Decline and Fall

I was glad to hear that Leon Panetta, a man I have respected ever since I worked tirelessly for his opponents in his congressional campaigns, had been selected to head the CIA. I'm not sure he's the most qualified person to lead that agency, but there's something to the founders' wisdom in mandating civilian leadership of the military, so I was ready to give the outsider the benefit of the doubt.

That turned to full-on support when I read this:

According to the latest polls, two-thirds of the American public believes that torturing suspected terrorists to gain important information is justified in some circumstances. How did we transform from champions of human dignity and individual rights into a nation of armchair torturers? One word: fear.

Fear is blinding, hateful, and vengeful. It makes the end justify the means. And why not? If torture can stop the next terrorist attack, the next suicide bomber, then what's wrong with a little waterboarding or electric shock?

The simple answer is the rule of law. Our Constitution defines the rules that guide our nation. It was drafted by those who looked around the world of the eighteenth century and saw persecution, torture, and other crimes against humanity and believed that America could be better than that. This new nation would recognize that every individual has an inherent right to personal dignity, to justice, to freedom from cruel and unusual punishment.

We have preached these values to the world. We have made clear that there are certain lines Americans will not cross because we respect the dignity of every human being. That pledge was written into the oath of office given to every president, "to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution." It's what is supposed to make our leaders different from every tyrant, dictator, or despot. We are sworn to govern by the rule of law, not by brute force.

We cannot simply suspend these beliefs in the name of national security. Those who support torture may believe that we can abuse captives in certain select circumstances and still be true to our values. But that is a false compromise. We either believe in the dignity of the individual, the rule of law, and the prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment, or we don't. There is no middle ground.

We cannot and we must not use torture under any circumstances. We are better than that.

It has been far, far too long since we've heard words like these from anyone in our Executive Branch. Moral clarity may actually be on the way in. Here's hoping it becomes a trend.

Via.

Labels: Bush, GWOT, torture

Via TPM, this post at the Wall Street Journal's blog reveals the extent to which lockstep thinking among economists helped lead to the current financial crisis:

The episode suggests one reason that the crisis went unchecked: A dangerous all-or-nothing orthodoxy had come to dominate the policy debate, where one was either for free markets or against them.

I've written about the perils of free market fundamentalism before, but it's worth noting that sloppy, lockstep thinking on economics isn't merely a tic of Bush Administration appointees, Cato Fellows and Ron Paul supporters, it's the dominant point of view among those whose actions have a direct effect on America's economic health. These are the fruits of decades of propaganda from the right on the inviolable sanctity of the invisible hand: the national economy guided by sloppy thinking investment bankers in Adam Smith neckties.

I've long believed that ideological rigidity is the result of an insufficiently broad and deep education, so imagine my surprise at the very next section of the post:

Another reason that many policymakers may have missed the risks is that macroeconomists didn’t have a good understanding of the changes that were occurring within financial markets and the banking system.

There has long been a marked distinction between economists who study finance and economists who study the broader economy, with limited communication between the groups. As a young Harvard University economist, Mr. Summers argued this was a dangerous shortcoming in a now famous screed, where he unfavorably compared finance specialists to “ketchup economists” who are too narrowly focused on their field of study, while also complaining about general economists tendency to continually rediscover conclusions that the finance specialists had come to long ago.

Again, these are the guys at the top of the field. When you're young and starting out, it's OK to be hazy on the details of specialties that only intersect with yours, but by the time you get to the "policymaker" stage, I'd like to think that years of study and experience might have filled in some of those gaps, or at least alerted you to their existence.

If the first casualty of ideology is critical thinking, the second must be integrity, because you can't dedicate yourself to the defense of a flawed ideology without bending the truth a little. Or in this case:

Finally, many academic economists privately worried that a housing bubble was building, and that it’s bursting would cause severe problems, but didn’t publicize their concerns.... “Most academics are really reluctant to take part in the public dialog, because the public dialog requires you to have an opinion about things you can’t really be sure about,” says Mr. Rajan. “They fear talking about things where everything is not neatly nailed in a model. They stay away and let the charlatans occupy the high ground.”

So, to recap: our economy is in tatters because the people entrusted with its care are a bunch of lazy-thinking, poorly-educated frauds and the genuine experts who might have stood in their way were too scared to speak up.

Sounds about right.

Labels: economics, ideology

I don't link to Glenn Greenwald enough (hell, I don't link to anyone enough) but his snarky take on Michael Calderone's piece on the year's biggest political scoops, which included Sarah Palin's shopping spree and McCain's houses but made no mention of the White House's endorsement of torture, is worth reading in full. A snippet:

In fairness to Calderone and his comrades in the political press, our media currently covers a country that has very few substantial problems and an administration that is renowned around the world for being competent, honest, conventional and quite uncontroversial. In general, countries which enjoy great tranquility, prosperity, and stability -- such as the U.S. today -- can afford the luxury of fixating on the types of fun and trivial stories which comprise the list of top "scoops" heralded by Politico.

Indeed, the only real news story in Calderone's bunch is the one where the White House used supposedly independent Military Analysts as propagandists for the DoD in the news media, which Greenwald notes was also, coincidentally I'm sure, the one that sank without a trace. I wrote about it here, and here is a list of Greenwald's more thorough takes, helpfully organized by Margalis at Common Nonsense.

As an antidote, here are 25 stories that didn't make Politico's cut, from Project Censored.

Labels: Framing, media, politics

Regarding the "little blue pill" story in the Washington Post, Yglesias comments:

One especially neat thing about this is that unlike guns or money, our Taliban rivals have essentially no prospect of producing large quantities of advanced pharmaceuticals. So if Afghan elders decide they like their ED meds, they’ll really have no choice but to try to stay on our good sides.

While there may or may not be any companies capable of producing "advanced pharmaceuticals" in Afghanistan, the rest of the region doesn't have that problem. Here's a company in Aleppo, Syria that produces knock-off versions of Viagra and Cialis. Here's a faux Viagra from Iran. I'm sure there are others, but you see where I'm going with this: "daddy's little helpers" are widely available throughout the world, including places where some of us imagine the religious authorities would never allow it.

