Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

The Mea Culpa Singers

If I might just add to Tim’s great post at the road to surfdom as well as DeLong’s here and Atrios’s ongoing frustration with the sorry warhawks’ excuses, I have to agree that this sad complaint that nobody could have known the Bushies would screw up Iraq this badly is total bullshit.

I am no psychic and I have no special insight that others don’t have. Yet somehow, I was able to see that the Bush administration was very likely to screw this up badly and so were millions of other people. (For one thing, at the time we were going into Iraq the abdication of our responsibilities in Afghanistan was already well under way.)

Back in my pre-blogging days, on the night the Senate passed the Iraq resolution Atrios published this:

Digby says, in Matthew Yglesias’s comments, in response to Yglesias saying “But if I don’t get what I want and it does come to war, you won’t see me out on the streets rallying for a Hussein victory either”:

I don’t think the pro-Saddam rally will be well attended.

But, there will be prayer vigils and sleepless nights on the part of those of us who hope that this incompetent administration doesn’t fuck it up so much that all hell breaks loose in the region, including the real possibility of nuclear war and many american and arab casualties. And we’ll be wishing fervently that terrorism on US soil doesn’t become something we’ll have to learn to live with because we just can’t seem to kill all the people who hate our guts and multiply exponentially with every aggressive action that we take. And we’ll sure hope that we can get some cooperation from the unstable regimes that finance them without having to invade and depose their leaders, too.

And, if everything works out, let’s keep our fingers crossed that we can turn the mideast into a democratic paradise quickly because judging from our experience in Afghanistan, our President meant it when he said he “wasn’t into nation building.” We really don’t need to fight this war again.

And I know that a lot of us will probably get together around the dinner table and water coolers to talk about the enormous sums of money remaking the mideast is costing and will continue to cost for years to come, while we worry about whether we’ll have jobs or health care or a chance of a comfortable retirement.

So, rather than attending pro-Saddam rallies, people who are against this war being waged by someone in whom they have no faith will be instead gathering together to fervently pray that his adventure goes perfectly every step of the way.

Those prayers were far from answered. In fact, I would say that my fears were downright prescient, including the ongoing and completely unresolved threat of terrorists and Islamic states with nuclear capability.

It wasn’t just me. Look at these poll results from that same week:

The public overwhelmingly wants to get the United Nations’ weapons inspectors back into Iraq and allied support before taking any military action. Americans also want a congressional vote before acting – and think members of Congress should be asking more questions about the implications of war with Iraq.

Americans are concerned about the wider implications of war with Iraq. They believe such a war will result in a long and costly military involvement; they believe it will lead to a wider war in the Middle East with other Arab nations and Israel; and that it could further undermine the U.S. economy.

Americans are also cool to the doctrine of pre-emption. They believe countries should not be able to attack each other unless attacked first – and less than half of Americans think the U.S., in particular, has the right to make pre-emptive strikes against nations it thinks may attack in the future.

This was just a year after 9/11. The public was far from convinced that Bush was doing the right thing. The press and the punditocrisy, on the other hand, just kept pushing and pushing and creating this sense of inevitablility about the war — much of it promoted by these hawks, both liberal and neocon, who insisted that we had no choice but to invade Iraq at the earliest possible time.

There really is no excuse but war fever. People chose to support that war, not because there was good evidence backing up the need for urgency. Indeed, there was plenty of evidence that we should be very cautious before we opened a front in the WOT right in the middle of the muslim holy land. But, the blood was pumping — people wanted a fight and the media wanted a show.

It’s really that simple. There was never any truly compelling reason to take on Saddam at just that moment and it didn’t take a genius (I’m certainly not one) to predict that Bush would make a hash out of it. I am tired of reading these mea culpas that are filled with invective toward those of us who were correct in our assessment of the motives and the competence of the administration. We weren’t a bunch of starry eyed hippies sitting around singing kumbaya — there was ample evidence and analysis that they simply chose to ignore.

In fact, it was the the neocons and the liberal hawks who decided that democracy is a matter of faith rather than reason and believed that if they just wanted it hard enough it would magically happen. The naive kumbaya chorus wasn’t on our side. It was the AEI and New Republic “Up With Democracy” singers who were the fools.

What Gaul:

U.S. President George W. Bush has repeated a call for the European Union to admit Turkey, despite criticism by France’s President Jacques Chirac that he was meddling in EU affairs. Bush said Tuesday that Turkey belongs in the EU and that Europe is ‘not the exclusive club of a single religion’ in what amounted to a rebuff to the French leader.

