3:07 PM
Has Iran been defused?
The recent news about Europe striking a deal with Iran on the latter's nuclear program is certainly welcome, but it's hard to see how this is anything but a temporary, stop-gap measure—a deal that Iran will eventually break. A number of experts agree that Iran's nuclear ambitions are borne of a desire to deter American military aggression, and the European deal addresses exactly none of those concerns. As Ray Takeyh and Steven Cook wrote last month in the Financial Times: "Through possession of [nuclear] weapons, [Iran's] clerical oligarchs think they can deter US designs and assert their claims in the vital waterways of the Gulf region."
If this is indeed the case, there are only two ways to defuse Iran's desire to go nuclear. The first option is to overthrow the regime in Tehran, something that a number of hardliners in the administration have been advocating. As Laura Rozen points out, the recent and rather tendentious US News & World Report "bombshell" about Iranian meddling in Iraq looks suspiciously like a trial balloon designed to build support for a more hawkish Iran policy.
For those less inclined towards half-baked "regime change" schemes, the other option is engagement with Iran, along the lines proposed over the summer by a Council of Foreign Relations expert task force. Unfortunately, now that Colin Powell is resigning, and administration hardliners like Undersecretary of State John Bolton are on the rise, there aren't many advocates of this sort of thing left.
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1:39 PM
Spitzer crafts a Democratic "message"
New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer—who, incidentally, should now be considered the odds-on favorite to become New York's governor in 2006—has a good article in this week's The New Republic about getting the Democrats to put forward their own version of the "ownership society":
Starting today, our party must focus on all the difficulties that working people face--from financial scams to job security to health insurance, from day care for our kids to nursing homes for our parents, from the price of gas to the increasing cost of college tuition, from the safety and security of our neighborhoods to the health of the environment. We must address these issues not as antiseptic policy points but as elements of a living mosaic that, together, form a society that rewards hard work and integrity. Our policies and plans will gain traction with the public when we frame them as a reflection of the core values we believe in.
The piece, admittedly, is mostly a self-promoting recap of Spitzer's barn-burning career to date, but he does make some good points about the need for that much-vaunted "Democratic message". Of course, the other side of the coin is exposing Bush's "ownership society" for the financial scam it really is. Last spring, Spitzer started down that path by making the liberal case for market intervention, arguing that economic regulations—from anti-pollution laws to crack-downs on predatory lending—can actually be framed as a means of making markets more efficient. It's time to start pounding this point home. The current Republican party, contrary to much conventional wisdom, is not at all the party of free markets, small government, and self-sufficiency. It's the party of corporate welfare and cronyism, the very things that stifle free markets and distort economic independence. Spitzer grasps that argument well, and it will be interesting to see whether his party follows him as his star continues to rise.
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1:31 PM
Energy secretary turns out the lights
His resignation didn’t generate nearly the interest of Colin Powell’s or John Ashcroft’s, but Spencer Abraham gave up his job as secretary of energy Monday. The former one-term senator from Michigan held the job longer than anyone else -- ironic, considering he called for getting rid of the department while he was in the Senate -- and, as the Associated Press aptly sums up, leaves a mixed legacy:
"Abraham faced a number of major issues during his tenure, from the nation's worst power blackout to soaring crude oil and gasoline prices as well as a growing urgency to find a place to bury the country's nuclear waste and yet another security flap at the Los Alamos weapons laboratory in New Mexico."
On the downside, Abraham was a big fan of Dick Cheney’s industry-packed energy task force, which called for (among other environmentally dubious steps) ANWAR drilling and the further loosening of regulations on the oil and gas industries. The usually out-of-the-spotlight Abraham also drew some public criticism for pushing the nuclear waste dump at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain, which is still pending an environmental impact study.
To his credit, Abraham realizes the danger of unsecured nuclear material, and has worked with Russia to secure highly enriched uranium from old Soviet reactors. He also served as a voice of caution when George Bush considered tapping the nation’s oil reserves to create a short-term price drop.
Abraham claims his biggest disappointment was his inability to get Congress to adopt Cheney’s full energy plan. But considering the potential consequences of those recommendations, he might be better off just taking pride in his nonproliferation record.
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12:39 PM
An alternative to CIA careerism
With news that the White House has ordered CIA Director Porter Goss to purge all disloyal officers from the agency, it's been hard to find an honest defender of this move. Perhaps the only credible rationale is that a hostile CIA, in "open war with the president" as one officer put it, could eventually leak information in a way that would harm national security. Thus far, that hasn't really been the case—the biggest leak this year merely told everyone that Iraq was not as rosy as the president was telling us, something that several think tanks and private intelligence groups were already saying. Still, things could no doubt get worse, and leaks probably need to be curtailed.
At the same time, those concerns need to be balanced against the agency's ability to remain independent and take risks—both of which are being harmed by Goss' little witch-hunt. After all, it's surely useful for CIA officers to have some forum for disagreeing with the president—they are experts, after all, and if the administration is doing something dumb or dangerous then voters should know about it.
It's only fitting, then, to pass along a suggestion made by the CIA's ex-bin Laden chief, Michael Scheuer—whose big mouth helped provoke the current crusade against CIA big-mouths—in his recent book, Imperial Hubris. Scheuer observes that most senior military and intelligence officers hope for cushy private-sector jobs after they leave government, and as such, they have no incentive to "rock the boat" and criticize the administration. Hence, Scheuer suggests barring these officials from private jobs and giving them a decent public pension instead. This would allow them to spend their remaining years openly debating military and intelligence policies without fear of reprisal, and eliminate the need for current officials to leak potentially damaging information in order to get their opinions aired. The country, meanwhile, would be better off for having an open and honest discussion over national security issues.
Now this is obviously not a policy the Bush administration will get behind—their interest is not so much debating national security policy as it is surrounding the president with an aura of infallibility. But it's a suggestion the Democrats could get behind, vocally, to provide an alternative to the stale careerism that the current president is trying to foment within the intelligence community.
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11:55 AM
If you can't win in Mosul... then where?
Buried deep in this Los Angeles Times piece about the U.S. military's new counterinsurgency strategy for Iraq comes a new perspective on how to win those still-elusive hearts and minds:
Commanders want the bloody battle against intransigent fighters in Fallouja to send a message to Iraqis elsewhere who ally themselves with extremist groups: Those who cooperate with radical insurgents, even in the short term, will become targets.
"The coalition and the Iraqis will not tolerate temporary alliances of convenience," said Abizaid, who visited Fallouja on Sunday before a late-night meeting with Myers, Casey and Iraqi commanders.
It's doubtful, of course, that all of those dead civilians in Fallujah were active (or even passive) collaborators with the insurgency. But it's looking more and more like that doesn't matter, and that the old methods of separating out insurgents from civilians are rapidly becoming obsolete.
