the handshake

what josh said:

they got issues we keep the chat shows running through the day at TPM HQ. and i've been listening to a constant stream — mainly but not only on fox — of talk through the day about whether we should feel weak or ashamed or tarnished or any other number of things because president obama had a friendly handshake with huge [sic] chavez of venezuela. the whole idea seems so deeply silly to me that it's hard to know how exactly to even comment on it. but i'm struck once again by the sort of psychologically arrested mentality and extreme emotional insecurity that seems at work in the minds of many foreign policy conservatives — or more specifically, so as not to paint with too broad a brush, those of the neo-conish flavor. sure, a lot of this is just political posturing — trying to sound the story out for possible political vulnerabilities on obama's part. throw a bunch of mud up against the wall and see what sticks. what's striking to me though is that a lot of it seems like a very genuine, gut-level emotional response. (a related example is what matt yglesias pointed out a few days ago — how many right-wingers seem to have convinced themselves that north korea, a borderline failed state on the possible brink of economic collapse somehow has the us over a barrel.) in the course of our normal lives, few of us have much difficulty identifying habits of defensiveness or a penchant for histrionic or petulant interactions as signs of weakness, not strength. really powerful people don't need stunts and usually signal their power by a certain graciousness and indifference in such interactions. they have nothing to prove. but american power, respect, command of public opinion — however you want to define it — must be in these people's minds an extremely brittle thing. they really do seem like extremely insecure people.

comical nonsense a bit of follow about on right-wing paranoia. i'm just watching andrea mitchell interview michael o'hanlon about whether president obama showed some sort of dangerous weakness in happily shaking hands with hugo chavez. mitchell played a clip of the always cartoonish newt gingrich and then noted that conservatives are drawing the analogy to john kennedy's famous meeting with nikita krushchev in the latter sized kennedy up as a lightweight and — so the argument goes — thus believed he could be pushed around during the cuban missile crisis. now, kruschev? really? i'm not sure i can imagine a better illustration of the sort of parodic paranoia i'm talking about. we do realize that the us has the most powerful military in the world and venezuela has little ability to project military power beyond its own borders. it's a non-entity militarily, even compared to iran and north korea. will he be emboldened into calling obama el diablo?

update:

the shocking truth fresh off our earlier national humiliation, we just received a note from TPM reader SR. and SR points out that in the second image of our obama at the summit of the americas slideshow we see president obama shaking hands with the dog of the president of mexico. he even seems a bit to be bowing to the dog.

quote of the day

gonzalo boye, spanish human rights lawyer and co-plaintiff filing torture and war crimes charges against the bush white house:

if they are innocent, they shouldn’t be afraid.

party poopers

(by robert t. balder)

life is cheap

... and after the bankrupt ruin of the invasion of iraq, so are neocons.

fred kagan, brainchild of george bush's "surge strategy" escalation gamble, on iraqi indifference:

... the interesting thing is that when we were fighting those battles and doing that damage, on the whole the iraqis were not bitching about collateral damage. you had nothing like the degree of upset about how many civilians were being injured and how much damage was being done to the infrastructure in iraq at a much higher level of destruction than you have in afghanistan at a much lower level of destruction. i think there's a cultural reason for that: afghans don't fight in their cities. iraqis do. for good or ill, iraqis expect to fight in their cities. that's where the insurgents dug in, saddam hussein planned to dig in to the cities or lure us into an urban fight. it's sort of understood that the battlefield is going to be there, that doesn't mean that they don't complain about it, that doesn't mean that it's not a problem, but it does mean that when the insurgents dig in and we root them out, the iraqis don't on the whole say "darn it, you shouldn't have blown up all of our houses." they sort of accept that. afghans do not.

shorter kagan:

the oriental doesn’t put the same high price on life as does the westerner. life is cheap in the orient. — general william westmoreland, “hearts and minds” (1974)

... which is why we shouldn’t feel bad about killin’ lots 'n' lots of ‘em, amirite, freddy boy?

the five stages of gop grief

four years ago conservatives, fundamentalists and neocons across the country were gloating.

tonight ... not so much, as testified by these assorted anecdotes from what could be a clinical casebook of right wing ideological collapse, collected from the out-patients commenters at the blog free republic:

stage 1) shock and denial:

Fox has done a terrible job in their reporting tonight. They are so proud of their computer equipment, they just can't run it. Brit is all over the place. Their website is worse

Has California come in? That's a lot of electoral votes. ANd we're giving it to Obama, because of Ohio exit polls?

DO NOT PANIC. THE POPULAR VOTE IS A VIRTUAL TIE.

MCCAIN CANNOT CONCEDE - CHALLENGE LEGALLY VOTE FRAUD EVERYWHERE, CHALLENGE LEGITIMACY OF BHO, HELL THROW IN THE UNNATURAL CITIZENSHIP. FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT! (DOESN'T OHIO HAVE TO WAIT 10 DAYS TO VERIFY ABSENTEE BALLOTS OF LIKE 200,000?)

stage 2) pain and guilt:

Welcome to the United Socialist States of America. I am so ashamed of Americans tonight.

If only those born in the US had voted, we would not be losing tonight.

Oh Lord, HAVE MERCY, PLEASE!!!!!! I am now feeling sick!

stage 3) anger:

ACORN has succeeded in stealing this election for the terrorist in chief.

Thank You W. - Hussien is your legacy! May your retirement be as bad as the Huseein Presidency will be for us. For the rest of you Bushes .. stay out of republican politics forever.

