Donle’s Daily Dispatches

Volume 1 Issue 197        Today’s News and Views     Thursday, July 13, 2006

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Today's News and Views

No More Democratic Weasels!

When we started up Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, I knew we wouldn't be popular in some quarters. After all, conservatives have had the corner on putting forward breakthrough ideas for most of the past generation. And they have grown used it.

Progressives have let them get away with setting the terms of the debate.

What is the last major, serious, big new idea that you've heard Democrats put forward? Jimmy Carter's energy independence? Harry Truman's universal health insurance? Democrats have a great agenda of things we need to do and things we need to get back to after the Bush Administration's wrecking crew gets through, but we also need to add new elements that respond to the challenges we face in the 21st century.

But I never thought it would be other Democrats leading the charge against Democrats having new ideas. Yet, that's what we've seen. My Co-Editor at Democracy, Ken Baer, and I published an op-ed in today's Los Angeles Times fighting back.

We're fighting back against people like Jonathan Chait, who works at the New Republic, and wrote a previous piece in the Los Angeles Times trying to argue that Democrats don't need to put forward any new ideas or have a vision that speaks to America. Just approach things on a "case-by-case" basis and you'll be fine. Anyone with a basic knowledge of American history would know that's just plain silly. Democrats at their best have offered America something -- and those are the only times we've won.

The fact of the matter is that the biggest divide among Democrats today isn't between centrists or liberals, its between Democrats who want to put forward a big agenda to America and those who want to just slide by on the other guys mistakes.

I know about that second strategy - I fought against for more than a year while I worked on the Kerry campaign.

But the rift continues and its between Democrats with the courage of their convictions and Democrats who are just plain scared.

As we wrote today, these Democrats are like the 98-pound weakling who lives in fear of the school bully. They will say anything to avoid being stuffed into a gym locker: I don't really believe in anything! I don't stand for anything! Please just leave me alone!

Passing off this sniveling advice is a band of gnome-like "intellectuals" who counsel Democrats to avoid offering any vision or direction for the country and simply to wait for voters to so tire of Republican government that they will turn to more competent Democrats to administer a conservative state.

Don't we believe that Democrats can do better than run on Bush's incompetence and DeLay's crimes? Can't we put forward an agenda that inspires people around the country to rally to our side; that reshapes the political map so we can build a real majority and not just win a couple extra votes to carry Ohio or Florida?

And, by the way, can't we propose some real solutions that would make America and the world better in major ways once we actually win?

Sometimes, I shudder when I think about what Franklin Roosevelt or Harry Truman would think. They broke with the past in major ways to deal with new challenges at home and around the world. They created the New Deal and NATO, the GI Bill and the Marshall Plan. What would they think of these timid souls who think all the thinking has been done and Democrats can offer nothing better than a more competent job administering our conservative political system?

Having seen the failure of a generation of conservative ideas on fiscal and foreign policy, Americans are ready to listen to an alternative. Now is the moment for Democrats to offer a set of breakthrough ideas that will create a governing majority for a generation. That's our long-term goal at Democracy: A Journal of Ideas. But this will happen only if they are willing to be more than the railroad conductor making sure the trains run on time, and instead put America on a new and different track.

Copyright 2006 © HuffingtonPost.com, LLC

The Ex-Speakers Speak With One Voice on the Sorry State of Congress

By Dana Milbank
Thursday, July 13, 2006; A02

There are not too many issues that would give common cause to Thomas Foley and Newt Gingrich. Yet there they were, sitting next to each other yesterday: the last Democratic speaker of the House and the man who ousted him to become the first Republican speaker of the House in half a century.

And they were in perfect harmony as they kicked around the notion of "How Congress Is Failing America."

"Congress really has to think about how fundamentally wrong the current system is," Gingrich said of his former colleagues. When facing crises at home and abroad, he said, "it's important to have an informed, independent legislative branch coming to grips with this reality and not sitting around waiting for 'presidential leadership.' "

Foley nodded at Gingrich's points and applauded when he finished. "If I didn't have a somewhat long history with Newt Gingrich," the Democrat said, "I would listen to what he had said if he were a candidate for Congress and say, 'I think I'll vote for this guy.' I think he's absolutely dead right in his diagnosis of what's happening to this country and to the Congress."

The old foes had come to the American Enterprise Institute at the request of two of the capital's most ubiquitous pundits, Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein, to launch "The Broken Branch," the scholars' new book about Congress.

For nearly two hours, Gingrich, Foley and their bespectacled hosts spoke with one voice about the lowly state Congress now finds itself in -- and the lack of easy solutions.

The men had no trouble identifying the symptoms: a collapse of committee deliberations, the demise of oversight of the executive branch, the loss of the "regular order" of rules for debate and legislation, a runaway spending process, and a shrinking legislative calendar. The causes were also not difficult to find: gerrymandered districts, travel and fundraising needs keeping lawmakers away from Washington, the loss of centrists in both parties, quickening news cycles and the reliance on lobbyist-raised cash.

