What a nice marriage of images. Especially for those of us old enough to recall poor Clarence Thomas who, when charged with sexual harassment in his Supreme Court confirmation hearing, so deftly turned defense into offense by calling the accusations a "high-tech lynching for uppity blacks."
Now that terrorism is the new communism, why shouldn't everyone the government wants to vilify be labeled a terrorist?
Perils of Dominance is the first completely new interpretation of how and why the United States went to war in Vietnam. It provides an authoritative challenge to the prevailing explanation that U.S. officials adhered blindly to a Cold War doctrine that loss of Vietnam would cause a "domino effect" leading to communist domination of the area. Gareth Porter presents compelling evidence that U.S. policy decisions on Vietnam from 1954 to mid-1965 were shaped by an overwhelming imbalance of military power favoring the United States over the Soviet Union and China. He demonstrates how the slide into war in Vietnam is relevant to understanding why the United States went to war in Iraq, and why such wars are likely as long as U.S. military power is overwhelmingly dominant in the world.
Challenging conventional wisdom about the origins of the war, Porter argues that the main impetus for military intervention in Vietnam came not from presidents Kennedy and Johnson but from high-ranking national security officials in their administrations who were heavily influenced by U.S. dominance over its Cold War foes.
It should be noted that US military dominance was an overwhelming fact, even though a frightened US public was constantly mislead about it, and while it's certainly true that Porter's perspective is influenced by the time he is writing in, and the concerns of the present, this was no loess true of earlier historians who failed to pay attention to US dominance. With this in mind, let's turn to Porter's diary:
In an interview on the PBS NewsHour last Wednesday, Joe Biden was unwilling to contradict the official narrative of the Iraq War that Gen. David Petraeus and the Bush surge had turned Iraq into a good war after all. That interview serves as a reminder of just how completely the Democratic Party foreign policy elite has adopted that narrative.
The Iraq War story line crafted by the Petraeus and the new counterinsurgency elite in Washington assures the public that U.S. military power in Iraq brought about the cooperation of the Sunnis in Anbar Province, ended sectarian violence in Baghdad and defeated Iranian-backed Shi'a insurgents.
In reality, of course, that's not what happened at all. It's time to review the relevant history and deconstruct the Petraeus narrative which the Obama administration now appears to have adopted.
The Sunni decision to cooperate in the suppression of al Qaeda in Iraq had nothing to do with the surge. The main Sunni armed resistance groups had actually turned against al Qaeda in 2005, when they began trying to make a deal with the United States to end the war.
Porter goes into details on the Sunni side, and then does the same on the Shia side, particularly explaining the dynamics of how Iran's interests were served. What Porter describes is not new--simply a very succinct and timely summary of what's already known to those not distracted by blizzards of official obfuscation. Particularly important is the fact that Moqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army were not subservient to Iran, and needed to be nuetralized once they'd played their role in crushing Sunni power:
"I know at least 7 [GOP] senators, who I will not name, but were made to make a commitment under threat of losing their chairmanships, if they did not support the leadership on every procedural vote," Biden said at a fundraiser Monday night.
"Every single thing we did, from the important to the not so important, required for the first time in modern American history, majority votes required 60 votes. All the sudden a majority became 60 instead of 50," the VP added, according to a pool report of the event.
Someone get me a fainting couch, for I am aghast at the power politics being displayed here. But then I think of Joe Lieberman and I stop myself.
I can't wish for the Republicans' intractability as the country goes to hell, but I can sure wish our side had their discipline when they sometimes need it.
Unless you live under a rock or in Antarctica, you will by now know this week, President Obama signed the healthcare reform bill into law.
As a fellow liberal, I am very happy to hear this news. But, in the past week, the news has been jumping on every opportunity to downplay the accomplishment, or play up the Republican rhetoric that the majority of Americans don't agree with the bill.
