Bollettino

The bankruptcy of the establishment Dems

There�s an exchange on Talking Points Memo between Josh Marshall, who runs it, and a buddy, John Judis, one of those ubiquitous liberal honchos who is regularly trotted out to make lame arguments on major league op ed pages, and within his stomping ground, The New Republic. The New Republic has been campaigning against Howard Dean, with comic ineffectuality, since last January (comic, since they keep running that blurb from Howard Kurz, about how the Democratic candidate has to �win the TNR primary.� Right. Judis�s letter is couched in that higher form of brainlessness that passes for political wisdom in the salons of establishment Dems. It lost them one presidential election and the Senate --- but of course, such losses pale, in the minds of such as Judis, with what happened thirty two years ago in 1972. Those who remember parts of their history too well, to paraphrase Santayana, by way of Freud, are doomed to repeat it.

Here�s most of the letter:


�I share your sentiments completely. The only thing I'm semi-certain about is Dean's lack of electability in November. I think it is because I lived through the McGovern campaign, as did some of those ex-Clinton people who have tried to pump up Clark. The similarities grow with every day. Not just the insurgent voter enthusiasm, the new ways of fundraising, and the bevy of flummoxed opponents, but also the economy (artificially stimulated by Nixon through the Fed and by Bush through the dollar just in time for election year) and the war (raging, but bound to quiet some by election time, and to raise prospects of peace). The economy deprives the Democrat of the issue that would allow him to attract working class votes; the war splits the Democrats, but not the Republicans. True, there are more "Starbucks" voters now than in 1972, but on the other side Bush is far more popular than Nixon was. Nixon was actually trailing Muskie in polls, which is why he thought he needed all the dirty tricks. I fear a cataclysm in the fall if the Democrats nominate Dean.�

This could have come from Tom Daschle�s super-ego � the same Daschle who said, about the compliant senate voting a blank check to Bush to make war in the Middle East, �now that�s over, we can get back to the economy.� These people truly don�t see what is right in front of their noses. The similarities with McGovern are trite. The idea that the war is just gonna simmer down, with the resistance melting away, is from Donald Rumsfeld�s May playbook � it looks silly now, and it will look even sillier as Bush bungles from one homemade solution to another. The truth is, the administration doesn�t just want to defeat the guerrillas in Iraq � they want a conservative showpiece in Iraq, something like Chili on the Euphrates. This is the dream they have clung consistently to, and there is no indication whatsoever that they have been swayed by the Reality principle. This is the true comparison with Vietnam. It isn't military, but attitudinal. Johnson saw Southeast Asia as another version of Delta Mississippi, with himself and the Pentagon supplying the necessary Great Society programs. Bush sees Iraq as a sort of Texas, where privatization and the right kind of can do businessmen will get the whole thing on-line and up to speed. That's a permanent illusion, we think. If there are any analogies to past elections, it should be more like Nixon vs. Humphrey.

As for the economic pickup � to be spooked because of a good quarter, and an uptick in employment that is, incidentally, one hundred thousand short of the standard Bush projection, is either na�ve or blind. Of course the economy is going to grow, but I wouldn�t bet on the deficit shrinking. I also wouldn�t bet on unemployment going down far enough that it recedes as an issue. So the Dem candidate ought to be able to talk about both of those things � and the only one I see crafting a realistic message is Dean. Dean is also the only candidate who knows that the electorate doesn�t punish an adaptive candidate � all the fingerpointing about previous positions just looks silly. Who cares what Dean said about Medicare in 94? It is an unlikely issue for the Republicans, anyway � what are they going to do, accuse Dean of secretly wanting to bring down the cost of Medicare?

There are, of course, a number of wildcards, but they are mostly not in Bush's favor. There is the possibility of another terrorist attack on this country -- and there is the growing possibility that terrorists might interrupt the oil economy of the Saudis. If that happened, the spike in oil prices would unwind this leveraged economy like nobody's business.

What Judis hates is the prospect of a Democratic president who does not particularly care for his kind � that niche of D.C. liberals who are always finding liberal reasons to support conservative policy. Those people have created a silly putty party, that presses out pale imitations of Republican programs. That�s a deeply dumb thing to keep on doing. Judis should look not to 72, but to 2002.

