Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Recipe For Cynicism

Atrios responded before I could to Matt’s posts of yesterday about his realization that the Bush administration is not only mendacious, but more stunningly incompetent than he ever imagined. I remember at the time being sort of surprised that so many people, not just Matt by any means, couldn’t believe that the Iraq scenario was unfolding exactly as it seemed to be. A very smart friend of mine kept saying “they won’t let them do this,” apparently subscribing to some sort of “Wizard of Oz” theory that a bunch of éminences grises behind the scenes have to sign off on anything the president wants to do. I think that many people are still having a hard time believing what they are seeing.

Reading Atrios’ post reminded me of one of mine that he posted from his comments section back in September of 2002. When I went back to read it I realized that at that time I too still had some belief that sanity would prevail:

I don’t object to going into Iraq because I think Saddam doesn’t want nukes. Of course he does. So do a lot of people, including al Qaeda. And a lot of unstable regimes already have them, like the countries of the former Soviet Union and Pakistan. I object because I don’t believe there is any new evidence that he’s on the verge of getting them or that he had anything to do with 9/11, or that he’s crazy because he gassed his own people (without our objection at the time), or that he’s just plain so evil that we simply must invade without delay, all of which have been presented as reasons over the past few weeks. There are reasons why we are planning to invade Iraq, but they have nothing to do with the reasons stated and are based upon political and ideological not security goals.

I particularly object because I deeply mistrust the people who are insisting that Saddam presents an urgent danger because they have been agitating for invasion and regime change, offering a variety of rationales, for 11 years. Pardon me for being skeptical but there is an entire cottage industry in the GOP devoted to the destruction of Saddam for a variety of reasons, none of which have anything to do with an imminent threat to the US. Until they concocted this bogus 9/11 connection, even they never claimed that the threat was to the US, but to Israel, moderate Arabs and the oil reserves.

I knew aboout Mylroie at this point, but I didn’t realize how firmly ensconced in the Wolfowitz/Cheney inner circle she was; I still believed that they were well … smart, at least.

I very much object because among these obsessives are the authors of the Bush Doctrine, which is nothing more than a warmed over version of the PNAC defense policy document that was based upon Cheney’s 1992 defense dept. draft laying out the neocon case for ensuring the continued status of the US as the only superpower after the cold war. They did not take the threat of terrorism into account when they formulated this strategy and have made no adjustments since the threat emerged. Instead they are cynically using the fear created by 9/11 to advance goals that have absolutely nothing to do with terrorism and in fact will make another attack more likely. We will not be able to protect ourselves against another 9/11 by asserting a doctrine of unilateral preventive war in Iraq or anywhere else. Terrorism is a different animal that requires a completely fresh approach with an emphasis on cooperative intelligence, creative police work and stealthy military strategies. We can’t invade every country that contains people who are potential terrorists. And the more we try to solve this problem through military force the more terrorists we will create.

[…]

The result has been that the administration position has been incoherent ever since. One day we must invade because Saddam is close to getting nukes, another it’s that he already has chemical and bio weapons. The next he’s a genocidal maniac. Blair and Powell say they want disarmament one day, Rummy and Cheney argue that regime change is the goal the next. According to next week’s Time Magazine, an administration source admits that they are throwing everything out there and hoping that something will “stick.”

[…]

Doesn’t this inconsistency make you just the tiniest bit suspicious of what’s really going on?

I have said before that if Bush will take yes for an answer and allow the UN to make another resolution demanding inspections, I will be more than happy to let him take credit for a hugely successful bluff. If Saddam fucks up and refuses we will then at least have the support of the international community to go to war on the basis of his intransigence instead of on the basis of a spurious right to “pre-emptive regime change” without convincing evidence of a threat.

More importantly we will not have implemented the delusional Bush Doctrine or engaged in unilateral “pre-emptive” military action in the mideast and thoroughly screwed up the coalition needed for terrorism prevention by striking at the hornets nest of Islamic anti-Americanism for no good reason. At this point, I’ll be thrilled if we can avoid WWIII and keep from burning all of our bridges in the very countries where we need cooperation to prevent more terrorism on US soil.

Obviously, in September I hadn’t yet completely come to terms with the fact that Bush was determined to go to war come hell or high water and that the whole UN gambit was more delaying tactic than serious endeavor. By February, I was in a state of high dudgeon and mexing my mitaphors with abandon :

Aside from wondering why keeping Saddam in a box, even with sanctions, isn’t better than dropping a payload equal to the firebombing of Tokyo on a civilian population, aside from knowing an explosion of terrorism is likely to result from the sight of a massive US army on the ground in the mid-east at this most dangerous moment, aside from being fully aware that the planning for this invasion has been underway for more than a decade undergirded by the same arguments of imminent danger that have not come to fruition, and aside from the fact that the administration has openly and shamelessly cast itself as Ariel Sharon’s kindred spirit at a time when such a declaration of solidarity is recklessly stupid…

Aside from all that, the main reason that I cannot support any kind of quasi-unilateral pre-emptive or preventive war is that I am 100% certain that the people who are agitating the strongest for it are hypocritical, incompetent, myopic, twistedly idealistic, mendacious and psychologically crippled.

