Tethered Swimming

Starting today Bush the Younger will spend the next five days traveling to Israel, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.  He’ll also meet with the leaders of Afghanistan and Jordan.  No one seems to expect much of anything to come of the trip - not foreign policy experts, not pundits, not other world leaders - and the White House isn’t doing much to make anyone change their minds.  There are no grand treaties to be signed; there are no stalemated negotiations which a President may be able to progress; there aren’t even any newly elected leaders to congratulate.  The region is in terrible shape, far worse than it was when Bush the Younger took office, and the trip has no discernable purpose.

During this Administration the United States has seen its involvement all over the Middle East deepen and neither they nor us are better off for it.  Just for kicks let’s take a quick look around the Middle East and see what’s happened in the last eight years, shall we?

Afghanistan - When Bush the Younger took office the civil war that had gone on in Afghanistan more or less uninterrupted since the Soviet invasion in 1979 had reached a relative stalemate along long established ethnic lines.  The Taliban controlled most of the country and the Northern Alliance, a group of warlords aligned against the Taliban, had a small but relatively secure strip of the north.  After the 2001 attacks in America, a NATO led coalition, working with the Northern Alliance, deposed the Taliban.  It was hailed as a new dawn for a forgotten land.

The international community promised that Afghanistan would no longer be neglected.  It wasn’t done out of sheer kindness though.  Failed states, areas where no government held sway, were suddenly seen as threats to the existing international order on account of the fact that rogue, non-state groups could use them as secure bases of operation.  Today, Hamid Karzai, the appointed and then elected leader of post-Taliban Afghanistan, is derisively referred to in the international community as the “Mayor of Kabul” because, get ready for it, much of Afghanistan is not under the control of any government.  Oh yeah, and the Taliban is still a potent force within the country and their leader, Mullah Omar, remains at large.

Egypt/Jordan/Saudi Arabia - Even in a post comprised largely of simplifications this one is particularly gross, but since I’d like to keep this to less than 5,000 words I’ll just point out one thing.  These countries have pro-western autocratic governments which have largely put off their own reckoning with their natural instability because the United States needs them to continue on their present course, no matter the future consequences.

Iran - In 2001 Iran, a theocratic democracy, had re-elected a relatively reform minded President and had, with the exception of suspicions about complicity in the Khobar Towers attack, enjoyed a relatively peaceful run of relations with its neighbors and the rest of the world.

Today Iran has considerably more economic influence thanks to record oil prices and has strengthened its hand in Iraq thanks to an American led overthrow of its implacable enemy and his replacement with Shiites long friendly to Tehran.  The empty bluster which for so long has exclusively comprised our policy towards the Islamic Republic has allowed the government in Tehran to enjoy this newly enhanced international position while seeing its most hard line elements bolstered, its pro-Western reformers given a bad name, and a bombastic demagogue elected President.

In short, during the course of Bush the Younger’s presidency the government of Iran has become less friendly and more powerful.  Bravo.

Iraq - This is, obviously, well covered ground, but it bears remembering that while Iraq was ruled by a murderous despot at the start of this Administration he was a weak murderous despot who was well contained and had, for more than a decade, respected the unwritten international rule that you’re allowed to do whatever you want to your own people as long as you don’t involve your neighbors.

Today the country is bogged down in a civil war that may end up tearing it apart, it is probably the most dangerous place on earth in terms of per capita violent deaths, it has spawned a refugee problem that burdens the entire region, and it has undergone violent multisided ethnic cleansing that will, when all is said and done, rank it right up there with Rwanda in 1994.  American troops are direct participants in the civil war, to dubious benefit, and the war will - conservatively - end up costing two trillion dollars.  Just a quick reminder, that’s two million million dollars.

Israel/Palestine - Again this is largely well covered ground, and we’ve got to be fair to Bush the Younger by remembering that the situation wasn’t exactly promising when he took office, the second Intifada was already four months old at the time.  He did not step into a situation where peace was at hand and blow it up.  However, in 2008 both sides are demonstrably further from their stated goals than they were in 2001.

Israel, whose stated goal is to be secure and at peace with its neighbors, is more vilified, both in the region and internationally, than it has likely ever been.  Bush the Younger’s all but undisguised favoritism caused the Israeli government to get carried away with policies that have been disastrous.  These include, but are not limited to, the unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, which has done nothing to improve the security situation; the bankrupting and crippling of the Palestinian Authority, which has resulted Hamas’ rise to power through legitimate democratic elections; and the 2006 war in Lebanon which failed to achieve its purpose, degraded Israel’s already low international reputation, and was positively catastrophic for the perception of Israeli military superiority.

The Palestinian’s stated goal, a viable and internationally recognized state, is no closer than Israel’s.  Thanks to the callousness are carelessness of the Bush Administration’s policies the Palestinians are now not only required to bear tremendous humanitarian burdens, but they’ve also lost the ability to field a single government with the authority and legitimacy to negotiate credibly.  As if that weren’t bad enough they are no longer even the most aggrieved people in the region.  That unfortunate title, and much of the attention that comes with it, has been diverted to the Iraqis by way of American fiat.

The Israelis and Palestinians continue, together and with the full support of the United States, along their path of mutually reinforced misery.

Lebanon - A state one trumpeted by the Bush Administration as a success story - ignoring the fact that the Syrian withdrawal had almost nothing to do with American actions - has continued along its bumptious course of occasional violence and non-stop instability.  It remains, as it has been since the Reagan Administration, almost completely impervious to American influence of any kind.

This is an incomplete picture and a simplification, but it’s also fair and accurate as far as it goes.  While I could go on about the many other foreign policy fiascos of Bush the Younger it seemed only fair to limit myself to the countries and topics that will likely be on his agenda for his little trip.  No American President can or should be expected to solve all the problems of any region, much less one as chronically chaotic as the Middle East, but at the very least we ought to expect that on the whole things aren’t worse at the end of an Administration than they were at the beginning.  Alas, for this President that is an inescapable conclusion.  He has taken a number of bad situations and made them worse, and while it is easy to dwell and focus on his preeminent failure in Iraq, it’s worth remembering that there are plenty of others as well.

Why is John McCain running for President?  It’s a deceptively tricky question.  We know why Barack Obama is running for President, he wants to end the Iraq War and repair the damage Bush the Younger has done to the federal government.  We know why George W. Bush ran for President in 2000, he wanted spend the budget surplus on tax cuts.  We know why Bill Clinton ran for President in 1992, he wanted to get the economy going.

By contrast, we’re still not sure why Bob Dole ran for president in 1996, something about not liking Bill Clinton and it being his turn.  Substituting Bush the Younger for Bill Clinton John Kerry ran for pretty much the same reasons in 2004 as Dole did in 1996.  Al Gore ran for President because he was Bill Clinton’s Vice President but he never articulated much of a reason beyond keeping the White House Blue.

So, why is John McCain running for President?  Because he wants to keep the White House Red and he wants to keep the Iraq War going.  If there’s more to it than that he hasn’t done much of a job explaining it.  Eight years ago John McCain ran for President, he did it because he thought Bush’s tax cuts were irresponsible and he didn’t think much of Bush personally.  After Bush the Younger was in office McCain spent the next couple of years sulking, apparently very publicly.  He flirted with becoming a Democrat in 2001 and did nothing to tamp down rampant speculation that he might be John Kerry’s running mate on some kind of half assed national unity ticket in 2004.  After that election McCain sold himself down the river and began positioning himself for 2008.

