more on war, or moron war

We have a lot to learn.

In the NYT Ross Douthat argues for permanent war in Afghanistan ... I mean, staying until we "succeed," which in the context of his article just means until the Taliban are guaranteed never, ever to rule again, Al Qaeda are eradicated in Pakistan, and the Middle East is no longer volatile. Then we can go home!

Maybe we can hope to be as successful there as we were in its sister-warzone, Iraq, where after 4000 soldiers' lives and hundreds of billions of dollars we have "succeeded" in finally establishing the Islamist state with strong ties to Iran that we've always dreamed of.

And look here! Here's Joe Klein in TIME, one of the major liberal voices in the press, referring to the antiwar base of the Democratic party as "vestigial," as in a useless, degenerate extra part inherited from a prior age. It is notable that those who are considered "antiwar" are considered deserving of such open contempt -- by a liberal pundit!

Just as with Iraq, however, we can at least take heart that the people are smarter than their chickenhawk pundits.

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.

Obama vs. Osama

A scary, and very plausible, thought via fivethirtyeight, probably the best polling analysis site on the intarwebs.

John McCain: foreign policy GENIUS!!!

Jon Stewart on the case. This, of course, comes on the heels of McCain referring to the defunct Soviet bloc nation of Czechoslovakia (twice!) and on multiple occasions misidentifying Al Qaeda as Shiite. In fact, he's done it so many times, both verbally and in written statements, that Mother Jones makes the most obvious, and scary, conclusion: he may, in fact, not recognize the difference between Sunni and Shia (to be more precise, what he may not grasp is the landscape of sectarian and ethnic divisions in the Middle East, the Mexican standoff between Arabs Sunni and Shiite, Kurds, Turks, and the various Afghan ethnic groups and regional warlords).

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?

"our very existence?"

Fortune magazine asks each candidate:

What do you see as the gravest long-term threat to the U.S. economy?

Obama: If we don’t get a handle on our energy policy, it is possible that the kinds of trends we’ve seen over the last year will just continue. Demand is clearly outstripping supply. It’s not a problem we can drill our way out of. It can be a drag on our economy for a very long time unless we take steps to innovate and invest in the research and development that’s required to find alternative fuels. I think it’s very important for the federal government to have a role in that process.

McCain: Well, I would think that the absolute gravest threat is the struggle that we’re in against Islamic extremism, which can affect, if they prevail, our very existence. Another successful attack on the United States of America could have devastating consequences. You’ve been a supporter of climate-change legislation that would essentially impose a penalty on the use of fossil fuel.

Wow. Now that's what I call "contrast!"

Can I just highlight the fact that McCain just told you that if you don't vote for him the terrorists might just blow up AMERICA!?

dignity promotion

Spencer Ackerman writes a great article on Obama's foreign policy team and the essence of his agenda.

the torture of abu Zubaydah

my only question is: since when did former Steelers tailback Jerome Bettis become an infamous Iraqi terrorist?

a Navy SEAL discusses his experience with waterboarding

and he says it's torture. This is probably the best discussion out there of exactly what waterboarding constitutes, the sensation it creates, and why it's torture.

It sounds horrific.

thugs in harmony

Did you ever think we would live in a country where a legislator could: a) say this to another legislator, and b) it not be all over the headlines:

If Henry Waxman today wants to go to Iraq and do an investigation, Blackwater will be his support team. His protection team. Do you think he really wants to investigate directly?

That was Congressman Darrel Issa, a Republican (of course), making a veiled threat of violence toward the head of the House Oversight Committee on behalf of a mercenary enterprise run by (of course) extremely well-connected Republicans.

But don't worry, Brian Williams will make sure that tonight you hear all about how there are fewer airline crashes lately.

sacrifice, GOP-style

From AP (c/o TPM):

"One of the ways my sons are showing support for our nation is helping me get elected because they think I'd be a great president."

That was Mitt Romney's answer to why he didn't ask his kids to serve in Iraq.

Romney, of course, like fellow war supporters Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson: Male Prostitute, chose not to serve when he was of age. He was too busy eating good cheese and irritating Parisians with good news from the angel Moroni.

muddying the water

I've given her the benefit of the doubt, I've been trying to keep an open mind, but I'm starting to strongly dislike Hillary Clinton. From Reuters:

Obama ruled out the use of nuclear weapons to go after al Qaeda or Taliban targets in Afghanistan or Pakistan, prompting Clinton to say presidents never take the nuclear option off the table, and extending their feud over whether Obama has enough experience to be elected president in November 2008.
...
Obama struck the tough tone after Clinton accused him of being naive and irresponsible for saying in a debate last week he would be willing to meet without preconditions the leaders of hostile nations Iran, Cuba, Syria, North Korea and Venezuela in his first year in office.

