“Rand Paul’s Defining Fraud”: Behind His Moment Of Non-Truth On Iraq
If the United States were finally going to have a sober debate about post-9/11 national security and defense policy, deciding what to do about the chaos in Iraq would seem to be the time for it. It seems like a tailor-made opportunity for Sen. Rand Paul to showcase the foreign policy of realism and restraint his admirers say could make him a formidable 2016 contender; just this weekend, on MSNBC’s “Up With Steve Kornacki,” former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele suggested Paul might emerge as a leader among antiwar voices in Congress.
But not quite yet. While Paul has voiced caution about putting ground troops back in Iraq – as has the president, and most sane people – on Sunday he tried out some new gravitas by saying he’s open to airstrikes, in an interview with the Des Moines Register. Yes, in Iowa, home to the first 2016 caucus.
“I think we aided the Iraqi government for a long time; I’m not opposed to continuing to help them with arms,” Paul said. “I would not rule out airstrikes. But I would say, after 10 years, it is appalling to me that they are stripping their uniforms off and running. And it concerns me that we would have to do their fighting for them because they won’t fight for their own country, their own cities.”
The problem is there’s little that airstrikes can do to change the fundamental political problems that are leading to the bloodshed. That’s why it’s become clearer, over the weekend, that the major voices calling for military action in Iraq don’t foresee getting the job done with a few precision airstrikes, or maybe a drone campaign to minimize the possibility of U.S. casualties. No, they’re now saying Nuri al-Maliki must go, committing the U.S. to another round of regime change at an unimaginable cost.
On Friday MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell asked Sen. John McCain whether Maliki could be coerced into broadening his government and changing his ways, and McCain answered, “He has to, or he has to be changed.” On Sunday Sen. Lindsey Graham even suggested the U.S. work with Iran to topple Maliki and form a new government. “The Iranians can provide some assets to make sure Baghdad doesn’t fall,” he said blithely. “We need to coordinate with the Iranians and the Turks need to get in the game and get the Sunni Arabs back into the game, form a new government without Maliki.”
That’s interesting. Here’s what Graham said about Iran seven months ago, when discussing negotiations over its nuclear program:
We’re dealing with people who are not only untrustworthy: this is a murderous regime that murders their own people, create chaos and mayhem throughout the whole world, the largest sponsor of terrorism. This deal doesn’t represent the fact we’re dealing with the most thuggish people in the whole world” (h/t The Wire).
Now Graham thinks “the most thuggish people in the world” are preferable to the Maliki government. To be fair to Rand Paul, supporting airstrikes does put him in opposition to the surreal hawkishness of his GOP Senate colleagues preaching regime change. But Paul could be meeting the Iraq crisis to lay out his larger vision of a realistic, restrained foreign policy that avoids such entanglements. Instead, there he was in Iowa taking a middle ground. “Rand Paul 2016: Not as Hawkish as the Old Guys” won’t make much of a bumper sticker.
It’s not the first time Paul’s supposed courage to question the national security state has itself come in for questions. After his filibuster against President Obama’s drone policy last year, he suggested he’d support the use of drones against the Tsarnaev brothers, the alleged Boston Marathon bombers, and even against someone trying to rob a liquor store. “If someone comes out of a liquor store with a weapon and $50 in cash I don’t care if a drone kills him or a policeman kills him,” the supposed libertarian told a shocked Neil Cavuto on Fox. Sounds like due process to me.
He missed another opportunity to stand out from the craven, anti-Obama Republican Party in the controversy over the prisoner swap that brought home Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl. The libertarian hero might have stood up for the principle that Bergdahl is innocent until proven guilty of various charges made by some of his fellow soldiers, or for the notion that we don’t leave our military men or women behind on the battlefield. The complicated politics of Bergdahl’s release, and even the circumstances of his enlisting in the Army – he’d been rejected by the Coast Guard but entered the Army on waivers that became common given the strain two wars put on the military – might have provided Paul with an opportunity to discuss the very human implications of America’s military overreach.
Instead, he used it as an opportunity to make a dumb partisan joke, suggesting Obama should have traded Democrats, not Taliban fighters, to retrieve Bergdahl. Another statesmanlike moment for the man some think could be the 2016 front-runner.
