marccooper

Modest Proposal: Should The Democrats Default?

We certified Kerry-phobes no longer hold the monopoly on bemoaning the rather pathetic Presumptive Democratic Nominee. Even hacks like the WashPo’s Richard Cohen are starting to pile on. Anti-war “progressives,” meanwhile, like former Mass. State Rep Tom Gallagher are also still struggling to swallow the increasingly bitter Kerry candidacy.

So, here’s a Modest Proposal. Why don’t the Democrats consider switching to the brilliant strategy deployed in the 70’s and 80’s by the Italian Communist Party? Maybe the Democrats should just default, not actively contest the election, allow GW Bush to be re-elected, and allow the Prez to exhaust himself and his governing party. It’s the old rope-a-dope move.

Some context: Back in the mid-70’s the very moderate Italian CP which was the dominant force in many a city and region, could have easily pacted with the centrist and smaller Socialists and easily come to power. But the crafty Commie leader of the time, Enrico Berlinguer, took one look at the OPEC-battered economy, rising unemployment rates, unruly unions, massive state corruption and concluded… nah! Why try to govern this mess? Better to stay comfortably in opposition, Comrade Berlinguer figured. Stay as far as possible from the responsibilities of government and let the mafia-like incumbent Christian Democrats continue to be ground down as they shouldered all the burdens of power. Thirty years later, the Italian Christian Democrats (and the Socialists) have indeed disappeared, and the Communists – albeit under a different name—now alternate in power with Silvio Berlusconi’s conservatives and will certainly lead the next Italian administration.

Shouldn’t the Democrats ponder this? Provided that John Kerry could actually win, do his supporters really want to inherit Bush’s deficits, rising interest rates, slumping Wall Street, anemic job market and deepening quagmire in Iraq? They want to try to manage that mess?

Instead of sliding down the chute with Kerry, wouldn’t it be easier to just withdraw from the 2004 contest and default the election to Bush? What would he be able to do in his second term anyway? Unable to pacify Fallujah, short on troops, lacking a governing partner in Baghdad, racking up a $5 billion a month tab in Iraq, driving his war management approval ratings down below 50%, having already rent NATO as well as opening an emerging (Powell-Rumsfeld) war of recriminations within in his own party, just what options would a re-elected Bush have? Sounds like four years of White House misery to me.

Wouldn’t that be immensely more amusing than watching Kerry ineptly soldier on?

Or maybe not.

Tribal Scamming...er Gaming

My just-posted latest L.A. Weekly column takes on an aspect of the Indian gambling scam. One local tribal leader closely resembles the Chief who appeared on last season's Sopranos-- the guy who was 1/16th indigenous and had his "racial epiphany" after tribal gaming was legalized!

There's a serious point to this column. California Democrats are so compromised by their dependence on Indian cash that Governor Schwarzenegger might very well cut a more "progressive" deal with the Big Money Indians that better benefits taxpayers-- and even organized labor.

Not Too Late: Anybody But Kerry

This is already all over the Web, which ought to tell you something. But because Jim Ridgeway of the Village Voice is an old-time compadre of mine, I’m only too happy to go along with the pack and post his piece on Why John Kerry Must Go. I’m doubly compelled to do so after watching JFK II on Hardball this afternoon and literally nodding out. Natch, the Democrats are not about to take this sage advice. So what else is new?

I had to chuckle reading Bob Scheer’s frantic L.A. Times column this morning sternly warning Kerry that he must firmly state his opposition to the war if he wants to win.

I laughed because I was thinking, “Now why on earth would Kerry do that?” He never said he was opposed to the war. He voted to authorize it. He has since vowed to “stay the course.” He has never claimed the mantle of peace candidate but all the peaceniks (or almost all) voted for him anyway.

Scheer and other Democrats urging Kerry to become the anti-war candidate are merely projecting their own desires on the poor guy. Kerry was chosen not because he stood for anything, but because he was the ‘electable’ guy. Remember?

Iraqi-Slavia

At least someone is thinking seriously about the course to take in Iraq, transcending the facile sloganeering of the Bushies and the muddled mumblings of John Kerry.

Peter W. Galbraith has an essay in the current New York Review of Books that is marked by a rather breathtaking and cool-headed analytical balance as well as an imaginative exit strategy. Liberal Democrat Galbraith has impeccable humanitarian credentials. As detailed in Samantha Power’s Pulitzer Prize-winning "A Problem from Hell": America and the Age of Genocide, he helped craft legislation that would have cut off U.S. agricultural and manufacturing credits to Saddam Hussein in retaliation for his 1987-1988 attempt to wipe out Iraq’s rural Kurds. The Reagan admin, however, defeated the proposal and handed the Iraqi dictator generous financial support while the regime gassed and executed some 100,000 Kurds. Galbraith sets up his current piece by conceding what the Peave Movement won't i.e. “what went right” with the war:

Iraq is free from Saddam Hussein... Along with Cambodia's Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein's regime was one of the two most cruel and inhumane regimes in the second half of the twentieth century. Using the definition of genocide specified in the 1948 Genocide Convention, Iraq's Baath regime can be charged with planning and executing two genocides —one against the Kurdish population in the late 1980s and another against the Marsh Arabs in the 1990s.

