Posts by Joshua Holland

Joshua Holland is an editor and senior writer at AlterNet.

At Least 5 Need Government-Run Health-Care at Bachmann's Angry Protests Against Government-Run Health-Care
Posted by Joshua Holland, AlterNet on November 6, 2009 at 1:27 PM.

I find Dana Milbank annoying. Actually, I think he's the living, breathing incarnation of everything wrong with the Beltway media.

Today's column is just as cynical, superficial and snarky as the rest. The argument he makes is typically obtuse.

BUT, it's directed at those annoying Tea-Baggers, so it amuses me!

Technically, Thursday's GOP-sponsored rally at the Capitol was a "press conference" (a Capitol Police spokeswoman explained that the lawmakers didn't have a permit for a demonstration). The speakers took no questions at this news conference, instead calling, at least a dozen times, for the Pelosi bill's death.

"Remember some of the other battles: Lexington and Concord, Hamburger Hill, Pork Chop Hill?" said Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa). "We're not going to leave this hill until we kill this bill!"

[...]

But, as with a similar rally by Democrats a week before, unpredictable things tend to happen in the wide-open spaces of the Capitol's West Front. Minutes into the rally, a breeze toppled the American flag from the stage.

More ominously, a man standing just beyond the TV cameras apparently suffered a heart attack 20 minutes after event began. Medical personnel from the Capitol physician's office -- an entity that could, quite accurately, be labeled government-run health care -- rushed over, attaching electrodes to his chest and giving him oxygen and an IV drip.

This turned into an unwanted visual for the speakers, as a D.C. ambulance and firetruck, lights flashing, pulled in just behind the lawmakers. A path was made through the media section, and the patient, attended to by about 10 government medical personnel, was being wheeled away on a stretcher just as House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) stepped to the microphone. "Join us in defeating Pelosi care!" he exhorted. A few members stole a glance at the stretcher. Boehner may have been distracted as well. He told the crowd he would read from the Constitution, then read the "we hold these truths" bit from the Declaration of Independence.

[...]

By the time it was over, medics had administered government-run health care to at least five people in the crowd who were stricken as they denounced government-run health care. But Bachmann overlooked this irony as she said farewell to her recruits.

Read the whole thing. Might amuse you too.

Report: Hasan Snapped Under Weight of Bullying, Anxiety Over Deployment
Posted by Joshua Holland, AlterNet on November 6, 2009 at 8:36 AM.

It goes without saying that the usual suspects would view the tragic events at Fort Hood as an act of terror inspired by "jihadism." A soldier, a Muslim of Palestinian descent, reportedly shouted "God is great!" before opening fire on soldiers awaiting deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan.

If one is already inclined to see terrorists lurking beneath one's bed, naturally that's a neat end to the story, and supports whatever simplistic notions about Islam and terrorism one might hold.

Yesterday, as the first sketchy reports started filtering in, I thought that an organized act of political terror was about the least likely scenario to have gone down. (This didn't prevent me from thinking, 'oh, this is not going to go well' when the Major's name was released.)

And as it turns out, unless you're reading Right-wing blogs this morning, it does in fact  appear to be a case of an individual snapping under a variety of stresses.

ABC:

Fort Hood shooting suspect, Major Nidal Malik Hasan, wanted out of the Army after being constantly harassed by others in the military and was called a "camel jockey," his family said.

As Hasan was about to be deployed to Iraq, he was suffering from some of the same stresses that he was trained as an Army psychiatrist to treat.

Although the 39-year-old had just been promoted to major in May, his family says he had hired a lawyer to help him get out of the Armed Forces.

"Apparently became very disgruntled in the mission in Iraq and Afghanistan and voiced that to a lot of his colleagues," said Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX)...

...After the 9/11 attacks, his cousin says he was the target of constant harassment from others in the military. His tormentors called him a "camel jockey," said his cousin, Nader Hasan. He wanted out of the Army, so he paid back his military student loans and hired an attorney.

While the bullying irritated Hasan, Nader Hasan believes his upcoming deployment is what set him off. The cousin said, "My mom is his mom… and we didn't know he was being deployed until we heard it on the news today."

