First, let me thank Michael Crowley and Steve Clemons for filling in while I was away. It's much appreciated. More shortly on other matters.
--Josh Marshall
Even if you have read it, Juan Cole's 10-point Plan regarding Iraq deserves to be read over and over again. It's very sensible and the fact that there is so much distance between the reality of America's foot-print in Iraq and what Cole suggests explains why this morass is worsening.
He proposes a lucid plan that really deserves immediate attention by policymakers. I'm particularly taken with the importance of re-branding the non-criminal Baathists.
This is very close to what Americans did with a large roster of conservative, accused set of classified war criminals (organized in different categories of seriousness) after WWII.
At the beginning of the Allied Occupation of Japan, socialists and communists were the big political winners and conservatives -- even the good ones -- were shunted aside. Ichiro Hatoyama, the first ascending Prime Minister, who assembled a coalition in the new government of Occupied Japan was purged from office by the Occupation authorities the night before he would have been vested with his office. This was a lousy lesson for democracy -- but still Hatoyama came back as Prime Minister in 1954, evidence in part of a significant change of political course that Americans took in Japan.
The differences between America's engagement in Iraq and Japan are enormous -- but what is clear is that there is a cost to keeping the competent civil and military administrators who worked for thugs, but who were not thugs themselves, from taking positions in a reformed government. Cole is absolutely right that U.S. authorities should be knocking back the Kurds and Shia who want to block the return of any previous Baathists.
I think that while I agree with Cole that U.S. forces need to withdraw from urban neighborhoods and should be trimming their profile in important ways, the most important thing America should do is work to internationalize the face of aid workers as well as foreign police and military officials as quickly as possible. The American flag needs to be removed from the scene.
What few seem to argue is that the moment President Bush gets serious about withdrawing from Iraq, European states and other Middle East nations are going to be worried about chaos, potential civil war, and outward migration. The American brand has been harmed in Iraq -- but that does not mean that all other nations will have the same problems. By leveraging our intent to withdraw, Bush could begin to angle with the Europeans, Egypt, the Russians (yes, even the Russians),the Saudis, Jordan, and other stakeholders in the region to take over roles that we will not continue. The players there need to be reframed -- and our eventual departure could be used to pass off responsibility to others.
But how to get them to go? The German Ambassador to the U.S. Wolfgang Ischinger once told me that his biggest fear about John Kerry being elected is that he would have to work hard to keep Kerry from asking Germany to send troops to Iraq, which many assumed Kerry would do if elected.
I think it's simple -- and it's a missing point in Juan Cole's excellent ten point plan, but perhaps still essential. The fact is that no matter what direction America goes with regard to the Iraq conflict, we really do need collaboration with other major powers -- even if we end up retreating quickly from the place. But most scenarios involve some ongoing presence. In that case, European and other key national support needs to be secured, and that must be one of our nation's highest national priorities.
But we are helping the Iraqi insurgents and al Qaeda fanatics in their quest by shooting ourselves in the foot with how we are respoding to the highest diplomatic priorities of nations we need.
Sid Blumenthal says it well in this piece that just appeared in The Guardian:
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. . .it was revealed this week that Mr Bush's new ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, was seeking 750 changes to the 36-page draft plan to be presented to a special summit in New York on September 14 to 16. Mr Bolton's amendments, if successful, would leave the plan in tatters.The Foreign Office confirmed yesterday that Britain was standing behind the original plan, putting it at odds with Mr Bush.
The concern in British and other international circles is that the American objections, if adopted, would severely undermine the UN summit, the biggest-ever gathering of world leaders.
At least 175 world leaders have accepted an invitation to attend. The UN said yesterday that Mr Bush had confirmed that he would be there.
A wide range of organisations, from aid groups to the anti-arms lobby, voiced dismay about Mr Bolton's objections yesterday and expressed concern that the summit may end in failure.
The Make Poverty History campaign said there was a danger that the millennium development goals, the original reason for holding the summit, would be reduced to a footnote.
A source close to the UN secretary-general, Kofi Annan said it was too early to declare the UN plan dead. "Bolton wants to knock down the plan and start from scratch," the source said. "He will find that his opinions are not shared by most of the rest of the world."
As best I can tell, President Bush, Dick Cheney, and Karl Rove turn every battle -- all of them -- into winner-takes-all, take-no-prisoners skirmishes. This is not strategy. This is just clear-cutting -- when America lets them get away with it.
Strategy would be losing the right battles to your friends so that America wins from them the support it most needs.
I think that a more enlightened posture on global climate change, global poverty, AIDS and other pandemics, and other of the Millennium Development Goals would be ideal battles for America to lose to its closest allies. If we gave them some "wins" to take back to their publics in order to secure their support for the biggest objectives America had, we'd all be better off.
It seems to me that securing their support for the "internationalization" and "de-Americanization" of some ongoing presence in Iraq would be well worth giving in on a few of these other gestures John Bolton has problems with.
--Steve Clemons
Stygius hits a homer in his assessment of John Bolton's immediate intentions regarding U.N. reform.
