The Distant Ocean

More real lessons of Vietnam

Our education on the real lesson of Vietnam proceeds apace, this time from the mainstream left.  First, Andrew J. Bacevich weighs in:

Here are a few of the lessons that [Bush] overlooks.

In unconventional wars, body counts don’t really count. In the Vietnam War, superior American firepower enabled U.S. forces to prevail in most tactical engagements. We killed plenty of North Vietnamese and Viet Cong. But killing didn’t produce victory — the exertions of U.S. troops all too frequently proved to be counterproductive.

"Killing didn't produce victory," eh?  Now that's profound.  It implicitly assumes that the deaths of non-Americans matter only to the extent that they impact American goals and policy, and have no other inherent significance. And it also implies that if killing does produce victory, then it's ok.  (This could change professional sports forever, and I say that's for the best; after all, isn't it about time they caught up with the visionaries behind Rollerball?)

Next, Rosa Brooks tosses out her two cents:

For most Americans, the lessons of Vietnam were reasonably clear before we invaded Iraq and have been painfully reinforced by the ongoing disaster there:

Don’t fight needless wars; don’t go blundering around in countries where you don’t know the language, history or culture; don’t underestimate the power of nationalism, ethnicity and religion to bind together — or tear apart — people whose interests otherwise seem to diverge or converge; and, most of all, don’t imagine that military force can solve fundamentally political problems.

Again, penetrating insight.  But there's a little problem there, Rosa: many argued, and many would argue to this day, that Vietnam was a deeply necessary war--and there will always be someone to make that argument in almost any instance.  So "don't fight needless wars" would seem to be relative to the point of meaninglessness.

For all the evident erudition of these patient teachers of ours, I prefer a much simpler lesson from a more authoritative source--namely the Nuremberg Tribunal, which declared:

To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime, it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.

The real lesson I take from this straightforward statement is that the lives of Vietnamese (and everyone else in the world) matter exactly as much as the lives of Americans, and the US has no right to end them by initiating wars of aggression.  Sadly, as the articles I've cited illustrate, this simple lesson is all but inexpressible in the mainstream media.

If you like your lessons even more basic than that, though, you can read the final word from the father of George Bush's favorite philosopher.

Is Blackwater getting its own air force?

It sure looks like they're headed in that direction:

Security and training company Blackwater USA confirmed that it has applied for a license to acquire one Embraer Super Tucano light attack trainer. The acquisition is on hold pending licensing approval by the US government, a Blackwater spokeswoman said. ...

The pending license also mandates that all weapons, including the 12.7mm, wing-mounted guns and provisions for smart bomb stores, are not used as part of the training mission.

The pending deal for the two-seat Super Tucano would launch Blackwater’s first training programme dedicated towards a light attack jet. Brazil and Columbia both employ the Super Tucano to battle drug smugglers and insurgents.

So if this deal goes through, here's what Blackwater will end up with:

Just one, and sans the wing-mounted guns and the bombs, of course...for now.  But it seems likely that it's only a matter of time before a company owned by a right-wing fundamentalist has its own private air force in addition to its own private army.

The future just looks brighter every day, doesn't it?

The silent majority

Uri Avnery describes the results of secret polls taken when Ariel Sharon was in power in Israel:

The public was presented with a question that came close to the final Clinton Proposal and the Geneva Initiative: Are you for a peace that would include a Palestinian state, withdrawal from almost all occupied territories, giving up the Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem and dismantling most settlements?

The results were very instructive. In 2002, 73% (seventy three percent!) supported this solution. In the next two years, support declined, but it was still accepted by the majority.

Avnery adduces this information to illustrate the Israeli response to Palestinian violence, but it's interesting on its own.  It echoes similar findings from 2002:

One of the best-kept secrets in Israel is that most Israelis are fed up with the occupation, and just want to get out.

According to June's findings by Mina Zemach, Israel's foremost pollster, 63% of Israelis are in favor of "unilateral withdrawal." In fact, 69% call for the evacuation of "all" or "most of" the settlements.

