The Death President

First they changed the name of the Estate Tax to the Death Tax, then they invaded Iraq and so far have killed over 2,500 American soldiers and countless Iraqis (today’s paper is estimating 3,000 in June and an average of 100 per day.) And now today the President vetoes Stem Cell legislation that amazingly passed both houses of Congress, although apparently just missing the number needed to override Bush’s veto. A large majority of Americans favor research on stem cells. But a small group, many of whom believe Jonah was swallowed by a whale and survived, are intent on foisting their beliefs on everyone else. While they love to claim they are pro-life, they really have no interest in anything past birth. This country, once the leading scientific center of the entire world, is quickly becoming a laughing stock as we disregard potential cures for many disabling diseases in order to safeguard embryos that will be destroyed anyway. Bush wraps himself in morality stating that if the proposed law passed "American taxpayers would for the first time be compelled to fund the deliberate destruction of human embryos." Of course he proposed the exact same thing five years ago and created a program that does just that although it is now close to useless as the number of cell lines is tainted and barely useful. There are approximately 400,000 frozen embryos stored in US fertility clinics, most of which will be discarded once the couples that created them no longer need them. Bush and Senator Brownback surrounded themselves with a few families that had adopted embryos implying that this was the moral path to be followed. So far 128 adoptions have occurred. I’m waiting breathlessly for the deluge of conservative right-to-lifers clamoring to adopt the remaining 399,872.

Those same conservatives are busy criticizing Bush for his failure to respond to Iran, North Korea, Hamas, and Hezbollah with force and strength. What they conveniently forget is that they cheered and pushed Bush into Iraq, squandering our resources and leaving us in this helpless position. But if they can’t kill more people in the Axis of Evil, they can at least kill more Americans

Bush Political Strategy

Peter Beinart is editor-at-large at The New Republic and the author of "The Good Fight: Why Liberals--and Only Liberals--Can Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again" (HarperCollins).

In an article published 7-10-06, Beinart explains how President Bush has chosen partisan and divisive policies whenever he had a chance to unite the American public. That strategy has always been to win elections with 50.1% of the vote so that no compromise with a larger majority would be necessary. As an election strategy it has succeeded for five years, but at a terrible cost to the country and is now bearing bitter results. Not only are we increasingly helpless in bringing the world community behind our ideas, we have a populace consisting of half the people who will not accept any idea emanating from the administration and another half who are unable to question anything the administration says.

Why doesn't George W. Bush want to win in Iraq? Seriously. The past several weeks have forced him to choose between two big goals: demonizing Democrats to help the GOP retain control of Congress and fostering a domestic climate that gives the new Iraqi government the best chance to survive. And, again and again, he has chosen door number one. This is what ex-Bush officials like Paul O'Neill and John DiIulio warned us about--and what Hurricane Katrina reaffirmed: that what matters in this administration is not policy, but politics. For all his talk about America's historical mission to defeat tyranny and spread freedom, there is only one mission to which George W. Bush has shown consistent devotion: winning elections. He acts less like the president than like the head of the Republican National Committee.

The situation in Iraq today is desperate but not hopeless. And, in the months to come, avoiding the abyss will require brutal compromises, not only in Baghdad, but in Washington--the kind that require support on both sides of the aisle. The good news is that the basic outlines of a deal to undermine the insurgency, break up the militias, and facilitate U.S. withdrawal are becoming clear. Sunni nationalist (as opposed to jihadist) insurgents seem increasingly willing to lay down their arms--if they are granted amnesty, the constitution is rewritten to accommodate their concerns, and U.S. troops leave. And, if Sunni insurgents stop massacring the Shia, then Shia militias may begin to disband.
That's the good news. The bad news is that envisioning the outlines of a final deal is a lot easier than achieving one. Ending the Iraq war will require agonizing concessions, not only from Shia, Sunnis, and Kurds--but from Americans as well. For starters, the United States will have to resist imposing a timetable for withdrawal, even though many Americans want one and many Democratic activists are demanding one. Such a plan must come from the Iraqi government, as part of a broader agreement with the Sunni insurgents and Shia militias. If the Iraqi government tells us to leave, it strengthens them--especially among the Sunnis who want us gone the most. But if we tell them we are leaving, it looks like a vote of no confidence in their ability to survive--which might embolden the Sunni insurgents to think they can win on the battlefield and, in turn, make the Shia militias dig in their heels.

