The Motley Moose - Recommended Diaries

Bush's [In]Competence or Conservatism: Framing the Debate

Strummerson — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 16:24:26 GMT

As we look forward to the inauguration of the first democratic president of our young century, we are perhaps just as eager to evict the current office holder from "our house" as we are to install the new one.

Given George W. Bush's disastrous record and poll numbers, we can expect the culmination of his service--if we can call it that--to be greeted with significantly subdued fanfare. But we nonetheless face a bit of a conundrum that may significantly affect political debates for at least a decade. Some will attribute the failure of our 43rd president to his culture of incompetence. Others will emphasize the failure of his conservatism to address both domestic and international challenges.
In point of fact, these options are not mutually exclusive. Indeed, the Bush administration's incompetence and ideological conservatism exacerbated the potential for each to damage our national interests. But rhetorically, they can be opposed. The more we stress incompetence, the wider the opening for an argument, already popular in right wing circles, that it was not Bush's conservative ideas that doomed his presidency, but his ideological inconsistency and his incompetence that led us into this morass. They seek to save face by arguing that Bush's personal failings thrust the Republican Party into the political wilderness. All we need, goes their argument, is a true conservative to lead the party back to power and rescue the country from its sorry state.

From this it may seem clear that the appropriate option is to downplay Bush's incompetence and maintain focus on the failures of his ideology to attend to reality and address our problems. Count on policy oriented columnists such as Paul Krugman and the writers at The American Prospect, The New Republic, and The Nation to continue to hammer away at this point. Unfortunately, their readerships are generally comprised of a small and self-selecting, well educated choir. We may mine their analyses for our arguments, but don't count on The American Prospect's circulation to go through the roof.

The relative inaccessibility, or at least unpopularity, of policy oriented analysis points to a cultural context that will aid conservatives in masking the failure of their ideology. Character driven narratives have much stronger appeal. Biography and memoir dominate a significant percentage of non-fiction sales for a reason. A failure of competence appears a more novelistic tragedy than does an ideological failure. Furthermore, our own animus toward Bush and his personal flaws impedes isolating and highlighting the ideological basis for the disasters he wrought. The best way to draw attention to this would be if we could compellingly cast him as a good and competent man who simply and sadly committed to faulty ideas and policies. Good luck with that.

Two additional factors will appear as impediments to framing this narrative both accurately and effectively as a failure of conservatism itself. Oddly, the second of these may provide some assistance in dealing with this conundrum, but only in the long term and only potentially. The first is a historical precedent, at least a perceived one, whereby the party in power generally becomes detached from reality and more ideologically entrenched in order to preserve its hold on power. The longer a particular constituency holds primary responsibility for the state of affairs, the more problems can be laid at its feet. Admitting to particular failures, even if failures are inevitable, carries the risk of playing into its critics' and opponents' hands. Witness the primary rhetorical devices of the Reagan Revolution and the neo-conservative ascendancy. Reagan did not attack the New Deal or the Great Society for being ill-intentioned in conception. He merely highlighted their failures and attacked the bureaucrats who perpetuated these failures out of self-interest. In fact, Reagan did effectively what we need to do now. He focused on policy failures and discredited systems as opposed to personal weaknesses. And Irving Kristol, one of the fathers of neo-conservatism (a particularly apt characterization given the nepotism that seems rampant in a movement now led by a younger Kristol and a second generation Podhoretz) often summed up his definition of a neo-con as "a liberal who got mugged by reality." Gingrich and his minions, Limbaugh and his listeners, have consistently claimed possession of "the facts." Now the left has seized the designation "reality based." This appears cyclical and there may well be something to it. It's easier to adjust one's position in the wilderness. It's what we expect the opposition to do. Those in power risk credibility when they shift and innovate.

