the corrosive effects of war

A great piece in the Post today from Andrew Bacevich on the increasing mistrust and alienation our professional army feels toward the rest of the populace. The opening two sentences are much broader, however, and I'm glad to see someone saying it:

Long wars are antithetical to democracy. Protracted conflict introduces toxins that inexorably corrode the values of popular government.

I hope that we get at least one great benefit from the war in Afghanistan, since it looks like we'll get little else: the lesson that even "good" wars are bad. Aside from the trite costs "in blood and treasure," war creates new enemies even when it vanquishes the old ones, damages our reputation abroad, desensitizes our people to violence (which carries its own attendant degradations of character), and breeds resentment of our democratic values and civil rights among both the military and civilian populations. It makes us coarser and more authoritarian as a people.

Barney Frank on Republican fiscal hypocrisy

Yes, yes, yes.

John McCain losing his base

By his base, of course, I mean the media. This from the AP, until now shameless water carriers for the Crazy Train:

The "Straight Talk Express" has detoured into doublespeak.

Republican presidential nominee John McCain, a self-proclaimed tell-it-like-it-is maverick, keeps saying his running mate, Sarah Palin, killed the federally funded Bridge to Nowhere when, in fact, she pulled her support only after the project became a political embarrassment. He accuses Democrat Barack Obama of calling Palin a pig, which did not happen. He says Obama would raise nearly everyone's taxes, when independent groups say 80 percent of families would get tax cuts instead.

Even in a political culture accustomed to truth-stretching, McCain's skirting of facts has stood out this week. It has infuriated and flustered Obama's campaign, and campaign pros are watching to see how much voters disregard news reports noting factual holes in the claims.

Ouch.

What we're seeing is the beginnings of a new, campaign-ending narrative: McCain, the former straight-talking maverick, losing his moral compass as he is corrupted by the lust for power. It probably won't start affecting his numbers for another week or two, and not unless this narrative appears in other places as well, but if other media figures start talking about McCain like this, he'll be in real trouble.

But don't worry, John: you'll always have Tom Brokaw.

Meanwhile, the AP also reported on Palin's first interview with Charles Gibson. If you saw the interview, you don't need me to tell you it did not go well:

John McCain running mate Sarah Palin sought Thursday to defend her qualifications but struggled with foreign policy, unable to describe President Bush's doctrine of pre-emptive strikes against threatening nations and acknowledging she's never met a foreign head of state.

The Republican vice presidential nominee told Charles Gibson of ABC News in her first televised interview since being named to the GOP ticket that "I'm ready" to be president if called upon. However, she sidestepped on whether she had the national security credentials needed to be commander in chief.

In case you're not wigged out by her already, when asked specifically whether she would start a hot war with Russia over Georgia, she said:

Perhaps so.

If elected, she will be a 72-year-old heartbeat away from the nuclear button. Then again, if you remember, John McCain was essentially agitating for the same thing with his "We're all Georgians now" crap.

The Washington Post is growing a little disenchanted with McCain's assurances that she knows what she's talking about as well. Apparently, Palin opening her mouth tends to do that:

FORT WAINWRIGHT, Alaska, Sept. 11 -- Gov. Sarah Palin linked the war in Iraq with the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, telling an Iraq-bound brigade of soldiers that included her son that they would "defend the innocent from the enemies who planned and carried out and rejoiced in the death of thousands of Americans."

The idea that the Iraqi government under Saddam Hussein helped al-Qaeda plan the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, a view once promoted by Bush administration officials, has since been rejected even by the president himself. But it is widely agreed that militants allied with al-Qaeda have taken root in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion.

Good Lord, is there a more thoroughly and publicly discredited misconception that we've seen in the last decade?

the Obamafication of Republican foreign policy, part 3

From the New York Times:

WASHINGTON — President Bush secretly approved orders in July that for the first time allow American Special Operations forces to carry out ground assaults inside Pakistan without the prior approval of the Pakistani government, according to senior American officials.

The classified orders signal a watershed for the Bush administration after nearly seven years of trying to work with Pakistan to combat the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and after months of high-level stalemate about how to challenge the militants’ increasingly secure base in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

Barack Obama, August 1, 2007 (via Reuters):

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama said on Wednesday the United States must be willing to strike al Qaeda targets inside Pakistan, adopting a tough tone after a chief rival accused him of naivete in foreign policy.