A recent Washington Post article has the spread at 46 to 50, the majority opposing the bill. But upon further reading, you can see that the margin of error is at 3 points, meaning the poll isn't conclusive. (The percentage for people in support of the bill could be from 43-49%, and the percentage against is anywhere from 47-53. These numbers overlap.)
But beyond petty arguments of numbers, it is hard to deny that this is, in the words of Vice President Joe Biden, a big, fucking deal (see below video). This is the first real upheaval of the system... ever. It's the culmination of years of work spanning back to Hillary Clinton's crusade during her husband's presidency.
At the end of the day, 32 million more Americans will have health insurance, and the bill will reduce our national deficit by $143 billion in the first 10 years.
What's not to love? Those facts are what is important.
Despite the possibility that a slim and debatable majority of Americans don't agree with the bill, this IS A GOOD THING.
Obama keeps sending Joe Biden to Iraq, where almost nobody pays attention when "Jabbering Joe" shoots off his stupid mouth.
Inside the embassy's sprawling compound, a piercing "duck and cover" alarm began moments after the American military commander, Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, told reporters traveling with Mr. Biden that security remained at its lowest levels since the war began - despite major bomb attacks like the ones on Aug. 19 that badly damaged two government ministries and killed at least 132 people.
What sense does any of that make?
Shortly after the attacks, Iraqi police opened fire on a car speeding down Palestine Street in eastern Baghdad. That in turn prompted an American patrol to open fire on the Iraqi police in the confusion. "We had to hide behind blast walls," an Iraqi officer said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
Luckily for those Iraqi cops, there are blast walls everywhere in Baghdad, and that great city has been completely transformed into an infinite maze of cages where millions of Iraqis live and die in ethnic isolation from each other.
"I think there has been progress," Mr. Biden said when asked why no significant progress has occurred since his last visit in July.
So I was watching MSNBC yesterday morning and they were showing video of the Obamas at the Grand Canyon. My first thought was, "why are they at the Grand Canyon during an insanely intense August recess battle over the issue that will very likely define his Presidency?" And then, as if by cue to emphasize what was going on in the world, the host said "next up, is there fallout from Barney Frank's argument with his town hall protester?"
Then I watched the OFA town hall meeting yesterday afternoon, and Jim Gilliam Tweeted:
@jgilliam cable tv was shut out of obama's #hc09 online forum. you can only watch online http://is.gd/2qsK9
It turns out later that Jim was mistaken, but it emphasized a point for me that I want to make on why we're losing this battle in the media, and how to get it back, which I talk about in the extended entry.
There is no "end game" strategy for the war in Afghanistan. That is what a military official told President Obama last week, according to an NBC report cited by Think Progress' Faiz Shakir yesterday. In other words, the ultimate outcome for our military presence in Afghanistan is unclear, not just to the activists and bloggers who have been wrestling with this war at Get Afghanistan Right, but to those inside the Pentagon as well. If we have any chance of avoiding further catastrophe in the region, we better make damn sure we Rethink Afghanistan.
That is exactly what Brave New Foundation is calling for in a new campaign launched today. They will hold a series of debates on the issues surrounding this war in the coming weeks, and currently they're asking everyone to sign the petition urging Congressional oversight hearings like those held in 2007 regarding the Iraq war. Vice President Biden, who orchestrated the Iraq hearings as Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman, said, "No foreign policy can be sustained in this country without the informed consent of the American people." Isn't informed public consent what we need now before committing more troops to Afghanistan?
Good evening. Greenwald was discussing the domestic applicability of the UN Convention Against Torture on the Bush administration. The convention, which Reagan signed and presented to the Senate in 1988 and was ratified in 1990 (Yes, once upon a time Republicans opposed torture! St. Reagan no less. Though I read somewhere he had loaded it down with reservations that probably gutted any real utility of the thing, but I disgress).
I mention this because it turns out the Senate, in ratifying the treaty, explicitly declared that sections 1-14 of the treaty were not "self-executing." This means that despite the provision of the constitution declaring ratified treaties to be "law of the land," the treaty had no force in domestic law until Congress enacted legislation in the US code to put force behind it.
