New Blog: nordicmodel

Posting has been slow lately as you've no doubt noticed. But here's someone else talking about Scandi issues:

A new blog, the topic is obvious, hat tip to New Economist. I've said it before, I'll say it again. No matter what your politics, contemporary northern Europe represents a high point in human civilization. If you're not deeply interested in the region, you should be. If you haven't visited, you must. Go, go, go. Travel is the starting point of learning social science.

H/t Ross

Dissenting Views

Scott McConnell in The American Conservative (h/t Yglesias):

.. it’s true that many Christians won’t enter this battle [against Israeli policies] without Jewish allies or at least will join it with less enthusiasm. It’s not simply that they can’t take the heat. It’s that those who have spent much time in journalism or academia or trying to influence public policy have generally done so alongside Jews and are accustomed to having Jews play significant roles in their personal and professional lives. To fight a battle without Jewish colleagues, or even against Jewish colleagues, is likely to feel rather lonely.

Someone should enlighten Andrew Sullivan...

Why Stay

A Sullivan reader nicely sums up my own reasons for not wanting to leave Iraq:

One of the main arguments against an American pullback or pullout is the likelihood of a genocidal and brutal civil war that would "force" the U.S. to come in to stop the slaughter.

I think it is appropriate to assume that there would be massive killing. I've heard arguments to the contrary and I've heard arguments that Syria/Iran, etc. would not permit it, but assuming that it would not take place is as foolish as assuming that everything will be just fine. So we should assume that there will be incredible slaughter, religious dislocation and depravity - at least in the non-Kurdish areas - if we get out.

Query: Do we have the discipline to stay out and to be presented night after night with scenes of uniminaginable slaughter that we will be accused of being "responsible for"? Because if we don't have the discipline - or the cold-heartedness, if you will - then that's a strong argument to continue with Bush's approach.

It's that simple; I don't want scores of Iraqi people to die. This morning I was listening (NPR) to a story told by an American soldier who was treating two Iraqi kids (a 6-year old boy and his 7-year old sister). The girl told him through an interpreter that she watch both her parents die. By the time he got them to the hospital the girl was clinging on to him and didn't want him to leave.

War is horrible. We can't leave the Iraqi's to kill each other unless there's no hope left. I'd rather maintain status quo for 2 more years until we can get a competent president who can put in place a regional plan that works. Sorry Hillary. It sucks for Democrats to have to clean up giant deficits and messy wars after Republican presidents. I'm all in favor for Krugman's suggestion that Democrats should stop fixing the deficits only so that Republicans can keep cutting taxes. But basic human decency means the same strategy can't be applied to unnecessary wars.

Bill and Steve

I didn't know this:

The only problem with Microsoft," said Jobs, "is they just have no taste, they have absolutely no taste, and what that means is - I don't mean that in a small way I mean that in a big way..."

Yes, in a big, big way.

And you can see why. Bourgeoisie Bill's career was helped by his parental connection to the business charity The United Way; IBM may well have lost patience with the tiny contractor Microsoft if Big Blue chairman John Akers hadn't indulged the son of fellow board member Mary Gates. Meanwhile, Orphan Steve was raised in the lower middle-class trades and had to acquire his own wit and nous, and develop his own sense of which technologies could be made malleable and sellable. It's entirely understandable then that when Bill made off with the loot, Steve felt cheated.

More fun at the link.

Journalism 101

An excellent set of rules that might have prevented the Iraq war and could prevent the looming Iran war from the Washington Post's Dan Froomkin (h/t Glenn Greenwald).

Iraq "Surge" Update

I heard on NPR this morning that Iraqi defense and police forces have now been placed along with American troops under a single command. They interviewed an American Colonel who said even though this is the last chance to get Baghdad under control he thinks the strategy might work.

This type of news coupled with a new Secretary of Defense (Gates) CentCom commander (Petraeus) warrants some optimism about the "surge". That is not to say Bush has not been a complete idiot about this war. But Democrats should not hurry to condemn Iraqi civilians to civil war either. But as usual nobody in Congress (Rep or Dem) seems to be thinking about the real issues here.

