August 30, 2008
Reflections on Republican Strategy
It doesn't really make sense for each major party to try to appeal to everybody, the electorate being so split, and the parties, in fact, don't. But it seems to me we don't have a very clear understanding of how the electorate is split, or why the Republicans — improbably as it seems — remain competitive. It's something I've been talking about a little bit in recent podcasts, I've been mulling it over, and to help organize my thoughts here are a few written, albeit scattered, observations.
August 29, 2008
Sarah Palin
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Whew! It'll be difficult now, even for the militantly stupid, to take John McCain seriously. No doubt a lot of women, and especially a lot of accomplished women who happen to be Republicans (Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, and Christie Todd Whitman come to mind, among others), are pissed. But, really, this selection is nothing more than a joke.
August 28, 2008
A Manifesto
What is to be done? Removing politics to the extent possible from our thoughts, what public policy priorities make sense? Not the small stuff, like health care, trade, regulation, social security, etc., but big things, the meta-policies that carry us forward as a civilization. There are, I think, three issues or perhaps more accurately clusters of issues that we must address. First is to get control of military spending, reducing it promptly by half with an eye towards further cuts. Second is to switch from a carbon economy to clean, renewable energy. And third is to tax the rich severely. If even one of these things cannot be accomplished we risk losing everything.
August 26, 2008
Inflection Point
U.S. and European recognition of Bosnian independence in April 1992 provided the proximate, more or less immediate trigger for Bosnia's civil war. In hindsight, many of those involved regretted recognition as it proved impossible to take back. Recognition, the most serious formal commitment the international system can make to a state, both foreshadowed and foreordained U.S. and NATO military involvement. Had it been withheld pending diplomatic negotiations the war might well have been avoided.
August 23, 2008
Werther's Law
Or Joe Biden and the Iron Law of Adverse Political Selection
By Werther*
Why do politicians make disastrous decisions with the consistency of iron filings obeying a magnet? Decisions that in retrospect (and frequently in prospect) seem doomed to failure? After 9/11 did it make any sense when, after coming close to the point of capturing Osama bin Laden, the U.S. government began pulling troops, materiel, and intelligence assets away from the hunt in order to invade a country which had nothing to do with Osama?
Once having invaded that country (Iraq), what was the set of policy options that faced our brilliant and esteemed leaders? They could have maintained most of the preexisting organizations and institutions in the country and co-opted them to maintain order and a functioning civil society. This was a policy followed very successfully by General MacArthur during the occupation of Japan. Of course they followed the polar opposite policy of firing all the Baathist administrators and disbanding the army, thus ensuring that the insurgency would benefit from a reserve army of the unemployed and disaffected.
Joe Biden's Foreign Policy
The rap against Obama — that he's all talk, no policy — applies twice over to Joe Biden. A prominent grandstander on Bosnia and Kosovo, Biden has vigorously worked the Darfur 'genocide' sob-story and most recently the Georgia conflict. He's a crisis chaser with a dependable record of being wrong. While it's true that he's now anti Iraq war, when it counted he voted to let the White House have its way. That's the cloth he's cut from: he always goes along with a majority consensus on critical decisions — when courageous dissent is called for he's nowhere to be found. Supposedly Biden will deflect charges of Obama's inexperience regarding national security issues. Perhaps just as likely he will give progressives pause.
August 19, 2008
Missing Propaganda
The U.S. announces it intends to leave troops "permanently" in Georgia. The Russians talk about leaving Georgia, but don't. Nose to nose, that's good. Not. After several days we've had time to look around the arena, so what do we see — or, I should say, what don't we see? For all the buzzing in American media about Russia's 'invasion' of Georgia, I'd like to see estimates of how many Russians may, in fact, be in Georgia at this moment. If large estimates of a reliable nature existed I have no doubt they'd have long since been leaked to the media. So where are they, then? To be realistic about it, with a guess off the top of my head, there might be 15-25,000 Russian troops in Georgia. Serious, but not anywhere near an 'invasion.' Actually, if I'm right, that's about what the Russians need to secure the two autonomous regions in dispute. The thing now is to avoid having an escalation of rhetoric metastasize into an escalation of a tangible, deadly nature.
