The Distant Ocean

From Jenin to Fallujah

2004-11-17T23:07:00.001-08:00

Quick: what's depicted in the picture below?

A mosque in...Fallujah? Najaf? Mosul? Right idea, but wrong war. This is actually a picture I took in a mosque in the Jenin refugee camp in April of 2002, just a little over a week after the Israelis finished their murderous assault there. The Israelis had used this mosque as a sniper nest, since it was on the high ground overlooking the center of the camp. Just like the U.S. marine firing from a Fallujah mosque in the photo at left (from an article in the New York Times). As I've watched the news coverage from Fallujah, the similarity has been striking for me; it feels like it's 2002 again and I'm back in the West Bank, walking through mounds of rubble and shattered glass that used to be homes.

People in the Middle East know all too well images like the one above from Jenin, and Nablus, and Hebron, and other Palestinian cities. And when they see the images that are coming now from Fallujah, I have no doubt that they think of Jenin, and Nablus, and Hebron, and other Palestinian cities--just as I do. They see the American (or is it Israeli?) soldiers attacking the Iraqis (or is it Palestinians?). The analogy is unavoidable.

But this isn't just a misguided conflation based on surface resemblances; rather, it's reality finally being made manifest. Palestinians have long had no choice but to accomodate ludicrous notions of the U.S. being an "honest broker" for peace--as though any rational person who's aware of the facts could consider the U.S. a disinterested observer, with no bias toward either side--but they know exactly who it is that's financing Israel's crimes against them, and that those crimes are in fact a join U.S.-Israeli project. Still, in the Occupied Territories the U.S. role is always one step removed, and obscured by endless clouds of diplomatic smoke. In Iraq, though, the mask is finally off. The U.S. is doing the killing directly now, using some of the experience gained by its client state to carry out the same kind of destruction.

I'm reminded of the fact that Colin Powell would not go to Jenin in 2002, and in fact delayed his arrival in Israel to give the Israelis enough time to finish their atrocities in Jenin and in other West Bank cities--but the U.S. military was there, and was taking careful notes. Their interest obviously wasn't just academic; after all, Donald Rumsfeld was calling for the invasion of Iraq just hours after 9/11, and so in April of 2002 there was a pressing need to prepare for the upcoming urban warfare in Iraq (the formal plans to attack Iraq were drawn up just six months later, in October of 2002, even as the Bush administration was claiming to be giving the inspections and diplomatic process time to work). In other words, the U.S. had no interest in putting any pressure whatsoever on Israel over the atrocities in Jenin and elsewhere--but they were eager to see just how effectively the Israelis could kill Palestinians in close quarters urban combat, since they knew they'd soon be doing the same kind of killing in Iraq.

The result is that in the perception of many people around the world, the distinctions between the U.S. and Israel are all but gone. IDF units demolishing huge swaths of the Gaza Strip and U.S. aircraft, artillery, and troops laying waste to Fallujah are just two different manifestations of a singular policy. And the consequences of this perception for U.S. citizens--both those who support what's being done and those who don't--will be devastating.

Help free Mordechai Vanunu (again)

2004-11-11T13:32:00.000-08:00

In case you haven't heard, Mordechai Vanunu was just re-arrested by Israel. They're doubtless counting on Arafat's death and the US assault on Fallujah to push this story to the back pages. The US Campaign to Free Mordechai Vanunu is calling on people to send email, faxes, and make phone calls. Here's the contact information they provide:

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon
3 Kaplan St.
Hakirya, Jerusalem 91007
Fax: +972 2 566 4838
Email: rohm@pmo.gov.il

Tommy Lapid, Minister of Justice
29 Salah al-Din St. Jerusalem 91010
Fax: +972 2 628 5438
Email: sar@justice.gov.il

Tzahi Hanegbi, Minister of Internal Security
P.O. Box 18182
Jerusalem 91181
Fax: +972 2 581 1832
Email: sar@mops.gov.il

Ambassador of Israel
3514 International Drive NW
Washington DC 20008
email:ambassador_sec@israelemb.org
phone:202-364-5500
fax:202-364-5607
Public & Interreligious Affairs (202) 364-5542
Political Department (202)364-5581/2
Press Office(202) 364-5538

This heroic man served nearly 18 years in an Israeli prison, much of it in solitary confinement, for revealing Israel's nuclear arsenal to the world; the very least that we can do is send a few messages to help him out when he needs it the most.

An Open Letter to The Progressive

2004-11-09T23:46:00.000-08:00

To: Matthew Rothschild of The Progressive

I read your "Letter to Incredulous Friends Around the World" with some incredulity of my own. There are several things in your letter--either stated directly or strongly implied--that would be worrisome coming from anyone who supported John Kerry, but which are particularly troubling coming from the editor of such a deservedly respected source of progressive news and commentary.

First, you cite Bush's rejection of the Kyoto Accords as one of the reasons that it's impossible to believe that Americans would have voted him back into office. But John Kerry also rejected Kyoto, as was made clear in this blazingly direct statement from one of his official policy papers: "John Kerry and John Edwards believe that the Kyoto Protocol is not the answer." While Bush's rejection of Kyoto is more aggressive, the fact is that the US would not have been participating in Kyoto no matter who was elected. You should know this, but your letter implies that you don't.

Later, you point to a ray of hope by saying that "55 million Americans said no to the Iraq War." Well, perhaps--but if they did, they certainly didn't do so on November 2nd in their vote for John Kerry, who said of Iraq: "I'm not talking about leaving. I'm talking about winning," and who furthermore tried to prove that he could prosecute the war even more violently than Bush by vowing that he would "not back off of the Fallujahs and other places, and send the wrong message to the terrorists." Voting for a candidate who spouts this kind of rhetoric hardly constitutes a "no to the Iraq War," as (again) you should know--yet your letter says otherwise.

You also said, "we are with you in abiding by the U.N. Charter." Well, you may be, and the rest of those 55 million Americans may be as well, but John Kerry most definitely is not. He made this crystal clear in his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention: "I will never give any nation or international institution a veto over our national security." And of course he reiterated this same statement in the debates, in his advertisements, and in his stump speeches. Giving an international institution a "veto" over war-making powers is in fact one of the key principles behind the U.N. Charter, which asks nations to sacrifice a measure of sovereignity in exchange for a forum in which to mediate disputes that would otherwise have to be resolved through violence. By his vociferous dismissal of that principle, John Kerry couldn't possibly have been more direct in his rejection of the primacy of the United Nations.

Again: you should know this. In fact, I imagine that you do know this. Yet like many on the Anybody But Bush left, your opposition to George Bush seems to have taken you into a realm of cognitive dissonance in which Kerry's actual statements, positions, and policies are immaterial. It's as though because Kerry was the candidate running against Bush, in many people's minds he became simply the antiBush--the antithesis of all things Bush--so that his positions were automatically assumed to be the opposite of Bush's. Yet on several of the very issues you cite (Kyoto, the Iraq War, respect for the U.N. Charter), and a host of others, that was not even remotely the case.

You need to face up to the fact that Kerry was not the antiBush, but was in fact strikingly similar to Bush in many aspects of his international and foreign policy. He did not deserve a pass for these positions from the progressive community, but rather forceful condemnation. The standard rationalization for not doing so during the campaign was that criticism of that sort would only help Bush, but in writing about this after the election, you no longer have that excuse--and you do us all a disservice when you ignore or obscure these facts.

