A Level Gaze

A Level Gaze

"What effect must it have on a nation if it learns no foreign languages? Probably much the same as that which a total withdrawal from society has upon an individual."
--G.C. Lichtenberg

Wednesday, June 30, 2004

The Key to Beating the Republicans

Is in this post over at Hullabaloo. It's a genius post, in keeping with Digby's general high level of kickitude. It includes this:

They believe they've just been sitting around being polite and restrained and out of the blue the left has come out swinging.

This after we moved the party way to the center, gave them a successful moderate republican president for two terms who they then impeached and after they completely disregarded the disputed election returns and governed as if they had a mandate. I mean, I know we Democrats are the mommy party and all, but push mommy far enough and she becomes a screaming bitch on wheels. What did they expect?

Republicans seem to have a very serious problem seeing themselves as they appear to others. Perhaps this might give a clue to how we reached the point where liberals are fighting back with everything we have.

[Emphasis mine]

That's it in a nutshell, their weakness. It's been there all this time, and we've ignored it. The tiniest pinprick against their bluster will put them on the defensive, if it casts them in a light they're not capable of comprehending. And they have no idea where we're coming from.

posted by David at 6/30/2004 12:56:00 AM ::

Tuesday, June 29, 2004

This Isn't Kevindrumwatch, I Swear

Finally, the last half hour of [Fahrenheit 9/11] includes a piece of street theater in which Moore accosts congressmen on Capitol Hill and asks if they'll try to get their sons and daughters to enlist in the military. It's a brutally unfair question, but one that echoes a standard debating point of Hitchens and others: "Would you prefer that Saddam Hussein was still in power?" It's a question that's unanswerable in 10 words or less, and about as meaningful as Moore's ambush interviews with congressmen.

There's a problem in that paragraph. Can anyone tell me what it is? Take 15 seconds and read it again. Anyone?

The problem with the paragraph is this clause: "It's a brutally unfair question." It's problematic because it is the opposite of the truth. The question isn't "brutally unfair." It's not even maternally-caressing-ly unfair. It is perfectly fair.

These guys voted to send thousands of our young men and women into harm's way. These guys voted to kill a whole mess of Iraqis. These guys voted to blow over 100 billion dollars in the interest of doing so.

It would seem to me that if you vote for those kinds of things, you'd better mean it. In one sense, saying the goal was worth risking your child's life, being willing to make a sacrifice, the same sacrifice that countless families here and in Iraq are making, would be an appropriate statement of such.

We have a professional, volunteer army. You can choose not to join. That's how the system works. Congressmen's sons are, well, fortunate. Most of them have better choices available to them than to make a career in the armed forces. They go to college and to graduate school, they get jobs, and their family name opens a lot of doors for them. For a congressman to say that his son or daughter should be put into the Middle Eastern meatgrinder when there are better choices available would be stupid.

There's actually an easy and correct answer to this question: "Yes I would. I believe in this war. It's vitally important that we win, and we need every soldier we can get to make sure we do. I can't force my son to join, but I wouldn't stand in his way. In fact, I'd salute him." Boom. End of question.

The difficulty these congressmen are having answering Moore's question stems from the fact that they no longer mean it (that is, if they ever did). Most of them let themselves be talked into supporting the war, and it isn't turning out anything like they thought it would. They don't have the courage of their convictions, and are forcing it onto the military and their families, to say nothing of the nation of Iraq.

To top it off, they should have known better. The 'evidence' offered up in support of invasion was sketchy. The rationales behind it shifted constantly. No one could get a single straight answer from the Executive Branch about anything having to do with Iraq. The entire freaking rest of the world thought it was a Really Dumb Idea. But they voted for it anyway. And when we're done, Iraq will still be a mess, and we'll have paid dearly in blood for it.

They didn't take their jobs seriously enough, and Moore is calling their (and our) attention to it. It's about time somebody did.

posted by David at 6/29/2004 11:23:00 PM ::

Monday, June 28, 2004

The First Rule of Realpolitik

Is that you don't talk about realpolitik.

