Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Beavis and Butthead and GOP “Family” values

It’s been quite a week, hasn’t it? Newtie’s back (not that he ever went away) and is reprising his award winning role as bombthrowing bad boy for the GOP Fedayeen. It made me nostalgic for the good old days back in the 80’s when he would denounce “deviant liberalism” to the empty House chamber on C-SPAN. We were all so innocent then. It never occurred to us that within 20 years Gingrich’s Leninist propaganda stylesheet would be the bible of a new right wing media establishment.

Gosh, I’ve missed him being in the spotlight. He is, after all, the reason the Republicans came to understand that openly expressing their “revolutionary” political philosophy of religious coercion, unregulated crony capitalism and global megalomania made the American public recoil in horror. Newt’s very existence exposes “compassionate conservatism” for the crock of shit it is.

Because President Chauncey W. Gardner is a sock puppet, it’s always hard to figure out whether these turf battles are good cop/bad cop or whether they truly represent a death match between State and Defense. But, as Atrios notes, the blow-back on this one is pretty over the top, so it’s hard to believe it’s a scripted routine.

My best guess is that the radical Rummy faction gave Gingrich the assignment to publicly introduce the idea of a need to “reform” the State Dept. (by purging career diplomats) along the lines of Rummy’s own revamping of the DOD, but they forgot what a rhetorical terrorist the guy is and let him do it his way. Certainly, some highly influential neocons agree with the substance of what he said:

Weekly Standard publisher William Kristol told Fox News that Gingrich is right about two things — a feud between the State and Defense departments is growing and the State Department is in need of an overhaul.

“People in the administration who don’t want some criticism are going to say Newt Gingrich stepped in it, but the truth is he told the truth. And Rumsfeld has tried to reform the Defense Department. He’s broken a lot of china; he has got a lot of enemies as a result. Colin Powell, who is an impressive man, has not rocked the boat at all at State, and I think that’s a mistake. State needs to be reformed,” Kristol said.

What they forget about Colin Powell is that he has his own constituency in the American public and could single handedly derail Junior’s re-election if he chose to do so, as Powell not so subtly reminds them from time to time:

“Personally, I’m very much in sync with the president, and he values my services,” Powell said on National Public Radio last month. “I also have to take note of the fact if you would consult any recent Gallup poll, the American people seem to be quite satisfied with the job I’m doing as secretary of state.”

This is why Rove muzzled Newt. I would guess that any “reformation” of the State department is tabled until after 2004.

And anyway, the much more important revelation in the Gingrich tantrum is his articulation of the neocon fury at the mid-east “roadmap.” That gets to the heart of the Perle/Wolfowitz plan for the region and they are hardly likely to give in on this one.

Let the GOP intramural blood-letting begin.

Which brings us to Lil’ Ricky Santorum’s intriguing remarks. He has no problem with people being homosexuals, nosiree. It’s what they do sexually in the privacy of their bedroom that undermines family values. So, I guess that Ricky doesn’t have a problem with men dressing in drag or wild Gay Pride parades or openly gay soldiers and sailors as long as they are celibate. He’s inclusive, that way.

It’s the dirty nasty sex that must be outlawed because every time Ricky thinks about what they do (and he thinks about it all the time) his family values get all tingly and stimulated — especially when he pictures that bad-polyamorous-man-with- three-hot-young-babes-all-tangled-up-together-in-one-great-big-bed kind of sex, or when he contemplates a sinful-adulterous-politician-who-strays-from-his-homeschooling-housewife-of-the-year-with-Ann-Coulter-for-some-man-on-dog type sex.

That’s the kind of sex that the government should make sure is illegal because if it doesn’t who knows what a Catholic Senator and former teen-age alter boy who has very, very bad thoughts might do?

Why, something like this could happen:

… When a distraught Sharon Bush phoned her mother-in-law to commiserate about the 48-year-old Neil, Barbara Bush told her coolly, “That’s between you and Neilsie.”

And when the 50-year-old Sharon met with author Julie McCarron in Houston on April 14 to explore writing a memoir of her life in America’s premier political dynasty, they ran into Neil’s 40-year-old mistress, Houston socialite Maria Andrews, at a popular restaurant called the Grotto.

Maybe if Neilsie were faced with a little jail time, he might have thought twice, eh?

This is what is so very impressive about the modern GOP’s political leadership. Brainpower. Bush himself, as we know, has a towering intellect and Dick Cheney is one of the country’s foremost authorities on …something. But, little Ricky Santorum is so uniquely brilliant that it is clear he is being groomed for the presidency.

His mastery of logic is simply breathtaking. For instance, when talking about partial birth abortion he dismisses the slippery slope argument made by pro-choicers as “absolutist”:

Senator Santorum says,:

“Charles is right. It is the absolutist argument that if they (Abortion Activists) concede even the most egregious and barbaric procedures then it calls into question the whole concept of abortion which they can not permit.”

But, in his infamous interview Senator Santorum also said:

“If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything.”

Perhaps the distinction between these two slippery slope arguments lies in the existence of the large and powerful man-on-dog advocate movement which is on record saying their strategy is to whittle away at resistance to privacy laws in order to get the anti-bestiality statutes eventually struck down all together. When seen in that light you can understand why right thinking people everywhere would be on their guards against allowing even the smallest concession to sexual privacy. That would be playing right into the hands of the bestiality rights movement, which after all, represents the base of the Democratic party.

But, that’s not all. On partial birth abortion, Santorum also said, :

“I believe that this is one of the seminal moments in our society. If a government deliberately allows this kind of barbarism to be inflicted on the most helpless and innocent, who among us will be spared in the end?”

Yes, indeed. If the law allows a woman and her doctor to decide that a braindead fetus should be aborted in order to save her uterus, what on earth could stop this woman and her doctor from deciding that her braindead Senator should be “aborted” to save her sanity? You’ve simply got to draw the line somewhere. There’s nothing absolutist about that.

I have to agree with Ricky on principle. Until the Supreme Court reverses Griswold and subsequent rulings that imply a constitutional right to privacy, I guess I’ll have to live with the fact that Santorum is allowed to bring home the corpse of their 5 month old fetus and force his small children to hold it, despite the fact that I find such behavior bizarre, sick and abusive. If the constitution allows people to handle fetal corpses in the privacy of their own home, are we not on a slippery slope to sanctioning grave robbery, necrophilia and cannibalism?

