Republican Convention: Enterprising Pioneers, All

Party conventions, by definition, have become little more than over-wrought pep rallies; short on specifics and purpose, long on pomp and glitter. As I wrote concerning the Democratic Convention last week, conventions provide ample opportunity for party supporters to push aside credulity and lend unwavering support to the party's corporate overlords. They are a time for healing, by which I mean abandonment of any and all trepidation about the party platform's divergence from the will of the voters. Glenn Greenwald expressed concern over AT&T's exclusive party, yet never seemed to approach a realization that the Democratic Party itself was just such an organization.

Central to these conventions, which have lost all tangible purpose now that the nomination itself no longer takes place there, is indeed the central tenet of the entire American political system. Namely, they are a charade meant to present a narrative which intersects reality at no juncture, a cinematic presentation of candidates and platforms as they are meant to be seen, not as they are.

It is within this framework that the Republican Party, forever bedfellows with the ruling elite and corporate oligarchy was marginally successful at presenting itself as the party of the people, even -- more laughable, still -- agents of change. Change, of course, is perennially the platform of the non-incumbent party (George Bush was the candidate of change in 2000), but it strains even the few remaining strands tying American politics to logic and reality for the party in power to do so.

For John McCain to run a successful campaign as an agent of change by running on a platform which promises no deviation whatsoever from the standard right-wing fare is ludicrous indeed, but meets with marginal success due to the American electorate's staunch ignorance of words and their meanings. Reason and logic hold spectacularly less import in American politics than do appearance and presentation, and the Republican Convention recently closed in Minnesota was a clinic in that reality.

Only in an environment which never questions theatrical presentation could a beer baroness present herself as a pioneer. In fact, among the speakers, it was near impossible to find a single individual of privilege. Every last one was suddenly a pioneer, a frontiersman, a by-product of the American Dream. This narrative has been central to the Republican presentation for decades, convincing successive generations to vote against their own economic interests while simultaneously insinuating that they are doing precisely the opposite.

Thus, promoting policies which guarantee the elimination of small businesses in favor of multinational corporations becomes looking out for the entrepreneur. Promoting educational policies which would eliminate the teaching of evolution or sex education as enforcing choice and parental controls. Promoting the elimination of any safeguards against capital flight becomes creating job security. In this Orwellian fantasy we've established, it is no longer necessary to sprinkle speeches with small intrusions of fact, for no one questions clear falsehoods, no one asks that definite meanings be attached to words or phrases.

Sarah Palin, herself a political gimmick, utilized her husband as one in her own acceptance speech. Despite the Right's unwavering opposition to organized labor and higher wages of the working class, she posits that being married to a member of that class suffices to eliminate a century of history.

He's a lifelong commercial fisherman ... a production operator in the oil fields of Alaska's North Slope ... a proud member of the United Steel Workers' Union ... and world champion snow machine racer.

Throw in his Yup'ik Eskimo ancestry, and it all makes for quite a package.

Again the specter of that American Dream, and a quasi-minority no less.

Despite being chosen precisely to reassure the base and draw attention away from McCain's occasional infidelity to his Party, Palin attempted to present herself as a change, a threat to the "Washington elite." For the most part, such an outlandish proposition seems to be bought in sum by the majority of the mass media and electorate. She may have supported the Bridge to Nowhere, but she's a threat to the Washington elites. She may be for drilling on protected lands, but oil companies supposedly fear her. She may be for the elimination of choice in school curriculum, but parents across America will thank her for doing just the opposite.

This was the spirit that brought me to the governor's office, when I took on the old politics as usual in Juneau ... when I stood up to the special interests, the lobbyists, big oil companies, and the good-ol' boys network.

If by standing up to the big oil companies she meant adopted their policies as her own governing platform, then I suppose she is correct. If by standing up to the lobbyists she means joining a campaign up to its teeth in some of the most influential corporate and despotic-regime lobbyists in Washington, then she is being honest.

If, however, words are to have any meaning, if the American voter is to require that actual linguistic and logical standards be applied to the nation's political language, then her speech and all others in the past two weeks have been pure farce.

Despite all claims to the contrary, the bevy of orations engaged in over the past fourteen days have barely intercepted the will of the public at-large at any point. Promises and chilling narratives abound, but nowhere was there an honest accounting just how the lives of Americans will be better four years from now. This, I suppose, is to be accepted in a country as religious as the United States. Its citizens are more than willing to accept everything on faith, and hastily discharge with anything that seems to conflict with their reigning worldviews. Inconvenient facts become nuisances to be swatted away so that the Kool-Aid may be imbibed without interference.

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The Second Coming of Harriet Miers

John McCain's selection of Alaska Governor, Sarah Palin, as his running mate on Friday is one of the most transparent, reactionary moves I've seen in political gamesmanship is quite some time. The selection was clearly made for one reason: to take as many of Hillary Clinton's disgruntled primary voters as possible. There's no other plausible explanation for choosing a woman from a sparsely-populated, little-traveled state with no foreign policy positions, let alone experience, who no one has ever heard of. The move was clearly designed to take the news spotlight away from Obama's Convention appearance as fast as possible with the added side show of pretending John McCain is some sort of women's libber all of the sudden.

Palin's acceptance speech was pretty standard fare, hitting all the required BS points, like being a mother (apparently a qualification for high office?), loving her children (must take guts), being married to a Steelworker, and being against 'politics as usual.' (Logic dictates, though, that if every politician were against the 'same old politics' like they say, the status quo wouldn't exist. But somehow it persists with al the 'change' artists in the midst. Odd.)

Of course, by being against 'politics as usual,' what Palin means is that she is a cookie cutter, typecast archconservative of the standard mold. Both McCain and Palin mentioned that she "fought the oil companies," but perhaps they meant fought for the oil companies, as Palin has been out in front of the movement to disregard all scientific evidence and drill in ANWR. An honest mistake, I'm sure.

Palin is also for the teaching of Creationism (read: magic) in place of science in schools, opposes abortion even in cases of rape and incest, and supported Pat Buchanan in opposition to George Bush being too moderate. If Palin's offering 'change,' it can only mean a harder turn right, but I don't think that's the impression (or aftertaste) she's trying to leave with the voters. No matter, they don't listen that carefully, anyway.

Did I mention she's a woman? A strong and capable one at that. While McCain may have selected Palin in an effort to woo Clinton voters, it's hard to fathom that the feminist persuasions of a large portion of them would be swayed to vote for a woman like Palin who is a polar opposite of nearly everything Clinton stood for (in public). McCain seems to have tried to pick a person that would both woo the base and disgruntled Democrats, but may have failed on both counts.

Palin's speech also hits the typical "one of us" platitude, one of the most familar tactics in the usual politics she so despises. She is not alone, of course, Michelle Obama did the same earlier in the week, and both McCain and Obama constantly bicker over who's more Joe Six-Pack. The tactic is tired, worn, and completely immaterial to who would better lead the country, yet it persists.

The American electorate seems determined to select a Mother-in-Chief or a Golf-Buddy-in-Chief rather than a leader of the country. This preposterous notion that in searching for the best leader of the country we should spend even one second worrying about who's more normal flies in the face of logic and reason. Politicians should give up the act, and voters should stop caring. Everyone loves their children, it doesn't qualify you for high office.

From a purely practical aspect, it's hard to imagine the selection of Palin as a boon for McCain. By selecting a woman who opposes every progressive stance pertaining to the sex, he has pushed away the very voters he was aiming for with the choice. By selecting a woman, he may have pushed away his own base. I can't foresee him changing his mind, but the selection of Palin has Harriet Miers written all over it.


Update: September 1 @ 1745 CST

Already? Bristol Palin is pregnant.

Personally, I couldn't care less, as it has nothing to do with her mother's ability to govern (her not having the slightest acquaintance with foreign policy handles that), but does this not affect her ability to serve as theocratic strongman for the McCain campaign?

Can we now be spared the circus routine of the GOP traveling the country assuring us that unwed mothers are unfit to be human beings? Please? I doubt it.

Again, this has absolutely no bearing on the ability to govern, but that's exactly the point. We know they still love their daughter, as does everyone else the GOP has railed against for decades. We know kids are faced with difficult choices and they sometimes make the wrong ones, but that's exactly the point. Everyone understands that except for the theocratic moralista on the Right. If you have an unwed teenage mother at home, you have to leave your regressive moralizing there with her.


Also, as an aside, I don't want it construed that Palin wasn't picked to shore up the base. Obviously that was the choice. I was working off the assumption that that was a given, and moving from there, making the choice of James Dobson's wet dream a woman rather than the more well-known men of the same constitution the operative variable.

