Week of: |
4:12 PM
Putin should listen to Gorby and Boris
It's no secret that the last leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, and Russia's first president, Boris Yeltsin, despise one another. But one thing they agree on is that President Vladimir Putin's most recent power grab threatens to undermine the democratic institutions and freedoms which both men rightly account their greatest contributions to Russia.
Putin wants to scrap the first-past-the-post system under which half of Duma's members are currently contested. If the "reform" takes effect, it will mean that all of the seats would be contested via party lists. Given Russia's weak party system, this translates into a huge advantage for Kremlin-friendly parties. Putin also wants the power to draw up short-lists from which regional parliaments will be forced to choose the nation's governors. This will undercut the power of the legislatures, which currently elect the governors, by placing limits on their selection and insure that inconvenient individuals who would challenge Moscow won't make the cut. As Yeltsin told Moscow News:
"We will not give up on the letter of the law, and most importantly, the spirit of the Constitution our country voted for at the public referendum in 1993. If only because the stifling of freedom and the curtailing of democratic rights is a victory for the terrorists. Only a democratic country can successfully resist terrorism and count on standing shoulder to shoulder with all of the world's civilized countries."
Gorbachev likewise criticized Putin for his continued refusal to acknowledge the link between the terrorist attack in Beslan and Russia's policies in Chechnya, and accused the president of using "the war on terror" to increase his powers:
"I'm certain that today, the actions of the government must rely on society. How can you stamp out corruption without a normal parliament or free press? Without control on the part of society? But there is no movement in this direction. The reverse is happening. Under the motto of war on terror, there are suggestions of sharply limiting democratic freedoms; citizens are stripped of the opportunity to directly express their attitude toward the government by giving up elections in single-seat constituencies. This comes now, when we already have mostly government-sponsored pet parties."
Putin would do well to listen to the wise advice of his predecessors.
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3:30 PM
Where are all the women candidates?
With all the attention lavished on those who are running for office in 2004, it's worth stopping to think about those who aren't -- namely, women. Although the Center for American Women and Politics notes that there are a record number of female candidates for the House this year (138 -- surpassing the previous record of 124), the numbers are still fairly paltry. A grand total of 3 women are running for governor's office. Etc.
Barry Deutsch has some cogent thoughts on why the U.S. government doesn't look more like America. First, he dismisses the "sexist voter" theory -- unlike in the 1980s, when voters preferred male candidates, women candidates have just as good a choice nowadays of winning an election.
The problem, Deutsch claims, is that women very rarely get on the ballot in the first place -- party elites and chairmen prefer to back male candidates. A 1998 study by David Niven confirmed some of this (64 percent of female officeholders, for instance, claimed that they had been discouraged to run by party leaders.) As Deutsch says, "To blame the lack of women in congress on voters - who are basically nonsexist in making their choices - is ridiculous. Voters can't vote for people who aren't on the ballot."
That's not the only factor, of course. Candidates for office tend to be very wealthy, and only 14 percent of women have incomes over $75,000. Plus, elections tend to favor incumbents, so, as Deutsch says, "Even if you assume that sexism doesn't exist anymore (an assumption not supported by evidence), past sexism will still have a very strong impact on who is in office." I imagine many of the same factors explain the lack of minority candidates, too. It's a reminder -- as if Palm Beach butterfly ballots didn't remind us enough -- that our democracy still has a ways to go before it becomes "representative."
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2:26 PM
George Bush: Closet Socialist?
Although I'm not about to endorse his libertarian approach to health care, economist Tyler Cowen does make a good point about Bush's "Health Savings Accounts" (HSAs):
Finally let us say that HSAs were soon to be much more common. What would the macro effects be on health care costs? I predict the "encourage health care expenditures" effect would swamp the "encourage high deductibles" effect. A $1000 or $2000 deductible is still not very high, especially since most people using the plan will be middle class or above. So aggregate medical costs would rise rather than fall.
The idea behind high-deductible plans -- where people have to pay the first $2000 in medical expenses out of their own pocket, before health insurance kicks in -- is to make people think twice before spending freely on health care. It's a hurdle that's supposed to slow down rising health costs. The problem is that low-income families get screwed and end up avoiding payments for health care they should be paying for. Meanwhile, high-income families, as Cowen says, spend more because, well, they can -- everything after the first $2000 is tax-deductible, if you can save up the money. And that means accelerating health costs -- especially for those who don't have savings accounts.
But then Cowen also makes another, less tenable, point -- that Bush's plan "has the plus of (possibly) deflecting pressures for national health insurance." The thinking, I guess, is that under Bush's plan voters will get used to the joys of private insurance. But as I've written before, the likeliest outcome is that Bush's plan will undermine employer-based coverage, leave people exposed to the worst vices of the market, and create a two-tiered, striated system of coverage. That's not exactly going to instill faith in market-based coverage. In fact, if I were a clever socialist, and I wanted to break down the private insurance system to the point where people started screaming for universal health care, Bush's plan is exactly the sort of system I would devise.
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2:11 PM
USS Cole trial in Yemen wraps up
The trial of six alleged Al Qaida members charged with planning the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole concluded Wednesday in Yemen, with the court's verdict scheduled for Sept. 29.
As the Associated Press reports, five of the men - all Yemenis - appeared in court, while the sixth, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, is in U.S. custody and was tried in absentia. They are charged with belonging to Al Qaida, planning to carry out crimes against the state, resisting authorities and forging documents. Possible sentences range from 15 years in prison to the death penalty.
Once again, other countries are bringing suspected terrorists to trial, while the U.S. has only completed a few preliminary hearings while most of the roughly 580 detainees remain held without charges at Guantanamo Bay.
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1:20 PM
Shaking up is hard to do -- but sometimes necessary
Garance Franke-Ruta of The American Prospect has an in-depth piece on the recent staff shakeup in the Kerry campaign. The upshot? Kerry isn't panicking. (And neither should we.) He just decided to bring in more experience operatives because, well, he wanted to take the campaign in a different direction:
According to Democratic insiders, a number of Kerry's most essential senior staffers advised him against responding to the "Swift"-boat attacks. Kerry's instincts told him to respond. But, according to one insider, Cahill, Cutter, communications research whiz David Ginsberg, and pollster Mark Mellman all advised against responding out of concern for alienating swing voters in battleground states, who, polling data showed, were turned off by negative campaigning. So Kerry sat on his hands until steam started coming out of his ears.
