Obsidian Wings

Give Truth a Chance

by Edward

John Kerry, in a New York Times op-ed piece titled "The Speech the President Should Give," really doesn't offer anything of the kind. Instead he runs through, once more, the laundry list of complaints against the way the Iraq invasion's been handled. Oh, he suggests here and there a variance to the current approach, but nothing the President most likely hasn't considered and rejected. With all due respect to the Senator, I'd like to suggest something a bit different.

The point of the President's speech tonight is to improve his ratings, especially with regard to the Iraq war, but his overall ratings as well (given he essentially ran for re-elections on the issue). The point of his speech tonight is to try to rally the nation around the cause again. Paradoxically, however, the nation is not who he should address in his speech. The speech the President should give should be directed to the men and women serving in our armed services. A blunt, heart-to-heart dose of truth in the form of an explanation of how he's going to ensure that everything humanly possible is done to bring them home safely and soon. If he can accomplish that, he'll get the other results he seeks. Why? Because what's ailing the nation (and Bush's ratings) is not how long the war is or how hard it is, but the disconnect between what we're hearing from friends and family in Iraq and what we hear from the White House. More than that, though, regardless of how many times the President insists he's proud of our troops, his role as Commander in Chief, as the head of the military, is to maintain the organization's commitment to, indeed absolute need for, honesty and integrity. It's built on an honor system. It breaks without those.

Most experts I've read or seen on TV agree that discussing the details of our exit strategy at this point is foolish, so I'll take it on faith that the President can't share that (assuming he knows what it is), but there's a more fundamental bit of information our troops need to know: that we haven't abandoned them.

Despite what Rumsfeld said on the Sunday Morning talk shows, there are very strong indications that our Army is indeed breaking, if not broken. The other guest op-ed in The New York Times today is by Lucian K. Truscott IV, a novelist and screenwriter who's spent time talking with our troops in Iraq, and who is the son of General Lucian K. Truscott Jr., the Commanding General Northern Landing Force in North Africa in WWII. In his piece on why the alumni of West Point are exiting the Army in droves, he nailed the essence of the nation's malaise:

In the fall of 2003 I was embedded with the 101st Airborne Division in northern Iraq, and its West Point lieutenants were among the most gung-ho soldiers I have ever encountered, yet most were already talking about getting out of the Army. I talked late into one night with a muscular first lieutenant with a shaved head and a no-nonsense manner who had stacks of Foreign Affairs, The New Yorker and The Atlantic under his bunk. He had served in Bosnia and Afghanistan, and he was disgusted with what he had seen in Iraq by December 2003.

"I feel like politicians have created a difficult situation for us," he told me. "I know I'm going to be coming back here about a year from now. I want to get married. I want to have a life. But I feel like if I get out when my commitment is up, who's going to be coming here in my place? I feel this obligation to see it through, but everybody over here knows we're just targets. Sooner or later, your luck's going to run out."

The most reprehensible part of what Rumsfeld made known the other day (see von's post on it here) is that without allowing our troops to take the leading role in defeating the insurgency, the coalition troops are indeed just sitting ducks. Without being on the offensive, with their superior training and equipment, they're just targets trying to outrun time and fortune. Nothing Rove can spin or hand to Rumsfeld or Bush as talking points will convince the troops that this is not true. Indeed, as Truscott notes, only the truth will help them now:

When members of the West Point class of 1969 and other young officers resigned nearly en masse in the mid-1970's because of Vietnam, Washington had a fix. Way too late, and with no enthusiasm, the politicians pulled out of Vietnam, ended the draft and instituted the "all volunteer" military, offering large increases in pay and benefits. Now, however, the Pentagon has run out of fixes; the only choices appear to be going back to the draft or scaling back our military ambitions.

The problem the Army created in Vietnam has never really been solved. If you keep faith with soldiers and tell them the truth even when it threatens their beliefs, you run the risk of losing them. But if you peddle cleverly manipulated talking points to people who trust you not to lie, you won't merely lose them, you'll break their hearts.

