In the documentary "So Goes the Nation," (yes, another shameless plug for the flick I was in) Paul Begala does an impression of Bill Clinton describing his attack strategy: "we're going to make it about their lives and not mine and we'll be both be better off.” Hillary is taking a page from Bill's playbook with her accusations that Obama is bringing racial issues into the nomination by having his supporters denounce her remark “that Dr. King’s dream began to be realized when President Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, when he was able to get through Congress something that President Kennedy was hopeful to do, the president before had not even tried, but it took a president to get it done.” The Democrats and Johnson didn’t “get it done,” the Civil Rights movement that King represented got it done in Selma and Birmingham and in countless other landmarks of oppression by standing up to brutal opposition and forcing the Democrats to do the right thing. She won't apologize for her comment in the belief that any compromise would make her look like a "flip flopper", so instead she attacks Obama, the embodiment of what the Civil Rights movement fought so hard to achieve.

This is a synopsis of the programs I ran in 2004 in Ohio that were featured in the documentary So Goes The Nation and was originally posted on one of my favorite blogs, Future Majority. One thing to note, I've started "trimming" the posts, so be sure to hit the "Read More" icon to see the whole story:

The Ohio Method

Despite the final outcome, those who participated in VoteMob and Downtown for Democracy saw the profound effect of peer-to-peer outreach paired with innovative data, media and targeting strategies. By throwing parties, hitting the bars, canvassing clubs, and going anywhere we thought there may be young voters we were able to compile a list of 130,000 of them between the ages of 18 and 34, we also registered over 10,000 for the first time.

Our persistence paid off. In Columbus, turnout increased among VoteMob contacts by 30.1%, around 76% of our registered contacts turned out, and we beat overall turnout (including the old folks) by 6% while beating under 30 turnout by 17.3%. Regular campaigns celebrate if they move the needle 5%, let alone 30%. (Thanks to Drew at WayPoint Data Solutions for running the analysis). In some precincts the Democratic vote was an astounding 187% higher than 2000. More importantly, there was no correspondent increase in Republican turnout. In terms of raw numbers in our targeted precincts statewide, 4 new Democratic voters made it to the polls for every new Republican added, demonstrating that our targeted efforts helped to increase the margin for the Democrats and deny any comparable advantage to the Republicans. The results in Columbus are indicative of our performance statewide.

In Part 1 of this series, a commentator astutely observed that any other proposal would have lost Dem votes and not gotten the requisite 67 votes to be veto proof. He or she said it was best for them to do the principled thing since Bush was going to veto everything anyway.

While I concede that it may have been impossible for the Democrats to push through a bill in the current political climate, my larger argument is deeper than legislative or parliamentary procedure. My question is what constitutes a “principled” stance on Iraq, and I assert that the immediate withdrawal plan proposed by the Democrats does not constitute a principled stance.

The problem is that in the 6 years since September 11th, the Democrats failed to formulate a compelling ethical or strategic alternative to the Bush administration’s caustic brand of international relations.

At the time of the war authorization vote in 2002, I was stunned at the readiness of Democrats to accept the insane rationales put forth by Bush, Cheney et al. for the Iraq War. Recall Sen. Clinton's October 2002 floor speech to the Senate regarding her endorsement of the Iraq war authorization:

If we get the resolution that President Bush seeks, and if Saddam complies, disarmament can proceed and the threat can be eliminated. Regime change will, of course, take longer but we must still work for it, nurturing all reasonable forces of opposition.

If we get the resolution and Saddam does not comply, then we can attack him with far more support and legitimacy than we would have otherwise.

Editor's note: Paul Rieckhoff of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America just posted this on Huffington Post and Military.com. I thought it merited a re-post in full because a) I have been sick and had to move so am behind on my own posts and b) it illuminates the disconnect between the boots-on-the-ground perspective and that of DC think tanks and policy heads, good read with informative links:

The 82nd Airborne vs. the Brookings Institution: Who Do You Trust for a Real View of Iraq?

This Sunday, the New York Times published an op-ed that gave a harsh assessment of the situation on the ground in Iraq.

The claim that we are increasingly in control of the battlefields in Iraq is an assessment arrived at through a flawed, American-centered framework. Yes, we are militarily superior, but our successes are offset by failures elsewhere. What soldiers call the "battle space" remains the same, with changes only at the margins. It is crowded with actors who do not fit neatly into boxes: Sunni extremists, Al Qaeda terrorists, Shiite militiamen, criminals and armed tribes. This situation is made more complex by the questionable loyalties and Janus-faced role of the Iraqi police and Iraqi Army, which have been trained and armed at United States taxpayers' expense.

