September 15
The acting president did some twisting of history in his speech at a National Guard convention. He said being a president who'd been in the National Guard was in the tradition of Jefferson, Madison, Lincoln, and Truman. One small problem: the National Guard didn't exist when Jefferson, Madison, and Lincoln were alive. Perhaps he was referring to their service in the militia. The militia formed in time of emergency, like Lincoln serving during the Black Hawk War. Perhaps though, that's not the comparison someone who avoided a war he supported should be using.
The woman I wrote about yesterday, Lynne Gobbell of Moulton, Alabama, was hired by John Kerry to help with his Alabama campaign. Her employer said she could work for him or John Kerry, and Kerry knew personal courage when he saw it. Don't blame Bush for not knowing personal courage. He's never been around it, so can't rightly be expected to recognize it.
Speaking of women backing Kerry, a group of 911 widows has endorsed him. They don't buy Bush's campaign theme of strong leadership. They cite his refusal to allow an impartial investigation of 911, followed by his obstruction at every turn. I found the obstruction mystifying at the time, because it made it look like he had something to hide. Since I'd nothing of missed warnings, didn't know about the seven minutes of silence, and figured he had been in office too short a time to have mucked up that bad, I didn't guess what he was hiding. Now we know he ignored the PDB on August 6 saying Bin Laden would attack with hijacked planes with a likely target being New York. Not explicit enough I guess. He also ignored Clinton's plan to go after Al Qaida in Afghanistan, and put Cheney in charge of a terrorism task force which never met. It's amazing this works for him as a campaign theme. Maybe that's what he was thinking about in the classroom that morning.
Or maybe he was thinking about how to use the corporate scandals to excuse his mishandling of the economy. That's right, the man in tight with Ken Lay, who appointed other Enron execs to administration positions, who ran Texas while Enron did all that crooked stuff, is citing the corporate scandals as a reason for the economy's troubles. Hey readers, can you name any other companies involved in scandal? Extra points if you named Halliburton, which had accounting problems when the CEO was Dick Cheney, who still takes pay from this government contractor -- which got billions in no-bid contracts to help in Iraq. In case anyone thinks the scandals are all in the past, remember Hollinger, whose execs took almost all the profits for themselves. The board members who allowed it in exchange for rich payoffs themselves included Richard Perle, one of the most influential neocons, and the infamous Henry Kissinger. I suppose Kissinger had time because his overseas travel has been curtailed by the need to avoid war crimes warrants. Actually, I do think the scandals are a reason for the bad economy, but Bush's cronyism is partly to blame for the scandals in the first place. We certainly can't trust someone so close to the crooks to fix the problem.
One more bit of hypocrisy. Republicans want a congressional investigation of the allegedly forged Bush National Guard memos. I'd be more sympathetic if ever they would investigate fraud when Bush on the giving end. They looked at how intelligence was wrong about Iraq, but not how it was misused. There's no investigation of the fraudulent figures for the prescription drug plan, the fraudulent numbers Bush used to claim success for his education program, or the source of the leak of Valerie Plame's identity. That's a prime reason we need at least one house in Democratic hands.
September 14
I don't know if Kitty Kelley's new book about the Bush family is telling the truth. Her interview with Matt Lauer on the Today Show focused on the story that Bush used cocaine at Camp David when his father was president, which is damaging if true because he was in his forties and had supposedly been through his religious conversion. That would also mean he's lying now, which would hardly be a surprise, but again that's if it's true. Most of the controversy hinges on whether this story was confirmed by Sharon Bush, ex-wife of Neil Bush. She denies it, but that's not the interesting part, because I don't really care if Bush used coke back then, aside from the question of whether he's lying now. No, I'm bothered more by how the Bush family treated a former family member. She said that when she met with Kelley, she was desperate for money. If she's telling the truth -- divorced couples sometimes trash each other -- Neil told her in an e-mail. I suppose that's no worse than a written letter, but Sharon left the impression it was sudden. She said she had a place to live for a year, but otherwise, after 23 years of marriage, she was left with no means of support. She was part of that quite wealthy family for that long, and they left her with nothing. This wasn't during Vietnam, or during Poppy's term, this was 2003. That tells something about what that family is still like. That's the family that runs the Republican party, which explains a lot about why that party has gotten so arrogant and crooked.
Speaking of the interviewer, Matt Lauer, he tried hard to be hard-hitting, all but calling Kelley a liar. He mentioned that her book was completely negative, a charge she rejected, then he cited not the book, but a summary from the publisher. He hadn't even looked at the book. She said her book wasn't completely negative, so maybe the publisher was just pushing the lurid bits. Whatever the case, he didn't check it for himself.
If you value free speech at all, let this motivate you to get out and vote. Lynne Gobbell of Moulton, Alabama, was fired for refusing her employer's order to remove a Kerry bumper sticker from her car. Her car was not part of her job, just her means to commute to work. She had no customer contact. Her employer felt free to include a flyer in the employees' pay envelopes touting the Bush tax cuts. This is the kind of arrogance that must be spanked down this election. If nothing else, vote for the right to put what you want on your own car.
