Purging & Surging… and Irrelevant “Opposition”
The Democrats will have their asses handed to them in the 2008 elections; and they will have deserved it. My prediction is that the Dems will lose the House, the Senate, and the White House by fairly substantial margins, and the Repugs will not even have to cheat to accomplish this result.
The reason? Look around.
The Bush administration was just delivered an unequivocal message from the general electorate about the disastrous and criminal war in Iraq. That message was co-delivered to the Democratic Party.
Now Bush has conducted his own Night of the Long Knives against Generals and bureaucrats, placed John Negroponte in a position to tell Condi Rice what to do, killed 27 Somali civilians with an airstrike ostensibly intended for a terrorist, and let it me known that he is about to “surge” in Iraq. “Surge” is some Bushist euphemism for “escalate troop levels”… include your own psychoanalysis of word choice — Bush is a blueblood frat-boy, after all.
The Democrats have one weapon in their arsenal to do the People’s bidding: the power of the purse. But here is their… “logic.”
The war they co-signed has slaughtered around 700,000 Iraqis and over 3,000 Americans. It has not yet politically secured permanent bases in the region (the real goal of the war, which many Democrats shared). It has not reinforced the myth of American military supremacy… al contrario. It has not reduced the precarious US dependence on oil imports to ensure business as usual for criminal conspiracies like Lockheed-Martin and Archer-Daniels-Midland. It has not created the desired outcome of putting the imperial hand on the oil tap to control China and Russia. It has not sown democracy in Iraq. It hasn’t even managed to implant a puppet regime that can leave the Green Zone without gunship escorts. The war has turned Iran into the regional power broker and set the stage for the destabilization of Saudi Arabia (I don’t object to either of these outcomes, but they were definintely not the outcomes desired by Cheney’s Raiders.) It has isolated pro-US political forces in Turkey (also not a bad thing, in my view, but…).
At any rate, the conduct of the war so far has been equivalent to the administration throwing itself (actually, it throws other people… like soldiers) out of a tree and into a blackberry thicket. And since that has worked so well, the new plan is to send 20,000 more worn-out, whacked-out, divorced, and disgruntled troops in to do exactly the same thing… only more of it.
Red-meat rightists like Joe Scarborough are calling for withdrawal. The Buchananite wing of the Republican Party is about to experience a growth spurt — fertilized in the ashes of neoconservatism, and shifting the focus of their animosity onto undocumented workers. Good news and bad news: the war is unpopular, and xenophobia is popular as hell (thanks to fascist twits like Lou Dobbs); so this faction will win the 2008 elections by posing as “populists” opposing the war.
But the Democrats? Well, they are “opposed to the surge,” but they certainly won’t vote to de-fund the administration’s war. They have pushed through a minium wage increase, a very good thing. But the economy will tank around Summer 2008, and the Republicans will successfully blame that on the Democrats, even as the Democrats continue to vacillate about the war while the corpses continue to accumulate.
The excuse is that the Iraqis will tumble headlong into a mass Rwanda scenario when the US leaves. This is, of course, bullshit, and they know it. The so-called sectarian violence is dierectly traceable to the US occupation there, and whatever violence happens after the US leaves will quickly lead to an Iraqi solution (the real fear of R’s and D’s, who are slavishly attached to the big money that doesn’t want Iraq or anyplace else to determine its own future apart from the Washington Consensus… that is, unlimited access to national economies by Wall Street).
I voted for Dems in the last election, just to help throw a speedbump in the road to ruin. And they will make problems for the Bush administration… just not on the war. Why, aside from who pays for their campaigns? Well, because, with a few exceptions, that party has more gutless cowards in residence than a pack of possums has lice. People don’t vote for vacillators. They’ll vote for a crazy person before they vote for someone who can’t seem to make up his or her mind.
That’s not smart, but it’s how things are (in fact, it’s boyshit, to the max… sometimes we need to change our minds… butin this case, the Dems are just evading responsibility while people die). Democrats need to say, hey, we messed up supporting this war. Let’s get out, and do it right now. That would win the 2008 elections. But instead, they are setting themselves up to do what they do best: snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
Prepare the insurgency.
