Defending honor, whether it exists or not

I wasn't going to post much about the latest story of love affairs among the prominent and powerful. Then I realized there was a definite Jacksonian connection here. So I can't resist.

That would be the famous case of Peggy Eaton, wife of Old Hickory's first Secretary of War, John Eaton. Peggy was a young widow who was known to be outspoken and not always in awe of expected social customs of Washington society ladies. This gave rise to rumors that she was a woman of loose morals. Jackson himself thought the rumors were scurrilous and encouraged Eaton to marry her, between Jackson's election in 1828 and his Inauguration. This was also a bit unconventional. The expectation at the time was that a widow would wait a full 12 months from the death of her husband to remarry, and that time period hadn't quite passed.

So there was a big brouhaha during Jackson first couple of years in office over Peggy Eaton. The other Cabinet wives didn't want to associate with her and there were various tensions in the Cabinet over it. This was all compounded by Secretary of State Martin Van Buren's use of the flap to discredit Vice President John Calhoun in Jackson's eyes, Calhoun being aligned with the anti-Peggy group.

This whole thing really ticked off Old Hickory. For one thing, his political enemies had tried to smear him and his wife Rachel, who died after the 1828 election but before his Inauguration, during his Presidential campaign. The "hook" was some obscure technical question about the validity of Andrew's and Rachel's marriage in Mississippi Territory. It was a frivolous accusation, since they had done another ceremony soon afterward the first to make sure there was no question about the legal status of the marriage.

Jackson did not subscribe to the present-day Democratic consultants' favored theory of responding to such sleaze-slinging by having the candidate "stay above the fray" and let the other side slime you until you lose. So he didn't leave any doubt that he thought the people using that tale were dirty scoundrels, rotten polecats and generally the lowest form of slimy snakes that crawled on the face of the earth. And he wasn't pretending, either. He really did think that. And when Rachel died, his was convinced her mortification at being the object of such attacks was one of the causes. At the reception after her funeral, he told his assembled guests:

I can forgive all who have wronged me, but will have fervently to pray that I may have grace to enable me to forget or forgive any enemy who has ever maligned that blessed one who is now safe from all suffering sorrow, whom they tried to put to shame for my sake!

The tablet that he prepared for her grave at their Tennessee home, the Heritage, where he is now buried beside her, read in part, "A being so gentle and so virtuous, slander might wound but could not dishonour".

Jackson's biographer Robert Remini quotes what one of Jackson's last living former slaves used to tell people when he led tours of the Hermitage and came to their bedroom: "This is de picture of Miss Rachel. Every morning de general would kneel before it and tell his God that he thank him to spare his life one more night to look on de face of his love."

So for a variety of reasons, Jackson defended Peggy Eaton - who was a fighter herself who demanded that he defend her - and put a great deal of effort into documenting the falsehood of accusations against her. William Faulkner caught the broader cultural significance of this in Requiem for a Nun (1951). The narrator is describing the naming of the Mississippi capital city, whose namesake was Andrew Jackson. (Not Stonewall Jackson, you silly Yankees!) This Hinds to whom he refers here was one of the commissioners who had laid out the plans to turn a trading post called Le Fleur's Bluff into a capital city; Faulkner points out that the earlier name is now "called and spelled 'Leflore'." And he writes:

And [they] named the city after the other old hero, hero Hinds' brother-in-arms on beaten British and Seminole fields and presently to be President - the old duellist, the brawling lean fierce mangy durable old lion who set the well-being of the Nation above the White House, and the health of his new political party above either, and above them all set, not his wife's honor, but the principle that honor must be defended whether it was or not since, defended, it was, whether or not; ...

Going back to the sleaze-slinging against him and Rachel in the 1828 Presidential campaign, it's worth quoting a letter he wrote to Sam Houston expressing his attitude toward such attacks. It's not a sad plea about the need for more "bipartisanship", which the priest of High Broderism today seem to think is the most important virtue in politics. The Clay reference is to Jackson's Kentucky rival Henry Clay, who Jackson blamed for that particular piece of sleaze being used (emphasis in original):

I am determined to unmask [those who have] entered into the combination to slander and revile me; and I trust, in due time to effect it, and lay the perfidy, meaness, and wickedness, of Clay, naked before the american people. I have lately got an intimation of some of his secrete movements, which, if I can reach with possitive and responsible proof, I will wield to his political, and perhaps, his actual destruction [Jackson was a duellist], he is certainly the bases[t], meanest, scoundrel, that ever disgraced the image of his god - nothing too mean or low for him to condescend to, secretely to carry his cowardly and base purpose of slander into effect; even the aged and virtuous female, is not free from his secrete combination of base slander - but anough, you know me, I will curb my feelings until it becomes proper to act, when retributive Justice will vissit him and his pander heads.

We also shouldn't forget that today's Republican Party operates on the assumption of the segregation system, which included a thoroughly debased politics. "Southern honor" for the segregationists has long since become nothing but a slogan defending white racism. Gene Lyons described the Arkansas variant in Fools for Scandal (1994):

Given literacy levels among the lowest in the United States, what this adds up to is a populist brand of political warfare that often descends to the level of professional wrestling. In a small, largely rural state with only one real city, it also makes for fantastic - and highly entertaining - gossip. Almost everybody, it seems, has a neighbor whose second cousin knows an old boy who worked on the governor's dentist's car, and he says ...