Mina's numbers are corroborated by everybody else: The Peace Index of Tel-Aviv University's Tami Steinmetz Center found that 65% of Israelis "are prepared to evacuate the settlements under a unilateral separation program".

A poll commissioned by Peace Now a month earlier revealed that 59% of Israelis support immediate evacuation of most settlements, followed by a unilateral withdrawal of the army from the occupied territories.

... Most Israelis are not aware that the majority wants the occupation to go away. To illustrate, I report an informal experiment conducted by peace activist Ron HaCohen in his Tel-Aviv University class. When asked what opinion the students believed was most common among Israelis, they guessed "dismantle most" or "dismantle only a few" of the settlements. Little did they suspect that the category "dismantle ALL the settlements" was the one most commonly chosen. Ron's students guessed that the Israeli public was much more pro-settlement than it actually is. Most people, I believe, feel this way.

If so many Israelis wanted to dismantle all the settlements and withdraw the army from the Occupied Territories, why didn't it happen?  The author mentions a few views on the topic that I'd say cover most of it:

Mark Mellman, one of the top political consultants in Washington, was not surprised. He said that it's not unusual for policymakers to ignore majority views, and that it's our job to get them to sit up and notice.

Ron HaCohen said, "Our main source of information about what people think, feel or believe is the mass media. The media portray the Israeli people as much more pro-settlements than they really are."

Hanna Kim suggests that the power of the settlements is a combination of their integration into the Israeli economy and the effectiveness of their Knesset lobby.

So in large part, the problem in Israel is a political class that refuses to acknowledge or honor the wishes of the majority of the population--with predictably catastrophic results.  As in Israel, so in the United States.

Satan: "Sorry, I'm otherwise occupied"

As the handwriting has started filling up the wall over the past few months, I've occasionally wondered who Bush could nominate as a fitting successor to Alberto Gonzales.  After all, Gonzales is the person who managed the seemingly impossible feat of turning booby-hating John "PATRIOT ACT" Ashcroft into a privacy protection martyr.

Who could Bush possibly nominate as an encore?  After all, Boss Tweed, Yuri Andropov, and Heinrich Himmler are all dead.  And on the flip side, one has to wonder how many hooves a nominee would need to have before the Democrats would be willing to block the nomination.

The humanity of Israeli checkpoints

This unimaginably horrible story is, to Israel's eternal shame, by no means unique:

GAZA CITY: An ill, one-year-old Palestinian baby died in his father's arms on Sunday after the pair passed several hours under baking sun waiting to cross from the Gaza Strip into Israel, medics said. Ibrahim Abu Nahel and his father arrived at the Erez border crossing between Gaza and Israel at 8 a.m. on Sunday, with the aim of traveling to the Yehelov Hospital near Tel Aviv to get treatment for the baby's heart condition, they said. The pair waited for four hours in the sun for the Israeli authorities to allow them to pass through, despite having had a permit to enter the Jewish state, and Nahel died, they said.

I've waited at the Erez border crossing to go from the Gaza Strip into Israel also, but not for four hours and not under the baking sun.  Since I had a blue American passport, I was conducted into the cool, comfortable Israeli border control building.  There were dozens of Israeli soldiers and border guards at Erez, in the building, in heavily fortified checkpoints, or watching us through sniper scopes, and so I can imagine how many Israelis must have been aware of the situation these people were facing--but didn't allow them through any faster.  The same Israeli security guard at Ben Gurion Airport who told me that "we own your parliament" also informed me that Palestinians are animals who don't love their children or care if they die; perhaps the Israelis at Erez shared her view, and so they felt no sense of urgency, knowing that the two-legged beasts wouldn't even mourn the loss of their child if it should come to that.

