Obsidian Wings

Budget Cuts Are Coming

There's been a bunch of chatter recently about John McCain's question about the War on Terror: 'Where's the sacrifice?'

Well, it's coming folks. If Bush is re-elected, there's good reason to suspect that we will see significant budget cuts in 2006 in "virtually all agencies in charge of domestic programs, including education, homeland security and others that the president backed in this campaign year."

Administration officials had dismissed the significance of the proposed cuts when they surfaced in February as part of an internal White House budget office computer printout. At the time, officials said the cuts were based on a formula and did not accurately reflect administration policy. But a May 19 White House budget memorandum obtained by The Washington Post said that agencies should assume the spending levels in that printout when they prepare their fiscal 2006 budgets this summer.

Now nothing's chiseled in stone yet (least of all that Bush will be in office then):

J.T. Young, a spokesman for the White House Office of Management and Budget, said the memo, titled "Planning Guidance for the FY 2006 Budget," is a routine "process document" to help agency officials begin establishing budget procedures for 2006. In no way should it be interpreted as a final policy decision, or even a planning document, he said.

But, there are folks on both sides of the political aisle suggesting these cuts would happen should Bush win (i.e., if Kerry doesn't win and raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans):

Fafnir Exclusive

Whatever you do, don't miss this exclusive interview with Donald Rumsfeld by Fafnir:

A small sample:

[Fafnir]: Now Secretary Rumsfeld, there are a lot of people criticizing your handling of the war over things like the undermanning of the military, the not preparing for reconstruction, the letting crazy militias run whole cities. What is your response to those critics?

DR: Well, jeepers, it's hard to say. It's easy for those people, in their press boxes and their ivory towers, to sit back and criticize without having to do the actual work of running the military. Now would another secretary of defense have done a better job, or do a better job? That question comes with a lot of unknowns. Some of those unknowns we know, and some of them we don't know. Do we have a metric for these known unknowns? Are there more unknown unknowns than known unknowns? Is that another unknown? We just don't know.

Simply priceless.

A Sinking Ship

So, you know it tears me up inside to be the bearer of bad news for the Bush campaign, but there's little other news to pass along these days. First it was the Muslim Americans, now the Cuban Americans:

Bush's support among Cuban-Americans in south Florida—about 80 percent of whom backed him in 2000—shows signs of eroding. A March Florida International University poll, for instance, showed that only 56 percent of the state's Cuban-Americans planned to vote for Bush, with 25 percent undecided. While the vast majority will almost certainly back Bush in November, even a shift of 5 percent could tip the balance if Florida is a close race.

Who's next, the Religious Right?

The right criticism.

Daniel Drezner writes an essential piece on what is wrong and what is right in our invasion and occupation of Iraq. The key graf is, I think, the final one:

The craft of foreign policy is choosing wisely from a set of imperfect options. While flawed, the neoconservative plan of democracy promotion in the Middle East remains preferable to any known alternatives. Of course, such a risky strategy places great demands on execution, and so far this administration has executed poorly. It would be a cruel irony if, in the end, the biggest proponents of ambitious reform in the Middle East are responsible for unfairly discrediting their own idea.

(via Matthew Yglesias, who notes that he's been saying much the same thing, and is being (unjustly, I think) torn up by his commenteers.)

Drezner and Yglesias are essentially correct, although I would offer one caveat. We should not expect to establish democracy with one mighty blow, or claim that we could've erased a thousand years of history if only we had devoted one more armored calvary division. The invasion of Iraq may be justified in order to protect ourselves or our allies, but it cannot be justified on the hope that it will remake Iraq or result in the kinky execution of a reverse domino theory -- that Iraq's liberalization will cause other regimes in the region to also liberalize.

* * * * *

Indeed, wars do not create democracies -- as we should have learned from the World Wars and, more recently, from our experiences in the Balkans.* Rather, long periods of stability and growing prosperity make democracies.

We prepared for the Iraq war, but not its immediate aftermath. That latter failing cannot be undone; now we must make do. But, if we do muddle through this period, there is another challenge still looming, and we have not yet decided how we will face it. This is the challenge of sustaining the growth and stability we hope to establish. This is the challenge of not only making, but keeping, Iraq as a friend.

This means, perhaps, preferring more expensive Iraqi oil to a cheaper Saudi alternative; continuing to invest in Iraq's infrastructure -- it's roads, bridges, harbors, oil fields. It means giving tax credits to companies that do business in Iraq. And, most importantly (and most difficult for some to swallow), it means making real progress on the Israel/Palestinian conflict.

