Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Waiting For Wesley

I am a little bit surprised that this incredible article in the August Esquire about Wesley Clark hasn’t made the rounds in Blogovia. Anyone who is intrigued by the possibility of the general getting in should read it.

I’ve written several enthusiastic posts about him in recent months, and I’ve been very interested in a Clark run since the day I saw him testify before the Senate the lead up to the Iraq resolution vote. Not only was his analysis absolutely on target, he was tremendously self-assured, well spoken and telegenic. I thought at the time that he would make an excellent candidate. I didn’t know if he was a Democrat but he was clearly not a neocon.

If anyone is interested in reading just how prescient Clark was that day, you can read the transcript here :

(And if you are interested in reading some really disrespectful Republican nastiness, pay special attention to the “questioning” of these generals by patriotic Senators Bunning and Sessions.)

This statement is particularly interesting in light of recent events:

I think that there is a substantial risk in the aftermath of the operation that we could end up with a problem which is more intractable than we have today. One thing we’re pretty clear on is that Saddam has a very effective police state apparatus. He doesn’t allow challenges to his authority inside that state. When we go in there with a transitional government and a military occupation of some indefinite duration, it’s also very likely that if there is an effective al Qaeda left — and there certainly will be an effective organization of extremists — they will pour into that country because they must compete for the Iraqi people; the Wahabes with the Sunnis, the Shi’as from Iran working with the Shi’a population. So it’s not beyond consideration that we would have a radicalized state, even under a U.S. occupation in the aftermath.

[…]

If we go in unilaterally, or without the full weight of international organizations behind us, if we go in with a very sparse number of allies, if we go in without an effective information operation that takes us through the — and explains the motives and purposes and very clear aims and the ability to deal with the humanitarian and post-conflict situation, we’re liable to super-charge recruiting for al Qaeda.

This appearance and his testimony before the House informed my thinking quite a bit on the Iraq invasion. He believes in multilateralism, as frustrating as it can be, not so much because it spreads the risk, but because it gives leaders and politicians of other countries a stake in a positive outcome. That translates into long term commitment, something that is absolutely essential to dealing with terrorism, failed states and nation building. This article written right after 9/11 strikes just the right note between righteous fury and intelligent, deliberate analysis

And as illustrated in the quote above, he was concerned from the very beginning about the potential negative consequences of an occupation in Iraq and how it would affect our efforts to combat al Qaeda. There were others, like Bob Graham, who also voiced this concern, but I never heard any one else theorize that terrorists would pour into Iraq after the war and transform it into a radicalized state under US occupation.

His comments not only reflected an informed strategic military worldview, as you would expect, they also showed a very complex and sophisticated analysis of the global political implications of where the administration was taking us. It was obvious to me that Wesley Clark isn’t just smart. He’s brilliant. Overachieving Clinton-brilliant.

(Meanwhile the President of the United States was either babbling, “They live in caves…we’re gonna smoke ‘em out”” or he was speechifying in phony flowery words and phrases that were so inauthentic that there were times you wondered if he even comprehended what he was saying.)

Like most Democrats I believe that the President of the United States should be very smart. According to beltway CW, this is an absurd view held only by overeducated, Volvo driving, Birkenstock wearing liberals who are the lowest form of American life and should be ignored if not imprisoned.

It would seem that the sad pathology of the inner city that disparages education and good grammar has strangely overtaken the Republican Party and many of those who make their living commenting on politics. It is now considered gauche in these circles to be “too” smart. The common understanding is that Americans prefer a leader who symbolizes their own mediocrity.

So, the big money Republicans simply market a slow but recognizable brand name and tell the apparatchiks not to mention that he is walking around stark raving naked. All that takes is cash and they have plenty.

We Democrats, however, have to find candidates who are not only brilliant, passionate and eminently qualified, which the base insists upon, but we must also pick someone who has appealing looks, an unassailable personal biography, an engaging personality, Southern roots and a heroic, masculine image so that the clueless swing voters and the giggling bimbos of the press have something to keep them sufficiently entertained during those long boring speeches with all the big words.

