… Lincoln saw an unresolvable tension between the Constitution of a democratic republic and the policies of aggrandizement and intemperate self-interest that lead from the manners of freedom to the slavish love of power. He spoke of the difference between the work of establishing a constitutional republic and the longer task of maintaining it. But maintaining it against what? Lincoln’s answer was always the same: against the internal pressure of greed, and the external pressure of war. The predicament of the country in 1861, he said, “forces us to ask: ‘Is there, in all republics, this inherent, and fatal weakness? Must a government, of necessity, be too strong for the liberties of its own people, or too weak to maintain its own existence?’”
We are now ten years into a policy shared by two successive administrations to plant a new understanding of the spirit of the laws in America. That policy has pretended there is a “trade-off” between liberty and security, and that in a time of crisis, security ought to have the upper hand. The Cheney-Bush and Obama administrations have accustomed us to laws and language concerned above all with the “protection” of citizens — as if there were something higher or more worth protecting than the liberty that is guaranteed by our laws and the framework of laws, the Constitution. [...]
To Maintain a Republic, by David Bromwich
Taylor Marsh has been writing on line since 1996, with the archives provided here a representation of that work.
Tag Archives | Iraq
The Sunday Early-Bird News Round-Up: The Red, White and Blue Addition
Good morning and welcome to Sunday. Happy July 3rd, pre-Independence Day!
I’ve even managed to find a red, white and blue bird, the Crimson Rosella (at left)
On this day in history, July 3, 1863, the Civil War Battle of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania ended in a major victory for the North.
For those of you who are not off doing something amazing on this long holiday weekend, I’ve rounded up some news for you to peruse:
~Of course we are!: The U.S. says we are willing to keep troops in Iraq if Iraq would like us to stay! I mean, it’s only been what? Eight years?
~Don’t even get me started on the U.S., Israeli and Greek bullying of the U.S. Boat to Gaza, aka the Freedom Flotilla. Whether or not one agrees with their mission or their tactics, the U.S. and Israel just look like a bunch of bullies. Interestingly, Haaretz was reporting yesterday that Greece agreed to prevent the boats from leaving Greek ports in due to Prime Minister Netanyahu’s lobbying the EU to toss Greece another huge bailout.
~Thirty Afghan civilians have been killed in 48 hours as a result of IED’s.
~The battle over raising the debt ceiling has been totally mismanaged by the White House. That the GOP can basically sell the idea that cutting services and programs for the working class is acceptable in order to continue lining the pockets of wealthy special interests, is a damning indictment of this administration’s policies and political messaging.
~The governor of Rhode Island, Lincoln Chafee, signed a controversial bill legalizing gay civil unions. It’s controversial because the tide has clearly turned- after New York, many want the states to go further with a full recognition of gay marriage, not just civil unions. Governor Chafee, for his part, supports gay marriage and says that the bill will get them one step closer to legalizing gay marriage. Perhaps, but it’s debatable.
~Ok, this YouTube ad from the National Republican Senatorial Committee really just wrote itself:
~This opinion piece by Leonard Pitts Jr. caught my eye. He calls out Obama for his disingenuous word games in refusing to throw his support behind gay marriage. But what struck me is how honest Pitts is- he describes how he used to support civil unions while opposing gay marriage. He goes on to say that he finally realized that doing so was illogical and based on the presumption that the relationships of gays and lesbians were somehow less worthy than those of heterosexuals.
~I know Taylor covered this last night but it’s so annoying I just have to chime in. Is Ben Smith serious? One of the most biased pieces of non-Journalism I’ve seen in a long time. Seriously, it just screams “I’m a planted story!” The reason it’s so annoying is that Politico has been beating this drum for about 3 years now. I could write an article that reaches the exact OPPOSITE conclusion by selectively interviewing Jewish people that I know support Obama’s Mideast policies. Oh, and granting them total anonymity. But would it be newsworthy? No, it wouldn’t be. It would just be selective, agenda-driven drivel.
~Tim Pawlenty isn’t raising much money. Goodbye Tim, we hardly knew ye.
~Secretary Clinton has called on Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi to step down.
~Another Republican nobody has ever heard of is entering the Presidential race. But at least he has a catchy name.
~Justin Elliot does some follow-up journalism and asks Jeffrey Goldberg what happened with his prediction that Israel would go to war with Iran? Naturally, Goldberg dances and weaves. Predicting and promoting the next neocon war is sort of a part time job for Goldberg.
~Pinkwashing has been in the news a lot and it’s in the news again! This time in relation to bad Israeli PR about the Flotilla and false accusations that the Flotilla participants are homophobic. Never mind that quite a few are openly gay. If you aren’t familiar with the whole Pinkwashing phenomena, that article I linked-to is a good run-down of recent events.
~If you didn’t read this Greenwald piece about the ridiculous show State Dept. legal adviser Harold Koh put on in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week, go read it. Basically, defending Obama’s Executive power grabs with respect to Libya is getting more difficult, even for those in his own administration. This is actually embarrassing- it’s a short video of Sen. Risch reading a quote from Senator Obama about war powers and Koh responding.
~Mental illness and gun rights.
~Contrary to popular perception, the repeal of DADT has not taken place and GLBT soldiers continue to be booted out of the military and some are even requesting to be discharged as a result of ongoing harassment and discrimination.
~The son of actor Rob Lowe will be interning for House Majority Leader Eric Cantor.
~An ExxonMobile oil pipe burst in Montana releasing oil into the pristine Yellowstone River.
~The Strauss-Kahn case is one big mess but alleged rape/sexual assault cases often are. I don’t know what happened in that hotel room, obviously, and so I can’t speak to that, but I will say this- people who are sometimes dishonest and lack credibility in the usual sense can still be sexually assaulted. Yes, someone could make up an allegation, but the credibility of the victim is a very thorny issue. It’s important to note in this story that as of right now, that prosecutors have not dropped the rape charges.
~The deterioration in U.S.-Pakistan relations is resulting in the U.S. having to use costlier supply routes to Afghanistan due to fears that Pakistan may decide to block more direct routes that wind through their country.
The End. Have a nice weekend and safe holiday!
The Sunday Early Bird News Round-Up: Father’s Day
Good morning and welcome to Sunday.
Happy Father’s Day to all you fathers out there!
On this day in history, June 19, 1862, slavery was outlawed in U.S. territories.
Here are some news stories from around the internets that you may or may not have seen:
~Barack Obama has pulled a GW Bush and is arguing he doesn’t need Congressional approval to use military force in Libya because what we are doing there doesn’t meet the definition of hostilities. I kid you not. I be the Libyans would beg to differ. So, while the White House is trying to convince all the good people at Netroots Nation that Obama actually gives a damn about the progressive base, the NYT has came out with an incredible story about how Obama, like Bush before him, ignored his top legal advisers about the need for Congressional approval prior to bombing Libya.
Maybe President Obama could have a debate with Senator Obama circa 2007 because this is what Senator Obama said about war powers:
The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.
As Commander-in-Chief, the President does have a duty to protect and defend the United States. In instances of self-defense, the President would be within his constitutional authority to act before advising Congress or seeking its consent. History has shown us time and again, however, that military action is most successful when it is authorized and supported by the Legislative branch. It is always preferable to have the informed consent of Congress prior to any military action.
~Speaking of Netroots Nation, the Obama administration is predictably buttering up the glbt vote. Once again the argument goes something like this “hey, we may be letting you down but just imagine how bad off you’d be if those other guys were in charge!” I give Obama credit where credit is do- for example on DADT- but I can’t help but get the sense that he has to be dragged kicking and screaming to do the right thing, and even then only after polls show that about 60% of Americans support it.
~More on the annoying politics of gay marriage.
~So, it’s official, we’re already in negotiations with the Taliban. I’ll repeat the question I posed in last weeks news round-up: If we can negotiate with the Taliban, a group that is killing American soldiers and Afghan civilians as we speak, why do we reject without any debate, the possibility of Mideast peace negotiations with Hamas? I have yet to get an answer to that question. If you have any ideas, please leave them in the comment section.
~Today, Karl Eikenberry offers a rare rebuke of Afghan President Karzai for his remarks about the U.S. negotiating with the Taliban, among other things.
~Tim Pawlenty’s tax plan is a joke- almost 40% of the benefits of the plan would go to the top 1% of the richest Americans. I don’t care how much average Republican voters hate Barack Obama, do they realize that the GOP exists to line the pockets of big business at their expense? And no, the Democrats don’t get a pass on this either.
~A Bahraini blogger at Netroots Nation called out the State Dept. for their silence on the brutal crackdown in Bahrain despite their knowing all the gory details about what the government was/is doing. Inexcusable.
~In the wake of the “Gay Girl in Damascus”/Amina controversy (if you are not familiar with it you can read about it here) there has been quite an important discussion that has ensued about how the West has misrepresented the glbt community in Arab countries, purportedly for their [our] own selfish purposes. If anything good has come of the Amina hoax, it’s that glbt advocates in the U.S. and Europe are having an open dialogue with members of the glbt in the Arab world, many of whom feel that the West doesn’t really understand their real concerns, but instead are taking advantage of them in order to push a decidedly Western agenda. On a similar note, there’s now a long-time-coming controversy brewing about the popular blog Gay Middle East, the gist of which revolves around the question of “who gets to speak for glbt Arabs in the Middle East?” There’s also the controversial issue of Pinkwashing which you can read about here.
