Thursday, January 20, 2005

Regrets Posted here Thursday, January 20, 2005 at 6:54:01 AM     Richard Armitage in a press conference on retiring as undersecretary of state said something so well many of us wish I had been sent by the leadership of the country . Daily Kos — Outgoing Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said: ********

	Wednesday, January 19, 2005

The Decembrist: Bill Thomas Gives the Game Away Posted here Wednesday, January 19, 2005 at 9:20:19 PM     This seems a very plausible analysis. "What Thomas was saying is exactly the point I've been trying to make: that the Bush/DeLay goal is not primarily to privatize Social Security, although they would be happy to do that if they can. Rather, the goal is to create a political dynamic over the next one to two years in which the Republicans appear the party of opportunity, ownership, dynamism, and forward thinking, while the Democrats appear to be the defenders of old, boring, inadequate safety net programs. " ********

	Saturday, January 15, 2005

Problem is PR, or the content? Posted here Saturday, January 15, 2005 at 10:10:58 AM     http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/13/nyregion/13profile.html A) PUBLIC DIPLOMACY 1. U.S. LACKING STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS - RICHARD HALLORAN (KOREA HERALD, JANUARY 13): America’s ability to persuade other nations "is in crisis," says a task force report from the Defense Science Board, "and it must be transformed with a strength of purpose that matches our commitment to diplomacy, defense, intelligence, law enforcement, and homeland security." "Policies will not succeed unless they are communicated to global and domestic audiences in ways that are credible and allow them to make informed, independent judgments," the board says. "Messages should seek to reduce, not to increase, perceptions of arrogance, opportunism, and double standards." Those messages are carried in public diplomacy, through American Cultural Centers abroad and exchange programs that bring foreigners to the United States, and public affairs offices that address the foreign press. In addition, strategic communications include broadcasts by the Voice of America and information operations that can involve controversial psychological warfare. Missing from these efforts are "strong leadership, strategic direction, adequate coordination, sufficient resources (funds) and a culture of measurement and evaluation," the report says. ********