"Flatly, in the 36-plus years we've been here, we've never seen it this bad," Ornstein said.

Said Mann: "If you were to look back on history for a comparable period, it might well be the late 19th century." Foley and Gingrich nodded.

Gingrich was even more dire. "I believe we are drifting into a cycle where the challenges we face are a greater mismatch with our potential solutions than any time since April of 1861," he said.

Foley struggled to keep pace. "If the Congress fails, democracy fails," he said.

It was heartwarming to see the former speakers removing the knives they had stuck in each other's backs. Though they serve on a Pentagon advisory board together, it was their first joint public appearance other than a congressional hearing. They shook hands cordially, at times reached to pat each other on the shoulder as they spoke, and cited each other's points with phrases such as "I agree with Newt on this" and "Speaker Foley will not disagree with me" and "As Newt says."

Gingrich, 63, cited a favorite Foley story he heard years ago, and Foley, 77, applauded Gingrich when he finished. Foley let only one scowl cross his face, when the moderator mentioned the Contract With America, the manifesto of the Republican Revolution of 1994. Each man confessed how his own leadership contributed to the problem.

In a sense, both former speakers share a need for rehab after highly public falls, Foley to an unknown challenger in his Washington state district and Gingrich at the hands of colleagues after poor election results and an earlier ethics flap. "Nothing gets one referred to as a great leader of an institution more than a willingness to show up on a panel," Gingrich quipped, "and one can gradually rebuild almost any reputation if you pander enough to the authorities that write columns and show up on TV."

The two were also united in their inability to offer a "silver bullet," as Foley put it. Their solutions were incremental: Restore committee power to write laws, ban fundraising in Washington, abolish lawmakers' political action committees, end spending "earmarks" and enforce the rules that guide the legislative process.

But a real change, they concurred, would come only with fresh blood. "The correct answer," Gingrich said, "is for the American people to just start firing people. This is what the Progressive movement was."

Until then -- and there are few signs of a mass movement building -- the legislative branch will have to heal itself. Gingrich suggested Congress rediscover its power to supervise the administration. "The failure to do effective, aggressive oversight disserves the country and disserves the president," he argued.

Foley encouraged Congress to stop whining about executive power and push back. "There's no mystery about Dick Cheney's position," he said. "It's the obligation of Congress to decide how far they want executive power to be exercised."

And, while waiting for a voter backlash to clean up Congress, Gingrich had some pithy advice for lawmakers who, in the current wave of scandal and personal enrichment on Capitol Hill, have confused the public interest with their personal interests. Said the former speaker: "My answer to them is 'Go home.' "

© 2006 The Washington Post Company

News

War veterans denied GI Bill benefits

By RON MARTZ
Cox News Service
Monday, July 10, 2006

SUMMERVILLE, Ga. — Andy Rowe thought he had life after the Army pretty well figured out before he came home from eight months in Afghanistan in November 2003.

An Army reservist since high school, Rowe, 27, planned to serve out the remaining four months of his military obligation in the inactive Reserve, get his honorable discharge and then use his GI Bill education benefits to go to college, just as his father did more than 30 years ago.

But Rowe soon realized that, despite his time in a combat zone, he didn't qualify for those education benefits unless he remained in the Reserves or Guard.

It's the same for tens of thousands of National Guard and Army Reserve troops mobilized since 9/11 — the largest deployment of reservists since World War II.

When military benefits were updated in 1984 through a law called the Montgomery GI Bill, members of Congress and even the military did not envision reservists being called into active duty as frequently as they are today. The law did not extend full college benefits to citizen soldiers and terminated them once they left the Guard or Reserve.

But since 2001, more than 500,000 reservists and Guard troops have been deployed for homeland security duties or sent to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet when they get home, they don't get the same benefits as those who were active-duty service members.

"Looking at how the Reserve forces are being used now, it really upset me," said Rowe, called up from the inactive Reserves to serve in Afghanistan.

Retired Army Col. Bob Norton is deputy director for government relations for the Washington-based Military Officers Association of America, which is lobbying for an extension of benefits.

"Under the law, [reservists and Guard troops] are veterans for every single benefit except the education benefits," Norton said.

Primary opposition to changing the education benefit for reservists and Guard troops — those on duty one weekend a month and two weeks in summer unless they are called to active duty — is coming from the Pentagon's Office of Reserve Affairs. Pentagon officials fear changes could hurt attracting and keeping men and women who sign up for the Guard or Reserve.

"It has proven to be a very attractive recruiting tool, and its effectiveness as a retention tool is certainly equally important to the Reserve components," Assistant Secretary of Defense for Reserve Affairs Thomas Hall testified in March before the House Veterans Affairs Committee.

