Always Right

Republicans are never wrong. They've always got people working the angles, so the Democrats can take the blame.



Remember all the Libya war hate from the Republicans? That was an easy position to go on the news and advocate back when the rebels looked like they were about to get thrown into the sea by Qadaffi's mercenaries, wasn't it?



But now that the Libya intervention seems to have worked, the pro-interventionist Republicans get to blame the President for not getting involved soon enough.



I really like how no one in the GOP even acknowledges that there is a difference of opinion within their own party. That's a powerful media strategy, my friends.



Same as it ever was.



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The Libyan Gamble

Libya. WTF? In a nation as polarized as we are, things aren't supposed to be this complicated. You're either Pro-War or you're in with Big Peace. You're either a neocon or a realist. You're either Pro-UN Internationalism or Pro-US Unilateralism. What do you do when your deliberative President reaches a similar conclusion to that of a "decider?" We're supposed to know exactly what to think, which party officials will do what, and which voting blocs will behave in what ways.

Karl Rove isn't supposed to "God Bless" Hillary Clinton.

Adrastos says it well:

[G]ood intentions are NOT sufficient. After watching the Bushies give Wilsonian internationalism a right wing twist, I'm a born again realist in matters of war and peace.

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I *really* hope I'm wrong about this because I'd love to see that murderous brown clad shitbird Gaddafi toppled. But the way they've gone about this gives me the heebie jeebies.

I think this is the biggest gamble America's made in decades. Ousting Gaddafi quickly with the combined might of Allied air-power and United Nations mandate restores badly needed credibility to internationalism. America no longer world policeman? I'm down with that. A big plus would be the preservation of the Arab pro-reform movement sweeping the Middle East. If newly liberated Libyans are cheering in the streets and setting up a post-Gaddafi government, Bahrain and Yemen are more likely to cut some deals at the conference table. And that's all secondary to the elimination of one of the world's last true madmen.

But if Gaddafi wins? Everything falls apart. Internationalism and the United Nations will be worthless. The United States will have sealed the deal in establishing a new era of Great Powers (that is coming quickly anyway but why hurry it along?). Gaddafi will butcher people on state television and no one will be able to do a thing about it. The Arab Reforms stop in their tracks, as dissent is crushed by autocrats who never have to listen to anyone but themselves again, ever.

That's just what happens immediately, and I'm not seeing a middle ground.

How did we get here? Let us count the ways:

Somalia was such a disaster for internationalism that little was done about Rwanda & Burundi, the Sudan, and - of course - Somalia.

The Balkans were the messy win of internationalism at work: proving that thousands dead, genocide, and war crimes in the neighborhood will eventually push the Europeans to clean house and bring America along for the ride.

Afganistan was the base of operations for those who attacked us on September 11th, the USS Cole, and in Kenya and Tanzania; it was an ongoing human-rights disaster; and it was a mess we had no small part in creating. I don't argue about our nation going to war in Afganistan, though I wonder what strategies could have been used to end that war sooner.

Iraq. We've really been in a state of undeclared war with Iraq since 1991, when the triumphant coalition of international allies drove Hussein's armies out of Kuwait. But we never really left. This is the longest-running external armed conflict in US history, and we are now on President #4 trying to end this cycle. The American people are still arguing about the restart of this war in 2003, basically so we have something other than Vietnam to argue about. And we're arguing about it despite the fact that the troops have held together two invasions this most recent invasion and an occupation without a clear strategy from Washington; without the appropriate resources needed to take, hold, and rebuild a nation of millions; and without true international support. That is an amazing accomplishment that is usually ignored when talking about this war.

Because the talking is mostly arguing about why we went to war in the first place. And that argument, based on our intervention in Libya, apparently hasn't been settled or even acknowledged. Which is one of the ways we've gotten to where we are today.

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The Egypt Narrative on the American Right

I've long said that the GOP/Tea Party/Right-Wing folks can take any issue, and talk themsleves into being on the right side of an issue and their political opponents into being on the wrong side of the issue, regardless of what the issue actually is.

