The Time for Radical Change is NOW

I want to make a frank admission today: I'm beginning to lose faith in the power of political change. I'm beginning to lose faith in the power of activism. I don't feel like blogging, or supporting candidates, or uncovering the latest Republican scandal (though there seems to be a new one every day.) Attempting to shame the media once again into reporting some real news with regard for the actual truth, instead of serving yet again as a corporate infotainment venue, seems a notion so futile at this point it's almost quaint. I certainly don't see why I should bang my head against a wall hounding some braindead Democratic politician to support the most obvious, politically popular and strategically astute pieces of legislation.

I'm losing faith because the timelines even of progressive bloggers are too damn slow to make a difference. I'm losing faith because the minor changes being proposed to the way we do business as a nation are going to be utterly overpowered by the radical changes that will be forced upon us by external necessity. The time for demanding radical change, in short, is now--or there's little point in being politically engaged.

The principal reason for this goes to the very heart of why we have a government. The government exists for the purpose of long-term planning: primarily to protect its people from the byproducts of their own shortsighted ignorance, greed and stupidity, and to provide services that the people could never provide of their own accord without the benefit of long-term planning. Left alone and unregulated, the "free market" will accrue wealth and influence among the very few, whose shortsighted greed eventually causes a democratic system to collapse into oligarchy and tyranny--just as surely as the lack of an urban police force will cause the rise to power of criminal gangs and mafias. Without the influence reality-based, far-sighted thinkers, society is doomed to lurch from crisis to crisis, and entire civilizations to the cyclical rise and collapse that seems depressingly endemic to the human condition.

Today, any intelligent attempt at long-term planning for America and the world literally cries out for radical change. By any objective measure, the time for drastically changing the way we do business in this country is already well past due--and the gulf between what is seen as politically feasible, and what we need to do to save our skins, is simply enormous. Let's look at the issues, shall we?

The Climate Crisis

With every new emerging report, our deadline for acting to mitigate the climate crisis draws shorter and shorter--and the effects of failure to act become more and more severe. With every new report, the predictions of temperature increases and ice melts predicted for years or even decades from now are proving to be happening already. The latest report, published in the British paper The Independent (h/t to dkos diarist Barcelona for bringing this to our attention yesterday), put it in starkest terms yet:

A rise of two degrees centigrade in global temperatures – the point considered to be the threshold for catastrophic climate change which will expose millions to drought, hunger and flooding – is now "very unlikely" to be avoided, the world's leading climate scientists said yesterday...

Two years ago, an authoritative study predicted there could be as little as 10 years before this "tipping point" for global warming was reached ...

"Even if we achieve a cap at two degrees, there is a stock of major impacts out there already and that means adaptation. You cannot mitigate your way out of this problem... The choice (now)is between a damaged world or a future with a severely damaged world."

It's not just that the climate is changing increasingly for the worse: the rate of detrimental change is rapidly increasing. Even if we made major legislative changes today, it is unclear just how much effect we would be able to have on the problem by the time those changes in the law resulted in changes to corporate and popular behavior.

Certainly, if we wait until the expiry of George Bush's term in office, the effect will be that much more muted, and the problem that much more severe. If we wait over a decade until we have courageous progressives in office (and presuming that cyclical political winds haven't shifted back in conservative directions by then), the train will have already left the station with no hope of recall. And none of this even gets into the problem that controlling our own behavior is only the first step: putting pressure on China and other nations in Asia to do their part is also necessary to deal with the crisis--something that can only be done once we have the credibility and moral high ground on the issue to make any demands.

Meanwhile, our Democrats can't even put increased CAFE standards or a decent feebate system into their latest energy bill. Unbelievable.

The Economy

The Republican Party has so screwed over the American People that it is difficult to know where to begin, or even what measures to take in attempting to mitigate the problem. The upward redistribution of wealth in the United States has occurred at such a rapid pace over the last 25 years that it is genuinely surprising that there is a middle class left. Certainly, Bill Clinton was no economic saint, as he did less than nothing to stem the collapse of the American manufacturing sector or to close the increasing gap between rich and poor. Even so, he left us with a balanced budget and huge economic surpluses--in spite of the landmines and booby traps left for him by the Republican Congress.

Meanwhile, the economic surpluses and strengthened middle class left to us by Bill Clinton have been transformed by Reverse Midas Bush into massive deficits, a huge national debt, and an American Dollar now being sunk into an inflationary spiral in a vain attempt to mitigate the housing and liquidity crisis caused by (surprise!) a shortsighted and greedy lending, banking and finance industry. Not, of course, that America has an exporting sector left to take advantage of a weak Dollar. And, of course, the Republican Party, aided and abetted by spineless Democrats, have ensured that declaring bankruptcy is now next to impossible.

