hilzoy

The Amazing Self-Refuting Talking Point

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by hilzoy From the Washington Post: “The Republican National Committee sent allies a list of “talking points,” including: “It’s disappointing that while President Bush has focused his administration’s entire efforts towards saving lives and helping the victims of Katrina, there are those who are using this tragedy to score cheap political points.”” This is actually … Read more

Barring The Red Cross From New Orleans

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by hilzoy The Red Cross has been barred from entering New Orleans. The Red Cross’ web site says this: “The state Homeland Security Department had requested–and continues to request–that the American Red Cross not come back into New Orleans following the hurricane. Our presence would keep people from evacuating and encourage others to come into … Read more

Brown: Worse And Worse…

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by hilzoy

I have to write this quickly: I just checked Amygdala, and Gary hasn’t posted on this yet!!! I can scarcely believe it: if I type very quickly, I might possibly get it up first. But you should visit his site anyways.

There’s yet another story about Michael Brown, this one from Time. Apparently he padded even more of his already dubious resume. Excerpts:

“Before joining FEMA, his only previous stint in emergency management, according to his bio posted on FEMA’s website, was “serving as an assistant city manager with emergency services oversight.” The White House press release from 2001 stated that Brown worked for the city of Edmond, Okla., from 1975 to 1978 “overseeing the emergency services division.” In fact, according to Claudia Deakins, head of public relations for the city of Edmond, Brown was an “assistant to the city manager” from 1977 to 1980, not a manager himself, and had no authority over other employees. “The assistant is more like an intern,” she told TIME. “Department heads did not report to him.” Brown did do a good job at his humble position, however, according to his boss. “Yes. Mike Brown worked for me. He was my administrative assistant. He was a student at Central State University,” recalls former city manager Bill Dashner. “Mike used to handle a lot of details. Every now and again I’d ask him to write me a speech. He was very loyal. He was always on time. He always had on a suit and a starched white shirt.”

In response, Nicol Andrews, deputy strategic director in FEMA’s office of public affairs, insists that while Brown began as an intern, he became an “assistant city manager” with a distinguished record of service. “According to Mike Brown,” she says, “a large portion [of the points raised by TIME] is very inaccurate.””

I saw an interview with one of the reporters who filed this story on CNN, and she said that the municipal records of Edmonds show him as an assistant to the city manager for the entire time he worked there.

“Brown’s lack of experience in emergency management isn’t the only apparent bit of padding on his resume, which raises questions about how rigorously the White House vetted him before putting him in charge of FEMA. Under the “honors and awards” section of his profile at FindLaw.com — which is information on the legal website provided by lawyers or their offices—he lists “Outstanding Political Science Professor, Central State University”. However, Brown “wasn’t a professor here, he was only a student here,” says Charles Johnson, News Bureau Director in the University Relations office at the University of Central Oklahoma (formerly named Central State University). “He may have been an adjunct instructor,” says Johnson, but that title is very different from that of “professor.” Carl Reherman, a former political science professor at the University through the ’70s and ’80s, says that Brown “was not on the faculty.” As for the honor of “Outstanding Political Science Professor,” Johnson says, “I spoke with the department chair yesterday and he’s not aware of it.” Johnson could not confirm that Brown made the Dean’s list or was an “Outstanding Political Science Senior,” as is stated on his online profile.

Speaking for Brown, Andrews says that Brown has never claimed to be a political science professor, in spite of what his profile in FindLaw indicates. “He was named the outstanding political science senior at Central State, and was an adjunct professor at Oklahoma City School of Law.””

Outstanding Senior, Outstanding Professor: what’s the difference?

“Under the heading of “Professional Associations and Memberships” on FindLaw, Brown states that from 1983 to the present he has been director of the Oklahoma Christian Home, a nursing home in Edmond. But an administrator with the Home, told TIME that Brown is “not a person that anyone here is familiar with.” She says there was a board of directors until a couple of years ago, but she couldn’t find anyone who recalled him being on it. According to FEMA’s Andrews, Brown said “he’s never claimed to be the director of the home. He was on the board of directors, or governors of the nursing home.” However, a veteran employee at the center since 1981 says Brown “was never director here, was never on the board of directors, was never executive director. He was never here in any capacity. I never heard his name mentioned here.” (…)

Brown’s FindLaw profile lists a wide range of areas of legal practice, from estate planning to family law to sports. However, one former colleague does not remember Brown’s work as sterling. Stephen Jones, a prominent Oklahoma lawyer who was lead defense attorney on the Timothy McVeigh case, was Brown’s boss for two-and-a-half years in the early ’80s. “He did mainly transactional work, not litigation,” says Jones. “There was a feeling that he was not serious and somewhat shallow.” Jones says when his law firm split, Brown was one of two staffers who was let go.”