The Military Officers Association has helped put together a consortium of about 40 groups and service organizations that represent more than 5.5 million vets — including such stalwarts as the American Legion, Veterans of Foreign Wars, Association of the U.S. Army and Military Order of the Purple Heart — collectively known as the Partnership for Veterans Education. Several higher education associations such as the American Association of State Colleges and Universities and the American Council on Education also are part of the consortium. Its aim: to try to persuade Congress to provide more equality in education benefits for citizen soldiers.

The group is pushing especially hard for what it is calling the Total Force Montgomery GI Bill. One major selling point of this proposal is the portability of GI Bill education benefits. That would allow reservists such as Rowe to earn credits for education while mobilized, just like active-duty troops do, and then use them after they leave the service.

Current law gives troops who serve on active duty three or more years to collect up to $1,034 a month for 36 months as full-time students. That benefit is available up to 10 years after discharge.

Reserve and Guard troops can earn 60 percent of that, or about $22,000, if they are mobilized for 15 months — the average length of deployment — and then go to school full time. However, they can collect only if they remain in a Guard or Reserve unit. If they go into the inactive Reserve — also known as the Individual Ready Reserve — as Rowe did, or are discharged, they no longer are eligible for education benefits.

"Right now, it's a double standard. They are treating these reservists like second-class citizens," Norton said. U.S. Rep. Jim Matheson (D-Utah) said Marine reservists in his congressional district who were deployed after 9/11 alerted him to the disparity in benefits.

"When I heard about it, I didn't think it was right," Matheson said.

Last year, he co-sponsored with Rep. Heather Wilson (R-N.M.) legislation that would enable Guard and Reserve troops who have accrued 24 months of active service within the last five years to be eligible for 100 percent of GI Bill education benefits.

Some unofficial cost estimates of the Total Force Montgomery GI Bill run as high as $4.5 billion for the first 10 years, although the Congressional Budget Office has yet to weigh in with more detailed figures.

Despite its cost, which could become a key obstacle in Congress, the bill now has 140 co-sponsors from both sides of the aisle, including Georgia Democrats John Barrow, Sanford Bishop, John Lewis and David Scott and Republican Nathan Deal.

"This is truly a bipartisan issue because it's about veterans," Matheson said.

The MOAA's Norton said another measure in the works is an amendment offered by Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) to the fiscal year 2007 Defense Authorization Bill.

This amendment would enable Guard and Reserve members mobilized for active duty to use their GI Bill education benefits after they leave military service.

Hall, the assistant secretary of defense who also is a retired rear admiral, told members of Congress that such a change could affect troop retention.

"The fact that a member must continue to serve in the Reserves to maintain eligibility has greatly assisted the Reserve components as a whole in maintaining consistently high retention rates over the years and has increased the education level of our Reserve forces," he said.

But Norton contends that the Defense Department's own survey data show education is not a major factor in an individual's decision to re-enlist or extend in the Guard or Reserves.

Rowe said education benefits he thought he would receive as a reservist were only part of his decision to enlist in 1996, when he was 17 and still a high school junior in his hometown of Summerville.

"My father instilled a true sense of patriotism in me, and I wanted to do something for the country," Rowe said.

His father, Tim, had served in the Air Force and used his GI Bill benefits to obtain an education degree and become a teacher.

Rowe went to basic training between his junior and senior years in high school and then was assigned to a unit — first in Chattanooga, and later in Atlanta — as an information systems specialist. He served nearly six years in the active Reserve force before transferring to the Individual Ready Reserve.

In April 2003 he was recalled to active duty and sent to Afghanistan, giving up his civilian job as a project manager for a telecommunications company.

"All I wanted to do when I came home was get another job and go back to school. But then when I applied I found out I couldn't use the GI Bill so I had to reconsider things," he said.

Rowe now works for Covista Communications out of Chattanooga and said that the issue for him is not so much the money as the principle.

"I don't think there's anything that will be done to help me now, but I think it's something that definitely needs to be done for soldiers in the future," he said.

Ron Martz writes for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

© 2006 Cox Ohio Publishing - Oxford Press

Jeb Keeps Picking Loser Christians

Posted by Trish | Jul. 12, 2006, 2:32 pm

Jeb Bush might be wondering how the godly could get him in so much trouble. First he had to call for the resignation of his appointee as secretary of the Department of Corrections after a string of scandals that make former FEMA head Michael Brown look like he really DID a heck of a job.

“I need political influence in order to obtain the things that I think that I need to obtain for the Lord, Jesus Christ”

Under James Crosby’s DOC, Floridians have watched steroid abuse among prison guards while they lived in state housing and pilfered state supplies and vehicles; rapes of female inmates; fatal beatings of a prisoner in 1999 and a teenage boot camper this year; kickbacks from privatized prison vendors; and an investigation by the FBI.

But Jeb said when he explained to Crosby earlier this year that things must calm down soon or else he would need his resignation, the man was downright pious.