~President Obama isn’t polling well against an unnamed GOP opponent. That’s not so good.
~John McCain is upset that some of the GOP presidential candidates are listening to the electorate and expressing doubts about invading and bombing a new country each week. He calls this view “isolationist.” You see, McCain’s (and Lieberman and Lindsey Graham) definition of “patriotism” is threatening the use of force to deal with every situation. If one expresses doubt or questions aobut whether this is in the U.S.’ best interests, well, then you are relegated to the status of cheese-eating-surrender-monkey. Go sit in the corner!
~Why is this news?
~An excellent article about how Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad was put on a pedestal by the U.S. and other Western countries, all the while they ignored the reality of what was going on on the ground (in the territories). The unelected Fayyad could stay in Washington’s good graces only so long as he unquestioningly did their bidding and now that there is a new Hamas-Fatah unity deal in the works (it’s not a done deal yet) and a continued push for a declaration of statehood at the UN in September, Fayyad may find for the first time that his phone calls will not be returned by the State Dept. and White House.
~Speaking of Israel-Palestine, Thomas Friedman has the whole solution mapped out in one short article. That was easy.
~A comedian impersonating Obama was pulled off the stage at the Republican Leadership Conference for making racial jokes. Isn’t this the same guy Fox News uses for their fake Obama debates?
~Andrew Breitbart is pathetic. Question- did Breitbart call on Vitter or Ensign or Sanford to resign when they were caught with their pants down?
~Our ally, Pakistan. Sigh.
~It’s interesting how Islamaphobia is so mainstream that it’s actually used as a political tactic to get votes. There aren’t a lot of groups about which you can say that, except perhaps glbt folks, who of course are also used by the right as a political wedge issue.
~Ok, this guy is my new hero. This was very bad planning by British Prime Minister Cameron’s advance team. Watch the doctor come in the hospital room and kick Cameron out for using a patient’s room as the setting for a political photo op:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTzMmkyk8V0&feature=player_embedded
~I’m sorry but Justice Clarence Thomas has turned the Supreme Court into a joke. And it would be entirely appropriate for Chief Justice Roberts to rein him in. It has nothing to do with his conservative judicial philosophy but has everything to do with the way he conducts himself. There was a time in this country when the Supreme Court was actually respected. I know, go figure. There have always been controversies but the SCOTUS has weathered those storms by staying as far away from politics and the appearance of impropriety as possible. Not Clarence Thomas though (and Justice Scalia is guilty of this also).
~The perpetually angry neoconservative WaPo blogger Jennifer Rubin quotes John Woo, the author of the infamous torture memos in the Bush administration, for guidance on War Powers. Good grief.
~Private contractors in Iraq will be able to stay in Iraq long after the remaining troops leave which means they will still be able to line their pockets rebuilding the country we bombed to hell and back.
The End.
E. J. Dionne’s Nostalgia for Bush Meets Enemies List
A former senior C.I.A. official says that officials in the Bush White House sought damaging personal information on a prominent American critic of the Iraq war in order to discredit him. Glenn L. Carle, a former Central Intelligence Agency officer who was a top counterterrorism official during the administration of President George W. Bush, said the White House at least twice asked intelligence officials to gather sensitive information on Juan Cole, a University of Michigan professor who writes an influential blog that criticized the war. – Ex-Spy Alleges Bush White House Sought to Discredit Critic
E.J. Dionne has written a whopper today by trying to be clever, but just comes off as daft analysis combined with negligence for uttering such blather. His a weird little column about his nostalgia for George W. Bush seems instead like a love letter to encourage Republicans. It’s all predicated on this week’s GOP debate, because he’s scared of Michele Bachmann, forgetting that Obama and the Democrats helped create her, while the Tea Party started as a reaction to George W. Bush on his watch.
That’s why I felt nostalgia for Bush, especially the guy who was a candidate for president in 2000. Unlike this crowd of Republicans, Bush acknowledged that the federal government can ease injustices and get useful things done.
At least he admits Bush’s debacle in Iraq is “why Bush nostalgia takes you only so far.”
This is the kind of stuff that’s written when you don’t hold a president accountable for his unspeakable acts, starting with war in Iraq and Abu Ghraib, but also allowing his vice president to run the show, while the man who killed over 3,000 people got away. A man who kept wars off the books and broke our economy with tax cuts, which Pres. Obama embraced with both arms. This man Mr. Dionne is nostalgic for was a failed businessman, prodigal son and duty dodging Guardsman, ran a race-baiting campaign in South Carolina against John McCain, all of while conspiring with Roger Ailes and one of his relatives on the Fox payroll who was primarily responsible for the Bush won theme that developed on election night.
From Rolling Stone magazine, a president who used Roger Ailes as an adviser, that’s who Mr. Dionne is getting wistful about today:
[...] After Bush took office, Ailes stayed in frequent touch with the new Republican president. “The senior-level editorial people believe that Roger was on the phone every day with Bush,” a source close to Fox News tells Rolling Stone. “He gave Bush the same kind of pointers he used to give George H.W. Bush – delivery, effectiveness, political coaching.” In the aftermath of 9/11, Ailes sent a back-channel memo to the president through Karl Rove, advising Bush to ramp up the War on Terror. As reported by Bob Woodward, Ailes advised Bush that “the American public would tolerate waiting and would be patient, but only as long as they were convinced that Bush was using the harshest measures possible.”Fox News tilted the electoral balance to George W. Bush in 2000, prematurely declaring him president in a move that prompted every other network to follow suit. It helped create the Tea Party, transforming it from the butt of late-night jokes into a nationwide insurgency capable of electing U.S. senators. …
Bush ignored warnings about Al Qaeda and bin Laden, with the list of economic incompetency lingering in a legacy that has us still suffering from it economically today.
Mr. Dionne conveniently forgets there was a set-up for all this and it began with Pres. Obama and Democrats not making their own case for what the Democratic Party believes government can do, but instead adopted Republican economic theory that got us into this mess in the first place.
Now we find, unsurprisingly let me add, that George W. Bush wanted to target Juan Cole because of his effectiveness at criticizing the Iraq war.
Suck on that morsel from Mr. Dionne’s nostalgia pie.
However, the pathetic part about E.J. Dionne’s nostalgia is that it’s not his fault. This absurd nostalgia for Bush should be laid at the door of Congress, when Speaker Pelosi refused to strip the bark off a president whose malfeasance and recklessness was the worst since Nixon. When a president turned the C.I.A. into his own personal misinformation center on a war that we’re still fighting in a country that never attacked us.
It’s this same presidential hubris that inspired Barack Obama to bomb Libya and many other things he’s done to mimic the imperial presidency of George W. Bush. Glenn Greenwald keeps a running list if you’ve forgotten.
That Pres. Obama had to tape Afghanistan back together because of Bush’s negligence, which evolved into a nightmare scenario of unending occupation is another example of why nostalgia for anything George W. Bush is simply a pathetic case of selective amnesia. Bush’s Pakistan strategy part of the disaster that allowed the ISI to likely shelter him all these years.
But Bush nostalgia really owes a debt of thanks to the Democrats. They’re the ones who allowed former Pres. Bush to ride into the sunset and set up his rehabilitation tour that never should have been allowed, let alone have history rewritten by he and Rumsfeld, with Cheney’s tome about to drop.
E.J. Dionne adds his piece of rewriting history to make 2012 Republicans look bad, by positing that George W. Bush was not a nightmare. His case falls apart as he ties himself in knots trying to prove a case that only could have been suggested by one of his Republican bosses trying to save the GOP from themselves.
I wish the gods could save us from amnesiac political writers in the traditional press and the partisan hacks who suck it up, but it seems people are suckers for stupidity.
Cue Obama’s Next Non-War Speech for Yemen
This is another edition in empire.
Pres. Obama started bombing Libya out of humanitarian reasoning, with there no strategic interest there for the U.S. Now he’s turning to Yemen, which is no doubt a dangerous place that does have wider implications. However, why is everyone just shrugging at his Executive hubris? Why is he getting to do it without congressional approval?
The CIA is expected to begin operating armed drone aircraft over Yemen, expanding the hunt for al-Qaeda operatives in a country where counter-terrorism efforts have been disrupted by political chaos, U.S. officials said.
The plan to move CIA-operated Predator and other unmanned aircraft into the region reflects a decision by President Obama that the al-Qaeda threat in Yemen has grown so serious that patrols by U.S. military drones are not enough.
Because it operates under different legal authorities than the military, the CIA may have greater latitude to carry out strikes if the political climate shifts in Yemen and cooperation with American forces is diminished or cut off. [...]
This is taking the excuse to bomb countries and send in covert forces, as long as there are no traditional boots on the ground, to a level that is potentially very messy.
Jon Huntsman has said he thinks we should no longer be in Afghanistan, that Libya is of non-strategic interest, and that he’d rethink our Middle East wars. I wonder what he thinks about drone power?
As commander in chief, Pres. Obama is so far off the reservation I’m not sure he could find his way back to the man who gave the anti Iraq war speech that snared him the nomination.
UPDATE: Read this piece by Bruce Bartlett.
