Nothing Aside

Success + Time = Violence

I've got another up-is-down quote from a top official about Iraq, but first, let's take a look at today's headline in the Washington Post:

"Decline in Iraqi Troops' Readiness Cited"

That's right.  A decline.  Tell me again how we're making progress? 

When it comes right down to it, this really is the only measure of progress we can look to.  We can't leave until the Iraqi army is capable of doing what we're currently doing, so the faster and better we can train the new recruits, the sooner we can get out.  But a decline?  I know we were hardly limping along as it was, but now we're losing readiness?

The number of Iraqi army battalions that can fight insurgents without U.S. and coalition help has dropped from three to one, top U.S. generals told Congress yesterday, adding that the security situation in Iraq is too uncertain to predict large-scale American troop withdrawals anytime soon.

Gen. George W. Casey Jr., who oversees U.S. forces in Iraq, said there are fewer Iraqi battalions at "Level 1" readiness than there were a few months ago. Although Casey said the number of troops and overall readiness of Iraqi security forces have steadily increased in recent months, and that there has not been a "step backwards," both Republican and Democratic senators expressed deep concern that the United States is not making enough progress against a resilient insurgency.

Huh?  If there are less battalions capable of enforcing a peace, then we are, in fact, taking a step backwards.  Having an extra 50,000 guys in uniforms doesn't an army make.  They need to be able to actually, you know, do stuff.

OK, now to the quote.  This is General Casey explaining what "progress" looks like in Iraq:

I'll tell you that levels of violence are a lagging indicator of success.

So if we're doing something right, violence will follow, no?  And that's a good thing?  According to that logic, the more violence there is, the better things are and the sooner we'll be able to bring everyone home.  As a corollary to this: peace and tranquility in Iraq means that we're doing something wrong since success breeds violence, not peace.  Keep that in mind the next time there's a lull in the violence.

Swagger, Probes and Indictments, Oh My!

Man, the Republican Party really knows how to pick'em. 

This week (month?) has been really bad for the GOP as the President has lost his swagger because of a natural disaster made worse by his administration's incompetent leadership, the Senate Majority Leader is "Bracing for Dual Probes" (who writes these headlines?) into his suspicious insider-trading-looking dealings, and the House Majority Leader has been indicted by a Texas grand jury.  For those of you keeping score at home, those are the top three officials in our elected branches of government.

If the Democrats can't turn this into a majority in both houses of Congress in 2006, nothing can.  I've never bought into the notion that the Democrats are "without ideas," since that's not really their first responsibility when they only have 44 Senate seats and a sizable deficit in the House.  The first objective is opposition - and with this administration and this Frist Senate and DeLay House there has been more than enough to oppose.  In fact I'm impressed Reid and Pelosi have kept up as well as they have.  But put all that aside.  Even if they are "without ideas," they will be running against, quite literally, crooks and scoundrels.  Talk about a gift.

Cliff Note Diplomacy

Perhaps I was too forgiving in my belief that Karen Hughes wouldn't be so bad as an undersecretary of state for public affairs.  I had figured that while her public affairs skills would be spotless, what with her perfect execution of the 2000 Bush campaign's simple message, it would be her lack of international experience that would be her downfall.  It now appears that neither one is all that exceptional:

Speaking to reporters for nearly an hour as she flew to Cairo, Hughes appeared to set a relatively low bar for judging her mission's success.

"Many of the differences and many of the concerns are deep-seated, and I'm probably not going to change many minds," she said. "But if I make a connection with a person or two who I can keep following up with after I leave here on my trip, I would consider it a success."

Hughes betrayed some nervousness in her first diplomatic foray, which will also take her to Saudi Arabia and Turkey. This is her first visit to all three countries, and as she spoke to reporters she clutched briefing papers that appeared to be the diplomatic equivalent of Cliffs Notes.

Asked whether she was meeting with the Muslim Brotherhood, Hughes turned uncertainly to an aide and indicated she wasn't quite sure of the answer. The aide whispered back and Hughes replied, "We are respectful of Egypt's laws."

Anyone who doesn't know the American policy towards the Muslim Brotherhood should not be at the top ranks of the Department of State.  I don't care if you're an expert in Korean affairs, if you're that senior of an official, you should know basic American policy around the world.  The fact that Hughes doesn't know simple things like this is troubling, to say the least.  If she's supposed to be the person to clean up the American image around the world, I have very little confidence that anti-Americanism will ever decrease in the next three years.

