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Tuesday, June 08, 2004
BEDTIME FOR BONZO
I swear, if I have to hear one more goddamn thing about Ronald Reagan, I might have to destroy my television. They won't put him into the ground until Friday, and I don't know if I can take it that long.
So I won't dwell on Reagan's place in history or my own personal reflections on it; there is plenty of that sort of thing floating around out there and much of it is really quite insightful, so I'll hold my peace. Instead, I will focus on how I think the event of his death will affect today's political landscape. Crass, you say? Welcome to Sambidextrous!
Of course, this is only good for Bush, especially coming right on the heels of the sixtieth-anniversary celebration of D-Day. Reagan didn't serve in World War II; he would already have been too old, pretty much. But the President during that conflict was Reagan's political idol, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, for whom he voted four times.
This may seem odd at first, since Reagan's terms in the White House seemed to be largely devoted to undoing Roosevelt's legacy of social welfare programs and centralized government control, at least on a rhetorical level. But Reagan saw his own struggle against Communism as the historical equivalent of Roosevelt's leadership in the war against Fascism. And like Roosevelt, he came into office during a period of the greatest economic discontent the nation had faced in a generation. Both Reagan and Roosevelt relentlessly projected their own indomitable optimism in the face of crisis; they managed to convince the citizenry that better days lay ahead, and that America would emerge victorious at the end of the long struggles they were engaged in.
Bush has been a careful student of Ronald Reagan, who is every bit as much his idol as Roosevelt was Reagan's. I don't know how many times I have heard Bush say "I'm an optimsist." Reagan was widely derided for calling the Soviet Union an "evil empire" and insisting that the Cold War could be won, just as Bush is today whenever he talks about the "axis of evil" and bringing democracy to the Arab world. But just over a year after Reagan left office, the Berlin Wall came down. Reagan's death can only remind Americans that lofty ideals of freedom can be realized in the wider world through hard work and inspired political leadership. Support for Bush's policy in Iraq has been wobbly lately, but I suspect it will pick up presently.
It's just too neat! Reagan dies on the eve of the anniversary of D-Day, right before the G8 meets to discuss, among other things, Iraq and the rest of the Arab world. So in one short week, the great historical struggles of the United States against Fascism, Communism, and Islamic totalitarianism become unified in the public consciousness, with extremely strong symbolic overtones. And Reagan becomes the link between FDR and George W. Bush.
If I were a conspiracy theorist, I would be certain that the spooks had Reagan bumped off. He was on the way out anyway, and at his age who would even suspect? But I don't go in for that kind of garbage.
I swear, if I have to hear one more goddamn thing about Ronald Reagan, I might have to destroy my television. They won't put him into the ground until Friday, and I don't know if I can take it that long.
So I won't dwell on Reagan's place in history or my own personal reflections on it; there is plenty of that sort of thing floating around out there and much of it is really quite insightful, so I'll hold my peace. Instead, I will focus on how I think the event of his death will affect today's political landscape. Crass, you say? Welcome to Sambidextrous!
Of course, this is only good for Bush, especially coming right on the heels of the sixtieth-anniversary celebration of D-Day. Reagan didn't serve in World War II; he would already have been too old, pretty much. But the President during that conflict was Reagan's political idol, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, for whom he voted four times.
This may seem odd at first, since Reagan's terms in the White House seemed to be largely devoted to undoing Roosevelt's legacy of social welfare programs and centralized government control, at least on a rhetorical level. But Reagan saw his own struggle against Communism as the historical equivalent of Roosevelt's leadership in the war against Fascism. And like Roosevelt, he came into office during a period of the greatest economic discontent the nation had faced in a generation. Both Reagan and Roosevelt relentlessly projected their own indomitable optimism in the face of crisis; they managed to convince the citizenry that better days lay ahead, and that America would emerge victorious at the end of the long struggles they were engaged in.
Bush has been a careful student of Ronald Reagan, who is every bit as much his idol as Roosevelt was Reagan's. I don't know how many times I have heard Bush say "I'm an optimsist." Reagan was widely derided for calling the Soviet Union an "evil empire" and insisting that the Cold War could be won, just as Bush is today whenever he talks about the "axis of evil" and bringing democracy to the Arab world. But just over a year after Reagan left office, the Berlin Wall came down. Reagan's death can only remind Americans that lofty ideals of freedom can be realized in the wider world through hard work and inspired political leadership. Support for Bush's policy in Iraq has been wobbly lately, but I suspect it will pick up presently.
It's just too neat! Reagan dies on the eve of the anniversary of D-Day, right before the G8 meets to discuss, among other things, Iraq and the rest of the Arab world. So in one short week, the great historical struggles of the United States against Fascism, Communism, and Islamic totalitarianism become unified in the public consciousness, with extremely strong symbolic overtones. And Reagan becomes the link between FDR and George W. Bush.
If I were a conspiracy theorist, I would be certain that the spooks had Reagan bumped off. He was on the way out anyway, and at his age who would even suspect? But I don't go in for that kind of garbage.
Monday, May 31, 2004
MASS APPEAL?
Hi everybody,
As most of you know, I was born and raised in Massachusetts; more specifically, in a little college town called Northampton. Massachusetts is and/or has been the home or site of, in no particular order, Plymouth Rock, the first Thanksgiving, the Salem Witch Trials, Benjamin Franklin, the Boston Massacre, the Boston Tea Party, Paul Revere, the battles of Lexington and Concord, John Adams, the Shays rebellion, the Red Sox, John F. Kennedy (the last sitting Congressman to be elected President), Mike Dukakis (the last losing Democratic Presidential challenger), the New England Patriots, a large portion of the sex scandal that has rocked the Catholic church, Senator John Kerry (who hopes to follow Kennedy's route to the Presidency and was Lieutenant Governor under Dukakis), and now, legal gay marriages. In 1972, it was the only state won by George McGovern in his humiliating loss to Richard Nixon for the Presidency. When the Watergate scandal reached its crest a couple of years later, the bumper stickers read "Don't blame me; I'm from Massachusetts!"
