MIDDLE EAST: WHAT DOES PROGRESS LOOK LIKE?

Let us hope there is more going on than it appears. No matter where one looks in the Middle East, it seems that our best hope for progress is that there is something being worked out through back channel diplomacy. That is, something is being moved forward through direct secret discussions, official or unofficial, or through intermediaries. That has to be that hope since what we do see happening openly is not very encouraging.

In the unending search to give meaning to the so-called "peace process" between Israel and the Palestinians, what we are getting once again is confrontation rather than negotiation. By any standards, the road to creation of an independent Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza is marked by numerous hazardous issues. Right now progress toward a Palestinian state seems to be blocked at the starting gate. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' insistence on another Israeli moratorium on building settlements on the West Bank before negotiations can continue is confronted by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahou's apparently nonnegotiable decision that the temporary pause in settlement construction will not be renewed. Despite any misgivings he may have about ending the moratorium, Netanyahou is boxed in by the ultra-right, pro-settlement members of his governing coalition. Extension or renewal of the moratorium would supposedly mean the collapse of his coalition, forcing new elections. And Abbas has his own problems on negotiating flexibility because Hamas which controls the Gaza part of the proposed new state is simply opposed to the negotiation from the outset.

President Obama and leaders of some other governments with Mideast interests have been pressing Netanyahou to extend the moratorium, but to no avail. Obama is seen in Israel as being less supportive of the Jewish state than previous Presidents and thus has less leverage with the Israeli government. Moreover, Obama's waning popularity at home further weakens his ability to nudge Israel, which enjoys strong backing in the Congress and a large segment of the public, into a more flexible position on the settlement issue. On the other hand, the United States certainly has a severe problem of gaining acceptance in the Muslim world where we are viewed as pro-Israel beyond redemption, as well as anti-Muslim.

So, despite the fanfare that surrounded the opening of the latest round of negotiations, we seem so far to have made little headway in building up any new momentum. That is, unless Abbas backs down and continues talks despite Netanyahou's stand-fast decision on settlements. If Abbas does retreat, it would further demonstrate his political weakness as a meaningful negotiating partner who speaks in behalf of all Palestinians.

Meanwhile, in Iraq the search for progress goes on. It has now been nearly seven months since the parliamentary elections but stalemate among the three centers of power has prevented the formation of a new government. The primary contenders are a Shiite coalition led by acting Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and a Sunni-secular Shiite block headed by one time Prime Minister Ayad Allawi. The election results gave Allawi's group the narrowest of margins in winning parliamentary seats, but without a majority. The Kurds are the third group involved but their aim is to see what benefits they can extract as the balance of power to further strengthen their already semi-autonomous control in their northern region. The United States has been trying to nudge the three groups into a power sharing arrangement but any progress in that direction is well hidden.

Finally, there is Iran, referred to in a previous post as the 800 pound gorilla. Among the many outstanding issues with that country are: 1) its nuclear ambitions; 2) its role in Afghanistan where it is helping the Taliban in its war with the U.S. and its NATO allies; and 3) Iran's role as a participant in any political settlement in Afghanistan, a settlement that would include so-called moderate Taliban leaders.

When Iran gets new pressures on the nuclear issue via economic sanctions or in its more- than-not-friendly economic and military relations with Russia and China, it resorts to the traditional Mideast negotiating strategy. That strategy is akin to the image of the protracted buyer-seller haggling over the price of a rug at the local bazaar. Iran has now suggested that it might be open to a possible solution that will guarantee it an external supply of enriched uranium to sustain its peaceful nuclear goals, while at the same time controlling its access to highly enriched uranium needed for weapons development. This has the echo of an earlier solution talked about but never concluded. If there are any serious talks on such an approach, one can almost be assured that Iran will seek to draw out such discussions in bazaar-like fashion while it continues to pursue its own nuclear ambitions, whatever they may be.

As to Afghanistan, Iran may have the luxury of more time before playing a role in any political settlement. First, unfortunately, it seems that there is still a lot of fighting to be done. While Afghan President Hamid Karzai might prefer a go-it-alone strategy for dealing politically with the Taliban, it is difficult to imagine a political settlement that does not take into account the views and concerns of the United States and the diverse, competing interests within the Pakistani government. A political way out of Afghanistan is still just a gleam in the American/NATO eye; meanwhile Iran can continue to play its hostile role while waiting to see what benefits it can extract at no cost by cooperating in regional political settlement at the right time.

In answer to the opening question, "What does progress look like" in the Middle East?; the answer is, "How can I tell? I don't see any."

POLICY, POLITICS, AND QUOTABLE QUOTES

When I sat down to write today's post, a quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson came to mind --"By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote." This led me to a few other quotes that seem appropriate for observing the current state of our politics.

-- "To feed the birds, you first have to feed the elephants." That political insight was given us by former Senator/Vice President/ Presidential candidate Hubert H. Humphrey, a happy political warrior of an earlier era. Over time the quotation has been used in altered form by others, terms such as supply side economics and trickle down theory. That is, feed the resources to the economic giants and the benefits will filter down to those below. That is where we are at in the current debate on what to do about the tax cuts made under President George W. Bush.

The GOP congressional leaders want to continue the tax reductions to the high income earners, defined as those filing joint returns with income over $250,000 a year, approximately 2 percent of tax filers. President Obama and the majority of congressional Democrats want to end the Bush tax cuts for the richest among us, while maintaining the reductions for the other 98 percent. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has said that no action will be taken on the issue in that chamber before the November elections. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said there could be a vote in the House before lawmakers go home to campaign for the midterm elections now just five weeks away. While the Republicans have taken a virtually unanimous partisan position on the issue, the Democratic leadership finds that conservative Democrats in both chambers are either outright opposed to raising the tax rate on the upper brackets now, or certainly don't want to have to vote on the issue before the elections.

That is about where things stand today. The point of this post is to give new life and new meaning to Humphrey's pointed, old quote. So as the political jockeying goes on, the birds await.

