If Dems Give Inches on Iraq, GOP May Take Miles--Into Tehran

There is nothing I would love better than to wake up in the morning and have nice things to say about the Democratic Leadership. I mean that--really, I do. I would love to read the news, read the blogs, and give a congratulatory pat on the back those we progressives worked so hard to elect and represent the interests of justice, fairness, and the reality-based community

But I can't. I find myself once again astounded at the cowardice and/or cluelessness (take your pick) of the Democratic leadership and their braindead messaging teams.

As I write this, two extremely important and confluent events are occurring side-by-side in real time. On the one hand, both Durbin and Reid appear set to cower before lame-duck president George Bush and his soon-to-be-shrinking Republican minority in Congress and grant them an additional $200 billion on top of the $120 billion of the People's Money already appropriated for the Iraq fiasco. On the other, serious rumors are abounding from various sources that there is a coordinated effort about to be pushed for an attack on Iran after Labor Day--which is, as Andy Card reminded us, when new products like a new war are to be launched.

That the Democratic Leadership does not understand or pretends not to understand the close connection between these two events is both astonishing as a political observer and infuriating as a progresive American. One need not believe that the supplemental money will be directly used an assault on Iran--though Gates' surprise at hearing about the extra $50 billion is extremely disturbing--to understand that the Bush Administration's success in getting its way on Iraq will be directly proportional to Dick Cheney's success in staging a successful push for an attack on Iran.

It's very simple: if Democrats bow to Bush now continuing our Occupation of Iraq and running roughshod over the will of both the American and Iraqi people even in the face of unequivocal poll numbers and insurmountable evidence of failure, corruption, incompetence and treachery, there will be no way for us to oppose Cheney on the much murkier and less obvious question of Iran. If Democratic foreign policy is to be waged on the basis of fear of Republican accusations of "weakness" on an issue as clear and easy as Iraq, how much more difficult will it be to break that pattern when it comes to deciding how to proceed in Iran? As long as the Democrats refuse to use the power of the purse or challenge/overtun the 2002 AUMF when it comes to Iraq, how will they propose to do when it comes to Iran? With impeachment "off the table", what hope can we have of even distracting, much less threatening or stopping, Dick Cheney from his own stated goals?

The Democratic Leadership believes that it can continue to give the Bush everything it wants on Iraq while pretending to stand its ground enough to keep Democratic voters motivated. The Democratic Leadership believes that it cannot safely politically achieve a change in Iraq policy until George Bush leaves office. The Democratic Leadership believes that if it does nothing to stop the Occupation until 2009, the election will be about Republican failures--whereas, if the Democrats do step up to the plate, the election will be about Democrats stabbing our soldiers in the back. The Democratic Leadership does not understand that more is at stake in Iraq than just Iraq--and that failure to stand up on Iraq will have disastrous consequences that their apparently small minds still do not understand.

Unlike many in the progresive blogs, I have not stood up and screamed that the sky is falling every time rumors came along of a war with Iran. I was skeptical when Sy Hersh was claiming an imminent attack back in 2006, and my skepticism proved to have been well-founded. Now, however, there is more reason for concern about a strike on Iran than ever before--the primary being that a cornered animal has no choice left but to attack. Beyond the recent rumors and the stationing of carriers at strategic points in gulf, the circumstantial reasons for suspecting an imminent attack are numerous:

• The "surge" is failing--and will continue to fail whether or not the Administration receives the supplementals it is requesting. The need to blame an external enemy for this failure will only grow stronger over time.



• The economy is teetering on the brink of a collapsing asset bubble in the midst of a credit crunch, and the heroic efforts on the part of the Fed and major banking institutions to stem the tide of worried investors will only last so long. There is nothing like a new war to stimulate an economy and take the minds of American people off of economic uncertainty.



• Republican hopes for 2008 are in a tailspin. Now that God, Guns and Gays don't quite have the same effect that they used to, the GOP is turning to increasingly desperate dirty tricks to attempt to maintain power. With Independents, Hispanics and Young Voters--three of most rapidly growing demographic segments in America--moving steadily away from the GOP, they will need to do something drastic to attempt to scare the American people into somehow voting for them again. There is nothing to do that like an exciting new war against a supposedly dangerous new enemy.



• Nearly every Republican candidate refused to rule out pre-emptively using nuclear weapons on Iran to prevent Ahmadinejad from getting his hands on nuclear weapons. More than an astonishing deficit of irony, it was a clear indicator of where the Republican Brand stands on the issue of attacking Iran: sooner rather than later, and as forcefully as possible



• The Religious Right is all but completely deflated in the wake of the scandals surrounding Foley, Vitter, Craig, Gannon, and the like. Larry Flynt supposedly has his hands on 30 others as well, whose names he will be leaking in a slow-drip fashion. Without a strong turnout from the Religious Right, the GOP doesn't stand a chance. Given the current state of things, the only thing that could motivate the Christianists at this point is another all-out crusading war against a Muslim nation.

Even if all of these pieces of direct evidence, rumors and circumstantial fears about an Iran attack turn out to be little more than hot air, it must be conceded that given what we know now, the danger of a last-ditch Republican assault on Iran cannot be discounted by any rational observer.