It’s the scourge of moral relativism that’s causing the trouble. The intellectual braintrust of Bush and Santorum are in complete agreement on this. Morality is black and white, there are no choices to be made, private or otherwise. There is one true way and they know what it is.

But, as Tim Noah pointed out back in October 2000, the GOP doesn’t have a problem with relativism in general. Science, for instance, is entirely relative:

Bush believes “the jury is still out” on evolution and said:

“I’d make it a goal to make sure that local folks got to make the decision as to whether or not they said creationism has been a part of our history and whether or not people ought to be exposed to different theories as to how the world was formed.”

Santorum actually made sure the congressional record included a “sense of the Senate” resolution attached to the “No Child Left Behind Act” which ensured that an Estrada Supreme Court would have the evidence to rule that lawmakers intended to endorse “intelligent design” being taught in the science classroom. As a matter of intellectual integrity he doesn’t believe it is right to pass judgment on universally agreed upon scientific knowledge if even one crackpot religious nut who calls himself a scientist disagrees.

“A number of scholars are now raising scientific challenges to the usual Darwinian account of the origins of life,” Santorum said after the bill passed. “Thus, it is entirely appropriate that the scientific evidence behind them is examined in science classrooms. Efforts to shut down scientific debates, as such, only serve to thwart the true purposes of education, science and law.”

Perhaps this is what Junior was referring to when he called Santorum “inclusive.” And, it does stand to reason that he’d like the man. After all, it’s not easy to find someone who is even dumber than he is. In fact, Santorum is such a putz that he was once named the the dumbest member of Congress.

One example of his brilliance: In speaking about the country’s long term prospects, Santorum remarked, “Nowhere in the Bible does it say that America will be here 100 years from now.”

“Santorum?” Sen. Bob Kerrey once commented. “Is that Latin for asshole?”

Hahahaha….

With all of this talk of religion and politics this week, I am a bit surprised that this story didn’t get more play:

Six members of Congress live in a $1.1 million Capitol Hill town house that is subsidized by a secretive religious organization, tax records show.

The lawmakers, all Christians, pay low rent to live in the stately red brick, three-story house on C Street, two blocks from the Capitol. It is maintained by a group alternately known as the “Fellowship” and the “Foundation” and brings together world leaders and elected officials through religion.

Ok. Who cares, right? A nice Christian boarding house. There’s nothing wrong with that. Except, it turns out that this particular “secretive religious organization” is a powerhouse in Washington and has been for more than 50 years. Strangely, however, nobody knows about it.

In a tour de force of investigative journalism, Harper’s magazine this month published a jaw dropping expose of this group that calls itself “the family” and which has been working hand in glove with the political elite for decades. The report, called “Jesus Plus Nothing. Undercover among America’s secret theocrats” is simply mind boggling.

In the process of introducing powerful men to Jesus, the Family has managed to effect a number of behind-the-scenes acts of diplomacy. In 1978 it secretly helped the Carter Administration organize a worldwide call to prayer with Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat, and more recently, in 2001, it brought together the warring leaders of Congo and Rwanda for a clandestine meeting, leading to the two sides’ eventual peace accord last July. Such benign acts appear to be the exception to the rule. During the 1960s the Family forged relationships between the U.S. government and some of the most anti-Communist (and dictatorial) elements within Africa’s postcolonial leadership. The Brazilian dictator General Costa e Silva, with Family support, was overseeing regular fellowship groups for Latin American leaders, while, in Indonesia, General Suharto (whose tally of several hundred thousand “Communists” killed marks him as one of the century’s most murderous dictators) was presiding over a group of fifty Indonesian legislators. During the Reagan Administration the Family helped build friendships between the U.S. government and men such as Salvadoran general Carlos Eugenios Vides Casanova, convicted by a Florida jury of the torture of thousands, and Honduran general Gustavo Alvarez Martinez, himself an evangelical minister, who was linked to both the CIA and death squads before his own demise. “We work with power where we can,” the Family’s leader, Doug Coe, says, “build new power where we can’t.”

At the 1990 National Prayer Breakfast, George H.W. Bush praised Doug Coe for what he described as “quiet diplomacy, I wouldn’t say secret diplomacy,” as an “ambassador of faith.” Coe has visited nearly every world capital, often with congressmen at his side, “making friends” and inviting them back to the Family’s unofficial headquarters, a mansion (just down the road from Ivanwald) that the Family bought in 1978 with $1.5 million donated by, among others, Tom Phillips, then the C.E.O. of arms manufacturer Raytheon, and Ken Olsen, the founder and president of Digital Equipment Corporation.

I urge you to read the whole article. I thought it was anomalous that the freaky Reverend Moon was a silent partner in GOP Inc (which, incidentally sponsored Santorum’s “faith based summit” through it’s front group the “American Leadership Conference.”)

Apparently, however, Washington is just crawling with powerful, wealthy and secretive religious organizations that are deeply involved in politics.

WTF?

What’s Wrong With The Democratic Party?

Nothing, actually.

First of all, it is terribly important that we remember that the Democratic agenda is remarkably coherent for such a large coalition and it is universally supported within the party and by a majority of the country as a whole.

That is really quite remarkable when you think about it and it is the Democratic Party’s great strength.

We are weak on national security, but I think we can deal with that if we do not cede patriotism and American values to the Republicans. This issue is driven by emotion, not policy, and that is best conveyed through symbolism and rhetoric. We can do that. (See my post below for a longer discussion of that concept.)

It is also important to remember that the Bush administration does not have a real governing majority or an electoral mandate. They just behave as if they do. There seems to be a misapprehension that there has been a huge sea change in American attitudes and political belief and that a vast majority of “regular Americans” have rejected us decadent liberals when in fact all that happened was that a small handful of votes went the wrong way in ’02. Al and Ralph, both left of center, won a clear majority in 2000. We should not allow them to make even us believe that they are universally beloved and supported in this country. The ballot box has certainly not demonstrated that and neither do the re-elect numbers.

