Vivienne Walt’s report for Time magazine on the handing-out of Iraqi oil contracts strikes me as unduly snarky:

Those who claim that the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003 to get control of the country’s giant oil reserves will be left scratching their heads by the results of last weekend’s auction of Iraqi oil contracts: Not a single U.S. company secured a deal in the auction of contracts that will shape the Iraqi oil industry for the next couple of decades. Two of the most lucrative of the multi-billion-dollar oil contracts went to two countries which bitterly opposed the U.S. invasion — Russia and China — while even Total Oil of France, which led the charge to deny international approval for the war at the U.N. Security Council in 2003, won a bigger stake than the Americans in the most recent auction. “[The distribution of oil contracts] certainly answers the theory that the war was for the benefit of big U.S. oil interests,” says Alex Munton, Middle East oil analyst for the energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie, whose clients include major U.S. companies. “That has not been demonstrated by what has happened this week.”

I think you would have to have a pretty crude understanding of politics to think that the sole motive for invading Iraq was a desire to see contracts assigned to companies headquartered in the United States.

That said, if you do think a desire to see contracts assigned to oil companies headquartered in the United States was a major Bush administration war aim, all this demonstrates is that the war failed to achieve its aims. After all, I don’t think anyone seriously disputes that one thing the Bush administration was hoping to achieve was to intimidate Iran into complying with American demands. The war has not, in fact, had that effect. But that’s because the war was a bad, poorly implemented idea, conceived of and conducted by immoral and unintelligent people. The fact that the war has failed to achieve most of its aims has no bearing on the issue of whether or not those were, in fact, the aims.

You always need to recall that the original Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld vision for the war was something very different. US troops go in, overthrow Saddam, quickly install an Ahmed Chalabi or Ayad Allawi type at the head of a new regime, and then a peaceful, stable, pro-American, unitary Iraq emerges like magic. The bulk of American troops pack up and go gome quickly. Maybe 20 or 30 thousand stick around safely on bases, ready to project power around the region. In that Iraq would contracts have gone to Chinese and Russian companies? Probably not. But the larger point would be that having the country of Iraq under American control in that sense would be about a lot more than a contract or two.

One always hopes that things will change, but as Chris Wickham observes in his excellent book The Inheritance of Rome: Illuminating the Dark Ages, 400-100, right-wing punditry has been hitting some themes for well over a millennium:

Salvian of Marseilles wrote a long hell-fire sermon called On the Governance of God in the 440s which ascribed Roman failures against the (obviously inferior) “barbarians” to their own sins: notably, unjust and excessive tacation, public entertainment, and sexual license.

Some things never change.

At the leadership press conference earlier today, Senator Tom Harkin acknowledged the disappointment of supporters of the public option and other key progressive priorities, and promised that “this is the beginning of health reform, not the end of health reform.”

It’s a reminder that even though this past week on the internet has been full of disputes between progressive friends of this bill and its progressive foes, that’s only a very transient divide. The real divide is between the Joe Liebermans and Ben Nelsons and Al Froms of the world who are 100 percent happy with how this turned out and the Matt Yglesiases and Marcy Wheelers and Tom Harkins who are not. And the crucial question going forward is whether it will be possible to further improve this legislation.

I think it’s very possible, but only if the people who are disappointed by the shortcomings of this bill take appropriate action. First and foremost, that means working as hard as possible to produce as good an outcome as possible in the 2010 midterm elections. Recall that before 2006, SCHIP expansion couldn’t pass the Senate. And before 2008, SCHIP expansion could pass the Senate but couldn’t get signed into law by the President. Elections have consequences. Starting in January 2011 we might have new progressive senators representing Ohio, New Hampshire, and Missouri or we might have new conservative senators representing Nevada, Delaware, and Connecticut. This is a very big deal. Has Ned Lamont been able to beat Joe Lieberman back in 2006, this might have had a happier ending this year. Elections have consequences.

Beyond that, everyone needs to contact their member of congress, their senators, and any senators or members of congress they’ve volunteered for or donated to. I think people don’t believe me when I say this, but letters from constituents matter a lot on the Hill. They matter to Democrats and they matter to Republicans. So get in touch. Tell people that you support further expansion of public programs, that you support tighter regulation on insurance companies, that you support more generous subsidies, that you support higher taxes on the wealthy, and all the rest.

But don’t stop there. Tell them you want to see the filibuster curbed or abolished. Show you’re informed and mention Jeff Merkley. Tell any Democratic Senators who may support you that you want the caucus to adopt discipline-enhancing rules about committee and subcommittee chairmanships.

I’m sure there are other action-items people can think of. But I wanted to make clear that my point about Weber this morning wasn’t just that people should meekly accept compromises. It’s that you accept compromises and then keep on working to build more political power. You do it by contacting members. You do it by urging friends and colleagues to contact members. You do it by donating to and volunteering for good candidates. You do it by turning out and voting for the better candidate in the race even when that candidate is disappointing. You do it by urging viable candidates to mount risky primary challenges against incumbents who don’t reflect the real possibilities of their constituency. You do it by staying engaged, and working hard.

I think this is an excellent bill, all things considered, but whether you agree with that or not the most important thing is what does the progressive community do going forward to enact even better bills in the future.

Noam Scheiber has an interesting piece out about the declining interest of American business goals in manufacturing and the industrial sector. His followup here is also worth reading.

That said, whenever I read something on this subject—or when I was in Germany, whenever I heard a German industrialist being condescending—I do feel compelled to point out that the “decline” of American manufacturing is very frequently overstated. You often hear it said that American “doesn’t make things anymore” but it’s just not true. Industrial production is way lower than it was before the current recession started, but the secular trend is clearly upwards:

What’s declined is not manufacturing, but manufacturing jobs:

In other words, our manufacturing has gotten much, much, much more efficient. Relatively low-value or unproductive factory work has gone overseas to take advantage of cheap labor and efficient transportation. What remains is an extremely productive industrial sector that’s making more stuff than ever.

That doesn’t make communities devastated by the loss of manufacturing jobs any less devastated, or change the fact that recent decades have seen wages for working class men stagnate or even decline.

I don’t want to endlessly rehash the intramural argument about whether this bill is worth passing or not, since at the end of the day I’m looking forward to working with all the netroots activists of the world on more and better legislation in the future. But to repeat—despite flaws, I think this is an excellent piece of legislation. Among other things, it represents a return, after fifteen years, of the idea that congress should be trying to pass major legislation that tackles major national problems. And even beyond that, it restores an even longer-lost tradition of congress trying to pass major legislation on specifically progressive priorities.

But before moving on from this argument, I would urge people to read Vicky Kennedy’s op-ed and also Henry Aaron’s op-ed.