After flying to Tampa to interview him, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote last year that the University of South Florida’s attempt to fire Sami Al-Arian shed light on “what kind of universities we desire, how much dissent we dare tolerate and how we treat minorities in times of national stress.” He noted that the proceedings began after “Bill O’Reilly invited Mr. Al-Arian on his Fox News show and virtually accused him of being a terrorist.”
[…]
O’Reilly says that “we took a lot of heat. And when it comes our way, no fruit basket. We had this guy dead. . . . The game being played now in the media, if you’re in a minority group, is that if you can’t win the debate, you demonize the person reporting the story by calling them anti-whatever. I’m not playing that game.”
I guess they repealed that pesky presumption of innocence thing in the Patriot Act. Or has The O’Reilly Factor been deputized by Ashcroft to act as a fair and balanced military tribunal?
Name of blog notices Safire’s gone all Noonan using the tiresome trope of channeling the dead for convenient conversations supporting their positions. Normal people call this fiction writing, but hey, in this Republican world we live in, it’s called journalism.
Which brings me to La Noonan’s thoroughly bizarre piece today, a “letter” so twisted that I am forced to conclude that this person is in need of some psychiatric intervention of the political kind.
Political Projection is an involuntary process motivated by emotions wherein a person imposes a subjective feeling or a thought on the other political party. Patients like Peggy are unaware of ‘projecting’ or how and why they do it. There is such an emotional need and frustrated feeling involved in such ’emotional-mental’ projection that when you read one of these”advisories,” it’s looking into the psyche of a very wounded and troubled woman.
When read correctly, we can see that Peggy is deeply unhappy with the Republican Party. Let’s try to see beneath the words and help Peggy understand the hidden feelings and emotions that drive her to constantly analyze the Democrats and innappropriately offer her counsel:
“In the Democratic Party now, and for some time, I have not perceived that they are trying to get us to a good place. They seem interested only in thwarting the trek of the current president and his party, who are, to the Democrats, ‘the other.'”
Clearly, Peggy is extremely guilty about the 8 years of coordinated and malicious character assassination that she and others like her perpetrated against the last President.
“You have grown profoundly unserious. This is the result of the win-at-any-cost mindset.”
This is a recurring theme of Peggy’s writings since George W. Bush was anointed to the office of President through a patently legalistic technicality rather than a clear mandate of the people. She is obviously deeply troubled by her driving desire to see the Republicans win by any means necessary in 2000.
“Democratic leaders, on the other hand, have by and large approached Iraq not with deep head-heart integration but with what appears to be mere calculation. What will play? What will resonate?”
Karl Rove has done great damage to Peggy’s fragile psyche with his intervention into the foreign policy of the country for electoral advantage and the obvious political calculations he uses to distance the president from his father, the “wimp.” Peggy is ashamed of her complicity in using GOP talking points and advancing an agenda for purely political reasons. Peggy should stay very far away from Karl, for the sake of her delicate mental health.
“You have become the party of snobs. You have become the party of Americans who think they’re better than other Americans.”
Here we have the case of someone who lives a life far away from the ordinary Americans she purports to represent and who feels that she is betraying her roots. Yet she is also one who quite openly presumes to write this criticism of the 50% of Americans who vote with the other party. She is becoming confused and irritated. Her self-hatred comes to the surface.
Her piece then devolves into a long remembrance of her history, that of a working class girl who became disillusioned with her chosen party because it ceased to care. It stopped being serious. It became radical and rude and mean, forcing old ladies to lose all their money on the bus and taking her hard earned money in taxes. She says,
“All of it came together bit by bit, and I started to become a conservative, and in time a Republican. And for the very reasons that my father was a Democrat.”
Oh my. Are we close to a breakthrough?
