No Brainer Alert

My glee at Karl Rove, who has arguably done more to harm American politics than any single individual in a generation or more, being cited for contempt by the House Judiciary Committee is overwhelmed only my belief that this was an absolute no brainer. And I would like to think that I would argue the same (in terms of legal culpability) were Rove a Democrat. Congress subpoenad Rove. He was called by the country's highest legislative body to testify. And, in a classic example of Rovian hubris and arrogance, Rove declared that he did not have to do so, that in effect, he was bigger than the United States Congress.

My guess is that for many of us who loathe the Bush administration, it is this arrogance that we most hate. This sense of not only being right, but of righteousness where most people would be at least a little bit self-reflective. Because aside from the arrogance, this administration has also shown a breathtaking level of incompetence. My view on the Iraq War was always ambivalent, but I could and did make a case for waging a war against Iraq. I also made a case as to why I did not trust this administration to wage that war well or competently. And this is where I see the biggest failure with regard to iraq -- arrogance mixed with incompetence that has reached such a perfect storm that the administration and its defenders actually manage to muster up something resembling outrage over the unwillingness of the anti-war types, whose own idiocy is often manifest, to recognize recent successes in Iraq. But it is this administration whose chief Iraq War architect sneered at reporters that the war would take six days, six weeks, but he could not imagine it taking six months.

Into the sixth year of the war that was supposed to take a fraction as long and cost a fraction as much, we are now supposed to genuflect to the sagacity of our leaders who may inadvertantly have stumbled into a modicum of success? It's ironic that one of the few good lines that President Bush has managed to squeeze out of his malaprop-prone mumblehole was his reference to the "soft bigotry of low expectations," because his advocates now expect his presidency to be graded on a curve so soft that it redefines the idea of lowering the bar.

So Karl Rove is likely to face contempt charges. And Republicans are likely to bewail the partisan nature of Democrats daring to act upon the obvious. But the reality is that Rove refused to respond to a subpoena that the country's lawmakers, Republicans and Democrats, issued. There was once a time when the Republicans were Amnerica's self-proclaimed law and order party. But apparently there are no angles to be played when the scofflaws don't play to type. Suffice it to say that rich, white, connected Republican operatives are not that type.

Quick Hits

A lot of different stories and arguments have caught my eye these days that I've wanted to write about. but rather than do that, I'll just give you a full onslaught to keep you occupied for a while.

Taylor Branch, whose three-volume biography of King/history of "The King Years" will be a go-to work for many years despite its flaws published a lengthy reflection on MLK and his legacy in the New York Times earlier this week. His article is taken from a speech he gave at the National Cathedral on Monday.

Another week, another work of nonfiction revealed as fraudulent? That seems to be the trend. The latest culprit appears to be Ben Mezrich's bestseller from a few years ago, Bringing Down the House, which provides the source material for the movie 21, which is probably playing in a multiplex near you. Every time this sort of story emerges I feel as if I make the same lamentation, but writing nonfiction is hard, and is all the more so because its biggest requirement is a fealty to the evidence. I don't think the reaction from we lesser-known writers every time one of these stories breaks is merely a mix of resentment and schadenfreude even if we may be entitled to a little bit of resentment and schadenfreude.

If that news is not depressing enough, The Boston Globe also has another seemingly recurring story, this one about the plight of bookstores. It ends on a somewhat optimistic note, however, so maybe the sky is not falling after all.

Do you know when the first intercollegiate baseball game was played? It was 1859. The participants? Williams and Amherst. Despite what you might read or hear, it is my understanding that the result of that contest is actually lost to history. That first game was played in Pittsfield, which baseball historians have also argued to be the home of the first known baseball game in the 18th century. With representatives from the College Baseball Hall of Fame (based not far from my home in the Petroplex in Lubbock) in attendance, the two teams will meet again in Pittsfield next week. Go Ephs! (And, oh yes, Amherst Sucks! Lousy, dastardly Defectors.)

Over at Real Clear politics Steve Chapman argues that when it comes to Iraq, "patience is not a policy." he makes a pretty compelling case. nonetheless, it is also true that in an ironic sense, the administration has fucked this war up so badly that they probably are correct that we now have to stay, without any sense of the fact that this really ought not to redound to their benefit.

