In light of what is clearly the utter failure of the administration to follow through on any promise other than “tax cuts for millionaires” and “invade Iraq” (like those photo-op pledges to front line emergency workers like the heroic firefighters) Thomas Spencer asks:
Isn’t it pretty outrageous that the Republicans ran that reprehensible campaign for the midterms in November accusing Democrats of not doing enough to support homeland security?
The rule of thumb is that whatever they accuse the Democrats of doing is what they are doing themselves. Projection as political strategy.
“A defense mechanism in which the individual attributes to other people impulses and traits that he himself has but cannot accept. It is especially likely to occur when the person lacks insight into his own impulses and traits.”
“The externalisation of internal unconscious wishes, desires or emotions on to other people. So, for example, someone who feels subconsciously that they have a powerful latent homosexual drive may not acknowledge this consciously, but it may show in their readiness to suspect others of being homosexual.”
“Attributing one’s own undesirabe traits to other people or agencies, e.g., an aggressive man accuses other people of being hostile.”
“The individual perceives in others the motive he denies having himself. Thus the cheat is sure that everyone else is dishonest. The would-be adulterer accuses his wife of infidelity.”
“People attribute their own undesirable traits onto others. An individual who unconsciously recognises his or her aggressive tendencies may then see other people acting in an excessively aggressive way.”
“Projection is the opposite defence mechanism to identification. We project our own unpleasant feelings onto someone else and blame them for having thoughts that we really have.”
Thanks to MWO, this transcript gave me a real belly laugh.
Crossfire Monday:
CARLSON: I would say there is a deep strain of unreasonableness in the French culture.
In the wake of 9/11, one of the single best sellers in France is a book, as you know, called “The Big Lie,” that claimed that the attacks on the World Trade Center were all part of a conspiracy by the Bush administration. I mean why should the United States listen to a nation that would buy a book like that?
JUSTIN VAISSE, BROOKINGS INSTITUTION: Of course. But then why should France listen to a nation that has newspapers like [The New York Post]? I mean that’s outrageous.
(APPLAUSE)
VAISSE: No, I think that — I really think that’s not a good argument to make. And you know you mentioned that Tom Friedman’s column saying that France was isolating itself just, you know, to make — to posture to seem important and all that. But, you know, let me remind you that President Chirac — in France, people are opposed to the war without the second resolution by 74 percent. But in the rest of the world, it is more like in the 90s — 90 percent.
And so of course Chirac is isolated. He’s somewhat isolated. But you know he’s isolated with billions of people. And so I think — you know, I think it is right that somebody is making the point.
(APPLAUSE)
EPSTEIN: Well, you know, I think that it — again, it’s regretful that France has been so public in its I think undermining of the Bush administration. I think that Bush, by the same token — you know Teddy Roosevelt had the adage walk — talk softly, carry a big stick. I think Bush has replaced that with a competing version, which is a diplomatic bull in a china shop…
CARLSON: But just, honestly, just correct the misperception here. This is not simply an effort by the administration to beat up on France. This is coming — there’s a deep wellspring of anti-French feeling in this country, and it’s going to have consequences. This is a bottle of French wine. This is a bottom [sic] of American wine.
(SCORNFUL SILENCE)
VAISSE: It is bigger.
CARLSON: And it’s bigger. That’s exactly right. More forceful. There will be Americans who boycott French products. This in the end is really going to hurt France, isn’t it?
VAISSE: No, I think it is going hurt wine lovers.
And people think a funny liberal couldn’t take down a right wing blow-hard…
“America has been the victim of a horrendous crime, and the barbarians of radical Islam, we know, will again use terror against the U.S. (and against targets in Europe too, don’t forget) if they can. They must be rooted out, and the deep causes of the crime addressed, even as we bring the particular terrorist networks to justice. But this complex task cannot be undertaken if we divide the world into the Manichean simplicities of George W. Bush: Those who are not for America must necessarily be against America. This is not good enough from the leader of the free world — and it’s certainly not good enough before the evil of the threat we face. We need sophistication, wisdom, the widest coalition possible, legitimacy — and, of course, a willingness to use force if every other avenue has been closed. Instead, we hear the language of pre-emptive war (which was outlawed by the Versailles Treaty of 1919) — and this from the greatest and most admired democratic republic in the world, a country that has always prided itself on its respect for law, at home and abroad. Europeans expect much, much more from America.”
Last week Bush careened from restrained but persistent evangelism before a convention of religious broadcasters to casual trash-talking with sailors in Jacksonville, Fla. “The terrorists brought this war to us — and now we’re takin’ it back to them,” he told the troops, leaning an elbow on the lectern, squinting crosswise at the camera, tossing a breathy Clint Eastwood chuckle. “We’re on their trail, we’re smokin’ them out, we’ve got ’em on the run.” One imagined the French Foreign Minister watching this lunch-hour martial spectacle and choking on his baguette.
