The "Iraqification" of American Politics
(updated below)
Many political commentators have described September 11, 2001 as a transformational moment in American politics, an event that triggered a significant realignment of prevailing political views and provoked a re-examination of what it means to be "liberal" or "conservative."
I disagree. It's not that September 11 wasn't an enormously significant day in American history. It was. But in the year or so following 9/11, the meaning of the terms "liberal," "conservative," and "moderate" (as well as "far left" and "far right") were largely the same as they'd ever been. One's place along the political spectrum was generally defined by one's views on typical barometer issues like tax policy, abortion, gun control, and one's perceived place on the conventional hawk/dove continuum.
The only difference was that in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, these distinctions were largely irrelevant because there was a broad political consensus about what needed to be done. Even most "doves" supported our invasion of Afghanistan.
But everything began to change in the Fall of 2002, when the Bush administration began an aggressive public relations campaign to sell the American people on the idea of invading Iraq. This was the moment of true political realignment, when the very meaning of the terms "conservative" and "liberal" began to change.
What do I mean? Well, let me begin by highlighting an exchange that took place Monday on the New Republic's blog, The Plank. In response to an uncharacteristically vacuous series of rants in which the New Republic's Jonathan Chait described "lefty bloggers" as--among other things--"crazed, ignorant ideological cannibals," a commenter made the following observation:
As simple as that sounds, it's hard to deny that it rings true. What we've witnessed over the last 3+ years is the "Iraqification" of American politics. The Iraq War has become the axis from which terms like "left," "far left," "right," and "moderate" derive their meaning.
How else can one explain a political climate in which Howard Dean and Al Gore have become the standard bearers of the "far left." Dean was a hawkish, fiscally conservative, pro-free trade governor with an A+ rating from the NRA. He was a centrist by any pre-2002 standard. Similarly, Al Gore's views on deficit-spending, free trade, and foreign policy place him squarely in what used to be called the "moderate wing" of the Democratic party.
But these two men shared another view in common; they thought the invasion of Iraq was a bad idea from the very beginning. And because of that, they quickly found themselves on the fringe of American politics, portrayed by the media and even their fellow Democrats as borderline radicals.
I can sympathize because the very same thing happened to me. Prior to 2002, I had always considered myself a sort of neo-liberal in the Tom Friedman/New Republic sense. I was socially liberal and supported traditional Democratic positions on issues like tax policy and healthcare. But I also strongly believed in free-trade and was generally hawkish on foreign policy issues. None of that has changed.
But as the Bush administration began to ratchet up its rhetoric on Iraq, I became increasingly distressed and mystified by what was happening. One moment there was nonstop discussion of Osama Bin Laden and the next moment it was as if he had been totally forgotten. Suddenly public enemy number one was Saddam Hussein, the aging dictator of a secular country that had no obvious connection to the jihadists who had attacked us on 9/11. I found this transition jarring; the whole debate seemed to be a rather glaring non-sequitur, a contrived marketing campaign. All of the sudden everyone was talking about Iraq, and not because of any new developments in Baghdad. It was as if everyone had collectively lost their minds.
I became even more distressed and disillusioned as I read through the pages of what had been my favorite magazine, the New Republic. Every issue was unrelentingly pro-war. No one seemed at all put off by the sudden transition from talk of Al-Qaeda to talk of Saddam's regime. No one was bothered by the fact that the Administration seemed to be going out of its way to confuse Americans about the relationship between the two (or that the vast majority of Americans supported the war because of this confusion). Even some of my otherwise liberal friends were caught up in the hysteria. And no one was raising the most obvious concerns. What happens after we oust Saddam's regime? Couldn't the unilateral "pre-emptive" invasion of an Arab country potentially do more harm than good in terms of our overall goal of reducing terrorism?
But then in September of 2002, someone finally gave voice to my concerns. It was Al Gore:
As thankful as I was that someone had tried to inject some sanity into the debate, I was immediately disheartened by the brutal and hysterical response to Gore's speech.
Michael Kelly, former editor of the New Republic, had this to say about Gore's speech in an op-ed in the Washington Post:
I long for the days when one's place on the political spectrum was not defined in such an arbitrary and unilluminating way.
UPDATE: Marshall Wittman proves yet again that he is perpetually stuck in 2002. In his latest post, he enthusiastically approves of Chait's childish tirade, observing that "the left wing blogosphere is a place where bile passes for wisdom." He describes lefty bloggers as "McGovernites with modems" (does he still use dial up?) and warns us that:
What a perfect illustration of my point. Wittman sees the right/left axis solely in terms of the Iraq War. Anyone, like me, who opposed the war is a McGovernite pacifist, no matter what they think about any other issue, including non-Iraq foreign policy issues. He blames the blogosphere for "moving the party to the left." What a joke. The idea that left-of-center bloggers are far to the left of the mainstream Democratic party is total rubbish, as Kevin Drum and Atrios explain well. I doubt Wittman can point to any issue for which this characterization holds true. For a time, it was probably true about Iraq. The liberal blogs were definitely ahead of public opinion on that issue. But the public has come around, and then some, and it had everything to do with the situation on the ground in Iraq, not the influence of the blogosphere.
Wittman claims that Democratic politicians are "pandering to the netroots." Really? If anything, Democratic politicians are reacting to public opinion, which is now solidly against the Iraq war and the Bush administration. That development has nothing to do with liberal blogs.
Many political commentators have described September 11, 2001 as a transformational moment in American politics, an event that triggered a significant realignment of prevailing political views and provoked a re-examination of what it means to be "liberal" or "conservative."