One possible reason is Mosul. Mosul, as all the papers are reporting, is quickly descending into anarchy. But what the papers neglect to mention is that Mosul was once the military's model of success in Iraq. Maj. Gen. David Petraeus earned his fame by creating local reconstruction projects that supposedly won the affection and gratitude of all the locals. The Pentagon was so pleased with Mosul's progress that it decide to rotate out the 101st Airborne Division in favor of a smaller force consisting mostly of National Guardsman, reservists, and Iraqi National Forces. But that strategy—which was precisely the strategy the Pentagon insisted would convince Iraqis to march down the path towards democracy—clearly hasn't worked. Now, if Gen. Abizaid can be taken at his word, it seems that military commanders are apparently looking at a much more violent means of subduing and intimidating the population.
Oh, and while the Pentagon is figuring out how to pacify the insurgency, ethnic violence is ramping up in Mosul—as predicted here and, well, just about everywhere else. Juan Cole reports that Arab gunmen attacked the Mosul headquarters of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, apparently in retaliation for the use of Kurdish peshmerga troops against Sunni insurgents in Samarra and Fallujah. So what does the Pentagon do? Send in even more Kurdish fighters to pacify the Sunni Arabs in Mosul. We've worried for a long, long time about the Bush administration's utter insensitivity towards provoking ethnic tensions in Iraq—and these latest moves sure don't instill much confidence.
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11:33 AM
More evidence of atrocities in Sudan
Later this week, the United Nations Security Council will hold a two-day special session on what to do about the genocide in Sudan. The U.N. has repeatedly threatened (with little resolve) to impose sanctions against the government if it didn’t improve security for refugees in Darfur -- an order two new reports show has not come close to being carried out.
Worse, as the BBC reports, Khartoum-backed militias are still carrying out attacks seven months after the government agreed to a ceasefire. The BBC visited the town of Kidinyir, where it found mass graves and spoke with survivors about recent attacks. At a Janjaweed militia base, the BBC found fighters carrying government military cards, another sign of official involvement in the killing. African Union peacekeepers agreed the government is still arming the Janjaweed and sending military planes to bomb villages in Darfur.
Also on Monday, the watchdog group Human Rights Watch released its latest findings on Darfur, labeling the security situation for refugees "a farce":
"The Sudanese government continues to terrorize its own citizens even in the face of the U.N. Security Council arriving in Africa," said Peter Takirambudde, executive director of Human Rights Watch’s Africa Division. "Unless the Security Council backs up its earlier ultimatums with strong action, ethnic cleansing in Darfur will be consolidated. And hundreds of U.N. personnel will be on the ground helplessly watching as it happens."
While the U.N. has waited on the findings of a report, casualties in Darfur have now reportedly topped 70,000. Hopefully this week’s meeting will produce some concrete pressure on Khartoum instead of another watered-down resolution or more delayed action.
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11:09 AM
Postponing elections in Iraq?
The Guardian is reporting that the interim Iraqi government may decide to postpone elections after all. The announcement comes from the government's deputy prime minister:
Barham Salih said the authorities were determined to hold the vote, but admitted they would have to assess the security situation nearer the time.
"Holding free and fair elections on time is an obligation that we have undertaken towards the Iraqi people," he said. But he added: "Nearer the time, the Iraqi government, the United Nations, the independent election commission and the national assembly will have to engage in a real and hard-headed dialogue to assess the situation."
Recall that Iraq is currently under martial law during its 60-day "state of emergency." Recall also that, in the Middle East, states of emergency tend to last far, far longer than originally planned. Now one could speculate, if so inclined, that the leaders in the interim government, Prime Minister Ayad Allawi among them, are worried that they may not have enough popular support to do well in the January elections. One could also speculate that Allawi may want to postpone the vote by appealing to the dire security situation in Iraq, consolidate his own power in the meantime, and angle for a more favorable electoral result.
Luckily, we don't have to do speculate, because the Iraqi press is doing it for us. Last week, Azzaman, a London-based Iraqi newspaper, asked "What happens after 60 days?" Al-Mashriq, another daily, sounded a similar note: "What happens after the 60-day period for the [martial] law expires? Is this law the first step in the treatment or the last one?" In response, the Baghdad, a paper issued by Allawi's own party, the Iraqi National Accord, replied that it "does not aim to suspend democratic life." But the government's latest announcement on the possible suspension of January elections is hardly reassuring.
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2:57 PM
No Cabinet member left behind?
The exodus of Cabinet members continues, with Secretary of Education Rod Paige -- a key architect of the "No Child Left Behind" program -- the latest example.
"The secretary has been looking at leaving, and he's been in discussion with the White House about the right time to do so," an anonymous official told the Associated Press.
The former Houston superintendent was a leader in Bush's push to demand "accountability" from schools by implementing national testing standards. While much of the recent controversy surrounding the program has focused on the president failing to fully fund it, it's worth remembering the many critics of the program's goals. As this publication pointed out in March:
"Critics of the law say it relies on 'fuzzy math' to humiliate and flunk schools for falling mere decimal points short of minimums. Instead of broadening educational choice and establishing excellence, they say it achieves the opposite effect of its feted title and deprives poor students of well-rounded learning."
A replacement for Paige has not yet been named. But whoever it is, reforming this troubled program should head their to-do list.
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1:52 PM
Ashcroft returns to form
John Ashcroft just couldn’t ride into the sunset without taking a few more shots at his political opponents.
The lame-duck attorney general, who famously claimed civil libertarians "give aid and comfort" to terrorists, aimed his wrath at the courts this time. While not saying so directly, Ashcroft sure seemed to address this week’s halting of a Guantanamo military tribunal, in claiming judges are violating the president’s discretionary powers:
"The danger I see here is that intrusive judicial oversight and second-guessing of presidential determinations in these critical areas can put at risk the very security of our nation in a time of war."
Wasn’t Ashcroft the guy who said just this week that the job of securing the American people had been achieved?
Anyway, the notion of "enemy combatants" as a new category to get around the Geneva Conventions is legally dubious at best. Deciding whether these tribunals are legal will set a precedent with important consequences, and the courts are simply doing their job in making sure it's the right one.
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12:39 PM
Meanwhile, elsewhere in the world...
With the world’s focus on the Middle East with Fallujah in flames and Yasser Arafat’s passing, events in Indonesia have gone largely unmentioned in the U.S. press. But these disturbing developments are worth noting.
On the large island of Sulawesi, where Christian and Muslim groups have lived under a peace deal for only two years, a Christian village leader was found beheaded, with police worried that the beheadings in Iraq served as inspiration. More ominous, a handwritten note left with the head warned authorities they "will find 1000 more heads" and said "this is a message from our parents that we will get vengeance," apparently a reference to the long religious warfare in the area.
In a separate incident, an autopsy revealed longtime human-rights activist Munir -- previously thought to have died of natural causes -- had remarkably high levels of arsenic poison in his blood. Police are now investigating the death as a murder. A vocal opponent of the deposed Suharto regime, Munir ran a group investigating human-rights abuses before his death.