More particularly, my hometown of Northampton nearly three hundred years ago hosted the pulpit of a man named Jonathan Edwards. To this day, his sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" is considered the crucial document of a movement that was known as the Great Awakening. Many people think of Edwards as quintessentially Puritan, but in fact the Awakening was a revival of Puritan consciousness that had lapsed in the century between the Pilgrim landing at Plymouth and the time of Edwards. In the end, Edwards was too moralistic for the town fathers to tolerate, and they ran him out of town. Today, right on Main Street in Northampton, a stone's throw away from City Hall, there is a church named after him; it looks like a Howard Johnson's.
What a difference three hundred years makes! About a decade ago, "60 Minutes" ran a story on Northampton; it was called "Lesbianville U.S.A." My little hometown now boasts the highest percentage population of lesbians of any community in America. And make no mistake, it's the real deal; they are militant, butch, in-your-face, and politically active. And now they can get married! I feel confident in saying that Jonathan Edwards would not approve.
The lesbian population, combined with the academic community employed at Northampton's prestigious Smith College (all girls!) and those of the four other colleges in the surrounding towns, makes for an extremely liberal political environment, to say the least. Even more so than Massachusetts generally, which is already thought of as a bastion of liberal politics (see Kennedy, Dukakis, Kerry, &c.). Despite being one of the foundation stones of the American edifice (pace Virginia), the state of my origins now lies well outside the mainstream of our nation's political life.
What I am getting at is: Massachusetts is a fucked up place! Gays can marry (good), but liquor stores are still closed on Sunday and last call at a bar is at 12:30 (bad). Liberal or not, the legacy of Puritanism dies very hard.
And it gets stranger the deeper you dig. Despite its liberal reputation and all the great work on civil rights instigated by John and Robert Kennedy, Massachusetts remains a deeply racist place as soon as you get outside of super-liberal enclaves like my hometown. When I was growing up, the only minorities of significant numbers in Northampton were the Puerto Ricans, and they all lived in low-income housing projects. They went to Northampton High with the rest of us, but they were a group unto themselves, largely thanks to bilingual education. This situation has changed a lot in the twenty years since I graduated high school; there is considerably more diversity in Northampton now. But Massachusetts as a whole is still very, very white, and not just in the old-money, pedigreed sense; there are a lot of necks in New England that are just as red as they come (pace Virginia again).
And then there's the Catholic church. I am not sure that people from outside of New England understand what a big deal the sex scandal was inside of my home state. I read last week that about 60 or so out of 200+ churches in the Boston archdiocese were going to be closed to defray the costs of the legal settlement. Boston is NOT that big a town, but it still had hundreds of individual Catholic congregations. Until the scandal broke, the universal church probably enjoyed more political power in Boston than it has anywhere else on Earth since the Reformation. ("Hmph," says Jonathan Edwards, "What do you expect from a bunch of papists?")
So this is where I come from, and more importantly, this is where John Kerry comes from, a small state with values and power structures that are profoundly dissimilar to those of large parts of the nation. Watching Kerry, it's not hard to detect in his manner his elemental distance from those he seeks to govern. I think he is a good candidate, but there are certain things about who he is that act against him, and these factors are essentially insurmountable.
Massachusetts is a great place for what it is. I am proud and not the least bit ashamed of where I come from. But until Kerry emerged as the presumptive nominee and the Massachusetts Supreme Court declared that gays could marry legally, I never dreamed that the Bay State could figure so prominently in national politics today. Because it shouldn't! And in many ways, I wish it didn't.
We won't get those bumper stickers this time around.
Hi everybody,
As most of you know, I was born and raised in Massachusetts; more specifically, in a little college town called Northampton. Massachusetts is and/or has been the home or site of, in no particular order, Plymouth Rock, the first Thanksgiving, the Salem Witch Trials, Benjamin Franklin, the Boston Massacre, the Boston Tea Party, Paul Revere, the battles of Lexington and Concord, John Adams, the Shays rebellion, the Red Sox, John F. Kennedy (the last sitting Congressman to be elected President), Mike Dukakis (the last losing Democratic Presidential challenger), the New England Patriots, a large portion of the sex scandal that has rocked the Catholic church, Senator John Kerry (who hopes to follow Kennedy's route to the Presidency and was Lieutenant Governor under Dukakis), and now, legal gay marriages. In 1972, it was the only state won by George McGovern in his humiliating loss to Richard Nixon for the Presidency. When the Watergate scandal reached its crest a couple of years later, the bumper stickers read "Don't blame me; I'm from Massachusetts!"
More particularly, my hometown of Northampton nearly three hundred years ago hosted the pulpit of a man named Jonathan Edwards. To this day, his sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" is considered the crucial document of a movement that was known as the Great Awakening. Many people think of Edwards as quintessentially Puritan, but in fact the Awakening was a revival of Puritan consciousness that had lapsed in the century between the Pilgrim landing at Plymouth and the time of Edwards. In the end, Edwards was too moralistic for the town fathers to tolerate, and they ran him out of town. Today, right on Main Street in Northampton, a stone's throw away from City Hall, there is a church named after him; it looks like a Howard Johnson's.
What a difference three hundred years makes! About a decade ago, "60 Minutes" ran a story on Northampton; it was called "Lesbianville U.S.A." My little hometown now boasts the highest percentage population of lesbians of any community in America. And make no mistake, it's the real deal; they are militant, butch, in-your-face, and politically active. And now they can get married! I feel confident in saying that Jonathan Edwards would not approve.
The lesbian population, combined with the academic community employed at Northampton's prestigious Smith College (all girls!) and those of the four other colleges in the surrounding towns, makes for an extremely liberal political environment, to say the least. Even more so than Massachusetts generally, which is already thought of as a bastion of liberal politics (see Kennedy, Dukakis, Kerry, &c.). Despite being one of the foundation stones of the American edifice (pace Virginia), the state of my origins now lies well outside the mainstream of our nation's political life.
What I am getting at is: Massachusetts is a fucked up place! Gays can marry (good), but liquor stores are still closed on Sunday and last call at a bar is at 12:30 (bad). Liberal or not, the legacy of Puritanism dies very hard.