“If you’ve done something wrong, tell me now and I’ll ask for your resignation,” Bush recounted his talk with Crosby. “Lead or get out of the way. This is an important department.”

Crosby said he wanted to pray about it and discuss it with his family.

Aw, isn’t that nice? What a guy. Crosby surrendered yesterday in Jacksonville, citing alcohol abuse as the reason for his rotten-to-the-core leadership. He faces eight years in prison and the loss of his state pension.

But that’s not the only area where things have gone south for Jeb and the lordly. We recently reported that the Rev. O’Neal Dozier, Jeb’s man in the black Republican community, was in trouble for making slurs about Islam on the radio. Now the gov has asked for his resignation from his Jeb-appointed post on the judicial nominating committee of Broward County.

[Dozier’s] views, criticized by Muslims, will mean his political involvement may be less influential, which he sees as a regrettable consequence to his primary mission.

“I need political influence in order to obtain the things that I think that I need to obtain for the Lord, Jesus Christ,” he said Tuesday, two days after turning in his resignation…

“If you look at the Quran, all the way from the beginning to the end it speaks of evil and violence,” Dozier said.

And so, you see, in that respect it differs starkly from the Bible, which does not have a blood sacrifice, war, stoning, salt-turning, plague, crucifixion, or four riders of the apocalypse on every other page. But there’s a bigger lesson for Dozier, according to Ibrahim Hooper of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

“He might take a look at his Bible again and see what Jesus what would do in these circumstances,” Hooper said. “I doubt that Jesus, peace be upon him, would seek to increase divisions and hostilities in the society in which he lived. Jesus preached love and respect, not hatred and mistrust.”

Copyright © 2006 Pensito Media Group, LLC.

Wednesday, July 12, 2006

Republicans have lots of respect for our dead troops. Too bad they couldn't care less about the living ones.
by John in DC - 7/12/2006 10:00:00 PM

Everyone remember this little beauty from the 2004 campaign, when George Bush decided to use the 3,000 dead on September 11 as campaign props?


Well, apparently now that the war on terror and the war in Iraq have become one big fiasco (where is Osama, anyway?), the Republican party has suddenly decided that talking about both wars is no longer politically correct. Which of course is understandable. I wouldn't want anyone talking about my biggest failures either, especially if they led to the deaths of nearly 3,000 US soldiers in a senseless war that's become a fiasco due to my incompetence.

I bring this up because the Republicans are now freaking out - meaning, they're running scared - over a new Democratic video highlighting Bush's many failures, and how America has taken a "turn for the worse" under Bush's and the Republicans' stewardship. And the video is of course, correct. It shows photos of pollution, the abysmal response to Hurricane Katrina, and the failed Iraq war, among other examples of Republican incompetence. The Iraq war photos in the video include that now-famous photo of the flag-draped coffins in the military jet coming back to the states from Iraq. Rightly suggesting that the deaths of nearly 3,000 US troops in a fiasco of a war is most certainly a "turn for the worse" that America has suffered under George Bush's presidency.

Now, you'll recall that George Bush has refused to attend even a single funeral of a US service member killed in Iraq.

And you'll recall that Bush has tried to stop the media from showing the arrival of the coffins of any US soldier who died in Iraq. Thousands of dead heroes are kind of a downer when you're trying to con the public into thinking everything is going swell.

So you won't be surprised to find out that the Republicans are now feigning freak out over the pictures of the coffins serving as a moving memorial to how sad and wrong it is that Bush and the Republicans are responsible for killing nearly 3,000 of our proud US troops.

What would the Republicans prefer we use to depict the tragedy of the deaths of our soldiers at the hands of a commander in chief who is inept and a Republican congress that is non-existent? Well, we already have that answer: The Republicans prefer we don't acknowledge the deaths of our troops at all. To the Republicans running Washington, DC, the deaths of our soldiers in Iraq are an embarrassment, an inconvenient truth one might even say. To Republicans in Washington, American soldiers don't matter, dead or alive, unless you're a Republican running for re-election, then our troops pop up in all your campaign events and ads as if they're our troops' new best friend, only to be forgotten until the next election.

But Republicans are not our troops' best friend.

Republicans sent our troops to Iraq to risk their lives for a lie. They sent our men and women into battle without the body armor they needed to stay alive. Republicans sent them in insufficient numbers to get the job done. They sent them with no plan for victory, no plan for exit. They sent them without even enough food.

Republicans cut the funding for veterans back here in America, and have left scores of Iraq war vets now homeless. And Republicans refuse to even consider pulling our troops out of a failed Iraq war, even as our troops continue to die each and every day - and why? - because a withdrawal would be an embarrassment to our failed commander in chief George Bush. And in a Republican's mind, what's a few thousand dead US troops when compared to possibly embarrassing the worst president ever?

So, the Republicans are understandably freaking out. After all, George Bush and the Republicans are responsible for the biggest US military failure since Vietnam. (And Dick Cheney is responsible for cutting the US military budget far beyond what anyone ever even wanted.) The only way the Republicans know to react is not to fix the problem, but rather to attack the messenger and distract the public.

