Saturday, December 29, 2007

Pakistan on Bhutto, Huckabee on Pakistan, Kristol at the NYT

It's looking more and more like the Pakistani government is trying to deflect attention from questions about possible involvement in Benazir Bhutto's assassination -- or even taking active steps to cover up such involvement:

As I write this post, India’s leading TV channels are showing video clips of the alleged assailants firing from the revolver at Benazir Bhutto. And the news agency AP reports: “An Islamic militant group said Saturday it had no link to Benazir Bhutto’s killing and the opposition leader’s aides accused the government of a cover-up, disputing the official account of her assassination.

“Bhutto’s aides said they doubted militant commander Baitullah Mehsud was behind the attack on the opposition leader and said the government’s claim that she died when she hit her head on the sunroof of her vehicle was ‘dangerous nonsense’.

“Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton called for an independent, international investigation into Bhutto’s death — perhaps by the United Nations — saying Friday there was ‘no reason to trust the Pakistani government’.

To give a further twist to the entire mystery, Pakistan government did not carry out the post-mortem on Benazir Bhutto’s body. The government now explains that it was not done at the request of Bhutto’s husband. It is unbelievable that in a crime that has international ramifications, and all the potential of turning into a major controversy, the Pakistan government conveniently overlooked basic legal requirements and allowed the burial to take place. Thus fuelling supicion that Musharraf regime is attempting a cover-up.


Every time Mike Huckabee opens his mouth and says anything about foreign policy, he has to pry his foot out:
In discussing the volatile situation in Pakistan, Mike Huckabee has made several erroneous or misleading statements at a time when he has been under increasing scrutiny from fellow presidential candidates for a lack of fluency in foreign policy issues.

Explaining statements he made suggesting that the instability in Pakistan should remind Americans to tighten security on the southern border of the United States, Mr. Huckabee said Friday that “we have more Pakistani illegals coming across our border than all other nationalities, except those immediately south of the border.”

Asked to justify the statement, he later cited a March 2006 article in The Denver Post reporting that from 2002 to 2005, Pakistanis were the most numerous non-Latin Americans caught entering the United States illegally. According to The Post, 660 Pakistanis were detained in that period.

A recent report from the Department of Homeland Security, however, concluded that, over all, illegal immigrants from the Philippines, India, Korea, China and Vietnam were all far more numerous than those from Pakistan.

In a separate interview on Friday on MSNBC, Mr. Huckabee, a Republican, said that the Pakistani government “does not have enough control of those eastern borders near Afghanistan to be able go after the terrorists.” Those borders are on the western side of Pakistan, not the eastern side.

Further, he offered an Orlando crowd his “apologies for what has happened in Pakistan.” His aides said later that he meant to say “sympathies.”

He also said he was worried about martial law “continuing” in Pakistan, although Mr. Musharraf lifted the state of emergency on Dec. 15. Mr. Huckabee later said that he was referring to a renewal of full martial law and said that some elements, including restrictions on judges and the news media, had continued.

Mr. Huckabee’s comments on the situation in Pakistan were not the first time he has been caught unprepared on foreign policy matters. Early this month, after the release of a National Intelligence Estimate concluding that Iran had stopped its nuclear weapons program in 2003, Mr. Huckabee said that he was not familiar with the report, even though it had been widely reported in the news for more than 30 hours.

You're supposed to do better than this if you want to be president of the United States. Then again, two terms of George W. Bush has significantly lowered the bar.

The New York Times is apparently about to give William Kristol (aka The Grinning Deathhead) a coveted weekly columnist slot starting in the new year:

Recently cast off from Time magazine, presumably for writing shallow, predictable tripe, the Weekly Standard’s William Kristol is getting a promotion of sorts.

The Huffington Post has learned that, in a move bound to create controversy, the New York Times is set to announce that Bill Kristol will become a weekly columnist in 2008. Kristol, a prominent neo-conservative who recently departed Time magazine in what was reported as a “mutual” decision, has close ties to the White House and is a well-known proponent of the war in Iraq. Kristol also is a regular contributor to Fox News’ Special Report with Brit Hume.


If the report is accurate, and Kristol is joining the Times’ roster, this is an embarrassment from which the paper of record will not soon recover. If Kristol were merely wrong about matters of national significance, this decision would merely be a mistake. But in recent years Kristol has become far more — gone are the “soothing tones” that made him a mainstay on the DC cocktail circuit, replaced with a bitter, sycophantic belligerence.

Over the summer, when Kristol started blaming American liberals for Khmer Rouge’s crimes, and arguing that the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam also created the conditions for the Islamist revolution in Iran in 1979, I started wondering if Kristol actually believes his own nonsense. Except, as Jonathan Chait explained, it may not matter: “Kristol’s good standing in the Washington establishment depends on the wink-and-nod awareness that he’s too smart to believe his own agitprop. Perhaps so. But, in the end, a fake thug is not much better than the real thing.”

True, except now, one of the world’s most prestigious news outlets has apparently given this thug space on the most valuable media real estate in existence.

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Steve Gilliard, Jr.: 1964-2007

Matt Bai has an appreciation in the New York Times Magazine section about Steve Gilliard, Jr., the much-loved and admired political blogger who died earlier this year:

Steve Gilliard was born into this Harlem and took it all in, but he wouldn’t find his voice on the corners. He was quiet, bookish, overweight. He won entrance to an elite high school, where he passed his time reading obscure military histories, then studied history and journalism at New York University. He found his true calling, though, on the Internet. In 1998, when he was 34, Gilliard joined a new site called NetSlaves.com, whose blogger-reporters chronicled the misadventures of the new high-tech work force, and there he discovered his own kind of incendiary oration. It was by the dim light of a computer screen, rather than on the sunlit corners of Harlem, that Gilliard took to expertly excoriating the moneyed establishment.

By 2003, Gilliard had become one of the first official “guest bloggers” on Daily Kos, then on its way to becoming the most influential of the new liberal political blogs, where he informed his indictments of the Iraq war with detailed references to the British occupation of Mesopotamia. Eventually he created his own site — “Steve was a big personality, and it was clear he needed his own stage,” Daily Kos’s creator, Markos Moulitsas ZĂșniga, later wrote — and became one of a small group of early political bloggers with his own devoted following (and a self-sustaining, if modest, income from ads). On Gilliard’s “News Blog,” along with the partisan attacks on Republicans that made him a hated figure on the conservative blogs, he specialized in applying history to the present day, which made him an unusual and distinctive voice. In 2004, he banged out a remarkable 37-part series, the equivalent of about 200 typed pages, chronicling the foibles of European colonialism.

Bai's piece is short and well-worth reading in full. Even more remarkable, though, is the blog post that led me to Bai, by Jesse Wendel:
God, I miss Gilly.

Every day, every week.

There's a tendency to put the dead up on pedestals. It isn't like that.

I'll be writing an article, reading a comment, talking to Hubris, Sara, LM or Jen... and suddenly Gilly is there, so real, so present, so alive.

He always knew what to say, what to post, and his writing came from his heart.

Jen told me earlier this month I'd written something which was the most Gilly-like thing I'd ever done, that she could hear his voice... and I burst into tears. Couldn't stop crying for almost ten minutes.

He guides us every day. We write, because he gave us space on The News Blog to grow and develop. In our talking with him, what of ours he posted or didn't, he taught us all editorial judgment.

Now The New York Times has recognized the worth of this good man, with an article in the Sunday Times Magazine in "The Lives They Lived" series. I encourage you to go read the entire article.

