Jane Galt: Compact Fluorescent Lights

First of all, I am not talking about some platonic ideal of Compact Fluorescent Lights which may or may not exist; I am talking about the actual ones I purchased at Wal-Mart, which s---. I got several wattages from (as I seem to recall) several manufacturers; they all s---ed. Since CFLs at Wal-Mart were the subject of the article, these are the relevant items to discuss, not some fantastic CFLs you mail-ordered from Japan.

Second of all, I don't have the choice of finding some lampshade in which they don't suck. I live in a 400 square foot apartment, and my landlord picks the white glass shades that go on my overhead lights. I'm sure that if I found some lovely tiffany glass in just the right hue, they'd be adorable.

Third of all, unlike almost everyone on the planet, I am dependent on these lights all day. My apartment does not get enough natural light to work by, and I often work at home. There is a big difference between having kind of sucky light for a few hours a day, and spending your whole day drenched in it. Light really does have an affect on your spirits: that's what Seasonal Affective Disorder is all about, and why people fight so hard for offices with windows.

Fourth of all, I did actually try these things; I'm not mindlessly extrapolating from the lights at work. I don't know what I hate about them--the colour, the glare, whatever. I don't care about the shape, and didn't notice any particular flicker (I'm one of the unlucky ones who can see it in offices with cheap lights). I just know that the one in my range hood now, the equivalent of a 100 watt incandescent, emits an ugly glare that is strongly reminiscent of being interrogated by the Mossad, and did so no matter what light fixture or lamp I screwed it into. The actual 100 watt incandescents now there do not. This was the bulb that was advertised on its freaky high-security plastic wrapping as being just like an incandescent.

Nor is this some hysterical reaction from someone prone to hate CFLs. I wanted to like CFLs; indeed, I believed so strongly in them that I had to throw out about $50 worth when I found out they didn't work in my apartment. And everyone else who walked into my apartment with a CFL in the socket had the same reaction; approximately: "Eeeeeeew." The place, now a warmly lit corner of paradise in the cold-hearted city, looked like a badly planned ladies dressing room in a failing discount department store chain. Now, what's really funny: someone who tried CFLs and found that she couldn't stand the way they looked in her apartment, or someone who is so completely unable to imagine any circumstances in which someone might have had a different experience from him with a product, that he writes several thousand words from another city asserting that I must be mistaken? Although I do want to make it claer, for the record, that I fully support Michael O'Hare's right to insert his foot in his mouth, clear up to the sacrum if he chooses.

Now, since my experiment five months ago, perhaps Wal-Mart has changed their entire line of bulbs. Perhaps they are all wonderful now. But they weren't, when I bought them. I'm sure that some people have found that they work wonderfully in a variety of places, but they do not work wonderfully for someone in a cheap, dark rental apartment. I'm just guessing of course, but I imagine that sort of apartment is fairly common among Wal-Mart's clientele, which might be why their bulbs aren't doing so well.

That said, I do plan to experiment, very cautiously, with other brands. I'm cheap, and as I say, I want to conserve electricity. But if they look like the Wal-Mart ones, they go right back out again. My green street cred may suffer, but given that I live in a tiny apartment in a highly efficient dense area, have no dishwasher or car, use a tiny gas range, do only full loads of laundry, and run a single air conditioner only in the room where the dog is, I feel like I've got a little reputational capital there to burn.

Julian Sanchez: "In Defense of My Retroactive Smugness"

Many doves opposed the war on the grounds that they feared something like what we're now seeing would occur. Here's Bill Galston, who I recall finding to be one of the more compelling critics of the war during the run-up:

The Bush administration's goal of regime change is the equivalent of our World War II aim of unconditional surrender, and it would have similar postwar consequences. We would assume total responsibility for Iraq's territorial integrity, for the security and basic needs of its population, and for the reconstruction of its system of governance and political culture. This would require an occupation measured in years or even decades. Whatever our intentions, nations in the region (and elsewhere) would view our continuing presence through the historical prism of colonialism.

And here's, well, me in September of 2002, responding to then-colleague Brink Lindsey:

In the absence of the rule of law and traditional liberal rights, the invisible hand may not function internationally as well as it does in robust markets, but it is not altogether absent: equilibria are established over time. Sometimes these are so unstable or inherently awful that almost anything would clearly be better. It's possible that tomorrow, photos will be released of Saddam and Usama sharing a tall milkshake with two straws. If that happened, I'd be duly embarrassed, and revise my assessment of the Iraqi threat. Under most conditions, though, the power vacuum created by the dramatic sort of regime change the administration envisions triggers a process of re-equilibriation at least as dangerous as the status quo. Deposing a dictator establishes a kind of political arbitrage opportunity, which political entrepreneurs are eager to exploit. In these cases, though, the transaction costs typically involve guns, bombs, and other implements of commerce in destruction. As post-invasion uncertainty rises, parties on the ground rush to exploit perceived differentials in local knowledge, and we see the same kind of flurry you would on a stock floor when a hot bit of news leaks—if the NASDAQ allowed traders to carry grenades. This is good in markets, because each act of arbitrage increases efficiency, and involves exchanges to mutual benefit. Exchanges of artillery lack this attractive feature. As we refrain from intervention domestically in the interest of encouraging productive trade, we should be guided by a defeasible presumption of non-intervention on the international stage in the interest of preventing this undesirable variety.

