Race Against Time

One of the key lines of demarcation between Iraq war supporters and foes is what impact it will have on the war on terrorism as a whole. Republicans argue that it serves as a warning to terror-harboring states, and cite Libya as proof (Libya abandoned its nuclear program shortly after the Iraq war began). Liberals claim its a distraction or worse, and cite Osama bin Laden's continued--well, existance--as proof. Both sides have some truth to them, but there are two more issues that I think are relevant.

The first is my usual chorus about how promoting democracy and giving Iraqis a stake in their own future makes America seem like a less threatening presence. By showing we care about the world's problems, we're no longer an oppressive force illegitimatly sucking up the world's wealth and resources. Its the difference between evil titan and jolly green giant. Except that the US green giant is willing to stand up for right and justice. David Adnesik notes there is a historical link between promoting democracy and crushing illiberal insurgencies, which would suggest that a) it will be hard, but it is still possible, to defeat the insurgency and b) that the Bush administration's abysmal policy failures in this area are directly linked to the dire situation we find ourselves in. On the other hand, it is a powerful argument against leftist relativists who think that any sort of military intervention to promote democracy is doomed to failure, or that democracy is culturally alien to the middle east. Daniel Drezner noted in the Auguest 6th 2003 edition of The New Republic that:

"There is...no evidence to support the claim that poor or non-Western democracies will revert to authoritarianism over time. To quote [Hoover Institute Fellow Larry] Diamond at greater length:

"[T]he overwhelming bulk of the states that have become democratic during the third wave [of democratization, from 1974-1991] have remained so, even in countries lacking virtually all of the supposed "conditions" for democracy. ... [O]nly 14 of the 125 democracies that have existed during the third wave have become authoritarian, and in nine of these, democracy has since been restored.

One of Diamond's favorite examples is Mali--a poor, landlocked, predominantly Muslim country that suffers from an adult literacy rate of less than 50 percent and an average life expectancy of less than 45 years. By Zakaria's logic, Mali is the last place in the world you'd expect democracy to take root. Yet the country has enjoyed a relatively stable, democratic government for over a decade. At a minimum, this suggests that [skeptics] may overstate the difficulty with which liberal values can be exported to the developing world.

But what of governments imposed via military occupation? Surely they're the exception to this optimistic rule. Actually, the empirical evidence of the last 50 years is rather evenly split on the question. Postwar Germany, Japan, Bosnia, and Kosovo are all, to varying degrees, democratic success stories; Somalia and Haiti are probably safely considered failures. (Let's be generous and say the jury is still out on Afghanistan.) Still, the more relevant point is that the key difference between the democratic haves and have-nots is not the conditions that prevailed prior to war; it's the occupiers' commitment to the democratization process once the fighting ends. In the words of a compelling new RAND Corporation study, America's Role in Nation-Building: From Germany to Iraq...:

'What principally distinguishes [successes from failures] are not their levels of Western culture, economic development, or cultural homogeneity. Rather, it is the level of effort the United States and the international community have put into their democratic transformations. In Germany and Japan, for example, substantial American aid reduced social, political, and other obstacles to the reconstitution of parliamentary politics and facilitated a transition to democracy. Nation-building, as this study illustrates, is a time- and resource-consuming effort.'"

In the September/October 2004 edition of Foreign Affairs, Joseph T. Siegle, Michael M. Weinstein, and Morton H. Halperin have a superb article entitled "Why Democracies Excel" that also explores this issue.

The second is an issue of time. When rogue nations are contemplating what they should do with their WMD programs post-Iraq, they can take two tactics. The first is the Libya model, IE, giving it up. This was the intended consequence, that the risk of maintaining WMD programs or terrorist sympathizes would be seen as too high, and thus we'd motivate proper behavior. The second response, however, is to accelerate these programs. North Korea serves as a model for this reaction. Despite posing a far greater threat to the US than Iraq ever did (by virtue of the Taepo-Dong missiles which can possibly hit the US with nuclear warheads), there was never any serious plan to invade the hermit state. Indeed, the US has barely managed to put together even a coherent policy towards NK. Other nations on the US hit list have undoubtedly noted that becoming a nuclear power is the fastest way to get the US to negotiate with butter, as opposed to guns.

"But David," my conservative readers are saying, "the US thought IRAQ had WMDs as well. And that didn't stop us from invading it!" True, but that overlooks some key issues. First of all, even though we did think Iraq had nuclear weapons, we knew that they had no method of delivering them to us. That minimizes the threat that the WMDs posed in the short-term, and makes the possibility of WMD use a relatively minimal argument on the ledger against intervention.

But beyond that lurks a deeper issue. Again, having fully functional nuclear weapons programs is a reasonably strong deterrant, certainly far stronger than what most rogue states could muster without them. And not having active WMD programs doesn't immunize a state from intervention (as Slobodan Milosevic can attest to). So the incentive for rogue states is to accelerate nuclear programs while the US is distracted in Iraq and thus can't do anything to stop it. By playing for time to forstall sanctions or other hostile action by the rest of the world, while simultanously putting weapons programs on "rush delivery," rogue states might hope to be able to construct a viable deterrent to the US before America can recover enough to stop it. Iran appears to be following this very model, taking advantage of US overstretch and delaying international action while continuing to pursue its weapons programs. The risk of inaction or delaying the programs far outweighs any risk to a full-speed ahead approach.

Once the genie of proliferation has been released from the lamp, its very difficult to stuff it back in. The clock has been set for WMD programs in states hostile to America. Now we must figure out how to beat them to the finish line.

Apocolypse Now

Immediately after the election, I wrote a dismal post-mortum in which I expressed pessimism towards any hope of creating an informed, issue-oriented electorate. Americans are too apathetic about the issues, they're too easily swayed by style and showbiz, they care too much about "character" and too little about content. I claimed that:

"The majority of Americans consider themselves moderates, but they aren't concerned with issues. They care about style. They want a candidate who matches their style, who makes them feel good. What did Clinton and Reagan have in common? They both made Americans feel good about themselves again. Now, when things are going well, this is an asset. But in times of trouble, it creates a disturbing catch-22, where incumbants are encouraged to pretend that problems don't exist so that voters feel good about themselves, and stick with status quo."

In such a world, I argued, there is little incentive for substantive discussion of issues and alot of incentive for demagoguery and slime attacks. And I was profoundly disheartened.

Then, with a little time to calm down, I stepped off the brink and said there was room for optimism. My dormant idealism came back, and I argued that while perhaps America has lost its way, it has not lost its heart. Eventually, the United States will remember its commitment to justice, tolerance, and equality, and will reject the poisonous division that has been foisted upon us by the peddlers of spite and partisanship.

Now, an article in The New Republic by Christopher Hayes has cast me back into gloom and doom mode.

Hayes spent time in Wisconsin talking to swing voters, and based on his experiences he came up with some--admittedly anecdotal--conclusions about the mind of the undecideds. And what he had to say was profoundly disheartening.

"A disturbing number of undecided voters are crypto-racist isolationists:...[A]mong undecided voters, I encountered a consistent and surprising isolationism--an isolationism that September 11 was supposed to have made obsolete everywhere but the left and right fringes of the political spectrum. Voters I spoke to were concerned about the Iraq war and about securing American interests, but they seemed entirely unmoved by the argument--accepted, in some form or another, by just about everyone in Washington--that the security of the United States is dependent on the freedom and well-being of the rest of the world.

In fact, there was a disturbing trend among undecided voters--as well as some Kerry supporters--towards an opposition to the Iraq war based largely on the ugliest of rationales. I had one conversation with an undecided, sixtyish, white voter whose wife was voting for Kerry. When I mentioned the "mess in Iraq" he lit up. "We should have gone through Iraq like shit through tinfoil," he said, leaning hard on the railing of his porch. As I tried to make sense of the mental image this evoked, he continued: "I mean we should have dominated the place; that's the only thing these people understand. ... Teaching democracy to Arabs is like teaching the alphabet to rats."...

That may have been the most explicit articulation I heard of this mindset--but it wasn't an isolated incident. A few days later, someone told me that he wished we could put Saddam back in power because he "knew how to rule these people." While Bush's rhetoric about spreading freedom and democracy played well with blue-state liberal hawks and red-state Christian conservatives who are inclined towards a missionary view of world affairs, it seemed to fall flat among the undecided voters I spoke with. This was not merely the view of the odd kook; it was a common theme I heard from all different kinds of undecided voters. Clearly the Kerry campaign had focus groups or polling that supported this, hence its candidate's frequent--and wince-inducing--America-first rhetoric about opening firehouses in Baghdad while closing them in the United States.

The worse things got in Iraq, the better things got for Bush: Liberal commentators, and even many conservative ones, assumed, not unreasonably, that the awful situation in Iraq would prove to be the president's undoing. But I found that the very severity and intractability of the Iraq disaster helped Bush because it induced a kind of fatalism about the possibility of progress. Time after time, undecided voters would agree vociferously with every single critique I offered of Bush's Iraq policy, but conclude that it really didn't matter who was elected, since neither candidate would have any chance of making things better. Yeah, but what's Kerry gonna do? voters would ask me, and when I told them Kerry would bring in allies they would wave their hands and smile with condescension, as if that answer was impossibly naive. C'mon, they'd say, you don't really think that's going to work, do you?
...
Undecided voters don't think in terms of issues: Perhaps the greatest myth about undecided voters is that they are undecided because of the "issues." That is, while they might favor Kerry on the economy, they favor Bush on terrorism; or while they are anti-gay marriage, they also support social welfare programs. Occasionally I did encounter undecided voters who were genuinely cross-pressured--a couple who was fiercely pro-life, antiwar, and pro-environment for example--but such cases were exceedingly rare. More often than not, when I asked undecided voters what issues they would pay attention to as they made up their minds I was met with a blank stare, as if I'd just asked them to name their favorite prime number.