I did not have the privilege of knowing Steve Gilliard, Jr., personally, or even of being familiar with his blog. That is my loss. But through pieces like Jesse's, I can get a sense of the kind of person and writer he was, and his work and life can continue to inspire. That is a kind of immortality, and I hope that the many bloggers and other friends and relatives for whom Steve's death is a deeply personal loss can take comfort from that.

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Friday, December 28, 2007

More Benazir Bhutto Coverage

The uncertainty over who killed Benazir Bhutto and how has been building all day. The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security put out a bulletin this morning that Al Qaeda had claimed responsibility for the assassination, but the sourcing seems to be a bit shaky:

... [S]uch a claim has not appeared on radical Islamist Web sites that regularly post such messages from al Qaeda and other militant groups.

The source of the claim was apparently Italian news agency, Adnkronos International (AKI), which said that al Qaeda Afghanistan commander and spokesman Mustafa Abu Al-Yazid had telephoned the agency to make the claim.

"We terminated the most precious American asset which vowed to defeat [the] mujahadeen," AKI quoted Al-Yazid as saying.

According to AKI, al Qaeda No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahiri set the wheels in motion for the assassination in October.

One Islamist Web site repeated the claim, but that Web site is not considered a reliable source for Islamist messages by experts in the field.

The DHS official said the claim was "an unconfirmed open source claim of responsibility" and the bulletin was sent out at about 6 p.m. to state and local law enforcement agencies.

The official characterized the bulletin as "information sharing."

Uh huh. Meanwhile, in Pakistan, the explanations for exact cause of death are multiplying:
Mystery shrouds the death of former Pakistan prime minister Benazir Bhutto. In an explosive revelation, Pakistan's Interior Minister Hamid Nawaz on Friday said that Bhutto did not die of bullet wounds.

Nawaz said that Bhutto died from a head injury. At least seven doctors from the Rawalpindi General Hospital – where the leader was rushed immediately after the attack – say there were no bullet marks on Bhutto's body.

The doctors have submitted a report to the Pakistan government in which they say that no post-mortem was performed on Bhutto’s body and they had not received any instructions to perform one.

“The report says she had head injuries – an irregular patch – and the X-ray doesn’t show any bullet in the head. So it was probably the shrapnel or any other thing has struck her in her said [sic]. That damaged her brain, causing it to ooze and her death. The report categorically [says] there’s no wound other than that,” Nawaz told a Pakistani news channel.

According to the Times of London:
The Pakistan Government tonight claimed that Benazir Bhutto did not die from bullet wounds, as previously thought, but from hitting the sunroof of her campaign vehicle.

The dramatic statement came as the murdered political leader's funeral drew to a close and the violence that has convulsed the country since her death intensified.

The interior ministry said at a press conference that video of Ms Bhutto's last moments and an examination by doctors had shown that Ms Bhutto died apparently accidentally, as a suicide bomb blast went off at her political rally in Rawalpindi last night, killing around 20 people. No full post mortem examination had been carried out at the request of Ms Bhutto's husband, it was reported.

Brigadier Javed Cheema, a ministry spokesman, said Ms Bhutto had died from a head wound after smashing against the sunroof’s lever as she tried to shelter inside her car. "There is no evidence of any foreign element in her body," Brigadier Cheema said. "No bullet hit her, nor any splinters hit her. Unfortunately, it was to be that way.

"I wish she had not come out of the roof top of her vehicle."

Agence France Presse has more of that quote:
"If she had not come out of the vehicle, she would have been unhurt, as all the other occupants of the vehicle did not receive any injuries," ministry spokesman Brigadier Javed Cheema said.

Bhutto's political associates disagree:
...Ms Bhutto's lawyer and a senior official in the PPP, Farooq Naik, rejected the Government's claim as "baseless".

"It is a pack of lies," he said.

"Two bullets hit her, one in the abdomen and one in the head.

"It was a serious security lapse."

Well, this is fairly transparent, motivationally speaking: If Bhutto essentially killed herself by hitting her head on the car's sunroof, then it's really a moot point whether Musharraf gave her enough protection or not.

Griff Witte and William Branigin have a wide-ranging article in today's Washington Post about the assassination and its consequences, both immediate and possible future. [Well, it was Witte and Branigin, but now it's just Witte, and the article has shrunk to three screens from five -- methinks it's being edited as I blog.] Anyway, I was particularly struck by this passage, on (original) screen 4 -- which I found particularly ironic in light of the massive unrest that has followed Bhutto's assassination (which Witte described earlier in the article):
The Bush administration had played a key role in brokering the agreement between Musharraf and Bhutto that enabled her to return to the country Oct. 18. Officials in Washington had hoped that an alliance of the two moderate leaders might create a robust political force to counter rising extremism in the country.
Obviously, the plan failed. But what I find so bitterly ironic is that the Bush administration actually succeeded in achieving precisely the result that bringing Bhutto and Musharraf together was supposed to prevent.

And, as Robin Wright and Glenn Kessler reported in a separate WaPo piece today, the consequences of Bhutto's return to Pakistan and her assassination are likely to be worse than if the U.S. had not tried to diddle with the internal workings of a country it knew nothing about:
For Benazir Bhutto, the decision to return to Pakistan was sealed during a telephone call from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice just a week before Bhutto flew home in October. The call culminated more than a year of secret diplomacy -- and came only when it became clear that the heir to Pakistan's most powerful political dynasty was the only one who could bail out Washington's key ally in the battle against terrorism.
[...]
"The U.S. came to understand that Bhutto was not a threat to stability, but was instead the only possible way that we could guarantee stability and keep the presidency of Musharraf intact," said Mark Siegel, who lobbied for Bhutto in Washington and witnessed much of the behind-the-scenes diplomacy.

But the diplomacy that ended abruptly with Bhutto's assassination yesterday was always an enormous gamble, according to current and former U.S. policymakers, intelligence officials and outside analysts. By entering into the legendary "Great Game" of South Asia, the United States also made its goals and allies more vulnerable -- in a country in which more than 70 percent of the population already looked unfavorably upon Washington.

Bhutto's assassination leaves Pakistan's future -- and Musharraf's -- in doubt, some experts said. "U.S. policy is in tatters. The administration was relying on Benazir Bhutto's participation in elections to legitimate Musharraf's continued power as president," said Barnett R. Rubin of New York University. "Now Musharraf is finished."

Bhutto's assassination also demonstrates the growing power and reach of militant anti-government forces in Pakistan, which pose an existential threat to the country, said J. Alexander Thier, a former U.N. official now at the U.S. Institute for Peace. "The dangerous cocktail of forces of instability exist in Pakistan -- Talibanism, sectarianism, ethnic nationalism -- could react in dangerous and unexpected ways if things unravel further," he said.

But others insist the U.S.-orchestrated deal fundamentally altered Pakistani politics in ways that will be difficult to undo, even though Bhutto is gone. "Her return has helped crack open this political situation. It's now very fluid, which makes it uncomfortable and dangerous," said Isobel Coleman of the Council on Foreign Relations. "But the status quo before she returned was also dangerous from a U.S. perspective. Forcing some movement in the long run was in the U.S. interests."

It wasn't in Bhutto's long-term interests, though, was it? Not that the Bushies are accepting any blame or responsibility:
Xenia Dormandy, former National Security Council expert on South Asia now at Harvard University's Belfer Center, said U.S. meddling is not to blame for Bhutto's death. "It is very clear the United States encouraged" an agreement, she said, "but U.S. policy is in no way responsible for what happened. I don't think we could have played it differently."