The second factor that stands in the way of focusing on policy and ideological failure, which may help out in the end, is Obama's own pragmatism. We cannot expect him to play a central or explicit role in discrediting conservatism and holding its proponents accountable. This in fact is one of the things that drew many of us to support him in the first place. We perceived a commitment to progressive goals without being bound to liberal policy dogmas as their means. This gives him great maneuverability in pursuing a progressive vision. Back in January, Cass Sunstein published a piece in The New Republic where he described Obama as a Visionary Minimalist, one whose process is minimalist but whose aims are visionary: http://www.tnr.com/politics/st...

It was this and like evaluations that helped solidify my own preference. I would argue that the most substantial disagreement between serious Clinton supporters and serious Obama supporters can be located in the degree to which they credited this "new politics" as either sincere or plausible. It was, and in some cases still is, a disagreement I consider an honest one. The question before us now is whether Obama's visionary minimalism will allow Obama to maintain his liberty from this or that means, to preserve a maneuverability with regard to policy and a freedom to revisit and adjust approaches that will not dilute his vision or impair his credibility. It's a tough sell.

If Obama succeeds, we will be less vulnerable to an ideologically reinvigorated opposition that seems inevitable. In the mean time, I fear that our justified anger at Bush and disdain for his incompetence and his irresponsibility will serve that reinvigoration. We cannot count on a small group of smart analysts with limited circulation or the practical and rhetorical success we hope for from our incoming president to ensure future opportunities to create progress. If conservatism is the problem, as I think it is, we've got to find ways to keep it in focus.

"And I would expect Israelis to do the same thing."

canadian gal — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 00:08:49 GMT

When President-Elect Obama visited the southern Israeli city of Sderot in July, he was visibly shaken by what he saw: "The Qassam rockets fired by Hamas deliberately and indiscriminately target civilians," Obama said. "This terror is intolerable. Israelis should not have to live in terror in their own homes and schools."

After visiting the hospital bed of two brothers injured by such an attack - one of whom an 8-year-old, who lost his leg as a result - Obama added: "If somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I would do anything to stop that. And I would expect Israelis to do the same thing."

Obama is absolutely correct. Israel has the right and the duty, to put a stop to the threat posed by Hamas - an Iranian-backed Jihadist militia - to its citizens. A just and proportionate Israeli response is one that strives to eliminate Hamas' ability to carry out attacks against Israel. No more, but also no less.

Israel is portrayed as the big bully using an inappropriate level of force against a vastly inferior foe. This is how it is reported and is therefore the way that it is perceived. Little coverage goes to the 10 or 15 missiles or more a day fired at Israel, only the response. But since April 2001, Israelis have been the target of nearly 8,000 rockets and mortar shells.

Usually people living within a 15-mile radius of Gaza have under 20 seconds to find shelter once a "code red" alarm is sounded. Sometimes a missile slips through Israel's warning system, depriving civilians of the opportunity to scramble for safety. The latest missiles launched into Israel have a range of around 25 miles and have been used to attack Beersheba. It should be noted that over half a million Israelis (10% of its population) live within range of these new, more powerful BM-21 Grad missiles.

Which brings us to today:

A Timeline of the Current Crisis-War as per Reuters.

