Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Mushy Dems

With a 38 billion dollar deficit, a collapsing health care system and the destruction of the dot-com industry, the time is now for an Austrian weight lifter to lead us. Perhaps we are getting what we deserve.

Frankly, I don’t think he’ll actually win unless he brings in a large number of new voters who vote for him because they are fans of his movies — the Jesse Ventura phenomenon. The base will likely stick with Simon — who, in this crowded field could win if more than 50% of voters support the recall.

I was quite glad that Arnold decided to run yesterday because it meant that Dick Riordan probably wouldn’t. Riordan is Davis’ worst nightmare (and Karl Rove’s wet dream) which is why Davis ran a (gasp!) negative campaign against him during the Republican primary.

Let’s clear something up about that campaign right now, shall we? Davis ran negative ads against Riordan pointing out his changed position on abortion rights. He certainly was trying to influence the primary, but not the way people think. He was focusing the Republican base on Riordan’s new pro-choice position, not for the purpose of smearing Riordan but because he knew the California Republicans are a bunch of neanderthals. If he hadn’t done it, Simon would have.

California politicians are saying that this was a “puke” campaign and have been self righteously shaking their fingers in his face and warning him not to try that again.

Oh my goodness. How perfectly awful that Davis would do such a horrible, horrible thing. Let’s recall him. It was just beyond the pale of proper political behavior.

But, maybe somebody ought to tell the Republicans about the rules of engagement, because they don’t seem to have gotten the word:

Republicans like winner Mitt Romney:

Although the Democratic primary isn’t until September 17, the Massachusetts Republican party is already on the air with a $200,000 radio ad campaign slamming Shannon O’Brien. The state GOP clearly views O’Brien as the Democratic frontrunner and hopes to tarnish her with negative campaigning in support of their candidate, Mitt Romney, who is running unopposed in his primary. “Clearly, Mitt Romney sees that my campaign is gaining momentum,” O’Brien said. “And he’s trying to influence the Democratic primary in an effort to knock me out, and I’m here to say it’s not going to work.” According to political observers, Republicans also hope that because the ads came through the state party and not Romney’s campaign, Romney won’t be fingered as the bad guy (The Boston Globe, 8/17)

Or winner Jeb Bush:

The surprising ascendance of Bill McBride was partly ignited by those with the most to dread from his candidacy, the wizards running Jeb Bush’s re-election machine.

Nearly three weeks ago, they uncorked a television attack ad that singled out the Tampa lawyer, who was then trailing well behind Janet Reno in the race to become the Democrats’ gubernatorial nominee.

You couldn’t miss the anti-McBride commercial, which featured the dancing legs of a briefcase-toting man in a business suit. The Bush people were so proud of this concept that they aired it about every nine minutes, or so it seemed.

Seriously folks, the only thing unusual about Gray Davis’ “interference” into the primary campaign of his opponent was that the Republican voters were happy to take the bait. It worked because the Republican base in California were more than willing to reject Riordan for his pro-choice views in the first place.

(And, what do you think Ed Gillespie and all the rest of the “helpful” Republicans doling out advice to the Democrats are doing by stoking the division between the DLC and the grassroots? Somehow, I don’t think they are really trying to help us.)

At this moment it looks like Riordan won’t run in the recall. But, who knows?

I watched him for 8 years, and while he is a congenial fellow and appears to be quite centrist, he is actually a corporate Republican who is willing to get into bed with the likes of Karl Rove to bring some GOP institutional power to California in anticipation of the ’04 election. He may be liberal in Republican terms, but he’s far from being a true liberal. In point of fact, he was remarkably ineffectual at anything but promoting a sort of genteel cronyism. Lucky for him, his term was up before everything went to hell in a handbasket here in LA.

Now Lt. Governor Cruz Bustamonte is in the race and the entire thing has taken a depressing turn.