And that's when Kerry finally brought on the A-Team. "This wasn't a coup. It wasn't a group of people who showed up one day and suddenly were in charge," says an observer. "These people showed up at the Kerry campaign and took power because John Kerry wanted them to."
Imagine that! A leader who changes up his staff because he isn't happy with the direction it's taking. Or better, a leader who realizes when things are going badly and decides to change course. It's quite the concept.
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12:42 PM
Killing hate-crimes legislation
In June, enough Senate Republicans joined with Democrats to support an expansion of federal hate-crimes law, voting to add crimes committed on the basis of gender, sexual orientation and disabled status to the existing law. But as the Washington Post reports Friday, the House's Republican leadership has promised to prevent those changes from becoming law.
The Senate included its proposal as part of its defense authorization bill, the Post explains, because the overall bill is one deemed a "must pass" by the House. Republican leadership, however, strongly opposes the measure, arguing the bill punishes thought instead of action (even though, by definition, a crime must be committed for the law to apply). As long as federal hate-crimes legislation exists, it seems only logical to extend it beyond race and religion to include other bias-based crime. But while GOP Sen. John Warner, a supporter of the provisions, plans to work with House leadership to save the measure, Rep. Jerrold Nadler told the Post the legislation is simply "not going to go anywhere."
During his 2000 campaign for the presidency, George Bush drew the ire of the NAACP (among others) for his refusal to extend federal hate-crimes legislation. So it shouldn't be terribly surprising to see the president sitting by quietly as the House tries to kill a measure that drew bipartisan Senate support.
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10:37 AM
For the Chamber of Commerce, the business of government is ... business
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is on a mission to defeat politicians, attorney generals, and judges it deems bad for business, and most of its targets are Democrats. Not that the business-advocacy group is always open about its political activism. Indeed, until this week, Washington state voters had no idea that the Chamber was behind a million dollar negative campaign ad blitz targeting Deborah Senn, a former state insurance commissioner running for attorney general in the Democratic primary. The Chamber of Commerce donated $1.5 million dollars to Voters Education Committee, a 527-group that bought the ads. The Voters Education Committee revealed the Chamber's involvement only after it was pressured to do by Washington's Public Disclosure Commission and only after some TV stations began to pull the ads.
Though the Chamber didn't succeed in defeating Senn, it came close. As Karen Besserman, Senn's spokeswoman told the Wall Street Journal: "We were ahead in the polls by 12 points as recently as three weeks ago, and $1.5 million later it was neck and neck. It was character assassination, and they tried to keep it secret." Senn isn't alone. As Mother Jones Washington correspondent Michael Scherer reported back in 2003, the business lobby's spending on state judicial and attorney general races skyrocketed since the 1990s. Groups like the Chamber of Commerce have been ambitious, resourceful, and very successful. As Scherer writes:
"The stated goal of many of these business groups is not a modest one: to chip away at more than 60 years of legal history, dismantle federal social services, and effectively erase the policies of the Franklin Roosevelt era.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce joined with the Business Roundtable to set up a complex network of front groups that anonymously filtered corporate money into often divisive local television ad campaigns. By 2000, campaign spending on state judicial races had risen to $45.6 million, a 61 percent increase over the previous peak in 1998 and twice as much as 1994. The Chamber claimed victory in 21 of 24 judicial elections it worked on in eight states, as well as 11 attorneys general races."
Of course, the Chamber hasn't forgotten about national legislative races. It's set to spend generously to unseat, among others, Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle in a very close race in South Dakota.
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4:30 PM
Wolfowitz finds a journalist he likes
Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz is no media darling. He has accused Arabic networks of inciting violence against U.S. troops, and U.S. reporters of sitting around in their Iraqi hotel rooms writing up rumors. But today journalists everywhere can rejoice that he's sticking up for the freedom of the press. In a New York Times op-ed, Wolfowitz defended Bambang Harimurti, the chief editor of the Indonesian magazine Tempo, who was sentenced today to one year of jail time for libel. Tempo ran an article arguing that businessman Tomy Winarta, who has ties to the country's military, stood to profit from a renovation contract on a textile market which was destroyed in a fire. The magazine objects to the application of criminal penalties to a defamation case and is appealing the court's ruling. Wolfowitz served as U.S. ambassador to Indonesia in the 1980s and is a friend of Bambang, whose magazine was shutdown in 1994 by the dictatorial Suharto regime. As Wolfowitz writes:
I know him to be a journalist of enormous integrity, someone who takes seriously his responsibility not only to publish the truth but also not to publish falsehoods. He is also a Muslim who has courageously denounced terrorism and extremism on the editorial pages of his magazine.
Bambang's conviction precedes the country's presidential runoff on Monday and as Wolfowitz rightly argues, sets a terrible example for Indonesian democracy:
My concerns about this case extend far beyond my worry about the fate of a friend. I believe that the whole world has a stake in the success of democracy in Indonesia. If this country of almost 240 million, with more Muslims than any other in the world -- indeed, with more than 15 percent of the world's Muslim population -- can demonstrate its capacity to develop democratic institutions, even in the face of economic adversity, it will be a valuable example for the rest of the world.
One of the worst possible ways that power can be abused is to take away the freedom of the press and thereby remove one of the most important mechanisms for ensuring that government respects the rights of its citizens.
For once, it is hard to disagree with Wolfowitz.
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2:44 PM
Priorities for intelligence reform
As the debate over intelligence reform rages on in Congress, it's worth noting that the single biggest intelligence issue -- stopping the proliferation of WMDs -- has often been lost in the shuffle. To that end, it's heartening to see that Senators Joseph Lieberman and Susan Collins want to give the intelligence agencies more control over reconnaissance and satellite imagery:
The national intelligence director would control the budgets of the CIA, the National Security Agency, the Homeland Security Department's intelligence directorate, the FBI's intelligence arm, the National Reconnaissance Office and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. The Pentagon would retain control over the Defense Intelligence Agency. Collins and Lieberman said commanders and troops in the field would suffer no interference in their access to timely intelligence.
