The Dish

I have little interest in escalating the tensions heating up on Andrew Sullivan’s excellent blog.

But let me respond to this sizzling couple of lines from Jamie’s note to Hilzoy and me today:

I understand how throwing around the word "neocon" (and McCarthyite calls or "Purging the neocons from the American soul"), as Steve regularly does, is now standard practice in some quarters as it provides a helpful substitute for actual argument, but providing red-meat to the nutroots doesn’t make it any more intellectually responsible.

I use the term "neocon" because I feel as if I know precisely what it means, to whom it should be applied, and what the broader agenda and objectives of the neoconservative movement are.  We may disagree about the place that neoconservative politics belongs in our national security debates, and I do believe that Jamie has been providing a "sideways defense" for the neocons.  I thought my own commentary was pretty diplomatic towards Jamie.  If not, apologies as I didn’t mean to rile him on a personal level.

For those who want to read a bit more on the mis-application of the term "neocon", read my "Norman Ornstein’s Neocon Problem."

But thanks Jamie for your insinuation that I am intellectually irresponsible.

Let’s begin the reply to Hilzoy’s broadside with her most stunning claim: "Despite George W. Bush’s attempts to paint al Qaeda as a totalitarian group bent on imposing a Caliphate on the world, al Qaeda is not a totalitarian organization." Al Qaeda doesn’t need the likes of George W. Bush (notice how it always comes back to him) to "paint" it as "totalitarian," it is totalitarian. I suggest she read Paul Berman’s Terror and Liberalism for more on the totalitarian roots and aims of Al Qaeda, or review any of the published and widely available statements of Osama bin Laden and his deputies.

She then states that "al Qaeda’s natural allies are not totalitarian regimes but failed states."  There’s no question that al Qaeda tries to exploit failed states as sanctuaries and safe havens, but claiming that al Qaeda is "allied" with them is a bit like saying it’s "allied" with the equator. Now, since we’re all being "charitable" with one another, perhaps what Hilzoy meant to say is that al Qaeda’s natural allies are the unfortunate people who live in failed states. But this, too, is not quite right. Last I checked, the ranks of al Qaeda were not choked with Haitians, Chadians, or Timorese. Al Qaeda’s natural allies are those who share its Islamist totalitarian vision for the future. Osama bin Laden went to Afghanistan not because it was a failed state, but because it was a Taliban-run Islamist state. At the same time, this ideology is transnational and can survive without overt support from a state sponsor — just as communism existed for several decades before the Soviet Union came into being.

It’s also telling that in Hilzoy’s extensive list of "our central foreign policy problems," there is no mention of al Qaeda or radical Islamism at all. She does mention "the risk of further destabilization in the Middle East and Pakistan" — a strange, but revealing, formulation. For Hilzoy, as for many on the left, there’s no agency, no ideology, no actor behind this destabilization, except, of course, America, George W. Bush, and the criminal neocon cabal.

Hilzoy then writes that I have "provided very little evidence" for my claim that "’Syria and Iran have effectively declared war on us’, a declaration I must have missed, especially in the case of Syria." This is pedantry. Obviously (and I didn’t think I would have to say this) Syria and Iran have not explicitly vocalized that they are at war with us. A declaration of war, signed by President Ahmadinejad himself, will not be arriving through the diplomatic pouch anytime soon. But Iran and Syria are directly arming groups and individuals which are killing American soldiers and our allies in Iraq. The two countries have been doing this for years and are the leading state-sponsors of terror. Does Hilzoy deny this? Is David Petraeus a "warmonger" for reporting that Iran and Syria are responsible for sowing murder and destruction against innocent people and American troops in Iraq? Why, just today American forces  assaulted a residence housing "leaders of Special Groups responsible for logistical facilitation of Iranian weapons and lethal aid flowing into Iraq." If the systematic killing of American soldiers is not a declaration of war, then what is? The attempts to deny the Iranian/Syrian proxy war against us, and the slandering of those who merely point it out as irresponsible "warmongers," is just another indication of the death of the anti-totalitarian liberal spirit.

Hilzoy asks what my evidence is for the claim that the Democrats are animated by "a mere hatred for the president and a serious lack of faith in even the potential role America can play in the world" and she challenges my assertion that the Democratic Party is going to undergo a "realist takeover." Perhaps this is only obvious to people who don’t consider themselves Democrats. Of course, there’s no statistical way to measure this sentiment that will please Hilzoy, but her frankly astonishing denial that al Qaeda is totalitarian and that Iran and Syria are aggressors are indicative of this trend, as is the fact that not a single Democratic candidate chose to attend the Democratic Leadership Council’s annual "conversation earlier this year," instead opting for the YearlyKos convention instead.

