Barackface

Saturday, April 01, 2006

2008 Countdown: Hillary-Obama

Luntz Report For 2008

What works in Hillary's favor?

She is brilliant, both intellectually and politically. She has proven leadership skills as US Senator, and number one advisor to the most talented politician of his generation, Bill Clinton, before that. She is qualified. Bill Clinton thinks Hillary is smarter than him, and he is right, like on so many other things.
More than a hundred years after Freud famously asked "What do women want?" we might finally have the answer: The White House. It is time to break the glass ceiling at the top. If Hillary doesn't do it in 2008, it will be a long wait before some other woman does.
Nothing beats getting Bill Clinton for Campaign Manager.

What works in Obama's favor?

He is old enough. John Kennedy was 42 when he became president. Bill Clinton was 46. Obama will be 47 in 2008. And we are talking of Vice President.
He will not be in the primaries. Al Gore was not either in 1992. Obama will help Hillary move beyond the Primary mud, to bring some sunshine onto the campaign.
Obama is half white, half black. Mothers count. Barack has become a verb like Google. You barack the glass walls and ceilings. He has cross-racial appeal. More whites in Illinois voted for him than for Bush.
The guy is supremely qualified.
2008 is as crucial for Obama as it is for Hillary. Obama does not want to miss the 2008 train either, for that would be the best way to ensure an Obama 2016, to break the glass ceiling a second time. It is about time.

They will probably face McCain. McCain has early momentum. McCain has sung the right tunes on many crucial issues like campaign finance reform, on broadband, on immigration, on lobbying reform. Being right on the issues will not be enough to counter McCain who might literally pull a rabbit out of his hat: he might invite Feingold to be his running mate, he just might. You never know with these maverick politicians.

And so you will need the clear social progressive symbolism that a Hillary-Obama ticket will provide to counter a McCain juggernaut.

Other prospects look dim.

John Kerry tried and failed in 2004, so did Dukakis in 1988. He got his shot, he did not make it, his time is up.

John Edwards. The sunshine boy is otherwise too shallow. Obama can cover the South much better.

Al Gore. I don't think he is running, but he had his chance in 2000. People like Edwards and Gore need to stick around on the speaking circuit. But they no longer belong in the ring.

Feingold. He has the guts, sure, but his platform is so very incomplete. He specializes in too few issues. And he does not have good political instincts. His reflexes are slow, although he is principled.

Obama Votes Nay
Russ Feingold And 2008
Obama, Ethics Reform, And White Dems
Karl Rove, Hands Off Hillary
Nancy Pelosi, Speaker
Hillary In Person
Primitive Liberals Need To Stop Attacking Hillary
Race, Gender, Progressive, Conservative Divides
The Spectrum On Gender
Michelle Bachelet: Yet Another Woman
The Israeli Wall Is Wrong, Hillary
Obama Was In Town And I Missed It
Bill Clinton Had Icecream For Lunch
Bill Clinton Has Left The Building
U2, Me Too
Dean 2008
Dean-Hillary-Obama Ticket
Eric Cesnik For City Council
Hillary Speaks Up For NYC

On The Web

Hillary Rodham Clinton, Senator from New York
Biography of Hillary Clinton
Hillary Clinton For President
HillaryClinton.com - Hillary Rodham Clinton for Senate
Hillary Rodham Clinton - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Hillary Web

Obama for Illinois
Barack Obama - US Senator for Illinois
Barack Obama - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Transcript: Illinois Senate Candidate Barack Obama (washingtonpost ...

Immigration Makes Economy Sense, Democracy, Justice, Family Sense

Immigration is the fresh air America thrives on. You deprive America of immigration and you are depriving oxygen. Immigration is fundamental to America's identity in a way that might not be true of any other country. Immigration is what makes America America.

The debate can not be if you are for or against immigration. The debate has to be as to how best to manage immigration. The past generations have been hostile to new immigrants. That does not mean this generation has to do it all over again.

If you are against illegal immigration, instead of trying to stench the flow, expand the legality.

Match willing workers with willing employers. And tax them both. And it is no taxation without representation. Give them voting rights. Then pave way for permanent residency, and then citizenship.

As to those who get cross-cultural jitters, let them eat cake, let them learn Spanish as a second language.

These immigrants spread democracy and wealth and economic reform in their countries of origin. They in the process save the US tens of billions of dollars that might have been otherwise spent on old fashioned defense and diplomacy work. These immigrants spread optimism and vitality. They exude work ethic working for peanuts. Don't demonize them. They are more American than the Americans. They believe in America more. Look at all the hardships they put up with just to be in America.

