Bush Tag Archive
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
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 |
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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 |
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I hesitate to claim victory prematurely. Yet with less than 100 days to go before the midterm elections, it is getting harder to see how the Democrats can fail to recapture the U.S. House of Representatives in November. Even the U.S. Senate, once presumed off limits, may be looking Blue again. Could it be that beltway insiders, who are often notoriously wrong on elections but like to echo conventional wisdom, may be right this time? Could it be that I am engaging in wishful thinking? On the other hand, perhaps I really am hearing an approaching stampede of pissed off voters of all stripes.
Whatever. I have my fingers crossed. I have my toes crossed. I am glad to hop on one leg if that will improve the odd that Democrats will retake the Congress. Mainly, I just feel the coming change inside of me. I smell it in the hot, fetid, ozone-laden air that is resting here over Northern Virginia tonight. I hear it anecdotally at the office water coolers. What I am hearing is, “This country is royally screwed up. It is time to throw the bums out.”
One reason I do not think my prognostication is a result of all the glue I have been sniffing lately is this report from Charlie Cook. Cook is non-partisan and well respected. His outfit pays careful attention to the numerous House and Senate races out there. His judgments have an excellent track record.
In the latest Cook Political Report/RT Strategies poll, conducted last Friday through Sunday among 809 registered voters, only 27 percent said the country was headed in the right direction and 63 percent said it was off on the wrong track. In polling for NBC and the Wall Street Journal, conducted July 21-24 and for CBS and the New York Times, taken July 21-25, the right direction numbers were 27 and 28 percent, respectively, while wrong track results were 60 and 66 percent respectively. These numbers are about the same as they were at this point in 1994 and going into Election Day that year.
Out of touch. That is what I hear the most. I bet you are hearing it too. The Republicans controlling government have severed their connections with real life and in particular their constituents. Having control of all three branches of government, they simply no longer care what the voters think. A most recent and egregious example was the so-called increase in the minimum wage bill. It was passed in the House only because it was tied to estate tax cuts, which would exempt the first $5 million in estate taxes for singles, and $10 million for couples. Never mind our already stratospheric federal deficits. Who cares if these tax cuts would only worsen the deficit? This is compassionate conservatism in action. When fully enacted, the new $7.25 an hour minimum wage would still not come close to providing a living wage, but this bill would allow multimillionaires to pass on even more of their wealth to their heirs, who never earned it. Can you feel their love?
The Republicans whole approach to government has become faith based. It has become not just surreal but downright bizarre. You cannot make up this stuff. It reads like something in The Onion. President Bush is saying we cannot have an immediate cease-fire in Lebanon because it will not solve the long-term problem security problem. Instead, we must allow both sides to keep killing in order to ensure peace. Big Brother has been proven right: War is Peace, at least according to George W. Bush. We can cut the deficit by taxing less and spending more. We need to give public school students vouchers to attend private schools even though a Department of Education report shows that public schools and private schools perform equally with the same class of student. We can solve global warming by allowing corporations to choose if they want to meet emissions standards. Medical savings accounts will solve our high cost of health care, even though most people simply do not have the disposable income to contribute to such an account. Of course the biggest, baddest, most egregious and most insidious lie of all: we are winning the war on terror. If winning the war on terror equals Armageddon, it is time to throw a victory parade.
It would have been nice if Americans had sobered up in time for the 2004 elections. My belief is that they are fully sobered up now. All signs point to governmental incompetence on a level never seen in this country. Perhaps Americans would have preferred to keep their heads stuck in the sand. It is no longer possible. This current sensory overload can no longer be ignored. The country is badly off track and the current crew in charge does not even realize the country is off track. They think things are just fine. The lunatics are running the asylum.
I do not seeing it getting any better for Republicans before the election. Indeed, Republicans should be praying their house of cards does not fully collapse before then. Household savings rates are in negative territory: we are living off credit cards and our equity. Could a recession be in our near future? Iraq, if it is not yet is civil war, is likely to devolve into large-scale sectarian genocide, and our troops will be in the middle of it. Housing starts are down, and house prices are going down too. This means the equity on which we depend to live beyond our means is shrinking too. Interest rates are up. Stocks are trending down. Arguably, the NASDAQ is in freefall. Domestic car sales are off sharply. If Republicans are lucky, gas prices will not increase, but they too are likely to go up before November.
It is too bad that the Democrats, for the most part, do not have a plan. Actually, there is a Democratic plan out there; it is just that it was badly marketed. Most Americans have no clue as to what the Democrats would do if they recaptured the Congress. In such a situation, most political parties would loudly be marketing solutions that would assuage the public’s concerns. The public is now ripe for a real solution to health care costs. They want to hear that we will get out of Iraq on a rapid time schedule. Yet my party cannot seem to say these things. It does not believe that the tide has turned in their favor. It does not know how to capitalize on the moment. Here is the truth: one hard smack to the Republican Party and it goes down. Winning through intimidation has been their preferred tactic. All Democrats have to do is laugh at them and the whole country will laugh with them. Their mojo is gone.
It may not matter that the Democrats do so little to win this election. There is no other path out there other than to keep the current pillagers in charge of the government. Perhaps there is hope that once in power again the Democrats will develop something resembling spine. Instead, they seem more worried about being Swift Boated.
