Shutting the Spigot
Given the Bush administration's intransigence and most of the Democrats' ambiguity, I think Senator Russ Feingold's push to cut-off funding is the most intelligent way to go forward.
It's going to be some time, if ever, that the Congress works up enough courage to take that step. But it's hardly too early for Feingold to stake out that position and start pulling the debate in that direction.
I find it alarming that the White House is ratcheting up the rhetoric against Iran. It's feels like deja vu all over again. And rather amazing it is that a full 3 1/2 years into this debacle the administration is starting to redefine the terms of the conflict as a new front against Iran. Looks like the Bushites finally got the message that linking the war in Iraq to 9/11 had run its course so now it's going to be about stopping the Mullahs' nukes.
The half-assed language from Democrats about "redeployment" unfortunately plays right into the hands of the administration's new targeting of Iran. Barack Obama's new proposal to redeploy all combat troops out of Iraq within a year is the best definition yet of this particular ambiguous term -- but it isn't good enough (by the way, John Edwards proposed a troop withdrawal a full year ago). Hillary's proposal to simply "cap" troop levels as-is in Iraq is a cowardly and belated dodge. Bi-partisan proposals to issue a non-binding congressional rebuke of the current surge is probably about as far as we're going to get in the short run. A good first step but in itself wholly insufficient.
Feingold's measure makes absolute common sense. It's more than just about controlling the purse strings. If Congress has the constitutional authority to declare wars it logically has the power to end them. If Congress can grant Bush authority to use force, it certainly has the power to de-authorize him. If that's done by ending the funding, so be it.
Here is the most significant statistic this week: 60% of Americans simply want the Bush administration to be over. Not in 2008, but right now. That includes one out of five Republicans.
The administration has slipped into it's death agony. That's no reason to let it drag the rest of us down with it. Cutting off the funding for its folly in Iraq, short-circuiting what might be its final Hail Mary to expand the war into Iran, and re-asserting the role of Congress now seems urgent and imperative.
January 30th, 2007 at 11:10 pm
The Department of Defense has identified 3,070 American service members who have died since the start of the Iraq war. It confirmed the deaths of the following Americans yesterday:
CHAO, Cornell C., 36, Chief Warrant Officer, Army; California; First Cavalry Division.
GARRIGUS, Mickel D., 24, Sgt., Army; Elma, Wash.; 10th Mountain Division.
RESH, Mark T., 28, Captain, Army; Pittsburgh; First Cavalry Division.
STEWART, Carla J., 37, Specialist, Army; 250th Transportation Company.
January 31st, 2007 at 9:04 am
I certainly prefer him to Biden, but Edwards has made recent noises that he would favor “out of Iraq into Iran.” The recent Herziliya Conference in Israel featured everyone from the Neocons, Republican cnadidates to Edwards, pandering like there’s no tomorrow about Iran’s threat to civilization.
January 31st, 2007 at 9:08 am
“If Congress has the constitutional authority to declare wars it logically has the power to end them. If Congress can grant Bush authority to use force, it certainly has the power to de-authorize him.”
Perhaps so, IF Congress can muster enough votes. As far as I can tell, a simple majority is not enough. Congress must introduce conflict-specific legislation AND either the President must not veto it, OR Congress has to be able to override the veto. We should beware of translating “Democratic majority in Congress” (slim in any case) as “Congress.”
It appears that, contrary to popular belief (and Wikipedia), the Foreign Assistance Act of 1974, drafted under a Democratic majority in Congress was not vetoed by Gerald Ford — he accepted its various limits on his powers in a “spirit of compromise”, according to his signing statement. I haven’t been able to find a record of how Congress voted on that bill, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he feared having to resort to the veto, and perhaps even having the veto overridden. At that point, the Vietnam War was very unpopular with GOP voters, not just Dem voters, and had been for a while.
The present situation is different, in two important ways.
(1) Although Bush has seldom resorted to the veto, he’s a notoriously stubborn guy, and will use it if he thinks he has to. “Spirit of compromise”, my ass — we’re not dealing with a Gerald Ford here. Rhis is a president who apparently looked at each ISG recommendation for plausible opportunities to do the *opposite*. Warned that the ISG report was the only bipartisan advice he would ever get on the subject of Iraq, he went off and foreclosed any bipartisanship on that subject.
(2) A large majority of GOP voters still support Bush’s Iraq’s policies, even if many are unhappy with how things are going in Iraq. For the last few months, you could even see a trend favoring adding more troops (rising to a peak of 18%, last I checked.) There is still a fairly solid core of GOP voters in the stay-the-course camp, and some of the more disastrous poll numbers for Bush don’t look quite as bad when you focus on the polls of registered/likely voters (conservatives being more likely to actually vote, as always.)
Feingold must realize he’s only engaged in symbolic resistance, for now. Maybe if he pushes on it for a year, and events favor him (as I suspect they will), he’ll have something. But don’t count on this initiative of his to nip the Surge in the bud. My bet is that it’s gonna happen no matter what.
January 31st, 2007 at 9:15 am
“Edwards has made recent noises that he would favor “out of Iraq into Iran.—
jcummings, can you give us a reference to this? It would be very serious if correct.
January 31st, 2007 at 9:27 am
“Altho Bush has seldom resorted to the veto, he’s a notoriously stubborn guy.” maybe not, if “notoriously” means “a lot of people say so.”
In any event, he needs to be presented with a bill before he veto it or not, and the Congress never will. They are in Feingold’s position of waiting for events to favor them, as if they are not doing so now.