These are, admittedly, fairly general remarks, so arguably I didn't predict precisely how things would go down. (I imagine accompanying Megan on an ill-fated sightseeing trip to Iraq: "You were so worried about Baathist insurgents, but we're about to be beheaded by the Badr Brigade. Don't you feel silly?") But then, what Tolstoy said about families goes for nation building adventures as well: The happy ones all resemble each other; the failures are infinitely varied. This is not, I think, a point to try to cudgel doves with: Our argument was precisely that destabilizing a country riven by strong sectarian divisions will have chaotic and unpredictable results, and it's for this very reason that there should be a strong presumption against ambitious regime change projects. This argument is not really undermined if the actual clusterfuck that follows differs in the details from our ex ante hypotheticals about what this might entail.

All that said, there's a certain irony in Megan's writing this just on the heels of Michael O'Hanlon's Washington Post op-ed defending the "surge." His argument (rebutted ably by Mark Kleiman, incidentally) is that war critics are hypocritical for opposing escalation now, since we argued so strenuously all along that the invasion was carried out without sufficient troops to stabilize the country. So to recap: When it's convenient for the administration to point it out, we were right on the mark four years ahead of the hawks. But heaven forfend any general inferences about our relative credibility should be drawn from this.

Gideon Rachman: The neo-cons’ route to disaster

Published: January 15 2007 20:56 | Last updated: January 15 2007 20:56

President George W. Bush’s decision to send more troops to Iraq demonstrates the remarkable durability of neo-conservative foreign policy. Just a couple of months ago, the neo-cons were being written off. The Baker-Hamilton report on Iraq was advertised as signalling the triumphant return of the “grown-ups” and the “reality-based community”. But the president chose to ignore Baker-Hamilton, reportedly dismissing the document as a “flaming turd”.

Instead he turned for succour and advice to his old neo-con allies. The “surge” idea was developed and promoted at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington think-tank that has long served as neo-con central. The neo-cons, like President Bush, are getting another throw of the dice in Iraq.

Obituary writers are, however, already preparing the death notices for neo-conservatism. The neo-cons stand accused of many errors: imperialism, Leninism, Trotskyism (New York school), militarism. Some believe that the real problem is that so many of them are Jewish – this is an alarmingly popular theme, to judge by my e-mails. But the problem with the neo-cons is not that so many of them are Jews. The problem is that so many of them are journalists.

In making this point, I hope that I do not come across as some sort of self-hating journalist. The best opinion journalism has a clarity and readability that far surpasses most academic papers or diplomatic telegrams. But opinion journalism also has its characteristic vices. An editor of The Economist in the 1950s once advised his journalists to “simplify, then exaggerate”. This formula is almost second nature for newspaper columnists and can make for excellent reading. But it is a lousy guide to the making of foreign policy.

The fingerprints of simplifying and exaggerating journalists are all over the Iraq debacle. Take a look at The Neocon Reader, which is edited and introduced by Irwin Stelzer, who writes a column for The Sunday Times. The book brings together essays by political figures, academics and journalists, but the last are the most numerous. Ten of the 22 contributors are columnists or editors.

The neo-cons that mattered most in shaping the “war on terror” served in the Pentagon and the White House. But the journalists are a vital part of a neo-con network that formulated and sold the ideas that took the US to war in Iraq and that is now pressing for confrontation with Iran. The links between journalists, think-tanks and decision-makers in the neo-con world are tight and there is plenty of movement from one area to the other. For example, David Frum, a former journalist, served as a White House speech-writer and helped coin the most famous over-simplification of the Bush era – the phrase “axis of evil”. He is now at the AEI.

Less than a year after the fall of Baghdad, it fell to Charles Krauthammer, a columnist for The Washington Post, to give a triumphal address on America’s role in the world to the annual dinner of the AEI. The elevated status of the Washington punditocracy was underlined by the fact that Mr Krauthammer was introduced by none other than Dick Cheney. In a previous era, it might have seemed more fitting for the journalist to serve as the warm-up act for the vice-president.

Mr Krauthammer’s speech was a masterpiece of simplification and exaggeration. He told the assembled grandees of Washington: “On December 26 1991, the Soviet Union died and something new was born, something utterly new – a unipolar world dominated by a single superpower unchecked by any rival and with decisive reach in every corner of the globe.” Mr Krauthammer made the familiar analogy between the war on terror and the heroic days of the second world war: “Establishing civilised, decent, non-belligerent, pro-western polities in Afghanistan and Iraq” would be as important as the US-led regime change in Japan and Germany in the 1940s. Then he proclaimed: “Yes, as in Germany and Japan, the undertaking is enormous, ambitious and arrogant. It may yet fail. But we cannot afford not to try. There is not a single, remotely plausible alternative strategy for attacking the monster behind 9/11.”

You can only admire the writing. The unexpected use of the word “arrogant” is arresting. The deployment of short and long sentences is mellifluous. But run that by me one more time. Was there really no “remotely plausible alternative strategy”?