During the 1990 Arkansas gubernatorial primaries, for example, lurid tales of lust and fornication were widely circulated about three of the four serious candidates -both Republicans, and, of course, Governor Bill Clinton. Only Clinton's Democratic opponent, an earnest good-government type perceived to have no chance, escaped suspicion. There was talk of whores, drunken orgies at duck-hunting clubs, illegitimate children, hush money, even suicides. One Arkansas politician was rumored to have had carnal knowledge of a convicted murderess inside her jail cell. Interracial sex, of course, is a topic of perennial interest. Indeed, it takes some effort to think of an Arkansas politician of note about whom scurrilous rumors haven't circulated.

For most Arkansas voters, evaluating this avalanche of smut has always been simple: your candidate is innocent, his or her opponents are probably guilty. The fact that political fault lines here tend to coincide with religious differences - hard-shell denominations to the right, "mainstream" churches to the left - makes it easy to caricature one's enemies as pious hypocrites. Otherwise, it would be tempting to suspect that many Arkansans harbor the secret belief that any politician - or TV evangelist, for that matter - who didn't have some rooster in him couldn't be much of a man.

But who would have dreamed that this stuff could be exported?

These are the standards on which today's Republican Party operates. They don't care whether John McCain obeys or has observed the official standards of the Southern Baptist Convention on marital fidelity. They.Don't. Care.

I'm not saying we should imitate authoritarian outlooks. Authoritarians are known for being able to hold wildly conflicting ideas at the same time. But everyone needs to be realistic about how the authoritarian Republican Party of today operates. With sex stories and everything else.

I voted for John Edwards in the California primary because I mailed my ballot before he withdrew from the race. I voted for him because he had a clearer position on withdrawing from Iraq than either Clinton or Obama; he had a more comprehensive health care plan than either of those two; and he was raising the issue of poverty in a way that had effectively been banished from national politics in the Age of Reagan. My only regret about that vote is that he dropped out of the race before it could have an effect on the outcome.

A couple of other thoughts. Is it really so bad that he didn't volunteer the information that he had a brief love affair? Whatever happened to, "A gentleman doesn't kill and tell"? There is something still to be said for that principle.

And any sane view of morality, Christian or otherwise, has to have some sense of perspective. Was John Edwards' admitted love affair as much of a moral offense - is it even in the same universe of moral offenses - as what Jane Mayer recounts in her book The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals (2008):

Bush also knew about, and approved of, White House meetings in which his top cabinet members were briefed by the CIA on its plans to use specific "enhanced" interrogation techniques [torture] on various high-value detainees. The meetings were chaired by [Condi-Condi] Rice, who was then the National Security Adviser, in the Situation Room. The participants were the members of the Principals Committee, the five Bush cabinet members who handled national security matters: Vice President Cheney, Secretary of State Powell, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, CIA Director Tenet, and Attorney General Ashcroft. Knowing how the Agency had been blamed for ostensible "rogue" actions in the past, Tenet was eager to spread the political risk of undertaking "enhanced interrogations." However, some members of the group became irritated with Tenet's insistence upon airing the grim details. "The CIA already had legal clearance to do these things," a knowledgeable source said, "and so it was pointless for them to keep sharing the details. No one was going to question their decisions - they were the CIA - they knew more than anyone else about each case. It's not as if any of the principals were debating the policy - that was already set. They wanted to go to the limit that the law required. But Tenet would say, 'We're going to do this, this, and this.'" Ashcroft in particular took offense at discussing such distasteful matters inside the White House. "History will not judge us kindly," he reportedly warned. There is no indication, however, that any Bush cabinet members objected to the policy. Cheney was described as "totally pushing it," and Rice, during the early period when Zubayda was captured, was described by a knowledgeable source as "a total hard-ass." The source suggested, "She was probably reflecting what the President wanted." (my emphasis)

This is the worst band of scoundrels ever to run the American government. I'm sure that John Edwards would have ended the torture policy. So please don't anyone try to tell me that Dick Cheney is a more moral person that John Edwards because Cheney doesn't cheat on his wife, preferring instead to get his sexual kicks designing the details of torture sessions.

Get back to me when the US is no longer in the business of torturing people and launching preventive wars. When we don't have a Cabinet full of gangsters who sit around talking about what kind of twisted sexual perversions to apply to prisoners selected to be tortured, and worrying about how they can avoid being arrested for what they're doing. Then we'll talk about what role that failure to adhere to Southern Baptist standards of sexual conduct should play in American politics.

Tags: andrew jackson, john edwards, old hickory, torture

How antiwar do the Democrats need to be?

Another article from last year, this one look at the Democrats agreement early in the year 2007 to compromise on the non-binding resolution against the McCain escalation (The Surge) that Bush had adopted for Iraq. Although by embracing Sen. John Warner's much milder version, they barely make a statement against the escalation. (See Spencer Ackerman at TPM Muckraker, Is Compromise Really An Anti-Surge Resolution? 02/01/07.)

That event showed a tension that we will see and experience for as long as the Iraq War continues. Politicians will normally try to stake out a position that wins support from as wide a group as possible and alienate as few as possible.

