March 15
There was interesting interview on MPR's Midmorning today (scroll to "Syrian troops continue to withdraw from Lebanon") if you've been following the Lebanon story, especially if you're wondering how much credit belongs to the acting president. Kerri Miller interviewed an expert on Lebanon, Steven Cook of the Council on Foreign Relations. He specified three immediate causes of the anti-Syrian protests, the first two of which you've seen written about here: the Lebanese constitution was changed to allow Syria's preferred president to stay on after he reached his term limit; and the assassination of popular former prime minister Rafik Hariri. The third seems obvious now that he's mentioned it: the orange revolution in Ukraine and president Viktor Yushchenko. Yes, the elected president who stopped his election from being stolen, not the unelected president who committed fraud to win his, was the inspiration. Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya, the Arab news channels, covered it nonstop. That's not to say Cook didn't give Bush a little credit. The Iraqi election was a good thing, and Bush has used the right rhetoric from his bully pulpit. I'll add that Bush doesn't get full credit for th election since he opposed it for so long, and while liberals have to be glad a conservative is saying the right things about Arabs and Muslims wanting democracy like anyone else, it stretches credulity to believe he has credibility. I do give Bush credit for being on the right side in Lebanon. However, again I raise the question, if Bush is the inspiration, why has it proven so hard to find Lebanese and Palestinians giving Bush credit for the changes they're experiencing? We all now the scenario to come though, or if you don't then here it is: the administration will find a shill to give Bush credit --- the shill will be exposed as such --- then the shill will get a job with Fox News.

Another thought struck me as I was listening to that program. Afghanistan had an election too, likewise its first election, likewise with threats from insurgents against voters, and likewise with voters defying them. So why did it gain a fraction of the attention the Iraqi election got? Could it be because Iraq War II was raging and utterly overshadowed it? So if the Iraq election kicked off a democracy movement in the Middle East, then the Afghan election might have accomplished as much if Bush hadn't started another war before the first was finished. Of course, that's assuming building democracy was the point of the wars, which it wasn't. We tolerated the Taliban until they allowed Al Qaida to use Afghanistan to attack us, and Iraq, you might recall, was about WMDs and helping Al Qaida, both of which proved false, thus requiring a new reason for war.

March 13
Allies can come from surprising places. An article denouncing the fraudulent presidential election in Ohio was written bystaunch Bush supporter Christopher Hitchens. That may over state it, but he's at least a supporter of the invasion of Iraq, and he's previously written a piece excoriating Fahrenheit 911 (including the usual right wing misstating of what was in it). That's the stuff that makes him a regular on Dennis Miller. He has on at least some occasions characterized himself on the left, and he's perhaps best known for calling for a war crimes trial for Henry Kissinger. He's also torn into Ronald Reagan in a rough way. Nonetheless, for a Bush-backer to say this is pretty impressive: "But what strikes my eye is this: in practically every case where lines were too long or machines too few the foul-up was in a Democratic county or precinct, and in practically every case where machines produced impossible or improbable outcomes it was the challenger who suffered and the actual or potential Democratic voters who were shortchanged, discouraged, or held up to ridicule as chronic undervoters or as sudden converts to fringe-party losers." The actual information in his column wasn't new, at least not to those who've been following this story all along. Hitchens is, however, a voice to make some of those who dismissed the problems in Ohio as conspiracy theory ask whether it might all have really happened, particularly when he writes of his personal discovery that the votes just didn't add up. Writing about an expert he consulted, he said, "I asked her, finally, what would be the logical grounds for deducing that any tampering had in fact occurred. 'Well, I understand from what I have read,' she said, 'that the early exit polls on the day were believed by both parties.' That, I was able to tell her from direct experience, was indeed true. But it wasn't quite enough, either. So I asked, 'What if all the anomalies and malfunctions, to give them a neutral name, were distributed along one axis of consistency: in other words, that they kept on disadvantaging only one candidate?' My question was hypothetical, as she had made no particular study of Ohio, but she replied at once: 'Then that would be quite serious.'".

By contrast, Thom Hartmann has been following the election fraud story all along. His most recent column is mostly a summary of the problems of the last couple elections, but there were a couple parts new to me, some details about Georgia in 2002 that make it look even fishier, and a study of the 2004 exit polls that shoot down explanations for the odd results other than fraud that benefitted the acting president.

