The Next Hurrah

Supreme Dereliction of Command Pt. I

By DHinMI

Yesterday over at Daily Kos, our friend and frequent commenter emptypockets had a powerful diary chronicling George W. Bush's Thursday.  As Iraq teetered on the verge of all-out sectarian/civil war, and the families of seven U.S. soldiers were notified that their sons made the supreme sacrifice for their country, our Commander in Chief couldn't didn't even attempt to exercise exemplary supreme command.  While Iraq's religious leaders tried to keep their followers from committing violence against members of other sects, tribes or ethnic groups, Bush attended political fundraising events. 

One might think it wasn't supposed to have turned out this way.  Back in 2002, while the neocons ramped up the Iraq war propaganda, the White House made it known that Bush was supposedly reading Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesmen and Leadership in Wartime by neocon scholar Eliot Cohen.  Most of the neocons dilettantes in empirical scholarship, but Cohen is generally considered a serious scholar.  In his book, he investigated the wartime leadership of four civilian politicians: Abraham Lincoln, French Premiere George Clemenceau, Winston Churchill and David Ben Gurian.  In addition to their propensity for dialouge with military leaders instead of dictating orders, Cohen identified four common traits:

The Other Problem with Port Security

By DHinMI

Unless you've been in steerage on a cross-Atlantic voyage, you've probably heard that the Department of Homeland Security has awarded a contract to a company from the United Arab Emirates to oversee some functions as six major US ports (New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Miami, and New Orleans). Just about everyone across the political spectrum is outraged that a country that was home to some of the 9-11 hijackers and provided an effective base for terrorist logistics and finance will, if the contract goes through, be in a position to undermine security in our already vulnerable ports. 

Members of the administration, including Attorney General Abu Gonzales, have argued that the port deal will have no effect on port security.  It appears that port security agencies such as police, customs and harbor patrol will not technically be effected by this deal.  It is also true that 24 of the 25 largest  ship terminals are operated by foreign companies, so the US has little direct control of what enters our ports.  However, it's very disingenuous of the administration to portray the United Arab Emirates as “just another country” or OK because their government is an ally in the War on Terra.  It's hard to imagine there wouldn't be an uproar if key function of customs, border security and drug enforcement were turned over to a company based in Columbia. 

But there's another reason to be outraged about port security that has nothing directly to do with whether the companies operating shipping terminals are from the United Arab Emirate or the United States of America: The Bush administration and the Republican-controlled Congress have not been properly funding port security:

Representatives of the nation’s public seaports oppose President Bush’s proposal to lump a dedicated grant program to improve port security into a larger funding pool.

Under Bush's fiscal 2007 spending plan, the Port Security Grant program, which was established in 2002, would be folded into the Targeted Infrastructure Protection (TIP) program within the Homeland Security Department’s new Preparedness Directorate.

Last year, Bush tried to consolidate the port security program into the larger grant program, but Congress rebuffed him and chose to keep the grant program separate. TIP was created to enhance security at port, railway, mass transit and other critical infrastructure facilities.

However, officials from the American Association of Port Authorities (AAPA), which represents 80 U.S. ports, said if the program is consolidated into a larger program, they would have to compete for funds against other transit systems, such as buses or rail...

[Some ports] have had to divert at least 15 percent of their capital budgets to security issues. This is straining their ability to handle ever-increasing cargo loads that are coming through their facilities, [a port official] said.

AAPA officials said the Coast Guard has estimated that port facilities would need to spend at least $5.4 billion in the next decade to improve security. Since 2002, the Port Security Grant program has allocated more than $708 million even though port officials have requested more than $3 billion.

They said there are few other sources they can get money from to help pay for security improvements.

Notice that there are at least two serious problems here.  One, as with our oil refining capacity or the capacity of our electrical grids, our port infrastructure is on the verge of overload.  But the deeper problem is that the Bush administration is more concerned with tax cuts that providing sufficient security to our critical, vulnerable and increasingly insufficient national infrastructure. 

Bush tried to deflect the criticism of the port deal by  claiming "I'm trying to conduct foreign policy now by saying to the people of the world 'we'll treat you fairly."'  Instead of arguing lamely that he's using the port deal to conduct a fair foreign policy, his first priority should be to keep Americans safe. His budget priorities show that our our safety isn't a Bush priority.

