What Will We Tell The Children?

By ThinkProgress on Jun 11, 2007 at 11:34 pm

The indomitable Haggai reads dozens of pages of old Senate transcripts and finds that “Baer’s analysis of the differences between Wayne Morse’s instincts and those of his colleagues in the run-up to the Six Day War is somewhat subtly–but very importantly–incorrect. It just doesn’t fit into the framework that Baer tries to put it in.” I know you’re as surprised as I am.

It’s also worth saying that this is a very odd choice of analogy. Say what you will about the Six Day War, but Israel fought it alone and . . . won decisively anyway.

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Yglesias

Musharraff on the Way Out?

By ThinkProgress on Jun 11, 2007 at 10:10 pm

Probably “within the next few months”, according to Spencer Ackerman and his sources.

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Daschle: ‘New Paradigm’ Of Foreign Policy Links Global Poverty With Security

By Amanda Terkel on Jun 11, 2007 at 8:10 pm

Today, the ONE Campaign launched ONE Vote ’08, which will push presidential candidates to “make the fight against global poverty a key foreign policy and security issue.” ONE Vote ’08 plans to spend at least $30 million to educate voters on the fight against global poverty. Watch the campaign video featuring U2′s Bono, New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, actor Matt Damon, and others:

Today, ThinkProgress attended a briefing with the ONE Vote ’08 co-chairs, former Senate Majority Leaders Tom Daschle (D-SD) and Bill Frist (R-TN), along with advisers Michael Gerson and John Podesta. All participants stressed that the fight against global poverty is necessary to ensure America’s national security. Daschle stated that the “new paradigm” of national security extends beyond military power:

[W]e really can’t simply respond to suicide bombers and think somehow that alone will be the investment in national security that we need for the future. That a new paradigm with a realization that there is a direct impact between our success on the ground in Uganda and our safety and security in the United States can be drawn.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN

As it stands today, even the United States’s closest allies are severely hostile toward U.S. leadership. According to a recent poll, 10 out of 15 countries surveyed believe that United States cannot be trusted to “act responsibly in the world.” All 15 of those countries reject the idea that “as the sole remaining superpower, the US should continue to be the preeminent world leader in solving international problems.” Similarly, global opinions of the United States have slipped considerably since 2000.

Find out more about ONE Vote ’08 HERE.

Christy at Firedoglake and the ONE blog have more.

Transcript: Read more

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McCain: ‘I Regret That Now September Seems To Be A Magic Moment’

By Matt Corley on Jun 11, 2007 at 7:16 pm

On February 4, 2007, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) predicted that “in the case of the Iraqi government cooperating and doing what’s necessary, we can know fairly well in a few months.” Four months later, however, there “has been little or no progress in achieving” key political benchmarks in Iraq, including a lack of “new laws governing the sharing of Iraq’s oil resources.”

Appearing on ABC’s This Week yesterday, McCain reversed course from his previous prediction, instead offering that never in his “wildest dreams” would he expect Gen. David Petraeus “to come back and say ‘everything’s fine now,’ just a few months after we’ve adopted a new strategy.” McCain added, “I regret that now September seems to be a magic moment.” Watch it:

[flv http://video.thinkprogress.org/2007/06/mccainpet.320.240.flv]

McCain said, “General Petraeus is not happy with saying [in] September we have to know exactly whether we are going to stay or go.” But he neglected to mention that the September deadline was originally set by Petraeus, along with Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker. Now, both he and Petraeus appear to be angling for more time.

McCain is hardly a credible messenger to be asking for more patience. In 2003, McCain said that “conflict” in Iraq would be “relatively short.” In 2005, he claimed that “a year from now, we will have a fair amount of progress [in Iraq] if we stay the course.” In 2006, after being forced to apologize for his previous claims, McCain went on to predict “we’re either going to lose this thing or win this thing within the next several months.” Three months ago, he said it was “our last shot” at success.