You get the same combination of overstatement and ancestor-worship in Mr Stelzer’s introduction to The Neocon Reader, when he writes of the “formidable intellectual firepower behind neo-conservative foreign policy”, which “has probably not been seen since George Kennan led a team that formulated America’s response to the threat of Soviet expansionism”.

The comparison with Kennan is instructive but not in the way Mr Stelzer intends. The main difference is that Kennan had a profound knowledge of the part of the world he was writing about. When he wrote his “long telegram” on the sources of Soviet conduct in 1946, he had many years’ experience as a diplomat in Moscow. The mixed bag of journalists and policymakers in Mr Stelzer’s book are intelligent people. But there is not an Arabist among them.

Neo-conservative columnists have tended to follow the trial lawyers’ approach to expertise. First, decide what you want to argue then find an expert who agrees with you. Most academic specialists on the Middle East were adamantly opposed to the invasion of Iraq. But Bernard Lewis of Princeton University was in favour of toppling Saddam Hussein. So it was he who was routinely and reverentially cited by the neo-cons.

The same attitude to expertise has been applied in pressing for a new military “surge” into Iraq. Most of the top brass of the US military were sceptical about sending more troops to Iraq. But Jack Keane, a retired army general, believes in it. So it is Gen Keane who is quoted approvingly in a recent article by William Kristol, the editor of the neo-con bible, The Weekly Standard; as well as by editorials in The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Times.

Unfortunately, the experience of recent years should caution against basing policy on the urgings of neo-conservative journalists, no matter how persuasively they write.

The current debacle in Iraq is what you get when you turn op-ed columns into foreign policy. Does that conclusion strike you as simplified and exaggerated? Maybe so – but that’s journalism.

Surgers Versus The Surge

The Washington Post reports that America's generals don't think much of Bush's plan "to add up to 20,000 troops to the 132,000 U.S. service members already on the ground." Interestingly, even though they don't put it that way, even th eauthors of the surge plan think this is a bad idea: "Kagan and Keane both emphasized that the surge has to be both substantial (minimum 30,000 troops) and sustained (minimum 18 months)." A Kagan-Keane sized escalation won't be mounted because the Joint Chiefs say it's logistically impossible. But according to Kagan and Keane success requires "a surge of at least 30,000 combat troops lasting 18 months or so. Any other option is likely to fail."

This is the sort of thing that can make a man shrill; I'm not sure what other indication you need that this cruel farce is being undertaken in bad faith. Or does Bush have some actual reason to believe that the number of additional troops required for the Iraq mission to succeed just so happens to be the exact number of troops who it's logistically possible to send? That's be a hell of a coincidence, wouldn't it?

Nikias Was Stabbed in the Back!

The guys at Lawyers, Guns, and Money won't mind extra scorn heaped on Victor Davis Hanson, I hope. If you listen to this episode of Radio Open Source (sometime venue for Ezra) you'll hear them debating the modern relevance of Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War. At one point, discussing the relevance of Thucydides to Iraq, Hanson says (at about 48:30):

...the text seems to suggest that Athens gave everything the commanders wanted in the field, and yet when he sums up he says that the greatest problem with the Athenian expedition to Sicily was the lack of support back home. Which people don't really want to uh, talk about much today.

That was a new one to me. I had to read various chunks of Thucydides for some classes in University, but never read the whole book cover to cover. My limited reading was that there was little doubt that the Sicilian expedition was pretty much a cockup from beginning to end. In any case, it's pretty easy to find the stuff about Syracuse -- the most crucial events are in the last two books, 7 and 8. So what the hell is Hanson talking about? Crucially, Book 7 details the campaign in Sicily and the ensuing disaster for Athens, and not once mentions the domestic politics of Athens (though it does speak of the Spartan invasion of Athens, a common occurrence during the war.) After the troops arrive in Sicily, the next reference to domestic concerns in Athens comes at the beginning of Book 8, after the disastrous defeat in Sicily:

When the news was brought to Athens, for a long while they disbelieved even the most respectable of the soldiers...

Fox News is older than I thought!

When the conviction was forced upon them, they were angry with the orators who had joined in promoting the expedition, just as if they had not themselves voted it....

Wait a minute. I think I see what's going on here...

and were enraged also with the reciters of oracles and soothsayers, and all other omen-mongers of the time who had encouraged them to hope that they should conquer Sicily. Already distressed at all points and in all quarters, after what had now happened, they were seized by a fear and consternation quite without example.

Ah. If this is what VDH means by his remarks above (and I honestly don't know where he's pulling that, this is just my best guess) then I'd say he's misreading Thucydides. But we knew that. I think it's safe to say what frightens VDH is not the prospect that we won't support our troops at home. Rather, what frightens him is that once American involvement in Iraq comes to its ignominious end, Americans will (like the Athenians in their day) turn on "the reciters of oracles and soothsayers, and all other omen-mongers" who got them in to this damn war. That would be you, Victor.