Billmon has said he does not want the Democrats to win. He argues that this mess is so big and so deep and so tall that Democrats will be blamed when they cannot clean it up. It is not often that I disagree with Billmon, but I do on this one. Democrats have a responsibility as citizens to put our country back into order again. We need to be a respected country in the world again. Someone has to throw out the bums out on the street. Someone has to take out the trash, sweep the floors, patch the window screens and tidy up the yard. Someone has to cut that national credit card in half and throw it in the trash.
If not the Democrats, then who?
August 2nd, 2006 at 08:19pm
Posted by
Mark |
Politics 2006 |
no comments
Yesterday the Bush Administration announced the long expected resignation of Treasury Secretary John Snow. The very same day President Bush nominated Wall Street financier Henry M. Paulson, Jr. as his third Treasury Secretary. Paulson is currently the head of the well-respected (and profitable) Goldman Sachs Group.
Paulson is very well qualified, as well as highly respected on Wall Street. This is good news because next to the chairman of the Federal Reserve, the Treasury Secretary wields the most influence in the financial community on United States fiscal matters. With stocks up, but faltering, the value of the U.S. dollar sinking, and with overseas markets skittish, the Bush Administration clearly needs a Treasury Secretary in which the financial community will have confidence. In this sense, Paulson is an excellent choice.
Generally when the White House comes offering a cabinet level position, you do not say no. Apparently, Paulson had to be courted aggressively by the Bush Administration. He spurned a number of interview requests before finally agreeing to meet with the President. Before accepting the position, Paulson required strict assurances that he would have the operational authority that he needed.
While it is clear that on fiscal matters, Bush and Paulson largely agree, what struck me from news reports is how Paulson vigorously disagreed with Bush on other matters. In addition to his full time work for Goldman Sachs, Paulson was the chairman of the Nature Conservancy. The Nature Conservancy’s mission is to buy land to keep it from ever being developed. I contribute to this charity through payroll deductions, and consider it one of the best uses of my charitable contribution. Paulson may be a wealthy Wall Street financier but he is also an ardent environmentalist. He and his wife also have given nearly a million dollars to a political organization affiliated with the League of Conservation Voters. This organization has regularly taken the Bush Administration to task for its anti environmental efforts. Clearly, Paulson has walked the environmentalist walk, not just talked it.
Perhaps most peculiarly, while the chairman of the Nature Conservancy, the Conservancy came out strongly in favor of the United States adhering to the Kyoto Protocol to cut greenhouse gas emissions:
The Kyoto Protocol is a key first step to help slow the onslaught of global warming and benefit conservation efforts…Until the United States passes its own limits on global warming emissions, innovative companies based here will lose out on opportunities to sell reduced emission credits to companies complying with the Kyoto Protocol overseas. Additionally, without enacting our own emission limits, U.S. companies will lose ground to their competitors in Europe, Canada, Japan, and other countries participating in the Protocol who are developing clean technologies.
Even Goldman Sachs under Paulson took a position on climate change. It promoted an “Environmental Policy Framework” that required governments to take urgent action to address climate change:
[C]limate change is one of the most significant environmental challenges of the 21st century and is linked to other important issues such as economic growth and development… Goldman Sachs is very concerned by the threat to our natural environment, to humans and to the economy presented by climate change and believes that it requires the urgent attention of and action by governments, business, consumers and civil society to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
In his position as Treasury Secretary, at best Paulson will have marginal influence on U.S. environmental policy. Nevertheless, those into reading political tealeaves might want to sit up and take note of this nomination. To date, the Bush Administration has not been accommodating to anyone working for it who is unfriendly to its positions. In fact, Bush’s first Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill was ushered out in 2002 largely for telling the American people some unpleasant fiscal truths: either sharp tax increases or dramatic benefit cuts would be needed to meet to pay out Social Security and Medicare benefits to promised to future retirees. He was eased out the door. Replacing him with John Snow however turned out to be a mixed blessing. While Snow faithfully towed the party line, Wall Street did not buy into growth through unending deficit spending. They wanted a policy maker, not a toady.
Paulson is unlikely to be this politically incorrect on basic Bush fiscal doctrine. However, he does have the savvy to realize that he had to have the authority to set his own policy without being countermanded by the White House. On this matter, for the first time, Bush has relented. Paulson’s sharp disagreements with the Bush Administration on environmental matters suggest that new White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten may be testing the waters of moderation. He may realize that in order for the Bush Administration to have any successes in its last three years, it will be necessary for the Administration to moderate its stances.
Paulson may be an olive leaf to the country that Bush is grudgingly willing to moderate his excessive conservative tendencies and embrace more mainstream behavior. This approach likely will not do much to improve his poll numbers, but it certainly could not hurt. It does suggest perhaps a hint of desperation from an otherwise buttoned down, stiffed lipped administration.
May 31st, 2006 at 09:19pm
Posted by
Mark |
Politics 2006 |
no comments
It’s smoke and mirrors times at The White House.
