So you sit down at the end of a long day and you wonder, "I had a long, hard day at work. I wonder what my government did at its long hard day of work?" You flip on the TV to see that their biggest item of a day last week was to vote to "condemn" the ad that Moveon.org placed in the New York Times questioning the (for lack of a better word) trustworthiness of the General. Seriously US Senate? That's the best use of your time? Playing school yard marm to a bunch of squabbling special interest groups? You really don't think that Petreaus has a thick enough skin to not be able to shrug that off?
Oh come on now, let's not be that silly. Of COURSE none of them are worried that he had he feelings hurt. The moment that ad his the presses, no one cared what it really said, and certainly no one cared about how Petreaus felt about the matter. Republicans saw dollar signs. They saw political capital. They saw a way to punish Democrats and divert attention away from a failing war where the majority of the dislike of their party's leader comes from, which they are irrevocably tied to. The General came in to defend them and their actions, and when the Democrats and Democratic affiliated groups questioned whether or not Petreaus was really being up front and entirely honest, backed into a corner they really did the only thing they could do: Play off the public's trust of the military and try to bypass the whole damned argument. Perhaps surprisingly, the one unassailable group in the US are US men and women in uniform. They are treated with respect and honor, not scorn and ridicule as they were during Vietnam. They are almost universally loved and treated with dignity. So I have to wonder why Republicans, seemingly holding the mantle of defenders of the Armed Forces from those wicked Democrats, are using the military as political cannon fodder to run roughshod over Democrats who take issue with their failed policies. Well duh, the answer is easy of course, it's because it's all the Republicans have left! They know they've lost the public's trust, that even though voter confidence in the Congress is below 30%, more than 50% of Americans still think that it's in better hands with the Democrats in charge. Now that is one hell of an insulting number to Republicans.
So with Democrats outraising Republicans by unheard of margins, with the Republicans in a dangerously precarious position for the 2008 Senate elections (a perfect storm of bad timing has left them in a position to lose several more seats), with a president who is wholly out of touch with the American people, and with a war stuck in their laps that no one wants anymore, they did the one thing they had left when the opportunity presented itself: Use the last respected government institution as a ploy to attack Democrats. Because Democrats can't attack the military and get away with it, so if Republicans can manage to manufacture an attack on the military where none exists (via the ad), and then attach the moveon.org ad to Democrats, well then Democrats just attacked the military! We must demand apologies from all of them! We have to force a vote in Senate to get them on record as being for or against the military.
Never mind the fact that the moveon.org ad actually asked a good set of questions. It showed what Petreaus actually says, and then presents known facts that seem to conflict with his not-under-oath testimony. Um, last I checked that was called being a good American, it's called citizenship actually, it's called civilian control of the military, and it's called not being an ignorant fool who drinks the kool-aid. But hey, that's not the type of attitude we want here in America is it? No sir! John McCain, in response to the moveon.org ad said they should be "thrown out of the country." Because hey, there's nothing more American than suppressing political dissidents right? I'm only mildly surprised that Democrats didn't take that particular line and demand an apology from McCain, but I guess the first amendment doesn't ge the same respect the military does.
Does the censure from Congress really mean anything? No. It's a non-binding resolution that has no teeth when it really comes down to it. But there is a moral to this story: Free speech in America is only possible if everyone approves of what you are saying. If they don't approve, they'll shout you down, or they'll make sure you can't get your words printed in the paper, or they'll get Congress to condemn you, or they'll get politicians you support and who support you to disavow you, and everyone who was once your friend will be forced through PR handwringing will throw you over the side like unnecessary ballast so they can kowtow to the misinformed, stupid public. We're in a new age now, where false umbrage and political maneuvering forces candidates to jump through hoops and creates prerequisites for what they must say before they can be taken seriously. Welcome to our new democracy. That censure might not do anything, but it says everything.
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Thursday, September 13, 2007
Petreaus, Iraq, and Options
It's hard to even have an opinion on Iraq anymore.