A bit of background here: In his most recent proposal for intelligence reform, President Bush wanted to keep technical agencies like the NRO under Pentagon control. The problem here is that the Pentagon simply isn't very good at counter-proliferation. In a little-publicized Senate hearing earlier this year, Ashton Carter, an assistant secretary of defense under President Clinton, described how the Defense Department has done an awful job of coordinating its technical capacities to track weapons of mass destruction. A national intelligence director would likely do better, but he or she would need control over the surveillance agencies to do the job right.
This may seem like a minor quibble, but it isn't. Practically speaking, conventional terrorism -- which was the main focus of the 9/11 report -- isn't nearly as big a deal as WMDs. If American suffered another terrorist attack on the scale of September 11, it would be tragic and horrible, but the country would survive more or less intact. But a large-scale chemical or especially nuclear attack on a major American city would be devastating in a way that nothing else could be. Intelligence reform needs to focus on this priority. Kudos to Lieberman and Collins for taking the first step. Now if we can just get the president to take non-proliferation seriously...
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1:38 PM
More back-seat campaigning
Even though the Bush convention bounce has effectively vanished, we can still engage in a little back-seat strategizing for John Kerry, can't we? Noam Scheiber has a few engaging posts today on why Kerry should attack Bush on a policy level, rather than on a character level. After all, Scheiber says, most voters have made up their minds about Bush's character. But if they start seeing that the president's policies are garbage, then the character question will take care of itself! In which case, Kerry should just start hammering home rising Medicare premiums and a botched-up Iraq occupation.
But this might only be part of what Kerry needs to do. Mark Schmitt has a brilliant essay on the importance of connecting policies with character. It's worth blockquoting a good chunk of it:
As much of a liberal policy wonk as I am, I don't believe that issues should be the basis on which people base their votes. To rank character very high is not just a tactical necessity for candidates, it's perfectly legitimate for voters... [I]n a basically affluent and tranquil society -- despite income inequality, despite 45 million uninsured, despite all that -- the problems we don't know about are still a bigger deal than the ones we do. To use Donald Rumsfeld's great taxonomy, the "unknown unkowns" are more worrisome than the "known unkowns" or the "known knowns." ...
If I were running the issues department of the Kerry campaign, or any campaign, the sign above my desk would not be James Carville's "It's the Economy Stupid": my sign would say, "It's not what you say about the issues, it's what the issues say about you." That is, as a candidate, you must choose to emphasize issues not because they poll well or are objectively our biggest problems, but because they best show the kind of person you are, and not just how you would deal with that particular issue, but others yet to rear their heads.
The best illustration of that is John McCain. The most admired political figure achieved his status in large part by his crusade for campaign finance reform. I've seen all the polls on this for seven or eight years, and "campaign finance reform," as an issue, is of interest to at most 5% of the public... And yet, for McCain, campaign finance reform is the perfect issue. It's tells a story about his independence, and his persistence, and it gives him a populist message without having to embrace more liberal economic policies.
As someone who a) thinks John Kerry has a bunch of great ideas, and b) thinks most of them will go down the drain when he actually comes to office, I have to agree. Campaign issues in themselves aren't the most important thing in the world. In defense of wonkishness, though, issues do show whether a candidate is serious about the problems facing this country (as Kerry seems to be) or just plain oblivious.
Unfortunately, Kerry seems to have trouble explaining this connection -- for both himself and his opponent. Witness Kerry's latest stump speeches. He's either attacking Bush's policies ("He's misled America about... what is happening on the ground in Iraq") or attacking Bush's character ("His is the excuse presidency"), but never wrapping both into one grand narrative. This isn't really the end of the world, and the polls show that Kerry's doing just fine, but it might explain why his attacks haven't as gained much traction as Bush's "flip-flop" theme.
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11:53 AM
Will Turkey go to war in Iraq?
Jim Krane's AP dispatch -- on the goings-on in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk -- offers evidence of a gathering storm in Kurdish territories. According to Krane, Kurds are emigrating en masse to the oil-rich Kirkuk so as to form an ethnic majority there. All told, some 72,000 Kurds have entered the city, while 50,000 Arabs have fled. (In the 1970s and '80s, Saddam Hussein expelled some quarter of a million Kurds from Kirkuk, and repopulated the city with ethnic Arabs.) As Juan Cole notes, social tensions are already rising:
Turkmen and Arabs are afraid that the Kurds are using this demographic movement to engorge Kirkuk and ensure that it is added to the Kurdish super-province they are planning, which in turn would be at least semi-autonomous from Baghdad.
Indeed, read the Kurdish media and it quickly becomes clear that Kurds are pretty well committed to conquest. Why is this a problem? Pundits far and wide have speculated that if the Kurdish territories won serious autonomy, Turkey would attack. For the most part, these fears are overblown: As the recent Chatham House report argues, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan badly wants to join the EU, and is reluctant to dash his chances by invading Iraq. But (and this is a big 'but') if the Kurds try to seize Kirkuk -- which has 6 percent of the world's oil reserves -- and violate the rights of ethnic Turkmen there, then Ankara may decide to step in. (And this doesn't even broach the possibility that Arab Iraqis in the South could well go to war over Kirkuk, too.)
In recent days, Kurds and Turkmen have been clashing in the northern, insurgent-controlled city of Tall Afar. The problem here is that the U.S. has reportedly integrated units of the Kurdish peshmerga into the Iraqi national guard -- primarily because the Kurds are the only competent fighters willing to side with the Americans. But by using Kurdish troops for security in Tall Afar -- as they did in Fallujah -- the U.S. risks provoking ethnic tensions within Iraq, and bringing a showdown with Turkey closer to reality. Erdogan has already warned that it would halt all cooperation with the U.S. if the Tall Afar offensive continues. Seems like as good a time as any to wish we had never alienated our Turkish allies in the first place.