Though I don't think I've ever seen an example as good as this one. See if you can follow the pick-your-own-right-wing narrative about Egypt:

Stability Good, Obama Bad: Obama isn't doing enough to support Mubarak against these protesters, who will install in Egypt Kenyan-anti-colonial-Marxist-Sharia government at the hands of the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood. Stupid Cairo speech. Why does this administration hate our allies?

Freedom good, Obama bad: Obama didn't pressure Mubarak enough to liberalize Egypt over the last 30 years, and now these protesters want the sweet promise of freedom George W. Bush offered them by invading Iraq. (Visual.) Why does this administration insist on keeping dictators as allies? Neoconservatism is vindicated, just eight short years later, in a different country, that the USA did not invade. (Though Fox News appears to be confused on this last point.)

How easy is this? If anything bad happens, it is automatically Obama's fault. But if anything good happens, Obama needs to thank George W. Bush, and widely discredited neoconservatives will be proven right about...Iraq. It doesn't matter that either choice completely ignores pesky reality or contradicts the other.

Luckily, there are a few really real conservatives out there who seem to be taking the correct lessons from this. While Limbaugh and Breitbart have to give their cults of personality what they pay for, other thinkers are working it out.

I linked you to one such sample yesterday, and today I link you to Kyle Wingfield at the AJC:

But for the part of Americans, via our government, one lesson is clear. The time for demanding real change and reforms in a country such as Egypt with a regime such as Mubarak’s, into which we have poured tens of billions of dollars, is not when the people have finally taken to the streets and defied the tanks.
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But this should be a red line: No more aid for undemocratic rulers who aren’t moving their people toward greater liberty.

Glad to see some conservatives on board the "let's not pay dictators to be allies" train, finally. It has taken some time. A long time. A really, really long time.

But, hey, while we're discussing unsavory allies....

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Left-Wing Narratives: Everything Was Fine Until...

Michael Lind is no left-winger, but after reading a recent article of his, it appears that he is a subscriber to one of the left-wing's most prevalant narratives. Lind falls into the same category of many left- and right-wing elite, especially those who cannot seem to reconcile the positions of others who do not agree with them 100%. Thus is the burden of already knowing everything.

You know how they know this? Because in the past, back when everyone who mattered "agreed" with them (the idea that they could be picking and chosing the agreement of historical figures to their personal philosophy never seems to be taken into account), the world was a far better, almost utopian, place. Just look at the state of things today, and how much better off we'd be if we had continued what was working!

Sound familiar? It should. There is an almost identical past-as-utopia streak running through the right-wing. (I'm not surprised that Lind is described as a "former" neoconservative.) But we can't ignore the danger of the same narrative running through the DNA of the left.

The main difference with the left's version is the understanding of what and where that utopian past specifically went off the rails. Lind fairly nails this current: Everything Was Fine Until The Christians Showed Up (In the 1970's). To many a leftist, society's fall from the rational advance of rational reason can be explained rationally as a result of irrational Christianity's rise to political power some time after 1970.

Because, the narrative tells us, lots of people in this country were Christians in the past, but they weren't very Christian-y. Not like today, anyway. Religion didn't have a very large impact on policy or history, the narrative goes, except as a foil for the forces of rationalism to defeat. The forces of irrational religion never won against the reasonable arguments of rational behavior, until something went wrong in the very recent past.

Oh, and this switch was made without any rational reason, because every scientific advance experienced in American history never had a consequence that was bad, ever.

This very recent and shocking rise of religion over rationality is an exception to the historical rule. Though it does explain, to the left-wing mind, the following things:

1. Why people disagree with their rational beliefs in the first place;
2. Why people vote against their own interests, making their disagreements policy;
3. Why the most left-wing candidates lose elections to dumb people voting against their own interests;
4. Why people who disagree with them should just shut their stupid mouths as not to encourage the dumb people who vote against their interests;
5. Why the only recourse is to make fun of those who disagree - there's nothing that can be done except withdraw into circles of similar thought and maybe throw a protest every now and again to compare witty and ironic signs.

