Thursday, March 31, 2005

Scale of International Morality

We're all so happy that Bush was right about promoting democracy in the Middle East. He was right to go to war, because look what a lot of good resulted.

On the scale of international morality, only one thing is worse than massacring thousands of your own civilians. That's what Hussein did. Worse than preying on people in your own country is massacring thousands of civilians in another country. That's what Bush did.

He said he did it for good reasons, and so far a lot of people have believed him. The Iraqis themselves are grateful that Bush rid them of Hussein, and only the most militant Iraqis would say that Bush is a tyrant. But we shouldn't forget about the crime he committed. He attacked another country without provocation: a weaker country that did not threaten us. Since Germany did it to Belgium in 1914, in the Great War that marked the advent of modern atrocities, we have regarded such attacks as crimes.

We aren't the first country to commit this crime, and we aren't the first country in a dominant position to do it. We could be the first democracy ever to have done it, though.

Americans don't do things like that. Not for any reason.

Ronald Reagan's Biggest Mistake: Response from Sam Goldman

Like you, I remember the Reagan years and the Ford years before them. Your facts may, indeed, be correct, but whatever went on inside Reagan's mind, I doubt that Jack Kemp was included in the ganglia.

As I see it, he had NO CHOICE but Bush. As you say, Ford was a long shot and reluctant. It never would have worked any more than any president taking a lower leadership role, even in a company. The case of JQ Adams is different as he went to the legislative branch---we may yet see Bill Clinton there, no?

Jack Kemp was on a conservative tear, particularly on abortion. The women's groups were, and are, quite strong and there is little chance that he'd have escaped lacerating attacks; those, then, rub off an Reagan and his charm and good looks go down the drain along with millions of female votes, along with men who viewed, and still do, the abortion issue as important.

Barry Goldwater? Too old.

Any senator? None were outstanding and California, to the rest of the country, still had a taint of Nixon as being kooky, almost criminal. RR needed a mid-west or eastern person.

Bush's qualities on paper are admirable. Like George McGovern, he has a weak-sounding voice, but fighter-pilots aren't weak, nor are oil-men in the patch, nor are Maine sailors.

The fact that W came along is a quirk of history. The fact that Albert Gore eschewed the support of Bill Clinton ranks as the stupidest act in American campaign history. He deserved to have lost, even with my vote in his pocket. I blame Gore for W, not RR and not GF.

Bring back Bill, I say.

All the best,

Sam

Ronald Reagan's Biggest Mistake

Most people would say that Iran-Contra was Ronald Reagan's biggest mistake. Certainly from the limited perspective of his own administration, and of Reagan's own goals, it was that. From the longer perspective of American political history, though, Reagan's biggest mistake was his selection of George Bush as his running mate in Detroit at the 1980 Republican National Convention.

We can't lay at Reagan's door all the bad consequences of this decision. No one would expect him to see what would happen a generation later because he put George Bush on the ticket that year. In the summer of 1980, Reagan wasn't even sure he could unseat a sitting president. His main concern was to select someone who could help him win. So let me tell you how this choice turned out wrong, how for want of a vice-presidential nominee, the republic was lost.

The usual story is that Reagan and Ford talked about a Dream Ticket in 1980, a former president and a popular candidate teaming up to make the Republican ticket unbeatable. Then the talks failed when Ford suggested something like a co-presidency. Reagan didn't like the sound of that, so in the middle of the convention he turned to George Bush, his strongest opponent in the primaries. Gerald Ford had overreached, the story went, and Reagan chose a natural alternate when he couldn't agree to Ford's terms.

That version tells part of the story, but it overlooks some interesting nuances. Those nuances explain why Reagan, usually so astute about things political, made a decision that he might not have made if he had spent more time on it. As it turned out, his choice of a running mate was more consequential than he might have guessed at the time.

Anne Edwards recently published a book called The Reagans: Portrait of a Marriage. She takes us to the spring of 1980, when Reagan is wrapping up the delegates he'll need to gain the his party's nomination at the Republican National Convention in August. Reagan first approaches Ford about the vice-presidency in March 1980, five months before the convention. "Will you help the Republican party out and be my running mate?" Reagan asks.

They'd mended their fences from the 1976 battle for the Republican presidential nomination, but Ford politely turned Reagan down. Vice-president isn't a role you take on readily after you've been president. Reagan, however, isn't one to take no for an answer, especially if he sees any possibility at all of success. He asks Ford to reconsider, and asks him again, until Ford agrees to talk about it. These talks become intense during the convention in Detroit, Michigan. Then Ford goes on live television...