I read liberal blogs every day and have been getting a lot of email this week from liberal readers. Much of the it has been excoriating me for not going after the real totalitarians: that is, the Bush administration. If this is what people actually believe, then I’m afraid there’s nothing any reasonable person can say to dissuade such an individual. And this stunning lack of moral clarity is, yes, another indication of the death of liberal anti-totalitarianism.

Hilzoy, however, may be right in her observation that realism has not bubbled up to the leading presidential candidates, but I’m talking about the party: its activist base, the people who vote for it, its policy wonks, et. al. After all, I wrote, "Thankfully, Hillary (the presidential candidate, with two "l’s"), who has taken on something of a motherly role in her frequent repudiations of the more naive pronouncements of her opponents,  refuted Edwards for his attempts to win over the Kossack wing of the Democratic Party." As Michael Crowley wrote some months ago, Hillary is, by instinct, a hawk and an interventionist. But I don’t know how tenable Hillary’s positions will be considering the fact that there is little to no Scoop Jackson constituency–animated by the cause of democracy promotion abroad and understanding how that aim protects America’s long-term interests–in the party anymore. We’ve seen the contortions she’s had to undergo over her previous support for the Iraq War, and John Edwards’ saying that there’s no such thing as a war on terror (as well as the popularity of this sentiment among the party base and liberal bloggers, neither of which Hilzoy or Steve have decided to address) is more evidence of Democratic fecklessness. Meanwhile, congressional Democrats have been arguing for withdrawal from Iraq, damn the consequences and irrespective of what General Petraeus reports next month.

With regards to the post on "grit," I never once said, as Steve Clemons accuses me, that the "neocons (or neocon-sympathizers)…are somehow the ones who understand "grit" better than the rest of us." I understand how throwing around the word "neocon" (and McCarthyite calls for "Purging the neocons from the American soul"), as Steve regularly does, is now standard practice in some quarters as it provides a helpful substitute for actual argument, but providing red-meat to the nutroots doesn’t make it any more intellectually responsible. My original post "On Grit" also had nothing to do with Iraq, but the war on Islamic fundamentalism more generally. My correspondent later wrote me that, "It is incredible not to have planned ahead for post-war Iraq and a huge failure of leadership." He is not a "neo-con" or a Bush administration defender. Again, it says much about the death of liberal anti-totalitarianism if the mere call for a more resolute Western defense of our freedoms in the face of totalitarian evil generates so much vitriol and accusations.

With respect to Barack Obama’s stance on America’s role in preventing genocide, Hilzoy writes that I make a "very serious charge without having any real basis for it." Well, let’s go back to what Barack Obama actually told the Associated Press, as posted on his very own website. 

If that’s [genocide] the criteria by which we are making decisions on the deployment of US forces, then by that argument you would have 300,000 troops in the Congo right now—where millions have been slaughtered as a consequence of ethnic strife—which we haven’t done.

This is casuistry. The United States invaded Iraq and, (arguably, for those calling for immediate withdrawal), has some responsibility for the security situation in that country. Comparing American responsibilities in Iraq to those in the Congo is deceptive.

Secondly, the rationale for the United States’ intervention in Sudan (and doing our best to avert genocide in Iraq) is not in any way tied to the rationale of intervention in the Congo. The United States can selectively intervene to prevent genocides and other mass humanitarian crises, and it’s cynical for Obama to argue that to support intervention in place A one also has to support it in places B,C and D. This reminds me of one of the more obnoxious arguments put forth by the anti-war left prior to the Iraq invasion; that, yes, Saddam’s a brute, but why aren’t you invading North Korea? I frankly don’t care if it’s inconsistent (and it’s not) to try and prevent one genocide but not all of them. And Hilzoy’s defense of Obama’s position that "[America’s] presence in Iraq was making the fighting worse, not better," flies in the face of what most experts on the region believe will be the consequence of American withdrawal, including the notorious neo-con/Bush shill New York Times correspondent John Burns. Like I said, Obama is no better than the rest of the candidates when it comes to Sudan, but he’s the only one–to my knowledge–to come out so forthrightly in favor of a policy that is literally "impassive" about genocide and that would leave Iraq to the likes of al Qaeda and other, yes, totalitarian movements.

Hilzoy sums up Obama’s position thusly: "Obama thinks that we should not put our own troops into Sudan not because he is opposed to taking action of any kind, but because he thinks that we have squandered our credibility in Iraq." Does this mean that once we elect Obama (or another Democrat) as president, we will immediately regain our credibility, Al Qaeda will call the war off, and we’ll then be able to do as we please?

As to Hilzoy’s final questions, all I can say is that I’ve never impugned her motives, so I won’t respond in kind. When Andrew introduced us all last week, he wrote: "They don’t agree on everything, especially foreign policy, which should make for some fun."  He didn’t want an echo chamber, and I apologize to anyone who had to endure the pain of reading something with which they don’t agree.