In that case, I could see the value in having the first anti-Iraq War measure passed in the new Congress be a bipartisan agreement. And the Senate Democrats laboring under the problem that they have a one-vote majority that depends of Joe Lieberman voting with the Democrats. As Ezra Klein wrote in Anti-War, or anti-this-war? TAPPED 02/02/07:

The lesson I've taken ... is that toppling Middle Eastern governments, occupying their societies, and trying to impose pluralistic democracy is an almost impossible endeavor, one with far more potential for catastrophe than completion. And it's easy to assume, listening to politicians who have turned against the war, that they've gleaned the same. That isn't necessarily true. Just because they oppose the Iraq War in retrospect, doesn't mean they oppose the theory on which it was based. They may have turned against the lies, or the mismanagement, or the unpopularity. But they may not have substantially raised the bar for the use of force. Given Edwards' recent comments on Iran, he seems comfortable hinting at another war with a more powerful Middle Eastern country over the issue of WMDs. Hillary certainly is. Being anti-war, it seems, is rather different than being anti-this-war.

Tags: iran war, iraq war, john edwards

What kind of "populist" is the Huck?

The Arkansas Times has an article on the Huck's Smarmy populism by Ernest Dumas (dated 01/10/08; accessed 01/09/08). The same issue features A populist charges across the Iowa prairie by John Williams as the cover story.

I've been reading in the liberal blogs about how down on the Huck the Republican Establishment supposedly is because of his "populist" streak. "Populist" is a much watered-down concept from the original in the late 19th century. But it still has somewhat of a vaguely democratic ring in America, whereas in Europe it tends to be applied to rightwing demagogues.

What kind of populist is the Huck, who Williams calls Brother Mike? (Baptist preachers are generally referred to as "Brother", not "Reverend".) Here's Williams' take. After quoting a description by Hunter Thompson of George Wallace in the 1972 campaign, he writes:

Huckabee is not substantially alien from the Alabama demagogue Thompson describes. The difference between Mike Huckabee and George Wallace is one of style. Huckabee does not yell and whip people into a frenzy — he cajoles and makes them forget themselves with laughter. Huckabee does not race-bait — no fish nibbling in that pond anymore — but he does tell them what they want to hear, regardless of how practical his proposal actually is. Like Wallace, his motive is personal advancement and his vehicle is expedient policy.

I don't mean to say that Mike Huckabee is an irredeemable phony. That would be a severe discredit to someone who has positions that clearly stem from his faith, inscrutable as they may be to me. Elimination of abortion and the sanctity of family is not a ploy to this man, but a deadly serious aspect of his worldview.

But in other matters — those distinct from meat-and-potatoes Christian conservative issues — Huckabee has made up policies on the fly in order to appeal to his target constituency. (my emphasis)

Dumas gives this example of the Huck's concern for working families:

While he has at times seemed to criticize his party and the Bush administration for favoring the rich and corporations with tax cuts instead of working people, he supported all the Bush tax cuts and says he would extend them when they run out. And while he maintains that his own crazy tax overhaul, a 30 percent national sales tax to replace most other individual and corporate taxes, would help the poor and middle class, it would instead be a massive shift of the fiscal burden from the very wealthy and corporations to working families.

On the Leno show last week, Huckabee explained why the sales tax would work so well: “First of all, you eliminate the underground economy. Everyone is paying [the tax]: drug dealers, prostitutes, pimps, gamblers ...” His choice of examples is a perfect illustration of the plan's goofiness.

To keep the tax rate as low as 30 percent, the so-called Fair Tax does indeed depend on every last part of the retail economy collecting the tax for services rendered, including Huckabee's drug dealers, prostitutes and pimps. Exactly how many drug dealers do you think will remit a check to the U. S. Treasury every month? The appeal of the plan, as Huckabee always points out, is that there would be no IRS — no enforcement.

Non-compliance would be so massive, experts say, that the tax rate would have to be 50 percent on every transaction, maybe more. Take that, Joe Lunchbucket. (my emphasis)

That gives an expanded meaning to "sin taxes", doesn't it? Williams describes that gonzo tax proposal as perhaps the Huck's "greatest act of fakery". But he also reports that Brother Mike has high expectations for the Fair Tax, saying of it, "When the FairTax becomes law, it will be like waving a magic wand releasing us from pain and unfairness." Aren't Baptist preachers supposed to be opposed to magic?

Dumas discusses other issues in the Huck's "populism":

But the least convincing label is the latest one pinned on him by all the media: populist. How refreshing they find it that a Republican bleeds for the poor working stiff and rages against Wall Street and callous business. Huckabee has been quite amazing as the champion of the sunburned sons of toil and underdogs everywhere. Upon his victory in Iowa he revealed that he left preaching for politics when he realized that the nation's political leaders sided not with the workers who struggled to pay the family's light and doctor's bills but with the guy who handed them their pink slips. No successful Arkansas politician since Jeff Davis, the tribune of the haybinders, has sounded a more virulent populism even if it has a smarmy rather than a hard edge.

That would be Jeff Davis the Arkansas politician, not to be confused with Jefferson Davis, antebellum Mississippi Senator and President of the Confederate States of America.

It is unconvincing because nothing in his political past showed any particular sympathy for labor. His office interfered with the state Workers Compensation Commission, his administration's one point of contact with workers, to stack the commission against injured workers and their families and to oust hearing officers who tended to favor workers' claims. One unfair dismissal engineered by Huckabee cost the state $125,000. A Huckabee appointee to the commission said the governor's office ordered him to fire the hearing officer, and attorneys for Wal-Mart also pressured him because the woman had ruled against the company in a job-injury case.