Also vote for your right to wear a t-shirt. This time the Bush campaign is the culprit, having two people arrested for wearing anti-Bush t-shirts at a campaign rally. The charge was trespassing, though they were on public property.
Speaking of the tax cuts the vicious bastard was touting, remember the credit for teachers who pay for school supplies out of their own pockets? Bush made a big deal out of the $250 credit, though he couldn't come up with enough money for schools supplies so teachers don't have to. It's expired. Perhaps after his education secretary, Rod Paige, the one who cheats on his tests, called the teachers unions "terrorists", he figured there was no point going after the teachers vote. So there's one tax credit rescinded. Now that he's made the teachers sacrifice for the greater good, Bush could ask the same of Ken Lay and the bully who fired Lynne Gobbell. By the way, that story about the tax credit mentions that California rescinded a similar tax credit for $1500. Gov. Arnold prefers to put the state horrifically in debt sooner than raise taxes for such piddling purposes as solvency, but he did have to do something, so he got it from the teachers in what is as good as a tax increase. He could consider putting some money into his state's schools so the teachers aren't funding them personally, but that would require taxing somebody. Besides teachers.
September 13
Sometimes there's so much to write about, it's hard to prioritize. I hope that won't be the case so much after the election. It is the case today, and what I do with the blog entries is try to figure out what's more important and what's more immediate. Usually I figure the election has to come first since it's so close, and the first subject is about that, but it's really about a longer term problem.
A Republican state legislator in Michigan accidentally let slip that Republicans intend to suppress the black vote. Mostly that means stopping people from voting in Detroit. State Rep. John Pappageorge can't understand why that's considered racist. Maybe in the Republican view, it's just politics as usual. Screw over your opponent any way you have to to win, and figure they'll understand it's just politics, not personal. He told columnist Bob Herbert that he wouldn't suggest anything racist or illegal. Well, racist is a matter of opinion, and it seems racist to suppress a vote rather than try to win it. "Legal" allows a lot. Negative ads telling lies are legal, just ask the Swift Boat Vets For Pissing on Someone Else's Medal. They'll also tell you it works. It's also legal to have the state patrol park near polling places in black neighborhoods, as happened in Florida in 2000. Push polling is legal, even with a misleading question. If you ask black voters, "If you heard that John Kerry sings Mammie in blackface for fun, would you be more likely or less likely to vote for him?" that would be legal. You didn't actually say Kerry did that, though you know what the hearer would think. That's the sort of tactic used in the smear of McCain in South Carolina in 2000. Another legal technique is to enforce the letter of the law in unhelpful ways, like Florida purging voters identified as felons from the registration rolls, but doing it in such a way as to target blacks, and then not telling them until they got to the polls and it was too late to fix mistakes. It would seem simple to not help people correctly fill out voter registration cards or absentee ballot applications, and not tell them they did it wrong. You just do this in black areas and not elsewhere. Not surprisingly, people who would resort to these tactics don't blink at actually doing something illegal, like dropping flyers in black areas that tell people they have to clear up warrants and tickets in order to vote, or tell people that problems have delayed the election in their neighborhood until the next day. In his column, Herbert mentioned college students threatened with arrest by a Republican district attorney since it's illegal for them to vote in the town where they attend college instead of at home. Except it's not illegal, as long as students don't vote at home too.
The hope of all this is to convince black voters that they'll run into so many problems, voting isn't worth the hassle, especially if they can be convinced their votes might not get counted. I could understand the temptation to skip the election in such circumstances, but doing so is exactly how the bastards who do this stay in office.
The other important issue is a new report on prisoner abuse, but not at Abu Graibh. This is at Guantanamo, and according to Seymour Hersh, Rumsfeld knew as early as Autumn 2002. The scandal at Abu Graibh has become well known, but Guantanamo has remained secret, at least until now. The Bush administration has maintained until now they didn't know much before the public. That appears to be a lie, and maybe with good reason. Hersh says a secret document signed by Bush says, "I determine that none of the provisions of Geneva apply to our conflict with al-Qaida in Afghanistan or elsewhere throughout the world." What did he think it meant to remove all legal protections from prisoners? If indeed anyone in the adminstration knew about this, they have abetted torture. That's a war crime. Were the U.S. a party to the international war crimes treaty, they would possibly face indictment, depending on the strength of the evidence against individuals. Bush, even if not up on charges himself, hasn't even fired anyone for this, all the reason anyone should need to vote him out. Rumsfeld, in that speech on Friday, said what went on at Abu Graibh wasn't as bad as beheading a hostage. He misses the point. A war criminal can't excuse his crimes on the grounds someone else did worse. It would be like the terrorist who beheaded a hostage defending himself on the grounds someone else beheaded two.
I don't want to get into another topic at this late hour, so two links: Someone has put together a nice list of Bush's many flip-flops.
For a follow up to what I wrote about Chechnya, here's a background on Chechen history and the Chechen war. This article goes back only to 1944, but is thorough since then.