[…]

He said that Turkish EU membership would be a “crucial advance” in relations between the Muslim world and the West because Turkey was part of both.

The main message in the U.S. President’s speech was a bid to mend relations between Muslims and Americans that were left tattered by the Iraq war.

“We must strengthen the ties and trust and good will between ourselves and the peoples of the Middle East,” he said.

Bush held up Turkey as an example of a Muslim democracy.

“Including Turkey in the EU would prove that Europe is not the exclusive club of a single religion, and it would expose the ‘clash of civilizations’ as a passing myth of history,” Bush said.

Somebody needs to get Bush’s people some time off because they obviously can’t take the stress. Publicly lecturing Europe about religious pluralism is about as obnoxious as an American president can get. And to use Europe as his whipping boy to mend fences with muslims (a totally incomprehensible strategy) is to basically say, “those Europeans make much better targets than we do, Osama. They hate yer muslim guts. Have at it.”

Who the hell do these people think they are? It’s not that we have no right to politely advocate for Turkey being admitted into the EU if we choose. It’s that we don’t do it by publicly insulting the EU for our own purposes. Where did these people learn their manners, Attica?

Chirac was, unsurprisingly, pissed:

“If President Bush really said that in the way that I read, then not only did he go too far, but he went into territory that isn’t his,” Chirac said of a remark Bush made over the weekend.

“It is is not his purpose and his goal to give any advice to the EU, and in this area it was a bit as if I were to tell Americans how they should handle their relationship with Mexico.

Oh, we won’t mind. That’s what we call the new “go fuck yourself” diplomacy. You’ll feel better, too.

Action, Reaction

Yglesias finds another dead fish wrapped in The Weakly Standard today. Apparently, we liberals had better get control of those violent thugs over at Move-On because the conservatives just can’t be responsible for what might happen if somebody “not so nice” came into power and felt like he had to teach us a lesson. (Matt takes them down quite handily.)

But, the article is also interesting for another reason. Here’s the passage that Matt highlights:

You can file the of Mussolini’s rise under “H” for Hegel, the idea that extreme movements always beget extreme counter forces. It was the far left, by relentlessly chipping away at the foundations of Italian life, that gave birth and power to the far right–as it did a decade on when Hitler rode nearly the same path under similar circumstances.

This is what seems most pertinent today, as “activist” groups like Moveon.org and demagogues like Michael Moore and angry men like Al Gore and George Soros rail so irrationally against both the president (comparing him to Hitler and Mussolini in a variety of contexts) and the structures of daily American life, including the legally adjudicated Supreme Court decision that ultimately decided the 43rd presidency in advance of a tedious recount that would’ve yielded the same outcome.

… Either this November or in four years, George W. Bush is going to be turned out of office; even the judge agrees with that. Someday, though, a populace provoked by the left’s constant fire-breathing may look for a dragon slayer who won’t go quite so easily.

Once again, we see the right’s blindness to its own actions over the last 15 years. I don’t disagree with their analysis of what contributed to the rise of fascism. The left was extreme and led to a counter response in equally radical terms. Ye olde pendulum swing.

They are perfectly right that the same exact thing may very well be happening here. But, apparently it doesn’t occur to these believers in civil discourse that their eliminationist right wing rhetoric of the last decade and a half — and a president who literally tells us to go fuck ourselves — is what has spawned this reaction from the left. (Not that I agree that Moore or Move-On say anything close to even a normal day’s Limbaugh/Savage blather, but in the interest of making my point I will stipulate that the left is mighty riled up.) They believe they’ve just been sitting around being polite and restrained and out of the blue the left has come out swinging.

This after we moved the party way to the center, gave them a successful moderate republican president for two terms who they then impeached and after they completely disregarded the disputed election returns and governed as if they had a mandate. I mean, I know we Democrats are the mommy party and all, but push mommy far enough and she becomes a screaming bitch on wheels. What did they expect?

Republicans seem to have a very serious problem seeing themselves as they appear to others. Perhaps this might give a clue to how we reached the point where liberals are fighting back with everything we have.

Language: A Key Mechanism of Control

Newt Gingrich’s 1996 GOPAC memo

As you know, one of the key points in the GOPAC tapes is that “language matters.” In the video “We are a Majority,” Language is listed as a key mechanism of control used by a majority party, along with Agenda, Rules, Attitude and Learning. As the tapes have been used in training sessions across the country and mailed to candidates we have heard a plaintive plea: “I wish I could speak like Newt.”