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Obama's Magic Wand

One of the many long-ignored realities in the Afghanistan theater is the continuing support of the ISI for Islamic militants, both in the FATA and Kashmir, which has endured for decades as a buffer against Indian influence in the region. Because Bush is only capable of seeing things in terms of absolutes, Musharraf and the Pakistani military were never confronted on their double dealing, and the problem was allowed to fester.

Now, both presidential candidates have announced plans to send a couple more brigades in, yet still have not addressed any of the central inhibitions of progress. Obama, in keeping with his sorcerer theme, is convinced that he can succeed in getting Pakistan and India to put their decades-long enmity behind them, thus eliminating the need for supporting Islamic militants and leading to a general aura of good tidings and cheer in the region. A farcical foreign policy promise if ever there was one.

Obama is a capable speaker to be sure, but wooing scores of college freshmen is not the same as ending generational conflict between neighboring nuclear powers. Unless he has a plan for Kashmir which would satisfy both sides up his sleeve, the mere suggestion of easing tensions to the point he suggests is lunacy. Especially now.

The latest crisis in Kashmir has turned that logic on its head. After a dispute over land snowballed into some of the biggest protests since a separatist revolt erupted in 1989, India and Pakistan are back at each other’s throats, hurling allegations at each other. Rather than asking whether the two countries can be persuaded to make a durable peace, the question now is how bad the relationship can get. “India-Pakistan relations are getting perilously close to ground zero,” writes former Indian diplomat M.K. Bhadrakumar in an Asia Times article.

Add in the domestic political instability in Pakistan, and relations between India and Pakistan have probably not been so combustible since they declared a ceasefire on the Line of Control dividing Kashmir in November 2003.

In other words, the plan is dead on arrival. That would be a problem for Obama if the American electorate were the slightest bit concerned about actual policy details, but un-fortified platitudes pass for foreign policy in the world of campaigning, which begs the question: What have we learned in the last eight years?

The last eight years have seen a disastrous foreign policy predicated on the same empty rhetoric, which, while different in tone, was still based entirely on the premise that no one would examine it too closely. We've witnessed the calamity wrought by a foreign policy long on promises and ideas but short on tactical details and historical literacy. We don't need four more.

McCain's bluster is easy to spot, a feat helped in no small part by his proclivity for uttering absurdities detectable by even the most geographically and culturally illiterate among us. Obama, though, has succeeded in dressing his foreign policy up in enough of a disguise that it comes off as deeper than it actually is. He understands the workings of the world infinitely better than McCain, but at the root, his foreign policy would be less a break from the typical American fare than we'd like to pretend.

One would be hard-pressed to find any variance between Bush, McCain, and Obama on the topic of Georgia, just as Obama's Afghanistan policy is largely mirrored by McCain's. What is clear, is that once in office, Obama will most likely settle into the same refrain seen for the last century in American foreign policy: A huge rhetorical structure of freedom and democracy all standing on a shaky foundation of ignorance of the realities of foreign lands.

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Georgia, Kosovo, and the US's Shifting Stance on Independence

Consistent with my regular pleas for historical literacy and context, it is impossible to witness the renewed fighting in South Ossetia without also considering the recent unilateral declaration of independence by Kosovo, and comparing the differing reactions from US officials. Ossetia has voted several times for independence to no avail, while Kosovo voted once and the US rushed to push for instant recognition by the UN.

First, the similarities of the two situations are fairly clear. Both involved an enclave comprised of an ethnic group starkly different from the surrounding areas, Albanians in Kosovo and Russians in Ossetia. Both have long held de facto independence, with their own government structures, and both were recognized by portions of the world community while denounced by others. On paper, the US would have to respond to the situations in a similar manner, if logical consistency or rationality is to have any bearing on our foreign policy. Luckily for US officials, no one holds them to that standard. Again, the reasoning behind the differing responses requires very little investigation.

Kosovo, in declaring its independence, was allying itself with the West, allowing for the US base Camp Bondsteel (perhaps more lawless than Guantanamo) to remain in place, and would benefit US control of the Balkan/Caspian Sea oil pipeline through the region. (Of little surprise, both Bondsteel and the pipeline are Halliburton enterprises.)

South Ossetia, on the other hand, should it break away would instantly become a Russian satellite, and thus its independence must be fought, despite the fact that the situation there resembles Kosovo in every other respect. While the varying reactions to similar situations may appear to be lacking consistency, it is remarkably consistent as far as US foreign policy goes. Independence and democracy is to be rewarded when it benefits US strategic goals. Should those actions, though, be perceived as going against US goals, they are to be fought and stifled. Far from being inconsistent, it is a policy that has remained wholly unchanged for more than a century, and resulted in the US propping up tyrannical regimes, often after placing those regimes in power. (Pinochet in Chile and the Shah in Iran come instantly to mind.)

Understandably, it is hard to get a clear picture of how the recent fighting began, as both sides have entered full propaganda mode, but it is most likely some combination of Ossetia baiting a conflict and worldwide distraction over the Olympics. But the fog of war isn't about to muddy the waters for John McCain, who's moral clarity is still as sharp as ever:

Today news reports indicate that Russian military forces crossed an internationally-recognized border into the sovereign territory of Georgia. Russia should immediately and unconditionally cease its military operations and withdraw all forces from sovereign Georgian territory. What is most critical now is to avoid further confrontation between Russian and Georgian military forces. The consequences for Euro-Atlantic stability and security are grave.

The government of Georgia has called for a cease-fire and for a resumption of direct talks on South Ossetia with international mediators. The U.S. should immediately convene an emergency session of the United Nations Security Council to call on Russia to reverse course. The US should immediately work with the EU and the OSCE to put diplomatic pressure on Russia to reverse this perilous course it has chosen. We should immediately call a meeting of the North Atlantic Council to assess Georgia’s security and review measures NATO can take to contribute to stabilizing this very dangerous situation. Finally, the international community needs to establish a truly independent and neutral peacekeeping force in South Ossetia.

The statement was posted Friday around 11 o'clock, well before anyone had established even a working view of the origins of the fighting, making John McCain on the campaign trail half a world away more privy to the workings than reporters on the ground in Georgia. (If the man has omniscience like that, maybe he should be president.) More likely, though, his roles are already in place, Russia is the villain and Georgia the poor, defenseless, "freedom-loving" country that needs our support. Who rolled into Ossetia first doesn't matter, the facts are to be determined by pre-ordained roles as good or bad.

McCain's portrayal of Georgia as "freedom-loving," however, comes with the requisite chinks in the logic. A Congressional Research Service report on Georgia details democratization challenges:

In early November 2007, the Georgian government forcibly suppressed demonstrations, closed some media, and declared emergency rule. Some Alliance members raised concerns about Georgia’s apparently faltering democratization and the suitability of inviting it to participate in a MAP at the upcoming NATO summit in Bucharest in April 2008.6 Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer criticized the imposition of emergency rule and the closure of media outlets by the government in Georgia as "not in line with Euro-Atlantic values." Domestic and international criticism may have helped convince President Saakashvili to admit that his government appeared non-responsive to the concerns of many citizens, and to resign and seek re-election by pledging reforms.

Here, "freedom-loving" implies its usual translation as "US-aligned." Democracy and freedom have nothing to do with the definition. Secretary Rice called for Russia to respect the "territorial integrity" of Georgia, apparently without a hint of irony, as one wonders when the US will begin to respect the "territorial integrity" of Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Serbia, Iran and the numerous other instances of its failure to do so.

The variance in the responses to the two nearly-identical situations of Kosovo and South Ossetia are indeed very telling, and show a remarkable consistency on the part of the US. Responses are not defined by a set, objective standard that takes empirical observations into account. Rather, the response is consistently tied to one, and only one, standard: Which party is more closely allied with US strategic goals.

In Kosovo, the Albanians allow for US use of a lawless prison and increase US control over the Balkan oil pipeline, therefore their independence must be immediately recognized. In Georgia, South Ossetia would ally itself with Russia, and thus their own declarations of independence must be summarily dismissed as illegitimate and Georgian force must be instantly supported. Clearly, the US would not declare that Serbia had the right to reclaim its "territorial integrity" by invading Kosovo, but such trivialities don't matter.

In America's foreign relations, all that matters is the potential benefit to US strategic and economic goals. All else, even in situations that are for all intents and purposes mirror images, must take a back seat to that reality, logical consistency be damned.

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What Orwell Didn't Know

The idea for this piece was stolen from the collection of essays by the same name. Overall a mediocre effort, but a worthy idea.