Clinton's position was that she would only meet those leaders after careful lower-level diplomacy bore fruit. Obama said she represented conventional thinking in line with that of the Bush administration and would not bring the fundamental change Americans need.

The New York senator and former first lady quickly pounced on Obama's remark about nuclear weapons at a Capitol Hill news conference.

"I think presidents should be very careful at all times in discussing the use, or non-use, of nuclear weapons," she said.

"Presidents since the Cold War have used nuclear deterrence to keep the peace. And I don't believe that any president should make any blanket statements with respect to the use or non-use of nuclear weapons," she said.

So Hillary's "blasting" Obama because, in the quest to find and destroy individual Al Qaeda officials and small training camps, he thinks it would be foolish to use... a nuclear warhead? In a country with the bomb??? I'm sorry, where's the naivety here? Isn't it basic logic to say that a bomb that wipes out entire cities and the use of which would trigger nuclear war would make a pretty bad choice to use against individuals who can be killed with... gosh, lemme think about this... a regular bomb? Or a sniper's bullet?

But, of course, Hillary doesn't think a nuke is a good idea, either. That's why she has to frame her argument in generalities; when the actual details of the scenario enter the picture, her point becomes ridiculous. Hillary could've made the exact same argument if Obama said he wouldn't kill terrorists in land-locked Afghanistan with navy gunships: "Well, naval gunships have kept the peace since the Cold War...a president should never take the use of naval gunships off the table..."

It may seem like a small point, but this is really bothering me because a) I haven't seen any of the other Dem candidates so brazenly spinning everyone else's arguments, b) this is now the third time in as many weeks that she's spun an argument in the direction of hawkishness.

Tack this onto her plan to "withdraw" from Iraq that would leave as many as 50,000 troops there, her hiring of at least one notorious unionbuster to a high level campaign position, and, of course, her f**king flag burning amendment in the senate, and I'm just not seeing a good Democratic candidate for president. I see some pandering in there, a whole lot of compromising of values, and no small amount of misleading her supporters, but not much of the type of person I want to see be president.

visualize futility

From Reuters:

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The main Sunni Arab political bloc quit the Iraqi government on Wednesday in a blow to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's shaky coalition as suicide bombers killed more than 70 people in three attacks across Baghdad.
...
The Sunni Accordance Front left Maliki's Shi'ite-led coalition over his failure to meet a list of about a dozen demands, including a greater say in security matters.
...
Issawi said Deputy Prime Minister Salam al-Zobaie and five ministers would resign on Wednesday.

The Sunni Front's 44 members will remain in the 275-seat parliament. Its withdrawal will have little practical effect on the 15-month-old government, which is virtually paralyzed by infighting but needs only a simple majority to keep functioning.

Maliki's government has already been weakened by the withdrawal of fiery Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's political bloc, one of the biggest in parliament, over his refusal to set a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops.

The Sunnis are leaving the table. We're watching the slow disintegration of the Iraqi government, and there is nothing we can do to stop it. What more can American soldiers do, forcibly prevent the Sunnis from leaving the government?

We are like the Celts, taking up arms and charging the sea.

he helps the bad guys

Another one of Matthews' more lucid moments. It's a relatively obvious point, but since no one else is saying it, props to Matthews (h/t TPM).

our dysfunctional media

Here's a great little TPMCafe piece burning Joke Line for his favorite journalistic strategy, specifically mendacity covering up lack of thoroughness. It's actually a pretty funny episode, or at least it would be if Joe Klein didn't write for Time f*&king Magazine. Sorta like how a lot of W's screwups would be funny if he weren't, ya know, Leader of the Free World.

I wanted to riff off this episode, however, to point something out. Perhaps I've mentioned it before, but there's an awful lot of misinformation surrounding the issue of "funding the troops." That the media let the issue be framed in such baldly partisan language is evidence itself of the ineptness with which they handled the issue, which is in my opinion what ultimately led to the breakdown in Congress. Everyone essentially admitted that Bush won the funding battle because Bush won the messaging of the funding battle. The Democrats' message was that this is how previous wars were ended and that this was how Congress was given a check on the president's war powers, and the president's message was that defunding is tantamount to letting the troops run out of bullets in the middle of Baghdad. Ultimately, the electorate (which in very real ways still is the final arbiter of these decisions, and this is an excellent example of such a situation) was swayed by Bush's argument, and the Democrats came to the conclusion that it was too politically perilous to push the issue (a decision they will, in all likelihood, come to regret next year).