-- "Can we all get along?" Thus spoke Rodney King nearly 20 years ago. King, an African-American, gained national attention in l991 when a videotape was made by a nearby observer showing a group of policemen beating on King repeatedly on a sidewalk after a high speed auto chase in Los Angeles. A portion of the tape was used by the media causing a public outcry against police brutality. The police said that the force used was necessary because King, a large man, was resisting arrest. Four of the policemen were charged with use of excessive force. When the four were acquitted the following year, a riot broke out that left 53 dead, almost 2,500 injured, and about $1 billion in financial losses. To aid in quelling the riot, King was put on television where he made his famous statement, "Can we all get along?" (In a later federal trial, two of the four were found guilty and imprisoned, two were acquitted.)

The same question might be asked today to help bring calm back to our "to the barricades" political atmosphere, now characterized to a mixture of sometimes toxic rhetoric of the candidates backed by far right cheerleaders such as Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh. Disagreement on policy issues and the rhetoric used is only part of the problem of political virulence, and perhaps the lesser part. The atmospherics are more heated when candidates and non-candidates like Beck wrap themselves in messianic robes and go forth as though they have been sent as God's messengers on earth. Along side of this assumption of divine guidance is a wrapped-in-the-flag patriotism.

Herein lies the heart of the problem. Many of those who have taken up the causes of the far right are also stating implicitly that those who do not see God and country the same way are thereby outside the pale of heavenly grace and are un-American.

So to answer Rodney King, "Probably not, certainly not in the near term." Regardless of who wins or loses in the coming elections, the tone of our politics has become too high decibel and too highly charged to expect any early return to political civility. To close on still another quote, this time from Pogo the comic strip possum who said in a different context in l971, "We have met the enemy and he is us."

THE GOP "PLEDGE TO AMERICA": THE POLITICS OF IRRELEVANCE

The House Republican leadership's "Pledge to America" is amazing. Not for what it says in its 21 pages which few people will read, but that the GOP would even make such a pledge. Public opinion polls show clearly that Congress is very low in public esteem and that low estimate applies to both Democrats and Republicans in Congress. So it is difficult to imagine how the House GOP leadership thinks this will make a difference in the November elections, except that they may see it as giving a last minute Republican voice to the many unhappy voters out there.

The problem for the GOP, however, is that the large pool of disgruntled voters , mostly independents and moderate Republicans we are told, have already been given a voice by the Tea Party (TP). This is a basic distinction between the "Pledge" and Newt Gingrich's l994 "Contract with America" which became both the voice and the policy base for the huge GOP midterm election victory that year. Now it is the TP that has come to be viewed as the voice of the disgruntled. Thus, the "Pledge" is likely to be perceived by most as "too much and too late" and as merely an attempt to play catch up ball with the Tea Party. Put another way, the "Pledge" is "too late" for many voters who have already jumped on board the TP train and it has left the station.

And while the TP has been picking up speed over the past six months, the Republican party, which has become to be viewed as a party of partisan obstructionism in Congress, has been increasingly concerned about what a disruptive force the TP has been. Disruptive in that the Tea Party in pursuit of its own highly vocal, extremist agenda has frequently challenged the GOP by putting up or backing its choice of candidates against those supported by the establishment party. This was most clear in the Senate primaries in Kentucky, Nevada, Alaska, and Delaware. In the process the TP has driven the GOP ideological core toward being even more conservative. So now the establishment GOP is trying to figure out how to gracefully retreat and appear to embrace the TP victors. However, it is not that easy. The primary winners seem to prefer going with the old adage, "dance with the one who brought you", meaning the TP not the GOP.

So too the policy agenda of the new "Pledge to America". It has the appearance of playing catch up ball to allow the party establishment to beat its chests that the GOP is returning to its basic conservative principles which TP followers believe have been abandoned. Also, the "Pledge" is intended to have voters believe that Republicans have a policy agenda for "change" and it is not just the party of "no". But the Tea Party and its fellow travelers have been pursuing their own "change" agenda for some time, an agenda presented in simple terms -- anti-big government, anti-spending, anti-deficits, including some social issues such as anti-gay, anti-abortion, and anti-immigration reform. Many, and maybe most, unhappy voters have adopted various parts of this agenda as a reflection of their own concerns. They don't need a late-appearing "Pledge" from the establishment GOP to express their policy choices, general or specific. At the general level, the disgruntled seem to be satisfied with the glowing generalities of the TP agenda. At the level of specific policies included in the "Pledge", it is a case of "too much". Tea Party adherents are not interested in specifics, much less pages of specifics (at least by TP standards), which have not been part of the TP political rhetoric. Again, in other words, "don't bore us with details".

In l960 a small book, THE SEMISOVEREIGN PEOPLE, was written by political scientist Elmer Schattschneider. In it he said that the most devastating form of politics was the politics of irrelevance; that is no one cares. (The book should be required reading for any political science student today.) In many respects the Republican party is irrelevant in this November's elections despite efforts by Michael Steel, John Boehner, and Mitch McConnel to make it otherwise. Certainly the GOP as a party will come out of the elections as the winner with a lot of new seats in the House and Senate to be added to the many easy victories of incumbents re-elected from safe districts. But the new winners will owe more to the tone of politics created and amplified to a sometimes toxic level by the Tea Party rather than to any difference the GOP and its return-to-principles "Pledge" will make. This year, the establishment wing of the GOP, except for its campaign money, is rrelevant.

IRAQ: WHAT DOES SOVEREIGNTY MEAN?

At this point just about everything to be said has been said about the Tea Party and the candidates it supports in the coming election. So it's time to shift gears and look abroad at our seemingly endless commitment in Iraq.