So, expect to hear a lot from the Republicans in the coming days about how much they respect our dead troops.

Maybe someday they'll respect the ones who are still alive too.

Copyright 2005 - John Aravosis

Act First, Ask Later

Peter Dreier and Kelly Candaele

July 11, 2006

Peter Dreier is professor of public policy at Occidental College in Los Angeles. Kelly Candaele is a trustee of the Los Angeles Community College District.

News reports about three recent court decisions—Texas gerrymandering, labor violations by Ralphs supermarket chain and President George W. Bush's treatment of prisoners at Guantánamo—make it appear that justice prevailed and the wrong-doers got their comeuppance. But the opposite is true.

Instead, these rulings reveal why the Republican Congress, the Bush administration and big business are so effective at getting what they want. They have an “obey when convenient” approach to our laws and judicial system. They break them when it suits their purposes, hoping that either they won't get caught or, if they do, that the punishment will be a slap on the wrist. In other words, they don't ask for permission. They ask for forgiveness.

On June 28, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Texas legislature had illegally gerrymandered a Texas congressional district by removing 100,000 Latinos from it to guarantee a safe Republican seat. The court told the Texas legislature to go back and redo the district. Republican Congressman Tom DeLay, the former House Majority Leader, set the stage for this redistricting by illegally raising corporate money which he funneled into the campaigns of Republican candidates for the state legislature in 2002. Thanks in large measure to these illegal campaign contributions, the GOP captured control of the Texas legislature and in 2003 redrew the map of the state's congressional districts. As a result, in the 2004 elections, the Republicans gained six Texas congressional seats that had previously been held by Democrats. Under the old map, Texas Republicans held only 15 of the state's 32 seats in Congress. After DeLay redrew the map, Republicans held 21 seats. This helped solidify the GOP's majority in Congress.

It is now clear that DeLay's redistricting chicanery was part of a web of corruption, linked to his friend and lobbyist Jack Abramoff, his congressional staffers-turned-lobbyists, and other sordid influence peddlers. Last year, a Texas judge ruled that DeLay's Texans for a Republican Majority Political Action Committee (TRMPAC) had violated state law by not disclosing over $600,000 worth of fundraising money and a federal grand jury indicted TRMPAC for accepting illegal political contributions. A federal grand jury also indicted two DeLay aides for illegal acceptance of corporate political contributions.

For their misdeeds, Abramoff is facing jail time, and DeLay was forced to resign his congressional seat and may, too, spend time behind bars. But the fruit of all this corruption is that, even if DeLay and his buddies wind up in the slammer, the Texas congressional delegation now has a substantial Republican majority, making it extremely difficult for the Democrats to take back the House. The Supreme Court ruled that one of the six gerrymandered congressional districts violated the Voting Rights Act, but failed to toss out the others that had been crafted by DeLay. In truth, none of them would have been created in the first place without DeLay's illegal use of corporate contributions. While DeLay never planned to quit the House or go to jail, many Republicans and their corporate allies view him as a martyr—or at least a sacrificial lamb—in the larger cause of controlling Congress. DeLay's demise, and last week's Supreme Court decision, doesn't undo the original sin: illegally soliciting corporate money to reverse the partisan make-up of Texas' congressional delegation.

In another recent case, the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles ruled that Ralphs, the giant supermarket chain, has to pay a $70 million fine for illegally hiring employees during a grocery workers’ strike in 2003 and 2004. Ralphs agreed to plead guilty to five felony charges included in the 53-count grand jury indictment against the corporation. Ralphs—which is owned by the Cincinnati-based Kroger Co., the nation's 21st largest company, with revenues of more than $60 billion—used fake names and Social Security numbers to secretly rehire about 1,000 locked-out workers during the longest and largest supermarket strike in U.S. history.

The strike cost Ralphs and two other national grocery corporations (Vons and Albertsons) about $1.5 billion in sales. But the business giants were able to outlast the United Food & Commercial Workers union, whose members lost four months of pay, health insurance, and in some cases, their homes during the dispute.

Although the workers Ralphs hired illegally represented a small fraction of the 60,000 strikers throughout Southern California, the company's misdeeds served its purpose. It helped keep the stores open with experienced employees, contributing to the company's ability to beat the strikers. Now, two years after the strike ended in defeat for the union, Ralphs has been called on the carpet for its law-breaking.

Analysts have interpreted the court-imposed fine as a setback to Ralphs and a major warning to big business to avoid engaging in such illegal activities. In reality, the $70 million fine should be viewed as a small slap on the wrist, a cost of doing business, even an investment in Ralphs’ longer-range effort to undermine the union's influence on labor-management relations. And the few thousand dollars that will be paid to the strikers as restitution will not begin to make up for what they have lost in wages, lower salaries, disrupted lives and psychological damage.  