The interview with former President Ford is part of CBS's broadcast from the convention hall. Walter Cronkite asks Ford about his role as vice-president. Ford answers in a way that seems to put him on an equal footing with Reagan. That raises doubts for Reagan, so he places a phone call to Ford's room in the hotel. Reagan presses Ford's representative for an answer. No more complications and negotiations - and I need your answer in three minutes! Ford doesn't come through with a positive reply within the time limit, so Reagan calls George Bush. Bush accepts immediately. The next thing you know, they are out on the convention floor together, a happy pair waving to the delegates!

We can see now that Ford really didn't want to accept. You can't fault him for thinking, "I would only do it if..." For Reagan, the negotiations with Ford were too public and too drawn out. He wanted to bring them to a quick end. He had to, because the convention was going to be over in a couple of days, and the delegates weren't going to wait around while he and Ford figured things out!

Problem was, Reagan's negotiations with Ford displaced the normal selection process, a process that takes quite a range of vice-presidential candidates into account. When the talks with Ford didn't produce an agreement, Reagan didn't have an alternate other than Bush ready to go out on the floor with him. He couldn't start the usual sounding out, vetting and selection process at that late hour.

Bush was a safe candidate. He was there in Detroit. Reagan could be confident that he would say yes. He had a lifelong record of service in the Navy, in the Republican party, and in the federal executive branch. The voters knew him. He was from the big state of Texas, and from the Northeastern establishment. So Bush had a lot to recommend him, even though Reagan thought that he was weak.

Reagan's opinion of Bush improved over the next eight years, but at the time he didn't respect his running mate that much. Reagan's assessment arose from their famous encounter at the high school gym in Nashua, New Hampshire, where Reagan stirred the audience when he declaimed, "I paid for this microphone!" Bush had not behaved with courage and grace during that episode, and Reagan observed it. But George Bush had all those other things to recommend him, so Reagan put him on the ticket.

I thought Reagan's selection of Bush was a mistake well before W. ran and won in 2000. Reagan needed a true believer like Jack Kemp on his side. It's not that Kemp or anyone else would have helped Reagan do a better job during his eight years in office. Bush himself served well as vice-president, and we know that the formal powers of the office are pretty limited to begin with. Bush did what Reagan asked him to do.

Bush turned out to be a poor choice because his role as vice-president made him Reagan's natural successor in 1988, and Bush was not a good successor for Reagan. In politics, though, you don't think about succession to an office you haven't even won yet. In 1980, Reagan and his team focused their energies on defeating an incumbent president. Their concentration would have been misplaced if they had been thinking about succession eight years down the line.
So I'm going to leave the rest of the analysis up in the air here. Part two comes next month. If I don't come through in February with some more remarks about Reagan's Republican successors, please catch me on it. You have a right to know!

Dowd: I Spy a Screw-Up

Maureen Dowd: I Spy a Screw-Up

Saturday, March 26, 2005

Jonathan Gurwitz: Two years later, does U.S. still belong in Iraq?

Jonathan Gurwitz: Two years later, does U.S. still belong in Iraq?

Web Posted: 03/20/2005 12:00 AM CST

San Antonio Express-News

A question is popping up around the globe as the topic of cocktail conversations. Even in countries where cocktails aren't served as a matter of religious propriety, people are incredulously asking, "Could George W. Bush be right?"

Youssef Ibrahim, a former Middle East correspondent for the New York Times, now head of a consulting firm in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, writing in the Washington Post:

"Regardless of Bush's intentions — which many Arabs and Muslims still view with suspicion — the U.S. president and his neoconservative crowd are helping to spawn a spirit of reform and a new vigor to confront dynastic dictatorships and other assorted ills.

"It's enough for someone like me, who has felt that Bush's attitude toward the Mideast has been all wrong, to wonder whether his idea of setting the Muslim house in order is right."

Columnist Richard Gwyn, a Bush and Iraq war critic, writing in the Toronto Star:

"Here it is time to set down in type the most difficult sentence in the English language. That sentence is short and simple. It is this: Bush was right.

"President George W. Bush wasn't right to invade Iraq. His justifications for doing so were (almost all of them) either frivolous, in comparison to the scale of the venture, or were outright fraudulent.