June 19 - A truce begins between Hamas and Israel. It calls for Hamas to stop cross-border rocket fire and for Israel to gradually ease its embargo on Gaza.
Aug 2 - Factional fighting kills three Hamas policemen and six pro-Fatah gunmen in the Gaza Strip in the worst fighting since June 2007.
Nov. 5 - Hamas fires dozens of rockets at Israel after Israeli forces kill six Palestinian militants in an eruption of violence that has disrupted the four-month-old truce.
Dec. 14 - Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal is quoted as saying the group will not renew the six-month-old truce with Israel.
December 18 - Hamas Islamists declare the end of the Egyptian-brokered ceasefire with Israel which expires the next day with a surge of cross-border fighting.
December 24 - Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip ratchet up rocket fire toward Israel.
December 27 - Israel launches air strikes on Gaza in response to almost daily rocket and mortar fire that intensified after Hamas ended the six-month ceasefire.
December 28 - Hamas says an Israeli air strike destroys a laboratory building at the Islamic University, a significant cultural symbol of Hamas.
-- Israeli aircraft bomb some 40 smuggling tunnels in the Gaza Strip that provide a lifeline to the outside world.
December 29 - Israel steps up its air strikes and bombs the Hamas-run Interior Ministry, the first air strike targeting a government building in the offensive.
-- Israel declares areas around the Gaza Strip a "closed military zone."
-- Palestinian militants fire rockets deeper into southern Israel.
December 30 - Israeli warplanes press on for the fourth day with attacks on Hamas targets.
-- Palestinian casualties since December 27 are 348 dead and more than 800 wounded. A U.N. agency says at least 62 of the dead are civilians.
-- Three Israeli civilians and a soldier have been killed by Palestinian rockets since the air strikes began.
-- Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum urges Palestinian groups to respond using "all available means" against Israel.
-- Israel says its attacks herald "long weeks of military action."
December 31 - Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh tells Palestinians that "victory is near."
-- Emergency session of U.N. Security Council to consider resolution drafted by Arab countries calling for immediate cease-fire adjourns without a vote.
January 1 - Israel kills Nizar Rayyan, a hardline Hamas leader, in an air attack on his Gaza Strip home.
-- Palestinian casualties since December 27 are 412 dead and about 1,850 wounded. A U.N. agency says about a quarter of the dead are civilians.
-- Three Israeli civilians and a soldier have been killed by Palestinian rockets since the air strikes began.
January 2 - No sign of a cease-fire on the seventh day of the conflict, with at least 429 Palestinians killed and 2,000 wounded, but a Palestinian official says that Egypt had begun exploratory talks with Hamas to halt the bloodshed.
January 3 - An air strike on a mosque kills 11 Palestinian civilians and wounds dozens, as Israeli tanks and troops wait on the border for a possible ground offensive. Palestinian death toll rises to at least 446.

Israel evacuated Gaza in 2005, removing not only its soldiers but all Israeli settlements, despite bitter resistance from the settlers and their political allies. At great political, financial and security cost to itself, Israel removed every soldier and every single civilian from Gaza, hoping that disengagement would reduce friction, spur economic development and provide a model for peace that could be extended to the West Bank. Israel was not alone in this hope. The United States, United Nations, European Union, World Bank, the Arab League and a thousand nongovernmental organizations were poised to help Gazans build prosperity, freedom and peace. What was the response? Delivering a Hamas victory in the 2006 Palestinian parliamentary elections. Hamas - the organization that is listed as a terrorist organization by Canada, the European Union, Israel, Japan, the United States and is banned in Jordan, Australia and the United Kingdom.

If Hamas, with total power in Gaza, had been willing to concentrate its energies on the economic development of the region and cease cross-border attacks, the Israeli government and public would have been much more willing to make a similar withdrawal from the West Bank where the majority of Palestinians live. We could have been seeing, by now, the birth of a new Palestinian state. But I digress...

Despite the tragic deaths of civilians, Israeli's airstrikes have been precisely aimed at Hamas fighters, installations and rocket launchers. Inevitably, the use of force causes injury and death to innocents, but from initial figures announced by U.N. personnel, it appears that more than 80% of those killed were Hamas security personnel or other militants - a ratio that might compare favourably with the use of force by NATO troops in Afghanistan. Israel has chosen its targets carefully, pursuing terrorist training camps and rocket storage facilities, and has used precision missiles to minimize civilian casualties.

Hamas has even admitted, most of the dead are terrorists.

This stands in stark contrast to Hamas' own conduct. By using heavily populated Gaza as a launching pad for its attacks and deliberately placed weapons factories and training centers in and around such civilian areas, Hamas is guilty of a double war crime. Not only does it target Israeli schools and hospitals, it also uses Palestinian women and children as human shields.