Yet, they have successfully enacted a radical economic and social agenda of supply side tax cutting, begun a revolutionary overhaul of the legal system, initiated massive regulation rollbacks and dissolution of the traditional separation of church and state. And they have also, not incidentally, completely overturned half century of foreign policy doctrine in just 2 years.

What’s amazing is that they have done all of this not only without a mandate, but without even explicitly campaigning on those issues or being honest about their implications. They are secretive and uncooperative with both the congress and the press and have assumed an inappropriate level of power in the executive branch. They do this because they know that they cannot win with their real agenda.

So, if most Americans support the Democratic agenda and the Republicans are blatantly governing far more radically than they promised in their campaigns, how are they getting away with it?

First, the other side has a huge advantage in money, incumbency and a constituency that benefits lopsidedly from the unrepresentative electoral college and senate. These are very powerful advantages that are unlikely to go away soon. But, even more importantly, they are overwhelmingly powerful in media, with the megaphone of power they now hold in all branches of government as well as the outright ownership of powerful talk radio, Murdoch newspapers and cable news. As Seeing the Forest so astutely observes, they have a message amplification infrastructure and the Democrats don’t. And that infrastructure serves as a conduit to the grassroots and the mainstream media. It shapes the conventional wisdom and defines the boundries of the establishment mainstream. All of these forces taken together give them the advantage even though a majority of Americans support the Democratic agenda and would reject the radical elements of the GOP agenda if they knew what they were.

Karl Rove knows this and has refined GOP tactics to obscure that profound weakness by using their infrastructure to not only demonize Democrats to the faithful (as they have always done) but to present the Republican Party in general and George W. Bush in particular as a triumphant and overwhelming juggernaut in the belief that this will carry the mushy uninformed with them over the finish line and keep the press on message. It is why, as Paul Krugman points out, “they focus all their attention on an issue; they pull out all the stops; they don’t worry about breaking the rules. This technique brought them victory in the Florida recount battle, the passage of the 2001 tax cut, the fall of Kabul, victory in the midterm elections, and the fall of Baghdad.”

But, he downplays the most salient aspect of these victories. The Republicans don’t just “not worry about the rules.” The fact is that they haven’t won anything without cheating since Bush ran as a moderate, seized office on a technicality and began to govern from the most radical edge of his party. The tax cut was passed with fuzzy math and outright falsehoods about the beneficiaries and the election of ‘02 was (barely) won because of smears against a disabled Vet and a coordinated talk radio campaign against a dead man’s grieving family. The invasion of Iraq was sold on lies about WMD and ties to terrorists.

The Bush administration, then, really is the political equivalent of Enron. Ken Lay and George W. Bush and Karl Rove and Andrew Fastow and Jeff Skilling and Dick Cheney are all cut from the same cloth.

If you recall, what Enron essentially did was cook up a bunch of complicated experimental schemes to take advantage of “energy deregulation,” one of those ivory tower think tank wet dreams they managed to foist on a gullible public in various states . They were theoretically clever but had never been tried in the real world. And they predictably failed, but since the company’s financial reports were so byzantine it was able to hide their losses by creating a bunch of new off the books sweetheart deals with insiders and investment bankers who were also recommending the stock to the public. And they kept moving like sharks, using misdirection and tricks to keep investors looking at their “next big new market,” while they covered up the failure of the last one.

When a rare person raised questions, the entire establishment that now stood to benefit from Enron’s success joined together to silence the critics. The company appealed to stockholders purely because of their winning ways and preternatural confidence. Nobody knew the details but they knew the plan was good because the cheerleaders and the analysts were all so convinced. So, everybody bought the stock and it became a self fulfilling prophesy. For a while.

They danced as fast as they could but inevitably all the fuzzy math and all the false bravado and all the secrecy and all the backroom dealmaking eventually caused the company to cave in on itself. There was nothing left but a bunch of theories that never worked and a crippling amount of debt.

The Democrats’ job is to prevent this from happening to the country. As taxpayers and citizens we are all shareholders in U.S. Inc. and if George W. Bush gets 4 more years I have no doubt that the results of his erratic decision making, his lack of transparency, his trust in radical ideologues and his reliance on sophisticated public relations to mislead the public will crash into reality. But, by that point the country will have been so seriously damaged that we may never quite recognize it again.

We shouldn’t let these guys intimidate us. They are dangerous, but it’s because they are reckless and corrupt not because they are a political juggernaut. That’s their schtick. It’s not real.

UPDATE:

Seeing the Forest has more on this subject today, as does the watch and worldgonewrong. If my comment section is any guide, Democrats have a lot of thoughts on this issue.

My position is most poetically expressed by that most excellent comment writer — the farmer:

“W is only a “great brand” by virtue of the marketing that made him a “great” brand. Great in this case, having about the same inate “great” value as say, the Great San Francisco Earthquake, the Great Fire of 1871, the Great Depression, and/or the Great White Shark. As “unknown blogger” mentioned, you can sell a rock in a box if you want to. Its still just a rock. But, its the box that sells the rock.

So, as Digby is getting at, its now up to liberals to restablish their dominance in the political marketplace. To market a high quality product in a highly visible high quality package. A better deal, more for your money, at a better price. Something that you can plant and it will grow for you. A real live perennial tree of liberty that you can plant in your own back yard. Not a nut tree either. Too many nut trees already. Rather, a big sprawling sugar maple, or a big blue atlas cedar. Or an apple tree, the kind you can make your own fresh pies from for years and years. Mom will love it. Mom and her apple pie tree. Its a patriotic American living thing and it arrives in a traditional hoop bound oak stave barrel half all ready to be planted in Washington DC. Ships in 2004, order today

Now, that’s what I’m talkin’ about…

4 Star Democrat

I have written a few blog posts in the last couple of months about General Wesley Clark, (here, here, and here) mostly as a jumping off point about the absolute necessity for the Democrats to drop the silly notion of the 2002 elections that they will be able to set aside national security in favor of preferred Democratic domestic issues if they vote with the President on foreign policy. Once again, they failed to appreciate that the Republicans will portray their opponents in what ever way suits their game plan regardless of their actual record or personal history. There is no margin in trying to appease them because they will only move the goal posts or lie outright if that’s what it takes to stay on message.

