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Tuesday, March 30, 2004
Rice to Testify WASHINGTON (CNN) -- After days of intense pressure, the White House on Tuesday agreed to allow national security adviser Condoleezza Rice to testify publicly and under oath before the commission investigating the September 11 attacks.Bush has been saying from Minute One that he wants to get to the Truth behind what allowed the 9/11 attacks to take place. Are we to conclude that he, in his infinite wisdom, just somehow knows that there is no additional useful information to be gleaned from his staff beyond what Rice will provide? How is he so sure the commission members will ask all of the right questions? What if Rice's testimony points in the direction of another White House official? Do these restrictions indicate even the tiniest shred of respect, let alone reverence, for the truth? If (god forbid) there is another attack on U.S. soil that takes advantage of security failure, a good case could be made for direct White House culpability for it over and above the failure to provide the security. Should such a disaster take place, the Bush administration will have actively and willfully impeded efforts to improve it. Father Knows Best In their fascinating new book, "The Bushes," Peter and Rochelle Schweizer depict former President George H. W. Bush as being proud but somewhat baffled by his son George W.'s rise to power. "You remember when your kid came home with two A's — and you thought she was going to fail," they quote him saying. "That's exactly what it's like."We're baffled, too, H.W. We see him as incurious, impatient, dogmatic, inflexible, callous, bullying, manichean, ill-informed, and abrasive, but you'd probably know better than we would. Help us cut through the crap, Dad. You know what he's like without all the packaging, ghost writing, and fluff, and you were surprised he would emerge as a leader. Why did you doubt his potential, and how would you explain how your hitherto thoroughly unsuccessful (and unappealing) progeny found himself governor of Texas and President of the United States of America? I mean, he never did get an A, did he? Did he accomplish it the same way he managed to make his fortune, through the efforts of your social and business network rather than through any effort or ability on his own part? Was the last name he shared with you a factor in getting the republican establishment behind him? Was backslapping quid pro quo with the conservative moneyed class, whom W has handsomely rewarded viahis tax policies, instrumental in his rise to power? Or did he develop all the qualities of a good leader out of the blue overnight? The child may be father to the man, but you were father to the child. What's his secret? Thursday, March 25, 2004
I Say Yaseen, You Say Yassin... I have an unusual last name, at least in the US. In print, it's usually spelled as above or as 'Yasin.' I almost never hear the sound of it, except when it's directed specifically to me. I expect the Smiths of the world are much less sensitive to the sound of their surnames than I am.* But hearing it on the radio something like 1,000 times in the past few days has been really jarring. My surname is pronounced exactly the same as that of the dead Hamas leader, only mine's Jewish. The somewhat addled mental state that's followed prompted me to give the subject of Yassin and Hamas a good deal more thought than I might have. The Palestinians are, in every meaningful sense, a stateless people. They are neither served nor represented by the government of Israel. They feel very badly treated by Israel. Having no government of their own (Yasser Arafat surrounded by the Israeli army in a bombed-out compound doesn't count), they have put together what is possible under the conditions they find themselves in. With the help of funding from abroad, Hamas and Hezbollah were possible. What are the functions of a sovereign government? Arguably, the first one is to defend the State, to have an army, the members of which must least threaten to kill people. Just about every government in history has killed people. The fact that Palestinians have slapped together organized militias is to be expected. It always happens. If they're not Israeli, they're something else, and feel the need of an army. I'm not saying Yassin was a good man, any more than I would say Sharon is. But his society felt it needed a son of a bitch, and he got the job. When he's gone, there will be another one, and he will have as many followers or more. It's natural for people to join together and form governments and armies as nation-states. It's often seen as legitimate (in some sense) for nation-states to kill people in defense of its citizens and their property. Why are the Palestinians' actions termed terrorism? If they were not prevented from doing so, they would form a state and exercise that power legitimately, and with the responsibilities that come with membership in the international community. They wouldn't last long if they made unprovoked attacks beyond their borders. If Israel wants to end Palestinian terrorism, a Palestinian state is the only reasonable first step. * There's a bit in Bob Marley's I Don't Want to Wait in Vain that goes "Ya see" that never fails to make me jump a little. Edit: incomplete post fixed. Tuesday, March 16, 2004
