I’ve written before about the possibility of an impending implosion in the Christian Right. You don’t put behind thousands of years of sectarian competition just because Paul Weyrich needs a voting block. One of the oddest marriages of convenience in this block has always been the fundamentalist armagedonists and the right wing Jews, seeing as the gleeful worldenders view the destruction of the Jews as a requirement for the rapture. But it’s been a convenient political alliance among certain Republicans so that’s been overlooked.
But guess what. When the “yids” don’t behave, here’s what you get on Tim LaHaye’s web site. From Max Blumenthal:
The Christian right sure gets its panties in a bunch when Jews act without their permission. Recently, a speech by the ADL’s Abe Foxman denouncing the Christian right’s theocratic agenda provoked a Gangland-style threat from James Dobson minion Tom Minnery — “If you keep bullying your friends, pretty soon you won’t have any.” Then, in response to Ariel Sharon’s Gaza pullout and subsequent formation of a new, centrist party, Tim LaHaye’s Left Behind Prophecy Group leapt into the fracas with some good, old-fashioned anti-Semitic slurs.
In an article entitled “Will the Goyim Win?” published on the official site of best-selling author Tim LaHaye (who also operates an annual Holy Land tour for evangelicals), “Christian journalist” Stan Goodenough takes Israel and the Sharon government to task for trading land for peace. In breathless prose, Goodenough bemoans the Israelis’ supposed surrender of “the cradle of their nationhood, the burial places of their national patriarchs and heroes.”
Then, he proceeds to pile it on:
But do you know what, Jews of Israel – and those Jews still in exile who so fervently support this way? You may think that in so acquiescing, you are setting a glowing example to the nations of the world.
But as far as these nations are concerned, the last thing they will want to do is emulate you. All you are doing is proving them right in their long-held belief that you are illegitimate, land grabbing, not-to-be-trusted Yids. And, as far as the Muslim world is concerned, your actions only confirm their view of you as a dhimmi nation, fit only to be ruled over by, and subdued under, Islam.
Ah yes, more of that sophisticated right wing geopolitical strategy. Chest thump and bellow your way to “victory.” (I don’t know what happened to them in the schoolyard, but it stunted their intellectual growth.)
And apparently if the Israelis don’t follow their edict to blow themselves up for Jesus, they will be seen as “land-grabbing yids” and lily livered cowards too. That was a short trip from A to B wasn’t it?
Get ready for more of this as various Christian sects come in to conflict as well. It’s only a matter of time before they start fighting among themselves.
A fascinating Ron Reagan and Monica Crowley show today in which the topic is how the Democrats are failing everyone on Iraq because they are spineless and unfocused and in disarray and can’t speak with one voice and have no leadership. I can’t get enough of blaming Democrats for the mess the Republicans have made.
But, this is a doozy. I just heard David Limbaugh say the following in response to Arianna Huffington saying that there needs to be a bi-partisan Truman Commission to sort out how much of the 200 billion we’ve spent has been lost to graft and corruption:
“I just wish the left would stop focusing on all these scandals.”
I can’t remember who it was, but somebody involved with the Open Robe Media project (thanks TBOGG) said that the reason they went with them is because Republicans know how to run a business. Heh. Kevin at Catch has all the latest on their troubles and links (via Juan Cole) to an impressive professional liberal news portal run by Robert Sheer. They must have kept their expensive launch party under wraps.
This Lincoln Group story is amazing. I have nothing to add to the substance that Laura Rozen and Billmon haven’t already covered with great insight. Psyops is one of Rummy’s favorite little hobbies. It’s no surprise that he’s been using it in every way he can get away with.
But I am interested in the fact that General Pace is on the record being against it saying “I would be concerned about anything that would be detrimental to the proper growth of democracy.” This is the second time in two days that Pace is playing the straight arrow to Rummy’s sleaze. Bob Fertik sent me an e-mail pointing out something interesting that I overlooked in that Pace-Rummy public disagreement the other day.
QUESTION: Sir, taking on his question a bit — and I can give you actual examples from coalition forces who talked to me when I was over there about excesses of the Interior Ministry, the Ministry of Defense; and that is in dealing with prisoners or in arresting people and how they’re treated after they’re arrested — what are the obligations and what are the rights of U.S. military over there in dealing with that?