The only real economy left now is that of the Plutonomy: as long as the rich spend money like water and the American middle class goes deeper and deeper into debt, the GDP continues to hum along nicely even as the system itself hollows out like a rotted tree. As I stated in my post The Economy of the Rich, by the Rich and For the Rich, all the industries that cater to the wealthy are performing beautifully, even as the rest of us take the dregs of what they provide and struggle (usually underemployed) in recessionary conditions. It was difficult to know whether to laugh or the cry as I watched CNBC yesterday, and the commentators were expressing shock that rising energy prices didn't seem to be having a dampening effect on economic growth: the idiots who currently run the system don't seem to understand the economics of a Plutonomy--if only the rich are driving economic growth, little things like rising energy costs that don't affect them, won't affect economic growth.

What is required to even attempt to fix this situation is a far-sighted plan to reward work instead of wealth, to reverse the trend of income inequality, and to invest in the sorts of biological and energy technology fields that will provide the good jobs of the future.

Obama and Edwards have each come out with some good-looking plans to accomplish some of these things. The problem (beyond the fact that neither of them, unfortunately, looks set to win the Democratic nomination) is that by the time they take office and fight to pass some of these programs through Congress, it will already be late 2009 or 2010: far too late to undo the damage occurring to the American Economy at incraesingly rapid pace.

The War

It is obviously important to stand and fight to end the Occupation of Iraq as soon as possible. And yet, while the Senate and the President bicker over just how many American troops stay in Iraq and for how long, the bigger and much more important picture is going completely unaddressed. While progressives fight to end this war/occuaption, we are leaving ourselves completely vulnerable to going into the next war on the slightest pretext or excuse.

Progressives are failing to address how we got dragged into Iraq in the first place. Anyone who has read American Theocracy by Kevin Phillips and Sorrows of Empire by Chalmers Johnson knows that we are in Iraq for two reasons: 1) to protect oil resources, and 2) to help perpetuate the military-industrial complex.

As long as America continues to be hopelessly dependent on oil, and as long as America continues to increase the amount of money and the size of its economy dependent on warmaking (the film Why We Fight is a must-see on this topic), America will continue to wage oil wars overseas. It might be Iraq today, but it will be Iran tomorrow. Or maybe Venezuela. Or maybe a Caspian nation. Or perhaps an oil-rich nation in Africa. Heck, maybe even China a decade from now.

Until and unless we make the major structural changes and bold moves necessary to decrease military spending, create an Apollo Program for new energy, and devolve the military-industrial complex, Iraq will be just one in a long series of expensive and crippling oil wars that bring our nation to its knees just as surely as the overreaches of the Roman and British Empires destroyed their ability to thrive and function.

And yet, as things stand politically today, the popular move of withdrawing forces from Iraq is seen as too radical a goal to achieve, while reducing military spending is seen as political suicide. If that is truly the case, then there is little point in political advocacy on foreign policy: by the time we wait the decade or two we need for real progressive leadership, Americans will already have endured two or three more destructive oil wars. By then, it will be too late.

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In short, the stepping-stone changes we as progressives are attempting to make in American politics are too little, too late. We don't have five, ten, twenty years to do something about global warming, about the hollow economy, about the oil-military-industrial complex.

The time for demanding radical change and serious guts from our politicians is now. Small-scale gains and trading out Republicans for Democrats on a case-by-case basis, election by election, isn't even close to enough. We need major, serious change--and quickly. We need the current crop of Democrats to stand up and fight; we can't wait another ten years.

Otherwise, the long-term planning required of government will be superfluous: the painful changes that are demanded of us now, will be forced upon us tomorrow or else we, as a democratic nation, will fall into the dustbin of history. Either way, it won't be pretty.

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...

Memo to DKos: Jim Webb Can Call It An Occupation--Why Can't You?

As Markos pointed out yesterday, Jim Webb's blistering statement against the Capitulation Bill in the Congress was like a breath of fresh air in a Democratic Party apparently too afraid to stand up for public opinion in the face of a President with a 28% approval rating. Even more interesting to me, however, was the fact that Mr. Webb, a military man throughout his career considered too hawkish and too conservative by many progressives to gain their support, consistently referred to the disaster ongoing in Iraq as an occupation (with only one exception when referring to Joe Lieberman's stance). Let's look at his statements again:

On the one hand, I find myself unable to vote against a measure that is necessary to fund our troops who are now in harm's way. On the other, I will not relent from my continuing efforts to bring this occupation to an end.

