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.

To Impeach or Not to Impeach: That is NOT the Question

As I have reluctantly stated before, I am in favor of impeaching the President, the Vice-President and Alberto Gonzales. Of course, I am not alone in this opinion; in fact, I came to it rather late. And certainly, it appears that more and more people are getting comfortable with the idea of impeachment--so many, in fact, that the impeachment drive can no longer be ignored by the traditional media. The Bush Administration's radical reinterpretations of the definitions of the Office of Vice-President as an island of government, and the range of authority of Executive Orders as not applicable to the Chief Executive will certain add even more fuel to what is becoming a raging Impeachment wildfire.

Of course, the "Impeach Now" crowd is not the only one capable of reasonable Progressive thought. Well-meaning, intelligent progressives may also come down on the side of what they see as Pragmatism; I myself was proud to be a member of this camp until not very long ago. Markos himself has been and may continue to be of this opinion (he hasn't written much on the subject lately). So-called Pragmatic arguments against Impeachment come in a variety of forms, including that:

• Democrats have a chance to frame ourselves and what we will do for the country--and that given a limited amount of media oxygen, the Party will not be able to walk and chew gum simultaneously.
• Partisan recriminations will only further divide an already deeply divided nation.
• Above all, bitter impeachment proceedings won't help accomplish the primary goal stated in the DailyKos FAQ: to help get more Democrats elected.

The oft-cited counterargument, of course, is that in the face of an out-of-control executive that believes it has imperial powers overriding all judicial and legislative authority, impeachment is the only pragmatic recourse. The counter-counter argument is that America has largely weathered the Bush storm; we only have 18 months of this bastard left; our democracy is largely intact and Democrats just need to prove themselves the competent party of adults who can get things done rather than play partisan games. And so the wheel of question-begging arguments turns round and round.

Both sides of this argument, however, are missing the only point that really matters. Both sides are right--right in the sense that impeachment is the only way to restrain the Bush Administration's mad lust for power, and in the sense that Bush is essentially a lame duck with little time left to play Oval Office demi-god, and is already being cast to the wolves by members of his own party, while Democratic victories in 2008 are the paramount objective. But both sides are also wrong. Both sides are wrong because they are both asking themselves the wrong questions. 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.

Because, you see, impeachment does not answer that question. If that blessed day does finally come when Bush, Cheney, Rove and/or Gonzales are finally held to account for their crimes in House and Senate impeachment proceedings, it will not stop such abuses from happening again. As much as we would like to throw the entire book at President George just as Thomas Jefferson did to King George before him, that is not likely to happen. Instead, impeachment is likely to hang on some relatively minor crime of obstruction or other. In the context of an administration that has deceived the American people into the disastrous military occupation of a non-threatening nation, obliterated checks and balances, eliminated habeas corpus, enshrined torture into our interrogation practices, and assumed the ability to invade privacy without a warrant (among a host of other crimes), nailing George Bush for covering up the real political reasons for the firing of a few U.S. attorneys he appointed (a crass, damaging and unprecedented though not illegal move in and of itself) would seem even more hollow and anticlimactic than jailing Al Capone for tax evasion.

Most importantly, impeaching Administration officials for one offense or another will only serve to warn the next administration to avoid that offense on which the impeachment proceedings were based, rather than the entire Unitary "we create the history you'll write about later" theory of Executive Power that is the source of the trouble. Instead, rightly or wrongly, the next Administration is likelier to learn in the wake of consecutive impeachments of Clinton and Bush that an Executive who loses control of Congress is at risk of losing his/her job in an overtly rancorous and hostile political climate--perhaps leading to increased attemnpts at Executive power consolidation.

Neither, however, does the anti-Impeachment side have any better answers. Even the most optimistic political observer knows that there is a pendulum in American politics that usually works in fairly regular cycles: Democrats and Progressives won't be in control forever. God forbid, in fact, that we should create permanent institutional majorities, else we would soon need yet another revolution to rid ourselves of the Pigs who took over Manor Farm. Further, authoritarianism comes not only in the red flavors of fascism, but in blue Stalinist ones as well. Simply ensuring the election of Democrats does not and will not ensure that Bushist theories of executive power will not rise from the dead yet again.

Preventing the nation from being torn asunder through vicious partisan strife will not rescue us from an actually competent Straussian Philosopher-King removing our liberties for own good in his/her infinite wisdom.

And finally, enacting progressive policies such as guaranteed universal health care, publicly financed elections, marriage equality, progressive taxation, corporate regulations, privacy protections and the like, will do nothing to prevent the next authoritarian freak and his merry band of cronies from replaying this sordid history like an unwelcome recurring nightmare.