That takes years of practice. But, we believe that you could have a significant impact on your campaign and the way you communicate if we help a little. That is why we have created this list of words and phrases.

[…]

Often we search hard for words to define our opponents. Sometimes we are hesitant to use contrast. Remember that creating a difference helps you. These are powerful words that can create a clear and easily understood contrast. Apply these to the opponent, their record, proposals and their party.

abuse of power

anti- (issue): flag, family, child, jobs

betray

bizarre

bosses

bureaucracy

cheat

coercion

“compassion” is not enough

collapse(ing)

consequences

corrupt

corruption

criminal rights

crisis

cynicism

decay

deeper

destroy

destructive

devour

disgrace

endanger

excuses

failure (fail)

greed

hypocrisy

ideological

impose

incompetent

insecure

insensitive

intolerant

liberal

lie

limit(s)

machine

mandate(s)

obsolete

pathetic

patronage

permissive attitude

pessimistic

punish (poor …)

radical

red tape

self-serving

selfish

sensationalists

shallow

shame

sick

spend(ing)

stagnation

status quo

steal

taxes

they/them

threaten

traitors

unionized

urgent (cy)

waste

welfare

Duck. The pendulum’s about to hit you in the face, assholes.

It’s Ring, you Moron

I hate to be pedantic, but this “let freedom reign” thing bugs the hell out of me.

The common phrase is “let freedom ring” not “let freedom reign.”

A Google search turns up 2,090 references to “let freedom reign” one of the top links coming from a white supremacy web site called “Panzerfaust Records” that features a bunch of racist lyrics. “My Country Tis of Thee” is not amongst them, as you might imagine.

On the other hand, “let freedom ring” turns up 72,700 references, number one being Sean Hannity’s dull as dishwater anti-liberal screed. (You’d think he’d be pissed that he lost the opportunity for such a nice cross-promotion.)

Of course, aside from the song lyric that every American schoolchild learns when he or she is about six years old, (“….from eh-everee-eey mountainside… le-et freedom ring,”) we have one of the most moving speeches ever made by anyone, anywhere, which is Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech:

This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with a new meaning, “My country, ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring.” And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania! Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado! Let freedom ring from the curvaceous peaks of California! But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia! Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee! Let freedom ring from every hill and every molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

Now that would have been worth evoking in the moment that Iraq was allegedly given back its sovereignty. Instead, our illiterate president, or an illiterate member of his staff, evoked a phrase that sort of sounds like that one, but isn’t. Just like everything else with this godforsaken war, they screwed it up — even down to the note Junior wrote for posterity.

You Aren’t My Friend

Apparently, some of Rush’s callers weren’t all that happy about Big Time’s new “if it feels good, go fuck yourself” philosophy. They think it might not be the best message to send to their kids.

Rush tried to explain it but wasn’t quite coherent because the drugs do tend to make you hallucinate. In his case, he had a vision that the Democrats were actually Republicans. It’s very interesting:

RUSH: …Look, I just want to say. I’m going to repeat what I said at the beginning of the program when I talked about this because I think there’s a bit of a double standard here when people are expressing outrage about this. Don’t misunderstand. I am not for the word becoming part of the common, everyday vernacular, but it still is. You cannot turn on television today without hearing the word. You cannot go to the movies without hearing the word — unless you go to a kids’ movie, a G movie — and it is what it is and we can sit here and lament it and wring our hands all we want.

What we can do is have our own private conduct of standards and abide by them with our friends and people that we deal with and refuse to fall prey and join those in the gutter who are using the word in a guttural sense. I don’t think Cheney was using it in a guttural sense.

The point to me is this. The Democrats have wanted it two ways, both ways for the longest time. They want to be perceived by the vast majority of people as decent and calm and refined, and they’re the ones who have all the compassion and care. They’re out there every day, Senator Leahy among them, accusing Vice President Cheney of corruption, of actually getting Halliburton a gig in Iraq for his own personal gain. They are claiming that he and Bush started this war — when it wasn’necessary — for their own personal gain, that they are in cahoots with all of this prison abuse, doing it personally because that’s a kind of people they are. They are saying some of the most…

What is being said about Bush and Cheney by people like Senator Leahy from committees, on television, is far worse than Cheney using the F-word back to Leahy, because these people are into character and personal assassination.These people are trying to destroy George W. Bush, his reputation and his life, just as they are trying to do Vice President Cheney’s.