From the United Nations High Commission on Refugees:

"The humanitarian situation in Iraq continues to deteriorate with the number of displaced Iraqis, both inside and outside the country, rising. Now, an estimated 4.2 million Iraqis are have been uprooted from their homes, with the monthly rate of displacement climbing to over 60,000 people compared to 50,000 previously, according to UNHCR and the Iraqi Red Crescent. Displacement is rising as Iraqis are finding it harder to get access to social services inside Iraq and many Iraqis are choosing to leave ethnically mixed areas before they are forced to do so. Some Iraqis who stayed in the country until the end of the school year recently started leaving the country with their families.

More than 2 million Iraqis are displaced inside Iraq, with over 1 million displaced since the February 2006 Samarra bombings. While most of the security incidents happen in the centre and south of the country, the displaced are not confined to these regions. In the north, there are more than 780,000 displaced Iraqis, over 650,000 in the centre of the country, and 790,000 in the south. Many are barely surviving in makeshift camps, inaccessible to aid workers for security reasons."

The population of Iraq is around 27 million. That means that about one in every six Iraqis is a refugee. That’s staggering. Just to make matters worse, though, cholera has broken out in refugee camps in the north:

"A cholera outbreak in northern Iraq, where thousands of people have sought refuge from sectarian violence, is overwhelming hospitals and has killed as many as 10 people, health officials said Friday.

The outbreak in Sulaymaniya and Kirkuk is seen as the latest example of the displacement and deterioration of living conditions caused by the Iraqi conflict.

The water-borne disease has struck more than 80 people in the two cities, which are about 100 miles apart, said Claire Hajaj of the U.N. Children’s Fund, or Unicef. She said cholera had been confirmed as the cause of five deaths and was suspected in five others.

Local officials said more than 2,000 people had been affected. (…)

The number of patients arriving at health facilities with cholera symptoms, which include severe diarrhea, has increased to the point that hospitals have stopped testing everyone.

"They simply can’t test them all," said Hajaj, of Unicef. "They’re just assuming that if it looks like cholera, they have cholera.""

We have not begun to do our part in addressing this problem:

"Since 2003, when the United States toppled Saddam Hussein’s regime, only about 1,300 Iraqi refugees have been resettled in the United States. Most of those admitted actually applied for resettlement before the 2003 war began. Only in recent months have refugees who fled after the fall of Saddam been able to arrive in the United States."

Here’s a handy chart. I feel so proud thinking that we have made it all the way to number 15 on this list, and have taken in a little over half as many refugees as Denmark, especially given the differences in the size of our respective populations. She lied.

The Bush administration: thinking up new and innovative ways to make me ashamed of my government.

When last we checked in on the slow-motion disaster that is Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe had decided to impose price controls. Predictably, this just caused shops to become empty: when people cannot sell at a profit, they tend not to sell at all. According to the Zimbabwe Independent:

"Business lost over $40 trillion since government declared war on big business. As a result government lost $13,1 trillion in revenue and that is when the warning bells sounded, prompting a rapid policy shift on the matter."

Now that price controls have been called off, what do you suppose Mugabe has done? If you guessed imposing controls on wages, you win!

" Zimbabwe’s government slapped a six-month freeze on wages, rents and service fees on Friday, the latest step in what some analysts call an increasingly desperate campaign to sustain an economy gutted by hyperinflation. (…)

The new freeze, announced in Friday’s editions of government-controlled newspapers, is intended to combat an annual inflation rate that the government says exceeds 7,600 percent, and private economists say is twice that. It bars businesses from indexing wages or fees to inflation, a method employed in many wage agreements.

All increases must now be approved by a government commission, the state-run Herald newspaper reported.

The freeze follows a decree issued in late June that forced merchants and wholesalers to reduce all prices by at least 50 percent. Shoppers stripped store shelves of clothes, meat and other basic goods after that decree, and producers have largely failed to ship new stock because goods now sell for less than it costs to make them.

Most commodities are now available only on the black market, where prices have continued to skyrocket. Moreover, as the last remaining stocks of goods trickle out of factory warehouses and onto the market, Zimbabwe could soon see the start of an inflationary spiral that would make today’s prices seem cheap, John Robertson, a Harare economist, said in an interview.

“It could go much higher — 10 times as much for some things in the next couple of weeks, as goods cease to exist,” he said."

The BBC quotes Robertson as saying: "I just wonder when they will try and reverse the laws of gravity, because this does not work." It’s a pity Mugabe doesn’t seem to realize that.

Last January, I posted a compilation of catastrophes that had befallen Zimbabwe during the previous week or two: doctors and teachers on strike, water shortages, sewage treatment plants crumbling, people unable to go to work because the bus fare was too expensive, upper- and middle-class Zimbabweans resorting to urban gardening in desperation: you name it. Since then, things have gotten much, much worse, and yet somehow, mysteriously, the government is holding on.