Unfortunately for him 2004 was a very bad moment to begin a political realignment.  At the time there were loud whispers of a “permanent Republican majority” and George W. Bush ruled the world.  Those frightening notions have since been proved the height of foolishness but McCain’s journey was already underway.  He cozied up to the right wingers who had previously despised him.  He wrapped both arms around the War on Terror and George W. Bush.  Now, eight years after he first set his sights on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, he is his party’s standard bearer.  He is their champion.  And his timing couldn’t be worse.

All of this was on display earlier this week when McCain went on The Daily Show.  The first part of the interview is McCain at his best.  Jon Stewart, like many other media titans, has made a lot of bread off McCain in the past and McCain is comfortable with the format.  They’re horsing around, joking about McCain having Secret Service protection now, quoting Chairman Mao and generally doing what talk show hosts and guests do.  As they go to commercial Stewart says, “When we come back, you and I, pleasantries over; we enter the Octagon.”

You couldn’t sum it up any better.  McCain is no longer a fun talk show host who can get away with saying unorthodox things because he’s a Senator for Life.  Now he is a candidate for the presidency and the horseplay he’s so good at gets put away.  The second segment of the interview starts with Stewart bringing up McCain’s tortured relationship with Bush the Younger and gets worse from there.  Despite Stewart giving him plenty of opportunities to get out of it, McCain sticks by his slimy assertion that Hamas wants Barack Obama to be President.   He repeats a macho-tough-guy talking point, that even he doesn’t seem to quite believe, about him being terrorists’ “worst nightmare”.  And he finishes it off with a joking reference to The Office that’s literally scripted.

The likeable McCain, the one from eight years ago who wasn’t a Republican robot, the one in whom independents and even Democrats found a lot to admire, is on display in the first segment.  But that is not the McCain who is now running for President.  That McCain is the one in the second Daily Show segment, the one who implies that Obama is a terrorist, who reads jokes he doesn’t understand off of index cards, whose only response to questions about Bush the Younger is to pretend to walk off stage.

That is the John McCain that Barack Obama is running against.  That is the John McCain who will soon find his media friends turning on him.  That is the John McCain of 2008.  It is a sad transformation, but he has a lot of company.  John McCain may be the last person ruined by George W. Bush.  Let’s hope so.

There was much hubbub a couple of weeks ago over an extremely dumb incident in Michigan.  The facts are not in dispute and here they are.  A guy took his seven year old son to a Detroit Tigers game.  Not knowing that it contained alcohol, he bought his son a Mike’s Hard Lemonade at the concession stand.  Security saw the kid drinking it, the cops showed up, the kid was taken to a hospital(!) and then placed in the custody of the state - away from his father and the rest of his family - for a couple of days.  Eventually, and with the help of some very heavy lawyers from the University of Michigan (where the parents are professors), the boy was returned.  The story made a few local papers and then became internet famous as various people decried the lunacy and stupidity of the authorities.

I’m not going to disagree with any of that, but let’s not kid ourselves here, this is how child protective services works: badly.  The only reason that this particular story merited any kind of attention is because it was one of the rare instances where a respectable middle class family was caught in the trappings of the state’s bureaucracy.  The scary part is that no one in this chain of events had the authority and the common sense to simply put a stop to it.  Setting aside everything else what that tells us is that the system is stressed and broken.  In this particular instance no serious harm was done.  The family was mightily, and unjustly, inconvenienced but there aren’t any real lasting effects.  What’s disturbing about this story is that it raises frightening questions about how the system deals with other, less able, families.

A child is wrongly taken and real harm is done because the parents lack the resources to ably contest it, or a child is rightfully removed from an abusive environment and placed in the care of an obviously sick bureaucracy, either way there’s no reason to believe that the right things are being done as often as possible.

This article from the New York Times two months ago is about the trouble the city has hiring and retaining child service workers and it highlights exactly what I’m talking about.  According to the article the average caseworker in New York City lasts less than two years on the job, including five months of training.  The work is so unpleasant and screwed up that the average caseworker is only able to carry on for a year and a half!  The work is doubtless very stressful and very depressing (dealing with kids in awful situations has to be), but police officers and hospital workers have to deal with many of the same things and they last a lot longer than two years.  That should tell us something.

While I’m sure there are differences between Michigan and New York, the rapid rate of personnel turnover goes a long way toward explaining something as preposterous as a child being confiscated over a harmless mistake at a baseball game.  If the frontline people get replaced every two years it’s no wonder that no one had the confidence to just give the boy back to his father.

The inescapable conclusion is that the system is fucked and it’s going to stay that way until it gets sustained high level attention from political leaders and the public.  Of course that isn’t going to happen anytime soon for exactly the same reason that the story out of Detroit was news.  Middle class people aren’t often affected by the broken system; it’s a poor people problem.  That “poor” is often synonymous with “not white” goes almost without saying.

Long established state bureaucracies generally only get serious attention in one of two ways, either they fail spectacularly or they start costing too much money.  In the case of child services the spectacular failures are usually along the lines of the state ignoring egregious abuse that results in death.  In this case the system failed without killing anyone and while the easy reflex is to point and laugh at dumb civil servants it doesn’t do any good.  Those people are all well intentioned (who would be doing that work otherwise?), what they need is better support.

The blame is not on them, it is on the rest of us, for allowing the system to decay and for allowing the perpetual problems of children to fester - out of sight and out of mind.

Side note:  This has nothing to do with the story at hand, but one of the articles linked above originally appeared in the Detroit Free Press.  It is no longer available free on the Free Press website though; it has been moved to an archive and if you want to read it you’ve got to buy it.  The WZZM (which is a television station on the other side of the state) link I used is still live though.  Just another little example of the bind newspapers are in when it comes to on-line content.

Grand Theft Auto IV was released for two different video game consoles this week; the prior popularity and notoriety of the series means that its release merits the broadest kind of attention. As a cultural spectacle, in terms of written articles and television stories, the game’s debut was up there with the biggest movies, the most bestselling of bestselling books and Nielsen dominating television programs. This is an honor rarely accorded to a video game, but this is the second time in less than a year that it’s happened, Halo 3 received similar attention last September.

What makes the whole thing fascinating and absurd is that the game is a niche product, it is an extremely popular niche product, but it’s still just that. Anyone can go out and see a movie just as anyone can purchase a book or watch a television program. But games like Grand Theft Auto and Halo require something more from their customers and that makes them impossible for an outsider to really understand.

First and foremost is the obvious financial cost. The game retails for sixty dollars but in order to play it you also need to have a three hundred dollar (or more) video game console and a relatively recent television.

In addition to the finances there’s the fact that in order to really experience the game you need to be a somewhat competent video game player. That may seem like a quibble, but take someone who’s never (or only rarely) played a game that requires you to maneuver a character in a three dimensional environment and see what happens. It’s a difficult mental state in which to put yourself and plenty of people just don’t find enough appeal in it to make learning it worthwhile.

Compare that to something like a book or a television program. Any literate person can open a book and immediately know what to do. Any person, literate or otherwise, can sit in front of a screen and pay attention. But only a segment of the population can really get into any video game, much less one as complicated as Grand Theft Auto.

There are a lot of ways to render accounts or descriptions of the gameplay, video of someone else playing the game can be captured, or someone can play the game and then write an account of what it was like. But to really experience what the creators of the game intended one needs to be able to play the game, and for games as vast and varied as Grand Theft Auto that requires both a lot of time and a very specific skill set.