First, it was Andy Card, the White House Chief of Staff. In March for reasons not made public (although I am betting it was prompted by a long lecture to President Bush from President Bush, the Senior), Andy decided maybe he didn’t want to be Chief of Staff anymore. (The yowl you heard was from his arm being so painfully twisted.) Taking his place was Josh Bolten, previously the head of the Office of Management and Budget. Josh was promoted because, well, it is hard to say why. Perhaps he was promoted because he was doing such a (cough, cough) terrific job balancing the federal budget. On the other hand, maybe it was because President Bush looked into his soul. We all know now what a fine judge of character our president is. I mean, look how well it worked with Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld (not to mention Vladimir Putin).
Karl Rove, Bush’s Senior Political Advisor and Deputy Chief of Staff, whom most credit for Republican gains in the last two elections, was told that he was working too hard. Rove was told to stop with the policy oversight stuff, and spend his time focusing on the upcoming Congressional elections. Republicans have plenty about which to worry. With a Fox News poll showing Bush’s approval rating at 33%, and a Congressional approval rating at 25%, some Republicans have finally discerned the obvious: their power trip may be over. It is time for more of the voodoo that Karl does so well and quickly before Republicans lose both houses of Congress in November. If they do not retain control then Bush will accomplish nothing in the last two years of his term. Even worse, the rich might have to pay higher taxes again. Oh Lordy, what nightmares! With his approval ratings in the toilet, Bush is already dead politically. Apparently, the political capital he thought he won in 2004 was an IOU. While Bush says, “I am the decider,” the American public has already decided: they want him and the Republicans out of power post haste. Bush never understood that real political capital is earned from the consent of the governed. Anyhow, Karl has to run to the rescue again to save their fannies. What will it be this time? Fear? Fear and rabid demagoguery? It will doubtless be some variation of the above. It’s their one trick pony, but it is unlikely to work this year. Americans have finally wised up. They are practically chomping at the bit to deliver their comeuppance. Even Pavlov’s dog figured out eventually that there was no need to keep salivating if the food no longer arrived on cue.
Scotty (Scott McClellan, White House Press Secretary) was also sent out to pasture. I actually feel a tiny bit of sympathy for Scott. He had to stand in front of the cameras day in and day out and convey the unchanging White House message. He excelled at obfuscation, denial and outright lying. However, he had his marching orders. He was the loyal, dutiful but ultimately stupid good soldier, even falling on his sword in the end for the foolish bosses he served. Those making the policy did not have to talk to either the press or the public. They were much more comfortable in their ivory towers. Scotty could not evade the press. Josh figured out that maybe the White House needs something other than an angry pit pull as press secretary. Reputedly, Tony Snow of Fox News is being considered for the job. Well, at least that would establish indisputably that Fox News was just an extension of the White House.
As for the new Deputy Chief of Staff, Bolten is emulating our president, who can judge character by how many (nonalcoholic) mint juleps he has had with a guy. Therefore, Joel Kaplan, Josh’s deputy at OMB, became the logical choice for Deputy Chief of Staff. Meanwhile, Josh has told the White House staff that if they were even thinking of resigning, this would be a great opportunity. It looks better than being fired.
Doubtless, there will be more staff shakeups in the weeks ahead. Bush is hoping that with some new staff that his administration will have a shiny and new look to it. Do not be fooled. This is the same soap in a different box. It is not like, God forbid, Bush is actually firing the incompetent fools who helped make such a colossal mess of his administration. Cheney, of course, is still at Bush’s right hand. Bush said on Wednesday that Donald Rumsfeld is doing a “fine job” and “I have strong confidence in Donald Rumsfeld.”
It may be that Bush will have no choice other than to get rid of some of his closest advisors. Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, who last fall convinced a grand jury to issue an indictment against Cheney’s former chief of staff, Scooter Libby, appears to be closing in on an indictment of Karl Rove. It may be that Karl will be too busy hiring $400 an hour lawyers and trying to keep his posterior out of prison to spend too much time worrying about congressional elections.
As for Josh Bolten, what he has is Mission Impossible. You know the metaphors too. The one that comes to mind to me: his job is to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic. Go ahead Josh. Believe that all these personnel shuffles actually mean something. Go ahead and hope that they will make a difference. They will not. Not even an October surprise is going to save this president and his Republican congress this time. Your only hope this time is massive vote fraud. Sadly, it appears your party has acquired some significant skills in this area. However, you know things are bad when even in Texas, more people disapprove of Bush than approve of him. He now stands naked not just in front of the world, but in front of his countrymen, and worst of all, his fellow Texans.
There is no way out of this Pandora’s box. Government exists to serve the interests of the people, not special interests. Why are the Nepalese rioting against their king? They riot because their government is not meeting their needs. Generally, Americans overlook quite a bit but they too have a breaking point. It is not that the breaking point is going to occur, it already has occurred. Republicans, being clueless about these things, just do not grasp this yet. Denial is much more comforting. Nevertheless, the truth is that it is late in the fourth act of Hamlet and Fortinbras has entered the castle. The bodies are starting to drop like flies. The denouement has already begun.
April 21st, 2006 at 06:03pm
Posted by
Mark |
Politics 2006 |
2 comments
While in Boulder, Colorado last week, my brother and I stopped by Boulder Books. There I found on the rack a new collection of Tom Tomorrow cartoons. His latest book is Hell in a Handbasket. On the cover, it depicts our president, Dick Cheney and political adviser Karl Rove. Each has devil horns coming out of their foreheads. It is subtitled, “Dispatches from the country formerly known as America”.