Sometime, something will have to give; I only hope that whoever replaces Mugabe when it does has some shred of concern for the Zimbabwean people, who have suffered enormously.

From the NYT:

"An independent commission established by Congress to assess Iraq’s security forces will recommend remaking the 26,000-member national police force to purge it of corrupt officers and Shiite militants suspected of complicity in sectarian killings, administration and military officials said Thursday.

The commission, headed by Gen. James L. Jones, the former top United States commander in Europe, concludes that the rampant sectarianism that has existed since the formation of the police force requires that its current units “be scrapped” and reshaped into a smaller, more elite organization, according to one senior official familiar with the findings. The recommendation is that “we should start over,” the official said. The report, which will be presented to Congress next week, is among a number of new Iraq assessments — including a national intelligence estimate and a Government Accountability Office report — that await lawmakers when they return from summer recess. But the Jones commission’s assessment is likely to receive particular attention as the work of a highly regarded team that was alone in focusing directly on the worthiness of Iraq’s army and police force."

Start over. On the entire national police force. This is hardly encouraging news, though it’s not a surprise either, especially not after "the working draft of a secret document prepared by the U.S. embassy in Baghdad" obtained by the Nation, which says the following about the Ministry of the Interior (MOI), which is in charge of the police force:

MOI is a ‘legal enterprise’ which has been co-opted by organized criminals who act through the ‘legal enterprise’ to commit crimes such as kidnapping, extortion, bribery, etc."

Meanwhile, the National Security Network has compiled a list of problems with assessing the administration’s claims that violence in Iraq has been reduced:

"For the past month, the Bush Administration and General Petraeus have asserted that a drop in violence is evidence that the "surge" is working. Unfortunately, the evidence is difficult to validate. Underreporting civilian deaths is, sadly, nothing new. A number of U.S. agencies differ with the Administration’s assessment that sectarian violence is down and in fact there are inconsistencies within the Pentagon’s own reporting. The Iraq Study Group concluded that in the past car-bombs that don’t kill Americans, murders, and inter-ethnic violence were not tracked in order to demonstrate reduced violence. Recent analysis indicates that some of these trends continue. More importantly, the military has refused to show the public any evidence to support the claim that violence is down."

The full list of issues with the numbers is worth reading in its entirety. One item is particularly striking:

"There were significant revisions to the way the Pentagon’s reports measure sectarian violence between its March 2007 report and its June 2007 report. The original data for the five months before the surge began (September 2006 through January 2007) indicated approximately 5,500 sectarian killings. In the revised data in the June 2007 report, those numbers had been adjusted to roughly 7,400 killings – a 25% increase. These discrepancies have the impact of making the sectarian violence appear significantly worse during the fall and winter of 2006 before the President’s “surge” began."

Spencer Ackerman reports this as well, with useful graphs. As he points out, this might be an artifact of a change in methodology. In any case, it would be nice if the Pentagon explained what accounts for a 25% increase in its own figures for the same month. It would also be nice if the administration would share with us its basis for the claim that violence in Iraq is coming down. But from where I sit, it doesn’t seem to be true. (See, for instance, Kevin Drum.) And it certainly won’t go down if the Iraqis have to disband their police force.

[UPDATE: More on the Pentagon’s numbers below the fold.]

UPDATE: IraqSlogger has a useful story on changes in the Pentagon’s figures. A graph from the story, courtesy of Ilan Goldberg of the National Security Network:

And an explanation:

"Goldberg explains the abnormalities as best he can:

Abnormality A: Between August and November 2006, DOD started reclassifying “casualties” as “deaths by execution” and suddenly you see a dramatic drop in killings. For example, in March 2006 right after the Samarra Mosque bombings you go from 1,750 “casualties” to 750 “deaths by execution.” Between November 2006 and March 2007 “Deaths by Execution” becomes “Sectarian Murders” but the numbers remain the same.

Abnormality B: Between the March 2007 report and the June 2007 report there was a dramatic change in the number of killings that were reported for the second half of 2006. In both cases the numbers were described as “sectarian murders.” The impact here is that it makes the “pre surge” situation look extraordinarily dire and therefore signals progress thereafter.

Abnormality C: Somehow the reclassification that occurred between the March and June 2007 reports caused the violence numbers in April and May of 2006 to drop dramatically. This was in the months following the Sammara bombings in February 2006 when sectarian violence was escalating."

I agree with Steve Clemons’ response to Jamie’s post ‘Whither the Antitotalitarian Left?‘. But I am also puzzled by one other point that Jamie makes:

"With the impending realist takeover of the Democratic Party, anti-totalitarianism will recede, and this is unfortunate. Whereas once the AFL-CIO had a large and effective international office, you’d be hard-pressed to hear, for instance, what they’re doing for Iraqi trade-unionists. (…)

Liberal interventionism, as a doctrine, has worked and ought to stay alive in the hearts of those claiming to be liberals–in spite of the failures of Iraq. Beyond the particularities of specific military interventions, what is most worrying is that the left has become so embittered by the response to 9/11 that it has withdrawn into a feral crouch from which it is more suspicious of what the Western democracies do to protect themselves than it is with the plight of oppressed people abroad. (…)

We may very well have a Democratic president. But what will inform their foreign policy values now that the Democratic Party is not animated by the anti-totalitarianism of old, but rather a mere hatred for the president and a serious lack of faith in even the potential role America can play in the world?"