Bernie Maopolski:
Do you think it’s better that the Democrats let Bush fail in the “surge” so they won’t be blamed for losing the war in the same way hawks blame the politicians and the press for losing Vietnam? (and like the fascists blamed the politicians for Germany’s loss in WWI)
For example these types say we should have invaded the North (Vietnam). Now we did a full invasion in Iraq and we are getting the same results. Do you think the more military setbacks the empire has the better? It seems protests mean nothing but IED’s and snipers have a better effect.
10 January 2007, 8:15 pmpeggy:
Stan, I don’t see how the behavior of the dems now will cause them to have their asses handed to them in the next elections. Can you explain a bit more? Why will the economy “tank” in the summer of 2008? As opposed to earlier or later? And why will the dems be blamed for it by the general populace?
And Bernie, I think the best thing for everybody is for there to be no “surge.” If it happens, it will make things worse for everybody. People have already voted against the war. It will still be going on in 2008, surge or no surge, and Bush will still be blamed.
STAN: There is a century in dog-years until the Nov 08 elections. My prognostication about the eocnomy was crystal-ball gazing, or in more scientific terms, a SWAG. There is one faction of the Republican Party, whose leader is again ubiquitous on television, the Buchananites. They have never been enthusiastic about the war, have always been xenophobic, and have tremendous appeal to Perot-like independents. The elections will be decided, however, not in the General Election, but in the Primaries. Buchananites will inhabit the abandond Congressional spaces of neocons, and both McCain and Romney (front-runners at this extremely early stage for R-Prez nomination) have just endorsed Bush’s desperate “surge” plan… leaving who? Maybe Guiliani, who has crossover appeal based on his tolerance of LGBT folk and his pro-choice position. If Guiliani runs against Clinton of Obama, he will win. Guiliani’s “law and order” rep from his fascistic measures in NYC will play the white-race card without ever saying it aloud, as well as the big-dik card. Dem’s are still unlikely to run Obama, and not exclusively because he will mobilize the R white supremacist base, but because he will be considered unreliable — as Dean was — by the Wall Street-controlled DLC, who Clinton does dog-tricks for at every opportunity (as Clinton before her did). But Clinton is so loathed for her pro-war positions by the most active (progressive) section of the Democratic base, that her nomination will deflate them and force the Dems to rely on media-buys without grassroots campaigning. At the same time, the R’s will roll out Clinton’s out–of-context comments about “baking cookies” and excite their base by tickling its misogyny. Wall Street loves Guiliani, and they will shift their support to the likely winner. The immigration issue will come back to the fore with an ugly vengeance, as the R’s and D’s achieve something like parity on their war-positions, whereupon, the R’s can recapture the loyal enthusiasm of their white base. Based on my inexact polling at Huffingtonpost, when I trashed the junior Nazi, Lou Dobbs, a LOT of Independents and even Dems will buy into the xenophobic (read: anti-Latin@) approach, which will be clothed in Buchananite populist (working class) rhetoric. Dobbs already runs a CNN program called “The War on the Middle Class,” which rails before millions each day against “illegal immigrants.”
On the issue of letters to Congresspersons… believe it or not, I was for a time a registered lobbyist (1996-2000). My experience was that legislators are the only profession more inherently nervous than burglars. They are extremely susceptible to popular pressure, a little known fact that some on the left find inconvenient to their purist fantasies of withdrawing from whitemale-bourgeois-dominated politics altogether. One state senator (a comparatively good one) told me that the efficacy of consituent contact is ranked as paper-letter highest, calls to the office second-highest, email lowest. He also said that three letters on the same issue starts the old acetylcholine flowing. Ten letters moves an issue onto the front burner (even if it is just to publicly attempt its dismissal or cooptation). Fifty letters is a tsunami. It’s not the numbers that are relevant, but that fifty letters on the same issue tells our intrepid burglar that there is organization happening somewhere… the really scary prospect. He also told me that no legislator will take a risky position, even if s/he wants to personally, unless s/he can go to the Party leadership ans demonstrate that “the pressure is overwhelming.” In other words, they need constituents to “make them do it.” They need us to “have their backs.” There is a lot of good-cop/bad-cop that happens with this. Mean people like me can paint everyone with the same brush (as I have done above), call names, ridicule, and generally hurt their feelings. Then organized formations within districts can adopt a more personable tone whle cleaving to the same demands, and promise to “get their back,” by doing the public education work to ensure taking said position will improve electoral prospects down the road. This process may make us all want to bathe afterward, but so does most of our jobs. The instrumental side of short-term politics is just that way. The line that cannot be crossed, imo, is actively embracing backward poltical tropes to gain contingent majorities.. my objection to the chickenhawk arguments against the war.