A puzzling statement was made on August 31by interim Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. That was the date for the final withdrawal of the supposedly last U.S. combat troops from Iraq. The word "supposedly" is used because there has been combat since then, and presumably most U.S. forces are trained for combat roles in one form or another. On that date al-Maliki, in a nationally televised address, made the statement that Iraq is a "sovereign and independent nation". I suppose that under international law that may be true, the Iraqi government has the legal right to exclusive control of its territory and the population within. But there is considerable reason to doubt that such legal sovereignty translates into de facto sovereignty, actual control.

First, the government may have such legal sovereignty but it falls far short on its actual ability to govern and to exercise such control. It will soon be seven months since the parliamentary elections were held and as yet we see little indication that a new government is being formed. On the same day al-Maliki was declaring Iraq's sovereignty, Vice President Joe Biden was in that country trying to nudge the three political power centers to come together in some kind of power sharing agreement. The three centers are a Shiite coalition headed by al-Maliki, a Shiite-Sunni based coalition headed by another one time interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, and the Kurds. While little progress toward forming a new government is evident, perhaps the more important point to be noted is the U.S. intervention to structure a solution. Such high level involvement by this country hardly seems to fit any claim of exclusive authority implied within the term sovereignty.

Second, how sovereign can Iraq be when there are still 50,000 U.S. troops there? The presence and role of these troops open to question one of the implicit conditions of sovereignty--control of the security of the nation. Some of the remaining American forces have already been called upon to help put down anti-government insurgents. The case is made that these troops are there in training and combat support roles and they are scheduled to be withdrawn at the end of next year. The troop withdrawal arrangement is a major part of the status of forces agreement made between the al-Maliki government and former President George W. Bush.

One should not presume that "withdrawal" which we commonly understand to mean complete withdrawal will occur. Don't be surprised if the agreement is explicitly altered or re-interpreted to have a different meaning, one that will allow a substantial number of troops to remain there after 2011. The remaining force would continue to have an assist/support function to back up Iraqi security forces who have not been able to this point to provide an adequate level of security, and it may be a number of years before they can operate on their own.

In short, Iraq's claim of sovereignty appears to fall well short of the independent power and authority we normally associate with the term. Currently it has neither a constituted national government that reflects the results of the last election, nor the means of providing its own security. On the other hand, it may be as sovereign as Afghanistan.

Tea Party: A New Puritanism

As noted in my previous posting, the Tea Party (TP) is creating some uncertainty within the Republican party establishment, among GOP congressional leaders, and for would-be presidential aspirants. But the biggest problem for them should be the basic nature of the Tea Party movement itself. It has taken on the character of a puritanical movement. That is, it has a package of grievances it perceives as threats to our governmental and fiscal future and moral values. In political terms, this translates to, "if you want our support you must accept and endorse the entire package or we'll fight against you."

The TP is not a coherent, structured organization. It is an umbrella movement that brings together multiple groups with diverse agendas. The current central core of the TP package is anti-big government and anti-federal spending/deficits. Within this core anti-agenda are President Obama's biggest legislative successes--stimulus spending, health care reform, and financial regulation. His successes are their clubs to beat on him and, it must be said, their rhetoric has gained some traction among voters.

But there is also another set of anti- issues linked to the TP--social policy issues including anti-abortion, anti-gay rights, and anti-immigration reform. There is a tug of war within the TP on whether to include the diverse social issues on their agenda. But TP adherents include groups focused on social policy. If the umbrella TP cuts out such issues, it risks losing those fellow travelers who feel intensely about the social policy agenda. Further, given the inclusion of God and religion in the speeches of some the most visible TP leaders and spear carriers such as Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck and Senate candidates such as Sharron Angle of Nevada and most recently Christine O'Donnell of Delaware, it seems highly unlikely that the TP can confine itself to a secular-only path to national redemption. In short, the whole is defined by the sum of its disparate parts.

If you are skeptical about "puritanical" as a term to describe the TP, you might consider the case of Senator Scott Brown of Massachusetts.

Very early this year Brown was elected to fill the vacant seat of the late Senator Ted Kennedy. Brown started his campaign as a clear underdog and his upset victory was attributed in significant part to late support and money from the Tea Party movement. But he quickly earned the ire of the TP in late February when he voted with the Democratic majority to block a filibuster on a $15 billion jobs bill. If that wasn't enough, in the summer he was one of the three Republicans who bucked the party leadership and crossed the aisle to help the Democrats pass the financial reform legislation aimed at curbing the excesses of Wall Street which were at the heart of the financial meltdown in the fall of 2008. His vote on financial regulatory reform, according to the Associated Press, resulted in TP activists protesting outside his office.

Some of Brown's decisions off the floor also drew the ire of the TP and other conservative activists. In April, he chose not to attend a rally on the Boston Common which featured an appearance of Palin, the political darling of the TP. Palin was later quoted as telling Fox News that while Massachusetts may "put up with" Brown, conservatives in Alaska would not. He also traveled to fund raising events for mostly moderate candidates for the Senate and House. Given that he was elected in a state with a Democratic tilt, it might be expected that he would choose to join the shrinking ranks of moderate Republicans and the majority Democrats on some issues rather than support the naked partisan, obstructionist strategy of the GOP congressional leaders.

So far, all of the TP activism has occurred outside of Congress (although sometimes on the sidewalk of the Capitol), with the TP looking in as a very vocal spectator. But it has also had some highly visible successes as a participant in the primaries, O'Donnell being the most recent. If, come November, the TP successes are extended to include getting some of their candidates into the House and/or Senate, the pressure for moving the party policy agenda closer to the TP extremist position will be inside Congress within the party caucuses of the two chambers. Like the Brown experience, the TP "our way or the highway" puritanism also extends to would-be presidential hopefuls. They will be subjected to the same litmus test on policy issues wrapped in an overarching God/religion/country theme.

So while the TP rhetorically portrays itself as wanting to give the country back to the people, return to the Constitution, and restore old values, it appears instead to be a movement that simply wants to define in its own terms what all of this means and support only those who accept what the movement says -- OR ELSE!!

