Obsidian Wings

How Not To Promote Democracy

by hilzoy

Here's a perfect example of the wrong way to advance an objective:

"Tehran's jailing of Haleh Esfandiari, a 67-year old grandmother who holds dual Iranian-American citizenship, as well as the interrogation of others with similar papers, is evidence that Washington's latest attempt to foist change on Iran is backfiring — as Iranian democracy advocates had warned. The Bush Administration had trumpeted its $61.1 million democracy program, including Farsi-language broadcasts into Iran, education and cultural exchanges and $20 million worth of support for "civil society, human rights, democratic reform and related outreach" as an important effort. However, sources tell TIME that several key Iranian reformers had repeatedly warned U.S. officials through back channels that the pro-democracy program was bound to expose them as vulnerable targets for a government crackdown whether they took Washington's funds or not.

Iranian civil rights activists contacted by TIME say that the cases against the Iranian-Americans have fostered the most repressive atmosphere inside Iran in years, making democracy advocates terrified to work or even speak on the telephone. Many are deeply reluctant to leave or re-enter the country, fearing that they will meet the same fate as Esfandiari, who was initially detained while heading to the airport after an eight-day visit to Iran to see her 93-year-old mother. She and at least two other Iranian-Americans were charged with espionage. Esfandiari is the director of the Woodrow Wilson Center's Mideast Program in Washington. The Wilson Center has strongly denied that she or the center has received any of the Bush Administration's funds. (...)

TIME's sources, who do not want to be identified for fear of retribution, say that they repeatedly warned about the negative consequences in informal talks that have been taking place for several years between figures in the U.S. and Iran who are close to their respective governments. Similar warnings were delivered to U.S. officials by others, including Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council. "We had talks with the State Department and with lawmakers," Parsi told TIME. "We pointed out the dangers. Our advice was not taken into consideration. Things have turned out worse than we expected." Parsi says that, in the past, individual democracy activists have been arrested without a pretext, but that the Bush Administration's program gave the regime an opportunity to go after as many as 10,000 non-government organizations and their memberships. "There is tremendous self-censorship going on," Parsi says. "They know that the money has made them targets." Speaking to TIME, a State Department official explained that because "dictatorships do react against any kind of rule-of-law, or democracy-promoting programs," the U.S. does not make public the names of recipients of program funds, although recipients are aware that the money is coming from the U.S. (...)

Akbar Ganji and Emaddeddin Baghi, two of Iran's most prominent pro-democracy activists, who have served long prison sentences for their activities, are among those who protested the U.S. democracy program. In a letter to international human rights organizations after Esfandiari's imprisonment, Baghi denounced the program as morally unjustifiable for effectively putting Iranian activists in harm's way.

Bush's democracy program is opposed even by some exile groups that support a tough U.S. line against the Islamic regime, including a royalist group led by Reza Pahlavi, the son of the deposed shah who seeks to reinstate the monarchy. In an e-mailed comment to TIME, Pahlavi said he "would not accept funds from any foreign governments." He said there were ways to support freedom "without such support coming in the form of governmental funds which invariably ends up hurting those it intends to help by unfairly labeling them as foreign agents."

Several mainstream Iranian reformers tell TIME that from the start they transmitted their opposition to the democracy program indirectly but clearly to American officials via the back-channel talks. Besides warning that it could trigger a crackdown, they argued that Iran's reform movement had strong popular support and did not want or require foreign help. Outside backing has been an unusually sensitive issue in Iranian politics ever since a CIA-backed coup d'etat in 1953 installed the former Shah. Instead, many of them argue, Iran's democracy movement would be better served if the U.S. lifted sanctions and improved relations with Tehran, which would enable trade and cultural links to be expanded. "There is no serious individual inside or outside Iran who is going to take this money," an Iranian reformer told TIME. "Anyone having the slightest knowledge of the domestic political situation in Iran would never have created this program.""

Later in the article, a State Department spokesman says that we should not blame these arrests on the US' democracy promotion programs. But blame isn't the point; trying to promote democracy is. And when the people who are actually trying to promote democracy in a country tell you that what you're proposing to do will put them in personal jeopardy, taint their organizations, and in all sorts of ways be counterproductive, then it might be a good idea to rethink your proposal.

