Bush takes a last visit to Baghdad

And an Iraqi journalist threw a shoe at him. Here we see him ducking. Iraqi Prime Minister Al-Maliki doesn't seem to be much fazed by the shoe attack.


I won't be surprised if at every interview and news conference (if there are any) that Bush does between now and Inauguration Day - which can't get here fast enough - that he'll require all reporters to remove their shoes before they come into the room.

It wouldn't be much notable except for the extremes his administration has gone to keep Dear Leader Bush from hearing any kind of dissent or discontent in person. (And, no, trolls, I don't recommend throwing shoes at the President.)

For more comment on the Shoe Attack, see Memeorandum.

Tags: bush, iraq war

Bush gets something right!

"I'm sure people view me as a war monger", Bush said in Saudi Arabia.

Tags: bush, bush doctrine

More daffy history from Bush

Does this man look like a Muslim terrorist to you?

Dear Leader Bush addressed his grateful subjects at the Heritage Foundation on Thursday. There was a lot of the usual: terror, evil people, the "war on terror", the value of torture, the need for indiscriminate domestic spying, etc. You can find the full text with audio and video at the White House Web site. A highlights version is available from TPM.

I was struck by the fact that Our Leader mentioned a couple of antiwar groups by name, MoveOn.org and Code Pink. He positioned them as allies of the Democrats against American national security, soldiers and veterans, starting at about 19:30 in the White House video:

I ask Congress to send me a clean veterans funding bill by Veterans Day; and to pass a clean defense spending bill. Congress needs to put the needs of those who put on the uniform ahead of their desire to spend more money. When it comes to funding our troops, some in Washington should spend more time responding to the warnings of terrorists like Osama bin Laden and the requests of our commanders on the ground, and less time responding to the demands of MoveOn.org bloggers and Code Pink protesters.

This is sleazy as all hell, though the Republicans generally have been slinging such charges for basically the last six years, and they're getting more and more hysterical about it.

But the Heritage Foundation crowd responded with warm enthusiasm.

I'm a little surprised by his singling those two groups out, though. It's obvious that when the President considers them significant enough to mention in a speech, that's likely to raise their profile. So why are they doing that? One reason is obviously that the Republicans have been focusing hard lately on discrediting antiwar activists and critics. But this is Dick Cheney's government, after all. So I can't help but wonder just how much they are intending to escalate against those named groups.

At about 4:50 in the White House video, Bush starts his grand history lesson. I found myself thinking about it a lot after I first heard that passage. For the first half hour or so, I was pretty much in a state of wonderment at the strangeness of it. And I don't pretend to understand it. But the jist of it is that Bin Laden is kind of like Hitler and Lenin and therefore we should pay attention to what they say, which would then make everyone go along with Bush and Cheney's plans for whatever they want to do.

Here are Dear Leader's own words on the topic starting at around 4:40 on the White House video:

We must take the words of the enemy seriously. The terrorists have stated their objectives. They intend to build a totalitarian Islamic empire - encompassing all current and former Muslim lands, stretching from Europe to North Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia. In pursuit of their imperial aims, these extremists say there can be no compromise or dialog with those they call infidels - a category that includes America, the world's free nation [sic], Jews, and all Muslims who reject their extreme vision of Islam. They reject the possibility of peaceful coexistence with the free world. Again, hear the words of Osama bin Laden last year: "Death is better than living on this Earth with the unbelievers among us."

History teaches that underestimating the words of evil, ambitious men is a terrible mistake. In the early 1900s, the world ignored the words of Lenin, as he laid out his plans to launch a Communist revolution in Russia - and the world paid a terrible price. The Soviet Empire he established killed tens of millions, and brought the world to the brink of thermonuclear war.

In the 1920s, the world ignored the words of Hitler, as he explained his intention to build an Aryan super-state in Germany, take revenge on Europe, and eradicate the Jews - and the world paid a terrible price. His Nazi regime killed millions in the gas chambers, and set the world aflame in war, before it was finally defeated at a terrible cost in lives and treasure.

Bin Laden and his terrorist allies have made their intentions as clear as Lenin and Hitler before them. And the question is: Will we listen? (my emphasis)

This is more of the usual threat inflation. But I still marvel at the notion of history here.

Karl Kautsky: forerunner of the Taliban?

Let's pretend for a minute that when Woodrow Wilson entered the Oval Office in 1913, he was less worried about rising European tensions and German Imperial aggressiveness under Kaiser Bill than about the threat of communist revolution. And that he set up a crack team of assassins to go after the leader most likely to lead such a movement. He would most likely have gone after Karl Liebknecht or maybe even Lenin's ideological nemesis Karl Kautsky. They were both high-profile leaders of the German Social Democratic Party (SPD). And the SPD was generally considered the strongest of the Social Democratic parties and the most likely to come to power first. (The split into Social Democratic and Communist Parties came in the wake of the First World War and the Russian Revolution of 1917.) It's unlikely that he would have gone after Lenin in his exile in Cracow, Poland, hanging out at the Jama Michalikowa Café. Because despite the Russian Revolution of 1905, which saw the first appearance of the workers' committees known as "soviets", Russian Social Democrats appeared even to most Marxists and Social Democrats elsewhere as unlikely leadership for a world revolution. Preventive assassination, like preventive war, is an inherently uncertain business.

John Kenneth Galbraith writes about Lenin in The Age of Uncertainty (1977):

With his high forehead greatly accented by the bald dome above, his neat mustache, dark, quiet suit and something very near a Van Dyck beard, he looked like the head of a firm of chartered accountants. Leon Trosksy, with his fierce and glittering eye and much less disciplined beard, was a man of far more satisfactory aspect [to fit the popular image of a revolutionary]. ...

Previously in London he had been astonished that the library at the British Museum was run for the public and that the librarians actually regarded themselves as the servants of the readers. (Years later, according to legend, it occurred to someone to ask one of the library attendants if he remembered Lenin. He did, a most diligent little man. The librarian wondered whatever had become of him.)

Though he didn't look like The Greatest Threat to Civilization in 1912 or thereabouts, it's not as though Lenin was completely ignored, though. Anyone who had reason or inclination to know about Russian politics or the European socialist movement had probably heard of him and knew something about the Bolshevik political stance. Kaiser Bill in 1917 decided to allow Lenin to travel through Germany from Switzerland on the way back to Russia, where the Kaiser thought Lenin could cause trouble for Germany's Russian enemy in the First World War then still under way.

Karl Liebknecht: Did he want to create a worldwide caliphate?

And after Lenin came to power, Wilson hardly ignored him. In fact, Wilson had a Protestant moralistic streak not completely unlike that associated with Bush. He regarded Lenin as something like the incarnation of evil, to the point of declining to pursue a proposal from Lenin that would have given the Communist government a much smaller area of control than what they wound up with. Wilson even joined with the British in landing troops in Russia. The small clashes that ensued were actually the only time in the existence of the Soviet Union that American and Soviet troops entered directly into hostilities with each other.

So I'm not really sure what the [Cheney] Bush means when he says, "the world ignored the words of Lenin".

Then there's Hitler. The original one, I mean, not Osama Hitler or Ahmadinejad Hitler or Code Pink Hitler. Bush says, "In the 1920s, the world ignored the words of Hitler, as he explained his intention to build an Aryan super-state in Germany, take revenge on Europe, and eradicate the Jews". That's actually a bit vague.

There seems to be a fascination among authoritarian types with the notion that Hitler mapped out his later strategy in Mein Kampf, which he published in 1925. Not really. Written during his brief stint in prison after making a failed coup attempt in Munich in 1923, now known as the Beer Hall Putsch, it is mostly a propagandistic rant derived largely from the extremist pamphlets he had read voraciously in Vienna prior to the First World War.

Here again, anyone paying attention in internal German politics in the 1920s would have had some knowledge of Hitler as the leader of the NSDAP (Nazi Party). Henry Ford even sent money to the NSDAP, so he knew about them. Ford was the only American singled out for praise in Mein Kampf.

