Fact-Finding, Fact-Losing

McCain recently criticized Obama for reiterating his intention to get American troops out of Iraq within eighteen months if he's elected even though Obama hasn't yet made his upcoming fact-finding trip to Iraq.

“In my experience," McCain said, "fact-finding missions usually work best the other way around: First you assess the facts on the ground, then you present a new strategy."

I'm not sure it's a fair accusation in this case, but it's a reasonable one. Policy decisions should always be inspired by aspiration but shaped by information. And even more important than finding facts is really thinking them through--making sure that they're as reliable, complete, and contexualized as possible. I've got no problem with McCain making this critique of Obama's stance. It rings a little hollow since I don't think there's any facts McCain could find that would make him change his policy, but that's a another story.

What I do object to is that since learning in 2000 just how ruthless and dishonest Bush and his retinue can be, McCain seems to have developed Stockholm syndrome for his captors in the creep wing of the GOP. In the past 5 years in Iraq, the US government has spent about a trillion dollars that could have been used at home (hello, mortgage crisis, hello tanking dollar), the US military has lost 4,121 soldiers, and (conservatively) 90,000 Iraqis have been killed.

This all happened to eliminate the threat of weapons of mass destruction that were long gone and to take out al Qaeda loyalists who weren't yet there. Before the invasion, those facts had been found. But then the White House had them lost. McCain isn't dumb. He knows that. But he's been mute on it for five years, and he'll be mute for another five months at least. If it's worth criticizing Obama for not making military decisions in terms of the best available information, surely it's worth criticizing the Bush administration-- Oh, never mind. We know what's going on.

Anyway, the good news in all this is that during the Bush administration, human life hasn't become worth less just figuratively. It's now literally worth less. 11.5% less, to be precise. In 2003, the EPA set the value of human life at $7.8 million dollars in deciding whether certain environmental pollution regulations saved enough life-dollars to be worth the regulation-dollars spent on them. Since then, the figure has dropped to $6.9 million.

Putting the dead from the Iraq war at 94,121 and setting aside deaths due to opportunity costs, the new EPA figure means that those who died in the Iraq war are only worth $649 billion. So it turns out that losing those facts about Iraq was only about a $1.65-trillion mistake rather than a $1.73-trillion mistake. Nice.

Gitmo (Yes, Still)

I'm sorry not to have posted for a while and also sorry to return to a familiar theme (Gitmo) even though there is, in theory, so much news to discuss.

However, I'm having a hard time giving a rat's ass about the primaries. The ratio of coverage to information is so punitive as to make tuning in feel like a very unsexy form of masochism. And let's not even talk about the lack of real conversation and debate. (From here on out, I propose that we replace the debates with Talking-Point Doll Theater. Each candidate would be represented by five dolls, each of which speaks a recorded talking point when you tickle its belly.)

One thing I am interested in but not in a position to have an opinion about: are things getting better in Iraq? The reports don't seem nearly so dire of late. Or is it just that we're no longer getting 24/7 IED porn because the American news outlets got distracted by Clinton's moist eyes?

Anyway, here's my gesture at a post, which actually more of a poll for anybody who happens to still be reading the blog.

The Declaration of Independence says that people shouldn't change their governments capriciously but that when a government becomes destructive to basic liberties, people can and should change the government.

To prove that King George had to go, Jefferson wrote this:

The History of the present King of Great-Britain is a History of repeated Injuries and Usurpations, all having in direct Object the Establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid World.
HE has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.
HE has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.
HE has combined with others to subject us to a Jurisdiction foreign to our Constitution, and unacknowledged by our Laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation: FOR imposing Taxes on us without our Consent, FOR depriving us, in many Cases, of the Benefits of Trial by Jury, [and] * FOR transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended Offences.

Jefferson goes on to complain that the King had "plundered our Seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our Towns, and destroyed the Lives of our People." I don't think we're there yet (tho' Iraqis may feel differently), but the other complaints do remind me of Gitmo.

So, on a scale of 1-10, how close are they? (1 = "radically dissimilar," 10 = "identical")

Mark Twain is Still Right

I don't repost items too often. But this one seems worth it. I posted a longer version of this over a year ago, and I think the questions have become more urgent since then.


