No one seems to be writing opinion pieces quite the way I would, so I decided to do it myself.
The name? Taverns are places where one goes to discuss the interesting events and things in the world, so this is my tavern.
I will offer my views on politics, economics, and whatever else strikes my fancy. I will occasionally publish the entire article from another journal for purposes of causing discussion.
Rep. Henry A. Waxman has released a comprehensive examination of secrecy in the Bush Administration. The report analyzes how the Administration has implemented each of our nation’s major open government laws. It finds that there has been a consistent pattern in the Administration’s actions: laws that are designed to promote public access to information have been undermined, while laws that authorize the government to withhold information or to operate in secret have repeatedly been expanded. The cumulative result is an unprecedented assault on the principle of open government
Essentially the Bush administration has been acting as though there should be no "transparent government" and also that even the Congress has no right to learn what the Executive Branch is doing. This is clearly a major step twoards authoritarian government, since it requires that Americans simply accept any decision made by the President or his administration with no possibility of question.
This is what Joe Klein has to say about the situation in Iraq based on the recent National Intelligence Estimate the CIA presented George Bush in July.
If the National Intelligence Estimate is accurate, we are facing a far more dangerous world than existed before the war. Many intelligence and military experts now believe that al-Qaeda has rebuilt its leadership structure and metastasized; that the U.S. military is overburdened and its leaders are likely to tell the next President that they lack the resources necessary to regain control in Iraq; that the U.S. government has lost the credibility to lead the world into action against future threats from, say, Iran or North Korea; that Iraq itself seems in danger of splitting into three chaotic regions, which—in the NIE's worst-case scenario—may lead to civil war.
You won’t hear that from either Bush or Cheney prior to the election. What you hear from this is a set of statements which are “true, truish or unprovable” but which are either unimportant or divorced from reality.
Whatever we hear in the debates will be more such hot air with no relevance to what is happening in Iraq or will be lies of the kind that take time to prove false. What we will not hear is what has to be done in Iraq because no one at this time knows.
U.S. intelligence pessimistic on Iraq future Estimate contrasts Bush statements, says civil war possible
The Associated Press
Updated: 10:46 a.m. ET Sept. 16, 2004
WASHINGTON - A highly classified National Intelligence Estimate assembled by some of the government’s most senior analysts this summer provided a pessimistic assessment about the future security and stability of Iraq.
The National Intelligence Council looked at the political, economic and security situation in the war-torn country and determined — at best — the situation would be tenuous in terms of stability, a U.S. official said late Wednesday, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
At worst, the official said, were “trend lines that would point to a civil war.” The official said it “would be fair” to call the document “pessimistic.”
The intelligence estimate, which was prepared for President Bush, considered the window of time between July and the end of 2005. But the official noted that the document, which spans roughly 50 pages, draws on intelligence community assessments from January 2003, before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and the subsequent deteriorating security situation there.
The latest assessment was undertaken by the National Intelligence Council, a group of senior intelligence officials who provide long-term strategic thinking for the entire U.S. intelligence community but report to the director of central intelligence, now acting CIA Director John McLaughlin. He and the leaders of the other intelligence agencies approved it.
Estimate contrasts Bush statementsThe estimate contrasts with public comments of Bush and his senior aides who speak more optimistically about the prospects for a peaceful and free Iraq. “We’re making progress on the ground,” Bush said at his Texas ranch late last month.
“It states the obvious,” White House press secretary Scott McClellan said on Air Force One as Bush flew to a day of campaigning in Minnesota. “It talks about the scenarios and the different challenges we face.” He said it did not reach any conclusions and left it up to policy-makers to act on the information.
A CIA spokesman declined to comment Wednesday night.
The document was first reported by the New York Times on its Web site Wednesday night.
It is the first formal assessment of Iraq since the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on the threat posed by fallen Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
A review of that estimate released this summer by the Senate Intelligence Committee found widespread intelligence failures that led to faulty assumptions that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
Senators say risks of failure greatSenate Republicans and Democrats on Wednesday denounced the Bush administration’s slow progress in rebuilding Iraq, saying the risks of failure are great if it doesn’t act with greater urgency.
