Roundup: Historians' Take
This is where we place excerpts by historians writing about the news. On occasion this page also includes political scientists, economists, and law professors who write about history. We may from time to time even include English profs.
Larry Sabato: Inaugurations Past and Present ... How Will Obama Measure Up?
Joseph Lane: Roland Burris and the U.S. Senate: A Replay of Marbury v. Madison?
Jay Winik: Obama Will Find the White House Is a Lonely Place
Andrew Bacevich: Afghanistan ... What's Our Definition of Victory?
Paul Krugman: Keynes was right and Friedman wrong about the Great Depression, then and now
Juan Cole: Have Bush and the Neocons Ruined it for the Israelis?
Lawrence Davidson: Whose Interest Defines National Interests?
Ronald C. White Jr.: Lincoln's Memo to Obama
Source: Wilson Quarterly (Winter edition) (1-8-08)
[Ronald C. White Jr. is the author of A. Lincoln: A Biography, published in January by Random House. His previous books include Lincoln’s Greatest Speech: The Second Inaugural (2002), and The Eloquent President: A Portrait of Lincoln Through His Words (2005).]
... Lincoln’s moral integrity was the strong trunk from which all the branches of his life grew. His integrity had many roots, including his intimate knowledge of the Bible, the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution. He may not have read Aristotle’s Treatise on Rhetoric, but he embodied the ancient Greek philosopher’s conviction that persuasive speech is rooted in ethos, or integrity. Lincoln would advise contemporary politicians that the American public knows when they are acting out a political role and when they are speaking with integrity, or what people now call authenticity.
Lincoln wrote candidly of his “peculiar ambition” in his first announcement for public office, in 1832. Barely 23, he offered a definition of ambition worth passing on: “that of being truly esteemed by my fellow men, by rendering myself worthy of their esteem.” Over the years, Lincoln learned to prune the strong branch of personal ambition so that it did not grow out of proportion to his service to others. The biting satire the young Lincoln occasionally dispensed gave way over time to the magnanimity he expressed in the closing benediction of his second inaugural address: “With malice toward none, with charity for all.”
The 16th president would counsel Obama to resist the growing demands to act quickly in response to the admittedly dire crises facing the nation in 2009. During the long interregnum between his election and his inauguration on March 4, 1861, Lincoln found himself under tremendous pressure to declare his policies on the growing Southern secession movement. The pressure only increased when he embarked on a 12-day train trip from Springfield to Washington in February 1861, which allowed him to speak to far more Americans than any previous president. And they expected to hear answers from him.
Lincoln would probably tell Obama that he too had been accused of being distant in the face of pressing political problems. As president, Lincoln emerged as a leader who kept his own counsel. Members of his own party accused him of neither convening nor consulting his cabinet enough.
I think Lincoln might offer a word of caution as President Obama puts in place several layers of economic and national security advisers in today’s admittedly more complex administrative structure. On the one hand, Lincoln would applaud Obama for emulating what he did— surround himself with strong leaders who would provide differing points of view. On the other hand, Lincoln might offer a gentle warning that Obama has appointed far more cooks than he did in the White House kitchen, which could end up spoiling his recipes for change.
With historical imagination, I can envision Lincoln putting his arm around Obama when offering this advice: Be comfortable with ambiguity. On a blue state/red state map, too often the question becomes, Are you for it or against it— gun control, abortion, immigration reform? Ambiguity is too often seen as a weakness, an inability to decide. Not so for Lincoln. Ambiguity became for him the capacity to look at all sides of a problem. Ideologues are the persons who lack the capacity to see complexity in difficult issues. Lincoln voiced this ambiguity in a private memo to himself that was found only after his death. As he pondered the meaning and action of God in the Civil War, he wrote, “I am almost ready to say this is probably true— that God wills this contest, and wills that it shall not end yet.” At the very moment that Lincoln, in private, offered the affirmation that God willed this ongoing war, he did so by admitting the partiality of his vision—“almost” and “probably.” Ambiguity is the mark of humility, not weakness. The question for the next four or eight years will be whether the American public can appreciate a president whose political autobiography, The Audacity of Hope, is filled with self-deprecating stories of his partial vision and even conflicting viewpoints....
Jim Sleeper: Can There Be Politics in Tragedy? Or in Gaza?
Source: TPM (Liberal blog) (1-4-09)
I'm immersed in long-range writing and leave tomorrow for six months in Berlin, but the Gaza war provokes me to share a brilliant essay by Darry Li, a doctoral student in anthropology and Middle East Studies at Harvard and a student at Yale Law School who has worked in Gaza for Human Rights Watch, B'tselem (the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories) and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights.
The essay appeared last February in Middle East Report, but it's making the rounds again because its clarity and comprehensiveness outweigh its blind spots. Below I post half of it with my comments, but click the link and read it all.
Li writes that Israel's promises to avoid a "humanitarian crisis" reflect its long descent from treating Gaza as a bantustan to abandoning yet controlling it as a holding pen. He gets polemical at times, and some of his analysis is wrong. But he's right that Israel's "disengagement" from Gaza in 2005 is, not "a one-time abandonment of control" but "an ongoing process of controlled abandonment, by which Israel is severing the ties forged with Gaza over 40 years... without allowing any viable alternatives to emerge."
This strategy seeks "neither justice nor even stability, but rather survival -- as we are reminded by every guarantee that an undefined 'humanitarian crisis' will be avoided."
A chilling charge. Li doesn't mention Israel's donation of greenhouses and housing it left behind in 2005, but he notes coldly that "Since its beginnings over a century ago, the Zionist project of creating a state for the Jewish people in the eastern Mediterranean has faced an intractable challenge: how to deal with indigenous non-Jews -- who today comprise half of the population living under Israeli rule -- when practical realities dictate that [Palestinians] cannot be removed and ideology demands that they must not be granted political equality."
This produced, he says, "the general contours of Israeli policy from left to right over the generations...: First, maximize the number of Arabs on the minimal amount of land, and second, maximize control over the Arabs while minimizing any apparent responsibility for them.
"On the first score, Gaza is a resounding success: Although it covers only 1.5 percent of the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, it warehouses one out of every four Palestinians living in the entire country. But on the second count, Gaza's density has made it very difficult to manage and its poverty makes it an eyesore before the world community." That has "forced Israel to revise its balance of responsibility and control several times. Each phase of this ongoing experiment can be understood through spatial metaphors of increasingly constricted scope: bantustan, internment camp, animal pen."
Yes, I know. But keep reading.
"From 1967 to the first intifada of 1987-1993, Israel used its military rule to incorporate Gaza's economy and infrastructure forcibly into its own, while treating the Palestinian population as a reserve of cheap migrant workers. It was during this stage of labor migration and territorial segregation that Gaza came closest to resembling the South African 'bantustans' -- the nominally independent black statelets set up by the apartheid regime to evade responsibility for the indigenous population whose labor it was exploiting.
"During the Oslo phase of the occupation (1993-2005), Israel delegated some administrative functions to the Palestinian Authority (PA) and welcomed migrant workers from Asia and Eastern Europe to replace the Gazans. ... Permits for travel to Israel and the West Bank, once commonly granted, became rare. Ordinary vehicular traffic ceased..... Israel erected a fence around the territory and commenced channeling non-Israeli people and goods through a handful of newly built permanent terminals like the ones that have recently come to the West Bank.
"It was during this period that Gaza under Israeli management most resembled a giant internment camp. The detainee population was, to a certain extent, self-organized and appointed representatives to act on its behalf (the PA) who nevertheless operated under the aegis of supreme Israeli military authority, within the framework of agreements concluded by Israel and a largely defunct Palestine Liberation Organization (which are now basically agreements between Israel and itself).
"The failure of the settlement enterprise and the ferocity of the armed resistance during the second intifada beginning in the fall of 2000 undoubtedly contributed to the decision to remove settlements and withdraw soldiers." But "[D]isengagement did not change Israel 's effective control over Gaza and hence its responsibility as an occupying power under international humanitarian law.... Israel continued to patrol Gaza's airspace and seacoast, and ground troops operated, built fortifications and enforced buffer zones inside the Strip.... The taxation system, currency and trade remained in Israel's hands; water, power and communications infrastructure continued to depend on Israel; and even the population registry was still kept by Israeli authorities.
"Israel's response has been simple, if disingenuous: If responsibility for Gaza arises from Gaza's dependency on Israel, then it would be more than happy to cut those ties once and for all. And this is exactly what Israel started doing after Fatah's military defeat in Gaza at the hands of Hamas in June 2007.... In any event, in Gaza the Oslo experiment in indirect rule seems to be over. Israel now treats the territory less like an internment camp and more like an animal pen: a space of near total confinement whose wardens are concerned primarily with keeping those inside alive and tame, with some degree of mild concern as to the opinions of neighbors and other outsiders."
This is Li at his most polemical but also at his most factual: Read the complete essay to see his account of how the border crossings are run and what the consequences are.
Then he writes, "[T]he logic of "essential humanitarianism...." promises nothing more than turning Gazans one and all into beggars -- or rather, into well-fed animals -- dependent on international money and Israeli fiat. It allows Israel to keep Palestinians and the international community in perpetual fear of an entirely manufactured "humanitarian crisis" that Israel can induce at the flip of a switch (due to the embargo, Gaza's power plant only has enough fuel at any one time to operate for two days. And it distracts from, and even legitimizes, the destruction of Gaza's own economy, institutions and infrastructure.... The notion of 'essential humanitarianism' reduces the needs, aspirations and rights of 1.4 million human beings to an exercise in counting calories, megawatts and other abstract, one-dimensional units measuring distance from death.
