The values are all there: teamwork; fairplay; a transparent and honest judiciary. By many counts, sports embody liberal values.
So why does it seem like pro sports -- and its apotheosis, last night's Super Bowl -- are the domain of conservative thinking? Is it the martial posturing (although, despite the on-field pre-game presence of David Petraeus, the NFL does claim it's moving away from military metaphors)? Is it the culture of excessive consumerism embodied in the ads? Is it the machismo that sometimes resembles an anti-woman ethos (and has led to Superbowl Sunday having a horrid reputation for spousal abuse)?
Boxer should have held up the pic with Maliki and Amedinajacket
Mr. Petraeus can you explain this picture? Especially the holding hands part? Were Iranian missles showering the Green Zone on this day?
by: gaspare @ Wed Apr 09, 2008 at 08:50
I heard Juan Cole on the radio a few days back, and he was remarkably charitable toward McCain's bottomless ignorance. He didn't say that McCain was clueless old coot, despite the fact it was lke asking Stephen Hawkins about Bart Simpson's science project. Regarding McCain's 100-year plans, he said something to the effect that McCain didn't seem to realize that Iraq wasn't Germany or Japan (after WWII). But, the more that I thought about it, the more I came to think that Juan was just a little bit off on this one point: Iraq is Germany--right at the beginning of the Thirty Years War.
The Thirty Years' War was fought between 1618 and 1648, principally on the territory of today's Germany, and involved most of the major European powers.[2] Beginning as a religious conflict between Protestants and Catholics in the Holy Roman Empire, it gradually developed into a general war involving much of Europe, for reasons not necessarily related to religion.[3] The war marked the culmination of the France-Habsburg rivalry for pre-eminence in Europe, which led to further wars between France and the Habsburg powers.
The major impact of the Thirty Years' War, in which mercenary armies were extensively used, was the devastation of entire regions scavenged bare by the foraging armies. Episodes of widespread famine and disease devastated the population of the German states and, to a lesser extent, the Low Countries and Italy, while bankrupting many of the powers involved. The war may have lasted for 30 years, but the conflicts that triggered it continued unresolved for a much longer time. The war ended with the Treaty of Münster, a part of the wider Peace of Westphalia.
Over the course of the war, the population of the German states was reduced by about 30%;[4] in the territory of Brandenburg, the losses had amounted to half, while in some areas an estimated two-thirds of the population died. Germany's male population was reduced by almost half. The population of the Czech lands declined by a third. The Swedish armies alone destroyed 2,000 castles, 18,000 villages and 1,500 towns in Germany, one-third of all German towns.
The analogy is striking--fragmented country riddled with religious conflict plus surrounding neighbors, each it's own agenda=a generation plus of incredibly bloody civil war with 30% population loss. If you ask me, the Lancet study is pretty much right on track.
This is what stupid Hitler analogies gets you: total blindness to rather obvious historical precedents that are far more relevant to actual situation.
I wish someone would ask Petraeus and Crocker about that.
Of course, weighty historical analogies, no matter how valid, and how much they might save our ass, only speak to a certain segment of the population. Hence, the eminent common sense of gaspare's suggestion. If the Democrats had learned anything from the Republicans over the past 20-30 years, not just Boxer, but two or three other senators, and a similar number of representatives would have asked strikingly similar, though not identical questions requiring display of the same photo.
Amd then there is the question of supporting out troops, and how the Iraq war is destoying out military....
Every single argument that the Administration and their lapdogs like John McCain have made or are making break down after that answer. The Ambassdor to Iraq just admitted that Iraq is not the central front in the war on terror. He just admitted that the potential for Al Qaeda to gain a beachhead in Iraq should the United States withdraw is miniscule compared to the already-established beachhead along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. He admitted that the global fight against terror is currently misdirected.
A withdrawal and reallocation of forces and resources is the only responsible path. I'd like to see questions tomorrow on the House side put to Petraeus on whether he agrees with Crocker on force allocation.
Bayh, a potential vice presidential nominee, said he did not want to get "sucked into the presidential campaigns," but went on to ask Petraeus to give the American people a general idea of when troop withdrawals can begin.
"Is it just impossible to offer any rough estimate?" Bayh asked, in the four-and-a-half-hour hearing's final volley.
Petraeus, as he did earlier, staunchly demurred. He said it was "flat-out not responsible to try to put down a stake in the ground" and estimate when troops could begin leaving Iraq.