"I will continue to press for a strategy of strong diplomatic engagement, which will enable us to end the occupation of Iraq, to increase regional stability, to fight international terrorism more effectively, and to address our broad strategic interests around the world. emphasis added

Jim Webb knows to use the word "occupation", I must believe, largely because his military experience leads him to understand the difference on a gut level between the sort of fighting he was engaged in in the jungles of Vietnam, and the long slow bleed of our troops in Iraq who are being used as sitting ducks and targets of an angry home-grown resistance.

I have made clear again and again and again the reasons why we should be using the language of "occupation" to describe the conflict in Iraq rather than the language of "war": wars can end only in victory or defeat, while occupations end only in annexation or withdrawal. The business of war is killing enemies and seizing territory; the business of occupation is pacifying areas you already control and exploiting their resources. In all respects, our involvement Iraq is an occupation rather than a war--which doesn't preclude the idea of a civil war going on between indigenous parties in Iraq. Most importantly, if we are truly fighting a "war" in Iraq, then calling for withdrawal does indeed equal a call for "defeat"; but if we are instead engaged in the "occupation" of a hostile country, withdrawal is simply inevitable and must happen sooner rather than later, given the hostility of the populus. In the context of the congressional funding battles, calling our presence an "occupation" makes defunding seem less like denying troops bullets in the middle of a firefight (a lie), and more like packing up our occupational operations and leaving the Iraqi people alone to manage their futures as they see fit (far closer to the truth).

And yet, in spite of the apparent obviousness of these facts, it often seems to me that this simple linguistic framing gets more traction in the halls of Congress than it does even on Daily Kos. With the Capitulation Bill at the forefront of most bloggers' minds, the topic of Iraq has been a central issue. And in most cases, those who speak for Dailykos have been consistently using the "war" frame over the last three days--a frame that has in many ways been one of the key sources of our inability to fight back against the immoral policies of the Bush administration.

First and foremost, we have Markos himself:

I've never been under any illusion that this war would end before the next Democratic president took charge. But when a party wins control of Congress on ending the war, I thought they would at least work to make that happen.

and here:

Thus far, Hillary has somehow managed to deceive voters into thinking that she's against against this war, despite having promised to keep troops in Iraq if elected president

Then there's BarbinMD:

"We're into the fifth year of George Bush's war

And DarkSyde:

The only reason I became involved beyond the casual level is because I don't like being lied to -- about a lot of stuff, but mostly about a pointless, devastating war

Or mcjoan, right in the headline:

Senate votes on ending the War Tomorrow

And Meteor Blades:

Marching Toward an Iraq War Moratorium

And last year's highest-impact diarist bonddad:

We Can't Afford The Iraq War

Of those who are said to speak for the site, only Kagro X has been valiantly and consistently using the "occupation" meme with effective and crystal clarity. It is possible to talk about Iraq only with the frames of "occupation" and "withdrawal", and Kagro has done it beautifully. For example, see here:

But the strangeness doesn't end there. Somewhere along the line, the preferred argument against actually de-funding the Iraq occupation -- that it would amount to an "abandonment" of the troops -- became the argument against timelines.

and here:

From all indications, today is going to be a lousy day. We are going to see another blank check issued on the Iraq occupation, and everybody is going to scratch their heads and wonder how it happened -- and that's only if you're still willing to give Congressional Democrats the benefit of the doubt.

I don't wish to seem to be misdirecting my anger with congressional Democrats against my fellow bloggers and staunch progressives here, nor is my intent to call out any particular individual writers. It just so happens that these particular individuals are among those who own, operate or speak for DailyKos, so their visibility and importance provide worthy exemplars.

All I'm saying is that if Jim Webb can do it, surely we can as well. It is not difficult to change one's language regarding this Occupation, and it can do everyone a world of good. Pretty please, with sugar on top?

UPDATE: I do, of course, agree with the many kossack commenters who have pointed out that Webb's speech means little without a "no" vote to back it up. All too true, and Virginia voters should hold him to account for it. Regardless of bluster or hypocrisy, however, his choice is language is still quite instructive.

New Graphic on the Overton Window on CorrenteWire

If there are only two issues that would define, in my opinion, the most significant things for the larger blogosphere to drum into the heads of the folks in the traditional democratic party, they would be the following:

1) referring the "war" in Iraq as the Occupation that it is; and

2) aggressively pursuing the implementation of the pushing the Overton Window, rather than triangulation, as official political strategy.