=================================================================

Why Are We There? When Can We Leave?


I'd like to share with you Mark Twain's thoughts on the Iraq war:

You ask me about what is called imperialism. Well, I have formed views about that question..... There is the case of Iraq. I have tried hard, and yet I cannot for the life of me comprehend how we got into that mess.... We were to relieve them from Hussein's tyranny, to enable them to set up a government of their own, and we were to stand by and see that it got a fair trial. It was not to be a government according to our ideas, but a government that represented the feeling of the majority of the Iraqis, a government according to Iraqi ideas. That would have been a worthy mission for the United States. But now -- why, we have got into a mess, a quagmire from which each fresh step renders the difficulty of extrication immensely greater. I'm sure I wish I could see what we were getting out of it, and all it means to us as a nation.

Okay, obviously Mark Twain didn't say that about America's occupation of Iraq. But he did say it--with the nations' names changed of course--about America's occupation of the Philippines, a nation that which came under US control in 1898 as part of the terms the treaty that ended the Spanish-American War (the Philippines had long been Spanish colonies). We promised the Filipinos that we were freeing them from oppressive monarchic and colonial rule, but they decided they'd rather free themselves. In 1899, the Filipinos declared independence. We fought their independence movement until 1913, and we won. The islands didn't leave American control until WW II (when Japan occupied them) and didn't get independence until 1946. (We got Puerto Rico and Guam in the same treaty and kept 'em.)

I'm fascinated that Twain's sense of the problems of the problem with America's occupation of the Philippines in 1900 applies so well to America's occupation of Iraq in 2006. And I don't think it's a fluke. I think it tells us something about the dangers of pursuing a foreign policy based on military force.

Worse, a closer analog to Iraq than the Philippines is another island nation that fell under our control after the Spanish-American War: Cuba. We got Cuba in the same treaty that we got the Philippines. President McKinley was pleased to have Cuba under his control, and he declared that America would have a twenty-year trusteeship over it. Pres. Roosevelt was more sympathetic to Cuban desires for independence, so he granted independence in 1902. But that independence had a big catch. Not only did the conditions of independence require that Cuba lease of Guantanamo Bay in perpetuity, they also granted--explicitly in the Cuban constitution--the US the right to intervene in Cuba's domestic affairs when it saw fit.

In 1906, the US exercised that right when it wasn't satisfied that Cuba's fragile (and elitist) government would survive the death of Pres. Estrada Palmer. The US was directly and indirectly involved with appointing or deposing governments in Cuba until 1944.

The factional and racial violence that helped keep Cuba politically unstable over that period seems unnervingly analogous to the regional and ethnic tensions in today's Iraq. Of course, the new Iraqi constitution doesn't allow us the right to intervene at will in Iraqi affairs, but Iraqis' inability to establish a new government, the ongoing guerrilla violence, and our having a hundred and fifty thousand troops on the ground makes that constitution more a piece of paper than a compelling reality.

And I'm afraid that the temptation to intervene militarily in Iraqi politics will be enormously strong for this and future Presidents. We now know that Bush entered this war excited not so much by supposed WMDs as by the neocon aspiration of "regional transformation," of deposing Saddam and putting a democratic, pro-US government in his place. A lot of those people are still in various important positions in the US government and a lot of them will be reluctant to see the US leave Iraq before a strong, pro-US government is in place. The problem is, it seems less likely every day that left to its own devices Iraq will have either a strong government or a pro-US government any time soon, much less both.

And you don't have to be a neocon to be tempted to stay in Iraq until we somehow "get it right." We've lost thousands of soldiers, killed tens of thousands of Iraqis, spend hundreds of billions of dollars that could have been spend on education, or health care, or a night on the town. People want those lives and that money to mean something. And Iraq is hugely important--as a source of oil, as a check on Iran, as a potential ally. If things go badly there, all that could go down the drain.

It took only a few years for thoughtful people to realize that they couldn't understand why we were in the Philippines or Cuba, but it took the US forty-eight years to get out of the Philippines and forty-six years to get out of Cuba. We've been in Iraq four. When will we get out? When can we get out? And, at least as important, how can we stop getting into these situations?