TIME: Grand Jury Investigating CIA Abu Ghraib Torture for War Crimes
The ghosts of Bush-Cheney-Rummy torture still hangs over the C.I.A., no matter what Leon Panetta has done to infuse the agency with honor. From TIME magazine:
Manadel al-Jamadi
It has been nearly a decade since Manadel al-Jamadi, an Iraqi prisoner known as “the Iceman” — for the bungled attempt to cool his body and make him look less dead — perished in CIA custody at Abu Ghraib. But now there are rumbles in Washington that the notorious case, as well as other alleged CIA abuses, could be returning to haunt the agency. TIME has learned that a prosecutor tasked with probing the CIA — John Durham, a respected, Republican-appointed U.S. Attorney from Connecticut — has begun calling witnesses before a secret federal grand jury in Alexandria, Va., looking into, among other things, the lurid Nov. 4, 2003, homicide, which was documented by TIME in 2005.
TIME has obtained a copy of a subpoena signed by Durham that points to his grand jury’s broader mandate, which could involve charging additional CIA officers and contract employees in other cases. The subpoena says “the grand jury is conducting an investigation of possible violations of federal criminal laws involving War Crimes (18 USC/2441), Torture (18 USC 243OA) and related federal offenses.” [...]
I’ll never understand the sense in allowing former Pres. Bush, V.P. Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld to walk out of Washington without a serious hearing on the malfeasance surrounding their prosecution of the Iraq war. I never wanted impeachment hearings to be the primary goal after he won reelection, but there’s something craven about the Democratic cowardice to hold our own leaders culpable by investigating their actions when in office. It’s one of Speaker Pelosi’s gravest errors in judgment.
Bush Iraqi Boondoggle: Pentagon’s $6.6 Billion Still Missing
From the LA Times we find out just what a disaster the team of Bush and Rumsfeld were for the U.S. From tax cuts that exploded the debt and an unjustified preemptive war kept off the books, add in Abu Ghraib and the plummeting of American credibility throughout the Arab and Muslim world, it’s hard to name a worse run operation than Dick Cheney’s Iraqi debacle.
After the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, the George W. Bush administration flooded the conquered country with so much cash to pay for reconstruction and other projects in the first year that a new unit of measurement was born.
Pentagon officials determined that one giant C-130 Hercules cargo plane could carry $2.4 billion in shrink-wrapped bricks of $100 bills. They sent an initial full planeload of cash, followed by 20 other flights to Iraq by May 2004 in a $12-billion haul that U.S. officials believe to be the biggest international cash airlift of all time. [...]
There is much more at the link, including that the Iraq government believes it was the job of the U.S. to guard the cash, so they intend to try to recoup it.
On a tangential note, there’s simply no reason to be in Iraq anymore.
Sunday Morning Early Bird News Round-Up
Good morning and welcome to Sunday!
On this day in history, June 12, 1967, the Supreme Court in the landmark case Loving vs. Virginia, struck down state laws prohibiting interracial marriages.
I’ve rounded up some news links, you know, so you can sound smart and on top of the news at breakfast or lunch…
~Joe Lieberman tries to undermine the President’s foreign policy.
~As everyone who hasn’t been stranded on a deserted island knows, Representative Weiner is taking some time off to get some sort of treatment for something (they didn’t say what), do some soul-searching and probably more to the point- sit back and hope this all blows over so he can stop the flow of fellow Democrats calling, one after the other, for his resignation. Anyone care? No? Ok, moving right along…
~What is wrong with the Democrats that they can’t make this a political issue? The GOP is waging war on Elizabeth Warren of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB)- could the GOP make it any more obvious that they don’t give a damn about the average American, preferring instead to create a platform based on enriching the very people that caused the collapse of the global economy? And yet what are the Democrats doing to get this message out? All I hear is *chirp* *chirp*
~GOP Rep. Dana Rohrbacher has been asked by the Iraqi government to please leave their country after he publicly called for Iraq to repay the U.S. for the cost we incurred invading and occupying their country.
~John Aravosis of AmericaBlog calls out CNN’s Roland Martin for defending Tracy Morgan’s homophobic rant. It’s worth a read.
~So, how much have the Bush tax cuts cost the U.S. thus far? $2.5 trillion. And yet the Democrats and the media continue with the farce that the GOP is serious about deficit reduction. They weren’t during the Bush years and they aren’t now. Rather, they are interested in gutting social programs they never liked to begin with and are using the deficit as an excuse. Anyone who takes defense spending completely off the table can’t be taken seriously about deficit reduction.
~Alabama has passed a draconian anti-abortion bill based on a “fetal pain” rationale. Naturally, there is no exception in the case of rape or incest.
~I’d like to introduce you to Texas Governor and possible GOP Presidential candidate Rick Perry.
~The neocon hawks who want to “bomb, bomb, bomb Iran” don’t really understand the Green Movement there although they are more than willing to use their purported concern for the Green Movement to try to make it sound like their war-mongering is born of humanitarian concerns.
~A major bump in the road to reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah.
~After the death of Osama Bin Laden, will Obama take advantage of the opportunity to make a significant reduction in troops in Afghanistan or will he follow the advice of the departing Secretary Gates and General Petraeus? The question everyone should be asking is ten years from now, will we still be saying “we’re making some progress but if we leave we could lose what gains we’ve made”? I can’t help but think the answer to that is “yes.”
~The real reason the WH rejected the French proposal to hold a Mideast peace summit with the Palestinians and Israelis- the administration is afraid another country might actually act like an honest broker and mediator.
~Dana Milbank provides a good example of everything that is wrong with the Washington press in this piece. Note he makes sure to tell us he knows Goolsbee personally and that Obama’s economic policies were initially “extreme” (the stimulus that didn’t have enough stimulus?).
~Daniel Ellsberg of “Pentagon Papers” fame reminds us just how crappy our government really is. He notes that much of what Nixon did would be legal today under an expanded definition of Executive power and laws like the PATRIOT Act. By the way, the Pentagon Papers have finally been declassified.
~The Obama administration’s war against whistleblowers was dealt a major blow in the NSA leak case. The government’s case fell apart in an effort to not have to expose some evidence to public scrutiny. Former NSA employee Thomas Drake was charged under the seldom used Espionage Act, which many felt was a draconian way to go after whistleblowers such as Drake, who exposed a multi-billion-dollar government boondoggle of waste and fraud and in the process, also revealed the NSA’s illegal (at the time) domestic surveillance data mining operation. If that isn’t the definition of “whistleblower” I don’t know what is. If we actually had a major media figure with some guts, they would actually dain to ask President Obama exactly what his definition of “whistleblower” is, particularly given he lauded them as champions of justice as a 2008 Presidential candidate. Oh, but he said a lot of things in 2008, didn’t he.
~Secretary of Defense Robert Gates ripped NATO in his farewell speech.
~No, Hillary doesn’t want to be President of the World Bank. Guessing her next move after Secretary of State has become a full-time parlor game in DC.
~I agree with Senator Harkin- Obama has fallen into the GOP trap of prioritizing the deficit over job creation.
~Rep. Giffords has released her first set of photos since the Arizona shooting in January. She really has made an amazing recovery thus far. She’s a very strong woman.
~The Obama admin. is funding a mobile-phone compatible shadow internet for dissidents to use to get around their own government censors.
The End.
Sarah’s Supporters Validate the Vagina Vote
When Palin first uttered her Paul Revere gaffe, I wrote a short post about it, then went over to conservative site because the writer was offering an excuse for Palin and asked if critics would apologize to her, because she was actually correct. The post over at Legal Insurrection foreshadowed the insanity that’s ensued since, which includes Palin fans trying to rewrite Revere’s ride in order to provide cover for Palin over at Wikipedia; Little Green Footballs links to an eye-opening page over there.
I very rarely do this, but in the comments over at LegalInsurrection I wrote the following: This post is representative of what’s wrong with our politics on both sides of the aisle. The lengths some people will go to in order to offer cover to politicians, whether it’s Palin or Obama, who actually deserve the ridicule they’re receiving at the moment.
A “constitutional conservative” promoting “Sarah Palin 2012″ responded to my comment on Twitter like this: Analyst @taylormarsh upset with @LegInsurrection & others for setting record straight re: #Palin Revere “gaffe” http://bit.ly/jTdPlz #tcot
Setting the record straight is actually code for Sarah and her fans making stuff up.
It’s alarming to me that as the second decade of the 21st century begins people are more interested in propping up a celebrity politician than standing up for the truth. That it’s Sarah Palin isn’t surprising, but it’s astonishing so many people think she’s worthy of such defense on a matter that should instead having her smacking herself up side the head.
Conservative women are rightly enthralled about a woman with their political viewpoint being nominated for the presidency. I’ve been covering Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann seriously, but is Sarah Palin’s inability to be honest going to be their standard?
That’s a serious question after Palin’s supporters went to the lengths they did on Wikipedia.
In 2008, Democratic women weren’t enamored by Hillary Clinton simply because she was a woman, but instead expected her to have the policy goods and the requisite experience, which is at it should be. They held Clinton to account for Iraq, but also didn’t side with her out of gender.
Michele Bachmann looks like Margaret Thatcher compared to Palin these days, who seems to be in a world of her own that includes her own facts too.
It’s hard to believe that conservative women only care about ideology, with everything else ignored as long as they can check the boxes on issues where they agree. History being outside those bounds evidently.
With Sarah Palin, it looks like we’re actually seeing the vagina vote validated and vaulted to credibility.
Ever since Palin appeared I’ve written about her instincts, her “it” factor, as well as the power she wields, even if most others shrug it off. This latest episode takes the notion of political loyalty and puts it in another category altogether.
No matter what ridiculous thing comes out of Sarah Palin’s mouth she will be defended, even against the indefensible.