I do not question the claim that "anti-totalitarianism" has receded in the Democratic Party. This is surely true. And there’s a good reason for it: totalitarianism is no longer the major danger that we face abroad. Despite George W. Bush’s attempts to paint al Qaeda as a totalitarian group bent on imposing a Caliphate on the world, al Qaeda is not a totalitarian organization, and its natural allies are not totalitarian regimes but failed states. In fact, there are not that many totalitarian states presently in existence; of those, some (e.g., Myanmar) pose no threat to us, while others threaten us not because they are totalitarian, but for some other reason. (E.g., North Korea threatens us because of the possibility that it might export its weapons, not its ideology.) Our central foreign policy problems — for instance, failed states and the violence they foster, the rise of China, Iraq and the risk of further destabilization in the Middle East and Pakistan, the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, the collapse of our moral standing in the world in general and the Middle East in particular — have very little to do with totalitarianism. For this reason, it would be odd if anti-totalitarianism were still the driving force behind liberal foreign policy — not quite as odd as if we were all animated by fear of German militarism or the Bonapartist menace, but odd nonetheless. I am, however, puzzled by the claim that the Democratic Party is about to undergo a "realist takeover", and that it is animated by "a mere hatred for the president and a serious lack of faith in even the potential role America can play in the world." What is the evidence for this claim? As best I can tell, the only evidence Jamie provides for his assertions about what motivates Democrats is his link to this article about a new foreign policy think-tank. It describes the people in that think-tank as believing that Democrats ought to be less interventionist and more realistic. But it presents very little evidence that Democrats are in fact following that prescription; in fact, when the article Jamie cites characterizes Democratic foreign policy as a whole, it is carefully noncommittal (e.g., "Just how much influence their argument is having on the front-runners in the Democratic presidential race is not immediately apparent.") The article does argue that some Democratic candidates have moved in realist directions, but its evidence is fairly weak. For instance, to support the claim that this is true of Hillary Clinton, it notes that in a recent speech on her foreign policy priorities, she "listed national interest first and values last, a slight shift, but a significant one to the finely-attuned ears of the foreign policy establishment." As causes for concern go, the order in which Hillary Clinton lists her points doesn’t rank very high on my list. Moreover, as the article notes, and as I argued earlier, Barack Obama is not a foreign-policy realist at all. In general, the article describes the Democratic Party as one in which there is a "a genuine clash of worldviews", not one that’s about to be taken over by anyone. So I’m not sure how linking to this article supports Jamie’s position. There are Democrats who think that the idea of promoting democracy abroad has been so tarnished by George W. Bush that we should leave it aside for now and concentrate on rebuilding our own moral credibility. This is not exactly foreign policy realism: many people who hold this view think that rebuilding our moral credibility involves doing straightforwardly good things in other countries, and generally reclaiming the right to stand for our values. Others, myself included, think that we should make the case that George W. Bush has never been serious about promoting democracy to begin with, rather than ceding the term ‘promoting democracy’ to him. Some Democrats (and Republicans) are tempted to conclude that the United States has neither the patience nor the wisdom to try to promote our values abroad at all. But I don’t think many of us are animated solely by "mere hatred for the president and a serious lack of faith in even the potential role America can play in the world", especially not if we’re talking about policy makers and advisors, as any discussion of a "takeover" of the Democratic Party must. I’d be interested in any evidence to the contrary that Jamie might present.

That brings me to my next point, which I’ll discuss below the fold.

On several occasions, Jamie has made serious claims for which he has provided very little evidence. There was, for instance, his claim that "Syria and Iran have effectively declared war on us", a declaration I must have missed, especially in the case of Syria. Similarly, his posts bemoaning our lack of grit brought to mind Tonto’s great (and probably apocryphal) line: "What do you mean, ‘we’, white man?" Practically every generation I know of has believed that its members lacked the grit and purpose of the generations that came before. Is there any evidence at all to suggest that this is more true of our generation than it was of, say, Caesar’s or Nietzsche’s?

And, as I noted earlier, Jamie’s post on Obama, and his related column, made claims about Obama’s views on genocide that were difficult to square with Obama’s record, his positions, or for that matter with a simple Google search of Obama’s website for a word like Darfur.