The cumulative effect on those who have had to endure such assaults is devastating, but seldom reported in the American - let alone Arab - press. Unlike Al-Jazeera, Israeli media shy away from inflammatory journalism, and the Israeli public tends to deal with the consequences of Hamas' attacks with introverted dignity, not photogenic rage. Israel is unfairly condemned for defending itself because the court of public opinion tends to be presented only with evidence of Israel's retaliation, not with its cause - Hamas' aggression.

As well - it must be understood that the timing of this conflict is fundamentally linked to three elections. Israel faces a general election in February; Iran will choose its next president in June; and Obama becomes president in about two weeks. As has been noted:

But the Israeli government's objectives are not just to influence Hamas. They are equally anxious to influence Israeli public opinion. Israel is a genuine democracy. It is due to have a general election on February 10. If that election results in Tzipi Livni as prime minister with Ehud Barak, the Labour leader and former prime minister, as her deputy, the peace process has a serious prospect of getting somewhere. The attacks on Hamas are already helping Livni and Barak in the opinion polls. The international community might not approve, but if we wish to see a Palestinian state in the foreseeable future this is likely to be the best route.
An Israeli government re-elected just 21 days after President Obama takes office would create an unprecedented opportunity to relaunch the peace process. George W. Bush only seriously engaged in the issue in his last year in the presidency, when his authority was disintegrating. Obama is likely to have eight years of power ahead of him and will carry more weight with both Israelis and Arabs than any previous president for many years.
Having Hilary Clinton as his Secretary of State is an additional asset. She is a powerful figure in her own right, well thought of in Jerusalem, and respected by the Palestinians. If the new US administration is willing to engage and help guarantee any successful negotiations, the Middle East could at last turn a vital corner.
Finally, there is the Iranian dimension. Iran may not be a proper democracy but no one can predict whether Ahmadinejad will get a second term in June or be ousted by a moderate opponent. If he goes, much of his rhetoric on liquidating Israel will go with him. A peaceful resolution of Iran's nuclear aspirations would also be more likely, especially as Obama has promised a serious dialogue with Iran to try to meet its security concerns. If the United States, under Bush, has been able to do a deal with Gadaffi's Libya then a new relationship with Iran, brokered by Obama, is not inconceivable.
So the stakes are high. An Israeli-Palestinian peace will not ensure, as is sometimes asserted, that Iran will become peace-loving, that al-Qaeda will disband or that terrorism will be a thing of the past. But no one can doubt that Israel-Palestine, Iran and terrorism are linked both in the political psychology of the Middle East and in the strategy of many Western governments.
Stopping Hamas launching missiles at Israeli civilian communities will not ensure peace nor an independent Palestine. But Israel will never concede a Palestinian state unless the Palestinians provide an absolute guarantee of an end to hostilities by all Palestinian parties.

As for the rest of us who watch by the sidelines, we can only hope for peace, understanding and that people don't play hard and loose with the facts.

Should Obama Respond to the Gaza Crisis?

Brit — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 15:34:56 GMT

After ten days of aerial attacks and rocket salvos, the conflict in Gaza has now become an all out ground offensive. During that time, Obama, Hillary and Biden have maintained a studied silence.

Is this just pre-inauguration protocol? Or does it signal an approval of the Bush administration's policy towards Hamas and Israel? If so, is this a good thing?

Consider this an open thread on the mounting conflict in Gaza.
As Simon Tisdall points out in today's Observer, Obama's silence is seen through most of the Arab and Muslim world as a tacit acquiescence to the Bush doctrine. As for the idea that a President Elect should not comment or intervene in international issues, the contradictions have been noted.

Regional critics claim Obama is happy to break his pre-inauguration "no comment" rule on international issues when it suits him. They note his swift condemnation of November's terrorist attacks in Mumbai. Obama has also made frequent policy statements on mitigating the impact of the global credit crunch.

My personal hunch is that the I/P issue is such a live rail in the US, constantly framed in the simplicities of 'one side bad/the other side good', that Obama is effectively constrained from saying anything more out of domestic political considerations.

As the election process showed, any sign of a retreat from the hardline Likudist support so prominent in the Bush administration is quickly portrayed as being 'weak on terror' or some kind of capitulation to Hamas and its apologists. So I think Obama is being cautious.