His one claim for helping workers was the state minimum wage law in 2006, but business interests pleaded with him and the legislature to pass a minimum wage bill to block a much tougher version in a constitutional amendment that would have been on the ballot that fall.

The comparison with George Wallace may be unfair to Wallace, who arguably was more serious about programs to benefit working people.

See also the Arkansas Times blog post by Max Brantley on Mike Huckabee: Faux populist 01/09/08, who thinks that the Huck "gives populism a bad name".

Can liberal media critics please incorporate this stuff into your usage of the Huck as an example of how the Establishment press tries to shut out advocates for working people? Yes, Glenn Greenwald, this means you, e.g., Media hostility toward anti-establishment candidates 12/19/07:

Edwards, Paul and Huckabee are obviously disparate in significant ways - ideologically, temperamentally, and otherwise. But there is a vital attribute common to those three campaigns that explains the media's scorn: they are all, in their own ways, anti-establishment candidates, meaning they are outside and critical of the system of which national journalists are a critical part, the system which employs and rewards our journalists and forms the base of their identity and outlook. Any candidate who criticizes and opposes that system - not in piecemeal ways but fundamentally - will be, first, ignored and, then, treated as losers by the press. ...

Worse, whenever these candidates are discussed, it almost never entails any discussion of the critiques they are making. Is Edwards right that corporations and lobbyists dictate legislation in Washington and that this state of affairs is profoundly anti-democratic and corrupt? Are Paul's criticisms of our bipartisan imperial policies and his warnings of resulting financial unsustainability (and increasing anti-Americanism) accurate? Is Huckabee's claim true that the GOP has obliterated the economic prospects of its own middle- and lower-middle-class followers? Who knows. Who cares. One searches any media discussions in vain for mention of such matters. (my emphasis)

Greenwald is talking in that post about three candidates: John Edwards, who is campaigning as a New Deal Democrat with a pragmatic, liberal-internationalist foreign policy; Ron Paul, the Liebling (darling) of the white supremacist right, whose foreign policy consists of paranoid xenophobia and whose economic policies could be largely culled from John Birch Society pamphlets; and, Mike Huckabee, Republican Governor and theocrat who's in tight with the Christian dominionist crowd and who wants to move prisoners out of the Guantanamo Gulag because he thinks they have it way too easy there.

Lumping those three as "anti-establishment" doesn't really make much sense. It also contributes to this "populist" scam the Huck and Ron Paul are trying to run.

Tags: ernest dumas, john edwards, john williams, max brantley, mike huckabee, ron paul

John Edwards on withdrawal from Iraq

Tom Hayden comments on Edwards new, and more realistic, policy on withdrawing American troops from Iraq in Edwards First Major Candidate Calling for All Troops Out, Breaks with Establishment Consensus on Iraq Huffington Post 01/02/08:

One day before the Iowa caucuses, John Edwards has become the first major presidential candidate to favor withdrawing all American troops, including advisers, from Iraq, doing so in response to queries from a leading military correspondent, the New York Times' Michael Gordon.

The positions taken by Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, while favoring de-escalation, would leave tens of thousands of American advisers, special forces and substantial back-up troops in Iraq for five years, at least until 2013. The mainstream media also has promoted the view that there is "no way out" of Iraq, according to a comprehensive survey by Peter Hart in Extra! [Nov.-Dec. 2007]. If these views prevail, the US government will be funding, arming, training and defending a repressive sectarian state in Baghdad for years. Already, for example, there are over 50,000 Iraqi prisoners held in detention by the US and Baghdad authorities, the vast majority of them on no charges. Evidence of torture and ethnic cleansing by the Baghdad regime has been accumulated in numerous official reports as well. (my emphasis)

Our lazy press corps is failing the public again, dull-wittedly passing on the Cheney-Bush spin that it's more-or-less impossible to get American troops out of Iraq.

I'm confident that both Clinton and Obama would move toward getting the troops out. And it seems to me that once that process starts, the notion of leaving some substantial American military or advisory presence there is going to quickly prove to be unrealistic because none of the major Iraqi factions are going to want to sponsor that arrangement. But Edwards is now taking the more realistic position.

Hayden closes with the observation that Edwards antiwar position "could become a rallying point in the Democratic platform debate", even if he loses in the primaries. Whoever the candidate is going to be, he or she need to go into the general election with an Iraq withdrawal position like the one Edwards has adopted.

Tags: barack obama, establishment press, hillary clinton, iraq war, john edwards, mainstream media, mainstream press, tom hayden

Labor's role in the Iowa caucuses

Seth Michaels at the News Now blog recaps union participation in the Iowa caucuses in Huge Turnout in Iowa Caucuses. Obama, Huckabee Winners 01/04/07:

According to exit polling by MSNBC, members of union households made up 22 percent of the vote. Obama and Clinton tied for first among these voters, with 30 percent each; Edwards won 24 percent of union household members.

On the one hand, 22% is "just a fifth". But these are a critical fifth for Democratic candidates. They have the organizations and the experience to turn out the vote.

This is also an interesting angle:

With more than twice as much turnout on the Democratic side as the Republican side, it’s worth noting that third-place finisher Clinton brought in more than 73,000 votes, nearly doubling the 38,000 votes that went to Republican winner Huckabee.