Well, Victor Shystee over at CorrenteWire has a fantastic new post up with a graphical illustration of the Overton Window and some interesting discussion of its applications and possible weaknesses. Head over for an interesting and thought-provoking read.

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.

Clammyc was right; I was wrong

I figured that the GOP Senate would stand firm in support of Bush and the Occupation of Iraq--just as the leading GOP presidential candidates have done. Apparently, the self-preservation instinct of the honorable Senators is causing them to do right by the American people in spite of themselves. As Clammyc says:

The Senate republicans may be a lot of things. But they are not overly stupid - especially now that Cat Killer, MD George Allen and Rick Santorum (warning: gross) are out of the Senate. And Mitch McConnell may be a grade A douchebag, but if he was Majority Leader instead of "Fristie", then the republicans would never have lost the Senate.


They know that this occupation is an unmitigated disaster. They know that we all know it too. Some of them don’t agree at all (so, for argument’s sake, fuck ‘em – they don’t matter). Some of them kind of agree, but either don’t think their base agrees or they still think that "victory" is achievable. Some of them think that "enough is enough already, and, you know what else, Bush is a real stubborn motherfucker who doesn’t know what he is doing and is going to take down our party for a generation."


And there are enough of those on the republican side in the Senate, and they decided to toss their miserable bag of shit called "Iraq" back in Bush’s hands and run away, screaming "no backsies". Bush, being "The Decider™" that he is, said that he will veto anything that has a withdrawal timeline. The very same withdrawal timeline that more than 70% of our own troops favored A FULL YEAR AGO. The very same withdrawal timeline that the Iraqis are in favor of. The very same withdrawal timeline that most of We the People are in favor of.


Not to mention, by the way, that this supplemental bill needs to PASS in order for Bush and the republicans to not be branded as troop haters and defeatists. Knowing that Bush would show his hand real early on with his most charming trait – chest thumping, all of the heat was off the Senate republicans. They didn’t have to be put on the hotseat – even if they voted against the bill. Remember, if Kerry "voted to fund the war before he voted against it", then surely, a republican that votes for withdrawal might as well be a flip flopping, terrorist loving, God-hating faggot.


Why is this? Well, quite simply, if this doesn’t pass, then there is no 120 brazillian dollars for continuing George and Dick’s bogus journey.


The republicans could have made a huge deal about this. Hell, they make a huge deal about everything – even when they were able to do everything without any consequences or anyone else even knowing. They could have fought this bill and stomped up and down and tried to make the Democrats blink. They could have made a big stink about "not wanting to tell the terrorists when they can come out and kill again".


But they didn’t.


They hung Bush – "dear leader" - their leader out to dry. Twisting in the wind. Basically, by not giving him cover here, the message is, in no uncertain terms, "you can’t keep fucking us over like this anymore. If you want your funding, then you gotta figure a way out."

Indeed.

The Biggest Loser Today? Senate Republicans

With news today of the passage of the Iraq Supplemental Bill has come a wide array of opinions from all sides of the political spectrum. The conventional wisdom on the supplemental goes something like this:

The battle is now joined between Democrats in Congress and President Bush; that Dems are playing a zugzwang on Bush, with three options:
1) Veto the bill, defunding his own war and setting up a battle royale before April 15, at which date the Occupation begins to be truly defunded;
2) Pass the bill, accepting the date-by-certains; or
3) Pass the bill, and simply "signing statement" away the oversight provisions.

But the truth is that the game is not really being played between Dems and President Bush, because everybody and their uncle who is being a realist about the situation knows that the bill will almost certainly not clear the Senate. And, of course, that's exactly what it has to do before it makes it to Bush's desk.

We can pressure as much as we want, but absent some very surprising shifts by some very key members of the Senate, Dems will not get the votes to pass this thing in its current form.

Johnson (D-South Dakota) is still recuperating from his illness, and will not be able to vote on the final bill. Thus, even if every Dem plus Sanders (and minus Lieberman) held their ground, the result in the Senate would be a tie--and ties are decided by Dick Cheney. Joe Lieberman (CfL-Connecticut) obviously won't vote for it. There will probably be at least one or two conservative Dems who bow to Administration and right-wing pressure, and perhaps even a progressive Dem (like Kucinich in the House) who think the bill isn't strong enough and vote that way. The GOP will stand as a bulwark of opposition to the bill, with perhaps one defection.

In other words, this bill is, barring a miracle, DOA in the Senate through Cheney's tiebreaking vote if nothing else.