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11:49 AM
Afghanistan's elections -- hold on tight
With Afghanistan scheduled to finally hold its oft-delayed national elections on Oct. 9 -- and with more than 900 people killed in political violence so far this year -- the U.S. is planning to increase its troop presence to help with pre-election security.
According to the Associated Press, the military plans to send "several hundred" troops to join the coalition troops already stationed in Afghanistan, sometime in the next few weeks.
Meanwhile, a regrouped Taliban has vowed to disrupt the elections by attacking any of the 18 candidates running for president. On Thursday, a rocket attack nearly hit a school where interim President Hamid Karzai was about to give a speech. Taliban spokesman Abdul Latif Hakimi said the former regime takes credit for the attack and told AFP more are planned:
"All presidential candidates are our top targets now because they are running for the polls of a U.S.-made election -- an election which will create a government in the interest of the Americans. We claim the responsibility for the rocket attack today in Paktia aimed at President Karzai but he was lucky, the rocket missed him."
While George Bush lists the overthrow of the Taliban among his administration's top achievements, the remnants of that government continue to threaten havoc three years later. A few hundred extra troops might help with temporary policing, but are no substitute for the resources prematurely diverted to Iraq.
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10:09 AM
"Civilians and insurgents are often impossible to tell apart"
One of the oft-cited lines on Iraq is that the insurgents who control the Sunni cities in Anbar Province don't really enjoy the support of the general population. In other words, if we could only separate out the enemies from the "peaceful Iraqi people", we could get on our way with elections and freedom and all that good stuff. It's a nice thought, but this military press conference -- discussing the U.S. attacks on Iraqi civilians a few days ago -- lays out the obvious difficulties:
"Your soldiers do not have any discipline," Ms. Rubaie said. "Why don't you go out of the cities, and face the terrorists somewhere else?"
General Chiarelli and Colonel McConville addressed those questions in some detail, if not to the satisfaction of everyone present. By so doing, they spelled out the challenges faced by American soldiers in Iraq as they try to carry on in densely populated areas where civilians and insurgents are often impossible to tell apart. [Emph. added]
Impossible to tell apart? Does this mean that, for all intents and purposes, any Sunni civilian can be an insurgent? Because if that's the case, and we have to kill every last woman and child in Fallujah in order to quell the rebellion and save the city, then we've already lost. Or -- is Gen. Chiarelli trying to say that U.S. soldiers are literally unable to tell the difference between friend and foe? If that's the case, it might be time to re-evaluate our general strategy before we end up alienating the entire population.
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9:21 AM
Meet the ethically-challenged House Republicans
House Speaker Dennis Hastert, who, ironically, got his job in 1998 as a "uniter" candidate, has gradually become one of the most outspoken Republican partisans. That attack-dog role has now resulted in a complaint to the House ethics committee from anti-Bush billionaire George Soros, who wants an investigation of recent Hastert comments.
In a late August interview on Fox News (naturally), the speaker said this:
"I don't know where George Soros gets his money. I don't know where -- if it comes from overseas or from drug groups or where it comes from."
Soros, naturally, was outraged. Hastert responded that his words were somehow taken out of context but was referring to groups Soros was giving money to. But as Soros wrote in his letter to the ethics committee:
"This kind of insinuation -- that a private United States citizen was in league with drug cartels and may be receiving funds derived from criminal activity -- has no place in public discourse."
Of course, Hastert wouldn't be the first of the current House leadership to be the subject of an ethics complaint. Next week, the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct is expected to discuss the three-part complaint pending against Majority Leader Tom DeLay. The allegations against DeLay include making legislative quid-pro-quos with campaign donors, using his congressional staff to track down Texas Democrats, and illegally distributing corporate money to legislative candidates.
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4:20 PM
K Street is betting on the GOP
As The Hill reports today, retiring House Democrats aren't drawing a lot of demand among K Street lobbyists. That's not good news for the Dems:
"The business community's apparent preference for retiring House Republicans is stoking talk on Capitol Hill that the 'K Street Project' is alive and well, even after the year's plum lobbying job, the top slot at the Motion Picture Association of America, went to former Clinton Cabinet member Dan Glickman."But the lack of open arms for midlevel Democratic lawmakers is also one indication, however imprecise, that the donor community on K Street does not believe that Democrats will retake the House this year."
The paper reports that Democrats Cal Dooley, Jim Turner and William Lipinski have been unable to secure private-sector offers. Meanwhile, Republican Jennifer Dunn has been contacted by more than a dozen firms and Billy Tauzin has several lucrative offers, while Scott McInnis and Jim Greenwood have already accepted high-end lobbying jobs.
Democrats point out that their party is already better-represented on K Street, so it would take more GOP hires to balance the scale. But one Democratic congressional aide told The Hill that the trend toward Republicans could backfire:
"With the presidency, Senate and House up for grabs this year, organizations that discriminate against Democrats are taking a major risk that they very well could come to regret. There are many Democrats who are proven to be very pro-business. The business community should be seeking them out and welcoming them so that they demonstrate that they are interested in working with congressional Democrats."
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2:06 PM
Schwarzenegger goes off message
By giving him a high-profile speaking spot at the Republican National Convention and having him make campaign-trail appearances, the Bush campaign calculated it could ride on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's appeal to moderates. But Schwarzenegger's recent actions further underscore how strongly his views on social policy clash with the president's.
On Tuesday, one day after George Bush let the assault-weapons ban expire, Schwarzenegger signed a bill that makes California the first state to ban 50-caliber sniper rifles.The ban on such rifles, which can penetrate armor and theoretically shoot down airplanes, was just the start.
On Wednesday, Schwarzenegger signed a bill requiring insurance companies to offer same-sex partners the same benefits as married couples. As Shannon Minter of the National Center for Lesbian Rights told The Advocate:
"There are still many businesses all across the state that do not provide any health insurance benefits to domestic partners, much less equal ones. This bill cuts straight to the source and makes it unlawful for insurers to issue any insurance policies that do not provide equal coverage to domestic partners and spouses."