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Bollettino

The rightwing media is so focused on the building of schools in Iraq that they have neglected a triumph of free enterprise: the building of concrete barriers. The NYT story, today, is enough to warm the cockles of Christopher Hitchens� heart. His buds among the occupiers � oops, liberators � are, of course, in intimate touch with the silent majority of Iraqis. But intimate touch doesn�t mean having the nasty things around you all the time, does it? Far better to seal yourself in with, say, a 9,000 pound concrete structure, �12 feet tall, is 9 feet wide, 4 feet thick at the base and 8 inches thick at the top.� Good fences make good neighbors, Frost wrote. In that spirit, the Occupation authority has been following the motto: �good concrete walls make good conquerors.� As things get better and better in Iraq, as we are making good progress, as many a hawk has to pinch himself not to move there, lock stock and barrel, so good are the circs (the affection of the people, the joy of being in the company of giants like Chalabi � it amazes me that Brit expats like Sullivan and Hitchens are still living in D.C. when they could be where the action is), the barrier has become a kind of status symbol.

�Miles of the barriers circle Baghdad's "green zone," the quiet, tree-lined neighborhoods were American occupation authorities live. But in recent weeks, as bombers have broadened their target list, the hulking walls have been installed around hotels, police stations, government ministries and private organizations. Every day, it seems, another facility is hidden behind a towering concrete wall.�
This is an entirely new take on the old Vietnam era idea of declaring victory and going home. We are going to create an enclave in Iraq that is so entirely bombproof and impenetrable by Iraqis that it will be a new, triumphant Iraq within Iraq. An Iraq we can rule. An Iraq that we have reformed. An Iraq that is entirely English speaking, and composed of men and women who are wholly on the Defense department contractor dole. Is this a great country, or what? No wonder Bush is practicing saying, �it�s morning in America.�

Bollettino

Wow. An answering spirit. A man who gets it. LI is frankly amazed.

In Slate, there�s an article by one Daniel Benjamin. Benjamin analyzes a fact that we have referred to obsessively: the unsecured military dumps around Iraq. In particular, the transfer of anti-aircraft weaponry to unknown, and probably unfriendly, hands. This, we believe, might be the worst thing the Bush administration, in its unblemished record of calamitous and stupid acts, has done so far. A sin of omission indicating the omission is between the ears of the President:
�Given the growing intensity of the combat in Iraq, the downing of two helicopters and the resulting deaths of 22 soldiers in the last week comes as little surprise. The destruction of a Black Hawk today, reportedly by a rocket-propelled grenade, and a Chinook on Sunday by a shoulder-fired missile were all but statistical inevitabilities in a country with a deepening insurgence and 600,000 or more tons of largely unsecured armaments.

But the attacks should also send a shudder through anyone who flies, even if they never board anything but commercial wide-body airliners and never venture within 5,000 miles of Iraq. By removing the locks from Iraq's enormous stores of armaments, including "vast, unknown" quantities of anti-aircraft weapons, as Air Force Gen. John Handy, commander of U.S. Transportation Command, put it several months ago, the fighting in Iraq has virtually ensured that some of these arms will wind up in the hands of terrorists who will want to use them outside the current war zone.�
/

There�s an absolutely hilarious defense of Bush�s record on terrorism going the rounds � that the lack of an attack in the U.S. is evidence of success. The same conservatives who spout this nonsense segue, without hesitation, into denunciations of Clinton�s slackness � a segue that calmly bypasses the almost nine year interval between the first and the second attempts on the WTC. The Bushies don�t even have that inactivity to excuse their comedy cop routine, since earlier this year, in a band reaching from Morocco to Java, the network � that loosely connected, intrastate and informal structure that supports Al Qaeda influenced operatives � was able to hit a number of targets. Discussions about the deployment of more U.S. troops or less miss, largely, the point: what are the troops supposed to be doing in Iraq? One major objective should certainly be to destroy the weaponry that Saddam�s and the previous guvs were able to lavish on the country in extended shopping expeditions that surely benefited the good workers of Lille, Nashville, Tennessee, and Kiev for a good twenty years before 1991.

Here�s what we have said in various recent posts about this. Notice, this was written by a poor man in Austin, Texas, a good 7,000 miles from the conflict, with only newspapers to supply him with information, and that information, too, in English. In other words, this isn�t rocket science. It was easy to foresee, before November 2, that a helicopter was going to go down. What was not easy to foresee would be three hits in one and a half weeks.

September 21:

Here we have a presidency that has utterly failed. One that has amassed a five hundred billion dollar deficit on� nothing. One that has gotten us enmeshed in one war, in Iraq, that not only has nothing to do with our interests, but is actually harmful to them. Meanwhile, we have incompletely dealt with a group that really has physically attacked us � al Qaeda. By cautiously never pronouncing the name, Osama bin Laden, Bush attempts to exorcize the man. What is the result? In Morocco, Bali, Jakarta and Saudi Arabia the organization, or its allies, have attacked. The pretence that they are crippled makes sense only to people who cannot see what is in front of their nose. Here�s something in front of our noses: the people who hijacked the four planes three years ago did not have chemical weapons. They didn�t have Uzis. They used credit cards, airplane tickets, and hobby shop paraphernalia to wipe out three thousand lives. And so far, nothing that has happened tells us that this can�t happen again. Meanwhile, the Democrats act as if calling the President a �miserable failure� is some kind of logomachical triumph.

