Wall Street Opinion Journal John Fund Thursday, October 13, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT
Harriet Miers’s nomination resulted from a failed vetting process.
“There’s a standard vetting process that we go through with all nominees.”–White House spokesman Scott McClellan
“The president is very, very confident in his judgments about people, and he likes to reward loyalty.”–Brad Berenson, an associate White House counsel in the first Bush term.
The vetting of Harriet Miers leaves questions that demand answers, not more spin or allegations that critics are “sexist” or “elitist.” It was so botched and riddled with conflicts of interest that it demands at a minimum an internal White House investigation to ensure it won’t happen again.
Father Hans,
I just wanted to ask you how it feels now, to be on the other side? Remember all the times that Republicans who opposed Bush on some policy or other were labeled? ‘Bush-haters,’ ‘extremists,’ ‘covert agents for the Dems,’ ‘irrational,’ ‘neo-NAZI,’ ‘anti-semitic,’ and more. Remember all that?
Well, now that you are against Miers, how does it feel to get bombast out of the official Republican camp instead of answers? People opposed to Miers are ‘sexist’ or ‘elitist’ or they hate Bush or they are trying to undermine the country while at war. Do you like how this plays? Do you like the left-wing smear tactics being used by the White House?
This is what Republicans like me have been putting up with since 2001. Everytime we questioned the Farm Bill, or the massive aid package to Israel, or the AIDS in Africa program, or why there was no Declaration of War in Afghanistan and Iraq, this how we have been treated.
It’s awful. It’s demeaning. It’s not the way Republicans should behave. But this is how this White House has done business from day one. Instead of engaging the issues, they frequently rely on smear tactics. Now that more Republicans have felt the sting of this, maybe we can banish this from our party for once and for all.
Anyone who remembers what the Bush people did to fellow Republican John McCain in South Carolina during the 2000 primary shouldn’t be surprised. Now their proxy, Pat Robertson, attacking Senator Brownback, and other “movement conservatives” who fail to jump on command.
Bush operatives in South Carolina accused McCain of having an African-American love child, they said McCain’s wife was on psychotropic medication and mentally unstable and they found former Viet Nam veterans to smear McCain (a former POW) as soft on defense and foreign policy. This is the thugiish and gangster-like mentality of the Bush family with its sense of entitlement for power and expectation of aboslute loyalty.
The phrase “either your with us or your against us” is one that could that you can more easily imagine coming from the lips of a Mafia Don then a President of the United States.
Glen, I don’t take the rhetoric that seriously. Reverting to the left wing tactics indicates a paucity of ideas, a weakness of mind really, and thus vulnerability to the stronger idea. I think that if the anti-Miers forces keep pushing, they can win.
Father Hans,
It’s still frustrating as all get out. We’ve been getting that rhetoric on a wide range of issues for awhile now. I’d like to think that it will die a natural death, but I am afraid we are in for three more years of it.
The Republicans are beginning to sound a bit like Dean’s post right above yours. Sorry Dean, but there isn’t much to say in response to your diatribe.
Glen, I just have a hard time taking it seriously. It’s such a lame ploy. I can understand your frustration, but if it continues it means that Bush is out of ideas. I can’t see this being the case although its clear that something has knocked him off his game. I’m not making a defense of his ideas here but pointing out he has managed to keep the opposition running, especially the Democrats, but seems to have faltered somewhat for a reason I don’t yet understand. I see the Miers candidacy as evidence of this.
You wonder if there was some kind of deep betrayal in the inner circle or something like that. Bush’s overreaction to the Katrina criticism for example, was out of character. Politically it would have been better to shift the blame to the LA governor and mayor given that most of the real blame lies there, but he ends up firing the FEMA director thereby granting credence to what were essentially partisan complaints. FEMA criticism would have blown over. It always does. Putting the spotlight on LA politicans would have stuck.
Now they say there are going to make a new case for Miers. It won’t wash. If Miers had any sense she would withdraw her nomination. Pushing her forward will force a Republican rebellion, again weakening Bush even further. If Bush insists on going this route, now is the time for a Republican presidential hopeful to distinguish himself by positioning himself against Bush. It’s not the way I want to see it happen, but its the only things that makes sense so far.
