reflectivepundit

Alberto Gone-zales

by David Epstein

My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over. Alberto Gonzales has --- at long last, and somewhat surprisingly --- resigned.

The analogy to Watergate is apt; not since Nixon has the executive branch done so much damage to the Constitution. But historians will have a hard time, I predict, determining whether Gonzales did more damage with the policies he promoted, as opposed to his spectacular mismanagement of the Justice Department, which has now been gutted of many of its skilled, dedicated employees, to be replaced by partisan hacks. Gonzo, you did a heck of a job.

The timing is a bit curious, too. Is this Gonzales's version of leaving on his own terms? Rove wouldn't resign after the 2006 elections; he gutted it out for another half a year in order to prove that no one was forcing him out. (On the other hand, this had a price: the fact that his leaving was treated as a bit of a non-event just underscored how irrelevant he had become in the interim. Better, I think, to leave at the zenith of your unpopularity than to slink away as a diminished former-someone.) Perhaps Gonzales didn't want to leave right after one of his so-horrible-it's-(almost)-funny testimonies before Congress, but before he was actually impeached or indicted for perjury. (And if he really did commit perjury, that investigation should continue, but of course it won't.)

So, what's next for his former eminence? He's still a close Bush friend, of course, which would indicate at least a cushy lobbying job or a high-end law firm in Texas. But he might have made himself radioactive by agreeing to wash the administration's dirty laundry for so long. Perhaps the Hoover Institution needs another senior scholar....

Rudy Giuliani: Neo-Conservatives’ Dream Candidate

By Brigitte L. Nacos
In spite of his opportunistic turns and twists, Rudolph (Rudy) W. Giuliani remains a moderate on social issues which are most important for the Republican right in that he is pro-choice, pro-gun control, and pro-gay rights. But when it comes to foreign policy, Rudolph W. and George W. are very much alike with Giuliani perhaps more hawkish on what he calls in his article in Foreign Affairs “the Terrorists’ War on Us” and the fight against “radical Islamic fascism.” By embracing the neo-conservative trigger-happy “global war on terrorism” doctrine Rudy W. has become the neo-conservatives’ dream candidate for 2008. Both George W. and Rudy W. derive what they seem to take as their special authority and legitimacy from the positions they held on September 11, 2001. As they cleverly invoke and exploit 9/11 for their political and policy goals, they get away with being righteous and stubborn—as the president once again shows by staying the course in Iraq as the Washington Post reports today.

Addressing the Veterans of Foreign Wars earlier this week, George W. said,
“I stand before you as a wartime President. I wish I didn't have to say that, but an enemy that attacked us on September the 11th, 2001, declared war on the United States of America. And war is what we're engaged in. The struggle has been called a clash of civilizations. In truth, it's a struggle for civilization [emphasis added].”

In Foreign Affairs, Rudy W. makes the same point,
”Full recognition of the first great challenge of the twenty-first century came with the attacks of September 11, 2001…Confronted with an act of war on American soil, our old assumptions about conflict between nation-states fell away. Civilization itself, and the international system, had come under attack [emphases added] by a ruthless and radical Islamist enemy.”

Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps: Not Separate From State and Government

By Brigitte L. Nacos
Under the headline “Tougher on Iran: The Revolutionary Guard is at war with the United States. Why not fight back?” today’s lead editorial in the Washington Post supports the administration’s plan to declare the Revolutionary Guard Corps a global terrorist organization. As I wrote the other day in a post here, there is no doubt that the Guard Corps was in the past and is today Iran’s potent terrorist weapon in that Guard members themselves carry out terrorist acts and supply terrorist groups outside with training, logistics, finances, and arms. But unlike other groups on the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist groups, the Revolutionary Guard is not a non-state entity but a huge military elite force that is an important part of the Iranian state which is for many years on the U.S.government’s list of state sponsors of terrorism. Indeed, it is the Guard that has been engaged in all the activities that justify the designation of Iran as a sponsor state of terrorism.