The Sunday Early Bird News Round-Up
Good morning and welcome to Sunday!
On this day in history, June 5, 1968, Senator Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated in Los Angeles. Also on this date in 1967 the Six Day War erupted between Israel and the surrounding Arab states.
Here are some morning links for your perusal:
~Former U.S. diplomat Lawrence Eagleburger died yesterday at the age of 80 years.
~The Yemeni President is in Saudi Arabia for medical care. That could be awkward for the U.S. For now, power has been transferred to the Vice President.
~Defense Secretary Gates is in Afghanistan saying his “goodbyes” and reassuring the Afghans that we will be there for the long haul. Obama has set himself up to have to battle not only the GOP on a myriad of issues but now his own party on Afghanistan. The troop surge didn’t work and the underlying problem- a corrupt, illegitimate government that is playing both sides- won’t be “fixed” by counterinsurgency.
~Speaking of Secretary Gates, why does the media help perpetuate the myth that Gates has been a leader in terms of cutting defense spending? Because really what he’s done is just moved money around. If people like David Gregory had stones they’d confront Gates with this but instead they fawn all over him in a rather embarrassing manner.
~The heroes of Jopin, Mo.
~Question: if the U.S. is willing to entertain the idea of having talks with the Taliban, a group that is killing Americans as we speak, why is negotiating with Hamas under certain conditions such a taboo? I’m not being sarcastic here, I’m honestly just asking the question.
~Are you tired of hearing about the Weiner scandal? Well, here’s the thing- we know the media loves anything having to do with sex, or anything that even hints of sex, because it’s so much easier to cover than, say, the latest Supreme Court decision. But it’s also a morality tale of sorts. Whoever was advising Rep. Weiner to go on the teevee box and give winding, circular, vague non-answers to basic yes or no questions should be fired or voted off the island.
~Just what President Obama needs, more photos of him on the golf course.
~Operation Cupcake.
~Donald Trump is jealous that Sarah Palin and her American history lessons are getting more attention than he has been of late.
~Yesterday was the 22nd anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. Any mention of the anniversary is forbidden in China and they have done everything in their power to erase the tragedy from China’s history.
~You have to hand it to Fox News, they really take on the big issues!:
~Never under estimate the ability of far right conservatives to dumb down almost any issue. They are allergic to nuance and prefer instead to see everything as Black or White, Good vs. Evil. That’s all well and good and it certainly makes for much easier political messaging but at the end of the day, that’s not how the world works.
~I realize that Sarah Palin supporters get really, really angry whenever someone criticizes her but I simply don’t understand why someone would defend someone with such a limited grasp on national and foreign policy. Every politician makes mistakes or stretches the truth and no politician can be an expert on every subject, but Palin’s statements are simply incomprehensible and it is just not acceptable for any candidate or political figure to blame their lack of basic knowledge entirely on the media.
~Ambassador Chris Hill has an interesting commentary about the Mideast peace process, or lack thereof. There seems to be a widening gap between long-time diplomats and foreign policy experts and politicians in both the U.S. and Israel. Regardless of where one stands on this issue one thing is certain, the current politicization of the peace process won’t help resolve the conflict or keep either the Israelis or Palestinians one iota more secure.
~The administration and the media have reacted dismissively to Sy Hersh’s New Yorker article about Iran’s supposed nuclear capability. It would seem that the media really haven’t learned anything since the Judith Miller, Scooter Libby days of reporting in the run-up to the Iraq War. Glenn Greenwald rips Politico for their journalistic hypocrisy and their acting as stenographers to those in power. The way in which the media has responded to the Hersh article is more proof that the media don’t report the news so much as decide what is and isn’t worthy of national debate. Irrespective of what one believes about Iran or Hersh’s reporting on this issue, it’s interesting how the administration and those in the media seem unwilling to even allow a debate to take place.
~Richard Cohen gets paid to write this stuff? Actual money?
~Meet GITMO’s evil twin, Bagram.
Ok, this is your daily dose of cute- the video went viral but in case you haven’t seen it, it’s hard not to smile as you watch it:
~While few people are watching, the situation in Sudan worsens.
~The Iraqis must be so thankful to us for fixing their country.
~Rather than screaming non-stop about the debt, which has been a problem in the making for well over a decade, we should be screaming for campaign finance reform so that voting isn’t just window-dressing for democracy.
~This is interesting- some religious Christians are questioning the morality of the GOP budget proposals. Apparently some people think selfishness and screw the poor isn’t a great Christian rallying cry. Good for them. A politician’s faith is/should be a personal matter unless they make it a center piece of their political platform and in that case, questioning some of the more blatant hypocrisy is justified.
~It’s official, hardly anyone in Congress agrees with Obama’s Libya strategy. Of course, the irony of the GOP maneuver is rather rich given most of them never met a war they didn’t like. The wording of the congressional resolution should have been applied to the authorization for the use of force in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The End.
Jill Abramson Named First Female Executive Editor of New York Times in 160-year History
Ms. Abramson said that as a born-and-raised New Yorker, she considered being named editor of The Times to be like “ascending to Valhalla.” “In my house growing up, The Times substituted for religion,” she said. “If The Times said it, it was the absolute truth.” – Abramson to Replace Keller as The Times’s Executive Editor
Unfortunately for Ms. Abramson, the New York Times is no longer associated with the “absolute truth.” That image collapsed almost 20 years ago when Jeff Gerth conjured up the Whitewater scandal in 1992, using subterfuge and misinformation to arm the Right against a man who hadn’t even been elected to the presidency yet.
This tradition continued during the Bush-Cheney era, when the Times was culpable for their part in the worst reportage in the history of journalism which was led by Judy Miller and her infamous aluminum tubes.
On Oct. 3, The Times ran yet another piece revising its prewar coverage of Iraq’s mass-destructive capabilities. Following the lead of The Washington Post—which had broken the same news 14 months earlier—The Times meticulously demonstrated how the Bush administration had tilted evidence so that captured aluminum tubes, meant as Iraqi artillery rocket parts, could be passed off as nuclear centrifuge components. And if The Times was more than a year late reacting to The Post, it was more than two years late reacting to itself. Far down, the Oct. 3 piece offered an implicit confession of institutional and reportorial failure: “[O]n Sept. 8 [2002], the lead article on Page 1 of The New York Times gave the first detailed account of the aluminum tubes. The article cited unidentified senior administration officials who insisted that the dimensions, specifications and numbers of tubes sought showed that they were intended for a nuclear weapons program …. The article gave no hint of a debate over the tubes.” (source)
But the Times did print Joseph Wilson’s op-ed, someone I’ve had the pleasure to meet and interview, so perhaps Ms. Abramson will reignite this energy back into the New York Times, instead of what the paper long ago became, just another traditional news organization losing ground to new media.
The most representative tweet of what the New York Times has been reduced to today came from David Weigel: BREAKING: Jill Abramson to become first female NYT editor to have her content aggregated by HuffPo. #ikidbecauseilove
The appointment of Ms. Abramson is still important, however, because too few women hold posts in the lofty editorial arena. Not even the Times lowered prestige can change that fact or that her appointment makes history. That we’re into the 21st century before something like this happened is quite an indictment of the print press and traditional journalism.
Obama Reelection Pitch: Lift Social Security Payroll Cap
**bumped**
I’ll take Yglesias’s post as a sign there is a possibility we’ll be saved from Obamanomics.
Yesterday in Virginia, Pres. Obama pushed one way to “stabilize the system” and Social Security, while he simultaneously works to make Congress more feckless through the Independent Payment Advisory Board, created through ACA, whose power he now wants to expand to take on Medicare. Obama on Social Security:
So we do have to stabilize Social Security’s finances, but we can do that with some relatively modest changes — unlike health care, where we’ve got to get in and work with providers and really get some much more substantial reforms. With Social Security, it’s just a matter of tweaking how it currently works.
Now, politically, it’s hard to do. Politically, it’s hard to do. For example — I’ll just give you one example of a change that would make a difference in Social Security. Right now you only pay a Social Security tax up to a certain point of your income. So a little bit over $100,000, your Social Security — you don’t pay Social Security tax.
Now, how many people are making less than $100,000 a year? Don’t be bashful. (Laughter.) The point is, for the vast majority of Americans, every dime you earn, you’re paying some in Social Security. But for Warren Buffett, he stops paying at a little bit over $100,000 and then the next $50 billion he’s not paying a dime in Social Security taxes.
So if we just made a little bit of an adjustment in terms of the cap on Social Security, that would do a significant amount to stabilize the system. And that’s just an example of the kinds of changes that we can make. (Applause.)
So we are going to have to make some changes in Social Security, but it’s not the major driver of our deficit. And what I’ve proposed is let’s work on Social Security, but let’s not confuse that with this major budget debate that we’re having about how we deal with both spending and revenues because that is the problem that is going to require some really hard work and some bipartisan cooperation. Okay?
If Pres. Obama had any leadership vision at all he would have done this before he lost his congressional majority. That he’s suddenly talking about it as his reelection heats up doesn’t impress me.