Why is it Kerry's Fault? Because We Suck. Hesiod brings to our attention a lovely little article in which John Kerry is blamed for the security failures at Boston's Logan International Airport that contributed to the 9/11 attacks. Former FAA security officials say the Massachusetts senator had the power to prevent at least the Boston hijackings and save the World Trade Center and thousands of lives, yet he failed to take effective action after they gave him a prophetic warning that his state's main airport was vulnerable to multiple hijackings. Later in the article, Sullivan is quoted as having told Kerry that "The DOT OIG [Department of Transportation's Office of the Inspector General, to which Kerry had forwarded the materials Sullivan gave him] has become an ineffective overseer of the FAA." Whose fault is it that the DOT had ineffective oversight? Kerry's? Before 9/11, Kerry could be forgiven for assuming that the Bush administration actually cared about airport security, and was doing the best it could to improve it. Especially in light of the fact that the situation was already common knowledge. Rewind to May 6, 2001. That night, a Boston TV station (Fox-25) aired reporter Deborah Sherman's story on an undercover investigation at Logan that Sullivan and another retired agent helped set up. In nine of 10 tries, a crew got knives and other weapons through security checkpoints - including the very ones the 9/11 hijackers would later exploit. Kerry just underscored the point. If he's at fault for the continued security lapses, then so is everyone else who saw that report. Unlike most of them, Kerry actually did something about it. I think their underlying logic is even more telling, even if I do have to stretch to make the point: 1. Kerry's having passed on the warnings to the DOT, under his own imprimateur, wasn't enough because everybody knows the Bush admin wouldn't take anything from a democrat seriously. 2. Instead, Kerry should have jumped up and down, screaming, to get them to do something about this, which would have made Bushco even more suspicious of political motives. 3. Upon reflection in the light of the media attention (?) generated by Kerry's paroxysms, Bushco would finally come to realize that the safety of air travel is its responsibility, and did something about it to guard its political flank. That's the most charitable interpretation of their argument I can come up with. The presuppositions behind it, that the Bush administration is selective about which realities it acknowledges and only reacts to situations that directly affect its political fortunes, both describe a group that is manifestly unfit to wield power. Monday, March 15, 2004
Spanish Self-Interest Kevin Drum believes that it "would reflect very poorly indeed on the Spanish electorate" if they "were upset that Aznar's support for the Iraq war was responsible for al-Qaeda targeting Spain." I'm having trouble with his math. If there's one thing pretty much everyone on the left agrees, it's that the Iraq war was not an "anti-terrorist" act, and especially not one targeted at Al Qaeda. However, the war is an instance of the infidel West attacking Muslims. One of the main goals of AQ is to foment hatred of the West among Muslims. Before the Iraq war, they cited as grievances what they contended was America's support of Israel's brutal repression of Palestinians, US military presence in Saudi Arabia, and the general history of Western interference in Islamic countries. Before the Iraq war, these grievances alone were enough to inspire 19 men to blow themselves on 9/11, to say nothing of their other attacks. The war in Iraq itself furthers their purpose. Had we limited ourselves to attacks on those who had attacked us, little sympathy for the jihadists' cause would have resulted. Killing thousands of Iraqi civilians in the course of toppling a dictator who was obviously unaffiliated with AQ and who presented no threat to the West is another matter entirely. Terrorists deserve what happens to them. The Iraqi civilians didn't. The war is being presented by the jihadists as yet another example of the West's high-handedness and contemptious disregard for the lives of Muslims. The goal of terrorism is to affect public opinion and to scare people into not opposing the terrorists' aims. If (if!) the Spanish electorate