This took 4 years, and was done as part of the Foreign Relations Authorizations Act of 1994. That one was presented by Lee Hamilton in the House. However, there was at least one earlier effort to implement the CAT, by Biden; I present section 1901 of the Biden-Thurmond Justice Improvements Act, aka S.3349, introduced in October 1992. As far as I can tell, Biden's text substantively matches Hamilton's, so I think it's a fair guess that Hamilton just reused it. Biden (or maybe Thurmond but I somehow doubt it) wrote the law implementing the United States' International committment against torture. Fascinating. Mr. Vice President, are you going to leave a law you wrote unenforced at its moment of truth?
Today Joe Biden ends his 36-year tenure in the U.S. Senate. While he now probably seems well-suited for the job of "backup President" not many in the progressive blogosphere would have predicted or advocated Biden as VP just a year ago. In fact, if you told me 18 months ago that Barack Obama would be elected President I would have said "good" and been unsurprised. But if you told me that Joe Biden would be Vice President I would have said "Wow!"
In the spring of 2008 there were very few pushing Biden as VP. In order to reinforce Obama's central message of "change" Chris Bowers eliminated as best candidates any who supported the invasion of Iraq including Joe Biden. Others who advocated a "balancing" approach usually failed to mention Biden as well. I heard a lot of advocacy for Powell, Hagel and Jim Webb. Over at Daily Kos Webb trounced Biden in a head-to-head match-up.
In a poll of Open Left readers in June, Biden finished as the 8th "most acceptable" candidate. Bowers in July on Biden as VP: "Yeah, that's real change." For me, it seemed odd that Obama would select as his running mate the guy who's announcement for President is remembered only because he called Obama fresh, clean and articulate.
There were some commenters who advocated Biden, such as Shul who was pushing for Biden in early June:
I can't even properly express how giddy I get just thinking about the possibility of Biden as the VP. I have no doubt that he would get up every single day and just hope that he got the call to go out and hammer McCain as hard as possible.
It seems the general voting public had similar views. MSNBC and Chuck Todd, using an NCAA-style bracket of 32 Democratic candidates for Vice President and an online vote, had Joe Biden emerge as the winner, beating Hillary Clinton in the finals. Did the Obama campaign view this as a national focus group?
With the benefit of hindsight it all makes perfect sense. Biden was one of Obama's mentors in the Senate. Obama's theme was "change" but at the same time he loves being a bridge, a uniter. The Obama team probably knew that an African-American candidate with the name Barack Hussein Obama who opposed the Iraq war from the start was about all the "change" they were going to need and then some. The Scranton-born Biden allowed them to better compete for one demographic that leaned McCain: older white men. And as a "backup President" no one doubted his credentials or ability to do the job if need be.
Vice President-elect Joe Biden is worried about the "exceedingly high expectations" the world community has for Barack Obama's presidency.
He believes he and Obama must follow through with action to show how they're different than George W. Bush, Biden told CNN's Larry King Monday.
"I have been contacted by so many world leaders. Their expectation for Barack's presidency is overwhelming," Biden said. "They are so hungry to have an American leader who they think has a policy that reflects our stated values as well as one they can talk to."
At the same time, Biden expressed sympathy for Bush over the Baghdad shoe-throwing incident - a day after Biden and Vice President Dick Cheney traded shots on the Sunday shows. "I feel somewhat badly for him," Biden said. "I think the incident in Iraq was - was unfortunate, that guy throwing the shoes. It was just uncalled for . . .and I think that President Bush and, unlike Vice President Cheney, is, upon reflection beginning to acknowledge some of the serious, if not mistakes, misjudgments that he made."
Last week, I wrote "that it simply isn't healthy to keep analyzing campaign rhetoric as though it demanded academic discussion." That still is still sound advice, because the intentional vagaries and obvious contradictions of such rhetoric will quickly frustrate anyone looking for deeper, analytical meaning. Still, I am going to break my own rule to comment on a recent statement by Vice-President-elect Joe Biden:
Barack Obama said you've got to reach out. You've got to reach a hand of friendship across the aisle and across philosophies in this country.