This ought to be obvious generally, but especially in a country like Iran. We were involved in toppling their democratically elected government. We have just invaded two countries on their borders. In both cases we promised to create democracy, and in both cases large chunks of the countries we invaded are in chaos. Under these circumstances, the last thing in the world that any Iranian pro-democracy movement needs is us sending them money. They might as well start wearing buttons saying "Kiss Me! I'm CIA!"

There are a lot of situations in which there's not much that we can do to promote democracy. This is one of them. Perhaps in some distant future, when the record of our current policies in the Middle East has been overwritten by an extensive history of good deeds undertaken with no strings attached and no expectation of any quid pro quo, we will reach the point when sending money to pro-democracy activists in Iran will not be counterproductive. I won't hold my breath.

***

UPDATE: I meant to say this in the original post, but forgot.

That sending money to pro-democracy groups in Iran is counterproductive is not that hard to figure out. For this reason, I think that there are two possible readings of the Bush administration's decision to do it. First, they are incompetent morons; or second, they don't care enough about promoting democracy to figure out even basic facts about how to go about it. Perhaps they just don't care about anything, or perhaps they care about something else, like pleasing their backers at the National Review, or giving Republican candidates the ability to say that they voted to spend gazillions of dollars on "democracy promotion in Iran", counting on us not to know or care whether what they were doing had even the slightest possibility of success.

In neither case should this be held against the goal of democracy promotion per se. As John Stuart Mill once wrote, "There is no difficulty in proving any ethical standard whatever to work ill, if we suppose universal idiocy to be conjoined with it." Democracy promotion might or might not be a good idea if carried out intelligently, but we can't look to the results of this administration's foreign policy to tell us much about that. What it does teach us is the overwhelming importance of electing people who have some clue what they're doing.

Abstraction

by hilzoy

In his last post, publius writes:

"Maybe I’m expanding it, but I read Klein’s argument as expressing skepticism of abstractions (and policy-by-abstractions), rather than skepticism of the individual abstract values themselves. In this sense, his foreign policy argument seems to be philosophical -- he’s skeptical of theory itself."

This is an interesting point, and an important one to get clear on. I'll take a stab at it below the fold, so as not to distract from Katherine's post. (Katherine: poetry. Me: analysis. At the moment, I'd rather be Katherine. Pout.)

Abstract words, too noble to neglect

by Katherine

Ezra Klein's essay on 'American values' reminded me of a famous quotation from Ernest Hemingway, in A Farewell to Arms:

There were many words that you could not stand to hear and finally only the names of places had dignity. Certain numbers were the same way and certain dates and these with the name of the places were all you could say and have them mean anything.

Abstract words such as glory, honour, courage, or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the numbers of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and the dates.

I know exactly what he means. Watch:

America's vital interests and our deepest beliefs are now one. From the day of our Founding, we have proclaimed that every man and woman on this earth has rights, and dignity, and matchless value, because they bear the image of the Maker of Heaven and earth. Across the generations we have proclaimed the imperative of self-government, because no one is fit to be a master, and no one deserves to be a slave. Advancing these ideals is the mission that created our Nation. It is the honorable achievement of our fathers. Now it is the urgent requirement of our nation's security, and the calling of our time.

So it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world....

Our country has accepted obligations that are difficult to fulfill, and would be dishonorable to abandon. Yet because we have acted in the great liberating tradition of this nation, tens of millions have achieved their freedom. And as hope kindles hope, millions more will find it. By our efforts, we have lit a fire as well - a fire in the minds of men. It warms those who feel its power, it burns those who fight its progress, and one day this untamed fire of freedom will reach the darkest corners of our world. -- President George W. Bush, Second Inaugural Address.

Abu Ghraib. Guantanamo. Haditha. Bagram. The Salt Pit. The Dark Prison. The Kandahar Airport. The Palestine Branch. Masra Torah. Camp NAMA. FOB Mercury. FOB Tiger. Camp Diamondback and Camp Glory. The Tigris River. Balad. Dover Air Force Base. Walter Reed Army Medical Center. A trailer near the Baghdad Airport. New Prague, Minnesota. Baghdad. Baghdad. Baghdad. Baghdad. Baghdad. Baghdad.  Baghdad. Baghdad.