Beyond that, in my experience folks in the Middle East are downright open about their affection for the blue diamonds. I can't tell you how many times I looked through a detainee's pocket litter and found a solitary blue pill, stashed like a nug at the bottom of his pocket or deep within the folds of his wallet. In Cairo, the drug stores often advertise Viagra and its upstanding bretheren right in front, the display occasionally being larger than the sign for the store itself, and more prominently placed.

Even the kids get into it. Don't ask me how or why this happened, but I was once asked by an Egyptian boy of no more than 14 years if I used Viagra, because he sure as hell did. (Incidentally, this kid actually began the conversation this way... creepy.) When I said, "no," he looked at me like I was a total dork. This says a lot about what it means to be "cool" in some places.

But I have no problem, in principle, with us providing a little extra humanitarian aid in an effort to a people brought low by poverty, despotism and war. Note that the pills are but one part of a broader strategy:

In their efforts to win over notoriously fickle warlords and chieftains, the officials say, the agency’s operatives have used a variety of personal services. These include pocketknives and tools, medicine or surgeries for ailing family members, toys and school equipment, tooth extractions, travel visas, and, occasionally, pharmaceutical enhancements for aging patriarchs with slumping libidos, the officials said.

Hearts and minds, indeed.

Labels: GWOT, Iran, Islam, Middle East, military, terrorism

If you haven't read it already, "Matthew Alexander's" Washington Post article about his experience as an Interrogator in Iraq is a crucial document in the story of America's decline. Alexander and I had similar experiences (I'm pretty sure I know him, actually). As a fellow former Interrogator, I found myself nodding in agreement through much of the piece.

I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Our policy of torture was directly and swiftly recruiting fighters for al-Qaeda in Iraq. The large majority of suicide bombings in Iraq are still carried out by these foreigners. They are also involved in most of the attacks on U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq. It's no exaggeration to say that at least half of our losses and casualties in that country have come at the hands of foreigners who joined the fray because of our program of detainee abuse. The number of U.S. soldiers who have died because of our torture policy will never be definitively known, but it is fair to say that it is close to the number of lives lost on Sept. 11, 2001. How anyone can say that torture keeps Americans safe is beyond me -- unless you don't count American soldiers as Americans.

I'm hesitant to shift too much of the blame for the attacks themselves away from the ordinary Iraqis who supported those foreign fighters ("Zarqawi's Willing Executioners"?), but the connection to our detention policies is spot-on. I heard versions of this many, many times from detainees--America came waving the banner of freedom, then unjustly imprisoned and horrifically abused the people they were supposed to be saving, thus inviting a bloody backlash.

Not only was I told this directly, but like Alexander I was also told the correlate: the good treatment, adequate food and healthcare that they received in our prisons convinced at least five of the men I personally interrogated to give solid intelligence. Once they found out that we (all) weren't that bad, they opened right up. I wish this story were told more often--Alexander and I can't be the only ones who heard this:

"I thought you would torture me, and when you didn't, I decided that everything I was told about Americans was wrong. That's why I decided to cooperate."

Imagine how different this war would have gone if that was a commonly-heard refrain. How tragic that it isn't.

(Cross-posted at OOIBC.)

Labels: GWOT, interrogation, Iraq, OOIBC, torture

Much of the article is self-serving claptrap, but Lord Black's inside view of America's prison system seems to have opened his eyes:

The US is now a carceral state that imprisons eight to 12 times more people (2.5m) per capita than the UK, Canada, Australia, France, Germany or Japan. US justice has become a command economy based on the avarice of private prison companies, a gigantic prison service industry and politically influential correctional officers’ unions that agitate for an unlimited increase in the number of prosecutions and the length of sentences. The entire “war on drugs”, by contrast, is a classic illustration of supply-side economics: a trillion taxpayers’ dollars squandered and 1m small fry imprisoned at a cost of $50 billion a year; as supply of and demand for illegal drugs have increased, prices have fallen and product quality has improved.

Well, duh. One shouldn't have to experience something so horrible as the fundamental injustices of the Prison-Industrial Complex and the drug war to be against them, but I'm glad this one rich S.O.B. finally does. If it takes sending them to prison for high-profile, muscle-flexing "tough on crime" conservatives to see the need for reform, I've got a few ideas....

Via.

Labels: conservatism, drug war, liberty, prison

I knew America was militarily involved in the horn of Africa (we've got troops stationed in Djibouti) but I didn't know how badly we had screwed things up there. Martin Fletcher reports:

I am referring to the Bush Administration's intervention in Somalia in the name of the War on Terror. It has helped to destroy that wretched country's best chance of peace in a generation, left more than a million Somalis dead, homeless or starving, and achieved the precise opposite of its original goal. Far from stamping out an Islamic militancy that scarcely existed, the intervention has turned Somalia into a breeding ground for Islamic extremists and given al-Qaeda a valuable foothold in the Horn of Africa.

Remember as you read the article that Afghanistan embraced the Taliban when they first took control for the same reasons Somalis embraced the Islamic Courts: after decades of civil war, the strongmen imposed order. I'm not as ready as Fletcher to laud the tyrannical rule of the Islamic Courts, whose thugs once opened fire on a crowd of World Cup fans.

But I do understand why the Somalis were quick to embrace trading in their right to drink and listen to music for the ability to walk to the store with a reasonable expectation of survival. That's where I see Iraqis heading now; I've been told as much by a lot of them. With all the talk of the statist "Road to Serfdom," it turns out that the quickest route to Serfdom is civil war, collapse of the state, several years of chaos, and the emergence of a strongman who imposes order. This is what we've given Somalia and Iraq: the desire to live under an iron hand.

This quote from the piece felt all too familiar:

“The Americans see an extremist under every Muslim stone,” one European official complained bitterly....

Doesn't that just give you the warm fuzzies?

Link via Obsidian Wings.

Labels: Bush, GWOT, Islam, terrorism

Via Art of the Possible: Jewish voters are stupid and insufficiently tribal because they voted for Obama, according to conservative columnist Don Feder. This article is all kinds of wrong, and someone needs to fisk the whole thing, but here are a few highlights:

That McCain had an unblemished, 20-year record of support for Israel, Obama is surrounded by advisors who are hostile to Israel, and Iranian Television described the latter as “highly educated” and “eloquent,” mattered not in the least.