Ralphs' behavior is typical of how many businesses view lawbreaking acts—such as defying pollution standards, violating workplace safety laws, or hiring undocumented immigrants. For example, it is against federal law for companies to fire workers for union activities, but the practice is widespread. Corporations facing union campaigns typically fire labor leaders illegally, knowing that they may eventually have to rehire them and pay fines and back wages, but only years later, after the union campaign has been thwarted. Under Bush, the understaffed and ideologically conservative National Labor Relations Board has shown no willingness to halt these illegal activities when they have the biggest impact. In this way, Ralphs (and its sister grocery chains) acted rationally during the supermarket strike. It is part of a broader strategy on the part of big business—with the support of the Bush administration and Republican Congress—to weaken the labor movement as a viable voice for America's working people.

The third judicial case viewed as a conservative setback was the Supreme Court’s rebuke of President Bush’s attempt to go around Congress by establishing special military trials for detainees at Guantánamo Bay. Bush and his advisers had attempted to undermine the statutes of the Geneva Convention by creating their own rules for how prisoners were legally treated. Many legal experts, including Bush supporters, are outraged by the president's willingness to ignore the Constitution in order to expand the authority of the White House in the name of the “war on terror.”

But far from being unusual, such lawbreaking has become a pattern in the corporate world, the right-wing forces in Congress, and in the Bush White House. They live by the credo that what is important is what you can get away with. The Texas re-districting Ralph’s labor violations, and Bush's Guantánamo cases are the fruits of that arrogance.

The common theme that unites corporate America, congressional Republicans, and the Bush administration is their willingness to act first—often illegally—to consolidate important political, economic and legal changes. In many cases, the powerful perpetrators never get caught. In other cases—as with Bush's Guantánamo prisons, DeLay's corporate-sponsored redistricting, and Ralph’s union-busting —the criminal justice system eventually catches up to such misdeeds. What is unfortunate about all of this is that Democrats in Texas, Ralph’s workers, and the inmates of Guantánamo Bay have already paid a steep price for the injustice inflicted upon them by powerful people.

© 2006 TomPaine.com ( A Project of The Institute for America's Future )

Making Sense Out of Dangerous Nonsense

By Bernard Weiner
Co-Editor, The Crisis Papers

July 11, 2006

I try to make sense of politics -- it's what my doctorate implies I'm qualified to do -- but often I am defeated. Reality is just too damn weird. And satire these days is almost superfluous. Here are three examples.

History tells us that long-term military occupations don't work, but countries continue to invade and occupy lands belonging to others. Then the occupiers seem shocked -- shocked! -- that the natives don't want them there.

Israel, for example, has a love-hate thing going with its occupation of Palestinian land. On the one hand, it knows that military occupations are self-defeating sappers of Israel's moral, economic and military strength, and so it makes moves to pull back within its borders, as it did in Gaza (but not yet in the West Bank). But then it permits itself to re-occupy, or at least re-invade, land that it left.

Two thirds of Americans know that the occupation of Iraq three years after Bush declared "mission accomplished" is reckless and nonsensical, and want the U.S. military to start exiting Iraq. Iraqis overwhelmingly have indicated that they'd prefer the U.S. start leaving as well or, at the very least, present a rough timetable for when that might start to happen.

But for both Israel and America, their occupations continue and appear to grow even worse. The very presence of these foreign troops on the ground, in Palestine and Iraq, is a large share of the problem, a running sore that creates a deepening infection in the local body politic, engendering a nationalistic resistance to throw the occupiers out. But the two military giants, each possessing overwhelming firepower, are caught in a quagmire of their own devising in trying to deal with shadowy, lightly-armed guerrillas who simply won't give up.

POWER AND HUMILIATION

In both Iraq and Palestine, the issue of humiliation is a constant. Israel continually, day after day, grinds the Palestinians' collective nose in their powerlessness; America uses its mighty arsenal to remind Iraqis who really controls their lives (and their deaths), and tries to impose a "democracy" from the outside.

If the U.S. is really interested in stabilizing the Middle East region, and diminishing the power of terrorist organizations that use that conflict as a rallying cry and recruiting tool, the logical first step would be to solve the Israel/Palestine conflict as quickly as possible. Instead, the Bush Administration does nothing, in effect serving an an enabler of the spiraling violence.

Both sides know roughly what needs to happen in order to effect a stabilizing peace: Israel withdraws from its settlements to its pre-1967 borders and is guaranteed security; a geographically and economically viable Palestinian state is created in West Bank/Gaza; treaties are worked out on right-of-return, jobs and water and so on; neither side permits the occasional terrorist act to deter its dedication to maintaining the peace; and Jerusalem is administered by an international body that shows no favoritism to any country.

That's the clear way to peace, but both sides make sure not to go there. The only logical conclusion is that they are not ready yet to travel that path; each believes that just one more military push will bring it what it wants. And, basically, what it wants is for the other side to vanish. Ain't gonna happen, but desire knows no logic.