To give you just a tiny sense of what life is like for Palestinians every day, here's what I wrote in 2002 about my experience with Abu Houli, another infamous manifestation of Israeli apartheid in Gaza:

This was no makeshift checkpoint along the lines of those in the West Bank, but rather a fortified military position.  Sniper towers were in evidence all around it.  Abu Houli is one of the most notorious checkpoints in Gaza or the West Bank, and with good reason.  It marks the intersection of the main Palestinian road in Gaza with an Israeli settler-only road, and priority is given to the Israeli settlers and military traffic.  It is only opened twice a day for Palestinian traffic, once in the morning and once in the evening, and then for only an hour or so each time.  Cars stack up, sometimes for up to two miles on either side of the checkpoint, filled with people waiting to pass to the other side of Gaza.  The actual times at which it will be opened for Palestinians are unpredictable, and sometimes the Israelis do not open it at all.  When that happens, Palestinians trapped there in the press of cars have a choice: try to walk back to their homes (assuming they’re on the right side of the checkpoint, are within walking distance, and are in good enough health to do so), or sleep in their cars overnight and hope that the checkpoint will be opened in the morning.  And all the while they are waiting, either choking on the constantly blowing sand and dust or sweltering in their closed cars in order to avoid it, they can watch Israeli settlers drive by at high speed along the settler-only highway.

Here's what Abu Houli looked like from the very front of the endless mass of cars (click on the photo for a larger image); you can see the main sniper tower, the gate, a tiny fraction of the razor wire, and the concrete wall protecting the Israeli-only road:

What you don't see are the other sniper positions, the squad of Israeli soldiers unrolling yet more razor wire as another soldier trained a heavy machine gun on the crowd of civilians, or the heavily-armed APC that pulled up beside the crowd and did the same.  It was educational for me as an American citizen to see just how the Israelis were using the $3 billion they were receiving each year from my government (and also educational--and deeply humbling--that despite the fact that they're fully aware of this, the Palestinians we met always treated us with tremendous hospitality and friendliness).

This monstrous checkpoint is finally gone now, dismantled by the Palestinians after they took control of Gaza in 2005.  But there are still hundreds of checkpoints and other obstructions in the West Bank, fulfilling their purpose of destroying Palestinian lives minute by minute.  We can only hope a day will come when they've all gone the way of Abu Houli.  But even if that happens, I don't know how Israel can ever atone for what it's done to millions of people no different from this poor couple and their child.

They're rubber, he's glue

In looking up examples of Bushian commentary on dissent for the purposes of establishing some of that well-loved ironic juxtaposition, I happened across this gem from November 2001:

BUSH: Like the fascists and totalitarians before them, these [people] try to impose their radical views through threats and violence.  We see the same intolerance of dissent; the same mad, global ambitions; the same brutal determination to control every life and all of life.

Huh.  Yeah.  That's, uh, a very good description of, err...the terrorists.

Imagine what a wonderful world we could have if only the pot and the kettle would transport themselves to Saturn and blow each other up there in the name of their respective religions, and leave the rest of us the hell alone.

Do what the president says!

On Wednesday, amidst an otherwise uninterrupted torrent of stupid, George Bush had this to say about Osama bin Laden and his associates:

BUSH: We must remember the words of the enemy.  We must listen to what they say.

Now, ordinarily I might be a little averse to taking advice from Bush, but maybe in this case we should give it a try.  Let's see just what it is bin Laden has said:

The greatest rule of safety is justice, and stopping injustice and aggression. It was said: Oppression kills the oppressors and the hotbed of injustice is evil. The situation in occupied Palestine is an example. What happened on 11 September [2001] and 11 March [the Madrid train bombings] is your commodity that was returned to you.

It is known that security is a pressing necessity for all mankind. We do not agree that you should monopolise it only for yourselves. Also, vigilant people do not allow their politicians to tamper with their security.

Having said this, we would like to inform you that labelling us and our acts as terrorism is also a description of you and of your acts. Reaction comes at the same level as the original action. Our acts are reaction to your own acts, which are represented by the destruction and killing of our kinfolk in Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine.

As much as it pains me to say so, I have to agree that Bush has a point this time.