Sickening Comparison of Bush Warriors and Churchill

Reading the post Our little Churchills by Glenn Greenwald makes me literally sick to my stomach. I am not kidding - the strong anger I feel when I read comparisons of sub-human weakling Bushies and truly great war leaders like Churchill and Lincoln is really affecting me physically right now.

As Glenn points out, in the face of existential danger during WW2 Churchill remained open to critisism and constructive debate at home. Bush, by contrast, says every critic of a minor war of choice is "aiding the enemy". This is so far beyond pathetic that words fail to describe how I feel about it.

Democrats Got Balls

Sez Sullivan.

The Situation in Iraq

I'm fairly busy today so I'll have to keep this brief, but listening to a podcast this morning of John McCain on Meet The Press (could not find the transcript) I can't help myself from commenting on the proposed "surge" and the situation in Iraq in general.

In essence, I think John McCain has the right attitude to the surge at this time. He made the following points on MTP which I agree with (this is from memory):

• General Petraeus has a genuinely new plan for Iraq which insists on gaining control over Bagdad and Anbar province
• General Casey's previous plan of slowly transferring control to Iraqi forces was ill conceived from the beginning and has been failing for over a year now
• Bush deserves a lot of critisism for not realizing that Casey's plan was failing earlier and taking steps to correct it
• General Petraeus has very solid credentials for this type of warfare (among other things, he helped oversee the military's new manual on counterinsurgency) and expert military opinion think his plan has a significant chance of success
• Anyone who opposes the "surge" should advocate a clear alternative strategy, which most Democrats don't seem to be doing

Now, I don't agree with McCain's view that opposing the surge without presenting good alternatives is a vote of no confidence in the troops. Rather, I agree with Russert's proposition that it is more likely motivated by a lack of confidence in the Commander in Chief. Nevertheless, it is unwise to oppose a surge without presenting a clear alternative. Oh - and the Democrats plan for slow withdrawal and transfer of power to Iraqi troops is not really a "clear" alternative in my opinion. At best it's no more than damage control.

The clear alternatives I've seen so fare are

• withdraw ASAP, leaving it to the military to decide if that takes 1 month or 6 (cut and run),
• withdraw from central Iraq but stay in the periphery (like Iraqi Kurdistan) and intervene with airpower if the civil war killing gets too much out of hand (humanitarian containment), or
• use a new military strategy and more force to try to turn things around (surge).

I think you can make good arguments for each of these strategies, but if you oppose the surge you should clearly state your preference for "cut and run" or the "humanitarian containment" strategy. Personally, given General Petraeus' qualifications and proposed plan I have to say I support the surge alternative at this time.

(It pains me to say that because I deeply dislike Bush and in some ways I want him to fail so badly that there won't be another president like him for a thousand years. But his popularity is spiralling down so fast these days that hopefully the country will have learned a lesson even if Petraeus manages to turn things around in Iraq. At the end of the day I just can't morally justify a strategy that will inevitably lead to hundreds of thousands dead Iraqis in a prolonged civil war brought on by the United States.)

Now, having said all that I also want to clarify that I don't particularily like John McCain as a presedential candidate just because I think his opinion on the surge is a sensible one. In fact, I agree with the liberal blogosphere consensus view that McCain's flip-flopping on all sorts of issues in order to pander to various right-wingers is extremely pathetic. On MTP he remarked that he had disagreed with Bush's conduct of the war in Iraq for a long time (I forget the exact wording he used). Surprisingly he even pointed out that the failures of the war had been comprehensively chronicled in books like Fiasco and Cobra II. But I wish Russert had asked him about this quote from his 2004 Republican convention speech in August 2004:

Most importantly, our efforts may encourage the people of a region that has never known peace or freedom or lasting stability that they may someday possess these rights. I believe as strongly today as ever, the mission was necessary, achievable and noble. For his determination to undertake it, and for his unflagging resolve to see it through to a just end, President Bush deserves not only our support, but our admiration.

No doubt McCain's answer would have been some version of "at the time I didn't know how badly handled the war was going to be". But that's a poor excuse. I'm just a lowly software developer but even I caught the "Blind Into Baghdad" article by James Fallows in February 2004 which detailed most of the early failures of the Iraq war.