I disagree. It's not that September 11 wasn't an enormously significant day in American history. It was. But in the year or so following 9/11, the meaning of the terms "liberal," "conservative," and "moderate" (as well as "far left" and "far right") were largely the same as they'd ever been. One's place along the political spectrum was generally defined by one's views on typical barometer issues like tax policy, abortion, gun control, and one's perceived place on the conventional hawk/dove continuum.
The only difference was that in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, these distinctions were largely irrelevant because there was a broad political consensus about what needed to be done. Even most "doves" supported our invasion of Afghanistan.
But everything began to change in the Fall of 2002, when the Bush administration began an aggressive public relations campaign to sell the American people on the idea of invading Iraq. This was the moment of true political realignment, when the very meaning of the terms "conservative" and "liberal" began to change.
What do I mean? Well, let me begin by highlighting an exchange that took place Monday on the New Republic's blog, The Plank. In response to an uncharacteristically vacuous series of rants in which the New Republic's Jonathan Chait described "lefty bloggers" as--among other things--"crazed, ignorant ideological cannibals," a commenter made the following observation:
What all you "centrists" and "Liberal hawks" really mean
is those of us who were right about Iraq from day 1. The
definition of left-right is all about that one issue.
Calling the blogosphere the loony left is absurd when you
look at the broad spectrum of policies. If Howard Dean is
far left on economics then Truman was an outright
communist.
It has basically become this:
Loony Left: against the war from day 1 (Dean, Gore,
Daily Kos et al)
Left: supported the war but now realize it was a mistake
(Kerry, Edwards, Bloggers like Yglesias)
Centrists: Supported the war, blame the execution "It was
Rumsfeld's fault" (TNR, Andrew Sullivan, Hillary, McCain, etc.)
As simple as that sounds, it's hard to deny that it rings true. What we've witnessed over the last 3+ years is the "Iraqification" of American politics. The Iraq War has become the axis from which terms like "left," "far left," "right," and "moderate" derive their meaning.
How else can one explain a political climate in which Howard Dean and Al Gore have become the standard bearers of the "far left." Dean was a hawkish, fiscally conservative, pro-free trade governor with an A+ rating from the NRA. He was a centrist by any pre-2002 standard. Similarly, Al Gore's views on deficit-spending, free trade, and foreign policy place him squarely in what used to be called the "moderate wing" of the Democratic party.
But these two men shared another view in common; they thought the invasion of Iraq was a bad idea from the very beginning. And because of that, they quickly found themselves on the fringe of American politics, portrayed by the media and even their fellow Democrats as borderline radicals.
I can sympathize because the very same thing happened to me. Prior to 2002, I had always considered myself a sort of neo-liberal in the Tom Friedman/New Republic sense. I was socially liberal and supported traditional Democratic positions on issues like tax policy and healthcare. But I also strongly believed in free-trade and was generally hawkish on foreign policy issues. None of that has changed.
But as the Bush administration began to ratchet up its rhetoric on Iraq, I became increasingly distressed and mystified by what was happening. One moment there was nonstop discussion of Osama Bin Laden and the next moment it was as if he had been totally forgotten. Suddenly public enemy number one was Saddam Hussein, the aging dictator of a secular country that had no obvious connection to the jihadists who had attacked us on 9/11. I found this transition jarring; the whole debate seemed to be a rather glaring non-sequitur, a contrived marketing campaign. All of the sudden everyone was talking about Iraq, and not because of any new developments in Baghdad. It was as if everyone had collectively lost their minds.
I became even more distressed and disillusioned as I read through the pages of what had been my favorite magazine, the New Republic. Every issue was unrelentingly pro-war. No one seemed at all put off by the sudden transition from talk of Al-Qaeda to talk of Saddam's regime. No one was bothered by the fact that the Administration seemed to be going out of its way to confuse Americans about the relationship between the two (or that the vast majority of Americans supported the war because of this confusion). Even some of my otherwise liberal friends were caught up in the hysteria. And no one was raising the most obvious concerns. What happens after we oust Saddam's regime? Couldn't the unilateral "pre-emptive" invasion of an Arab country potentially do more harm than good in terms of our overall goal of reducing terrorism?
But then in September of 2002, someone finally gave voice to my concerns. It was Al Gore:
I believe that we ought to be focusing our efforts first and
foremost against those who attacked us on September 11th
and who have thus far gotten away with it. The vast majority
of those who sponsored, planned and implemented the cold-
blooded murder of more than 3,000 Americans are still at
large, still neither located nor apprehended, much less punished
and neutralized. I do not believe that we should allow ourselves
to be distracted from this urgent task simply because it is
proving to be more difficult and lengthy than was predicted.
Nevertheless, President Bush is telling us that America's most
urgent requirement of the moment right now is not to redouble
our efforts against Al Qaida, not to stabilize the nation of
Afghanistan after driving its host government from power, even
as Al Qaida members slipback across the border to set up in
Afghanistan again. Rather, he is telling us that our most
urgent task right now is to shift our focus and concentrate on
immediately launching a new war against Saddam Hussein. . . .
I believe that this proposed foreshortening of deliberation in
the Congress robs the country of the time it needs for careful
analysis of exactly what may lie before us. Such consideration is
all the more important because the administration has failed
thus far to lay out an assessment of how it thinks the course of a
war will run, even as it has given free run to persons, both within
and close to the administration, to suggest at every opportunity
that this will a pretty easy matter. And it may well be.