So is the administration's finger-pointing at Al Qaeda part of a strategy to deflect blame? Scarecrow at Firedoglake thinks, maybe:
With the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, the general consensus seems to be that the Bush Administration's policies in Pakistan and central Asia are in a shambles, but that has not stopped the Administration's least credible agency from leaking stories blaming the murder on al Qaeda. Even if that's true, responsibility is a broader concept.

Dropped right in the middle of the New York Times lead story on yesterday's tragic killings is this:
On Thursday evening, officials from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Homeland Security issued a bulletin to local law enforcement agencies informing them about posts on some Islamic Web sites saying that Al Qaeda was claiming responsibility for the attack, and that the plot was orchestrated by Ayman al-Zawahri, the group’s second-ranking official.

One counterterrorism official in Washington said that the bulletin neither confirmed nor discredited these claims. The official said that American intelligence agencies had yet to come to any firm judgments about who was responsible for Ms. Bhutto’s death.

The likelihood that extremists associated with al Qaeda could be responsible seems accepted by several sources -- see e.g., Tariq Ali, writing for the Guardian. But no official investigation has occurred and no one has explained the security breakdown despite repeated warnings. Apparently no autopsy was performed to confirm whether the gun reportedly found near the suicide bomber was the murder weapon. [CNN reporting this a.m. Bhutto was killed by shrapnel.]

In the face of suspicions about possible complicity by the Musharraf regime, and without knowing what happened, our FBI and DHS are giving unverified reports to US media in which al Qaeda takes responsibility. It may be true or false, but we have been conditioned to believe it, so it may be enough to divert attention from reports like this Times article:
The assassination of Benazir Bhutto on Thursday left in ruins the delicate diplomatic effort the Bush administration had pursued in the past year to reconcile Pakistan’s deeply divided political factions. Now it is scrambling to sort through ever more limited options, as American influence on Pakistan’s internal affairs continues to decline. . . .

The assassination highlighted, in spectacular fashion, the failure of two of President Bush’s main objectives in the region: his quest to bring democracy to the Muslim world, and his drive to force out the Islamist militants who have hung on tenaciously in Pakistan, the nuclear-armed state considered ground zero in President Bush’s fight against terrorism, despite the administration’s long-running effort to root out Al Qaeda from the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

[...]
The Bush Administration did not kill Benazir Bhutto; someone else did that. But it appears the Administration convinced her to go back to Pakistan to save a risky policy foolishly built on a despised, repressive military dictator to fight the US "war on terror." Now a courageous woman is dead, another nation is in chaos, the US is further discredited, it can't account for billions in military aid, and we still have an administration that remains a menace to everyone's security as long as they remain in office. But the Administration wants us to believe that only al Qaeda is responsible.

Pretty disgraceful. But Ralph Peters goes the White House one better. Not content with refusing to accept responsibility for Bhutto's murder, Peters actually tells his readers her death is good news for Pakistan:
FOR the next several days, you're going to read and hear a great deal of pious nonsense in the wake of the assassination of Pakistan's former prime minister, Benazir Bhutto.

Her country's better off without her. She may serve Pakistan better after her death than she did in life.

We need have no sympathy with her Islamist assassin and the extremists behind him to recognize that Bhutto was corrupt, divisive, dishonest and utterly devoid of genuine concern for her country.

She was a splendid con, persuading otherwise cynical Western politicians and "hardheaded" journalists that she was not only a brave woman crusading in the Islamic wilderness, but also a thoroughbred democrat.

In fact, Bhutto was a frivolously wealthy feudal landlord amid bleak poverty. The scion of a thieving political dynasty, she was always more concerned with power than with the wellbeing of the average Pakistani. Her program remained one of old-school patronage, not increased productivity or social decency.

Educated in expensive Western schools, she permitted Pakistan's feeble education system to rot - opening the door to Islamists and their religious schools.

During her years as prime minister, Pakistan went backward, not forward. Her husband looted shamelessly and ended up fleeing the country, pursued by the courts. The Islamist threat - which she artfully played both ways - spread like cancer.

But she always knew how to work Westerners - unlike the hapless Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who sought the best for his tormented country but never knew how to package himself.

Military regimes are never appealing to Western sensibilities. Yet, there are desperate hours when they provide the only, slim hope for a country nearing collapse. Democracy is certainly preferable - but, unfortunately, it's not always immediately possible. Like spoiled children, we have to have it now - and damn the consequences.

In Pakistan, the military has its own forms of graft; nonetheless, it remains the least corrupt institution in the country and the only force holding an unnatural state together. In Pakistan back in the '90s, the only people I met who cared a whit about the common man were military officers.

Americans don't like to hear that. But it's the truth.

Bhutto embodied the flaws in Pakistan's political system, not its potential salvation. Both she and her principal rival, former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, failed to offer a practical vision for the future - their political feuds were simply about who would divvy up the spoils.

From its founding, Pakistan has been plagued by cults of personality, by personal, feudal loyalties that stymied the development of healthy government institutions (provoking coups by a disgusted military). When she held the reins of government, Bhutto did nothing to steer in a new direction - she merely sought to enhance her personal power.

Now she's dead. And she may finally render her country a genuine service (if cynical party hacks don't try to blame Musharraf for their own benefit). After the inevitable rioting subsides and the spectacular conspiracy theories cool a bit, her murder may galvanize Pakistanis against the Islamist extremists who've never gained great support among voters, but who nonetheless threaten the state's ability to govern.

It goes on like that. And in this case you don't need to read the whole thing. This is enough to tell you what Ralph Peters is.

If you're looking for a good round-up, Swaraaj Chaujan has one here.

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Thursday, December 27, 2007

Benazir Bhutto, 1953-2007

I have been on nonstop go the whole day, so I have not been able to read much of the coverage of Benazir Bhutto's assassination. But I gather from this terse commentary by Josh Marshall that it became election fodder rather quickly. Paul Krugman states (what should be) the obvious: It's not about you.

This is who it's about:

In the chaos the confusion after the assassination, the site was littered with pools of blood. Shoes and caps of party workers were lying on the asphalt, and shards of glass were strewn about the ground. Pakistani television cameras captured images of ambulances pushing through crowds of dazed and injured people at the scene of the assassination.

Farah Ispahani, a party official from Ms. Bhutto’s party, said: “It is too soon to confirm the number of dead from the party’s side. Private television channels are reporting 20 dead.” Television channels were also quoting police sources as saying that at least 14 people were dead.

At the hospital where Ms. Bhutto was taken, a large number of police began to cordon off the area as angry party workers smashed windows. Many protesters shouted “Musharraf Dog.” One man was crying hysterically, saying his sister had been killed. Dozens of people in the crowd beat their chests and chanted slogans against Mr. Musharraf.

Nahid Khan, a close aide to Ms. Bhutto, was sobbing in a room next to the operating theater, and the corridors of the hospital swarmed with mourners.

Juan Cole gives us some of the political and historical context:
The Pakistani authorities are blaming Muslim militants for the assassination. That is possible, but everyone in Pakistan remembers that it was the military intelligence, or Inter-Services Intelligence, that promoted Muslim militancy in the two decades before September 11 as a wedge against India in Afghanistan and Kashmir. The Pakistan People's Party (PPP) faithful will almost certainly blame Pervez Musharraf, and sentiment here is more important than reality, whatever the reality may be. The PPP is one of two very large, long-standing grassroots political parties in Pakistan, and if its followers are radicalized by this event, it could lead to severe turmoil. Just a day before her assassination Benazir had pledged that the PPP would not allow the military to rig the upcoming January 8 parliamentary elections.