Slowly Losing It

So I haven't been especially prompt or zealous in posting to this blog lately. Y'all can decide for yourselves whether that means I should apologize or take a bow.

It's getting harder for me to post. This is supposed to be, in general, a cultural & political blog with a high percentage of appropriate snark. But I'm running low on appropriate snark these days. Those of you who know me (and who else reads this, really?) will find that improbable. It is improbable. But true.

Now, I'm not running out of sarcasm and irony. Still brimful, in fact. I'm just increasingly unable to take any consolation from them. Last night I was up late watching a Daily Show rerun, and they did a couple features on what the Congress has been up to lately, particularly the Senate fuss over MoveOn's "Petraeus/Betray Us" ad and the House's hearings into naughty language and dick-swinging in hip hop. And from somewhere in my soul came a small sound that must be what an athlete hears when an ACL pops.

I mean: Jesus fucking Christ on a popsicle stick.

The kids over at MoveOn run a fourth-grade ad, and the Senate actually, as a body, devotes hours of debate to it? The President has a strong opinion? Seriously? The House of Representatives calls hip hop artists in to grill them about dirty words, most of which the Representatives seem only to have heard in music recorded before the witnesses were born? (Get. over. NWA. It's 20007.)

They have got to be kidding. We have 150,000 troops in Iraq, tens of thousands more in Afghanistan, and we're spending at least a billion dollars a day to keep them there. That's money not going to health care, not going to the debt, not going to infrastructure, not going to education, not going to any of the things that make our country work and our dollar strong enough to buy fifty Canadian cents.

At this point, I don't really care how anybody voted on the MoveOn resolution or what questions they asked Fitty. My feeling is that simply dignifying the proceedings with participation should be grounds for a recall election.

The thing is, I don't see it getting any better. Our electoral system is awash in legalized bribe money, our economy manufactures little beside carbon dioxide, our educational system now operates on the principle that if all children are behind, nobody can accuse you of leaving any of them there.

And we don't care. We're not even fighting. We're watching the Daily Show or Monday Night Football or whatever else it is we stare at while we wait for the Pizza Hut delivery dude and give up on the promise of America.

America has never been a perfect country. Like all countries, it was founded on violence and inequality. But unlike some countries, it was also founded on the dream of participation and justice. And belief in those ideals has sometimes, at crucial moments, actually given people the vision and even the power to demand something better.

Maybe we'll have one of those moments soon. I hope so. But I'm running low on optimism, and for me optimism is the only thing that keeps snark from turning into bitchy despair. And I don't want to write post after post of bitchy despair. So I'm trying to find ways to write something better. But I'm not finding it easy, so I hope that you'll forgive me if I go longer between posts.

A Genuinely Horrible Oil Fact

The New York Times is reporting that between 5-15% of Iraqi oil production goes missing every day and has been doing so for the past four years. That's 100,000-300,000 barrels daily.

Apparently, investigators aren't sure if the loss is caused by improper production estimates, theft, graft, sabotage, or some mixture.

Oil is basically Iraq's only source of revenue. This is a mess, folks.

A Genuinely Horrible Oil Idea

The other shoe may be about to drop.

When Pres. Bush first called for the US to attack Iraq, liberal protesters everywhere busted out their "No Blood for Oil!" placards. I remember at the time thinking, "God, I really hope this isn't primarily about oil." The intervening years have ensured that, whatever Bush's original intentions, the invasion and occupation hasn't been primarily about oil--Iraq has been too much of a mess for occupying it to be about anything but trying to fight the insurgency.

But now that oil is back. The Iraqi parliament is now considering a bill that essentially started with the US State Department. The bill is being sold in this country and in Iraq as a deal to arrange revenue sharing among Iraqi regions. But the bill's main purpose is to oblige Iraqis to give over at least 70% of the nation's oil to foreign oil companies. (By "foreign," I mostly mean "American.")

This is beyond disgraceful--it's borderline wicked. Iraq's infrastructure is in terrible shape, but the Iraqi oil ministry can still pump oil and is doing so. Surely if we're serious about the country ever recovering from the devastation that we've helped generate, we should do everything we can to ensure that the country has a stable, meaningful revenue stream in the upcoming years. That means a system in which the profits from oil sales stay in Iraq rather than leaving the country.