August 15, 2008
The Most Dangerous Man in America
By Werther*
The first crisis over North Korea's nuclear program arose in late 1994. It was obvious there was not much the United States could do to step in unilaterally and disarm the North Korean regime. Sanctions, the normally inevitable option short of war, had no meaning — the United States had no trade with the North in the first place and the regime followed a policy of economic autarky (Juche) in any case. There was really only one feasible course of action: gather as many regional allies as possible, agree to a process of inducing North Korea to freeze its nuclear program, and tender an offer to the North Koreans on the basis of a quid pro quo.
August 14, 2008
Crimean War Redux?
For a couple days now street hoodlums have been demonstrating outside the Russian Embassy in Washington D.C. One wonders, indeed, whether the Georgians might have rented a chapter of Hells Angels. Meanwhile, American media continues its supine meltdown. Only in Europe can one find such clear, sensible commentary as this essay by Seamus Milne, columnist and associate editor at The Guardian. Things have a way of unraveling: Now Ukraine says it will block ships of the Russian Black Sea Fleet from their home port of Sevastopol if they participate in actions against Georgia. The Russians, who lease Sevastopol's port until 2017 (a carry-over from the former Soviet Union), and who clearly wish to stay longer despite Ukrainian talk of throwing them out when the lease is up, are most unlikely to bend before Ukrainian threats. Talk coming from the Bush administration has been uniformly provocative, a mix of calculated insults and challenges. And Bush started "humanitarian aid" missions to Georgia. It's risky, because "humanitarian aid" is so frequently used as the thin edge of the wedge for military intervention in the post-Cold War world — all the players involved know that well and one thing easily leads to another. Anything might happen, for example, to an American "humanitarian" flight. A proxy mini-war with Russia over Georgia is bad enough. Getting directly involved is insane.
August 9, 2008
No More Mr. Nice Guy
Now that Russian troops are actually fighting in Georgia's breakaway province of South Ossetia they probably won't leave anytime soon. Not after NATO gave Russia a prime example of how this sort of operation works, in Kosovo. And, to be blunt, nothing brings greater joy to the collective heart of Washington's defense establishment than a new rationalization for more military spending. So don't believe what Condi says about peace: Washington has lots of ways to goose the Georgian government into further provocations of Moscow — one must read the reporting carefully to realize that it was a Georgian attempt to seize Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia, that sparked the fighting — and even a lame duck Bush administration may well shuffle into a proxy mini-war in the Caucasus region.
August 5, 2008
Torture, TV, and the Banality of Tony Scalia
By Werther*
Hannah Arendt's analysis of totalitarianism had several flaws, but one of her observations has lodged itself permanently in the national psyche as a handy cliché whenever some human monster is found to have a taste for the art of Walter Keane or, like Kim Jong Il, for pornographic movies: The Banality of Evil.
Continue reading "Torture, TV, and the Banality of Tony Scalia"...
August 2, 2008
To Catch A Killer (or Killers)
The FBI got lucky. They found an anthrax suspect willing to commit suicide, then gave him enough opportunity to actually do so. Case closed. But even if Dr. Bruce E. Ivins really was a lone, crazy microbiologist there remain a lot of critical, unanswered questions about how advocates of totalitarian rule used the hysteria of the moment to ram the so-called Patriot Act through Congress — questions detailed in an excellent essay by Glenn Greenwald. The bentonite angle in particular must be explained. And I would add to Greenwald's eminently correct observation that ABC News has an obligation to account for its reporting with my own question whether the FBI ever interviewed ABC News about their sources, and if so whether the FBI then interviewed those individuals and, again, if so, whether there appeared to be any collusion among them to point the finger of blame at Iraq?