Katrina: Republican Report Contradicts Republican Talking Point

By DHinMI

The WaPo has a draft of the Republican-authored Congressional report on the response to Hurricane Katrina.  Buried in the 21^st paragraph of a 30 paragraph article is this gem:

As the president's principal disaster adviser, Chertoff poorly executed many decisions, including declaring Katrina an "incident of national significance" -- the highest designation under the national emergency response plan and convening an interagency board of experienced strategic advisers on Aug. 30 instead of Aug. 27; designating an untrained Brown to take charge of the disaster; and failing to invoke a federal plan that would have pushed federal help to overwhelmed state and local officials rather than waiting for them to request it. [Emphasis added]

Think back to the days just after Katrina.  The administration was getting some of the worst coverage it's ever gotten, and America and the world watched in horror as people in New Orleans had to fend largely for themselves because the local and state governments were overwhelmed.  And the administration and their conservative media allies were trying to pin the blame for the lack of effective response in New Orleans on the failure of Democratic Governor Kathleen Blanco and nominally Democratic N.O. Mayor Ray Nagin (who switched parties to run for mayor and still endorsed Blanco's Republican opponent for governor in 2003) to request federal assistance.  Director of Homeland Security Chertoff “said one reason federal assets were not used more quickly was 'because our constitutional system really places the primary authority in each state with the governor.'”.  In an example of Karl Rove's reported effort to aggressively pin the responsibility for the poor response in New Orleans on the local (Democratic) officials, Chertoff also claimed

"The way that emergency operations act under the law is the responsibility and the power, the authority, to order an evacuation rests with state and local officials," Mr. Chertoff said in his television interview. "The federal government comes in and supports those officials."

The idea that the White House was itching to help out, but was constrained from doing so until they got an official request from Blanco and/or Nagin was repeated over and over.  Never mind that, contrary to the WH's claims at the time, Blanco had made such a request.  (Look at the correction at the top of this page for proof.)  On the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal and on O'Reilly's show, on Fox and across the Republican blogs, the story was repeated that Blanco didn't request federal assistance, and until she did the White House was prevented from helping out.  But as today's WaPo article points out, the idea that the federal government was prevented from assisting in the disaster zone until officially requested by Blanco is clearly false; the federal government could have mobalized all available resources and begun assistance immediately, regardless of whether Blanco had submitted the request.  (And again, it's sort of beside the point, because Blanco in fact did make such a request.)

Keep an eye on this between now and Wednesday.  I would say chances are good that someone at the White House will notice that the Republican-controlled House of Representatives is about to undercut an important White House and Republican talking point, and excise or at least significantly edit the section as mentioned in the WaPo article. 

McCain Sucks Up to the Wingers

By DHinMI

I've long been skeptical of John McCain's chances of winning the 2008 Republican Presidential nomination.  The right wing of the GOP just holds too many primary votes, McCain's main appeal lies with independents who in many primaries and caucuses won't be able to participate, and there will be too much Democratic activity in the early primaries  (unlike in 2000) to keep many Dems or as many independents from voting in a Republican primary.  But one shouldn't discount McCain's ability to prove his "maverick" reputation and supposed independence from the extremist elements in the GOP coaltion is one of the most outrageous fictions in modern American politics:

Most "Conservative" Republicans aren't Conservatives, They're Authoritarians

By DHinMI

The Washington Post's Dana Milbank has a great piece today about the hostile reaction to former Republican Congressman and Clinton adversary Bob Barr at the Conservative Political Action Committee convention this week. 

As of midday yesterday, a silent auction netted $300 for lunch with activist Grover Norquist, $275 for a meal with the Heritage Foundation president and $1,000 for a hunting trip with the American Conservative Union chairman. But lunch with former congressman Bob Barr (R-Ga.), with an "estimated value" of $500, had a top bid of only $75 -- even with a signed copy of Barr's book, "The Meaning of Is," thrown in.

No surprise there. The former Clinton impeachment manager is the skunk at CPAC's party this year. He says President Bush is breaking the law by eavesdropping on U.S. citizens without warrants. And fellow conservatives, for the most part, don't want to hear it.

Facts on Muslims and Arabs (Two Terms that AREN'T Synonymous)

By DHinMI

With all the controversy over the editorial cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed, there's been quite a flurry of discussion in Blogostan about Muslims.  Some of the discussion has been good (like Georgia10's backgrounder on the controversy here ), some not so good (like much of the discussion on the thread below Georgia10's piece).  To be fair, while I've seen quite a few insensitive, ignorant and even offensive comments about Muslims and Islam, nothing I've seen on any liberal blogs has come even remotely close to the genocidal ravings about Arabs and/or Muslims you can see just about every day at Frei Republik or Little Genocidal Footsoldiers Little Green Footballs.  But there's still a lot of ignorance and apparent bias seeping through in comments from generally insightful and well-informed people.  So here are a few demographic facts about Muslims and Arabs that some may find surprising, and that knowing about will, I hope, elevate the conversations about the cartoon controversy. 

