Avdat

Surging in Afghanistan

Some reactions to Obama's speech:

1. At the beginning of the speech, as he summed up how we got into this jam and the nature of it, he looked alternately angry and disgusted. There's nothing like having to clean up someone else's pile of poo, but then again, he asked for this job, and he got what he asked for.
2. I thought that his attempt to put the best face on a possibly stolen election in Afghanistan fell flat. And doesn't that call into serious question this counter-insurgency strategy? Doesn't a successful counter-insurgency depend on the government that you're trying to prop up having legitimacy in the eyes of its people?
3. I was very glad to hear him set a deadline. A high school graduate who enlisted in the Army this summer was ten years old when this war started. Our fifth graders on 9/11 are now fighting in Afghanistan. Enough is enough.
4. I was also very glad to hear him say in effect, "We can't afford this war." Because we can't. A trillion dollars in "supplemental appropriations" for two wars is why we are broke. It's not the stimulus, and its not even the bank bailouts. For people wringing their hands about all the debt we're running up this year, the takeaway lesson is, Don't borrow money in good times to fight a war of choice, not of necessity, because when the bad times return, they'll bite you in the butt.
5. I was most pleased to hear the President commit to moving toward a world free of nuclear weapons. A Jack Bauer guided fantasy on torturing a terrorist who knows where the suitcase containing the loose nuke is great, but you know what would be even greater? Living "under your own vines and fig frees, unafraid" and untroubled by certain apocalyptic anxieties because nuclear weapons no longer exist. And what we've learned in this decade is that preventive war is a lousy way to work toward a nuclear free world. The more mundane work of negotiating treaties, verifying them, and vigorous law enforcement is what will get the job done.
6. As I said in the previous post,I don't think any President would have enough political capital to walk away from a war in which the enemy is ascendant. And because the enemy is on the march, the status quo is unacceptable. One last effort to pacify the country before we get out is thus our only viable option. It seems to have worked in Iraq, much better than I thought it would in late 2006. 
7. But given the corruption in #2, and the failure of the Iraqis thus far to take advantage of the improved security and forge a political reconciliation, doesn't this mean that both surges are more about finding a face-saving way to get out than victory?
8. It was sobering to see an audience full of pimply guys in gray cadet uniforms. Some of them will surely be killed before they live long enough to clear up their acne.That's not right.
9. If it's not right then why aren't you more vigorously opposed to this escalation, Marvin? I suppose the answer is, I think that some mixture of sin, history and even Providence have brought us to this ugly point of no good alternatives and no real alternatives at all other than the path outlined last night, and "opposing" the policy makes as much sense as opposing the tide coming in. I think a better question is, Are we learning anything from this slow motion disaster?
10. In Advent we dare to hope for peace on earth and good will toward men, but we also hear John the Baptist's contempt for pious hopes that aren't backed by repentance. Beating swords into plowshares isn't a mandate only for the bad guys.

Turns out Obama's not the messiah after all

I understand that people on the left are deeply disappointed in the Obama administration, especially on the eve of this Afghan troop surge announcement, but they have only themselves to blame. Barack Obama campaigned on shifting the war focus from Iraq to Afghanistan, and that is what he is doing. You didn't really think that you'd elected a peacenik, did you?

Even if Obama were a true peacenik, I'm not sure that he could stop an escalation in Afghanistan if he wanted to. The military wants this. Between Republicans and moderate Democrats, there's probably a majority in Congress who want this. The elite journalists think that peace is an unserious proposition. Can one man, even if he is President of the United States, withstand the sustained pressure of the federal bureaucracy and its allies in the fourth estate?

We're talking about principalities and powers here. We're talking about the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. Obama, and any President, has a tiger by the tail. They all wind up getting eaten eventually.

Ditto on domestic issues. Liberals are furious with the excruciatingly slow pace of health care reform, and frustrated that Obama hasn't brought the hammer down on recalcitrant members of his own caucus, but Obama didn't campaign as the Dick Cheney of the left. He pledged to be a post-partisan President. And post-partisanship means tolerating a meandering legislative process and a certain amount of showboating by people who aren't where you are politically.

I get frustrated too, but I don't really think I'd want my own man stifling dissent the way that the Bush administration stuffed a sock in John Dilulio, assassinated the character of Richard Clarke and won a spurious criminal conviction against Don Siegelman. Do you? Do you want to move along health care reform by having friendly state attorneys general opening campaign finance investigations against Blanche Lincoln, Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman? 

To paraphrase Dennis Green, the Obama administration is who we thought they were. Moderate by temperment and constrained by forces they aren't fully in control of, Obama is doing about as well as I thought he could.

Much better than the alternative.

Your Monday morning irony alert

Obama to escalate war this week, receive Peace Prize next week.