“It’s beyond pitiful, it’s beyond embarrassing, it’s now in the zone of dangerous,” said Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., referring to figures showing only about 6 percent of the reconstruction money approved by Congress last year has been spent.
Foreign Relations Committee members vented their frustrations at a hearing where the State Department explained its request to divert $3.46 billion in reconstruction funds to security and economic development. The money was part of the $18.4 billion approved by Congress last year mostly for public works projects.
The request comes as heavy fighting continues between U.S.-led forces and a variety of Iraqi insurgents, endangering prospects for elections slated for January.
“We know that the provision of adequate security up front is requisite to rapid progress on all other fronts,” said Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Ron Schlicher.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said circumstances in Iraq have changed since last year. “It’s important that you have some flexibility.”
But Hagel said the shift in funds “does not add up in my opinion to a pretty picture, to a picture that shows that we’re winning. But it does add up to this: an acknowledgment that we are in deep trouble.”
'Lack of planning apparent' Hagel, Committee Chairman Richard Lugar, R-Ind., and other committee members have long argued — even before the war — that administration plans for rebuilding Iraq were inadequate and based on overly optimistic assumptions that Americans would be greeted as liberators.
But the criticism from the panel’s top Republicans had an extra sting coming less than seven weeks before the presidential election in which President Bush’s handling of the war is a top issue.
“Our committee heard blindly optimistic people from the administration prior to the war and people outside the administration — what I call the ’dancing in the street crowd,’ that we just simply will be greeted with open arms,” Lugar said. “The nonsense of all of that is apparent. The lack of planning is apparent.”
He said the need to shift the reconstruction funds was clear in July, but the administration was slow to make the request.
“This is an extraordinary, ineffective administrative procedure. It is exasperating from anybody looking at this from any vantage point,” he said.
State Department stresses progress State Department officials stressed areas of progress in Iraq since the United States turned over political control of Iraq to an interim government on June 28. They cited advances in generating electricity, producing oil and creating jobs.
Schlicher said the department hopes to create more than 800,000 short- and long-term jobs over two years, saying, “When Iraqis have hope for the future and real opportunity, they will reject those who advocate violence.”
Congress approved the $18.4 billion in November as part of an $87 billion package mostly for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. At the time, administration officials said the reconstruction money was just as important as the military funds. But only $1.14 billion had been spent as of Sept. 8.
“It’s incompetence, from my perspective, looking at this,” said the panel’s top Democrat, Sen. Joseph Biden Jr. of Delaware.
In separate action Wednesday, the Senate Appropriations Committee agreed to shift $150 million from the $18.4 billion to buttress U.S. efforts to help victims of violence and famine in the Darfur region of Sudan and nearby areas. The transfer was approved by voice vote with bipartisan support.
A furious row has broken out over claims in a new book by BBC broadcaster James Naughtie that US Secretary of State Colin Powell described neo-conservatives in the Bush administration as 'fucking crazies' during the build-up to war in Iraq.
Powell's extraordinary outburst is alleged to have taken place during a telephone conversation with Foreign Secretary Jack Straw.
The 'crazies' are said to be Vice-President Dick Cheney, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz.
It's nice to know that even though Powell has sold his soul to the crazies, he is still smart enough to know how bad they really are.
The Russian reaction to the terrorist attack on School No 1 in Beslan is taking shape. This is continued action in two wars that have together lasted over ten years, and which Putin used to show that he was “tough on the Chechnyans” when he first took office. In moves the Christian Science Monitor article characterizes as “bankrupt”, Putin is following the Bush counter-terrorism actions as demonstrated after 9/11. According to an article in the Christian Science Monitor today :
President Vladimir Putin refuses to meet with top Chechen separatist leaders, whom he holds responsible for a wave of terror that includes two downed passenger jets, a suicide bomb in Moscow, and the hostage crisis. But analysts say that Mr. Putin may offer far broader autonomy to Chechnya, which adds up to "de facto independence."