He writes:
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Not only is Bolton trying to dilute or remove effective action against AIDS, global poverty, climate change, etc. he's trying to turn the meeting into a UN reform vehicle; more specifically, a John Bolton UN reform vehicle.This next bit I want to make emphatically: My sense is that Bolton is not only hamstringing the development goals of the meeting, this is also an attempt by him to seize control of the US's UN reform project from others within the State Department (namely, the Secretary of State).
Bolton needs very badly to take over and be identified with any UN reform initiative, even if it fails on his account. This requires waging battle against his political adversaries within the administration.
Secretary Rice has ostracized Bolton from the major UN reform decision-making, in part by appointing Shirin Tahir-Kheli as her own UN Reform Special Adviser. Rice's worry is that, given Bolton's track record, Bolton would only screw up UN reform. A reasonable probability. Hence, Shirin Tahir-Kheli.
One interesting positive Bolton story that made its way to me via a trusted source is that our Ambassador has gone out of his way to meet every one of the "facilitators" of the Millennium Summit document.
Some of these facilitators were in absolute shock that he took the time to shake hands and look each in the eye and say that he appreciates the work they do.
Watch out. I think John is studying Clinton meet and greet tapes.
--Steve Clemons
How does one go about re-wiring how Americans think about terrorism? This is my most recent project.
Some folks think that the "high-fear dynamics" that 9/11, Bali, Sinai, Madrid, and the London bombings (among other incidents) have unleashed benefit a vested class of players who thrive during war.
Weapons labs, defense firms, and pundits who also have financial stakes in war-related venture funds and investments like James Woolsey clean up in times of low-trust and high-fear. If things go back to normal, these players lose. There is a zero-sum game underway where return to stability and normality is something that many in the Washington establishment will vigorously, though in nuanced and subtle ways, fight.
The globalization we used to be tilting towards was one of high-trust (perhaps naievely high trust) where people, money, semiconductor chips, ideas moved more and more effortlessly across borders. That has changed, and many aspects of globalization have become messier in a world where fear has been ratcheted up -- and trust knocked very far down.
Tomorrow (well today actually, but later in the morning) I'm going to discuss Barry Lynn's new book, End of the Line: The Rise and Coming Fall of the Global Corporation, which thinks through some of the consequences of the fragility of global structures today, particularly firms. But that's later today.
Right now, I'm going to post the agenda for a mega-conference I am directing on terrorism. This agenda lists names that will simultaneously tick off and please nearly anyone who looks through it -- no matter that person's political stripes.
It's a diverse bunch. And that's one of the requirements of re-wiring how folks (inside the Beltway at least) think about terrorism. One must not just preach to the choir. We've had four years since 9/11, and it is time that we reconsider our approach to terrorism and think more broadly, more comprehensively, and beyond bullets and ballots.
I want to get into this conference and the question of how to redirect America's "terror" focus in ways that may actually make Americans and citizens around the world more secure.
So, chew first on the list of attendees. Everyone seems to want to email me their two cents on who should or should not be included.
Then, let's talk through the issues, themes and strategies tomorrow.
The conference is free and open to the public. There will be high-quality, real time web-casting at the conference website. And if you are in town, feel free to register through the web.
I nearly forgot. It's now my birthday.
Lyndon Baines Johnson and Mother Teresa were both born on this day, along with me -- and I tell folks that that may explain alot.
--Steve Clemons
The End of Diplomacy?
This from a thoughtful piece by Anne Penketh in The Independent:
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But judging from his few weeks in New York, Mr Bolton is not at the UN to negotiate. Since Madeleine Albright, President Clinton's UN representative, the US delegate has arrived with a rocket in his or her pocket. In the council, if the other delegates do not like what the Americans want, the US no longer hesitates to act without UN blessingNow Mr Bolton is at the UN with a mission. At the end of the Cold War, Francis Fukuyama famously decreed the end of history. We could be witnessing the end of diplomacy.
I hear the air just squealing out of the bubble of American pretensions.
America in the past has generally demonstrated capacity to be a great leader of others -- a planning nation, a strategic nation, a complex systems integrator in war and peace -- but now the obsession with doing things alone is a rejection of leadership and guarantees future weakness.
--Steve Clemons
Summits and Conferences. And Initiatives.
The U.N. Millennium Summit was an opportunity for America to make "real" what George Bush stated during his first trip to Europe after his last election: that America was ready for a "fresh start" with our allies, particularly in Europe. But John Bolton is wrecking this Summit and squandering another opportunity for the U.S. to get its diplomacy pointed in a more constructive direction.
Many progressive readers get frustrated when I suggest that Condi Rice, Bob Zoellick, Stephen Krasner, Nick Burns, Paula Dobriansky and others at the helm at State are in a completely different zone than John Bolton. But they are.
Yesterday, it was clear as day that Nick Burns, in a meeting with NGO representatives, would neither confirm nor deny that the U.S. was dropping support for the Millennium Development Goals. In other words, Burns would not support John Bolton's rejection of them in the leaked document showing Bolton's edits to the Millennium Summit draft. Nick Burns' silence is a sign that Bolton bolted ahead of Madame Secretary.
But no word from Condi Rice on all of this. Someone in the press corps -- or one of the young college students she seems to frequently meet with (given her recent appearances on C-Span at liberal arts schools) -- needs to ask her whether the MDGs are out. Has she decided that they ought to be tossed in the trash can? If so, has she consulted with any of our allies about this?
