The American Conservative

The controversy over the 92,000 classified war documents leaked to major newspapers through WikiLeaks hardly presented a bump in the road for congress, which passed $59 billion in supplemental defense funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan on Monday. This is not surprising because 1) congress has shown absolutely no backbone in contesting the war spending proposed by either a Republican or Democratic White House since 2002 and 2) the Wikileaks story, like everything else, has been politicized and so far neutralized by Washington and its dutiful mainstream media so that short of revelations that President Karzai himself has been stoned out of his mind bringing down U.S helicopters with Iranian-manufactured MANPADs (surface-to-air missiles), every pundit and lawmaker with a microphone this week has been resigned to dismiss the contents of those 92,000 pages as “old news.”

“Based on what we’ve seen, I don’t think that what is being reported hasn’t in many ways been publicly discussed, either by you all or by representatives of the U.S. government, for quite some time,” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told the press on Monday. Sure, I can remember plenty of “public discussion” over the Taliban taking down Chinooks with heat-seeking missiles, and an entire Marine company being thrown out of Afghanistan (but not officially disciplined) for covering up the killing spree of 19 Afghan civilians in March 2007. But that’s just old news. My favorite is from Democratic Sen. John Kerry, who not surprisingly lost his one nerve from Monday to Tuesday, saying two days ago that the documents “raise serious questions about the reality of America’s policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan,” and then yesterday warning reporters that it’s all a bunch of raw data with no context. Huh?

Not that the leaks haven’t produced some much needed panic on Capitol Hill, mostly over Pakistan, whom the American taxpayer has been foolishly larding with billions of dollars for decade, the most recent overture coming in the form of $500 million (part of a $7.5 billion, 5-year aid package)  announced by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last week. But the notion that our aid is in part going to the Pakistani Intelligence Services (ISI), which is in turn aiding the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan, did not deter everyone. “I argue that the revelation of this WikiLeaks, you know, thousands and thousands of documents, is evidence that we need to work to continue to build (Pakistan’s) democratic institutions,” insisted Rep. David Dreier, R-Calif. When slap-chop Republicans weren’t busy taking this angle, they were blaming WikiLeaks for harming national security with revelations they insist “everyone knew about anyway.” Go figure.

But while Reps. Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul attempted valiantly to use the WikiLeaks storm as leverage for their last-ditch resolution to withdraw from Afghanistan for good, congress caved — on the withdrawal, (vote: 65-356-9), and the spending (vote: 308-114). Four Republicans did vote with Kucinich and Paul on the withdrawal: Reps. John Duncan (Tennessee), Rep. John Campbell (California), Rep. Tim Johnson (Illinois) and Rep. Walter Jones (North Carolina), all staunch conservatives but long-time war critics. Eleven Republicans voted against the final spending bill.

With familiar shills in the media declaring the Wikileaks story as “nothing new here, move along,” (The Daily Show last night captured one British talker calling it a ‘tempest in a teacup’), our wobbly lawmakers get enough cover to duck the war question through another round of staggering taxpayer spending. For now. Wikileaks’ Julian Assange says more damning documents are on the way. Karzai with a Kalashnikov? We’ll have to wait and see.

…if you’re only going to continue the same practices on U.S. soil? That’s what a coalition of civil libertarians is asking. “Bringing the practice of indefinite detention without charge or trial to any location within the United States will further harm the rule of law and adherence to the Constitution,” they say. TAPped blogger S. Serwer notes,

From a civil libertarian point of view, we’re in a much worse place than we were during the Bush administration, when Democrats were willing to oppose Bush’s expansive claims of executive authority. Now we have only muted criticism from Democratic legislators and hysterical cries from Republicans that Obama isn’t going far enough.