It’s too early to tell if these incidents are related, or if more violence is imminent. But Indonesia, still in its first months of an elected government –- and home to Jemaah Islamiya, one of the world’s most active Islamist terrorist networks -- remains an area more people should be paying attention to.
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11:14 AM
100,000 deaths revisited
Remember that Lancet study showing that the Iraq war may have led to 100,000 excess deaths over and beyond what would have occurred had we done nothing? No? Around the internet at least, it seems that after Slate's Fred Kaplan—an antiwar liberal, after all—"debunked" the study, everyone assumed it was invalid, or a wild guess, or pre-election propaganda. And that, it seemed, was that.
But was the study actually invalid? Daniel Davies has a long post today arguing that most of the "critiques" of the Lancet study were based on a faulty understanding of statistics, and that the study, while hardly the definitive tally, is a sound study and a perfectly good estimate. Now, the study alone doesn't make or break the so-called "humanitarian case for war"—judging that case involves a lot of counterfactuals about what Saddam Hussein would and wouldn't have done, the effects of strengthened post-9/11 sanctions, and the consequences of the Hussein regime collapsing on its own. There's a legitimate debate there. But the Lancet number certainly can't be as casually dismissed as some people would like.
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11:00 AM
Peace in our time?
For the past few years, Ariel Sharon has been able to avoid bilateral talks with the Palestinian Authority by saying he had no "partner in peace" as long as Yasser Arafat held his job. With that rationale no longer viable, both George Bush and Tony Blair are treating Arafat’s death as the start of a new chance for the stalled peace process. As Blair said at the leaders’ joint press conference Friday morning:
"If we want a viable Palestinian state, we want to make sure the political, the economic and the security infrastructure of that state is shaped and comes into being. We've got the chance over the next few months, with the election of a new Palestinian president, to put the first marker down."
Bush echoed those sentiments, saying he plans "to use the next four years to spend the capital of the United States on such a state." Through a spokesman, Sharon reiterated the possibility of a two-state solution if the intifada is brought to an end:
"There is a two-state solution based on the fact that they have to first stop terrorism before there is a state,'' said Raanan Gissin. "Bush is putting it as a challenge to the future Palestinian leadership. ... He says `It's up to you and you have a new situation.' ... The fact is that there is a new era now. He is urging them to drop the Yasser Arafat legacy.''
But the U.S. stopped short of committing to a Mideast conference, and the question of who replaces Arafat remains a central concern. If a legitimate election produces a leader, negotiations should be able to go forward. But the possibility remains that groups like Hamas could use violence to disrupt elections, or even poll well enough to win them. As Jimmy Carter writes in a column published today, Palestinians must choose their leader without interference from the U.S. or Israel, and would be wise to choose a moderate willing to compromise and negotiate. How that choice is made will say a lot about whether Palestine can seat a true partner for peace at the table, and whether statehood can become a reality.
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10:13 AM
About those hearts and minds...
If you were to design a campaign, from scratch, to win the hearts and minds of a disgruntled and violent minority in an occupied country of your choosing, you might imagine that it's not too wise to storm the home of that disgruntled minority's most popular religious leader. In fact, let's go one further—if in your experience you had learned that storming the homes of popular clerics generally led to uprisings and violent standoffs, you might think that raiding clerics' homes was a doubly bad idea. Right?
Apparently not. Knight Ridder reports that American troops are kicking down the doors of Sheik Harith al-Dhari, the country's most popular Sunni cleric. In truth, Al-Dhari has caused no end of trouble in Iraq—from telling insurgents that they could attack Iraqi security forces to calling for a boycott of January elections. It might be better for everyone involved to muzzle him up for a bit—which is what the U.S. is no doubt doing.
The other side to the issue, though, is that al-Dhari has also been one of the few religious leaders trying to avoid sectarian civil war in the country. Last spring, when U.S. troops were faced in a standoff with Moqtada al-Sadr, al-Dhari condemned the attack and called for a "unity" clerics board to promote cooperation between Sunnis and Shiites. But the Fallujah offensive has completely dismantled those efforts—Shiite leaders, al-Sadr aside, are doing nothing to support the Sunnis and are quietly rejecting al-Dhari's calls for help. The Shiites do have a moral case—many Sunnis in Fallujah, after all, are Saddam loyalists who supported persecution of the Shia for thirty years. But morality isn't the main issue here; avoiding civil war is, and the wedge now being driven further between Sunnis and Shiites bodes ill on that front.
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6:14 PM
About those "moral values"...
As any political junkie knows, the questions asked in a poll often matter as much or more than the answers. So the Pew Research Center analyzed last Tuesday's exit poll data, and found different poll questions yielded very different results in what voters named the most important issue in the presidential election.
When voters had to pick a "most important" issue from a list, about a quarter of them chose -- say it with us -- "moral values." However, when given an open-ended question (i.e. What do you consider the most important issue in this race?), "moral values" tied with terrorism at 9 percent, behind the war in Iraq and the economy. As pollster and professor Cliff Zurkin told the Associated Press:
"The advantage of the open-ended question is it tells you what's at the top of mind for voters -- what they're thinking. Much too much has been made of the moral values answer."
Plus, there’s the issue of what "moral values" constitute. As the AP notes, a fair number of those voters aren’t in the Jerry Falwell camp:
"The Pew poll found that voters' reasons for picking ‘moral values’ varies. Just over four in 10 of those who picked ‘moral values’ from the list mentioned social issues like gay marriage and abortion, but others talked about qualities like religion, helping the poor, and candidates' honesty and strength of leadership."
In other words, while "moral values" were an important factor in this election, the characterization of the U.S. populace caring more about gay marriage than national security isn’t quite as accurate as the Falwells of the world want you to believe.
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3:31 PM
One-stop "election fraud" shop
If you're still trying to figure out if Bush stole the election or not, go check out this new blog, "Something's Rotten in the State of Denmark." It's not a conspiracy site, but it's examining the issue pretty thoroughly. The author—an anonymous Democrat—is picking through each of the voting-fraud theories, and seeing whether each one can be debunked, or is worth following up. (Link via Mickey Kaus, who has much more to say on the whole matter.)
Worth reading. And, I think, it takes exactly the right tone on the matter. Irregularities in the election no doubt occurred, and they need to be checked. But that's about it. Screaming "Bush cheated!" at every turn only hurts the cause, and is likely to turn people away from the issue altogether.
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2:10 PM
Democrats again playing center
In case there weren’t enough groups for centrist Democrats among the Democratic Leadership Council and its offshoots, some Democratic operatives are now creating Third Way. The goal is to get centrist senators to produce new policy proposals "for a new moderate majority," a Third Way spokesman told the Washington Post. The group is meeting tonight and plans to roll out a legislative agenda in early 2005, with Sens. Evan Bayh, Mary Landrieu, Blanche Lincoln and Thomas Carper among the members.