"Having conquered Iraq and deposed Saddam Hussein, Bush and his officials and generals then made every blunder that could be imagined by an occupying power, adding several original ones of their own.

"But on the defining, fundamental question, Bush was right."

Journalist Claus Christian Malzahn writing for Der Spiegel Online:

"When Reagan stood before the Brandenburg Gate and the Berlin Wall and demanded that Gorbachev 'tear down this wall,' he was lampooned the next day on the editorial pages. He is a dreamer, wrote commentators.

"When the voter turnout in Iraq recently exceeded that of many Western nations, the chorus of critique from Iraq alarmists was, at least for a couple of days, quieted. Just as quiet as the chorus of Germany experts on the night of Nov. 9, 1989, when the Wall fell. Just a thought for Old Europe to chew on. Bush might be right, just like Reagan was then."

From Casablanca to Kabul, people who were supposedly genetically predisposed to suffer despotism in silence are suddenly sounding the chorus of freedom.

If this groundswell for democratic change is causing Arab, Canadian and European critics to feel somewhat conflicted about Bush, it's giving bitter-enders on the American left — some of whom are still replaying the past two presidential elections — and cynics on the right a case of cognitive dissonance.

Bush, after all, is supposedly an evangelical simpleton and a tool of oil-producing, Arab autocrats or Zionist imperialists, depending upon the source.

But such ideological fantasies are now running headlong into a brick wall of historical facts. And so the critics must decide.

Are they on the side of millions of Afghans and Iraqis breaking the chains of despotism, Lebanese shaking off the occupation of a dictatorship, Egyptians asserting their political liberty and women across the Middle East claiming their basic human rights?

Or to ensure that nothing positive accrues to the despised Bush and to fulfill the Cassandra-like prophesies about the war in Iraq, are they on the side of homicidal religious fanatics, human rights criminals, racists and sexists?

To pose the question this way is a mistake. It borrows from Bush’s principle, “You’re either with us or you’re against us.” Where is the voice that says, “An aggressive war is wrong, period.”? It doesn’t matter what comes out of the war: it’s just wrong. Reagan himself held to three simple moral principles that he learned from his mom: Everything happens for a reason. God has a plan for you, for all of us. Everything works out for the best in the end. I believe those things, and if I believe them I have to acknowledge that they apply to big things like the war in Iraq. But the war itself is evil, and should not have happened. We can see, sixty years later, that the Holocaust and World War II had many good outcomes, but they were evil and they never should have happened. The Crucifixion, which we remember this Good Friday, had an unbelievably good outcome for all of us, but it was an evil act and it never should have happened. No one can justify it. The same reasoning applies to our aggressive war in Iraq. No amount of good consequences can ever justify evil acts. Period.

Supporters of the Bush Doctrine would be wrong to declare as democratic faits accomplis the astounding developments in the Middle East. The likelihood is great that events in the region will more closely resemble Tiananmen Square than the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Far more wrong, however, are administration opponents, blinded by ideological zeal, who are unwilling to grant any credit to Bush for these astounding developments, recognize the American military's role in shattering the Middle Eastern mantle of oppression or cheer the brave people of the region risking their lives to transform their moribund societies.

Monday, March 14, 2005

From Mark Twain

"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect."

- Mark Twain

Saturday, March 05, 2005

Democracy Now! Radio and TV News

Democracy Now!: radio and TV news

The Ronald Reagan We All Knew

"Ronald Reagan has a genius for American occasions. He is a Prospero of American memories, a magician who carries a bright, ideal America like a holograph in his mind and projects its image in the air.... Reagan, master illusionist, is himself a kind of American dream. Looking at his genial, crinkly face prompts a sense of wonder: How does he pull it off?" - Time, July 1986

Drug Wars

Who thinks we would have any more drug crimes were we to decriminalize drugs?

Why do we treat drugs and alcohol differently?

Why should we care if someone wants to take drugs, as long as they don't operate a car or other dangerous equipment while under the influence?

What does liberty mean if government can control what I put into my own body?

Friday, March 04, 2005

A New Political Party (Part II)

A New Political Party (Part II)

I wanted to report on some follow-up to A New Political Party, dated February 25, 2005. I checked out the American Reform Party on Google, and found http://americanreform.org. A gentleman active in that organization sent me a link for the New Frontier Coalition (NFC) at http://newfrontiercoalition.org. Here is my note to the gentleman who sent the link:
_________________________________________

Thanks for the link to the NFC site. Here are some quick thoughts after checking out the site and reading your recent correspondence.