I already suspected that the touchscreens in Georgia were more important to the defeat of Sen. Max Cleland than the smear campaign run against him. I'd heard the last polls showed him winning and the then the result reversed. I didn't know the same thing happened in the gubernatorial race. Again the incumbent was a supposedly popular Democrat, but this time there was no smear campaign, and the lead in the polls was even bigger, yet again the result was the reverse of the polls. That shoots down the theory the smear campaign explains Cleland's loss. Turnout might explain it, except Georgia's turnout was unimpressive, so that seems unlikely.

Hartmann also wrote about a study of the exit polls that indicated the polls matched the results where paper was used. The authors, Steven Freeman and Josh Mittledorf, also said statistical analysis contradicted the assertion of the pollsters that the results could be explained by a greater willingness of Kerry voters to answer the poll. The most shocking bit was when they took a guess that someone hiding extra Bush votes would put them where Bush support was heaviest: "Lo and behold, the report provides data that strongly bolster this theory. In those precincts that went at least 80 percent for Bush, the average within-precinct-error (WPE) was a whopping 10.0—the numerical difference between the exit poll predictions and the official count. That means that in Bush strongholds, Kerry, on average, received only about two-thirds of the votes that exit polls predicted. In contrast, in Kerry strongholds, exit polls matched the official count almost exactly (an average WPE of 0.3)."

If you think I keep on this issue just to undermine Bush's legitimacy, you're half right. I'd be lying if I suggested I thought Bush was legitimate despite all the indications the election was stolen. Obviously I'd like to be rid of him and impeachment over election fraud would be just as good as impeachment over lying about Iraq or allowing war crimes. Impeachment however is probably a pipe dream. The point of all this is to stop it from happening again. Our elections are screwed up, and until they're fixed and honest, the Republicans will hold power indefinitely.

Some good news though going back to fraud in 2002, this time in New Hampshire, where the Republicans had a telemarketing firm launch a denial of service attack on Democratic and union GOTV phone banks. A second crook is going to jail, and the biggest one is facing trial.

March 12
It's sad to see good Bush critics turn and join the bandwagon of chickenhawks claiming credit for Bush for any good thing happening in the Middle East. On a recent Daily Show, Jon Stewart thought the anti-Syria demonstrations in Lebanon were a direct result if the Iraqi election. Bill Maher made the same mistake last night on Real Time. In fact, he and his guests, except the lone ganged-up-on dove Richard Belzer, said some incredible things. Mostly, they made the classic mistake of assuming that when one event follows another, the first must have caused the second. I've addressed in earlier entries that what happened in both Lebanon and Palestine have local causes. It bears repeating that no one among the Lebanese or Palestinians is giving credit to Bush. Bush might want to argue they should, but it seems unlikely they're taking inspiration from the most unpopular man on the planet. The case for cause might be stronger if the Lebanese took to the streets and the Palestinians called for elections right after the election in Iraq (which Bush opposed for a long time, part of the reason he doesn't get credit) but there were two other inciting incidents. In Palestine, Yassar Arafat died, causing the need for an election, and his immediate successor kept power, albeit in a free election. In Lebanon, demonstrations broke out quickly after Hariri was assassinated. In fact, one has to wonder if the far bigger demonstrations in support of Syria indicate that Bush's aggressiveness has caused Lebanese to feel they have to choose between Bush and Syria, and the choice is easy.

Maher said something about how they hate us in the Arab world not because we intervene too much, but because we don't intervene enough. They're upset we didn't jump in out take out all their dictators. And the evidence for this assertion is .... well ... never mind. The counter argument is that if this were true, volunteers from the Arab world going in to Iraq would be joining us. Instead they've all joined the insurgents, the opposite of what that theory would predict.

One of the guests defending Bush, Irshad Manji, made one point that struck me as nothing short of willful ignorance. Forgive me for paraphrasing but I don't recall the exact words and there's no transcript. She said something to the effect that dictators don't fall without an invasion. As I've mentioned several times before (are there still people who don't read this blog? Don't answer that.) lots of dictators have been overthrown. Every democracy in fact required at some point the overthrow of an undemocratic regime. You can count on your fingers how many involved an invasion.

One thing I'll add to that last statement, which I've made before allowing the exceptions of the Axis nations after World War II and the possible exception of Afghanistan (whether it reaches democracy is still in doubt, but let's hope), is that I would be willing to concede Serbia too. It was a bombing campaign, not an invasion, but there was at least an implied threat, and force was used to remove Serb forces from Kosovo leading to the overthrow of the Serb dictator Slobodan Milosevic (who, interestingly, is on trial by an international war crimes court). However, the Serbs seemed ambivalent about removing someone who brought them so much grief when they were under duress to do so and the nationalists are still popular, showing how force is of limited use in democratization. I won't grant the rest of former Yugoslavia as an exception since that was the use of force to repel invasion, not to overthrow a dictator.

