Tuesday, February 07, 2006
Monday, February 06, 2006
Saturday, February 04, 2006
Thursday, February 02, 2006
Tuesday, January 31, 2006
Monday, January 30, 2006
Friday, January 27, 2006
Thursday, January 26, 2006
Wednesday, January 25, 2006
Tuesday, January 24, 2006
The President's Latest Q & A Session
So now we have to ask, Mr. President, what wouldn't you do?
Say again?
Well, you've authorized warrantless domestic wiretaps, which are clearly illegal. You simply can't do domestic searches without a warrant. When you violate a law that's so clear-cut, I'd like to ask, what wouldn't you do? It's useful to know what you think the limits on your executive power are.
Okay, I'll give you some good examples. I wouldn't authorize torture for people we want to interrogate and intimidate.
You've already done that.
I wouldn't set up a system of prisons outside of the United States where we can keep our prisoners of war.
You've already done that.
I certainly wouldn't leak the name of one our intelligence agents to the domestic press in order to discredit my opponents. You could even call that treason.
You've already done that, too, Mr. President.
Give me a break here. How about this? The president's powers as commander in chief are pretty broad, but to launch an attack on a country that's not an immediate threat to us would go beyond my power. It would violate the UN charter as well.
But sir, you did that, too.
You've got me pinned down pretty well now. Can you think of anything I haven't done yet?
Well, you could drop a nuclear bomb on North Korea to make it give up its nuclear weapons. You'd teach them a lesson.
Yes.
And you could drop another bomb on Harvard University to quiet Alan Dershowitz and all those other people on the faculty who keep criticizing you.
I don't think Ted Kennedy would like that very much.
Mr. President, what's one university in the War on Terror? If it's necessary to protect the American people, you should do it.
How about if I just roll some tanks into Harvard Square? That wouldn't be so drastic. Maybe not as effective, either.
Come on, Mr. President, you have a reputation to maintain here. You don't want Dick Cheney to call you a namby pamby behind your back, do you?
Of course not, but I don't want to destroy America. I want to save it. Pretty soon you and your friends will say that I want to destroy America in order to save it.
You've already done that.
Say again?
Well, you've authorized warrantless domestic wiretaps, which are clearly illegal. You simply can't do domestic searches without a warrant. When you violate a law that's so clear-cut, I'd like to ask, what wouldn't you do? It's useful to know what you think the limits on your executive power are.
Okay, I'll give you some good examples. I wouldn't authorize torture for people we want to interrogate and intimidate.
You've already done that.
I wouldn't set up a system of prisons outside of the United States where we can keep our prisoners of war.
You've already done that.
I certainly wouldn't leak the name of one our intelligence agents to the domestic press in order to discredit my opponents. You could even call that treason.
You've already done that, too, Mr. President.
Give me a break here. How about this? The president's powers as commander in chief are pretty broad, but to launch an attack on a country that's not an immediate threat to us would go beyond my power. It would violate the UN charter as well.
But sir, you did that, too.
You've got me pinned down pretty well now. Can you think of anything I haven't done yet?
Well, you could drop a nuclear bomb on North Korea to make it give up its nuclear weapons. You'd teach them a lesson.
Yes.
And you could drop another bomb on Harvard University to quiet Alan Dershowitz and all those other people on the faculty who keep criticizing you.
I don't think Ted Kennedy would like that very much.
Mr. President, what's one university in the War on Terror? If it's necessary to protect the American people, you should do it.
How about if I just roll some tanks into Harvard Square? That wouldn't be so drastic. Maybe not as effective, either.
Come on, Mr. President, you have a reputation to maintain here. You don't want Dick Cheney to call you a namby pamby behind your back, do you?
Of course not, but I don't want to destroy America. I want to save it. Pretty soon you and your friends will say that I want to destroy America in order to save it.
You've already done that.
Monday, January 23, 2006
Sunday, January 22, 2006
Biographer Richard Reeves examines President Reagan, a masterful rhetorician
Wichita Eagle | 01/22/2006 | Biographer Richard Reeves examines President Reagan, a masterful rhetorician:
"Did Reagan's brainy White House staff members manipulate him? No way, Reeves says. As White House Chief of Staff James A. Baker III commented, 'He treats us all the same, as hired help.' A later chief of staff, Donald Regan, told Reeves that everybody working in the White House 'thought he was smarter than the president.' Reeves responded, 'Including you?' Regan's reply: 'Especially me.' But it was Reagan, not Baker or Regan, who managed to persuade power brokers to more than double the federal tax dollars devoted to the military, to decrease taxation of the wealthy, and to substantially neutralize the Soviet Union's influence in a worldwide Cold War."
"Did Reagan's brainy White House staff members manipulate him? No way, Reeves says. As White House Chief of Staff James A. Baker III commented, 'He treats us all the same, as hired help.' A later chief of staff, Donald Regan, told Reeves that everybody working in the White House 'thought he was smarter than the president.' Reeves responded, 'Including you?' Regan's reply: 'Especially me.' But it was Reagan, not Baker or Regan, who managed to persuade power brokers to more than double the federal tax dollars devoted to the military, to decrease taxation of the wealthy, and to substantially neutralize the Soviet Union's influence in a worldwide Cold War."
Saturday, January 21, 2006
Friday, January 20, 2006
Legal Rationale by Justice Dept. on Spying Effort - New York Times
Legal Rationale by Justice Dept. on Spying Effort - New York Times
This proves it then, that we have an unconstitutional presidency that will operate outside the law. Any person who says that a wiretap in the United States without a warrant is justified can't be right. National security requires some secrecy, but a warrantless wiretap can't be justified under any legal doctrine. To make such a wiretap permissible, we would have to change the law. The president's defense of his actions shows that if the law conflicts with his beliefs about what national security requires, he'll go with his beliefs.
This proves it then, that we have an unconstitutional presidency that will operate outside the law. Any person who says that a wiretap in the United States without a warrant is justified can't be right. National security requires some secrecy, but a warrantless wiretap can't be justified under any legal doctrine. To make such a wiretap permissible, we would have to change the law. The president's defense of his actions shows that if the law conflicts with his beliefs about what national security requires, he'll go with his beliefs.
Thursday, January 19, 2006
Friday, January 13, 2006
Tuesday, January 10, 2006
http://www-internal.mathworks.com: News
http://www-internal.mathworks.com: News
What is the relationship between the war in Iraq and this action by Iran? Do you see one?
What is the relationship between the war in Iraq and this action by Iran? Do you see one?
Monday, January 09, 2006
Sunday, January 08, 2006
Monday, January 02, 2006
Saturday, December 31, 2005
Friday, December 30, 2005
Monday, December 26, 2005
Thursday, December 22, 2005
Wednesday, December 21, 2005
Opponents of the War in Iraq Need a Strategy
Telegraph | News | I have been beaten and tortured, says tyrant
Did Americans torture Hussein? He's getting what he deserves, you say? Remember that the important matter isn't really what Hussein says, or even what Americans did to him. It's what people believe about what he says that counts. After Abu Ghraib and everything else they've heard, people in the region will believe that Hussein is probably telling the truth. The Butcher of Baghdad has become the Lion of Baghdad in a few short weeks, and we have lost another propaganda skirmish. Did you expect three years ago that Hussein would accuse us of torture, and that people would believe him? Did you expect three years ago that Hussein would have more credibility in the region than we do? And we think we're going to lead the way to democracy?
I still wish I could remember what I wrote about torture a few weeks ago. It wasn't meant to be, I guess. The character of these pieces is that I explore what's on my mind now. I won't be able to reconstruct what was on my mind then. Remember this argument, then, because it's the thread that runs through all of the debate about whether or not the CIA or any other agency of the United States ought to be able to mistreat prisoners of war. The United States needs the help of other countries to win this war. It can't win the current war in Iraq alone, but here I'm talking about the larger war against Al Qaeda. If the United States mistreats the people it captures in the course of that war, it won't get the assistance it needs. We are in a new world here. We cannot win the war that started on September 11 alone.
For over three years now, I've been angry about the war in Iraq. I was angry about it the day Bush first intimated that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein was his vaunted goal, the feted next step in the so-called war on terror. I must realize now that anger, now vented, won't do much to change our policy. We don't have that many fence-sitters anymore. People have made up their minds about the war, and the country is roughly two to one against it. The people who think the war will advance our goals won't change their minds at this point. The big problem now is that the people who are against the war don't have much cohesion. They can't agree about what we should do next, and they haven't gathered their ideas and their political force around a strong set of leaders. As a result, their anger and their desire to effect a change of course have not had much influence. It's like a pot of boiling water evaporating to steam: lots of heat and turmoil down below, and not much effect from the steam above. The steam, not pressurized, can't exert any force. Somehow the anti-war movement has to exert some force.