Do I wish the Bush presidency was “over”? Yes by all means, if only it means that the Left and Democratic base will be forced to abandon their obsessively Bush-centric outlook and move on.
January 31st, 2007 at 9:29 am
Some background reading on congressional attempts to limit war appropriations:
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2007/01/military_deployments.html
and the first comment here
http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1168002575.shtml
by a “mikeca”, suggesting that Congress did not “cut off” funding for military assistance to South Vietnam, but merely required that any such aid be approved by Congress. (Unfortunately, some of the links used in citations are dead.)
Technically, Congress can kill a war against a President’s objections simply by cutting off funding for it. In reality, a war has to be massively unpopular — any veto override requires a 2/3rds majority in both House and Senate, and that probably requires something like 75% of Americans to strongly oppose the war, when you consider that conservative voters are overrepresented in Congress in a number of ways. 75%? We’re not there yet. A President who actually cares what the people think won’t let it get to that point, of course. But I’m not sure this President does. He’ll keep being a Decider no matter how much of a Divider it makes him, or even in the face of considerably unity directed against him. Sadly, our best hope might be in the slim chance that the Scooter Libby trial squeezes somebody hard enough that they finally rat on the Decider about some undeniably impeachable offense.
January 31st, 2007 at 9:36 am
http://www.rawstory.com/news/2007/Edwards_Iran_must_know_world_wont_0123.html
January 31st, 2007 at 9:40 am
Russ Feigold is one of the few ‘manly’ Democratic Congressmen. Like Bush, he speaks clearly and decisively.
Bush, the decider, decided to remove a brutal menace to the Middle East, the source of the worlds economic life blood(expecially ours), and a menace to its people, when it looked like the opportunity existed.
This without giving too much thought to the fact we were already at war in Afganistan and the fact his own father was wise enough to study the possible consequences internal to Iraq.
America will not endure a long live war on foreign soil for too many years, and those years are about used up. It is silly to think a surge of troops can make a difference when our own Congress is divided over staying there. What would you be doing right now if you were an elected official in Iraq siding with America? I would be looking to change my support for occupation.
What would you be doing right now if you were an unelected combatant in Iraq right now listen to our Congress, even those supporting the surge, saying this is the military’s last chance to get things under control over there? I would be seeing the light at the end of the tunnel for driving out the US. I would be fighting like hell to create even more carnage on the surge troops.
This silly question of ‘does it hurt our troops morale and encorage their foes in Iraq to learn of the devisiveness in Congress?’ Of course it does for christsake, and anyone who tries to deny it sounds totally silly…..or like a politician.
It is time to wrap it up overthere and suffer the consequences. And they will be huge in my opinion. Those on the left who have consistently underestimated the dangers of radical Islam all over the world lead now by Iran and its shite terrorist division Hisbola in Lebanon and Iraq, with al Queda and its Sunni terrorist division in Pakistan and Afganistan and Iraq competing for second, will begin to see those consequences when the democracy in Lebanon, Iraq, likely Iran, followed in due time by a much wider world war triggered by terrorist attempts to destableize Nuclear Pakistan.
Remember, you heard it here first at MarcCooper.Com.
January 31st, 2007 at 9:45 am
“I would be looking to change my support for occupation.” to be clearer “….”to change my support to against the occupation”.
January 31st, 2007 at 9:50 am
Thanks jcummings, that is important to know. But depressing, one less candidate I can vote for.
January 31st, 2007 at 11:10 am
I suppose we can look at contiuning comic relief as the campaign continues between the real Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee of our politics: The Bullyboy reactionary and his the Progressive punching bag. Keep those post cumming boys!
The Daily Howler has been well noted round these parts of late, but he shouldn’t get all the credit: the intrepped Eric Boehlert has fought the good fight against the “balanced” commentary one might happen upon here. http://mediamatters.org/columns/200701300006
It was always questionable for John Kerry to wrap himself in glory for heroism in a war he would later reject on principle. However, for “Progressives” to stand by and let the right smear him is all the more to their shame. As our sad friend said about his tarnished hero Hitchens: “It says a lot more about them.”
I’m conviced it’s come down to projection. Such people hate the Democrates for not standing up to the forces they themselves lack the basic courage to call out.
January 31st, 2007 at 11:16 am
As I said yesterday I favor both the Feingold and Obama bills but think the Obama bill makes more sense since there is already money in the pipeline and for the reasons that Michael Turner gave. The Obama bill sets definitve times for withdrawal and I really don’t care what you call it. If he wants to say “Redployment” that’s fine with me. As I also said there needs to be legislation prohibiting any military activity against Iran unless the President receives specific authorization from Congress.
I think Turner’s analysis is spot on. The most the Dems can do is support these bills and hope A) the Senate Republicans don’t filibuster and B) join in overriding a certain Bush Veto. He is also right about the GOP base. They are the dead enders who still support the war so we are probably talking about some real profiles in courage and, so far, the only one showing anything like that is Chuck Hagel.
But this would make it clear to one and all that the GOP “owns” this war and the disasters that will follow will be theirs to bear. And it would go a long war to dimishing the “Stab in the Back” argument that would be sure to come in any event.
Finally, let me say this. Barack Obama may have catapulted himself into first place with this move. Its sound as legislation. It doesn’t equivocate and it sets definite timetables.
Lets see what Hillary does.