But while this is bad news for our troops, for our country, and for Iraq, it's actually the best of all possible worlds politically. Here's why:

1) Bush is leaving office in 2008 regardless of what happens with this bill. His approval ratings are horrid, and there's very little he can do to make himself more odious, no matter what he does with this bill. There a presidential election on--and the GOP owns this war lock, stock and barrel. Furthermore, the Democratic and Republican nominees will be busy sniping at each other in 2008--not at Bush.

2) The Dem house has generated the headlines it needs to. While many of us feel the bill didn't go nearly far enough, to the average person not paying too much attention the news, it looks like Dems are standing very tough against Bush. This is a good thing.

3) The Senate GOP is extremely vulnerable in 2008--and unlike Bush, has to stand for re-election. They have a lot to lose--to the tune of 5 or 6 Democratic pickups or more. Senators are seen as national politicians, and the Occupation of Iraq is by far the biggest national issue.

If and when the Senate stands in the way of holding Bush accountable and setting timetables to end the war, it will not be Bush who stands in the crosshairs of the public's anger; it will be the Republicans in the Senate.

And the mantra, should the bill fail in the Senate, will be clear: as long as a Republican is president, the ONLY way to end the Occupation of Iraq is by getting rid of Senate Republicans. The election for President will stand and fall on its own merits, and that of the candidates (though any current Senators will be held to account for their own votes, of course). It is the Republican Senators, however, whose fate will be most impacted by this battle.

And here's a guarantee: if the vulnerable GOP Senators stand up for Bush and against the American people on this issue, they will be ousted in 2008 with near certainty. And that--if nothing else--is the most tangible accomplishment of today's victory in the House.

Dem Congressional Approval Ratings DOWN: Failure to Address Iraq Cited

According to a new Gallup poll, public approval of the Democratic congress is down again after a brief honeymoon of a few months, with only a 28% approval rating against a 64% disapproval rating:

The modest uptick in approval of the job being done by Congress has dissipated for the most part after only two months. Congress job approval had risen over the last two months after the Democrats took over control of Congress in early January -- fueled in large part by a jump in approval among rank and file Democrats. This month, however, Congress job approval is back down to levels quite similar to where it was in 2006. Democrats have lost a good deal of the positivity exhibited in the first two months of the year after their party took over.

According to Gallup's monthly update on job approval of Congress -- in a March 11-14, 2007, national poll -- 28% of Americans approve of the job being done by Congress and 64% disapprove. This marks a substantial change from January and February, with approval down nine points and disapproval up nine points.

It would appear that after a few brief months of optimism about the new government, the American people have reverted to old pessimistic form, wallowing in cynicism about Congress. But what's worse, the approval ratings from Democrats went down substantially more than did those of Independents, while Republican approval ratings of Congress decreased only slightly this month versus the last few months:

This month, however, Congress job approval among Democrats has fallen back, and to a lesser degree among independents. Republicans -- already much less positive in January and February after their party lost control of Congress -- became only slightly more negative this month.

This means, of course, that Republicans have been happier with Congress of late than have Democrats. That's not a good sign.

While Gallup did not ask respondents for the reasons behind their answers, they did make an educated guess:

It is difficult to pinpoint precisely what is behind the drop off in optimism about Congress among Democrats. One possibility is that Democrats are disappointed that their party has been unable to do anything substantive about the Iraq war -- the dominant issue in last November's midterm elections. The increase in the price of gas and/or other economic concerns may also be a factor. Overall satisfaction with the way things are going in the United States and ratings of economic optimism are both down in the March Gallup Poll.

Honestly, I think the Gallup folks are right. Democratic and Independent voters put the Dems in Congress to do something--anything--about the Occupation of Iraq. Republicans--who by and large are okay with what Bush has done in Iraq, their only frustration lying with the lack of speedy "victory"--are fine with Congress of late because they haven't done much about the war.

What this means is that while the investigations and confrontations with the White House are quite pleasing to many of us activists, the bottom line for most Democrats was, is, and will remain serious action to end the Occupation of Iraq; anything less, and voters will express their displeasure in November of 2008.

Therefore, as we encourage Dems to do their investigatory duties, let us not allow the ending of the Occupation to take any less prominence in our minds: time is running out, and the voters are watching closely.

The Entire "Surge Is Working/Not Working" Debate is Bullshit

It is tiresome to watch Democrats and Progressives make the same mistakes time and time again when talking about the colossal nightmare that is our involvement in Iraq.  Even many smart folks I highly respect in the liberal blogosphere continue to make the same rhetorical mistakes based on the same false assumptions over and over again.  And again and again, I find myself screaming at my computer--wondering when people are going to finally start looking at the situation in Iraq as it actually is, instead of how Republican framing is telling us to see it.

