Thursday, February 01, 2007

Iran: Who Will Be Accountable?

I consult the American Conservative about as often as I volunteer for colon experiments - and come to think of it there is a link-age. But having had my attention directed to an important article there, moon in all your splendor we need to attend to this. If you have made it here you should explore that link: I've streamlined message, and my paste misses vital material. And, just as I am doing here, please disseminate to the wide email lists I am sure you have. This is one of those that could actually produce Change.

Lose a war, lose an election. What else did the Republicans expect? That is especially true for a “war of choice,” which is to say a war we should not have fought. It is difficult to imagine that, had Spain defeated the U.S. in 1898, the Republicans would have won the election in 1900.

What does the Democrats’ victory mean for the war in Iraq? Regrettably, not what it should, namely an immediate American withdrawal from a hopelessly lost enterprise. Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans, both of whom now want to get out, desire to go into the 2008 election as the party that “lost Iraq,” which is how taking the lead for withdrawal could be painted. Instead, both parties in Congress and the White House are likely to agree only on a series of half-measures, none of which will work. We will stay bogged down in the Iraqi quagmire for another two years, as the troops caught in Operation Provide Targets continue to die.


A more critical if less obvious question is what do the results of the election mean for a prospective attack on Iran? On the surface, the Democrats’ seizure of both houses of Congress would seem to be good news. Having won their majorities because the American people want out of a war, they ought to be reluctant to jump into a second one.

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There is one action, a possibility opened by the Democrats’ electoral victory, that would stop the Bush administration from launching such an attack or allowing Israel to do so. If our senior military leaders, especially the Joint Chiefs of Staff, would go public with their opposition to such an adventure, the new Democratic majority in Congress would have to react. The public that put it in office on an antiwar platform would compel it to answer or lose all credibility. While the Joint Chiefs would infuriate the White House, they would receive the necessary political cover from the new Democratic Congress. The potential is there, for the generals and the Democrats alike.

For it to be realized, and the disaster of war with Iran to be averted, all the generals must do is show some courage. If the Joint Chiefs keep silent now and allow the folly of an attack on Iran to go forward, they will share in full the moral responsibility for the results, which may include the loss of an army. Perhaps we should call it “Operation Cornwallis.”

Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Oh Molly, No!

If ever there were a succinct explication of the "Life's Not Fair" meme it would seem to be that Molly Ivins has left us and Dick Cheney is still here. I am still trying to wrestle my way out of a sense of victimhood.

Ms. Molly was such an inspiration. Her ability to inject just that wee bit of downhomery, sometimes via as little as a single regional word-spelling quirk, routinely had me agog.

You can take solace that I am at a general loss for words, still ruminating. In the meantime wake and slake on this. Mea culpas to readers for minimal formatting and to source for wholesale post.

Molly Ivins: 1944-2007
Scarecrow
Firedoglake 1/31/07

(I found this lovely picture of Molly at NNDB — had no idea she was a fellow Smithie, but my love of her snark suddenly has more context. Molly Ivins passed away this afternoon at her home. We send our condolences to family and friends, and a whole lot of love to Molly. We had planned on posting this in the morning, as a love note to her, before we learned of her passing, but it seems so appropriate a tribute to her kick ass spirit to post her own feisty words this evening. — CHS)

I've been reading/enjoying/loving Molly Ivins columns for many years. So I thought our readers would enjoy some snippets from some of her most recent columns. At the bottom of some links, there's a calendar, and from that you can find dozens of her columns from previous years. Go check out the archives; every column is a treasure. And if you find observations written by or about Molly that you'd like to share in the comments, please do so.

Populists! Who'da thunk it! — November 16, 2006

Now, from my hours spent battered and half brain-dead listening to the fatuous, self-important commentators of our nation, I learn that the people did not elect liberals to Congress last week. Nope, they elected populists! Well, gosh all hemlock. Populist! I am one.

Who knew? I thought all said I was chopped liver. Populist. . . .