What that means is that any outside discussion of the game is rendered completely absurd. A common frame of reference is needed for any meaningful information about the game to pass from one party to another. Games like Halo and Grand Theft Auto are popular and lucrative enough to generate mainstream media attention, but with the exception of reviews (which serve the purpose of informing potential players whether or not the game in question is worth their time and money) any story or article about the game is telling a hopelessly incomplete tale to anyone who hasn’t spent some time in Liberty City or on a Halo ring.

Is Knocked Up sexist? Or is The Passion of the Christ anti-Semitic? There is no absolute answer, but you can gain all the information you need for an informed opinion by watching them. Is The Da Vinci Code anti-Catholic? All you need is an eighth grade reading level and a few spare hours to find out for yourself. The same cannot be said for Grand Theft Auto or any other large, complex video game. If you want to know what you’re talking or writing about you need to play the game (extensively); and if you haven’t done that then no one who has is going to take your opinions or conclusions at all seriously. Nor should they.

Despite this week’s rejuvenation of Reverend Wright mania there really is very little left to be said about either the Democratic or Republican presidential nominating contests.  On the Blue side Hillary Clinton continues to roll the dice on long odds but it almost certainly isn’t going to matter; the hole she dug for herself in February is just too deep.  On the Red side John McCain has the whole world at his feet and owes Mike Huckabee a great big “Thank You” kiss just as soon as they get a private moment.  With that in mind, let’s play “Jump the Gun” and ask some questions that aren’t on the minds of most folk yet, but soon could be.

The John Nance Garner Sweepstakes - Speculation has already begun as to who the undercards are going to be.  McCain has a list already and despite the media’s fascination with an Obama/Clinton or Clinton/Obama ticket (which makes no sense for either of them) I’m sure each of them has one as well.  The bottom half of the ticket will get more attention than usual this year because of McCain’s age as well and the fact that Dick Cheney has done remarkable things with his pitcher of warm piss.  But in the end the Vice-Presidential nominees really only need to not do anything embarrassing or have any unknown embarrassments in their past.

The political press, bored out of their minds in June and July, will make a big fuss over both picks but the odds of either tilting the election one way or the other are really remote.  While we’re on the topic, no John McCain is not going to select Condoleezza Rice.  Not gonna happen.  I could list a dozen reasons but two will be sufficient: 1) McCain is going to have a hard enough time distancing himself from the current Administration without selecting one of its most prominent members as his running mate, and 2) she’s black.  There’s no sense in confusing the racist assholes whose votes McCain will need by putting melanin on both sides of the ballot.

Senior Moments - This one is a little speculative on my part, but I can’t resist.  Everyone knows John McCain is old; half of the jokes at his expense make fun of him for it.  But there are going to be moments in the campaign, on the stump, at a debate, basically any time McCain is live in front of a camera, where he’s going to forget something critical or misspeak badly.  The trick isn’t to get people to understand that he’s old; it’s to show them that there may be real disadvantages to electing someone of that age.  With any luck, McCain will do a lot of the work for them.

Racist Bullshit Ain’t Nothin’ New - The last couple of Republican conventions have been widely mocked for having a disproportionate number of black faces on the screen compared to the number of black keisters in the seats.  This naked attempt at colorization reached its apotheosis at the 2004 convention when they had a gospel choir perform for a faithful but monochromatic audience.

This year, of course, we have the twist of the Democrats actually nominating a black guy.  I, for one, am excited to see what effect (if any) this has on the presentation of the Republican national convention.  Token symbolism from the right is one thing when the contest still boils down to White Guy #1 versus White Guy #2, it’s quite another when the other party is actually running a minority.  Will they up the number of on-screen minorities?  Increase the number of Latinos on the theory that they don’t like Obama?  Or will they just abandon all pretense and have the lily-white convention they’ve always wanted?

Bring Out Your Dead - I’ll freely admit that I’m engaging in wishful thinking on this one, but I think there’s a real possibility that McCain is going to fall behind in the national polls over the summer and never recover.  The thinking goes something like this, McCain and Obama are roughly on a par in most national polls at the moment - a moment when both McCain and Hillary Clinton are bad mouthing Obama and almost no one is bad mouthing McCain.  In a year that looks to be have a pronounced Blue tint (Mississippi?!) it stands to reason that Obama should open up a lead on McCain within just a few weeks of Hillary’s removal from the scene.  That may not happen, of course, but if it does, and if Obama’s lead holds up over time (and through the Republican convention), McCain and his surrogates are going to start getting questions about being behind and the whole stinkin’ election being a foregone conclusion.  It will be high comedy.

Bush the Younger on the Trail - I am eagerly looking forward to this.  Once the Democratic nomination finally ends, the biggest question in terms of campaign strategy is going to be the relationship between Bush and McCain.  How will the McCain campaign deploy him?  They literally can’t afford to just ignore him a la what Al Gore did to Bill Clinton in 2000; McCain is going to need the money that only Bush will be able to bring in from the crazies.  With a disapproval rating above 70%, can McCain afford to be seen in public and on camera with Bush?

Then again, can he afford not to?  That remaining thirty percent, many of whom have a longstanding dislike of the Senator, is absolutely necessary for a McCain victory.  The convention ought to be entertaining.  Will Bush give a speech on Day 1 and then vanish back to D.C., or will McCain need him there in the hall throughout?  Keeping the Bush loyalists on board while still appealing to everyone else is the single toughest thing McCain is going to need to do.  I am of the opinion that it is all but impossible, but watching them try ought to be one of the dominant themes of the campaign.

This list is by no means complete, and as always there are a lot of unknowns that no one is talking about at the moment.  It’s just a few things to look for as we get into summer and the real and true silly season begins.

The hand wringing and teeth gnashing that followed Hillary Clinton’s victory in Pennsylvania last week was as predictable as it was pointless. Take a look at the headlines (you don’t need to actually read the articles) from RealClearPolitics for the last couple of days (Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday). You’ll be treated to a vocabulary smorgasbord of “Dilemma”, “Low Road”, “Negative”, “Bitter” and the like. It’s enough to make you think it’s some kind of soap opera or fraudulent Zimbabwean election. But it’s all water under the bridge. Barack Obama will almost certainly be the nominee, he’ll be confirmed as such long before the convention, and Hillary Clinton will be a smiling and happy soldier raising money for Democratic candidates up and down the line.

Hillary Clinton isn’t stupid. She’s a stalwart Democrat and she badly wants that big blue airplane, but she isn’t a megalomaniac hell bent on acquiring the nomination at any cost. She can certainly seem that way, but she isn’t. I’ll change my tune on that if we’re still having this argument in the middle of June, but we won’t be. She is a practical and pragmatic person and will not risk her future in the Senate by running the Democratic Party into the ground.

Consider things from her point of view. She spent most of last year as the front runner, the press all but anointing her before even a single vote was cast. Combine that with the fact that as First Lady for eight years she saw, up close and personal, the power which she and many others so desire. Losing the nomination to Barack Obama is a lot of dead hope for her, on a simple human level that’s got to be tough to shake off.

In 2004 her name was bandied about before John Kerry’s corpse was even cold. 2008 was going to be her year, but now it’s suddenly dawned on everyone that 2008 was her only year. Consider, if Obama wins in November there won’t be an open Democratic nomination until 2016. And if Obama makes it two full terms he’ll likely have a designated successor and she’ll be nearly seventy. If Obama loses in November there will be an open nomination in four years but it comes with two huge disadvantages for Hillary. First, her Senate seat is up for grabs in 2012. It’s one thing to run for President when you’ve got your powerful and cushy legislative job to fall back upon, but working without a net would be a lot less attractive to someone who is clearly both very cautious and very interested in seeing her policy ideas put into action. Second, if Obama does lose in November there are going to be a lot of people within the Democratic Party who will place a lot of blame, justifiably or not, on her and her husband. That alone might be enough to keep her from getting this close again.