And it gets stranger the deeper you dig. Despite its liberal reputation and all the great work on civil rights instigated by John and Robert Kennedy, Massachusetts remains a deeply racist place as soon as you get outside of super-liberal enclaves like my hometown. When I was growing up, the only minorities of significant numbers in Northampton were the Puerto Ricans, and they all lived in low-income housing projects. They went to Northampton High with the rest of us, but they were a group unto themselves, largely thanks to bilingual education. This situation has changed a lot in the twenty years since I graduated high school; there is considerably more diversity in Northampton now. But Massachusetts as a whole is still very, very white, and not just in the old-money, pedigreed sense; there are a lot of necks in New England that are just as red as they come (pace Virginia again).
And then there's the Catholic church. I am not sure that people from outside of New England understand what a big deal the sex scandal was inside of my home state. I read last week that about 60 or so out of 200+ churches in the Boston archdiocese were going to be closed to defray the costs of the legal settlement. Boston is NOT that big a town, but it still had hundreds of individual Catholic congregations. Until the scandal broke, the universal church probably enjoyed more political power in Boston than it has anywhere else on Earth since the Reformation. ("Hmph," says Jonathan Edwards, "What do you expect from a bunch of papists?")
So this is where I come from, and more importantly, this is where John Kerry comes from, a small state with values and power structures that are profoundly dissimilar to those of large parts of the nation. Watching Kerry, it's not hard to detect in his manner his elemental distance from those he seeks to govern. I think he is a good candidate, but there are certain things about who he is that act against him, and these factors are essentially insurmountable.
Massachusetts is a great place for what it is. I am proud and not the least bit ashamed of where I come from. But until Kerry emerged as the presumptive nominee and the Massachusetts Supreme Court declared that gays could marry legally, I never dreamed that the Bay State could figure so prominently in national politics today. Because it shouldn't! And in many ways, I wish it didn't.
We won't get those bumper stickers this time around.
Friday, May 14, 2004
A MEMO
Intelligence intercept from May 7, 2004, freely translated from the Arabic by the Sambidextrous Linguistics Unit.
TO: All personnel, Baghdad station
FROM: ObL
All praise is due to God, to whom all praise is due.
I know there are a number of Americans that you are holding on our behalf. Take any one of them; I don't care which, but one of those civilian contract employees would be preferable. Cut his fucking head off and get it on tape. Distribute through the usual channels.
Please forgive me if my manner seems unusually abrupt, but I cannot stress enough how important this is to our cause. We are Al, frigging, Qaeda; the world's premiere terrorist organization. We may not have invented the prisoner torture video, but our contributions to the form are without peer in the industry. The Daniel Pearl tape alone has set standards that remain unmatched even now, years later. We are not about to be outdone by a bunch of fucking rank amateur Americans. If there are more pictures from Abu Ghraib, as everybody seems to think, the Americans could well pull out, and you all know that is the last thing I want to happen.
God is great.
Intelligence intercept from May 7, 2004, freely translated from the Arabic by the Sambidextrous Linguistics Unit.
TO: All personnel, Baghdad station
FROM: ObL
All praise is due to God, to whom all praise is due.
I know there are a number of Americans that you are holding on our behalf. Take any one of them; I don't care which, but one of those civilian contract employees would be preferable. Cut his fucking head off and get it on tape. Distribute through the usual channels.
Please forgive me if my manner seems unusually abrupt, but I cannot stress enough how important this is to our cause. We are Al, frigging, Qaeda; the world's premiere terrorist organization. We may not have invented the prisoner torture video, but our contributions to the form are without peer in the industry. The Daniel Pearl tape alone has set standards that remain unmatched even now, years later. We are not about to be outdone by a bunch of fucking rank amateur Americans. If there are more pictures from Abu Ghraib, as everybody seems to think, the Americans could well pull out, and you all know that is the last thing I want to happen.
God is great.
Friday, March 19, 2004
ONE YEAR LATER
Hey everybody,
Again, sorry I haven't been seeing after this as much as before. I will try to do better.
Anyhow, even though the media have been talking about it all week, TODAY is actually the one-year anniversary of the beginning of hostilities in Iraq. It seems like a good time to take stock of where things stand there and here at home.
You all know I supported the war, and on balance, I still do. Even before this time one year ago, it was never something I was happy about, but something I found tragically necessary. Since then, everything that has gone wrong has made me stop and think if maybe I had been mistaken. So far, knock on wood, I still feel pretty much the same.
It hasn't been easy. Last August saw a huge escalation in bloodshed, with anti-coalition forces trying their very best to foment civil war among Iraq's various demographic groups. I was on pins and needles, and every major attack that occurs brings me right back there. Considering everything they have been through, I think it's a great testament to the Iraqi people that they have NOT descended into violent sectarian conflict.
And that's still the crux of the matter for me. Weapons of mass destruction were never among my main reasons for supporting Saddam's ouster, so the conclusion of chief weapons inspector David Kay that Saddam probably hadn't had them since the Gulf War did not rattle me as much as it did some of the war's other supporters.
No, the main reason I backed the war was that I thought that no progress could possibly be made toward a progressive political culture in the Arab world with Saddam still in power. On balance, it can only be considered a positive good that he has been deposed and apprehended. There are numerous repressive dictators in that region, but he was, in my book, by far the worst.
Which leads me to a little side note. Responding to my post here after Saddam's capture in December, my friend Jim took issue with my characterization of Saddam as "one of the worst and most murderous dictators of modern history". "Not even close!" he replied. This led us into a discussion (which I found quite bizarre, frankly) of exactly who the worst dictators had been. Now, here is a little piece of advice for those of you who, like Jim, opposed the war. There are many good arguments on your side (distracts from the war against al-Qaeda, unnecessarily divides the global alliance, &c.), but "Saddam Hussein was really not so bad" is NOT among them. Sorry Jim, but that was the direction you were going in.
Anyhow, the main reason I still think the war was a good idea is that it seems like the people of Iraq agree with me. I don't think the polls in Iraq since the war can be very accurate at all, but they are all we have to go on. Without exception, they ALL show that the great majority of the Iraqi population is happy that Saddam is gone, and optimistic that they will be better off because of it. This is despite all the civilian casualties, looting, terrorism, and other violence that they have been subjected to in the past year.