Again, Schwarzenegger's actions won't be well received by the Bush administration, whose 2004 party platform took a strong stance against both gay marriage and civil-union arrangements.
Bush obviously hopes some of Schwarzenegger's support among moderates will rub off on him. What he doesn't get is that the governor's popularity owes a lot to his willingness to legislate from the center on social issues instead of using them to create political wedges.
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12:27 PM
The price to pay for Bush's blind eye to Russia
Even the neoconservatives are getting antsy about Bush's quiescence towards Russia. Robert Kagan has some especially harsh words for Bush's "pro-democracy agenda":
Does President Bush care about the fate of democracy in Russia? Ever since Sept. 11 he has proclaimed a grand strategy of promoting democracy worldwide. He has rightly made this his goal in Iraq, and despite the faulty performance of his Pentagon advisers, it remains his primary objective. ...
Throughout the past couple of years, however, the Bush administration has turned a blind eye to anti-democratic trends in Russia. Secretary of State Colin Powell made a strong statement against Putin's treatment of opponents last spring, and he expressed concerns about Putin's actions yesterday. But the White House has been relatively quiet. And the president's voice, the only one that really matters, has not yet been heard.
If you can ignore the delusions about democracy in Iraq (Pentagon advisers are to blame, are they?), Kagan has a point. Bush's blind eye towards Putin just doesn't make any sense -- strategic or otherwise. Over at the American Prospect, Matthew Yglesias suggests that Bush doesn't really care all that much about spreading democracy, or is too lazy to do anything about it.
That sort of hypocrisy would be excusable if we got some strategic benefit from letting Putin run wild and centralize authority. But by all accounts we don't. The Chechnya conflict only aggravates Muslims around the world, and while al Qaeda didn't start the conflict, they are certainly happy to blame America for the continuing violence. In Imperial Hubris, Michael Schuerer cites "U.S. support for Russia, India and China against their Muslim militants" as one of Osama bin Laden's most effective rallying cries. Now, I'm not suggesting we should start challenging Putin because that's what the terrorists want, but our cozy friendship with Russia doesn't seem to make us any safer.
Of course, putting pressure on Putin and trying to resolve the Chechnya crisis won't make groups like al Qaeda go away. Osama bin Laden, after all, blames the U.S. for the massacre of Muslims in Bosnia during the 1990s, when we were in fact doing quite a bit to stop those massacres. Still, the point of trying to resolve these sorts of situations is to separate out those who, like al Qaeda, will attack the U.S. no matter what, and those who will join Osama bin Laden's global jihad because of legitimate grievances.
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11:11 AM
To ID or not to ID (voters)?
If New Mexico's attorney general and secretary of state get their way, some first-time voters won't have to show identification before voting on Election Day. And while the officials' reasoning is sound, the controversy it has kicked up shows why a better system is needed.
As the Albequerque Journal reports, Secretary of State Rebecca Vigil-Garon has asked the state's supreme court to overturn the decision of a county clerk, who wants new voters who didn't register in person to submit ID before voting. Vigil-Garon and the attorney general's office argue a county can't make its own rules when the state as a whole doesn't require identification. As three assistant attorneys general wrote in the filing:
"Counties are not free to follow their own lead regardless of inconsistency with the secretary of state or their neighbors. Citizens should be able to know with certainty statewide what the requirements for voting are."
Opponents of the identification requirement also argue it can disenfranchise some voters, while supporters say it can prevent voter fraud -- both valid points. Certainly, all counties in the state should follow the same rule, but a system should be put in place to defend against fraud. In what's expected to be a close election, such a safeguard could determine who's running the country come January.
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10:40 AM
Bush makes the OED of quotations -- and not for a gaffe!
George W. Bush freely admits to his difficulties with the English language; and how could he not, given the frequency and quality -- if that's the right word -- of his verbal slip-ups. Consider: a recent bashing of trial lawyers went awry when Bush opined that because of frivolous lawsuits, "too many OB/GYN's aren't able to practice their love with women all across the country."
But his gaffes haven't stopped Bush from earning a place in this year's Oxford English Dictionary of Quotations. The phrase that earned Bush the top honor was "an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of this world" -- his infamous reference to Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. As Elizabeth Knowles, the dictionary's editor explained to Reuters: "You look at the quotation, not at their linguistic dexterity." Bill Clinton also made the dictionary -- for his musings about the 2000 election fiasco in Florida:"The American people have spoken -- but it's going to take a little time to determine what they said."
Democrats will be hoping that Bush's electoral fortunes will echo the words of another of this year's entries, quiz host Anne Robinson's "You are the weakest link ... Goodbye."
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5:24 PM
Preparing for a Florida 2000 replay
In the post-soft-money age, how do candidates raise money for a recount? Don't worry if you don't know; John Kerry doesn't know either. His his campaign has asked the FEC to explain how to raise money in the event of a Florida 2000 replay.
In that election, both Al Gore and George Bush were allowed to raise unlimited contributions from individuals (but not corporations or unions) to help pay their recount expenses. Not surprisingly, Bush raised $14 million to Gore's $3.2 million. But that was before the McCain-Feingold bill became the law of the land, and it's probably a wise move by Kerry to find out what rules he'll be operating under in case of another Florida.
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2:44 PM
Netanyahu obstructing Gaza withdrawal
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is making it clear that he means what he says when it comes to dismantling Jewish settlements and withdrawing troops from the Gaza Strip and the northern part of the West Bank. On Tuesday, Sharon's security cabinet, in a 9-1 vote, approved a $670 million compensation package for the settlers -- about $200,000 to $500,000 per family. Sharon's Likud Party rival, Finance Minister (and former PM) Benjamin Netanyahu, voted for the compensation package, but is trying to sabotage Sharon's disengagement plan. Netanyahu's is doing so by calling for a national referendum on the matter -- something that Sharon should have done this summer. Instead, Sharon left the decision to the Likud rank-and-file, which overwhelmingly voted against it. Sharon, of course, declared the party's decision non-binding, pressed on with the plan, and is confident that the Knesset will back it.