Some Republicans suggest Paul could be a formidable 2016 foe to Hillary Clinton, who may or may not be more hawkish than he is on foreign policy. I say “may or may not” because when Paul is pushed on his alleged anti-intervention, pro-liberty stances, he often goes limp: Drones are bad in Pakistan but OK in Boston? There’s not much the U.S. military can do in Iraq but let’s do some airstrikes because … well, we don’t know why. Airstrikes are quickly becoming the safe way for Republicans to trash Obama for the Iraq debacle without committing themselves to ground troops either, and Paul missed another chance to show the foreign policy courage his supporters are always telling us about.
By: Joan Walsh, Editor at Large, Salon, June 17, 2014
“Up In Smoke”: High Turnout (Wink, Wink) Could Hurt Florida’s Governor Scott
The geniuses running the Republican campaign effort in Florida have now decided that stirring opposition to medical marijuana will help Governor Rick Scott win.
Casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson, a huge donor to pro-Scott forces, recently gave $2.5 million to a new group aiming to defeat a proposed constitutional amendment that would legalize cannabis use for patients with cancer, glaucoma, multiple sclerosis and six other serious diseases.
Recent polls show that between 66 percent and 70 percent of likely Florida voters favor the medical-marijuana amendment, and that the support cuts broadly across party lines. The measure, listed as Amendment 2 on the November ballot, requires 60-percent approval to become law.
The question is why the Republican brain trust thinks it’s a crackerjack idea to attack a popular social cause while Scott is fighting tooth and nail to save his job. The governor will be in deep trouble if thousands and thousands of marijuana advocates show up to vote in November. They’re not exactly his core constituency, so why get them riled?
Scott’s opposition to the medical-marijuana amendment is well known. He should low-key the issue, except to point out that he has promised to sign a law allowing a non-euphoric strain of the herb to be used for treating severe epilepsy in children and other patients.
That’s a humane decision, and it would win him votes.
But now comes Adelson’s seven-figure donation to the Drug Free Florida Committee, dedicated to defeating Amendment 2.
You might wonder why a rich Las Vegas casino owner is trying to prevent sick people 2,000 miles away from gaining legal access to pot. You think Adelson is genuinely worried that medicinal cannabis is a gateway to total legalization, and that it poses a dire threat to the people of Florida?
The man couldn’t care less. He’s all about getting Republicans elected.
According to The Washington Post, during the 2012 election cycle Adelson spent more than $92 million on political races, most of it on losing candidates. He wasted a ton of dough on Newt Gingrich’s flaccid presidential run, and then dumped more on Mitt Romney.
Now someone apparently has convinced him that Scott’s re-election depends on a large turnout of anti-pot voters. Thirty years ago this might have been a viable strategy, but public opinion has shifted drastically all over the country.
The GOP isn’t really scared of medicinal marijuana. They’re scared that it’s on the same ballot with Scott and their other candidates. They’re scared that more pro-cannabis voters will be Democrats than Republicans.
Feeding that fear is the fact that the biggest booster of Amendment 2 is John Morgan, a wealthy Orlando trial lawyer who’s a top supporter (and employer) of Charlie Crist, Scott’s presumed Democratic opponent in November.
A longtime proponent of legalizing medical marijuana, Morgan spent about $4 million on the statewide petition that put the issue on the ballot. Clearly he believes it won’t hurt Crist’s chances in the governor’s race.
So the Republicans now retaliate with the Drug Free Florida Committee, headed by GOP fundraiser Mel Sembler and his wife, who have close ties to the Bush family. The Semblers also bankrolled the fight against legalizing marijuana in Colorado.
Adelson’s $2.5 million check is by far the heftiest donation to the fledgling committee. When asked why the out-of-state gambling tycoon is pouring so much money into the battle against Amendment 2, Scott replied: “You’d have to ask Sheldon.”
As if Scott has no clue what his sugar daddy is up to. It’s an organized plan by Republican strategists that has nothing to do with the medical dispensation of marijuana, the statutory sturdiness of the amendment, or the ludicrous fantasy of a “drug-free” Florida.
It’s raw politics. The platform will be a 21st-century version of Reefer Madness propaganda, and the aim will be to scare people enough to make them go vote against Amendment 2. Those are folks who would also likely vote for Scott.
That’s the GOP theory, anyway.
A hyperbolic media campaign against medical marijuana could easily backfire, motivating pro-pot voters in even larger numbers. A high turnout, no pun intended, can only help Crist and hurt Scott.
