Politics and Press

The interaction of the press and politics; public diplomacy, and daily absurdities.

Press

Desperate Acts of a Desperate Man? Bush and Iran

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The visit to New York of Iran’s President Ahmadinejad has highlighted America’s paranoid fear of a third-rate clown from a second-tier power. Having placed Iran within his Axis of Evil, President Bush now must deal with the fact that his invasion of Iraq handed Iran the strategic gift of unparalleled influence in the likely Iraq of the future (for a detailed analysis of why this is so, see Peter Galbraith’s The Victor in the October 11 issue of the New York Review of Books).

While the United States begins the long and painful process of coming to grips with the Iraq reality of – at best – stalemate and at worst – defeat, it has proven all too tempting to lay the blame as far away from the White House as possible. And what better place than Tehran? Ergo, the ongoing stories of weapons being smuggled into Iraq from Iran, ignoring the unpleasant fact that the U.S. has basically armed both sides of a civil war in which its own soldiers and marines are caught in the middle. The American press dutifully reports every account of Iranian weapons found in Iraq, joins in the jingoistic threats of bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities and ignores the unpleasant reality that the vast majority of deaths in Iraq can be traced to Sunnis and Shiites killing each other and even some of their own – frequently with American weaponry.

The recent Israeli flyover of Syria led to hints of North Korean-Syrian cooperation on nuclear weapons development; hints  given the same credibility the press gave Saddam’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. At the same time the Cheney wing of the administration sees an opportunity to scuttle the talks with North Korea, something they have tried to do from the beginning of those negotiations. All of which begs the question: what is Bush planning for his swan song?

One possibility is for Bush to continue to pressure for more sanctions on Iran; another would be open direct negotiations with Iran and yet another would be to initiate bombing attacks on Iran’s nuclear and military facilities. At this point it seems the first of these options has been chosen, the second is almost surely not going to happen but the third option remains viable. President Bush is not known for his subtlety of mind – indeed his behavior suggests an impatience with those who disagree with him and a schoolyard bully’s tendency to use others to fight his battles for him – in this case it could be his own Air Force and/or the Israeli Air Force. A bombing attack on Iran would feed some of his more vocal neo-con supporters and leave one more mess for his successor to clean up.

An analyst friend theorized this week that perhaps the best solution to the perceived nuclear threat from Iran would be to do what was done to the Soviet Union in the Cold War: serve notice that a nuclear attack on any country by Iran would be met with subsequent annihilation of the Iranian nation and its people. Détente was never a perfect solution – but it worked for 50 years against a foe a whole lot tougher than Iran and it could possibly put an end to foolish posturing by American politicians and media editorialists.

The Failure of Bush’s Surge

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President Bush, his GOP Congressional supporters, and a large proportion of the American news media have cooperated in pulling off the great Petraeus shell game. It goes something like this: you start with 130,000 troops in a failed occupation in Iraq and make a case for a short-term surge of an additional 30,000 troops to provide time for the Iraqis to put together a strong central government with all factions in Iraq sharing power. You report in six months that the surge has been successful and that you expect to begin withdrawing from Iraq in a year or so by removing 30,000 troops. So, of course, we are right back where we started and – at this writing – no closer to a strong government in Iraq than we were a year ago. But the withdrawal of 30,000 troops is an illusion. The U.S. military has simply run out of available troops and 30,000 would need to be removed regardless.

Putting the surge into context requires understanding that there remains no end game strategy from Bush; that the U.S. military is in a highly weakened state with generals predicting problems responding to additional threats; that the violence in Iraq remains high and is mostly not connected Al Queda; that 2 and a half million Iraqis (largely the middle class professionals) have left the country; that the British pulling their troops out of Basra is already leading to increased sectarian violence there; that the cost to the United States will soon be over a trillion dollars; that the war in Afghanistan is suffering due to our inability to supply adequate troops there: that Iran remains the likely big winner in Iraq because of Bush’s inability to even consider the real consequences of his fiasco; that much of the billions spent on reconstruction in Iraq has been wasted on shoddy construction or simply stolen by corrupt contractors; that soon the American military death toll will be over 4,000 and the number of wounded over 30,000; that hundreds of thousands Iraqis have been killed in the aftermath of the invasion; that the basic infrastructure in Iraq is worse than it was under Saddam; and that no longer does anyone use the word “victory” when discussing the future of our efforts in Iraq. It would be impossible to make up a perfect storm of ignorance and arrogance to match what the Bush presidency has done in Iraq.