The majority of undecided voters I spoke to couldn't name a single issue that was important to them. This was shocking to me. Think about it: The "issue" is the basic unit of political analysis for campaigns, candidates, journalists, and other members of the chattering classes. It's what makes up the subheadings on a candidate's website, it's what sober, serious people wish election outcomes hinged on, it's what every candidate pledges to run his campaign on, and it's what we always complain we don't see enough coverage of.

But the very concept of the issue seemed to be almost completely alien to most of the undecided voters I spoke to. (This was also true of a number of committed voters in both camps--though I'll risk being partisan here and say that Kerry voters, in my experience, were more likely to name specific issues they cared about than Bush supporters.) At first I thought this was a problem of simple semantics--maybe, I thought, "issue" is a term of art that sounds wonky and intimidating, causing voters to react as if they're being quizzed on a topic they haven't studied. So I tried other ways of asking the same question: "Anything of particular concern to you? Are you anxious or worried about anything? Are you excited about what's been happening in the country in the last four years?"

These questions, too, more often than not yielded bewilderment. As far as I could tell, the problem wasn't the word "issue"; it was a fundamental lack of understanding of what constituted the broad category of the "political." The undecideds I spoke to didn't seem to have any intuitive grasp of what kinds of grievances qualify as political grievances. Often, once I would engage undecided voters, they would list concerns, such as the rising cost of health care; but when I would tell them that Kerry had a plan to lower health-care premiums, they would respond in disbelief--not in disbelief that he had a plan, but that the cost of health care was a political issue. It was as if you were telling them that Kerry was promising to extend summer into December.

To cite one example: I had a conversation with an undecided truck driver who was despondent because he had just hit a woman's car after having worked a week straight. He didn't think the accident was his fault and he was angry about being sued. "There's too many lawsuits these days," he told me. I was set to have to rebut a "tort reform" argument, but it never came. Even though there was a ready-made connection between what was happening in his life and a campaign issue, he never made the leap. I asked him about the company he worked for and whether it would cover his legal expenses; he said he didn't think so. I asked him if he was unionized and he said no. "The last job was unionized," he said. "They would have covered my expenses." I tried to steer him towards a political discussion about how Kerry would stand up for workers' rights and protect unions, but it never got anywhere. He didn't seem to think there was any connection between politics and whether his company would cover his legal costs. Had he made a connection between his predicament and the issue of tort reform, it might have benefited Bush; had he made a connection between his predicament and the issue of labor rights, it might have benefited Kerry. He made neither, and remained undecided.

In this context, Bush's victory, particularly on the strength of those voters who listed "values" as their number one issue, makes perfect sense. Kerry ran a campaign that was about politics: He parsed the world into political categories and offered political solutions. Bush did this too, but it wasn't the main thrust of his campaign. Instead, the president ran on broad themes, like "character" and "morals." Everyone feels an immediate and intuitive expertise on morals and values--we all know what's right and wrong. But how can undecided voters evaluate a candidate on issues if they don't even grasp what issues are?

Liberals like to point out that majorities of Americans agree with the Democratic Party on the issues, so Republicans are forced to run on character and values in order to win. (This cuts both ways: I met a large number of Bush/Feingold voters whose politics were more in line with the Republican president, but who admired the backbone and gutsiness of their Democratic senator.) But polls that ask people about issues presuppose a basic familiarity with the concept of issues--a familiarity that may not exist.

As far as I can tell, this leaves Democrats with two options: either abandon "issues" as the lynchpin of political campaigns and adopt the language of values, morals, and character as many have suggested; or begin the long-term and arduous task of rebuilding a popular, accessible political vocabulary--of convincing undecided voters to believe once again in the importance of issues. The former strategy could help the Democrats stop the bleeding in time for 2008. But the latter strategy might be necessary for the Democrats to become a majority party again."

My whole--my only--basis for optimism in America is a abiding belief that Americans both want to do the right thing and care enough to do the right thing. By all accounts, I think the former is true. In Oklahoma, for example, one of the reddest of the red states, an entire community banded together in order to protect a gay teenager who was faced with picketing, harassment, and intimidation by a radical anti-gay christian sect. They don't accept that homosexuality is moral. They voted in favor of a state constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, and they hope the teenager will change his ways. But when faced--head on--with such unmitigated hate, with slogans such as "Fags Are Worthy of Death," they knew, deep in their hearts, that this was wrong. And they unified as one, and with a strong voice repudiated those whose ideology is based on fear and loathing. When Americans see the effects of injustice with their own eyes, when its impacting their friends, family, or neighbors, there is no people on earth who will unite faster and shout louder for justice. The problem is for the vast majority of Americans who never have to deal with these issues head on. If they cared enough to even glance at the issues, they might see that there are wrongs to be righted, battle yet to be won. But they don't care, and they can't be motivated. And as long as America sees the world this way, the Republican tactic of minimizing issues while maximizing fear will continue to win elections.

Soft on Crime

Republicans always hold themselves to the highest of ethical standrads. That's why, when faced with the possibilty of House Majority Leader Tom Delay's ethical problems turning into a felony indictment, they took strong and decisive action.

Current GOP rules dictate that if a member of the leadership is indicted for a crime that carries more than 2 years in prison, she/he shall temporarily be removed from the leadership post. Since DeLay's cohorts are looking at life in prison for money laundering charges, whatever crimes he might eventually get charged with probably will cross the two year threshold, which would require him to step down.

Naturally, when faced between the choice of protecting a powerful congressman or preserving a shred of institutional dignity, House Republicans chose the former. A proposed change by DeLay lackey Henry Bonilla (R-TX) would eliminate the offending rule, so that DeLay could continue to serve while under prosecution. (Link via Talking Points Memo)

Though this is sufficient for the short-term, Republican congressman are already crafting a bill to label the House of Representatives a federal prison so that DeLay can also continue to serve in the event he is convicted. An anonymous GOP staffer said the change would be necessary "so that the House isn't intimidated or influenced by such anti-democratic notions as rule of law and morality."

How to Piss off the Democrats by Really Really Trying

Tapped provides insight into the Republican theory of passing bills: If a Democrat's voting for it, then something's wrong:

"FORCED INTO IRRELEVANCE: In a post otherwise addressing a slightly different question, Mark Schmitt makes this observation:

"I've noted in the past the tendency in Republican congressional politics, particularly in the House, to take pride in slipping something through with the bare minimum number of votes. The last tax cut bill was an example.
That this is the congressional strategy has begun to seem clear to me, although it's a radical innovation. Hastert and DeLay's insight seems to be that a bill that gets 218 votes in the House is just as much the law as one that gets 430. And for every vote they add on to the necessary minimum majority, they might have to compromise in some unnecessary way, whether with Democrats or their own fiscal conservatives. In other words, they see every vote over a bare majority as the equivalent of leaving money on the table or overbidding in an auction."

I don’t really have much special insight to offer here, but I thought this passage from Lou Dubose and Jan Reid’s new book on Tom DeLay was helpful in shedding a bit of light on the Republicans' 50%+1 strategy in Congress:

"DeLay prefers a polarized House in which the adversarial relationship between Republicans and Democrats is institutionalized. 'A number of times the Republican majority could pass a bill by 300 votes,' said a veteran House staffer who has worked for the Democratic leadership. 'A bill that has that type of potential. Then they yank it to the conservative side so it passes 220-210...There’s a mentality in the Republican leadership that if a significant number of Democrats support a bill somehow it’s tainted.
'Part of it goes back to the K Street thing, where they want to be able to say to their funders that the only people who can deliver anything for you are Republicans.' If House Republicans can make their Democratic counterparts irrelevant to the process of passing the nation’s laws, they can make them irrelevant to big political contributors."

The hardnosed, 'why compromise at all?' mentality that Schmitt describes is certainly a big part of it, but just as clearly there appears to be a strategic component to the House GOP’s deliberate sidelining of Democratic cooperation or input: The 50%+1 strategy, just like the K Street Project, is in part designed to help render the Democrats a permanent congressional minority. At all times, it's part of the Republican leadership’s decision-making and legislative calculus to try to lend substance to DeLay spokesman Stuart Roy’s characterization of the Democrats as simply 'irrelevant.'"

A superb example of this was the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, better known as "Laci and Conner's Law." The underlying premise of the law was unanimously supported: Murderers who also kill a fetus when killing a pregnant women should be punished more harshly than if they just kill a women. Obviously, this was an idea that garned support across party lines. In terms of achieving this objective, there were two ways to go about it when writing the law. Either 1) You could make the murder of a fetus while killing a pregenant women an aggrevating factor to the crime, which would allow for upward adjustment of sentences or 2) you could make the fetus a "person" under law, so that the crime is actually two counts of murder instead of one (which also would allow for harsher sentences). The UVVA used the latter tactic.