So, no more spin Mr. President. Our troops deserve the truth. Spin won't get your numbers back up, and, more importantly, it won't help our men and women over there. When running for office in 2000, you said the principles you would use in deploying troops include the following:

It must be in the national interests, must be in our vital interests whether we ever send troops. The mission must be clear. Soldiers must understand why we're going. The force must be strong enough so that the mission can be accomplished. And the exit strategy needs to be well-defined.

With all due respect, Mr. President, you seem to have lost your way on most of those. Start with helping the soldiers truly understand why we're there and how the mission is going to be accomplished. You'll see a ripple effect in your ratings as they report home that things are getting better, or at least that they feel better about what they're doing there. The Army will see a ripple effect as officers decide to remain in the service and young Americans decide to enlist. The truth is the way out of this mess, Mr. President. You've tried everything else. Give it a chance.

Rove, Take 2

by hilzoy

One of the things that went through my mind after Karl Rove's remarks last Wednesday was: doesn't he realize that there are Democrats (and even, gasp, liberals) serving in the armed forces? How on earth must it make them feel to know that while they are risking their lives, one of the President's top advisors is impugning their loyalty for political gain? I just found (h/t Shakespeare's Sister) a website, Take It To Karl, devoted to collecting their comments, and those of veterans. Some excerpts:

"I enlisted after the war began (...) I do not support this war in the slightest, but I will not sit at home and lecture others on their insufficient patriotism when the nation is in need. I joined because I believe in giving back some measure of service and devotion to my country.

To hear a man like Karl insinuate that only conservatives are really patriotic is a knife in the back to every man and woman in Iraq who serves here. At least a third of us voted against Bush and pals. The number increases every day that we stay here, forced to make bricks without straw for months on end.

We've been here for 6 months. We're going to be here for at least 6 more. And next week we're moving to a more 'active' sector because the unit there is rotating home and the are is still too hot to entrust to the IA or IP, most of whom are still not fit to guard a traffic light, despite two years of efforts on our part. For some of us, this is our second tour through Iraq. My unit, [Withheld] was the tip of the spear in OIF I. At least half of us are combat veterans of a major battle and liberals. Can any of your gang say that, Karl?"

and:

"Karl Rove politicized one of the darkest days in American history, and rather than apologize he says he was "refering to MoveOn.org" or some other lie, and it makes me sick. These neo-cons are causing American men and women to die daily for a lie, they are running up an Enron style debt and they refuse to take responsibility for their actions.

Quote this: Their slow but deadly hemorraging of this country's resources and their naive and boneheaded disaster in Iraq is a much greater threat to our security than al Quada and all the terror organizations anywhere in the world.

Combined.

The mess you have made will take generations to clean up. "

and:

"Like all Americans, I remember clearly where I was when reports of the attacks of 9/11 occured. A friend awoke me with a bang on the door in the middle of the night, and everyone in the building was soon watching the footage of the attacks on a scattering of TVs. Some folks stayed up for several hours, but myself, I went back to bed. I knew that I would need my sleep for the next day's alert and whatever would come with that.

It might suprise you, Mr. Rove, to know that a card-carrying liberal was not merely jumping at the chance to defend his country on 9/11, but that I was already there, rifle in hand. However the plain fact of the matter is that the bleeding heart contingent is well represented in the rank and file. If you had ever served, Karl, you would know this, and know how foolish your statements to the contrary sound.

Thousands of liberal men and women join the army knowing that they will be forced to serve silently, honoring the ideal of a non-partisan military that obeys the orders of our nation's elected leaders. With your bitterly partisan remarks, you repay them with a stab in the back by ignoring their service and pretending that the military is a conservative organ of government."

The Mystery Pollster has asked and answered one obvious question: what do polls tell us about what Democrats actually wanted to do after 9/11? The ones that seem most obviously on point are this:

"If it is also determined that the Taliban ruling party in Afghanistan is harboring Osama bin Laden, would you support the United States and its allies retaliating with military action against Afghanistan, even if it could result in civilian casualties, or would you oppose that? Support: 91% of Republicans, 80% of Democrats, 78% of independents (Q37)

What about Osama bin Laden's organization itself? Do you think the United States should retaliate against Bin Laden's group through military action, or should the United States pursue justice by bringing him to trial in the United States? Retaliate vs. bring to trial: Republicans 80% to 17%, Democrats 66% to 28%, independents 64% to 27% (Q38)" (LATimes 9/13-14 2001 (pdf))

and, for those who have been listening to the claim that Rove was really talking about liberals, not Democrats:

"Do you think the U.S. SHOULD take military action against whoever is responsible for the attacks? Yes: 84% of liberals, 93% of moderates, 95% of conservatives.

