sambidextrous

2004-06-08T18:46:00.000-07:00

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.

2004-05-31T10:05:00.000-07:00

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.

2004-05-14T09:16:00.000-07:00

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.

2004-03-19T14:38:00.000-08:00

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?

2004-02-14T13:44:00.000-08:00

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?

2004-01-19T05:48:00.000-08:00

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!

2003-12-23T11:40:00.000-08:00

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

2003-12-15T09:12:00.000-08:00

NO MATTER HOW YOU SLICE IT . . .

. . . the capture of Saddam Hussein over the weekend can ONLY be construed as a good thing. Even if you did not support the war to begin with, PLEASE be happy that one of the worst and most murderous dictators of modern history has been captured alive to face some sort of justice.

Does this help Bush's chances for re-election and take Howard Dean down a ways? Certainly. But that's not anywhere near enough to push this event close to the negative column, as Dean himself was quick to acknowledge. The election is still almost eleven months away, and lots of things can (and will) happen between now and then.

So be happy! I sure am.

2003-12-10T13:37:00.000-08:00

THAT'S MORE LIKE IT!

Here is Dan Balz in today's Washington Post, writing about last night's debate among the Democratic presidential candidates:

"When the debate turned to Iraq, Dean offered what appeared to be his most detailed description of what he would do as president to help stabilize the country and reduce the U.S. presence there.

"Although he opposed the war, Dean said U.S. forces will have to remain there for several years until Iraq has a democracy strong enough to prevent al Qaeda terrorists from gaining a foothold and a 'widely respected' constitution to prevent the emergence of 'a fundamentalist Shiite regime.' Calling Afghanistan a model, Dean said he would have elections first, then the writing of a constitution to assure credibility to the process."

Also, in accepting Al Gore's endorsement yesterday, Dean happened to mention that Gore had been giving him advice on foreign policy. Coincidence? I don't think so. I have to say that it makes me feel a bit better to hear Dean acknowledge that American troops will have to stay in Iraq for quite some time. Hopefully, he won't be back to "our troops have to come home" later this week.

More important, Dean's call for elections first seems to put him on the same page as Iraq's Ayatollah al-Sistani (see blog entry from 12/2), and ahead of George Bush in advocating democracy in the Middle East! I really think this is the right way to go for him. As I have mentioned a number of times now, Bush's call for democracy is very inspiring, but it is already ringing hollow.

To be fair, his State Department should be given proper credit for its role in helping persuade Sheverdnadze to cede power in Georgia last month, as well as for correctly joining in the global scepticism about irregularities in Russia's parliamentary elections last week. But yesterday, he curried favor with China by expressing U.S. policy against a proposed democratic referendum in Taiwan. And this is nothing compared to our policy in Central Asia (see linked articles in our last blog entry).

I've said it before, and I am sure I will say it again: Dean's case against the President should be "How can Bush build democracy abroad when he is so fundamentally opposed to it at home?"

Or, how about this soundbite: "If you love democracy, vote for a Democrat!"

2003-12-05T12:07:00.000-08:00

SPECIAL GUEST APPEARANCE!

I hope more of you will choose to participate in this fashion, but I am happy to start things off with my old pal Andy Marshall. I got an email from him sort of out of the blue a week or so ago. He has been in and out of the Coast Guard for a decade, give or take, and now he is back in and on assignment in Azerbaijan. Of course, I was fascinated and asked if I could post some of his observations here, and he agreed.
As I mentioned to Andy, I think the Caucasus and the neighboring regions of the Caspian Sea and Central Asia are some of the most important and overlooked areas of the world today. Overlooked, that is, until the recent events in Georgia right next door, which I hope you are well apprised of.
Of course, it's all about energy: the largest untapped reserves are there, and Western companies are trying to build a big pipeline from Azerbaijan through Georgia and into Turkey and thence to the West. The Russians are not real thrilled about this. They understandably view the region as their backyard and already distribute much of the energy produced there (mostly to themselves).
For more about the region in general, I encourage you to read either or both of these articles from today's edition of Asia Times Online, one about Georgia and one about Turkmenistan, which lies directly across the Caspian from Azerbaijan. Also, I recommend this terrific (and seemingly still ongoing) series of articles by Pepe Escobar about the Central Asia region in general.
Finally, I read Asia Times Online every day if I have time. It gives me a great perspective on world events, and I highly recommend it.
And now, here's Andy!

