Thursday, May 20, 2004

Posted here Thursday, May 20, 2004 at 8:30:17 PM     Further on Bush meeting on capital hill http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A43544-2004May20.html Behind closed doors, Bush gave a 35-minute version of his stump speech covering Iraq, the economy and energy policy. When he finished, the participants filed past a bank of microphones to announce that they were unified in support of Bush and that there had been no dissent expressed at the meeting. Bush took no questions. ********

Posted here Thursday, May 20, 2004 at 7:12:55 PM     Need to raise the possibility that the Chalabi raid was to get the security files he took from the Iraq security ministry at the beginning of the occupation. Those files contain lots of blackmail possibility, and that may include Americans. ********

Posted here Thursday, May 20, 2004 at 6:39:02 PM     So what is the chance that Saddham will be handed over to the "Iraqis" who will then find a way to set him "free"? Bush is going to (still a surmise) get out in the next weeks, and chaos will increase. in the melee.... ********

Posted here Thursday, May 20, 2004 at 5:53:46 PM     The handoff story now emerges as central. Good set of issues at http://blogs.salon.com/0003364/ The Century 21 agents will be viewed as liberators! I noticed a couple of days ago that Steven R. Weisman was busying himself generating murk about the (already murky enough) Iraq "sovereignty" handoff, when admirable clarity had already been achieved in a Wall Street Journal report, detailing arrangements that will maintain Americans in effective control of "Iraqi" ministries, that Weisman studiously ignored. The Times' Christopher Marquis has an A14 piece today that constitutes official NYT notice of—not the WSJ report itself, God forbid, but of its subject ("U.S. Advisers to Stay in Iraq After June 30"), which is now an allowable topic since the Administration has gone public with it. (If they were motivated in that decision by the WSJ story, the Times sure as hell ain't gonna say.) What the WSJ failed to notice, Marquis seems to imply, was the degree to which caring motivates the policy: About 200 American and international advisers will continue to work at 26 Iraqi ministries as consultants after the June 30 transfer of authority to Iraq, Bush administration planners said Wednesday. "We want the Iraqis to understand that we are not abandoning them," said Ambassador Francis J. Ricciardone, who is managing the transition for the State Department. He spoke at a briefing sponsored by the United States Institute of Peace. ********

Posted here Thursday, May 20, 2004 at 4:57:08 PM     Further on politics. I’d further add that no one in the realm of potential voters is exactly like anyone else. Each person is a tapestry woven of left and right, conservative and progressive, rural and urban, scientific and humanist threads. There is actual strength in this fact – all woof and no warp is way too fragile. Each person is an oriental carpet of opinions and cultures. But it suggests that polarization, them and us, is not a very viable political strategy. We need to create groundswells made up of people who differ. Creating a position that appeals and or educates to a broader consensus is important.  Highlighting certain differences while being tolerant about others seems the way to go.   It keeps surprising me that a candidate cannot say, in answer to a reporter’s question,  – ‘that is not for me to say. As President my job is to maintain the democratic process and have the voters and representatives make the decisions, It can even disagree with my own. What counts as candidate for president is not what I think about all issues, but whether or not I can help maintain and enhance the democratic process. I am not asking to be elected king, but administrator. There are of course some issues that deeply divide us and where the presidential election is a kind referendum where the people chose directly. I am going to be clear about those issues, and open to discussion and questions, and not make those decisions alone, but in consultation with different kinds of people, from different parts of society. . The president can only lead on a few issues, and should help – it is the oath of office – to create the conditions where the rest of the political process can have its say. Of course we have been through a series of presidential elections where “freedom, strength, liberty, progress, fair,” have dominated. But these are not issues, they are cheerleading. They are so important they should be taken as givens. The real issues get hidden by these words if the words are taken to be issues. The result is we get presidents who have significant undeclared agendas. Who would have anticipated that Bush would be a “strong” president, fierce and unyielding, and that he would take huge risks with the country? What he said was “compassionate conservatism.” And it even sounded good. …..”   ********

Posted here Thursday, May 20, 2004 at 4:05:27 PM     The cost of fighting terrorism is far greater than the cost of terrorism. How to translate this obvious truth into meaningful social policy? The cost is not just dollars, but mentality, and creating a new generation of people who live in war, and it affects their mentality. There is no wining against terror, if terrorist intent lives. And the source is economic and cultural inequality. The urgency is to civilize everyone, educated, hopeful, needs met, and more. Our current US view is that free markets and media democracy achieve this, but it does not. It can help the rich and some of the middle class, but not the rest. The poor (in spirit and dollars)  even in the  US are out of sight - but that is where trouble starts: either the Tim McVeighs, or the insurgents in now most of the world. And in the world of felt brutal inequalities, leadership from the beneficiary half of the world, like Bin Laden, will emerge to help those left behind or left out. Without achieving civilization for everyone, we live, given technology, where threat will be abstractly constant, and the mega-response to threat, from the long lines at the airport, the shadow in our hearts, the presence of those who think - our security folks - a life of death and destruction and suspicion - will be our fate. ********

