No-Bid Contracts: A Way of Life Posted by Suzanne Nossel

All the things wrong with no-bid contracting for Katrina - and the things that ought to be happening instead - are laid out in this post.

But here's what the Washington Post says is actually happening:

The agency has already begun awarding hundreds of millions of dollars in no-bid Katrina contracts under loosened government rules designed to get relief and rebuilding efforts underway quickly. As the money begins to flow, some fear the agency could become overwhelmed. "They've never spent anything even remotely on this scale. So the real question is going to be what kind of controls are in place," said Bill Jenkins, who monitors FEMA for the Government Accountability Office. "There are going to be fraudsters coming out of the woodwork." . . . .

Last week FEMA gave out hundreds of millions of dollars worth of contracts to engineering and construction firms to build an estimated 300,000 temporary housing units. Those contracts were awarded without competition under rules that allow agencies to bypass normal procedures during an emergency. Several went to companies that have been major financial supporters of the Bush administration. One firm, Shaw Group Inc., of Baton Rouge, is on the client list of lobbyist and former FEMA director Joe M. Allbaugh, though he has said he does not get involved with contracts. . . .

Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.), the ranking minority member on the Senate committee overseeing FEMA, said last night that he has discussed with [Sen Susan] Collins [Maine] the idea of a special IG to monitor Katrina spending. "Congress has to be very aggressive in making sure that in our haste to help we aren't wasting an enormous amount of public money, or worse, having it used in a way that's corrupt," he said.

In addition to making sure the American public doesn't get bilked, Congress ought to also see to it that the businesses and people of New Orleans get in on the action.  Otherwise that great city may get rebuilt, with no one who wants to go back and live there.

Memo to Progressives: Cooperation is Good Posted by Heather Hurlburt

Speaking of features of the landscape we'd never have imagined, how about turning on the network news Saturday night to see b-roll of Mexican and Dutch sailors in Biloxi?

I'm cautiously optimistic that those who predicted a backlash of new American isolationism (including some reader responses to this post of mine) were wrong.  Mind you, I think the European commentators who predict a new US humility and re-engagement with the world are also over-optimistic.

But now progressives have to be careful not to fall into the trap that the President has quietly backtracked out of.  I caught a progressive policy adviser who shall remain nameless on tv Saturday as well, blaming Bush Administration ineptitude for our inability to weather this alone, without international support.

Wrong.  Remember, progressives are about community, smart mutuality, and the argument that we build international institutions not out of altruism but because they will be there for us as well.  Suggesting that we should have been able to go it alone, fun as it might be, just buys into the frame (forgive the Lakoff-speak) that somehow out there somewhere there's a way we could go it alone all the time.  Public opinon experts like Steven Kull tell us that 75-85 percent of the public knows that's not true and wants stronger arguments in support of international cooperation, rule-making, etc.  Let's not cut our own arguments out from under ourselves.  We're the beneficiaries of international goodwill and cooperation working in spite of ourselves.

10 features of today's landscape that we would not have imagined on 9/11 Posted by Suzanne Nossel

It's hard to put oneself back in the mindset of that brilliantly sunny but paralyzingly dark September day four years ago, nor the surreal weeks and months right after.  But I've tried to do so today, and to consider what aspects of today's American situation could have been predicted, and what would have seemed unfathomable.  I don't think the war in Iraq would have been inconceivable, nor that it was impossible to imagine the US dead in a military conflict in the Middle East creeping up toward the number of 9/11 casualties.  It may be a little strong to say that none of the items on this list were imaginable:  truthfully we may have imagined we might see them, though fervently hoped we wouldn't. 

Osama on the Loose - Remember "dead or alive?"  First we thought Osama would be caught during the war on Afghanistan.  Then we thought that the Administration would surely find him before the 2004 elections (see this TNR article entitled "July Surprise").  It was hard to judge which imperative was more powerful:  punishing the man who orchestrated the 9/11 attacks, or decapitating al Qaeda.   I would not have guessed that neither would be accomplished by now.

Homeland security seemingly in disarray - There are two surprises here:  1) that we're so woefully ill-prepared for another major disaster on the homefront; and 2) that few realized this until the Katrina debacle two weeks ago.   In retrospect, as tragic and horrifying as it was for New York City in particular, 9/11 was nowhere near the challenge in terms of emergency response that a major hurricane or a dirty bomb would pose.

Public diplomacy effort has gone nowhere - There was an enormous amount of talk about outreach and diplomacy in the weeks and months after 9/11.  While a stack of thorough reports have been written on the topic and dozens of solid recommendations issued, progress has stalled almost completely.  This GAO report details the manifold reasons why this effort has yet to get off the ground.  Karen Hughes was sworn in the day before yesterday to the post of Under-Secretary for Public Diplomacy, a post that had been vacant for 16 months.   We'll see where we are a year from now under her stewardship.