So much for Rove's PERMANENT MAJORITY..... ....the Hispanic vote went big for Obama.... ...New Mexico is no longer a red state..... ...Colorado and Arizona are trending left... how will we ever win an election in the future? Thank you George W. Bush and John Mccain for ruining our party with your open borders policy.

stage 4) depression:

Capitalism lasted longer than communism but in the end everyone settled on socialism. Bush should have at least gone down swinging and holding to his principals (That's what I hated about him in his first terms but what I miss about him right now)

It's over. It's been over. I have been the victim of my own wishful thinking. We're getting a terrorists buddy instead of a patriot. It is depressing.

Allow me to be the first to say with sadness: ALL HAIL KING HUSSEIN

I for one, welcome our new socialists overlords. Now, where's that bottle?

stage 5) acceptance and hope:

This is what you should all do now: Hug your wife and kids Pray to God and understand he has a plan Keep your guns close Get a good accountant to shelter your money It is true, that I never concieved such a day during my lifetime. But I still have faith in God, my family and friends.

They dug their own grave. The same goes for bipartisanship. Either way, the Republicans will never be relevant again without conservative leadership. Palin in 2012 is a start.

Anybody know a good militia I can join?

Amerika has just elected its first communist president - in fact, with a communist Congress, a complete communist government. Time to start understanding how to organize and lead a resistance movement.

With the union stuff coming we'll never be able to get back the congress. How long before Sharia law is implemented? The only saving grace I can think of now is that HRC does have proof that he is not eligible to be POTUS.

And there's always the possibility Israel acts tomorrow and the world nuclear war is on!

one year to go

george w. bush, oct. 15 2001:

let me say a few words about important values we must demonstrate while all of us serve in government. first, we must always maintain the highest ethical standards. we must always ask ourself not only what is legal, but what is right. there is no goal of government worth accomplishing if it cannot be accomplished with integrity. second, i want us to set an example of humility. as you work for the federal government there is no excuse for arrogance, and there's never a reason to show disrespect for others. a new tone in washington must begin with decency and fairness. i want everyone who represents our government to be known for these values.

such good times weren't meant to last ...

a critical mass of cool

what digby said:

kennedy's legacy has been revised more often in the fewest years than probably any president in history. looking back, he falls short in many more ways than we all believed when i was young. he was a cold warrior to the bone and his actions sometimes failed to match his rhetoric. he was in office in very trying times with a very thin mandate. but after the past few years of crazed chickenhawk neocons lifting his rhetoric of freedom and democracy to promote unprovoked wars of aggression, i came to especially appreciate his cool reaction to his biggest challenge — the cuban missile crisis. imagine if bush had been in office when that happened. well, we don't have to, really. we know what they did after 9/11 and it certainly wasn't this: to help him decide what to do about the cuban situation, and how much risk to run of a nuclear exchange, kennedy assembled a small group that came to be called the executive committee of the national security council — or excomm for short. early in his presidency, kennedy had had to make a decision about a cia plan to land cuban exiles at the bay of pigs, in cuba, with the hope that these exiles would overthrow cuba's communist government, headed by fidel castro. kennedy had asked for advice about this from only a handful of people — those he knew he was officially obliged to consult. the operation proved to be a fiasco, and afterwards kennedy had resolved in future to consult more widely. included in the excomm were the regular participants in national security council meetings, plus kennedy's brother, the attorney general robert kennedy, and the president's chief speechwriter, the white house counsel theodore sorensen. both of these men could help kennedy to think about the domestic political aspects of the crisis. the president also invited several other key advisors to join the group: c douglas dillon, who had held high posts under eisenhower and who gave kennedy a link to the republican leadership; dean acheson and robert lovett, who had served under president harry truman and could help kennedy see the current crisis in longer historical perspective; and a former ambassador to the soviet union, llewellyn (tommy) thompson, probably the person in the president's circle who was best acquainted with khrushchev. [...] in the first day's debates, everyone favoured bombing cuba. the only differences concerned the scale of attack. kennedy, bundy, and some others spoke of a 'surgical strike' solely against the missile sites. 'it corresponds to "the punishment fits the crime" in political terms', said bundy. others joined the chiefs of staff in insisting that an attack should also take out air defence sites and bombers, so as to limit losses of us aircraft and prevent an immediate air reprisal against us bases in florida. by the third day, 18 october, another option had come to the fore. the under secretary of state, george ball, had commented that a us surprise attack on cuba would be '... like pearl harbor. it's the kind of conduct that one might expect of the soviet union. it is not conduct that one expects of the united states.' robert kennedy and secretary of state dean rusk concurred, rusk observing that the decision-makers could carry 'the mark of cain' on their brows for the rest of their lives. to meet this concern and to obtain time for gaining support from other nations, there developed the idea of the president's publicly announcing the presence of soviet missiles in cuba, ordering a blockade to prevent the introduction of further missiles, and demanding that the soviets withdraw the missiles already there. (both for legal reasons and for resonance with franklin roosevelt's 'quarantine address' of 1937, the term 'quarantine' was substituted for 'blockade'.) to those of kennedy's advisers who still favoured quick use of military force (the 'hawks' in later classification), this quarantine constituted an ultimatum. if khrushchev did not capitulate within a day or two, a us air attack on cuba would follow, followed before long by an invasion. for those in the excomm who would later be classed as 'doves,' the quarantine bought time for possibly developing some diplomatic solution. [...] on 26-27 october, the crisis came to a head. khrushchev cabled kennedy that he was prepared to remove missiles from cuba in return for a us promise not to invade cuba — a promise that had already been given more than once. but, just as kennedy and his excomm began to discuss a response, khrushchev broadcast from moscow a second message saying the missiles would be removed if, in addition, the united states withdrew nuclear missiles and other 'offensive means' from turkey. the second khrushchev message provoked furious debate. with ball in the lead, kennedy's advisers said almost unanimously that khrushchev's new condition was unacceptable. america's nato allies would think the united states was sacrificing their security for the sake of its own. kennedy alone seemed unconvinced. when ball said, 'if we talked to the turks ... this would be an extremely unsettling business', kennedy replied with asperity, 'well, this is unsettling now, george, because ... most people would regard this as not an unreasonable proposal ... i think you're going to have it very difficult to explain why we are going to take hostile military action in cuba ... when he's saying, "if you'll get yours out of turkey, we'll get ours out of cuba."'. 'what kennedy wanted was to mollify khrushchev without seeming to make a concession, and above all to avoid any prolonged negotiations.' in the end, kennedy found a way to finesse the situation. he sent robert kennedy to see the soviet ambassador, anatoly dobrynin, to tell him that the missiles in turkey were obsolete, and that the us planned to pull them out within about six months. all this was true. he said further, however, that, if the soviet union used this knowledge to claim that the us had struck the deal proposed in khrushchev's radio message, kennedy would deny the claim and would not remove the missiles from turkey. what kennedy wanted was to mollify khrushchev without seeming to make a concession, and above all to avoid any prolonged negotiations. he had to insist that soviet missiles come out of cuba unconditionally, or he would compromise the display of firmness that he judged necessary to protect against a berlin crisis. in fact, the exchange between robert kennedy and dobrynin had no effect. khrushchev had already decided to retreat to a simple request for a no invasion pledge. and the crisis ended on that basis. us reconnaissance aircraft kept watch while the soviets dismantled their missiles and loaded the parts on ships for return to the soviet union. this threat was far, far greater than the threat of islamic terrorism where their weapon of mass destruction were hijacked airliners and box cutters. we were *this close* to nuclear war. the president himself was in charge and intelligent enough to seek advice from a range of people and analyze the situation with a clear dispassionate eye in the middle of a crisis. as that excerpt from the bbc shows, the initial reaction was to bomb first and ask questions later. it's probably human. but leaders of a great country, with massive military power, have an obligation to look beyond their understandable human reaction. kennedy, cold warrior though he was, had a nimble, creative and serious mind and he was able to see beyond the emotional response to the bigger picture. this stuff matters. it matters a great deal. in fact, as we look to choose our next president we may want to inform ourselves as to whether the candidates have those kennedyesque qualities at least with the same degree of interest we take in whether they wear earth tones or cackle when they laugh.

