Ann Richards

I was saddened to read about the passing of Ann Richards, not just for her sake, but for the inevitable partisan politicizing of the end of her life.

Yes, I feel for her friends and relatives, and morn their loss. Her's was a life to be admired, even imitated.

Then there will be the gratuitous statements from the W clan, pandering to the group which has no clue what "turd blossom" Rove did to her in 1994.

Following will be the Coulter/O'Reilly-style defamation regarding her personal problems, regardless of the strengths brought as a result of those life lessons.

But she deserves to be remembered as on of the last of the true populists, one who lived the gritty life of an icon of the "American Dream"; she actually overcame real adversity to make a real difference in peoples lives. And she understood real challenges, not just fundraising ones. Lastly, she emerged onto the national stage from humble origins, but always remained genuine, always staying true to the people she swore to serve. How refreshing.

She was a true inspiration in a world of political despair. We love you Ann. I wish we had more of you on both sides of the aisle.

A Tribute

Weekly Wash September Style

Two absolutely brilliant columns from the New York Times (keep in mind the second is from one who often leans right):

September 12, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
Starting Another War
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
It is quite possible that President Bush will bomb Iran’s nuclear installations over the next couple of years.
Let’s hope he looks at how Israel shot itself in the foot in Lebanon this summer and resists the siren calls of neocons who claim that a few air raids would make the Iranian nuclear menace disappear.
The argument Mr. Bush is hearing in favor of an airstrike is pretty simple: Iran is a terrorist regime that has sponsored attacks on Americans and on Jews (as far away as Argentina). The president of Iran is a hard-liner who has used language that, while subject to debate among Farsi speakers, may mean that his aim is to wipe Israel off the map.
A nuclear Iran would also have a devastating ripple effect around the region: Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey might go nuclear as well. And considering how reckless Iran’s foreign policy has already been, imagine if it felt emboldened with a nuclear weapon.
Moreover, if Mr. Bush doesn’t strike Iran, there’s a good chance that Israel will — and the U.S. would still get blamed (partly because the Israeli planes would fly through American-controlled airspace over Iraq).
So if the U.S. is going to get the blame either way, why not do it right, with a combination of American bombers and cruise missiles destroying Iranian nuclear sites in Natanz, Isfahan, Arak and perhaps Bushehr? A successful strike would have to destroy not only buildings but also kill the scientists involved; this is one military strike that would surely occur during working hours.
That’s the argument. But Iran’s leaders are probably praying for such a strike; it may be the only way that they can stay in power for more than another decade.
I’ve never been in a country where the government is so unpopular as in Iran, with the possible exception of Burma. The government is so corrupt, tyrannical and incompetent that it will eventually collapse — unless we attack its nuclear sites and trigger a nationalistic surge of support for the regime.
We Americans are still paying the price for our involvement in the 1953 overthrow of the elected Iranian government of Mohammed Mossadegh; if we bomb Iran, we may cement the mullahs in power for another 50 years.
Moreover, the military options are wretched, partly because Iran is probably doing much of its work at sites we can’t destroy because we don’t know where they are. The Natanz site for now is an empty room. We might kill Russian technicians at Bushehr or elsewhere, and Iran might retaliate with terror attacks aimed at us (counterterrorism experts suspect that Iran has sleeper agents in the U.S. whom it could activate).
A military strike would also do nothing more than buy time. Ashton Carter, a former senior Pentagon official who has studied the possibility of a strike and considers it feasible (but unwise at this time), estimates that a one-time strike would delay Iran’s nuclear weapon at most three or four years. The U.S. could then go back and hit the sites again, but Iran presumably would hide the locations, so later strikes would be less effective.
Dov Zakheim, who was under secretary of defense in Mr. Bush’s first term, recalls that fears of Pakistan’s “Islamic bomb” proved exaggerated and notes that Iran doesn’t treat its 20,000 Jews as wretchedly as its rhetoric would suggest (Iran continues to be home to more Jews than any Middle Eastern country save Israel). Mr. Zakheim argues that the best way to protect Israel is to give Israel improved missile defense capabilities on the understanding that it not launch a first strike against Iran.
As for alternatives to bombs, the best option is more of the carrot-and-stick diplomacy that the West is already engaging in (including direct Iran-U.S. talks) — and keeping International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors in Iran to uncover the hidden sites. Few experts expect Iran to give up its nuclear program altogether, but it’s likely that Iran could be persuaded to adopt a Japanese model: develop its capacity to the point that a bomb could be completed in weeks or months, but without testing or stockpiling weapons.
Granted, expert reassurances are easier to accept if you live in New York than in Tel Aviv, and the consequences of being wrong would be horrific. But however one judges the risks, the one thing we should have learned from Iraq and Lebanon is that military “solutions” can leave us worse off than before.