March 9
Somebody somewhere got a lucky break. My laptop died, taking with it bookmarks on future topics. It was a software problem, so probably just one *&^%$ registry file took it down. I was wrong about not backing up my bookmark files, and I might have been wrong about something else. Try not to faint. Yesterday, half a million Lebanese demonstrated in support of Syria. That's more than demonstrated for Syrian removal. Now you have to wonder if some weren't put up to it by those in power, and I disregard the demonstration in Damascus. You also have to wonder if the numbers demonstrating for Syria's departure were reduced in number by fear of retaliation. Still, in a country of just four million, that's a lot of people. It's apparent the Lebanese aren't united in wanting Syria out. I blithely assumed the anti-Syrian demonstrators spoke for the vast majority, much as I suppose a foreigner could have taken anti-war demonstrations here to signify majority opposition to Bush's invasion of Iraq. What's amazing is I made that mistake and I'm not even looking to exonerate Bush's war. No wonder conservatives so easily gave in to the temptation to crow.

So events might pop Bush's bubble better than what I said about him not deserving credit for Lebanese democracy last week, what I said about him missing an opportunity when he picked Iraq as his target instead of the Syrian troops in Lebanon, or even the results of a Zogby poll showing the Lebanese are more inclined to blame Bush and Israel for the death of Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. That probably comes from the same thinking that believes the Jews in the World Trade Center were warned and absent on 911, but nonetheless should be an indication Bush isn't inspiring a democracy movement. What an idea --- nobody is feeling inspired by the most unpopular man on the planet. Conservatives don't want to hear that I'm sure, but they don't exactly have a line up of Arab democrats thanking Bush. If they had any, they'd be playing it up. That they haven't shows they have none, and are still searching for a shill to thank Bush on Fox News.

I will admit that Bush's democracy rhetoric is at least the right words, and I will even admit the suspicion that pressure from Bush accounts for the cosmetic changes announced by the governments of Egypt and Saudi Arabia. However, not only are conservatives claiming credit for elections in Iraq they tried to prevent, and for Lebanon, but they think the current peace between Israel and the Palestinians is Bush's doing too. Again, when the Palestinians managed free elections, did anyone say "thank Bush!"? Were they ingrates, or did Bush really have nothing to do with it? For that matter, anyone notice that when Sharon and Abbas shook hands, there was no US president there? Not that there would have been even if Bush was there, but that's another matter. Bush has paid no attention and can't now take credit for something done despite his inattention. Yes, he had the "Roadmap to Peace". It was folded back up and stuffed in a corner of the glove compartment. I suppose that's just my opinion, but notice absolutely nobody referred to it since well before Arafat died. By the way, anyone notice how all the good things happened after Arafat died? At the same time, Sharon, regarded by many as a war criminal, surprised me by his willingness to make peace. The point of all this is that once again, the causes of the improvement in the situation there are local.

Lest someone think denying Bush credit is just partisanship, I credit Reagan for supporting the implementation of the Camp David Accords. I also will state that though it happened under Clinton, the agreement between Arafat and Yitzak Rabin was mostly the work of Bush Sr. Junior, unfortunately, has suffered from Iraq obsession, so he does not get credit. Once terrorists trained and experienced in Iraq start attacking elsewhere, it will be obvious Bush's efforts have only made things worse.

March 6
After mentioning World War II in yesterday's entry, I saw the last hour of "Tora, Tora, Tora", the 1970 film about Pearl Harbor. I was reminded of course of the similarities between the two biggest defeats in American history, and I don't just mean they both involved attacks with airplanes. I'm thinking more of how the country pulled together after each attack. Every war has divided the country except two, World War II and Afghanistan. These are also the only two which began with a surprise attack. Every other war was to some degree a choice. Unfortunately, the differences between these two wars are striking in what they tell us about our leadership then and now.

President Roosevelt, often known by his initials "FDR", took a unified country, maybe realizing the silver lining of the defeat at Pearl Harbor was that the country would never have been unified if he had to talk it into joining the war, and held it together. Bush blew apart his unified US, quickly turning it through sheer venality into one of the most divided periods of our history. If FDR and Truman after him had run World War II he way Bush ran the war in Afghanistan, they would have started diverting resources right after D-Day towards the next war. They would have tried to say the next enemy, maybe the Soviet Union, or the Spanish government that was backed by Italy and Germany, or just some country FDR and Truman had a personal beef with, was somehow as guilty as the Axis powers and had to be taken out. The result would have been skipping the Cold War and going right to World War III, or else a pointless war against someone else which diverted attention from the real war. Meanwhile, there would have been too few soldiers on occupation duty, leading perhaps to anarchy in the Axis countries just like happened in both Afghanistan and Iraq. It's also striking that FDR kept the country together through the election of 1944 instead of winning by dividing like Bush did. Of course, in FDR's case, the handling of the war was a strong point, so maybe he didn't need gay marriage and Swift Boat Vets for Smears.