Germany's Coalition Battle Begins

After looking like a sure loser just a week or two ago, German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder bounced back to (potentially) victory in yesterday's German federal election.  Most of the German press had written off Schröder and had anointed his Christian Democratic Union opponent, Angela Merkel, as the Chancellor-to-be.  German voters, however, seem to have had misgivings about Merkel and, despite their dissatisfaction with Schröder's painful (but entirely necessary) economic reforms, seem to have decided that he was still the best alternative. 

However, no one party earned a majority, and the usual coalition pairings of CDU/Free Dems or SPD/Greens also appear to have fallen short of a governing majority (results here).  All this leaves Germany in a quandary: what will the next government look like?  And perhaps just as importantly, who will have to break their campaign promises in order to form such a mixed government?  Here is how the final tally broke it all down:

• 35.2% for Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the center-right party led by Angela Merkel.
• 34.3% for the Social Democratic Party (SPD), the center-left party led by Gerhard Schröder.
• 9.8% for the Free Democrats, the pro-business right-wing party (traditionally the coalition partner of the CDU).
• 8.7% for the Left Party (Linkspartei), the new left party, made up of disaffected SPD members and former communists.
• 8.1% for the Greens, the progressive left-wing party (traditionally the coalition partner of the SPD).

So what are the possibilities for coalitions?  At least according to campaign promises, the possibilities are sparse.  For instance, both the SPD and the CDU have sworn off any possible alliance with the Left Party.  For Schröder and the SPD this makes sense since the Left Party is made up of former SPD members who have fought tooth and nail against the economic reforms and cuts in the welfare state that are necessary for Germany to stay competitive in a globalized world economy.  For this same reason, it would be impossible for the CDU to ever work effectively with the Left Party.  So this limits the options tremendously right off the bat.

Then there is the possibility of the SPD/Green combo luring the Free Democrats away from the CDU.  This too would be awkward, but not quite as badly.  Schröder's necessary economic reform platform could use a burst of energy from the pro-business wing of German politics, though the SPD may be punished for such an arrangement in future elections. 

A CDU-led coalition with the Free Democrats in addition to the Greens also seems untenable.  The Greens would not be too happy in such a government and would quickly find their ideals compromised by the realities of government.  Especially after holding a prized position in the previous government, when it's leader Joschka Fischer was Foreign Minister, a CDU-led government would be difficult to swallow.

Which leaves us with the most likely combination: a "grand coalition" between the SPD and the CDU.  This, however, runs into the biggest obstacle of them all: pride.  While Merkel has already suggested such an arrangement after realizing that she squandered her incredible poll lead of just a few weeks and even days ago, Schröder is having none of it.  He has said that he will only allow for such a "grand coalition" if he can remain Chancellor.  That makes sense from a personal perspective: the prospect of a demotion to Foreign Minister in a "grand coalition" after being Chancellor would probably encourage one to seek early retirement as a face-saving move.  Considering that Schröder was probably going to retire anyway when polls were putting his SPD a good 10-15% behind Merkel's CDU, this might still turn out to be the best option.  However, with an impressive come-from-behind tie in the closing days of the campaign, Schröder is riding high and has reason to believe that the people would prefer his continued leadership.

So what should be done?  Traditionally the leader of the party with the most votes is selected as Chancellor.  That would suggest that Merkel should become Germany's first female head of government.  I wouldn't count on that though.  Either watch for Merkel to accept Schröder's demand for the Chancellorship and herself be booted out of CDU's leadership for giving up victory, or prepare for the fireworks that come with unusual coalition governments.  However it happens, don't expect it to last very long.  Such toxic mixes in government usually don't last long.

Wanted: Fiscally Responsible Leadership

I missed Bush's Katrina speech last night.  That's mainly due to the fact that I don't yet have a TV in my new apartment, but partly because I already knew what he was going to say.  Today Andrew Sullivan echoes that feeling:

I guess I wasn't the only one who decided to skip watching the president live last night. Across the blogosphere, it seems as if many others decided to catch it later, or on the web, or just read the transcript. Why? Because I knew what was coming: an attempt at spiritual uplift, greased by billions and billions that we don't have, organized by a federal government that, under Bush, cannot seem to organize anything competently. I'm not saying we don't need to spend money on the reconstruction of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. I'm saying I don't want to hear it from this guy.