Pakistan is important to US security. It is a nuclear power. Its military fostered, then partially turned on the Taliban and al-Qaeda, which have bases in the lawless tribal areas of the northern part of the country. And Pakistan is key to the future of its neighbor, Afghanistan. Pakistan is also a key transit route for any energy pipelines built between Iran or Central Asia and India, and so central to the energy security of the United States.

The military government of Pervez Musharraf was shaken by two big crises in 2007, one urban and one rural. The urban crisis was his interference in the rule of law and his dismissal of the supreme court chief justice. The Pakistani middle class has greatly expanded in the last seven years, as others have noted, and educated white collar people need a rule of law to conduct their business. Last June 50,000 protesters came out to defend the supreme court, even though the military had banned rallies. The rural crisis was the attempt of a Neo-Deobandi cult made up of Pushtuns and Baluch from the north to establish themselves in the heart of the capital, Islamabad, at the Red Mosque seminary. They then attempted to impose rural, puritan values on the cosmopolitan city dwellers. When they kidnapped Chinese acupuncturists, accusing them of prostitution, they went too far. Pakistan depends deeply on its alliance with China, and the Islamabad middle classes despise Talibanism. Musharraf ham-fistedly had the military mount a frontal assault on the Red Mosque and its seminary, leaving many dead and his legitimacy in shreds. Most Pakistanis did not rally in favor of the Neo-Deobandi cultists, but to see a military invasion of a mosque was not pleasant (the militants inside turned out to be heavily armed and quite sinister).

The NYT reported that US Secretary of State Condi Rice tried to fix Musharraf's subsequent dwindling legitimacy by arranging for Benazir to return to Pakistan to run for prime minister, with Musharraf agreeing to resign from the military and become a civilian president. When the supreme court seemed likely to interfere with his remaining president, he arrested the justices, dismissed them, and replaced them with more pliant jurists. This move threatened to scuttle the Rice Plan, since Benazir now faced the prospect of serving a dictator as his grand vizier, rather than being a proper prime minister.

With Benazir's assassination, the Rice Plan is in tatters and Bush administration policy toward Pakistan and Afghanistan is tottering.

So much for U.S. influence in the world after seven years of war and military occupation and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, Afghans, and Americans killed in the name of a "global war on terror" in which Pakistan was supposed to be a key ally.

Predictably, U.S. officials are calling Al Qaeda "a likely suspect" in the assassination, but Pakistanis are blaming Musharraf, and the truth (which probably will never be known) could be a complicated mixture, since Musharraf was not above using his ties to Islamists to protect his own power:
The main suspects in the assassination are the foreign and Pakistani Islamist militants who saw Ms Bhutto as a Westernised heretic and an American stooge, and had repeatedly threatened to kill her.

But fingers will also be pointed at the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, (ISI) which has had close ties to the Islamists since the 1970s and has been used by successive Pakistani leaders to suppress political opposition. Ms Bhutto narrowly escaped an assassination attempt in October, when a suicide bomber struck at a rally in Karachi to welcome her back from exile.

Earlier that month two Pakistani militant warlords based in the country’s northwestern areas had threatened to kill her.

One was Baitullah Mehsud, a top militant commander fighting the Pakistani Army in South Waziristan, who has ties to al-Qaeda and the Afghan Taleban. The other was Haji Omar, the leader of the Pakistani Taleban, who is also from South Waziristan and fought with the Afghan Mujahidin against the Soviets in Afghanistan.

Ms Bhutto said after the attack that she had received a letter, signed by someone claiming to be a friend of al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, threatening to slaughter her like a goat. But she also accused Pakistani authorities of not providing her with sufficient security, and hinted that they may have been complicit in the Karachi attack.

She indicated that she had more to fear from unidentified members of a power structure that she described as allies of the “forces of militancy”.

Analysts say that President Musharraf is unlikely to have ordered her assassination, but that elements of the Army and intelligence service stood to lose money and power if she became prime minister. The ISI includes some Islamists who became radicalised while running the American-funded campaign against the Soviets in Afghanistan and were opposed to her on principle. Saudi Arabia is also thought to have frowned on Ms Bhutto as being too secular and Westernised and to have favoured Nawaz Sharif, another former Prime Minister.

One of Bhutto's closest friends and advisers, Husain Haqqani, is convinced Musharraf is responsible:
After an October attack on Bhutto's life in Karachi, the ex-prime minister warned "certain individuals in the security establishment [about the threat] and nothing was done," says Husain Haqqani, a confidante of Bhutto's for decades. "There is only one possibility: the security establishment and Musharraf are complicit, either by negligence or design. That is the most important thing. She's not the first political leader killed, since Musharraf took power, by the security forces."

Haqqani notes that Bhutto died of a gunshot wound to the neck. "It's like a hit, not a regular suicide bombing," he says. "It's quite clear that someone who considers himself Pakistan's Godfather has a very different attitude toward human life than you and I do."

As for what comes next: Haqqani doubts that Musharraf will go forward with scheduled elections. "The greatest likelihood is that this was aimed not just aimed at Benazir Bhutto but at weakening Pakistan's push for democracy," he says. "But the U.S. has to think long and hard. Musharraf's position is untenable in Pakistan. More and more people are going to blame him for bringing Pakistan to this point, intentionally or unintentionally. It's very clear that terrorism has increased in Pakistan. It's quite clear that poverty has increased in Pakistan. ... anti-Americanism might come in, as people say, 'You know what, why should we support this [pro-U.S.] regime that has not delivered anything to us?'"

One has the sense that Bush et al. don't have the slightest clue how to handle these dark forces that it never occurred to them for one second they might be messing with blind.

Andrew Sullivan:
What we are witnessing in the Islamic world is something we should learn to be somewhat reticent about. There is so much we do not know - and what we do know suggests a period of extreme and dangerous instability we will have only limited capacity to affect, if at all. A Bhutto deal with Musharraf meant a rational, sane option for Pakistan to Western diplomatic minds. But this world is a darker, more irrational place than we know. And these convulsions will surely continue. It may be that our attempt to fix the situation has only made it worse. Which would not be the first time, of course.

Won't be the last, either.

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Screw the Old People

This is how our government takes care of its own people:

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said Wednesday that employers could reduce or eliminate health benefits for retirees when they turn 65 and become eligible for Medicare.

The policy, set forth in a new regulation, allows employers to establish two classes of retirees, with more comprehensive benefits for those under 65 and more limited benefits — or none at all — for those older.

More than 10 million retirees rely on employer-sponsored health plans as a primary source of coverage or as a supplement to Medicare, and Naomi C. Earp, the commission’s chairwoman, said, “This rule will help employers continue to voluntarily provide and maintain these critically important health benefits.”

Maha notes the Orwellian spin:
Let us pause and reflect upon Ms. Naomi C. Earp’s words. In fact, I was so taken with what Ms. Naomi C. Earp said that I went to the EEOC web site for more. ...

There Barbara found the following press release:
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) today announced the publication of a final rule allowing employers that provide retiree health benefits to continue the longstanding practice of coordinating those benefits with Medicare (or comparable state health benefits) without violating the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA). The regulation, which safeguards retiree health benefits, was published in today’s Federal Register and is available on the EEOC’s web site at www.eeoc.gov.