The Tea Party Express: 2010 and 2012

SECURING THE BASE: WHO IS THE FRINGE?

Democrats, we are told, are gleeful over the Tea Party Express (TPE) victories last Tuesday and in earlier primaries, giving hope that the extremism of the TPE will drive Republican moderates and disgruntled independents into the Democratic fold in November. For the Democrats, the big one on Tuesday was the Delaware primary giving Christine O'Donnell, backed by the TPE, a big win over her moderate opponent, Representative Mike Castle, in the race to take over Joe Biden's Senate seat. That, Democrats believe, demonstrates that right wing extremists are taking over the GOP and thus will tip the voter balance enough to give Democrats victories not only in Delaware but also in some other tough places like Nevada and Kentucky. And maybe allow House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to keep her job.

Besides the supposed boon for the Democrats, the post-primary election analyses see the wins by a number of extreme right wing candidates as a GOP headache not only for November but also for Republican leaders in the House and Senate in the next Congress. If TPE candidates win and go to Washington, can the GOP leadership bring the TPE victors into the fold or will they be openly challenged to push the party legislative agenda still farther to the right? So the ultimate question for Republicans in the short term is--who are the ideological fringe, the shrinking number of moderate Republicans or the small number of successful TPE-backed extremists who may be coming to Congress? I say "small" because, even if they all win, they will represent only a small fraction of the House and Senate membership. The two chambers will still be overwhelmingly dominated by incumbents. But even if only a small number, they certainly have proven to be vocal, thus posing a considerable annoyance at least to GOP congressional leaders whether in the majority or minority. And, of course, the voices of any new TPE members will be reinforced by outside cheerleaders like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh.

For President Obama, GOP obstructionism has already been a problem in getting important pieces of his economic recovery program through Congress, particularly in the Senate where the 60-vote rule has served the Republican minority well as the instrument of obstruction. Obama's problem is likely to be even greater if there is a small but vocal group of new right wing extremists pushing their definition of "change" on their mainstream conservative brethren.

But going beyond the many analyses of what lies ahead in elections just over six weeks away is what all of the sound and fury of the TPE and its fellow travelers may mean for the longer term, the presidential elections of 2012. The ideological trajectory of the Republican party seems to be clearly heading in the direction of the right wing extremists, as exemplified by the Tea Party and its adherents. Without knowing how this November's elections will turn out, GOP presidential hopefuls already must calculate whether to move further to the right or leave room for attracting the party's moderate voters and independents. Such calculating is part of the basic strategy of elective politics--first secure the base. One only has to listen to Newt Gingrich with his increasingly outrageous rhetoric to see where he thinks the party base lies. For Sarah Palin, there's no problem. She has helped define the far right base. For other would-be's like Mitt Romney or Mike Huckabee, it is a bit trickier. While they have certainly been right of center, they do not appear as yet to have committed themselves to the more extreme right policy positions or the Gingrich-like vocalizing , although Romney was quick to endorse O'Donnell after her victory. And then, of course, there is Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina who has so far confined himself to being a TPE spear carrier in the primaries but may become more ambitious in the near future.

The bottom line for all of the 2012 Republican presidential hopefuls, however, is not how the TPE and its adherents do in November. Win or lose, the TPE has already clearly demonstrated that they can make a significant difference and it is not likely to go away. The message is that the Republican voter base has shifted farther to the right and any presidential hopeful who ignores that does so at his or her peril. If Democrats are correct in their thinking that the right wing extremism displayed by the TPE will help them this year, then the continual sliding of the GOP to the right should also serve Obama well in 2012.

Partisanship Through the Eyes of the Partisans

AND THE MEDIA ROLE IN MARKETING PARTISANSHIP

A few days ago I read online a story by Ken Strickland of NBC News, about how the Senate has shown more rancorous partisanship in the past than it currently displays. The thrust of the story, part of an informative series, was based on interviews with nine Senators who were retiring or had been defeated in primaries and won't be returning next year. Their combined views were, essentially, that despite the public image of extreme partisan politics, things were not as contentious in the Senate as they have appeared. The story stated that, historically, there have been more rancorous times. The current partisan politics image came primarily because of fights over the $800 billion stimulus program, health care reform, and greater regulation of the banking industry and Wall Street.

To me, the story had two particular annoyances.

First, as members of the world's most exclusive club, the nine exiting Senators were simply absolving themselves and fellow club members of the partisanship label that has become attached to the Senate over the past two years. Of the nine interviewed, six were Republicans and none had broken partisan ranks to support any of the three major bills that have become the litmus test of partisanship. (The stimulus bill passed with only three Republicans voting for it--Senators Collins and Snow from Maine and Specter from Pennsylvania before he switched to the Democratic party. Health care reform passed with no Republican support; financial regulation passed with three GOP votes--Collins and Snow from Maine and then newly-elected Scott Brown from Massachusetts.) And the beat goes on. Yesterday (September 14) only two Republicans--George Voinovich of Ohio and George LeMieux of Florida--voted to clear the way for Senate passage of a bill to provide $30 billion to aid small businesses, a group usually dear to the hearts of the Republicans. Republicans are simply adamant in their opposition to legislation that President Obama might claim as a victory toward job creation and speeding up economic recovery.

Naturally the six outgoing Republicans would defend themselves against any charges of Republican partisanship and obstructionism. And the three Democrats interviewed also took the club member view and defended the institution. As club members, one really should not expect them to do or say otherwise. And who knows how many of them will be returning as lobbyists and, therefore, would not like to leave on a dissonant note about their colleagues.

Second, and to me equally troublesome, is that the media itself, not just the self-serving Senators interviewed, have been a big a part of the partisanship issue. It has been the media who have importantly shaped the voter image of raw partisanship of the current Congress. Both the printed and electronic media were continually telling us about the unwillingness of GOP lawmakers, particularly in the Senate, to cross the aisle to support the stimulus program, health reform, and financial regulation proposals. Rhetorically, on how many occasions has the media focused our attention on the bipartisanship of anything?