The problem with this is that by defining a fetus as a "person," there are obvious overtones to the abortion debate. While the bill specifically exempted abortion from its scope, many Democrats worried that the GOP was trying to create a "legislative trail" defining a fetus as a person in order to provide the grounds for overruling Roe v. Wade. Hence, many Democrats were reluctant to vote for the bill in that form. In order to rectify this, Representative Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) submitted what's known as "the Lofgren Amendment" (officially the "Motherhood Protection Act of 2001"), which had the same goal as the UVVA but adapted the former (aggrevating factor) tactic in order to achieve it. By not making the fetus a person, it neatly sidesteps the abortion debate while still increasing the punishment for those who kill a fetus along with the mother. In other words, the Lofgren Amendment is a plan that everyone can agree on, while the UVVA is a plan that only some people can agree on.

Needless to say, the House rejected the Lofgren amendment 229-196, then passed the UVVA 252-172. Democrats uneasy about the abortion implications were caught in a tough spot, to go on the record as opposing "Laci and Conner's Law" is a PR disaster. Many Democrats in swing districts had no political choice but to support the final bill, reservations not withstanding.

The point here isn't whether or not a fetus is a person. That particular debate most certainly needs to occur, but it should occur directly and not via underhanded measures in unrelated bills. The point is that, given a choice on whether or not to achieve the same objective bipartisanly or unipartisanly, the GOP leadership chose the latter. The best thing that can be said about the Republican tactics on this issue is that they deliberately and needlessly alienated the entire Democratic house legislation for partisan political gain. The worst case is that they did all that AND tried to endrun around the discursive channels for the abortion debate. Neither should be tolerable, but unfortunately both are emblematic of Tom DeLay's style of doing business.

The Progressive Constitution

A group of academic headliners have started a blog which expounds what a progressive constitution in the year 2020 would look like. While I'm not a fan of using the constitution to achieve partisan political purposes *cough*FMA*cough*, these folks seem on the level and have some interesting ideas. Very cool.

Volokh Conspiracy with the link, and it also points you to the forthcoming synopsium (by the American Constitution Society, who have their own blog here) upon which the blog is based. Even more very cool.

Rock and a Hard Place

Well, the Fallujah campaign is winding down. TNR's Iraq'd blog has the post-mortum. On the one hand, the US job is far from done. Fallujah may have been a step in the right direction, but it has also enflamed anti-US sentiment amongst the Sunnis. And our anti-insurgent strategy is rapidly starting to resemble whack-a-mole, bringing the bludgeon of US power down on the insurgents in Fallujah, only to watch them pop up in Mosul, then Sadr City...oy vey. Iraq'd notes:

"According to the Los Angeles Times, the U.S. military command met yesterday in Baghdad "to craft a strategy for using the momentum from a seemingly successful anti-insurgent battle in Fallouja to pacify other embattled Iraqi cities"; already air strikes have begun in Baquba. It may very well be that strikes at other insurgent bases can tamp down the insurgency during the two months before elections, but it is unlikely to destroy it: First, while the U.S. had months to prepare the invasion of Falluja, the inflammation of other cities, including once-a-model-of-success Mosul, appears to have caught the U.S. military somewhat off guard and will subsequently prompt a more ad hoc tactical strategy to reclaim those cities, if such operations occur. Second, it's unclear whether the 140,000 U.S. troops can sustain an operations tempo comparable to what seizing Falluja required. Third, reconstructing Falluja is a massive undertaking of a sort that the U.S. has proven unable to handle over 20 months of occupation, and to expand those needs around the country at this late hour represents a serious strain on resources. And finally, the elections themselves are extremely likely to represent a new level of Sunni disaffection with a now-formally Shia government, which risks replenishing the ranks of the insurgency."

So the US has to stay in Iraq to work out all of these problems, right? Well, yes, and no. While Allawi's government isn't really strong enough to stand on its own two feet yet, and certainly isn't competent enough to solve these problems on its own, it also isn't strong enough to continue to have a US presence. Iraq'd continues:

"With an insurgency on its doorstep, its long-deferred-and-now-realized aspirations for ruling Iraq at risk, and the feebleness of the Iraqi security forces on display, the Shia will have to decide what their relationship to the U.S. occupation is. Can it afford to ask the U.S. to leave--or to restrict missions against the insurgency in some fashion, or to set a date for ultimate withdrawal? Can it afford not to ask the U.S. to leave? There's good reason to believe that Dong's warning of woe unto the government that risks becoming a U.S. proxy won't apply so much to an elected Shia leadership: Unlike Ngo Dinh Diem or Iyad Allawi, the slate of candidates organized and blessed by Sistani will carry true legitimacy among the Shia who vote them in. But the longer the U.S. stays, the greater the risks that the average anti-occupation Shia will view the second interim government as too closely allied with the United States. And it can also become a rallying cry for the insurgency: Shia and American infidels have conspired to destroy Iraq, etc. Unless the Shia are prepared to wage and sustain (and presumably defeat) a civil war against the Sunni insurgents, they will have to figure out a way to cleave at least some Sunnis from the insurgency politically at a time when their very political ascendancy is most inflammatory to the Sunnis. (One way of doing this--pointing to Shia condemnation of the invasion of Falluja as an indicator of good faith--appears to be a foreclosed option now.) In terms of accomplishing that task, the U.S. presence in Iraq looks like a liability."

So let me get this straight. If we leave Iraq, then the insurgents re-entrenchment in Mosul, Hawijah, Sammara, and other cities will give them a strong base of attack against the Allawi government. Continuing Sunni resentment will prevent even an elected government from having legitimacy, so a civil war results. US interventionism is thus discredited, and chaos ensues. If we stay in Iraq, resentment towards US presence undercuts the legitimacy of the Allawi regime and pushes anti-occupation Shiites away from the government. At the same time, enraged Sunnis will also continue to press the attack, crippling the weakened Iraqi state. US interventionism is still discredited, and chaos still ensues.

Freedom is on the march...

Tragic Mistake

In his review of Noah Feldman's new book "What We Owe Iraq", Robert Kagan (Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace) makes a trechant point: (link via Andrew Sullivan)

"The most tragic [of the Bush administration's failures] was the failure in the early days after the invasion to fulfill the 'first duty' of an occupying power: providing basic security. Much has been made of the looting that occurred immediately after the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime, but Feldman notes the essential point: by allowing the looting to proceed, American forces sent a clear message 'that the United States was not in charge, and that no one else was, either.' Iraqis had to seek security for themselves in what was for a time a state of anarchy, and it was hardly surprising that they turned to their own kind for protection. Feldman says that it was not 'ancient' ethnic and religious differences that empowered armed militias, but the human instinct for survival. 'Had there been half a million U.S. troops on the ground,' he insists, 'it is highly likely that there would have been little looting, no comparable sense of insecurity and therefore a reduced need for denominational identities to become as dominant as they quickly did.'"

As tempting as it is to pass this off as just another mistake in the Bush administration's litany of failures (and it is that too!), there also is room for hope. Professor Feldman apparently has devoted alot of his scholarly attention to the notion that religious, devout muslims hold the key to democratic reform. If that is the case, and the secretarian divides that currently are fueling the conflict are not inherent to the situation, the possibilty of creating a democratic government seems far more likely. Tough, but possible. I can only hope that the Bush administration reverses its trend of mistakes and misjudgments and seizes whatever oppurtunities come forward to make the dream of so many Iraqis a reality, because failure is not an option.

War of Liberation

John Quiggin wades into the merits of describing the Iraq war as a "war of liberation." To summarize it, he agrees that Iraq qualified as a "war of liberation," but then gives several reservations to the premise of a "war of liberation" itself:

"The problem, rather, is with the whole idea of a “war of liberation”. Just as with the Christian doctrine of “just war”, the doctrine is so loose that it can easily be claimed by both sides in the same war. Most wars of liberation, like most wars of all kinds, have done more harm than good.
...
Another important observation, particularly relevant in the case of Iraq, is that, even if you conceive of a war as one of liberation, it is almost always necessary to ally yourself with people who have less noble aspirations. Nationalist Iraqis, seeking only the withdrawal of the occupying forces, have inevitably co-operated to some extent (how much is not clear) with terrorist jihadis, who want to use Iraq as a base for their own global operations. Supporters of the American war effort find themselves in coalition with all sorts of unsavory parties, from thugs like Allawi and (until a few months ago) crooks like Chalabhi, to anti-Muslim crusaders in the West. As a rule, the least scrupulous members of a coalition are the most successful in pursuing their goals."

These are all valid concerns. More than valid, actually, they are concerns which must be addressed seriously and comprehensively at the outset of the war. Is this really a "war of liberation," or is it a pretext for US realist interests? Who are we allying with, and are we going to be forced to cut a deal with the devil? How can we insure that the local populace won't turn against us? The fact that these questions exist does not, in itself, knock down the justification for "wars of liberation" in principle. The fact that these questions were ignored, however, is a powerful indictment of how the Bush administration chose to prosecute this war.