But the NSDAP was one of several splinter parties in the German Parliament in the 1920s. According to my trusty multi-color chart from Fragen an die deutsche Geschichte (1991), the NSDAP in 1928 had 12 seats in Parliament, versus 73 for two other overtly anti-Semitic parties, the Christlichsoziale Partei and the Deutsche Reformpartei. Of the two "Weimar parties", as they are sometimes called, the SPD had 153 seats and the Catholic Center Party 62. The Communists had 54 and the liberal Deutsche Staatspartei 25. The two other most significant rightwing parties were the Duetsche Volkspartei with 45 seats and the Deutschnationale Partei with 73 seats.

So, if you were an American looking at German politics in 1928, how worried would you have been about the NSDAP? Even if the Internet had been around then, how much time would you have spent searching out their Web sites? In fact, the NSDAP at that point looked to be a party in decline, its Parliamentary representation having fallen from 32 in 1924 to 14 and then to the 12 of 1928. It was the onset of the Great Depression in Europe in 1929 that gave the NSDAP its fateful boost. In the 1930 elections, the increased their representation to 107 seats. Prior to Hitler becoming Chancellor in January, 1933, the NSDAP's electoral strength peaked at 230 seats in early 1932, which made it then the largest party in Parliament for the first time, and then fell in the elections of late 1932 to 196.

From 1929 onward, anyone who was paying attention to German politics was paying attention to Hitler and the NSDAP. But the real failure of judgment wasn't a failure to listen to Hitler's words. They didn't get votes in those parliamentary elections without practicing the usual political arts of targeting pleasing messages to various segments of the public. Not all of their public positions in 1928-32 turned out to be blueprints for their policies.

The most significant failure on the part of Western nations was failing to recognize the inherently threatening nature of his military buildup, which was at the center of Hitler's domestic economic program from the day he became Chancellor. And a failure to develop foreign policies and military policies consistent with them to be able to contain Germany once they began to revise the Versailles Treaty limits by force with the remilitarization of the Rhineland in March, 1936.

So, the bottom line here is that Bush's little history lesson was as ditsy as most Republican pop history is. The main thing he seems to be trying to do is to inflate the menace of Osama bin Laden running a terrorist network from a cave or village hunt in some godforsaken corner of Wazirstan or wherever he is to the military threats represented by Nazi German and by the Soviet Union at the height of their power.

For that amount of threat inflation, I guess you need to come up with some pretty creative alternative history.

Tags: authoritarianism, bolshevik revolution, bush, germany, german politics, lenin, republican party, soviet union, third reich

Good for the Republicans?

I'm guessing that the practitioners of High Broderism will conclude that it is. Good for the Republicans, that is: Reuters/Zogby poll shows Bush approval rating at record-low 24% by John Whitesides, Reuters 10/17/07.

Why do I think that? We can start with the headline Reuters put on the story, which was, "Voters unhappy with Bush and Congress".

Yep, it sounds good for the Republicans to me. (NOT!)

This means that Shrub Bush is getting down close to Dick Cheney levels of popularity.

And, speaking of the Dark Lord, if you want to see something really scary, check out the new Frontline documentary available for viewing online, Cheney's Law.

Tags: bush, cheney, dick cheney, establishment press, mainstream media, mainstream press

Hersh's latest on expanding the Iraq War to Iran

Seymour Hersh reports on the Cheney-Bush administration's current war planning for Iran in Shifting Targets: The Administration's plan for Iran in the New Yorker issue dated 10/08/07 (accessed 09/30/07). He reports that Dick Cheney's current approach is no longer a massive bombing campaign on a wide variety of Iranian targets but the new emphasis is "on 'surgical' strikes on Revolutionary Guard Corps facilities in Tehran and elsewhere, which, the Administration claims, have been the source of attacks on Americans in Iraq." As Hersh notes, after years of agitation on the topic of Iran's nuclear program, Cheney's new approach means that what was previously "a counter-proliferation mission has been reconceived as counterterrorism".

Hersh explains the shift as follows:

The shift in targeting reflects three developments. First, the President and his senior advisers have concluded that their campaign to convince the American public that Iran poses an imminent nuclear threat has failed (unlike a similar campaign before the Iraq war), and that as a result there is not enough popular support for a major bombing campaign. The second development is that the White House has come to terms, in private, with the general consensus of the American intelligence community that Iran is at least five years away from obtaining a bomb. And, finally, there has been a growing recognition in Washington and throughout the Middle East that Iran is emerging as the geopolitical winner of the war in Iraq.

Reality, in other words, has been strongly reasserting its claims on Middle East policy.

I find the comment about public opinion especially intriguing. We know that Cheney and Bush have contempt for the opinions of the American public on matters of war and peace, except when they agree with Cheney's plans. Hersh also reports a couple of paragraphs later in the article:

At a White House meeting with Cheney this summer, according to a former senior intelligence official, it was agreed that, if limited strikes on Iran were carried out, the Administration could fend off criticism by arguing that they were a defensive action to save soldiers in Iraq. If Democrats objected, the Administration could say, "Bill Clinton did the same thing; he conducted limited strikes in Afghanistan, the Sudan, and in Baghdad to protect American lives." The former intelligence official added, "There is a desperate effort by Cheney et al. to bring military action to Iran as soon as possible. Meanwhile, the politicians are saying, 'You can't do it, because every Republican is going to be defeated, and we’re only one fact from going over the cliff in Iraq.' But Cheney doesn’t give a rat’s ass about the Republican worries, and neither does the President."

Even dictatorships have to take some account of public opinion. So I have no doubt that managing public perceptions is a major concern of Cheney and Bush. But I would be curious as to just how public opinion against war with Iran gets filtered to Cheney and Bush in a way that causes them to change their planned course of action significantly.

Despite the uncertainty on that point, I do think it's very significant that even though many war critics are rightly disgusted right now at the timidity of Congressional Democrats in asserting their Constitutional role in the matter of military attacks on Iran, the public opposition to the Iraq War is somehow having the effect of restraining even Cheney and Bush in some way in this matter.

But we shouldn't fall into the current Republican habit of imagining that such issues exist almost exclusively in the form of domestic American politics. Even though it might be politically less difficult at first to have a more limited attack, it isn't necessarily the militarily optimal approach. Don't get me wrong. I'm opposed to expanding the war to Iran.

But one of the risks is the Iranian retaliation. If the US overtly attacks Iranian territory, we have to assume Iran will counter-attack in some way. A more limited strike would presumably leave Iran with a much greater capability to retaliate, a retaliation likely to be directed against American soldiers in Iraq.

We also have to remember. This is Dick Cheney and George Bush running this show. Apart from all issues of justification for war, if they expand the war to Iran, they will screw it up. Hersh lays out some of the risks as follows:

He [a recently retired C.I.A. official] added, "The guys now running the Iranian program have limited direct experience with Iran. In the event of an attack, how will the Iranians react? They will react, and the Administration has not thought it all the way through."

That theme was echoed by Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former national-security adviser, who said that he had heard discussions of the White House’s more limited bombing plans for Iran. Brzezinski said that Iran would likely react to an American attack "by intensifying the conflict in Iraq and also in Afghanistan, their neighbors, and that could draw in Pakistan. We will be stuck in a regional war for twenty years."...

A limited bombing attack of this sort "only makes sense if the intelligence is good," the [Pentagon] consultant [on counterterrorism] said. If the targets are not clearly defined, the bombing "will start as limited, but then there will be an 'escalation special.' Planners will say that we have to deal with Hezbollah here and Syria there. The goal will be to hit the cue ball one time and have all the balls go in the pocket. But add-ons are always there in strike planning."

The surgical-strike plan has been shared with some of America's allies, who have had mixed reactions to it. Israel's military and political leaders were alarmed, believing, the consultant said, that it didn’t sufficiently target Iran's nuclear facilities. The White House has been reassuring the Israeli government, the former senior official told me, that the more limited target list would still serve the goal of counter-proliferation by decapitating the leadership of the Revolutionary Guards, who are believed to have direct control over the nuclear-research program. "Our theory is that if we do the attacks as planned it will accomplish two things," the former senior official said. (my emphasis)

Any time the Cheney-Bush administration is going to do something major like this and the viability of the action "only makes sense if the intelligence is good", we have good reason to worry.