Obviously, Iraq is a sovereign country now, but the United States is responsible for training and expects to turn over the security mission to them.
So, what is the U.S. obligation in addressing that, preventing that, and what can we do? And what are we doing?
RUMSFELD: That’s a fair question. I’ll start and, Pete, you may want to finish. But we are working very hard to train and equip the Iraqi security forces. So is NATO. So are some neighboring countries.
There are a lot of people involved in this, dozens of countries trying to help train these Iraqi forces. Any instance of inhumane behavior is obviously worrisome and harmful to them when that occurs. Iraq knows, of certain knowledge, that they need the support of the international community. And a good way to lose it is to make a practice of something that is inconsistent with the values of the international community.
RUMSFELD: And I think they know that.
He doesn’t even know what he’s saying, does he?
Now, you know, I can’t go any farther in talking about it. Obviously, the United States does not have a responsibility when a sovereign country engages in something that they disapprove of. However, we do have a responsibility to say so and to make sure that the training is proper and to work with the sovereign officials so that they understand the damage that can be done to them in the event some of these allegations prove to be true.
QUESTION: And, General Pace, what guidance do you have for your military commanders over there as to what to do if — like when General Horst found this Interior Ministry jail?
PACE: It is absolutely responsibility of every U.S. service member if they see inhumane treatment being conducted, to intervene, to stop it. As an example of how to do it if you don’t see it happening, but you’re told about it, is exactly what happened a couple of weeks ago. There was a report from an Iraqi to a U.S. commander that there was a possibility of inhumane treatment in a particular facility. That U.S. commander got together with his Iraqi counterparts. They went together to the facility, found what they found, reported it to the Iraqi government, and the Iraqi government has taken ownership of that problem and is investigating it.
So they did exactly what they should have done.
RUMSFELD: I don’t think you mean they have an obligation to physically stop it, it’s to report it.
PACE: If they are physically present when inhumane treatment is taking place, sir, they have an obligation to try to stop it.
QUESTION: Let me follow up. To what extent do you think these allegations of abuses by the Iraqi security forces, particularly some of the complaints and allegations from Sunni Iraqis that the largely Shia security forces are engaged in abuses, to what extent do you think that’s an indicator that the Iraqi military, Iraqi security forces are not yet ready to assume control of the country?
RUMSFELD: Oh, I don’t think it is. I mean, you’re going to have allegations back and forth.
We were deeply concerned that there could be conflict among the various elements in that country after the end of major combat operations, and there hasn’t been, and that’s a good thing.
RUMSFELD: First of all, what we’re doing is we’re prejudging these remarks and allegations and reports. And I just can’t do that. And what’s going to happen is the Iraqi government is going to be formed after the December 15th election — two weeks, whatever — and it will be seated by the 31st of December…
QUESTION: So your sense is that these abuses are not a widespread problem that threaten the…
RUMSFELD: My sense is I don’t know. And it’s obviously something that one has to be attentive to. It’s obviously something that General Casey and his troops are attentive to and have to be concerned about.
I am not going to be judging it from 4,000 miles away — how many miles away?
Rummy quite clearly wants to deal with “reports” of “allegations back and forth” that can be “investigated” and then “more reports” can be issued saying that it was a bunch of “bad apples.” Why mess with success?
He doesn’t want American forces doing anything to stop abuses — because he wants the Iraqis to do this dirty work. Why, if we play our cards right, we will have another friendly country willing to accept our illegal renditions and torture them for us! Maybe they’ll even house a secret CIA prison or two. This nation building makes friends with benefits.
But, unlike that drooling sycophant Richard Myers, who slobbered all over Rummy like he was Elvis, Pace doesn’t seem to be following the script. What’s up with that?
Update: One other thing about the “blowback” aspect of the planted stories business. It’s quite obvious that it’s a Republican PR job because it’s the same M.O. they used in the Clinton scandals. They planted lies or rumors in the much looser foreign tabloid press, who would then print it so that Drudge could link it and Cokie would report it because “it’s out there.” This “blowback” is just standard GOP psyops.