And don't get me wrong, it's a mess. Our own hand-picked Governing Council can only agree on an interim constitution when we lean on them, and the bickering there between Kurds and Shi'ites could be a disturbing harbinger of worse conflict once power is actually handed over. But if you look at it another way, it's actually GOOD that there are opposing political movements jockeying for power in an Arab nation as long as they are not shooting for each other. That's what democracy is all about! And Iraq is the only Arab nation where this takes place today.
But even other nations in the region are beginning to lurch towards greater political participation. We shall never know if this would have happened without the war, but I will go out on a limb and say I very much doubt it. Then there is the surprise decision by Libya to come clean about their own weapons programs, and the parallel decision in Iran to pretend to do the same. Here, I am much more comfortable saying that these things would NOT have happened were it not for the war.
But that does not let me off the hook. In some ways, I am very glad that John Kerry has become the Democratic nominee. Like me, he supported the war beforehand, but is horrified by the way the Bush administration has handled it and its aftermath. This, along with certain political calculations, has led him to being in the odd position of voting in Congress for the war and against the additional appropriation of funds to fight it, and then to have to make one of his typical longwinded justifications for this seeming inconsistency.
There is still every chance that Iraq could slide into civil war, and if that happens, Kerry and I will have some tough questions to answer. But in fact, we already do. It's very easy to say "I support the war, but I would have handled it better." I can't see what exactly could have been done differently that would have resulted in better conditions on the ground in Iraq today. Sure, we should have had more troops, we should have stopped the looting in the immediate aftermath of conflict, maybe we should have kept the Iraqi army together. But if we had taken all these steps, would things necessarily be any better for Iraqis than they are today? We shall never know.
And there is more. I remember back around Labor Day when the Congressional Budget Office issued a report saying that our then-current troop levels could only be sustained for another six months (that is, until about now) without diverting troops from elsewhere. Now THAT gave me pause. "Where the hell was the CBO nine months ago?" I wondered. Suddenly, there is a big push on the Afghan-Pakistani border to find bin Laden and his henchmen. Why wait until now? It's the election, stupid. Yes, this does make me feel like I have been taken for a ride.
And then there is Madrid. To be fair, al-Qaeda has been vowing to go after them for years before the war, but Aznar's decision to join us in Iraq really did seal it for them. That is a lot to have on my shoulders.
But those who opposed the war have their own questions to answer. Why should Saddam have been left in power? Does the capitulation of Libya count for anything? Is it really wrong to want to see a brutal dictator toppled from power even if George Bush wants the same thing?
Hey everybody,
Again, sorry I haven't been seeing after this as much as before. I will try to do better.
Anyhow, even though the media have been talking about it all week, TODAY is actually the one-year anniversary of the beginning of hostilities in Iraq. It seems like a good time to take stock of where things stand there and here at home.
You all know I supported the war, and on balance, I still do. Even before this time one year ago, it was never something I was happy about, but something I found tragically necessary. Since then, everything that has gone wrong has made me stop and think if maybe I had been mistaken. So far, knock on wood, I still feel pretty much the same.
It hasn't been easy. Last August saw a huge escalation in bloodshed, with anti-coalition forces trying their very best to foment civil war among Iraq's various demographic groups. I was on pins and needles, and every major attack that occurs brings me right back there. Considering everything they have been through, I think it's a great testament to the Iraqi people that they have NOT descended into violent sectarian conflict.
And that's still the crux of the matter for me. Weapons of mass destruction were never among my main reasons for supporting Saddam's ouster, so the conclusion of chief weapons inspector David Kay that Saddam probably hadn't had them since the Gulf War did not rattle me as much as it did some of the war's other supporters.
No, the main reason I backed the war was that I thought that no progress could possibly be made toward a progressive political culture in the Arab world with Saddam still in power. On balance, it can only be considered a positive good that he has been deposed and apprehended. There are numerous repressive dictators in that region, but he was, in my book, by far the worst.
Which leads me to a little side note. Responding to my post here after Saddam's capture in December, my friend Jim took issue with my characterization of Saddam as "one of the worst and most murderous dictators of modern history". "Not even close!" he replied. This led us into a discussion (which I found quite bizarre, frankly) of exactly who the worst dictators had been. Now, here is a little piece of advice for those of you who, like Jim, opposed the war. There are many good arguments on your side (distracts from the war against al-Qaeda, unnecessarily divides the global alliance, &c.), but "Saddam Hussein was really not so bad" is NOT among them. Sorry Jim, but that was the direction you were going in.
Anyhow, the main reason I still think the war was a good idea is that it seems like the people of Iraq agree with me. I don't think the polls in Iraq since the war can be very accurate at all, but they are all we have to go on. Without exception, they ALL show that the great majority of the Iraqi population is happy that Saddam is gone, and optimistic that they will be better off because of it. This is despite all the civilian casualties, looting, terrorism, and other violence that they have been subjected to in the past year.
And don't get me wrong, it's a mess. Our own hand-picked Governing Council can only agree on an interim constitution when we lean on them, and the bickering there between Kurds and Shi'ites could be a disturbing harbinger of worse conflict once power is actually handed over. But if you look at it another way, it's actually GOOD that there are opposing political movements jockeying for power in an Arab nation as long as they are not shooting for each other. That's what democracy is all about! And Iraq is the only Arab nation where this takes place today.
But even other nations in the region are beginning to lurch towards greater political participation. We shall never know if this would have happened without the war, but I will go out on a limb and say I very much doubt it. Then there is the surprise decision by Libya to come clean about their own weapons programs, and the parallel decision in Iran to pretend to do the same. Here, I am much more comfortable saying that these things would NOT have happened were it not for the war.
But that does not let me off the hook. In some ways, I am very glad that John Kerry has become the Democratic nominee. Like me, he supported the war beforehand, but is horrified by the way the Bush administration has handled it and its aftermath. This, along with certain political calculations, has led him to being in the odd position of voting in Congress for the war and against the additional appropriation of funds to fight it, and then to have to make one of his typical longwinded justifications for this seeming inconsistency.