For Hillary it really is now or never, and even for a seasoned politician with skin as thick as an elephant accepting that kind of loss isn’t easy. The fact that she still has a small chance at the nomination is enough to impel her forward and no amount of op-ed articles or talking head shows are going to convince her otherwise. That is quite understandable, even commendable in a “never say die” kind of way. But the idea that this contest is going to go to the convention, that the fight over Michigan and Florida will poison both states for the Blues in November, is just plain silly.

The simple fact is that while Obama cannot win enough pledged delegates to sew up the nomination outright, he can - and probably will - win enough delegates and votes in the remaining nine contests to irrevocably seal his lead in both. Maybe that happens on May 6, maybe it doesn’t happen until June 3, but it is going to happen. That’s when Hillary’s cell phone is going to ring, and it might be Bill on the other end, it might be Howard Dean, it might be someone from her campaign, but whoever it is will tell her that it’s all over and she’ll accept it.

She’ll accept it because she knows that there’s a difference between playing hard until the clock runs out, no matter what the scoreboard says, and refusing to leave the field after the referee has blown the whistle. She isn’t going to risk making herself a pariah for half the Democratic Party. She’s still a Senator, and while she’s more famous than most of her Senate colleagues, she needs to get along with them if she wants to see her ideas translated into action.

Hillary Clinton is very clearly willing to fight for this nomination, but there just isn’t any real, solid evidence to support the idea that she’s willing to destroy the party to win. If she’s still at it in the middle of June it’ll be a different matter, but for right now she hasn’t done anything wrong. If she’s still behind when the voting is done, and it sure looks like she will be, I trust her to congratulate Obama and then do her best to make it a Blue November.

And just like that, the long awaited Pennsylvania primary ends not in a bang, but in a whimper.  Much like March 4 and then Super Tuesday before it, both sides can crow about last nights results.  And like those previous Tuesdays the Clinton camp may feel the need to crow a little louder because their underlying case remains fundamentally weaker.  Unlike those previous two Tuesdays, however, this time around the conventional wisdom is that the Clinton bid is all but dead and last nights results will do little to blunt that storyline.  Still, she won and so, for two more weeks at least, the show will continue!

It’s time to start thinking about the end of this thing though.  Barack Obama looks to have a chance to finally finish off the Clinton campaign two weeks from now in North Carolina and Indiana.  Otherwise it’ll likely drag into June, though even in that scenario the adults in charge of the Democratic Party will likely force a conclusion long before the convention.  In either case, the outcome should be finalized at least six or seven weeks before the balloons drop in Denver.

During those six or seven weeks Obama and John McCain will be exchanging speeches and sound bites on a near daily basis.  Would the Democratic Party be wise to then have a convention that simply emphasizes McCain bashing and Obama fellating?  Or, will the convention need to be a big intra-Party hug to bring all the Hillary Clinton supporters enthusiastically back into the fold?  It all depends on how long Hillary wants to keep stringing things along.

One way or another all the Blues really want to do is make sure that in the fall it’s all about “McCain vs Obama”, not bitter memories and lingering tiffs over “Clinton vs Obama”.  If Hillary is still a major part of the story through June it might take something as shiny and contrived as the convention to finally push her out of the mainstream news.  If Hillary’s story ends before June, the “Obama vs McCain” story will already be entrenched and delving too deep back into the primary, even under the auspices of “unity” or “healing”, would be a mistake.

It really doesn’t matter though; Obama all but assured himself the nomination back on March 4th.  The real election, the one in November, will be decided in September and October and all this springtime piffle won’t matter in the least, unless Obama loses and fingers need pointing.  Of course if that happens there will be other, much bigger, problems at hand.

Deep down in his heart of hearts, does Bill Clinton want his wife to be President?  I’ve never met the man and I doubt there’s a way to get a truly honest answer either way, but it’s interesting enough that I think it’s worth asking.  The question doesn’t arise out of any criticism or praise of Bill’s actions on the campaign trail, whether he’s been an asset or a liability to Hillary’s campaign is one of those pesky known unknowns.  Rather, on a personal level, would he really want to be the first First Gentlemen after having been President?

Bill Clinton has been so famous for so long that it’s hard to know what really makes the man tick.  We know that he’s an extremely talented politician; we know that he’s a gash hound; we know that he’s a policy wonk; we know that he’s got a big but not entirely unjustified ego.  It had to have killed him not to be able to run in 2000.  A victory, which he was popular enough to think would’ve been probable, would’ve erased the stain on the blue dress far better than any dry cleaning.  Instead he had to sit on the sidelines and watch Al Gore’s weak campaign and the fiasco in Florida.

As a matter of simple marital decency he has to support his wife’s candidacy.  (Though apparently the same stricture didn’t apply to Bob Dole.)  But I wonder how enthusiastic he is about it.  The role of the political spouse doesn’t suit him.

Most political spouses, on just about every level of American politics, are ignored.  All they need to do is smile and wave and not get caught doing anything illegal or tawdry.  It’s usually the wife in the sidecar, but it’s true no matter which member of the marriage is the actual candidate.  Bill Clinton, on the other hand, has been the undisputed center of attention in every room he’s been in for the last thirty years, even a sitting U.S. Senator is still second banana to an ex-President.  All that changed when Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign got started.

The fishbowl life began anew and Bill knows from experience that it will only get worse if Hillary becomes the nominee and then the President.  Even the biggest Hollywood celebrities don’t know the kind of media scrutiny that’s on a President.  For Hillary there’s an upside to once again submitting to the strict brackets the attention would impose on life.  After all, she’d get to be President.  For Bill, what’s the upside?

Everything I’ve read about him these past few years seems to suggest that he spends a great deal of his time traveling abroad and giving speeches.  All of that would come crashing to a halt if his wife became the President of the United States.  Sure, he’d still be able to attend conferences about AIDS in Africa, but everywhere he went would become an unofficial state visit.  He probably wouldn’t even be able to travel in privacy on the airplanes of his wealthy friends anymore.

The inversion that becoming the First Gentlemen would entail is almost unimaginable.  Would be happily get on board that great big airplane to fly to some summit meeting and then be content talking to the other spouses?  Does he really want to be sitting upstairs at 1600 Pennsylvania while Hillary is downstairs in the bunker deciding whether or not to attack Iran?  Does he want to again see his every movement become a news item?

We don’t know what the power structure would be like inside a second Clinton White House.  We don’t even know, nor do we want to know, what the power structure is like inside the Clinton’s marriage.  Certainly Bill would be more visible than an ordinary First Lady, but the Presidential spouse doesn’t technically have a title.  He’d be a uniquely positioned special envoy but he knows, better than anyone, that the Executive Branch is a one person show.  Maybe he’s made his peace with all this, but it’s a question that just gets deeper the more one thinks about it.  Even if he believes unequivocally that Hillary would make a better president than Barack Obama, I’ll bet that some part of him feels a tiny bit relieved if/when she finally suspends her campaign.

Come to think of it, when that does happen, and it almost certainly will, somebody, either in a prominent position on-line or in a newspaper or magazine, is going to ask this same question except it will be framed in terms of, “Did Bill Clinton sabotage his wife’s campaign once it became clear that Obama could win?”  Ought to be entertaining.