As for General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker, it is, in my view, wrong to fault them for trying to make the best of the rotten hand dealt to them. They were careful to avoid making the kind of stupid boasts that regularly come from their President – “bring it on”, “mission accomplished”, “we’re kickin ass in Iraq”. etc. – and while they put the best face they could on the situation, the blame must be laid at the President’s desk – with the complicity of the American electorate who elected him not once, but – for God’s sake – twice!

Campaign Update II

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It is hard to imagine a two-year campaign for the presidency that could be more tedious and less substantive than the one we are being given.  It is hard to know whether this is mostly due to the dismal candidates or to the American press that manages to find almost nothing of substance to report. We have had reports on John Edwards’ $400 haircut, Hillary Clinton’s showing a shadow of cleavage on the Senate floor, Barack Obama’s basketball days in Hawaii, Mitt Romney’s “golly gee whiz” vernacular, Rudy Giuliani’s kids’ likely voting, Bill Richardson’s politically incorrect comment that people are gay because of “choice”, Clinton’s letters to an old college boyfriend, etc.

When Romney “won” the so-called Ames, Iowa straw ballot he was applauded for having organized a successful “walking around money” campaign in which he literally bought the election.  The second place finisher, Mike Huckabee, was elevated to a serious campaigner by virtue of his “folksy humor” – sort of a Latter Day Will Rogers to Romney’s Latter Day Saint. But the fundamental fact is that Romney won by giving people the money to go and vote and then feeding them and Huckabee came in second because he was basically the only other serious candidate to show up.

The big news yesterday and today is that a Republican Senator was arrested for doing something distasteful in an airport men’s room. This on the second anniversary of the Katrina recovery fiasco, and on the day that President Bush is seeking an additional $50M to drag out his Iraq fiasco with not a glimmer of a long-term strategy.  As for the candidates, presumably the Republicans will take aim at the sinful Senator while supporting the President’s request for good money after bad and ignoring the victims of Katrina. The Democrats will continue to split hairs of difference among themselves and to cater to a variety of narrow interest groups.  President Bush will continue to seek out meetings of veterans groups to drum up support for his war and the rest of us will simply wait for the serious campaign to start…assuming it will.

Socialism, U.S. Style

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Bill, a friend of this Blog, writes the following after mistakenly turning on the “O’Reilly Factor”:

My Economics Professor at Rutgers once commented that in America, it was “socialism for the rich and the corporations but capitalism for the rest of us”. Nothing has changed; recently Bill O’Reilly was bashing universal healthcare as socialism. Yet when we socialize the cost to general electric for polluting a river, or Halliburton for delivering shoddy work in Iraq, or farmers for not growing crops, or Big Pharma for taking drug designs from the NIH – not a word is spoken. But the Bill O’Reillys of the world continue to pull out the same tired, cheap and shallow arguments. Just amazing that they do it and that people continue to tune them in.

The Campaign: Style Over Substance

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“Democracy is coming

To the USA”- Leonard Cohen

If the summer seems longer and hotter than usual, requiring huge intakes of adult beverages, you may have been following the presidential campaign too closely. The latest example of vacuity pretending to be seriousness is the introduction of YouTube into the debates. This has led to news outlets throughout the country devoting large amounts of airtime and ink to the fact that there are “real people” (as opposed to journalists who apparently are not “real”) with “real questions” in the country and isn’t it wonderful that technology allows them to ask the questions in styles waaaay more interesting than the straight-forward question.

The day after the Democrats answered questions from “real people” including a man disguised as a snowman, PBS’s Lehrer Report devoted ca. 20 minutes to a discussion of how the use of YouTube made for a much more personal relationship between the voters and their would-be Kings or Queen. On this and other TV news programs there is almost no discussion of the issues that could resemble intelligent analysis. The focus remains on style and ephemeral issues like the cost of candidates’ haircuts, the size of one’s war chest, whether a particular religion is good or bad for a candidate, and whether they have crafted their standard responses cleverly enough to avoid being pinned down to a real commitment. For analysis stations go to either the same tired talking heads or in a fit of derring-do go to the tried and true Man in the Street technique in which all sides of an issue are given equal time – Sally Mae discusses why we need to stay in EyeRaq and Doug makes the case for leaving.

It is indeed turning out to be a Long, Hot Summer. Now back to the fridge for some relief.