Finally, in response to Phillip Kerrigan of Australia, who responded to your letter with the admonition that we not "let John Kerry just fade away," I say this: yes, please, by all means let John Kerry fade away. And please let the progressive community never again be so deeply compromised, enervated, and divided by pro-war Democrats who know they can take our support for granted even as they forcefully reject our most cherished values.

Global warming a problem? Think again!

2004-11-08T13:28:00.001-08:00

A good friend of mine noticed this Reuters story on the as-yet unheralded benefits of global warming. Some choice bits:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Rising global temperatures will melt areas of the Arctic this century, making them more accessible for oil and natural gas drilling, a report prepared by the United States and seven other nations said on Monday. [...]

Such a change would threaten coastal cities, change growing patterns for vegetation and destroy habitats for some wildlife, but an energy-starved world would have new areas for oil and gas exploration, according to the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment report.

The Arctic region, particularly offshore, has huge oil and gas reserves, mostly in Russia, Canada, Alaska, Greenland and Norway. Warmer temperatures would make it easier to drill and ship oil from the Arctic, the report said.

Who knew there could be such opportunity in adversity? Just think: those whose homes aren't washed away by rising ocean tides, and who manage to survive the increasingly frequent and severe hurricanes, typhoons, and tornadoes that will come as a result of global warming, will be able to continue driving their cars for several years longer.

So tell all those Gloomy Guses who think global warming is a problem to turn that frown upside down. The glass isn't half empty, it's half full--of melted Arctic ice, that is! Well, that and crude oil. But you get the idea.

Nader's violent death still a real rib-tickler for Kerry voters

2004-11-04T22:12:00.001-08:00

Apparently the humor potential of Ralph Nader's violent death wasn't exhausted during the campaign. It's still funny! Just listen to what author and journalist Stephen Pizzo had to say on Alternet:

"Calm down Ralph, I'm not referring to you. For you I prescribe a long vacation – a road trip in a vintage Ford Pinto."

Ha ha ha! Do you get it? It's like this: "vintage" Ford Pintos used to explode in rear end collisions. So if Ralph Nader took a long road trip in one, he could be immolated in a fiery crash. See, Pizzo apparently disagreed with Nader's electoral strategy this time around--so Nader's painful death has become a source of humor to him! And what's even better is that there's irony here too, because according to Ford's own estimates, Nader's actions in exposing the dangers of the Pinto saved 180 people per year from burn deaths, and that many more each year from serious burn injuries. So for him to die that way would be really funny! It makes you wonder if Stephen Pizzo (or anyone dear to him) was ever in a Pinto that was rear-ended, but which didn't explode because of Nader's selfless actions. Boy, wouldn't that be a twist? Even funnier!

This echoes the chuckles Bob Harris offered us all when he ran a poll just before the election that humorously asked (he's a funny guy, you see--he writes for TV and movies), "What would you like to contribute most to Ralph Nader's campaign?" Among his suggested answers:

A seat belt, air bag, and fire hood equipped ice floe
A shiny new '65 Chevy Corvair

Ha ha ha! Get it? The Corvair bit? It's just like the Pinto joke. See, Bob Harris agrees with nearly everything Ralph Nader has to say, but he wanted John Kerry to win this election, and he thought Ralph Nader might affect Kerry's vote totals. So he used the suggestion of Nader's death as a punch line in his humorous survey. It's funny!

Go ahead and do some Google searches--I bet you can find plenty more examples of your own. You'd be amazed to discover just how many Kerry voters get a kick out of imagining a painful death for Nader. Take Robin Supak, a loving parent and self-described "Poke-mom" (Pokemon+mom, just in case you were wondering) who wrote in her "Song for Ralph Nader": "Please stop these dreams where you perish in a Pinto!" (that's her exclamation point, not mine).

Still not getting it? Well, maybe you could think of it this way: it's like 2004 is really 1984, Nader is Emmanuel Goldstein ("the lonely, derided heretic on the screen, sole guardian of truth and sanity in a world of lies"), and Kerry voters are living out one big Two Minutes Hate--only instead of lasting two minutes, it seems to have no end. And that's funny. Isn't it...?

You know what? Maybe you're right. Actually, that's not funny. It's not funny at all.

Democrats learning all the wrong lessons

2004-11-04T17:44:00.000-08:00

There's a teeny, tiny chance the Democrats will learn the right lesson from this election (stop acting like Republicans and trying to position the party wherever we think the people want us to be), and a much bigger chance that they'll learn the wrong lesson (we lost because of "moral values"? you want us to be a values party? just wait and see!). I'm waiting with not-very-bated breath to see what happens, since I strongly expect it'll be the latter. And here's one of the first indications that that's just what they're going to do (from a story entitled, "Should Democrats Get Religion?"):

Now some in the party are saying that the Democrats need to reach out to these voters with a faith-based appeal. "I don't hesitate to stand up in a crowd and express how important faith is in my life. It is important to be able to express that in a way that is believable, and Democrats have to get comfortable doing that," Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., told the Washington Post.

And this:

"We Democrats better think long and hard about what happened ... and how our party is going to connect with the hopes and aspirations of the people," Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., after watching Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., an 18-year Senate veteran, go down in defeat. "We have lost the ability to connect with people's value systems and we're going to have to work to get that back."

And Michael Lerner of Tikkun is pushing the same message in slightly more touch-feely fashion (predictably taking the opportunity to pimp his own "politics of meaning" as well):

Tens of millions of Americans feel betrayed by a society that seems to place materialism and selfishness above moral values. [...] They want their lives to have meaning--and they respond to candidates who seem to care about values and some sense of transcendent purpose.

While I don't disagree with Lerner's core message in this article, if trying to position themselves strategically on the "moral values" issue is the only thing the Democrats do as a result of the 2004 debacle, they're in for a lot more pain--and so are we all. And pushing them on just this one front from the left (and thus effectively enabling their delusion) will only make it that much easier for them to get it wrong.

To progressive Kerry voters: You broke it--now are you willing to do what it takes to fix it?

2004-11-04T10:20:00.000-08:00

To progressives who voted for Kerry in this election, and especially to those who backed Nader in 2000 but shifted to supporting Kerry in 2004, I say this: you need to accept that you made a serious mistake, and resolve never to make that mistake again. By supporting Kerry and the Democrats when they were ignoring nearly every one of your deepest concerns, you only pushed them towards their stunning defeat and ultimately helped to re-elect George Bush.

More than any single group, it was progressives who could have put positive pressure on the Democrats. But instead many of you muzzled your voices and muted your criticisms, worried that any negative word might hurt Kerry's electoral chances. You ignored or rationalized away Kerry's Bush-like stances on a host of critical issues; after all, he'd certainly be better on some issues, and you let that be enough for you. The Bush threat was just too great. So you set aside your conscience and justified your support for Kerry by saying that you were being "practical" or "adapting to a changing situation." But when you put out those Kerry/Edwards signs with the message "A Stronger America" at the bottom, surely you must have been thinking: is this what I've waited four years to hear the Democratic Party say? When I was protesting the Iraq war, when I was writing letters and making phone calls to try to restore the liberties taken from us under the USA PATRIOT Act--is this what I wanted to hear?