September 12
Here's an example of Republicans lying again, either by unproven charges or half-truths, depending upon whether one believes the rebuttal. The National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) has started running and ad attacking Don Barbieri, a candidate for the U.S. House in Washington. This was the district of George Nethercutt, who defeated Speaker of the House Tom Foley in 1994, when the Republicans took control for the first time in 40 years (reports at the time indicated many voters thought whoever they elected would be speaker, which might explain dumping a speaker for a freshman). That may explain why they're so attached to the seat, not that it excuses the attack. The ad accuses Barbieri of being willing to eliminate American jobs because there were layoffs when the company of which he was CEO bought another company and laid off part of the workforce. Barbieri's rebuttal is that the purchased company was headed to bankruptcy and would have dissolved if not bought, so there were fewer layoffs with the buyout and jobs were actually saved. I tried to research this, and my efforts proved fruitless. I can't tell which version is the truth, but my difficulty finding out even the name of the purchased company suggests the Republicans didn't research it. Since they make the accusation, they ought properly to provide evidence for it, make it easy to see, but they don't. Even the NRCC web site has nothing, except the claim Barbieri isn't in line with the voters of that district, which they say about every Democrat. Even without believing Barbieri's rebuttal, this is an unproven accusation. If Barbieri proves to be telling the truth, or if it's impossible for an outside observer to tell (the purchased company's condition could be a matter of opinion, even if someone had access to the books which I doubt the Republicans did) then it's a lie by half-truth. It's a half-truth because the NRCC was right that workers got laid off, but they deliberately left a false impression by not saying the whole workforce would have lost their jobs without the buyout.
While the subject is a House race, let me remind readers that winning control of at least one house of Congress is vital. Even if Bush wins, which at this time seems likely, having even one house would retard the Bush agenda and allow investigation if the administration's wrongdoings, which rarely happens with complete Republican control. If Kerry wins, a Republican Congress means a stalemate, and only a Democratic Congress will actually get anything done. So even if you're sure Kerry will lose, or you just can't vote for him for whatever reason, you still need to get to the polls for the congressional races.
Maybe I shouldn't say my search to confirm or disprove the NRCC ad was entirely fruitless, because I did come upon a couple interesting things. The Seattle Times exposed another lie in their state. The Building Industry Association of Washington, which backs a Republican gubernatorial candidate, ran an ad accusing a Democratic candidate of opposing open primaries. This candidate actually supported open primaries, but the new system apparently is unpopular, so they decided to blame her, even if that's a bald faced lie. The editorial goes on to mention that the BIAW was confronted with the lie, and justified it on the grounds that she had junior attorneys defend it, presumably to undercut the defense. She appointed three attorneys with 40 years' experience together, so they lied again. Washington voters might want to tell their legislature to investigate these guys.
The other interesting thing was a letter to the editor of The Spokesman-Review of Spokane, WA. It's a marvelous example of believing contradictory things. The writer said:
John Kerry had consistently voted to cut defense spending, raise taxes, support abortion rights, and increase the size of government throughout his Senate career. He cannot be trusted as commander-in-chief, who might send our troops into battle. Will he worry about the cost, or do whatever it takes to win?So the two problems with Kerry are that he spends too much, and he keeps opposing spending freely. To put it another way, and the writer seems not to see the contradiction, Kerry spends on anything and worries too much about keeping down the deficit. I don't doubt the letter writer is sincere in his beliefs, it's just kind of scary, because this ability to believe contradictory things is part of how the right keeps people fooled. In that vein, the "big-government" bit at the end is interesting. The government has never grown so fast, either fiscally or in terms of power, as it has under Bush. Maybe he's using the same letter he used in 1976, substituting Kerry and Bush for Carter and Ford. The words are the same.Finally, John Kerry will not govern as someone with "conservative" values. He will govern as he has legislated: as a big-government, tax and spend liberal. Vote for President Bush.
September 11
Today every media outlet has retrospectives on 911. There is a common opinion that the world changed that day, an opinion I share (I wrote this one year after, with an update last year and again today). Something has turned out exactly the reverse of any logic. If you were told anytime before the attacks that one day, the country would suffer a massive terrorist attack with thousands killed, and a commission looking into it would discover the president ignored everything that might have thwarted it, you would assume that president would have a tough time getting elected (normally you'd say re-elected, but let's not get into that right now). Now imagine this same president sat silently pretending to read a book in an elementary classroom when he was told "America is under attack" until an aide fetched him. Instead of trying to find out what was happening, he had his handlers spin a story that he sat there so as not to frighten the children (what, they wouldn't hear about it soon anyway? Go see the video for yourself.) Especially once you learn that he stayed at the school another 20 minutes, disregarding that as a target himself he was endangering the school, you would assume he wouldn't even win his party's nomination. If I then told you he obstructed the commission that learned all this, you would expect he wouldn't even run. If you then heard he attacked civil liberties at home, pulled resources away from the war against the people who attacked us to attack a country not involved, and that he was caught using fake evidence to justify this second war, you would assume he resigned to avoid impeachment. If I told you this future president would not face impeachment, not only be nominated by his party, not only lead in the polls, but be using the his handling of the attack as the center of his campaign, you would think me nuts. Yet here we are. The biggest failures of Bush's adminstration are exactly why he has the majority bamboozled into supporting him because he's the better leader.