The pipeline is about halfway completed. It takes a detour through Georgia thence Turkey. The other option was to go through Armenia, but to the Azeris, that wasn't an option, being sworn enemies and all. Stalin (from Georgia) (and Gorbachov) made sure of that. There don't seem to be any ex-Soviet states that get along, at least down here--a very effective implementation of the Divide and Conquer theory . . .

Azerbaijan has been called "the next Kuwait" for its oil reserves. It also has nine different climactic zones (lacking only arctic, tropical, and, um... another one(there are twelve worldwide)) and produces all sorts of, um, produce: citrus, avacados, walnuts (world's leading producer, someone said), cauliflower, apples... The little roadside produce stands rival any Korean market in NYC in their cornocopious abundance. The region is a meeting point of world cultures, where the Ottomans met the Russians and Persians, where Christ meets Allah, and now, where US backed Turkey strains like a chained Rottweiler on the border of Russian backed Armenia. Not to mention the heroin trade routes. Since the US invaded Afghanistan, they are producing eighteen times the amount of heroin and it flows easily through the thousands of miles of open borders in Iran, Armenia, Azerbaijan. The new threat is people bringing it in via boat to the Azeri shores, which is where we come in.

We're trying to get the Azeri Marine Brigade (AMB) up to the task of patrolling their waters and boarding vessels in search of drugs and WMDs. It's a long and challenging task. The Azeris have about eighty years of Soviet induced amotivational syndrome; they learned to accept orders, and each month, a new supply train would come and bring new stuff for which no accounting was required. They would use what they needed and the rest would end up on the black market. Now they think we're here to do the same thing. We did little to shatter this myth when we shipped, at tremendous expense, two containers full of spare parts for the three boats we have given them. To the Azeris, it was the begin of a new, imperial gravy train. One of my jobs is to convince them that we are not the new Soviets, that we're "merely" here to assist them in becoming self-sufficient. (It reminds me of the funny movie line "we're from the Government and we're here to help".)

It all smacks of early Sixties Vietnam, though. It was a similar mission back then, and the final, exasperated answer was that the Vietnamese, at least the ones we were backing, were unable, unwilling, or just too corrupt to become the independent fighting force we were trying to train. I think we'll be working the Azeri program for a while, too. (It could, even escalate into a war. There are twenty million Iranian Azeris living south of the border here, and with them, a certain sense of propriety over the sovereign Republic of Azerbaijan.) I don't have a lot of hope for the "old guard" AMB. They have mastered the art of telling you what you want to hear, and assuring you that they can do the job, if they only had: a cart, forty meters of electrical wire, a new printer, an air conditioner (in winter), some brass polish, and, my personal favorite (and theirs, too) some American-made SCUBA gear . . .

If a male Azeri secondary school graduate fails the college entrance exams, they must serve for eighteen months in the military. They are paid twelve-thousand manat per month, about $2.50 . . .

2003-12-03T13:28:00.000-08:00

WHAT HOWARD DEAN SHOULD HAVE SAID (Part 2)

Dean's problems with in regard to foreign policy are succinctly summarized by Michael O'Hanlon in today's Wall Street Journal.:

"Consider the record. On Sept. 26 this year, in a statement calling for the resignations of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Mr. Dean stated that 'we are in Iraq now, and we cannot afford to fail.' On Oct. 9, in the Democratic debate in Phoenix, he said, 'Now that we're there, we can't pull out responsibly.' In these comments, Mr. Dean was realistically recognizing the strategic importance of succeeding in Iraq even if he had himself opposed getting involved there. He was also recognizing the political need to appeal to the mainstream American voter who knows we cannot cut and run in this crucial part of the world.

"But there is another side to Mr. Dean -- the one who must tap into the anger of the Democratic left against all things Bush and against the war in Iraq in particular. In the Sept. 4 debate in Albuquerque, N.M., for example, Mr. Dean stated: 'We need more troops. They're going to be foreign troops, as they should have been in the first place, not American troops. Ours need to come home.' This was nothing short of a prescription for ending the mission and declaring failure."

