Occam’s Razor

Needed: a dose of reality for presidential daughters (and sons)

Those of us who watched The West Wing were treated to a fictional, yet likely accurate portrayal of the life of presidential offspring. Viewers best knew the fictional President Bartlet’s daughter Zoey. At the end of Season Four, she was kidnapped on the night of her graduation from Georgetown University. She also prominently dated Bartlet’s very African American personal aid, Charlie Young. Both of these events caused end of season cliffhangers.

From The West Wing we learn that the gilded life is not necessarily easy for presidential offspring. The Secret Service is omnipresent, making it very difficult to maintain privacy and the semblance of a personal life. There is also the ever-curious press corps, who likes to read into the president defects they detect in their offspring. Like modern day princes, these presidential sons and daughters are thrust into a role not of their choosing. Moreover, once their famous parent leaves office, they often become curiosities. Like Amy Carter, sometime they are banished to obscurity. However, if they are particularly smart, good-looking and their parents are well connected they can end up earning six figures right out of college.

Chelsea Clinton has a new job, the Associated Press reports. The 26-year-old former first daughter recently started working for Avenue Capital Group, a New York-based hedge fund that handles about $12 billion in assets.

Clinton had been working as a consultant for McKinsey & Co., the international consulting firm, since 2003, reportedly for a six-figure salary. She received her master’s degree from Oxford University after graduating from Stanford in 2001.

Federal campaign records indicate that Avenue Capital founders Marc Lasry and Sonia Gardner have donated thousands of dollars to Democratic lawmakers, including Chelsea Clinton’s mother, New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, as well as to various Democratic campaign committees. There was no word late yesterday from Avenue Capital, any of the Clintons or their reps.

Arguably, Chelsea was simply astute enough to turn the detriment of being a presidential daughter into an asset. If you Google Chelsea’s name, you will find that she has been a busy daughter in the six years since her father left office. After finishing high school at the exclusive Sidwell Friends School in Washington, she received a bachelor’s degree in history from Stanford, where she commendably graduated with highest honors. She recently received a degree in international relations from Oxford University, which her father also attended. Ironically, she now lives in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan. It is just a bit north of the current residence of another presidential daughter: Barbara Pierce Bush, who lives in Greenwich Village. I have to wonder if they occasionally get together for cappuccinos at Starbucks.

Granted, the cost of living is very high in New York City. Even so, Chelsea Clinton’s six-figure salary, given that she is a 26-year-old woman with a master’s degree and is not a lawyer is virtually unheard of. Bill Clinton earned only $30,000 a year as the governor of Arkansas, and that was after spending some time as a professor at the University of Arkansas and unsuccessfully running for Congress. It does not take much to infer that Chelsea’s comfortable salary was due in large part to her parental connections. It also does not hurt that she is a very attractive woman. Presumably, she carries a premium for both her good looks and parental connections. I assume this was the reasoning behind McKinsey & Co. offering her such an inflated salary. Reports suggest she has the Clinton charisma. She may be the next generation of a future Clinton political dynasty.

Like Chelsea, President Bush’s twin daughters Jenna and Barbara are also cute and attractive. Unlike Chelsea, they never properly lived at the White House. Both were 18 when Bush was elected and just beginning college. After graduating from the University of Texas at Austin, Jenna laudably spent some time teaching in public schools in the District of Columbia. Her twin sister Barbara chose to attend Yale, which her father and grandfather attended. Perhaps this was done in part to keep the Bush legacy at Yale alive for another generation.

However, both Bush daughters have had their issues with the law. Barbara and Jenna were charged with being a minor in possession of alcohol at a Mexican restaurant in May 2001. Jenna had a similar incident at an Austin bar a month earlier. In addition, The Washington Post reported in 2002 that the Bush girls were spotted (but not cited for) drinking at a Washington DC nightclub. Having spent some time recently pondering genograms, I have to wonder if the Bush twins have been channeling their father’s issues with alcohol and parental authority. Time will tell. While nominally Republican, both act more like Democrats.

Of Jack and Jackie Kennedy’s children, John Jr. became a glamorous assistant attorney in New York. He attracted a lot of press, but never became a politician. Perhaps this was because, like his father, he died young. He died in 1999 at age 39 (along with his wife and sister-in-law) when he piloted a piper cub into the Atlantic. The crash was thought to be due to his inexperience piloting aircraft. Caroline, the sole surviving child of the Kennedy marriage and now technically an orphan, is politically active in a few of her father’s causes. She is one of the founders of the Profiles in Courage Award. She is a graduate of both Harvard and the Columbia Law School. Her modest life seems a sensible response to her family’s tragic tendencies.

What is true about all these people is that it was difficult for them to encounter the real world. Chelsea Clinton probably enjoyed the most freedom, until her father ran for president. All have enjoyed both the perquisites and the detriments of being offspring to the president of the United States. Their lives were changed forever.

For me this background makes the case of Amy Carter so interesting. I have already confessed my admiration for Jimmy Carter. There was no cushy private school for Amy when the Carters were in the White House; she went to D.C. public schools. Her relatively normal entry into adulthood was perhaps assisted by the public’s general disdain for her father. The Carters were determined not to give their daughter any special favor. Amy fell into obscurity.

The last of the Carter’s three children (her two brothers were 15-20 years older, so they were adults when Carter was in office), Amy’s post White House life was frightfully ordinary. She too went to college, but to “ordinary” colleges like the Memphis College of Art and Tulane University. After her collegiate experience, she was left to fend for herself. As I recall from press reports, she worked in a bookstore to make ends meet. However, she has been politically active. She participated in various sit-ins on issues including apartheid in South Africa and the Reagan Administrations policies in Central America. She dallied on her way to the altar, not marrying until she was 29. She refused to be “given away” at her wedding, and has retained her maiden name. She is currently raising one son with her husband, and is avoiding the limelight.

I suspect over time that some of these presidential offspring will be running for higher office too. Perhaps it is in their blood, or they picked up the expectation watching their parents. I can sense thirty years from now there may be another Senator Clinton in the Senate. However, I am leery about all of these glamorous and often pampered next generation politicians running future ships of state. Our current president perhaps demonstrates that political dynasties tend to be bad ideas. Those who run the ship of state should be people grounded in real life. Arguably, because George W. Bush was not, it contributed to his singular view of the world and the disaster that now is Iraq. Iraq would have never have happened on Bill Clinton’s watch. Bill Clinton certainly came with many faults. He is also quite brilliant and has an amazingly flexible mind. I personally was thrilled at his election. Any man who took at much joy in a burger and fries from Burger King as he did could get my vote. For my money, he was grounded in the real world. He may have come from trailer park trash, but this and his intelligence gave him the insight to deal effectively with people. It may also be one of the reasons he was so despised. The same is true with Jimmy Carter. Both rose above their modest circumstances and in so doing, became very effective politicians.

