of cultures, something that our generation has a prime responsibility to avoid.
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To those who believe that war would be the quickest way of disarming Iraq, I can reply that it will drive wedges and create wounds that will be long in healing. And how many victims will it cause? How many families will grieve?
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We do not subscribe to what may be the other objectives of a war. Is it a matter of regime change in Baghdad? No one underestimates the cruelty of this dictatorship or the need to do everything possible to promote human rights. But this is not the objective of Resolution 1441. And force is certainly not the best way of bringing about democracy. Here and elsewhere it would encourage dangerous instability.
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Is it a matter of fighting terrorism? War would only increase it and we would then be faced with a new wave of violence.
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Is it finally a matter of recasting the political landscape of the Middle East? In that case, we run the risk of exacerbating tensions in a region already marked by great instability. Not to mention that in Iraq itself, the large number of communities and religions already represents a danger of a potential break-up.
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We all have the same demands. We want more security and more democracy. But there is another logic other than the logic of force. There is another path. There are other solutions. We understand the profound sense of insecurity with which the American people have been living since the tragedy of September 11, 2001. The entire world shared the sorrow of New York and of America struck in the heart. And I say this in the name of our friendship for the American people, in the name of our common values: freedom; justice; tolerance.
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But there is nothing today to indicate a link between the Iraqi regime and al Qaeda. And will the world be a safer place after a military intervention in Iraq? I want to tell you what my country’s conviction is: It will not.
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Four months ago, we unanimously adopted a system of inspections to eliminate the threat of potential weapons of mass destruction and to guarantee our security. Today, we cannot accept, without contradicting ourselves, a conflict that might well weaken it. Yes, we also want more democracy in the world. But we can only achieve this objective within the framework of a true global democracy based on respect, sharing, the awareness of a true community of values and a common destiny, and its core is the United Nations. Let us make no mistake, in the face of multiple and complex threats, there is no single response, but there is a single necessity — we must remain united.
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Today we must together invent a new future for the Middle East. Let us not forget the immense hope created by the efforts of the Madrid conference and the Oslo agreement. Let us not forget that the Mideast crisis represents our greatest challenge in terms of security and justice. For us, the Middle East, like Iraq, represents a priority commitment, and this calls for even greater ambition and boldness. We should envision a region transformed through peace; civilizations that, through the courage of reaching out to each other, rediscover their self-confidence and an international prestige equal to their long history and their aspirations.
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Mr. President, in a few days, we must solemnly fulfill our responsibility through a vote. We will be facing an essential choice: disarming Iraq through war or through peace. And this crucial choice implies others; it implies the international community’s ability to resolve current or future crises; it implies a vision of the world, a concept of the role of the United Nations.
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[We], therefore, believes that to make this choice, to make it in good conscience in this forum of international democracy, before our peoples and before the world, the heads of state and government must meet again here in New York at the Security Council. This is in everyone’s interest. We must rediscover the fundamental vocation of the United Nations, which is to allow each of its members to assume its responsibilities in the face of the Iraqi crisis, but also to seize together the destiny of a world in crisis and thus to create the conditions for our future unity.
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Thank you, Mr. President.
Excerpted remarks as delivered by France’s Foreign Minister to Security Council and recorded by the Federal News Service. March 7, 2003. New York. Note: all the bracketed [we]’s above replaced “France” in the text.
This speech shows the remarkably accurate observations made by someone able to detach from the emotional context of a tense situation, which is what a skilled Chief Excutive is able to do. Our friend, Mr. De Villepin, was calm and reserved, and able to think with disciplined restraint. The American Chief Executive, on the other hand, was, for whatever reason, unable to grasp the same evidence seen by others. The results speak for themselves. The point now is not to ask how anyone could have missed the evidence that others could see, nor is it to insist that America should have known. The point is, how can anyone today, with the advantage of retrospection, still deny what was evident on March 7, 2003?
Déjà Vecu
We have all some experience of a feeling, that comes over us occasionally, of what we are saying and doing having been said and done before, in a remote time – of our having been surrounded, dim ages ago, by the same faces, objects, and circumstances – of our knowing perfectly what will be said next, as if we suddenly remember it. Charles Dickens, “David Copperfield”
I’m honored to offer my readers another exclusive sneak preview of Rick Perlstein’s forthcoming book, Nixonland:
The President was glad for a politically useful distraction. On March 29,[1971] after the longest court-martial trial in history, Lieut. William “Rusty” Calley was convicted of murder by a jury of his military peers.