When the reporters get through fact-checking Brown’s background, I suspect it will turn out that he spent his entire adult life huddled in a tiny room somewhere, pacing around and around, muttering: ‘I am the Outstanding Political Science Professor! I can practice family law! I am the Director of an obscure nursing home! It’s just that God and I are keeping it all our little secret for now. But one day everyone will have to listen to me for a change!’

*** Update below the fold.
*** And another update as well.

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Michael Brown: It Just Gets Worse

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by hilzoy

Via TPM: It turns out that Michael Brown’s background is even less substantial than we thought — and that’s saying something. From The New Republic:

“The real story of Brown’s meteoric rise from obscurity is far more disturbing, as well as a good deal more farcical. It’s clear that hiring Brown to run FEMA was an act of gross recklessness, given his utter lack of qualifications for the job. What’s less clear is the answer to the question of exactly what, given Brown’s real biography, he is qualified to do. “

More below the fold.

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FEMA Rocks!

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by hilzoy So you might have been wondering: did we just throw gazillions of dollars at the Department of Homeland Security and get nothing for our money but those ludicrous color-coded threat levels? Gentle reader: I too once worried about this, but thanks to the inimitable Ezra Klein, I am not worried any more. For … Read more

The Blame Game

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by hilzoy

Via Atrios:

“Encouraging responsibility is not a search for scapegoats, it is a call to conscience. And though it requires sacrifice, it brings a deeper fulfillment. We find the fullness of life not only in options, but in commitments. And we find that children and community are the commitments that set us free.

Our public interest depends on private character, on civic duty and family bonds and basic fairness, on uncounted, unhonored acts of decency which give direction to our freedom.

Sometimes in life we are called to do great things. But as a saint of our times has said, every day we are called to do small things with great love. The most important tasks of a democracy are done by everyone.

I will live and lead by these principles: to advance my convictions with civility, to pursue the public interest with courage, to speak for greater justice and compassion, to call for responsibility and try to live it as well.”
— George W. Bush
***

Matt Yglesias has a very good post:

“The Blame Game: A brief comment on the subject of this game, which, apparently, it’s a bad idea to play. First off — it’s not a game. Assigning blame is a deadly serious matter. It’s also integral to any sort of viable social practice. The criminal justice system relies on assigning blame to various people and punishing them. So does the civil tort system, and so does the non-criminal regulatory system. So, for that matter, does any kind of coherent business or non-profit enterprise — when mistakes are made, you need to decide who’s to blame for them, and ensure that the culpable are sanctioned. If you don’t identify and punish the blameworthy, then people will have no reason to try to do their jobs correctly.

Politics is the same way. There’s a very serious principle-agent problem associated with public policy — the interests of government officials tend to diverge quite sharply from those of the citizens they’re supposed to be serving. This is why dictatorships tend, in practice, to ill-serve their citizens and be beset by corruption, malgovernment, and all kinds of other problems. In democracies we try, through elections and the ability of elected officials to fire their subordinates, to align those incentives. The way that works is that when bad things happen, people are supposed to blame someone, and then elect someone else to replace him. For that to do any good, you need to “play the blame game,” which is to say find out who’s actually responsible.”

Matt is absolutely right. And since thinking about blame, responsibility and guilt is part of my day job (a fact which, oddly enough, has never gotten me eliminated from a jury pool during voir dire), I thought I’d add a few things. And to try to eliminate any confusion arising from the mixed motives people might have in blaming others, I want to start with what we are doing when we blame ourselves.

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“What Are We Doing Here?”