So if we must have political dynasties, I am keeping one finger crossed behind my back. It is not crossed for a future Senator or President Chelsea Clinton, but instead for a future Senator or President Amy Carter. Amy’s life at least was grounded in some reality, despite being the president’s daughter. It appears that there are no coattails from her father’s term in office on which to run. However, I would rest easier with her steering the ship of state.

I bet Amy enjoys a burger with fries too.

November 24th, 2006 at 06:46pm Posted by Mark | Politics 2006 | no comments

Neoconservative Weasels

Today’s Washington Post has a lead story by reporter Peter Baker. In it, he quotes a number of prominent neoconservatives who are now openly sour on the way the Bush Administration conducted its war in Iraq. For example, Kenneth Adelman, who was part of the original Iraq War brain trust, now acknowledges that the Iraq War has turned into a debacle. “This didn’t have to be managed this bad. It’s just awful.”

Richard Perle, head of the Pentagon’s Defense Advisory Board and one of the predominant cheerleaders for the invasion now says “If I had known that the U.S. was going to essentially establish an occupation, then I’d say, ‘Let’s not do it,’ and instead find another way to target Hussein. It was a foolish thing to do.”

Joshua Muravchik, a neoconservative at the American Enterprise Institute reportedly told the Post’s Baker, “There’s a question to be sorted out: whether the war was a sound idea but very badly executed. And if that’s the case, it appears to me the person most responsible for the bad execution was Rumsfeld, and it means neocons should not get too angry at Bush about that.”

It is natural to see things clearer in hindsight. It is also natural (though shameful), if your forceful advocacy for an unnatural policy like a preemptive invasion of a foreign country goes awry, to try to salvage your own reputation. You can bet the officers on the S.S. Titanic did not want to go down with their ship and its captain either. It may be late in the voyage. There may not be much above the water than the stern of this ship, but these neoconservatives are now jumping into the lifeboat anyhow. In their mind, just because they were cheerleading this war, that does not mean they are partly responsible for it.

These same men were in a position to directly influence policies and strategies for this war. For example, they could have insisted that their support and employment was conditional upon a well thought out security strategy. However, since many of these men were raising a glass with Dick Cheney right after the invasion toasting its success, apparently they let themselves be caught up in euphoria the moment. If they had criticisms, they largely kept their lips buttoned and went with the crowd.

If they truly had misgivings prior to the war, it was their duty to speak up. If they had them but did not share them with those in authority, then they acted cowardly. If they were more concerned about their own careers and being properly positioned within the levers of power than looking out for the best interests of the country, then they did not deserve to have been entrusted with their positions in the first place. To express misgivings and cry wolf now so many years later suggests they are simply weasels.

We should waste our time listening to anything they have to say anymore. Peter Baker should have done us all a favor by not even bothering to print their pathetic mea culpas. No more trees need to be turned into pulp so the public can learn their discredited opinions and turncoat mutterings.

Unquestionably, President Bush has ultimate responsibility for the debacle in Iraq. Nevertheless, all those who sat on the sidelines and urged him and his top cronies on are also permanently tainted. No amount of public regrets after the fact changes the fact that they were key players in an action that was cataclysmic for Iraqis, lethal to our country’s hard-earned international reputation and devolved into folly of the most egregious kind. If it were possible to impeach, convict and then send Bush to prison for this disaster, men like Aldeman, Perle and Muravchik should be doing time also in nearby adjacent cells. They should be allowed their once a week phone call home to family. Just please do not let them near a reporter!

November 19th, 2006 at 05:03pm Posted by Mark | Politics 2006 | no comments

Election 2006 Postmortem

What a difference two years makes! Two years ago this week I surveyed the results of the 2004 election with dismay. President Bush, who should have handily been defeated for bungling the War in Iraq, was reelected, although the difference in the popular vote (2.4%) and the electoral vote (35 votes) made it one of the closest wins in recent history. While the Republicans picked up only three House seats, they solidified a formidable 30-vote majority in the House. In the Senate, Republicans picked up four seats, making the odds of retaking the Senate this year so small that even most Democrats (like me) thought it was a long shot.

Now that the dust has settled, the results of Tuesday’s election are stunning. Democrats picked up 29 House seats while losing none. A number of elections in dispute are likely to add to this total. In the Senate, with the concessions today by Montana Senator Conrad Burns and Virginia Senator George Allen, the Democrats took a 51-49 majority. This majority though feels rather fragile. It assumes that the newly reelected Senator Joe Lieberman from Connecticut, who ran his independent campaign more like a Republican than a Democrat, doesn’t feel a case of sour grapes and align himself with the Republicans. Amazingly, not a single Democratic incumbent running for the U.S. Congress lost, which may be a first for either political party.

This amazing upset hardly ends at the national level. Looking at state races, Democrats will now control a majority of the governorships (28) next year, up 6 seats. Five state legislatures switched from Republican to Democrat; not one went from Democrat to Republican. New Hampshire turned stunningly Democratic. (The New Hampshire House went from 37.5% Democrat to 59.8%. The New Hampshire Senate went from 45.8% Democrat to 66.7%. In addition, it elected Democrat John Lynch as governor.) Counting state Senate and House seats nationwide, Democrats picked up 349 seats out of 7393, a gain of 4.7 percent.

You have to look very hard for any Republican successes. If Republicans succeeded, it was in not making their losses completely catastrophic. Republicans held on to a retiring senate seat in Tennessee and a retiring governorship in Florida. That was about it. Tuesday was an overwhelmingly Democratic night. Republicans can take some comfort in that the margin of victory for Democrats was in many cases achingly small. Both Conrad Burns and George Allen lost by less than 1% of the popular vote. Still, it was remarkable how in very tight major races, they went consistently for the Democratic candidate.

There is no single reason why Democrats faired so well. Clearly, the voters were expressing extreme unhappiness of the last five years of one party rule. Many were voting to express their disgust with President Bush in general and his bungled War in Iraq in particular. Many others were expressing their unhappiness with their more precarious standard of living.

However, there were also demographic changes that came into prominence in 2006. This country is becoming less white and the minorities are voting disproportionately for Democrats. As young voters begin to vote, they vote predominantly for the Democrats. These demographic forces bode well for the Democratic Party’s future.