Sexy and not-so-sexy health care reform

Ron Brownstein has written a long and somewhat wonkish assessment of the health care reform bill currently being debated in the Senate. Long story short, the bill's chief purpose is to cut skyrocketing health care costs by moving the system away from a fee-for-service template and toward a fee-for-outcomes template.

Republicans outside elected office like the bill, but wish it had as many sticks as carrots to encourage better coordination of care among providers. And malpractice reform. But since Republicans have decided to not play ball with the White House and the Democratic majority, there's no one at the table lobbying for the latter.

Like a lot of liberals, I've tended to view the success or failure of the bill almost solely in terms of the survival of the public option, but the article points out that a state-sponsored insurance plan "would affect who writes the checks in the medical system, but not what the checks are written to pay for." It raises the question of the relationship between universal coverage and cost containment, and the priorities of the two.

Apparently, President Obama is rather smitten with the article, and Rahm Emanuel has made it required reading for the White House staff. 

Campaigning for universal coverage is sexy in that social justice kind of way. But the HCR bill detailed by Brownstein's article isn't a bit sexy. It's the government using its regulatory and reimbursement power to encourage a set of best practices that are designed to make health care less expensive and the nation's citizens healthier.

And that's OK. In fact, that's probably the best we can expect from people at the pinnacle of power in 21st century America.

It's the difference between Amos's passion and Joseph's prudence. So long as the prudent are seeking to achieve the aims of the passionate, we ought not denigrate reform just for lacking sex appeal.

Getting to yes on health care reform

Even though health care reform leaped yet another hurdle yesterday, I'm less buoyed than before. With Blanche Lincoln joining Joe Lieberman in threatening to filibuster a final bill that contains a public option, it seems like the prospects for a public option are now rather dim. And without a public option, will Congress wind up passing a bill that forces people to buy health insurance they can't afford? That's neither a policy nor an electoral winner.

Lincoln's is a frustrating case. One might hope that she's posturing, but apparently she spoke in such categorical terms that there's no way she could walk away from her threat without a loss of face. Even stranger, Lincoln's web page still shows her supporting a public option. I definitely expected more party discipline than this.

Then again, it may be that the last two elections are masking the real ideological balance of power in Congress. The Democrats built large majorities in Congress running against the Bush administration's manifold incompetence, but that doesn't necessarily mean that Congress or the nation as a whole has moved as far to the left as those numbers indicate. Under more normal circumstances, we might have watched Democrats negotiating with moderate Republicans to overhaul the health care system this year, but since there are no moderate Republicans left, Democrats are negotiating with Democrats. The result is starting to look like a centrist compromise, rather than the more progressive bill that 60 Democratic Senators could theoretically enact.

Then again, as Yglesias is so fond of pointing out, we wouldn't being having this discussion if the Senate ran according to majority rule, or, even better, if we didn't have a legislative body in which Wyoming, population 532,688, has the same representation as California, population 37,756,666. So we have the Founding Fathers to thank. Even now they are saving the Republic from the mob rule of the uninsured and the price gouged.

UPDATE: Here's Robert Reich on the slow withering of the public option.

Obama wins Nobel prize

As I told my wife this morning, I'd much rather be home with her watching Fox News anchors have a fit and fall in it, but duty calls...

Wilder card

We're electing a governor this fall in the Old Dominion. Today's big news is that former governor and former Richmond mayor Doug Wilder won't endorse fellow Democrat Creigh Deeds. The utterly weird Times-Dispatch editorial writers, conservatives with a long-standing man crush on Wilder, say that there's no way to spin this as a positive for Deeds.

I'm not so sure. These days, everybody thinks that Doug Wilder is psycho. White and black. Rich and poor. Democratic and Republican. Isn't a Wilder endorsement the kiss of death? I am conspiratorial enough to think that Obama and Kaine's pleading with Wilder to endorse Deeds was just kabuki theater.

You non-Virginians probably know about GOP candidate Bob McDonnell's master's thesis which exhibited cave man views on gender relations. I like Kevin Drum's 25/25 rule: You can't hold anything against a politician that he/she said more than 25 years ago or prior to his/her 25th birthday. Alas, McDonnell wrote his thesis in 1989 when he was in his mid-30s. It's fair game, and Deeds has been beating on that thesis like a drum, but that says to me that Deeds has yet to shore up his left flank (he was the most conservative of the three Dems in the primary). And he has yet to lock down the soccer mom/security mom/working mom vote.

Deeds is in trouble. You don't want to be going into October in that kind of shape. Plus, the economy stinks, and Democrats have held the governor's office for eight years. Time for a change, right?

There's no way that I'd vote for a troglodyte like McDonnell, but Deeds hasn't run an inspiring campaign. Deeds' ads notwithstanding, governors can't do jack about abortion. Their bread and butter is transportation and education, but all we get from Deeds is, "When I'm Governor, I'm gonna, you know, get people together and come up with a bipartisan transportation plan." Well that's no plan.