When Calley had first been called to Washington in June of 1969, he thought it was to receive a medal. He was shocked to learn it was for a court martial: “It seemed like the silliest thing I had ever heard of. Murder.” It betokened a national confusion. At the trial his defense lawyer said, “This boy’s a product of a system, a system that dug him up by the roots, took him out of his home community, put him in the Army, taught him to kill, sent him overseas to kill, gave him mechanical weapons to kill, got him over there and ordered him to kill.” He argued that the decision to scapegoat Calley went all the way up the chain of command–better to indict a lieutenant, shut down this whole embarrassment incident as neatly as possible, than the entire system of “pacification” and “free fire zones” and “search and destroy missions” itself. He tried to call Defense Secretary Laird as a witness. The judge overruled him.
The argument was lent support by the fate of Calley’s commander, Major General Samuel Koster. Koster had witnessed the massacre from his observation helicopter and complained only that they weren’t recovering enough enemy weapons. He signed off on an Army report that noncombatants had been “inadvertently killed…in the cross fires of U.S. and V.C. forces.” After the Army’s investigation into the My Lai massacre, he suffered a mere reduction of a grade in rank. Everyone else involved ended up acquitted or with their charges dropped.
Calley stood ramrod straight at his sentencing and mewled in a breaking voice about his victimhood: “Yesterday, you stripped me of all my honor. Please, by your actions that you take here today, don’t strip future soldiers of their honor.” He was sentenced to life at hard labor. You didn’t have to construe Calley a put-upon innocent to conclude that something stunk. “Calley Verdict: Who Else Is Guilty?” read Newsweek‘s cover line. “Who Shares the Guilt?” asked Time.
John Kerry, the VVAW spokesman, had an answer: “We are all of us in this country guilty for having allowed the war to go on. We only want this country to realize that it cannot try a Calley for something which generals and Presidents and our way of life encouraged him to do. And if you try him, then at the same time you must try all those generals and Presidents and soldiers who have part of the responsibility. You must in fact try this country.” It was a common conclusion of liberals: Senators Ribicoff and Hatfield, the New Yorker, Telford Taylor, a prosecutor of Nazis at Nuremberg and the author of Nuremberg and Vietnam: An American Tragedy.
But that was what the Communists were saying, too, conservatives observed. And if Calley was their villain, he must be our hero.
The VFW’s national commander Herbert Rainwater led the way: “There have been My Lais in every war. Now for the first time we have tried a soldier for performing his duty.” A little Mormon boy in Utah, Timmy Poppleton, wrote his senator begging him to intervene: “I’m only eight years old, but I know that Lieut. Calley was defending our freedoms against Communism.” His mother–many mothers–had explained that the villagers of My Lai must have done something to deserve it. Joseph Alsolp agreed. The hawkish one of the columnizing brothers complained in his second column after the verdict about what his editors did to his first one: “by no fault of this reporter, the persons Lt. Calley was convicted of killing were miscalled ‘civilians.’…. These victims from My Lai in fact came from a ‘combat hamlet’ of a ‘combat village.’ From about the age of four on up, all persons in a ‘combat village,’ of both sexes, are trained to kill. by the iron rules of the Viet Cong, if they do not follow their training, they are killed themselves after one of the VC kangaroo-trials.”
The American Legion post at Columbus, Georgia, home of Fort Benning, pitched in a promise they would raise $100,000 to help fund Calley’s appeal “or die trying”: “The real murderers are the demonstrators in Washington who disrupt traffic, tear up public property, who deface the American flag. Lieut. Calley is a hero. He’s an all-American. He fought for us in a country where Communism is still trying to take over. We should be proud of him. We should elevate him to saint rather than jail him like a common criminal.” Calley was now Columbus’s favorite son. At a revival at the football stadium, the Rev. Michael Lord pronounced, “There was a crucifixion 2,000 years ago of a man named Jesus Christ. I don’t think we need another crucifixion of man named Rusty Calley.”
Entrepreneurs stood at attention. “Free Calley” stickers managed to blossom on car bumpers within 24 hours, like toadstools after a spring rain. A Nashville record producer slapped a solemn recitation as if in William Calley’s voice over a backing track of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” and moved 200,000 45-rpm records in a day and a million in a week:
While we were fighting in the jungles they were marching in the street
While we’re dying in the rice fields they were helping our defeat
While we’re facing V.C. bullets they were sounding a retreat
As we go marching on…When I reach my final campground in that land beyond the sun
And the great commander asks me, ‘Did you fight or did you run?’