Passage of this awful oil bill has become one of the famed benchmarks that Democrats and Republicans alike are insisting on. The Democrats, at least, should stop playing around with this. The Iraqi parliament's handing over its country's one real source of immediate revenue wouldn't prove its ability to govern--just the opposite. That's a no-brainer.

Before the invasion, Paul Wolfowitz and the entire Bush administration was insisting that Iraqi oil revenues would basically pay the costs of the war. Obviously, that pipe dream has long since been flushed down the pipes and the pipelines. Economically and otherwise, America is going to be paying for this war for a long time, and it's no use pretending otherwise. Even if you somehow think that the Iraqis "owe us," remember that we as a nation wouldn't get anything out of the proposed oil bill anyway. The oil rights wouldn't go to US taxpayers. They'd go to multinational oil companies, some of which happen to be headquartered in the US. So the only way any American taxpayer will get to see any of that oil is to pay $3.62 per gallon at the pump. And since we'd be doing that anyway, I'd rather that the money go to Iraqi elementary schools than to Exxon's Cayman Islands accounts.

Thanks, Jon Stewart

For those who somehow missed it, please go see this two-part interview between Jon Stewart and John McCain. Stewart actually asks McCain so many of the questions that I've wanted to hear a serious Iraq war apologist try to answer. Part II is particularly important because he asks how questioning the President is the same as failing to support the troops. And then he doesn't back down when McCain tries the typical nonsensical misdirections.

The Unaccountability Dictionary

George Tenet, former CIA director and he of the "slam dunk" intelligence that justified the Bush administration's case for the Iraq war, is about to publish a book entitled At the Center of the Storm in which he attacks Dick Cheney and others (though not the President) for going to war with Iraq without a serious debate on whether or not Iraq actually, say, posed a threat.

There's a lot to be said about this but (see my post immediately below) it's already been said. "Today a former Bush administration official/federal prosecutor/Katrina victim/woman with functioning eyes and ears revealed that the Bush administration's glaring incompetence/contempt for the Constitution/half-secret desire to hasten Armaggedon has led the President and/or his top-level staff to invade/destroy/trample yet another country/right/box of puppies, but the President continues to maintain that he acted in the best interests of the nation and to stand firmly behind Don Rumsfeld/Alberto Gonzales/a compost heap that someone told him is Margaret Thatcher."

So, rather than pretending to be shocked that the administration bumbled blindly into Iraq armed with little more than a gas station map of Baghdad and a song in its heart (specifically, "America, Fuck Yeah!"), I'm simply going to point out an interesting lexical development made clear in Tenet's book. Tenent, who of course learns things before the rest of us, has begun to use words in the novel ways that they will incontrovertibly and imminently be used, or at least so the New York Times reports:

Mr. Tenet takes blame for the flawed 2002 National Intelligence Estimate about Iraq’s weapons programs, calling the episode “one of the lowest moments of my seven-year tenure.” He expresses regret that the document was not more nuanced, but says there was no doubt in his mind at the time that Saddam Hussein possessed unconventional weapons. “In retrospect, we got it wrong partly because the truth was so implausible,” he writes.

Implausible (adj.)--characterized by inconvenience of consequence.

See also Tenet: (n.) 1. an important belief or conviction held retroactively; 2. a person who holds such a belief or conviction

Oh, Sweet Moronic Jebus

At a South Carolina town hall meeting, a superlatively Fox-informed gentleman asked John McCain when America was going to send "an airmail message to Tehran" (because remember, it's not tactics, intel, troop strength, materiel, and domestic support that win wars, it's the manliness of your message). In reply, McCain sang "Bomb Iran" to the tune of "Barbara Ann."



It was meant as a joke. And, along with the (rhetorical) dancing McCain did afterward, it did save him from having to answer directly whether he would lead us into another war even though the ones we're in already have stretched the military as far as it will go. Still. It's mighty creepy and somehow a little sad.