Here’s a provocative post on immigration by Brad Plumer: The Case for Open Borders. Click through to all the links and you will find some very informative data. (I especially recommend this article by Daniel Drezner.) It’s not a plan I’m necessarily endorsing, but it’s a different way of looking at things. With problems this complicated and politically treacherous we need to be open to fresh thinking if only to question whether some of our assumptions are still valid.
Jane is reporting that Rove’s lawyer Luskin told Fitzgerald that “inveterate gossip” Viveca Novak told him that Rove was Matt Cooper’s source, which sent him and Karl rummaging frantically through the e-mails to refresh Karl’s sketchy memory. Apparently, it took them five months to find it, but whatever.
If Novak confesses that she did this, it certainly gives the lie to all this high minded posturing we’ve heard from all the journalists about their do or die committment to their promises of confidentiality. This little scenario requires that Cooper or his editor blabbed to Novak who then blabbed to Rove’s lawyer! Oh Lord, bless the majesty of the First Amendment that guarantees Freedom of the Press and Anonymous Juicy Gossip.
I actually find it hard to believe that she really told Luskin this. I’m going to withhold judgment until she writes her story. (Check out Jeralyn for the explanation of the legal ramifications of Novak telling Luskin.)
I think that the NIH should be looking into something else right away, however. There seems to be some sort of terrible medical condition that’s taking over Washington. Libby didn’t remember Cheney telling him that Plame was CIA. Rove didn’t remember telling Cooper. Woodward’s source is reported to have forgotten that he told Woodward. Miller forgot that Libby told her and couldn’t remember why she wrote down the name Plame. Pincus couldn’t remember Woodward telling him about Plame. Woodward can’t remember if he mentioned Plame to Libby. Mitchell doesn’t remember what she had for lunch.
And of the people who could have looked through their notes or checked their phone logs or even rattled their memory once the shit hit the fan — and it hit the fan within days or a week of hearing about all this — none of them did. Here we had this huge brouhaha, with Joe Wilson talking about frog-marching and claiming that the administration had outed his wife to punish him, and none of these officials and journalists remembered that they had spoken to one another about the very subject that was under discussion. It was only years later when confronted with documentary proof, jail time or someone coming forward that they decided to search their records or think back, and in most cases it was just too late.
These are elite journalists and the highest government officials. And they all seem to have some sort of serious memory defect. This explains a lot about what has gone wrong in our political system.
The New Republic and The LA Times this week both feature articles about the Minutemen of Herndon, Virginia. The TNR piece is framed as a cautionary tale for liberals who think that the Minutemen are out of the mainstream:
Bill explains that he “slid into the Minutemen” because he was disturbed by the way his neighborhood was changing, and the other Minutemen standing with him nod in agreement. “Dormitory-style homes” have popped up on their streets, Bill says, and the residents come and go at strange hours. Their neighbors’ children are intimidated and no longer like to play outside, in part because “we’ve got about 17 cars coming and going from our neighbors’ houses.” Matt, another Minuteman who lives in nearby Manassas, claims that the police have busted prostitution rings operating out of nearby properties. Bill doesn’t want his name printed, he tells me, because he worries about retaliation from the local Hispanic gang, MS-13. Pointing to the cluster of day-laborers across the street, he explains to me that the Herndon 7-11 is “a social gathering place, too.” Taplin has publicly objected to a regulated day-laborer site set to open in Herndon on December 19–proposed in order to combat the trespassing, litter, and nuisance complaints that have arisen in conjunction with the informal 7-11 site–because he worries that even a regulated locale wouldn’t change “their behaviors.” Even on the coldest mornings, more than 50 workers often convene at the 7-11, and Bill judges that sometimes only 10 or 20 get hired. “When,” he asks me, “is it ever a good thing for 40 men to hang out together?”
These anxieties may be overblown, in some cases borderline racist; but they are not, unfortunately, outside the mainstream. In Mount Pleasant, the predominantly Hispanic, rapidly gentrifying Washington neighborhood where I live, complaints have begun to surface about the groups of men that congregate on stoops or outside of convenience stores at night. Those who have complained call it loitering, but one Hispanic resident told the Post that when the men gather outdoors, “[t]hey’re having coffee; they talk about issues. … It’s part of our community.” For the neighborhood’s Hispanic population, this practice is a cultural tradition; for its newer batch of hip, ostensibly liberal urbanites, it is disturbing, and too closely resembles something American law designates a crime.