It's almost difficult to get motivated in opposition to the constant screw-ups and almost intentional mismanagement perpetrated by this administration.  Perhaps that's the goal: wear down liberals to the point of exhaustion (Of course, The Onion was on top of this a while ago).  But how can we really trust this administration to do the right thing anymore?  Iraq is idling along at the same deadly pace, the federal budget deficit continues to grow, and as a Category 4 hurricane rolled over a city situated below sea level, this White House sat on its hands while refusing to play the "blame game" (note to the wise: the only people who don't want to play a "blame game" are the people who are usually to blame). 

But what's the solution?  Eliminating the Estate Tax on the wealthy so that those who are worth more than $1.5 million don't have to worry about passing on their extreme wealth to their family.  Adding another $200 billion to the federal budget for Katrina-related reconstruction while making no cuts in spending (note to senators: you "earmarked" $25 billion on the recent transportation bill for pet projects.  Look there!). 

Is this all a trap, as one of my more astute commenters has suggested?  Are Republicans just letting the budget get out of control so responsible Democrats will have to start cutting government?  If so, let's fall into that trap.  The myth out there is that Democrats are pro-spending and Republicans are not.  But look at this 100% Republican government that we've had for five years: massive additional spending - greater than the rate of spending growth under a Democratic Congress (if you can remember when that was) - but all on Republican-favored projects.  Republicans are spendthrifts just as much as Democrats used to be.  The difference is that Republicans insist on cutting taxes at the same time, driving America into even further debt. 

Someone needs to be responsible here.  Right now, the Democrats are the only ones willing to think about the future of this country.  Republicans may have wanted to starve the beast (they used to, I'm not so convinced of that anymore), but pretty soon America is set to die of fiscal starvation.  That may please the likes of Grover Norquist, but those who care about this country will be stuck with the dreary reality.

Conservatism Needs A Diet

Perhaps you heard Tom Delay's recent comment that there simply is no more fat to cut from the federal budget.  You may have been as shocked as I am, especially after Congress passed the most pork-heavy transportation and energy bills in history.  Just for the record, here is what Delay declared:

WASHINGTON -- House Majority Leader Tom DeLay said yesterday that Republicans have done so well in cutting spending that he declared an "ongoing victory," and said there is simply no fat left to cut in the federal budget.
    
    Mr. DeLay was defending Republicans' choice to borrow money and add to this year's expected $331 billion deficit to pay for Hurricane Katrina relief. Some Republicans have said Congress should make cuts in other areas, but Mr. DeLay said that doesn't seem possible.
...

Asked if that meant the government was running at peak efficiency, Mr. DeLay said, "Yes, after 11 years of Republican majority we've pared it down pretty good."

The ridiculousness of this statement speaks for itself.  Anyone who has paid any attention at all to the federal government knows that the government is about as obese as your average American.

Here is what Andrew Sullivan had to say about it all:

This is what conservatism has now come to mean: the worst aspects of big government liberalism with the worst aspects of meddling in the moral decisions of people's private lives. And the people who have done this seem oblivious to it. I will remind you, Tom DeLay equated a balanced budget with fiscal sanity in the Clinton years. But now it's his budget, and his constituents and interest groups who get to feed at the trough, and the sky is the limit. A reminder to fiscal conservatives: today's GOP isn't just not what it used to be; it's your main enemy now. Conservatism has been hijacked by puritans and spendthrifts. Their unifying philosophy is meddling in other people's lives and spending other people's money.

Right on.  Real "conservatism" hasn't been a functional philosophy in the U.S. Government since the late 1990s.  It wasn't the philosophy I subscribed to, but at least it was consistant and honest.

Crazy Things Heard On The Metro

Ah, and so it begins: the first installment of Crazy Things Heard On The Metro.  Frankly, I'm surprised it took me a week to hear something ridiculous on the DC metro.  If you are at all familiar with Overheard In New York, you'll immediately understand where this comes from. 

Today's installment comes from a woman who was otherwise silent, but who would say the most random things moments after the doors closed at each stop.  First there was this:

Can you imagine how many Chinese are on the New York subway?  They're everywhere!  Chase Manhattan said, 'if you're Chinese you're everywhere'."