“Implementation of this rule is welcome news for America’s retirees, whether young or old,” said Commission Chair Naomi C. Earp. “By this action, the EEOC seeks to preserve and protect employer-provided retiree health benefits which are increasingly less available and less generous. Millions of retirees rely on their former employer to provide health benefits, and this rule will help employers continue to voluntarily provide and maintain these critically important benefits in accordance with the law.”

The EEOC proposed the rule in response to a controversial decision in 2000 by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Erie County Retirees Association v. County of Erie. The court held that the ADEA requires that the health insurance benefits received by Medicare-eligible retirees be the same, or cost the employer the same, as the health insurance benefits received by younger retirees. After the Erie County decision, labor unions and employers alike informed the EEOC that complying with the decision would force companies to reduce or eliminate the retiree health benefits they currently provided – leaving millions of retirees aged 55 and over with less health insurance, or no health insurance at all.

And thus continues the Bush administration's grand tradition of using language to pervert meaning:
Because health care costs are ballooning, the burden of providing health insurance for retirees is too much for many businesses to bear — no doubt this is true — so the EEOC says it’s OK for the companies to cut the retirees loose and let them fall back on Medicare. But because Bushies are Bushies, they can’t just come out and say it that way. Instead, they crank out some Orwellian doublespeak pretending this is all for the retirees’ own good.

John Cole sees this as "... another piece of evidence [...] that we will be moving to single-payer in the next deade or so, simply because big business wants this (and would argue they need it) in order to survive. ... At this point, it almost has a feel of inevitability about it." I think John is being way too optimistic about this country's capacity for common sense.

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Wednesday, December 26, 2007

Top Ten Myths About Iraq

Juan Cole gives us his Top Ten Myths About Iraq 2007 (paraphrased):

  1. The surge is responsible for the drop in violence.
  2. Iraq is now "calm" and Iraqis want Americans to stay, even if grudgingly.
  3. The northern part of Iraq is calm and thriving economically.
  4. The Sunni leaders who are being paid by the U.S. military to fight Al Qaeda are reconciling with Iraqi Shiites and the Shiite central government.
  5. Slowly but surely, Iraq is meeting U.S.-imposed benchmarks for progress.
  6. Iraqi women have been liberated by the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and the subsequent U.S. occupation.
  7. Iran was supplying deadly explosive material to Sunni extremists.
  8. The surge stopped the sectarian violence in Baghdad.
  9. Religious and political reconciliation has begun and is making progress.
  10. The American electorate has lost interest in Iraq and no longer considers it a top issue.
Needless to say, Prof. Cole has his detractors -- Andrew Sullivan calls it "clinical denial":
For some, the war is over, victory has been achieved, and the only task now is to elect a new Decider to conduct a victory parade. Sadly, this seems to me to be verging on clinical denial. There is no question that General Petraeus, for the first time, has instituted a competent, if ad hoc occupation, by doing pragmatic deals in local areas and regions, constructing massive walls in Baghdad to keep warring sects apart, effectively bribing other areas with new investments and providing sufficient troops in some places to maintain a lull in the massive bloodletting that the US invasion unleashed. But in the next few months, the troop levels will be reduced, or the US military will be broken. They key to sustaining a national peace in Iraq is some level of sectarian integration in the police and army, some reconciliation between national Sunni and Shiite political parties, some resolution of the remaining trouble spots in the north, such as Kirkuk, and some kind of political leadership able to reach across the bloody divide. It is very hard to see any of these things happening.

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Civilizations

If you love to read just for the sake of or the possibility of learning some neat out of the way and totally unexpected knowledge, I have just the book for you.

About two years ago I was given this book as a Christmas present. “Man on Earth: A Celebration of Mankind” by John Reader, Perennial Library, Harper & Row, Publishers.

A 255 page volume, the author profiles twelve, here-to-fore-to-me-unknown, societies that currently exist in a variety of places from the equator to the Arctic Circle. India, Africa, Bali, Switzerland and more. Entertaining, enlightening and hard to put down.

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Boxing Day

Today, 26 Dec is known as Boxing Day in most United Kingdom Commonwealth of Nations countries, including, of course, our neighbor to the north, Canada. According to Wikipedia Boxing Day's origins are as follows:

Boxing Day is a traditional celebration, dating back to the Medieval Ages, and consisted of the practice of giving out gifts to employees, the poor, or to people in a lower social class. The name has numerous folk etymologies[3]; the Oxford English Dictionary attributes it to the Christmas box; the verb box meaning: "To give a Christmas-box (colloq.); whence boxing-day."

I do not know the appropriate salutation for Boxing Day, but I wish it to you on this Boxing Day.

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Monday, December 24, 2007

Congress "Recognizes" Christianity as Having Special and Particular Importance, Above Other Religions

Here is a resolution that passed the House on Dec. 11, with broad bipartisan support. The only reason I know about this is because it was posted in the Off-Topics section of a gymnastics forum that my daughter frequents, and she told me about it. I don't recall seeing any mention of this endorsement of one particular religion in any news outlet, at all.

H. Res. 847: Recognizing the importance of Christmas and the Christian faith

Whereas Christmas, a holiday of great significance to Americans and many other cultures and nationalities, is celebrated annually by Christians throughout the United States and the world;

Whereas there are approximately 225,000,000 Christians in the United States, making Christianity the religion of over three-fourths of the American population;

Whereas there are approximately 2,000,000,000 Christians throughout the world, making Christianity the largest religion in the world and the religion of about one-third of the world population;

Whereas identify themselves as those who believe in the salvation from sin offered to them through the sacrifice of their savior, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and who, out of gratitude for the gift of salvation, commit themselves to living their lives in accordance with the teachings of the Holy Bible;Whereas Christians Christians and Christianity have contributed greatly to the development of western civilization;

Whereas the United States, being founded as a constitutional republic in the traditions of western civilization, finds much in its history that points observers back to its Judeo-Christian roots;

Whereas on December 25 of each calendar year, American Christians observe Christmas, the holiday celebrating the birth of their savior, Jesus Christ;

Whereas for Christians, Christmas is celebrated as a recognition of God's redemption, mercy, and Grace; and

Whereas many Christians and non-Christians throughout the United States and the rest of the world, celebrate Christmas as a time to serve others: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved, That the House of Representatives--

    (1) recognizes the Christian faith as one of the great religions of the world;

    (2) expresses continued support for Christians in the United States and worldwide;

    (3) acknowledges the international religious and historical importance of Christmas and the Christian faith;

    (4) acknowledges and supports the role played by Christians and Christianity in the founding of the United States and in the formation of the western civilization;

    (5) rejects bigotry and persecution directed against Christians, both in the United States and worldwide; and

    (6) expresses its deepest respect to American Christians and Christians throughout the world.


Since Liberty Street is a mid-tier blog, and this is a very important issue, any bloggers reading this who share my outrage over Congress endorsing religion in general, and the Christian religion in particular, might want to write about it. I'm not asking for a link back; I'm just asking that other bloggers who might be higher profile than I am write about this resolution, because it is now the official position of the United States government.

I have linked to the text of the resolution, above. It's at GovTrack.US -- click here.