But Bush's policies have visibly failed in the Middle East, and we desperately need a new vision. Outside the multivalent combatants, the US has the only playable card in the region.

Should Obama and his team keep their counsel till January 20th? And in the meantime, what fundamentalist political forces - from Iranian extremists to Israeli right wing expansionists - will exploit this pre inauguration hiatus?

FoxNews ticker: "Let's hope the magic negro does a good job"

ragekage — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 15:04:56 GMT

From The Raw Story this morning comes this gem:

As if Americans needed any more reminders of how closely aligned with the Republican party the Fox News network is, New Year's Eve brings us this new tidbit.
During it's broadcast from New York City, the network encouraged viewers to send in text messages which, if approved by moderators, would scroll across the Fox ticker at the bottom of the screen.
Moderators, however, let this one slip: "HAPPY NEW YEAR AND LET'S HOPE THE MAGIC NEGRO DOES A GOOD JOB. LOVE JEN AND JOHN C."

I realize that it was a viewer comment that "slipped by" a moderator, but still... c'mon, guys. Way to perpetuate your own stereotype!

Broken Telephone in the Hyper Media-Age.

canadian gal — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 04:51:08 GMT

Throughout the day today I was reminded of my junior kindergarten days. Namely of playing broken telephone. Remember the game? Well basically - the first player whispers a phrase or sentence to the next player. Each player successively whispers what that player believes he or she heard to the next. The last player announces the statement to the entire group. Errors typically accumulate in the retellings, so the statement announced by the last player differs significantly, and often amusingly from the one uttered by the first.

Which brings us to today, first people around the internet, and specifically in the blogosphere were shrieking from the rafters that Israel was using Depleted Uranium in Gaza then later this became accusations of Phosphorus Gas. So I decided to investigate this further.

Here is what I found:
The source of the story of Israelis using Depleted Uranium in Gaza comes from Press TV:

Medics tell Press TV they have found traces of depleted uranium in some Gaza residents wounded in Israel's ground offensive on the strip.
Norwegian medics told Press TV correspondent Akram al-Sattari that some of the victims who have been wounded since Israel began its attacks on the Gaza Strip on December 27 have traces of depleted uranium in their bodies.
The report comes after Israeli tanks and troops swept across the border into Gaza on Saturday night, opening a ground operation after eight days of intensive attacks by Israeli air and naval forces on the impoverished region.
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak warned on Sunday that the wide-ranging ground offensive in the Gaza Strip would be "full of surprises."
A ground offensive in the densely-populated Gaza is expected to drastically increase the death toll of the civilian population.

But who is Press TV really?

Press TV is an English language international television news channel which is funded by the Iranian government, based in Tehran and broadcasts in English on a round-the-clock schedule. With 26 international correspondents and more than 400 staff around the world, its stated mission is to offer a different view of the world events.

Then about the Phosphorus Gas... Well this stems from a 'credible' news source, although the reporting is well - libelous at best.

Israeli artillery shells explode with a chemical agent designed to create smokescreen for ground forces.
Israel is believed to be using controversial white phosphorus shells to screen its assault on the heavily populated Gaza Strip yesterday. The weapon, used by British and US forces in Iraq, can cause horrific burns but is not illegal if used as a smokescreen.
As the Israeli army stormed to the edges of Gaza City and the Palestinian death toll topped 500, the tell-tale shells could be seen spreading tentacles of thick white smoke to cover the troops' advance. "These explosions are fantastic looking, and produce a great deal of smoke that blinds the enemy so that our forces can move in," said one Israeli security expert. Burning blobs of phosphorus would cause severe injuries to anyone caught beneath them and force would-be snipers or operators of remote-controlled booby traps to take cover. Israel admitted using white phosphorus during its 2006 war with Lebanon.
The use of the weapon in the Gaza Strip, one of the world's mostly densely population areas, is likely to ignite yet more controversy over Israel's offensive, in which more than 2,300 Palestinians have been wounded.