The whole thing is obviously an incredible tragedy. But as Mark Ames -- who wrote the book about this kind of rage-killing -- points out on the front, this was anything but an isolated incident. All kinds of people "go postal."

That this one happened to be a Muslim and a soldier with strong feelings about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan only gives those who were already so inclined an opportunity to use a profound tragedy to impugn an entire faith.

Who's Been Held Accountable for the Crimes of Bush's "War on Terror"? Four Italians ... Sort of
Posted by Joshua Holland, AlterNet on November 5, 2009 at 11:53 AM.

I may be wrong, but setting aside a handful of low-level prison guards convicted for brutalizing or killing detainees, I think that despite many well documented violations of both international and various countries’ domestic laws committed in the “war on terror”, the total number of people who have been prosecuted -- not counting those tried in absentia -- is now 4 (correct me in the comments if I’m overlooking something!).  

All were Italians. Two were convicted yesterday in an Italian court and sentenced to three-year terms for kidnapping a man named Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr off the streets of a liberal democracy, depriving him of any semblance of due process despite its fully functional judiciary and sending him to a country that would torture him for information they believed he was holding. 

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

What Tuesday's Election Results Mean for the Bigger Political Picture: Nada
Posted by Joshua Holland, AlterNet on November 4, 2009 at 10:56 AM.

Partisans spin, and obviously political reporters have an interest in fabricating compelling "national story-lines" during dull off-year elections. So with this first supposed "test" of the Obama administration, the tea-leaf reading -- navel-gazing is probably a better metaphor -- is in high gear this morning. Is the right on the rebound? Has the GOP gotten its groove back? Was it all a referendum on the new president's policies? Oh dear, what is going on?

Below, Addie does a nice job following all the bouncing balls of yesterday's races, and I agree with her conclusion that the results signal that the Right is "organizing up a storm."

But I don't live in Jersey, Virginia or some rural NY district on the Canadian border, and I'm not interested in marrying some dude in Maine. So I find no meaning in these races, and there are plenty of good reasons why you shouldn't either (unless, of course, you're from Virginia or want to marry a person of the same sex in Maine -- in NY-23, Owens, a conservative Dem, will vote more or less like the mainline Republican Scozzafava would have had she been elected (he does support health reform, however), and New Jersey politics are so perennially screwed up that George Washington couldn't have governed the state effectively).

Let's look at some of the buzz floating around ...

The "red tide" of falling governorships is a referendum on Obama!

Nonsense. Here's the deal: University of Minnesota political scientist Eric Ostermeier went back and crunched some numbers from previous gubernatorial races in those states. He found that going back to 1989, New Jersey and Virginia have voted the same way in every election, and in every case, it was for the party that didn't control the White House. And over those past two decades, those votes have in no way correlated with various presidents' approval ratings.

Ostermeier:

Democrats swept the 1989, 2001, and 2005 elections in these two states - and were able to do so both when Republican Presidents were popular (George H.W. Bush at 57 percent approval on Election Day in 1989; George W. Bush at 84 percent in 2001) as well as unpopular (Bush at 42 percent approval in 2005).

Republicans, meanwhile, swept the 1993 and 1997 gubernatorial contests in the two states while Bill Clinton was in office - at both unpopular (in 1993, at 48 percent) and popular (in 1997, at 57 percent) periods of his presidency.

According to exit polls, 57 percent of New Jersey voters held a favorable opinion of Obama even as the electorate sent Christie to the Governor's mansion (and it was a less-than-apocalyptic 48 percent in VA). Let's also not forget that Corzine had been unpopular for a long time. Here's a report from April of 2008 -- just a few months into the Democratic presidential primaries -- headlined, "Study Says Corzine Popularity is Sinking", which found that only 38 percent of New Jersey voters approved of the job he was doing at that time.

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

"America's Toughest Dictator"? FBI Investigating Joe Arpaio for Using Office to Bully Opponents
Posted by Joshua Holland, AlterNet on November 3, 2009 at 12:27 PM.

Fox News' show-boating Sheriff Joe Arpaio is a thuggish right-wing clown with aspirations to higher office and a police force of his own (he's reportedly weighing a run to become Arizona governor next year). His use of the latter to advance the former may just prove to be his undoing.