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Under Rug Swept

Matthew Yglesias has a delicious response to Bruce Bartlett's complaint about Matthew's earlier post on Bartlett's book:

No, no, no! I don't think the history should be swept under the rug at all. What I think is that the history reflects well on present members of the Democratic Party. The political views of the Southern Democrats were unconscionably evil, and the corrupt bargain national Democratic Party figures struck with them was a terrible thing. But in a series of intense political battles, the Democratic Party eventually broke decisively with that heritage, prompting breakaway segregationist campaigns in 1948 and 1968 and eventually leading the bulk of the white supremacist constituency to drift to the Republican Party.

The significance of the history of race in America -- and of the centrality of the Democrats' corrupt bargain with white supremacy to American political history -- really shouldn't be minimized. But what it shows is that the Democratic Party's decision to embrace the civil rights movement and the Republican Party's decision to embrace opposition to civil rights has been integral to the Republican Party's political successes toward the end of the 20th century.

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God's Basic Training

The Christianization of the U.S. military has been written about before, but there is growing evidence that the problem goes far beyond individuals being harassed to convert, as serious as that is. Fundamentalist groups like Campus Crusade for Christ are actually engaged in creating an identification between militarism and radical right-wing Christian theology:

For US Army soldiers entering basic training at Fort Jackson Army base in Columbia, South Carolina, accepting Jesus Christ as their personal savior appears to be as much a part of the nine-week regimen as the vigorous physical and mental exercises the troops must endure.

That's the message directed at Fort Jackson soldiers, some of whom appear in photographs in government issued fatigues, holding rifles in one hand, and Bibles in their other hand

Frank Bussey, director of Military Ministry at Fort Jackson, has been telling soldiers at Fort Jackson that "government authorities, police and the military = God's Ministers," Bussey's teachings from the "God's Basic Training" Bible study guide he authored says US troops have "two primary responsibilities": "to praise those who do right" and "to punish those who do evil - "God's servant, an angel of wrath." Bussey's teachings directed at Fort Jackson soldiers were housed on the Military Ministry at Fort Jackson web site. Late Wednesday, the web site was taken down without explanation. Bussey did not return calls for comment. The web site text, however, can still be viewed in an archived format.

The Christian right has been successful in spreading its fundamentalist agenda at US military installations around the world for decades. But the movement's meteoric rise in the US military came in large part after 9/11 and immediately after the US invaded Iraq in March of 2003. At a time when the United States is encouraging greater religious freedom in Muslim nations, soldiers on the battlefield have told disturbing stories of being force-fed fundamentalist Christianity by highly controversial, apocalyptic "End Times" evangelists, who have infiltrated US military installations throughout the world with the blessing of high-level officials at the Pentagon. Proselytizing among military personnel has been conducted openly, in violation of the basic tenets of the United States Constitution.

Perhaps no other fundamentalist Christian group is more influential than Military Ministry, a national organization and a subsidiary of the controversial fundamentalist Christian organization Campus Crusade for Christ. Military Ministry's national web site boasts it has successfully "targeted" basic training installations, or "gateways," and has successfully converted thousands of soldiers to evangelical Christianity.

Military Ministry says its staffers are responsible for "working with Chaplains and Military personnel to bring lost soldiers closer to Christ, build them in their faith and send them out into the world as Government paid missionaries" - which appears to be a clear-cut violation of federal law governing the separation of church and state.

"Young recruits are under great pressure as they enter the military at their initial training gateways," the group has stated on its web site. "The demands of drill instructors push recruits and new cadets to the edge. This is why they are most open to the 'good news.' We target specific locations, like Lackland AFB [Air Force base] and Fort Jackson, where large numbers of military members transition early in their career. These sites are excellent locations to pursue our strategic goals."

Mikey Weinstein, the founder and president of the government watchdog organization the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, whose group has been closely tracking Military Ministry's activities at Fort Jackson and other military bases around the country, said in an interview that using "the machinery of the state" to promote any form of religion is "not only unconstitutional and un-American but it also creates a national security threat of the first order."

A six-month investigation by MRFF has found Military Ministry's staff has successfully targeted US soldiers entering basic training at Lackland Air Force Base and Fort Sam Houston, with the approval of the Army base's top commanders.

"I've said it before and I will say it again," Weinstein said. "We are in the process of creating a fundamentalist Christian Taliban and somebody has to do something to stop it now."

The above article was published on Friday. Yesterday, a Daily Kos diarist, Troutfishing, seriously ruffled some right-wing feathers when he posted, side by side, two photographs from the above-quoted article: the first photo showed a Hamas suicide bomber holding an automatic weapon in one hand and the Koran in the other; the second photo showed two U.S. Army recruits in basic training at Fort Jackson, SC, holding rifles and, in the same hand, held against the rifles, copies of the Bible. [After being viciously assailed for "attacking U.S. troops," Troutfishing chose to separate the photographs, keeping the one of U.S. soldiers at the top and moving the photograph of the Hamas suicide bomber farther down the page. He says, right at the top of the page, that the other photograph is further down -- and it's clear from the context that he separated the photos to defuse the situation -- but despite that, Charles Johnson chose to see it as "a cowardly move to disguise the Kos mindset."]

The right-wing commentary was predictably one-note, framing the issue entirely as one of implied equivalence between Islamic terrorists and Christians in the U.S. military. The DK post that accompanies the photographs is impressive: lengthy, thoughtful, and nuanced. But Charles Johnson and his pals dismiss the article as "a long exercise in crackpot moral equivalence that compares US troops holding Bibles with a Palestinian female suicide bomber holding a Koran."

In truth, the issues raised in Troutfishing's post are considerably more complex and serious than a simple comparison between Islamic suicide bombers and U.S. troops. One sentence from the opening of the post says it all: "You might call the image, to the right [of the two Army recruits holding rifles and the Bible] the ghost of Christmas future."

Indeed. The message here is not that Hamas terrorists and American soldiers are the same. In a way, it's the opposite: Troutfishing is telling us that a narrow, fundamentalist Christian agenda, being injected into our military from outside it, is forcing our soldiers into a role they were never meant to assume -- that of religious warriors in a modern-day Crusade between Christianity and Islam. Here is the entire passage in which that opening sentence appears [emphasis mine]:
You might call the image, to the right, the ghost of Christmas future. Let me suggest a productive frame for the picture which depicts a parallel that is both real but which has not yet fully emerged as a dominant dynamic.

The dynamic is that of religious war, a phenomenon that has an old and evil history especially in the Middle East.

But, that future - religious war - does not have to prevail. It is a danger as long as there are US troops in Iraq, because US troops in basic training, as detailed in a new Military Religious Freedom Foundation report, are being indoctrinated in the ideology of religious war[,] and the cultivation of the mentality of religious war, between Christianity and Islam, is exactly what many leaders on the American Christian right and Islamic religious extremists including those of Al Qaeda want more than anything - to provoke a full blown religious war between Islam and Christianity.

If you think this is crazy, Troutfishing lets us hear it from the horse's mouth.

I doubt the lgf crowd read this far, and even if they did, the last thing they are prepared to do is formulate an intelligent response:
... [M]y point wasn't to stigmatize American soldiers but, rather , to underline the fact that they are being taught a theology of war and that there is ugly precedent for the teaching of the theology of war, within the Christian tradition, that goes back all the way to the First Crusade.
[...]
Indeed, Gary Bussey's course, taught at Fort Jackson [see Truthout article], was advertised with a flyer using imagery that's evocative of the Crusades especially given that the parent organization behind Bussey's ministry is named Campus Crusade For Christ.