Yeah, that Rahm Emanuel is an anti-zionist of the first order. And anything Iranian Television says must be false. If they say the sky is blue, they're wrong and deserve to be militarily occupied.

Even though Iran is led by a raving anti-Semite and Holocaust-denier – who’s said Israel “should be wiped off the face of the Earth” – even though Iran was voted most likely to commit nuclear suicide if it could take Israel with it, a plurality of Jews still said they’d oppose U.S. military action to forestall a second Holocaust.

Poor Iran. They so wanted to win "Most Likely to Create a Death Star," but that award went to Japan. There, there, it's just a popularity contest. Oh, and Ahmedinejad didn't say that.

As Jewish author Dennis Prager notes, if there was a connection between Judaism and liberalism, those Jews grounded in Torah and most committed to living a Jewish life, would be the most liberal.

Right. Because the more Orthodox you are, the more Jewish you are. And Dennis Prager is definitely the go-to guy for impartial analysis.

[Obama] attended Farrakhan’s 1995 Million Man March, and later lauded the neo-Nuremberg rally as an event that brought African-American men together and showed they were ready “to make a commitment to bring about change in our communities and our lives”

"Neo-Nuremberg rally"? WTF? Nothing hyperbolic there, Godwin.

[Obama] said the “legitimate claims” of Hezbollah are “weakened” by its violence

You mean to tell me there's absolutely nothing legitimate about Hezbollah's claims, which in turn aren't weakened by their use of violence? How on earth is that even a controversial statement?

[Obama] said the terrorist attacks of 9/11 grew out of “a climate of poverty and ignorance, helplessness and despair” – to which we must not overreact

I don't know of any actual scholar in the field who denies that "poverty and ignorance, helplessness and despair" are at least part of the root causes of terrorism. It's clearly an extremist position, taken only by those who truly hate the Judeo-Christian faith, and Israel is as good as incinerated now that Barack Hussein is in charge.

Those Jews also reject the Judeo-Christian ethic and the historic mission of the Jewish people – to repair the world under the rule of God.

Because there's only one way of interpreting the injunction to "repair the world," and that's to "vote Republican." After all, the world is in much better shape now than it was eight years ago. But Jews are too stupid to that..

How this bigoted, jingoistic moron has been allowed to write a sydicated column for a quarter century is beyond me. But he's certainly at home in today's conservative movement.

Labels: conservatism, politics, religion

Via Andrew Sullivan:

More than 100 retired generals and admirals called Monday for repeal of the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy on gays so they can serve openly.

I knew a good number of gay servicemembers and veterans both when I served and afterward when I worked with the military in Iraq and at Ft. Huachuca; and counted many as friends. I saw no difference in their abilities, and saw very little threat to "unit cohesion" by their presence.

Among those I have known was one of the 12 female victims of a "witch hunt" at the Defense Language Institute (DLI) in 1999--she was a friend of my then-wife, who was also at DLI at the time. She came over to the house several times, once so that we could show her The Rocky Horror Picture Show, which I used to lamely joke was what pushed her over the edge (she had not come out yet, bet we had our suspicions). She was, of course, no different than any of the other servicemembers we knew in terms of ability, professionalism, dedication and esprit des corps, but she was gay, so her services were not needed, not even after September 11.

The fundamental injustice of her discharge, of a policy that demands servicemembers remain in the closet, was only too obvious to me then as it is now. There is no good reason gays cannot be allowed to serve openly in the military. Any "unit cohesion" problems can easily be addressed by the military's current sexual harrassment regulations. Most of the people I knew in Iraq, especially the grunts, had no problem serving with homosexuals and almost everyone it seemed knew one personally who was relatively open about his or her sexual orientation.

Sure, the faggot and cocksucker comments flew unfettered through many a conversation, but never in my presence were they directed at gays. This does raise the sticky issue of widespread homophobia, at least in talk, in our military, but fortunately the military has an almost ideal system for rooting out prejudice.

In Basic Training at Ft. Leonard Wood, MO in 1995, I was forced to meet and work alongside people whose subcultures I had never known. In my 8-person (we were among the first gender-integrated Basic Training cycles at Leonard Wood) squad were a stereotypical white redneck from the Georgia hills, an black soldier from Detroit and a Puerto Rican female from, well, Puerto Rico, alongside myself, a white boy from an agricultural town in California. Would we have ever come into contact with all of those people in one place had the military not forced us to work together? Likely not. But I remember having a private conversation toward the end of the 8-week cycle with that stereotypical redneck about race. He brought it up, because he just had to tell someone how strange it was to him that he could have so much in common with a black man. I told him I was astonished to discover how much he and I shared.

This epiphany can happen, and has happened, for those who believe they could never work with a homosexual. All it requires is for the military to tell its recruits, "shut up, put your differences aside, and learn to work together." They might also add, "keep your hands off each other," as they already do in gender-integrated units.

If you're at all concerned about the results of Prop 8 in California or the grossly unequal treatment of homosexuals in our society, you should be hopeful about this development. Just as racial integration of the military 60 years ago was a watershed event in the struggle for equality, lifting the ban on gays in the military will serve a similar purpose.

Twenty years from now, we may look upon this as the canary in the coalmine of legal anti-gay discrimination in America. The Servicemembers Legal Defense Network has made it easy foryou to write your representatives about this issue. Please do so.

(Cross-posted at OOIBC.)

Labels: homosexuality, liberty, military, OOIBC

After opposing "timelines for withdrawal" from Iraq on principle for years now, the Bush Administration has agreed to one. One of the things that struck me about the article was the way time constraints led to the Administration giving in on one of its key lines in the sand. My guess is that Iraqi officials stalled, and Bush blinked:

The U.S. government has lobbied hard for the status-of-forces agreement, which would replace a United Nations mandate authorizing the U.S. presence that expires on Dec. 31. Without some legal umbrella, the 150,000 U.S. forces would have to end their operations in Iraq in a few weeks' time, military officials said.

...

One issue is timing: The notoriously slow-moving Iraqi parliament is scheduled to adjourn on Nov. 25 for a three-week break to allow lawmakers to make the hajj pilgrimage.

"We have a limited window of time," warned Hoshyar Zebari, the foreign minister.