There is still every chance that Iraq could slide into civil war, and if that happens, Kerry and I will have some tough questions to answer. But in fact, we already do. It's very easy to say "I support the war, but I would have handled it better." I can't see what exactly could have been done differently that would have resulted in better conditions on the ground in Iraq today. Sure, we should have had more troops, we should have stopped the looting in the immediate aftermath of conflict, maybe we should have kept the Iraqi army together. But if we had taken all these steps, would things necessarily be any better for Iraqis than they are today? We shall never know.
And there is more. I remember back around Labor Day when the Congressional Budget Office issued a report saying that our then-current troop levels could only be sustained for another six months (that is, until about now) without diverting troops from elsewhere. Now THAT gave me pause. "Where the hell was the CBO nine months ago?" I wondered. Suddenly, there is a big push on the Afghan-Pakistani border to find bin Laden and his henchmen. Why wait until now? It's the election, stupid. Yes, this does make me feel like I have been taken for a ride.
And then there is Madrid. To be fair, al-Qaeda has been vowing to go after them for years before the war, but Aznar's decision to join us in Iraq really did seal it for them. That is a lot to have on my shoulders.
But those who opposed the war have their own questions to answer. Why should Saddam have been left in power? Does the capitulation of Libya count for anything? Is it really wrong to want to see a brutal dictator toppled from power even if George Bush wants the same thing?
Saturday, February 14, 2004
BATTLE LINES DRAWN?
Hi everybody,
Sorry I've been a little lax on this; my "career" transition has been getting the better of me, but I am getting a handle on it. It will affect the methodology of this blog though; Since I am no longer an Internet professional, I won't have the resources to link to as many articles as before. Since you are all on the Internet already, and are in theory interested enough to visit Sambidextrous at all, I trust you to be able to keep up on your own with the stuff I am talking about.
And now, on with the show! My last entry was on the eve of the Iowa caucuses and the President's State of the Union address. My, how things have changed! It wasn't that long ago that many of the so-called experts (along with would-be experts such as your "humble" author) were saying that Howard Dean had the Democratic nomination all sewn up. Well, what do you know?
Even back in the summer of 2002, it was already apparent that John Kerry would be seeking the nomination. I thought then that he would be a good candidate, and not just because, like him, I'm from Massachusetts. He certainly has the background for it, especially in national security, which will be among the most important issues in this, the first Presidential election after 9/11. Also, as my dad says, there is an air of "gravitas" about his presentation, and I find this altogether appropriate to the times.
Of course, the downside of "gravitas" is that Kerry has a tendency to speechify instead of speaking. That was one of his characteristics that made Howard Dean's blunt and fiery manner so appealing by contrast back when he was absorbing all the money and media attention in the race. Like several of the other candidates, Kerry learned his lesson from Dean and sharpened his presentation, all to good effect so far.
It's also been said that Dean pretty much sabotaged himself, beginning with his assertion that America was no safer now that Saddam Hussein had been captured. To be fair, I think Dean was absolutely right about this in a technical sense. Since that time, the WMD argument has been shot full of holes by some of the people who were most vociferous about making that argument in the first place. If Saddam did not have WMD, it's pretty hard to make him out as a serious threat to America. And if he was not a serious threat to begin with, then capturing him does not eliminate a threat.
Unfortunately for Dean, he can't put the cart before the horse. By the time the Iraqi Survey Group's David Kay changed his mind about WMD, Kerry had already won a handful of primaries. Dean didn't help himself with the "I have a scream" speech immediately following the Iowa caucuses, and Kerry was able to capitalize on his weakness.
John Edwards has been doggedly sticking it out, but if he couldn't even win South Carolina, the state where he was born, then he seems forever doomed to second place. As I mentioned in my last post, he is incredibly inspiring on the stump with his idea of the "two Americas", but even this is wearing thin. After a while, he seems inspiring in the same way that motivational speakers do. Inspiration isn't very effective if it begins to seem canned. I still think he is probably the ideal Vice Presidential candidate, and possibly somebody to watch for in 2008.
So now it looks like Bush vs. Kerry, much as it did more than a year ago. Goes to show you: the more things change, the more they stay the same. At this point, Kerry seems like more of a sure bet than Dean did even at the holidays, but you never know. I have to say that I have seldom been happier to be wrong. I still like Dean, but when the predictable actually occurs, it almost inevitably falls into the "worst-fears-realized" category.
So much for the domestic battle lines. Meanwhile, over in Iraq, chaos looms ever larger. The past week has seen blood flowing by the trough over there, with no letup in sight. The U.N. is trying to reach some kind of compromise between the coalition and Ayatollah Sistani, and making precious little headway.
In this case, the battle lines are not as clear as they are here at home. Our commanders in Iraq can't seem to decide if they are facing hardcore Ba'athist holdouts, al-Qaeda militants, or both. It's probably both, but the commanders seem to alternate in the media, which is probably just as much the media's fault as theirs.
Then, of course, there are the different sectarian Iraqi groups wrangling among themselves. It's a situation of great uncertainty, and it's anybody's guess how it will turn out. Between this and David Kay, it's been a tough week for the President.
Meanwhile, back at home, jobs are not being created, and Gregory Mankiw, Bush's chief economic adviser, stepped in it early in the week when he said that outsourcing overseas is actually a good thing. This is very much the equivalent of Dean's comment about Saddam's capture, although I don't agree with Mankiw as much as I do with Dean, most economists share this view about a global open labor market. I'll discuss this issue in more detail later. In the meantime, Bush's budget, his Medicare plan, and even his State of the Union address have been roundly panned by both parties.
Well, if you are like me and want to see Bush lose the election, this would be great if it were happening in the fall. But Bush has threaded the needle before, and he could easily do it again. It wasn't that long ago that people were asking "What did the President know and when did he know it?" Of course, this investigation is ongoing, but by now, we all pretty much know that the answers to these questions are "Not much" and "All the time."
Kerry's upset of Dean should have taught us all that we can't possibly know what's coming down the road. Hell, 9/11 should have taught us that. It's been a very interesting year already so far. What could happen next?
Hi everybody,
Sorry I've been a little lax on this; my "career" transition has been getting the better of me, but I am getting a handle on it. It will affect the methodology of this blog though; Since I am no longer an Internet professional, I won't have the resources to link to as many articles as before. Since you are all on the Internet already, and are in theory interested enough to visit Sambidextrous at all, I trust you to be able to keep up on your own with the stuff I am talking about.