"As Israel has experimented with various models for controlling Gaza over the decades, the fundamental refusal of political equality... has taken on different names.... During the Bantustan period, inequality was called coexistence; during the Oslo period, separation; and during disengagement, it is reframed as avoiding "humanitarian crises," or survival. These slogans were not outright lies, but they disregarded the unwelcome truth that coexistence is not freedom, separation is not independence and survival is not living."
Li argues that although "half of the people between the Mediterranean and the Jordan live under a state that excludes them from the community of political subjects, denies them true equality and thus discriminates against them in varying domains of rights. Israel has impressively managed to keep this half of the population divided against itself -- as well as against foreign workers and non-Ashkenazi Jews -- through careful distribution of differential privileges and punishments and may continue to do so for the foreseeable future."
Li concludes with a telling but "tacit reminder of the intimacy that persists through 40 years of domination. The people of the southern Israeli town of Sderot... were unpleasantly reminded of this intimacy when, one morning in 2005, they awoke to find hundreds of leaflets on their streets warning them in Arabic to leave their homes before they were attacked. The Israeli military had airdropped the fliers over neighboring parts of the northern Gaza Strip in an attempt to intimidate the Palestinians there, but strong winds blew them over the frontier instead."
Three things are rather obviously missing from Li's clear, cool assessment: The pre-1967 history of Israelis and Palestinians; the post-2009 future Li wants for the area; and the existence of Hamas, which, we are left to assume, is what it is because Israel's policies have been what they've been.
Well, Li can't cover everything in a 2800-word essay (and, if you've read this far, please do read all of what he wrote). But some contextual markers from him in these three areas would have advanced the discussion and perhaps his arguments. On the three areas I've mentioned, let me just note here that:
1.Li mentions Jewish history only with the words, "Since its beginnings over a century ago, the Zionist project of creating a state for the Jewish people in the eastern Mediterranean...." Correct, but, shall we say, minimalist, with a soupcon of a suggestion that they don't belong there. Perhaps Ashkenazi Jews who came to Palestine of the 1920s and '30 should have returned to the warm and welcoming bosom of Europe? Some of my Lithuanian-Jewish ancestors actually knew the geography of Palestine far better than they knew that of the Baltic provinces they finally fled.
Why was that? Does Li know why Immanuel Kant dismissed the Jews of his time as "These Palestinians who are living among us."? (On that, for the philosophically as well as historically inclined, I commend the Israeli philosopher Yirmiyahu Yovel's Dark Riddle: Hegel, Nietzsche, and the Jews.) Does Li know that 40% of Israel's Jews grew up speaking Arabic, or hearing their parents speak it, because after Israel's founding they became refugees from centuries-old homes in Algiers and Cairo and Baghdad?
2. If it is correct to reduce the Jewish historical context to a few words, as Li did in his essay, wouldn't it have been just as correct to note that Palestinian demands for liberal rights and for self-determination in a nation-state arose only as the Zionist demands did? Were there any such Palestinian demands under Ottoman rule? Doesn't Palestinian liberalism come from the 20th-century West, if not, indeed, from the Jews? Isn't that what makes this such a tragedy? If not, would Li tell us which Arab state wants a Palestinian state to exist even now?
True, the answers are more complicated than my questions imply, for most nations in the Middle East are post-colonial fictions, anyway, and that opens a door to a long and, for the left, a fraught debate about whether there should be nation-states at all, and, if not, what "national liberation movements" are for. Li quite rightly poses the broader, more urgent problem of political equality for Palestinians, both as individuals and as a community. Israel speaks with a forked tongue on the subject, and Li is justified and effective in spotlighting the "right" fork.
But what solution does he seek? What kind of Israeli responsibility, or Israeli-Palestinian interdependency, does he envision? This matters if we really want to end Israel's depredations in the occupied territories and, to a lesser but very real extent, among its own 1.5-million Arab citizens within the 1967 borders. Does Li seek Israel's dissolution in a bi-national, democratic state whose majority would be Palestinian? So I infer, but can he say with a straight face that, under Arab rule, justice would finally displace revenge, as it has not under Israeli occupation?
Li knows that Israelis, who've actually worked rather hard and suffered to build their hybrid Jewish/democratic state, insist they see no signs of any similar inclination among Palestinians. To what extent are they right? To what extent are they just racist? To what extent are they rationalizing their own cruel, bone-headed obsession with their own security at the expense of everyone else's?
3. To sort out this question about Israeli perceptions -- and it always helps to read the scorching reportage and columns in Haaretz, israel's New York Times -- we'd have to open a door to the third black hole in Li's essay: Hamas.
Suffice it to say here that, revolted though I am by young American-Jewish fanatics who move to Judea and Samaria because they think God promised it to them, I am no less weary of watching young American writers displace a certain cold rage at suburban America, however well-justified that rage may be, onto Israel as an implantation of that way of life into the Muslim ummah but who never get around to imagining how the human rights and personal freedoms they champion would fare under Hamas or Hezbollah even if every Jew returned to the warm and welcoming bosom of Europe.
This is a tragedy, in every sense, and Israel's latest attempt to escape it is doomed, no matter the military outcome. Li is right to challenge Americans, and perhaps especially Jews, to take off the blinkers and see what Israel has been doing. But if he thinks that Israel can dissolve itself, or be dissolved by others, into a greater liberalism or humanism the he and a few noble advocates want to herald in the Middle East, let him sketch out for us how that might happen.
Let him show Israel and its enemies how to climb back up the ladder, from animal pen to internment camp to Bantustan, to....? It's not as if, just because Hamas and Hezbollah have been providing social services and a certain kind of schooling, they are showing us liberals the way. There are other ways, described best in Johathan Schell's The Unconquerable World, which acknowledges, however, that for every movement led by a Ghandi, King, Mandela, Havel, or Michnick, there are people's liberation movements that are as destructive and as doomed as their oppressors.
Julian Zelizer: Can Obama and Congress share power?
Source: CNN (1-5-09)
[Julian E. Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School. He is the co-editor of "Rightward Bound: Making America Conservative in the 1970s" and is completing a book on the history of national-security politics since World War II, to be published by Basic Books. Zelizer writes widely on current events.]
Executive power has been one of the defining characteristics of President George W. Bush's administration.
President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and many members of the White House pushed to expand executive power -- as much as any specific domestic or foreign policy -- from the beginning of the administration.
The Bush administration formed in a direct conversation with the presidential politics of the 1970s. Several members of the Bush administration came of professional age working in the Nixon and Ford administrations.
They watched an assertive Congress respond to the Watergate scandal by revitalizing legislative power through the War Powers Act of 1973, the Budget Reform of 1974, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and the Independent Counsel Act in 1978.
The Bush administration thought vesting Congress with so much power was dangerous, because it saw the legislative branch as inefficient. Building on efforts since President Ronald Reagan to reverse the congressional reforms of the 1970s, the current White House spent enormous political energy, before and after 9/11, trying to reclaim power for the executive branch.
The expansion of presidential power is not unique to the Bush administration. It began early in the 20th century and, despite some exceptional periods such as the 1970s, continued steadily throughout.
But in several respects, this expansion was bigger in scale and scope than under previous presidents. For example, as a way to agree to legislation without agreeing to follow the intention of Congress, Bush issued statements when he signed bills -- doing so far more frequently than preceding presidents.
When Congress passed a bill banning the use of torture in December 2005, Bush added a signing statement allowing him to bypass the law in his role as Commander-in-Chief.
Bush also used executive orders to achieve policy objectives without obtaining congressional consent. Most of the president's national security programs were also conducted under high levels of secrecy and sometimes ignored rules such as those spelled out by FISA....
The chances for restoring a better balance of power remain unclear. There was a notable silence on the issue during the 2008 presidential campaign....
Larry Sabato: Inaugurations Past and Present ... How Will Obama Measure Up?
Source: Larry Sabato's CrystalBall newsletter (1-8-09)
Rituals matter in any society, but in a democracy they are especially significant. Most authoritarian regimes are stable for long periods of time; the barrel of a gun ensures it. Democratic societies can change rapidly with public opinion, and a new administration is frequently the polar opposite of its predecessor.
How best to balance the need for change with the assurance of continuity? Ceremony. Of all our national rites of passage, none has more significance than the inauguration of a President. The simple oath of office, stretching back 220 years, links Democrats, Republicans, liberals, conservatives, and Founders in an unbroken line. Now there's a security blanket for an anxious citizenry, especially those who didn't vote for the new President.
We have added many pieces to the straightforward oath. Massive crowds, prayers and choirs, poems and salutations galore, 19-gun salutes and vast inaugural parades and balls--all of these are considered de rigueur for a new President. The tiniest ceremonial part can generate controversy, as we have just seen with Barack Obama's selection of evangelical Christian preacher Rick Warren to deliver the invocation.
Americans expect to see the new and old Presidents together in a show of unity, however forced or phony. An unhappy, vanquished John Adams left town in the wee hours before his victorious successor, Thomas Jefferson, was sworn in on March 4, 1801. In the present day it would be considered very bad form for the outgoing Chief Executive to skip the incoming's oath-taking. The two Presidents do not have to like one another and do not have to chat in the car from the White House to the Capitol on Inauguration Day. Herbert Hoover and FDR said barely a word in 1933 during their short journey, and neither did Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower in 1953. The image of harmony was what counted.
Of all the inaugural puzzle parts, the most commented upon is 'the speech'. The inaugural address can be a discourse for the ages or an oration for the present moment. Generally, expect the latter. A quick read of all inaugural addresses leads to an inescapable conclusion: very few have been memorable.