Stiftung Leo Strauss: The Year of Fearing Women

Today we instead skip a beat and note the Mansfieldian fury foaming from Movement (as opposed to just Republican) and socially reactionary circles. The transfer of power on the Hill is not a mere cyclical ebbing of partisan fortune. Estrogen, that baleful pollutant, has been unleashed. Code words for Nancy Pelosi were on full display — “coronation”, “Queen Bee”, “Cheerleader in Chief”, etc. All that was missing? Quotes about drinking only pure grain alcohol, rain water and denying women to avoid loss of essence. It's not just the usual suspects across the radio dial, although we heard a fair sampling during some commuting today. Chris Matthews and other liberal faux blue collar posers also indulge in the estrogen fear mongering but they mask it better. Unless Matthews talks about HRC. Then he crosses his legs and becomes simply unbalanced. 2007 may well be the Year of Fearing Women.... Consider the Pelosi as 'Queen Bee' meme all over talk radio. Rush for example cited a study from somewhere claiming that women are unable to abide other women in positions of power because other women provoked female subconscious competititon for powerful male attention. And then Rush segued into a hilarious but still effective Agitprop denunciation of European petitions allegedly requiring that all people must by law sit when using bathroom facilities for urination. A Western decline into The View and the end of Sergio Leone-era laconic Eastwoodisms. One memorable caller said he was just back from 10 years in Berlin (yet sounded suspiciously like a 30 year old NASCAR fanboy) and blamed the 20th Century European civil wars for eliminating millions of males from households. This loss of male genetic leadership explained France in 1940 (but not Algeria apparently), Western European opposition to Dubya, and the political rise of women such as Merkel (who is a Neocon's Neocon anyway but that's beside the point) and the striking Segolene Royal, a socialist candidate for president in France. Rush's show as we listened did not address how Verdun, the Somme and 1939-45 begat Pelosi and Rosie O'Donnell on this side of the Lake.

Schwarzenegger and health care: Don't get greedy

Schwarzenegger and health care: Don't get greedy Posted by Jonathan Zasloff The Governator announced today his new plan for California health care. From the very sketchy details currently available, it doesn't seem like a terrible plan, although it could be better. It appears to be basically a pay-or-play program similar to the kind that he opposed a couple of years ago: business must either ensure their workers or pay 4% of their payroll into a state program. It also put a 2% tax on doctors' receipts and a 4% tax on hospitals. Healthy Families (California's CHIP program) would be expanded to cover all children who aren't otherwise covered, bringing some federal money in. There are two points to make here: 1) We shouldn't get greedy. The most popular Republican governor--perhaps the popular Republican period--has a proposal for universal health coverage. Progressives now bemoan rejecting Bush I's proposals in 1991, Reagan's federal Medicaid buyout, and Nixon's FAP. I would rather take universality and then work on building a better model. Yes, single-payer would be better, but no, we're not going to get it now. Besides, more radical surgery at the state level might risk ERISA pre-emption. The test will be what the proposal requires of health plans. If it is not much, then businesses might just drop their employer coverage and pay into the system. If the requirements are limited, then most people might wind up with worse coverage than beforehand. That won't fly. But let's see. 2) This will be settled in the courts. Already the right-wing Assembly GOP leader has opposed any plans with new taxes. But Fabian Nunez, the Democratic Assembly Speaker, said that Schwarzenegger's plan would only need majority legislative support. This is an aggressive posture: generally speaking, tax increases and the state budget need a two-thirds majority, which means that they need at least some legislative Republican support. If this thing (or something like it), passes with less than two-thirds support, some group (probably bankrolled by right-wing groups) will sue. That means it could be up to the California Supreme Court to decide the matter. That court is almost obsessive about not interfering in political decisions, so I would expect upholding of the law. But you never know. UPDATE: An excellent site to stay up to date on this is the Sacramento Bee's Crossroads/Health Care blog. it reports that the California Nurses Association, which did so much to block Schwarzenegger's special election chances, is coming out full-blast against the proposal because it isn't single-payer. Sigh. CNA is a good organization, but they are having a hard time taking yes for an answer--maybe because the hospital tax threatens their membership. The CEO of Health Net is enthusiastic--maybe because it ISN'T a single-payer system. Dan Weintraub, the Bee reporter who manages the site, reports on the legal aspect: the key here is that the Administration says that it isn't a "tax" but rather a "fee"--which only requires a majority vote. I think that the state Supreme Court is likely to agree: it has been very generous on the fee/tax distinction in previous cases.

Brent Budowsky: Why Are We in Iraq?