But, Galbraith argues, the Bush administration’s Iraq policies are “failing for many reasons.”

First, they are being made up as the administration goes along, without benefit of planning, adequate knowledge of the country, or the experience of comparable situations. …The fundamental problem of Iraq is an absence of Iraqis.

Then comes his novel solution. Neither an orchestrated hand-over of sovereignty by the Bushies to a hastily-constructed, American-picked central government nor an imperial partition. Instead, Galbraith argues for a “three-state solution.” A Swiss or Yugoslavia-type loose confederation that more closely resembles the reality on the ground:

The best hope for holding Iraq together—and thereby avoiding civil war—is to let each of its major constituent communities have, to the extent possible, the system each wants. This, too, suggests the only policy that can get American forces out of Iraq…The three-state solution would permit the United States to disengage from security duties in most of Iraq.

I can’t do justice to the nuances of his argument in a blog-sized posting. If you are serious about finding a way out of Iraq that does more than abandon its 26 million people, read Galbraith’s entire piece and at least consider his arguments.

Blazing Straddle

Way, way back in the barely-remembered days of the Presidential Primaries -- y’know, six or seven weeks ago—John Kerry was taunting GW Bush to Bring It On.

Well, my friends, IT is here. And instead of standing firm and firing back, Kerry’s being steadily plinked like some flop-over duck in a shooting gallery.

While the Bush administration contemplates a possible showdown in the Sunni Triangle, Kerry will apparently spend this week deciding if he’s for or against the war, for or against the Patriot Act, and for or against corporate tax cuts. No hurry, John. You still have months of time left to try out different positions.

If you’re one of those Democrats who spent the first part of the year testifying to Kerry’s electability, you better avoid the current posting by Mickey Kaus who continues to earn his ranking as Most Relentless Kerryphobe by parsing the flip-flops of the last week.

Looks like tonight ABC News will also be batting Kerry around. At least until he decides just exactly whose medals those were he tossed away in 1971.

Now… please don’t write me to complain that the Nasty Republicans and the Big Bad Media are ganging up on JFK II. It sure wasn’t moi who said he was so electable!

Sure it’s unfair to exploit Kerry’s inconsistencies (I’ll make sure to pass your complaint on to the RNC).

But, damn, it’s so easy.

Booked!

I’ll be doing only light to non-existent posting this weekend as the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books will be eating up most of my time.

If you’re in the So Cal area, I encourage you to come out to the UCLA campus and partake in one of the great cultural events that L.A. has to offer.

I’ll be participating in three events:

Saturday
1:00-2:00
Moore Hall, C100
Panel discussion: "Creative Nonfiction “

Sunday
11:30-12:30
Korn Convocation Hall,
Panel discussion: "Commerce and Aesthetics in the Making of America's Culture"

Sunday
2:00-3:00
Booth #344, Royce Quad, signing copies of my latest book, "The Last Honest Place in America"

The P-Word

Is it too early to discuss what is, with or without U.S. consent, a likely culmination of the war in Iraq: Partition?

Aren’t the internal pressures such that Iraq is destined to spin off into three separate parts? An independent northern Kurdistan. A central Sunni hell. And a fundamentalist Shia nation in the south. Should we oppose that? Or ease its emergence?

Former Pentagon political-military analyst Lt. Col. (ret) Karen Kwiatkowski edges toward that suggestion in her latest column.

She doesn’t use the P-Word but her suggested strategy would pave the way for a carve-up. You can read her entire column at militaryweek.com. An excerpt:

[U.S. forces could] pull back into a subset of friendly Guantanamo-style Iraqi outposts. In places like Kurdish Mosul or Shia Basra, we can pick our own friendly hosts and spend the bulk of the $67 billion base building and security money on these must-have facilities. As we withdraw to our friendly zones, we get to keep military access. As cities like Baghdad and Fallujah settle down, we might negotiate with the emergent leadership there for additional military access. Or not.

Kwiatkowski quit the now infamous Office of Special Plans on the eve of the war and has since been publicly trashing the neocons who ran the shop (the one Woodward quotes Colin Powell deriding as the Gestapo).

I interviewed Kwiatkowski in February. She claimed, among other accusations, that the OSP never conducted any serious intelligence and instead built what she called a “propaganda” justification for the inevitable invasion:

So there was no debate over WMD, the possible relations Saddam Hussein may have had with terrorist groups and so on. They spent their energy gathering pieces of information and creating a propaganda storyline. The very phrases they used are coming back to haunt them because they are blatantly false and not based on any intelligence. The OSP and the Vice President’s Office were critical in this propaganda effort — to convince Americans that there was some just requirement for pre-emptive war.

Is her advice to partially pull back into guarded enclaves now the practical option?