One of the first things that struck me about Orwell, as it does about many historical figures, is that both sides (in our polarized world, it is imagined that there are only two worldviews, to be taken in whole or not at all) claim him as their own. The right, recalling 1984 sees him as a virulent anti-Socialist and anti-Communist, though it is clear that it is the tyranny he opposes rather than the economics. The left, likewise, revels in his scathing of totalitarianism while simultaneously ignoring their own talent for the same. Orwell, himself, saw much the same pillaging of Dickens in his essay, Charles Dickens:

When Chesterton wrote his introduction to the Everyman edition of Dickens's works, it seemed quite natural to him to credit Dickens with his own highly individual brand of medievalism, and more recently a Marxist writer, Mr. T. A. Jackson, has made spirited efforts to turn Dickens into a bloodthirsty revolutionary. The Marxist claims him as "almost" a Marxist, the Catholic claims him as "almost" a Catholic.

The argument is baseless from the start, as Orwell was writing for his own time, not to please one side or the other of this counter-productive, mundane, polarized muck we've found ourselves in. But also, one of his prevailing themes is the use of language and its effect as a vehicle for propaganda and abuse. Who, having witnessed the banality of our current campaign season, cannot see examples of Newspeak and Orwellian language in abundance? If not used explicitly for propaganda, then at least to obfuscate the fact that the speaker, while profusely spilling forth words, is indeed saying very little.

What is clear from Orwell's writing, especially Politics and the English Language, is that he would achieve no favor in either camp, Obama a master of flashy vacuousness, and McCain a great utilizer of phrases which have assumed meanings but whose definitions he intentionally fails to apply. Citing the lack of precision in his contemporary prose:

The writer either has a meaning and cannot express it, or he inadvertently says something else, or he is almost indifferent as to whether his words mean anything or not. This mixture of vagueness and sheer incompetence is the most marked characteristic of modern English prose, and especially of any kind of political writing. As soon as certain topics are raised, the concrete melts into the abstract and no one seems able to think of turns of speech that are not hackneyed: prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated henhouse.

Both Obama and McCain are guilty of this fault, neither wishing to attach their prose to a specific meaning, preferring instead to allow the listener to paint their own canvas of what they want to hear. Boxing in their rhetoric with the concrete would force explanation and only inhibit their ability to woo as many people as possible.

The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using that word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different.

It seems that a men like John McCain and George Bush were no less prevalent in Orwell's time, as both embody Orwell's laments in the above passage. Both are rhetorical fans of freedom, democracy, and patriotism, but both are equally opposed to applying a concrete definition to the words. In speech, both are avid fans of Iraqi democracy and sovereignty. In practice, they see the country as nothing more than the 51st state which just happens to contain an obscene amount of oil. By throwing the words out, however, the listener applies their own meaning, and as such is capable of seeing a process in which 100s of thousands of Iraqis die as a humanitarian mission and "for their own good." Cluster bombs don't spread death, they spread democracy and freedom. The words, in true Orwellian fashion, hide from view the practical outcome of their true meaning.

Likewise, Obama is greatly aided by the fact that he, himself, is a blank canvas, which only further strengthens the effect of his equally-vacuous words and phrases. Obamas followers paint onto him their own hopes and dreams, their own wishes for a "new direction," and little attention is paid to his actual words. Much of the recent presumption of Obama flip-flops stems from the reality that many are hearing his words for the first time, although he has repeated them often.

In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism., question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them.

It is in this manner that killing thousands of people becomes an act of good will, the sending of other parents' children to die an act of bravery, the calling for the addition of troops and the addition of a new country in which to fight as anti-war. What's more, the electorate for the most part does not ask politicians to eliminate euphemism or vagueness. For the most part, the voting public has no more desire to see the dark face of reality than politicians have motive for giving it to them. As such, to a large extent, the American public censors itself and consigns itself to orthodoxy.

Controlling the public in a totalitarian world is simple, in democracy a little more tact is needed. Propaganda has developed since the time of Orwell in a manner which invites the target audience to do most of the censoring and imbibing of falsehoods themselves. Under the guise of a free society, the public is bombarded with false images and half-truths to the point that they censor themselves, they begin to take as fact total falsehoods without the ruling party lifting a finger.

Americans are bombarded with images of materialism on a daily basis, convinced that all they need to be happy is more toys, and in this pursuit they shed all skepticism of the political structure and cease to ask questions, preferring instead to chase pipe dreams and manufactured illusions. The public clamors for coverage of Obama's bowling average, engages in ritualistic shock at nearly every phrase consisting of anything more than pre-fabricated euphemisms and phrases, all the while ignoring any significant discussion of topics which might actually affect them.

Great pains are taken to paint the two candidates as inhabiting the extreme ends of the ideological spectrum, which sucks the public into a false, polarized debate which ignores virtually anything of substance and import. Presenting Obama and McCain as the extremes of acceptable thought rules out any possibility that the public might begin to think outside that range, might begin to question facets of the system itself. A public that willingly chases red herrings will keep quiet in the corridors of power. A public that censors itself won't ask questions or seek a return on the empty, vacuous rhetoric employed by politicians of all stripes.

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A Tale as Old as Time

One of the great fallacies of this campaign season has been the widely-held notion that we are witnessing something entirely new, that both candidates are aberrations within their own parties and thus practice a "different kind of politics." But once all the self-congratulatory, pre-fabricated cliches fade away we are left with the same script that has been used since the time of Jefferson.

Putting the policies aside for a moment, at least those that have even been put forward, these two supposedly unconventional candidates have conducted a campaign that is as conventional as it is mundane. Obama may bring a flashy grip of his native tongue into the fold, and McCain may be buoyed by the illusion of his independent-minded past, but in the execution there is nothing to separate 2008 from 2004, 2000, or even 1800 for that matter.

The script is well-known by now. Americans are made to reject intellectualism as effete and feminine, out of touch with real Americans, and arrogant, a picture that has been applied to every Democratic candidate for decades and continues to find traction. What Americans want -- real, masculine Americans that is -- is a President like Grandpa John or Uncle George. A real man. A man who thinks with his gut, not with his head. A man who has no need for nuance, real understanding of world affairs, or that flashy education. No, when a real man looks at the world, he sees the clear lines separating the good from the bad, the light from the dark. Intellect simply renders those that possess it ineffectual. Americans want a man of action, a man of toil and sweat, not a sheltered college boy.

It is in this framework that a man such a George Bush, truly a man born into luxury and good fortune if ever there was one, can be presented as anti-elite. It is how Bush, though he embodies the very definition of 'elite' if the word is to have any meaning, can be transformed by the performing simple tasks on his quaint little ranch, dressing in simple clothes, and using simple language. Only then can a man with opportunities well beyond the dreams of most Americans be portrayed as a cowboy and a real American.

If rational thought ever makes its return to our shores, the scheme will be seen instantly as a farce, but for now the window is still wide enough for John McCain to climb through. Although I am no fan of Obama's foreign policy, it is painfully clear that he offers an understanding of world mechanisms that McCain has never even approached. McCain is in the vein of Bush, in that he sees what he needs to see -- good and evil -- and nothing more.

Words like 'victory,' 'freedom,' and 'democracy' provide him with all the understanding he needs. Any attempt to define those terms will be met with resistance, as it is much more beneficial to him to have the listener paint his own image of the word than for McCain to be boxed in with a constrictive definition. If 'victory' was defined, McCain wouldn't be able to declare it when he felt the time called for it. If we had clear aims, people might start asking questions about how they could be achieved.

Where contemporary liberals fail in their analysis of this pervasive motif, though, is in presuming that it began with their favorite straw man, Karl Rove. While Greenwald is correct in his assertion that the McCain campaign has been forced to diverge from discussion of the issues by a public that widely rejects his stances, he is wrong in assuming that this is an entirely new phenomenon. Karl Rove presents a bugaboo to Democrats looking for a scapegoat, but he merely represents the man most able to tap into prevailing themes in American politics that have been around since the early stages of the Republic. Rove didn't create the notion of ineffectual, effete intellectuals, he merely used it to greater advantage than anyone else.

William Loughton Smith wrote a pamphlet attacking Thomas Jefferson in 1796, the tone of which should be immediately familiar:

The characteristic traits of a philosopher, when he turns politician, are, timidity, whimsicalness, and a disposition to reason from certain principles, and not from the true nature of man; a proneness to predicate all his measures on certain abstract theories formed in the recess of his cabinet, and not on the existing state of things and circumstances; an inertness of mind, as applied to governmental policy, a wavering of disposition when great and sudden emergencies demand promptness of decision and energy of action.