Bush has a formidable advantage going into this election and it’s not just because of incumbency and money but because many in this country are drawn to the nostalgic martial spirit that is being marketed and sold by the Republicans like it was Classic Coke. Patriotic symbols of strength and superiority make them feel secure at a time when the world seems confusing and chaotic. Questioning of authority is deemed unsafe for any number of reasons, not the least of which is the resulting harsh criticism by those in power.

George W. Bush will be marketed in 2004 as a visionary foreign policy genius and battle hardened commander who is the only man in the race who is seasoned and experienced enough to win the war on terror. He will be wrapped tightly in the flag with brass bands and yellow ribbons and allusions to the great victories of WWII. He will speak of high hopes and serious challenges and he will wield his great personal defeat of Saddam as a weapon against any little pissant who has the balls to suggest they should replace him before he’s even begun to smite evil once and for all. (Oh yes, and we need more religion and tax cuts too. Cue “I’m Proud To Be An American.”)

The media, having already learned that patriotism sells, will be signing on to the George W. Bush campaign not so much because of explicit political bias but because the image the Republicans are selling is an image that Americans want to buy. Mostly, that comes down to Good America, Strong America.

I believe that Democrats should give no ground on this. We represent real American values and we have every right to use the traditional language and symbols of patriotism to express that. We are the ones who stand for the Constitution and the American system of justice, which we hold so dear that even in times of war we do not waver. We are the ones who believe in the sacred American values of Liberty, Equality, Opportunity and Democracy and we are the ones who work to ensure that every American, not just the privileged, share in them. We are the ones who have faith that America is strong enough to survive any challenge without sacrificing those values. The flag and Sousa and apple pie and love of country are not the exclusive property of the Republican Party; they belong to all Americans. We should take them back.

I believe that the best person to make the argument that Democrats are Americans too is someone who defies the phony liberal stereotype manufactured by GOP Inc. I think that many Americans could have their eyes opened to the true patriotism of the Democratic Party if that case were made by someone who spent more than 35 years maintaining American security. If that someone was so excellent that he began this career by graduating first in his class at West Point and ended it as the Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, the Democrats would have the perfect symbol of patriotic leadership as well as someone who has the demonstrated ability to maneuver the political shoals of the Pentagon and Washington without the taint of partisan politics.

I want the Democrats to nominate the candidate who can best beat George W. Bush. Standard stump speeches and stale rhetoric cannot compete with the spotlight conferred upon the flag draped Commander In Chief who is being expertly marketed as the Man Who Saved The World. We will not defeat that 200 million dollar juggernaut with predictable Washington faces or unknown iconoclasts without national security credentials.

This election is not business as usual.

I believe that Democrats can beat the Republicans at their own game if we take back our rightful ownership of patriotic symbolism and nominate someone who embodies those All American virtues.

General Wesley Clark is as qualified to be President today as was Colin Powell in 1996 when he was seriously courted by the Republicans as the most serious threat to Clinton’s re-election. He is far more qualified to be President than George W. Bush ever will be. He is a Democrat.

I sincerely hope that he throws his hat into the ring and if he does, I will support him.

To read more about General Clark, please visit the Daily Kos’ Draft Clark web site. Sign the petition even if you are not entirely persuaded but think that he could make a contribution to the primaries. Having a General on the stump would be helpful to the Democrats and he could very well be an attractive VP candidate if someone else emerges as a clear winner. We need him in the race.

Roundheels

We read that the Bush administration has rolled out a plan to parlay its “success” in Iraq and the immense and overwhelming personal popularity of our wartime President to push its its crazy domestic program. Political strategists speak openly of this strategy and discuss at great length Poppy’s failure to do the same thing back in 91. Everyone reporting on politics understands that conflating the President’s wartime popularity with his unpopular tax cut is a conscious political tactic.

So naturally, Judy Woodruff just promoted an upcoming segment on CNN with this script:

“Next. The Commander In Chief tries to revitalize his battleplan for the homefront.”

All that was missing were the strains of “Battle Hymn of the Republic” in the backround. Judy may have even issued a smart salute, but I probably missed it when my eyes filled with tears at the image of our battle-weary Dear Leader forced to once again climb aboard that political Humvee and roll on down to Capitol Hill to fight the evil liberals and (sadly) even some of his own troops as they try to sabotage his crusade against terrorism and taxes.

Can’t we even let our hero shake off the dust of his latest mano a mano combat with the satanic Saddam before we force him to take on Mullah Daschle and Olympia bin Snowe?

Thank goodness we have Major Judy around to keep us focused on the fact that while the war between Good (Republicans) and Evil (Democrats) is not over, our tired but determined President George W. Patton will not rest until every last enemy is crushed under the boot of liberty and justice.

The Lesson Of Iraq

Demosthenes and others have blogged this item from The Guardian yesterday which claims that Dubya has nixed a Syria invasion. Let’s hope it‘s true.

But, it would seem to me to be fairly easy to change his mind if Wolfowitz or Rummy are of a mind to. All they have to do is draw the parallel between Poppy leaving Saddam in power when he had enough troops on the ground to go all the way to Baghdad and Junior leaving Assad in power when he has the troops on the ground to go all the way to Damascus (and Beirut.) I’m sure his good friend and fellow “man of peace” Ariel Sharon would be happy to weigh in on that as well.

If Syria is off the table, however, it appears that Israel is consciously playing cozy with the administration for reasons that make no sense unless they really believe that Assad is about to fold up his tent and run crying from the room. Otherwise, this sort of thing seems designed to inflame the situation to a point where invasion is unavoidable.

Mofaz, who often serves as Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s “bad cop” in taking a hard security line regarding Israel’s Arab neighbors, was quoted Monday as detailing demands he said Israel would ask the Americans to pass on to Syrian officials.

Accusing Assad of having supplied Iraq with weaponry during the war, as well as making statements that appeared to negate Israel’s right to exist as a nation, Mofaz told the Ma’ariv daily:

“We have a long list of issues that we are thinking of demanding of the Syrians, and it is proper that this be done by the Americans. It begins with removing the threat of Hezbollah in south Lebanon; distancing long-range rockets; moving Hezbollah away from the south, up to dismantling [Hezbollah]; stopping Iranian aid to Hezbollah via Syrian ports; and halting the granting of the cover of respectability to the terror headquarters of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad based in Damascus, from which they dispatch orders and funding to Palestinian terrorist organizations.”