These are people who would never admit they share anything in common with the Herndon Minutemen. But like it or not, the Minutemen are acting on anxieties many Americans share–anxieties about the challenge of enforcing the law in towns that are swelling in size due to immigration; anxieties about the challenge of integrating and accommodating an immigrant culture. Border states like California have been grappling with these issues for years, in court battles about day-laborer sites and debates over concepts like bilingual education. Often in these conflicts those who have presented cultural, as opposed to legal, objections to uncontrolled immigration are condemned as xenophobic or racist. But as my Mount Pleasant neighbors have shown, it can be tricky to disentangle legal from cultural discomfort.
Not really. People legally assembling in public is not criminal and this “cultural discomfort” is simple xenophobia. And just as xenophobes (and their close cousins, racists) did in the past, they couch their “cultural discomfort” in narrow interpretations of the law and property rights.
Notice that the neighborhood in question is a Hispanic neighborhood being gentrified. These complaints are coming from yuppies moving into neighborhoods where their “culture” isn’t dominant. Who’s the immigrant, anyway?
It was Massey, again, who pointed it out to me. “Why in Chicago,” he asked, “is there no anti-immigrant movement as there is in California?”
Because the white ethnics here have their own, uh, “mexicans,” to protect. White European immigrants. The Romanians, Russians … but above all, Poles. From Poland. Many Poles. Tens of thousands. So how can the whites here complain about the latinos? We’ve got our own illegals to hide.
That kind of clarifies things a little, doesn’t it? The eastern Europeans are often highly skilled tradesmen, not day laborers like the Mexicans, who really do take high paying jobs away from citizens. It’s a major issue in Europe and would be here too except for the fact that in the cities where large numbers of Poles and Russians overstay their visas and live here illegally, they are in the bosom of their well assimilated ethnic group. “Illegal immigration” is a much more complicated issue than it seems in our multi-ethnic culture.
The LA Times tells a similar story of Herndon and the Minutemen but had the added feature of the residents complaining about their property values being lowered while George Bush and the Republicans are catering to the Hispanic vote at their expense.
The retired social studies teacher said she got involved because houses in her neighborhood had become packed immigrant dormitories. She suspects that most tenants in the rooming houses, including the one next door, are illegal. She deals with roosters crowing and men urinating in the yard, loud parties and empty beer cans dumped outside. She fears it’s driving down the value of her house.
“I’m angry,” said the 60-year-old widow. She said the fight against illegal immigration was deeply personal and broadly political.
“George Bush is in it for the Hispanic vote, and we’re on the receiving end,” she said. “That’s not fair. Before, everybody looked out for everybody else; no one locked doors,” she said of her neighborhood. “Now we all have security systems.”
Jeff Talley, 45, an airplane maintenance worker who lives across the street from Bonieskie, also joined the Minuteman chapter. “When you start messing with the value of people’s houses, people get really upset,” he said.
As Talley sees it, illegal immigrants take jobs from Americans  whom it would cost companies more to employ and that will have long-term effects on American society.
“There’s a disappearing middle class,” said Talley, a Republican. “George Bush is a huge disappointment to this country. The Republican Party used to be for ordinary people, but no more.”
This is an old, old populist rant. The Republican moneyed elites are against the little guy — and it’s because of the immigrants.
The TNR article goes on to explain:
Our national debate on immigration tends to focus on economic issues, namely job loss, and scrupulously to avoid the kind of cultural anxieties that the Herndon Minutemen, the residents of Mount Pleasant, and Bill O’Reilly are bringing to the fore. After all, anxieties about how immigration will affect national culture seem like more of a European thing, springing from a deep-seated and distinctly un-American nativism and yielding byproducts like the headscarf dispute and Jean-Marie Le Pen. But on this side of the Atlantic, little Le Pens are beginning to flourish.