Those who discount the force of netroots are in denial. While the netroots community is overwhelmingly progressive, that does not mean they were myopic enough to give money only to progressives. Clearly, the netroots lost in Connecticut, but they picked up impressive victories too. Donations from the netroots to candidates like John Tester and Jim Webb were not only instrumental in their election, but they also made it possible for them to mobilize in the first place. Arguably, neither Tester nor Webb would be senators elect today had it not been from the netroots. The netroots are now a proven means of winning seats. Netroots won the U.S. Senate for the Democrats. It is not your father’s smoke filled room anymore.

Having won the reigns of legislative power, it is another question entirely whether Democrats will prove to be competent to govern. Voters in general were expressing more extreme displeasure at Republicans than enthusiasm for the Democrats. Democrats have traditionally been the “none of the above” party, rather than a party with a coherent message and platform. Perhaps after being out of power for so long they will absorb some important lessons. At least our initial rhetoric is encouraging. The likely next Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi talks about being the Speaker of the House, not the Speaker of just the Democrats. She is stressing bipartisanship. Senator Majority Leader elect Harry Reid is expressing similar thoughts. If history is a guide, this spirit will not last too long, but it is a hopeful sign nonetheless.

Having spurned bipartisanship, President Bush now has to embrace it if he wants anything in his last two years to be more than a footnote. His prompt dismissal yesterday of our disastrous Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was a hopeful sign. (I called for it in 2004.) Bush’s dismissal is bizarrely inconsistent with remarks he made a few days earlier wherein he promised he was never going to get rid of him. Since the plans for Rumsfeld’s replacement were clearly well along before the election, essentially Bush was lying. He probably justified it as an attempt to attempt to fire up his base in order to win the election.

No amount of bipartisanship will solve some problems. One of them is our quagmire in Iraq. Both sides are likely to embrace the recommendations of the nonpartisan Iraq Study Group. They will use it for political cover, because it will be politically unacceptable to make a recommendation for withdrawal that is not contingent upon Iraqis achieving benchmarks that they will not be able to meet. For the next two years, expect that our troops will remain in Iraq. Perhaps some small percent will come home to give the illusion to the American public that we will extricate ourselves from the war. Undoubtedly, the real responsibility for Iraq will remain with Bush, not the Congress, because strategy and tactics are the responsibility of the Commander in Chief. This bodes well for Democratic prospects in 2008. It is quite possible that in two years our government will move from Republicans in charge of all branches of government to Democrats being in charge of all branches but the Supreme Court.

For myself I am savoring this exquisite moment of victory. I would like to think it is the first of many, but I am sanguine. What goes around comes around. Without a hardnosed attention to the people’s business, Democrats will be lucky if they are still in power ten years from now, despite the carnage inflicted by Republicans these last six years. I am trying not to think about these sad political realities right now. For a Democrat like me, Tuesday night was magical. It was perhaps a once in a lifetime event. The closest parallel was the Election of 1974 following Watergate. However, in that election, Democrats already controlled both Houses of Congress. I would dance from the rooftops, except I have two left feet. Nonetheless, I am beaming, as is everyone in my very Democratic household. I helped make this election possible through my own contributions in time and money. I feel vested in its outcome and am thrilled to have Jim Webb, my netroots candidate, as my new Senator elect.

November 9th, 2006 at 09:29pm Posted by Mark | Politics 2006 | no comments

Why Democrats should punt on a plan for Iraq

There are just eight days until the midterm elections. That pungent smell of rancid urine is not from trying to litter train your new puppy. It is from all the Republicans wetting their pants. It would be an understatement to say the Republicans are nervous. They are plain scared. They can feel power slipping away. Some like Republican strategist Karl Rove feign optimism. Nevertheless, by now even Republicans can feel the political earthquake approaching. The question now becomes, what will its magnitude be?

President Bush has been running around the country engaged in, what else, blaming Democrats. This is not new of course, but what is new is that he is blaming Democrats for his mistakes. “The Democratic goal is to get out of Iraq. The Republican goal is to win in Iraq”, he said today at Georgia Southern University. “If you listen carefully for a Democrat plan for success, they don’t have one. Iraq is the central front in the war on terror, yet they don’t have a plan for victory.” President Bush has a point. It is hard to find any Democrat with a plan for winning with Iraq that passes the sniff test. Such as they are, most Democrats are calling for beginning a withdrawal of troops in 2007. They also want to involve regional powers in Iraq’s future. Mostly though Democrats sound wishy-washy on how to succeed in Iraq. Instead, they state the obvious by calling attention to Bush’s mismanagement of the War in Iraq. Hmm, maybe that is their plan.

If so, I think it will prove to be very politically effective. By calling attention to the Democrats’ lack of a plan for Iraq, what Bush is really trying to do is get the Democrats to share ownership his failure. He hopes that by showing that they are bereft of good ideas on Iraq, the cloud of doom that has been hanging over him and his party will lift. In this case, the lack of a Democratic plan should be construed as a short-term political blessing for the Democrats. It is a smart election strategy for the Democrats to keep the focus where it belongs: on Bush’s bungling the War in Iraq in particular and the War on Terror in general.

In reality even if Democrats sweep both houses of Congress next week, there is not a whole lot they can do to bring the troops home. They could in theory cut off funding for the war, but they will not have the votes to override a presidential veto. Congress’s power has never been in exercising the war, but in its oversight. However, if they control Congress, Democrats can exercise genuine oversight on the war. This has been sorely lacking with Republicans in charge. However, the power to run the war constitutionally will remain with President Bush. Iraq will remain his albatross for the rest of his life. I believe that its colossal failure will almost certainly make it impossible for a Republican to become elected president in 2008.

Here is the reality of our situation in Iraq, if it is not already apparent to you: we have lost. As I alluded before the war even started, we would lose because we had insufficient troops to secure the peace. Overthrowing Saddam and his government was a given and a no brainer. It was containing the inevitable and historical sectarian strife, along with occupying a Muslim country with forces perceived to be Christian that were the real obstacles to long term success. This is not to say that hope is entirely lost in Iraq. It is just that success at this point is so bizarrely improbable that only the willfully foolish think it can possibly happen.