George Washington's second was so short (four sentences prior to taking the oath) it couldn't be called an address. Almost all the others relied upon a formula that guaranteed oblivion. The new President detailed proposals about the transient issues of the day, mixed with campaign boilerplate and empty platitudes about politics. William Henry Harrison in 1841 was the wordiest ever, taking an hour and forty five minutes in a snowstorm without warm clothing. Some said (incorrectly) that the longest inaugural produced the shortest Presidency. Harrison's death occurred a month afterwards, from pneumonia, but the disease was almost certainly contracted in his third week in office. Harrison's anti-Jacksonian inaugural address, partly the work of Daniel Webster, was adorned with allusions to the Greeks and the Romans. It made the case for the preeminence of the legislative branch as well as "sound morals". Yet it contained not a single sentence worth repeating here.
Occasional lines from inaugural addresses make their way into the public consciousness. Historians remember Thomas Jefferson's attempt at bipartisan reunification in the wake of the divisive 1800 election, "We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists." Abraham Lincoln's first address on March 4, 1861 would surprise contemporary citizens who think of Lincoln only as the "Great Emancipator," for the new President hoped to avert a full-fledged civil war by being shockingly tolerant of slavery's continuance. He appealed to "the better angels of our nature" and sought mainly to urge that the "bonds of affection" between North and South not be broken.
The bloody Civil War changed all that. Lincoln's unforgettable second address on March 4, 1865, included a sentence with which all Americans are familiar. Just five weeks before his assassination, Lincoln declared, "With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds..." Tragically for the United States of Lincoln's day and generations thereafter, the President's plea was rejected by John Wilkes Booth (who actually attended the swearing-in at the Capitol and whose image in the crowd was captured by a photographer).
Three score and eight years later, Americans heard the next enduring inaugural speech. At the depths of the Depression, with a run on the banks threatening to demolish what was left of the nation's economic superstructure, Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaimed at the outset of his address, "All we have to fear is [dramatic pause] fear itself--nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance." FDR's entreaty made a difference. Before March 4th, citizens had never been so apprehensive, anxious, and desperate. Then a strong leader gave them hope, and rallied his countrymen at a moment when a quarter of the people were unemployed and millions were starving.
In reading the inaugural addresses, one is struck that in the broad sweep of American history, there is arguably only one speech that transcends the concerns of the moment and speaks to every generation anew, from beginning to end, without becoming dated. That one is John F. Kennedy's. It was almost an address not delivered, at least not to a large outdoor crowd--a vital backdrop that enabled JFK to project the power and vigor he sought for his administration. Heavy snow overnight on January 19, 1961 nearly led to a cancellation of the outdoor ceremonies and parade. But Kennedy's team insisted on going forward, and the youngest elected President knew he had the oratorical flourishes to inspire a nation. Kennedy's is an address that should first be read in its entirety and then watched for effect. Intoxicating sentences touch the heart and stir the soul in a lyrical fashion worthy of the inauguration's featured poet, Robert Frost. Here are just a few:
"Let the word go forth, from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans..."
"...[W]e shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and success of liberty."
"If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich."
"Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate."
"All of this will not be finished in the first 100 days. Nor will it be finished in the first 1,000 days, nor in the life of this Administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin."
"Now the trumpet summons us again--not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need; not as a call to battle, though embattled we are--but a call to bear the burden of a long, twilight struggle, year in and year out, 'rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation'--a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself."
"The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it--and the glow from that fire can truly light the world."
"And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country."
"With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth, God's work must truly be our own."
I was a Catholic schoolboy watching JFK on a black-and-white television on that Inauguration Friday. The teachers, the priests and the nuns, my classmates, all of us knew instantly that we had watched something truly special. No doubt the excitement of seeing a Roman Catholic finally break the religious barrier at the White House contributed to the rush of the moment. Many of us went home, grabbed the evening newspaper (which was a staple in those days), and committed the speech to memory. After all these years, I wrote most of the excerpts printed above from the 1/20/61 recording in my head.
It wasn't just the prose. A brilliant speech was made unforgettable by Kennedy's masterful delivery. President Kennedy, elected with one of the slimmest pluralities in history, feared by many in the Protestant majority for his 'ties to the Vatican', regarded as a callow youth insufficiently experienced to be Chief Executive, launched his administration not with an election but a speech. And his popularity soared from that instant. You could almost hear many Americans breathing a sigh of relief, accepting that, maybe, just maybe, the country was in capable hands and the Pope wouldn't be running the United States after all.
With a Presidency that eerily lasted only the thousand days he had mentioned in his inaugural address, John F. Kennedy never had a chance to build a lasting record. However, the inaugural legacy he left has haunted every one of his successors. The speeches of Lyndon Johnson in 1965 and Richard Nixon in 1969 and 1973 were pedestrian in their prose and dull in their delivery. Nothing at all remains in the public mind from their inaugural days in the sun.
My first opportunity to attend an inaugural in person came in 1977. My political mentor at the time, former Virginia Lt. Gov. Henry Howell, had been one of the first major politicians outside Georgia to endorse a little-known ex-governor by the name of Jimmy Carter. Those of us on Howell's staff thought the boss had gone a bit bonkers to back this certain loser. The rest is written in the history texts, and Howell was forgiving enough to share his front-section seats with a few of us doubters. Expectations were sky-high for Carter, but with all due respect to the former President, it was one of the worst-delivered inaugural speeches in the television age. Only Carter's salute to outgoing President Ford roused the crowd, and the new President mumbled and stumbled his way through the rest. There was no JFK rebirth that day.
Some of Carter's successors offered better addresses, for sure. Ronald Reagan could have held an audience's attention by reading the telephone directory, and he produced more than a few stellar speeches during his Presidency. Yet neither of his inaugural gambits soared. The first was overshadowed by the simultaneous release of the American hostages by Iran, the second by weather so frigid that the outdoor ceremonies were cancelled and Reagan's address was given to a small group of VIPs huddled inside the Capitol--which ruined the effect. George H. W. Bush would be the first to admit that he cannot deliver a speech well, and he didn't on January 20, 1989. The only lingering memory of that day was Bush's reaching out, literally and figuratively, to the Democratic leaders of Congress. They shook Bush's hand, all right, but almost immediately began undermining his legislative proposals. Bill Clinton delivered two polished addresses in 1993 and 1997 that no one recalls. George W. Bush was too weak from the divided overtime election of 2000 to propose anything electrifying in 2001, and he was too divisive and burdened by Iraq in 2005 to bring the country together. His inaugural addresses, like so many of his predecessors, were just words on parchment.
The gold standard remains Kennedy. Every President in the television age has been, and will continue to be, measured against his address. Even in grainy black-and-white, after the passage of nearly a half-century, his remarks thrill.
Barack Obama has been compared to Kennedy--an association avidly encouraged by his staff (when they are not mentioning Abraham Lincoln or Franklin Roosevelt). Like JFK, Obama has moved millions with his exhortations. Obama was embraced by Ted Kennedy and Caroline Kennedy at a critical moment in the Democratic primary campaign. Wags have claimed that Camelot is being replaced by Obama-lot.
But the pressure is on Obama. The videotape won't lie. Can Obama rhetorically match or exceed JFK when he finishes the oath-taking and steps up to the microphone later this month? Obama's inaugural address won't determine the success or failure of his time in office. Yet as Kennedy demonstrated, it can do a great deal to rally a nation and help a President move his agenda forward in the early days.
Joseph Lane: Roland Burris and the U.S. Senate: A Replay of Marbury v. Madison?
Source: Britannica Blog (1-8-09)
[Joseph Lane is the Hawthorne Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science at Emory & Henry.]
The “Is Roland Burris a Senator?” game has just taken a shocking turn toward the past. When turned away from the Senate chamber, the reasons given were that “his credentials were not in order” because his appointment by the Governor of Illinois had not been certified, as required by law, by the Secretary of State of Illinois.
This is not the first time that we have faced a major controversy based on the obscure legal question about whether or not Secretaries of State, when charged by law with certifying and delivering state appointments, have some discretion, perhaps even some constitutional duty, to intercept and prevent improper or questionable appointments to offices of public trust. We may be facing the most improbable of replays because this case is now looking like Marbury v. Madison all over again.
Quite possibly the most famous but least understood of the great Supreme Court precedents, Marbury (1803) is widely believed to be the case that “created,” or at least “recognized,” the existence of judicial review in the U.S. constitutional system. However, many people don’t realize that Chief Justice John Marshall’s decision in Marbury marked, at least in the first instance, how weak the courts were when faced with direct conflicts of authority between themselves and the executive or legislative branches. In the incipient Burris case, it is not clear that the courts could exercise any more power now than Marshall’s court did then.
Let’s look at the facts of the earlier case in a very short form: William Marbury was appointed Justice of the Peace for the District of Columbia in the waning hours of the John Adams administration, one of many judicial officers who were appointed by the outgoing president and confirmed by the lame duck Senate in the panicked rush that preceded the inauguration of Thomas Jefferson as President. His appointment appeared to be clear of all of the constitutional hurdles, but federal law at the time required that commissions like Marbury’s be stamped with the Great Seal and then delivered by the Secretary of State. The outgoing Secretary of State - and incoming Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court - John Marshall did not have the time to perform this duty, and the new Secretary of State - James Madison - declined to do so on the argument that the appointment of these “midnight judges,” while perhaps technically legal, was certainly suspect. An outgoing administration, defeated at the polls and facing minority status in both houses of Congress as well as the loss of the presidency, seizes power in the judiciary by clever shenanigans.
Who could approve?
Madison’s disapproval of the Adams appointments is not at all unlike the widespread disgust now expressed about a presumptive felon and soon to be ex-governor making such an appointment to the Senate on behalf of all the people of Illinois.