As to why Third Way is looking at the Senate instead of the House, Carper explains that gerrymandering and the tone of House leadership have made it hard for centrists to play a role, as opposed to the more conciliatory Senate. If Third Way focuses on triangulating with policy that can draw moderate Republican support, all the better. The danger, of course, is this group siding with the more conservative GOP leadership so as not to appear too "liberal," and therefore abandoning the role of an opposition party.
When DLC chair Al From was asked about the electoral math, he argued "we can't cede territory to the Republicans, because they'll take every inch we give." Those from his wing of the party would be wise to keep that approach when dealing with the new Senate.
If the GOP puts forward moderate ideas, fine. In the more likely event it panders to the right, centrist Democrats going along won’t strengthen their party. Recent Senate history is already littered with ousted Democrats who sided with Bush on the war, the Patriot Act and the budget.
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12:00 PM
New election theory: It was culture and the economy!
Stan Greenberg and James Carville of Democracy Corps have just released their long-awaited post-mortem of John Kerry's loss. It's a good one—everyone should read it in full.
Most significantly, Carville and Greenberg manage to get a more precise read on how crucial those "cultural issues" were in the election. Among "Bush waverers"—voters who ultimately voted for George W. Bush but seriously thought about voting for Kerry—a whopping 92 percent mentioned cultural issues such as gay marriage, abortion, guns, Kerry's "liberalism", and Kerry's Vietnam record, as a major factor for supporting Bush. Only 50 percent of those "waverers" cited security reasons, putting a dent in the theory that national security, not cultural values, was the big election-swinger. Oh, and the "flip-flopper" label did quite a bit of damage too.
But cultural values alone didn't do it. Last week I noted that the final exit polls showed a curious reversal of support for Kerry on economic issues. Greenberg and Carville argue that that reversal was absolutely crucial—in the last ten days of the campaign, the economy all but vanished from the debate. That allowed cultural issues to become a greater force in the election than it otherwise would have been—and led to rapid Bush gains in the last ten days among white rural voters, non-college educated voters, and seniors. These "Bush waverers" all overwhelmingly supported Kerry on economic issues, but in the absence of clear debate on the matter, they voted on culture. Hey, maybe Thomas Frank is on to something after all...
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11:09 AM
Burying Arafat
Wednesday’s death of Palestinian Authority leader Yasser Arafat opens a new and uncertain chapter in the peace process and the future of Palestinian stathood. But it is certain that Arafat remains as polarizing in death as he was in life.
One averted controversy comes with Arafat’s funeral arrangements. The chairman had requested burial in Jerusalem, where he often claimed to have been born (though he was actually born in Cairo). Instead, he will be entombed in the West Bank city of Ramallah, following a military funeral Friday in his true place of birth.
A "top Palestinian cleric" told Reuters that Arafat will be buried in a concrete coffin, so that his remains can eventually be uprooted and taken to Jerusalem. That leaves open the possibility of dangerous burial confrontation Israeli officials had worried about, in which hundreds of mourners trying to bury Arafat would clash with Israeli troops ordered to prevent that.
So far, though, things have gone to plan in the post-Arafat transition. Rawhi Fattouh has taken Arafat’s title on an interim basis, Prime Minister Ahmed Queria has taken on more duties and Mahmoud Abbas has taken leadership of the PLO. There has been little violence, and Israel is so far staying on course with its withdrawal from the territories.
In a nod to his divisiveness, Arafat’s Friday funeral will be attended by representatives of many governments, but few world leaders will personally attend. Assistant Secretary of State William Burns will represent the U.S., and Israel has no plans to send a delegation. In his comments on Arafat’s death, President Bush managed to express support for Arafat’s constituents while avoiding praise of the man himself:
"We express our condolences to the Palestinian people. For the Palestinian people, we hope that the future will bring peace and the fulfillment of their aspirations for an independent, democratic Palestine that is at peace with its neighbors."During the period of transition that is ahead, we urge all in the region and throughout the world to join in helping make progress toward these goals and toward the ultimate goal of peace."
A burial in Ramallah seems fitting for Arafat. For his recent refusal to participate in the peace process -- and his tacit support of the intifada -- he will not secure in death the place in the holy city he was unable to give his people during his lifetime.
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10:55 AM
First Fallujah... then Mosul?
The Financial Times (sub. only) gets a few military experts on the record today to discuss the battle of Fallujah. The consensus that emerges is that the chances of taking the city are very good: The Marines have been conducting urban war games since the late 1990s and they're extremely well-trained for this situation. Holding the city, however, is another matter—and the track record here is bleak. The last insurgent stronghold that was retaken, Samarra, is now slipping back into chaos. One British military official says, "[T]he jury is still out on whether Samarra was a success." Peter Khalil, formerly of the CPA, notes that "[m]ilitary forces, by their very nature, are not trained specifically to hold cities like that." A more high profile and effective counter-insurgency strategy would likely involve more troops, experts say.
As for the larger political fallout from Fallujah, the Los Angeles Times talks to those ever-present "Iraqis on the street" and finds that the battle may be inflaming sectarian tensions in Iraq—Shiites support the battle, Sunnis condemn it. As we noted yesterday, the possibility of post-election civil war continues to be a major issue.
As for the question of "What comes after Fallujah?" Kathleen Ridolfo of RFE/RL reports that foreign fighters may be moving to Mosul, a major city in northern Iraq that has been steadily deteriorating over the past few weeks. To add a bit of context here, Mosul has six times as many people as Fallujah, easily, and it is already a source of ethnic tension. As with Kirkuk, many Kurds were driven out of the city during the 1990s, replaced by an influx of strongly pro-Saddam Sunnis. The Kurds are certainly itching to take Mosul (and its oil fields) back—the U.S. had to force Kurdish peshmerga troops out of the city in the early days of the war. There are also large numbers of Turkomen, Christians, Armenians, Shiiites, and Yezidis living in the city. If there's any place where the insurgents could provoke serious ethnic violence, Mosul is it.
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10:00 AM
The FCC and self-censorship
Oh, what Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake hath wrought.
As part of a Veteran’s Day special, ABC had planned to broadcast Steven Spielberg’s World War II film "Saving Private Ryan" this evening. It seemed like a nice gesture, reminding viewers of when the U.S. "liberating" nations was more than spin, with a heavily honored patriotic film. But several affiliates, citing the FCC crackdown on profanity, nudity and violence, have decided not to air the film:
"Under strict interpretation of the rules, we can't run that programming before 10 p.m.," said Ray Cole, whose company owns three ABC affiliates. "We have attempted to get an advanced waiver from the FCC and, remarkably to me, they are not willing to do so."