But the administration has not said much of anything to clarify
its idea of what would follow regime change or the degree of
engagement that it is prepared to accept for the United States in
Iraq in the months and years after a regime change has taken
place.
As thankful as I was that someone had tried to inject some sanity into the debate, I was immediately disheartened by the brutal and hysterical response to Gore's speech.
Michael Kelly, former editor of the New Republic, had this to say about Gore's speech in an op-ed in the Washington Post:
Gore's speech was one no decent politician could have delivered.Kelly's unhinged attack on a fellow hawkish liberal for voicing perfectly reasonable concerns was emblematic of the lunatic intensity of that particular moment in history, a moment that has come to define our understanding of what it means to be "far left" or "moderate." Almost four years later, a sizeable number of journalists, commentators, and pundits continue to view politics through this singular lens. As a result, our political discourse has become unmoored and increasingly nonsensical.
It was dishonest, cheap, low. It was hollow. It was bereft of policy,
of solutions, of constructive ideas, very nearly of facts--bereft of
anything other than taunts and jibes and embarrassingly obvious
lies. It was breathtakingly hypocritical, a naked political assault
delivered in tones of moral condescension from a man pretending
to be superior to mere politics. It was wretched. It was vile. It was
contemptible.
I long for the days when one's place on the political spectrum was not defined in such an arbitrary and unilluminating way.
UPDATE: Marshall Wittman proves yet again that he is perpetually stuck in 2002. In his latest post, he enthusiastically approves of Chait's childish tirade, observing that "the left wing blogosphere is a place where bile passes for wisdom." He describes lefty bloggers as "McGovernites with modems" (does he still use dial up?) and warns us that:
The net effect of the blogosphere is that is moving the
party to the left. On national security issues, the lefty
bloggers have far more in common with the party of
Michael Moore than that of JFK. And Democratic politicians
are increasingly pandering to the netroots. That pandering
may gain them access to money and some activists, but it is
not where the voters reside who they will need to become a
majority party.
What a perfect illustration of my point. Wittman sees the right/left axis solely in terms of the Iraq War. Anyone, like me, who opposed the war is a McGovernite pacifist, no matter what they think about any other issue, including non-Iraq foreign policy issues. He blames the blogosphere for "moving the party to the left." What a joke. The idea that left-of-center bloggers are far to the left of the mainstream Democratic party is total rubbish, as Kevin Drum and Atrios explain well. I doubt Wittman can point to any issue for which this characterization holds true. For a time, it was probably true about Iraq. The liberal blogs were definitely ahead of public opinion on that issue. But the public has come around, and then some, and it had everything to do with the situation on the ground in Iraq, not the influence of the blogosphere.
Wittman claims that Democratic politicians are "pandering to the netroots." Really? If anything, Democratic politicians are reacting to public opinion, which is now solidly against the Iraq war and the Bush administration. That development has nothing to do with liberal blogs.
posted by A.L. at 12:01 AM
17 Comments:
I agree that the war in Iraq has come to been seen has the barometer for which one measures their political leanings. It is sad because there are so many more issues other than Iraq that are in desperate need of attention.
IMHO, The political spectrum in this country has shifted HARD to the right. Many current dems, including Hillary, sound like Reagan Republicans. There is no "loony left", a marginal presence, at best.
Amongst all the yellow-ribbon laden SUVs at stoplights, within the hordes of Wal-Mart goers buying bright plastic thingys, and alongside groups of my countrymen who search through driveway yard sales for that dollar-fifty velvet lamp, I know that there are those like me, who stumble about in this wilderness of hyper-paranoia, looking around at everyone, surreptitiously eyeing the crowd trying to discover who might share a similar mindset as to what has become of this place.
And I shudder to think that one out of every three persons that I see supports this Administration, and I wonder what it would take to change their minds. I wonder if they can change at all.
By the time our Iraq visitation ends I will be dead and everybody will claim to be on the loony left, everybody. I have many Democratic party friends who by most accounts where liberal who supported the invasion who now find the administration contempable. I who once was a Rupublican party conservative have always been on the loony left and I find I like it. I changed parties when the grand old party nominated Bush/Chaney. My problem today is that every time I hear of another boy killed in Iraq I get sick to my stomach. I do not think any of our current so called leaders have a clue as to how to undo the harm which has been done. What scares the hell out of me, the father of a 19 year old son, is that crazy bastard my invade Iran next. As a loony leftest I what to say right now, I'm against it!
Terrific post.
I'm a fellow TNR/Friedman Democrat-- one who supported the war.
I guess under your proposed rubric I'd be labeled a "centrist".
Looking back at my mistakes and miscalculations, I feel like I allowed myself to be led astray by my (1) well-grounded, intense dislike of Saddam; (2) belief that America Can Do Anything, and should do lots; and (3) insufficient comprehension of the Bush administration's incompetence, nastiness, and dishonesty. I should have known better, especially on pt. 3-- pre-9/11, the US was a huge obstacle to efforts to curtail funding of terrorism, because of Grover Norquist's hatred for any government efforts at anything. Not to mention the tax cuts.
So, what do we do about it? How do we keep the same thing from happening with Iran in the next couple of years?
Superb post. Thank you. The perfected technique of instant illiegitamcy crafted by GOP labellers put Gore & Dean behind glass walls. America just shut the sound off every time the label was stuck on. Looking back on Dean & Gore's speeches from '02 they now come across ever moreso logical. Feingold gave a CSPAN speech yesterday and Evan Bayh one today that are both must watches.