January 31st, 2007 at 11:56 am
Here is a memo to all those who find no good in anything the Dems do unless it is by a guy who IS NOT running for president. We are informed today that the Senate Republicans, led it apears by John McCain and “Independent” Joe Lieberman, will filibuster the Resolution urging no surge. So if 40 Republicans (plus “Holy Joe”) hang tough that will be a signal that any legislation in the Senate toward ending the war is doomed.
(Parenthetically they got encouragement when the Senate Dems agreed to the GOP tax cuts to get a minimum wage bill. I hope the House Dems have the good sense to nix this in Conference)
So may I suggest that the onus be placed where it really belongs. On the Senate Republicans who must decide if they want to stay with the “Decider” and go down in flames in 2008, or with the American People that want this miserable war over and the sooner the better!
January 31st, 2007 at 12:22 pm
It is literally “redeployment” – the bill sends them to bases close by, not to Fort Bragg. Obama is a weasel. And as I said once before, who gives a shit if the thirty percent of Americans who support the war think the seventy percent stabbed them in the back. Fuck them.
The time to equivocate – which Obama does, as Marc notices, is over. Edwards spoils his rep as the only true antiwar candidate by the remarks I linked above. Hillary is a triangulator, and seems disapointed tha the Lobby seems to prefer Obama or Edwards over her. Biden is an absolute nutjob with a horrible neocolonial partition plan.
Bring on a third party. None of these Dems even come close to doing hte right thing.
January 31st, 2007 at 12:27 pm
Jus to reitterate what a sick fuck Edwards is:
“The vast majority of people are concerned about what is going on in Iraq. This will make the American people reticent toward going for Iran. But I think the American people are smart if they are told the truth, and if they trust their president. So Americans can be educated to come along with what needs to be done with Iran.”
#
January 31st, 2007 at 12:32 pm
I have more respect for those opponents of the war who acknowledge the potential for dire consequences following withdrawal (even if they thing withdrawal is the lesser evil), and articulate something of a national strategic approach they would take post-Iraq, than those who just agitate to end it.
Many seem to favor intervention lite ala Kosovo-Serbia, or worse, such as military confrontation with Iran. Others seem simply hate Bush or reflexively oppose any American war.
January 31st, 2007 at 1:31 pm
There is an interesting article by William Pfaff in the latest NY Review of Books about the underlying ideological agreement among the entire political class on America’s mystically ordained special role in the world, the origins of this line of thinking and the strategic straitjacket that it wraps the opposition Democrats. He concludes that they will be unable to stop the Cheney-Bush plans, including its plans for war against Iran.
January 31st, 2007 at 2:39 pm
K Hardy: “It was always questionable for John Kerry to wrap himself in glory for heroism in a war he would later reject on principle. However, for “Progressives†to stand by and let the right smear him is all the more to their shame”
What the hell does this mean? Is there supposed to be some kind of progressive media machine that takes arms against Republican smears against John Kerry? And who exactly are you accusing of supporting the Swift Boaters? Marc? Read the archives, pal.
Grumpy: “I have more respect for those opponents of the war who acknowledge the potential for dire consequences following withdrawal ”
Of course the consequences are potentially dire. What’s going on now is dire. The way things are headed is dire. Everybody and their mother is trying to head us away from dire. Some of us think that leaving now is a lot less dire, at the very least for American interests. And just fyi, I have a lot more respect for supporters of the war who acknowledged going into it the potential for dire consequences. You weren’t so serious when you were banging the drums of war, were you?
January 31st, 2007 at 2:44 pm
Those who believe the American intervention in Iraq is wrong should push in favor of Senate action on the withdrawal as well as no-increase and no-cinfidence resolutions. I believe ultimately that a filibuster would fail and might well derail the Straight Talk Express.
This war is very unpopular. It does not, at least at this point, seem to involve critical American interests (the spectre of Iran and, of course, its weapons of mass destruction, is introduced at least in part to provide such critical interest). So it seems very risky for a candidate for President to insist on investing lives and dollars in that effort.
At this point I don’t think most people know what McCain and Giuliani et al think about the war. A filibuster will force McCain at least to stare down the red light and tell people they are wrong, that this fight is worth the candle. Unless things get a lot better in Iraq, McCain and any other senator who blocks the majority resolution will be in bad shape.
There is, in my mind, little likelihood that the troop surge will turn the tide and the anti-government forces in Iraq will not be defeated. There is, however, a possibility that one of many foreseeable disasters will ensue. That may include some form of aggression from Iran. If this happens, the right will try to hang the outcome on the antiwar Democrats.
It’s what they are good at.
But the situation has reached a point where the principle political issue is so fundamental that it is “pre-constitutional:” does the executive have legitimate authority to commit lives and money in support of a war that the people demostrably oppose?
There are some technical quibbles about posing the question in this way…such as how we really know what the public thinks. Are opinion polls quasi-official modes of identifying the electorate’s position between elections? Well, I think probably so, when there is a consensus on an issue on which the people are sufficiently informed. Also, we have a mid-term election which can and has been read almost unanimously as a rejection of the administration’s policy toward Iraq.
So the question is whether the president has the legitimate political authority to pursue involvement in Iraq? The only ways I can think of to raise that question are (1) by proposing “non-binding” resolutions; (2) by an impeachment vote; and/or (3) by filing suit. Precedents from the Vietnam-era would indicate that the federal courts would dismiss such a lawsuit as one raising a “political question” that the courts are precluded by the constitutional separation of powers doctrine from deciding. But it might be worth trying anyway. Btw, I don’t think that trying to cut off funds would raise the fundamental question of executive powers–it pretty much assumes that he has the power if he can raise the bank.