[…]
Only a few years ago, the European political establishment largely ignored concerns about an immigration wave overwhelmingly originating from one region–only to be stunned as fanatics rose to prominence by championing an issue that mainstream politicians had refused to touch. To prevent the same thing from happening here, liberals will have to recognize that immigration, often considered a “conservative” topic, is now a potent political issue. Concern is no longer confined to California, Arizona, and Texas; nor is it confined to Republicans. Liberals will need to make an affirmative case for immigration as a concept–but also concede that our current system is deeply flawed. They will have to acknowledge that many Americans have legitimate worries about immigration–but that there are better ways to approach the issue than skulking around day laborer sites with a camera. Wherever they come down on the issue, and whatever they propose, liberals will have to acknowledge that immigration is not a fringe concern. And telling the Minutemen to “go home” isn’t going to make it go away.
Ok. But let’s not bullshit ourselves while we are making our political argument about how to deal with this issue. This is not a uniquely European problem, for crying out loud. It’s as American as McDonald’s apple pie. We’ve been doing this shit for centuries — and we do it to Mexicans pretty regularly because we share a border and there are always handy illegals to kick around when necessary. This is not new. It’s a symptom of economic insecurity.
And the problem for these Minutemen and those liberal hipsters is not “cultural discomfort.” There’s are other, older, better words. Xenophobia. Nativism. Racism. The dark underbelly of populism.
I agree that this is a potent issue right now for reasons I set forth earlier. But please, no soft-peddling the reasons, at least in our own minds. No creating nice little code words for confused working class whites who are looking for easy scapegoats or narrow-minded urbanites to excuse their “discomfort” with law abiding people who are doing nothing more than legally assembling in public. Let’s call a Mexican a Mexican and go from there.
I wrote a post some time back called Populism Tango, wherein I discussed the dangers in jumping into populism. It’s a perfectly good, and often correct, political philosophy. But it does have this ugly tendency to scapegoat immigrants, blacks and ethnic minorities. In that post I quoted Democratic strategist Mudcat Saunders who has a lot of advice about how to attract those elusive white males:
“Bubba doesn’?t call them illegal immigrants. He calls them illegal aliens. If the Democrats put illegal aliens in their bait can, we’re going to come home with a bunch of white males in the boat.”
Why would that work?
[W]hat he is suggesting is a tried and true method to get rural white males to sign on to a political party. Bashing immigrants and elites at the same time has a long pedigree and it is the most efficient way to bag some of those pick-up truck guys who are voting against their economic self-interest….And that’s because what you are really doing is playing to their prejudices and validating their tribal instinct that the reason for their economic problems is really the same reason for the cultural problems they already believe they have — Aliens taking over Real America — whether liberals, immigrants, blacks, commies, whoever.
That’s a problem for us because no matter how tempting it might be to go and grab those Virginians who are so disenchanted with George Bush and promise to close the borders and solve their problems: nobody has yet figured out how (short of an economic catastrophe so huge that people will disregard everything else) we can keep a coalition of liberals, workers, urbanites, racial minorities and nativist immigrant bashers in the same tent.
Blaming the “culturally discomfitting” Mexicans during one of these periods of economic insecurity is a temptation for political strategists, I have no doubt. But today, it’s playing with fire. There is a reason why Karl Rove has been handling this issue with kid gloves. It’s not just the agriculture lobby, which could be persuaded to keep its powder dry for a period of time until the frenzy dies down (as it always does.) No, this time, there is a huge voter block at stake. They saw what happened in California when Pete Wilson let his id run free in an earlier period of economic insecurity and he ran ads saying “they just keep coming.” He destroyed the Republican party in this state.
Demographics show that the Hispanic vote is essential for future majorities. Ruy Teixiera reported last August:
As two recent reports document, the Hispanic population of the United States continues to increase rapidly, especially in areas that we now think of as “solid red.” The Pew Hispanic Center report describes and analyzes the extraordinary growth of the Hispanic population in six southern states, Arkansas, Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee, down to the county level. The Census report shows that Texas has now become a majority-minority state (joining New Mexico, California and Hawaii), primarily due to its burgeoning Hispanic population.
