Month: December 2009

The former vice president, the man who imported torture into the American constitutional system, failed to capture bin Laden, invaded a country under false pretenses, allowed the Afghanistan campaign to disintegrate, and added $5 trillion to the next generation's debt burden, is attacking a sitting president on a day he announces a critical military strategy in front of his troops.

It is, again, a breathtaking piece of dishonor from this bitter, angry man. To accuse your successor of "weakness" because he has actually conscientiously tried to figure out the right thing to do in a war Cheney and Bush clearly botched is a new low in American politics and the partisan politicization of war and peace.

The attack on Obama is an accusation of treason:

“Here’s a guy without much experience, who campaigned against much of what we put in place … and who now travels around the world apologizing,” Cheney said. “I think our adversaries — especially when that’s preceded by a deep bow … — see that as a sign of weakness.” Specifically, Cheney said the Justice Department decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the accused mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, in New York City is “great” for Al Qaeda. “One of their top people will be given the opportunity — courtesy of the United States government and the Obama administration — to have a platform from which they can espouse this hateful ideology that they adhere to,” he said. “I think it’s likely to give encouragement — aid and comfort — to the enemy.”

Accusing the president of giving aid and comfort to the enemy is such a disgusting charge, such a deeply divisive, unAmerican tactic, it would be excoriated if it came from some far right blogger. That it comes from a former vice-president, violating every conceivable protocol (as he did in office), reminds me of why Cheney and Cheneyism remain such a threat to core American and Western values.

If you truly use a position of such authority to show contempt for the sitting president, to accuse him of treason, to attack him on the day he addresses the nation in a critical address, to divide him from the troops, to use sacred issues of war and peace which a president is solemnly engaging as a political weapon or as a vain and self-serving attempt to make your own record look better, then you have no core respect for the institutions and traditions and civility that make a constitutional democracy possible.

Look also at the focus of his attack: the civil trial of Khaled Sheikh Mohammed in New York City. All Cheney can see is the opportunity for such a figure to grandstand, as if KSM's rantings will have any effect but to demystify him. What Cheney cannot see – because he has no deep appreciation of it – is the beauty of treating a monster like KSM to the stringent calm of Western justice. And what Cheney fears – for he is no fool – is that the trial will also reveal Cheney's torture regime, how it distorted intelligence, prevented bringing suspects to justice and tarred the US for ever as a country that now does what its enemies used to do: abuse, torture and mistreat prisoners in wartime.

I might add that one wonders what the circumstances were in which Mike Allen and Jim Vandehei took a trip to interview Cheney the day before Obama's Afghanistan address. What was the news hook? Did Cheney summon them to transcribe his vile assault? Did they request a newsy interview the day before Obama's speech?

Here's what I fear: that in a media era in which pageviews count more than actual news, Politico has allowed itself to become a conduit for political actors, rather than an independent voice covering news. This kind of story – which is really about itself – certainly doesn't defuse such fears.

Matt Steinglass puts Afghanistan in perspective:

Afghanistan is a tiny, economically irrelevant country halfway around the world that has never had a stable central government. I don’t think the likelihood of our creating a stable, self-sufficient, non-Taliban government there is very good. And I don’t think the benefits of creating such a government, to the US, are really so high. And I think even the benefits of creating such a government for Afghans have been overstated. But let’s say we have a 75% chance of being able to do it. There is surely a maximum price tag at which we are willing to value that outcome. What is it?

One hopes that this question was at least asked under this administration. As opposed to the last one.

A reader writes:

Perhaps what we need to do is stop calling this attitude conservative and start pointing out how radical it actually is.

And he will want to ensure that his children will enjoy the world as he has.

These are deeply conservative instincts, humble in the face of nature, conscious of the need to preserve for the future, aware of the limits of exploitation. These conservatives aren't utopian tree-huggers. They do not worship Gaia or see no give and take with the natural world. They believe in the harvest but also in the need for fallow years and for care and husbandry of animals and plants and environments. And they love their home for its specificity and its beauty, and do not want to see its stability and future gambled away on the casino of greed.

And yet nothing is more alien to what now passes for American conservatism than this respect and care for nature. Which is why it isn't really conservative in any meaningful sense at all.

The longer I live, the more it disgusts me.