According to local CBS affiliate KBHO (via TPM):

The FBI is looking into accusations that Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio is using his position to settle political vendettas.

Over the past year, 5 Investigates examined more than two dozen complaints against the sheriff from business owners, government workers, mayors and law-enforcement officials.

They claim they spoke out against Arpaio, and shortly after, deputies paid them unwelcome visits.

Arpaio has gotten into hot water before as a result of his harsh, publicity-grabbing campaign against undocumented immigrants. There was a very public fracas with then-Governor Janet Napolitano in 2007, and his office lost a chunk of funding as a result. Earlier this year, in a high-profile spat with the DHS, he lost some of his federal immigration enforcement powers.

But this is different -- here he's charged not only with abusing the powers of his office to go after marginal groups like unauthorized immigrants, but citizens who dare criticize his actions, including political opponents and the media -- influential members of the community. As such, this might not end as well for the sheriff as his earlier controversies.

Consider a few of the people on whom he's reportedly sicced his deputies ...

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

Civil War Today: Obama Highly Popular Everywhere Outside of Old South
Posted by Joshua Holland, AlterNet on November 2, 2009 at 10:31 AM.

I've spent far too much time in the South and been acquainted with far too many Southerners -- a number of liberal-minded folks among them -- to get into the stereo-typical South-bashing popular in some liberal quarters.

Yet, I must say, when I see results like these it does cause me to pause and wonder again why the North fought so hard to stay married to these people (I know -- we were an emerging power-couple and clung to the relationship for the money and influence):

BARACK OBAMA

The gap between opinions in the South and the rest of the country is nothing short of striking. According to the numbers in this poll question on Obama, it's greater than the divide that exists between whites and blacks or young voters and senior citizens.

Anyway, this comes via Oliver Willis, who adds:

President Obama is overwhelmingly popular in every region of the country except for the south. I am surely this is all entirely due to his economic policies and his radical social agenda and not any other thing at all, certainly not the color of his skin no way sir.

Wing-Nut GOP Rep Interrupts Hearing to Berate NFL Commissioner Over Rush Limbaugh Diss
Posted by Joshua Holland, AlterNet on October 29, 2009 at 10:16 AM.

Here, folks, at a House Judiciary Committee hearing on "legal issues related to football head injuries," are your tax dollars at work (via):

Here’s an interesting confrontation from a hearing on the Hill today between Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell. King said he’d “scoured” Rush Limbaugh’s infamous comment that the media was giving Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb too much credit because he was black and found no racism in it whatsoever — Limbaugh, said King, was calling out the media for reverse racism.

King, as certifiably mad as any member of Congress, of course went on to whine about the injustice of Goodell being totally mean to Rush-bo and then turning around and allowing total sluts like J-Lo and Fergie -- women who dress trashily and sing songs with dirty words -- own shares of NFL franchises! (There's video to your right. No, not of Fergie and J-Lo -- of Iowa Rep Steve King complaining!)

Anyway, I think Limbaugh-NFL-Gate has pretty much been my favorite bit of wing-nut faux-outrage this year. I mean, the overwrought screeds about the death of free expression -- "Tonight Rush became the metaphor for all of us… every man woman and child in this great nation of ours." Or the delicious but ill-fated calls for a Tea-bagger boycott of NFL football. One commenter -- no doubt a "satire troll" -- offered this suggestion on a right-wing blog:

I never thought I'd say this, but "Thank God for Canada." Not only do they have a REAL conservative ruler, but they actually have a damn good Football league.

The Montreal Alouettes could beat the Vikings or the Broncos any day of the week.

I think we conservatives should just switch our allegiences to the CFL--the Conservative Football League.

That was rich comedy! And why not, with the right screaming 'liberal fascism' in response to a bunch of NFL owners -- mostly conservative businessmen -- figuring out that rush Limbaugh wasn't good for their brand?

Which brings me to my very favorite take on the whole brouhaha ...

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

Is Joe Lieberman Bluffing, or Would He Really Torpedo Health-Care Reform?
Posted by Joshua Holland, AlterNet on October 28, 2009 at 10:19 AM.