There Are Now Twenty General Eric Shinsekis and They Are All Being Disrespected BY BRENT BUDOWSKY (posted by SusanUnPC; forwarded from Larry Johnson. Mr. Budowsky is a Contributing Editor to the Fighting Democrats News Service.) The execution of Saddam Hussein, carried out by a government friendly to Iran and dominated by Shiite death squads, with war whooping supporters of the Sadr militia cheering and taunting at the hanging, with the President of Iraq disrespected under Iraqi law while the Prime Minister carried out this execution like a religious vendetta; The execution of Saddam Hussein, on the eve of a major Islamic holiday, under the personal direction of the Iraqi Prime Minister, with years to plan and premeditate the event, after a rushed appellate process that was barely more than a legal sham, was not the conduct of a democratic government seeking a national reconciliation, it was the conduct of a militant and violent faction led a Prime Minister using his "government" to aggressively escalate its sectarian civil war. If anyone deserved to die, it was Saddam, but the way this was done, the length of time given to its planning, only dramatizes exactly what the war policy of President Bush has created, and only dramatizes how disastrous it would be, for American troops and casualties to surge for the cause embodied by a government such as this. "Sadr, Sadr, Sadr" the witnesses war whooped at the hanging personally orchestrated by the Prime Minister of Iraq. President Bush appears poised to escalate for what he calls "victory". What kind of victory, and for whom, would be the triumph of a government that conducts itself like this? When this war was so unwisely initiated, the President disrespected the overwhelming military judgment of our commanders, who advised a far larger force at the beginning of this conflict. Four years later, the President disrespects the overwhelming military judgment of American commanders and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who advise against a troop surge pushed by a President determined to escalate, regardless of the judgment of commanders he has always (falsely) claimed to follow on military matters. This war from the beginning, was the triumph of an iron willed President who refused to respect military judgment, the submission for far too long of a Congress and Loyal Opposition that lacked the clarity and courage to check and balance this disaster, and the tragedy for our country and troops who pay the price for these misjudgments and derelictions. The worst case is, in real time, the same grave mistakes are made by the same people, for the same reasons, in the same way, with the same results. Days before the election, the President mislead the American people saying Defense Secretary Rumsfeld would remain, running as a wartime partisan, in a wartime election, believing the voters should be deceived about the Secretary in charge of the war. Immediately upon release of Baker-Hamilton, the President who campaigned as eagerly awaiting it, immediately dismissed it, saying he wanted to hear from his generals whose advice he said he always followed. The generals then weighed in against the troop surge, so the President disrespected their advice. The purported rationale for the troop surge then changed daily, as did the original rationale for the war. The Saddam execution was carried out to aggressively wage sectarian war which deliberately escalated the worst result of the policy. Meanwhile Congress returns with reports that the President has definitely decided to push the troop surge but has not decided on the mission. A Senate which in a secret vote would oppose the surge by 80-20, includes many respected Senators who abhor the surge but publicly say they might support it "if the mission is right", despite the fact that most Generals oppose it because they believe there is no mission that would justify it. The American people just voted for Democrats and Republicans who campaigned in favor of deescalation, are now debating conditions of escalation, saying they support commanders, who oppose escalation. At the outset of this war, General Shinseki warned against the consequences of the war plan pushed through, during a rush to war, with one party using war as a political weapon, while the other party supported it because of political fear, and neither party fought with resolve to send our troops to war with the necessary body armor and equipment until the Marine Corps pathologist said up to 70% of our casualties were preventable. General Shinseki was ridiculed,demeaned, and pressured to leave his post early by an Administration that scorns and removes those who were right, and gives Presidential Medals of Freedom to those who were wrong, under the impotent gaze of a Congress that did nothing to stop this, for four deadly years. And it continues today, an instant replay of those who publicly claim to support our commanders, yet keep their options open to support the very escalation that our commanders risk their careers to oppose. The troop surge is a blunder in search of a rationale. The reason so many commanders oppose it, is there is no rationale. And the greatest disingenuous act of all, is for those who privately oppose the surge to consider publicly supporting, using "the commanders" and "the mission" as their excuse, which is engaging in the same disrespect for military judgment that has created this chaos and carnage for four long years of this. What is the acceptable mission for those who might support the surge? To support the Shiite Prime Minister who pursues sectarian war by masterminding executions with war whooping death squad supporters chanting "Sadr, Sadr"? Is the mission to support one group of Shiites in sectarian wars against other Shiites? Is the mission to support the Shiite militia against the Sunni militia? Is the mission for American men and women to become the Baghdad police? What is the acceptable mission, to those who might support the surge against overwhelming military advice from military professionals and commanders? The one rational mission is what the President apparently is not considering, and does not require a troop surge: substantial upgrade of our training of the Iraqi military and police, and providing them with vehicles and equipment that they desperately need, which can be advanced with redeployment rather than a surge. What is happening today, is that there are twenty General Shinsekis who are being replaced by the President who claims he takes their advice, or threatened by the Administration to toe the line on a policy they abhor, or else. What is happening today is that there are twenty General Shinsekis, now being ridiculed in our newspapers and blamed by the President for his failures, or publicly misrepresented as supporting a surge they advise against, and pressured to say what they do not believe. What is happening today is what happened in 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2006 with commanders offering their best military judgment that is often ignored, by a President who wades deeper into the quagmire of chaos believing his will can change the realities of war, surrounded by enablers who say words of support for commanders while they do things they know the commanders advise against. After the Baker-Hamilton report was released the Joint Chiefs of Staff met with the President and it has been reported they unanimously advised against the surge. Whatever the truth, it must come out now, before any escalation of this war. Congressional Leaders should call on President Bush to publicly release the redacted notes of this meeting to determine the true military judgment of our military leaders. At a minimum the bipartisan Congressional Leaders and the Chairman and Ranking Members of the proper Committees should be briefed in a classified session of the full discussion with the Chiefs, including full discussion of contemporaneous notes of that meeting. There should be comprehensive hearings with all of the recent and current commanders and Joint Chiefs of Staff where they honorably and precisely state in public their military judgment, advice and recommendations. Distinguished and genuinely good men and leaders such as Senator Warner, Senator Hagel, and Senator Lugar should do what Senator Barry Goldwater did with President Nixon. Go the White House, look the President in the eye, and say: with great respect sir, this must end, now, we must not escalate this war any further, we will not support this surge, there is a better way. It is high time and long overdue that the United States regain its position of diplomatic and moral leadership in the Middle East and bring in former Presidents George Herbert Walker Bush and Bill Clinton to explore the opportunity for progress and work with our friends around the world to create Marhall Plan like program for all (including Iraqis) who implement cease fire agreements. While restoring leadership that has traditionally been exercised by American Presidents since 1948, we can implement some form of troop redeployment in Iraq as proposed Rep. Murtha and Baker-Hamilton, increase training for Iraqi military and police, dramatically upgrade the military equipment, vehicles and armor for the Iraqis and test regional diplomacy with Iraq's neighbors. What we must not to, is again ignore the sound military judgment of commanders, the bipartisan judgements of the Baker Hamiltion Group, the private pleadings of our NATO allies, and the true private opinion of the overwhelming majority of both parties in Congress who must stop enabling, and start doing what they know is right. Today there are 20 General Shinsekis. This time, let's listen to them.