My belief is that as long as we talk about timetables for withdrawal and the like, the people who oppose the war will continue to be ineffectual. People who speak against the war in Iraq need to fashion a strategy for prosecuting the war against Al Qaeda. The administration has such a strategy. Victory in Iraq will bring democracy to the region, and that will so weaken Al Qaeda that it won't be a threat to us anymore. It doesn't matter that the strategy is based on the false premise that democratic politics will make Al Qaeda ineffectual. It's a strategy nevertheless. If the Democrats, Republicans, and independents who oppose the war don't formulate a broad strategy to counter the administration's, they'll be stuck in a reactive mode. If all the war's opponents can offer is a timetable for withdrawal, they won't have a plan that anyone can get behind. Though people don't say it, everyone feels uncomfortable about leaving Iraq having no idea about what's next. If we leave Iraq without any kind of plan at all for what's next, that really will be a defeat.
So you want to ask now, what would such a strategy look like? I've said these things about what we should do so often that I think it must be boring by now. Yet mostly I say these things in private, and it's been a while since I wrote them down in one place. The first thing we need to do is admit to the rest of the world that the invasion of Iraq was a huge mistake. We can find a way to do that without losing face. We can maintain the honor of our armed forces and also admit to our allies, in the Middle East and elsewhere, that the war in Iraq ought not to have occurred. The second part of this plan is to withdraw from Iraq in a way that takes political factors into account. This process is a complicated one, and requires us to work closely with our allies, and with many different groups inside Iraq. Our current political leaders have shown no willingness or ability to engage in this process, so talking about it in detail is a discouraging exercise.
The third part of this strategy is to renew the war against Al Qaeda. To do that, we need to reestablish our military strength in Afghanistan. We also need to go to work in Pakistan. The earthquake there gives us an unmatched opportunity to do good there. We need their friendship. They deserve our help. If we can establish a political, military, and humanitarian presence in Afghanistan, and a humanitarian presence in Pakistan, we will have done so much to correct the mistakes of the last three years. Let's make the first non-quake related project the construction of an interstate highway system in Afghanistan. We need the transportation network for our own purposes, and the whole region would benefit from it. What a symbol of success we'd have. If we help the Pakistanis who lost their homes and livelihoods in the earthquake, we'll have another good reason to be active in the area, and a multitude of good deeds to create good will. We badly need to talk with people in that area. We can't win the war against Al Qaeda without bringing American goodness to south Asia. American goodness is precisely the opposite of what we've shown during the occupation of Iraq.
Did Americans torture Hussein? He's getting what he deserves, you say? Remember that the important matter isn't really what Hussein says, or even what Americans did to him. It's what people believe about what he says that counts. After Abu Ghraib and everything else they've heard, people in the region will believe that Hussein is probably telling the truth. The Butcher of Baghdad has become the Lion of Baghdad in a few short weeks, and we have lost another propaganda skirmish. Did you expect three years ago that Hussein would accuse us of torture, and that people would believe him? Did you expect three years ago that Hussein would have more credibility in the region than we do? And we think we're going to lead the way to democracy?
I still wish I could remember what I wrote about torture a few weeks ago. It wasn't meant to be, I guess. The character of these pieces is that I explore what's on my mind now. I won't be able to reconstruct what was on my mind then. Remember this argument, then, because it's the thread that runs through all of the debate about whether or not the CIA or any other agency of the United States ought to be able to mistreat prisoners of war. The United States needs the help of other countries to win this war. It can't win the current war in Iraq alone, but here I'm talking about the larger war against Al Qaeda. If the United States mistreats the people it captures in the course of that war, it won't get the assistance it needs. We are in a new world here. We cannot win the war that started on September 11 alone.
For over three years now, I've been angry about the war in Iraq. I was angry about it the day Bush first intimated that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein was his vaunted goal, the feted next step in the so-called war on terror. I must realize now that anger, now vented, won't do much to change our policy. We don't have that many fence-sitters anymore. People have made up their minds about the war, and the country is roughly two to one against it. The people who think the war will advance our goals won't change their minds at this point. The big problem now is that the people who are against the war don't have much cohesion. They can't agree about what we should do next, and they haven't gathered their ideas and their political force around a strong set of leaders. As a result, their anger and their desire to effect a change of course have not had much influence. It's like a pot of boiling water evaporating to steam: lots of heat and turmoil down below, and not much effect from the steam above. The steam, not pressurized, can't exert any force. Somehow the anti-war movement has to exert some force.
My belief is that as long as we talk about timetables for withdrawal and the like, the people who oppose the war will continue to be ineffectual. People who speak against the war in Iraq need to fashion a strategy for prosecuting the war against Al Qaeda. The administration has such a strategy. Victory in Iraq will bring democracy to the region, and that will so weaken Al Qaeda that it won't be a threat to us anymore. It doesn't matter that the strategy is based on the false premise that democratic politics will make Al Qaeda ineffectual. It's a strategy nevertheless. If the Democrats, Republicans, and independents who oppose the war don't formulate a broad strategy to counter the administration's, they'll be stuck in a reactive mode. If all the war's opponents can offer is a timetable for withdrawal, they won't have a plan that anyone can get behind. Though people don't say it, everyone feels uncomfortable about leaving Iraq having no idea about what's next. If we leave Iraq without any kind of plan at all for what's next, that really will be a defeat.
So you want to ask now, what would such a strategy look like? I've said these things about what we should do so often that I think it must be boring by now. Yet mostly I say these things in private, and it's been a while since I wrote them down in one place. The first thing we need to do is admit to the rest of the world that the invasion of Iraq was a huge mistake. We can find a way to do that without losing face. We can maintain the honor of our armed forces and also admit to our allies, in the Middle East and elsewhere, that the war in Iraq ought not to have occurred. The second part of this plan is to withdraw from Iraq in a way that takes political factors into account. This process is a complicated one, and requires us to work closely with our allies, and with many different groups inside Iraq. Our current political leaders have shown no willingness or ability to engage in this process, so talking about it in detail is a discouraging exercise.
The third part of this strategy is to renew the war against Al Qaeda. To do that, we need to reestablish our military strength in Afghanistan. We also need to go to work in Pakistan. The earthquake there gives us an unmatched opportunity to do good there. We need their friendship. They deserve our help. If we can establish a political, military, and humanitarian presence in Afghanistan, and a humanitarian presence in Pakistan, we will have done so much to correct the mistakes of the last three years. Let's make the first non-quake related project the construction of an interstate highway system in Afghanistan. We need the transportation network for our own purposes, and the whole region would benefit from it. What a symbol of success we'd have. If we help the Pakistanis who lost their homes and livelihoods in the earthquake, we'll have another good reason to be active in the area, and a multitude of good deeds to create good will. We badly need to talk with people in that area. We can't win the war against Al Qaeda without bringing American goodness to south Asia. American goodness is precisely the opposite of what we've shown during the occupation of Iraq.
Monday, December 19, 2005
Sunday, December 18, 2005
Bush Says U.S. Is Winning in Iraq, Sacrifices Ahead
Bloomberg.com: U.S.
All the talk is about troop levels, a timetable for troop withdrawals, and the cost of the war. We're also talking about torture, limits to surveillance in the United States, and democratization in Iraq. Before you try to reach a judgment about any of these issues, ask yourself about the author of the situation we are in now. Ask yourself you have confidence in this leader, who is trying so hard to vindicate himself. He says that we are winning the war in Iraq, and he asks you to have confidence that he is right. But we have no reason to believe anything this man says. He says that to give up his project in Iraq now would be an act of recklessness. The act of recklessness right now is to believe that our president knows what he is doing.
Ask yourself these questions as you decide whether or not to believe Mr. Bush. The questions are not designed to be fair to the president. They highlight what he has actually done, as opposed to what he thinks he has done.
What do you think of a president who, a year and a half after 9/11, attacked a country that had nothing to do with 9/11?
What do you think of a president who authorizes the NSA to spy on American citizens without judicial oversight?
What do you think of a president who thinks it is alright to imprison the citizens of other countries in secret? Who wants to mistreat prisoners in order to force them to give us information?
Here is the most troubling question of all. What confidence can you have in a leader who does not understand the relationship between political and military problems? Who cannot coordinate political and military initiatives in order to solve problems in both areas? Bush has outlined a strategy for victory, as he calls it. The only path to victory, even on his own terms, requires a high degree of competence and sophistication in the handling of political and military processes in Iraq, in the region, and in the entire world. Yet Bush and his team have shown nothing but incompetence and simple mindedness ever since Bush announced that he wanted to overthrow Hussein by force.
He cannot ask for our loyalty and confidence now, and expect to get it. He has no record to stand on. In three years he has managed to make our country an object of fear, contempt, and hatred in one country after another. The entire world stood ready to help us take on our enemies in the fall of 2001, for our enemies were their enemies. Everyone not already against us was already for us. No one questioned our leadership, or doubted our willingness to fight. All counted themselves lucky to be fighting alongside us.
Now survey the state of the world at the end of 2005. The people of no country, not even Great Britain, want to fight with us now. People suspect us of dirty politics at every turn. No one has confidence in our judgment, or in our ability to fight any war - the one in Iraq or the one against Al Qaeda, to a successful conclusion. No one thinks any longer that our success and their success are linked.