Petraeus and Crocker have no problems projecting out the potential implications of leaving Iraq - but they refuse to make projections of what staying will look like. That double standard is absurd. Is there a strategic plan for our presence in Iraq? If so what? The answer is pretty clearly no. They have no end game. There is no exit strategy. The Bush/McCain/Petraeus/Crocker plan is simply to stay and to stay a very very long time in the hopes that things slowly get better.
Petraeus won't even firmly assert that our presence in Iraq is making us safer, though he basically says he thinks it is. I've heard from a bunch of military folks that he has to believe his strategy is working, that it's just leadership to be optimistic and can-do. But Petraeus isn't being optimistic, he's just waffling and avoiding questions. It's dangerous that Petraeus has put himself in a political role while in uniform.
Democratic challenger Don Wiviott is using his platform as a candidate to put out an ad on Iraq in response to Petraeus's testimony. On Saturday, Wiviott asked his supporters for questions to ask Petraeus.
This is a very smart way to use the national media environment to a candidate's advantage. Institutionally, the DCCC would probably argue that keeping paid advertising limited until the last two months or so makes sense.
"General depending accounting used, this war will cost us from $2 - 3.5 trillion. Help me explain to my constituents why it is more important to rebuild Iraq and not rebuild America."
Tim Cunha (FL-06) sent a letter to Democratic House leaders.
When General David Petraeus and U. S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker meet with Congress Tuesday and Wednesday, Tim Cunha, Democratic 6th district congressional candidate, wants them asked: "Is the continued American involvement in the Iraq civil war making America safer?"
Alice Kryzan (NY-26) in a heavily contested primary has a video.
This week is a tremendous messaging opportunity on Iraq for anyone who wants to take it. General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker are testifying in the House and the Senate on Tuesday and Wednesday about the surge. The goal from our perspective should be to pose the question of whether our presence in Iraq is making us safer, rather than focusing on levels of violence and the tactical questions surrounding the surge. Barack Obama frames it correctly with this question.
Obama, an Illinois Democrat, also wants a quick end to the war. On Friday, he said: ""We still don't have a good answer to the question posed by Sen. (John) Warner the last time Gen. Petraeus appeared: How has this effort in Iraq made us safer and how do we expect it will make us safer in the long run?"
By far the worst framing is done by Carl Levin, speaking about the surge.
"In my judgment, it's too rosy, but there are parts of it that are not so rosy, and both pieces need to be declassified," Sen. Carl Levin said, pointing in particular to the portion of the report describing Iraq's political progress.
Levin also likes to blame the Iraqi government for the problems in Iraq. It's actually a fairly common line, with prominent Democrats undercutting a coherent message.
"We saw a meaningful reduction in violence, and that presented an opportunity to build up national reconciliation that was the underlying premise of the surge," said Representative Howard L. Berman, Democrat of California and chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. "It seems that the Iraqis have largely frittered it away."
Republicans, meanwhile, see this week as an opportunity to push their message about winning in Iraq. Here's what Republicans are planning.
On the Republican side, a veterans group tied to the party is planning a rally near the Senate, while House Republicans are coordinating with conservative bloggers and will invite conservative radio commentators to broadcast from Washington. Republicans plan to push for new money for troops in Iraq; to highlight statements by Democrats that the troop "surge," which ended last fall, has worked; to point out some signs of political reconciliation; and to insist that troops can be removed from Iraq only when military leaders decide it is the proper time.
"The goal of the effort is not just to reinforce the message delivered by General Petraeus, but to launch a full-fledged assault on the misinformation campaign promoted by Democratic leaders who have lost every time they have tried to legislate defeat for America," said an internal strategy memo for Republican communications operatives.
It is clear that DC Democrats have several different lines of messaging going on that work against each other. Some of them want to drill into the tactics of the surge, some want to discuss larger national security questions, and some want to concede the surge worked but that the Iraqis are somehow at fault.
It's important to recognize that this is all a sideshow to the real question in front of all of us, one avoided by many of the politicians in DC. What do we do in Iraq to make our country safer?
Today, Frank Rich wrote a column called 'The Good Germans'. He spends a bunch of column inches lamenting how 'we' have let the war go on, and are as complicit as the Germans during the Nazi regime. Here's the nub:
As the war has dragged on, it is hard to give Americans en masse a pass. We are too slow to notice, let alone protest, the calamities that have followed the original sin.