September 10
Donald Rumsfeld gave a speech to the National Press Club today. Besides being his usual jerkish self toward critics, he said some interesting things. There were two revealing gaffes where he betrayed the obsession he and the administration have with Saddam. First, talking about Al Qaida's assassination of Northern Alliance leader Ahmad Shah Masoud on September 10, 2001, he attributed it to Saddam, immediately correcting himself. The other one was caught by the moderator, who informed him that when he referred to Bin Laden not having appeared in a video since September 11, he called him "Osama Hussein". Is it any wonder these guys went after the wrong country and continue to confuse Iraq with the war on terror when Saddam is that much on their minds --- still.
He also told a couple whoppers, though one might be called gross ignorance for a Secretary of Defense and the other merely grotesque stretching of the word "peaceful." In the first case, he said that when the U.S. sends its armed forces into a country, we do it to help the people and then we leave when the problem is solved. Sounds like a nice ideal, except it isn't at all true. We currently have troops in almost every country where we've ever intervened. In at least a couple cases where we pulled out, we went back in. Since he's defense secretary, he might be expected to know where we have a military presence. He even mentioned that we're still in Bosnia long after we hoped to pull out. Don't miss my point, I'm not saying all those presences are wrong. They have to be taken on a case by case basis to decide that, which I won't do right now. I'm pointing out the huge factual error that sounds good for justifying the war in Iraq, but is baseless and Rumsfeld must know it.
The second one is hard to understand as anything other than deliberately misleading, perhaps to explain away getting only a draw in the battle with Muqtada al-Sadr's militia for control of Najaf. He actually held up Najaf as an example of settling things peacefully. However, every news report mentioned heavy fighting. Dozens of buildings were damaged or destroyed during the peaceful resolution. Rumsfeld, who at least had a lot of input if he wasn't the one who made the decision, knows full well the only reason the shrine wasn't stormed was because it would have ignited a much bigger Shiite rebellion. For him to pretend it was just because we use peaceful methods to resolve conflicts is a lie.
Now that we've caught a conservative politician lying, let's catch a conservative pundit too. Kathleen Parker, in a column of smirking criticism of how Kerry is handling his campaign, told a fib and did some weaseling. The fib was that Kerry challenged the patriotism of anyone who didn't fight in Vietnam: "Today those other deferred fellows are considerably older and probably feeling a little grumpy at the implication that they were less than patriotic." She didn't quote Kerry because then she couldn't fool her readers as to what he said. Responding to Cheney's criticism that Kerry would be an unsteady leader, Kerry said, "I will let the American people decide whether five deferments make you more qualified to serve America in a position of leadership or two tours of duty." That's from a story in Parker's own newspaper, the Orlando Sentinel. She really ought to read it before sounding off. This is also from her paper: "I will not have my commitment to defend this country questioned by those who refused to serve when they could have." Those are the remarks from the speech to which Parker is referring, and which she did not repeat for her readers lest they know she was lying about what he said. Just for fun, here's the weaseling bit: "Kerry's decision to impugn all those people now seems a near-fatal miscalculation. Yet, characteristic of the entitled class to which he belongs, Kerry seeks to blame others, especially his campaign managers, for his flagging popularity." The first part is just a repeat of the lie that he impugned anyone's patriotism. It's the "entitled class" remark I call weaseling, because she knows, as Bush backers always know when they criticize Kerry's wealth, Bush comes from the same social class. He was recently on camera boating with Poppy somewhere off the New England coast. In fact, it seems indicative of the two candidates that Bush was riding as his dad steered, while Kerry windsurfed himself. Sounds like not much has changed since Vietnam in that respect.
September 9
Sometimes the perfect can be the enemy of the good. That strikes me as the case with voters who are unhappy with Bush, but won't support Kerry because they just don't like him, or think the campaign bogged down, or just think that whatever Bush's faults, he's just more likeable. Such a person was on the Al Franken Show today. Franken has a segment where he talks to people eating at a barbecue joint who disagree with his politics. Today he talked to someone who claims to be a Democrat, but can't bring himself to vote for Kerry because Kerry doesn't inspire him. He cited a magazine article in which the writer hung out with Kerry and said Kerry had no soul. The person Franken was talking to also complained about how badly the campaign is going. I could take issue with specifics of what this person said, like how does one person judge that another one has no soul, but the point is this person seems to have a visceral reaction against Kerry. He dismissed every point Franken and his co-host, Katherine Lanphear, brought up to refute the point that no one is enthusiastic about Kerry. After he was off the line, Franken and Lanphear both seemed to miss just how gut level was the reaction against Kerry. Lanphear said the demand to be inspired as a condition of support was childish, which is unusual since she leaves going off on something to Franken. It's not childishness, though they're right it's not rational. It's the perfect being the enemy of the good. People hope for an ideal candidate, and challengers especially get held up to that standard, as this person was doing to Kerry. What I want to say to anyone whose negative reaction to Kerry is on a personal level is that unless you meet him yourself, opinions are going to vary and be very personal about what sort of man Kerry is. Very few politicians really are inspiring, and waiting for such a person leaves the incumbent in office. Is that an acceptable price?