Supreme Court Will Hear Guantanamo Case

by hilzoy

From the Washington Post:

"The Supreme Court, reversing course, agreed Friday to review whether Guantanamo Bay detainees may go to federal court to challenge their indefinite confinement.

The action, announced without comment along with other end-of-term orders, is a setback for the Bush administration. It had argued that a new law strips courts of their jurisdiction to hear detainee cases.

In April, the court turned down an identical request, although several justices indicated they could be persuaded otherwise.

The move is highly unusual.

The court did not indicate what changed the justices' minds about considering the issue. But last week, lawyers for the detainees filed a statement from a military lawyer in which he described the inadequacy of the process the administration has put forward as an alternative to a full-blown review by civilian courts.

"This is a stunning victory for the detainees," said Eric M. Freedman, professor of constitutional law at Hofstra Law School, who has been advising the detainees. "It goes well beyond what we asked for, and clearly indicates the unease up there" at the Supreme Court."

The Supreme Court's order is here (pdf). The "statement from a military lawyer to which the article refers is here (pdf). I meant to write about that statement at the time, but anyone who is in any doubt about the total inadequacy of the CSRTs, the only procedure available to most Guantanamo detainees, should read it. The defense's argument that the Supreme Court should hear this case is here (pdf); it's also worth reading.

These detainees are in their sixth year at Guantanamo. They are still trying to get habeas rights: the right to compel the government to show that it has some good reason for detaining them. It's wonderful that the Supreme Court will hear the case, but it should never have taken so long.

Bleg, And News

by hilzoy

Does anyone know how to find cached copies of old web pages? It seems like a useful skill to have. I thought of it just now because I just realized that John Derbyshire seems to have called (ironically? He was chanelling Betjeman) for the destruction of Washington DC and then thought better of it. Here's a blank box where, apparently, his post used to be, and here are some snippets of it that have survived elsewhere:

"Come, friendly bombs, fall on D.C.!
It's not fit for humanity.
There's nothing there but villainy.
Swarm over, Death!

Come, bombs, and blow to kingdom come
Those pillared halls of tedium—
Hired fools, hired crooks, hired liars, hired scum,
Hired words, hired breath.

Mess up this mess they call a town—
A seat for twenty million down
And rights to the incumbent's crown
For twenty years.

...
And smash his desk of polished oak
(Paid for by honest working folk
Toiling 'neath taxation's yoke)
And make him yell."

See also here, here, here, here.

Sure would be interesting to read the whole thing, though.

***

In much more important news, Andrew is en route. As Charles noted, you can read his blog here; if you misplace the link, it's listed as 'Andrew in Iraq', under Multiples.

Godspeed, Andrew; we'll be thinking of you.

I Don't Get It

by hilzoy

Like Matt Yglesias, I'm puzzled by this:

"The International Atomic Energy Agency's Board of Governors met two weeks ago for budget negotiations, but could not agree to a funding increase for the agency. To make matters worse, donors have not yet delivered over $35 million dollars in promised contributions. That may not seem like a tremendous amount, but the IAEA's total budget is only $379 million.

In a rare move, IAEA Director Mohammed elBaredei appealed directly to the Board of Governors, which is composed of thirty-five IAEA member states, to urge them to consider the consequences of an IAEA budget that provides for zero-growth. (...)

elBaredei's plea makes me wonder if we are living on borrowed time. Accidents are bound to happen, particularly as more and more countries seek nuclear power as an alternative to fossil fuel. But, as he points out, the agency's ability to respond to a Chernobyl style incident is severely diminished by an overstretched budget. Also, some of the important verification work the agency does in places like North Korea and Iran may be called into question by the ageing environmental sampling technology the agency is forced to use. elBaredei even says that the IAEA must outsource some of its lab work, calling into question the whole principal of neutrality that gives the IAEA its credibility.