Nobody really knows what’s going on with the economy but there have been enough scary signs lately that it is a focus of concern for a lot of people.  Consequently, our presidential aspirants have felt to need to opine and emote on economic issues - nevermind that the office of President doesn’t have all that much power to affect the cycles of the economy.

John McCain gave a big economic speech yesterday.  On his website you can read the text but, near as I can tell, cannot watch the video.  It’s a pretty standard political speech.  Open with an anecdote about how tough things are for ordinary people, take a quick but toothless swipe at executive pay, talk about how the Republicans will once again be the party of fiscal restraint, take a couple of swings at the Blues and eventually get around to the list of policy proposals that will never be enacted.  There really isn’t much in it.

The reason for that light touch is simple and obvious but largely unmentioned: the federal budget and the tax code that supports it are, as presently constructed, profoundly Republican.  The series of tax cuts enacted by Bush the Younger when he still had a Republican Congress to work with have transformed the federal budget.  Even as they’ve lead to record deficits, formerly the bane of fiscal conservatives, these policies have remained overwhelming popular as Republican campaign points.  What, really, is left for John McCain to say about them?

All McCain really has are largely empty promises to help “hardworking” homeowners and the usual pap about rejecting earmarks (a tiny portion of the budget) and making tax cuts permanent (and nevermind that he opposed them in the first place.)  He can’t say much in the way of promising new things because it is his party that put in place all of the elements that are now crashing down around us.  That’s true of a lot of things, most notably the wars, but on economic issues and tax policy there really isn’t anywhere for him to go.

When it comes to Afghanistan and, especially, Iraq McCain’s position is all but lockstep with the current Administration.  He goes to markets in Baghdad and tries to say things aren’t that bad.  But on the economy he can’t say that up is down and black is white because the overwhelming consensus is that down is down and black is black.  Nobody is in favor of waves of foreclosures and a recession.

Instead McCain is left with nibbling around the edges.  More tax cuts!  Less waste!  Uh . . more tax cuts!  These are the same talking points that we’ve been hearing for the last eight years.  The problem is that the public is extremely dissatisfied with the way things are going.  81% dissatisfied according to that New York Times/CBS poll from a couple of weeks ago.  That article also contains a paragraph that ought to scare the hell out of any candidate promising to engrave the Bush tax policy in stone:

“Fifty-eight percent of respondents said they would support raising taxes on households making more than $250,000 to pay for tax cuts or government programs for people making less than that amount. Only 38 percent called it a bad idea.”

Knowing that the minority who lust after permanent tax cuts are absolutely vital to his election, what else can McCain say?  Economy collapsing?  Rub some ‘Tussin on it!  Lost your house?  Rub some ‘Tussin on it!  Financial system in chaos?  Pour the ‘Tussin right on that motherfucker!

On Tuesday There Will Be Blood was released for home video.  That sentence is becoming something of an anachronism thanks to the internet but it’s still a decent enough excuse to talk about one of the most original and memorable movies I’ve seen in a long time.  It is, to say the least, an odd picture, but to my mind it is the first movie I’ve ever seen that invites honest comparison to 2001: A Space Odyssey.

One was made in the past about a time in the future which is now also the past, the other was made in the present about the past, so it’s not an immediately obvious comparison, but I think it’s valid.  I was thinking this in the theater in fact.  The very opening scene of Blood is a dialogue free exercise in human will.  Daniel Plainview, our anti-hero, scratches his living from the dirt in an anarchic and - forgive me - Hobbesian world.  As the mining sequence continued I was instantly reminded of the “Dawn of Man” opening to 2001.  Both Plainview and our primitive ape-ancestors (who, like most movie apes look suspiciously like guys in costumes) are alone in a harsh environment and speaking is neither necessary nor useful.  It is man against nature, struggling to establish some kind of control over a hostile world.

The structures of the movies are similar as well.  Both lurch forward in time when it suits the story’s purpose and the onus is on the viewer to have seen everything worthwhile.  Strauss’s “Blue Danube” would not have been out of place with the haunting imagery of the flaming oil gusher sequence.  Though I’ll admit I’m stretching my comparison a little here, both films end with the protagonist alone, having mastered the world that had been so hostile to them at the beginning of the film.  There are, obviously, big differences between isolating oneself in a mansion and floating above the Earth as the star-baby, but at the conclusion of both films the mastery of the main character cannot be denied.

This is certainly not a precise comparison, There Will Be Blood takes us into the Earth while 2001: A Space Odyssey doesn’t even use the Earth as a setting for most of its runtime.  But in the way both movies conserve their dialogue, in the way both movies linger over beautiful but terrifying images, in the way both movies show human will pushing the limits of technology, there are similarities that are too striking to be ignored.  Deliberate storytelling is a rarity; it can seem slow but it also dares you never to look away lest you miss something as important as it is fleeting.  While life would suck if all movies were like that, There Will Be Blood was a refreshing and stunning movie worthy of being talked about for decades, just like 2001: A Space Odyssey.

General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker testified before the Senate yesterday.  Today they’re going to the other side of Capitol Hill for a similarly pointless day of trying to say as little as possible.  Petraeus and Crocker are up on the Hill as the Administration’s point men.  Like any members of the Administration they are required to hew closely to the Administration’s official position and the only unknown is whether or not one of them will flub a line.  Last September they were up there in the midst of a potentially serious budget debate.  This time around the election is looming and the prospect of any serious conflict between Congress and the White House is close to nil.

The Administration is paralyzed in Iraq; all the brouhaha with Petraeus and Crocker in Congress is a red herring.  If we could’ve brought about an end the violence in Iraq through the application of American military force it would’ve happened by now.  Similarly, if the political opposition to the war had the power to force the President’s hand, they would’ve done so by now.  Instead, both sides, while constantly professing the utmost care for the troops, have more or less agreed to run out the clock on the current president.

Bush the Younger has a little more than nine months of his presidency remaining and barring a truly spectacular disaster (think Green Zone overrun by militants) there will be little to no change in our Iraq policy between now and inauguration day.  Maybe Congress could’ve pushed harder on Iraq last year and maybe they did all that was possible, at the moment it is irrelevant.

The current situation is a political stalemate and neither side will have the strength to change anything until after November.  (No one in a position of authority cares in the least what the actual Iraqis think or want.)  While there is at least a small chance that something newsworthy enough to affect the election will happen during the testimony of Crocker and Petraeus, it is very unlikely.  Even if Petraeus declared all was lost in Iraq, tore the plastic thing from his chest and stormed from the room it wouldn’t make a lick of difference.  The pro-war people would simply dismiss him and continue defending the progress that they keep insisting we’re making.

Even the question of whether or not significant troop withdrawals will be possible is utterly unimportant at the present time.  If the orders to start drawing down were issued tomorrow there would still be a huge number of American troops in country on November 4th.  Moreover, those troops are still going to be coming under attack and suffering casualties, no matter what is said in Washington D.C. or Baghdad.

Besides all that there is one other indisputable tip off that these hearings are pointless: they’re occurring during business hours.  If they were really important they’d be on in primetime.  The presidential debates this fall will be on in primetime though, and they will matter a hell of a lot more than any testimony given on the Hill in April.

As with most things Iraq related, the reaction to the recent fighting in Basra would be extremely funny if it was just another domestic American political soap opera instead of a war that kills and maims people. The story arc is so familiar that it’s become boring. Something bad happens; the White House and its cadre of fanatics declare the disaster a sign of progress; the lie eventually becomes inoperable; the war continues. The links below are to stories from The New York Times.