I’ll stand both straight and tall stripped of medals, rank and gun
And this is what I’ll say:Sir, I followed all my orders and I did the best I could
It’s hard to judge the enemy and hard to tell the good
Yet there’s not a man among us would not have understoodWe took the jungle village exactly like they said
We responded to their rifle fire with everything we had
And when the smoke had cleared away a hundred souls lay dead…
There’s no other way to wage a war when the only one in sight
That you’re sure is not a VC is your buddy on the right…Glory, glory hallelujah, glory, glory hallelujah…
And radio stations played the silent majority’s “Four Dead in Ohio” over and over again, only pausing in between to call for donations to Rusty Calley’s defense fund, as respectable editorialists stood aghast. “We responded to their rifle fire”? A jury of six decorated combat veterans had ruled there had been none. “For the first time we have tried a soldier for performing his duty”? The stockades were full of soldiers and Marines tried for killing Vietnamese captives in combat. “The only difference,” wrote William Greider, who covered the four-and-a-half month trial in the Washington Post, “is that, instead of 22 people, most of them killed only one or two.” The Wall Street Journal pointed out, “This is a young man duly convicted of taking unarmed prisoners entirely at his mercy, throwing them in a ditch, and shooting them. Is this nation really to condone such an act, as a strange coalition of super-patriots seems to urge?” The Washington Star said “the day this country goes on record as saying that unarmed civilian men, women, and children of any race are fair game for wanton murder, that will be the day that the United States forfeits all claims to any moral leadership of this world.” Scott Reston, in the Newspaper of Record, wondered whether “somebody were going to propose giving Lieutenant Calley the Congressional Medal of Honor.”
Above and beyond all the commotion, Nixon spied simple commonality: super-patriots and peace were on the same side.
The White House had done its polling. 78 percent disagreed with Calley’s conviction and sentence; 51 percent wanted him exonerated outright. Within 24 hours the White House got 100,000 telegrams, calls, and letters. They were 100 to one for Calley’s release. Meanwhile the President’s handling of Vietnam in general he was heading into Lyndon Johnson territory: 41 percent approval, 47 percent disapproval. On March 30 the White House alerted the media that on March 7 the President would go on TV to announce more troop cuts. Then they got to work exploiting Calley.
Nixon delegated the legal questions to John Dean’s office. Overnight his staff became experts on military law. The conclusion: the conviction was by the book, the sentence would likely be reduced on appeal, the President was extremely limited in his power to intervene, and that any White House interference mitigating “a gross violation of the customary law of war” could have a domino effect weakening the good order of the military justice system.
Military justice be damned. Nixon conferred with his new favorite political enforcer John Connally. He complained to Haldeman and Ehrlichman the “lawyers provide no political gain for us on the argument.” It was Chuck Colson who came up with his first move: he could immediately order Calley released from the stockade until his appeal was decided. On April 1 President made the call to Admiral Moorer. “That’s the one place where they say, ‘Yes, Sir,’ instead of ‘Yes, but,'” he pronounced with satisfaction. The action was announced at the House of Representatives; the floor broke out in spontaneous applause (the President was so proud of the response he noted it in his memoirs).
And a man convicted by fellow Army officers of slaughtering 22 civilians was released on his own recognizance to the splendiferous bachelor pad he had rented with the fat proceeds of his defense fund, as featured in a November 1970 Esquire feature laid out like a Better Homes & Gardens spread–padded bar, groovy paintings, and comely girlfriend, who along with a personal secretary and a mechanical letter opener helped him answer some 2,000 fan letters a day.
April 2, in San Clemente, the leader of the Free World allotted almost a full day for discussion of l’affaire Calley (save for three hours with the governor of California to try to talk him down from sabotaging the Family Assistance Program as part of Reagan’s “all-out war on the tax taker”). White House polls showed 96 percent of the public was following the case, the highest they’d recorded on any subject. They had to move: it was time for some virtuoso difference-splitting. The Old Man ordered a course “on the basis of what does us most good”–anything to to buck up his approval rating to end Vietnam “our way.” Ehrlichman summarized the final recommendation: “The President does nothing”–in a way that strongly hinted at a future pardon.