The board has until September to finalize the budget, so there is a chance that they may reconsider. The alternative -- an IAEA without the resources to counter, say, nuclear smuggling -- is truly frightening. "

The Christian Science Monitor reports that we owe a third of the missing funds, and adds some context:

"With the IAEA's ¤283 million ($379 million) annual budget, the United Nations has touted the Vienna-based agency as "an extraordinary bargain." The US Office of Management and Budget has stamped it as "100 percent" worth the US allocation. The IAEA and ElBaradei were jointly awarded the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize. (...)

The negotiations by the IAEA Board of Governors ended last week with the prospect of zero increase in funding, prompting ElBaradei to speak out. The budget deadline is in September, at the IAEA General Conference."

If there ever was an agency we ought to fund, the IAEA is it. They are competent; they have a good track record; they are extremely credible to people who no longer trust us; and they are dealing with some of the most important issues on the planet. It would be one thing if they needed trillions of dollars to carry out their work. But they are asking for so little. 22% of $379 million is $83.38 million By the standards of the Federal budget, that's practically a rounding error. To put it in context, this year President Bush requested $204 million for abstinence education. If we can manage to spend $204 million on a discredited approach to sex ed that's in the budget solely as a sop to religious conservatives, surely we can manage to increase the budget of the agency responsible for verifying compliance with the nuclear nonproliferation treaty, coping with accidental nuclear discharges, nuclear safety, and a host of other really, really important issues. Better still, cut the abstinence education and send the whole $204 million to the IAEA.

I've put parts of el Baradei's letter to the IAEA's governors below the fold. I have also cleaned up characters that came out oddly in my source -- for instance, I assume that in "we can’t do it", the second word is "can't", and have altered it accordingly.

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Undervaluing Values?

by publius

Unlike Hilzoy, I was more sympathetic to Ezra Klein’s “Down With Values” argument. So at the risk of sparking a rootin-tootin’ ObWi family feud, I’m going to try to defend it.

Maybe I’m expanding it, but I read Klein’s argument as expressing skepticism of abstractions (and policy-by-abstractions), rather than skepticism of the individual abstract values themselves. In this sense, his foreign policy argument seems to be philosophical -- he’s skeptical of theory itself. One question it raises is whether theory has any useful role to play in the foreign policy realm.

I recognize that I’m using “theory” a bit loosely. For today, “theory” refers to a comprehensive abstract ideology cited as an animating foreign policy principle. For instance, a foreign policy based on “freedom” or “justice” is what I’m calling “foreign policy by theory.”

With that in mind, the first problem with foreign policy by theory is that it flips empiricism on its head. The idea of empiricism is that you study the individual situation first, and draw abstract conclusions second. An abstraction-based foreign policy -- whether democracy-promotion or Communism -- reverses this order. It begins with the abstraction (often with excessive epistemological certainty) and applies it to the individual situation.

Consider how these two approaches might play out regarding, say, China and Taiwan. Approaching the dispute with a blank slate would likely lead the US to stay mute and ambiguous. China is very touchy about it, and a military escalation over Taiwan would be disastrous for pretty much everyone (and every market) involved. If we decided, however, that our commitment to the abstract idea of freedom outweighed these pragmatic concerns, we might act in a very unwise way (or interpret events in an inaccurate way). This is a simplified example, but the broader point is that approaching objective reality with a pre-existing theory in mind colors and distorts our perceptions.

Ezra Klein On Values

by hilzoy

I normally agree with Ezra Klein. Not only that, I think he's one of the sharpest commenters out there. So I don't like saying that I think his article on values in foreign policy is just plain wrong. Unfortunately, though, I do.

Ezra starts off with this:

"I have a confession to make: I am not a values voter. I do not want a foreign policy based upon "the idea that is America." I do not think we should be guided in all things by such glittering concepts as liberty, democracy, equality, justice, tolerance, humility, and faith.

In fact, I'm fed up with values. Entirely. They've failed this country. As a lodestar, there is none worse."