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No, the great challenge for American democracy is neither impeachment nor corporate corruption: it is the curtailment of the power of the executive branch itself. America can survive the depradations of Republican legislators and jurists; it cannot so easily survive many more years of maniacally out-of-control chief executives and their lieutentants. That challenge will remain with us regardless of whether Democrats win in '08, or whether George Bush is impeached before then.

From this moment onward, the Presidency of George W. Bush must serve not only as a monstrous enemy to block and stymie at every opportunity, but more importantly as an object lesson: What we have witnessed here must never happen again so long as we have memories to share, eyes to see, and the will to fight.

From this moment onward, our primary political focus must not only be on passing progressive legislation in the traditional sense, but more importantly on codifying the balance of powers in such a clarion way that not even the love child of Samuel Alito and Dick Cheney could possibly mistake it for a fragile bird to shoot down with a stroke of their "Unitary Executive" pen.

From this moment onward, the specter of George Bush must hover over our government as an ever-present reminder of the frailty of our institutions, and the clear and present danger imposed not only by Republican ideology, but by unchecked Executive Power itself.

From the 2008 election onward, Progressive Policy must be defined as much by its explicit curtailments on executive power as by its work on behalf of the beleaguered middle-class and underclass.

Let us, therefore, impeach if and when we can. Let us work to elect Democrats. Let us work to pass progressive legislation.

But let us also remember that to impeach or not to impeach is not the question over which our slings and arrows should fly at one another. Because the question that should drive us, keeping us awake at night on our computers, is instead How do we stop even a mad hatter like Bush from ever sending us down this rabbit-hole again?

An American Capacity for Evil

How could this have happened in America? How did we get into this horrible mess? Why is there not more outrage from the American people? Why is the traditional media so compliant? Why are the Democrats so timid?

As the full rotten fruits of the Bush Administration's contempt for democracy, constitutional process, human rights, international law, middle-class economics and just plan basic human decency become increasingly apparent with each passing day, coherent and convincing answers to these questions become increasingly necessary. It should be deeply troubling to anyone who cares about America as a nation and the principles upon which it was founded that our institutions could have become so easily subverted, and our national will so broken that we not only did nothing to prevent these disasters, but failed to act decisively to right the wrongs once they had become so appallingly obvious.

It is these questions that Al Gore attempts to answer in his outstanding book Assault on Reason. Gore's answer in a nutshell is that representative democracy only functions based on a two-way conversation between its government those being governed; that in the days of pamphlets and the written word such communication was commonplace and easy (at least for the bourgeois); and that radio and especially television have broken down that communication into a one-way street from government to the people, with an ever decreasing attention span.

Al Gore is right about all this, of course--yet as I turn it over in my mind, it is clear to me that this explanation alone does not suffice to explain how we got to such a dreary state of affairs. America has a long history of horrific corruption, appalling deficits of accountability, and immoral acts of oppression and war that predates radio and television. Slavery, the Trail of Tears, Andrew Jackson's final "victory" in the war of 1812, the massacres of Native Americans at Wounded Knee and elsewhere, the brute aggression of the Mexican-American War, the Confederacy on the wrong side of morality and history, the lies of the Spanish-American war, the social injustice and government corruption of the Gilded Age and robber baron eras, Jim Crow and the White Man's Burden of Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson--all of these took place well before the advent of radio and television. And nearly all took place with the fairly quiet consent of the governed.

No, the answer lies deeper. While America's ability to project might, together with the secrecy and corruption made possible by the unprecedented power of multinational corporations, has ensured that the Bush Administration's misuse of both capacities will earn it the award of Worst Administration Ever, the uncomfortable truth is that the difference between Bush and many of his American predecessors is not one of quality, but rather of quantity. One shudders to think what sort of damage might have been done by a President Jackson, President Grant or President Nixon, given Bush's military power, post-9/11 national cohesion, and pressure from corporate interests. Bush and his Republican corporatocratic cronies do so much damage because they have the power to--not because they are a uniquely destructive breed.

But even that is not enough. Regardless of the power that can be wielded by an unholy alliance of religious dogmatism, military-industrial complex influence and corporate power, there still remains the question of how the American people, its media, and its supposed opposition parties could have remained so compliant for so long.

The answer, I believe, lies in the fact that most Americans simply do not believe their leaders and their government to be capable of sheer evil. Certainly, we as Americans acknowledge the past sins of slavery, native exterminations, Jim Crow and the like--but we view these actions as a product of inadequate social enlightenment at the time, simply reflected by our leadership. And certainly, we believe our politicians to be venal consummate liars who are inherently corrupt and self-serving. But we are incapable of allowing ourselves to admit that we as a nation are capable of playing an utterly immoral role on the world stage.