(Creepy, isn’t it? One of the most unpleasant characteristics of the modern Republican bully is his overarching sense of victimization. Combined with this very, very sick projection problem, you can see why he needs the little blue babies.)

Now, all you children out there listen up. This is how the grown-up Republicans behave:

Yet when Cheney shows up at the Senate, here’s Pat Leahy who wants to be all buddy-buddy and put his arm around him and get in the photo-op and act like they’re good buds, and Cheney — and this has been going on for far too long — and Cheney finally said F-you. You aren’t my friend.

What he was saying: You’re not my friend; I don’t want you in my company, and I’m not going to smile when I’m around you, because you don’t deserve my friendship. You haven’t earned my friendship. You are my enemy, and I’m not going to come here and put on a show, phony baloney show, that says like you and that we are convivial and that we are colleagues and all we do is disagree in the daytime but at night we go out and have a beer. F-you. I don’t want to have a beer with you. I don’t want to be anywhere near you. I don’t like you. You do not deserve my friendship, and don’t act like we’re friends here. Point made.

Amen. Hubba hubba. Home run, exclamation point. It’s about time this started happening because the Democrats are getting away with this two-faced behavior of theirs for way, way, way too many years.

That’s what they mean when they say they are “changing the tone,” kids. If Democrats say something bad about Republicans, they are bad. If Republicans something bad about Democrats, they are telling the truth. If Democrats have disagreements with you but still try to be friendly, they are being two-faced. You should tell them to go fuck themselves. That’s what grown-ups call “civility.” And you will feel so much better after you do it, too.

If that doesn’t work and you still feel bad, try one of these little blue babies. Uncle Rush and Uncle Dick are what we call “Republican role models.” We believe that if it feels good, do it. That’s what being a grown-up Republican is all about.

Thanks to kevin for the Catch.

More Cuttin’ ‘n Runnin’

Tristero links to Rhandi Rhodes saying that it is unconscionable that Bremer would cut ‘n run while a US marine was still being held by the evul terrists. The troops must be awfully pleased to see their Preznit now behaving as if he no longer has anything to do with what’s going on in Iraq. Some support for our boys, eh? Sneak outta town in the dead of night and leave them there to face the music.

Let freedom rain. Or is it, let freedom rein? Let freedom wring? I forget. Condi?

Michael Kinsley’s Editorial Page Is In Da House

It’s Called Democracy

What gives the government the right to arrest you and imprison you indefinitely without offering a reason or opportunity to appeal? The answer, in the United States, is: Nothing gives the government that right. It is hard to see what is left of American freedom if the government has the authority to make anyone on its soil — citizen or noncitizen — disappear and then rule that no one can do anything about it.

Or so we once thought. But the Bush administration — whose convoluted memos on defining torture now rank with Bill Clinton’s definition of sex — says Congress gave it exactly this power. And when was that? Soon after Sept. 11, 2001, Congress passed a two-line resolution authorizing the use of military force against “nations, organizations or persons” engaged in terrorism. We would like to hear from any member who intended by this vote to repeal the Bill of Rights.

[…]

President Bush and his administration say: Look, there’s a war on. And anyway, the United States is not some Latin American dictatorship of the 1970s; we can trust our government not to abuse the extraordinary power it claims. But this administration’s record of incompetence and callousness does not inspire us to lightly kiss away our constitutional protections.

[…]

The whole point of the substantive freedoms and due process guarantees in the Bill of Rights is that freedom should not rest on any government’s claims of benevolence. Now that the Guantanamo detainees have been given the right to a hearing, Americans will learn a bit more about what has happened there. As with the abuses at Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib prison, it’s likely that the more they learn, the less they’ll like it.

Read the whole thing. It sizzles.

The Cut And Run Administration

Juan Cole reveals what this little transfer of authority pageant is really all about:

This entire exercise is a publicity stunt and has almost no substance to it. Gwen Ifill said on US television on Sunday that she had talked to Condaleeza Rice, and that her hope was that when something went wrong in Iraq, the journalists would now grill Allawi about it rather than the Bush administration. (Or words to that effect). Ifill seems to me to have given away the whole Bush show. That’s what this whole thing is about. It is Public Relations and manipulation of journalists. Let’s see if they fall for it.

It’s the only thing that makes sense. I will bet real money that we are going to hear Susan’s friend Flounder McClellan reply to every question about Iraq, “you’ll have to ask the Iraqis about that, Helen. We transferred authority to them back on June 28th so the 35 coordinated car bombs and the beheadings of all members of the justice ministry yesterday will have to be dealt with by the Iraqi authorities. It’s their country.”