The effect of this is to move debate in the anti-liberty direction: under Bush, Democrats — for largely partisan reasons, to be sure — pushed against his detention policy. The resistance to executive policy was coming from the direction of civil liberties. Now the resistance to Obama’s executive-detention policies is coming not from the Democrats, who have shucked their scruples, but from Republicans who — for reasons of ideology as well as self-interest — demand even greater exertions of executive power. The voice of civil liberties has been excluded from debate within government. The groundwork has already been laid to push things further whenever Obama chooses to expand his power or whenever the GOP retakes the White House.

I can’t understand why Harry Reid is still the Senate Majority Leader when he is so weak and he allows things like this to continue:

Sen. Richard Shelby’s (R-AL) office has confirmed to TPMDC the reports that Shelby has placed a hold on President Obama’s nominees over a pair of government programs set to be based in Alabama. He did not confirm that Shelby has taken the rare step of blocking all of Obama’s nominees, as was reported yesterday.

“Sen. Shelby has placed holds on several pending nominees due to unaddressed national security concerns,” Shelby spokesperson Jonathan Graffeo said in a statement. “Among his concerns” are the progress on multi-billion dollar defense contract that would see planes built in Mobile, AL and Obama’s decision to scrap a $45 million FBI improvised explosive device lab Shelby secured an earmark for in 2008. (emphasis added)

At the very least, Reid should make Sen. Shelby get up and actually filibuster like they used to in the old days.

One must engage in ample amounts of self delusion to defend Republican performance on budget issue in the last few years, but Daniel Foster at NRO’s Corner is up to the task:

Obama is right. Monthly deficits under the recent Democratic Congresses don’t exceed annual deficits under those Republican Congresses. But they come pretty darn close.

Hensarling’s comments likely emerged from a release issued by the Republican Study Committee just yesterday, showing that the total accumulated deficit from Republican-controlled budgets from FY 1996-FY 2007 (and factoring in the substantial surpluses run from 1998-2001) stands at just under $1.246 trillion. The deficit run by Democratic-controlled Congresses in just three years — starting with FY2008 and including the latest CBO projections for FY 2010 — is already $3.222 trillion.(emphasis added)

That means that over twelve years of Republican rule, there was an average annual budget deficit of about $104 billion. Compare that with an average annual deficit since 2008 of $1.074 trillion — or about $90 billion per month.

This would be a powerful argument if the budget was the responsibility of the congress alone, but the president also has a say. Foster parenthetically notes that the country ran surpluses for a time when President Clinton acted as a restraint on Republican budget-busting proclivities. After Bush assumed office in 2001, the restraining factor was gone and Republicans cut taxes while putting two wars and a big new spending program (Medicare part D) on their grandchildren’s credit card.

Of course, no absurd defense of the Republican party’s disastrous rule would be complete without the uncritical link from reliable rightwing booster, Glenn Reynolds.

GOP operatives are again falling on their noses trying to be more PC than the Democrats. Their war on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid for saying in a private that president Obama was well-positioned in 2008 because he is “a light-skinned African American with no Negro dialect unless he wanted to have one” has turned into something truly tasteless. Although Reid apologized to the President for his “poor choice of words,” there was nothing outrageous in what he said, particularly since it came out in a private conversation. I heard quite a few observations similar to his from my impeccably leftist academic associates during the presidential campaign. Despite his left-leaning position as a senator, lots of Americans, I was told, would vote for candidate Obama because he seemed like a non-threatening black. White voters would feel good about themselves if they had the chance to vote for such a pleasant-sounding black candidate.

I’ve no idea why anyone but a PC exhibitionist who is straining hard to win minority votes could take offense at Reid’s remarks. Black spokesmen such as Al Sharpton and Congressman Charles Rangel, who are known to scream racism at the drop of a pin, seem unfazed by his comments. Both urged Americans to forget about this alleged insult and to pass the health care plan. Admittedly such figures are highly partisan Democrats, but I have to agree with them about the silliness of the GOP’s reaction to Reid’s comments, which were made to personal friends. Read More…

If I am reading this correctly, the pending health care legislation requires me to buy insurance but the insurance companies can continue to use preexisting conditions to set the rates that they will sell that insurance to me.  As my wife (in her fifties) and I (sixty-three) do indeed have preexisting conditions, as do most people our age, we have been unable to get any affordable insurance through the current system.  As I am self employed I cannot buy into a group plan.  The most recent quote we received was for $3000 a month for coverage, which we cannot afford.  So the government now might force me to buy that coverage?  This health plan only makes everything very much worse for my demographic, which is the first wave of post World War II baby boomers.