No wonder Democrats are mum about a plan for success in Iraq. Unlike Republicans, most Democrats inhabit the real world. They know the situation in Iraq is so bollixed up that even a speculator with tons of spare cash would not waste any money betting on a successful outcome. Given that nothing Democrats can say or do will change this sad reality, why should they assume part of its ownership? If they did, in 2008 voters might assume they would do something equally foolish in the next conflict. It is better to leave Bush and the Republicans holding their ball. If Bush is the nation’s quarterback, the Republicans are on offense, it is fourth down and 99 to go, and there is two seconds left on the clock in the fourth quarter, it is better that the Republicans take the inevitable fall.

If Democrats must propose plans for the War on Terror, it is far better to focus on where there is some probability of success. Success in Afghanistan is looking dubious, but it is not virtually hopeless as it is in Iraq. Besides, Osama bin Laden is reputedly in Afghanistan, or in nearby northwestern Pakistan. At least we could leverage sufficient forces to go after those who actually hurt us on 9/11.

Besides, things can only improve when those who screwed up this war are out of power. If Democrats win Congress, one of the most effective things they can do is hold many hearings on the war. It needs to be clear that people like Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld were instrumental getting us into this mess. They need to account to the American people for their actions in public hearings. Why did Rumsfeld go into Iraq without a plan to win the peace? Why did Cheney forcefully assert Iraq had WMDs when there was no conclusive intelligence? Why were we repeatedly lied to? In making these public officials account for their actions, Democrats can help facilitate their ouster and position our government to being one that is accountable again. Democrats should demand these instigators be replaced with leaders who are grounded in reality.

It is obvious to voters that Bush does not have a viable plan for victory. Stay the course is not working. Democrats should demand that Bush present a viable plan for Iraq’s success. He is after all the Commander in Chief and it is his responsibility. Perhaps in the process, Bush will realize it is time to fold his hand. The reality is he has had nothing to show for years except bluster.

October 30th, 2006 at 08:58pm Posted by Mark | Politics 2006 | no comments

Why do Republicans hate America?

According to our President and Commander in Chief, “Stay the course” in Iraq no longer means “stay the course”. In fact, according to an interview with President Bush broadcast on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos, our president asserted, “We’ve never been stay the course.”

A search of the White House web site alone shows that the President used the phrase at least eighteen times. Of course, the American public knows all about “stay the course” now. It has become drubbed into our brains, and like a catchy but annoying Top 40 song, we cannot get it out of our mind. It resonates like a loud bongo drum. Twenty years from now when someone uses the phrase, instead of suggesting steadiness, it will imply rampant and reckless bullheadedness. The unwelcome image of George W. Bush will pop in our heads.

Nevertheless, since our President now decrees that his White House has never said stay the course, it must be time for the Ministry of Truth to start scrubbing the record. This will be a challenge. Moreover, since Republicans in particular seem to have a problem with ambiguity, it leaves the obvious question. Why do Republicans in Congress want the terrorists to win?

I mean I am just shocked by what has been coming out of the mouths of heretofore-stalwart Republicans these last few weeks. No less than my own Senator George Allen of Virginia, in a tight reelection bid (one recent poll shows his rival Jim Webb marginally ahead), wants to change strategies in Iraq. “We can’t expect to keep doing the same things and get different results,” he said recently, even though a month earlier on Meet the Press he said, “Staying the course means that we don’t tuck tail and run, that we don’t retreat, that we don’t surrender.”

Senator Allen, you are either with staying the course no matter how stupid and counterproductive it is, or you must want the terrorists win. It is that simple really. No shades of grey are allowed in the War on Terror. So what is with all this sudden murkiness? Such murkiness is the hallmark of those dreaded tax and spend pussy whipped Democrats.

In fact, there is a long list of Republicans in Congress who want to change the course in Iraq. Some are calling for troop withdrawal. Coincidentally, most of them are running for reelection. In fact, soon you may have to start looking under rocks to find Republicans who still want to stay the course.

It has taken Republicans a while to figure it out, but they are finally realizing that staying the course means something even worse than letting the terrorists win: they will be voted out of office. All that message consistency apparently only works as long as the public buys into it. For some reason, probably because the massive civil war underway in Iraq is impossible to tune out and American casualties there keep accelerating, the American public no longer buys it. The American people overwhelmingly want to change the course in Iraq. The polls are consistent. For example, this recent ABC News-Washington Post poll indicates that 57% of Americans say the War in Iraq was not worth fighting and 55% blame the Republicans. It is the number one issue that respondents say will drive them to the polls in less than two weeks.

Okay, so let us agree for a moment that those of us who want to change the course in Iraq maybe do not want the terrorists to win after all. I know it is hard for me to get my mind around it. After all, a couple years ago when I expressed this sentiment someone left an “America: Love it or Leave It” note on my car’s windshield. Naturally, with this sort of peer pressure, I thought I must have unwittingly been supporting al Qaeda. Does wanting to change the course now mean that I was patriotic all along? Does this mean that those who want to continue to stay the course now want the terrorists to win?

Or could this just indicate that following the same failed strategy demonstrates not just stubbornness, but stupidity? Maybe it means that the American people are now wide-awake, and recognize there is no simple solution to this complicated situation. Maybe now that we have had our national chin karmically kicked in a few times by reality, we understand what does not work, and are amenable to trying something else.

The voters will give the politicians firm guidance on November 7th. Stay tuned.

October 25th, 2006 at 10:02pm Posted by Mark | Politics 2006 | one comment

The Illusion called the State of Iraq

If wishes were horses, beggars would ride
If turnips were swords, I’d wear one by my side
If ifs and ands were pots and pans,
there’d be no need for tinkers’ hands

Scottish Proverb

Sometimes the most obvious things are the hardest to discern. So here’s a dose of reality: Iraq as a nation no longer exists. Moreover, arguably it has not existed for some time. You do not have to look very far for evidence. From yesterday’s New York Times:

The Shiite militia run by anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr seized total control of the southern Iraqi city of Amarah on Friday in one of the boldest acts of defiance yet by one of the country’s powerful, unofficial armies, witnesses and police said.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki dispatched an emergency security delegation that included the Minister of State for Security Affairs and top officials from the Interior and Defense ministries, Yassin Majid, the prime minister’s media adviser, told The Associated Press.

The Mahdi Army fighters stormed three main police stations Friday morning, planting explosives that flattened the buildings, residents said.

About 800 black-clad militiamen with Kalashnikov rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers were patrolling city streets in commandeered police vehicles, eyewitnesses said. Other fighters had set up roadblocks on routes into the city and sound trucks circulated telling residents to stay indoors.