At the next day’s morning briefing Ron Ziegler said before any sentence was carried out the President would “personally review the case and finally decide it.” Ehrlichman took the podium: this “extralegal ingredient” was appropriate in a case which had “captured the interest of the American people,” and which required “more than simply the technical, legal review which the Code of Military Justice provides.” The officers involved in the appeal, he reassured the press, would be in no way influenced by their Commander in Chief.
The political reviews were stellar. Senator Margaret Chase Smith of Maine, the “Conscience of the Senate,” released a statement: “I think the President performed a very wise and useful service to his nation…. it was impressively evident that the President caused many Americans to pause in their judgement, to gain perspective, and to replace emotion with reason.” Senator Robert Taft (whom Nixon called in other contexts a “son of a bitch…peacenik”) said he had restored the morale of the military. The White House’s private polling showed his actions found favor with 75 percent of the American people. Only 17 percent disagreed.
The legal reviews were not so salubrious. Privately, Secretary Laird complained, “Intervention in the Calley case repudiates the military justice system.” Publicly, the case’s prosecutor, Captain Aubrey Daniel, wrote the President, in a four-page single-spaced letter made available by Senator and presidential candidate George McGovern’s office, “The greatest tragedy of all will be if political expedience dictates the compromise of such a fundamental moral principle as the inherent unlawfulness of the murder of innocent persons.” Bill Greider asked in the Post: “Should it open the doors at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and release all the other soldiers convicted of the same offense as Calley?”
Then there were those enraged the President hadn’t gone nearly far enough. On the front page of The New York Times on April 4, one of the Green Berets charged but never tried for killing a Vietnamese civilian, Robert F. Marasco, now a life insurance salesman in New Jersey, announced he had carried out murder on “very, very clear orders” from the CIA. “He was my agent and it was my responsibility to eliminate him with extreme prejudice.”
John Dean once more proved his usefulness to the President by crafting the White House’s subsequent talking point: in such ongoing legal cases, “it would be improper and inappropriate for White House staff members to make any comments or statements.”
That would turn off some problems. Secretary Laird, Colonel Daniel, Robert F. Marasco, the Washington Post, the New York Times, and all the rest would have to howl in the wilderness.
*****
Luckily for the President the Post and Times weren’t howling as loudly as they might. Two days later, on April 5, Senator Hatfield read the “Winter Soldier” testimony from Detroit into the Congressional Record. He stated on the floor that they revealed “the institutionalized racist attitudes of the military in the training of men who are sent to Vietnam–training which has indoctrinated them to think of all Vietnamese as ‘gooks’ and subhuman,” and that atrocities were the consequences of “policies adopted by our military commanders.” If the Times had reported on it readers would have learned about, from SP/4 Gary Keyes, the time “there were some fishermen out on the ocean and a couple of our sergeants thought it would be good sport to use them as target practice”; or of Marine Sergeant Scott Camil, whose buddy, when a woman one of their snipers shot asked for water, “stabbed her in both breasts, they spread her eagle and shoved an E-tool up her vagina, an entrenching tool, and she was still asking for water. And then they took that out and they used a tree limb and then she was shot.” Or the prisoner of war interrogator, Lt. Jon Drolshagan–discharged soldiers bravely using their names and stepping up publicly didn’t risk court martial any more, just ostracization from their communities–who described one of their “normal things”: “The major that I worked for had a fantastic capability of staking prisoners, utilizing a knife that was extremely sharp, and sort of filleting them like a fish. You know, trying to check out how much bacon he could make of a Vietnamese body to get information.”
The Times did, however, run a sentimental story on Nixon’s latest appeal to the silent majority.
He went on TV Wednesday, April 7 from the Oval Office at 9 PM (first he read a handwritten note from Henry Kissinger: “Because you go on tonight I want you to have this note to tell you that–no matter what the result–free people everywhere will be forever in your debt. Your serenity during crisis, your steadfastness under pressure have been all that has prevented the triumph of mass hysteria. It has been an inspiration to serve”).
