April 16, 2004

3:10 PM
Space invaders

Writing in SpaceNews.com Victoria Samson, a research analyst at the Center for Defense Information in Washington, points to a little-noticed but far-reaching shift in U.S. military planning.

[T]he 2005 defense budget has, tucked away in various unlit corners, weapon systems which go beyond the mere protection of space assets. It is becoming clear that the United States intends to fund research and development for programs which, in the words of Air Force Space Command Master Plan for 2006, could eventually allow it to fight war "in, from, and through space."

She notes generous funding allocations for lasers with anti-satellite capabilities ($23.8 million); for space control technologies, both offensive and defensive ($15.8 million); for a hypersonic delivery vehicle that would have a global reach ($25 million). But, not surprisingly, it's the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) that's "pushing the envelope the most."

MDA's 2005 budget documents include a request for funding for a space-based kinetic energy intercept test bed that would become part of its Block 2012 capabilities. This is the third year that the [U.S. President George W.] Bush administration has included in its defense request funding for such a program. In 2003, MDA asked for $30 million; in 2004, $14 million; now in the 2005 budget request, $10.5 million. Apparently, the thinking at MDA is that there is some sort of magic number which, if they go low enough, will allow them to escape outside scrutiny, at which point their request will be granted and they can then use it as a toe-hold to establish a larger program.

Why we should care: The U.S. has had a decades-long policy against putting weapons in space. "Even during the height of the Cold War, when tensions were greatest about U.S.-Soviet rivalry and who would get the upper-hand, U.S. decision-makers held back on taking the step toward fielding weapons in space because the consequences would be so deleterious."

These funds indicate that - public comments to the contrary - the United States is gearing up for putting weapons in space. If the U.S. military isn't forced to justify this titanic shift in its planning, then a few years down the road we will wake up to discover that the decision to weaponize space has been made. Americans' opportunity to insist on accountability will have come and gone.

- Julian Brookes

Link this     E-mail this     Print this

 

April 15, 2004

12:20 PM
An appealing reality

I have to admit, I've never been able to sit through an entire episode of any 'reality' show -- even those which sound so fascinating in the deft hands of the folks at Television Without Pity. But I may change my tune this summer, now that Showtime has discovered the political junkie audience.

Don't get me wrong. I'm fully prepared to be disastrously disappointed by the cable network's new show, 'American Candidate.' But the conceit is great -- invite any U.S. citizen over the age of 18 to make a case for why they should be president. And, even if the show itself turns out to be trash, the pre-air material is fascinating.

Sure, the 'candidates' include the usual self-promoters and Washington wonks, but most are good ol' regular Americans with good ol' irregular ideas. 'American Candidate' doesn't represent a cross-section of America. But Kerry and Bush would still do well to read the candidate profiles, if only to recognize the wonderfully wacky and diverse reality behind the pundits' red/blue rhetoric.

- Will Tacy

Link this     E-mail this     Print this

 

April 14, 2004

03:35 PM
Mistakes and corrections

In case you're just waking up from hibernation, President Bush stumbled through a press conference last night during which he refused to apologize for -- or even acknowledge -- missteps he and his administration cohorts have made in their sprawling war. Bush brushed off a question about shouldering responsibility for allowing Sept. 11 to occur. He declined to entertain a suggestion that his team erred in its buildup to the Iraq war. And he flatly rejected any comparison to Vietnam as a "false" analogy that "sends the wrong message to our troops and sends the wrong message to the enemy."

In other words, stay the course. Nobody did anything wrong, there's nothing to apologize for, and there no reason to consider what could have been done better. Stay the course.

Given that April has been the deadliest month in Iraq since U.S. troops rolled across that country's borders more than a year ago, such arrogant, blind self-satisfaction seems bizarre. Certainly, the deaths of nearly 100 American service people in the span of a little more than three weeks should prompt some introspection. But Bush isn't an introspective kinda guy. In the president's black-and-white world, self-examination is an unwelcome weakness.

And Dick Polman of the Philadelphia Inquirer suggests that's just fine with about half of America:

The nation is so polarized that the Bush-boosters will still view him as master and commander, standing firm against terrorists abroad and critics at home, refusing to cede an inch. And the Bush-bashers probably surfed to other TV stations, convinced again that the President is insufferably incapable of admitting error or recognizing the folly of his adventure in Iraq.