OK, the Dems had a choice of strategies to get around an inevitable GOP-led filibuster of any health-care bill with a public option.

The bill they have in the House has a public option. They could have gotten a really watered-down bill without the measure through the Senate, used the popular momentum for a public choice to add it during the the reconciliation process (in which the House and Senate bills are combined) and then done a full-court press to pass the final product. 

Most Congressional observers doubt that the handful of cantankerous Democrats in the Senate who might join a filibuster of the Senate bill the first time around would have the nerve to block the legislation if it came back from the reconciliation process with some compromise public plan. Which would have left the insurance caucus Dems -- Joe Lieberman, Ben Nelson, Evan Bayh, Blanche Lincoln and other sell-outs -- out of the limelight.

But Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid promised to deliver a bill with some form of public insurance option. That moves the process along significantly and, as The Hill reports, may help progressives in the House get a "robust" version of the scheme through the lower chamber, as the details of their bill get ironed out. (See Booman for more on the process stuff.)

But because Reid doesn't have the votes so far to bring his bill to a vote -- and may not even have enough to begin debate on its provisions -- it's a high-risk move, in large part because it empowers so-called "moderate" Senate show-boats like Joe Lieberman, who promptly announced that he would likely join a Republican filibuster of the reform package. Whatever else he believes, Lieberman's all about the attention and he's got an abundance of it right now.

At this time, I'd like to just remind readers that when progressives backed Ned Lamont in the primary against Lieberman in 2006, Harry Reid came to his defense by swearing that Old Joe was "with us on everything but the war" in Iraq.

Anyway, sour grapes aside, the buzz today is about whether Lieberman can be moved. Is he being cantankerous now to puff up his own chest and make the liberals who had the chutzpah to beat him in a Democratic primary chafe but will eventually come around? Or is he really prepared to almost single-handedly blow up the whole year-long legislative process during its final act if he doesn't get his way?

A sampling of what some smart observers are saying about that question after the jump ...

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

White House "Attacks" Chamber of Commerce ... and Rahm Emanuel Keynotes Chamber Event
Posted by Joshua Holland, AlterNet on October 26, 2009 at 1:57 AM.

Ever been in one of those really fraught, slightly pathological hot-and-cold relationships?

The Washington Post, yesterday:

The chief lobbyist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on Sunday complained about a White House campaign of "invectives" and "name calling" against his organization ...

Speaking on Fox News Sunday, longtime Chamber lobbyist Bruce Josten said the group's relationship with the White House began to sour after differences of opinion developed about President Obama's health care and economic agendas.

"Let's be clear, we haven't raised up the cain. It came from their side of the street," Josten said ...

Politico on Friday:

White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel has accepted an invitation to be the keynote speaker at a dinner for ...

... the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Board of Directors on Nov. 4.

Ugh, Rahm at the Chamber -- talk about 'sleeping with the enemy'. I'm never sure whether the White House is torn between wildly divided factions, routinely divorces rhetoric from action as a way of keeping its base happy without making too many waves or is in the midst of a deviously brilliant campaign to drive its ideological opponents insane.

GOP Senate Obstructionists Trying to Reverse 2008 Election
Posted by Joshua Holland, AlterNet on October 24, 2009 at 2:33 PM.

According to People for the American Way, dozens of Barack Obama's nominees -- many in key positions -- are still waiting to get started as Republicans threaten to filibuster their confirmation and the White House and senate leadership seem (inexplicably) cautious about using their 60-vote majority to ram them through. It's largely flown under the radar.

TPM:

In 1949, a change to Senate rules allowed members to filibuster executive branch nominees. Senators tend to believe (or at least to say) that, within bounds of decency, the White House deserves to be able to staff the executive branch as it chooses; and in the 60 years since then, the practice has been used sparingly.

Until Barack Obama came to town.

"Between 1949 and 2009 there were 24 nominees on which cloture was forced," Baker said. "In just the first 9 months of the Obama administration, there have been five such votes."

Despite a record of rather extreme appointments, there were 7 cloture votes during the 8 years of the Bush administration. Of the 29 times such votes have occurred in American history, 20 have been over Democratic nominees and 9 over Republicans. Not surprisingly, before Obama took office, over half of all cloture votes of executive branch appointees had occurred during the Clinton administration -- 13.

