Legal Fiction

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As our goals in Iraq shift from democracy-building towards trying to prevent a failed state, the inevitable question – the question that will no doubt occupy historians for many generations – is beginning to be raised about the neocon vision: Was the neocon plan for transforming the Middle East inherently flawed, or was it merely implemented poorly (to put it lightly). It’s an important question. If the neocons’ democracy-building was the right idea (and not inherently flawed), that means that we should try it somewhere else (presumably with better planners). Dan Drezner weighed in on this question in his TNR essay last week. Drezner maintains, with caveats, that “[w]hile flawed, the neoconservative plan of democracy promotion in the Middle East remains preferable to any known alternatives.” I’m not sure that’s right – here’s why.

First, I should say that I am normally a big fan of Drezner (though his whole any-Iraq-news-is-good-for-Bush theory was fairly ridiculous). That said, I’m starting to think that the neocon vision of democracy promotion (via military force) in the Middle East cannot be salvaged by claiming that it was poorly executed by the administration. I fear the very idea – like Communism – is flawed, largely because it turns a blind eye to many realities of human nature.

First, I should point out a post by Kevin Drum, who has also argued that the vision itself could not possibly have been implemented successfully because of practical and systemic reasons. Practically, he explains, we simply don’t have the 450,000 troops that Drezner claims was probably needed. Second, we have the more systemic problem of not being able to use full force against insurgents who hide within urban populations. It would contradict our claim about being a “liberation” force if we didn’t occupy with a light hand. I agree with Kevin, but I would add a couple of other thoughts.

One of Drezner’s key claims is that “appeasement” was a bad policy and that the neocons are the only group who have presented any credible theory for dealing with the problems in the Middle East. Here’s what he had to say:

To be sure, democracy promotion is far from easy. Indeed, regime change in the Middle East looks like a lousy, rotten policy option for addressing the root causes of terrorism, until one considers the alternatives--appeasement or muddling through. The latter option was essentially the pre-9/11 position of the United States and its allies, and has been found wanting. Appeasement or isolation has the same benefits and costs that the strategy had in the 1930s: It buys short-term solace but raises the long-term costs of facing a stronger and potentially undeterrable adversary.

For all their criticism of Bush's grand strategy, Europeans and left-wingers have offered very little in the way of alternatives to his vision. Some say that American soft power could bring about change in the Middle East. But decades of alternately coddling, cajoling, and ostracizing Arab despots has not led to liberalization or democratization. We have showered Egypt with aid, but have succeeded only in propping up an authoritarian monster in Hosni Mubarak.

I’m not sure that’s right. Drezner creates a straw man by labeling our pre-9/11 strategy as “appeasement” (which is loaded with Nazi connotations). A better word would be “containment” (remember the first Gulf War). That’s exactly how we dealt with communism. We contained it, engaged it, and threatened it when it tried to expand. It was a long-term strategy. Everything that Drezner is saying about the long-term costs of “appeasement” could have been applied equally well to Communist regimes in the 1950s. Wisely, we decidedly that a mix of containment and long-term engagement would be a better strategy. As for Mubarak, I agree that he’s no Thomas Jefferson. But Egypt hasn’t threatened Israel in quite some time.

The bigger problem is simply that the neocon vision – like Communism – is too idealistic. It has been a central tenet of conservative thought at least since Rousseau and the French Revolution that man cannot be made good. The Constitution is dripping with pessimism of the capabilities of man to act good, and to act in the public interest. The Constitution, however, recognized man’s flaws and designed our government with those flaws in mind (i.e., checks and balances, divided government). As bad as certain regimes may be, we must be aware of the limits of our transformative powers. Men are rarely changed by the barrel of a gun. Instead of hoping to change the Middle East by force, we should start sending in radio stations (like Radio Free Europe) and McDonalds.

Just as the neocons erred by viewing terrorism through the old Cold War nation-state lens, I think they (and others) are erring by not understanding that economic force works better than military force in the globalized 21st century. The key to containing a potential enemy is to make them economically dependent on you. The South didn't integrate, for example, until Congress threatened to take their money away. Similarly, we have wisely made China dependent on global markets. Our China policy - containment and economic engagement - is working well. China is an important trading partner, a WTO member, and will host the Olympics in 2008. With China, like Russia, we are simply creating the conditions in which democracy can emerge organically (or at least creating conditions in which the old regime can pass away peacefully). With respect to the Middle East, we should be directing our economic focus toward Iran, where a strong, young middle class is yearning to throw off the old regime. It's like Friedman said yesterday - we should aim at "tilting" a country in the right direction "[so] that the process of gradual internal transformation can take place over a generation."

Is that enough to stop terrorism in the short-term? Probably not. But nothing will - and foolish military invasions make things worse. Modern terrorism is the result of various historical policies and contingent events that we cannot change. Sadly, as long as people want to attack us, they will find a way to do so. The only viable long-term strategy is to make them stop wanting to attack us. In my opinion, this goal can only be achieved over the long-term through a policy of containment, stabilization, and economic engagement (carrots and sticks).

Before I conclude, I also want to take issue with this line from Drezner’s essay:

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.

Here’s my question – do we really want Middle East democracy right now? I don’t think that Israel would be that excited about being surrounded by a democratic Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt. Remember, democracies are not inherently good. In theory, they reflect the mood of the populace. That mood can be good, or it can be bad. I mean, the South was democratic from 1865 to 1965 and it wasn't exactly tolerant or free from hate.

I guess I would just say be careful what you wish for. If the democratic will in places like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Pakistan were unleashed, I'm not sure we'd like what we would see.

[Update: I should add that the containment/engagement strategy requires the credible threat of American military force. If only America had stopped after Afghanistan, and hadn't halted Arab self-reflection in its tracks by invading Iraq, our position would be much stronger. Today, however, with our overstretched military and domestic skepticism, other countries will no longer see us as a credible threat - which is really "ironical" (from "Waiting for Guffman" - great movie) given that one of the supposed benefits of invading Iraq was to show that we mean business. For this and other reasons, I fear that the negative ripple effects of the Iraq war, especially with respect to our foreign policy, will become much worse as time goes on.]

I'm outta here for the day. In the meantime, I'd encourage everyone to go visit "Books For Soldiers." If you don't have some books lying around, you can also give money.

Oh yeah - Billmon is back!

[Update: You know, I just heard a song that sums up the Chalabi affair. As it turned out, the man to whom many wanted to hand over Iraq turned out to be an Iranian double agent (oopsies!). If that's overstating it, it was clear that he had long had ties to a regime that we, to put it lightly, aren't big fans of. Anyway, the song lyrics from Guns N Roses pretty well sums it up:

"I used to love her, but I had to kill her."

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(Via Atrios) One of National Review Online's contributors (John Derbyshire) points out that we're overlooking some of the "minor secondary benefits" of the war:

Another secondary benefit is the workout our military got. I'm willing to take instruction from military readers on this, but it seems to me that a military recently experienced in the organization and fighting of a hot war has, other things being equal, a tremendous advantage over one that has not been so experienced. Soldiers want to fight, and soldiers like ours and Britain's, who have recent experience of hard fighting, are keener, better motivated, swifter, calmer, and more skilled at their trade than armies that have spent 20 years doing training exercises and "peace-keeping" missions.

Maybe John should go ask these people if they enjoyed their "workout." Ask all 806 of their families too. And while you're at it, John, ask the 4,327 people who have been wounded if they feel better after their "workout."

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I’ve often viewed the Bush economic policy like one of those credit card deals you get in the mail that offers 0 % APR for 12 months or so. With the new card in hand, you rush out and buy as much as you can because there’s no interest. But the interest will kick in eventually. In a sense, Bush has been loading up the national credit card with massive, imbalanced tax cuts at the same time he has increased spending – and don’t forget that the Baby Boom retirement is looming on the horizon. In other words, the APR is about to kick in - hard. According to the Washington Post, it might start next year.

Here’s an excerpt from “2006 Cuts in Domestic Spending on Table”:

[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. . . . The funding levels referred to in the memo would be a tiny slice out of the federal budget -- $2.3 billion, or 0.56 percent, out of the $412.7 billion requested for fiscal 2005 for domestic programs and homeland security that is subject to Congress's annual discretion.

But the cuts are politically sensitive, targeting popular programs that Bush has been touting on the campaign trail. The Education Department; a nutrition program for women, infants and children; Head Start; and homeownership, job-training, medical research and science programs all face cuts in 2006.

From an economic perspective, it’s pretty simple what’s going on. The tax cuts are being paid for by cuts to programs that help middle class people. When Bush cut taxes, he wasn’t reducing the costs of government. He was merely shifting those costs – shifting them to the middle class and shifting them to future generations. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not knee-jerk anti-tax cut. Targeted tax cuts are often necessary to jumpstart the economy. And taxes were too high in 1979 and were strangling innovation. But. . . Bush’s tax cuts weren’t designed to be a short-term stimulus. They were designed to be a long-term, structural shifting of the tax burden to the middle class (or away from the upper class - which is the same thing, economically speaking). And the reason he gets away with it is that most people simply don’t understand economics and don’t understand the federal budget.

Let’s look at the budget first. (I’m cutting and pasting liberally from a prior post when my traffic was much lighter). I’m basing this on the 2002 fiscal year budget (just because I had done some research for a side project). I would argue that people support tax cuts and spending cuts because they have bought into the admittedly powerful narrative of “limited government.” It sounds nice and it’s easy to understand. So, when conservatives advocate lower taxes and lower spending, they have a very compelling narrative. Unfortunately, it just doesn’t hold up to reality.

Here are the numbers. In 2002, the total budget was about $2.01 trillion dollars. Of this $2 trillion, approximately $1.3 trillion went toward mandatory spending and paying off the debt. “Mandatory spending” includes Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and various smaller items like veterans’ benefits. Unless you are a political idiot or want to see America default, no politician in America dares to cut these. To me, that means that we have a pretty strong consensus in favor of this massive federal spending – nearly 2/3 of the entire federal budget. Thus, 66 cents of every tax dollar goes toward things that nearly everyone supports.

The remaining third is the so-called discretionary spending. That’s what Congress fights over every year. So we’ve got about $730 billion left. Of that, nearly half went to defense ($345 billion). Given 9/11 and our two recent wars, politicians risk political suicide by questioning even a dollar of defense spending. When we combine defense spending with the other untouchable spending programs, we’re up to 81%. Thus, 81% of the federal budget is not even up for debate. That’s 81 cents of every dollar.

Even if Congress voted to cut all of the remaining $365 billion from the budget, we would still be living under a very, very “big” government. And as we have seen, no one wants to cut any of the $1.7 trillion, or at least none have the political courage to say so. But cutting the entire $335 billion is also unrealistic politically. This money (representing around 19% of the entire budget) includes ALL the discretionary funds allocated to the Departments of Education, Justice, State, Homeland Security, Labor, Agriculture, Commerce, Energy, Housing and Urban Development, and Veterans Affairs – to name a few. This money also funds agencies like the EPA and important branches of governments like, oh say, the judiciary. Even if there are some conservatives who want to make some cuts in these programs, the size of any cuts would be limited both by the needs of the federal government and by political reality.

The point here is that only a tiny, miniscule fraction of the federal budget is ever up for debate from year to year. I certainly don’t mean to say that small cuts would not have serious consequences. They would. My point is that small cuts (which are the only possible kind) will not usher us into an age of “limited government.” Not by a long shot. What the cuts will do is allow upper-class people to save some money on taxes at the expense of programs that serve people with less money.

That’s what so dishonest about the administration's tax cut. They essentially threw some pennies at the middle class, who thought they were getting a great tax cut, while they delivered buckets of cash to wealthy people. In doing so, they shifted the cost of government to the middle class. I mean, look at the sorts of programs being cut – “nutrition program for women, infants and children; Head Start; and homeownership, job-training.” Who do you think benefits from these programs? When’s the last time a Bush (or a Kerry) got “job training”? By cutting these programs, the savings can be used to partially subsidize massive imbalanced tax cuts. Conservatives will object that these programs are wasteful and could use some cutting. I would ask in return, "Have you been to a public school recently?" Cutting "waste" in these sorts of programs won't do a damn thing but hurt people. As the article said, $2.3 billion isn't a lot compared to the total budget - but it's a lot to take away from all of these smaller progams' budgets. Everyone MUST understand - these spending cuts don't cut "waste" in any statistically meaningful way. These cuts only hurt programs that help people, and subsidize tax cuts for people who won't need them. They certainly won't usher us into a utopian age of Jeffersonian "limited government." If you really want to reduce government, you've got to cut defense, Social Security, and Medicare. And good luck doing that in the age of the demagoguing television ad. Get past the pretty narrative, get past the Wizard's curtain and see these cuts for what they are - straight-up interest group give-aways.

That’s why the culture wars are so important. Mustn’t distract the working classes while we literally take their money and give it to richer people.

It’s astounding. I blame it on linguistics. Conservatives have successfully defined the debate in terms of “big” versus “small” government. What’s crazy is that most people would be appalled at the reality of “small” government if they ever had to live through it (which thankfully they don't - unless you live in Alabama, which has the most regressive tax system in the country).

Progressives should refuse to debate using these terms. Instead, they should point out that they merely want to fund the programs that Americans want, at the levels they need to be funded. The funding levels necessary to do this have been (successfully) labeled as “big government.” This linguistic triumph creates the conditions in which people favor tax cuts that literally cost them more money over the long-term than if the cuts had never been passed. Here’s the hypothetical conversation that I wrote earlier that sums it up:

Q: So do you prefer big or limited government?
A: Limited government. That’s why I vote Republican.
Q: Can you tell me exactly what government spends money on that is so wasteful?
A: Not really, I just think it’s too big and big government doesn’t work.
Q: So you’re for cutting the current spending levels Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid?
A: No.
Q: What about defense?
A: No way.
Q: Are you for cutting education, or defaulting on our interest payments?
A: No.
Q: That’s almost 83% of the budget, assuming everything else gets cut. Are you opposed to at least some levels of funding for the Departments of State, Justice, Homeland Security, Health and Human Services, Labor, Housing and Urban Development, and all the other administrative departments and agencies?
A: Maybe we could cut some of their funding, but we should definitely fund them.
Q: So, are you for big government or limited government?
A: Limited government.
Q: But you support the funding levels for all these programs I listed?
A: Yes.

Marx is somewhere laughing his ass off - or perhaps crying.

When did Al Gore become . . . AWESOME?

(CSPAN has a video feed - under "most watched video")

The long successful strategy of containment was abandoned in favor of the new strategy of "preemption." And what they meant by preemption was not the inherent right of any nation to act preemptively against an imminent threat to its national security, but rather an exotic new approach that asserted a unique and unilateral U.S. right to ignore international law wherever it wished to do so and take military action against any nation, even in circumstances where there was no imminent threat. All that is required, in the view of Bush's team is the mere assertion of a possible, future threat - and the assertion need be made by only one person, the President.

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The conventional wisdom says that there is nothing good about the Nader candidacy for John Kerry. That’s probably right. But on the day Kerry is set to launch his foreign policy vision, I can’t help but wonder if Kerry couldn’t use Nader to his own advantage. In other words, could Kerry use Nader – especially on issues of foreign policy, Iraq, and patriotism – as a foil, or as his own Sister Souljah. It would be a big gamble right now, and thus probably not worth it. But for now, let me lay out what I’m talking about – and then we’ll look at the pros and cons.

“Sister Souljah,” for those who don’t know, refers back to Clinton’s denunciation of rapper Sister Souljah in 1992 after her extremist statements following the Rodney King beatings. The term “Sister Souljah moment” has even become a political term that you can find in the encyclopedia. Wikipedia defines it as follows: “A Sister Souljah moment is a political tactic wherein a politician publicly repudiates an allegedly extremist person, statement, or position nominally having some affiliation with the politician, in order to appeal to a large centrist base.” Bush did the exact same thing in 1999 when he said:

Too often, on social issues, my party has painted an image of America slouching toward Gomorrah. . . . Too often, my party has focused on the national economy to the exclusion of all else. . . . Too often, my party has confused the need for limited government with a disdain for government itself.

That’s pure Clintonianism – and I hope to write more about the benefits of “triangulation” (properly understood) later today or tonight (which is slightly different than the Sister Souljah moment). But back to Kerry. . .

The most obvious possibility for contrasting himself with Nader is on Iraq. Nader is quickly making the war his trump card and he has been calling for a rapid withdrawal by the end of the year. Kerry has so far (and wisely, I think) avoided the temptation to set an arbitrary date for withdrawal when the facts on the ground are changing so rapidly. So, Kerry could pick a speech in which he attacks the Nader “cut and run” position. It would have to be artfully done – Kerry would have to portray the Nader position as irresponsible in the worst possible way. He would also have to remain vague enough so that he could in fact withdraw troops if it turns out that Bush has so hopelessly ruined the operation that our continued presence becomes a destabilizing (rather than a stabilizing) force. He would have to throw in the obligatory “I reject the views of some in my party, etc. etc.” - just like Bush did and just like Clinton did.

That’s the strategy. Here are the benefits. As Stanley Greenberg has said (in his wonderful “Two Americas”), modern Democrats have a “threshold” problem. Majorities of Americans support Democratic economic views, but they are unwilling to listen to, or even consider, these views unless they are satisfied that the Democrat isn’t soft on national security and “values” (I’m sorry to use that much-abused word). In other words, before Americans will consider anything Democrats have to say, the candidates must first meet a minimal “threshold” on national security. That’s why Kerry’s national security speeches are a good strategy. The point isn’t necessarily to win over everyone – Kerry only needs to establish a threshold credibility on national security so that swing voters will listen to him on health care, education, and energy independence. Bush, by contrast, had to convince everyone in 2000 that he wasn’t a radical religious zealot, so that people would be willing to consider his other policies.