If you read Chris Hedge's superb book "War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning," you'll see that this is a phenomenon that is not by any means exclusive to America. Any society that is gearing up for war becomes gripped with a collective psychosis that refuses to tolerate dissent. The first enemies that are dealt with are invariably the enemies within, as any public figures or intellectuals with counterveiling views are silenced. Once the inital psychosis is over, societies tend to look back with shame and revulsion at how they behaved at war's outset, and to do everything they can to not be confronted with it. Again, that's what you see in regards to our Iraq discussion. Gore was proved to be completely right, but giving him his due would mean revisiting a point in time that is deeply shameful and that everyone would rather simply pretend didn't happen. So we roll along with a discredited president and thoroughly discredited secretary of defense, and we try to avert our eyes and pretend things really aren't quite so bad.
Your post is spot on. It is amazing to me how restricted the public political discourse is even today on Iraq, Iran, health care, taxation policy, the efficiacy of our battle against terrorists, NSA spying programs, climate change ... There's an awful lot of talk about the 'Bush bubble,' but it's painfully obvious to me we're in a bubble, every last one of us. And if you talk about our debased level of discourse, omigod, you're channeling Michael Moore.
For example: I've been a faithful New York Times reader for years. But now I take everything that appears in that paper with a large, and I do mean large, grain of salt. I think I have some pretty good reasons to not trust the Times any more -- Judith Miller's WMD "reporting," Friedman's nitwit bloviating, Keller sitting on the NSA spying story for a year until Risen forced his hand -- but when you see distrust-of-the-media get discussed in mainstream media outlets, it's always with this very dismissive, only-a-wacko-conspiracy-theorist-could-think-that tone.
Great post AL. Really.
I guess I fall into the loony left category by the "Iraqi definition" then even though I was all for getting Bin Laden and the invasion of Afghanistan. Where is Osama anyway?
I am loony left even though I own several firearms and believe the old adage that "guns don't kill people, people kill people".
I am part of the loony left not only because I despise all Republicans as a rule but also apparently in spite of the fact that I despise pretty much every Democrat politician but Feingold, Gore and Conyers.
And all because I knew the Iraq war was bullshit from jump. Ridiculous. We, as a nation, have gone completely insane and it is entirely the fault of the bedwetting wingnut warmongers and the general publics willingness to be afraid of the bogeymen that the wingnuts tell them to be afraid of.
We have truly fashioned and received a government and a society we deserve. Fuck it is frustrating to watch the country you love go down the shitter.
There may be some other evidence that Gore was “against the war” from the beginning, but it is not to be found in that speech. While Michael Kelly was correct that the speech was essentially hollow (and wouldn’t it have been fairer to link to his actual article? http://www.jewishworldreview.com/michael/kelly092502.asp), Gore’s main points seemed to be that:
A) Yes, we need to take out Saddam but should get “an international coalition” to join us. Bush did this as well as humanly possible, over the course of the next five months after Gore’s speech. It ultimately became apparent that certain countries would never, under any circumstances, join us in taking Saddam out, whether for venal reasons or otherwise;
B) If we took unilateral action against Iraq, it would lose us multilateral cooperation in the war against terrorism. Our actions in Iraq, even if inaccurately characterized as unilateral, have not had this effect, since international cooperation in the war against terrorism even from nations opposed to the Iraq war has been unfailing, and in some instances more successful than could have been expected, such as with Lybia and Pakistan. Even countries such as Germany and France, which were opposed to our actions in Iraq and gratuitously offensive about it, have since moderated their tone;
And C) We absolutely must not cut and run from Iraq after deposing Saddam Hussein, but must be willing to stay, deal with the aftermath, and engage in nation-building. Clearly, Bush took this caution to heart. He has not cut and run, and is engaging in nation-building, a painful job the success of which cannot be accurately evaluated for years.
Michael Kelly’s article blasts elements of the speech other than those you quoted, and although intemperately phrased, seems well-founded.
Here is some of what Gore said in that speech, which bears out my analysis above:
"I believe that we are perfectly capable of staying the course in our war against Osama bin Laden and his terrorist network, while simultaneously taking those steps necessary to build an international coalition to join us in taking on Saddam Hussein in a timely fashion.
. . . .
"[A]ll Americans should acknowledge that Iraq does, indeed, pose a serious threat to the stability of the Persian Gulf region, and we should be about the business of organizing an international coalition to eliminate his access to weapons of mass destruction. Iraq's search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to completely deter, and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power.
. . . .
"And here's one of my central points. Our ability to secure that kind of multilateral cooperation in the war against terrorism can be severely damaged in the way we go about undertaking unilateral action against Iraq.
. . . .
"Now, here's another of the main points I want to make: If we quickly succeed in a war against the weakened and depleted fourth-rate military of Iraq, and then quickly abandon that nation, as President Bush has quickly abandoned almost all of Afghanistan after defeating a fifth-rate military power there, then the resulting chaos in the aftermath of a military victory in Iraq could easily pose a far greater danger to the United States than we presently face from Saddam. Here's why I say that. We know that he has stored away secret supplies of biological weapons and chemical weapons throughout his country [which terrorists could seize in the aftermath of his fall].
. . . .
"Now, my point is, this [rejection of nation-building] is a Bush doctrine. This is administration policy. Given that it is administration policy, we have to take that into account as a nation in looking at the likely consequences of an overwhelming American military victory against the government of Iraq.
If we go in there and dismantle them--and they deserve to be dismantled--but then we wash our hands of it and walk away and leave it in a situation of chaos and say, "Oh, that's for you all to decide how to put things back together now - that hurts us.