no more slam dunks

this week's news leak that bush has secretly signed

a "nonlethal presidential finding" [?!? 1] that puts into motion a cia plan that reportedly includes a coordinated campaign of propaganda, disinformation and manipulation of iran’s currency and international financial transactions.

... has the blogoshpere once again atwitter (as leaks about iran typically incite every few weeks) that all-out war with iran is just around the corner. even as the same article cautions that while

"vice president cheney helped to lead the side favoring a military strike," said former cia official riedel, "but i think they have come to the conclusion that a military strike has more downsides than upsides."

... many still see this as one more step down the road to armageddon:

"i think everybody in the region knows that there is a proxy war already afoot with the united states supporting anti-iranian elements in the region as well as opposition groups within iran," said vali nasr, adjunct senior fellow for mideast studies at the council on foreign relations. "and this covert action is now being escalated by the new u.s. directive, and that can very quickly lead to iranian retaliation and a cycle of escalation can follow," nasr said.

i've already touched on some of the reasons why war with iran will not be forthcoming, such as an increasingly hostile (to the neocons) political climate:

"... the trash talk in a street altercation escalates in proportion to the expanding distance between the two protagonists.... it's when the fist fight has been avoided (or tabled) and they're putting distance between each other that the taunting becomes louder and more florid.... ... they're waging rhetorical escalation because de-escalation is the unacknowledged order of the day, and there's nothing they can do about it." — james wolcott, 9/2/06

an increasingly recalcitrant military:

"with the encouragement of some still in positions of military leadership, i offer a challenge to those still in uniform: a leader's responsibility is to give voice to those who can't — or don't have the opportunity to — speak. enlisted members of the armed forces swear their oath to those appointed over them; an officer swears an oath not to a person but to the constitution. the distinction is important ..." — marine lieutenant general greg newbold, retired, 4/9/06

[admiral william] fallon’s refusal to support a further naval buildup in the gulf reflected his firm opposition to an attack on iran and an apparent readiness to put his career on the line to prevent it. a source who met privately with fallon around the time of his confirmation hearing and who insists on anonymity quoted fallon as saying that an attack on iran "will not happen on my watch". asked how he could be sure, the source says, fallon replied, "you know what choices i have. i’m a professional." fallon said that he was not alone, according to the source, adding, "there are several of us trying to put the crazies back in the box."

and a more robust opponent:

... unlike iraq, iran boasts the capability of striking back at its attacker, both with and without warning. its long shadow across the straits of hormuz and its purported international network of sleeper cells have been thoroughly dissected in other publications, so suffice it here to say that most americans would prefer that iran's boasts remain untested.

but there is an overarching dimension to this ongoing melodrama that i haven't yet made crystal clear.

war with iran won't be a "slam dunk".

remember, when the white house and its neocon enablers first seduced america into abetting its invasion of iraq, the primary pitch they made that john q. public found so enticing was that "regime change" would be easy:

"i believe demolishing hussein's military power and liberating iraq would be a cakewalk. let me give simple, responsible reasons: (1) it was a cakewalk last time; (2) they've become much weaker; (3) we've become much stronger; and (4) now we're playing for keeps." — reagan arms control director ken adelman, 2/13/02 "five days or five weeks or five months, but it certainly isn't going to last any longer than that." — defense secretary donald rumsfeld, 11/15/02 "a slam-dunk case." — cia director george tenet, 12/12/02 "we will win this conflict. we will win it easily." — sen. john mccain, 1/22/03 "i think it will go relatively quickly, ... [in] weeks rather than months." — vice president dick cheney, 3/16/03 "major combat operations in iraq have ended." — president george bush, 5/1/03

and cheap:

"iraq, unlike afghanistan, is a rather wealthy country. iraq has tremendous resources that belong to the iraqi people. and so there are a variety of means that iraq has to be able to shoulder much of the burden for their own reconstruction." — white house spokesman ari fleischer, 2/18/03 "the oil revenues of iraq could bring between $50 and $100 billion over the course of the next two or three years ... we're dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon." — deputy defense secretary paul wolfowitz, 3/27/03 "in terms of the american taxpayers contribution, [$1.7 billion] is it for the us. the rest of the rebuilding of iraq will be done by other countries and iraqi oil revenues ... the american part of this will be 1.7 billion. we have no plans for any further-on funding for this." — usaid director andrew natsios, 4/23/03

and we'd all be heroes:

"if we just let our own vision of the world go forth, and we embrace it entirely and we don't try to be clever and piece together clever diplomatic solutions to this thing, but just wage a total war against these tyrants, i think we will do very well and our children will sing great songs about us years from now." — michael leeden, american enterprise institute, 10/29/01 "i think that the people of iraq would welcome the u.s. force as liberators; they would not see us as oppressors, by any means." — vice president dick cheney, 9/9/02 "think of the faces in afghanistan when the people were liberated, when they moved out in the streets and they started singing and flying kites and women went to school and people were able to function and other countries were able to start interacting with them. that's what would happen in iraq." — defense secretary donald rumsfeld, 9/13/02 "the iraqi people understand what this crisis is about. like the people of france in the 1940s, they view us as their hoped-for liberator. they know that america will not come as a conqueror." — deputy defense secretary paul wolfowitz, 3/11/03 "as i told the president on january 10th, i think they will be greeted with sweets and flowers in the first months and simply have very, very little doubts that that is the case. this is a remarkable situation in which the population of a country that's about to have a war waged over its head positively wants the war while all kinds of other countries don't for one reason or another. that should tell us a lot about this war and about the future [inaudible] which i think is desufficiently emphasized." — iraqi exile kanan makiya, 3/17/03 "i think when the people of basra no longer feel the threat of that regime, you are going to see an explosion of joy and relief." — deputy defense secretary paul wolfowitz, 3/24/03

explosions, paul? most certainly, and to this very day. joy and relief? well .. not so much.

the collapse of the occupation and the clearly-forseen civil war unleashed amid the criminal lack of contingency planning for the invasion's aftermath painfully dramatized the dangers of huffing one's own propaganda, particularly propaganda laced with dubious intel cherry-picked and stove-piped from neocon hustlers and iraqi beat artists.

while it's tempting to believe (as many do) that a group of people so horribly misguided must be certifiably insane (and therefore capable of any utter lunacy the most ill-informed paranoiac can dream up), the iraq debacle only proves them to be self-deluding, greedy and morally bankrupt, even evil — but not insane.

because only an insane person launches a war that they don't believe they can easily win, and it was as true for adolf hitler before he invaded poland as it is for george bush before he invaded iraq.

and iran will be no cakewalk.

because thanks to an imploding middle east, a newly-combative congress, a collapsing military and increasingly resistant commanders, a disgusted electorate, a bursting budget, a resurgent taliban and a hezbollah-chastized israel, the war-mongers in washington — and the too-willing public — got a cruelly-needed splash of cold and bitter reality, and right in the kisser.

and while pride childishly demands that they continue rattling their tin swords, in the maddeningly elusive hope that they'll sucker iran into a "gotcha" moment and get them to finally cry "uncle" to prove once and for all america's total pwnage before they slink off into the pages of infamy, the war-mongers know too well that their cynical dream of *cough* "spreading peace and democracy" *cough* across the middle east has just gone up in smoke:

"we are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield." — george orwell, 1946

---

¹ wtf ... ?!? is this supposed to be bush-speak for "no drive-bys"? are presidential "findings" ordinarily "lethal"? and just how many of these "findings" have left bush's desk anyway? there just isn't any end to this crew's thuggery ...

thirsty?

this one's on the house, you republican gasbags!

bob cesca has a long-overdue message for all those oh-so-deserving and soon-to-be-irrelevant professional pundits, politicians, prognosticators, proselytizers, preachers, peddlers and outright propagandists who've been proven so horrifically wrong for the past six years:

last week, i described a nightmare scenario in which the republicans won the midterm prompting the president, high on mandate juice, to form the department of shut the f*** up, headed by a sock puppet named secretary fiddlesticks. now that the democrats have taken back the congress and 51+ percent of america finally has a voice in government again, i think it's time to seriously let fly. so at the risk of sounding contentious in this all-too-genuine era (several days) of bipartisanship, here now is a roll call of people who must officially shut the f*** up. republican trolls who wrap up their anonymous and incomprehensible criticisms of progressives with the phrase, "and that's why your party never wins," need to shut the f*** up. the cowards who so easily disregard our liberties by shrugging off the president's illegal wiretapping; the cowards who shrug off the military commissions act and the death of habeas corpus; and the cowards who shrug off torture with the phrases, "i'm not doing anything wrong, so i have nothing to worry about," or, "you can't [blank] if you're dead," ought to shut the f*** up. [yes, we're calling you out pat, jeff and john, you buncha li'l skairdy k-k-kats!] anyone who still believes that global warming is a myth? shut the f*** up. rush limbaugh must shut the f*** up. on second thought, strike that. the more we see violet beauregard flapping his arms and mocking parkinson's patients, the better off the rest of the nation will be. in ann coulter's latest column, he wondered when the democrats would be fitting senator-elect jon tester with a "leotard." speaking of tards, mr. coulter needs to shut the f*** up. and this order stands for anyone who claims senator-elect tester is a "conservative democrat." he could very well be the face of the new progressive democrat and one of the most genuine lawmakers elected tuesday. prediction: if he isn't already, tester will quickly become a rock star in this party. i think it was bill maher who mentioned this but it stands repeating here: neocons who have made multiple rosy predictions about iraq need to shut the f*** up and are forthwith banned from making any more predictions. sean hannity, bill o'reilly and other homophobes who use the "san francisco liberal" label for speaker-elect pelosi must... you know. we all understand that it's right-wing code language meaning "homo-values." if that's what you mean, just say it. that is, unless you're not man enough. if you still believe that karl rove is a genius, wizard, architect or anything short of overrated, you must shut the f*** up. one popular vote loss, one win, one near loss to a disorganized opponent and one outright loss means one thing and one thing only: mediocrity. racking up this kind of record by means of dirty tricks, race-baiting and questioning the patriotism of decorated war veterans makes rove a mediocre hack at best. [hmm ... i believe said something along those lines over a year ago.] ed gillespie, the man who's just a neck with a mouth, is officially ordered for the last time to shut the f*** up. the devilish wordsmiths who think it's strategic and clever to refer to the democratic party as the "democrat party" need to stop it. shut the f*** up. the official name of the party is the democratic party, with the "ic" at the end. yeah, i know. newt gingrich and frank luntz invented the idea of saying "democrat party" or "the democrat leadership" or "the democrat voters" in order to emphasize the "rat" syllable, leaving a rat-like subliminal hint in the minds of listeners. president bush, in his so-called "conciliatory" press conference wednesday, used this incorrect pronunciation several times. "and while the ballots are still being counted in the senate, it is clear the democrat party had a good night last night, and i congratulate them on their victories." "this morning i spoke with republican and democrat leadership in the house and senate." "... we'll begin consultations with the democrat leadership starting thursday and friday." "... and now work with democrat leaders in the congress because they control the committees and they control the flow of bills." "we got some tax cuts passed with democrat votes." and finally ... mr. president. saying that you're going to work with congress and compromise for the sake of the nation doesn't mean shoving your unconstitutional terrorist surveillance act and your bellicose anti-u.n. u.n. ambassador through a lame duck session. so if you don't really intend to be bipartisan, then shut the f*** up. you pride yourself on letting people know exactly where you stand and, despite the fact that you routinely stand on dangerous principles, there's at least some cold comfort in knowing what you're up to. but it's clear that that president bush is long gone — replaced by a man who can't even be honest with his own base about things like the iraq war, subsequently leaving his allies alone, confused and scrambling to assuage the anger of an increasingly hostile constituency. this last part? keep it up, thank you. and that's the roll call. i've spent the last several days not only breathing in the sweet aroma of real-life governmental checks and balances, but i've also been evaluating where we go from here. clearly speaker-elect pelosi and the democratic leadership have the daunting task of working with the white house to not only push through vital pieces of legislation, but they also must do so in a way that doesn't raze their chances for further pickups in 2008. it goes without saying that any misstep in the face of this republican party (and its media lapdogs) could spell disaster. so they have to play nice in some ways, but you and i are best served by remaining on the attack and never hesitating to tell those who deserve it to shut the f*** up. update: i've been told that joe mccarthy was the first to use the "democrat [sic] party" misnomer. however, its use became much more pervasive when gingrich and luntz practically made it mandatory in the ranks of the gop.

like writing on toilet paper

it sounds like bush is getting tired of all the carping know-it-alls-without-a-plan:

president bush on saturday challenged lawmakers skeptical of his new iraq plan to propose their own strategy for stopping the violence in baghdad. "to oppose everything while proposing nothing is irresponsible," bush said. — "bush: war skeptics 'proposing nothing'"

but if bush is genuinely interested in seeing other plans, he need only check his inbox.

it's where he'll find, among others, the murtha plan, the kerry-feingold plan, the biden plan, the edwards plan, the levin-reed plan, and not to mention the baker-hamilton plan, otherwise known as the iraq study group plan, which bush already sounds familiar with, since he was recently overheard describing it as "a flaming turd".

and then there are the seemingly daily growing roster of freely-dispensed blogger plans like the johnson plan. it's plainly apparent to none but the willfully blind and deaf that at this late date there are no lack of thoughtful alternatives.

unfortunately (and i do say this with the utmost respect to all those who have been applying the necessary brain-power and wisdom that's been heretofore lacking in this debate) all these plans represent nothing more than idle academic masturbation. they're all quite pointless. and that's why you'll find no trademarked and patented "aarrgghh plan" on this site.

because unless the first step in your grand strategy reads:

my grand strategy for iraq by carping know-it-all 1) remove george bush and dick cheney from office.