Michaels notes that the vote counts are estimates; technically, the Democratic state party doesn't release the raw vote figures.

He also give the lineup of unions by candidates in Iowa:

The three top finishers in Iowa have high lifetime AFL-CIO congressional voting record scores: Clinton has 93 percent, Edwards 97 percent and Obama 96 percent.

Although the AFL-CIO did not endorse, several affiliate unions did, and many of those unions ran active programs in Iowa.

AFSCME released TV ads in support of Clinton, and AFT aired radio ads supporting Clinton. The Fire Fighters (IAFF) union was active in Iowa in support of Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), including a bus tour featuring Dodd and IAFF members from around the state. The Iowa Postal Workers union (APWU) supported Edwards.

In addition to AFSCME and the AFT, Clinton has won the endorsement of 10 unions affiliated with the AFL-CIO: AFSCME, AFT, the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU), the Bricklayers (BAC), the Letter Carriers (NALC), the Machinists (IAM), the Office and Professional Employees (OPEIU), the Painters and Allied Trades (IUPAT), the Sheet Metal Workers (SMWIA), TCU/IAM, the Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) and the United Transportation Union (UTU).

Three national unions are backing Edwards in the Democratic primaries: the Mine Workers (UMWA), Transport Workers (TWU) and United Steelworkers (USW).

IAM’s endorsement of Clinton in the Democratic primaries was accompanied by an endorsement of Huckabee in the Republican primaries. The union earlier this week denounced Huckabee’s move to cross the picket line of striking television writers to appear on the Jan. 2 “Tonight Show with Jay Leno.”

In an earlier post (Huckabee Will Cross Picket Line to Appear on Leno 01/02/07), Michaels quotes Tom Buffenbarger, president of the Machinists union, on Huck's Leno appearance:

Governor Huckabee should not cross the picket line. We have made that abundantly clear to his campaign. With such missteps, he risks losing the support his jobs and economic policies have won for him among trade unionists who will attend the GOP caucuses in Iowa or will vote in the later primaries.

Guests have to cross a union picket line to appear on Leno but not to appear on David Letterman's show. Letterman's production company reached an interim agreement with the strikers.

Michaels links to the Iowa Workers Independent News site, Unions React To Iowa Democratic Presidential Caucus Vote, Obama's Victory by Doug Cunningham 01/04/08. Cunningham includes the following statements. Dennis Williams, Director of UAW Region 4 on Obama:

This is huge for Barack Obama. I think it says to our country - we want change. Were tired of the status quo. Barack Obama has a history of working for working men and women of this country. So I don't think there's any doubt in my mind at least that Barack will be a friend of working men and women and organized labor. he will champion workin' people's causes. And We need that in this country.

SEIU Local 199 President Cathy Glasson on Edwards and the stakes in the Presidential race this year:

Raising up the middle class, standing up for working people and their families - nurses and janitors and head start teachers and school bus drivers. It's really about insuring that every man, woman and child has health care, affordable and accessible health care. And it's really about lifting people up in this country, and I think that's really the focus. And the [Democratic] candidates all believe that.

AFSCME Council 62's Andrew Bouska of AFSCME Council 62:

We're gonna allocate the resources that we need in terms of communicating with our members and letting them know that Hillary Clinton is the best candidate for working families and will be the best president for our future. So we look forward to five days away in New Hampshire, moving on to Nevada, South Carolina and then Super Super Tuesday on February fifth.

Tags: barack obama, hillary clinton, john edwards, mike huckabee

Democrats, war with Iran and Republicans for a pro-peace third party

"Don't Mugwump that war, my friend..."

Gareth Porter, who has provided some of the best commentary on the diplomacy and the politics of the Iraq War, takes a lot at the question, Does Hillary Support War with Iran? Huffington Post 10/15/07.

He takes a close look at Clinton's triangulating on threatening war with Iran, voting for the prowar Kyl-Lieberman resolution but also supporting the Webb amendment banning Bush from starting a war with Iran without Congressional approval. It's not splitting hairs to observe, as Porter does, that "calling for a vote on the issue is not an indication that Clinton is opposed to war with Iran".

He also reminds us that the information available to us publicly at this moment in time strongly indicates that Cheney and Bush intend to launch a high-risk and completely unnecessary war against Iran.

But we now have Sy Hersh's most recent report in The New Yorker, that there has been "a significant increase in the tempo of attack planning" on Iran by the Bush administration. That comes on the heels of a reliable report in August that Cheney had been pushing for a limited strike on bases in Iran that would be aimed at provoking an Iranian response and my own analysis that Lieberman was coordinating his own pro-war amendment in July with the U.S. military command production propaganda supporting war with Iran.

Clinton's failure to utter the slightest protest in the face of a real threat of war must be taken as prima facie evidence that Clinton has no fundamental disagreement with war against Iran. Unless the voters of New Hampshire and Iowa send a signal that they will not accept a Democratic candidate who is not ready to stand up against war with Iran, the chances of preventing such a war recede to the vanishing point. (my emphasis)

I'd like to think the bolded statement is too harsh a judgment. But I can't argue that it is. This is not just a marginal positioning issue. War with Iran would almost certainly be a crime in international law (which is a positive thing to OxyContin Republicans, we have to remember) and would compound the strategic disaster we know as the Iraq War. It's a time for leaders to take clear stands on an Iran War, not to triangulate and comma-dance around it.