Now the president asks for our support as he continues along the path that he has set out. He does not deserve our followership any more than he deserves to be our leader. He has proven his incompetence, his dishonesty, and his inability to accomplish what he says he is going to accomplish. We have to find a way to make this man irrelevant. If we go the way he says we ought to go, if we follow him as we have followed him in the past, we will keep failing.
Mr. Bush may be curiously right about one of his arguments. He says that to turn our back on Iraq now would be disastrous. We can say with some confidence that anything we do under his leadership is going to be disastrous. Yes, our failures under his leadership may be irreversible, so serious that we will crash no matter what we do. But the fight isn't over yet. We may find better leadership, and our opponents may make serious mistakes, too. If we continue to fight under incompetent leadership, though, we will find a collapse at the end of this path that no one could have conceived during the period of unity after 9/11.
Saturday, December 17, 2005
Editorial: Iraq war was wrong
asahi.com Iraq war was wrong:
"Including Japan, all nations that have supported or participated in the Iraq war ought to admit their mistakes now. Only then will it become possible to reorganize the framework of global cooperation with Iraq's reconstruction."
"Including Japan, all nations that have supported or participated in the Iraq war ought to admit their mistakes now. Only then will it become possible to reorganize the framework of global cooperation with Iraq's reconstruction."
The Seattle Times: Nation & World: Patriot Act renewal stalls after spy report
"We need to be more vigilant," Sununu said, paraphrasing Benjamin Franklin: "Those that would give up essential liberty in pursuit of a little temporary security deserve neither liberty nor security."
Wednesday, December 14, 2005
Tuesday, December 13, 2005
Monday, December 12, 2005
Emerson
“Don't be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an
experiment. The more experiments you make the better."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
experiment. The more experiments you make the better."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
Sunday, December 11, 2005
Wednesday, December 07, 2005
Tuesday, December 06, 2005
Monday, December 05, 2005
Friday, November 25, 2005
Thursday, November 24, 2005
The Intelligence Issue - Another Pass
On Saturday I wrote a few paragraphs, then lost them when I cleaned the keyboard! Tip: always save your work before you do anything else. It happens to all of us.
Anyway, here is one of the main points from the original. If we had not failed in Iraq, we would not be so concerned with the intelligence issue now. Since we have failed, we want to find out who is responsible for the failure, and this seems a promising path, both for Bush's political opponents and for people who are simply dismayed by how things have turned out.
Here's another way to put it. This perspective highlights the irrelevance of the issue to the central problem, which is what we should do now. If Bush's operations in Iraq had turned out great, we wouldn't care how dishonest he was in getting us there. Because his operations there have turned out horribly, we'll rightly hold him responsible, and that's true even if he were totally honest in the arguments he used to get us there. Yes, it was maddening to listen to the way he argued his case back when the war was still in the future. Bush lost his credibility with me a long, long time ago. Now, though, we don't need to make judgments about what he says he's going to do. We've seen it. Now we can make judgments about what he has already done. We can see that what he has done is a complete failure.
That's not to say that Bush's honesty is a non-issue. We need to make judgments about his trustworthiness all the time. We don't need to hash out WMD and the CIA's intelligence for the hundredth time, though. We can judge Bush by his own statements here. All of the reasons Bush gave for going into Iraq were false. He has one left, the one that he clings to all the time now. We're going to bring democracy to Iraq and to the region. We're going to prevent a civil war, and help the Iraqi people secure their country. Who believes that anymore? Bush has failed by his own standards. That's the only standard you can judge a leader by. Has the leader achieved what he said he would achieve? Has he made things better, or worse? You answer that for yourself.
Reagan said that heroes aren't braver than the rest of us, they're just braver five minutes longer. I think abou that saying pretty often. It seems that success often comes from the fortitude that let's you stick it out just a little bit longer. You keep going even when you think it's not worth it anymore. Your dream seems further away then ever, but you persevere. That does take courage. Does this principle hold here? Will we succeed in Iraq if we hold on a little longer? Do you think that our current leadership has the capacity to achieve success, given their past record? You answer that for yourself.
Someday, the war in Iraq will end, and the Republicans will take credit for it. They'll say, "See, we told you that peace would come to that country eventually, if we just saw it through." They'll say that even if the end of the war eventually comes about because we left the country. It's not going to end while we're there, that's for sure.
For a long time, defenders of the war kept saying that if we left, a civil war would break out. We had to stay there to prevent that. Now the country's anarchy has deteriorated into civil war: a war of all against all, it seems, except that the country's ethnic groups do keep the conflict more organized than that. Now even the war's most vigorous defenders can't deny what we see all around us there. We have a civil war there now, and we have not been able to prevent it.
Now the war's defenders say that we can't fail in Iraq. We can't signal defeat to our opponents. We can't let the terrorists, as we like to call them, show the world that they can beat us. Soon we'll see that we've been failing in Iraq from the start. Yes, we removed Hussein from power, but that's not what we need to be doing. Saddam Hussein did not attack us on September 11. Let me say that again. Saddam Hussein did not attack us on September 11. He did not help those who did attack us. Let me say that again. He did not help those who did attack us. We cannot go around attacking countries because we think that some people in those countries might want to attack us in the future. Bush has said the opposite: if we think someone in another country might attack us in the future, we have to take action right now. After September 11, preemptive war is a necessity.
Well let's get something straight: the Iraq war was not preemptive and it certainly is not necessary. The commentators' idea that this was a war of choice is absurd. The war is both unnecessary and foolish. If you want to call a foolish mistake a choice, that's fine. It makes you look that much worse, if you admit that your crime was the result of a deliberate choice.
All right, I want to say this part as clearly as I can. The war in Iraq is a crime. That doesn't make criminals of the brave soldiers fighting the war. You can draw your own conclusions about the people who started the war. It doesn't matter what reasons they give to defend their aggression. They believe that the September 11 attacks justify any acts of self-defense they deem necessary. They believe that they have to undertake measures, even measures that violate the United Nations charter, in order to protect the United States from more attacks. They'll never admit that they've done something wrong. But even though the Democrats have been gutless wonders, and have declined to call the war a crime, historians will not be quite as bland. Let's hope they do have the courage to tell the truth. Maybe they'll read these essays someday after I'm gone, and they'll agree. They'll wonder why so few commentators said the truth - that the war is a crime. The only explanation is that no one is willing to say such things in the midst of a war, since it harms morale, and injures our fighting strength.
We have to do whatever is right and just and effective to absolve this crime. We can't win the war that started on September 11 from where we are now. We can't win the war in Iraq, either. To win the first we have to stop fighting the second. To win the first we have to pull out from Iraq and regroup. That is not cutting and running. Regrouping accomplishes a lot of practical tasks on the battlefield. When an army regroups, it readies itself for the next stage of the battle. It takes units that are scattered, leaderless and ineffective and makes them effective again. Weapons and water are distributed, assignments given, and leaders are connected with troops that need new orders. We need to regroup after the Iraq fiasco. We night to regroup in order to fight effectively again. Regrouping is not defeat.
That's not going to happen for the next three years, though, so we have to be patient. In the meantime, we have to find leaders who can help to plan the next stage of the war even though they do not hold power in our government. We have to be ready for the changes that are coming. We may not have hope now of rapid progress anywhere, but we have to act quickly when the time comes. We have to prepare.
That's all for tonight. Please visit The Last Jeffersonian, and please sign up for the journal on the home page if you haven't already!
Anyway, here is one of the main points from the original. If we had not failed in Iraq, we would not be so concerned with the intelligence issue now. Since we have failed, we want to find out who is responsible for the failure, and this seems a promising path, both for Bush's political opponents and for people who are simply dismayed by how things have turned out.
Here's another way to put it. This perspective highlights the irrelevance of the issue to the central problem, which is what we should do now. If Bush's operations in Iraq had turned out great, we wouldn't care how dishonest he was in getting us there. Because his operations there have turned out horribly, we'll rightly hold him responsible, and that's true even if he were totally honest in the arguments he used to get us there. Yes, it was maddening to listen to the way he argued his case back when the war was still in the future. Bush lost his credibility with me a long, long time ago. Now, though, we don't need to make judgments about what he says he's going to do. We've seen it. Now we can make judgments about what he has already done. We can see that what he has done is a complete failure.
That's not to say that Bush's honesty is a non-issue. We need to make judgments about his trustworthiness all the time. We don't need to hash out WMD and the CIA's intelligence for the hundredth time, though. We can judge Bush by his own statements here. All of the reasons Bush gave for going into Iraq were false. He has one left, the one that he clings to all the time now. We're going to bring democracy to Iraq and to the region. We're going to prevent a civil war, and help the Iraqi people secure their country. Who believes that anymore? Bush has failed by his own standards. That's the only standard you can judge a leader by. Has the leader achieved what he said he would achieve? Has he made things better, or worse? You answer that for yourself.
Reagan said that heroes aren't braver than the rest of us, they're just braver five minutes longer. I think abou that saying pretty often. It seems that success often comes from the fortitude that let's you stick it out just a little bit longer. You keep going even when you think it's not worth it anymore. Your dream seems further away then ever, but you persevere. That does take courage. Does this principle hold here? Will we succeed in Iraq if we hold on a little longer? Do you think that our current leadership has the capacity to achieve success, given their past record? You answer that for yourself.