We can't continue to be a red and blue country. We can't be divided like we have been.
I am entirely in favor of "reaching out." If nothing else, it is at least worth a shot. However, I do not understand why "we can't continue to be a red and blue country." In this passage, red and blue are defined as "philosophies," apparently political philosophies. If we can't continue to have different political philosophies, count me out of the nation altogether.
Equality under the law is a must. Equality in economic opportunity must always be a goal we work toward. However, working toward everyone sharing the same political philosophy scares the living bejesus out of me.
I know it is just rhetoric. I know it isn't even designed to appeal to me. Still, it disturbs me that messaging of this sort is regularly made by a wide range of politicians, Joe Biden and Barack Obama included. Who is the idea of total national political agreement supposed to appeal to, anyway? It is a disturbing allusion to totalitarian political ideals that has grown common within our own mainstream political discourse. A type of bi-partisan fascism, if you will.
I wish everyone would stop saying this line. I know it is just messaging rhetoric, but it actually scares me a little bit. Can we please remain a country with diverse political philosophies? Pretty please?
Jay Carney is leaving Time magazine after 20 years to be Vice President-elect Joe Biden's communications director in the White House, astonished magazine and gleeful transition sources said.
Carney's title will be assistant to the vice president and director of communications. TIME.com's "The Page" first reported his new job.
Carney, the magazine's Washington bureau chief, is one of Washington's best-known talking heads, with regular appearances on ABC's "This Week," "The McLaughlin Group" and MSNBC's "Hardball."
Biden has assembled a team of heavyweights: Ron Klain, who was chief of staff to former Vice President Al Gore, as chief of staff; Mike Donilon, one of Washington's best-connected Democratic consultants, as counselor; and Tony Blinken, a longtime Biden adviser, who is expected to fill a senior role on the National Security Council or on Biden's staff.
Jay Carney mocked Josh Marshall for pursuing the Bush Attorney scandals, arguing that "in this case some liberals are seeing broad partisan conspiracies where none likely exist." He later retracted his words and apologized to Marshall, which is more than most reporters tend to do.
There's not really a point in criticizing this choice. Joe Biden is who he is, he's obviously comfortable with Carney and Carney can clearly move a message through his former colleagues in the press. It is useful to think about what this means.
When an administration chooses personnel, it's a validation of the set of institutions and social ties that nurtured that personnel. In this case, the administration is validating the traditional press - Time Magazine in this case - as an important and credible organization. Part of the new progressive movement's ideological core is about seeing the press as an explicit battle space without residual moral credibility. The Lakeoff thesis of 'framing' makes the implicit argument that mediating institutions are no longer credible, but need to be molded along progressive lines. A sustained critique of the media is core, just as it was core to the right in the 1970s and onward.
This is a different belief system that held by people like Jay Carney, who think that the press is a relatively honest authoritative group that does make errors but broadly operates in 'the best interests' of a democratic nation. That such an important figure in journalism is going into this administration suggests that the Obama administration pretty well believes that the political conversation might need to be altered, but that the actors controlling our dialogue - mainstream journalists - are credible guides for the public. We'll see how that works out.
The election is over. It's time for America to move forward. Time to come together for the good of the country. Time for Republicans and Democrats to forget their differences and reach out to one another. But not to Joe Lieberman!! It's in this spirit of half-hearted bi-partisanship we present our latest parody. Think of it as a musical olive branch. Or maybe it's more like a stick in the eye.
STATE BLOGS
Today Joe Biden ends his 36-year tenure in the U.S. Senate. While he now probably seems well-suited for the job of "backup President" not many in the progressive blogosphere would have predicted or advocated Biden as VP just a year ago. In fact, if you told me 18 months ago that Barack Obama would be elected President I would have said "good" and been unsurprised. But if you told me that Joe Biden would be Vice President I would have said "Wow!" 