". . . .the Congress should require as part of any resolution that it considers some explicit guarantees on whether or not we're proposing to simply abandon the Iraqi people in the aftermath of a military victory there, or whether or not we're going to demand as a nation that this doctrine of wash your hands and walk away be changed so that we can engage in some nation building again and build the kind of peace for the future that our people have a right to expect."
Finally, an epithet Michael Kelly did not apply to the speech but should have is ‘naive to the point of idiocy.’ Gore said this:
"If what America represents to the world is leadership in a commonwealth of equals, then our friends are legions. If what we represent to the world is an empire, then it is our enemies who will be legion."
Human nature being what it is, there is no way the United States will enjoy “legions of friends” as long as it remains the preeminent military and economic power in the world. Envy alone (and the resentment and demagogery it breeds) precludes this. Sure, if a lot of us die suddenly and horribly, as we did on 9-11, we can collect some Hallmark sympathy cards, but anyone reading the foreign press in the week or so after 9-11 could see how brief and limited that sentimentality was going to be. To keep it, we would have had to keep dying. No, thanks.
For a variety of reasons having nothing to do with Bush, countries like China, Russia, and France will never (in the foreseeable future) be our friends, while some others will be friendly only for so long as their populations are not induced through demagogery to regard us as the cause of their own problems - example, Mexico, or for so long as their trading relationship with us is successful, example, India.
Gore’s speech was not prescient, it was calculated to allow him to claim prescience pretty much no matter what happened. If the Zarqawi insurgency had not gained traction at the end of 2003/early 2004 (energized, no doubt, by the early success of the Dean campaign) and Iraq had settled down into a reasonably functional moderately democratic state, he would have just as easily been able to claim credit for convincing Bush to overcome his distaste for nation-building. The only absolute claim he made without any hedging or reservation, of course, was that Saddam was engaging in the effort to acquire weapons of mass destruction. When Bush said the same thing, the left called that a lie. Funny how nobody has accused Gore of that.
Anonymous, I appreciate your lengthy and substantive comment, but I could not disagree more.
Gore said all the right things in his 2002 speech, and at a time when people were not willing to hear it. His key substantive point was that the war debate was being propelled by a false sense of urgency that was being ginned up intentionally by the Bush administration. The White House didn't want to pause and think about what they were doing. They didn't want to give anyone time to question the wisdom of the invasion or debunk the conventional wisdom motivating it. They painted an entirely too rosy picture, didn't bother to do any serious thinking or planning, and viciously mocked and marginalized anyone who called for patience or calm deliberation.
That was Gore's point. No one, especially Gore, was suggesting that Saddam was not a threat on some level. But Gore questioned whether deposing Saddam should be our top priority in light of the myriad of other more relevant issues that were on our plate. He also questioned the need to rush headlong into war without exhausting other options, without engaging in any serious diplomacy, and without doing any real planning for the aftermath.
Those were all incredibly important points that no one else was making. And for pointing that out, Gore was savaged.
Your suggestion that Bush did as much as "humanly possible" to build a pre-war coalition is absurd. He couldn't get other countries to go along with him because 1) his administration was openly mocking these countries ("old Europe") 2) the rush to war was so abrupt and such a total non-sequitur that it caught the whole world off guard, and 3) he and his people were transparently exaggerating the nature of the threat (particularly with respect to Iraq's nuclear capabilities and its links to al Qaeda). That's no way to assemble a real coalition. True diplomacy takes patience, planning, and honesty.
As for Kelly's article, I didn't mean to leave out the link. I just couldn't find it in my haste. I'll add it now.
The political spectrum in this country has shifted HARD to the right. Many current dems, including Hillary, sound like Reagan Republicans.
The blogosphere isn't any better. We have a circle of links (A.L. is not one of them) that proclaims to be "liberal" will flaming and banning any dialog about socio-economic issues that have always been the heart of the democratic party -- at least when the democratic party used to win elections.
One of these moron "superblogs" started a self-indulgent mission to "change red states", like everything would just be fine if everyone would just shut up and listen to FDL!!
Kansas was once a progressive state - but the entire dialog has been shifted so far to the right that REAL progressive/liberal ideas are off the radar screen.
This isn't just the wingnut's faults, the faux "advertise liberally" circle of links too is largely responsible for this change in dialog.
Many of the "superblogs" are really just republicans that cannot stand the party's position on one pet issue (i.e. gay rights).
I respect any bloggers right to post what they wish - but some are too busy pattin' themselves on the back while undermining the integrity of liberal/progressive traditions. Many of the loudest voices will not tolerate any liberal/progessive ideas at all.
This is probably more responsible for demonizing the "L" word than the MSM
A.L., I have no idea why I am even trying to communicate with you except that I’m stuck in this chair until my back decides to stop hurting and lets me get up. All my experience tells me that people with BDS* cannot be reasoned with. But here goes:
No matter how long and how well Bush engaged in diplomacy, he could always be criticized for not doing it longer or better. If he negotiated six months, he could have gone seven or ten or twenty. If he convinced Britain, Spain, Australia and Italy, he didn’t convince France, Germany and Russia. And if he’d convinced them, he still might not have convinced China or South Africa or Bhutan.
You say that “the White House didn't want to pause and think”, “didn't want to give anyone time to question,” “mocked and marginalized anyone who called for patience or calm deliberation,” and “rush[ed] headlong into war without exhausting other options, without engaging in any serious diplomacy.” These are all common lefty claims, and since they are couched in completely subjective terms, they cannot be absolutely refuted, but they are hardly self-evident from the facts.
