disconnect

Losing The War On Terror

I was reading Richard Clarke's book "Against All Enemies" a lot in the past two days. I've had it for about a month but hadn't read it for a week or two until I picked it up again this week. It starts out talking about the things that he and the Bush I/Clinton administrations did to fight terrorism, which is where I left off. When I got back into it this week, I got to the point where Dubya takes office and things start getting pushed to the back burner. That angered me enough until he describes their even bigger mistakes after September 11, and the continued resignations of people working in counter-terrorism out of disgust with the attitude and policies of the Bush administration. I would post quotes from the book but there were simply too many worth posting.

One of the points that he makes is that you can't simply kill Al Qaeda leaders and pursue their operatives, you have to offer a more attractive alternative to radical Islamic philosophies, similar to how capitalism eventually defeated communism, and show skeptical Arabs that America isn’t really the Great Satan. You probably think this is somewhat of an obvious strategy. Richard Clarke certainly thought so, and I agree. However, someone forgot to clue the Bush administration in on it. Clarke says, and I concur 100%, that nothing could have been better from bin Laden’s standpoint than America invading an oil-rich Arab country without provocation and occupying it. Also, referring to Ariel Sharon as the “man of peace” and buddying up to him doesn’t help too much either.

Now we have these pictures of American soldiers humiliating Iraqi prisoners, and reports indicate that these are not isolated incidents and taking pictures isn’t the worst thing that happens. I know the majority of soldiers don’t do stuff like, but that’s not the point. In fact, what any American thinks of this really isn’t the point. The point is that Arabs are furious about this, as they should be. Americans were furious when their contractors got their burned corpses dragged through the street, so it really shouldn’t come as a surprise that Arabs are furious when their citizens get sodomized and humiliated for the pleasure of American troops.

This probably means that the chance that we had to mold Iraq in our way of choosing is completely gone. Bush said today that our troops will stay there until our mission is finished, but what mission we could accomplish at this point is beyond me. Perhaps we intend to stay until we sodomize every Iraqi by the end of this year. But the fact that we will probably end up replacing a feckless Iraq under Saddam Hussein with an Iraq in chaos, in civil war and the #1 tourist destination for mujahedeen fighters is actually not the biggest problem. The bigger problem is that not only will more Iraqis hate America now than when Saddam was in power, but more Arabs will as well. And I wouldn’t blame them, since the only America they know is the America that rumbles past their house in a tank. The only Americans they see are pointing guns at them or assaulting their fellow Arabs in television coverage. And if they somehow had the view that America was the bastion of freedom and human rights, the occupation, the siege in Falluja, and these pictures wiped that out.

It’s difficult to blame President Bush (or more appropriately, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and the rest of his cronies) for the actions of individual soldiers. However it’s not difficult to blame him for putting those soldiers in Iraq in the first place, and doing so with the least amount of support possible so that they would be under as much stress as possible (especially after their tour of duties are extended). And when the next terrorist attack occurs in this country by terrorists who either escaped our efforts to capture them while we were distracted in Iraq, or by those whose hate against us boiled over because of the occupation, the blame will be squarely on his shoulders as well.

One more thing... in addition to Clarke’s scathing indictments against the war in Iraq, he also cites numerous examples of the administration failing to fully fund homeland security initiatives and being unprepared to deal with another massive attack. Of course, it doesn’t help when the leaders of these departments who aren’t Bush cronies keep resigning for some reason.

Seven ABC Affiliates Ordered Not To Air 'Nightline'

This is incomprehensible. Check out the statement now on the front page of the Sinclair Broadcasting Group:

ABC Nightline Pre-emption

The ABC Television Network announced on Tuesday that the Friday, April 30 edition of "Nightline" will consist entirely of Ted Koppel reading aloud the names of U.S. servicemen and women killed in action in Iraq. Despite the denials by a spokeswoman for the show, the action appears to be motivated by a political agenda designed to undermine the efforts of the United States in Iraq.

There is no organization that holds the members of our military and those soldiers who have sacrificed their lives in service of our country in higher regard than Sinclair Broadcast Group. While Sinclair would support an honest effort to honor the memory of these brave soldiers, we do not believe that is what "Nightline" is doing. Rather, Mr. Koppel and "Nightline" are hiding behind this so-called tribute in an effort to highlight only one aspect of the war effort and in doing so to influence public opinion against the military action in Iraq. Based on published reports, we are aware of the spouse of one soldier who died in Iraq who opposes the reading of her husband's name to oppose our military action. We suspect she is not alone in this viewpoint. As a result, we have decided to preempt the broadcast of "Nightline' this Friday on each of our stations which air ABC programming.