If I could speak to this person, I wouldn't preach to him about how awful Bush is. Franken tried that and unsurprisingly it was getting nowhere since the problem is Kerry. Instead I'd ask him what he thinks about Bush, and if he held the opinion change is needed, then I'd ask him if Kerry might do better. In the process I'd be digging around for his more substantial objections. Ultimately, if the objections can't be answered satisfactorily, someone who dislikes both candidates might be persuaded to vote for a third party. Yes, that's just a protest vote, not as good as getting past gut level reactions to Kerry to see a more honest man and better policy, but better than choosing Bush as the lesser of two evils.
There was another revelation from another person at that barbecue joint that explains why Bush hasn't been impeached since the evidence he used to take us to war proved fake. Franken talked to someone who called himself a patriot and made it plain he didn't care if no WMDs or Al Qaida connections were found in Iraq. This jibes with what I hear from other Bush supporters, who may not want to say outright they don't care the whole premise for war was false, but that seems to be the subtext. Saddam's history of brutality was enough. This makes some sense since some, maybe many of us, who opposed the war because the evidence was falling apart even before the war might have backed it on human rights grounds. There would still be tough questions to be asked before saying yes, but at least we wouldn't doubt the truth of the basic case for war. If I thought the fakery behind the evidence didn't matter, I might explain it this way. If my car was stolen, and I later caught a car thief, I'd happily throw him in jail, or beat the tar out of him, even if he wasn't the one who stole my car. That analogy has flaws of course --- if I killed some innocent bystanders in the process of getting the wrong thief that would be closer --- but it gives insight into the thinking of people who know the reasons for war didn't pan out, but support it anyway. Now if we could just figure out these people who still think Saddam was behind 911, we'd be getting somewhere.
While we're on the subject of persuading voters, please Sen. Kerry, stop using the "W stands for Wrong" speech. It's just dumb. It sounds more like namecalling than real rebuttal of foolish policies. To my fellow liberals, we know Bush is remarkably unencumbered with alacrity, and the outside world makes no secret of thinking he's a buffoon and can't fathom how he has any chance of winning a fair election, but the people who back him or still need persuading just don't care. Maybe they don't think intelligence is that vital, which does fit with traditional American anti-intellectualism, or they think he's smart enough, but whatever the reason, it looks like anybody swayable has been swayed. Let's get back to his habitual lying, the bad economy, and all that substantive stuff.
Speaking of lies, here's a good one. Bush spokesman Dan Bartlett tried to dismiss the memos from Bush's commanding officer. He said, "Those who are trying to read the mind of a person dead 20 years are stretching at best. The president at every turn did what he was told to do.'' What mind reading? The man wrote memos, which all these years Bush managed mysteriously not to find. The memos are quite clear that Bush was not doing what he was supposed to. Again, the issue isn't what he did 30 years ago, it's the lies he still tells now.
September 8
Now I'm willing to say it's proven. Two reports today, from 60 Minutes and The Boston Globe, brought substantiation to the charges that the acting president wasn't quite an acting guardsman. But first, a word again on why this matters: Bush has lied about his service. If he lied back then and owned up now all this would go away, but he's been lying the last few years, so absolutely it's relevant. It also says something about his character that he's been willing to watch Kerry be smeared when his own record is so vulnerable. It shows either hypocrisy or bad judgement, either of which disqualifies him.
60 Minutes interviewed the former speaker of the Texas state house who owned up to helping rich kids jump the line into the national guard, including Bush Jr. He expressed a guilty conscience when visiting the Vietnam memorial in Washington, realizing that essentially, he made life and death decisions based on privilege. There was a long waiting list to get into the guard during that war, because guard units were rarely sent, and Bush's was known as a "champagne unit". When Bush got in, someone else got drafted. Someone may have died in Bush's place, a fact of which Bush seems utterly insensible. That insensibility alone should render him unfit to be president. As if more is needed, 60 Minutes also found memos from Bush's commanding officer in Texas where he says Bush seems able to go over his head and get help from higher up. That's just his impression, not proof of anything, and since he's deceased he can't be asked for clarification. However, the fact these memos haven't come out before is suspicious in light of what's known, and the other papers that are missing. They might not ever have existed, since record keeping was somewhat lacking. The Globe report said it couldn't find evidence that Bush fulfilled his obligation to join a unit near Boston when he went to Harvard, though the administration says one of the documents already released shows he did sign up as required. The alleged absence when he was supposed to be in a unit in Alabama is still a matter of the lack of evidence he was there, like no one being able to remember him, and his commander being sure he wasn't there.