In a nutshell, this is the great irony of the Bush Doctrine and the Iraq war. Conceived as a means of finally putting to rest "Vietnam Syndrome," it now looks as though it's going to cement it in place for another few decades.

Liberals everywhere should hail the handiwork of Bush and the neocons. For a relatively small cost, we've gotten rid of a truly odious fascist dictator and assured that the American public is less inclined than ever toward military adventurism. What more could we ask for?

Kevin, buddy, pal. Not even in jest do you say that the Iraq debacle was worth the murderous sleaze. There are crimes here that cry out for punishment, if only so we can, as a nation, show our face in the international community. If the ultimate result of the Iraq Adventure is a mindful American quiescence, the connection to the invasion of Iraq should be mentioned in a properly mortified tone.

Kevin, you fight the good fight, and I don't consider a day complete that doesn't see a visit to your blog, but this is too much.

posted by David at 6/28/2004 11:30:00 PM ::

Monday, June 14, 2004

So Much for Nation Building

The Agonist points to a fascinating Overseas Security Advisory Council article, entitled "UK Holds Indirect Talks with Taliban."

LAHORE: The UK has started holding indirect talks with the Taliban to seek an "honourable" exit from Afghanistan, MMA [Mutahidda Majlis-e-Amal - the six-party alliance that runs Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province] secretary-general Maulana Fazlur Rahman, who is mediating between the two, told Dawn by phone here on Sunday.

The Maulana feels that the British authorities are working on behalf of the United States and this indirect process has been chosen to avoid any ill-effects on forthcoming presidential elections. The polls are to be held on Nov 2.

If we're looking to bug out of Afghanistan, why are we negotiating with the Taliban? Did we do such a bad job of rebuilding the country and setting up the Karzai government that we have to ask the Taliban's permission to leave? It appears that the Bush administration believes that as soon as we drop the strings, our puppet government will cease to be and Mullah Omar's goons will march in and take over. And we have to make nice with them so they won't make the transition worse than it has to be.

If I recall correctly, we killed an awful lot of them en route to driving them from power in the first place. I can't begin to imagine why they'd want to help us when we approach them from such a craven position.

If this is true, then, with the exception of the capture of Saddam, the Bush administration is batting a perfect .000 in the War on Terror. I've long thought we were going to let Karzai's government fail. I never imagined we'd have to ask the Taliban's permission to do so.

I don't remember having seen anything about it before, but the OSAC appears to be very much legit.

posted by David at 6/14/2004 03:43:00 PM ::

Friday, June 11, 2004

No Excuses for Bigotry

Kevin Drum has some comments on why Reagan's states' rights comment at his 1980 speech in Philadelphia, Mississippi might not have been quite as bad as we thought:

REAGAN AND PHILADELPHIA....Ronald Reagan's record on civil rights was pretty abysmal, but I'd like to suggest that he might be getting a (slightly) bum rap on one particular subject: his speech at the Neshoba County Fair in 1980. First, here's the background.

In 1964 three young civil rights workers (two whites and one black) were killed near Philadelphia, Mississippi, by a gang of Ku Klux Klansmen that included several sheriff's deputies. The state of Mississippi failed to prosecute, Robert Kennedy sent in the FBI, and in a circus trial some of the men (though not the county sheriff himself) were eventually convicted of violating the workers' civil rights. This was, needless to say, one of the seminal events of the civil rights movement.

Now for Reagan. In 1980, after receiving the Republican nomination, Reagan flew to Mississppi and gave a speech at the Neshoba County Fair, a few miles from Philadelphia. But why? Why did he choose this place to kick off his campaign? And how could he have been insensitive enough, even in passing, to talk about "states' rights" — obvious code for white segregationism — at a place like this?

As Kevin notes, there's "not much excuse." Except there is a bit of one.

But let's fast forward exactly eight years to August 4, 1988. Guess who's talking at the Neshoba County Fair? Here's the New York Times account:

Gov. Michael S. Dukakis, bringing his campaign today to a sweltering Mississippi town that is at once in the heart of the conservative South and a place resonant with the anguished history of the civil rights movement, had to confront the region's enigmatic political character.