Smith compares Jefferson disfavorably with Washington, who "was, thank God, no philosopher; had he been one, we should never have seen his great military exploits; we should never have prospered under his wise administration." Smith illustrates that even in the late 18th Century, military virtue was a good test of political leadership, a virtue that Jefferson, although one of the most important figures in American history, did not possess and was therefore unfit to lead. The parallel to the 2008 campaign is at once obvious.

In 1800, as the attacks against Jefferson continued, another typical American stalking horse appeared, animosity toward Europeans. Joseph Dennie writes:

At the seat of government his abstract, inapplicable, metaphysicopolitics are either nugatory or noxious. Besides, his principles relish so strongly of Paris and are seasoned with such a profusion of French garlic, that he offends the whole nation. Better for Americans that on their extended plains "thistles should grow, instead of wheat, and cockle, instead of barley," than that a philosopher should influence the councils of the country, and that his admiration of the works of Voltaire and Helvetius should induce him to wish a closer connexion with Frenchmen.

The language is of a different era, but the themes are familiar. Karl Rove, far from creating his attacks, merely represents the most recent bearer of arms that were developed centuries ago and have served politicians ever since.


Related:

Chasing Straw Men, July 29

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More on the Surge and the Political Realities of Iraq

This week has been an unmitigated disaster for McCain in the foreign policy arena, supposedly the source of his greatest advantage. Apart from the Maliki government asserting its opinion that US troops should begin preparations for withdrawal, McCain exhibited quite ably his inability to grasp anything in international relations beyond that of 'gut feeling,' a reality that became more clear each time McCain tried to walk back his previous statements.

After expressing anachronistic support for the efficacy of the Surge, McCain was forced to create a new history, explaining that the Surge was actually just a term employed to describe a general counterinsurgency strategy that began well before anybody thought to mention it. A nice try, but an argument that simply doesn't hold up under scrutiny, like most of McCain's policy statements. The term 'Surge' has been used from the start to describe the increase in US troops beginning in February 2007, to go back and retroactively apply the term to a overarching strategy post mortem flies in the face of 17 months of use.

But even if we allow for a midstream change of definition, McCain's claim that "the Surge has succeeded" doesn't hold up under his own definition of the term.

By controlling the violence, we can pave the way for a political settlement. Once the government wields greater authority, however, Iraqi leaders must take significant steps on their own. These include a commitment to go after the militias, a reconciliation process for insurgents and Baathists, a more equitable distribution of government resources, provincial elections that would bring Sunnis and the government, and a large increase in employment-generating economic projects.

In other words, the true aim of the Surge was exactly what Barack Obama and everyone else has been saying it was, political reconciliation, and on that front the Iraqis have failed miserably. They've pushed back provincial elections into next year, the country is still a broken arrangement of fiefdoms, and there is still no plan for dispersement of oil money to name just a few shortcomings.

The Maliki government has indeed gone after militias, most notably in Basra, but even that operation failed to achieve a pure strategic victory, as the most recent issue of Newsweek examines in a profile of the governor of Basra, Mohammed Waeli. Waeli exemplifies the ambiguities of enemies and allies that both Bush and McCain declare they ignore in favor of a 'gut' approach to foreign policy. On paper, Waeli, as a government official, is a friend of the US and Maliki and a ally in the fight against insurgents and Iran. In reality, he is an opportunist who has made millions off of oil smuggling and overseen the transformation of Basra from relatively liberal (for the Middle East) into a Shiite fundamentalist city indicative of Iranian influence throughout eastern and southern Iraq.

Even as Maliki and the US forces must concern themselves with insurgents from the street, they must also battle officials like Waeli who have carved out a profitable niche and will be reluctant to give it up in favor of political reconciliation. Waeli is an indication of the realities facing the country as a whole, a vast, diverse collection of power centers resistant to becoming part of a united whole. The number of US troops in Iraq has little bearing on solving that core issue.

If the past week has been an illustration of anything, it's that McCain is trying to make up for lost time by showing that he has the ability to grasp the intricacies of real-world conflicts and put away his past reliance on blanket statements and assessments of good versus evil. Unfortunately for him, every time he rolls out a new theory, facts and history shoot it down rather hastily.


Related:

McCain's Foreign Policy Illiteracy, July 22
Iraq Withdrawal: Clutching at Straws, July 22

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Tangible Evidence of McCain's Foreign Policy Illiteracy

Pointing out every gaffe and misstep along the campaign trail doesn't particularly interest me, but as the one contained in John McCain's interview with Katie Couric today speaks volumes about his lack of basic understanding in Iraq I'll break my own (unwritten) rule.

As I've said before, pointing to the "success" of the Surge is a tactic employed purely out of a desire to wipe discussion of the initial decision to invade Iraq from polite discourse, for obvious reasons. As Obama and others, including myself, understand, there were numerous factors to the drop in violence in Iraq, and the drop itself preceded the Surge by several months.

One of these factors was the Sunni Awakening, a resistance to AQI activities in Anbar province aided by both American funds and a legitimate frustration with militant actions. John McCain tried to tie this together today, at long last.

Couric: Senator McCain, Sen. Obama says, while the increased number of U.S. troops contributed to increased security in Iraq, he also credits the Sunni awakening and the Shiite government going after militias. And says that there might have been improved security even without the surge. What's your response to that?

McCain: I don't know how you respond to something that is such a false depiction of what actually happened. Colonel McFarlane (phonetic) was contacted by one of the major Sunni sheiks. Because of the surge we were able to go out and protect that sheik and others. And it began the Anbar awakening. I mean, that's just a matter of history.

McCain apparently thinks the last clause seals all debate, but alas, history is indeed set on the timeline here: The Anbar Awakening was declared in progress in September of 2006, two months before the subject of escalation was even broached and fore before the President's State of the Union in which it was announced. The Sunni Awakening is indeed a matter of history, Mr. McCain, just not your version. As Juan Cole explains, few Surge troops ever made it to Anbar:

The casualty figures dropped in al-Anbar, where few extra US troops were ever sent. They dropped in Basra, from which the British withdrew. Something happened. Putting it all on 30,000 extra troops seems a stretch. And what about all the ethnic cleansing and displacing of persons that took place under the nose of the "surge?"

Before the Surge, the US still had more than 100,000 soldiers (not counting private mercenaries) in Iraq, to say that 30,000 more were solely responsible for pacifying the entire country flies in the face of credulity. It's simply not plausible that other factors -- the Awakening, the Mahdi Army cease fire to name a couple -- did not play a role.

Here again McCain illustrates rather clearly that his reputation regarding foreign policy bears little resemblance to his actual grasp of the subject. Mistaking which country borders which (Iraq-Pakistan) or mentioning the name of a country that no longer exists (Czechoslovakia) are generic missteps that don't add up in the long run. Exhibiting a continual failure to grasp even the most obvious realities and enduring lack of historical literacy, however, paint a much broader picture. Namely, that John McCain's entire foreign policy rests on his ability to talk tough and pray that nobody asks him to explain anything.

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Iraq Withdrawal: Clutching at Straws

Every so often politics and entertainment collide to provide us with a brief moment of brevity in a sea of morose inanity, and Nouri al Maliki's recent comments regarding the withdrawal of American troops have provided us with just such a moment. Given the mileage John McCain has tried to get out of his unwavering support for an unending occupation of Iraq, it was not surprising that he instantly played offense, predictably suggesting that al Maliki's comments were mistranslated.

But, as facts so often do, they made him look more ludicrous than before. Just as McCain forgets that there's a record of his statements regarding the countless issues he's taken a 180 on, he also fell victim to the suspicion that there would be no tape of the interview in question. Of course there was, and it said precisely what Der Spiegel reported it did. Making matters worse, the translator used was Maliki's own, further plunging McCain down the rabbit hole into Wonderland.

The tactic is familiar. Something comes out that presents a slap in the face to the entire Bush/McCain worldview and the wheels take motion, sowing the seeds of doubt in the form of ludicrous accusations of mistranslation or even leading poll questions. How else would greater than 80 percent of the Iraqi population want US forces out if not for the work of a mischievous (or worse, liberal!) pollster?

Other supporters of interminable war don't have to use even as little tact as McCain must employ for appearance's sake, John Derbyshire, for instance.

We should tell Maliki, loudly and in public, that he owes his job to us, and that further prosecution of our military operations in his country will be conducted with regard only to U.S. interests, as determined in consensus by our established domestic political processes. And if he doesn't like that, he can go to hell.

God bless democracy.

Derbyshire's argument, insofar as it exists at all, seems to be that al Maliki mistakenly believes himself to be the sovereign, elected leader of Iraq, when in fact he is Bush's appointed administrator for the American Protectorate of Iraqsburg. It's refreshing, though, that the intellectual stalwarts who've supported the disaster from the beginning have given up on all pretense, saving everyone the trouble of ignoring it.