Do you think the U.S. SHOULD take military action against whoever is responsible for the attacks, even if it means that innocent people are killed? Yes vs. No: liberals 60% to 19%, moderates 64% to 21%, conservatives 76% to 14%.

What if that meant going to war with a nation that is harboring those responsible for the attacks, then do you think the United States should take military action against whoever is responsible for the attacks? Yes vs. No: liberals 75% to 6%, moderates 83% to 6%, conservatives 89% to 3%

What if that meant that many thousands of innocent civilians may be killed, then do you think the United States should take military action against whoever is responsible for the attacks? Yes vs. No: liberals 62% to 17%, moderates 69% to 18%, conservatives 73% to 15%." (CBS/NYT 9/20-23 2001 (pdf))

Bottom line: sizable majorities of liberals and Democrats favored military action. As everyone, including Rove, knew all along.

As I noted in the comments to another thread, I asked myself, over the weekend, whether I could think of anything coming up that Rove might want to distract us from, in addition to all the bad news we already know about. And I thought of one thing: the Department of Defense has been ordered to release the rest of the Abu Ghraib photos by this Thursday. For what that's worth.

Alea Iacta Est

Donald Rumsfeld on Fox News Sunday:

... the implication of the question was that we don't have enough [troops] to win against the insurgency. We're not going to win against the insurgency. The Iraqi people are going to win against the insurgency. That insurgency could go on for any number of years. Insurgencies tend to go on five, six, eight, 10, 12 years.

Coalition forces, foreign forces are not going to repress that insurgency. We're going to create an environment that the Iraqi people and the Iraqi security forces can win against that insurgency. ...

There is freedom in Sec. Rumsfeld's statement.  There is a certain relief.  No longer need you pay heed to my calls (and the calls of others) for more troops in Iraq.  No longer must Josh Trevino call for a draft to supply those troops.  No longer must we agitate to "just win" in Iraq.  ("Just support!" is apparently the new battle-cry.)  Indeed, the time for us to score a decisive victory in Iraq seems to have passed; and the Administration has decided that it is not possible to go back for a second try.

But there are other emotions, too.  Less-freeing emotions.  Emotions that seem better suited to sitting in a twin-prop in turbulence than being a citizen of the greatest nation on Earth in a battle for the soul of a liberated Iraq.  Indeed, if you have always believed -- or, as I, have come to believe -- that Iraq is a central front in the war on terror, Rumsfeld's statement is frankly terrifying. 

For here is what it means:  If victory in Iraq is required to win the war on terror and our troops no longer hold the key to such victory, then we have given up part of our control over the course and conduct of a big part of the war.  We have subcontracted a substantial part of our national defense to Iraq's fledgling security forces. We win, or lose, based on their -- not our -- efforts.

GOP: Sell To The Wrong Guy And Major League Baseball Sleeps With The Fishes

by hilzoy

From Roll Call (subscription), via the DCCC:

"Three months into their inaugural season, the Washington Nationals are in first place. Attendance is strong, hopes are high, and the team is reportedly turning a tidy profit. But to some Capitol Hill Republicans there is a dark cloud on the Nats' horizon: the potential that their newly adopted home team could be purchased by billionaire financier George Soros. Earlier this month, Soros joined an ownership bid being led by entrepreneur Jonathan Ledecky. Their group is one of more than a half-dozen angling to take over the Nats, who are currently owned by Major League Baseball. (...)

While the Soros-Ledecky group is not seen as the frontrunner to win the bidding for the Nationals, who should be awarded to their new owner at the end of the 2005 season, the very prospect that Soros could have a stake in the team is enough to irritate Congressional Republicans. "I think Major League Baseball understands the stakes," said Government Reform Chairman Tom Davis (R), the Northern Virginia lawmaker who recently convened high-profile steroid hearings. "I don't think they want to get involved in a political fight."