Getting Drafty

Republican Senator Chuck Hagel floated renewal of a military draft in today’s Senate hearings on the war in Iraq:

"Why shouldn't we ask all of our citizens to bear some responsibility and pay some price?" Hagel said, arguing that restoring compulsory military service would force "our citizens to understand the intensity and depth of challenges we face."

Whether you are for or against the war, isn’t Hagel basically right? Is there any better way to democratize the debate on war and peace than democratizing the burden of military service?

With what arguments do we on the Left defend the notion that only the disproportionately less better-off be forced to volunteer in the service while the rest of us comfortably debate their fate?

In the fall of 2001 as the war in Afghanistan was getting underway I wrote a column proposing we reconsider a draft – but this time with NO deferments or exemptions. Some friends thought I was being ironic. I wasn’t:

"For three years, in the late ’60s, I actively and successfully resisted the draft without ever securing a student deferment. I spent two summers working as a volunteer "counselor," advising my peers how to similarly dodge the call-up for Vietnam. But as I — and millions of others — resisted, our call was clear: Stop the draft. Stop the war. I can’t recall anyone demanding the draft be ended but the war continued.

The draft became the ultimate, popular and democratic governor on the war policies of the state. When a consensus among the American people prevailed that the Vietnam War was a noble and honorable endeavor, the draft functioned without a glitch. When that consensus collapsed, so did the system of military call-up. And with American youth in rebellion, inside and outside the armed forces, the butchery in Vietnam was called to a halt."

By the way, New York's liberal Democrat congressman Charlie Rangel proposed a draft back at the beginning of last year for many of the same reasons.

What Saudis?

I’m no fan of Bob Woodward. But I was riveted by his interview with Mike Wallace last night on 60 Minutes. In Woodward’s version of the run-up to the Iraqi war, GW Bush comes off, frankly, as a putz. My Nation colleague David Corn has a nifty analysis of the Woodward disclosures.

The disclosure that appears to unsettle the White House the most is Woodward's assertion that in mid-January 2003 Bush decided to proceed with the invasion of Iraq. Woodward also notes that in November 2001, Bush asked the Pentagon to whip up a plan for war with Iraq. Such an order can be defended by the administration as prudent planning. After all, in the post-9/11 world, you never know when you might need such a plan…But in the months before the war, the White House insisted that Bush was pursuing diplomatic options in good faith… [In] late January [2003], Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer said, "Nobody, but nobody, is more reluctant to go to war than President Bush....He does not want to lead the nation to war."
But, according to Woodward, Bush was already leading the nation to war, having made the decision on January 11. National security adviser Condoles Rice--who has become the administration's explainer-in-chief--suggests that Bush was merely thinking aloud at the time. But Woodward's account is pretty strong, noting that the Saudis were informed before Bush bothered to tell his secretary of state.

By the way, how much longer are the Saudis going to wait before dropping the price of oil? I give already.

What oil? What Saudis? White House flack Scott McClellan does his best impersonation of Ari Fleischer when asked. Read all about it on Josh Marshall’s Talking Points Memo.

The White House’s slippery evasiveness on the accusation that a foreign power might have been enlisted to influence our national election oozes…well...oil.

Is That All There Is?

Sorry. John Kerry remains a stultifying, milquetoast, evasive, weaseling bore. There I said it! I’d be fascinated by any other characterization from someone who actually sat through his entire Meet The Press appearance this morning (transcript here) .
When Tim Russert pushed him to clearly define what his candidacy was about, Kerry unreeled one more meandering traipse through all of GW’s many (real and profound) sins. Et tu, Senator?

On the cataclysmic issue of Iraq, the very non-Naderish Russert was driven to dryly react to Kerry’s statements saying: “That sounds exactly like George Bush.”

Kerry took objection and added he would now “exactly” state his difference with the administration over the war:

“You cannot have America run the occupation, make all the reconstruction decisions, make the decisions of the kind of government that will emerge, and pretend to bring other nations to the table.
Now, finally, George Bush is doing what I and others have recommended for some period of time… in effect, he's transferred to the U.N. now just the decision about what government we'll turn it over to, but he won't transfer to the U.N. the real authority for determining how the government emerges, how we will do the reconstruction of Iraq. I think that's a prerequisite to bringing other countries to the table. That simple. It's that simple."

If only it were. Then came this doozey

MR. RUSSERT: Israel assassinated Hamas leader Rantisi. Do you support that assassination?
SEN. KERRY: I believe Israel has every right in the world to respond to any act of terror against it. Hamas is a terrorist, brutal organization. It has had years to make up its mind to take part in a peaceful process. They refuse to. Arafat refuses to. And I support Israel's efforts to try to separate itself and to try to be secure.

In other words, why not off Arafat too? You might think that Kerry would have worked up the cojones to at least add some nuance to the debate. He might have ventured to say that the timing seems abhorrent; that Sharon’s move is likely to further stoke Arab resentment over Fallujah; that this might toss more fuel onto the smoldering anti-American upheaval in Iraq.

But as I said, that would take cojones.