If a smart person were making his campaign decisions, the governor would have told Adelson to stay out of Florida’s marijuana debate. Amendment 2 is almost certain to pass, so why run commercials that will only propel more of its supporters to the polls?
The result could extend Adelson’s losing streak, and send Scott’s re-election hopes up in smoke.
By: Carl Hiaasen, Columnist for The Miami Herald; The National Memo, June 17, 2014
“Their Own Genre Of Stupidity”: On Iraq, Let’s Ignore Those Who Got It All Wrong
At noon today, President Obama issued his first statement on the deteriorating situation on Iraq. “This is not solely or even primarily a military challenge,” he said. “The United States will do our part, but understand that ultimately it’s up to the Iraqis as a sovereign nation to solve their problems.”
Obama left the door open to unspecified “actions,” but repeated that the Iraqis themselves had to seize the opportunity that the years of American effort gave them.
This will no doubt be greeted by the President’s opponents with something akin to apoplexy. They will be arguing that in fact the problem does have a military solution, that the U.S. can solve it, and that whatever is happening, everything would be better if we applied more force.
We have now reached the rather ironic situation in Iraq where we find ourselves allied with Iran in an effort to save the corrupt and thuggish government of Nouri al-Maliki, while the army we spent eight years training falls apart. I’m not going to pretend to have unique insight into Iraqi politics (I’d suggest reading Marc Lynch, for starters, as a way of getting up to speed on what has led to this point).
But there are few people who understand Iraq less than the Republican politicians and pundits who are being sought out for their comments on the current situation.
As you watch the debate on this issue, you should remind yourself that the most prominent voices being heard are the very ones who brought us the Iraq War in the first place, who promised that everything was simple and the only question was whether we’d be “strong” and “decisive” enough — the same thing they’re saying today. They’re the ones who swore that Saddam was in cahoots with Al Qaeda, that he had a terrifying arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, that the war would be quick, easy and cheap, that since Iraq was a largely secular country we wouldn’t have to worry about sectarian conflict, and that democracy would spread throughout the region in short order, bringing peace and prosperity along with it.
We can start with the man on every TV producer and print reporter’s speed dial, John McCain. McCain does provide something important to journalists: whatever the issue of the moment is, he can be counted on to offer angry, bitter criticism of the Obama administration, giving the “balance” every story needs. The fact that he has never demonstrated the slightest bit of understanding of Iraq is no bar at all to being the most quoted person on the topic.
For context, here’s a nice roundup of some of the things McCain said when he was pushing to invade Iraq in the first place. When asked if Iraqis were going to greet us as liberators, he answered, “Absolutely.” He said, “Post-Saddam Hussein Iraq is going to be paid for by the Iraqis” with their oil wealth (the war ended up costing the American taxpayer upwards of $2 trillion). And my favorite: “There is not a history of clashes that are violent between Sunnis and Shias, so I think they can probably get along.”
The conflict between Sunnis and Shiites is the central dynamic of the Iraq conflict, of course. Yet today, the media once again seek out John McCain’s wisdom and insight on Iraq, which is kind of like saying, “Jeez, it looks like we might be lost — we really need to ask Mr. Magoo for directions.”
Of late, he has a habit of walking out in the middle of briefings where he might actually learn what’s going on so he can head to the cameras and express his dudgeon. His current genius idea is for the administration to rehire David Petraeus and send him to Iraq, where he’ll…do something or other. He showed his deep knowledge yesterday by saying “Al Qaeda is now the richest terrorist organization in history,” apparently unaware that ISIS, the group sweeping through Iraq, is not in fact the same thing as Al Qaeda.
And the rest of the neocon gang is getting back together. Here’s Lindsey Graham advocating for American airstrikes — and I promise you that if the administration does in fact launch them, Graham will say they weren’t “strong” enough. Here’s Max Boot saying that what we need is just short of another invasion of Iraq: “U.S. military advisers, intelligence personnel, Predators, and Special Operations Forces, along with enhanced military aid, in return for political reforms designed to bring Shiites and Sunnis closer together.” Former Bush administration official and torture advocate Marc Thiessen is appalled that Barack Obama squandered George W. Bush’s glorious Iraq victory.