For Americans, however, resisting a public withdrawal date is only the beginning. The truly gut-wrenching part will be looking the other way if Iraq's government allows insurgents who murdered heroic young Americans to go free. In blood-soaked societies, some kind of amnesty is crucial. Amnesties helped overcome the Islamist insurgency that ravaged Algeria in the 1990s, and they helped peacefully transfer power in South Africa, through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Like black South Africans who saw their families slaughtered under apartheid, some Iraqi Shia and Kurds who saw their families slaughtered by Saddam Hussein will have to accept a public acknowledgement of the truth but no full justice. And some grieving American families will have to as well. The United States can get Iraqi leaders to fudge this on paper. But, on the ground, an amnesty for some violent anti-U.S. insurgents may prove crucial to persuading Sunni nationalists to break with the foreign jihadists, lay down their arms, and give Iraq's new government a chance at life.

Swallowing these concessions will require a bipartisan bargain--the kind of ceasefire required for difficult domestic changes like reforming Social Security or the tax code. Were he interested in such a deal, Bush would have invited top Democrats into his office after the formation of Iraq's new government and the death of Abu Musab Al Zarqawi and said something like this. "If you resist a withdrawal plan so the Iraqis can announce their own, I'll bring you in on the negotiations. In fact, I'll replace Donald Rumsfeld with a secretary of defense that you trust--why don't you suggest a few names. And, if you don't demagogue this amnesty stuff, I'll tell Karl Rove and his henchmen to stop calling you cowardly defeatists. That might hurt me this November, since slandering Democrats is my best chance of luring Republicans to the polls. But I'm more interested in winning Iraq than winning Ohio. And, to do that, I need your help."

Of course, over the past several weeks, President Bush has done exactly the opposite. Rove and company immediately wielded Zarqawi's death as a partisan club, saying that, if Democrats had their way, he'd still be loose. Then the White House and congressional Republicans rigged a phony, vicious Iraq debate in Congress, which saw Republicans call the main Democratic Senate plan (which didn't include a strict withdrawal timetable) "cut and jog"--only to announce days later that the Bush administration was considering something similar itself. All of which made Democrats trying to decide what was best for the country--as opposed to merely their party--look like chumps. Partisan acrimony, already stratospheric before the Iraq debate, is now even worse. And, among Democrats, the likely result will be greater demands for a public timetable for withdrawal and louder denunciations of amnesty for insurgents. (In Tennessee, Democratic Senate hopeful Harold Ford is already running ads on the subject.) It's hard to serve the national interest when the president of the United States does not.

This has been the Democrats' dilemma all along. From the beginning, Bush has preferred the war on terrorism as a wedge issue to the war on terrorism as a unifying national cause. In 2002, he staged a fight on the Department of Homeland Security, when a bipartisan compromise could easily have been had. That fall, he told Congress he needed its support to disarm Iraq peacefully--when he was already intent on war. He has refused to seek congressional authorization for government surveillance, even though Congress would have given him most of what he wanted. In short, he has done everything in his power to alienate Democrats from an anti-jihadist struggle that, without their support, he cannot win. If Michael Moore did not exist, Bush would invent him.

Politics, of course, does not--and should not--end in times of war. But mendacious, blood-sport politics should. Instead, it has emanated from the highest office in the land. And, if we lose in Iraq, it will be a major reason why.

Middle East Crisis

Stratfor is one of the world’s leading private intelligence firms. They conduct studies on geopolitics, security and public policy showing the intersection with politics, economics and military matters. On July 13, 2006, they published an analysis of the current crisis in the Middle East that answers questions about why Israel is attacking Beirut, rather than just southern Lebanon. The article in its entirety follows:

Israel lives with three realities: geographic, demographic and cultural. Geographically, it is at a permanent disadvantage, lacking strategic depth. It does enjoy the advantage of interior lines -- the ability to move forces rapidly from one front to another. Demographically, it is on the whole outnumbered, although it can achieve local superiority in numbers by choosing the time and place of war. Its greatest advantage is cultural. It has a far greater mastery of the technology and culture of war than its neighbors.