A populist is pretty much for the people and generally in this case exactly the same as a liberal — we just put the em-pha-sis on a different syl-la-ble. We also tend to be more fun. We do not vote to hurt average Americans, even if the corporate payoff is really big. Even if it's just a little bit — like the bankruptcy bill.

We tend to focus less on social issues and more on who's gettin' taken and who's doin' the taking. In my opinion, Americans are not getting taken by the Republican Party. They are getting taken by Large Corporations that bought and own the Republican Party.

The word populist was misused, abused and co-opted by right-wingers for years, ever since we were all forced to read Richard Hofstadter's The Paranoid Style in American Politics. Bad history can do a powerful amount of damage. . . .

If you read back to the beginning of the populist movement, however, you will find Andy Jackson and the West set against all those dreary Eastern snobs. When Andy opened up the White House and let in the people, the snobs had the fantods.

OK, it's not the 19th century anymore, but it is always the right time to point out that the emperor isn't wearing any clothes. Honest. There stands George W. Bush, buck nekkid. We want to help him out of this fix because he's dragging the whole Army, the country and the world down with him. But don't ask us to call those clothes.

Thanks. No, Seriously — November 23, 2006

AUSTIN, Texas — It's time to give thanks, and I want to start off with a great, big thank you for the top American movement conservatives and all the fun we've had since Election Day. I know I promised not to gloat after this election was over, but I'm not talking unseemly gloating — I'm talking about moments so brilliantly hilarious the only option is to put your head down on the desk and howl.

First in line is the wit of The National Review's Kate O'Beirne, who clearly teamed up with Borat to explain the great conservative win. Her explanation is that this is a win for conservatism because a great many of the D's elected are so conservative themselves. She says half of them are conservatives.

She is indeed right. If only twice as many Democrats had been elected, it would have proved that there are twice as many conservatives in the country, and this is clear to any thinking person. We might challenge Ms. O'Beirne to explain how the next Republican win is a victory for liberalism.

The reason that O'Beirne and others are able to accept such an absurdity is because they've been listening to George W. Bush for six years and are thus able to believe six impossible things before breakfast. . . .

Iraq Exit is Up to Us — January 8, 2007

The president of the United States does not have the sense God gave a duck — so it's up to us. You and me, Bubba.

I don't know why Bush is just standing there like a frozen rabbit, but it's time we found out. The fact is WE have to do something about it. This country is being torn apart by an evil and unnecessary war, and it has to be stopped NOW.

This war is being prosecuted in our names, with our money, with our blood, against our will. Polls consistently show that less than 30 percent of the people want to maintain current troop levels. It is obscene and wrong for the president to go against the people in this fashion. And it's doubly wrong for him to send 20,0000 more soldiers into this hellhole, as he reportedly will announce next week.

What happened to the nation that never tortured? The nation that wasn't supposed to start wars of choice? The nation that respected human rights and life? A nation that from the beginning was against tyranny? Where have we gone? How did we let these people take us there? How did we let them fool us?

It's a monstrous idea to put people in prison and keep them there. Since 1215, civil authorities have been obligated to tell people with what they are charged if they're arrested. This administration has done away with rights first enshrined in the Magna Carta nearly 800 years ago, and we've let them do it.

This will be a regular feature of mine, like an old-fashioned newspaper campaign. Every column, I'll write about this war until we find some way to end it. STOP IT NOW. BAM! Every day, we will review some factor we should have gotten right. . . .

Stand Up Against the Surge — January 11, 2007:

The purpose of this old-fashioned newspaper crusade to stop the war is not to make George W. Bush look like the dumbest president ever. People have done dumber things. What were they thinking when they bought into the Bay of Pigs fiasco? How dumb was the Egypt-Suez war? How massively stupid was the entire war in Vietnam? Even at that, the challenge with this misbegotten adventure is that WE simply cannot let it continue. . . .

A surge is not acceptable to the people in this country — we have voted overwhelmingly against this war in polls (about 80 percent of the public is against escalation, and a recent Military Times poll shows only 38 percent of active military want more troops sent) and at the polls. We know this is wrong. The people understand, the people have the right to make this decision, and the people have the obligation to make sure our will is implemented. . . .