Sadly, Porter is also correct that neither John Edwards nor Barack Obama have taken a clear stand in opposition to expanding the war to Iran, either:

Unfortunately, neither Edwards nor Obama have done anything to indicate that they will actively oppose war against Iran either. The only hope for reversing the present momentum for war is that Democratic voters will begin a massive shift to a candidate who has been straightforward in opposing war with Iran from the beginning. Bill Richardson declared in an op-ed last February, "Saber-rattling is not a good way to get the Iranians to cooperate. But it is a good way to start a new war - a war that would be a disaster for the Middle East, for the United States and for the world."

That is the position the voters must rally around decisively in the primary states. And there is no time for dallying over candidates based on other issues and qualifications. The anti-Iran war shift has to happen right now. (my emphasis)

I'm certainly sympathetic to the sentiment.

Of the three major candidates, I've been more favorable to Edwards, and I've given up on Al Gore entering the race. Edwards has been willing to address the problems of poverty and restricted opportunity for working people in America straightforwardly. Of the three, he looks to be the most pro-labor and the most willing to pursue policies aimed at reversing some of the results of the political class warfare the Republicans have waged on behalf of the most wealthy, with notable effectiveness for the last seven years.

But their reticence on expanding the Iraq War into Iran makes me look much more favorably on Chris Dodd and Dennis Kucinich as primary candidates. Especially since Dodd just came out forthrightly with a bid to stop the Cheney-Bush drive to give telecoms retroactive immunity for criminal actions in violation of laws on surveillance.

This brings up a situation where Ron Paul could wind up putting Mitt Romney or Benito Giuliani in the White House with a third-party candidacy. If Cheney launches his war on Iran within the next few months and the Democratic nominee winds up supporting it, that won't win them any Republican-leaning votes. No matter how jingoistic Democrats they try to make their support for an Iran War sound, the Republicans will accuse them of being traitors for half-heartedly supporting it, or for not demanding that MoveOn.org supporters be placed in concentration camps, or whatever.

But it will give a steroid injection to Ron Paul's "a plague on both your houses" posture accusing both major parties of being prowar. That phrase, "a plague on both your houses," was one that Franklin Roosevelt once used while trying to arbitrate some intractable labor-management standoff during his Presidency. It inspired CIO leader John L. Lewis in perhaps his most famous speech, where he rolled out his trademark Biblical purple prose to declare sadly, "Labor, like Israel, has many sorrows."

So will the American public and our soldiers in the Middle East if that scenario comes to pass. Enough antiwar voters will be disgusted enough to be tempted to either stay home or vote for Ron Paul on a third-party ticket. The fundis would be unlikely to support him, because Paul is not sufficiently anti-choice on abortion for their taste, he criticizes "Christian Zionism" and he's opposed to the fundis' sacred crusade in Iraq (and maybe soon to be Iraq-Iran).

So he want pull many Republican base voters. But he could pull some Democratic-leaning voters, even some hardcore Dem base voters. And he could also get enough publicity with his accusations that the Republicans and Democrats were equally bad on the Iraq(-Iran) War that some Dem-leaning independents might decide to vote for the Reps because they think there's no foreign policy differences between the two parties but are also worried that Democrats might want to give some of their tax money to "undeserving" people of color who they prefer to see suffer for their "bad choices".

Far-fetched? Widening the war to Iran could throw a huge monkey-wrench into Presidential politics. And check out this report by Jose Antonio Vargas, The Disciples of Ron Paul, Spreading the Word in N.H. Washington Post 10/15/07:

In a state where Patrick Buchanan upset Bob Dole, the front-runner for the GOP nomination, more than a decade ago, anything is possible, says Andrew Smith, a pollster and director of the University of New Hampshire's Survey Center. As of last November, 26 percent of New Hampshire's electorate were registered Democrats and 30 percent were Republicans. But the biggest block of voters - 44 percent - were undeclared. Forty percent to 45 percent of those, Smith says, leaned Democrat and 25 percent to 30 percent Republican.

But whatever their backgrounds, the Paulites have catapulted a Republican candidate often described "eccentric," "unknown" and a "long shot" into a spotlight. Paul may be the candidate who has tapped into that independent and frustrated portion of the electorate that in every race is looking for a third way. ...

A University of New Hampshire poll last month showed Paul at 4 percent in the state. The most recent Washington Post-ABC News national poll, also from last month, had him at 3 percent. "The other campaigns aren't worried that he'd win the primary. They just don't know who his supporters are and whose support he's taking away," Smith adds. "His poll numbers aren't high now, but it's only October. And they could see him getting 10 percent of the vote here. If you get 10 percent of the vote in a crowded field, well, you might finish third." (my emphasis)

The corporate Republicans and the theocrats can block Robert Welch Ron Paul from getting the nomination. But a third- or second-place finish in New Hampshire could give him just enough gas to make a third-party run in the fall more credible.

And don't think the Republicans won't be willing to channel funds to a Ron Paul third party campaign if they think it has the potential to kick the electoral votes of one or two big states to the Republicans. If Blackwater types can donate to the Green Party for that purpose, they can donate a Loon-for-President third party effort, too.