And for the positive effect they have in their countries of origin, they are going to help change those countries such that the pressure for immigration is going to weaken over time. Those countries themselves are going to start offering opportunities that people come to America for. Immigration is not about opening up the floodgates, but rather about spreading the American ideal of democracy far and wide in the best way possible. This is not about inviting in three billion people who live on $2 a day or less. This is about inviting in a few million, the cream of the crop, who will have beneficial effects on those three billion in ways the formal US government machinery is simply incapable of. You open up the gates, they come in, they work, they pay taxes, they create wealth that did not exist before, and they spread that wealth creation back to their home countries.

To his credit, President Bush has been singing many of the right tunes on the topic. I guess he has Hispanics in his family. Jeb Bush' wife is Hispanic, I think. And there are a lot of them in Texas, his home state. And he is president because of the Hispanic vote. And he speaks broken Spanish.

And John McCain has been a hero on this issue. Kudos.

Make immigration legal, make it humane, make it well managed and productive. Get creative about it. The Global South wave of immigrants should not have to go through the rough treatment the earlier East Europeans might have gone through, the Irish might have gone through. Lessons have to be learned from history.

Immigration is an emotionally charged issue, and that is why there has to be plentiful debate. All sides have to be heard and heard well, even those who are opposed to the idea, for in expressing their unwarranted fears they will have taken one step closer to becoming more understanding. Let the healing and growth take place through a robust, wide dialogue.

The unions that are opposed to the guest worker program should instead work to get these guest workers voting rights so as to expand their ranks and in the process get greater collective national power.

Hate Speech, Free Speech: Europe Needs To Learn The Difference
Bill Frist's Ancestors Came From The Moon
"I've Been To Europe Once, And That's Enough"
blac
Pat Robertson Is Sick, Anti-Faith
Race, Gender, Progressive, Conservative Divides
The Spectrum On Gender
Pan American Desi Caucus: Brown Is Beautiful
Social Progress: Show Me The Money
Social Security, School Vouchers, And Class Warfare
The Israeli Wall Is Wrong, Hillary
Blacks, Hispanics At The Core Of The Democrat Rainbow Coalition
The Spectrum/Dialogue Concept Is Key To Power
French Society: No Easy Solutions
Riots In France
Dick Cheney, Nelson Mandela, Howard Dean
Say Hello To Appu
No Taxation Without Representation
The Three Pillars

Critiquing A Critique Of The Iraq War Critiques

Hamro Nepal All Set To Be Launched
Democracy Spreading Mechanism
The Demosphere Manifesto

Friday, March 31, 2006

Critiquing A Critique Of The Iraq War Critiques

When Cynicism Meets Fanaticism: Critiquing The Critique Of The War In Iraq by Victor Davis Hanson

I just bumped into a blog post where Hanson of the Hoover Institution takes the war critiques to task. He summarizes the main points of the critiques and then proceeds to demolish them. These are the eight empty vessel arguments of the anti-war people, he claims:

1. Saddam was never connected to al Qaeda, the perpetrators of 9/11.
2. There was no real threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
3. The United Nations and our allies were justifiably opposed on principle to the invasion.
4. A small cabal of neoconservative (and mostly Jewish) intellectuals bullied the administration into a war that served Israel’s interest more than our own.
5. Saddam could not be easily deposed, or at least he could not be successfully replaced with a democratic government.
6. The architects of this war and the subsequent occupation are mostly inept (“dangerously incompetent”) — and are exposed daily as clueless by a professional cadre of disinterested journalists.
7. In realist terms, the benefits to be gained from the war will never justify the costs incurred.
8. We cannot win.

Then he offers his counter arguments. They can be summarized as follows:

Saddam might not have behind 9/11, but he was connected to Al Qaeda, like Germany and Japan, so different from each other otherwise, were part of an alliance.
The WMD worries were real. It does not matter that they were not found, but more than one intelligence agency, including Iraq's own, claimed they were there. They were not there, but Iraq could quickly have produced them: Saddam had the resources and the intent.
The UN opposition to the war lacks ground since the UN was embroiled in the food for oil corruption scandal. Europe also had business interests in Iraq. So they too had little moral ground from which to speak.
Some say it was Israeli security that was the number one reason. But Bush, Cheney, Rumsfelf, Rice, Powell, none of them are Jewish, and our ambassador in Iraq and a top Commander are both Arab.
Instead of a quick victory, things could have started much uglier. And the sacrifice has been worth it for the tens of millions that have now voted there.
There has not been another 9/11. The Arab world is witnessing a democracy tsunami across the region. Europe is finally waking up to the Iran threat. If there has been ineptitude, it has been on the part of the western media.
Leaving Iraq now would be like walking out of World War II in 1943.
As to we can't win, that is still in the future. But we have a strong military, we will win for sure.

I must say I appreciate the attempt at comprehensivity on the part of Hanson. Other than that the work reads like so much propaganda, rather than a disinterested academic analysis.