While he pledged to ''bring down the barriers to opportunity for all our people,'' he made only passing reference to the problems of American minorities in a speech to an almost entirely white crowd at the Neshoba County Fair, 24 years to the day since the bodies of three slain civil rights workers were found under an earthen dam nine miles from here.

Mr. Dukakis mentioned that he was near the birthplace of Dennis (Oil Can) Boyd, a pitcher for the Boston Red Sox who was born in nearby Meridian. But he did not mention the three young civil rights workers: Andrew Goodman and Michael H. Schwerner, both whites from New York, and James E. Chaney, a black who was born in Meridian. The three were slain on a back road by a gang of Ku Klux Klansmen on the night of June 21, 1964, and found 44 days later, on Aug. 4.

The omissions may have reflected the sensitivities of the Dukakis organization to the dilemmas at this campaign stop, at a time when he is trying to attract both white conservatives and blacks in the South.

Does Ronald Reagan deserve criticism for opening his campaign at Neshoba and using the occasion to mention his support for states' rights to an all-white Southern crowd? Yes.

On the other hand, he's not the only candidate to head to Neshoba shortly after being nominated, and he's not the only one to shade his words there to court Southern whites. In fact, even with Reagan's performance to learn from, Dukakis decided to play pretty much the same game eight years later.

During Reagan's entire career, from his opposition to the 1964 Civil Rights Act to his risible suggestion during his presidency that South Africa had eliminated segregation, his civil rights record was pretty abominable. However, I suspect that in this particular incident there's a bit less than meets the eye. Caveat emptor.

Reagan went to the scene of an atrocity against civil rights, and said, basically, that he symphathized with those who did the crime.

Dukakis merits being placed in the same box as Ron because he spoke at the same place? As he was attempting to win the votes of those in attendance, he chose not to beat the crowd up for what had happened there. By Kevin's logic, there was something morally wrong with Dukakis' attempt to earn the votes of the whites in Neshoba county.

The difference between what Reagan and Dukakis did is stark and vast. Imagine this scenario taking place in Germany in the 1950's. One politician stands at a podium and uses phrases that tacitly, but unmistakably, indicate his agreement with Nazism. Several years later at the same place, another politican gives a speech in which he doesn't bring up the Holocaust. Is there the tiniest shred of equivalence between the two politicians' actions? No.

Finally, no matter what Dukakis did in 1988, even if he had donned full KKK garb and lynched a black man at the fair, it has absolutely no bearing on the appropriateness or morality of what Reagan said in 1980.

posted by David at 6/11/2004 12:55:00 PM ::

Goodbye, Hesiod

Thank you for all of your hard work and unwavering conviction. I trust you will find the right outlet for your prodigious energy.

You truly made a difference.

posted by David at 6/11/2004 11:21:00 AM ::

Monday, June 07, 2004

Digby.

Read it all.

posted by David at 6/07/2004 11:58:00 PM ::

Jesus Backflipping Christ

Now he tells us:

The United States and its allies are winning some battles in the terrorism war but may be losing the broader struggle against Islamic extremism that is terrorism's source, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Saturday.

The troubling unknown, he said, is whether the extremists -- whom he termed ''zealots and despots'' bent on destroying the global system of nation-states -- are turning out newly trained terrorists faster than the United States can capture or kill them.

''It's quite clear to me that we do not have a coherent approach to this,'' Rumsfeld said at an international security conference.

Have the neocons been living in a cave in a vacuum in another dimension?

The continuing, unbearable, dehumanizing living conditions of the Palestinians gave rise to suicide bombers and galvanized Muslim opinion against Israel and her sponsor. So we backed the party in Israel that has done the most to further humiliate and oppress them.

Then, all on our own, we launch an invasion of a country whose regime, whatever its faults, had actively worked against radical Islam, and which we already had by the throat. We took far too few steps to foster goodwill towards our policy here, abroad, or in Iraq. Besides the civilian casualties that inevitably accompany military action, because we didn't bother to properly research the situation on the ground, thousands more were killed and wounded. When we bungled, such as in our decisions not to protect the Iraqi national library or to disband the Iraqi army, we shrugged off our culpability for, and the seriousness of, the consequences and blamed the victims.