And now, on with the show! My last entry was on the eve of the Iowa caucuses and the President's State of the Union address. My, how things have changed! It wasn't that long ago that many of the so-called experts (along with would-be experts such as your "humble" author) were saying that Howard Dean had the Democratic nomination all sewn up. Well, what do you know?
Even back in the summer of 2002, it was already apparent that John Kerry would be seeking the nomination. I thought then that he would be a good candidate, and not just because, like him, I'm from Massachusetts. He certainly has the background for it, especially in national security, which will be among the most important issues in this, the first Presidential election after 9/11. Also, as my dad says, there is an air of "gravitas" about his presentation, and I find this altogether appropriate to the times.
Of course, the downside of "gravitas" is that Kerry has a tendency to speechify instead of speaking. That was one of his characteristics that made Howard Dean's blunt and fiery manner so appealing by contrast back when he was absorbing all the money and media attention in the race. Like several of the other candidates, Kerry learned his lesson from Dean and sharpened his presentation, all to good effect so far.
It's also been said that Dean pretty much sabotaged himself, beginning with his assertion that America was no safer now that Saddam Hussein had been captured. To be fair, I think Dean was absolutely right about this in a technical sense. Since that time, the WMD argument has been shot full of holes by some of the people who were most vociferous about making that argument in the first place. If Saddam did not have WMD, it's pretty hard to make him out as a serious threat to America. And if he was not a serious threat to begin with, then capturing him does not eliminate a threat.
Unfortunately for Dean, he can't put the cart before the horse. By the time the Iraqi Survey Group's David Kay changed his mind about WMD, Kerry had already won a handful of primaries. Dean didn't help himself with the "I have a scream" speech immediately following the Iowa caucuses, and Kerry was able to capitalize on his weakness.
John Edwards has been doggedly sticking it out, but if he couldn't even win South Carolina, the state where he was born, then he seems forever doomed to second place. As I mentioned in my last post, he is incredibly inspiring on the stump with his idea of the "two Americas", but even this is wearing thin. After a while, he seems inspiring in the same way that motivational speakers do. Inspiration isn't very effective if it begins to seem canned. I still think he is probably the ideal Vice Presidential candidate, and possibly somebody to watch for in 2008.
So now it looks like Bush vs. Kerry, much as it did more than a year ago. Goes to show you: the more things change, the more they stay the same. At this point, Kerry seems like more of a sure bet than Dean did even at the holidays, but you never know. I have to say that I have seldom been happier to be wrong. I still like Dean, but when the predictable actually occurs, it almost inevitably falls into the "worst-fears-realized" category.
So much for the domestic battle lines. Meanwhile, over in Iraq, chaos looms ever larger. The past week has seen blood flowing by the trough over there, with no letup in sight. The U.N. is trying to reach some kind of compromise between the coalition and Ayatollah Sistani, and making precious little headway.
In this case, the battle lines are not as clear as they are here at home. Our commanders in Iraq can't seem to decide if they are facing hardcore Ba'athist holdouts, al-Qaeda militants, or both. It's probably both, but the commanders seem to alternate in the media, which is probably just as much the media's fault as theirs.
Then, of course, there are the different sectarian Iraqi groups wrangling among themselves. It's a situation of great uncertainty, and it's anybody's guess how it will turn out. Between this and David Kay, it's been a tough week for the President.
Meanwhile, back at home, jobs are not being created, and Gregory Mankiw, Bush's chief economic adviser, stepped in it early in the week when he said that outsourcing overseas is actually a good thing. This is very much the equivalent of Dean's comment about Saddam's capture, although I don't agree with Mankiw as much as I do with Dean, most economists share this view about a global open labor market. I'll discuss this issue in more detail later. In the meantime, Bush's budget, his Medicare plan, and even his State of the Union address have been roundly panned by both parties.
Well, if you are like me and want to see Bush lose the election, this would be great if it were happening in the fall. But Bush has threaded the needle before, and he could easily do it again. It wasn't that long ago that people were asking "What did the President know and when did he know it?" Of course, this investigation is ongoing, but by now, we all pretty much know that the answers to these questions are "Not much" and "All the time."
Kerry's upset of Dean should have taught us all that we can't possibly know what's coming down the road. Hell, 9/11 should have taught us that. It's been a very interesting year already so far. What could happen next?
Monday, January 19, 2004
CAUCUSES, CAUCUSES, CAUCASUS!
Happy New Year everybody!
Sorry I haven't updated this in a while. Like most people, I was pretty busy through the holidays, and it turns out I am changing jobs, so I have been pretty absorbed in the transition process.
Anyhow, the Iowa caucuses happen tomorrow night, and not a moment too soon! Finally we can get the ball rolling in choosing a Democratic nominee. It looks like a four-way dead heat right now among Howard Dean, Richard Gephardt, and Johns Edwards and Kerry. Even I am not stupid enough to try pick a winner at this stage!
I would like to say, though, that I saw John Edwards on TV the other night and he was great. At my age, I can't remember the last time I could use the word "inspiring" about a political candidate, but there is no other word I can think of to describe Edwards on the stump. I don't think he can win the nomination, but he is definitely somebody I would watch in the future and I still think he would make a great running mate for the eventual nominee.
I don't know how much any of you know about the caucus system; I myself really did not know much about it until recently. If we can think of a primary as a mini-election, with polling booths and secret balloting, the Iowa caucuses are more like a set of mini-conventions. In each caucus location, the voters must publicly declare their support of a particular candidate. If any one candidate does not have fifteen percent of the voters in any one location, those voters must either remain uncommitted or direct their support elsewhere. The other groups can try to swing them over to their candidate.
In some ways, this is a great process. The voters are very engaged and committed, and they really take great care in the decision they are making. Would that the entire electorate was as discriminating!
The problem with this year's caucases, though, goes back to that four-way tie. All the candidates are too busy running against each other to run against George Bush. And this week, there is plenty to run against him on.