The latest example of the farce that is our debate on Iraq is the "The Surge Is Working/No It Isn't" argument of the last week.  In case you missed it, the Kuwait News Agency (whatever that is) reported last week that U.S. troop deaths were down by 60%.  The Kuwait News Agency gave that story directly and exclusively to rightwing hack Matt Drudge; from there it has become the GOP talking point du jour, appearing everywhere from The Economist to a wide variety of stupid right wing blogs.  They are arguing, in other words, that the surge is working because U.S. deaths in Iraq are supposedly down--and that Democrats should get in line behind the brilliant Commander-in-Chief.

And what, pray tell, has been the Democratic and Progressive response?  That the surge isn't working, because U.S. troop deaths aren't really down, and that Drudge and the Kuwait News Agency are lying.  And, as usual, the truth is on our side, while the lies are on theirs.  The Drudge/Kuwait News lies are nicely debunked by Will Bunch at Attytood, and even by Kossacks quaoar and R o o k: the Kuwait News Agency is misrepresenting data by only taking a segment of U.S. troop deaths, and claiming it's talking about the whole country.

The problem is that this response--while necessary--is absolutely stupid, and sets the debate squarely on terms favorable to the GOP.  We do need, of course, to debunk lies where we see them--but to stop there and assume that we have therefore won the debate is the height of folly.  By accepting the GOP's framing on this issue, we have already lost the debate about the surge (new Out-of-Iraq opinion polls notwithstanding)--regardless of which lies we may or may not debunk.  The entire debate on the subject is bullshit.  That's a bold statement, but it's easy to prove.

The entire debate is bullshit because the success or failure of any "surge" or "escalation" of U.S. forces in Iraq does NOT hinge on the increase or decrease of U.S. deaths in Iraq.  It would seem that all sides--Progressive, Democrat, Republican, and Chiliastic Authoritarian Nutcase--have forgotten the very first reason that we ostensibly still have troops in Iraq in the first place: to stabilize Iraq as a sovereign, democratic nation and to get Iraqis to stop killing one another.  That is, after all, the reason proffered by weak-kneed Democrats and lying Republicans for the continued presence of U.S. troops.

It is a circular and deeply stupid argument to say that the presence of peacekeeping forces in an area is succeeding because fewer peacekeeping forces are being killed.  Think about that one for a second.  But it is even more stupid to validate that circular argument by saying that it's wrong because peacekeeping forces are in fact being killed.  In this context, both sides have completely missed the point and forgotten what the original objective was in the first place.

In case the point still isn't clear, let's use the visual example of the Pottery Barn Rule.  Let's say I deliberately break a jar full of scorpions.  Then I call my friends to help me put the jar back together.  My friends and I start getting stungs incessantly by the scorpions.  My friends get pissed with me for breaking the jar in the first place, and the scorpion stings are frankly starting to swell and cause respiratory failure.  So I call in more friends to help out--much to the chagrin of the friends I already have, who say I am abusing my friendships.  Later, because we have more hands to push scorpions away, the average number of stings per minute starts to decline.  I proclaim victory--while my friends deny it, because they say we're really getting stung at the same rate as before.  Meanwhile, every single goddamn person in the room forgot our objective: to put the damn jar back together!

And let me tell you, the jar is still very broken.  Iraqi civilians are still dying in droves in an unabated civil war.  Just look at the news: Baghdad attacks kill 11 just today, with a massive chlorine gas attack yesterday.  It's not working, and it's not getting fixed.

But perhaps worst of all, Democrats are setting themselves up for failure by conceding that a low to nonexistent number of U.S. troop deaths in Iraq would constitute success.  On these terms, Bush could maintain permanent bases in Iraq with no troop deaths--and Dems would be forced into silence.  Bush could theoretically, if we had the manpower, send 100,000 more troops into Iraq like Shinseki originally wanted--and violence against U.S. troops would doubtless decrease substantially--again forcing Dems into submission, since success has been redefined away from a stable Iraqi society into fewer U.S. troop deaths.  Meanwhile, Iraq as a nation would still be as far from self-sustaining and stable as ever before.

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The only way we as a party and as a nation can have strayed so obviously and so fundamentally in our debate about this issue is by completely misreading the purpose of our presence in Iraq: most people--even in the progressive blogosphere--still act like we're waging a war, when we're actually engaged in maintaining an occupation.  We may be occupying a country in civil war, but it's still an occupation.