Most other industrialized nations do not have this problem. The nations of Europe learned the lessons of colonial exploitation, empires established and lost, and brutal world wars fought due to greed and stupidity. Japan (in spite of its official refusal to acknowledge it) understands and is fairly contrite for the negative role it has played in military and economic exploitation of its neighbors. Russia certainly is sadder but wiser for its experiences with state-run Communist Empire. Even China has a storied history of imperial cruelty and rebellion from such--though its lessons tend to be internally rather than externally directed.

But America has not yet had its often heavy hand slapped by the forces of karma. The impossibility of the maintenance of both military colonial empire and domestic democracy have not yet become apparent to the average American. In fact, most Americans are still sitting on the laurels of overtly beneficial military campaigns overseas in World War II and in Korea--perhaps the only truly just wars America has fought since the war of 1812 (with the possible exceptions of Kosovo and Gulf War I). Even when our actions are overtly aggressive, Americans have always found a way to justify them to ourselves.

Perhaps the best example of the philosophy that most Americans hold when it comes to foreign policy is presented by Trey Parker and Matt Stone in their 2004 comedy Team America: World Police. Apologies for the crudeness here, but the words are Parker's and Stone's. Shortly before the following speech in the film, the American heroes have foiled a plot of world domination by North Korea's Kim Jong-Il, who has made unwitting allies of the Hollywood celebrities the Right loves to hate (unless their running as Republicans for president, of course):

We're dicks! We're reckless, arrogant, stupid dicks. And the Film Actors Guild are pussies. And Kim Jong Il is an asshole. Pussies don't like dicks, because pussies get fucked by dicks. But dicks also fuck assholes: assholes that just want to shit on everything. Pussies may think they can deal with assholes their way. But the only thing that can fuck an asshole is a dick, with some balls. The problem with dicks is: they fuck too much or fuck when it isn't appropriate - and it takes a pussy to show them that. But sometimes, pussies can be so full of shit that they become assholes themselves... because pussies are an inch and half away from ass holes. I don't know much about this crazy, crazy world, but I do know this: If you don't let us fuck this asshole, we're going to have our dicks and pussies all covered in shit!

As clammyc and I will be discussing tonight on our radio show Political Nexus, this speech, crude and filled as it is with misogynist sexual politics, underlines the American theory of domestic and foreign policy: we may be over-the-top sometimes, but our hearts are in the right place. Our leaders stand up, we believe, to evil wherever it is--and sometimes some weaklings get hurt and offended in the process--but if it weren't for our strong decisive leadership, all those weaklings would get abused by those evil people in the world. This ethic applies just as much to our law-and-order attitude towards drugs and a variety of other crimes (leading to horrific incarceration rates) as it does to our foreign policy in Iraq. In the minds of most Americans, we can always be overly aggressive dicks--but never assholes. And the worst thing we could possibly have, we believe, is a President who is a "pussy". Indeed, it would be difficult to surmise how dickish an American president would have to be for us consider him/her enough of an asshole to actually impeach.

And that is why Chris Matthews can't believe Americans don't like George Bush. That is why the idea of impeaching George Bush for war crimes and crimes against the American Constitution is so distasteful to so many Americans. That is why our Democratic candidates have such difficulty saying that occupying Iraq is wrong, or that Bush deliberately lied to get us to invade; instead, they say their vote was a "mistake", that they wish they had "known then what they know now", that we were "misled". That is why Americans were so utterly shocked by Abu Ghraib, and why they did their best to forget about it just after it happened. That is why Americans were so utterly shocked by the callous and incompetent response to the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, and why they did their best to forget about that, too, just months thereafter. That is why it takes a Michael Moore to say explicitly that American healthcare isn't just in need of adjustments, but is structurally bad.

In sum, Americans cannot hold George Bush accountable for his evil actions if they refuse to acknowledge the possibility that any American president could be capable of using our power towards evil ends. So long as conventional wisdom dictates that no politician or major media figure can speak badly of his/her country's position on the world stage, no politician will truly be able to speak badly of the leadership that put us in that position.

This is why Al Gore cannot decide whether or not to run for President. As an outside figure, he can hold George Bush's and America's feet to the fire for dragging its feet on global climate change, and for abusing the awesome power of its military might. As a politician, however, he knows that doing so is the kiss of death.

As Americans, we deserve the leadership that we get. So long as we are incapable of admitting evil of ourselves, we will be incapable of having principled leadership like Al Gore is demonstrating today. At best, we will get the calculated platitudes of a Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama; at worst, we will get the utter depravity of a George Bush or Dick Cheney.