Of course not. Yet that still wasn't enough to make you change your mind; you went along with it all and played the part of the good soldier, because you'd accepted the binding logic of surrender: Bush must go, and therefore Kerry must win. So you silenced your conscience, set aside your misgivings, and forged ahead. And on November 2nd you went out and voted for a candidate who had demonstrated just how deeply misguided he was on Iraq when he said: "I'm not talking about leaving. I'm talking about winning."

And for putting up with all of that, what did you get? George Bush as president, and a Democratic Party that's weaker and more compromised than ever. I've seen many progressives, still in denial, saying "I did my part" by voting for Kerry. Sorry, but not by a longshot--unless you mean that you did your part in helping re-elect George Bush, and assuring continued Republican domination of the US electoral scene for years to come.

I know that that wasn't your intention. I understand that your willingness to support Kerry was born out of a genuine (and quite valid) fear of the effects of four more years of George Bush, and that you felt that you were doing the right thing--no matter how disagreeable it may have been. You were following your best judgement. The results, however, have proven that that judgement was flawed.

But there's something you can do to make this right. If you're determined to continue working within the Democratic Party framework, you should contact your local party leadership--the sooner the better--and tell them that you'll no longer settle for candidates like Gore and Kerry. And you have to be genuinely willing to follow through on that pledge. If the Democrats run another Kerry or Gore in 2008 (in the form of Hillary Clinton, say, or Dick Gephardt), you have to be willing to withhold your vote, even if it may mean a Republican victory. If you don't think you could handle that outcome, consider that if you had withheld your vote this time--as you should have done unless you truly believed in the bulk of Kerry's positions--the Democrats would have lost more decisively and would have been that much more open to reform. But since progressives threw in their lot with Democrats and made it a relatively narrow margin, the Democrats may continue in their denial and refuse to learn the right lesson this time around. By giving them your support for free, you only delayed the inevitable.

It may take more than one election to set this right, or it may never happen at all, but it comes down to this: the Democrats' "incremental co-optation" approach to victory is doomed, and accomodation to it will only prolong its demise. As progressives, we have the power to make sure that that option is foreclosed to them sooner rather than later. This is the best opportunity we've had in years to force the Democrats to start acting like an opposition party again, and we may not get another before it's too late. Please don't squander it.

Norway closer to joining the EU as a result of Bush's victory

2004-11-03T22:09:00.000-08:00

Here's one positive result of Bush's victory--and one that supports the thesis I put forward previously regarding the likelihood of international opposition in the face of another four years of Bush:

The reelection of US President George W. Bush could push Norway closer to joining the European Union, Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik said on Wednesday.
"If the distance expands between the two sides of the Atlantic I think that many people in Europe, including myself, will see a need for a closer foreign policy and security cooperation" between European countries, said Bondevik.

If the EU matures to the point where it can act as a countervailing force to US hegemony, that can only be a good thing.

This Party is Over

2004-11-03T01:06:00.000-08:00

Yes, they really did blow it. Consider the mind-numbing reality here: the Democratic Party, as led by the DLC, has now lost the White House twice to George Bush. No, really: George Bush! Yes, really: two times. I swear I'm not making this up.

Not only that, but they somehow managed to do even worse in 2004 than they did in 2000, despite the fact that Bush now had a record as president--and a record of lies, disastrous policy decisions, and utter incompetence to boot. And they don't even have the consolation of wailing about the unfairness of the electoral college, since Kerry not only lost the electoral college but also failed to win the popular vote (not by a slim margin, either, but by millions of votes). And the Democrats lost seats in both the House and Senate as well.

Let's all take a moment to recall now that Kerry was chosen and championed by the Democratic elite (and then marketed to and accepted by the rank and file) because he was "electable." Sure, he was no progressive, but he was electable. Yes, he was an Iraq hawk in a party with more than 90% doves, but he was electable. Ok, he was a USA PATRIOT Act backer in a party galvanized by its opposition to that grotesque assault on our liberties, but he was electable. So good people set aside their beliefs, chucked their values in the closet, and gave Kerry their support in spite of their serious misgivings about him--and all because he was supposedly electable. Winning mattered more than anything else, and the formula for winning (so we were informed) was to back John Kerry to the hilt and keep your damn mouth shut, despite the fact that many of Kerry's policies looked just like Bush's.

I remember the first thing I heard from Kerry in regards to the presidential election. MoveOn had just solicited statements from the Democratic contenders as to why MoveOn members should support them. Kerry's main reason? That he would work to keep abortion legal. Faced with one of the worst US presidents of all time and a host of issues he might have hammered home or used to differentiate himself, Kerry chose the most safe, hackneyed, predictable Democratic rhetoric he could muster. That was when I first realized that I could not support John Kerry. And that was why, when I heard all these dubious claims that he was more electable than mildly (and I stress "mildly") progressive candidates like Howard Dean, I just shook my head in disbelief. Could the Democrats possibly be foolish enough to repeat their disastrous strategy of 2000?

Yes, they could.

The Democrats have labored for years now under the delusion that they could win elections by endlessly pursuing the "center." The Republicans, on the other hand, realize that in order to win, you have to shift the "center" towards you. Put the two together and you see that the "center" the Democrats have been pursuing has been steadily moved to the right by the Republicans. Unless and until the Democratic Party resolves to become a true opposition party and undertake the difficult work (now much more difficult, after so many years of neglect) of shifting the frame of debate in this country away from the right, it will continue to lose elections. And we will all suffer the results--not just for the next four years, but quite possibly for decades.

In short: this Party is over.

Democrats: Did you actually manage to blow it?

2004-11-02T23:26:00.000-08:00

So it looks like Bush is very likely going to win--and not only that, but Kerry won't even take the popular vote! Even Al Gore managed to do that much, ferchrissake. Astonishing. If things continue as they're going now, the Democrats will have blown it against one of the most arrogant, corrupt, bumbling politicians of all time, with a raft full of issues that they could have used to batter him utterly into submission--if only they'd had the backbone and integrity to do so. But instead they decided to run yet another mealy-mouthed discount Republican, a USA PATRIOT Act supporter, an Iraq war supporter, a corporate shill. In a year where over 90% of their base strongly opposed the Iraq war, they decided to focus on the economy as their major campaign issue. They chose to triangulate rather than to inspire. They chose to adopt Republican positions instead of doing the hard work to shift the political debate in this country to the left, as a genuine opposition party would do. And it looks like we're all going to pay the price for it.

Gore's failure in 2000 taught the Democrats nothing. What I want to know is: will they actually learn a lesson from it this time? Will rank and file Democrats finally wrest control of their party from the DLC, and pull the party to the left--where it belongs? How many more failures at the Congressional and presidential levels will it take before they finally realize that the country doesn't need two Republican parties?

And will all the progressives who tossed aside their values and muzzled their criticisms in order to support Kerry realize that in doing so, they only made Kerry and the Democrats weaker, and helped Bush get reelected? Exactly as Ralph Nader and his spokesman Kevin Zeese so presciently predicted, by the way.

We still don't have have the final results, of course, and it's possible--though very unlikely--that Kerry could still somehow pull it out. But frankly, no matter what the final result turns out to be, these criticisms are still absolutely warranted...because the very fact that this election wasn't a complete Democratic slam dunk shows just how far gone the Democratic party is.

More tomorrow.

No matter who wins, progressives lose

2004-11-02T15:27:00.000-08:00

In terms of the presidential election, November 2nd, 2004 is not a bright day for progressives. The first half of that is obvious, of course; having George Bush as president for four more years is almost too painful to contemplate.