Stolen Sacrifices

In the last several months, Americans of different political backgrounds have been arguing that one of Pres. Bush's biggest failings as a leader has been his unwillingness to ask Americans to sacrifice during a time of war. These people argue that soldiers and their families are making big sacrifices--lives, jobs, stability, time with family--but the rest of us aren't.

Can't argue with the first part. Our soldiers and the people who care about them are being asked to make huge sacrifices, time after time, year after year. It often seems to me that liberals, conservatives, and apathetics alike who stridently accuse others of not "supporting the troops" are doing so in large part because they feel guilty about going along with a plan of action that requires 0.1% of the population to make 100% of the obvious sacrifices.

But here's some sick consolation for those feeling guilty: when it comes to the Iraq War, the rest of us are actually making sacrifices too. We're just not being asked to make them. We're not even aware of them.

Okay, maybe morally you can't be said to be "sacrificing" if you're not aware that you're doing it. But we are giving up a lot to make this war happen. I've said most of this before--we've spent something like $600 billion specifically on the war, more on affiliated military costs, and way more on opportunity costs.

The opportunity costs are particularly huge. By investing some--not even all--of the spent on the Iraq War, we could instead have stabilized the Social Security fund well through the retirement of the boomers. We could have used the Iraq War money to put in place ambitious, serious education plans that would lift poor people out of poverty, that would have placed better college education in the reach of everybody, and that in the long run would have made America both more pleasant to live in and more economically competitive. We could have worked out a national health care plan that would have protected, in particular, children without insurance. If nothing else, we could have given everybody--including military families who now would have their loved ones at home--a tax cut.

Above all else, we could have preserved the idea that the American government is there to serve Americans. Americans in general. Not defense contractors, not neocons who have manhood issues because they were picked on in elementary school, not chickenhawks who had other priorities until they were too old to put on a uniform. But from 2001-2006, we sat back and allowed a government to tell us that our long-term best interests lay in ignoring the Constitution and not spending any of our tax dollars on our future. We let our government spend more money than it had on something that hurt us, meaning that we now have less money to spend on things that could help us.

That has to stop. It really does. It's bad enough that nobody asked us to sacrifice. And it's worse that they made us do it anyway. It's worst of all that we're only now starting to notice.

Good News!

By which, of course, I mean bad news.

The prestigious British medical journal The Lancet recently released a study indicating that about 650,000 Iraqis have died during the Iraq War.

Some in the British government are questioning the study's sampling method, even though the method is the standard one for battleground estimates. But the chief scientific advisor to the British Ministry of Defense has said that the estimate is pretty much as good as possible, and even its British critics in the Foreign Office have written, "The survey methodology used here cannot be rubbished, it is a tried and tested way of measuring mortality in conflict zones."

At Iraq Body Count, the death toll is at about 62,500. But, as they point out, they're counting only reported deaths. And, as they point out, "It is likely that many if not most civilian casualties will go unreported by the media. That is the sad nature of war." So The Lancet figure isn't necessarily inconsistent with the IBC figure.

Still, if we're optimistic, maybe the IBC number is only, say, a 10% undercount. That would mean that only 70,000 Iraqis had died since the war began. Which is a mere 23 times more than died in the 9/11 attacks. Cheer up, Iraqis! Good news!

Yes and No, Tom McMahon

Executive director of the Democratic party Tom McMahon is sending Democratic supporters an embarrassing e-mail.

In the e-mail, McMahon attacks House minority leader John Boehner for labeling critics of Bush's Iraq policy as terrorist symphathizers. Fair enough. Boehner is doing that, just like Bush & his administration have been doing that since the White House started pushing the invasion. And it's sleazy. It should stop.

But the "Democrats good, Republicans bad" portion of the e-mail is sort of pathetic, and it's a good example of why voters who try to pay attention to political debates often stop trying pretty fast.

McMahon writes:

Why are Republicans scared of a debate on America's top issue? And why can't they stand up to the Democrats on the current situation in Iraq?

Because it wasn't the Democratic Party that led us into a war on false pretenses. Democrats didn't alienate our global allies by ignoring diplomatic efforts to find a peaceful resolution. Democrats didn't reject the advice of our military leaders, who recommended we change the course. And Democrats didn't decide to put more of our troops in harm/s way to interfere in a bloody civil war with no end in sight.