Obama's stance comes amid debate in Washington over what to do about a resurgent al Qaeda and Taliban in areas of northwest Pakistan that President Pervez Musharraf has been unable to control, and concerns that new recruits are being trained there for a September 11-style attack against the United States.

Obama said if elected in November 2008 he would be willing to attack inside Pakistan with or without approval from the Pakistani government, a move that would likely cause anxiety in the already troubled region.

"If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will," Obama said.

John McCain thought Obama's idea was "naive" at the time. Wonder what he thinks now?

For those of you keeping score, the Bush Administration is already quietly adopting Obama's foreign policy positions on Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran, and McCain has himself adopted Obama's position on Afghanistan after chiding him for it. This, then, makes the fifth time the Republicans have mocked Obama's foreign policy only to appropriate it as their own later. Or, as it was expressed 4 years ago, being against it before they were for it.

It's not a flip flop, however, because John McCain was a POW.

Hey Brian Williams

ya think this story might be "newsworthy?"

the steel chair!

Because I'm sick of conventional sports metaphors in politics. We need more unconventional ones. This incident this weekend, then, was a pivotal moment. A Goldberg spear. The capturing of the queen. Losing Australia. From The Washington Independent:

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki told Germany's Der Spiegel magazine, "U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes." Within hours, U.S. Central Command -- at the behest of a clearly worried White House -- released a statement arguing that Maliki was misquoted through a botched translation. But Monday, Maliki's spokesman, Ali al-Dabbagh, said that the government was talking about "a timetable which Iraqis set." Asked when that timetable would run out, Dabbagh quickly specified, "2010."

As a result, the positions on Iraq of the Bush administration, the U.S. military and Sen. John McCain, the presumed GOP presidential nominee, now face numerous challenges. The administration's plans for a permanent U.S. presence in Iraq have been profoundly undermined. The military will have to adjust to a strategy of extrication. The McCain campaign is presented with one of its nightmare scenarios: the Iraqi premier embracing the judgment of its opponent, Sen. Barack Obama, which strengthens Obama's bona fides on a national-security issue McCain has largely staked his presidential bid on owning.

The weak link in all this, of course, is the media reporting of the events, which is a genuine X-factor considering their long-time love affair with St. John the Maverick. They've buried his flip flops and papered over his cringeworthy foreign policy gaffes, but can they avert their eyes and pretend not to notice that Maliki totally bankrupted McCain and Bush's primary argument for a permanent occupation of Iraq, handing Obama complete control of the crucial yellow/green corner of the board?

The Obamafication of the Republican Party, part 2

Josh Marshall notes the trend of the Bush Administration and the McCain campaign both quietly adopting Barack Obama's positions in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iran:

Let's run the list.

McCain and now the White House (via the DOD) are moving toward more US troops in Afghanistan -- a position they've each long opposed and which Obama has been on record in support of for at least a year.

Bush and McCain have each also in different ways tried to nudge closer to Obama's position on withdrawing troops from Iraq. The key shoe falling today is President Bush's embrace of a "time horizon" for withdrawing troops from Iraq. Meanwhile, McCain's declaration of military victory in Iraq seems very much like an effort to get people thinking the troops are coming home soon within the conceptual architecture of his professed goals in Iraq.

And finally Iran. I'm not certain what McCain himself has said about Iran in recent days. But over recent months a key line of attack from the president and John McCain has been that Obama is a latter-day Neville Chamberlain for saying we should negotiate with Iran. And now over recent days we've learned that the White House is sending one of its top diplomats to negotiate directly with Iran's nuclear negotiator. And there are growing signs the White House is poised to open a diplomatic interests section (an unofficial diplomatic outpost) in Tehran.

It may all just be an attempt to build some last-minute bragging rights while taking Iraq off the table in the election, but at the end of the day this is still John McCain and George W. Bush tacitly conceding that Barack is right about getting out of Iraq and negotiating with Ahmadinejad, and they were wrong.

One hell of a story, if you can find someone to report it.

the Obamafication of Republican foreign policy

We learned yesterday, despite a nearly complete media blackout on the story, that John McCain has abandoned his policy on Afghanistan and has adopted Barack Obama's. From the Huffington Post:

John McCain likes to paint Barack Obama as a naive follower on key national security issues. But by moving up his planned Afghanistan speech by two days to follow Obama's, and by agreeing that more U.S. troops are needed there, McCain appears to be following the Illinois Democrat on a major proposed shift for U.S. foreign policy.

Last month, Joint Chiefs chairman Adm. Michael Mullen said he needed at least three brigades shifted to Afghanistan, but that "troop constraints were preventing such a move."