Nobody claimed that Marbury did anything improper, but it was widely believed that those who created his position and appointed him to it did. Like Burris, he was deprived of a choice position on account of the presumed improprieties of those who appointed him. Marbury sued, as Burris presumably will, claiming that even though there were (and are) laws requiring action by the Secretary of State to complete official appointments, those laws do not allow any discretion for the Secretary of State(s). They are clear commands that the Secretary of State must take action to complete the appointments and a Secretary of State who fails to do so, does not prevent the appointment but only violates his own public duty. Marbury sued in the U.S. Supreme Court for a writ of mandamus, an order to act, that would force Madison to complete the sealing and delivery of his commission.
The Supreme Court accepted most of Marbury’s reasoning but ultimately (and this is what college freshmen often get wrong about the case) denied that it had the power to intervene in the dispute. Overturning a congressional law that (arguably) gave the Supreme Court the power to issue writs just like the one requested, John Marshall declared that yes, Marbury had a right to the office, and yes, Marbury was entitled to the commission, but no, the Court could not issue a mandamus to make Madison act. The Court’s decision seemed to concede that the judiciary could not make the executive branch deliver what it would not deliver. Thus, while laying the groundwork for the great power of judicial review, the case actually ended in the Court’s admission of its own weakness.
Now we return to Mr. Burris’s plight.
Perhaps he is correct that the Illinois Secretary of State cannot choose to withhold certification. Legally, there may be no discretion involved in the Secretary of State’s act, and perhaps, Burris has every legal right to the office of Senator. But let’s assume for a moment that the Senate majority is unmoved by these arguments, that they stand by the judgment that Burris’s appointment was “tainted” or improper, and that it is now incomplete. They can refuse to seat Burris, and even though Burris will sue, it is an open question whether the Court can now do what it could not do in 1803 - Can it force one of the other branches of the federal government to accept the judiciary’s judgment about who is properly appointed to an office under the other branch’s direct control?
Here, I have to say (the oft-cited but equally misunderstood Powell v. McCormack notwithstanding), Burris may face a fate not unlike Marbury’s. If the Senate relents and allows him to be seated, and there are some signs they may now plan to do so, all may yet end well for Roland Burris. But if the Senate leadership is really willing to stand by the judgment that the Illinois Secretary of State has effectively enjoined Burris’s appointment (much as Madison did Marbury’s), we may be reminded that for all of the judiciary’s apparent strength, the courts may not be any stronger in this regard than they were in 1803.
In 1803, rather than risk looking impotent when Madison simply ignored a mandamus directed to him, the Court found a way not to order anything that it could not enforce, and I suspect that faced with similar intransigence, should we make it that far, we may see this history repeated. I think that rather than watching the Senate ignore a court order that Mr. Burris be seated, courts might just decide that there is some good reason not to decide this case, or at least not to decide it quickly and to hope that another resolution saves them from ever having to do so.
I cannot say whether Marbury’s loss was tragedy, but we may safely say that this time, it is looking more and more like a farce.
Søren Schmidt: It is 3 Crises, Not One (Middle East)
Source: Informed Comment (Blog run by Juan Cole) (1-8-09)
[Søren Schmidt, Ph.D, Reasearcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies, Copenhagen.]
Analysis. The fighting in Gaza is closely linked to two other conflicts: Israel’s relationship with Syria and Iran’s role in the region. All three conflicts need to be solved in order to achieve peace.
Israel’s attack on Hamas in Gaza has led to Syria breaking off the semi-official peace negotiations with Israel, the strengthening of Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s popularity, the weakening of the pro-western governments of Egypt and Jordan, and an upswing in recruits ready to join the many extremist groups in the Middle East.
Everything indicates that a peaceful and constructive development of the situation has been pushed even further into the future.
This outcome is in sharp contrast to the positive developments of the 90s, when the Israeli-Palestinian peace process contributed to the Israeli-Syrian rapprochement and the election of the moderate Khatami as president of Iran.
If the region is to exit the current death spiral, it will be necessary to exploit the synergies that a coordinated approach to the situation would open up.
Cont'd
The First Conflict: Palestine-Israel
The Palestine-Israel conflict is now 50 years old. The diplomatic track that the Oslo Process represented has collapsed, and the parties are instead attempting to improve their relative positions by military means.
Hamas is no longer interested in continuing the cease fire with Israel, as long as the blockade of Gaza is still in effect. Meanwhile, Israel seeks to weaken Hamas as much as possible with the invasion of Gaza, and concurrently achieve results with the moderate, but increasingly irrelevant, Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas.
Hamas has no faith in reaching a diplomatic solution with Israel and wishes to repeat the success of Hezbollah in Lebanon in achieving a balance of power with Israel, leading to Israel accepting and recognizing Hamas as a negotiating partner and accepting Hamas’ demands as Hamas improves its position of strength.
These increasingly violent developments lead the Israeli population to fear, however, that a Palestinian state will not protect them against terrorism, which is why the majority of them backs the attacks on Gaza.
But the support for the hard Israeli line is also caused by the increased prominence of the ultra-orthodox and strongly nationalist element of the population relative to the secular and more moderate element.
The reason for this is partly demographic in that the ultra-orthodox are increasing their numbers far more rapidly than are the secular, and partly that many moderate Israelis are leaving the country for more peaceful parts of the world.
The Second Conflict: Syria-Israel
The Syria-Israel conflict has not moved either since Israel conquered the Syrian Golan in the ’67 War. Although the border between the two countries has been calm, Syria has been pressing Israel by supplying Iranian weapons to Hezbollah through the Damascus airport.
The desire of Israel to establish peace with Syria and hand back the Golan thus is directly related to Israel’s desire to stop this traffic and end Syria’s longstanding alliance with Iran.
There is just the problem that if Syria enters into a peace agreement with Israel in a situation where neither the Israeli-Palestinian question nor the conflict over Iran’s nuclear program is resolved, the Alawite minority government in Syria will soon be challenged by an unsavory alliance between Iran and its own Islamist dissidents–and will face a very uncertain future.
Since the Syrian regime is not in the habit of committing suicide, an isolated agreement between Syria and Israel is not likely.
The Third Conflict: Iran
The third point of conflict is Iran: Iran's nuclear research program involves the use of centrifuges for enrichment. Should the regime close the fuel cycle, and should it decide to pursue a nuclear weapons capability, the 2005 National Intelligence Estimate of the US government suggested that Tehran could have a warhead in as little as a decade. If this happens, the balance of power in the region will be significantly altered. Israel’s current regional monopoly on nuclear weapons will be broken, and Israel will be inclined to delay such a development with military attacks on the Iranian nuclear installations.
This in turn may lead to Iran convincing Hezbollah to attack Israel on the one hand, and on the other to attack US troops in Afghanistan and Iraq with help from Iran’s allies in those countries. Finally Iran will most likely seek to disrupt the oil traffic through the Strait of Hormuz.
Increased western sanctions against Iran will be perceived by many as yet more proof of the unholy alliance between the West and the Zionists against Islam–and this will strengthen the hawks in Ahmadinejad’s environment and weaken the moderate forces.
In such a situation Iran and the Islamic terrorists will do everything in their power to prevent an Israeli-Syrian peace agreement.
Therefore the three conflicts are closely linked. Without progress in one, it will also be very limited what progress can be achieved in the other conflicts.
A Coordinated International Approach
Conversely, a coordinated international approach, including both Iran and the Arab states, could lead to progress on one track, then on the next and result in a de-escalation of the conflict level in the entire region.
Progress on the Israeli-Palestinian track will, for example, increase the probability of Syria and Iran showing themselves more willing to negotiate. Progress in the negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program will make it less important for Iran to derail the negotiations between Israel and Syria and between Israel and the Palestinians and will also dampen Israel’s fear of Iran.
Finally, progress in relations between Syria and Israel will weaken Hezbollah and thereby also Iran, thus making Iran more cooperative on the nuclear question.
The international community has many opportunities to influence developments in the region and ought to use these to promote a coordinated solution. Economic incentives, security guarantees, and deployment of peace-keeping forces to Palestine are just some of the means that can be employed.
Multilateral Resolve
Diplomatically, the multilateral approach used by Bush Senior in the 90s would be the correct one–with the addition of resolve in checking the expansion of the Israeli settlements on the West Bank and the will to declare how the solution to the Palestinian problem ought to look.
Two things are clear: The region itself cannot solve its problems, and the separate approach to each of the three conflicts that has been used so far is inadequate.
Juan Cole: Neoconservatism dies in Gaza
Source: Salon (1-8-09)
The Gaza War of 2009 is a final and eloquent testimony to the complete failure of the neoconservative movement in United States foreign policy. For over a decade, the leading figures in this school of thought saw the violent overthrow of Saddam Hussein and the institution of a parliamentary regime in Iraq as the magic solution to all the problems in the Middle East. They envisioned, in the wake of the fall of Baghdad, the moderation of Hezbollah in Lebanon, the overthrow of the Baath Party in Syria and the Khomeinist regime in Iran, the deepening of the alliance with Turkey, the marginalization of Saudi Arabia, a new era of cheap petroleum, and a final resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on terms favorable to Israel. After eight years in which they strode the globe like colossi, they have left behind a devastated moonscape reminiscent of some post-apocalyptic B movie. As their chief enabler prepares to exit the White House, the only nation they have strengthened is Iran; the only alliance they have deepened is that between Iran and two militant Islamist entities to Israel's north and south, Hezbollah and Hamas.
The neoconservatives first laid out their manifesto in a 1996 paper, "A Clean Break," written for an obscure think tank in Jerusalem and intended for the eyes of far right-wing Israeli politician Binyamin Netanyahu of the Likud Party, who had just been elected prime minister. They advised Israel to renounce the Oslo peace process and reject the principle of trading land for peace, instead dealing with the Palestinians with an iron fist. They urged Israel to uphold the right of hot pursuit of Palestinian guerrillas and to find alternatives to Yasser Arafat's Fatah for the Palestinian leadership. They called forth Israeli airstrikes on targets in Syria and rejection of negotiations with Damascus. They foresaw strengthened ties between Israel and its two regional friends, Turkey and Jordan.