Um.  Ok.  Mind you, she wasn't saying this to anyone in particular.  She was just saying it.  Then there was this gem:

If you're Chinese and like my sister, you should - there's a million Chinese - you should move to Michigan.

Hmm.  Good to know, I guess.  All these references to things Chinese were throwing me for a loop since at the very moment she was saying these things I was half-heartedly reading this Economist article.  For a moment I was very confused.

Finally

I almost got whiplash when I read this headline: "Bush Takes Responsibility for Blunders":

WASHINGTON - President Bush said Tuesday that "I take responsibility" for failures in dealing with Hurricane Katrina and said the disaster raised broader questions about the government's ability to respond to natural disasters as well as terror attacks.

"Katrina exposed serious problems in our response capability at all levels of government," Bush said at joint White House news conference with the president of Iraq.

"To the extent the federal government didn't fully do its job right, I take responsibility," Bush said.

There is no reason why anyone should be excited about a simple statement like this, but we haven't seen anyone in the White House take responsibility for anything in the past five years.  This is a good start.  Hopefully he is being sincere and not just trying to put out the flames on his presidency.  At this point though, I'm too cynical to believe the former.

Jalal Talabani, President of Iraq

This morning I was able to attend a speech given by Iraq's new president, Jalal Talabani, at the St. Regis Hotel in Washington, DC.  The event was sponsored by the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution.  There were about 50 or 60 people there - many fewer than I was expecting.

President Talabani spoke for about half an hour before Martin Indyk, Director of the Saban Center and former U.S. Ambassador to Israel, opened it up to questions.  Talabani's speech was largely uneventful.  He expressed his condolences for those who died in New Orleans and compared that tragedy to the thousand Iraqis who were killed in a stampede when a rumor of a suicide bomber spread throughout a crowd.

His speech, though this is to be expected, was overflowing with optimism and resolve:

To build a democratic Iraq... we have mobilized the principles of democracy and the arms of democracy. Because of the continued virulence of Ba'athist fascism, we must defend our democracy while we build it, we must fight even as we vote.

He spoke about the imperfections in the new Iraqi constitution, perhaps in an effort to show to the Sunnis that those who they view as the victors in the constitutional process didn't get everything they wanted.  So many things in Middle Eastern politics are zero sum games.  Talabani seemed to be putting forth the very reasonable idea that perhaps Iraq won't be reverting to that system:

Principaled compromise is a key element of democratic life. In a compromise, nobody is perfectly happy and nobody is perfectly unhappy, but we learn to live with each other. That princiiple is vital for the survival of a diverse country such as Iraq.

Again, the vast majority of Iraqis, through their democratically elected representatives, have shown that they are willing to make principled compromises. Indeed, the good news from Iraq is that the new Iraqi constitution is not a perfect document. The equally good news is that nobody is wildly enthusiastic about the new Iraqi constitution and that no blood was spilled in the writing of the constitution. We talked, we sometimes disagreed, but we were, at least most of us, always committed to settling our differences through dialogue and compromise.
...

If anybody was completely happy with the new Iraqi constitution, then there would by necessity be others who were completely unhappy, and that is a failure. A document that the few cannot hold up as a banner of victory is a success for the many.

The bold parts are, I think, important passages.  Democracy doesn't produce the kind of absolute results that governance in the Middle East has so often produced.  His speech, on the whole, stressed this idea of sectarian compromise very heavily.

In the new Iraq, unlike under the old regime, the state is based on the principle of inclusion, not exclusion. Iraq will be for all Iraqis who share the vision of a democratic, pluralist, federated country. We will extend our hand to all those who are willing to join us in achieving this vision, because in the new Iraq, there must be no victors and no vanquished.

Talabani went on to say that the war in Iraq was really a war that ended a civil war: a civil war between Saddam and the people of Iraq.  Lovely conceptual prose, but a little too rosy for me.  The fact is that civil war becomes more likely each day that the Sunnis remain outside of the political spectrum.  That's not to say that this is Talabani or any Shi'ite leader's fault, for the Sunnis have largely chosen not to participate, for whatever reasons.