This event yesterday is the boldest action to date by an Iraqi militia. It demonstrates the impotency of the so-called government of Iraq. With very little effort, a militia working under the instructions of the radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr was able to take control of this city of approximately 340,000 people in Eastern Iraq. His militia did so with apparent impunity. While later reports suggested the militia has withdrawn at the request of an envoy working for the Iraqi government, no doubt the point was understood inside the Green Zone: focused militias of sufficient size can control not just towns, but major cities, and the Iraqi Army is largely incapable of stopping them.

Even the Bush Administration grudgingly admits that the security situation has simply spun out of its control. The result is a toxic mixture of anarchy and civil war. The influential cleric Muqtada al-Sadr understands that Iraq really is no more. That is not to say the “government” of Iraq is wholly impotent. However, from a tactical level it is just another militia. Since it is backed by the United States, it is one of the more powerful ones. Yet even with the powerful assistance of tens of thousands of American troops in Baghdad alone and aggressive block-by-block efforts to clear neighborhoods of arms and insurgents, the violence has intensified. The carnage is clear from many statistics: deaths of American soldiers in Iraq are reaching a two-year high, there are an average of 100 Iraqis murdered on a typical day, the ethnic cleansing of whole neighborhoods continues largely unchecked, and 914,000 Iraqis that have relocated since the war began.

Al Sadr’s militia will be one of many already trying to establish dominance over various regions of Iraq. For now, the conflicts are mostly between Sunni and Shiite militias. In Baghdad, the sectarian war seems to be one without clear boundaries. Yet competing militias are still working within the city to control territory, despite the heavy presence of Iraqi and American troops. The Iraqi Army and Police have proven to be mostly useless there, and some elements inside it are working for sectarian interests. North of Baghdad we recently read about Sunni militias killing more than 100 Shiite residents of the city of Balad. In Western Iraq, our military admits it cannot improve the political or social situation there, and its ability to control territory is very limited.

Here in the United States the average voter now understands that Iraq is embroiled in a civil war, and it has spun out of our ability to control it. Nevertheless, we are still largely in denial that the state of Iraq has ceased to exist. We think that because it has a parliament, it is a state in fact. For a state to be one in fact, and not just in name, it must control its territory. Paramilitary groups control much of Columbia, and consequently those areas are really no longer a part of Columbia until the Columbian government can control them. Aside from the Green Zone and scattered neighborhoods and cities, government forces do not control Iraq either. In fact, the Green Zone is starting to eerily resemble Hitler’s bunker at the end of World War Two. That few of those who control Iraq will venture outside the safety of the Green Zone speaks volumes.

Today’s reality is that Iraq is stateless. It is rife with competing militias each attempting to gain the upper hand. Who controls a given territory largely depends on which force or militia has dominance over an area at a given time. With no clear boundaries, increasingly Iraqis are choosing to relocate to be with their own clans. A de-facto partitioning of Iraq has been underway for some time. People are expressing the reality with their feet. Those who can, such as the oppressed Christian community, are emigrating and ending up in nearby states like Syria.

At the White House, the disconnect between the reality in Iraq and official policy continues to become more surreal and now has entered the realm of the bizarre. An Iraq Studies Group has returned from Iraq. Headed by Bush’s father’s well-respected Secretary of State James Baker and former congressional representative Lee Hamilton of Indiana (who also vice chaired the 9-11 commission) the group is reportedly putting together a list of recommendations to deal with the Iraq mess. While its conclusions are unknown, Bush stated just yesterday that he is only amenable to changing tactics, not strategy. He still operates under the illusion that Iraq can be a free, democratic and contiguous state. His inability to acknowledge reality is doubtless fueling the animus that suggests that voters will allow Democrats to retake the House of Representatives in November, and possibly the Senate as well.

“If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.” Just as Humpty Dumpty could never be put back together, there is no way to put Iraq back together either. At this point, it is beyond even Saddam Hussein’s ability to reform the Iraqi state. The Iraqi civil war is well underway. Clerics like al-Sadr are making their own reality. They are forging the sad new turbulent reality that was the country of Iraq.

There remains some small sliver of hope that Iraq will balkanize into a federation of states. Bush should be embracing this outcome. While it remains highly dubious, it still exists within the realm of the possible. The free, prosperous and democratic Iraq he envisions was always just a neoconservative fantasy. If a federalist state emerges, it will not last long. Its purpose will be to give us an excuse to withdraw our forces, and then it will collapse. I do not think federalism will take root in Iraq. Instead, I see continued civil war with the eventual creation of loose Sunni and Shiite states, and a stronger Kurdish state to the north. Within each state, there will be considerable bloodshed as competing militias fight for control. The real fight, of course, will be for whom controls access to the oil resources.

It remains to be seen whether the sectarian violence in Iraq will spill over outside its borders. When all the bloodshed finally ends, will this be the new map of the Middle East?

October 21st, 2006 at 11:08am Posted by Mark | Politics 2006 | one comment

Obituary: The United States of America

In case you did not notice, the United States of America died on September 28th.

As is often the case with countries long in decline, the actual death went largely unnoticed by the public. The country first tested positive for the righteousness infection in 1981 when President Ronald Reagan was sworn into office. Tests reconfirmed the infection in 1985 and 1989. The infection though went into remission in 1993 with the election of President William Jefferson Clinton. Indeed, some doctors claimed the patient was now free of the disease. However, on January 20, 2001 it became clear that the virus had merely lain dormant for eight years. The disease metastasized on March 20, 2003. From that time on the disease became incurable. Although civil libertarians and liberals made valiant attempts to halt the progress of the disease, the Democrats in Congress refused to develop a spine, saying they did not want to be seen as giving aid and comfort to terrorists.

Death, when it came, came very quickly. The postmortem on the United States of America revealed that death occurred not from one cause, but two principle causes.

First, on this date Congress agreed to do away with writ of Habeas Corpus. Written specifically to ensue those captured in combat could appeal their detention and ignored by the President, Congress said the President could now choose precisely to whom it would apply. The writ has been in widespread use since its first use in 1305 in Great Britain. By the 18th century, the writ was so firmly established that the United States adopted it from the British legal system without a thought. On Thursday after 701 years of use, Congress decided Habeas Corpus was incompatible with fighting the War on Terror. In fact, Congress gave the President so much discretion that he can toss into prison anyone he deems an enemy combatant, including American citizens, and keep them there indefinitely. He does not even have to keep a list of these combatants. Effectively the President now has the sanction to let people he does not like disappear and with no accounting whatsoever. According to our Congress, this shows resolve in the War on Terror. It was noted that at the moment of Congressional passage, the country’s heart stopped beating.