Give the GOP its inch on Iraq, and it will take a mile--quite possibly into Tehran. By allowing Bush to do what he wants on Iraq, the Democratic Leadership believes it is giving the GOP the rope with which to hang itself, at the expense of the lives a few thousand more U.S. soldiers and countless more Iraqis. That is a not only an immoral gamble, but a foolish one: for the rope that the Dems give the GOP will not be used to hang just the GOP, but rather will be used to hang all of us in one way or another.

The time for courage is now--before it is too late.

Why Are Good Progressives At Each Others' Throats?

There comes a time when two parties, after arguing in earnest and with the best of intentions, find that all their superficial disagreements and conflicts of point of view are boiled down to irresolvable and fundamental philosophical differences about the nature of human events. Indeed, when two otherwise reasonable and strongly allied factions argue passionately at cross-purposes, it is essential to discover once and for all why they differ, and to resolve the philosophical differences that divide the parties.

There are few better examples of such an argument than today's conflict over impeachment, succinctly expressed in MissLaura's frontpage post today. After no fewer than six recommended diaries yesterday advocating impeachment (including my own) and a frontpage post by Meteor Blades, Digby laid out in her brilliant and incomparable fashion the best possible counterargument to those demanding this extroardinary political act.

Digby's argument is one that I made in poorer fashion many times prior to my conversion to the pro-impeachment camp. To quote Digby:

But even so, that's not necessarily a good enough reason not to do it. It could be useful, if only to tie the administration up in knots until they leave the scene. But the risks are high that if you don't have a specific (and somewhat simple) crime to point to and a good chance of at least getting a quick impeachment vote in the House, that it could blow back pretty hard on the Dems. This is not because people like Bush and don't want him out of office. It's because they see that the presidential campaign is in full swing and know that Bush will be out of office soon anyway. That means many of them will likely be susceptible to the inevitable GOP screeching that the petty Democrats are playing politics, going for payback, wasting time etc. And the media will be thrilled to help the Republicans make that case.

That's not the only case that can be made against impeachment. There are many other concerns as well, including that the future is more important than the past, that the public wants solutions rather than partisan recriminations, that we actually have an opportunity to frame ourselves for a change rather than let the public be told what we stand for by Republicans, and that Bush's/Cheney's replacement would likely be Republican--and that I wouldn't want Nancy Pelosi installed as president through impeachment. Finally, as MissLaura says:

When we remember that impeachment is a nuclear political act, also remember that nuclear explosions produce nuclear fallout. We need to know the winds before we launch. To me, it's too likely the fallout would blow right over our heads. Would that really be a defense of the Constitution?

So much, so good for the arguments against impeachment. The standard arguments for impeachment, meanwhile, are well-known to all. These include:

• That Bush/Cheney must be removed as soon as possible
• That history will judge poorly those who did not stand against criminal action
• That the Constitution is worth defending at all costs
• That justice itself demands prosecution for crimes
• That Dems will look stronger, rather than weaker, for having stood up to Bush

My intent here is not to advocate for or argue against any of these positions for or against impeachment. Some of them are well-considered; others less so (on both sides.)

My intent, rather, is to highlight why there can be such fundamental disagreement among these parties, and what the fundamental philosophical difference may be.

The answer, as it so happens, is not a terribly complex one--but it is an answer that goes to the very heart of what the Progressive movement at large and the Netroots in specific is attempting to accomplish. At the heart of the divide between the pro-impeachment progressives and those who remain skeptical of it is a fundamental dichotomy of trust. In the end, every argument for and against boils down to whether one trusts more in the power of individuals and ideologies, or in the power of structures and the constraints they place upon power itself.

Those who oppose impeachment are desperately afraid--and I don't necessarily blame them--that using up the oxygen of time, media coverage and political power on impeachment proceedings will harm Democrats irreparably as we enter the 2008 election season. They argue somewhat convincingly that all the strong stands against Bush/Cheney in the world will not serve anyone of any political stripe when Rudy McRomneyson takes the oath of office in January 2009, and the Bush/Cheney approach to governance receives a popular mandate. They argue, quite rightly, that a successful impeachment is unlikely--and that even if successful, it would be lengthy process that would not effectively cut short the rule of Bush/Cheney for more than a few months.

It is not my purpose here to poke holes in these arguments--though they are by no means unassailable. Certainly, the Republicans did not face dire electoral consequences for impeaching a very popular Bill Clinton. But let us instead take these arguments at face value, and take it as a given that Democrats will suffer somewhat electorally as a byproduct of a failed impeachment drive, while doing little to actually defray the consequences of Republican control of the White House.

These arguments rest on one presumption and one alone: That the election of Democrats in 2008 is the paramount and highest political goal over the next 18 months. That we can do little to preserve our Democracy while Bush remains in power--but that once we get Democrats in power with the right governing priorities and ideological stances, we'll be back on track. It is the same idea as that presented on a DCCC fundraising request I received today in the mail from Nancy Pelosi:

Democrats are determined to end the war in Iraq, move forward on energy independence, address global warming, start tackling America's health care crisis, and take all the other long-overdue steps needed to lead our nation out of the Bush morass. But, the Bush Administration and its Rubber Stamp Republican allies in Congress are throwing everything they've got into holding onto power and putting the special interests ahead of the American people.