I think it can wait for another 2 years until smarter, saner people can be put in charge of running the world. I’ll support freeing the Iraqi people from tyranny if somebody else is doing the freeing. These guys are far more likely to throw them out of the frying pan directly into the fire. For the sake of the Iraqi people and the people of the world, these children must not be allowed to play with matches.

Looking back I can see that it was as simple as looking at the way Bush won the election and the way he governed afterward to see he was not to be trusted. And if it is true that all organizations ultimately reflect the leader at the top then it was always obvious that this administration was incompetent.

It shakes the foundation of our faith in the constitution and belief in democracy that our supposed meritocratic society would allow such dimwitted arrogance to ascend to the most powerful offices in the world and worse, that the citizens would be so cowed, apathetic or drunk with power that they would utter only the feeblest of protests at its most outrageous actions. Bush’s incompetence and hyperactive partisanship in the face of a very dubious election outcome has probably created more cynicism about politics than Watergate and Vietnam combined. It is that final nail in the coffin — the loss of faith that even if they are liars and cold calculating players of Realpolitik, no matter what, our leaders are smart, patriotic and in control.

The biggest danger confronting us now isn’t what these people want to do but what may happen because they don’t know what they are doing.

Walking On Eggshells

David Niewert has a must read post up about how the political became the personal as the modern Republicans rose to power. There is much to recommend this post, but I’d like to add something to one aspect of it.

He is saddened and disappointed by some of his conservative friends who refused to discuss Bush vs Gore and who don’t seem to be willing to speak out against the encroaching totalitarianism of the conservative movement. As he did, I had always assumed that the majority of Republicans out in the real world were decent, hard working people who didn’t subscribe to radicalism of any kind, whether from the right or the left. I suppose I counted on them to step in if things got out of hand and I’ve been puzzled until fairly recently about why that hasn’t happened. I simply can’t believe that real conservatives and mainstream, non-dittohead Republicans actually endorse the thuggish hyper-corporatism and will to power that we are seeing in Washington today.

David reluctantly concludes that they either implicitly endorse the increasingly blatant eliminationist rhetoric and strongarm tactics or they don’t give a damn. But I actually think it’s something else.

I think they are actually more afraid of these jack-booted bullies than we are. They are, as Hesiod once memorably said, “battered GOP moderates.” Like an abused spouse they know that nothing pisses off the Lord of the Manor more than lip from his own family:

Smith, self term-limited, is leaving Congress. His lawyer son Brad is one of five Republicans seeking to replace him from a GOP district in Michigan’s southern tier. On the House floor, Nick Smith was told business interests would give his son $100,000 in return for his father’s vote. When he still declined, fellow Republican House members told him they would make sure Brad Smith never came to Congress. After Nick Smith voted no and the bill passed, Duke Cunningham of California and other Republicans taunted him that his son was dead meat.

It isn’t easy being a liberal Democrat in this political landscape. But, it’s even harder being a Republican rebel.

… And speaking of crushing enemies, the White House and the GOP generally will be guilty of professional malpractice if they don’t punish Jeffords for pulling the rug out from under them. I know that it’s illegal to sew a half-starved weasel into his small intestine, but there are some other options.

changing the tone…

Roll Call’s Ed Henry reports an image of Vermont’s independent senator was being used for target practice inside the men’s urinal at Capitol Hill Club, a gathering place for Republicans adjacent to Republican National Committee headquarters.

“Although several folks apparently got a kick out of taking aim at the photo of a man they now detest because of his decision to bolt the GOP, a peeved member of the club ripped the photo out of the urinal, fearing it would be seen as yet another symbol of the party’s alleged intolerance,” Henry reports.

Imagine that.

Et tu, Van den Heuvel?

Hey all you Democrats, if you need to be reminded of what a real old fashioned Emmett Tyrell style hit piece looks like, this one defines the genre as well as anything you’ll see from The American Spectator. It’s an excellent example of character assassination, done with the patented snotty superiority that drips most copiously from those whose main contribution to political discourse is the metaphorical shiv in the metaphorical backs of their own allies.

I haven’t up to now recognized myself as a servile member of a “group of hushed, groveling supplicants staring dewy-eyed at their savior Caesar,” and frankly I’ve never seen any such thing at the Clark events I’ve attended. (But, my goosestepping martial spirit was thrilled to read that Clark joked with a pastry salesgirl about really loving “napoleons.” I think that pretty much says it all about what Clark is really up to and I couldn’t be happier. My savior wants to invade Russia. And this time he’ll do it right.)

In fact, the “napoleon” comment merely foreshadows the main contention (aside from how silly his stupid volunteers are) that the “neo-Nixonian” Clark wants to replay the Vietnam war in Iraq so that he can emerge the winner. This is as sophomoric a psychological insight as anything the blond pundetts ever spewed with such prurient delight about Clinton’s alleged sexual pervertedness. In much the same way, this claim is nothing more than a fevered Naderite’s masturbatory war-porn fantasy.

(On the other hand, maybe it’s a meme I shouldn’t dismiss out of hand, even though it’s completely wrong. It certainly has a better chance of getting the ever more fascist Republicans out of the White House than “Hell No, We Won’t Go.”)

I have not been one to argue that the candidates have to play nicey-nice in this primary. These guys are big boys and they have to learn how to take a hit if they expect to be in shape to face the Bush Bullyboys. But, if this low-life hit piece is used against Clark by any of the other Dem candidates or their supporters it’s going to start a bloody civil war — and that is playing right into Rove’s hands.