Doctors attempted to revive the country, but were forcibly restrained by the Congress. Congress intervened in the rescue by passing another law that says the United States will comply with the Geneva Conventions by doing precisely what it explicitly prohibits. In doublespeak worthy of Big Brother, Congress declared that the Third Geneva Convention, Article Three which specifically covers treatment of noncombatants, requires them to be treated humanely and prohibits “outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment” now permits torture. Unbelievably, Congress has interpreted the Geneva Conventions to mean any interrogation techniques that in the judgment of the president does not inflict “severe pain” may be used on noncombatants. Severe pain is defined as any technique that will leave a lasting mental trauma. Although the President is not a psychiatrist, he gets to determine which techniques do not leave a lasting mental trauma. Apparently, waterboarding (simulating drowning) may not leave a lasting trauma. If so, it is lawful and fully complies with the United States’ new interpretation of the Geneva Conventions. Consequently, attempts to restore the country’s heartbeat failed, and the country was declared dead upon passage of these bills. Although the country is dead, the death certificate has not yet been signed. The President is expected to sign both bills into law shortly.

It was noted by many independent observers that the country had been acting delusional since September 11, 2001. Once a beacon of liberty, democracy and concern for the rights of all citizens, the United States became increasingly paranoid and self-righteous. It refused to hear different points of views. Traditional allies who expressed disagreement with its philosophies were either ignored or castigated. Once able to navigate successfully in a pluralistic world, and admired by the rest of the world for its broad tolerance and generosity, it became insular and dogmatic. It counted as friendly only those who followed it without question or hesitation and cast aspersions on any country with differing points of view.

Osama bin Laden was at bedside at the country’s death, and expressed satisfaction. “Frankly,” he said, “we had no idea that such a resilient country with so many constitutional checks and balances could succumb to this infection so quickly. We are delighted to have succeeded beyond our wildest dreams. We have succeeded in killing all the aspects of this country that once was the greatest on the planet. Now the survivors will be more susceptible to our message, since we now share so much more in common. We believe in torture, and so do they. We do not believe in due process or trial by jury, and neither do they. We believe we have the holy truth and so do they. We believe in using whatever means are necessary to affect our ends, and so do they. Frankly, we had no idea that three airliners could kill such a robust democracy so quickly. We look forward to more death and bloodshed in the years ahead. Together we will spread intolerance across the world and bring about a third global war. Praise be to Allah, the Merciful.”

The survivors were too distracted by their cell phones, X Boxes and iPods to notice their country’s passing. They were last seen filling up their SUVs with cheap gas and tuning in the current episode of The Lost.

October 1st, 2006 at 10:49am Posted by Mark | Politics 2006 | no comments

Empty Suit

There are few people that irk me more than hypocrites. Today President Bush’s hypocrisy is irritating me.

Perhaps you heard his speech to the nation Monday night, on the fifth anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks. I did not, although I read excerpts later. By now, most Americans have developed Pavlovian responses to George W. Bush. They amount to this: when we hear him, we turn down the sound. When we see him, we change channels. There is no point in wasting precious minutes of our lives to hear him tell us precisely the same thing he has repeated ad infinitum. That is why despite being broadcast on four networks and three cable channels, his speech on Monday drew only 37 million people. That is four million viewers less than tuned into his last State of the Union speech and a whopping 45 million less than listened to his first State of the Union speech. The speech of course was all about staying the course in Iraq and elsewhere. Those who bothered to tune in were not disappointed:

Whatever mistakes have been made in Iraq, the worst mistake would be to think that if we pulled out, the terrorists would leave us alone. They will not leave us alone. They will follow us. The safety of America depends on the outcome of the battle in the streets of Baghdad. Osama bin Laden calls this fight “the Third World War” — and he says that victory for the terrorists in Iraq will mean America’s “defeat and disgrace forever.” If we yield Iraq to men like bin Laden, our enemies will be emboldened; they will gain a new safe haven; they will use Iraq’s resources to fuel their extremist movement. We will not allow this to happen. America will stay in the fight. Iraq will be a free nation, and a strong ally in the war on terror.

Yet why stay and fight when our tactics are self-defeating? Staying the course, as I mentioned recently, is insane. Would it have been better for Great Britain to have hung on at Dunkirk? Of course not. Thousands would have been needlessly killed. There are times when tactical withdrawals are logical. It makes no sense to continue a strategy that amounts to shooting yourself in the foot.

There is little doubt we are losing this war. For example, The Washington Post recently reported this about the western predominantly Sunni province of Iraq called Anbar Province.

The chief of intelligence for the Marine Corps in Iraq recently filed an unusual secret report concluding that the prospects for securing that country’s western Anbar province are dim and that there is almost nothing the U.S. military can do to improve the political and social situation there, said several military officers and intelligence officials familiar with its contents.

The officials described Col. Pete Devlin’s classified assessment of the dire state of Anbar as the first time that a senior U.S. military officer has filed so negative a report from Iraq.

One Army officer summarized it as arguing that in Anbar province, “We haven’t been defeated militarily but we have been defeated politically — and that’s where wars are won and lost.”

I have a simple question for the president. If Iraq is truly the central front on the War on Terror, why will you not put the forces on the ground so we can actually secure the country? Apparently, 140,000 troops are not nearly enough. The Iraqi Army that we helped create and train is apparently not up to the job. They are far more interested in fanning sectarian warfare than securing national peace. Its government, such as it is, is corrupt and ineffective.

What would it take to truly secure Iraq? You heard it from generals whom your Secretary of Defense dismissed before the war: 350,000 troops or so. (It might well be more than that now.) The force must be overwhelming or there is simply no hope of securing this ethnically divided country. That you cannot make the commitment required to actually do the job that you say is so vital to the country proves that you are simply another hypocrite. At least I hope it is that. The only other option is you are too stupid to be president. So it has come to this: your strategy amounts to letting the terrorists win.

Since our troops are already stretched thinly across the globe and since, at best, we are just meeting armed forces recruitment goals, it is clear that to put the sufficient troops in Iraq to would require reinstating the draft. This, of course, is something both your administration and the Republican congress promised during the 2004 election that you would never do. However, if it is that vital to our national security, then there is no other choice. You and your Republican congress must make this unpopular decision because it is required for our national security. You said it yourself: we must defeat them there so they will not defeat us here.