Voters now have to decide it they believe him. It’s not the first election promise he’s made, but those big bad Republicans and Blue Dog Dems forced him to cave. The question is what we’re going to have to give up in return for lifting the cap, if it happens. The only way it will if Democrats take back the House and keep the Senate, which considering Rep. Ryan’s poison budget pill isn’t as far fetched as it sounds, though I wouldn’t put odds on it this early.
graphic via the Washington Post
As the chart above illustrates, Obama, Democrats, Republicans and the Tea Party are still wrong and the people don’t want their prescriptions. So it’s no surprise that everyone is souring on political parties, because neither of the big two represent anyone anymore. It’s part of the reason the Tea Party rose up, but they’re ideas are even worse.
To compete with what Obama said yesterday, we have Obama’s Gang of Six and Senate man Dick Durbin talking about using Social Security as a bargaining chip. David Dayen did a rundown on this yesterday. I’m not going to pose it as “good cop – bad cop,” but it’s obvious Independent a Sen. Bernie Sanders has struck a White House nerve.
Durbin criticized a resolution put forward by Sen. Bernie Sanders, a liberal independent from Vermont, that says Social Security should not be cut under a deficit reduction plan. Durbin said he would not vote for such a resolution.
“I think Bernie is going too far with his language,” Durbin said.
“In 2037, as we know it, Social Security falls off a cliff,” he said. “There’s a 22 percent reduction rate in payments, which is really not something we can tolerate. If we deal with it today, it’s an easier solution than waiting. I think we ought to deal with it. Many of my colleagues disagree, put it off to another day. But from my point of view, leaving it out makes it easier politically, including it, I think, meets an obligation, which we have to senior citizens.”
I still don’t think anything will happen before 2012. But it’s it’s just a matter of time whether it’s Democrats or Republicans who starting tinkering with Social Security, which isn’t any part of our deficit or debt problems.
Instead we should be surtaxing the super wealthy, reversing the Bush tax cuts completely (because everyone is going to have to take a hit), lift the payroll cap for Social Security above $160,800 (Obama reiterating this idea), cut the Pentagon budget, come home from Afghanistan, pull out of Iraq, which is especially important since Pres. Obama started a war in Libya that will require a lot more effort than anyone’s talking about right now, as well as end subsidies for big farm and oil companies, then fix the tax code so Exxon-Mobil and GE actually have to pay taxes. Problem solved.
Oh, and one more thing, U.S. trade policy, which is the biggest reason why Donald Trump caught fire with his blow torch rhetoric targeting China.
As you look at the graphic above also notice the feelings about cutting military spending. It’s particularly fitting that as badly as we need serious cuts in Pentagon spending, decades of militarism, preemptive war, our latest in Libya, and support of the defense contracting industry has cemented into the minds of most Americans that we actually need the military-industrial complex we have today, which in the 50th anniversary year of Eisenhower’s warning tells our entire debtor nation’s story.
Barack Obama’s ‘Mean Streak’
This Washington Examiner editorial made me laugh out loud. The headline is: Mean streak: Obama is not as nice as he looks.
This is news? Evidently the Republicans never heard of Alice Palmer.
Taking on the very obvious first, Republicans are whining because Pres. Obama supposedly gave a “mean-spirited partisanship, gross misrepresentations of fact, and sophistry of the lowest sort concerning Republicans’ alleged desire to hurt old people, the poor and mentally challenged children.” That he did it with Rep. Paul Ryan sitting in the front row was just too much for them to take.
This from a crew who believe that weaning seniors off a guaranteed benefit and putting them on an unequal voucher program is good policy for people who don’t have adequate means to help themselves. That the environment is expendable, who think freedom is just for men and that women’s wombs should be wards of the state (especially if you’re a poor woman), who want to keep expanding the Pentagon while bombing countries that haven’t attacked us, who think separate and unequal justice for people suspected of crimes is good enough, and that blue collar, waitresses, truckers and people in hard labor jobs should have to wait to retire, while the rich are protected from high taxes and corporations get breaks because they’re more important than government programs that offer services for people, including building infrastructure, repairing buildings and roads, but also making things that will make us more competitive, including high speech rail across this country.
From the Examiner editorial:
Obama then spent Thursday evening regaling an audience of Democratic donors with what he thought were off-the-record insider jabs about his recent budget negotiations with House Republicans, including this cheap shot at Ryan: “When Paul Ryan says his priority is to make sure he’s just being America’s accountant, that he’s being responsible, I mean this is the same guy that voted for two wars that were unpaid for, voted for the Bush tax cuts that were unpaid for, voted for the prescription drug bill that cost as much as my health care bill — but wasn’t paid for. So it’s not on the level.” The reality is that the Iraq and Afghanistan wars under President Bush were regularly funded by Congress, claiming tax cuts must be “paid for” is a hoary piece of Democratic class-warfare demagoguery, and the prescription drug plan Ryan supported cost half as much as the Democratic alternative then on the table. Such fact-free commentary is to be expected from blind partisans, but not the president of the United States.
We need a lot more demagoguery, put on top of rhetoric that starts a real class war, because working people are getting screwed by both political parties, neither of whom represent the working class anymore. It’s long overdue that politicians start a rhetorical war against the “Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%,” to quote Stiglitz, because the super rich are doing just fine, as are the corporations like GE and others who don’t pay taxes in a country where a little corporate patriotism is due.
The other hilarious point about the Examiners Obama’s a Meanie editorial is that these nitwits seem not to recognize another campaign speech when they see it. I’m sorry to bring up Barack Obama’s record, because I know how the media at large gets annoyed when someone reminds people, but Obama is one of the toughest, hard boiled and ruthless campaigners around. There is nothing he won’t do or say in pursuit of the presidency.
Where were these people during the primaries of 2008?
But pretending like Republicans and the Right aren’t scurrilous election mode vipers is really too much. People laugh at the birther issue, but there really isn’t anything more dangerous or reprehensible than trying to delegitimize a sitting president. This is a regular pattern with Republicans, because they tried to do the same thing with William Jefferson Clinton. The difference being that Clinton came in after Reagan, with Republicans and much of the Washington elite incensed about the Hicks from the Sticks usurping the conservative king’s domain, while Barack Obama came in with the people at his feet, the press on his side and the world waiting for Mr. Hope to deliver “fundamental change.”
Besides, as we’ve learned in Pres. Obama’s first term, it’s not like he’s going to deliver on anything he says as Candidate Obama.
So Republicans, relax, be happy. There’s never been an election where you didn’t give as good as you got. I’m sure 2012 won’t be any different.
Will Trump Tornado Pull Palin In?
**UPDATED – BUMPED**
Real estate mogul Donald Trump touted his net worth as a selling point over likely presidential contender and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. “I’m a much bigger business man and have (a) much, much bigger net worth. I mean, my net worth is many, many, many times Mitt Romney,” Trump said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “I built a very big net worth and I’d like to put that ability … to work for this country.” – Trump: I’m ‘much bigger’ than Romney
Watching the Right come unglued as their circus primaries unwind is the most fun I’ve had watching politics in a very long time. Seeing Sean Hannity’s face fall when Mr. Trump criticized Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget on Thursday was a priceless moment on Fox TV. Now that Donald Trump is “leading” in a meaningless poll of mostly unannounced candidates, the Tea Party peanut gallery is chiming in with something developing that could, though there is still no movement yet, but could help nudge Sarah Palin into the 2012 presidential race. If Trump would run as an Independent then, well, no matter who wins the Republican primary, we might actually have an interesting election, especially now that Sarah Palin’s sounding like a candidate again.
First the establishment came for Sarah, now they’re after Donald Trump. Over a week ago I wrote he’s the the un-Obama. Rich Lowry picks up that thread, as the Republican Right begin they’re onslaught to take Trump down a notch, because the entire Republican field is making the GOP look like a collection of seriously wacky nitwits.
Trump wants to be the anti-Obama. Obama is too soft; Trump is tough. Obama knows nothing about business; Trump is God’s gift to American capitalism. Obama is painfully thoughtful in his affect; Trump is brash. They share much more important qualities in common, though. Like the Obama of 2008, Trump is an arrogant celebrity with a talent for branding who knows much less than he thinks and vastly overestimates his ability to fix the country’s problems. We’ve been here before. Give me humble. Give me boring. Give me wonky. Give me anything but another celebrity apprentice.
Yesterday Andrew Breitbart tweeted a couple of missives in support of Palin:
My goal is to intro David Mamet & other prominent @SarahPalinUSA supporters to Palins. In Hollywood there are tons.
I’m still waiting for the wrong position @SarahPalinUSA has taken. Or idea she misstated. They hate her because she is right.
Sean Hannity’s mini-me, Mark Levin, squealed like a man worried about things getting away from his fellow wingnut warrior, going on about Trump’s “record” as a private citizen. It seems the Tea Party crowd is all for citizen activists unless it’s an independent person finding fault with someone who deserves it. For one that would be George W. Bush, which Donald Trump is on record as saying was the worst president ever. Like many Americans, in fact the majority as it eventually turned out, Trump also was furious about being lied to over Iraq.
Mr. Trump told Rush Limbaugh yesterday (audio) that he might be surprised about what he decides. The tone in Mr. Trump’s voice was mischievous enough to tease he’s closer to running than not. Again, I’m still not convinced, though his interviews this week sound far more aggressive than he has earlier, no doubt bolstered by the polls.
But the Tea Party freaking out over Donald Trump catching fire means something is shifting. The establishment elite had to eventually speak up, so that was a given.
What the wingnut crew doesn’t seem to understand is that Breitbart and the mini-me Levin tape, as well as the CNN tape with Blitzer, only makes Donald Trump more attractive to conservative Independents who will no way vote for Obama or Mitt Romney.