The Omnipotent Mr. Cheney

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The Washington Post is running a 4-part report on the Vice Presidency of Richard Cheney. The report, prepared by Barton Gellman and Jo Becker and entitled “Angler” which is Mr. Cheney’s secret service code name, paints a picture of our Vice President as the man behind the throne, pulling strings, Oz-like, that direct many of our most critical domestic and foreign policy programs. One example is the role Mr. Cheney played in how the United States would handle “terrorists” captured during the apparently unending “war on terror”. Mr. Cheney developed the draft order that Mr.Bush signed, putting into operation the policy permitting the indefinite confinement of foreign terrorism suspects without any access to the courts. Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Advisor Condi Rice, nominally in charge of such things, knew nothing about the order until after it was executed. The secrecy is typical of Cheney’s modus operandi. As stated in the Gellman/Becker report:

“Across the board, the vice president’s office goes to unusual lengths to avoid transparency. Cheney declines to disclose the names or even the size of his staff, generally releases no public calendar and ordered the Secret Service to destroy his visitor logs. His general counsel has asserted that “the vice presidency is a unique office that is neither a part of the executive branch nor a part of the legislative branch,” and is therefore exempt from rules governing either. Cheney is refusing to observe an executive order on the handling of national security secrets, and he proposed to abolish a federal office that insisted on auditing his compliance.

“In the usual business of interagency consultation, proposals and information flow into the vice president’s office from around the government, but high-ranking White House officials said in interviews that almost nothing flows out. Close aides to Cheney describe a similar one-way valve inside the office, with information flowing up to the vice president but little or no reaction flowing down.”

Mr. Cheney has played a similar role in approving use of extremely inhumane treatment of “terrorist” prisoners (which many believe amounts to torture), gatekeeping Supreme Court nominees, and squelching environmental initiatives – all with a degree of secrecy that is startling. Past vice-presidents have attended state funerals and promoted run-of-the-mill programs, such as Mr. Gore’s efforts to improve the bureaucracy’s efficiency. Not so Mr. Cheney. While the President signs the executive orders and makes the public appearances, Mr. Cheney pulls the strings from his undisclosed locations. The Post report confirms that Mr. Cheney is in fact our co-President, exercising power as Vice-President as it has never been exercised before.

The Candidates and Iraq: Avoiding Reality

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A recent Op-Ed piece in the Washington Post recognizes what should by now be obvious to any serious candidate for the presidency: by any reasonable definition the Iraq War is lost. The decision to invade was based on a combination of ignorance, arrogance and deception; the waging of the war was naïve and simple-minded, and the management of the follow-up has been nothing short of a disaster. The surge is most recently defined by General Petraeus as a ten-year effort; that is a time line the American people will not accept. Nor will they accept the Bush/Cheney concept of a new “Korea-type” 50 year involvement. The American people have determined that it is not in the national interest and they are – finally – smarter than their leaders.

So, what is going on with the primary campaigns among both Republicans and Democrats? It seems obvious that the major foreign policy challenge facing America is first, how to extricate itself from Bush’s Iraq fiasco and second, and perhaps more important, to begin to define an appropriate role for the United States in the Middle East and Gulf region post-Iraq. But the campaign rhetoric is largely confined to how long to stay in Iraq, how many troops to leave behind, can Americans face the fact of defeat, and isn’t it about time the Iraqis cleaned up the mess we made.

No one can know what will happen when U.S. troops leave Iraq but we can certainly predict what will happen if we stay because it is happening already – more American deaths, more Iraqi deaths, throwing good American after bad, more Iraqis leaving their country, and a terrific training and recruiting ground for Al Queda.

But to read the press and listen to media news one would think that staying in Iraq was an actual option. It is not and the more time spent pretending otherwise is time lost to the serious effort needed to redefine America’s role in the world in a way that reflects both reality and America’s real national interest. This public discussion needs to begin now and needs to be led by those who would be our next president.

Mitt Romney: All Suit, No Man??

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His no-hair-out-of-place look has led some to refer to Mitt Romney as “Governor Perfect”. But former Governor of Massachusetts Mitt Romney has not-so-subtly shifted positions from middle of the road to far right on abortion, stem cell research, gun control, civil unions for gay couples, homosexual adoption, and birth control privacy laws, among others. He has added support for the Iraq adventure to his current repertoire as he courts the right wing of the GOP for primary votes and it is apparent that he will do almost anything, take on any view and change any opinion, to reach the White House.

What would candidate Romney look like in a general election when the extreme right has less influence and any GOP candidate must gain support from independents? He has said that his positions have “evolved” since he left the governorship of Massachusetts and it is probable that they will evolve backwards as time and events demand. He is one more in a long (and growing) line of presidential candidates with no central core of beliefs and should have a large sign on the back of his suit: “Voter Beware”.

In 1968 George Romney, Mitt’s father, was a candidate for the GOP presidential nomination and discovered very late in the game that supporting the Vietnam War was a loser of an issue so he changed his mind, claiming that he had been “brainwashed” by the military (Gene McCarthy commented that a “light rinse would of sufficed”).