One book that investigates the separation of powers issue was written about 10 years ago by then-Congressman Andy Jacobs, Jr. It is called “The 1600 Killers,” and is a strong statement against what he calls “presidential wars.”
January 31st, 2007 at 3:45 pm
Ending the war starts with impeaching Bush.
We can’t go on pretending that crimes were not committed, that it’s okay to lie to start a war and that if we just extricate ourselves from Iraq–by hook or crook–things will get better.
As many here have suggested, Bush and the geopolitical magicalists who think for him are now looking for ways to morph this into a war against Iran. Given that highly predictably, much-predicted move, how can anyone believe that the American foreign policy establishment would right itself without repudiating the political and moral crimes that led it inextricably, inevitably into war in Iraq?
Props to reg for noting long ago here that you need to watch this movie from the beginning to understand it. It started in the Cold War with the idea that ANYTHING was OK foreign-policywise, not matter how kooky, if it could be seen as opposed to Soviet power.
Thus we gave arms, intelligence and MORAL SUPPORT to bin laden, Saddam and so on.
Casey, Rumsfeld, Cheney–these names are familiar not just because Bush appointed them, but because they were architects and/or apparatchiks of this Manichean Cold War madness that steered the U.S. directly into the gordian entanglements that now ensare it in the Middle East.
The problems are much, much broader than Bush himself, yet, rooting them out begins with the removal Bush, because he is both the symbol and the legal and moral manifestation of the retrograde, counterhistorical chauvanism that will lead America into one Iraq after another if not extirpated at its roots.
January 31st, 2007 at 6:20 pm
Impeachment certainly sounds like a good idea and lord knows this crowd would deserve it but unless you can show me 67 votes for conviction in the Senate it is a futile gesture. I wish it were otherwise but that is the way it is.
January 31st, 2007 at 6:26 pm
And jcummings you keep talking about this mythical “Third Way”. What third way? I’m sorry to break this to you but there atre two tickets to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave and they’re labled “Republican” and “Democratic” respectively. You don’t like that tough noogies. All this talk is so much hot air and I really think you know it.
As to whether we call it a withdrawal or a redeployment and send the troops to Kuwait or Filene’s Basement is quibbling. Do you really think we’ll keep 135,000 personnel in Kuwait for long? As I said I like both Feingold and Obama’s measures and they are not competing. And I also think that a measure banning operations in Iran is needed. But, frankly, let us see if the GOP Senators really want to filibuster any or all of these. If they hold up the resolution we’ll know they are still slavish followers of Dubya and any and all onus is on them.
January 31st, 2007 at 6:34 pm
For those who haven’t heard, Molly Ivins has passed away. This is a sad day.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070201/ap_on_re_us/obit_ivins
January 31st, 2007 at 7:02 pm
RIP Molly. I hope somewhare you and Ann Richards are sharing some good jokes.
January 31st, 2007 at 7:14 pm
“Impeachment certainly sounds like a good idea and lord knows this crowd would deserve it but unless you can show me 67 votes for conviction in the Senate it is a futile gesture. I wish it were otherwise but that is the way it is.”
Not futile, not a “gesture.”
Do you doubt for a moment the results of investigations about when, where and why Cheney-Bush bastardized intelligence about Iraq to fan the flames of post-9/11 war passion?
Make the 49 GOP Senators vote for their man, AFTER it is shown in impeachment hearings the extent to which he deliberately flouted constitutional law to spy on Americans, deliberately misrepresented intelligence and irretrievably politicized the intelligence gathering process.
It is crucial for the country to focus on exactly those issues if there is to be any hope of avoiding the next Iraq or, even, the next series of Iraqs.
January 31st, 2007 at 7:18 pm
“The problems are much, much broader than Bush himself, yet, rooting them out begins with the removal Bush, because he is both the symbol and the legal and moral manifestation of the retrograde, counterhistorical chauvanism that will lead America into one Iraq after another if not extirpated at its roots.”
Comrade Bunker relives the good ole days of Cold War, where the legal and moral authority of the Soviet Union should have won out.
Screw the millions of people who longed be free of cradle to grave nanneyism of the ‘mother’ lands central government, and the price they had to pay for it.
A bisquit a day keeps the capitalists away. NOT!
January 31st, 2007 at 7:23 pm
But a dictator-a-year did manage it for 40 years. You can fool all the people some of the time…..
January 31st, 2007 at 7:44 pm
from yesterday’s NY Times:
“LAST August, a federal judge found that the president of the United States broke the law, committed a serious felony and violated the Constitution. Had the president been an ordinary citizen — someone charged with bank robbery or income tax evasion — the wheels of justice would have immediately begun to turn. The F.B.I. would have conducted an investigation, a United States attorney’s office would have impaneled a grand jury and charges would have been brought.”
by James Bamford
January 31st, 2007 at 8:05 pm
Molly Ivins’ passing got me down too.
I don’t expect much from the pro-war Democrats and Republicans (the real majority), eiither. So what if a “surge” is nixed? The US military will be in Iraq until the oil runs out.
And ya think Israel (the Democrats’ fickle bride) wants the US Empire to leave Iraq? When Israel weighs in on attacking Iran, be ready. The pathetic “news” trial balloon of the superhuman Iranian agents targeting US militarists in Iraq is already being floated.