A lot anyone's position will come down to trust. Who do you trust? Do you trust the President? I think given his track record you'd be hard pressed to find a reason to. He has given so much spin to Iraq over the last few years that America is sick, from both the dizzy spell and the cost in lives and money. His speech earlier tonight was meant to inspire, but it didn't, and it didn't because of the track record the President has laid down for himself over the last few years. His speech tonight tried to emphasize the progress we have made since last year. A year ago, he said, we were close to admitting that provinces were lost to Al Qaeda, that we were being hammered by ever more powerful militias, and that there seemed little hope for ever settling the matter peacefully. Well, I'm sorry but, what? A year ago President Bush was extolling the virtues of the war and blaming naysayers for being down on it and ruining the image of all the progress we were making. But now a year a later they were all right but THIS time is different? It's a hard pill to swallow from a man that has a pathological inability to talk straight, despite his so called Texas folksy charm.
So who does that leave us with? The only other government official speaking with that kind of authority is General David Petreaus, leader of all and everything that is going on in Iraq. He and President Bush have said that Anbar province is a posterchild for everything that can go right in Iraq, that local Sheikhs and other tribal leaders came to the US asking for help. And yet reporters on the ground are saying that all we're doing is throwing money at them in return for their help. We give them money, guns, and by promising them a spot in the Iraqi police force, we give them legitimacy. Meanwhile, outside those cities are makeshift cities of refugees, hundreds of thousands of them, pushed out of their homes by sectarian rivalry and fighting fueled by the same people we are now funding and supporting. And we are hearing reports that the Iraqi Police is corrupt, rife with sectarian feuding, hated by the average Iraqi, and many are calling for it to be disbanded entirely.
Crocker and Petreaus didn't even try to sugarcoat the failures of the government. It seems the government is offering up the lack of progress in the government and asserting military success so we'll take that one as a given and he can claim partial success. But while Democrats seem to be falling for it, by attacking the government and leaving the military situation alone, I don't. I don't think the military situation is nearly so rosy, even if the added 30,000 troops have had a positive impact, violence is still ridiculously high, and I don't consider paying off our enemies (which is ironic considering the President previously said he didn't even want to talk to them, let alone pay and arm them) any sort of success. We didn't learn from that lesson with Osama Bin Laden? We trained and armed the man during the war between the USSR and Afghanistan in the 1980's, and now we're seriously doing it again?
Petreaus is saying five of twenty combat brigades in Iraq will be out by July, which means a reduction in forces (post surge) of 25%. That's cool, but what then? If there is never a political fix to the problem, there will never be a stable Iraq like President Bush is promising. And he appears unwilling to really strongarm them into fixing it. So we have to ask ourselves a couple questions: What do we really expect to do over there? What do we think will happen if we suddenly left? Is it worth it?
My opinions have been mixed on this subject for awhile now. I believed, and still believe that I was right from the start, that Iraq was a bad idea, that we never should have gone in, and that if we were going to go in, it was done all wrong, and mismanaged from the start. But now we are there, and wishing makes nothing so. So do we do the honorable thing and fix what we broke? Or do we cut our losses? I think we do both, or at least, we try to be honorable. I've given up expecting honesty or honor from the White House. He says we will only draw down troops from a position of victory, but he ignores the fact that keeping those 30,000 surge troops in Iraq is unsustainable, we just don't have the men for it, which makes his words more lies and smokescreen. So first: We don't abandon Iraq, not yet anyway. What we need to do is issue them warning, stern warnings, that our continued assistance is NOT without strings or limitations. We give them until the end of Bush's presidency to act. It's arbitrary, but I don't care anymore, we've given them YEARS to act, and they have done little to nothing to make the situation better. So we set a date, too bad, you guys had your chance. Don't trumpet that date from the rooftops, in fact, it should be private between President Bush and Maliki and his government. If it leaks out, well, that's a sign of how weak that government is then isn't it? If they fail to meet the standards we set for them, then we do one of two things: 1. We dissolve their government, take over, and set the laws the way we've wanted them to begin with. Yes, it'll destroy the democracy we've already created and will piss a lot of people off, but if they can't do it, we have to, or else: 2. We get out. If they won't fix it, and we won't fix it, it isn't going to be fixed, and if it isn't going to be fixed, what the hell are we still doing there? President Bush likes to make all these fanciful allusions to World War II, and all the great things we did in Germany and Japan after the war. Is he ignoring the fact that there were military governors there for more than a DECADE after the end of the war? In Iraq we handed control over far too fast. They weren't ready for it. They didn't have the support they needed from within to keep it going, and so it is falling down.