Someday, the war in Iraq will end, and the Republicans will take credit for it. They'll say, "See, we told you that peace would come to that country eventually, if we just saw it through." They'll say that even if the end of the war eventually comes about because we left the country. It's not going to end while we're there, that's for sure.
For a long time, defenders of the war kept saying that if we left, a civil war would break out. We had to stay there to prevent that. Now the country's anarchy has deteriorated into civil war: a war of all against all, it seems, except that the country's ethnic groups do keep the conflict more organized than that. Now even the war's most vigorous defenders can't deny what we see all around us there. We have a civil war there now, and we have not been able to prevent it.
Now the war's defenders say that we can't fail in Iraq. We can't signal defeat to our opponents. We can't let the terrorists, as we like to call them, show the world that they can beat us. Soon we'll see that we've been failing in Iraq from the start. Yes, we removed Hussein from power, but that's not what we need to be doing. Saddam Hussein did not attack us on September 11. Let me say that again. Saddam Hussein did not attack us on September 11. He did not help those who did attack us. Let me say that again. He did not help those who did attack us. We cannot go around attacking countries because we think that some people in those countries might want to attack us in the future. Bush has said the opposite: if we think someone in another country might attack us in the future, we have to take action right now. After September 11, preemptive war is a necessity.
Well let's get something straight: the Iraq war was not preemptive and it certainly is not necessary. The commentators' idea that this was a war of choice is absurd. The war is both unnecessary and foolish. If you want to call a foolish mistake a choice, that's fine. It makes you look that much worse, if you admit that your crime was the result of a deliberate choice.
All right, I want to say this part as clearly as I can. The war in Iraq is a crime. That doesn't make criminals of the brave soldiers fighting the war. You can draw your own conclusions about the people who started the war. It doesn't matter what reasons they give to defend their aggression. They believe that the September 11 attacks justify any acts of self-defense they deem necessary. They believe that they have to undertake measures, even measures that violate the United Nations charter, in order to protect the United States from more attacks. They'll never admit that they've done something wrong. But even though the Democrats have been gutless wonders, and have declined to call the war a crime, historians will not be quite as bland. Let's hope they do have the courage to tell the truth. Maybe they'll read these essays someday after I'm gone, and they'll agree. They'll wonder why so few commentators said the truth - that the war is a crime. The only explanation is that no one is willing to say such things in the midst of a war, since it harms morale, and injures our fighting strength.
We have to do whatever is right and just and effective to absolve this crime. We can't win the war that started on September 11 from where we are now. We can't win the war in Iraq, either. To win the first we have to stop fighting the second. To win the first we have to pull out from Iraq and regroup. That is not cutting and running. Regrouping accomplishes a lot of practical tasks on the battlefield. When an army regroups, it readies itself for the next stage of the battle. It takes units that are scattered, leaderless and ineffective and makes them effective again. Weapons and water are distributed, assignments given, and leaders are connected with troops that need new orders. We need to regroup after the Iraq fiasco. We night to regroup in order to fight effectively again. Regrouping is not defeat.
That's not going to happen for the next three years, though, so we have to be patient. In the meantime, we have to find leaders who can help to plan the next stage of the war even though they do not hold power in our government. We have to be ready for the changes that are coming. We may not have hope now of rapid progress anywhere, but we have to act quickly when the time comes. We have to prepare.
That's all for tonight. Please visit The Last Jeffersonian, and please sign up for the journal on the home page if you haven't already!
Tuesday, November 22, 2005
Cheney too divisive to right Bush’s ship?
"Any suggestion that prewar information was distorted, hyped, fabricated by the leader of the nation is utterly false," Cheney said, decrying the "self-defeating pessimism" of many Democrats. He added that to begin withdrawing from Iraq now, as some lawmakers have suggested, "would be a victory for the terrorists."
We handed our enemies a huge victory when we dropped the first bomb on Baghdad in March 2003. In everything we have done since then, and in everything we have not done, we have made our enemies stronger. The purpose of warfare is to weaken your enemies until they cannot fight you anymore. As long as we follow Mr. Cheney, the opposite will hold: we will become weaker and our enemies will hold the initiative. We have one way to avoid the defeat that Mr. Cheney fears: follow Mr. Murtha.
We handed our enemies a huge victory when we dropped the first bomb on Baghdad in March 2003. In everything we have done since then, and in everything we have not done, we have made our enemies stronger. The purpose of warfare is to weaken your enemies until they cannot fight you anymore. As long as we follow Mr. Cheney, the opposite will hold: we will become weaker and our enemies will hold the initiative. We have one way to avoid the defeat that Mr. Cheney fears: follow Mr. Murtha.
Sunday, November 20, 2005
Saturday, November 19, 2005
House Erupts in War Debate - Los Angeles Times
House Erupts in War Debate - Los Angeles Times
I need to add a few remarks about WMD to the previous remarks about torture.
The debate about intelligence failures and WMD in Iraq are non-issues. We have other problems to solve now. Let the historians analyze this issue.
It is an issue in that we need to know if Bush is trustworthy. He was dishonest in the arguments he made for war. But he adopted a whatever-it-takes approach, and he believed he was doing the right thing. He didn't think that what he was saying was dishonest.
Results are what count. No amount of honesty at the beginning would protect Bush now, when the results are so bad. And no amount of dishonesty at the beginning would matter much now if the results had been good. We're attacking Bush because the war has clearly failed. The arguments he used to justify the mistake won't help us decide what to do now.
So that's the three parts of the argument: (1) It's not an issue now, when we have other problems to solve. (2) Bush's honesty is an issue, but we already know about his dishonesty because he tied Hussein to al Qaeda in the planning and execution of the 9/11 attacks. (3) The key question now is results, not the nature of the arguments used to justify the war in the first place. The results have been bad, and we want to figure out what to do now.
That's all for now!
I need to add a few remarks about WMD to the previous remarks about torture.
The debate about intelligence failures and WMD in Iraq are non-issues. We have other problems to solve now. Let the historians analyze this issue.
It is an issue in that we need to know if Bush is trustworthy. He was dishonest in the arguments he made for war. But he adopted a whatever-it-takes approach, and he believed he was doing the right thing. He didn't think that what he was saying was dishonest.
Results are what count. No amount of honesty at the beginning would protect Bush now, when the results are so bad. And no amount of dishonesty at the beginning would matter much now if the results had been good. We're attacking Bush because the war has clearly failed. The arguments he used to justify the mistake won't help us decide what to do now.
So that's the three parts of the argument: (1) It's not an issue now, when we have other problems to solve. (2) Bush's honesty is an issue, but we already know about his dishonesty because he tied Hussein to al Qaeda in the planning and execution of the 9/11 attacks. (3) The key question now is results, not the nature of the arguments used to justify the war in the first place. The results have been bad, and we want to figure out what to do now.
That's all for now!
Iraq War Criticism Stalks Bush Overseas
Iraq War Criticism Stalks Bush Overseas
So the debate about the war grinds on here. Thanks to John Murtha for his courage and forcefulness. Here's a note I wrote to my spouse about Murtha's stand:
Hi Leslie,
I read a little more about Representative Murtha's remarks, and the White House's reaction. We can just pray now that we really have reached what people call the tipping point on this matter.
The trouble is, pulling out requires people who are adept at dealing with the political situation in Iraq. The administration has proven itself equally incompetent in both political and military matters over there. So we would be pulling out with no plans or preparations for our subsequent policy in Iraq, or elsewhere.
If we can start to look to Congress for leadership, that's great. But people certainly aren't accustomed to looking there.
Steve
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Take yourself back to September 11, 2001, and to the week that followed. What did you think about the future then? We all had different thoughts, in the midst of our shock and unity. Our thoughts about the future were certainly different from those we had on September 10. I've remembered my main thought many times since then: We need someone like Winston Churchill to lead us now, and I don't see any Winston Churchills around. Everyone hoped for the best from President Bush, but instead they got the worst.
Our unity at the time was a good thing. We needed it, both for comfort and to fight back. Now we're divided, so divided that it's hard to recall from day to day how cohesive we were in the days that followed September 11. Good leadership would have taken that cohesiveness and shaped a powerful force to deal with our enemies. Everyone wanted to serve, to do what was necessary. We wanted to do our part. The energy was palpable. I wanted to be an intelligence analyst, because I knew I'd be good at that. The entire country, and the rest of the world with us, was ready to go to work to defeat our enemies.
We dissipated that energy and broke that unity in Iraq. The desire to serve is gone. We don't know what's going to happen, and we certainly don't want to fight any more wars. We still need good leadership. Could you have predicted this unhappy division at this point in the war, this level of divisiveness just four years after the towers went down? What kind of leadership must it take to waste the patriotic response that welled up after the initial attack? If the response had dissipated gradually over the course of a generation or two, one could understand that. People who were too young to remember September 11 might not have the same instinctive feelings about it. But everyone who remembers what happened that day might have been united by that experience. Instead, we're fighting with each other now, just fifty months later. That's due to poor leadership, and terrible mistakes.