[…]
In this survey just completed, Hispanics had swung back to the Democrats with a vengeance, giving them a 32-point margin in a generic race for Congress (61 to 29 percent). The Republican vote today is 10 points below what Bush achieved just six months earlier. These voters are deeply dissatisfied with the Bush economy and Iraq war; they are socially tolerant and internationalist; they align with a Democratic Party that respects Hispanics and diversity, that uses government to help families, reduce poverty and create opportunity, and that will bring major change in education and health care. This is even truer for the growing younger population under 30, including Gen Y voters, who support the Democrats by a remarkable 46 points (70 to 24 percent).
The country is experiencing economic and social insecurity and as has always happened in the past at such times, the focus turns to immigration (illegal and legal) as a cause. But this time that same immigrant group (that has always been here, by the way) is a huge, growing voting block and a big prize for the political party that recognizes and respects it. People like Mudcat Saunders think that you can scapegoat the “illegal aliens” without any spillover into the large legal Hispanic community. But as we saw in that gentrifying neighborhood in Virginia, it isn’t really about illegals per se. And California proved that if you go too far with the “illegal alien” business you lose the Hispanic population altogether.
Democrats can look to the future and find a populist message that doesn’t cater to white fear and tendencies to scapegoat minorities. And we can add the Hispanic community permanently into our coalition, denying Karl Rove his most coveted goal. Or we can take the easy way out and catch a few Bubbas until the economy turns around, at which point they’ll go right back home to the party that really knows how to feed their worst instincts on regular basis — the Republicans.
And then of course, there’s this: if we succumb to the temptation to re-marry the twin pillars of populism for the umpteenth time, economic resentment and nativism, we will not only continue to lose elections we will lose our souls as well.
Update: Alice in the comments points out that Herndon, the home of the militiamen in the two articles quoted above, voted decisively for Tim Kaine in the last election. It’s not a mainstream as the authors would have people believe.
Update II: Greg at The Talent Show offers up some thoughtful advice on how to handle this.
Josh Marshall is collecting “nice tries,” which are the brownnosing, he said/she said statements by the media implying that all this nasty corruption business is a bi-partisan matter.
It’s obvious that the “culture of corruption” charge is scaring the GOP because they’ve clearly put the hammer down on the media to portray the looming scandal tsunami as something “everybody does.” This, of course, is utter bullshit. As Marshall says, it comes from the proximity to power and the Democrats are way out of that game.
[B]eginning with the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994, and accelerating in 2001, when George W. Bush became president, the GOP has made a determined effort to undermine the bipartisan complexion of K Street. And Santorum’s Tuesday meetings are a crucial part of that effort. Every week, the lobbyists present pass around a list of the jobs available and discuss whom to support. Santorum’s responsibility is to make sure each one is filled by a loyal Republican–a senator’s chief of staff, for instance, or a top White House aide, or another lobbyist whose reliability has been demonstrated. After Santorum settles on a candidate, the lobbyists present make sure it is known whom the Republican leadership favors. “The underlying theme was [to] place Republicans in key positions on K Street. Everybody taking part was a Republican and understood that was the purpose of what we were doing,” says Rod Chandler, a retired congressman and lobbyist who has participated in the Santorum meetings. “It’s been a very successful effort.”
If today’s GOP leaders put as much energy into shaping K Street as their predecessors did into selecting judges and executive-branch nominees, it’s because lobbying jobs have become the foundation of a powerful new force in Washington politics: a Republican political machine. Like the urban Democratic machines of yore, this one is built upon patronage, contracts, and one-party rule. But unlike legendary Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley, who rewarded party functionaries with jobs in the municipal bureaucracy, the GOP is building its machine outside government, among Washington’s thousands of trade associations and corporate offices, their tens of thousands of employees, and the hundreds of millions of dollars in political money at their disposal.
Political machines are not unprecedented. Patrick Fitzgerald is dismantling both a Republican and Democratic one in Chicago as we speak. We’ve seen “heckuva-job-Brownies” before. We’ve seen politicians and business work together to rip off the taxpayers and cheat the little guy many times. We’ve seen greedy politicians before. But this current national GOP machine is unique in its blatant, in-your-face arrogance and the swiftness with which it descended into utter, all-out corruption such that even a Republican run Justice department cannnot ignore it.
As the Abramoff scandal unfolds, it’s important to remember that Jack Abramoff is not just another lobbyist or even just another Republican. He and Grover Norquist and Ralph Reed all ran the college Republicans during the Reagan years. He is a “movement conservative” of the innermost circle of movement conservatives. This is not a fluke. It’s endemic to the modern Republican party.