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by hilzoy From the Salt Lake City Tribune, via TPM: “Not long after some 1,000 firefighters sat down for eight hours of training, the whispering began: “What are we doing here?” As New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin pleaded on national television for firefighters – his own are exhausted after working around the clock for a … Read more

Politicizing Katrina

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by hilzoy Does this count? “Under the command of President Bush’s two senior political advisers, the White House rolled out a plan this weekend to contain the political damage from the administration’s response to Hurricane Katrina. It orchestrated visits by cabinet members to the region, leading up to an extraordinary return visit by Mr. Bush … Read more

Katrina Again

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by hilzoy Washington Post“ “With much of central New Orleans finally cleared of hurricane refugees, search teams widened operations Sunday to outlying streets, moving house to house with orders to evacuate all remaining residents from the city. Determined to reestablish order, police shot several people and killed at least two after gunmen opened fire at … Read more

Cause And Effect

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by hilzoy Cause: As I wrote yesterday, Michael Brown, the Director of FEMA, was hired despite a lack of any disaster relief or (successful) management experience by his college roommate, and promoted to be FEMA’s director for reasons that are, to me, completely unclear. When you put unqualified people in jobs, it’s completely predictable that … Read more

Rehnquist Dies

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CNN “Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who quietly advanced the conservative ideology of the Supreme Court under his leadership, died Saturday evening. He was 80.” Discuss.

Post Without A Name

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by hilzoy

I am still feeling more or less flattened by the devastation in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. However, in odd moments, I have begun reading the articles about the background story: the defunding of FEMA, the excuses of various officials, the general cluelessness of the people who were supposedly in charge, and the offers of aid delayed for days by paperwork or even turned down. In anticipation of the time when I can write about this, I want to say this:

Criticizing the administration’s response to this or any other disaster is not ‘politicizing’ it. There are, I think, two ways of politicizing something. One is to drag politics into a discussion where it does not belong. Thus, if I decided to make a big issue out of Laura Bush’s birthday party, that would be ‘politicizing’ it. I can’t imagine in what possible world criticism of the administration’s response to a catastrophe would count as ‘politicizing’ in this sense.

The other way is to use something to score cheap political points. Criticism of the administration’s response to Katrina only counts as ‘politicizing’ if that criticism is motivated by partisanship, rather than by genuine outrage. Criticism of people as ‘politicizing’ the disaster is, fundamentally, a criticism of their character: it means either that they have allowed partisanship to skew their judgment, so that they overstate their criticisms, or that their motives are not grief, outrage, and anger, but a desire to score political points.

This is important. If all criticism of the administration were out of bounds, we would have no way of registering any of its failures. And people who dismiss all criticism as scoring political points prevent themselves from any serious examination of this administration’s record. By conflating people who believe the administration has fallen short because they take every opportunity to slam George Bush with people who hold the same belief because they have examined the evidence and concluded that it is true, they spare themselves the trouble of actually thinking about George Bush’s record, or about the possibility that some of his critics might be right.

Below the fold: one of the things that prompted this.

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Jabbor Gibson

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by hilzoy (h/t Gary) Here’s the story of a hero: “Thousands of refugees of Hurricane Katrina were transported to the Astrodome in Houston this week. In an extreme act of looting, one group actually stole a bus to escape ravaged areas in Louisiana. About 100 people packed into the stolen bus. They were the first … Read more

Oh Dear God.

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by hilzoy CNN: “As police and National Guard troops struggled to restore order Thursday in New Orleans, emergency teams suspended boat rescue operations because conditions in the flooded city were too dangerous, rescuers said. The instructions to stand down came during a meeting with officials from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. CNN’s Rick Sanchez reported … Read more

Human Filth Speaks!

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by hilzoy

Glug, glug, glug.

(Sorry; couldn’t resist.)

I have not been thinking about who, if anyone, is responsible for the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. Whenever I find myself on a web page that has anything to do with those questions, I save the link and move on. I just can’t begin to think about that yet.

However, I did follow a link in comments to this post by Thomas at RedState. Since he is from Louisiana, I’ll give him a pass on the rhetoric: I don’t get bent out of shape by what people say two days after large chunks of their home state have been destroyed. But it did make me think: maybe now would be a good time to lay out, in general, the kinds of criticisms I think might be in order and the kinds I don’t, precisely because I haven’t read any of the relevant articles and I really don’t know what they contain, other than what one can glean from the headlines. I have no idea at all what the facts are (which is why, at various points in this post, I’ll probably find myself saying: I don’t know if this is true, but suppose it is… — I really don’t know. This is not disingenuous at all.) Because I have no idea which criticisms, if any, I will end up thinking have some merit, I can’t really skew things one way or the other.

First of all, while of course no one should slant their assessment for political purposes, it can’t be inappropriate for anyone ever to criticize the government’s preparedness or response to this catastrophe. The possibility that exactly this sort of catastrophe would strike New Orleans was not exactly unforeseen. I first read about it years ago, and have been hoping against hope that someone, somewhere, was looking out for New Orleans: shoring up the levees, starting to replenish the wetlands, and so forth. And if I, who am not responsible for emergency preparedness, knew about this, surely someone in the federal government knew as well.