Saddam kicked out the inspectors in 1998, which was a violation of the 1991 ceasefire agreement and of various UN resolutions throughout the 1990s. Clinton/Gore did their diplomatic best to deal with that, without any success whatsoever except a growing movement among the worldwide Left against sanctions, usually accompanied by the claim that sanctions were killing “50,000 Iraqi children under five every year” along with tens of thousands of other Iraqis. Clinton’s appointee as U.S. Attorney for Washington summarized the arguments against sanctions in June, 2001, at http://www.scn.org/ccpi/pflaumer-2001jun21.html. The article is a useful trip through memory lane, because she describes the devastation in Iraq’s infrastructure that was caused by the 1991 war and never repaired - the same devastation which we are criticized for not having repaired immediately upon arrival in 2003. All these claims about the abject horror of Iraqi life due to sanctions and Gulf War 1, of course, were promptly forgotten after the liberation, allowing many of the same people to argue now that ordinary Iraqis were better off under Saddam.
Bush placed Iraq squarely in his “axis of evil” speech in January 2002, and pursued quiet diplomacy with friendly nations for the next eight months to build agreement that 11 years’ worth of threats and demands needed finally to be backed up. Then in early September, 2002, he spoke to the entire UN on the need to act. He obtained Congressional approval in October. In early November, the UN Security Council unanimously passed Resolution 1441, giving Saddam a “final deadline” of December 7, and threatening “serious consequences” if Iraq had not fully complied by then with the requirements of that and previous resolutions going back all the way to the 1991 ceasefire agreement.
Iraq allowed inspectors back in, but although Saddam turned over thousands of pages of documents on the deadline, these were declared inadequate and incomplete by Blix. Saddam did not comply then, and had still not complied three months later although in the meantime further proof of non-compliance was found by the inspectors (long-range missiles, hidden documents, non-cooperating scientists). For those three months after expiration of the deadline, Bush’s diplomatic efforts were on-going, including Powell’s speech to the UN in early February and the submission of another resolution to the Security Council in mid-February.
The end of diplomatic efforts was announced after Bush’s meeting with Blair and Aznar on March 16, 2003. It came only after Chirac announced on March 10 that France would veto any resolution that would lead to war “regardless of the circumstances.” All Chirac could offer as an alternative to war was an on-going inspection program of the same sort that had failed to affirmatively disarm Iraq between 1991 and 1998. In other words, Resolution 1441 was to be yet another hollow threat, meaning nothing.
But Chirac was quick to say that it was the US’s deployment of 200,000 troops to the Middle East that backed up the inspectors’ efforts by the credible threat of force. So France’s position was, in effect, that 200,000 US troops should remain deployed in Saudi Arabia to “credibly threaten force” while the inspectors went about their interminable process. How this deployment would remain credible after the UN proved its resolutions were meaningless is hard to imagine, but the provocation to jihadists of 200,000 troops on semi-permanent deployment on the sacred soil of Saudi Arabia is not. As we have seen, IEDs and decapitations can be and have been applied in Saudi Arabia just as well as in Iraq.
Depending on how you want to count it, diplomacy was attempted for 12 years, or six months, or something in between, including more than three months after the “final deadline” announced by the UN.
That may seem a rush to war to you, but it seemed to me at the time a lengthy necessary exercise doomed to failure. Bob Woodward called the six months between Bush’s September 2002 speech to the UN and the declaration at Azores on March 16, 2003, “the long diplomacy.” By comparison to the lead-up to any previous war in history that I can think of, it was certainly lengthy.
Your explanation for why Bush “couldn’t get other countries to go along with him” is no doubt satisfying to you, but unsupported by the evidence. Putin, Chirac and Schroeter certainly made no such claims. If Bush “and his people were transparently exaggerating the nature of the threat” then Resolution 1441 couldn’t have happened. What strikes me as absurd is that, given the nature of Saddam Hussein and his regime, anybody could demand absolute guarantees of trustworthiness of the intelligence available to us. The guy murdered his own sons-in-law. How exactly would you go about gathering 100% reliable intelligence about his true capabilities? When you know he did have WMD, and years of inspections have failed to confirm that he no longer has them, would your default position be that we should assume he doesn’t have them?
I know the line: Bush had already determined to go to war, so none of that matters. Not being a psychic myself, I am unable to affirm or deny the accuracy of that claim, but not believing in others’ psychic powers either, I am unable to treat that as a rational argument.
There is no question that at one point, Saddam did have specifically identified stockpiles of chemical weapons and biological weapons, along with delivery systems for both, and an active nuclear weapons development program. Effecting and documenting the destruction of these was the purpose of the original inspections and that task was never completed. Weapons that Blix said existed are still not accounted for today. They may have been secretly destroyed by Saddam or lost or stolen or hidden or sold. It may be Saddam did not disclose their loss or destruction because he gained street cred from people thinking he had them. The fact remains that for 12 years, he was under an absolute duty under the international law the Left demands we genuflect to, to affirmatively establish that he had destroyed them, and for 12 years he failed to do that. If actually enforcing that duty after 12 years of violations was an “abrupt non-sequitur” then clearly international law is just a game to be played on some elite cocktail circuit.
You can’t prove that if Saddam had come forward with proof of the destruction of the stockpiles, Bush would still have gone to war, and I can’t prove he wouldn’t have, since we can’t construct alternate universes and test out our beliefs. You are entitled to believe what you want about that; I’m noncommittal on it.