America has been generally belligerent toward the nascent Iraqi state, treating their clear wishes, such as timelines, as the suggestions of politicians clearly out of their depth.

This paternalism is the sort of thing that hawks believe projects strength, but by refusing to budge on Iraq's (and the rest of the world's) demands for more autonomy, reductions in U.S. forces, legal accountability for the actions of U.S. military and civilian personnel and a timeline for withdrawal, America has backed itself into a corner where the only options were "leave soon" or "leave now." America could have spent the last five and a half years working in good faith with Iraqi officials to transfer authority as soon as possible, but instead Bush insisted on calling the shots, thus weakening his position when the inevitable day came when America had to negotiate.

Maliki was aware of this, but the Administration seemed to be oblivious. Another example of the grotesque hubris and myopia that have characterized the Bush years. Basically, Maliki schooled Bush.

(Cross-posted at OOIBC.)

Labels: Iraq, military, OOIBC, politics

I've been asked by many of my former conservative and libertarian friends what a self-described "liberal" believes on economic matters. From now on, I'll begin my explanation with, "what Hilzoy said":

I'm sure that there are some devotees of central planning out there somewhere. But for the most part, those of us who reject free market fundamentalism do so not because we fail to recognize that market economies are generally best, but because we think that this, like most general principles, has exceptions.

...

I find myself arguing in favor of more regulation more often than not. This is not because I favor it in general, though; it's because, as I said, the playing field has shifted since the '70s and '80s. Back then, there were arguments between people who were generally for regulation and people who were generally opposed to it, and I normally found myself in the middle, asking for details of particular cases. Now, however, the pro-regulation camp has more or less vanished, leaving mostly people (like me) who think these questions should be decided on a case-by-case basis, and that there is no general reason for favoring regulation over its absence, arguing against free market fundamentalists who often write as though all regulation were presumptively bad.

The basic problem with free market fundamentalism is that a large number of those steeped in the doctrines of Hayek and Friedman can't help but see any economic decision through the false dichotomy of collectivism and capitalism, or coercion and freedom.

You don't have to be a Nobel Prize-winning Economist to see that the world doesn't actually operate by those rules (N.b.: Hayek and Friedman were both Nobel laureates); each new emissions or workplace safety regulation hasn't plunged us further into despotism. That America and Europe have somehow managed to not slide into Serfdom despite the ever-growing size of the welfare state in the half century or so since Hayek's flawed argument (in its famous booklet form here) was published never phazes the free market ideologues.

The fact is, some things really are worse than government intervention, the supposed "coercion" of taxation (it's more complex than that), and the resultant loss of freedoms that occur when more of your money is spent by somebody else. Market interventions really can be decided on a case-by-case basis, and often the benefits outweigh the costs.

Labels: conservatism, liberalism, liberty

Just in case you were wondering why McCain lost, it's that his campaign, conducted almost entirely on personal slander and fear-mongering, was too nice:

Honestly, if I should hear the word “gracious” applied to John McCain’s concession speech even one more time, I may throw the biggest hissy fit ever seen this side of the Mississippi.

In reality, however, it isn’t the concession speech that has me riled. It’s the unavoidable reality that Senator McCain attempted to be graciousness
personified throughout his campaign.

Ahem.

Labels: conservatism

It looks like America is headed for another crisis: physicians refusing to heal the sick because Obama's health plan might lower their standard of living. Instaputz reader Michael Hauk is ready, willing and able:

I am a physician in a highly paid and understaffed specialty. Many of my colleagues are openly discussing going part-time to lower our tax exposure, should Obama get his socialist wish-list through Congress. I did my medical training in the military, and had frugality instilled in my make-up by parents and grandparents who lived through the (real) Depression. My family and I already live well below our means, and we can live just as well on less. Much, much less.

Obama believes healthcare is a right. Well, good luck fulfilling that promise when those of us who provide it decide it’s not worth it anymore…

I have to admit, I kind of like the thought of Michael Hauk living in a cave and hunting for his food so that liberals won't have the smug self-satisfaction of knowing that doctors are in it for more than the money. Such professionalism as his is irreplaceable! The whole system will collapse! That'll show 'em!

Via Henley.

Labels: conservatism

I've been reading a lot of commentaries on the movement conservative "cocoon," and I certainly agree that the Right has apparently recused itself from the "reality-based" world the rest of us live in, but I'd like to propose an alternative metaphor: the Conservative Cave.

I'm referring specifically to Plato's Allegory of the Cave, from Book VII of The Republic. If it's been a while since you read it (or are encountering it for the first time), here's the gist: imagine a group of prisoners who had been chained up their whole lives, unable to move, and only able to see the cave wall in front of them. Behind them is a fire which creates shadows on the wall, which the prisoners take to be reality. They know nothing of the sun or the rest of the world beyond the cave's walls. Now imagine that they are freed, and after a lifetime of knowing only the wall in front of them (and believing that the shadows of things on the wall were the things themselves) they are exposed to the world in all its variety. Some of those freed prisoners would embrace their new knowledge, and go back to the cave to tell those still imprisoned about the wide wonders they had seen. Others would reject their new knowledge and retreat back to the comfortably familiar ignorance in which they had always lived.

You can see where I'm going with this.

Conservatives have elected to reject the outside world in favor of their safe little cave, where Rush Limbaugh and Fox News are constantly piped in, the internet blocks everything but Red State and NRO, and the only reading material is The Weekly Standard and the Regnery catalogue. If something happens outside their world it is either ignored or filtered to the point of unrecognizability. Hence the ludicrous claims about global warming, evolution, Iraq, and Sarah Palin's cognitive abilities.

You see, it's not that conservatives are stupid or evil: they're imprisoned by their ideology, staring blankly at the wall in front of them and believing it's the whole wide world while behind them Bill Kristol makes shadow puppets with his hands. How else to account for the Right's fierce anti-intellectualism, xenophobic talk of "real" America and mindless repetition of self-evidently baseless talking points?

The Left isn't immune to this, by the way. If you think Ralph Nader isn't as blinkered by his own ideology as the editors of the National Review are by theirs, you're setting yourself up for a stay in the same prison (but yours will have Rachel Maddow and The Daily Show on TV and Democracy Now! on the radio). Feel free to imagine the libertarian, paleo-right and communist versions of the prison. The ultimate problem is ideology, and the way it distorts reality.