Under its agreement with Spielberg, ABC cannot edit the film (and, as anyone who has seen "Pulp Fiction" edited for TV can attest, that’s a good move on Spielberg’s part). The network has agreed to pay any FCC fines its affiliates receive, but Cole says other FCC sanctions must be borne by the affiliate, and he’s not willing to take a chance.
The decision will no doubt be cheered by Oklahoma’s Sen.-elect Tom Coburn, who, commenting in 1997 on an NBC screening of Spielberg’s "Schindler’s List," said NBC had taken television "to an all-time low, with full-frontal nudity, violence and profanity" and should outrage "decent-minded individuals everywhere."
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4:35 PM
Moyers v. Norquist
Check out Bill Moyer's most recent interview with Grover Norquist, the architect of the conservative revolution, who had this to say after last week's election:
"Once the minority of House and Senate are comfortable in their minority status, they will have no problem socializing with the Republicans. Any farmer will tell you that certain animals run around and are unpleasant, but when they've been fixed, then they are happy and sedate. They are contented and cheerful. They don't go around peeing on the furniture and such."
The notoriously cocky Norquist goes into high swagger mode talking about the death of Democrats, telling Moyers that the Republican Party, "not just in Washington but in state capitals as well, will be the dominant majority party in the United States for the next 25 years or more." Other highlights:
"Well, in terms of ideology, I think if you ask free market conservatives and Republicans, we would say, 'Take a look at what free market policies give you. And take a look at what stateist policies give you, the difference between East Germany and West Germany, North Korea and South Korea, between France and the United States."
Moyers gives as good as he gets, though, challenging Norquist on the last four years of "big government," as well as the cronyism that has characterized the Bush administration:
"I'm sorry that I'm retiring at the end of December. Because I think the next four years are going to be a bonanza for investigative journalism. I just think every time you wed the state and business together like this, you get corruption flowing like the Mississippi River."
I guess that's one area of job creation and growth that's often overlooked in assessments of Bush's economic record.
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4:18 PM
Adding value to the Democratic message
The notion that George W. Bush rode to victory on a wave of popular outrage over abortion and gay marriage never really held up. For starters, Bush didn't do appreciably better in states where gay marriage bans were on the ballot. What's more, the exit poll finding that "moral values" were paramount in Bush voters' minds wasn't very meaningful. (Which moral values?)
Now comes word from the Washington Post of a new poll showing that, in fact, voters understand "moral values" as covering a multitude of "sins" -- not just those fastened on by the religious right.
Among the findings: 33 percent of voters said the nation's most urgent moral problem was "greed and materialism"; 31 percent said it was "poverty and economic justice." Sixteen percent cited abortion, and 12 percent named same-sex marriage.
Clear message: contrary to the argument that people of faith (and, for that matter, people big on "values") are the exclusive property of the GOP, there's clearly an opening here to make the Democratic case in moral terms. (After all, aren't poverty and economic justice supposed to be liberal preoccupations?). As a liberal activist type tells the Post, "progressives need to embrace the deep moral critique that people are looking for and make that case on poverty and Iraq, and not just try to talk more about God or outpace the Republicans on gay marriage or abortion."
So, that's the good news. The bad -- if unsurprising -- news is that Democrats have yet to make that case effectively. And a post-election poll mentioned by the Post indicates that liberals just aren't trying hard enough: 71 percent of voters said they'd heard from the religious right; 38 percent said they'd heard from the religious left.
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2:24 PM
Immigration reform back on the agenda
President Bush yesterday resurrected his plan to ease rules on immigration by introducing a program that would grant guest-worker cards to illegal immigrants working in the United States. Bush met with John McCain, one of the Senate's most outspoken proponents of a guest-worker program, while Colin Powell was in Mexico City pushing the plan in a meeting with Mexican president Vicente Fox.
However, the reform has already riled conservatives, especially after the passage, in Arizona, of Proposition 200. This initiative requires that people provide proof of citizenship when registering to vote and calls for state and local government employees to check the immigration status of those applying for non-federally mandated public benefits. It also requires government employees, by law, to report undocumented workers to authorities.
Bush and Powell both acknowledge that the administration's program faces a tough fight in Congress, with opposition from conservatives dead set against amnesty and progressives who argue the bill does not go far enough to grant rights to those worthy of citizenship in the U.S. Immigration reform will face its toughest challenge from southwest conservatives. Upon hearing of the Bush-McCain meeting, Rep. Tom Tancredo, Colorado Republican and chairman of the Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus, bluntly dismissed the idea of reform:
"An amnesty by any other name is still an amnesty, regardless of what the White House wants to call it. Their amnesty plan was dead on arrival when they sent it to the Congress in January, and if they send the same pig with lipstick back to Congress next January, it will suffer the same fate."
With the border resurfacing as a major issue for nationalist activists, and given the Bush administration's clear reluctance to support them, this is fast becoming a potential wedge issue in the 2006 election. Moreover, any immigration reform faces a standoff with ballot initiatives and amendments sweeping the country in the aftermath of Prop 200's success. Here's a run-down of states suspected to fight for more strict anti-immigration laws in today's Washington Times.
California, where a grass-roots organization known as the California Republican Assembly hopes to gain enough signatures to qualify an anti-immigrant initiative for the March 2006 ballot. The group wants to restore portions of Proposition 187 that prohibited benefits to illegal immigrants not mandated by federal law.Georgia, where a group known as Georgians for Immigration Reduction said it was "very energized" by the Arizona vote and, says spokesman Jimmy Herchek, is watching "closely" what happens in that state's court challenges. Mr. Herchek said draft legislation would be presented to legislators in the near future.
Colorado, where Defend Colorado Now is drafting a constitutional amendment to prevent illegal aliens from receiving "public services" other than those involving public safety or life-threatening emergencies. A petition drive is to begin in January 2006, with 70,000 signatures needed to put it before voters.
Texas, where Texans for Fair Immigration hope to draft legislation similar to the Arizona initiative and lobby state officials to pass it. State laws bar the placement of initiatives on the ballot.
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1:29 PM
Dear John: don't do it!
The other day, the Washington Post reported that a "fired up" John Kerry plans to use his newfound name recognition and gargantuan mailing lists to "remain a voice in American politics." So far, so unobjectionable. Ominously, though, the Post picked up chatter among "aides and friends" that Kerry is "assessing the feasibility" of a run at the White House in 2008. As The New Republic today explains in an astringent editorial, the only appropriate response to this, if you're a Democrat, is: Noooooooo!
If the election results somehow failed to make this clear, we'd like to remind Senator Kerry that he is not an effective communicator. He tends to blather on, circling round and round his point without coming close to it. He regularly utters phrases --"global test," "I actually voted for the $87 billion before I voted against it"--that play directly into his opponents' hands. And he projects the image of an out-of-touch patrician that is precisely the opposite of what the Democratic Party needs....It is certainly true that the election saw an enormous outpouring of activism on Kerry's behalf. That activism, though, was motivated by opposition to Bush rather than by support for Kerry. He was merely a vessel for righteous outrage over a failed and dangerous presidency. And not a very potent vessel, either. Polls consistently showed that strong majorities of the public believed that President Bush did not deserve reelection. Bush's strategists understood all along that their path to victory required convincing the public that Kerry was not a plausible alternative. They did so rather easily. This belies their claim to have won a popular mandate, but above all it shows that Kerry failed utterly at his task. ...