September 12, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
Osama’s Spin Lessons
By JOHN TIERNEY
Somewhere, Osama bin Laden must be smiling. Or at least he will be whenever his couriers deliver the next batch of press clippings.
Once again he has beaten America at an American game: public relations. He may be sitting powerlessly in a cave, but his image is as scary as ever. He doesn’t even have to cut a new video. He released an old one last week, the equivalent of a fading musician putting out a greatest-hits album, only this one’s getting played every hour.
Last night, President Bush paid him homage by quoting his warning that America will face “defeat and disgrace forever” it if loses in Iraq. Bush himself called the war on terror a “struggle for civilization,” and said it was essential to ”maintain the way of life enjoyed by free nations.”
It was just the kind of apocalyptic language favored by bin Laden, except that, for all his delusions, he might realize that American civilization is not really in jeopardy. Americans can try to copy him, but they don’t understand his rhetorical technique.
They continually misinterpret his equine theory of international relations: “When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature, they will like the strong horse.” This is supposedly a reason America was attacked on Sept. 11 — it was perceived as weak for failing to respond to Al Qaeda’s earlier attacks — and why it can’t leave Iraq.
If we falter in Iraq, Vice President Dick Cheney explained to Tim Russert on Sunday, the war on terror will falter because people will say: “My gosh, the United States hasn’t got the stomach for the fight. Bin Laden’s right, Al Qaeda’s right, the United States has lost its will and will not complete the mission.”
But bin Laden knows something else the Bush administration hasn’t figured out: You don’t actually have to be the strong horse. You just have to look stronger. You can be weak, you can be pummeled in a fight, but as long as your opponent looks more scared than you, you can save face by simply declaring victory.
As an act of war, the attack on Sept. 11 was a blunder by Al Qaeda, and not merely because of the counterattack that destroyed Al Qaeda’s training camps and ousted the Taliban. It also alienated former jihadist allies in the Arab world, and caused a rift within Al Qaeda.
One of its senior members, Abu al-Walid al-Masri, broke with bin Laden and accused him of having an “extreme infatuation” with international publicity. The attack, as Fawaz Gerges notes in Foreign Policy magazine, demonstrated that “bin Laden was prepared to sacrifice Afghanistan and Mullah Omar at the altar of his public relations campaign.”
But at least bin Laden knew his P.R. Al Qaeda wasn’t a serious military threat to America, but it could play one on television. As Al Qaeda’s losses mounted and America recovered from the attack, bin Laden and his cohorts didn’t let the facts get in the way of their campaign to promote fear (and themselves). They hid in caves and proclaimed themselves champions.
America, meanwhile, accentuated the negative. Instead of declaring victory against terrorists after routing the Taliban and sending bin Laden into hiding, it invaded Iraq, reinvigorating Al Qaeda with a new tool for recruiting. Instead of putting the terrorist risk in perspective, Bush (with the full cooperation of Democrats and the press) set an impossible standard for making America safe.
“We’re on the offense against the terrorists on every battlefront,” Bush said last week, “and we’ll accept nothing less than complete victory.”
When you define victory that way, when you treat one attack from a disorganized band of fanatics as a menace to civilization, you’ve doomed yourself to defeat and caused more damage than they could. You can’t completely stop terrorism, but you can scare people into giving up liberties, wasting huge sums of money and sacrificing more lives than would be lost in a terrorist attack.
Take it from bin Laden, who bragged in 2004 that it was “easy to provoke and bait this administration.”
“All that we have to do,” he said, “is to send two mujahedeen to the farthest point east to raise a piece of cloth on which is written Al Qaeda, in order to make the generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic and political losses.” And then Al Qaeda, no matter what losses it has suffered, will come off once again looking like the strong horse.

Copyright New York Times Corp.

Things We're Supposed to Think, Not Say

Quote of the week from W:
"Ya know one of the hardest parts of my job is to connect Iraq to the war on terror".

Absurd Diversions

Or, Fractured Fairy tales:

Sausage on the loose.

And the loo joke.

UPDATE: WaPo

Israel's Major Malfunction

The significance of Israel's botched military incursion into Lebanon over the last 2 months has been dismissed by some pundits as deja-vu all over again, or business as usual for the middle east (the way it is destined to be). But a closer inspection beyond the pages of CNN.com reveals a few striking differences from past military efforts.