As Speaker of the House I am asking you to stay with us. Don't yield to cynicism or frustration, like the Republicans want you to do. Help us win the hard-fought struggles we need to win in the days and weeks ahead that can help us make lasting real change to take America in a New Direction.

We need your steadfast support as we confront an Administration that long ago lost touch with reality. And, even as we work side by side to force the Bush Administration to face the facts in 2007, we need you to help our Democratic candidates take their message to voters in 2008.

In other words, Democratic ideologues are being blocked by Republican ideologues; don't get angry with us because we aren't getting anything effective accomplished--just work with us to get rid of the Republican ideologues in '08 so we can move forward on Iraq, energy and healthcare. In sum, they say, put the right people in power with the right ideas, and everything will be fine.

Those of us who favor impeachment, on the other hand, find all such arguments utterly hollow and tragically misguided. We do so because we understand that this battle is not, fundamentally, a partisan one but rather a structural one. We believe that any individual--regardless of party affiliation or ideology--who usurps authority and obliterates balance of power as Bush/Cheney have done is just as dangerous to Democracy as Bush/Cheney themselves. As I said in To Impeach or Not to Impeach: That is Not the Question:

The question at hand is not "What Do We Do About Bush?" or "How Do We Move America Forward in a Progressive Direction?" or even "How Do We Put Bush Behind Us and Create A Lasting Democratic Majority?" The real question at hand is instead "How in the world did this happen in America--and more importantly, how do we stop it from ever happening again?"

As evil as the NeoConservative agenda has clearly been, as utterly deficient in competence and moral compass as the Religious Right has been, as predictably disastrous as placing a formerly cocaine-addicted sociopathic dry drunk with a silver spoon in his mouth and serious daddy issues has been, and as monumentally insane as having former Nixon protégés be in charge of Executive secrecy and power has been, it should still shock Americans with a sense of civics and history how easy it has been for a nutso Commander-in-Chief and his morally-challenged cronies to subvert the Consitution, the will of the American People, and the very foundations of Democracy in a few short years. Had you told me back in 1999 that this could have happened in America even with the worst of leaders, I would have laughed in your face. I had confidence in the power of our structural institutions back then that I utterly lack today. For me, the key question--indeed, the only question--is how to effectively stop even the worst of madmen from ever having the power to wreak such havoc again.

Now, while it is true that impeachment itself does not necessarily block Unitary Executive theories of governance in and of itself, it certainly is a step in the right direction. Specific legislation or even Constitutional Amendments clarifying once and for all the exact limits of executive power may be necessary. But any impeachment proceeding does far more to address these issues than simply standing by and hoping for the election of a Democratic President.

Many of us who support impeachment, indeed, would rather elect a Giuliani who does NOT use Unitary Executive powers than a Hillary/Obama who DOES use them. That is utter heresy to ears of many--especially at a site whose ostensible goal is getting Democrats elected. But history has seen far too many Republics fall into Empire for our taste: Augustus may have been a good Emperor, but it doesn't matter; Caligula's always right behind.

For structuralists like us, the election of the right individual or ideologue in the context of the erosion of limits on power themselves is but a salve on an open wound. For us, individuals will never salvage anything. Individuals are corrupt, weak and short-lived; ideologies come and go, mutable with the change of times, circumstances and public whim. The framers understood that structure was everything and trumped political ideology or factional affiliation--re-read the Federalist Papers if you don't believe this. Individual elections and individual officials are but tumbleweeds passing through the pillars of structure. Either this question of limits on executive power gets resolved permanently, or our Republic will have a dictator elected on 4-year cycles. Tyranny is only a short milepost ahead on this road.

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This question goes beyond impeachment. It is a fundamental divide that is at the heart of what it means to have a progressive movement. It is at the heart of many divides and bitter arguments between progressive blogger communities.

Are we a collection of activists dedicated to the maximum success of the Democratic Party at all costs, or do we seek to do what we believe necessary to preserve the Republic even at the price of potential electoral cost? Shall our calculus be only that of the impact on the next election, or shall it be on that of the impact on the nation at large? Do we believe that Republican rule is the greatest evil to be feared, or that unchecked power itself is the greatest evil to be feared?

This argument to me is similar to that of the two protagonists in the outstanding film Crimson Tide: with hot nuclear confrontation looming between the United States and a crazed Russian coup leader, there is a power struggle on a U.S. nuclear submarine between the Captain played by Gene Hackman and the XO played by Denzel Washington. With orders in hand to fire nuclear missiles at Russia, the sub loses contact with Washington headquarters even as another aborted message was just arriving. Hackman's captain, looking to defend the United States at all costs against its enemy Russia and follow orders to the letter of the law, insists on firing the nukes. Denzel's XO insists that nuclear war itself is the danger to be feared, and demands that the sub do everything in its power to regain contact with the Pentagon--even at the expense of danger to the crew and to American lives at home. After twin mutinies on board and near catastrophe, Denzel wins and the final message arrives not to fire the nuke. While both men were right, both were also wrong--and it is a question that plagues anyone charged with the possible use of nuclear power to this day.