O'Hanlon has this largely right, but in fairness to Dean, I would like to point out here that he DID NOT oppose the extra funding for the war; he said it should be paid for by rescinding the tax cuts to the wealthy. But I also remember the frustration I felt hearing Dean say "we cannot afford to fail" (which he actually said not only on September 26th but also a day or two before the first Democratic debate on September 4th; anybody who can find me the quote from a reputable news source gets a free Dark Horses CD!) and follow it up in the debate itself with "We need more troops. They're going to be foreign troops . . . Ours need to come home." Oh Howard, you were so close!
Let me be perfectly clear about this: just getting a new President here in America will not be enough to get foreign troops into Iraq. And if, as Dean says (correctly, in my view), "we cannot afford to fail", and more troops are required to ensure success, and no foreign troops are forthcoming, then simple logic allows for only one answer: more American troops.
Dean has already established himself not only as the candidate who opposed the war in Iraq but also as the presumptive front-runner for the nomination. If he can now demonstrate that he takes the situation in Iraq as seriously as it should be taken by adopting a stance in favor of victory and democracy there, he will NOT suffer for it politically. On the other hand, if he continues to assert that our forces need to be withdrawn no matter what, there is no way he will win the Presidency. I guess it's possible he is gambling that the situation in Iraq will continue to deteriorate over the next eleven months and that the public will come around to just wanting to forget about Iraq. I think that is probably unwise; I expect the situation there to still be very serious by election-time, and commanding every bit as much attention as it does now. Many people speculate that Bush wants to establish a new quasi-democratic government there so that he can draw down the force levels in time for the election. As in other matters, premature withdrawal is a bad idea, and if I am going to call Bush on it, you can bet I will call Dean on it too.
What should Dean say instead? Thankfully, it's not all that different from what he has said so far. O'Hanlon pointed out above that he does seem to have it partly right. Keeping in mind some of what he has said already, and the things I mentioned in yesterday's entry about Bush backing away from actual elections in Iraq, it could go something like this:

"I opposed this war from the beginning, and it is to my great dismay that much of what I feared has come to pass. But as I have said before, now that we are in Iraq, we cannot afford to fail. As President, I will do everything I can to secure the support of our allies in this situation, but let's face it: by the time I am inaugurated, it may very well be too late, thanks to the sorry excuse for diplomacy practiced by this administration. I want to assure the American people that our mission in Iraq will not falter under my leadership. It is a matter of our vital national security.
"George Bush says he wants to build a democracy in Iraq. I say: why not start here at home? And of course, that's the problem: of course President Bush doesn't want the Iraqi people to elect their own leaders. He is never content with the results of the popular vote. Instead, he wants to practice the same kind of cronyism there that he does here; just hand the keys and barrels full of your tax dollars over to his own buddies.
"People say I'm weak on national security? Does the President think that setting up a corrupt, hand-picked plutocracy in Iraq will endear America to the Iraqi people? Does he think that will enhance our security?"

Basically, I think Dean should continue acting like he is the nominee already. Forget about Kerry, Gephardt, and all the rest. Run against Bush and GET IT RIGHT!

2003-12-02T12:11:00.000-08:00

FUN WHILE IT LASTED

Previously on Sambidextrous:
I had mentioned that I supported President Bush's forward strategy for freedom in the Middle East in very general terms, but I wondered if he and the nation as a whole had the strength to pull it off. It looks like Bush is caving in already, less than a month later. Here are some excerpts from an article by Rajiv Chandrasekaran in today's Washington Post:

"A majority of Iraq's U.S.-appointed Governing Council has decided to support an American plan to select a provisional government through regional caucuses despite objections from the country's most powerful Shiite Muslim cleric, according to several council members.

"The council's stance, the result of intense lobbying over the past few days by the U.S. administrator of Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, could result in a dramatic showdown with Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who has insisted that a provisional government be chosen through a national election. If the council persists in supporting the American plan, many in Iraq's Shiite majority, who regard the grand ayatollah as their supreme spiritual authority, may reject the provisional government as illegitimate . . . "

"The initial moves of the council have pleased the Bush administration, which regards caucuses as the best -- and speediest -- way to select a provisional government. U.S. officials had worried that a call for elections by the council would have scuttled the transition plan, making it harder for President Bush to declare an end to the civil occupation before next year's presidential election . . . "

"Under the Bush administration's new transition plan, approved by the council on Nov. 15, caucuses would be held in Iraq's 18 provinces to choose representatives to serve on a transitional assembly, which would form a provisional government. Participants in the caucuses would have to be approved by 11 of 15 people on an organizing committee, which would be selected by the Governing Council and U.S.-appointed councils at the city and provincial levels . . . "

"U.S. officials have opposed keeping the council around after a provisional government is formed because of concern that the two bodies might squabble and that the entire process could lose legitimacy if an American-appointed council continued to hold power. But several council members, particularly those who do not lead large political parties, are concerned about their ability to be selected through the caucuses.

"Some of them now want Bremer to guarantee members a role in the provisional government in exchange for their support of the caucuses.

"Several members also want the council to play a greater role in selecting people for the caucuses. Under the Nov. 15 plan, the Governing Council would appoint only five of the 15 members on each of the 18 caucus organizing committees. The 10 others would be drawn from provincial and city councils.