They advocated "removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq," in part as a way of "rolling back" Syria. In place of the secular, republican tyrant, they fantasized about the restoration of the Hashemite monarchy in Iraq, and thought that a Sunni king might help moderate the Shiite Hezbollah in south Lebanon. (Yes.) They barely mentioned Iran, though it appears that their program of expelling Syria from Lebanon and weakening its regime was in part aimed at depriving Iran of its main Arab ally. In a 1999 book called "Tyranny's Ally: America's Failure to Defeat Saddam Hussein," David Wurmser argued that it was false to fear that installing the Iraqi Shiites in power in Baghdad would strengthen Iran regionally.
The signatories to this fantasy of using brute military power to reshape all of West Asia included some figures who would go on to fill key positions in the Bush administration. Richard Perle, a former assistant secretary of defense under Reagan, became chairman of the influential Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee, a civilian oversight body for the Pentagon. Douglas J. Feith became the undersecretary of defense for planning. David Wurmser first served in Feith's propaganda shop, the Office of Special Plans, which manufactured the case for an American war on Iraq, and then went on to serve with "Scooter" Libby in the office of Vice President Dick Cheney.
The neoconservatives used their well-funded think tanks, including the American Enterprise Institute, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP, an organ of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee), the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, and the Hudson Institute, among others, to promote this agenda of the conquest of Iraq as a solution of all ills....
As a result of the deliberate destruction of the peace process by the Israeli right and by Hamas, a two-state solution seems increasingly unlikely. This tragic impasse, one phase of which is now playing out with sanguinary relentlessness, was avoidable but for the baneful influence of the neoconservatives and their right-wing allies in the U.S. and Israel.
The neoconservatives had prided themselves on their macho swagger, their rejection of namby-pamby Clintonian multilateralism, and on their bold vision for reshaping the Middle East so that the Israeli and American right would not have to deal with existing reality. In the cold light of day, they look merely petulant and arrogant. The ancient Greek poet Bion said that boys cast stones at frogs in sport, but the frogs die in earnest. The neoconservatives were the boys, and the people of Iraq, Israel, Palestine and Lebanon have been their frogs. The biggest danger facing the United States is that there will be no true "Clean Break" -- that the neoconservatives will somehow find a way to survive the Bush administration, and continue to influence American foreign policy.
Daniel Pipes: Solving the "Palestinian Problem"
Source: Jerusalem Post (1-7-09)
Israel's war against Hamas brings up the old quandary: What to do about the Palestinians? Western states, including Israel, need to set goals to figure out their policy toward the West Bank and Gaza.
Let's first review what we know does not and cannot work:
- Israeli control. Neither side wishes to continue the situation that began in 1967, when the Israel Defense Forces took control of a population that is religiously, culturally, economically, and politically different and hostile.
- A Palestinian state. The 1993 Oslo Accords began this process but a toxic brew of anarchy, ideological extremism, antisemitism, jihadism, and warlordism led to complete Palestinian failure.
- A binational state: Given the two populations' mutual antipathy, the prospect of a combined Israel-Palestine (what Muammar al-Qaddafi calls "Israstine") is as absurd as it seems.
Excluding these three prospects leaves only one practical approach, that which worked tolerably well in the period 1948-67:
- Shared Jordanian-Egyptian rule: Amman rules the West Bank and Cairo runs Gaza.
To be sure, this back-to-the-future approach inspires little enthusiasm. Not only was Jordanian-Egyptian rule undistinguished but resurrecting this arrangement will frustrate Palestinian impulses, be they nationalist or Islamist. Further, Cairo never wanted Gaza and has vehemently rejected its return. Accordingly, one academic analyst dismisses this idea "an elusive fantasy that can only obscure real and difficult choices."
It is not. The failures of Yasir Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas, of the Palestinian Authority and the "peace process," have prompted rethinking in Amman and Jerusalem. Indeed, the Christian Science Monitor's Ilene R. Prusher found already in 2007 that the idea of a West Bank-Jordan confederation "seems to be gaining traction on both sides of the Jordan River."
The Jordanian government, which enthusiastically annexed the West Bank in 1950 and abandoned its claims only under duress in 1988, shows signs of wanting to return. Dan Diker and Pinchas Inbari documented for the Middle East Quarterly in 2006 how the PA's "failure to assert control and become a politically viable entity has caused Amman to reconsider whether a hands-off strategy toward the West Bank is in its best interests." Israeli officialdom has also showed itself open to this idea, occasionally calling for Jordanian troops to enter the West Bank.
Despairing of self-rule, some Palestinians welcome the Jordanian option. An unnamed senior PA official told Diker and Inbari that that a form of federation or confederation with Jordan offers "the only reasonable, stable, long-term solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict." Hanna Seniora opined that "The current weakened prospects for a two-state solution forces us to revisit the possibility of a confederation with Jordan." The New York Times' Hassan M. Fattah quotes a Palestinian in Jordan: "Everything has been ruined for us - we've been fighting for 60 years and nothing is left. It would be better if Jordan ran things in Palestine, if King Abdullah could take control of the West Bank."
Nor is this just talk: Diker and Inbari report that back-channel PA-Jordan negotiations in 2003-04 "resulted in an agreement in principle to send 30,000 Badr Force members," to the West Bank.
And while Egypt's president Hosni Mubarak announced a year ago that "Gaza is not part of Egypt, nor will it ever be," his is hardly the last word. First, Mubarak notwithstanding, Egyptians overwhelmingly want a strong tie to Gaza; Hamas concurs; and Israeli leaders sometimes agree. So the basis for an overhaul in policy exists.
Secondly, Gaza is arguably more a part of Egypt than of "Palestine." During most of the Islamic period, it was either controlled by Cairo or part of Egypt administratively. Gazan colloquial Arabic is identical to what Egyptians living in Sinai speak. Economically, Gaza has most connections to Egypt. Hamas itself derives from the Muslim Brethren, an Egyptian organization. Is it time to think of Gazans as Egyptians?
Thirdly, Jerusalem could out-maneuver Mubarak. Were it to announce a date when it ends the provisioning of all water, electricity, food, medicine, and other trade, plus accept enhanced Egyptian security in Gaza, Cairo would have to take responsibility for Gaza. Among other advantages, this would make it accountable for Gazan security, finally putting an end to the thousands of Hamas rocket and mortar assaults.
The Jordan-Egypt option quickens no pulse, but that may be its value. It offers a uniquely sober way to solve the "Palestinian problem."
Jan. 7, 2009 update: The National Post cleverly dubs my plan (in its title to this article) the "back-to-the-future option," but I like best the name bestowed on it by blogger Mary P. Madigan: "the no-state solution." Perfect.
Jay Winik: Obama Will Find the White House Is a Lonely Place
Source: WSJ (1-3-09)
[Mr. Winik, a historian, is the author of "April 1865" (HarperCollins, 2001) and "The Great Upheaval: America and the Birth of the Modern World, 1788-1800" (Harper, 2007).]
The day after Abraham Lincoln's election, he assembled a gaggle of reporters and boisterously declared, "Well boys, your troubles are now over; mine have only just begun."
Little did he know just how prophetic his words would be. Between Election Day and his inauguration, seven Southern states seceded from the Union and the Fort Sumter crisis reached a dangerous flashpoint.
His own general-in-chief, Winfield Scott, strongly advised him to surrender the fort. William Seward, his secretary of state, ardently counseled negotiations with the South, and even privately assured the Confederates that Sumter would be evacuated. Most of his cabinet sided with Seward and voted to evacuate as well.
That was when Lincoln decided that he alone would have to decide. To the flicker of oil lamps, he stayed up all night on March 28. Shortly after dawn the next morning, he informed the cabinet that he would re-provision the besieged Fort Sumter -- a fateful move that all but ensured civil war.
The war would grind on for four long years and as late as 1864, an exhausted Lincoln would aimlessly roam the White House corridors, moaning, "I must have relief from this terrible anxiety or it will kill me." If it didn't kill him the ongoing avalanche of public and private criticism almost did, not to mention his string of distressingly ineffective generals. Little wonder that, instead of glory in the presidency, Lincoln once confessed, he found "only ashes and blood."
Lincoln was one of our two greatest presidents, saving the Union and freeing the slaves. But never was the going easy, not in the beginning of the great crisis, not in the middle, not at the end. When he took office, Lincoln never dreamed of a civil war that would last for four years and consume 620,000 lives.
For our president-elect, who is looking to history for guidance, herein lies a cautionary tale. Barack Obama will soon learn two lessons that all of our presidents, the great ones as well as the failed ones, discover -- often the hard way. The challenges he will face will almost certainly be different from what he thought. And however talented his team, he will never be able to escape the often overwhelming isolation of presidential decision making....
Andrew Bacevich: Afghanistan ... What's Our Definition of Victory?
Source: Newsweek (11-29-08)
[Bacevich is a professor of history and international relations at Boston University and the author of “The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism.”]
In Afghanistan today, the United States and its allies are using the wrong means to pursue the wrong mission. Sending more troops to the region, as incoming president Barack Obama and others have suggested we should, will only turn Operation Enduring Freedom into Operation Enduring Obligation. Afghanistan will be a sinkhole, consuming resources neither the U.S. military nor the U.S. government can afford to waste.
The war in Afghanistan is now in its eighth year. An operation launched with expectations of a quick, decisive victory has failed signally to accomplish that objective. Granted, the diversion of resources to Iraq forced commanders in Afghanistan to make do with less. Yet that doesn't explain the lack of progress. The real problem is that Washington has misunderstood the nature of the challengeAfghanistan poses and misread America's interests there.