Unless I am missing something significant, it is not clear to me whom this plan benefits unless it is the insurance industry, which will be able to sell plans to lots of young and healthy individuals.

I attended the annual reunion of the 1980 Rome CIA Station last night.  The group is in the sixty to seventy age range, mostly retirees with good pensions and health insurance, and a few are still working for CIA as contractors. It is 100% conservative with most voting Republican reflexively.  Last year’s meeting was held just before election time.  At the last reunion my wife and I were the only two attendees out of about twenty present who were not going to vote for John McCain and Sarah Palin.  When my wife and I were preparing for last night we were somewhat apprehensive, fearing that the reunion would quickly turn into an anti-Obama rant.  To our surprise, however, conversation soon turned to how the US economy is in far worse shape than any politician in Washington seems to understand.  Most were in despair about the future of our country, noting that Congress is so hopelessly corrupted that only a clean sweeping out of all incumbents would accomplish anything.  There was general agreement that the US has become an evil empire, fighting seemingly endless wars that serve no purpose.  Several told horror stories about dealing with the health care industry, this in spite of the fact that they have good insurance, with everyone agreeing that major reform is required even if government health care would be an undesirable alternative.  Surprisingly, there was not a whole lot of carping about Obama, with several noting that he had inherited a mess from GWB.  Ron Paul’s name came up several times and two of the women present commented that what America needs is a new revolution headed by someone like him to restore the constitution.

It being the ROME station we also talked a lot about food and wine, the newly released digital DVD of I, Claudius, the pluses and minuses of HBO’s series Rome, Inspector Montalbano, and the state of the Catholic Church.

I would not want to read too much into alcohol fueled comments made on one evening by a group that is far from representative, but it occurs to me that there is something in the air.  Can it be that the American people have finally had enough of politics as usual?  It would be nice to think so and it would be nice to think that somehow someway someday it might be possible to plug into that sentiment to recreate a genuine conservative movement that is both answerable to the American people and reflective of the national interest.

Barry Bugs Out

Tom Englehardt nails the true nature of President Obama’s address to cadets at West Point:

Certainly, the choice of venue, and so the decision to address a military audience first and other Americans second, not only emphasized the escalatory military path chosen in Afghanistan, but represented a kind of symbolic surrender of civilian authority.

Rush Limbaugh’s wistful musing about a military coup is more oblivious than devious: after a perfunctory, brief struggle, the coup is victorious (Of course, if the president had been arrested at West Point and replaced with a military junta, I’m not entirely sure Limbaugh wouldn’t find a way to justify it. Are you?). Under political duress, the president has accepted the role of conditional, if not yet nominal, Commander-in-Chief, surrendering an authority he doesn’t want and wouldn’t know what to do with anyway. Now he bites his nails and waits, like the rest of us.

But it’s not the president’s prerogative to divest himself of command over the armed forces to avoid its political consequences–elite convention notwithstanding. The extraordinary executive power over war itself remains, insulated from legislative or judicial interference, nominally vested in an elected president, wielded by a cabal. This is dereliction of duty of the highest order. The Commander in Chief has abandoned his post to cower in the rear while his mutinous subordinates take command.