One of the sadder, and more dangerous, consequencs of Bush's bungling the war is that it might taint any further US humaniterean interventions in a way Somalia never could. Already, pro-war liberals such as myself have come under a lot of fire for their position. We are accused of being "Bush-lite," "sellouts," "imperialists," or worse. Politically, the risk that Democrats will attempt to become a party of isolationism and foreign weakness is great, though not inevitable. More important than political ramifications for any one party is the prospect that the US will partially or entirely withdraw from the global sphere. Obviously the US will never totally cut itself off from the world, we're far too intertwined and have too much at stake in global institutions to be able to practically do that. But an America that refuses to take military action to defend the world, or that foists that obligation entirely upon the UN and regional actors, is very feasible. This is a scary possibilty. Neither the UN nor any regional body has shown the political will, past propensity, or pragamatic capability to defuse conflict situations. The risk is that the world will intervene "just enough" to satisfy its obligations and soothe its conscience, while never devoting the resources necessary to actually stabilize restless warzones and rebuild shattered communities.

A world in which the global elites ignore the pain and suffering of the periphery is a world that will forever be buffetted by terrorism and backlash. The "fingers in the dike" that are preventing 3rd world resentment from exploding into a spate of violence against their more fortunate cohorts are twofold. The first is the overwhelming power disparity between the two regions. This hedge grows weaker every day, since WMD proliferation and terror tactics can neutralize traditional military power gaps. Jack Snyder, Professor of International Relations at Columbia University's Institute of War and Piece Studies points out that

"Precisely because America is so strong, weak states on America's hit list may increasingly conclude that weapons of mass destruction joined to terror tactics are the only feasible equalizer to its power. Despite America's aggregate power advantages, weaker opponents can get access to outside resources to sustain this kind of cost-imposing resistance. Even a state as weak and isolated as North Korea has been able to mount a credible deterrent..."["Imperial Temptations," The National Interest No. 71 (Spring 2003)

The relatively cheap availabilty of the components of WMDs makes nuclear/chemical/biological blackmail a reasonably foreseeable tactic by nations who otherwise could be marginalized or ignored. The prospect of even one nuclear weapon being set off on US soil probably will be enough to at least deter any overtly hostile US actions. And the use WMDs by non-state actors (like Al-Qaeda), who cannot be easily retailiated against and certainly can't be destroyed by a WMD counterattack, should be a sobering prospect. If proliferation becomes a reality and WMDs break loose from their relatively narrow (current) containment, US military hegemony will no longer be enough to protect us from harm.

The second "finger" is the perception, however frail, that the world does care, at some level, about the plight of the global periphery and will work to alleviate it. International institutions such as the UN, where the lowliest nations stand as equals with the US, Britian, and other powers, have done much to convince the global poor that they too are members of the world community, and as such they will be cared and provided for. If the US is seen as abandoning what--to the rest of the world--is a solemn commitment to work for the betterment of mankind, a sense of betrayal will quickly emerge, likely to be followed by resentment and hatred. With nothing to lose, the global poor will increasingly attack the US and the West as a protest against unfair and inequitable global policies. US withdrawal from global affairs is thus doubly dangerous: It increases the propensity of people to commit terrorism, while at the same time severely hampering our ability to maintain our military hegemony (by engaging in aggressive counterproliferation efforts).

This helps explain some of my outrage toward President Bush. When I tell local Republicans that I oppose Bush because I support the war in Iraq and an interventionist US foreign policy, they tend to stare at me agape. But it really is a perfectly sensible position. If one believes that actions such as the invasion in Iraq are (hopefully rarely) necessary actions to take in order to maintain a secure and just world, the fact that President Bush has made it unlikely that the US will ever take such an action again should be profoundly troubling. Somehow, the US is going to need to salvage its international credibilty in order to continue taking such actions, but Bush's needless arrogance and refusal to admit any error has made this well-nigh impossible. And if Iraq, God forbid, ends in a failure, no amount of US diplomacy or incentives will convince the world that such interventions are valid or advisable. President Bush's policies have put us on the edge of disaster, and unfortunately his tunnelvision and removal from reality only hasten the approaching catastrophe.

Never Let a Poly Sci Professor Read a Bedtime Story

From the comments section of Daniel Drezner's latest baby blogging (the objective is to fill his daughter's "thought bubble"):

"Daddy, can you read me the Mearsheimer bedtime story where Goldilocks, the mama bear and the baby bear gang up on the papa bear and take his porridge?"

Let's play a game...submit different versions of fairy tales as told by various politicians/political theorists/activists! Best answers get much adulation and praise (I'd give a real prize, but I'm a poor, miserly college student).

This would work SO much better if I had more than ten readers...

The FRC Goes Off the Deep End

So far, I've refrained from quoting the Family Research Council because while they often say stuff that sets off my wingnut alarm, it's such a part of their character that it almost seems redundant to point it out. But they've finally gone so far off the deep end that I am compelled to point it out.

The FRC has made known their opposition to Senator Arlen Specter's ascension to the chair of the Judiciary Committee on the grounds that he might not be friendly enough to pro-life nominees. Fair enough. But in their daily Washington Update, group President Tony Perkins makes the outrageous argument that the constitution mandates that the Senate consent to any nominee that the President puts forth, no matter how extreme or unqualified he or she may be.

"The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette endorsed Sen. Specter this year because "he would be in a position to block some of the ideologically extreme federal judges likely to be nominated by President Bush in a second term, some of them for the Supreme Court." With all due respect to Sen. Specter's journalist pals, but the Constitution makes it clear that the Senate's role is to "advise and consent" when it comes to judges, not "block and dissent."

With all due respect to Mr. Perkins, the constitution actually makes it clear that the President can only appoint judges WITH the advice and consent of the senate. Presumably, the senate is well within its rights to NOT give this consent, and I would argue that this is PART of the senate's constitutional responsibilty, not an abrogation of it. The constitution specifically mandates that judicial nominees go through the senate to maintain the system of checks and balances that prevent any one branch of government from monopolizing power. This balancing act is integral to our constitutional scheme of government, and it is shocking to see the FRC advocate throwing it away for short-term political gain. Or rather, it would be if the FRC had any respect for the constitution beyond the point where it affirms their particular ideological standing.

If Mr. Perkins would like to brush up on what the constitution actually says, he can access it online here.

Solving the Insurgency

The insurgents strategy of dividing Iraq along religious lines is continuing throughout the Fallujah assualt. The LA Times reports that Iraqi reaction to the attack on Fallujah breaks heavily along secretarian fault lines, lending credance to the fear that the assault will push the country further in the direction of civil war. Worse yet, Defense Tech notes that the US army isn't following its own guidelines for combating an insurgency. Whereas the guidelines emphasize mobility, precision, minimization of civilian casualties and kill-counts over territory, the US incursion has done a far better job at securing territory rather than getting the top terrorist leaders (and has laid waste to the town while doing so).

So what can be done? I won't claim to be an expert on military affairs, but on the civilian side of things The New Partisan (God I hate that name!) argues that the Iraqi government can leverage its immense oil reserves to divide the population from the insurgency.

"Iraq’s new government should simply announce that as of a date certain, it will establish a new national investment fund — call it The Iraqi People’s Freedom Trust — which will be credited with a major share of all future Iraqi oil earnings. A popular real world model might be the Alaska Permanent Fund, which grants a share of that state’s oil revenues to every citizen. Revenues directed to Iraq’s Freedom Trust could be invested in Iraqi government bonds, keeping a small cash reserve to provide for cash withdrawals from the Trust by individual Iraqis.

All 27 million Iraqis — men, women and children — would be eligible for an equal, personal account in the Freedom Trust simply by proving Iraqi birth and pledging their allegiance to the government. With assistance from coalition allies, registration for ownership shares in the trust could go hand in hand with registering citizens for the upcoming national elections. Any adult citizen of Iraq would then be free, at any time, to ask for a calculation of their account’s value and withdraw up to their full balance — no questions asked."

My first thought upon reading that was: "Oh great. More oil-based croynism." And it's true that oil has been a death sentence for many countries seeking to democratize. John Judis writes for The New Republic on March 23rd 2003 (sub. only):

"After the colonial powers departed at the end of World War II, oil provided the newly independent governments of the Middle East a veritable windfall--either through concessions or later through outright ownership of their country's oil facilities. With their new income, the states' kings, emirs, and sheiks were no longer dependent on their countries' merchants or workers for tax income. They could finance their governments entirely out of oil revenues. They could also use these oil revenues to buy off the citizenry through social-welfare systems, state jobs, land grants, and lucrative contracts. Their citizens became passive recipients of government largesse--paying no taxes and receiving no representation."

However, upon further reading I became convinced that the New Partisan's plan could dodge these harms.

"For the first time in the history of Iraq, indeed of oil nations generally, the new government would be offering each and every citizen a real, guaranteed ownership share in an asset that has been long since nationalized and regarded as a public patrimony. Establishment of the Freedom Trust would dispel the fantasy that this war was waged by the U.S. to somehow steal Iraqi oil. The Freedom Trust would instantly offer a stark contrast with the Saddam regime’s practice of stealing and wasting oil revenues on weapons, palaces and luxuries for a tiny elite of privileged cronies."