Inexplicably, (to me, anyway) the prevailing view really is that the US can now control events without having to go to war because it has demonstrated that it is willing to use force in Iraq.

Thomas Friedman says that we should begin a policy of “aggressive engagement” with Syria which, because we have no legal basis for a military invasion, falls somewhere between military aggression and “useless constructive engagement.” Basically, it consists of “getting in Syria’s face every day” and reminding the people of Syria how bad they have it. Somehow, this is supposed to force Syria to change because Assad saw what happened to Saddam when he refused to do what the US told it to do.

If that is the case, then it would be ridiculous to take the threat of invasion off the table because without it, it’s just a bunch of annoying hot air. Implicit in these complaints is the threat of military action and everybody knows it. It makes no sense otherwise.

But, more importantly, we need to look more closely at the example we made of Saddam Hussein and the lessons that other foreign leaders are likely to have drawn from it.

Immediately after 9/11 various friends of the administration like Perle and Woolsey immediately began banging the drum to invade Iraq, a desire that was fully documented for years by various highly influential policy makers in the administration.

Throughout the next few months, speculation in the media built as to whether the US was going to adopt this policy.

The administration released TheBush Doctrine stating in clear terms the fact that the US is adopting a strategy of pre-emption to remove the threat of weapons of mass destruction before they are operational.

In August Dick Cheney made a speech laying out the case for regime change in Iraq and the US willingness to invade unilaterally.

In September, the President changed course and went to the UN and asked for a resolution requiring that Iraq rid itself of its WMD and allow inspectors back into the country to verify said disarmament.

The UNSC voted unanimously for this resolution, Saddam declared he had destroyed his WMD long ago and the inspectors were allowed back into the country.

From that time until March, inspectors had been in the country and found no evidence of WMD. The US then said that time had run out and launched the invasion against the wishes of most of the Security Council and much of the world.

Throughout this time, the US government had insisted that if Saddam disarmed we would have no need to invade. Saddam claimed throughout that he had disarmed and allowed weapons inspectors into the country to verify that.

We have been in the country for a month now and have yet to turn up any evidence of WMD and now seem to be shifting our sights to Syria and rewriting the reasons for the invasion to be purely a war of liberation.

Yet, everyone is saying that since we deposed Saddam tyrants and despots everywhere will scurry to do our bidding in order to avoid similar treatment. Indeed, the administration says this straightforwardly: “They would do well to learn the lesson of Iraq…”

But, the lesson of Iraq is that if the US has decided to invade it has no compunction about drawing up a speculative list of crimes such as harboring terrorists and WMD’s, followed by a series of demands that you cease doing those things. Unfortunately, it has also shown that even if you make an effort to comply with those demands and as impossible as it is to prove a negative, it will say that you are lying and invade anyway.

I have no doubt that Bashar Assad is aware that Bush stuck his head in Condi Rice’s office last spring and said “Fuck Saddam, we’re taking him out,” which means that nothing short of Saddam’s ruling junta committing mass suicide could have stopped the war despite all of the posturing before the world community about “disarmament.”

The lesson of Iraq is that the United States is going to do what it wants to do without regard to international law or any nation’s good faith effort to cooperate. If they have decided to take military action against you it is a fait accompli. “Aggressive engagement” looks suspiciously like the “Decade of Defiance and Deception” public relations package that sold the war to the American public. No world leader is now under the misapprehension that complying with American demands necessarily guarantees that he will not be invaded and deposed anyway. There is no value in face saving or compromise because the US has proved that it will change its goals and create new rationales at will. So, the only question for any leader in this situation is whether to surrender without bloodshed or go down fighting. All moral authority is vested in America’s willingness to deploy its military.

The lesson of Iraq for the US is that the United States had better be prepared to invade any country it “aggressively engages” from now on because it proved to leaders everywhere that capitulating to its “demands” guarantees them nothing. US power now rests entirely on force – it can no longer use diplomacy or any kind of positive reward for good behavior because the lesson of Iraq is that the US cannot be trusted to negotiate in good faith. Any threats short of war are useless because foreign leaders can no longer count on the US to keep its word not to invade if certain conditions have been met.

American foreign policy is now entirely unpredictable and is based upon nothing more than an elastic self-serving notion of American security. It requires no international consensus regardless of whether it directly impacts US national security and does not follow any international law or norms. It interprets treaties as it wishes without regard to precedent and holds other nations to standards to which it does not hold itself. It does not speak with one voice so its impossible to judge its real position and act accordingly. The American public are overwhelmingly supportive of the administration’s new policy regardless of whether the government lies blatently about its reasons so there is little hope of any internal pressure to moderate. The world must now base its relationship with America on nothing more than blind hope or fear of one man’s unknown intentions.

The lesson of Iraq is that the US is now the world’s most powerful rogue state.

GOP Flack

Following this Atrios post I see that Robert George of the NY Post writes to Romanesko’s Media News in response to Michael Wolff’s article and my post speculating that the unnamed “uber-civilian” is Jim Wilkinson:

Michael Wolff probably should have named who he was having trouble with — it would hardly be the first time that a journalist has complained about how much (or how little) information that they are getting from official sources (or for that matter, how much they are being “spun”). It seems to me that the biggest problem that Wolff (and many in blogworld) have with Jim Wilkinson (if that is indeed the person to whom Wolff is referring) is his “uber-civilian” and “Republican operative” status. First, there seemed to be a hint that it is wrong for a civilian to be doing public affairs. But the simple fact is — as has been reported elsewhere and I can confirm — is that Wilkinson is a Navy reservist. Now, that doesn’t make him active duty, but it doesn’t make him a total “civilian” either.

As for Wilkinson’s alleged party affiliation, well before heading to CENTCOM, he worked out of the White House press operation. I’m sure the WH people felt that the combination of military and political background made him a good pick to flack for Tommy Franks. Kinda makes sense to me. Besides, are we to be shocked — shocked!!!! — that a press person representing an administration’s viewpoints (even those in a war zone) might have been involved in politics earlier?

I don’t know why a civilian reservist who is not on active duty would be wearing a uniform, but perhaps that’s just an odd vainglorious affectation rather than an attempt to appear to be DOD instead of White House. In any case, it is just a little bit of delicious detail and holds no real importance.