And Bill Kristol, who may have done more than any single person outside the Bush administration to make the war a reality, and whose predictions and assessments about the war were so spectacularly wrong they constituted their own genre of stupidity? He’ll be on ABC News’ “This Week” on Sunday, so he can enlighten us about what’s really going on.
We’re facing yet another awful and complex situation in the Middle East where we have a limited set of options, and none of them are good. But whenever you hear anyone say that the answer is simple and that being “strong” is the key — as one conservative after another will no doubt be saying in the coming days — don’t forget what happened the last time the country listened to them.
By: Paul Waldman, The Plum Line, The Washington Post, June 13, 2014
“Yes He Could”: Health Care And Climate, President Obama’s Big Deals
Several times in recent weeks I’ve found myself in conversations with liberals who shake their heads sadly and express their disappointment with President Obama. Why? I suspect that they’re being influenced, often without realizing it, by the prevailing media narrative.
The truth is that these days much of the commentary you see on the Obama administration — and a lot of the reporting too — emphasizes the negative: the contrast between the extravagant hopes of 2008 and the prosaic realities of political trench warfare, the troubles at the Department of Veterans Affairs, the mess in Iraq, and so on. The accepted thing, it seems, is to portray Mr. Obama as floundering, his presidency as troubled if not failed.
But this is all wrong. You should judge leaders by their achievements, not their press, and in terms of policy substance Mr. Obama is having a seriously good year. In fact, there’s a very good chance that 2014 will go down in the record books as one of those years when America took a major turn in the right direction.
First, health reform is now a reality — and despite a shambolic start, it’s looking like a big success story. Remember how nobody was going to sign up? First-year enrollments came in above projections. Remember how people who signed up weren’t actually going to pay their premiums? The vast majority have.
We don’t yet have a full picture of the impact of reform on the previously uninsured, but all the information we do have indicates major progress. Surveys, like the monthly survey by Gallup, show a sharp drop in the percentage of Americans reporting themselves as uninsured. States that expanded Medicaid and actively promoted the new exchanges have done especially well — for example, a new survey of Minnesota shows a 40 percent drop in the number of uninsured residents.
And there’s every reason to expect a lot of additional progress next year. Notably, additional insurance companies are entering the exchanges, which is both an indication that insurers believe things are going well and a reason to expect more competition and outreach next year.
Then there’s climate policy. The Obama administration’s new rules on power plants won’t be enough in themselves to save the planet, but they’re a real start — and are by far the most important environmental initiative since the Clean Air Act. I’d add that this is an issue on which Mr. Obama is showing some real passion.
Oh, and financial reform, although it’s much weaker than it should have been, is real — just ask all those Wall Street types who, enraged by the new limits on their wheeling and dealing, have turned their backs on the Democrats.
Put it all together, and Mr. Obama is looking like a very consequential president indeed. There were huge missed opportunities early in his administration — inadequate stimulus, the failure to offer significant relief to distressed homeowners. Also, he wasted years in pursuit of a Grand Bargain on the budget that, aside from turning out to be impossible, would have moved America in the wrong direction. But in his second term he is making good on the promise of real change for the better. So why all the bad press?
Part of the answer may be Mr. Obama’s relatively low approval rating. But this mainly reflects political polarization — strong approval from Democrats but universal opposition from Republicans — which is more a sign of the times than a problem with the president. Anyway, you’re supposed to judge presidents by what they do, not by fickle public opinion.
A larger answer, I’d guess, is Simpson-Bowles syndrome — the belief that good things must come in bipartisan packages, and that fiscal probity is the overriding issue of our times. This syndrome persists among many self-proclaimed centrists even though it’s overwhelmingly clear to anyone who has been paying attention that (a) today’s Republicans simply will not compromise with a Democratic president, and (b) the alleged fiscal crisis was vastly overblown.
The result of the syndrome’s continuing grip is that Mr. Obama’s big achievements don’t register with much of the Washington establishment: he was supposed to save the budget, not the planet, and somehow he was supposed to bring Republicans along.
But who cares what centrists think? Health reform is a very big deal; if you care about the future, action on climate is a lot more important than raising the retirement age. And if these achievements were made without Republican support, so what?
There are, I suppose, some people who are disappointed that Mr. Obama didn’t manage to make our politics less bitter and polarized. But that was never likely. The real question was whether he (with help from Nancy Pelosi and others) could make real progress on important issues. And the answer, I’m happy to say, is yes, he could.