Yesterday I wrote about one complex problem that gets a simple answer. Another such problem is what to do about terrorism. A coworker of mine, reading about the massacre in Beslan, remarked that if he was a Russian he'd want to kill every Chechen. My response was something like "That's how the Russians got in this mess." The incident starkly shows the biggest conflict in understanding responding to terrorism. On the one hand, terrorists perform acts that can only be described as criminal. Beslan is particularly awful, and there's no excuse for it. On the other hand, the Chechens are trying to free themselves from an occupation that can fairly be described as brutal. It's hard not to sympathize with their cause, but it's hard to sympathize with anyone who resorts to terrorism. What do you do when the cause is good and the methods are evil? That's not the case with all terrorism, which should be obvious, but needs stating to avoid charges I'm romanticizing terrorists. Sometimes, however, the cause is sympathetic. That's the main reason why dealing with terrorism can't be subject to simplicities like "You're with us or you're with the terrorists."
Note I said that's only the main reason, not the only one. There are often multiple groups with the same cause, as is the case with the Chechens, so who to retaliate against? Or just hit somebody, which feels good, but has problems. If you get the wrong ones, the right ones are still there, and everyone hurt by the retaliation is now more inclined to support the terrorists. That's a problem we've had in Iraq, and the Russians have made their situation worse by abusive tactics towards Chechens who weren't part of the insurgency. If the attacked party addresses legitimate grievances, does that indicate that the terrorists won, which of course encourages more. But to not address the grievances encourages terrorists too.
Sometimes just seeing the right conflict is tough too. Russia wants to add the Chechens to the general war on terrorism, which properly should be considered a war on Islamic fundamentalism. However, the Chechens were nationalists. Some number still are, but some number have turned to Islamic fundamentalism. Al Qaida's members in Afghanistan included Chechens. However, most Chechens aren't Al Qaida, and wouldn't have been if the war hadn't gone on so long. So the Russians made their own problem --- but --- maybe now it really is part of the war the U.S. has been fighting in Afghanistan.
So this stuff isn't so simple.
September 7
A question every American has asked about the outside world is, "Why do they hate us?" Asking the question doesn't mean there's patience for a complex answer unfortunately. It's easier to grab the simple answer, "They hate us for our freedom." After all, we're good people, we don't hurt anyone else, and we're the freest country, so anyone who hates us must hate freedom, and that's why they attack us. There, easy to understand, no introspection required, no need to change anything we do except to hit back. Most Americans also believe the rest of the world admires our freedom, even if these beliefs seem contradictory. Adherents of this simplicity include the Bush administration. Whether individual members truly believe it use it cynically, it makes good politics. What a shame it isn't true. Something Americans seem unable to accept is that we're admired for our democracy, that part is right, but despised for what we actually do. We need only ask, as a Zogby poll did. At the least, that should dispel any notion we've gained respect since Bush became the acting president. In fact, it was spelled out that he's the biggest problem. He's tried to finesse this by appealing to American unilateralism, with cutting remarks about Kerry getting permission from Paris to defend the country, similar sorts of remarks about Europe and the UN. That's good for appealing to Americans who don't care what the rest of the world thinks, bad for getting other countries to contribute soldiers to wars that mostly benefit us, or for getting them to hunt down the Al Qaida cells in their countries. Here's the Zogby report.
September 6
I guess every day will be a busy news day until the election is over, unless we have more voting problems of course. But those touch screen machines will fix that, right?
This story on The World is another example of how things get twisted when young men are sent to war by arrogant leaders who think they're above the law. The Air Force reports that rape remains a problem, and the armed forces have been trying for years to do something about it. The problem is particularly acute in Iraq and Afghanistan. Women in the green zone in Baghdad, supposedly the safe spot for Americans, have been told not to walk alone at night. That's inside the green zone, not outside. They face a serious threat from male soldiers and contractors. Why would this be? Is there something particularly wrong with American men? No, because this problem wouldn't be bigger in the green zone. Are we recruiting rapists to be soldiers? Seems unlikely, because again the problem wouldn't be greater just in one or two areas. Could the problem be that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Co. have said we are the great USA which can throw its weight around and not obey the rules? If that was the case, it would manifest itself in other ways, like the abuse of prisoners. And indeed it has. Corruption starts at the top.
Like I said two days ago, no reason to panic about the polls. A CNN Gallup poll shows Bush got only a couple points of bounce. He still leads, but polls vary. Leading in polls is encouraging to supporters of the leader, and some people vote for the likely winner. Be glad that's not so prevalent as in primaries, and don't lose sight that this election is still winnable. Even when your candidate doesn't win, doing better can help the party in other races.
Another follow up from Saturday: Nick Coleman explains why removing honors bestowed on Floyd B. Olson is vandalism by reminding Minnesotans of why Olson is our greatest governor.
Critics of Michael Moore call him an egotist. Surely an egotist would take the chance to grab a second Oscar. A movie with so much impact, it's revolutionized the market for documentaries, is guaranteed to get nominated for Best Documentary. Moore denies he's guaranteed to win, but acknowledges Fahrenheit 911 is the 800 pound gorilla in the documentary category. He says another deserving documentary should get a chance. Moore-haters will probably say he's just pretending to be nice, but giving up the Oscar is real. He's done this so his film can be on television before the election, which makes it ineligible for Best Documentary. TV isn't likely, because it violates the deal with his DVD distributor so Moore has to get permission, which he sounds pessimistic about. The point, Moore bashers, is that he is losing, not gaining, money and attention for himself to defeat Bush. You don't have to agree with his politics, maybe you don't agree his motives are pure, but at least pick apart the factual errors -- if you can find them.