Brevity aside, the last week spells certain disaster for McCain on nearly every front. His entire campaign is premised on the fact that he is 'right' on Iraq, although it has been exhaustively shown that even that concept is a farce, and precisely antithetical to reality. Maliki calling for withdrawal within a short time leaves McCain with absolutely nothing to stand on. After attempts to downplay Maliki's comments failed, they were shown to be accurate and several more Iraqi officials repeated much the same. McCain finds himself on an island concerning the central theme to his campaign, and given that, everything else falls away.

McCain can try as hard as he wants to paint Maliki's demands as "conditions based" like his own, but that only solidifies the reality that even that call means absolutely nothing, as he has yet to define what any of these conditions are or what the victory they may accompany. What is becoming increasingly clear is that although McCain is long on years and supposed to be the foreign policy expert, when it comes to actually offering anything of tangible value in the international arena he falls short. In addition to a myopic focus on Iraq, McCain has exhibited no signs of having even the slightest understanding of the variables that affect world politics, and the Maliki debacle is only the most recent in a long line of events showcasing those failures.

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Maliki's Comments Bring Out McCain's True Thoughts on Iraqi Sovereignty

If the Bush/McCain position on the American presence in Iraq showed signs of weakening earlier this week with the announcement of the made-up concept of a 'time horizon,' then Maliki's comments to Der Spiegel yesterday indicating that he'd like American forces out sooner rather than later signals that supporters of an indefinite US presence may be in their "last throes," to borrow a phrase. While most of the focus has been on the fact that Maliki endorsed Obama's position, even if he was unwilling to inject himself in the American elections (though the favor is unlikely to be returned), the most important aspect of the exchange to me is the absolute disdain McCain shows in his responses for Iraqi sovereignty.

McCain's response to all previous efforts of Maliki to assert his independence, whether regarding opposition to the Iraq SOFA or US troop withdrawals has been a mixture of indignation and an offensive against Iraqi sovereignty. At nearly every turn, McCain has said something along the lines of "Maliki's just a politician, so his comments can be dismissed." Of course, McCain is also a politician, but with the added bonus of currently seeking the highest elected office in his country. Still no word from McCain on dismissing his own statements as mere electioneering.

McCain sealed his opposition to Iraqi sovereignty with his response to the most recent revelations, saying "[Maliki’s] domestic politics require him to be for us getting out. The military says 'conditions based' and Maliki said 'conditions based' yesterday in the joint statement with Bush. Regardless, voters care about [the] military, not about Iraqi leaders." [This was a campaign official, not McCain himself.]

American voters may not care about Iraqi leaders, but American officials are under obligation to do so. The entire Iraq enterprise was premised on the fact that "we were doing the Iraqis a favor." To stand now in direct opposition to the wishes of the Iraqi government is to declare conclusively that the invasion was indeed an American economic and political operation from the start. Not that there was ever any real doubt, but the facade gets harder to maintain with each passing day.

The whole episode is proof positive of where America's commitment to democracy begins and ends. When Iraqi democracy serves as a pipeline to funnel oil money back to the West and a vehicle for supplying a playground for private contractors drunk with tax payer funds, it is a welcome addition to the world scene. When Iraqi democracy begins to serve as a vehicle for serving the will of the Iraqi people to the detriment of the public positions of American elected officials, it becomes disposable.

Much of the focus has been over the differences between the positions of Obama and McCain, but that sniping misses the real point. The only position that matters is that of the Iraqis. The US engaged in Iraq to bring them democracy, or so our leaders told us, now it's time for us to live up to our promises.


Related:

When a Guest Becomes a Squatter, June 15
The Iraq 'Time Horizon,' July 18

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John McCain: Bluster More Important Than Results

As evidenced by the firestorm over General Clark's comments suggesting that military service alone doesn't classify one to be President - seemingly a self-evident truth, but you wouldn't know it from the response - the presumption that McCain's time in the Hanoi Hilton somehow mitigates the fact that he has demonstrated a distinct lack of basic comprehension in the foreign policy arena persists. Like George Bush, McCain substitutes a qualitative, fundamental understanding of the real world for a fantasy world full of bluster and posturing, all the while given a pass by the media and the public.

In a country which sought an actual examination of proposals and results on the campaign trail, this errant nature would be seen for what it is and discarded hastily. But in the world of the low-information voter, Americans are blinded by the uniformed past and ignore the disastrous results of McCain's ideas when acted upon.

McCain constantly demonstrates his dearth of knowledge by conflating al Qaeda with every source of resistance and continually suggesting that Iran's influence is entirely unwanted and consigned only to America's enemies. The reality is well-documented and provides a stark contrast to McCain's rhetoric.

As I said while examining Obama's proposals for Afghanistan, the Surge has become a red herring in the discussion of Iraq, used as a way of directing attention away from the first four years of the war and focusing it on a short period where violence began to return to a point still obscene and still of US origin. By pointing to the Surge, McCain and his allies have effectively eliminated any and all discussion of the initial tragedy of the decision to invade Iraq. Now McCain and the White House are trying to parlay that tactical and PR success into a winning argument concerning Afghanistan.

Only when given the free pass on foreign policy that McCain is because of his previous service could he avoid the obvious question that should follow his recent proposal to send more troops to Afghanistan: Where have you been? While everyone else has been screaming from the mountaintops that the situation is swiftly deteriorating, McCain has remained silent, merely repeating his call to stay in Iraq until victory arrived. And because he never defined what that meant, he was able to declare just that on Thursday.

I repeat my statement that we have succeeded in Iraq. Not we are succeeding. We have succeeded in Iraq.

This of course allows him to justify paying a little bit of attention to Afghanistan, as everyone has been pleading for months while he fiddled. But McCain's hands are far from clean on the narco state. When it was suggested in 2003 that Iraq might present a distraction - which it clearly has - McCain simply said that the US could "muddle through Afghanistan." Well, the returns are in on that "muddling," and they aren't pretty. Again, in a reality-based world, this blatant lack of foresight, in tandem with his marginalization of those who were actually correct in their assessment, would be met with real consequences. But McCain bears the scarlet 'R,' so that possibility is out.

McCain is allowed to keep perpetrating his shtick, saying he "knows how to win wars," despite all evidence proving precisely the opposite.

Although he chastises Obama for not "having a strategy," McCain offers up a strategy that points yet again to his complete failure to properly assess even the most apparent realities of the foreign policy arena. His strategy calls for an increase in the size of the Afghan military funded by other countries. This plan ignores entirely the fact that other countries have abandoned the Afghanistan effort precisely because of the Iraq War, a war that McCain has championed since the Nineties. He has also called for more NATO troops, again disregarding Robert Gates' trip earlier this year in search of just that which came up empty.

McCain also promised to capture Osama bin Laden, which is odd given his statement in 2002 on Face the Nation that bin Laden's capture wasn't "that important."

To suggest that McCain's foreign policy proposals should be examined on their merits rather than his past sporting of a uniform is not a denigration of service in general. It is a rational approach to campaign procedure which implies that the results of one's ideas should have at least some bearing on one's reputation. If that were the case, McCain's reputation in the foreign arena would be irreparably damaged, as he has shown with tremendous clarity at every juncture of the Bush years to be completely void of even a fundamental understanding of the real world. In a world governed by results rather than bluster, the fact that those who disagreed with McCain have be proven right at nearly every turn would begin to wear on the man's political stature.

But as it stands, facts have taken a back seat to conventional wisdom. It doesn't matter how many times McCain's policies prove to be an utter failure, he'll still have an 'R' next to his name, and in America that means never having to admit errors, even as they continuously knock you between the eyes.


Related:

Surge II: Afghanistan, July 15
Calling Their Shots, March 20
Changing the Rules of the Game, April 1
Fences Make Good Neighbors, April 11

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What Iraqi Democracy Looks Like

*Update Appended, 7/16 @ 1100*

As I've said before, the only (publicly stated) rationale for the invasion of Iraq still on the table is the drive to establish a beacon of democracy in the Middle East, if only because its the only one not definitively disprovable by facts. (Wherever tangible reality meets the Bush worldview, the latter is brutally swept aside.) That said, there has been scant discussion of the probable outcome of the exercise in Iraqi democracy.

John McCain has made a living out of saying the US must stay in Iraq until 'victory' occurs, though a definition of victory seems perpetually elusive for him. Now Obama, in his desire to slink his way ever closer to McCain in the foreign policy arena has declared that victory is imminent. Yet, like McCain, Obama's vision of victory is founded on a set of circumstances clearly contradicted by facts on the ground (forgive the cliche).