McCain should focus his “regret” on the fact that he been wrong at every turn in the Iraq disaster.

Transcript: Read more

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Reid: ‘I Don’t Agree’ With Lieberman, Iran Attack Will Only Further Destabilize Middle East

By Faiz Shakir on Jun 11, 2007 at 3:04 pm

In an interview with ThinkProgress, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) today rejected Sen. Joe Lieberman’s (I-CT) threats of a war against Iran. On CBS’s Face the Nation, Lieberman claimed that “we have to be prepared to take aggressive military action ” against Iran.

“I know Joe feels strongly about that part of the world. I do too,” said Reid, rejecting Lieberman’s calls for ratcheting up tensions. “I believe our efforts should be diplomatic in nature,” Reid said, citing the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group and others to hold a regional conference to resolve security issues in the Middle East. Reid also noted that “we are so overextended” that the U.S. does not have the ground troops necessary for a war with Iran.

“The invasion of [Iran] is only going to destabilize that part of the world more,” Reid charged. “I know Joe means well, but I don’t agree with him.” Watch it:

[flv http://video.thinkprogress.org/2007/06/reidint.320.240.flv]

Transcript: Read more

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BREAKING: Bush Administration Loses Major Terror Detention Case

By ThinkProgress on Jun 11, 2007 at 1:36 pm

In a “major setback” to President Bush’s terrorism detention policies, a federal appeals court ruled today that the administration “cannot legally detain a U.S. resident it believes is an al-Qaida sleeper agent without charging him.”

In the 2-1 decision, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel found that the federal Military Commissions Act doesn’t strip Ali al-Marri, a legal U.S. resident, of his constitutional rights to challenge his accusers in court.

It ruled the government must allow al-Marri to be released from military detention.

Al-Marri has been held in solitary confinement in the Navy brig in Charleston, S.C., since June 2003. The Qatar native has been detained since his December 2001 arrest at his home in Peoria, Ill., where he moved with his wife and five children a day before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to study for a master’s degree.

“To sanction such presidential authority to order the military to seize and indefinitely detain civilians, even if the President calls them ‘enemy combatants,’ would have disastrous consequences for the constitution — and the country,” the court panel said.

UPDATE: Read the full decision HERE. Human Rights First has an overview of the case.

UPDATE II: Via ACSBlog, SCOTUSBlog explains what comes next:

[T]he panel concluded, it would grant al-Marri habeas relief, though not immediate release. It said the government had accused him — though not with formal charges — of “grave crimes.” The case was returned to a federal judge in South Carolina with instructions to order the Pentagon to release al-Marri from military custody “within a reasonable period of time to be set by the District Court. The Government can transfer al-Marri to civilian authorities to face criminal charges, initiate deportation proceedings against him, hold him as a material witness in connection with grand jury proceedings, or detain him for a limited time pursuant to the Patriot Act. But military detention of al-Marri must cease.”

UPDATE III: The New York Times calls the decision a “stinging rejection of one of the Bush administration’s central assertions about the scope of executive authority to combat terrorism.”

Digg It!

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Yglesias

Excuses

By ThinkProgress on Jun 11, 2007 at 11:31 am

I have to say that I’m really disappointed in this Ken Baer article. Back in March, Time ran an article about widespread criticism of Mahmoun Ahmadenijad in Iran. Ezra Klein did a blog post noting that the existence of such criticism seemed to undermine the narrative that Iran is a totalitarian society:

For all the talk of Iran’s autocratic tyrants, here you have the president being burned in effigy, interrupted by firecrackers, and condemned to death, all while he’s giving a speech. And he does nothing more than “smilie tightly” throughout it! In this country, if an activist exposes an anti-war t-shirt while the president is talking, she gets muscled out of the room. That’s not to say Iran doesn’t have all sorts of human rights violations of its own, but the attempt to make the country look like some sort of tyrannical, dictatorial regime is just another element of the war propaganda.