Republican missteps are not translating into Democratic gains — an interesting development I think. Bush’s numbers are low, but the numbers for Democratic leaders are even lower. They haven’t gained by the missteps. Not sure what it means except that we are in a period of conflicting political cross-currents and noone has any clear idea what things will look like when things calm down. It does seem a good time for new future leadership to emerge however.
All good points, Father. The Democrats can’t capitalize on the Republican missteps because they can’t figure out what to offer. Senator Dick Durbin was on Fox News today. He did a good job pointing out a lot of Republian missteps in Iraq. The lack of Level 1 Units this far into the training program is a big, big hit to the President. In addition, there are a ton of other metrics that look less than favorable, not the least of which that we lost 5 KIA on the same day the Constitution was passed AND we used fighter bombers to pound a city in Western Iraq.
How can we possibly be using such heavy weapons in a country we are supposed to be occupying?
Anyway, these points were all good. Then the news anchor asked Durbin, “Okay, what would the Democrats do better?”
Durbin suddenly went red in the face and completely fell apart. The Dems have zippo. Nada. Nothing at all to contribute. They can’t capitalize on Republican mistaks unless they can bring something to the table. This isn’t likely to happen anytime soon.
On the other hand, I would love to see Reagan-stye outsider run against the Bush record on fiscal discipline and other matters. It would be just like in 1980, when Reagan beat the country-club establishment by proposing bold ideas that they considered too radical. Let’s face it, new ideas aren’t going to come from the Dems. But, they could still come from some Republican statehouse out there.
Father and Glen – I totally agree with your comments on the Democrats. They are offering nothing positive to the voters, just whining and complaining. The writing is on the wall, but the Democratic leadership refuses to see it.
Just last week a pair of political scientists, Galston and Kamarck, issued a paper entitled “The Politics of Evasion”, which caused a bit of a stir. The paper urges the Democratic party to move to the center on social issues and foreign policy and accuses the Democratic leadership “of a systematic denial of reality”, and the false belief that the party doesn’t need to change, because the voters will eventually come to them.
The authors writes of “three pervasive themes in the politics of evasion. The first is the belief that Democrats have failed because they have strayed from the true and pure faith of their ancestors — we call this the myth of Liberal Fundamentalism. The second is the belief that Democrats need not alter public perceptions of their party but can regain the presidency by getting current nonparticipants to vote — we call this the Myth of Mobilization. The third is the belief that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with the Democratic Party: there is no realignment going on, and the proof is that Democrats still control the majority of offices below the presidency. We call this the Myth of the Congressional Bastion.”
http://www.ppionline.org/documents/Politics_of_Evasion.pdf
Galston and Kamarck argue that moving to the center on social and foreign policy issues is the price the Democrats will have to pay if they ever hope to regain power and implement a domestic agenda that moves the nation towards universal health care and repairs the social safety net for the poor and middle class.
Father Hans, Missourian, and all,
Just a word on what really seems to be going on in Republican circles. From time to time, I used to play around on Redstate.org
I recently posted a critique of Islam and Islamic countries that is very, very similar to many of the ideas expressed by Missourian that Islam retards social progress.
I got banned because of it. Here was the message, “What isn’t laughable is religious bigotry. Indonesia and Malaysia have had their progress frozen? Hardly. Ponder that question in the free time you have on your hands now that you are no longer posting here.”
Cute. The official Republican line is – Islam is misunderstood and has been hijacked. The offical word is that ‘Islamism’ is bad, but ‘Islam’ is good.
Since I’ve been banned I won’t get the chance to inquire how the moderators feels about Indonesia’s bloody rape of East Timor, a Roman Catholic country, or how they feel about the ongoing attacks by government-sponsored Jihadists against Christians and others. I’m evidently a senseless religious bigot who is unworthy to speak in Republican circles.
I am tempted to say, if these Republicans are to be my allies, then am I really in need of enemies?
Father Hans said, “Republican missteps are not translating into Democratic gains â�� an interesting development I think. Bush’s numbers are low, but the numbers for Democratic leaders are even lower.”
Third party? Hard for me to believe, but what are the alternate implications? Just continued muddling on both sides?
Glen
Misunderstood Islam is not just the “official” Republican policy, it is also Democratic policy. East Timor has been going on since the 90s and the previous administration ignored it also. Albright considered it an Australian concern.