For Mr. Obama, that status quo is close to what he is now calling "victory." In his speech yesterday, he said, "True success will take place when we leave Iraq to a government that is taking responsibility for its future — a government that prevents sectarian conflict, and ensures that the Al Qaeda threat which has been beaten back by our troops does not reemerge. That is an achievable goal if we pursue a comprehensive plan to press the Iraqis to stand up."

Suggesting that a democratic exercise in Iraq would "prevent sectarian conflict" is not a goal to be taken lightly, as the power struggles surrounding elections exacerbate sectarian tensions as much as they quell them. Whereas McCain offers the promise of victory without definition, Obama counters with a vision of success fatally wedded to circumstances not likely to appear.

I've alluded to the tenuous state of the upcoming provincial elections in previous posts, indicating that much of Maliki's recent pushes in Basra, Sadr City and elsewhere have been thinly-veiled power plays meant to affect the results of those elections. Marc Lynch examines other aspects in more detail here:

It appears that the long-anticipated Iraqi Parliament vote on a law governing the provincial elections scheduled for the beginning of October has been postponed until Thursday and probably longer. Parliamentary Speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani postponed discussions after the Kurds walked out in protest over the treatment of Kirkuk; leaders from the Shia UIA were reportedly huddling with their Kurdish partners in the governing coalition, trying to reach an agreement on how to proceed.

This isn't a great shock: the government had submitted a multiple-choice draft for the Parliament to debate, leaving the most contentious issues unresolved. It didn't seem likely that the divided and contentious Parliament would quickly arrive at a consensus which eluded Maliki's relatively tight ruling Shia-Kurd coalition....

The issues raised by the provincial election law cut to the heart of competing visions of Iraq's political future. Kurds are fuming over the plans for voting in Kirkuk, which they feel might prejudice the future of the contested area (the three official Kurdish provinces will almost certainly not take part at all in the provincial elections). The question of open vs closed lists may seem technocratic, but will have major implications for voting: many people think that (for better or worse) closed lists strengthen the role of parties at the expense of individual candidates and could heighten the salience of sectarian appeals.

Clearly, more than a few issues, with many of the contentious issues promising to stoke sectarian strife rather than soften the blow, as Obama hopes. As it stands, Iraq is not a centralized government, but a collection of different concentrations of power, a situation not likely to change as a result of the elections. Part of that relationship is the status of Kirkuk, a city which the Kurds feel should be part of their semi-autonomous region, making the prospect of holding elections there a "thorny subject."

Likewise, the use of closed lists, where voters are only given a choice of parties rather than individual candidates, will almost by definition promote sectarian divides. The Sadrists are also barred from participating as a party, leaving them out completely should closed lists be used, and one can imagine that would have some effect on the Mahdi Army cease fire, which has no small bearing on the so-called "success" of the Surge.

Also receiving little attention is the status of the 5 million displaced Iraqis, victims of the years of ethnic cleansing. Unless the election law allows them to vote in their previous areas of residence, the elections would be a de facto codification of that cleansing. Eric Martin, remarking on Lynch's piece, expresses his pessimistic outlook:

The reason for time's inadequacy as a facilitator of resolution stems from the stubbornness of the convoluted and cross-cutting matrix of conflicts that continue to plague Iraq: various groups of Iraqis are battling to determine the political future of their country (unitary state vs. fragmented state, Islamist vs. secular, etc.), to dictate their roles in it (various ethnic/sectarian groups vying for safety, survival, economic and political power) to determine the level of foreign occupation/involvement (American, Iranian, etc.) and to redress crimes and injustices both recent (5 million internal/external refugees, hundreds of thousands dead, etc.) and historical (Shiite/Kurdish suffering at the hands of Saddam). How does more time to discuss the various positions/demands undo that? The answer is, generally, it doesn't.

If that wasn't problem enough, Saddam's VP made an appearance today, taunting not only Bush, but Muqtada al Sadr and al Qaeda, throwing yet another obstacle in the way of the administration's attempts to paint Iraqi resistance as a homogeneous bloc. The taunts also further exemplify the probability that the provincial elections portend of a powder keg of sectarian tensions.

That, essentially, is what Obama is trying to gloss over in saying success is close at hand, and it's surely an aspect of the Iraqi reality that needs more attention paid to it. Obama sees a future with a less-than-perfect democracy, but he ties that to the supposition that any democracy will temper internal conflict. All available evidence, however, points to precisely the opposite conclusion, a reality that should force Obama to explain just how he plans to avoid it.

Empty platitudes pervade American political discourse, sure, but on issues as significant as the Iraqi elections, the public deserves much more. The last 5 years has been an exercise in trading actual understanding of reality for a strong gale of hollow rhetoric, and if the overwhelming success of that tactic doesn't call for a change of course, nothing will. While Obama's definition of 'success' may be short on specifics, at least he deigns to make an attempt. Thus far, McCain has yet to offer even a token milestone for his goal of 'victory.'

*Update*

The fighting has begun to materialize, with Kurdish lawmakers protesting on Tuesday. There is virtually no chance of the election happening before the Presidential elections in November, but how much that affects the American enterprise I'm not sure.


Related:

The Myth of the Surge, March 27
Changing the Rules of the Game, April 1

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Mental Recession or Just Mental?

While Phil Gramm may think Americans are engaged in some macabre game of hide the mortgage check, his friends at the White House seem to think simply wishing the economy in the right direction is a plausible alternative. Bush's speech today was rife with the typical folksy dribble and sincerest regret for misplacing the ever-elusive magic wand. Black magic or no, economic remains a numbers game, and concrete realities have never been Bush's strong suit.

President Bush began Tuesday trying to calm consumers troubled by an increasingly shaky economy, but his words had little effect.

By the end of the day, the Dow had closed at its lowest level in two years, the government reported that prices had jumped at their sharpest pace in 27 years, and the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board warned that "significant challenges" lie ahead.

Even the administration's plan to support the mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — hurriedly announced over the weekend — didn't stem the tide. Both enterprises saw their stocks drop more than 25 percent.

Truth be told, though, one can understand the indifference of Bush, Gramm and the rest of the free-market crusaders, as they're probably doing just fine. A core principle of Friedmanism is that economic success hits the top rung first, and downturns take out the bottom just the same. Gramm and those like him are free to play chicken with the market, assured that when they get in over their heads the Fed will bail them out. Most Americans don't have that benefit.

Despite Bush's valiant effort to paint a rosy picture, the numbers remain unchanged, and aren't nearly as pretty.

_ Wholesale prices were up 1.8 percent last month, the Labor Department reported. Producer price inflation has grown 9.2 percent in the last year, the fastest since 1981.

_ General Motors Corp., battered by the decline in auto sales, suspended its dividend and announced plans to lay off salaried employees and borrow up to $3 billion.

_ Oil prices fell by $6.64 to about $138 a barrel, as investors became concerned that the slow economy will dampen demand. But the price was still well above year-ago levels.

_ Retail sales were up a scant 0.1 percent in June, the Commerce Department reported Tuesday. Gas prices accounted for all the increase, Vitner said. "You take out gasoline prices and sales were down," he added.

Bush and McCain would also like to apply the principle of willing the country to a good economy to oil production, assuring us that simply opening the OCS will invoke OPEC to lower the price of oil and save us all. The faulty logic inherent in that argument has been pointed out ad nauseum, yet it persists.

To recount just a few things I've enumerated before:

• Between 1999 and 2007, the number of drilling permits issued for development of public lands increased by more than 361%, yet gasoline prices have also risen dramatically contradicting the argument that more drilling means lower gasoline prices. There is simply no correlation between the two.


• Oil and gas companies have shown that they cannot keep pace with the rate of drilling permits that the federal government is handing out. In the last four years, the Bureau of Land Management has issued 28,776 permits to drill on public land; yet, in that same time, 18,954 wells were actually drilled. That means that companies have stockpiled nearly 10,000 extra permits to drill that they are not using to increase domestic production.


• Oil companies are only drilling on 27% of the federal lands leased to them and 24% of the offshore acres, leaving the companies with 68 million acres of leased acreage on which they are not producing oil or gas.

At some point, one would think that our leaders would be called to point to some tangible evidence that their rhetoric has even a brush with reality, but that has yet to happen. Consider that the argument at its core is "if we simply allow the oil companies to drill, oil prices will go down."

Now contrast that with reality: We've allowed the oil companies to drill on 68 million acres and oil prices have gone up exponentially.