But the alternative is most definitely not a cause for celebration either. If progressives do help Kerry take the presidency, they will have just succeeded in installing a pro-war politician who has attacked George Bush from the right on issues like Iraq, terrorism, and support for Israel, and who (in coordination with the Democratic party leadership) has thoroughly rejected progressive values and squelched even the most modest forms of dissent within the party. More on that here. That's nothing to celebrate, to say the least.

And Kerry will be able to carry out his declared Bush-like policies (particularly in the realm of foreign and international policy) with scarcely any domestic or international opposition, as I've written before. Progressives who think otherwise are just fooling themselves, in my opinion. I'd love to be wrong on this, but I saw it with my own eyes under Clinton, and I can't see any reason to expect that it would be different this time around. Just the opposite, in fact; the scare that Bush has given liberals and progressives will make them that much more accomodating to Kerry's worst policies than they were to Clinton's.

But the negative effects of this election for progressives go much deeper. I've watched as an entire procession of progressives I've respected in the past have thrown their support to Kerry and--more to the point--have attacked Ralph Nader for his decision to run, tarring him with poll-tested Democratic spin about Republican support, accusing him of being nothing more than an egotist, questioning his sanity or his morals, and far worse. It's possible to disagree with Nader on tactics or judgement without rancor, but in my experience the number of people who've done that is vanishingly small. Instead, the norm has been insults, smear tactics, condescension, and arrogance directed towards Nader and those who are supporting him this year. The low point for me was when I saw Bob Harris "humorously" suggest that the best fate for Nader would be to put him in "a shiny new '65 Corvair" or to strand him on "a seat belt, air bag, and fire hood equipped ice floe." If the image of Ralph Nader's death in a fiery car crash doesn't give you the giggles, well, you just haven't tapped into the 2004 progressive zeitgeist.

This election has also demonstrated just how paper thin progressive support for democracy really is, and how quickly it can change when someone like Nader dares to go against the grain. I've seen one ad running on several progressive sites that actually asks, "What have you done to STOP Ralph Nader?" (emphasis theirs, not mine). Roll that one around in your mind for a while. People like Norman Solomon and FAIR founder Jeff Cohen have made it their mission (and contribution to the Kerry campaign) to discredit and attack Nader; to his shame, Cohen is acting as a consultant to the "Unity Campaign," an initiative whose sole purpose is to undermine Nader. The Orwellian terminology there is particularly telling--"unity" in this case means "unity behind Kerry," or perhaps more accurately, "unity against Nader."

These progressives have offered scarcely any complaint as the Democrats have used dirty tricks to undermine the Nader campaign's efforts to get on the ballot in various states; in fact, the silence has been deafening. Apparently it's an appalling travesty when Republicans do this kind of thing in Florida, but it's perfectly acceptable otherwise--as long as it's directed at the right target, that is. That's "unity" for you.

And the anti-Nader campaign among progressives goes even further. Respected progressive web sites like Common Dreams have published a seemingly endless stream of hit pieces on Nader, but have allowed hardly a word in defense of Nader or critical of Kerry. FAIR, which found many occasions to criticize media handling of Nader during his presidential bid in 2000, has become mysteriously silent regarding the media's treatment of Nader in 2004 (e.g. regarding the double standard applied to donations from Republican supporters to Nader and Kerry). The overriding priority among many progressives has been to undercut Nader and to prevent any criticism of Kerry that may possibly have the side effect of reducing his electoral support. It's been quite striking to me--not to mention bitterly ironic--to see just how similar this de facto censorship has been to the de facto censorship we see every day in the corporate media.

In short, the progressive community has revealed that it can be just as opportunistic, venal, anti-democratic, and accomodating to injustice as any other political group in this country. Not that this was news to me...but seeing it in action has been deeply dispiriting.

Sadly, no matter who wins this election, progressives have already lost.

An Open Letter to Michael Moore

2004-11-02T11:44:00.000-08:00

Michael,

As a progressive, I read your final words to voters before the 2004 election with despair. It's sad (no, pathetic) to watch good progressives like yourself selling your souls to John Kerry and the Democrats. You're not content just to vote for Kerry because you feel it's an imperative in order to remove Bush, which is a perfectly understandable sentiment; no, you've rationalized it to such an extent that you are now acting genuinely enthusiastic about Kerry, and as a result you've blinded yourself to who he actually is. And sadly, you're far from alone among progressives in doing so.

You had this to say about voting for Kerry: "We’re the ones always being asked to make the huge compromises and to always vote holding our noses. No nose holding this time." Really? You won't have to hold your nose? Despite the fact that Kerry wants to wage war in Iraq more viciously than Bush, opposes the Kyoto Protocol, opposes the International Criminal Court, supports the USA PATRIOT act, enthusiastically pushes for so-called "free trade" in general and supports the WTO and NAFTA in particular, backs Israel to the hilt, and--possibly the worst of all--bellows over and over and over that he will "hunt down and kill" the "terrorists" no matter where they are, under the exact same preemptive doctrine pursued by the Bush administration? And that's just scratching the surface (see this article for a more detailed look at some of Kerry's most egregious positions).

In light of these positions of Kerry's, I can't imagine how anyone who calls themself a progressive could vote for Kerry without holding their nose--yet that's just what you say you'll be able to do. I fully understand that many progressives feel compelled to vote for Kerry simply because of their fear of and anger towards George Bush, but you've gone well beyond that: you've sold your soul to the Democratic party and John Kerry, and you've embraced your new "friends" (your word) with all the ardor of someone taking up a new religion.

And like a religious convert, you're in denial about inconvenient contradictory information, as you demonstrate so clearly when you say this: "Yes, Kerry was wrong to vote for authorization for war in Iraq but he was in step with 70% of the American public who was being lied to by Bush & Co. And once everyone learned the truth, the majority turned against the war. Kerry has had only one position on the war – he believed his president." I have no doubt that you know that Kerry proclaimed that he would still authorize the Iraq war even knowing that there were no WMDs there. Yet you're so much in thrall to Kerry and so sick with Anybody-But-Bush fever that you're willing to pretend that that never happened, and to give Kerry a pass.

The irony is that it isn't Ralph Nader--the man you attack in your letter--who will be the death of progressive causes in the US; rather, it's people like you, who've tossed aside your values and your judgement in your support of John Kerry, and who are allowing him to co-opt your voices and your influence without so much as a peep against his Bush-like positions on critical issues like Iraq and Kyoto. You say that Ralph Nader has "lost his compass"--yet Nader's values and positions have remained steady and constant since 2000, when you strongly supported him, and he continues to be one of the most intelligent and articulate progressive voices we have. You're the one whose compass is missing.

I urge you to reconsider your support for Kerry. Not in terms of your vote, or even your advocacy for Kerry over Bush, but in realizing that despite the fact that you'd be pleased if Bush is voted out of office, you should also not be pleased that the best the Democrats could give this country--in this year of all years--was John Kerry.

More PIPA chicanery?

2004-10-29T17:36:00.000-07:00

In reading through the actual results of the PIPA survey, it becomes clear that PIPA didn't just use creative footnoting on the issues of Kerry's positions on Kyoto and the International Criminal Court in order to claim that his supporters accurately understand his positions. Rather, they also hid inconvenient results--or one major inconvenient result, anyway.