Wednesday - 26 March - Headline: Iraqi Crackdown on Shiite Forces Sets Off Fighting

4th paragraph: In Basra, American and British jets roared through the skies, providing air support for the Iraqi military. A British Army spokesman for southern Iraq, Maj. Tom Holloway, said that while Western forces had not entered Basra, the operation already involved nearly 30,000 Iraqi troops and police forces, with more arriving. “They are clearing the city block by block,” Major Holloway said.

Thursday - 27 March - Headline: Iraqi Army’s Assault on Militias in Basra Stalls

2nd paragraph: American officials have presented the Iraqi Army’s attempts to secure the port city as an example of its ability to carry out a major operation against the insurgency on its own. A failure there would be a serious embarrassment for the Iraqi government and for the army, as well as for American forces eager to demonstrate that the Iraqi units they have trained can fight effectively on their own.

Friday - 28 March - Headline: Assault by Iraq on Shiite Forces Stalls in Basra

1st paragraph: American-trained Iraqi security forces failed for a third straight day to oust Shiite militias from the southern city of Basra on Thursday, even as President Bush hailed the operation as a sign of the growing strength of Iraq’s federal government.

Saturday - 29 March - Headline: U.S. Airstrikes Aid Iraqi Army in Basra

2nd & 3rd paragraphs: Although American officials have emphasized that the campaign in the southern port city of Basra is directed by Iraqi forces, the Iraqis have failed so far to wrest control of neighborhoods in Basra from Shiite militias and asked the Americans and British to step in. The Iraqi military does not have jet fighters.

In Baghdad, American helicopters exchanged fire with Mahdi Army militia members in the Shiite neighborhood of Sadr City, and rockets crashed into the office of Iraq’s Sunni vice president in the heavily fortified Green Zone, killing a security guard.

Sunday - 30 March - Headline: Shiite Militias Cling to Swaths of Basra and Stage Raids

1st paragraph: Shiite militiamen in Basra openly controlled wide swaths of the city on Saturday and staged increasingly bold raids on Iraqi government forces sent five days ago to wrest control from the gunmen, witnesses said, as Iraqi political leaders grew increasingly critical of the stalled assault.

Monday - 31 March - Headline: Cleric Suspends Battle in Basra by Shiite Militia

1st paragraph: The Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr on Sunday called for his followers to stop fighting in Basra and in turn demanded concessions from Iraq’s government, after six days in which his Mahdi Army militia has held off an American-supported Iraqi assault on the southern port city.
The substance of Mr. Sadr’s statement, released Sunday afternoon, was hammered out in elaborate negotiations over the past few days with senior Iraqi officials, some of whom traveled to Iran to meet with Mr. Sadr, according to several officials involved in the discussions.

Tuesday - 1 April - Headline: Iraq Seems Calmer After Cleric Halts Fighting

4th paragraph: The uncertainty over Mr. Sadr’s statements was underlined at a news briefing in Baghdad on Monday, where Ali al-Dabbagh, a government spokesman, dodged questions about whether Mr. Maliki would honor Mr. Sadr’s demands. When asked if the government would release Mahdi Army detainees who had not been accused of a crime, for instance, Mr. Dabbagh said there had long been plans to let some of them go.
He said the government would “look into” Mr. Sadr’s concerns.

Wednesday - 2 April - Headline: Britain Puts Troop Drawdown on Hold

6th paragraph: [British defense secretary Desmond Browne] said the use of British ground troops in the fighting was ordered “in extremis,” suggesting that the deployment of forces from the British base at Basra was a last-ditch measure to save Iraqi troops.

Thursday - 3 April - Headline: U.S. Cites Planning Gaps in Iraqi Assault on Basra

5th paragraph: The Bush administration has portrayed the Iraqi offensive in Basra as a “defining moment” - a compelling demonstration that an Iraqi government that has long been criticized for inaction has both the will and means to take on renegade militias.

Friday - 4 April - Headline: More Than 1,000 in Iraq’s Forces Quit Basra Fight

1st & 2nd paragraphs: More than 1,000 Iraqi soldiers and policemen either refused to fight or simply abandoned their posts during the inconclusive assault against Shiite militias in Basra last week, a senior Iraqi government official said Thursday. Iraqi military officials said the group included dozens of officers, including at least two senior field commanders in the battle.
The desertions in the heat of a major battle cast fresh doubt on the effectiveness of the American-trained Iraqi security forces. The White House has conditioned further withdrawals of American troops on the readiness of the Iraqi military and police.

That’s a pretty neat little summation of the Basra affair. It also serves as a scale model of our entire Mesopotamian adventure, including the usual denouement where the Iraqis and the Iraqi government are cited as the root of the problem. As though, to paraphrase the evil king in Braveheart, the only trouble with Iraq is that it’s full of Iraqis. The real trouble with Iraq is that it is under an unpopular and ineffective foreign occupation.

Recall that the - ahem - surge was the government’s response to the 2006 elections, Donald Rumsfeld’s resignation and the Baker-Hamilton report. The rational was that the occupation of Iraq could be made to work with better leadership and strategy. Yet here we are a year later and very little has changed. The war continues to go downhill and whatever fresh bullshit is trotted out by those who defend its continuation cannot long conceal that simple and immutable fact.

Bush the Younger was in Ukraine yesterday and he was extending his support to the idea that Ukraine (and Georgia) should be permitted to begin joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.  I have no idea how serious Bush is in his desire to see Ukraine put on the path to membership, other NATO members are less than enthusiastic.  For all I know he was just saying nice things while he was a guest in their country and has no intention of following up in the least, but I am in complete agreement.  NATO should be expanded to include Ukraine and Georgia.

NATO was created, more or less, to ensure that in the event of a Soviet attack on Western Europe the United States would have no choice but to commit immediately and totally to the fight.  Before the alliance was founded the United States had twice tried to stay out of European continental wars and twice failed to do so.  NATO recognized the reality that Europe and America are, both culturally and economically, bound much closer than most places separated by 3,000 miles of ocean.

The Soviet Union hasn’t existed for seventeen years and that has naturally raised questions about the purpose of NATO.  In a world that remains conflict ridden and unstable an alliance as successful as the one between the North Americans and the Western Europeans was not to be casually discarded, whatever its original justification.  NATO is comprised of countries that no longer have any significant territorial or security disagreements (Cyprus and Gibraltar being two prominent but manageable examples to the contrary) and share a devotion to representative government and liberal society.  They make natural allies.

After the Berlin Wall fell and the two Germanys reunited, the NATO membership of the newly reunited country endured.  Nine years ago NATO was expanded again, with quite a bit of controversy, to three former members of the Warsaw Pact.  Four years ago a slew of former Eastern Bloc states and three (3!) former Soviet Socialist Republics were brought in as well.  In the new world the threat of invasion was less than the threat of instability.  NATO remained a defensive alliance, but it also became a way to bind the new democracies (where a slide back to totalitarian government was not out of the question) to the older and more established ones.  These were precedented moves; Spain joined the alliance in 1982 after it emerged from the dictatorship of General Franco.

Expanding NATO is not altruism on the part of America, Britain, France, Germany or any of the older members.  Saying to countries like Poland, the Baltic republics, or even Ukraine that they are not welcome at the Atlantic table because they’re just too close to Russia is the worst kind of short sighted realpolitik.  The article in this morning’s New York Times quotes the French prime minister thusly, “We are opposed to the entry of Georgia and Ukraine because we think that it is not a good answer to the balance of power within Europe and between Europe and Russia.”  That’s an awful lot of words to basically say, “Please don’t turn off our natural gas.”