The other striking similarity was how both disasters required a bunch of screw ups on our side. Everything that could have prevented the disaster was left undone. Warnings were ignored. The key difference however was there were consequences for Pearl Harbor. Responsible people were punished. The people who screwed up 911 got promoted. FDR gave full cooperation to the commission that investigated Pearl Harbor. Bush fought against ti every step of the way. He denied its necessity, delayed its formation, refused to hand over documents, repeatedly said he had handed them over when some were withheld, refused to testify under oath, and talked with the commission under very limited circumstances. It turned out, of course, that he had a lot to hide, which I suppose is the biggest difference between Bush and FDR.

The galling thing for Bush's opponents, certainly including me, is what ironically saved him from what should have been certain impeachment with the revelation by the 911 commission of wrongdoing at least as big as Watergate was that Bush's wars were still going. Of those values that divide red and blue America, none is bigger than the red belief that Americans have to back their president no matter what. I've written on that in detail before so I won't repeat it all here. I'll just point out that the lack of accountability within the Bush administration has sadly passed down to its supporters, teaching Bush that he can get away with anything, and teaching future presidents that the sure way to relection is to keep a war going.

March 5
Mark Morford had a marvelous way of popping the neocon bubble about Iraq's tentative progress towards democracy: "Bush does not get credit for Iraq's fleeting glimpse of democracy for the exact same reason you don't give the tsunami credit for cleansing the streets of Indonesia." If I can invent a more general way of saying the same thing, not that I claim this is as good, "The disaster doesn't get credit for the rebuilding."

At the risk of repeating myself, every democracy once wasn't. Lots of dictators have fallen. Very few countries required a foreign invasion to accomplish this. Americans tend to think first and foremost of the Axis countries that were democratized after World War II. It's that common mistake we make of thinking World War II was the typical war when any honest look at history shows it was unique. One of the unique aspects was that we invaded three enemy countries, imposed a democratic system upon them, and made them stick. These are the only three examples I can think of where this was the case, and they're also the only three we invaded after they started the war, with the possible exception of Afghanistan (I say "possible" for two reasons: one, we don't yet know democracy will stick there and two, Afghanistan didn't attack, but harbored those who attacked, though I'd call that a distinction without a difference). Every other democratic nation built its own democracy. This shows that not only is foreign invasion not a necessary condition of democracy, it might not even be desirable.

Admittedly we don't know for sure, and might never know. What we do know is that democracy wasn't the point of the second Iraq war. It's just the only thing that offers hope of justifying it when there were no WMDs and the only connection to Al Qaida consisted of one of Saddam's agents saying "Not interested" to an organization determined to destroy Arab secular regimes, like Saddam's.

March 4
OK, 3G issue time. That's God, Gays, and Guns for those who haven't been following this blog. Columnist Michael Ventura has an interesting idea: teach the major religions in school. That's not that crazy. In fact, I've had that same thought for long time too. It's sounds scary, like the start of state sponsored religious indoctrination. It would need safeguards so it didn't become eight months of Christianity and one month of the rest, including why the rest are wrong. But realize that in my case this comes from someone who's not religious. However, I agree with Ventura, "I believe one cannot claim to be a cultured human being without knowledge of the great religions, their histories, and scriptures." Religion is a part of the culture not just of the US, but of every culture on the planet. That fact is regardless of individual religious belief, or even whether religion is a good idea. I'm not ready to agree that, "...there is no greater historical force than religious passion.", but I'm willing to grant it's perhaps as important as nationalism, racism, economics, ideology, or geography, all of which we can study comparatively.

I wouldn't expect opposition just from civil libertarians concerned with the state sponsorship of religion. I expect religious conservatives to be just as opposed to the idea of teaching their religion in a neutral setting rather than as indoctrination in the faith, not to mention other religions being given equal emphasis. I don't doubt some of our fundamentalists would be unable to stop themselves trying to hijack the religion class for themselves. Many honestly believe neutrality toward religion is impossible, and one has to win. It's nonetheless worth the trouble of keeping it neutral, because it is ridiculous to think of growing up in America and not knowing the basics of the bible, even for non-believers. It's equally ridiculous to think that we won't make a complete mess of relations with Muslims, Jews, Hindus, or Buddhists by knowing nothing about them. I suggest that everyone who asked after 911, "Why do they hate us?" and really didn't know is proof of this. A more educated populace won't buy the "they hate freedom" crap.