The similar question for Progressives is as follows: are Republicans the greatest danger we face? Or do we face an even greater danger in allowing Unitary Executive Power and utter disregard for the laws of the United States to go unchecked, unpunished and unrebuked?

It is a fundamental question that we must resolve--and quickly.

As the Curtain Falls, the Villains Exit Stage Right

With the breaking news of Bush's commutation of Scooter Libby's sentence still rolling hot off the presses, the curtain has finally fallen on yet another depressing piece of Bush Administration kabuki theater. All that is left in this sordid spectacle is the predictable reaction of the audience: the outraged jeers and hisses from the left, the thunderous applause from the right, and the final, painfully evenhanded judgment from the pompous theater critics in the media.

The stage was set from the beginning, when the Administration's fatal character flaw set in motion a chain of events with predictably tragic consequences. Joe Wilson chose to try to set things right in Denmark insofar as he could, and stab through the veil of Administration secrecy and lies, only to be rewarded for his effort by treasonous blades and men poisoned by lust for power. An Administration that came to power through royal coup and was obsessed with invading Iraq at all costs has reaped the inevitable electoral consequences for their transgressions, but the career suicides under a river of evil and the poisoned bodies of betrayed heroes are already too heavy to bear and too numerous to undo. The law, embodied by Fitzgerald, did what it could to hold the guilty accountable--but no more. And in the final act came the inevitable and totally forseeable denouement: illegal obstruction of justice was commuted through the twisted power of legal obstruction of justice, as those who first conspired to pour toxic lies into the ears of the American People walk as free men.

Unfortunately, that will no doubt be the final scene in this foul drama: the villains will exit stage Right, still standing and taking bows to the clamorous approbation of their fans, as the majority of the audience looks on in shocked horror and disbelief, and a vocal segment of the audience makes its displeasure clear. And the critics will turn in their remarks on the whole business with typically dispassionate false objectivity.

The reason this play will end thus is that we have no Hamlets and no Horatios willing to take the risk of committing career suicide and taking arms against this sea of evil. Our Democratic princes and princesses see themselves in quick line for the succession to the throne of our criminally wanton King George; just a few more years, they tell themselves, and this nightmare will be over and all will be well in Denmark again. In the meantime, they would prefer to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous deeds than engage in the sort of swordplay that might endanger their precious political futures. And all the while, the people perish under the weight of abject lawlessness and blatant treason.

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It does not have to be thus, of course. A stark choice lies before each and every one of us--a choice by which we will be forever judged in the annals of history.

We can choose to ride out the Bush presidency, in the naive hope that the next Democratic nominee will be our Fortinbras to wipe away the darkness and make of these evil transgressions mere unpleasant memories of a bygone era, even as Claudius, Gertrude, Polonius and Laertes all walk free to wreak their havoc in other capacities.

Or we can choose to be heroes and rush headlong where angels fear to tread in defense of our honor, the Constitution, and the principles of freedom and justice to which our country is so famously and supposedly committed.

But please, elected Democrats, spare us your feigned outrage. All the soliloquies and well-publicized indignation in the world; all the legalistic and parliamentary motions of investigations, senses of the Senate, and no-confidence votes in the world accomplish exactly nothing without decisive action in their wake. Even little children know the difference between a hero and a bureaucrat.

One day those little children--the kids and grandkids of those of us young enough never to have lived in the decade of Vietnam--will ask us what we did, and what our parents did.

Long after the 2008 election is but a distant memory written about only in history textbooks, generations to come will ask not what strategies we used to achieve electoral victory in some House or Senate race somewhere, but rather what we did to stop these villains and hold them accountable for their crimes.

As a child of the Reagan years, I neither know nor care what was done in any given Senate race to win Democratic victory in the wake of Watergate. I neither know nor care how the House leadership chose to play the issue of Vietnam to achieve maximum electoral benefit.

I care instead about Bernstein. I care about Woodward. I care about Frank Church. Because those men were heroes unafraid to cross swords with the most powerful man on earth. Those are the men history will remember. Those are the men who defended America when it needed defending most.

At some point we must, as a Party and as a Movement, decide what is more important: simply winning elections, or being the extraordinary heroes that are required in these extraordinary times?

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The evidence is already patently clear enough to impeach Gonzales and Dick Cheney. The outrageous lies and clear obstructions of justice are bright as day. Perhaps Bush still has far too much plausible deniability--and if so, so be it.

The only question that remains is for the Democratic leadership: will you be the heroes your nation requires in its hour of need, or will you instead sell your birthright for the mess of pottage that is the next election cycle? Will you truly allow these villains to walk off stage without feeling the blade of their own karma?

The choice is stark, and your actions will be remembered for generations to come.

Are the super-rich sure this is what they want?

If the Bush Administration policy ethic were boiled down to just two essential common denominators, they would have to be the following:

1. The pursuit of unchecked executive power; and

2. An obsessive compulsion to funnel money to the ultra-rich

We've seen the income inequality graphs.  We've seen the outrageous tax giveaways to the ultra-rich.  We've seen Darth Cheney's unprecedented power grabs for the executive branch in everything from Bush's signing statements to his disgusting and probably permanent perversion of the Justice Department.