Afghanistan having become an afterthought - In the weeks and months after 9/11, it was expected that rooting out the Taliban and transforming Afghanistan into a stable country would consume American foreign policy for years to come.  Four years later, Afghanistan rarely makes the front page.  The country has made significant progress but according to this UNDP report, remains in danger of devolving back into a failed state.  Militarily, large swaths of territory remain under hostile control.    Its no surprise that Afghanistan still needs US attention; what's amazing is that it no longer gets it.

Nowhere on non-proliferation - When President Bush famously referenced an axis of evil based comprised of known nuclear proliferators, the expectation was that his Administration would launch a focused crackdown on those weapons.  In the intervening years, apart from launching preemptive war on the only one of the three regimes in question that turned out not to have WMD, the Administration has been "stumbling and reactive" in response to the very real threats posed by North Korea and Iran.

That US policy would have resulted in the recruitment of hundreds if not thousands of potential Middle East terrorists - Here's how CIA Director Porter Goss put it in February:  "The Iraq conflict, while not a cause of extremism, has become a cause for extremists," Goss told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.   "Those jihadists who survive will leave Iraq experienced in and focused on acts of urban terrorism. They represent a potential pool of contacts to build transnational terrorist cells, groups and networks in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and other countries."

No Sputnik relative to Arab world - One of the biggest obstacles to effectively fighting terror identified in the months after 9/11 was the scarcity of Americans with deep knowledge of Arab languages and cultures.  According to this report, four years later we know neither how many Arab linguists and translators the Defense Department has, nor how many it needs.  We are still busy convening task forces to look at the problem and figure out what needs to be done.

Still having detainees at Guantanamo without trial - When the military first started using Guantanamo to house detainees from the Afghanistan war in early 2002, the notion was that it would be temporary.  Nearly four years later, the facility is still being used to house more than 500 detainees who have not been tried.

Energy independence nowhere - When it was revealed that 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers were Saudi nationals, an outcry rose about the need to free the U.S.  from dependency on foreign oil and the unholy alliances that reliance creates.  While the White House pays lip service to this idea, the reality of his corporate-friendly proposals doesn't come close to matching the rhetoric.

No further attack on US soil - Living in Manhattan on 9/11 and ever since, I've been waiting for another attack since that day.  As of today, its impossible to know whether al Qaeda and kin are today incapable of carrying out something on the scale of the attack four years ago, or whether they are planning something even worse for, say, tomorrow.  Which brings me to my final point . . .

No clear sense of whether we're gaining ground against terror or not - I'm not sure whether anyone's to blame for this, but four years ago I sure would have thought that this long into the future, we'd have a better sense of whether our efforts to combat terror were paying off.  We know which American policies aren't working, but it seems almost impossible to answer whether we are - in sum - more or less vulnerable than we were on that horrible day.

Katrina Clean-Up: And the Winner Is . . . Halliburton Posted by Suzanne Nossel

Last week, I warned that while we were all fretting over the fate of hurricane victims, firms with close ties to the Administration would be lining up for the reconstruction gravy train.  I pointed out that such firms, including principally Halliburton and its subsidiaries, had been accused of massive fraud, mismanagement and waste in relation to their roles roles in post-war Iraq.

Sure enough, its happening.  This story reports that Halliburton and Bechtel have already scored rich contracts for clean-up work on the Gulf Coast.   Members of Congress, the media and the public should demand accountability and insist that the people of New Orleans partake of the economic opportunities that will be created through the rebuilding effort.  The clean-up and reconstruction processes should be used as ways to lure people back to New Orleans to revive and reshape their city, not to line the pockets of the Administration's favorite large corporations.

Can the Center Hold at the UN Posted by David Shorr

One of the most cynical things I ever heard was when the distinguished former Pakistani Ambassador Ahmad Kamal told a group of college students gathered for a model UN that the object of the game at the United Nations is to "avoid becoming isolated." The implication is clear, with just a few friends, a UN member state can block almost anything it objects to. Ambassador Kamal's words have been ringing in my ears as I monitor the tortured last-minute negotiations over UN reform in preparation for next week's summit meeting. How, I've been wondering, can a fairly small group of renegade countries derail reforms that enjoy fairly broad support? Welcome to the United Nations.