Jamie’s response to my post puzzled me. While he wrote in his column that "Judging from his statements thus far, it appears that Illinois Democratic senator and presidential candidate Barack Obama — though many steps away from becoming leader of the Free World — has presciently formulated his own doctrine: The United States will remain impassive in the face of genocide", he now claimed that "I’m not really sure if there is an Obama Doctrine, but was hoping to be provocative and stir some debate." Here I agree with Steve Benen’s take:

"Really? Kirchick wrote a piece for publication in a newspaper that accused a top presidential candidate of being indifferent towards genocide. He got basic facts wrong, and confronted with his mistakes, Kirchick argues that he simply wanted to “stir some debate”? (…) Professional writers aren’t supposed to submit pieces for publication with errors of fact and judgment just to get people talking."

We live in a time in which it is virtually impossible for ordinary citizens to get all the information they need to make informed political decisions. It’s hard to know all that we need to know about the effects of various changes to Social Security, or the history and political culture of Iraq, or what effects our mounting debt is likely to have in the future. For this reason, people who write about politics for public consumption have, I’ve always thought, a responsibility, as citizens, to write things that illuminate and inform, or at the very least do not spread misinformation, however provocative. We all need help trying to figure things out, and for that reason we should at the very least try to make sure that what we say is true. And that in turn means that when we say something that we do not clearly mark as mere supposition, opinion, parody, etc., we have an obligation first to check and see whether it is true, and second, to link to the evidence for our claims if we write for a medium (like blogs) that allows us to do so.

An uncharitable way to take Jamie’s posts would be as manifesting a disregard for this duty, either (as in the posts on grit and on the demise of the antitotalitarian left) by repeating myths without bothering to ask whether they have any basis in fact, or (in the case of the Obama post and column) by making a very serious charge without having any real basis for it, in order to "be provocative", even though many of those who read his original article might not be aware of any debate it provoked. Since I do not particularly want to be uncharitable, I’ll just ask: Jamie, how do you conceive of your role as a journalist and blogger? What responsibilities do you think it involves? And how has your view of those responsibilities informed the posts I’ve mentioned above?

Jamie Kirchik has just published a missive about the lessons that the modern political left should be drawing from Bayard Rustin’s life and twisting political course, and I need to respond to him more fully later today as I think he’s fundamentally mistaken about the tectonics of today’s foreign policy/national security establishments.

But what needs to be said up front is that this nation’s neoconservative moment has yielded the most serious abandonment of the principles and ideals that comprise America’s sense of self.  The neocons, for whom I think Kirchik provides a sideways defense, have been complicit in helping to justify the massive expansion of executive branch authority in our government and have promulgated rationales that have led to abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, the inclusion of torture as a tool in interrogations, extraordinary rendition, suspension of habeas corpus for those accused but not found guilty of being enemy combatants, and the assertion that the unitary executive can’t really be held accountable for these historically  un-American acts.

To be fair to Kirchik, he doesn’t say he is a neocon and suggests that Rustin was not either, but the article he wrote both tells the story of a socially-liberal political nomad who nonetheless was the liberal-turned-hawk kind of Scoop Jackson democrat on national security issues that many other neocons would look like as well.  And the fact is that the neocon crowd that took far too easily the helm of the foreign policy establishment away from the realist and liberal internationalist players in this game are almost entirely responsible for the dramatic erosion of America’s national security portfolio.

There are so many levels of failure during what has largely been an alliance of pugnacious Jesse Helms-revering nationalists like Dick Cheney and John Bolton and ideological neoconservatives like Scooter Libby, Douglas Feith, and Paul Wolfowitz that it is hard to run through it all here.

But to sum up the disaster, the Bush/Cheney neocon gamble of showing all the world our limits in taking on a classic thug like Saddam Hussein punctured the mystique of American power.  Superpowers achieve their goals by leveraging mystique and the possibility of what they might do or not do.  Shorn of that mystique, America has become far weaker.  Allies are now not counting on America as much as they once were — and enemies are moving their agendas.

The global equilibrium has been thrown off, and to fill the voids left by the collapse of confidence in America’s ability to achieve its objectives, other nations are rushing in to maximize their security or to try and restore balance.  Whether its Japan, Israel, Saudi Arabia, or South Korea — all allies in one way or another — all are changing their behavior.  And the neocons (or neocon-sympathizers) — who Jamie Kirchik  thinks are somehow the ones who understan d "grit" better than the rest of us — are responsible.

One thing that gives me some hope is that America’s civil servants — whether working at the CIA, the State Department, the Department of Defense, the National Security Agency, or within the Department of Justice broadly — want out of the "Darkness at Noon" detainee practices promulgated by Vice President Cheney and his team and embraced by numerous neocons.

Scott Horton at No Comment provides a DoJ example and gives a great follow-up to Emma Schwartz’s expose at US News & World Report that "a large part of the attorney staff at the Department of Justice are refusing to appear on behalf of the Department and make arguments or write briefs connectied with Guantanamo."