	Tuesday, January 04, 2005

Posted here Tuesday, January 04, 2005 at 3:13:26 PM       Reviewing the Democrats, the question of press bias, and why there is no left of center in the US.   January 2, 2005 DEMOCRATS ENTANGLED So What Happened in That Election, Anyhow? By ADAM NAGOURNEY   First example: For example, did Democrats lose because they were seen as lax on "values," which was the early verdict on the Kerry loss, or because they were seen as weak on terrorism?   Note how this precludes the possibility that they lost because they also seemed to support the war, and the polls show most people have had it with the war.   Note the definition of the "base" in the following   But the importance of values is disputed by more than a few Democrats, who obviously would prefer not to follow a plan that might irritate some fairly crucial parts of the base, be they secular Democrats, abortion rights advocates or supporters of gay marriage.   This precludes the possibility that the real "base" in the Democratic party is social fairness, less difference in wealth and income, support for social security, support for a more creative positive and peace inducing foreign policy.   He then quotes two Democrats without pointing out that their underlying position is strongly pro war in Iraq, and then fails to point out that Truman and Kennedy were much better at multilateralism, nor that the cold war was itself a bit of an invention.   "Values obviously are important," said Terry McAuliffe, the national Democratic party chairman, whose term expires in February. "But clearly, the overriding issue in this election was terrorism and national security. You don't get to those other issues until you have checked the box on national security."   Timothy J. Roemer, a moderate former Indiana congressman running to be Democratic chair, said: "We did not have a very compelling message about how to make Americans feel safer in a post 9/11 world. The message was more about Iraq, where our base voter was, than it was about talking through how, for instance, Truman and President Kennedy made Americans feel safe in the Cold War."   And to call Roemer a moderate is to say that anything let of center is not. As Kos tells us Well, he's a strong opponent of abortion rights. And he's one of only 20 House Democrats to vote in favor of social security privatization back in 2001. We're a big enough tent to accommodate differences on abortion (I'm not prejudging Reid because of his abortion stance). But Roemer's social security record is a deal killer. Roemer is not a Reform Democrat, and, beyond that, clearly outside the party's mainstream.   The point is, for the press, any democrat who is for social justice, legal justice, multilateral approaches to international security for all, and in favor of some constraints on corporations, is considered beyond the pale. How did this happen?   In debate, it is hard to make progress when one side is de-ligitimated, and only small differences are allowed. The point is, for the press, any democrat who is for social justice, legal justice, multilateral approaches to international security for all, and in favor of some constraints on corporations, is considered beyond the pale. How did this happen   My proposal is that we are in a corporatist state, it is winning, and everyone knows it. So live with it. Those who oppose it are going against the system, not looking for small reforms, because there are not going to be any .   There are no Democrats, only Republicans. There are two Republican parties. One fairly southern and rural plus suburbs called Republican, and one more urban and capital intensive called Democrats. Anything to the left of these positions is basically called socialist, and defined as out of the game       Meanwhile   From ABC news's The Note for today http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/TheNote/story?id=156238 In fact, the greater long-range consequence of the events in Asia gives the Leader of the Free World and the Commander in Chief another extended opportunity to sit astride the world look tough and compassionate at the same time. It looks like Bush can do anything, and the rest of the country is powerless. Social security, environment, .. And it just might be that he will lose on social security, and while progressives are fighting its destruction, environmental laws, energy policy, court appointments, proceed under the smoke screen. For alternative voices we have things like   The answer is quite simple. They beat us because they are abusers. We can call it hate. We can call it fear. We can say it is unfair. But we are looped into the cycle of violence, and we need to start calling the dominating side what they are: abusive. And we need to recognize that we are the victims of verbal, mental, and even, in the case of Iraq, physical violence.   Listen to George Bush say that the will of God excuses his behavior. Listen, as he refuses to take responsibility, or express remorse, or even once, admit a mistake. Watch him strut, and tell us that he will only work with those who agree with him, and that each of us is only allowed one question (soon, it will be none at all; abusers hit hard when questioned; the press corps can tell you that). See him surround himself with only those who pledge oaths of allegiance. Hear him tell us that if we will only listen and do as he says and agree with his every utterance, all will go well for us (it won’t; we will never be worthy). http://mathewgross.com/blog/archives/001041.html   and The War on Terror is a conservative frame. It is a phrase that was invented by Bush speechwriters after 9/11 for the sole purpose of casting the upcoming shift in foreign policy in terms that would evoke the conservative worldview in both the majority of the nation and the majority of electorate. The War on Terror evokes specific conservative ideas that include, but are not limited to, all of the following: the need for continuing escalation of the size and influence of the military industrial complex; a simplistic conceptualization of identity revolving primarily around the notion of a clash of civilizations between Islam and the West; a view that threats can only be countered and tamed through the use of force; justification of any United States military action overseas, whether unilateral or pre-emptive. When Democrats and liberals argue that Bush is not properly conducting the war on terror, they end up supporting that frame and all of the ideas it evokes. When Democrats and liberal hawks urge their candidates and fellow party members to take the war on terror more seriously, they end up reinforcing that frame in the mind of the nation and electorate and all of the conservative ideas it carries with it. When Democrats and liberals argue that there is ore to the war on terrorism than military actions they end of enhancing the power of the "war on terror" frame in the mind of the nation and the electorate and all of the conservative ideas the frame itself reinforces. That so many Democrats are not only willing, but also chomping at the bit to go along with the conservative frame of the "war on terror," is the main reason why Bush won in 2004. By repeatedly and unquestioningly reinforcing the "war on terror" frame, we aided conservatives in their goal of pushing the country decidedly into the conservative camp when it came to foreign policy. That we continue to claim that Bush is losing the war on terror, that conservatives do not understand the war on terror, or that we do not take the war on terror seriously only serves to worsen the problem. By using the frame "war on terror," we continue to reinforce the conservative ideas I listed above in the minds of the electorate and then wonder why the country keeps voting for conservatives.   From http://www.mydd.com/story/2004/12/30/16138/652 ********