Josh Micah Marshall: Bush Blames General Casey for Everything

I don't know if the basic gist of the New York Times piece on what happened in Iraq in 2006 will get picked up. But in case anyone misses it, let's do the short summary. According to the White House, the person to blame for Iraq is Gen. George W. Casey, Jr., the top American commander in the country. And Casey's so bad that President Bush is probably going to can him before his current tour concludes this summer. Probably as soon as next month. In so many words, Casey's policy (which, reading between the lines, it's pretty clear Casey thought was Bush's desired policy) was maintain current troop levels and 'standing down as the Iraqis stand up'. You may have thought that was the Bush policy. But apparently not. "Over the past 12 months," the Times now tells us, "as optimism collided with reality, Mr. Bush increasingly found himself uneasy with General Casey’s strategy." In fact, the Casey policy left the White House so wrong footed that they were "constantly lagging a step or two behind events on the ground." So why did the president wait so long to rid himself of this meddlesome general? Well, politics is politics, remember. "Many of Mr. Bush’s advisers say their timetable for completing an Iraq review had been based in part on a judgment that for Mr. Bush to have voiced doubts about his strategy before the midterm elections in November would have been politically catastrophic." At least there was no rush to get a handle on the situation. Read this article. The swirl of buckpassing, cravenness, ridiculous lies and general awfulness will turn your head.

Matt Yglesias: "I agree with Nick Kristof -- George W. Bush would be a pretty good president if he reversed, um, all of his ideas about public policy

Guest: Steve Benen IF KRISTOF'S WISHES WERE HORSES.... Kevin frowns upon highlighting items behind the New York Times' pay wall, but Nick Kristof's year-end piece, published yesterday, was a sight to behold. Kristof noticed that President Bush's legacy "doesn't look good right now," and imagined a future obituary that described Bush leaving office "vilified and disgraced." Kristof proceeded to offer 10 suggestions for the president to pursue in 2007 that might help him "rescue" his legacy." It's quite a list. * Negotiate with Iran and Syria, and "renounce permanent military bases in Iraq." * Start working on an Israeli-Palestinian peace plan. * Confront the genocide in Darfur. * Dump Dick Cheney and get a new VP. * Expand the government's efforts to combat AIDS. * Address climate change. * Give up on the idea of attacking Iran. * Give up on privatization and embrace a Clinton-like approach to Social Security reform. * Address our disgraceful inequities in health care and pursue Carter's idea of comprehensive coverage for children up to age 5. * "Steal [policy ideas] from your critics and rivals." It's enough to make me wonder if Kristof has been watching the same president as the rest of us the last six years. As Matt Yglesias put it: "I agree with Nick Kristof -- George W. Bush would be a pretty good president if he reversed, um, all of his ideas about public policy and started governing like a liberal Democrat." I suspect this isn't going to happen. Call it a hunch.