Over in Iraq, there are a different set of caucases in the works. To briefly recap part of my blog entry from last December 2nd, the Bush administration wants to "elect" the transitional Iraqi government through what they are calling a caucus system. The problem though, is that the caucus participants are essentially handpicked by Paul Bremer, the Iraqi Governing Council (also handpicked by the Americans), and the U.S. military. This is bringing democracy to the Arab world?
The wildcard here is the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the senior figure of Iraq's Shi'ite Muslims. Sistani is insisting that any transitional government be chosen by direct elections. Isn't this what we are supposed to be doing in Iraq? And this week, Sistani has not been averse to hinting that if elections do not occur, there will be trouble, and the tens of thousands of Shi'ites demonstrating in his support in Basra and other places would seem to bear this out.
The usual round-up of unnamed American officials shrewdly point out that we can't give one man veto power over U.S. foreign policy. If we yield to Sistani now, they ask, what will he demand next? To this I would respond, that he is vetoing something that we should never have been pushing for in the first place. What is the American objection to direct elections? Only that they could not be organized in time for the handover of power, scheduled for this July. In Washington this weekend, Bremer said that he wanted to address Sistani's concerns, but that the handover date would not budge.
I supported the war, and I would do so again today. Having Saddam Hussein out of power in custody is to me an unambiguous good. But George Bush is playing domestic electoral politics with the very lives of 25 million Iraqis, and jeopardizing our own national security while he is at it. Make no mistake, there could be civil war in Iraq. Some of the smarter commentators pointed out when Saddam was captured that knowing he was in the pokey could make the Shi'ites more assertive, because he had paid them back for previous uprisings with wholesale slaughter. Well, here we go.
When the war was brewing a year ago, I knew full well that Bush was going to use it to boost his own election prospects this year, but I never thought he would sink quite this low. I cannot recall the last time a U.S. President enacted a foreign policy decision that I found so profoundly disgusting. Outside some of our Israel policies, that is!
So what does one caucus have to do with the other? Not much, unfortunately! I have not heard any of the candidates speak in Iowa about the sham in Iraq. I have heard none of them say:
"THIS is a caucus! You people are taking time out of your lives to get together and help decide who will run against the President in November. This is how democracy works!
"George Bush wants to stack the deck with his own people in Iraq and call it a caucus. THIS is a caucus! Are you going to let him get away with this? Are you going to let him tell the world that the American democracy that he wants to export to other countries is nothing better than a rigged game?"
Why is nobody saying this?
So much for the caucuses, now on to the Caucasus! I haven't heard again from my pal Andy, our Sambidextrous corresponent on the scene in Azerbaijan, but I am confident that I will soon. Also, Andy mentioned earlier that in addition to his U.S. Coast Guard duties in Baku, he will be spending parts of the next year in Kazakhstan in Turkmenistan. I can't wait to hear about those countries. Kazakhstan is far and away the largest of the Central Asian states, both in geography and energy resources, and Turkmenistan also has lots of oil and gas, as well as the dubious distinction of having been selected as the worst place to live in the whole world for 2004 by The Economist in their special issue looking ahead to this year.
So what do the caucuses have to do with the Caucasus? Lots! The peaceful handover of power in Georgia is now complete, and America can be proud of our role in that transfer. I can't help thinking, though, that former Georgian President Eduard Sheverdnadze was a victim of his own fame. Earlier last year, right next door in Azerbaijan, former President Aliyev handed power over to his own son in an election that international observers roundly condemned as having been rigged. Bloody riots ensued, but the results stood. Just in time too; Old man Aliyev died just last month, his legacy assured. What did the U.S. do? Not a goddam thing. Unlike Sheverdnadze, nobody has ever heard of the Aliyevs, and there's a big pipeline going in there, you know!
In the Caucasus and Central Asia, the Bush administration is pursuing exactly the same policy of purchasing security at the expense of liberty that Bush decried in his November speech at the National Endowment for Democracy. Why is nobody calling him on this?
To be fair, I think that there are perfectly valid reasons for having a different policy in Central Asia than we do in the Arab world. As I have mentioned before, Central Asia combines the problems of the Arab world with those of the former Soviet states. Tough combo! And the fact is that the 9/11 highjackers were Arabs, not Central Asians.
But then again, I'm not running for President! Even if Bush is right to have this policy disparity between two different regions, it still runs counter to his expressed policy, and it should fall to the opposition candidates to demand that he explain why. And if they won't do that, why are they not at least screaming bloody murder about the bogus Iraq caucuses, especially given the perfect opportunity to draw the comparison to the genuine caucuses in Iowa?
OK, that will do it for today. This time tomorrow, we will know the results in Iowa, and then it's on to the New Hampshire primary, with a detour through Bush's State of the Union address tomorrow night. Should be a corker!
Happy New Year everybody!
Sorry I haven't updated this in a while. Like most people, I was pretty busy through the holidays, and it turns out I am changing jobs, so I have been pretty absorbed in the transition process.
Anyhow, the Iowa caucuses happen tomorrow night, and not a moment too soon! Finally we can get the ball rolling in choosing a Democratic nominee. It looks like a four-way dead heat right now among Howard Dean, Richard Gephardt, and Johns Edwards and Kerry. Even I am not stupid enough to try pick a winner at this stage!
I would like to say, though, that I saw John Edwards on TV the other night and he was great. At my age, I can't remember the last time I could use the word "inspiring" about a political candidate, but there is no other word I can think of to describe Edwards on the stump. I don't think he can win the nomination, but he is definitely somebody I would watch in the future and I still think he would make a great running mate for the eventual nominee.
I don't know how much any of you know about the caucus system; I myself really did not know much about it until recently. If we can think of a primary as a mini-election, with polling booths and secret balloting, the Iowa caucuses are more like a set of mini-conventions. In each caucus location, the voters must publicly declare their support of a particular candidate. If any one candidate does not have fifteen percent of the voters in any one location, those voters must either remain uncommitted or direct their support elsewhere. The other groups can try to swing them over to their candidate.
In some ways, this is a great process. The voters are very engaged and committed, and they really take great care in the decision they are making. Would that the entire electorate was as discriminating!
The problem with this year's caucases, though, goes back to that four-way tie. All the candidates are too busy running against each other to run against George Bush. And this week, there is plenty to run against him on.
