Month: October 2008

by publius

John Murtha seems to be in real danger of losing his seat. The problem, as best I can tell, was Murtha’s bold mavericky strategy of calling his constituents racists and rednecks. In my five years of blogging, I’m not sure I’ve ever endorsed a Republican over a Democrat. So what the hell — I hope Murtha gets beat.

The main reason I oppose Murtha is that he’s corrupt. CREW, for instance, includes him as one of the few Democrats on the “20 Most Corrupt Members of Congress” (and they have further details there). It’s not just that he loves him some pork though — lots of people love pork, and I frankly don’t care all that much about earmarks anyway.

The problem with Murtha is the type of pork he pushes for — namely, massive bloated defense spending. One of the longer-term challenges for progressive Democrats is to limit the criminally large and bloated defense budgets that are squeezing out other priorities — and creating incentives for more aggressive hawkish policies (e.g., escalating tensions with China).

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by hilzoy

I’ve been following the ACORN story, and trying, bit by bit, to understand it. The broad outlines are pretty clear:

“ACORN registers lots of lower income and/or minority voters. They operate all across the country and do a lot of things beside voter registration. What’s key to understand is their method. By and large they do not rely on volunteers to register voters. They hire people — often people with low incomes or even the unemployed. This has the dual effect of not only registering people but also providing some work and income for people who are out of work. But because a lot of these people are doing it for the money, inevitably, a few of them cut corners or even cheat. So someone will end up filling out cards for nonexistent names and some of those slip through ACORN’s own efforts to catch errors. (It’s important to note that in many of the recent ACORN cases that have gotten the most attention it’s ACORN itself that has turned the people in who did the fake registrations.) These reports start buzzing through the right-wing media every two years and every time the anecdotal reports of ‘thousands’ of fraudulent registrations turns out, on closer inspection, to be either totally bogus themselves or wildly exaggerated. So thousands of phony registrations ends up being, like, twelve.”

There a couple of key points here. First, as a lot of people have pointed out, voter registration fraud is not the same as fraudulently casting a ballot. There are a lot of safeguards in place to prevent people from casting fraudulent ballots, and submitting a fraudulent registration does not begin to mean that you will be able to cast a fraudulent ballot. First, you’d need to submit the fake registrations. Then you’d need to hope that they made it through the election officials’ screening. And then, as Rick Hasen writes in Slate:

“I would have to (…) pay a lot of other individuals to go to the polling place and claim to be Mary Poppins or Old Dead Bob, without any return guarantee—thanks to the secret ballot—that any of them will cast a vote for my preferred candidate. Those who do show up at the polls run the risk of being detected (“You’re not my neighbor Bob who passed away last year!”) and charged with a felony. And for what—$10?”

And besides all that, you’d have to hope that none of the large number of people you hired shoot their mouths off about it later. If you think about it, it’s a pretty labor-intensive and risky way to try to steal an election. Much easier and safer to rig an election machine, stuff a ballot box, or find some subtle way of intimidating the other side’s voters. This may be why there’s very little evidence of actual voter fraud.

Second, in any large organization that has a lot of workers registering people to vote, someone is going to get lazy and decide to turn in made-up registrations rather than real ones. That’s not a sign of organizational perfidy; it’s human nature. The important question, in the ACORN stories, is not: did some one of their many, many employees submit fake registrations? It’s: did ACORN knowingly try to get fake registrations accepted? and, if not: did it do everything it could have done to minimize the number of fake registrations, and to catch those that were submitted?

Third, a lot of news stories I’ve read have said that ACORN submitted fraudulent registration cards without noting that ACORN is often required by law to return all registration cards, even the ones filled out for “Mouse, Mickey”. (This is to prevent them from discarding, say, all the people from a party they don’t like, leaving the people whose cards they threw out believing that they had registered when in fact they were not.) ACORN does try to identify fraudulent registrations, and to mark them as fraudulent or suspicious when it turns them in. (They also fire people who submit fake registrations to them, and on at least some occasions turn them in to the election board.) Some of the coverage I’ve seen fails to mention whether the fake registrations ACORN submitted were flagged in this way or not.

Omitting this information is irresponsible: there’s a huge difference between ACORN submitting fraudulent registration cards in the hopes of sneaking them into the system, and ACORN turning in fraudulent registration cards in an envelope marked “Fraudulent Registration Cards; Please Investigate!”, because the law requires it to. The first is knowing fraud; the second is compliance with the law. The media should make it clear which of the two is going on.

Likewise, it would be good if the media would distinguish between cases that might possibly indicate an attempt by ACORN to register fraudulent voters and cases that couldn’t. The guy who registered 73 times, for instance, will not show up on voter registration rolls as 73 separate iterations of himself, all with the same address, driver’s license, etc. There is really no plausible story about how this could represent an attempt by ACORN (or anyone) to steal an election. Given the charges flying around, the media ought to make this clear.