Bubba holds the record, but Obama is on pace to shatter it with cloture votes on 28 nominees, more than all other administrations since 1949 combined.

I would just point out how ridiculous this makes the whole wing-nut kerfuffle about Obama's "communist" and unaccountable "czars" -- the officials he is supposedly slipping in around the senate confirmation process. Not that it wasn't already ridiculous -- George W. Bush appointed more czars than Obama, and several of those Fox News and others have attacked as unconfirmed czars (8 out of 30) were actually customary positions filled by people who were in fact duly approved by Congress. But the hypocrisy of leveling the charge while dozens of Obama's appointees still await confirmation 9 months into his term in office is mind-jangling.

Finally, let me just add that People for the American Way is especially interested in one nominee whose block by Republicans has been particularly galling: Dawn Johnsen, Obama's pick to head the Justice Department's Office of Legal Council. OLC advises the executive branch on the law, and during the Bush administration it was packed with right-wing ideologues with an expansive view of executive power (to say the least). It's where  people like "torture memo" authors Jay Bybee and John Yoo basically told the White House it could do anything it wanted as long as they said it had something to do with terrorism.

Johnsen's eminently qualified -- she served as acting head of OLC during the Clinton years, she's been endorsed by former heads of the OLC under both Republican and Democratic administrations; her Republican senator, Dick Lugar, has endorsed her.

The problem for the GOP -- aside from their instinctive desire to play petty games with Obama's nominees -- is that she's really good.  As The New York Times reported, her appointment to head the OLC after the Bybees and Yoos brought it so much well earned infamy represents the kind of change Obama promised but has so far failed to deliver in many other areas:

Ms. Johnsen, a law professor at Indiana University, was an unsparing critic of memorandums, written by lawyers at the Office of Legal Counsel in the Bush administration, that said the president could largely ignore international treaties and Congress in fighting terrorists and that critics have portrayed as allowing torture in interrogation.

The broad reading of presidential authority was “outlandish,” and the constitutional arguments were “shockingly flawed,” Ms. Johnsen has written. While her language was harsh, the memos have largely been withdrawn, and among lawyers a consensus agreeing with her views has emerged.

Nonetheless, Republicans have denounced her comments.

If you'd like to see Dawn Johnsen's nomination get an up or down vote, sign PFAW's petition here.

Oil Tycoon: Our Troops Died ... We're "Entitled" to Sweet Contracts in Iraq!
Posted by Joshua Holland, AlterNet on October 23, 2009 at 10:48 AM.

After all that, it looks like the Iraqis are cutting some big deals to develop their massive oil wealth -- but with the mushy Europeans and the damn Chi-coms!

Iraq's Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani told a Washington conference on Wednesday that his government was happy with the energy auction it held earlier this year. The auction was the first chance for foreign oil firms to compete for Iraqi oil since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

BP and the Chinese oil company CNPC were the only firms to win a contract in Iraq's bid round this summer, the first chance for foreign oil firms to compete for Iraqi oil since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. Seven other oil and gas fields failed to attract bidders on the terms Iraq offered.

But a consortium headed by Italy's ENI (ENI.MI: Quote, Profile, Research) said last week it signed a deal to develop the giant Zubair field for a remuneration fee of $2 a barrel. At Iraq's oilfield auction in June, the consortium refused to go below $4.40 a barrel.

Another consortium headed by Exxon is still in the running for one project, but that doesn't mollify hedge-fund gazillionaire -- and natural gas honcho -- T-Boone Pickens. He's none-too-happy:

Oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens told Congress on Wednesday that U.S. energy companies are "entitled" to some of Iraq's crude because of the large number of American troops that lost their lives fighting in the country and the U.S. taxpayer money spent in Iraq.

[...]

"They're opening them (oil fields) up to other companies all over the world ... We're entitled to it," Pickens said of Iraq's oil. "Heck, we even lost 5,000 of our people, 65,000 injured and a trillion, five hundred billion dollars."

[...]

"We leave there with the Chinese getting the oil," Pickens said.