Or, does John Bolton need to be reeled in? Condi needs to respond.
Bill Clinton is piggy-backing on the Millennium Summit with his "Clinton Global Initiative". I am planning to attend -- either as a blogger on site or as a regular attendee (via the support of friends -- as the price tag is a whopping $15,000 to get in the door, and I don't think that even gets one into the VIP circle). We'll keep you posted on that one.
And finally, for those of you interested, on September 6-7, I am helping to organize a major conference on America's "next phase" response to terrorism. It coincides with the 4th anniversary of 9/11 and is designed to bring an ideologically diverse crowd (a genuinely diverse crowd) together to think beyond the police and military responses to terrorism.
It's open to the public -- and there will be live, high-quality webcasting of the entire program. Information on the conference -- Terrorism, Security and America's Purpose: Towards a More Comprehensive Strategy is here.
Speakers and participants include former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Utah Governor Jon Huntsman Jr., General Wesley Clark, author Tom Clancy, Senator Chuck Hagel, Rockefeller Brothers Fund President Stephen Heintz, Congressman Jim Saxton, Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist, George Soros, former Deputy National Security Advisor Jim Steinberg, University of Chicago Professor Robert Pape, Harvard University Stephen Walt, Woodrow Wilson School Dean Anne-Marie Slaughter, former Attorney General John Ascroft, University of Michigan professor and Informed Comment blog proprietor Juan Cole, former State Department Chief of Policy Planning Mitchell Reiss, and many others.
The list of speakers and agenda are being released shortly -- and it's a fascinating roster and may be a genuine opportunity to get American policy makers and leading players in Beltway civil society to begin thinking beyond bullets regarding terrorism
More soon.
--Steve Clemons
The Bolton Civil Wars in the State Department may have just re-started.
For those who followed the Bolton battle from early March through August, one of the real issues with John Bolton is that he was constantly attempting to undermine Colin Powell, Richard Armitage and others but did so with Dick Cheney's blessing.
There is evidence bubbling to the surface -- not altogether clear -- but pointing to the possibility that Bolton has already stepped out of his holding pen and is undermining Condi Rice and Bob Zoellick -- again with Dick Cheney's blessing.
A short while ago, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Nick Burns met with NGO representatives regarding the upcoming U.N. Millennium Summit and U.S. objectives.
A reader of The Washington Note and TPM pressed some key questions Burns' way -- particularly why any reference to Millennium Development Goals was completely cut out of the recently leaked Bolton-edited Millennium Summit draft document.
Remember, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are not firm targets and in the past, the U.S. has for the most part robustly supported these goals. The MDGs were agreed to by 190 nations in 2000 and reaffirmed in the Monterrey Consensus and referred to in the Gleneagles Declaration this summer.
When pressed -- several times -- on why these are apparently being knocked out by the United States in the Millennium Summit document, Nick Burns and subsequently Philo Dibble ducked the question and stated that they opposed the target of 0.7% of gross national income for official development assistance as an example of an old paradigm. They stated that that those kinds of numeric targets yielded poor results and stale discussion.
The bottom line though is that the 0.7% for development campaign is not an explicit part of the MDGs. When pressed further, they refused to say more.
In other areas of inquiry about the leaked Bolton document and U.S. intentions, Burns and Dibble were quick to defend the "perceived" U.S. position.
But when it came to the MDGs, it seems as if Burns and Dibble were coached to respond to any MDG issue by referring to the U.S. objection to the 0.7% target.
Reading between the lines -- Burns and Dibble refused to stand up for Bolton or say more in support of this stance. They refused to say anything.
One hypothesis is that Bolton went riding off alone again -- and doesn't want to support the Millennium Development Goals but has failed to consult with anyone.
Dropping the MDGs without consultations with the NGO community, other nations, or other stakeholders in the Bush administration (there is shock through parts of the administration about this) is huge news.
Burns and Dibble were apparently not prepared to support Bolton's line on this. Otherwise, they would have been defending him.
The insubordination may have just begun. Maybe they'll give him a pass this first time -- and try and teach him a lesson about coordination and communication. But my guess is that Bolton is drawing his energy and position from Karl Rove and Dick Cheney and only flirts part time with Bob Zoellick and Condi Rice.
We'll see. This picture I've painted could be wrong, but something is amiss between Turtle Bay and Foggy Bottom.
--Steve Clemons
Recess-appointed U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton is doing exactly what his critics expected of him. He is sticking it to the world. . .hard and nasty.
I received this morning a leaked copy of U.S. comments on the draft document for the Millennium Summit in September. I have been informed that these are John Bolton's personal draft modification suggestions that appear on the document.
Here is the document, adobe format, but it is a very large file. (Dial-up readers be careful.)
These suggested revisions are leaps and bounds more offensive, regressive, short-sighted, and dismissive of others than America's "bad guy" role in the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development.