The piece strongly contradicted years of study of the Middle East surely meant they wouldn't be taken in by a Department of Defense dog-and-pony show, right? And could yesterday's op-ed possibly come from a source more reputable than the Brookings Institution? What are the authors' credentials, exactly?

Buddhika Jayamaha is an Army specialist. Wesley D. Smith is a sergeant. Jeremy Roebuck is a sergeant. Omar Mora is a sergeant. Edward Sandmeier is a sergeant. Yance T. Gray is a staff sergeant. Jeremy A. Murphy is a staff sergeant.

This op-ed was written by seven American soldiers who are serving in Iraq right now. They describe themselves as "responsible infantrymen and noncommissioned officers with the 82nd Airborne Division soon heading back home." Sadly, one of the authors, Staff Sergeant Murphy, a Ranger and reconnaissance team leader, was shot in the head before the piece was published. (He is being flown to the U.S. and is expected to survive.)

Consider the tremendous amount of moral courage that it takes to put oneself on the line like this. Whether you agree or disagree with the stance these soldiers take, hats off to them for having the guts to write this piece. Only a person with exceptional love for his or her country would take this kind of risk. And because I know people will ask, I think these soldiers will be fine under the Uniform Code of Military Justice for two reasons: 1) they included a disclaimer, and 2) they didn't disclose any information that would compromise OPSEC (operational security). There is always room in the military for professional dissent.

And right now, we need their experience and opinions. These guys spent a year in Iraq, not eight days, which is why they can read between the lines on Pentagon statistics. For instance, when the Pentagon says, as they told O'Hanlon and Pollack, "more than three-quarters of the Iraqi Army battalion commanders in Baghdad are now reliable partners," the truth on the ground can be far different. As the soldiers recount:

A few nights ago, for example, we witnessed the death of one American soldier and the critical wounding of two others when a lethal armor-piercing explosive was detonated between an Iraqi Army checkpoint and a police one. Local Iraqis readily testified to American investigators that Iraqi police and Army officers escorted the triggermen and helped plant the bomb... The truth is that battalion commanders, even if well meaning, have little to no influence over the thousands of obstinate men under them, in an incoherent chain of command, who are really loyal only to their militias.

Bottom line: No scholarly articles can replace real boots-on-the-ground knowledge. Participating in a heavily secured, carefully orchestrated sight-seeing visit to Iraq does not make you a military expert any more than a trip to Yankee stadium qualifies one to be a baseball broadcaster for ESPN. That should be obvious by now.

But the media continually treats troops as wallpaper footage to run in the background while the latest talking-head pseudo-expert pontificates. And the White House hasn't learned the lesson, either, judging by the so-called "Petraeus report" coming out in September. The White House announced last week that this report won't actually be written by Gen. Petraeus. Once again experienced military leaders will be overruled by air-conditioned bureaucrats and Beltway experts.

So let's call the Petraeus Report what it is: Yet Another White House Plan. Of course, those don't have a great track record, especially when it comes to assessing the situation on the ground. In the meantime, as more Americans and Iraqi civilians die waiting for someone in power to listen to the troops on the ground, someone should call the Brookings Institution -- I can think of seven sharp 82nd Airborne soldiers who are getting back from Iraq soon, and they could use some comfy think tank fellowships.

The comparison between Rome and the U.S. has been made before, but not so forcefully by a non-partisan figure like David Walker, the Comptroller General (head honcho) of the Government Accountability Office. His intimacy with legislative and fiscal matters is considerable, and I think we need to listen. The Financial Times explored his assertion:

David Walker, comptroller general of the US, issued the unusually downbeat assessment of his country’s future in a report that lays out what he called “chilling long-term simulations”.

These include “dramatic” tax rises, slashed government services and the large-scale dumping by foreign governments of holdings of US debt.

Drawing parallels with the end of the Roman empire, Mr Walker warned there were “striking similarities” between America’s current situation and the factors that brought down Rome, including “declining moral values and political civility at home, an over-confident and over-extended military in foreign lands and fiscal irresponsibility by the central government”.

“Sound familiar?” Mr Walker said. “In my view, it’s time to learn from history and take steps to ensure the American Republic is the first to stand the test of time.”