I am very disheartened by the spectacle of Democratic politicians running around like a bunch of screaming teenage girls, spouting incoherant crap about being against the recall on principle, but wanting to have an “insurance policy” or a “fallback,” all the while stepping on each other in their excitement to get on the “Gray Davis is a ruthless loser” bandwagon.

It’s just more of that hair-splitting, “I’m for the war, with reservations,” chickenshit politics that translated into a loss in 2002.

Perhaps Davis should ask to borrow the hair shirt Lieberman and pals forced Clinton to wear to such great effect. We could throw around the words “reprehensible” and “deplorable” and dolefully express our great disappointment in his leadership. That’s always such a helpful “defense.”

We look like a bunch of complete losers. We have no party loyalty, no winning strategy, no overriding principles, no guts and no patience. We don’t want our politicians to play the same game of hardball that our opponents play but whine and wring our hands when they win using those tactics.

These forays into banana republicanism are one area where I think we should draw the line and come together as a party to reject them outright as a matter of principle. And, I say this as a political pragmatist. By tying ourselves in knots to find ways to “win” under the terms the Republicans have set, we look desperate and voters can smell our weakness.

(And, in this case, there is little doubt in my mind that allowing the Republicans to “win” with Arnold or anyone else, may be just what they deserve.)

This recall is an assault on the democratic process, just like the bogus impeachment. It represents a willingness to use any loophole and stretch the meaning of any law to attain the result of either permanently crippling their target, forcing him to resign under pressure or ousting him from office in humiliation. When the likes of Joe Lieberman take to the floor of the senate and condemn the President for being “immoral” and the California Democrats spout platitudes about “insurance policies” they are aiding and abetting the Republicans.

Capitulating in any way is to give credence to a fundamentally illegitimate process, one which changes — perhaps forever — the expectation that, barring illegal activity, voters can expect that the winning candidate will fulfill his term of office.

We are pounding the nails in our own coffin.

Spun Sugar

Today, a fine journalist from the LA Times named Vicki Kemper wrote the following piece of garbage in a story about Bush and Powell’s coffee shop photo op yesterday. (For reasons I don’t quite understand, the LA Times does not put all of its stories online.)

Unlike Washington, this is an environment Bush knows and loves, from the canyons on his ranch to the patrons of The Coffee Station. And, here, far away from the partisan capital, the warm feelings are mutual.

(And Karl gives a great big “Yesssss!”)

Bush’s father spent most of the 70’s and 80’s in Washington DC but apparently this “reporter” thinks his son was on the outs with him because he’s practically a stranger in the place. The fact is that he actually moved his family to DC in 1987 so he could work full time on his father’s campaign. After the election, they moved to an affluent suburb of Dallas called Preston Hollows. He lived there until he moved into the Governor’s mansion.

And, we all know that he bought the “ranch” in 1999 as a prop for his campaign. I’m sure it is an environment he knows and loves – after all, he’s “cleared brush” in the canyons for at least 8 photo-ops since the inauguration alone.

Oh Wilderness!

Get Al From and Evan Bayh on the horn right away. They’re going to have to call in their troops for some damage control. The vitriolic, Bush-hating Far Left is at it again:

Here is the pattern that I see: the President’s mishandling of and selective use of the best evidence available on the threat posed by Iraq is pretty much the same as the way he intentionally distorted the best available evidence on climate change, and rejected the best available evidence on the threat posed to America’s economy by his tax and budget proposals.

In each case, the President seems to have been pursuing policies chosen in advance of the facts — policies designed to benefit friends and supporters — and has used tactics that deprived the American people of any opportunity to effectively subject his arguments to the kind of informed scrutiny that is essential in our system of checks and balances.

The administration has developed a highly effective propaganda machine to imbed in the public mind mythologies that grow out of the one central doctrine that all of the special interests agree on, which — in its purest form — is that government is very bad and should be done away with as much as possible — except the parts of it that redirect money through big contracts to industries that have won their way into the inner circle.

