Thursday, December 28, 2006

Just a Photo

Saturday, December 23, 2006

A Look Back

Ivo Daadler dug up some real gems from the GOP's platform in 2000:

The reporter told me take a look at the 2000 GOP foreign policy platform, and reread the litany of indictments Bush & Co. had issued with respect to Clinton’s foreign policy.
The administration has run America’s defenses down over the decade through inadequate resources, promiscuous commitments, and the absence of a forward-looking military strategy. [As opposed to breaking the Army and Marine Corp, sending troops to war without adequate body armor and equipment, and only deciding to increase force levels five years into a global conflict.]
The arrogance, inconsistency, and unreliability of the administration’s diplomacy have undermined American alliances, alienated friends, and emboldened our adversaries. [My all-time favorite!]
World trade talks in Seattle that the current administration had sponsored collapsed in spectacular failure. [Doha anyone?] An initiative to establish free trade throughout the Americas has stalled because of this lack of Presidential leadership. [Ah, yes. Bush’s leadership on this issue really has made a difference — 6 years later and we’re not a step closer to a deal.]
The problems of Mexico have been ignored, as our indispensable neighbor to the south struggled with too little American help to deal with its formidable challenges. [Think the Mexicans feel they’ve gotten any help from Bush lately? After declaring the relationship with Mexico America’s most important on September 9, 2001, Bush has ignored our southern neighbors ever since.]
The tide of democracy in Latin America has begun to ebb with a sharp rise in corruption and narco-trafficking. [And since then, only America’s friends in Latin America have won elections… Not!]
With weak and wavering policies toward Russia, the administration has diverted its gaze from corruption at the top of the Russian government, the slaughter of thousands of innocent civilians in Chechnya, and the export of dangerous Russian technologies to Iran and elsewhere. [The biggest mistake wasn’t seeing Putin’s soul…]
A generation of American efforts to slow proliferation of weapons of mass destruction has unraveled as first India and Pakistan set off their nuclear bombs, then Iraq defied the international community. Token air strikes against Iraq could not long mask the collapse of an inspection regime that had — until then — at least kept an ambitious, murderous tyrant from acquiring additional nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. [North Korea? Iran? Oh, and what do we do when inspectors in Iraq return?]

Good stuff.

Thursday, December 14, 2006

A Fundamental Misunderstanding

After over three years of war in Iraq, we get a headline like this from the AP:

Bush: Iraq enemy far from being defeated

Let's keep this short. After declaring Mission Accomplished in May of 2003, who are we supposed to believe is the enemy? Who does he think we need to defeat? Of course he won't say. He continues to lump everything and anything into a Frankenstein description of the War in Iraq.

There are at least four separate, ongoing conflicts tearing Iraq apart:

Al Qaeda in Iraq killing American soldiers and Shiites.
A Sunni - Shiite civil war
Intra-sectarian battles between rival Shiite militias.
A Sunni insurgency comprised of ex-Baathists.

Does anyone really believe he'll ever pick a new "enemy", and then defeat it? All we're going to get for two more years is this:

"We're not going to give up. The stakes are too high and the consequences too grave..."

He's got two options on the table: Pick a new "enemy" to defeat, presumably at this point the Sunnis, and witness a massive wave of killings up close, or, pull our troops out now and watch the sectarian slaughter from afar.

Guess which one he'll choose? Neither. He'll kick this bloody can down the road for two more years until he's gone. For Bush, it really doesn't matter what happens in Iraq from here on out. The only thing he's concerned about is that he never gets blamed for "losing the war". Loss of life, both American and Iraqi, and a further descent into violent chaos are no longer on his radar. From now on, he needs to make sure he's remembered as a "winner". Someone who never "gave up." The man who declared "victory". The man who's great "legacy" must be carved in granite.

Trust me, the historians will get it right. This guy was a monkey at the helm of an out-of-control freight train; you know, the one who missed that elusive "victory" thing three stops back.