But I am entitled to believe, which I do and you likewise cannot disprove, that Iraq would today be an undeniable success story if Dean had not given voice to and energized the sizeable contingent of our homegrown reflexively anti-war America-bashers toward the end of 2003. He, Moveon.org, and the like demonstrated to Zarqawi and Zawahiri that they just might accomplish in the Middle East what the North Vietnamese accomplished in Southeast Asia. Why should jihadists care that they cannot win militarily or win the support of the majority of Iraqis? All they have to do is divide Americans and fill the vacuum left behind when domestic politics causes us to lose confidence and abandon our efforts. It’s been done before, and in exactly the same way. Their strategy since early 2004 has been precisely that. And to their credit, they are turning out to be right. Unlike the Vietnamese, however, they will chase us into our own country from whatever territory we abandon to them.
Finally, to go back to what Gore said: He warned that the war in Iraq might be a distraction from the war against those who brought us 9-11. Whatever the arguments may be pro or con for having gone to war in Iraq in the first place, that is one warning that has proven to be in error. Al Qaeda not being a country but a network, the war on Al Qaeda must be pursued wherever we can find and engage them. In particular, they absolutely must be deprived of success in every place where they themselves deem their success critical. Iraq is such a place now. Al Qaeda is there. Zawahiri and others deem it to be absolutely critical to succeed there and are not fooled by the Western media into thinking that they are succeeding. They know they are not. Moreover, Iraq is a far better and easier environment in which to fight Al Qaeda than Afghanistan and Pakistan, since there is a usable infrastructure, more favorable geography, a sizable population amenable to the benefits being on our side can bring them, a struggling but advancing political culture, and some quite impressive individuals - Sistani, for instance. If Iraq ever gets a chance to have its own “George Washington” figure, he might well qualify.
To be vigorously against the Iraq campaign before it started was a tenable position (though it was not Gore’s position). I certainly had reservations. My greatest concern before we started was that wars are necessarily conducted by the government, and in a democracy, that makes high levels of incompetence in planning and execution and enormous resource waste foregone conclusions. Given the number of obvious mistakes that have been averted, overall it’s gone better than I expected.
But now, when it is clear that Al Qaeda regards the Iraq front as vital to its survival and is throwing everything it’s got into that front, people who are still obsessing about whether enough diplomatic efforts were made to get France on board back in 2002 are seriously missing the point, and those who insist we should pull out now might as well just hand Al Qaeda a freshly sharpened sword and stretch out their necks.
Those are the people Zawahiri has in mind when he talks about America lacking the stamina to defeat Al Qaeda. (Obviously, he’s not talking about our military.) He is convinced those people will prevail here, and he may be right. That would gratify BDS sufferers, but only because they have convinced themselves that Bush is the enemy rather than Al Qaeda. To fight Bush is easy, cost-free, and done by all the cool people who attend the Academy Awards. To fight Al Qaeda requires acknowledging someone is seriously determined to kill you, will happily detonate a nuke in your home town as soon as he can get his hands on one, and is completely impervious to traditional means of deterrence. Fighting that enemy means taking chances, having things go wrong as well as right, persevering. I do wish Bush were as fluent as Churchill, or as manipulative as Clinton, but unlike the vast majority of his critics, he is at least clear on who the real enemy is, and on the nature of the battle.
Well, assuming you read this far, this hasn’t made a dent in your convictions, has it? But my back feels better. Good night.
*BDS: Bush Derangement Syndrome
anonymous, your suggestion that "No matter how long and how well Bush engaged in diplomacy, he could always be criticized for not doing it longer or better" is just as subjective a conclusion as you claim A.L.'s arguments about how we rushed into war is. Surely you can see that.
You can cite all of the 'kicking the UN out of Iraq' and 'violations of resolutions' that you want, but at the end of the day, they are UN RESOLUTIONS, the enforcing of which are left to the UN, and not the USA. One cannot espouse 'Saddam did not comply with UN resolutions' as a rationale for war, and then dismiss the UN subsequently (i.e., deciding for all that 'we'll be the ones to enforce your resolutions, regardless of what you say'), and remain credible. Your statement about the Administration having "pursued quiet diplomacy with friendly nations for the next eight months to build agreement" highlights this dismissal--why not use the body that is already in place, and for which we signed on as a part, instead of talking outside of it with others because you do not agree with that body? What is the point of a UN, then?
IIRC, Blix was well on his way towards a determination that there were indeed NO WMDs, and that he was soon to report this, which would have destroyed the Administration's war rationale. The whole problem here is that everything was rushed, rushed, rushed, just like Gore said.
The US has had troops in S.A. for quite awhile now. I do not see what this has to do with Iraq. Again, it is up to the UN as a body, and not the US, to determine what was to be done about Saddam's refutation of its resolutions. This is the point that you appear to dismiss, regardless of the time involved in what you rightly call a 'long diplomacy.' The 'rush' was not meant to mean this entire diplomatic process, but how quickly to go into Iraq, after the Administration decided to do so, and after specious claims of Iraq/Al Qaeda collaboration. The UN resolution violations were just an excuse. It is this that represented 'abrupt.'
Indeed, the entire reason 'Bush couldn't get other countries' was because they realized that it was the UN as a body, and not the US as a member of it, who should make such decisions. And they were and are right. Again, what is the purpose of the UN when a member can choose to unilaterally enforce its resolutions?
I cannot appropriately respond to your comment about "Dean" because I am laughing so heartily. So, this is all Dean's fault? And it's the fault of those Americans who happened to agree with him? Are we now terrorists, too? Wow, all would have gone swell if it weren't for the 'reflexive America bashers.' Well, I am entitled to believe and you cannot disprove that a stupendous, huge Red Herring just entered the room, and one even bigger than that fish Bush caught.