Labels: conservatism, Framing, politics, reason

I see that I've done it again. I've gone weeks without posting anything. So here's a short update: I arrived back in the states in August and promptly sank into a deep, numb depression. My girlfriend left me when I got back, making what I thought would be a time of healing and reconnecting into another period of seclusion and depression. I barely left my couch for days on end. I started grad school, enjoyed it, then dropped out thanks to my continuing mental and emotional troubles and a mortgage that was sinking me financially. I realized at some point that the only real reason I was still living in that crappy Arizona military town was that undervalued house, so I decided to accept a foreclosure or short-sale (selling or renting the place is out of the question--many homes on my street are for sale, my housing development isn't even halfway finished and the rental market is flooded) and move to Portland, Oregon, a city I've long wanted to call home. I've got family in the area, so at least there's a support network for me there.

I'll be settled in Portland by mid-November. I'm hopeful that living in a positive, progressive city near loved ones will be the jolt I need to get on with my life. If that doesn't work, I don't know what I'll do.

Labels: personal, PTSD

Wow. Just, wow.



We are so screwed if she's elected.

Labels: Election '08, McCain

I'm sure you've all heard the "Trig Palin is actually Sarah's grandson" rumors, and are now acquainted with the "Palin's 16 year-old got pregnant out of wedlock" story. I agree with Andrew Sullivan that the story is still fishy, especially the bit about Palin giving a speech, then flying from Texas to Alaska via Seattle on commercial air and bypassing the big, conveniently-located hospital in Anchorage to give birth somewhere more private--all after her water broke. How to end this responsibly? Here's Sullivan:

Why not kill this rumor with Palin's medical records? A 43 year old woman's pregnancy with a Downs Syndrome child would have been intensely monitored, and the records must be a mile long. Just release them, ok? If necessary in a closed room for reporters, just as with McCain. And we can all breathe a sigh of relief and move on.

I hope, for the nation's sake, this happens soon and Sarah is actually the mother, but I think we deserve to know if a potential Vice President faked a pregnancy.

BUT...

I'm glad Obama has drawn a line in the sand regarding scrutiny of candidates' children. Here's what he said at a press conference today:

Jake Tapper: Governor Palin and her husband issued a statement today saying that their 17 year old daughter Bristol who is unmarried is 5 months pregnant. Do you have a comment?

BO: I have heard some of the news on this and so let me be as clear as possible. I have said before and I will repeat again, I think people's families are off limits, and people's children are especially off limits. This shouldn't be part of our politics, it has no relevance to governor Palin's performance as a governor or her potential performance as a vice president. And so I would strongly urge people to back off these kinds of stories. You know my mother had me when she was 18. And how family deals with issues and teenage children that shouldn't be the topic of our politics and I hope that anybody who is supporting me understands that is off limits.

Those of us who comment on politics ought to follow this advice. Attacking the children of candidates perpetuates the politics of slander and trivialities, which diminishes us all. It obscures the real issues of this election. No one comes out a winner.

Hilzoy at Obsidian Wings made the human decency argument in the strongest, most humane terms I've seen:

It's easy, in the midst of a political campaign, to forget that the people involved are, after all, people. Some of them -- Sarah Palin, for instance -- place themselves under a media spotlight of their own free will. Others -- her daughter, for instance -- wind up there through no fault of their own. Imagine yourself in her position: there you are, seventeen years old, pregnant, unmarried. Maybe you understand what happened and why; and maybe your parents and friends do as well. But zillions of bloggers and reporters and pundits are about to make the most personal details of your life into a political issue, and they don't understand it at all. And yet, despite that, they are about to use you and your unborn child to score points on one another, without any regard whatsoever for you and your actual situation.

Hopefully those of us who remember Dan Quayle's despicable Murphy Brown remarks (which, incidentally, introduced the phrase "family values" into popular parlance--a dubious achievement if there ever was one) will think twice before criticizing a child for making a mistake. And no, "nyah, nyah, Republicans are hypocrites" arguments are not legitimate either. Not when it involves children and politicians' private lives in ways that say nothing substantive about their policies.

Let's rise above this and do what would have been easy anyway: critique McCain and Palin on substance.

Labels: Election '08, McCain, Obama, politics

The U.S. is returning control of heavily-Sunni-dominated Anbar Province (and former Decline and Fall stomping ground) to the Shi'a-dominated Iraqi government and hailing it as an example of the success of the "surge" in that area. While I am all for pulling our military out of Iraq as soon as possible, there's very little to be hopeful for in terms of Iraqi internal security in the short term, and there's no reason to attribute the significant downtick in violence in Anbar over the last year and a half to the troop surge, the vast majority of which was centered on Baghdad and the Diyala province.

Violence went down in Anbar because we started paying them, to the tune of $300 per month to more than 100,000 people, a somewhat substantial salary in a province where people still raise livestock in relatively dense urban areas, such as Fallujah and Ramadi. These payouts went to the Awakening groups, composed largely of former insurgents, many of whom had spent time in American-run prisons such as Abu Ghraib and Camp Cropper. The idea was that if the violence could be brought to a more manageable level, political space might open up for negotiations between the Maliki government and Sunni militants. That hasn't been so successful.

My guess is that life is about to get a lot worse for the average Anbar resident, because as soon as we remove ourselves from the area and/or stop cutting those Awakenings checks all bets are off. Maliki's government, widely considered illegitimate among Sunnis, has already started cracking down on Awakening movement members in and around Baghdad, driving them from their homes and arresting them. From the WaPo story:

Shiite officials have attacked the movement as illegitimate and have recently issued more than 650 arrest warrants for people in areas west of Baghdad to shut the movement down.

Abu Zakaria, an Awakening leader, said the move by the Iraqi Army could destroy the security gains in the province.

"We don't want to see al-Qaeda come back but if this keeps happening we will be in serious danger of seeing an explosion of attacks," he said.

In western Baghdad's Abu Ghraib district, members of the Awakening have fled their homes and their posts to avoid capture. Residents said that violence has recently spiked and members of the Sunni insurgent group Al-Qaeda in Iraq have returned.