"But Governing Council members contend the provincial and local councils, several of which were formed by military commanders with minimal popular consultation, are not sufficiently representative and are rife with loyalists of former president Saddam Hussein. As a consequence, many members want either the Governing Council to have more seats on the organizing committees or the local councils to be dissolved and assembled from scratch."

Boy, that didn't take long. It's incredible to me that a senior Shi'ite cleric wants the Iraqi government to be directly elected by the Iraqi people and the Bush administration DOES NOT. I especially love that last bit about how the Governing Council (handpicked by Paul Bremer) is complaining that the local councils (handpicked by the U. S. military) "are not sufficiently representative". That is so rich!
Maybe Bush does believe, as he said last month, that "stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty." But he also seems to believe that his own re-election can be purchased at the expense of Iraqi liberty.
Attention Howard Dean: you thought I had forgotten about you, didn't you? No such luck; THIS IS YOUR OPENING. This is your chance to say all that fun stuff like: "American commitment to freedom and democracy can't just be lip service" &c. Howard? Howard, are you there?
I am sure you will get other chances, but you really should jump on any of them that are Iraq-related. Most of the other major failings of the Bush administration in this regard are in places like Central Asia that most of us have never heard of and don't really care about. Don't worry, folks at home; I will get to these in future blog entries.

2003-11-25T12:11:00.000-08:00

CAIRO, MISSOURI

OK, as promised, I am not going to pick on Howard Dean this week; he can take the holiday off!
Instead, I would like to return to my topic of a couple of weeks ago (blog entry from November 13th below), the recent formulation of U.S. foreign policy as defined by President Bush in his recent speeches in Washington and the United Kingdom. As I mentioned, I am curious as to how people in the actual Middle East will react to his avowed intention to bring democracy to that part of the world.
Well, in the interim, I have been able to find some small segment of whatever public reaction there may be, in the form of two different editorial columns in the online edition of the Al-Ahram Weekly.
I read Al-Ahram every week. I don't think it's very good on the whole, actually, but I think it's important to keep track of how the public dialogue occurs in the Arab world. Egypt's Al-Ahram is probably the most widely read English-language publication in the region, and so it's a pretty good place to start. On a more personal note, it was also the home of almost all the writing of my old professor Edward Said in the last year of his life.
On top of that, I think Egypt on the whole is a country that is too often ignored in our current debate about the state of the Arab and Muslim spheres generally, but that is a subject that I will save for a future entry. Suffice to say for now that its population of 60 million is more that those of Iraq and Saudia Arabia put together.
For now, I would like to concentrate on two columns from this week's edition of Al-Ahram, by Azmi Bishara and Gamil Mattar respectively. They are sort of long, so please read carefully before proceeding with my own blather.
Not very encouraging, are they? Bishara, in particular, is pretty harsh on Bush. He writes in Al-Ahram just about every week, so I am pretty familiar with his work. On the whole, I think he might be their best columnist; his analysis of political issues is generally extremely insightful and acute. No dummy! Here, though, he remains certain throughout that Bush is an imperialist, and refuses to believe that any better intentions are in play.
Mattar I am not as familiar with. I think his column might be even more disturbing than Bishara's. At least Bishara wants to take part in the discussion, however confrontationally. Mattar's disillusion with the entire idea of democracy borders on outright hopelessness.
I am not asking anybody to agree or disagree with either of these columnists. I am trying to point out exactly how monumental a task Bush has set for himself and for our nation; he is talking about a decades-long struggle on the scale of the Cold War. Whether or not we agree with Bishara and Mattar is nowhere near as important as whether or not they agree with us, if you take my meaning.
In other words, these are the people we have to start with. Bishara and Mattar are educated people who have some knowledge of the wider world around them, and they are not religious ideolgues. Unless Bush can convince them that he is absolutely sincere in his proclamations of intention in the Middle East, he is doomed to fail.

And he has a long way to go.

2003-11-20T12:13:00.000-08:00

DEAN'S LIST

OK, to review, I have identified Howard Dean's major weaknesses as:

1) A lack of experience in foreign policy

- AND -

2) A blunt and perhaps even arrogant demeanor.

I have also mentioned that these two problems go hand-in-hand. As USA Today's Jill Lawrence put it this week: "One longtime adversary wonders whether he's up to tasks that require tact, such as international diplomacy. " A fair question.
Free of charge, here is some friendly advice for the doctor. The best part about my recommendations is that a good number of them can help address both problems at once. Most of this is stuff he should probably put off until the early primaries are over and he can legitimately claim front-runner status, but it never hurts to think ahead.