First, Arab isn't synonymous with Muslim.  Islam did arise out of the Arab bedouin society and culture of 8th century Arabia, and the Koran was written in and studied in Arabic, so the influence of Medieval Arab culture and society is important, just as nomadic Caananite culture and society of .a thousand years earlier is important in shaping all the monotheistic religions.  But to equate Arab (which is a cultural, social, ethnic and linguist identification) with Muslim (which is a religious identification) is like using calling Christians Jews, because Jesus and most of his earliest followers were Jews. 

Beyond the historical aspects of the different identifications, there are many non-Muslim Arabs, and far, far more non-Arab Muslims than there are Arabs of all faiths combined.  There are approximately one billion Muslims, but only about 200 million of those Muslims are Arabs.  In fact, of the countries with the largest Muslim populations, only Egypt is an Arab country (in millions, %=percentage of national population that's Muslim; figures calculated from country profiles in CIA Factbook:

1.Indonesia (212m, 88%)
2.India (140m, 13%)
3.China (133m, 1%) *
4.Pakistan (157m, 97%)
5.Bangladesh (119m, 83%)
6.Egypt (74m, 94%)
7.Turkey (69m, 99%)
8.Iran (66m, 98%)
9.Nigeria (64m, 50%)
10.Ethiopia (32m, 45%)

For Boehner, Reform Begins Corruption Continues at Home

By DHinMI

So, the House Republican caucus wanted to present a clean, faux-reformist image to Americans, so today they rejected Roy Blunt and chose as Tom DeLay’s replacement as Majority Leader Ohio Congressman John Boehner.

That’s right, the new ethically pure, reformist, anti-corruption Congressional Republicans will be led by a Republican from Ohio. Boehner is a member of a male-only country club with a $75,000 initiation fee. Maybe that cleaned out his bank account, which is why he had to take almost $14,000 in free trips from the lobbyist-connected Ripon Society. He also has a history as a bag man for the tobacco lobby during his days as a capo for Newt Gingrich, even going so far as to disburse checks from tobacco lobbyists to Republican members on the floor of the United States Congress. So this really made me chuckle:

On Tuesday, majority Republicans in the U.S. House sought to contain the damage from the Abramoff scandal by proposing their own package of reforms, including banning travel paid for by outside groups, restricting gifts and denying pensions to lawmakers convicted of felonies related to official duties.

"An honorable majority responds to its stumbles with contrition, reform, and an effort to fix that which is broken," said Republican U.S. Rep. John Boehner, of West Chester.

Boehner’s association with corrupt majorities isn’t limited to being a Republican in the United States Congress, either. It also includes his position as a prominent Republican in the state of Ohio. As you surely know, the Ohio Republican party has so-far made the Abramoff crooks look like a bunch of pikers. There’s still time for the Abramoff scandal to morph into something much, much bigger—and it probably will—but what we know in Ohio is that the Ohio Republicans’ La Cosa Noe-stra centered around GOP fundraiser Timothy Noe has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for Republicans running for both state and federal office, including George W. Bush’s Presidential campaign. Noe broke laws in raising money for Bush, and he stole the pension money of Ohio workers by investing it in shady deals with his coin business.

Has John Boehner done anything to clean up corruption in his own party in his own home state? He certainly didn’t distance himself from Jean Schmidt, to whose campaign in 2005 he donated $10,000, despite her connections to Noe. He doesn’t appear to have called for any sweeping reforms of the Ohio Republican party, or publicly urged Republicans to renounce the money they received from Noe.

Why should we expect John Boehner to be a sincere advocate of Congressional lobbying reform, when he’s done nothing to advocate or implement reform among his fellow Ohio Republicans, possibly the most corrupt bunch of Republicans in the country?

 

Republican Felon Jack Abramoff: Time to Refocus

By DHinMI

RonK has kicked up a bit of dust with his two most recent posts examining the contributions of the Indian tribes once represented by Republican felon Jack Abramoff. (Repeat the phrase “Republican felon Jack Abramoff” three times, then find a way to slip it into a conversation, and it will always be part of your active vocabulary.) I urge readers with the time to go through the comments on those two threads, and follow the arguments of the participants. With only a few exceptions, even when heated and irritated, the participants made good points, and at this point on the second thread there seems to be a consensus around the facts as presented by RonK, and at least a modicum of acceptance on where it may fit in to the bigger scheme regarding the Republican scandal involving Republican felon Jack Abramoff.