First, the legendary Israel military stalwart of old seems to be lost, maybe temporarily, perhaps forever. The perceived morally superior architect of precision, daring and surgical (not to mention successful) operations such as the raid at Entebbe appears now more like the US of Iraqi fame: if a 1,000 lb bomb doesn't win their hearts and minds, try a 10,000 lb bomb. If that doesn't work, then surely a 20,000 lb one will do the trick. Show 'em how tough you are, that's the only way to win the peace, cowboy style. What it in fact now appears to have accomplished is to demonstrate to the rest of the region that it is now possible to stand up to the most powerful military force in the area, and do it convincingly. And worse, Israel is left with nothing even approaching their original stated goals in the conflict. In fact, they are more at risk as a result.

Second, after 15 long years of invasion, occupation, civil war, and massive bloodshed Lebanon was finally free of its last occupiers, Israel and Syria. Reconstruction of its infrastructure, services and utilities was nearly complete, the economy was growing, foreign investors returning and it was well on the way to reclaiming its place as a major tourist destination (Beruit was once known as the "Paris of the Middle East"). Hezbollah was waning in significance and popularity, and seemed to be going the way of the IRA. While it was still the de-facto government in the south, military operations were slowly being eclipsed by social and governing activities. In a few short weeks Israel managed to turn Hezbollah into a regional hero again, marginalize a budding Lebanese government, destroy bridges, power plants and other new infrastructure, and remind the area whom they despise, and why.

Third, Iran has now clearly emerged as the top power broker in the area. As the saying goes, "the Iraq war is over, and Iran has won!" Israel managed to underscore that for any who missed it the first time.

Fourth, by using what was clearly a grossly disproportional show of force to what should have been seen as a relatively insignificant provocation (reminds me of W's claim that he was "tired of swatting flies"), they have lost a lot of the support they once took for granted in the world. I know this was a tipping point for me. And that of course will start the cries of "anti-semitism" much as the critics of the current US administration are accused of being unpatriotic.

One of the most stunning observations has been watching (and listening to) the reaction of lefty talkers on radio and TV. One would expect a similar reaction as the one to the invasion and occupation of Iraq: you know, can't bomb your way to peace, innocent civilians, world opinion, etc.

But suddenly the lefty talkers are sounding like sound-bite righties when it comes to Israel and Lebanon. Some of the tidbits I've heard, and my commentary:

"Hezbollah is a terrorist organization, and they killed 241 marines in 1983.

Yes, and Libya killed 270 people (including 189 Americans) in the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 in 1988, but we've managed to patch things up there and get American oil interests going in that country again. There are literally dozens of other examples. There is a time to move on when the environment is fertile for it. Because of our lack of understanding of the region, we use the term "terrorists" indiscriminately and without makeup and functional distinction.

"They started it.

How childish does that sound....... I've even heard some of the talkers say "what's Israel supposed to do when rockets are fired into its northern areas?" Folks, the first rockets heading south didn't launch until well after they were heading north. The initial provocating was a minor firefight between Hezbollah and the IDF. Evidence suggests that Israel has been planning this for months if not years, just waiting for a reason to excuse a preemptive strike.

"Israel has a right to defend itself.

One of my faves, a soundbite right out of Karl Rove's playbook. Of course they do, no sane person disputes that. Now that that's been established, lets talk meaningfully about the current situation and stop being sidetracked by meaningless phrases.

"At least Israel is trying to avoid civilian deaths.

A noble cause, thought their stated intentions conflict a bit with the actual results. Depending on whose numbers you use, Israel has killed 3-4 civilians per Hezbollah fighter killed, Hezbollah has killed 3-4 IDF members to every Israeli civilian killed. I realize that this can be partially explained as the situation mixes conventional forces with urban guerilla tactics. But that's the path they knowingly took, and the results are still the reality for Lebanese civilians.

I do not suggest that Israel is all wrong and Hezbollah is all right; the latter has a sinister and duplicitous past. But one should expect a higher moral standard to be set for Israel, backed by the most firepower the world has ever seen.

Breaking the Law

Another glimmer of hope and sanity emerged today as a federal judge ruled that the NSA's so-called "terrorist surveillance program", commonly referred to as warrantless wiretapping, not only violates the law but the constitution as well and ordered an immediate halt to the program. What this means is that the smokescreen about this activity potentially being legal is off the table. What it doesn't mean is a cessation of the program.