... then your plan is nothing but toilet paper.

because unless you're willing to let events continue to spiral for at least another two years, george bush will give your precious plan all the due consideration he gave to the over-anticipated iraq study group report — that is, as steve gilliard remarked, he'll "wipe his ass" with it.

which leaves us with only one plan — the only one that matters — the kagan plan, more fondly known as "the surge".

and what makes this one plan oh-so irresistible to the commander-in-chief?

frederick kagan, 36, is the author of choosing victory, a blueprint for the surge adopted by president george w bush. just as everybody had begun writing off the influence of the neocons at the white house, genial, chubby-faced frederick gave the muscular intellectuals a lease of life. it was at camp david last june that kagan, a military historian and fellow of the american enterprise institute, outlined his plans for pouring more troops into iraq to bush and his war cabinet. donald rumsfeld, the then defence secretary, was unimpressed, but kagan's views got another hearing when bush was searching for ways to ditch the seemingly defeatist recommendations of james baker's iraq study group. "wow, you mean we can still win this war?" a grateful bush reportedly said. — "... bush's final baghdad gamble"

calling captain kirk

oregon congressman david wu on the floor of the house rebuking bush's plan to escalate our adventure in the middle east:

now, this president has listened to some people, the so-called vulcans in the white house, the ideologues. but unlike the vulcans of star trek, who made the decisions based on logic and fact, these guys make it on ideology. these aren't vulcans. there are klingons in the white house. but unlike the real klingons of star trek, these klingons have never fought a battle of their own. don't let faux klingons send real americans to war. it is wrong.

wu, a democrat, is chairman of the technology and innovation subcommittee of the house science and technology committee, and apparently an avid star trek fan:

he admitted friday that while recovering from a recent back injury, he watched "a whole basket of star trek tapes" lent to him by a neighbor. which star trek series or movie is his favorite? "i watch them all," wu said. "a terrible confession."

tough guys don't carry umbrellas

we can all sense that the war is coming. it is vital for america to seize the initiative and fight it on our terms, when we have the maximum advantage. it's five minutes to midnight. the time to strike iran is now. — robert tracinski, "five minutes to midnight: the war is coming, no matter how hard we try to evade it."

tracinski tries his level best to sound calming and reasoned, yet still strident and imperative — but james wolcott, left blogistan's resident ginsu expert, knows the sound of trash talk when he hears it:

i have a theory on why the war party rhetoric has gone skittish and skyhigh, a theory based on casual observation of new york streetfights (streetfights everywhere, really). what i've noticed is that the trash talk in a street altercation escalates in proportion to the expanding distance between the two protagonists. when two potential fighters are almost literally in each other's faces, their words are few, their expressions fierce. it's when the fist fight has been avoided (or tabled) and they're putting distance between each other that the taunting becomes louder and more florid. "get back in my face again, motherfucker, and i'll pound your face into hamburger meat, motherfucker." "come back and say that to my face, lame-ass motherfucker." etc. you can supply your own david mamet expletives and challenges. one of my favorite verbal showdowns occurred on 14th street one rainy day when two non-pugilists kept up the trash talk until one of them said, "you're carrying an umbrella, motherfucker — how tough can you be?" which i must say got quite a chortle from us idle bystanders. now what has this to do with the posings of our militaristic muscle mouths? this: it is an index of the frustration and impotence they're experiencing at not getting their way. they're waging rhetorical escalation because de-escalation is the unacknowledged order of the day, and there's nothing they can do about it. steve clemons published a dispatch from the nelson report indicating that despite all of the cheneyesque bluster, the bush administration is pursuing the diplomatic route with iran. to the dismay of the hard nosers, bush is also reeling back his use of "islamic fascists", which will be interpreted as a capitulation to political correctness. you even have rumself whining that his recent appeasement slur was taken "out of context," and calling for "constructive" dialogue regarding the situation in iraq. and then there's the happy novelty of rudy giuliani blowing the whistle and calling a foul on "partisan bickering", which will not endear him to the more strident dickheads in his party. there has been a major shift in the mood climate, one which the war party and its bloggers are resisting at the top of their lungs. but resistance is futile. as john robb writes in an important post at global guerrillas, "playing at war", we're not going to the get the grand, conclusive world war iii (or iv) that same [sic] neocon ideologues crave.

newt gingrich: look at all the different connectivity. you'd have to say to yourself, "this is in fact world war iii." john gibson: world war iii. bill o'reilly: world war iii, right? john gibson: this is world war iii. sean hannity: ... world war iii. the start of world war iii! michael leeden: more like world war iv ...

bloodsuckers

steven d at booman tribune on the neocons, their bottomless thirst for conquest, and its role in the coming midterm elections:

... a while ago i predicted we were in for a wild ride this summer in terms of a coordinated campaign by conservative supporters of president bush to generate support for war with iran, in part to bolster the republican party's prospects for the mid term elections this fall. yet even i didn't anticipate the bush administration letting israel slip off it's [sic] leash to attack both the palestinians in gaza and hizbollah in lebanon. mea culpa. i should have anticipated such murderous manipulation from the most immoral and deceitful administration in our history. if killing a few more arabs (and israelis) is what it takes to assure continued majorities in the house and senate for republicans, the bush team is more than happy to oblige. the fact that this approach has already failed miserably in iraq is of little consequence. retaining their power, and implementing the folly of an expanded war in the middle east is all that matters to them.

monstrous as this picture of the administration is, the reality may be even uglier. while steven portrays the israeli offensive merely as a means to an end — continued domestic political domination — the offensive may be an end in itself, as an irresistible incitement to war with the archnemesis iran.

the war trolls know that they're running out of time. they know that their clutch on the body politic may be significantly weakened come november. they know that they may never again in their lifetimes get another chance to dismember and resurrect a servile middle east — a chimera which never seemed more achingly close to birth.

this administration has only one modus: raising bogeymen. it has only one note: a shrill screech. it has only one concern: its own blasphemous survival. forget about acts of governance or evidence of accomplishment from these bloodthirsty maurauders. true leadership cannot hope to thrive as long as they remain battened onto a host as torpid and succulent as america. will the world will have strength enough left in 2008 to exorcise the vampires of vietnam for once and all?