By challenging Nader, Kerry can establish (in the minds of voters) that he’s not too liberal on national security, and that he’s willing to stand up to certain elements in his own party who would prefer to abandon Iraq to its fate.

There are risks though (and there are some big ones). For one, 53% of Democrats (according to this poll) now prefer leaving Iraq now (see here too). By moving to the center, Kerry threatens to lose even more votes on the left to Nader. That’s a huge risk – and it might be one that he shouldn’t take. On the other hand, Kerry might still be able to do this because of none other than Karl Rove (you know, the genius). By abandoning Bush’s centrism in 2000 and adopting an aggressive energize-the-base-and-screw-the-middle strategy, Rove of all people may have secured Kerry’s left flank. In other words, because people hate Bush so much (in large part due to Rove’s less-than-genius campaign strategy), Kerry can pretty much do whatever he wants and won’t lose that many people to Nader. In addition, Rove’s screw-the-middle strategy may also prevent Nader from getting on a number of ballots (because of lack of support). If that’s the case, and Nader doesn’t get on the ballots in major swing states, Kerry should definitely distance himself from Nader at strategic moments. Remember, Republicans hated Clinton so bad in 2000 that they tolerated a largely centrist, soccer-mom campaign. Clinton secured Bush's right flank.

I suppose this would all have to be polled. If denouncing Nader’s Iraq policy would cost more votes than it would gain, then it’s obviously a bad strategy. Also, it might put Nader in the news, which would only help him gain support. It’s a tough issue – but that’s why they pay campaign advisors the big bucks.

Terry Holt, Bush '04 campaign spokesman, was on Hardball yesterday. His logic is impeccable:

HOLT: And we didn‘t choose this war. . . .

MATTHEWS: Well, who did choose it? Who did choose it? Who did choose this war with Iraq, if the president didn‘t?

HOLT: When, on 9/11, almost 3,000 people were killed on our soil.

MATTHEWS: What did Iraq do that day?

HOLT: In fact, Iraq has been a hotbed of instability in the neighborhood.

MATTHEWS: OK.

HOLT: Saddam Hussein is a war criminal by anybody‘s imagination.

MATTHEWS: So the war—so Iraq led the fight against us on 9/11?

HOLT: Well, in fact, they had been inspiring terrorism all over that region for years and years.

MATTHEWS: Well, this is a question we‘ll have to get an answer to at some point. I haven‘t seen any evidence yet. But I accept the argument. This is part of this campaign.

Question - if "inspiring terrorism" is the relevant test, does that mean we can invade the White House? Or Sharon's offices?

[Update: And while we're exploring honesty today, I might as well throw in this passage from Jim Hoagland (who I think is safe from the charge of liberal media bias - hat tip to Peter):

Your speech Monday night carried stirring visions of the change you want to bring to Iraq and the Middle East. What it lacked was more important: a clear recognition of the ever-widening gap between those uplifting visions and the explosive conditions produced in Iraq by what has become a self-defeating U.S. occupation policy. Your words lacked the minimal dose of honesty a leader owes his nation in times of crisis.

I was literally just watching CSPAN'S Washington Journal and had to spit out my Oatmeal Raisin Crisp. Laurie Mylroie - the neocon conspiracy theorist who Richard Clarke spent half of his book ridiculing - just said (I may not have every word right, but I have the last part right for sure):

"A lot of people thought after 9/11 that Iraq was involved, and it was!"

These people - especially the Perle wing - just lie and lie and lie.

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I’m currently reading Dan Carter’s book called “From George Wallace to Newt Gingrich: Race in the Conservative Counterrevolution, 1963-1994.” It’s good, and I’ll have more to say about it in future posts. For now, I wanted to point out one passage that struck me as interesting. It was describing some of the views of Nixon’s campaign advisors regarding the nature of television (then a fairly new medium) and the American voter. I thought about this passage as I watched Bush’s speech last night. And suddenly I realized that, if these Nixon people are correct, Bush is going to win. And based on what I have witnessed over the past three-and-a-half years, these Nixon people seem to be right on.

The passage from the book is describing how Nixon and his team recognized the possibilities of exploiting television in the campaign:

Nixon’s men knew the tools of their trade. Television would allow minimum uncontrolled exposure of the candidate and an opportunity for maximum manipulation of the electorate. As one of Nixon’s media advisers told him even before his nomination: “Voters are basically lazy, basically uninterested in making an effort to understand what we’re talking about. . . . Reason requires a high degree of discipline, of concentration. . . . The emotions are more easily roused, closer to the surface, more malleable. . . . It’s the aura that surrounds the charismatic figure more than it is the figure itself, that draws the followers. Our task is to build that aura.”

Nixon’s chief speechwriter, Raymond Price, was even more explicit. For most voters, he said, the decision to support a candidate was a “gut reaction, unarticulated, non-analytical, a product of the particular chemistry between the voter and the image of the candidate.” It’s “not what’s there that counts, it’s what’s projected.” And this projection “depends more on the medium and its use than it does on the candidate himself.”

Kinda makes you rethink your negative views of Nixon, eh? Seriously though, Bush’s team understands this stuff clearly. His speech last night showed it. I suspect Karl Rove laughed to himself when he heard Biden and the Washington Post claim that the plan lacked specifics, and that it was only a repackaging of the current failed policy, and so forth. Rove is smarter than that. He knows that (1) these people are not the target audience; (2) his target audience doesn’t care about the specifics of the policy, and can’t be bothered to learn. The point of the speech was not to lay out a policy or answer difficult questions – it was about projecting an aura, rousing emotions, and creating “gut-level” connections. And Bush succeeded.

It was a good speech. Above all, it was an emotional speech. It made you want to grab a flag and go track down the people who beheaded Berg. That’s because it followed the same basic formula as all Iraq-related speeches. Stir up fear and anger, with a healthy dose of terrorism and 9/11. Portray it in pure black-and-white, us-vs-them terms. Use stirring rhetoric of freedom and liberty. Calm fears by projecting an image of control and clear strategy. The tactics are good because they’re based on basic human emotions – forged through millennia of evolution. We respond to fear. We respond to patriotism (because it mimics our genetically-based impulses to rally around and protect our family). We’re human, and television exploits our humanness (that’s why “Girls Gone Wild” sells).

I should add, however, that the speech was only good if you were completely uninformed about the situation in Iraq. I mean, come on. Bush took the exact same old policy and repackaged as a “five-point plan,” while being less than completely honest to people about the strength of our coalition, the Iraqi links to terror, etc. No major questions were answered – will Iraq have a veto over military operations? What if they ask us to leave? But again, that wasn’t the point of the speech. The point of the speech was to reaffirm Bush’s gut-level connections with Americans and to project (emotionally and visually) an image of control in a tightly orchestrated speech given at a military institution. (This is one of the many reasons we need a constitutional amendment banning television.)

The larger point I want to make, though, is that Bush showed his true strength last night – connecting with “Joe Public” through carefully orchestrated television appearances. Whatever flaws he has as a leader and thinker, he emits a warmth and resolve in his speeches – even if what he’s saying has absolutely no connection with reality. People, in their gut, relate to him – especially when he’s stirring up their fears or appealing to patriotism. Reagan had this gift too. Kerry, to put it lightly, does not.

Television, like patriotism, plays on our genetic impulses, though it does so in a different way. Television creates the illusion that we know Bush personally - just as if he were talking to us on the street. Because we find his personality so appealing, we tend to trust and support his administration's policies -- even though his individual personality has absolutely zero rational connection to the policies themselves. Bush is, like all presidents to some extent, emotional wrapping paper.

So that’s the problem for the anti-Bush crowd. To argue against Bush, you are forced to use reason. You have to show just how disconnected the Iraq rhetoric is from the reality on the ground. You have to get through the undisprovable assertions such as “Invading Iraq made America safer” or “Cutting taxes creates jobs.” But these sorts of empirically-based arguments only work if empiricism is relevant in the minds of the American voter. If they’re voting only on the basis on “gut-level” feelings and auras, then why should Bush even bother laying out specific policies? If the Nixon crew is correct, then it’s an absolute waste of time to publicly wrestle with difficult questions. It’s much better to merely make shit up, so long as you’re showing “resolve” when you do so.

Bush doesn’t usually just flat-out lie. He merely stretches the phrase “plausible interpretation of certain facts” to its breaking point. Again, the goal is to project emotional strength, and to create an emotional attachment with the audience. As long as the RNC can get up and make some connection – regardless of how tenuous – between what Bush is saying and what the facts are, then he can keep on making emotion-based arguments. One example is “Saddam supported suiciders.” Yes, Saddam supported Palestinian terror, which is a completely different beast from al Qaeda terrorism, which is a completely different beast from the Iraqi insurgents (and Saddam himself). But "suiciders" is a plausible way of saying it – and it certainly stirs up the right emotions.

In short, if Nixon is right, Kerry is screwed. (This is why Edwards would have been a stronger candidate despite his inexperience – his ability to connect is much stronger.) I should add that I’m not saying that ALL Republicans vote Republican for emotional reasons. Many people vote Republican for very intelligent reasons – economic principles, judicial philosophy, foreign policy, etc. In fact, I think many intelligent Republicans have lost faith in Bush, but would prefer a Republican executive branch and so they're holding their noses and voting for him. But still, it's hard to deny that many people support Bush because of purely emotional, and thus irrational, reasons - such as because they think he would be a good guy to go to a barbeque with. It’s all about emotion – Nixon knew it and Rove knows it too.

Finally. Just to let everyone know, Blogger gets a glitch from time to time that makes the site inaccessible using the normal URL. If and when this happens in the future, you can still usually access the site by removing the "www" from the URL. For example, instead of typing in "http://www.publiusrocks.com"; type in "http://publiusrocks.com".

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Today's WP (citing the annual report from the International Institute of Strategic Studies):

Far from being crippled by the U.S.-led war on terror, al Qaeda has more than 18,000 potential terrorists scattered around the world and the war in Iraq is swelling its ranks, a report said Tuesday. . . .

And the Iraq conflict "has arguably focused the energies and resources of al Qaeda and its followers while diluting those of the global counterterrorism coalition that appeared so formidable" after the Afghan intervention, the survey said. The U.S. occupation of Iraq brought al Qaeda recruits from across Islamic nations, the study said. Up to 1,000 foreign Islamic fighters have infiltrated Iraqi territory, where they are cooperating with Iraqi insurgents, the survey said.

President Bush (yesterday):

The rise of a free and self-governing Iraq will deny terrorists a base of operation, discredit their narrow ideology and give momentum to reformers across the region.

This will be a decisive blow to terrorism at the heart of its power and a victory for the security of America and the civilized world.

Pretty words - no facts. I hope Andrew Sullivan is reading. I've said it once - and I'll say it again - one can agree that the war on terror is a war, and disagree that Iraq was an appropriate tactic in that war.

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This is why I've abandoned the NYT for the Washington Post (and why I love Robin Wright):

Nor did Bush try to answer some of the looming questions that have triggered growing skepticism and anxiety at home and abroad about the final U.S. costs, the final length of stay for U.S. troops, or what the terms will be for a final U.S. exit from Iraq. After promising "concrete steps," the White House basically repackaged stalled U.S. policy as a five-step plan.

In effect, the president said his current plan is good enough to win, and he set out to rally Americans to his cause with rousing language that placed the conflict in Iraq in the context of the larger, more popular battle against terrorism.

I'm going to have a lot more to say about Bush's speech later today. Briefly, I thought it was a good speech. Bush's problem isn't that he can't give a good speech, it's that his words have little correlation with reality. Hell, I could give a good speech if I could just get up there and make shit up, linking Iraq to the war on terrorism without a second thought, using vague Jeffersonian platitudes. It's a highly effective - though deceptive - rhetorical strategy, and that's what I'll be focusing on later today. Bush is great at the pathos - but he sucks at the logos. He's all pretty words - Will Saletan (as usual) has him pegged.

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Over at Mere Dicta, Mike Anderson has responded to Juan Non-Volokh's ("JNV") claim that the Berkeley protests against Yoo were attacks on academic freedom. Mike explained, as I did below, that "academic freedom" does not apply to government actions, but to academic viewpoints. JNV responded - and his response shows all too clearly why you shouldn't trust lawyers. He says:

Note, however, that the infamous memo did not advocate torture; it did not even advocate forgoing Geneva Convention protections for Al Qaeda and Taliban detainees. To the contrary, it explicitly took no position on the matter and made clear that the President could, pursuant to his authority as commander-in-chief could impose the Geneva Convention's requirements on military personnel. It was a legal memorandum written on behalf of a client, not a policy recommendation.

That's a typically legalistic way of avoiding the argument. The first sentence is a straw man. The really interesting sentence is the second one ("it explicitly took no position"). Yes, it's true that the memo took no position, as a matter of policy, whether the President should ignore the Geneva Conventions. But that's not really the heart of Mike's (and the other students') arguments. What they're saying, and what is undeniably true, is that the memo concluded that ignoring the Geneva Convention AND ignoring customary international law were legal. And this position, Anderson alleges, is not legal at all. The memo stated:

We further conclude that these treaties do not apply to the Taliban militia. . . . [Here's the kicker] We conclude that customary international law, whatever its source and content, does not bind the President, or restrict the actions of the United States military, because it does not constitute federal law under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution. The President, however, has the constitutional authority . . . to interpret and apply the customary or common laws of war in such a way that they would extend to the conduct of [al Qaeda, the Taliban, or our own military].

In other words, we'll do what we damn well please. If Yoo is right about customary law being nonbinding always (regardless of source and content), then my international law professor owes me some money for erroneous lecturing. But the point is that Anderson and the students are alleging that Yoo advised a client that a clearly illegal position was legal - something that lawyers cannot do. His advice was a public action, and it arguably helped create the conditions in which abuse occurred. I don't think this was a war crime (as the student petition seems to), but I do think it's misleading to dismiss the students' complaints as an attack on "academic freedom." And I certainly think it's fair game for students (who once upon a time asserted their power at universities) to protest.

JNV shifts the battle (subtly) by invoking policy, when the real debate is over the legality of the memo's conclusions. Surely JNV would admit that, if Yoo recommended a clearly illegal position, then the student protest would not merely be attacking "academic freedom." But hey, perhaps Yoo is right - again, I'm no expert on international law. Some courts have said it's not binding in some circumstances, while the State Department has said it is binding in certain circumstances. I'm not trying refute Yoo (I'll leave that for experts) - I'm merely pointing out that this is more than an attack on academic freedom. If JNV favors Yoo's position as a matter of law or politics, then he should explain why Yoo's conclusions were legal - indeed, he may have a strong case.

But JNV is being disingenuous by dismissing the merits of the protests as a bunch of fuzzy-headed liberals attacking academic freedom (which is a caricature that appears too often over at VC). Perhaps JNV needs to lay off the David Bernstein books. He certainly needs to lay off the citations to Douglas Feith, who better pray his inbox doesn't have a message that reads "Dear Ahmed, Here's the US Classified Intelligence You Asked For."

[Update: I was thinking last that there might be a way to reconcile the seemingly inconsistent positions of the courts and the State Department with respect to whether customary international law is binding. Again, this is speculation, so I'd welcome anyone who actually knows the answer to this question. But, is it possible that a president could be subject to two different sets of law - federal law AND international law? For example, every American is subject both to federal law and state law. To argue that a given action isn't a violation of federal law doesn't insulate you from being charged with violating state law.

Similarly, it might not be enough to say, as the memo does, that "customary international law cannot bind the executive branch under the Constitution." Perhaps the President (and the American military more generally) always has to answer to (1) federal law; and (2) customary international law - and the two may not be coextensive jurisdictions. Again, I'd welcome anyone with real expertise.]

[Update 2: Also, I should clarify my views on the Volokh Conspiracy. It's a group blog, so you need to judge the individual contributors. Eugene Volokh is awesome (except when he's whoring his abilities to defend Cheney's lies), as is Jacob Levy. Randy Barnett is hit-or-miss, depending on whether he's in a "natural law" sort of mood. David Bernstein is the biggest dumbass in the entire legal profession - and he's scary. I don't know enough about the rest of them.]

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One of the Volokh contributors links to and discusses the Berkeley law students' protests of Professor John Yoo at their recent graduation. Yoo is a former DOJ attorney who helped craft, and assess the legality of, the administration's post-9/11 military actions. Specifically, Yoo's memos concluded that al Qaeda and Taliban prisoners were not subject to the Geneva Convention. Even more striking, Yoo concluded that even though America would hold other nations accountable to international laws, America itself was not bound to follow those same laws.

The Volokh contributor is disturbed that this is an attack on academic freedom (indeed, the whole site is rather obsessed with the alleged rise of Nazi-esque political correctness limiting speech on campus). I'm not sure, however, that this is an attack on "academic freedom." As I understand that term, academic freedom is about giving faculty the widest possible latitude to teach, write, and research any topic - regardless of how controversial that topic might be. I'm fine with that. Let the Marxists and Straussians compete for students, I say.

But the Yoo protests strike me as something different. Yoo is being attacked, not for controversial academic theories, but for his public actions as a government lawyer. A strong case can be made that Yoo's legalistic and arguably disingenuous memos led to international law violations at both Gitmo and now Abu Ghraib. I'll concede that al Qaeda is probably not subject to the Geneva Convention, but it's a stretch to say that the Taliban fighters should not have been afforded those protections. But even assuming Yoo is right on all of that, it strikes me as absolutely ridiculous and unjustifiable to say that America will hold others responsible for international laws that she herself will not follow. The State Department went nuts when they read Yoo's memos, but (as usual) they lost.

If you buy the argument (as I do) that Yoo played an integral role in creating the conditions for Abu Ghraib (by consciously ignoring international law and allowing others to do the same), I think it's perfectly acceptable for Berkeley students to demand Yoo's resignation to the extent they are protesting his actions as a DOJ lawyer. I mean, would it be an attack on academic freedom if Duke law students protested Professor Richard Nixon for his Watergate-related activities (assuming he was given a post)?