There are two basic reasons for this: First, the government will likely petition for (and will likely be granted) a stay pending outcome of appeal, said appeal to drag on for years potentially. Secondly, this administration has made it perfectly clear to date that they do not feel they need to play by the same rules the rest of us do. Lacking any enforcement mechanism (given our rubber stamp congress), her ruling is likely unable to be enforced.

But still, thank the heavens for "activist" judges who still recognize the law when they see it. It will be interesting to see how long it takes Mr. Cheney to publicly call this ruling a "victory for al-Quaeda".

Read the complete ruling--PDF

Memoirs of October, 'O Five

I seem to get a large number of Google and Yahoo! searches (among others) leading readers of the blogosphere to my entries of October, 2005. I note this because when I occasionally look back in my archives (blush!), that month still intrigues me (blush, blush!!) and I wish I could duplicate some of the topics and writings of that time. Perhaps this fall will accommodate......

Here's a link to that collection, enjoy!

Clueless Joe Lieberman

If any optimists still held out hope that Senator Joe Lieberman cared solely for the best interests of his constituents and the Democratic party, those hopes were crushed mightily last night and this morning by the good Senator himself. After suffering a narrow but historic loss in yesterday's US Senate primary in Connecticut to newcomer Ned Lamont, Joe proceeded to not only challenge his alleged party in the November generals as an independent, but continued to attack his alleged party's nominee for US Senator (note that most prominent Dems quickly endorsed Mr. Lamont after the results of the election were certain).

Further, Senator Lieberman made it more than clear that no one will be successful in talking him out of running as an independent this fall. With these statements he's essentially saying three things: first, I don't care about the schism I will help create in my "party" over the next 3 months, second, I don't care about the fact that I may be responsible for my "party" losing another Senate seat as I split the vote, and third, the one and only most important thing to me is to maintain the power and prestige I've enjoyed for the last 18 years, period. Its the same arrogance which prevented him from taking his challenger seriously until the last few weeks.

A funny sidebar, the wingnut reaction is bound to be amusing as up to now they've seen only two types of Dems: the good ones, Senators Lieberman and Miller (who consistently support the stiffs more than the Dems), and the rest who are all far left Massachusetts type abortion & gay lovin' cut and runners. So its not surprising to see them bemoaning the loss of this DINO. Here's one amusing blast (albeit a product of simple, shallow thought and weak writing skills) at those who voted for Mr. Lamont as being in the "wackadoo wing" of the party. Sure. Those way-out crazies who voted for a millionaire businessman. But of course one must consider the source, a publication a half step up from The Weekly World News.

WaPo

The Weekly Wash (Premier)

I have an acquaintance, who shall remain nameless until permission to reveal is granted, who sends me weekly week-end op-ed roundups he/she calls the "wash". I intend to make it part of this blog, beginning today. It is usually comprised of New York Times columnists, which is the case today. Note these opinions do not always reflect my own (especially Mr. F):