But okay, this is all retrograde and simplistic, I know. Just the sort of thing to set elite eyes rolling, like taking the Constitution and sovereignty too seriously. Let’s crassly accept the “political reality” and acknowledge the asymmetry between the White House and the the military establishment :

The Pentagon dictates policy directly to the Republican Party, Fox News, conservative radio and Internet, while fighting to a draw in the contested middle that is the the unallied media.
Obama, on the other hand, leads a party divided on the war and has a more conditional alliance with a media complex–MSNBC, NPR, etc.–that is both less powerful and less subservient than their adversaries. It’s no great boast, but the liberal media and Democratic Party have, on this issue, shown superior independence and character. The difference casts in relief the decadence of the Republican Party and its staunchest media organs.

Meanwhile, in the Boy Wonder’s White House Joseph Biden, garrulous and glib, self-imagined Caesar to Iraq’s Gaul, is what passes for a pragmatist and sage. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (her position the product of a previous political capitulation), known for taking flight in hectoring recrimination before the galling indignity that is the unscripted media encounter, is sent abroad to placate a resentful world. The charmless representing the clueless. God help us.

The American political class is perennially obsessed with which party will come to power and what agenda it will implement, but, in some respects, this is a shortsighted view. Ultimately, victories for partisan legislation may pale in significance to constitutional changes. (Here, I use “constitutional” in the sense of the broader political system, the balance of ruling elements in the “regime,” rather than just the text of the Constitution itself.)

The Framers consciously constructed our political institutions to check the worst tendencies of each element. The Senate was supposed to be embody something of an aristocratic quality, the House the democratic element, the Presidency a monarchical component, and the Supreme Court the rule of law beyond day-to-day politics. Since the Founding era, though, we have seen tremendous changes in this balance. The Senate is now elected by popular vote and the nature of the Presidency has been transformed through reform of the Electoral College and the development of the primary system. On top of all that, the federal bureaucracy has taken on a life of its own. So our modern political system is a strange amalgamation of despotic, democratic, oligarchic, and bureaucratic elements overlaying the framework of the Founding. The question I’d like to pose: do we have too much or too little democracy at the present?

In an era of judicial legislating and the “imperial presidency,” it would be tempting to assume more power to the people would be the solution. Speaking from a conservative point of view, democracy sometimes furthers our ends (i.e. the passage of Prop 8 over the designs of California’s legislature and courts), but it’s less clear in other cases. For instance, if we did not have the less-democratic Senate, we would clearly have Obamacare by now. According to Tocqueville, more democracy would lead to more concern for equality and less respect for liberty, especially the right to property. So conservatives who rail against “elites” in the name of democracy are often entirely justified, but they are playing with a dangerous fire indeed, one that could burn them in the end.

Those who are interested in issues like widespread corruption of our elected officals by foreigners have no doubt followed the ex-FBI traslator turned whistle blower Sibel Edmonds saga for the past few years.  Sibel has finally testified in court under oath about some of the things that she learned while working for the bureau.  The testimony was in a court in Ohio about two weeks ago.  A full transcription and a useful summary appear at http://www.bradblog.com/?p=7374.  In short, she names a number of Congressmen including former Speaker Dennis Hastert who took money from Turkish lobbyists.  She also identifies senior State Department and Pentagon officials who apparently did the same, including our friends Marc Grossman, Paul Wolfowitz, and Doug Feith.  Interestingly, she claims that Grossman blew the cover of Valerie Plame’s company Brewster Jennings back in 2001, causing CIA to shut it down, so Robert Novak was not guilty of exposing the CIA cover mechanism.  In another interview given a few weeks ago, Edmonds claims that CIA was working closely with al-Qaeda in the Balkans and continued to do so until 9/11. 

As I have reported before, Edmonds is a credible witness who is ignored by the mainstream media and congress because her tales, if true, would be devastating to both political parties and to the Israel and Turkish lobbies.  She is dismissed as a crackpot.  She might in fact be blowing smoke, but now that she has testified under oath and in considerable detail making very specific accusations isn’t it time for someone in the administration to review the FBI files and stand up to say whether her accounts are true or not?  Corruption in the US government is something that no one wants to talk about, particularly if powerful foreign interests are involved.