The speech was the usual: it announced a dizzying new pace of troop withdrawals; included the selective historical review, the optimistic assessment (“tonight I can report that Vietnamization has succeeded…. Look again at their chart on my left. Every action taken by this administration, every decision made, has accomplished what I said it would accomplish”); the affirmation of the selflessness of the American effort (“never in history have men fought for less selfish motives–not for conquest, not for glory, but only for the right of a people far away to choose the kind of government they want”); the mournful lament that the only roadblock to progress was the recalcitrance of the enemy negotiators in the face of generous American offers, the wild-eyed insanity of setting a date for withdrawal (“we will have thrown away our political bargaining counter to win the release of American prisoners of war…we will have given enemy commanders the exact information they need to marshal their attacks against our remaining forces at their most vulnerable time…. Shall we leave Vietnam in a way that–by our own actions–consciously turns the country over to the Communists?”). He again mobilized the trope of shame as cheap shot at those who argued for a different way (“I know there are those who honestly believe that I should move to end this war without regard to what happens in South Vietnam. This way would abandon our friends. But even more important, we would abandon ourselves…. We would lose respect for this nation, respect for one another, respect for ourselves”).
Then finally, as ever, he wound up for the sentimental dénoumente. Which this time was a masterpiece. “While we hear and read much of isolated acts of cruelty, we do not hear enough of the tens of thousands of individual American soldiers–I have seen them there–building schools, roads, hospitals, clinics, who, through countless acts of generosity and kindness, have tried to help the people of South Vietnam. We can and we should be very proud of these men. They deserve not our scorn, but they deserve our admiration and our deepest appreciation….”
His voice took on a honeyed Norman Rockwell tone.
“The reason I am so deeply committed to peace goes far beyond political considerations or my concern about my place in history, or the other reasons that political scientists usually say are the motivations of Presidents.
“Every time I talk to a brave wife of an American POW, every time I write a letter to the mother of a boy who has been killed in Vietnam, I become more deeply committed to end this war, and to end it in a way that we can build lasting peace.”
(You cared about peace because you cared about those brave Americas left behind in the Hanoi Hilton. They, on the other hand, do not.)
“I think the hardest thing that a President has to do is present posthumously the nation’s highest honor, the Medal of Honor, to mothers or fathers or widows of men who have lost their lives”–he was nearly whispering–“but in the process have saved the lives of others.”
This was a rhetorical gambit. It let him end with a story about little Kevin: the Checkers of 1971.
“We had an award ceremony in the East Room of the White House just a few weeks agao. And at that ceremony I remember one of the recipients, Mrs.–Karl–Taylor.
“He charged an enemy machine gun single-handed and knocked it out. He lost his life. But in the process the lives of several wounded Marines in the range of that machine gun were saved.
“After I presented her the Medal, I shook hands with their two children, Karl, Jr.–he was 8 years old–and Kevin, who was 4. As I was about to move to the next recipient, Kevin suddenly stood at attention and saluted.”
Pause.
“I found it rather difficult to get my thoughts together.”
His voice deepened.
“My fellow Americans, I want to end this war in a way that is worthy of the sacrifice of Kevin Taylor.”
He was speaking very slowly.
“And I think he would want me to end it in a way that would increase the chances that Kevin and Karl, and all those children like them here and around the world, could grow up in a world where none of them would have to die in a war; that would increase the chance of Americans to have what it has not had in this century–a full generation of peace.”
Yesterday, one of the masterminds of President’s Bush’s torture regime, William Haynes, testified before a Senate committee. He was not there to answer for his crimes. He was there because George W. Bush has nominated him to be a federal appeals court judge. He explained that the problems we’ve all heard about are the result of a few “bad apples” and they are all being properly dealt with. As of today, it’s not known if he will be confirmed. digby
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Saving Western Civ
by digby
So the big protest against the NY Times took place yesterday and all the heavyweights showed up. Atlas Shrugged was there and took pictures:
It’s also why we drink booze, woo a flooze, and take poos in our shoes — because hey buddy, you snooze, you lose.
But indeed, why doesn’t the New York Times quit it with all that high-flown cloak-and-dagger ‘warrantless spying’ stuff, and simply haul off and print a New York City subway map, so that al-Qaeda can know where all the secret and never-advertised subway routes are?
Atlas also claims that these guys are anti-semites.
Update: Wolcott’s protest review.
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Presidentin’ For Dummies
by digby
Q Well, Mr. President, you’ve known Mr. Prodi for a long time, and you’ve known Mr. Berlusconi — you’ve known both of them. And how would you assess the personal relationship that you had with Mr. Prodi and with Mr. Berlusconi? Is there a difference how comfortable would you feel with one or the other?