July 14, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
Left Behind Economics
By PAUL KRUGMAN
I’d like to say that there’s a real dialogue taking place about the state of the U.S. economy, but the discussion leaves a lot to be desired. In general, the conversation sounds like this:
Bush supporter: “Why doesn’t President Bush get credit for a great economy? I blame liberal media bias.”
Informed economist: “But it’s not a great economy for most Americans. Many families are actually losing ground, and only a very few affluent people are doing really well.”
Bush supporter: “Why doesn’t President Bush get credit for a great economy? I blame liberal media bias.”
To a large extent, this dialogue of the deaf reflects Upton Sinclair’s principle: it’s difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it. But there’s also an element of genuine incredulity. Many observers, even if they acknowledge the growing concentration of income in the hands of the few, find it hard to believe that this concentration could be proceeding so rapidly as to deny most Americans any gains from economic growth.
Yet newly available data show that that’s exactly what happened in 2004.
Why talk about 2004, rather than more recent experience? Unfortunately, data on the distribution of income arrive with a substantial lag; the full story of what happened in 2004 has only just become available, and we won’t be able to tell the full story of what’s happening right now until the last year of the Bush administration. But it’s reasonably clear that what’s happening now is the same as what happened then: growth in the economy as a whole is mainly benefiting a small elite, while bypassing most families.
Here’s what happened in 2004. The U.S. economy grew 4.2 percent, a very good number. Yet last August the Census Bureau reported that real median family income — the purchasing power of the typical family — actually fell. Meanwhile, poverty increased, as did the number of Americans without health insurance. So where did the growth go?
The answer comes from the economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, whose long-term estimates of income equality have become the gold standard for research on this topic, and who have recently updated their estimates to include 2004. They show that even if you exclude capital gains from a rising stock market, in 2004 the real income of the richest 1 percent of Americans surged by almost 12.5 percent. Meanwhile, the average real income of the bottom 99 percent of the population rose only 1.5 percent. In other words, a relative handful of people received most of the benefits of growth.
There are a couple of additional revelations in the 2004 data. One is that growth didn’t just bypass the poor and the lower middle class, it bypassed the upper middle class too. Even people at the 95th percentile of the income distribution — that is, people richer than 19 out of 20 Americans — gained only modestly. The big increases went only to people who were already in the economic stratosphere.
The other revelation is that being highly educated was no guarantee of sharing in the benefits of economic growth. There’s a persistent myth, perpetuated by economists who should know better — like Edward Lazear, the chairman of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers — that rising inequality in the United States is mainly a matter of a rising gap between those with a lot of education and those without. But census data show that the real earnings of the typical college graduate actually fell in 2004.
In short, it’s a great economy if you’re a high-level corporate executive or someone who owns a lot of stock. For most other Americans, economic growth is a spectator sport.
Can anything be done to spread the benefits of a growing economy more widely? Of course. A good start would be to increase the minimum wage, which in real terms is at its lowest level in half a century.
But don’t expect this administration or this Congress to do anything to limit the growing concentration of income. Sometimes I even feel sorry for these people and their apologists, who are prevented from acknowledging that inequality is a problem by both their political philosophy and their dependence on financial support from the wealthy. That leaves them no choice but to keep insisting that ordinary Americans — who have, in fact, been bypassed by economic growth — just don’t understand how well they’re doing.

July 14, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
The Kidnapping of Democracy
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
When you watch the violence unfolding in the Middle East today it is easy to feel that you’ve been to this movie before and that you know how it ends — badly. But we actually have not seen this movie before. Something new is unfolding, and we’d better understand it.
What we are seeing in Iraq, the Palestinian territories and Lebanon is an effort by Islamist parties to use elections to pursue their long-term aim of Islamizing the Arab-Muslim world. This is not a conflict about Palestinian or Lebanese prisoners in Israel. This is a power struggle within Lebanon, Palestine and Iraq over who will call the shots in their newly elected “democratic’’ governments and whether they will be real democracies.
The tiny militant wing of Hamas today is pulling all the strings of Palestinian politics, the Iranian-backed Hezbollah Shiite Islamic party is doing the same in Lebanon, even though it is a small minority in the cabinet, and so, too, are the Iranian-backed Shiite parties and militias in Iraq. They are not only showing who is boss inside each new democracy, but they are also competing with one another for regional influence.
As a result, the post-9/11 democracy experiment in the Arab-Muslim world is being hijacked. Yes, basically free and fair elections were held in Lebanon, the Palestinian territories and Iraq. Yes, millions turned out to vote because the people of the Arab-Muslim world really do want to shape their own futures.
But the roots of democracy are so shallow in these places and the moderate majorities so weak and intimidated that we are getting the worst of all worlds. We are getting Islamist parties who are elected to power, but who insist on maintaining their own private militias and refuse to assume all the responsibilities of a sovereign government. They refuse to let their governments have control over all weapons. They refuse to be accountable to international law (the Lebanese-Israeli border was ratified by the U.N.), and they refuse to submit to the principle that one party in the cabinet cannot drag a whole country into war.
“Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinians all held democratic elections,’’ said the Israeli political theorist Yaron Ezrahi, “and the Western expectation was that these elections would produce legitimate governments that had the power to control violence and would assume the burden of responsibility of governing. ... But what happened in all three places is that we [produced] governments which are sovereign only on paper, but not over a territory.’’
Then why do parties like Hamas and Hezbollah get elected? Often because they effectively run against the corruption of the old secular state-controlled parties, noted Mr. Ezrahi. But once these Islamists are in office they revert to serving their own factional interests, not those of the broad community.
Boutros Harb, a Christian Lebanese parliamentarian, said: “We must decide who has the right to make decisions on war and peace in Lebanon. Is that right reserved for the Lebanese people and its legal institutions, or is the choice in the hands of a small minority of Lebanese people?”
Ditto in the fledgling democracies of Palestine and Iraq. When cabinet ministers can maintain their own militias and act outside of state authority, said Mr. Ezrahi, you’re left with a “meaningless exercise’’ in democracy/state building.
Why don’t the silent majorities punish these elected Islamist parties for working against the real interests of their people? Because those who speak against Hamas or Hezbollah are either delegitimized as “American lackeys’’ or just murdered, like Rafiq Hariri, the former Lebanese prime minister.
The world needs to understand what is going on here: the little flowers of democracy that were planted in Lebanon, Iraq and the Palestinian territories are being crushed by the boots of Syrian-backed Islamist militias who are desperate to keep real democracy from taking hold in this region and Iranian-backed Islamist militias desperate to keep modernism from taking hold.
It may be the skeptics are right: maybe democracy, while it is the most powerful form of legitimate government, simply can’t be implemented everywhere. It certainly is never going to work in the Arab-Muslim world if the U.S. and Britain are alone in pushing it in Iraq, if Europe dithers on the fence, if the moderate Arabs cannot come together and make a fist, and if Islamist parties are allowed to sit in governments and be treated with respect — while maintaining private armies.
The whole democracy experiment in the Arab-Muslim world is at stake here, and right now it’s going up in smoke.
And another view. I still believe that Iz has gone too far, but it has become clear to me that I do not have a firm understanding of all the factions and forces at work in the Middle East.