By putting the oil revenue in private accounts, rather than in the control of easily corruptable government bureaucrats, this plan sidesteps the potential for cronyism present in most oil-based democratization schemes. Instead of being dependent on the government for oil largesse, the people gain a direct ownership stake in their society independent of whatever the government chooses to do. By giving them that stake, suddenly the terrorists aren't fighting against the American infidels, they're fighting against the Iraqi future. This, in turn, could take the rug out from under the insurgencies support. And because it can be applied equally to all the ethnic groups in Iraq, it can help mend the secretarian-based divides the insurgency has helped to create. All in all, an intriguing plan.

Cards on Minorities and the Courts

Some Cards on minority access to the courts I've found interesting.

SEX DISCRIMINATION; WHY SEX IS SUSPECT CLASS UNDER THE 14th AMENDMENT
William Brennan, Plurality Opinion Fronteiro v. Richardson 411 US 677 at 684-686 and n.17 (1973)

"There can be no doubt that our Nation has had a long and unfortunate history of sex discrimination. Traditionally, such discrimination was rationalized by an attitude of "romantic paternalism" which, in practical effect, put women, not on a pedestal, but in a cage...As a result of notions such as these, our statute books gradually became laden with gross, stereotyped distinctions between the sexes and, indeed, throughout much of the 19th century the position of women in our society was, in many respects, comparable to that of blacks under the pre-Civil War slave codes. Neither slaves nor women could hold office, serve on juries, or bring suit in their own names, and married women traditionally were denied the legal capacity to hold or convey property or to serve as legal guardians of their own children...It can hardly be doubted that, in part because of the high visibility of the sex characteristic, women still face pervasive, although at times more subtle, discrimination in our educational institutions, in the job market and, perhaps most conspicuously, in the political arena...It is true, of course, that when viewed in the abstract, women do not constitute a small and powerless minority. Nevertheless, in part because of past discrimination, women are vastly underrepresented in this Nation's decisionmaking councils...this underrepresentation is present throughout all levels of our State and Federal Government"

MINORITIES CAN'T GAIN TRACTION IN THE SYSTEM WITHOUT SOME DEGREE OF POLITICAL INFLUENCE
Jack Balkin, Professor of Law at Yale University. "WHAT BROWN TEACHES US ABOUT CONSTITUTIONAL THEORY." Virginia Law Review Vol. 90, No. 6, October 2004. Pg. 1531-1577

"Law students are usually taught that it is the job of courts to pro-tect what United States v. Carolene Products [304 US 144, 152, n.4, (1938)] called 'discrete and insular minorities.' These are groups that have suffered a long history of discrimination, are relatively politically powerless, and are unable to protect themselves in the political process. This portrait is quite misleading. In general, courts will protect minorities only after minorities have shown a fair degree of clout in the political process. If they are truly politically powerless, courts may not even recognize their grievances; and if they have just enough influence to get on the political radar screen, courts will usually dismiss their claims with a wave of the hand. Conversely, as a reform movement for minority rights gains prominence through political protest and legislative lobbying, courts will increasingly pay attention to minority rights and take their claims more seriously." (1551-1552)

Jack Balkin, Professor of Law at Yale University. "The Constitution of Status", 106 Yale L.J. 2313, 2340 (1997)

"[L]egal elites...usually respond to ‘disadvantaged’ groups only after a social movement has demanded a response. Ironically then, a status group must display some degree of political power—whether at the ballot box or in the streets—before it can be considered ‘politically powerless’ and hence deserving of legal protection...[G]roups that are truly politically powerless usually do not even appear on the radar screen of legal decisionmakers—including courts—because the status hierarchy is so robust that few in power even notice that there is a problem."

This one's just funny:
Jack Balkin, Professor of Law at Yale University. "WHAT BROWN TEACHES US ABOUT CONSTITUTIONAL THEORY." Virginia Law Review Vol. 90, No. 6, October 2004. Pg. 1531-1577

"Judges are sort of like place kickers in football. Most place kickers are pretty bad at making an open-field tackle to stop a speedy running back returning a kickoff. But place kickers can help pile on after the other players have tackled or slowed down a runner. That is sometimes how I imagine courts and their relationship to social change: They see the running back lying on the ground, groaning under the weight of a huge pile of linebackers. The judges say to themselves, 'It’s time for us to do some justice!' and they throw themselves on the pile." (1549)

Just How Bad Was It SUPPOSED To Be?

"U.S.-led troops hold most of Fallujah; Insurgent resistance is weaker than anticipated": Frontpage Headline, Minneapolis Star Tribune, 11/10/04

"In Fallujah, a bloody fight for every inch": Headline, Minneapolis Star Tribune, same day.

"A bloody fight for every inch" is WEAKER than anticipated? I suppose we can be grateful it isn't "a bloody fight for every millimeter."

Meanwhile, Fallujah seems to be a rollout of the new insurgency strategy: "Pushing for a secretarian-based civil war. TNR's "Iraq'd" blog reports:

"Politically, the insurgents have significantly advanced what could be called the Sunni persecution strategy: That is, to gather recruits, material, and political support for the insurgency by aggravating the sense among Sunnis that they have no future in the U.S.-sponsored political process. The only Sunni political party in the Allawi government has quit in protest and the largest Sunni religious organization has formally called for their adherents to boycott the January elections. One member of the Iraqi Islamic Party who refused to resign his position--and who has since been renounced by the party--explained his decision: "It will be a big mistake not to have the Sunnis' participation in the election. We would have problems for decades to come."

Exactly. That's the insurgents' strategy: Ensure that the U.S.-backed process takes on an overwhelmingly sectarian character, with the Shia dominating outright alongside a restive Kurdish delegation waiting in the wings to seek independence. Since the insurgency will by all estimates continue on into January, a Shia victory sets the stage for pushing the vicious cycle of Sunni alienation and violent resistance forward. That is why attacks have been occurring in Shia areas like Karbala and Najaf, and why, except for the occasional outburst by Moqtada Al Sadr, no Shia are coming to the aid of Falluja this time. Understood through this prism, the Sunni insurgency is in a revolutionary situation, viewing itself as far more likely to gain what it seeks--restored domination of Iraq and the removal of U.S. forces--through violence than through any political settlement. Much of the Sunni insurgency appears to be figuring that they can win a civil war, and as such are looking to start one."

This, unfortunately, is a sadistically brilliant strategy. By specifically undermining the prospects of a future democracy (by claiming that the Sunni's voice is going to be suppressed by the new government), the insurgents virtually guarentee that a) they'll continue to be able to get new recruits no matter how many the US kills and b) that the Shi'a majority government that will be formed in January will be unable to govern. And of course, if the Shi'a government launches into a widescale offensive against the nation's Sunni population, well, that's what would be impolitely called a "civil war."

It's about time US politicians and foreign policy elites start discussing what happens if the US loses this war in Iraq (I define "losing in Iraq" as the emergence of either a civil war or a non-democratic tyranny as the government in Iraq). I'm not saying we're past the point of no return, but the consequences of losing in Iraq are so dire that we need to have contingency plans in place now if we're going to prevent a total foreign policy disaster (we all remember the problems that go along with a lack of advance planning, right?)

Washington Sampler

Two bits of news I'd like to discuss here.
First off, Crooked Timber excerpts from a Financial Times article by Adam Posen of the IIE (talk about hearsay!). The money quote:

"However, the Bush administration is putting its political staying power ahead of economic responsibility - indeed it is weakening the independence of those very institutions on which Americans rely to check economic radicalism. For example, the current Republican congressional leadership is trying to override the constitutional design whereby the Senate acts as a brake on the executive branch and on the self-interest of “majority faction”. Bill Frist, senate majority leader and George Allen, the Republican senate campaign committee chair, said their unprecedented direct campaign against Tom Daschle, the defeated Senate minority leader, should warn moderate Republican and Democratic senators not to be “obstructionist”, even though that is precisely what the Founding Fathers intended the Senate to do.

… Markets tend to assume that the US political system will prevent lasting extremist policies so, even now, observers discount the likelihood of the Bush administration fully pursuing - let alone passing - this economic agenda. If the thin blue line of Democrats and the responsible Republican moderates in the Senate bravely fulfil their constitutional role, perhaps the damage will be limited. If not, we can foresee the US economy following the path to extended decline of the British economy in the 1960s and 1970s and of Japan in the 1990s."

Those commentators who think that the Senate should just rubberstamp whatever the President throws at it are seriously missing the point. The Senate has the obligation to take seriously its role as a check against unbridled executive power. This isn't to say they should just become liberals for the sake of opposition. But the trend towards excessive party discipline and partisanship needs isn't healthy for America as a whole, regardless of whether we're talking about economic policy or judicial nominations.

Second, the first two Bush cabinet officials to resign are Don Evans and John Ashcroft. I couldn't care less about Evans. Ashcroft's resignation is most certainly welcome (though I've read some reports that say Ashcroft actually was a moderate voice inside the administration and his tough-talk outward persona didn't match what he really felt), though I'm worried about who will replace him. Also, this quote, apparently from his resignation letter, immediately struck me:

"The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved."

On what planet, exactly? Even if you think that America has made significant progress toward making ourselves safer from terrorist assualt (something I'm not sure I believe), we certainly aren't there yet. If Bush insiders think that America is safe and are going to shift their focus away from American security, it does not bode well for America as a whole.