The real lesson of Vietnam

If you're like me, you've wished fervently that you could learn the real lesson of Vietnam.  The question has plagued you through restless days and sweaty-sheeted nights.  You've given up any hope of unraveling this conundrum on your own, and you've wailed in despair: "Oh where, where can I turn to learn the real lesson of Vietnam?!?"

Well, wonder no longer--our collective cries of anguished befuddlement have finally been heard.  Commenting on Bush's stunningly asinine Iraq-Vietnam analogy, the New York Times offers us, at long last, the answer:

The real lesson of Vietnam for Iraq is clear enough. America lost that war because a succession of changes in South Vietnamese leadership, many of them inspired by Washington, never produced an effective government in Saigon.

Yes...yes, that's deep.  We'll have to think on it.  But our education doesn't end there. The Los Angeles Times also has an answer for us, and though it's a bit different from the first, it surely merits our serious consideration as well:

The real lesson of Vietnam is that its civil war was a nationalist struggle that toppled no communist "dominoes" across Asia. Bush's rhetoric implying an Al Qaeda "domino effect" in the Middle East has the same false ring.

But even that isn't the final answer that's being offered to us.  Some foreigners with funny-sounding names apparently think that they know what the real lesson of Vietnam is:

"With regard to the American war in Vietnam, everyone knows that we fought to defend our country and that this was a righteous war of the Vietnamese people," Foreign Ministry spokesman Le Dung said. "And we all know that the war caused tremendous suffering and losses to the Vietnamese people." ...

Ton Nu Thi Ninh, former chairwoman of the National Assembly's committee on foreign affairs, said ... "The price we, the Vietnamese people on both sides, paid during the war was due to the fact that the Americans went into Vietnam in the first place."

I admit, though, I can't quite fathom what they're getting at.  It almost seems like they're trying to imply that the United States never had a right to attack Vietnam at all, and that Vietnamese lives matter more than US political maneuvering.  But that's absurd; after all, neither the New York Times nor the Los Angeles Times said anything remotely like it!

But fortunately we don't need to bother investing the mental effort to unravel their arcane utterances, since they're clearly misinformed, obviously unqualified to comment, and quite possibly insane.

UPDATE: Yet more incomprehensible statements from Ms. Ninh:

"It is very ill-considered and, frankly, cavalier to make use of Vietnam in such a way to extricate himself from the Iraq debate," said Ton Nu Thi Ninh, former deputy chair of the foreign relations committee of Vietnam's National Assembly. "Opening this up again can only rekindle resentment, antagonisms that have been put on the shelf for the sake of looking into the future."

Vietnam was "an unjustified and a wrong war in the first place so to start analysing things only from the withdrawal of US troops is really puzzling", she said. "The root of the problem is not the withdrawal, it's the very fact of starting up the war in the first place."

"An unjustified and a wrong war in the first place"?  Sure, 69% of Americans may agree with her that the US attack on Vietnam was a mistake and nearly as many may think it was "fundamentally wrong and immoral", but who are we supposed to listen to--them, or the New York Times?

The DOTIGOTUS (or: You can't get there from here)

Michael Cohen (a former speechwriter for the US ambassador to the UN) illustrates why so many Americans are incapable of understanding US foreign policy:

I believe that America is inherently good. That goodness, if you will, comes from the basic values that I believe underpin this nation, from not only our founding documents and in particular the Bill of Rights, but from the ongoing efforts to ensure the spread of freedom and opporunity  [sic] to all our citizens. If you think this sounds hackneyed that is your right - you have as much right to hate America as I do to love it, but I apologize to no one for my patriotism and basic faith in America and its people.

The belief that America is inherently good is what makes so many people impervious to mountains of evidence that the United States is, in fact, exactly like every other powerful nation throughout history: driven first and foremost by its interests (namely the interests of those who govern it and the groups they represent); bent on extending its control and influence; and concerned with human rights and international law mainly to the extent that they can be used to rationalize and provide cover for those actual underlying motivations.