Juan Cole: Saddam: The Death of a Dictator

The body of Saddam, as it swung from the gallows at 6 a.m. Saturday Baghdad time, cast an ominous shadow over Iraq. The execution provoked intense questions about whether his trial was fair and about what the fallout will be. One thing is certain: The trial and execution of Saddam were about revenge, not justice. Instead of promoting national reconciliation, this act of revenge helped Saddam portray himself one last time as a symbol of Sunni Arab resistance, and became one more incitement to sectarian warfare. Saddam Hussein was tried under the shadow of a foreign military occupation, by a government full of his personal enemies. The first judge, an ethnic Kurd, resigned because of government interference in the trial; the judge who took his place was also Kurdish and had grievances against the accused. Three of Saddam's defense lawyers were shot down in cold blood. The surviving members of his defense team went on strike to protest the lack of protection afforded them. The court then appointed new lawyers who had no expertise in international law. Most of the witnesses against Saddam gave hearsay evidence. The trial ground slowly but certainly toward the inevitable death verdict. Like everything else in Iraq since 2003, Saddam's trial became entangled in sectarian politics. Iraq is roughly 60 percent Shiite, 18 percent Sunni Arab and 18 percent Kurdish. Elements of the Sunni minority were favored under fellow Sunni Saddam, and during his long, brutal reign this community tended to have high rates of membership in the Baath Party. Although many members of Saddam's own ethnic group deeply disliked him, since the U.S. invasion he has gradually emerged as a symbol of the humiliation that the once-dominant Sunni minority has suffered under a new government dominated by Shiites and Kurds. Saddam was a symbol of Sunni-Shiite rivalry long before the U.S. occupation. In 1991, while he was in power, he had ferociously suppressed the post-Gulf War Shiite uprising in the south, using helicopter gunships and tanks to kill an estimated 60,000. After the invasion, many Shiites wanted him to be captured, while many Sunnis helped him elude capture. When Saddam was finally caught by U.S. forces in late 2003, Shiites in the Baghdad district of Kadhimiya crossed the bridge over the Tigris to dance and gloat in the neighboring Sunni Arab district of Adhamiya, provoking some clashes. After his capture, students at Mosul University, in Iraq's second-largest and mostly Sunni Arab city, chanted, "Bush, Bush, hear our refrain: We all love Saddam Hussein!" and "We'll die, we'll die, but the nation will live! And America will fall!" As the U.S. consolidated control over Iraq, meanwhile, Sunni alienation increased. The American occupiers adopted punitive measures against members of the Baath Party, who were disproportionately though by no means universally Sunni Arab. The army was dissolved, sidelining 400,000 troops and the predominantly Sunni officer corps. Thousands of Sunni Arab civil servants and even schoolteachers were fired. A "de-Baathification" committee, dominated by hard-line Shiites like Nouri al-Maliki (now prime minister) and Ahmed Chalabi, denied large numbers of Sunni Arabs the right to participate in political society or hold government positions on grounds of links to the Baath Party. Sometimes politicians were blackballed simply because a relative had been high in the party. As Iraq spiraled down into a brutal civil war with massive killing and ethnic cleansing, many Iraqis began to yearn for the oppressive security of the Saddam period. After the destruction of the golden dome of the Shiite Askariya mosque in Samarra last February, Iraqis fell into an orgy of sectarian reprisal killings. By the time of Saddam's trial, sectarian strife was widespread, and the trial simply made it worse. It was not just the inherent bias of a judicial system dominated by his political enemies. Even the crimes for which he was tried were a source of ethnic friction. Saddam Hussein had had many Sunni Arabs killed, and a trial on such a charge could have been politically savvy. Instead, he was accused of the execution of scores of Shiites in Dujail in 1982. This Shiite town had been a hotbed of activism by the Shiite fundamentalist Dawa (Islamic Call) Party, which was founded in the late 1950s and modeled on the Communist Party. In the wake of Ayatollah Ruholla Khomeini's 1979 Islamic Revolution in neighboring Iran, Saddam conceived a profound fear of Dawa and similar parties, banning them and making membership a capital crime. Young Dawa leaders such as al-Maliki fled to Tehran, Iran, or Damascus, Syria. When Saddam visited Dujail, Dawa agents attempted to assassinate him. In turn, he wrought a terrible revenge on the town's young men. Current Prime Minister al-Maliki is the leader of the Dawa Party and served for years in exile in its Damascus bureau. For a Dawa-led government to try Saddam, especially for this crackdown on a Dawa stronghold, makes it look to Sunni Arabs more like a sectarian reprisal than a dispassionate trial for crimes against humanity. Passions did not subside with time. When the death verdict was announced against Saddam in November, Sunni Arabs in Baquba, to the northeast of the capital, staged a big pro-Saddam demonstration. They were attacked by the Shiite police that dominate that mixed city, who killed 20 demonstrators and wounded a similar number. There were also pro-Saddam demonstrations in Fallujah and Mosul. Baghdad had to be put under curfew. The tribunal also had a unique sense of timing when choosing the day for Saddam's hanging. It was a slap in the face to Sunni Arabs. This weekend marks Eid al-Adha, the Holy Day of Sacrifice, on which Muslims commemorate the willingness of Abraham to sacrifice his son for God. Shiites celebrate it Sunday. Sunnis celebrate it Saturday –- and Iraqi law forbids executing the condemned on a major holiday. Hanging Saddam on Saturday was perceived by Sunni Arabs as the act of a Shiite government that had accepted the Shiite ritual calendar. The timing also allowed Saddam, in his farewell address to Iraq, to pose as a “sacrifice” for his nation, an explicit reference to Eid al-Adha. The tribunal had given the old secular nationalist the chance to use religious language to play on the sympathies of the whole Iraqi public. The political ineptitude of the tribunal, from start to finish, was astonishing. The United States and its Iraqi allies basically gave Saddam a platform on which to make himself a martyr to Iraqi unity and independence -- even if by unity and independence Saddam was really appealing to Sunnis' nostalgia for their days of hegemony. In his farewell address, however, Saddam could not help departing from his national-unity script to take a few last shots at his ethnic rivals. Despite some smarmy language urging Iraqis not to hate the Americans, Saddam denounced the "invaders" and "Persians" who had come into Iraq. The invaders are the American army, and the Persians are code not just for Iranian agents but for Iraqi Shiites, whom many Sunni Arabs view as having Iranian antecedents and as not really Iraqi or Arab. It was such attitudes that led to slaughters like that at Dujail. In his death, as in his life, Saddam Hussein is managing to divide Iraqis and condemn them to further violence and brutality. But the Americans and the Shiite- and Kurd-dominated government bear some blame for the way they botched his trial and gave him this last opportunity to play the spoiler. Iraq is on high alert, in expectation of protests and guerrilla reprisals. Leaves have been canceled for Iraqi soldiers, though in the past they have seldom paid much attention to such orders. But perhaps the death of Saddam, who once haunted the nightmares of a nation, will soon come to seem insignificant. In Iraq, guerrilla and criminal violence executes as many as 500 persons a day. Saddam's hanging is just one more occasion for a blood feud in a country that now has thousands of them.