Donald Trump’s best bet has always been as an Independent, with a trial Republican balloon the way to get there. However, therein lies the conundrum. There’s really no path to winning as an Independent, which means his pledge of only running if he can win is put to the test by the backlash going on right now by the Tea Party who are balking that Trump could take the Republican nomination, which is up for grabs.
On the sidelines sits Sarah Palin. I’m guessing with Trump’s rise, but also Michele Bachmann taking some energy out of Iowa, Palin’s receiving a lot of fan mail and encouragement from Tea Party people to please consider running in 2012. It’s also her only real shot, as politics doesn’t wait for anyone. Her fans yelping… The Tea Party needs you, Sarah! Michele Bachmann can’t win and we can’t let Trump use our movement! Run, Sarah, run! This is the chant she’s been waiting for, the push she’ll need to move, because she can’t disappoint the people.
Or maybe this whole thing will end with Mitt Romney winning the nomination, but I just don’t see how he makes it through the primaries. Does the Republican establishment still have that kind of power? We’ll soon see.
This post has been updated, bumped from 4.16.
Obama’s Libya Stalemate
**UPDATED**
However, despite President Obama’s speech to the nation explaining the justifications for military engagement last Monday, an increasing percentage say that the military action lacks a clear goal – 57% today, up from 50% a week ago. And by an overwhelming 66% to 25% margin, most say they would oppose the U.S. and its allies sending arms and military supplies to the anti-government groups in Libya. – Goal of Libyan Operation Less Clear to Public
Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd has urged the international community to maintain its resolve over the deadly conflict in Libya, as NATO vowed to do everything possible to protect civilians. Libyan rebel leaders have accused NATO of standing idly by while government forces kill people in the besieged western city of Misrata. – ABC News
Libyan rebels ripped NATO “inaction” in Gadhafi-held portions of the country, proving that no good deed goes unpunished, especially if it’s as haphazardly initiated as this one was by the West.
War brings with it its own humanitarian crises; you can’t wage it without killing civilians. That’s just a fact.
For Pres. Obama and his neoconservative friends, along with a lot of Democrats, deciding to go into Libya is proving to be a very bad war of choice. From the Washington Post:
“One Libya, with Tripoli as its capital” is spray-painted on walls around this rebel city and glides off the tongues of opposition leaders. Moammar Gaddafi will fall in a week, they predict, two at the most, and they’ll build a new country then.
But as weeks stretch into months and progress on the battlefield stalls, this rebel-held area of Libya is settling into its status as a de facto separate state.
[...] …on Monday a facility that feeds oil to Tobruk was sabotaged, presumably by Gaddafi’s forces. The damage to production has not yet been assessed, but the attack underscored the east’s fragility. For now its leaders live in semi-hiding, with bodyguards and safe houses, and the east is dependent on NATO airstrikes to keep Gaddafi’s forces at bay.
Libya was never going to be Rwanda, with the ghosts of that catastrophe inspiring an emotional decision by Obama and other leaders, including Sec. Clinton, Samantha Power and Susan Rice, among others. It’s truly remarkable how seasoned foreign policy hands can ignore the history of intervention and the predictable outcome of half-measures.
The only way to have a positive outcome in Libya was to go all in. You can’t wage half a war successfully.
Afghanistan proved that after Bush left for the Iraq preemption misadventure, with Pres. Obama still trying to make right in that country something that cannot be corrected from the outside.
Why Isn’t Obama Targeting Syria Next?
**UPDATED**
President Bashar al-Assad made a rare public pledge to look into granting Syrians greater freedom on Thursday as anger mounted following attacks by security forces on protesters that left at least 37 dead. – Thousands chant “freedom” despite Assad reform offer
You think it’s America’s job to interject ourselves and save the world?
You want to stop humanitarian crises everywhere?
Well, get busy people.
Citing rights activists and witnesses, the AFP news service reported that 100 people were killed when police opened fired in the southern city on Wednesday. However, the report could not immediately be verified.
Thousands defied the deadly government crackdown on Thursday as they took to the streets in funeral marches for protesters killed by police gunfire, an activist said.
As the casualties mounted, people from the nearby villages of Inkhil, Jasim, Khirbet Ghazaleh and al-Harrah tried to march on Daraa Wednesday night but security forces opened fire as they approached, the activist said. It was not immediately clear if there were more deaths or injuries.
Story: 15 dead in new clashes in southern Syria cityDemocracy activists used social-networking sites to call for massive demonstrations across the country on Friday, a day they dubbed “Dignity Friday.”
Meanwhile, the State Dept. is “deeply concerned.” That’s the phrase that has helped launched the What are you going to do about it question? for decades.
Pres. Obama has started down a path that reveals the knotted reality of cherry picking carnage to manage, which is threatening to reduce his presidency to rubble. NATO still can’t come to an agreement over command. Via MSNBC:
Quarreling NATO While the fighting raged, NATO again failed to agree to take over command of the military operation “Odyssey Dawn” from the United States, chiefly because of objections from Turkey, diplomats said.
The United States, with its forces already tied up in Iraq and Afghanistan, said it wants to give up its lead role in Libya in a “matter of days,” with NATO playing an important role in the command of the operation, although the exact structure of its role was still under discussion. France, which launched the air campaign against Libya with Britain and the United States on Saturday, argues that having the U.S.-led NATO in charge would erode Arab support because of the alliance’s unpopularity in the Arab world.
After starting down a deliberative path, Pres. Obama’s now ventured into no man’s land, because looking at Syria, Bahrain and Yemen, nothing he’s currently doing makes any sense.
The Libya no-fly misadventure now has the dubious distinction of having the lowest approval of any war “kinetic military action” in four decades and that’s before people learn just how little information the Obama administration had on the “rebels” prior to Pres. Obama pulling the trigger.
(h/t Ben Smith on Twitter)
The Finish the Job Quotient
The fact that a trio of top Senate Democrats — who were highly critical of President George W. Bush’s conduct of the war in Iraq — felt compelled to defend a Democratic president who’s launched a new war front shows just how worried some Democrats are about the Libya military action. In fact, Durbin went as far as comparing Obama’s action in Libya to President George H. W. Bush’s international coalition in the first Persian Gulf War. – Senate Democrats defend Obama on Libya
If you’re on defense you’re losing.
As for Democrats being worried, they should be. Libya will by no means be over when Pres. Obama hands the reins to NATO, and the White House begins to market this mess as an accomplishment.
Pres. Obama’s war of choice in Libya was ill conceived and ill planned. There is no foreign policy strategy to pin it to or anything about going in that reveals consistent U.S. thinking. That’s the foundational problem with the whole misadventure, which you can’t call a mission, because there wasn’t one. But there is something equally troubling awaiting us in the wake of what we’ve done.
The daddy of all finish the job lessons came through George W. Bush’s preemptive action in Iraq, led by Dick Cheney and Donald known and unknown Rumsfeld. Greta Van Susteren sat down with Mr. Rumsfeld last night (h/t Yglesias) and listening to what unfolded reminded me of the whole theory of how we ended up back in Iraq. Dick Cheney eventually regretted not finishing the job during the first Gulf War.
It brought to the forefront just how ludicrously dangerous the thinking has been on Libya. That a no-fly zone would be the end of worries for the Libyan people. That with Gadhafi humiliated around the globe, what a megalomaniac like him would do to retaliate against the nations that brought it to bear. Considering the U.S. was the lead on Operation Odyssey Dawn, it puts us in the position where blowback awaits in time.
From the transcript (video at the link):
VAN SUSTEREN: I guess the reason why I have some element of concern because he’s obviously threatened us. I mean, we’ve got our — we’ve got our flyovers. We’ve got our military action. And he says that, you know, he’s going to fight back. And I never know if it’s just sort of an empty threat of someone who’s pathetic or someone who truly does have nuclear or biological or chemical weapons that we simply don’t know about and that he could fight back.
RUMSFELD: I just don’t know the answer, but there’s no question he’s a person who’s engaged in terrorist acts. He’s sponsored them, dealt with terrorist organizations. And he is — he obviously didn’t stay in power for 40 years by being stupid. He’s intelligent and clever and opportunistic. He would not think of trying to compete against our armies or navies or air forces. He would deal — whatever he did would be asymmetric and it would be something that would be unconventional and very likely — and possibly not even something in Libya, something conceivably elsewhere in the world.
[...] [...] RUMSFELD: Oh, my goodness! He’s been a survivor. He’s been there 40 years. If there continues to be open questions as to whether the coalition’s mission is regime change, I think that there is at least a reasonable possibility that Qaddafi can last it out. And the way he would do that would be to inject fear into anybody who decided to oppose him because the mission of the coalition was not to eliminate his regime. That would be public. That would be known. Once that’s known, people would be quite reluctant to turn against what may very well end up staying in power. …
Hearing Pres. Obama say our engagement isn’t war sounds like something a naive person would proffer from fantasyland, not someone leading the most powerful free nation on the planet that’s just started a war against a Libyan mad man whose history of terrorist ties and carnage is legendary. Though it is welcome news to learn about Treasuring freezing his assets, which is some story, with these efforts deserving applause.
Once you choose to start a war for “humanitarian” reasons, but also have declared “Gadhafi must go,” but then you leave your adversary alive and in power to plot, you’ve opened the door to a whole world of unmentionable horror. Can’t assassinate him, particularly under the terms of what you’ve concocted, but you can’t afford to leave him alive either, though that’s exactly what you’ve done.