I wish Molly was alive.
January 31st, 2007 at 9:28 pm
Not to hijack the thread, but I’m bummed about Molly’s passing. I had the pleasure of sitting next to her at a business dinner a former employer was sponsoring and posted about it here. She was a classy lady.
January 31st, 2007 at 9:47 pm
The James Bamford op-ed mentioned by bunkerbuster can be found here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/31/opinion/31bamford.html
This caught my eye:
“Senator Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican who is the ranking member on the Judiciary Committee, noted that much of the public was opposed to the [warrantless wiretapping] program ….”
“Much”? Not “most”? Yes, I’m afraid it’s true. As of late 2005, at least, you can’t find a majority of Americans actually opposed to the crime that Bush committed.
http://www.pollingreport.com/terror3.htm
Which might help explain the timidity of Congress so far, on this point.
The squeeze is on, definitely. We may yet see an unambiguously impeachable offense turn up. The case Bamford writes about is in the appeals process now. The Libby trial is producing some squealings we haven’t seen before. There are a number of new congressional investigations, and I don’t think they will all come up empty-handed.
Nevertheless, I believe it will still take about 75% of Americans being hopping mad at Bush, including a majority of likely GOP voters, to get 67 votes for impeachment out of the Senate. And impeachment isn’t removal, as we saw with Clinton. Why wouldn’t Dubya take the hint? Because, despite the doubts of bob williams above, he really is a notoriously stubborn guy:
http://www.pollingreport.com/bush.htm
—
Associated Press-Ipsos poll conducted by Ipsos-Public Affairs. Nov. 7-9, 2005.
“Now I’m going to read you some words that might be used to describe a person. As I read each word, please tell me whether you think the word describes George W. Bush or not . . . .”
Stubborn: Yes – 82% / No – 17% / Unsure – 1%
—
Of course, from a certain ideological vantage point, stubbornness is one of Dubya’s virtues. So perhaps “notoriously” isn’t quite right. I can go with “famously” if you prefer. Especially if you press that preference on me over and over, always staying the course, never letting up. I might change my tactics in defense of “notoriously”, but if you adapt and adjust your own tactics, eventually victory will be yours. Why? It’s simple: words speak louder than actions. Especially when the actions are halfway across the world, or hidden in the bowels of the State Department, but the words are on Fox News every night..
January 31st, 2007 at 9:56 pm
You miss the point, Jim R, but in doing so, you give the game away.
It’s you and the Bushists who can’t conceal your longing for the moral blank checks you think the Cold War provided you with and for the political blank checks it actually did.
Thus the guilelessness with which you fall to calling me “Comrade,” the pathetic default sobriquet of every halfwit rightwing sophomore in every Cold War dorm-room debate.
It’s so easy to see why you would love the Cold War and why you fail to understand the essential differences between then and now.
January 31st, 2007 at 10:02 pm
“And just fyi, I have a lot more respect for supporters of the war who acknowledged going into it the potential for dire consequences. You weren’t so serious when you were banging the drums of war, were you?”
Actually, I wasn’t beating the drums. I was quite skeptical, in fact. A country invented by Gertrude Bell, whose king ended up dragged through the streets on a jeep, while Nuri Said, England’s favorite tried to escape dressed as a woman, was never going to be the next Switzerland. My support for the initial decision to go to war was a close thing, on balance, based mostly on the evils of Saddam and the numbers of educated Iraqis who might be able to make a new start in the Middle East. Those folks, of course, have fled.
Knowing some history, I thought that attacking Afghanistan was even riskier, though a legitimate act of self-defense. Their government had harbored people who attacked our largest city. Nevertheless, I remembered that the British in the 19th C. invaded Afghanistan. One British soldier, one, survived. The Soviet defeat there was almost as ignominious.
January 31st, 2007 at 10:05 pm
A sad and fond adieu to Molly I…
For those who like their politics with a shot of wry and will miss her…Franken’s in for the Senate against Coleman. Soundbite: “I’ll be the only New York Jew in the race who grew up in Minnesota.” (Norm moved to MN from NYC.) Franken, of course, is bright, he’s clean, he’s articulate…
January 31st, 2007 at 10:15 pm
The relatively coherent Crosby: “This war is very unpopular. It does not, at least at this point, seem to involve critical American interests (the spectre of Iran and, of course, its weapons of mass destruction, is introduced at least in part to provide such critical interest). ”
And the rather less coherent jcummings: “Casey, Rumsfeld, Cheney–these names are familiar not just because Bush appointed them, but because they were architects and/or apparatchiks of this Manichean Cold War madness that steered the U.S. directly into the gordian entanglements that now ensare it in the Middle East.”
How did you guys suddenly forget about All That Oil? America’s feet are stuck in that tarpit no matter what. If anything, the end of the Cold War made the tarpit gummier. Peak Oil makes it even more of a trap. Bush says we’re in the defining ideological contest of our time, but I’m sure he knows better. Anyone closely tied with the oil business knows better.
January 31st, 2007 at 10:38 pm
Grumpy…Given that you saw Afghanistan as a project that should at the very least give one pause, no matter how justified taking down the Taliban was in the wake of 9/11, I’m surprised that you would assent as a purely practical matter to turning around and invading Iraq on what was pretty obviously a pretext. Didn’t it seem like a wild stretch that Iraq posed any “clear and present danger” to the U.S. ? And what kind of people do we become when sending our GIs full-on into battle isn’t a last resort against real enemies ? I’m not a pacifist, but I’ve got a son in the military and I believe in limits to what we construe as “just war”. That’s fundamental to my moral sense. I’d not be considered a Christian in any conventional sense, but I was raised as one and the core values pretty much stuck with me. Am I out on some crazy liberal limb here by conservative standards ?