Volokh is usually reasonable (even in error), and I applaud their efforts to expose the Young Liberal Taliban when they show their ugly faces on campuses and thwart free speech. But the Yoo protests seem to be different - I wonder if "Juan Non-Volokh" might be masking his political views under a pretty facade of "academic freedom."

[Disclaimer: I'm no expert on the meaning/understanding of "academic freedom." But still, it seems that protesting a professor based on his/her non-academic actions is very different from protesting their academic teachings and writings.]

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Just returned - I'm pretty beat, so I haven't had time to review all the latest Chalabi news, but Josh Marshall and Kevin Drum have some good links. It seems that the man to whom we were going to hand over Iraq is an Iranian spy. And, remember, that's our "best friend." This revelation is huge on so many different levels. But to me, the most striking thing about the Chalabi scandal is how it points towards a much greater, and much more terrifying, ignorance and incompetence among the people who planned this war. In other words, what's truly significant is not that Chalabi is a weasel, it's that the people who executed this war were too ignorant to realize it. And that lack of recognition itself is indicative of a much wider, systemic ignorance and incompetence that we are now paying for with blood.

When I read the Salon article about Chalabi and the neocons, I already knew that he had offered some bogus intelligence about WMDs and about how the Iraqis would view us after the invasion. But what I didn't know - and what is shocking - is that Chalabi promised that the new Iraq would recognize Israel, sign a treaty with it, and supply it oil through the old Haifa pipeline - and the neocons believed it. Here are some excerpts:

Chalabi assured them that the Iraqi democracy he would build would develop diplomatic and trade ties with Israel, and eschew Arab nationalism. . . Had the neocons not been deluded by gross ignorance of the Arab world and blinded by wishful thinking, they would have realized that the chances that Chalabi or any other Iraqi leader could deliver on such promises were always remote.

One of the key promises he made concerned the revival of the Iraq-Israel oil pipeline. . . With Chalabi's encouragement, the Israeli Ministry of National Infrastructure, which is responsible for oil pipelines, dusted off and updated plans for a new pipeline from Iraq. . . . With Chalabi in power in Iraq, either in front or behind the scenes, L. Marc Zell confirms, the neocons were told there would be such a treaty with Iraq. "He promised that. He promised a lot of things."

Look - I'm no Middle East expert. But even I know that the chances of an exile persuading the Iraqi people to recognize Israel (during reign of Sharon/Likud, no less) and supplying it oil is zero. In fact, you have to be the fucking stupidest person on Earth to honestly believe this could happen (Gen. Franks description of Feith, the Pentagon's No. 3).

Here's what truly troubling about all of this. If the people who are in charge of developing the Iraq strategy could be so grossly ignorant about this most basic fact of life in Arabic culture, isn't it fair to assume that they were ignorant about a LOT of other things too? Doesn't this suggest that the people responsible for planning and executing this war charged into Baghdad without the first clue about Arab culture?

Think of it this way. Assume you just had a major, and risky, heart operation. You soon develop complications. While you're at the doctor's office, you hear the doctor say that the aorta is the artery in your upper leg (it's by your heart). Now, that itself is not evidence that the doctor's error caused the complications you're now experiencing, but it's a pretty good indication that he shouldn't have been operating on your heart in the first place. In other words, if he's wrong about that, then chances are that he could have been wrong about a great many other things - things that related more directly to your botched heart operation.

And that's what's so terrifying. If Wolfowitz, Cheney, and Feith were too damned stupid to realize that Chalabi could not (and would not) rebuild the Haifa oil pipeline (along with granting full diplomatic recognition that would trigger a pro-Israel wave across the Middle East at the same time Sharon is razing houses in Gaza), then it's clear that our war was planned and executed by people who had no clue what the hell they were doing. This is terrifying to me. I realize that it's more comforting to think that our military planners know what they're doing. But believing this Iraq-Israel fantasy is roughly equivalent (in terms of sheer ignorance) to a cardiologist not knowing where the aorta is.

Again, the problem is not Chalabi himself - it's that everything surrounding Chalabi shows how ignorant our Pentagon was of the realities on the ground in Iraq. They believed the terrorist connection stories, even though Saddam's regime was secular and he hated al Qaeda (and the feeling was mutual). They thought they could charge in with a Christian army with no international legitimacy and be treated as liberators. They initially wanted to allow Turkish troops into Iraq (horrible idea). They thought they could create a democracy out of an artifical country drawn up on the tables of Paris in 1918. They didn't seem to understand that Iraq's three ethnic groups hated each other and were united only because of Saddam's ruthlessness.

Our current troubles are linked to these instances of ignorance. For example, because we thought we would be loved, we sent in one-third of the total troops needed for security. Because they lacked numbers, the troops could not secure the country immediately after the invasion. Our ignorance also led us to try to win the Iraqi hearts and minds by imposing an exile puppet government headed by a bullshitting Iranian spy upon them (anyone remember the Iraq-Iran war?). The spy persuaded us to disband the army (probably the single stupidest move of the entire occupation). And let's not forget the whole prison abuse scandal - which itself is a product of the instability and lack of intelligence that led to the insurgency. And finally, just when you thought we couldn't get much dumber, according to Sunday's Post, we're letting Iraq be rebuilt by young Americans with absolutely zero experience or qualifications. They do, however, all have "strong Republican credentials."

You see?? It's all connected. The common theme is utter ignorance of Islam and Arabic culture more generally. Obviously, you can't predict everything that will happen in a war - that's why they're called "wars." But, when you reject the State Department and the UN for interns at the Heritage Foundation, these things should be expected.

It's truly terrifying to step back and think about how our entire Iraq policy was based on ignorance (in the literal sense - "lack of information"). The reality is - as Dr. Johnson said of King Lear - "too horrid to be endured."

[Update: KnightRidder has an article today on some of the consequences of listening to Chalabi. As I said above, our ignorance is being paid for in blood:

If Chalabi didn’t talk the administration into invading Iraq, his dubious intelligence underpinned much of its case for war, and his prediction about how Iraqis would greet American troops encouraged Pentagon civilians to spurn advice from their own generals about how many and what kind of troops it would take to secure Iraq. Among the troops the Pentagon left out were sufficient numbers of military police.

Chalabi’s assurances that he had a secret network of allies inside and outside Iraq, meanwhile, encouraged Pentagon planners to ignore a State Department effort to prepare for a post-Saddam Iraq. Instead, Pentagon officials assumed that with their help, Chalabi, a Shiite Muslim like 60 percent of Iraq’s population, could assemble a new government and get the battered country back on its feet.]

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Unfortunately, I'm preparing to leave town for the weekend and I doubt I'll have Internet access (though it's possible). It's too bad because I really wanted to write a post tonight about the implications of the raid on Chalabi's house. Needless to say, I would have paid a substantial amount of money to see the look on Richard Perle and David Frum's faces when they turned on Fox News and saw that American soldiers had raided Chalabi's house - and left a bullet hole in a portrait of his face for good measure. Yes, my friends, this thing is approaching Shakespearian levels of tragic absurdity. Don't forget - this is the guy we picked to run postwar Iraq.

Anyway, if I can get to a computer tomorrow, I'll be posting on this. If my flight weren't so damn early, I'd write it tonight.

For those of you are unfamiliar with the new Martin Luther King of Baghdad (he actually had the nerve to tell America "Let my people go"), you can read this Salon article by John Dizard entitled, "How Ahmed Chalabi Conned the Neocons." (you have to watch an ad first). In fact, I actually had a temporary soft spot for Bush after I learned (from Kos) that he told the King of Jordan that he could "piss" on Chalabi. I'll have much more later.

Oh, and one last thing. The award for most hypocritical article ever goes to David Frum in a discussion of how Islam is inherently militant:

Islam, like all religions, teaches respect for human life. But Islam also contains unique elements all its own. For unlike Judaism and unlike Christianity, the spiritual elements of Islam are mixed with an ideology of war and conquest, even in the pages of the Koran itself. And both the text of the Koran – and the personal example of the Prophet Muhammad – justify killing in general and beheading in particular as legitimate weapons against unbelievers.

That's horrible, and nothing at all like the teachings found in "An End to Evil," eh Dave?

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OK - I’m assuming everyone did their homework and read Lithwick’s Slate article on the “slippery slope” argument that is so commonly cited in opposition to gay marriage. Lithwick’s point seems to be that in assessing gay marriage, we should look to gay marriage itself and stop looking at the parade of horribles that people often link it to. This is the “slippery slope” – gay marriage leads to legal incest, then polygamy, and then dogs and cats living together, etc. In other words, Lithwick is taking issue with the comparisons – or more precisely, the relevance of the slippery slope (and parade of horribles) to the actual issue of gay marriage. As much I sympathize with Lithwick’s politics, her argument is only half right. Unfortunately, it’s also half wrong. Lithwick’s problem is a common one – she is conflating “is” and “ought.” In debating the legality of gay marriage, it’s absolutely critical to keep the is/ought distinction in mind. There are important differences between saying, “The law is such and such,” versus saying “The law ought to be such and such.”

Let’s look at the “is” part first. As much as I favor gay marriage rights, there is simply no good legal argument that the Constitution permits them (I’m assuming this is true for state constitutions too). Unlike Brown (which can at least fall back on the anti-race discrimination provisions of the Constitution), there is no text in the Constitution that would allow a court (in good faith) to legalize gay marriage. The only two possible avenues are equal protection and substantive due process. With respect to these two provisions, conservatives like Bork are correct when they say that these provisions are simply ways for judges to project their personal preferences into the Constitution. “Substantive due process” literally means whatever judges say. Both Lochner and Roe are substantive due process cases, and I don’t see how you can conclude anything other than that, in both cases, the judges imposed their political preferences on to the Constitution. Now, you can certainly conclude that the Constitution would be better if these rights were included, but that’s an “ought” argument, not an “is” argument.

The second avenue is equal protection. For courts to say that equal protection requires gay marriage, they would have to conclude that states have no rational basis for banning them. “Rational basis” is an exceedingly easy test to meet, and I think gay marriage opponents could make a rational (though misguided) argument as to why they should be banned. The larger point is that the equal protection question is merely a subjective question on the merits of homosexuality dressed up like a legal question. I discussed this point in a prior post in which I argued that every legal debate surrounding gay marriage is in reality a question on the merits of homosexuality. So, because majorities and legal precedent oppose gay marriage, judges would be imposing their political preferences upon majorities (even though I agree with the judges’ sentiment). Again, there’s nothing wrong with judges resisting majorities (that’s why we have them), but there must be some textual basis for their counter-majoritarian actions that doesn’t open the door for all judges of all ideologies to impose all their preferences on to the law.

So back to Lithwick. Lithwick argues that the slippery slope argument isn’t a good legal argument to apply to gay marriage. She says we should look at the “case or controversy” before us, and stop worrying about hypothetical cases. As a matter of the deciding what the law “is,” that can’t be right. When judges decide cases, they are (1) reaching a result; and (2) using a process to reach that result. If a given result can only be reached through a sketchy process (say, using substantive due process), then hypothetical, slippery-slope-type arguments are very relevant. The basis for legal gay marriage is that individuals should have the right to consent to marry whom they please. But, as a matter of logic, that rationale could easily be applied to consenting brothers and sisters/cousins, or even polygamy (though polygamy is somewhat easier to argue against). The larger point is that when we’re discussing what the law “is,” slippery slopes and parades of horribles are very relevant.

A different question, however, is what the law ought to be. With respect to this question, Lithwick is absolutely correct in saying that parade of horribles is irrelevant and, in my mind, ignorant. Thus, when legislators are debating bans on gay marriage, their invocation of slippery slopes is both misguided and irrelevant. First, I think the line we have drawn around male-female marriage is inherently arbitrary. We could just as easily decide to draw the line around consenting two-person marriage, or even two-person non-incest marriage. Lithwick herself describes some of the policy arguments against polygamy (I would add that a two-person marriage would fit neatly into the existing family law regime, whereas polygamy would not).

That’s the beauty of the legislature – with respect to some areas, it’s omnipotent. It can draw arbitrary lines to reflect democratic will, and in theory, the courts must respect that. So, when legislators say, “gay marriage will lead to X and Y,” you can respond, “then draw the line so it doesn’t.” The slippery slope is irrelevant to the question of what ought to be.

This is another reason why progressives should return to their early 20th century roots and seek legislative solutions (which requires fixing the gerrymandering, along with making the administrative state more accountable). Legislative solutions are more legitimate, and they are not constrained by the dictates of logic (obviously). That’s why I think a good strategy would be to chip away at the most obvious forms of discrimination. For example, instead of going for marriage all at once, push for visitation, custody, and adoption rights. Then health benefits, and then full civil unions. In certain states, advocates can fight for civil unions now. When civilization doesn’t come crashing down, then other states might realize how ridiculous their own slippery slope fears have been.

Don’t get me wrong, I would love see legalized gay marriage in all fifty states tomorrow. But we do live in a democracy, and we have not yet ratified any Constitutional text that would give courts a free hand to be counter-majoritarian in this area. If you believe in a strong rule of law (which is not self-evident, though I favor it), then you can’t pick and choose when you want to apply it.

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I've been pretty much slammed with work tonight, so I didn't have time for a post. But I will be posting tomorrow (hopefully late morning/early afternoon - depending on what I can get done) and I'll be commenting on this article by Slate's Dahlia Lithwick entitled: "Slippery Slop: The Maddening 'Slippery Slope' Argument Against Gay Marriage."

So that's your homework - go read that, and we'll dissect it tomorrow (or, errr..., today, I guess). Lithwick is sort of mixing up two very different concepts.

Oh - but before I leave, is Bill Safire completely crazy? Iraq has literally driven some war supporters to insanity (Reynolds, Hitchens, Safire). I mean, just read the first paragraph of his op-ed yesterday:

You probably missed the news because it didn't get much play, but a small, crude weapon of mass destruction may have been used by Saddam's terrorists in Iraq this week.

Saddam's terrorists? It only gets worse from there. It's truly horrible - Krauthammerian, even. And while we're at it, I hope everyone saw this little jewel by Glenn Reynolds (via Atrios):

And here's a question: Freedom of the press, as it exists today (and didn't exist, really, until the 1960s) is unlikely to survive if a majority -- or even a large and angry minority -- of Americans comes to conclude that the press is untrustworthy and unpatriotic. How far are we from that point?

First, he's mischaracterizing the doctrine. The free speech right itself arguably goes back to the Founding (and before), but its modern form traces back to the years following World War I when people like Reynolds tried to punish war critics and socialists under the Espionage Act. If I remember correctly, the First Amendment was applied to the states in the 1940s (it was the first to be incorporated, I think - before that, the Bill of Rights only applied to action taken by the federal government). Yes, certain aspects of the doctrine were strengthened and expanded in the 60s, but it's a bit of a stretch to say that the right "didn't exist, really, until the 1960s" as if Justice Brennan dreamt it up while tripping at a Dead show.

But here's the bigger problem. This guy - this LAW PROFESSOR WITH THE MOST WIDELY-READ BLOG ON THE INTERNET - is essentially saying, "Look, you media people either need to agree with Bush and his Iraq policy or else we might rise up and take away your rights." This truly isn't that far from the fence that divides America from Facism-land. Reynolds used to be readable, but he has lost his ever-loving mind over Iraq. Matt Yglesias (only 23?!?) said it best: [T]he coverage of the war indicates that the policy is failing because the policy is failing, not because the press is out to get the president. To make this strategy work, you need some new facts, not a new press corps.

Just sit back and watch them. Just as Josh Marshall predicts, when these people realize what an absolute, world-historical, tragic mess we've made by invading Iraq and/or occupying it incompetently, they're going to try blaming it on the people who never supported it in the first place. And Clinton.

Wow - this post got longer than I intended. Anyway, Lithwick for tomorrow.

This is pretty funny.

Via the Wash. Post:

An Israeli tank and helicopter fired on rock-throwing Palestinian demonstrators Wednesday, killing 8 to 12 people and wounding dozens of others, according to witnesses.

Let's assume for just a second that the Gaza "operation" is justified. Is right now really the best time to launch this operation - at a time when Israel's closest ally is struggling with fallout from the prison scandal?

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In my recent Brown post, I argued that blacks should not seek re-segregated education because, among other things, majority white legislators would not fund the black schools adequately. Obviously, it seems as if I was accusing white legislators of being “racist.” But that’s not exactly what I meant. I mean, I was accusing them of being something, but I’m not sure “racist” is the best word to describe what I meant. This confusion led me to realize that we desperately need a new vocabulary to discuss contemporary issues of race. So, I need your help. We need some new words to discuss the racial problems America faces. The current debates rely too heavily on the word “racism” – a hyper-loaded term that is often inaccurate and polarizing. For now, I’ve adopted the word “post-racism,” but I’d like to abandon the word “racism” altogether (in the context of certain modern racial debates). To me, that term is fast becoming an obstacle to both understanding and progress in the areas of race. Let me explain why.

Whenever linguistic labels no longer adequately describe the things or concepts they’re applied to, we need to abandon them. For example, we have adopted the word “apple” to describe a specific type of object possessing certain characteristics (red, sweet, etc.). But what happens when that object’s (i.e., the apple’s) essence begins to change? Let’s assume, for instance, that genetic engineers create a apple/pear hybrid. The word “apple” would no longer be a good descriptive label for this new object (i.e., the fruit) that we’re applying it to. Neither would “pear.” In truth, the new fruit is something different and should be called by a different name.