The truth is, of course, that McCain knew full well in August 2004 that Bush had botched the post-war phase of the Iraq invasion. But he knew that his chances in 2008 would be shot to hell if he didn't support a then-popular Republican president. McCain may be wiser than most Washington politicians when it comes to foreign policy, but a man of integrity he is not.

UPDATE: I'm open to the possibility that this Sullivan reader may be right in his assumption that the "surge" or "plus up" is simply an attempt by Bush to kick the bucket down the road to the next president. But if those are the grounds on which the Congressional Democrats base their opposition then they should say so. Right now (imho) they just look like they're opposing the surge simply because it has Bush's name on it, while scrambling to come up with a justification. This other Sullivan reader sums up the Congressional cowardice well (although unlike him I would never endorse anything done by Hugh Hewitt).

UPDATE II: David Brooks argues (subscription only) in the Sunday NY Times for a Bosnia-style partitioning in Iraq. He has some good points.

The Republican Fourtysomething Explained

A phenomenal explanation of today's young(ish) Republicans that supports what I've observed during my 5 years of living in the South (via Glenn Greenwald):

Dreher's earliest political memories are of the Carter Administration and the Iranian hostage crisis, followed by the triumphant ascension of Ronald Reagan. He was 13 years old when Reagan was elected, so you can't fault him for viewing these events through a child's eyes. The problem is, as it is with so many of his fellow travelers, that his understanding of politics remained childish.

It sounds insulting but I think we're all colored by those first encounters with politics as a child. Luckily I didn't grow up in the United States under Carter and Reagan so I don't have any deep-rooted prejudices against Republicans or Democrats. I do strongly dislike the Soviet communists and stubborn "we-are-entitled-to-everything" 70s-style European union leaders, but both groups are practically extinct today.

GOP and Race in The South

An important entry on a topic I've tip-toed around before:

Let's look at my neighbour across the street from my house in Chamblee (15 min outside central Atlanta). He recently had a meeting of minds with my wife over the FUH2 website which posts pictures of people "saluting" Hummers. He carries stickers in his car that read something like "H2: Fuck the environment, I'm rich", along with an assortment of anti-Bush stickers. Yet he is not a Democrat. Like most other white and sensible people I've met in the South he says he's a "Libertarian".

I don't know exactly what it is, but there's some powerful force that keeps Southerners away from the Democratic party. If you're a white male who grew up in the South, and you don't work in a very liberal-minded profession such as education or healthcare, then you're just not going to admit any allegiance with the Democratic party no matter how liberal, environmentalist or even socialist your political views are.

I wasn't ready to say this back in March, but I've been thinking about it a lot and now I am: Like Digby says, this "powerful force" is race.

That doesn't mean I think all white conservative Southerners are consciously racist in the sense that they will be hostile to or think badly of individual blacks. The young white Southerners I know treat black colleagues with respect and professionalism. (By the way I heard Barack Obama talk about progress in this area lately although I can't remember where. He said that when he's dealing with a white person one-on-one he doesn't feel that his race is on the white person's mind.)

But when I am in social settings outside of work surrounded by fellow whites I hear views about blacks and black neighbourhoods that don't make empirical sense to me. These assumptions are, I believe, rooted in tradition and history. Talk about how un-safe certain neighbourhoods are, for instance. I get a sense there's no point in asking if they've ever visited these neighbourhoods, or know somebody first-hand who has. That's irrelevant. There's just a clear sense that "they" are very different from "us".

Big Brother is Here

Get this: Commenter "Baggi" posts this comment on a right-winger Kevin's blog:

Kevin,

Glenn Greenwald departed the United States on June 22, 2006 and hasn't come back since. If you want to know how I know that and more, send me an Email.

Posted by: Baggi at July 21, 2006 06:30 AM

Glenn confirms:

The information provided there by "Baggi" was accurate. I left the U.S. on exactly June 22, and as of July 21, had not re-entered the country.

So, then, how did Baggi know this? Simple. He probably for the Department of Homeland Security (from UPDATE II of Glenn's post):

Via some creative Google and Technorati searches and the like, Todd Larason and Mona in comments have rather conclusively established that the "Baggi" referenced above is (or at least repeatedly claims on right-wing blogs to be) an employee of the Department of Homeland Security.