While Obama kept sounding the call continually for bipartisanship, the media kept telling us how he was running into a stonewall in his search for GOP support on the various parts of his agenda. Partisanship was also the media focus on the nominations of two U.S. Supreme Court justices. About the closest we came to hearing about efforts at bipartisanship was when we were told how two or three Republicans had been pried loose from the party leadership and brought into negotiations in an effort to gain the necessary 60 votes to get around GOP obstructionism and have a bill considered on the floor. The Strickland article, through the interviews of exiting Senate clubbers, would have us think that maybe the partisanship of the current Senate wasn't really all that bad. Presumably Strickland himself wasn't trying to change any minds, merely giving us another perspective.

To conclude, the public perception of naked partisanship in the Senate has come from the reality of actual voting behavior on the big issues, fixed and reinforced into the our minds by the media search for the sharpest headline. It is much too late to change the public perception, particularly when the case is made by some members who are part of the problem.

Afghanistan: The Chinese Water Torture

DOONESBURY: RED RASCAL, AFGHAN SUPER HERO

The Sunday Doonesbury comic strip is like a gift that keeps on giving. In the September 5 strip Garry Trudeau gave us the funny but all-too-true story about what a mess we get into when we hire local militias in an effort to buy some kind of peace in the neighborhood. It was an "ain't that the truth" kind of story. It was the inspiration for my September 6 post. This week (September 12) Doonesbury was a tale of Red Rascal, a mysterious Afghan super hero out to right the wrongs committed by Taliban "evil doers". It's an "ah, if that it were only so" kind of story. This post is not to reveal the true identity of Trudeau's super hero (it is not General Petraeus) but, sadly, the opposite reality -- how Afghanistan has come to be like Chinese water torture, a slow drop at a time on the forehead until you cry out for mercy or go insane.

In previous posts on Afghanistan, July 29 and August 21, I have focused on the corruption that infests the highest levels of the government of President Hamid Karzai, including his family, referring to them as upper case SOB's. (For the truly innocent among us, SOB means Son of a Bitch.) And in our search for anyone or any groups who will help us to extricate ourselves from the Afghan mess, we have paid out bribe money to lower case sob's, local warlords/militias to keep them from attacking our troops or supply convoys moving through their territories.

From the beginning, part of our Afghan policy has been to root out corruption as one of the things that needed to be done in our nation-building goal. As part of nation-building we naively believed we could get Afghan farmers to give up poppy growing and opium production, a major prop of official and unofficial corruption in the country. We have now given up nation building as a policy objective, but any effort to root out corruption has become a kind of Catch 22. The Washington Post last week (September 10) had a really scarey story which said, "After nearly nine years of nation-building in Afghanistan, experts say, the U.S. government faces mounting evidence that it has helped assemble one of the most corrupt governments in the world." Just one day before that, another Post story said that Karzai intends to block any international investigations into corruption. And prior to that Karzai blocked an American funded investigation of corruption, placing himself personally between the investigators and one of his top aides being investigated. In sum, we seem to have accepted the obvious fact that the Karzai government is corrupt beyond redemption, so if the primary goal in Afghanistan is to defeat al-Qaeda and the Taliban, then we will have to live with the corruption and keep funding it.

But the unceasing dripping on the forehead stemming from our growing tolerance and funding of graft may be matched by the dripping from the the fight-the-Taliban front. An important part of our current strategy to defeat al-Qaeda and the Taliban seems to be to subdivide the Taliban into two groups--the hard core bad guys, and the not-so-hard core moderates. The Taliban hunted by Trudeau's Red Rascal defines the former, the "evil doers". The latter apparently are those Taliban who have never signed on to what national security advisor General James Jones refers to as the "global jihad business and doesn't seem to have any ambitions beyond the region." So these lower case, moderate Taliban sob's are the ones the Afghan, Pakistani, and U.S. governments would like to bring to the bargaining table for a political solution to the war.

But that apparently isn't the only way we are seeking to use lower level Taliban and other lower case sob's, local warlords and militias. Again a Washington Post story (September 4) quoting an unidentified senior defense official: "There are areas where you need strong leadership, and some of these leaders are not entirely pure. But they can help us to be more effective in going after the primary threat, which is the Taliban." However, as already noted, the Taliban now is a divisible term and the U.S. and some international partners have committed $250 million toward an effort to get lower level Taliban to leave the insurgency and work as hired hands to provide internal security in various parts of the country. But (in Afghanistan there always seems to be a "but" or series of "buts"), there are internal divisions within the Afghan government that have prevented getting the Taliban-for-hire program from being effectively implemented. An important part of that split is one view that buying the Taliban into the fold at any level will be an opening for renewed Taliban control by the "evil doers" in the future.


So with what seems to be a continuous stream of bad news about rampant corruption funded, at least in part, with American money and with our growing frustrations in dealing with Karzai, it is hardly any wonder that there is a large and growing segment of Americans who believe that the only solution is to just get out of Afghanistan. This would help end these frustrations as well as the larger problems of growing combat casualties and spending billions of dollars to pay for the war and the corruption. In short, Afghanistan has become not only a military, political, and budgetary burden, but also a growing embarrassment. Sadly, there is no Red Rascal in sight, only the unending Chinese water torture attached to dealing with the Karzai government while
trying to fight an increasingly unpopular war.

Short Term and Long Term Politics

HARRY HOPKINS VS. JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

President Franklin Roosevelt in a meeting with his advisers in the l930s was presenting the long term benefits of his proposed social security program. Harry Hopkins, one of his chief advisors, supposedly remarked, "But Mr. President, people eat in the short run." For this November's midterm congressional elections, Hopkins words take on added meaning, with a 2010 modification: eating in the short run means also having a job--now. President Obama clearly understands. His dilemma is that his newest business tax cut and infrastructure spending proposals are tied to long term politics and not near term jobs, if the two years before the 2012 presidential election can be considered long term. The business tax breaks and $50 billion for infrastructure spending inherently have no near term payoff on job creation and economic recovery.