As shown on page 16 of the questionnaire, the respondents were asked to rate Bush's and Kerry's positions on the question: "In the Middle East conflict, should the United States take Israel’s side, take the Palestinians’ side, or not take either side?" And in answer to this question, only 20% of Kerry supporters realized that Kerry's position is to take Israel's side, while an amazing 68% believe that his position is not to take either side.

Kerry's position on Israel is crystal clear; nobody reading his policy paper on Israel could possibly mistake where his sympathies lie. He has even gone to pains to reassure the Israeli lobby in the US that his support for Israel is second to none.

So Kerry's supporters are just as far off the mark on this issue as they were regarding Kerry's positions on Kyoto and the ICC. Yet this inconvenient result was simply omitted from the final PIPA report--thus removing yet another obstacle to PIPA's desired conclusion that Kerry supporters are "accurate in assessing their candidate's positions on all these issues."

I contacted PIPA yesterday, requesting that they either retract or correct these portions of their report, but as yet they've not responded. We'll see what matters more to them: accuracy and honesty, or putting out results that are favorable to Kerry and his supporters.

The Separate Reality of PIPA

2004-10-28T11:40:00.000-07:00

As you've likely heard, the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) recently released a report entitled "The Separate Realities of Bush and Kerry Supporters" which purports to show how Bush supporters don't even understand Bush's actual policies, while Kerry supporters are extremely well-informed about Kerry's policies. The report has been used by Kerry supporters in predictably self-congratulatory fashion. But while I'm not too surprised by the first half of PIPA's assertion (regarding Bush), the second (regarding Kerry) set off major alarm bells for me, given what I've written about Kerry's positions and the consistent surprise I've heard from Kerry supporters when they discover what those positions actually are.

So I decided to examine the report's findings to see what was causing the disconnect, and the following statement jumped out at me immediately (in fact it practically clubbed me over the head, thanks to the portion I've bolded below):

Majorities of Bush supporters misperceive his positions on a range of foreign policy issues. In particular they assume he supports multilateral approaches and addressing global warming when he has taken strong contrary positions on issues such as the International Criminal court and the Kyoto Agreement. A majority of Kerry supporters have accurate perceptions of Kerry positions on the same issues.

The report later notes that 65% of Kerry supporters think he favors the ICC, while a whopping 74% think he favors Kyoto. And the authors laud the accuracy of these beliefs ("Kerry supporters were much more accurate in assessing their candidate’s positions on all these issues").

PIPA's conclusions here are utter hogwash. First, Kerry is opposed to the Kyoto Protocol; his official policy paper states unequivocally that "the Kyoto Protocol is not the answer." Second, Kerry is also opposed to the International Criminal Court, as he told the Boston Globe ("Kerry opposes role in tribunal," 10/5/2004): "I don't believe the United States should join the International Criminal Court until our concerns are addressed and the Court develops a solid track record of fair prosecutions of the world's worst criminals." So the fact that so many Kerry supporters mistakenly believe he supports both Kyoto and the ICC shows that they're not much better than Bush supporters when it comes to understanding their candidate's actual positions. Yet astonishingly, PIPA chose to feature these two issues in their summary of supporters' beliefs about the candidates' foreign policy positions (page 10).

Like me, you may be wondering how PIPA could possibly have justified their conclusions. The answer is in the fine print. If you examine the actual results on page 12, you'll see an asterisk next to the two rows in the table regarding Kyoto and the ICC, directing you to the following footnote: "Supports in principle but wants to negotiate terms for US involvement."

This is data fudging of the first order. In the case of Kyoto it's just an outright distortion; Kerry's statement on Kyoto itself is utterly unambiguous, although Kerry does pay lip service to the importance of addressing global warming. In the case of the ICC, the footnote is arguably a true statement, but at the very least it's highly misleading. A more accurate footnote would have been "Opposes, but is willing to consider US involvement if certain conditions are met" (as per the Boston Globe article). But in that case, the authors couldn't have supported their desired conclusion that Kerry supporters are well-informed about his policy positions.

It's also important to note that in the actual questions asked, PIPA absolutely did not offer any such caveats about Kerry's positions; the respondents were simply asked to assess whether or not Kerry thought the US should participate or not participate in Kyoto and the ICC. The footnoted qualifications were added by PIPA in their report after the fact, to allow the desired conclusion to be reached. Based strictly on the actual questions and responses for these two issues, then, PIPA's summaries are flat-out falsifications. And PIPA further fudged the results by translating the somewhat ill-defined phrase "participate in" in the questionnaire into the more definitive "supports" in the report.

PIPA also noted (correctly) the "cognitive dissonance" of Bush supporters, while ignoring extreme examples of the same sort of thing among Kerry supporters. For example, the report notes that "Nearly all Kerry supporters (92%) agree that if US intelligence services had said that Iraq did not have WMD and was not providing support to al Qaeda, the US should not have gone to war." Of course, this directly contradicts the statement of their candidate, who proclaimed--astonishingly--that he would still have voted for war even knowing there were no WMDs. Yet somehow this disconnect between Kerry's supporters and Kerry himself doesn't merit any comment by the report's authors. This same pattern is repeated elsewhere in the report.

The PIPA results are interesting, but they've been carefully crafted and in some cases practically falsified in order to present a misleading view of both Kerry and his supporters. As always, caveat lector.

Seymour Hersh on some results of another Bush term

2004-10-28T09:56:00.000-07:00

In the Toronto Star, Seymour Hersh had this to say about some of the results he expects to see if Bush assumes the presidency again:

If there is a second Bush term, Hersh believes European countries — spurred by large and increasingly radical Muslim populations at home and the fact that they are 5,000 kilometres closer to Iraq than the United States is — will band together to be more opposed to American policy than they already are.

"And I think you're going to see even the Germans say it's time to remove the United States as the sole interlocutor between Israel and the Palestinians," Hersh said.

These are exactly some of the things I had in mind when I wrote that a Kerry loss may actually be more beneficial to the world in the long run than a Kerry victory. And I'd expect that the reverse holds as well: if Kerry is elected, European nations will be that much less likely to continue in their strengthened opposition to American policy, and will allow the US to continue in its decades-long role of enabling Israel to keep the threat of peace indefinitely at bay. And the blowback for US citizens will be just as disastrous as it's been in the past.

A Handy Bumper Sticker

2004-10-27T01:27:00.000-07:00

Kerry is the Morphine: Why John Kerry Must Lose

2004-10-19T13:23:00.000-07:00

I've written previously about the fact that many of John Kerry's key policies are similar to (and in many cases more extreme than) those of the Bush administration. But a dedicated ABB liberal or progressive will just respond that, yes, that may be true, but overall Bush is still worse--and we can't afford four more years of his administration's policies. This is the argument that needs to be confronted head on.

I strongly believe that John Kerry must lose this election, for the future of progressive politics in the US, and ultimately and more importantly for the good of the world. I've come to this conclusion slowly over the course of the past year, as I've seen Kerry's positions shift right and harden.

Kerry is a trademark Democratic Leadership Council "New Democrat"--perhaps even more so than Bill Clinton, the prototypical New Democrat (DLC founder and CEO Al From noted approvingly that "this campaign is building on Clintonism"). And rightly or wrongly, his performance in this election will be taken as a referendum on the validity of the DLC's continued ideological control of the Democratic Party.