Cheney’s 1994 Conclusion: Take Over of Iraq Would Cause Quagmire

By Brigitte L. Nacos
When searching archived video tapes for material to be part of a day-long program about the “Life and Career of Dick Cheney” on C-SPAN 3, producer Emmanuel Touhey discovered a C-SPAN interview with the former secretary of defense from 1994. At the time of this interview, when Cheney himself contemplated a run for the White House, C-SPAN’s Bruce Collins asked him why he had been against U.S.forces moving on to Baghdad during the first Persian Gulf War. Cheney said, “It’s a quagmire, if you go that far and try to take over Iraq.”Moreover, as the video material now available on YOUTUBE reveals, nine years before the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the removal of Saddam Hussein, Cheney predicted precisely what has unfolded in Iraq since the invasion and the fall of Saddam Hussein. In 1994 he asked rhetorically, what would happen after the removal of Saddam Hussein and the central government? His answer was that that pieces of the country would be “flying up” and that Syria would try  to take a piece of western Iraq, Iran part of the Eastern part, and a consolidated Kurdish part would be a threat to Turkey. Noting that 146 Americans had died during the Persian Gulf War, Cheney asked furthermore: How many additional dead Americans is Saddam worth?"

As of today (according to Iraq Coalition Casualties), 4,004 members of the coalition forces have died since the invasion started in March 2003—3,707 of them American servicemen- and –women. 23,308 coalition forces, 23,877 of them Americans, were wounded or for other reasons medically evacuated. And it is a good bet that many, many more innocent Iraqis were killed and maimed and millions forced to leave their homeland.
Mary Ann Akers wrote in the Washington Post that Cheney during an interview with ABC News earlier this year was asked “how his views had changed from 1991, when he also spoke of military action in Iraq as a ‘quagmire.’ ‘Well, I stand by what I said in '91," Cheney told ABC. "But look what's happened since then -- we had 9/11."
Since there is no credible evidence for a connection between Iraq and Saddam Hussein on the one hand and 9/11 on the other, it is high time for the vice-president to ask: How many additional dead Americans are the dead Saddam Hussein and the Iraq quagmire worth?

Manufacturing the News: Michael Deaver and Karl Rove

By Brigitte L. Nacos
The death of Michael Deaver, who was Ronald Reagan’s premier image maker, and the departure of Karl Rove from the Bush White House highlight the centrality of public relations, propaganda, and manufactured news in modern White Houses and administrations. Power-holders and power-seekers have always tried and often succeeded in manipulating public views about themselves, their politics, and policies, but Michael Deaver opened a new chapter of public relations stagecraft during the Reagan years. While major factors during the presidencies of George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, Karl Rove and his associates proved the most aggressive and ruthless yet in marketing a president, branding their party, and manufacturing news to sell their policies—most notably the Iraq War. Calling Deaver rightly “the media maestro who shaped President Ronald Reagan’s public image,” the Washington Post’s Patricia Sullivan writes. “As the White House deputy chief of staff during the first term of the Reagan presidency, Deaver orchestrated Reagan's every public appearance, staging announcements with an eye for television and news cameras. From a West Wing office adjacent to the Oval Office, Deaver did more than anyone before him to package and control the presidential image.”

Commenting on Karl Rove’s sudden retirement from his White House job, Frank Rich takes his readers back to the summer of 2002, when “Andrew Card, then the president’s chief of staff, told The New York Times why the much-anticipated push for war in Iraq hadn't yet arrived. ‘You don't introduce new products in August,’ he said sounding like the mouthpiece for the Big Three automakers he once was. Sure enough, with an efficiency Detroit can only envy, the manufactured aluminum tubes and mushroom clouds rolled off the White House assembly line after Labor Day like clockwork.” While Card offered a glimpse of the behind-the-scene marketing tricks in selling the war on terrorism--in Iraq, Karl Rove was, no doubt, the brain behind such political maneuvers.

Why the Terrorist Label for Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps Now?