More significantly, could you have predicted that one of the main divisive issues would be whether or not we can torture our prisoners of war? The issue speaks for itself. Congress wants to pass a resolution that would prohibit torture: cruel and inhuman treatment, as the current phrase goes. The president and the vice-president say that they need freedom to use methods that will help us obtain information we need. Retired Admiral Stansfield Turner rightly calls Richard Cheney the vice-president for torture in a speech he delivers in England. Who could imagine, on September 12, 2001, that we would stumble on an issue like that only four years later? We cannot fight our enemies when we expend so much energy on an issue like this. We don't need to torture our prisoners, or mistreat them in ways that look like torture, in order to defeat our enemies. The only real motives for torture are revenge and a sense of control, not information. Our leaders believe that the resolution in Congress will tie their hands, make it so much more difficult to prosecute the war successfully. But we all know, again instinctively, that we can succeed in this war without treating our prisoners brutally. We all know it, and we're dismayed that our leaders have brought us to this point.
I've been saying this for so long now, and we must act on it: we need new leadership. We haven't ever tried to ignore our president before, certainly not in wartime, but we need to do that now. We need to find leadership elsewhere. Yes, our president holds a lot of power, but most of it depends on our willingness to follow. Absent that willingness, the president can't lead. We know now that he's unable to lead, and that he does not deserve our loyalty. It's not unpatriotic now to say, "Thank you very much, but we'll find our leaders elsewhere." We have to do it if we want to survive the war, let alone win it. I'd like to say that no mistake is so serious that it's irreparable, but I'm not sure about that. At least we can try to repair this mistake, but we have to do it soon. We can't wait.
So the debate about the war grinds on here. Thanks to John Murtha for his courage and forcefulness. Here's a note I wrote to my spouse about Murtha's stand:
Hi Leslie,
I read a little more about Representative Murtha's remarks, and the White House's reaction. We can just pray now that we really have reached what people call the tipping point on this matter.
The trouble is, pulling out requires people who are adept at dealing with the political situation in Iraq. The administration has proven itself equally incompetent in both political and military matters over there. So we would be pulling out with no plans or preparations for our subsequent policy in Iraq, or elsewhere.
If we can start to look to Congress for leadership, that's great. But people certainly aren't accustomed to looking there.
Steve
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Take yourself back to September 11, 2001, and to the week that followed. What did you think about the future then? We all had different thoughts, in the midst of our shock and unity. Our thoughts about the future were certainly different from those we had on September 10. I've remembered my main thought many times since then: We need someone like Winston Churchill to lead us now, and I don't see any Winston Churchills around. Everyone hoped for the best from President Bush, but instead they got the worst.
Our unity at the time was a good thing. We needed it, both for comfort and to fight back. Now we're divided, so divided that it's hard to recall from day to day how cohesive we were in the days that followed September 11. Good leadership would have taken that cohesiveness and shaped a powerful force to deal with our enemies. Everyone wanted to serve, to do what was necessary. We wanted to do our part. The energy was palpable. I wanted to be an intelligence analyst, because I knew I'd be good at that. The entire country, and the rest of the world with us, was ready to go to work to defeat our enemies.
We dissipated that energy and broke that unity in Iraq. The desire to serve is gone. We don't know what's going to happen, and we certainly don't want to fight any more wars. We still need good leadership. Could you have predicted this unhappy division at this point in the war, this level of divisiveness just four years after the towers went down? What kind of leadership must it take to waste the patriotic response that welled up after the initial attack? If the response had dissipated gradually over the course of a generation or two, one could understand that. People who were too young to remember September 11 might not have the same instinctive feelings about it. But everyone who remembers what happened that day might have been united by that experience. Instead, we're fighting with each other now, just fifty months later. That's due to poor leadership, and terrible mistakes.
More significantly, could you have predicted that one of the main divisive issues would be whether or not we can torture our prisoners of war? The issue speaks for itself. Congress wants to pass a resolution that would prohibit torture: cruel and inhuman treatment, as the current phrase goes. The president and the vice-president say that they need freedom to use methods that will help us obtain information we need. Retired Admiral Stansfield Turner rightly calls Richard Cheney the vice-president for torture in a speech he delivers in England. Who could imagine, on September 12, 2001, that we would stumble on an issue like that only four years later? We cannot fight our enemies when we expend so much energy on an issue like this. We don't need to torture our prisoners, or mistreat them in ways that look like torture, in order to defeat our enemies. The only real motives for torture are revenge and a sense of control, not information. Our leaders believe that the resolution in Congress will tie their hands, make it so much more difficult to prosecute the war successfully. But we all know, again instinctively, that we can succeed in this war without treating our prisoners brutally. We all know it, and we're dismayed that our leaders have brought us to this point.
I've been saying this for so long now, and we must act on it: we need new leadership. We haven't ever tried to ignore our president before, certainly not in wartime, but we need to do that now. We need to find leadership elsewhere. Yes, our president holds a lot of power, but most of it depends on our willingness to follow. Absent that willingness, the president can't lead. We know now that he's unable to lead, and that he does not deserve our loyalty. It's not unpatriotic now to say, "Thank you very much, but we'll find our leaders elsewhere." We have to do it if we want to survive the war, let alone win it. I'd like to say that no mistake is so serious that it's irreparable, but I'm not sure about that. At least we can try to repair this mistake, but we have to do it soon. We can't wait.
Thursday, November 17, 2005
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
Sunday, November 13, 2005
The Intelligence Issue
I can't believe we are still hung up on the issue of intelligence two and a half years into this war. The Democrats say that the Bush administration misled the country into the war by claiming a threat from weapons that didn't exist. Bush responds that the Democrats who voted for the war had access to the same intelligence he did. He says they're hypocrites and ready to rewrite the history of the origins of the war. The war was wrong as a moral decision, and it was wrong as a strategic decision. It was also illegal. The war was wrong on all three grounds, and the arguments required to make that case don't depend on the quality of the intelligence, or on our judgments about its signigicance. Iraq could have possessed all of the weapons materials that Bush said it possessed, and going to war would still have been a huge mistake. The debate about intelligence works to Bush's advantage, because it let's him respond with the kind of arguments he made in his Veteran's Day speech. When I hear the president call his critics deeply irresponsible, I know we have reached the bottom in this discussion.
Opponents of the war should remember something about this discussion. The president is sure he has done the right thing, and he's not going to change his mind. Yet many critics, including Democrats in Congress, talk as if they can change his mind. Remember that reporters and others have challenged Bush on the grounds for war for a long time now. They asked him less than a year into the war how he could justify the attack, given that we had not found any weapons. Bush responded, "What difference does it make?" He continued with the argument we have heard so many times since: The man was a threat. We had to get rid of him. Period.
Well, Bush was right when he said, "What difference does it make?," but not in a way he ever imagined. The weapons issue, and the intelligence issue, don't make a difference, The war was wrong whether or not Hussein had the weapons, or the materials, or the programs, or the desire. The war was justified only if Hussein posed an imminent threat. So rather than analyze the intelligence with hindsight, let's do a little threat analysis. Rather than ask how we could have blundered into a war we can't win because of bad intelligence, let's ask how we can win the war we should be fighting once we understand the threat better.
An imminent threat is one that's real and about to be carried out. It can't be imaginary, or doubtful, or far in the future. A fear is not a threat. A child is afraid of many things that aren't actually dangerous. After September 11, people became afraid of things that weren't actually threats. Iraq was one of them. The Bush administration argued after September 11 that we had to reconceive the threats around us. Before 9/11, we underestimated the potency of our enemies - we underestimated their ability to do us harm. We would not make the same mistake again. Now we would preempt our enemies. We would attack them before they could attack us. We had to redefine our idea of what counted as an imminent threat in the new world that existed after September 11.
Whenever someone argues that it's time to revise a tested principle, watch out. The person is going to advocate a course of action that's unsound. That's not to say that the bits conventional wisdom we use to help us make decisions are the only or the best guides available. Some principles, though, rise above conventional wisdom. They're carefully reasoned and tested through time. They have to do with decisions where a lot is at stake. They're anchored with the lessons and experiences of many generations of people just like us. The principles that tell us when a preemptive war is justifed are among these higher-level rules. They tell us that you can't attack someone simply out of fear. You can't attack someone because you think they might attack you sometime in the future. The threat has to be real and present.
We didn't think that Hussein's military activies justified a preemptive war before 9/11. The only way to argue that Iraq posed an imminent threat after 9/11 was to make a connection between Hussein and Al Qaeda. If Hussein actively cooperated with Al Qaeda, and he had the weapons we said he had, then he was an imminent threat. That's exactly the argument that Bush and his advisors made. They actually tried to convince people that Hussein had helped Al Qaeda carry out the 9/11 attacks. The argument was ridiculous on its face, but enough people believed it that the administration carried the day, and won approval from Congress to go to war. He might have found a way to launch the war even if he had not had enough votes in Congress, and that sense of inevitability about the fighting may have led some Democrats to vote for what they regarded as a foregone conclusion anyway.