The same is true for the word “racism.” If that term no longer describes the underlying motivations and attitudes to which it is applied, then we need a new word that does. For example, it’s perfectly legitimate to classify support for slavery and segregation as “racist.” Similarly, if parents don’t want their children dating someone of a different race because they don’t care for people of that race, that’s racist. The problem, however, is that many modern-day blacks and whites (especially from certain regions or socioeconomic backgrounds) have adopted diametrically opposing positions on a whole host of issues that implicate race (i.e., affirmative action, welfare reform, No Child Left Behind, inner-city spending, criminal sentences, death penalty, busing, Confederate flag, etc.). Now I’ll be the first to admit that many whites (and many blacks) take positions on these issues based on pure racism. But many don’t. For some, the motivation is not “racism,” as we understand that term. But still, race (somehow) seems to be playing a motivating role. For example, even though a white person can oppose affirmative action without being racist, I still believe that race – not “racism” – is coloring that person’s view. So what gives?

Here’s the problem. The word “racism” has become hyper-loaded and, at the same time, over-invoked. It works well when it’s applied to people who favor segregation or slavery, but are there really that many people who still believe in forced segregation? We’ve at least made that much progress, right? Today, the word “racist” is generally a conversation-stopper, and usually results in a pointless “You-are/I-am-not” screaming match. For example, using the term “racist” to describe, say, a modern opponent of affirmative action immediately links that person with slave-holders and the white supremacy movement. And that’s just not fair. White people (including legislators) can oppose affirmative action out of a motivation other than racial animus. And that’s true across a wide range of other issues as well (including education funding of black schools). That said, it does seem strange that blacks and whites see so many issues in such different ways, statistically speaking. This divergence of views seems to suggest that race is still playing an important role in people decision-making process.

Here’s the challenge. We need a way to say that race is influencing certain policy preferences, without saying that race-ism is doing so. Residential segregation has created a world in which we are simply unaware of the perspectives and experiences of other races in America. For example, if you’re white and you’re reading this blog, do you have a good black friend? (And vice-versa, and change the races if necessary). When was the last time you talked to someone of another ethnicity about race? I suspect many of you answered “no” and “never” – and this is a liberal blog. I don’t mean to preach – I asked the questions so we can clearly see the heart of the problem. The problem America faces in dealing with issues of race is no longer racism (or pure racial animus) – the problem is racial ignorance that is itself a product of the tangled history of race, economics, and discrimination in America. Because of this history (which is the source of the modern residential segregation that shields us from other races), whites only think about how certain policies affect whites. Blacks only think about how certain policies affect blacks. Latinos only think about Latinos, and so forth. This limited vision is not based out of animus (in most cases), it’s merely a logical consequence of our segregated society. If you grow up in an ethnically homogenous neighborhood and attend an ethnically homogenous school/church, you will likely seek out ethnically homogenous friends later in life, even when you’re in a multi-ethnic setting such as college or the workplace. That’s not racist, though race plays a factor. I don’t know what to call it, but for now I’ll call it “post-racism.” (Because the innocent, race-influenced views are a byproduct of the old non-innocent racism.).

Here’s how this “post-racism” works in the real world. Take affirmative action. Whites see it only through the lens of white people. They think it robs them of college spots, and refuse to see what advantages their “whiteness” has brought them as a result of publicly and constitutionally-mandated discrimination over centuries. Similarly, blacks only see the centuries of discrimination and ask themselves how any moral white person could possibly object to affirmative action. Whites see the world through a white lens, blacks through a black lens. Both can do so without being “racist,” though race influences and infects their perceptions. The same is true for crime-related issues such as sentencing and the death penalty. Blacks view this differently because they are more likely to be familiar with someone (or someone who has a cousin, etc.) who has gone to jail for many years for a non-violent drug offense. They are also more likely to know how unfairly the death penalty is applied. For many American whites, the criminal justice system is an abstraction. It doesn’t affect them, nor does it affect anyone they know. Thus, for blacks, race motivates them to oppose harsh sentencing and the death penalty. Whites don’t feel this same motivation. It’s not racism, but the views are influenced by race – or post-racism.

And that brings me to my final point – school funding. When I said that white legislators wouldn’t fund black schools, perhaps a better way of saying it would have been that white legislators won’t feel much motivation to ensure that black schools get adequate funding. For example, schools are generally funded by local property taxes. That’s great if you’re in a wealthy district. But it sucks if you don’t. The answer is that the property tax funding must be supplemented through taxes (higher taxes if necessary to make sure that poor kids don’t get the shaft). But race is an obstacle to this redistribution. Not racism – race. For many whites, their schools are just fine and so they don’t want any extra taxes. By never being exposed to the conditions of inner-city schools, white legislators will not be motivated to act.

I just watched a special called “Beyond Brown” on PBS that discussed the real-world effect of No Child Left Behind. I now understand why so many minority groups have opposed it. They see first-hand the damage it’s doing to their kids. I don’t have the link, but apparently one-quarter of all third-graders in Florida failed the test recently (you can see other stats here). From what I gathered, this means that schools have no choice but to fail them. And these are not dumb kids. Honor students failed. They explained that they had simply never been exposed to many of the questions on the test. Perhaps failing children at such a high rate will help education over the long-term, but it’s destroying lives in the short-term (on the micro-level). I watched, heart-broken, as the PBS show interviewed an honor student who lost her college scholarship because she failed that test. Another girl wept openly as she prepared to take the test for the second time. If she failed, she would have to attend third-grade again (for the third time). All of her friends, she claimed, made fun of her. Needless to say, I am now very opposed to No Child Left Behind, or at least whatever provision of it was responsible for what I saw. Like Iraq, it might have been a good idea in the abstract, but it’s a disaster on the micro-level. But again, because many whites are shielded from the real-world effects of NCLB, race prevents them from understanding why it’s so bad. Not racism, but post-racism.

So if anyone can think of a better word to describe what I’m talking about, I’d love to hear it.

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President Bush, today, speaking to the AIPAC:

Prime Minister [Sharon's Gaza withdrawal] plan is a bold, courageous step, that can bring us closer to the goal of two states, Israel and Palestine, living side-by-side in peace and security. The Prime Minister's decision has given the Palestinian people and the free world a chance to take bold steps of their own toward peace. . . . Our vision is a Middle East where young Israelis and Palestinians can play and learn and grow without living in the shadow of death.

Reuters, today:

Israeli tanks and armoured vehicles have demolished hundreds of Palestinian homes in one of the most destructive incidents in the Gaza Strip in recent years. According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), 2,197 people have already been made homeless and 191 homes razed throughout Gaza in the past few days.

The worst affected area is Rafah, on the border between Egypt and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, where 1,064 people lost their homes in 48 hours. More than 30 Palestinians have died and many others who are critically injured are unable to reach hospitals due to curfews and restrictions on movement imposed by Israeli forces.

Scott McClellan, today:

The government of Israel has informed us that these operations are aimed at stopping smuggling of arms through tunnels and at preventing the distribution of those arms -- not at destroying homes.

Amnesty International, in a report released today:

More than 3,000 homes, vast areas of agricultural land and hundreds of other properties have been destroyed by the Israeli army and security forces in Israel and the Occupied Territories in the past three and a half years. Tens of thousands of men, women and children have been made homeless or have lost their livelihood. Thousands of other houses have been damaged, and tens of thousands of others are under threat of demolition, their occupants living in fear of homelessness. House demolitions are usually carried out without warning, often at night, and the occupants are forcibly evicted with no time to salvage their belongings. Often the only warning is the rumbling of the Israeli army's US-made Caterpillar bulldozers beginning to tear down the walls of their homes. The victims are often amongst the poorest and most disadvantaged. In most cases the justification given by the Israeli authorities for the destruction is "military/security needs", while in other cases it is the lack of building permits. The result is the same: families are left homeless and destitute, forced to rely on relatives, friends and humanitarian organizations for shelter and subsistence. . . .

According to Article 147 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, "extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly" is a grave breach, and hence, a war crime.

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Although it’s been crowded out by bigger events such as the IGC assassination, the anniversary of Brown, gay marriage, and the possible sarin bomb, the Washington Post just published a very interesting two-part article on Bush’s fund-raising network of Pioneers, Rangers, and yes, Super Rangers (maybe the next the category will be “Super-Duper Double Dog Rangers”). You can find the articles here and here. I want to use these articles to provide some support for my earlier argument that it’s wrong to conceptualize the presidential election as a competition between individuals. To see the race in this way, or as a contest between two individual personalities, is a fundamentally misguided way to think about the election. But let’s back up.

My basic point in my earlier post was that the election was a contest between rival executive branches (and judicial appointees). As I explained, Bush’s personality traits have almost nothing to do with 99.9% of the everyday activities of the executive agencies. Likewise, Kerry’s wordiness would have approximately zero relevance to the activities of the executive branch. The real question people should be asking is: “What types of people do I want running the EPA, the Pentagon, the State Department, and DOJ?” The answer to that question – and not Bush or Kerry’s personality traits – should determine your vote.

To help you decide, the WP articles make it very clear just what type of executive branch Bush has been and will be creating. First, the Post provides an insight into the actual individuals who have been appointed (and what their backgrounds are). Second, the Post shows which specific interest groups have benefitted and will continue to benefit from Bush’s executive branch.

The first article in the series provided a good summary of the history and inner workings of Bush’s fund-raising network. As most people know, the Bush campaign team institutionalized its fund-raising by creating a rather ingenious system of “Pioneers” – individuals who raised at least $100,000 for Bush. The genius of the system is that it created competition and essentially subcontracted the fund-raising to individuals who were otherwise unaffiliated with the campaign. Though I certainly admire the business model, there is much not to admire.

First, the Post article makes clear just who Bush was depending on to fund his presidential campaign. Essentially there were four groups: (1) his former business partners in his oil and baseball ventures; (2) “the Texas political elite and business community” – many of whom were energy executives; (3) his father’s extensive financial donor lists; and (4) Republican governors’ supporters, especially Jeb’s. It’s not a large group, nor is it diverse under any definition of diversity that I could think of. Of the nearly $300 million Bush has raised since 1998, at least a third and probably more than half have come from a mere 631 people.

The problem with depending this heavily on such a small number of people is that you become forced to pay these people back at some point. And as the Post explained, the Pioneers have been well-rewarded:

Of the 246 fundraisers identified by The Post as Pioneers in the 2000 campaign, 104 -- or slightly more than 40 percent -- ended up in a job or an appointment. A study by The Washington Post, partly using information compiled by Texans for Public Justice, which is planning to release a separate study of the Pioneers this week, found that 23 Pioneers were named as ambassadors and three were named to the Cabinet: Donald L. Evans at the Commerce Department, Elaine L. Chao at Labor and Tom Ridge at Homeland Security. At least 37 Pioneers were named to postelection transition teams, which helped place political appointees into key regulatory positions affecting industry.

A more important reward than a job, perhaps, is access. For about one-fifth of the 2000 Pioneers, this is their business -- they are lobbyists whose livelihoods depend on the perception that they can get things done in the government. More than half the Pioneers are heads of companies -- chief executive officers, company founders or managing partners -- whose bottom lines are directly affected by a variety of government regulatory and tax decisions.

. . .

For the 2004 election, the composition of the Pioneers has changed, reflecting the broad support the Bush administration has given and received from industries ranging from health care to energy. Of the 246 known Pioneers from the 2000 election, about half -- 126 -- are Pioneers or Rangers again. They are joined by 385 new Pioneers and Rangers whose backgrounds are less from Texas and the Bush circle than from the nation's business elite, particularly Wall Street and such major players as Bear Stearns & Co. Inc., Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co.; Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc., Credit Suisse First Boston Inc. and Morgan Stanley & Co. Inc.

The campaign's most productive Zip code this year is Manhattan's 10021: the Upper East Side, bounded by Fifth Avenue, East 80th Street, East 61st Street and the East River.

It’s really quite simple. The people mentioned in the paragraphs above are the executive branch. Bush can go to NASCAR events and talk in his Texas accent all day (the accent he presumably developed at Phillips Academy, Yale, and Harvard). But the bottom line is that the working-class people he panders to have no influence in his executive branch. In fact, his executive branch has, from day one, set out to undermine or remove regulations and programs that disproportionately help middle-class Americans even though they may hurt corporate profits. That’s what’s so fundamentally dishonest about the GOP culture wars. They try to stir up rage against gays, “activist judges,” environmentalists, and other libruls, at the same time that they allow the nation’s top executives to dictate the policy of the executive branch. As our nominee for the Sweden ambassadorship aptly put it:

"You wouldn't have direct access if you had spent two years of your life working hard to get this guy elected president, raising hundreds of thousands of dollars?" he said. "You dance with them what brung ya."

Now, to be fair, it’s not self-evident that businesspeople will act against the public interest. I admit that I can be a little knee-jerk anti-corporate. I’m not anti-business, and I generally support free trade. My problem with this arrangement is that I think that business executives (whose interests are inherently concerned first and foremost with profit) cannot be trusted to control government policies (whose interests should be the greater good of the people). In many areas, such as environmental policy and workers’ rights, there is simply a zero-sum game between business and the public as a whole. There always has been. Just look at article number two, which describes how the EPA rolled back a Clinton-era regulation affecting a billion-dollar laundry company (run by a Pioneer) that opponents claim will result in contamination of groundwater. According to the article, laundry lobbyists were allowed to edit the proposed regulation – environmental groups were not.

Think about the following passage the next time you hear some idiot on TV talking about Bush or Kerry’s personality traits, accents, or clothes (sorry, that last one was Gore):

Twenty-four Rangers and Pioneers are either drug industry executives or lobbyists whose companies stand to get more business from the administration's Medicare drug benefit bill passed last year. Twenty-five energy company executives, along with 15 energy industry lobbyists, are either Pioneers or Rangers. Many have been deeply involved in developing the administration's energy policy. Seven of those Pioneers served on the Bush energy transition team. The administration's energy bill, which remains stalled by a largely Democratic filibuster in the Senate, would provide billions of dollars in benefits to the energy industry.

But in response, Kerry looks French and Gore's clothes were chosen by Naomi Wolf.

Kos has some touching photos from today's marriages. I don't see how you can view these people (and the people in SF) and see them as a threat to the family. Today is an opportunity for a new day. Perhaps we can abandon our militant anger against religious opposition. Instead, progressives should use the images from today to urge religious conservatives to rethink whether their current interpretation or belief is consistent with the larger religious themes of love, compassion, and family. This much love can't be wrong.

I've updated the sidebar with some new links and more recent posts. I haven't checked all the links yet (it's late and I'm sleepy), so let me know if any don't work. I'd also encourage people to visit the link "Books for Soldiers" that I've added. You can disagree with Bush, but still have empathy for what the people on the ground are going through.

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This week marks the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education – the landmark Supreme Court case ruling that “separate but equal” education was unconstitutional. In the popular mind, Brown is one of America’s triumphs – a long overdue recognition of equality by the nation’s highest judicial body. In my opinion, it’s not only the most overrated decision in the Court’s history, it’s actually become an impediment to integration. I have three fundamental problems with Brown: (1) its effect is overrated; (2) it gives the wrong people credit for desegregating American schools; and (3) it is now an obstacle to integration.

Before I review each of these problems, I should direct you to an excellent New Yorker article by Cass Sunstein, which outlines many of the critiques of Brown from both the left and the right (and by whites and blacks). Sunstein anticipated some of the arguments I wanted to make, largely because we are both relying heavily upon the work of Professor Michael Klarman in assessing certain aspects of Brown (Klarman has an excellent new book here). Anyway, I’d urge you to read the New Yorker article too.

Overrated

Many people know that Brown declared segregation unconstitutional in 1954. Most people don’t know that, throughout most of the South, it had zero effect. After Brown, integration did occur in the old “border states” such as Kentucky. As Sunstein pointed out (citing Klarman), in the Deep South states (i.e., AL, MS, SC, LA, GA), exactly zero black children attended integrated schools in 1960. Even in 1964, a full decade later, 98% of black children in the South still attended legally segregated schools. True desegregation only happened when Congress got into the act in 1964 with the Civil Rights Act. It took the grotesque abuses of Alabama police officers in Selma and Birmingham to prick the national conscience to demand action. Even then, Senate leaders had to struggle to get enough votes to overcome a Southern filibuster – a filibuster that included a fourteen-hour address by Senator Byrd (D-WV), the current Ranking Minority member of the Senate Appropriations Committee. The bill was also opposed by the godfather of modern conservatism, Barry Goldwater. In fact, the passage of the Civil Rights Act gave rise to the modern Republican South. From 1964 on, Republican leaders such as Goldwater, Nixon, and Gingrich have all used race to gain the Southern white vote, which had been solidly Democratic. But I digress. . .

As Klarman has explained, Brown is also a lesson on the limits of the ability of the judiciary to bring about social change. Integration (or to be more precise, the attempt at integration) only happened after Congress got into the act. [Though I should add that the Court dropped the ball in Brown II when it allowed states to implement integration slowly. I doubt it would have mattered, however, even if the Court demanded immediate compliance, which it didn’t.]

Credit Where Credit’s Due

My second problem with Brown, which follows logically from the first, is that too many people think that nine old white men were responsible for bringing about integration in America. It’s doubly wrong in that, first, the old men’s ruling didn’t even have that much of an effect. But second, the Civil Rights Act (which got integration going) was the culmination of a generations-long grass-roots struggle by civil rights organizations, churches, students, and community activists. For example, just think about all the effort that was needed just to create talented black lawyers in light of the centuries of slavery and discrimination. Thurgood Marshall’s courage and brilliance would never have been known if, decades earlier, a black law school at Howard University had not been founded (and that itself had its own complex sets of causes). The NAACP only got to the Supreme Court because of its intensive, decades-long efforts within the newly emerging black middle class to create a grass-roots network that would help identify favorable cases and donate funds. Post-Brown, the 1964 Civil Rights Act would never have happened without Dr. King’s organization, along with the black-white student alliance of the early 1960s. In short, integration happened as a result of the blood, sweat, and tears of generations of civil rights activists. Obviously, the Court acted bravely to strike down Plessy, but it borders on profane to give the Justices credit for integration to the exclusion of the churches, activists, and other grass-roots networks that created the necessary conditions for integration to take place.