He then goes on to make the following points: First, he talks a bit about Anne-Marie Slaughter's new book, which I haven't read and thus cannot comment on. Then, he notes the frequency of various moral terms in Bush's second inaugural, which I think is irrelevant to any interesting point. He notes that concepts like democracy and liberty "do not, themselves, suggest a foreign policy." This is true, but it's also true of any other general concept on which we might seek to base policy. To take this as an objection to basing foreign policy on values implies that we should not base our foreign policy on any general concept at all, since any general concept -- the national interest, democratic values, human rights -- will require some actual thought about how it is to be promoted in a complicated world. The only alternative to basing our foreign policy on something that requires such thought is not to have a coherent foreign policy at all.

Ezra then says that "the language of idealism" enables a style of argument in which one side slams another for not being moral enough to support a given policy whose consequences the slammers have not bothered to understand:

"The language of idealism enabled what my friend Chris Hayes refers to as the "moral blackmail" of the Iraq war: How could anyone who professes to believe in freedom and democracy refuse to devote a couple of tax dollars to freeing the Iraqi people from tyranny?"

Again, this is true of any general basis for foreign policy, since nothing that could serve as such a basis is immune to being advocated by idiots. Compare: "How can you say you care about our national interest when you're not willing to spend a few dollars to gain complete control over Iran's oil reserves by invading it and installing a friendly puppet government that the Iranian people will adore? Huh?" It's even true of what looks like almost no foreign policy at all: a dedication to protecting ourselves from a world we regard as hostile, and with which we refuse to engage. That still requires some actual thought about how to protect ourselves, and leaves us open to what we might call the "self-defense blackmail" argument: How can anyone who professes to want to protect our country refuse to sacrifice a couple of tax dollars to strengthen our version of the Maginot line? How can they say that our plan to build deep-sea platforms from which we can pour molten pitch onto the heads of ocean-going invaders isn't worth it? Don't they care about America??

Ezra ends his article with this:

"What I want is not a foreign policy vision that builds from a foundation of values, but from one of consequences. Whether a policy is concordant with America's view of itself is less important than its likely outcomes. The Paul Wolfowitzes of the world had thought plenty about values and were perfectly capable of discussing their vision of Iraq as a shining city on a Mesopotamian hill. What they hadn't thought about were outcomes -- constraints on our action and capabilities, the likely effects on others' actions of our use of force, etc. Good thing they weren't really pressed on the subject, lest they'd have had to conjure up a postwar plan for a reception that didn't include candy and flowers -- a plan they didn't have. But they weren't questioned, because they were effectively able to keep the conversation focused on values -- do you care about liberty? hate tyranny? believe Arabs can be democratic? -- rather than consequences.

What the Democrats' post-Bush foreign policy vision must do is be able to outlast the Democrats. I have no doubt that President Obama, or President Edwards, or Secretary of State Slaughter can implement a values-based foreign policy I find congenial. What I do fear is what happens when their terms close, and the language that they let Americans remain accustomed to is appropriated by a far more hawkish administration. Much better for Democrats to create a foreign policy framework that a future administration would have to fight against if it wished to revive neoconservatism. Giving them language they can slip right into seems awfully accommodating.

So no more of "the idea that is America." Let's hear the argument that is a wise and sane American foreign policy. Let's hear about conditions for the use of force, and the constraints surrounding it. Let's hear the hardnosed cases for restraint and multilateralism. Don't subsume those points beneath malleable terms like "humility" and "democracy." Popularize the explicit arguments for how American should act. Do that, and our values will be safeguarded, even when their protectors have long since left."

This is the most serious objection, and I'll put my discussion of it below the fold.

Goodbye, Immigration Reform

by hilzoy

From the Washington Post:

"The most dramatic overhaul of the nation's immigration laws in a generation was trounced this morning by a bipartisan filibuster, with the political right and left overwhelming a coalition of Republicans and Democrats who had been seeking compromise on one of the most difficult social and economic issues facing the country.

The 46-53 tally fell dramatically short of the 60 votes needed to overcome opponents' dilatory tactics and parliamentary maneuvers that have dogged the bill for weeks.

The failure marked the second time in a month the bill was pulled from the Senate floor, and this time, Democratic leaders of the Senate indicated it would not be back.