Which leads most logical people to ask? Why is Israel 'believed' to be using this? Photos of course. I have attached one for reference.

Seems concrete to me. Let's run with the story.

In the meantime, Israel is denying this.

Israeli military spokesmen deny that their forces have used phosphorus in Gaza, despite photographs and film of munitions showing similar characteristics to the potentially lethal shells.
The Israelis have not said what kind of munitions they have been using, other than saying that their use is permitted under international law.
Phosphorous shells are not illegal if they are used to create a smokescreen or to illuminate targets, rather than as a weapon against people, military experts and human rights campaigners said yesterday.
Mark Garlasco, senior military analyst at Human Rights Watch, said it seemed from news films that Israel had used "artillery-delivered obscurants" which were not illegal.

So now that this is all cleared up, some can run off and start quoting this as fact ;)

DOMA must go.....

louisprandtl — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 04:32:38 GMT

It is not a liberal who's saying this. It is the author of DOMA (Defense of Marriage Act) former Congressman Bob Barr saying so.

Crossposted at MyDD

First he admits that DOMA was indeed designed to pre-empt the judicial process.

DOMA was indeed designed to thwart the then-nascent move in a few state courts and legislatures to afford partial or full recognition to same-sex couples. The Hawaii court case Baehr vs. Lewin, still active while DOMA was being considered by Congress in mid-1996, provided the immediate impetus.

Barr explains in his column in LATimes that there are two parts to DOMA and their explicit aims.

The Hawaii court was clearly leaning toward legalizing same-sex marriages. So the first part of DOMA was crafted to prevent the U.S. Constitution's "full faith and credit" clause -- which normally would require State B to recognize any lawful marriage performed in State A -- from being used to extend one state's recognition of same-sex marriage to other states whose citizens chose not to recognize such a union....
However, we did incorporate into DOMA's second part a definition of marriage that comported with the historic -- and, at the time, widely accepted -- view of the institution as being between a man and a woman only. But this definition was to be used solely to interpret provisions of federal law related to spouses....

Barr wrestled with the unconstitutionality of the DOMA like President-elect Obama. Today he concludes that DOMA actually had become a 'club' to prevent the ability of a State to recognize same-sex unions.

In effect, DOMA's language reflects one-way federalism: It protects only those states that don't want to accept a same-sex marriage granted by another state. Moreover, the heterosexual definition of marriage for purposes of federal laws -- including, immigration, Social Security survivor rights and veteran's benefits -- has become a de facto club used to limit, if not thwart, the ability of a state to choose to recognize same-sex unions.

Then it seems that Barr's libertarian side is winning over his conservative religious side. He wrote "It truly is time to get the federal government out of the marriage business. In law and policy, such decisions should be left to the people themselves."Can't say it any better....

Even more so now than in 1996, I believe we need to reduce federal power over the lives of the citizenry and over the prerogatives of the states. It truly is time to get the federal government out of the marriage business. In law and policy, such decisions should be left to the people themselves.

And he agrees with our famed Constitutional Scholar President elect Obama....

In 2006, when then-Sen. Obama voted against the Federal Marriage Amendment, he said, "Decisions about marriage should be left to the states." He was right then; and as I have come to realize, he is right now in concluding that DOMA has to go. If one truly believes in federalism and the primacy of state government over the federal, DOMA is simply incompatible with those notions.

Thirteen years ago, this man was the architect of a highly discriminatory law. He is still not admitting that DOMA is plain and simple legitimized discrimination practised by Government against the same sex couples. But from the State's rights perspective, he is coming to the same conclusion as Obama and rest of us that DOMA needs to go. And it seems that he is moving towards a position that Government should not be in business of denying marriage status to folks based on sexual orientation.

Congressman, I don't think I liked your politics in 90s, but today your column opened the door for dialog on this important issue a little bit..For that, a big Thank you.

Read Bob Barr's full column at Los Angeles Times.

Link to LATimes