Military officials amplified past threats on Wednesday in moves that in some ways mirror US steps after 9/11. Chief of Staff Col. Gen. Yury Baluyevsky warned of "preemptive strikes ... to liquidate terrorist bases in any region of the world." A $10 million reward is being offered for information leading to the "neutralization" of Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev and the more moderate former Chechen president Aslan Maskhadov.
The steps are meant to equate Kremlin steps with preemptive US moves. These include threats against Georgia in 2002 over Chechen rebel bases, and the killing of a former Chechen leader in a car bomb in Qatar in February. Russia denies any involvement, but two Russian security agents have been convicted in the case.
"They are saying that what's good for the goose is good for the gander: If you [in the US] can do it, we after such an attack can do it as well," says Mr. Lieven. "The military has obviously failed. [The Kremlin] is bankrupt, totally bankrupt of ideas.
"The Russians have not yet done everything that they could in terms of savagery," says Lieven. "All this talk of Russian abuses - most of [it is] true. But if you remember American strategy in Vietnam, or the French in Algeria, they cleared extensive areas of the countryside, put people behind barbed wire ... Anyone in those areas was by definition an enemy and shot on the spot."
"The Russians haven't done that yet," adds Lieven. "Another few attacks like this [and] the Russians could adopt much more ferocious measures."
Like Bush, Putin is trying to use the military to solve political and sociological problems. Chechnya is another example of the inability of pure military force to resolve such difficulties, but like Bush, Putin does not seem willing to try negotiation or other approaches for fear of appearing weak to his supporting constituency. Part of the probelm is that he terrorist have succeeded in making him appear weak, and part is the problem is that neither Bush nor Putin appear to be able to see past military force to the methods of detaching the supporters of the terrorists from the populations they claim to be fighting for.
No one will win until our leaders can learn to think in terms of humans they don’t otherwise understand or like. Until then we can plan on more terrorism.
If we stay in Iraq and fight a long, grinding, unwinnable guerrilla war against Islamic militants, bin Laden is delighted. If we give up and leave Iraq, bin Laden is delighted.
It didn't have to be this way, of course. We could have spent our military energies on smashing al-Qaeda and our diplomatic energies on gaining allies in the Middle East — demonstrating that Osama bin Laden's murderous vision was neither the best nor the only path for the Muslim world. Instead, thanks to George Bush's obsession with Iraq, America is the Great Satan, bin Laden is the most popular public figure in every Arab country in the world, al-Qaeda is bigger and more broad-based than ever, a thousand American soldiers are dead, and Iran and North Korea pursue their nuclear plans with impunity.
This is based on the excellent analysis posted today by Juan Cole. His final conclusion is:
The US is not winning the war on terror. Al-Qaeda also has by no means won. But across a whole range of objectives, al-Qaeda has accomplished more of its goals than the US has of its.
Kevins' conclusion is one I share: We are where we are because of George Bush. Never forget that.
The Washington Post has an informative article on the terrorist attack at School No. 1 in the town of Beslan in Southern Russia. There are several very interesting elements in it.
The purpose of the raid seems reasonably clear.
"The puppet leaders who organized these fierce incursions, they are attempting to destabilize the situation in the North Caucasus and make one people go against another," said Aslakhanov, President Vladimir Putin's top Chechnya adviser. "They are inciting old grudges and unsolved problems."
"It appears to be a deliberate provocation to reignite the conflict between Ingushetia and North Ossetia, to extend the range of the chaos," said Fiona Hill, a scholar at the Brookings Institution in Washington. "It's very easy to stir up the region if you want to, and somebody wants to. This is a wake-up call. The whole of the Caucasus is going to go up at this rate."
The leader has been identified as a long time Chechnyan guerrilla leader.
Calling the shots, according to Russian investigators, was Basayev, the brutal guerrilla leader who has fought the Russians in two wars over the past 10 years and been designated a terrorist by the United States and United Nations.
