Most Absurd Superlative Contest Posted by Shadi Hamid

A couple weeks ago, I heard a prominent journalist say that Lyndon Johnson was the greatest president the US has ever had (this journalist, for his own sake, will remain unnamed). When I heard this, it struck me as a rather comical thing to say. I tried hard not to interrupt the talk by chuckling uncontrollably. And then I realized he was totally serious. In this spirit, I thought that after their drubbing last week, conservatives would resort to similarly absurd superlatives. And they certainly have. But, as far as I can tell, nothing can still top what Michael Novak said a week before the midterms:

I call Donald Rumsfeld the best Defense Secretary the U.S. has ever had. Close behind him, in my book, is Secretary Richard Cheney, and we have been lucky to have a number of other very good Secretaries of Defense during the past century. 

I hereby declare this the reigning champion. But I propose a challenge: can anyone find a more absurd superlative then this? 

Borat and Anti-Semitism Posted by Michael Signer

At the risk of forever marking myself as a dour, humorless scold (see my critique of Talladega Nights, to which one reader, "Mikedbot," crisply responded, "I don't think you fully understood the movie, but then I don't think I fully understood your post.") I want to say here that I thought Borat was a problematic movie -- and even risky. 

I was heartened to read a story yesterday on CNN where Sacha Baron Cohen found himself on the defensive about the film's obsessive anti-Semitism.  His argument:

He said he always had faith in the audience to realize this was a fictitious country and the mere purpose of it was to allow people to expose their own prejudices.

"I think part of the movie shows the absurdity of holding any form of racial prejudice, whether it's hatred of African-Americans or of Jews," said Baron Cohen, a devout Jew who keeps Kosher and observes the Sabbath when he can.

There is a fine line between entertainment and satire; there is another fine line between satire and education.  I don't believe the movie even crosses to satire, much less education.  And this is because of its strangely obsessive, almost totally raw, depiction of anti-Semitism.

Stop the Murtha-Mongers Posted by Shadi Hamid

I find it baffling why any liberal would readily lend his or her support to John Murtha, who hopes to win the post of House Majority Leader later today. Let’s pray he doesn’t. If he did, it would provide only more evidence that the Democratics are devoid of a moral core or any recognizable set of principles or ideas. Murtha is not a liberal. He doesn’t claim to be a liberal. The only reason progressives like him is because he stuck it to Bush presumably when no one else would. That’s a pretty crappy reason to vote someone in as Majority Leader of your party. It would be one thing if Murtha’s opposition to the war was based on a distinctly progressive vision for US foreign policy. It isn't (as Bradford Plumer explains in an excellent post).

Murtha remains a perplexing mix of realist and neo-con, taking perhaps the worst of the two trends and fusing them together. I can’t think of one time where I’ve heard Murtha talk about the importance of democracy in Iraq and the Middle East. That may be because he doesn’t really care (there are, apparently, dearer things to his heart). Can someone tell me what distinguishes Brent Scrowcroft from John Murtha in this regard? Not much, except that Murtha is actually more of a hawk, but in the worst sense of the word. Every now and then, he will give us a Michael Ledeen-ish nugget like: "The big problem in the Middle East is Iran. We went to the wrong place." How reassuring.

Opposition is not vision. It’s simply criticism, and that’s all Murtha has offered the House on the issue of Iraq. He wants us to get out now. For many liberals, apparently, this is the only position that matters. Hatred of Bush and opposition to the Iraq war have become the litmus test for a good chunk of the Democratic base. These activists, in any case, have always been united more by tactics than belief. It is not clear what they believe. It is, however, clear that this war is all that matters to them, even if it means putting aside the liberal values and principles that supposedly define us - or at least the ones that once did.

Where State and Human Security intersect Posted by Lorelei Kelly

Marc and Shadi have pointed out a painful dilemma in their last few posts: That the values of a democracy promoting foreign policy have been given a bad name by the neo-cons and their rush to war in Iraq.  I have also been perplexed by this (keeping in mind that the USA has undermined itself abroad in the name of democracy several times before the neo-cons were on the scene). Yet I agree, we must not let the values of democracy (human rights, transparency, participation) become casualties of the past five years.  One way to do this is to forget about the rhetoric for awhile and dive into real problem solving.