In short, the document does the following:
<$NoAd$>~ knocks out entirely the Millennium Development Goals~ continues to undermine collective efforts against climate change
~ knocks out targets and timetables for all goals and objectives
~ guts any efforts toward further disarmament objectives and focuses exclusively on non-proliferation, while both had always been important objectives in the past
~ strikes the section that states that countries will use force only as last resort
~ and oddly, strikes out the need to establish a legal definition of terrorism, which the Bush administration has previously stated is a requirement before proceeding towards a U.N. Convention on Terorrism.
The John Bolton we came to know (and not love) is back.
Condi -- When does the "supervision" promised to Senators Voinovich, Hagel, and Chafee begin?
--Steve Clemons
Greetings TPM readers.
Michael Crowley has burned a brilliant path these last few days at the helm of Josh's operation. I'm going to have to talk with him about the "white smoke" stuff though as I've just returned from a trip to Rome and was caught off guard by the embalmed popes on display at St. Peter's. Did Lenin follow in this tradition? or did the Popes get the idea from Stalin? I'd really like to know.
It seems that Michael and I both used to hang out with Josh in the earliest, uncertain days of Talking Points' beginning at the Connecticut & R Starbucks. Josh's daily diet primarily consisted of S'bucks black & white cookies and a venti ice latte. In New York, a more stressful town, he's now moved to straight-up venti ice coffee.
Josh Marshall changed my life -- or at least seriously reduced the number of hours I sleep. He drove me to launch my own blog, The Washington Note, because he thought I had some things to say that just wouldn't perk well in my day job at the New America Foundation. My latest serious blogging focus had been attempting to keep John Bolton from the United Nations. While my fellow-travelers in the effort and I succeeded in blocking Bolton's confirmation by the Senate, we did not sufficiently alter the environment such that President Bush couldn't get away with a recess appointment.
But with Josh's focused blogging efforts on social security reform, and TWN's campaign on Bolton, some are arguing that certain models of blogging campaigns -- hitting a controversial issue in its soft spot -- with high-road reporting mixed with some advocacy can yield results.
More on that later.
For the moment, just wanted to introduce myself; say a "big-time" (as Dick Cheney would say) thank you to Michael Crowley; and just chuckle with all of you that John Bolton's first big move at the U.N. was to tell the other envoys that there is precious little time left to push reform and then rip up 400 separate passages in the current U.N. reform plan.
Hey, maybe the U.S. should be tearing apart the U.N. draft reform plan, but Bolton's negative credibility rating means that few buy what he is saying, even if he might be right.
More later.
--Steve Clemons
It was just a few years ago that I would see Josh, before he moved to New York, hunched over his laptop in the Starbucks of our Dupont Circle neighborhood, and wonder whether he was headed down some nutty Internet rabbit hole never to be heard from again. Now here I am thanking him for trusting me with his huge audience of loyal readers. Color me humbled.
Thanks also to (nearly) everyone who wrote in. I'd never quite appreciated the crucial role of blog readers until I started getting dozens of emails from complete strangers filled with all sorts of great insights and information. For instance, one very thoughtful reader who knows a lot about Mark Fuhrman insists he's not the racist villain he was made out to be. A persistent skeptic in Ohio is certain there's a good reason other Democrats are loath to challenge Mike DeWine and that Paul Hackett would face daunting odds if he does. And to that one Yngwie Malmsteen fan: devil's horns right back at ya!
That white smoke you now see billowing in the sky is the fabled signal for "Habemas blogam," or, "We have a new blogger." That would be the formidable Steve Clemons, senior fellow at the New America Foundation and author of The Washington Note. As you may know, Steve and Josh are sympatico on many key issues, so no doubt Steve will be a terrific read for the duration of Josh's absence.
And if you don't already, please do visit The New Republic Online. You might not agree with everything there, but hopefully you'll find it all provocative, informative, and generally worth your while. Cheers!
--Michael Crowley
Josh briefly flagged it back in June, but since then Coleen Rowley's bid for Congress in Minnesota has drawn surprisingly little attention. The former FBI whistleblower and 2002 Time Person of the Year has emerged as a strident critic of the Iraq war, which she's called a Vietnam-like "quagmire" that has made America less safe. If I'm reading this editorial correctly, she seems to believe the U.S. should withdraw pronto. And now she's just returned from a weekend at Cindy Sheehan's Crawford peace camp.
Rowley's opponent, incumbent Republican John Kline, is a real Establishment Man: a former Marine Corps Vietnam vet who carried the nuclear "football" for a time under Carter and Reagan. He's the antithesis, in other words, of an anti-war Sheehan-aligned whistleblower. So this race promises to be an intense culturo-political flashpoint -- particularly when you throw in the recriminations over ignored September 11 warnings that Rowley's sure to invoke. Sooner or later, I expect, Fox News will be obsessing over this one.
A few months ago I might have said that Rowley's aggressively liberal posture would be a problem in a district that George Bush carried with 56 percent of the vote. But in the wake of Paul Hackett's near win in Ohio Red country, and with Bush's approval ratings plunging to new depths, I'm not so sure anymore.
The caliber of Rowley's political skills remains to be seen. But Republicans like Kline must be in a cold sweat over the war, and over Bush's flailing attempts to shore up public opinion. How Rowley fares in the months ahead could tell us a lot about the Democrats' overall chances in 2006.
This is probably my last post before I sign off later tonight. It's been a blast.