THE PRESIDENT: I feel very comfortable with both. The first thing that’s important is I feel comfortable with the people of Italy. We’ve got very close ties.
And let me just take a step back. What’s interesting about our country is that we’ve got — we’ve had close ties with a lot of countries. My ranch was settled by Germans.
Q Really?
THE PRESIDENT: Yes. There’s a huge number of Italian Americans. A lot of Russian Americans. You know, Norm Mineta in my Cabinet is a Japanese American. In other words, so when you talk about relations with an American President, you’ve got to understand that there’s a — at least I have, I know my predecessors have, connections, close connections with people who have fond — either fond memories and/or great pride in their motherland.
Who knew?
How embarrassing it must be these days to be John Podhoretz, who wrote this in his hilariously ill-timed tome, Bush Country, How Dubya Became A Great President While Driving Liberals Insane:
The consistent inability of Democrats and liberals to pay proper respect to their adversaries has surely done more damage to them than to their adversaries. Their misunderestimation will continue to cost them as long as they persist in their comforting delusion that the whip-smart George W. Bush is an idiot.
And, by the way, Norm Mineta’s resignation was official last week.
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Norquistian Boogeyman
by digby
Jonathan Chait expands upon his Sunday op-ed, noting that I offered up “a fairly cogent and persuasive, albeit profanity-laced, case against Lieberman.” (I did say shit and fuck once each. Oops, I did it again.)
Chait reiterates that he dislikes Lieberman but is concerned that if Lieberman loses he will become a martyr. I suppose he probably will. But he will be one without a platform in the US Senate. He will do much less damage as a Fox News analyst or an AEI fellow — or even Sec Def reporting to his good pal Dick Cheney. (Even I don’t think he’s worse than Rumsfeld — who is?) In any event, he will no longer be an elected Democrat from a liberal state deriding his own party and enabling the Republicans. That is its own reward.
Chait worries even more that if Lieberman actually wins the primary, or the general as an independent, he’ll be angry and alienated from liberals. Frankly, I’m not sure what that means. Will the man of integrity suddenly begin changing his stance on the issues? If the worry is that he will become more rhetorically abusive toward the base of his own party, well what else is new? He already went on the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal and said we were undermining national security by speaking out against the president. His disdain for us (and I would argue in that case, for American values) is manifest already and has been for years.
Chait’s larger point is that the netroots are a danger to liberalism because of our alleged “party line.” He begins with this:
Since I have space here, I’d offer up two prime examples of the party line. The first is Iraq. To be on the side of the angels, one must favor withdrawal and believe that there was no rational case to be made for war given the publicly-known information in 2002.
I find this interesting because to the best of my knowledge, virtually the entire Democratic party is in favor of some kind of withdrawal from Iraq. This is a mainstream position. Indeed, there were only six Democrats in the senate who voted against the Levin-Reed resolution that called for a phased redeployment: Sens. Mark Dayton of Minnesota, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Mark Pryor of Arkansas, Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, Bill Nelson of Florida and Ben Nelson of Nebraska. Only one of them is taking heat for his position on Iraq. There is no litmus test — but Blue State Democrats in safe seats who defy their constituents’ wishes on this matter risk being challenged — by their constituents.
The second part of his argument — “one must … believe that there was no rational case to be made for war given the publicly-known information in 2002” is puzzling. After all, the rationale for the war in Iraq was absurd on its face: al Qaeda had attacked us so we attacked Iraq. We could have attacked New Zealand for all the sense it made.
Now I realize that they dazzled a lot of people with a lot of bullshit but the fact remains that even if the publicly known information had turned out to be true it still wouldn’t have made any sense. The world was full of potential threats. Why Iraq? Why then? Why the rush? Why alienate our allies? Why take our eye off the ball? Why not North Korea or Pakistan, both of which at that very moment presented a more obvious threat? Those are questions that have not to this day been adequately answered. Hell, the questions have barely even been asked by the mainstream press.
This was not a tough call on the merits, regardless of the lame demagogic gobbledygook (drone planes anyone?) about Iraq’s “weapons of mass destruction.” That is unless you supported the ridiculous Bush Doctrine that permits the US to “take out” any country that might someday think of posing a threat. Or you agreed with the puerile notion that we had to prove our manhood in the middle east by kicking somebody’s ass — didn’t matter whose. I reserve the right to not support people who thought things like that — or who believed that it made sense after 9/11 to invade a country in the mid-east that had not attacked us. They were very foolish about something very serious.
