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« July 30, 2006 - August 5, 2006 | Main | August 13, 2006 - August 19, 2006 »
Even if Nasrallah is killed, there will, apparently, be hundreds more. This, from the newspaper Al-Masri al-Youm (translation of the first sentence):
Health offices in Alexandria (Egypt) found that 128 newborn babies were given the name "Nasrallah."
Don't worry guys. These are the birth pangs of the "new Middle East."
Wow -- big week, with both Lamont and London, in rapid succession. I've been sampling opinions from all the bedraggled lawyer-types who I run into on the Metro coming home from work at 11 p.m.
So here's what I'm hearing this week, which for political and national security junkies was definitely The Best Week Ever.
In true Hegelian spirit, let's do a little thesis-antithesis-synthesis on two key issues: (1) What this means for progressives, (2) What in tarnation Joe Lieberman is doing.
Stands for GOP. After issuing talking points claiming Ned Lamont's victory would encourage Al Queda, they raise the threat level to red. Didn't stop there. Then there's this revelation :
"Weeks before September 11th, this is going to play big," said another White House official, who also spoke on condition of not being named, adding that some Democratic candidates won't "look as appealing" under the circumstances. - AFP, August 11, 2006
Then yesterday, the Republican National Committee sent out a fundraising letter, written by Rudy Giuliani:"In the middle of a war on terror, we need to remain focused on furthering Republican ideas more than ever before… Please make your commitment felt
with a financial contribution for $500, $250, $100, $50, $35 or $25 ...blah blah blah..."
Americablog does a nice recap.
Is it true that the GOP is so desperate that they have to hope people die in order to raise money?
Be aware of neo-con media, like a background chorus, turning our security challenges today--along with the political opposition-- into a Cold War redux. It really, really is not. Having lived in 1989 Berlin, I'll go into this more later.
Remember, the people in charge now are the same ones who will fund any number of outer space techno-fantasies that enriches their campaign contributors and won't even fix Amtrak. International terrorism has increased every day that George Bush has been president. Its not a coincidence. Bush's policies have thrown gasoline on the fire of resentment and hatred (latest fire, our friends in Lebanon). Remember 04? Mr. Cheney spread the gospel far and wide, declaring that Senator Kerry was "weak" because he talked about international terrorism as a law enforcement challenge. Well, The Heathrow terror plot was uncovered by Pakistani, British and American policework and intelligence. Mr. Kerry was right. He still is. Law enforcement cooperation from nations who are our friends, Mr. Cheney and company, not vanity wars, is what will keep Americans safe.
The protracted debates underway at the UN over a ceasefire in Lebanon illustrate all that's best and worse about the UN. Leading members of the Security Council have spent weeks debating the text of a resolution aimed to end the fighting and install an international peacekeeping force in Southern Lebanon.
A few weeks back, the night before similar calls from Kofi Annan and Tony Blair, I wrote a piece suggesting that UN intervention would be the only way to quiet the conflict. Events since then both underscore the UN's indispensability, and highlight its limitations.
On the downside:
- As virtually always, progress at the UN is unbearably slow. Today's thwarted terrorist attack finally dislodged horrifying photos of the devastation in Lebanon and Israel from the front pages for the first time in weeks, but if no deal is struck, the bloodshed and destruction will continue.
- The UN is only as good as its most powerful member states. The reason the organization hasn't acted is very simple: the US, France, Israel, Lebanon and Hezbollah have so far failed to agree on the terms of a cessation to hostilities. In the face of continued discord on a ceasefire's terms, the UN is paralyzed.
- The UN's deployment capabilities are limited. One of the key sticking points on the resolution is that while France and other countries need time to amass a peacekeeping force, Israel does not want to pull back until international troops are there to keep the peace. If the UN had better rapid deployment capabilities, that gap would be easier to bridge. This leads right back to my last point in that its the UN's leading member states who have historically blocked the formation of any standing UN peacekeeping capabilities.
But despite all that, the negotiations underway also illustrate the UN's central importance to the resolution of the conflict:
Shadi asks such a good question -- Where is Karen Hughes -- that I thought I'd try to answer it. And indeed, it wasn't hard. Just last week, she sat down for an interview with the Dallas News which included this gem of a public diplomacy priority:
summer camps to teach English.
Now, it would actually be a cheap shot to contrast that proposal with the depth of disaster that is our Middle East policy.
But I can't resist it. Let's see -- maybe one in Ramallah; one in the Lebanese mountains -- so beautiful; and one each for Iraq's Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites!
Seriously, in places like Indonesia, Turkey, parts of Africa, I think that might be a reasonable idea. But what it does highlight is the long-term, slow-moving nature of public diplomacy -- and the utter foolishness, or cynicism, of presenting Ms. Hughes' work as the solution to the problem of our terrible image in large parts of the world.