Horton also writes:

Under the Code of Professional Responsibility, there are certain circumstances when a lawyer is not ethically permitted to appear and advance arguments that a client wants him to make. One is when the client is appearing in court advancing claims of fact that the lawyer knows to be untrue. Another is when the client wants to make arguments as to law which are not well grounded in the law, or in a good-faith argument for its reversal, modification or reinterpretation.

In connection with Guantanamo, the Justice Department already has a very long track record of prevarication in submissions to courts. So much so that the Fourth Circuit, the most conservative Court of Appeals in the country, recently raked it over the goals for making misleading statements. And indeed, Judge Michael Luttig, often considered high on the short list for a Supreme Court appointment under the Bush Administration for his tightly held and extremely conservative judicial values, went out of his way to indicate that he felt Justice Department lawyers had been misleading the court over detainee treatment issues. Similarly, on the law, the Justice Department has lost three straight cases before an extremely conservative Supreme Court on detainee treatment issues, and is preparing to lose a fourth.

Jamie Kirchik bemoans the rise of the "liberal realists" as a counter to the neocons — but what may be happening is that the Bill Kristol-led neocons harmed this nation during their time at the wheel and those with a conscience, those who understand what checks and balances are about, what habeas corpus means in a justice system, who understand accountability for tragedies like Abu Ghraib are bouncing back to the norms this country has traditionally embraced.

The norms of a nation aren’t really "knowable" unless observed under stress.  Our recent history has tarnished our ability to motivate and animate others on everything from human rights to transparent and just government.

It’s easy to be for the rights of victims when there is no crime to consider.  It’s easy to wax on about democracy, the rights of minorities, and checks and balances in government — but unless America itself demonstrates these when shocked and challenged, then the rest of the world won’t believe them when we are out "promoting democracy". 

Most conservative and liberal idealists understand that.  So do conservative and liberal realists.  It’s the neocons, Jamie, that have taken this nation down a good number of notches.

— Steve Clemons

(for those at the American Political Science Association Annual Conference in Chicago or in the city, I’m blogging in the fantastic lounge of the Sheraton Hotel next to the Chicago River.  I’ve met a number of folks here today who noticed that I was guest-blogging for Andrew this week, or who were familiar with The Washington Note.  Stop by if you like.)

David Corn has gotten hold of a secret report — still in draft form — outlining the concerns that the US military and foreign service have about a "norm of corruption" in the current Iraqi government. 

One wonders how holier-than-thou Americans can be here given the rampant corruption we have allowed in no-bid contracting in Iraq and even around the billions in recovery funding for the Katrina tragedy.

Corn writes:

As Congress prepares to receive reports on Iraq from General David Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker and readies for a debate on George W. Bush’s latest funding request of $50 billion for the Iraq war, the performance of the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has become a central and contentious issue.

But according to the working draft of a secret document prepared by the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, the Maliki government has failed in one significant area: corruption. Maliki’s government is "not capable of even rudimentary enforcement of anticorruption laws," the report says, and, perhaps worse, the report notes that Maliki’s office has impeded investigations of fraud and crime within the government.

The draft — over 70 pages long — was obtained by The Nation, and it reviews the work (or attempted work) of the Commission on Public Integrity (CPI), an independent Iraqi institution, and other anticorruption agencies within the Iraqi government. Labeled "SENSITIVE BUT UNCLASSIFIED/Not for distribution to personnel outside of the US Embassy in Baghdad," the study details a situation in which there is little, if any, prosecution of government theft and sleaze.

Moreover, it concludes that corruption is "the norm in many ministries."

A couple of quick thoughts.

First, in an environment in which there is a second economy of influence or money, the cause is usually that there is no trust in the first economy.  Rules and contracts are not enforceable in Iraq, and self-dealing becomes highly rational and important for survival when everyone else is doing it — and when there is a sense that the whole enterprise may collapse at any moment.  That is certainly true of Iraq.

So, corruption occurs — and in some circumstances, rational self-dealing can be useful because it helps to influence and sway the behavior of major stakeholders in Iraq’s political system.  We can hem and haw about the morality of corrupt government officials, but the more efficacious tactic would be to bribe them ourselves if we care about what they do.

But that requires us to be able to set clear objectives of what we are trying to do, apply resources to the effort, and see it through.  America does not seem to have that ability — and seems to insist on operating with the delusion that we are dealing with good guys who actually care about the Iraqi nation. 

We are not.  Those in Iraq, at the helm now, are self-dealers on the whole — who care about power among their clan and sectarian identity.

And we are only realizing now that they are corrupt?  I had thought we were bribing them all along but just weren’t very good at it. 

We need to get out.