October 30:

1. End the p.r. aspect of the war. In Vietnam, the army would take a hill simply to have it reported on the news that they took a hill. That soon demoralized troops, and eventually corrupted the whole military effort in that war. In this war, we are hearing all about troops building schools. Meanwhile, on the side, we are also hearing that the guerillas are supplying themselves from huge dumps of conventional weapons, including surface to air missiles, because we don�t have enough military personnel on the ground to destroy these things. This is, to put it bluntly, lunatic. If you don�t prioritize military missions for the army in a hostile situation, you shouldn�t have any responsibility for the army. Be a man, pull the school builders, cut off the enemy�s ability to acquire weapons. Period.

Bollettino

Notes on unemployment. LI's was not one of the figures that got slotted into the employment column this month. We are happy to see that one hundred thousand more people did get jobs. Ourselves, it will now be six months, and, we estimate, seventy some applications, resumes, and cover letters since we started our quest. In September, we even went to some employment agencies. Kelly's, and one that specialized in secretarial work. Employment agencies used to be bread and butter. In New Haven, LI really did work for a year for a temp agency. Around that experience, in retrospect, we have woven a rosy glow. Back in those days, we could manfully go out on a Friday and pay for our drinks and eats. Something we haven't been able to do, now, for a year.

Today the job we had scared up lately -- painting -- was cancelled. Bad news, as we haven't paid a bill this month, and they are all hanging over our head. There is this much to be said for poverty -- it makes you very, very aware. For instance, I am very aware of opening the front door. I take a deep breath when I do it. I expect something to be hanging there -- a notice from the landlady or the power company. The telephone company isn't as client friendly -- they just cut you off.

So, rather glumly, we decided to take advantage of our "free day" to apply for something. Surely the employment numbers ought to nudge retail stores in Austin gearing up for holiday sales. Happy, newly employed people will want to buy gifts for all the people who floated them when they were down, n'est-ce pas? We went to our two most visited sites -- Monster and Statesman jobs. Ah, Statesman jobs had a nice one -- the liquor store we pass almost every day wants help! Well, from consumer to advisor -- trust me for the higher zones of drunkenness. I put on a nice shirt and my nice black shoes, the blunt nosed one, and ventured out. The woman behind the counter didn't exactly seem overjoyed to see me -- although surely she's rung up my 1.39 Buds before? No matter. I went to the Lotto machine, which had a surface on which I could write, and scribbled down my history, at least as the makers of job applications view the salient points of it. In the meantime, two customers came in, both of whom seemed to be living on the street. The had the street aura attachng to their gimme caps and jeans and backpacks. That sense that the long, strange trip has been way too long -- in fact, it looks like it is going to go on until you die. The one with the big curly beard was determined to cash a check, while the younger one, blonde, a little abashed, hung back. The woman at the counter couldn't cash the check because there wasn't enough money in the cash register. The big curly beard just wanted, though, to cash a check. And so, for about six times, the woman at the counter re-iterated the fund deficit problem, and the man in the beard re-iterated his check situation. The beard was already a little wasted, but it was a friendly, morning glow. His buddy caught on the first time, and when the woman explained the fund deficiency problem, the blonde would also explain the problem, until the beard finally achieved a puddled satori and said, hey, why am I in here so early?

I think my future is with the beard.

Bollettino



As we numerously, and numbingly pointed out in the pre-war buildup, Christopher Hitchens, one of the most showcased of the Bush apologists in the media, argued for a war that diverged significantly from the one the Bush administration said it wanted to fight. Hitchens�s war was never fought. Bush�s was. We have been wondering what effect this might have had on Hitchens. Does his heart still belong to Daddy? Or has he crawled off Paul Wolfowitz�s knee and become a finger-pointer?

The good news is, Hitchens is a loyal soldier. In his latest column for Slate, he shows that he, and Tony Blair, are perhaps the only Brits left who believe the Saddam and the WMD fairytale. But Hitchens was never along on the weapons case. He was, emotionally, tugged by the idea that Saddam was a terrorist, and he still clings to that. Here�s an all too typical passage:

�And it [the peace of 91] left Saddam free to continue to threaten his neighbors and to give support and encouragement to jihad forces around the world. (The man most wanted in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, Abdul Rahman Yasin, fled straight from New Jersey to Baghdad, though there are still those in our "intelligence" services who prefer to grant Saddam the presumption of innocence in this and many other matters.).�

Perhaps the intelligence services remembered that they helped Klaus Barbie escape Europe in the late 1940s � and they perhaps remembered that that did not imply that the U.S. was pro-Hitler. States make all kind of alliances, for all kinds of reasons. As for the threats to his neighbors, Hitchens truly must be joking. This is a man who didn�t even effectually threaten Northern Iraq, split off by the Coalition No-Fly zone. Since Hitchens loves to put in unsupported French bashing statesments (�Not only was he able to defy the United Nations, but with French and Russian collusion, he was also increasingly able to circumvent sanctions�), perhaps we should add that the No Fly zone was initiated by the French, who moved a reluctant Bush I to implement it.