The DLC has had a stranglehold on the Democratic Party for over a decade now. They saw their success in getting Bill Clinton elected twice as a mandate for their brand of centrism, and his electoral success cemented the DLC's power. But Clinton's success was more a result of his extraordinary personal charisma than his DLC-approved political stance. Where Clinton wasn't involved--at the Congressional level, and in 2000 with Al Gore--the Democrats' DLC-guided strategy has been an abject failure, leading the party into serious decline. Election 2004 could very well be their last hurrah; although the DLC will never admit that their strategy is flawed no matter what the election result, if they cannot beat a candidate as bad as Bush, I'd strongly suspect that the Democratic Party's rank and file would finally revolt against them and their policies.

The DLC and Kerry have pursued an active policy of shifting to the right in an attempt to court conservative voters. In an election year where their base was completely energized by its opposition to the Iraq war (90% of the Democratic convention delegates opposed the war), the DLC and Kerry made a conscious choice to reject an antiwar position--going so far as to prevent even the mildest antiwar language in the party platform, preventing any debate about the war on the floor of the convention, and even preventing delegates from sporting antiwar messages on their clothing. On issue after issue, they have aggressively and contemptuously rejected progressive positions, counting on the fact that progressives are so afraid of Bush that they will support Kerry no matter how far to the right he moves.

So if Kerry wins in 2004, the DLC will conclude forever more that it can piss on progressive values and still count on the progressive vote. Furthermore, the DLC will point to Kerry's victory as the ultimate vindication of their strategy, erasing the stigma of Gore's failure in 2000. They will have beaten Bush while in effect co-opting his worst policies, and they will refuse to see that the the victory is a repudiation of Bush rather than a validation of their own ideology. The result will be DLC domination of the Democratic Party for at least the next 20 years--and probably more--and the complete undermining of any hope for the advancement of even remotely progressive principles in this country within the two-party framework. Progressive principles and positions will for all intents and purposes be a dead letter in US politics for decades to come.

Progressive values will be undermined in another major and more important way if Kerry wins: namely, if Kerry is elected, liberal and progressive Democrats in this country will go to sleep. They'll disappear. Instead of there being 250,000 people in the streets of San Francisco before war even starts, they'll be sitting in their armchairs cheering--just as they did for Yugoslavia, when 70 days worth of vicious bombing by Clinton wasn't enough to get more than a few thousand people out into the streets. I have absolutely no doubt on this point, because I've seen it for myself. I participated in the demonstrations against Clinton's attacks on Iraq and Yugoslavia, and I saw just how few people participated--and how few of those appeared to be mainstream Democrats (if you've participated in any demonstrations, you know that it's not difficult to distinguish them from the usual suspects). I recall one Yugoslavia-related protest in Sacramento outside of a Democratic convention where one of the delegates came outside, wearing his gray suit, and literally screamed at us and gave us the finger from the moment he left the building until he finally disappeared down the street. He was absolutely livid that we would presume to oppose Clinton's policies, so much so that he threatened people with physical violence. The contrast with the behavior of Democrats during the protests in the runup to the Iraq war couldn't possibly have been more pointed.

So I can say with confidence that those progressives who are looking forward to rallying all of their new allies on November 3rd to put positive pressure on a Kerry administration are in for an extremely rude awakening. When they march out to oppose the Bush-like policies that Kerry has repeatedly promised to implement, they'll look behind them and see...nobody. By helping Kerry, they are in fact doing everything they can to undermine the issues in which they so strongly believe.

More importantly, the same narcotic effect will occur on an international level as well. Just as with Clinton, Kerry is smart enough and diplomatic enough to market his Bush-like policies to the world without ruffling feathers and making enemies. So instead of mobilizing other nations of the world to oppose those policies, as Bush has done through his arrogant incompetence, Kerry will be able to placate and neutralize them. Let me emphasize the point here: the actual policies (in particular the international policies) of the United States will not change significantly under Kerry, but the opposition to them by other governments will most definitely be significantly reduced; indeed, this is one of Kerry's primary campaign planks. The major potential countervailing force to US violence, obstructionism, and exceptionalism will have been removed, just as it was under the Clinton administration.

So the result of a Kerry victory would be that policies that are nearly identical to those of the Bush administration would go forward, just as they did under Clinton--but with practically no domestic opposition, and no significant international opposition either. The harm would be all that much greater as a result. And because the DLC would have cemented its ideological hold on the Democratic Party for years to come, the chance that we might return to sanity someday--however slim it may be--would essentially be eliminated.

That is why Kerry must lose.

I'm of course aware that the flip side of what I'm calling for is four more years of Bush, and the very idea is excruciating, to say the least. Bush is without a doubt the worst and most corrupt president in my lifetime--and that's saying a lot. But for the reasons I've stated here, I strongly believe the ultimate harm that will occur with a Kerry presidency is far greater. This is the place the DLC has brought us to, and by rewarding them for it, liberals and progressives will only guarantee that it will continue indefinitely. And I genuinely fear that for a multitude of reasons, the world is running out of time, and that without a major realignment of US policies--or at least some effective domestic or international brake on the worst effects of those policies--that time will run out.

Electing Kerry now is like going to a doctor to get treatment for a serious leg wound and having him give you a prescription for morphine. If you take it, you may no longer feel the pain, but eventually gangrene will have set in and you'll lose the entire leg...or if you take the drugs long enough, you may just wind up dead. But you'll have felt fine all along the way.

We can either choose to face the pain of four more years of Bush now, or we can choose to take the morphine and pretend that everything is better--right up until the moment when it's too late.

Progressives: this is John Kerry

2004-10-18T14:36:00.000-07:00

It's a difficult time to be a progressive in the United States, and even more so in the runup to the 2004 elections, watching in dismay as so many respected progressives buckle and throw their support to John Kerry--and chastise other progressives for not doing the same. I think it's worthwhile to make a list of some of Kerry's positions on key issues, to clarify just who it is they're asking us to support:

Kerry voted for the Iraq war and infamously proclaimed that he would do so again even knowing that there were no WMDs in Iraq. Let that sink in for a moment: he'd do the same thing again, even knowing that no WMDs would be found, and even knowing what Bush did with the authority. His handwaving about it being "the right authority for a president to have" is utterly disingenuous; we all knew exactly what was coming and what that vote meant, and since Kerry is no fool he certainly knew it as well, no matter how he tries to misrepresent it now.
Furthermore, Kerry has vowed to prosecute the war in Iraq even more viciously than Bush, saying that unlike Bush, he will "not back off of the Fallujahs and other places, and send the wrong message to the terrorists."
Kerry is also delusional enough to believe that "victory" is possible in Iraq and has said that he will not withdraw from Iraq under any other circumstances, as he declared in the first debate: "I have a plan for Iraq. I believe we can be successful. I'm not talking about leaving. I'm talking about winning." And note that this statement was made during Kerry's prepared closing comments--this was not just a statement made in the heat of the moment, but rather his official policy.
Kerry opposes the Kyoto Protocol, just as the Clinton administration did in its eight years in power (something that liberals and progressives have managed to ignore or forget). His official position is that "the Kyoto Protocol is not the answer. The near-term emission reductions it would require of the United States are infeasible, while the long-term obligations imposed on all nations are too little to solve the problem."
Revealing his true environmental stance even further, Kerry has vowed to "put that pipeline [from Alaska to the continental US] in and drill like never before, drill all over the United States."
Kerry voted for the USA PATRIOT act (parts of which he purportedly claims to have written himself), and made a point of reiterating his support for it in the second debate. He also supported the Clinton administration's Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, the precursor to the USA PATRIOT act.
Kerry opposes US participation in the International Criminal Court.
Kerry has backpedalled on the stronger statements he made in 1971 in opposition to the Vietnam War--undercutting the one action for which he perhaps most genuinely did deserve the support of progressives--saying they were "inappropriate" and "a little bit excessive," and characterizing them as "mistakes." This is part of a general pattern of distancing himself from his now politically inconvenient former principles, as in his laughably dishonest repudiation of his previous opposition to the invasion of Grenada: "I was dismissive of the majesty of the invasion of Grenada," Kerry says now. "But I basically was supportive. I never publicly opposed it."
Kerry voted for and supports NAFTA, the WTO (formerly GATT), permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) for China, and fast track negotiating authority for the president. And although he's paid lip service to the idea of protecting workers' rights, nobody should be fooled by that--the Director-General of the WTO certainly wasn't.
Kerry has vowed to cut corporate taxes, since he's apparently not satisfied that the share of taxes paid by corporations is now lower than it's been at any time since World War II (and that was before Congress' recent passage of a massive tax giveaway for corporations).
Kerry has rejected international law (and co-opted Republican rhetoric nearly verbatim) in declaring repeatedly that he "will never give any nation or international institution a veto over our national security." This is (again) just a continuation of Clinton administration policy, which explicitly rejected the primacy of the United Nations on issues of global security, as when Clinton repeatedly attacked Iraq and bombed Yugoslavia without even the pretense of United Nations approval.
And of course Kerry's enthusiastic support for Israel's ongoing policy of slow motion ethnic cleansing in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip is second to none, as evidenced by his official position paper.

The list goes on and on; this is just a sampling. Nearly every one of these positions mirror those of the Bush administration, and in fact in many cases Kerry is attacking Bush from the right, as I've noted previously.

This is John Kerry. If you cast a vote for him, you're giving him your consent and encouragement to go forward with these kinds of policies and principles. If you choose to do so, that's up to you--but you should at least know exactly who it is you're supporting.

Aristide's "resignation" becomes history

2004-10-15T20:48:00.000-07:00

In an article about Haiti, the Washington Post had this to say about armed thugs who are now entering Haiti's cities:

The men were also part of the armed rebellion that led Aristide to resign in February and flee the country.

"Resign...and flee the country?"

Anyone coming to this article without any previous knowledge of the relevant background would be left completely unaware that Aristide actually says that he absolutely did not resign, and that he was "kidnapped" and removed from the country by the US in what he called "a modern coup d'etat"...and that Aristide's version of events is corroborated by eyewitnesses, including the caretaker at his residence and one of his senior bodyguards.

By fiat, in a single clause, the Washington Post has recreated reality: Aristide resigned, and fled. And the US involvement in his ouster has vanished. An inconvenient bit of history is simply gone.

This happens in the mainstream media all the time--witness how effectively the US media suppressed inconvenient facts like Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam Hussein in 1984 during the runup to the 2003 Iraq war--but for some reason this one struck me as particularly chilling. I couldn't help but think of Orwell's 1984: "Oceania was at war with Eurasia: therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia."

Killer Kerry

2004-10-14T20:54:00.000-07:00

The Kerry campaign has obviously decided that it's important for Kerry to emphatically state, over and over, just how much he wants to "kill" terrorists. In fact, the full approved phrase appears to be "hunt down and kill." With Bush and Cheney, the word choice has more often been along the lines of "capture and kill" or "bring to justice"; as on so many other issues, the Democrats are attempting to outflank Bush from the right by making their rhetoric even more extreme.

Kerry and Edwards bleat the "kill" mantra whenever they get a chance; they literally said it in every single one of the debates. Here was Kerry in the first debate:

I will hunt down and kill the terrorists, wherever they are.
[...] I will never let those troops down, and will hunt and kill the terrorists wherever they are.

In the second debate:

I will never stop at anything to hunt down and kill the terrorists.

[...] I have a plan that will help us go out and kill and find the terrorists, and I will not stop in our effort to hunt down and kill the terrorists.

And in the third debate:

I will hunt them down, and we'll kill them, we'll capture them.

And Edwards parroted the same line in his debate as well:

What John Kerry said -- and it's just as clear as day to anybody who was listening -- he said: We will find terrorists where they are and kill them before they ever do harm to the American people.

[...] I would find terrorists where they are and stop them and kill them before they do harm to us.

In fact, the Kerry campaign apparently thinks it's so important to emphasize Kerry's eagerness to kill that it actually put out an ad after the first debate to drive the point home for anyone who wasn't listening:

Announcer: "You've seen a debate where John Kerry was strong and clear, and that he would find and kill terrorists to protect America." [...]
Kerry: "I'm John Kerry and I approve this message."

Yes, John, it's obvious that you do.

So now we know what would happen to "terrorists" under a Kerry administration. But just who would get to make the determination of who is a "terrorist" and who isn't? Apparently Kerry is perfectly willing to act as judge, jury, and executioner--or rather, to delegate those functions to the personnel on the ground. So no more need to worry about torture or human rights violations at Guantanamo; Kerry would make sure that menacing terrorists like these would never be taken to Guantanamo at all, but would instead end their lives in some unmarked grave in Afghanistan, Iraq, or wherever else Kerry decides to "hunt them down."

Progressives who are still holding fast to the hope that the John Kerry of 1971 is lurking somewhere inside this bellicose windbag--just waiting for an election victory so he can emerge into the daylight, throw aside all of this bloodthirsty rhetoric, and lead us to a future of peace, justice, and respect for human rights--seriously need to wake up and see exactly who it is they're supporting. He's not making a secret of it...if anything, he's proud of it.

Bush is having flashbacks

2004-10-13T23:35:00.000-07:00

In the third debate, Kerry pointed out (correctly) that Bush had previously claimed to be "not that concerned" about Osama bin Laden, and Bush responded by saying that this was "kind of one of those exaggerations."

Huh? All the commentary I've seen has focused on the fact that this was a rather transparent fib on Bush's part, but while that's true...what did he mean by "one of those exaggerations"?

We've all seen Bush flail around helplessly when he's asked a question that doesn't fit one of his canned answers--like he's mentally searching for a tape to pop in and play, whether or not it actually has anything to do with the topic at hand. Methinks that in this case Bush was actually flashing back to his rehearsed sound bites of Election 2000, when Gore's "exaggerations" were a primary theme of Bush's campaign.

Scary. But what's even scarier is that a large number of people genuinely believe this befuddled man-child is qualified to be the leader of the most powerful nation on the planet.

Which is worse: the delusional dolt, or the casual liar?

2004-10-06T22:24:00.000-07:00

In the first debate Kerry was at pains to point out that invading Iraq was a mistake, with statements like this one:

We can't leave a failed Iraq. But that doesn't mean it wasn't a mistake of judgment to go there.

And this one:

The president made a mistake in invading Iraq.

Yet later in the debate, when Jim Lehrer took him at his word and asked him point blank, "Are Americans now dying in Iraq for a mistake?," Kerry unequivocally answered, "No."