	Sunday, December 05, 2004

Posted here Sunday, December 05, 2004 at 5:49:25 PM     The most important reading today has been the difficult article in The New Republic  www.tnr.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20041213&s=beinart121304   AN ARGUMENT FOR A NEW LIBERALISM. A Fighting Faith by Peter Beinart Post date: 12.02.04 Issue date: 12.13.04   Basically he argues that the democrats ("The Liberals") must embrace a new cold war mentality toward "Islamic Fundamentalism." He says it is the only way to win, and it requires confronting the soft side of the democratic party, and abandoning the social issues ( he does not name them but environment, economy, health...).   He does not see that the basic humanitarian side of the democrats is concerned that the it is the US fundamentalists that mirror the Islamic fundamentalists, and support the same kind of totalitarian government - in response to each other.   He seems to reduce the whole issue to winning. An alternative reading would be that he is trying to mobilize the democrats to be a war party. Why? protecting Israel might be one answer. It is not clear what other logic leads down this path, especially if the argument that it is the way to win fails.  He wants to say that people Voted against Kerry because he was weak on Iraq, which equals weak on Terror. But the polls show that people are much more concerned about terror than the war in Iraq, and their concern about Iraq is that it is such a mess.   Therefore being concerned with terror is not the same as supporting the war. Kerry made attempts to separate the issues, but because he was ambivalent in his voting about Iraq, and talked at the end about More troops to fight harder to win, I think the evidence shows that many couldn't see a difference between Kerry and Bush, and that sometimes foolish consistency is smarter than flip-flopping. It may be that the popular perception of both candidates is close to the discernible truth.   But now to the article.   During World War II, only one major liberal organization, the Union for Democratic Action (UDA), had banned communists from its ranks. Announcing the formation of Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), the statement declared, "[B]ecause the interests of the United States are the interests of free men everywhere," America should support "democratic and freedom-loving peoples the world over." That meant unceasing opposition to communism, an ideology "hostile to the principles of freedom and democracy on which the Republic has grown great." This is his set up. That being militant against Islamic fundamentalism is equivalent, and that he has no critique of the costs to US society of the way Bush has gong about it.   At the time, the ADA's was still a minority view among American liberals. Two of the most influential journals of liberal opinion, The New Republic and The Nation, both rejected militant anti-communism. The American Civil Liberties Union (aclu) denounced communism, as did the naacp. By 1949, three years after Winston Churchill warned that an "iron curtain" had descended across Europe, Schlesinger could write in The Vital Center: "Mid-twentieth century liberalism, I believe, has thus been fundamentally reshaped ... by the exposure of the Soviet Union, and by the deepening of our knowledge of man. The consequence of this historical re-education has been an unconditional rejection of totalitarianism." And he continues to equate anti totalitarian with being against Islamic fundamentalism and for the war in Iraq, not noting that Iraq was one of the most secular Arabic countries, itself opposed to fundamentalism (and conceivably holding  it at bay more than the US or post Saddam government can do).   Today, three years after September 11 brought the United States face-to-face with a new totalitarian threat, liberalism has still not "been fundamentally reshaped" by the experience. And here the equation is complete, and the idea that American liberalism needs to act cold war toward Islamic fundamentalism as if it were Soviet communism. The shift in scale makes Beinart Quixotic, spending all on very weak opponents, while strengthening them    On health care, gay rights, and the environment, there is a positive vision, articulated with passion. But there is little liberal passion to win the struggle against Al Qaeda--even though totalitarian Islam has killed thousands of Americans and aims to kill millions; He reduces the humanitarian justice side of the democratic party as completely as do the Bush folks. When liberals talk about America's new era, the discussion is largely negative--against the Iraq war, against restrictions on civil liberties, against America's worsening reputation in the world. In sharp contrast to the first years of the cold war, post-September 11 liberalism has produced leaders and institutions--most notably Michael Moore and MoveOn--that do not put the struggle against America's new totalitarian foe at the center of their hopes for a better world. As a result, the Democratic Party boasts a fairly hawkish foreign policy establishment and a cadre of politicians and strategists eager to look tough. But, below this small elite sits a Wallacite grassroots that views America's new struggle as a distraction, if not a mirage. Two elections, and two defeats, into the September 11 era, American liberalism still has not had its meeting at the Willard Hotel. And the hour is getting late.   