--Michael Crowley
Oh, man! I know eight-year-olds who would be embarassed by this excuse: Pat Robertson says he was "misinterpreted." You gotta check out the details.
If you'll indulge another oddball reference (don't worry, this is my last day!), Robertson's pathetic cover story reminds me of the great old Monty Python "Piranha Brothers" routine:
Rogers: I've been told Dinsdale Piranha nailed your head to the floor.Stig: No! Never! He was a smashing bloke. He used to buy his mother flowers and that. He was like a brother to me.
Rogers: But the police have film of Dinsdale actually nailing your head to the floor.
Stig: (pause) Oh yeah, he did that.
Memo to Robertson: Don't bother. The police have film of you nailing your own head to the floor...
--Michael Crowley
Here's an interesting angle to the seemingly intractable Darfur tragedy. The group BeAWitness.org has created an ad mocking network television's obsession with ephemera like Michael Jackson and the Runaway Bride while thousands upon thousands die miserably in the Sudan. The group says all three major networks have refused to air the ad.
As a personal aside, I actually tried to watch some coverage of the Natalee Holloway disappearance on Fox News the other night. (She's the Alabama teen who went missing in Aruba.) And while I was able to derive bits of cheap pleasure from the Michael Jackson trial and even the Scott Peterson saga, I must say this story seems utterly mind-numbing. Of course one feels for Natalee's family and hopes against hope that she turns up alive. But there was clearly so little to discuss -- the case seems pretty well stalled -- it just felt like an excruciating waste of time. The only fun part was watching Sean Hannity and Alan Colmes trying to feign real interest. Yet this stuff gets incredible ratings. Call me out of touch, but I find that nothing short of bizarre.
Another depressing footnote: one guest on this show was Mark Fuhrman, who has apparently made a new career as an author and commentator on trashy tabloid crimes. Ten years after he was revealed to be an astonishingly hateful racist, leading one of his assocates to say "Fuhrman's life is in the toilet. He has no job, no future," Fuhrman seems to be doing pretty well for himself. Wonder if he's even heard of Darfur. I guess it doesn't matter.
Anyway, watch the ad. It's provocative.
--Michael Crowley
On a lighter note, I've got a short 'Diarist' in the forthcoming issue of TNR on rock snobs, music collecting, and what you might call the dark side of the iPod. I hope even non-music geeks will find it interesting.
(This link is now open for non-TNR subscribers, as is Spencer Ackerman's piece on the Iraq constitution.)
--Michael Crowley
OK, sifting through polls can drive you crazy (and it's often a waste of time, as some readers have, er, forcefully noted). But on the heels of that gruesome ARG poll, the fact that the Harris Poll now shows Bush hitting an all-time low of 40 percent suggests something real is happening. Especially when you consider that Bush has now dropped three points, to 45 percent, in that Rasmussen poll which had recently been a ray of light for him.
Bush's current stay-the-course speechifying tour is intended to stop this bleeding. But when even erstwhile allies like David Frum are complaining that "President Bush's words on the subject of Iraq have ceased connecting with the American public," it's hard to see how repeating the same old soundbites, even with precise casualty figures empathetically thrown in, will do the trick.
P.S. Note Frum's comment that he's been flooded with emails -- from National Review readers, remember -- agreeing with him. Republicans are nearing a state of panic over Iraq.
--Michael Crowley
It's official: People for the American Way is calling for the Senate to reject John Roberts. This will be a tough one for a lot of Democrats, but none will be more fascinating to watch than the junior senator from New York.
Update: A hectoring friend may be right in arguing that Hillary really isn't so interesting here; at the moment, she doesn't seem very likely to oppose Roberts. But I still think it'll be fascinating to see what rhetorical path she chooses to try and mollify her liberal fans. That said, another 2008 hopeful, Joe Biden, might be the more interesting test case. As my friend notes, the non-Hillary White House hopefuls have less capital with the Democratic left to burn.
--Michael Crowley
Matt Yglesias makes the salient, how-did-we-miss-it point about Pat Robertson: What's interesting is not that Robertson has said another crazy and offensive thing. It's that he was heaping scorn -- for a not-tiny 700 Club audience -- on Bush's Iraq adventure. Matt calls it a "subtle dig," but now that I think about it, it's pretty flagrant. Matt's got a couple other good points, too, so get thee here.
--Michael Crowley
TPM readers have graciously not harassed me for ignoring the biggest story of the week, the new Iraqi draft constitution. I don't really have the expertise to add much value here, so let me steer you to the foreign-policy Howitzers at work over in the America Abroad section of TPM Cafe. There's an interesting sentiment here from Anne-Marie Slaughter:
I never thought I would take this position, particularly given what could be at stake for the women of Iraq, but I’m going to come down on the getting it done side. Let’s just remember, the compromises that our founding fathers made to get to a constitution – mediating between slave states and free states – included one that left slavery intact and defined each slave as worth only 3/5 of a person.
But here's some man-bites-dog opinion from the right: On Sunday National Review's Andrew McCarthy, who has written some thoughtfully provocative things about the war on terror, responded to press reports about the constitution's Islamic core with the appalled declaration, "This is where I get off the bus... I am as certain as I am that I am breathing that the American people would not put their brave young men and women in harm’s way for the purpose of establishing an Islamic government. Anyplace."