Basayev stormed a Russian hospital in 1995 and took more than 1,000 patients and doctors hostage and sponsored the capture of a Moscow theater in 2002 that led to the deaths of 129 civilians.
[See the article from Slate giving the background of the Chechnyan war.]
There may have been some Arabs involved, but this was pretty clearly locally planned, initiated, and carried out.
Russian investigators are checking out reports from an unidentified Western intelligence service suggesting that some of the attackers came from Jordan and Syria, according to a source briefed on the government's investigation who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter. An Islamic group tied to al Qaeda's second-in-command, Ayman Zawahiri, has claimed responsibility for the attack.
But some analysts remained skeptical, arguing that the Russians were exaggerating the Arab connection so Putin could claim to be fighting international terrorists rather than domestic nationalists.
"It could be there were advisers from the Middle East, but initiating the plan, executing it, belonged to locals," said Alexei Malashenko, a regional specialist at the Carnegie Moscow Center, a research organization.
The Russian government has been trying to bomb the Chechyans into submission, and the main result has been to expand the war they are fighting to cover all of Russia. The use of military force by itself simply isn't going to solve their terrorist problem.
ChechnyaWhat drives the separatists to commit such terrible outrages?By Masha GessenPosted Saturday, Sept. 4, 2004, at 3:06 PM PT
As many as 600 people, many of them children, are dead, and hundreds more are injured. The two-day hostage crisis that ended in an 11-hour gunfight is the most horrific in a harrowing chain of terrorist attacks in Russia. Russian officials are saying al-Qaida did it. But the truth is far more complicated.
The current conflict in Chechnya goes back to the fall of 1991, when the tiny republic in the Russian Caucasus declared independence. It wasn't a crazy thing to do. The Soviet Union, which once seemed indestructible, was falling apart (and collapsed completely by the end of the year). Russia itself had a convoluted structure, with 89 federation members, each belonging to one of five categories (region, autonomous region, ethnic republic, province, and two special-status cities) with different structures and rights within the federation. The Russian Constitution recognizes the right of federation members to secede—and Chechnya tried to claim this right.
The Chechens' desire was perfectly understandable. As an ethnic group, Chechens had been mistreated by the Soviet regime, and the Russian empire before it, perhaps worse than anyone else. In 1944, the Chechens, along with several other ethnic groups, were accused of having collaborated with the Nazis and deported to Siberia. Their collective guilt established by the order of Stalin, on Feb. 23, 1944, more than half a million Chechens were forcibly herded onto cattle cars and sent to Western Siberia. As many as half died en route, and uncounted others perished in the harsh Siberian winter; the exiles were literally dumped in the open snowy fields and left to fend for themselves.
The Chechens were not allowed to return home until 1976. So by the time of perestroika, virtually all Chechen adults were people born in Siberian exile. No wonder they didn't want to live side by side with the Russians, who had mangled their lives. The last straw came in August 1991, when, during the failed hard-line communist coup, rumors spread that another deportation was in the works. Chechens overthrew their local, Soviet-appointed leader, and elected a new president on a nationalist platform.
Russia had no intention of recognizing Chechen independence.
The Kremlin's fears were understandable: With the Soviet Union crumbling, there was no reason the shaky Russian federation couldn't follow. Granting independence to one region could set off a chain reaction. What's more, an oil pipeline went through Chechnya, and a small amount of oil was produced in the republic itself, so losing Chechnya could have meant significant financial loss for Russia. President Boris Yeltsin declined even to negotiate with the Chechen separatists—a traditional Russian disdain for this Muslim people no doubt played a role in his decision—and simply let the problem fester for three years.
By the fall of 1994, Chechnya, which had been left to its own devices, had all the trappings of de facto sovereignty. It had its own armed forces, small but well-trained, called the Presidential Guard. It operated its own international airport, which Russia seemed not to notice, and it had effectively taken control of its oil production and exports.
In October 1994, Moscow decided finally to put things right by staging an armed uprising in Chechnya. It was meant to look like a spontaneous rebellion of pro-Moscow Chechens, but it was so poorly planned that it failed, and several dozen participants were detained by the Chechens. All the supposed rebels turned out to be ethnic Russians employed by the secret services.