One would think that with these new legislative proposals and existing issues -- mainly what to do about the "temporary" Bush income tax cuts -- on the table there would be enough moving parts for Congress to cobble together some kind of mutually agreeable package. This should be true when some of the major parts of what is now being proposed or must be dealt with soon clearly tilt in the direction of tax cuts--one half of the GOP fiscal policy mantra, the other half being spending cuts. Since Senate Republicans have leveraged their minority position into procedural blockages of some major legislation, one would be tempted to think that they would relish the buffet of opportunities to get some of what they want.

Here is where short and long term politics collide. First, in the short term there are just over seven weeks for Congress to act on anything before the November 2 elections, and even less time than that before calling it quits to go home to campaign. Second, there is no incentive for the Republicans to give Obama any legislative victory that will help him and his fellow Democrats in Congress to claim progress on jobs and economic recovery. Historically, the term Dead on Arrival (DOA) has been used at times to label the legislative prospects for presidential budgetary and other policy proposals to Congress. Obama's newest proposals would certainly seem to be DOA.

On his part, Obama has no illusions about his legislative prospects between now and the coming midterm elections. It seems an obvious fact that his latest proposals are tailored to long term politics, the next presidential election since they would have no job creating impact before 2011/12. But in the short term, the Democrats--at least some of them--can try to play the GOP obstructionist card. That is, blame past Republican policies and current GOP obstructionism in Congress as the root causes of the current and continuing economic distress of the country. Meanwhile, congressional Republicans can play the waiting game with polls showing voter sentiment is on their side with projections/speculation giving the GOP control of the House and perhaps even the Senate.

While Obama's newest tax and spending package may be DOA, there remains the more immediate political issue of what to do about the Bush tax cuts which expire at the end of this year. Obama has now made it clear that he wants to stick with the original Democratic plan to make the middle class tax cuts permanent while reinstating on January 1 the higher tax bracket for the upper income group, defined as an income above $250,000 for tax payers filing a joint return. Where the Democratic congressional leadership is at on this issue is less clear. Here again it is the short term versus long term politics, but this time the tug of war is between the President and his congressional leadership. The Democratic congressional leaders, who once shared the President's view on this issue, are driven by the short term need to preserve their threatened majority and thus may be persuaded to extend the upper income tax cuts for one or two years in order to help the re-election of their more conservative Democratic colleagues. The President, on the other hand, has his own form of preservation politics, seeing the issue as another way of tagging Republicans as the party of the rich and thus helping him to define his opposition for 2012. Perhaps after November 2, he will also feel both free and justified in further defining the GOP as the party of right wing extremism. That is, unless he continues his unrequited quest for bipartisanship.

I suppose it would be akin to drinking the Jonestown kool aid to think that somehow all of this short term vs. long term politics will find a happy compromised solution that will take care of both presidential and congressional needs--and maybe the country's needs. But perhaps the most realistic, if not the most comforting, way of thinking about this is to consider another quote, this time of British economist John Maynard Keynes, the father of pump priming economic stimulus: "In the long run, we're all dead".

Snake Oil Political Analysis

SELF-SERVING POLITICAL SCIENCE

I recently read an editorial page column lauding the merits of congressional partisanship; conversely, downgrading the value of bipartisanship. It should be noted that our local newspaper has two facing editorial pages. The left page carries left of center editorials and columns while, of course, the right side page presents conservative editorials and columns. The column this blog is referring to was on the right hand page written by rightist columnist Gary Andres and entitled "Overrated bipartisanship".

Relying on the research of others, Andres said that the evident partisanship in Congress is the result of increasing political homogeneity of congressional districts, Republican and Democratic, with the former becoming more conservative and the latter more liberal. Andres then goes on to say that as members become less cross-pressured by this ideological homogeneity, they have relinquished their power to party leaders in Congress and the leaders increasingly use parliamentary procedures to accomplish political objectives. Result: ". . . the polarized environment that envelops Congress today."

While it is certainly not self-evident that everything he says is correct, especially the part about rank and file members relinquishing more power to party leaders, the really disturbing part of his column is the conclusion that the increasing partisanship is a good thing.

What is good about this partisanship, he argues, is that it produces more party responsibility which in turn aids the voter to clarify each party's position on major issues. In that sense, he says, we are approximating the European model of party responsibility rather than perpetuating the blame game where both sides blame the other for what goes wrong or isn't getting done. Partisanship thus helps voters to caste more informed ballots, he asserts.

One obvious problem with such a conclusion is that the European model he sees us approximating with more partisanship is the parliamentary model. In broad brush description, in a parliamentary system the voters cast their ballot for a member of parliament and the party winning a majority of seats picks its party leader as the head of government--Prime Minister, Premier, Chancellor. If the party in power cannot reach agreement on policy or falls under a cloud of scandal, they can choose a new leader/Prime Minister, or, if necessary, hold new parliamentary elections. In Europe also, governance is sometimes through a coalition of parties so delicately constructed that it is difficult to make important policy decisions without one or so coalition members dropping out and forcing new elections. (Think post-World War II Italy or Israel's coalition government today in terms of decisions about building new settlements on the West Bank.)

But ours is a presidential system. The head of government (and in our case, also the head of state) is chosen independently of the Congress and thus we frequently end up with divided government, the President of one party and Congress of the other. Possibly also, a divided Congress with the House and Senate controlled by different parties, an outcome we may have after the November elections. And, unlike parliamentary systems, we have fixed elections for both the President and Congress and can't call a new election just to throw the rascals out. Also, and importantly, even if the President and Congress are controlled by the same party with similar ideologies, both have institutional powers and prerogatives they feel a need to protect against the infringement of the other. So the European model that Andres trots out as his paradigm simply doesn't fit either the Constitution or some of the basics of our politics.