Americans are looking for leadership, somewhere, anywhere. At least one of the Democratic presidential contenders might have shown the guts to soundly slap the "General Betray-Us" headline on the ad placed by MoveOn.org in The Times, if only to deflate a counterproductive distraction. This left-wing brand of juvenile name-calling is as witless as the "Defeatocrats" and "cut and run" McCarthyism from the right; it at once undermined the serious charges against the data in the Petraeus progress report (including those charges in the same MoveOn ad) and allowed the war's cheerleaders to hyperventilate about a sideshow.
Rich is operating according to the rules of the media elite. It's ok to whine about the problem, but try to do anything about it and you're getting very much uncivil, sir.
Lots of people might be loving Frank Rich's column today that says that Americans are responsible for what America does. Of course, many of us passed the basics of citizenship 101 in grade school, and have been working to try to fix the political system ever since we woke up and noticed a group of lunatics and incompetents in charge.
For instance, Moveon, which apparently is a juvenile McCarthyite group.
In sharp contrast to the lionisation of Gen. David Petraeus by members of the U.S. Congress during his testimony this week, Petraeus's superior, Admiral William Fallon, chief of the Central Command (CENTCOM), derided Petraeus as a sycophant during their first meeting in Baghdad last March, according to Pentagon sources familiar with reports of the meeting.
Fallon told Petraeus that he considered him to be "an ass-kissing little chickenshit" and added, "I hate people like that", the sources say. That remark reportedly came after Petraeus began the meeting by making remarks that Fallon interpreted as trying to ingratiate himself with a superior.
In May of 2003, David Petraeus cooperated with Bush crony Stephen Cambone to push the narrative that the military had found biological weapons trailers.
"The suspected mobile biological agent production lab found on 9 May in our area was found by one of our infantry units during operations at the al-Kindi Rocket and Missile Research and Development Center," Major General David Petraeus said May 13 during a briefing from Mosul. "Our own chemical section looked at the trailer and confirmed it as a trailer that was very close to identical to the first trailer that was found by Special Forces southeast of here last week."
Petraeus said he spoke with experts May 13, and they have a "reasonable degree of certainty that this is in fact a mobile biological agent production trailer."
This ad is running in the NYT, by Moveon, and is getting lots of media play. This is an interesting response, from Redstate.
Here is a list of vulnerable Democrats. Call them and get their comments on MoveOn.org's ad campaign. Put their response in the comments.
Call 202-224-3121. Ask the Representative if he or she stands with MoveOn.org in its assesment of General Petraeus as cooking the books for the White House. If they say no, ask if they condemn MoveOn.org calling General Petraeus "General Betray Us."
Here are the members you should call. Again, the number is 202-224-3121.
Harry Mitchell AZ-5
Gabrielle Giffords AZ-8
Jerry McNerney CA-11
Joe Courtney CT-2
Christopher Murphy CT-5
Tim Mahoney FL-16
Ron Klein FL-22
Jim Marshall GA-8
John Barrow GA-12
Melissa Bean IL-8
Joe Donnelly IN-2
Brad Ellsworth IN-8
Baron Hill IN-9
Leonard Boswell IA-3
Nancy Boyda KS-2
John Yarmuth KY-3
Tim Walz MN-1
Paul Hodes NH-2
John Hall NY-19
Kirsten Gillibrand NY-20
Michael Arcuri NY-24
Heath Shuler NC-11
Zack Space OH-18
Jason Altmire PA-4
Patrick Murphy PA-8
Christopher Carney PA-10
Chet Edwards TX-17
Nick Lampson TX-22
Ciro Rodriguez TX-23
Steve Kagen WI-8
So far, they have one response. Bush Dog Zack Space "agrees with Moveon.org in principle, wouldn't use that language, but won't condemn them for using it, either."
Another new arrival in the West Wing set up a rapid-response PR unit hard-wired into Petraeus's shop. Ed Gillespie, the new presidential counselor, organized daily conference calls at 7:45 a.m. and again late in the afternoon between the White House, the Pentagon, the State Department, and the U.S. Embassy and military in Baghdad to map out ways of selling the surge.