So there you have it: When they want to smear and intimidate those who disagree with them, sympathizers of our Dear Leader have the full resources of the Department of Homeland Security ($36.5 billing in 2004, 184,000 employees), including domestic spy data obtained without Congressional approval, at their disposal.

Who said the spirit of the Soviet Union was dead?

Reaction to Elections 2006

My thoughts? Like Glenn Greenwald I am relieved that our post-9/11 flirtation with authoritarianism may be over for now:

The basic mechanics of American democracy, imperfect and defective though they may be, still function.
...
Karl Rove isn't all-powerful; today, he is a rejected loser. Republicans don't possess the power to dictate the outcome of elections with secret Diebold software. They can't magically produce Osama bin Laden the day before the election. They don't have the power to snap their fingers and hypnotize zombified Americans by exploiting a New Jersey court ruling on civil unions, or a John Kerry comment, or moronic buzzphrases and slogans designed to hide the truth (Americans heard all about how Democrats would bring their "San Francisco values" and their love of The Terrorists to Washington, and that moved nobody).

All of the hurdles and problems that are unquestionably present and serious -- a dysfunctional and corrupt national media, apathy on the part of Americans, the potent use of propaganda by the Bush administration, voter suppression tactics, gerrymandering and fundraising games -- can all be overcome. They just were.

But I shudder to think what would have happened if another terrorist attack on the scale of 9/11 had happened before November 7, 2006. If two thousand dead Manhattan workers led to suspension of habeas corpus, warrantless wiretapping, re-discovery of medieval torture practices and people "disappearing" into secret prisons I would hate to think what a dirty nuke attack could have accomplished.

Bush and his fellow loyalists in Congress have vividly reminded us that Herman Goering's famous Nuremberg quote is as relevant as ever:

Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger.

Let's hope we do better at proving Herman wrong when the next terror attack on US soil happens.

George W. Bush on This Week

Bush appeared on ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos this past Sunday. I just listened to it and I wanted to note my reaction. I think he's got good intentions, and he should appear more often on unscripted events like this where he actually takes real questions and gives real answers. Of course his answers reveal a world view that gravely lacks nuance and knowledge. But like most people he is not an evil man. I agree with those who say that he's a good guy who is simply in over his head.

A good critique of Andrew Sullivan's The Conservative Soul

By Geoff Arnold:

The great social and political leaps of imagination and courage did not spring from conservatism, and it’s silly to pretend otherwise. Yet in Sullivan’s world view, liberalism is squeezed out: it’s either an economic aspect of conservatism (in the spirit of The Economist, perhaps), or a barely-restrained flavour of socialism.

Via Andrew Sullivan's own blog on Time.com.

Voters decide For Life when they're 20?

Kevin Drum shows a chart that suggests voter party allegiance is decided when they turn 20, based on whether the current president is popular or not. So, people who turned 20 when Reagan was president are likely to be Republican, whereas people who turner 20 when Clinton or Bush Jr. were presidents are likely to be Democrats.

On some level I guess this is good news, in that it proves the existence of SOME sort of a feedback loop (i.e. bad politicians/parties will be punished). It's just a shame that it may take generations for the feedback to show up in election results (as the 2004 elections showed - it didn't matter how much Bush Jr. screwed up, we still have to wait for those Reagan-era youngsters to be replaced because they're not going to change their minds).

Sullivan reader: What We've Lost

I don't have much time to blog anymore but I just had to re-post this gripping letter from a reserve soldier who fought in Desert Storm - the first war in Iraq:

I was deployed in my reserve unit (USMCR) as part of operation Desert Storm and Desert Shield. Marine infantry, and we were on the front lines, supposedly to guard a gunship base, but really, though, the gunships guarded us.

Not too much later, it was time to take prisoners. One of the platoons went north, and when they came back, there were stories about how Iraqi soldiers lined the roads, trying to surrender. I spent a week guarding Iraqi men in a makeshift prison camp, a way-station really, and more than I could count. They didn't look like they were starving or dehydrated. Apparently, once the ground war began, they just pitched their weapons and headed south at first opportunity. The more I've thought about it, the more I realize that they knew bone deep that they'd get fair treatment. We gave them MREs (with the pork entree's removed) but almost immediately some Special Forces guys arrived and set up a real chow line for them. We gave each man a blanket, (I kept an extra as a souvie) and I think I saw a Special Forces doc giving some of them a once over.