To do so though would require genuine leadership and hard choices. This is something that is clearly beyond you. If America loses the War on Terror, it will be because you and your Republican Congress made the disastrously wrong choices. You substituted ideology for a dispassionate assessment of the facts and a comprehensive analysis of the complexities of the Middle East. In addition, you did not bother to learn from history. We did not win two world wars because we made halfhearted commitments. We gave each war everything we had. We focused like a laser beam on winning them. We won because we were united. The nation understood the stakes and the consequences of losing. We have yet to win a major war where we did not make this tradeoff. It did not happen in Korea, where the war came down to a draw and we are still dealing with its detritus. It did not happen in Vietnam where we lost but our fears were ultimately proven to be phantoms. Since you are incapable of convincing the country to make the necessary sacrifices to win in Iraq, it will not happen there either.

That is partly why we have tuned you out. You had the opportunity to demonstrate genuine leadership shortly after September 11, 2001 and you squandered it. Only those who felt a calling to serve their country would have to fight the War on Terror. As a result, the War on Terror gradually faded into abstraction and surrealism. It was something bad going on over there. Moreover, we received mixed messages. Your voice said it was deadly serious, but your attitude was: keep partying America! That message sank in.

Actions always speak louder than words. Your actions told us: do not work up a sweat about this terrorism thing. We the grown ups in government (i.e. Republicans) got it under control. Spend your time in Leave it to Beaver land, except of course right before elections. Then it was necessary to be really fearful of terrorists again, to make sure Republicans stayed in power. (Sure enough, it is the same strategy this year.) Right after the election though, it is back to denial. Spend, spend, spend and attend church regularly too.

Of course, we understand that we are just deluding ourselves. The carnage in Iraq has woken most of us up at this point. Now that we are sobered up, we know you and your Republican Congress are incapable of actually solving the problem. However, there is not too much we can do to change the problem because we have an intransigent president who will not shift course no matter what. So mostly, we have tuned you out. We are resigned. You have become the crazy uncle in the attic and you have a legal paper that means we cannot evict you until January 20, 2009. Then hopefully someone with a clue, perhaps General Wesley Clark, can take charge and maybe do something that will work.

After September 11, 2001, we wanted another Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Instead, we got a caricature of a president. Since you are stuck on your foolish course, we know that we can only expect terrorism to worsen. We cannot believe we were so gullible as to put an empty suit like you into power.

September 13th, 2006 at 10:00pm Posted by Mark | Politics 2006 | no comments

Threats from within on the Fifth Anniversary of September 11th

Has it been five years? The date seems too prominent in my memory for it to be half a decade away already. For most of us Americans, even if we did not live in New York or Washington, the events of September 11, 2001 left a permanent impression in our minds. Move over Kennedy Assassination and Challenger Disaster. The tragic events of this day eclipsed all of them.

I have been in both the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. Until I ran out of web space, I hosted pictures of myself and my family on the observation deck of the World Trade Center during the spring of 2000. Far from being bustling, the twin towers seemed serene by Manhattan standards. You could stand in the courtyard, crane your head way, way up and try to see the top floors. Do it for too long and your neck was sure to hurt. They seemed as permanent as the pyramids of Egypt.

Not only have I visited the Pentagon, I worked there for nine years. Perhaps it was just as well that by 1998 I had grown frustrated and left for better opportunities with the Department of Health and Human Services. While the office I worked at there was not one of the ones destroyed (in fact that office relocated to another building a few miles away before September 11th) I could have easily found other work in the Pentagon. So I too could have been one of the 125 deaths in the Pentagon who died that day. Many times when I was enjoying a bit of the bucolic during my lunch hour in the Pentagon’s center courtyard (ironically referred to as “Ground Zero”) I would watch turboprops buzz a few hundred feet overhead on approach to Reagan National Airport. I wondered how air traffic controllers could direct airplanes to fly directly over the Pentagon. One bomb dropped from one of these airplanes could also have wreaked massive havoc to our national security.

On September 11th, 2001 itself I was busy at work in my office in Washington, D.C. At the time I worked on the National Mall at the headquarters of the Department of Health and Human Services. It was one of our contract employees who told me something about a plane hitting the World Trade Center. We went into one of the conference rooms that had a big screen TV and watched CNN in horror. We heard not only that the Pentagon had been hit, but that other planes were coming our way. Many of us ended up outside. We could see grayish white smoke from the Pentagon crash to our west, waffling up into a surreal crystal clear blue sky. Many people were frantically calling on their cell phones. Few succeeded in getting through. Eventually we just started bugging out of town, thinking that if we could just get home we would at least be safe. (One of the surprising aspects of the day was that Dan, the guy who drove our vanpool, managed to do it at all. It would be the last day he would drive the vanpool. The next day he was in the hospital for tests. Less than a month later has was dead, not from terrorism, but from pancreatic cancer.)

I steeled up my nerves and returned to the office the next day. The truth was that after that terrible day I never felt comfortable working in Washington, D.C. again. My feelings were exacerbated when we moved to another building in Southwest D.C. From my window I could look down on a steady stream of anonymous railroad cars entering and leaving the District. I frequently wondered if any of them would explode outside my window.

So I started looking in earnest for civil servant jobs in the suburbs. My current position with the U.S. Geological Survey here in Reston, Virginia is a direct effect of that day five years ago today. While I feel safe at work again, I do not feel safe like I did before September 11th. I am still occasionally unnerved. Last week, for example, the power went out in our building. My first though was to wonder if some terrorist incident was to blame.

With five years hindsight I can say that I overreacted. I was born during the Cold War. Until it ended some fifteen years ago, I lived with the abstract but very real threat that my life could end at any moment as a result of a nuclear missile strike. For most of us, September 11th made the fears that foreigners could actually kill us here on our home soil very concrete rather than abstract. I also believe that if you were one of the couple million people like me who experienced the attacks firsthand, however removed, the threat became particularly personified.

I have already put together my thoughts on what it would really take to win the War on Terror. Three thousand deaths as a result of three incidents on one day is a lot of people. Although every life lost that day (except for the perpetrators) was precious, five years later it may be helpful to put those deaths in perspective. 3000 deaths were 3000 more Americans than died on our home soil as a result of the Cold War. However, your odds of being one of the victims of September 11th were roughly 1 in 100,000. Those are pretty good odds, even if you work in New York City or Washington. That is why I am one of many advocating we concentrate resources to prevent terrorists from acquiring weapons of mass destruction. It is an obvious strategy for which this administration has given short shrift. We want to prevent the type of war that kills millions and rips apart a nation on all levels. Our own Civil War is a painful example of what not to do. Had you been alive then, your odds of dying in the war were 1 in 100. When it was over, our country and our economy were in ruins. Perhaps our greatest national security threat is not from outside, but from within.