Isn’t there anything we can do to stop this madness? These out-of-control freaks of the hard left are going to keep us in the wilderness forever.

A majority of voters would never in a million years endorse a man who said things like this. (And, imagine what kind of opportunistic whore his running mate would have to be?)

Thank Gawd the DLC is keeping tabs on fringe politicos like this wierdo.

Looking For Trouble

I’ve written a lot over the past months about the problems a weak and intellectually deficient president can cause because he cannot manage the competing factions within his government. It leads to incoherent policy swings and constant second guessing. Unless he has a long term association with a group of advisors who think of his best interests first, and control the infighting around him, a dumb president is always being buffetted by the arguments and appeals to ego that characterize courtiers angling for his ear.

This hasn’t happened much in our history because presidents are usually ambitious hard-working men who have developed a strong sense of what they believe long before they get into the oval office. This condition is more indicative of Monarchy and history is full of examples of callow, spoiled Royals being manipulated by devious advisors.

What we are seeing in this drama between the State Department and the Neocons is one such example and it may just become lethal if somebody doesn’t get ahold of Prince George and tell him that he needs to fire John Bolton and put the State Department firmly in charge of Asia policy.

He is completely out of control now and I begin to suspect (as apparently Chris Matthews does, as well) that he may be trying to tank the North Korea talks on purpose. (I also agree that it might be part of a coordinated attempt to knee-cap Powell and Armitage, but that is just part of the ongoing battle that was launched when Newt Gingrich threw his broadside against the entire State Department professional staff last spring.)

Iraq is a travesty. But there was never really any question of seriously destabilizing the world order by invading such a weak country. North Korea is a completely different story. Neocon crazy men could actually succeed in causing a meltdown in Asia and that is something we really do not want to see.

It’s a very good idea to keep in mind that the neocons characterize China(pdf) as being single biggest threat to US hegemony. There are some in the movement who are completely obsessed with them. As they said for more than 30 years about the USSR, they now say that the PRC is building up its military to levels that threaten the US and its allies in the region.

These guys are playing the most dangerous game imaginable. John Bolton may be a complete nut, but he represents Cheney, Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld in the State Department. It is very hard to believe that he wasn’t operating on orders when he made his ridiculously intemperate remarks. They were made for a reason.

The following exchange from Hardball (via the Daily Howler) shows Jed Babbin giving the PNAC official talking points:

MATTHEWS: Jed Babbin is the former deputy undersecretary of defense…Jed, you’re randy to say what a great guy this is but does it make sense to trash talk right before you’re talking about nuclear weapons?

JED BABBIN, FORMER DEPUTY UNDERSECRETARY OF DEFENSE: No, it’s obviously not diplomatic here.

MATTHEWS: Not smart for us.

BABBIN: It’s not smart if you want to bring these guys to the table and you expect any result.

Right now we can’t expect any real result because the Chinese have not indicated they will make decisive pressure on North Korea. That’s the only thing that’s going to resolve this peacefully and without that, whether Bolton says what he says or not doesn’t matter because the talks will not proceed.

[…]

BABBIN: I think the neocons want to crush these guys and feel that they are creating pressure on these people, scaring them, hoping that they’ll come to the table to negotiate. I think it’s the old story of sunshine versus the north wind. The South Koreans have been trying north wind and we at least ought to try to negotiate seriously.

I don’t know what the hell he means about Sunshine and the North Wind, but his frist answer is much closer to the truth. The trash talk is not designed to get the North Koreans to the table, it is designed to blow the talks. Those guys do not want to negotiate with China.

They’re still complaining about Nixon coddling the Chi-Coms, fergawdsake:

“This preposterous legacy of America’s normalization of relations with China more than two decades ago has become a positive invitation to war.” Robert Kagan

Bush is all over Powell today like he’s his long lost brother, so in the short term the gambit doesn’t seem to have worked. But, in every big battle so far, Powell has only succeeded in slowing down the neocon juggernaut, and in the end he reluctantly ends up aiding them.