July 14, 2006
Op-Ed Contributor
Israel’s Invasion, Syria’s War
By MICHAEL YOUNG
Beirut, Lebanon
ISRAEL’S incursion into Lebanon after the kidnapping on Wednesday of two Israeli soldiers by the militant group Hezbollah is far more than another flare-up on a tense border. It must also be seen as a spinoff of a general counterattack against American and Israeli power in the region by Iran and Syria, operating through sub-state actors like Hezbollah and the Palestinian organization Hamas.
If America and its Security Council partners are smart, however, they may be able to use this crisis to further their security goals in the Middle East, and to help Lebanon climb out of its political morass.
This is not to say that the cycle of attack and retaliation between Hezbollah and Israel is merely a proxy war. The two sides have long engaged in a conflict in southern Lebanon — albeit, since Israel’s pullout in 2000, one mostly limited to a disputed territory known as the Shebaa Farms and contained by unwritten rules. This week, however, Hezbollah transgressed three political lines.
The first was its expansion of military operations outside the Shebaa area. While Hezbollah has done this before — even killing some Israeli troops — the latest operation was certain to be intolerable to an Israeli government already dealing with the kidnapping of another soldier, Cpl. Gilad Shalit, by Hamas in Gaza.
A second line that Hezbollah crossed was its evident coordination of strategy with Hamas; this went well beyond its stated aim of simply defending Lebanon and left Israel feeling it was fighting a war on two fronts.
The third line crossed was domestic. By unilaterally taking Lebanon into a conflict with Israel, Hezbollah sought to stage a coup d’état against the anti-Syrian parliamentary and government majority, which opposes the militant group’s adventurism.
Hezbollah holds seats in the 128-member Parliament but has an uneasy relationship with the majority, which has been on the defensive as Syria has tried to reassert control over Lebanon after its military withdrawal last year. Hezbollah hoped to humiliate the anti-Syrian politicians by forcing them to endorse the kidnappings and showing how little control the government has over the party.
Israel wants Lebanon to pay an onerous price for its ambiguity on Hezbollah: it has imposed an air and sea blockade and is launching air attacks well into Lebanon, including several on the Beirut airport. Pointedly, however, Israel has failed to mention the regional facet of the crisis. Israeli officials have left Syria out of their condemnations, in jarring contrast to the Bush administration’s statements that have rightly highlighted Iranian and Syrian responsibility for Hezbollah’s behavior.
Iran, of course, has long bankrolled Hezbollah, and the Israeli government said yesterday it feared the two kidnapped soldiers were being taken to Tehran. But Syria is the nexus of regional instability, giving shelter to several of the most intransigent Palestinian militants, transferring arms to Hezbollah, and undermining Lebanon’s frail sovereignty.
Israel can brutalize Lebanon all it wants, but unless something is done to stop Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, from exporting instability to buttress his despotic regime, little will change.
Once the Israelis end their offensive, Hezbollah will regroup and continue to hold Lebanon hostage through its militia, arguably the most effective force in the country. Hamas leaders in Damascus will continue derailing any negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians. And Syria will continue to eat away at Lebanese independence, reversing the gains of last year when hundreds of thousands of Lebanese marched against Syrian hegemony.
It would be far smarter for Israel, and America, to profit from Hezbollah’s having perhaps overplayed its hand. The popular mood here is one of extreme anger that the group has provoked a conflict Lebanon cannot win. The summer tourism season, a rare source of revenue for a country on the financial ropes, has been ruined. Even Hezbollah’s core supporters, the Shiite Muslims in the south, cannot be happy at seeing their towns and villages turned again into a killing field.
What to do? While the United Nations has been ineffective in its efforts toward Middle East peace, it may be the right body to intervene here, if only because it has the cudgel of Security Council Resolution 1559, which was approved in 2004 and, among other things, calls for Hezbollah’s disarmament.
The five permanent Security Council members, perhaps at this weekend’s Group of 8 meeting, should consider a larger initiative based on the resolution that would include: a proposal for the gradual collection of Hezbollah’s weapons; written guarantees by Israel that it will respect Lebanese sovereignty and pull its forces out of the contested Lebanese land in the Shebaa Farms; and the release of prisoners on both sides. Such a deal could find support among Lebanon’s anti-Syrian politicians, would substantially narrow Hezbollah’s ability to justify retaining its arms, and also send a signal to Syria and particularly Iran that the region is not theirs for the taking.
One important thing: No Lebanese government could legitimately help to advance such a plan if Israel were to try to, as its army chief of staff put it this week, “turn back the clock in Lebanon by 20 years.” Israel must cease its attacks and let diplomacy take over.
Michael Young is the opinion editor of The Daily Star in Lebanon and a contributing editor at Reason magazine.
A reasonable voice:
To the Editor:
Israel’s bombings of Gaza and Lebanon are an irrational and disproportionate reaction to the capture of three Israeli soldiers and the killing of three others.
So far, more than 50 Palestinians in Gaza and nearly as many Lebanese have been killed, hundreds have been wounded, and the bombing of critical infrastructure will surely kill far more.
This incredibly disproportionate use of force demonstrates a macabre equation where each Israeli life appears to be worth the lives of dozens of innocent Palestinians and Lebanese.
By threatening to “turn back the clock in Lebanon by 20 years,” Israel appears willing to punish millions of Lebanese for the actions of a few militants.
The time has come to end United States support for the oppressive, out-of-control government of Israel.
Eric Ettlinger
Berkeley, Calif., July 13, 2006