At first glance, the objective of this dual-pronged attack on decency and moral values may seem self-evident.  After all, in the minds of the neoconservatives and their allies in the top .001% of American income holdiers, the calculus is simple enough:

-- Money = political victory

-- More money for the rich = more political victory for the rich

-- More executive power = more ability to enforce, secretly and openly, policies favoring the rich

-- More executive power = greater ability to exploit the wealth/cheap labor of foreign nations, using the poor as cannon fodder.

And certainly, that formula has worked well for the economic elites at least since Reagan, if not long before that.

But if there is one single identifiable third pillar of the Bush Administration policy ethic, it would have to be shortsightedness.  Neoconservatives and Bushites have a tendency not to recognize the enormity of disasters and blowback situations until it is far too late for them to free themselves from the ensuing debacle.  They're like a sabertooth cat leaping after a rodent in a tar pit: so enthralled with engorging themselves on their latest small-time victim that they fail to realize the mess they're getting themselves into.  We've seen this with Iraq; with Afghanistan; with Katrina; with the DoJ scandal; with Rovian politics of destruction; with global warming; and with the disaffection of the very allies we need to extricate our Middle East position.

They simply don't realize the monsters and nightmares of their own making until it is too late to save their reputations and often their own hides.

And I wonder strongly if they aren't making the same mistake by attempting to gain unbridled executive power in order to further engorge their already fat pockets.  After all, modern dictatorships--especially those in countries with widening income disparities and populist leanings--rarely turn out well for the rich.  This is not only true throughout the world, but also here in America.

America has a strong populist tradition dating from the gilded age of the late 1800's, if not before.  Whenever income disparity has grown to the degrees that it has in 2007, America has responded with aggressive populist presidents who often wield an uncomfortable degree of executive power to reign in the wealthy and redistribute income.

It happened with Bull Moose Teddy Roosevelt in the era of the robber barons.  It happened with his nephew Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who stacked the courts and became essentially President For Life in the wake of Hoover's Great Depression.  There's an argument to be made that it even happened with Abraham Lincoln, who used an uncomfortable degree of executive power to end slavery.  Unchecked executive power, while a hallmark of Nixonite conservative wetdreams, has rarely worked well for the aristocratic elite in America.

Nor has it worked terribly well throughout the world in the latter years.  Populist dictatorships are rarely friendly to maintaining wealth among elites.  One has only to look at Chavez in Venezuela; Kirchner in Argentina; Morales in Bolivia; even back to Vargas in Brazil or the wealth confiscations of wealth in the wake of Islamic Iranian revolution against the shah.

If anything, unchecked executive power in the modern era usually leads to confiscations of the wealth of elites.  It has also done so throughout the bulk of American history.

So, if I were in the upper .001% of income in the United States, I would be deeply concerned about the Bush Administration's policies set up to help my cause so generously.  In fact, if I were a wealthy elite, the very LAST thing I would want is to see institutionally mandated monarchical executive power in tandem with another million or five in my pocket.  Because I would know that severe blowback was not likely to be far behind.

But then again, I never did credit Bush or his allies with a great degree of foresight.

Cheney and Limbaugh are right

I know it's bad form to call out a fellow blogger--especially one as brilliant and dedicated as front-pager BarbinMD over at dKos--but sometimes it is necessary for the sake of posterity to hold one another's feet to the fire in the interests of truth and honesty.

In this case, I must object strongly to BarbinMD's post today excoriating Dick Cheney for saying that "a significant portion of the Democrats -- including, I think, Nancy Pelosi -- are adamantly opposed to the war and prepared to pack it in and come home in defeat, rather than put in place or support a policy that will lead to victory."

With apologies to BarbinMD and to the progressive blogosphere agreeing with Barb's post, I must break to you the unhappy news that Cheney is right.

To refute VP Dick, Barb dicks around with the well-worn Democratic Party line in responding to Cheney's barb.  She says (echoing the safe and unthreatening lines about "endless wars" with "no military solution" parroted by Obama, Edwards and Hillary) the following:

After more than four years, hundreds of thousands of deaths and an Iraqi civil war, perhaps it would have been more helpful had they discussed their own devotion, their seeming allegiance, to the concept of fighting a war that has no military solution...

To be fair, BarbinMD was only quoting General Petraeus' own remarks on the subject--remarks which caused Petraeus to take quite a bit of heat.  And to be fair, this meme--that of the endless "war with no military solution"--is standard boilerplate for those who oppose Bush's foreign policy in the Middle East.  The only problem is that I have no idea what the #@*& that's supposed to mean.  Neither do Dick Cheney and Rush Limbaugh--and quite frankly, I don't blame them.

When I go to Dictionary.com and look up the word "war", this is what I get:

1. A conflict carried on by force of arms, as between nations or between parties within a nation; warfare, as by land, sea, or air. 

2. A state or period of armed hostility or active military operations: The two nations were at war with each other. 

3. A contest carried on by force of arms, as in a series of battles or campaigns: the War of 1812.

I challenge anyone to tell me how one achieves a non-military solution to "conflict carried on by force of arms", "period of armed hostility or active military operations" or "series of battles or campaigns" without the treaty-enforced capitulation and surrender of one side (or a langorous stalemate).  There is no non-military solution to a war, and never has been.  Those words are utterly meaningless.