When both sides are ready to accept that the Other is not going to disappear but has genuine needs and desires that need to be satisfied, which realization will require some very real and painful compromises, then and only then can the road to peace be taken. Either it happens now -- and, even amidst the current bloodshed, there are hopeful signs -- or the slaughter continues for another generation or two, until both sides realize enough is enough.

A LESSON FROM VIETNAM

With regard to Iraq, the U.S. (finally!) has to learn the lesson of Vietnam: When occupying a foreign nation, with no outlook other than endless stalemate, you either leave on your own, with as much dignity and face-saving gestures as possible, or you get drawn further into an endless quagmire (death by a thousand cuts) and eventually have to leave anyway looking like a muscle-bound superpower defeated by a ragtag guerrilla army.

Even Bush's generals know all this, but the policy has been otherwise decided by arrogant, ideologically-driven civilians, in this case mainly by Cheney and Rumsfeld. They will "stay the course" and the U.S. will have to leave ignominiously later. Why? Because they want those permanent military bases in that area of the world, they want that oil and gas, they want to try to impose their will and idea of the future on that volatile region of the world, and because Bush and his bunker crew are psychologically incapable of admitting they were wrong from the very beginning.

If the war results in tens of thousands more killed and wounded, and bankrupts the nation, so be it, according to Bush&Co. In any event, Bush has told us, winding up the Iraq war will happen on his successor's watch, so the Bush Administration doesn't have to accept any responsibility for the debacle and the deaths.

OPENING THE FRIGHT PLAYBOOK

With less than four months to go until the November mid-term election, it's deja vu all over again, as Yogi said. Karl Rove simply opens his fright playbook, the same one he used in 2000, 2002 and 2004, and attempts to play the electorate -- and especially the putative opposition Democrats -- like a xylophone. Terrorists here, terrorists there, terrorists everywhere. And, by and large, the mainstream media publishes the fright stories straight, without seriously raising any major questions, and the Democrats, terrified of being labeled "soft on terrorism," buy into the Republican agenda. I don't get it.

How else to interpret the major, unrelenting news coverage given to the supposed Miami cell of hardcore jihadists planning on blowing up Chicago's Sears Tower, or the Islamist conspirators allegedly planning to blow up the train tunnels leading into Manhattan?

In the first instance, a paid informant inside the group got them interested in the Sears Tower idea, and, voila!, they're busted for "planning" to bring down that massive structure -- quite by "coincidence" just as the American election campaign moves into its final 100 days. In truth, it appears that there were no Sears Tower "plans," just a lot of bloviating about what these wannabe jihadists would like to do someday to the dastardly Americans.

With regard to the New York City story, apparently untrained Islamists, most of whom didn't even know each other, shared online ideas about exploding a device inside the tunnels, the effect of which would be to cause chaos in the New York subway system. (The Bush forces raced to the microphones to predict that Lower Manhattan, especially the economic centers, would be flooded, forgetting the laws of physics that would keep the water in the river since in order to flood the city, there would have to be strong pumps pushing the water up above sea level, which is where Manhattan resides.) Further, the FBI is relying on a captured Islamist militant picked up in Lebanon; until we know whether he was psychologically or physically tortured, what he "confessed" to means next to nothing.

No, friends, the timing and especially the lack of specifics and evidence -- indeed, about all we have are allegations of what some Bad Guys were talking about doing, some day, maybe -- appears to be just part of the pre-election fear-building machinery cranking up in rather cumbersome and obvious ways. Warning: Karl Rove construction ahead; proceed with caution and lots of grains of salt.

OSAMA BIN WHO?

Here are Rove and his minions warning about Islamist terror-cells, even telling a tale that the would-be New York tunnel-bombers got their go-ahead from the leader of al-Qaida, but they're closing down the CIA's anti-terrorist unit whose function is to locate and neutralize Osama bin Laden. Explain that one. See what I mean about reality outstripping the possibilities of satire? (Same goes with the U.S. military hiring out-of-work skinheads to fight in Iraq. And then Bush&Co. are puzzled by Iraqis' negative reactions to having Muslim-hating, racist American troops on their soil. You can't make this stuff up.)

Either the pre-election fright stories being told are riddled with untruths, or the Bush Administration needs the bogeyman of Osama bin Laden out there helping scare the U.S. population into submission. It's been that way since 9/11.

Without bin Laden on the loose, Bush&Co. would not have virtual free rein to do whatever it feels it needs to do in its so-called "war on terrorism" -- a permanent war against a political/military tactic, which permits virtual carte blanche domestically (police-state powers) and more wars abroad (Iran? Syria? Venezuela? North Korea?). Similarly, bin Laden needs a clumsy, rampaging America so that he can build his base of support and foment more Islamist mischief around the world. Osama and George -- the dance of the tarantulas.