At The Washington Post David Broder steps away from politics for a minute and thinks that he has discovered a singularly grim period in the world of sports. He's wrong, of course. Sports have always reflected society's tumult, and sometimes has fueled it. If there are problems with sports that is simply because there are problems with society. Take a deep breath and go watch a few games. Do so for a week and somewhere on a field, court, track, pit, pitch, course, or what have you, something wonderful will happen that will remind you of what sports are about.

Finally, and self indulgently, I've been busy at both the Africa Blog and the South Africa Blog, and I hope you'll check both of them out now and regularly.

Iraq Status Report

There is a new collaborative news source for the war in Iraq, the Iraq Status Report. According to their launch announcement,

"this new site is a collaborative effort by Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Institute for the Study of War, and The Long War Journal providing the only 'one-stop-shop' on the Internet for news, commentary and analysis related to the U.S. Mission in Iraq."

ISR is pretty much an advocacy site for the Iraq War, and i could do without some of the more ardent cheerleading -- I would think a little humility would be in order after five years of a war that we were condscendingly told would take "six days, maybe six weeks" and not six months from an administration whose president not only opposed but derided the idea of nationbuilding prior to his ascendance to the presidency. it s my belief that those who supported the war from the beginning have lost all claim to aggressively dismissive arguments. That said, for those of us who have continued to be ambivalent amidst the maelstrom of the righteousness on both sides, Iraq Sstatus Report will be another useful source of information.

Supporting Torture, Diminishing the United States

So, apparently the President feels that we cannot win wars in which our strongest claim is that we are better than our enemies without doing things that cast into doubt whether we are actually better than our enemies. That is the message I draw, anyway, from President Bush's decision to veto a law that would have limited the CIA's ability to torture prisoners.

I really do not know what more there is to say. There was a time when the very idea of Americans engaging in such noxious practices inspired outrage. But too many have acquiesced. Does torture make us safer? Does it give us actionable intelligence? We have seen scant cases where either would be the case. in the meantime what we do is diminish ourselves while exposing our own troops to even worse treatment. I would just strongly encourage you all to read every one of the articles in the latest Washington Monthly, which is devoted to advocating stopping these policies. As long as this administration, which has done so much harm and so little good, is in power such cries will represent little more than lamentations. But a better day will come.

Is McCain a Lightweight?

A pretty reasonable case can be made that John McCain is something of a lightweight on domestic policies. But, we're told, that does not matter because he is strong on foreign policy. And Republicans want to convince us that we'll finally get the leadership that we need in Iraq. But not so fast says Steve Chapman at Real Clear Politics.

McCain is getting the kid glove treatment from the media because, well, he won the GOP nomination while the Democrats seem to be in some sort of cage match. But there is a long time yet to go, and McCain will get his chance to face scrutiny. Don't be surprised to discover that beneath the gravitas there is not too much policy substance. And that may be ok -- McCain is a good and honorable man and would almost certainly be better than what preceded him as president (yeah, I know, 'soft bigotry of low expectations"). But in a campaign that will be based on judgment and experience I think we have a right to ask about the judgments he made and what he has done with that experience.

The Algeria Attacks

This morning's bombings in Algeria could tell us many things, if we chose to listen to them. But I fear we'll only hear them partially, and through partisan ears at that. Assuming that al Qaeda is responsible for the bombings (a conclusion that does not seem unreasonable) we should be reminded that this we face a fanatical foe determined to wreak havoc across the globe against liberal democracy and those sympathetic with liberal democracies, and even those illiberal states that do not cater to al Qaeda's particular form of extremist Islamic tyranny.