After some browbeating by his colleagues McCarthy qualified that opinion until he could learn more firsthand; it'll be interesting to see where he comes down now that the deal is done.
P.S. Also don't miss this thorough - and despairing - evaluation by my TNR colleague Spencer Ackerman, who knows Iraq policy like Yngwie Malmsteen knows guitar scales. Spencer warns that Iraq may now be headed "into the abyss." <$NoAd$> Shudder.
--Michael Crowley
So Robert Novak is outraged at the White House for allowing the Base Realignment and Closure Commission to recommend the shutdown of Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota. That's a humiliation for the state's Republican Senator, John Thune, the man who dethroned Tom Daschle last fall; Thune had promised voters he'd protect Ellsworth and its 6,000 jobs.
Given that Democrats often accuse the Bush administration of placing partisan gain above the national interest, Thune's bitter pill seems a chance for a conservative like Novak to challenge that theory -- to praise the White House for taking the high road by not meddling with the nonpolitical commission's cold-eyed decision. The fact that Thune's direct personal appeals to the likes of Karl Rove, Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney got him nowhere make for an especially compelling point.
Well, it turns out that's not quite how Novak feels:
This is a cautionary tale of what happens when politicians forget politics... [D]amage to Thune as a national fund-raiser and candidate-recruiter seems irrevocable. He has been transformed from regular to maverick. Bush might ask himself: Is closing one air base worth this?... The Bush team looked like tone-deaf, old-fashioned Republicans interested more in going by the book than winning elections.
Yeah, "the book" is for sissies. Especially when your party only holds 55 Senate seats.
In a way, Novak's oddly impassioned argument is like some hilarious inverse of Alec Baldwin's legendarily ruthless "always be closing" monologue from Glengarry Glen Ross:
You can't play in the man's game, you can't [un-]close them? Then go home and tell your wife your troubles. Because only one thing counts in this life. Get them to sign on the line which is dotted. You hear me you [expletive expletives]?... [Never] be closing. [Never]. Be. Closing.<$NoAd$>
Which raises the question: if Rove somehow does save Ellsworth, does he win a set of steak knives?
--Michael Crowley
The On-Your-Own Club: Republicans flee from Robertson -- Rumsfeld, Coleman, Martinez.
--Michael Crowley
Yesterday I mentioned an intriguing angle to the Jack Abramoff-Tom DeLay relationship that hasn't gotten very much attention. The House Ethics Committee is set to dig into the Abramoff-related allegations against DeLay this fall, and I'm curious to know how carefully the panel will explore the shadowy NaftaSib angle.
NaftaSib is a Russian oil and gas company which apparently underwrote a six-day "fact-finding" trip to Moscow that DeLay took with Abramoff in 1997, during which the two met with NaftaSib executives for reasons that remain unknown. The trip and DeLay's meeting with NaftaSib officials was widely reported earlier this year. What I never saw was any follow-up on additional evidence released by the Senate Indian Affairs Committee on June 22 that shed some additional light on Abramoff's relationship with NaftaSib, and on the company's true nature.
That evidence included an eye-popping 2001 email between Abramoff and a Russian man named Vadim. The email concerned the purchase of paramilitary equipment, apparently including night vision goggles, that Abramoff intended to send to his Israeli West Bank settler friends.
A close read of the emails shows that this Vadim fellow had -- you guessed it -- a naftasib.com email address. What's more, Vadim's email signature identified him as "Assistant to Ms. Nevskaya" -- presumably one Marina Nevskaya, a NaftaSib executive who reportedly had been an instructor at a Russian military intelligence school. The Washington Post has reported that NaftaSib "has business ties with Russian security institutions." According to the Post's sources, DeLay met with Nevskaya in Moscow and subsequently in Washington.
It would be awfully interesting to know how aware Abramoff and DeLay were of these NaftaSib connections at the time of the 1997 Moscow trip. It would also be interesting to know whether Abramoff had been discussing the sub rosa purchase of military equipment back then, and whether DeLay himself knew anything about it. And, of course, it'd be useful to know why just DeLay was meeting with these people in the first place.
Just some of about a hundred fascinating questions for the House Ethics Committee to tackle in the months ahead.
P.S. You can read the most recent trove of Abramoff emails here and here. Nuke up some popcorn and enjoy yourself, it's great stuff. Vadim's note can be found on page 79 of the first PDF, embedded in a longer message from Abramoff to his settler friend Schmuel Ben-Zvi.
--Michael Crowley
I only vowed to mostly resist my current pet obsessions while squatting here. And now Ross Douthat forces me to speak up on the astonishing new documentary Grizzly Man, which he declares "the movie of the year" with a wonderfully sophisticated (but readably short) argument about nature, religion, and, well, getting eaten by a bear.
--Michael Crowley
Is it really such a surprise that the credibility of the Able Danger story is in so much doubt? Not if you know much about the chief advocate of the theory, Republican Congressman Curt Weldon of Pennsylvania, one of Washington's most eccentric freelance diplomats and self-styled terrorism experts.