I'm done with the status quo. The status quo is a mismanaged war, and a country that seems unwilling to commit the troops needed when they are needed to fix this problem correctly. And I refuse to let us half ass it for another decade before we finally say we gave it the old college try, but we just couldn't hack it. They can bleed is dry, just like the Chechnyans are doing to Russia, who wastes their best and most valued military equipment on a tiny nation of people yearning to be free. They did it in Afghanistan too, and then, WE were the Iran supplying weapons secretly. So we either put up NOW, or we get out, NOW. It isn't retreat. WE didn't lose. We won. Iraq lost. The problem with pinning this as a win or lose for the US but leaving the outcome up to Iraq is that we don't actually get to fight anything. We're leaving it up to Iraqi politicians to win or lose the war for us. That's what you get from black and white them or us thinking. Fact of the matter is that militarily, our servicemen have performed splendidly in spite of Administration blunders by the dozens. We declare victory and we come home, because we did what we set out to do, but the Iraqis failed. So they lose, we don't. We rebuild our broken army and we prepare to fight another day, but we don't abandon the fight as a whole, and we don't allow them to beat us in a war of attrition, which is exactly what this is becoming.
Secure victory for the future by leaving before it's too late to win in the future. Give them an ultimatum; it's far past time to do so.
A lot anyone's position will come down to trust. Who do you trust? Do you trust the President? I think given his track record you'd be hard pressed to find a reason to. He has given so much spin to Iraq over the last few years that America is sick, from both the dizzy spell and the cost in lives and money. His speech earlier tonight was meant to inspire, but it didn't, and it didn't because of the track record the President has laid down for himself over the last few years. His speech tonight tried to emphasize the progress we have made since last year. A year ago, he said, we were close to admitting that provinces were lost to Al Qaeda, that we were being hammered by ever more powerful militias, and that there seemed little hope for ever settling the matter peacefully. Well, I'm sorry but, what? A year ago President Bush was extolling the virtues of the war and blaming naysayers for being down on it and ruining the image of all the progress we were making. But now a year a later they were all right but THIS time is different? It's a hard pill to swallow from a man that has a pathological inability to talk straight, despite his so called Texas folksy charm.
So who does that leave us with? The only other government official speaking with that kind of authority is General David Petreaus, leader of all and everything that is going on in Iraq. He and President Bush have said that Anbar province is a posterchild for everything that can go right in Iraq, that local Sheikhs and other tribal leaders came to the US asking for help. And yet reporters on the ground are saying that all we're doing is throwing money at them in return for their help. We give them money, guns, and by promising them a spot in the Iraqi police force, we give them legitimacy. Meanwhile, outside those cities are makeshift cities of refugees, hundreds of thousands of them, pushed out of their homes by sectarian rivalry and fighting fueled by the same people we are now funding and supporting. And we are hearing reports that the Iraqi Police is corrupt, rife with sectarian feuding, hated by the average Iraqi, and many are calling for it to be disbanded entirely.
Crocker and Petreaus didn't even try to sugarcoat the failures of the government. It seems the government is offering up the lack of progress in the government and asserting military success so we'll take that one as a given and he can claim partial success. But while Democrats seem to be falling for it, by attacking the government and leaving the military situation alone, I don't. I don't think the military situation is nearly so rosy, even if the added 30,000 troops have had a positive impact, violence is still ridiculously high, and I don't consider paying off our enemies (which is ironic considering the President previously said he didn't even want to talk to them, let alone pay and arm them) any sort of success. We didn't learn from that lesson with Osama Bin Laden? We trained and armed the man during the war between the USSR and Afghanistan in the 1980's, and now we're seriously doing it again?
Petreaus is saying five of twenty combat brigades in Iraq will be out by July, which means a reduction in forces (post surge) of 25%. That's cool, but what then? If there is never a political fix to the problem, there will never be a stable Iraq like President Bush is promising. And he appears unwilling to really strongarm them into fixing it. So we have to ask ourselves a couple questions: What do we really expect to do over there? What do we think will happen if we suddenly left? Is it worth it?