1) Offer John Edwards the Vice Presidency.
Honestly, I think John Kerry should have done this months ago. Edwards attracted a lot of attention last year from folks who saw him as Clinton Redux (yes, some people think that is a good thing). But he faded quickly, having been judged too young/inexperienced, and perhaps too much in the pocket of his fellow trial lawyers. Recently, people have wondered what Edwards is still doing in the race. I would say that he is angling for the number two slot, throwing down a marker for '08, and/or hoping for a surprise Hail Mary victory in one or more of the Southern primaries to revive his flickering flame.
Before Wesley Clark officially joined the campaign, many people speculated that Dean might tap him as a running mate. I guess this is still possible, but I doubt it will happen. As a Southerner Clark would add balance to the ticket, and as a former General he could help erase Dean's foreign policy deficit. The problem with Clark, as has become all too clear since he announced his candicacy, is simple: He's a weenie!
Edwards would be a better pick. What does he bring to the ticket?

a. He is also from the South, although I doubt that it will really help much; as in 2000, I expect the whole region to fall to Bush. Yes, Florida included. As far as I know, outside of the Confederate Flag flap (discussed here last week), Edwards has spent far less time criticizing Dean than most of the other Democratic candidates have. I don't think that's an accident. So if Dean puts him on the ticket, they can BOTH be the candidate for the Stars and Bars crowd! Whoops, except that they will all probably vote for Bush anyway.

b. Edwards serves on the Senate Intelligence community, which will help bring more foreign policy expertise to the campaign, although not so much that it swamps the top of the ticket as with Dukakis/Bentsen in 1988; Edwards is still only in his first term in the Senate.

c. Edwards has raised lots of money. Granted, almost all of it is from wealthy lawyers, but that won't hurt Dean politically. Since he has raised so much money already from tens of thousands of small contributors, he has pretty much insulated himself from charges of being on the hook to special interests (not that such charges won't be levelled against him anyway). When all is said and done, Dean will need every penny he can get his hands on if he wants to go toe-to-toe with the cash-laden President.

d. As the wealthy son of not-so-wealthy parents, Edwards has adopted a populist stance that is not at all dissimilar to Dean's.

e. Edwards is a member of Congress who voted for the resolution to go to war in Iraq. This might sound a little odd, but if Dean nominated him, it would instantly clear up a lot of the controversy about him being to divisive a figure. Most of his opponents in the primary fight are legislators, and as they have attempted to tear him down, he has taken to firing back at them as a group. Again, since Edwards has only been in Washington since 1998, he won't appear to be as much of an insider as Kerry, Gephardt, or Lieberman.
Once Dean has a commanding number of delegates, he can nominate Edwards and make a magnanimous speech in which he says something like:

"I want to lead our party to victory, and to do that, I will need the help of each and every Democrat. Fighting amongst ourselves won't help us defeat George Bush, which is much more important than any differences I might have with my friend John Edwards.
"Senator Edwards and I disagreed about whether we should go to war in Iraq. Well, the war started (insert qualifying adverb here) a year ago, and our arguing today about whether it was right or wrong won't change that. We are now at war, and what matters now is not the arguments of a year ago, but how we move forward from here starting next year to get ourselves out the mess that George Bush has gotten us into. Our nation is facing its greatest foreign policy challenge in a generation, and it is the duty of all Americans to work together and bring their best ideas to the table to meet that challenge.
"Senator Edwards knows the values of ordinary, hard-working Americans, and it will be a pleasure for me to welcome him as my Vice President."

2. Form a shadow National Security team.

Dean might not need to go so far as to say "This person will be my Defense Secretary, this person my Secretary of State," &c., but he should at least begin to surround himself with people who will publicly present analysis of and campaign positions on the major foreign policy issues of the day. There are a number of well-qualified Democrats that could help out; Joe Biden springs to mind, for one.

3. Go to Iraq.

Dean should not do this until after the convention, but he should do it as soon as possible after that. Such a trip would demonstrate his understanding that the conduct of U.S. actions there will be the single most important responsibility he will inherit from Bush. So far, Bush has not seen fit to go there. If Dean beats him to it, he can silently yell "Chicken!"

That's all for now! More to come as need be, but I will try to give Dean a break for a little while and pick on somebody else.

Yrs., &c.,
SAM

2003-11-19T11:52:00.000-08:00

PHYSICIAN, HEAL THYSELF!