It's interesting to note that this controversy comes just days after Weldon -- who was furious about not getting the chairmanship of the House Armed Services Committee in 2000 -- publicly claimed he had House Speaker Dennis Hastert's backing to assume the job in a couple of years. If the Able Danger story turns out to be a huge embarassment for Weldon, you have to wonder if he'll still be Hastert's guy.
P.S. Yes, that is assuming Republicans keep the House for a while. But that's hardly a crazy assumption.
--Michael Crowley
The Houston Chronicle reports on a "hush-hush" September fundraiser for Tom DeLay featuring Dick Cheney. This is interesting for two reasons. One, it shows that the Bush administration remains totally supportive of DeLay (although it's duly noted that Cheney and not Bush is the attendee). Second, it suggests that Republicans believe DeLay will have a serious re-election fight on his hands next year and needs mondo cash to wage it.
--Michael Crowley
And now for something completely different: From a letter to the Times of London, here's a creative, of-the-moment argument against exending pub hours in the UK:
Effects of new drinking hoursSir, I turned teetotal having seen, as a barrister, many lives destroyed by alcohol: those of both otherwise law-abiding citizens, who committed acts of violence when drunk, and their victims.
Like Judge Charles Harris, QC, and the Council of Her Majesty’s Circuit Judges (report, August 10), my many Muslim friends also see large-scale loutish alcoholism, and the society which permits it, as decadent.
Allowing pubs to open round the clock will increase Muslim disaffection and support for those fighting such decadence. Extended drinking hours may cause more terrorism.
ANDREW M. ROSEMARINE
Salford, Manchester
I wonder what Richard Clarke thinks of this idea...
(Thanks to reader Alex Massie)
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--Michael Crowley
Pat Robertson on Venezuela's Chavez: "If he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it." Flabbergasting. But remember, this is the man who recently called liberal judges a more insidious threat than "a few bearded terrorists who fly into buildings." If he survived that one, he can survive anything.
--Michael Crowley
As journalism grows ever more fractured and shallow, The Washington Monthly remains one of the industry's truly noble institutions. Its sense of public service and the national welfare isn't often rewarded with the kind of "buzz" that magazine editors obsessively pursue -- to the detriment of our collective IQs. Which is why it's great to see the Monthly's ingenious and inspiring take on the silly ritual of college rankings rewarded with a big Washington Post write-up. (You can thank the magazine's visionary founder, Charlie Peters, by checking out his well-received new book.)
--Michael Crowley
I'd be remiss if I guest-hosted Josh's site and didn't mention this story from The Hill: House Republicans are holding a fundraiser on Wednesday to benefit the legal defense fund of two DeLay associates indicted on money laundering charges. What sort of fundraiser, you ask? A golf tournament, naturally!
--Michael Crowley
US News & World Report has a big Jack Abramoff piece this week. I've followed the Abramoff story closely, and this installment is a pretty familiar rehash of the basic narrative. But a couple of things in it struck me. One is that the Justice Department has been poring through fully 500,000 of Abramoff's emails. That's a reminder of just how much of the conservative lobbyist's enthralling secret world remains unrevealed, despite all the national coverage to date. (It's also a reminder of Sam Rosenfeld's understandable surprise at why Democrats on the Senate Indian Affairs Committee haven't released more Abramoff emails and generally pushed the story harder.)
And in the wake of Abramoff's indictment earlier this month for his role in an allegedly fraudulent Florida business deal, there was also this interesting passage on the current state of the DOJ's investigation into Abramoff's general lobbying and political activities:
Prosecutors often like to use criminal charges from one inquiry as leverage in another, and that may well happen with the investigation underway in Washington. But people familiar with the investigations say prosecutors aren't in a big hurry. "There is no need to rush into this thing," says a person familiar with the Washington inquiry. "It is almost a foregone conclusion that [the grand jury] could indict him anytime [it] wanted to. For now, he spent a night in jail [in relation to the Florida charges]. Let's see what his mind-set is." Prosecutors would ultimately like to secure Abramoff's cooperation, the source added. With more than 40 FBI agents assigned to the case, there is every indication that prosecutors are interested in more than just a couple of lobbyists. The source also confirmed a recent Washington Post report that Scanlon, a former press aide to House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, has been in discussions with Justice Department lawyers.
The Washington buzz about Abramoff has subsided for now. But this story is a long way from over. Later today or tomorrow we'll look at a question that has largely slipped through the media cracks about Abramoff, Tom DeLay, and potential Russian arms dealers. <$NoAd$>
--Michael Crowley
The Sheehan Effect? Tapped's Garance Franke-Ruta flags a new ARG poll that shows Bush's approval rating has plummetted to an astonishing 36 percent -- down six points from a month ago.
Update: A reader notes that the recently reliable Rasmussen poll (which almost precisely forecast the 2004 presidential vote) shows Bush at a far healthier 48 percent, which is up five points from early last week. (That's right around when the conservative anti-Sheehan backlash really got rolling, by the way.)
Incidentally, Rasmussen also shows that Americans aren't too crazy about Cindy Sheehan, and that nearly four in ten (and a clear majority of Democrats) think it's time to bring the troops home.