I sincerely hope that nobody takes the bait. It can only start a cycle of reaction and retribution and that will end up hurting the eventual nominee.

They’re Always In A Hurry

They had to rush through the impeachment vote before they broke for the Holidays in 1998. We didn’t have time to count the uncounted votes in Florida because an arbitrary date was set in stone. We couldn’t wait for the inspectors to finish the job in Iraq or to persuade the UN to back us in March 2003 — we had to go in immediately.

When they are in a hurry, you know they have a bad case and they are just trying to ram it through before anyone can stop them. The Washington Post says today in its editorial called Government By Juggernaut:

Rank-and-file lawmakers of both parties are often unable to see legislation until the vote is upon them — not just because details are still being hammered out, but because exposing the document to public scrutiny would hurt the cause of those who seek to have it passed by any means. Both houses have rules designed to prevent this sort of governing by ambush. But these are routinely swept aside in the interest of swift passage, however uninformed. Contempt for the minority extends to the White House, which sought recently to require that Democrats obtain the approval of Republican committee chairs before submitting questions to the administration.

Norm Ornstein talking about the blatant abuse of power with the medicare vote says:

Democracy is a fragile web of laws, rules and norms. The norms are just as important to the legitimacy of the system as the rules. Blatant violations of them on a regular basis corrode the system. The ugliness of this one will linger.

This ugliness is part of Republican rule and has been for a while. It will not just linger, it may have completely changed the system already. The GOP now stands for nothing but winning by any means necessary. And unfortunately, many in this country seem to believe that winning automatically validates whatever you do.

Southern Strategery

I’m a big fan of Jesse Jackson Jr and his endorsement of Howard Dean is meaningful to me. So, when I read this article in The Nation I was hoping for a thorough explanation of Dean’s “Southern Strategy” that would convince me of a new and bold approach to a long term problem. Unfortunately, it was more or less what I already knew and I am left with the opinion that it’s either a naïve misunderstanding of the complexities of voting behavior or a feint to hide the fact that Dean has no intention of challenging in the south. I hope it’s the latter because if it’s the former he may find echoes and reverberations of this miscalculation throughout the campaign if he wins the nomination.

But, it isn’t just Dean. There seems to be an common belief among Democrats in which it is assumed that we can make a populist pitch to poor and working class southern whites and circumvent the unpleasantness of certain racist attitudes and culture war issues with an appeal that consists of saying that and they should vote for us because their economic self interest is more in line with working class blacks than rich whites. This belief seems to rely on the idea that southern Republicans have been led astray by Nixonian racist appeals to the extent that they are unaware that the Democrats are for progressive taxation and social programs that might benefit them. They just need to be informed of this misunderstanding and they will fall into line.

But, part of this theory also maintains that Democrats have failed to illustrate the differences between the two parties and that they have neglected to point out that Republicans don’t have working people’s best interests at heart. This is not true. Nor is it true that Democratic politicians up to now (if not rank and file big city liberals) have written off the Southern white male vote or treated them disrespectfully. Progressives have spent decades trying to figure out how to reach this block of voters who should by all rights be aligned with the Democrats on the economic issues that most affect their lives.

The question has always been, why don’t southern working class whites vote their economic self-interest?

In this paper (pdf) Sociologist Nathan Glazer of Harvard (bio), who has long been interested in the question of America’s underdeveloped welfare state, answers a related question — “Why Americans don’t care about income inequality” which may give us some clues. Citing a comprehensive study by economists Alberto Alesina and Edward Glaeser of Harvard and Bruce Sacerdote of Dartmouth called, “Why Doesn’t the United States have a European-Style Welfare State?” (Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, 2/2001) he shows that the reluctance of Americans to embrace an egalitarian economic philosophy goes back to the beginning of the republic. But what is interesting is that both he and the economists offer some pretty conclusive evidence that the main reason for American “exceptionalism” in this case is, quite simply, racism.

AGS [Alesina, Glazear and Sacerdote] report, using the World Values Survey, that “opinions and beliefs about the poor differ sharply between the United States and Europe. In Europe the poor are generally thought to be unfortunate, but not personally responsible for their own condition. For example, according to the World Values Survey, whereas 70 % of West Germans express the belief that people are poor because of imperfections in society, not their own laziness, 70 % of Americans hold the opposite view…. 71 % of Americans but only 40% of Europeans said …poor people could work their way out of poverty.”

[…]

“Racial fragmentation and the disproportionate representation of ethnic minorities among the poor played a major role in limiting redistribution…. Our bottom line is that Americans redistribute less than Europeans for three reasons: because the majority of Americans believe that redistribution favors racial minorities, because Americans believe that they live in an open and fair society, and that if someone is poor it is his or her own fault, and because the political system is geared toward preventing redistribution. In fact the political system is likely to be endogenous to these basic American beliefs.”(p. 61)

“Endogenous” is economics-ese for saying we have the political system we do because we prefer the results it gives, such as limiting redistribution to the blacks. Thus the racial factor as well as a wider net of social beliefs play a key role in why Americans don’t care about income inequality, and why, not caring, they have no great interest in expanding the welfare state.