The use of the word "crusade", to describe evangelical campaigns aimed at religious conversion, is endemic to contemporary Christianity and especially on the American Christan right. But that invocation of the historical Crusades is deeply anti-Semitic in light of what the Crusaders did ; in the first Crusade, as described below, the Crusaders, upon breaking through the defenses of the city of Jerusalem, slaughtered the Jews and Muslims living in that city. They hacked those defenseless civilians apart with swords, and burned them alive as well, so that the streets of Jerusalem were filled with blood.

Evangelical campaigns might not, some would argue, be inherently anti-Semitic but use of the word "crusade" as a term for evangelical conversionary campaigns is deeply, inherently anti-Semitic in the most accurate, comprehensive sense : it is both anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim.
[...]
Soldiers in basic training at Fort Jackson are being taught theological justification for killing. ...
[...]
The soldiers shown in the photo, who are being indoctrinated in the ideology of religious war, are no more at fault than the young female Hamas member in the photo. Those truly at fault for any resulting strife and violence are the people who are doing the indoctrination.
[...]
The American soldiers-in-training in the image were photographed as the graduating class of a course, taught by a "military ministry" of Campus Crusade For Christ, entitled "God's Basic Training." ...

So they were not just soldiers who happened to be Christians -- they were graduates of a class in fundamental Christian theology. They had been actively recruited and indoctrinated with a very specific, extreme, apocalyptic, fanatical form of fundamentalist Christian belief by an outside organization that has as its goal the transformation of the U.S. military into a religious army against anyone who is not Christian.

And that brings us back to those two photographs. The caption below the photos at Truthout says that the photos "show how the infiltration of fundamentalist Christianity in the US military is starting to mirror Islamic fundamentalism." And that's why the photographs were placed side by side. Not to diss American soldiers or compare them to terrorists; not to attack Christians or soldiers' or anyone's personal religious beliefs. That photograph is not about Christian religious belief. If it were, you would not be seeing new Army recruits holding up rifles and bibles together. Is that a normal association for Christians? Rifles and bibles? Do Christians routinely carry around a rifle with their bible? Is that a standard symbol of Christianity, a rifle? You know, like when you see a cross, you think, Christian. When you see a rifle, do you think, Christian? Obviously, there is a message intended in creating an association between the rifle and the bible. Obviously, those Army recruits are holding their rifles and their bibles together for a reason. How can anyone look at a photograph like that and not get the point: that these American soldiers are meant to be part of a Christian religious war against Islam? You'd have to be either blind or willfully malicious to see it as anything else.

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Let's Compare Apples to Oranges

Bruce Bartlett is the author of a new book about the Democratic Party's "buried past" of racism. In the WSJ Opinion Journal today, Bartlett hawks this theme:

In his new book, "The Conscience of a Liberal," New York Times columnist Paul Krugman makes a strong case for his belief that the political success of the Republican Party and the conservative movement over the past 40 years has resulted largely from their co-optation of Southern racists that were the base of the Democratic Party until its embrace of civil rights in the 1960s. A key piece of evidence for Mr. Krugman is that Ronald Reagan gave his first speech after accepting the Republican presidential nomination in 1980 near Philadelphia, Miss., where three civil rights workers were murdered in 1964. In the course of this speech, Reagan said he supported "states' rights." Mr. Krugman says this was code declaring his secret sympathy for Southern racism.

Others, including Mr. Krugman's Times colleague David Brooks and Reagan biographer Lou Cannon, have come to Reagan's defense, denying that he was a racist or had any racist intent in his 1980 speech. That's fine but unlikely to change the minds of those like Mr. Krugman who are determined to smear the Republican Party with the charge of racism, and who are adept at finding racist code words like "law and order" by Republicans that are completely convincing to liberals and Democrats in support of this accusation, even though they are invisible to those with no political ax to grind.

However, if a single mention of states' rights 27 years ago is sufficient to damn the Republican Party for racism ever afterwards, what about the 200-year record of prominent Democrats who didn't bother with code words? They were openly and explicitly for slavery before the Civil War, supported lynching and "Jim Crow" laws after the war, and regularly defended segregation and white supremacy throughout most of the 20th century.

Following are some quotes from prominent Democrats largely drawn from my new book, "Wrong on Race: The Democratic Party's Buried Past." Even with the exclusion of all quotes that contain the N-word, it is clear that many of the Democratic Party's most important historical figures have long made statements that reduce Reagan's alleged transgression to a drop in the ocean. If we are going to hold him and his party accountable for a single mention of states' rights, then the party of those listed below is far more culpable in promoting and defending racism.

It's difficult to know what Bartlett thinks he's proving by quoting Thomas Jefferson and other 19th and early 20th century Democrats on race. The Republican Party did not even exist until 1854, and did not become the party of choice for Southern white racists until the second half of the 20th century. As Matthew Yglesias points out, this is common knowledge for anyone who is reasonably well-informed:
... As everyone with any awareness of American political history knows, for about 100 years starting in the mid-19th century, the Democratic Party was the vehicle of choice for the white supremacist agenda that dominated the politics of the white south and that vast majority of the leading villains in the story of race in America were Democrats. That said, starting in the New Deal, the Democrats also became the preferred party of urban northern African-Americans and white liberals. That created a lot of intra-party tensions which played out over the next 30-40 years and resulted in a decisive victory for the racial liberals.

Meanwhile, in a parallel development, "new right" insurgents -- most of whom were, like Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan, opponents of civil rights legislation -- took control of the Republican Party. During this time, the white south became the electoral base of the GOP, while the much-shrunken Dixie faction of the Democratic Party became biracial. I don't think there's anything about this history that would upset modern-day Democrats -- obviously, Abe Lincoln and the GOP was the right way to go in the 1860s and Woodrow Wilson's record on racial issues was terrible but that was all quite a long time ago.

Bartlett (or an impersonator) responds in Matthew's comments section:
Joe McCarthy's sins are pretty old new, too. But that doesn't stop liberals from dredging them up time and time again. It's a rare year when there isn't a major new book about McCarthy or a Hollywood film about him.

Matt's reaction is exactly what I expected from the left. Since the history cannot be denied they will sweep it under the rug as old news--and boring news at that. But considering the recent flap about Reagan's Philadelphia, Mississippi speech in 1980, I don't think liberals can dismiss my argument without also dismissing their own efforts to use 27 year old speeches to damn the Republican Party for racism. They can't have it both ways. Either history matters or it doesn't.

History matters. So does intellectual honesty:
I think you're completely missing Matt's point. Matt is not sweeping the shameful history of the Democratic party under the rug, he is pointing out that between that history and the present there is a difference-making series of events, i.e. the Democratic party ceased being the party of white supremacists, and the GOP became the home of the white south. The new version of the Democratic party was, in other words, decisively different from the old. Corresponding to this is the fact that you will be hard pressed to find a Democrat who would defend its old white supremacism.

In contrast, Reagan's 1980 speech is very much continuous with the present-day Republican party. Indeed, Reagan is probably the most commonly viewed recent hero in the Republican party. And I ask you: have Republicans as decisively rejected the past embodied in Joe McCarthy as Democrats have rejected their white supremacist past? That is, I have never met a Democrat who was prepared to defend the Democratic party's old white supremacist agenda. In contrast, it is not difficult to come across prominent defenses of Joe McCarthy among Republicans, is it?

And another thing: What buried past?
Can a fact that's presented in great detail in any high school American history book really be considered buried? I know that people complain about the way we teach history, but most schools do in fact cover the frigging Civil War.