Expanding the war to Iran, with the Democratic candidate supporting the war but trying to mugwump enough to not totally alienate the base, could provide an ideal opening. (Mugwump = straddling the fence)

Tags: barack obama, hillary clinton, iraq war, iran war, john edwards, mugwump, ron paul

A good word for Hillary Clinton on the Iraq War

Hillary Clinton is taking a bad rap on her position on the Iraq War. I've criticized her myself because well into 2006, she was suggesting that more American troops were needed in Iraq. I was even more concerned about her position on the closely related issue of war with Iran, which would really be a big expansion of the Iraq War. She was sounding very hawkish on that issue a year ago.

But the lazy conventional wisdom of that group we generously call our "press corps" is that Hillary is in big trouble with Democratic primary voters because she refuses to distance herself from her vote from the 2002 war resolution on Iraq, which she voted to support. Or, in the version that the Big Pundits, steeped as they are in High Broderisim, trotted out on Meet the Press Sunday, she refuses to say it was a "mistake". In fact, David Broder himself, the Dean of All Pundits, was there in person to pronounce High Broderist verdict on the issue. The transcript itself isn't up yet, but you can access the broadcast by download or MP3 at the Web site.

There's a nugget of truth in the conventional wisdom: Hillary's hawkishness on the Iraq War has disturbed a lot of Democratic voters. And, in general, a lot of Demcorats are concerned that she may still be trying to operate by bipartisanship and "triangulation" in an environment where the Republican Party has become so authoritarian and beholden to Christian dominionists and conservative Southern white voters (two categories which heavily overlap) that such approaches are neither feasible nor desirable.

But we can't forget that our "press corps" operates under Clinton Rules, i.e., that you can say any dang fool thing, no matter how dishonest or silly or trivial, as long as you say it about the Clintons. And the Big Pundit script on Hillary and The War as displayed on Meet the Press is an example of Clinton Rules at work. My own attitude toward the 2002 war resolution, which I thought then and think even more so now was a horrible mistake for any member of Congress to have supported, is somewhat different that the take that a lot of war critics have on it (more on that below). So I don't regard her vote for that as unmitigated evil on her part.

And as Bob Somerby diligently points out, she has been saying since 2004 that knowing what we know now, she would not have supported the resolution.

Thanks to the laziness of our Establishment press, John Edwards - who I tend to favor over Clinton for the nomination at this point - has at this point successfully positioned himself as more antiwar than she, though he too voted for the 2002 resolution. But, via Somerby on 01/18/07, here was what Hillary Clinton had to say on the war back on 08/29/04, here to Wolf Blitzer:

BLITZER (8/29/04): When you voted for that resolution, like almost everyone else, you believed Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction?

CLINTON: Right, right. Well, indeed I did. And if someone asked me that if we had known then what we know now, there wouldn't have been a vote. You know, no administration would have come to the Congress and asked for a vote that would have authorized any kind of action based on what we now know.

And here to Timmy Russert:

CLINTON (8/29/04): There would not have been a vote, Tim. There would never have been a vote to the Congress presented by the administration. There would have been no basis for it. But we are where we are, and what I think we have to do now is try to understand the series of miscalculations which for the first time ever the president admitted in an interview last week, have occurred, which have rendered our situation more dangerous, less safe, and have put back the effort to try to stabilize and democratize Iraq. I believe with all my heart that, you know, we have to have new leadership at the highest level of our government in order to be successful in the strategy we have embarked upon in Iraq. No matter how we got there, and as I said, we wouldn't have even had a vote if all the facts had been available.

RUSSERT: But John Kerry said he would vote again today for authorization, even knowing what he knows now. You don't agree with that.

CLINTON: Well, but I think the point John was making was the same one I was making, that we don't have a choice to have hindsight.

I disagreed with any Democrats voting for that October 2002 war resolution because it was clear that Cheney and Bush would use it as a political cover for launching a preventive (illegal) war and that they would use it to beat the Democrats who supporter them on it over the head whenever they criticized anything about the war or its conduct.

But we should also be clear about just what that resolution authorized, because under our much-embattled Constitution, it is the responsility of Congress to declare war and to make rules for the armed forces generally, including the paramaters within which the Executive is allowed to wage war. Cheney and Bush violated that 2002 Congressional war resolution when they invaded Iraq.

It's only very recently that I've heard Democrats in Congress begin to make that point. And they don't make it nearly often enough or prominently enough. Cheney and Bush violated that resolution. And their doing so is a clear-cut impeachable offense.

John Dean laid out the details of this in his book Worse Than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush (2004). Dean also discussed the issue on Democracy Now! of 04/06/04, Worse Than Watergate: Former Nixon Counsel John Dean Says Bush Should Be Impeached. He deals with a closely related impeachable offense here: Worse Than Watergate Salon 06/11/03. Short version: the resolution authorized war with Iraq only if there were no other way of dealing with Iraq's (non-existent) "weapons of mass destruction" and if there were a clear link established between Saddam's regime and Al Qaida, including involvement in the 9/11 attacks (a non-existent link on both counts).

So, as much of a mistake as the war resolution was, that resolution did not authorize the war that Cheney and Bush launched in March of 2003.

Hawkishness on Iran

At the moment, I'm more disturbed by the stance that Edwards is taking on Iran than by Clinton's. Via Eric Alterman's Altercation of 02/07/07, this article by John Judis, Flying Blind on Foreign Policy The Plank blog 02/06/07, looks at Edwards' stance. I don't agree with Judis' conclusion, reflected in the title of his post. But I'm concerned that he's not been willing to confront the disastrous consequences of attacking Iran under current conditions.