Clark is smart, to be sure, but he’s got all the other good stuff, too.

He’s got a very high Q rating and handles the press with the aplomb of a film star. He has a winning smile and an easy laugh. He knows how to speak in simple terms about complex issues. He is a proven military hero, a respected world leader, a southerner and a self made man who worked hard and succeeded at everything he tried.

In other words, he is the man who George W. Bush is pretending to be.

A genuine, traditional, all-American, patriotic winner.

* Word to the wise, draft Clarkers. You’ve got to show some pictures and footage of Clark in uniform. Those 4 big stars are a symbol of Clark’s experience, integrity and leadership. We need to work that mojo. In post modern America it’s all about the symbols, metaphors and memes.

That’s what I’m talking about

And, since nobody else has done it, I’ll post this little anecdote from the Esquire article. Even cynical, pragmatic old me got a little bit of a chill down my spine when I read it. It’s a great story and every Clark supporter should spread it around the water cooler and the dinner table:

In August 1995, the general—three stars, working as J-5 for the Joint Chiefs—went to Bosnia as part of the negotiating team Ambassador Richard Holbrooke had put together to end the civil war that had resulted in the massacre of as many as eight thousand Muslim men and boys at the town of Srebrenica the month before. In Belgrade, Clark had met for the first time Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic, who was sponsoring the Bosnian Serbs. Now the team had to travel to Sarajevo.

Told that the airport in Sarajevo was too dangerous to fly into, the team decided to drive and asked Milosevic to guarantee its safety on a road held by Bosnian Serbs. Milosevic did not, and so the team wound up taking a fortified Humvee and an armored personnel carrier on a pitched, narrow, winding mountain road notoriously vulnerable to Serb machine-gun fire.

Clark and Holbrooke went in the Humvee, the rest in the APC. In his book, the general describes what happened this way: “At the end of the first week we had a tragic accident on Mount Igman, near Sarajevo. [Three members of the team] were killed when the French armored personnel carrier in which they were riding broke through the shoulder of the road and tumbled several hundred meters down a steep hillside.”

It is not until one reads Holbrooke’s book, To End a War, that one finds out that after the APC went off the road, Clark grabbed a rope, anchored it to a tree stump, and rappelled down the mountainside after it, despite the gunfire that the explosion of the APC set off, despite the warnings that the mountainside was heavily mined, despite the rain and the mud, and despite Holbrooke yelling that he couldn’t go.

It is not until one brings the incident up to the general that one finds out that the burning APC had turned into a kiln, and that Clark stayed with it and aided in the extraction of the bodies; it is not until one meets Wesley Clark that one understands the degree to which he held Milosevic accountable.

For more on General Clark, visit

the Clarksphere

the Wesley Clark weblog

draft clark

the Clark Coalition

And for a tittilating bit of DC scuttlebutt on the Clark campaign, check out HoyPuhLoy

Leave No Child Behind

The commander of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp has told the BBC the US military is hoping to release children it is holding there.

The BBC’s Gordon Corera, in Guantanamo Bay, says the US’s interviews with the three children – aged between 13 and 15 – reveal they may have been coerced into fighting in Afghanistan.

General Geoffrey Miller who leads operations at the camp is seeking to have the children released in recognition of their age and co-operation, our correspondent says.

“These juvenile enemy combatants were impressed, were kidnapped into terrorism. They have given us some very valuable intelligence. We are very close to making a recommendation on their transfer back to their home countries,” General Miller said.

Special treatment

The children have been kept separate from the 700 adults being held at the camp, located on the southern Cuban coast.

They have been held with no access to a lawyer or understanding of what will happen to them, our correspondent adds.

But the children have been given access to games, even videos, as well as an extensive education programme.

This has led to the belief that they can be rehabilitated

Calling Mr. Kafka, Mr Franz Kafka. Please pick up the white courtesy telephone.