It’s likely that the press will fall for this because they think the Iraq story is so, like totally boring. And just as with Afghanistan they will lose interest if they are distracted with a shiny new storyline. Therefore, I propose that Democrats take the gloves off immediately and accuse the Bushies of cutting and running the first time they try this crap.

The transfer is bullshit, of course. We own that place and every problem in it for gawd knows how long. So what? Nothing’s going to change that reality no matter what the miserable failure does. We’re going to have to clean up his mess.

So I say, make the case that little George is a snivelling coward who is running from his responsibilities (like he has all his life.) Call them the Cut ‘n Run Administration. Start asking “Who lost Iraq?” Use their patented baiting techniques against them. Let’s see if we can push Cheney and his sock puppet over the edge — preferably on national TV.

Update: Ask and ye shall receive. Paul Krugman asks, “Who Lost Iraq?”

Studio Games

Via Salon I see that Disney has teamed up with the GOP front group protesting F911.

MOVE OVER MICHAEL MOORE

Disney & Move America Forward

Team Up to Show a Brighter Side of America

(SACRAMENTO) — Move America Forward is teaming up with Walt Disney Pictures to present an exclusive screening of Disney’s ‘America’s Heart & Soul’ on Monday, June 28, 2004 at the Crest Theater in Sacramento, California. The private screening takes place at 1:00 PM and members of the news media are invited to attend. ‘Americas Heart & Soul’ opens in theaters nationwide on Friday, July 2nd.

Unlike the negative and misleading storyline of Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11,” Disney’s “America’s Heart & Soul” features a collection of upbeat storylines of real life Americans who pursue their passions in a way that underscores what makes America a great nation.

I feel the need to express just the tiniest bit of skepticism about this little association.

Bob and Harvey Weinstein are two of Disney’s most treasured assets, right up there with Minnie and Mickey. I don’t know what their deal to buy the rights to F911 was, but I have little doubt that it was a well coordinated and happy acquisition for both sides. Let’s just say that Bob and Harvey are masters at creating and then milking a controversy.

Methinks the wingnuts are being played.

Cookies Full Of Arsenic

Alterman says:

How interesting for SCLM fans that the alleged inaccuracies in Moore’s movie (which I’ve not yet seen) appear to be considerably more upsetting to the mainstream than say, those in the president’s State of the Union messages, press conferences and requests to Congress for the power to go to war with Iraq.

This isn’t all that surprising, really. Mainstream pundits and journalists are creatures of show business more than anything else. Therefore, they are only really personally engaged when popular culture speaks to a topic.

The usual political debates are also part of show business, but they are more akin to sporting events, not straight entertainment, which is what provides that which pundits and journalists truly aspire to — stardom. They observe and comment on the political sporting events, and sometimes they overtly identify with one team or another. But, for the most part they are personally competitive on the basis of celebrity and clout, not the substance of the debate. (Tim Russert appearing on Don Imus illustrates this point well, I think.)

Michael Moore is a succesful, award winning popular performer who crosses all the boundries of journalism, visual media, politics and fame that they consider their rightful turf. Worse, he takes the their show outside the stultifying environs of Sunday morning gasbaggery into date night at the multiplex. This is very threatening to them.

They are upset with Moore not because of the alleged inaccuracies about Bush and 9/11. Clearly, they do not care about such trifles. They are upset with Moore because he is more famous than they are.

Be sure to read Charles Pierce’s review of the film at the same link. It’s priceless.

Update: Brad DeLong has posted an incredibly interesting and in-depth analysis on the subject of the mighty presscorps that you all must read. Indeed, there is one passage that I believe makes my small point (much less rudely, of course.)

And by the end of the process of reporter-molding our reporter finds it bizarre and inexplicable that anybody actually cares about the substance of the issues. As one sentence from what Weisman wrote to me put it: “for someone who got the longest quote in my [Glenn] Hubbard profile, you mercilessly slammed me really good…” For Weisman, my annoyance at the fact that Weisman’s Glenn Hubbard profile was substantively wrong is inexplicable and bizarre. I should, Weisman thinks, be friendly and grateful to him, for I “got the longest quote” in his article. And what sources really want is to be quoted at length in the Washington Post, right?

The idea that I would want the story to inform Americans about economic policy is simply not on his screen at all.

That’s because these people aren’t about journalism. They are about the sweet smell of success.