If Polman is right, if there is no room for movement in America's body politic, if the national divide really has hardened, then I suppose there's no reason to examine why Americans still support the president and his war. But I prefer to be more hopeful. I prefer to believe that the millions of reasonable Americans outside the progressive community -- Americans who voted for Bush in 2000, or supported the attack on Afghanistan, or believe that toppling Saddam Hussein was a worthy goal -- can recognize that the war in Iraq was ill-conceived, and that the occupation has been ill-managed. I prefer to believe that even supporters of Bush admit that this administration have put more a few feet wrong.

Which is why I think Micah Sifry's new column on TomPaine.com is worth reading. Sifry tackles the core question here: "Why -- even in the face of the latest grim news -- do Americans support the U.S. presence in Iraq?" Sifry comes up with three general answers, and all ring true. But I can think of a fourth. Americans who didn't oppose the war to begin with just aren't ready to admit they were wrong. They don't want to admit that Bush misled them. They don't want to accept that this war was unnecessary. They don't want to acknowledge that the war on terror has actuall been hampered by a massive and mismanaged investment of blood and treasure in Iraq.

Will those Americans come around in the months ahead? Will they prove more open to self-correction and self-criticism than the arrogant, self-deluding members of Team Bush? Sifry suggests they aren't likely to make that leap unassisted. And he argues that John Kerry simply isn't presenting the kind of leadership necessary to help those voters along.

Yes, we can all point out that what Bush believes is dangerous and out-of-touch with reality. But until Kerry presents an equally resolute image, those arguments will do little to sway swing voters."

- Will Tacy

Link this     E-mail this     Print this

 

11:45 AM
Fearmonger in chief?

While a majority of pundits are debating how Bush performed in his press conference (can you really call it that, when he answered fewer than 20 questions?), a handful are bothering to actually dissect his words. Both those he used in the odd appearance last night, and in numerous remarkably similar speeches over the past few months.

Sheldon S. Wolin, emeritus professor of politics at Princeton University, notes that, beneath the vaneer of 'stay the course' resolve, Bush's message remains one of fear and threat.

Fear is politically useful because it simultaneously divides and unites. It breeds suspicions among neighbors as well as a common yearning for security.

Using the battle cry of a "war on terrorism" and stubbornly insisting that Saddam Hussein possessed "weapons of mass destruction," the Bush administration is not about to surrender the tactical advantages of an anxious public being told repeatedly that it is trapped in a war with no end-point.

But there is a problem with such political fearmongering, of course. In fact, there are two problems. First, the message Bush is peddling is essentially a hopeless one. There is no positive vision, no grand plan. Second, while Americans remain convinced that terrorism is a threat, a growing number are coming to realize that the invasion of Iraq was in no way a response to that threat. The bloody, no-escape occupation of Iraq, Americans are left to conclude, is the result of a war waged for dubious reasons.

But Bush will not admit that. He won't admit a single mistake was made in connection with Iraq -- not in the half-hearted diplomatic buildup, not in the over-hyped construction of a WMD-based case for war, and not even in the obviously faulty post-Saddam planning. Bush claims that his credibility is sterling, that "the world has learned this: When I say something, I mean it."

Unfortunately, Bush's self-confidence rings hollow when faced with all the misstatements and misinformation that has poured out from his administration over the past two years. On that front, as on so many others, Mark Shields writes on CNN, Bush and his neocon cohorts clearly haven't learned the lessons of Vietnam.

The official duplicity and deception that characterized American policy in Vietnam must have taught us all that the credibility of every American leader is fragile and perishable.

The leader who misleads his countrymen reaps the whirlwind. The leader's punishment is the mistrust of his fellow citizens. Mistrust is the father of cynicism, and cynicism breeds alienation -- which will wound the nation more profoundly than Saddam Hussein in or out of custody.

Is it me, or is it getting a little gusty?

- Will Tacy

Link this     E-mail this     Print this

 

11:10 AM
Bush laid bare

The partisan reaction to President Bush's peculiar press conference was as swift as it was predictable (then again, the swiftness was predictable, too). But the most interesting responses actually came from conservatives.

Sure, most neocon pundits gushed. Bush's fumbling for words, his stubborn refusals to entertain the possibility that errors have been made in Iraq, his squirming answer to a question about the still-missing weapons of mass destruction -- these were all happily passed over as inconsequential. Presidential lap-dog John Podhoretz of the New York Post summed it all up this way: "No one should be fooled by the way he stumbled through some of his answers about his mistakes as president. Bush knew exactly what he was doing, as he always does." Janice Shaw Crouse, a speechwriter for the Bush I White House, all but swooned in a piece on National Review: "The president's demeanor and determination was reassuring. His manner clearly indicated that he is a leader. His remarks did not seem canned; nor did he seem to be a phony spinning out what the public wanted to hear. He came across as strong, resolute and real." And Fred Barnes of The Weekly Standard was only slightly less starry-eyed (Bush snookered the press, Barnes gloats).