If any criticism of government preparedness for a disaster is forever out of bounds once the disaster happens, then we can never figure out what our mistakes are and learn from them. Obviously, this would be awful: the last thing on earth we should do is doom ourself to ignorance on the crucial question: what can we do to minimize the possibility that anything like this will ever happen again? Moreover, it makes no more sense to me to say that our government’s success or failure at preparing for an entirely predictable catastrophe is somehow not an appropriate topic of conversation than it would make sense to rule out discussion of an administration’s foreign policy or environmental record. This is exactly the sort of thing we should think about in assessing an administration’s record. If we were as well prepared as we should have been, obviously whoever is responsible for that deserves credit. And if not, whoever is responsible for that deserves blame, absent some compelling story about other, even more urgent priorities, which, just now, I have a hard time imagining.

On the other hand…

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Katrina: Disaster

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by hilzoy I didn’t watch the news today until 10pm, and so didn’t know how much worse things had gotten (though I can now see that I would have if I had checked Gary’s comments instead of writing a new post. And no, Gary, this is not the first time…) Yesterday I was relieved that … Read more

Formative Experiences: Foreign Policy

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by hilzoy

While thinking about Sebastian’s thread, it occurred to me that my thinking about foreign policy crystallized around some very specific episodes, and that it would be interesting to know what everyone else’s were. (It might also help us know where everyone else is coming from. On reflection, I found I could barely imagine what it would be like to have the reference points of someone, say, 15 years younger than me.) Here are mine. (Just foreign policy; adding domestic policy would take too long.)

When I was growing up, both the war in Vietnam and the Cold War were the backdrop to everything. My parents were, basically, liberal internationalists. They had met in Paris, in 1954 and therefore they had followed the French Indochina war, and therefore they knew a fair amount about Vietnam way before the US got seriously involved, and thought our getting involved was a bad idea from the outset. And this meant that they did not go through any sort of wrenching change of heart in 1965 or ’66, and thus were at no risk of lurching from too far on one side to too far on the other. They just thought that we did not have significant national interests there, and that there was no real case for going to war to support one bad regime against another. I tended to agree. (And I read a lot about it later, not wanting to be stuck with a kid’s understanding of it, and have never seen any reason to change my mind.)

The major lesson I took from the Vietnam war, as a kid, was this: it seemed to me that we had gotten into it without having fully thought it through. What if advisors weren’t enough? Were we prepared to send troops? What if the troops we sent weren’t enough? Etc. By the time I started being really aware of the war, around ’67 or ’68, it seemed to me to be a kind of situation I (as a kid) completely recognized from my own experience: the kind where you say something dumb without thinking, and then are made to follow up on it in some way, and then can’t figure out how to backtrack, and end up having completely painted yourself into a corner with no way out. The obvious way to deal with these situations, thought 8 year old me, was not to get into them in the first place, and if you do, just apologize immediately and extricate yourself. (I did not, then or now, consistently act on this knowledge, more’s the pity.) Likewise here: I thought you should never get into a war without being very clear about how you can get out again without damage to your credibility. Never, never, never. And never for some vague reasons like: this is communism, we should oppose communism, therefore we should intervene. Never, ever get into a war without knowing exactly what you’re doing.

About the Cold War: it was just omnipresent, though in its later, 60s form. It’s relevant, though, that my mother is Swedish (she moved to the US after marrying my Dad), and so half my relatives were (a) not from the US (which meant that I always knew what it was like to see the US from the outside), and (b) living disproof of the idea that all leftists were communists. (It’s hard to disbelieve in the existence of people who are, in fact, your grandparents: proud and committed socialists (and democrats) who took it to be obvious that the US was a fundamentally admirable country and the USSR was not.)

It was also part of the backdrop of my childhood that the US government sometimes did the right thing and sometimes did not. The major political events of my parents and their friends were World War II and McCarthyism, which made either reflexive dislike of or reflexive cheering for the US and all its works just impossible. Our basic assumption, when I was growing up, was that the US was founded on admirable principles to which it sometimes lived up and sometimes did not, and that it was our job as citizens to help it to do the right thing more often.