Here’s Ken’s take:

. And yet, as in 1967, too many progressives–so chastened by the Bush Administration’s deceptions over Iraq and the egregious mistakes that followed–are in danger of letting the past prevent them from focusing on the real threats looming ahead. Some even go so far as to excuse the Iranian regime, the better to deny the very existence of a threat. One prominent blogger, Ezra Klein, wrote, in a post titled “Autocratic Iran?” that the “attempt to make the country look like some sort of tyrannical, dictatorial regime is just another element of the war propaganda.”

I think Ezra worded the half-sentence that Baer quotes out of context poorly, but taken as a whole I don’t think any fairminded reader could reach the conclusion that Ezra is “excus[ing] the Iranian regime.”

Meanwhile, it’s frustrating to me personally to see yet another go-round of this with Baer who, thanks to his occasional participation on TPM Cafe, has some interactions with progressive bloggers, myself included. Every now and again he’ll pop up to accuse progressives generally, and progressive bloggers in particular, of not taking the Iran issue seriously enough. Each time, I try to engage him in an actual argument about the merits of different policies vis-a-vis Iran but instead he kind of vanishes only to reappear once again, months later, with another effort to pathologize opposition to military action against Iran rather than wrestle with the many, many actual arguments that have been raised by a wide variety of knowledgeable experts as to why this would be a catastrophic course of action.

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Yglesias

Arming Sunnis

By ThinkProgress on Jun 11, 2007 at 11:23 am

Arg. This is just incredibly frustrating. The US-sponsored alliance of Sunni Arab nationalists in Anbar Province aimed at ejecting al-Qaeda seems to be fracturing as some elements of the alliance accuse others of being dupes and collaborators with the American occupiers. And, of course, this is the essence of the problem. It’s simply impossible for the United States of America to be the main sponsor of a credible nationalist resistance to al-Qaeda. The only way to take advantage of Sunni Arab discontent with foreign fighters in Iraq is for us to step out of the way and stop trying to micromanage events. Instead, though, we insert ourselves into every embryonic promising trend and wind up wrecking it.

Somewhat oddly, Democracy has an article advocating that we begin adopting the “arm Sunni militias” policy that has, in fact, already been implemented and that’s running into some problems.

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Yglesias

Bipartisanship (Really!)

By ThinkProgress on Jun 11, 2007 at 11:08 am

Marc Ambinder has some advance skepticism about efforts to build support for stronger action against global poverty and disease on a bipartisan basis:

The second is to create a transpartisan set of solutions. That’s going to be hard. The politics of poverty is perceived as intractable. Liberal and conservative solutions rarely overlap, and when they do, there are distinct political downsides for at least one of the political parties. Remember, the mass of Americans who want bipartisan solutions aren’t the same Americans who vote in primaries. That’s why Fred Thompson talks about bipartisan solutions and espouses fairly conventional Republican policies.

Naturally, this came up a lot in a small meeting I and some other bloggers attended with Bill Frist, Tom Daschle, John Podesta, and Michael Gerson who are, I guess, the key symbols of bipartisanship. I came away fairly convinced. Frist, who turns out to be almost shockingly impressive on this subject, specifically said that in his view “the real turn was the faith-based community embracing an issue that heretofore they’d been uncomfortable with, largely because of condoms.” What happened was less that people with strong religious opposition to condom promotion decided to embrace it anyway, said Frist, but that people reach the conclusion that “we don’t have to be out in front on all aspects of the issue” and just focus on helping in the ways they can help in good conscience (distribution of medical supplies, campaigns on the importance of faithfullness in marriage) rather than fighting other people over different prevention methods.

Frist did, however, concede that thus far it’s the Democratic candidates who “have taken a leadership role today on these issues.” The main obstacle, as best I can see, to bipartisan action on this front is that (as one conservative blogger in the room noted), on the right this kind of thing is specifically identified with exactly the kind of Gerson-ian “compassionate conservative” strain of conservatism that’s becoming deeply unfashionable at the moment.