Let’s hope it was because he was saving his political capital to force Lil’ Cap’n T-Ball to listen to him on North Korea and China. It’s not much, but it’s all we’ve got.

Sending a Fabulous Message

TBOGG links to Julia and Lisa’s posts about the shocking allegations of inappropriate touching by Reverend Robinson.

I too was stunned to read that a religious man a role model would abuse his position and exploit his power by putting his hand on a man’s back and arm while engaged in a conversation. Frankly, it turned my stomach. What’s next, men holding hands in public?

What kind of message does this send to the children? How can we expect the good men of this country to control their desire for man on dog sex if we sanction this type of behavior from our leaders? It is, quite simply, immoral and disgusting.

I cannot believe that God fearing men like Fred Barnes will countenance this type of behavior coming from anyone. He will surely denounce such deviance whenever and wherever he finds it.

Brilliant Strategery

Via Hesiod, I find that Joe Lieberman has a very cunning plan to win the election for the Democrats. Everyone is talking about Howard Dean’s unprecedented grassroots internet campaign, but I think that Lieberman is doing something even more exciting He has, apparently, decided to bypass the Democratic grassroots entirely and fight George W. Bush for the Republican vote.

And, the beautiful thing is that he’s using the RNC to do it!

An E-Mail from Ed Gillespie:

Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-CT) apparently understands what other Democrats don’t, that those unwilling or unable to stop terrorist activity by dealing with it will be forced to deal with its aftermath:

“Some in my party are sending out a message that they don’t know a just war when they see it, and, more broadly, are not prepared to use our military strength to protect our security and the cause of freedom.” (Sen. Joe Lieberman, “Lieberman Takes President, Fellow Democrats To Task On Security, Foreign Policy,” Press Release, 7/28/03)

There must be millions of Republicans who will read Gillespie’s e-mail and realize that the Democrats are providing them with a viable alternative to George W. Bush.

Never let it be said that Joe doesn’t think outside the box.

Dumbshit Theory

I think that Charles Dodgson and some of my readers may misunderstand one of the fundamentals about the Dumbshit Theory, as Jesse at Pandagon calls it.

When it is theorized that Saddam was bluffing about whether or not he had WMD before the war it is predicated on the fact that he played many games prior to 1998 and then refused, until 2002, to allow inspectors back in after they were withdrawn. He did not have any credibility and indeed the international community had absolutely no obligation to take his word for anything.

I’m sure he didn’t approve of David Kay and I’m sure he had good reason to doubt the Americans. And, of course we were spying. But as a leader who had been found to have lied extensively about his weapons programs in the past and had (with or without the tacit approval of the US) violated international law and invaded a sovereign country just a few years before, Saddam did not have much of a leg to stand on by complaining.

The facts are that Saddam had once had an active unconventional weapons program and nobody trusted that he wouldn’t start one up again if he got the chance.

In 1998 he basically pulled the plug on inspections. No, he didn’t kick the inspectors out, but he did restrict their movement to such an extent that it was tantamount to saying, “make me.” The Clinton administration withdrew the inspectors and launched Desert Fox.

Since that time, Saddam refused to allow the UN inspectors back in. The Dumbshit Theory assumes that Saddam made the calculation around 1998 that it was in his best interest to keep the world guessing about whether he was attempting to rebuild his weapons programs. (And, I thought he might have done it as much for internal reasons as any other. Tyants don’t keep power if they allow themselves to look weak.)

By the time he agreed to give them unfettered access in 2002, under tremendous pressure, the Bush administration had already made the decision to invade.

None of this says that we had a right to go to war. The UN, with resolution 1441, was unanimous in its requirement that Iraq cooperate with inspections and it did. There is no doubt that we could and should have allowed the inspectors to complete their work while Saddam was on the hot seat and the whole world was watching.