But no, she digresses into a long dissertation on gun control and abortion, veritably begging the Democrats to adopt the position of the Republican Party. She says,
“Democratic leaders are radical on abortion because they live in fear of–brace yourself, more snobs coming–a pro-abortion lobby that has money, clout and workers, and that can kill the hopes of any Democratic aspirant who doesn’t toe the line. And that pro-abortion lobby is largely composed of the professionals, journalists, lawyers and operatives who long ago showed such contempt for America.”
Read that again. Journalists, lawyers and operatives who long ago showed such contempt for America. Peggy has just disowned her public self.
She then gives the Democrats some concrete advice:
“Look at the clock. Know what time it is. Half the country is wondering if we are in the end times. (Excuse me, I mean they fear man may be living through a final, wrenching paroxysm, the result of man’s inhumanity to man and of the inevitable culmination of several unhelpful forces and trends.) So wake up and get serious.”
Half of the people are wondering if we are in the “end times.”
The Democrats need to wake up a get serious.
Oh Peggy
“Don’t ‘position’ yourself on issues like Iraq, think about your position on Iraq and be guided by a question: What will be good and right for America and the world? Reach your conclusions and hold to them as long as you can hold them honestly.”
Peggy obviously feels uncomfortable with the myriad lies and distortions that have been told by this administration. She doesn’t like the fact that the administration position is best called the “unilateral-regime-change-disarmament-exile-UN-coalition-of-the-willing-we’ll-go-it-alone-because-they-have-nukes-drones-terrorists-evil-gas-his-own-people-moral-clarity-doctrine-everybody-in-the-whole-world-hates-Bush-Doctrine.”
“Stare down the abortion lobby, the gun-ban nuts, etc. Be moderate. Make progress.”
Peggy is telling the Republican Party that they need to listen to the few remaining moderates in the party. Poor Peggy.
“Be pro-free-speech again. Allow internal divisions and dissent. A vital political party should have divisions and dissent.”
More of Peggy’s discomfort with the mechanical Borg-like message machine of the GOP organization. She remembers a Republican party of old that held views from Rockefeller to Goldwater. Her envy of the diversity and tolerance of a party that holds views from Kucinich to Lieberman is palpable.
“Develop a new and modern Democratic rationale–the reason regular people should be Democrats again. Stop being just the We Hate Republicans Party. That’s not a belief, it’s a tic.”
Those Clinton hating dittoheads are getting on Peggy’s nerves. She’s tired of hearing the daily ranting of those who blame all the problems in the world on “liberals.” She yearns for the day when Republicans can let go of the Neanderthal hatred of the “other.” She hates herself for being part of something so ugly.
“Stop being the party of snobs. Show love for your country and its people–all its people. Stop looking down on those who resist your teachings.”
And by this letter of advice she embodies the very thing she imputes to the Democrats. Has there ever been a woman who was less self aware?
“Stop taking such comfort in Bill Clinton’s two wins. Move on. He was a great political talent, but he won by confusing the issues, not facing them. That’s a trick that tends to work only at certain times and only with powerful charisma… Ask him to stay home. He reminds people of embarrassment. He uses up all your oxygen.”
Peggy has a powerful attraction to Bill Clinton and it discombulates her considerably. She is distracted by his presence and finds it hard to breathe. He makes her think dirty thoughts.
“Stop the ideology. A lot of Democratic Party movers and intellectuals have created or inherited a leftist ideology that they try to impose on life. It doesn’t spring from life; it’s forced on life, and upon people. Stop doing that–it’s what weirdos who are detached from reality do.”
Peggy has truly grown to despise the likes of Grover Norquist, Bill Kristol and Newt Gingrich. The “movement ideologues” make her sick, she thinks they are wierdos who are detached from reality. She feels that they are imposing themselves on her. It would seem that she feels imposed upon by many men. (Although she only describes one as having “powerful charisma.”)
“And by the way, I’d like it if you started smoking again, at least for a while. Democrats were nicer when they smoked. Then they let all those Carrie Nation types in the party beat them to a pulp, and regular Democrats stopped feeling free to be regular flawed messy humans.”