--Michael Crowley
Senator Paul Hackett? You're all probably familiar with Paul Hackett, the anti-war Iraq veteran who recently made a stunningly strong showing in a special House election in a blood-red Republican district near Cincinnati. I saw the closing days of Hackett's campaign first-hand, and, while he wasn't always the smoothest candidate, it was amazing to watch how the one-liner "Just Back from Iraq" stopped people in their tracks and made them listen.
It now looks increasingly likely that Hackett will run for Senate next year, against the vulnerable Republican incumbent Mike DeWine. This Cincinnati Post article has current details, including the decision by one top Ohio Democrat to skip the race and the signal from another that he probably won't run -- developments which appear to make Hackett the Dems' de facto candidate.
That's got to terrify DeWine. Although a statewide campaign could test Hackett's raw political skills, he'd be an instant celebrity candidate on par with, say, Barak Obama. And given that Hackett, who thrilled liberals by calling Bush a chicken hawk and an S.O.B., raised around half a million dollars online for his House special election, imagine what he could do in a marquee Senate battle.
But a Hackett Senate bid would channel the same intraparty tensions discussed below. Many Democrats feel Hackett was too anti-Bush for his own good, that his blazing rhetoric may have scared off some war-weary Republicans who nevertheless respect the president. Needless to say, Hackett's liberal champions don't buy that. So if party consultants convince Hackett to hold back on the Bush-bashing in a Senate race, his liberal-blog-fueled fundraising could dry up fast. But Hackett's a cocksure, shoot-from-the-hip kind of guy -- he even lapsed into a Robert De Niro "Are you talkin' to me?" imitation during his House concession speech -- and it's not clear anyone can tell him what to say in the first place.
The Cincy Post says Hackett may soon visit Washington to meet with party leaders about the race. If so, I assume this would be a key topic of conversation.
--Michael Crowley
Divided they fall? After the 2004 primaries, fractious Democrats were impressively united in the great offensive to unseat George W. Bush. The party remained fairly monolithic earlier this year, thanks mainly to its widespread loathing for Bush's Social Security plan. But lately solidarity has again given way to a familiar brand of infighting. Two big articles today in the Times and the Post chronicle surging tensions between the party's liberal base and its Washington establishment -- over Iraq on the one hand and the Roberts nomination on the other. Call for withdrawal from Iraq, or support the war while criticizing Bush? Go nuclear on John Roberts, or skip an uphill fight and focus on other issues? The debate rages -- and the wheels spin.
Even some key Democrats fall on different sides of different issues. Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold -- who is thinking about a run for president in 2008 -- is featured prominently as a voice of the base in the Post's story on Iraq. But in the Times, Feingold is lukewarm about pummeling Roberts for political gain.
So if you're wondering why Democrats aren't getting more positive traction out of Bush's dismal approval ratings, one reason is that they simply can't agree on what to do. You better believe that makes Karl Rove a happy man.
--Michael Crowley
Hello TPM readers. I’m honored to be minding Josh’s store while he's gone. And I know that discovering a guest blogger at your favorite site can be like showing up at a ball game to find the star player benched with a pulled hamstring. So I hope to disrupt things as little as possible, sticking mainly to familiar TPM topics -- including one of my personal favorites, Jack Abramoff -- and to (mostly) resist such pet diversions as Bob Mould, The Andy Milonakis Show, and the astounding Grizzly Man.
I'll kick off with one 2008 GOP presidential hopeful's novel perspective on the Iraq mess. Sunday's Washington Post had a big front-pager on the highly ominous rise of Shiite and Kurdish militias within the U.S.-trained Iraqi security forces. It seems the militiamen are carrying out assassinations, abductions, and intimidation campaigns across the country. In Basra, for instance, some uniformed Iraqi policemen don't "serve and protect" so much as execute their enemies and dump their bullet-riddled bodies at night in a garbage-filled lot.
When Republican senator/presidential hopeful George Allen was on ABC's This Week today praising the Bush administration for its training of Iraqi security forces, George Stephanopoulos suggested that the Post's story has some pretty troubling implications for that utterly essential element of our success there. Not to worry, Allen said -- factional divisions are nothing new:
[Y]ou have that even in our United States. We have local police, we have state police, and you have the FBI.
Got that? Bloodthirsty Shiite militiamen really aren't so different from, say, Virginia state troopers. To which a startled-looking Stephanopoulos objected: "They're not militias going out and killing people outside the law!"
It's amazing, come to think of it, that Stephanopoulos didn't burst into laughter. There may be reassuring responses to the Post's story, but Allen's certainly wasn't one of them. Let's hope someone in the White House has a better answer. <$NoAd$>
--Michael Crowley
I am going to take advantage of this almost end of the summer week to take a short vacation -- a literal vacation and also a vacation from Talking Points Memo.
I may pop up once or twice this week here or at TPMCafe. But this will be my last regular post until next weekend.
This week I'm going to have two guest bloggers at the site who will hold down the fort while I'm away.
First, Mike Crowley of The New Republic will sign on for the first half of the week. And then he'll be followed in the second half of the week by Steve Clemons of The Washington Note and the New America Foundation.
I'll be back next weekend, with batteries recharged and back to regular posting as the political tempo begins to ramp up once again.
--Josh Marshall