We knew the problem was Islamic extremism. 9/11 was a flaming bag of dogshit left on America's front door, as were the Cole bombing, the Khobar Towers bombing, and the first WTC bombing in 1993.

Maybe some attempt on our part to signal that we were not the enemy of Islam might have been appropriate. There is no way to know at this point. Attacking known terrorists, as we failed to do properly in Afghanistan, is always good policy. But it's obvious that the absolute worst kind of response on our part was to inflame opinion among the Muslim rank-and-file, a result virtually guaranteed by our actions towards Israel and in Iraq.

That we have gained nothing but near-universal ill will in exchange for the thousands of casualties and billions of dollars spent in this endeavor is stupefying. That our leaders claim they didn't see any of this coming is unpardonable.

via Digby, who wields the flaming sword of righteousness.

posted by David at 6/07/2004 09:13:00 AM ::

Saturday, June 05, 2004

Soros Demonization Ramps Up

I'm just adding my bit to the chorus of disgust resulting from Tony Blankley's remarks about George Soros on Fox's Hannity and Colmes June 3.

Among other things ("He is a self-admitted atheist, he was a Jew who figured out a way to survive the Holocaust," critique of which I will leave to my esteemed colleagues among the non-bigots), Blankley accused Soros of "plundering the world's currencies," and "caus[ing] the Southeast Asian financial crisis in '97." I addressed another instance of this slander back in February, to the effect that Soros didn't plunder anything. He saw big, pre-existing imbalances in currency markets and profited from them. In doing so, it is quite likely that he prevented worse damage to the international financial system by popping currency bubbles before they could do more damage.

The real scumbaggery in Blankley's defamation comes from his standards of convenience when it comes to a democrat as opposed to a republican. "He's buying influence all over the world. He's a robber baron, he's a pirate capitalist, and he's a reckless man."

What sort of restraint would Blankley advocate Soros to have used? What's a capitalist to do when he sees an extraordinary opportunity to make money? Was he to stop himself, and say to those involved in the situation, "uh...gents, I believe the British Pound is tremendously overvalued. If I weren't such a nice guy, I could have taken the shirts right off your backs. Just thought you should know." They'd have laughed in his face. The Bank of England felt it was justified in keeping the exchange rate far above the point at which it would have otherwise been.

For Soros to have held himself back from legal means to make money is precisely the opposite of capitalism. Pursuit of self-interest in the form of wealth is what capitalism is all about. If Blankley is advocating that there should have been legal restrictions on Soros's ability to make his currency bets, then he's an apostate of the first order to conservative dogma. He clearly doesn't believe this principle should hold universally, but just for those with politics that differ from his own. He is a rank hypocrite.

Update: Non-bigot Max Sawicky takes out the trash. It's one of those days when the piddling liberal generalist (me) addresses the economic aspects and the distinguished liberal economist addresses everything else. Go figure. See also Kevin Drum's comments.

posted by David at 6/05/2004 12:25:00 PM ::

Wednesday, June 02, 2004

Wow

An e-mail from the [Bush] campaign's Pennsylvania office, obtained by The Associated Press, urges churchgoers to help organize "Friendly Congregations" where supporters can meet regularly to sign up voters and spread the Bush word.

"I'd like to ask if you would like to serve as a coordinator in your place of worship," says the e-mail, adorned with the Bush-Cheney logo, from Luke Bernstein, who runs the state campaign's coalitions operation and is a former staffer to Sen. Rick Santorum, the president's Pennsylvania chairman.

"We plan to undertake activities such as distributing general information/updates or voter registration materials in a place accessible to the congregation," the e-mail says.

Ok, so screw the whole idea that collapsing the wall between church and state is to help people. It's to give congregations financial incentives to support one political party.

via Atrios

posted by David at 6/02/2004 10:53:00 PM ::

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