One of history's enduring lessons is that Afghans don't appreciate it when outsiders tell them how to govern their affairs—just ask the British or the Soviets. U.S. success in overthrowing the Taliban seemed to suggest this lesson no longer applied, at least to us.
But we're now discovering that the challenges of pacifying Afghanistan dwarf those posed by Iraq. Afghanistan is a much bigger country—nearly the size of Texas—and has a larger population that's just as fractious. Moreover, unlike Iraq, Afghanistan possesses almost none of the prerequisites of modernity; its literacy rate, for example, is 28 percent, barely a third of Iraq's. In terms of effectiveness and legitimacy, the government in Kabul lags well behind Baghdad—not exactly a lofty standard. Apart from opium (last year's crop totaled about 8,000 metric tons), Afghans produce almost nothing the world wants....
Stephen Kenney: Immigration through the ages
Source: Boston Globe (1-3-09)
[Stephen Kenney is director of the Commonwealth Museum at the Massachusetts Archives.]
IN A RECENT CNN commentary Ruben Navarrette Jr. complained about the "hypocrisy" of American immigration policy. "We have two signs on the Mexican border: 'Keep Out' and 'Help Wanted.' "
The dilemma is hardly new. Before the Constitution, even before the American Revolution, similar issues arose in colonial Massachusetts. Skills were needed but there were fears about the crime and disease that newcomers might bring.
In the mid-18th century, the Province of Massachusetts Bay recruited German immigrants to work as printers and glassmakers. A lottery was established to finance the project, and skilled workers were exempted from military service.
It was hoped that the Germans would "prove honest and reasonable" and provide "Books for Churches and Schools and to promote a Christian life." An elite group of immigrants would even benefit Harvard College, that "ancient and renowned University of Cambridge."
Although some Germans were welcome, authorities worried about others who came uninvited and the merchants who brought them. According to a German document at the Massachusetts Archives, the merchants "take all sorts of Beggars they find on the Road. . . Should every one be inspected, I dare say, a great many would be found to carry the Mark of Infamy on their backs or to be mark'd with an hot Iron for having committed infamous Crimes."
In 1750, the Massachusetts General Court crafted an immigration reform measure: "An Act to prevent the Importation of Germans and other Foreign Passengers in too Great a Number in one Vessel." It reflected a fear of disease. "Through want of necessary room and Accommodations," aboard ships, "they may often Contract Mortal and Contagious Distempers [and infect others] on their arrival."
According to the legislation, accommodations for passengers over the age of 14 should be "at least six feet in length and one foot and six inches in breadth." For those under 14 "the same length and breadth for every two."
If the legislation was intended to control the flow of immigration, there was a surprising response from Rotterdam agents. They were quick to exploit the rules in advertisements. One promised "Fixed Bed-Rooms or Cabins are to be made in the Ship six Foot long and one and a half broad for every whole Freight." Each "whole Freight" (or passenger) would enjoy a range of amenities....
Paul Krugman: Keynes was right and Friedman wrong about the Great Depression, then and now
Source: NYT (1-4-09)
... Let’s not mince words: This looks an awful lot like the beginning of a second Great Depression.
So will we “act swiftly and boldly” enough to stop that from happening? We’ll soon find out.
We weren’t supposed to find ourselves in this situation. For many years most economists believed that preventing another Great Depression would be easy. In 2003, Robert Lucas of the University of Chicago, in his presidential address to the American Economic Association, declared that the “central problem of depression-prevention has been solved, for all practical purposes, and has in fact been solved for many decades.”
Milton Friedman, in particular, persuaded many economists that the Federal Reserve could have stopped the Depression in its tracks simply by providing banks with more liquidity, which would have prevented a sharp fall in the money supply. Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, famously apologized to Friedman on his institution’s behalf: “You’re right. We did it. We’re very sorry. But thanks to you, we won’t do it again.”
It turns out, however, that preventing depressions isn’t that easy after all. Under Mr. Bernanke’s leadership, the Fed has been supplying liquidity like an engine crew trying to put out a five-alarm fire, and the money supply has been rising rapidly. Yet credit remains scarce, and the economy is still in free fall.
Friedman’s claim that monetary policy could have prevented the Great Depression was an attempt to refute the analysis of John Maynard Keynes, who argued that monetary policy is ineffective under depression conditions and that fiscal policy — large-scale deficit spending by the government — is needed to fight mass unemployment. The failure of monetary policy in the current crisis shows that Keynes had it right the first time. And Keynesian thinking lies behind Mr. Obama’s plans to rescue the economy.
But these plans may turn out to be a hard sell....
Neve Gordon: Israel's New War Ethic
Source: Nation (1-5-09)
[Neve Gordon teaches politics at Ben-Gurion University. Read about his new book, Israel's Occupation (due out this fall from the University of California Press), and more at israelsoccupation.info.]
Watching Israeli public television (Channel 1) these days can be an unsettling experience, and lately I've abstained from the practice. But after being stuck for seventy-two hours with our two young children inside a Beer-Sheva apartment, the spouse and I decided to visit my mother, who lives up north, so that our children could play outside far away from the rockets. My mother, like most Israelis, is a devout news consumer, and last night I decided to keep her company in front of the TV.
For the most part, the broadcast was more of the same. There were the usual images and voices of suffering Israeli Jews along with the promulgation of a hyper-nationalist ethos. One story, for example, followed a Jewish mother who had lost her son in Gaza about two years ago. The audience was told that the son has been a soldier in the Golani infantry brigade and together with his company had penetrated the Gaza Strip in an attempt to save the kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit.
"Because members of his company did not want to hurt civilians, they refrained from opening fire in every direction, which allowed Palestinian militiamen to shoot my boy," the mother stated. When the interviewer asked her about the current assault on Gaza, she answered that, "We should pound and cut them from the air and from the sea," but added that, "We should not kill civilians, only Hamas." The report ended with the interviewer asking the mother what she does when she misses her son, and, as the camera zoomed in on her face, she answered: "I go into his room and hug his bed, because I can no longer hug him."
Thus, despite the ever-increasing loss of life in the Gaza Strip, Israel remains the perpetual victim. Indeed, the last frame with the mother looking straight into the camera leaves the average compassionate viewer--myself included--a bit choked up. Over the past few years, I have, however, become a critical consumer of Israeli news, and therefore can see through the perpetuation of the image that Israel and its Jewish majority are the victims and how, regardless of what happens, we are presented as the moral players in this conflict. Therefore, this kind of reportage, where the huge death toll in Gaza is elided and Jewish suffering is underscored, no longer shocks me.
What did manage to unnerve me in the broadcast was one short sentence made by a reporter who covered the entry of a humanitarian aid convoy into the Gaza Strip on Friday.
My mother and I--like other Israeli viewers--learned that 170 trucks supplied with basic foodstuff donated by the Turkish government entered Gaza through the Carmi crossing. That the report had nothing to say about the context of this food shipment did not surprise me. Nor was I surprised that no mention was made of the fact that 80 percent of Gaza's inhabitants are unable to support themselves and are therefore dependent on humanitarian assistance--and this figure is increasing daily. Indeed, nothing was said about the severe food crisis in Gaza, which manifests itself in shortages of flour, rice, sugar, dairy products, milk and canned foods, or about the total lack of fuel for heating houses and buildings during these cold winter months, the absence of cooking gas, and the shortage of running water. The viewer has no way of knowing that the Palestinian health system is barely functioning or that some 250,000 people in central and northern Gaza are now living without any electricity at all due to the damage caused by the air strikes.
While the fact that this information was missing from the report did not surprise me, I found myself completely taken aback by the way in which the reporter justified the convoy's entrance into Gaza. Explaining to those viewers who might be wondering why Israel allows humanitarian assistance to the other side during times of war, he declared that if a full-blown humanitarian catastrophe were to explode among the Palestinian civilian population, the international community would pressure Israel to stop the assault.
There is something extremely cynical about how Israel explains its use of humanitarian assistance, and yet such unadulterated explanations actually help uncover an important facet of postmodern warfare. Not unlike raising animals for slaughter on a farm, the Israeli government maintains that it is providing Palestinians with assistance so that it can have a free hand in attacking them. And just as Israel provides basic foodstuff to Palestinians while it continues shooting them, it informs Palestinians--by phone, no less--that they must evacuate their homes before F-16 fighter jets begin bombing them.
One notices, then, that in addition to its remote-control, computer game-like qualities, postmodern warfare is also characterized by a bizarre new moral element. It is as if the masters of wars realized that since current wars rarely take place between two armies and are often carried out in the midst of civilian populations, a new just war theory is needed. So these masters of war gathered together philosophers and intellectuals to develop a moral theory for postmodern wars, and today, as Gaza is being destroyed, we can see quite plainly how the new theory is being transformed into praxis.
Jonathan Zimmerman: Obama should agree to a pay cut
Source: Philadelphia Inquirer (1-6-09)
In 2006, newly elected Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe voluntarily reduced his salary by 30 percent. That same year, Bolivia's new president, Evo Morales, halved his own annual wage. And just a few months ago, Irish President Mary McAleese announced she would accept a 10 percent pay cut.
Are you listening, Barack Obama?
Let's hope so. Like other world leaders, Obama has urged citizens to sacrifice during tough economic times. So it's time for him to put his own money where his mouth is. When Obama becomes president on Jan. 20, he should accept a modest decrease in salary.
Believe me, he can afford it. At $400,000 per year, Obama will earn eight times as much as the average U.S. household. A 10 or 20 percent pay cut wouldn't put a very big dent in the Obama family's finances.