A reader writes:

Switzerland’s laudable reluctance to invade countries that have not attacked it may have given the country a progressive image that it does not deserve. The decision to ban minarets does not seem quite so freakishly backward when compared with Switzerland’s track record on women’s suffrage.  A few highlights:

• In 1959, 67% of Swiss men voted no on a national referendum on women’s right to vote, with 31% voting yes.

• In 1966, Basel-City became the first Swiss canton to allow women to vote.

• In 1971, women’s right to vote in national elections was finally accepted by Swiss men in another referendum, 66% to 34%.

• Most cantons introduced women’s suffrage shortly before or shortly after the 1971 national referendum.  However, two cantons still did not allow women to vote in 1989! (a Federal Supreme Court decision ended that in 1990).

On the other hand, in 2005, Switzerland became the first nation to pass a same-sex union law by referendum, with 58% of voters approving a partnership law that grants same-sex couples the same rights as heterosexual marriage, except for adoption and fertility treatments.  So maybe the Swiss aren’t so much backward, or progressive, but rather . . . complicated. 

Sort of like us.

I can't recommend highly enough Ambers' careful take-down of John Harris's offering of seven different anti-Obama memes. I don't find any of them particularly persuasive, although obviously there are vulnerabilities.

What strikes me about the attacks is how scattershot they are. The right wants to argue both that Obama is a mean-ass Chicago pol and a push-over. They want to argue both that he's a socialist control freak and that the real power in Washington is Nancy Pelosi. They want to attack him as weak abroad and yet they support his Afghan surge and his attempt to rally the world to place sanctions on Iran. The inconsistencies are legion, because, I suspect, Obama's enemies have yet to get a single, compelling narrative that rings true. They didn't manage it in the campaign and they have not managed it since. He's too big and interesting a figure to be caricatured that way. The cartoonists and the comics have the same problem. He eludes them, as complicated adults often do.

Maybe an event or the passage of time will yield a more fruitful line of criticism. But so far? Not so much. Yes, he's damaged, because the environment has to be one of the toughest any new president has faced in a generation. But he has not been truly hurt. Unemployment is climbing, America, post-Bush, has very little leverage in the world, health reform is mind-numbing and worrying, the debt is soaring … all this explains Mr HopenChange coming down to earth. But none of it really pivots off a line of Rovian attack, and none of it coheres around a single persuasive narrative.

If I were to isolate one weakness, I'd say that Obama's inability to relate emotionally to his supporters since being elected is the most obvious.

I expected a moderate non-ideological pragmatism but I didn't quite expect Obama to have lost his touch with the base as completely as he has. Among the young, he is no longer an icon of change but a symbol of the resilience of the Washington system. The simple moral case for universal health insurance, for example, has been absent for months, and yet it remains the strongest core argument for reform. His sober support for Geithner and Summers and the lack of real fire in his belly in holding Wall Street accountable for its gleeful rape of the global economy is not exactly the kind of change most hoped for. I see no one fired up among his earliest supporters, and the coolness of his affect amid the heat of his opposition has weakened him politically.

This is understandable given the core platform he ran on – a return to pragmatic realism at home and abroad. And it is reparable largely because of the insanity of the current right, and the potential accumulation of real achievements – on healthcare, the recession, torture, federalism. But it is a vulnerability. There is a real sense among those who actually did the work in electing him that they are the least of his interests and priorities in office. 

I'm fine with it. I know politics is a cruel long game and I also appreciate the strategy he is persistently pursuing. It is a huge relief to see a president more intent on getting things right than on winning news cycles. But he needs to re-connect with his supporters, to remind them again of why they voted for him and did so much for him.

His remoteness from his early insurgency is inevitable. But it is also risky.

A reader writes:

I do respectfully disagree with your opinions about the failure of the Iraqi surge and the current assessment that the trend-lines are going downward. I have deployed both to Afghanistan and Iraq with my most recent stint a 14 month tour in Kirkuk, Iraq so I feel have I have a perspective that I would like to offer.