Of course, there’s the question of “humanitarian missions”, “nation building”, etc. , but unlike the Boys from Brookings, I’m very skeptical of this stuff and think our “internationalist” agenda should be limited, restricting any such campaigns to multilateral missions where we aren’t left holding the bag if they go south and we haven’t committed ourselves to a goal that isn’t clearly achievable – unlike the neo-con radicals who made crazy noises about “transforming the Middle East” and exercised a silly season of triumphalist propaganda aimed at discrediting anyone tainted with sanity while Iraq was crumbling under their aegis.
Why these clowns still have cushy, do-nothing Beltway sinecures, money-losing publishing contracts and control of major “non-profit” financial resources to propogate their ideological pipedreams amazes me.
February 1st, 2007 at 1:35 am
Grumpy Old Man writes: “My support for the initial decision to go to war was a close thing, on balance, based mostly on the evils of Saddam and the numbers of educated Iraqis who might be able to make a new start in the Middle East.”
Well, that’s better, at least, than the crap about WMD and Al Qaeda “links”. But a slim reed.
The problem is that, to a great extent, the “evils of Saddam” were what made a relatively secular, modernizing, technocratic state possible, and the education benefits that came with it, in these scraps of Ottoman Empire stitched together by Gertrude Bell. As Jeanne Kirkpatrick was wont to point out, sometimes a dictatorship is the only thing holding a nation together. And a smart dictator makes *sure* that he is what’s holding the state together, and makes sure his educated subjects know it. Saddam wasn’t a brilliant dictator, but he wasn’t a dumb one either.
Education is, we imagine, the ultimate civilizing force. It’s easy to forget how many tyrants and terrorists have had advanced degrees. (I believe the former Taliban foreign minister is now some kind of scholar in residence at an Ivy League university.) Education only gets you so far towards liberal ideals. The USSR had a pretty amazing educational system.
The glue of the state in Saddam’s Iraq was probably composed of money (oil proceeds), force (very centralized, and also a unifier when external force threatened), and rising standards of living (including education), in that order of importance. Religion, ethnic and clan ties were more solvent than glue, unless you were in a ruling clan like Saddam’s Tikriti Mafia (and the internal, deadly squabbles within that family make me doubt that as well).
The war with Iran put a big dent in Iraqi living standards, then Gulf War I and the ensuing sanctions inflicted even more damage, but both represented external threats that probably promoted some unity even as they dissolved some parts of the order.
Well, we toppled an increasingly flimsy house of cards, and now the money’s pretty much gone, living standards are generally worse than under Saddam, and education is increasingly at risk. In times of chaos and uncertainty, family ties and religion become relatively greater sources of strength, unity, identity and comfort. It turns out that Iraq is one of the most consanguinous nations in the world, so those blood ties really came to the fore– for every major party militia we know about, there are probably a dozen tribal militias. Iraq was always a pilgrimage destination for the region’s Shi’ites, and radical Shi’ism was always an undercurrent of resistance in Saddam’s Iraq. With the old reliable unifying forces gone, the solvent forces emerged as dominant. The humanistic, universalistic forces unleashed by education were never very strong in Iraq (glue-forces in the technocracy, but solvent-forces in terms of values), and now they are literally on the run — to Jordan, Syria, wherever they can get to.
I have to say I’m a little suprised. Prior to the invasion, and for a while afterward, I believed in what I could perceive of Iraq, through the media and from what I could gather from what few Iraqi friends I have (most from that technocratic educated elite stratum.) I even thought that the belief in Iraq as a relatively modern, secularized, “liberalizable” society figured into the Bush administrations calculations. If Saudi Arabia might be supplanted by an Al Qaeda Arabia (as the 9/11 attacks hinted), Iraq was probably the best bet for some kind of replacement ally, by virtue of its social order, not just its oil — just as Iran under the modernizing Shah was sort of America’s Great Hope for a while.
It was a failure of *sociological* imagination, I guess. There were some (in Army intelligence, IIRC) who more or less figured out that an invasion at the low troop levels we had, and still have, would put us where we are today. The authors of that study claim that it never got high enough in the chain of command to affect policy. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were right about that.
At the same time, however, remember that Rumsfeld had been adamant — to the point of threatening to fire people — about not engaging in post-invasion planning. No doubt he thought it the lesser of evils: any leak of plans for a long occupation might have doomed the invasion plan politically. Without his ban on Post-Invasion ThoughtCrime, some such study (the Army’s couldn’t have been the only one, I think even the Baker institute had their own version) might have seen daylight at the highest levels, giving rise to a pause, out of which some less harrowing scenario might have unfolded. Now, however, we’ll have to depend on the sociological imagination (tempered by experience) of Gen. Petraeus, on considerably less auspicious terms. He’s a smart guy. But he’s not the Second Coming (of Christ *or* Imam Ali.) And I think it’s gonna take some kind of miracle, now.
February 1st, 2007 at 5:31 am
“How did you guys suddenly forget about All That Oil?”
It sure ain’t oil that causes the U.S. to send billions of dollars a year to help Israel kill, torture and ethnically cleanse Palestinians, neighborhood by neighborhood.