Saddam, 9/11, Osama

Saddam and Osama never were allies. Actually Saddam was a secularist, Osama dreamt of a theocracy in Iraq like everywhere else. It is not possible Saddam might have liked the idea. If anything they were competitors to the same land, though never directly.

40% of Republicans believe Saddam was behind 9/11. That is mindboggling. Republicans like Cheney have cynically used 9/11 to great effects.

Weapons Of Mass Destruction

You have to start at the end. None were found. The intelligence agencies were so far off the mark, they intended to go to the moon, and ended up on Mars. The error was huge. But the error was that the agencies did not come up with a categorical statement that the WMDs did not exist.

What is worth noting though is there was tremendous White House pressure upon the agencies to cut the corners to show certainty where none existed so as to bolster the war cause. The decision to go to war preceded the marshalling of the intelligence.

A Small Neocon Cabal

It is so obvious a handul of neocons proved decisive. There might not have been a Jewish lobby, and I don't hear many anti-war folks suggest as much, but there sure was a neocon lobby, too married to their strong on defense ideology, too addicted to campaign contributions from the military-industrial complex that stands to make money every time there is war.

The process by which the decision to go to war was reached sure was faulty. War got seen as the weapon not of last resort, but first. Intelligence was marshalled with a clear intent to make a particular case. The congressional vote was to exhaust the non-war options first, but Bush misread it on purpose.

Democracy

Toppling a dictator was not the stated goal. That came much later, after the dictator had already been toppled, and no WMDs were found.

This is important to point out.

And if the idea is to spread democracy, the Iraq way would be a ridiculous way to do it elsewhere: $240 billion, 2300 American lives, 30,000 Iraqi lives and counting. This model can not be replicated. The US would go bankrupt, many more Americans would die, the draft will have to be reinstated, and you will end up killing larger numbers of people with the pretext of coming to their aid.

Incompetence

This part is so true. Katrina proved it beyond doubt.

Benefits

It is good Saddam is gone. But has the cost been worth it? And what about the other Saddams of the world? Why did the Iraqi Saddam deserve the favor?

There has to be a non-violent, progressive way of spreading democracy in the rest of the Arab world, a war with communications technology way, one that organizes the Arab Americans in places like New York City to be cutting edge soldiers for democracy rather than demonizes them.

Deciding On Withdrawal, Defining Victory

Mission Accomplished was not victory, we came to learn that rather fast. But the American troops do have to come home. So what is victory? A stable, democratic Iraq? An Iraqi army that can fend for itself?

The withdrawal has to happen sooner rather than later.

It is not about if Americans can win in Iraq. It is about if Iraqis can. That is extra true in the rest of the Arab world.

Is it possible to design a $10 billion war with communications technology method to "invade" another Arab country, say Egypt or Saudi Arabia, the Arab Americans taking the lead? I think yes.

The point being the Iraqi misadventure can not be replicated. There has to be a better model.

Can't Take Back Congress Without Strong On Defense
Rahm Emanuel: Big Ideas For America
Long War
Iraq Intel: The Spy Who Failed Me
The Larger WMD Question And Iran
Complicated Iraq
Nepal Message To Top Democrats
Pentagon, Hexagon
The Saudi Royal Family Has Got To Go

Democracy Spreading Mechanism
The Demosphere Manifesto

In The News

US military deaths drop in Iraq San Jose Mercury News, USA
US military deaths in Iraq drop as Iraqis targeted Washington Post
General: Training, confidence reducing US deaths in Iraq Stars and Stripes
Iraqi Security Forces Succeeding Against Insurgents Washington File
BBC faces protests over 'Iraq bias' Guardian Unlimited, UK
Inquiry into secret guns-for-Iraq deal Times Online, UK
Buckley Says Bush Will Be Judged on Iraq War, Now a `Failure' Bloomberg
Americans won’t tolerate another three years in Iraq Fort Wayne News Sentinel
Bush takes potshots at messenger Seattle Post Intelligencer
The Conquerors Dance: War Feasting with the Bush's PEJ News
Kidnappings forecast to rise in Iraq San Jose Mercury News
'Good Day' in Iraq for Freed US Journalist Los Angeles Times
Rice says 'thousands' of mistakes made in Iraq Guardian Unlimited, UK
Rice: US policy in Iraq riddled with mistakes Jerusalem Post
Uganda: Northern Situation Worse Than Iraq's - NGOs AllAfrica.com, Washington
Uganda death rate higher than in Iraq: Report Indian Catholic
Cleric urges US to remove Iraq envoy Financial Times, UK
Iraq leaders resume cabinet talks BBC News
Iraq Shi'ite ayatollah demands US fire envoy Reuters AlertNet

Visitors

31 March