As for Marshall’s collection, I would suggest that he check out the first 15 minutes of Hardball today. Tweety could hardly stop talking about how corruption is totally non-partisan in any way. Tony Blankley at least had the good graces to say that if he were a Democratic operative he’d be wearing a bib — to catch the drool.
However, my winner of the day is from Wolf Blitzer’s ‘The Situation Room” today in which Bruce Morton went all the way back to the 70’s Wilbur Wayne Hays and his mistress-on -the-payroll-who-couldn’t-take-dictation, Elizabeth Ray, to demonstrate how corrupt the Democrats were. (The only corrupt Republicans mentioned in the piece were Cunningham and … Gingrich, who it was claimed had to leave office in part because of his crooked book deal, which isn’t actually true.)
The kicker was a poll showing that 63 percent of the public consider most Democratic representatives are honest compared to 57 percent who think that most Republican representatives are honest. Morton said that means it’s a tie.
I’m giving a speech tomorrow that outlines the progress we’re making in training Iraqis to provide security for their country. And we will make decisions about troop levels based upon the capacity of the Iraqis to take the fight to the enemy.
And I will make decisions on the level of troops, based upon the recommendations by the commanders on the ground. If they tell me we need more troops, we’ll provide more troops. If they tell me we’ve got a sufficient level of troop, that’ll be the level of troops. If they tell me that the Iraqis are ready to take more and more responsibility and that we’ll be able to bring some Americans home, I will do that. It’s their recommendation.
Secondly, we want to win. The whole objective is to achieve a victory against the terrorists. The terrorists have made it very clear that Iraq is the central front on the war on terror. See, they want us to leave before we’ve achieved our mission. You know why? Because they want a safe haven. They want to be able to plot and plan attacks.
This country must never forget the lessons of September the 11th, 2001. And a victory in Iraq will deny the terrorists their stated goal.
Finally, a democracy in Iraq, which is now emerging, will serve as a fantastic example for reformers and others. And as democracy takes hold in the broader Middle East, we can say we have done our duty and laid the foundation of peace for generations to come.
We should listen to what Bush is actually saying here because he lays it all out. Notice that he has to predicate everything on the idea that we are winning. (In the press conference he said it very emphatically: “secondly …. we wanna WIN) He deeply believes, for both political and ideological reasons, that winning is the only thing that matters.
Last night I heard Newt Gingrich throwing around the phrase “surrender to the terrorists” on O’Reilly. His successor as Speaker of the house, Dennis Hastert wrote earlier:
Murtha and the Democrats ”want us to retreat. They want us to wave the white flag of surrender to the terrorists of the world.” And he said, ”We must not cower like European nations who are now fighting terrorists on their soil.”
This is significant because Rove long ago convinced Bush that he can continue in Iraq as long as the American people think we are “winning.” It tracks with his own belief in the bandwagon effect and it’s backed up by some academics who have advised the White House that “staying the course” is possible as long as they handle the PR effectively.
In shaping their message, White House officials have drawn on the work of Duke University political scientists Peter D. Feaver and Christopher F. Gelpi, who have examined public opinion on Iraq and previous conflicts. Feaver, who served on the staff of the National Security Council in the early years of the Clinton administration, joined the Bush NSC staff about a month ago as special adviser for strategic planning and institutional reform.
Feaver and Gelpi categorized people on the basis of two questions: “Was the decision to go to war in Iraq right or wrong?” and “Can the United States ultimately win?” In their analysis, the key issue now is how people feel about the prospect of winning. They concluded that many of the questions asked in public opinion polls — such as whether going to war was worth it and whether casualties are at an unacceptable level — are far less relevant now in gauging public tolerance or patience for the road ahead than the question of whether people believe the war is winnable.
“The most important single factor in determining public support for a war is the perception that the mission will succeed,” Gelpi said in an interview yesterday.