September 5
Maybe the acting president will finally learn that saying about people in glass houses. After employing the old tactic of having surrogates do the dirty work of smearing an opponent, in this case of John Kerry about events in the early 70's, the same thing may be happening right back to him. At the same time Kerry was serving in Vietnam and leading the protests at home, Bush Jr. was sort of serving in the Air National Guard. The evidence he was AWOL and relying on Daddy's influence to get away with breaking rules isn't conclusive, but evidence to the contrary is absent. It's also about events in the early 70's so it might seem irrelevant if Bush's countenancing of smear campaigns against opponents didn't say something about Bush now. The article I linked to is an interview with a woman who claims to have witnessed some things herself, and heard the rest from her late husband who was close to the Bush family. How ironic: stuff is being said about Bush when he was young by people who have some information only second hand. Bush brought this on himself. Maybe at long last the Bush family habit of smearing opponents has finally caught up with them. Dubya's infamous refusal to ever admit a mistake may be what's really hurting him here. If the stuff about his young days is true, he could just admit to it, and say he's reformed and matured, and that would be the end of it. Of course, then he couldn't go after his opponents the same way.
More substantially, sometimes numbers can make things plain. The Independent has compiled quite a list. If anyone still doubts that Bush ignored terrorism and was focused intently on Iraq before 911, this is telling:
"1 Number of Bush administration public statements on National security issued between 20 January 2001 and 10 September 2001 that mentioned al-Qa'ida.104 Number of Bush administration public statements on National security and defence in the same period that mentioned Iraq or Saddam Hussein."
If you're supporting Bush because of his competency as commander-in-chief, look at this:
"43 Percentage of the entire world's military spending that the US spends on defence. (That was in 2002, the year before the invasion of Iraq.)"Think about it, that much of the world's defense spending, and this war in Iraq has stretched our resources thin, even with all the contractors and mercenaries. Afghanistan is still raging, but consumes a fraction of the resources devoted to Iraq. Something just seems like mismanagement.
Actually there is a number that helps explain it, and helps explain why so many people are seeing the U.S. as an empire:
"130 Approximate Number of countries (out of a total of 191 recognised by the United Nations) with a US military presence."
Here's this substantiation of the AWOL charge:
"$3,500 Reward a group of veterans offered in 2000 for anyone who could confirm Bush's Alabama guard service.600-700 Number of guardsmen who were in Bush's unit during that period.
0 Number of guardsmen from that period who came forward with information about Bush's guard service."
September 4
The Taxpayers League of Minnesota, a group of tiny membership but much money, and which brought to Minnesota that disastrous no tax pledge it convinced the milquetoasts in the state Republican party to sign on to, has launched a petition drive to rename Olson Memorial Highway for Ronald Reagan, and likewise replace all of Olson's statue with Reagan. C.A. Ray makes a case against this in today's Star Tribune. Though it's the one-page version, do what The Taxpayers League of Minnesota should do before they tear down a great man and read this biography. Unfortunately, I think the League's odds of success are better than even. They have the state Republicans eating out of their hand. The Republicans have made a demi-god out of Reagan. Olson died 68 years ago and most Minnesotans have no idea who he was. The only hope of stopping this thing is to tell Minnesotans who he was before they buy into the League's posthumous smear, so even if they think Reagan was a great man, they may be amenable to the idea that he can be honored without dishonoring another great man. There are more highways to be named and more places for statues.
Let's not despair folks. I refer to polls showing Bush has an 11 point lead over Kerry. I first heard Bush got an 11 point bounce. That's actually a 5-7 point bounce depending on the poll. That's better than Kerry got, but not that much. It seems bigger when Kerry's bounce was small and the election is so close. However, remember that the conventions are usually a couple weeks apart. They were five weeks apart. Most voters don't even remember the Democratic convention at this point. Would Kerry's bounce have been bigger without the fake terror alert to steal the headlines? Who knows. I do know it was heartening to finally hear Kerry himself hitting back hard on Bush and Cheney's status as chickenhawks. Now he must be willing to go after the lies about Iraq and mishandling of 911. Show Bush in that classroom. Ask what would have been different if Bush had read the PDB warning about Bin Laden planning to attack with airplanes. Ask why he did nothing when one of his staff exposed an undercover agent.
September 3
The benefit of watching the GOP convention is the party platform is now clear:
- Bush happened to be in office when 911 occurred.
That awful thing that jumps out is that Bush and the Republicans, despite no WMDs being found, and even after Bush himself has admitted they didn't find ties between Saddam and Al Qaida, are still tying together the war in Iraq and the war on terror like it's all wrapped together in a tidy package. They've returned to the pre-truth rhetoric. The reasoning is poll driven: on an issue by issue comparison, the only thing where Bush leads Kerry is terrorism. The biggest issues are terrorism and Iraq. Therefore, Bush's best chance of winning an honest election (an election not decided by brother Jeb or Diebold) lies in making terrorism the big issue and tying it to Iraq. That's why there were lots of mentions of Saddam, few of Al Qaida.