That said, on to a few specific cases. I picked them more or less randomly, based on what I happened to read about when I was thinking of doing this. I tried to dig a bit deeper, to figure out whether or not the evidence pointed to any sort of systematic fraud. In particular, I wanted to know whether or not ACORN had flagged suspicious registrations, and whether or not it seemed to be cooperating with the authorities and generally trying to minimize fraud. I did this because I wanted to find some sort of evidence one way or another.

In the cases I’ve gone through, the takeaway seems to be: ACORN had flagged suspicious registrations; it was cooperating with authorities, there is no evidence that it was trying to submit fraudulent registrations, and plenty of evidence that it was trying not to. (E.g., firing people who submitted fake registrations to ACORN.) I do think ACORN ought to ask serious questions about its practice of paying people to register people to vote, and/or about its controls on its employees, though I understand why one might want to give low-income people the work. Details below the fold.

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by Eric Martin

Rich Lowry neatly summarizes the political advantages inherent in claiming the mantle of morality in foreign policy making, as Bush and his neoconservative supporters have attempted to do rather ostentatiously:

Bush’s emphasis on the inherent hunger for freedom is powerful. It clothes his foreign policy in an undeniable idealism. It puts his liberal opponents in a tight spot, because it is awkward for them to object to the kind of sweeping universalism they have always embraced. It might be simplistic, but that is often an advantage in political communication.

Lowry is right in as much as he decscribes a short-term, domestic, political expedient, and Bush has been able to capitalize on this uplifting narrative to great effect, especially early on in his tenure, both in terms of achieving his policy objectives and commanding the public’s support.  Part of this has to do with the attractiveness of the message, especially for those that have the luxury of thumping their chest from a safe distance.  As Rob Farley observed while reviewing an interesting back and forth between Stephen Walt (realist) and Joshua Muravchik (neoconservative):

Indeed; the moral component of neoconservatism has always been the appearance of moral rectitude, rather than any practical effort to achieve moral goals. This makes it particularly appropriate for creatures of the Beltway, who endure no real costs for their moral postures.

However, there are underlying contradictions that limit the effectiveness of using this facade of idealism and, in the end, the rhetoric itself can serve to box-in its purveyors and/or accentuate the hypocrisy.  Take, for example, the pervasive anti-Muslim bigotry amongst the population that Bush draws his support from – a demographic reality that co-exists, uncomfortably, with the fact that Bush’s policies are sold, at least publicly, on the basis of bestowing the gifts of freedom and democracy on various Muslim nations at great cost to the American people. 

Along these lines, Neoconservatives seem to have a tough time deciding if Muslims are uncivilized brutes, congenitally incapable of embracing democracy, or if, to the contrary, they are so ready for American-style governance that simply conducting airstrikes on Muslim nations will cause pro-American democracy to spring up organically like shoots through bomb-tilled soil. 

Then there is the inability of the Bush team to make accommodations for democratic expressions that go against predictions and preferences, such as the outcome in Gaza where elections that were pushed for on a rapid schedule by the Bush administration (against Israeli and moderate Palestinian warnings) resulted in Hamas coming to power.  The Bush administration reacted with hostility to the newly elected government, casting its democracy promoting agenda as a cynical, self-serving and highly contingent brand of idealism.

Iraq, too, has been an interesting case study neoconservative rhetoric on democratization confronting real world democratic outcomes and popular opinion. 

Recall, initially, that the Bush team hoped to put off elections in Iraq for several years, allowing for stewardship by viceroy (kicking it colonial school) and then later a limited sovereign.  However, relenting to pressure from Iraqi leaders like Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani, the Bush team first handed the reins over to CIA asset Iyad Allawi and, next, to an elected Iraqi government that, despite Bush administration hopes/predictions, did not include Ahmad Chalabi or, in any significant measure, Iyad Allawi.  Instead, a coalition, comprised mostly of religious fundamentalist Shiite parties with significant and long standing ties to Iran, emerged as the dominant force.

This was less than ideal from the Bush administration’s perspective, to understate the frustration of purpose: the new Iraqi government would not be a friend of Israel’s, would not countenance being a base for launching attacks on neighboring Iran and would, in fact, quickly open warm relations with Tehran.  And these were the positions of our "allies" – our adversaries were openly attacking our troops and civilian personnel.

Still smarting from the results of the Gaza elections and, to some extent, the Iraqi elections, the Bush administration took a more proactive role in trying to shape the political landscape ahead of regional Iraqi elections – targeting the factions most hostile to a prolonged US military presence (the Sadrists), while bolstering Maliki’s power and authority vis-a-vis the Sadrists and his other rivals.  These actions were pursued under the (most likely false) assumption that Maliki would welcome a prolonged US military presence.  While Maliki’s hand has indeed been strengthened by US efforts (to the extent that he has even begun challenging his closest Shiite allies in some arenas), the end result may be of little value to US policymakers seeking to establish an enduring military foothold in Iraq. 

Months ago Maliki began making noises opposing certain aspects of the rather one-sided strategic framework and SOFA agreements put forth by the Bush administration: specifically, Maliki demanded an actual timetable for complete withdrawal of US troops, control over important national security decisions (actions launched internally and externally, ie) and limitations on the immunity for US personnel sought by the Bush administration.  At the time (and since), there was much speculation about the source of Maliki’s assertiveness: whether he actually found the proposed terms repugnant, or whether he had been forced to oppose them because of their extreme unpopularity amongst the Iraqi population. 