By Brigitte L. Nacos
This morning’s front page and television breaking news of the Bush administration’s plan to designate Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps a foreign terrorist organizations does not reveal anything new about the mission and character of this elite military corps which utilized terrorist strategies and tactics from the time it was established in 1979. From the outset one of the pillars of the Iranian Islamic Republic and its rulers, members of the corps were involved in the 444-day long Iran Hostage Crisis during the Carter presidency. The Guards were instrumental in the establishment, training, and support of Lebanon’s terrorist organization Hezbollah, the group that held Americans hostage in Lebanese hide-outs through much of the 1980s and carried out hijackings—brutally killing a number of their hostages. Members of the organizations were dispatched to Bosnia and Albania in the 1990s and to Chechnya as well. More recently, they were surely involved in supplying Hezbollah as well as Hamas with missiles and other arms and in the kidnapping of British sailors in disputed waters separating Iraq and Iran. In short, there is nothing new about the terrorist activities of this large military force that exists independently from
Iran’s traditional military. So, why does the Bush administration move belatedly to declare the Guards officially a global terrorist organization? According to the Washington Post’s Robin Wright, “The main goal of the new designation is to clamp down on the Revolutionary Guard's vast business network, as well as on foreign companies conducting business linked to the military unit and its personnel. The administration plans to list many of the Revolutionary Guard's financial operations.” But since Iran is already on the U.S. Department of State’s list of state sponsors of terrorism, official entities of that state and its government—and first of all the Revolutionary Guard Corps with its involvement in terrorism—have been (or should have been) off-limit for American companies’ business transactions for years. According to Helen Cooper of the New York Times, the move “would serve at least two purposes for Ms. Rice: to pacify, for a while, administration hawks who are pushing for possible military action, and to further press America’s allies to ratchet up sanctions against Iran in the Security Council.” It is hard to imagine that the official terrorism stamp for the Guards would result in more support for sanctions against Iran at the UN and in less pressure from domestic Iran hawks.

Instead, what looks more like toothless propaganda may nevertheless harden the lines between
Washington and Tehran further and obstruct diplomatic efforts to solve the issues surrounding Iran’s nuclear program and enlist support for the stabilization of Iraq. In the end, this could  work in favor of those who  are in favor of  using military force against Iran.

“Bush’s Brain” Quits: What Next for Karl Rove, the White House, and the GOP?

By Brigitte L. Nacos
In their fascinating book Bush’s Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential, James Moore and Wayne Slater write that “without Karl Rove, there would be no President George W. Bush.” According to the authors, the brilliant and ruthless campaign consultant Rove, who has had long ties to the Bush family, was instrumental in George W.’s gubernatorial and presidential campaigns. When he moved into the White House, he became President George W. Bush’s permanent political consultant and, as befitting for “Bush’s Brain,” something like a co-president. Now, after several top White House aides have left their posts already, Rove announced his departure in an interview with Paul. A. Gigot, the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page editor. But although under clouds for his role in the CIA leak case and, as today’s Washington Post put it, “under scrutiny by the new Democratic Congress for his role in the firings of U.S. attorneys and in a series of political briefings provided to various agencies across government,” Rove is  upbeat with respect to President Bush’s remaining time in office and the chances of the Republican Party in the 2008 presidential election. While insisting that he is through with political consulting, Rove is already thinking ahead to 2008 telling Gigot, “if we keep our nerve and represent big things, we'll win." Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen write in The Politico, “In happier days, friends expected Rove to serve — whether in government or not — as the liaison between Bush and the ’08 GOP presidential nominee. Now Rove recognizes the nominee needs to be his own man, with separation from an unpopular administration, so any role he plays will be very behind the scenes according to colleagues.” In other words, while not signing on with another presidential campaign, Rove is likely to play some role in the GOP and the campaign of his party’s presidential nominee.