When the covert operation failed, Moscow decided to use overt tactics. The Russian defense minister at the time boasted he could take Grozny, the Chechen capital, in two hours. The war, which began on Dec. 11, 1994, lasted nearly two years, cost at least 80,000 Chechens and about 4,000 Russian soldiers their lives, and ended in military defeat for Russia. In 1996, Russia pulled its troops out of a virtually demolished Chechnya, leaving it to fester—again. For the next three years, Chechnya, whose infrastructure had been bombed out of existence, turned into a state run by and for criminals. In the absence of any clear legal status for the place or its residents, everything that happened there—from oil exports to kidnappings—was by definition illegal.
A shocking and important event preceded the Russian pullout from Chechnya. In June 1995, a group of rebels emerged from what seemed at the time to be a nearly defeated Chechnya and tried to take over the small Russian town of Budyonnovsk. Dozens of armed men ended up barricading themselves in the local hospital, where the patients, including women with their newborns, became their hostages. Russian troops tried to storm the building but aborted the attack quickly. In the end, Moscow negotiated a cease-fire in Chechnya and let the terrorists get away in exchange for the hostages' release. Immediately after Budyonnovsk, Russia started peace negotiations with the Chechen rebels, making the hospital siege probably the most successful act of terrorism in history. It is also the only large-scale hostage-taking that didn't end in a storm.
The second war in Chechnya began in September 1999, following a bizarre and brutal series of terrorist acts. Two apartment buildings in Moscow and one in the south of Russia exploded, killing more than 300 people. Another building, in the town of Ryazan, was de-mined in time. At the same time, a group of Chechen rebels staged an incursion into the neighboring republic of Dagestan, taking over several villages there for a few weeks.
In the last five years, several critics of the Putin regime, including a former senior secret services officer, have produced a fair amount of evidence indicating that the Russian secret services may have instigated or even carried out some or all of these attacks. If this were the case, it wouldn't be the first time a country fighting a separatist movement tried to defeat it by funding a more radical terrorist wing in the hopes of undermining the more moderate separatists locally and discrediting them internationally. It also wouldn't be the first time such tactics had failed. Usually, the terrorist movements quickly take on a life of their own, and their federal masters and funders lose control.
The current Russian regime based its popularity on its harsh response to the terrorist attacks of 1999. Vladimir Putin, a virtual unknown who was appointed prime minister just before the first explosions, rose to political fame and power by taking a harsh stand and promising to bomb Chechnya into submission.
The bombing has been going on for five years, but submission still seems unattainable. Chechen fighters have not only continued to battle the federal powers at home but have staged a series of increasingly shocking terrorist attacks in other parts of Russia (although the Chechen connection is, in most cases, presumed rather than proved). There have been explosions in Moscow and elsewhere, including a bomb in the Moscow subway; there have been two shocking hostage crises—over 800 people held for three days in a Moscow theater two years ago and 1,000 or more held in the school building this week. Russians, for their part, always seem to botch the rescue operations. In the Moscow theater, the military part worked fine, but 129 people died needlessly because no one had bothered to organize the medical end of the rescue. The details of this week's bloodbath are not yet clear, but it is obvious that it involved a military and humanistic failure on the part of the Russians.
So, what does al-Qaida and international Islamic terrorism have to do with any of this? Probably very little. Chechens have plenty of reason to do what they do without outside inspiration.
In addition, their tactics are very different from al-Qaida's. Osama Bin Laden's group generally aims for maximum casualties; the Chechens, at least when they have staged hostage-takings, have not seemed to have that goal. Al-Qaida explicitly targets Westerners; the Chechens, on the other hand, explicitly exclude Westerners from their list of targets; they target Russians and Russia-sympathizers.
Finally, the Chechens' demands, when they have made them, have always focused on the war in Chechnya to the exclusion of any religious or international agenda. They have consistently demanded a the withdrawal of Russian troops from Chechnya—an unattainable goal in the current Russian political climate, but one that may look plausible to the Chechens because it worked after Budyonnovsk.