In other words, the negotiations went nowhere, and the U.S. has just handed the central Iraqi government a geographically enormous area populated by well-armed, well-organized and U.S.-legitimated domestic enemies. The American hope that these "former" insurgents would be absorbed into the Iraqi military has been dashed by Maliki, who can't afford to (and isn't inclined to) bring them all under the umbrella of a legitimate Iraqi military and/or police force. In the interest of short-term security gains (laudable as those might be, especially for the servicemembers deployed there) America funded, armed, trained and granted legitimacy to an enormous faction of internal dissidents with a proven record of violence and (somewhat understandable) hostility to the Iraqi central government.

When I was in Fallujah and elsewhere in Anbar, I met many of these so-called "Sons of Iraq" and observed hundreds of them in their daily jobs. What I saw was a group of people divided between their tribal loyalties (tribes are still the dominant form of social and political organization in Anbar, and the Awakening movement's success can be greatly attributed to the cooperation of Tribal Sheikhs, who simply ordered members of their tribes to join the Awakening, sometimes personally delivering them to recruitment centers) and their still-seething hatred for America, Iraqi Shi'a and the Maliki government. Sometimes it was unmistakable: the cold hatred I saw in the eyes of many "Sons of Iraq" toward me seemed to say, "if I had my way I would have killed you by now." I was not reassured by the fact that so many of them were armed with loaded AK-47s. These were many of the same people who had fought tenaciously against U.S. forces as recently as the year before in Fallujah and elsewhere, and old grudges die hard.

Caught in the middle of all this is the vast majority of people in Anbar who never explicitly sided with the insurgents or supported their operations only tacitly and out of fear. As the Iraqi Military, Police and Ministry of Interior expands into Anbar, the most likely outcome will be sectarian repression, mass arrests and attempts to wrest power from Tribal Sheikhs. Any of these would be enough to spark a return to 2004-2006 levels of violence, and soon there will be few U.S. troops to provide any counterbalance.

Again, I'm glad our servicemembers are being taken out of harm's way in Iraq; and it's about time we refocused on Afghanistan, which we had a legitimate reason to invade. But get ready for the proverbial rivers of blood. Bribing insurgents was short-sighted and irresponsible, because no thoughtful analysis could conclude that those people's motivation for laying down their arms (then picking up ours) was a desire to see the Maliki government succeed. (I don't know if those payments are set to stop, but even if they continue tensions are likely to boil over.) They are still as concerned with resisting the central government as they ever were, and almost no one in Anbar believes the Sunnis are going to get a fair shake in Iraqi politics without forcing Maliki's hand. If anything, our policies made the long-term problem worse: they're better-trained, better-organized, and have a patina of respectability now.

I sincerely hope this doesn't come about, and that Maliki and the Sunni Sheikhs find a way to work together. History doesn't give us much reason for hope, however. These are people fighting for power in an internal struggle that American policy created and exacerbated through policies that paid scant attention to the underlying causes of sectarian violence in Anbar and elsewhere. Remember that as U.S. officials pat themselves on the back for a job well done.

(Cross-posted at OOIBC.)

Labels: Iraq, military, OOIBC

The first day of the Republican National Convention has been more or less called off and both the current President and Vice President of the United States will be skipping their party's convention so that Bush and the rest of the GOP can focus on New Orleans relief. I'm surprised but admittedly heartened that Bush would do such a thing, although we all know that his presence at the convention would be poison to McCain's campaign, so it's not a purely statesmanlike move. Given the choice between Bush hiding his head in the sand, behaving like a petulant child and insisting that his surrogates are doing a "heck of a job," and him acting like an actual President, I'll take the latter.

But this is frightening: a contractor for the Army Corps of Engineers filled New Orleans floodwalls with newspaper, in direct violation of the terms of their contract no less, according to an eye witness in this WWLTV report, complete with video:

“It's like putting a Band-Aid on the hole of a gas tank of an airplane,” the resident said.

Instead of an airplane, it's a floodwall, and instead of a Band-Aid, the witness says two years ago, he saw the contractor filling the expansion joint or opening between the floodwalls with newspaper.

“The whole length of the wall was stuffed with newspaper.”

And when he confronted the contractor, the contractor blamed Washington for the substandard work.

“He basically told me when Congress sent down the money, it would be repaired the proper way.”

But during a recent trip to the area, two years later, it was apparent that didn't happen. Much of the newspaper had deteriorated or been eaten by bugs, but some still remained. In fact WWL cameras even captured the date May 21, 2006, on a page of the Parade magazine from the Times-Picayune.

I hope the people on the gulf coast are getting out now, or are already gone. This one looks big, and I doubt anyone in its path feels confident in the U.S. government's ability (or inclination) to make sure they are safe. I sure hope they don't still think the walls will save them.

Via Sadly, No!

Labels: Bush, McCain, politics

Isn't this elevation of a small-town, blue-collar political neophyte to the national stage a bit like the plot of a bad sitcom at the exact moment it jumps the shark? Remember Benson, in which a smart-aleck domestic servant somehow becomes a major party's candidate for Governor? There's a reason the series ended the season that happened. The Republican Party is now like the last season of Benson, amusing at times but clearly not going to be renewed for next season because the plot has grown so ridiculous that we can no longer suspend our disbelief.

Labels: Election '08

The web is abuzz with debates on Sarah Palin's experience, fitness to take over if the oldest President ever keels over moments after being sworn in, and how much cuter she is than Joe Biden. What I haven't seen mentioned as often (in the 40 or so hours since many of us first heard of her) is the fact that she just got her first passport about a year and a half ago, after assuming the governorship of Alaska. And from what I can tell she's used her passport just once: to visit troops in Kuwait and a military hospital in Germany. Here's the relevant graf, from the New York Times story:

Ms. Palin appears to have traveled very little outside the United States. In July 2007, she had to get a passport before she visited members of the Alaska National Guard stationed in Kuwait, according to her deputy communications director, Sharon Leighow. She also visited wounded troops in Germany during that trip.