This is a cry for help. Peggy is clearly nearing a suicidal crisis. She feels flawed and messy and horny and she can’t live with it. It may be time for an intervention.
“You’re still one of our two great political parties. Show some class, the good kind. Throw your cap over the wall as JFK said, and boldly follow.”
Yes. Become Republicans. The very existence of the Democratic Party is painful and frustrating to Peggy Noonan.
Earlier in the piece she said the Democrats of the 60’s adhered to the following credo:
“We do not love this place; we prefer leaders unsullied by the grubby demands of electoral politics; we are drawn to the ideological purity of Ho, Fidel, Mao. And by the way we’re taking over: Oppose our vision and we’ll take care of you by revolutionary means.”
These words come from the heart. She does not love this place. She prefers leaders unsullied by such grubby demands of electoral politics as adhering to the notion that a duly elected President should not be “unelected” by a partisan impeachment for a personal indiscretion, or grubby demands that votes be counted. She is drawn to the ideological purity of McCarthy, Father Coughlin, Perle.
And by the way, she’s taking over: Oppose her vision and she’ll take care of you by revolutionary means…like paperless voting machines.
Thank you Matthew Yglesias for blogging what I have been screaming at the television since Saturday in response to the smug argument coming from certain quarters that the capture of Khalid Sheik Mohammed somehow proves that the US can successfully wage war against Iraq and al Qaeda:
But no. We’re not at war with Iraq right now. And yes, the administration could be more preoccupied with Iraq than it is today. We could, for example, be waging a shooting war against their army which, I hope, would attract some attention. You also need to consider that the bulk of the terrorism-based anti-war argument has to do with the notion that a war will inflame public opinion against us, which really has nothing to do with this arrest.
In fact, one could argue that the high profile arrest, coming on the eve of the invasion may have the exact opposite effect that it is designed to have — that is to cow the tremulous terrorists into throwing up their arms in surrender at the sight of our massive martial superiority.
I am in favor of arresting al Qaeda terrorists and bringing them to justice (and by that I do not mean the kind of justice Judge George W. Bean endorses, i.e. the “they won’t be bothering us any longer heh, heh, heh” kind.) A series of these high profile arrests, with the aid of countries from all over the world, particularly Muslim countries, and a transparent open legal proceeding would have been the way to deal with the issue. By framing it as a “war” it played into the megalomaniacal mindset of the terrorists. Had they been designated as global criminals in dry legal language, rather than with the religious rhetoric as the personification of “evil” they would have been somewhat marginalized as martyrs and it would have allowed the Muslim nations to respond with more vigor.
But then, a megalomaniacal mindset is not confined to terrorists, is it?
The LA Times has lately been running some highly critical news analysis of the Bush administration. In fact, the Times is out front on a lot of issues pertaining to the mid-east, largely because of its fine expert Robin Wright, who is one of the most insightful analysts of the politics of the region around.
Today, the LA Times has two interesting reviews of the Bush administration’s “diplomacy”, the first being a global analysis of how their blunderbuss technique is perceived both overseas and domestically, and the second is a scathing indictment of Paul Wolfowitz’s obviously inept diplomacy in Turkey:
“If we’re an arrogant nation, they’ll view us that way,” George W. Bush said during his 2000 presidential campaign. “But if we’re a humble nation, they’ll respect us.”
Little more than two years later, the world’s verdict on President Bush’s diplomacy is split — between critics who see it as arrogant and allies who support its goals but sometimes wonder where the “humble” went.
The leaders of France, Germany, Russia and China, all nations Bush hoped to count as allies in the confrontation with Iraq, have joined to resist the president’s drive toward war, with complaints over what they see as American highhandedness.
Even staunch allies such as Prime ministers Tony Blair of Britain and Jose Maria Aznar of Spain have sent word to Bush that some U.S. bravado — like Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld’s dismissal of “Old Europe” — has done more harm than good.