I am a big fan of Tom Tomorrow and his weekly strip This Modern World. Looking back on this collection of strips though, which begin in late 2002 as the Iraq War was being sold to the American public, it is as easy to cry as it is to laugh. In fact, it is hard not to laugh and cry and the same time. Not all of us were deceived by the lies coming from the Bush White House at the time. For me, the Iraq War was nothing more than a simpleton’s paranoid fantasies fully realized by 150,000 American troops. I raised holy hell at the time. I attended peace marches. I wrote letters. I called senators. This preemptive war to remove a despotic dictator with delusions of grandeur (but zero influence outside his own country) to me symbolized everything that was wrong with my country. Tom Tomorrow got it right. The day we invaded Iraq, my country lost its soul. I no long live in the United States of America.
As Sparky the liberal penguin put it in this cartoon from 2002, “Um - here’s a scenario for you: what if the invasion of Iraq turns out to be a complete catastrophe - costing thousands of lives, setting off other wars in the region, and ultimately doing far more harm than good?” To which the two Republican clones start worrying if Saddam Hussein is training an army of giant mutant lizards who can shoot deadly laser beams out of their eyeballs.
As a country, we lost our minds and our souls on March 18th, 2003, the day that we invaded Iraq. Just about all of us were hornswoggled. You would expect neoconservatives, with their Neanderthal and schizophrenic vision of the world, to lose a sense of perspective. But Colin Powell? The same man who warned Bush that when it came to invading Iraq, if we broke it, we owned it? The same man who cautioned us never to go into a war without a sound exit strategy? I remember at the time debating his presentation to the U.N. Security Council with friends online. Most were wholly convinced. Fuzzy satellite shots of railroad cars and dubious intelligence reports from second hand sources were sufficient to them for us to start a war. Gosh, we knew where those WMDs were: smack dab in the middle of the Sunni Triangle. Rumsfeld knew it for a fact.
It was all so clear to me back then, but I was mostly alone among my peers. They treated me with either disdain or condescension. Bush and his fellow yahoos could try, but they could not yank my chain. Yet it was clear that as Bush was yanking most of our chains, his chain was also being yanked. The neoconservatives played our simpleton and puffed up fool of a president like the puppet that he is. In turn, it is tempting to think that Saddam was pulling the neoconservatives’ chains. However, I do not think that was the case. Saddam simply could not conceive of someone even more deeply paranoid than he was.
See, here is the thing. Why were the neoconservatives so convinced that Saddam was acquiring weapons of mass destruction? It is clear to me: because subconsciously they identified with Saddam. I know he would do it because I would do the same thing, was what was coming from their id. Something must have gone very wrong with them while growing up. Perhaps Dad had been too handy with the belt. Perhaps they had been picked on too much during recess at school. They were full of repressed anger and anxious for a suitable form of revenge. Unfortunately, those who hurt them had disappeared. So they found others on whom to turn the tables. They convinced themselves that they really were smarter and better than everyone else. Moreover, they would prove it by slowly, over many years, gaining power. They would suck up to simpletons like Bush and use them as their means to an end. For one-dimensional people like Bush had an uncanny ability to latch onto the millions of other simpletons out there. It required leveraging the same faith that these voters had in their religion into candidates who emulated their values, but who could be manipulated. Bush was a convenient toady, but there are still plenty of them around. Bill Frist is the next George W. Bush.
For all the neoconservatives’ protestations about wanting to spread freedom, their real aims were duplicitous. What they really wanted was to control us so they could remake us into a stronger sort of mongrel super-race of uber-Americans. While many of Bush’s supporters are creationists, the neoconservatives are pragmatic social evolutionists. Social Darwinism is their most basic core value: Americans must become meaner and nastier than every other country, because in their paranoid minds the world was an incredibly nasty place. Only by becoming as ruthless and single minded as the enemy could we triumph. To save our way of life, it must first be destroyed, then remade into a new, more militant and less tolerant image.
A trumped up war with Iraq gave them the means to their end. Their vision of America had us citizens goose-stepping to their beat. Just like Adolph Hitler, they cravenly hit us at our most vulnerable spots: fear, paranoia and rabid patriotism. Fear: if you vote for the Democrats then you are helping terrorists, because they secretly want the enemy to win. Moreover, we need color-coded alert levels so we are always aware of just how precarious our happy suburban lives are. Paranoia: be suspicious of everyone who does not act patriotic. Pass something called The Patriot Act, which makes everyone markedly less free. Patriotism: you are either for us or against us. They knew we would fall for it, because it worked wonders for the Nazis too. Human nature is constant and the masses are malleable with the right leverage. For Bush, the rule of law became inconvenient to a nation’s new challenges. Therefore, he invented the most dubious of rationales: a “unitary executive theory” that he interprets as no law can touch him if he does not want it to. He can do anything he wants as long as he thinks his actions protect the country from its enemies. Just to make sure it lasts for the foreseeable future, he made sure that fellow conservatives who subscribe to the unitary executive theory filled two Supreme Court vacancies.