A spinoff I would hope for is a resolution to the controversy over teaching evolution. Probably nothing will satisfy those who won't accept any science that doesn't agree with their literal interpretation of Genesis, but it might alleviate the concerns of some who need the reassurance that God is mentioned somewhere. This might effect in the public mind the separation of religion and science needed for an educated society. It might combat the fundamentalist preachings that there is no such thing as neutrality in religion, and that not mentioning God is the same as hostility to religion.

This becomes relevant when science needs to inform public policy. Ventura mentioned the decision against repairing the Hubble space telescope, which is making discoveries that challenge religious doctrine. I would add the refusal against overwhelming evidence to address global warming. The problem with religious backed scientific ignorance is the inability to see not only through religious dogma, but through the falsehoods of economic special interests that make environmental and health policy so difficult. After all, if science is just another set of beliefs, then might not tobacco companies be just as right about cigarettes as cancer researchers? Couldn't the shills working for chemical companies be just as right as every other scientist on the planet warning against ozone depletion by CFCs?

March 3
I mentioned a couple weeks ago that the acting president's nominee for intelligence director, John Negroponte, was ambassador to Honduras during the Contra War. There's a film out about him which, according to David Corn, documents Negroponte's role in human rights violations. Corn also linked to a series in the Baltimore Sun ten years ago documenting this earlier torture scandal. Negroponte still denies his role, and at least the Reagan administration had the decency to lie about using torture. Dubya chooses instead to justify and redefine it to not include the methods he's approved. Likewise, while Reagan hid his backing of Central American death squads, Bush's boy Rumsfeld has been open about considering their use in Iraq. Well, what's one more war criminal in the cabinet.

March 1
What do these two things have in common?
1. The son of Togo's deceased dictator, illegally installed immediately after his father's death by the army, has stepped down.
2. Popular protests have caused Lebanon's Syrian backed prime minister to resign.

The obvious is that they're happening at the same time, but look a bit deeper. Both events have occurred without a foreign invasion. The chattering class of the far right won't like that, because they would like to think Bush's invasion of Iraq is the cause. I don't know of any who claimed credit for Togo, but they sure want to think Bush is the hero of Lebanon. That's right, the Lebanese people filled the streets under the inspiration of the most unpopular man in the world (that's Bush, for those not paying attention). While driving home from work this evening, I listened to Hugh Hewitt, a talk radio host carried by a local conservative station (it bills itself as "The Patriot", so those who disagree...). He was ragging on a liberal blogger (not this one, but Hugh, I wouldn't mind the publicity) posting on Talking Points Memo for denying Bush the credit for Lebanon, saying conservatives were engaging in the logical fallacy that two events close together must therefore be connected. The blogger added that this thinking was why so many believe Reagan won the cold war by himself. Hewitt paraphrased the rest of the blog entry, "blah blah blah". Doing the typical conservative thing, Hewitt didn't refute the points, but attacked the motives of the other side, and attacked a straw man, saying something like, "These Democrats don't believe presidents ever affect anything." Yeah Hugh, we spend a lot of time making that argument.

Let me spell this out. In both Togo and Lebanon, Democratic change has come from internal causes. If the invasion of Iraq were necessary to cause such change, you have to wonder if any dictator would ever have fallen. Lots have however, almost never without a foreign invasion. In Lebanon, no one took to the streets to demand the Syrians leave when Bush invaded Iraq, not when Saddam fell, not when Saddam was captured, not when the interim government was installed, and not after the elections. The tipping point in Lebanon was the assassination of a popular political leader. The context was Syrian domination of the Lebanese government, including the presence of Syrian troops despite the civil war being over since 1991. The assassinated prime minister resigned in protest over the constitution being changed to allow the Syrian backed president to stay on past his term limit. Nobody said, "Hey look, the US president that we all hate mentioned freedom a bunch of times in his speech. Let's go confront our occupiers!" Like the ragged on liberal blogger said, Bush backers haven't offered any evidence other than chronology, like Lebanese leaders crediting Bush.

If there's any surprise over conservatives' blind belief all good things come from Bush, get this: in a poll that asked whether respondents would choose the acting president or the elected George W., Washington, Republicans overwhelmingly chose Dubya. I can think of pithy things to write, but that just shouldn't need comment.

See the archives for earlier entries.