Wednesday, December 13, 2006

The Grand Game

I've read reams of material on the Neoconservatives. I've read the Project for the New American Century's Rebuilding America's Defenses. I've read A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm. I've read everything and anything I could get my hands on so I could try and understand what was going on and where we're headed. After all of that, it never dawned on me these people were dreaming of something like this:

Another point, and one I'm not sure is widely appreciated. The folks who brought you the Iraq War have always been weak in the knees for a really whacked-out vision of a Shi'a-US alliance in the Middle East. I used to talk to a lot of these folks before I became persona non grata. So here's basically how the theory went and, I don't doubt, still goes ... We hate the Saudis and the Egyptians and all the rest of the standing Arab governments. But the Iraqi Shi'a were oppressed by Saddam. So they'll like us. So we'll set them up in control of Iraq. You might think that would empower the Iranians. But not really. The mullahs aren't very powerful. And once the Iraqi Shi'a have a good thing going with us. The Iranians are going to want to get in on that too. So you'll see a new government in Tehran. Plus, big parts of northern Saudi Arabia are Shi'a too. And that's where a lot of the oil is. So they'll probably want to break off and set up their own pro-US Shi'a state with tons of oil. So before you know it, we'll have Iraq, Iran, and a big chunk of Saudi Arabia that is friendly to the US and has a ton of oil. And once that happens we can tell the Saudis to f$#% themselves once and for all.

Now, you might think this involves a fair amount of wishful and delusional thinking. But this was the thinking of a lot of neocons going into the war. And I don't doubt it's still the thinking of quite a few of them. They still want to run the table. And even more now that it's double-down. I don't know what these guys are planning now. But there's plenty of reason to be worried.

If anyone thinks the people that we have in charge will choose a less destructive policy over one that will cost hundreds of thousands of lives, you'd better get correct. It might be easy to forget that these are the people that get something wrong, make things worse, and then rinse and repeat. Make that get everything wrong. Why should we believe for one second they'll get it right now? Right, none. The chances favor them, being as incompetent and cut off from reality as they are, choosing the worst options.

By way of her amazing reporting, Laura Rosen has shed light on the administration's proposed "tilt" towards the Shiites. I guess with what Josh has given us above, it's all starting to fall into place.

Just to round things out, today CNN is reporting that Bush is leaning towards sending 20,000 to 30,000 more troops into Bahgdad to try and quell the ethnic cleansing going on there. As Michael Schwartz amply points out in his piece, the last time we tried putting more troops into the capital, the more the violence increased, on all sides. This option will of course be cheered on by the beltway crowd ("we're doing something"), but those of us out here in the hinterlands should treat this option with nothing but derision and contempt. It will only result in more suicide bombings, more civilian deaths, and more dead American soldiers; the rates growing exponentially based on how many troops we add.

When the next minor shift in policy fails, we'll be treated to more of this:

The pattern has always been:

1. Declare that we must stay in Iraq to prevent some Bad Thing from happening.

2. Bad Thing happens anyway.

3. Declare that we must stay in Iraq to prevent some Worse Thing from happening.

4. Worse Thing happens anyway.

5. Reiterate sequence.

At no point does the “Sensible Center” consider that the previous failures implicate our ability to fulfill the new mission, which is always paradoxically grander in scale while being a retreat from previous ambitions.

There are titanic shifts underway in the Middle East, and the fuel that charges those changes is blood. Expect a tanker's full of it to be spilled in the next couple of years, with U.S. troops stuck right in the middle of it. Duncan Black has stated over and over again that Bush will never pull out of Iraq, and that Bush believes leaving equals losing, and I've long thought that something might come along to change the president's mind. Given his rejection of the Baker-Hamilton commission's report, I would now concede that there is no other conclusion to be made.

If one needed any indication that Bush will not change his strategy on Iraq, all one needs to do is listen to what he says:

Yet Bush is described by another recent visitor as still resolutely defiant, convinced history will ultimately vindicate him.
"I'll be dead when they get it right," he said during an Oval Office meeting last week.

Even the historians that study his presidency will get it wrong. That is, unless they agree with him.