The credit given to the Supreme Court is actually an example of a much more common error that many people make about history and the nature of historical change. Too many people subscribe to an individual-centric version of historical change. For example, many people think that nine Supreme Court Justices ended segregation. In reality, the Supreme Court was merely riding the wave of the much larger social, economic, and demographic forces (Great Migration, World War II, etc.) that led to Brown. The Court’s action was merely an effect of these greater causes – it was not itself a cause. It’s sort of like saying that a raft on an ocean current caused the current to flow the way it did. This individual-centric error is also common today in discussing terrorism. For example, people think Osama caused 9/11, when a whole host of larger causes were actually responsible.

Impediment to Integration

Probably my biggest gripe about Brown is that it is now an impediment to integration. Much of the 50th anniversary articles on Brown have noted that America is re-segregating. CNN has an article that links to Gary Orfield’s Civil Rights Project, which has some wonderful statistics on this issue. Although you can and should read about re-segregation from more knowledgeable people than myself, I want to focus on the issue from a somewhat different angle.

It’s clear that, despite Brown, America remains very segregated. This is largely a result of residential segregation that itself has a myriad of causes including discriminatory housing policies and white flight to suburbs (For a good discussion, see Thomas Sugrue’s history of modern Detroit - "The Origins of the Urban Crisis."). Most importantly, there is an unwillingness to take the steps necessary to fulfill Brown’s legacy. For example, one of the Court’s worst decisions (not quite up there with Dred Scott and Bush v. Gore, but it’s up there) was a case called Milliken in 1974. In response to white flight, school districts had been drawn up to include suburban whites and inner-city minorities. The Court (5-4) struck this down, finding that suburbs that had not contributed to segregation (i.e., non-Southern suburbs) didn’t have to provide a solution. In other words, the suburbs could stay white. My law professor summed it up as follows, "Brown gave whites a reason to leave, and Milliken gave them somewhere to go."

There has been no public outcry to overturn Milliken, for many reasons. But one important reason, in my opinion, is Brown. Brown validates the American education system for guilty whites. Knowing that nine old men on Court struck down Plessy allows America to sleep easier while its school systems become more and more segregated. Brown puts a stamp of approval on a education regime that should not be approved. Brown helps America forget that we have a problem. There will be no solution to segregation until we realize there’s a problem.. Brown, in 2004, makes that recognition more difficult. People can say, “Hey, we solved this problem in 1954. There’s nothing unfair now. It’s all de facto.” De facto - the magic incantation that supposedly makes the problem disappear. [As I hope to explain in a future post, America has never fully come to terms with the reality of slavery and its effects.]

I am – to say the least – outraged by the unwillingness to follow through with Brown. I’m not only mad at content whites, I’m also very mad at black communities in cities such as Louisville and Nashville who have successfully argued in favor of ending desegregation orders. This NYT article takes a fascinating look at the arguments the black communities made. At first glance, they seem reasonable. It’s racist to assume that all-black schools are inferior; they help create a community; etc. But as the article eventually points out, some are seeing that they made a mistake. And they have. If people think that white state legislators (especially in certain states) are going to fork over extra funding for all black, inner-city schools, they’re crazy. (Sorry, I'm still pessimistic about race relations.) One of the whole points of integration was prevent white majorities from defunding black schools. With re-segregation, black communities will lose funding and legal protection. Thurgood Marshall is no doubt cursing in his grave.

Integration works. In some places, though, it’s been implemented unwisely. If that’s the case, then let’s think about new ways to implement it. But let’s not abandon integration and give in to the David Brooks world where everyone only wants to be with their own race for their entire life. I reject that vision of America.

[Update: Coincidentally (I honestly didn't know), Klarman has an op-ed in today's NYT. Klarman raises many of the points I made, in large part because my points rely heavily on his work.]

[Update 2: Based on some the comments I'm getting, I wanted to clarify one point. I think people are focusing too heavily on my comments about how the Court was "riding the wave" (perhaps I should have been more clear). I certainly didn't intend to get into a free will/determinism debate by suggesting that integration was merely the product of larger events over which individuals exerted no influence or agency. Yes, integration was the product of larger forces other than the Court, but I include among those larger forces the volition and individual actions of a wide, organized, collective civil rights movement.]

I'm leaving now to go to a graduation. I'm hoping that I'll be able to post tonight or tomorrow morning (the latter being more likely). If not, I'll be back Sunday night. Cheers.

Friedman is pissed today. Welcome to the club, my friend.

It reminded me of Harry's line from Dumb and Dumber:

You know Lloyd, just when I think you couldn't be any dumber, you go and do something like this... and totally redeem yourself!

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As regular readers know, my most fundamental problem with the pro-war camp is its claim that invading Iraq was related to the war on terror. Even if we can forgive those who felt Iraq was related to the war on terror prior to the invasion (hindsight is 20/20), there is simply no evidence for holding that position now. Iraq had no WMDs, no al Qaeda links, and the democracy domino theory is more of a hopeful dream than an empirically supported belief. But yet, as I explained a few days ago, many are still conflating Iraq with 9/11, and with the war on terrorism more generally. More importantly, as the reaction to the Berg beheading showed, many Americans are equating al Qaeda with Iraqis and Iraqi insurgents. Up until yesterday, I was merely upset that this conceptual error had led us into an unnecessary war. But after reading the post-Berg commentary, I had a moment of clarity. I'm now absolutely terrified. The conceptual error is far more dangerous than I had ever realized. Let me explain.

First, I should direct you to what I read. Via Matt, I was directed to the Corner where Rich Lowry - who is not a fringe conservative - quoted (approvingly) excerpts from the following editorial in Murdoch's New York Post:

It wasn't enough that they slaughtered the young Philadelphia businessman like a sheep and held his severed head aloft as if it were a trophy. No, they filmed the whole thing for the world to see. Soldiers don't behave like that. Only cowards and thugs do. Now it's time to ratchet up the response to this war. Forget Abu Ghraib. The abuse committed there by a handful of soldiers was not typical; nor is it acceptable. But the beheading of Nick Berg is par for the course for al Qaeda.

I'm not even going to elaborate on the dark irony of the statement about how soldiers don't kill prisoners and film them. For now, just notice that the editorial begins by noting that al Qaeda was responsible. Not Iraq insurgents, al Qaeda. Ok - it goes on to say:

Some people - some Americans - have forgotten about 9/11. That attack should have been enough to justify all-out war. . . . It can end only with the total annihilation of those who practice butchery and barbarism. Those who have set as their goal the destruction of America. . . .

America has to come out swinging. And not stop until every last one of the savage thugs is dead. If that means a resumption of major combat in Iraq, so be it. Would it mean another division or so of combat troops to get the job done? Turn to our garrisons in Europe, or Korea, to get them. In sufficient numbers to get the job done. To hell with political sensitivities in the region. To hell with negotiating with radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in Najaf and the Sunni insurgents in Fallujah. To hell with handing Saddam Hussein over to Iraqis, as some want to do, and risking some reverse - perverse - kangaroo trial that results in his survival. Evil, cutthroat terrorists need to be eradicated.

Notice how easily the Post jumps back and forth from al Qaeda to al-Sadr, from true terrorists to Fallujah insurgents. In their mind (and Lowry's I guess), there is no difference between the al Qaeda fucks who beheaded Berg and the Shiite insurgents who follow al-Sadr, or the Sunnis who fight in Fallujah. This conceptual error is, of course, nothing new. But here's something that I hadn't considered - something that is truly terrifying.

What I'm envisioning is not all that probable, but it's becoming increasingly possible, and it's something we should think about ahead of time. Let's assume (God forbid) that al Qaeda pulled off an attack that caused more deaths than 9/11 did. For example, what if they obtained a nuclear device and detonated it against our troops or even an American or Israeli city (which is not so crazy - go read Bill Keller's NYT Magazine article last year entitled "The Second Nuclear Age" that documented all the loose material that could go underground - link anyone?). If the Post wants to level Fallujah because of Berg, what will they demand after this sort of major attack? I suspect they will demand a nuclear attack of their own - or at a least some damn big non-nuclear bombs on an Arab city such as Fallujah or Damascus.

Here's the problem - al Qaeda (after the fall of the Taliban) is not state-sponsored. It's an international group of individuals scattered across many countries. Thus, there's no way to retaliate against it using massive military force (as Kevin Drum aptly noted yesterday). You can't drop a bomb that would only kill Saudi or Syrian bankers who subsidize al Qaeda. So here's my fear: Al Qaeda hits us hard. The American people demand retaliation. Because of the novel structure and organization of al Qaeda, it simply can't be retaliated against with "conventional massed forces" (Kevin's term). But, because Americans equate al Qaeda with Iraqi insurgents, we'll retaliate against people who had nothing to do with the attack. And we'll do so in a horrific way depending on how severely we're attacked. I fear we'll nuke Fallujah while the al Qaeda terrorists laugh their asses off in their hotel in Cairo. In the meantime, our misguided response will finally radicalize all Arabs (Osama's dream), and American-friendly regimes will be overthrown. In Bill Murray's immortal words in Ghostbusters, "Riots on the street. Dogs and cats living together. Mass hysteria." You get my point.

Yes, this is an unlikely worst-case scenario, but it's time for someone to start thinking about worst-case scenarios so we can prevent a massacre on the scale of history's most prolific murdering leaders. Even a small chance that this might happen is too high. Americans must understand the difference between al Qaeda and other Arabs with guns. This includes Hamas, Hezbollah (who condemned the Berg killing), and the Iraqi insurgents. The fear that keeps me awake at night is that al Qaeda will sucker us into initiating a new Holocaust. I mean, listen to the rhetoric in the Post. These people want to kill everyone in Fallujah right now for something they didn't do - just like people want to punish the insurgents for 9/11, which is something they had no part in.

Sorry to be so dramatic. But we need to realize just how lethal the conceptual error could potentially be. We need to think about it from a broad, world-historical perspective. It could literally lead us into a second Holocaust. My anger with Bush is not just the consequences of his conscious blurring of Iraq and al Qaeda - I'm also outraged by the potential consequences. It's cosmically irresponsible - to America, the world, and world history. This isn't a damn election game anymore.

As I explained in an earlier post, the gay marriage debate takes place on such an abstract level that it's hard for people to understand how the ban affects individuals in the real world on a micro-level. Hopefully, this California case (via Yahoo) will help make the debate more concrete.

A woman has no parental rights over the twins she was raising with her lesbian partner — even though she is the children's genetic mother, an appeals court ruled. Upholding a lower court ruling, the 1st District Court of Appeal decided only the woman's partner — who gave birth to the twins after artificial insemination with eggs provided by her lover — has full parental rights. The court said though the genetic mother was a loving, at-home parent, "functioning as a parent does not bestow legal status as a parent."


This is a travesty. Explain to me exactly what is so Christian about using the power of the state to prevent a PARENT from having, you know, parental rights. (And I don't buy the legalistic bullshit that concludes that someone who raises a child and provides its DNA isn't a "parent." If that's the law, the law is immoral.) Can you imagine the heartbreak of being separated from your children - forever - just because you're gay. This is an outrage. As I've said before, this is the civil rights battle of our day. Fight back - your children will thank you.

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Before I begin today, I want to express my condolences to the Berg family. The murder was an outrage, and the Abu Ghraib abuse doesn’t make it any less outrageous.

Anyway. . . Inhofe’s comments yesterday have given me an excuse to write a post that I’ve been meaning to write for some time about the potential of the progressive blogosphere. As I noted earlier, I recently read a book on the Renaissance. What I learned is that the achievements of the Renaissance stemmed directly from a whole series of factors – improved technology; better transportation; printing press; and growing trade. The common thread was that all of these developments allowed ideas to be exchanged at more rapid rates. For example, the printing press and better ships allowed ideas to be disseminated across Europe at a (relatively speaking) mind-boggling speed. That’s also what the great civilizations – Greece, Rome, the Islamic Middle East in the 7th through the 12th centuries – had in common. They were all central nodes in a vast network of commerce and ideas. These civilizations benefitted from the free exchange of ideas and innovation that took place within their cities.

I think that the blogosphere, and the Internet more generally, has the potential to usher in something equally great; a New Renaissance, if you will. It’s similar to the old trade networks of Italy and the Middle East in that it allows ideas to be carried across the world at high speed. And like the printing press before it, the Internet allows the most innovative and revolutionary ideas to spread quickly at little cost. Hell, Howard Dean essentially created a new political party through the Internet. And the Internet is eventually (I hope) going to bring down Chinese communism and Iranian theocracy. (Instead of invading Iraq with our military, we should sent have sent in battalions of modems.) So how does all this relate to Inhofe and the blogosphere? Stay with me, I’m going to get there.

In a post last month, I linked to a philosopher of science (Bruno Latour) who, though liberal, had grown tired of the Left’s dogmatic criticism in universities. As I explained in that post, “criticism” has a technical meaning. It refers to the Left’s practice of “deconstruction” – or breaking down familiar subjects such as religion, race, or gender in order to see the ideological biases or power hierarchies that are allegedly behind these concepts. This philosopher believed that criticism (in this sense) was a tired concept. Instead of deconstructing everything, he argued that the Left should try constructing for once. I may be mischaracterizing Latour’s argument (it’s a, uh, tough read), but I think I know what he’s getting at. Instead of trying to tear down everything, the Left should use its intellect and energy to construct new ideas and new narratives.

An example from politics may help clarify what I mean. The progressive blogosphere is obsessed with tearing down Republican positions, just as Lefty English majors are obsessed with tearing down (or deconstructing) religion and family structures. But, attempts to tear things down are admissions of inferiority. You tear down that which you fear, and that which you think is stronger than you. Instead of using our collective energies to destroy conservatism, progressives should construct new ideas. Imagine there’s a bar on the street that you hate, but tons of people keep going into the bar and getting drunk on the cheap, watered-down beer. Instead of standing outside and denouncing the bar, and throwing sticks at it, why not build a better bar down the street? Give people a place to go, and then you can ignore the crappy bar. One of the reasons Republicans have been so successful is that, for nearly 20 years, they’ve been cultivating an intelligentsia in think tanks and foundations. As flawed as their vision is, their collective energies have constructed a positive vision (in law, economics, foreign policy, etc.). The Left, by contrast, is vision-less.

This is how the blogosphere can mirror the trade networks of antiquity. By proposing new ideas and critiquing each other ideas, the blogosphere (which has some great talent) can be the vanguard of progressive politics in America. In short, the blogosphere is an infrastructure that can be used to transmit, test, and disseminate good ideas to our nation’s leaders. Right now, it’s too focused on tearing down the other side to create anything new. So, in the spirit of constructing a new progressivism, here’s my first stab.

As I explained yesterday, what bothers me most about Inhofe is the claim that he represents common sense “values.” Inhofe and his supporters would surely say that he is a great supporter of religion, patriotism, and family. Deconstructionists would then jump in to explain how his religion is merely a reflection and validation of the social norms of white, evangelical Oklahoma. In other words, Inhofe’s God is a white, heterosexual Oklahoman who opposes gays and abortions. These Lefty grad students would then explain that Inhofe’s patriotism is a narrow parochialism that values Americans above all other humanity, thus validating and reinforcing America’s economic hegemony. Finally, they would critique his vision of “family” as a reflection of gender bias, economic inequality, and on and on. But Latour is right – it’s time for the Left to stop its obsessive deconstruction of everything middle America holds dear. Again, deconstruction assumes inferiority. To the deconstructionists, these concepts are bigger, or are a threat, and must therefore be deconstructed. Instead of deconstructing, let’s try constructing.

Imagine that our brains are a computer (this is Latour’s example – or my strained attempt to repeat his example). The traditional deconstructionist model is to download a program in our brains, which we then disassemble into little pieces. Instead of that, what would happen if we downloaded the program, combined it with other programs, and made the final program much bigger and better than that which was originally downloaded?

For example, if Inhofe’s religion is flawed, construct a new and better religion. Instead of attacking Christianity to discredit Inhofe’s politics, construct a more compelling Christian narrative in which to frame your own politics. I hinted at how to do this yesterday. Many of the traditional liberal/progressive positions are arguably much more consistent with Christianity, and religion more generally, than Republican positions. These positions include helping the poor; asking the rich to sacrifice for the common good; protecting the environment; improving the criminal justice system; fighting AIDS; ending world hunger; opposing unnecessary wars; opposing the death penalty; and ending discrimination against homosexuals. If the Republican religious narrative is an obstacle, construct a more compelling narrative.

The same is true for "patriotism." Many people on the Left are disgusted with Inhofe’s version of patriotism. Instead of attacking Inhofe by attacking patriotism per se, we should construct a new American patriotism (in Wes Clark’s terms), or a new economic patriotism (Billmon’s term). This new patriotism could include higher taxes on the wealthy to support the war; energy independence; incentives for national service; and a recommitment to the world institutions. The latter would require a new global patriotism that recognizes our common humanity and “interdependence” (Clinton’s term from his awesome speech - the pdf is here). Again, the problem isn’t patriotism, it’s the mangled version of patriotism espoused by people like Inhofe.

The same is true for “family.” Instead of attacking Middle America’s notion of “family” as discriminating against gays, progressives should co-opt and expand the concept of family. In advocating for gay marriage, stress the benefits of two-parent households. Note the real-life tragedies in which parents can’t even visit their children because their partners (the biological parents) ended the relationship and took the children away - they can't see them because they're not a “parent” under law. Construct – don’t deconstruct.

This post was also influenced by a law professor named Madhavi Sunder, who is a young law professor at UC Davis. In her excellent 2003 Yale Law Journal article entitled “Piercing the Veil,” she challenges Islamic women to battle for rights within the framework of Islam. In other words, she doesn’t argue that women should abandon Islam in Middle Eastern countries. Instead, women should fight to show that the current version of Islam, as interpreted by the ruling men, is not the only possible interpretation of the Koran. Islam, properly understood, does not support discrimination. She is constructing, not deconstructing. Islam, as practiced, is the obstacle, so she’s offering a new, more compelling Islam to take its place. The benefit is that women can use the religious narrative to their advantage, rather than being seen as subversive.