The scary politics come from the extreme left that embrace radical Islam as an ally because of it’s anti-Western stance (the irony being that if sharia were imposed here they would be the first introduced to chop-chop square). You can see this ideology manifested in the anti-semetic/anti-Israel rhetoric coming out of the left. The most recent example being the anti-Israel comments by Cindy Sheehan.
Father and Glen: While I agree with many of your observations it would improve your credibility with me enormously, if you went on record acknowleging and deploring the thuggish tactics of the Bush administration. Ater all, these are the tactics that the Bush people recently turned on their own allies, like Senator Brownback of Kansas. I would like to know your thoughts on the following:
– Why do you think the late Lee Atwater (Bush Sr.’s political advisor and Karl Rove’s mentor) apologized on his deathbed to Michael Dukakis?
– How do you feel about the character assasination of John McCain by the Bush people in South Carolina during the 2000 primary?
– Did you feel it was wrong to depict Senator Max Cleland, a Viet Nam War veteran who left three limbs on the battle field, an ally of Osamma Bin Ladin?
– In passing the Medicare Drug Bill, the Bush administration deliberately underreported the cost of the entitlement and threatened to fire the actuary for the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS)if he revealed the true cost to Congress. Are these acceptable tactics in your eyes?
– Did you support the Bush campaign’s attempt to suggest that John Kerry did not earn his decorations for bravery in Viet Nam?
– The woman who was the chief procurement officer for the pentagon was recently demoted for demanding that the Halliburton contract for services in Iraq be rebid after one year. Do you agree that President needs to punish whistleblowers?
Jerry,
Agreed, especially on East Timor. However, I didn’t expect anything else out of the Democrats. I did, however, expect much more out of the Republicans. I’m not in favor of some kind of global assault on Muslim countries. Christ died for them too, so I would prefer to persuade them rather than bomb them.
However, there are a large number of sensible policies that make sense if one understands the full implications of the Sharia, and its possible introduction via the ballot box not only in Iraq, but also Western Europe. I expected better out of the Republicans and am disappointed. The PC takeover of the party I have called home since age 10 is much more painful than the PC takeover of a party to which I have never belonged.
RE: No. 1: Was the objection that Bush administration engages in smear tactics and character assasination, or only that the Bush administration engaged in smear tactics and character assasination against fellow Republicans, and that they should limit their mud-slinging to Democrats?
Let the paragons of virtue and morality answer that question.
Dean,
-Why do you think the late Lee Atwater (Bush Sr.’s political advisor and Karl Rove’s mentor) apologized on his deathbed to Michael Dukakis?
I wasn’t aware of the apology. The election in ’88 was nastily run. I didn’t care for Dukakis then, and still don’t as far as his policies. However, the Bush camp didn’t run against him so much as they linked him to Willie Horton. I didn’t like the way the campaign was run, but it was not surprising. I voted against Bush in the primaries, he was not my candidate of choice. I think that the election was so nasty because Bush, as a country-club Rockefellar Republican, could not really run on his record. He was so out-of-step with conservatives, that the only way that he could win was to literally frighten people by attacking Dukakis as some kind of freak. That is unfortunate, and sad, and a lot of other things. I would like to see elections decided on issues in a fair and honest debate. I didn’t care for the smears then, or now.
– How do you feel about the character assasination of John McCain by the Bush people in South Carolina during the 2000 primary? I don’t like McCain for a host of reasons. He is a classic neo-con, liberal on social issues but into military force in foreign policy. However, see the above quote. I don’t think McCain is anti-Christian or was out to get Christians. Nor do I consider Bush to be the Christians’ best friend. Pulling in Ralph Reed to pin McCain to the mat through personal attacks is not how campaigns should be run. McCain was vulnerable on multiple issues, the problem was that Bush usually shared McCain’s opinion on those issues and so couldn’t exploit them. In short, with no real policy daylight between the two on so many issues it became personal. Sad.
– Did you feel it was wrong to depict Senator Max Cleland, a Viet Nam War veteran who left three limbs on the battle field, an ally of Osamma Bin Ladin? I’m from Georgia, and Max Cleland had actually usually been fairly well-received by conservatives. Not because they agreed with him, but simply because he was a nice enough guy. I don’t like attacking anyone’s patriotism without some extremely good reason. Opposing government policies is not enough reason to suspect that someone is on Bin Ladin’s side. I was happy to see Cleland defeated, but there was no reason to run this campaign on that level. On the other hand, I think that Democrats did blow at least a few of the ads out-of-proportion. I saw them while visiting my family, and not all of them were over-the-top. At least a couple, however, were in really bad taste, so I think that Cleland has a definite right to be angry.