[…]
The American tradition of wartime leadership seems more subdued. The most memorable images are gaunt and painful: the haunted Lincoln; the dark circles under Franklin Roosevelt’s eyes; Kennedy standing alone, in shadows, during the Cuban missile crisis. This is a moment far more ambiguous than any of those; intellectual anguish is permissible. War may be the correct choice, but it can’t be an easy one. The world might have more confidence in the judgment of this President if he weren’t always bathed in the blinding glare of his own certainty.
Every single elected Democrat should be hammering on the sheer incompetence of the George W. Bush administration. Even if it’s really Clinton’s fault, even if it’s a complicated issue, even if the rest of the world is a bunch of nincompoops who just can’t be trusted, the job of President is to HANDLE IT AND GET THE JOB DONE.
Check out the cool movie tribute to the week-end demonstrations over on blah3.
And, I’ve been meaning to link for a couple of days to this great piece by Zizka on the value of hysteria.
Already we liberals have had to get used to the accusations of treason. Once the war starts, these will get worse. The Bush administration has already made comparable accusations against unccoperative Congressmen. We can expect that to get worse too, and the Democrats seem incapable of resisting effectively. If the war goes badly, God forbid, things will get worse yet; and when the economy stalls on top of everything else, as it seems very likely that it will, we can expect a further escalation of unofficial and official attacks on us.
So yeah, I’m paranoid and hysterical. If you have a problem with that, bite me. In certain periods of history it’s been the paranoids who survived. Are we living in one of these periods?
Krauthamer just said that Carol Mosely-Braun, a former US Senator from Illinois, former Ambassador to New Zealand and veteran of 10 years in the state legislature has the thinnest qualifications in Presidential political history.
I can think of at least one other person who ran for the office with even thinner qualifications, can’t you?
Soto over at Daily Kos does some more damage to Tom Friedman and also references this important article by Nicholas Lemann in the New Yorker on the Mid-east grand plan.
But as you read the Lemann article and evaluate the arguments by Feith, Cambone, and Wurmser in support of this grand plan, two things may strike you. First, the whole scenario above assumes that Al Qaeda does nothing during this domino-toppling in the Middle East, that all of these quasi-regime changes would take place over months and years against a backdrop devoid of Al Qaeda. Secondly, what is absent in these hoped-for developments are any Israeli actions towards progress with the Palestinians, as if the current situation can be frozen for several years while our grand plan evolves.
In other words, this Administration’s world view is based on the premise that only a military solution can deal with 9/11 and the Middle East, resulting in years of occupation, war, nationbuilding, domestic terrorist attacks, deficit spending, and “Pentagon or nothing” budgeting.
I think it’s actually worse than that. These guys never believed, and even after 9/11 still don’t believe, that terrorism is a serious problem. They are focused on their geopolitical gameboard and thus are unwilling and unable to analyse the changing situation in the mid-east (or anywhere else for that matter.) They’ve got a list and they’re checkin’ it twice. Don’t confuse them with inconvenient details.
Jason Vest wrote the following in TAP in June of last year:
Why wasn’t the threat posed by al-Qaeda — the only entity in recent years to attack U.S. government installations — foremost in the administration’s mind?
There are a lot of potential replies to that question, but the short answer — and the most convincing one — is that the Bush administration was still fighting the Cold War. Hence its unhealthy obsession with that weapons relic known as the Star Wars program, and with re-creating a bipolar world in which China would take over enemy duty for the Soviet Union, while Cuba remained a vital threat. Going up against a new evil empire and its satellites, or a regional hegemon, is familiar stuff; asymmetric war against a decentralized enemy with a complex geo-theological worldview isn’t.
[…]
There’s no need to take this critic’s word for it; just visit the Center for Security Policy’s Web site. Judging from the dozens of “reports” the center has issued since the August 1998 embassy bombings, the most urgent threats to American national security are, in no particular order: China, ballistic missiles, Cuba, Iraq, and threats posed to Israel by Syria and Yasir Arafat. Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network doesn’t make the cut. Indeed, only two of the center’s “reports” since 1998 have dealt with al-Qaeda, and even those have done so only indirectly. According to the center, the most important lesson learned from the 1998 attacks was one illustrated by the U.S. retaliation against the al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant: that there’s no way “chemical weapons can be effectively and verifiably banned,” which proves that it’s necessary to kill any form of chemical weapons control.
It would be tempting to laugh this off if Gaffney’s group weren’t so influential. As one page on the Center for Security Studies Web site proudly notes, no fewer than 22 of the center’s advisory council members now occupy key national security positions in the Bush administration.
[…]
With Iraq spawning terrorist legions, China girding for World War III, North Korea looking to launch a missile at Alaska, and Fidel Castro plotting to destroy the Colossus of the North, there simply wasn’t any room for bin Laden in the pantheon of threats that govern the Bush security orthodoxy.
There still isn’t , even now, and that is the problem.
If Doug Feith and John Bolton say they are going to “do” Iran and Syria next, I’d believe them. Osama bin Laden, economic meltdown, worldwide opprobrium, and a breakdown of international order aren’t anticipated in the plan and are therefore to be ignored as much as possible. (North Korea didn’t cower and run as they were supposed to when faced with our manly threats, and they are confused about that but undeterred.) All of these things are distractions from the plan.