If we want to save our country, however, we will need to admit the truth. We will need to be able to call a spade a spade, and acknowledge that great evil has indeed been done in our names. I only hope that we as a nation can do so before it is too late.

GOP in Trouble: My Personal Iowa Experience

Allow me to begin this personal story by stating the way I earn my daily bread: I'm a focus group moderator by trade, one of those oft-vilified creatures in politics and corporate advertising who talks to regular people, finds out how they feel about specific issues, and relays that information to my clients to help them craft better messaging.

So you can imagine my delight at being invited by my better half to visit her relatives over Memorial Day weekend in rural Iowa, the heart of the "heartland" and home to the famed Iowa caucuses. The entire trip provided me the opportunity to use my moderating skills and probing techniques on the farmers, teachers, service employees and other denizens of this conservative, bellwether state. What I discovered there should strike terror into the heart of any Republican operative--especially one working for a candidate supportive of Bush's policies in Iraq.

The people I spent my time with were by and large, with a few pleasant and notable exceptions, your archetypical rural Midwest Republicans: generous, proudly self-sufficient, kindhearted people who often wear their religion on their sleeve, carry with them deep racial prejudice born of decades of Republican rhetoric and lack of contact with "the other", and deeply distrust government involvement. One of the houses I visited at length even sported a Ronald Reagan calendar facing a George W. Bush calendar, with an outsize W'04 re-election sticker plastered on the inside walls to overshadow them.

Even here, however, the tide has turned against the GOP to a strong degree--and against Bush to an even stronger one. My conversations, when they turned to politics, always eased into the subject gradually--but when they did, there was palpable discontent in the air. These are people who are extremely upset: upset at the incursions of big agriculture companies into the marketplace that used to be dominated by small farmers; upset at the lack of economic and social incentives for their children to remain in their hometowns or even within the state; upset at the amount of out-of-control government spending and huge national and trade deficits; deeply upset at the lack of enforcement of immigration laws; upset at the abandonment of the farming and industrial economies in favor of those that support the passing of money from one person to another without physical goods in trade; and upset, above all, at the pointless and hopeless occupation of Iraq. And while all of these issues may not be enough to drive many of them to vote for Democrats, more than a few are thoroughly disenchanted with the Republican party that they admit has been directly responsible for these negative repercussions.

It is also important to note that the demographic trends I observed strongly favor the progressive side: by a hard and fast rule, the oldest generation (75-100 years old among these resilient Norwegian descendants) was by far the most conservative; the next generation was fairly evenly divided with a slight conservative orientation; the next (somewhere between 25-40) leaned decidedly progressive; and the few young adults present were unanimously liberal.

But there was one conversation that struck me more than any other, truly encapsulating the heart of my Iowa experience and opening a window onto the sordid reality facing the modern Republican Party of Bush:

In the middle of my dinner at a restaurant near Des Moines, I arose from my chair to get a closer look at the television at the bar. Or should I say the televisions plural, as one was situated in an ill-lit and out-of-the-way corner, while the other stood prominently on display at the center of the bar. The television-in-exile was set to Fox News, its anchors yammering mindlessly about Linsay Lohan's recent DUI arrest; the favored location was set to CNN's Situation Room, where the primary subject under discussion was that of Iraq. It was around this latter that three restaurant employees and one patron (all Caucasians) were seated, intently watching the report and murmuring to one another with the soft earnestness of communal resignation and disappointment.

I strolled up to the bar and approached nearer to the television--and to the far more interesting words it was obscuring from its denizens. When one of the employees turned to offer me a drink in the down-to-earth, friendly manner only a down-home Midwestern bartender can, I pointed instead to the television and indicated that I had sidled over for the news, rather than a drink. It was at that moment that another employee, a handsome, weary-looking woman in her late thirties with a heavy golden crucifix around her neck exclaimed, "What a damn waste!"

"The war?" I asked. Everyone at the bar nodded. It turned out that the occupation of Iraq was deeply personal for several of them: one, an attractive young woman in her mid-twenties with the demure earnestness of the reserved regular church-goer, had a cousin currently serving in Iraq as part of the first battalion to ever go there from Iowa under W's regime. He was supposed to be home by now, but his tour of duty had been extended through July. I wished for his speedy and safe return in July; her response was heartbreaking. "IF he gets home then; I don't know if he'll ever make it home, alive or not." Another had a cousin who had died from an IED in a poorly armored humvee. The third employee's son reportedly had a friend whose head was horribly disfigured in another IED blast, and was now struggling to survive through the paltry graces of the post-Walter Reed Veterans' Administration. I asked the woman whose cousin was on his extended tour how he felt. She responded with a sigh, "Just like the rest of his unit. He was totally gung-ho when he first went in, but now he's 180 degrees the other direction. He says there's no reason to be there anymore, and he just wants to come home." It was painfully reminiscent of a New York Times article that came to similar conclusions when interviewing Delta Company of the First Battalion, 325th Airborne Infantry, 82nd Airborne Division.