Bush and his aides, not surprisingly, push back.
“What you have here is a president who is willing to point out what’s right and wrong, maybe sometimes undiplomatically,” said a senior administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
[…]
Can you believe this? I’m going to have to begin to give more credence to the idea that President Gantry actually believes that he has been chosen by God to lead this Crusade. He alone is endowed with the wisdom to proclaim what is right and what is wrong.
This is precisely the kind of provocative fundamentalist sloganeering that plays into bin Laden’s hands while offending the more modern rationalists who make up the moderate muslim factions in the mid-east, not to mention our allies and cultural compatriots in the rest of the world.
Early last month, Vice President Dick Cheney telephoned Turkey’s prime minister with an urgent message: The Bush administration wanted the country’s parliament to vote within days– just before the Muslim holiday of Bayram– on a request to base U.S. troops in Turkey for an assault on Iraq.
The timing of the pressure struck a raw nerve here, one that was still aching when Turkish lawmakers finally took up the request Saturday and dealt it a surprise defeat. As Turks offered explanations Sunday for this stinging defiance of their strongest ally, tales of American insensitivity were high on the list.
[…]
“The Americans kept giving ultimatums and deadlines, asking Turkey to jump into a barrel of fire,” he said. “They seemed to think we could be bought off, but we had real security concerns about what Iraq would look like after Saddam. They never addressed those concerns.”
[…]
For their part, U.S. officials believed the Turks could not afford to turn them down. On the assumption that Turkish leaders understood this, officials led by Paul D. Wolfowitz, the deputy Defense secretary, kept pressing hard for a decision. When Turkey balked, U.S. officials, in private comments to reporters, often questioned the country’s value as an ally.
“The disinformation campaign against Turkey played a big role in upsetting national feelings,” Erdogan told reporters Sunday.
In the end, Washington tried to bargain for Turkey’s loyalty with the promise of an aid package that would include $6 billion in grants. The deal nearly fell apart last week when Turkey balked at one of the conditions– that it agree to strict International Monetary Fund guidelines for reform of its economy.
By week’s end, the government had accepted the condition, but it had no time to explain and sell the accord to lawmakers, many of whom felt that Turkey had been shortchanged.
“The time pressure put on Turkey did not help the Americans’ case,” a senior Turkish diplomat said, because it forced the government to call a vote prematurely.
It is not surprising, when you think about it, that the Bush administration has little patience for the needs of a democratic country to heed the will of its people. There is a strong undemocratic streak running through the modern Republican party that has been becoming more and more obvious over the last 10 years. They are simply not very attuned to the needs of politicians who feel that they must adhere to the wishes of their constituents. This is just as obvious in the way they are treating elected American representatives as in their treatment of overseas allies.
It’s also another reason why we should not place too much store in their professions of desire for democracy throughout the mid-east. This is one concept where practicing what you preach is truly a prerequisite for requiring it of others.
Today, in his ongoing quest to find some way to reconcile his sophomoric cheerleading for the past year with the fact that the team he’s cheering is simultaneously more cynical and more incompetent than his idealistic, childish view of them ever dreamed, Tom Friedman is reduced to sports metaphors. But, he is clearly having a problem letting go of the fantasy that his team aren’t Knights of the roundtable, they are reckless buffoons.
He frames the coming war as a “drama” to which he’d love to pull up a chair and pop up a big bowl of popcorn and just enjoy for the sheer pleasure of watching George W. Bush (professional cheerleader) throw the long bomb. (Has there ever been a less appropriate metaphor? It’s enough to make the stomach churn — even more so if you have a loved one in the military or you happen to be an unfortunate Iraqi likely to be on the receiving end of Bush’s throwing arm. What was he thinking?)