The DLC  method of lining a bunch of lefties up against the wall and forcing them to say "kill terrorists" or "twin perils of terrorism and tyranny" before they get into the serious-foreign-policy club is silly. A much better strategy is to actually tackle liberal dilemmas in the real world: Like when to use force.  How to do it, whether or not the military is the one who should do it, should it be done by the USA or through a collective organization, what does the doctrine look like, what does the training look like, should it be privatized etc. etc. etc.

Our challenge today, not just as progressives, but as a planet is to derive a way to understand security two ways simultaneously: one that combines the needs of the individual with the more traditional needs of the state. This intersection is dangerous--with lots of careening traffic. Rhetorically this place is often posed as a tradeoff like the old rusty guns versus butter debate. But that is conceptually wrong and mostly unhelpful.  Both are important. Always. State and individual human security needs are not mutually exclusive and should not be seen as tradeoffs. A strong Army is good. So are more girls' schools. Because we haven't talked about it --putting everything on the budget table as we go--we have neither.

I attended a book reception today where the audience pitched questions along this theme.The Impossible Mandate? is a new publication out of the nonpartisan Henry L. Stimson Center . It centers on military preparedness, the Responsibility to Protect  and Modern Peace Operations. (The book will be up on the site asap!)

The central question: Is the world prepared to use military force to protect civilians from mass violence?

Author Tori Holt called the military role in providing civilian protection "coercive protection". What a great example of the new language we need to explain our new world. Those two words together help me envision an integrated idea at the all important intersection--using the military to create safety.  The humanitarian lobby Interaction comes at it from a humanitarian aid point of view in this publication. 

We're living in a time when an individual can inflict terrible harm on a state. The flip side of that coin is that the state is also marshalling resources on behalf of individuals.

I'm hoping that the outcome of all this conceptual athleticism is a policy to make a virtue out of necessity.  Support for preventive measures that help both states and individuals: participatory, self-government early and often. I'm going to think about this some more and hopefully come up with a less clunky way of putting it.

Trade Policy Strikes Back, Pre-emptively Posted by Heather Hurlburt

*11.15 A couple of posters have asked why trade should be a priority concern for progressives, given the urgency of Iraq, global warming, etc. etc.  I'll give you two reasons, one for each side of the house.  First, the US needs to make sure the global economy continues to grow, and we continue to thrive in it, if we are to have the resources to address any other challenge, whether it is global warming, terrorism, AIDS, etc.  Trade deficits and budget deficits make the policy hole we are in on those vital issues even deeper.  Second, some big progressive constituencies think that issues around trade -- either the collapse in American employment in certain formerly well-paid manufacturing sectors, or the structural injustice the current trade regime does to poor commodity farmers in developing nations -- are fundamental.  If enough of your constituencies think something is fundamental, it's going to be on the agenda, whether you like it or not.

In case you were surprised that the (still GOP-controlled) House embarrassed the President by voting down his Vietnam trade pact yesterday, this analysis of the "globalization debate" gives you all the explanation you need.  Note the running tally of trade-affected Congressional races.  Note that both parties are affected.

The Post coverage gives more of the international labor/environment angle, but the first piece I linked to (USA Today) is much more evocative of how people outside the Beltway see it -- another piece of globalization mayhem coming at us out of our control.  To counter that, the pro-trade community is going to have to come up with some new ways to make sure workers and consumers think that their livelihoods and well-being are under their control. 

Trade policy is the next big bipartisan train wreck.  The "pro-trade" and "economic nationalist" certitudes of both sides are largely outdated platitudes, whether it's President Bush telling the newly-unemployed to take community college courses (so helpful for that job at McDonald's) or the just-say-no trade rejectionism that I see a lot of in the industrial Midwest where I live.  Progressives have less than a year, to my mind, to offer up new ways forward that avert that train wreck.  Interesting little things, from unions organizing overseas to proposals for changing how we do unemployment and health insurance, are bubbling all over -- but I'm not at all sure we'll pull them together in time.

Iraq Blame Game: Michael Ledeen Gets Creative Posted by Heather Hurlburt

We've been trying to follow the conservative blame game for the mess on our hands in Iraq.  Was it the fault of an insufficiently-dedicated George W. Bush (see David Frum and others)?  The top military commanders (see Don Rumsfeld)?  The defeatist American people? (Joshua Muravchik)

AEI's Michael Ledeen has a new entry.