What I find really amazing is that George acknowledges Wilkinson is representing the “administration’s viewpoint” when he says:

“I have a brother who is in a Hummer at the front, so don’t talk to me about too much fucking air-conditioning.” “A lot of people don’t like you.” “Don’t fuck with things you don’t understand.” “This is fucking war, asshole.” “No more questions for you.”

I always felt that the administration acted like a bunch of cheap movie gangsters, but it’s quite refreshing to see a Republican concur.

However, he still does not really understand why people object to a partisan hack like Wilkinson being influential in the war zone. It’s not just that Wilkinson characterized the bourgeois rioters as “volunteers” when everybody knows that they were virtually all paid congressional staffers. It’s because his job is to spin the war and control the message and that’s just a little bit offensive to old fashioned people who still think that the military should not be explicitly political, particularly in wartime. And it’s all the more objectionable when this very same fellow is the one who was in charge of compiling the report “A Decade of Defiance and Deception that included so many of the now disproved allegations about aluminum tubes and the like.

Here are some excerpts

of an internet cache of this archived article

from Newsweek written by Martha Brant last September:

Ladies and Gentlemen … the Band: Selling the war in Iraq

“We’re getting the band together,” White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett told the group on their first conference call last week.

The “Band” is made up of the people who brought you the war in Afghanistan—or at least the accompanying public-relations campaign. Their greatest hit: exposing the Taliban’s treatment of women.

Now, they’re back for a reunion tour on Iraq. The Band’s instrument, of course, is information.

They aim to use it against Saddam Hussein, respond to his disinformation and control the message within the administration so no one—not even Vice President Dick Cheney—freelances on Iraq.

That’s no easy task. The members talk every day by phone at 9:30 a.m.

The key players are a handful of rising stars in their early 40s and under:

For starters there’s Deputy Communications Director Jim Wilkinson, 32, a fast-talking Texan who has become an unlikely but keen student of Islam. He recently got back from a trip to Morocco where he continued his study of Arabic (which he can now read and write pretty well).

It was Wilkinson who spearheaded the successful Afghan women’s campaign last year. A Naval Reserve officer, Wilkinson got his start working with Bush ally Texas Rep. Dick Armey. He’s the go-to guy when the White House needs information against its enemies.

In the last few weeks, he and his underlings have weeded through hundreds of pages of news clippings, U.N. resolutions and State Department reports to compile an arsenal of documents against Saddam Hussein. They released the first round last week: “Decade of Defiance and Deception” (a broken-U.N.-resolutions hit parade).

Then there’s Tucker Eskew, 41, a savvy South Carolinian, who will soon be named the director of the new Office of Global Communications, which will be formally launched this fall. Neither a Texan nor a lifelong Bushie, he earned his stripes during the Florida election mess by becoming the campaign’s tropical smooth-talker.

[…]

It was Bartlett, Bush’s right-hand man and the 31-year-old leader of the Band, who has insisted that this and all documents be sourced. Wilkinson spent hours footnoting the 22-page “Decade of Defiance” document released last week, for example. “We compiled every single possible bit of research we could find and then set out to verify, verify, verify,” Wilkinson explains.

[…]

The White House is sending administration bigwigs to hearings this week and next to help make Bush’s case against Saddam Hussein—not just to Congress, but to the American people. It’s the Band’s job to make sure that case gets heard.

They’ll be playing soon at a TV, newspaper and radio near you.

I would have thought that once the invasion was underway that the DOD could be depended upon to handle the press. Why a costumed White House “band member” needed to be there is still not clear, George’s oh-so-world weary Raines impression notwithstanding. Perhaps it is standard in all wars for the White House to have a representative at Central Command to coordinate “the message” and tell reporters “don’t fuck with things you don’t understand” and “no more questions for you.” But, that wouldn’t make it any less disturbing.

Law and Order: Private Justice Squad

Boy, those police states are just awful. I’m sure glad we liberated the Iraqis from a regime that would do things like this:

…[he] witnessed coworkers and supervisors literally buying and selling women for their own personal enjoyment, and employees would brag about the various ages and talents of the individual slaves they had purchased.”

…[they were] engaging in perverse, illegal and inhumane behavior [and] were purchasing illegal weapons, women, forged passports and [participating in] other immoral acts.”

…women and girls were handed over to bar owners and told to perform sex acts to pay for their costumes.The women who refused were locked in rooms and withheld food and outside contact for days or weeks. After this time they are told to dance naked on table tops and sit with clients. If the women still refuse to perform sex acts with the customers they are beaten and raped in the rooms by the bar owners and their associates. They are told if they go to the police they will be arrested for prostitution and being an illegal immigrant.”

It is so nice that the United States has arrived to set things right.

Oh, wait a minute. These are things that were done by our All American Dyncorps Rent-a-cops in Bosnia. And guess what? We’re gonna send ’em to Iraq! I’m sure they’ll have some juicy stories to swap with those Ba’athist secret police we’ve also hired to “restore order.”

Dyncorp Wants You

That plan appears to be almost ready. Half a world away from the bedlam in Iraq, just outside of Forth Worth, Texas, police recruiters are currently manning the phones for Dyncorp, a multi-billion dollar military Contractor. For Dyncorp the turmoil that is emerging in Iraq could mean a boom in business.

“When the area is safe, we will go in. Watch CNN. In the meantime fax us a resume if you want a job,” Homer Newman, a Dyncorp recruiter told Corpwatch. But Chuck Wilkins, a company spokesman in Virginia, said: “The contract hasn’t yet been awarded.”

Yet a website has been offering Dyncorp jobs to “individuals with appropriate experience and expertise to participate in an international effort to re-establish police, justice and prison functions in post-conflict Iraq.” The company is looking for active duty or recently retired cops and prison guards and “experienced judicial experts.” Applicants must be US citizens with ten years of sworn civilian domestic law enforcement. The site even has a toll free number and a “cops.recruiting@dyncorp.com” email address for applicants.

The website explains that recruits will help “establish police stations and monitor activities determining the selection, screening and training processes for police officers, demonstrating police practices and techniques used by democratic societies advising local police on criminal investigation methods and monitoring their progress working side-by-side with police officers from around the world reporting humanitarian violation.”