Davis, whose panel also oversees District of Columbia issues, said that if a Soros sale went through, "I don't think it's the Nats that get hurt. I think it's Major League Baseball that gets hurt. They enjoy all sorts of exemptions" from anti-trust laws. Indeed, Hill Republicans could potentially make life difficult for MLB in a variety of ways. In addition to being exempt from anti-trust rules, baseball is still under scrutiny over the steroid issue. The Nats, meanwhile, hope to have a publicly-funded stadium built soon, though money for that venture is expected to come through the sale of bonds rather than a federal outlay.

Still, Rep. John Sweeney (R-N.Y.), vice chairman of the Appropriations subcommittee that covers the District of Columbia budget, said if Soros buys the team and seeks public funding for the new stadium or anything else, the GOP attitude would be, "Let him pay for it." "We're not going to interfere with [the sale], but from a fan's perspective, who needs the politics?" Sweeney said. Another senior Republican lawmaker who requested anonymity said that the league should be aware of the perception problem that might be associated with selling the Nats to Soros. "Why would Major League Baseball want to get involved with George Soros?" said the lawmaker. "It's about more than just the sale price.""

What's next: a horse's head in Bud Selig's bed?

Hagel: We Are Losing The War In Iraq

by hilzoy

From the Omaha World-Herald, via DKos:

"GRAND ISLAND, Neb. - More than 200 Nebraska American Legion members, who have seen war and conflict themselves, fell quiet here Saturday as Sen. Chuck Hagel bluntly explained why he believes that the United States is losing the war in Iraq. It took 20 minutes, but it boiled down to this: The Bush team sent in too few troops to fight the war leading to today's chaos and rising deaths of Americans and Iraqis. Terrorists are "pouring in" to Iraq. Basic living standards are worse than a year ago in Iraq. Civil war is perilously close to erupting there. Allies aren't helping much. The American public is losing its trust in President Bush's handling of the conflict. And Hagel's deep fear is that it will all plunge into another Vietnam debacle, prompting Congress to force another abrupt pullout as it did in 1975.

"What we don't want to happen is for this to end up another Vietnam," Hagel told the legionnaires, "because the consequences would be catastrophic." It would be far worse than Vietnam, says Hagel, a twice-wounded veteran of that conflict, which killed 58,000 Americans. Failure in Iraq could lead to many more American deaths, disrupt U.S. oil supplies, damage the Middle East peace effort, spread terrorism and harm America's stature worldwide, Hagel said. That's what keeps him on edge these days. (...)"

David Brooks: Lost In Space

by hilzoy

David Brooks outdoes himself today:

"Karl Rove has his theories about what separates liberals from conservatives and I have mine. Mine include the differences between Jeffrey Sachs and George Bush. (...)

Sachs is a child of the French Enlightenment. At the end of his new book, "The End of Poverty," he delivers an unreconstructed tribute to the 18th-century Enlightenment, when leading thinkers had an amazing confidence in their ability to refashion reality so that it would conform to reason. (...)

The Bush folks, at least when it comes to Africa policy, have learned from centuries of conservative teaching - from Burke to Oakeshott to Hayek - to be skeptical of Sachsian grand plans. Conservatives emphasize that it is a fatal conceit to think we can understand complex societies, or rescue them from above with technocratic planning. (...)

Conservatives appreciate the crooked timber of humanity - that human beings are not simply organisms within systems, but have minds and inclinations of their own that usually defy planners. You can give people mosquito nets to prevent malaria, but they might use them instead to catch fish."

First of all, Brooks is wrong about the Enlightenment. While many writers in the French Enlightenment thought it was possible to improve society somewhat, and that reason could help us to figure out how, most of the major figures of the Enlightenment (French or otherwise) did not have a lot of confidence in their ability to refashion reality so that it would conform to reason. (Montesquieu? Diderot? Voltaire? Rousseau?) The closest thing to a major figure in the French Enlightenment who did think this was Condorcet. But people who cite Condorcet in support of this idea generally overlook the fact that the work in which he most clearly comes down in its favor was written in 1790, when he was in hiding from the Terror, and is therefore more likely to be a desperate statement of hope against all odds than a simple statement of what he believes.