was punishing Aznar solely because they perceived his actions as being anti-terrorist enough to provoke an al-Qaeda attack, the terrorists have accomplished their goal: the Spanish public has shown that if they are attacked they will vote against a politician who strongly opposed the terrorists. This logic only makes sense with regard to governments that supported the Iraq war. Had the attacks occurred in Germany or France, the electorate there would be more, not less, likely to favor hardline anti-terrorist politicians. Elections would turn on not doing something dumb in the future. In Spain, the election was about having done something dumb in the past. Aznar's government was an enthusiastic supporter of and participant in the Iraq war. That, and not any anti-terrorist actions, made them a target of AQ. Making yourself a target for no good reason isn't a good idea. I think the Spanish people are smart enough to figure this out. Tuesday, March 09, 2004
Hang Your Head, Gray Lady You have printed in your pages what must be the most actively empty and stupid collection of words in your history, under the headline "Hooked on Heaven Lite." Quoth David Brooks: Who worries you most, Mel Gibson or Mitch Albom? Do you fear Gibson, the religious zealot, the man accused of narrow sectarianism and anti-Semitism, or Albom, the guy who writes sweet best sellers like "Tuesdays With Morrie" and "The Five People You Meet in Heaven?" Perhaps nobody is protesting or getting angry about our "easygoing narcissism" because it hasn't repeatedly been correlated with intolerance, repression, war, and, occasionally, genocide. I'm sure the Iraqis and Afghanis don't think we've gone soft. In this heaven, God and his glory are not the center of attention. It's all about you. I seem to recall a certain messiah who reduced all morality to "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Or, in other words, to human feelings. As for me, I'll take bromides over brimstone every day of the week. I don't happen to agree that we'd be better if we were only more sheep-like. Brooks attempts to convince his readers that "Our general problem is not that we're too dogmatic. Our more common problems come from the other end of the continuum." If our president is to be believed, the greatest threat to the future of our nation and world peace is the rising tide of Islamic extremism. We are better than our enemies, we are told, because we are a free nation where everyone has the inborn right to express his or her opinion and to act as he or she sees fit, free from the dictates of tyranny. Brooks evidently disagrees, citing with disapproval Christopher Lasch's idea of "the theraputic mentality[,] an anti-religion that tries to liberate people from the idea that they should submit to a higher authority, so they can focus more obsessively on their own emotional needs." To what higher authority should we be submitting ourselves, David? God isn't down here, telling us what to do, unless you are able to discern the will of the divine in tornadoes and car crashes (and 9/11?). To whom, then? Should we abase ourselves before ministers? Priests? Imams? Rabbis? Lamas? Madmen? To which ones in particular, David? Worst of all, Brooks neglects to point out even one negative consequence, however far in the future, that will follow from our putative shift away from "the rich moral framework of organized religion or rigorous philosophy"* It's almost as if he's counting on some universal disgust arising from exposure to words like "narcissism," "obsessively," and "schmaltzy" to do his lifting for him. He doesn't bother to make his own point. If there's something more to be feared than Gibson's exclusionary zealotry or Albom's nonprescriptive theraputic depictions, it's the proliferation of poorly-reasoned, ill-informed, and nakedly pandering spew such as "Hooked on Heaven Lite" in our newspaper of record. * I'd bet Brooks couldn't come up with a rigorous philosophy meeting his criteria that wasn't stuffed to the gills with religion. Thursday, March 04, 2004
Shadow Government Ezra Klein of Pandagon has an intriguing idea about how to keep the media focused on Bush & Co.'s, er, shortcomings: form a shadow government. Name a VP soon, and a "cabinet" in June. Each member of the shadow cabinet would comment on Bush administration actions and proposals in his/her area, point up shortcomings and contradictions, and put forward what a Kerry administration would do instead. The press would eat it up, and the nation would benefit from a democratic counterpoint on every issue. I only see one major problem with this approach, and it could prove a deal-breaker: it's an awful lot of cats to herd. All the participants have to be lined up ahead of time and commit to making themselves available to serve in a Kerry administration. They would have to abandon government