— Steve Clemons

Anti-totalitarianism was once an animating feature of the Democratic Party, and the American left in general. It was FDR who led the United States against Fascism, Harry Truman who aided anti-communists fighting in Turkey and Greece and John F. Kennedy who stated that the United States "would pay any price, bear any burden" to defend freedom abroad. The American labor movement played a crucial role in fighting communism (both domestically and internationally), with the AFL-CIO’s Lane Kirkland, the "Champion of American Labor," at the helm. What has happened to this spirit? That’s a question I ask today, in reference to Bayard Rustin, one of the most enigmatic, independent-minded, consistent–yet barely remembered–heroes of 20th century liberalism (he also happened to be openly gay, an aspect of Rustin’s life that Andrew examined here). A social democrat to the end, he joined other liberals (many of whom would eventually become neo-conservatives) in supporting Scoop Jackson for president in 1976, formed the Coalition for a Democratic Majority to fight the McGovernite wing of the party and was a founding member of the Committee on the Present Danger. He was also a strong supporter of Israel and one of the few black American leaders to warn of the dangers that a Zimbabwe led by Robert Mugabe would bring to bear.

Vietnam certainly played a large part in turning the left against muscular, progressive internationalism, as the war split traditional liberals from leftists. For the latter, America had become unredeemable because of its involvement in Indochina. The Soviet Union and the United States were morally indistinguishable, in this analysis, and the "Free World"–a term sneered at by many on the left–was no longer worth fighting for, if it ever had been in the first place. Rustin was part of a coterie of liberals, along with American Federation of Teachers head Al Shanker (profiled Monday by Freedom House’s Arch Puddington in the Wall Street Journal) who rejected the left’s rejection of America.
 

With the impending realist takeover of the Democratic Party, anti-totalitarianism will recede, and this is unfortunate. Whereas once the AFL-CIO had a large and effective international office, you’d be hard-pressed to hear, for instance, what they’re doing for Iraqi trade-unionists. But the intellectual failings of the American left cannot compare with the infighting of the British left. A fascinating feud has erupted over the past few weeks amongst several left-wing British writers over the future of the European left. It begins with Nick Cohen, a co-writer of the much-heralded Euston Manifesto, whose book, "What’s Left? How Liberals Lost Their Way" presents an historical examination of "the willingness of people on the liberal-left to support or, more often, excuse or explain away totalitarian movements of the ultra right." Johann Hari, a columnist for the Independent and an erstwhile supporter of the Iraq War himself, trashed the book in Dissent and renounced Euston for being explicitly pro-war (Cohen responds here). Yet one of the signers of Euston was Michael Walzer, himself opposed to the Iraq War.

Oliver Kamm, columnist for the Times of London, has weighed in on the Cohen-Hari fight. His most important point is this one:

The left, with few exceptions, seems not so much content as insouciant at the political damage sustained by an approach that in the 1990s rebuffed the genocidal aggression of Slobodan Milosevic, preserved Sierra Leone from the vicious rule of private armies, and overthrew theocratic barbarism in Afghanistan.

Liberal interventionism, as a doctrine, has worked and ought to stay alive in the hearts of those claiming to be liberals–in spite of the failures of Iraq. Beyond the particularities of specific military interventions, what is most worrying is that the left has become so embittered by the response to 9/11 that it has withdrawn into a feral crouch from which it is more suspicious of what the Western democracies do to protect themselves than it is with the plight of oppressed people abroad.

Michael Weiss has a good summary of this brouhaha, and brings us back to the original point:

Cohen’s most chilling prophecy, brought to reality by his cheapest heckler, is that once the mainstream left runs out of banner enemies, what then? Tony Blair is gone. George W. Bush is on his way out. With fewer and fewer bugbears to assail, the left will have to face real monsters sooner or later, and when it does, it will find that all of its old casuistries and excuses have come to dust.

Indeed, Tony Blair is gone and his evil puppeteer George W. Bush will soon be out as well. We may very well have a Democratic president. But what will inform their foreign policy values now that the Democratic Party is not animated by the anti-totalitarianism of old, but rather a mere hatred for the president and a serious lack of faith in even the potential role America can play in the world? If they were alive today, I’d like to think that Bayard Rustin, Lane Kirkland and Al Shanker would be enthusiastic signatories of the Euston Manifesto. Perhaps the Democrats can look to these 20th century liberal giants for a start.

As Larry King played in the background of my hotel room last night, I heard that the former wife of a gay politician would be appearing shortly to discuss l’affaire Craig. Oy, I sighed, it’s totally going to be media-shy Arianna Huffington, who, when Jim McGreevey came out, established something of a cottage industry as the go-to spurned wife of the gay (or in her case, "bisexual") political husband for television bookers everywhere. But it turns out that Larry’s guest was Dina Matos McGreevey. Arianna must have been so pissed! Will there be a face-off between Huffington and McGreevey for the attentions of TV producers? And who knows? Maybe in two years, when the next inevitable Republican closet case emerges, Suzanne Craig will be on TV to peddle her book.