The vote was a major defeat for President Bush, dealt largely by members of his own party. The president made a last-ditch round of phone calls this morning to senators in an attempt to rescue the bill, but with his poll numbers at record lows, his appeals proved fruitless. Bush has now lost what is likely to be the last, best chance at a major domestic accomplishment for his second term."

I was, as I have said, very ambivalent about this bill, and the more time went on, the less I liked it, since the price of getting the Repblican support it didn't have the first time around seemed to be adding new provisions that made it much worse, like the touchback provision for all illegal immigrants. I really, really want a decent solution to the problem of illegal immigration, as I wrote here, but this was never that solution to start with, and the more time went on, the truer that was.

I do have one thought about all this, though. Ever since the argument that erupted in the comments to publius' post on this subject, I've been mulling over the question: what is it about this issue, exactly, that has made so many conservatives go absolutely ballistic? (A couple of caveats: first, I am asking, here, not why anyone cares about this issue, a question to which I assume the answer is: because it's important; nor am I asking why any conservative cares about it. I am interested in the motivations of that particular branch of the right that favors not just some strict immigration reform package, but provisions like touchback, which seem to have no good rationale other than a desire to make life miserable for illegal immigrants, and which are, when you think them through, likely to be counterproductive in terms of conservatives' stated goals. Others can speak for themselves, but I do not believe that many people here are among the people I'm asking about. I really mean this; I don't want conservatives here to think I'm talking about them when I'm not. The test is: when I hear about the touchback provision, do I think, "Hell yes!"? If so, I am talking about you. If not, not. -- Also, I assume, of course, that all sorts of people have all sorts of motives; I will necessarily be overgeneralizing.)

I think that the answer can't be something like: those conservatives think that the laws should be respected, because a lot of those same people have not been sent round the bend by all sorts of other violations of the law. (The FISA program, torture, Scooter Libby, etc.) I also assume that there are people out there for whom the answer is just something like "racism, duh", but I also think that that's nothing like the whole of it, and that it oversimplifies things to think that it is. There is, I think, something else going on, and I think that it has to do with the implosion of Bush's presidency, and of the Republican party. I think it might help to explain what I think is going on if I told a seemingly unrelated story.

As I have mentioned, I arrived in Israel the day before the invasion of Lebanon in 1982, and spent the first couple of months working on a kibbutz. At that point, Israel had a hugely argumentative political culture in which almost anything could be said, but there were still a few things that were just off the table. It was not OK to criticize the conduct of a war while that war was going on, for instance. Everyone, even the most bitter ideological enemies, rallied to the side of the government and the army when a war broke out. That was an absolutely unquestioned obligation that everyone I ever encountered accepted absolutely.

At the same time, most of the people I encountered, both on and off the kibbutz, had deep misgivings about the invasion. Was it the right thing to do? Was the government going about it in the right way? Almost every previous war had been in response to an invasion or to the imminent threat of one; this war was not, and that threw people into uncharted territory about which they were very, very uneasy. But because absolutely no one thought that it was OK to criticize the government's conduct of a war while that war was going on, they had no way of expressing this unease. It wasn't that they had fully formulated thoughts about what was wrong, thoughts that they suppressed; it was as though they didn't have a way even to think clearly about what it was that disturbed them so much; as though they lacked a language in which to formulate and express their uneasiness.

Then came the massacres at Sabra and Shatila, in which the Israeli Defence Forces seemd to have stood by and allowed the Lebanese Phalangists to slaughter nearly a thousand people. The effect of this was like dropping a paperclip into a jar of saturated sugar-water: the liquid looks clear one moment, and then suddenly, out of nowhere, something that had been there all along crystallizes and becomes visible. Criticizing the government during wartime based solely on one's own sense that something was badly wrong seemed to be literaly unthinkable, but criticizing the government for standing by while civilians were slaughtered -- that was something everyone could understand. In less than a month, a tenth of the Israeli population was in the streets demonstrating.

I think that immigration plays something like the same role for Republicans. Suppose that a lot of them have had a growing sense that there is something badly wrong with President Bush's administration. It might be hard to express this, or even to figure out how to think about it, especially for those who have a lot invested in defending the administration, or who are heavily invested in the thought that liberals are always, by definition, wrong. It would be especially hard to express misgivings about the war, since on that issue battle lines were drawn up, and defensive formations created, long ago. If this is right, then some non-negligible number of people on the right would have had a growing sense that something is badly wrong that they had no way to articulate.