But William Kristol, the Weekly Standard editor and neocon eminence grise, was initially more forthcoming. Unlike Podhoretz, Crouse, and Barnes, Kristol actually bothered to listen to what Bush said -- not just how he said it. And Kristol wasn't encoruaged. "I am depressed," he declared. "I am obviously a supporter of the war, so I don't need to be convinced. But among people who were doubtful or worried, I don't think he made arguments that would convince them. He didn't explain how we are going to win there."

No, he didn't. Just like he didn't really explain why we're there to begin with, or how his war of convenience in Iraq is a meaningful contributor to the war on terrorism.

- Will Tacy

Link this     E-mail this     Print this

 

April 13, 2004

02:20 PM
Profiles in self-deception

'Profiles in Courage' is an important book. Not just because it was written by John F. Kennedy. Not just because it won the Pulitzer Prize. But because it celebrated true statesmanship and the courageous placing of principle above personal profit or advancement.

Which, for anybody opposed to the Bush Administration's war of convenience in Iraq or its disastrous mishandling of the occupation there, makes Irwin M. Stelzer's use of the phrase a tad galling. In a column for The Daily Standard, the conservative pundit bestows that historic mantle on Prime Minister Tony Blair for continuing to support Washington's war and for coming to the U.S. to make his position all the more public. What makes Blair's stance so courageous? Bush's pariah-like standing in the U.K., Stelzer asserts:

George W. Bush is the third rail of British politics, and the prime minister has been shown surveys reporting that British voters view Bush as a greater threat to Britain's safety than bin Laden. Make no mistake about it: The only thing more unpopular in Britain than the war in Iraq is the American president, with Blair a close third when he is seen to embrace the American president, or, as it is put here, when he acts as "Bush's poodle."

The only problem, of course, is that to millions of people around the world -- including a huge number in Great Britain -- Blair's 'courageous' support of Bush looks very much like a case of sympathetic delusion. Steltzer may still stitch together a promise from the tattered neocon vision of Iraq ("Win in Iraq, establish a stable, self-governing and prosperous nation where once one of the world's most sadistic dictators held power, and all the charges made by bin Laden against the West are disproved"), but that think-tank future simply won't square with Iraq's deadly present. As Paul Krugman noted in his New York Times column, "Mr. Bush and his inner circle seem more divorced from reality than ever." And Blair has remained in lock-step with Bush during that forced march into fantasy.

Such willing self-delusion might be courageous, but it's a kind of courage we can do without.

- Will Tacy

Link this     E-mail this     Print this

 

1:05 PM
The Pentagon's predictable problem

Soldiers who disobey orders or violate standards of conduct can be court-martialed and incarcerated; their supervisors can be reassigned or forced to retire. Private companies, by contrast, are able to operate ... with little accountability to civilian or military authorities.

From "Soldiers of Good Fortune," by Barry Yeoman, in the May/June 2003 issue of Mother Jones.

"How well are [private military companies] performing? We honestly don't know, thanks to a lack of accountability and bad accounting. There's a lot of attention on the question of whether soldiers are getting proper support of the kind they got in the past. Soldiers are still eating MREs [meals ready to eat] months after the president declared victory."

Peter Singer, of the Brookings Institution, quoted in ""The Pentagon's Private Corps," by me, in Motherjones.com, October 22, 2003.

And from today's Los Angeles Times:

Halliburton Co. has suspended some convoys delivering supplies to the military in Iraq due to escalating violence, U.S. Army and company officials said Monday, raising the danger of shortfalls in food, fuel and water supplies if the situation continues. ...

Halliburton's inability to move about the country offers evidence of how the rapidly declining security situation in Iraq — and the military's reliance on private contractors to supply troops and rebuild the country — could hurt the U.S. mission.

- Julian Brookes

Link this     E-mail this     Print this

 

12:05 PM
Dick in Asia

Vice President Dick Cheney wrapped up his trip to Japan by praising Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and the Tokyo government's refusal to bow to the demands of Iraqi militants who have kidnapped three Japanese civilians. Which, of course, is what Cheney is expected to do. But a visit from the veep is arguably the last thing Koizumi really needs right now.