The original woman bearing the cross continued, "They're only there for oil, you know."

"Really!" I said. I explained that I talked to people for a living and had never been to Iowa before, and that I was deeply interested in what they had to say for my own education. "That's good," said the patron, a gruff man in his fifties. "Nobody else ever listens to us. Certainly not the people in Washington."

I asked the first woman why she thought it was an oil-driven war (I didn't use the Occupation frame--I was then involved in the discovery of opinions, rather than their creation), and when she had begun to feel that way. Her answer was at once surprsing and deeply revealing: "A few years after it started, when everything was clearly going downhill. Bush and those boys never changed anything about what they were doing there, even when it obviously wasn't working. And we're still there when everybody knows we got no business there. What else are we supposed to think? What other reason could there be?"

I asked in turn each of the others when they had soured on the war; they would only answer after I had assured them that I felt the same revulsion to Bush's foreign policy as did they. Each and every one said that their discontent had begun two or three years back. Said the patron, "Like she said, we've got no business there. These people have been fighting one another since the beginning of time..." "Since Adam and Eve, almost," chipped in the third employee, whose vague grasp of even Biblically-inspired history did not diminish her moral judgment of Bush's Iraqi trail of tears. "It's not our job to civilize them and make them stop fighting, even if we could. It's pointless and ridiculous. We just need to bring our boys home." Although these good, God-fearing people could not bring themselves to take responsibility for what the government they helped elect had wrought on the Iraqi people, they still knew a skunk when they saw one.

It turned out, however, that their greatest concern was not even for the soldiers still stationed there, but for those already home and those soon to be home. "How many more billions are we going to have to spend on the medical care for the ones do make it home wounded? It's just never going to stop," said one. The patron told the tale of his son's friend's difficulties (the one currently with half a head) in procuring veteran's benefits or employment after being released from a California hospital. Said another, "We remember how many people suffered after coming home from Vietnam. This is just going to be so much worse."

Then came the Democrats' turn in the spotlight--though it was a far more favorable gaze than I had anticipated. The young woman mentioned that the Democrats had just given Bush more money; I affirmed that they had, and asked how they felt about that. Interestingly, each one responded with a slight variation on the original woman's response: "I don't know. They didn't have a choice, I guess. That's all the bargaining power they have when it comes to dealing with the President." I don't know if this attitude holds true for most of America's heartland, but if it is, it is at once deeply comforting and highly dismaying. On the one hand, it demonstrates that Pelosi's and Reid's gamble has paid off, and the public still considers this to be Bush's occupation opposed by the Democrats; on the other, it shows an alarming lack of understanding of Legislative's ability to act as a coequal branch to that of the Executive.

It was here that our little group was broken up by the arrival of other patrons to occupy two of the restaurant staff, and the call of nature upon the original patron. My last question--and most instructive--was for the young woman who remained.

"What," I asked, "is your most important issue right now when it comes to a candidate?" "The war," she said without a moment's hesitation.

Looking down at the wedding ring on this young woman's finger and the small crucifix she bore on a chain round her neck, I ventured further: "Let's say it's 2008, and you have the choice between a Republican who supports Bush's mission in Iraq, and a Democrat who you disagree with on important moral issues. What do you think you'll do?"

Her answer should make Republicans nationwide tremble with the terror that only the swift and inevitable recognition of an approaching boulder of karma can bring.

"You know, it's tough. Usually I vote on moral issues--and so does my family. You can tell someone's character from the stand they take on those things. But at the same time, I think we've seen that no matter what you believe in morally, it doesn't really matter very much to what happens in the country. My family has talked a lot about this. We really need people who are going to make the right decisions, no matter what they believe personally. So I'd still definitely have to say I would vote for the person who says they'll stop the war."

There's trouble brewing in River City, Iowa. Big, big trouble. And that starts with a capital "T" and that rhymes with "B" and that stands for Bush. Mene, Mene, Tekel Upharsin...