If the Democratic Party is going to get off its back, it needs spokesmen who can clearly explain its positions without leaving even its own partisans bored or confused. It needs someone who can connect with the economic and moral values of the middle class. And it needs to be able to discuss foreign policy without invoking the word "alliances" like some kind of irrepressible verbal tic. The longer Kerry overstays his welcome, the harder it will be for such spokesmen to emerge.
Note to Kerry aides and friends: Got that?
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1:06 PM
Debating the future of labor
A few months ago, the Washington Monthly ran a series of articles wondering what would happen if Bush won a second term. The most chilling of the bunch was this one by Grover Norquist, suggesting that a second-term Bush administration would move to dismantle labor unions once and for all. With labor finished, Norquist reasoned, Democrats and liberals would be finished too.
Those assaults will no doubt come, but for now the big news is that labor unions themselves have begun wondering what they need to do to become a more potent organizing force. Already, the SEIU, the main service-industry union, is challenging the AFL-CIO for effective leadership of the movement, and its president, Andy Stern, has started a new site, Unite to Win, dedicated to discussing the future of labor. Items on the agenda include starting a targeted campaign against Wal-Mart, denying endorsements to any politician who does not support labor law reform, reforming organizational strategies, and, most controversially, merging and eliminating smaller unions across the country. Not surprisingly, the debate is getting quite heated. And on that note, Labor Blog has two long posts on the whole issue that are well worth reading.
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12:41 PM
"Thinking" straight about national security
Both Kevin Drum and Matthew Yglesias have some great thoughts on how Democrats lost the election over national security, and why the party needs to start thinking straight about the issue. The only point to add (for now) is that simply parlaying the party's grab-bag of good ideas on war and terrorism into a coherent "message," as those two advocate, may not be enough. There's surely an emotional component to the national security debate, and it probably plays a far greater role in elections than Democrats (or wonks like me) would like to admit.
As Louis Menand discussed in the New Yorker earlier this year, a large swath of voters use emotional heuristics, rather than issues, to cast their vote. That seems right: John Kerry, after all, won overwhelming support from voters who considered Iraq their top issue, and it wasn't because he told those voters about his great Iraq ideas—he didn't—but because the facts on the ground made current Iraq policies emotionally repellent to a large segment of the population. But in the long term, counting on a steady flow of body bags to help win an election isn't really a strategy.
On the issue of terrorism, where Kerry lost big, it's hard to see what can be done differently. The Republicans don't have any message here, but rather a vaguely "hawkish" stance that is presumably satisfying to a large number of people on some visceral level. Democrats can't compete by becoming even more hawkish—they have, after all, a large and important antiwar constituency. (There's a reason why Joe Lieberman was trampled in the primaries.) The hope was that John Kerry's veteran credentials would straddle the party divide and close the "emotional deficit"—but that strategy was neutralized by the Swift Boat Vet ads. So something else obviously needs to happen. (And, as Ezra Klein writes today, the party as a whole needs to revamp its image, rather than merely pin its hopes for rebranding on a single appealing candidate.) But it will take, it seems, more than just good ideas and a steady message.
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11:26 AM
Health care for vets
The Christian Science Monitor has a new report on the health care hassles that military vets face when they return from combat. At the moment, roughly 1.7 million veterans lack health insurance, and many can't get treatment for injuries or sickness unrelated to their military service. There's always a danger that this issue—like everything else—will get turned into a pure political issue, but there's surely a problem here, and it deserves wider attention.
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10:47 AM
Meet the new Ashcroft
It didn’t take long for George W. Bush to find a replacement for John Ashcroft at the DOJ. The bad news is, he’s reportedly handing the reigns to White House counsel Alberto Gonzales.
Gonzales (who would have the distinction of first Latino attorney general) admittedly doesn’t have Ashcroft’s long record as a favorite of groups like the John Birch Society. But while some conservatives have expressed glee at his relative lack of a controversial "paper trail", what is there isn’t encouraging.
Most importantly, Gonzales wrote the infamous 2002 letter urging the president to claim the Afghanistan war -- and the indefinite detention of "enemy combatants" -- was exempt from the Geneva Conventions. And he’s been an outspoken supporter of the detainee system, making it unlikely he’ll veer much from Ashcroft’s draconian policy. In his role at the White House, Gonzales ended the practice of having the American Bar Association play an official role in picking judicial nominees, an early salvo in the administration’s attempt to reshape the courts with conservative judges. And on the "company you keep" front, Gonzales was a partner in the law firm that represented Enron and worked with Kenneth Starr on the Whitewater investigation that eventually became the Monica Lewinsky investigation.
But other than that…
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10:19 AM
A groundswell for abolishing the electoral college?
Maybe not yet. But the bandwagon is growing, as Josh Marshall finally hops aboard. Long-time Mother Jones readers will know of course that there are no good reasons for the electoral college.
Over the past few days we've suggested that Democrats get behind some sort of big electoral reform—either abolishing the electoral college, or nationalizing the Senate, or both. They do need to be careful about this, however. The point is not to be sore losers who want to game the system to make the electoral landscape more favorable to them. No, the point is that the current electoral institutions have hindered the process of democratic deliberation. Most of the issues that decided the last election, after all, were inherently national issues. Economic and trade policy should not be relegated to focus on the steel industry in Ohio and Michigan. The direction of national security should not be the drawn up according to the whims of a handful of suburban moms in Philadelphia. Rather than "protect local interests", the current method of electing presidents only narrows the scope of the national debate, and needlessly at that. We already have gerrymandered House members who cater to local interests. Let's have a president who worries about the country as a whole.
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9:56 AM
Win Fallujah, lose war, etc.
If you want a minute-by-minute, blow-by-blow account of how the U.S. Marines are kicking ass in Fallujah, go read the Belmont Club blog. It's great. But if you want to know how the war is actually progressing, read this story by Knight Ridder's Hannah Allam, reporting that the only Sunni political party that wasn't boycotting elections is now, in fact, thinking about boycotting elections over the ongoing violence. Of course, if the majority of Sunni Arabs decide to boycott January's election, it won't be very difficult for the Shia to win 75 percent of the vote, and with it the ability to modify the Iraqi constitution at will. That in turn significantly ups the probability of post-election civil war, which as Spencer Ackerman lays out was probably the insurgents' main goal in the first place.
So what comes next? Either we cut and run, and hope the Sunni insurgents don't trounce the Shia-dominated government (which doesn't have much ability to protect itself), or we stay and continue fighting the insurgency ourselves for years and years. An insurgency, note, that seems to just vanish and reappear elsewhere, like Whack-a-Mole, every time we attack. If there's a third option, no one's saying what it is.