A Democratic counterattack seems clear. Part one, they must cast doubt upon Bush's handling of terrorism. It's basically the same as how the Republicans attacked Kerry's service record to weaken a central point of his campaign, but that strategy will be much stronger when the facts stand up to scrutiny. The Democrats must remind the public of how Bush missed warnings, ignored Clinton's plan to attack Afghanistan after the Cole was attacked, in short missed anything that might have foiled 911. They need to remind the public of Bush's seven minutes of silence when he was told about the second tower being hit. They need to show how Bush stonewalled the 911 commission. Part two, they must separate in the public mind the war in Iraq from the war on Al Qaida. The evidence, or lack thereof, has come out, but the Republicans have been repeating the opposite so much the public is starting to think it's true, or at least they don't know what to believe.
Speaking of Clinton's plan, there was a whopper of a lie told by New York Gov. Pataki in his speech introducing Bush. He's an effective speaker and was giving a positive speech until he mentioned the Islamic terrorist attacks during the Clinton administration. He said Clinton did nothing in response. The 911 commission report showed that Clinton took terrorism far more seriously than Bush. Pataki conveniently forget that after the first World Trade Center bombing, Clinton caught the men who did it. They're still sitting in prison. After the embassy bombings, he bombed Al Qaida camps in Afghanistan and a suspected chemical weapons plant in Sudan. The effictiveness of those retaliatory strikes is debatable since he plant in Sudan made aspirin, so reluctance to drop more bombs on uncertain targets would be understandable, and bombs in Afghanistan missed Bin Laden, but there's no way anyone can say he did nothing. Finally, after the Cole was hit, Clinton drew up the plan to take out AL Qaida and the Taliban. The earliest it could have been launched was December. It wold still have been in progress when the new administration took over, so Clinton decided to let Bush make his own decision. The plan languished until 911. Anyone who doubts what Clinton did need only look at the 911 commission report and Richard Clark's book.
It bears repeating that lies matter. Republicans used to like to say "character counts" when they thought it would help against Clinton. I thought they were right that character counts, and it still does. Why would anyone vote for people who have been caught in so many lies?
September 1
Britain has its answer to Lila Lipscomb, the grieving mother in Fahrenheit 911 who may be the mother who brings down the acting president. Rose Gentle, whose son was killed in Iraq, gave Tony Blair what for over the death of her son. Her words to the deputy Prime Minister when she stormed out of 10 Downing Street, and her daughter's words in a letter to the Prime Minister. Mrs. Gentle has since become a leader of the anti-war movement in Britain. What's almost painful is I had more respect for Tony Blair than any other current national leader, including the American presidents he's contemporaneous with. It is a mystery to me that he followed Bush to war and didn't see through the evidence. As Bush's evidence was unraveling before the war, Blair's support was the one thing that gave me pause. He didn't support the war to be popular, because other than the very start of the war, the British public always opposed it. Blair's own party opposed it. I looked at how Blair acted like no prior prime minister to make peace in Ulster, and I couldn't fathom his thinking. I still can't.
Zell Miller, the last Dixiecrat, took the gloves off for the Republicans. They've been so careful to say they're just criticizing the Democrats' record and positions, but not questioning anyone's patriotism. That's over not that he used the exact words, "they are not patriotic." According to Miller, anyone who opposes Bush during war is trying to tear the country apart. He referred to the Democrats' "manic obsession to bring down our commander in chief." The man had the nerve to rant and rave, and then in an interview on CNN, act surprised he came across angry. Kudos to Wolf Blitzer, Judy Woodruff, and Jeff Geenfield who called Miller on his inaccuracies and his own flip-flops. They pointed out that Kerry voted for 16 of 19 defense bills, and that Cheney himself had opposed many of the weapons systems Miller criticized Kerry for not supporting. Zell, besides being honest enough to switch parties, you should stop equating blind obedience with patriotism.
In case anyone thought the corporate scandals, forgotten in the rush to war in 2002, have come to an end, there was a doozy today. Hollinger, the parent company of the Chicago Sun Times, was robbed of 95 %of their profits by two top execs. Most of it was stolen by paying money to a management company that just happened to belong to them. Yes, they paid nine figure sums to their company to do what they were doing anyway. Rest assured here is a Republican link, as usual. The board of directors, who paid themselves nice ill-gotten gains too, include Richard Perle, who helped put the neocon plan for Iraq into effect and lobbied for a defense contractor while he was on the Defense Advisory Board, and Henry Kissinger, who has to be careful where he travels lest he be arrested for war crimes, and who was Bush's first choice to chair the 911 commission (part of the stonewalling). An interesting side-note: the story was at the top of the front page in the rival Chicago Tribune, but the Sun Times itself had a banner at the top of the front page with the story on page 78.
See the archives for earlier entries.