– In passing the Medicare Drug Bill, the Bush administration deliberately underreported the cost of the entitlement and threatened to fire the actuary for the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS)if he revealed the true cost to Congress. Are these acceptable tactics in your eyes? No. Bush lied, and then shifted focus to Social Security. Social Security is solvent for decades, but Medicare is likely to bankrupt the nation. There is no way fiscal conservatives should have accepted this bill. They only did so because Bush is a Republican. That is a poor excuse for accepting bad policy.
– Did you support the Bush campaign’s attempt to suggest that John Kerry did not earn his decorations for bravery in Viet Nam? I don’t think the election should have been about Vietnam. Unfortunately, Kerry set that tone by focusing so obessively on his service in Vietnam. Unlike many Democratic veterans, there really are a lot of questions about Kerry’s service in Vietnam. Should they have really mattered in the election? Not really, in my opinion. That was a long time ago, and I didn’t care about what happened in a war long over. I was looking for Kerry to come up with a clear direction on Iraq, the war we are currently in. If he had presented a clear and convincing alternative, then he would have even had my vote. He waffled on the issue, however, and instead tried to run on the basis of his personal resume. “Trust me because I fought for the country in Vietnam.” That wasn’t enough, in my book, to differentiate him from Bush. So I went 3rd Party.
– The woman who was the chief procurement officer for the pentagon was recently demoted for demanding that the Halliburton contract for services in Iraq be rebid after one year. Do you agree that President needs to punish whistleblowers? Whistleblowers should always be protected. No-bid contracts are always open to abuse. Similar things occurred with Haliburton in the Balkans during the Clinton years. ‘Rent-seeking’ behavior is a bi-partisan problem. So is cronyism, as evidenced by ‘Travelgate’ during the Clinon years in office. I think we should condemn it when we see it, regardless of whose political ox gets gored. If you don’t stand for the truth when it is inconvenient, then what kind of person are you?
Dean,
Mudslinging is just plain wrong, against anybody on either side. I don’t care for it, at all. It just isn’t civil. I may disagree with your ideas on how to solve a particular problem, poverty for example, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t think you are sincere in your desire to help. In a perfect world, each side would make their case on the merits, and the voters would decide. We don’t get to live in that world, though, mostly because both parties are so pragmatic on almost any issue that it is hard to define clear policy differences.
Iraq is the classic example. Democrats largely voted to authorize force, and then attacked the war on a pragmatic basis that it has been handled badly. If Democrats were clearly and consistently against the following: 1) undeclared wars, 2) wars that do not directly involve defense of the United States, then they would be presenting a clear and consistent alternative to the Republican Party. Unfortunately, the Democrats are not sure about such questions. Democratic presidents have frequently deployed military forces into combat without a declaration of war. At the same time, Democrats have frequently used military force for ‘nation-building’/’humanitarian’ military interventions. Vietnam is the biggest example, where LBJ though of the Mekong Delta as a big Tennessee Valley Authority writ large. Or Clinton attacking civilian targets in Serbia on the basis of trumped up charges of genocide.
This leads a dispassionate observer to conclude that Dems are only opposed to wars if they are not in charge of them. Hardly a principled pro-peace message.
Without policy differences, it comes down to personality and personal attacks. Especially since the Republican Party keeps ‘going left’ and stealing the policy ideas of Democrats.
Time to stop this visciousness on both sides. The party that can clearly articulate a coherent vision for fiscal sanity, border security, reduced federal involvement in state affairs, and an end to the occupation of Iraq is going to win big in 2008. If neither party can come up with such plans, then we are in for another round of ‘Who do you trust? Me or that schmuck?”
Glen: It’s ironic isn’t it. In 2002, John Kerry voted to give President Bush war powers in legislation that contained all of the most abusive features of the Gulf of Tonkin resolution. That was the legislation that authorized the Viet Nam war Kerry fought in and later opposed. If anyone would have been wary of handing the President a blank check to wage war you would think it would have been Kerry.