Cheney is absolutely correct: If America is fighting a "war" in Iraq, then Democrats are urging for America's surrender and defeat in that war.  That's the plain and honest truth of the matter--and no amount of whining, gnashing our teeth and screaming about the nasty rhetoric coming from ghouls like Cheney is going to make a difference.  If you're fighting a war, and your side is losing, and you act to recall your troops from the field of conflict, that's the very definition of retreat and defeat.  It's just common sense--and any attempt to deny or wiggle out of that sounds, quite rightly, like bullshit to most clear-headed people.

And we can use all the periphrastic rhetorical circumlocutions like "escalation" and "conflict" and "endless war" that we want; it's still not going to change the heart of the matter.

The fact is that Democrats have the same choices today that we had six months ago, and the six months before that--and the six months before that: we can either wail and piss down our legs at being called surrender monkeys for trying to a end a "war" by dishonorably pulling our troops out of the conflict without first achieving "victory", or we can tell the goddamn truth: namely, that America is NOT FIGHTING A WAR IN IRAQ.

I have made this case in post after post after post after post: America may be babysitting a 3-way civil war currently taking place between Sunni, Shia and Al-Qaeda in Iraq (which, just for the record, Al-Qaeda will lose in short order once our occupying presence unifying and distracting the factions is removed), but our portion of the "war" ended when we completed our invasion and decapitation of the regime by capturing Saddam Hussein.  From that point forward, we were no longer fighting a "war" in Iraq, but were instead the Occupational Authority in a foreign land.  Our role in Iraq bears much more resemblance to that of France in Algeria or the British in India than it does to our efforts in WWII, Korea or even Vietnam.

We control the government.  We control the streets--or have the ability to do so with a single military raid.  We control the infrastructure.  We control the prisons.  We control the economy.  It is within our power to let the population live, or to "pacify" it brutally and without mercy.  We own Iraq in every sense of the word: there are no enemy leaders to kill; no territory to seize; no infantry battalions to crush; no navy to sink; no air force to shoot down; no landmarks over which to place our flag in triumph.  We are quite simply NOT fighting a war of any kind in Iraq.  Indeed, the reason there is no military solution to this war is because there IS NO WAR.  See how tidy that is?--and we don't even have to put on bullshit protectors over our ears!

As I said in GOP Bluff Finally Called: War or Occupation?:

In war, your objective is to seize (or defend) territory, kill or capture the enemy, and (hopefully) depose the enemy government.

In an occupation, your objective is to subjugate and manage a foreign population with peace and stability, while building up infrastructure in and/or exploiting the resources of that population.

And it makes a big difference.  To quote myself again, this time from How Can You Surrender If There Was Never a War?:

THERE IS NO WAR IN IRAQ.  There is an OCCUPATION.  And there is a resistance to said occupation.  This resistance takes many forms: criminal thuggery, despicable terrorism, sectarian violence, and guerrilla warfare....

And this is absolutely critical.  It's critical because there is a HUGE difference between wars and occupations: Occupations can end only in WITHDRAWAL or in ANNEXATION; Wars can end only in DEFEAT or VICTORY.

America is NOT ready to annex Iraq--even if such a thing were possible.  Cheney and Bush would like to, through the process of permanent bases--but the American public won't stand for it.  America IS ready to accept withdrawal from Iraq--But ONLY if it understands that what is happening in Iraq is an OCCUPATION and not a war.

And most importantly, as a I said in It's Not Defeat, Dammit:

Let me be very clear about this: America WINS by withdrawing from Iraq. We win because we're not spending $2 billion/week. We win because we're not losing more troops to targeted homegrown resistance. We win because we're not killing 600,000 more civilians and inflaming world anger. America wins by allowing Iraq to pursue its own destiny and stand up for itself. America wins by decreasing its foreign policy emphasis on oil. Most importantly, we win because we were never fighting an identifiable "enemy" once Saddam was toppled and imprisoned.

So to sum up:

1. It's an Occupation, not a War

2. Wars end it "Defeat" and "Victory", but Occupations end in "Annexation" or "Withdrawal"

3. America WON the "war" a long time ago.

4. America WINS by ending our occupation of Iraq and allowing them to make full use of their freedom.

Until we start shouting these things from the rooftops and telling it like it is, people like Cheney and Limbaugh are going to keep calling us Defeatocrat Surrender-Monkeys.

And so long as we keep swallowing their bullshit premises, they're going to continue to be right.

A Simple Proposal

Corruption in government--it's such an old and time-honored partnership that the very phrase government corruption has become a well-worn cliche. As Americans, we've come to expect a certain level of corruption when it comes to public officials in Washington.

This Republican Administration, however, has carried the level of brazen corruption to such jaw-dropping, dizzying heights--and the price of that corruption has become so high in terms of wasted treasure and squandered lives--that something structural really has to be done about it at this point.

Obviously, we can talk until we're blue in the face about campaign finance reform, and eliminating the money game from electoral politics. That's an enormous challenge, and one fraught with constitutional difficulties.

But when it comes to the fired attorneys case and the Walter Reed privatization case, the corruption is far more blatant. Usually, you see, corruption takes a little bit of work: special interest "X" gives you money for your campaign; you return the favor on the sly by giving handouts to special interest "X"; special interest "X" takes you on special junkets to keep your loyalty.