Also via Alterman, from Clinton's Seanate Web site, is the text of her 02/01/07 speech to AIPAC, the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee. AIPAC is the Likud-friendly, very hawkish group that is the most influential lobby group among what is often called the Israel lobby. And AIPAC is pushing a hardline policy on Iran.

I've seen this speech reported in various ways, some of which - reflecting the press corps script - makes Clinton's position sound unrelentingly hardline, as well. What she said in that speech included. This part quoted in isolation certainly sounds straighforwardly hawkish:

U.S. policy must be clear and unequivocal. We cannot, we should not, we must not, permit Iran to build or acquire nuclear weapons. And in dealing with this threat as I have said for a very long time, no option can be taken off the table.

But Iran is a threat not only because of the hateful rhetoric spewed by its president, not only because of its nuclear ambitions, but because it uses its influence and its revenues in the region to support terrorist elements that are attacking innocent Israelis; and now we believe attacking American soldiers. Hezbollah's attacks on Israel this summer using Iranian weapons clearly demonstrate Iran's malevolent influence even beyond its borders.

I would much prefer that everyone drop the "no option can be taken off the table" line. That normally goes without saying. And it would be better to let it go without saying it.

But she also told the AIPAC audience this, which not all of them were entirely happy to hear:

There are no easy answers to the complex situation we face today. I have advocated engagement with our enemies and Israel's enemies because I want to understand better what we can do to defeat those who are aiming their hatred, their extremism, their weapons at us. And I believe we can gain valuable knowledge and leverage from being part of a process again that enables us to get a better idea of how to take on and defeat our adversaries.

This is a worthy debate to have in our country today. There are many, including our President who rejects any kind of process of any sort of engagement with countries like Syria and Iran. I do believe that that is certainly a good faith position to take, but I am not sure it is the smartest strategy that will take us to the goals that we share.

It is a debate worth having because right now we know that there are direct threats to Israel, to our young men and women in harms way in Iraq, to the very fragile democracy in Iraq and to the one in Lebanon. As bad as the situation looks to us today, it could become even worse. And what do I mean by engagement or some kind of a process? Well I'm not sure anything positive would come out of it, I have no expectations whatsoever. But there are a number of factors that I think argue for some attempt to do what I am suggesting: number one I don't think we know enough about how Iranian society and their government really functions. I was struck by the rejection of the President's party in those recent elections. If we are having to pursue potential action against Iran beyond enforcing the toughest sanctions that we can and bringing the world community along as hard as it is, to recognize the danger to them as well as to us and to Israel then I want to know more about the adversary we face. I want to understand better what the leverage we can bring to bear on them will actually produce. I want to get a better sense of what the real power centers and influentials are. And I also want to send a message if we ever do have to take war, drastic action to the rest of the world that we exhausted all possibilities because we need friends and allies to stand with us as we stand with Israel in this long war against terrorism and extremism. I talked with a number of you about how we best pursue our mutual goal of reining in terrorism and extremism of protecting and guaranteeing the security of Israel, of preventing a state that sponsors terrorism from becoming a nuclear power. There are no good analogies that we can pull from history because we're living with new threats and asymmetric warfare and state actors and non-state actors, each of whom have the potential to wreak such horrible damage on innocents, but I suggest and hope you will consider thinking of a smart way to pursue our interests and Israel's at this dangerous time that gives us both more information and more leverage. Similarly with Syria which is becoming an even greater problem because of its support for Hamas, because of its involvement in both Lebanon and Iraq against Israeli and American interests, we also have to do more to figure out what, if any real leverage we can bring to bear. And all during the Cold War we met with the Soviet Union while they had thousands of missiles pointed at our cities while their leaders threatened to bury us while they sowed discord and military uprisings and actions against us and our allies. That was a smart strategy even though it was a difficult one. Today we face a new set of dangers that in some way are more difficult because we're living in not a stable, bipolar world, but living in an unstable, multi-polar world. And I think you can send a very clear message to your enemies about what they will face if they do not change while trying to figure how best to create conditions internally and externally within those societies to cause that change. (my emphasis)

Except that I would prefer she lose the "all options on the table" line, what she's describing here is the right policy. The Iranian nuclear program, even leaving aside some of the more hysterical claims that are being made, is a real concern for the world: a problem made far more acute the Cheney's and Bush's preventive war against Iraq, sending a strong signal to Iran and others that if you don't want to be invaded by the US, you better have usable nukes ready to use. In signficant part because of the Iranian program, the Board of Directors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists just recently moved the hands on their famous Doomsday Clock from seven minutes before midnight to five minutes before midnight.

At the same time, to recklessly reject Iranian diplomatic initiatives and take very concrete steps toward war with a serious, major-league diplomatic effort to prevent it is the kind of recklessness and irresponsibility that has been the hallmark of the Cheney-Bush administration's foreign policy.

The Establishment press reports Hillary Clinton's position's through a false lens, defined by Clinton Rules. We don't have to endorse every jot and tittle of her foreign policy statements to recognize and try to get around their laziness and professional misconduct on reporting her positions. (For our godless heathen readers, "jot and tittle" is a Biblical reference in King James English, similar to "dotting every "i" and crossing every "t".)

Tags: hillary clinton, iran, iran war, iraq war, john edwards