When this Doctrine of the Inherent Goodness of the United States is fixed firmly in someone's mind, they literally can't get there from here.  They've foreclosed the possibility of arriving at one entire set of conclusions before the questions are even considered.  It's like asserting categorically that nothing heavier than air can fly under its own power, and then trying to explain how a jumbo jet gets from London to Rome; it's literally impossible to arrive at the correct explanation.

Adherents of the DOTIGOTUS are constantly faced with cognitive dissonance, which can only be resolved through increasingly tortured rationalizations and outright rejection of reality.  The overthrow of Iranian democracy and support for the Shah of Iran (along with a host of other tyrants), the killing of millions of Vietnamese, the sponsorship of and bipartisan support for the genocidal Indonesian invasion of East Timor, the instigation of mass slaughter in Central America throughout the 1980s, the refusal even to call what was happening in Rwanda in 1994 "genocide" and the shameful lies that were offered for the failure to act--these are just a few of the endless examples in which reality and the DOTIGOTUS conflict.  In each of these cases (and in the dozens I didn't mention) you'll find true believers doing everything in their power to avoid the simple, obvious conclusion that the US acts without any regard for human rights or international law.

I'm speaking from experience here, because I wholeheartedly embraced the DOTIGOTUS for most of my life.  I believed, reflexively, that the United States was inherently good, and I interpreted everything the US did on the basis of this belief.  This was not in any way a considered position; it was just my birthright as an American, and particularly so as the son of a military officer.  It was as unquestioned and natural to me as breathing.

My embarrassingly naive beliefs collided violently with reality in 1991, after I'd just finished watching the US decimate Iraq in the name of freedom and human rights. I'd soaked up the news coverage gleefully night after night, cheering each bomb and every cruise missile we fired at the enemy, impatiently flipping channels to try to catch the good bits one more time.  Here was America fulfilling its "basic values" and displaying to the world its willingness to fight for the cause of freedom.

But after the inevitable US victory (and by extension my own personal victory as well), something inexplicable happened.  Iraqi Shiites and Kurds listened to George H.W. Bush's call to rise up against Saddam Hussein, and Hussein responded with predictably brutal force, killing tens of thousands.  But the US did nothing to block Hussein or assist the rebels in any way, despite the rising death toll and increasing criticism.  The news reports that used to validate my viewpoint were now contradicting it at every turn--and the hollow repetition of official excuses by the talking heads didn't soften the impact at all.  There was simply no way to square what the US was doing (and what US officials were saying) with my beliefs, and I felt deeply unsettled and genuinely confused.

So how did I resolve the conflict?  The way any good DOTIGOTUS believer would: I assumed that there must be more to it than I was hearing, and that if I knew what government officials knew I might see that their approach was the one that would actually do the most good in the long run.  At the worst, I thought that they were acting out of a caution that sacrificed our lofty values on the altar of pragmatism, and that while this may have been a mistake, it was only a momentary diversion from the path of righteousness (soon to be rejoined when a Democrat took over the White House).

The simple truth--that the lives of those Iraqis mattered not one whit in the political calculations of the US government--was unthinkable to me, and wouldn't be for many years, when I finally started paying close attention to politics in general and US foreign policy in particular.  It's still amazing to me how simple it became to understand the US's role in the world once I was willing to follow the facts wherever they might lead rather than trying to bend reality to a predetermined conclusion.

When I talk to true believers these days I'll often suggest that they suspend this one assumption, even if only momentarily or for the sake of argument.  It may be the first time they've tried looking at the US as they would any other country in the world, and if they're open-minded at all the experience will make them think--and there's a good chance it will stay with them.

Ironic juxtaposition!

Everyone loves ironic juxtaposition, don't they?  I mean, really, do you know anyone who doesn't get a laugh out of ironic juxtaposition?  I know I don't.  So let's give it a try!  Ok, here's the first citation:

A White House manual that came to light recently gives presidential advance staffers extensive instructions in the art of "deterring potential protestors" from President Bush's public appearances around the country.