Get rid of the softies is the message, make the democratic party the center of a new cold war.   The real change this year was on foreign policy. In 2000, only 12 percent of voters cited "world affairs" as their paramount issue; this year, 34 percent mentioned either Iraq or terrorism. (Combined, the two foreign policy categories dwarf moral values.) Voters who cited terrorism backed Bush even more strongly than those who cited moral values. And it was largely this new cohort--the same one that handed the GOP its Senate majority in 2002--that accounts for Bush's improvement over 2000. As Paul Freedman recently calculated in Slate, if you control for Bush's share of the vote four years ago, "a 10-point increase in the percentage of voters [in a given state] citing terrorism as the most important problem translates into a 3-point Bush gain. A 10-point increase in morality voters, on the other hand, has no effect."   This does not do a good job of sorting out the difference between the Iraq voting and the Terrorism voting, nor does it include the possibility of a much more strategic "win the hearts and minds" strategy and what it could accomplish, which was crippled by the negatives f the war (its stupidity, lying, meanness, ill-planning and Prisons scandals, to name a few). Nor does he in the article deal with the loss of esteem in all the countries of the world (according to poling such as done by Pew on worldwide country by country attitudes toward the US.   You get the idea. Here are further excerpts and a closing comment.   On national security, Kerry's nomination was a compromise between a party elite desperate to neutralize the terrorism issue and a liberal base unwilling to redefine itself for the post-September 11 world.  Like the other leading candidates in the race, he voted to authorize the use of force in Iraq. This not only pleased Kerry's consultants, who hoped to inoculate him against charges that he was soft on terrorism, but it satisfied his foreign policy advisers as well. For top Kerry foreign policy advisers, such as Richard Holbrooke and Joseph Biden, Bosnia and Kosovo seemed like models for a new post-Vietnam liberalism that embraced U.S. power. And September 11 validated the transformation. Democratic foreign policy wonks not only supported the war in Afghanistan, they generally felt it didn't go far enough--urging a larger nato force capable of securing the entire country. At the Democratic convention, Biden said that the "overwhelming obligation of the next president is clear"--to exercise "the full measure of our power" to defeat Islamist totalitarianism. Three months before the Iowa caucuses, facing mass liberal defections to Dean, Kerry voted against Bush's $87 billion supplemental request for Iraq. With that vote, the Kerry compromise was born. To Kerry's foreign policy advisers, some of whom supported the supplemental funding, he remained a vehicle for an aggressive war on terrorism. And that may well have been Kerry's own intention. But, to the liberal voters who would choose the party's nominee, he became a more electable Dean. That wasn't an accident. Had Kerry aggressively championed a national mobilization to win the war on terrorism, he wouldn't have been the Democratic nominee. Kerry was a flawed candidate, but he was not the fundamental problem. The fundamental problem was the party's liberal base, which would have refused to nominate anyone who proposed redefining the Democratic Party in the way the ADA did in 1947. In 1950, the journal The New Leader divided American liberals into "hards" and "softs." The hards, epitomized by the ADA, believed anti-communism was the fundamental litmus test for a decent left. Non-communism was not enough; opposition to the totalitarian threat was the prerequisite for membership in American liberalism because communism was the defining moral challenge of the age. Moore is a non-totalitarian, but, like Wallace, he is not an anti-totalitarian. And, when Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe and Tom Daschle flocked to the Washington premiere of Fahrenheit 9/11, and when Moore sat in Jimmy Carter's box at the Democratic convention, many Americans wondered whether the Democratic Party was anti-totalitarian either. [badly wrong minded] By January 2002, MoveOn was collaborating with 9-11peace.org, a website founded by Eli Pariser, who would later become MoveOn's most visible spokesman. One early 9-11peace.org bulletin urged supporters to "[c]all world leaders and ask them to call off the bombing," and to "[f]ly the UN Flag as a symbol of global unity and support for international law." Others questioned the wisdom of increased funding for the CIA and the deployment of American troops to assist in anti-terrorist efforts in the Philippines. In October 2002, after 9-11peace.org was incorporated into MoveOn, an organization bulletin suggested that the United States should have "utilize[d] international law and judicial procedures, including due process" against bin Laden and that "it's possible that a tribunal could even have garnered cooperation from the Taliban."  