Remember, Bush sincerely believes that he's doing what's best for the country. People sometimes admit their mistakes, but they're much less likely to admit incompetence. Bush clearly does not know what he is doing. That's why he says things like, "What difference does it make?" A debate about intelligence makes no logical sense because it really doesn't matter whether or the intelligence was bad or good. He only posed an imminent threat if he was in league with bin Laden, and that charge was laughable. It was so clearly cooked up that only people carried away by fear could believe it. And Bush played upon fear. He's the first president we've had who could accurately be called a fear monger.
A debate about intelligence makes no practical sense either, because no one who launched the war will admit the mistake. No one on the Bush team will say, "Whoa, you're right - we over-estimated the threat from Hussein and attacked the wrong guy as a result. Better go back and rethink this one." If the administration won't rethink its actions, why try to persuade it to do so? The citizenry already believes that Bush blew it. How do the Democrats gain by saying, "You misled us into war"? They don't gain any advantage in the debate, and they give Bush an opportunity to counter-charges. The only reasonable thing to do is to make Bush irrelevant, and to find leadership that's both competent and courageous enough to do everything we need to do. It may take three years or more to do that, but that's okay.
Opponents of the war should remember something about this discussion. The president is sure he has done the right thing, and he's not going to change his mind. Yet many critics, including Democrats in Congress, talk as if they can change his mind. Remember that reporters and others have challenged Bush on the grounds for war for a long time now. They asked him less than a year into the war how he could justify the attack, given that we had not found any weapons. Bush responded, "What difference does it make?" He continued with the argument we have heard so many times since: The man was a threat. We had to get rid of him. Period.
Well, Bush was right when he said, "What difference does it make?," but not in a way he ever imagined. The weapons issue, and the intelligence issue, don't make a difference, The war was wrong whether or not Hussein had the weapons, or the materials, or the programs, or the desire. The war was justified only if Hussein posed an imminent threat. So rather than analyze the intelligence with hindsight, let's do a little threat analysis. Rather than ask how we could have blundered into a war we can't win because of bad intelligence, let's ask how we can win the war we should be fighting once we understand the threat better.
An imminent threat is one that's real and about to be carried out. It can't be imaginary, or doubtful, or far in the future. A fear is not a threat. A child is afraid of many things that aren't actually dangerous. After September 11, people became afraid of things that weren't actually threats. Iraq was one of them. The Bush administration argued after September 11 that we had to reconceive the threats around us. Before 9/11, we underestimated the potency of our enemies - we underestimated their ability to do us harm. We would not make the same mistake again. Now we would preempt our enemies. We would attack them before they could attack us. We had to redefine our idea of what counted as an imminent threat in the new world that existed after September 11.
Whenever someone argues that it's time to revise a tested principle, watch out. The person is going to advocate a course of action that's unsound. That's not to say that the bits conventional wisdom we use to help us make decisions are the only or the best guides available. Some principles, though, rise above conventional wisdom. They're carefully reasoned and tested through time. They have to do with decisions where a lot is at stake. They're anchored with the lessons and experiences of many generations of people just like us. The principles that tell us when a preemptive war is justifed are among these higher-level rules. They tell us that you can't attack someone simply out of fear. You can't attack someone because you think they might attack you sometime in the future. The threat has to be real and present.
We didn't think that Hussein's military activies justified a preemptive war before 9/11. The only way to argue that Iraq posed an imminent threat after 9/11 was to make a connection between Hussein and Al Qaeda. If Hussein actively cooperated with Al Qaeda, and he had the weapons we said he had, then he was an imminent threat. That's exactly the argument that Bush and his advisors made. They actually tried to convince people that Hussein had helped Al Qaeda carry out the 9/11 attacks. The argument was ridiculous on its face, but enough people believed it that the administration carried the day, and won approval from Congress to go to war. He might have found a way to launch the war even if he had not had enough votes in Congress, and that sense of inevitability about the fighting may have led some Democrats to vote for what they regarded as a foregone conclusion anyway.
Remember, Bush sincerely believes that he's doing what's best for the country. People sometimes admit their mistakes, but they're much less likely to admit incompetence. Bush clearly does not know what he is doing. That's why he says things like, "What difference does it make?" A debate about intelligence makes no logical sense because it really doesn't matter whether or the intelligence was bad or good. He only posed an imminent threat if he was in league with bin Laden, and that charge was laughable. It was so clearly cooked up that only people carried away by fear could believe it. And Bush played upon fear. He's the first president we've had who could accurately be called a fear monger.
A debate about intelligence makes no practical sense either, because no one who launched the war will admit the mistake. No one on the Bush team will say, "Whoa, you're right - we over-estimated the threat from Hussein and attacked the wrong guy as a result. Better go back and rethink this one." If the administration won't rethink its actions, why try to persuade it to do so? The citizenry already believes that Bush blew it. How do the Democrats gain by saying, "You misled us into war"? They don't gain any advantage in the debate, and they give Bush an opportunity to counter-charges. The only reasonable thing to do is to make Bush irrelevant, and to find leadership that's both competent and courageous enough to do everything we need to do. It may take three years or more to do that, but that's okay.
Saturday, November 12, 2005
Bush Contends Partisan Critics Hurt War Effort - New York Times
Bush Contends Partisan Critics Hurt War Effort - New York Times:
"The stakes in the global war on terror are too high, and the national interest is too important, for politicians to throw out false charges," Mr. Bush said. "These baseless attacks send the wrong signal to our troops and to an enemy that is questioning America's will. As our troops fight a ruthless enemy determined to destroy our way of life, they deserve to know that their elected leaders who voted to send them to war continue to stand behind them."
"The stakes in the global war on terror are too high, and the national interest is too important, for politicians to throw out false charges," Mr. Bush said. "These baseless attacks send the wrong signal to our troops and to an enemy that is questioning America's will. As our troops fight a ruthless enemy determined to destroy our way of life, they deserve to know that their elected leaders who voted to send them to war continue to stand behind them."
Sunday, November 06, 2005
Thursday, November 03, 2005
Saturday, October 29, 2005
Thursday, October 27, 2005
Sunday, October 23, 2005
Patriotism
Back in 1975 or so, William Appleman Williams came to give a lecture at Reed College. I only knew that he was a well-known historian, and I wanted to hear him mostly because I hadn't heard many lectures by well-known historians. I didn't know much about his or his writing. I didn't know he was from the South.
When we was well into the talk, he criticized Abraham Lincoln for his war of aggression against the South. Williams didn't mount a lengthy attack, but it was clear that he wasn't mispeaking, that his remarks weren't open to misunderstanding. I had never heard such a thing before.
Naturally in my schooling, Abraham Lincoln was next to God and Jesus in the hierarchy of good people. I hadn't thought that anyone, least of all a thoughtful, well-known historian, could think that Abraham Lincoln was a bad guy. But sectional bitterness persisted, a century after Reconstruction.
I wanted to recall Williams' talk because it's related to current discussions of patriotism. I don't think Williams was unpatriotic to criticize Lincoln's war policy. And it's not unpatriotic to criticize Bush's war policy. When Cheney attacks the war's critics as unpatriotic, he makes a huge error. Patriotism is not what's at issue here.
When we was well into the talk, he criticized Abraham Lincoln for his war of aggression against the South. Williams didn't mount a lengthy attack, but it was clear that he wasn't mispeaking, that his remarks weren't open to misunderstanding. I had never heard such a thing before.
Naturally in my schooling, Abraham Lincoln was next to God and Jesus in the hierarchy of good people. I hadn't thought that anyone, least of all a thoughtful, well-known historian, could think that Abraham Lincoln was a bad guy. But sectional bitterness persisted, a century after Reconstruction.
I wanted to recall Williams' talk because it's related to current discussions of patriotism. I don't think Williams was unpatriotic to criticize Lincoln's war policy. And it's not unpatriotic to criticize Bush's war policy. When Cheney attacks the war's critics as unpatriotic, he makes a huge error. Patriotism is not what's at issue here.
Tuesday, October 18, 2005
Bush to Visit Reagan Library
Ventura County Star: "President Bush is scheduled to attend the ribbon-cutting ceremony of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library's Air Force One Pavilion in Simi Valley Friday. Invited by officials at the library, President Bush and his wife plan to attend the 11 a.m. ceremony and a 1 p.m. lunch...."
Look at this one. Recently I read that the Reagan Library sent a cease and desist letter to a political candidate who wanted to display his own photographs of himself with Reagan at his website. The Library forced him to remove the photographs because they implied an endorsement from Reagan, even though they did not hold the rights to the photographs. As the keepers of Reagan's memory and legacy, they reason, they have final say over how Reagan's image is used.
But now look what they've done in connection with an upcoming ceremony at the Library. They think they look good when they have the president of the United States come to the ribbon-cutting ceremony for Air Force One. Instead, they associate Reagan's memory with the living image of the worst president we have ever had. What a double standard! An unknown, aspiring candidate who wants to show a picture of himself shaking hands with Reagan receives a cease and desist order. That's an unauthorized use of Reagan's image, they say? But if the Reagan Library can brush up its own image with a presidential visit, no travesty is too great. Who gave the Reagan Library authority to stain the legacy of this great man with the squalor and crimes of our current president? How can they think that having a president like this one present during this significant ceremony will benefit Reagan's legacy? Bush brings shame with him wherever he goes.