That’s a lot of dollars and much, much more in diplomatic and geopolitical capital.
February 1st, 2007 at 7:50 am
Turner:
And the rather less coherent jcummings: “Casey, Rumsfeld, Cheney–these names are familiar not just because Bush appointed them, but because they were architects and/or apparatchiks of this Manichean Cold War madness that steered the U.S. directly into the gordian entanglements that now ensare it in the Middle East.â€
I didn’t say that. It was our resident Ahmedinijad fan Bunkerbuster. What I will say is to RLC – If you feel morally comfortable giving your vote to people who sew death, such as every Democrat running, those Dems who will plan a war with Iran, then you are an enabler. Better a Republican…so I’m for a Third Party to, yes, purify the left vote, until the Dems stop taking us for granted. They deserve to lose.
February 1st, 2007 at 7:52 am
As a longtime Anti-Zionist, I can assure BB that backing Israeli rampages has (tangentially) to do with oil…I suggest looking at this essay from the London Review of Books…
http://lrb.co.uk/v27/n08/reto01_.html
February 1st, 2007 at 9:30 am
What’s needed now is more House & Democratic investigations into Republican corruption such as the one last night showing all that fraud & corruption in monies supposed to be spent in rebuilding Iraq. Also 72 House Democratics including many African -Americans are a strong anti-war block wanting to cut off funding to Iraq War. So anti-war people have a clear block in the House as well as Feingold et al in the Senate. Also we need to pressure corporate media to tell how the truth about how awful Iraq is. Journalists now can’t go anywhere except in armed conveys.
What worries me a lot is Bush’s warmongering about Iran and how he has an aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf.
What are people going to do if Bush starts to bomb Iraq. I hope Bush doesn’t, but what happens in the worst case?
February 1st, 2007 at 2:35 pm
Reg: “I’m surprised that you would assent as a purely practical matter to turning around and invading Iraq on what was pretty obviously a pretext. Didn’t it seem like a wild stretch that Iraq posed any “clear and present danger†to the U.S. ? And what kind of people do we become when sending our GIs full-on into battle isn’t a last resort against real enemies ? I’m not a pacifist, but I’ve got a son in the military and I believe in limits to what we construe as “just warâ€. That’s fundamental to my moral sense. I’d not be considered a Christian in any conventional sense, but I was raised as one and the core values pretty much stuck with me. Am I out on some crazy liberal limb here by conservative standards ?”
Well, I must confess that although I thought the Saddam-ties-with-al-Qaeda thing as weak, he did give haven to Abu Nidal for quite a while; and I don’t think many people thought Saddam had given up his WMD as completely as he had done (for some reason, possibly to deter Iran, the Iraqis wouldn’t document their destruction of the WMD). The absolutely-no-WMD reality surprised almost everyone.
That said, I have generally been anti-Wilsonian and skeptical about a missionary effort to spread democracy to our brown and yellow brethren (especially at bayonet-point). Iraq was (for me) something of an exception, and only seemed like a just war when it seemed likely to succeed at relatively low cost, which obviously hasn’t happened.
Time, I think, to revisit what was pejoratively called “isolationism” in another age, as I have begun to do here.
February 1st, 2007 at 5:18 pm
I didn’t think Saddam had, for all practical purposes, zero “WMDs”. It wasn’t necessary to think that for the war to seem more than a bit wack, if nothing else. It was obvious if you read the range of available sources at the time that the threat was being overdrawn wildly, which made the whole venture even more suspicious (and frankly it’s not terribly surprising that Saddam was, in effect, trying to maintain a regional bluff about his military capabilities when he had next to nothing – certainly no threat to us. Also I objected to the “WMD” conflation – or having Saddams war crimes comitted 20 years ago when he was some approximation of an ally hauled out – as a matter of discerning rational strategy. The whole thing made no sense to me in the context of 9/11. Seemed like neocons trying to turn a national tragedy to their advantage for a pre-fab agenda. It may seem paranoid to say this, but I’m convinced some of them were glad for the occasion.
February 1st, 2007 at 5:21 pm
As for Isolationism, I’m not an isolationist on any principle, but there’s a lot to be said for it on pragmatic grounds. Some of the best analysis I’ve read of the failures and dangers of the Bush regime is in American Conservative. I’ve found more consistently informative and well-argued foriegn policy stuff there than The Nation. Ironically both of them have more in common in their anti-interventionism than either does with the Big Sticks over at Weekly Standard and TNR.
February 1st, 2007 at 9:33 pm
My apologies to jcummings for misattributing bunkerbuster’s quote. And my thanks, actually, for the LRB article, which I’ve read through twice now. As he writes:
“As a longtime Anti-Zionist, I can assure BB that backing Israeli rampages has (tangentially) to do with oil…I suggest looking at this essay from the London Review of Books…
http://lrb.co.uk/v27/n08/reto01_.html
That essay doesn’t spell it out, but leaves the “tangential” connection easily inferred: the Palestinians have been convenient for the Gulf oil monarchies, for OPEC generally, for the oil majors, and for the arms industry. There is a geopolitical “sweet spot” for oil profits in maintaining what the authors of the LRB article call “tension without war”. You can’t maintain that condition without maintaining states AND tension. Most Arab states, but particularly the oi-rich ones, have fed Palestinian rejectionism, because the frequent outbreaks of violence provide grist for the their anti-Israel propaganda mills — they help keep the petrostate subjects more enraged at external enemies, less so at the state itself. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been an excellent investment all around — except, of course, for the hapless Palestinians.