Law Enforcement and the War on Terror

In off-blog conversations about the Bush administration, I've argued that this presidency has, more than any Democrat, viewed the war on terror through a pre-9/11 mentality that emphasizes the importance of states rather than the non-state actors (IE: Al-Qaeda) that actually threaten us. In both Sudan and Afghanistan, terrorist groups have shown that they can survive and thrive without a supporting state structure (both of those countries had, at best, anemic central governments not in control of the whole country). Hence, the policy of attacking states rather than attacking terrorists is counterproductive, as Al-Qaeda can just "stick and move," dodging recrimination as we get bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan and whatever other states we decide to intervene in.

Now, Phillip Carter gives another area in which the Bush admin is looking at the war on terror through the pre-9/11 lens: It sees it as a law enforcement issue (Thanks to Kevin Drum). Obviously this is quite ironic, as one of the Bush campaign's key charges against Kerry was that he didn't see the war on terror as a war at all. But as Carter notes:

"I can't even count the times have we heard this administration said it was fighting a war against terrorism — not an intelligence and law enforcement endeavor. I think this critique hits the nail on the head. The Bush administration is waging a war on Al Qaeda. But it continues to use metrics better suited for law enforcement in measuring its success in that war. To date, the administration has not devised a grand strategy for measuring political, moral, economic or strategic progress against Al Qaeda, much less what victory might look like. And thus, we measure our success using crude metrics like the body count — something which is ananthema to most military planners today, but still used in the prosecutorial context by officials who measure their success by convictions and imprisonments."

Michael Scheuer, former chief of the CIA's Bin Laden unit supports, remarking in The New York Times:

"I think Al Qaeda has suffered substantially since 9/11, and it may have slowed down its operations, but to take the two-thirds number as a yardstick is a fantasy.[...] To say that they have only one-third of their leadership left is a misunderstanding. That is looking at it from a law enforcement perspective. They pay a lot of attention to leadership succession, and so one of the main tenets of Al Qaeda is to train people to succeed leaders who are captured or killed."

I pointed out in reference to the Iraq insurgency that measures of success based solely on body count (either ours or theirs) are flawed and don't take into account the political realities of the ground situation. Unless we want to continue fighting this war into perpetuity, we need to win the war of ideas as well as the war on the ground. We could be killing 100 Al-Qaeda operatives a day, but if they can replace them as fast as we can kill them we aren't making progress. The Bush administration, by not creating a comprehensive strategy for winning the war (and by mucking up the closest thing they have to one: Democratizing Iraq and the Middle East), is making the world a more dangerous place and hampering the war on terror.

Guantanamo Bay Trials Illegal

The US District Court for the District of Columbia has ruled in Hamdam v. Rumsfield that current procedures for military commissions in Guantanamo Bay are illegal and void. To briefly sum up the 47 page ruling:

The order that accompanies this opinion provides: (1) that, unless and until a competent tribunal determines that Hamdan is not entitled to POW status, he may be tried for the offenses with which he is charged only by courtmartial under the Uniform Code of Military Justice; (2) that, unless and until the Military Commission’s rule permitting Hamdan’s exclusion from commission sessions and the withholding of evidence from him is amended so that it is consistent with and not contrary to UCMJ Article 39, Hamdan’s trial before the Military Commission would be unlawful; and (3) that Hamdan must be released from the pre-Commission detention wing of Camp Delta and returned to the general population of detainees, unless some reason other than the pending charges against him requires different treatment.

Nothing too shocking in the opinion. It does seem to validate my suspicion that O'Conner's willingness to have a more deferential standard to the government than the constitution might otherwise allow won't have any practical effect. But in all reality, this case dealt with some pretty narrow issues, the bigger battles are yet to be fought.

We Apologize for this Election-related Interruption, we now Return you to your Regularly Scheduled Genocide

The Washington Post ran an editorial on the Sudan situation entitled "Darfur Slides." This strikes me as a slight understatement (I'm reminded of the scene in Dogma where Rufus, the 13th apostle, remarks "You might call it being 'marytred. I call it 'being bludgeoned to death by big f---ing rocks'!"), but the point is well taken. Not only is the Darfur situation moving even further into crisis, but what momentum had been gathered in favor of intervening to stop the genocide has appeared to stall out. The Post writes:

AT DAWN ON Tuesday, a few hours before Americans began voting, Sudanese police and soldiers arrived at a camp for displaced people in South Darfur. They set fire to huts, beat people with truncheons and shot an unknown number; then, as The Post's Emily Wax reported, they loaded 250 families into trucks and drove them away. They did all this, moreover, at a camp just eight miles from a contingent of Nigerian cease-fire monitors, whose job is supposedly to deter such war crimes. Meanwhile the United States is leading an international response to Darfur's crisis. Its principal goal is to deploy more African Union monitors of the sort that failed Tuesday.

For a while over the summer, the world's response to Darfur seemed to be gathering momentum. A series of high-level visits to the region, including stops by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, put pressure on Sudan's government to stop murdering civilians; the U.N. Security Council passed two resolutions condemning the abuses; Congress and then the Bush administration determined that the systematic killing of ethnic Africans met the definition of genocide. Sudan's government responded by allowing relief workers to bring food and medicine to displaced people and by agreeing to the presence of African Union troops. All this progress was unforgivably slow, and tens of thousands of people died waiting for it. But it was still progress.

Now the momentum has fizzled. Preparations for an African Union force continue, but the violence in Darfur has flared to the point that it's not clear what 3,500 outsiders can accomplish in an area the size of France. Tuesday's attack on civilians was just one of many, and anti-government rebel groups are growing more violent and numerous.

Darfur is yet another example of the US' and international community's 10 second attention span enabling atrocities to occur around the world. I pointed this out when talking about humaniterean intervention in Iraq earlier, but I want to expand and reiterate this issue here because I think it's important.

Realistically speaking, expressions of moral indignation toward human rights abuses can only last so long before they become "old news." Making our human rights policy solely dependent on diplomatic pressure lets dictators try and "wait out the storm" and hope that by stalling for time, they can avoid any substantial US or international intervention to stop the abuse. At best, a policy based on diplomacy will only encourage oppressive regimes to violate human rights more quietly, and as North Korea, Saudi Arabia, and China among others demonstrate, it is rather easy to violate human rights systematically, persistantly, and egregiously without arousing a sustainable international outcry.

The fear is that Darfur will become the new Congo, which is already shaping up to be a repetition of Cambodia. Those who think that the international community will always be shocked into action by ongoing human rights abuses need to come to terms with the fact that over 3,000,000 people have died in an ongoing genocide in the Congo, an event that has passed virtually without notice in the international community. It is true that massive human rights atrocities usually do attract the notice of the western world, eventually. Unfortunately, the attention usually only remains focused after the atrocities have ended, when we wonder how we could let such indiscriminate slaughter and solemnly vow "never again." After a suitable period of soul searching, we revert back to our regular apathy, and barely ten years after we sat and watched the Rwandan genocide unfold, we again appear to be willing to sit back and watch the Darfur and Congo genocides occur with minimal international intervention.

I'm not Partisan, I'm Opinionated

The folks over at Tapped (weblog of the American Prospect) make an excellent point about the difference between being a partisan and having an opinion. They are very seperate entities. To boot:

Can we get something straight here? There is a difference in kind between "partisan" and "opinionated." In fact, in a political context, these words often mean the opposite. True political partisans say whatever is best for their party. They don't have any opinions of their own, merely a line of the day. A journalist with an opinion is, one hopes, someone who has gathered enough facts to come to a conclusion about whatever it is they're writing about. You can be opinionated without being a partisan, and you can be partisan without being opinionated. (Nor is partisanship proportional to ideological fervor: You can be highly partisan as well as centrist, as Tom Daschle was, or highly conservative and also bipartisan, as John McCain is. Why is this so hard to understand?)

I try my best to be opinionated, not partisan. To be clear, my opinions tend to lean Liberal. Does that make me partisan? I don't think so, because I evaluate issues independent of what the Democrats say on the matter. If you don't think that's true, then you can think I'm a partisan. That's fine. All I'm saying is that I do my best to be as non-partisan as I can, and call the issues as I see them. And all I expect of my colleagues in the blogosphere is that they do the same.

This issue is important to me, because I think it aptly synthesizes a couple of very core beliefs I hold. When one has opinions, rather than blind faith in a party, it makes for a stronger Democracy. The tendancy of people to substitute party affiliation in place of actually thinking about and discussing issues of importance to our nation is extraordinarily damaging to democracy as a whole. At the same time, the people can't take all the blame. Partisan politicians are every bit as bad, in fact they're worse, because they feed the cycle and actively prevent the nation from breaking out of its hyperpolarized mindset. Hence the anger bordering on rage I feel towards Tom DeLay and his ilk. People like him are ruining the country. I pray for a day when we have more McCains and Liebermans in office, and the DeLays and Roves and Moores of the world are off writing wingnut blogs like they should be. But the key point is that one can still hold deep, abiding, sincere convictions, and fight for those convictions, without turning into a reckless partisan. John McCain is a perfect example. Chuck Hagel, Joe Biden, and Barack Obama are others. These men are models that the rest of us should hold ourselves up to, and I think it's in keeping with the ethical standard I hold myself to as well.