Secondly, since Andres has taken the political science road to tell us how good partisanship is, there is also the principle of political efficacy which includes the belief that our individual vote can make a difference. In a district with one-party and ideological homogeneity, a member of the out-party, Republican or Democrat, is not likely to feel that increased partisanship helps her or him participate more effectively. I live in a one-party congressional district, Republican, and I go to the poll out of a need to persevere but under no illusion that my vote will make a difference. (It is also a one-party state for presidential elections.)

In short, the case for "the more partisanship the better" comes off as simply a justification for the naked Republican obstructionism practiced in the current Congress. If, as being projected/speculated by analysts, the next Congress will be more Republican and more conservative, the outlook ahead for this blogger is dismal indeed. Certainly it is difficult to imagine that the case for more partisanship is anything other than a self-serving right wing view wrapped up in the snake oil medicine of how good it is for the country and the voter.

The Wisdom of Comic Strips

DOONESBURY: A GUIDE TO POLICY ANALYSIS

In thinking about writing the next blog it occurred to me that something on a light note might be in order so I started to make notes on my initial professional career as a political reporter in Hawaii. Then came yesterday's (Sunday) newspaper and an inspiration for the next best thing, a comic strip--Doonesbury. No one has ever presumed that Doonesbury is just a comic strip, but rather a serious but light slant on the world as seen by Garry Trudeau.

To capsulize, Doonesbury cartoonized (if there is such a word) a crucial element of our problem in Afghanistan. As stated in previous blogs, we are looking for local warlords, militias, organized thugs, etc., whom we can hire long enough to help us begin to extricate ourselves from the Afghan morass in which we find ourselves. As Trudeau depicted it, such hires are situational opportunists who will rent themselves to us to help keep the local peace, but are quick to jump ship if a higher bidder comes along. In an August 21 blog, I characterized such hirees as lower case sob's. A congressional staff report in early summer gave evidence of the need for such thuggish hirees to protect our supply convoys from attack. That report went on to speculate that some of this protection money may even be trickling down to local Taliban groups as another layer of protection.

Last Saturday, the Washington Post presented what seemed to be confirmation that we are now prepared to officially incorporate upper and lower case SOBs into our basic strategy by tolerating more corruption within the Kabul government of President Hamid Karzai (an upper case SOB). The Post quoted an unidentified senior defense official as saying, "There are areas where you need strong leadership, and some of those leaders are not entirely pure. But they can help us to be more effective in going after the primary threat, which is the Taliban." This is not really a shocking statement. It has been evident for some time that our repeated efforts to get Karzai to clean up corruption in the countryside he controls, within his government, and within his family, have gone unheeded, but we have not gone to the barricades to force the issue.

President Franklin Roosevelt supposedly once said about bureaucracy something to the effect--you can beat it, punch it, and kick it, but it's like a pillow; in the end it returns to the same shape. Thus it is within the Afghanistan regime with its rampant corruption.

Going further, there was also an item in our local newspaper on Sunday from the New York Times News Service, reporting that the United States has tentatively agreed to bail out Afghanistan's largest bank to head off a major financial crisis in that country. A major share holder in that bank is Karzai's brother. Thus, Wall Street has come to Kabul. Even if we haven't figured a clear way out of our military involvement in Afghanistan, we do have a lot of experience in bailing out banks. If our bailout experience at home can be extended to Afghanistan, in about a year the bank will again be prospering.

To conclude by returning to a quote used in an earlier blog (July 29). When FDR was asked about our relationship with one time dictator of Nicaragua, Anastasio Samoza, the President said, "He may be a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch." We seem to be expanding our efforts to bring a lot of upper and lower case SOB's/sob's into our fold, but as Doonesbury makes the case, exaggerated perhaps but not without a foundation in truth, they may not be "ours" for long. But, optimistically, maybe just long enough for us to tunnel our way out of the mess.

Search for a Silver Lining

POLITICS, THE NEW DISMAL SCIENCE

It has been a rather discouraging day, both in politics and policy.

The front page of our local paper prominently displayed the election predictions of Prof. Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia, who projected that the Republicans are likely to capture 47 additional seats in the U.S. House of Representatives in the next Congress. Further, he said that the GOP may pick up 8 or 9 seats in the Senate. There has been a lot of speculation, including one from White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, about a GOP takeover of the House but today's story went on to point out that Sabato has a very good reputation for accuracy in predicting election outcomes. The numbers of Sabato's projects are depressing enough, but it gets even worse if you personalize these results and envision John Boehner (with his multiple shades of tan) as the next Speaker of the House. Also, even if Republicans don't win enough Senate seats to make Mitch McConnell Majority Leader, he will have strengthened his leverage immensely for control of the flow of legislation.

Add to this the likely fact that both the House and Senate will become significantly more conservative, thanks in part to Tea Party activism which has pushed even moderate Republicans further to the right. So, on what is a bad day for this blogger, politics had replaced economics as the dismal science. About the only good news is that the Tea Party and the Republican party in Delaware have gotten into a shootout over the choice of a candidate to fill the Senate seat formerly held by Vice President Joe Biden. The state party leaders are backing U.S. Representative Mike Castle while the Tea Party is behind Christine O'Donnell whom the GOP state party chairman has said "could not be elected as dog catcher." After the huge upset in the Senate primary in Alaska, one shouldn't bet against the chances of a "dog catcher" victory.

At the policy level, further efforts to deal with the very slow economic recovery and the high jobless rate seems to be rapidly shifting from Democratic-preferred spending solutions to tax cuts, the favorite playing field of Republicans. Gone also, despite fading rhetoric, seems to be any likelihood of increasing the tax rates of high income earners. It should be added, however, that there is now some murmuring about raising the $250,000 definition of high income for a married couple to $1 million. A very likely result seems to be that the "temporary" label of the tax cuts of President George W. Bush will be extended, at least until the outcome of the 2012 presidential election is known. If Sabato is correct, the only thing standing in the way of making the Bush cuts permanent is President Obama's veto power.