The gas tax in North Carolina is 31 cents per gallon. In Virginia it's 19. And Virginia's roads suck. Driving on I-64 in Richmond is like driving to the Baghdad airport. Northern Virginia is a parking lot, any time of day, and in any direction. We need fewer potholes and more mass transit. Just raise the gas tax and be done with it, OK?

Wilder won't endorse Deeds in part because Deeds won't rule out such a tax increase, which Wilder says is regressive. But look; it's not regressive in cities because poor people ride the bus, and even in rural areas, an extra 10 cents per gallon would be invisible--well within the customary price fluctuations of a commodity like gasoline.

You can do lots of stuff with a rope

Time will tell if Barack Obama's health care speech is a game-changer, but it sure felt like one. Obama explained a very complicated piece of legislation in terms everyone can understand, powerfully refuted the lies circulating about the proposal, and closed by effectively showing how health care reform is the embodiment of the nation's highest ideals. It didn't hurt that GOP Representative Joe Wilson "showed his butt" as we say down here. Once again, Obama looks thoughtful and sober not only because he is, but because the opposition by contrast can't help but present as stark raving mad.

Obama's been on the national stage for a while now. It's safe to say a pattern's emerging. It's almost as if he hands over the mic to his opponents--yields the floor entirely--only to return more powerful than ever.

There was that time in the primaries where, between Jeremiah Wright and Hillary Clinton dominating the airwaves, no one could get a good word in edgewise about Obama. Then he gave that masterful speech on race which sympathetically outlined but ultimately refuted Wright's brand of racial politics--and Obama was back on top.

Same thing last fall. Sarah Palin's slutty stewardess look and red meat speech had the GOP convention as excited as the Gentleman's Club at last call. Obama's numbers were down, and Democrats were wondering when he was going to knock this nonsense down. But come October, and the debates, Obama was looking much smarter than Palin and much steadier than the erratic and angry John McCain.

Ditto the GOP hissy fit about the stimulus. Obama got the bill he largely wanted.

And now, after a month of GOP sound and fury, the President has recaptured the momentum on health care reform. There's a long way to go, but I think that Obama and his congressional allies took an essential step forward last night. 

You could call this rope-a-dope. Obama lets the opposition wear themselves out taking their best shots at him. When there's no gas left in their tank, Obama gets off the rope and goes to work. That's the political strategy of a man who's supremely confident in his own abilities.

You could also call this giving the opposition enough rope to hang themselves. That's the strategy of a man who's taken the measure of the other side, and knows them better than they know themselves.

How to write an obituary

The Chronicler managed to tell the life story of King David without mentioning his affair with Bathsheba and subsequent murder of Bathsheba's husband Uriah. This is perhaps the most audacious whitewash in the history of, well, history, since the Chronicler's sole task seemed to be documenting the genealogy of all the leading families in post-exilic Judaism, and the Uriah affair irrevocably altered the family tree of the most prominent of Jewish families, arguably the most prominent royal family of all time. So when Hanna Rosin at Andrew Sullivan's blog laments the media's lapse into euphemism when discussing Senator Kennedy's swimming away from the car containing Mary Jo Kopechne at Chappaquiddick, I have to say, Euphemism is better than dead silence.

Her larger point is that the Kennedy men were misogynists, and it's an open question as to whether Kennedy's extraordinary legislative record on behalf of women, the poor, the sick and the disabled altogether makes up for his personal chauvinism, although she's inclined to say Yes.

We do know about the adultery with Bathsheba and the conspiracy to murder Uriah, thanks to the Deuteronomic historian and Saint Matthew, and yet the canon as a whole celebrates David as a man after God's own heart, who eloquently expressed his zeal for Yahweh in poetry, song and dance, not to mention the slaying of Israel's enemies. Public statesmanship can redeem private failures.

Domestic terrorism

Why do doctors who perform abortions tend to get murdered when Democrats occupy the White House? There seems to be a lack of patience in some corners of the pro-life movement, an unwillingness to live with the ebb and flow of the political process. As soon as an election goes against them, some of them appoint themselves judge, jury and executioner. You could call them sore losers, except that expression cheapens the seriousness of gunning someone down in the vestibule.

But it's worse than that: 

• Oklahoma City.
• The murder of ob/gyns.
• Think tanks funding specious lawsuits to the tune of millions with the sole purpose of getting the President of the United States to testify under oath about his sex life in the hopes that a fib might make the legal grounds for overturning an election.
• Torture.
• Illegal wiretapping.
• Bush v. Gore.
• A post election run on ammunition.

There is a contempt for the democratic process and the rule of law on the right side of the political spectrum that gets expressed in a variety of ways. The sane people remaining on the political right really need to stand up and take back their movement from the terrorists, conspiracy theorists and media mouthpieces that fan the flames of violence and extremism.

Which is why all the hysteria about Barack Obama's associations with William Ayers was so completely whacked. The right owns the domestic terror market, lock, stock and barrel. Thou art the man, dittohead.