Friday, March 04, 2005

 
I Suppose It's Been a Long Time

Postmodern Potlatch may be making some sort of comeback, or may become a different blog altogether. For the time being, if you haven't noticed, nothing is going on here. Oh, and I don't know what happened to a couple months' worth of posts.
posted by Patton
12:14:00 AM

Saturday, January 03, 2004

 
From an exhaustive NYT article about a recent foreign policy summit featuring speakers from Zbegniew Brzezinsky to Chuck Hagle:

There are two very large inferences that can be drawn from comments like these and, more broadly, from the current debate over national security issues in policy institutes, academia and professional journals. One is that the Bush administration stands very, very far from the foreign-policy mainstream: liberal Democrats, conservative Democrats and moderate Republicans have more in common with one another than any of them have with the Bush administration. The other conclusion is that the administration's claim that 9/11 represents such a decisive break with the past that many of the old principles no longer apply is right -- but the new principles need not be the ones the administration has advanced. A different administration could have adapted to 9/11 in a very different way. And this is why national security should be, at least potentially, such a rich target of opportunity for a Democratic candidate.

Good reporting is so rare these days that James Traub deserves commendation for a piece that both collects a wide variety of non-spun information and actually analyzes it transparently.
posted by Patton
5:54:00 PM

Friday, January 02, 2004

 
A reader named Marcus implies (I think) that this recent piece by Secretary of State Colin Powell can be seen as a sort of counter-volley to the latest neocon tome (discussed below). At the least, Powell appears to be making the case that Realpolitik has not been abandoned, which in this climate is itself a good thing.

But what about in a second Bush administration, without the influence of that one Realist guy? What's his name? Colin Powell?
posted by Patton 1:41:00 PM

 
An End to Evil

I actually bought this book. I read a review a few days ago, and posted a Metafilter thread that is stil going on, but I just had to read the much-awaited sequel to Rebuilding America's Defenses, this time translated into Terrorism-ese.

Two seperate nuggets from the book so far:

The lax multiculturalism that urges Americans to accept the unaceptable from their fellow citizens us one of this nation's greatest vulnerabilities in the war on terror. America must communicate a clear message to its Muslism citizens and residents a clear message about what is expected from them.

And...

Of course, the country should be well-prepared to care for those injured by terrorist attack, and Congress should make available whatever funds are necessary to the task. (Though Congress should also be appropriately alert to the tendency of many cash-strapped state and local governments to repackage almost they do as "first-response" in order to qualify for federal aid.) But important as it is to be prepared to help the wounded and injured after a terrorist attack, it is far more important to prevent that terrorist attack in the first place. As George Patton could have said, "Nobody ever won a war by caring for his wounded. He won by making the other poor SOB care for his wounded."

Even though it's been painfully obvious for two years now, it is still shocking at times how out-of-touch our leadership is. The idea that "the enemy" in the "War on Terror" is some concrete force in a trench somewhere is dangerously out-of-place when combatting international terrorism, yet it underlies the basic methodology of the War on Terrorism.

More on this crazy book later.
posted by Patton
1:36:00 PM

Tuesday, December 30, 2003

 
Ashcroft Recuses Himself From Leak Investigation (washingtonpost.com)

He has finally done something right. They should name a street after this guy!
posted by Patton
11:13:00 AM

Thursday, December 25, 2003

 
Holy Crap!

The source said that at the time of the State of the Union speech, there was no organized system at the White House to vet intelligence, and the informal system that was followed did not work in the case of that speech. The White House has since established procedures for handling intelligence in presidential speeches by including a CIA officer in the speechwriting process.

Yeah, you read that correctly. Previous administrations have had such an "organized system at the White House to vet intelligence." They called it the National Security Advisor. There is no end to the distress brought on by the fact that so many Americans care more about partisan points and hating their neighbors because of differences on non-starter wedge issues than about the basic competency of the people tasked with their security. What, exactly, does Condi Rice do all day?