Among other things, any event must be open only to those with tickets tightly controlled by organizers. Those entering must be screened in case they are hiding secret signs. Any anti-Bush demonstrators who manage to get in anyway should be shouted down by "rally squads" stationed in strategic locations. And if that does not work, they should be thrown out.

But that does not mean the White House is against dissent -- just so long as the president does not see it.

I bet you know what's coming next, don't you?  Yep--that's right!  Here's the second citation:

BUSH: The terrorists ... seek to spread a political vision of their own -- a harsh plan for life that crushes freedom, tolerance, and dissent.

With these two citations in front of us now, it's only natural to compare them.  And when we do, I think you'll agree that we find they are ironically juxtaposed.  And we've already established that ironic juxtaposition is funny.  Therefore, this posting is funny too!

What commie pinko leftist said this?

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people ... This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron."

Who could it be?  Ralph Nader?  Martin Luther King?  Jesus?

No, that would be Dwight D. Eisenhower--Republican.  The same crazed conspiracy nut who coined the phrase "military-industrial complex."

This is not to confuse words with deeds, of course...but just try to imagine any major politician, regardless of party affiliation, saying anything remotely approaching those words today.

Times certainly have changed.

Today's poetry corner

Considering the nuclear destruction of the planet put me in mind of one of my favorite poems--"Fire and Ice", by Robert Frost:

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

This flawless verse was written in 1920, so there was nothing subatomic on Frost's mind when he wrote it.  It can be read on multiple levels--on the surface level as musings about our collective fate, or on the very personal level as an observation of the ways that relationships end.  What I take from it at any given time depends entirely on my state of mind.  It's a measure of Frost's gift that he could express so much (with such depth, craft, and wit) in so few words.

Will the poetry corner become a regular feature here in the sometimes-murky waters of the distant ocean?  Only time will tell.

"The Real Verdict on Jose Padilla"

There's a worthwhile article in the Washington Post about the Jose Padilla trial, written by Jenny S. Martinez, the attorney in his civil case.  The lede:

The conclusion of Jose Padilla's criminal trial in a federal court yesterday shows that waging the "war on terror" does not require giving up our constitutional values or substituting military rule for the rule of law. The jury's guilty verdict should be appealed, but the verdict on the Constitution is in: We should keep it.

It's worth reading the rest, if for no other reason than to remind yourself that despite the existence of man-shaped cacodemons like John Yoo, there are still lawyers who believe in fundamental principles of human rights and human decency.

3203 A.D.: US apologizes to Iraqis

Assuming the Earth hasn't melted by then thanks to terminal climate change or nuclear barbecue, we might finally see an apology from the US to Iraqis in 3203 A.D.--if the US has the decency to follow the example set by Denmark, that is:

More than 1,200 years ago hordes of bloodthirsty Viking raiders descended on Ireland, pillaging monasteries and massacring the inhabitants. Yesterday, one of their more mild-mannered descendants stepped ashore to apologise.

The Danish culture minister, Brian Mikkelson, who was in Dublin to participate in celebrations marking the arrival of a replica Norse longboat, apologised for the invasion and destruction inflicted. "In Denmark we are certainly proud of this ship, but we are not proud of the damages to the people of Ireland that followed in the footsteps of the Vikings," Mr Mikkelson declared in his welcoming speech delivered on the dockside at the river Liffey. "But the warmth and friendliness with which you greet us today and the Viking ship show us that, luckily, it has all been forgiven."

If there's any justice in the future world, this statement will be delivered by the reanimated husk of George H.W. "I will never apologize for the United States--€”I don't care what the facts are" Bush, under the telekinetic control of the sentient cockroaches who will no doubt rule the entire North American land mass by that time.

What to do in a terrorist attack

This is required reading.

(Indirectly via this, which is also spleen-out-the-nose funny.)