If, into this mix, someone were to drop an issue that was not Iraq, and that did not involve agreeing with liberals, but that did allow these conservatives to express their own serious concerns about this administration, I think it would play the same role that the Sabra and Shatila massacre did when I was in Israel -- giving people a clear, readily understandable, and legitimate way to express serious misgivings that until now had remained largely silent (with, in this case, the exception of the Harriet Miers nomination, which played a similar role in a more limited way.) In that case, one would expect the issue to be driven not only by people's views on immigration itself, but by an anger that had, until now, no other form of expression.

Likewise, consider this quote from the Post article:

"Against that was the rhetoric of opponents, such as Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), who declared: "Americans feel they are losing their country.""

Americans are not literally losing their country because of illegal immigration. They may have to deal with more people who speak an unfamiliar language, and some of them might face real and serious economic problems because of competition from people not governed by e.g. minimum wage laws, but we are not "losing our country", any more than we "lost" it to Chinese immigrants at the turn of the last century, or to the Irish in the mid 1800s. I think that if people did not already have the sense that their country was in some sense slipping away from them -- if they felt secure enough about our country and its direction -- then they would be a lot less inclined to think that illegal immigrants were taking it away from them. But the reason they think their country is slipping away from them need have nothing to do with illegal immigration itself, as opposed to a more general sense that the rules are stacked against them, and no one obeys the laws, and decent people who work hard get screwed.

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UPDATE: Forgot to include the roll call vote. Mostly Democrats plus 12 Republicans voting for cloture; mostly Republicans plus fifteen Democrats and Bernie Sanders voting against.

Southampton Dock

by von

ROSS DOUTHAT, last Tuesday:

Two out of two Matts agree: If the U.S. pulls out of Iraq or fails to bomb Iran, the "stab in the back" narrative is going to become the centerpiece of a revived post-Bush conservatism, and progressives need to steel themselves to combat it.

Myself, I think that liberals should be praying that the Right embraces the "stabbed in the back" theory of what went wrong in Iraq (and possibly Iran as well), because it will push conservatives toward political irrelevance.

Professor Reynolds, today, ignoring Douthat's advice:

JUST BACK FROM IRAQ, J.D. JOHANNES HAS A COLUMN ON RICHARD LUGAR: "Is it possible to win a war on the ground, and lose it in Congress?"

J.D. Johannes, Reynolds' support, explaining:

The principal accomplishment of the surge to date is solidifying the “Anbar Awakening,” the significance of which has been under-reported by the media and ill-understood by the public. If any piece of territory in Iraq qualified as a “terrorist safe haven,” it was bloody Anbar. .....

The virtual extinction of the insurgency in the province — a victory that I was privileged to witness first-hand — represented not some momentary quirk of tribal alliances, but a diligent application of the revised tactics that coalition forces have implemented under skilled, battle-proven officers and Gen. Petraeus.

Anbar province and Baghdad, this week:

[June 24] Iraqi authorities say a suicide bomber driving a fuel tanker has killed at least 10 people in an attack on police headquarters in the city of Baiji.

[June 25] A stealthy suicide bomber slipped into a busy Baghdad hotel Monday and blew himself up in the midst of a gathering of U.S.-allied tribal sheiks, undermining efforts to forge a front against the extremists of al Qaeda in Iraq. Four of the tribal chiefs were among the 13 victims, police said.

[June 26] The Petraeus team's attempt to try to (at least temporarily) change the game in Iraq's Anbar province by arming some tribes against the ISI (the loose Islamic State of Iraq) looks like it is already over. A significant failure in security allowed a suicide attack in the Mansour hotel lobby that killed key leaders (made critically important due to the imposed hierarchy deemed necessary to create a single Sunni "front") of the "Anbar Salvation Council." In parallel, there are rumors of bitter rivalry and that a tribal leader ("Anbar Awakening") absconded with $75 m in US money given to fund militia development.