Odds and Ends, and a Slice of Optimism

First off, I'm going to judging at the Apple Valley debate tournament this weekend. So no blogging from Friday till Monday. I probably could use the break. And listening to dozens of high schoolers talk and argue intelligently about democracy promotion is real break from election watching (the sad thing is, I'm serious. It's been awhile since I've been able to see anything substantive on the topic).

Now, some more post-election thoughts, responding to the commenters on the last post. A lot of people argued that democrats were in trouble with "value voters," IE the famous "God, Guns, and Gays" crowd. They're absolutely right. As Noam Schieber reminds us, the Conservative vote came out in force this election, with 34% of the electorate describing itself as Conservative (compared to 29% in 2000). That's a huge shift. What's more, according to polling the most important issue for voters this election wasn't Iraq, or the Economy, or Terrorism. It was "Moral Values" (edging out "economy" 22-20). To paraphrase Andrew Sullivan: For Bush's base, it wasn't about the war on terror. It was about the war on gay unions.

All of this, I think, only reaffirms my point though. The "moral values" issues probably have the least substantive discussion of any major campaign issue. You never see a real debate about gay marriage or abortion. Republicans just say "GAY PEOPLE!" and voters run screaming to the polls, while Democrats just try and play damage control. In other words, 1) Bush won due to 2) "values-voters" who 3) are voting off issues that get no discussion beyond bumpersticker platitudes. Style 1, Substance 0.

So to win, the Democrats either have to shift the ground of debate onto areas where they have stronger platitudes, or they need to push the debate beyond cute sound bites. Not only do I find the former morally abhorrent, but I think that it won't work. Abortion and gay marriage are important concerns for many people, and Democratic efforts to ignore them are likely to backfire. And yet, the latter option is a paradox. As former guestblogger Greg Ihrie points out, the mainstream media presents an irreconcilable obstacle to these goals. I think that, in the long term, blogs may counter the influence of the MSM. But what are to do in the short run, when it appears that voters care more about isolating gays and lesbians than annihilating Al-Qaeda? At times it seems we need a silver bullet.

And yet, hope remains. Today, polarization has divided America into Republican and Democrat. Politicians get votes by appealing to the worst in voters. We face grave threats abroad, and yet we fight amongst ourselves at home. Honest disagreement is presented as betrayal, the slightest hint of bipartisanship is seen as traitorous. I do not argue that Americans must ignore legitimate grievances. The solution to partisan vitriol is more speech, not enforced silence. The politics of deceit and deception; bigotry and apathy; prejudice, fear, hate, and anger, can only win out for so long. In the long run, justice will reign in this great land. In place of fear, we can offer hope. In place of bigotry, we can offer brotherhood. In place of partisanship, unity, in place of factions, community, in place of lies, honesty. The legions of justice stand battered but not broken. There is a better way out there, and it is up to us to seize the initiative. And when the gauntlet is thrown down, we will meet the forces of wrong, fight them, beat them, and stand victorious in a stronger, safer, more just America. In cities and in towns, villages and in hamlets, in farms and in apartments, from young to old,Democrat to Republican, Christian to Jew to Muslim to Atheist, black or white, rich or poor, gay or straight, north, south, east, west and all over this great land, we will not be silenced, we will not be quiet, we will not equivocate, and most of all we will not be ignored.

There is hope yet for America. It is a hope based on what binds this nation together as one. The principles of liberty for all, justice for all, equality for all, are what unite this country together as the greatest country in the world. Barack Obama said it best: "The pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats. But I've got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we don't like federal agents poking around our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States and have gay friends in the Red States. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and patriots who supported it. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America." And I believe that, whether or not the standard bearer is a Republican or Democrat, a Liberal, Conservative, or Independent, the day of reckoning draws upon us. The era of hate is over. The American people will not let their government, their churches, their synagogues and their mosques be hijacked in the name of exclusion and bigotry. The party of Abraham Lincoln, who freed the slaves, and Dwight D. Eisenhower, who desegregated the schools, and of Anthony Kennedy, who affirmed that yes, Gay people too are full and equal Americans, cannot be allowed to become the party of Jerry Falwell, Tom DeLay, Pat Robertson and others who wish for a divided, infighting, spiteful America. There is too much at stake for that, and Republicans and Democrats of wisdom and moderation must reach out and fight back the forces of intolerance that threaten to overcome our nation. We will prevail, because we must prevail.

In the coming four years, I hope that Americans can work together, Republican and Democrat, across party lines, for the good of the country we all love so much. I pledge my support to any politician, no matter the party, who will stand beside me and work with me in the pursuit of justice. We owe it to our parents, we owe it to our children, we owe it to our country, to make America all that it can be. Much has been accomplished, but much remains to be done. The hope of America lies in the hands of the millions of American citizens who remain committed to our founding ideals, the ideals that shine as a beacon of hope to oppressed peoples around the world. And so, now more than ever, God Bless the world, God Bless the Democrats, God Bless the Republicans, and God Bless America!

Post-Mortum

I'm going to write as honestly as I can in this post. Since we're in the immediate aftermath of a bitterly fought election, it may come off a bit raw. All I can say is that I hope I've purchased enough moderate credibilty that you can all indulge me for awhile. And since it seems only Republicans read my blog, please no mocking. I'd do the same for you. Here are my thoughts on how this election will impact everybody:

Republicans
Well, my forecast of an impending GOP civil war has been forestalled, at least for now. In the long run, I think my prediction still holds true: The GOP's mismatched coalition simply can't last much longer. But election day victories work wonders for keeping status quo alliances intact.

The real question is how Bush will govern in his second term. Part of me wants to think he'll be a bit more sensible, in part because it would be hard not to, and in part because without the need to win another election, there isn't any reason to keep playing the pander game. But a much greater part of me is pessimistic, since without an impending election to keep him honest, there is nothing pushing Bush to the center. It seems unlikely that Bush would have risked so much in polarizing America by governing from the right, if he would have been content to be a centrist. Furthermore, even more than 2000 or 2002, this election has given Bush a semi-solid mandate to continue his policies. This shouldn't be taken as a vindication of these policies, the relevant morality or advisibility of any given action exists independent of its electoral popularity. But Bush and the Republicans will almost certainly use this election as an excuse to make even more radical changes in our society. This is their right, and I don't contest it. But I don't have to be happy about it either.

Democrats
An unmitigated disaster. We lost key senate races. We lost key house races. We lost the presidency. Right now, Democratic activists are so hung up on the idea of four more years of Bush I think that they haven't even noticed just how bad of a shape we're in. I think the prevailing mood amongst Democrats was that the worst-case scenario for us was that we'd maintain the status quo: IE, Bush would still be president, and the house and senate would stay in approximately the same margins as they were before. But it looks like we're going to be worse all the way around.

Not only that, but this whole election is devastating to Democratic morale. In 2000, we had righteous anger driving us after Florida. We kind of lost a step after 9/11, and got nailed in 2002. But I think everyone thought that the Democratic machine was going to make a roaring return as a relevant player in the political process. We threw everything we had into this election, and we still lost. Whereas we had that drive and determination after 2000, all I see now is despair and hopelessness in the eyes of the Democrats around here. The electoral map is slanted against us, our best turnout efforts failed to win contested races, and in many cases 2004 was our only chance to win these races (does anyone think the Oklahoma Senate spot will be competitive again anytime in the next, oh, 35 years?). This is really, really bad.

Democracy
Here's where I start to descend a bit, I think. First, let me say that for all appearances this election was reasonably fair. Sure, there were scattered reports of random this and that around, but on a whole, it does not look like there will be any Florida repeats. That's a positive by any measure.

I will say that I am extremely disillusioned at the moment. To gather why this is, allow me to share an anecdote. When I was in elementary school, we had elections each year for our school president, VP, secretary, treasurer, and class reps. And every year the principal would get on the intercom and remind us that "we should vote for who we thought would do the best job, not just your friends." And we'd all kind of chuckle, because we knew that everyone just voted for their friends and no one gave the slightest thought to who would do a better job. But I thought, and I think we all thought, that this was because we were kids, and when we were grownup then we would look at the candidates seriously and make decisions based on issues and hard analysis.

Fast forward to 2000. In 2000, I was still a hyperliberal, not the center-leftist I consider myself now. I watched an election race where the biggest issue was that Gore was "too brainy" and Bush was "folksy" and "an average Joe." I was totally in shock. What the hell did "folksiness" have to do with Presidential qualification? Why was being smart considered a disadvantage, of all things? It was like the voters were all 10 years old again. In the first presidential race I followed carefully, I was dismayed to see virtually no attention paid to issues of substance, and hours upon hours of coverage dedicated to Gore's sighing or Bush's malapropisms. Why did I bother to inform myself on the issues, if issues were irrelevant to the process? It just didn't make sense to me.

Moving again to 2004. Towards the end of the election, I formulated a theory that matched my new centrist perspective. I argued to my friends that the majority of Americans weren't polarized archenemies. Rather, we had alot of disillusioned moderates angry that both parties appear to make decisions based solely on political concerns. The particular voting tendancies of these moderates was based around which party better dealt with their "pet issues," but as a whole, they were unhappy campers who wanted to see a third way. In light of this election, I revise that theory to incorporate my thoughts in 2000. The majority of Americans consider themselves moderates, but they aren't concerned with issues. They care about style. They want a candidate who matches their style, who makes them feel good. What did Clinton and Reagan have in common? They both made Americans feel good about themselves again. Now, when things are going well, this is an asset. But in times of trouble, it creates a disturbing catch-22, where incumbants are encouraged to pretend that problems don't exist so that voters feel good about themselves, and stick with status quo. I understand the electoral reasons for this, but the point is its bad for the country. It's dangerous, and while some electioneering may be tolerable when we're just talking about pushing numbers around the budget, when we're fighting a war, when American lives are at stake, its simply not acceptable anymore to subordinate principle to politics.