Netanyahu claims that a national "referendum will moderate the fury and remove the objections heard from some quarters about the legitimacy of this program." But the real reason Netanyahu has all of the sudden become a referendum fan is because it is the perfect stalling tactic. It would take 90 days to organize the referendum and there are plenty of obstacles standing in its way. As Labor Party leader Shimon Peres told the Jerusalem Post:
"This will only cause problems; people will say Arabs shouldn't take part, and that will mobilize the world against us. Others will say a special majority is needed, and that will divide the Knesset. Then they will say the referendum is over the June 6 cabinet decision, but according to that decision there is no evacuation until March -- we don't need to make a mockery of the Knesset."
Sharon's timetable calls for the complete withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and four West Bank settlements by the end of 2005. If carried out, the withdrawal may well get the Israelis and Palestinians back to the negotiating table to work out a final settlement to the conflict. Netanyahu wants to have his cake and eat it too -- publicly supporting the disengagement plan while undermining it by calling for a referendum. It would be a shame if his stalling tactic succeeds.
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1:06 PM
Missile defense tests postponed for technical (read: political) reasons
It's well known by now that the National Missile Defense shield was pushed ahead before tests confirmed if it even works. So it shouldn't be a surprise that the system's planned late-September tests have been postponed until after the November election.
The Pentagon cited technical considerations for the delay, which means the system will go into operation within the next few months despite no flight tests in more than two years (and those tests were hardly encouraging). But Sen. Jack Reed, one of the plans more vocal critics, seeds another element to the timing:
"This has been a program so fraught with political calculation, rather than strategic and scientific thought, that I would assume there's some political aspect to the delay."
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11:27 AM
How the Dems should pitch health care reform
Judging from the latest reports, Bush's is trotting out the old line that Kerry's health plan would amount to a "government takeover of healthcare." The immediate and most obvious retort here is, "No it wouldn't." Because it wouldn't. All Kerry wants to do is expand coverage for low-income families -- something Bush also wants to do, only less effectively -- and subsidize catastrophic costs over $50,000. Nationalizing the means of production this isn't.
But this also strikes me as a losing argument for Kerry. True, he doesn't want to take over healthcare, but he still wants a greater government role, and it's hard to get around that. The best way to frame this debate, then, is to note that Kerry simply wants to make the private insurance system work more efficiently. The short version goes like this: Putting free-market pressure on HMOs and insurance companies forces them to keep costs down, but, alas, it also gives them incentive to drop the riskiest patients. By covering the most expensive medical bills, Kerry would eliminate adverse selection while maintaining the cost-reducing aspects of the free market. It's like capitalism, only better.
As a general rule, Democrats would do well to start framing debates along these lines. Eliot Spitzer and Paul Celli, Jr. made a similar argument in The New Republic a few months ago. The party could achieve much more -- and gain far more support -- by saying that they're trying to improve the market system, rather than destroy it. It worked for Franklin Roosevelt; there's no reason it can't work for John Kerry.
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11:26 AM
Tony Blair gets it on global warming
While George Bush continues to do nothing on the issue of climate change, it appears Tony Blair is coming around to its dangers.
Blair is scheduled to give a major address on the subject later today and, according to the BBC, the British prime minister was shocked by top scientists' analysis of the pace of global warming:
"This is a serious issue and it is going to get worse... because every year we are piling more green house gases in to the atmosphere..."There are whole communities that are going to be affected. The time to act is now."
To that end, Blair is expected to announce plans to fight aviation pollution and develop solar technologies. While the BBC found some environmentalists worried that Blair's plans would lack specifics, his willingness to work on the issue (the UK previously announced a plan to cut greenhouse gases dramatically by 2050) is a welcome contrast from his friend across the pond.
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10:31 AM
Colorado could be the next Florida
We noted yesterday that Colorado may split up its electoral votes in the 2004 election, depending on whether or not Coloradans vote on Amendment 36. As I mentioned a while back, splitting up electoral votes isn't a good deal more representative than the system we have now. Richard Hasen, meanwhile, shares a few legal concerns of his own:
We can start with the simplest way that things can go wrong: The vote on Amendment 36 could be very close, and there might need to be a recount of votes, throwing the entire national election into dispute ...
The most interesting and trickiest legal question has to do with Article II of the Constitution, which allows each state Legislature to set the rules under which electors are chosen and allocated. When the U.S. Supreme Court was considering the 2000 Florida controversy, supporters of Bush argued that the Florida Supreme Court, in extending the deadline for Al Gore to contest the election and later by ordering a recount, had violated Article II. The argument was that the court had usurped the Legislature's power.
To Hasen's first point, we can only note that the 2000 recount wasn't actually a crisis until the media made it so. Remember the copies of Newsweek with a ripped Constitution on the cover and the word "CHAOS" blaring across the page? Or Cokie Roberts saying that we needed to count the votes as quickly as possible so that all the poor frantic citizens could continue to have faith in the system? No doubt we'd be treated to the same frenzy this time around, but there's no real need for it -- if it takes a few extra weeks to count chads and whatnot, I'm sure most Americans will be just fine.
As for Hasen's last concern, well, note that the Supreme Court could annul or uphold Amendment 36 depending on how they wanted to decide the election. And that would be chaos.
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4:28 PM
The importance of knowing what you're up against
In the Washington Post today, Doug Farah and John Mintz take a comprehensive look at the Muslim Brotherhood, a secret Muslim organization with links to al Qaeda. Farah has noted elsewhere that the 9/11 Commission completely glossed over the Brotherhood's role in the financing of al Qaeda. These sorts of omissions mean little to those of us who don't follow such things, but to a government like ours that has had trouble shutting down terrorist financial networks, it's pretty crucial to get these things right.
Two other points about the organization bear mentioning. The Iraqi Islamic Party (IIP) in Iraq likely maintains informal ties to the group, having started as an offshoot of the Brotherhood (although IIP leader Muhsin Abdul Hamid has denied any connection). The IIP is the only major Sunni party in Iraq right now, and the only viable option for Sunni representation, even though it is not actually represented in the interim government. If, as Farah and Mintz report, the U.S. government is trying to engage moderate members and subgroups of the Brotherhood, the IIP would be a good place to start. As yet, Sunnis have no real outlet for political participation in Iraq, and the U.S. has thus far done everything it possibly can to marginalize them. It's not the best way to curry favor with large, shadowy Sunni groups.