Posted here Thursday, May 20, 2004 at 12:22:43 PM     Bush visits the hill Republicans. It had been said that he would take questions and stay an hour. He stayed 45 minutes and took no questions. But In a 45-minute pep rally in a basement conference room under the West Front of the Capitol, Mr. Bush told more than 200 House and Senate Republicans that the United States was firmly committed to transferring power to the Iraqis on June 30 and insisted that the temporary government would not be under American control. Specifically, Mr. Bush told the group, according to House and Senate members in the meeting, that the new American ambassador to Iraq, John D. Negroponte, would not be a de-facto successor to L. Paul Bremer III, the top American civilian administrator in Iraq who is to step down from his duties on July 1. Mr. Bush took no questions from the lawmakers, and left without speaking to reporters roped off in a corner of the Capitol's basement. The assurances offered by Mr. Bush come at a time when Europeans and Iraqis remain skeptical of American intentions and are questioning whether the sovereignty conferred on the country will bring about a dramatic change in the status quo. "He said, you know, that John Negroponte is not replacing Jerry Bremer," Senator Rick Santorum, Republican of Pennsylvania, told reporters after the session. "What's replacing Jerry Bremer is a sovereign Iraqi government. And Negroponte will be there as an ambassador; he's not calling the shots anymore." this is the strategy - get out. He can argue that "we liberated Iraq and now the Iraqis must show their true spirit. We did our part. "You can lead a horse to ...."" His metaphor was better, [update 8:30pm, i was insensitive to the implications of this for Iraqis, who had a national assembly and a political culture before Saddham. ] Representative Deborah Pryce, Republican of Ohio, told reporters that the president told the group that for Iraqis it was "time to take the training wheels off" and that they need "to take the bike and go forward." This probably helps explain the Chalabi raid this morning: dis-empower the most obvious new dictator. But the story might be more complex, and some have speculated that being disowned by the US makes him more palatable in Iraq. I doubt it but.. ********

Posted here Thursday, May 20, 2004 at 9:58:05 AM     After some responses to my posting on Democratic and Republican fears.. I have received seven private emails in response to my posting, all saying great, but..   The but is, that the right IS bad and evil, whereas the left is good and wonderful.   But my point was to get below belief so we can actually try to understand why people think and vote as they do, and stop demonizing them (except for DeLay).   To the most recent of those emails I replied   “I of course agree, but, in trying to understand how people vote, it is important to recognize that the rightside fear of the left is as visceral, powerful and rooted in a real historical analysis, with roots back to federalist and anti-federalist thinking in say about 1800.   Part of the problem is, the left has no story now. Multilateralism, ok, but what else?”   My basic belief is that the vote for Bush in 2000, and will be in 2004 (unless things really fall apart and Bush is not a candidate) is based on the following simple logic: we have had too much change. How can I vote so that the vote is as much against change as possible? Gore, with his environmentla book and calculated passivity in 2000 made him seem like an unknown who would try to shake things up. Bush was a real do nothing president who mumbled “passionate conservative” and about nothing else. This in part why I like Kerry’s current low profile strategy. He is comfortable, not anguished, he will let us alone (I am talking about how voters see him, not my own much more radical beliefs).   Here is another frame going back before the federalist debates: in the 1600’s and first half of the 1700’s, those who came to America were fleeing religious persecution *and* the enlightenment. They wanted a small community of believers. Starting in the mid 1700’s that migration slowed and those who wanted challenge and economic advantage on the edge of the (of course sovereign British) empire came out of the Scottish universities and London business. It was this group from which came the founding fathers and the constitution. Those two levels, pietism religious protestant and enlightenment secularism, never merged, and we still have that separation today.   Failure to take the right seriously at the intellectual level is a fundamental mistake. And it takes damn hard work to get into an empathetic frame of mind.   ********

Posted here Thursday, May 20, 2004 at 9:27:29 AM     The US's reputation has shrunk and is sullied in so many domains: military, diplomatic, legal. Rebuilding the sense of a decent America now seems monumental. The Republican attacks on Clinton And I add one not common: Gore's abandonment of Clinton, looking like he has no emotional connections The Bush election The Florida mess and the biased court. The monothematic response to 911, the war on terror (a war that can never be won). Enron and other business operas The attacks on Afghanistan The Incursion into Iraq after a world wide mass protest (to a decision long before made) The failure in Iraq starting with the obvious looting, and Rumsfeld's dismissal of it. The failures to create security and get the electricity back on, the phones.. The special connections with corporations,the bidding, the poor image of all that. The loss of American values in the Patriot act The religification of the war The prisoner mess , and the recognition of US domestic prison violence The low caliber of leadership, the absence of the President, who neither reads nor talks, but only issued hacked sentences of meaningless reference, like "compassionate conservative" and his use of words over and over like strength and freedom, a dull cheerleader in a losing game. ********

Posted here Thursday, May 20, 2004 at 8:32:33 AM     www.counterpunch.org has a long detailed article on Chalabi. ********