As RonK laid out, over the last few days some very smart and shrewd people on our side of the blogosphere made some assertions about patterns of tribal political donations that don’t appear to hold up to a factual examination. RonK should be commended for straightening out the fact that the tribes represented by Abramoff actually gave more money to Democrats during his involvement. However, their donations to Republicans grew at an even greater rate of increase. Thus, it was more money to Democrats, but the percentage to Democrats shrunk during Abramoff’s involvement with the tribes, meaning that the net differential between donations to Republicans and Democrats shifted in favor of the Republicans.

Furthermore, there is testimony supporting the claim rejected by some that in fact Abramoff directed the tribes to dispense some of their money to Democrats. Since the sources of this testimony themselves may not be unimpeachable, we can leave that open for now. But even if one fully accepts the proposition that Abramoff was directing his clients to continue the standard pattern of tribes donating to Democrats, he was still altering that pattern by increasing the number of donations to Republicans, and shifting the percentages of donations to the parties in favor of the Republicans.

There are some important lessons to be learned from the statements of some smart people who were wrong, from the information assembled by RonK, and by what wasn’t being discussed during this dust up over whether Abramoff directed donations to Democrats, and whether Democrats were receiving more or fewer donations from Abramoff’s clients.

First, the lessons of what not to do:

"Is David Dreier Gay?" Crosses Into the Mainstream

By DHinMI

From today’s Wall Street Journal (subscription required):

California's Rep. David Dreier is a gentleman in the not-so-gentle world of the House Republican leadership.

Witty, articulate, friend to the Annenbergs and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mr. Dreier is a Ronald Reagan-style optimist who favors inclusive politics. But after 25 years in Congress, he finds himself isolated by the increasingly raw social warfare within his own party.

Amid the turmoil in the House, the 53-year-old lawmaker is an obvious candidate to help fill the leadership void. But Mr. Dreier, whose upscale Los Angeles-area constituents are less conservative on social issues than on fiscal matters, shuns any elected party post, preferring to protect his privacy as a loyal lieutenant to Speaker Dennis Hastert…

Mr. Hastert waived party rules to extend Mr. Dreier's tenure as House Rules Committee chairman and considered elevating him to fill in when Mr. DeLay first stepped aside in October after being indicted in Texas on campaign-finance charges. The idea was quickly scotched when Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R., Mo.) went to Mr. Hastert to claim the title for himself. But talk of Dreier leadership set off an uproar among social conservatives, who mounted calls to Mr. Hastert's office and attacked Mr. Dreier, citing his votes in support of stem-cell research and against a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage.  [emphasis added]

Um, yeah. Preferring to protect his privacy. And sure, “social conservatives” objected to Dreier’s votes on stem cell research and against the Federal Marriage Amendment.

Let’s be honest here. The reason why Dreier isn’t acceptable to many Republicans is because he’s gay.

It’s hardly a secret that David Dreier is gay. Doug Ireland wrote about Dreier for the L.A. Weekly in 2004. And Pam covered things as Dreier’s candidacy to replace DeLay was floated and quickly pulled back when DeLay stepped down last September. But throughout all this, there’s been barely a peep in the mainstream media about Dreier apparently being rejected for the top ranks of GOP congressional leadership because of his (still not publicly acknowledged) sexual orientation.

But this morning, I finally heard an honest mention of Republicans rejecting Dreier for leadership because he’s gay on a non-alternative media source. During her weekly News Roundup with a panel of journalists, NPR’s Diane Rehm asked her panel—including the WSJ’s Doug Harwood—about the Dreier article. Specifically, she asked about why he faced a “leadership test.”  She almost certainly knew what she was doing, and The Nation’s David Corn took her bait, and made it clear that Dreier is gay and that’s why many of his colleagues oppose the idea of him being in leadership.

It was really quite simple, and didn’t include any parsing, or hemming and hawing. Corn just said there’s plenty of information out there for people to read for themselves, even mentioning the LA Weekly article (linked above). For the WSJ—which separate from their editorial page is an outstanding newspaper—to avoid candid discussion about Dreier’s sexual orientation and the opposition it generates among his Republican colleagues is irresponsible.