The market for the empty rhetoric of Bush and McCain should dry up once it becomes so detached from reality as to be absurd, yet the cavalcade of buffoonery marches on.


Related:

Pure Speculation, June 12
McCain, No Stranger to Irony, April 25

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Surge II: Afghanistan

The Surge in Iraq was successful in two respects. First, it did coincide, coincidental or causal I'm not sure, with a drop in violence in Iraq. Second, it injected new life into proponents of the war, who by now have very little to stand on in the way of rational thought. By throwing out the red herring of the Surge, the administration was able to point to its moderate successes as a way of directing attention away from the vast array of failures of its Iraq adventure, failures which persist regardless of the attention paid to them.

Where the Surge failed, however, was in accomplishing its stated goal. The tempering of violence was meant as a vehicle for achieving its true aim, which was stabilization of the government. From the American perspective, this meant allowing Maliki the time to push the undesirable political factions out so that democratic principles could not be applied to them in the upcoming (maybe) provincial elections. While the Surge did witness the return of Sunni politicians to Parliament, Iraq is no closer to ceasing to be a "collection of different fiefdoms controlled by warlords," thus signaling the Surge failed in achieving its central goal.

Luckily for the Bush administration, no one is paying attention to the political front, including the Messiah himself, who this weekend wiped his website clear of criticism of the Surge. Apparently, after 100s of thousands of Iraqis have met their demise, a slower pace over several months and all will be forgiven. Downturn in violence or not, those Iraqis remain deceased and the country's infrastructure remains ashambles, well after the taxpayers granted engineering firms billions to fix it. Pointing to the minor success of the Surge is to disregard all the miserable failures that came before, and to grant the term 'success' to simply a slower pace of devastation seems a misuse of the term.

Both Presidential candidates are so enamored with the blinding PR victory that they're calling for a reprise in Afghanistan, which for anyone paying attention has regressed to the point it was circa October 2001. To Obama's credit, he has continuously pointed to Afghanistan as "the real front in the War on Terror," so his call for 10,000 more troops comes as a natural offshoot of his campaign.

McCain, however, made today his first acceptance of that point, his first attempt to perhaps admit that Iraq never was about terrorism and was always an economic endeavor. This change of direction of course comes only after the administration signaled it was okay by insinuating it may do the same last week.

But spoiling the self-congratulatory party are some pesky facts, differences between the two situations. If the most abject failure of American foreign policy is to apply cookie-cutter policies to the world as if its inhabitants were a homogeneous sample and transposable over any region, both McCain and Obama exhibit similar failures in attempting to apply the same tactics used in Iraq to Afghanistan.

The most glaring difficulty is that the Taliban stronghold they seek to root out is not in Afghanistan, but Pakistan. Thus, regardless of the number of troops stationed in Afghanistan, whether increased by 10 or 50 thousand, the same issue of Pakistani sovereignty exists. The Pakistani government has shown no willingness to allow NATO forces to conduct cross-border raids, so any suggestion that the Surge forces would do so would come as an affront to the wishes of our 'ally.'

Musharraf's hold on power grows weaker by the day, which has led to the Pakistanis remaining lax on raids in the FATA and NWP in order to avoid stoking a fire which might drive him from the seat of government. Allowing NATO to conduct itself in Pakistan with autonomy would surely be unpopular among the populace and put Musharraf in greater peril.

The other wrench thrown into the rhetorical cog is the ISI, Pakistan's Intelligence force. Karzai's government is convinced that the ISI is interfering in his country, and responsible for the attempts on his life as well as several bombings, including the recent bombing of the Indian embassy. In other words, Pakistan is engaging in everything Iran is chastised for in Iraq. These are no small obstacles for McCain or Obama.

Unless the two are willing to address the tangible differences between Iraq and Afghanistan, any suggestions involving a Surge in Afghanistan should be regarded as mere rhetorical flair. Neither has illustrated any effort to address Pakistan's role in the deteriorating situation, and until such time as they do, the Surge is a promise without hope for fulfillment.

Related:

Pakistan Stops Fighting Militants, May 18
Nir Rosen: Iraq a Collection of Fiefdoms, April 5
GAO: US Lacks a Plan in Afghanistan, April 20

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Iraqi SOFA: Out on the Curb?

Even given the enormous and egregious breeches of Iraqi sovereignty that the SOFA the US was trying to force on the Maliki government contained, I must say that I'm surprised--and impressed--that the Iraqis have held up as well as it seems they have, with the Washington Post reporting that a long-term deal may be all but dead.

Really, the only hope Bush and Crocker had of pushing the deal through was without the involvement of either legislature and sans journalistic scrutiny. Once the details of the proposal got out, it was game over. While Bush serves a country with a complacent populace and complicit Congress, Maliki is more beholden to both in his own country. When religious leaders such as al Sistani began coming out in full force against the SOFA, there was no chance he would be able to avoid submission to the legislature, and no chance doing so would result in its adoption.

To recount briefly, the SOFA was essentially a deal wherein the Iraqis would sign up willingly for colonial rule. I say colonial not as a loaded phrase meant to incite, but because under the tenets of the agreement, Iraq would have met every criteria. The US forces would operate completely independent of the Iraqi government, have complete immunity from Iraqi laws, be able to launch attacks from Iraq without notification or permission, and control completely Iraqi airspace. In essence, the exact model of the old British Empire where the Middle East was nominally controlled by locals but was in reality part of British Imperial rule. The British simply found it cheaper to have a third-party do the dirty work.

The SOFA, then, was a signal of how much times have changed. Whereas in Imperial times, the oil was siphoned out without the countries' consent, today the Iraqis are expected to sign their consent for the exact same circumstances. Picture a hangman offering a letter of consent to the condemned while in the noose.

The failure of months of negotiations over the more detailed accord -- blamed on both the Iraqi refusal to accept U.S. terms and the complexity of the task -- deals a blow to the Bush administration's plans to leave in place a formal military architecture in Iraq that could last for years.

The article matter-of-factly blames the failure of the proposal on "the Iraqi refusal to accept US terms," leaving aside any details of those US demands, and for obvious reasons. Those details which are left out, are not simply minor nuances to a larger agreement, but a signing over of Iraqi sovereignty to the US for the indefinite future, not something the Iraqi government, bound by democratic principles, could have signed. The only possibility of success from Bush's perspective, would have been if the Iraqis showed as much disdain for democracy as he does in his own country.

Negotiators expect [the deal] to include a "time horizon," with specific goals for U.S. troop withdrawal from Baghdad and other cities and installations such as the former Saddam Hussein palace that now houses the U.S. Embassy.

The fixed dates will likely include caveats referring to the ability of Iraqi security forces to take over from U.S. units, but without them, U.S. negotiators concluded that Iraqi acquiescence was doubtful. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his political allies have come under intense domestic pressure to reject any perceived infringement on Iraqi sovereignty. Maliki, who last week publicly insisted on a withdrawal timeline, wants to frame the agreement as outlining the terms for "Americans leaving Iraq" rather than the conditions under which they will stay, said the U.S. official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity because U.S.-Iraqi negotiations are ongoing.

Indeed, Maliki's submission to "domestic pressure" has thrown Bush and McCain for a loop, as they are not sure what a democracy in which the government performs the will of the people looks like.

In effect, Maliki is calling their bluff, as both Bush and McCain have said previously that "when the Iraqis ask us to leave, we'll leave." Now that the time is rapidly approaching, both are scrambling to dissemble, saying that Maliki is "just a politician" and surely wouldn't demand withdrawal before his security forces are ready. That is, before the US has ensured the economic end of the bargain.

The US would also like some more time to influence the October provincial elections, as Maliki still has plenty of work to do before Sadr's faction becomes politically inviable, the unstated goal of his recent pushes in Sadr City and Amara.

The negotiations surrounding the SOFA illustrate quite clearly what the US means by democracy. The tangible disdain that both Bush and McCain have shown for Maliki's willingness to submit his rule to the will of the Iraqi populace indicates that both would prefer a system more like that of the US, where politicians put on a happy face every four years, then spend the inter-nicene period trouncing on the public will. As Dick Cheney infamously quipped, the American public has one chance to voice their opinion, the general election. In between, the country belongs to the victors.

McCain surely knows a thing or two about pandering, but in calling for withdrawal, Maliki is doing no such thing. He is attempting to enforce the will of well over 80 percent of his population. Bush and McCain may call that pandering, but those of us still romantically tied to the events of 1776 call it democracy.