Now finally, the country is sobering up. It would have been much better had the country been fully sober last November. Nevertheless, as I pointed out back then, karmic forces cannot be held in check forever. Bush’s poll numbers hover in the mid thirties and Congress’s numbers are even lower. Dick Cheney’s approval rating is 19%. Cheney was booed today throwing out the first pitch at the Washington Nationals’ season opener.
In reality though we still live in dangerous times. The biggest threat though is not from al Qaeda. For Osama bin Laden is the real puppet master. He was shrewd enough to realize exactly who our president was: one big dumb ass easily manipulated domino. His goal was not to convert America into devout Muslims, although that may be a long-range fantasy. No, his real goal is to convert the Islamic world into one conservative Islamic caliphate. To accomplish it, he needed a force bigger than he could muster. The United States military was the first domino, and he just needed the President of the United States to tip it. His goal could be done on the cheap. Just hijack a few planes using some misguided religious martyrs with box cutters. Have them fly a few airplanes into our most prominent buildings. Do it and we would respond more predictably than Pavlov’s dog. We have been masterfully played for the fool, but bin Laden was also fortunate to have his evil stars so perfectly aligned. Such a grandiose mistake like the one we made in Iraq was only possible with the neoconservatives in positions of power and a complete fool in the Oval Office.
Therefore, the dominoes fell one by one. Many gave the illusion of progress on the war on terror, while actually exacerbating it. It remains to be seen whether those Americans who still remember the blessings of freedom and liberty can stop this chain of dominoes before the world slowly devolves into an eternal set of religious mini-wars lasting generations.
However, forces are lining up to limit further damage. It is already beginning. To work, it simply must be manifested by a return to power by the Democrats in both houses of Congress this autumn. With a change in Congressional power, our new leaders will then have to summon the courage to impeach and convict Bush for his clearly illegal high crimes. It is unclear though that even if Bush is impeached and convicted, that he would actually vacate his office. It is also unclear whether the 2006 elections can be conducted fairly. There was enough voting fraud in 2000 and 2004 for even the mildly paranoid to be disturbed. Diebold controls many voting machines and they sure enough delivered Ohio for the Republicans as promised with a last minute Republican vote surge. Republicans also control most supervisor of election positions. I do not think they will go peacefully; having power is just so intoxicating.
The November elections may turn out to be a time to manifest real patriotism. It will require our supervisors of elections simply to do their duty and let the voting be free and fair. For our biggest enemy is no longer hiding in caves in northwestern Pakistan. He and his cronies occupy the White House and all positions of power in the government. They have shown an unwillingness to listen to reason and an affinity for using whatever means are necessary to affect their desired ends, legal or illegal. We will need every tool at our disposal.
Until now, losing an election was enough to remove someone from power. It may take massive demonstrations that will dwarf recent immigration protests to remove the neoconservatives. It may take massive civil protests with demonstrators lying down blocking access to public buildings, like during the Vietnam War. It may take ordinary citizens standing in front of tanks like in Tiananmen Square. Let us hope a sane head or two in the neoconservative power circle can persuade the rest that their time is over.
Let us also hope that Tom Tomorrow’s next book of cartoons comes from the United States of America that we grew up in, not the grotesque and sick parody that is currently foisted on us. We must stare down these paranoid schizophrenics and firmly show them the door. We may have to push them out. We may have to haul them out one by one and throw them onto the streets. However, they must go if we want to live in the United States of America again.
April 11th, 2006 at 09:25pm
Posted by
Mark |
Politics 2006 |
2 comments
How low can he go? A recent CBS News poll shows President Bush’s approval ratings have sunk to 34%. Some question the sampling method: were too many Democrats sampled, thus making it biased? As other polls results come in, we will soon know. However, after today’s news you have to wonder whether Bush will soon feel nostalgic about this week. Perhaps he will look back on the good old days when there were still 34% of Americans who approved of his job as president.
That Bush has 34% approval is largely due to his delusional Republican flock. However, even there, there are signs of weakness. 22% of Republicans disapprove of Bush, along with 86% of Democrats and 61% of independents. Now, with the clear video evidence that Bush was given explicit warnings about the magnitude of Hurricane Katrina before its landfall, and his subsequent proclamation four days later that no one could have predicted the magnitude of the storm, it is reasonable to ask: is this the final incident that will sink his ship of state?
What more evidence do Americans need that we have a disaster for a president? Bush has a reverse Midas touch: whatever he interferes with, he makes worse. If this were not enough, when he needs to become engaged, he cannot summon the energy. Iraq, Katrina, failing to capture bin Laden, the spiraling deficit, global warming, pissing off our allies, record gas prices, faith-based initiatives, No Child Left Behind - I could go on for pages on things he has bungled.
My brother sent me an email when this latest poll came out. He asked the question: how could the 34% of Americans still be so stupid? It is a good question. Has the rest of the country been living in a cave the last five years? Are the 34% Evangelical Christians hoping that Bush will trigger Armageddon so they can be saved? Have Republicans become so stuck in their opinions that they have simply lost any shred of objectivity? In view of his colossal mistakes, how could anyone support him unless they were delusional or had a frontal lobotomy?