A) Factually, the number of attacks in Iraq is down to minimal levels.  More important are the types of attacks.  Paradoxically, the best indicator of the current health of government control is not the spectacular suicide bombings (unless you are having a high tempo of them) but how many smaller IED and direct/indirect fire attacks.  The first problem set indicates that you have a terrorism problem, the second indicates that you have lost support of a significant portion of the population to the point that they are willing to take up arms against the central government.  There is no denying that Iraq has a terrorism problem that they will have to contend with for years to come.  However, I think the real figure to watch is the tempo of the other types of attacks and the level of sectarian reprisal killings, something that was a huge accelerator of violence during the horrific period of 2005-2007.  So far, I don’t think we are seeing that.

B) The potential delay in elections and the public statements are not as worrying to me.

One lesson that I learned in my time in Iraq is that all sides in Iraq typically make maximalist and sometimes alarming statements in the media as a matter of course.  Sometimes, those statements can be pretty dramatic and outrageous (one leader we worked with once said in the press he was going to cut off the head of an opponent during a particularly heated moment.  Needless to say, no such thing happened and both sides worked through the issue to a favorable and reasonable outcome).  However, those statements are meant for domestic consumption and for influence building within their various coalitions that these politicians belong.   It is typical Middle-Eastern bargaining and posturing and when the camera is off, these folks are generally a lot more reasonable and professional.

I am in no way suggesting that the problem of Kirkuk or the elections are not important or fraught with mid to long term problems.  However, I am stating that in the 14 months I was in Kirkuk, not a single week passed by without someone asking if Kirkuk was getting ready to burn down and the fact was that Kirkuk was a fairly stable and never as tense as others thought it to be.  As far as the elections, I think we are still seeing a work in progress and the jockeying for advantage is still occurring but ultimately it is a healthy process that I predict will result in elections if not in January, than within the first 90 days of 2010.

In conclusion, I think that my problem with your current line of argument is that regardless of the wisdom and rationale of this war, it shouldn’t cloud a more clear analysis of where we actually are in Iraq versus where we were.   Respectfully, I detect a distaste of previous policy and leadership as a driver for your assessment.  I think we are still on track and I think that the President is keeping to his word and his timelines and doing so in a realistic and measured fashion.  I also believe that Iraq is navigating this current political process better than I expected.  I would suggest that observing this process over the course of the next several months and comparing with previous Iraqi political processes would likely result in a more nuanced view.

I'm most grateful for the email and the valuable perspective it contains. And I sure hope my reader is right. I didn't foresee the success of the surge in tamping down violence so it is perfectly possible I am not seeing its success in forging political reconciliation. All I can say is that I remain worried about the near future, and distant future, but will observe this process over the next few months to see what transpires. The acid test will be what happens after US forces have left. And in all this, of course, I am in no way impugning the courage and skills of the US military in attempting to pull off something this astonishingly difficult. I am in awe of them, in fact, and wish their sacrifices had been met by better political leadership these past few years.

Castine, Maine, 6.13 am

From a white paper by the Afghanistan Research Reachback Center:

[T]he desire for “tribal engagement” in Afghanistan, executed along the lines of the recent “Surge” strategy in Iraq, is based on an erroneous understanding of the human terrain.  In fact, the way people in rural Afghanistan organize themselves is so different from rural Iraqi culture that calling them both “tribes” is deceptive. “Tribes” in Afghanistan do not act as unified groups, as they have recently in Iraq. For the most part they are not hierarchical, meaning there is no “chief” with whom to negotiate (and from whom to expect results). They are notorious for changing the form of their social organization when they are pressured by internal dissension or external forces. Whereas in some other countries tribes are structured like trees, “tribes” in Afghanistan are like jellyfish.

(Hat tip: Matt Steinglass)

Dreher uncomfortably accepts gay adoption. His mind shifted when he came across an actual living example of the good it can do. One of his commenters, the child of lesbian parents that fostered four children, speaks from experience:

On this subject, my feelings are entirely uncomplicated – anyone who stands between a hungry kid and home with food is doing something immoral. Anyone who stands between a child who is not safe and safe home is wrong. And if you think that heterosexual parents make better adoptive homes, and want to make a big deal about it, you had better have at least one adopted, high need kid if you want me to give a hoot what you think. I realize that's a much more visceral than rational response, and probably a little unfair. But as I'm sitting in my Moms' living room, cooking for tomorrow, when 28 of our family – my sisters and their husbands and kids, my aunt and her adopted daughter and her elderly mother, two former foster kids and their kids, my aunt and uncle (on step-Mom's side) and their kids are coming together, I find I simply can't come up with anything else to say.