Two of the realities cannot be changed. Nothing can be done about geography or demography. Culture can be changed. It is not inherently the case that Israel will have a technological or operational advantage over its neighbors. The great inherent fear of Israel is that the Arabs will equal or surpass Israeli prowess culturally and therefore militarily. If that were to happen, then all three realities would turn against Israel and Israel might well be at risk.

That is why the capture of Israeli troops, first one in the south, then two in the north, has galvanized Israel. The kidnappings represent a level of Arab tactical prowess that previously was the Israeli domain. They also represent a level of tactical slackness on the Israeli side that was previously the Arab domain. These events hardly represent a fundamental shift in the balance of power. Nevertheless, for a country that depends on its cultural superiority, any tremor in this variable reverberates dramatically. Hamas and Hezbollah have struck the core Israeli nerve. Israel cannot ignore it.

Embedded in Israel's demographic problem is this: Israel has national security requirements that outstrip its manpower base. It can field a sufficient army, but its industrial base cannot supply all of the weapons needed to fight high-intensity conflicts. This means it is always dependent on an outside source for its industrial base and must align its policies with that source. At first this was the Soviets, then France and finally the United States. Israel broke with the Soviets and France when their political demands became too intense. It was after 1967 that it entered into a patron-client relationship with the United States. This relationship is its strength and its weakness. It gives the Israelis the systems they need for national security, but since U.S. and Israeli interests diverge, the relationship constrains Israel's range of action.

During the Cold War, the United States relied on Israel for a critical geopolitical function. The fundamental U.S. interest was Turkey, which controlled the Bosporus and kept the Soviet fleet under control in the Mediterranean. The emergence of Soviet influence in Syria and Iraq -- which was not driven by U.S. support for Israel since the United States did not provide all that much support compared to France -- threatened Turkey with attack from two directions, north and south. Turkey could not survive this. Israel drew Syrian attention away from Turkey by threatening Damascus and drawing forces and Soviet equipment away from the Turkish frontier. Israel helped secure Turkey and turned a Soviet investment into a dry hole.

Once Egypt signed a treaty with Israel and Sinai became a buffer zone, Israel became safe from a full peripheral war -- everyone attacking at the same time. Jordan was not going to launch an attack and Syria by itself could not strike. The danger to Israel became Palestinian operations inside of Israel and the occupied territories and the threat posed from Lebanon by the Syrian-sponsored group Hezbollah.

In 1982, Israel responded to this threat by invading Lebanon. It moved as far north as Beirut and the mountains east and northeast of it. Israel did not invade Beirut proper, since Israeli forces do not like urban warfare as it imposes too high a rate of attrition. But what the Israelis found was low-rate attrition. Throughout their occupation of Lebanon, they were constantly experiencing guerrilla attacks, particularly from Hezbollah.

Hezbollah has two patrons: Syria and Iran. The Syrians have used Hezbollah to pursue their political and business interests in Lebanon. Iran has used Hezbollah for business and ideological reasons. Business interests were the overlapping element. In the interest of business, it became important to Hezbollah, Syria and Iran that an accommodation be reached with Israel. Israel wanted to withdraw from Lebanon in order to end the constant low-level combat and losses.

Israel withdrew in 1988, having reached quiet understandings with Syria that Damascus would take responsibility for Hezbollah, in return for which Israel would not object to Syrian domination of Lebanon. Iran, deep in its war with Iraq, was not in a position to object if it had wanted to. Israel returned to its borders in the north, maintaining a security presence in the south of Lebanon that lasted for several years.

As Lebanon blossomed and Syria's hold on it loosened, Iran also began to increase its regional influence. Its hold on some elements of Hezbollah strengthened, and in recent months, Hezbollah -- aligning itself with Iranian Shiite ideology -- has become more aggressive. Iranian weapons were provided to Hezbollah, and tensions grew along the frontier. This culminated in the capture of two soldiers in the north and the current crisis.

It is difficult to overestimate the impact of the soldier kidnappings on the Israeli psyche. First, while the Israeli military is extremely highly trained, Israel is also a country with mass conscription. Having a soldier kidnapped by Arabs hits every family in the country. The older generation is shocked and outraged that members of the younger generation have been captured and worried that they allowed themselves to be captured; therefore, the younger generation needs to prove it too can defeat the Arabs. This is not a primary driver, but it is a dimension.