Glazer goes on to point out how these attitudes may have come to pass historically by discussing the roles that the various immigrant support systems and the variety of religious institutions provided for the poor:

But initial uniformities were succeeded by a diversity which overwhelmed and replaced state functions by nonstate organizations, and it was within these that many of the services that are the mark of a fully developed welfare state were provided. Where do the blacks fit in? The situation of the blacks was indeed different. No religious or ethnic group had to face anything like the conditions of slavery or the fierce subsequent prejudice and segregation to which they were subjected. But the pre-existing conditions of fractionated social services affected them too. Like other groups, they established their own churches, which provided within the limits set by the prevailing poverty and absence of resources some services. Like other groups, too, they were dependant on pre-existing systems of social service that had been set up by religious and ethnic groups, primarily to serve their own, some of which reached out to serve blacks, as is the case with the religiously based (and now publicly funded) social service agencies of New York City. They were much more dependant, owing to their economic condition, on the poorly developed primitive public services, and they became in time the special ward of the expanded American welfare state’s social services. Having become, to a greater extent than other groups, the clients of public services, they also affected, owing to the prevailing racism, the public image of these services.

Glazer notes that there are other factors involved in our attitudes about inequality having to do with our British heritage, religious backround etc, that also play into our attitudes. But, he and the three economists have put their finger on the problem Democrats have with white Southern voters who “vote against their economic self-interest,” and may just explain why populism is so often coupled with nativism and racism — perhaps it’s always been impossible to make a populist pitch that includes blacks or immigrants without alienating whites.

So, we are dealing with a much more complex and intractable problem than “southerners have been duped by Nixon’s southern strategy” or that liberals have been insulting them for years by supposedly devaluing their culture. Indeed, even the nostalgia that Howard Dean professes for FDR’s coalition is historically inaccurate. A majority of whites have never voted with blacks in the south. (In the 30’s, as we all know, southern blacks were rarely allowed to vote at all.) In fact, FDR had an implicit agreement with the southern base of his party to leave Jim Crow alone if he wanted their cooperation on other economic issues. The southern coalition went along out of desperation (and also because they were paying very little in taxes.) But, as soon as the economy began to recover, and Roosevelt began to concentrate on programs for the poor, the division that exists to this day re-emerged.

Ed Sebesta over at Temple of Democracy thinks that Dean was on a course to launch a much more familiar “southern strategy” with a classic southern states rights argument and he gives some supporting evidence to back that claim. He says that liberals are always interested in using his research on the neo-confederacy when it comes to taking down Repubicans but that they aren’t interested in hearing about Democrats who may be playing the same game. I’m not willing to go as far as he does but I do think it illustrates at least a crippling naiveté that liberal Democrats all over the country are so earnest about getting white votes in the south but failed for months to realize that the semiotics of the confederate flag are a hell of a lot more complicated than a simple demographic shorthand for “southern white guy.”

And, regardless of his earlier intent, I think it’s obvious by the timing of events that Dean realized that if he wanted the support of the unions who were on the verge of endorsing him he had to find another way to appeal to white southern voters. Unfortunately, the idealistic view that Jesse Jackson Jr voices, of a purely economic appeal to both blacks and whites, is probably also only effective in pleasing white liberals who are already persuaded. It will likely have the opposite effect on working class whites. I’m fairly sure that Joe Trippi knows this and has actually written off the south in his electoral calculation.

There is another way to approach this issue that neither winks and nods at racism, depends upon a naïve idealism about the attitudes underlying southern voting patterns or writes off the south entirely. The key is to continue to reject racism in no uncertain terms while re-framing the economic argument in a way that appeals to Americans’ belief in their social mobility.

I didn’t invent that idea, of course. I believe that Clinton understood the long standing association between racism and egalitarianism and began to take steps to de-link them by re-directing the good government argument to the middle class — the class most people, regardless of their race, identify as their own. (Welfare Reform was another, as painful as it was.) That reframing, combined with his sincere affinity for African American concerns, helped him to capture Georgia, Louisiana, Arkansas, Kentucky and Tennessee in 1992 and Florida, Louisiana, Arkansas, Kentucky and Tennessee in 1996 — with more than 90% of the black vote and close to 50% of the white vote.

Throughout both of his terms he walked a fine line, trying to move this argument about government away from its subliminal racist underpinning while continuously speaking out and proselytizing against racism. He was trying to make the country begin to see that government services benefit the vast majority rather than those who are “lazy” or “inferior,” while also trying to get people to see African Americans as middle class working people like everybody else. Whether he succeeded is open to debate, but he does deserve some credit for winning in the south with his approach.

Racism is the original sin of the American experiment and progress in expunging it is slow going, especially in its ground zero, the south. It may even be that some of our most cherished beliefs about ourselves — individualism and self-sufficiency — are partially grounded in an ugly reaction to slavery and the fallout from it. White Supremacists and neo-confederates are exactly what they appear to be and more subtle aspects of their philosophy play themselves out in the multitude of ways that people rationalize their beliefs about government social programs and many other things in American culture. (If you don’t believe me, read this study from the University of Chicago called Racial Bias in Hiring: Are Emily and Brendan More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal?)