Democrats trumpeted the statement as vindication, but McCain's campaign held its line and "resisted calls for more [U.S.] troops" in Afghanistan.
...
Flash-forward to today. As the AP reported, McCain was set to discuss the economy, with an address on Afghanistan scheduled for Thursday. But the campaign ditched its planned focus on jobs (although not its banner) to follow Obama's lead -- not only by talking about national security but by joining him in calling for more American troops in Afghanistan.

Nearly an hour after Obama finished his D.C. speech, in which he repeated his call for "at least two additional combat brigades" to be sent to Afghanistan, McCain stepped to his podium across the country in New Mexico and tried to one-up his Democratic rival. As McCain's website now says, the Arizona Republican wants "at least three additional brigades" for the fight in Afghanistan.

Barack Obama: a leader John McCain can believe in.

Following that, we hear this morning of a striking reversal in a notorious Bush Administration. From AP:

In a break with past Bush administration policy, a top U.S. diplomat will for the first time join colleagues from other world powers at a meeting with Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, The Associated Press has learned.

William Burns, America's third highest-ranking diplomat, will attend talks with the Iranian envoy, Saeed Jalili, in Switzerland on Saturday aimed at persuading Iran to halt activities that could lead to the development of atomic weapons, a senior U.S. official told the AP on Tuesday.

Now who was it again who not only advocated talking to our enemies as a central feature of his foreign policy plan, but took an enormous amount of grief from both George W. Bush and John McCain, as well as his fellow primary candidates for it?

well, that answers that

Barack slaps down the Iraq "flip flop" bs in the New York Times, reiterating his commitment to withdrawal over 16 months.

I still would like to hear more about this "residual force" that he proposes to keep in Iraq. 1 brigade? 3 brigades? 100 military trainers and a platoon of Navy Seals? This is not a trivial distinction.

Nevertheless, consider the possibility: if Obama is elected, there is a chance that we could be mostly out of Iraq by this time in 2010. Imagine.

Bush to Curveball: "Give me a whopper!"

The LA Times tracks down the infamous "Curveball." It ain't pretty:

"He was corrupt," said a family friend who once employed him.

"He always lied," said a fellow Burger King worker.

And records reveal that when Alwan fled to Germany, one step ahead of the Iraq Justice Ministry, an arrest warrant had been issued alleging that he sold filched camera equipment on the Baghdad black market.
...
Alwan didn't share all his secrets. He didn't disclose that he had been fired at least twice for dishonesty, or that he fled Iraq to avoid arrest. But he did tell some whoppers that should have raised warnings about his credibility.

He claimed, for example, that the son of his former boss, Basil Latif, secretly headed a vast weapons of mass destruction procurement and smuggling scheme from England. British investigators found, however, that Latif's son was a 16-year-old exchange student, not a criminal mastermind.
...
In early 2002, a year before the war, he told co-workers at the Burger King that he spied for Iraqi intelligence and would report any fellow Iraqi worker who criticized Hussein's regime.

They couldn't decide if he was dangerous or crazy.

"During breaks, he told stories about what a big man he was in Baghdad," said Hamza Hamad Rashid, who remembered an odd scene with the pudgy Alwan in his too-tight Burger King uniform praising Hussein in the home of der Whopper. "But he always lied. We never believed anything he said."

Another Iraqi friend, Ghazwan Adnan, remembers laughing when he applied for a job at a local Princess Garden Chinese Restaurant and discovered Alwan washing dishes in the back while claiming to be "a big deal" in Iraq. "How could America believe such a person?"

This guy was a primary source for George W. Bush's prewar WMD claims. Remember the mobile weapons labs in Colin Powell's UN presentation? All Curveball.

it's official: Bush lied

From McClatchy (who else?):

WASHINGTON— A long-awaited Senate Select Intelligence Committee report made public Thursday concludes that President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney made public statements to promote an invasion of Iraq that they knew at the time were not supported by available intelligence.

A companion report found that a special office set up by then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld undertook "sensitive intelligence activities" that were inappropriate "without the knowledge of the Intelligence Community or the State Department."
...
“There is no question we all relied on flawed intelligence. But, there is a fundamental difference between relying on incorrect intelligence and deliberately painting a picture to the American people that you know is not fully accurate," Rockefeller said in a statement.

Among the reports conclusions:

* Claims by President Bush that Iraq and al Qaida had a partnership "were not substantiated by the intelligence."