The more fundamental issue is this: Israel withdrew from Lebanon in order to escape low-intensity conflict. If Hezbollah is now going to impose low-intensity conflict on Israel's border, the rationale for withdrawal disappears. It is better for Israel to fight deep in Lebanon than inside Israel. If the rockets are going to fall in Israel proper, then moving into a forward posture has no cost to Israel.

From an international standpoint, the Israelis expect to be condemned. These international condemnations, however, are now having the opposite effect of what is intended. The Israeli view is that they will be condemned regardless of what they do. The differential between the condemnation of reprisal attacks and condemnation of a full invasion is not enough to deter more extreme action. If Israel is going to be attacked anyway, it might as well achieve its goals.

Moreover, an invasion of Hezbollah-held territory aligns Israel with the United States. U.S. intelligence has been extremely concerned about the growing activity of Hezbollah, and U.S. relations with Iran are not good. Lebanon is the center of gravity of Hezbollah, and the destruction of Hezbollah capabilities in Lebanon, particularly the command structure, would cripple Hezbollah operations globally in the near future. The United States would very much like to see that happen, but cannot do it itself. Moreover, an Israeli action would enrage the Islamic world, but it would also drive home the limits of Iranian power. Once again, Iran would have dropped Lebanon in the grease, and not been hurt itself. The lesson of Hezbollah would not be lost on the Iraqi Shia -- or so the Bush administration would hope.

Therefore, this is one Israeli action that benefits the United States, and thus helps the immediate situation as well as long-term geopolitical alignments. It realigns the United States and Israel. This also argues that any invasion must be devastating to Hezbollah. It must go deep. It must occupy temporarily. It must shatter Hezbollah.

At this point, the Israelis appear to be unrolling a war plan in this direction. They have blockaded the Lebanese coast. Israeli aircraft are attacking what air power there is in Lebanon, and have attacked Hezbollah and other key command-and-control infrastructure. It would follow that the Israelis will now concentrate on destroying Hezbollah -- and Lebanese -- communications capabilities and attacking munitions dumps, vehicle sites, rocket-storage areas and so forth.

Most important, Israel is calling up its reserves. This is never a symbolic gesture in Israel. All Israelis below middle age are in the reserves and mobilization is costly in every sense of the word. If the Israelis were planning a routine reprisal, they would not be mobilizing. But they are, which means they are planning to do substantially more than retributive airstrikes. The question is what their plan is.

Given the blockade and what appears to be the shape of the airstrikes, it seems to us at the moment the Israelis are planning to go fairly deep into Lebanon. The logical first step is a move to the Litani River in southern Lebanon. But given the missile attacks on Haifa, they will go farther, not only to attack launcher sites, but to get rid of weapons caches. This means a move deep into the Bekaa Valley, the seat of Hezbollah power and the location of plants and facilities. Such a penetration would leave Israeli forces' left flank open, so a move into Bekaa would likely be accompanied by attacks to the west. It would bring the Israelis close to Beirut again.

This leaves Israel's right flank exposed, and that exposure is to Syria. The Israeli doctrine is that leaving Syrian airpower intact while operating in Lebanon is dangerous. Therefore, Israel must at least be considering using its air force to attack Syrian facilities, unless it gets ironclad assurances the Syrians will not intervene in any way. Conversations are going on between Egypt and Syria, and we suspect this is the subject. But Israel would not necessarily object to the opportunity of eliminating Syrian air power as part of its operation, or if Syria chooses, going even further.

At the same time, Israel does not intend to get bogged down in Lebanon again. It will want to go in, wreak havoc, withdraw. That means it will go deeper and faster, and be more devastating, than if it were planning a long-term occupation. It will go in to liquidate Hezbollah and then leave. True, this is no final solution, but for the Israelis, there are no final solutions.

Israeli forces are already in Lebanon. Its special forces are inside identifying targets for airstrikes. We expect numerous air attacks over the next 48 hours, as well as reports of firefights in southern Lebanon. We also expect more rocket attacks on Israel.

It will take several days to mount a full invasion of Lebanon. We would not expect major operations before the weekend at the earliest. If the rocket attacks are taking place, however, Israel might send several brigades to the Litani River almost immediately in order to move the rockets out of range of Haifa. Therefore, we would expect a rapid operation in the next 24-48 hours followed by a larger force later.