positions and careers in exchange for tenuous futures. Further, the scheme would greatly telescope the usual vetting process. If a member of the shadow cabinet were to say something out of tune with the rest of Kerry's platform, the republicans are sure to jump all over it and say that Kerry can't manage people and isn't fit to govern. If their collective message is to be effective, Kerry has to come up with concrete, detailed policies for each department in a very big hurry. Then he has to get each of the participants to sign onto the program, even and especially where it conflicts with his/her own position. Should Bush win, these people will have undermined their credibility for nothing. If there are perceived differences among the "cabinet," the press will find itself with an irresistible drama to follow that can only help Bush's cause. As prospective cabinet members, participants' backgrounds and character would be fair game for the other side, which could target them at leisure, unconstrained by the rules and decorum of the Senate chamber. Anything the slime machine came up with on these people would stick to Kerry, before the election. Instead of a shadow government, Kerry should round up 3 or 4 high-profile Democrats as "official spokesmen," one for foreign policy, one for budgetary issues, one for labor issues, etc. They'd be perceived in much the same way as shadow cabinet members, and receive nearly as much press coverage, without giving the other side such a big target to shoot at. "We must protect the sanctity of marriage" --George W. Bush What is this sanctity? It can accommodate divorce? It can be done for money, for citizenship, out of desperation? This is holy? This is stupid. Monday, February 16, 2004
Food For Thought All the current talk about outsourcing assumes something not at all in evidence: that large American corporations, which currently hold enormous sway over our economic life, will retain their ties to America. If they don't--if they take decades' worth of accumulated wealth created by Americans, and decide to base themselves elsewhere--there will be a net loss to America. All the 'in the long-run we'll be fine' arguments, notwithstanding whatever benefits to individual workers are provided by unemployment insurance and (currently insignificant) retraining programs, won't do a damn thing about it. We've only scratched the surface of the economic mobility that will ultimately be facilitated by globalization. It's but a small step from relocating individual production or service facilities to pulling out altogether. As water seeks the lowest possible level, investment seeks the lowest possible costs. Economists, start your calculators. Tuesday, February 10, 2004
Al Qaeda Letter Fails the Sniff Test The 17-page document found at a supposed "al Qaeda safe house" seems mighty fishy to me. The upshot, that attacks should be staged against Shia targets in order to bring them into open conflict with the "sleepy Sunnis, who are fearful of destruction and death," in order to "prolong the duration of the fight between the infidels and [Al Qaeda]" seems like an unnecessary strategem. Attempts to pull together a government by the June 30 deadline are already highlighting differences between ethnic groups. Just about all of the local military and police (and paramilitary, etc.) have partisan affiliations, and therefore cannot be counted upon to neutrally uphold the law. No matter how a government is formed, there are bound to be a lot of armed people who will be unhappy with it. Given the 800 lb. gorilla status of the Shiites at the moment, it's a very good bet that it will be the Sunnis, and, to a lesser extent, the Kurds, who will be motivated to disrupt things. If we've pulled out by then, a civil war is highly likely, the Bush administration is going to look awful, and muslims around the world are going to be awfully pissed off--advantage Al Qaeda. If we still have lots of soldiers on the ground then, we'll be putting them in harm's way between would-be combatants, and de facto undermining the legitimacy of the Iraqi government--advantage Al Qaeda. They win either way. Al Qaeda doesn't need to foment conflict in Iraq--it exists already, and is likely to continue for the foreseeable future. It just doesn't make sense for them to expend resources and risk exposure doing something that is patently unnecessary. Therefore, I conclude the letter is almost certainly a fabrication. For an interesting hypothesis concerning why such a fabrication might have been made, Hesiod's got the goods. Thursday, February 05, 2004