Sorry. I just had to say that. It's an error that annoys me, since one of the reasons I love the French Enlightenment is their rich and dark view of human nature and its complexities. (And for the record: when Brooks refers to 'the crooked timber of humanity', he is of course quoting Kant, a member of, you guessed it, the Enlightenment.)

More obviously, though: what on earth is this business about Bush and his advisors having "learned from centuries of conservative teaching -- from Burke to Oakeshott to Hayek -- to be skeptical of Sachsian grand plans"? Huh? Is Brooks talking about some other George Bush -- one who, when confronted by the possibility of remaking Iraq by force, responded with skepticism? Who refused to invade Iraq until his administration had really thought through the problems of reconstituting Iraqi society after the fall of Saddam, because he had learned from Oakeshott that any such undertaking would be difficult and perilous? Who decided not to try to remake Iraq along conservative economic principles that it had never known before, on the grounds that a Burkean gradualist approach would be preferable to recreating the Iraqi economy from scratch as a sort of Heritage Foundation theme park? Who asked his advisors, at every turn: how can we be sure that this attempt to bring freedom to Iraq will go the way we want it to? Are we sure we will be greeted as liberators? Don't human beings have minds and inclinations of their own that usually defy planners? Have we paid enough attention to the ways in which our plans could go wrong?

Maybe this skeptical George W. Bush is alive and well in some alternate universe. Maybe in that far-off galaxy he is cautiously leading America from strength to strength, and from victory to victory. But the George W. Bush who is running our country is about as far from the conservative, gradualist, skeptical vision of Burke, Oakeshott, and Hayek as it's possible to be.

Sexual Counterrevolutionaries

by hilzoy

I've just been reading (via Pandagon) the oddest article. It's from Rolling Stone, and it's about twenty-something Christians who have embraced chastity. And "embraced chastity" is, I think, the right way to put it: they don't just not have sex, they seem to have made it the organizing principle of their lives in a way that strikes me as very sexualized, and certainly very strange.

"After church one day, Dunbar, Power and I sit on a bench and lean back in the sun and watch Sunday morning stroll by. "Cleavage everywhere," notes Dunbar, not disapprovingly. Power holds up his right hand. Wrapped around his wrist, in a figure eight, is a black plastic bracelet. "This," he says, "is a 'masturband.' " One of their friends at college -- Pepperdine University -- came up with the idea. As long as you stay pure -- resist jerking off -- you can wear your masturband. Give in, and off it goes, a scarlet letter in reverse. No masturband? No one wants to shake your hand. "It started with just four of us," says Dunbar. "Then there were, like, twenty guys wearing them. And girls too. The more people that wore them, the more people knew, the more reason you had to refrain." Dunbar even told his mother. He lasted the longest. "Eight and a half months," he says. I notice he's not wearing one now. He's not embarrassed. Sexuality, he believes, is not a private matter."

I guess not.

Eat the Whales

The photo came from a Tokyo market.  The Sunday Telegraph:

Japan has introduced an education program into primary and secondary schools to teach students to eat whale meat.

Almost 60,000 whale meals were served at 280 schools during the program's first three months in the Wakayama province, south-west Japan.

The program has proved so successful, education chiefs are considering making it national.

Yummy.  I think I'll have the sushi instead, sans whale (hat tips to Nick Danger and Clayton).

"Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 and the attacks and prepared for war."

by hilzoy

Oddly enough, despite all that preparation, we're now two years into the war in Iraq and our troops still don't have the armored vehicles they need to protect themselves from being blown to bits:

"When Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld visited Iraq last year to tour the Abu Ghraib prison camp, military officials did not rely on a government-issued Humvee to transport him safely on the ground. Instead, they turned to Halliburton, the oil services contractor, which lent the Pentagon a rolling fortress of steel called the Rhino Runner. State Department officials traveling in Iraq use armored vehicles that are built with V-shaped hulls to better deflect bullets and bombs. Members of Congress favor another model, called the M1117, which can endure 12-pound explosives and .50-caliber armor-piercing rounds.