So, we can argue about whether we even need to capture the south as Thomas Schaller rather convincingly shows here. We also could adopt a strategy that only feints to the south in order to force the Republicans to spend time and money there. And, we surely should keep in mind, as Donkey Rising writes”… many southern voters are, in fact, reachable by Democrats and becoming more so over time. This is especially true in the emerging “ideopolis” areas of the south–Florida’s hi-tech and tourist areas, North Carolina’s research triangle, the Northern Virginia suburbs of DC, etc.–and Democrats need to cultivate these voters, not abandon them. Otherwise, Democrats will throw away the longer term opportunities created by demographic and economic change in the south.”

But if we think we can make any headway with working class whites (particularly in the south) who currently vote Republican by making an appeal to their class solidarity with blacks, we are going to be disappointed. Their resistance to that idea is one of the main reasons they reject government social programs in the first place. We don’t help blacks or whites by failing to understand that and we certainly won’t win any votes by ignoring it.

Note: If anyone would like a different perspective on this issue, I urge you to read Christopher Caldwell’s 1998 piece in The Atlantic called “The Southern Captivity of the GOP” It seems to me that Caldwell’s observations are as salient today as they were 5 years ago — the only difference is 9/11.

9/11 gave Republicanism a national boost that nothing else could have and it is the real battleground on which the coming election will be fought. If we can make the national security case then we might even bring in some of those southern voters who don’t vote their economic self-interest. They do value the military and they are suffering disproportionately from this massive error in judgment in Iraq. If we fail on that issue I fear we will fail nationally and George W. Bush will finally get the mandate he so desperately seeks. Lord help us then.

Neocon Tinfoil

Susan at Suburban Guerrilla points out a statement by Wes Clark in the debate yesterday that needs some further explanation:

I saw the Democratic debate, and I think Wesley Clark made the best point: Instead of attacking terrorists, Bush chose to attack states.

Which is how we got into this mess.

Exactly so. But, it is interesting to look at how this came to pass. I wrote back in September about Paul Wolfowitz’s “You can believe me or you can believe your eyes” philosophy of governance. In that post I mentioned that it was none other than Laurie Mylroie, nutcase extraordinaire, who was responsible for this absurd notion that terrorism, by definition, must be state sponsored. She testified to that fact just recently before the congress. If you want to see a full blown paranoid mind, complete with tin foil, being taken seriously by a bunch of dim-witted politicians, read her testimony.

Here is her conclusion about Al Qaeda and the threat we face from terrorism. Keep in mind that Wolfowitz and Cheney have endorsed her views and that she is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute:

A major misunderstanding regarding the nature of terrorism arose in the wake of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, with the claim that a new form of terrorism had emerged that was no longer state-sponsored.

On the contrary, the major terrorist strikes against the U.S. that were attributed to “loose networks” of Islamic militants, including al Qaeda, are much better explained as Iraq, working with and hiding behind the militants. In short, the 1991 Gulf War did not end with the cease-fire declared back then.

Read the whole thing. It makes Tom Clancy read like Nancy Drew. This woman is to foreign policy and terrorism as Ann Coulter is to civil discourse. Yet, she is influential among the highest reaches of the administration and inspired this ridiculous belief that terrorism is dependent upon, and in fact a reflection of, enemy governments rather than the far flung ideological movement it really is.

This bizarre theory was convenient for those who wanted to invade Iraq for other reasons and it certainly provided a nice excuse to continue with boondoggles like missile defense and other hallucinogenic neocon wet dreams. But, this error (a belief in which was fueled largely, I believe, by knee-jerk rejection of all things Clinton) led to a strategy that has exacerbated the terrorist threat and exposed America’s strategic weaknesses with no benefit.

There was one state sponsor of global terrorism. It was Afghanistan. The rest is a delusionary obsession of one lone nut who managed to convince many of the fringe dwellers and old anti-communist comrades that inhabit the Bush administration that she is right and provided the others with a good excuse to avoid the real threat of terrorism so that they can continue on their long myopic march toward global hegemony.

If people won elections based upon fact vs fantasy, we would win this next one in a total landslide. (Unfortunately, the opposite may be true, in which case we’d better find some slick slogans to beat their “I made U Safe” mantra.) But, for those of us who actually like real information, I think the neocon intellectuals’ acceptance of this totally bizarre, off-the-wall theory takes the cake. I don’t know whether they are psychologically impaired or if they are stupid. But, this strategic error, as Suburban Guerrilla points out, is the single biggest reason we are in the mess we are in today in Iraq.

UPDATE: Tim Dunlop wrote an excellent piece about this yesterday and ties it together with the ongoing argument about what constitutes winning the war on terrorism. Here is an excerpt, but read the whole thing:

The Istanbul attacks do, however, reinforce that we all need to take the threat seriously. But while I absolutely applaud Bush and Blair’s recent comments about eliminating this threat, what concerns me is that they seem to be under the impression that terrorists are a discrete group that can be counted, isolated and therefore eliminated. Thus they instantly connect the “war on terrorism”, a metaphoric construct, with the actual war in Iraq:

Meanwhile, Blair said the assaults in Istanbul wouldn’t have a negative impact on Britain’s or America’s commitment in Iraq. Bush described the U.S.-led coalition’s work in the nation as “noble” and “necessary”.

This is so depressing. It not only shows an unhealthy desire to use whatever comes to hand as a prop to support anything and everything they do, this sort of talk also indicates that they are using the presumptions of state-based war to frame their understanding and responses to the threat of terrorism. By seeing the fight against global terrorism through the prism of state-based war, we are likely to respond with, well, wars on states, and this is insufficient at best and counterproductive at worst, as it has been in Iraq.