Russian intelligence has produced little or no evidence that al-Qaida is present in Chechnya. Russian officials claimed that there were Arabs among the hostage-takers, but this information has yet to be confirmed, and even if it is, it may mean only that foreign men have come to fight on the side of Chechens—something that has happened before and something that happens in every conflict, whether or not a major international organization is involved.
On the other hand, it would be surprising if al Qaida had no presence in Chechnya at all. Chechens are Muslims, and they are at war; representatives of virtually every Islamic organization have at one point or another sent missionaries and recruiters to the region. They have also sent money. Researchers of al-Qaida say that, in addition to its own organization, the terrorist network has a number of loose affiliates, essentially freelancers, who get occasional financial support. Most likely, some Chechen groups or individuals fall into that category.
But Russia's terrorism problem is not international Islam. It's a war that Russia started and has continued. Because of terrorism, this war has spread to engulf the entire enormous country.
Masha Gessen is deputy editor in chief of Bolshoy Gorod, a Moscow weekly.
This was published today (September 6, 2004) in the Washington Post by William Raspberry
Show me a home where education and learning are central values, and where the parents are reasonably competent at the business of child-rearing, and I'll show you the home of a good student.
Further, the clearest identifying characteristic of what we call a good school is a critical mass of children from good homes.
If this is so, why do our public policies pay so little attention? Listen to our school leaders and you'd think the difference between school success and school failure lies in the quality of the superintendent, the size of the school budgets, or the academic backgrounds and skill levels of the teachers.
My point is not to let the schools off the hook but to offer an explanation of why a torrent of school reforms over the past few decades has brought the merest trickle of improvement. We haven't paid enough attention to improving the homes our children come from.
Maybe one reason is that we have confused good homes with affluent homes. It's true that the educational values I'm talking about are more likely to reside in the homes of economically successful adults.
But the values that place a premium on education don't exist only in rich homes. Good homes in the sense I'm talking about are homes where parents understand and stress the importance of knowledge, quite apart from its economic utility.
Raspberry continues to describe the program he calls “Baby Steps” that he has initiated in his Mississippi hometown to encourage and train parents to create an educationally good home for their children.
This is the first sensible thing I have seen published about childhood education in years.
This also seems to me to imply certain public policy efforts to support families raising children. Such policies include a fair and livable minimum wage, decent affordable housing, and universal access to health care. While affluence may not be necessary to create good homes, a minimum of financial and medical security certainly is.
But Raspberry’s “Baby Steps” program or something similar is critical. With or without those public policy items, parents need groups who encourage them towards proper parenting and teach what is necessary for parenting.
As social beings we do those things the groups of people we belong to encourage, and we generally don't do those things that people don't encourage.
Report - Diebold voting machines designed to manupulate the vote.
This report is scary, especially after the President of Diebold has promised to work to elect Bush. It needs to be publicly investigated by an independent body. From: www.blackboxvoting.org. Read the entire article.
Consumer Report Part 1: Look at this -- the Diebold GEMS central tabulator contains a stunning security hole
Submitted by Bev Harris on Thu, 08/26/2004 - 11:43. Investigations Issue: Manipulation technique found in the Diebold central tabulator -- 1,000 of these systems are in place, and they count up to two million votes at a time.
By entering a 2-digit code in a hidden location, a second set of votes is created. This set of votes can be changed, so that it no longer matches the correct votes. The voting system will then read the totals from the bogus vote set. It takes only seconds to change the votes, and to date not a single location in the U.S. has implemented security measures to fully mitigate the risks.
This program is not "stupidity" or sloppiness. It was designed and tested over a series of a dozen version adjustments.
Bush may believe that the US is winning in Iraq, but the member states of the coalition of the willing do not seem to be getting the message.
Here is Juan Cole reporting on the loss of troops from our allies. The Polish and Ukrainian troops have been the largest contingests after the US and the UK, and the Polish troops commanded the foreign division.