I suspect that Gingrich and Hastert’s “surrender” talk is aimed at Bush as much as the Democrats, to keep him from going soft, but it’s also setting the stage for the inevitable “who lost Iraq” argument down the line. Guys like Gingrich want to clearly be on the “never give up, never give in” team after the smoke has cleared so they can pretend they are brave warriors worthy of leadership. I think Bush actually believes this crapola, however. It fits his schoolboy vision of the way the world works.
The terrorists have a strategic goal. They want us to leave Iraq before our work is done. They want to shake the will of the civilized world. In the past, the terrorists have cited the examples of Beirut and Somalia, claiming that if you inflict harm on Americans, we will run from a challenge. In this, they are mistaken.
It’s one of their more ridiculous beliefs and yet it is the foundation of neocon thinking about how to deal with terrorism. They honestly think that if we stay in Iraq that we will prove to the terrorists that we are tough … and then they will not be able to attack us anymore. As unbelievable as it is, this simple-minded psychological diagnosis of the problem is one of the main reasons why we are stuck in this quagmire.
But Bush doesn’t stop with that simple delusion. He also believes that he has been called to this battle by something much more important than the mere will of the American people. As Seymour Hersh writes in this week’s New Yorker:
Current and former military and intelligence officials have told me that the President remains convinced that it is his personal mission to bring democracy to Iraq, and that he is impervious to political pressure, even from fellow Republicans. They also say that he disparages any information that conflicts with his view of how the war is proceeding.
Bush’s closest advisers have long been aware of the religious nature of his policy commitments. In recent interviews, one former senior official, who served in Bush’s first term, spoke extensively about the connection between the President’s religious faith and his view of the war in Iraq. After the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the former official said, he was told that Bush felt that “God put me here” to deal with the war on terror. The President’s belief was fortified by the Republican sweep in the 2002 congressional elections; Bush saw the victory as a purposeful message from God that “he’s the man,” the former official said. Publicly, Bush depicted his reëlection as a referendum on the war; privately, he spoke of it as another manifestation of divine purpose.
The former senior official said that after the election he made a lengthy inspection visit to Iraq and reported his findings to Bush in the White House: “I said to the President, ‘We’re not winning the war.’ And he asked, ‘Are we losing?’ I said, ‘Not yet.’ ” The President, he said, “appeared displeased” with that answer.
“I tried to tell him,” the former senior official said. “And he couldn’t hear it.”
According to this report in the NY Daily News, Bush doesn’t trust his advisors anymore. (Not even his wife, after all she failed him on the Miers debacle.) He’s going to stick with the simple script that has him being chosen by God to lead this battle against evil. Hardliners are going to manipulate him with that by doing what Gingrich did last night — characterizing a withdrawal as “surrendering to the terrorists.”
What he is going to do is what many in the military have long wanted to do, which is revert to a greater reliance on air power. If anyone is succumbing to political pressure it’s the wild-eyed Rummy whose management of the war has turned out to be a cock-up of epic proportions. We’re going back to our tried and true: Bombing the shit out of anything that moves. From Hersh:
A key element of the drawdown plans, not mentioned in the President’s public statements, is that the departing American troops will be replaced by American airpower. Quick, deadly strikes by U.S. warplanes are seen as a way to improve dramatically the combat capability of even the weakest Iraqi combat units. The danger, military experts have told me, is that, while the number of American casualties would decrease as ground troops are withdrawn, the over-all level of violence and the number of Iraqi fatalities would increase unless there are stringent controls over who bombs what.
Now that’s the nice, clean, surgical kind of war the American people like. No American casualties and fun pictures of buildings going “kaboom!” And it takes the pressure off of our near-broken Army. The Air Force may have problems with Iraqis using their air power to play out old grudges against non-combatants, but the American people can be successfully snowed on that one. The Iraqis will be standing up and we’ll just be enforcing the conditions of our glorious victory.
“We’re not planning to diminish the war,” Patrick Clawson, the deputy director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told me. Clawson’s views often mirror the thinking of the men and women around Vice-President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. “We just want to change the mix of the forces doing the fighting—Iraqi infantry with American support and greater use of airpower. The rule now is to commit Iraqi forces into combat only in places where they are sure to win. The pace of commitment, and withdrawal, depends on their success in the battlefield.”
That is what we call “winning.” And we will keep plenty of troops on the ground and planes in the air for years to come to ensure that the war stays “won.”