The preamble to the NFC constitution is well-worded - more in response to that below. I think that the word coalition, as in New Frontier Coalition or in the ARP Coalition Committee, accurately describes the efforts under way now. I don't think it’s a good word to include in the name of a new third party that registers with the FEC. It implies that the individual parties maintain their identities within the coalition. If we had a parliamentary, proportional representation system like the Europeans or the Israelis, coalitions work fine. Our system doesn't work that way, so a new third party has to have unity built into its name. I don't think people will eagerly vote for a coalition in our system. What starts as a coalition has to coalesce into an organization that can field candidates and win votes.

I think almost half of the electorate is not happy with the existing two parties. Polls have put the independent vote at almost forty percent for some time, but my instinct tells me it's somewhat higher than that. Lincoln and Clinton won the White House with a little over forty percent of the popular vote. A new coalition needs to put together an organization that can win electoral votes in enough states to be credible. The Republicans nominated Fremont in 1856, and took the presidency only four years later. It could happen again.

Before the 2000 election, I wrote an article called "Where Are Candidates People Want?" I thought both candidates were poor at the time, and I don't believe I was the only one. A couple of weeks ago, the same thoughts were there: the two political parties are failing in one of their main jobs, which is to find candidates for office that people actually want. Fifty to sixty percent of the voters count themselves Democrat or Republican. They're happy enough, but the remaining forty to fifty percent are not happy at all with the choice they have on election day. Efforts to unite this group have to be successful.

Every unhappy voter has his or her reasons for dissatisfaction. For me, the war in Iraq gives special urgency to our situation. I wrote about the war a great deal in 2004 (see http://thelastjeffersonian.com/ugly_war.pdf), and the outcome of the November election made me see that we are truly in trouble. I do not want to see us lose our position of leadership in the world, and it's happening right in front of us. The effort to form a coalition is the only practical avenue out. The NFC preamble, with its tone of frustration and urgency, speaks to the mood that many have after the 2004 election.

To appeal to history once more: After one of his many unsuccessful races in the mid-1850s, Lincoln figured he was through with politics, and went back to his law practice. Then the Missouri Compromise came along, with its prospect of slavery in the new territories in the west. This proposal motivated Lincoln to become involved in politics again, and we know what happened after that. The war in Iraq is an event of similar magnitude. It has to motivate people to act, to do something after spending quite a while off the field. Like many, I've grumbled and complained about the two parties for a long time, but I didn't think I could do much about it. The efforts underway to form a new coalition give people like me a lot of hope, and a lot of reason to act.

That's enough for now. I'd like to post this message to the entire group, but it's long and I'm still pretty new. You are welcome to post it when you reply if you'd like. Perhaps it can give others encouragement, as your messages have encouraged me.

Steve


P.S. I agree with your remarks about the Libertarian Party. It is reasonably well organized, state by state, but its members' mental framework is that of a party that will always be small by comparison with others. They would not feel comfortable as part of a large coalition. A third party like the one you've described has to have an outlook that is as inclusive as possible.


Tuesday, March 01, 2005

Get Out Now

I used to be an intellectual. Now I'm just mad.

I thought of that tonight as I was reading about the events in Lebanon today. Scott McClellan or somebody like him said we have to be cautious about the resignation of the government there. The departure of the previous, pro-Syrian government is no guarantee, he said, that we'll see free or fair elections in the van. And who are we to commenting on whether another country has free or fair elections? Look at the election we've just been through. Would anyone call that a free election? Or was it a herd of scared voters stampeded by propaganda into voting for a war criminal? I don't want to think that it could be true, but right now I don't have any other explanation. I just cannot think how people could have voted for someone who committed the acts that Bush committed. I said something like that to Leslie, and she replied, "People are scared." That seems to be all that one can say.

So much of the reasoning about this war has been consequentialist. It'll all be worth it, we say, if we can bring about peace and democracy in the Middle East. It'll all be worth it - all the blood and grief - if we can bring democracy and freedom to the whole region. I say no, no, no. Stop measuring things in the balance. We can't bring out the scales of international justice here, to offset bad causes with good outcomes. We can't excuse ourselves by pointing to the good we did. There are some things you just don't do, no matter what. You don't shoot someone in the back, you don't sleep with your neighbor's wife, you don't falsely defame someone to protect yourself, and you don't attack another country that hasn't threatened you. To say that the war in Iraq is okay as long as we achieve a good outcome there is like saying that the Nazi holocaust was okay because the state of Israel could never have been created otherwise. The Jewish homeland became possible because Hitler tried to wipe out all of the Jews in Europe. No one says the holocaust was worth it because it gave birth to Israel.