From Michael Hersch at Newsweek: Presently a new team enters the office of Iraq's civil administrator, his democracy task force, the project closest to his heart. Bremer notes he's giving the teaching teams some $450 million, nearly five times what they were budgeted; he talks about bringing in local U.S. battalion and brigade commanders. "You've got basically nothing in this area!" he says, scanning a printout. He asks if there is "an escape clause" in the contract being given to the U.S. company that's doing the democracy promotion because "it very well may be that the U.N. takes over." The Iraqi electricity minister pops in, and Bremer, with his usual genteel good humor, admonishes him for making wild predictions about megawatt increases in the country's still-flickering power supply (even now, Baghdad blacks out several times a day). Though he's careful not to flaunt it, Bremer controls everything down to Iraqi ministers' travel plans. "We're both going to get run out of town if you keep doing that," Bremer says. "What do we care?" the minister jokes, "we're both going to lose our jobs anyway." Now, we have several facts here. One is that the Christian Right, often described as George W. Bush's base, hates the U.N. The neocons hate the U.N. Mohammad ElBaradei and Hans Blix, the U.N.'s representatives in Iraq, who were attempting to meet U.S. requirements (and who turned out to be right on every major count), were routinely discounted and undermined by members of the Bush Administration. How is it, then, that the Administration's Chosen Man in Baghdad is entirely sanguine about the fact that U.N., natural counterweight to the unfettered dominance of the United States of America, will likely wind up with the responsibility of running Iraq? Obviously he's a realist, but I'm really surprised he's saying this out loud, because it would be tantamount to saying we have failed in our Great Quest to Liberate Iraq. via Tacitus Will Lie for Food In the latest installment of Brad DeLong's dressing-down of Jonathan Weisman for filing a report on the budget that "reads like 90% of it is a rewritten White House press release," Brad provides a list of defenses and/or excuses that have been suggested to him by several of Weisman's supporters. Among were the following points:
I don't understand what the whole media gotta-toe-the-line-if-I-want-to-keep-my-access thing comes from. At the beginning of the Bush presidency, I could see how that impression might have taken hold. If you're covering the administration, you need to be where they are. But that was then. By now, it has to be plain to everyone that the worst possible source of information on the Executive Branch's activities is the White House. It's common knowledge that if there's good news, it'll be blown out of proportion. If there's bad news, it'll be ignored or denied. Sometimes they just make shit up. The only journalists who get anything relevant from actually being there are the Mo-bots who write piffle about the jaunty tilt of W's belt buckle and the raw virility of the gleam in Rummy's eye. The news isn't about what the WH says. That isn't the news. The news is about what they do, and what it means for us. The WH isn't a closed soap opera, of interest in and of itself. It's a critical part of the awful and exquisite machinery that maintains our freedoms, such as they are. We are the issue. They are not. What earthly purpose can be served by journalists' aiding and abetting the administration in disseminating its insultingly transparent dishonesty? If you ask the WH press corps, it's so they can be on hand to receive more of the same. Monday, February 02, 2004
Republicans: Soros to Receive Blame for Bad Economy This floater being put up by Jon Dougherty at Newsmax is sure to be a major item on Republican spin point lists within the week, and will remain in play through the election. The billionaire's zeal to unseat Bush has caught the notice of top policy-makers in Washington who worry that Soros would not need to risk his whole fortune to cause mischief. This is GOP disingenuousness at its sharpest, and has the potential to shield Bush from any electoral fallout arising from any sudden economic calamities. Those of us on the left need to study hard on this one, and make sure we're all knowledgeable enough on the subject to call it for the bullshit it is. It's always easier to understand world events in terms of single actors like Saddam and Osama (and, soon, George) than as the product of complex and unpredictable systems. If this Soros-sabotages-the-economy meme gets widespread traction among swing voters, it will be very difficult to get them to pay attention while we attempt to talk them through the mind-numbing arithmetic of tax policy and health-care accounting. However, if we can enunciate sharply, and in few words why this very idea is bogus, the issue could be nipped in the bud. Soros already has the reputation of being a market-buster. A lot of semi-knowledgable people (journalists) have hazy recollections of a time when he single-handedly wrecked Britain's currency exchange rate