But it would make a big statement about what our new president really believes.
As everyone knows, Obama wants a massive economic-stimulus package from Congress. But he has carefully balanced these calls for more federal spending with cautions that Americans will have to make do with less.
"We're all going to have to tighten our belts," Obama said on the campaign trail in October. "We're all going to need to sacrifice. We're all going to need to pull our weight."
Likewise, after winning the election, Obama warned that he would cut the budget in some places even as he expanded it in others. "If we're going to make the investments we need, we must also be willing to shed the spending we don't," he declared.
So do we really need to pay our president $400,000?
Before George W. Bush, we didn't. Bill Clinton earned $200,000 as president. Just before he left the White House, however, he signed legislation doubling his successor's salary. (The Constitution bars Congress from raising or lowering a president's pay while he is in office.)
Remarkably, that was only the fourth raise in presidential history. George Washington made $25,000 in 1789, which remained the presidential salary until Ulysses S. Grant got $50,000 in 1873. The pay rose to $75,000 for William Howard Taft in 1909. Forty years later, Harry S. Truman earned $100,000. That doubled in 1969 for Richard M. Nixon, who made $200,000. And that's where the salary stood until 1999, when it was doubled again for our current president.
Surely, George W. Bush didn't "need" $400,000, either. But he also didn't tend to advocate shared sacrifice, as Obama has. Most notoriously, Bush urged Americans to "go shopping" after 9/11. And that's exactly what we did.
But these are different times, for America and for the world. Around the globe, only one national leader - Singapore's prime minister, Lee Hsien Loong - makes more than the U.S. president. But even Loong accepted a 19 percent pay cut for next year in light of his nation's gloomy economic outlook.
Shouldn't Obama do the same? Like Bolivia's Morales, who earmarked the savings from his reduced salary for increasing teachers' pay, Obama could donate the saved portion of his salary to a worthy cause. Or he could simply leave it in the federal Treasury to help pay down the enormous debt we all are about to incur.
It wouldn't make a big difference in practical terms, of course. Symbolically, however, it would be huge. If our famously svelte president-elect wants Americans to tighten their belts, he should start with himself. The rest of us will follow.
Lincoln Mitchell: Frozen Ice Balls and the Bush Legacy
Source: Huffington Post (Blog) (1-4-09)
[Lincoln Mitchell joined Columbia University in January of 2006 as the Arnold A. Saltzman Assistant Professor in the Practice of International Politics.]
As the clock winds down on what may well be the worst presidency in American history, the Bush administration spin has taken one more surreal twist as Vice President Dick Cheney's aggressively unapologetic stance regarding the administrations policies and actions over the last eight years is tempered by President Bush and those around him urging us not to judge Bush yet, but to take a longer, more historical view of the Bush presidency. Presumably, this is simply what you say at the end of a failed presidency rather than simply admit that failure, but it is worth trying to determine precisely what President Bush means when he asks us to take a more historical perspective on his presidency.
Perhaps Bush hopes or believes that at least for the foreseeable future, scholars and others will borrow a line from the former Chinese Prime Minister Zhou Enlai who when asked, in the late 20th century, what he thought of the French Revolution said it was too early to tell. Perhaps Bush believes that, as the now back in fashion economist John Maynard Keynes wrote more than eighty years ago, "in the long run we are all dead." More likely, as a baseball fan, Bush is placing his faith in the frozen ice ball theory. This theory, alternately attributed to one of two left-handed pitchers from the 1970s, Bill Lee or Tug McGraw, is essentially that in millions of years the sun will go supernova, the earth will turn into a frozen ice ball and nobody will care what Reggie Jackson, Tony Perez or anybody else did against Tug McGraw or Bill Lee with two men on in the World Series. It is probably true that several million years from now, nobody will be around to care about how bad a president George W. Bush was, but I wouldn't want to hang my legacy on that.
What if, however, we took the Bush claim at face value and imagined what historians, sometime before the frozen ice ball theory kicks in, perhaps years or decades from now will say about the Bush presidency? It is very unlikely that history will view the Bush presidency as kindly as the Bush White House and family might like. The Bush presidency will most likely remembered for squandered opportunities and disastrous decisions in foreign policy, mismanagement of the economy, corruption of both a petty and serious nature, creative interpretations of the constitution, and a studied, and malignant, neglect of major issues such as climate change. In fairness, Bush will be remembered for some positive things such as increases in some areas of foreign assistance and in an "other than that Mrs. Lincoln how was the show?" kind of way, keeping the country safe from terrorism after the attacks of September 11th.
The major areas on which Bush will be evaluated will be the same as those on which most presidents are judged, the economy and foreign policy. In these areas, it is likely that his legacy will grow worse, not better, over the next few decades. With regards to the economy, the evaluation will remain unambiguous, Bush inherited a functioning, even prosperous economy, although hardly one without problems or significant flaws, and due largely to a zealous, almost fanatic, aversion to taxes and regulation, will leave office with an economy that while in severe recession is also plagued by structural problems that will take years to solve. Bush should not be held entirely responsible for these structural problems, but he certainly spent the last eight years making them worse. Even in the throes of the most bizarre Rovian fantasy, it is hard to imagine an economist in the year 2050 or 2100 saying "we should all be grateful for the sound economic management of the Bush administration."
It is the Bush foreign policy, however, that will almost certainly keep historians busiest over the next decades. The most generous historians will give Bush credit for ridding the world of Saddam Hussein who had been one of the worst dictators in recent history. However, even those will have to temper their positive evaluation with a critique of the process by which Bush both took our country to war and how his team conducted that war. The best thing future historians will be able to say accurately about the Iraq war is something to the effect of George W. Bush wanted to go to war in Iraq in the worst way possible-and that's exactly what he did.
It is far more likely that future historians will focus on how Bush allowed international goodwill following the end of the Cold War and the attacks of September 11th, and the accumulated power of the US to drain away into the sands of the Iraqi desert while killing and displacing thousands, wasting billions of dollars and ignoring other serious problems around the world. John McCain's, incessant claims notwithstanding, the surge may be working, but a functioning, peaceful Iraq after the US troops leave, is still a very tenuous proposition. More importantly, the war in Iraq has started an entirely predictable, and predicted, chain of events which has led to far less stability and danger in the greater Middle East. This damage is not irreversible, but if in the future Middle Eastern lemons are turned into lemonade, serious scholars will give the credit where it is due, to the administrations of Barack Obama or perhaps his successors, not to Bush for the mess he made.
Of course, the Middle East is not the only region where Bush foreign policy has been a disaster. Historians will undoubtedly comment upon Bush's years of ignoring the growing strength and malignant role played by Russia in much of Eurasia, and the failure to develop a strategy which recognized the reality of new Russia. It is also telling that as the Bush administration winds down, tensions are heating up between two nuclear powers, but that is only the second most pressing foreign policy issue of the moment. My word limit does not lend itself well to a comprehensive tour of Bush foreign policy mistakes, but the point should be clear by now.
Bush has left the country weaker economically and in a more dangerous unsettled world than the one he found. He has also left the country in more peril from climate change and other environmental threats than it was eight years ago. These are far from short term issues which will go away in a few decades. Unfortunately for Bush, history will judge him and, future frozen ice balls notwithstanding, most historians won't be as forgiving as Bill Lee or Tug McGraw.
Tom Engelhardt: The Ponzi Scheme Presidency
Source: TomDispatch.com (1-5-09)
[Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project, runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com. He is the author of The End of Victory Culture, a history of the American Age of Denial. He also edited The World According to TomDispatch: America in the New Age of Empire (Verso, 2008), a collection of some of the best pieces from his site and an alternative history of the mad Bush years now ending.]
It may finally be 2009, but in some ways, given these last years, it might as well be 800 BCE.
From the ninth to the seventh centuries BCE, the palace walls of the kings who ruled the Assyrian Empire were decorated with vast stone friezes, filled with enough dead bodies to sate any video-game maker and often depicting -- in almost comic strip-style -- various bloody royal victories and conquests. At least one of them shows Assyrian soldiers lopping off the heads of defeated enemies and piling them into pyramids for an early version of what, in the VCE (Vietnam Common Era) of the 1960s, Americans came to know as the "body count."
So I learned recently by wandering through a traveling exhibit of ancient Assyrian art from the British Museum. On the audio tour accompanying the show, one expert pointed out that Assyrian scribes, part of an impressive imperial bureaucracy, carefully counted those heads and recorded the numbers for the greater glory of the king (as, in earlier centuries, Egyptian scribes had recorded counts of severed hands for victorious Pharaohs).
Hand it to art museums. Is there anything stranger than wandering through one and locking eyes with a Vermeer lady, a Van Eyck portrait, or one of Rembrandt's burghers staring out at you across the centuries? What a reminder of the common humanity we share with the distant past. In a darker sense, it's no less a reminder of our kinship across time to spot a little pyramid of heads on a frieze, imagine an Assyrian scribe making his count, and -- eerily enough -- feel at home. What a measure of just how few miles "the march of civilization" (as my parents' generation once called it) has actually covered.
Prejudiced Toward War
If you need an epitaph for the Bush administration, here's one to test out: They tried. They really tried. But they couldn't help it. They just had to count.
In a sense, George W. Bush did the Assyrians proud. With his secret prisons, his outsourced torture chambers, his officially approved kidnappings, the murders committed by his interrogators, the massacres committed by his troops and mercenaries, and the shock-and-awe slaughter he ordered from the air, it's easy enough to imagine what those Assyrian scribes would have counted, had they somehow been teleported into his world. True, his White House didn't have friezes of his victories (one problem being that there were none to glorify); all it had was Saddam Hussein's captured pistol proudly stored in a small study off the Oval Office. Almost 3,000 years later, however, Bush's "scribes," still traveling with the imperial forces, continued to count the bodies as they piled ever higher in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Pakistani borderlands, and elsewhere.