It's not yet time for complete despair. A group of 12-15 ambassadors started meeting Friday evening, chaired by Canadian Ambassador Allan Rock, to try to hash out compromises that proved elusive in the "core group" of 32 that has been meeting for two weeks. In recent conversations, ambassadors have expressed cautious optimism; they tell me that key countries have indicated a new flexibility, but had yet to offer new positions. According to Pollyanna's best-case scenario, a flurry of compromises is reached over the next 48 hours, and all this eleventh-hour posturing is revealed as negotiation brinkmanship.

But the posturing itself says something about the dysfunctions of the United Nations and should be taken as a lesson if no agreement on reform is reached. As the main instrument of international cooperation and the world community's only meeting place with universal membership, the United Nations has great potential to marshal collective action on today's challenges from terrorism to poverty reduction to human rights and nuclear non-proliferation. But it can only achieve this potential if the world's leaders pull together.

When the UN's member states bicker as they have for the last several weeks, they are focused on outmaneuvering one another. The countries actively trying to block the package of reforms that were prepared for the summit -- Algeria, Cuba, Colombia, Egypt, India, Iran, Jamaica, Pakistan, Syria, Venezuela -- are trying to keep the UN from being more active and effective, often preferring the inconclusive debates that often paralyze the 191-country General Assembly. (The problem with the US position is different, but no less real, overreaching by niggling over small stuff rather than shoring up the major items.)

Perhaps Clint's response to my earlier post on human rights had a point in saying that countries fending off international pressure are more motivated than those bringing pressure to bear. As W.B. Yeats put it, "The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity." But let's hope not.

The reform package can still be rescued, but only if the superpower gets into a much more constructive mode and some of the other developing world countries stand up to the obstructionists. What's needed is for member states to focus on the problems (poverty, conflict, repression) rather than each other. Is this too idealistic? According to the report of a High-level Panel  of elder statesmen and women, it's not only possible but necessary:

Without mutual recognition of threats there will be no collective security. Self-help will rule, mistrust will predominate, and cooperation for long-term mutual gain will elude us.

Free-Fall and the Court Posted by Michael Signer

A new Pew poll's out today.  The President's in trouble:

Two-in-three Americans (67 percent) believe he could have done more to speed up relief efforts, while just 28 percent think he did all he could to get them going quickly. At the same time, Bush’s overall job approval rating has slipped to 40 percent and his disapproval rating has climbed to 52 percent, among the highest for his presidency. Uncharacteristically, the president’s ratings have slipped most among his core constituents – Republicans and conservatives.

Wow.  40%.  That's low.  And it means the President is going to be on the defense, politically, not just about the hurricane, but about everything political, for a good while.  Which means Democrats may have an opportunity not only to work on productive legislation here -- they may be in a better position than they thought re. the Supreme Court.

My pet theory about all of this is that, prior to Katrina, the President had already lavishly squandered his political capital (when he said he'd spend it, no kidding, it's spent).  His approval rating was already in the low-40's, pre-hurricane.  Now, he's likely to free-fall even farther, and faster (my high school physics notwithstanding -- would he actually fall at the same rate???).

To turn from the aching pain of New Orleans to the soothingly anodyne topic of the Supreme Court, I think this means that the President is going to have a more difficult time replacing Justice O'Connor with an extreme right-winger.

Unless, of course, John Roberts is a Manchurian Candidate, or something like it, as some of our more charmingly suspicious friends seem to suspect. 

He does have that weirdly saccharine grin, and that perma-tan, after all...

Hmmm...

UN Reform Issue Spotlight: Human Rights Posted by David Shorr

I thought I'd temporarily set aside the debate of Pollyanna (me) versus Chicken Little (Mark Goldberg) versus Solomon (Suzanne) over whether agreement will be reached among UN reform negotiators in New York.

Instead I want to focus on one of the major issues of reform: creating a new Human Rights Council to replace the controversial Human Rights Commission. This issue is especially timely today. U.S. Ambassador John Bolton has requested a small group meeting on this disputed reform in New York, and the likely conveners of such a meeting are probing to make sure the Americans would be bringing new positions to the table. One central question is whether governments can be pressed to improve their rights records more effectively through confrontation or cooperation.

The existing commission is infamous for having some of the worst rights-violating regimes among its elected members -- among others the Sudanese government (even as it backs a genocidal campaign in Darfur). As such countries have used their places on the commission to shield themselves from international pressure, the body has drawn the scorn of the Bush Administration. But the commission is widely seen as discredited and a blot on the UN's reputation.

As it stands, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights meets for just a frenzied six weeks each spring, bickering continuously over resolutions. Now the diplomatic tug-of-war has carried over into the debate over replacing the commission with a new Human Rights Council that would remain in session all year. As one side sees it, the issue is the ability of rights-abusing regimes to fend off scrutiny; for the other side, the problem is the way the U.S. and others unfairly beat up on sovereign states.