The Iraq WMD fraud certainly makes our allies more concerned about following the American lead, understandably so. Hersh reports that Gordon Brown's government in Britain is interested in continuing down the same road that the pathetic Tony Blair took by supporting the Cheney-Bush administration in attacking Iran. But even they are worried about the intelligence claims, according to Hersh:

The revised bombing plan "could work - if it's in response to an Iranian attack,” the retired four-star [American] general said. "The British may want to do it to get even, but the more reasonable people are saying, ‘Let’s do it if the Iranians stage a cross-border attack inside Iraq.’ It’s got to be ten dead American soldiers and four burned trucks.” There is, he added, "a widespread belief in London that Tony Blair’s government was sold a bill of goods by the White House in the buildup to the war against Iraq. So if somebody comes into Gordon Brown’s office and says, ‘We have this intelligence from America,’ Brown will ask, ‘Where did it come from? Have we verified it?’ The burden of proof is high." (my emphasis)

Hersh discusses an incident where British commandos seized a big shipment of weapons coming across the Iranian border into Afghanistan, though it wasn't clear whether it was officially sanctioned by the Iranian government:

Vincent Cannistraro, a retired C.I.A. officer who has worked closely with his counterparts in Britain, added to the story: “The Brits told me that they were afraid at first to tell us about the incident—in fear that Cheney would use it as a reason to attack Iran.” The intelligence subsequently was forwarded, he said.

The retired four-star general confirmed that British intelligence “was worried” about passing the information along. “The Brits don’t trust the Iranians,” the retired general said, “but they also don’t trust Bush and Cheney.” (my emphasis)

Not surprisingly, less submissive allies are even more skeptical of US intelligence claims from the Cheney-Bush administration:

The French government shares the Administration’s sense of urgency about Iran’s nuclear program, and believes that Iran will be able to produce a warhead within two years. France’s newly elected President, Nicolas Sarkozy, created a stir in late August when he warned that Iran could be attacked if it did not halt is nuclear program. Nonetheless, France has indicated to the White House that it has doubts about a limited strike, the former senior intelligence official told me. Many in the French government have concluded that the Bush Administration has exaggerated the extent of Iranian meddling inside Iraq; they believe, according to a European diplomat, that “the American problems in Iraq are due to their own mistakes, and now the Americans are trying to show some teeth. An American bombing will show only that the Bush Administration has its own agenda toward Iran.”

Another important point in Hersh's article is the indication of how strongly Dick Cheney intends to make sure that the expansion of the war into Iran happens:

“Cheney’s option is now for a fast in and out—for surgical strikes,” the former senior American intelligence official told me. The Joint Chiefs have turned to the Navy, he said, which had been chafing over its role in the Air Force-dominated air war in Iraq. “The Navy’s planes, ships, and cruise missiles are in place in the Gulf and operating daily. They’ve got everything they need—even AWACS are in place and the targets in Iran have been programmed. The Navy is flying FA-18 missions every day in the Gulf.” There are also plans to hit Iran’s anti-aircraft surface-to-air missile sites. “We’ve got to get a path in and a path out,” the former official said.

A Pentagon consultant on counterterrorism told me that, if the bombing campaign took place, it would be accompanied by a series of what he called “short, sharp incursions” by American Special Forces units into suspected Iranian training sites. He said, “Cheney is devoted to this, no question.” (my emphasis)

Another grim indicator in Hersh's report is this:

And two former senior officials of the C.I.A. told me that, by late summer, the agency had increased the size and the authority of the Iranian Operations Group. (A spokesman for the agency said, “The C.I.A. does not, as a rule, publicly discuss the relative size of its operational components.”)

“They’re moving everybody to the Iran desk,” one recently retired C.I.A. official said. “They’re dragging in a lot of analysts and ramping up everything. It’s just like the fall of 2002” - the months before the invasion of Iraq, when the Iraqi Operations Group became the most important in the agency.

It's also important to recognize how drastic would be the contradiction between attacking Iran and our current posture of supporting the pro-Iranian, Shi'a-dominated government of Iraq:

Iran has had a presence in Iraq for decades; the extent and the purpose of its current activities there are in dispute, however. During Saddam Hussein’s rule, when the Sunni-dominated Baath Party brutally oppressed the majority Shiites, Iran supported them. Many in the present Iraqi Shiite leadership, including prominent members of the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, spent years in exile in Iran; last week, at the Council on Foreign Relations, Maliki said, according to the Washington Post, that Iraq’s relations with the Iranians had “improved to the point that they are not interfering in our internal affairs.” Iran is so entrenched in Iraqi Shiite circles that any “proxy war” could be as much through the Iraqi state as against it. The crux of the Bush Administration’s strategic dilemma is that its decision to back a Shiite-led government after the fall of Saddam has empowered Iran, and made it impossible to exclude Iran from the Iraqi political scene. (my emphasis)

Peter Galbraith emphasizes the same point in Mission accomplished - for Iran Salon 09/24/07:

In short, George W. Bush had from the first facilitated the very event he warned would be a disastrous consequence of a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq: the takeover of a large part of the country by an Iranian-backed militia. [He refers to the Badr Organization, the militia of SIIC, the lead party in the Iraqi government.]And while the president contrasts the promise of democracy in Iraq with the tyranny in Iran, there is now substantially more personal freedom in Iran than in southern Iraq.

Iran's role in Iraq is pervasive, but also subtle. When Iraq drafted its permanent constitution in 2005, the American ambassador energetically engaged in all parts of the process. But behind the scenes, the Iranian ambassador intervened to block provisions that Tehran did not like. As it happened, both the Americans and the Iranians wanted to strengthen Iraq's central government. While the Bush administration clung to the mirage of a single Iraqi people, Tehran worked to give its proxies, the pro-Iranian Iraqis it supported - by then established as the government of Iraq -- as much power as possible. (Thanks to Kurdish obstinacy, neither the United States nor Iran succeeded in its goal, but even now both the U.S. and Iran want to see the central government strengthened.)

Since 2005, Iraq's Shiite-led government has concluded numerous economic, political and military agreements with Iran. The most important would link the two countries' strategic oil reserves by building a pipeline from southern Iraq to Iran, while another commits Iran to providing extensive military assistance to the Iraqi government. According to a senior official in Iraq's Oil Ministry, smugglers divert at least 150,000 barrels of Iraq's daily oil exports through Iran, a figure that approaches 10 percent of Iraq's production. Iran has yet to provide the military support it promised to the Iraqi army. With the United States supplying 160,000 troops and hundreds of billions of dollars to support a pro-Iranian Iraqi government, Iran has no reason to invest its own resources.

Of all the unintended consequences of the Iraq war, Iran's strategic victory is the most far-reaching. (my emphasis)

An overt military attack on Iran would be a very, very bad idea.

Tags: bush, cheney, iran war, peter galbraith, seymour hersh

Even at his best, he's not so good

"He" being Chris Matthews. Wonky Muse in a post yesterday focused on Dan Froomkin's comments about Bush's Iraq War speech this past week in It Came From Planet Bush Washington Post Online 09/14/07. In the article, he also discusses Matthews' response:

On MSNBC last night, anchor Chris Matthews was incredulous: "The fact that we have 36 countries fighting on our side in Iraq must be news to the soldiers over there. I don't know who these people are or how many divisions they have. I mean, all we read about in the papers are American GIs getting killed by IEDs and terrible accidents and all kinds of enemy action over there, usually in the battle of the civil war over there. The idea we're one of 36 countries fighting the war I think is ludicrous and why the president would throw that out there, I think it only opens him up to ridicule."

Despite his habitual drooling about the manliness of Bush and the 2008 Republican Presidential candidates and his warped attitude toward Hillary Clinton, Matthews has been critical of the Iraq War all along.

In this case, as Froomkin points out about the 36 countries to which Bush referred

A recent State Department report shows a total of 25 countries with armed forces in Iraq - and that includes Slovakia's six soldiers and Moldava's 11. Non-American troops total under 12,000, with most in non-combat roles, compared to over 160,000 Americans.

But even in making a sensible criticism of Bush's speech, Matthews made a fairly amazing blunder:

Matthews later asked Democratic Sen. and presidential candidate Joseph Biden about "the strange world we had described to us tonight... We're given a picture in 20 minutes of a country over there, an ally, you know, like Chiang Kai-shek used to be against the Japanese or Hungary against the Soviets, an ally, a country we care about and it's fighting for its life against our enemy, which is al Qaeda. No real references except once to the fact there's a civil war going on in that country. The notion that we're one of 37 countries fighting over there against the bad guys. There's so much of this that's truly - and I don't mean this in a cartoon sense - fantastic. When you're with the president, does he live in this world or does he just sell it?"