Related:

The Iraq SOFA: Not So Comfortable, June 5
US Holds Iraqi Funds Hostage Over SOFA, June 7
When a Guest Becomes a Squatter, June 15

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Obama, McCain and Flip-Flopping: When a Meme is Just a Meme

Lost amid the swooning coverage of Barack Obama this election cycle is any real attention to his words, beyond their lyrical quality of course. That absense has led directly to the current panic of the Obamatrons who're shocked to find that Obama's slick campaign skills would be used to run, well, a campaign that makes him electable.

The Republicans, of course, are more than happy to stoke the fire, jumping on the "he's changed his stance on withdrawal" bandwagon in a reprise of their 2004 campaign meme. However, in order to really believe that his stance has changed, one would have had to ignore nearly every single statement he's made on the subject, as he has said he would need to consult with officers on the ground before planning any pullout every time the subject has been broached in Q&A sessions.

On Thursday:

My 16-month timeline, if you examine everything I've said, was always premised on making sure our troops were safe. And my guiding approach continues to be that we've got to make sure that our troops are safe, and that Iraq is stable. And I'm going to continue to gather information to find out whether those conditions still hold.

Thus began the firestorm which filled the holiday news void, lest the lazy journalists have to seek out an actual news story or something. The benign statement--seemingly--is nothing new for Obama, as it has been consistent over the span of his campaign. Selective hearing and short attention spans have ensured that the message was lost, but it was there for anyone who chose to listen.

At the September MSNBC Democratic Debate:

Russert: Will you pledge that by January 2013, the end of your first term, more than five years from now, there will be no U.S. troops in Iraq?

Obama: I think it's hard to project four years from now, and I think it would be irresponsible. We don't know what contingency will be out there.

What I can promise is that if there are still troops in Iraq when I take office -- which it appears there may be, unless we can get some of our Republican colleagues to change their mind and cut off funding without a timetable -- if there's no timetable -- then I will drastically reduce our presence there to the mission of protecting our embassy, protecting our civilians, and making sure that we're carrying out counterterrorism activities there.

I believe that we should have all our troops out by 2013, but I don't want to make promises, not knowing what the situation's going to be three or four years out.

Clearly far short of a 16-month promise. I've already written about Obama's willingness to leave lawless private contractors behind in Iraq and his commitment to status quo ante foreign policy in arenas elsewhere, and everything he's said on the subject has been meticulously constructed so as to allow for the most wiggle room possible. What the listener chooses to hear is not under his control.

And his former adviser Samantha Power in March to round it out:

STEPHEN SACKUR: Let me stop you just for a moment. You said that he’ll revisit it when he goes to the White House. So what the American public thinks is a commitment to get combat forces out within sixteen months, isn’t a commitment isn’t it?

POWER: You can’t make a commitment in whatever month we’re in now, in March of 2008 about what circumstances are gonna be like in Jan. 2009. We can’t even tell what Bush is up to in terms of troop pauses and so forth. He will of course not rely upon some plan that he’s crafted as a presidential candidate or as a US senator.

He will rely upon a plan, an operational plan that he pulls together, in consultation with people who are on the ground, to whom he doesn’t have daily access now as a result of not being the president.

So to think, I mean it would be the height of ideology, you know, to sort of say, well I said it therefore I’m going to impose it on whatever reality entreats me –

SACKUR: Ok, so the 16 months is negotiable?

POWER: It’s the best case scenario.

Far from flip-flopping, Obama's position has been remarkably consistent, even if consistently equivocal.

The corporate media seems happy to be complicit in advancing the Republican narrative on this particular issue, if for no other reason than it's a story that requires very little leg work on their part. As far as flip-flopping goes, though, John McCain surely takes top prize. Comparing his 2000 campaign and his current one, it becomes nearly impossible to find a subject on which he hasn't dramatically switched positions.

To run through just a few:

• Once calling leaders of the religious right "agents of intolerance," he has embraced not only Jerry Falwell and spoken at Liberty, but has accepted the endorsements of two of the most intolerant of the intolerant, John Hagee and Rod Parsley.


• Once decried the Bush tax cuts as unwise in a time of war and said they were too beneficial to the top economic tier, now pledges to extend those cuts.


• Opposed drilling on the OCS. No longer.


• Introduced two bills to the Senate, one forbidding torture and another reforming immigration policy, now supports neither. And those were bills he introduced himself.


• Once stated he wouldn't attempt to overturn Roe v Wade, now pledges to.


• In 2005, warned against a long term presence in Iraq. Now, well, you know the rest.

I could go on, but there's hardly a need. Whatever your allegiance to the policies of either candidate, there is no logical debate to be had on which one has shifted positions with greater fluidity. That's not to say that it won't go that way, as the American electorate is not known for its resistance to being led around by the nose. The only thing that matters is that the strategy worked in 2004 and the Republicans will be damned if they don't try it in 2008, even when the reality proves that tactic a farce.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Facts no longer matter, and conventional wisdom is a tough beast to slay.

Related:

Obama Would Leave Contractors in Iraq, March 3
Obama's Move to the Right, July 2
McCain Warns Against Long-Term Presence, April 30
McCain Called for Quick Withdrawal from Clinton's Forays, April 6

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The Fallacious Nature of Conventional Wisdom on National Security

When Charlie Black gave his interview to Fortune in which he implied another terrorist attack on US soil would be beneficial to the McCain campaign, the backlash centered on the idea that he was in fact hoping for such an occurrence. While even I am not cynical enough to believe he could wish for such a thing, the underlying point he was trying to make still instills deep frustrations.

That idea--that Republicans are inherently more capable in the area of national security--is one that has been thoroughly debunked by all available evidence of the past 7-plus years, yet it lingers. Despite demonstrable proof that the world is less stable than when George Bush took office, the existence of an al Qaeda stronghold in the mountains of Pakistan, the creation of a new haven for unrest in Iraq, an emboldened North Korea, and a strategic windfall for Iran, conventional wisdom still holds that should terrorism return to American shores, the public would want a Republican in charge.

Apart from what should be obvious--that conventional wisdom is almost invariably wrong--there is ample proof that it is especially so in this particular case. In examining the reasons for this persistence, there seems a dearth of legitimate ones. The most glaring supposition is that the public, or the media personalities who pretend to speak for them, juxtapose positive results with strong posturing.

At nearly every turn, Bush has taken a strong rhetorical stand against terrorism, but all attempts to follow through on his threats has met with disaster and failure. After promising to "smoke 'em out of their holes," he has allowed, via a deviation of resources, al Qaeda to grow even stronger on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border and concurrently the Taliban to begin to reassert itself in Kandahar and elsewhere.

Iraq is perhaps the most prescient example of valuing bluster over substance, as Bush employed bullying tactics with both Saddam Hussein, Congress, and the American public before proving his argument to be entirely devoid of veracity. Nonetheless, conventional wisdom holds. What matters is not that the US created a new terrorism nexus or handed Iran the greatest strategic windfall it could have dreamed of, but that Bush talked tough. By appearing strong in the face of a challenge, the utter failure of the follow-through is granted. Only under these circumstances could the President and his surrogates now undertake preparations for an attack of Iran under nearly identical conditions as the prelude to the invasion of Iraq. The narrative is a carbon copy, yet the failure of the previous foray does not factor into the analysis.

Why this is so is not so easy to ascertain. Liberals think it's a sign of a conservative press, but I'm more apt to think of the media as lazy, inept, and overly deferential to power. Journalists are a mouthpiece for the administration, due mainly to the lack of motivation for actual investigation, but I don't believe this will change should a Democrat take office. The press will still write articles made up entirely of quotes from public officials, and the conservatives will have even more reason to cry about a liberal press.

The second factor is that the press is afraid, journalistic integrity be damned, to be labeled un-American. Facts no longer matter. What matters is that the government is supported in its endeavors, regardless of how inept or counter-productive they are. The majority of the public has neither the time nor the initiative to follow through on the end game of the policies, so they are beholden to the superficial coverage of the American media, which eats at the trough of trivialities and conventional wisdom fallacies.

Why, then, are we to presume that McCain would be better in office than Obama? If the implication is that McCain will be an extension of Bush's stance on terror, then shouldn't the opposite conclusion be reached? How does an examination of the results of the past 7 years not lead to seeking a different angle? The policies are clearly failing, as any objective analysis would illustrate. al Qaeda is stronger. The Taliban is back. Iran is stronger. Iraq is now an unstable terrorism boon. Success cannot be found anywhere, yet still we are supposed to buy into the Bush-McCain policies.

There is only one explanation for such a position: Facts no longer matter. Results are immaterial to the argument. Words matter. He who talks the toughest wins, and if the country ends up less safe, so be it. Conventional wisdom is nearly impossible to slay. Credibility's a different animal.

Related:

Changing the Rules of the Game, April 1

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