Let's take this back to a David Brooks editorial from a few days ago (my entry here). Brooks' crux: that George Bush is more qualified to be President than Howard Dean because Bush is an ideologue and Dean is a problem-solver. While this apparently makes sense to Brooks, one can only hope that repeated fuckups by incompetent officials like Condi Rice will lead a majority of Americans to see thiings differently.
posted by Patton
3:25:00 PM

Wednesday, December 24, 2003

 
Washington Goes to War (with Howard Dean)

Eric Alterman both catalogues and refutes the major pundit-driven attacks on Howard Dean. Now that the media's hasty rush to discredit Dean's statement that Hussein's capture did not make Americans any safer has been shut up by our lovely new orange alert, Americans might be ready to see the other major anti-Dean lies debunked. As Alterman--himself a recovering Kerry shill--rightly points out, the insecurity and fear driving these Washington insiders to attack Dean isn't even being concealed below the surface.

Saddam Hussein may be out of his spider hole, but Washington's real enemy is still at large. His name: "Howard Dean"--and nobody in America poses a bigger threat to the city's sense of its own importance.

No excerpt does the piece justice. Read on...
posted by Patton
1:01:00 PM

Tuesday, December 23, 2003

 
For Vietnam Vet Anthony Zinni, Another War on Shaky Territory

The WaPo has in-depth profile of retired Marine General Anthony Zinni.

It is one of the more unusual political journeys to come out of the American experience with Iraq. Zinni still talks like an old-school Marine -- a big-shouldered, weight-lifting, working-class Philadelphian whose father emigrated from Italy's Abruzzi region, and who is fond of quoting the wisdom of his fictitious "Uncle Guido, the plumber." Yet he finds himself in the unaccustomed role of rallying the antiwar camp, attacking the policies of the president and commander in chief whom he had endorsed in the 2000 election.

"Iraq is in serious danger of coming apart because of lack of planning, underestimating the task and buying into a flawed strategy," he says. "The longer we stubbornly resist admitting the mistakes and not altering our approach, the harder it will be to pull this chestnut out of the fire."
posted by Patton
7:38:00 AM

Sunday, December 21, 2003

 
Democrats Face the Wand

For the Democratic presidential candidates, it is hard enough hearing accusations that they are soft on terrorists. But should they be suspected of being terrorists?

Apparently so, since they are constantly getting frisked at airports. It does not matter that the screeners often recognize the candidates. Unless they charter their own planes (as Howard Dean and John Kerry usually do), the Democrats hoping to become commander in chief must repeatedly take off their shoes and stand patiently as the screeners wave the wand from head to toe and dig through carry-on luggage....

The candidates presumably get picked on because their campaigning often requires them to buy a one-way ticket at the last minute. That is popularly assumed to be the kind of ticket that sets off alarms at the T.S.A. The agency refuses to identify any of the criteria used by its screening system, much less explain why terrorists capable of plotting the destruction of an airplane would not be smart enough to buy a round-trip ticket ahead of time.
posted by Patton 11:45:00 PM

 
Nation's Threat Level Raised to Orange

But I thought America was safer now that Saddam Hussein has been captured? I'm so confused. If Howard Dean said we aren't safer, and he's a rotten commie liar, than that must mean we are safer, right? But now Tom Ridge tells us that we aren't safer. Is he a dirty lib'ruhl like Dean? Bush needs to fire him and replace him with someone willing to tell the truth about our newfound freedom from Saddam's imminent threat. Whatever is happening here, I'm sure it's ultimately Hillary's fault.

posted by Patton 11:36:00 PM

 
Napster Runs for President in '04

The elusive piece of this phenomenon is cultural: the Internet. Rather than compare Dr. Dean to McGovern or Goldwater, it may make more sense to recall Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy. It was not until F.D.R.'s fireside chats on radio in 1933 that a medium in mass use for years became a political force. J.F.K. did the same for television, not only by vanquishing the camera-challenged Richard Nixon during the 1960 debates but by replacing the Eisenhower White House's prerecorded TV news conferences (which could be cleaned up with editing) with live broadcasts. Until Kennedy proved otherwise, most of Washington's wise men thought, as The New York Times columnist James Reston wrote in 1961, that a spontaneous televised press conference was "the goofiest idea since the Hula Hoop."

Such has been much of the reaction to the Dean campaign's breakthrough use of its chosen medium. In Washington, the Internet is still seen mainly as a high-velocity disseminator of gossip (Drudge) and rabidly partisan sharpshooting by self-publishing excoriators of the left and right. When used by campaigns, the Internet becomes a synonym for "the young," "geeks," "small contributors" and "upper middle class," as if it were an eccentric electronic cousin to direct-mail fund-raising run by the acne-prone members of a suburban high school's computer club. In other words, the political establishment has been blindsided by the Internet's growing sophistication as a political tool — and therefore blindsided by the Dean campaign — much as the music industry establishment was by file sharing and the major movie studios were by "The Blair Witch Project," the amateurish under-$100,000 movie that turned viral marketing on the Web into a financial mother lode.