Biden's reply: "I don't know, Chris." (my emphasis)

Hungary was our ally against the Soviet Union? Say what? Actually, Hungary always fell within the Soviet sphere of influence and domination after the Second World War. It fairly rapidly became a "people's democracy", i.e., Soviet-style socialist country. And it remained a Soviet ally until the Warsaw Pact was dissolved in 1990. The Library of Congress has a country study of Hungary from 1989 available online. (Don't they update those country studies any more?)

My guess is that Matthews was thinking about the 1956 Hungarian uprising, which Charles Sudetic describes in that country study:

On October 23, a Budapest student rally in support of Polish efforts to win autonomy from the Soviet Union sparked mass demonstrations. The police attacked, and the demonstrators fought back, tearing down symbols of Soviet domination and HWP rule, sacking the party newspaper's offices and shouting in favor of free elections, national independence, and the return of Imre Nagy to power. Gero called out the army, but many soldiers handed their weapons to the demonstrators and joined the uprising (see Historical Background and Traditions , ch. 5). Soviet officials in Budapest summoned Nagy to speak to the crowd, but the violence continued. At Gero's request, Soviet troops entered Budapest on October 24. The presence of these troops further enraged the Hungarians, who battled the troops and state security police. Crowds emptied the prisons, freed Cardinal Mindszenty, sacked police stations, and summarily hanged some member of the secret police. The Central Committee named Nagy prime minister on October 25 and selected a new Politburo and Secretariat; one day later, Kadar replaced Gero as party first secretary.

Nagy enjoyed vast support. He formed a new government consisting of both communists and noncommunists, dissolved the state security police, abolished the one-party system, and promised free elections and an end to collectivization, all with Kadar's support. But Nagy failed to harness the popular revolt. Workers' councils threatened a general strike to back demands for removal of Soviet troops, elimination of party interference in economic affairs, and renegotiation of economic treaties with the Soviet Union. On October 30, Nagy called for the formation of a new democratic, multiparty system. Noncommunist parties that had been suppressed almost a decade before began to reorganize. A coalition government emerged that included members of the Independent Smallholders' Party, Social Democratic Party, National Peasant Party, and other parties, as well as the HWP. After negotiations, Soviet officials agreed to remove their troops at the discretion of the Hungarian government, and Soviet troops began to leave Budapest. Nagy soon learned, however, that new Soviet armored divisions had crossed into Hungary.

In response, on November 1 Nagy announced Hungary's decision to withdraw from the Warsaw Pact (see Glossary) and to declare Hungary neutral. He then appealed to the United Nations and Western governments for protection of Hungary's neutrality. The Western powers, which were involved in the Suez crisis and were without contingency plans to deal with a revolution in Eastern Europe, did not respond.

The Soviet military responded to Hungarian events with a quick strike. On November 3, Soviet troops surrounded Budapest and closed the country's borders. Overnight they entered the capital and occupied the National Assembly building. Kadar, who had fled to the Soviet Union on November 2, assembled the Temporary Revolutionary Government of Hungary on Soviet soil just across the Hungarian border. On November 4, the formation of the new government was announced in a radiobroadcast. Kadar returned to Budapest in a Soviet armored car; by then, Nagy had fled to the Yugoslav embassy, Cardinal Mindszenty had taken refuge in the United States embassy, Rakosi was safely across the Soviet border, and about 200,000 Hungarians had escaped to the West.

With Soviet support, Kadar struck almost immediately against participants in the revolution. Over the next five years, about 2,000 individuals were executed and about 25,000 imprisoned. Kadar also reneged on a guarantee of safe conduct granted to Nagy, who was arrested on November 23 and deported to Romania. In June 1958, the Hungarian government announced that Nagy and other government officials who had played key roles in the revolution had been secretly tried and executed.

Anybody can make a slip. But referring to Hungary as being an American ally against the USSR in the way that China was a US ally against Japan during the Second World War is really kind of goofy.

Froomkin's column has quite a few links to critical and analytic commentary on Bush's speech.

Tags: bush, chris matthews, hungary, iraq war

Bush thanks Austrians for help in Iraq War

Austrian "never forget" stamp from the post-Second World War four-power occupation period

Bush was very generous in thanking Austrians for participating in his Iraq War. This was surely a surprise to the Austrian Bundesheer (Army), who didn't realize they had participated.

From President Bush blunders at APEC summit in Australia by Thoms DeFrank New York Daily News 09/08/07:

A President who jokes that English is his second language outdid himself with a string of verbal gaffes in Australia yesterday.

The malapropisms added some levity to a day marked by an unusually testy exchange with South Korea's president over U.S. policy toward North Korea.

Beginning a talk to business leaders at Sydney's Opera House, Bush told Australian Prime Minister John Howard, "Thank you for being such a fine host for the OPEC summit."

Bush quickly corrected himself: "APEC summit" - the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting. ...

Bush didn't correct the blooper, but the official White House transcript changed the word to "Australian."

You know, Austria, Australia, one of those foreign countries, it's all about the same. Unless you're maybe Austrian or Australian. You know, different continents, different countries. They tend to think people might be able to tell a difference.

Tags: austria, australia, bush

A really bad idea ... but the American Legion will love it

Bush spoke to the American Legion on Tuesday. I can see why he would feel at home with that crowd; see my earlier posts Is it just because they hate our freedoms? 08/24/05 and Legionaires Disease II is already speading 08/27/05.

Our Dear Leader's speech included this:

The other strain of radicalism [besides Sunni extremism] in the Middle East is Shia extremism, supported and embodied by the regime that sits in Tehran. Iran has long been a source of trouble in the region. It is the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism. Iran backs Hezbollah who are trying to undermine the democratic government of Lebanon. Iran funds terrorist groups like Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which murder the innocent, and target Israel, and destabilize the Palestinian territories. Iran is sending arms to the Taliban in Afghanistan, which could be used to attack American and NATO troops. Iran has arrested visiting American scholars who have committed no crimes and pose no threat to their regime. And Iran's active pursuit of technology that could lead to nuclear weapons threatens to put a region already known for instability and violence under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust.

Iran's actions threaten the security of nations everywhere. And that is why the United States is rallying friends and allies around the world to isolate the regime, to impose economic sanctions. We will confront this danger before it is too late. (my emphasis)

We've been down this road before with Dear Leader. It's impossible for war opponents to answer each and every line of the claims used to push for war with Iran. But we can note the main ones. Is there any real evidence that Iran is supplying the Taliban? It's very unlikely, since Iran was hostile to the Sunni-fundamentalist Taliban regime in Afghanistan and actively supported the US efforts to overthrow it.

My understanding is that it's correct that Iran "is the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism". That was also true back in 2002 when Cheney and Bush were pushing for war with Iraq, claiming it was a state sponsor of terrorism that had to be stopped. Critics of that policy at the time pointed out over and over again that according to the State Department's own documents, Shi'a Iran was the leading state sponsor of terrorism, not secular-Sunni Iraq.

That Iranian-sponsored terrorism, so far as we know from the public record, has not been directly specifically against the United States since the attack on Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia in 1996, which is widely regarded as an Iran-sponsored attack.

Our Leader continued:

I want our fellow citizens to consider what would happen if these forces of radicalism and extremism are allowed to drive us out of the Middle East. The region would be dramatically transformed in a way that could imperil the civilized world. Extremists of all strains would be emboldened by the knowledge that they forced America to retreat. Terrorists could have more safe havens to conduct attacks on Americans and our friends and allies. Iran could conclude that we were weak -- and could not stop them from gaining nuclear weapons. And once Iran had nuclear weapons, it would set off a nuclear arms race in the region.

Extremists would control a key part of the world's energy supply, could blackmail and sabotage the global economy. They could use billions of dollars of oil revenues to buy weapons and pursue their deadly ambitions. Our allies in the region would be under greater siege by the enemies of freedom. Early movements toward democracy in the region would be violently reversed. This scenario would be a disaster for the people of the Middle East, a danger to our friends and allies, and a direct threat to American peace and security. This is what the extremists plan. For the sake of our own security, we'll pursue our enemies, we'll persevere and we will prevail. (Applause.)