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Open Thread: Neither Fair Nor Balanced

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by hilzoy I think we are in need of an open thread. As I have nothing particularly interesting to say myself, I’ll just cite some quotes that I love. “Are we all living like this? Two lives, the ideal outer life and the inner imaginative life where we keep our secrets? … The Buddhists say … Read more

Katrina

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by hilzoy

I’ve been out and about all weekend, doing things other than watching the news, so I only just realized that what was a minor hurricane the last time I checked now has all the makings of a major catastrophe. From the NOAA:

“DEVASTATING DAMAGE EXPECTED

MOST OF THE AREA WILL BE UNINHABITABLE FOR WEEKS…PERHAPS LONGER. AT LEAST ONE HALF OF WELL CONSTRUCTED HOMES WILL HAVE ROOF AND WALL FAILURE. ALL GABLED ROOFS WILL FAIL…LEAVING THOSE HOMES SEVERELY DAMAGED OR DESTROYED.

THE MAJORITY OF INDUSTRIAL BUILDINGS WILL BECOME NON FUNCTIONAL. PARTIAL TO COMPLETE WALL AND ROOF FAILURE IS EXPECTED. ALL WOOD FRAMED LOW RISING APARTMENT BUILDINGS WILL BE DESTROYED. CONCRETE BLOCK LOW RISE APARTMENTS WILL SUSTAIN MAJOR DAMAGE…INCLUDING SOME WALL AND ROOF FAILURE.

HIGH RISE OFFICE AND APARTMENT BUILDINGS WILL SWAY DANGEROUSLY…A FEW TO THE POINT OF TOTAL COLLAPSE. ALL WINDOWS WILL BLOW OUT.

AIRBORNE DEBRIS WILL BE WIDESPREAD…AND MAY INCLUDE HEAVY ITEMS SUCH AS HOUSEHOLD APPLIANCES AND EVEN LIGHT VEHICLES. SPORT UTILITY VEHICLES AND LIGHT TRUCKS WILL BE MOVED. THE BLOWN DEBRIS WILL CREATE ADDITIONAL DESTRUCTION. PERSONS…PETS…AND LIVESTOCK EXPOSED TO THE WINDS WILL FACE CERTAIN DEATH IF STRUCK.

POWER OUTAGES WILL LAST FOR WEEKS…AS MOST POWER POLES WILL BE DOWN AND TRANSFORMERS DESTROYED. WATER SHORTAGES WILL MAKE HUMAN SUFFERING INCREDIBLE BY MODERN STANDARDS.

THE VAST MAJORITY OF NATIVE TREES WILL BE SNAPPED OR UPROOTED. ONLY THE HEARTIEST WILL REMAIN STANDING…BUT BE TOTALLY DEFOLIATED. FEW CROPS WILL REMAIN. LIVESTOCK LEFT EXPOSED TO THE WINDS WILL BE KILLED.”

StormTrack puts it more concisely:

“I am going to make this very simple. If you are in Mississippi or Lousiana near or below sea level, GET OUT!!!”

*** Update: here’s a link to donate to the Red Cross. (End Update; more or the original post below the fold.)

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A Fact To Bear In Mind

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by hilzoy Things do not look good for the Iraqi Constitution: “Amid conflicting reports about continuing negotiations, government spokesman Laith Kubba told al-Arabiya television that “consensus is almost impossible at this point.” “The draft should be put before the people,” he said, referring to the nationwide referendum on the document that must be held by … Read more

Türkmenbashi Saves The Planet!

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by hilzoy Everyone’s favorite appalling megalomaniacal dictator, Saparmurat Niyazov (aka Türkmenbashi), is back in the news. A few days ago he banned lip-synching: “Unfortunately, one can see on television old voiceless singers lip-synching their old songs,” Niyazov told a Cabinet meeting in comments broadcast on state TV on Tuesday. “Don’t kill talents by using lip … Read more

Now Is The Time For Your Tears

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by hilzoy (h/t Body and Soul) “The wrongdoers will be brought to justice” — George W. Bush “Mr. Chairman, I know you join me today in saying to the world, judge us by our actions, watch how Americans, watch how a democracy deals with the wrongdoing and with scandal and the pain of acknowledging and … Read more

Clark on Darfur (That’s My Guy!)