Jim Henley speaks into the night

[T]he US and its Iraqi allies chose to try Saddam on one of his relatively minor crimes because if they did so they could get him safely hung before they had to try him for the major ones, the gas attacks and massacres that happened during The Years of Playing Footsie with the United States. The Dujail reprisals were a war crime, no doubt about it, a bigger sham of justice than Saddam’s own trial, by two orders of magnitude. They were also the sort of war crime that people like Ralph Peters and a hundred other pundits and parapundits think the United States should be committing. Every time you read a complaint about “politically correct rules of engagement” you are reading someone who would applaud a Dujail-level slaughter if only we were to perpetrate it. Those are the people who are happiest of all about tonight’s execution. Smells like—victory! It’s the pomander they don against the stench.

Matthew Yglesias: Ronald Reagan, Donald Rumsfeld, and Saddam Hussein

Saddam Hussein is a monster who the world will be well rid of.... [But,] as Spencer notes in its zeal to avoid an international tribunal (Bush hates international law), we organized a total farce of a trial and wound up creating a kangaroo court to try a guilty man. When you think "Saddam Hussein and crimes against humanity" your thoughts naturally turn to Halabja/Anfal. Prosecuting that case, however, raised awkward questions about Don Rumsfeld's meet-and-greet with Saddam Hussein.... The purpose of said visit, as people might recall were the American press not to have its head in the sand, was largely to reassure Saddam that the Reagan administration's public condemnation of Iraqi chemical weapons use against the Iranian military and Kurdish insurgents was not something Baghdad should take especially seriously. [George Shulz's] State Department would condemn, but special envoy Rumsfeld was around to cut deals. At any rate, as a result of Saddam's pending execution, prosecutions for further crimes, including matters related to Anfal, are now deemed unnecessary.... Saddam is being executed for the specific charge of killing 148 men and boys from the town of Dujail in retaliation for a July 8, 1982 assassination attempt against Saddam. Saddam's legal team argued that given the state of war existing at the time between Iraq and Iran this fell under the purview of sound counterinsurgency strategy and said argument was rejected. Fair enough, but compare this to, say, Fallujah. Thirteen civilians were killed when American soldiers opened fire on protesters. This led, in turn, to the murder and mutilation of four contractors employed by the US military. This led to a retaliatory military strike on the town by US and Iraqi government forces that local doctors claimed killed over 600 people. The Iraqi health ministry disputes that, arguing that "only" 271 civilians died in the attack, during which "more than half" of the city's homes were destroyed. The exact same as what happened at Dujail? No. A completely different sort of thing? Also no. But if Dujail is worth a death sentence, then what's Fallujah worth? Five years? Ten? I don't really know. How about the people tortured to death after the Bush administration's decision to ignore international and domestic law regarding detentions and interrogations?

Max Sawicky Has a Problem

...I have a problem with the DeLongian formulation, shared in spirit by Thoma, about "balancing" Social Security and Medicare finance. Here as well, the problem is not only the economics, but the political reality that in matters of budgetary scruples, the Democrats [seeking to cooperate with Republicans] are trying to hold a formal dinner with a pack of feces-flinging monkeys...

Paul Krugman: A Failed Revolution

[Republcan] apologists have settled on a story line that sounds just like Marxist explanations for the failure of the Soviet Union.... [T]he noble ideals of the Republican revolution of 1994 were undermined by Washington’s corrupting ways.... [D]efeat was a good thing, because it will force a return to the true conservative path. But the truth is that the movement... was always based on a lie.... As long as people like Mr. Armey, Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay were out of power, they could run on promises to eliminate vast government waste that existed only in the public’s imagination — all those welfare queens driving Cadillacs. But once in power, they couldn’t deliver.... Unable to make good on its promises, the G.O.P., like other failed revolutionary movements, tried to maintain its grip by exploiting its position of power. Friends were rewarded with patronage: Jack Abramoff began building his web of corruption almost as soon as Republicans took control. Adversaries were harassed with smear campaigns.... Without 9/11, the Republican revolution would probably have petered out quietly... Instead, the atrocity created ... four extra years gained by drowning out unfavorable news with terror alerts, starting a gratuitous war, and accusing Democrats of being weak on national security.... In the end, Republicans didn’t shrink the government. But they did degrade it.... Is that the end for the radical right? Probably not.... Still, the Republican revolution of 1994 is over. And not a moment too soon.