It’s unfortunate if the Russians are antagonized by expansion, but they need the cooperation of Europe (as a market for natural gas and for other economic reasons) just as much as the Europeans need them.  The last time I checked one sovereign nation does not have the right to tell another, no matter their history together, what groups it may and may not join and what policies it may and may not pursue.

The point is to tie North America and Europe that much closer because together we are all stronger.  At the moment Ukraine may not have much to directly contribute to the security of the United States, but that may not be the case twenty years from now.  It’s a country of 45 million people and while it is neither rich nor strong today, a few decades down the road it very well could be both.  Would the French Prime Minister prefer the Ukraine become a strong and wealthy country with close ties to Russia?  Or to Western Europe?

In the more immediate future the newer NATO members have proven eager to contribute troops to peacekeeping missions and generally done what they can to prove that they belong as well.  In an effort to pad its application Ukraine is already supporting NATO missions around the globe.  A little fresh blood in the club from time to time is a healthy thing.

Let’s also not forget that the attacks of 11 September 01 caused NATO to invoke Article 5 (the one that stipulates that an attack on one member is considered an attack on them all) for the first time.  That means that the war everyone wishes got more attention was a NATO war, while the Iraq war is not.  Anyone who would like to remind the Russians that NATO is not an American led gang of international vigilantes can point to the lack of NATO sanction for the 2003 invasion of Iraq as proof positive.

The trans-Atlantic alliance remains the defining security arrangement of the world.  As much blood as has been spilled in all the regional and ethnic conflicts, most of which sprung up after the Cold War, the terrible specter of a real World War III has never been more remote.  This is the kind of democracy promotion that the United States and friends can and should be doing.  A democratically elected and legitimate government is asking to join the premier club of democratic governments.  The right answer, in all kinds of ways, is “Yes”.

Brief Note:  At the moment Greece is unhappy with Macedonia’s application to NATO because it doesn’t want the country of Macedonia, which it refers to as the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, to have exclusive rights to the term “Macedonia”.  There was even a full page ad in today’s New York Times (page A15) detailing how much of historical Macedonia is in modern day Greece.  I do not know the details of the grudge or how it got started, my guess is pride and money are at stake somehow, but I find this whole thing hilarious.

A couple of weeks ago I fixed up an old Hewlett-Packard laptop for my dad.  It had been my brother’s laptop but as he’s moved on to a new and better one the three year old HP got passed down (or is it up?).  Once I was done removing all of my brother’s old software (which was now merely clutter) I installed Firefox, added Adblock and Flashblock to keep my dad’s surfing quick and painless, and imported a bunch of my news and politics bookmarks.  Thanks to wireless internet my dad can now sit comfortably in his chair by the fireplace and read endless stories about Iraq, Afghanistan, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John McCain and George W. Bush.

Then one morning last week my dad and I were talking and he said he had spent a couple of hours that morning reading on his laptop.  His previous custom had been to read the paper copy of The New York Times that arrives on his doorstep every morning.  He said he preferred the laptop.  I told him that even though there is an unlimited amount of high quality content on-line, I still like to begin my day by reading the A section of the Times.  This is backwards; the seventy year old is supposed to be the one defending the ink and paper version, not the one trashing it.  Maybe he’s just enamored with his new toy and he’ll eventually return to the paper; then again, if a septuagenarian prefers the on-line version maybe the newspapers are in even more trouble than is generally suspected.

Personally though, I like the dead tree version of the Times in the morning.  I even have my own arrogant, self-congratulatory saying to go along with it.  As far as I’m concerned, “There are two ways to start your day, one is having read The New York Times, the other is not.”  Despite my smarmy syntax I am not so foolish as to think that reading the Times makes me a better person, or even better informed than other people.  I like to read the Times in the morning because it’s a well written, well edited little window on the world.

It’s the same reason I like the dead tree version of the Economist.  The Times and the Economist provide news from parts of the world I wouldn’t ordinarily hear about.  They have their editorial biases, but so does everything else and, for my money, they are the two best print sources of English language international news.

There are more stories every day than any one man can take in, and that’s a good thing.  But I don’t need to know about them immediately.  It doesn’t matter if I get the news about Europe, Africa, South America or any other worldly place a day or two after the fact.  It happened didn’t it?  There’s no need to rush something like the news.  Very little of it is immediately pertinent to my life, but immediacy doesn’t make it any less interesting.

Our Mesopotamian adventure reached two milestones this week, four thousand dead Americans and five years duration.  Neither is to be celebrated but both provide useful excuses for a sprinkling of news coverage and the usual back and forth over whether or not the war is working, was worth it, etcetera.  It amounts to little more than padding; last fall the Democratic Congress and Bush the Younger reached a stalemate over the war and more or less conspired to postpone a reckoning until after the election.  All debate about Iraq since has been a sideshow.  The next truly meaningful exchanges about the war will occur this fall and will be between Senators Obama and McCain (plus their various proxies and subordinates).

Regardless of the outcome of the war, or of the election on which it hangs, there have been countless Iraqis who have in good faith aided our efforts in their country.  This includes interpreters who’ve gone out with our military units, stringers and locals who’ve worked with our journalists, and various staff who keep American bases, as well as the Green Zone, up and running.  (George Packer wrote a brutal article about some of these people a year ago in The New Yorker.)   These people and their families took the United States of America up on an offer to help their country and yet all but a lucky few have been left to twist in the wind should they need to escape the flaming remains of Iraq.

It should come as no surprise that we’ve shit all over these people, shitting on brown people is one of the defining characteristics of the US Government going all the way back to its inception, but that doesn’t make it any less shameful.  Refugees International has a page set up at their website where you can see just how screwed up the Iraqi refugee situation is.  Near the bottom is this:

The U.S. fell far short of its promise to permanently resettle 7,000 vulnerable Iraqis in the 2007 fiscal year.

The U.S. promised to resettle 12,000 Iraqis in the 2008 fiscal year, but the program is off to a slow start.

That is beyond pathetic, beyond embarrassing.  We took in 1,608 Iraqis between October 2006 and September 2007?  Words fail.  We ought to be throwing the doors open to these people, for their benefit and ours.

There are three main objections to that policy.  The first is that some of them may be terrorists in hiding trying to get over here to hurt us.  The second is that resettling large numbers of Iraqis in the US is tantamount to admitting that our Iraq policy has failed.  The third is the old NIMBY objection.  None of those three excuses amounts to a hill of beans.

Whether we’re talking about people who’ve worked for our government in Iraq or ordinary civilians who found their lives in danger and had to flee, the idea that some of them might be terrorists in hiding is the stuff of bad fiction.  It’s not an ideal situation, it’s not the striving and yearning to breathe free of immigrant lore, but these are people who’ve had their lives thrown into utter chaos and disorder by our actions.  Extending our hospitality to as many of them as possible is the least we can do.

As for admitting that our policies have failed, well c’mon we do that every day.  Even by the Bush Administration’s own reckoning things are fragile and progress is slow.  What’s one more euphemism?  Call it “temporary”, call them “guests”, use whatever bland meaningless terms you need to use to convince the press and the public that they aren’t coming here permanently and get them on an airplane.