Over in Iraq, there are a different set of caucases in the works. To briefly recap part of my blog entry from last December 2nd, the Bush administration wants to "elect" the transitional Iraqi government through what they are calling a caucus system. The problem though, is that the caucus participants are essentially handpicked by Paul Bremer, the Iraqi Governing Council (also handpicked by the Americans), and the U.S. military. This is bringing democracy to the Arab world?
The wildcard here is the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the senior figure of Iraq's Shi'ite Muslims. Sistani is insisting that any transitional government be chosen by direct elections. Isn't this what we are supposed to be doing in Iraq? And this week, Sistani has not been averse to hinting that if elections do not occur, there will be trouble, and the tens of thousands of Shi'ites demonstrating in his support in Basra and other places would seem to bear this out.
The usual round-up of unnamed American officials shrewdly point out that we can't give one man veto power over U.S. foreign policy. If we yield to Sistani now, they ask, what will he demand next? To this I would respond, that he is vetoing something that we should never have been pushing for in the first place. What is the American objection to direct elections? Only that they could not be organized in time for the handover of power, scheduled for this July. In Washington this weekend, Bremer said that he wanted to address Sistani's concerns, but that the handover date would not budge.
I supported the war, and I would do so again today. Having Saddam Hussein out of power in custody is to me an unambiguous good. But George Bush is playing domestic electoral politics with the very lives of 25 million Iraqis, and jeopardizing our own national security while he is at it. Make no mistake, there could be civil war in Iraq. Some of the smarter commentators pointed out when Saddam was captured that knowing he was in the pokey could make the Shi'ites more assertive, because he had paid them back for previous uprisings with wholesale slaughter. Well, here we go.
When the war was brewing a year ago, I knew full well that Bush was going to use it to boost his own election prospects this year, but I never thought he would sink quite this low. I cannot recall the last time a U.S. President enacted a foreign policy decision that I found so profoundly disgusting. Outside some of our Israel policies, that is!
So what does one caucus have to do with the other? Not much, unfortunately! I have not heard any of the candidates speak in Iowa about the sham in Iraq. I have heard none of them say:
"THIS is a caucus! You people are taking time out of your lives to get together and help decide who will run against the President in November. This is how democracy works!
"George Bush wants to stack the deck with his own people in Iraq and call it a caucus. THIS is a caucus! Are you going to let him get away with this? Are you going to let him tell the world that the American democracy that he wants to export to other countries is nothing better than a rigged game?"
Why is nobody saying this?
So much for the caucuses, now on to the Caucasus! I haven't heard again from my pal Andy, our Sambidextrous corresponent on the scene in Azerbaijan, but I am confident that I will soon. Also, Andy mentioned earlier that in addition to his U.S. Coast Guard duties in Baku, he will be spending parts of the next year in Kazakhstan in Turkmenistan. I can't wait to hear about those countries. Kazakhstan is far and away the largest of the Central Asian states, both in geography and energy resources, and Turkmenistan also has lots of oil and gas, as well as the dubious distinction of having been selected as the worst place to live in the whole world for 2004 by The Economist in their special issue looking ahead to this year.
So what do the caucuses have to do with the Caucasus? Lots! The peaceful handover of power in Georgia is now complete, and America can be proud of our role in that transfer. I can't help thinking, though, that former Georgian President Eduard Sheverdnadze was a victim of his own fame. Earlier last year, right next door in Azerbaijan, former President Aliyev handed power over to his own son in an election that international observers roundly condemned as having been rigged. Bloody riots ensued, but the results stood. Just in time too; Old man Aliyev died just last month, his legacy assured. What did the U.S. do? Not a goddam thing. Unlike Sheverdnadze, nobody has ever heard of the Aliyevs, and there's a big pipeline going in there, you know!
In the Caucasus and Central Asia, the Bush administration is pursuing exactly the same policy of purchasing security at the expense of liberty that Bush decried in his November speech at the National Endowment for Democracy. Why is nobody calling him on this?
To be fair, I think that there are perfectly valid reasons for having a different policy in Central Asia than we do in the Arab world. As I have mentioned before, Central Asia combines the problems of the Arab world with those of the former Soviet states. Tough combo! And the fact is that the 9/11 highjackers were Arabs, not Central Asians.
But then again, I'm not running for President! Even if Bush is right to have this policy disparity between two different regions, it still runs counter to his expressed policy, and it should fall to the opposition candidates to demand that he explain why. And if they won't do that, why are they not at least screaming bloody murder about the bogus Iraq caucuses, especially given the perfect opportunity to draw the comparison to the genuine caucuses in Iowa?
OK, that will do it for today. This time tomorrow, we will know the results in Iowa, and then it's on to the New Hampshire primary, with a detour through Bush's State of the Union address tomorrow night. Should be a corker!
Tuesday, December 23, 2003
THAT'S MISS NAVIDAD TO YOU, PUNK! MY FRIENDS CALL ME FELICE!
Sorry I haven't been updating this too often, but I always seem to be real busy around the holidays. I have to fly out of LaGuardia tomorrow and it's really going to SUCK!
Sure, lots of stuff that I like to talk about here is still going on, but it will keep until next week. And God knows what will happen between now and then!
I am not sure what Christmas presents I will receive, but the champion recipient this week has got to be the President, who got Saddam Hussein and a surrender from Muammar Qaddafi all in the space of six days! Lumps of coal for Howard Dean, sure, but there are still 1.5 shopping days left.
So any way, Happy Holidays to all of you out there in blogland!
Yrs., &c.,
SAM
Sorry I haven't been updating this too often, but I always seem to be real busy around the holidays. I have to fly out of LaGuardia tomorrow and it's really going to SUCK!
Sure, lots of stuff that I like to talk about here is still going on, but it will keep until next week. And God knows what will happen between now and then!
I am not sure what Christmas presents I will receive, but the champion recipient this week has got to be the President, who got Saddam Hussein and a surrender from Muammar Qaddafi all in the space of six days! Lumps of coal for Howard Dean, sure, but there are still 1.5 shopping days left.
So any way, Happy Holidays to all of you out there in blogland!
Yrs., &c.,
SAM