Is anybody beginning to wonder what in the hell is really going on down there? Why do I have a feeling that our pride in our vaunted Western values may be a tiny bit misplaced these days?

This is absolutely, fucking sick. If the most powerful country on earth is so vulnerable that we have to lock up some 12 year old Afghan kid in a goddamned concentration camp then this whole thing is hopeless.

The Camp Commandant has apparently come to the professional judgment that these kids can be rehabilitated so at least we won’t have to give them a secret trial before we kill them.

And they’ve had video games!

First Principles

Bill Simon Jr., one of the best-known Republicans in the recall election for California governor, dropped out of the race today, saying that the defeat of Gov. Gray Davis was more important than his personal ambitions.

Mr. Simon had come under intense pressure from fellow Republicans in recent days to withdraw from the contest to avoid splintering the Republican vote

[…]

… on Friday, the Lincoln Club of Orange County, a group of wealthy conservative Republicans, unanimously endorsed Mr. Schwarzenegger and urged Mr. Simon, Senator McClintock and Mr. Ueberroth to step aside. Also on Friday, the Republican leader of the State Senate, Jim Brulte, warned that there were too many Republicans in the race and that some would have to drop out to avoid handing victory to Mr. Davis or Mr. Bustamante.

We had a little dust up, if you recall, during the last election when the Democrats put the heat on Bob Torricelli to resign 36 days before the election so that they could replace him on the ballot with someone who could win. The Republicans went into their patented phony ape-shit mode, screaming about the rule-‘o-law-blah-blah-blah, sore-loserman, blah, blah blah.

The reasons as to why this action was so outrageous numbered in the hundreds.

Sullivan said that the health of the body politic required that Torricelli should have been forced to stay on the ballot so he could be ritually humiliated.

George Will fulminated that “election laws are supposed to be exacting so they can prevent just such last-minute frenzies by people frightened of losing. Yet today Democrats are asserting this principle: Anytime–even just 36 days before an election–a party has discouraging polls about a candidate, that party can replace him.”

Jonathan Last boldly asserted that “the Democrats haven’t just become Nixon, they’ve become the exaggerated liberal nightmare version of Nixon: Today Democrats are what they believe Nixon was.”

But, despite their varying objections, there was one overriding matter of principle that every last Republican agreed upon, — a matter so serious and of such fundamental importance to our system that any legalistic hairsplitting or judicial interpretations of it are, by their very nature, antithetical to the practice of democracy.

This principle is not, you understand, that old liberal clap trap about “counting all the votes” or “whoever wins the most votes wins” or even something silly like “short of incapacity or corruption, office holders who have been certified in a legal election should be allowed to serve their entire term.” These are nice concepts but they don’t carry any serious philosophical weight.

No, Republicans hold that the single most important principle upon which our electoral system rests is the sanctity of the arbitrary deadline which under no circumstances shall ever be overruled, even if it conflicts with another arbitrary deadline, is incomprehensibly vague or was instituted by the legislature for purely administrative purposes that had no bearing on anyone but a couple of election workers in outlying suburbs (if anyone can even remember why it was instituted in the first place.)

If an arbitrary deadline is on the books it is sacrosanct under any and all circumstances and no court in the land has a right to tamper with it.

This is because a deep and abiding fidelity to bureaucratic timetables that mean absolutely nothing is the very foundation of our democracy. You can look it up.

It explains why we hear no similar indignant outcry from George Will about “last-minute frenzies by people frightened of losing” at the sight of another weeping conservative being muscled out of the recall on a daily basis. (Lock up your horses, Uberroth.)

You see, the GOP outrage at the Torricelli matter was never about the fact that national Democrats so desperately wanted to keep that seat that they strong-armed their weak candidate to step aside to make way for a stronger contender. The Republicans admittedly did that very thing today in California, so they onviously don’t have a problem with it. And, it certainly wasn’t about a corrupt politician being forced to stay the course and face the music — after all, his opponent had been calling for Torricellis resignation for a solid month before he actually did it.