What's breathtaking about that response is how simply Kerry switched from one statement to another--how he simply lied, without any compunction whatsoever. Bush's abuses of the truth are legion (does anyone recall him claiming in Poland that "we found the weapons of mass destruction"?), but over time I've come to the conclusion that in many cases he truly has convinced himself that he is not lying. He's simply so divorced from reality that he doesn't know the difference between the truth and a lie.

Kerry doesn't have that excuse. Kerry's an intelligent person, and there's no question in my mind that he knew precisely what he was doing here. He realized that he'd set a trap for himself, and rather than step into it, he simply contradicted what he'd already stated with crystal clarity two separate times in the same debate. Because it was politically expedient, and because the honest and accurate answer would have opened him to charges that he lacks patriotism or doesn't "support the troops."

So I'm left wondering which is worse: the delusional dolt, or the casual liar?

Thom Hartmann: Let the Reader Beware

2004-08-13T17:14:00.000-07:00

[ NOTE: This is an old article of mine, from August 2004. You probably won't be too shocked to learn that Hartmann never retracted the falsehoods that I describe here. You may also not be shocked to learn that Common Dreams refused to run this article, though they were happy to publish Hartmann's attack. ]

In his article "Ralph Nader: Let the Voter Beware" (Common Dreams, August 6th), Thom Hartmann throws out the damning claim that Ralph Nader has made a concerted effort to "deceive people" and "mislead his audiences," apparently in order to bamboozle them into supporting his 2004 presidential bid. Specifically, Hartmann's charge boils down to "the misperception Nader is pushing that the problem third parties face is purely the fault of the existing two parties."

Deception, misleading, and deliberately pushing misperceptions: these are harsh indictments indeed, especially when directed at a person with Nader's reputation for honesty and integrity. On closer investigation, however, it's clear that these claims are themselves built on a foundation of falsehood. Hartmann has misrepresented the facts in an attempt to smear Nader--a sorry but sadly common practice among some progressives in the runup to the 2004 elections.

Hartmann's sole cited evidence against Nader is a pair of quotes ripped violently out of context from Nader's February 2004 appearance on "Meet the Press." Fortunately, we have the actual transcript available to evaluate his claims. Let's examine how closely Hartmann's version compares to reality. First, Hartmann describes the following exchange between Nader and Tim Russert, helpfully filling in some implied subjects for us (in square brackets):

In a February 2004 appearance on Meet The Press, Nader said to Tim Russert, "You'd never find that type of thing [resistance to a third party] in Canada or Western democracies in Europe. It is an offense to deny millions of people who might want to vote for our candidacy an opportunity to vote for our candidacy. Instead, they [the Republicans and Democrats] want to say, 'No, we're not going to let you have an opportunity to vote,' for our candidacy."

So according to Hartmann's inserted comments, in this quote Nader is referring directly to "resistance to a third party" by "the Republicans and Democrats." Now let's look at the actual quote in context:

MR. RUSSERT: There's a Web site that actually says www.ralphdontrun.net, and I want to air this in its entirety for you to watch it, for the country to watch it, and then give you a full chance to respond. Let's watch:

(Russert plays the video clip)

MR. RUSSERT: There's real passion in that. What do you say to those people?

MR. NADER: That's the liberal intelligentsia that agrees with almost all our positions. That is a contemptuous statement against democracy, against freedom, against more voices and choices for the American people. You'd never find that type of thing in Canada or Western democracies in Europe. It is an offense to deny millions of people who might want to vote for our candidacy an opportunity to vote for our candidacy. Instead, they want to say, "No, we're not going to let you have an opportunity to vote," for our candidacy.

Obviously Nader's "they" wasn't referring to the "Republicans and Democrats" at all, but rather to the people behind ralphdontrun.net (a web site that is specifically dedicated to attacking and undermining Nader's campaign, not third party campaigns in general), and to the larger group of "liberal intelligentsia" who support their viewpoint and tactics. Hartmann's bracketed characterizations are completely misleading, and he has carefully omitted the context which would have made that obvious to his audience.

At this point in Hartmann's article the discerning reader--even if he or she is giving full credit to the version of reality being presented--is likely to wonder: is that really all you have? Presumably realizing this, Hartmann shores up his first deception with another one. He punches home his claim about Nader's misrepresentation of the true nature of the U.S. electoral system by immediately following the quote above with this:

Nader added, "There's a tremendous bias in state laws against third parties and independent candidates bred by the two major parties, who passed these laws. They don't like competition." Amazingly, many people are taken in by this argument, as they don't understand the difference between our system and those of most European nations, and don't realize that our election system was developed before there were any political parties whatsoever.

This might be amazing--if that's what Nader was actually saying, that is. In fact, though, this quote not only appeared much later in the interview, but it was also addressed to a specific question from Russert that makes the context and meaning crystal clear. We go to the actual transcript once more to set the record straight:

MR. RUSSERT: How uphill will your battle be, and how many state ballots do you think you can get on?

MR. NADER: There's a tremendous bias in state laws against third parties and Independent candidates bred by the two major parties, who passed these laws. They don't like competition. So it's like climbing a cliff with a slippery rope. And anybody who doubts it can look at a list of all these signature barriers and all the obstacles a number of states, not all of them, put before third-party candidates.

So Nader was actually answering a direct question about state ballot access provisions. In order to obscure this fact, Hartmann had to omit not only Russert's question itself but Nader's mention of "signature barriers and all the obstacles a number of states...put before third-party candidates." And of course Nader is precisely right when he points out that ballot access laws like these have been promoted by the two major parties (for obvious reasons); they surely aren't mentioned in nor even implied by the Constitution.

It's worth asking at this point what Nader's actual position is regarding the topic that Hartmann is discussing: namely, the distortion of democracy engendered by the winner-take-all system in the U.S. Nader's feelings about the electoral system have never been difficult to discern--he explains them regularly in his interviews and speeches--but in order to present this falsified indictment, Hartmann actually had to ignore Nader's statement in this very same "Meet the Press" interview that "the antiquated Electoral College [is a] winner-take-all system that blocks all the way to excluding candidates from the debates, blocks any kind of voices, any kind of competition, and we've got to fight that." Recall that Hartmann would have us believe that Nader's sin is to claim that the obstacle to third party participation in elections "is purely the fault of the existing two parties" (my emphasis). Unlike Hartmann, Nader understands that the serious problems we face today in the electoral system are a result both of structural inequities that have existed since its inception and of subsequent efforts by the two major parties to reinforce and expand those inequities in order to solidify their own power.

The final irony here is that the main remedy that Hartmann reasonably puts forward for the U.S. electoral system--instant runoff voting, or IRV--is also a commonplace in Nader's stump speeches, and Nader's campaign web site features an extended discussion of the importance of IRV. It's hard to believe that Hartmann could be unaware of this if he has even passing familiarity with Nader's positions.

So the real question that arises from all this is not why Ralph Nader is trying so hard to "mislead his audiences," but rather why a progressive like Thom Hartmann would sacrifice his own reputation for truth and integrity to undertake such a transparently dishonest and malicious attack on Nader. It appears likely that Hartmann is one of that group of progressives who are not just planning to support Kerry in 2004, but who are intent on smearing the only major progressive voice in this campaign in order to garner a few more (most likely meaningless) votes for the Democrats--and the facts are a wholly optional consideration in that crusade, to be seized upon if they're useful and distorted or ignored if they're not. He owes Nader not just a retraction, but an apology.