Seems like the Romney genes are intact, but going through life on a haircut and a smile do not make for a good president. Now it is up to the American press to put on their big-boy pants and start dealing with issues and the political history of all the candidates and forget about suits, haircuts, slick commercials, and canned responses aimed at narrow interest groups.

Does the Primary System Work?

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The recent presidential primary debates have made it clear that both major political parties will be selecting their candidates on the basis of limited purity rather than substance. For the Republican Party it is immigration that is pulling the candidates to the right. For the Democratic Party, withdrawal from Iraq pulls the candidates to the left. Perhaps this is for the best but it seems reasonable to wonder whether there might be a better way to select the two finalists in the process soon to be known as American Political Idol.

The fact that primaries are decided by narrow slices of both parties and that the press plays up one or two issues means that substantive discussion of a wide range of critical issues gets deferred until at least after the primaries and perhaps even after the election. The immigration debate will continue but will never lead to throwing 11 million immigrants out of America – cannot be done and should not be done, regardless of political rhetoric. And while the Iraq invasion was a horrible mistake the reality is that extricating America from that mistake will take time and will require a rethinking of America’s role in that part of the world.

The real loss in the primary race is that one or both parties are largely ignoring major issues that require attention. These include: the cost and availability of health care; the substantive quality of education beyond simply standardized testing; the need to repair the image of America throughout the world; the need for substantive environmental controls; the widening gap between the haves and have-nots; the long-term effect of huge deficits on future generations – the list goes on. But so far the emphases in this election are identified by focus groups in a limited number of primary states and the reporting of the press, which tends to reinforce the numbing vacuity of presidential hopefuls mouthing tired repetitions of unrealistic slogans on self-identified hot button issues.

IRAQ UPDATE: Good Money After Bad

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As we enter the fifth year of the Bush Iraq Fiasco, there continue to be amazing stories of rampant corruption, mind-boggling incompetence and a pig-headed obstinate inability to face reality.

The country has been entertained for five months as President Bush resists the congressional majority’s calls for “deadlines” in its funding bill for Iraq. Refusing to accept the inevitable, Bush continues to dream of an as yet undefined “victory” in Iraq while the Congress searches for a veto proof funding bill that will set a timetable for the U.S. to begin to move troops out of Iraq.

The latest move in this political dance macabre is away from “deadlines” to “benchmarks” – apparently a less inflammatory word for Bush but still not acceptable if there are any specific dates applied. This in spite of – or maybe because of – a lack of evidence that the “surge” will be effective in anything other than raising the American death toll while merely delaying the inevitable.

However, one group that is moving toward deadlines is the Iraq Parliament, with a majority of its members signing on to the principle of deadlines for American troops to leave – but agreeing with the American view that the withdrawal should not be precipitous and should be timed to the readiness of Iraqi troops to maintain security. While this might not satisfy either Bush or the Congress, (it is, after all, their country) they are moving toward reality at a faster pace than Bush. Meanwhile the death toll mounts, ca. 100 Americans per month and ca. 100 Iraqis a day.

Another development in Iraq is reminiscent of Paul Wolfowitz’s comment in 2003 that Iraqi oil would pay the costs of reconstruction after a brief victorious battle. That has turned out to be as good an idea as Wolfowitz’s handing his girlfriend a $60G raise and foisting her on the State Department. Turns out that having paid for destruction of Iraq’s infrastructure we are now paying for its reconstruction as well and it is not going well. Iraq oil production is not close to the predicted levels and the NY Times reports today that a draft report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office describes a situation in which from $5 to $15 million a day of Iraqi oil is disappearing – either through government corruption, smugglers or – worse yet – insurgent theft. The latter translates into an oil production program that in effect is bankrolling the insurgents who are killing American troops.

The press cannot seem to come to grips with all of this – choosing to argue about the when and how of withdrawal without ever coming out and saying that withdrawal is inevitable. Defeat is in the air and is a tough pill for politicians and bloviating journalists to swallow with their pride in their throat. It looks an awful lot as though the day is coming and it would seem to be a good idea to start thinking about the future and how we can undo the damage of the miserable mistakes made by Bush and his band of fools. Bush predicted a new world after Iraq and he is going to get it and would be well advised to start thinking about how to interact with that new world.

Finally, it seemed somehow appropriate to have Dick Cheney threatening Iran on a aircraft carrier deck just four years after Bush got into his costume and declared “mission accomplished” – also on a carrier deck. Fact is that Cheney and Bush are in many ways headed for the kind of irrelevance that Tony Blair faced and at least had the sense to resign from office.