Action, Reaction

Jesse writes about Tom Friedman’s latest intrepid foray into obviousness — “the 2000’s are the era of the Security Man,” and points out the odd contradictory messages the Bush people push to maintain the sense of unreality about the “war” we are fighting.

But, the most amusing riff in Friedman’s little Sunday epiphany is this gem:

We had to react, but we must stop overreacting. Terrorists win when they prevent us from enjoying and spreading our values. We defeat them not just by how we react, but by how we don’t react.

That’s so true. Overreaction is self-defeating isn’t it? Especially when the perpetrators are trying to provoke an overreaction. You might even say it plays right into their hands.

Of course, Friedman and I disagree just a little on what constitutes overreaction. I tend to think its an overreaction to invade a country that had nothing to do with the terrorist attack just so that we could swing our giant manhood all over the mideast — particularly when the aftermath of that little demonstration has illustrated to the entire world that we are not exactly omnipotent. And, when that act ends up creating even more terrorists, I can’t help but think that such action might be a bit counterproductive to the cause of fighting terrorism. But, that’s just me.

Tom thinks overreaction is when a “Security Man” for Colin Powell cancels a speech for security concerns. (I guess it never crosses his mind that Powell might have cancelled his speech for the same reason Junior cancelled his — heckling concerns.)

I suppose that it was always understandable that Americans would react to 9/11 with shock, horror and a blind desire to hit back. But, it is usually believed that leaders, whether of men or beltway opinion, would set aside their emotions as quickly as possible and employ their rational minds to solve the problem and guide the country through the crisis. One might even say that this defines leadership.

Tom didn’t agree with that. He said:

No, the axis-of-evil idea isn’t thought through – but that’s what I like about it. It says to these countries and their terrorist pals: “We know what you’re cooking in your bathtubs. We don’t know exactly what we’re going to do about it, but if you think we are going to just sit back and take another dose from you, you’re wrong. Meet Don Rumsfeld – he’s even crazier than you are.”

There is a lot about the Bush team’s foreign policy I don’t like, but their willingness to restore our deterrence, and to be as crazy as some of our enemies, is one thing they have right. It is the only way we’re going to get our turkey back.

I’d hate to accuse Tom of overreacting, seeing as how he’s against it and all, but that just sounded a little bit over the top to me. The administration, enabled by a totalitarian patriotic fervor, pretty much did as Dr. Friedman ordered. We defied the whole world and lashed out like a puerile, glass jawed bully, crazed with fear and anger.

So, it’s nice that Tom has belatedly realized that “we defeat them not just by how we react, but by how we don’t react” but he hasn’t quite grasped the larger message yet. He seems to believe that the concept of overreaction applies only to the parochial trope that the terrorists win when we can’t “enjoy and spread our values.”

Sometimes, Tom, the terrorists win when we overreact and drain the resources actually fighting terrorism to invade a country that had nothing to do with terrorism and end up creating even more terrorists. It may not be in the same league as making Colin Powell cancel a speech he didn’t want to make, but it sure as hell looks like a win to me.

Pre-Emptive Self Defense

That damned liberal media. Look at the lede of this NY Times article about Bush’s new commercial.

Poor Bush. The Democrats have been launching “sustained attacks” and “undermining him with their sniping.” Bad Democrats.

After months of sustained attacks against President Bush in Democratic primary debates and commercials, the Republican Party is responding this week with its first advertisement of the presidential race, portraying Mr. Bush as fighting terrorism while his potential challengers try to undermine him with their sniping.

The new commercial gives the first hint of the themes Mr. Bush’s campaign is likely to press in its early days.

It shows Mr. Bush, during the last State of the Union address, warning of continued threats to the nation: “Our war against terror is a contest of will, in which perseverance is power,” he says after the screen flashes the words, “Some are now attacking the president for attacking the terrorists.”

By indirectly invoking the Sept. 11 attacks, the commercial plays to what White House officials have long contended is Mr. Bush’s biggest political advantage: his initial handling of the aftermath of the attacks.

[…]

With somber strings playing in the background, the commercial flashes the words “Strong and Principled Leadership” before cutting to Mr. Bush standing before members of Congress. Intended to call out the Democrats for their opposition to Mr. Bush’s military strategy of pre-emptively striking those who pose threats to the nation, the screen flashes “Some call for us to retreat, putting our national security in the hands of others,” then urges viewers to tell Congress “to support the president’s policy of pre-emptive self defense.”

I’m going to call my Congressman and Senators right away. I do not want to put the security of the US in the hands of others. While it is now obvious that there were no actual WMD in Iraq, it is still true that Saddam had scientists who had the scientific knowledge to make theoretical plans and then theoretically use those plans to make deadly WMD that could be given to theoretical terrorists. This invasion, therefore, was a pre-emptive act of self-defense.

And now that I can see the full implication of what constitutes a pre-emptive act of self defense, I want him to invade Japan immediately.

They have many top flight scientists who could create any number of lethal weapons of mass destruction. They have a history of being hostile to America. They have home grown terrorists who gassed their own people. They could be a threat to the region if they ever obtained nuclear weapons.

I see no reason why we should wait for a mushroom cloud before we pre-emptively defend ourselves from the theoretical possibility that Japan might desire someday to attack us.