[June 26] Iraqi commandos raided the home of a Sunni Cabinet member Tuesday after a warrant was issued for his arrest, outraging Sunni politicians and jeopardizing U.S.-backed reconciliation efforts within the Shiite-led government.

The move against Culture Minister Asad Kamal al-Hashimi came after he was identified by two suspected militants as the mastermind of a Feb. 8, 2005, ambush against secular politician Mithal al-Alusi, an Iraqi government spokesman said. Al-Alusi escaped unharmed but two of his sons were killed.

[June 26] An Iraqi tribal leader has been shot and killed in southern Baghdad, one day after at least four Sunni tribal leaders were killed in a suicide bombing at a hotel in Iraq's capital.

[June 27] Iraqi officials say a car bomb has exploded in northern Baghdad, killing at least seven people.

Authorities say the blast in the Kadhimiya district on Wednesday evening injured at least 14 others.

Bomb attacks and other violence Wednesday in Iraq killed about 50 people overall, many in the Baghdad area.

[June 27] Insurgents killed a US marine during combat operations in the restive Sunni province of Anbar in western Iraq, the military said Wednesday.

[June 27] Police found the bodies of 21 people in Baghdad on Wednesday. Most had been shot. ....Four Iraqi policemen were killed in an ambush near the oil city of Kirkuk, 250 km (155 miles) north of Baghdad, when gunmen opened fire on their vehicles, police said. .... The Iraqi army have killed four insurgents and detained 85 others during the last 24 hours in different districts of Baghdad, the Defence Ministry said. ....Gunmen killed two members of the Assyrian's Beth-Nahrain Association Union in a drive-by shooting in central Mosul, 390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad, police said. .... A suicide car bomb targeting a police commando checkpoint killed one policeman and wounded three other officers in the al-Jaderiyia district of southern Baghdad, police said. .... A roadside bomb killed seven people, including five police commandoes in Samarra, 100 km (60 miles) north of Baghdad, police said, adding that two civilians were killed when security forces opened fire in the aftermath of the blast. .... A car bomb killed at least three people in an attack on police vehicles near a busy market in northern Baghdad, a witness said. Police said there had been an explosion in the Suleikh district and 10 people were wounded. .... Fourteen insurgents were killed when a truck they were rigging with explosives blew up overnight in the town of Shirqat, 310 km (190 miles) north of Baghdad, police said. .... Five people were killed and three wounded in different attacks by gunmen on Tuesday in Mosul, police said. .... An athletic club in Mosul was badly damaged when gunmen planted bombs inside the building overnight, police said.

[June 28] A massive car bomb exploded at a street-side bus depot during Baghdad's Thursday morning rush hour, killing at least 22 people and wounding more than 40 others in a tremendous explosion that set fire to scores of vehicles, Iraqi police said.

Authorities say at least 18 others were wounded by the blast in the northern town.

Earlier Monday, a suicide car bomber killed eight people and wounded 25 in an attack on the governor's offices in Hillah, a predominantly Shi'ite city, south of Baghdad.

It took four years of failure for the President and his supporters to heed the advice of Senator John McCain and others.  It took four years for them to admit that, maybe, McCain, Powell, and Shinseki were right. Now, they complain that we do not trust their judgment.  Now, wars are not lost by the Commander in Chief or the Secretary of Defense, but by the U.S. Senate.  Now, we are the ones who are oblivious to reality.  Now, we cannot ask whether the surge is "Too Little, Too Late."  Now, they are right and we are wrong.  Now, four years on, they still do not get it.

It may well be that the troops have been stabbed in the back.  Reynolds and Johannes, however, are pointing their fingers in the wrong direction.

[June 26] The Petraeus team's attempt to try to (at least temporarily) change the game in Iraq's Anbar province by arming some tribes against the ISI (the loose Islamic State of Iraq) looks like it is already over. A significant failure in security allowed a suicide attack in the Mansour hotel lobby that killed key leaders (made critically important due to the imposed hierarchy deemed necessary to create a single Sunni "front") of the "Anbar Salvation Council." In parallel, there are rumors of bitter rivalry and that a tribal leader ("Anbar Awakening") absconded with $75 m in US money given to fund militia development.