Yet there are still plenty of them out them. Heck, I see them on my block, still sporting their Bush/Cheney stickers on their SUV bumpers. I cannot fathom why they did not surreptitiously peel them off. Do they want to be like Captain Edward J. Smith and go down with the Titanic? Do they want to be derided, laughed at or even worse pitied by their neighbors? Maybe their support is just another faith-based initiative. Click your heels three times Dorothy and you will end up in Kansas. Maybe they forgot that Dorothy just got a bad knock on the head.
Bush may not be the worst president of all time, but he is coming very close. As bad as the Iraq debacle is, he has not yet hit President Buchanan’s peculiar milestone. Buchanan largely stood aside and allowed our Civil War to start. Nevertheless, hold on. Bush has three years left in his term. Give him time. Who knows what it will be. Perhaps it will be another oil shock. Perhaps a thermonuclear bomb will slip through one of our ports (where only 5% of cargo are inspected) and destroy a major city. I am praying though that the gods have decided we have suffered enough. Seeing how the good people of Iraq are suffering for our foolishness though, I am not too hopeful.
After the 2004 election, I wrote that Bush’s chickens would come home to roost. Like the Iraq de facto civil war now underway, those chickens were not at all hard to spot even then. Check off the Iraq debacle. Energy prices up. Check. Deficit keeps going up. Check. International lenders getting wary of lending us money. Check. Health care costs dramatically outpacing inflation. Check. Net loss of earning power. Check. Bin Laden still at large four and a half years after 9/11. Check. If this were a chess match Bush would be down to a king and a couple pawns. We had wrapped up World War II within four and a half years of Pearl Harbor. Yet here is our foolish president in Afghanistan saying today that bin Laden “will be brought to justice”. It is unlikely to happen on your watch, fool.
As the polls clearly show, Americans are fed up with Bush and even more fed up with Congress (28% approval). Since Republicans have a lock on all three branches of government, I believe that voters will take out their wrath on them during elections this autumn. If you asked me six months ago, I would have said that Democrats had a 50% chance of retaking the House and forget about retaking the Senate. I now think the odds for retaking the house are at least 75%, and there is a 50/50 chance in the Senate. As I pointed out in this blog entry, in the elections after Watergate, Democrats increased their majority in the House by 47 seats and 4 seats in the Senate. Americans now disapprove of our Republican congress to a higher degree than they disapproved of the Democratic congress before the 1994 “Gingrich Revolution”. In 1994, Republicans picked up 55 seats in the House. Democrats need just six seats to take control of the House. With so many retirements and the current mood in the country, barring some massive election fraud, I think it is a slam-dunk. Unfortunately, I do not put massive election fraud past the current crew. They have demonstrated repeatedly they do not care about the law.
If Democrats win, is impeachment out of the question? I certainly hope not, although the idea of Cheney having his hand on the nuclear trigger is even less appealing that having Bush’s finger on it. However, perhaps they will go down in flames together. With Democrats in charge, it would not be difficult in the least to find charges that amount to probable cause for high crimes and misdemeanors. Bush’s egregious violation of the FISA statutes is the simplest and fastest way to throw the bum out. However taking us into war in Iraq based on scattershot and faulty evidence is even more egregious. Convicting him in the Senate would be tougher, but perhaps even Republicans would be glad to cut their losses. Most do not see it yet, but Bush is an albatross around their necks. Whoever replaced him and Cheney, even if it were a Democratic Speaker of the House, would be better for their party then allowing the current set of fools to stay in office.
If because of this latest revelation Bush’s poll numbers do not drop into the 20s, then perhaps Republicanism just needs to be banned. Apparently, it is more addictive than crack, and wholly messes up the heads of otherwise reasonable people. Fortunately, a few conservatives like William F. Buckley have finally seen the light. They will not be mistaken for a fool any longer. They are wisely jumping into the lifeboats while there is still room.
March 1st, 2006 at 09:08pm
Posted by
Mark |
Politics 2006 |
one comment
Sometimes I hate calling it right. Granted, I have been sometimes wrong with my prognostication in the past. Last I looked President Kerry was not in the White House. Nevertheless, I hit the bullseye on Iraq. I called it right even before the war started. Winning a prediction would normally make me want to gloat. Yet as I watch Iraq descend into the civil war that I predicted, I just feel sick over the whole thing. Moreover, I feel almost nauseous knowing that my country recklessly lit the fuse.
Arguably, there has been a minor civil war going on in Iraq since around 2004. At first American forces were the principle targets of the insurgency. We are still hit regularly by insurgent forces. Seven Americans died from IEDs just the other day. Of course, American forces are now harder to target. We have adapted to losses by keeping many of our forces in their bases instead of patrolling or fighting. It makes for lower casualty counts for our increasingly antiwar public, but it probably does not improve Iraq’s security.
No one knows for sure who is causing the violence. That alone is telling. If forces were really in control, there would be no anarchy. Yet here we are nearly three years after our invasion and we are still operating with our blinders on. It appears that our intelligence today is not much better than the virtually nonexistent intelligence used to start this war.