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by hilzoy Yesterday, on NPR and his website, Wes Clark called on NATO to send troops to Darfur: “After a series of UN Security Council resolutions on Darfur and a donors conference to boost the African Union Mission there, you could be forgiven for thinking the international community has responded adequately to the crisis. Sadly, … Read more

“Peak Oil”: Not Even A Molehill

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by hilzoy (Still channeling Luskin…) Conservatives are betraying their usual economic innumeracy by getting worked up about the high price of gasoline. It’s clear to anyone who knows economics that they are making two sophomoric mistakes. First of all, they aren’t looking at the big picture. Petroleum is just one commodity; it’s the overall cost … Read more

How Many Blastocysts Does It Take To Screw In A Lightbulb?

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by hilzoy This is a serious question, and one that pro-life conservatives typically haven’t bothered to consider. The answer is: even an infinite number of blastocysts can’t screw in a light bulb. They can’t operate a tool-and-die machine, come up with novel medical innovations, or start a small business either. The contribution blastocysts make to … Read more

What To Do In Iraq, According To Me. For What Little That’s Worth.

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by hilzoy

The reason I’ve been writing posts on Iraq is that I’ve been trying to figure out what I think of it all, and I wanted both to get a few large topics out of the way and to think it through as I wrote. In this post, I want to try to figure out what we can still achieve in Iraq, and whether it’s worth it. To state the obvious: I am not an expert on Iraq. I am just trying to work this out for myself. Everything I say could be completely wrong. However:

I think we are long past the point where we can talk about “success” in Iraq. Whatever we do now, we have undone decades’ worth of work containing Iranian influence in the Persian Gulf, destroyed any air of invincibility that we had after the first Gulf War, bogged down our army, destroyed our moral authority both by allowing the abuses at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere to occur and then by not holding anyone high up in the military or civilian leadership accountable, done enormous damage to our alliances and interests, and on and on and on. I take all of this as a given.

I also think it is pointless to think about constructing any kind of model democracy for the Middle East. That was always a very long shot; to bring it off we would have had to plan meticulously, and then have everything break our way. We didn’t; it didn’t; as a result, I think this possibility has gone glimmering.

My modest goals now are two. First, we should, if possible, prevent the outbreak of a full-scale civil war. (In the comments to my post on militias, several people noted that there is already a civil war underway in Iraq. They are, of course, right. But it’s a civil war within certain limits, of which more later.) Second, we should, if possible, prevent Iraq from becoming a failed state like Afghanistan, both because failed states are very bad for the people who live under them and because failed states are important to terrorists.

As I see it, Ted Kaczynski proved that you can be a terrorist without much assistance or infrastructure. But two things help a lot: money and a secure base of operations where terrorists can set up training camps and live unmolested. Non-failed states would have to be nuts to allow Osama bin Laden the latter. But failed states, which cannot enforce the law within their own borders, have no choice in the matter. A failed state is, therefore, not just a disaster for its own people but a danger to others.

The question is: can we prevent Iraq from becoming a failed state and/or having a full-blown civil war? And can we do so without instituting a draft, which we seem to be unwilling to do?

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Iraq: Women’s Rights

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by hilzoy

The NY Times reports this:

“Under a deal brokered Friday by the American ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, Islam was to be named “a primary source of legislation” in the new Iraqi constitution, with the proviso that no legislation be permitted that conflicted with the “universal principles” of the religion. The latter phrase raised concerns that Iraqi judges would have wide latitude to strike down laws now on the books, as well as future legislation.

At the same time, according to a Kurdish leader involved in the talks, Mr. Khalilzad had backed language that would have given clerics sole authority in settling marriage and family disputes. That gave rise to concerns that women’s rights, as they are enunciated in Iraq’s existing laws, could be curtailed.

Finally, according to the person close to the negotiations, Mr. Khalilzad had been backing an arrangement that could have allowed clerics to have a hand in interpreting the constitution. That arrangement, coupled with the expansive language for Islam, prompted accusations from the Kurd that the Americans were helping in the formation of an Islamic state.”

The Times also reports that this deal is unravelling. And much as I’d like to see the delegates who are drafting the Iraqi constitution (or accepting bits of it drafted by us) meet their deadline, I can’t say that I’m sorry. Because Iraq under Sharia law is simply not something the United States should be pushing. As one Kurdish politician put it:

“We understand the Americans have sided with the Shi’ites,” he said. “It’s shocking. It doesn’t fit American values. They have spent so much blood and money here, only to back the creation of an Islamist state … I can’t believe that’s what the Americans really want or what the American people want.”