These assholes, on the other hand, don't even think they need to stoop to such effort. The corruption doesn't even happen in exchange for campaign contributions; it's a direct connection from policies of mass bloodshed to increased profits in their overly bloated personal bank accounts. The Republicans in this administration--from Cheney to Rumsfeld to everyone else--are content to own direct stock in companies that have direct interest in killing Americans, killing foreigners overseas, and letting our wounded veterans rot in substandard medical facilities. They literally make a DIRECT PROFIT from death and destruction, while they make decisions to lie the American people into creating even more death and destruction.

It's time to put an end to this. At least if they're going to be corrupt, force them to be corrupt in the form of kickbacks and graft. The taking of direct profits from the use of death-making institutions by those in control of the weapons of death is a moral outrage that screams out for immediate attention and eternal censure.

My proposal, therefore, is simple: DISALLOW ANY FEDERALLY ELECTED OR APPOINTED OFFICIAL FROM OWNING ANY INTEREST OR STAKE IN COMPANIES PROVIDING DEFENSE CONTRACTING OR MILITARY SUPPORT SERVICES TO THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT. No exceptions. I would like, if I thought it constitutionally viable, to disbar any board members or high-level officials from a military contractor or support service from giving campaign contributions--but I don't think that would be possible.

But it's the very least we can do to try to stop in its tracks a military-industrial complex that is openly, brazenly bleeding us dry in more ways than we can count. It's time to end the madness. It's time that those in control of the dogs of war at least had to take an intermediary step if they want to be corrupt enough to unleash those dogs of war in their own economic self-interest. It's time to unhitch the profit caboose from the warmongering NeoCon train.

And in the wake of the upcoming Cerberus/Walter Reed scandal and the Cheney/Halliburton scandal, there's no time like the present.

The Most Overlooked Storyline of '08: The GOP Cheney Problem

It's amazing what one can learn from a perusal of Republican websites like National Review, TownHall, and even links from blogs like RedState and FreeRepublic. This is especially true when they are terrified and looking to assign blame for their woeful condition going into '08.

In this case, I'm talking about a fascinating and insightful article from Townhall by prolific conservative writer Bruce Bartlett. Although I disagree strongly with Bartlett's politics, his conclusions are dead on.

Bartlett states unequivocally that Bush screwed over Republicans from the get go. He's not talking about the War/Occuaption in Iraq. He's not talking about Katrina. Nor about government for the rich, reckless mismanagement, Dubai ports, outing undercover agents, or trying to use immigration as a wedge issue.

No, he's talking about Bush's selection of and loyalty to Dick Cheney as his vice-president--and the stubborn penchant for sycophancy that led to it.

The article is entitled Republicans' Cheney Problem, and I strongly encourage everyone to read the whole article. But the absolute key paragraph that will raise some eyebrows is this one:

That the Republicans do not have a sitting vice president running for the presidential nomination in 2008 is entirely George W. Bush's doing. In 2004, he decided that he would rather have a vice president who would never question him than one who could carry on his legacy. As Bush explained in a Feb. 12, 2007 interview on C-SPAN:

"From my perspective, it is good not to have a vice president running for president. Can you imagine somebody out there running and all of a sudden saying, 'Well, I wouldn't have done it exactly that way.' When things got difficult, like they are in Iraq, I told the president that he should have done it this way. He chose another way.' In other words, there would be the tendency for a candidate who was associated with the president to feel like they needed to distance themselves during the tough moments, like right now, and that would create instability inside the administration."

This is absolutely critical: Bush picked Cheney (and stuck with him) because Cheney would stay loyal to his batshit crazy policies even when they went south (as even he must have known they would). And now Republicans like Bartlett who still remain enamored of Bush's policies are upset with Dear Leader because he valued loyalty and message consistency over the ability to carry on the rotten legacy of his policies.

What Bartlett and his colleagues fail to realize is that sycophancy, belligerence, secrecy and unresponsiveness are legacies of this president--the disasters of Iraq, Katrina, etc., are merely outgrowths of an entire "fuck-you" attitude towards governance. Further, it's not clear why Bartlett should be surprised that the leader of an entire political establishment dedicated to the philosophy of "Look Out for Number 1" spent his political career and capital, well...looking out for number 1, rather than looking out for his Party.

Bartlett, of course, goes on to argue the obvious points in favor of having a vice-president willing to carry on your legacy as a president--a position Bush explicitly chose to deny his own Party:

Another virtue of having a vice president with ambitions of his own is that he is the only senior White House official in a position to resist the sycophancy that always surrounds the president. This is important because presidents live in a bubble, surrounded by people who owe their power and position solely to him. They are loath to be seen as "out of the loop" or to read news stories about their imminent departure, when they had no such plans. This tends to make the White House staff highly responsive to the president's wants, biases and whims.

Once into a second term, the vice president cannot be fired and his own ambitions will encourage him to pressure the president into adopting policies and taking positions that will be popular with voters. Since presidents cannot run for a third term, they would otherwise be totally impervious to public opinion. If a vice president hopes to be elected president himself, he has a strong incentive to advise the president to adopt policies that will make it easier for him to win.