Neither was there any reason that we had to call this bluff immediately after 9/11. The intelligence estimates, as we now know, did not anticipate that even if he was rebuilding his arsenal that he could accomplish it any time soon.

Here’s how the case is made, quite inadvertently, by a member of the Bush administration in a March article by Nicolas Lehman in the New Yorker:

Last week, I went to see Richard Haass, the director of the policy-planning staff at the State Department. Haass is probably the Administration’s most prominent moderate theoretician and is a leading member of the foreign-policy establishment …With his departure, it’s hard to think of whom one could call a prominent moderate theoretician in the Bush Administration.

[…]

After months of official talk about removing Saddam from power, would the United States really have been willing to accept his remaining as the Iraqi head of state if he complied with the weapons inspectors?

“That’s a hypothetical,” Haass said. “We said that we would have lived with it. My hunch is that, if you had had complete Iraqi co?peration and compliance, so we had eliminated to our satisfaction the W.M.D.”—weapons of mass destruction—“threat, the question would be, Could Saddam Hussein have survived that?

My hunch is, Saddam concluded he couldn’t survive it, which is one of the reasons why we are where we are. It would have been such a loss of face. But, assuming it did not lead to regime change from within, I do not think we could or would have launched a war in those circumstances.

Instead, if Saddam survived W.M.D. disarmament, we could have pursued regime change through other tools. That’s why you have diplomacy, that’s why you have propaganda, that’s why you have covert operations, that’s why you have sanctions. You have the rest of the tools. So my recommendations would have been, we pursue regime change and war-crimes prosecution—he still should have been responsible for war crimes—using other tools. But I think you had to reserve the military either for the W.M.D. issue or for incontrovertible evidence of support for terrorism.”

Oops.

The issue is not that Saddam was much too smart to ever try to bluff the US, or that he was a fine upstanding member of the international community who had been truthful about his weapons programs and should have been believed. Neither of those things are true.

The fact is that whether or not Saddam was bluffing has absolutely nothing to do with whether we needed to depose him and occupy Iraq. As the leader of the world (and now purveyors of the Pax Americana) we are supposed to be able to figure that shit out. If we can’t then we don’t have any business taking it upon ourselves to be unilaterally establishing “global order” in the first place.

The problem is that either the intelligence agencies of most powerful nation on earth were so inept that they were unable to independently verify whether he did or did not have WMD or that the most powerful nation on earth knew very well that Saddam did not possess WMD and lied about it.

In either case it completely invalidates the central tenet of the Bush Doctrine — the concept of “pre-emption.” The US has just proved that it cannot be trusted to launch wars of choice based upon its knowledge that a given country will present a threat in the future.

The Democratic Revolution

Calpundit says:

After all, the real purpose of the war, we’re told, was to turn Iraq into a model for other Middle Eastern states to follow. I think this explanation is essentially correct, and what’s more, I agree that it’s the only real justification the war had.

But, he then wonders why they didn’t do sufficient planning for the post-war period.

I think that things like this happen for a variety of reasons, some of which Kevin mentions — like the fact that certain people believed the nonsense that Iraqis would be so grateful that they would show up for work on Monday and everything would fall into place.

And, in fact there was some planning, but they planned for all the wrong things — like a massive refugee crisis that never materialized. (Competence and prescience are not the strong suit of the ivory tower neoconservatives.)

But, the main reason they didn’t plan better is because this so-called real purpose for the war is no more the actual purpose than WMD or ties to terrorism. It is a happy talking point designed to lull good hearted Americans into believing that we are on a grand humanitarian mission. (In fact, its main purpose may have been to gain the support of George W. Bush.)

The reality is that the invasion of Iraq is nothing more than a cold and straightforward demonstration of American military power for the purpose of intimidating enemies and to enable a long term strategic placement of troops and equipment in the region.