Once, only once, one of them got all irritated and tried to get in one of the Corporal's faces, loud. (I was a lance-corporal). He wouldn't back down, so the Corporal gave him an adjustment, a rifle butt-stroke to his gut, not hard, but he went down. The Corporal sent me for the medic. The guy was ok, and now calm (or at least understanding the situation), and hand-signed that he was out of smokes and really, really needed one... Not a bad guy, just stressed-dumb and needing a smoke. None of the others prisoners in the camp even registered it.

We went north to mop up not long after that. I saw the Iraqi weapons: rocket launchers a little smaller than semi-trailers, hidden in buildings, AKs in piles, big Soviet mortars and anti-tank mines, everywhere but unarmed. They had food too. Pasteurized milk to drink, but most gone bad by then. Some of the mortar rounds were still in crates. They had long trenches that were hard to see in the dunes, bunkers with maps, fire-plans laid out, and blankets, all placed with decent vantage for command and control. They even had wire laid for land-line communications. The point is, they could have fought. Not won, no they couldn't have won, but they could have fought. Instead, they chose to surrender.

Looking back, I think that one of the main drivers in these men's heads was that they knew, absolutely, that they'd get fair treatment from us, the Americans. We were the good guys. The Iraqis on the line knew they had an out, they had hope, so they could just walk away. (A few did piss themselves when someone told them we were Marines. Go figure.) Still, they knew Americans would be fair, and we were.

Thinking hard on what I now know of history, psychology, and the meanness of politics, that reputation for fairness was damn near unique in world history. Can you tell me of any major military power that had it? Ever? France? No. Think Algeria. The UK? Sorry, Northern Ireland, the Boxer Rebellion in China... China or Russia. I don't think so. But America had it. If those men had even put up token resistance, some of us would not have come back. But they didn't even bother, and surrendered at least in part because of our reputation. Our two hundred year old reputation for being fair and humane and decent. All the way back to George Washington, and from President George H.W. Bush all the way down to a lance-corporal jarhead at the front.

Its gone now, even from me. I can't get past that image of the Iraqi, in the hood with the wires and I'm not what you'd call a sensitive type. You know the picture. And now we have a total bust-out in the White House, and a bunch of rubber-stamps in the House, trying to make it so that half-drowning people isn't torture. That hypothermia isn't torture. That degradation isn't torture. We don't have that reputation for fairness anymore. Just the opposite, I think. And the next real enemy we face will fight like only the cornered and desperate fight. How many Marines' lives will be lost in the war ahead just because of this asshole who never once risked anything for this country?

A Fascinating Admission by a Republican

This quote from former Republican National Committee official Allen Raymond speaking to the Boston Globe is worth noting:

"Republicans have treated campaigns and politics as a business, and now are treating public policy as a business, looking for the types of returns that you get in business, passing legislation that has huge ramifications for business," he said. "It is very much being monetized, and the federal government is being monetized under Republican majorities."

There's a good word for this: Feudalism.

San Diego: How RW uses its Media to Win

This is important. Digby quotes Robert Parry:

At dinner a few weeks ago, a well-placed Republican political operative was oozing confidence about GOP prospects in the November elections, not because the voters were enamored of George W. Bush but because the Democrats and liberals had done so little to improve their ability to reach the public with their message.

By contrast, he described to me a highly sophisticated Republican system for pouncing on Democratic “bad votes” and verbal gaffes and distributing the information instantaneously to a network of pro-Republican media outlets that now operates down to the state, district and local levels.

This huge conservative media advantage has now contributed to dooming Democratic hopes for snaring the vulnerable suburban San Diego seat of imprisoned Republican congressman Randy “Duke” Cunningham.

In the June 6 special election, Republicans reported a last-minute surge of support after conservative media outlets trumpeted a verbal blunder by Democrat Francine Busby, propelling Republican lobbyist Brian Bilbray to victory by about four percentage points.

Media, explained (by Rob Corddry)

This attitude on the part of MSM reporters helps explain how America got where it is today.