Bush has not increased the size of the U.S. military since September 11--despite repeated calls from hawks in his own party--in part because, given his massive tax cuts, he simply cannot afford to. An anti-totalitarian liberalism would attack those tax cuts not merely as unfair and fiscally reckless, but, above all, as long-term threats to America's ability to wage war against fanatical Islam. Today, however, there is no liberal constituency for such an argument in a Democratic Party in which only 2 percent of delegates called "terrorism" their paramount issue and another 1 percent mentioned "defense." or liberals to make such arguments effectively, they must first take back their movement from the softs. As Mary Sperling McAuliffe notes in her book Crisis on the Left: Cold War Politics and American Liberals, 1947-1954, while some of the expelled affiliates were openly communist, others were expelled merely for refusing to declare themselves anti-communist, a sharp contrast from the Popular Front mentality that governed MoveOn's opposition to the Iraq war. In 1969, Ronald Radosh could remark in his book, American Labor and United States Foreign Policy, on the "total absorption of American labor leaders in the ideology of Cold War liberalism." That absorption mattered. It created a constituency, deep in the grassroots of the Democratic Party, for the marriage between social justice at home and aggressive anti-communism abroad. Today, however, the U.S. labor movement is largely disconnected from the war against totalitarian Islam, even though independent, liberal-minded unions are an important part of the battle against dictatorship and fanaticism in the Muslim world. But, if elements within American labor threw themselves into the movement for reform in the Muslim world, they would create a base of support for Democrats who put winning the war on terrorism at the center of their campaigns. Challenging the "doughface" feminists who opposed the Afghan war and those labor unionists with a knee-jerk suspicion of U.S. power might produce bitter internal conflict. And doing so is harder today because liberals don't have a sympathetic White House to enact liberal anti-totalitarianism policies. But, unless liberals stop glossing over fundamental differences in the name of unity, they never will. But, despite these differences, Islamist totalitarianism--like Soviet totalitarianism before it--threatens the United States and the aspirations of millions across the world. And, as long as that threat remains, defeating it must be liberalism's north star. Methods for defeating totalitarian Islam are a legitimate topic of internal liberal debate. But the centrality of the effort is not. The recognition that liberals face an external enemy more grave, and more illiberal, than George W. Bush should be the litmus test of a decent left. Today, the war on terrorism is partially obscured by the war in Iraq, which has made liberals cynical about the purposes of U.S. power. But, even if Iraq is Vietnam, it no more obviates the war on terrorism than Vietnam obviated the battle against communism. Of all the things contemporary liberals can learn from their forbearers half a century ago, perhaps the most important is that national security can be a calling. If the struggles for gay marriage and universal health care lay rightful claim to liberal idealism, so does the struggle to protect the United States by spreading freedom in the Muslim world. It, too, can provide the moral purpose for which a new generation of liberals yearn. As it did for the men and women who convened at the Willard Hotel. We don't need a calling for the ambitious, we need a calling for truth and justice that appeals to the majority of mankind. The choice is not between being against totalitaruanism or leaving it alone, it is between getting it here in a worst kind of war there, vs working for justice and a liveable world.   Beinart's forced logic seems to argue that to win the next election (or to have won the last several) the Democrats ("Liberals") need to act like its a new cold war. I think most of us find that logic flawed. Multilateral justice and targeted police action would be much better, and leave us some room to deal with larger issues like environment, energy, spread of nuclear weapons.If so, what is his motive for going down this new cold war path? Why do we need to force terrorism (world wide a still small number of people and casualties compared to Bhopal, auto accidents...) to be the single issue to define the party?   How much of it is to keep the US on a path that protects Israel. Is there any other explanation?   Friedman in the NYT <http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/05/opinion/05friedman.html?oref=login&;hp>   Of all the irresponsible aspects of the 2005 budget bill that the Republican-led Congress just passed, nothing could be more irresponsible than the fact that funding for the National Science Foundation was cut by nearly 2 percent, or $105 million. On CBS news , there are other ways.. Millions of folded paper cranes fluttered down from warplanes in the skies over southern Thailand Sunday as the air force completed a mission of peace aimed at expressing the nation's hope for an end to separatist violence in the Muslim-dominated ...   ********