If I'm a politician gathering lessons from this election (and the last), here's what I learn:
1) Style is 80%, substance 20%
2) The 20% substance should pander only to the base, since they're the only ones paying attention to the issues anyway.

What does this give us? A political system that encourages and rewards personal sliming, politics of demagogery, and substantive extremism. That frightens me. What frightens me more is that I don't see a way to counteract it. It might very well be inherent to democracy. This election saw an unprecedented effort toward the politics of personal destruction, but it also gave voters more resources on which to learn about issues than ever before. From the blogosphere to Factcheck.org, the ability to learn about the world around us and the truth about political issues reached incredible heights. Groups went crazy trying to get out the vote, from ACT to Vote or Die. None this seemed to do anything. There is almost a willful resistance to anything that threatens America's well-entrenched ignorance. And I don't see anyway to stop it.

Before I get jumped on, I'm not denying it's possible to support Bush from a policy standpoint. It certainly is, and I'm sure there are plenty of principled, informed Bush supporters who weighed the facts and decided Bush was their man. All power to them. However, I think that it is indisputable that what put Bush over the top was not an agreement with his policies but an appreciation of his style. Americans want to put on a tough face against terror. We are resolved to win this war, and we want a leader who is an embodiement of that resolve. Noble qualities, for sure. But not substantive differences by any stretch. That's what I mean when I say these elections are decided on style. And no matter how many times Kerry says he's going to be resolved, and determined, when people get it in their heads that he's a weak-kneed flipflopper, they are going to be very reluctant to change that.

In my last post before the election, I made a pledge to support the president, even if I didn't vote for him. That pledge still holds. I wish President Bush the best, and hope he can lead America to a better tommorow. I don't know if there is any way to restore substance to politics. But I do pledge that my little corner of the political world will remain dedicated to intelligent, rational, and objective discussion of the issues, regardless of political origin. That is all I have to offer to America.

Post Election Pledge

I'll take this pledge* from Buzz Machine:

After the election results are in, I promise to:
: Support the President, even if I didn't vote for him.
: Criticize the President, even if I did vote for him.
: Uphold standards of civilized discourse in blogs and in media while pushing both to be better.
: Unite as a nation, putting country over party, even as we work together to make America better.

*Nothing in this pledge shall be construed to require me to support an unfair tallying of the votes. The Debate Link reserves the right to support post-election litigation to make sure all the votes are counted, pursuant to the democratic ideals that make our nation great. All rights reserved. Hat tip to Andrew Sullivan.

Final Election Prediction

UPDATE: 11/1 @ 7:00. West Virginia was a typo, I think Bush will win it (the electoral vote tally was right originally)
From now until we find out who our next President is (IE, sometime in December), I'll be having a slow, progressive heart attack. Before I succumb to immobility and the fetal position, here are my electoral predictions.

POPULAR VOTE: Kerry by less than 1%, +/- 1% (IE, it will be very close in either direction).

WHITHER THE STATES?
Alabama: Bush
Alaska: Bush
Arizona: Bush
Arkansas: Bush
California: Kerry
Colorado: Bush
Connecticut: Kerry
Delaware: Kerry
District of Columbia: Kerry
Florida: Kerry
Georgia: Bush
Hawaii: Kerry
Idaho: Bush
Illinois: Kerry
Indiana: Bush
Iowa: Kerry
Kansas: Bush
Kentucky: Bush
Louisiana: Bush
Maine: Kerry
Maryland: Kerry
Massachusetts: Kerry
Michigan: Kerry
Minnesota: Kerry
Mississippi: Bush
Missouri: Bush
Montana: Bush
Nebraska: Bush
Nevada: Bush
New Hampshire: Kerry
New Jersey: Kerry
New Mexico: Bush
New York: Kerry
North Carolina: Bush
North Dakota: Bush
Ohio: Kerry
Oklahoma: Bush
Oregon: Kerry
Pennsylvania: Kerry
Rhode Island: Kerry
South Carolina: Bush
South Dakota: Bush
Tennessee: Bush
Texas: Bush
Utah: Bush
Vermont: Kerry
Virginia: Bush
Washington: Kerry
West Virginia: Bush
Wisconsin: Kerry
Wyoming: Bush
FINAL TALLY: KERRY 306, BUSH 232

Keeping the fingers crossed...ackkk, my heart!

Freefall

UPDATE: 10/31 @ 9:25 PM

Things just aren't working for us in Iraq. Newsweek reports (tip off: Kevin Drum) that we're in an even worse situation than has hither to been acknowledged. Quote:

"But the truth is, neither party is fully reckoning with the reality of Iraq—which is that the insurgents, by most accounts, are winning. Even Secretary of State Colin Powell, a former general who stays in touch with the Joint Chiefs, has acknowledged this privately to friends in recent weeks, NEWSWEEK has learned. The insurgents have effectively created a reign of terror throughout the country, killing thousands, driving Iraqi elites and technocrats into exile and scaring foreigners out. 'Things are getting really bad,' a senior Iraqi official in interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's government told NEWSWEEK last week. 'The initiative is in [the insurgents'] hands right now. This approach of being lenient and accommodating has really backfired. They see this as weakness.'
...
Washington has declared several times that the insurgency would soon be defeated or at least mostly neutralized. Senior officials made such statements when electricity was restored to its pre-occupation levels in 2003, when Saddam was captured in December, when sovereignty was handed over on June 28. Each time the insurgency has only grown. Now even military officials who are hopeful the insurgency can be defeated—or perhaps just reduced to a violent annoyance—say it will be a long haul no matter who is U.S. president.

We've got a mess on our hands, no doubt about it. And yet, inexplicably, some trust the man who caused the mess to get us out of it. Presumably, if Bush had a plan to fix Iraq, we'd have seen it by now. That Iraq is still mired in an insurgency, indeed, that the insurgency has only grown as time has passed, is a powerful indictment against the Bush administration.

UPDATE: Daniel Drezner also runs with this issue for awhile. Specifically, he uses it to utterly dismantle the Chicago Boyz's (by way of Instapundit) claim that Bush has done a great job on this war. They write:

Now the one thing that strikes me about the military efforts to date is just how incredibly successful they've been, and how masterfully planned and executed they turned out to be. Not perfect, of course (You mean there's terrorists setting off explosives? Against Americans and their supporters? In the Middle East, no less? Say it isn't so!). But a lot of the toys that John Kerry voted against turned out to be damned useful in the War on Terror. I don't want to even think about how an Afghanistan operation with Vietnam-era technology and tactics would have gone for us - I think in that case we'd have been wishing for another Vietnam. And if you've ever cracked a history book, you'll realize that only 1200 deaths in a year and a half of invading a dictatorship, overthrowing its dictator, and fighting a chronic insurgency is astoundingly good news, especially when added to the fact that the long-predicted flood of refugees never materialized, the terrorists that Saddam's regime had nothing whatsoever to do with suddenly got extremely interested in the fate of Iraq . . . and Iraqis are still signing up to take on the battle for their country against these thugs and getting set to vote in their first-ever real election in a couple of months.

And the Commander-in-Chief at the helm during these amazing accomplishments is called incompetent? You've got to be kidding me.

Drezner notes that

"There is one point in this narrative on which I absolutely agree -- the observable costs of the insurgency in Iraq, measured in either men or material, is nowhere near the cost of what transpired in Vietnam. We're talking about differences by several orders of magnitude.

There is, of course, the question of unobservable costs -- and read Ambassador Peter Galbraith's disturbing account in the Boston Globe on that issue.

More importantly, there is the question of trend -- are things betting better or worse in Iraq over time? And here's where I part company with the above narrative."

He then quotes from the above Newsweek article to illustrate this point. The point that I think is relevant here is this. Whether or not Bush has done a good, or even remotely competent job of fighting this war goes beyond simple body counts. Whether or not we are "succeeding" in Iraq is a direct function of how likely it is that country is going to end up as a stable, functional democracy. If it becomes a new haven for terrrorists, then we are losing even if we don't incur a single new casualty. If it replaces its old dictator with a new dictator, we've failed even if we don't incur a single new casualty. The proper measure of Bush's policies in post-war Iraq is whether or not they've been facilitative of our goals for the region: Democratization and Anti-terrorism. The fact is, they haven't been. They haven't been because our hubris has turned the local population against us. They haven't because our spurning of offered international assistance has reinforced the perception that this is an imperial mission. They haven't because the interim government loses credibilty every time it identifies itself with the US. They haven't because increasingly, democrats in the region like Ayatollah Ali Sistani are viewing the US as an obstacle, rather than an aid, to democracy. They haven't because the situation in Iraq has deteriorated to the point where the National Intelligence Estimate foresees a reasonable chance that the country will fall into civil war. All of these issues are problems for which the Bush administration can, and must, be held culpable for.