Women.

Yes, women.  And no, not Iraqi women or Islamic women or women suicide bombers or women in hijabs.

Republican women.  Condoleezza Rice, Laura Bush, Karen Hughes, and Harriet Miers, to be specific.

Here's the quote, from that Vanity Fair piece which just keeps on giving (though my browser will not open it):

"Ask yourself who the most powerful people in the White House are. They are women who are in love with the president: Laura [Bush], Condi, Harriet Miers, and Karen Hughes."

What a soap opera.  Four women cook up a plot that changes the shape of history, all for love of One Man.  Can't you just see the paperback cover?  It sounds like something Lynne Cheney might write.

I could go on with the satire.  But let's be clear:  Mrs. Bush and the Ms.s Rice, Miers and Hughes are four formidable women.  They have not, however, performed a five-year end run around Cheney, Rumsfeld and the whole national security apparatus.  Nor would they want to.

Nor should their careful staffing of the President serve as an excuse for those who should have told the President hard truths and unpleasant facts but did not.

Attempting to re-assign blame from the principals to the staff is, in a word, tacky.  And that's the real core point here.  Nobody was led astray by women's wanton wiles.  Neither was this a case of great policy poorly executed by love-blinded staffers, or poor policy that would have been stopped if not for love-blinded staffers.  I am, perhaps, belaboring the obvious.  But the buck stops with the people who had the ideas and made the decisions -- no matter what your ideology or gender.   

Creating an imaginary cabal of dangerous women is, in two words, sexist and weird.  Perform a little thought experiment.  Remove the four names and the word "women" and replace it with "blacks," "Asians," or "Jews."  See what I mean?  Totally inappropriate.

(Besides, when women do form cabals, we don't mess up this badly.)

Or Is It: When Neocons Sound Like Liberals? Posted by Marc Grinberg

Shadi raises an important issue in his last post, on foreign policy messaging.  He argues that liberals (including him) are increasingly uncomfortable with moralistic messaging that decries human rights abusing regimes, calls for the promotion of democracy and freedom abroad, and suggests that there is evil in our world.  The important question is why. 

The answer, it turns out, was in his post (the title) the whole time: because "liberals sound like neocons."  The language of good and evil, criticizing oppression and human rights abuses, democracy promotion - today, these are all neoconservative themes.  When liberals refer to them, they are seen (by other liberals) as mimicking the Bush Administration.

But there is something extremely disturbing about this.  After all, human rights, democracy, values-based foreign policy - these are traditionally progressive ideas, right?  Was it not President Carter who argued that our foreign policy must be guided by our belief in human rights - by our "belief that dignity and freedom are fundamental spiritual (yes, he said that) requirements."  Was it not President Clinton who stated that under his leadership "America's bright flame of freedom [was] spreading throughout all the world."  Was it not Clinton who called on the international community (at the UN!!!)  to "take a side - not merely stand between the sides. For when good and evil collide, even-handedness can be an ally of evil."

Now, I believe Shadi's problem is more with the language than with the policies (human rights, democracy, etc.).  I fear, however, that this is not true of all liberals who increasingly oppose the injection of morality into foreign policy and object to American involvement in the affairs of other nations.  I can understand why.  The Bush Administration has stolen our foreign policy tradition and made it their own, perverting it to a nearly unrecognizable form in the process. But I think the tendency to run away from our tradition, to ditch morality to the side of the road, let the neoconservatives pervert our values, and move forward with some variant of a realist foreign policy is wrong. 

Instead, liberals must fight to take back our tradition from the Bush Administration.  Let's reclaim the policies of liberal internationalism and the language of a moral foreign policy.  After all, the two come hand-in-hand.  Since liberal internationalism is an approach rooted deeply in liberal beliefs and worldview, it would be impossible to sell it in language devoid of values and of morality (I challenge you to try).

I'm up for the fight.  Are you?

When Liberals Sound like Neo-Cons Posted by Shadi Hamid

I think Marc, in his latest post, has gotten to the root of the Democrats’ problems on national security:

What concerns me is the increasing tendency among liberals (of all stripes) to confuse taking a security threat (or a moral travesty) seriously, with advocating an armed response to that threat.  The Bush Administration has already stolen democracy promotion and a moral foreign policy from liberals.  Has it now taken ownership of the ability to assess threats to American security

What we’ve been doing too much of and for too long is letting conservatives define the terms of the debate. We have to go on the offensive and reclaim what was once ours but has now been taken away.