But the truth is that Friedman doesn’t really see this as a dramatic sporting event. He’s no jock, and it shows. He sees it as some sort of medieval morality play in which George W. Bush is Strength, Saddam and bin Laden are Satan and Evil and the Middle East is a democratic Paradise waiting to be born. Strength and Force (with a little help from the comical Crazy) will lead a Crusade to teach the twins, Ignorance and Poverty, that Democracy is their Savior.
But, the long litany of mistakes and miscalculations that Friedman subsequently narrates — what he calls his “dilemma” — is so unintentionally hilarious that it is obvious that what we are seeing is actually a Mack Sennet Keystone Kops farce. Friedman says he thinks the “plan” to spread wholesome democratic capitalistic all-American goodness would have been better served if the Bush administration hadn’t angered all of Europe by trashing the Kyoto treaty, hadn’t alienated the Russian national security elite by trashing the ABM treaty, or hadn’t proposed one radical tax cut on top of another one on the “eve of a huge, costly nation building marathon abroad.”
And Tom thinks Bush made a mistake in not rallying the country for energy conservation, and should have initiated a Manhattan Project for alternative energy. He should have also been deeply involved in resolving the Israeli Palestinian conflict even to the extent that we would threaten to withdraw funds from Israel if they did not cease building settlements. And needless to say it would have been better if the administration had put the Arab countries (like Saudi Arabia, perhaps?) on notice that we would not sit idly by while they tolerated extremists.
It’s actually difficult to watch someone flail so helplessly against that undertow of realism that flows though his column today. He frets that because of all these errors in judgment that “Bush has told us the right thing to do, but he won’t “be able” to do it right.” It apparently doesn’t occur to him that people this inept are highly unlikely to complete a hail mary pass. In fact, President Quarterback hasn’t connected even once in the entire game.
This wishful thinking is running amuck among people who are even less dazzled by the President’s manufactured machismo than Tom Friedman. They cling to the idea that even though this administration has fouled up every single foreign policy initiative, that they wasted all of the U.S. moral authority emanating from 9/11, that they have been proven over and over again to be the boldest and most shameless liars to ever occupy the White House, that somehow they “Just Have To” do this one right. The long bomb “Just Has To” connect.
I think it’s time for everybody to start considering just what we are going to do in the event this thing, like every single other thing this administration has done, goes wrong? What are we going to do when the “It Just Has To Work” theory of geopolitics fails?
I imagine that a lot of us have picked up our copies of “The Guns of August” in recent weeks. There is a sense of things hurtling out of control, nothing going quite the way anyone conceived it. Hubris and belligerant confidence seem to overrule rational analysis in much the same way that the great powers miscalculated and overreached in the early days of WWI.
Vaara points out in a very interesting essay that this is not surprising — that our feelings of deja vu are because the coming invasion, rather than being a “Project For A New American Century,” is really the final chapter of the last one.
It’s a very provocative and interesting piece.
* Phrase also coined by Vaara, but I plan to use it liberally.
I received an e-mail this morning from blogger Centerpoint who kindly pointed me to his site where I could learn how to make my print more readable. Being HTML impaired, I appreciate all the help I can get.
I learned that blogger does not require me to set the font size, which means that everyone can adjust the font on their browsers to the size most comfortable for them. On the larger and largest font sizes on Explorer, the print is quite large and in bold. I hope this helps.
I also changed the font to Ariel, which is the font that I have always preferred for letters. I hope this helps, too.
Monkey Media Report has a very interesting post up about the alternative to war:
Not sure why I haven’t seen more discussion of this one in the blog world: With Weapons of the Will: How to Topple Hussein Nonviolently by Peter Ackerman and Jack DuVall. It’s a ‘must-refute’ for those in favor of a costly U.S. invasion/occupation. Originally published in Sojourners magazine last September (and linked approvingly in a fascinating 3-part analysis at One Hand Clapping), the article points out that civilian populations have risen up a number of times to overthrow dictators who were at least as willing to engage in mass murder as Saddam:
“It’s essential to understand that unless a regime wants to murder the entire population, its ability repressively to compel a population’s compliance is not infinitely elastic.”