The Government of India has asked the 5000 Indian workers in Iraq to come back to India, offering them help in doing so, because of the poor security conditions.
Not only have the Poles started making plans to end their major military presence in Iraq by January, but the Ukraine contingent is also signficantly sizing down this fall or winter.
Thailand: 423 troops leaving early on Aug. 31 instead of Sept. 20; 20 withdrawn on Aug. 10.
Norway: 10 currently in Iraq; 140 withdrawn on June 30. Cited reason: growing domestic opposition and peacekeepers needed elsewhere, such as Afghanistan.
Dominican Republic: 302 withdrawn on May 4. Cited reason: growing domestic opposition.
Honduras: 370 withdrawn on May 12. Cited reason: Troops were sent for reconstruction, not combat.
Nicaragua: 115 withdrawn on Feb. 4. Cited reason: lack of funds.
Philippines: 51 withdrawn on July 19. Cited reason: to save lives of hostages.
Singapore: 160 withdrawn on April 4. Cited reason: completed humanitarian mission.
Spain: 1,300 withdrawn on May 4. Cited reason: new government fulfilled campaign pledge.
Note that only 13 countries other than the US have 300 or more troops in Iraq, and several of them will probably insist on withdrawing by February 2005.
The US will increasingly have to go it alone in Iraq next year, though the UK and Italy will probably continue to provide about half a division between them. (the US has the equivalent of about 7 divisions in Iraq).
Are you like me? Confused about what this Republican Party is trying to present at its convention?
Ezra Klein has the closest thing to an answer I have seen yet. He is posting at Kevin Drums' blog Washington Monthly.
Ezra Klein
SEPTEMBER SURPRISE...This has been a -- what's the adjective I'm looking for? -- surprising convention. We high-falutin media personnel (particularly us intern/blockers) love our pre-event storylines, it makes covering the convention so much easier. And this time, the storyline was not only obvious, but seemingly based in fact. With McCain and Giuliani headlining the first night, Arnold taking the second, and fair-weather Democrat Zell Miller attaching himself to the third, it seemed clear that the Republicans were going to paint a hopeful, inclusive portrait of their party. But then, between McCain's call-out of Moore and Miller's Emperor Palpatinesque performance, a funny thing happened. It became clear that moderation was not the theme of the week and a new narrative was needed. In the resulting scramble for storylines, two distinct narratives have emerged:
? Illusion, the first, has been best expressed by the LA Weekly's Josh Bearman. This launches from the observation that the delegates seem, well, unexcited. Where the Democratic convention offered crushing crowds and enough body heat to render the Fleet Center suitable for baking, the Republican convention seems sparsely attended and unenthusiastic, to the point that Maryland Lt. Governor (and token black guy) William Steele had to go camp-counselor on the delegates, repeatedly exhorting the crowd to turn up the volume for the renomination of the ticket. There's been no attempt to set forth an agenda, little effort to build up Bush and no feeling of security or strength emanating from the stage. Instead, we've seen fear-mongering, a focus on this dangerous world, and an assurance that John Kerry will bring the country to its knees, right before handing Osama (c'mon, you remember him) a key to the gates.
? Extremism, the second, has been best explained by TNR's Noam Scheiber. All the Republican moderates featured on the stage are looking for further advancement within the party. More often than not, that means the 2008 nomination for president. And prevailing in that contest requires, as John McCain will tell you, some love from the conservatives who power the primary. So instead of using the convention to showcase their broad appeal, they've used it to showcase their right-wing appeal. Since these guys suffer from a, uh, lack of belief in current conservative extremism, they've resorted to base us-against-themism, requiring full-throated attacks on Kerry. Instead of painting a moderate, kind face on the party, the convention's been hijacked by outcasts trying too hard to show they can be part of the gang, too. One by one, they've lined up to slash, rip, and detonate homemade effigies of the Democrat, appearing for all the world like a surprisingly blood-thirsty mob. Now, that might be effective, but no one on earth is going to mistake it for moderation.