As diplomats in New York wrangle over this, naturally there are structural issues regarding how the new body would be organized and elected (a summary of the U.S. position is here). The proposed mechanism for keeping the worst offenders off the council is to require election by a supermajority of two-thirds of the UN General Assembly. There is also supposed to be a system of peer review that subjects all countries to scrutiny on a regular rotation, beginning with those on the council -- a mechanism meant to level the playing field and also deter rights-abusers from seeking membership.

The real issue, though, is whether the council will push for improved rights by pointing fingers at regimes and voting on condemnatory resolutions or by extending a helping hand and quietly cooperating on solutions. The best approach, of course, is to strike a balance between naming-and-shaming and more cooperative approaches. Both are essential to strengthen human rights, and combining the two should be easier for a body that meets year-round.

Give Them a Roof! Congress and Iraq Posted by Lorelei Kelly

Hallelujah!  Members of Congress--fed up with the calculated indifference of their institution--are initiating a second-track process to discuss how America might move in a different direction on Iraq.   

Led by Rep. Lynn Woolsey (CA) will convene an unofficial and hearing on Iraq policy. Both Democrats and Republicans have been invited and some 25 Members of Congress have indicated that they will attend. Witnesses will include:

Former Sen. Max Cleland (D-Ga.), a Vietnam veteran, retired Gen. Joseph Hoar, former commander of the U.S. Central Command, and Tom Hayden, a former California legislator, civil rights activist and specialist on the Northern Ireland Peace Process. Also expected to participate are Ken Katzman, a Middle East analyst at the Congressional Research Service, David Mack, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Arab Emirates, and Anas Shallal, founder of Iraqi-Americans for Peaceful Alternatives. 

Let's hope that this activity will mark the day that Congress gets back to its constitutional job of oversight and asking tough questions.   Location on Capitol Hill TBA.  As of this writing, the Republican leadership will not give the organizers a room, so the hearing might take place on the front lawn of the Capitol.

Remember New Orleans: Conservatism is Over Posted by Lorelei Kelly

It is not merely for today, but for all time to come that we should perpetuate for our children's children this great and free government, which we have enjoyed all our lives.  I beg you to remember this, not merely for my sake, but for yours......It is in order that each of you may have through this free government which we have enjoyed, an open field and a fair chance for your industry, enterprise, and intelligence; that you may all have equal privileges in the race of life, with all its desireable human aspirations. It is for this the struggle should be maintained...The nation is worth fighting for...

Abraham Lincoln to the 166th Ohio Regiment, 1864

Government is good. It's a common good. For such a prosperous and successful country, Americans have relatively few things that unite us, a language, some symbols, a few songs, a government.  All things considered, we've done really well as a nation built on a balance between cooperation and self-interest. 

My last post laid a good deal of blame on the current administration for negligence and lousy priorities leading up to the drowning of New Orleans. They didn't cause  the hurricane, of course.  Bush's campaign-recycled political appointees at FEMA aren't soley responsible for the chaos and incompetence in the response to Katrina, either.  It's not just the President to blame, with his fake photo-ops  his bizarre humor and his skittery, distant gaze during Katrina coverage.  It wasn't only his mother Barbara-- who thinks that the mostly poor storm refugees must be better off now that they are in Texas.  No, I'd go even further.  The pitiful disarray and our government's incapacity-- humiliatingly laid bare by Katrina-- is not an accident. It is, rather, an outcome.   This broken and feeble apparatus, the government that Lincoln so loved-- is exactly what the American conservative movement--ascendent for thirty years--has wrought.

Unlike their thoughtful intellectual ancestors, today's conservatives hate government. Suspicion of government--our common good--is incessant and pervasive.  Their dismal chorus has provided the political soundtrack of my cohort's lifetime.   It's near impossible to pinpoint actual intentions that lead to massive failure but it is important to delve into this gray area and state a basic truth: in politics, values are not priorities and it is a big mistake to confuse the two.  Everyone values New Orleans--yet building solid levees and saving the marshland to protect it has never been a priority.  Everyone values a rapid and competent federal response--yet creating a prepared and capable public sector is a low priority according to reigning conservative philosophy.  Bureaucracies are boring and wasteful and federal overhead is expensive.  Privatize it.  Then all of a sudden you need well trained experts and a helicopter to plug the levee. It needs to happen NOW-- not when a private company can make one available.  The helicopter doesn't come until its too late.  This is what happens when the people in charge don't own the assets.   Government atrophy is rarely the result of one distinct deliberate act. It happens when big problems--like hurricanes--get put in the "too hard" box and attendant concerns are never dealt with properly.