I have made this point again and again in posts such as It's Not Defeat, Dammit! and How Can You Surrender if There Was Never a War?, and will not belabor the details here.

In this context, we are using the language of war to describe success or victory.  We are talking about body counts; number of U.S. troops dead; number of insurgents dead; territory seized; incursions made.  All in the service of nothing--because the objective isn't to kill insurgents or take territory, but to create a stable and functioning country out of Iraq.

And on that count, we are failing miserably--no matter how many or how few brave U.S. soldiers lose their lives pointlessly in the unforgiving sands of Iraq.

It's time, at long last, to actually remember that when we debate the effectiveness of the "surge"/"escalation".  That we remember the ostensible reasons for our troops' being in harm's way in the first place.  And that we not fall into right-wing rhetorical traps again.  And again.  And again.

Because it's bullshit.

Another Ugly Betrayal of American Heroes

It seems that every day brings another example of the Bush Administration's betrayal of those who place their lives at risk in the service of the nation. They betray out men and women in uniform. They betray our undercover CIA agents for political reasons.

Now, it appears, they are betraying the safety of our undercover ATF agents in order to pinch pennies.

Many of you may remember the famous case of the ATF agent who infiltrated the criminal Hells Angels gang, leading to the conviction of 16 high-level members of the gang. Incredibly, that agent, Jay Dobyns, has been left to fend for himself by the ATF, which has refused to grant him special protection.

And why? To save the ATF a few dollars, all while Bush submits budgets demanding $8 billion every goddamn month for Iraq. I know it sounds preposterous--but then, nothing is beyond this government when it comes to betraying those who work hardest and matter most.

From the article (whose full text I highly encourage you all to read):

With his undercover work done and his real identity as a law enforcement agent exposed, Dobyns says the Hells Angels and other gangs enlisted by it came after him, issuing death threats. Dobyns claims that the ATF -- rather than protecting him -- abandoned him.

"There was a murder contract on me and there was what was called a green light list, which was circulating in the prison, which was a list of people that various gangs wanted killed," Dobyns told CNN.

In response, Dobyns says, the ATF gave him a routine transfer with no special protection, despite his repeated protests. The ATF could have moved Dobyns and his family under what is known as a "threat policy" -- similar to the kind of protection the government routinely gives witnesses in organized crime cases.

And why not place this American hero into special protection?

But federal agents who go undercover don't automatically get a high level of protection, according to Dobyns and other ATF agents CNN interviewed.

"In order to save money, I was told it wasn't cost effective," Dobyns says.

Dobyns says he has moved himself and his family several times to elude those who've threatened to kill him. He has filed a claim with the ATF for the emotional stress and financial burden he says he's had to bear as a result.

So this man, who put his life on the line in more ways than one for his country, has found it necessary to move his family multiple times on his own dime because the ATF refuses to honor his service by helping keep him alive. But then, this is the same administration that puts soldiers into the line of fire without adequate body armor, vehicle armor or sandbags. Most galling, however, is that we could fully protect this man with the amount of money it takes to fund just one minute of the Occupation of Iraq.

And it's not just him, either. Multiple agents say that the ATF's penny-pinching has put their lives at risk:

But more than a dozen former and current ATF agents interviewed by CNN, many of whom have their own lawsuits, claims and serious concerns, said the ATF is failing to protect its agents.

Charlie Fuller is a 23-year retired veteran ATF special agent and a former top trainer of undercover agents, who wrote a manual on undercover work, "The Art of Undercover." He trained Dobyns and many other top ATF undercover agents.

"What happened to Dobyns is not an isolated incident," said Fuller. In many cases, he said, managers don't thoroughly understand the complexity of the undercover work or how to best work with and manage the agents once they're back in the real world.

He said agents are seen as troublemakers or retaliated against if they raise complaints or report problems.

It's Bunnatine Greenhouse and Valerie Plame all over again. Bust your butt and risk your life for America; get betrayed by the Bush Administration; get punished for blowing the whistle. Meanwhile, the oil companies rake in profits like never before, and the cost of Bush's war of choice escalates out of control.

I wish I had a pithy comment or insightful observation to make from here; I don't. All I have is anger against those who betray our nation's heores; passion to remove them from office as quickly and efficiently as possible; and the resolve to try to pick up the pieces of broken trust with which they have littered the landscape of American consciousness.

A Call for the Contempt of Silence

Have you no sense of decency sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?