A couple weeks ago, a few of us were discussing US foreign policy. I started going off on neo-conservatives. Someone interrupted and said “wait, you’re not a neo-con?” At first I thought she was joking. But she wasn’t. She really thought I was. Why? Because I talk about democracy promotion a lot and I sometimes use explicitly moralistic language when doing so. It’s irritating, tiresome, and it bores me to have to start my arguments with a disclaimer (I’m not a freaking neo-con. I’m a liberal and damn proud of it).

So I know what Marc’s talking about and I sympathize with his frustration. The neo-cons (and Republicans in general) act as if they have a monopoly on morality, democracy promotion, and whatever else. And, too often, progressives run away, scared and disillusioned, accepting the terms of the discourse. Well, that’s got to end.

With that said, let me hedge a bit. And I know Marc will jump on me for this. I didn’t like the way he phrased the Iran security threat in his Democratic Strategist article:

If any issue should arouse the passion of Democrats, it is the spread of nuclear weapons to a radical Iranian government. Iran is a nation that stones women, publicly executes homosexuals, suppresses its minorities, and has violated the most basic human rights we fight for as Democrats. Allowing Iran to build a nuclear weapon would strengthen this government's hand against their own people. And nuclear proliferation--which would spread from Iran to the rest of the region--poses the greatest human rights abuse of all: threatening to destroy millions of lives in a war or a nuclear accident.

It just makes me feel uncomfortable. It sounds a bit too… ummm…Manichean? Marc and I talked about this earlier and he pushed me to explain what I thought was problematic with his choice of words. And I’ll say the same thing I said then: I’m not entirely sure: I just don’t feel entirely comfortable with that kind of rhetoric.

To be frank, sometimes I look back at the language I use in my own articles and I wonder if I go too far. For example, a couple months ago I wrote the following in the American Prospect:

We do indeed have a story to tell, and it is this: America will close, finally, the longstanding gap between words and deeds; we will, today, wage a war on the twin perils of tyranny and terrorism; and we will not stop until we have won.”

I stand by my phrasing here. However, I can fully understand why it makes progressives uncomfortable. The question is: should it?

Dealing With Anti-American Rhetoric Posted by Ali Eteraz

Who will be the global footsoldiers in Progressive American Hegemony ("PAH")? I ask this question because under Old School Realism, with respect to the Muslim world and Third World Countries, the "footsoldier" question was eliminated completely by total and absolute reliance on the puppet Tyrant. Today, the PAH crew believes that reliance on tyrants no longer servers its function. In other words, it seems that the PAH crew wants to undermine the tyrants in favor of the populist underbelly of Muslim and other Third World countries. I recall Shadi suggesting -- by way of an example -- that we needed to open up dialogue with the populist Islamists of Egypt and Jordan. Skeptics say: can we even accomplish such a dialogue? Isn't it the case that the populist Islamists draw their legitimacy from their Anti-Americanism? How can we support people who don't like us? (They also add, how can we support people who don't share our values, but I addressed that in my first post already).

My response is that: part of the reason Islamists of today are anti-American has been because of their experience where we supported those tyrants who in turn  repressed the Islamists. In Pakistan, during the 80's, we supported the Islamists (by supporting a tyrant who supported them), there wasn't much anti-American rhetoric coming out of Pakistani Islamist circles. Let's say the Democratic Congress passes a resolution in favor of the populist Islamists of Egypt tomorrow. Immediately they come to our side. At this point we can dangle our $2 billion a year over them (as we currently do with Mubarak). (Pakistan is a more difficult situation because we have no leverage with the Islamists).

In short, if Islamists come to power without our assistance, or without having needed our legitimization, they will remember that. They will know that they did it on their own -- "without America" -- and then they will work with an agenda that makes no consideration for our views.

There remains one major problem: the moment there is any indication to any of the dictators that he has lost favor with the US, he will turn to a massive project of internal repression. It is here that I hesistate because now the question becomes: would the American public be prepared to take military action? If not military, what could be done?