The Left’s problem isn’t that they lack good policies. We’re right on the issues. Our problem is one of narrative and rhetoric. All we need is a new way to sell these ideas. Many people are simply scared that the Left is going to undermine what they hold most dear – God, America, and traditional family. Instead of destroying these concepts, we can use those concepts to persuade. In short, we can construct a new progressivism using these very concepts. Obviously, my ideas will need to be worked out, but we’ve got to start somewhere. And what better place than the blogosphere – the printing press of the 21st century.

Senator Inhofe's (R-OK) website states:

United States Senator Jim Inhofe, one of the leading conservative voices in the Senate, is a strong advocate of common sense Oklahoma values.

Here's a Reuters article quoting Inhofe today at the Taguba hearing:

"I'm probably not the only one up at this table that is more outraged by the outrage than we are by the treatment," the Oklahoma Republican said at a U.S. Senate hearing probing the scandal. "These prisoners, you know they're not there for traffic violations," Inhofe said. "If they're in cellblock 1-A or 1-B, these prisoners, they're murderers, they're terrorists, they're insurgents. Many of them probably have American blood on their hands and here we're so concerned about the treatment of those individuals."

Coalition military intelligence officers estimated that about 70 percent to 90 percent of the thousands of prisoners detained in Iraq had been "arrested by mistake," according to a report by Red Cross given to the Bush administration last year and leaked this week. The report also said the mistreatment of prisoners apparently tolerated by U.S. and other coalition forces in Iraq involved widespread abuse that was "in some cases tantamount to torture."

Obviously, Inhofe's fascism is not representative of the Republican Party. What truly frustrates me, though, is that the press allows people like Inhofe to claim that their perverted conservatism reflects Oklahoma (or Christian) values. (Here's an article from a linguist that explains how conservatives have successfully "framed" political issues in self-serving ways, linguistically speaking.) Inhofe is a perfect example of how conservatives succeed by being more linguistically savvy. By framing the terms of the debate, people like Inhofe can claim to be standing up for Christian values when they surely are not. It's time for progressives to get over their moral inferiority complex in the face of people like Inhofe.

I can't stress it enough - there is no reason why progressives should cede the "values" debate to conservatives, especially fringe conservatives like Inhofe. Progressives in predominantly Christian areas (i.e., practicing Christian areas) should start co-opting Christian narratives. For example, why not use religious narratives to oppose unnecessary war, oppose the death penalty, provide government services to the poor, ask the wealthy to sacrifice for the common good, reach out to other countries (our fellow humans), improve prisons, and on and on. Face it people - most of America is Christian. Rather than fight it, co-opt it. After all, I firmly believe that big-hearted progressivism is more consistent with traditional religious values than free-market, Darwinian conservatism.

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At first glance, it might seem that Bush has discredited both the neocon foreign policy and the liberal hawk foreign policy in one fatal blow of incompetence. I suspect that, when neocons like Kristol and Brooks (or hawks like Hitchens or Friedman) are sitting around having a beer, what infuriates them most is that Bush discredited their legitimate foreign policy vision by failing to implement it properly. In other words, neocons must privately fume that, technically speaking, the principles of neoconservativism weren’t discredited in Iraq - only the mangled, mutated version of neoconservativism that Bush applied. But now, because the mutation has been discredited, neoconservativism itself has been discredited in the minds of Americans and the world.

Today, though, I want to focus on the liberal hawks (i.e., liberals who supported invading Iraq). Some of the recent comments to my posts (which have been excellent) have made me think that maybe I’ve been too hard on the liberal hawks. I would add that, although one might think that Iraq has discredited them too, it’s possible that Bush’s bungling of Iraq might actually strengthen the liberal hawk foreign policy over the long-term. But let’s back up.

For those who don’t know what “neocon foreign policy” means, I’ve discussed that here. As for the liberal hawk foreign policy, here’s how I would define it (and someone correct me if I’m wrong). Liberal hawks are liberals/progressives who believe that military force can and should be used in pursuit of humanitarian goals that are not really in America’s strategic interest. Like the neoconservatives, there's a heavy dose of idealism in them and their vision. This camp supported the use of military force in Kosovo, and strongly advocated using force to prevent the Rwandan genocide. The most famous liberal hawks today are people like Tom Friedman, Christopher Hitchens, Fareed Zakaria, and Paul Berman. Many or even most American liberals have not exactly embraced the hawks, and continue to oppose military force almost 100% of the time. I suppose you could imagine the liberal foreign policy world as existing along a spectrum with Noam Chomsky on one end, and Christopher Hitchens on the other.

One reason that I shouldn’t be too hard on the hawks is that I consider myself a “soft liberal hawk” (my term). That means that I do support the idea of using force to pursue humanitarian goals, but only sparingly. For me, the absolute first principle is that military force has, throughout history, caused many times more problems than it solved. I think that war is only rarely justified. Combat is horrible - it’s horrible for the nations that endure it, and it’s especially horrible on the individual soldiers who engage in it. War fucks people and nations up - permanently. It always has unintended consequences, and innocent people always die in large numbers. It’s not something to be glorified or celebrated, it’s something that must be solemnly accepted, and only when circumstances have forced it upon us.

In short, my baseline presumption is “no war unless absolutely necessary,” sort of like “innocent until proven guilty” is the baseline of the criminal justice system. For me to support a war, the President (or whoever) has to make a very strong case to overcome that presumption. Where I differ from much of the anti-war Left is that I think that humanitarian disasters can make war absolutely necessary. For example, Clinton’s true sin is not lying about a blow job (Bush has kind of put that into perspective, no?), it was allowing Rwanda to happen. Roughly 800,000 people were slaughtered, and many more millions became refugees.

So my gripe is not really with liberal hawkism, per se. My gripe is that the Iraq invasion was a poor candidate for the use of force under liberal hawk principles. (It’s similar to the idea of supporting the war on terror, while opposing the war in Iraq because it undermines the broader war.) Obviously, hindsight is 20/20 and it’s easy for liberals, today, to say “nyah-nyah-nyah-I-was-right.” But it wasn’t obvious, at the time, that invading Iraq was the wrong decision. I should add that, in debates like these, it’s foolish to say that the two sides were either 0% or 100% right or wrong. Evaluating war is an exercise in probabilities. I was not 100% sure that I was right, and I wasn’t sure that Bush was 100% wrong. The answer is somewhere in between these extremes.

But here’s why I opposed the invasion at the time. As I saw it, there are two main rationales for invasion: (1) the actual threat to the US (i.e., WMDs or al Qaeda connections); and (2) democracy-building humanitarianism. I didn’t buy the first one for a few reasons. First, al Qaeda and Saddam hated each other. Saddam was secular, Osama is not. Second, not all WMDs are alike, despite what Bush says (another rhetorical coup in the lead-up to war). Chemical and biological weapons shouldn’t even be classified under the same linguistic label as nuclear weapons. Yes, mustard gas in the subway would not be pleasant, but I’m not sure preventing the possible deaths of a few dozen (or even hundreds) of people justified invading Iraq to get rid of them. Nuclear weapons are totally different. So be careful when people say things like, “Everyone thought he had WMDs.” Bush conflated the different kinds of WMDs, but there was never any strong evidence of nuclear activity according to everyone except us and England. If Saddam’s weapons were such a threat, it’s inconceivable that other countries would risk nuclear attack just to spite the United States. In short, I just didn’t buy the threat in light of other nations’ responses, or at least, I didn't think the threat was imminent enough to justify invading, which I thought was going to lead to mass civilian casualties.

You have to remember that contingency works both ways. Yes, I could have been wrong about the WMDs, but a lot of bad shit could have also happened that didn’t. For example, it was very possible that the invasion could have degenerated into the type of urban warfare we’re seeing now, which would have caused a new humanitarian disaster where none existed. (The media shielded us from the images of the civilian death we caused in Fallujah.) I certainly wasn’t 100% sure that my position was correct, but again, it’s all about the presumption of peace (which, again, is like the presumption of innocence). I needed more than the drum-banging fear campaign of 2002 to convince me. And yes, there were some good reasons for invading, but the true question is whether and why those reasons were sufficient to overcome the presumption of peace (remembering that mustard gas is different from an A-bomb).

As for the humanitarian/democracy-building rationale (the one relied on by many liberal hawks and all neocons), I just didn’t buy it. Domino theories don’t seem to apply in the Middle East. As Juan Cole has said (on NPR?), Turkey is an Islamic democracy and that hasn’t exactly spread like wildfire through the Middle East. Similarly, people thought the Iranian revolution would spread, but it didn’t. To me, even though Saddam was bad, Iraq was stable. There was no imminent genocide or humanitarian disaster that required such swift action. In addition, you must remember that Iraq is an artificial country, composed of ethnic groups that hate each other, with no tradition of democracy-supporting institutions (independent judiciary, free press, strong middle class, etc.). It’s just not the proper place for democracy-building experiments. I’m an occupation hawk, today, not because I have dreams of democracy, but because I want to prevent humanitarian disaster.

So, I’m not ready to give up on liberal hawkism yet, but many are – just as many have given up on neoconservativism. But here’s the glimmer of hope that liberal hawks have, and neocons don’t. From my understanding, liberal hawks are strong believers in international institutions such as the UN and NATO. I am too. Liberal hawks (some of them, at least) believe that international humanitarian missions must be done with legitimacy – and only the UN or NATO can provide such legitimacy. One could argue that Bush’s primary problem is that the invasion and occupation have zero legitimacy in the eyes of the world (and in the eyes of the Iraqis). It is pure “might-makes-right.” So, liberal hawks can say, “It would have been different if we used the UN and the international community.” Neocons can’t say this, because their whole foreign policy vision is about abandoning the UN. To be frank, I’m not sure anything could have worked in Iraq. Saddam imposed stability on an inherently unstable nation. Removing him has opened the floodgates. But regardless, I’m certain that the neocon vision would never have worked. It’s at least possible that a true international coalition with non-Christian soldiers fighting under a UN mandate could have made Iraq work. Installing a puppet regime of exiles that would recognize Israel would not.

What I’m trying to say is that there is a way for the liberal hawks to salvage their reputation and their vision. The key is to portray the war as a lesson in the importance of legitimacy. The neocon vision inherently lacks legitimacy, but the liberal hawk vison does not. The hawks can say, “Bush had the right idea, but did it the wrong way. Let’s learn from this and strengthen international institutions rather than abandoning them.” It would have helped, a lot, if hawks had tried to stop the war in February when they realized it was going to be implemented illegitimately and without any real foreign support. It would help even more if hawks, today, admitted that they were wrong (not about the invasion per se, but about not trying to stop it when it became clear that Bush was perverting their vision). To be fair, though, many have.

Perhaps “soft hawkism” (needs a better name - “smart hawkism?”) is a good alternative vision for Kerry to adopt. Being “strong” (the current Kerry talking point) isn’t enough. You have to be strong AND smart. Or more precisely, strong and legitimate. Otherwise, you get Iraq, and I fear that no amount of strength or “staying the course” can help us attain what we most need – legitimacy.

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I wanted to add a brief follow-up to last night's post. If you buy my argument that many Americans justify the Iraq invasion to themselves by invoking the emotions they felt after 9/11, then you can better understand statements like these (from Bush's April '04 press conference):

Saddam Hussein was a threat. He was a threat because he had used weapons of mass destruction on his own people. He was a threat because he coddled terrorists. He was a threat because he funded suiciders. He was a threat to the region. He was a threat to the United States.

The key to Bush's Iraq policy - the absolute, essential key to everything - is to convince people that Iraq was a necessary (and wise) part of the war on terror. The only reason that the people who agree with Lieberman's comments support this war is because they think it will either prevent a future 9/11 or punish those who attacked us on 9/11. Maintaining that perception is the whole ballgame for the Bush team. (In my opinion, these people would not have supported the democracy-building rationale, which was used by liberal hawks - I'm focusing on the people who heard Lieberman and said, "Yeah, he's right.")

As I said before, the reason the WMD rationale was important was because it provided a logical bridge from 9/11 to Baghdad (e.g., Saddam could give them to al Qaeda). The same is true for the terrorist link. Arguing that Saddam had terrorist connections provides a logical link between two events that would not otherwise be connected - 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq.

So notice what Bush is doing when he says that Saddam "funded suiciders" - he's equating Palestinian terror with al Qaeda. If you take nothing else away from this blog, remember this - Palestinian terror is completely different from al Qaeda terror which is completely different from Iraqi insurgent attacks. Because they're all Arabs, and because many Americans know next to nothing about the complexities and diversity of the Arab world, all of these people (and their acts) blend together in their minds. What's most annoying about the Bush administration is that they all know that Hamas is radically different (in purpose, in origin, and on and on) from al Qaeda, but they tell the American people they're the same because they must maintain the illusion. As Al Franken says, this is a "lllllllliiiiiiieeeee."

To rephrase Nietzsche in Birth of Tragedy - Iraq can only be justified by illusion.

[Update: On an aside, Andrew Sullivan (yes, Andrew Sullivan) has some really powerful posts today (and yesterday).]

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A lot of people have been upset with Lieberman over his strange comments at the Rumsfeld hearing. Here's what he said:

I cannot help but say, however, that those who were responsible for killing 3,000 Americans on September 11th, 2001, never apologized. Those who have killed hundreds of Americans in uniform in Iraq working to liberate Iraq and protect our security have never apologized.

Obviously, this statement has absolutely no logical relation to Abu Ghraib abuse. For some, this was the last straw and they're vowing to support his primary opponent in 2006. Now, I was certainly angered (or more precisely, baffled) by these statements, but I think kicking Lieberman out of the party is a bad idea, for the same reason that supporting Toomey was a bad idea for the long-term health of the GOP (as I explained in a prior post). But anyway. . .

I think we can understand Lieberman's comments better if we drop the knee-jerk hostility and view them with more of an anthropological eye. In fact, I think that looking at his statements from a different perspective will allow people (especially angry anti-war people) to understand just why it is that so many Americans supported the invasion, and continue to support Bush's Iraq policies. I mean, if progressives want people to view the Middle East culture (and Arab anger) more empathetically, then they must also extend this same empathy to pro-invasion Americans.

To me, Iraq is sort of a like a giant inkblot (or Rorschach) test in that people's responses to events in Iraq often reveal more about the subjective state of their mind than about any objective reality in Baghdad. I've written about this before in a prior post where I argued that conservatives' (& liberal hawks') denunciation of the Spanish election results were reflecting their own insecurities about Iraq rather than objective reality in Spain. Likewise, I think that Lieberman's comments provide us with a fascinating window into the minds of the war supporters. I started thinking about this today as I listened (silently) to some members of my family echo the same sort of Lieberman responses to news reports of the prison abuse that interrupted our afternoon Mother's Day activities. They immediately invoked 9/11, Saddam, and the contractor deaths in Fallujah.

What's interesting about these responses is that they're not really logical, they're emotional. Many Americans supported the invasion (and continue to, if for no other reason than to avoid cognitive dissonance) out of a sense of revenge. Recall my post on rhetoric a few months ago in which I distinguished between logos, pathos, and ethos. What I did not mention was that rhetoric is not only used by speakers to persuade an audience. It can also be used by individuals to persuade themselves that a certain belief is correct. In other words, we invoke rhetoric within our own minds to help persuade the dissenting voices in our head. And so, in my opinion, people like Lieberman (and those who agree with his comments) have justified the war in Iraq to themselves primarily through pathos, not logos, and that explains the otherwise unexplainable comments.

It's actually a fascinating response, psychologically speaking. The Abu Ghraib abuse threatens the most central, vital assumption used to justify invading Iraq - that American action is clearly good. That assumption is necessary to justify ignoring allies, violating international law, shitting on the Geneva Convention, and invading a sovereign nation. It's all OK because we're good. We're coming in to show the world how to create a just democracy. Even if that's true, it's no longer true in the perceptions of everyday Iraqis (whose perceptions are most essential to the success of our efforts). Because Abu Ghraib strikes at the very heart of pro-invasion arguments, and thus creates the most cognitive dissonance, it's understandable why people would feel such a strong need to rationalize it. To continue justifying the invasion in their own minds, Americans must reconcile their prior beliefs with the new allegations of abuse. And so they're returning to their first principles - anger and revenge.

It's quite simple. After Abu Ghraib, people are experiencing so much cognitive dissonance that they must re-justify the war to themselves. To persuade themselves, they're using a specific type of rhetoric - pathos. They recall the rage and fear they experienced on 9/11. And then, through a logical "leap of faith," they project that rage on to Saddam, who is a convenient target because he's such a horrible man. I think that, in effect, many Americans are saying, "We had to invade because of what they did to us on 9/11." This is not logical - it's pathos, pure and simple. Raw emotion and anger. Remember that in September 2003, over 70% of Americans thought Saddam was personally involved in the 9/11 attacks, despite exactly zero evidence. That's no accident - that's the reason we went to war. And that's why the WMD rationale was so important in justifying the war (many times more important than the democracy-building rationale). The WMD rationale provided the necessary link between the anger of 9/11 and the justification for invading Saddam. In fact, that's why so many people to this day believe that Iraq had weapons - the cognitive dissonance would otherwise be too great. The entire edifice of their pro-invasion position depends on this foundation.

Hopefully, this helps explain Lieberman. I don't think that he's consciously trying to re-elect Bush, the man who robbed him of the vice-presidency (and in his mind, the presidency - somewhere down the road). I also don't think he's consciously lying, though I can't know for sure. My hunch is that he has justified the invasion for so long by recalling his rage about 9/11 that he can't bear to face the cold reality that no link exists.