By: Paul Krugman, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, June 16, 2014
“No, Eric Cantor Did Not Lose Because He’s Jewish”: There Were No Other Elephants In The Room
Eric Cantor’s primary defeat by David Brat, an economics professor at Randolph-Macon College, sent the pundits scurrying. Shocked and bewildered, they searched around for theories to makes sense of what they had not anticipated happening. Hundreds of articles were written and dozens of explanations were offered.
One of the more fascinating threads that emerged from the cacophony of ideas put forward in the days following the primary was the effort to find a Jewish dimension to the story. Cantor, the House Majority Leader, was the highest ranking Jewish lawmaker in American history, with aspirations to be Speaker of the House. When one adds to that the fact that Brat is a religious Christian who speaks frequently of his faith, the temptation to uncover a Jewish angle became irresistible. The New York Times, the Washington Post, the leading Jewish weekly the Forward, and a variety of other publications duly turned out articles examining, from every perspective, the Jewish and religious sides of the election.
The problem was that there was no Jewish angle, at least not one of any consequence.
David Wasserman, a normally sensible political analyst, got things going with a much-quoted statement to the Times suggesting that anti-Semitism was at play in Cantor’s defeat. Cantor was culturally out of step with his redrawn district, according to Wasserman, “and part of this plays into his religion. You can’t ignore the elephant in the room.” Sensationalist headlines soon followed. The Week, a news magazine, ran a story entitled “Did Eric Cantor lose because he’s Jewish?” And the Forward ran an opinion column with the headline “Did Eric Cantor Lose Because He’s Jewish? You Betcha.”
But there was no elephant in the room. There wasn’t even a mosquito in the room. Nobody could turn up a single statement or piece of literature coming from the Brat campaign or anyone else that was even remotely anti-Semitic. And sensationalism aside, the ultimate consensus of virtually everyone was that anti-Semitism was not a factor of any kind in Cantor’s loss.
Conservatives, including Jewish conservatives, cried foul, charging that the point of the coverage was a deliberate attempt by liberals to smear Republican voters as bigots. Perhaps, although my own view is that it reflected media sloppiness and obsessiveness more than political conspiracy.
Another claim was that even in the absence of explicit anti-Semitism, the Brat victory represented a victory for evangelicalism and Christian politics and therefore a long-term threat to Jews and all non-Christian minorities. Vigilance about church-state separation is always appropriate, of course, but it is hard to see the threat here. Brat is often described as aligned with the Tea Party, which is a motley collection of organizations and activists; it has ill-defined religious positions not at all identical with those of evangelical groups, which are diverse themselves. Most important, there is much evidence that Americans are becoming less religious and not more so, and, as the gay marriage issue demonstrates, more tolerant in their religious outlooks.
Mr. Brat, of course, likes to talk publicly of his belief in God, and that is distressing to some people, both Jews and Christians. But God talk is acceptable in America, and people with liberal religious outlooks, President Obama included, also make reference to their religious beliefs from time to time. The key for politicians is to be sure that they ground their statements in a language of morality that is accessible to everyone; Americans need a common political discourse not dominated by exclusivist theology. As long as Brat—and others—stay on the right side of that political line, there is no reason to see this election as a religious watershed for Jews or anyone else, or a victory for religious coercion.
A third claim is that the Cantor defeat represents a disastrous decline of Jewish political fortunes. In this view, Cantor’s defeat is seen as part of a broader pattern: There are 33 Jews in the current Congress, both the House and the Senate, as compared with 39 in the previous one. But here again, this seems like an altogether arbitrary and unfounded assumption. Jews are well represented in all areas of America’s educational, business, and political life, and that is not changed in any way by the defeat of a Jewish Majority Leader in the House of Representatives.
Eric Cantor’s fall from political power is interesting and in some ways important. For decades to come, politicians and professors will study it as an example of what happens when a serious but self-referential politician loses touch with the things that ordinary Americans care about and gets caught up in the big-dollar culture of Washington. But they will say very little about the Jewish dimension of this affair—and that is for the simple reason that it doesn’t exist.
By: Rabbi Eric H. Yoffie, a Writer and Lecturer, was President of the Union for Reform Judaism from 1996 to 2012; Time, June 16, 2014
Share This Blog
Unknown Feed- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
mykeystrokes.com 