In the short-term, we're using all elements of American power to protect the American people by taking the fight to the enemy. ... Our strategy is this: We will fight them over there so we do not have to face them in the United States of America. (Applause.) (my emphasis)

... We seek an Iran whose government is accountable to its people - instead of to leaders who promote terror and pursue the technology that could be used to develop nuclear weapons.

He is claiming the alleged Iranian backing for anti-American attacks in Iraq, where Iran is backing the American-supported Shi'a government, as a fact:

Shia extremists, backed by Iran, are training Iraqis to carry out attacks on our forces and the Iraqi people. Members of the Qods Force of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps are supplying extremist groups with funding and weapons, including sophisticated IEDs. And with the assistance of Hezbollah, they've provided training for these violent forces inside of Iraq. Recently, coalition forces seized 240-millimeter rockets that had been manufactured in Iran this year and that had been provided to Iraqi extremist groups by Iranian agents. The attacks on our bases and our troops by Iranian-supplied munitions have increased in the last few months - despite pledges by Iran to help stabilize the security situation in Iraq.

Some say Iran's leaders are not aware of what members of their own regime are doing. Others say Iran's leaders are actively seeking to provoke the West. Either way, they cannot escape responsibility for aiding attacks against coalition forces and the murder of innocent Iraqis. The Iranian regime must halt these actions. And until it does, I will take actions necessary to protect our troops. I have authorized our military commanders in Iraq to confront Tehran's murderous activities. (Applause.)

For all those who ask whether the fight in Iraq is worth it, imagine an Iraq where militia groups backed by Iran control large parts of the country. Imagine an Iraq where al Qaeda has established sanctuaries to safely plot future attacks on targets all over the world, including America. We've seen what these enemies will do when American forces are actively engaged in Iraq. And we can envision what they would do if we - if they were emboldened by American forces in retreat. (my emphasis)

I really hope some enterprising reporter is following up on exactly what Bush meant when he said, "I have authorized our military commanders in Iraq to confront Tehran's murderous activities."

He's talking more and more, it seems, as though hostility to Iran is part of the Iraq War. And if he attacks Iran, it will be essentially a broadening of the Iraq War. With consequences that will not be good for the United States.

Bush's host on Tuesday, the American Legion, takes a position on antiwar criticism that fits well with the authoritarian state of today's Republican Party. From their booklet Resolution 169 - The War on Terrorism: A Guide to Building Awareness (2005):

Antiwar groups began demonstrating against military action even before U.S. troops began to strike back at our enemies. The antiwar group Act Now to Stop War and End Racism actually held its first antiwar rally on Sept. 29, 2001 - before U.S. forces began the liberation of Afghanistan, before the first terrorist was jailed at Guantanamo Bay, before the war in Iraq, even before the fi res stopped smoldering in Manhattan.

Because of their methods, history will not judge these protesters kindly. They are not only causing additional pain and anguish to America’s heroes, they are also encouraging the enemy, thereby lengthening the war.

In our view, war is painful enough without adding anguish to its veterans and their families. What do we mean by anguish? Walter Reed Medical Center, where many of America’s injured warriors are being treated, has been targeted by war protesters. Some demonstrators have gone as far as protesting at funerals for America’s fallen heroes. Some opponents of the war have even called the terrorists "freedom fighters." These terrorists are people who murder religious pilgrims, behead humanitarian aid workers, kill unarmed U.N. offi cials and bomb U.S. troops as they rebuild broken cities. Simply put, they are not freedom fighters. They are killers without conscience or compunction. That was obvious to most Americans on 9/11, and it remains obvious today. (my emphasis)

These guys (and they're mostly guys) are still so hung up on the "culture war" of the 1960s that they seem fixated on the moment when Spiro Agnew was Vice President and ranting and evil media types in New York (and we know what kind of people live in New York, don't we, nudge-nudge wink-wink?) and hippie protesters. Further in their little propaganda pamphlet, in which they equate supporting the Cheney-Bush war policy with (of course!) supporting "the troops", they say:

U.S. forces serving in Iraq and Afghanistan are committed to completing their mission successfully, transforming tyrannies to democracies and defeating organized terrorism in places where it has been allowed to exist. Those U.S. forces need to know that most Americans share their passion to succeed and that those who oppose the war represent a media-hungry minority whose efforts inspire the enemy. Troops everywhere must know that the people at home support them and their mission. They cannot be separated from each other, and support for both is the fast track to bringing our troops home safely. The protest movement, meanwhile, gives hope to the insurgency, to terrorists and other criminals around the world, energizing their campaigns to destroy America and all it values. (my emphasis)

I haven't gone back and checked the polls from 2005. But sufferers from this particular brand of Legionnaire's disease that leads them to cheer for disastrous war policies by Cheney and Bush are very much a minority in America today.

Tags: american legion, authoritarianism, bush, iraq war, iran, iran war

Bush's bad historical analogies

Thom Shanker of the New York Times commits an act of real journalism by bothering to ask some questions about the historical analogies Bush is using to defend indefinitely American combat in the Iraq War: Historians Question Bush’s Reading of Lessons of Vietnam War for Iraq 08/23/07.

He doesn't address the the Vietnam War stab-in-the-back claim. But he does look at some of the related claims:

American air power was used to help sustain South Vietnam’s struggling government, but by the time of the famous photograph of Americans being lifted off a roof in Saigon in 1975, few American combat forces were left in Vietnam. "It was not a precipitous withdrawal, it was a very deliberate disengagement," said Andrew J. Bacevich, a platoon leader in Vietnam who is now a professor of international relations at Boston University.

Vietnam today is a unified and stable nation whose Communist government poses little threat to its neighbors and is developing healthy ties with the United States. Mr. Bush visited Vietnam last November; a return visit to the White House this summer by Nguyen Minh Triet was the first visit by a Vietnamese head of state since the war.

"The Vietnam comparison should invite us to think harder about how to minimize the consequences of our military failure," Mr. Bacevich added. "If one is really concerned about the Iraqi people, and the fate that may be awaiting them as this war winds down, then we ought to get serious about opening our doors, and to welcoming to the United States those Iraqis who have supported us and have put themselves and their families in danger." (my emphasis)

The article also discusses briefly Bush's Second World War analogy:

The comparison of Iraq to Germany and Japan “is fanciful,” said Steven Simon, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He noted that the American and allied militaries had eliminated the governments of Japan and Germany, and any lingering opposition, and assembled occupation forces that were, proportionally, more than three times as large as the current American presence of more than 160,000 troops in Iraq.

“That’s the kind of troop level you need to control the situation,” Mr. Simon said. "The occupation of Germany and Japan lasted for years — and not a single American solider was killed by insurgents." (my emphasis)

At one point in the polemics around the Iraq occupation, war fans were scaping to find instances of guerrilla resistance in Germany or Japan. So far as I've seen, Simon is correct: there were no American deaths from any resistance fighters, if any could be said to exist. (Secret networks to smuggle war criminals out of Germany are another matter.)

Tags: bush, iraq war, vietnam war

Bush makes the Vietnam War "stab-in-the-back" into his official state ideology

I've written a lot about the "stab-in-the-back" excuse for the loss of the Vietnam War, which has long since been embraced by the Republicans' "culture war" ideology. And we've been hearing a barely-altered ideological version of it already being used to blame the Democrats for the loss of the Iraq War.

In reality, the Republicans have fought this war just the way blowhard-white-guy Republicans have been saying wars should be fought. We blasted into Iraq and didn't worry about any limited goals. We destroyed the Iraqi government and dissolved the Iraqi army. We took over the place and decided ourselves what to do with it. We didn't worry overly much about the United Nations and certainly not about international law, or even the American laws banning torture.

Despite attempts, Congress has so far put no restraints on how Bush and his Party conduct the war. (There was an essentially symbolic bill banning acts of torture that were already illegal anyway.) And, according to both our Dear Leader Bush and and to his generals, our generals have gotten exactly what they have requested and have been allowed to conduct the war exactly the way they wanted.

The result is a disaster. The biggest strategic disaster in the history of the United States, as a matter of fact.

So the Republicans say it's all the Democrats' fault.