Like just about every other leader in the 'coalition of the willing,' the Japanese premier is facing growing domestic pressure to pull his country's troops out of Iraq. And the presence of Washington's super-hawk is only fuel for that opposition fire. The liberal Asahi Shimbun stops just short of calling for the withdrawal of Japanese troops, but the paper's editors pull no punches in blaming Washington for the current mess.

We are forced to conclude that the situation in Iraq has deteriorated far beyond anything we ever predicted.

U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is still quite upbeat about the current situation, which he says is caused by ``a mixture of a small number of terrorists, a small number of militias, coupled with some demonstrations and some lawlessness.'' Yet things are not that clear-cut, and being anti-American surely doesn't necessarily mean one is a terrorist.

Moderate Shiites who welcomed the ousting of Saddam Hussein despise the current occupation rule and call it an ``invasion.''

Anti-American sentiment continues to spread because the Americans are trying to stamp out the resistance by force.

The editors are talking, of course, about anti-American sentiment in Iraq. But they might be talking about similar feelings in their own country. Or in just about every other corner of the globe. Even the war party pundits are being forced to notice that Washington has fewer and fewer friends in the world these days (while contending fatuously that we can do without).

At the very least, the White House must recognize that millions of people around the globe will never support its war of convenience in Iraq or its haphazard, ill-planned, and deadly occupation. And they must admit that, as Naomi Klein points out in her recent column for The Guardian, the U.S. has succeeded only in uniting Iraq's warring factions in opposition to the occupation. But Rumsfeld's head-in-the-sand pronouncements leave no room for such politically uncomfortable realities.

- Will Tacy

Link this     E-mail this     Print this

 

April 12, 2004

5:06 PM
Kerry, Osama's candidate?

In the days after the Spanish election, a distressingly myopic and tragically underinformed cadre of American pundits declared the vote a victory for al Qaeda and Islamic terrorists everywhere. Now, we are starting to hear the pre-echoes of what could be a similar spin come November, should John Kerry win. Only, this time, the right-wing bloviators don't have ignorance to hide behind, just bald partisanship.

No, the war president's lap-dog pundits aren't actually stupid enough to say that Osama bin Ladin wants Kerry to win. But they're coming astonishingly close. Bill O'Reilly, the man who couldn't take Teri Gross' version of hard ball, argues that "the terrorists know Bush is up for reelection and, interestingly, it seems like they want W out." On what does he base that insight? His extensive survey of terrorist opinion? His sources deep within extremist groups? He doesn't say. But he does conclude with the following pronouncement: "if the terrorists remain the aggressors, say hello to First Lady Teresa Heinz Kerry."

Oh, how deft of Bill, weaving Kerry's wife -- the environment-minded activist Bush lovers are learning to hate -- into his little missive. But it won't answer.

- Will Tacy

Link this     E-mail this     Print this

 

4:43 PM
The Saudi angle

Everybody, it seems, has ideas about what questions the 9/11 inquiry commission should be asking (Ethan Wallison, in a predictably partisan piece for National Review, even has some ideas about who should be doing the answering). But whereas Wallison's advice is transparent and silly, the pointers offered in a Boston Globe op-ed by Craig Unger are both intelligent and important. Unger, the author of 'House of Bush, House of Saud,' argues that the commission will have an opportunity this week to delve into a clear and obvious intelligence failure -- if they have the fortitude to do so.

This time the stars will be Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI director Robert S. Mueller III, among others. When they testify—especially Mueller—we will see whether or not the commission has the stomach to address what may be the single most egregious security lapse related to the attacks: the evacuation of approximately 140 Saudis just two days after 9/11.

This episode raises particularly sensitive questions for the administration. Never before in history has a president of the United States had such a close relationship with another foreign power as President Bush and his father have had with the Saudi royal family, the House of Saud. I have traced more than $1.4 billion in investments and contracts that went from the House of Saud over the past 20 years to companies in which the Bushes and their allies have had prominent positions—Harken Energy, Halliburton and the Carlyle Group among them. Is it possible that President Bush himself played a role in authorizing the evacuation of the Saudis after 9/11? What did he know and when did he know it?

- Will Tacy

Link this     E-mail this     Print this

 

2:35 PM
Bush on the slide

After a week of bad news for George W. Bush ... more bad news. The latest Newsweek poll has Kerry leading Bush in a two-way matchup by seven points (50 percent to 43 percent). Even with Nader in the mix, Kerry is up four points. Bush's numbers are down on Iraq and the economy, and his favorability rating, at 48 percent, is lower than it's ever been, showing that the recent good economic news is not sinking in, and that the violence in Iraq is taking a toll on the administration at home.

- Julian Brookes

Link this     E-mail this     Print this