(Am I discounting that there are terrorists out there who really want to, and maybe even are planning, to do American harm? Of course not. But the way the Bush Administration goes about its business -- torture, occupations, bombings, violations of law, extra-constitutional authoritarianism, appointing incompetents in key positions, etc. -- makes us citizens less secure, not more secure.)

It's a crazyquilt world and all you and I can do is try to make some sense of it, even though I know it's virtually impossible to piece it all together. Welcome to the hunt.
 

Copyright 2006, by Bernard Weiner
 

Bernard Weiner, Ph.D. in government & international relations, has taught at universities in California and Washington, worked as a writer/editor for the San Francisco Chronicle, and currently co-edits The Crisis Papers (www.crisispapers.org)

How to Lose the War on Terror; Bush's Ten Rules

By Bob Burnett

On June 28th, Foreign Policy and the Center for American Progress released a survey of 116 foreign-policy experts where 84 percent said that the US is not winning the war on terror. This panel included Democrats, Independents, and Republicans; 71 percent of the "conservatives" polled gave the Bush Administration bad marks on fighting terrorism. How is it possible that the United States, which annually spends nearly as much on defense as all the other nations of the world combined, is losing the war on terror? Here's how, you follow George Bush's ten "rules".

1. Tell Americans that the war on terror will be "a lengthy campaign" and then don't involve them in it. Don't ask them to make any sacrifice, such as reducing their fossil-fuel consumption. Don't give them an activity to do that will foster community and allay their fears. Instead, tell them to go shopping. Implore them to trust the President because "he's a Christian."

2. Resist formation of an independent commission to investigate what happened on 9/11. When public outcry forces the creation of this commission, feign cooperation with it, and resist all requests for information. Classify massive amounts of material as "top secret" and deny access to independent investigators. When the 9/11 Commission publishes its recommendations, thank them vociferously, pledge your cooperation, and then don't implement any of their suggestions. Don't do anything that suggests you made a mistake prior to the terrorist attacks.

3. Make the conduct of the war on terror the exclusive responsibility of the Department of Defense. Dismiss the advice of national-security experts that effective anti-terror efforts involve diplomacy, covert operations, economic sanctions, and law enforcement, as well as military action. Surround yourself with advisers who have either never been in the military, or, if they have, avoided active duty. Make your Administration's motto, "We know best because we have no experience in war."

4. Abandon diplomacy. Argue that terrorists only respond to the use of force. Distill the nature of the conflict into one simplistic phrase, "you are either with us or against us." Disdain any action directed at the roots of terrorism. Promise the American public that the US will lead an anti-terror coalition, then turn off all the potential coalition partners with your hypocrisy and arrogance. Promote anti-American sentiment so virulent that wherever you go you must carry your own "green-zone" security bubble.

5. When you are on the edge of scoring a decisive victory in Afghanistan, don't follow through. Even when you've trapped Osama bin Laden and the other Al Qaeda leaders, don't follow the advice of your military and send in American troops, instead rely on mercenaries. Use the Afghanistan war as the testing ground for your Secretary of Defense's unproven theory about how to wage modern war: over-reliance on technology and underutilization of American troops. Ignore the fact that he has never led troops or even been in battle.

6. Once you've occupied Afghanistan, and the Afghans look at you as liberators, treat them as a colony rather than a fledgling democracy. Spend billions of dollars on the military aspect of the mission, but not the funds necessary to guarantee that the Afghan economy stabilizes or that civil society blooms. Make sure that all the big contracts go to your U.S. political supporters and not to local contractors.

7. When you are on the brink of pacifying Afghanistan and eradicating the roots of terrorism, shift your focus to Iraq. Lie to the American people about every aspect of this war: its justification, cost, duration, and the impact on the war on terror.

8. Ask for international support but abandon institutions such as the UN and the Court of Justice. Mock the United Nations by appointing John Bolton as the US Ambassador after he's said, "There is no such thing as the United Nations. United States makes the U.N. work, when it wants it to work." Beg the international community for support in Iraq but refuse to work with it on issues such as global warming and arms control. Eschew cooperation; ask only, "What have you done for me lately?"

9. Ask the military for a comprehensive plan for the invasion and occupation of Iraq and then ignore it. Shove everyone who disagrees with you out of the military or your Administration. Keep saying that you see signs of progress even when the situation steadily deteriorates. Steadfastly ignore all indicators that your ill-advised actions have strengthened the insurgency and advanced the terrorist cause.

10. Adopt the same "the ends justify the means" mentality that characterizes the terrorists. Develop a reputation for hypocrisy and brutality to the extent that other nations can't distinguish you from your adversaries. Never admit a mistake and never ask for advice. Remember, you believe that winning is everything.



Authors Bio: Bob Burnett is a Berkeley writer and Quaker actvist. He is particularly interested in progressive morality and writes frequently on the ethical aspects of political and social issues.

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