I do not, however, think that the Democrats in congress believed any such thing. I’m not so naive that I don’t know that the political exigencies of the moment put Democrats in a tough spot. I wish they had had the courage to stand up and say, “wtf?” but the militant zeitgeist demanded that they genuflect to the flag every five minutes or be called terrorist loving traitors. It was not easy, particularly since the memory of the Democratic votes against the first Gulf War seemed fresh to many of those geezers.
Still, 22 Democratic senators and Jim Jeffords voted against the use of force resolution, so it’s not like this view was way out there. And I have no doubt that not one of those 23 saw even the remotest justification for war with Iraq. (I seriously doubt the rest of them did either.)
Today, most Democrats who voted for the resolution have found ways to publicly distance themselves from that moment. I think they know that history is going to judge them harshly for their weakness. It will judge America harshly. But while I do insist on my prerogative to boldly assert that up was up and down was down back in 2002, I’m not suggesting that every Democrat who voted for the war be booted out of office. I haven’t seen any evidence that anyone is doing that. You will recall that Democrats, including the entire blogosphere, supported John Kerry and John Edwards in overwhelming numbers, both of whom voted for the war. It just ain’t so that we are hardline doctrinaire on this subject. (At least until Commandante Markos orders us to be.)
As for political writers who continue to insist that the war was rational in 2002, I no longer respect their opinions. So what?
Chait’s other example of a party line is that we bloggers demand that everybody kiss our asses:
To be in the good graces of the activists, one must believe not only that the rise of Internet activism has some potentially positive ramifications, but to signal that one accepts a Manichean battle between virtuous people-powered activists and corrupt Washington insiders.
I am unaware of that requirement, but speaking for myself I could not care less if people believe that we are the second coming or even that they think “the rise of Internet activism has some potentially positive ramifications.” (I do have to wonder how much you have to hate internet activism to think that there aren’t even any potential positive ramifications of it, though.) Perhaps there are those who feel that politicians must signal that they accept the “Manichean battle between virtuous activists and corrupt Washington insiders” but I didn’t get the memo. Requiring everyone to see us as heroes is a little grandiose, even for the elite blogofascist cabal.
It should be noted that the observation that the political establishment is corrupt is pretty mundane stuff, however. It’s been a staple of politics forever. And the belief that “the people” need to take back control of their government is also pretty mundane. It’s even got a name. It’s called populism. Only the delivery system is new. After nearly two decades of DLC corporatism and Democratic losses, did anyone not anticipate that that there might be exactly this sort of backlash? Whose fault is that?
It’s certainly fair enough to criticize populism on the merits. There are ongoing debates within the blogosphere on that very topic. I will admit that defending the political establishment probably won’t find you Kos level readership (a sad reality of which I’m sure that the publishers of TNR are all too well aware.) But the blogging marketplace is wide open to anyone and if someone wants to defend the establishment they are free to do so and there are plenty of blogs that do it. There are even official establishment blogs. The worst thing they face from people who disagree is criticism.
Chait quotes Kevin Drum who wrote:
Last I heard, Grover Norquist had built an entire career on insisting that every last Republican politician kiss his pinkie ring and pledge never to vote for a tax increase. And the Republican Party seems to have done pretty well as a result.
and then adds:
I think the citation of Norquist is telling. Some of the liberal internet activists consciously fashion themselves after Norquist (who, by the way, fashions himself after Lenin) and would like to replicate on the left the comintern-like apparatus he has constructed on the right. It is true that the Norquist mentality has helped Republicans win elections. But plenty of conservatives wonder whether it has actually helped advance conservatism. Government, after all, has grown under Republican rule, and the fact that it now funnels more of its largesse to GOP-affiliated interests is of small comfort to honest conservatives.
(That’s actually a cheap shot at Drum. He was making a rhetorical argument not advancing that theory.)
If there are those in the blogoshpere who are consciously fashioning themselves after that corrupt putz Grover Norquist, I’m unaware of it, and I think I’d know. The only people anywhere who are wearing that particular tinfoil are the writers of TNR.