It's like your mama used to tell you about your reputation -- takes a long time to build it up but only a short time to lose it.
(Another reason Ms. Hughes might want to disappear -- release of this study showing that attitudes toward the US actually worsened among Arab students who took in the two US-funded networks, Radio Sawa and Alhurra tv.)
Is somebody going to file a missing person report on Karen Hughes? If any Democracy Arsenal readers know of her whereabouts, please email me immediately. This, I wish to tell you, is of the greatest importance.
Well, the State Department’s got to get its act
together. Actually, never mind that. It’s too late. There is nothing quite left to
salvage. Condoleezza Rice appears intent on saying the most bizarrely
inappropriate things to already skeptical international audiences. As Arianna
Huffington observed, it’s not exactly the best idea to compare war to labor
contractions. Stop talking about the “new
I'll bet Senator Lieberman wishes he'd sat somewhere else in the last January at the State of the Union....in a back row where POTUS GW couldn't smooch him.
Suzanne and David's post yesterday on the Lieberman loss is a good one. I'd also point readers to a classy statement about the Connecticut election written by Representative John Conyers. It looks for now like the Senator will forge ahead with his Independent bid--a saga that will both undermine and divide the left. Whether he intends to or not, the neo-conservative sound machine will snatch Senator Lieberman's every utterance and twist it to their own ends. And they will get some help from Democrats. I'm convinced now that the New Republic's Marty Peretz has lost it . Like a phantom limb, he keeps chasing some scary and powerful "left wing". Please, Mr. Peretz, show me where these folks are!
Peretz might be drinking the Kool Aid, but the Bush White House is mixing a whole new toxic batch. Here's what spinmeister Tony Snow claimed on TV today: that last night's Connecticut Senate primary gave voters the chance to answer the question, "Do you take the war on terror seriously?" Snow said that voters in Connecticut who supported Ned Lamont (and the 57 percent of Americans who support his position on Iraq) were choosing to "ignore the difficulties and walk away." That is the same approach, he said, that led Osama bin Laden to the conclusion "that Americans were weak and wouldn't stay the course and that led to September 11th."
But of course this White House never lets the facts get in the way of a good soundbite. Apparently, a more significant factor than the Iraq war was opposition to President Bush Fifty-nine percent of all voters said that Lieberman "was too close to the President," and although no exact numbers are provided, it was that group which "voted overwhelmingly for Lamont." The most reliable factor in the Lamont win seems to have been not opposition to the war specifically, but a more generalized disapproval of President Bush and of Lieberman's support for the president.
There's even some politically motivated slander making the rounds-- accusing the anti-Lieberman crowd of being anti-semitic. That's more than a cheap shot. It's a stab in the heart of our democracy. This religious exploitation could become worse given the backdrop of the Israel/Hezbollah/Lebanon conflict. Danny Schechter at media channel has a very thoughtful post on this. And Salon has a good list of where this insidious tactic is raising its head.
So please gentlemen, where are these crazy lefties? Well, if you followed Snow or Peretz's advice, you might look at the top progressive Members of Congress--I selected these three from the National Journal's yearly ranking. Although you might not agree with everything, these folks have hit the bullseye on national security many times. There are no Osama cheerleaders here. Who is Mr. Snow talking about? Could it be Air Force veteran Pete Stark ? Daughter of a veteran and the only Member to vote against the use of force resolution that our President has exploited to justify both domestic surveillance and war without end--Barbara Lee ? Psychiatrist in the VietNam era Naval Corps Jim McDermott ? The list goes on and on. I guess the conservative talking points factory doesn't do research. Too many pesky facts. Much more gratifying to dive headfirst into the gutter.
Happy Joe, indeed. I was in Italy, of all places. Yesterday, in between the Sistine Chapel and some damn good pizza, I flipped on the TV in my hotel room to CNN International. Wow, I thought, there's Joe. More to my surprise, however, I saw him smiling - beaming, actually - and then pumping his fist to spirited cheers from what appeared an excitable audience. Look at that, I thought, Lieberman beats out Lamont after all, despite trailing in most recent polls. Then I glanced down to the bottom of the screen and saw the headline: Lieberman loses to Lamont (or something like that). For a second - and not more - I was confused. Then a moment of clarity. That does make sense.
I have never seen someone so happy to lose a Democratic party primary.
For months now, security-minded liberals have feared the fallout if Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman, sometimes dubbed the most hawkish of progressive hawks, loses his primary race to antiwar challenger Ned Lamont. Lieberman's defeat, they worry, will cast liberals as captive to the isolationist left, undercut their credibility on defense, and hurt their prospects for the November elections.