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Sunday, December 23, 2007

Lessons Learned

Things I've learned from reading conservative blogs:

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Two Wealthy Candidates with Very Different Attitudes Toward Wealth

David Leonhardt has an interesting article in today's New York Times about two extremely wealthy presidential candidates -- John Edwards and Mitt Romney -- and the radically different views they have about their success and the obligations it implies:

By the final weeks of 1984, well before either turned 40, John Edwards and Mitt Romney had already built successful careers. But the two men were each on the verge of an entirely new level of financial success.

Mr. Edwards, then making a nice salary as a lawyer at a small North Carolina firm, spent early December staying at the Inn on the Plaza in downtown Asheville. Scattered around his room were documents relating to his first big malpractice case, a lawsuit filed by a man named E. G. Sawyer, who used a wheelchair after his doctor had overprescribed a drug. On Dec. 18, at the courthouse opposite the hotel, a jury awarded Mr. Sawyer $3.7 million.

In Boston, Mr. Romney had risen to become a vice president at Bain & Company, an upstart management consulting firm, and had been chosen to run a spinoff investment firm known as Bain Capital. He spent the end of 1984 flying around the country — in coach class, to save money and to show his investors how serious he was about turning a profit — visiting companies and deciding whether to invest in them.

In the decade that followed, Mr. Edwards would win one big verdict after another, and Mr. Romney would oversee a series of hugely profitable investments.

Like thousands of other Americans in a global, high-technology economy in which government was pulling back and wealth was being celebrated, Mr. Edwards and Mr. Romney used talent, hard work and — as both have suggested — luck to amass fortunes. They became a part of a rising class of the new rich.

Whether this class is a cause for concern — whether it deserves some blame for the economic anxiety felt by many middle-class families — has become a central issue in the 2008 presidential race. And Mr. Edwards and Mr. Romney are basing their candidacies in large measure on the very different lessons each has taken from his own success.

“Some people come from nothing to being wildly successful and their response is, ‘I did this on my own,’” Mr. Edwards said in an interview. “I came to a different conclusion. I believe that I did work hard, and I think people should work hard, but I think my country was there for me every step of the way.”

Today, he added, “the problem is all the economic growth is going to a very small group of people.”

Mr. Romney, by contrast, talks about the ways that his experiences at Bain showed him how innovative and productive the American economy can be and, particularly, how free markets can make life better for everyone.

“There is a model of thought among the Democrats — that the amount of money, the amount of wealth in a nation, is a fixed amount,” he said in an interview. “And that if Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are making a lot of money, that just means somebody else is not able to make as much. That happens to be entirely false.”

The two men represent a clear divide between the Democratic and Republican parties over whether the government should redistribute more wealth, from the rich downward, now that economic inequality is greater than it has been since the 1920s.

Income inequality is not about "somebody else" not being "able to make as much" as Bill Gates or Warren Buffet -- or Mitt Romney or John Edwards. But of course it plays much better to frame the issue this way than it does to accurately state the true problem, as Arthur Herzog, Jr., and Billie Holliday did almost 70 years ago, much more lucidly than I ever could.

The "free market" does not have a satisfactory answer to that old news -- which is why we continue to get shallow, misleading analyses like this one:
Romney came from greater wealth, as his father was an executive at the American Motors Corporation. But Romney made his personal fortune on his own and did it much in the same way that Edwards made his fortune; through lots of talent, lots of hard work and again, not a little luck (as Jefferson noted, the harder one works, the luckier one tends to get). I might doubt--as I have in the past--whether Romney, a very bright man, is as intellectually engaged in politics as he was in business. But there is no doubting the fact that Romney was indeed tremendously intellectually engaged in business and that degree of intellectual engagement helped win him the wealth he now has.

These two life stories help buttress Romney's argument that wealth is not a zero sum game. Power--especially political power--may well be a zero sum game but wealth and economic prosperity is a different matter entirely. Edwards could have gotten a lot of respect by pointing to his life story and making an optimist's argument to the electorate to the effect that if he could rise to the great financial heights he has achieved, anyone could. Sure, he would probably segue from that into making claims regarding how big government would help in the effort, but at the very least, he would be speaking to people's hopes and not to their fears.

Instead, he chooses to play the class warfare game and tell the electorate "watch what I say and pay no attention whatsoever to the nature of my life story as I talk about wealth and prosperity distribution in America." His own life story belies his populist claims and enhances Romney's case.

Except that it doesn't, because Edwards knows that he didn't become wealthy entirely on his own -- that talent and hard work were only part of the reason for his success, and not even the largest part. If talent and hard work were the major factors behind Edwards' success, what would that say about the vast majority of Americans who will never know that level of success? That they are lazy and untalented?

Pejman Yousefzadeh's assertion that "these two life stories help buttress Romney's argument that wealth is not a zero sum game" is utterly illogical. What about everyone else? If the life stories of two fabulously wealthy Americans support the argument that such wealth is attainable for anyone, what do 37 million Americans (in 2006) who are living below the poverty line tell us? Or the millions of Americans who are falling out of the middle class? What do they tell us about the certainty of wealth for anyone who is talented and hard-working?

The inconvenient truth is that the "free market" is not free, and "prosperity" in the U.S. economy as it exists today is a zero-sum game in which, as Maha notes, those who create the wealth benefit the least from it.
I’d like to point out that ordinary working people created most of that wealth. Inequality doesn’t grow because the wealth are somehow more deserving and working stiffs less so; it grows because the wealthy are able to control the wealth distribution system to their advantage. The role of government is not to take money away from the rich to give to the poor, but to keep the wealthy from gaming the system.

Back in February, NPR had a 7-part series in which Uri Berliner examined the "Haves and Have-Nots: Income Inequality in America." In his introduction to the series, Berliner provided some insight into how those who already have most of the nation's wealth keep getting ever more of it, to the detriment of everyone else.

Insight #1: Stock options are better than paychecks, especially in a flat-wage economy.
To get a sense of how the very wealthy have prospered over the past generation, consider this: The share of total income going to the top-earning 1 percent of Americans went from 8 percent in 1980 to 16 percent in 2004.
[...]
One reason: gains in the stock market. Affluent people own more stocks, and executives are often paid in stock or stock options. So when the market does well, their wealth accelerates quickly. ...

During the same 10-year period, American workers became among the most productive in the rich, industrialized, world. But the growth in their wages, when adjusted for inflation, was spotty at best.

Insight #2: Job insecurity is rising and employer-provided benefits are vanishing.
For people in the broad middle class, the economic picture over the past decade has been mixed. Unemployment has been low and inflation largely contained. But behind those reassuring trends, you'll find a lot of volatility in labor markets — what economists call "churn." In short, there's more hiring and firing going on.

That churn had led to new opportunities for many workers, but caused hardship and anxiety for many others. Add to this the fast-rising cost of health care and the decline of employer-paid pensions, and you understand why many middle-class families describe themselves as financially squeezed. Low-income Americans, of course, are financially squeezed as well, only more so.

Insight #3: Increasingly rarefied skill sets, more outsourcing, weaker unions.
New technology has made many jobs obsolete, while creating dramatic opportunities for wealth in computers, finance, and media and entertainment. Global competition has done the same. As middle-class assembly-line jobs vanish, and routine white-collar work gets outsourced overseas, the value of education and special skills rises. The power of unions continues to decline.

And how does the ordinary Joe or Josie pay for another certification or degree every few years when there is barely enough money to pay the rent?

The fight is fixed.

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