i once called this administration a potemkin government, for its perverse devotion to pretense, but i was mistaken, because a potemkin government accomplishes nothing. as the bones, sucked dry, pile higher and higher in the desert, their leavings, their real achievement, can be seen for miles and miles: it is a charnel house.

painting by alex ross © 2004.

for whom the bills toll

"in truth i tell you, this very night, before the cock crows, you will have denied me three times." — matthew 26:34

november 1967: in response to the growing demonstrations that culminated in the october peace march on the pentagon, president lyndon johnson launched a press blitz aimed at shoring up flagging support for the vietnam war. johnson relit "the light at the tunnel" and flew general william westmoreland, commander of u.s. forces in vietnam, to washington to personally assure the national press club that "we have reached an important point when the end begins to come into view." johnson received a nearly 10-point bounce in the polls for his efforts, from 40% to 48%.

however, johnson's bounce in the polls was quickly turned into a dive by the startling tet offensive, launched by the north vietnamese at the start of february 1968, which demonstrated that they were far from their last throes. during the offensive american audiences were also treated to a brutal street execution and were introduced to the now-famous phrase "we had to destroy the village in order to save it", attributed by many to the destruction of the city of ben tre.

by february's end a turning point in the war of domestic public opinion had arrived, made explicit when cbs evening news anchor walter cronkite, considered by viewers, "the most trusted man in america" — even as late as 1995 — concluded that "it seems now more certain than ever, that the bloody experience of vietnam is to end in a stalemate." in turn, johnson reportedly concluded that "if i've lost walter cronkite, i've lost middle america." the "light at the end of the tunnel" had been rudely snuffed out in homes across america.

johnson's approval sank back down to 38% and approval for his handling of the war hit 26%. comprehending the hole he was in, on the last day of march he withdrew his bid for reelection.

♠
38 years later
♥

november 2005: nearly three years into the war, with support for the occupation and the president at its lowest ebb — a familiar 38% — george w. bush launched his public relations blitz, dubbed the "national strategy for victory in iraq". while the speeches may have earned him a modest bounce of 5 points, one could argue instead that it was the december 15 iraqi elections that gave america a glimpse of hope. but bush could not escape johnson's fate and his bounce too came crashing down in late february when the golden mosque in samarra was destroyed, dashing any hope that civil war could be averted.

by that time venerable walter cronkite, long retired but still active at the ripe age of 89, had already made his case for withdrawal in january:

"it's my belief that we should get out now," cronkite said in a meeting with reporters. ... the best time to have made a similar statement about iraq came after hurricane katrina, he said. "we had an opportunity to say to the world and iraqis after the hurricane disaster that mother nature has not treated us well and we find ourselves missing the amount of money it takes to help these poor people out of their homeless situation and rebuild some of our most important cities in the united states," he said. "therefore, we are going to have to bring our troops home."

but his pronouncement was no "cronkite moment": in fact the journalist had come out against the war at least as far back as december 2003:

kurtz: let's talk a little bit about your views. you were opposed, no question about it, to the war in iraq. why? cronkite: well, not so much the war in iraq, as the way we entered the war in iraq. without any support from our previous allies, or the united nations as a whole. it seemed to me that this was — this unilateralism is a very serious breach of diplomacy, of strategy.

having remained largely out of the public eye for twenty years, cronkite no longer holds the nation in the thrall he once enjoyed as television's preeminent newsman, despite the continued respect of the public and the absense of any clear heir. furthermore, his advanced age, his having "outed" himself as a "social liberal" and his having endorsed 2004 democratic presidential hopeful dennis "moonbeam" kucinich's proposal for a federal "department of peace" gave ruthless war boosters fodder that they could use to dismiss the news legend as a doddering "leftie" loon.

---

but there can be little doubt that america had reached a "cronkite moment", even if the man himself was unable to deliver it personally. no, today's proliferation of network and cable news options no longer affords a single voice that kind of power over the national conscience. but three noteworthy voices did chime that week in february when the golden mosque was destroyed — noteworthy because they all were vocal supporters of the invasion.

bill o'reilly, fox news host and the most watched personality on cable news, could certainly lay claim to an audience the size of cronkite's, but no one save o'reilly himself would lay claim to any of cronkite's gravitas. quite the opposite: o'reilly is a sanctimonious screeching cartoon. nevertheless, on february 21, the day before the bombing of the golden mosque, a flummoxed o'reilly proclaimed:

here is the essential problem in iraq. there are so many nuts in the country — so many crazies — that we can't control them. and i don't — we're never gonna be able to control them. so the only solution to this is to hand over everything to the iraqis as fast as humanly possible. because we just can't control these crazy people. this is all over the place. and that was the big mistake about america: they didn't — it was the crazy-people underestimation. we did not know how to deal with them — still don't. but they're just all over the place.

bill buckley, jr., called "the father of contemporary conservatism", founder of the national review, is known to the layperson as the longtime host of firing line, his public policy arena. buckley's real audience however is the washington beltway; the professional narcissists in the nation's capitol want to know what buckley thinks of them. two days after the bombing a morose buckley concluded:

one can't doubt that the american objective in iraq has failed. ... our mission has failed because iraqi animosities have proved uncontainable by an invading army of 130,000 americans. ... different plans have to be made. and the kernel here is the acknowledgment of defeat.