But the Democrats expected a successful campaign like the first Gulf War and so they shoved their doubts and misgivings aside and jumped on board the war train, so they wouldn’t be labeled as misguided peace-niks later on. The danger signs were all there however for anyone who cared to look.
The administration embarked on a relentless, insistent campaign to frighten the American people and convince the public that it was in danger. (“The smoking gun could be a mushroom cloud”) Zeal for war was made a prerequisite for advancement in executive branch,the Defense department and CIA, while officials who expressed doubts or misgiving were driven out of government.
A concerted effort was made by special groups in the Vice President’s office to “cherry-pick” intelligence, and “stove-pipe” the most damning evidence to the media. Yet, one after another, every one of these reports warning that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction was exposed as groundless or over-exagerated.
Troops were rushed to the middle-east before diplomatic attempts at resolution had time to progress. The White House constantly changed the rationale for war, (“they won’t let the inspectors in”, “they let the inspectors in but are playing cat and mouse”, “the inspectors aren’t inspecting fast enough”). Every time the Iraqi demonstrated more cooperation, the Bush administration grew more frantic.
They will greet us as liberators, the Bush administration claimed, they will release doves, and carpet our soldiers path with rose petals. Every suggestion that the war could require an investment of time or money was shunted aside. Iraqi oil revenues will pay for the war, we will be in and out in a matter of months. Even planning for an occupation was tacit admission that the rosy scenario might not unfold so no planning was done at all. Instead we asked Halliburton and some right-wing think tank ideologues from the the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Founddation to go over and figure it out afterward. We ignored the first warning signs, “Looting? Who cares about looting? Democracy is messy.”)
In 1841 Charles McKay wrote the book, “Extraordinary Popular Delusions & the Madness of Crowds” Between 2002 and 2004 I believe I witnessed a similar phenomenon in the United States as millions willing embraced blatantly false rationales for wasting enormous amounts of blood and treasure in a damaging and unnecessary war.
Glen writes: “If Democrats were clearly and consistently against the following: 1) undeclared wars, 2) wars that do not directly involve defense of the United States, then they would be presenting a clear and consistent alternative to the Republican Party.”
This presumes the existence a public space in which rational discussions of the issues can occur. That public space has long gone, largely due to the right-wing propaganda empire. Before the Iraq war anyone who expressed reservation about the war was painted as a traitor, indifferent to the sufferings of the Iraqi people, a proponent of appeasement, a deserter in the war on terror.
If anyone who disagrees with a corrupt pack of liars over a potential war is a branded a traitor, then don’t be surprised if the discussion is not of very high quality.
After having gone through General Elections in the UK, Americans are just plain amateurs when it comes to mudslinging.
Having said that why don’t we be more truthful in the comments we make, instead of the “he did it first” statements or spewing the latest public relations material coming out of the RNC or DNC headquarters.
1. George W. Bush didn’t invent politics, dirty tricks, mudslinging, smears etc. It’s as old as politics through the centuries. Spend some time reading political campaigns, commentaries and editorials during different administrations and what do you find? The same type of blame game mudslinging that we bemoan now. You should read about what the editorialists wrote about Truman or the comments calling Eisenhower “Ole Bubblehead”. To continually cite how W launched a smear campaign against so and so in just drinking the kool-aid of political propaganda. We can go through examples of Clinton and the team to put down bimbo eruptions. And on and on ad nauseum. It serves no purpose and shows limited insight into how politics in the country work, or have worked for decades.
2. U.S. foreign policy has been the same since World War II, regardless of which political party has been in the White House. The only difference is to what degree each President was willing to execute that policy or what was the most pressing at the moment. What Bush did by going into Afghanistan and Iraq was only carry out the policies held by the Clinton State Dept. To pretend that somehow the Bush White House cut this Iraqi policy out of whole cloth is just pure ignorance about U.S. foreign policy.
3. Can we find another whipping boy other than Halliburton? It’s unoriginal and ignorant. Please anyone tell me the companies that have the same capabilities that Halliburton does?
I’ll help you out the closest U.S. company is Bechtel. And guess what? They have U.S. government contracts also. But they don’t make the left’s whine list because Cheney wasn’t their CEO at anytime. Halliburton’s biggest rival is Schlumberger, a Dutch owned company. Can you imagine the left’s whining if US contracts were given to them? Get over it Halliburton is not the evil the left believes it is.