Yup, that's right: If we do not take steps to resolve the Israel/Palestinian conflict, we will find any popular government that emerges in Iraq to be against our single most important ally in the region, and on the wrong side of the single most important regional political issue.** This is not a recipe for long-term stability (at least as a democracy).

So, this is our task, now: peace in the Middle East. Let's get to it, Mr. President; it's likely not going to happen overnight.

When you dream, dream big (I suppose).

Need to Know Basis Only

/snark on/

Right hand, meet Left Hand...

Pentagon surprised by Bush pledge to destroy Abu Ghraib: report

I know he's the boss and all that, but the President might have at least IM'd the Pentagon that he was going to announce this...a text message, courier pigeon, something...

Pentagon officials were caught by surprise by President George W. Bush's announcement on Tuesday that the notorious Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad was to be torn down.

"This office was not aware of any plans to raze Abu Ghraib or build another prison," a Pentagon spokesman told The New York Times, insisting that he remain anonymous lest he was seen as contradicting the president.

A White House official, who also asked not to be identified, told the daily it was Bush's idea to include the announcement in a speech Tuesday, in which he outlined his strategy to hand over power to an interim Iraqi government on June 30.

Then again, it is mostly a symbolic PR move at this point, so I guess the only one the President needed to tell really was Karl Rove ("tell" .... "repeat back".... same difference).

/snark off/

I link to this Onion article...

... not because it's funny (although it is, in that cruel way that the Onion sometimes adopts), but because I am filled with a certain nostalga for that You Can't Do That On Television, not to mention a certain other sort of nostalga for Christine "Moose" McGlade. Hey, by the time that I had started watching the show on a regular basis she was legal, even if I wasn't.

And if you're too young to know what I'm talking about, click here. All will be explained.

Moe

We seemed to have had technical problems today.

So if you found the site difficult to load today, it's probably not because of your connection.

Here's hoping that this was just a hiccup...

Moe

I'll say this for Kerry...

...he ain't this guy*:

Gore says Rumsfeld, Rice, Tenet should step down

NEW YORK (AP) — Al Gore delivered a fiery denunciation Wednesday of the Bush administration's "twisted values and atrocious policies" and demanded the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and CIA director George Tenet.

Raising his voice to a yell in a speech at New York University, Gore said: "How dare they subject us to such dishonor and disgrace! How dare they drag the good name of the United States of America through the mud of Saddam Hussein's torture prison!"

If you've got proof of a conspiracy, Mister Gore - that is to say, something that could be used in a court of law - then by all means share it. Until then, well, I'm sure that the folks over at Moveon.org are thrilled by your speeches. I guess that we'll just have to see how they play out in, well, Peoria and just about everywhere else.

(Via Protein Wisdom, in a manner somehow involving stark, raving mad calimari)

UPDATE: Constant Reader Anarch gives us a link to the transcript of the speech, which disagrees with the text found in the article at several points, particularly the phrase "were clearly forced to wade into a moral cesspool designed by the Bush White House". Sloppy of me to not check.

Then again, now that I've read the entire speech, I'm amending the difference between Senator Kerry and Mr. Gore to five steps.

Moe

*I don't want that to sound too much like damning with faint praise: Senator Kerry's about four steps above Gore as a Democratic Presidential candidate these days, and their apparent distance is increasing as Gore continues to spiral further downward.

Well, that's a relief.

Senator Kerry will be accepting the nomination at the Democratic convention after all, thus rescuing it from a fate... not much different than it would have been anyway. It's not like either party's is going to be particularly surprising, tasteful and/or memorable.

Then again, 'surprising' and 'memorable' may not be all that positive conditions. As somebody or other once said, adventure is somebody else in deep trouble, far away. I'm sure that Terry would like nothing better than to bring off a nice, safe, boring convention...

OK, now the pollsters are just getting silly.

Or maybe bored: Poll Shows Voters Prefer Bush at Barbecue.

Do I really need to quote further, here? Oh, wow, he's also ahead on 'running the family business' question and tied on 'teaching your children'. (Rolling eyes) Yup, we got this election sewn right up, folks: the Democrats might as well just pack up and go home.

(BTW, this is cheerful mockery, not bitter.)

Moe

PS: Yes, I understand Quinnipiac's argument that offbeat questions may have some utility for pollsters. I just don't think that the results to these questions really mean anything. Which is admittedly my reaction to polls this early anyway, but why flog that particular dead horse?