And that brings us to Bush. The administration has, starting one day after 9/11, consciously and systematically exploited people's emotions to justify the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Dick Cheney does it every goddamned day. I think a lot of people on the Left are mad at the supporters of the invasion. I feel sorry for them. They're victims. They got duped by an administration who knew exactly how to bend people's post-9/11 anger and fears to serve the neocons' utopian, foreign-policy fantasies. To be honest, I would include Bush as one of the duped. I suspect that, on a micro-level, Bush's advisors subtly played on his fears and anger to get him to support this war.

Word to the neocons - history will remember.

I normally don't post anything on Saturday, but I did want to mention briefly David Brooks's op-ed today. As I've said before, Brooks baffles me. Before he joined the NYT, he was my favorite public intellectual. Bobos and his Atlantic Monthly articles were brilliant. But then I started reading his neocon apology pieces in the NYT. Something's not right. Either the author of Bobos was hiding his true ideology, or the current NYT columnist is. They just seem to be two different people. The author of Bobos is appealing to the more liberal Starbucks professional class. The NYT columnist, by contrast, only seems to be worried about getting the Weekly Standard talking points on to the national scene. It's more than a disagreement with conservativism (I'm a big fan of George Will and Tucker Carlson, for example). It's that Brooks, who showed such analytical brilliance in his other works, is often disingenuous on the op-ed page in that he simplifies and distorts things to help make the neocon foreign policy look better than it is. Take some of the excerpts from today's column, for example.

"We have a military filled with heroes, but the atrocities of a few have eclipsed the nobility of the many."

Well, that's sorta true. But that view portrays the abuse as being limited to the actions of a few bad-apple soldiers. What's becoming increasingly clear is that these bad-apple soldiers were ordered to "soften up" the detainees to obtain intelligence. In other words, this is starting to look a conscious strategy adopted at the very top of our military or CIA departments.

"We've got to acknowledge first that the old debates are obsolete. I wish the U.S could still go off, after Iraq, at the head of "coalitions of the willing" to spread democracy around the world. But the brutal fact is that the events of the past year have discredited that approach.."

Not so fast. Yes, the arguments about the postwar are fundamentally different than those regarding the initial invasion. But, people must be held accountable for their mistakes - especially when those mistakes kill hundreds, wound thousands, and threaten Middle East stability unnecessarily. And yes, Mr. Brooks, you and your buddies at Weekly Standard must also be held accountable, along with people like Andrew Sullivan, Colin Powell, Tom Friedman, the New Republic, and the WP op-ed page. All of these people's historical legacy is (to varying degrees) now linked with the Iraq policy because they helped allow the invasion to happen. We will not forget - ever.

"It's hard not to be impressed with the way the military crisply opened criminal investigations into the depravity at Abu Ghraib."

Uhh, yes it is. On an aside, I'm not sure that "crisply" is the best modifier for "opened." But anyway, given that we know exactly zero about Gitmo, I'm confident that we would NEVER have heard about these pictures until many years later if they had not been leaked. Sure, an investigation was started, but I'm not sure it was as motivated as it is now.

[Update: To be fair, though, the overall thrust of Brooks's column is that the administration screwed things up badly. That's a big step. But, and this is important, Brooks still believes in the general neocon formula for success. He just thinks Bush screwed it up. People thought the idea of communism worked too, it was just that Stalin and Mao didn't implement it correctly. But over time, when a certain formula fails again and again, it's time to consider the possibility that the problem isn't the implementation, but the actual formula itself. Communism will always fail because it's an inherently flawed idea (a beautiful idea - but one that lacks an understanding of humanity). The same is true for the neocon foreign policy. It's a beautiful idea, but one that is flawed at its essence. And because of that, it can NEVER be implemented by anyone, even if Bill Kristol were Commander-in-Chief. Matt Yglesias makes a similar point here.]

Then we shouldn't fire Rumsfeld, we should flog him. Via Drudge, "US soldiers abused young girl at Iraqi prison":

The US military has said it will investigate claims by a former inmate of Abu Ghraib prison that a girl as young as 12 was stripped and beaten by military personnel. Suhaib al-Baz, a journalist for the al-Jazeera television network, claims to have been tortured at the prison, based west of Baghdad, while held there for 54 days. Mr al-Baz was arrested when reporting clashes between insurgents and coalition forces in November. He said: "They brought a 12-year-old girl into our cellblock late at night. Her brother was a prisoner in the other cells. She was naked and screaming and calling out to him as they beat her. Her brother was helpless and could only hear her cries."

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Jeb's Florida strategy got unveiled this week. It includes pandering to the Florida Cuban vote with measures that continue to punish people back in Cuba. It also includes purging the voter rolls of felons (who are disproportionately black and so, disproportionately Democratic). If you'll remember, they did the same thing in 2000, but it ended up disenfranchising people (mostly black people) who had similar names to felons. It was quite a charming operation, really.

In my opinion, unless you're a terrorist, you shouldn't lose your right to vote. Period. But at the very least, your voting rights should be restored after you've served your time. According to the Sentencing Project, seven states permanently disenfranchise all felons (after only one felony). These states include Alabama, Florida, Iowa, Kentucky, Mississippi, Nebraska, and Virginia. Notice any theme? They're disproportionately Southern. That's no accident. Southern states have a long history of using felon disenfranchisement to target blacks. For example, while it's true that felon disenfranchisement predates the Civil War, many Southern states from 1890 to 1910 (the era of "Redemption" - probably the most racist period in American history, North and South) tailored their criminal disenfranchisement laws so that only certain crimes led to disenfranchisement - crimes that tended to be commited more often by blacks than whites. For example, burglary and theft led to disenfranchisement, while crimes of violence (such as murder) did not. (103 Yale L.J. 537, 541-42). These are the roots of the modern disenfranchisement laws.

I didn't have time to do a lot of research, but the Sentencing Project released a report in 1998 that reveals the extent to which these laws disproportionately affect minorities (especially in Florida). I'd encourage everyone to take a look, but here are some highlights:

As of 1998:

- Nearly 4 million adults are either currently or permanently disenfranchised
- One-third of this 4 million are black males
- Roughly 13% of the black adult male population is disenfranchised
- The following six states (AL, FL, MS, NM, VA, WY) disenfranchise more than 4% of their adult population
- Florida and Texas each disenfranchise more than 600,000 people (Bush won Florida by 537 votes)
- Over one-third of all ex-felons (those who have served their time) are in Florida (436,000)
- In Alabama and FLORIDA, 31% of all black men are permanently disenfranchised
- Florida's total disenfranchised population is 650,000 (as of 1998 - it's surely more now)

I think that liberals and religious conservatives could form a coalition to end disenfranchisement for felons who have served their time. To me, this seems very consistent with the idea of forgiveness and renewal that is central to Christian doctrine. But it won't be happening in Jeb's Florida. Not until after November anyway. It's true that Jeb isn't breaking any laws, but many are questioning the timing:

However, some supervisors question why the administration is making the move this close to the election. Florida's primary is Aug. 31 and the general election Nov. 2. "Why is the state doing this now?" said Ion Sancho, the election supervisor in Leon County who recently changed his registration from Democrat to no party affiliation.

Do you really have to ask? I won't go so far as to say that Jeb's actions were racist (though they surely affect certain races disproportionately), but there's no denying that these actions are purely partisan. American citizens' voting rights should not be used as a partisan tactic for gaining votes.

And people wonder why blacks don't vote for Republicans.

My application for the bar exam is due and I've been spending today trying to round up everything I need. I tell you, it's enough to make you start believing in "small government." But anyway, I didn't have time to write a substantive post tonight. I suspect I'll write a shorter post or two tomorrow afternoon. It's probably a good thing given that I'm too frustrated about the prison scandal to write with a clear head. It's not just the abuse (though that's bad), I also feel sad for all our troops. You know that's got to be a stab in the back to their morale - not to mention the greater physical danger it subjects them to (especially if they are taken prisoner).

But anyway, nothing tonight. On an aside, I fear this is the first of many posts in which I complain about the bar exam.

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I was listening to Al Franken today and he made reference to the Atlantic Monthly article "Blind into Baghdad" by James Fallows. It's worth a read. Here's the blurb under the title: "The U.S. occupation of Iraq is a debacle not because the government did no planning but because a vast amount of expert planning was willfully ignored by the people in charge. The inside story of a historic failure."

I would add that it's important for all people, progressive and conservative alike, to get beyond viewing issues relating to Iraq through an individual-centric lens. For example, I too was moved by Bush's embrace of the teenage girl who lost her father on 9/11. Let's even assume for now that Bush is a good man. Being good simply does not excuse the incompetence that Fallows describes - the incompetence that is now causing people to die unnecessarily. If you support Bush's Iraq policy because you think Bush is a good guy, that's irrational. Likewise, if you oppose his Iraq policy because you hate his smirk, that's also irrational. We have to get beyond personality and look at the empirical reality of the policies. Whether you were for or against the war, it's clear that it was a huge error to disregard all of the warnings and recommendations of the State Department and others regarding the postwar. Likewise, we should be outraged at the prison abuse not because Rumsfeld is slimy (just read how he treated Shinseki), but because he instituted specific policies that led to this systemic abuse (as explained in the WP editorial - posted below).

This election should not be about personality, nor should it be about who you would prefer to have a beer with.

I'm not fond of the WP editorial page, but it's right on today:

The horrific abuses by American interrogators and guards at the Abu Ghraib prison and at other facilities maintained by the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan can be traced, in part, to policy decisions and public statements of Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld. Beginning more than two years ago, Mr. Rumsfeld decided to overturn decades of previous practice by the U.S. military in its handling of detainees in foreign countries. His Pentagon ruled that the United States would no longer be bound by the Geneva Conventions; that Army regulations on the interrogation of prisoners would not be observed; and that many detainees would be held incommunicado and without any independent mechanism of review. Abuses will take place in any prison system. But Mr. Rumsfeld's decisions helped create a lawless regime in which prisoners in both Iraq and Afghanistan have been humiliated, beaten, tortured and murdered -- and in which, until recently, no one has been held accountable.

And the WP also has a gut-wrenching story from an ex-detainee discussing the abuse he endured at the prison.

Can someone please take some fucking responsibility for this? It's going to cost us the war. Fire Rumsfeld. And fire Wolfowitz too. And fire Powell - once again, Powell knew that bad stuff was happening, and just sat on it. Powell - the ultimate "yes man." I think I despise his actions most of all - he could have stopped this war, and he could have exposed this abuse, but he decided to say "Thank you, sir, can I have another?" Fire him. Fire them all. This is America for God's sake. We don't murder prisoners. We don't sodomize prisoners. Or at least I didn't think we did. And by the way, how much confidence does everyone have in our little lawless regime down at Gitmo these days? I would bet a large sum of money that the Gitmo detainees have been enduring this for almost THREE YEARS now. I guess we'll have to send Sy Hersh to Cuba because God knows we'll never learn anything from Rumsfeld and his merry band of dumbasses.

Sorry, but I'm PISSED THE FUCK OFF. We MURDERED people. We TORTURED people. It makes me sick.

[Update: Andrew Sullivan finally said something I agree with: What [Abu Ghraib] reveal[s] is something true: Americans are no better and no worse as human beings than anyone else. They can become savages as well. But our system - the open press, the internal reviews, the democratic accountability - minimizes the damage of our flawed human nature. That's exactly right. And that's why decisions like Rumsfeld's (noted above) and unchecked executive power at Gitmo are such bad ideas. That's the whole point I've been trying to make in some of my recent posts: Power must be checked because humans (all humans) abuse power.]

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Here’s a definition of “dramatic irony”:

[I]n literature, a plot device in which the audience's or reader's knowledge of events or individuals surpasses that of the characters. The words and actions of the characters therefore take on a different meaning for the audience or reader than they have for the play's characters.

And here’s Bush speaking in Michigan on May 3:

The world is better off without Saddam Hussein in power. The world is better off because he sits in a prison cell. Because we acted, torture rooms are closed, rape rooms no longer exist, mass graves are no longer a possibility in Iraq.

Will Saletan has a great collection of other quotes that are increasingly ringing hollow as we learn about how widespread the abuse was. Today, though, I want to put aside the prisoner abuse (for now) to focus on something else that Bush said in Michigan this week – something that got us into this mess in the first place:

The lesson of September the 11th is oceans no longer protect us, and, therefore, we cannot let threats fully materialize. In other words, we can't see a threat and hope it goes away. We can't see a threat and say, oh, gosh, maybe the person will change their mind and all of a sudden their hatred for America will diminish. We've got to deal with threats.

Yes, that is the lesson. We have to “deal with threats” before they materialize. But here’s my problem – you can agree that threats must be dealt with, but disagree with the way in which those threats are being dealt with by the administration. People must recognize the distinction. I’ve made these points before, but it’s essential for people to understand the questionable conceptual leaps that Bush is making. It’s a two-step strategy. First, state a broad goal that everyone agrees with, such as “We must win the war on terror” or “We must deal with threats before they materialize.” By the way, there’s not a single sane person in America who disagrees with these broad goals. The second, and most critical, step that Bush makes is his argument that the tactics he has chosen to pursue those goals are the best (or only) possible tactics. In other words, he doesn’t want people to realize that one can agree that we must fight the war on terror, but disagree with the way in which Bush has fought it (i.e., by invading Iraq). We can also all agree that we must deal with threats, but disagree about whether the use of preemptive war (as outlined above in Bush’s speech) is an effective strategy to achieve that goal.

Bush is hoping that his rhetoric can cause people to equate the broad goals with the tactics he has used in pursuit of those goals. He’s essentially saying, “We had to invade Iraq because we have to win the war on terror, or because we have to deal with threats before they materialize.” But that’s conflating strategy (or “goals”) with tactics. And that’s the point. Bush and his supporters want to frame the debate in such a way that when people disagree with their tactics, it looks like they’re disagreeing with their goals. For example, if you don’t support the Iraq war, you don’t support fighting the war on terror. In a purely rational world (mmm. . . purely rational world), Bush would be defending Iraq as a tactic in the war on terror, rather than equating opposition to the war with opposition to the goal of winning the war on terror.

So that’s what people need to understand – there are many other ways to fight terror and deal with threats, many of which do not involve invading sovereign nations in violation of international law. Today, though, I want to make a quick point about why preemptive war in particular is such a bad tactic.

I was watching Joseph Wilson on Charlie Rose last night. He explained that preemptive war traditionally referred to attacking a military that was on the verge of attacking you. Israel’s preemptive strike in 1967 (Six Days War) is one of the best examples of justified preemptive strikes. It’s fairly easy to come up with acceptable guidelines for when such strikes are acceptable: Preemptive wars/strikes are acceptable when you know beyond a reasonable doubt that an attack is imminent. America, however, has transformed that doctrine into a much vaguer, more dangerous standard. Apparently, the new standard is: Preemptive war is acceptable when, in the opinion of the threatened nation, an attack will one day materialize. A quick example from constitutional law will show why this new doctrine is so weak, conceptually speaking.

One of my obsessions in law is the distinction between the result and the process by which the result is reached. I explained this distinction in a prior post, in which I offered the following example: “For example, let’s imagine that the Supreme Court struck down segregation in a two sentence opinion that said: ‘First, the Court is omnipotent and whatever we says, goes. Second, in light of this power, we find segregation unconstitutional.’ It’s an absurd example, but it raises an important point. Even though the result was proper, the process by which the result was reached (i.e., “Court in omnipotent”) was not.” This is my problem with Roe. It’s the right result, but the process the Court used would allow all sorts of subjective judicial preferences to become law (remember Lochner? – it’s based on the same rationale as Roe).

That’s my problem with Bush’s version of preemption. Sometimes it will reach good results, but the process will eventually cause more harm than good. Once other nations are given this power, what’s to stop them from abusing it? For example, what's to stop China from “eliminating” the Muslims on its western border? What’s to stop Russia from annihilating Chechnya? What’s to stop any number of African nations/tribes from lashing out at their rivals? What’s to stop Israel from expelling Palestinians from the West Bank? Whatever justifications these nations would offer are conceptually indistinguishable from the one we offered to justify invading Iraq (and that’s how Bush justified it in Michigan this week). The Rwandan Hutus could say, “The Tutsis were a gathering threat to us, and in our opinion, a future attack in inevitable.” Before anyone flips out, I’m not comparing our actions to the Rwandan genocide. My point is that the logic behind both justifications is indistinguishable.

And so, we need to abandon this version of preemptive war as a tactic in the war on terror. The mere possibility of a future attack, waged with weapons that may or may not exist, is simply not enough to justify invading sovereign nations. And remember, “sovereign” doesn’t mean “good,” it means “sovereign.” For good or bad, sovereignty is the basis of our entire system of international law. That doesn’t mean we can’t strike preemptively. It just means we can’t do so without better evidence.

Make sure you read his op-ed in the NYT today.

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If there’s anything good about the abuse and murder of Iraqi prisoners, it’s that it might finally drive a stake through the heart of the neoconservative vision of foreign policy, which will help prevent future Iraqs from happening. Perhaps Abu Ghraib will strengthen the hand of the realists within the GOP foreign policy world and Richard Perle will be cast out into the wilderness for good. I never thought I'd long for Henry Kissinger, but oh well. In all seriousness, I’m not merely using the prison abuse scandal to pound on the neocons. The prison abuse is very relevant because it contradicts one of the central tenets of neoconservative thought – which is the intense belief in the superiority of America (or more precisely, the West) to the rest of the world. This is the foundation upon which the entire neocon edifice stands. But let’s back up.

To understand what I mean, you first need to understand the difference (within the GOP foreign policy world) between realists and neocons. Billmon has an excellent post on this exact issue, and I’d encourage you to read if you haven’t. Although there is a fair amount of diversity that goes under the generic name “neocons,” Billmon explains that there are some unifying themes to their thought:

It's easy enough to point to some common themes that are generally identified with the neocons: contempt for international organizations and the concept of multilateralism; impatience with traditional balance-of-power diplomacy; a cultish devotion to the use of military power; an outspoken belief in the superiority of Western culture and political institutions; a messianic vision of America's mission to "civilize" the world.