Update: Matt Yglesias on TAPPED also points out the obvious. This is a basically dishonest attack on the patriotism of the Democratic candidates implying that they don’t want to fight terrorism and are lobbying for retreat:

This combination of scapegoats and strawmen makes it essentially impossible to have a rational debate about anything, and truly gives the lie to the alleged conservative enthusiasm for civility.

Freedom

Thanks to Yglesias and Atrios for linking to this piece of shit by James Lileks and getting my blood pumping this morning:

Hey, Salam? Fuck you. I know you’re the famous giggly blogger who gave us all a riveting view of the inner circle before the war, and thus know more about the situation than I do. Granted. But there’s a picture on the front page of my local paper today: third Minnesotan killed in Iraq. He died doing what you never had the stones to do: pick up a rifle and face the Ba’athists. You owe him.

Utter, fucking bullshit. The Iraqis owe us nothing. Absolutely nothing. We did not invade their country for their sake, we did it for ours. (The exact reasons, of course, are subject to change depending upon available facts and gullibility of the audience.) It was a war of choice. Any sacrifice our soldiers have made is on behalf of the United States of America and it is only the United States of America that owes them gratitude for it.

Iraq is their country. They have every right to criticize the way we are handling the invasion and occupation of that country. They do not answer to us either morally or legally.

It is unbelievably arrogant (not to mention shockingly blind to the very concept of “liberty” we are supposed to be promoting) to suggest that our invasion and occupation of a sovereign nation subjects the citizens of that nation to a requirement that they not only refrain from criticizing the fact that we’ve allowed the country to descend into chaos, but that they should actually be grateful for it. As the man who makes Midge Dector quiver with septuagenarian lust once said, “freedom is untidy.”

Life under Saddam was undoubtedly terrible. But, daily life in a war zone is hardly an improvement. Here’s a post from Riverbend on Tuesday. I’m sure she should realize how much she owes America for the freedom they’ve brought her but somehow she seems more concerned with the fact that ordinary people are being randomly bombed out of their homes and rousted out of their bedrooms in the middle of the night:

They’ve been bombing houses in Tikrit and other areas! Unbelievable… I’m so angry it makes me want to break something!!!! What the hell is going on?! What do the Americans think Tikrit is?! Some sort of city of monsters or beasts? The people there are simple people. Most of them make a living off of their land and their livestock- the rest are teachers, professors and merchants- they have lives and families… Tikrit is nothing more than a bunch of low buildings and a palace that was as inaccessible to the Tikritis as it was to everyone else!

People in Al Awja suffered as much as anyone, if not more- they weren’t all related to Saddam and even those who were, suffered under his direct relatives. Granted, his bodyguards and others close to him were from Tikrit, but they aren’t currently in Tikrit- the majority have struck up deals with the CPA and are bargaining for their safety and the safety of their families with information. The people currently in Tikrit are just ordinary people whose homes and children are as precious to them as American homes and children are precious to Americans! This is contemptible and everyone thinks so- Sunnis and Shi’a alike are shaking their heads incredulously.

And NO- I’m not Tikriti- I’m not even from the ‘triangle’- but I know simple, decent people who ARE from there and just the thought that this is being done is so outrageous it makes me want to scream. How can that ass of a president say things are getting better in Iraq when his troops have stooped to destroying homes?! Is that a sign that things are getting better? When you destroy someone’s home and detain their family, why would they want to go on with life? Why wouldn’t they want to lob a bomb at some 19-year-old soldier from Missouri?!

The troops were pushing women and children shivering with fear out the door in the middle of the night. What do you think these children think to themselves- being dragged out of their homes, having their possessions and houses damaged and burned?! Who do you think is creating the ‘terrorists’?!! Do you think these kids think to themselves, “Oh well- we learned our lesson. That’s that. Yay troops!” It’s like a vicious, moronic circle and people are outraged…

The troops are claiming that the attacks originate from these areas- the people in the areas claim the attacks are coming from somewhere else… I really am frightened of what this is going to turn into. People seem to think that Iraq is broken into zones and areas- ethnically and religiously divided. That’s just not true- the majority of people have relatives all over Iraq. My relatives extend from Mosul, all the way down to Basrah- we all feel for each other and it makes decent people crazy to see this happening.

There have also been a string of raids all over Baghdad, but especially in Al-A’adhamiya. They’ve detained dozens of people with the excuse that they own more than one weapon. Who owns less than two weapons? Everyone has at least one Klashnikov and a couple of guns. Every male in the house is usually armed and sometimes the females are too. It’s not because we love turning our homes into arsenals, but because the situation was so dangerous (and in some areas still is) that no one wants to take any risks. Imagine the scene: a blue mini-van pulls up… 10 dirty, long-haired men clamber out with Klashnikovs, pistols and grenades and demand all the gold and the kids (for ransom). Now imagine trying to face them all with a single handgun… if Baghdad were SECURE people would give up their weapons. I hate having weapons in the house.

I’m so tired. These last few days have been a strain on every single nerve in my body. The electricity has been out for the last three days and while the weather is pleasant, it really is depressing.

This is one good reason why nations should think twice before they try to justify their foreign adventurism as acts of “liberation.” Oddly enough, people often believe that once they are liberated they should actually be, you know, free.