Cool, huh? Too bad about those unfortunate allegations of Human Rights Violations and Fraud

The company is not short on controversy. Under the Plan Colombia contract, the company has 88 aircraft and 307 employees – 139 of them American – flying missions to eradicate coca fields in Colombia. Soldier of Fortune magazine once ran a cover story on DynCorp, proclaiming it “Colombia’s Coke-Bustin’ Broncos.”

US Rep. Janice Schakowsky, an Illinois Democrat, told Wired magazine that hiring a private company to fly what amounts to combat missions is asking for trouble. DynCorp’s employees have a history of behaving like cowboys,” Schakowsky noted.

“Is the US military privatizing its missions to avoid public controversy or to avoid embarrassment – to hide body bags from the media and shield the military from public opinion?” she asked.

Indeed a group of Ecuadoran peasants filed a class action against the company in September 2001. The suit alleges that herbicides spread by DynCorp in Colombia were drifting across the border, withering legitimate crops, causing human and livestock illness, and, in several cases, killing children. Assistant Secretary of State Rand Beers intervened in the case right away telling the judge the lawsuit posed “a grave risk to US national security and foreign policy objectives.”

And then there was all that unpleasantness about slavery and prostitution:

What you have here is a Lord of the Flies mentality. Basically you’ve got a bunch of strong men who are raping and manipulating young girls who have been kidnapped from their homes. Who’s the bad guy? Is it the guy who buys the girl to give her freedom, the one who kidnaps her and sells her or the one who liberates her and ends up having sex with her? And what does it mean when the U.S. steps up and says, ‘We don’t have any jurisdiction’? That’s absurd.”

Rummy meant it when he said freedom meant people were free to commit crimes. “Course, you’re especially free to commit crimes if you are a private cop working for a defense contractor who has immunity from prosecution.

I sure hope our Iraqi friends don’t choke on those big old whiffs ‘o freedom we’re giving them.

The American Death Star

Mary over at the Watch (which has a whole bunch of great posts up) sent me this analysis from Stratfor by Dr. George Friedman on the Big Picture. Their belief is that the rationale for invasion can be reduced to 2 simple premises:

1. To transform the psychology of the Islamic world, which had perceived the United States as in essence weak and unwilling to take risks to achieve its ends.

2. To use Iraq as a strategic base of operations from which to confront Islamic regimes that are either incapable of or unwilling to deny al Qaeda and other Islamist groups access to enabling resources.

The first is really just a way to demonstrate the basic logic of the Bush Doctrine and it comes down to a rather cultish worship of Machiavelli. (Check out Michael Ledeen’s onanistic writings on the subject.) You know the line:

My view is that it is desirable to be both loved

and feared; but it is difficult to achieve both and,

if one of them has to be lacking, it is much safer

to be feared than loved.

[…]

Nevertheless, a ruler must make himself feared

in such a way that, even if he does not become

loved, he does not become hated. For it is

perfectly possible to be feared without incurring

hatred. And this can always be achieved if he

refrains from laying hands on the property of his

citizens and subjects.

I’m at a loss as to how this can possibly fit in with the Straussian views of the conservative Virtuecrats, but I guess it all just boils down to team sports or something. The more I delve into the philosophical foundations of the Bush Doctrine and those who support it the more incoherent it is. Christians for Machiavelli. Now that’s some intellectual gymnastics.

I suppose it is of a piece with a government that openly embraces fear and power as a policy while using the rhetoric of liberty and religion to sell it. This kind of cognitive dissonance is so pervasive that you have to give them credit for their superhuman ability to keep their heads from exploding.

Anyway, the Stratfor report takes a whack at examining the psychology of those we believe we can cow with our vast military prowess:

The simplistic idea that resentment of the United States will generate effective action by Arabs misses a crucial point. Two scales are at work here: the radicalism scale and the hope scale. On the radicalism scale, the level of radicalism and anti-Americanism in the Arab world has been off the chart for months. Increasing the level would be difficult. However, radicalism by itself does not lead to action. There must also be hope — a sense that there are weaknesses in the U.S. position that can be exploited, that there is some possibility of victory, however distant. So long as the hope scale tends toward hopelessness, radicalism can be intense.

The United States was prepared to allow the radicalism scale to go deep into the danger zone, but Washington has been trying to keep the hope scale deeply in the green zone. Israel’s failure after 1967 was inherent in its position: The Israelis depended heavily on outsiders for national security. The Arab perception was that the Israelis could be attacked by splitting them from their patrons. This sense of vulnerability led to an active response to defeat. .

It goes on to say that the US must now work to avoid projecting a sense of vulnerability and suggests that in order to ultimately prevail it must reduce the hatred. The hatred will cause us to lose control of Iraq and that loss of control will lead to a perception of vulnerability.

I agree that the administration believes all this, but it remains inexplicable to me. Yes, al Qaeda uses the “Americans are a bunch of pussies” rhetoric in their recruitment videos. And, they do harbor the illusion that they single handedly brought down the Soviets (a trait they share with the neocons.) But, does anyone believe that this invasion of Iraq has somehow made us seem invulnerable to anybody but a bunch of stupid Americans who missed the point of Star Wars?

Terrorists don’t have to defeat the mighty US military to win. These people already know that all it takes is a handful of fanatics killing American civilians on American soil to provoke our government into acting like a rabid dog by wildly undertaking reckless adventures abroad, invoking totalitarian measures at home and spending more and more of our money on warmaking capability. We could theoretically scare all the tinhorn dictators in the world into cowering like a bunch battered Democratic Senators before our mighty sword, but it is an extremely strange reading of psychology that says you can frighten suicide bombers.

But, the neocons think that terrorists are just agents of rogue states so they don’t spend a lot of time second guessing their decade old plan to rule the world. But even by their own logic, I fail to see how aggressive bellicosity toward Syria even before the bullets have stopped flying in Iraq is going to accomplish their goal of being both feared and loved.

With respect to the second point, there is some speculation that this saber rattling toward Syria is a sop to Ariel Sharon as an inducement to sign on to the “road map.” On the other hand Richard Perle believes that since we’ve “liberated” 25 million Iraqis, we’ve done our part for the Arabs and the Palestinians can piss up a rope. So, as usual, nobody really knows what the hell they are up to.