The overarching point here is that things can always get worse in the Middle East. Much worse, and at a moment's notice. The policies that the American administration seems to be poised to make will only add fuel to the fire. They couldn't care less, as long as their legacy is looked upon somehow as favorable. In what might be viewed as some sort of sad, Faustian bargain, they've taken to listening to Henry Kissenger. History will judge them on its own terms, and worry not, they'll be plenty of graves to be dug for everyone.

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

It's Not Mania, It's MADNESS

This isn't trivial, it's CUPCAKE INSANITY:

CUPCAKE MANIA....The Washington Post reports today about a brewing parental backlash against schools that try to ban birthday cupcakes. An expert explains what's behind it:
The cupcake-as-symbol-of-childhood is powerful: It's wrapped in the cultural definition of what it means to be a good mother, something that's a moving target in this society, said Kathryn Oths, an anthropologist at the University of Alabama who studies food and culture.

...."Think about it. Banning cupcakes is almost like an assault on the national identity," Oths said. "It comes at a time when there are fears of terrorism and the immigration brouhaha that they're 'watering down' our traditional American culture — meaning middle-class white America — that's slipping out of our grasp."
Um, OK. But what I really want to know is where this cupcake mania came from in the first place. Do modern parents really bring in cupcakes for every single birthday? That must be 20 or 30 cupcake days a year. Seriously?

Question: has this changed over the years, or was Orange County just a cupcake-less wasteland during the 60s? I don't recall even celebrating birthdays in school when I was growing up, let alone being fed trays of cupcakes on a regular basis. And believe me, if cupcakes really are a celebration of middle-class, white, better-dead-than-red Americana, Orange Country would have been leading the pack in cupcake feedings.

So when did this start? Is it a regional thing? Did I miss out? I know I have plenty of teachers who read this blog. Help me out in comments.

UPDATE: Responses are all over the map. Some people remember vast feeding frenzies of youthful cupcakes, other went entirely cupcake-less like me. Best comment comes from Chicago Liberal:
You have no idea.

You try to raise a non-obese, relatively healthy kid and you do okay until they hit kindergarten. Between the cupcake days, the party days, and the "specials" (teacher's day, Arbor Day, whatever) there's hardly a day that isn't loaded with extra artificial food coloring, high fructose corn syrup and fat. And then we wonder why the kids all misbehave. Blue, tattooed "froot" leather does not occur anywhere in nature! But try to tell that to most parents.

Seriously, parents will get near violent with you when you suggest at an average suburban school that maybe we should just have one cupcake/candy/sweet treats day a month, or otherwise limit sweets. So, you can tell your kid that she can sit in the corner and eat her grapes and carrots while her friend passes out the sponge bob froot snacks. You can harp on the teacher. Or you can take it to the [PTA] where they will roll their eyes at you.

Oh, so the PTA is rolling their eyes at the Terrorists? The Nazi's never gave out cupcakes and they lost WWII. What does that tell ya?

Monday, December 11, 2006

Thickness of the Bubble

From Paul Bedard at U.S. News:

And now we learn that President Bush really believed the GOP was safe, too. On the day before the elections, he asked embattled House gop leader Dennis Hastert to run for speaker again so he could guide the White House's agenda in Congress.

This appears to be a rumor, but given what we know, it sounds credible. If true, I guess Karl Rove really did have him convinced that the numbers he had were accurate. Guess that didn't turn out so well, huh? Hastert's been booted from the leadership entirely.

And via Steve Benan at the Carpetbagger Report, this from the New York Daily News:

Outside Republican sources report that except for isolated pockets of realism, the West Wing bunker hasn't yet absorbed Bush's diminished power.
"The White House is totally constipated," a former aide complained. "There's not enough adult leadership, and the 30-year-olds still think it's 2000 and they're riding high."
One White House assistant insisted to a friend last week that the election was merely a repudiation of Bush's execution, not his policies.
"They don't get it," a GOP mandarin snapped. "The Iraq report was their brass ring to pivot and salvage the last two years, and they didn't grab it."
...
"We will get an immigration bill, and the President will make a valiant but doomed attempt at entitlement reform," he said. "But we are looking at two frustrating years of gridlock and several foreign policy failures."