While his comments may be a tad alarmist, I think there is considerable merit to them. In Walker's presentation regarding the subject, he asserts that our current fiscal and policy course will force us to either double current tax rates or cut federal spending by 60% by 2040. That's right when I'm set to retire, so bye bye Social Security and Medicaid for my (most probably) impoverished keister, and forget about my (hypothetical) children and grandkids competing with the rest of the developed countries.

I believe Walker's assertion that "over-confident and over-extended military in foreign lands and fiscal irresponsibility by the central government" are turning us into Rome in its death throes is compounded by the abandonment of the strong dollar policy (link to an informative Asia Times article on the consequences of this action). For years the U.S. coordinated with the "Group of Seven" countries that account for 65% of the world economy- i.e. Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States (and more recently, Russia- making it the G-8)- to implicitly coordinate on exchange rates and maintain a strong dollar relative to other currencies.

Our ability to finance such huge deficits is dependent on the willingness of foreign governments to hold dollar assets and use the dollar as a reserve currency. Without coordination with the Group of Seven (or is it 8?), the value of the dollar is determined by the market. A continued devaluation could force central bankers to move towards different currencies to stanch the loss in value of their assets; especially if our bad fiscal policies, negligence of human capital development and unsustainable military belligerence make them think the U.S. is an increasingly bad bet.

Part of the logic behind allowing the market to set the value of the dollar is to make imports more expensive and exports cheaper to reduce the trade deficit. This strategy ignores the fact that we are in a globalized economy. The U.S. isn't going to start making the kind of products we have been importing because they are more expensive, we are just going to pay more because our manufacturing base has contracted. This is part of the reason we haven't seen a reduction in the trade deficit.

If the world moves away from the dollar and our habits of consumption and savings remain the same, then the party will be over. We will have to raise taxes or interest rates which could precipitate a contraction in liquidity and lead to recession. Last week, Bush made the unusual move of trying to reassure the markets that this scenario wasn't happening, saying that the current volatility was due to an over-heated housing market and easy money that would soon correct itself. Bush pondered one solution, "tax cuts and reduced regulations aimed at overcoming what some see as a weakening of the competitiveness of American capital markets compared with those overseas." Yup, he said it- cut taxes.

There are strong arguments that the current jitters over U.S. debt and consequent volatility in global markets is, as Bush asserts, a correction and not a crisis (see my friend and college professor Michael Pettis' recent blog post "Is this the big one" for one of the better arguments). Also, a major shift from the dollar as reserve currency hasn't occurred yet. However, worsening fiscal and trade deficits matched with a major crisis in our debt markets could make a severe crisis and move from the dollar as reserve currency a reality sooner than later. This would compound the fiscal horror show Walker describes by undermining our ability to finance our debt. Regardless, it will take a lot of political will in the short and long term to counteract the Republican mantra of reduced regulation and taxation as well as their fiscal insanity. The FT article closes with Walker advising the current Presidential candidates to have the cahones to cultivate that political will:

Mr Walker said he would offer to brief the would-be presidential candidates next spring.

“They need to make fiscal responsibility and inter-generational equity one of their top priorities. If they do, I think we have a chance to turn this around but if they don’t, I think the risk of a serious crisis rises considerably”.

I hope they give him a call, and so do my unborn children and grandchildren.

The Dem's loss of the legislative battle to wrest the war authority from Bush has made it apparent that the overall Democratic strategy is purely political and divorced from any considerations of ethics or the national interest.

The proof came after the failure of the all-night session. The Washington Post reported:

After the vote, which followed a rare all-night debate, Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) startled colleagues by announcing that the Senate would not vote on several other proposals intended to force Bush to revisit his war plans. Although war critics in both parties had supported the measures, Reid and other Democratic leaders dismissed them as too weak. Instead, they are holding firm in their bid to persuade GOP critics of Bush's Iraq policy to embrace more aggressive Democratic measures to begin withdrawing troops.

Reid's move was hailed by antiwar groups, which have urged Democrats not to compromise.

The uncompromising position of the Democratic leadership on withdrawal serves as a red herring for the anti-war left, just as the Gay Marriage Amendment does for the Republicans and the conservative wing of their party. Both proposals have no chance of becoming a reality, but the parties deploy them to fire up their respective bases.