We'll hear that narrative in the days to come, as well we should. But what I imagine we will not hear is that an attack such as this one in Algeria really ought to remind us that when the Bush administration proclaims success in the Global War on Terror (or whatever barbarous neologism they're spinning these days -- I follow these things and I'm not even sure. Are we still rolling with "The Long War," an indeterminate construction that seems befitting of the Bush years?) it seems apparent that they want to elide the "global" aspect of things. For while it is true that there have been no attacks on American soil since 2001 there had not been a whole lot of attacks on American soil prior to 9/11. (The Bush Administration has somehow spun being in office during the worst terrorist attack in American history into a model of stewardship which is brilliant, albeit in an Orwellian way.) But there have been attacks across the globe, many against our allies (The atrocities in Spain and England) and innumerable attacks in Iraq that may show many things, but not that we've crushed terrorism. And while too many have been willing to overlook the clear improvements from the recent surge, many others seem bound and determined to try to freeze this moment in amber, to take on a whiggish approach in which today's improvement represents inevitable improvement and in which they ignore the fact that the United States is sort of responsible for what has gone on in Iraq for ill as well as for good -- and there are representatives of both.

Today's attacks in Algeria represent the dangers we face but also the dangers we have not eradicated. They represent the evil men can do but also the slippery nature of our political dialogue. They represent the triumph of terror over hope, but somehow also the triumph of hope over reality.

Veteran Presence

The Boston Globe has a story about the many ways in which veterans of the Iraq War are helping 2008 candidates for both parties. Naturally one of the main memes of the campaign will be an attempt to claim to be the most patriotic and pro-troops of all. While this story does not purport to be scientific or even representative, it does indicate that claims to speak for what veterans think will likely be a farce, as all of the candidates have drawn support, ranging from the ardently anti-war candidates to those who claim that only victory, as long as it takes, is acceptable.

Is al-Qaeda in Iraq a Myth?

At The Washington Monthly former Stars & Stripes reporter Andrew Tilghman has a potentially explosive piece on what the title calls the "Myth" of al-Qaeda in Iraq. He concludes his piece thusly:

Five years ago, the American public was asked to support the invasion of Iraq based on the false claim that Saddam Hussein was somehow linked to al-Qaeda. Today, the erroneous belief that al-Qaeda's franchise in Iraq is a driving force behind the chaos in that country may be setting us up for a similar mistake.

I have tended to be wary about underestimating al Qaeda's will to do the liberal west harm even if the organization does not have the capacity to carry out its most ardent desires. But I think we do need an honest an open debate about causation and correlation in Iraq, about al Qaeda's real role throughout the conflict there, and about the various options and consequences for each of them. There is no ideal result about to spring forth like a mirage from the desert sands. But there surely are better options, and those are what we have to seek.

Iraq and Vietnam: The Quagmire of Analogies

So now Iraq is like Vietnam. When for so long war supporters have fulminated and sputtered that it is not. And now the anti-war masses will argue that Iraq is not like Vietnam. When for so long they have fulminated and sputtered that it is.

How is this: In some ways the Iraq War loosely resembles some aspects of Vietnam. In a huge number of ways it does not. That will prove deeply dissatisfying to ideologues who are unwilling to make comparisons except for when it helps them to make some larger point to lambaste the other side. A moderate stance on the analogy is a lot more true than the perspective of those who now argue that Iraq is like Vietnam in order to try to pin prospective failure on a party that was not in power in any branch of government in the first four years of a war that is now not quite four-and-a-half years old. And it is a lot more true than the stance of those who have tried to invoke Vietnam as shorthand for "bad war."

In our constant quest to develop a usable past, we almost always do so the wrong way. The reality is that in terms of planning at strategy and long-term approaches, this war in Iraq is, like nearly all wars, sui generis. At this point the only quagmire that seems apt is the one that ideologues on both sides find themselves mired in as a result of their desperate attempts to score points against those with the temerity to disagree with them.

In Defense of Joseph Wilson

Over at The New Republic Michael Currie Schaffer has a defense of Joseph Wilson. It may not be the defense any of us would want, mind you. But it largely rings true, and I love the subhead: "Joseph Wilson's selfless self-promotion."

David Corn on Bill Kristol

In The Washington Post David Corn has ruthless takedown of Bill Kristol in an inaptly titled piece, "Why Bush is a Loser." The title is inapt because while Corn does go after Bush's policies he really takes aim at Kristol, one of the President's biggest cheerleader and a man who would lead me to pack my beach clothes if he told me a storm was coming. Kristol, as Corn only begins to reveal, has been so wrong about so much in the last five years. Amazingly, this nearly unbroken streak of wrongness has not reduced Kristol's smug sense of certitude even one iota.

Hat tip to Donnie Baseball.