No, the egregious violation was going past the sacred 51 day deadline for replacing a name on the ballot. When the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled that the right of the Democratic party to have a candidate in the race superceded this holy edict (the other side argued that the Democrats had to forfeit the race), the Republicans erupted in righteous fury at the Nixonian dirty tricksters.

Lucky for them that this is California and not New Jersey. There aren’t any more hallowed deadlines that prevent them from forcing the non-muscled Austrian GOP candidates drop out of the race so that the Republican Party can take a mulligan and try again to win the seat they legally and legitimately lost 9 short months ago.

Hell, here they could put the thumb screws to Larry Flynt and Gary Coleman just for kicks right up until the polls open — just 45 days from today.

I Gotcher Trademark Infringement, Right Here

Where DO the Bushies get their ideas, I wonder?

They Get It

TAPPED, writing about the terrific Dean blog pinpoints not only what is so good about it, but what is important about it:

Tapped has thought for a while that the great unacknowledged secret of the Dean campaign’s wildly succesful blog — at least during this slowish news month of August — is that it has a heck of a lot more in common with Parade Magazine and US Weekly than it does with Slate. The Dean Blog is as goofy and cheesy and low-brow as the American people themselves…

The Dean people understand something that the rest of the Democrats just can’t seem to get a grasp on.

Politics and popular culture have converged. The Bushies know this and very effectively market their “product” as a shit-kickin’ moron. They know their audience.

Dean’s bloggers know theirs too.

In both cases, they are successful because they are entertaining. In the dense and dangerous internet jungle or the maze of the 500 channel sushi menu, being boring will kill you.

Phlegmatic Overachievers

Michael Wolfe wrote another one of his brilliant pieces this week, this time on the liberal cognoscenti. With the exception of Bill Clinton, (who should always be listened to — he’s one of those freaky people who’s always riding the Zeitgeist) it turns out that the “movers and shakers” of the Democratic party are awfully flaccid and slight. Sigh.

Personally, I love these people. The thinkers, the overachievers, the rational, problem solving, liberal minded, intellectual elite. These are the people whose forbearers can take credit for much of the progress that led to our open and liberal society. (Conservatives and warriors are there, too, in different ways.) But hey, this is my tribe.

However much I love them, however, these days they seem to be living in a different dimension than the one I inhabit.

There was even the sense, for all its various problems—consolidation, Fox (everybody said Murdoch’s name with great scorn), the mess at AOL Time Warner—of the media’s being, well, safely and proudly fair-minded (despite the conservative noisiness).

Ann Moore, while she openly shuddered over the AOL merger, still thought Time Inc. did pretty fine work without corporate interference. And Michael Kinsley, who was there with his new wife, Patty Stonesifer, who runs the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, said sanguinely, “I don’t see the problem, frankly,” and then offered a defense of big media and Bill Gates.

Indeed, nowhere at the conference, really, was there controversy. In some sense, the theme of the conference, even, was a rejection of controversy—much talk about the erosion of civic trust that came from partisanship.

Well, yes. The erosion of civic trust (partially) comes from partisanship. But, they evidently believe this “partisanship” comes from partisans on both sides equally, and that further, if everyone would just behave, then we wouldn’t have all this unpleasantness.

“Come come, people. Let’s not sink to their level. Let’s “send a positive message of bipartisanship and conviviality so the GOP can see that you get more flies with honey than you get with vinegar.”

The leadership of “overachieving” liberal America are like sheltered maiden aunts and musty Latin professors — filled with good intentions but useless against a gang of street thugs.

They seem to think that if we can just hold on to our notions of civility and good government, politics will go back to being a more or less collegial game defined by cooperation and compromise. In other words, they think the system itself is defined by the cold war consensus and the New Deal and all this bickering is anomalous and temporary.