It is also clear that the support of the Dem Presidential candidates for the measure is a strategy to win in the upcoming primaries, disregarding the need for an immediate change in policy. They are also attempting to shift the blame for their initial support of the war to the Republicans in the 2008 election. Obama, Kucinich and Gravel are the exceptions, as they opposed the war at the time. However, Obama's incessant reiteration of his opposition to the invasion is disingenuous at best. There is no way of telling that he would have opposed it in the Senate, especially if he had been a freshman Senator. He was safe to criticize the war because he had no authority over it, had a smaller constituency to please, and was trying to stoke the enthusiasm of the Dean wing for a run he clearly had in mind at the time.

The reality is that the Dems could have put through a legislative package that would have mitigated the Republican opposition to the withdrawal timetable by replacing that demand with something more akin to the Gelb-Biden plan or the prescriptions of the Iraq Study Group. This could have garnered the veto-proof 60 votes needed in the Senate by adding the support of Republicans who oppose Bush's conduct of the war. That would have put more control of the war in the hands of Congress and enhanced the prospects of positive solutions in the short term. Instead, nothing has changed and thousands of Iraqis, Americans and allies continue to die and there is little prospect of a change of course in the short term. Great job, Sen. Reid.

The Dems chose to play politics instead of building bipartisan support. In the process they have ignored the national interest and ethical considerations (a point I will deal with in following posts). Making withdrawal the central theme for the opposition doesn't do anything to address the more salient points the Iraq Study Group and Gelb-Biden plan make, and having the "no more troops" message broadcast by MoveOn doesn't do a damn thing. While the results of the "surge" remain to be seen, the blatant dishonesty of the Administration coupled with their astounding incompetence make it clear that a Congress with bipartisan resolve would do a better job.

Can't the Dems see the long game? Bush isn't delusional, he went ahead and proposed the troop increase and has vehemently opposed timetables because he knew it was going to set the Democrats up to look like the divided and incoherent political opportunists they have increasingly become, while enabling him to retain the war authority.

In my coming posts I want to explore the views of Noah Feldman, author of What We Owe Iraq, as well as Paul Rieckhoff; an Iraq Vet and founder of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, with whom I helped create the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America PAC (now know as VoteVets.org). Feldman addresses the ethical dilemmas of occupation and our obligations towards the Iraqis through the prism of national self-interest while Paul offers a more measured view of the situation on the ground and tries to find a middle ground between the extremes of both parties. I also want to delve into the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group and Gelb-Biden plan.

We're just busy tempting, like fate's on the nod
running on empty, bourbon and god
it's been a while since we knew the way
and it's been even longer since our plastic priest class
had a goddamned thing to say

I was a lover before this war

TV on The Radio "I Was a Lover"

My name is Evan Hutchison, I'm 29 and a recovering Democratic campaign operative. Now I deploy voter files and field strategies with my firm, Voterscape. I've worked from Texas to New Hampshire trying to get Democrats elected.

The Democrats and "progressives" have, for the most part, failed to create a cohesive opposition or learn lessons from our excruciating defeats over the last 8 years. They hide behind the atrocities of the Bush administration and offer little in the way of substantive policy options as an alternative. The joy of November 2006 is disappearing as I watch the Democratic Congress fail to forge positive policies, wrest the war authority from Bush or win legislative victories. They seem to be interested in little more than scoring partisan points and fulfilling the diktats of their polling and media consultants in the pursuit of "victory" in 2008.

My goal is to point out some of the errors and propose positive solutions to them as well as bring attention to efforts outside of the party and the "netroots" that are emerging in the wake of so many failures. I may trash on people and organizations that are toxic as well.

I also want to analyze current developments from a historical and theoretical perspective. How would our current state of affairs be perceived by formative thinkers like Tom Payne or Alexis de Toqueville? What lessons can be learned from the struggles of the Civil Rights movement or the partition of India? If I can't answer questions like that, then I'll at least point you to stuff you should read and rant a little about why.

Below is an exchange I had with a good friend of mine who served two tours in Iraq as a Staff Sergeant in a Marine Infantry Company. Brian spearheaded the initial invasion and returned to build Iraqi security forces and fight in the battle at Najaf. I wrote him after Bush vetoed the war spending bill that required a timetable for troop withdrawals:

From: "Evan Hutchison"
To: "Brian"
Subject: Bush Veto
Date: Wed, 2 May 2007 01:06:09 -0400

The Iraq veto today got me thinking about the conflict again. In my experience, there is usually a solution to a problem, but folks up the chain of command, namely politicians, who have no interest in effecting a solution usually mess it up. I really believe a unilateral withdrawal with no replacement force (be it NATO or an Arab League force, as laughable as the latter is) will engender violence and human suffering on a
horrific scale and the world will judge it our fault. Is there a solution there? Are withdrawal and a civil war inevitable with what has been set in motion? Do you think Iraqis will resolve it themselves and boot the other outside influences, including Al-Qaeda?