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Militias In Iraq

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by hilzoy

The Washington Post has a terrifying article on militias in Iraq. Excerpts:

“Shiite and Kurdish militias, often operating as part of Iraqi government security forces, have carried out a wave of abductions, assassinations and other acts of intimidation, consolidating their control over territory across northern and southern Iraq and deepening the country’s divide along ethnic and sectarian lines, according to political leaders, families of the victims, human rights activists and Iraqi officials.

While Iraqi representatives wrangle over the drafting of a constitution in Baghdad, the militias, and the Shiite and Kurdish parties that control them, are creating their own institutions of authority, unaccountable to elected governments, the activists and officials said. In Basra in the south, dominated by the Shiites, and Mosul in the north, ruled by the Kurds, as well as cities and villages around them, many residents have said they are powerless before the growing sway of the militias, which instill a climate of fear that many see as redolent of the era of former president Saddam Hussein.

The parties and their armed wings sometimes operate independently, and other times as part of Iraqi army and police units trained and equipped by the United States and Britain and controlled by the central government. Their growing authority has enabled them to control territory, confront their perceived enemies and provide patronage to their followers. Their ascendance has come about because of a power vacuum in Baghdad and their own success in the January parliamentary elections.

Since the formation of a government this spring, Basra, Iraq’s second-largest city, has witnessed dozens of assassinations, which claimed members of the former ruling Baath Party, Sunni political leaders and officials of competing Shiite parties. Many have been carried out by uniformed men in police vehicles, according to political leaders and families of the victims, with some of the bullet-riddled bodies dumped at night in a trash-strewn parcel known as The Lot. The province’s governor said in an interview that Shiite militias have penetrated the police force; an Iraqi official estimated that as many as 90 percent of officers were loyal to religious parties.

Across northern Iraq, Kurdish parties have employed a previously undisclosed network of at least five detention facilities to incarcerate hundreds of Sunni Arabs, Turkmens and other minorities abducted and secretly transferred from Mosul, Iraq’s third-largest city, and from territories stretching to the Iranian border, according to political leaders and detainees’ families. Nominally under the authority of the U.S.-backed Iraqi army, the militias have beaten up and threatened government officials and political leaders deemed to be working against Kurdish interests; one bloodied official was paraded through a town in a pickup truck, witnesses said.

“I don’t see any difference between Saddam and the way the Kurds are running things here,” said Nahrain Toma, who heads a human rights organization, Bethnahrain, which has offices in northern Iraq and has faced several death threats. Toma said the tactics were eroding what remained of U.S. credibility as the militias operate under what many Iraqis view as the blessing of American and British forces. “Nobody wants anything to do with the Americans anymore,” she said. “Why? Because they gave the power to the Kurds and to the Shiites. No one else has any rights.”

“Here’s the problem,” said Majid Sari, an adviser in the Iraqi Defense Ministry in Basra, who travels with a security detail of 25 handpicked Iraqi soldiers. Referring to the militias, he said, “They’re taking money from the state, they’re taking clothes from the state, they’re taking vehicles from the state, but their loyalty is to the parties.” Whoever disagrees, he said, “the next day you’ll find them dead in the street.””

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Permanent Bases In Iraq?

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by hilzoy

Ron Brownstein of the LA Times did a good piece on the question of permanent bases in Iraq a few days ago, and I have been collecting links on it for a while, with the vague intention of posting something on it. Since it was brought up in the comments to von’s last post, I thought: why not now? For starters, some excerpts from Brownstein’s article:

“So far the administration has downplayed the possibility of permanent bases without excluding it. In Senate testimony in February, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said flatly: “We have no intention at the present time of putting permanent bases in Iraq.” Pentagon officials echo that insistence today. But Rumsfeld last winter said he could not rule out the idea because the United States and the permanent Iraqi government would make the final decision. Bush took a similar line in January in an interview with Arabic television. “That’s going to be up to the Iraqi government,” the president said. “[It] will be making the decisions as to how best to secure their country, what kind of help they need.”

Leaks from the Pentagon have deepened the uncertainty. In May, the Washington Post reported that military planning did not envision permanent bases in Iraq but rather stationing troops in nearby Kuwait. But the report noted that the Pentagon was also planning to consolidate U.S. troops in Iraq into four large fortified bases. On the theory that concrete speaks louder than words, critics see such work as a sign the administration is planning to stay longer than it has acknowledged.