Unlike the Humvee, the Pentagon's vehicle of choice for American troops, the others were designed from scratch to withstand attacks in battlefields like Iraq with no safe zones. Last fall, for instance, a Rhino traveling the treacherous airport road in Baghdad endured a bomb that left a six-foot-wide crater. The passengers walked away unscathed. "I have no doubt should I have been in any other vehicle," wrote an Army captain, the lone military passenger, "the results would have been catastrophically different." Yet more than two years into the war, efforts by United States military units to obtain large numbers of these stronger vehicles for soldiers have faltered - even as the Pentagon's program to armor Humvees continues to be plagued by delays, an examination by The New York Times has found.

Many of the problems stem from a 40-year-old procurement system that stymies the acquisition of new equipment quickly enough to adapt to the changing demands of a modern insurgency, interviews and records show. Among other setbacks, the M1117 lost its Pentagon money just before the invasion, and the manufacturer is now scrambling to fill rush orders from the military. The company making one of the V-shaped vehicles, the Cougar, said it had to lay off highly skilled welders last year as it waited for the contract to be completed. Even then it was paid only enough to fill half the order. And the Rhino could not get through the Army's testing regime because its manufacturer declined to have one of its $250,000 vehicles blown up. The company said it provided the Army with testing data that demonstrate the Rhino's viability, and is using the defense secretary's visit as a seal of approval in its contract pitches to the Defense Department. (...)

Today, commuting from post to post in Iraq is one of the deadliest tasks for soldiers. At least 73 American military personnel were killed on the roads of Iraq in May and June as insurgent attacks spiked. In May alone, there were 700 bombings against American forces, the most since the invasion in March 2003. Late Thursday, a suicide car bomber killed five marines and a sailor in a convoy of mostly female marines who were returning to camp in Falluja. Thirteen others were injured. Officials said the vehicles most likely included a seven-ton truck. Last winter, 135 convoys were attacked on the Baghdad airport road alone, and even the most fully armored Humvee is no longer safe from the increasingly powerful insurgency bombs. Marine Corps generals last week disclosed in a footnote to their remarks to Congress that two of their best-armored Humvees were destroyed, while a Marine spokeswoman in Iraq said five marines riding in one such Humvee were killed this month in a roadside bomb attack.

Still, thousands of Humvees in Iraq do not have this much protection. The Pentagon has repeatedly said no vehicle leaves camp without armor. But according to military records and interviews with officials, about half of the Army's 20,000 Humvees have improvised shielding that typically leaves the underside unprotected, while only one in six Humvees used by the Marines is armored at the highest level of protection. The Defense Department continues to rely on just one small company in Ohio to armor Humvees. And the company, O'Gara-Hess & Eisenhardt, has waged an aggressive campaign to hold onto its exclusive deal even as soaring rush orders from Iraq have been plagued by delays. The Marine Corps, for example, is still awaiting the 498 armored Humvees it sought last fall, officials told The Times..."

Read the rest. It's appalling. It's a good thing we have conservatives in charge of our government, though: think how much worse things would be if we hadn't prepared.

New Iranian President Declared

The Iranian theocracy staged an election yesterday and declared that the new president will be Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a fundamentalist hardliner and onetime mayor of Tehran.

Several brief observations are made, followed by a more detailed discussion.  First, the election on June 17th and the run-off yesterday cannot be considered legitimate.  Why?  Because the regime has refused access to international elections observers, the press has no freedom and dissidents favoring freedom and real democracy have reported widespread fraud.  Election results and voter turnout are unverifiable.  Second, the election results don't matter anyway.  The country is run by Ayatollah Khamenei and the Guardian Council, a group of hardline Islamic clerics.  All other positions of authority are subject.  Third, the message sent to the world by the ascension of Ahmadinejad, a former basiji (read religious goon squad member), is a troublesome one.  The mullahs want to crack down.  The creeping social, political and economic liberalization that took place over the past several years will stop and likely reverse.  Development of atomic bombs will continue, as will funding of terrorist groups such as Hezbollah.