We understand that our decision in this matter may be questioned by some. Before you judge our decision, however, we would ask that you first question Mr. Koppel as to why he chose to read the names of 523 troops killed in combat in Iraq, rather than the names of the thousands of private citizens killed in terrorist attacks since and including the events of September 11, 2001. In his answer, we believe you will find the real motivation behind his action scheduled for this Friday. Unfortunately, we may never know for sure because Mr. Koppel has refused repeated requests from Sinclair's News Central news organization to comment on this Friday's program.

I don't even know where to begin here. CNN has more on this, including that four of Sinclair's top executives have given the maximum $2000 to the Bush/Cheney campaign (this is appalling even without that knowledge, but it leaves no doubt as to why they're doing it).

That CNN article also says that ABC did air the names and pictures of those who died on 9/11 on its first anniversary. I can't really find any more info on that but it's beside the point. I know Nightline is not airing the names of non-combat-related fatalities simply because there isn't enough time in a half-hour, so I would imagine doing something similar for 9/11 on Nightline would have been largely impossible.

They state their reason for censoring the show as one spouse who opposes the reading of her husband's name to oppose military action. Except no one in ABC says this is being run to oppose military action - only Sinclair. I don't think they'll be airing any commentary, like "God, what a shame he had to die for a mistake." Just the names and pictures, and the viewer comes to their own conclusions. It says a lot about Sinclair that this is the conclusion they've come to.

Sinclair general counsel Barry Faber confirmed the company told its ABC affiliates not to air Friday's Nightline.

"We find it to be contrary to public interest," he said.

I'm sorry, but I find it to be in my interest to know the names and faces of those who died fighting for me and my country, or to at least have the opportunity to watch a television program that will tell me.

[edit] - From their site, it appears that they don't have any stations in Chattanooga, but they do run WB-18 and UPN-24 in Milwaukee, and WB-23 in Minneapolis. For those of you living there, if you feel the same way as I do about this, might I suggest writing a letter to those stations protesting the decision and/or explaining why you won't be watching their programming anymore. Those aren't ABC stations of course so they're not directly affected, but I'm sure they will pass the news up to Sinclair if they get enough of them. It's not like you were going to watch the WB or UPN anyway. ;)

Kruggers and Herby

A depressing (but accurate, as always) op-ed from Krugman today, and a furious one by Herbert. Though I'm mad too for the same reasons Herbert mentions.

Every time I see bad news about Iraq, I say either out loud or to myself, "Mission accomplished." Tomorrow is one year since Bush took the opportunity to congratulate himself with the "Mission Accomplished" banner by flying onto an aircraft carrier which had to do circles in the Pacific lest it get within sight of San Diego and spoil the illusion that it was too close for a helicopter landing and thus the fighter landing was necessary. Of course, much bigger illusions are being spoiled currently in Iraq. It's a sign of how out of touch this administration was and still is that I think they actually believed on that day that the mission was accomplished. That at least helps explain how things got so messed up.

More on this if time permits.

"Troubling."

Whoa whoa, hold up a minute, stop the presses. John Kerry voted against body armor! This whole time here I was telling you what an awful job President Bush is doing in the White House and telling you that you should support John Kerry, and now I find out that he doesn't want our troops to have body armor! What a fool I am to question our president! I also heard Dick Cheney insinuate that John Kerry voted to better equip the Iraqi Fedayeen to fight against our troops, and that he voted for the Make Babies Cry Act of 1987.

Here's a debunking of these latest ads from factcheck.org.

The "Coalition"

Arab News Editorial

I wonder how the Bush administration would/will react if Britain pulls out of the coalition. Bush would probably say something like, "Well, Portugal has 120 troops in Iraq, and I recently got a phone call from the president of Mozambique telling me I'm doing a really good job. The coalition is strong."

I was saying last night, right now anti-American sentiment is pretty high just about everywhere, but for the most part it's limited to anti-Bush feelings. Most people around the world are able to distinguish between the Bush administration and the American people, particularly given how close the last election was. They give us the benefit of the doubt that we didn't know how terrible they could be (and in relations with just about every foreign country, they've been abysmal). But if we re-elect him... all bets are off. It will basically be a ringing endorsement of everything he's done over the past four years, and average Americans would become 100% responsible for the actions of their government.

[edit] - Pew Research Center poll showing U.S. favorability ratings and more

Further Debunking of Cheney's Accusations

Perhaps I shouldn't have been so harsh on ol' Dick for his speech yesterday (you can read the full text of it here if you want). He's still an ass, and he should have better things to do than talk about John Kerry all day, but he brought up some decent points that I think I ought to shoot down, lest you hear them on Rush Limbaugh and get your panties in a twist.