John E. Pike, a defense analyst at GlobalSecurity.org, points to another indication. Although the United States is systematically training Iraqis to fight the insurgents, he notes, the Pentagon has not taken key steps — like making plans for acquiring tanks or aircraft — to build an Iraqi military capable of defending the country against its neighbors. To Pike that means that although the United States might reduce its troop level in Iraq, the fledgling nation, like Germany or South Korea, will require the sustained presence of a large American contingent, perhaps 50,000 soldiers. “We are building the base structure to facilitate exactly [that],” he says.”

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The Abu Ghraib Photos: The Saga Continues…

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by hilzoy From the ACLU, via the Poor Man: “Following a two-hour closed hearing in New York on August 15, a federal judge ordered the government to reveal blacked-out portions of its legal papers arguing against the release of images depicting abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib. The government has until August 18 to make … Read more

Iraq: What The Media Don’t Tell Us

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by hilzoy A standard conservative complain about media coverage in Iraq is that it concentrates too much on car bombs and casualties, and not enough on any successes that are taking place. As I wrote recently in comments, I think that part of this has to do with the constraints journalists are under in Iraq, … Read more

Defeatism

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by hilzoy

In a recent comment, Charles has said:

“Noted, that the lefties in this thread and in my most recent post think Iraq is a lost cause. In my view, it’s only lost if we lose our political will to prevail. That should’ve been a prime lesson learned from Vietnam. Sadly, it looks like that lesson didn’t take here.”

He has also referred to “the troubling liberal-left “can’t do” attitude that I’m seeing more and more of”, and repeated the claim that Iraq is “only a lost cause if enough people like you believe it is.”

I will leave aside the fantastical idea that liberal defeatism, or for that matter liberal anything, could be responsible if we suffer a defeat in Iraq. I want instead to think about ‘defeatism’. When I read Charles’ comments, I was reminded of the time when the shelter I was working at got a new executive director. We were all happy to have her, and we all gave her the benefit of the doubt at first, even when she did things that struck us as odd. Then, about six weeks into her job, she had a retreat, where most of us got to see her in action for the first time. At one point, she was talking about the need to bring more volunteers into the organization, and in the discussion said that it would be interesting to think about having them take over some of the shifts, alone. One of the people whose job it was to do things like negotiate our insurance said: unfortunately, it’s written into our insurance policy that we have to have a paid staffer present at all times. And our new executive director said: “You see, I think that’s just the kind of negative thinking we need to do away with around here.” The person who had pointed out the insurance problem said: I’m not trying to be negative; it’s just that if we did that, we would, in fact, lose our insurance.

Now: our new executive director had, until her arrival at our shelter, lived in Alberta. She had no knowledge of US federal, state, or local laws, funding organizations, or, well, insurance regulations. But she went off on this tear about how all she was hearing was negativity; no willingness to try fresh new thoughts; just a kind of hidebound throwing up of obstacles. I couldn’t see what she was talking about: nothing in the previous discussion had struck me that way at all, nor were my co-workers an inflexible, defeatist bunch. It was just that, in this specific case, what she wanted to try was not, in fact, possible, and someone had tried to say so.

Which is all a long way of saying: when someone says that something can’t be done, it could be defeatist, or it could be a recognition of reality. And when someone else responds that the first person is defeatist, it could be right, or it could be a way of denying reality by attacking those who try to describe the features the second person doesn’t want to hear about.

Before I’m willing to accept the charge that people on the left are defeatist, I want to hear some actual reasons for thinking (a) that we can, in fact, achieve our goals in Iraq, and (b) that we can do so while being led by George W. Bush, a man who has driven such Bush-hating, latte-drinking, Michael Moore-embracing, Islamofascist-coddling members of the loony left as von to ask: “What the Hell does a guy have to do to get fired in this town?” For the record, this does not seem to me to be an adequate response:

“The fact remains that we are the most powerful country in human history, and our main opposition are groups of paramilitary thugs and mostly non-Iraqi terrorists. They will lose, provided we have the sticktuitiveness to overcome.”

Our army can defeat any other army. It can prevent any insurgency from defeating it. It cannot defeat an insurgency with enough popular support to be able to replace its fighters, explosives, and so forth. It especially cannot do so when the force we have deployed is too small to secure Iraq’s borders. The most it can be sure of doing militarily is maintaining a presence there indefinitely, without yet having been defeated. It cannot be assured of actually defeating the insurgency. Still less can an army, by itself, achieve political or social goals. And our primary goals in Iraq have never been military goals like holding a town; they have been goals like: creating a stable country at peace with us and its neighbors. No army on earth can achieve that through force of arms alone.

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