Certainly Democrats of all stripes have awakened to the notion that the partisan infrastructure the Republicans created must be met with something. We are at a huge disadvantage. But that isn’t a netroots thing. Ask John Podesta or Simon Rosenberg or any number of others who are working to set up think tanks and publishing houses and all kinds of organizations that have nothing to do with the netroots. I honestly don’t know what the hell he’s talking about.
I would welcome a little more organization and communication in the netroots and look forward to the medium maturing as an effective way to advance liberalism. But all we’ve got right now is a very loose confederation of activists, writers, gadflys and humorists — and millions of readers — who all agree that Republicans (and Joe Lieberman) are bad for the country and we are doing whatever we can to replace them. We also tend to agree that something has gone awry in the Democratic party — the fact that we are completely out of power being the big clue. We discuss that a lot. Some bloggers raise money for candidates. Some write emails to each other about topics they are interested in and try out new ideas on each other. Is that really so threatening?
It is true that the Norquist mentality has helped Republicans win elections. But plenty of conservatives wonder whether it has actually helped advance conservatism. Government, after all, has grown under Republican rule, and the fact that it now funnels more of its largesse to GOP-affiliated interests is of small comfort to honest conservatives.
Yes, isn’t that something? Now that it is falling under its own venal, corrupt weight, all the “honest conservatives” are suddenly realizing that it isn’t conservative at all. How very convenient. Chait is falling for the oldest trick in the book and my regular readers know exactly what I’m talking about. Conservatism cannot fail, it can only be failed. (If you want to see a purge in full glory, keep your eyes on the right if they lose the election. Nobody does it better. Not even Stalin.)
Chait claims the blogosphere is paranoid and sectarian and he worries what it will do to liberalism. I’m frankly worried about the paranoia and sectarianism at The New Republic, a magazine I’ve been reading for 30 years. This notion that Kos is some sort of commander of the blogofascist empire is ridiculous. Kos is a successful, respected blogger, but believe me, I don’t take orders from anybody and I don’t know any other bloggers who do. The blogosphere is a kind of organism. To the extent there’s a hierarchy, it’s not manufactured, it’s organic, and there is no recognized leadership — there’s readership. This idea of a Stalinist comintern is a misunderstanding of epic proportions. The blogosphere has the most open distribution of power of any human endeavor I’ve ever participated in. If a certain amount of groupthink occurs, it’s certainly no more than what you see at the DLC — or The New Republic.
People in Washington need to wrap their minds around the fact that this stuff really is bubbling up from below and it’s real. Bloggers are merely in the vanguard of a rising leftwing populist sentiment around the country. It is a predictable reaction when a party ceases to be responsive to its voters. Liberalism has been moribund for some time now. This is a chance to at least begin the process of resuscitation and could be used by the political establishment as a useful counter-weight to help drag the country back from the brink of rightwing extremism.(If that’s what they want, that is.) Smart politicians will accept this and find a way to use its strength strategically, not fight it.
Jay Rosen wrote in the comments to Chait’s post:
In my view… The TNR writers just cannot accept that liberal opinion journalism of the insider variety has been invaded or at least affected by the unbelievably crude, overheated and totally unsavvy writers in the Kos, Townhouse orbit, and that people in politics, specifically the Democratic party, actually pay attention to these activist-loudmouths. The “perch” they thought TNR represented just isn’t the same in the Net era, which to them isn’t fair. They hate it. They wanted their turn to sneer at the unsubtleties of left activists so as to demonstrate TNR-style Washington savvy.
They went to good schools; they know people on the inside. They want those gates (around liberal opinion journalism) back up. The gates were good to them.
I didn’t say it, he did.
I would just again point out that the characterization of the “Kos Townhouse” orbit as being a group of “unbelievably crude, overheated and totally unsavvy … activist-loudmouths” is only partially correct. (I proudly wear the labels, others may not.) But to the extent you believe it’s true, keep in mind that it reflects the frustration of millions of politically active progressive citizens who have been scapegoated and derided for decades by the political insiders who now find themselves on the other end of the attack. These people are the base of the Democratic Party. If people think the party can prevail in this modern hyper-partisan era by continuing to insult its most active and ardent supporters, then have at it. But no one should be surprised then when those supporters decide to take matters into their own hands. Democracy is untidy that way.
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MMMM Peach-Mint Tea
by digby
I consider it my duty to promote young liberal entrepreneurs whenever I can, so here’s a little product you might find refreshing as we go into the dog days of summer.
I have not tried it yet, but it sounds really, really good to me.
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