Several foreign policy failures? Sounds promising. I wonder which ones that person has in mind.

Sunday, December 10, 2006

Tough Guy? No, Sniveling Coward

Josh Marshall has an important post up at his site that should not be overlooked:

I'm not sure I've ever heard anything truer said on the whole sorry topic of this war. And it gets to the heart of the issue. He won't ever change course. Not because there's anyone who can't see that the present course is a catastrophe, but because changing course would cut the legs from under the collective denial of the president and his supporters. As bad as things get they can still pretend they're on the way to getting better. It's a long hard slog to January 2009 when it becomes someone else's fault. Once they pull the plug themselves, though, they admit it was all a disaster, that the whole presidency was, in Dick Gephardt's half forgotten phrase, "a miserable failure."
That is why we're in Iraq today. Get your head around it.

Go get the rest.

More on the "80% Solution"

I should've pointed out in an earlier post that Laura Rosen over at War and Piece had already broken this story in the L.A. Times:

AS SECTARIAN violence rises in Iraq and the White House comes under increasing pressure to revamp its strategy there, a debate is emerging inside the Bush administration: Should the U.S. abandon its efforts to act as a neutral referee in the ongoing civil war and, instead, throw its lot in with the Shiites?

A U.S. tilt toward the Shiites is a risky strategy, one that could further alienate Iraq's Sunni neighbors and that could backfire by driving its Sunni population into common cause with foreign jihadists and Al Qaeda cells. But elements of the administration, including some members of the intelligence community, believe that such a tilt could lead to stability more quickly than the current policy of trying to police the ongoing sectarian conflict evenhandedly, with little success and at great cost.
...
AS SECTARIAN violence rises in Iraq and the White House comes under increasing pressure to revamp its strategy there, a debate is emerging inside the Bush administration: Should the U.S. abandon its efforts to act as a neutral referee in the ongoing civil war and, instead, throw its lot in with the Shiites?

A U.S. tilt toward the Shiites is a risky strategy, one that could further alienate Iraq's Sunni neighbors and that could backfire by driving its Sunni population into common cause with foreign jihadists and Al Qaeda cells. But elements of the administration, including some members of the intelligence community, believe that such a tilt could lead to stability more quickly than the current policy of trying to police the ongoing sectarian conflict evenhandedly, with little success and at great cost.

She has more on the "Salvadorization" of the war, here.

The Crux

Ivo Daadler gets to the heart of the matter with regard to the Iraq Survey Group:

The most basic flaw in the report is the belief that political reconciliation is still possible in Iraq. But there is no evidence to support that belief — and there is plenty of evidence that the opposite is true. Iraqis are dying at a rate of well over 100 per day — which adds up to 40-50,000 Iraqi men, women, and children perishing each year. Many times that number are seriously wounded. Those that aren’t killed or maimed are leaving Iraq — currently at a rate of 1 million Iraqis per year. These are numbers that affirm, in ways that no spin can counter, that Iraq is now and has been for quite some time descended into a deadly civil war — a war in which Baghdad, the Iraqi capital city, stands at the bloody center.

It's a quick read if you'd like to give it look.

I'd argue that it's worse than a civil war in Iraq: it's a completely failed state.

Monday, December 04, 2006

SCIRI

Just a quick note. If you told the denizens of wingnuttia in early 2003 that the Iraq War had gone so badly that George W. Bush would have to meet with Abdul-Aziz Al-Hakim in The White House, their collective heads would've popped like the lancing of a massive boil. We're talking beyond unthinkable.

And who is this stately Shiite Holy Man?

He's the leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. He's been waiting in Iran (Axis of Evil, et. al.) for years to return home to claim the Shiite's right to power. Here's a little tidbit as well: the holiest sites for the Shia sect of Islam reside in Iraq, not Iran.

Islamic Revolution. Yes, the kind that overthrew the Shah of Iran. Hostages. 1979. Ayatollahs. 444 days.