This is why the U.S. military hates when politicians who don’t understand war decide to play it like it’s a game. You can’t simply let fly a bunch of words to change the dynamic. Once the bombs start dropping all bets are off.
You’d think we’d have learned this by now.
How Does Sec. Clinton’s Latest Statement Help?
I have absolutely no idea the purpose of these remarks on ABC from Sec. Clinton, beyond covering for a commander in chief making his way home as a crisis escalates, this time politically. They make absolutely no sense to me at all at this point, but nothing the Obama administration is doing or saying on Libya makes sense, which now includes Sec. Clinton.
Not only does she admit she’s not aware “personally” of what she went on to tell Diane Sawyer, but she goes on to say some of what she’s imparting is “theater,” while throwing out the possibility that one of Col. Gadhafi’s sons was killed as she simultaneously admits the “evidence is not sufficient” for her to confirm the information she just imparted.
It’s like the world edition of As Libya Turns, with Clinton offering up sound bites that sound like a foreign policy soap opera, as she in the next breath proclaimed to be “very relaxed about it” all in an effort to obviously shore up Pres. Obama, as criticism at home escalated exponentially.
“We’ve heard about other people close to him reaching out to people that they know around the world — Africa, the Middle East, Europe, North America, beyond — saying what do we do? How do we get out of this? What happens next?” Clinton said in an exclusive interview. “I’m not aware that he personally has reached out, but I do know that people allegedly on his behalf have been reaching out.”
“Some of it is theater. Some of it is, you know, kind of, shall we say game playing, to try to do one message to one group, another message to somebody else,” she added. “A lot of it is just the way he behaves. It’s somewhat unpredictable. But some of it, we think, is exploring. You know, what are my options, where could I go, what could I do. And we would encourage that.”
Clinton said she’s also heard reports that one of Gadhafi’s sons may have been killed in the air strikes. But she added that the “evidence is not sufficient” to confirm.
Fox reports Obama has canceled public events for Wednesday, with the White House press corp coming home before the President, his own plans reportedly to include cutting his trip short by “hours.” However, no other outlet has offered a similar report, though this is not all that surprising to hear at this point.
Then there is Pres. Obama finally coming to grips that Gadhafi is very likely to stay in power, something that was clear from the top for anyone whose studied foreign policy.
“As long as Qadhafi remains in power — unless he changes his approach provides the Libyan people the opportunity to express themselves freely and there are significant reforms by the Libyan government, and he steps down — there’s still going to be a potential threat to the Libyan people,” Obama told reporters at a news conference here, his final stop on a five-day tour of Latin America. “We will continue to support the efforts to protect the Libyan people, but we will not be in the lead.” – Barack Obama: Libyan air campaign could last
It must be very ugly in our President’s brain right now as he tries to reconcile what he wants to happen with the realities of war and the U.S.’s role in it, which cannot be changed simply because Obama has deemed it must.
Pres. Obama is operating his Libya policy, such as there is one, under the assumption that because his plan is to remove the United States from the narrative of the no-fly action by handing over duties to the coalition or NATO immediately, that this is as easy as it sounds and can be done on his word. What this ignores is U.S. history, our role as leader of the free world and in taking the helm on every military intervention in modern times, not to mention what is expected of the American President at home.
The good news so far is that the American public haven’t caught up with the reality the Obama administration is facing and all the President and his team can hope is that they’ll get lucky or something will break, it may take both, before the public gets wind of the facts, which are ugly all around.
Obama’s policy also ignores what happened under Bush, as well as what Obama’s done in the region since becoming president. Pres. Obama believes his Cairo speech wiped out what has happened in Pakistan, but especially in Afghanistan, including the multitude of drone attacks, civilian deaths, and troops deployed, while his Administration has failed utterly on any coherent (there’s that word again) Middle East policy that deals effectively with the Palestinian and Israeli challenge.
Rachel Maddow once again tried to make the argument for Obama on her show last night, pressing her narrative of the President’s reluctance and also his willingness to change the U.S. interventionist narrative, this time emphasizing Obama’s Cairo speech, and once again, as with last night, her guests, Al Jazeera English’s Ayman Mohyeldin and Gideon Rose of Foreign Affairs, quickly blew her theory out of the water. Obama wanting to turn the page from what came before is simply not enough given the history of the U.S. in the region, which now includes Pres. Obama’s own presidential footprint.
No matter what his intentions, humanitarian and that “Gadhafi must go,” the fact remains Pres. Obama has started a war in Libya and nothing he can say can change this reality or his role in initiating Operation Odyssey Dawn. The fact that Obama did this “on the fly,” to quote Sec. Gates, without thinking through the consequences of military action and the ramification of war becomes more apparent by the day.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates told reporters Tuesday that plan to transfer command of the mission in Libya to coalition forces is “complicated.” “We haven’t done something like this on the fly before,” Gates, who is currently overseas on a diplomatic trip to Russia, said. Added Gates, “It’s not surprising to me that it would take a few days to get it all sorted out.” – Talk Radio News
Newsweek Asks ‘How Dumb Are We?’ Ask Oprah.
[National Security Advisor Thomas Donilon speaking] [...] Fourth, the circumstances arose with the passage of the United Nations Security Council on Thursday, the night before a congressional recess. So he did, even with that, call Congress, those who remained in town on Friday and those who are out of town, on the phone to consult with them. – David Dayen
If the President of the United States thinks he can launch military actions in Libya without officially notifying Congress on the fig leaf that it was a Friday night and nobody was around, Obama obviously believes we’re really dumb. Tina Brown’s Newsweek point out he may have a point.
Newsweek recently queried people to take their “citizenship test.” It’s not shocking that 38% failed. You can take the poll here. A couple of weeks ago Tina Brown’s newsweekly asked who was the most admired woman? The answer was Oprah Winfrey.
The most admired woman in the United States is Oprah Winfrey. One-quarter say Oprah Winfrey is the most admired woman, 17 percent say Hillary Clinton, 12 percent say Michelle Obama and 10 percent say Condoleezza Rice. Nine percent say Laura Bush, 7 percent say Diane Sawyer and 6 percent say Sarah Palin. Republican women say Oprah Winfrey is the most admired woman (33 percent), followed by Sarah Palin (18 percent). Democratic women say Hillary Clinton is the most admired woman (31 percent), followed by Oprah Winfrey (21 percent). Independent women say Oprah Winfrey as well (23 percent), followed by Diane Sawyer (19 percent). – Newsweek Survey: Oprah, Clinton Most Admired Women in America
Did you know Oprah Winfrey helped George W. Bush sell preemptive war in Iraq? Considered the “national anchor” by some, it mattered. This was an exchange that was featured on Bill Moyers’ “Buying the War,” which can be seen in the snippet below (h/t corrente).
Audience member: “I hope it doesn’t offend you… I just don’t know what to believe with the media.”
Oprah: “We’re not trying to propagandize, show you propaganda. We’re just showing you what is.”
Audience member: “I understand that, I’m saying —”
Oprah cuts her off.
Oprah: “OK, but, OK, you have a right to your opinion.”
from Bill Moyers’ “Buying the War”
Obviously, Ms. Winfrey wasn’t the only one on the Iraq war bandwagon, but her impact has also never been discussed. Though when the war went south and she flipped to be against it, she was lauded, while no one logged she was late and had been wrong.
For whatever reason Oprah always gets a pass.
Who can forget the huge moment in the ’08 primaries when Oprah said Barack Obama is “the one”? From CNN:
“I’ve never taken this kind of risk before nor felt compelled to stand up and speak out before because there wasn’t anyone to to stand up and speak up for,” Winfrey told thousands of people in Cedar Rapids Saturday evening.
“We need a president who can bring us all together,” she said. “I know [Barack Obama] is the one.”
Earlier in Des Moines, she focused on world affairs. “These are dangerous times, you can feel it. We need a leader who shows us how to hope again in America as a force for peace,” Winfrey told the enthusiastic crowd.
“I believe Barack Obama will bring statesmanship to the White House,” she said. “He’s a man who knows who we are and knows who we can be.”
Ms. Winfrey’s euphoria is the same type that followed Barack Obama throughout his campaign, which also landed him the Nobel Peace prize.
If anyone knows how dumb we are it’s Oprah Winfrey. She’s been cashing in on it for 25 years.
Though she’s done important shows, including on females in the military, and many others, that’s not what the overwhelming bulk of her shows covered or how she stayed on top. She never intended to follow in Phil Donahue’s shoes, instead going tabloid to beat him in the ratings and never turning away from one trash show after another. Her specialty was always her victim-apalooza shows. Oprah spawned Sally and every other trash TV show after her.
Over her astounding 25-year television career, Ms. Winfrey has also accomplished what no other woman has done before. Not only is she staggeringly wealthy, but someone who got that way through breaking the television trash TV barrier onto daytime long before Jerry Springer’s wild escapades hit. It’s an amazing accomplishment for any entertainment business person, but especially an African American woman raised in the segregated south and she deserves all the credit due for her achievements, including her incredible charitable giving. Her “O” network is a venture I hope will succeed where men have before, but where women have never before ventured.
Oprah has done for women what sports does for men. Make people believe in the financial mountaintop, sometimes through hocus pocus like “The Secret,” but she inspires the sight of dancing dollar bills in her fans’ dreams.
Of course, it’s one of the core problems of this country. Wealth over working to earn it, which Oprah Winfrey would be the first to tell you she worked hard for what she achieved.