Meanwhile, the left wing is celebrating Lamont’s showing as proof of the might of bloggers and outside-the-Beltway activists to influence politics. Both sides are wrong. Lieberman's defeat—engineered less by Internet junkies than by mainstream liberals in the Connecticut suburbs—heralds not a new peace movement but a hard-fought resoluteness and clarity on national security that Liberals have achieved in recent months. No longer skittish or defensive about criticizing the Bush administration’s stances on Iraq and terrorism, liberals are unafraid of risks and are finding a voice on foreign policy that should win them ground at the polls.
Lieberman didn't lose because he voted for the war or because he opposes an immediate pull-out from Iraq. Plenty of other liberals hold those positions yet remain popular—including, notably, Senator Hillary Clinton, who also faces a primary challenge from an antiwar leftist yet is coasting toward reelection.
Michigan's leading poll-watcher predicts that turnout will be "pathetic", but I've still got a voting stop scheduled for later this afternoon. In preparation, I'm thinking about the ways national security is -- and isn't impacting the Michigan races, of which there are a number of interesting ones.
The Republican Party seems to be having authority problems -- a couple of incumbent Congressmen are being challenged from the right, and the party's handpicked African-American opponent for Senator Debbie Stabenow stands a good chance of being rejected by GOP primary voters.
Statewide, the Dems look more controlled -- but in my local area, we've got a progressive slate of Democrats spitting with rage about city leaders taking money from "outside interests" and focusing too much on "growth." But I digress.
I notice a national security/terrorism and Iraq undercurrent through several races on both sides of the aisle; and I see a number of local issues that ought to tie back to energy policy, and thus to national security, but which don't seem to in the minds of cadidates and voters alike. And that's interesting too.
The state GOP thought it was oh so clever to sign on Detroit-area minister and former city councilman the Rev. Keith Butler to challenge Stabenow. Party rank and file didn't agree and are striking back with Sherriff Michael Bouchard, whose ads make much of his experience with violence and disaster, and his post-9-11 service at the World Trade Center site. It's not a line of voter appeal I've heard in a while, but it seems to be effective, as he's passed Butler in the polls.
Over on the Democratic side of the aisle, though, we've got a retired CIA man, Jim Marcinkowski, set to win his primary today and mount a very strong challenge against incumbent Mike Rogers -- so strong that political observers have moved the race into the tossup column. You might expect a CIA guy to be a little reticent about his background, but no -- and Marcinkowski has even had Joe Wilson out here stumping for him, whipping up voter outrage about the Valerie Plame outing. I confess I hadn't believed there was so much voter outrage about that, but Marcinkowski is clearly doing something right. (Full disclosure: I staffed a political training that Marcinkowski attended and have donated to his campaign. Come to think of it, I've given to Stabenow too.)
What both men seem to have in common is an ability to make their national security experience part of the background music, something they're not putting forward as their only asset but something you're subtly aware of all the time -- and something they clearly think works in their favor. Given that neither national party seems to have that down smoothly right now (check out this cringe-inducing LA Times article about a GOP strategy memo encouraging candidates to make Iraq a winner), is it just possible that the elections this fall will turn on which party's individual candidates are better-prepared to tell their own, credible, national security stories?
And is that going to be the real sense in which Lamont/Lieberman is a bellwether?
The dog that didn't bark
With no apologies whatsoever to John Podhoretz. What if our democracy has become so frantic about destroying our enemies that it can no longer keep track of who its enemies are, why we are fighting them, or what it would mean to win? What if we assign so much value to our own people that we lose any sense of common humanity? Will the people of other countries believe us when we tell them our quarrel is with their leaders and not with them? Will we have fewer or more enemies if we dismiss all other concerns than the indiscriminate pursuit of our foes? Will other nations come to our aid if we brush aside their wishes and priorities? What if our enemies refuse to learn the lessons we are so insistent on teaching them? What if, instead of being awed by our power and righteousness, they choose to continue the fight? Is there a point at which the costs exceed the conceivable gains? Don’t we expect our leaders to calculate the chances for and obstacles to success? How many enemies must we fight, for how long? What if not every enemy can be defeated militarily? How do we know that political steps will never give a better outcome, that they will never reduce the enemy’s will to fight or their support and sustenance? What if our soldiers are cut loose from "voluntary limits" in combat? What if limits are essential to keeping the conduct of war from becoming completely senseless? What if they are a fundamental part of the warrior’s honor? What if they are critical to the ability of young men and women to make sense of a searing experience? What will be the long-term effects on their psyche? What if we start measuring our own behavior against those of our enemies? What will we permit ourselves (our troops) to do because our enemies are worse? Could somebody please remind me again what it means to win?