Get Every Candidate On Record NOW

As we all know by now, President Bush (not to mention his lackey Alberto Gonzales) is incontrovertibly guilty of an obviously impeachable offense in light of Comey's testimony yesterday. Bush can attempt to deny recollection of the damning phone call to Mrs. Ashcroft if he pleases; Mrs. Ashcroft can deny recollection of it if she pleases, though how she could do that without obviously perjuring herself since she had banned all callers and visitors to Ashcroft's room is unknown. Perhaps she could say that the call came directly from Gonzales or Andy Card.

But the mafia-like circumstances of this amazing story cannot be denied: the rush to be first to the ill attorney general's room; the courageous stand of FBI chief Mueller--a story I am certain he would corroborate--in insisting that Comey not be removed from the room; Card and Gonzales blowing past Comey with an executive order for Ashcroft; Ashcroft's improbable and amazing lucidity in remembering his conversation with Comey--another point I am certain that Ashcroft would corroborate--and denying the order; the cloak and dagger 11PM White House meeting in which Comey insisted on having Olsen as a witness--a fact I am certain Olsen would corroborate; the denial of entry to Olsen for the first 15 minutes; the courageous stand of Comey in continuing to refuse; the emergency approval of the illegal program over the head of the Office of Legal Counsel and the DOJ the very next day.

It reads like the plot of a cloak-and-dagger mafia thriller, with the President as the heavy, with Card and Gonzales as his goons.

It is so undeniably, egregiously illegal in a way that even John Q. Public can really get a grip on, that it would truly require that the President be caught eating puppies or raping babies for it to get much worse.

And yet, in the face of such radically dramatic illegality, I cannot seem to find any Presidential candidate from either party with a statement on the issue--despite its being yesterday's news at this point.

Go to Hillary Clinton's site: Nothing. Go to Barack Obama's site: Nothing. John Edwards: Nothing. Bill Richardson: Nothing. And hardly surprisingly, nothing from Rudy Giuliani or Mitt Romney or John McCain or any of the rest of the jokers on the other side of the aisle.

More importantly, even when they do make statements I expect to see the pablum answers showing their "grave concern", the need for "full investigations" and "strong regret" at the actions of the Administration. But while just that much would be nice, such generalities won't go nearly far enough.

No, I want each and every candidate--especially the current and former Senators to answer the following question: "If President Bush authorized the continuance of the warrantless domestic spying program even though his own Justice Department and Office of Legal Counsel said it was illegal and refused to sign off on it, would you vote to impeach him or call for his impeachment?" It is critically important that they do so, because this is about a fundmental respect/disrespect for the rule of law in the United States of America.

Because let us all remember this simple fact: The President obviously did not believe that he could unilaterally allow this program to continue through his power as Commander in Chief--otherwise he would not have been so desperate to get Ashcroft's approval. He KNEW that what he was doing was illegal and not within his rights. He knew it, and he didn't care. This goes beyond the President's belief that he can act like an Emperor with legal cover: this goes straight to whether he can do somethign he KNOWS is illegal and still get away with it, even though the entire world knows as well.

Those Democrats who are trying to walk the "centrist" line in this election should let us know whether their centrism overrules their respect for equality and the rule of law.

Those Democrats who believe that we must all come together in one big, purple hug and focus on the future rather than the past, should let us know if they would disrespect the foundation of our Constitution in the name of forward-thinking optimism.

Those Democrats who would play the role of elders and statesmen should let us all know if their years of experience tell them that sociopathic, Constitution-trampling illegality is OK in this particular case.

Those Democrats who would carry the progressive mantra should let us know if they believe that electability trumps their principles when it comes to blatant law-breaking by the Commander in Chief.

Above all, those Republicans who would seek to follow in Bush's footsteps must let us all know just how closely they intend to follow--and how much respect they intend to give our broken democracy and disdained laws.

Because this issue is beyond politics at this point. The political arguments against impeachment are always there, and they are compelling: I've spouted them myself many a time. But this issue is not subject to gentleman's disagreement: this is a matter of principle so momentous that political considerations simply must be put aside (though I don't believe that they would be as politically damaging at this point as some think.)

Those who would be our future Commanders-in-Chief must make their stands and show us where their principles truly lie. I therefore call on every person who reads this piece to email and call every Presidential Candidate and get an answer to this important question.

I will be doing so myself, of course--and I urge anyone who gets a coherent answer from any one of the declared candidates to email me with it to isnospoon-at-gmail-dot-com, and I will include it in a follow-up to this post.

Let them take their stands, and let the chips fall where they may.

if you read nothing else today...

read today's piece by Kagro X on the front page of Daily Kos today, The veto: why not a signing statement?

No better reason, to my mind, to send Bush the same damn bill again. I want this constitutional showdown--and the sooner the better.