* The president and vice president misrepresented what was known about Iraq’s chemical weapons capabiliies.

* Rumsfeld misrepresented what the intelligence community knew when he said Iraq's weapons productions facilities were buried deeply underground.

* Cheney's claim that the intelligence community had confirmed that lead Sept. 11 hijacker Mohammed Atta had met an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague in 2001 was not true.

Frankly, I have nothing more to say about this.

it was the war

Atrios catches a new phenomenon, a new media blind spot as it unfolds in the post-mortems of the Clinton campaign: they find many, many reasons why Clinton lost, not a single one of them related to her Iraq War vote. I noted its presence the first time I saw it, but in the last 24 hours it has appeared three more times.

This is not difficult, and it's rather surprising that nobody is saying it: Obama had one major opening to join the primary, and that was that Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, and everybody else (besides Kucinich) voted for the war. Aside from fairly minor differences in health care plans, that was really the only thing he could hold over Clinton and Edwards as a reason why he'd make a better president, and certainly the only position on which he could base an insurgent presidential campaign.

Nor are people exactly split on the war. As of the most recent poll, the number of Americans who believe that going to war with Iraq was "the wrong thing to do" stands at a whopping 62%, almost double the number of people who answered that it was the right thing. As Matthew Yglesias put it:

"...it's inconceivable to me that Obama's campaign could have gotten off the ground had Clinton spent 2002 and 2003 as a lonely liberal voice speaking out against the war, then spent 2005 and 2006 being completely vindicated in her judgment. It's not just that Obama wouldn't have beaten her, he wouldn't have run at all -- it would have been preposterous. She would have faced a from-the-right challenge in the primary that would have gotten some attention but never posed any real threat.

But Clinton's error on the war opened up serious doubts about her substantive and political judgment about one of the highest-profile issues of the moment. In many ways it's a testament to how brilliant her campaign was all throughout 2007 and 2008 that they never allowed the war issue to bury her, considering that an overwhelming majority of Democratic primary voters think she made a mistake. "

The war vote as Achilles' Heel also has irresistible narrative allure. I think there's very little doubt in most people's minds that Hillary Clinton voted to authorize war with Iraq not because she honestly believed it was the right thing to do, but because she believed she would have to if she ever wanted to be president. She's hardly alone in this; it's widely suspected that both John Kerry and John Edwards believed, and did, likewise.

And yet that one vote foiled the presidential ambitions of all three.

Hogwash. Hogwash! Hogwash.

McClatchy, formerly Knight-Ridder, has consistently been the best press outfit in its reporting on Iraq, standing head and shoulders above everyone else. They took a moment last week to bitchslap Brian Williams, Charles Gibson, and the rest of 'em. I think it's gonna leave a mark.

they're his base

The Associated Press hops on the Crazy Train. Meanwhile, Josh on McCain's "I didn't say 100 years in Iraq, I just said 100 years in Iraq!" issue:

The rub here is this: McCain does not want to leave Iraq. Period. He wants tens of thousands of troops to stay in Iraq permanently. He made a big point of this during the primaries when it was politically advantageous to do so. And he followed up with a qualifier explaining that it's okay because our occupation of Iraq will soon be like our presence in Germany and Japan where nobody gets killed. But there's little reason to believe our occupation of Iraq will ever be like that. We tried this in Lebanon; the French tried this in Algeria; the British even tried it in Iraq. Western countries have a very poor history garrisoning Muslim countries in the Middle East. Iraq isn't like Germany or Japan, not simply because of the history of the country but because both countries accepted decades-long US deployments as a counterweight to threatening neighbors. The relevant point is that McCain believes American troops should stay in Iraq permanently. His pipe dream about Iraq turning into Germany doesn't change that. It just shows his substitution of wishful thinking for sound strategic judgment.
...
...The New Yorker's Rick Hertzberg put it all quite elegantly back in January just after McCain started saying this. "McCain," he wrote, "wants to stay in Iraq until no more Americans are getting killed, no matter how long it takes and how many Americans get killed achieving that goal--that is, the goal of not getting any more Americans killed. And once that goal is achieved, we'll stay."

all quotes are taken out of context

...that's why they're "quotes."

That being said, what exactly is "out of context" about the Crazy Train saying we should stay in Iraq for 100 years? He said exactly that-- twice!-- yet on multiple occasions I've heard people say I took his statement "out of context" because "he was talking about a South Korea-type occupation without the casualties we have now."

So McCain only wants to stay long enough to quell violence, so that we can then... stay?