Many of those body counts were duly made public. This record of American "success" was visible to anyone who visited the Pentagon's website and viewed its upbeat news articles complete with enumerations of "Taliban fighters" or, in Iraq, "terrorists," the Air Force's news feed listing the number of bombs dropped on "anti-Afghan forces," or the U.S. Central Command's stories of killing "Taliban militants."
On the other hand, history, as we know, doesn't repeat itself and -- unlike the Assyrians -- the Bush administration would have preferred not to count, or at least not to make its body counts public. One of its small but tellingly unsuccessful struggles, a sign of the depth of its failure on its own terms, was to avoid the release of those counts.
Its aversion to the body count made some sense. After all, since the 1950s, body counting for the U.S. military has invariably signaled not impending victory, but disaster, and even defeat. In fact, one of the strangest things about the American empire has been this: Between 1945 and George W. Bush's second term, the U.S. economy, American corporations, and the dollar have held remarkable sway over much of the rest of the world. New York City has been the planet's financial capital and Washington its war capital. (Moscow, even at the height of the Cold War, always came in a provincial second.)
In the same period, the U.S. military effectively garrisoned much of the globe from the Horn of Africa to Greenland, from South Korea to Qatar, while its Navy controlled the seven seas, its Air Force dominated the global skies, its nuclear command stood ready to unleash the powers of planetary death, and its space command watched the heavens. In the wake of the Cold War, its various military commands (including Northcom, set up by the Bush administration in 2002, and Africom, set up in 2007) divided the greater part of the planet into what were essentially military satrapies. And yet, the U.S. military, post-1945, simply could not win the wars that mattered.
Because the neocons of the Bush administration brushed aside this counterintuitive fact, they believed themselves faced in 2000 with an unparalleled opportunity (whose frenetic exploitation would be triggered by the attacks of 9/11, the "Pearl Harbor" of the new century). With the highest-tech military on the planet, funded at levels no other set of nations could cumulatively match, the United States, they were convinced, was uniquely situated to give the phrase "sole superpower" historically unprecedented meaning. Even the Assyrians at their height, the Romans in their Pax Romana centuries, the British in the endless decades when the sun could never set on its empire, would prove pikers by comparison.
In this sense, President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, and the various neocons in the administration were fundamentalist idolaters -- and what they worshipped was the staggering power of the U.S. military. They were believers in a church whose first tenet was the efficacy of force above all else. Though few of them had the slightest military experience, they gave real meaning to the word bellicose. They were prejudiced towards war.
With awesome military power at their command, they were also convinced that they could go it alone as the dominating force on the planet. As with true believers everywhere, they had only contempt for those they couldn't convert to their worldview. That contempt made "unilateralism" their strategy of choice, and a global Pax Americana their goal (along with, of course, a Pax Republicana at home).
If All Else Fails, Count the Bodies
It was in this context that they were not about to count the enemy dead. In their wars, as these fervent, inside-the-Beltway utopians saw it, there would be no need to do so. With the "shock and awe" forces at their command, they would refocus American attention on the real metric of victory, the taking of territory and of enemy capitals. At the same time, they were preparing to disarm the only enemy that truly scared them, the American people, by making none of the mistakes of the Vietnam era, including -- as the President later admitted -- counting bodies.
Of course, both the Pax Americana and the Pax Republicana would prove will-o'-the-wisps. As it turned out, the Bush administration, blind to the actual world it faced, disastrously miscalculated the nature of American power -- especially military power -- and what it was capable of doing. And yet, had they taken a clear-eyed look at what American military power had actually achieved in action since 1945, they might have been sobered. In the major wars (and even some minor actions) the U.S. military fought in those decades, it had been massively destructive but never victorious, nor even particularly successful. In many ways, in the classic phrase of Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong, it had been a "paper tiger."
Yes, it had "won" largely meaningless victories -- in Operation Urgent Fury, the invasion of the tiny Caribbean island of Grenada in 1983; against the toothless Panamanian regime of Manuel Noriega in Operation Just Cause in 1989; in Operation Desert Storm, largely an air campaign against Saddam Hussein's helpless military in 1990 (in a war that settled nothing); in NATO's Operation Deliberate Force, an air war against the essentially defenseless Serbian military in 1995 (while meeting disaster in operations in Iran in 1980 and Somalia in 1993). On the other hand, in Korea in the early 1950s and in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from the 1960s into the early 1970s, it had committed its forces all but atomically, and yet had met nothing but stalemate, disaster, and defeat against enemies who, on paper at least, should not have been able to stand up to American power.
It was in the context of defeat and then frustration in Korea that the counting of enemy bodies began. Once Chinese communist armies had entered that war in massive numbers in late 1950 and inflicted a terrible series of defeats on American forces but could not sweep them off the peninsula, that conflict settled into a "meatgrinder" of a stalemate in which the hope of taking significant territory faded; yet some measure of success was needed as public frustration mounted in the United States: thus began the infamous body count of enemy dead.
The body count reappeared quite early in the Vietnam War, again as a shorthand way of measuring success in a conflict in which the taking of territory was almost meaningless, the countryside a hostile place, the enemy hard to distinguish from the general population, and our own in-country allies weak and largely unable to strengthen themselves. Those tallies of dead bodies, announced daily by military spokesmen to increasingly dubious reporters in Saigon, were the public face of American "success" in the Vietnam era. Each body was to be further evidence of what General William Westmoreland called "the light at the end of the tunnel." When those dead bodies and any sense of success began to part ways, however, when, in the terminology of the times, a "credibility gap" opened between the metrics of victory and reality, the body count morphed into a symbol of barbarism as well as of defeat. It helped stoke an antiwar movement.
This was why, in choosing to take on Saddam Hussein's hapless military in 2003 -- the administration was looking for a "cakewalk" campaign that would "shock and awe" enemies throughout the Middle East -- they officially chose not to release any counts of enemy dead. General Tommy Franks, commander of the administration's Afghan operation in 2001 and the invasion of Iraq thereafter, put the party line succinctly, "We don't do body counts."
As the President finally admitted in some frustration to a group of conservative columnists in October 2006, his administration had "made a conscious effort not to be a body-count team." Not intending to repeat the 1960s experience, he and his advisors had planned out an opposites war on the home front -- anything done in Vietnam would not be done this time around -- and that meant not offering official counts of the dead which might stoke an antiwar movement… until, as in Korea and Vietnam, frustration truly set in.
When the taking of Baghdad in April 2003 proved no more of a capstone on American victory than the taking of Kabul in November 2001, when everything began to go disastrously wrong and the carefully enumerated count of the American dead in Iraq rose precipitously, when "victory" (a word which the President still invoked 15 times in a single speech in November 2005) adamantly refused to make an appearance, the moment for the body count had arrived. Despite all the planning, they just couldn't stop themselves. A frustrated President expressed it this way: "We don't get to say that -- a thousand of the enemy killed, or whatever the number was. It's happening. You just don't know it."
Soon enough the Pentagon was regularly releasing such figures in reports on its operations and, in December 2006, the President, too, first slipped such a tally into a press briefing. ("Our commanders report that the enemy has also suffered. Offensive operations by Iraqi and coalition forces against terrorists and insurgents and death squad leaders have yielded positive results. In the months of October, November, and the first week of December, we have killed or captured nearly 5,900 of the enemy.")
It wasn't, of course, that no one had been counting. The President, as we know from Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward, had long been keeping "'his own personal scorecard for the [global] war [on terror]' in the form of photographs with brief biographies and personality sketches of those judged to be the world's most dangerous terrorists -- each ready to be crossed out by the President as his forces took them down." And the military had been counting bodies as well, but as the possibility of victory disappeared into the charnel houses of Iraq and Afghanistan, the Pentagon and the president finally gave in. While this did not stoke an antiwar movement, it represented a tacit admission of policy collapse, a kind of surrender. It was as close as an administration which never owned up to error could come to admitting that two more disastrous wars had been added to a string of military failures in the truncated American Century.
That implicit admission, however, took years to arrive, and in the meantime, Iraqis and Afghans -- civilians, insurgents, terrorists, police, and military men -- were dying in prodigious numbers.
The Global War on Terror as a Ponzi Scheme
As it happened, others were also counting. Among the earliest of them, a website, Iraq Body Count, carefully toted up Iraqi civilian deaths as documented in reputable media outlets. Their estimate has, by now, almost reached 100,000 -- and, circumscribed by those words "documented" and "civilian," doesn't begin to get at the full scope of Iraqi deaths.
Various groups of scholars and pollsters also took up the task, using sophisticated sampling techniques (including door-to-door interviews under exceedingly dangerous conditions) to arrive at reasonable approximations of the Iraqi dead. They have come up with figures ranging from the hundreds of thousands to a million or more in a country with a prewar population of perhaps 26 million. United Nations representatives have similarly attempted, under difficult circumstances, to keep a count of Iraqis fleeing into exile -- exile being, after a fashion, a form of living death -- and have estimated that more than 2 million Iraqis fled their country, while another 2.7 million, having fled their homes, remained "internally displaced."
Similar attempts have been made for Afghanistan. Human Rights Watch has, for instance, done its best to tally civilian deaths from air strikes in that country (while even TomDispatch has attempted to keep a modest count of wedding parties obliterated by U.S. air attacks in Afghanistan and Iraq). But, of course, the real body count in either country will never be known.
One thing is certain, however: it is an obscenity of the present moment that Iraq, still a charnel house, still in a state of near total disrepair, still on the edge of a whole host of potential conflicts, should increasingly be portrayed here as a limited Bush administration "surge" success. Only a country -- or a punditry or a military -- i