Wow, the blindness continues in your next statement--that "Al Qaeda not being a country but a network, the war on Al Qaeda must be pursued wherever we can find and engage them. In particular, they absolutely must be deprived of success in every place where they themselves deem their success critical. Iraq is such a place now." Al Gore was spot-on--Iraq had nothing to do with Al Qaeda at that time. This represents the 'rush to war' that was mentioned. We as a populace had no time to verify the claims made by the Administration--which we now know were false. The only reason, and pay attention to this: the only reason that 'Iraq is such a place now' is because we went into Iraq. Surely you realize this--or can you point to some substantive evidence of this? If so, I believe Karl Rove would appreciate it if you contacted him. "Iraq is a far better and easier environment in which to fight Al Qaeda than Afghanistan and Pakistan," --now you are starting to get it. That statement represents a truth of sorts, and if the Administration had stated that as a rationale, they would have been laughed out of the room. We DID NOT find Al-Qaeda in Iraq before the war (alluding to your comment that we must find them wherever they are), but we sure can now!
"Those are the people Zawahiri has in mind when he talks about America lacking the stamina to defeat Al Qaeda." That is quite a telling statement. It assumes that, regardless of how right we are as a country, and no matter how solid the rationale for war, there will always be those who 'lack the stamina.' Well, I submit that 'we lack the stamina' because we were lied to by this Administration. In WW2 we most certainly did not 'lack the stamina' because everyone, all of us, recognized and realized the foe at hand. We 'reflexive America bashers' who 'lack the stamina' are simply those who recognize and realize that we were sold a lemon, and that in the process of selling it to us, the Administration abandoned our principles.
I simultaneously laugh and cry at your labeling of we 'reflexive America haters' as those who attend the Academy awards, and/or as those who suffer from some 'ain't that cool' acronym that apparently neatly contains your foes. We fight Bush because he lied to us, and continues to lie. Sure, I agree that 'fighting that enemy means taking chances, having things go wrong as well as right, persevering' is absolutely spot-on. But that is the point--Iraq was not the enemy who attacked us on 9/11, no matter how much you want to conflate it with Al-Qaeda. We can and have fought enemies, but Iraq ain't it. And Bush most certainly is NOT clear on who the enemy is: one day, it's 'those that hate America.' On another day, it's 'those that hate Freedom,' and on still another day, it's 'those who wish to do us harm.' Can't you see that the Administration is painting a never-ending picture, one that goes clear around the world, and one that keeps us in constant fear? The nature of the battle is that "it is constant, never-ending, and if you know what's good for you, you'll keep us in power." Fear. Fear. And more Fear. All emanating from a lie.
Hope your back remains pain-free.
Terraformer, Since you agree with me that Al Qaeda is in Iraq now, do you agree with me that we should stay and fight them there, or do you believe we should surrender the field to them? If so, to what field should we deploy and how do we get them there to fight, or can Al Qaeda now be safely ignored?
As important and interesting as it may be to debate the causes of the past and its rights and wrongs, surely it is more important to decide what to do now? So - what should it be: withdraw or stay and fight?
Personally, I have never conflated Al Qaeda with Saddam. I have always regarded them as much like Hitler and Stalin - antagonists who would not be averse to making common cause when it suited them, planning all the while to stab each other in the back.
However, a full frontal assault on the immediate enemy is not always the best or only way to proceed. Guliani cut the rate of murder and other serious crime in New York by targeting petty criminals. The success of that strategy was not simply accidental. He knew what he was doing. The logic of targeting Saddam as one of the means of defeating Al Qaeda is entirely comprehensible to me, and still persuasive.
No, I don't "blame" Dean. I speculate that the outcome in Iraq over the last two years would probably have been different if the internal US debate had been different. Would you seriously argue that observing discord in one's enemy's camp has no positive and energizing effect on a combatant? Do you think that Cindy Sheehan isn't reported on Al-Jazeera?
One final point: I would discourage you from studying too much WWII history. The American will to defeat our enemy in that war was carefully nurtured by outright lies, severe censorship, suppression of various civil liberties to a degree unimaginable today, enormous propaganda efforts and, oh, yes, an opposition party that carefully avoided the kind of conduct that the Democratic Party has engaged in nonstop for the last four years. All to a good purpose, but if you think Bush lied, you just have no clue about what FDR did. If WWII had been conducted by the standards of the last few years, I doubt we could have won it.
Thanks for the good wishes. I got a good six hours of work in today and am alive to tell about it! Sure wish they'd bring Vioxx back, though.
This post is completely accurate. The Bush Administration and its puppets at Fox News has been effective in labelling liberals terrorists and so forth.
The number of examples of this I could provide would probably exceed the length of the Bible, Torah, and Quran combined.
Why have they gone so off course of previous presidencies? Because they thought, let's take an offensive stance rather than a defensive stance in setting the policy debate, even if we mess up horribly. As Porter Goss said this pass weekend, "admit nothing, deny everything, and make counteraccusations."
Press conferences are considered by this Administration as a privilege to the press when it is a (theoretical) right of the American people.
It has taken a turn toward dictatorship, where war and 'security' is the reason behind eroding your civil liberties and questioning policy is insurgency. Lambaste your critics swiftly and hard enough every time they question you is their P.R. strategy. As a result, the non-Fox News/conservative talk radio media became scared and compliant as journalists like Helen Thomas point out. This not only works to maintain support on the policies they support, but distracts people from the policies they are weak on like education or healthcare.
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