My opinions have been mixed on this subject for awhile now. I believed, and still believe that I was right from the start, that Iraq was a bad idea, that we never should have gone in, and that if we were going to go in, it was done all wrong, and mismanaged from the start. But now we are there, and wishing makes nothing so. So do we do the honorable thing and fix what we broke? Or do we cut our losses? I think we do both, or at least, we try to be honorable. I've given up expecting honesty or honor from the White House. He says we will only draw down troops from a position of victory, but he ignores the fact that keeping those 30,000 surge troops in Iraq is unsustainable, we just don't have the men for it, which makes his words more lies and smokescreen. So first: We don't abandon Iraq, not yet anyway. What we need to do is issue them warning, stern warnings, that our continued assistance is NOT without strings or limitations. We give them until the end of Bush's presidency to act. It's arbitrary, but I don't care anymore, we've given them YEARS to act, and they have done little to nothing to make the situation better. So we set a date, too bad, you guys had your chance. Don't trumpet that date from the rooftops, in fact, it should be private between President Bush and Maliki and his government. If it leaks out, well, that's a sign of how weak that government is then isn't it? If they fail to meet the standards we set for them, then we do one of two things: 1. We dissolve their government, take over, and set the laws the way we've wanted them to begin with. Yes, it'll destroy the democracy we've already created and will piss a lot of people off, but if they can't do it, we have to, or else: 2. We get out. If they won't fix it, and we won't fix it, it isn't going to be fixed, and if it isn't going to be fixed, what the hell are we still doing there? President Bush likes to make all these fanciful allusions to World War II, and all the great things we did in Germany and Japan after the war. Is he ignoring the fact that there were military governors there for more than a DECADE after the end of the war? In Iraq we handed control over far too fast. They weren't ready for it. They didn't have the support they needed from within to keep it going, and so it is falling down.
I'm done with the status quo. The status quo is a mismanaged war, and a country that seems unwilling to commit the troops needed when they are needed to fix this problem correctly. And I refuse to let us half ass it for another decade before we finally say we gave it the old college try, but we just couldn't hack it. They can bleed is dry, just like the Chechnyans are doing to Russia, who wastes their best and most valued military equipment on a tiny nation of people yearning to be free. They did it in Afghanistan too, and then, WE were the Iran supplying weapons secretly. So we either put up NOW, or we get out, NOW. It isn't retreat. WE didn't lose. We won. Iraq lost. The problem with pinning this as a win or lose for the US but leaving the outcome up to Iraq is that we don't actually get to fight anything. We're leaving it up to Iraqi politicians to win or lose the war for us. That's what you get from black and white them or us thinking. Fact of the matter is that militarily, our servicemen have performed splendidly in spite of Administration blunders by the dozens. We declare victory and we come home, because we did what we set out to do, but the Iraqis failed. So they lose, we don't. We rebuild our broken army and we prepare to fight another day, but we don't abandon the fight as a whole, and we don't allow them to beat us in a war of attrition, which is exactly what this is becoming.
Secure victory for the future by leaving before it's too late to win in the future. Give them an ultimatum; it's far past time to do so.
Sunday, September 2, 2007
Why The Democratic Party Should Change Its Name
A reasonably intelligence person could easily deduce that a political party calling themselves "Democrats" would in fact be supporters of democracy. But recent decisions threaten to remove an element of the democratic rights of Michiganders and Floridians. Howard Dean, in a draconian move, has threatened both states with the removal of their delegates to the nominating convention if they don't adhere to the rule that leaves Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina in control of the early portion of the election.
Both the Republicans and Democrats have mandated that no states other than the ones they handpick will be allowed to hold primaries before February 5th, 2008. States that hold their primaries before that date, such as Michigan, who is very close to approving a January 15th move, and Florida, who has moved theirs to January 29th, risk losing all their delegates to the Democratic nominating committee, and half to the Republican.