If you've never seen a military installation in a foreign country, let me describe it for you: a walled, razor-wired compound, overwhelmingly populated by Americans, the few locals you see almost always speak decent English, and among the dining choices are one or all of the following: Burger King, Pizza Hut, Cinnabon, Starbucks and KFC. (Yes, yes, I know: "Sounds like a foreign city to me!" Bear with me.) There are lots of reasons why this is the case, and some of them are even pretty reasonable, but the fact remains that if you have only been to Ali Al Selim Air Base in Kuwait and the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, you've only technically left the United States. Counting that as "foreign travel" is like counting airports you've had layovers in as "visits" to that city. (This is one reason why you should take the pronouncements of pundits and politicians who have "just returned from a trip to Iraq" and are ready to render judgment with a plentiful helping of salt--those people rarely, if ever, leave the seclusion of American fortresses.)

Not that there's anything wrong with visiting the troops, especially at Landstuhl. I commend her for doing that.

OK, so apparently she once visited Ireland. Which is nice, but it says a lot about her lack of interest in the rest of the world that she's only traveled to a couple of military bases and an English-speaking country, and only in the last year and a half. This is excusable (though lamentable) in the Governor of a sparsely-populated state, but not in the biography of an aspirant to the second highest office in the land, in which she would spend a sizeable chunk of her time meeting with foreign dignitaries, all of whom will know significantly more about her country than she knows about theirs.

The greatest challenges facing America right now depend heavily on what the rest of the world does: energy, the environment, national security, trade, outsourcing, and that little skirmish just north of where she tasted her first international Frappuccino come to mind. She appears to be in way over her head on all of these issues (with the possible exception of energy, on which I merely disagree strongly with her), and has evidently not been studying up, even though her name was floated early as a possible "darkhorse" running mate.

Face it: we all know why he picked her. To steal some of Obama's "historic" mojo. (Now we know why McCain was so "gracious" about congratulating Obama on his historic moment the night before this announcement.) He wouldn't have chosen her if there had been another, experienced running mate who could theoretically bring in undecideds while simultaneously kowtowing to the Religious Right. This is a pick designed to dominate a news cycle, not inspire confidence in the judgment of our next President. It's insulting to women, who evidently in McCain's view care less about the issues than if a candidate has ovaries, and it's insulting to the rest of us voters, who generally expect a veep candidate to be someone we've heard of, or at least someone who knows something about the job. The stakes are too high for such a cynical ploy. Just think of it: we could be one "Barack Obama Photographed Looking Goofy in a Helmet" incident from the reality of Vice President Palin.

By picking someone with no detectable interest in the world beyond our borders, McCain has shown himself to be serious about running for President, but unserious about being President.

Labels: conservatism, Election '08, McCain, politics

There's been an outpouring of support for me since my last post, for which I am very grateful. Special thanks goes to Edger at OOIBC and Docudharma. He re-posted PTSD... over there and his commenters have been amazing. Thank you each and every one.

It's a funny thing: when I was a conservative, I always got a lot of "it's great that you're in the Army/defending freedom/taking it to the terrorists" but when I problematized the situation a little bit--bringing up flaws in the war strategy, expressing doubts about the war itself, pointing to past mistakes made by our government that contributed to the current situation--my conservative friends couldn't find it in themselves to acknowledge that anything was wrong. And this was in 2005, by which point you would have had to be deaf, blind, mentally retarded and/or willfully ignorant to not notice that things were looking very bad. Invariably, they would tell me that it was all the media's fault (just like Vietnam!) and that I needed to insulate myself from traitors and collaborators such as Peter Jennings.

I finally had enough of the conservative movement and its pathetic inability to look in a mirror or think critically about any of its cherished platitudes and bolted. What I had expected to find, based on years of reading the likes of Russell Kirk, David Horowitz, Lew Rockwell, Victor Davis Hanson, the AEI gaggle, The National Review (I subscribed for more than five years), Human Events (my parents subscribed throughout my childhood), and other organs of the right-wing propaganda machine, was rabid anti-war neanderthals who hated America. (I should say that by the time I left, I knew this wasn't the only face the Left had to offer.)

What I found instead was compassion, understanding, a willingness to examine one's positions, and an openness to divergent points of view that utterly confounded the dichotomies I had absorbed in my youthful Right-wing radicalism. These were good, decent people by and large. I won't claim that there is no Left-wing lunatic fringe, but I will say that the crazies have not infiltrated the Left mainstream the way they have on the Right. There is no Left equivalent of Ann Coulter, at least not in terms of attention, airtime, book sales or general publicity. This is partly because the Right has much more leeway in the current media climate, but it's also because the Left does a better job of policing itself. It's true that Coulter was kicked off The Corner, but that didn't actually affect her popularity at all. When the Left ditched Hitchens (a subject about which I remain conflicted) he stayed ditched. This is not the result of some sort of Politburo that meets in the offices of The Nation every Wednesday at 9 am to decide the fate of liberalism, it's the genuine dislike of rank-and-file liberals for those who give them a bad name.

I have no doubt that the Right will eventually come to the consensus that Bush has been a disaster, but the Left would have been dogging him all along, rather than swallowing his absolutist rhetoric so gleefully as they failed to criticize even his most abhorrent policies (torture being perhaps the most egregious). The Right did that eventually with Nixon, after all, but only because of his economic policies and supposed kowtowing to Mao. When LBJ got us (deeper) into an unwinnable and morally repugnant war, the Left ensured that he would not serve another term. When Bush did it, the Right rallied around him and invented controversies about the service of an actual warrior and patriot in one of the most cynical and depraved moments in the history of our politics. Oh, and google the term "PTSD" on "corner.nationalreview.com" to see how often that issue has come up on one of the busiest political blogs in the world. That's what happens when you substitute "support my agenda" for "support the troops."

The Right loves to talk about freedom, but it suppresses freedom of expresion within its own ranks. They barely even debate anymore. As Peter Fonda put it in Easy Rider:

[Freedom's] what's it's all about, all right. But talkin' about it and bein' it, that's two different things. I mean, it's real hard to be free when you are bought and sold in the marketplace. Of course, don't ever tell anybody that they're not free, 'cause then they're gonna get real busy killin' and maimin' to prove to you that they are. Oh, yeah, they're gonna talk to you, and talk to you, and talk to you about individual freedom. But they see a free individual, it's gonna scare 'em.

Too true. Sorry I was so wrong about you guys for so long.