GOP Foreign Policy: A Study in Weakness and Cowardice

As our President prepares yet another address to the nation filled with talking points urging "determination" and "strength" in Iraq lest we lose faith in the Iraqi people, and Rudy Giuliani tours the country claiming that electing Democrats will lead to a new 9/11, it is appropriate to remind the nation of the fact that the Republican history of foreign policy at least since Ronald Reagan has been characterized by weakness, cowardice, and a lack of faith in the American values we all hold dear.

This idea really crystalized for me during a fantastic discussion between myself and clammyc on our Framework show at Political Nexus this week, dealing with framing on national security: the GOP is not just criminally belligerent and unbelievably inept in its foreign policy, but also incredibly weak and surprisingly lacking in faith for a party so filled with supposedly faith-based operatives.

clammyc's diary of yesterday, Destroying the "national security" meme, did a fantastic job of laying out the ways in which George Bush's GOP has failed to protect our ports and national security infrastructure, to respond adequately to terrorist threats, looked the other way or actively helped as hostile nations arm themselves to become our next enemies, voted against armor and benefits for our troops, dodged drafts, and otherwise behaved like sniveling cowards in the face of the tough national security challenges of the new millennium.

But really, it goes a great deal beyond even that. The reason Republicans are so weak on national security is that their entire outlook on national security is born of inherent weakness, fear and distrust in the righteousness of the democratic rule, self-determination and innovation so key to the American spirit--and it has been thus for decades.

This inherent weakness makes it all the more astonishing, frankly, that Democrats have been unable all this time to counter our single most significant political disadvantage vis-a-vis Republicans: that Republicans are somehow "strong" on national security, while Democrats are not. The GOP has been attempting to leverage this idea with the American public for well over half a century with figures as odious or extreme as Joe McCarthy and Barry Goldwater, but the hawkish stances of these figures backfired on Republicans as often as it succeeded until the era of Reagan and Jimmy Carter; meanwhile, the strength of figures such as FDR and JFK was enough to counter any notions of Democratic weakness in foreign policy.

It was only with the ascension of Ronald Reagan that the meme of Republican superiority in matters of national security truly took hold in a way that Democrats have been unable to counter; ironically, however, it is precisely with Reagan that the Republicans started a campaign of systematically demonstrating its own weakness in this area--weakness that Democrats have been unwilling or unable to exploit politically. Which is all the more pathetic, as the history of Republican foreign policy resembles that of a bully who lashes out randomly in terror of his own shadow. Consider some history:

--It was Republicans, led by the same convicted felon Ollie North who is currently a contributor to Fox News in a segment called "War Stories" (!), who were responsible for the Iran Contra debacle, wherein your and my government sold weapons to Iran in order to secretly fund murderous military insurgents in South America. These insurgents were led by the same villian currently responsible for suppressing insurgents in our ongoing occupation of Iraq. And let's really be clear about what this scandal was about: a Republican party so terrified of scary tin-pot socialists in banana republics that they were willing to sell high-level ballistic weapons to one of our greatest and most unstable international enemies--and so terrified of the opproprium of the American public that they found it necessary to do it in secret.

--It was Republicans who were in all probability involved in a deal with Iran to free the hostages only after their own election. If they were indeed guilty of doing this as common sense dictates and many respected experts continue to insist despite an utterly inadequate House investigation denying it, then they did so out of fear that they would not and could not carry the 1980 election on the merits of their own ideas--in spite of the major challenges facing Jimmy Carter's presidency.

--It was Donald Rumsfeld who shook Saddam Hussein's hand as the United States funded and aided him even after we were made well-aware of the man's brutality. We did this so that Saddam Hussein could weaken our declared enemy Iran--our enemy because they had taken our hostages (freed days after Reagan's inauguration), and because we were apparently terrified they would use against us the weapons we were selling them under the table--through an ugly war in which children were used to clear fields of land mines. Republicans were so terrified of Iran that they were willing to support a brutal dictator and allow children to clear land mines for them rather than face up to an enemy they were selling weapons to out of paralyzing dread of the banana republic socialists.

--It was Republicans in the United States who were so terrified of a teetering Soviet Union that had just made a desperate tactical mistake, that our CIA aggressively funded the Afghan mujahideen who would later become the Taliban--and quite possibly directly funded Osama bin Laden as well. Long after John F. Kennedy had done the real work of facing down the Soviets in the Cuban Missile Crisis (resolved through diplomacy rather than war, by the way), Reagan allowed Gorbachev to do the heavy lifting of glasnost while having so little faith in the superiority of the American way of life and economic system that he found it necessary fund those who would later cause more American deaths in one day than the Soviet Union had in decades.