OK, as you probably have guessed, I am operating on the assumption that Howard Dean will be the Democratic nominee for President next year. It's not exactly a done deal, and Dean seems mindful that it was not so long ago that people were saying that the nomination was John Kerry's to lose; and so he did! Dean, though, unlike Kerry, is not taking anything for granted. I should also say that I am rooting for him. I did and still do support the war in Iraq, but I don't think I can stand another four years of Bush as President of the United States.
Dean has a number of weaknesses, and these are what I would like to begin discussing today. There are two main ones, and they go very much hand in hand:

1) He has no foreign policy experience.

I'm sorry, but this really does matter a lot in the world after 9/11. Opposing the war before it began is fine, but he has to do better than to say that he would get the U.N. involved; by the time he is President, it will either be probably too late for that or Bush will have already done it. As Nicholas Kristof noted in his column in today's New York Times:

" . . . the U.N. and NATO have even less stomach for suicide bombs than Americans do. The U.N., after all, has been frantically cutting staff in Baghdad. And if we can't get NATO countries to secure Afghanistan, why would it be easier in Iraq . . ?"

Take a look at this speech that Dean delivered in Houston just yesterday. Notice that he spends about three quarters of it talking only about domestic policy. Now, in recent weeks, all the Vietnam comparisons have been dragged out by the punditocracy, mostly by Republicans eager to point out that Iraq is NOT Vietnam. And from a military standpoint, they are absolutely right. But politically, foreign policy in general and the war in particular will play a greater role in next year's election than at any time since (you guessed it) Vietnam.
This does not bode well for Dean and the Democrats. Granted, things are very different in America since then, but they bear some examination. In 1968, just as now, the Democrats were bitterly divided amongst themselves about whether or not the war was a good idea. In 1972, the Democratic nomination of the anti-war George McGovern handed an electoral landslide to the G.O.P. The beneficiary in both cases: Richard Nixon.
It should be said here that Dean is very different from McGovern in this and other ways. As Robert Kagan (of all people) astutely pointed out in a piece in Sunday's Washington Post:

"Dean does not call for a reduction in American military power but talks about using the 'iron fist' of our 'superb military.' He talks tough about North Korea and at times appears to be criticizing the Bush administration for not addressing that 'imminent' threat more seriously. And he especially enjoys lacerating Bush for not taking the fight more effectively to al Qaeda, a bit like John F. Kennedy criticizing Eisenhower in 1960 for not being tough enough on communism."

But taking shots at Bush is not the same as having a serious and detailed foreign policy of your own. The best Dean could do in Houston yesterday was this bit:

"We need a global effort to provide education, to foster democracy and to promote capitalism and economic opportunity in areas of instability. We need to champion the rights of women across the world. Above all, we must demonstrate that our vision has the interests of the world at heart, and not merely our own."

Nothing wrong here. But is it my imagination, or does this sound quite a lot like it could have fit very well into Bush's speech at the National Endowment for Democracy a couple of week's ago?
Furthermore, beyond reaching out to the international community, Dean outlines virtually no specific methods for achieving these very worthy goals. A couple of minutes at the end of the speech about foreign policy, and then it's back to: "And we begin by building a better world at home."
He is going to have to do better.

2) Temperament

Being the pissed-off candidate has in many ways been the cornerstone of Dean's success, but if he hopes to beat Bush, he has to offer more than that. If you listen to Bush's public statements (and you really better, regardless of how distasteful you may find them), take careful note of how often he uses various derivations of the word "optimism". He's "optimistic" about the economy, he's "optimistic" about Iraq and democracy in the Middle East, &c. People really respond to this, as well they should. Most people really want things to go well; Dean himself has come a long way saying "You have the power."
But people still fear, and not without justification, that his combative demeanor and unwillingness to admit to mistakes have turned him into a polarizing figure, not just nationwide, but even within the Democratic party itself. As a story from the AP put it today:

"His popularity has dismayed some in the Democratic establishment who see him as too abrasive and too liberal to successfully challenge Bush's wartime commander-in-chief credentials."

Of course, the other candidates have spent far more time attacking him than vice versa, but Dean's a scrapper; he won't back down.
OK, this entry is already long enough. Tune in for our next installment, in which I will provide some friendly suggestions as to how Dean can begin to surmount some of these problems.