Joseph Welch, spoken to Joe McCarthy

In the lifecycle of every bully and pompous blowhard comes a special turning point.  After scowling, abusing and intimidating their way through life, generating the vilest of karma wherever they treat, there finally comes a point for such bullies that seems unthinkable during the heights of their influence and power--that time when people just.  stop.  listening.  The time when people are simply unfazed by even their heaviest bluster.

For Richard III, there finally came a time when no one would even lend him a horse to flee from certain death.  For Julius Caesar, the petulant request for just one demonstration of support even as he fell dying--returned only with a final dagger's thrust.  For Saddam Hussein, a shackled walk of ignominy out of courtroom even as he bellowed in protest about his Iraq.  For Joe McCarthy, disgrace came in the form of a simple question expressed from dismayed disbelief.

But when, at long last, will that moment come for the rabid ideologues of the right wing?  Our generation has been long in need of our own earthshattering moment of final disrespect; for  almost every word of disdain that can be uttered in response to these villains has been uttered at this point--save that of shocked silence, turned backs and averted gazes.

What else, indeed is left?

In today's National Review Online and Weekly Standard, Fred Barnes tells us that we should "not give up when victory is at hand" in Iraq.  This highly respected pundit and Fox News correspondent has the gall to write paragraphs like:

No one knows the tragic story of America in Vietnam better than Jim Webb, first as a Marine, then as a writer. So the newly elected Democratic senator from Virginia--a fierce opponent of the war in Iraq--wants to keep Vietnam out of the debate over Iraq. "As much as possible, we need to keep this debate away from Vietnam," Webb said last week. Iraq "is not a parallel situation." But Webb feared that many who supported the Vietnam war, and watched America abandon South Vietnam as it grew close to victory over the Communist forces of North Vietnam, might see similarities.

Indeed, they might, for certain parallels between Iraq and Vietnam are uncanny. A new general, David Petraeus, is taking over in Iraq with a credible new strategy, counterinsurgency. Four decades ago, General Creighton Abrams became the American commander in Vietnam, also with a new strategy. It called for taking and holding the villages and hamlets of South Vietnam. In a word, it was counterinsurgency, and it worked. Now in Iraq, Petraeus has as good a chance of success, starting with the pacification of Baghdad, as Abrams had. And the painful lesson of Vietnam applies in Iraq: Don't give up when victory is at hand.

What is one supposed to say to such baldfaced lies and atrocious propaganda?  There is no snark, no vehemence, no derision, no anger, no outrage that could fully do it justice.

What else is left but the contempt of silence?

What else is left for America's biggest bully, when he complains about the "militant left" conflating militant Christians with moderate ones--out of the same breath he uses to condemn all Muslims as militant?  What can one do but turn one's back, replicating one of the final and most powerful scenes of the play "Twelve Angry Men"?

What is one to say to stuffed shirt Dinesh D'Souza in response to a book with the title "The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11".  Can one do anything more than avert one's gaze, and hope people see through it for the utter crap that it is?

When Jonah Goldberg, widely published columnist and moron of the first degree, writes Liberal Fascism: Totalitarian Temptation from Mussolini to Hillary Clinton, are there truly any words that are appropriate?  Any that can be repeated in polite company, at any rate?

When America's #1 talk-radio host can say that "Pacifist kooks are as dangerous as Al-Qaeda" without shame; when America's #2 talk-radio host repeats debunked lies about one of America's most respected Senators having trained at a Wahhabists madrassa, when America's #3 talk radio host can say without shame about Democratic applause for healthcare during the SOTU that "Heathcare . . . Democrats stand first. They must like sick people more than Republicans"--when that's the case, is there anything to do but just turn off the radio?

When two of those assholes--Hannity and Beck--each get the 6pm primetime slot on the two most-watched cable news networks on television, is there truly anything to do but to stop watching altogether?

And don't even get me started on the quotes of the actual elected officials.

Because what, at long last, is left?  What, at long last, would they have to say before the public just started tuning out?  To what levels of depravity and lengths of wingnutty outrage would they have to stoop before people just started pulling the plug?  How wrong would they have to be before the media simply stopped giving them credence?

At what point, in short, do we stop even arguing with them, and start treating them with the utter contempt that they so richly deserve?

I'm beyond anger or outrage at this point.  I've moved into the realm of utter disrespect and sheer contempt.  The time is ripe for Democrats, progressives, realists, moderate Republicans, and true conservatives (as opposed corporate shills) to simply stand them down and shun them.

Give them no airtime.  Never appear on their shows.  Never respond to their insults, save possibly by telling them to go to hell.  If they buy time on the public airwaves to smear your name, treat them with the contempt they deserve.

The time for a devastating wall of silence for these people is long overdue.