Talabani's speech was pretty much what you'd expect, however.  It was the question and answer period which was the more interesting part.  It was there that Talabani said the following things:

• Iraq will not be dealing with the issue of relations with Israel until Israel deals with the issue of relations with the Palestinians.  Good luck with that.
• "We, and you, cannot afford to cede Iraq to the evil forces of terrorism and religious fanaticism. In two years, there will be no need for American forces."  Looks like someone is willing to set a timetable... 
• He did, however, add that the American presence was what was really keeping Iraq from being swallowed up by its neighbors: "We need American troops [to stay] to intimidate our neighbors."
• And this came out of nowhere: "All Arab media, without exception, are supporting terrorism."  No sooner had he said this than a reporter from al-Araba News prefaced his question with a quick rebuttal - to which Talabani just shrugged, as if to say: "Well, then show me otherwise."

After the Q and A, I was able to make it up to the front of the room where the reporters and a few other people from Brookings and other think tanks had converged on him.  I somehow managed to come face to face with the President of Iraq though, at a perfect moment when it seemed as though everyone else was occupied elsewhere so I got an extra moment with him.  I shook his hand and congratulated him on the new constitution (I will say though, I was not impressed with his handshake; much like the country that he now leads, it was sweaty and weak).  I wasn't sure what else to say to a man who had literally spent his entire life fighting for freedom for his people.  And now he was the first Kurdish head of state in the history of the modern Middle East.  Quite impressive, I'd say.

9/11 Vs. Katrina

Thomas Friedman comes out swinging - for the fences:

[I]f 9/11 is one bookend of the Bush administration, Katrina may be the other. If 9/11 put the wind at President Bush's back, Katrina's put the wind in his face. If the Bush-Cheney team seemed to be the right guys to deal with Osama, they seem exactly the wrong guys to deal with Katrina - and all the rot and misplaced priorities it's exposed here at home.

These are people so much better at inflicting pain than feeling it, so much better at taking things apart than putting them together, so much better at defending "intelligent design" as a theology than practicing it as a policy.

For instance, it's unavoidably obvious that we need a real policy of energy conservation. But President Bush can barely choke out the word "conservation." And can you imagine Mr. Cheney, who has already denounced conservation as a "personal virtue" irrelevant to national policy, now leading such a campaign or confronting oil companies for price gouging?

And then there are the president's standard lines: "It's not the government's money; it's your money," and, "One of the last things that we need to do to this economy is to take money out of your pocket and fuel government." Maybe Mr. Bush will now also tell us: "It's not the government's hurricane - it's your hurricane."

An administration whose tax policy has been dominated by the toweringly selfish Grover Norquist - who has been quoted as saying: "I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub" - doesn't have the instincts for this moment. Mr. Norquist is the only person about whom I would say this: I hope he owns property around the New Orleans levee that was never properly finished because of a lack of tax dollars. I hope his basement got flooded. And I hope that he was busy drowning government in his bathtub when the levee broke and that he had to wait for a U.S. Army helicopter to get out of town.

Harsh.  Remind me not to get on Friedman's bad side.  He continues:

The Bush team has engaged in a tax giveaway since 9/11 that has had one underlying assumption: There will never be another rainy day. Just spend money. You knew that sooner or later there would be a rainy day, but Karl Rove has assumed it wouldn't happen on Mr. Bush's watch - that someone else would have to clean it up. Well, it did happen on his watch.

I disagree on this point.  It wasn't that Rove assumed the rainy day would happen at another time and that it would be a bad thing.  It was that Rove didn't care how much rain we got and actually sought rainy days.  To say that they were just hoping for the best ignores the real motivations of Rove and his crew.

Besides ripping away the roofs of New Orleans, Katrina ripped away the argument that we can cut taxes, properly educate our kids, compete with India and China, succeed in Iraq, keep improving the U.S. infrastructure, and take care of a catastrophic emergency - without putting ourselves totally into the debt of Beijing.

So many of the things the Bush team has ignored or distorted under the guise of fighting Osama were exposed by Katrina: its refusal to impose a gasoline tax after 9/11, which would have begun to shift our economy much sooner to more fuel-efficient cars, helped raise money for a rainy day and eased our dependence on the world's worst regimes for energy; its refusal to develop some form of national health care to cover the 40 million uninsured; and its insistence on cutting more taxes, even when that has contributed to incomplete levees and too small an Army to deal with Katrina, Osama and Saddam at the same time.

It's all falling apart for this Bush administration.  Katrina is showing the public just how lost this administration truly is.