Islamic Revolution and George W. Bush. Come to think of it, I didn't see that one coming myself.

Friday, December 01, 2006

The "80% Solution"

From the Washington Post :

The Bush administration is deliberating whether to abandon U.S. reconciliation efforts with Sunni insurgents and instead give priority to Shiites and Kurds, who won elections and now dominate the government, according to U.S. officials.
The proposal, put forward by the State Department as part of a crash White House review of Iraq policy, follows an assessment that the ambitious U.S. outreach to Sunni dissidents has failed. U.S. officials are increasingly concerned that their reconciliation efforts may even have backfired, alienating the Shiite majority and leaving the United States vulnerable to having no allies in Iraq, according to sources familiar with the State Department proposal.

Note that this is a "crash review". One might wonder what they've been up to for well over three years. More:

Some insiders call the proposal the "80 percent" solution, a term that makes other parties to the White House policy review cringe. Sunni Arabs make up about 20 percent of Iraq's 26 million people.
Until now, the thrust of U.S. policy has been to build a unified government and society out of Iraq's three fractious communities. U.S. officials say they would not be abandoning this goal but would instead leave leadership of the thorny task of reconciliation to the Iraqis.
...
Opponents of the proposal cite three dangers. Without reconciliation, military commanders fear that U.S. troops would be fighting the symptoms of Sunni insurgency without any prospect of getting at the causes behind it -- notably the marginalization of the once-powerful minority. U.S. troops would be left fighting in a political vacuum, not a formula for either long-term stabilization or reducing attacks on American targets.
A second danger is that the United States could appear to be taking sides in the escalating sectarian strife. The proposal would encourage Iraqis to continue reconciliation efforts. But without U.S. urging, outreach could easily stall or even atrophy, deepening sectarian tensions, U.S. sources say.
A decision to step back from reconciliation efforts would also be highly controversial among America's closest allies in the region, which are all Sunni governments. Sunni leaders in Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf sheikdoms have been pressuring the United States to ensure that their brethren are included in Iraq's power structure and economy.

I think we need to emphasize that these are internal deliberations, so we don't know if these ideas will be implemented. But if they are, this is nothing short of utter madness. If the U.S. is seen as taking sides at this point, it will start a regional war. And how do we know that? Because the Saudi's have explicitly told us so:

In this case, remaining on the sidelines would be unacceptable to Saudi Arabia. To turn a blind eye to the massacre of Iraqi Sunnis would be to abandon the principles upon which the kingdom was founded. It would undermine Saudi Arabia's credibility in the Sunni world and would be a capitulation to Iran's militarist actions in the region.
To be sure, Saudi engagement in Iraq carries great risks -- it could spark a regional war. So be it: The consequences of inaction are far worse.

It's almost unreal that we have these kinds of clowns running our foreign policy. That they are considering a policy they know would start a massive sectarian war, one that involves multiple countries across the wider Middle East, is all you need to know about the caliber of the Bush foreign policy apparatus.

Is the Modern GOP "Mainstream"?

No. In many ways, they're insane. I don't use that term lightly either. It just happens to be the truth. Kevin Drum at the Washington Monthly has this:

Click the link to read a summary of the Texas State Republican platform for 2000, the one they passed after six years with George Bush at the helm. Like so many revolutionaries before them, they're perfectly happy to proselytize their plan to the world openly with no hemming or hawing. You don't have to guess what their goals are, you just have to read what they themselves say they are.

The South has always been with us, but it's the Texas strain of militant conservativism that's made the South so toxic in recent years. If the country is finally starting to tire of their messianic insistence that you're not a real American unless you worship at their churches, watch their sports, and raise your family the way they tell you, it's not a moment too soon.

If you think the elimination of the separation of Church and State, abolishing Social Security, and taking back the Panama Canal sound like conspiracy theories; think again. Go ahead and click the link in his post (it's actually one of my favorite blog posts ever).

Howard Dean's 50 State Strategy has never looked smarter.

Marble Composition