Every single one of themes includes one vital implicit assumption: America is superior to the world. That’s the neocons’ “first principle.” If you don’t share that assumption, then the other policies listed above make no sense. For example, ignoring the entire world (except Israel – even majorities in England opposed the war) and international law in order to invade Iraq only makes sense if you believe that America is more correct than the rest of the world. The neocons were essentially saying, “We will not be constrained by world opinion and international law, because we know that we are on a mission for good.” But it’s kind of hard to square that vision with the torture of prisoners. Good nations don’t do that.

And that leads me to the larger point I want to make. The neocon view of America is actually only a small aspect of a much larger problem with the way that much of conservative America views our nation. One of my most fundamental critiques of American conservative thought is its tendency to view America in a parochial, almost child-like, my-daddy-is-the-best-daddy kind of way. Liberals, by contrast, tend to see America in a more nuanced or even ambiguous way (which makes for bad talk radio). Of course, I also have no use for liberals who adopt an angry, self-hating view of our nation that is equally wrong. There's a lot to love about America.

But in general, it would be nice if Americans adopted a more humble nationalism. There are roughly 193 nations in the world. I bet that there are people in all 193 of these nations who would claim that their nation is the best nation. Just as a matter of empiricism, we should be skeptical about claims of American superiority over the rest of the 193. But don’t get me wrong, I think there are some great things about America. Its Constitution is probably the crown jewel of rationalist Enlightenment thought. The fact that Abraham Lincoln – a poor backwoods lawyer – could rise to become our nation’s greatest President is a strong metaphor for the opportunities for social advancement that America offers.

But there are some bad things about America. It treats its poor worse than any industrialized democracy. Its historic success depended in part upon exterminating one race and enslaving another (though the Europeans share a lot of the blame too). It also encouraged and facilitated corruptions and coups throughout the Cold War. The lesson of all this is that America is both good and bad, like all other nations and like all other humans. We should remember this when we make foreign policy decisions, and we should be very skeptical of foreign policies that depend entirely on the theoretical assumption that America is better than the rest of the world.

I would guess that what most frustrates sympathetic foreign observers of America is that its citizens seem to disregard whatever facts tend to threaten their parochial, child-like adoration of their homeland. When they study America, they read about the history of racial abuse. Many Americans would rather ignore it. They read about our atrocities in Vietnam. Many Americans don’t want to contemplate that our military sometimes acts wrongly. Because the world can view us from a more disinterested perspective, they understand what we often choose to ignore – America often acts unjustly. That doesn’t mean we can’t be patriotic. It doesn’t mean we can’t celebrate our historic triumphs over Nazism and Communism. But it does mean that we can’t allow our patriotism to cause us to ignore the world. Sometimes the world is right. America is human, and humans screw up sometimes.

Take Iraq. America’s invasion of Iraq was a bad idea. It was only a good idea if you really believed that America is better than everyone else. Otherwise, it’s hard to justify invading a country that no one else wanted us to invade and that violated international law. In my opinion, we were still blinded with fear and anger after 9/11, just as an individual would be if his or her child had been killed. But the whole point of the rule of law is that we don’t allow that individual to take justice in his or her own hands. Sometimes it would have good results, but the fear is that, over the long run, it would cause far more harm than good. And it would make our world less safe. Similarly, because we were still blinded with anger after 9/11, we were not in the best position to make a rational assessment of the wisdom of invading Iraq. But because too many Americans had such an unnuanced, unambiguous nationalism, we didn’t let world opinion or international law get in our way. As I explained here, when the whole world thinks one thing, and you think something different, there are two ways to think about this disagreement: Either (1) we’re right and 96% of humanity is wrong; or (2) we’re wrong and the other 96% of humanity may be seeing something that we aren’t.

So maybe Abu Ghraib can teach us all a lesson. Sometimes America does bad things. When we recognize that, we might also recognize the need for international law and cooperation. And, sure, the UN has problems. But let's try fixing it before we abandon it. Let's make that the next American challenge, and the next American triumph.

I was afraid of this. Reuters (via Drudge) reports that the military is investigating the deaths of 25 prisoners held by Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan. At least two of them have been declared murders. I predicted in my post last night that Abu Ghraib was the tip of the iceberg not because I think our military is corrupt (far far from it), but because there are systemic causes of prisoner abuse - and systemic causes create systemic effects. These causes include, among other things, the stresses of combat, human psychology, and the lack of proper prison oversight (which results in "unchecked" power).

For those who have heard of his case, Marcus Dixon has been set free by the Georgia Supreme Court. You can read the details here (registration required) - and the Curmudgeonly Clerk has also written about it. If anything, the AJC article doesn't explain how terrible this case was. Marcus Dixon, an 18-year old black high school student who was an honor student and had received a football scholarship, had sex with a fifteen-year old white high school girl when she was 3 months shy of 16 (the age of consent). Her father was a racist, and so she lied and said Dixon raped her (she admitted to her friends that it was consensual and was scared of her father). Dixon was acquitted in 20 minutes on the rape charges, but the prosecutors (who were slimy racists themselves - I saw them on TV) convinced the jury to convict on child molestation (strictly because of the students' ages). The jury convicted, although they were completely unaware that the conviction had a 10-year minimum sentence. The jurors later explained that if they had known about the mandatory minimum sentence, they would not have convicted him. So, Dixon was sent to jail for consensual teenage sex. Thankfully, the GA Supreme Court reversed the conviction.

Let's hear it for the New South (though it was a 4-3 decision, so the Old South almost won).

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Over at the American Street blog, one of the contributors made the astute observation that the Abu Ghraib prison abuse could affect the way that the Supreme Court thinks about the recent 9/11-related cases involving the limits of executive power (i.e., Gitmo detainees, Padilla, Hamdi). I hope that it does. Specifically, I hope it helps the Court understand why it’s so dangerous to give the executive branch such vast powers without any sort of oversight or check on those powers. (I discussed some of these concerns in a post two weeks ago.) Before I explain how the prison abuse is relevant to the 9/11 cases, I first want to revisit the infamous 1973 “Stanford Prison Experiment” by Dr. Zimbardo. The experiment provides a perfect example of we must always be skeptical of giving humans, or human institutions, unchecked power.

The famous Zimbardo experiment had a fairly simple purpose. Dr. Zimbardo wanted to study the effects of assigning people to become either a prison guard or a prisoner. To do this, he recruited twenty-four Stanford undergraduates to participate in the experiment. They did not know each other beforehand, and Zimbardo randomly assigned them to be either guards or prisoners. A simulated prison was constructed in the basement of one of the buildings on campus and the experiment began. Everything was as real as possible. The prisoners were assigned numbers and given small cells. The guards were given uniforms, night sticks, and total control over the prisoners.

The experiment was originally intended to last two weeks. However, after a mere six days, Zimbardo had to call the whole thing off. As it turned out, the guards took their roles a little too seriously. They completely internalized their roles as guards and within days they started physically abusing the prisoners. You can read more about the details of the experiment here, but here’s an excerpt:

The guards became more and more verbally and physically aggressive. Zimbardo described this as pathology of power. The prisoners became increasingly depersonalised and several experienced extreme emotional depression, crying, rage and acute anxiety.

The experiment had to be stopped after just six days instead of the planned 14 days, mainly because of the pathological reactions of the participants. Five prisoners had to be released even earlier because of extreme emotional depression. Zimbardo believes that the study demonstrate the powerful effect roles can have on peoples’ behaviour. Basically the participants were playing the role that they thought was expected of, either a prisoner or prison guard.

The lesson that Zimbardo took away was that one’s environment, and one’s assigned roles within that environment, can have an enormous influence over individual behavior. One obvious example of this phenomenon was the behavior of the guards at the Nazi concentration camps. I agree with Zimbardo’s conclusion, but I took away another lesson from the experiment – one with more relevance to politics. That lesson is that human power must be checked, or controlled. For whatever reason (genetic or social), humans tend to abuse powers given to them if they are not checked. This is true of monarchies, communist dictators, and managers at Burger King. As regular readers know, I think originalism and Framers-worship are both irrational and more than a little absurd. But, the Framers’ decision to create a system of separated powers, and checks and balances, was nothing short of genius.

Let me restate that I am a big believer in government programs, but I am very skeptical of human institutions. These institutions are made up of humans, and so like humans, they will try to increase and abuse their power if that power is not checked. The Framers recognized this dark side of human nature and designed a system of government that would control it. Each branch was designed to be a check on the other so as to prevent any one branch from obtaining too much power. That’s the true genius of the Framers' Constitution (as opposed to their “original understanding” of the word “commerce” or “unreasonable”).

The Abu Ghraib prison abuse is merely another in a long line of examples of humans abusing the power given to them when they aren’t supervised (or “checked”) properly. The Supreme Court should take note of these behaviors when they decide whether to give the executive branch such vast powers as detaining people indefinitely and declaring citizens enemy combatants. If Bush gets his way, there will no check whatsoever on these powers. Based on what I have said before, we have every reason to believe that these powers will be abused.

For example, one reason that the right to counsel is so important is that provides a check on police (or executive) abuses. If guards know that the prisoner has access to an attorney (or can communicate with the outside world), they know that they cannot risk abusing the prisoners or else the whole world will know. The same is true for declaring citizens enemy combatants. If the administration knows that those individuals who are deemed combatants can challenge that classification in court, then the executive branch will be far less likely to abuse that power. And I should point out to Republicans that this power could be abused by Democrats as well – for example, by labeling armed militias such as the Branch Davidians in Waco as “enemy combatants.” It’s not a partisan issue – it’s a question of trusting the executive branch.

If I’m right, then I suspect that we’re going to learn that the Abu Ghraib abuse is merely the tip of the iceberg. Billmon has already posted some quotes that strongly suggest that the American military abused and perhaps murdered prisoners in Afghanistan. We know for a fact that the Gitmo detainees have endured physical abuse and inhumane conditions. Our own Inspector General has told us so. As more Iraqi prisoners are released, I suspect we’re going to hear more and more about the prison abuse.

As I said yesterday, I’m not saying all this to bash Americans. My point is that this sort of abuse is something that all humans do. America has (arguably) been more successful in preventing it because of our system of checks and balances. The Supreme Court should keep all of this in mind when it decides whether to allow the executive branch to have unchecked authority over everyone that it unilaterally deems to be terrorists. The Justices should remember the lessons of the Zimbardo experience – power corrupts, and so power must be checked.

[Update: I fear my prediction is coming true. Read this article entitled "More Iraqis Allege Abuse by U.S. Military." The scandal is growing.]

Let's do a recap of the evolving justifications for war:

#1 - We needed to invade to get rid of Saddam's WMDs. No evidence. Try again.

#2 - We needed to invade because Saddam had ties to al Qaeda. No evidence. Try again.

#3 - We needed to invade to create a liberal, multi-ethnic democracy. As recent events showed, this ain't gonna happen. At this point, we'd be happy with stability - though I fear civil war or partitioning Iraq may now be inevitable. Try again.

#4 - We needed to invade to get rid of Saddam's torture chambers and rape rooms. We set up our own torture and rape rooms, so that won't work either. Try again.

I'm eagerly awaiting the new line of justifications for the summer season. I suspect the new justifications will be variations of Justification # 3, simply because that justification (unlike the others) cannot be disproved with empirical evidence. In other words, you can always say, "Iraq is on the road to democracy."

[Update: Ok Ok - #4 is overstated and I apologize. It was written in anger, and wasn't appropriate, just like most things done in anger. Just to be clear, I do not equate Saddam and the American prisoner abuse. That said, the prisoner abuse is horrific - and it doesn't justify it to say that Saddam was worse. The reason I'm so mad is that the war against both terrorism and the Iraqi insurgency is largely a war for public opinion. As I explained here and here, you can't attack terrorism solely by killing the terrorists. Al Qaeda is a self-replicating virus that seeks fertile ground. To win, we have to deprive it of fertile ground. The prisoner abuse is sort of like crop-dusting the Middle East with the al Qaeda virus. In other words, acts like these cause the virus to spread because it creates sympathy for the terrorists, or "fertile ground." This is also true of the insurgency. The worse we seem, the stronger the insurgents become and vice-versa. The idiots who did this to the prisoners are not only war criminals, they are endangering their fellow servicemen and servicewomen - the majority of whom are trying their best to help Iraq, and are sacrificing their lives for it. That's why I'm pissed.]

[Update 2: Reuters has a story entitled "Iraq Abuse May Undermine U.S. 'War on Terror'"]

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It’s becoming increasingly clear that the abuse of Iraqi prisoners was not an isolated event, but was far more systematic. Seymour Hersh, in the New Yorker, obtained a classified military report that documented the grisly details of what some of the prisoners endured:

[P]ouring cold water on naked detainees; beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair; threatening male detainees with rape; allowing a military police guard to stitch the wound of a detainee who was injured after being slammed against the wall in his cell; sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick, and using military working dogs to frighten and intimidate detainees with threats of attack, and in one instance actually biting a detainee.

It’s hard to overstate just how damaging these revelations will be. Our success in Iraq depends almost entirely on the perceptions others have of our occupation. For example, if the world thinks we are a force for good, they’ll be more likely to help out and provide troops and resources. If they don’t, they won’t. The perception of our actions within the Arab world (which includes the Iraqi streets) is even more critical for our success. Forcing inmates to engage in homosexual acts is not exactly the best way to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi insurgents – homosexuality is a violation of Islamic law, by the way.

But all of this is fairly obvious. What is less obvious is the lessons that Americans could learn from the prisoner abuse – both about ourselves and war more generally. Specifically, I want to use the Iraqi prisoner abuse to make a larger point about how war affects the human mind.

As I have said before, I think that most Americans have no grasp of the horrors of combat. Within our movie and video-game culture, war is merely an abstraction. In other words, people simply don’t know what they’re getting into when they clamor for war. One of the participants in the recent panel – “The Seduction of War” – at the LA Festival of Books made this very point (see my prior post). He explained that the American public is largely shielded from the reality of battle. We might see pictures of buildings exploding on CNN, but we don’t see pictures of corpses with their heads blown off. Nor do we see the images of the soldiers right after they get hit with a roadside bomb that spits glass and nails into their extremities. Soldiers see all of this firsthand. They have to live with these fears every single day. And when you live in fear of having your face blown off every day, it can affect you, and not necessarily for the better.

College students in introductory psychology classes learn that soldiers in combat must (if they are to stay sane) learn to dehumanize their enemy. It creates far too much cognitive dissonance to see the targets you’re being asked to kill as fellow human beings with wives, small children, and pets at home. Before soldiers can kill them, and before we back at home can be asked to support killing them, the enemy must be dehumanized. This dehumanizing is merely a defense mechanism, and one that has been used in all wars throughout history. For instance, in World War I and II, the Germans and Japanese were often depicted (in cartoon illustrations) as animals. A more modern example of dehumanizing can be seen by our own President when he refers to the insurgents as “thugs” or “terrorists.” This dehumanization allows us to rationalize our country’s military actions. And it works both ways – the al Qaeda terrorists dehumanize us when they refer to us as, say, “Zionists.”

Our soldiers are not immune from this cognitive defense mechanism. I mean, how can you possibly view the insurgents as fellow humans if they are shooting at you or planting bombs that kill your dearest friends. You can’t. And so prisoner abuse is to be expected – in all wars and by all sides. Let me be clear – I am not bashing our soldiers. I’m merely saying that, because we are all humans, dehumanization is a necessary and unavoidable consequence of going to war. All sides do it, no matter how just or unjust their cause may be.

That brings me to the larger point, which is that these are the sorts of things that the public needs to understand BEFORE we charge into war. When we send troops off for war, we need to understand not only that many of them will die or be seriously maimed, but that many of them will (under the fear and stresses of combat) find themselves committing acts they would not otherwise commit. Because the soldiers will dehumanize the enemy, some will inevitably abuse the enemy (and its civilians). Just look at what the Americans did in Vietnam. And look at what the North Vietnamese did to Americans. Again, I’m not saying this is something that Americans do. I’m saying this is something that humans in combat do. That’s why the abuse is not an isolated event, but a systematic pattern of behavior.

The broader lesson is that war cannot be entered into lightly. Many reasonable conservatives understood the stakes of invading Iraq and still felt it was necessary. But many did not. Personally, I think that too many people – still angry, afraid, and vengeful after 9/11 – supported this war without understanding the true nature of war (including Bush). In wars, soldiers die. In wars, soldiers get hurt badly. In wars, soldiers develop psychological problems from which they never recover. In wars, events don’t go as planned. In wars, innocent civilians get killed. In wars, families of soldiers suffer. In wars, soldiers sometimes do bad things like abuse prisoners who they view as subhuman. These are the unavoidable costs of war. They have happened in every single war in human history and will happen in every single war in the future. So, to support war, you must believe that the benefits of war outweigh the inevitable costs that I have outlined above.

Please don’t interpret this post as an argument for leaving Iraq. As I’ve said many times, we have no choice but to stay. We’ve invaded and so our calculations have changed completely (as I explained here). But I do hope that the images of the prisoner abuse helps people understand the kinds of demons that are unleashed in war – both on the battlefield and in our own minds. There’s a reason that people say war is hell.

Maybe people will think about these things the next time our leaders are pushing us to fight an unnecessary war.

[Update: More details of the widespread prison abuse here - it's enough to make you sick: "Former prisoners say lengthy interrogation sessions, employing sleep depravation, severe isolation, fear, humiliation and physical duress, were regular features of their daily regimen and remain so for the estimated 2,500 to 7,000 people inside the jails."

[Update 2: You can see many of the pictures here.]

Sorry for the absence - I went to the Kentucky Derby this weekend and am in the process of recovering. I'll have a post later tonight, but probably not this afternoon.