The source for Democrat/Republican differences

Ask.com (née Ask Jeeves) claims that their "ExpertRank algorithm goes beyond mere link popularity (which ranks pages based on the sheer volume of links pointing to a particular page) to determine popularity among pages considered to be experts on the topic of your search."  And apparently their approach is paying off, according to the latest search engine rankings.

I mention this as background to my amusing discovery yesterday that someone had been directed to a posting of mine based on the Ask.com query, "How Are Democrats Different from Republicans?"  Ask ranks my posting as the third most useful source of information for that question; if we're to take them at their word, this is apparently since I'm considered to be one of the foremost "experts on the topic", ranked just behind the Missouri Digital News and some right-wing bozo.

Now don't get me wrong, Ask, I do appreciate the referral, and I even agree that the posting you linked to is pretty informative.  In a just world it would be read, memorized, and standardized-tested-for in every school on the face of the planet.  But I can't help but think that maybe, just maybe, this reveals that there's a teensy weensy little flaw in your ExpertRank algorithm.

(Related: Google used to think this site was the source for FTC merger information.  Not so much anymore.  Still riding high for "shambling man-turd", though!)

Go Green, Dennis!

Dennis Kucinich is the one Democrat that I might actually vote for were he to win the nomination; as I've said before, I agree with his positions on many issues and I have a lot of respect for him (in spite of his distressing willingness to sell out his supporters and be a good little Democrat when push comes to shove).  But there are a lot of reasons why he'll never win the Democratic Party nomination--not least among them this:

      

In a country as shallow as this one there's just no way a guy with Kucinich's appearance (and height) is going to find success in one of the mainstream parties, certainly not as a tree-hugging lefty.  It's a sad truth, but there it is.

As things stand now, Kucinich's main function on the national stage is to provide a fig leaf for the Democrats on their left flank, and to sap the energies of progressives by giving them a safe establishment figure on whom to focus their time and effort.  By continuing to be a token progressive in a party full of utterly compromised corporate centrists, he's only undermining his own causes and enervating his natural allies.

If Kucinich really wants to further the progressive cause, establish a higher profile, and stay true to his (expressed) values, I think the best thing he could possibly do would be to switch his party affiliation from Democrat to Green.  It would give the Greens an immediate presence in Congress and therefore much greater credibility nationwide even as it spotlighted the deficiencies in the Democratic party.  It would open up in the public mind--and in the minds of Democratic leaders--the understanding that this option exists, and is truly viable.  It would become an escape hatch in the Hindenburg of the two-party system, and its very existence would exert pressure on the Democrats to adopt progressive positions.  (And as long as we're dreaming here, just imagine the impact if other progressive Democrats followed suit--or even better, if they all left the Democrats for the Greens at the same time.)

I often see talk from progressives about Nader running as a Democrat on a ticket with Kucinich, but that's just a recipe for two prominent progressives to be marginalized and ignored instead of one.  But if Kucinich became a Green and then he and Nader ran together, you'd have two major names under the Green banner.  It's still vanishingly unlikely that they'd win, of course, but it would firmly establish the Greens as a serious party at the national level, and it would energize the progressive movement as nothing else has.

So think about it, Dennis.  You can stay in a party where good hair and good looks matter more than good policies, or you can be in the vanguard of those who value substance over style.  You can keep up your current practice of being the court jester in the kingdom of the blind, mounting quixotic and doomed White House runs every four years, or you can help establish a truly progressive party in the US as an alternative to the Democrats--and the Republicans, for that matter.  Which of those alternatives is more worth your time?

How would you like that cooked?

As I've observed before, with Alexander Cockburn one day it's sausage and the next day it's pig anuses.  Happily, today he's got a nice big helping of sausage for us:

Led by Democrats since the start of this year, the US Congress now has a “confidence” rating of 14 per cent, the lowest since Gallup started asking the question in 1973 and five points lower than the Republicans scored last year.