Zachary Roth at the Columbia Journalism Review takes the absurdity even a step further, saying:

It’s clear from this that McCain isn’t saying he’d support continuing the war for one hundred years, only that it might be necessary to keep troops there that long. That’s a very different thing.

Really? How? The fact is that, as long as our soldiers have been in Iraq, there have been terrorists, militias, and warlords killing them, and there's no indication whatsoever that they plan to stop anytime in the foreseeable future. How in this context, then, in the actual real world where real living soldiers live and die, is it possible to "keep troops there" without "continuing the war?"

For that matter, what happens if McCain presses on with the occupation and its attendant casualties for 4 years and the violence doesn't go down? 6? 7? What if the violence goes up? Would he leave?

How, then, is "John McCain wants us to stay in Iraq for 100 years" not perfectly accurate?

the George W. Bush reality distortion field

From Reuters (via Matthew Yglesias):

In a videoconference, Bush heard from U.S. military and civilian personnel about the challenges ranging from fighting local government and police corruption to persuading farmers to abandon a lucrative poppy drug trade for other crops.
...
"I must say, I'm a little envious," Bush said. "If I were slightly younger and not employed here, I think it would be a fantastic experience to be on the front lines of helping this young democracy succeed."

"It must be exciting for you ... in some ways romantic, in some ways, you know, confronting danger. You're really making history, and thanks," Bush said.

I guess we know what's wrong with our foreign policy now: nobody bothered to tell G-Dubs that "Dulce et Decorum Est" was meant as an ironic title.

It also goes without saying that the president didn't have quite the same reaction to being on the front lines of helping a certain young democracy succeed when he was himself "slightly younger and not employed here."

If McCain were a rapper, he'd be "Tone Def"

A spin-off of the Obama viral video.

America's overreach in Iraq and the end of hegemony

A great if wordy article in the NYT on the future makeup of world politics/economics and how the U.S. must reorient its foreign policy strategy to regain its footing and succeed in that world.

Surprisingly, engaging in numerous unilateral wars, telling everyone they're "with us or agin' us," and giving the UN the finger are not included among the ideas for success.

Also, did you see the 60 Minutes interview with George Piro, Saddam's FBI interrogator? Wow, fascinating. Lots of stuff about Saddam's personality, how actual, non-torture interrogations work, and the subtle ways to influence a guy like Saddam.

...oh yeah, and then some filler about how Saddam really did dismantle his weapons programs in the '90's and considered bin Laden an enemy and a dangerous fanatic. Of course we've known that since the last presidential election season.

Oh, snap!

At the last Democratic debate:

Wolf Blitzer: Congressman Kucinich, I believe you're the only person on this stage who had a chance to vote on the Patriot Act right after 9/11 who voted against it right away.

Dennis Kucinich: That's because I read it.

He's a snarky little bastard.

outed and offed

Oh my God! From Larry Johnson, former CIA agent and classmate of Plame:

In 2004 the FBI received intelligence that Al Qaeda hit teams were enroute to the United States to kill Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, and Valerie Plame. The FBI informed Valerie of this threat... As the mother of two pre-school children, her first thoughts were about protecting her kids. She took the threat seriously and asked for help.

When the White House learned of these threats they sprung into action. They beefed up Secret Service protection for Vice President Cheney and provided security protection to Karl Rove. But they declined to do anything for Valerie. That was a CIA problem.

Valerie contacted the office of Security at CIA and requested assistance. They told her too fucking bad and to go pound sand. They did not use those exact words, but they told her she was on her own.
...
So if you have wondered why Joe and Val are a little pissed off, this might help shed some additional light on the matter. Not only did the Bush Administration out a covert intelligence officer working on the most sensitive national security issues in a time of war, but when that officer faced a direct threat to her life and her family’s safety because of that public exposure, they did not do a goddamn thing to help.

Apparently Plame recounts this story in her new book, Fair Game. I heard Terry Gross interviewing her yesterday, and when conversation turned to the Bush Administration and the exposure of her identity to the Prince of Darkness, Plame actually dropped the T-bomb ("treason"). That's a pretty serious charge to be throwing around,* and I don't know that I've ever actually heard someone in a non-elected, non-appointed government office use that word before.

My guess at the time was that someone she knew and had been working closely with had died because of that exposure. She was mad as hell.

*-- Not that Plame's characterization of the outing of a covert CIA operative is necessarily wrong or right, mind you; it's just that it's much stronger than the language I think most people are accustomed to hearing.