2003-11-13T12:51:00.000-08:00

The Vision Thing

OK, this is another story from last week, but please bear with me; I just launched this boat two days ago! I promise that next week I will start in with and stick to more timely material.
Before I go any further, I would just like to make it clear that I do not at all enjoy having George Bush as my President, and I dearly hope that we are well past the halfway point of his tenure as such.
By now, I am sure you have all heard at least something about the speech that Bush made at the National Endowment for Democracy. In it, he inaugurated an ambition to bring democratic government to the Middle East. If you have not read it, I really think you should. Come on, don't be like that! Just because Bush says something does not mean it is automatically wrong. Go on, read it now.

Like I said before, I don't care much for GWB. But I can't really find much in that speech that I disagree with. It is very ambitious, and I do find it rather odd that scarcely a week later he seems to be doing everything he can to cut and run in Iraq. Sure, it will safeguard his re-election prospects, but it does seem to fly in the face of his very bold plan outlined in the speech.
And that's the crucial question, really: Is this something we can pull off? All of us liberals scoffed at Reagan in the 80s, but meanwhile there were people like Vaclav Havel and Lech Walesa who took great inspiration from his words. Not coincidentally, both of them were vocal supporters of the war in Iraq. Now let's see, whose side do we want to be on: Vaclav Havel or Jacques Chirac?
That we know of so far, there don't seem to be many Arab dissidents cheering W. on, but isn't it safer for them to keep their heads down? I figure there might have been some response amongst the dissidents in Iran; despite their charter membership in the Axis of Evil, they exhibit a slightly greater degree of tolerance for open dissent. But so far, our putative democratic partners in that part of the world seem to be keeping silent.
I don't figure it matters much to Bush; this speech was mostly about setting up his election strategy for next year, and that is really what we should be focusing on. I really think the war is likely to be more important than domestic issues come next November, but of course, these days, it's difficult to predict much of anything. But this much I can tell you for sure: whether or not you agree with it, Bush came out last week with what I am not at all embarassed to describe as a bold and ambitious vision of America's role in the world.
Make no mistake; this will be the central theme of Bush's campaign. The economy may recover some in the next year, but probably not enough for him to crow about. Things are going to have to continue to deteriorate in Iraq if Howard Dean is to stand any chance of beating Bush. The continued loss of life is not something I am remotely anxious to see happen, but it does seem to be the direction the situation is taking.
But I still don't think it will be enough for Dean just to say that Bush was wrong about Iraq. He has to posit an alternative vision that is just as broad and optimistic as the one Bush outlined last week. So far, he has not come close to doing so, although I encourage all of you to review the foreign policy statements he has up on his Website.

What is Howard to do then? Tune in next week!

2003-11-12T12:35:00.000-08:00

What Howard Dean SHOULD Have Said (Part 1)

OK, I know the flap about Howard and the Confederate Flag is more than a week old already, but I also think it could resurface in the Southern primaries early next year, and possibly even in the general election.
I don't know how many parts this series will contain; that's up to Howard and the voters!
Finally, I would like to state up front that I am not doing this to pick on Howard. Unless things change drastically, he looks like a lock for the nomination, and if he hopes to beat Bush, he'll need all the help he can get. It is in that spirit that I offer:

Good evening.
Statements that I have made throughout this year about the Confederate flag have recently caused uproar and controversy, particularly among the members of my own party, and for that I am truly sorry, because this sort of division is directly tied up in the meaning of that flag as I see it.
Some people look at the flag of the Confederacy and see a symbol of pride and defiance, others an emblem of prejudice and hatred. I see the Stars and Bars as a sad reminder of an awful period in the life our nation, the bloodiest in our history; a time when America was divided along the lines of race, regionalism, and radically divergent economic systems, divisions that ran so deeply across the land that Americans took up arms and made war against one another. That time of armed struggle is long since ended, but tragically, these same issues continue to divide Americans even now, more than a century later.
The great southern author William Faulker once wrote: "The past is never dead. It’s not even past." History is not a series of lessons to be learned and then set aside; rather, it lives and breathes in the hearts and minds of the people. The hard work of freedom is never done, and the legacy of slavery is not an encumbrance to be shed, but a challenge to be embraced, every day, by the nation as a whole.
Many of my democratic colleagues have been swift to condemn the hatred they see embodied in the Confederate flag. This is an honorable sentiment, but it is not enough merely to condemn those who fly the Stars and Bars, the symbol of a nation divided against itself. We must also earnestly ask of them, and of ourselves, why they do not instead fly the Stars and Stripes, the flag of one nation, not for nothing called the UNITED States.
George Bush came into office promising to be a uniter, not a divider. I think we all know how that worked out. Just over two years ago, he led a nation united as never before in the face of a new and dangerous threat. Now, at a time of unprecedented challenges both at home and abroad, he presides over a deeply polarized America, divided not only within itself, but from most of the rest of our world.
America deserves better. Our nation can once again stand whole, and we can make it happen together.
Thank you.