One beef of the republicans has been that Kerry voted against defense spending, as if voting against defense spending for certain projects in 1990 (which is when most of these specific examples are from) means he'll suddenly decide to disband the military or something. In the previous post (found below this one), I linked to an article that described how Cheney didn't want to spend money on a lot of this stuff either. That article does a great job of describing why attacking Kerry on those votes is stupid, but I want to go one step further. Here's a quote from Cheney in the Washington Post on 12/16/84 found here:

If Reagan "doesn't really cut defense, he becomes the No. 1 special pleader in town...The severity of the deficit is great enough that the president has to reach out and take a whack at everything to be credible...If you're going to rule out the other two [Social Security cuts and a tax increase], then you've got to hit defense."

Apparently Kerry is a flip-flopper for doing things like voting for the Patriot act and then attacking it. But here's Cheney saying in 1984 that you have to do something to cut the deficit, either cutting Social Security or defense or increasing taxes, while nowadays he says we can spend more on defense, more on Medicare and cut taxes with a huge deficit. Obviously that's a change of mind that makes a lot of sense.

Speaking of flip-flops, one that Cheney brought up was that Kerry voted against the first Gulf War, for the vote in Congress in late 2002 authorizing the President to take some form of action against Iraq, and against the $87 billion appropriations bill recently to fund operations in Iraq. I can't explain the vote in 2002 other to say than it was simply a vote saying that Iraq could be a threat and it needed to be dealt with. Bush did a good job of it getting inspectors in there until he decided that the inspectors not finding any WMD couldn't possibly mean there was no WMD, and started a war. So I guess it's Kerry's fault that he gave him the benefit of the doubt on that one vote; obviously he should have assumed that Bush would have launched an unprovoked war with little international support despite some signs of cooperation from the Iraqi government.

As for the $87 billion vote, I recently saw a Bush ad that ended with a shot of Kerry saying "I actually did vote for the $87 billion... before I voted against it." Well haw haw haw, listen to that man flip-flop around on stage! That thar's sure funny! Except, if you actually think about it, all he's saying is that he tried to introduce an amendment that would pay for the $87 billion by raising taxes to cover it - you know, the radical idea that you need real money to pay for things. Then he voted against the bill in protest, knowing it wouldn't be a deciding vote. So he stood on principle rather than caring what the vote would look like in the election. And he pays the price for it.

Now the first Iraq war... there it gets trickier. Because nowadays that first Gulf war looks pretty good (especially compared to how the second one's going). And I agree that Bush 1 did a good job building the coalition for the first war and everything. But let's remember that our response to Iraq's invasions weren't exactly cut and dry. In 1980, Iraq invaded Iran. America's response to that was basically "Hey Saddam, go show that crazy Ayatollah who's boss. And here's some anthrax in case you need it." Overly simplified, but we were stuck somewhere between not caring and supporting Saddam Hussein. Then Iraq invades Kuwait and suddenly this is an atrocity that requires full mobilization of the U.S. military and full-scale war for the first time since Vietnam. So you could see how one could justify a vote against military action before the first Gulf war, not knowing as we know now how it might turn out.

My point being that these attacks against John Kerry are, at best, ignorant of the details and circumstances surrounding each vote, and at worst, completely baseless attacks by people who ought to have something better to do than fly to Missouri to attack their opponent more than six months before the election.

"And you, Dick Cheney, are no Winston Churchill."

On March 5, 1946, Winston Churchill traveled to Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, where he delivered his "Iron Curtain" speech which marked the beginning of the Cold War. So when Dick Cheney’s staff approached the President of Westminster College about delivering a "major foreign policy address" there on Monday, I’m sure they were delighted that the Vice President chose their school to deliver another a landmark address. Perhaps he would discuss the new struggle against terrorists as the "Cold War" of our generation? Maybe he would announce a bold new vision to defeat radical Islamists and free us from the quagmire in the Middle East? Or perhaps Dick Cheney would use the historic backdrop to attack John Kerry?

When the president of the college has to apologize for your speech, maybe you made the wrong choice. From the NY Times: "The contrast between the candidates this November will be sharper than it has been in many years," Mr. Cheney said (he’s right on that). "The senator from Massachusetts has given us ample grounds to doubt the judgment and the attitude he brings to bear on vital issues of national security."