And speaking of freedom, it’s comforting to know, at least, that General Buck Turgidson…er Tommy Franks, is no longer in the military:

Gen. Tommy Franks says that if the United States is hit with a weapon of mass destruction that inflicts large casualties, the Constitution will likely be discarded in favor of a military form of government.

Franks, who successfully led the U.S. military operation to liberate Iraq, expressed his worries in an extensive interview he gave to the men’s lifestyle magazine Cigar Aficionado.

In the magazine’s December edition, the former commander of the military’s Central Command warned that if terrorists succeeded in using a weapon of mass destruction (WMD) against the U.S. or one of our allies, it would likely have catastrophic consequences for our cherished republican form of government.

Discussing the hypothetical dangers posed to the U.S. in the wake of Sept. 11, Franks said that “the worst thing that could happen” is if terrorists acquire and then use a biological, chemical or nuclear weapon that inflicts heavy casualties.

If that happens, Franks said, “… the Western world, the free world, loses what it cherishes most, and that is freedom and liberty we’ve seen for a couple of hundred years in this grand experiment that we call democracy.”

Franks then offered “in a practical sense” what he thinks would happen in the aftermath of such an attack.

“It means the potential of a weapon of mass destruction and a terrorist, massive, casualty-producing event somewhere in the Western world – it may be in the United States of America – that causes our population to question our own Constitution and to begin to militarize our country in order to avoid a repeat of another mass, casualty-producing event. Which in fact, then begins to unravel the fabric of our Constitution. Two steps, very, very important.”

Franks didn’t speculate about how soon such an event might take place.

Already, critics of the U.S. Patriot Act, rushed through Congress in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, have argued that the law aims to curtail civil liberties and sets a dangerous precedent.

But Franks’ scenario goes much further. He is the first high-ranking official to openly speculate that the Constitution could be scrapped in favor of a military form of government.

…

Franks ended his interview with a less-than-optimistic note. “It’s not in the history of civilization for peace ever to reign. Never has in the history of man. … I doubt that we’ll ever have a time when the world will actually be at peace.”

Franks is one of those good-ole boy Generals who hated Wesley Clark. Clearly, it was because Clark reads something other than comic books.

Perot-Crazy

I can’t really expand on anything Mark Kleiman says here about the new “Perot-crazy” unpatriotic meme that the Republicans are busily spreading about Wesley Clark. He pretty much clears up the lies and the willful misunderstandings of Clark’s words about al Qaeda and Iraq. (It is indisputably true that they pulled specialized troops from Afghanistan to run Dick and Don’s Excellent Adventure.)

I will, however, address the image with which they are trying to stick Clark and whether I think it will work.

I said below in the comments of the previous post about General Shelton that I believe that this was to be expected. The only thing you can really smear Clark with is his military service since he was such a straight arrow personally.

But, it is difficult to come down too hard on his military career without indicting the entire military establishment and the civilian leadership he served under. Those glowing performance reviews are going to be hard to refute without asking everybody up the the entire chain of command, including Colin Powell, why they consistently promoted this incompetent nutcase. The military is one institution that people would like to believe functions as a meritocracy — in fact, it is the one institution that people would like to believe in, period. It’s playing with fire to come down too hard on its processes.

So, they will try to caricature him and the Perot image is probably the best they can come up with. Pro-military, technocrat, eagle scout type. But, here’s the thing. Perot acted crazy on television. Lots of people liked his brand of craziness, but it was craziness nonetheless. He was wildly entertaining. But, he wasn’t presidential. And when that became clear to most people it ruined his chances to actually win the election.

Clark appears steady, calm and reasonable. He doesn’t look or act crazy. His supporters aren’t crazy. He isn’t a “character.” They’ll have to provoke him into completely losing it on national television to make people believe he’s nuts.

These kind of character smears only work if there is something about them that people can sense might be true. You could believe that Bill Clinton was a womanizer and a bit of a 60’s hedonist because there was something undeniably sexual and hedonistic about the guy. Many didn’t judge him harshly for those things, but it wasn’t hard to believe that he was that way.

Gore could be painted as a petty liar and slightly deranged because his speaking style was stiff and formal and ripe for the kind of derision that a shallow, celebrity obsessed culture loves to pile on poor suckers who have the misfortune to be uncool. Geeks are cool only in big cities. Everywhere else, they are just wierdos who need to be stuffed in a locker.

McGovern was easily portrayed as a peacenik not because of his own record, which was that of a war hero and moderate. It wasn’t even because of his stand on the war because most people agreed with him by 1972. It was because of his youthful supporters, who scared the straights by giving the impression that they were about to take over the Democratic party (which they did, eventually, and then cut their hair and joined the DLC.) People didn’t mind McGovern so much or love Nixon so much, but they looked at the television and had no problem believing that he was, in fact, the candidate of “acid, amnesty and abortion.”

Gray Davis was blamed for a crisis that didn’t even exist merely because his personal style was so bland that in an era of phony heroic masculinity, they were able to sell dullness as incompetence.

I’m sure that there is an effective way to smear Clark and I imagine that Rove and company will turn over every rock to find it. But, one of the reasons I think he might have a chance to beat Bush (a difficult task for any Democrat, I fear) is that his strengths track nicely with the current zeitgest, making it more difficult to negatively caricature him than the others.