mechanism with the Deutchmark through canny trading. It's a gross oversimplification that ignores the fact that even uniquely savvy financiers such as Soros cannot reverse gravity. At the time, the pound was obviously highly overvalued, and the British government was propping it up with £4 billion of its foreign exchange reserves and cripplingly high interest rates. Soros saw this was unsustainable, and proved instrumental in popping the bubble. The U.K. is better off today because of it. If Soros convinces enough people he's right, the markets could move in response, but, as even (god help me) Don Luskin says, ""First and foremost, the speculators have to be right." In other words, Soros cannot push a market in a direction it wasn't going to go in anyway. Even if it has help, if the dollar plummets and interest rates rise, it will be because of massive trade and budget deficits, not because of the machinations of a transplanted Hungarian financier and his paltry $7 billion. The whole point is that Soros made money in the currency markets because he was right. Again and again, he put his own money where his mouth was, and came out ahead. When he says something, people listen, because he knows what he's talking about. If he says the economy is screwed, there's probably something to it. We need to help the public understand that there's a difference between pointing out that something is wrong and making it wrong in the first place. Monday, January 26, 2004
The Draft Inches Closer The Army Reserve, once thought of as a way for enlistees to earn some extra money while serving only one weekend a month except in cases of war or serious emergency, will be radically different in the future, if its commander gets his way. Under a plan spelled out Tuesday by Lt. Gen. James R. Helmly, chief of the Army Reserve, the mobilization system would be changed fundamentally so that Reserve members would be scheduled for mobilization every four or five years for periods of nine to 12 months. I don't really see how this is going to work. People leaving the regular Army are doing so because they'd rather take their chances in the dismal civilian job market than face continued deployment and war. They've watched the Bush administration cut combat pay and medical benefits for both regular and reserve units. Deployed reservists are widely perceived as being given fewer resources and less support than their full-time counterparts. If future deployments are to be longer and more frequent, current laws regarding employer nondiscrimination against reservists will need to be reevaluated. Skilled workers (i.e., more desirable recruits) aren't going to want to give up their paychecks, and companies are going to balk at having their productivity pulled out from under them. This announcement raises another question: between Bush's calls for increased military spending and professed desire to get out of Iraq quickly, why is there a need to squeeze more out of the Reserve? It's possible there are plans for one or more additional regime changes that will keep our troops occupied for the foreseeable future, but I don't think the administration is going to risk it too soon after being so badly burned in the Iraq fiasco. More likely, people are opting out of the Army in droves, and this initiative is a stopgap measure to slow the bleeding. Whatever the reason, it looks like the recently replenished draft boards may soon have something to do. Sunday, January 25, 2004
Made It! "Um...er...ah...[Do you think the media will be affected by bloggers' calling them on their omissions and misrepresentations?] Jeff Jarvis gave a typical rah-rah internet response that didn't really address the question or admit that there is often a bias in media. Oh well. I'd hoped Josh would be the one doing the responding. I even forgot to mention my blog. [smacks self in head with large trout] But Atrios will be on, so it will have been worth it. Arrrgh! I got through on the Blogging of the President show. I told the screener that I thought it wouldn't be possible for the media to recreate what happened to Al Gore this time around. He told me to sit tight while the guests were on, and they'd get to me. The show played while I was on hold, but out of sync with the radio (and I didn't want to hold the phone to my ear for an hour +. So I got the other phone that had the speakerphone capability, plugged in the power and unplugged the phone I was on... Arrrgh! Wednesday, January 21, 2004
2004 Koufax nominee. A very important post from David Neiwert that reminds democrats what their constituency is. Shorter: A lot of people's living standards are falling because of republican policies; if this continues, we're going to wind up like Latin America, with few rich and many poor. It will be the end of the American Dream. We know what to do. Why aren't we doing it? |