This is surprising coming from a group of very smart people. They, of anyone, should know that there is nothing fundamentally “balanced” in our political system and that there is nothing to stop this country from becoming a de facto one-party state, by legitimate OR illegitimate means. History is full of examples of that very thing and the United States (contrary to Prezdunt Pretzel’s beliefs) is not specially blessed by God or anything else.

They certainly should be able to see that the modern Republican party has as much a chance of going back to the suprapartisan politics of Everett Dirkson as Arianna Huffington has of winning the California governorship.

Something profound is happening in America and, for some reason, liberalism’s smartest people don’t seem to realize it.

So, it looks as though any stemming of the radical Republican tide really is going to have to come from the grassroots.

Wolfe also discusses Wesley Clark’s appeal in a very interesting way, concluding that he is the wet dream candidate of the liberal intellectual elite but is possibly too “cool” for the “not-so-cool” American heartland. I would agree if he had a different biography. It doesn’t guarantee a win, but you cannot discount the martial spirit of much of the south and rural America, particularly at a time like this. Michael Lind wrote a great article on the topic that I think is more relevant than ever.

The sad fact is that being super-smart is now considered a liability for a president. It makes him a pussy.

Unless, perhaps, he is also a four star General.

As bizarre as it is, we Democrats must now nominate candidates who have images of heroism, machismo or scrappy rags to riches tales of Galtian proportions. But, we have to pretend that he isn’t one of the smartest people on the planet. That would offend the mouth breathers, apparently, who need to believe that anyone smarter than them (a door knob, for instance) is too effeminate to be president.

They can try to characterize Clark as a cold, effete, smarty pants but they have to be very careful. Clark’s only been out of the military for a couple of years. He spent his entire life in the Army — there is absolutely no history of any counter-culture shenanigans or any issues of personal integrity. His life cannot be criticized on the basis of the culture war, a unique situation for a Democrat. (Republicans, no matter how hedonistic are, of course, exempt. Praise Jeebus.)

They’ll go after him anyway, needless to say, but it stands a good chance of backfiring. Attacking General Clark on a personal basis is akin to attacking the military itself.

It won’t stop them. But, it will not help them either.

Helluva Hangover

It is just possible that the tired old saw “…as California goes, so goes the nation” is not the laughable irrelevance that we all think it is as we watch this sideshow. As I read today’s LA Times poll, showing that Davis and the legislature both have over a 70% unfavorable rating, it looks to me as if the electorate of this state is having a bit of a temper tantrum.

Historically speaking, that often leads to one of those “clean house” elections — like 1994.

It’s impossible to know what the country as a whole will be feeling a year from now, but I can easily picture a widespread discontent that could shake up the whole election.

The reason is that the economic downturn is just now starting to be felt and downturns are much more painful when it seems like only last week the sky was the limit. Falling from a lofty height really hurts.

I think that people may finally be coming to terms with the fact that the economy isn’t going back to what it was and that translates into big dreams and aspirations going down the tubes. Recessions come and go, but speculative bubbles are once in a lifetime.

Unfortunately, conventional wisdom emanating from pundits and corrupt analysts made a lot of Americans believe that the business cycle really had been vanquished (if they knew what the business cycle was in the first place) and that the end of history was nigh.

They believed that success beyond their wildest dreams was almost guaranteed so they bought big expensive houses and ran up their debt with cheap credit, secure in the knowledge that they were winners, with a capital win. Why, things were going so well that we could turn politics into a soap opera and journalism into a reality TV show. Seriousness was so boring and 70’s.

Now people are beginning to understand that they may have to lower their expectations. We are in a confusing war, insecure, in debt, underemployed and under the bosses thumb — and nobody knows what hit them. People are starting to wake up to the knowledge that this may be no blip, no “correction.”

George W. Bush’s America does not look like a shining city on a hill.

I hope that Davis doesn’t lose. I think it is a travesty of democracy — one of many, lately. But, if the worst happens, the Democratic talking points are clear:

As California goes, so goes the nation: Throw The Bums Out.