--It was Republicans who, when faced with a rising drug problem, were so petrified of the possible consequences of having faith and trust the same system of regulation and taxation that had worked well for alcohol and cigarettes, decided to declare a "war on drugs" (the second stupidest phrase of GOP creation behind "war on terror") that has led to record incarceration rates and the easy availability of a black market living that is the greatest single factor in the ability of those living in ghettoes to find honest work. This strange preoccupation with a return to the days of Prohibition lest modern day Al Capones get high on marijuana instead of money has also helped contribute to the funding of Colombian death squads to the tune of $1.3 billion per year.

--It was Republicans who found it so necessary to maintain the American public's goodwill in a Gulf War necessitated by their own support of Saddam Hussein that they overstated the efficacy of Patriot Missiles, possibly resulting in the deaths of 28 American servicemen.

--It was Republicans who, from Reagan until today, have been so terrified of the prospect of change and so faithless in the American ability to create technological innovation that they have found it necessary to engage our nation in increasing disastrous oil wars in the Middle East over the last several decades.

--It was Republicans who claimed that Clinton was wagging the dog when he twice struck at Osama Bin Laden.

--It was Republicans who wanted to pack up with their tails between their legs and come home in the wake of Clinton's eminently successful, overwhelmingly internationally approved and relatively bloodless war in Kosovo.

--It was Republicans who were so petrified of phantom ICBMs coming from North Korea that they allowed 9/11 to happen on their watch, sending Condi Rice to give a speech on Missile Defense on 9/11 when it had been barely a month since the infamous August 6th Presidential Daily Briefing stating that Osama Bin Laden was determined to strike inside the United States.

--It was Republicans who were so terrified of military losses in Afghanistan that they sent corrupt Afghan warlords to do the fighting for them in Tora Bora, allowing the most wanted criminal in America's history to escape and remain unaccountable for his murderous deeds to this day.

--It was Republicans who were so terrified of the consequences of peak oil that they allowed energy companies and neoconservative kooks to ignore Afghanistan and instead engage in an immoral, unconscionable invasion and occupation of Iraq.

--It is Republicans who are so afraid of losing the oil contracts in Iraq that they are desperate to keep American troops as fodder in the area as long as possible, rather than trust that the Iraqi people can manage their own affairs. Indeed, as long as extremists like Al-Sadr can point to an outside enemy, the Iraqi people can see them as latter-day Robin Hoods, rather than as power-hungry villains; it is only when men like Al-Sadr are forced to govern that progress will be made in Iraq. Yet Republcians are so afraid of Al-Sadr and so desperate to keep their grubby hands on the oil out of fear that American technological innovation will be inadequate to solve our energy crisis, that they are willing to allow Bush to veto funding for their own troops in the field.

And there is so much more where that came from.

---------------------------

It is a truly onerous list. And yet the Republican theme of "strength on national security" continues to earn dividends for them. It does so because Democrats are, by and large, afraid of going out on a limb and literally calling Republicans the petrified, terrified, corrupt liars that they are. Iran-Contra wasn't a "scandal"--it was treason predicated on cowardice. Arming Saddam wasn't a "mistake"--it was short-sighted stupidity borne of fear. Arming Bin Laden wasn't a "necessary evil"--it was myopic ineptitude created from panic. And the list goes on and on. Republicans have been unafraid to use the harshest possible language to slander Democrats on the issue of national security, and it is time we fought fire with fire.

This day, as President Bush prepares to deny funding to his own troops that he and his party have placed into harm's way due to fear and trepidation, it is time we brought their history of cowardice to mind--and to open the rhetorical floodgates against these sniveling bullies. No time like the present.

Markos sez...

Markos Moulitsas, proprietor of Daily Kos, has not exactly been a big proponent of impeachment. He has, in fact, stood against impeachment for over a year now even as most of his community has clamored and screamed for it. I myself jumped on the impeachment bandwagon a few months back in the face of Bush's belligerence on signing statements. Markos, however, has stood firm--even though it meant alienating much of his community, thereby endangering his livelihood.

So you know we've started to reach a tipping point when, in reaction to the mid-November to early-December gap in DOJ communication records reported by Politico, you see this from the big man himself:

The Bush Administration is working overtime to make this attorney scandal look more and more like Watergate by the day...Expect the phrases "constitutional crisis", "impeachment", and "inherent contempt" to start making the rounds.

Some of the last and most significant progressive holdouts against impeachment are falling by the wayside in the face of Bush's sheer brazenness and outright corruption. Watch for the political conservation in this country to turn ugly very quickly.

There is an epic battle on the horizon, and it's coming with greater haste than most realize.

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.