It is important to note that there may be other tax work to be done in this Congress, either when it returns for its regular session or in a post-election special session. Obama has been pressing for a tax cut package aimed primarily at small businesses, but GOP obstructionism in the Senate has stopped that proposal so far. Now the rumble seems to be of broader business tax cuts, meaning any tax cut package may add more breaks for big business. Obama said today (Sept.3) that he would be discussing a broader job-creation package next week, but not hinting whether "broader" means inclusion of a spending plan, an expanded tax-cut-only proposal, or a combination of both. In any case, it will be important to see how much trading off the White House and Democratic congressional leaders will have to do to squeeze anything through before the elections now just over two months away.


Maybe the news will get better tomorrow, or the next day . . . week . . . month, whenever.

The 800-Pound Gorilla

A TALE OF THREE PROBLEMS



"It is time to turn the page." That's the way President Obama put it last night in noting the final day for withdrawal of the last U.S. combat forces from Iraq. If it were only that simple.

The next page includes the continuing story of efforts to deal with the long running Israeli-Palestinian issue. And, of course, the next page also includes the other running problem of the war in Afghanistan.

It is difficult to imagine that much real progress can come out of the so-called summit meeting, beginning today, between the United States in the person of Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. The fundamentals haven't changed. Israel has long said that the ultimate price for creation of a Palestinian state (there are other major issues also) is guarantees for Israeli security and recognition by the Palestinians of Israel as a Jewish nation that is here to stay. It is difficult to get to any final arrangement when the old, square-one stumbling block continues to exist-- Israel's continued building of new Jewish settlements on the West Bank, the core of any new independent Palestine, and in east Jerusalem where the Palestinians would like to place their capital. Netanyahu, under great pressure from the ultra-nationalist right in the person of his Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, fears that any commitment to either a long-term freeze or outright ban on such settlements would bring down his government.

At the same time, Abbas says he will not enter any long-term negotiations unless the settlements are halted now. Like Netanyahu, Abbas also can show little flexibility because his Palestinian Authority is challenged by Hamas which controls the Gaza strip, a Palestinian refugee tinder box and source of periodic rockets fired into Israel. Both Israel and the United States view Hamas as a terrorist organization and thus cannot be recognized and admitted to any negotiating process. To show that Hamas is still a force to be dealt with, it admitted to the killing of four Israelis in the West Bank city of Hebron on the eve of the Washington talks.


So when the presumably already written final statement for the talks is issued, it is unlikely to provide any notable signs of substantive progress, but rather a tentative commitment to simply hold further, lower level talks.

Thus, as we turn the page on the ending a combat role in Iraq, continuing the escalated war in Afghanistan, and launching another round of Israeli-Palestinian talks, we find there is an 800-pound gorilla in the room--namely, Iran. (Perhaps 800 pounds is too much, but Iran is certainly a weighty presence.)

In choosing to go to war in Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein and his mythical weapons of mass destruction, we removed Iran's greatest nemesis and competitor for regional dominance. In getting rid of Saddam, we empowered Iran. With the end of Saddam's Baathist, minority Sunni-based regime, we opened the door to mutual courting between the Shiite majorities in both countries. The Mideast is a sectarian world where Sunni-Shiite religious differences and centuries old antagonisms make a big difference in how all countries in the region view the various issues and possible solutions.

It wasn't long after Saddam was gone when Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr was off to Tehran to see what troubles he could stir up for the United States whose presence in Iraq he openly fought with his Mahdi army. Current and Interim Prime Minister Nuri al-Malaki has not hidden his willingness to go to Tehran to establish a working relationship with Iran's Shiite President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. But perhaps the most unkind cut of all has been the visits to Tehran by Ahmed Chalabi. It was the exiled Chalabi who was instrumental in helping to sell us the case of Saddam's possessing weapons of mass destruction. It was also Chalabi whom we backed in the early days as our hoped-for spear carrier in future shaping of Iraqi politics. Unhappily for us, Chalabi decided to go into business for himself and develop his own political network, to the exclusion of the United States. Chalabi's role as a continuing thorn in the U.S. side and as a major player in Iraqi politics is analyzed in the recent issue of Newsweek magazine.

So what we have today in Iraq are 50,000 troops as trainers/advisors, an increasingly embarrassing stalemate in the formation of a new government following last March's election, and major political actors who seek to advance their own political fortunes, at least in part, through Tehran.

Iran's oversized presence in the region is also a key factor in Israeli-U.S. relations. With Ahmadinejad's oft repeated threats to Israel and his determination to pursue Iran's own nuclear ambition, Israel pressures the United States to take military action against Iran before it develops nuclear weapons. We, in turn, keep pressing for more and stronger sanctions hoping to bring Iran to the bargaining table to give up development of such weapons to halt nuclear proliferation generally and to assist Israel in particular. In pressing for a sanctions-negotiation route we also hope thereby to discourage Israel from unilateral military action against Iranian nuclear facilities, such as it did in Iraq in l981.

If the Iranian presence isn't enough to deal with in Iraq and in nuclear proliferation/Israeli issues, there is also a growing Iranian involvement in neighboring Afghanistan. Ahmadinejad has actively reached out to increase its ties with both Afghanistan and Pakistan, thereby trying to wedge its interests into any negotiations to end the war. The Iranian President has held direct talks with his counterparts, Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, to discuss the long term reconstruction of Afghanistan. At the same time, Iran has been making inroads with the Taliban by supplying them weapons. Iran's relations with the Taliban have not always been good, but Ahmadinejad now sees the Taliban as a way of carrying on his fight with the United States in still another area. The net result of these efforts he hopes will be a further enhanced Iranian presence in another part of the region.

So Iran is the 800-pound gorilla in the room in our search for solutions to our continuing multiple problems in the region. However, as asserted before in my blogs: "the existence of a problem does not assume the existence of a solution," at least not now.