This is made quite clear in the PNAC’s defense strategy document that pre-dated 9/11 and formed the basis for the Bush Doctrine:

“Facing up to the realities of multiple constabulary missions that will require a permanent allocation of U.S.forces.”

“Need for a larger U.S. security perimeter” and the U.S. “should seek to establish a network of ‘deployment bases’ or ‘forward operating bases’ to increase the reach of current and future forces.”

“North Korea, Iran, Iraq, or similar states [will not be allowed] to undermine American leadership, intimidate American allies, or threaten the American homeland itself.”

“Main military missions” necessary to “preserve Pax Americana” and a “unipolar 21st century” are the following: “secure and expand zones of democratic peace, deter rise of new great-power competitor, defend key regions (Europe, East Asia, Middle East), and exploit transformation of war.”

The PNAC report concludes that the global order “must have a secure foundation on unquestioned U.S. military preeminence.”

As for Iraq, it explicitly says:

“The U.S. has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in the Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.”

It also mentions “Saudi domestic sensibilities,” and calls for a permanent Gulf military presence even “should Saddam pass from the scene” because “Iran may well prove as large a threat.”

It was only after Powell briefly prevailed in keeping the neocons on their leash after 9/11 that the neocons fell back on their pal Michael Ledeen’s old bogus arguments from the 80’s about exporting a “democratic revolution.”

After others like Michael Kelly rolled out the new talking points in the summer of 2002, Ledeen himself opined in the Wall Street Journal:

If we come to Baghdad, Damascus and Tehran as liberators, we can expect overwhelming popular support. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld put it well the other day when he encouraged his media questioners to think about the people in such places as prisoners, not as free men and women. They will join us if they believe we are serious, and they will only believe we are serious when they see us winning. Our first move must therefore show both our power and our liberating intent.

It pays to remember that in 1985 he also wrote:

”America has voiced against Soviet/Cuban/Nicaraguan power of Central America, however, we have not acted upon it. If we fail to act, our Cuban and Nicaraguan enemies will slowly set their conflict throughout the hemisphere.”

This will only discourage others who are contemplating “taking up the struggle for democratic revolution.” Also, failure to act in Central America, will make the US lose credibility among other nations; causing other regimes not to listen to our advice. They will say, “If America cannot protect a nearby ally against Nicaragua, can it be expected to shelter a distant friend against the Soviet Union itself?”

“We should remain true to our principles—supporting the democratic revolution in El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala, while thwarting and reversing the totalitarian advance, in order to persuade others to take risks for freedom and democracy.”

I don’t suggest that Michael Ledeen doesn’t believe what he says, although like all the neocons, he is always wrong in his predictions. I do know that he is full of really wacked out ideas, not the least of which was his recent temper tantrum suggesting that we might want to think about declaring war on France.

But, his “democratic revolution” argument was never an explicit part of the neocon argument for removing Saddam until the Spring of 2002, when the neocon faction was pressing its case for invasion.

The big strategic reason for invading and occupying Iraq has been public since Wolfowitz’s 1992 Defense Policy Guidance that formed the basis for the PNAC document and the Bush Doctrine.

Demonstrate our military prowess and willingness to use it.

Establish a permanent military presence in the region.

Prove that leaders of rogue states will not be allowed to undermine American leaders, intimidate American allies, or threaten the American homeland itself.

All the rest is up for grabs. If Iraq becomes a democracy, all to the good (unless they elect someone hostile to us.) But, the plan certainly does not require an outbreak of democracy in the mid-east for it to be perceived as successful by its planners. What matters is that we won easily and our military is established on the ground in the region for the forseeable future. That’s why we really did it.

Whether those successes bring about the expressed goal of global order based on a “secure foundation of unquestioned U.S. military preeminence” remains to be seen. It’s entirely possible that it will result in exactly the opposite. And that Americans will pay a steep price for such hubris.