The best guess is that the current anarchy in Iraq is mostly caused by a myriad of sectarian forces, each hoping to expand their own power by cutting down opposing sects’. Of course, when hardly anyone is minding the store, it becomes easier for the entirely wrong elements to become unleashed. One hundred forty thousand American troops were clearly not enough boots on the ground to prevent anarchy. Therefore, al Qaeda and affiliated elements easily crossed borders and set up shop, possibly aided by Iran and Syria. It would be a good bet to assume they are responsible for this most egregious act: the destruction of the Askariya shrine in Samarra. However, it could also have done by a small sect of Sunni insurgents.
If we were to do a risk assessment of what would trigger an Iraqi civil war, you would think blowing up some of the holiest Shia and Sunni shrines in the country would do it. Forces sufficient to repel attacks should have been securing these sites. But since war is hell, it must lead to a lot of muddled thinking. It must be hard to think tactically when you are not even sure you can get down the street safely. While not quite to the Shia what St. Peter’s Church in the Vatican is to the Roman Catholics, the Askariya shrine is nearly as important. Think how outraged Catholics would feel if the Sistine Chapel with Michelangelo’s precious frescos were turned into rubble by terrorists.
Not surprisingly, the attack had the desired effect. The Shia, who have always been in the majority, found that with an incident this egregious they could no longer sit on their hands. Numerous Sunni mosques were quickly damaged or destroyed, although with all the anarchy it is hard to quantify the size of the destruction. That in turn led to the destruction of some Shia mosques. Hundreds of people have been killed. Iraqis will be fortunate if only thousands more are killed as a direct result of this incident.
As for the nascent Iraqi constitutional government, it is likely gone with the wind. A major Sunni sect will no longer participate unless some extremely onerous demands are accepted. Perhaps they will think more clearly with time. Rather than expecting unity, expect Iraqis to become passionately sectarian. This one nation ideal is just no longer a good fit. When push comes to shove, you have to make unpleasant choices. In Iraq that means that clan loyalty trumps over national loyalty. Rather than seeing the united and pluralist Iraq of America’s dreams, Iraq will devolve into heightened civil war and ruthless sectarianism. The result will mean what is has arguably already occurred: the end of Iraq as a country. Instead, there will be Eastern Iraq. Since it is predominantly Shia, it will likely end up as part of Iran. The Kurds will have their own country, if Turkey will allow it. The Sunnis will form either their own impoverished nation or affiliate with Syria, Jordan or Saudi Arabia. Iraq as we have known it since the British assembled it after World War I is effectively history. We are too blinded by our predispositions to see this yet. What should concern us more is whether the civil war in Iraq will spill outside its borders, inflaming the whole Middle East.
This civil war is unlikely to look like most civil wars. I will grant that insurgents have been attacking the Iraqi army and police at levels that suggest a civil war started years ago. Yet there does not appear to be a united insurgency. Therefore, “civil war” may not be the right label. Then what exactly do you call it when a nation descends into anarchy and chaos and sects fight other sects in the street? To call it an insurgency is absurd. We may need a refined definition of civil war for our modern age.
I believe that what we witnessed in Lebanon in the 1970s and 1980s is what we will see in Iraq for at least the next decade. Perhaps as in Lebanon, the factions at some point will have released their entire animus. Perhaps even the insurgents will get so sick of fighting that they will either demand peace or go home. Perhaps. However, this day is a long way off.
I believe that this civil war was destined to happen. Saddam Hussein the chess player set up the violence we are witnessing by inflaming sectarian tensions during his dictatorship. Sunni and Shia have lived peacefully together for many years. Their relationship was not always in perfect harmony. However, prior to Saddam Hussein each side rarely saw reasons to get violent with the other. Much of what we are now witnessing is a sad denouement of Saddam’s dubious legacy. One thing is clear: by invading, we added gasoline to this smoldering fire. It is unlikely that history will look kindly at our noble intentions.
February 25th, 2006 at 09:22pm
Posted by
Mark |
Politics 2006 |
one comment
Hindsight should always be 20:20. Strangely though, we seem to be unable to learn lessons from our attempts at nation building, particularly in the Middle East. Why is this? Let us ponder the wreckage and see if we can learn the lessons that seem to escape our current leadership. Then let us examine how we might do things differently in the future.
So Iran, which claims that its nuclear program is purely for peaceful purposes, may be building the bomb. This seems a rational assumption. After all, its latest president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is not exactly firing on all cylinders. For example, he thinks the Holocaust is a myth. Even though Iran is a signatory to the 1968 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, he feels Iran can give lip service to it. Perhaps channeling the spirit of Saddam Hussein, he is quite comfortable throwing out inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency whenever he finds it convenient. Never mind that by doing so he is violating the treaty.
Meanwhile, a leading Iranian newspaper is sponsoring an international cartoon contest on the Holocaust. Reputedly, this is being done so that Jews will know how it feels to suffer the gross sacrilege Muslims are going through with the publication of imprudent cartoons featuring the Prophet Muhammad. I have to wonder why Jews would feel offended if indeed the Holocaust were truly a myth. Do they think that Israelis are not aware of the many virulently anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish cartoons already routinely printed in Middle East newspapers? Moreover, there is the wee problem that it was not Jews but a Danish newspaper that published the offending cartoons. Meanwhile the rioting over these cartoons continues unabated across the Muslim world. Nine Muslims died today alone in Libya. These Muslims seem to think that by accidentally killing more people (all fellow Muslims so far) and destroying more property that the Prophet Mohammad and Allah are pleased. Somehow, I doubt it.