Homophobia is a fact of Republican politics. To paper it over with euphemisms about protecting one’s privacy helps the GOP continue pursuing a radical agenda while concealing their true radicalism and intolerance to the broader public outside their reactionary base. Kudos to Diane Rehm and David Corn for just coming out and saying what David Dreier and his fellow Republicans won’t say: he’s gay, and for that reason his fellow Republicans don’t trust him.

  

The Bin Laden Message Subtext: Competition Between Bin Laden and Zarqawi

By DHinMI

Hearing this morning that Osama bin Laden had issued another audiotape offering a “truce,” this time with the United States, I figured I’d be late to the game, that most of the bloggers would have already parsed and analyzed the meaning and significance of bin Laden’s message, and that what I wanted to say would be old and stale. But to my surprise, a quick tour of the some of the blogs most likely to have covered the speech showed very little interest. Maybe bin Laden and al Qaeda messages are becoming like the Tom Ridge rainbow of terror warnings, or the 25^th launch of the Space Shuttle; something that doesn’t capture our attention they way it used to, at least not until something spectacular happens. 

In his message, bin Laden not only proposes a truce with the U.S., he also says that al Qaeda is preparing terror strikes within the U.S. Its likely that most analyses you’ll see of this message will focus on the conflict between al Qaeda and the United States. It’s also been proposed that the message, coming days after the attempt to assassinate Ayhman al-Zawahiri, is to reassure jihadis that the senior figures of al Qaeda are still alive, which is plausible but complicated by the fact that some reports claim that the tape has been dated to December, weeks prior to the attempt on Zawahiri’s life. But there’s another (not necessarily exclusive) reason why bin Laden may have issued the message, which includes a statement on the importance of rebuilding Iraq and Afghanistan: al Qaeda may be loosing support in Iraq, and he may be trying to regain control of al Qaeda in Iraq.

One of the least discussed dynamics in Iraq is the apparent ideological and strategic rift between Al Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and the bin Laden/Zawahiri-led al Qaeda “establishment.” Almost a year ago Zarqawi began advocating exapanding operations in Iraq to fighting Shiites and inciting sectarian war between Iraq’s Sunni and Shiites. As al Qaeda’s Robespierre, he’s does not appear constrained by tactical or strategic prudence, which prompted Zawahiri to urge him to stop the beheadings and intentionally targeting civilians. 

Zarqawi ignored Zawahiri’s advice. Zarqawi may be making progress in inciting civil war between Iraq’s Sunni and Shiites, and his stature may be greater among Islamist political fundamentalists outside Iraq, but within Iraq his methods are hurting any effort to foster wider appeal among Iraqis, and fueling conflict between the indigenous Iraqi insurgency and the Jihadis. As the NYT reported last week, fighting between in the Sunni Triangle between the indigenous insurgents and the Jihadis has increased in recent months, and Iraqis have begun to turn against the Jihadis as interlopers with no regard for Iraqi tribal and nationalistic traditions and concerns. Last week outgoing commander of coalition forces in Iraq Lt. General John Vines also said al Queda in Iraq was in “disarray.”

So among whatever other reasons may have prompted this message from bin Laden, it’s worth considering that it’s an olive branch to Iraqis increasingly alienated by the aims and methods of those in Iraq who are acting in the name of al Qaeda. Furthermore, it may be a sign that the global Jihadi movement may be entering a new phase, where the Egyptian and Egyptian-inspired ideological descendents of the Muslim Brotherhood give way—through death, incarceration, and rejection by the even more extreme elements of the Jihadi movement—to the ideological crude brethren of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. This could be an attempt by bin Laden to stave off the transfer of power and influence and inspiration from him to Zarqawi, which could roughly be like the shift of influence from Lenin to Stalin. At the same time, it may reflect concern that Zarqawi is screwing up the image of al Qaeda in Iraq, with possible negative repercussions through all Muslim societies. To use a bit of corporate phraseology, it may be as if bin Laden is trying to rescue his brand’s name from the poor care given it by franchisees like Zarqawi. 

I hope some of these questions are being pondered by the experts in terrorism and foreign policy, because it would obviously be better to understand bin Laden than just mindlessly react to his public statements. Even better would be if someone in the Bush administration listens to anyone who takes seriously the internal dynamics and possible struggles for power and influence in Al Qaeda. Such attention to the workings of al Qaeda may even lead to a more effective policy against this global terrorist movement by the Bush administration, which would benefit us all.