2003-11-11T10:55:00.000-08:00

Excerpts from an email to my friend Rick Russell about the war in Iraq and the 2003 World Series, 10/29/2003

1) The Bush administration is being taken to task, quite correctly, because no large quantities of weapons have been found so far. Perhaps they will be, or perhaps they will be forever buried, or perhaps they were never there at all. This question may never be resolved.
It’s unfortunate that the administration felt compelled before the war to insist that large quantities of weapons were there. The case before the U.N. should have been as simple as: “Is Iraq in compliance with the relevant resolutions?”, which they clearly were not. Their failure to comply should have been ample justification for action, but unfortunately, the other members of the Security Council were willing to settle for partial compliance, or what you and I might call stalling for time.
Knowing this, the administration charged ahead, insisting upon large quantities of banned weapons, in the hopes of gaining political support at home (successfully) and abroad (much less so). It was sort of a blunder; domestic support was well in evidence before the bulk of the arguments were made, and more help from abroad might have been secured if the human rights argument had been made more forcefully.
But I doubt it. Off the record, European diplomats were quoted over the summer that they would have been willing to authorize military action by September. I think that’s probably B.S. I really doubt Chirac would ever have gone for it, but I suppose there is a vague possibility that France could have ended up being the isolated country instead of us. Again, we will never know.
So here we are, and sure, it’s sort of a mess. Anybody who supported the war should have expected it to be; I sure did. But I believe it could have been handled better. I think we should have gone in with half again as many troops from the get-go and put a big clamp down on the looting right away. I was astounded when Rumsfeld responded to the looting with “Freedom is untidy”. Either we have liberated Iraq, or Iraq is now the central front in the war on terror. It is not possible for both of these things to be true.
A long hard slog, as Rumsfeld himself says, and he is right. Genius maneuver to leak that memo, I thought, and I am sure he did it himself. The administration is completely correct when they assert that we cannot turn back now.
Sure, it’s a mess. But those who opposed the war would really have to explain to me how Iraq would somehow have been less of a problem for the United States in the future if we had not gone to war this year. Once again, we’ll never know, but it just does not seem possible to me.

2) I am disappointed that the Yankees lost, but the Marlins beat them fair and square. I hope this experience will be instructive for:

a. The Yankees. When Torre first came to the team, the media couldn’t shut up about how he had brought National League baseball to them. Bunting, baserunning, fielding, small-ball, &c. They have taken a couple of steps away from that style of play in more recent years, but even at their height in the late 90s, they never played that way to the degree that this year’s Marlins did.
One of the most crucial plays in this year’s World Series came in Game 1 when Pudge Rodriguez threw out Nick Johnson at third base after a pitch. I can’t even remember the last time I saw a catcher even attempt to do that, let alone just go BANG! You’re out! It was not even that they had just happened to do it. The Marlins obviously had it worked out in their playbook. The Yankees never attempted to run against Rodriguez again.
The Marlins had infield hits. They pulled a bunt-and-run. Alex Gonzalez scored in Game 6 with a nifty baserunning performance at the plate. The Yankees made some costly errors; the Marlins made none that made any discernible difference. I can’t stress how important I think fielding is.

b. The Red Sox. Again, fielding. How did the Red Sox lose the 1986 World Series? On a fielding error. In Game 7 of this year’s ALCS, I am very sure that Trot Nixon could have caught the ball that landed as a double for Jeter and that opened up the eighth inning for the Yankees. If he had, the Red Sox would have won, and Grady Little might still have a job, and the Red Sox would have faced Florida in the World Series.
But they would have lost. The Red Sox lost to the Yankees in 7+ games; the Marlins beat the Yankees in six. The Red Sox have abjectly refused to play small ball at any time in their history. Why have they not won a Series since 1918? Because they play baseball the same way it was played in 1918, waiting for some big guy to knock the ball out of the yard.
This past season, the Yankees stole 98 bases, the Red Sox 88. The Yankees made 114 errors, the Red Sox 113. So in any given game by either team, there would be odds of just over 2 out of 3 that they would make an error.
The Marlins stole 150 bases and made 78 errors. In any given Marlins game, the odds were just less than even that they would make an error at all. They led the majors not just in stolen bases but in infield hits.
Attention Red Sox: this is how you beat the Yankees! But it’s more than that. It’s how you play championship baseball.

2003-11-11T09:51:00.000-08:00

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Yrs., &c.
SAM