And speaking of threats from within, what about deaths that we inflict on each other? While they cannot be classified as acts of terrorism, they are equally as lethal. There are 78 deaths from firearms in our country every day. Some are a result of suicide, but most are homicides. If we could cut our firearm death rates to those of Western Europe, we could prevent the equivalent of one September 11th every 43 days.

Arguably, preventable deaths should be equally as tragic as homicides. Nearly as many Americans die of mostly preventable cardiovascular diseases every day (2566) than were killed on September 11th. According to the CDC, tobacco smoking kills 1200 Americans daily. Some would argue these deaths amount to a peculiar form of suicide, since the risks are known and prevention strategies can be adopted. Is a wife’s suffering over the loss of a husband who died of obesity, alcohol or smoking any less than some wife who lost their husband as a result of terrorism? These judgments are hard to make, but I would say no.

On this fifth anniversary, I am still struck by the need to develop an effective strategy for dealings with the terrorist threat. It is clear that our strategy to date has been wasteful, largely ineffective and generally counterproductive. Yet I am also seeing potentially greater threats that we are giving short shrift. While we try to prevent external threats, let us also be mindful of the cancers like poverty, racism and polarization by income or values. They are harder to detect but are far more likely to kill our nation.

September 11th, 2006 at 04:40pm Posted by Mark | Politics 2006 | no comments

“Stay the course” is insane

On April 21, 2006 while pondering the Republican 2006 election strategy I predicted that in order to maintain control of Congress, the White House had no choice but to play the terrorism card one more time with the American people:

What will it be this time? Fear? Fear and rabid demagoguery? It will doubtless be some variation of the above.

Sadly, although this was an absurdly easy prediction to make, my prediction has come to pass. Yesterday, President Bush spoke before a Republican fundraiser. Rather than speak of a solution to the problem of terrorism that might actually work, he merely went back to his “stay the course” rhetoric. According to The Washington Post:

Bush offered an impassioned defense of his Iraq policy, linking the war to the battle against terrorists and once again rejecting the growing clamor from Democrats — and some Republicans — to begin setting a timetable for withdrawing the more than 130,000 U.S. troops. While acknowledging that many Americans are troubled by the violence in Iraq, he said “amazing progress” is being made and said defeating the insurgency in Iraq is essential to preventing terrorists from coming to America.

If America left Iraq “before the job is done,” he said, it would be a “major defeat” for the United States and would create a “terrorist state in the heart of the Middle East.”

A day earlier, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld spoke before the American Legion:

Drawing parallels to efforts by some nations to appease Adolf Hitler before World War II, Rumsfeld said it would be “folly” for the United States to ignore the rising dangers posed by a new enemy that he called “serious, lethal and relentless.”

In a pointed attack on the news media and critics of President Bush’s war and national security policies, Rumsfeld declared: “Any kind of moral and intellectual confusion about who and what is right or wrong can severely weaken the ability of free societies to persevere.”

So here is what it has come down to: you are either with the Administration’s proven unworkable tactics in dealing with terrorism, or you are with the terrorists. By the logic advanced by his administration, apparently a majority of Americans now want the terrorists to win.

America to the Bush Administration: the debate is not over whether to end terrorism, but how to end it. While Bush sees “amazing progress”, the rest of us see a war gone grievously awry. Take this story in today’s Washington Post. Murder and mayhem like this in Iraq is so unspectacular it needs to be buried deep in the international news section of the Post.

Rescue crews pulled bodies from the rubble of bombed buildings Friday after a barrage of coordinated attacks across eastern Baghdad neighborhoods killed at least 64 people and wounded more than 280 within half an hour, police said.

It is ironic that Secretary Rumsfeld speaks of folly. For I am reading The March of Folly by the well-known author and historian Barbara W. Tuchman. She recounts examples of folly throughout the history of the world, starting with the Trojan Wars and continuing through Vietnam. The book was published in 1984, five years before her death. There is no doubt in my mind though that if she was still alive she would have to add a new chapter to her book to capture our grossly misdirected war on terrorism.

Wooden-headedness, the source of self-deception, is a factor that plays a remarkably large role in government. It consists of assessing a situation in terms of preconceived fixed notions while ignoring or rejecting contrary signs. It is acting according to wish while not allowing oneself to be deflected by facts. It is epitomized in a historian’s statement about Philip II of Spain, the surpassing wooden-head of all sovereigns: “No experience in the failure of his policy could shake his belief in its essential excellence.”

Step aside, King Philip. Send George W. Bush to the front of the line.

From the moment it was planned, the War on Terrorism and the War in Iraq in particular became an exercise is extreme folly. Moreover, Secretary Rumsfeld was one of its chief planners. Since the War on Terrorism has devolved into folly and the administration has refused to change our counterproductive course, then arguably our administration is now insane. It is unfortunate that insanity does not amount to high crimes and misdemeanors. If so then we could at least impeach the president and vice president and perhaps put someone with a clue in charge. (Arguably, President Bush has violated U.S. laws against war crimes. This could be grounds for his impeachment and removal from office. Not surprisingly, he is promoting legislation that would, after the fact, exempt him and his administration from possible prosecution.)

The vast majority of Americans want a real solution to the problem of terrorism. It is clear to them that what we have done so far simply has not proven effective. They want new strategies and tactics to actually solve the problem, rather than pretend to solve it.

“Staying the course” is not leadership when it is counterproductive. A real leader will quickly discern when a strategy works against him and try a better approach. That President Bush cannot do this shows that he no longer leads this nation. He comes across as increasingly disconnected and more than a bit pathetic.

Of course, he is out hitting the road now because midterm elections are looming. He is far more worried about the Republican Party maintaining control than he is about solving the problem of terrorism. He should be afraid of the midterm elections because they will be a referendum on him. Many otherwise decent Republican candidates will bear the price of his folly.

Americans remain convinced that terrorism is a global problem that must be addressed. Our will is steady and no one, particularly the Democratic Party, wants to sweep terrorism under the rug. The only thing that has changed is that voters now have no-confidence in Bush’s leadership. By voting against Republicans, voters will demonstrate not just our patriotism, but our commitment to take effective steps to deal with terrorism. In other words, voters will say, “Well, at least we are sane.”

September 1st, 2006 at 03:57pm Posted by Mark | Politics 2006 | no comments