bill kristol, scion of a founder of neoconservatism and the founder of the weekly standard, is familiar to viewers as a regular commentator on the fox news circuit. as a founder and chairman of the project for the new american century (whose members had included neo-apostate francis fukuyama), the think tank behind much of bush's suicidal foreign policy, kristol is the rightful father of the iraq adventure. speaking on the weekend following the bombing, as would a step-parent to a brood of half-wits, a testy kristol complained:

kristol: there would not be civil war if zarqawi had not spent the last 2 1/2 years — had ex-saddamists with him, very skillfully going on the offensive slaughtering shia in karbala, now blowing up the mosque. wallace: they’re there. there are going to be more mosques to blow up. what do you do about the terrorists? kristol: kill them. defeat them. wallace: we’ve been trying. kristol: we’ve been trying, and our soldiers are doing terrifically, but we have not had a serious three-year effort to fight a war in iraq as opposed to laying the preconditions for getting out. connelly: i think that really begs the question then: what have we been doing over there for three-plus years? you say there hasn’t been a serious effort to rid that region of the terrorists. i just wonder what secretary rumsfeld would say in response to that or all the u.s. soldiers who have been over there all this time. kristol: secretary rumsfeld’s plan was to draw down to 30,000 troops at the end of major activities.

in less than a week, after civil war could no longer be denied, a popular champion of the war and a respected opinion leader publicly abandoned the mission and one of its key architects publicly disparaged its execution. the bills have tolled. the cock has crowed. despite his claims to disregard polls and pundits, there can be no doubt that george bush has heard the knell and the caw. sadly for those still destined to suffer the gravest mistake of his presidency, bush has yet to exhibit any of johnson's powers of comprehension and appears intent only on abandoning any reckoning or resolution to his ill-starred successors.

the architects of human destiny

dreams die hard when you're a neocon. it's just that the rest of us do the suffering.

in francis fukuyama's recent eulogy to neoconservatism, the newly repentant and newly retired acolyte laments that "the idealistic effort to use american power to promote democracy and human rights abroad that may suffer the greatest setback." "The problem with neoconservatism's agenda," he has come to realize, "lies not in its ends, which are as american as apple pie, but rather in the overmilitarized means by which it has sought to accomplish them."

it would be snide to suggest that fukuyama and his shadowy braintrust neither appreciated nor calculated, in their machiavellian way, the negative consequences of unleashing upon the planet yet another series of ideological wars, with their attendant destruction, mayhem, atrocities and moments of brazen television horror.

nonetheless we are forced to wonder if they also anticipated the renunciation of long-established international legal norms, the kidnappings, the secret gulags, the extra-legal detentions and last but never least the torture. did the constriction at home of civil freedoms that are "as american as apple pie" in order to expand them abroad enter into their cold calculus? how much of the neocons' original thought went into the actual implementation of american strategic policy, the so called "bush doctrine"?

while we may not know for decades the bush administration's real goal for intervention in the middle east, for the sake of this discussion let us temporarily put aside dark murmurs of oil and schemes of american hegemony. let us for the time being grant the administration its stated mission of furthering the development of freedom and democracy across the globe, even so far as to grant the terms "freedom" and "democracy" with the best possible meanings and all the visible blessings that go with them. are not these goals in themselves worth the price?

"imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last, but that it was essential and inevitable to torture to death one tiny creature — that baby beating its breast with its fist, for instance — and to found that edifice on its unavenged tears, would you consent to be the architect on those conditions?" — fyodor dostoevsky, the brothers karamazov, 1880

in the 2001 action film swordfish, john travolta's super-slick and super-glib super-spook starkly justifies himself by citing the classic theologic defense of god's apparent tolerance of evil, which defines evil as a necessary means towards a greater good. his character's name suggests, despite the hellish and high-casualty havok his plots unleash, that gabriel the spook, like his namesake the archangel, is in the service of a force for benevolence:

"[you're] not lookin' at the big picture, stan. here's a scenario: you have the power to cure all the world's diseases but the price for this is that you must kill a single innocent child. could you kill that child, stanley? no? you disappoint me. it's the greatest good."

neither dostoevsky nor poor stanley could take that step, but for others, like gabriel and the neocons, the question proves too compelling and the logic seems inescapable: indeed, how could one deny peace to the long-suffering billions of earth for the sake of only a single life, one child?

however, the logic is inescapable only if one presumes the power of a god: that one has perfect control over events and perfect knowledge that the intended outcome is absolutely guaranteed. since mere mortals, even neocons, are blessed with neither omnipotence or omniscience (much less omnibenevolence), that any human should answer such a question with not simply "yes, i would kill that child" but righteously "yes, i would kill untold thousands of children" demonstrates the epitome of arrogance and the source of the hubris only now admitted to by neocons like fukuyama:

"... successful pre-emption depends on the ability to predict the future accurately and on good intelligence, which was not forthcoming, while america's perceived unilateralism has isolated it as never before. it is not surprising that in its second term, the administration has been distancing itself from these policies and is in the process of rewriting the national security strategy document."

so without any guarantee that our goal, the spread of freedom and democracy, is achievable, can we still justify these machiavellian visions, the failures of the bush administration nonwithstanding? after all, though repentant he may be, fukuyama still sees, as quoted above, the failure of the neocon dream as a failure only of implementation:

"the problem with neoconservatism's agenda lies not in its ends, which are as american as apple pie, but rather in the overmilitarized means by which it has sought to accomplish them."

so long as men like fukuyama continue to believe that even though the execution be flawed, the neocon dream remains worthwhile, the rest of us shall remain the pawns of the would-be architects of human destiny.

to the architects then let us honestly restate dostoevsky's conundrum, and ask them to take into account the limits of human knowledge, power, competence and will:

if you believed that you might be able to make some men somewhat happier by torturing to death thousands of tiny creatures — those babies beating their breast with their fist, for instance — would you consent to be the architect on those conditions?