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3:46 PM
Let the Eagle Soar ... away
The controversial tenure of Attorney General John Ashcroft is now officially coming to an end. Ashcroft turned in his letter of resignation on Tuesday (as did Commerce Secretary Donald Evans), the first resignations in an expected second-term shakeup.
Ashcroft’s resignation was no surprise, as aides had described him as worn down from the job -- and he’s long been an easy target for critics of the administration. But in his resignation letter, Ashcroft bizarrely wrote that “The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved.”
Huh?
As the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency argued just yesterday, nuclear terrorism remains a very real threat, with U.S. and international action needed to prevent terrorists from acquiring weapons and causing a catastrophe. Osama bin Laden is still making videos instead of sitting in prison. Ashcroft’s DOJ even famously refused to close loopholes to prevent terrorists from acquiring guns in the U.S.
Ashcroft has his reasons for resigning, and that's fine. But his "mission accomplished" phrasing reeks of self-congratulatory revisionism.
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3:38 PM
Was the election stolen?
A week after the election, not everyone seems so sure that it went off smoothly—rumors continue to fly about e-voting fraud and ballot stuffing. If credible, these are of course serious allegations and should be checked out. But so far, very few allegations have held up. In Slate today, Josh Levin notes that the final vote counts in Ohio, Florida, and New Mexico all pretty closely matched final exit polls. He follows that up with an analysis showing that the results from those optical-scan machines in Florida pretty much matched what you'd expect from the voter data—pretty much sinking the theory put forward by Thom Hartmann.
Elsewhere, irregularities are turning up here and there—like this story about voters voting more than once on provisional ballots in New Mexico, or this story about a "computer glitch" that gave Bush 3,893 votes in Franklin County, Ohio—but nothing big enough to swing an election. There are also stories like this, contending that poor and minority voters were subject to intimidation. That needs to be investigated, and the offenders punished, but all in all it just doesn't look like the election was stolen.
The question, then, is whether the press should look for more irregularities. The short answer is: yes. The long answer is: yes, but not because it will "prove" that Democrats were robbed—it probably won't—but because it's in everyone's interest to work out the kinks and get stricter standards in place for e-voting machines.
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2:14 PM
Looking to the future
Keeping with a campaign ritual, the American media have already begun the rampant speculation about 2008. But, as the BBC notes in its speculation piece, some British betting parlors have already placed odds on that race. And the favorites should have a familiar ring:
"[John] Edwards gave up his Senate seat to run for the White House this year, and having lost, he does not have an obvious pulpit from which to preach for the next four years."Hillary Clinton, the wife of the former president and now a senator in her own right, faces no such handicap -- and London betting parlors consider her the favorite, with odds of 5-1…
"The British bookies put the best odds on [Rudy] Giuliani for the Republicans – 15-2. If they are right, 2008 could be a rematch of the 2000 New York Senate race that never happened. Mr Giuliani dropped out for health reasons, and Mrs Clinton won."
While press reports focus on 2008, the more immediate concern for both Republicans and Democrats is who takes over their national committees. As the Associated Press notes:
For the GOP, the choice is easy: whomever President Bush recommends. Republican activists said a likely candidate is Ken Mehlman, the former White House political director who served as campaign manager for the Bush-Cheney team.Democrats face a much tougher challenge. The next leader of the Democratic National Committee will be responsible for rebuilding a party battered by two straight presidential election losses, finding a way to stanch the flow of voters away from its ranks and picking up seats in congressional elections in 2006. Democrats agree that the party needs an aggressive activist to replace McAuliffe, whose term is ending.
A lot of names are being floated for the DNC job, including Howard Dean. He’s certainly proven himself on the fundraising end, but would have to commit to serving a full term (meaning, no Dean campaign in 2008). Tom Vilsack or Mark Warner would face the same choice. Other rumored options include Donna Brazile, Inez Tenenbaum, Simon Rosenberg and Roy Barnes.
Who the Democrats ultimately pick will give some idea of how the party wants to craft its message. And that's a process that needs to start early .
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12:59 PM
Red State PC
Check out Timothy Noah's sharp look at politically correct conservatives in Slate yesterday. Too often conservatives are allowed to dismiss ideas they don't like as "liberal PC" even as they cry foul when they're labelled "right-wing." Noah cites an example from election-day coverage and identifies a significant shift in the way the Christian right is marketing itself in the current political landscape:
"[O]n Election Night last week, I discovered that sometime when I wasn't paying attention it had become an insult to call somebody a member of 'the Christian right.' Early that evening, White House correspondent Terry Moran killed some time during the wait for election results by briefing ABC News anchor Peter Jennings about Karl Rove's strategy of corralling 'evangelical Christians.' When Moran was finished, Jennings explained why Moran used that term:'I just want to make one observation about terminology. I'm not sure that you're gonna hear a lot of new terminology this year you haven't heard before, but "evangelical Christian" is what people used to call, unfortunately, the Christian right. Some people call them conservative Christians. But they are those from those churches in America which take the Bible literally.'
The long-term political legitimacy of the conservative Christian movement -- which has rebranded itself the "religious right," then the "Christian right," and more lately "evangelical Christians" -- hinges, of course, on its ability to appear more mainstream than it actually is. Judging by the above, it's succeeding.
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12:27 PM
How Social Security adds up...
Brad DeLong looks at the "simple arithmetic" of Social Security privatization. The arithmetic is really quite simple: If you want young workers to divert their payroll taxes into private accounts, then some benefits somewhere are going to have to be cut. Since it's impossible to cut benefits for current seniors—seniors have voting power unlike any other—the government will have to cut future benefits for everyone in, say, their 40s and under. DeLong estimates a 40 percent cut, which seems reasonable to expect.
For someone like me, who is just starting out in the workforce, this is an okay deal. I can probably make up that 40 percent cut with the savings I generate in my private account over all of those years. (Assuming I don't invest in Enron or some other fiasco.) On the other hand, for someone in their mid-30s or 40s, this isn't such a great deal, since those people have been paying into the system for years, and now they'll see much less return on those past payments. In fact, people in their 30s and 40s won't even come close to recouping their benefit cuts. An economist at the Angry Bear site calculates that a worker in her mid-40s could easily see the present value of her retirement fund drop from $450,000 to around $200,000.
The only way the math makes sense on this is if the government doesn't start cutting benefits until workers, say, in their mid-20s start retiring. But then they're basically paying out full benefits on exactly the same schedule as the current system—which is supposed to be in a "crisis". Except that, under the new plan, current workers are diverting payroll taxes into private accounts, so there's less money to pay the same amount of benefits. Easy: the government says. We can just borrow all that money—and expect that the bond market won't freak out, but will understand we're doing this for the good of the country. The odd thing here is that this plan expects that the bond market won't freak out because markets work perfectly. But the government also expects to exploit the overvalued risk premium in the stock market because markets, um, don't work perfectly—that's how savings accounts are going to make us all rich. Right? Right! Simple arithmetic…
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10:18 AM
Just how important is Fallujah?