	Thursday, December 02, 2004

Posted here Thursday, December 02, 2004 at 3:41:11 PM     Thanksgiving was a time to think, to experience, to connect with nature and people.  It seems like the Republicans now will turn to some serious infighting, and it may make monolithic governance even harder for them. The Democrats don't seem to have a Central story: nearly winning the election, demographics moving in their favor (young voters more than any other group for Kerry), but the need to tell a story brings out how little of an agreed on story there is. The war? Globalization? Corporatism? There is no real agreement. Makes one just thoughtful. I read Vonnegut's 1950 Player Piano, a wonderful story about a dumb Texas governor, and the division of the world into managers, machines, and prols. What most caught my attention was that the prol description fits much of the red voter profile, but that much of the managers (not admired in the story) fit the profile of many blue voters, and especially their spokespeople. Suggests that the current red/ blue division is very thin, and the real division lines cut across all known identifiers. ********

	Friday, November 19, 2004

Posted here Friday, November 19, 2004 at 9:53:04 PM     More on garden world from http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/20/opinion/20rogers.html It's Easy Being Green By WILL ROGERS San Francisco — Though nobody seemed to notice, Republican and Democratic voters seemed to be of similar minds on one issue this election: the environment. Across the country, in red states and blue states, Americans voted decisively to spend more money for natural areas, neighborhood parks and conservation in their communities. Of 161 conservation ballot measures, 120 - or 75 percent - were approved by voters. Three-and-a-quarter billion dollars were dedicated to land conservation. In Florida, for example, President George W. Bush won at least 60 percent of the vote in Lake, Indian River and Collier Counties. On the same ballot, more than two-thirds of the voters in each of those counties approved local park bonds worth $126 million, by margins as high as 73 percent. In Gallatin County, Mont., where the president beat John Kerry by 56 percent to 41 percent, 63 percent of voters approved $10 million in bonds to buy conservation easements to preserve ranchlands. In Chesterfield County, Va., which Mr. Bush carried 63 percent to 37 percent, voters passed a $20 million park bond by 76 percent to 24 percent. It was the same in the states where Mr. Kerry prevailed. In Massachusetts, 10 townships approved extra taxes to support conservation and historic preservation. In Los Angeles, which Mr. Kerry won by 73 percent to 26 percent, 76 percent of voters approved a $500 million water-quality bond that included $100 million for conservation. And in both Burlington, Vt., where Mr. Kerry won 75 percent of the vote, and in Kendall County, Tex., where the president won 81 percent of the vote, voters approved $5 million to protect open spaces. So what's the story? Simply put, these measures unify Americans. It's hard to be against new parks and trails, or to disagree with wanting to protect farms and forests from development. What's more, voters have learned that these measures often provide local solutions to water-quality problems: preserving natural lands in watersheds can help protect drinking water sources or reduce storm-water runoff. It helps that success is contagious. For example, more than a decade ago, New Jersey created a program to provide extra money to local communities that had approved measures to raise money for local conservation programs. The program has enjoyed sustained support from Republican and Democratic legislators and governors. Now, every county in New Jersey has a program to finance land conservation, along with more than 200 of the state's cities, townships and boroughs. True, this year's election didn't turn on environmental issues. But the voters sent a message anyway: whether we're red or blue, we all have a little bit of green in us. Will Rogers is the president of the Trust For Public Land, a national conservation organization. ********