Perhaps they actually believe they can force Assad to step down just by saying “boo!” But, if the Stratfor analysis is correct, if he stays in power after all of this in your face rhetoric we must invade Syria or risk being seen as vulnerable. And, if we do that then we will definitely create more hatred. It’s hard to see how they can finesse this one into another “liberation.”

When you open your big mouth and roar at other countries that you “expect” them to do what you tell them – no need for a UN resolution fig leaf or wimpy coalitions in Bush’s Empire –you’ve got to be prepared to back it up. And when you talk tough to a guy whose power rests entirely on his repressive authority you’ve left him no choice but to go down fighting. So, unless Assad humiliates himself and backs down or Bush backs down, thereby making the US appear vulnerable, we are backing ourselves into a corner. It’s very likely that we will be invading Syria.

You can’t fight in here, this is the War Room!

Via Atrios this may be the best article yet about the surreality of Operation Big Swinging Manhood.

Even Kubrick and Southern couldn’t have made this stuff up:

[…]

First it was CNN that replayed my question – the CNN view was, more or less, the liberal media view: a certain hand wringing about whether the media was being used. Then it was Fox, with its extreme, love-it-or-leave-it, approach to the war, which took me apart: I was clearly a potential traitor.

And then it was Rush.

To his audience of 20 million – pro-war, military minded, Bush-centered, media-hating – lily white-Rush laid me out. I was not only a reporter, but one from New York magazine. “New York” resonated. It combined with “media” and suddenly, in the hands of Rush, I was as elitist and as pampered (fortunately nobody mentioned the Ritz) and as dismissive of the concerns of real Americans as, well, Rush’s 20 million assume the media to be. Whereas Rush, that noted foot soldier, represented the military heartland.

What’s more, according to Rush, that great defender of the rights of African-Americans, I was a racist. Duh. A white liberal challenging a black general. It’s a binary world.

And Rush gave out my email address. Almost immediately, the 3,000 emails, full of righteous fury, started to come.

Clearly marked as the rabble-rouser of the get-out-of-Doha movement, I was approached by some enforcer types. The first person was a version of a Graham Greene character. He represented the White House, he said. Wasn’t of the military. Although, he said, he was embedded here (“sleeping with a lot of flatulent officers,” he said). He was incredibly conspiratorial. Smooth but creepy: “If you had to write the memo about media relations, what would be your bullet points?”

The next person to buttonhole me was the Centcom uber-civilian, a thirty-ish Republican operative. He was more full-metal-jacket in his approach (although he was a civilian he was, inexplicably, in uniform – making him, I suppose a sort of para-military figure): “I have a brother who is in a Hummer at the front, so don’t talk to me about too much fucking air-conditioning.” And: “A lot of people don’t like you.” And then: “Don’t fuck with things you don’t understand.” And too: “This is fucking war, asshole.” And finally: “No more questions for you.”

I had been warned.

Read the whole thing

It’s pretty clear who the civilian in uniform is and he’s a real piece ‘o work:

Signaling the high interest in improving the military’s image is the appointment of [Jim] Wilkinson as spokesman for CENTCOM. A veteran White House publicist as well as a Navy Reserve lieutenant, Wilkinson headed the anti-Taliban Coalition Information Center during the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan and was spokesman for the Bush campaign in Miami-Dade County during the Florida recount after the 2000 election.

Wilkinson’s political credentials have aroused journalistic concerns that the Bush administration, not known for its openness, is trying to control the message and use it for re-election purposes in the 2004 campaign.

Buzzflash reported:

…this entire public affairs operation is headed Jim Wilkinson, one of the thugs who protested the Florida recount. Ever the good soldier, (though a civilian, Wilkinson reportedly wears a military desert camouflage uniform to work)…

He is a big believer in freedom of expression, though, so it’s hard to believe he would try to muzzle the press. Why, during the Florida recount CNN reported:

A spokesman for the Bush recount team in Florida said he was there during the exchanges Wednesday and saw no violence or kicking.

“I can tell you that simply did not happen,” said Jim Wilkinson.

“What you had was a lot of young volunteers who, frankly, objected to this election being decided behind closed doors, without the media having a full view and without our observers having a full view,” Wilkinson said. “We executed our First Amendment rights in a peaceful manner, with full decorum.”

Yes. Elections these days are so darned “untidy,” aren’t they?

Heads or Tails?

If there was ever any doubt as to the reason why nothing makes sense in this administration this removes it:

With strong and powerful personalities such as Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Vice President Cheney at the center of these disputes, the battles are often carried on to the last minute, when Bush makes a decision. Both sides wage spirited fights because, up until the moment Bush tips his hand, they assure themselves that the president shares their point of view.

The process, some officials say, at times verges on dysfunctional, largely because people at the lower levels make decisions without knowing or understanding the actual policy. That in turn can confuse and confound allies and foes as the administration appears to shift tactics from diplomacy toward confrontation, and back again.

No kidding.

That bodes well for this:

Administration officials have told the Israeli government that it is in its interest to allow Abbas to succeed. “We’re talking hard, right now,” an official said, about the steps expected of the Israeli government. A senior Arab official said Arabs will be watching to see whether Israel takes substantive steps such as quickly reducing the number of roadblocks and checkpoints on the West Bank or dismantling some settlements.

Yet Israel has serious concerns about the road map, and officials have indicated they want to renegotiate some aspects, a position that has some sympathy in other parts of the administration.

And this could certainly be a problem:

Asked if the United States was preparing to take some action against Syria, Wolfowitz said, “That’s not a decision the Defense Department makes. That obviously . . . would be a decision for the president and Congress.”

Yet, on the same day as Wolfowitz’s comments, Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage told reporters that “in the last several days they have responded quite well to U.S. and coalition warnings and démarches about closing their borders and things of that nature and she has done so.”

While the State Department is not unhappy to have Syria rattled, the rhetoric has begun to alarm some officials, as well as officials in the British government. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell is frequently forced to deny in television interviews overseas that the United States has a secret list of countries it plans to attack next

So, what do you think he does? Eeeny meeny miney mo? Rock, paper, scissors?