Then there’s good old NIMBY.  Refugees are not something ordinary people generally want around them and their homes, but this is a big country and according to the 2000 census there were already 1.2 million Americans of Arab descent.  Most of those aren’t Iraqis of course, but there is already large population here (which has almost certainly grown since 2000) that can be used to help resettle Iraqis who can no longer live in Iraq.

There would be obvious benefits to the new arrivals, but we would benefit as well.  This is a war which most Americans don’t like thinking about, even now when we’re in the midst of it, and the day it ends we’ll do our best to forget it as quickly as possible.  By coming to America and settling here Iraqis would serve as a living reminder of the war, and the more of them who stay, who become Americans just like the rest of us, the better off we’ll all be.  Home grown Americans would benefit by seeing that Arabs really are just people; the new Americans might understand this country as more than a far off place that sends troops all over the world.

We owe these people a debt of honor, the ones who’ve worked for us and the regular refugees.  A simple enough starting point ought to be the former group.  We asked for their assistance and they gave it, sometimes at personal risk that would shrivel the guts of people who’ve never had to face such choices.  Of all the failures of our policies in that miserable country, this one is unambiguously indefensible.

I have spent a great deal of time watching college basketball over the last couple of days and there are eight more games scheduled for this afternoon. It is a wonderful spectacle and for much of the time multiple games are occurring at once, helping to ensure that something worth watching is on at all times. There are more games than can be fit on a single screen or channel and for the low, low price of seventy dollars my benevolent conduit overlords at DirecTV allow me to watch every single game. Terms and conditions, as they are wont to do, may apply.

Take Thursday night for example. On my channel guide there are four standard definition and four high definition channels in the 700 range, one for each of the four different live CBS feeds coming from around the country. Of course, I also have a local CBS feed as well. Each of the four dedicated basketball channels is set to one; for Thursday night the last stanza of games was Notre Dame/George Mason, Wisconsin/Cal State Fullerton, West Virginia/Arizona, and UCLA/Mississippi Valley State. The local CBS station also lists one of the games, in my case it was the Notre Dame/George Mason game.

The dedicated channels do not break away from coverage no matter how lopsided the score becomes. That’s what they are there for after all, to give you the option to watch any game regardless of other considerations. The local CBS feed, on the other hand, is just a regular network affiliate broadcasting to a market and is under no obligation to stick with a single game. Indeed, they’ll switch from a blowout to a closer matchup and rightfully so.

Here’s where the fine print comes in to play. On Thursday night my dedicated Notre Dame/George Mason channel was blank because that was the game slated for my local CBS affiliate. Blackout rules keep satellite television customers shackled to their local affiliates no matter what. In theory I had access to all four concurrent games, but after just a few minutes of play Notre Dame pulled way ahead and my local CBS affiliate jumped to another game. Even though my channel guide had Notre Dame/George Mason listed for the local affiliate, of the forty total minutes of court time in that game it probably showed fifteen of them, ten at the beginning and five right after halftime. The dedicated channel stayed blacked out even after the local affiliate pulled away from its listed game.

I have no problem with my local CBS affiliate broadcasting television programs. I do have a problem with the idea that their license to broadcast combined with an agreement with the network results in a some kind of legal claim on what my eyeballs are allowed to watch. Of course if I was dead set on still watching the Notre Dame/George Mason game I could’ve watched it for free on CBS’ website. Apparently, reduced picture quality and occasional buffering problems absolve CBS of any non-compete obligation with its local affiliate. In the grand scheme of things this is hardly a serious issue, but it points to just how screwy the rules governing something as simple and fundamental as television are.

Without turning this into some kind of populist screed about television and media, I’d like to point out that these ridiculous blackout rules are just the tip of the iceberg. There was the feud Comcast got into with the fledgling Big Ten Network last year where football fans were deprived of the right to watch their teams because two large organizations couldn’t come to an agreement. It isn’t limited to sports either, on cable or satellite no one has the ability to choose which specific channels to receive. Oh no, you must choose which package of channels, ensuring you and your kids have access to channels you don’t watch and may not even want available. Next February the way television is broadcast is going to change and no one really knows how many ordinary people will be affected. The less said about infrastructure exclusivity, net neutrality and the embarrassing state of broadband internet access the better.

In the end it’s about finding the easiest and most efficient way to transmit digital data from one location to another. This includes being able to watch a live basketball game from 2,000 miles away just as much as it includes the simple acts of writing an e-mail or placing a telephone call. The current systems for doing so are rickety and riddled with legal and logical contradictions. At the moment it isn’t much of a problem, here in 2008 were are still in all but the most primitive stages of the digital world. But digital communication, on any scale, over any distance, is one of the most fundamental aspects of our lives. The technology that provides the bedrock of this world is constantly improving, our thinking about it needs to keep up or we’re going to find ourselves in a world where digital communication is fundamentally unfair or, worse yet, doesn’t work properly.

Barack Obama seems to be getting high marks for his speech yesterday but it’s too soon to tell what the final spin and lasting fallout will be. It may put this farcical stuff about his preacher behind him for awhile, it may not. It may be a brilliant campaign pivot that neutralizes the reverend’s comments by putting them in the broader contexts of race and our silly political discourse, it may not. It doesn’t really matter either way though because a month from now this whole incident is barely going to be remembered.

The more - ahem - controversy the Senator from Illinois endures this early in the year the better off he is likely to be later. We can use Rev. Wright’s comments as a topical example of why. The money quote of this little tempest is the phrase “God damn America” in place of the more traditional, but equally meaningless, “God bless America”. Those three little words put the huffers and puffers of the flag-pin set into a tizzy and caused enough media hyperventilating that the candidate himself had to go on television and give a big speech.

There are a lot of people here in America who wear their religion and their patriotism right on their sleeves (hopefully lots of people can see them there!). To see those two concepts employed in the reverse of their accustomed expectations must have been very distressing. But I’ve got two pieces of bad news for anyone who thinks this is long-term damaging to Obama’s campaign. First, Obama didn’t say it, someone else did. Even if that someone is close to Obama it still isn’t him. Second, this whole thing is primarily about shock value and shock wears off rapidly in contemporary America.

“God damn America” is only going to work once as serious political theater. It’ll be in pamphlets and talking points from now through November - no doubt about that, but the big media storm is only going to happen once, here in March, eight long months (two-hundred and forty-one news cycles!) from the election. It’s not news a second time unless the good reverend has some even more cutting rhetorical bombs in his repertoire. It’s tough to imagine one as concise and biting as “God damn America” though. My personal suggestion would be “God should make white people get abortions” but it doesn’t seem too likely that he’d say that.

In any case Rev. Wright has now been - ahem - exposed to the national media. He’s no longer working directly for the campaign and any time his comments come up again Obama or one of his surrogates can point to yesterday’s speech and call the matter closed. That isn’t going to satisfy everyone, but long before November it is that position, rather than outrage over the remarks, which will occupy the media high ground. The same goes for the picture of Obama in the turban, the lunatic “madrassa” story from last year, and all this other crap; they’re good for a couple of news cycles and little more.

If this had come out right before Halloween it would be different. An October Surprise, which may still be in store for us, is a hallowed American political tradition. But a “March Surprise”, if there even is such a thing, probably describes a college basketball game.

On Thursday Tom Engelhardt posted one of his customarily circumspect and informative essays about our situation in Iraq, “The Eight Inside-the-Beltway Fundamentals of the Iraq War“.  It is worth reading in full, though two specific sections immediately jump out.  The first was his list of three different scenarios (one for each of the three remaining presidential contestants) for what our involveme