No scandal or neglect of Ulysses Grant or Warren Harding equals the horrible mistake that Bush has made. No paranoid spying or dirty tricks by Nixon approximates the discredit that Bush has brought on this great nation. Certainly no disgrace of Clinton's second term comes close. With one war in the spring of 2003, Bush proclaimed to the world, "We don't care to lead you anymore. We don't even consider you worthy of our leadership. We intend to throw off responsibility for the world system of law and politics we've created. We'll do what we want." The results of that proclamation were predictable enough, and we see the seeds of those results around us now. No country looks to us for leadership now. No country expects us to act in anything but our own interests. No country can feel safe in a system where the powerful attack the weak. In this case, the attacker is not only powerful: the very guarantor of peace and security broke loose and wreaked death out of an elemental surge of fear and a lust for revenge.
I gave a speech at the Reagan Library once. It was in the spring of 2002. Mark Burson, the executive director of the Reagan Foundation, invited me to come to the Library to talk about Reagan. Not so long after that visit, the Library's leadership changed. The current director of the Reagan Foundation is Duke Blackwood. According to the Ventura County Star, he played hardball with the docents that the library dismissed on the grounds that they were too old to carry out their duties. He said in a letter that if they talked with the press, they would suffer consequences. I'm not sure how you can threaten volunteers you've just dismissed, but he did it.
Anyway, Mr. Blackwood now thinks he as a big event going with the opening of the pavilion that houses Air Force One. They've been preparing for this important gathering for a long time. They've raised lots of money for the pavilion, and the opening ceremony is a good way to say thank you for your contributions: and we hope to see more of you and your checkbook. What a victory the Library thought it had achieved when the president accepted its invitation to speak at the ceremony! We are proud to present ...the president himself! The young, vigorous and handsome George W. Bush, president of the United States. The true bearer of Reagan's bright vision into our country's hopeful future.
It's not bright anymore, and hope's going to disappear fast when our citizens discover what this president has done to our reputation. Keep him far away from Reagan and his memory. Keep him far away from the Reagan Library and anyplace associated with Reagan's name. Send a cease and desist letter: no person of such low stature, who brought shame upon his country, shall associate himself with the memory of this great leader. No person who ruined Reagan's strong, hopeful vision, who razed the bright city on a hill and replaced it with pyramids of naked prisoners, shall set foot on the ground where Reagan is buried. It could imply an endorsement.
Look at this one. Recently I read that the Reagan Library sent a cease and desist letter to a political candidate who wanted to display his own photographs of himself with Reagan at his website. The Library forced him to remove the photographs because they implied an endorsement from Reagan, even though they did not hold the rights to the photographs. As the keepers of Reagan's memory and legacy, they reason, they have final say over how Reagan's image is used.
But now look what they've done in connection with an upcoming ceremony at the Library. They think they look good when they have the president of the United States come to the ribbon-cutting ceremony for Air Force One. Instead, they associate Reagan's memory with the living image of the worst president we have ever had. What a double standard! An unknown, aspiring candidate who wants to show a picture of himself shaking hands with Reagan receives a cease and desist order. That's an unauthorized use of Reagan's image, they say? But if the Reagan Library can brush up its own image with a presidential visit, no travesty is too great. Who gave the Reagan Library authority to stain the legacy of this great man with the squalor and crimes of our current president? How can they think that having a president like this one present during this significant ceremony will benefit Reagan's legacy? Bush brings shame with him wherever he goes.
No scandal or neglect of Ulysses Grant or Warren Harding equals the horrible mistake that Bush has made. No paranoid spying or dirty tricks by Nixon approximates the discredit that Bush has brought on this great nation. Certainly no disgrace of Clinton's second term comes close. With one war in the spring of 2003, Bush proclaimed to the world, "We don't care to lead you anymore. We don't even consider you worthy of our leadership. We intend to throw off responsibility for the world system of law and politics we've created. We'll do what we want." The results of that proclamation were predictable enough, and we see the seeds of those results around us now. No country looks to us for leadership now. No country expects us to act in anything but our own interests. No country can feel safe in a system where the powerful attack the weak. In this case, the attacker is not only powerful: the very guarantor of peace and security broke loose and wreaked death out of an elemental surge of fear and a lust for revenge.
I gave a speech at the Reagan Library once. It was in the spring of 2002. Mark Burson, the executive director of the Reagan Foundation, invited me to come to the Library to talk about Reagan. Not so long after that visit, the Library's leadership changed. The current director of the Reagan Foundation is Duke Blackwood. According to the Ventura County Star, he played hardball with the docents that the library dismissed on the grounds that they were too old to carry out their duties. He said in a letter that if they talked with the press, they would suffer consequences. I'm not sure how you can threaten volunteers you've just dismissed, but he did it.
Anyway, Mr. Blackwood now thinks he as a big event going with the opening of the pavilion that houses Air Force One. They've been preparing for this important gathering for a long time. They've raised lots of money for the pavilion, and the opening ceremony is a good way to say thank you for your contributions: and we hope to see more of you and your checkbook. What a victory the Library thought it had achieved when the president accepted its invitation to speak at the ceremony! We are proud to present ...the president himself! The young, vigorous and handsome George W. Bush, president of the United States. The true bearer of Reagan's bright vision into our country's hopeful future.
It's not bright anymore, and hope's going to disappear fast when our citizens discover what this president has done to our reputation. Keep him far away from Reagan and his memory. Keep him far away from the Reagan Library and anyplace associated with Reagan's name. Send a cease and desist letter: no person of such low stature, who brought shame upon his country, shall associate himself with the memory of this great leader. No person who ruined Reagan's strong, hopeful vision, who razed the bright city on a hill and replaced it with pyramids of naked prisoners, shall set foot on the ground where Reagan is buried. It could imply an endorsement.
Tuesday, October 11, 2005
Saturday, October 08, 2005
The Fallacy of Cut and Run vs. Stay the Course
Well we've heard the president speak again about the war on terror. A couple of days ago he addressed the National Endowment for Democracy about why we should continue the fight. His speechwriter did a good job smithing the words, but he wrote the whole argument based on a false premise. The premise comes in two parts: if we pull out of Iraq, we'll walk away from the war on terror, and if we want to prosecute the war on terror, we have to stay in Iraq.
Why don't the Democrats challenge Bush on this argument? Why won't anyone look closely at the false logic Bush uses to support his claim that we have to fight on in Iraq? Before we look at the premise, we need to get the terms right. Bush's favored phrase is the war on terror. But terror is a method, not an enemy. It's like saying the war on bombing, or the war on stabbing, or the war on subversion. Our enemy is Al Qaeda, not terror. Al Qaeda is a difficult enemy to fight, and it uses a lot of different methods. But at least we should be clear about who we're fighting, and what we're fighting.
Let's return to the president. He does get to set the terms of debate. This president, though, has had a lot of freedom. He's a fear mongerer and a panderer, and his opponents don't call him on it. All of his speeches set up choices and outcomes that make his opponents look terrible if they disagree with him. Rather than forcing him to change the logic of his argument, his opponents just keep quiet and hope people don't notice. They're not quiet all the time, but they don't speak loud enough or long enough. The White House's propaganda operation easily overwhelms the tiny squeaks that occasionally emerge from the opposition.
Having addressed those throat-clearing items, lets return to Bush's bad logic. What's wrong with setting Cut and Run against Stay the Course as the two options available to us now? Cut and Run means we admit defeat and give up the fight. Stay the Course means we show resolve and pursue the fight to the end. But those aren't the only choices, or the only outcomes. Cut and Run actually means we fight where we should be fighting. Stay the Course actually means we continue a futile and weakening struggle amongst a population that does not want us. Bush says that his opponents want to admit defeat, and that his policies are the only road to victory. If you look at what he's done, though, Bush led us into defeat and characterized the calamity as a long hard struggle for democracy.
Here's the problem: if you define your options too narrowly, you essentially operate with blinders on. If you misperceive the structure of your situation, you can't even start to think productively about the best strategy. That's what has happened to our thinking about Iraq. We can't get past timetables, defeat, retreat, morale, credibility, staying the course, and democracy for all in the region. We judge our options as acceptable or unacceptable based on the wrong criteria.
The most general criteria would be: What's in our interests? What's in the interests of the Iraqi people we'd like to help? What's in the interests of the entire region, from Morocco in the west to Pakistan in the east? What's in the interests of the smaller region, Iraq and its neighbors? What's in the interest of world peace and a good life for all of us? Now I know the Republicans say they are asking those questions, but they've had bad results with their actions. So we have to ask if their strategy is any good.
General Odom asks why we don't cut and run. What would be so bad about that? His article is a good one. You can find the link for it above this entry in the weblog. If I had more time, I'd like to summarize his points and offer my own comments on them. Right here, I'll distill the main strategy he suggests: withdraw from Iraq, repair relations with our friends, and fight the war we should be fighting. General Odom's strategy reveals the fallacy of Bush's current argument, that if we withdraw from Iraq, we stop fighting, and if we want to continue fighting, we have to stay in Iraq.