This speaks to a political calculation by the Republicans, a gamble that this election no longer turns on appeals to the center but excitement among the base. The base will vote against, the center will usually vote for. So if you want the middle, you give them a party they'll love; if you want the base, you give them the other party to hate.
Tonight, I fully expect Bush to try and make himself loveable. But the Republicans have spent the rest of the convention demonizing the Democrats, and along with Bush's appearances on fishing shows, speeches at Nascar rallies and advertisements in red states, that speaks to a significant uncertainty that moderates are reachable or important in this election.
If you are a moderate, or a half way educated individual, why would you buy the garbage the Republican Party is trying to pass off on us?
Fear.
There is no other answer to that question. They are offering us the option of supporting them because they promise success in the war on terror and they tell you that Kerry does not make such an absolute promise.
But they don't tell you how they will make it work. It is just a "Trust us!" statement, and they ask you to ignore the idiotic decisions made after we invaded both Afghanistan and Iraq. They ask you to ignore the fact that Iran and North Korea are greater threats than Iraq ever was, but that they have no way of dealing with either. Essentially, they are ignoring the real problems, and threatening you with the lesser set of problems that they have opted to deal with.
They offer us a picture of fear, but as an alternative they offer us George Bush, a man who has never failed to fail to deal with a problem he was faced with.
Bush has made many promises, and never lived up to any of them. But he made some beautiful promises. Of course, they were never funded, or didn't work, but he made great promises. Just as he is doing now.
What else does he have to offer?? Just promises. No results, just promises.
Look for the nastiest campaign of the last hundred years in the next two months. Bush has nothing else to offer except anger, lies, promises and misrepresentations.
He will then ask his supporters to carry out the promises he has made. Then ask if that is the kind of people who should be in charge of the very serious problems of terrorism and the economy.
Steve Clemons of the Washington Note had this to say about running against George Bush for President.
If I were running for President of the United States, it is hard for me to imagine a much easier target to beat than George W. Bush. Yeah, he has the benefit of family branding. But he has harmed the mystique of American power. His subordinates have blurred the lines separating American faith and American secularism -- at home and abroad. His administration has concealed important data and research that would have helped inform our policies. We are in a lousy fiscal condition that is retarding economic recovery. He won a contested presidency and then opted to swing to the far right rather than to heal the wounds opened during the presidential race of 2000. We are occupying a nation that doesn't want us after a war whose legitimacy is profoundly suspect.
And Bush can only speak in simple sentences -- no clauses -- sort of like a Hemingway novel, but without the genius.
Personally I think this last is an intentional act by Bush. It makes listening to him so slow and inefficient that people quickly cease to pay close attention to what he is saying. On the rare occasion when he says something important, most people miss it.
Zell Miller and Dick Cheney spoke to the Republican National Convention last night. It was a sad, very angry, even sick spectacle. This was what William Saletan of Slate had to say about the speeches.
The case against President Bush is simple. He sold us his tax cuts as a boon for the economy, but more than three years later, he has driven the economy into the ground. He sold us a war in Iraq as a necessity to protect the United States against weapons of mass destruction, but after spending $200 billion and nearly 1,000 American lives, and after searching the country for more than a year, we've found no such weapons.
Tonight the Republicans had a chance to explain why they shouldn't be fired for these apparent screw-ups. Here's what Cheney said about the economic situation: "People are returning to work. Mortgage rates are low, and home ownership in this country is at an all-time high. The Bush tax cuts are working." But mortgage rates were low before Bush took office. Home ownership was already at an all-time high. And more than a million more people had jobs than have them today.
"A senator can be wrong for 20 years without consequence to the nation," said Cheney. "But a president always casts the deciding vote." What America needs in this time of peril, he argued, is "a president we can count on to get it right."
You can't make the case against Bush more plainly than that.
If the convention speeches are any guide, Republicans have run out of excuses for blowing the economy, blowing the surplus, and blowing our military resources and moral capital in the wrong country. So they're going after the patriotism of their opponents.