The condescending reaction to the Dean insurgency by television's political correspondents can be reminiscent of that hilarious party scene in the movie "Singin' in the Rain," where Hollywood's silent-era elite greets the advent of talkies with dismissive bafflement. "The Internet has yet to mature as a political tool," intoned Carl Cameron of Fox News last summer as he reported that the runner-up group to Dean supporters on the meetup.com site was witches. "If you want to be a Deaniac," ABC News's Claire Shipman said this fall, "you've got to know the lingo," as she dutifully gave her viewers an uninformed definition of "blogging."...

From Mr. Trippi's perspective, "The Internet puts back into the campaign what TV took out — people."
posted by Patton 10:51:00 AM

 
Libyan deal shows need for shift in U.S. diplomatic tactics, analysts say

I realize that in the up-is-down world of Bush administration foreign policy, a diplomacy-driven disarming is somehow seen as an affirmation of the rejection of diplomacy, but noone has told this to the Carnegie Institute just yet:

"The president is trying hard to portray this as a victory for his strategy," said Joseph Cirincione, director of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace's nonproliferation project. "But when you look at this, it's almost the opposite of the Bush doctrine."

Announcing the Libya deal, Bush invoked the Iraq war that brought down Saddam Hussein as he issued a flat warning of "unwelcome consequences" for countries that do not follow Libya's lead.

White House officials promoted Friday's Libya announcement as vindication of Bush's decision to make war on Saddam, even though banned weapons, Bush's prime public reason for waging it, have not been found.

British officials say that perhaps just as important was the long diplomatic process of getting Libyan leader Gadhafi to take responsibility for the 1988 downing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.

Gadhafi initiated the weapons talks in March, amid the buildup in the Persian Gulf area to the U.S.-led war in Iraq. The overtures came just after Libya agreed to a $2.7 billion settlement for the Pan Am bombing.
posted by Patton
10:02:00 AM

Saturday, December 20, 2003

 
The Death of Horatio Alger

A great Krugman piece on the impact of wealth inequality.
posted by Patton
9:26:00 AM

Friday, December 19, 2003

 
BushTax.com

Rather than take responsibility for our common future, Bush has shifted costs to states and communities, who then pass them on to you. That’s the Bush Tax.

Across the country, people are seeing their property taxes skyrocket. That’s the Bush Tax.

State college tuition at 4-year schools has increased this year by an average of $579 nationwide. That’s the Bush Tax.

States and local government have cut vital services. That’s the Bush Tax.

We’re all having to pay more for less. That’s the Bush Tax.

Even worse, our children and grandchildren will be paying the Bush Tax. Bush promised, "I came to this office to solve problems and not pass them on to future presidents and future generations." Yet as a direct consequence of his tax policy, over six years an American family of four will take on $52,000 more in its share of the national debt. That’s the Bush Tax.
posted by Patton 1:30:00 PM

 
Krugman: Telling It Right

But even if all that happens, we should be deeply disturbed by the history of this war. For its message seems to be that as long as you wave the flag convincingly enough, it doesn't matter whether you tell the truth.

By now, we've become accustomed to the fact that the absence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction — the principal public rationale for the war — hasn't become a big political liability for the administration. That's bad enough. Even more startling is the news from one of this week's polls: despite the complete absence of evidence, 53 percent of Americans believe that Saddam had something to do with 9/11, up from 43 percent before his capture. The administration's long campaign of guilt by innuendo, it seems, is still working.

The war's more idealistic supporters do, I think, feel queasy about all this. That's why they lay so much stress on their hopes for democracy in Iraq. They're not just looking for a happy ending; they're looking for moral redemption for a war fought on false pretenses.
posted by Patton 12:02:00 PM

 
Snake in the Grass?

Here's a link to a Metafilter Post that I put together about the Bush campaign's recent move to define themselves as sort of grassroots underdogs. Funny stuff.
posted by Patton
11:53:00 AM