The Democrats didn't start this war, but we're working to end it -- and the House resolution is an important first step to changing the course and bringing our brave men and women home.

Gee. While it's true that the Democrats in Congress in 2002 & 2003 didn't lead us into war or alienate our global allies or reject the advice of our military leaders, it's also true that with rare exceptions like Russ Feingold they didn't do squat to stop any of it. They all voted to give Bush the authority to invade Iraq at his discretion. They didn't challenge any of the lousy evidence used to support the decision to invade. They didn't ask hard questions. So Bush quarterbacked the Iraq debacle, but most of the Dems in Congress were standing on the sidelines with towels and Gatorade at the ready, cheering the team on.

It's fine to point out that the invasion was always a bad idea. It's fine to oppose the troop surge. It's not fine to pretend that you were knocked over the head and locked in the closet during the year before and after the invasion. Taking responsibility for your wartime mistakes (Tom McMahon, Hilary Clinton) is about more than "taking reponsibility" while pointing your finger at the White House and pretending you were out of town when that shit went down. Taking responsibility is about admitting you were wrong and responsibly trying to fix it.

Send me an e-mail about that, Tom McMahon, and I'll gladly read it.

War and (on?) the Constitution

I'm going to risk exile from bloggerdom by admitting that there are some important things I don't know. But I don't, and I'd like to know. So, here are some questions:

1) When the Congress passed legislation authorizing the Iraq invasion, it wasn't a formal declaration of war, was it? As I recollect, it was an authorization to use force but not yet a declaration of war.

2) How open-ended was that initial authorization--did it authorize an indefinite occupation of Iraq or just the removal of Hussein from power?

3) We all call it the Iraq "War," but, like the Vietnam "War," it's a war in fact but not in law--we're only constitutionally at war when the Congress declares that we are. Given that fact, is the President right when he says, "I'm the decision-maker"? That is, if the Congress hasn't actually declared war, does the President have the right to send troops where he wants when he wants? Isn't it still Congress's decision at this point?

This has been bothering me a lot lately. As anybody who slogs through Mike's and my posts on the war knows, we've long had our doubts about its wisdom. More so now than ever, I see it as a waste of lives, money, energy, and credibility. But beyond that, I'm really uncomfortable with the fact that it now seems accepted by the American people and their legislators that the President (whoever it may be) can send troops into conflict entirely at his or her discretion. The framers of the Constitution gave the Congress--and only the Congress--the right to declare war, and they did it for a reason.

The President, yes, is commander-in-chief, and that's excellent. Keeping the military under civilian control in that way makes it harder for generals to seize control of the government.

But the same philosophy of checks and balances that works against tyranny by giving ultimate military power to a civilian is also built into Congress's power to declare war. As I understand the Constitution, the President can tell the military how to conduct itself, but the President cannot single-handedly take the nation to war. He or she needs backing of the Congress (in theory, the people's representatives) to start a war. And that makes sense to me--if you can't get a majority of elected officials to decide that the country is under attack, then the country probably shouldn't be at war.

I'm not a Constitutional scholar, and I could very well be overlooking some legal precedent that makes the Iraq (Non)War a legal. But it doesn't make logical sense to me that the power to declare war is the same as the power to declare February 7, 2007 to be "Jane Doe Day" in commemoration of her heroic saving of Fluffy from that very tall tree. The declaration of war isn't ceremonial; it's quite literally a call to arms. It shouldn't be possible to devote our resources and lives to organized violence without a declaration. According to the Constitution, the decision that war is necessary should ultimately be the Congress's, just as the decision as to how to conduct a war once it's declared should ultimately be the President's. But that's not how it is now. And that's a problem, a huge one.

Now, obviously, if you're fighting international terrorism or even drug cartels, then sometimes the President will need to authorize small-scale attacks without waiting for a formal declaration of war. But the difference between inserting an eight-man SEAL team into an al-Qaeda training camp is of a vastly different magnitude than sending 150,000 soldiers and hundreds of billions of dollars to Iraq. The Iraqi conflict is exactly what the framers understood by war, and the fact that Congress has never declared that war unnerves me. It should unnerve you too.