At this point, the only thing that can prevent this would be a major intervention by Syria with real guarantees that it would restrain Hezbollah and indications such operations are under way. Syria is the key to a peaceful resolution. Syria must calculate the relative risks, and we expect them to be unwilling to act decisively.

Therefore:

1. Israel cannot tolerate an insurgency on its northern frontier; if there is one, it wants it farther north.

2. It cannot tolerate attacks on Haifa.

3. It cannot endure a crisis of confidence in its military

4. Hezbollah cannot back off of its engagement with Israel.

5. Syria can stop this, but the cost to it stopping it is higher than the cost of letting it go on.

It would appear Israel will invade Lebanon. The global response will be noisy. There will be no substantial international action against Israel. Beirut's tourism and transportation industry, as well as its financial sectors, are very much at risk.

It’s Getting Better All the Time

The next time Administration officials and PR people tell us about how Iraq is improving, just refer to this article about life at Baghdad University as reported in this past Thursday’s Washington Post.

It's finals time in Iraq. Black-clad gunmen have stormed a dormitory to snatch students from their rooms. Professors fear failing and angering their pupils. Administrators curtailed graduation ceremonies to avoid convening large groups of people into an obvious bombing target. Perhaps nowhere else does the prospect of two months' summer vacation -- for those who can afford it, a chance to flee the country -- bring such unbridled relief.

"From the point of view of exchanging or expressing opinions, there is no comparison. Back then, there was no possibility to express your views in any way," said the school's president, Mosa al-Mosawe. "But in terms of security, during the Baath regime it was much better."

Mosawe spoke on Thursday, the day Baghdad University's chief of security was assassinated by gunmen outside his home. About 50 university staff members have been killed since the invasion, more than half of roughly 90 university employees killed across Iraq, said Mosawe. Other calculations of slain professors are even higher: An antiwar organization called the Brussels Tribunal lists 250 names.

Some professors say the killings are motivated by the same sectarian rivalries between Shiite and Sunni Muslims that take Iraqi lives every day and are intertwined with the country's political struggles. Regardless of the reason, the killings are inspiring an exodus of professors from the university system.
At Baghdad University, 300 staff members have requested one-year leaves of absence to flee the violence, and about half of all professors will spend the summer out of the country or in Iraq's more peaceful northern region, Mosawe said.

"The religious people are taking over the universities, and all the secular people are being driven out," said Mustafa al-Hiti, the former dean of the university's College of Pharmacy and now a member of parliament. The intimidation of teachers has spread to the daily workings of the classroom. During a meeting between the minister of higher education and senior professors last week, Hassan Hashim, the head of the journalism department, decried the influence of Shiite militiamen in the school. He said professors were changing the grades of students who belonged to the Mahdi Army, a militia loyal to Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. Professors gave students from hard-line religious groups the answers to tests, he said.

"This is a radical religious movement and they want power," said Juwab Abu Rafal, a professor of mass media. "The problem is nobody talks about it because everyone is afraid."

Abu Rafal said he avoids controversial subjects in class. Fearing retaliation, he said, he once failed to punish a student who was caught cheating. Professors now bring guns to school and leave them with the receptionist, he said.

The students are not immune from the aggression. Female students who once walked their campus quads in jeans and T-shirts now often bundle up in traditional head scarves and abayas to appease religious extremists. Music and dancing have been prohibited at some college gatherings. In central Baghdad last week, gunmen wearing black raided a dormitory of the University of Technology, beat 10 students and kidnapped them. The students were said to be Sunnis from such insurgent strongholds as Ramadi in western Iraq.

The Sinking Bush Presidency

Following North Korea’s missile tests, the US look more and more like Gulliver tied up by Lilliputians. A combination of incompetence in leadership, fueled by wishful thinking tied to a pre-existing agenda that we could act unilaterally whenever we wanted to rather than to a realistic assessment of the world situation, coupled with an arrogant belief in military power, has led us into the Iraq quagmire and left us unable to cope with the real problems facing us. We now have minimal support from our friends and enjoyment of our plight from too many in the world. Reversing these trends, even if we elect the ideal opposite candidate in 2008. is going to be a gargantuan task. Some quotes from an analysis in today’s Washington Post.