4. Please show some real proof that the Iraq war was unnecessary, not just because Bush ordered it. To insist the war is unnecessary is to place yourself in support of Saddam’s regime of rapes, tortures, and murders of thousands of Iraqis(to include children). It’s to ignore the 12 plus years of UN violations and the cease-fire agreements by Saddam. To make baseless statements that the war was unnecessary is to do what you accuse the supporters of the war of doing — blindly following a political agenda. (I find it amazing how the left believes Bush, Halliburton, etc. are evil, but argue Saddam and his progeny should have been left in power to continue abusing the Iraqis.)
5. Intelligence is not an exact science it is an art. There is no “cherry picking” of evidence. To do intelligence is to gather information (anything from electronic, satellite, human intel) and then take time to go over the information to determine what is happening — analyze and interpret (and this also means to clarify what is accurate or not). To clarify, there is no computer program that you plug the intelligence material gathered into, and then the correct answer comes out printing out. It doesn’t work that way.
Yes some of the material gathered was shown to be false, but the only reason it was proven false was because US troops went into Iraq. To claim that what we know now about the information was what we knew before the war is being deceptive with facts.
Dean get beyond the political talking paper mentality and think for yourself. If you want some insight I recommend these books:
Propaganda — Jacques Ellul
The Image — Daniel Boorstin
#19 Like I said earlier get beyond the political propaganda Dean. Because there is disagreement with the party at least shows there is life and dialogue going on.
JBL writes: “George W. Bush didn’t invent politics, dirty tricks, mudslinging, smears etc.”
Bush publicly stated that Jesus Christ is his favorite “political philosopher.” That, combined with his nasty political attacks, is certainly an invention.
JBL: “Please anyone tell me the companies that have the same capabilities that Halliburton does?”
Why should any other company develop that capability when Halliburton receives virtually automatic no-bid contracts? How do you compete against that?
JBL: “I’ll help you out the closest U.S. company is Bechtel. And guess what? They have U.S. government contracts also. But they don’t make the left’s whine list because Cheney wasn’t their CEO at anytime.”
Yeah, with Haliburton it’s called “cronyism.” Now in the old days conservatives actually cared about what happened with public money. Today the government can hand out billions of dollars in no-bid wartime contracts to the VP’s former company after the VP has helped engineer the war and it’s no problem. JBL, if you’re not in the least troubled by that then you’re not a conservative. I don’t know what you are, but not conservative. Do us all a favor and don’t ever have a job where you’re responsible for spending public funds.
JBL: “To insist the war is unnecessary is to place yourself in support of Saddam’s regime of rapes, tortures, and murders of thousands of Iraqis(to include children).”
Dude, how does it become OUR job to liberate the world? When did that happen? There are lots of nasty people around, lots of cruelty, lots of suffering. I don’t see how all of those situations have a claim to our treasure and the blood of our soldiers. We already had a war against nasty people in Afghanistan, and rather than devoting more resources to that, we invade some other country under false pretenses, with underwhelming force, and little post-war planning, and turn the joint into a terrorist factory. And at the end of the day, we have no idea what kind of government will ultimately emerge there, whether the place will finally collapse in to widespread civil war, or the conditions under which we’ll be able to leave.
JBL: “Yes some of the material gathered was shown to be false . . .”
Some? Some?? How about the entire presentation to the U.N., for starters.
JBL: ” There is no “cherry picking” of evidence.”
They created a special office, the purpose of which was to cherry pick the evidence. All of the qualifiers of the intelligence — “maybe,” and “perhaps” — became “certainly” and “without a doubt.” They intentionally didn’t want people talking about post-war planning, because they were worried that such planning would undermine support for the war. A lot of the intelligence professionals were mortified by what went on, and rightly so. And that was on top of the garden-variety stupidity that passed for analysis, as when The Great Military Genius Wolfowitz proclaimed that it wouldn’t take more soldiers to occupy the country than what was required for an invasion.
JBL: “To claim that what we know now about the information was what we knew before the war is being deceptive with facts.”
That’s because the administration created a web of misinformation in order to get us into the war, that was fully revealed as a fraud only after the war. The solution there is not to be grateful to the war for revealing the truth, but to not create the misinformation in the first place.