Nothing new -- In August T-Boone called on the administration to "demand" oil contracts from Iraq before considering a withdrawal ($$). But it is an unusually brazen admission that many energy bigs did in fact consider "blood-for-oil" to be a straightforward deal.

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

Happy Days Are Here Again for Wall Street but Main Street Is Too Poor to Retire
Posted by Joshua Holland, AlterNet on October 22, 2009 at 10:01 AM.

Goldman Sachs just posted profits of more than 5 bucks per share. Goldman's people will take home more in bonuses this year than at any point in its 140 year history.  Goldman's not alone -- the whole financial sector is up!

My mother is a social worker. She's worked steadily since she was 14 years old. She was looking forward to retiring last year and thought she had it all worked out -- social security, a very small pension from the state in which she works and a modest collection of acorns in her 401(k) were going to allow her some dignified Golden Years. Not luxurious, just dignified.

That was then. Her 401(k) took a deep hit in the financial crisis. Now she's working a part-time job to make ends meet. Because of budget cuts, she just lost that and has been put "on call."

She's not alone, according to a new study (HT: Steven D.):

More Americans plan to delay retirement following steep drops in the value of their savings accounts, data from several new surveys show.

A study to be released on Thursday by Canadian insurer Sun Life Financial Inc found 65 percent of U.S. workers plan to stay on the job at least one more year than planned, an 11 percentage point increase from a similar survey in January.

"There is a huge drop in confidence that has taken place," because of the fall of stock markets since 2007, Wes Thompson, president of Sun Life's U.S. division, told Reuters in an interview. At the same time, longer life expectancies mean individuals need to build up more savings before they stop working.

"It's not retire at 65, get ready to die at 70," Thompson said.

The survey was conducted in September of 2009, when stock markets had already begun their recovery.

Also, a forthcoming study by Prudential Financial Inc found that 66 percent of respondents over the age of 45 said they may need to work longer than expected to afford retirement.

And a recent survey by mutual fund giant Vanguard Group Inc of Pennsylvania found that 45 percent of American investors said putting off retirement was "possible" and the figure was nine percent points higher among people in their fifties.

Key Figure in AIPAC Spy Scandal Interrupts Sentence to Call for Regime Change in Iran
Posted by Joshua Holland, AlterNet on October 20, 2009 at 3:15 PM.

Last week, it was John Bolton advocating -- or kinda-sorta advocating -- a nuclear first strike on Iran at a GOP-affiliated conference on "ensuring peace." This week, the ironic-crazy continues with Larry Franklin -- the former defense official who pled guilty to 3 counts of criminal conspiracy for handing classified documents to Israeli officials and representatives of AIPAC -- arguing for regime change in Iran in the prestigious pages of Foreign Policy magazine.

Franklin was working in the Pentagon's infamous Office of Special Plans under Paul Wolfowitz and Doug Feith at the time he was busted. He and his defenders say he was just trying to circumnavigate the DoD bureaucracy when he gave the documents to AIPAC officials -- that he thought they could get his "concerns" about what he thought was the Bush administration's soft touch on Iran to Elliot Abrams, a fellow-traveller at the National Security Council. So while prosecutors said Franklin knew that the classified info he disseminated "could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of a foreign nation," the AIPAC-approved party-line is that he was a victim of his ideological opponents' "criminalization" of the kind of horse-trading in tidbits of information that's routine in DC foreign policy circles.

Even if one accepts that account -- recall that he also slipped info to an Israeli official directly -- it says  quite a bit about our foreign policy establishment when a Pentagon employee would think a lobbyist for AIPAC was the best conduit he had to his superiors in the White House.

Anyway, now he takes to the pages of one of the country prestigious foreign policy journals to claim that the months of turmoil following the Iranian elections somehow vindicates his actions. "Still serving my 10-month sentence," he writes, "I take little solace in the knowledge that my concerns were justified." (Sounds dramatic, but Franklin, who faced up to 25 years behind bars, got a slap on the wrist -- 13 months in jail which were later reduced to 10 months under house arrest.)

It's also unclear why the events of recent months absolve him of his crimes. Franklin says his goal was to "shake the foundations of Iran's mullahcracy," but all parties in the disputed election support the basic structure of Iran's "mullahcracy." And if he's just saying that the tainted vote proved the regime in Tehran to be generally cruel or corrupt, it's not like it enjoyed a good reputation in DC foreign policy circles at the time anyway.