With all that in play, I can tell you that the left doesn't have a problem losing elections because the "dumb people" are "irrationally" voting against their interests. The left loses elections because they subscribe to this narrative, and don't see the value in understanding why voting against their policies can be seen by large numbers of voters as the most rational thing to do.

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Neoconservative Fantasy Life

This weekend when I wrote about Tunisia, I wondered how long it would take Neoconservatives to start taking credit for the Tunisian people's revolt.

Back home, failed neoconservatives - architects of our failures in Iraq, Iran and Afganistan - will point to the recent and ongoing Iraq war as the catalyst for the Tunisian revlot. "See!" They will say, "that's what happens when democracy is spread."

Some may see this as prescient, but this is easy to predict. After all, this train is never late.

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Tunisia

This primarily Muslim nation in North Africa just drove out their autocratic leader. Americans, still reeling from Tuscon, may not know what to make of this, but Hillary Clinton fairly spells it out:

"While some countries have made great strides in governance, in many others, people have grown tired of corrupt institutions and a stagnant political order," she said. She appealed for leaders to heed calls to rein in rampant graft and offer all of their people a better way of life.

"Those who cling to the status quo may be able to hold back the full impact of their countries' problems for a little while, but not forever," Clinton said. "If leaders don't offer a positive vision and give young people meaningful ways to contribute, others will fill the vacuum."

This is one of the most mature statements I've heard an American Secretary of State make about the Middle East in almost a decade, and it fairly sums up the situation. How does it affect the United States? Because some of those "others" filling the vaccum happened to be Osama bin Laden.

For a long, long time, the United States ended up supporting too many anti-Democracy autocrats in charge of oil-rich Arab nations in the Middle East. Our intention was strategic control of oil, and democratic institutions might have threatened that. Better to engage a client autocrat to keep the communists at bay than foster democratic sentiment and give them a chance to change government through voting.

In the absence of political enfranchisement, the populations turned to the "others," those selling false religious fundamentalism, that could not be effectively controlled by these nation's autocratic rulers.

Our greatest failures? Our support for the Shah of Iran, our support for the Mujahedeen in Afganistan and our support for Saddam Hussien in Iraq. All decisions which have cost American lives, and have been doing so for decades.

What will happen in Tunisia? Hopefully, a liberalization will occur, and this nation will get to embark on their own experiment with self-government. Hopefully, they will never have to experience a rash of political suicides and riots that come along with internal unrest and self-propelled regime change. Hopefully, the people who just gave their blood for economic and political liberty will not surrender that liberty to tyrants of a religious stripe.

Back home, failed neoconservatives - architects of our failures in Iraq, Iran and Afganistan - will point to the recent and ongoing Iraq war as the catalyst for the Tunisian revlot. "See!" They will say, "that's what happens when democracy is spread."

Do not heed their words, for we do not know how Tunisia will reinvent herself, and we know from experience that neocons would have rather played ball with a corrupt autocrat than with a messy but vibrant democracy. This is what happens when the people choose, not when a government is forced upon them.

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The Third Front

Hey, I know what will get us out of these economic doldrums, fix the deficit and keep Comrade Obama out of office in 2012 - LET'S GO TO WAR WITH IRAN!

After all...

We are in the best shape we will ever be in to deal with attempted Iranian retaliation for our part in assisting an Israeli strike. Our posture to disrupt and protect against terrorist attacks at home and abroad has never been stronger
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The United States outflanks Iran in both Iraq and Afghanistan

These are the same people who claimed we would be welcomed as liberators, find the hidden WMD's in Iraq who have strategized our nation into two wars against 4th or 5th rate powers that have continued for nearly a decade.

War with Iran would be a disaster for the United States of America.

(HT: the Daily Dish, busy fighting the next war instead of refighting the last one.

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