RE: No 18.4 “Please show some real proof that the Iraq war was unnecessary”
JBL, I’m happy to oblige:
1) The war in Iraq was unnecessary because our previous policy of aggressive inspection, deterence and sanctions was succeeding in containing and weakening the Saddam Hussein regime.
a. Weapons of Mass Destuction, destroyed. Weapons inspectors Rolf Ekaeus and Scott Ritter testified before the 2004 invasion that 95% of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction had been destroyed. Other dangerous Iraqi weaponry, such as stockpiles of high explosives, had been located, documented and placed under seal.
b. Iraqi military capabilities severely weakened. The ease with which US forces pushed Iraqi military opposittion aside attested to the impact of 10 years of sanctions had prevented Iraq from replenishing stockpiles of equipment, heavy weapons, aircraft and ammunition lost in the first Gulf war.
c. Iraqi ability to threaten neighbors curtailed. The implementation of a No-Fly zone for Iraqi military aircraft prevented Iraq dfrom threatening it’s neighbors.
d. Iraqi ability to oppress minorities reduced. The no-fly-zone created a defacto autonomous Kurdish region within Iraq into which Iraqi forces were barred from entering.
e. Iraqi cooperation with inspectors regained. In 1988 Iraq ordered international inspectors to leave Iraq, but under threat of military action Iraq allowed them back in at the end of 2002. It’s hard to imagine that Iraq would be capable of making any major terrorist move with dozens of inspectors further documenting their weapons capabilities and making frequent surprise visits at various sites.
2) The war in Iraq was unnecesary because the causus belli (“reasons for war”) offered by the Bush administration have been proven false.
a. Iraq was never a threat to US national security. The CIA director the George Tenet reported to Congres on Tuesday, October 10th 2002 that â??Baghdad for now appears to be drawing a line short of conducting terrorist attacks” with conventional or chemical or biological weapons against the United States, but “Should Saddam conclude that a U.S.-led attack could no longer be deterred, he probably would become much less constrained in adopting terrorist action,”. (â??C.I.A. Warns That a U.S. Attack May Ignite Terrorâ??, The New York Times, October 10, 2002, by Allison Mitchell and Carl Hulse.)
b. No Iraqi connection to September 11th was ever established. The CIA has discredited the one lone piece of evidence to support this acccusation, an alleged meeting between Mohammed Atta and Itraqi agents in Prague. The CIA denies that the meeting ever took place.
c. After an exhaustive search no Iraqi weapons of mass destruction have ever been located. The United States spent close to one billion dollars and many months combing Iraq for WMD, but found none. “I don’t think they existed,” David Kay the chief American weapons inspector later told Congress, referring to Saddam’s alleged stockpiles of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. “What everyone was talking about is stockpiles produced after the end of the [1991] Gulf War and I don’t think there was a large-scale production programme in the Nineties.”
“Iraq Arms Inspector Casts Doubt on WMD Claims, Kay’s Stance Differs with White House View of Situation in Iraq”
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1615880
d. Dubious sources of information alleging Iraqi threat. Many of the sources alleging thet Iraq possed weapons of mass destruction were quiclky revealed to be dubious and uncertain at best. The Niger Uranium document that the Bush administration based its accusation of a reconstituted Iraq nuclear program on, was easily revealed to be a forgery. Embezzler Ahmed Chalabi found that the United States would pay him and his operatives millions of dollars for any evidence of WMD without confirmation or corroboration proof and provided socres of fabrications and fictions for payment.
It should be noted that this evidence was provided from the CIA to the White House accompanied by plenty of caveats and qualifying and explanatory text regarding its dubious veracity and relability. The White House in it’s haste and zeal for war stripped off those qualifiers from it’s own reports to Congress, the UN and the American people.
Note 22: It all depends on how we define “necessary”, no?
Necessary to prevent an imminent attack against the US? No. We must admit that the evidence was flimsy. Besides, Hussein may be a megalomaniac, but he was never suicidal. If anything, he was highly protective of his life (think of the food tasters, the doubles, etc.). I’m sure he was aware that had he launched a nuclear attack, he could pretty much expect a complete and total annihilation.