Losing Their Way

Its got to be tough being a mainstream, reasonable, rational Republican these days.

The party which embraced fiscal restraint is now spending like a drunken sailor, charging it to our kids' and grandkids' (and so on) credit cards. And by selling this historic debt to foreign governments, some of whom are a looming threat, they're compromising national security to a far greater degree than a group of al-Qaida operatives. Even worse, this deficit spending is not being used for investments in our future, such as infrastructure improvements, education, or health care. It's instead being pissed away to bloated defense contractors and other DOD waste that is well beyond most citizens' imagination. We spend more in sheer dollars for "defense" than the rest of the world combined, and it's increasing every year. This is on the back of ever shrinking expenditures on education and social safety net programs such as Medicare.

The party that self-identifies with morals, principles and values is now mired in scandal, hypocrisy, corruption and a cynical regard for the law. And since we have the fox guarding the henhouse, there's not likely to be any serious oversight in the near future.

The party which used to be for smaller government, state's rights and a reduction of federal intrusion into individuals' lives has now built the largest government infrastructure in the nation's history (per capita spending). It is in the process of building huge bureaucratic organizations spying on ordinary citizens to an extent that even George Orwell could not have imagined, away from the prying eyes of a bipartisan congress and pesky federal judges ensuring virtually no meaningful oversight. They govern with a fascist flair, creating knee-jerk policies which will do little to stop well funded al-Qaida operatives, but will continue to shrivel the rights of law-abiding Americans. State's rights? Can you say Constitutional Amendment banning gay marriage?

The party of bold, forward thinking ideas has now degenerated into a three-word culture, winning elections solely by sliming their opponent with misleading information and outright lies. "Stay the course", "cut and run", "tax and spend", "war on terror", "September the 11th" and many other phrases that play well on Fox "News" do not describe sound, intelligent public policy.

Lastly, the party which claims to be the gatekeepers for our security has accomplished just the opposite due to the unprovoked invasion and occupation of a sovereign Arab country and our "my way or the highway" attitude toward the rest of the world on this and other issues, according to many ex-generals and other non-partisan security experts. And just as important as what they are doing is what they are not doing, the behind the scenes blocking & tackling like tightening cargo port security.

To the group I identify in the opening? It's no longer enough to say "this is not my Republican party", hold your nose and pull the "R" lever hoping you might actually get to pay a couple of bucks less tax someday or because you believe that bigger international problems just require bigger bombs (that's the naive notion, not the other way around). This is not just a couple of bad apples in the West Wing, this is Senate leadership, this is House leadership and it is increasingly State leadership. This is your party in the 21st century, denial is futile.