So now Cheney is making vague inferences that John Kerry is unfit to lead the country with regards to national security. Of course, the last time Cheney was making sly implications like this, he was implying that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11, although no evidence of this exists. Now 70% of Americans believe this, probably because people just assume that when the Vice President says something, it’s true. He has access to the best intelligence in the world, so he can’t be wrong, and surely he couldn’t be lying. You create a scenario where either the Vice President lies/is stupid/is utterly wrong, or Saddam was behind 9/11. Not surprisingly, 70% of the country tend to prefer thinking they aren’t being led by idiots.

So now the Vice-Presidential Truth Machine is suggesting we doubt John Kerry’s judgment on vital issues of national security. May I helpfully suggest that we examine Dick Cheney & Co’s judgment on vital issues of national security. We invaded Afghanistan after 9/11, which was good, except we still can’t secure the country enough to have elections and the Taliban is still roaming around a good part of the country. We pulled out a lot of those troops to Iraq, where Saddam Hussein was too busy building big palaces to himself to notice that he had no WMDs, and where the citizens were too busy worrying about Saddam Hussein to hate Americans. Then we launched a war which most of the rest of the world condemned that did a real good job of toppling the regime, and a real bad job of doing anything close to rebuilding Iraqi society. Now Iraqis hate us too, because they know how powerful we are from how quickly we got rid of Saddam, and either we didn’t really want to rebuild their country and give it back to them, or we were just horribly incompetent at it. Of course there are many more reasons the Bush policy on national security is terrible, but I just wanted to give a sampler.

So with Cheney’s glowing record on national security out there, what was John Kerry’s major problem that Dick Cheney suggested made Kerry unfit to lead? Apparently, Dick doesn’t like the fact that Kerry voted against several Defense projects in an effort to cut defense spending. Unfortunately for Dick, he did the same thing. And he doesn’t like the fact that Kerry voted for the Patriot Act, then criticized it, and voted to give the President authority to deal with Iraq in 2002, then criticized how he did it. In Bush/Cheney’s view, once you announce a position, you have to stick with it, no matter how wrong it turns out to be.

disconnect.net Version 4 - A New Hope

So here it is, for the first time since the last time: a blog by Dan Coates. Let me clear something up right from the start – there will not be much originality here. I used to have a website here with all sorts of random thoughts and essays back in the day when such a thing wasn’t done to death and one could be at least moderately original and have a hope of carving out a niche on the web that wasn’t played out. I don’t really think that’s possible anymore. When thinking of a way to make this page look different than any of the hundreds of thousands of blogs that are probably out there now I came to the conclusion that it’s just impossible. Any design that isn’t a horrific assault on your eyeballs (and many that are) have already been thought of and used countless times. Similarly, any decent idea in the world of politics and current events (which is what this page will mainly be about) has already been thought of. I would highly doubt you will read anything here that you can’t read somewhere else. Having said that, let me explain why I decided to bother with all this.

For several months now I’ve been sending links to a few friends and family to articles mostly about how the Bush administration needs to be voted out and other related topics. Some people are liberal like me and just like hearing that they’re right. Others I’m trying to convince to vote Democratic in the next election and “see the light” so to speak. I usually include some kind of commentary with the links and articles I send, and sometimes the commentary is the main reason for sending the email in the first place. So I decided to move to a blog format both to allow other people to see the links, articles and commentary I was sending out, and to lighten the load on the inboxes of the people I was sending the emails to.

So let me be clear one more time: If you read the New York Times religiously every morning you may find my links to Paul Krugman’s op-ed articles redundant. If you read five or so websites that I like to read you may find 95% of what’s in here redundant. If you’re a liberal like me you can find plenty of other much more well-known blogs to tell you how right you are. What I intend to at least attempt to do is, for the people like me who read up on current events incessantly, to try to provide some commentary on why I think this and that is important, and to state my point of view as well as I can. And for the people who don’t have the time or the inclination to read through all the crap I do most days, I hope that I can provide links and references to some of the more worthwhile articles and opinions out there, and put them in a frame of reference that lets you know why you should listen to it and why you should care. Also, I hope people use the comments in here to add to what I say or start a discussion on it.

One more thing… as I mentioned before, I am a liberal and a Democrat. But I don’t necessarily expect that you are. Despite what I said before (3/4-jokingly), I did not start this site to tell you how right a liberal point-of-view is. I already mentioned that I am trying to convince a few people to vote Democratic in November’s elections, and I acknowledge that there are many things people can have differences of opinion on. I will do my best to respect that while still pointing out that there are some things which everyone should be able to agree on. And hopefully do this in a way that’s at least slightly more interesting and worthwhile than the thousands of people out there on the Internet saying the same thing.