The second point, and an underreported one at that, is that Hassan al-Turabi is well-known as one of the more radical leaders of the Brotherhood. Who is Hassan al-Turabi? Why, a major backer of the Darfur rebels in the Sudan. While head of the country in the 1990s, Turabi gained notoriety for hosting and befriending Osama bin Laden. (Turabi was later ousted by current Sudanese president Omar Bashir, which may have indirectly led to the current rebellion in Darfur.) So while calls to "do something" in the Sudan are certainly noble, it's worth taking a look at who, exactly, we're backing and what we hope to achieve there.
The larger point in all this -- and one reason why the Post article deserves close attention -- is that the "war on terror" quite obviously involves dealing with a number of disparate groups that are connected in shadowy and complex ways. Without a larger sense of exactly who we're dealing with, and how our policies in different regions fit together, there's very little chance we're going to get anything accomplished. And that's precisely why President Bush's vague talk about "resolve" and inattention to detail simply won't cut it.
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3:51 PM
Pete Coors stumbles through a debate; buy that man a beer!
As George Bush works on ways to debate as little as possible, the equally gaffe-prone Pete Coors completed the first of ten debates Saturday in his Colorado Senate race against Ken Salazar.
According to press reports, Coors got the evening's biggest laughs - unintentionally, of course. While parroting the Bush theme of too many trial lawyers in government (like Bush, neglecting to mention the large number of GOP lawyers-turned-congressmen), the ultra-rich brewery heir said, "We need a few more people from Main Street, people like you and me." As the Rocky Mountain News reports:
"The laughter at the expense of the multimillionaire was long and loud, and the remark served to set up Salazar's 'you and I come from different worlds' line, and his by-now familiar history of growing up on a San Luis Valley ranch without electricity or a telephone."
Otherwise, Coors revived his primary campaign tactic of veering between Limbaugh-esque attacks on liberals (a "sensitive" war on terror, "appeasement," "trial lawyers") and agreeing with his opponent on fiscal policy rather than articulating specific alternate plans.
One lesson the political rookie hasn't learned from his close and bitter primary against former Congressman Bob Schaffer is to do his homework on the issues before a debate. After drawing boos with his suggestion that George Bush didn't want to go to war in Iraq but had to in order to fight terrorism, the brewer was asked about his views on the Sept. 11 Commission report. The "tough-on-terror" Coors admitted he hasn't yet read it: "I'm in the process. It's in my hotel room."
With his immense fortune and a voting population in which Republicans outnumber Democrats, Coors will likely poll strongly. But with nine more debates to go, the popular Attorney General Salazar should be able to make his case effectively and further expose Coors as the novice he is. His name recognition and wealth helped him defeat the more qualified Schaffer, but Salazar has an excellent chance to switch that seat over to the Democratic column.
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2:50 PM
Evading Seymour Hersh
Will Seymour Hersh's new book about Abu Ghraib cause shockwaves in Washington? Who knows, though it's interesting to note that the Pentagon tried to pre-empt the book with a hostile press release. It's also interesting to watch Gen. John P. Abizaid's spokesperson squirm over the allegations:
Mr. Hersh also says that a military officer involved in counterinsurgency operations in Iraq learned of the abuses at Abu Ghraib in November and reported it to two of his superiors, Gen. John P. Abizaid, the regional commander, and his deputy, Lt. Gen. Lance Smith.
"I said there are systematic abuses going on in the prisons," the unidentified officer is quoted as telling Mr. Hersh. "Abizaid didn't say a thing. He looked at me - beyond me, as if to say, 'Move on. I don't want to touch this.' "
But Capt. Hal Pittman, a Central Command spokesman, said in a statement Saturday, "General Abizaid does not recall any officer discussing with him any specific cases of abuse at Abu Ghraib prior to January 2004, nor do any of the officers of the Centcom staff who travel with him."
The highlighted bits say it all. Capt. Pittman completely dodges what Hersh actually reported -- discussing specific cases of abuse and discussing systematic abuses are two very different things. You know you've hit close to home when the non-denials start pouring in.
Speaking of Abu Ghraib, Jackson Diehl has yet another op-ed detailing the buckets of whitewash surrounding the torture investigations. Right now the only hope for an honest, thorough inquiry resides with a few principled Republicans in Congress. Well, that and Seymour Hersh.
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1:39 PM
Trade wars heat up with China
There comes a time in every young president's life when sensible approaches to trade policy must give way to election-year pandering and protectionism. Strangely enough, these times seem to come more often than not for President Bush, who was recently caught cooking up a scheme to limit garment imports from China:
A senior United States trade official strongly suggested that the Bush administration will move in coming weeks to limit imports of Chinese clothing, opening a new front in a simmering trade conflict with the world's most populous country in the final weeks of the presidential campaign.
In an interview Sunday, U.S. Commerce Undersecretary Grant Aldonas said he expected American manufacturing groups to file petitions "as early as next week" seeking limits on an anticipated surge of certain types of clothing from China. He said the administration was prepared to impose restrictions ahead of a rush of Chinese goods expected early next year, following the lifting of quotas that have ruled the global textile trade for three decades.
Aldonas is right -- once the quotas are lifted, China will likely dominate the world textile market. But that doesn't mean crude protectionism is the way to go. For starters, the World Bank has estimated that the trade losers in this case will mostly include non-Asian developing countries. Anyone expecting that the quota lifting will spell the immediate and rapid demise of the U.S. garment industry will be sorely disappointed. (We can also note that the U.S. exports a good deal of fabric and cotton to China; the removal of quotas will clearly help some Americans.)
In the long term, though, the U.S. garment industry will decline -- and this is a fairly irrevocable process. China's textile industry has overwhelming advantages that go well beyond an undervalued currency and government subsidies. Gary Clyde Hufbauer of the International Institute for Economics has estimated that American workers would need to be eleven times as productive to compete with China. Short of closing up our markets completely, no amount of quotas and tariffs will put even a dent in this comparative advantage.