FEMA is not real government capacity, it is a contracting agency that relies on outside entities to carry out most of its mission.  The Department of Homeland Security did not even have an internal inventory of relief skills when Katrina hit.  The only organization in our government that is a healthy public service is the military.  But  if the only agency Congress will fund is the Defense Department, then pretty soon the Army is going to be responsible for everything. Witness Katrina.  Is that what we really want?   Here's the top ten list from the  President's Homeland Security Council. This list is from a July, 2004 internal planning document:

1. nuclear detonation 2. biological attack anthrax 3. biological disease outbreak influenza 4. biological attack plague 5. chemical attack blister agent 6. chemical attack toxic industrial chemicals 7. chemical attack nerve agent 8. chemical attack chlorine 9. natural disaster earthquake 10. natural disaster hurricane. 

Hurricane is number ten. This list should make the government haters take a long breath,  say goodbye, and give it up.

UN Reform: Will the Summit Plummet? Posted by Suzanne Nossel

Drowned out amid Katrina is the drama underway at UN headquarters as the organization prepares for a gathering next week of 170 heads of state to review and approve a reform program for the organization.  Last time we checked, John Bolton setting the process backward by a characteristically impolitic 11th hour intervention that threw the negotiating document into disarray.   

Since then talks have staggered along.  As Mark Goldberg describes, the rest of the UN membership, including particularly the General Assembly's controlling developing world blocs, struck back at Bolton proposing counter-amendments that undid earlier compromises.   Since then, apparently recognizing that reforms the Administration has already trumpeted are now in jeopardy, the US has made some gestures toward conciliation.

While some are in suspense, let me offer a guess at what happens next.  There will be a consensus document.  It's too late to call off the Summit, and too embarrassing to have a Summit that fails to adopt a document.   High-stakes UN negotiations always come down to the wire; refusal to bend until the very last minute is deeply ingrained in UN delegates' DNA.

The document will be much vaguer than hoped, and will simply duck significant areas of disagreement including, inter alia, what should be done (i.e. how much money and political will should be devoted to) global poverty, terrorism, AIDS, global warming, human rights violators, streamlining the UN itself, etc.  You can get a feel for the document from this early draft. 

There will be some language that, if acted upon, could result in substantial, specific reforms to the way the UN does business (helping to restructure and re-legitimize its human rights commission, for example, or convening a Peacebuilding Commission to handle post-conflict reconstruction).   But the text will also leave loopholes that allow spoilers bent on killing particular reforms to get future bites at the apple (slowing the reforms down, watering them down, and/or refusing to fund them) once other bodies like the Security Council and GA working committees take over and attempt to implement.

More important at this stage than nuances of wordsmithing is how the whole enterprise gets spun:  do the heads of state and the media reference a sense of disappointment over the failure to get further, or do they declare victory despite a document that's short on details and iron-clad commitments, stressing those clauses that sound solid and real.   

The spin, in turn, will be driven by exactly how frustrated the governments become with one another - and most notably the US -  in the coming days:  most countries would prefer to have something positive to tout back home, though if they're angry enough at the US in particular, that desire could be trumped by the impetus to blame us for yet another international mess.

For the US's purposes at this point, the best we can hope is that 1) we don't get blamed for this devolving into failure; 2) that our key goals make it into sub-committee with some momentum.  This means ensuring that the Summit document is perceived as a major stride toward reform rather than a lowest-common-denominator compromise.  I expect the Administration will opt to paint the Summit outcome as a success, if only because it can ill-afford bad news right now.

David Shorr (aka Pollyanna) is confident that, evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, John Bolton is committed to seeing through significant reforms if only because if in not doing so he personally risks being seen as a failure. 

I'm not so sure.  After all, as Assistant Secretary for Arms Control Bolton allowed the NPT and other non-pro mechanisms to wither and languish.  To many of Bolton's staunchest supporters, UN reform means confining the organization to a narrowly defined set of roles and responsibilities and otherwise getting it out the US's business (see here to get an idea of what I mean).  To them, successful obstruction of reforms that would augment UN capabilities would be viewed as a triumph.   By most accounts Bolton's obstructionist opening salvo two weeks ago was not done at Condi Rice's behest;  that being so, one has to wonder which constituencies Bolton has uppermost in mind.

The latest turnabout by the US, agreeing to accept language on the Millennium Development Goals and other issues that he had previously excised may signal that Rice and the White House have decided that, Bolton's personal agenda aside, they cannot risk failure.  Even putting the UN's future to one side, as a simple political matter given the pressures created by a chaotic Iraq and a sunken New Orleans, they're right.