Hitchens loves to battle straw men; but as the Iraq situation worsens, he doesn�t have that luxury as much as he used to. So as he moves to shape his argument for the war in his customary, and purely meretricious, terms (�The continuation of this regime was indeed an imminent threat, at least in the sense that it was a permanent threat. The question then, becomes this: Should the date or timing of this unpostponable confrontation have been left to Saddam Hussein to pick? The two chief justifications offered by the Bush administration (which did mention human rights and genocide at its first presentation to the United Nations, an appeal that fell on cold as well as deaf ears) were WMDs and terrorism. Here, it is simply astonishing how many people remain willing to give Saddam Hussein the benefit of the doubt.�), you can feel him starting to come to grips with the argument that the planning up to the war was flawed, even if one bought the case for belligerence � that instead of having the obnoxious Rumsfeld shooting off his mouth, it would have been far better to have the oily Baker jetting around, holding the hands of the allies. Hitchens, as an ideologue, hates the idea that sometimes, extremism isn�t necessary in the defense of liberty. It is interesting that Lefty types, when they migrate right, don�t stop until they are as far over as possible. Hitchens pairing with Newt Gingrich is much like Horowitz�s pairing with a varied and unsavory crew of racists. Hitchens, however, is a brighter man than the never too 100 watt-ish Horowitz. That said, he is still inclined to that laughable gesture of the self-important insider, the personal assurance from a Very Important Person:

�More to the point, one has to be prepared to support a campaign�or a cause�that is going badly. The president has been widely lampooned by many a glib columnist for saying that increased violence is not necessarily a cause for despair and may even be evidence of traction. He is, in fact, quite right to take this view, which was first expressed, to my knowledge, by Gen. John Abizaid. Those who murder the officials of the United Nations and the Red Cross, set fire to oil pipelines and blow up water mains, and shoot down respected clerics outside places of worship are indeed making our point for us. There is no justifiable way that a country as populous and important as Iraq can be left at the mercy of such people.�

With the last, of course, we can agree. Iraq was never going to have avoid the historic pattern that usually precedes liberation � that is, internal strife. The idea that the U.S. was, or is, going to impose its own form of liberation on the country was the whole reason to oppose the war, from a Burkean standpoint. Hitchens� war was one fought against an absolute evil by an entity without its own interests. A fairy tale war. Luckily, in the real war, the Coalition is reluctantly starting to rethink its screw-ups � for instance, trusting Chalabi as the voice of the Iraqi people; or disbanding the Iraqi army. No thanks, one must add, to Hitchens, whose miserable invectives before the war have not been enriched by any particular ingenuity since Daddy declared the major hostilities over. If Hitchens really wanted to justify this war, perhaps he would have chose this week to write about something a little more timely � for instance, the bonehead gesture of imposing a Grover Norquist approved flat tax on the country. Since nobody in Iraq is much used to paying taxes, this is a non-issue for the nonce � but in combination with selling off Iraq�s private industry, it could soon become a very hot, and very fraught one. We leave Iraqis to the �mercy of such people� as the guerillas when we give them such rally-able objects to resist.

Bollettino

"We mourn every loss, we honour every name, we grieve with every family, and we will always be grateful that liberty has found such brave defenders� � George Bush, November 3

�Bring em on� � George Bush, July 3

Ten names of the 16 that were killed Sunday in Fallujah.

Joe Wilson, Crystal Springs, Mississippi

Sgt. Ernest Bucklew, Enon Valley, Pennsylvania

Sgt. Keelan L. Moss, Houston, Texas

Pfc. Anthony Domenic D'Agostino, Waterbury, Connecticut

Spc Brian Penniston, Fort Wayne, Indiana

Staff Sgt. Daniel Bader, York, Nebraska

Private Karina Lau, Livingstone, California
Spc. Frances M. Vega, San Francisco, California

Darius T. Jennings, Cordova, South Carolina

1st Lt. Brian Slavenas, Genoa, Illinois

Sgt. Steven D. Conover, Wilmington, Ohio

Let these names lie heavy on D.C.