The voters put the Democrats in to end the war and it’s escalating. The Democrats voted money for the surge. They voted for the next $459.6 billion military budget. Their latest achievement is to provide enough votes in support of Bush to legalize warrantless wire tapping for “foreign suspects whose communications pass through the United States.” Enough Democrats joined Republicans to make this a 227-183 victory for Bush.

The Democrats control the House. Speaker Nancy Pelosi could have stopped the bill in its tracks if she’d really wanted to. But she didn’t. The Democrats’ game is to go along with the White House agenda while stirring up dust storms to blind the base about to their failure to bring the troops home or restore constitutional government.

Hallelujah!  Testify!

I'd planned to write about this myself, but I'm happy that Cockburn saved me the trouble.  I've watched the Congressional approval rating plummet over the past few months with a genuine sense of awe at the Herculean incompetence of the Democrats.  It's taken real talent to squander the level of goodwill they had in November of 2006, but they've managed it without a single correct step--I literally can't think of anything they've done right.  And they're now the least popular Congress on record.  Given the tremendous unpopularity of Bush, Cheney, and the policies of this administration, that's nothing short of astonishing.

But the really astonishing part will come in November 2008, when--despite this staggering record of opportunistic incompetence on the part of the Democratic Party--50% of the voting population in the US will give them their support at the polls.  After all, what other choice do they have?

The Cassandra complex, confirmed

A few weeks back I wrote about the left's Cassandra complex--the phenomenon of being marginalized, derided, and ultimately dismissed despite knowing exactly what's going on and why.  And now Michael Ignatieff has been helpful enough to provide a signal example of this in his brain-blastingly turgid, obtuse, self-serving essay about who was wrong about Iraq (him) and who was right (us):

We might test judgment by asking, on the issue of Iraq, who best anticipated how events turned out. But many of those who correctly anticipated catastrophe did so not by exercising judgment but by indulging in ideology. They opposed the invasion because they believed the president was only after the oil or because they believed America is always and in every situation wrong.

As Ignatieff ably demonstrates here, the corollary to the Cassandra complex in the case of the left is that even after the fact--when everything we've said, down to the last detail, has proven to be correct--we won't receive any credit for it, nor will we be accorded any more credibility when the next time rolls around.

There's much more to say about this, but I'll save it for another day.

A "prominent progressive leader" speaks out

I've written before (here and here) about the ludicrous campaign by Democrats and their fellow travelers, both liberal and conservative, to hijack the word "progressive".  As I mentioned there, Normal Solomon wrote to the co-director of the Campaign for America's Future to ask why Hillary Clinton's name was mentioned in the context of "prominent progressive leaders", and the response was that "some people do consider Hillary progressive"--which led me to joke, ha ha ha, that the people he's talking about apparently live on Mars or perhaps in deep caves under the ocean floor, completely cut off from any conduit of information.

But I was wrong; at least one of them lives in New York.  Here's Hillary Clinton describing her preferred political classification in the recent CNN/YouTube debate:

CLINTON: I prefer the word "progressive," which has a real American meaning, going back to the progressive era at the beginning of the 20th century.

I consider myself a modern progressive, someone who believes strongly in individual rights and freedoms, who believes that we are better as a society when we're working together and when we find ways to help those who may not have all the advantages in life get the tools they need to lead a more productive life for themselves and their family. So I consider myself a proud modern American progressive, and I think that's the kind of philosophy and practice that we need to bring back to American politics.

So Rupert Murdoch's favorite Senator is a "proud modern American progressive"?  Oh ferchrissake...don't words mean anything to these people?

Obviously this isn't the end of the world, but it's been useful to have a one-word moniker to describe myself and like-minded folk, despite the limitations.  What do we do once the Democrats have completely tarnished it?  Maybe we should just start reclaiming "liberal" the way homosexuals have reclaimed "queer";  I actually try to do this already in my own small way whenever someone asks me if I'm a Democrat, to which I usually reply, "No, I'm not a Democrat, I'm a liberal."

(Thanks to Arthur Silber for the pointer to this horrific quote.)