Defining Moment

For the record, I’m against allowing gays to marry because I feel that it will rend the very fabric of our society by tearing asunder the traditional definition of the institution at the heart of it. Indeed, we have already gone too far.

In order to restore the sanctity of marriage I propose that we not only pass a constitutional amendment barring gay marriage, but that we also pass one reversing all of the other changes to the definition of marriage that conservatives predicted would be catastrophic when they were first proposed.

For instance, women were considered property of their husbands, and their property was considered the property of their husbands for millennia. It was absolutely fundamental to the definition of marriage and allowing women to be legal equals was correctly predicted to completely destroy the moral basis of the institution. Just think how much better off we would be today if people had listened to conservatives who predicted that marriage could never survive such a huge legal change instead of allowing a bunch of off the wall feminists to destroy the very foundation of society.

Obviously, birth control should immediately be outlawed. During the debate that took place during the 50’s and early 60’s on the subject it was clear to anyone who paid attention that if birth control were made legal it would sanction immorality and promiscuous lust and the institution of marriage would disappear. Clearly, that has happened. Similarly, loosening the divorce laws has led to polygamy just as conservatives and religious scholors predicted.

And, as so clearly demonstrated by recent history, allowing the races to intermarry is tantamount to sanctifying bestiality. (Conservatives knew, then as now, that man is always teetering on the edge of mad dog-love and all it will take is a change in our definition of marriage to push him over.)

Frankly, I think we should think about going back to the earliest definitions of marriage if we hope to preserve it as the basis upon which our society thrives. Therefore, I believe marriage should be defined as a man and the woman (or women) he abducts from an enemy tribe. Now, that’s a legal definition anybody can understand.

Maybe there are those who think that later societies may have made an improvement or two on the concept of what constitutes marriage. Perhaps we can concede that marriage should at least be agreed upon by the groom and the bride’s father. (Abduction can be so unpleasant.) In fact, we could go back to tradition that held for hundreds of years in Europe wherein the engagement celebration was the culmination of contract negotiations between the families and featured consummation of the marriage and the presentation of the blood stained sheet. Marriage itself was only “sanctified” later (by either a notary or a priest) when the actual money changed hands.

But, perhaps the most important tradition to many in the conservative movement will be the return of the tradition of droigt de seigneur. In the modern world this would be interpreted as the right of the CEO, landlord or male politician to sleep with any bride on her wedding night. Surely this is one marriage “tradition” that should be revived.

If we want to preserve the traditional definition of marriage, that is.

Tony’s Dilemma

Matthew Yglesias has a great post up about the assertion in the Tom Friedman column today that Blair couldn’t make the real case for invasion because of the British public’s shallow dislike for George W. Bush’s personality and because they hadn’t gone through 9/11.

I think that antipathy to the government of George W. Bush is a perfectly sound reason for doubting the humanitarian case for war that Friedman and others on the left have been pushing. The argument would, in short, be that before the war Bush had been given the opportunity to govern one country and he basically made a hash of it. We’ve seen bad budgeting, crony capitalism, social intolerance, large-scale dishonesty, and a wavering commitment to democratic procedure, liberal transparency, and all other norms of good government. Now as Friedman has repeatedly been at pains to point out, winning the peace in Iraq will be a difficult business and it seems eminently reasonable to ask whether or not the person in charge of the operation is up to the task.

I agree that questioning this particular administration’s ability to carry out such an ambitious nation building plan was always perfectly reasonable, even if you agreed with the goals on humanitarian terms. I always thought that the Iraqi people were tough enough to hold out for another couple of years until we could get someone competent in office.

But, I also think that Friedman has completely misunderstood Blair’s dilemma with respect to why he had to make the imminent threat argument. It wasn’t because the British hadn’t experienced 9/11 and therefore needed to be persuaded that they were under threat. The reason Blair had to make the phony case for terrorist ties and WMD was because Americans needed to be persuaded that 9/11 had something to do with Iraq. He knew that this opportunity to remove the tyrant only existed because Bush was willing to frighten the American public into believing that Saddam was involved and that he was planning to launch biological, chemical and nuclear weapons at the US in his next attack.