As part of this positioning, Bush himself rolled out his own version of the Vietnam War stab-in-the-back mythology to the Veterans of Foreign Wars on Tuesday, citing as an authority Osama bin Laden, among others. From the White House Web site, with "Applause" notations omitted, President Bush Attends Veterans of Foreign Wars National Convention, Discusses War on Terror 08/22/07:

Finally, there's Vietnam. This is a complex and painful subject for many Americans. The tragedy of Vietnam is too large to be contained in one speech. So I'm going to limit myself to one argument that has particular significance today. Then as now, people argued the real problem was America's presence and that if we would just withdraw, the killing would end.

The argument that America's presence in Indochina was dangerous had a long pedigree. In 1955, long before the United States had entered the war, Graham Greene wrote a novel called, "The Quiet American." It was set in Saigon, and the main character was a young government agent named Alden Pyle. He was a symbol of American purpose and patriotism - and dangerous naivete. Another character describes Alden this way: "I never knew a man who had better motives for all the trouble he caused."

After America entered the Vietnam War, the Graham Greene argument gathered some steam. As a matter of fact, many argued that if we pulled out there would be no consequences for the Vietnamese people. [I wonder who he's talking about here; such a statement from a Vietnam War critic would be hard to find. - Bruce]

In 1972, one antiwar senator put it this way: "What earthly difference does it make to nomadic tribes or uneducated subsistence farmers in Vietnam or Cambodia or Laos, whether they have a military dictator, a royal prince or a socialist commissar in some distant capital that they've never seen and may never heard of?" A columnist for The New York Times wrote in a similar vein in 1975, just as Cambodia and Vietnam were falling to the communists: "It's difficult to imagine," he said, "how their lives could be anything but better with the Americans gone." A headline on that story, date Phnom Penh, summed up the argument: "Indochina without Americans: For Most a Better Life."

The world would learn just how costly these misimpressions would be. In Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge began a murderous rule in which hundreds of thousands of Cambodians died by starvation and torture and execution. In Vietnam, former allies of the United States and government workers and intellectuals and businessmen were sent off to prison camps, where tens of thousands perished. Hundreds of thousands more fled the country on rickety boats, many of them going to their graves in the South China Sea.

Three decades later, there is a legitimate debate about how we got into the Vietnam War and how we left. There's no debate in my mind that the veterans from Vietnam deserve the high praise of the United States of America. Whatever your position is on that debate, one unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price of America's withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like "boat people," "re-education camps," and "killing fields."

There was another price to our withdrawal from Vietnam, and we can hear it in the words of the enemy we face in today's struggle - those who came to our soil and killed thousands of citizens on September the 11th, 2001. In an interview with a Pakistani newspaper after the 9/11 attacks, Osama bin Laden declared that "the American people had risen against their government's war in Vietnam. And they must do the same today."

His number two man, Zawahiri, has also invoked Vietnam. In a letter to al Qaeda's chief of operations in Iraq, Zawahiri pointed to "the aftermath of the collapse of the American power in Vietnam and how they ran and left their agents."

Zawahiri later returned to this theme, declaring that the Americans "know better than others that there is no hope in victory. The Vietnam specter is closing every outlet." Here at home, some can argue our withdrawal from Vietnam carried no price to American credibility - but the terrorists see it differently.

We must remember the words of the enemy. We must listen to what they say. Bin Laden has declared that "the war [in Iraq] is for you or us to win. If we win it, it means your disgrace and defeat forever." Iraq is one of several fronts in the war on terror - but it's the central front - it's the central front for the enemy that attacked us and wants to attack us again. And it's the central front for the United States and to withdraw without getting the job done would be devastating.

If we were to abandon the Iraqi people, the terrorists would be emboldened, and use their victory to gain new recruits. As we saw on September the 11th, a terrorist safe haven on the other side of the world can bring death and destruction to the streets of our own cities. Unlike in Vietnam, if we withdraw before the job is done, this enemy will follow us home. And that is why, for the security of the United States of America, we must defeat them overseas so we do not face them in the United States of America.

Yes, there were consequences of the civil war in Vietnam after the United States withdrew and Saigon fell.

There were also strategic benefits for the United States from withdrawing. We stopped pouring lives and money into a war that was not vital to our national interests and that offered no reasonable prospect for "victory" at any acceptable price.

One of the main justifications for the war was that a North Vietnamese victory would mean an expansion of Chinese power. In fact, unified Vietnam resumed their country's traditional distant relationship with China and actually fought a serious border skirmish with the Chinese.

The testosterone argument over whether losing in Vietnam "emboldened" our enemies is pretty questionable. The fact that Osama bin Laden, hiding in his proverbial cave in the badlands of Pakistan or wherever, taunts the United States over the Vietnam War is no surprise. Nor does it tell us much of anything. This citing of Bin Laden's propaganda claims to justify your own position of the moment - Democrats do it too - is a bit weird. More importantly, it's becoming a ritual symbol with little actual content other than the emotional, just like Second World War symbolism has been used ever since 1945. Bush doesn't fail to cite some in his VFW speech, either.

Yes, the jihadis will taunt Bush's manhood when US troops eventually leave. Maybe Bush can reassure himself by dressing up in his "Mission Accomplished" flight suit and manly codpiece and admire himself in costume in the mirror.

The truth is, whatever "emboldening" of actual or potential enemies the Iraq War has produced has pretty much already occurred. The United States invaded a country that was no threat to us. And we've been now tied down there militarily for longer than we were involved in the Second World War that Bush was still citing today. With no end in sight. And the effectiveness of the Iraqi enemy's irregular warfare has been demonstrated many times over.

Will we really look tougher if we continue to pursue the illusion of total victory and unconditional surrender for the next 5, 10, 15 years? Is Bush willing to spend the remaining months of his failed Presidency rallying his Party and the nation to accept a military draft and the decade-or-longer continuing combat commitment that would be required for any hope of such an outcome to exist?

Democrats shouldn't let themselves be bullied by this kind of talk. No matter what happens, the Reps are already blaming the Democrats for the loss of the Iraq War. If there is another major terrorist attack in the United States, the Republicans will blame the Democrats, no matter what. And however the US eventually leaves Iraq under whatever President, the Republicans will blame the new foreign policy challenges on Weakness and lack of Will - by the Democrats.

Not that the Democrats should accept such accusations. On the contrary. But they also shouldn't be under any illusion that they can avoid them by buckling under to Bush's failed Iraq War policies.

And when it comes to reality-based analysis of the Iraq War itself, we should all remember that talking about the potential aftermath of withdrawal - which the war critics are aware of and often discuss (e.g., George McGovern and William Polk in Out of Iraq [2006]) - without talking at the same time of the ongoing costs and risks of continuing American participation in the war is to create a phony picture. Which, as usual, Bush was trying to do in his Tuesday VFW speech.

Tags: bush, iraq war

No, it can't happen here

An ACLU Freedom of Information Act suit succeeded in springing a secret White House manual on how to keep any dirty hippie protests from disrupting Our Leader's orderly public appearances, as reported in White House Manual Details How to Deal With Protesters by Peter Baker Washington Post 08/22/2007:

Among other things, any event must be open only to those with tickets tightly controlled by organizers. Those entering must be screened in case they are hiding secret signs. Any anti-Bush demonstrators who manage to get in anyway should be shouted down by "rally squads" stationed in strategic locations. And if that does not work, they should be thrown out.

But that does not mean the White House is against dissent - just so long as the president does not see it. In fact, the manual outlines a specific system for those who disagree with the president to voice their views. It directs the White House advance staff to ask local police "to designate a protest area where demonstrators can be placed, preferably not in the view of the event site or motorcade route." (my emphasis)

I like to kid my Austrian friends about a popular saying there, "Ordnung ist das halbe Leben" (order is half of life).

But they have a sense of humor about it. And, when it comes to political events involving the most senior government officials, well, they don't just arrange Potemkin events like the White House sets up to showcase Dear Leader Bush's greatness. I reported about a year ago - with actual original material from first-hand observation, even! - about a political rally for the Austrian conservative party, the Österreichische Volkspartei (ÖVP) in our California Governor's hometown of Graz.

As I observed then, Austrian political practices seemed quite exotic for someone from our model American democracy that we take pride in being the model to the world. (The extent to which any other countries in the world see it that way is another question.)

The serving government officials of the time who appeared there in person included Chancellor Wolfgang Schüssel; Finance Minister Karl-Heinz Grasser and Foreign Minister Ursula Plassnik along with the Defense Minister, the Economics Minister and the Interior Minister (more-or-less the Attorney General in American terms).