Administration’s Terrorism Fear Tactics Worked Again to Whip Democrats in Line

By Brigitte L. Nacos
After months of showcasing Attorney-General Alberto Gonzales’ unwillingness to tell the truth when testifying before congressional committees or speaking in public, enough Democrats in both the U.S. Senate and U.S. House were unwilling to vote against “The Protect America Act of 2007” that expands the administration surveillance power far beyond the parameters of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 and expands the surveillance authorization prerogatives of the attorney-general (in tandem with the director of national intelligence) who has serious truth-telling deficiencies. As Aziz Huq writes in The Nation,
The law's most important effect is arguably not its expansion of raw surveillance power but the sloughing away of judicial or Congressional oversight. In the words of former CIA officer Philip Giraldi, the law provides "unlimited access to currently protected personal information that is already accessible through an oversight procedure."
E.J. Dionne Jr. reveals in today’s Washington Post why the Democratic majority—especially in the House—did not stand up to the president but handed him and the Republican minority a victory. According to the Post columnist,
One anxiety hovered over the debate: If a terrorist attack happened and Congress had not given Bush what he wanted, the Democrats would get blamed for a lack of vigilance. "Could something happen over August?" Rep. Rush D. Holt (D-N.J.) asked in an interview. "Sure it could. What bothered me is that too many Democrats allowed that fear to turn into a demand for some atrocious legislation."

President Karzai’s Plea for Female Hostages Only: What about the Male Captives?

By Brigitte L. Nacos
Pressured by the South Korean government to negotiate the release of a group of South Koreans kidnapped and held by the Taliban, Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai warned according to the Christian Science Monitor that the kidnapping of female foreigners would “bring historical shame and defamation for this country and this nation” and that “in Afghanistan’s history, never anyone has kidnapped women.” It is hard to understand that 23 South Korean Christians traveled to Afghanistan to provide medical service for poor Afghans and presumably do missionary work at a time, when the Taliban had resurfaced in certain regions of the country and was hardly inclined to look kindly upon Christians and possible missionaries. The kidnappers have already executed two male hostages and threatened more killings if the Afghan government does not release imprisoned Taliban members or sympathizers. Of the remaining 21 hostages, 16 are females. By pleading for the freedom of the 16 women, Karzai plays a dangerous gender card in an admittedly difficult hostage situation. Karzai’s public appeal is obviously designed to shame the Taliban kidnappers into releasing those 16 females and thus save the lives of as many of the captives as possible.

But what about the five male hostages? Since it is not unusual for female captives to receive more favorable treatment from terrorists or criminals alike, government negotiators may have reasons to ask in behind-the-scenes talks that hostage-holders release their female captives first. It is very different, when the president of a country declares publicly that the kidnapping of women is shameful and contrary to the country’s tradition while not saying the same about the kidnapping of men. By not condemning hostage-taking regardless of the victims’ gender and by remaining altogether silent on male captives, President Karzai implied, unwittingly as it may be, that kidnapping females is incompatible with Afghan traditional values but that taking males hostage is not—or less so.

Not exactly a promising effort to curb the wave of kidnappings by members of the Taliban and other tribal groups that, except for the South Korean case, involve mostly male, not female victims.

Are U.S.-Supplied Arms Killing American Troops in Iraq?

By Brigitte L. Nacos
In case you missed the shocking story in today’s Washington Post about stockpiles of arms that were given to Iraqi security forces by the United States and simply disappeared, Glenn Kessler’s report sums up the irresponsible and even reckless ways in which U.S. officials distributed lethal weapons without making sure that they would not end up in the hands of America’s enemies. As Kessler reports, “The Pentagon has lost track of about 190,000 AK-47 assault rifles and pistols given to Iraqi security forces in 2004 and 2005, according to a new government report, raising fears that some of those weapons have fallen into the hands of insurgents fighting U.S. forces in Iraq. The author of the report from the Government Accountability Office says U.S. military officials do not know what happened to 30 percent of the weapons the United States distributed to Iraqi forces from 2004 through early this year as part of an effort to train and equip the troops.” 

It was mind-boggling enough, when we learned earlier that huge sums of money disappeared mysteriously in  Iraq during the early post-invasion phase, but it is even more shocking that American  troops are presumably killed and maimed by insurgents who use those “disappeared” arms.