11 January 2007, 1:07 amDick Reilly:
Stan
This little gem comes courtesy of Sen. Dick Durban (D-IL.), Senate Majority Whip, who took questions from reporters immediately after delivering the Democratic Party response to Bush’s speech on Wednesday, according to Lyn Sweet of the Chicago Sun-Times.
Choice excerpts from the QA session:
Q But Senator, isn’t the argument that Democrats — that you guys are making over and over again that the American people voted in November to send you here not just to debate, not just to talk, but actually to do something? And you have the power now, in some ways, to actually do something. So how will you use that, not just talk, not just debate, not just have a sense of the Congress or Senate resolution, but actually use your power?
Durbin.: There are limited opportunities for Congress to act. A commander in chief has extraordinary authority to move troops to certain places in the world, and the president’s going to use that authority.
First we’re going to bring before the Congress this question about the policy and try to have a bipartisan debate and a conclusion as to whether this policy is supported by Congress, and then watch for the reaction from the American people and from the president.
In the meantime there will be oversight by our committees. I won’t rule out further action by Congress. I hope I’ve made it clear here and all of us have made clear that whatever action we take will not be at the expense of the safety of our troops that are in the field. But there may be a way to engage the White House on a policy debate at a new level past the first resolution.
Q But as a practical point, these brigades could be dispatched without — (off mike).
Durbin.: Oh, yes. Yes.
Q And that’s probably what’s going to happen.
Durbin: That’s right. And it probably will happen right away. Jack Reed, who, of course has some background on this, says it’s likely that several thousand troops are going to move in a few days, and in maybe a week or two another thousand troops will move. So that’s going to happen even while Congress is in the midst of this debate. The thought that we could stop this in its tracks I don’t believe is practical.
Full story:
11 January 2007, 11:17 amblogs.suntimes.com/sweet/2007/01/dick_durbin_delivers_official.html
Richard Manning:
From the perspective of ordinary Americans, I think there is a very clear reasons why they should oppose the surge:
1) It has not been made clear why the Iraq policy has failed
2) It is not clear who to blame for bad policy choices and incompetance.(there is lots of speculation and finger pointing, but nothing conclusive)
Hence, there is no reasonable basis to believe the administration can make good on their plans. A totally new crop of people might have some credibility, but even minus Rumsfeld and some generals, this is the same team that has failed on many fronts for years.
RM
11 January 2007, 4:20 pmpeggy:
Thanks, Stan. Now I get it. Will send the second part of your message to my friend.
Wrt the first part, what can we do to make your prediction not come true?
12 January 2007, 4:57 amfedupwithhypocrisy:
We should call it what it really is–”splurge”–as in Bush on intoxicants and Cheney on birds and Rice on shoes and congressmen on bribes–an extravagant indulgence of military personnel and taxpayer dollars.
Buchanan is the worst–a whiny blowhard who still doesn’t think Nixon did anything wrong. Libertarians are Republicans until they have taken advantage of democratic assistance to the point that they earn enough money to no longer need it, and then wish to deny it to anyone else through tax cuts. Buchanan “claims” to have been against the Iraq war from the start, but gets to have it both ways as he embraces the redeployment doomsday scenario and supports the surge.
I mail the letters to my congressmen, but I’m from Wyoming, and I know not one would dare cross Cheney.
12 January 2007, 2:16 pm