This decision is stupid and wrong on multiple fronts. First off, why are Democrats making hay in a state that has at least twice now lost them a national election? Florida has turned into a massive swing state, one the Democrats need to make a play for in 2008, and shutting them down like that is going to piss them off royally. Why alienate them? Michigan isn't exactly a solid blue state either. We could fall on either side of the line, despite recent Democratic gains here. The state is last in economic growth in the nation, as we watch our auto jobs fly every which way around the globe, and we want answers. Shutting down our voice will only force us to look at the candidates who will actually listen to us, which leaves only the Republicans.
Florida is threatening legal action against the Democrats over the issue. But there's something bigger at stake here than just political fallout, it's the biggest issue of all. That issue, is who gets a voice in choosing our national leader. Why do the same two states, who don't represent a true cross section of America, get to be out in front? Why is it only two other states, as olive branches to the southern and western regions get added (South Carolina and Nevada)? And now the Democrats and Republicans have created a system which makes it advantageous to try and have the earliest possible primary, as the earlier the primary, the further ahead you are, and the more campaign stops you get, which increases the power of your voice. Now 30 some states are bunched together on February 5th, four are out in front, all of which are getting major campaign stops and dollars, and a couple might not get anything. Most every Democratic candidate has already pledged to ignore democracy, ahem, I mean to adhere to the Democratic Party by not even campaigning in states that have primaries before February 5th who aren't approved.
So who really wins in this scenario? Americans are being denied the right to vote in their primary because they violate stupid, arbitrary rules that serve a grand minority of voters. The best we Democrats here in Michigan could do I suppose is change party affiliation and all vote for Ron Paul. So long as our votes aren't going to count anyway, we might as well do some damage. But I don't particularly feel like helping the Democrats right now. If there weren't so much riding on this election, I'd almost vote Republican just to spite them, not that the Republicans are much better on this issue, but at least their candidates aren't caving to the pressure by not campaigning here.
Howard Dean, who I once helped campaign for in 2004, should be ashamed of himself.
Both the Republicans and Democrats have mandated that no states other than the ones they handpick will be allowed to hold primaries before February 5th, 2008. States that hold their primaries before that date, such as Michigan, who is very close to approving a January 15th move, and Florida, who has moved theirs to January 29th, risk losing all their delegates to the Democratic nominating committee, and half to the Republican.
This decision is stupid and wrong on multiple fronts. First off, why are Democrats making hay in a state that has at least twice now lost them a national election? Florida has turned into a massive swing state, one the Democrats need to make a play for in 2008, and shutting them down like that is going to piss them off royally. Why alienate them? Michigan isn't exactly a solid blue state either. We could fall on either side of the line, despite recent Democratic gains here. The state is last in economic growth in the nation, as we watch our auto jobs fly every which way around the globe, and we want answers. Shutting down our voice will only force us to look at the candidates who will actually listen to us, which leaves only the Republicans.
Florida is threatening legal action against the Democrats over the issue. But there's something bigger at stake here than just political fallout, it's the biggest issue of all. That issue, is who gets a voice in choosing our national leader. Why do the same two states, who don't represent a true cross section of America, get to be out in front? Why is it only two other states, as olive branches to the southern and western regions get added (South Carolina and Nevada)? And now the Democrats and Republicans have created a system which makes it advantageous to try and have the earliest possible primary, as the earlier the primary, the further ahead you are, and the more campaign stops you get, which increases the power of your voice. Now 30 some states are bunched together on February 5th, four are out in front, all of which are getting major campaign stops and dollars, and a couple might not get anything. Most every Democratic candidate has already pledged to ignore democracy, ahem, I mean to adhere to the Democratic Party by not even campaigning in states that have primaries before February 5th who aren't approved.
So who really wins in this scenario? Americans are being denied the right to vote in their primary because they violate stupid, arbitrary rules that serve a grand minority of voters. The best we Democrats here in Michigan could do I suppose is change party affiliation and all vote for Ron Paul. So long as our votes aren't going to count anyway, we might as well do some damage. But I don't particularly feel like helping the Democrats right now. If there weren't so much riding on this election, I'd almost vote Republican just to spite them, not that the Republicans are much better on this issue, but at least their candidates aren't caving to the pressure by not campaigning here.
Howard Dean, who I once helped campaign for in 2004, should be ashamed of himself.
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