Coming Out

We can change today’s culture from “if it feels good, do it”. George W. Bush,

Texas A&M Univ. Apr 6, 1998

“It is as satisfying to me as coming is – you know, as having sex with a woman and coming. So can you believe how much I am in heaven? I am, like, getting the feeling of coming in the gym. I’m getting the feeling of coming at home. I’m getting the feeling of coming backstage when I pump up. When I pose out in front of 5.000 people I get the same feeling. So I’m coming day and night.” Arnold Schwarzenegger in the documentary “Pumping Iron”

“I think he’d be a good governor.” George W. Bush, Crawford, Texas Friday, August 8, 2003

This recall, like the immature obsession with the Clenis™, is nothing more than baby boomers like George W. Bush “doing it because it feels good,” GOP style. The poor Republicans had to sublimate their unresolved adolescent sexual confusion into bullying midlife power plays or go to their graves as the saddest lil’ guys in the world. Ahhnold is just the latest cartoonlike example.

We boomer Democrats grew out of that “it it feels good, do it” bullshit a long time ago. Even then we pretty much confined it to sex, hair and air guitar solos. Unlike the Republicans, we didn’t let morons and radicals actually run anything. We just partied. (Ahhnuld appears to be one of the few who is double dipping in the FGDI ethos. More likely he never stopped…)

Allowing Junior, Newtie, Norquist, Perle and DeLay to wield real world power is the equivalent of the Democrats running Tiny Tim, Jane Fonda, Bernardine Dorn, Huey Newton and Abbie Hoffman in 1972.

Only now, middle aged and paunchy, the republicans are discovering that it “feels sooo good” to be a rebel and a tough guy, telling the establishment to “bring it on.” Getting in people’s faces is such a rush. It is as satisfying as coming, getting the good feeling of coming in the gym, getting the good feeling of coming at home, getting the good feeling of coming backstage or out in front of 5.000 people on the deck of an aircraft carrier. It’s like coming day and night.

Let Them Eat California Roll

Mister egalitarian, Mickey Kaus writes:

(Meanwhile, complaints about the long ballot seem overblown. Are citizens who routinely negotiate a typical cable TV guide or sushi menu really unable to find their candidate among 135 names, if the ballot is laid out clearly?) ….

It may come as something of a surprise to him that the 500 channel, digital cable menu that he negotiates everyday (as do I — with some difficulty, I might add) and long complicated sushi menus may be “routine” over here on the Westside of LA, but they are probably not that “typical” in other parts of Los Angeles, much less California. Certainly, ballots containing 135 names, in no discernable order, spread over many pages and attached to punch card ballots that are impossible to verify by looking at them is not commonplace even for all of Mickey’s salt of the earth pals in Brentwood and Beverly Hills.

Then, unbelievably, in the next post he says:

If Arianna would freely admit her shifting positions and joke about them, almost all would be forgiven. It’s bizarre that she hasn’t been displaying in public the self-deprecating humor that wins over dinner guests in private.

Don’t you just hate it when somebody you just adoooore at intimate dinner parties turns out to be such a bore when they’re running for office. I know I do.

I’m sure that if she didn’t have to appeal to the great cableless, sushilliterate hoi polloi, we’d get to see more of the charming Arianna that Mickey and I just love at those faaaabulous dinner parties.

(How many nights have we spent at Arianna’s salon, nibbling spicy yellowtail, watching pay-per-view, listening to her tinkling laughter as she gaily tells tales of her former days as Newties courtesan? Life can be so sweet sometimes.)

Now, she is dirtying her hands in the electoral process, having to explain her political evolution in a serious way and being forced to answer questions from the great unwashed…even about her (gasp!) finances. It’s so common, so tawdry.

It’s sad, really. She was once one of Us. You know — the people who are superior to Everyone, conservative and liberal alike?

Hooyah

Those Texas Democrats have got what it takes.

Send them an e-mail, if you have a minute. A little national Democratic solidarity might just make their day.