Here's where the media screwed everything up, though: one of these arguments is a fact, and the other argument is a lie. Literally. It is absolutely true that Congress has used this power before and that it never amounts to soldiers running out of bullets. Never. In fact, the Republican congress did it as recently as 1993, when they defunded Clinton's peacekeeping mission in Somalia. It is, therefore, a bald-faced, absolute, literal, in-every-sense-of-the-word lie to say or in any way imply that defunding the war=soldiers in the middle of gunfights running out of bullets or going hungry or not getting their paychecks.

Yet that is not how it was portrayed in the newspapers or on TV. Russ Feingold, screaming from the rafters that the GOP's argument is crazy talk, was treated as "just another opinion on the matter" while pundits, anchors, and reporters alike were allowed to use the term "defunding the troops" with impunity. No one was ever called on it despite the fact that this is not a subjective position, but rather something that can actually be verified or refuted with even a mere modicum of research, so far as I've found.

It is notable that (from what I read, anyway) it was often implied that soldiers would run out of bullets, or that they would suffer from defunding-- you may remember a number of iterations of "defunding would harm soldiers in the field"-- but almost no one would actually come out and say "they'll run out of bullets." It's become a very handy way to tell when a politician or pundit is lying: when they imply something over and over, but never actually say it, obviously so that, when the truth finally comes out, the speaker can't be fingered as technically having "lied." Perhaps this explains why no intrepid reporter ever bothered with fact-checking it: since no one ever technically said it...

But, of course, we all know that these were exactly the arguments being forwarded, which is exactly why the majority of Americans polled now believe that defunding a war is bad but ending the war in every other conceivable way is good, amazingly despite no one ever technically telling them that!

There are 2 points in this whole battle where the media's careless treatment of the debate is both mitigated and exacerbated, however. One is that a number of Democrats in the House and Senate, including, most disappointingly, Barack Obama, actually confirmed the rightwing frame on camera. I am still, at this point, utterly baffled at why they did so; perhaps they thought the PR battle was already lost and didn't want Pelosi leading them down the path to losses in '08. On the one hand, this fact relieves the media of a degree of culpabiliity, since if even some Democrats were saying it, it must be true, right? On the other hand, if the media were handling this in the true/false manner it really merited, perhaps they would've confronted these wavering Democrats on the issue.

The second point is that, if you look at the history of "defunding" wars, and the fact that it's always happened safely in the past, and that after losing funding, all previous presidents have ordered the Armed Forces to execute orderly and safe withdrawals from theirs conflicts, in what way could the current troops possibly be put in harm's way by defunding, especially more than by staying in this war? Though I said that the "running out of bullets" argument is an absolute lie, there is actually one way in which it could be true: if Congress knows or believes that the president would intentionally let the troops run out of bullets. That is, if Congress would refuse to pass a funding bill for the war, and the president were to set a deadline until the troops start running out of supplies (which, as you may remember, he did), and instead of ordering a withdrawal, he kept them right where they are. Then he'd invite all the media to come to the Green Zone and watch while he dares Congress to sit on its hands while the clock winds down.

Sounds crazy, right? But what else Could Obama possibly have meant when he said no member of Congress "wants to play chicken with our troops?" Why would Democrats not only back down from defunding before they even tried, but even reinforce the framing that defunding puts troops in harm's way? In what other way could that statement possibly be true? Do you really think Bush would order a withdrawal if Pelosi said he was cut off, and even if he would, do you really think he would let Congress know that? This is the argument that, I believe, was going on behind the argument we were hearing on TV, yet not a single reporter ever pushed this issue. Not a one. Imagine what could've happened had the media brought logic into the equation and shown that one argument was patently, verifiably false, except under this bizarre cicumstance, and what could have happened. Not only would our discourse have been more honest and real and productive, but perhaps there's a chance that "Home by Christmas" could have been a reality for 160,000 families this year.

one of the few meaningful moments of the last several years

and it passes without notice in our revered news media. Cindy Sheehan calls it quits:

Camp Casey has served its purpose. It’s for sale. Anyone want to buy five beautiful acres in Crawford , Texas ? I will consider any reasonable offer. I hear George Bush will be moving out soon, too...which makes the property even more valuable.

This is my resignation letter as the "face" of the American anti-war movement. This is not my "Checkers" moment, because I will never give up trying to help people in the world who are harmed by the empire of the good old US of A, but I am finished working in, or outside of this system. This system forcefully resists being helped and eats up the people who try to help it. I am getting out before it totally consumes me or anymore people that I love and the rest of my resources.