All the commentators now say that whatever you think of the war, the act is done now and we have to make the best of it. We have to stick it out. Well, yes, we do have to make the best of it, but the second point about sticking it out does not follow from the first. The commentators take for granted, without bothering to argue the point, that the way to make the best of of Iraq is to stay in Iraq. What makes us think that we are having a salutary effect there? What makes us think, when almost everyone there hates us, that we can help them? It's a universal rule of human relations that you can't help someone who doesn't want to be helped. Why shouldn't this principle apply to nations as well? The Iraqis don't want our help. Even our puppets are happy to carry on their affairs without us. What can we do there?

The conventional answer is that we have to stay in Iraq until we have trained sufficient security forces to maintain peace and order in the land. We have to be patient, people say. Give the Iraqis time and they will develop security forces with the training, morale, discipline, leadership, equipment, information and power to defeat the insurgency and its criminal allies.

Now give that answer a second thought. We have 150,000 soldiers in Iraq: the best equipped, most committed, most highly trained and powerful force in the history of warfare. No one questions the quality of their leadership. Everyone comments on how their morale holds up despite the terrible circumstances of their duty. Their ability to gather information and locate enemy leaders and stores has improved. Yet this force is clearly unable to disarm its foe. If we can't disarm the insurgency with 150,000 troops, why do we think that 100,000 Iraqis can do it? The Iraqi force won't have the armor, the heavy weaponry, or the air power that we do. The insurgency has exploited our vulnerabilities, and Iraqi vulnerabilities, with skill and resolve. Why do we think the Iraqis will succeed where we have failed? Why do we think that we can train them to do what we can't do ourselves?

Now give the be patient answer a third thought. The enemy says that they will continue to attack Iraqi security forces as long as they act in concert with the American occupation forces. People say that if we leave Iraq a civil war could develop, but a civil war has already developed because of our presence there. The insurgents have directed their attacks against Iraqis who fight on our side. Suppose we left and the insurgents had no occupation to fight against. Would they continue to kill Iraqis? Would suicide bombers continue to drive their cars into the middle of large crowds of recruits to blow them up? We don't know. But the logic of this question is clear. There's a chance that the civil war in Iraq would take a different course were we to withdraw. And we can't know what would happen were we to withdraw unless we actually do it.

People say that we have to stay in Iraq three to five years, that we have to be ready to lose as many soldiers there as we lost civilians on September 11, 2001. Do the people who say that actually believe that at the end of five years of occupation, we'll have a situation in Iraq that's much better than it is now? Time is not on our side here, yet people say be patient. Don't rush to get out of there - no timetables for withdrawal. But what evidence do we have that thirty-six more months and 1,500 more lives will bring the outcome we want? Who can point to a process or a set of conditions that indicates progress toward our goal? Any rational analyst of this war can see that our presence in Iraq is the key catalyst for the violence there. The dynamics of the war will change when we are gone. We don't know how they'll change, but we do know that things won't stay the same if we leave.

That brings me to a last point. Consequentialist reasoning in this situation focuses on what we can do for the Iraqis, and by their example what we can do for the entire region. The argument to outcomes says that if we can spawn democracy throughout the Middle East and South Asia, we can defeat Al Qaeda. Even if you believe that argument, even if you believe that we are fighting our enemies in Iraq so we don't have to fight them here, we have more direct ways to accomplish the same goal. The visionary argument says that if we bring democracy to the entire region, we can drain the fundamentalist swamp and get rid of the murderous alligators that threaten us. Our experience with that kind of operation indicates that even if you do obliterate the swamp, the alligators just go somewhere else, like the golf courses.

We have to attack Al Qaeda directly. We have to act against our enemy in collaboration with other countries, in collaboration with other groups. We have to concentrate on the tasks right in front of us. The visionaries offer up an appealing goal - security for the West if we can make the whole Middle East safe for democracy - but the vision is illusory. We will lose our position of leadership in the world if we follow their path. In fact, we already have lost it.