Labels: conservatism, personal, politics, PTSD

...is a bitch.

I haven't been officially diagnosed (that will have to wait until I get back stateside, in August) but the signs are all there: obsessive thoughts about horrific scenes I witnessed in Iraq, anxiety at the mere mention of anything having to do with that war, extreme guilt at having willingly participated in such a colossally wicked venture, sleepless nights, mood swings, constant fidgeting, and the strong proclivity to self-medicate by any means necessary. I have good days and bad days, but they've been mostly bad, and certainly worse than they were when I blogged about them before.

The worst for me is the guilt and the anger. Guilt for what I was a part of and anger that such a war could happen, or that people could still believe there is anything remotely positive about our military presence in Mesopotamia. As Thoreau put it so ably at Unqualified Offerings:

It outrages me more than I can describe that there are still apologists for this. It outrages me more than I can describe that there are people who can look at this and say "Yep, we sure made the right choice there!" And it outrages me more than I can describe that the people who look at this and see no evil are actually taken seriously. They are invited to speak and write in serious venues. They are warmly thanked for offering their amoral apologies. They are allowed to remain in power rather than impeached, convicted, removed, and stripped of privilege. They are able to walk down the street undisturbed when they should be cursed and pelted with trash. They should be sprawled on a sidewalk next the McPherson Square Metro Station, hoping to cadge enough quarters to enjoy the rare treat of laundering the vomit out of the only shirt they own, praying all the while that decent people do not recognize them beneath the matted beard and tangled hair.

In a real republic Bush would have been drummed out of office by now and the last thing any major candidate for the Presidency would say is that we might be in Iraq for another 100 years. Just thinking about it makes me so... anxious. Every time I hear a war apologist speak I am overcome with grief and it's a good hour before my mind's back on track. This is my war casualty: a complete inability to escape from that place for longer than a couple of hours.

Seeking mindless distraction, I went to see Ironman the other day, and boy was that a mistake. The predictably evil defense contractor (played by Jeff Bridges, who always looks like Jeff Lebowski to me, which is a bit disconcerting) reminded me so much of my old boss in the war-profiteering biz--warm and friendly on the outside, cold and heartless on the inside--that I spent half the movie trying to will away my flashbacks, then spent the next several hours after the movie drinking alone in my apartment. Such an innocuous reference from such a banal movie shouldn't produce such a powerful reaction, but such is life after war, for me at least. Suffice it to say I won't be watching Rendition or In the Valley of Elah any time soon.

So there it is: I'm pretty messed up in the head right now, and there's not a lot I can do but try to work through it. It's not like there are VA programs for DoD Contractors with PTSD. That's why the federal government loves contractors so much: there's no long-term commitment. A servicemember has all those whiny legislators demanding benefits (and overriding Bush's veto... we hope) for the troops, but us temps, we're on our own. Now that I'm not working for the company that paid me to go to Iraq, I'm nobody's problem but my own. Hell, I don't even have medical insurance any more. I swear to FSM I'm moving to Canada or Denmark some day.

Discovering that your soul has a price isn't a pleasant experience, but I'm the guy who signed on the dotted line, so it's my cross to bear. I wish I had read the fine print.

Cross-posted at OOIBC.

Labels: Iraq, OOIBC, personal, politics, PTSD

Of the 56 Senators and more than 200 Representatives who have signed on to legislation to improve GI Bill benefits, none of them is named John McCain. He's opposed to making the GI Bill more lucrative because "enhanced educational opportunities could negatively affect retention rates." You see, the last thing you would want is a military in which the troops feel like their military experience has prepared them to venture out into the wide world. No, better that they feel there is no escape because there aren't enough "opportunities" on the outside.

This isn't Supporting the Troops, it's Supporting the Defense Establishment. A veteran such as John McCain should know better; and he should do better by the young men and women he has sent, and pledged to send, to risk their lives in Iraq for his corrupt and pointless war.

Labels: Iraq, military

I'm glad to see that the media has finally done its job and uncovered the completely unsurprising links between the retired generals who serve as supposedly-independent Military Analysts on TV news and the Pentagon and Military Contractors whose talking points they invariably echo. It's one thing to know that there's no way these guys were picked because of their complete independence from the Pentagon and its big business contractors. It's another to have evidence that it goes so much further than that. It's a must-read.

A minor point I think deserves to be rebutted is this one from Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman:

It was, Mr. Whitman added, "a bit incredible" to think retired military officers could be "wound up" and turned into "puppets of the Defense Department."

If you believe this, you don't know the military very well. These guys all retired at the rank of Colonel or higher, and if there's anything a soldier could tell you about the guys at the top of the pyramid, it's that they seem to have no idea what goes on at the bottom of it. The Colonels and Generals I've seen in Iraq rarely leave their offices, except to take other Generals and Colonels on tours in their helicopters. They are briefed more than once a day on operations, but those briefings are often a bit... sanitized to protect their subordinates. They simply don't have the feel that the guys outside the wire have for what's going on. Given the lack of recently retired Buck Sergeant hired to be a Military Analyst on MSNBC, this makes for a somewhat skewed view of the battlefield.

But more tragically, there's a system in place that almost ensures that by the time you reach the rank of General, you've spent so much time with your nose up the ass of the people who made it before you that it's the only way you know how to operate. You see, there aren't all that many openings for Generals in the military, so they can be choosy in who they pick to wear those stars. One of the main criteria for making it that far is having a spotless or near-spotless OER (Officer's Evaluation Report). To get a good OER, you basically have to be competent in your position and not piss off your commander.

And what might piss off a commander? Well, considering that he's got an OER of his own to look after, anything that might wreck his next promotion is pretty high on that list. All this basically means that the last thing you want to do as a junior officer looking up at the stars is think outside the box, take risks, put yourself on the line, or any of those other things that businesses were hiring consultants to tell them to do 10 years ago. The people who make General tend to be above average in intelligence, but risk-averse, thanks to a system that encourages lockstep thinking and looks askance at anything that bucks tradition.

So no, Mr. Whitman, it's not "a bit incredible" that retired Generals are puppets of the system. That's how they got there in the first place. And thanks to the extremely lucrative after-market in the defense contracting and lobbying business, these retired Generals know they've got to