We are the people who run this country. We are the deciders. And every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war. Raise hell. Think of something to make the ridiculous look ridiculous. Make our troops know we're for them and trying to get them out of there. Hit the streets to protest Bush's proposed surge. If you can, go to the peace march in Washington on Jan. 27. We need people in the streets, banging pots and pans and demanding, "Stop it, now!"

Thank you, Molly Ivins. Bless you.


Amen, baby. You will be missed.

Monday, January 29, 2007

VP Queeg

The subject might be considered a major disservice to Wouk's Captain. My Reader's Encyclopedia (composed in a context and era when correctness still mattered) characterizes Queeg as "cowardly and inefficient." The first of course encapsulates the bully Cheney, but alas, to the disservice of the whole business of democracy, he has only at times been inefficient. When it comes right down to it, his official record has War-Criminal and Swine as two of the first entries. Dick Cheney is obviously a man in desperate need of some love and devotion (I can't help but speculate that his childhood must have been the sort to make Faulkner blanch).

It's great to have Dan Froomkin from the Washington Post back blogging after an unfortunate bronchitis encounter. You've been missed, Dan! I've excerpted shamelessly here, but you really ought to celebrate Froomie's recovery by touring his whole column.

While Dick Cheney undoubtedly remains the most powerful vice president this nation has ever seen, it's becoming increasingly unclear whether anyone outside the White House believes a word he says.

Inside the West Wing, Cheney's influence remains considerable. In fact, nothing better explains Bush's perplexing plan to send more troops to Iraq than Cheney's neoconservative conviction that showing the world that we have the "stomach for the fight" is the most important thing -- even if it isn't accomplishing the things we're supposed to be fighting for. Even if it's backfiring horribly.

But as his astonishing interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer laid bare last week, Cheney is increasingly out of touch with reality. He seems to think that by asserting things that are simply untrue, he can make others believe they are so.

Maybe that works within the White House. But for the rest of us, it's becoming a better bet to assume that everything -- or almost everything -- Cheney says is flat wrong.

Meanwhile, the trial of Cheney's former chief of staff Scooter Libby is exposing to public view the vice president's role as master-manipulator of misinformation and vindictive retaliator-in-chief -- once again, indifferent to the truth. (For example, Cheney ordered his staff to lie to reporters about the contents of a highly classified National Intelligence Estimate.)

And former aide Cathie Martin's testimony on Friday validated the most cynical conspiracy theories about how Cheney manipulates the press.

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But for Cheney, Iraq is an "enormous successes," it's the media's fault that more people don't recognize that, and showing "lack of stomach" in Iraq would lead not just to a debacle there but to cataclysmic domino-style effects across the globe and terrorist attacks within our borders.

So perhaps it's not a surprise that Cheney is losing support even from fellow Republicans who, looking ahead to the 2008 elections, do not relish carrying the burden of defending his increasingly indefensible world-view.

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Peter Baker writes in Thursday's Washington Post: "Vice President Cheney said yesterday that the administration has achieved 'enormous successes' in Iraq but complained that critics and the media 'are so eager to write off this effort or declare it a failure' that they are undermining U.S. troops in a war zone, striking a far more combative tone than President Bush did in his State of the Union address the night before.

"In a television interview that turned increasingly contentious as it wore on, Cheney rejected the gloomy portrayal of Iraq that has become commonly accepted even among Bush supporters.

'There's problems' in Iraq, he said, but it is not a 'terrible situation.' And congressional opposition 'won't stop us' from sending 21,500 more troops, he said, it will only 'validate the terrorists' strategy.' . . .

"Cheney has been criticized in the past for presenting what some called an overly rosy view of the situation in Iraq, most notably in 2005 when he said the insurgency was in its 'last throes.' The view he expressed yesterday seemed no less positive, and he sparred repeatedly with 'Situation Room' host Wolf Blitzer, telling him 'you're wrong' and suggesting he was embracing defeat."

Here's the transcript and video of the CNN interview.

There were so many baseless assertions, it's hard to know where to start. Blitzer tried valiantly to challenge some of them, to no avail.

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