Imagine if Bush had said in his SOTU, “We were just dramatically attacked by Islamic fundamentalists who have declared holy war on our country. We removed the government that was providing them haven in Afghanistan, but many of them are still hiding there and in Pakistan and their influence continues to grow throughout the Muslim world. Kim Jong Il of North Korea told us that he has nukes and is ready to sell them to terrorists to feed his starving population. Despite these huge immediate challenges, I think this is the perfect moment, with only our good friend Great Britain by our side, to launch a completely unrelated operation to liberate the Iraqi people from the Stalinist tyrant who we have allowed to remain in power for more than 30 years. We think that if we build a democracy in Iraq that terrorists will see the error of their ways eventually.”

In the unlikely event that Americans agreed that this was a good time to begin launching humanitarian operations only very tangentially related to terrorism, he would have run right up against another argument against invading Iraq right after 9/11 which was that invading a middle eastern country immediately in the wake of 9/11 would potentially alienate many of the Arab states that had been helpful in tracking down al Qaeda and was likely to create even more resentment and be a recruiting bonanza for terrorists.

A majority of Americans might have then concluded that a long term and extremely expensive humanitarian mission in Iraq was not worth throwing away our long term alliances and the support of the entire world after 9/11 just when we needed as much global cooperation as possible to combat terrorism. Certainly, people might have at least asked for more than happy talk about “sending messages” and “setting examples” if the cost of unilateralism as measured in lives and tax dollars — much less national security — had ever been discussed.

Friedman, however, persists in his completely unsubstantiated conclusion that America and Britain invading and “building a more decent Iraq would help tilt the Middle East onto a more progressive political track and send a message to all the neighboring regimes that Western governments were not going to just sit back and let them incubate suicide bombers and religious totalitarians, whose fanaticism threatened all open societies.”

He has said this over and over again.

Can someone please explain to me why he thinks Iraq’s neighbors would learn the lesson that the invasion proved that the West was not going to let them “incubate suicide bombers and religious totalitarians whose fanaticism threaten all open societies” when Iraq featured none of those problems?!! Does he think that Arab leaders are as stupid as the Americans who bought the mawkish tripe that Saddam was behind 9/11? For Gawd’s sake…

The lesson is that America invaded an Arab country that posed no threat, and had nothing to do with 9/11 because it saw the opportunity to get away with it. As for building “a more decent Iraq,” I’d feel a little bit more confident if that hustler Ahmed Chalabi wasn’t taking over the intelligence apparatus and using it to settle old scores — with Wolfie and Rummy’s enthusiastic permission, evidently.

I admit that as a hater of totalitarians here and elsewhere, I generally agree with Blair that if we have the capability of getting rid of a tyrannical dictator with minimal loss of life and the support of the international community, that it is a worthy goal. Nobody has to make the humanitarian argument to me. But as the British people wisely understood (and you have to wonder why Blair and Friedman didn’t) the problem in this instance was that the President of the United States was an incompetent puppet, his advisors were either ineffectual milquetoasts or radical nutcases, and his timing was cynically opportunistic and counterproductive.

As Yglesias points out, there was absolutely no reason to think that they were going to be any more prudent or competent in this arena than in any other. It was obvious from the beginning that the competing factions of the foreign policy shop in this White House were engaged in a constant tug of war for the ADD-led brain of President Treadmill. The President’s own father had to have his friend Brent Scowcroft write an op-ed piece in the NY Times to persuade him to muzzle Mad Dog Cheney in the run up to the war. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that they weren’t exactly a well oiled machine over there.

I don’t know if Americans will ever face up to the fact that Bush and his cronies either didn’t give a damn about 9/11 or, even more frightening, actually believe that Saddam was behind it. But, Tom Friedman should know better.