February 1st, 2007 at 11:08 pm
Suffice to say, you misunderstand it, in my opinion. While you get a certain part of it, I reject (as do Retort, if you read the fleshed out version of the essay in their excellentshort book Afflicted Powers) the notion of “Palestinian Rejectionism.” What yo ludo get is that the Palestinian/Israeli conflict itself is convenient to global capital – a point that should be clear from Retort is that there is no “OPEC” and industry for this and that – there is capital – oil is just an extension – perhaps the ultimate extension, like Gold at one point, of capital. It is through this lens that one sees constant US allowances for Israel to keep oppressing Palestinians, as well as US allowances for Arab states to claim to speak for said Palestinians, true. A point that is drawn out further is that even if Israel wanted to end its occupation, it is far too convenient to capital.
February 2nd, 2007 at 6:14 am
jcummings writes: “our resident Ahmedinijad fan Bunkerbuster.”
As I have explained at length, I’m no fan of the charmless, diminutive theocrat. I merely object to blatant distortion and exaggeration of Ahamadinejad’s words in the U.S. news media and blogosphere.
But I can understand why you’d resort to the cheapest shots: you’ve so little intellectual capital, you’ve got to cut corners wherever you can.
February 2nd, 2007 at 6:43 am
Michael Turner writes: “Most Arab states, but particularly the oi-rich ones, have fed Palestinian rejectionism.”
You’ll have to explain what you mean by “rejectionism” here. The Palestinians, as Jimmy Carter’s lifetime of diplomacy in the region shows, have more often than not sought accommodation with Israel, which has more often than not, rejected it.
Arafat negotiated peace deals and stood ready to entertain more: Sharon never even consented to stop threatening to assassinate Arafat in his own offices, and Michael Turner wants to blame the Saudis for “feeding” rejectionism?
What has prevented the Palestinians from achieving peace with Israel? Your assertion that somehow Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Iran are responsible for this is mystifying.
That’s a pretty astonishing claim, when Jerusalem, since 1967 has been occupied by Israel, which has never even offered to end the occupation, nor to annex the city and let democracy take it’s course, i.e. Arabs take power through the ballot box.
The Palestinian leadership has always supported international law and UN resolutions and has actively sought international military intervention in the conflict. How, then, can you call them rejectionists?
Isreal, on the other hand, has consistently rejected international peacekeeping efforts, ignored UN resolutions and insisted that its occupation of Jerusalem and the right of displaced Palestinians to return to their land is non-negotiable. And somehow I don’t think they’re getting checks from the oil shieks.
And it sure isn’t Arab oil money that is today building more Jewish-only apartments on Palestinian land. Are you suggesting that Arab objections to this land grab are somehow “rejectionist?”
Michael writes: “The frequent outbreaks of violence provide grist for the their anti-Israel propaganda mills.”
I’ve run across some egregious paranoia on the Web, but this is the topper: The Palestinians aren’t fighting to take their land back, or to prevent the seizure of more, or to simply prevent Israeli soldiers from kidnapping and torturing their fathers, uncles, sons and daughters. No, in Michael Turner’s world, the Palestians are throwing rocks at Israeli tanks so that Arab monarchs can add a margin to the price of oil. You seem like a smart guy, Michael, but either you’ve been smoking some really bad PCP or someone else is using your login. Your cascading assertions on this issue make up quite a pool of mud.
February 2nd, 2007 at 7:56 am
It IS Arab oil money that helps settlements. Read Retort, Nitzan and Bischler and look at the longterm close relationship, now in the open, between Sunni Sheiks and the Israeli government. They both directly prop each other up. Through that lens, the Saudis are as responsible for settlements as the Israelis are for the treatment of poor Saudis.
February 2nd, 2007 at 1:04 pm
You’re going to have to explain how the Sunni shieks “directly” prop up the Israeli government. I’m sure you’ll agree, the assertion is stunningly counterintuitive.
February 2nd, 2007 at 1:45 pm
If one systematizes capitalism, ala Marx, one doesn’t at all place more power in the hands of one ruling group than another. I suggest taking a very close look at Retort’s work, the Marxist economists Jonathan Nitzan and Shimshon Bischler or David Harvey. Also, look at the mainstream Israeli press at the open relationship between Israel and the Gulf States. It is not so much a matter of propping anyone up as it is unsophisticated analysis to look at specific (base) forces without the larger global capital superstructure. Palestinians are not oppressed because of evil Israel (though the occupation is surely evil.) Palestinians are opressed because capitalism finds the occupation to be good for business…..read the piece I linked very closely…..And understand that any analysis of global affairs that doesn’t take into accont the impersonal circuitry of capitalism is bound to be nothing but vulgarity and cant.
February 2nd, 2007 at 5:42 pm
JC: I think I understand what you’re getting at, and it’s a worthy, if tangential, point. Perhaps you’ve blown things all out of proportion to make them fit some kind of unified theory of all that’s wrong in the world. That’s always a mistake.
There are indeed winners and losers on both sides of the occupation.
Beyond that, you’re playing way too fast and loose with definitions. For starters, what do you mean by “capitalism?”
Private ownership of property? Occupation is impossible under any capitalism worthy of the name. Israeli seizures of Palestinian land, in addition to being the foreign-subsidized acts of an unabashedly socialist government, are a fatal affront to the most basic tenet of capitalism: private property rights.