As I wrote then:

The most amazing thing about it to me probably didn't seem unusual to most people there. It was that here was the head of government, appearing in a partisan rally along with some of the most senior members of his government. And, unlike the strictly controlled partisan appearances of Dear Leader Bush, the rally was completely open to the public.

Even an unsympathetic foreigner like me could attend. And the place wasn't crawling with uniformed security personnel or burly guys in dark suits and sunglasses. No sharpshooters visible on the rooftops.

Perhaps most unusual of all in comparison to Dear Leader's approach, there was a protester in the crowd who occasionally shouted out something negative. He was standing about thirty yards from the stage when the Chancellor was speaking. There were two security guards who were standing discreetly to either side of him. But they didn't try to drag him out of the crowd or arrest him or beat him up or anything even when he shouted out dissent against the Chancellor. The head of government was actually allowed to hear one of his voters shouting out criticism!

An amazing thing for those of us who have become acclimatized to the way today's Republican Party handles things.

The speeches themselves weren't especially notable, except again for an American, who couldn't help but notice that the horrible, awful menace to Western Civilization from The Terrorists was not a central theme of the speeches. There was much more talk about health care and employment issues. The Foreign Minister used her few minutes to promote Europe, i.e., supporting the European Union. Chancellor Schüssel and Herr Minister Yuppietwit [Grasser] focused more on stock conservative bromides, like how if we just cut taxes for the wealthy and restrict the opportunities of kids from working-class families to go to college, everything will get better.

There was also quite a bit of patriotic hype about how great Austria is. Though by American standards of over-the-top patriotic and nationalistic rhetoric, it was pretty tame.

Sad to say, it's hard to picture that happening here in America right now. Here, demonstrators who might distract from the adoration of Our Leader are treated differently, as the Post reports:

The lawsuit was filed by Jeffery and Nicole Rank, who attended the Charleston [West Virginia] event wearing shirts with the word "Bush" crossed out on the front; the back of his shirt said "Regime Change Starts at Home," while hers said "Love America, Hate Bush." Members of the White House event staff told them to cover their shirts or leave, according to the lawsuit. They refused and were arrested, handcuffed and briefly jailed before local authorities dropped the charges and apologized. The federal government settled the First Amendment case last week for $80,000, but with no admission of wrongdoing.

Now, I take it for granted that no party is going to let their rallies be shouted down by protesters, nor should they. But the Bush practice has obviously gone far beyond that, to the point that his staff try to shield Dear Leader from having any direct exposure to live dissent at all among his subjects.

Today's authoritarian Republican Party increasingly operates on the Benito Giuliani definition of freedom from back in 1994:

Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do.

You have free speech so I can be heard. (from 'Freedom Is About Authority': Excerpts From Giuliani Speech on Crime New York Times 03/20/1994

For more than one reason, I generally avoid using the word "fascism" to describe contemporary political movements or arguments. So I would have chosen a different title for Chris Hedges' book on the Christian dominionism in America than American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War On America (2006). But his book contains a number of "case studies" on individuals, some prominent and some not, that I'm sure will be a valuable resource for other researchers.

One facet of Christian dominionism that discusses is how common words can be redefined in such groups in an almost cult-like manner. For many fundamentalists, as he describes, the entire concept of freedom - including political freedom - becomes defined as submitting to the will of God. As interpreted, of course, by His faithful representatives like Pat Robertson or Sam Brownback. Or, as Giuliani put it, "Freedom is about authority."

On this general topic, check out the comments by Digby (Hail Caesar 08/20/07) and David "Orcinus" Neiwert (Right-wing reductio ad absurdum 08/20/07) about a frank proposal from a columnist, Philip Atkinson, at the conservative Web site Family Security Matters, for a Bush dictatorship. I had never heard of Atkinson before that. And the Web site pulled his post and all his other columns. But the Digby link has the full article. He wrote:

The inadequacy of Democracy, rule by the majority, is undeniable - for it demands adopting ideas because they are popular, rather than because they are wise. This means that any man chosen to act as an agent of the people is placed in an invidious position: if he commits folly because it is popular, then he will be held responsible for the inevitable result. If he refuses to commit folly, then he will be detested by most citizens because he is frustrating their demands. ...

The wisest course would have been for President Bush to use his nuclear weapons to slaughter Iraqis until they complied with his demands, or until they were all dead. Then there would be little risk or expense and no American army would be left exposed. But if he did this, his cowardly electorate would have instantly ended his term of office, if not his freedom or his life.

The simple truth that modern weapons now mean a nation must practice genocide or commit suicide. Israel provides the perfect example. If the Israelis do not raze Iran, the Iranians will fulfill their boast and wipe Israel off the face of the earth. Yet Israel is not popular, and so is denied permission to defend itself. In the same vein, President Bush cannot do what is necessary for the survival of Americans. He cannot use the nation's powerful weapons. All he can do is try and discover a result that will be popular with Americans.

I'm not suggesting this is a glimpse of some massive Republican plot. But it is a literate example of how authoritarian thinking can lead to the desire for being rid of the ambiguity of all this troubling democracy stuff, where citizens are expected to think for themselves and take some responsibility for their government. (In the rightwing world, the notion that "Israel" is looking to commit genocide on Iranians, even though the writer seems to like the idea, has a meaning going beyond any foreign policy question, i.e., promoting the idea that The Jews are savage and amoral.)

In a moment like the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks - which made for a pretty long moment - authoritarians can have a chance to push for a "tyranny of the majority", when they happen to be in the majority. The more normal case, though, is for them to be in the minority. And that means their usual position is one of whining about how screwed up all these decadent democratic ideas and practices and popular programs like Social Security are.

Christian fundamentalism also encourages this habit of thought. Fundamentalists normally see themselves as God's Elect and destined to be a permanent minority in an un-Godly world. There's nothing inherently authoritarian in that. But in practice, that can and often does translate into trying to apply their religious certainty to political issues as well, and regarding the very process of compromise inherent in democratic government as un-Godly in itself. The variety of thought known as Christian dominionism particularly encourages that approach.

Tags: authoritarianism, bush, republican party

The unilateral Executive theory of Presidential power

Digby makes an important point about today's Republican Party, specifically in regard to Dark Lord Cheney's "unilateral Executive" theory of Presidential power. For authoritarian Republicans like the Party's leaders today, the Party is the ultimate source of legitimacy. Not the Constitution, not the law. Not even ideology, except so far as ideology protects the power of the Party and the economic and class interests to which it is dedicated to serving. Digby writes:

It's actually a straight line from the Watergate pardon to Iran-Contra (and its pardons) to impeachment to the stolen election of 2000 to the unitary executive abuses of the Bush presidency and the Iraq war. It doesn't really have anything to do with Dick Cheney's alleged theory of executive power, since he employs it only when he's defending a lawless Republican administration. (I don't exactly recall old Dick standing up and complaining loudly about the imperial congress spending eight years harassing the executive when the executive was a Democrat, do you?)

Cheney and his boys escalate whenever and wherever they have institutional control. He doesn't actually believe in a powerful executive. He believes in a powerful Republican Party and so do all of his lock-step brethren --- by any means necessary. (my emphasis)

Let's hope that most of them don't quite hold the "by any means necessary" perspective!

Tags: bush, cheney, unilateral executive, unitary executive

Petraeus and Bush

Gene Lyons discusses those two gentlemen and their Iraq War in Mystery man Arkansas Democrat-Gazette 07/25/07. I'm not quite sure which of the two the title refers to, though. Bush, I think. Here's Lyons on Petraeus:

The great hero of Baghdad, however, is expected to be Gen. David Patraeus. The president invoked his name 11 times on July 12. Bush having cashiered all the generals who opposed his “surge,” it’s to this mighty Caesar a war-weary nation is expected to turn for an objective appraisal of Iraq policy come September. ...

To hear Petraeus tell it, the U. S. has turned more corners in Iraq than a stable of barrel racing horses. Six weeks before the 2004 presidential election, he wrote a Washington Post column claiming that victory was imminent, largely because of the fighting spirit of Iraqi soldiers whom Petraeus himself had trained—an effort that’s quietly been all but abandoned.

On evidence, Petraeus appears to be a familiar American type, a capable soldier combining strong right-wing views and dreadful political judgment. Compare, for example, MacArthur, Gen. Douglas C.