All this is just a long way of saying that the proper response here is to face the inevitable and start preparing the U.S. textile industry for a dramatic shift sooner rather than later. Expanding wage and health insurance for dislocated workers would make for a decent start. John Kerry has advocated something along those lines. But Bush, it seems, would rather say to hell with sound trade policy and focus instead on a few votes in November.
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11:35 AM
However bad things get in Iraq, we'll always have Afghanistan
Perhaps just as significant as the violence in Iraq is the recent rioting in Afghanistan. Demonstrators in Herat raised hell on Sunday after its governor, Ismail Khan, was removed from his post by the central government. More worrisome still is the fact that both the police and international forces couldn't even contain the riots:
The destruction in the protests on Sunday was the worst to occur in Afghanistan since Mr. Karzai took power as head of an interim administration more than two and a half years ago. The national police and army were unable to contain the demonstration or stop the looting."
Among the offices looted and burned were those of the United Nations refugee agency, the World Health Authority and the International Office of Migration, as well as the Afghan Human Rights Commission. The offices of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan were also looted and nearby cars burned. The police station was strewn with rocks, and only held because some of its 90 officers were local residents.
It's still unclear why, exactly, Hamid Karzai tried to remove Khan, a popular governor, from his post and bring him to Kabul. In a throwaway sentence, the New York Times report seems to hint at the invisible hand of Zalmay Khalilzad:
At the urging of the American ambassador in Kabul, Zalmay Khalilzad, Mr. Khan went on local television to ask citizens not to be angry at his dismissal and not to destroy property and cause instability.
Khalilzad is an old neoconservative and protegee of Paul Wolfowitz who advocated regime change in both Iraq and Afghanistan all throughout the 1990s. Back in 1996, Khalilzad suggested in a Washington Post op-ed that the U.S. create a broad-based government in Kabul, drawing from factions across the country -- including radical Islamist groups. He may be advocating similar tactics now.
Khan, note, is a key figure of Jemiat-i-Islami, one of those radical Islamist groups that wields unchallenged influence in the northeastern provinces. Given that the Bush administration has refused to commit more troops to Afghanistan, Karzai's only hope for stability is to co-opt popular leaders like Khan into the central government. The problem, as the latest riots prove, is that the ethnic and religious factions aren't always willing to play along. Unfortunately, the success of Afghanistan elections on October 9th will hinge on this sort of power-jockeying by Karzai and Khalizad. At this point we can only hope they're up to the task.
As an alternative explanation, Ismail Khan is well-known for his close links to Iran (most of the border trade with Iran takes place via Herat). Is it possible that the Bush administration is trying to forestall Iranian involvement in Afghanistan by undermining leaders like Khan? With the paucity of reporting coming out of the region we may never know, but Afghanistan certainly doesn't exist in a vacuum, and there's more at stake here than those nice (and wildly off-the-mark) figures about how many Afghans have registered to vote.
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11:25 AM
Colorado considers doling out electoral votes proportionately
In its electoral math, the Bush campaign is counting on nine votes from Colorado, but voters in that state will decide on Election Day whether to allocate its votes proportionately.
Thanks to 134,821 petition signatures, Colorado's Nov. 2 ballot includes the provision. If it passes, the state's electoral votes will likely be split 5-4 (barring an upset; polls show a fairly close race).
"When a winner gets 51% and the loser 49%, and you give all the electoral votes to the winning candidate, that's not representative government," ballot initiative spokeswoman Julie Brown told the Associated Press.
Republican pollster Kay Atkinson said the measure would make Colorado "the least influential state in the country," and has started the bluntly named opposition group Coloradans Against a Really Stupid Idea.
With both parties working to defeat the measure, it appears to have little chance of passing. And that's probably good for Coloradans, unless they're really sick of all those visits from the presidential candidates.
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10:16 AM
Military officers should speak out more
Only the most deluded of observers would think that U.S. "strategy" in Fallujah has been a success. Recall that back in April, after four Blackwater contractors were lynched and mutilated, the Marines attacked the city, sparked an insurgency, abruptly withdrew after a few days, and then placed former Baathists in charge of the city. Over the weekend we learned that those Saddam-era supervisors -- the vaunted "Fallujah Brigade" -- have disbanded after proving wholly inept at keeping peace in the city. Now Lt. Gen. James T. Conaway, the officer in charge of Western Iraq, is speaking out against the whole debacle:
Conway arrived in Iraq in March pledging to accelerate reconstruction projects as a way to subdue Anbar province, dominated by Sunni Muslims. But on March 31 he was confronted in Fallujah with the killing of four U.S. security contractors, whose bodies were mutilated or burned by a celebrating mob. Conway said he resisted calls for revenge, and instead advocated targeted operations and continued engagement with municipal leaders.
He echoed an argument made by many Iraqi politicians and American analysts -- that the U.S. attack further radicalized a restive city, leading many residents to support the insurgents. "When we were told to attack Fallujah, I think we certainly increased the level of animosity that existed," Conway said.
He would not say where the order to attack originated, only that he received an order from his superior at the time, Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the overall commander of U.S. forces in Iraq. Some senior U.S. officials in Iraq have said the command originated in the White House.
Note that last sentence -- the White House ordered an attack over the objections (and wisdom) of senior military officers. No doubt they wanted to show "resolve" or something. There are perfectly good arguments to be made for civilian control over the military. But considering that civilians in this White House have been wrong about, well, just about everything, maybe it's time to start consulting with people who actually know what they're talking about.
It's also worth wondering why so few military officers actually speak out. Maybe they remember the tongue-lashing Eric Shinseki received from the Pentagon, for daring to suggest before the invasion that maybe, just maybe, the U.S. might need more troops. Michael Schuerer lamented a similar problem in Imperial Hubris, observing that few intelligence officials dared to criticize the government, even when civilian leaders were obviously wrong or misguided. It's clear that this sort of subtle censorship hasn't done the U.S. any favors.
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