According to the authors, the key to sparking the kind of resistance that overthrew Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu in Romania and Augusto Pinochet in Chile is breaking the stranglehold of fear that keeps the people in check. Once that happens – look out, dictator:
“No one doubted the willingness of Pinochet’s regime, in the 1970s and early 1980s, to use terror as an instrument of repression in order to assure the regime’s control: Disappearances, brutal killings of dissidents, and arbitrary arrests had silenced most dissenters. But once that silence was broken in 1983 in a way that the regime could not immediately suppress — through a one-day nationwide slow-down, followed by a nighttime city-wide banging of pots and pans in Santiago — the regime was no longer able to re-establish the same degree of fear in the population, and mammoth monthly protests were soon under way.”
In the case of Romania in 1989, it was the population of Timisoara that lit the bonfire:
“[Shoot to kill orders] arrive in Timisoara that afternoon. At 17:00 water cannons and tear gas are used against the people, tanks and APD’s enter the streets and the shooting begins at about 18:00. They fire indiscriminately into the crowd. This was the watershed of the Revolution – differentiating it from previous demonstrations such as strikes in the Jiu valley and the 1987 riots in Brasov. News spreads quickly, especially by foreign TV and radio transmissions from neighbouring countries. The scale of the massacre becomes more and more exaggerated with reports of up to 60,000 dead in Timisoara…That same night there are sporadic anti-Ceausescu riots in other towns…”
Yep, that’s how successful popular revolt usually works. It’s interesting that when President Bush went to Romania last November, he called upon the memory of Ceausescu to drum up support for invading Iraq. “From that balcony, the dictator heard your voices and faltered,” Bush said, while failing to mention that no foreign army had been necessary. (It should be added that Soviet hands were probably pulling strings behind the scenes in 1989, just as U.S. hands would pull them in Iraq today).
Ackerman and DuVall also note a key point about Saddam’s rule that may make it easier to bring down than the regime of someone like Pinochet:
[“Saddam’s] hold on power is even more reliant on personal loyalties and their reinforcement by material rewards and mortal penalties. As such, the frequent reports of his repression should be seen not only as a sign of his brutality, but as evidence of the disaffection that his capricious, personal style continues to breed: He would not have to crack down if there were no one who might be disloyal.”
In other words, if Hussein started ordering mass executions of crowds in broad daylight – a likely move – a military mutiny like the ones that took place in Romania and Chile would be an even more likely countermove. And it turns out there’s also a strategic advantage from the perspective of a hawk like Rumsfeld:
“[If a campaign began with] civilian-based incidents of disruption that were dispersed around the country and that did not offer convenient targets to shoot at, any attempt to crack down would have to depend on the outermost, least reliable members of Saddam’s repressive apparatus”.
Why is this not the plan on the table in the White House? Why are we spending billions of dollars and endangering the lives of, for instance, my roommate’s brother-in-law? The authors’ final paragraph says it all:
“Regimes have been overthrown that had no compunction about brutalizing their opponents and denying them the right to speak their minds. How? By first demonstrating that opposition is possible, peeling away the regime’s residual public and outside support, quashing its legitimacy, driving up the costs of maintaining control, and overextending its repressive apparatus. Strategic nonviolent action is not about being nice to your oppressor, much less having to rely on his niceness. It’s about dissolving the foundations of his power and forcing him out. It is possible in Iraq.”
Sound like pie in the sky?
Tell it to Nikolae and Elena
This would have worked. With modern media and a concerted effort in other countries in the region, it would have worked. But, it would not effectively establish our reputation as the meanest muthafuggahs on the planet and that, after all, is what this is all about.
“You Will be democratic, and I mean now” is an interesting, if completely incoherant, concept.
Read the entire post. He has many great links to the subject. This, it seems to me, was the real alternative to war.