And Lyons on Bush:

On July 13, Bush invited a platoon of conservative columnists to the White House to admire his steely resolve. ... One conservative who wasn't invited is The Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan. Citing a "rock-ribbed Republican friend" who told her, "I don’t believe a word that comes out of his mouth," Noonan admits being creeped out by "the president’s seemingly effortless high spirits.... His Iraq leadership has failed. His standing is lower than any previous president’s since polling began. He’s in a good mood. Discuss.” Some of the diagnostic criteria for Narcissistic Personality Disorder are as follows: "a grandiose sense of self-importance," "fantasies of unlimited success, power," "requires excessive admiration," "strong sense of entitlement," "takes advantage of others," "lacks empathy” and “arrogant affect." It’s the classic con man’s personality. For such an emotional cripple, every day being genuflected to and addressed as "Mr. President" would be “Mission Accomplished” Day.

Tags: bush, gene lyons, iraq war

Blaming the generals

I posted the other day about how Bush was setting up his generals to take the blame for his Iraq War disaster. Thomas Ricks is writing about the same theme in Bush Leans On Petraeus as War Dissent Deepens: General Set Up as Scapegoat, Some Say Washington Post 07/15/07:

With opposition to Bush's Iraq strategy escalating on Capitol Hill, the president has sought, at least rhetorically, to transfer some of the burden of an unpopular war to his top general in Baghdad, wielding [Gen. David] Petraeus as a shield against a growing number of congressional doubters. In speeches and meetings, the president has implored his critics to wait until September, when Petraeus is scheduled to deliver a much-anticipated assessment of the U.S. mission in Iraq. ...

Some of Petraeus's military comrades worry that the general is being set up by the Bush administration as a scapegoat if conditions in Iraq fail to improve. "The danger is that Petraeus will now be painted as failing to live up to expectations and become the fall guy for the administration," one retired four-star officer said.

A couple of other Washington Post regulars are writing about it, too, including Dan Froomkin in How Bush Uses His Generals Washingtonpost.com 07/16/07, where he quotes the same passages from Bush's Thursday press conference that I did on the point. (Just sayin'.) William Arkin picked up on the same point in Listening to the Generals? Early Warning blog, Washingtonpost.com 07/13/07.

Tags: bush, iraq war

Bush: The generals are to blame for the mess in Iraq

Our Leader: Don't blame me, blame my generals

How else can you read this statement of his during his press conference today?

Those are all legitimate questions that I'm sure historians will analyze. I mean, one of the questions is, should we have sent more in the beginning? Well, I asked that question, do you need more, to General Tommy Franks. In the first phase of this operation, General Franks was obviously in charge, and during our discussions in the run up to the decision to remove Saddam Hussein after he ignored the Security Council resolutions. My primary question to General Franks was, do you have what it takes to succeed? And do you have what it takes to succeed after you succeed in removing Saddam Hussein? And his answer was, yes.

Now, history is going to look back to determine whether or not there might have been a different decision made. But at the time, the only thing I can tell you, Wendell, is that I relied upon our military commander to make the proper decision about troop strength. And I can remember a meeting with the Joint Chiefs, who said, we've reviewed the plan. I remember - and seemed satisfied with it. I remember sitting in the PEOC, or the Situation Room, downstairs here at the White House, and I went to commander and commander that were all responsible of different aspects of the operation to remove Saddam. I said to each one of them, do you have what it takes? Are you satisfied with the strategy? And the answer was, yes. (my emphasis)

This is yet another reminder of what a difficult time satirists have spoofing the Cheney-Bush regime. The Onion did a piece a couple of weeks ago called Bush: Maybe U.S. Military 'Just Not Very Good' 06/27/07. They have their imaginary Bush saying:

When the decision was made to liberate Iraq, I was going on what my advisers were telling me and what everyone has said for nearly a century - that the U.S. military is the best in the world. But if that were the case, and we did have the most powerful army, navy, marines, and air force on the globe, we would be winning, right?

That was satire. But is it so very different from what Bush said today in those two paragraphs I just quoted?

Tags: bush, iraq war

Subpeonas in the Cheney-Bush era

Cheney and Bush may have discovered yet another new frontier in secrecy, stonewalling, and Executive privilege: Bush Orders Miers Not to Testify by Laurie Kellman, AP 07/11/07. Sara Taylor and Harriet Miers are both former Executive Branch employees who have been subpoenaed to testify before Congress. Bush "directed" both of these private citizens not to testify. And so far, they are both complying with Dear Leader's "direction". Marty Lederman at the Balkinization blog has some thoughts on this in What Is a Private Citizen to Do (When Caught in the Middle of an Interbranch Dispute)? 07/11/07:

Now, this is odd, to say the least. Let's look more carefully at what's happening here. Taylor and Miers actually are faced with legal "directives" -- subpoenas from congressional committees. And their failure to give testimony responsive to the subpoenas is a crime, by virtue of a duly enacted statute (2 U.S.C. 192). ...

All of which is to say that Taylor and Miers have chosen to commit a federal crime, and to disregard the only legal directives (the subpoena, the federal statute) to which they are in fact subject. (emphasis in original)

I guess all this complying with the law stuff is like, you know, so-ooo pre-9/11. At least for those that Our Leader designates as being exempt. What was the word now-Attorney General Abu Gonzales used for the Geneva Conventions, "quaint"?

Tags: bush, bush administration

Bush on Syria

Robert Fisk writes about Bush's position on relations with Syria in The scar of Hariri's murder will never heal in Lebanon Independent 06/01/07 (posted 05/31/07), which mainly deals with the UN Security Council's decision to investigate the assassination of the former Lebanese Rafik Hariri:

Clearly, George Bush will be pleased because he has long ago lined up President Bashar al-Assad of Syria in his sights. Not long ago, receiving Lebanese visitors in the White House - and this a 100 per cent accurate quotation from the horse's mouth, so to speak - Bush announced that he was "going to hang Bashar by the balls". The problem, of course, is that Mr Bush is in no position to do that. Indeed, it is the army of Iraqi insurgents who appear to have Washington by the balls and it is Mr Bush who may need President Assad's help to relieve this terrible pressure. For at the end of the day, Syria and Iran are the two countries which the US needs so it can extract itself from Iraq. (my emphasis)

Tags: bush, syria

May excitement abounds

It's already been an eventful May! Congress sent Bush an Iraq War funding bill with a withdrawal timeline and he's already vetoed it. Despite the fact that the clock is ticking for our troops, he voted against funding for the troops.

And Britney Spears began her post-rehab public performance "comeback" last night at the House of Blues in San Diego. Not surprisingly, all reliable reports say it was brilliant. Those who are experienced in reading Britney symbolism appreciate the fact that she began her "comeback" on International Workers Day.

Our Dear Leader Bush addressed his loyal subjects about the Iraq War yesterday in Washington: Remarks by the President to the Associated General Contractors of America 05/02/07. He didn't have anything particularly new to say, though it's always worth noticing what he does say about it just because he's the Decider. It was mostly the same sort of stuff we've heard for over four years, now. Things are going great, with a few small problems here and there, we have to hang in there, freedom is on the march, yadda, yadda. Funny, he didn't mention anything about those "weapons of mass destruction" we went in to find and destroy.

He said we need to give Gen. Petraeus until September before we start judging whether the McCain escalation (The Surge) is succeeding. Then he proceeded to explain all the ways it's supposedly succeeding, and brilliantly so, thanks to his own far-sighted, wise leadership.

Dear Leader also stressed the alleged role of "Al Qaeda" in the Iraq War. He makes it sound like the United States is supporting the Maliki government and the whole Iraqi nation against Al Qaida, who are apparently the masterminds and perpetrators behind nearly every attack in the whole country. He does mention that there are a few Sunni and Shi'a extremists here and there.

Dear Leader said, "And the definition of success as I described is sectarian violence down. Success is not, no violence." He also says that "the number of sectarian murders in Baghdad has dropped substantially" as a result of the McCain escalation. As Bush might phrase it: in other words, sectarian violence is down. That means there's less sectarian violence. Well, mission accomplished, then! He should be able to agree on a withdrawal timetable with Congress sometime this week, don't you think?

Tags: britney, britney spears, bush, iraq war