As I wrote at the time: Regardless, our position is untenable in the long run.  Maliki will either push us to the exits as he desires or, eventually, be forced to respond to the dictates of the ballot box or other popular upheaval/challenges even if he would prefer to keep his bodyguards around for longer.  So how would the neoconservative set handle the fruits of its democratization efforts in Iraq when the outcome does not suit its long term designs? 

Unsurprisingly, the McCain camp prefers the "Maliki-is-forced-into opposing us for domestic political concerns" storyline.  As if this would be reassuring to those that favored a long term military presence in Iraq. "Don’t worry, he just has to say that to the Iraqi people to get their votes, but after elections, he’ll go back on his word and the Iraqi people won’t notice."  Or something.

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by Eric Martin

There are a few stories emerging from "Post-Successful Surge Victorious Iraq" worth mentioning.

First, some ominous signs surrounding one of the biggest (if not the biggest) impediments to the establishment of a peaceful, stable Iraq going forward: the resolution of the internal/external refugee crisis.  The population of displaced Iraqis numbers between four and five million (roughly 15-20% of the pre-war population).  Many of those who have fled were either forced out (by threats and/or the killing of family members) or chose to leave due to the instability and dangers present in their neighborhoods.

The problem is that, regardless of the motive for leaving, the residences of these refugees have been, in almost every case, taken over by either the evictors or Iraqis who were themselves evicted from other parts of the country.  As one could imagine, this creates an extremely fraught situation.  There are competing claims to home ownership, historical community ties being ruptured and potential for a new round of "corrective" displacements – all infused with sectarian tensions and a recent history of bloodshed.  Actually, the bloodshed is ongoing despite the success of The Surge: last month alone, there were 366 Iraqi civilian and security forces deaths from political violence that were reported in the press – actual numbers were likely higher as the media doesn’t catch them all.  That’s quite a complex knot to disentangle.

The Iraqi government is making some noises about addressing the problem, but thus far, there has been more talk than action. For example, the Maliki government recently declared that all those that took over homes illegally must vacate the premises, but enforcement of that decree has been non-existent.  Further, Maliki has been offering cash and other inducements to Iraqis abroad, and moving to shut down refugee camps in neighboring countries, but the follow-through on the assistance, again, has been underwhelming.  Marc Lynch offers his take on an article appearing in the Arab media:

Iraqi refugees from abroad: government not keeping its promises just giving us $120 and a pat on the back, instead of $700 and material support, they complain in story from Saudi al-Sharq al-Awsat. What, a gap between Iraqi government’s rhetoric and implementation? I’d be shocked, shocked to learn that.

According to McClatchy, the lack of more comprehensive financial assistance is not the worst of it:

Only a small fraction of the roughly 5 million Iraqis who’ve fled their neighborhoods in fear since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion have gone back, although returns have picked up since the Iraqi government last month began urging people home. […]

Many Iraqi families have returned to their old homes in peace, but a disturbing trend already is emerging: They’re being targeted and attacked, and in some cases killed, for trying to go home. Some have been threatened. Others have found explosives tied to their front doors. Some have had their homes blown up.

The trend, along with an uptick in sectarian and ethnic violence in northern Iraq and growing tensions among rival Shiite factions in the south, is a worrisome development for American political and military leaders who’re increasingly eager to declare victory in Iraq so more U.S. troops can be sent to Afghanistan.

This will, unfortunately, only get worse – and the alternative is equally unsavory.  If the Iraqi refugee populations residing in squalor in foreign countries remains exceedingly high, there is the potential for broader unrest.  Such refugee populations are historically fertile grounds for radicalization and, in turn, such beleagured refugee clusters tend to destabilize host and neighboring states. 

Speaking of sectarian violence, the plight of Iraq’s Christians shows no sign of abatement:

Christians in Mosul are fleeing their homes after a spate of killings this week that left 12 Christians dead in one of the largest Christian communities in Iraq.

The killings follow large protests by the community last month against the passage of the provincial elections law. An article that would give representation to Christians and other minorities was removed from the law before its passage.

Now the last safe haven for Christians is gone, said Canon Andrew White the vicar of St. George’s church in Baghdad.

After a spree of killings and forced evictions of Iraqi Christians in Baghdad last year, many fled to Mosul. But even there they could not escape the danger. In February of this year the Archbishop Paulos Faraj Raho of Mosul was kidnapped and killed. […]

Christians once were estimated to be about 3 percent of the Iraqi population or about 800,000 people.

But as Iraq grew bloody and violent the Christian community dwindled. Now some estimate that more than half of Iraq’s Christians have fled. White believes that the Christian community is about a quarter of the estimated 800,000.

Some have accused the Kurdish peshmerga militia of being behind the anti-Christian activities due to the Christians’ opposition to Kurdish obectives with respect to regional laws, but it is unclear exactly who the perpetrators are.

As for the democratic process, there are serious problems on that front as well:

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