So, with women admiring Oprah more than any other woman in America, as our culture also obsesses over Charlie Sheen, and as we blunder yet again into another undeclared military excursion, how can we be surprised that 38% of Americans can’t pass a citizenship test?
But how dumb are we?
Money and fame are our guide.
We don’t gravitate to information or education, though we talk a lot about it. Just look at who represents us and how they do their jobs.
We are suckered by celebrities telling us things made out of cotton candy rhetoric often with no foundational facts available at all.
Oprah’s a blockbuster shopper, hailing “my favorite things,” which makes companies and thrills the women in her audience. Her historic TV show’s tabloid tales reach across the globe. Her spirituality shows have helped rehabilitate her smarmy programming, which cashed in on victimhood as if it were the holy grail of goodness.
I find her historic success on television laudable for the sheer financial power she’s accumulated, but her television show is virtually unwatchable for the most part. I taped her last season for a while, but haven’t been able to watch most episodes. I do admit to enjoying Barbara Streisand and Robert Redford, as well as McGraw and O’Neil, but there’s only so much fluff I can take that doesn’t make me laugh.
Kitty Kelly’s biography, “Oprah,” was so feared by “O” that the media virtually banned her book due to Ms. Winfrey’s power to muzzle Kelly. “Oprah” is an eye-popping page turner of unending revelations compiled in one volume where Kelly constructs a picture of an insecure, binge-eating, control freak who obviously hasn’t taken her spirituality to heart. That Oprah’s fans didn’t read it isn’t surprising, but the complicit nature of the blackout on Kelly’s book is rather historic.
I can’t vouch for anything in the book except to say I’ve read it, but also that Kelly has never been successfully sued and “Oprah” is no exception. Mrs. Kelly is a methodically anal researcher with a gift for getting people on the record, while Oprah refused any contact at all, which is understandable. So there is quite a bit of the book that’s taken from other publications, long before Oprah earned her power. Kelly is an author who is compelled to strip the media story away from her subject then re-compile it slowly, episode by episode.
When Kelly’s book first came out Huffington Post gave her a full airing, as did USA Today and other papers, but television appearances were few and far between.
In America, we like our icons pristine. It’s more important than anything, including information about them that reveals them as imperfect humans. Americans abhor legend busting. On the whole we simply don’t want the facts. To paraphrase a legendary Jack Nicholson character, we simply can’t handle the truth.
Take the experience recounted by Kelly of prizewinning columnist for New Orleans’s Times-Picayune, Chris Rose, who wrote about the traumatic reaction he had after Hurricane Katrina. After 10-hours of “revisiting the emotional wreckage of the hurricane,” here’s a very brief synopsis of what happened when Rose refused to sign one of Oprah’s notorious nondisclosure/confidentiality agreements:
“‘If you don’t sign, we don’t run the segment,’” the producer said.
[...] “I had stuck my hand into a hornet’s next of anti-Oprah sentiment on the Internet that pushed my book from number eleven thousand on Amazon to number eighteen by the end of the day and then on to The New York Times bestseller list. … .. [...] I had no idea there were negative feelings about her and her confidentiality agreements out there, but I received calls and emails from writers all over the country saying they were going to buy my book that day to send her a message.”
Any society afraid of truth is in trouble. That’s us.
One year ago when Ms. Kelly’s book was released it caused a firestorm due to the personal revelations revealed by Oprah’s relatives, which is the stuff of stunning tabloid juiciness. It rivals anything in “Game Change,” which is going to be an HBO movie. Your heart breaks for Winfrey, as revelations of being a prostitute are discussed for her memoir that never was done and all sorts of sordid contested details are unloaded. The saddest part of the saga is that for all Oprah’s public religiosity the picture portrayed by Kelly is one of paranoid megalomaniac. However, what wafts from the pages of Kelly’s book helps you understand why Oprah chose the path she did on daytime, churning the swamp of human indignities for ratings and financial reward’s sake.
It’s likely no one in this country could explain how dumb we are better than Winfrey.
The worship of Oprah seems even weirder when you juxtapose Oprah with what’s happening with women around the world, especially as the women of the Middle East rise up to change their countries that includes a place for them in their country’s future.
Perhaps it’s the privilege of women in America that makes Oprah’s fans worship her, without caring about the underlying reality that doesn’t match the legendary “O” marketing.
For whatever reason, Oprah has never gotten the national scrutiny for how she’s impacted our culture, but also the dumb factor in our country. Over 25 years of daytime programming on “Oprah” represents why we’re dumb.
Of course, Oprah’s not the only one to blame or maybe she’s not to blame at all. After all you can change the channel. However, when it’s seen as blasphemy to ask the same questions of Oprah that were asked of Geraldo Rivera there’s a willful ignorance being applied, especially where women are concerned.
So, if you want to know how dumb are we, ask Oprah. She’s become the richest woman in America, rivaling men around the world, by betting on American ignorance.
This column has been updated and cross-posted at TheModerateVoice.
Anne-Marie Slaughter Slams Obama for ‘Fiddling’ on Libya
**UPDATED**
When Democrats join with neoconservatives like Bill Kristol on Libya, as well as Michael Barone who accused Obama of voting “present” on Libya, all I can see is the ghost of Iraq preemption dancing in my head.
Ms. Slaughter didn’t learn squat from her support for the Iraq war and its devastating results. Her op-ed in the New York Times today is remarkable, not only for the chasm in her much respected thinking of not gaming what can happen once we get embroiled in a country’s civil war, but for calling out Pres. Obama for “temporizing” on Libya.
No doubt Obama will want to squash her truth to power militaristic opinion like he did PJ Crowley on Manning, but Ms. Slaughter is now well out of his reach.
PRESIDENT Obama says the noose is tightening around Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. In fact, it is tightening around the Libyan rebels, as Colonel Qaddafi makes the most of the world’s dithering and steadily retakes rebel-held towns. The United States and Europe are temporizing on a no-flight zone while the Organization of the Islamic Conference, the Gulf Cooperation Council and now the Arab League have all called on the United Nations Security Council to authorize one. Opponents of a no-flight zone have put forth five main arguments, none of which, on close examination, hold up.
IT’S NOT IN OUR INTEREST Gen. Wesley K. Clark argues that “Libya doesn’t sell much oil to the United States” and that while Americans “want to support democratic movements in the region,” we are already doing that in Iraq and Afghanistan. Framing this issue in terms of oil is exactly what Arab populations and indeed much of the world expect, which is why they are so cynical about our professions of support for democracy and human rights. Now we have a chance to support a real new beginning in the Muslim world — a new beginning of accountable governments that can provide services and opportunities for their citizens in ways that could dramatically decrease support for terrorist groups and violent extremism. It’s hard to imagine something more in our strategic interest.
Slaughter’s claim that it’s “time to act” would put the United States intervening in a country where a civil war is raging, when it’s been obvious for days that Gadhafi is likely to prevail.
But her most astounding claim is on labeling “Arab democrats.”
..Assuming that a no-flight zone can be imposed by an international coalition that includes Arab states, we have an opportunity to establish a new narrative of Western support for Arab democrats.
This assumes much more than is currently evident, especially when you look at Egyptian men and their reaction to women marching for their own freedom. There is also no evidence that any of the countries enjoying the Arab spring will end up secular, which is a prime tenet of “democrats.”
If the Security Council fails to act, then we should recognize the opposition Libyan National Council as the legitimate government, as France has done, and work with the Arab League to give the council any assistance it requests.
This is where militaristic interventionist Democrats always end up. When other countries refuse to lead the U.S. should always step in. This is the same thinking that made Democrats in the Senate jump on the band wagon for Iraq that led to more ill will inside the Arab world than we could ever predict, but also led to a economic quagmire from which we still cannot extricate ourselves.
If the U.S. engages to help the opposition Libyan National Council it should be as partners with the world and the Security Council, but absolutely under no circumstance with America alone in the lead.
Steve Clemons rebuts Anne-Marie Slaughter today as well.
After all we’ve learned, 20th century Scoop Jackson Democrats still want to write checks for war supporting interventionist policies the U.S. economy can no longer afford to cash.
As Sect. Clinton’s former Director of Policy Planning at the State Department, Ms. Slaughter knows very well what it takes to impose a no-fly zone. So her “fiddling” slam is extraordinary given her respected stature in Democratic foreign policy circles.
Of course, former Pres. Clinton also supports a no-fly zone, as does John Kerry and others on the Democratic side.
Pres. Obama doesn’t have much company on his side, which should make everyone nervous on what may unfold.
UPDATE: Sen. Dick Lugar become the first to say any no-fly zone should be accompanied by Arab nations footing the bill. Amen.
[...] Given the costs of a no-fly zone, the risks that our involvement would escalate, the uncertain reception in the Arab street of any American intervention in an Arab country, the potential for civilian deaths, the unpredictability of the endgame, the strains on our military, and other factors, it is doubtful that U.S. interests would be served by imposing a no-fly zone over Libya. If the Obama Administration is contemplating this step, however, it should begin by seeking a declaration of war against Libya that would allow for a full Congressional debate on the issue. In addition, it should ask Arab League governments and other governments advocating for a no-fly zone to pledge resources necessary to pay for such an operation.
This is not unprecedented. More than $50 billion in foreign contributions were received to offset U.S. costs in association with the first Gulf War in 1991. Much of this came from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. …
