Month: August 2008

by hilzoy

As I understand it, the reason the Obama campaign wanted to have the last night at Invesco Stadium was because it allowed all sorts of organizing opportunities. But it also had some other real benefits:

(a) Waves! I don’t know whether this came through on any of the coverage, but we had a huge and very enthusiastic wave that went all the way around the stadium five times, and only stopped when the next speaker came on and we had to be quiet.

(b) Fireworks! Can’t do that indoors.

(c) A sense of excitement and enthusiasm like you wouldn’t believe.

Reasons not to have the last night in a stadium:

(a) At times, the crowd absolutely drowned out the speakers. 75,000 very enthusiastic people are a force to be reckoned with.

(b) Getting out. There’s a reason I’m only posting now. I tried to post from the field, but it didn’t work.

More below the fold.

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by Eric Martin

Matt Yglesias discusses the tendency to misconstrue morality in intention and consquence when analyzing foreign policy options – especially relevant after the latest round of preening surrounding the conflict between Russia and Georgia (though the stench of "Bomb Burma for the Sake of the Burmese" still lingers in the air).

…I think a lot of people have a tendency to wave the flag of “morality” or “idealism” in foreign policy as a way of evading responsibility for the consequences of their ideas…There would have been nothing “moral” about it if Dwight Eisenhower had taken an “idealistic” stand over Hungary in 1956 and wound up causing a nuclear war. Nor would the fact that the resulting war would, in an important sense, have been the result of immoral Soviet actions really done a great deal to exculpate Eisenhower. There’s nothing new about this idea, it’s all in Max Weber’s “Politics as a Vocation” where he says that in the political domain we need an ethic of responsibility, where you put forth initiatives that actually lead to good consequences.

True to form, the McCain camp described Obama’s level-headed reaction to the Georgia/Russia conflict (a reaction shared by our European allies and the Bush administration itself!) as a "naive" brand of "appeasement" – betraying a lack of concern for human suffering.  Along these lines, McCain’s allies shrouded their calls for a widespread confrontation between the US and Russia (and their exhortations to the Georgians to "let’s you and him fight") in the cloak of compassion – defending the people of Georgia from a rapacious Russia which had morphed into some freakish Stalin/Hitler hybrid (our enemies always manage this transformation somehow). 

In the rush to claim the moral high ground in the periodic game of king of the sanctimonious mountain, however, none of the would-be humanitarians were forced to account for the repercussions that would actually result from their preferred course of action.  The death toll from the conflict if joined by the United States (or from a prolonged insurgency by Georgians with our aid) would be astronomical – potentially cataclysmic considering the availability of nuclear weapons.  Yet war supporters were safe to bask in their smug judgmentalism in the knowledge that even the Bush administration would not be so reckless. 

However, Andrew Sullivan is right to be concerned that when it comes to a potential McCain presidency, the safe harbor for the judgmental-set might be lost.  Not that this would deter them. When their advocacy leads to disaster, the moral stalwarts will just hide behind the nobility of their intentions – Max Weber be damned!

There is another aspect of the tendency to equate bellicosity with righteousness that is worth analyzing: many of the deeply concerned idealists that reach the solemn conclusion that war is necessary (with a frequency that belies the supposed painstaking deliberations taken to reach the oft-visited option of last resort) tend to be unmoved when presented with non-violent means to better the lot of a beleagured population.  The impassioned calls to action vanish, the brows un-furrow and the pious cloak is put back in the closet for another day.  Humanitarian crises just seem to draw less consternation when one of the options to help the target population isn’t to target the population. This commenter sums it up succinctly:

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by Eric Martin

There have been some pretty serious developments with respect to the Maliki government’s position vis-a-vis the Sunni Awakenings/Sons of Iraq groups over the past couple of weeks.  The nickel version is that the Maliki government is shifting from a mere refusal to integrate the Awakenings/SOI into the Iraqi Security Forces (or grant them civil positions in the government), to an active military campaign to forcibly disarm and disband those same militias.   Arms have been seized, some leaders have been arrested and others killed.

Marc Lynch has been out of town – so he has a solid alibi to explain away his silence on this important topic.  I do not have such an excuse, but will take advantage of his return to make amends for my heretofore neglect.  The Extra P:

A couple of weeks ago, I laid out the case that the problem of the future of the Awakenings was coming to a head.  Well, while I was away, the issue seems to have exploded.   McClatchy, the New York Times, the LA Times, and others have run important stories on what seems to be a concerted campaign by the Maliki government to crack down on the Awakenings movement – with what appears to be grudging American acceptance.   

The Awakenings experience demonstrates the limits of American influence over the Iraqi government – months of sustained, intense pressure on Maliki to integrate the Sons of Iraq into the Security Forces has produced remarkably little results, and now Maliki is cracking down on a pillar of Gen. Petraeus’s strategy against al-Qaeda.  This should be another nail in the coffin of the popular idea that improving security will lead the Iraqi government to make political accommodations with its rivals.

As stated previously, the argument that all the Iraqi factions needed was a lull in the fighting to resolve the underlying political issues that led to the fighting in the first place was always tenuous.  Further, the Awakenings/SOI strategy that preceded, and then accompanied, the Surge was working at cross-cutting purposes with the above.  On the one hand, the deal with the Sunni insurgents reduced the levels of violence, but on the other hand, as Brian Katulis points out, it further fractured Iraqi society by creating – or strengthening – distinct power nodes outside the central government.

What has been extolled as a central “success” of the surge has also exacerbated existing political divisions and fomented new political cleavages in an already fractured and fragile Iraqi body politic. Newly empowered sahwa leaders are challenging each other, traditional Sunni Arab political parties, and the Iraqi government. […]

What’s worse, current U.S. policy in Iraq does not take into account how the sahwa movements have…[made] it more difficult to achieve progress in striking the power-sharing deals necessary to stabilize their country.

The hope, or roll of the dice, was that the Maliki government would eventually, if begrudgingly, incorporate the Awakenings/SOI groups into the government – leading to non-violent buy-in from a potentially destabilizing segment of Iraqi society.  Maliki, however, feels no pressure to act.  Why would he when he has the US military around to back his every move?  The US government can’t pressure Maliki when its leverage is undermined by the fact that leaders like Bush and McCain are promising to provide Maliki with military support for the next millenium – whether or not Maliki is willing to make political concessions.  The violence in Iraq will flare up, however.

Maliki’s actions should not be interpred solely through the sectarian (Shiite v. Sunni) lens, however.  Rather, the federalist/nationalist, or Powers that Be (PTB)/Powers that Aren’t (PTA), paradigm is relevant. In this respect, Maliki has targeted political factions that do not currently hold power in the regional, and in some cases federal, government (the Sadrists, Awakenings/SOI).  In doing so, he is pushing ahead with an anti-democratic consolidation of power – flirting with the formation of a military dictatorship gussied up with democratic trappings.  Sam Parker (via a footnote to a Reidar Visser piece) explains:

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