Precisely. That's the whole point! Bush knew good and goddamn well that his policies were atrocious and terrible for the American People--and he sure as hell wasn't going to have some traitorous vice president who would attempt to go over his head to salvage the reputation of the party. (Instead, he would get a traitorous vice-president who would out nuclear proliferations secret agents while remaining loyal to his 27% approval-rating policies). Cheney's atrocious approval ratings aren't by accident--they're by design.

And this, after all, is the modus operandi of George W. Bush: take it over, run it into the ground, and run away. It's what he did to Arbusto oil; it's what he did to the Texas Rangers; and he'll be damned if he doesn't do the same goddamn thing to the Republican Party. Only problem is, he's taking the American People and their representative democracy down with him (to say nothing of the people of Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere).

The final paragraph is the kicker:

For these reasons, I think Dick Cheney's lack of ambition for the presidency has been more of a handicap to Bush than the blessing he sees it as. It has fostered insularity at the White House and closed off an important avenue of influence to the president that has encouraged him to take a "go it alone" attitude, which is bad both for the country and the Republican Party.

No doubt--but that's what happens when you make devil-may-care selfishness and greed a moral good; when stubbornness and belligerence are seen as virtues, rather than vices; when a vampire-like insistence on secrecy and lack of sunshine in government are seen as heroic; when faith in idiocy is valued over reasoned intelligence; and when Gordon Gekko's "Greed is Good" speech is seen not as a villain's moral lesson, but as a guidebook for life and motivational seminar.

It's just too bad that we've all had to be unwilling passengers of this careening train wreck.

Is Bush Telling Cheney to Go F*$# Himself?

First it was the End of Cowboy Diplomacy, and the ascendancy of diplomacy in dealing with Iran--leaving Sy Hersch with some egg on his face.

Then it was the Bush Administration failing to act on their usual grandstanding and beliigerence to the other branches of government by actually reversing their ground on detainees after the Hamdan decision--not just for those at Gitmo, but also for those at CIA prisons worldwide.

And now the third blow in less than a week: The end of unconditional Halliburton contracts in Iraq, and the divvying up up contracting duties to no less than three independent, audited, competing contractors.

These are three pieces of shockingly good news that should take us all aback.  I haven't seen this administration go this much on the defensive and actually reconcile themselves to somewhat saner versions of hare-brained policies in the six years since I've been watching them.

And there can be only one reason for this in my mind: a deep and personal rift between President Bush and V.P. Cheney that has now moved into actual policy considerations.

For the record, I have never believed that Bush was evil to the core.  I believe he is an arrogant and totally-out-of-touch rich frat-boy.  I believe that he is a deeply insecure and spiteful man.  I believe he is a sociopath without human compassion.

But at heart, I think he's a privileged little brat who has had everything done for him all his life, and who still thinks he's a big kid--and who's in a job that's WAY too big for him.

Cheney, on the other hand, is an evil bastard.  Cheney is a man who, as John Edwards pointed out, voted against meals on wheels and the MLK, Jr. holiday.  He's a man who calculated his college attendance, marriage, and even his wife's pregnancy to exactly coincide with draft deferrals from Vietnam.  He's a man who was on the inside of the Nixon administration, and felt that Nixon was wronged.

And these policies that are being reversed are Cheney's pet policies.

As many journalists and bloggers have pointed out, the Gitmo detainee policy has been Cheney's brainchild and pet issue.  It is Cheney who insisted on the Gitmo policy; Cheney who lashed out at Democrats and the press over torture; Cheney who first and most violently claimed that CIA prisons and extraordinary rendition were absolutely necessary.  Bush's defenses of these policies have, by contrast, seemed tepid, petulant and annoyed by comparison.

Interestingly, they have by contrast NOT stood down on the NSA spying after Hamdan.  I believe that's because the NSA spying program was more Bush's idea than Cheney's--and that Bush personally stands to lose a great deal politically (possibly even impeachment) by backing down on it.

And Iran?  Remember that it was CHENEY who was a member of PNAC.  It is Cheney who wants to nuke Iran.  Bush have been gung-ho to attack Iraq for on account of various personal demons, corporate allegiances and bad advice, but I doubt very much that Bush has any personal incentive to attack Iran.  Bush isn't PNAC, and it's rumored that Bush highly resents his PNAC advisors for their bullshit lies about how the post-war occupation would turn out.

And Halliburton?  This is not only the corporation that Cheney used to run and with whom he still has ties, but it's the corporation that continues to line Cheney's pockets.  What else can we surmise from a move to hamstring Cheney's favorite little corporation?  I doubt very much that the move is to save face politically, since Halliburton's horrible misdeeds in Iraq have not exactly been in the news lately.  What about the character of this administration over the last six years would lead us to believe that they would make this move out of the kindness of their own hearts?

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No, my friends.  Something very deep is at work here.  Strange events have been taking place--strange events that would bespeak, for this first time, a shred of sanity in this administration.

And every piece of unexpected good news comes at the price of a policy very near and dear to Cheney's heart.

My suspicion is that little boy Bush has seen the political handwriting on the wall, and told Cheney to go fuck himself in none too equivocal terms.  I could be wrong, but that's what my objective analysis tells me.