Success in the war against Al Qaeda does not require that we stay in Iraq. Success in the war against Al Qaeda requires that we scale down our operations in Iraq, regroup, and figure out the best way to prosecute the war against our enemies. Iraq has absorbed so much of our energy and resources that we don't even think about the war against Al Qaeda, except in connection with the conflict in Iraq. The administration thinks that winning the war in Iraq and winning the war against Al Qaeda amount to the same thing. But they're not the same thing. If we achieve our goals in Iraq, we will not have won the war against Al Qaeda. It's not clear now how we can defeat Al Qaeda, but we know from experience how not to do it. We know we can't do it by continuing our current operations in Iraq.
Here's a quotation, paraphrased from Einstein: The definition of insanity is to keep doing what you have been doing, and expect different results. It's time for a new strategy in the war against Al Qaeda. The beginning of a new strategy is recognition that the war in Iraq and the war against Al Qaeda are not the same thing. Victory in Iraq does not mean victory over Al Qaeda. We have to recognize that, at this moment, Iraq has to solve its own problems. That's what they want to do, and letting them do it serves our own interests. When we recognize that, we'll begin to see how to prosecute the war against Al Qaeda. Until we end this great diversion in Iraq, our blinders will prevent us from seeing the next steps we should take in the real war.
Why don't the Democrats challenge Bush on this argument? Why won't anyone look closely at the false logic Bush uses to support his claim that we have to fight on in Iraq? Before we look at the premise, we need to get the terms right. Bush's favored phrase is the war on terror. But terror is a method, not an enemy. It's like saying the war on bombing, or the war on stabbing, or the war on subversion. Our enemy is Al Qaeda, not terror. Al Qaeda is a difficult enemy to fight, and it uses a lot of different methods. But at least we should be clear about who we're fighting, and what we're fighting.
Let's return to the president. He does get to set the terms of debate. This president, though, has had a lot of freedom. He's a fear mongerer and a panderer, and his opponents don't call him on it. All of his speeches set up choices and outcomes that make his opponents look terrible if they disagree with him. Rather than forcing him to change the logic of his argument, his opponents just keep quiet and hope people don't notice. They're not quiet all the time, but they don't speak loud enough or long enough. The White House's propaganda operation easily overwhelms the tiny squeaks that occasionally emerge from the opposition.
Having addressed those throat-clearing items, lets return to Bush's bad logic. What's wrong with setting Cut and Run against Stay the Course as the two options available to us now? Cut and Run means we admit defeat and give up the fight. Stay the Course means we show resolve and pursue the fight to the end. But those aren't the only choices, or the only outcomes. Cut and Run actually means we fight where we should be fighting. Stay the Course actually means we continue a futile and weakening struggle amongst a population that does not want us. Bush says that his opponents want to admit defeat, and that his policies are the only road to victory. If you look at what he's done, though, Bush led us into defeat and characterized the calamity as a long hard struggle for democracy.
Here's the problem: if you define your options too narrowly, you essentially operate with blinders on. If you misperceive the structure of your situation, you can't even start to think productively about the best strategy. That's what has happened to our thinking about Iraq. We can't get past timetables, defeat, retreat, morale, credibility, staying the course, and democracy for all in the region. We judge our options as acceptable or unacceptable based on the wrong criteria.
The most general criteria would be: What's in our interests? What's in the interests of the Iraqi people we'd like to help? What's in the interests of the entire region, from Morocco in the west to Pakistan in the east? What's in the interests of the smaller region, Iraq and its neighbors? What's in the interest of world peace and a good life for all of us? Now I know the Republicans say they are asking those questions, but they've had bad results with their actions. So we have to ask if their strategy is any good.
General Odom asks why we don't cut and run. What would be so bad about that? His article is a good one. You can find the link for it above this entry in the weblog. If I had more time, I'd like to summarize his points and offer my own comments on them. Right here, I'll distill the main strategy he suggests: withdraw from Iraq, repair relations with our friends, and fight the war we should be fighting. General Odom's strategy reveals the fallacy of Bush's current argument, that if we withdraw from Iraq, we stop fighting, and if we want to continue fighting, we have to stay in Iraq.
Success in the war against Al Qaeda does not require that we stay in Iraq. Success in the war against Al Qaeda requires that we scale down our operations in Iraq, regroup, and figure out the best way to prosecute the war against our enemies. Iraq has absorbed so much of our energy and resources that we don't even think about the war against Al Qaeda, except in connection with the conflict in Iraq. The administration thinks that winning the war in Iraq and winning the war against Al Qaeda amount to the same thing. But they're not the same thing. If we achieve our goals in Iraq, we will not have won the war against Al Qaeda. It's not clear now how we can defeat Al Qaeda, but we know from experience how not to do it. We know we can't do it by continuing our current operations in Iraq.
Here's a quotation, paraphrased from Einstein: The definition of insanity is to keep doing what you have been doing, and expect different results. It's time for a new strategy in the war against Al Qaeda. The beginning of a new strategy is recognition that the war in Iraq and the war against Al Qaeda are not the same thing. Victory in Iraq does not mean victory over Al Qaeda. We have to recognize that, at this moment, Iraq has to solve its own problems. That's what they want to do, and letting them do it serves our own interests. When we recognize that, we'll begin to see how to prosecute the war against Al Qaeda. Until we end this great diversion in Iraq, our blinders will prevent us from seeing the next steps we should take in the real war.
Friday, October 07, 2005
Thursday, October 06, 2005
Geography Lesson - Bush plans 'major speech' on Iraq, terrorism - Oct 6, 2005
CNN.com - Bush plans 'major speech' on Iraq, terrorism - Oct 6, 2005:
"It's time the president tells us how he plans on getting us out of the hole he's dug us so deeply into. And just to stop digging, as the old saying goes, is not enough," said Sen. Joseph Biden, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
The senator from Delaware urged Bush to convene a summit of Iraq's neighbors to hammer out a broader peace for the region, as the United States did in Afghanistan and during the Balkan wars of the 1990s.
"It's time the president tells us how he plans on getting us out of the hole he's dug us so deeply into. And just to stop digging, as the old saying goes, is not enough," said Sen. Joseph Biden, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
The senator from Delaware urged Bush to convene a summit of Iraq's neighbors to hammer out a broader peace for the region, as the United States did in Afghanistan and during the Balkan wars of the 1990s.
Wednesday, October 05, 2005
Center for Small Government: Carla Howell
How Could I Live Without Filing Taxes?
Copyright 2001 by Carla Howell
All rights reserved.
I love doing my taxes
when each spring time comes, don't you?
Instead of garden walks and ball games,
I get to work my weekends too.
How could I live without filing taxes?
What would I do with my free time?
Where would I go on a beautiful Sunday?
Good thing there's someone to make up my mind.
Subtract line 6 from line 5, and if that's more than zero.
Then enter the amount from Schedule A line 21.
Multiply line 7 by .03 and if that is smaller than .8 of line 4.
Then deduct that from your deduction. Isn't this fun?
How could I live without filing taxes?
What would I do with my free time?
Where would I go on a beautiful Sunday?
Good thing I won't have to make up my mind.
My favorite part of filling out my tax forms
is when I get to write a check for whatever is due.
'Cuz the government can get such incredible bargains with my money
like a billion-dollar bridge or a forty-dollar metal screw.
How could I live without filing taxes?
What would I do with my free time?
How could I spend all of my money?
Good thing there's someone who can spend it just fine - for me.
Lucky, lucky, lucky, lucky me!
Copyright 2001 by Carla Howell
All rights reserved.
I love doing my taxes
when each spring time comes, don't you?
Instead of garden walks and ball games,
I get to work my weekends too.
How could I live without filing taxes?
What would I do with my free time?
Where would I go on a beautiful Sunday?
Good thing there's someone to make up my mind.
Subtract line 6 from line 5, and if that's more than zero.
Then enter the amount from Schedule A line 21.
Multiply line 7 by .03 and if that is smaller than .8 of line 4.
Then deduct that from your deduction. Isn't this fun?
How could I live without filing taxes?
What would I do with my free time?
Where would I go on a beautiful Sunday?
Good thing I won't have to make up my mind.
My favorite part of filling out my tax forms
is when I get to write a check for whatever is due.
'Cuz the government can get such incredible bargains with my money
like a billion-dollar bridge or a forty-dollar metal screw.
How could I live without filing taxes?
What would I do with my free time?
How could I spend all of my money?
Good thing there's someone who can spend it just fine - for me.
Lucky, lucky, lucky, lucky me!
Center for Small Government: Carla Howell
Monday, October 03, 2005
Sunday, October 02, 2005
Two Definitions
Callow - Lacking adult maturity or experience; immature.
Clown - a. A buffoon or jester who entertains by jokes, antics, and tricks in a circus, play, or other presentation. b. One who jokes and plays tricks.
Clown - a. A buffoon or jester who entertains by jokes, antics, and tricks in a circus, play, or other presentation. b. One who jokes and plays tricks.
