Bush: Dem Iraq bill is “prescription for chaos.” Look who’s talking …
It’s catchy, ain’t it.
A short time ago, the Washington Post’s David Broder wrote that Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) was the Democrats’ Gonzales. Today the Daily News‘ Tom DeFrank does pretty much the same thing, calling Bush and Reid “peas in a puzzled pod.”
Writes DeFrank …
As the Iraq war becomes ever more divisive and heartbreaking, the lame-duck President and Senate majority leader pursue a high-stakes game of “Amateur Hour” from opposite ends of Pennsylvania Ave. Even their friends know it.
In a town where genuine bipartisanship in the national interest seems to have died with Gerald Ford’s presidency three decades ago, the two main protagonists have managed to achieve the impossible – all of political Washington shaking their heads in collective distress.
I have a higher opinion of DeFrank than Broder. But the pattern is pretty clear: DC’s elderly wise men reporters seem to be falling over themselves to compare Reid to an incredibly unpopular president and an unprecedentedly disgraced Attorney General.
It’s well enough to knock these guys around. I’ve done my share of it with Broder. But it’s worth taking a moment to recognize the deeper pattern. For these guys the adoration of bipartisanship for its own sake always trumps efforts to grapple with key public questions. You either think we’re fundamentally on the right track or the wrong track in the occupation of Iraq. If you think it’s the latter bipartisanship is an empty vessel since the president is unwilling to change any core point of his policy and the great majority of Republican members of Congress — for now at least — are unwilling to oppose him. That means that trying to force the president to change policy is the only honorable option available. It’s really as simple as that.
Both DeFrank and Broder zero in on Reid’s ‘war is lost’ comment. I won’t go into the ins and outs of the different versions of what he said. But the simple fact is that a clear majority of the people in the country agree. They think the war was a mistake and that as the president wants to fight it it’s not winnable.
Reid’s real sin in their eyes isn’t verbal clumsiness or political obtuseness, though that’s what they want to pass it off as. Their beef with him is that he’s thrown down the gauntlet on this key issue. And that is an unforgiveable breach of decorum, notwithstanding the merits of the issue at hand.
Reid is in trouble with these guys for saying what most people consider the unvarnished truth. And to these guys that’s unforgiveable.
A Pittsburgh lawyer asks a good question …
The Bush administration’s efforts to use an obscure provision of the Patriot Act to replace U.S. attorneys it deemed too vigorous in investigating Republican officials, too slow in indicting Democratic public officials or too reluctant to investigate “voter fraud” — a euphemism for attempting to suppress the minority vote — caused me to re-think my opinion of the fairness of Western Pennsylvania’s U.S. attorney, Mary Beth Buchanan. I began to wonder why all of the recent public-corruption investigations in our region have been of Democrats.
For all the endless debate about strategy and tactics, past and present about Iraq, it is astonishing how little the public debate in this country entertains the idea that the occupation itself is the cause of the unrest and violence in the country.
This isn’t an original and unheard of concept. I know that. Indeed, it’s common sense. But in our public debate it is what we might call the logic that dare not speak its name.
The point occurred to me when looking at the discussion going on at PostGlobal.
Of course, the bitter irony is that it doesn’t have to be one or the other. As I wrote a couple years ago, the really awful thing about the situation we’ve gotten ourselves into is that we’re both the glue holding Iraq together and the solvent tearing it apart. And neither is this to say that there aren’t all sorts of hatreds and social pathologies helping Iraq rip itself apart on its own. Iraq’s Sunni minority had its heel on the neck of the Shi’a majority long before the US become the dominant power in the region — for many centuries, by some measures. But like a wound that is not allowed to heal and thus becomes infected again and again it is folly to assume that Iraq can set itself right as long as the occupation lasts. Particularly because it is one that fundamentally lacks legitimacy, which has always been the heart of the matter.
Late Update: TPM Reader WG responds …
You write that “the occupation itself is the cause of the unrest and violence in the country.” I think that’s partially true, but more importantly, the occupation is preventing any resolution of the conflict. Civil wars end when one side knows it has lost. As long as we are in Iraq the insurgency will not know it has lost. Both Republicans and Democrats say they want the U.S. leave — Iraqis realize that the occupation isn’t forever. Until the U.S. has left, hope will still live in the hearts of the Sunni fighters. The Iraqi government, already cheated of sovereign legitimacy, will not be able to establish credibility of force.
It’s Catch-22, Iraqi-style. The U.S. canât leave Iraq until its government can stand by itself. The Iraqi government canât stand by itself while the U.S. is propping it up.
I think I basically agree with this, though I don’t think the reality of occupation is merely an after the fact aspect of the problem in Iraq. Imperialism casts a long shadow in the region. And we fall under it.
For Turkophiles and all close observers of Turkey, another key development. The country’s constitutional court has effectively blocked the presidential candidacy of the Justice and Development (PK) party’s Abdullah Gul, who is currently the foreign minister, likely forcing early elections and a new showdown between the country’s secularists and the soft Islamism of the PK.
Blair: “Within the next few weeks I won’t be Prime Minister of this country. In all probability, a Scot will become Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.”
Today’s Must Read: when doesn’t a U.S. attorney’s performance matter? When he’s a senior official at the Justice Department, of course.
Exclusive: John Kerry launches national fundraising drive designed to pressure GOP Senators and get them to break ranks with Bush on Iraq.
Thomas Sowell in the National Review: From my ivory tower, things look so bad that it may be time for a military coup in the United States.
In today’s episode of TPMtv, why President Bush can’t fire Alberto Gonzales …
Update: For a summary of today’s episode, click here.