Necessary to reduce the human toll on Hussein’s political prisoners and on the brutal gulags he maintained for those he considered “dissidents”? This is plausible, actually. How many would he had to have killed for military action to have been justified? A thousand? A hundred thousand? A million? I don’t have an answer, really. This wasn’t the pretext for going to war, however. It perhaps should have been stressed a bit more than it was. It would have been more honest.
Necessary to create some potential for a democracy to be established in the region? Maybe. Now this is where it becomes interesting. If the best possible results happen in Iraq and the country creates a peaceful mode of government that’s supported by an electorate, perhaps that region may warm to the concept that theocratic mob rule is not necessarily successful or desirable.
It could (even if not very likely) result in an intellectual and spiritual revolution there that results in, at last, more peaceful relations within the Middle East and with Israel and the US.
People are looking for absolute black and white answers on the validity of this war, and unfortunately, they aren’t there. At least I don’t see them.
“In 2002, John Kerry voted to give President Bush war powers in legislation that contained all of the most abusive features of the Gulf of Tonkin resolution. That was the legislation that authorized the Viet Nam war Kerry fought in and later opposed. If anyone would have been wary of handing the President a blank check to wage war you would think it would have been Kerry.”
You would have thought that, yes. In fact, if Kerry had had the political temerity to stand up and make just that case – he might have been in his 10th month of office now.
But he didn’t. As was pointed out by another writer, we have had 50 years of bi-partisan sameness on foreign policy. Representative Ron Paul introduced a Declaration of War in the House against Iraq. Not because he supported the war, but because he thought that Congress should come down on one side or the othe, and not hide behind a weasel resolution. If the Dems could foreswear executive action, and instead campaign on fidelity to the Constitution, people would notice.
I will not hold my breath, however, waiting for this.
Glen: See my note in No. 7. Bush continues to drag down the Republicans, while the Democrats appear unable to repair the division between their own left-wing and centrist factions and as result are unable to put together a coherent message.
I wonder if we are looking at an opportunity for a third party, a party of the center, to form and provide an alternative for voters disatisfied with the two traditional parties (like you and me). It’s certainly possible,if public opinion remains as it now, that the Democrats could return to power in 2008. It’s also possible that the Democrats could find themselves unable to cope with all the challenges Bush has been ignoring and allowing to grow, and prove equally disappointing to an electorate which in desperation may be ready to turn to a third party in 2012.
By the end of this decade, the nation could be in terrible fiscal shape as budgets deficits continue to spiral out of control as an aging population demands more services and China and Japan refuse to extend us anymore credit, our massive trade deficit brings about a devaluation of the dollar with resulting negative economic consequences, our energy situation worsens as we are unable to develop alternative sources of energy fast enough to reverse the increasing cost of oil, our military strength is sapped by years of attrition in Iraq, and our health care system continues to collapse under the weight of a growing number of uninsured. For a few wildcards, lets imagine that global warming is real and the number of devastating category 5 hurricanes continues to increase, cyles of drought and preciptation worsen, avian bird flu is real and causes a global pandemic, terrorists get hold a few nuclear devices, an earthquake wipes out LA or san Francisco, and someone invents a virus that can bring down the entire internet.
JamesK – I think Glen has already neatly disposed of the “let’s build a nice democracy in the middle-east” argument for the war. Glen argued that:
1) Not all nations are ready for democracy and there is no one-size-fits all template for imposing it. Democratic government may require the existence of certain institutions and conditions to operate successfully. There has to be consensus and agreement among citizens towards the same general goals, (e.g. slavery vs abolition, federalism vs regional control, etc), or the seeds are sown for future conflict. Large groups of citizens must not be marginalized but all need to have a stake in the outcome of democratic election. Citizens need to be educated enough to make informed decisions and local government needs to be honest enough to count their votes fairly and correctly.
2) Brand new democracies are fragile and can provide perfect incubator-like conditions for ideologically militant groups whose agenda is to usurp and destroy the democracy. The Weimar Republic in Germany, which guaranteed the right of Adolph Hitler to organize a political movement with anti-democratic intentions, is a good example.
3) The presence of a democratic government in another county is no guarantee that a nation will always behave in a manner pleasing to the United States. Turkey’s democratic legislature, for example, voted in 2003 not to allow US forces to operate from Turkish soil as we were about to launch the ill-fated war.
The goal of introducing foreign nation to democracy becomes a naive, risky and dangerous proposition if all of the above are not carefully considered.