From deteriorating security in Afghanistan and Somalia to mayhem in the Middle East, confrontation with Iran and eroding relations with Russia, the White House suddenly sees crisis in every direction. North Korea's long-range missile test Tuesday, although unsuccessful, was another reminder of the bleak foreign policy landscape that faces President Bush even outside of Iraq. Few foreign policy experts foresee the reclusive Stalinist state giving up the nuclear weapons it appears to have acquired, making it another in a long list of world problems that threaten to cloud the closing years of the Bush administration, according to foreign policy experts in both parties.

"I am hard-pressed to think of any other moment in modern times where there have been so many challenges facing this country simultaneously," said Richard N. Haass, a former senior Bush administration official who heads the Council on Foreign Relations. "The danger is that Mr. Bush will hand over a White House to a successor that will face a far messier world, with far fewer resources left to cope with it."

The huge commitment of resources and time on Iraq -- and the attendant falloff in international support for the United States -- has limited the administration's flexibility in handling new world crises. "This is a distracted government that has to take care of too many things at the same time and has been consumed by the war on Iraq," said Moisés Naím, editor of Foreign Policy magazine.

Even in the context of a post-Sept. 11, 2001, world, the array of tough, seemingly intractable foreign problems is spreading. Renewed violence has expanded to major cities throughout Afghanistan, as Afghan rebels adopt tactics of Iraqi insurgents and as President Hamid Karzai's popularity has plummeted. Iran is balking at demands to come clean or compromise on its nuclear program, despite new U.S. and European incentives. Palestinians launched longer-range missiles into Israel, while Israel has authorized its army to invade part of northern Gaza.

Meanwhile, an Islamist militia in Somalia seized control of the capital, Mogadishu. Mexico's future is uncertain after a close and disputed presidential election. And yesterday, the price of oil hit a new high of $75.19 a barrel.

Concern about such developments is cutting across the normal fault lines in American politics, with critiques being expressed by conservative realists such as Haass and liberal internationalists such as former secretary of state Madeleine K. Albright. Albright said yesterday that the United States now faces the "perfect storm" in foreign policy. "The U.S. is not as unilateral as it is uni-dimensional," she said in an interview. "We have not been paying attention to a lot of these issues. . . . Afghanistan is out of control because not enough attention was paid to it."

Court Reverses Bush Philosophy

The increasingly conservative Supreme Court Thursday reversed a basic tenet of the Bush Administration: they said that the military tribunals that the administration wants to use to judge enemy combatants held in Guantanomo are illegal, as they do not follow established law of the United States.

Bush has consistently ignored basic laws and established institutions, arrogantly claiming Executive rights that don’t exist. In his rush to appear decisive as a leader, he has disregarded the reasons we exist as a society. It is ironic that he claims to want to bring democracy to the world while circumventing it at home. His use of signing statements when he approves new legislation is a further example of this approach – picking out portions of legislation that he wants rather than what has been passed.

What he has done with this philosophy is glaringly unnecessary no matter how he attempts to claim extraordinary emergency crises. This approach is part of why he squandered the support of the American people following 9/11 and lost the support of our allies, turning the US into a pariah, when he had the opportunity to bring us and the world together in opposition to terrorism.

If his approach had been successful, an ends justifies the means argument might have been possible, but he cannot even claim that. Carnage in Iraq continues unabated, Bin Laden is untouched and issuing video after video, and torture doesn’t work according to almost all reports. (The Russians who know a thing about torture claim they only used it when they wanted to get someone to recant. If they needed operational information, they treated their prisoners humanely, because they knew torture would only elicit what the victim thought the torture wanted, rather than the truth.)

The case that The Court just finished also shows the weakness of the Bush position. He claims that he is protecting us from "killers" who threatehn our very existence but the Supreme Court case was about Salim Ahmed Hamdan who was Bin Laden’s chauffeur and bodyguard. How this makes him a dangerous enemy combatant is unknowable. Now that he may face a real trial with legal standards, what is he going to be charged with – doing 70 in a 50 mile zone? If his behavior is all it takes to forfeit every semblance of US laws, we will have to expand Guantanomo to house hundreds of thousands of people who are opposed to our policies