From the start of the Bush plan, the White House communications office had been blitzing an e-mail list of as many as 5,000 journalists, lawmakers, lobbyists, conservative bloggers, military groups and others with talking points or rebuttals of criticism. Between Jan. 10 and last week, the office put out 94 such documents in various categories -- "Myths/Facts" or "Setting the Record Straight" to take issue with negative news articles, and "In Case You Missed It" to distribute positive articles or speeches.
This follows the revelation that Petraeus has had closed door strategy sessions with the Republican caucus,persistent rumors that Petraeus will run for President on the Republican ticket in 2012, and Petraeus's grad school buddy Michael O'Hanlon at the unaccountable Brookings Institution fomenting a PR offensive to bolster his friend's image. Now, I know that senior military leaders interweaving their military activities and messaging with partisan Republican operatives is nothing new and so we've all become somewhat desensitized to it, but technically speaking, America still is a republic.
Steve Clemons voices something I've heard for some time, that there's a draft General David Petraeus movement for the 2012 GOP nomination. The scenario goes like this. Democrats take over the White House and Iraq in 2008, try to fix the mess and fail, lose Congress in 2010, and a new breed of 'moderate' Republicans led by Petreaus sweep into power in 2012.
No matter what the outcome of his testimony before Congress in September on the results of the surge or the long-term outcome of the Iraq War.
In fact, Petraeus may actually be helped in any hidden presidential aspirations he may hold if things continue to deteriorate in Iraq and the Dems take the White House in November 2008.
The scenario runs something like this.
Petraeus -- who both Dems and Republicans liked when he was perceived to be a highly competent, underappreciated expert on counter-insurgency and who was punished by Rumsfeld and exiled far from the front line action to do his work in Leavenworth, Kansas -- won't be blamed for the deteriorating mess in Iraq.
Things continue to go badly. Petraeus holds his finger in the dyke preventing total breakdown in Iraq and convulsing violence, but the Dems win the White House in 2008. Let's just say Hillary Clinton wins, but I think the scenario holds for either Edwards or Obama.
Hillary Clinton and two chambers of Congress are now fully responsible for unwinding the Iraq War and managing America's position in the Middle East. No matter how one looks at the problem, there is no silver bullet solution to preserve America's interests where they were. There will be costs. Some Sunni governments in the region could fall. A regional conflagration could begin to heat up. A high-level assassination of a moderate Sunni Arab leader in Jordan, Egypt, or Saudi Arabia could start a raging new regional, if not global, war.
But not even considering the more nasty, sensational scenarios -- Clinton or Obama or Edwards and their Democratic partners in Congress are going to have a terrible mess that will likely deteriorate further before some equilibrium is found.
There will be "plenty" by that time to blame on Hillary and the Dems in the Middle East -- and thus, a new balanced, more pragmatic and judicious voice is needed -- someone who understands how to deploy power and understands the evolving contours of non-state, radicalized, Islamic extremist violence.
That's the rumor out there, and it's been out there for some time. Petraeus is a Republican, and he's apparently been meeting and planning with the Republican caucus to hold it together this September. This strikes me as highly unethical, but as long as Harry Reid preemptively capitulates on every Iraq vote, that doesn't matter.
As Glenn Greenwald has noted, the Iraq war debate is lost until Bush leaves office. This is a pathologically weak Congress, unable to stand up for the simplest and most basic of human rights or Constitutional principles. And as long as people like Reid continue to expect Republican moderates to be the adults and tell them what to do, we can expect a strong run by David Petraeus in 2012 as he rides in on a white horse talking of ending torture and restoring American influence in the world.
Whose party is Harry Reid leading in the Senate again?
Todd Beeton pointed me to this interview of Ellen Tauscher by the excellent Think Progress team. I transcribed the relevant bit.
Look I know Brian Baird, he's a friend of mine. And I'm on the Armed Services Committee and I've been to Iraq, this is my fourth trip, my sixth trip to the region. And I will tell you that when you get in the Green Zone, there is a physiological phenomenon I think called Green Zone fog. And there is such a, sense of winning. They will show you, it's, uh, death by powerpoint. Chart after chart after chart after chart where they have sliced like carpaccio the results of what's going on and it's always that their argument is winning. And if you press, after the third of fourth time, what about this, this and this, you start to peel the onion back and see what we all know, that the surge is not sustainable.
UPDATE: I just got off the phone with Ciaran Clayton, Brian Baird's press secretary. I asked her if he's going to support the $50B supplemental request, and she said 'he probably will'.