The conventional wisdom on Fallujah, I take it, is that this is going to be the mother of all battles, the "insurgency's last stand." And Pentagon leaders have been more than willing to propagate that conventional wisdom; just listen to Donald Rumsfeld hype up the enemy over the past few days: "Listen these folks are determined. These are killers." And so on.
The only problem is that no one really believes this will be the insurgency's last stand. Insurgents have known for months that the Marines are coming, and anyone who wanted to slip out of the city has slipped out—as Ghaith Abdul-Ahad reports in the Washington Post, no one in Fallujah thinks that Abu Musab Zarqawi is still hanging around. Most likely, the bulk of the insurgents will slip away elsewhere, to Samarra or Ramadi or Mosul, and come back to Fallujah when the U.S. leaves. As Fred Kaplan writes, no one's really answered the question of what comes after Fallujah.
One guess is that no one's even trying to answer that question, and that the main goal of this whole operation is to hype up the Iraqi security forces. The strategy goes like this: The Marines announce that they're coming, the insurgents melt away, and we get to see a bunch of breathtaking photographs of the Iraqi 36th Commando Battalion kicking down doors and arresting young men in hospitals. "Three cheers, the Iraqis can take care of themselves." That sort of thing. The interim government is playing along—offering promotions to every Iraqi soldier that stays and fights—and U.S. military commanders are downplaying stories about desertions. Rumsfeld called it an "isolated problem"; Gen. George Casey insisted the desertions "did not have a significant impact." They're not actually trying to defeat the insurgency; they're trying to boost the reputation of the homegrown forces.
The only problem in all of this is that the 36th Battalion in Fallujah is extremely unique. As Noah Schactman reports, the companies were formed from pre-existing militias—including Kurdish peshmerga fighters—and they're "not beholden to the central government," as one military official put it. So even if these Iraqi forces do well in Fallujah, that says virtually nothing about the success of the rest of the soldier-training project. (And the 36th Battalion certainly can't be everywhere at once.) If there's a coherent strategy here it's certainly hard to detect.
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10:08 AM
Bush visits the wounded (and stretches the truth)
President Bush made his first visit since March with soldiers wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan. According to the Associated Press, Bush visited with 50 to 55 soldiers at Washington's Walter Reed Army Medical Center. In the released text of his speech, Bush repeatedly stretched the truth regarding the government medical care provided to wounded soldiers:
"This country takes -- asks a great deal of the men and women who serve our military; we're asking a lot of them, particularly in the first war of the 21st century. We put a lot of fine troops into harm's way to make this country more secure and the world more free and the world more peaceful. We ask them to face great dangers to meet a national need. In return, we have made a commitment. We have made a commitment to the troops, and we have made a commitment to their loved ones, and that commitment is that we will provide excellent health care -- excellent care -- to anybody who is injured on the battlefield."
On a day when American forces suffered the highest one-day death toll in more than six months on the battlefield, Bush continues to mislead the public about the grave medical and financial problems facing returning soldiers. In my recent interviewwith Nina Berman, who talked to and photographed wounded soldiers returning to the U.S., she discusses the grave situations facing many soldiers and their burgeoning outrage against the government for its lack of care and overall disregard for disabled soldiers. More photo ops at Walter Reed won't change their condition, but it will continue to cloud public opinion regarding the realities of war.
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4:51 PM
Not the line-item veto....
Roll Call is reporting that President Bush wants to bring back the line-item veto as a way of reining in spending. The veto would allow the president to strip away any item that he doesn't like from a bill without vetoing the entire bill—a power that would be good for, say, cutting out congressional pork. President Clinton was granted similar authority in 1996, though the Supreme Court eventually struck the veto down, saying it violated the separation of powers and gave "the president the unilateral power to change the text of duly enacted statues." The Bush administration thinks their version can pass constitutional muster this time around.
This isn't the biggest deal in the world, but it's a good indication of how unserious the administration is about reining in spending. Frankly, the line-item veto is not all that effective as a cost-cutting measure: In the eight months that Clinton wielded it he managed to shave off a scant $500 million off the budget. Most of the time, Congress had no problem overriding the president's cuts. The data from the states is no more encouraging: In the 43 states that allow the veto, governors rarely use it; state legislatures usually just end up vote-trading to divert spending from one wasteful project to another.
No, the only real appeal of the veto lies in its political potential. Clinton often used his power to punish uncooperative Republicans by denying them local projects, as when he struck down tax breaks for Idaho Potato Farmers, ostensibly to hurt one of his most vocal opponents, Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID). Bush will no doubt also use the veto as a weapon to attack recalcitrant Democrats—he could, for instance, influence congressional races by denying Democrats the ability to win votes with pork. There might be a moral case for all this if it wasn't for the fact that it's Bush's own party that's responsible for the uptick in pork-barrel spending over the past few years. But never mind that. The veto is, after all, a great way to pretend to be fiscally conservative while chipping away at your opponents.
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4:44 PM
More bad news on climate change
The science on global warming keeps rolling in, and the assessments continue to look bleak.
The newest example is today's release of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment from the Arctic Council. The study, compiled over four years on behalf of the eight Council nations (including the United States), found the Arctic is affected by global warming more than any other region on earth. Temperatures there are reportedly rising at twice the global average, perpetually accelerating the melting of the polar cap. These are the report's 10 "key findings," none of them encouraging:
-The average Arctic temperature has increased twice as much as that of the rest of the world over the past few decades, likely bringing heavier precipitation, shorter and warmer winters and much reduced snow and ice cover that will probably last centuries.-Arctic climate changes will affect the rest of the world, as the melting of highly reflective snow and ice increases the overall heat absorption of the planet and glacial meltwater raises the sea levels and disrupts ocean currents.
-The treeline will move northward.
-Habitat for marine animals will shrink, threatening some species such as polar bears with extinction by the end of the century, while other species will move north. Arctic fisheries may become more productive.
-Coastal communites will face increasing erosion from heavier storm seasons and melting permafrost.
-Reduced sea ice could lead to heavier marine traffic and increased access to some resources.
-Thawing permafrost will damage northern roads, buildings and infrastructure.
-Aboriginal lifestyles will face major economic and cultural adjustments.
-Increased ultraviolet radiation will affect people, animals and plants, with the current Arctic generation expected to receive about 30 per cent more UV than their mothers and fathers.
-Climate change is occurring in a context of increasing chemical pollution, land overuse and population increases.
These findings will be formally presented to the eight member nations Tuesday, during a meeting in Iceland, and the council response is expected by Nov. 24. If the U.S. wants to begin the process of rebuilding relations wit