Good-bye America ...you are not the country that I love and I finally realized no matter how much I sacrifice, I can’t make you be that country unless you want it.

It’s up to you now.

It's an ominous sign for our nation's soul when Cindy Sheehan gives up hope.

As an aside, it's also quite significant that she hears "George Bush will be moving out soon, too," considering he bought the ranch in... ready for it?... 1999.

somebody thought Falwell wasn't anti-gay enough

Did you know that the protesters at Falwell's funeral whom Mark David Uhl was planning to bomb weren't anti-war protesters or anti-fundamentalists or people who thought Falwell was too hardline, but rather the infamous Westboro Baptist Church of Fred Phelps and "God Hates Fags" fame? Falwell's funeral was being crashed by people who thought Jerry Falwell was too friendly to gays!

This, of course, brings up an interesting question-- does this knowledge in any way change or mitigate your opinion of Mark David Uhl? Obviously, it shouldn't, but I'd be lying if I said it didn't at least send flitting across my consciousness the thought that, "Well, it would be nice to be rid of them..." Then I felt a sudden empathy toward the totalitarians in our midst who base their opinion on governmental force on whether they like the victims, and I felt a little sick.

Happy Mission Accomplished Day

a perfect circle

From AP (via Feministe):

AUSTIN — A package left at a women’s clinic that performs abortions contained an explosive device capable of inflicting serious injury or death, investigators said today.

“It was in fact an explosive device,” said David Carter, assistant chief of the Austin Police Department. “It was configured in such a way to cause serious bodily injury or death.”

The package was found Wednesday in a parking lot outside the Austin Women’s Health Center, south of downtown Austin.

Nearby Interstate 35 was briefly closed, and a nearby apartment complex was evacuated while a bomb squad detonated the device.

Did you hear about this anywhere? Anywhere at all? Does anyone else find it astounding that no one bothered to cover an act of terrorism in the capital city of the second most populous state in the Union, and pretty much the only time that, out of all the times when the police find a "mysterious object" in some public place, it really was a bomb?

One of Zuzu's commenters noted sarcastically that "perpetrated by Muslims" is part of the definition of terrorism, so since this was not likely committed by Muslims it doesn't count. Of course, as we've seen with media and government treatment of groups like Operation Rescue, or of the Free Republic commenter who mailed Keith Olbermann an envelope filled with fake anthrax, or, to a lesser degree, Klan marches, the commenter's characterization is dead-on (no pun intended). It doesn't complete the circle, however: why do you think the media and government tacitly make "perpetuated by Muslims" a prerequisite for an act to qualify as terrorism?

So they don't have to count abortion clinic bombers or rightwing kooks or white supremacists or any of the rest of the GOP's more unsavory constituencies, that's why! Think I'm being too partisan? Then explain to me why the one single solitary non-Muslim group regularly referred to as "terrorists" are eco-terrorists, who are associated with "the left" (coincidentally, eco-terrorists are also, if I'm right on this, the only group I've mentioned who don't have any history of taking or threatening human lives, which you'd think would be the main prerequisite for being a "terrorist").

only one possible conclusion

Republicans are telling us that, for Congress to cut funding for the troops is to put the troops in harm's way. Yet, as Senator Feingold frequently notes, Republicans had no problem defunding the war in Somalia in the '90's:

Every member of Congress agrees that we must continue to support our troops and give them the resources and support they need. And every member of Congress should know that we can do that while at the same time ending funding for a failed military mission. That was clearly understood in October 1993, when 76 senators voted for an amendment, offered by Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia, to end funding for the military mission in Somalia effective March 31, 1994, with limited exceptions.

None of those 76 senators, who include the current Republican leader and whip, acted to jeopardize the safety and security of U.S. troops in Somalia. All of them recognized that Congress had the power and the responsibility to bring our military operations in Somalia to a close, by establishing a date after which funds would be terminated.[emphasis mine]

So how could one possibly rationalize those 2 actions?

There is one way: what the Republicans are tacitly telling us (and George W. Bush is openly admitting) is that Bush cannot be trusted to protect the troops as Commander-in-Chief. You see, Congress felt comfortable that it could strip the Clinton Administration of war funding with the full confidence that the Commander-in-Chief would then order a safe and orderly redeployment with the time he has remaining. There was no question that the troops would be no less safe and secure if Congress defunded the conflict.

The Bush Administration, however, is so craven and callous and stubborn that, if Congress tries to defund the war in Iraq, there's a significant chance that Bush will just keep them there anyway and watch them run out of bullets, essentially playing chicken with soldiers' lives. It's more dangerous for Congress to strip the funds from the Iraq War because Bush cannot be trusted to act in good faith.