This is not the party of Teddy Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, or even George the first for that matter. And it's not going away soon. This is your party, that's the name on the door, and you're enabling it to thrive and grow. Before you vote this fall, I'd ask you to read two of the most poignant and learned speeches of the 20th century and decide if the current bunch really represents you: Dwight D. Eisenhower's 1953 "Chance for Peace" speech and his 1960 "Military Industrial Complex" speech. He was a real Republican, and a true American.

The Color Purple

I brought this up in a blog last year, but think it bears repeat scrutiny. Look at the map to the left (taken from the RNC web site) and what do you see (besides a greatly exaggerated depiction of red dominance)?

With few exceptions, all the major population centers in the US are blue, or dominated by progressive voters. The vast majority of lightly populated rural areas are dominated by regressive voters.

Why?

My theory?

Major population centers tend to have much greater access to social, cultural, and political diversity through the arts, lectures, media and educational institutions thereby exposing the population to greater thought diversity (not to mention real life outside of these United States). This results in more nuanced and considered opinions. And I also believe these areas are more exposed to the effects of poverty, as well as the work of charitable organizations.

Your thoughts (besides calling me an elitist)?

New NEW To The Page

Check out the "Cost of the War" counter at the bottom of the left sidebar (after "About Me"). I plan to leave it there for awhile, so if you ever want to remind your rightie friends how much moolah we're pissin' away on a daily basis there (not to mention the human life) feel free to come back and check it out as often as you like!

UPDATE: New, improved! Now with W time-left-in-office countdown clock!!

Vegas East

Castro Convertible

Who was the first to conquer space?
It's incontrovertible!
That the first to conquer living space
Was the Castro Convertible.
Who conquers space with fine design?
And saves you money all the time?
Who's tops in the convertible line?
Castro Convertible!!

Colbert Fever

You know you have a real story when folks are still talking about an event a week and a half after it happened. In modern times we discuss today what the entertainment media told us to talk about last night or this morning, then tomorrow dutifully change to the assigned topic du jour, yesterday's news a faded memory.

So now a week and a half we still have the pundits parsing the now famous Steven Colbert speech at the annual White House Correspondents dinner in D.C. One of the initial reactions right after the event was the predictable righteous indignation of the regressive talkers as they tried to kill that story early on. Shameful, disrespectful, not funny, and on and on went the critics. Excuse me?????!! Not funny???!! Or maybe did most of it go over your head?

But then stodgy, buttoned-down CSPAN awakens to find they actually have a hit on their hands!

And so Mr. Colbert has gone from emerging sidekick to the toast of the town. Well, toast of half of the town (or is it 69% now?).

The No Fact Zone

Not sure what the AP was thinking when they invited Stephen Colbert to be the keynote speaker at the White House Correspondents annual dinner last Saturday. As Jon Stewart put it, "Apparently he [Colbert] was under the impression that they'd hired him to do what he does every night on television". Colbert has come of age, the speech was nothing short of brilliant. He thoroughly spanked the DC press crowd, plus W, did it to their faces and on their turf. Enjoy (Update: As of 5/8/06 CSPAN has forced YouTube and ifilm to take down the Colbert speech. Here's the version the GOOGLE cut the exclusive deal for):
Colbert WHCD Speech
The Story
Jon Stewart's Thoughts

Ooo-ooo That Smell!

Um, can I please take a look at that Kyoto thingy again? Um, uh, I may have ovelooked something.......

Just Say No!

Reuters reports that John Kerry is deciding whether or not to run for president in '08. Senator Kerry, ponder no more! You are a wonderful statesman, and a dedicated public servant. And you'd probably make a very good president. But you blow as a candidate. Don't subject us to that, or another humiliating defeat again.

Tweak!

It would be amusing if it was not so sad. The guy whose only other job before the current one was as the governor of a state. And now he's trying to effectively deal with rabble like this. God help us every one.

BTW, is this a bad wig or a bad comb-over??

Flotsam and Jetsam

We have a mixed bag today. Among the gems:

• W pretending to "shake things up"
• Scotty Mac is tired of lying
• "Ahm the desahder!" (dejavu from the Iraq invasion runup)

I originally had 5 items, but decided one might be offensive to our female readers and the other was immature: letting a rabid regressive lure me into his lair of anger and hate (in other words, "their" comfort zone). Enjoy!