Over in Iraq voters in a recent parliamentary election, rather than voting for secular candidates, voted for sectarian and religious ones instead. The majority Shi’ites, at the insistence of their firebrand cleric Moqtada Sadr, nominated Ibrahim Jaafari as the new prime minister. Jaafari is the current ineffectual interim prime minister. Sadr, of course, wants closer ties with the Shi’ite country of Iran and wants nothing to do with a national unity government promoted by the United States, or for that matter the United States.
In addition the Palestinians have elected Hamas into power. As you probably know, this is a political party whose professed aims include the destruction of the state of Israel. The many suicide bombers that have killed Israel citizens demonstrate the sincerity of their beliefs. Palestinians voted this way quite mindfully of the implications. Although unhappy with the outcome, even President Bush complemented Palestinians on how well they followed the Democratic process.
So perhaps democracy is spreading all over the Middle East. Arguably, even our current nemesis state Iran is a democracy. (It would flunk our test of being a real democracy, since clerics have the final say on whether a candidate gets on the ballot.) Unfortunately, Americans are not getting the desired outcome for the billions of dollars we invested. We assumed that democracy would to lead naturally to pro-Western, pro-American governments happy to sell us oil. Unfortunately, the evidence suggests (with Kuwait perhaps the exception) that in the Middle East people will vote for those with virulently anti-American, anti-Israeli and pro-Islamic state positions. For the most part, they are democratically saying, “Bring on theocracy!”
This should not surprise us. From interpreting the Quran, a theocracy should be the natural form of government in a predominantly Muslim country. Values we cherish like pluralism and secularism are much harder to instill when submission to the will of Allah trumps all.
Where did our good intentions go wrong? How did Iran become such a problem for the United States? Why are Iraqis voting for religious and sectarian parties? Why would the Palestinians, whose better relations with Israel are now finally bearing some fruit, suddenly prefer a religious government with murderous impulses toward Israel?
I see two overall reasons. First, our government has engaged in short-term thinking and ignored the long term likely consequences. Second, we projected our worldview on the Muslim worldview and assumed it would be a natural fit.
Case Iran. How did Iran get to hate us so much? It is because during the Cold War, we used Iran like a ten-dollar whore. It was just another pawn in our international chessboard. We wanted to deny the Soviet Union access to warm water ports. Therefore, it made sense for us to promote an Iranian king, the Shah of Iran. It was convenient for us to overlook his excesses and his oppression of his people. He was a means to an end: containing the Soviet Union. We discounted the ill will that would result if the Shah were overthrown. We assumed we could contain Iran so this would never happen. Our outcome in Iran though was partly a result of bad timing. Islamic fundamentalism was sweeping across the Middle East at the time. Iran was the first place in modern times where it would be tried as a form of government. Perhaps in the context of those Cold War times our choice was unavoidable. On the other hand, perhaps instead of allowing Iran to become a monarchy, we should have promoted real democracy. Had we done so perhaps its current clerics would not be associating us with the Great Satan. Perhaps instead of hearing regular chants of “Death to America” they would be peeling the bells for their democracy day.
Our tactics were similar in Iraq: contain the Soviet Union with what you have to work with. Consequently, we promoted Saddam Hussein, the very man we revile. Why did we help him? We aided him because our plan for containing the Soviet Union using Iran collapsed when the Shah was overthrown. In Iraq, we took big risks, including looking the other way as we did in Iran when Saddam ruthlessly oppressed its citizens. Saddam became too powerful and his ambitions became too imperialistic, resulting in a situation we could not contain.
As far as the needs of the Palestinian people, we have been unabashedly pro-Israel since its creation. We came late to the table in recognizing that the Palestinian people had legitimate needs. We looked the other way or offered the mildest protests every time another Jewish settlement was established in occupied Palestinian territories. We often aided Israel in the Security Council. We made sure that virtually no resolution against it would pass. We should have been cutting our aid to Israel as it expanded its settlements. More often, we simply increased our aid. The more Israel whined, the deeper we dug into our pockets.
This is what hindsight should show us if we were to look back on the past objectively. It should also inform us that democracy is not always the solution. Even if we are able to install a democratic government in a Middle East country, the odds are that its citizens will elect leaders opposed to our interests. Should this surprise us? For the culture of the Middle East is much different than our own culture.
Fostering democracy in the Middle East may or may not take wings, but it will not necessarily lead to a world more aligned to America’s interests. Neither is democracy in the Middle East a panacea for our nation’s long-term security. Perhaps President Bush is finally sobering up. In his latest State of the Union address, he said our nation is addicted to oil. Unfortunately his policies did a lot to increase our addiction. However if we were to follow through on his suggestion to dramatically reduce our need for oil from volatile spots like the Middle East, in the process we should also increase our national security. For whether democracy or more totalitarianism results in the Middle East in the future, the outcome is less likely to affect our national security.
February 17th, 2006 at 07:20pm
Posted by
Mark |
Politics 2006 |
no comments