I don't know what it will be like, but my understanding is that US forces are the only ones protecting the civilian population without regard to sect or ethnicity, and I actually think the neighborhood post component of the "surge" isn't half bad, although it is producing more casualties- it just needs to go hand in hand with more aggressive diplomatic and political efforts by the US.

It seems there are some leaders there, at least Sistani, who are still interested in the civic process and even Sadr seems to be wondering how he can legitimize himself. We can't just leave a vacuum there, we hold the monopoly of violence- Al-Qaeda and the insurgents can car bomb all they want, they can't flatten a town like we can. Who is going to step in? Everybody with a militia and some funding is my opinion, and hello Somalia, or the Delta region of Nigeria- except with a lot more Al-Qaeda, bigger arsenals, and in the middle of the geo-political shit storm. No f'ing way can we just cut out. I may have to vote Republican. As much as I hate the dude, Bush really had to veto that thing, in my opinion. Cutting the purse or impeaching him isn't going to solve a damn thing either. What do you think? I glean everything I know from the news and history, your perspective is more interesting to me.

--Evan

On 5/3/07, Brian wrote:

My perspective is going to have to be one of selfish pride. We (the Armed Forces) have put way too much time, energy and blood into something that has turned out to be a disaster. Although it is hard to admit, it's the truth. It hurts to see what the result of an extremely successful ground campaign and the subsequent time and tolerance spent putting up with the crap that is stability and security operations (something no one really wanted to recognize was an inevitable responsibility of the armed forces - Marines especially) actually turned out to be.

We put in a lot of long, hard days working with, training and befriending the Iraqis. Deep down, they all want to have a lot of the same freedoms we do, (not all of our freedoms, but a lot of them) but it's incredibly difficult to go against the grain in their culture. To get a legitimate opinion from one of those idiots is like pulling teeth. I did learn a lot about them during the time I spent there. I took time to get to know them. They are difficult to trust unless you are a family or tribe member, Sunni or Shia. With all of this being said, we (us uniformed patriotic retards) believe that we have accomplished a lot in Iraq and haven't backed down once from any of the challenges that we have faced while there. The day the first American died in Iraq, my heart was in it for the long haul, regardless of the cultural differences we experience, or the time we spend away from home. As hard as it is to believe, people are still joining the military, wanting to take part in a non-withdrawal, military solution in Iraq, fully knowing that they will eventually be sent to take part in the hostilities.

As long as we have people who feel strongly enough to put their life on the line in order to take part in this disaster, and we continue to have leadership out there willing to seek out solutions to end this thing with our balls semi-intact, we should stay until the Iraqi government has an established security force and credible religious and government leadership worthy of looking opposition in the eye and poking the fucker out. The militia idea would be OK, as long as you use them in a way that legitimizes the government at the same time. Take out stinger words like militia and replace them with regional "national guard" under "regional or provincial control", but maintain the main government's legitimacy by using the established army and security forces in the same regions to provide assistance when needed. Something we can have a hand in as well via special ops/CIA stuff for funding, but use the Iraqi army for training. No one "national guard unit" needs to be more powerful than its region requires it to be.

We need to stay is the bottom line. Just like we were supposed to exhaust every possibility to avoid conflict in the fist place, we should exhaust every possibility to ensure we don't create an even bigger vacuum dead smack in the middle of the Middle East that we will really have to deal with a couple of years from now.

I have no idea if I even answered your question, I just typed a lot of thoughts. It's hard to stay on track with a kid crawling all over you.

Chao,
B-Nizzle

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Evan Hutchison
Date: May 3, 2007 11:32 PM
Subject: Re: Bush Veto
To: Brian

You definitely answered my question, very eloquently. It is amazing to me that troops are still willing to go there, and a testament to the Armed Forces and Americans. I think you are dead on with your assessment. I hope more people come around to it, I think it is in line with the sentiments of a lot of Americans, particularly that we don't want to see the sacrifices made go to waste in what could grow to be a wider conflict.

I think your solution with the guard units balances regional autonomy and gives a buffer without destroying the authority of the central government or the ability of the U.S. to continue to lend support and fight the more destructive elements in the conflict. Thanks for the reply.

-Evan