But of course, the larger point of the column is to urge us all to finally follow his advice and overthrow the damn regime already ...

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

Spell "Quagmire" A-F-G-H-A-N-I-S-T-A-N
Posted by Joshua Holland, AlterNet on October 19, 2009 at 2:11 PM.

There are few pundits quite as dishonest as the WaPo's Jackson Diehl, so who knows if his concern-trolling on behalf of our European allies is even true:

As the president and his National Security Council privately debate whether to send tens of thousands of troops to war, America's European allies watch with a mixture of anxiety and anguish. They know that if the deployment goes forward, they will be asked to make their own difficult and politically costly contributions of soldiers or other personnel. But they are, if anything, even more worried that the American president will choose a feckless strategy for what they consider a critical mission. And they are frustrated that they must watch and wait -- and wait and wait -- for the president to make up his mind.

To back his contention, he cites Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt and NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, then fleshes it out with the words of a "senior commander in one European army," "the words of one ambassador" and "another ambassador." So there are two Europeans whose quotes are perfectly inline with Diehl's personal preference for more military force in Afghanistan. And apparently, they basically represent a continental consensus:

European governments bought in to Obama's ambitious plan to pacify Afghanistan when he presented it in March. Unlike the U.S. president, they mostly haven't had second thoughts. By and large they agree with the recommendations developed by the commander Obama appointed, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who says that unless the momentum of the Taliban is broken in the next year, the war may be lost.

Even if we buy his story, it's worth noting that Diehl's never met a foreign war he didn't like and was naturally far less sympathetic to European sensibilities when most of those in the Old Country vehemently opposed the invasion of Iraq.

Now he's become so preoccupied with the idea that the Yur-peans may think us wobbly -- and perhaps less-than-manly -- if the Obama administration chooses not to escalate the conflict that he doesn't bother to argue why we should.

He doesn't articulate what success in Afghanistan might look like, and he takes it as a given that more troops would finally give NATO forces the upper hand.  

But that is anything but a sure thing ...

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

John Bolton Speaks to Young Republicans About "Ensuring Peace" ... Advocates Nuclear First Strike on Iran
Posted by Joshua Holland, AlterNet on October 15, 2009 at 1:37 PM.

Years ago I had a writing instructor who was very unhappy with the use of cliché. There are many crimes a writer can commit, but using a lot of trite references, he'd repeat again and again, reflected a poor and lazy intellect. 

To say something is Orwellian or straight out of 1984 certainly fits that bill. But what's a guy supposed to do when John Bolton -- our former ambassador to the freakin' UN -- goes to a conference (sponsored by the University Young Republicans and Chicago Friends of Israel, natch) called "Ensuring Peace," and says stuff like this (via Daniel Luban)?

“Negotiations have failed, and so too have sanctions,” Bolton said, echoing his previously-stated belief that sanctions will prove ineffectual in changing Tehran’s behavior. “So we’re at a very unhappy point — a very unhappy point — where unless Israel is prepared to use nuclear weapons against Iran’s program, Iran will have nuclear weapons in the very near future.”

Emphasis is Luban's. I think the Great Mustache of Crazy's statement isn't quite as clear cut as Daniel. But, as he goes on to note, even in its ambiguity, it is significant to the degree it shifts the parameters of the debate:

Bolton made clear that the latter option is unacceptable... While Bolton coyly refused to spell out his conclusion, the implications of his argument were clear. If neither negotiations, nor sanctions, nor deterrence are options, then by his logic the only remaining option is for “Israel…to use nuclear weapons against Iran’s program.”

Of course, it is nothing new for Bolton and his neoconservative allies to threaten an Israeli strike against Iran. But Bolton’s use of the “n-word” is, I believe, new for him, and marks a significant rhetorical escalation from the hawks. An Israeli strike, nuclear or otherwise, without U.S. permission remains unlikely. But as it often the case, I suspect that Bolton’s intention is less to give an accurate description of reality than it is to stake out positions extreme enough to shift the boundaries of debate as a whole to the right.